When is Coercion a Necessity?
(as posted on the Examined Life Discussion Forums: Philosophy Discussion June 25, 2004)
We all experienced being coerced at some point in our lives, whether spanked or made to feel uncomfortable before some authority, like our boss. From our internal perspective, this coercion is the result of being forced to do something against our will, or an embarrassment, or offensive to us. In our minds, we find coercive anything that is done to us with which we do not agree at some level. Mostly, being coerced is an unpleasant or painful experience, which most of us will seek to avoid.
On a grander social scale, coercion is force applied against another with or without their approval, so that an end result is achieved. In our human interactions, some coercions are necessary, since without them there would be social chaos, anarchy. Laws of necessity demand coercion, since to disobey them triggers some sort of penalty. Social laws are made up of, either approved or disapproved, agreements with which all must comply, and those who fail to comply will be punished, or coerced.
On a more universal scale, coercion is sometimes a necessity. Dating back to the days of Plato's Republic, there is a greater public good to which all are subject, and must submit, whether or not it is in their will to do so. This subjugation to the greater good had been passed down to us all through history, so that all persons who live within a greater philosophical structure of what it is that is this good, for the good of the nation, the community, a ship at sea, must comply and obey, or face coercion. This is true even if the greater good is defined by philosophical ideas we today find repulsive, such as Fascism or perhaps Communism, where to disobey this greater good could be severely punished by imprisonment, forced labor, or death. And likewise in what we would think of more benign philosophical belief systems, such as a democratic society of equality and liberty, can nevertheless exercise its power to coerce us if we do not comply. So this is a paradox, whereby a social philosophy that is there to protect our individual liberties also has the power to take them away, or of necessity coerce. Therefore, it becomes a philosophical question: When is coercion a necessity?
To answer this question, it may serve to list some categories of coercion, to see if any patterns emerge:
1. Coercion by authority, where failure to comply may be punished:
ADDENDUM to Coercion.
In the above I left out the obvious, Criminal Coercion, because it offered no doubt. But on further thought, I think it should also be listed. This is simply brutality, where it is inherently coercive to its victims, by definition, and always illegal.
7. Criminal Coercion, where a person is brutally attacked:
If I were to give a one-liner for when is coercion a necessity, I would say:
PRIMITIVE COERCION: No Cause, no name.
MASTER AND SLAVE DYNAMICS, in ancient and modern times. Household management falls into departments corresponding to the parts of which the household in its turn is composed; and the household in its perfect form consists of slaves and freemen. The investigation of everything should begin with its smallest parts, and the primary and smallest parts of the household are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children; we ought therefore to examine the proper constitution and character of each of these three relationships, I mean that of mastership, that of marriage (there is no exact term denoting the relation uniting wife and husband), and thirdly the progenitive relationship (this too has not been designated by a special name)... Since therefore property is a part of a household and the art of acquiring property a part of household management (for without the necessaries even life, as well as the good life, is impossible), and since, just as for the particular arts it would be necessary for the proper tools to be forthcoming if their work is to be accomplished, so also the manager of a household must have his tools, and of tools some are lifeless and others living (for example, for a helmsman the rudder is a lifeless tool and the look-out man a live tool--for an assistant in the arts belongs to the class of tools), so also an article of property is a tool for the purpose of life, and property generally is a collection of tools, and a slave is a live article of property. It is manifest therefore that there are cases of people of whom some are freemen and the others slaves by nature, and for these slavery is an institution both expedient and just. But at the same time it is not difficult to see that those who assert the opposite are also right in a manner. The fact is that the terms 'slavery' and 'slave' are ambiguous; for there is also such a thing as a slave or a man that is in slavery by law, for the law is a sort of agreement under which the things conquered in war are said to belong to their conquerors. And even from these considerations it is clear that the authority of a master over slaves is not the same as the authority of a magistrate in a republic, nor are all forms of government the same, as some assert. Republican government controls men who are by nature free, the master's authority men who are by nature slaves; and the government of a household is monarchy (since every house is governed by a single ruler), whereas statesmanship is the government of men free and equal. About property in general there is little difficulty, with the exception of property in slaves, which is an institution of a very doubtful character. The slavery of the Helots is approved by some and condemned by others; and there is some doubt even about the slavery of the Mariandynians at Heraclea and of the Thessalian Penestae. This makes us ask, What shall we do about slaves? To which every one would agree in replying,--Let us have the best and most attached whom we can get.
