The so-called “WAR ON TERRORISM”

11 September and Beyond

'(CBS) On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said.

'He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat.

'"In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death," he said.

'Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11-- the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten.

'Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."

'More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.

'"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 TRILLION [my emphasis] in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

'$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

'"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.'
-Excerpt of "The War On Waste"

My reflections on the continuum of violence as shown on 11 September 2001:

Some ideas that may cause us to question the "official story lines"

Further ideas that may cause us to question the "official story lines"

Websites & articles that analyze the historical background and the current situation

Technical aspects of 11 September 2001

ENVIRONMENT

WAR GAMES

PLANES

Firms to Develop In-Flight Phone Service
Jul 11, 9:27 AM (ET)

BERLIN (AP) - Siemens AG (SI) said Monday it has signed a contract with aircraft maker Airbus SAS to develop technology that would allow passengers to use their mobile phones during flights.

The German company will provide technology based on the GSM wireless standard for Airbus to integrate into the electronics systems used on its aircraft, Siemens said. The service is to be launched in 2006.

The companies plan to fit a base station, linked to the terrestrial GSM network via satellite, behind the ceiling panel of a plane. The base station will receive signals from passengers' mobile phones, personal computers and organizers.

Siemens said the technology will allow passengers to use their electronic devices throughout a flight without interfering with the aircraft's own equipment.

Shares in Munich-based Siemens, which is selling its handset business to BenQ of Taiwan, were up 0.8 percent at $74.40 in afternoon trading in Frankfurt.

Stock in the European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co, Airbus' main parent company, was up 1.9 percent at $31.93 in Paris.

Source: "Firms to Develop In-Flight Phone Service"

Possible guides to a better future for ALL of us

**A Page Of Quotations: Many of the quotes on this page came from this site


**“The hard truth is that the U.S. media left America as unprepared for these terrorist attacks as any Air Force general or CIA bureaucrat. As we dropped bombs on Iraq for 10 years running — justified or not — the U.S. media failed to report on it. Then suddenly, on Sept. 11, we think “We’re at war” when in fact there hasn’t been a day since the Gulf War ended when an American aircraft hasn’t locked onto a target with a missile or bomb. We were at war, it’s just that the media didn’t think it was interesting enough to tell you about it. That’s our lesson to learn.”

Above quote is from: In defense of al-Jazeera: Attacking the messenger, and our message at the same time


**“The Afghan war was illegal and could not be justified on the basis of self-defense. ‘Mr. Powell US Secretary of State has said that the evidence against bin Laden and al-Qaeda would not stand up in court. If it won't stand up in court, how the hell can it justify bombing?’”

Above quote is from: Former UN man warns of Afghan 'catastrophe'

**"We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated. "The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. "Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain."

Dr. Jose M.R. Delgado
Director of Neuropsychiatry
Yale University Medical School
Congressional Record, No. 26, Vol. 118
February 24, 1974

Above quote is from: Conspiracy Nation


**“Gen. George Crook, a veteran Indian fighter throughout the Great Plains and Southwest, who eventually began to perceive (albeit too little, too late) the flaws in his government's policies. With some qualifications, it could serve as an apt description of certain aspects of America's (and the world's) current political climate: ‘It is too often the case that . . . newspapers . . . disseminate all sorts of exaggerations and falsehoods about the Indians, which are copied in papers of high character and wide circulation, in other parts of the country, while the Indians' side of the case is rarely ever heard. In this way the people at large get false ideas with reference to the matter. Then when the outbreak does come public attention is turned to the Indians, their crimes and atrocities are alone condemned, while the persons who injustice has driven them to this course escape scot-free and are the loudest in their denunciations.’” -Above quote is from a review of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Alexander Brown


**“Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman, or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed, or 'disappeared', at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame.”
-Amnesty International, 1996


**"You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who does it or says it."
-El Hajj Malik-Shabazz (Malcolm X), 1925-1965


**“Nothing is more annoying in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A foreigner will gladly agree to praise much in their country, but he would like to be allowed to criticize something, and that is absolutely refused.”
-Alexis de Tocqueville, 1831


**"During the period of 1981-1992 I was an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency but was fired because I protested the harshly discriminatory actions of my superiors - some of whom made their "best" decisions while intoxicated during normal working hours. They also openly rewarded female employees who "cooperated" by providing sexual favors in exchange for highly desireable assignments."
-Kenneth Stahl