"Coercion is necessary to stop coercion, and under no other conditions, of necessity, for then that leads only to more coercion."
But even this simple formula may not be totally true and fraught with danger. I leave this thought to ponder:
Can the prevention of coercion be used against us to coerce? And if so, is this justifiable, or necessary?
Or better: Can we prevent coercion without coercing? Other than "turning the other cheek", I can think of no other answer.
* * * * *
Our best defense against coercion?
I suspect the strongest defense anyone can prepare against coercion is just one of awareness. This calls for foresight, vigilance against unnecessary trespass, an awareness of when we are being coerced or forced against our will, against our agreement. In a society where laws of agreement dominate our daily activity, where the law is designed to protect us from coercions, it falls to each individual to be cognizant when this protection is somehow being usurped. We like to think this is how our society is structured, by agreement and inherent it its social contract, but such a social agreement is never assured.
I believe that our first duty is that we do not coerce unnecessarily, since coercion starts with us. On the other side of this is an equal awareness when it is we who are being victimized by coercions. For agreements to be enforced, where the laws's policing functions protect us for being forced against our agreements, it falls to us to equally police both our own activity as well as those activities of others that concern us. This is especially true where agreements are formed to coerce another, or where a person not guilty of coercion is being victimized by third party agreements. Such agreements of necessity are null and void, and should never be allowed by anyone. If such an awareness is in place, then there is less chance that we are caught unawares of the dangers facing us, so that coercion has a lesser chance of taking root. If coercion does take root, then it becomes more difficult to undo the damage, whether legally through a third party arbitration, or court of law, jury and judge, or through fighting to regain our rights. This is especially true of current geopolitical conditions where certain factions of extremism or fanaticism think it is their duty to coerce us, to force us against our will to do theirs. This is never so, and none should ever feel they are justified in such coercions. However, if we are not aware of their designs to coerce, then we are in effect defenseless until such time that the coercion had taken place, an damage done. It is a better defense to be aware of it before hand, so that those who want to coerce are not empowered to do so. As soon as such coercive conditions become manifest, a little bell should go off in our heads: "Warning - coercion!"
So the philosophical principle here is one of awareness to not empower coercion, even before it starts. Any population of individuals who are more vigilant in this respect will be more difficult to coerce than those who are unawares. It becomes more difficult to coerce if people are conscious of it. When we are more free to interact with one another through a process of agreements instead, sanctified through laws that protect our property and contracts, then society as a whole becomes dominated more through agreements than coercions. This is a more desirable state of affairs than a society where individuals are constantly being victimized by coercion. Then, where coercion is necessary is only in that state of affairs where it is coerce itself, self negate, so that it has no power to do damage. This awareness of coercion runs the gamut from terrorists who want to blow themselves up to kill us all the way to subtle coercions that infringe upon our human rights. In final analysis, awareness of coercion may be the best way to disempower it from being itself.
How do we empower people to be conscious of coercion, so to disempower it? I would think it should come from education at the earliest possible age of a child's understanding. Conflict resolution, personal rights, social human rights, should be taught earliest in school, as a matter of self preservation of our society built up on the power of agreements.
* * * * * *
Can we ever be sure we are not coercing another, or that they are truly coercing us? The answer again falls back on one's level of awareness, of our consciousness, of that inner knowing that something is wrong. Then it takes reason to correct it, and that takes work. But the 'knowing' it is wrong is already inborn in us. What had failed us to date is that we had been taught to NOT recognize coercion, but to go along with it, to accept it 'for our own good' without complaint. It is this awareness that needs to change.
Ivan D. Alexander
By Ivan A. on Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 12:54 pm:A Society Built on the Principle of Habeas Mentem
A society built on the principle of Habeas Mentem is a society based on a principle that is consistent with the way we view our universe. Our universe is now no longer a manifestation of random forces and accidental circumstances; now, our universe is a natural order formed for its own purpose and moved by its own knowledge. We can harness this order to have it become the foundation of our new social order by consciously seeking to occupy the definition of our identity; we can occupy more closely this real definition by applying the definition of our human identity to our human organization through the principle of the Law of Agreement. In agreement, we materialize the natural order of our universe in the midst of our human definition of our reality, in particular our social reality. Thus, a society built on the principle of Habeas Mentem is a society built on a principle of human agreement.
The issue is of necessity one of either coercion or agreement. Agreement is an achieved state of conscious approval between two living beings aware of this approval, though an unconscious approval may also exist, such as two animals sharing the same space together without ever talking about it. However, when such agreement is not possible, or violently rejected, or simply rejected, then to persist becomes coercive, so in this way coercion becomes the opposite of agreement.
In societies built out of coercion, where the strongest win, then coercion is a perpetual necessity, since agreements are constantly subordinated to coercion. One of the faults of so-called utopian societies, was that the individual's right to agreement was always subordinate to society's ability to coerce, i.e., the 'isms' of Communism or Fascism, where this coercion was at times lethal to intellectuals who questioned the system. On the other side, societies built up of agreements, whether individual contractual agreements, a handshake at the diamond district, a phone call to your broker, or large legal agreements, the laws and constitution of the land, or democratic agreements, that who wins the election serves in office until the next term; all these agreements dominate over coercion, in that coercion is what we are supposed to be protected from. When the system fails, then coercion once again dominates activities, either as subordinating individuals to powerful bosses, or gangsters, or mob like power, or even to anarchic social chaos, where agreements are no longer validated except to fight for them. Once agreement no longer rules, it seems we fall back into coercion.
So, if I were to qualify when was "coercion necessary", I would say that it is always necessary to preserve our right to form agreements, so that agreements rule rather than coercion. Of course, if we make agreements only to coerce others, then once again we are back to coercion, which self negates the right to agreements. Once we can no longer form agreements and are subject to coercions instead, then we start to erode our right to being who we are, in effect, we begin to lose our personal identity. The result is usually unhappiness and suffering, and if violent enough, physical harm, mental or physical abuse, punishment, enslavement, and ultimately in worst case death. We know agreements are more agreeable to us than coercion, since this is what defines an agreement, that we agree with it.
Coercion is a necessity only to stop itself, even if this coercion was agreed upon. Any agreement to coerce, except to stop coercion, is of necessity a self disqualifying agreement, since its end result is coercion. Where coercion rules, agreements become impossible to enforce, since coercion dominates over them, and the agreements have no validity. For agreements to be valid, they must be protected from coercion; and must also be enforced with coercion where failure to abide by an agreement is a breach of contract, coercive to the victim. So coercion is a double edged sword, philosophically, that can be used to cut or heal coercive abuses: to enforce agreements, it is a good; to coerce against agreements, it is bad thing. But when used for the good, coercion is then done of necessity, I would think.
By Ivan A. on Thursday, September 2, 2004 - 09:02 pm:
The twelve Nepali men who were kidnapped in Iraq and brutally killed by the terrorist insurgents, by shooting in the back and then beheading while still alive, is a clear case of primitive coercion without cause. The twelve men could have been of any nationality, religious or ethnic heritage, who were men of no political standing, unimportant in the course of world events. They were merely cleaning staff of no stature except that they became victims of another horror perpetrated in the name of Islam. They would have never called attention to themselves otherwise. Yet, they were victimized in such a cruel way to get the world's attention to the dysfunctional coercive cause of the murderous gang who captured them in the name of some cause or other. Whatever legitimacy they thought their cause had was invalidated by the primitiveness of their actions. In fact, their cause has no name, for it is unworthy of one, bankrupt of any legitimacy. Same as the name of the gang who killed them has no name, nor do they deserve one. In their semi-delirious imagined jihad, the beheading of innocent men whose only crime was to be there, is unworthy of considerations beyond those of what they really are, a most primitive coercion only, murders with no cause and no name.