**"The CIA is not now nor has ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the president's foreign policy advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while reporting "Intelligence" justifying those activities. It shapes its intelligence, even in such critical areas as soviet nuclear weapon capability, to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target audience of its lies."
-Ralph McGehee


**”The most important thing you can do is simply to continue exposing them. Because why does the FBI do all this? To scare the hell out of people. Were they doing this because of a Soviet invasion threat or because they thought the Socialist Workers Party was about to take over the country? Are they going after whoever their current target is because the country is in imminent danger, internal or external? No. They are doing it because they don't like these organizations. They don't like the civil rights organizations, they don't like the women's organizations, they don't like the anti-war organizations, they don't like the Central American organizations. They don't like social movements. They work for the establishment and the corporations and the politicos to keep things as they are. And they want to frighten and chill the people who are trying to change things. So the best defense against them and resistance against them is simply to keep on fighting back, to keep on exposing them. That's all I have to say.”
-Howard Zinn


**“It should be unnecessary to point out that massive terrorism is a standard device of powerful states.... Some cases are not even controversial. Take the US war against Nicaragua, leaving tens of thousands dead and the country in ruins. Nicaragua appealed to the world court, which condemned the US for international terrorism ("the unlawful use of force"), ordering it to desist and pay substantial reparations. The US responded to the court ruling by sharply escalating the war, and vetoing a security council resolution calling on all states to observe international law. The escalation included official orders to attack ‘soft targets’ -- undefended civilian targets, like agricultural collectives and health clinics -- and to avoid the Nicaraguan army. The terrorists were able to carry out these instructions, thanks to the complete control of Nicaraguan air space by the US and the advanced communications equipment provided to them by their supervisors.”
-Noam Chomsky


**“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
-J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, pp. 51-52


**“No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make "safe" and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for historical or even geological ages. To do such a thing is a transgression against life itself, a transgression infinitely more serious than any crime ever perpetrated by man. The idea that a civilisation could sustain itself on the basis of such a transgression is an ethical, spiritual, and metaphysical monstrosity. It means conducting the economic affairs of man as if people really did not matter at all.”
-E.F. Schumacher


**"The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."
-Stephen Biko


**"... the media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly."
-Noam Chomsky


**"No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is ALWAYS economic."
-A.J.P. Taylor, British Historian


**"It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in."
-General Colin Powell [When asked about the number of Iraqi people who were slaughtered by Americans in the 1991"Desert Storm" terror campaign (200,000 people!)]


**"I will never apologize for the United States of America - I don't care what the facts are."
-President George Bush 1988 [Bush was demonstrating his patriotism by excusing an act of cold-blooded mass-murder by the U.S. Navy. On July 3, 1988 the U.S. Navy warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial airliner. All 290 civilian people in the aircraft were killed. The plane was on a routine flight in a commercial corridor in Iranian airspace. The targeting of it by the U.S. Navy was blatantly illegal. That it was grossly immoral is also obvious. Except to a patriot.]


**"To maintain this position of disparity (U.S. economic-military supremacy)... we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming.... We should cease to talk about vague and... unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standard and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts.... The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
-George Kennan [Director of Policy Planning U.S. State Department, 1948]


**"If they turn on the radars we're going to blow up their goddamn SAMs (surface-to-air missiles). They know we own their country. We own their airspace... We dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now. It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need."
-U.S. Brig. General William Looney (Interview Washington Post, August 30, 1999) [Referring, in reality, to the brutal mass-murder of hundreds of civilian Iraqi men, women and children during 10,000 sorties by American/British war criminals in the first eight months of 1999]


**"I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime."
-Albert Einstein, 1947


**"Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth."
-Virginia Woolf


**“My image of “a Communist” was not a Soviet bureaucrat but my friend Leon's father, a cabdriver who came home from work bruised and bloody one day, beaten up by his employer's goons for trying to organize his fellow cabdrivers into a union.”
-Howard Zinn, from You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.”


**"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind".
-Mahatma Gandhi


**“The other day, the parents of Greg Rodriguez, a young man who died in the World Trade Center, said this: "We read enough of the news to sense that our government is heading in the direction of violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances against us.
"It is not the way to go...not in our son's name."”