Rome, Sept. 1, 2004
Primitive coercion knows no causes, only the terror of capturing innocent human beings, kidnapping their children, threatening them with death, and killing them as their parents and loved ones watch helplessly at the horror. Whether it is in Russia, or Chechnya, or Sudan or Liberia or Israel or DR Congo or Palestine or Iraq or Columbia, or the United States of America, or of Africa or Europe or Asia; their cause has no name but the banal horror of killers who coerce the innocent. It all comes from fear.
What are they afraid of? That it is okay to love one another? Is this what they are so afraid of, that where there is love, they see Satan in all of us, in all the beauty of creation, in all we do? In freedom, in peace? In truth, they are only fearing themselves, their vision blurred, their love stifled; their cowardly acts proves this, that in wishing death to others they only show the fear in their hearts. Is this what their cause is all about? Fear? If so then their cause does have a name. It is the cause in the name of the Fear that drives their crude killings of innocents.
Ivan
By Ivan A. on Saturday, September 11, 2004 - 04:12 pm:
SLAVERY AS UNDERSTOOD IN ANCIENT GREECE:
Aristotle taught there is a science to the master and slave relationship in the smallest part, that of the household. In his "Politics" he writes:
Aristotle was comfortable with the idea of a slave as property, another necessary article of the household if it is to work properly. He then goes on to show how this is as necessary as a ruling part of nature as are the musical scales, and totally normal. The good master, or statesmen over social affairs, is one who treats his slaves well. A good slave, by contrast, like a well domesticated animal, is one who obeys well. Aristotle sees this as being just, as he says:
Quote:
The slave, he further writes, though a separate body from the master, is nevertheless a part of his soul by nature. Taken higher up the scale of citizenship, however, he does make a distinction between master and slave relationship, which he identifies as a science, and those of government where the authority over free men is different:
Quote:
Quote:
In Plato's "Laws", treatment of slavery is somewhat more ambiguous, since he mentions that there are some who think slavery is not just or desirable, though socially acceptable. As he writes:
So, though slavery is of a very doubtful character, it nevertheless is acceptable, provided the slave is an attached and good slave. In his Laws, Plato also mentions that if a master kills his slave, his act is not punishable, other than to seek purifications, or pay twice the value of the slave if belonging to another. Of course, a slave killing his master would be punished as parricide, with death.
Quote:
So going back to ancient Greece, on which many principles of our modern society are based, including our republican governance, there was a tradition, an acceptable system of belief, that there is a natural master and slave relationship. Their dynamics were then defined by the laws and jurisprudence of the time. It was considered normal for masters to rule over their slaves, and never the other way around. If a master beat his servants, or even killed them, such coercive behavior was never condemned. Coercion was a valid way of life for how society was run by its masters, the free men. Thus, it was likewise normal for slaves to obey any coercion imposed on them. Slavery was natural and right.
PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR MODERN TIMES:
In the time of the Romans, wealthy people could not imagine their lives without slaves. Indigenous peoples throughout the world practiced slavery for a very long time, whether Indians taking other Indians as captives in warfare, or black Africans doing the same, and sometimes selling them off to European and Arab slave traders. By the time of early colonies in the Americas, slavery was largely relegated to racial slavery, where Indian or black slaves were still acceptable, but one's own European servants were now bonded by obligations instead, such as debt or fee of passage, so their indentured tenure was limited. In the old world, work houses were common to pay off debt, where whole families were forced to work as virtual slaves. In the Americas, other than largely black African slaves, it was no longer a matter of birth, and slavery had fallen into decline. By the time of the American Civil War, slavery was hotly contested as unjust. Today slavery is totally unacceptable.