**"The US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, revealed in a television interview over the weekend that President George Bush had given an order last Tuesday for the military to shoot down any civilian aircraft that disregarded instructions from air traffic control and appeared to be a threat. The fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco, was thought to be on its way to Washington but crashed in rural Pennsylvania following some kind of altercation between the hijackers and a group of passengers determined to thwart their plans. The rumors that this plane was shot down are based on the fact that debris was found up to eight miles from the crash site, that one of the passengers talking on a mobile phone reported hearing an explosion and seeing a plume of white smoke in the cabin, and that eyewitnesses saw a second aircraft in the sky at the time of the crash."
-The Independent, London, England, September 20, 2001


**"If you give a man the correct information for seven years, he may believe the incorrect information on the first day of the eighth year when it is necessary, from your point of view, that he should do so. Your first job is to build the credibility and the authenticity of your propaganda, and persuade the enemy to trust you although you are his enemy."
-A Psychological Warfare Casebook, Operations Research Office, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland (1958)


**"Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government."
-Henry Kissinger speaking at Evian, France, May 21, 1992 Bilderburgers meeting. Unbeknownst to Kissinger, his speech was taped by a Swiss delegate to the meeting.


**"History is the history of war -- of leaders of countries finding reasons and rationales to send the young people off to fight."
-John Stockwell, former CIA official and author


**"Indonesia plays a key role in maintaining regional stability. It is a leader in ASEAN and is a fundamental force for peace and prosperity ... We did not have a discussion about East Timor."
-Secretary of Defense William Cohen at a press conference, January 1998, after meeting with Indonesian President Suharto who is responsible for the deaths of 500,00 - 1,000,000 following his US-sanctioned coup against Indonesian President Sukarno in 1965, and the deaths of 200,000 during Indonesia's US-sanctioned invasion and occupation of East Timor in 1975.


**"They tell how the Chilean military -- trained and financed by the United States – tortured people with electric shock, particularly on the genitals; forced victims to witness the torture of friends and relatives (including children); raped women in the presence of other family members; burned sex organs with acid or scalding water; placed rats in women's vaginas and into the mouths of other prisoners; mutilated, punctured, and cut off various parts of the body, including genitalia, eyes, and tongue; injected air into women's breasts and into veins (causing slow, painful death); shoved bayonets and clubs into the vagina or anus, causing rupture and death."
-Victims and survivors of the fascist coup in Chile in 1973


**”Confused? Having difficulty telling the good guys from the bad guys? Use this handy guide to differences between Terrorists and the U.S. Government:

TERRORISTS: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician, from extremely wealthy oil family
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician, from extremely wealthy oil family

TERRORISTS: Leader has declared a holy war ('Jihad') against his 'enemies'; believes any nation not with him is against him; believes god is on his side, and that any means are justified.
US GOVERNMENT: Leader has declared a holy war ('Crusade') against his 'enemies'; believes any nation not with him is against him; believes god is on his side, and that any means are justified.

TERRORISTS: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution of non-believers
US GOVERNMENT: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution of non-believers

TERRORISTS: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a free and fair democratic election
US GOVERNMENT: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a free and fair democratic election

TERRORISTS: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in cold blooded bombings
US GOVERNMENT: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in cold blooded bombings

TERRORISTS: Operates through clandestine organization (al Qaeda) with agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other terrorist tactics
US GOVERNMENT: Operates through clandestine organization (CIA) with agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other terrorist tactics

TERRORISTS: Supposed leader has extensive financial ties to Supposed leader of US GOVERNMENT
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader has extensive financial ties to Supposed leader of TERRORIST

TERRORISTS: Supposed leader invested heavily in US bio-chemical companies
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader invested heavily in US bio-chemical companies

TERRORISTS: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine civil liberties
US GOVERNMENT: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine civil liberties”
-arrived in an email


**"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it... Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


**"If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence."
-Bertrand Russell, in "Roads to Freedom" -- December 12, 2001


**"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."
-John Philpot Curran, 1790


**"It is fundamental that the great powers of Congress to conduct war and to regulate the Nation's foreign relations are subject to the constitutional requirements of due process. The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with fundamental constitutional guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit governmental action."
-Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 1963


**"Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and rebellions? Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treasons, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual and the minds of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension."
-Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788

Personal perceptive devices coming to fruition