In our modern democratic world we see pure submission as a negative, no longer acceptable for its own sake. We no longer see it as natural that there is a master over slave relationship, and thus the dynamics for men and women had changed. There is still a vestige of slavery as acceptable in terms of some religions, where pure obedience to the teachings of the prophets and Allah's messengers is desired. In the opinion of one writer, "Surrendering Ourselves to Allah", for example, he says:
He then explains that unlike slavery to negative things like drugs and alcohol, slavery to serve Allah is a very different kind of 'slavery', for which he would gladly serve in servitude to Him. So servitude and obedience is philosophically, at least is some spheres of religious beliefs, is acceptable and desired. Surrendering one's soul to God, or to Jesus, is a form of total obedience, especially given the religious institutions to which a believer belongs will impose certain rules to be obeyed without questioning. So a Master relationship exists for such a believer, whether born into this religion or accepted of one's free will in adult life, and such obedience is not seen as slavery, but as an act of submission to a higher order of things, God. However, this is not the same as obedience to another human being, one deemed as in some way superior, as a master, to the inferior, the slave. So the two distinctions are in fact different, though some would argue that a philosophy of total obedience is not so far removed from slavery, and that any persons who accept this philosophy for themselves, even of their own free will, cannot make the distinction properly, and thus may be 'slaves' to others. If for no other reason, their acceptance of this condition renders them submissive to the interpretations by their religious authorities to what is God's will, and thus they obey men. But such submission is really of one's free will, so not slavery per se, though freedom in a religious context is never a main issue. Once one had accepted a certain obedience to God, then it is in one's soul to find the true submission required to serve that God, though this obedience may be no more than being true to one's conscience. It took a Protestant Reformation to bring this to the fore for Christians, which propelled our world forward, though it is not clear the same had moved other religions. Total obedience is still the paradigm for many of Earth's societies, whether to the king, or tyrant, or local authority.
Quote:I have to admit that when I first accepted Islam, and someone told me that i was now a slave of Allah, it did make the hair on the back of my neck stand on ends. Slavery in the West carries very bad connotations. The very word stirs up deep and volatile emotions. The regime of slavery was one of injustice and barbarism, so most people's reaction is, "Slave? I am nobody's slave. I'm a free man/woman, with a will of my own."
Be free. You will be surprised when you no longer accept coercion, others respect you, now you are not inclined to coerce others, and you are actually more happy. So be free of coercion, and really "be free!"
Win in the name of God!
This BBC article on the DR Congo is too close to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Today's "the horror" is much worse.
I would submit that coercion is a double edged sword.
When is animal coercion a necessity?
It is easy to justify many things in war and the name of profit under pure unrestrained capitalism. The use of coercion, use of drugs, financial pressure, psychological and physical torture, twisting of religous beliefs and all the rest. The justification is that such things will save lives or expand profits. The same goes for the use of animals during experimentation. The justification is that the new drugs and techniques will save lives. The article at the end of this postings is part of what drove the use of coercion at GITMO, when you read it you see what the men in woman in GITMO were trying to prevent.
Thank you sincerely Ed, for this great reference
Thank You for the Comment Ivan,
A Lesson in Cold War Intelligence and Terrorism
PANAM 103 was a classic case of cooperation from the Soviets to the Middle East to do to us what we did to the Soviets in Afganhistan. Everyone from the Iranians, Lybians to former East German Intelligence all played in that explosion. The Target list of people that were booked for the flight was tremendous. Had we all been on it, the blow to American Intelligence and Security would have been tremendous. In simple terms PANAM 103 was a nexus point in history....
I have looked at the bombing in London and have based on preliminary analysis of the facts made some initial conclusions.
Further analysis of the London Bombings
AL QAEDA FAILED IN ITS TERROR
There is hope as well for the Children of Islam if they listen they have fallen far...
Fall out from the Bombing still reverberates and post bombing second stage operation assessment.
A lesson from the past, being updated and used by Osama and his network today. They are hoping to prompt a Islamic Crystal Night in the West and then use it for their own purposes....
Ed, it will not happen. "A lesson from the past, being updated and used by Osama and his network today. They are hoping to prompt a Islamic Crystal Night in the West and then use it for their own purposes.... "
Ed, I should add to my above that Al Qaeda and their Whahabism inspired wanabees are no more than mere criminals, both in Arab society and in their invaded countries like Europe and America. They will be hunted down as criminals against humanity and prosecuted. Not to belittle your thoughts, but there will be no other retribution against these criminals other than capture and prosecution, or killed in action. In their misguided confused ideology, they will see this as Jihad. We will see it as no more than cutting out a social cancer against law abiding and peaceful human society. The root cause is their evil mullahs teaching hatred in their "Koranic" schools. I put the Koran in quotes here because their interpretation of holy teachings are fouled with their hatred of our western values of democracy and human freedoms.
Ivan,
Ed, I hear you. But immigrated Arabs, or their offspring Islamic fundamentalist copycats, have to live in their real world of real choices, and that means they must choose either to live within the values of the West, which they chose, or live within the values from which they ran away. If they choose the latter, then they want to impose on the West the same values from which they ran away. Is this not irrational? Secular fanaticism or religious fanaticism have the same modus operandi, or using unreasonable propaganda to sway their followers into evil deeds. This, alas, is a curse on all the peaceful and law abiding Arabs, or other Islamics, to which they must pay very serious attention. If they do not, it will be their undoing as a culture, one that will be marginalized and ostracized by the rest of the world. And this is serious, something they may not understand how truly serious it is. God gave them reason and the free will to make a choice, same as any man or woman, and they chose to leave Arabia to immigrate to a better land. Now they must choose again, whether to embrace the same oppression from which they ran away, or to embrace a new ideology of freedom. Iraq and Afghanistan will be major tests in this, and we shall see how they chose. The immigrant Arabs will be watching. But they in the end will have to choose, just as God made them with the mental ability to make this choice. I pray they choose wisely, whether to join the rest of humanity or go back to their ancient ways of slavish oppression. If they choose wrongly, their culture will disappear into the oblivion of history. This would be sad to me, because I actually like the Arab world. But I would not impose the violent worst of it on Europe or America, but only the best of it, which is gentle and soulful and poetic, in my experience.
I hear you Ivan,
I have been develing into the London bombing in an effort to dectect if there was coded traffic based on the Koran being used. I note the following regarding the number seven identified in another posting. Capture 7 of the Koran is the one that details the establishement of an Islamic Empire. I also note that July 7 is 177 days from the Gregorian New Year and that in 2006 the Haj starts on 1 January 177 days from the bombing. I believe that we may have cracked part of the code that the terrorists were using duirng the London bombing but I would need more data to go further.
Unfortunately I have to concur with the following opinions on the war on terrorism. This last bombing indicates a major shift in terrorist organization has taken place...
At present I beleive that there is a conflict for leadership between two of the Great Islamic Militant terorist Groups Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah. The Middle East one Al Qadea and the Asian one Jemaah Islamiyah. At present Al Qaeda is engaged in direct operations, however I believe that Jemaah Islamiyah is currently in a planning and rebuilding cycle and will emerge shortly back on the world stage.
Qudos to Ed Chesky for the best assessment of Global Terorism...If we could we would award you the congressional medal of honor...
This guy trisected the angle broke the Czech War Plans and did not get the congressional medal of honor? What is up with the United States?
I think the government is covering something up!
I have been monitoring this site and Know Edward Chesky having served with him. He is an officer of the highest moral character.
In time the truth will come out with regrads to the people that falsified the intelligence that got us into the War in Irag. When it does it will be bigger than Watergate. Ed Chesky is just one of the victums of it.
To set the record straight
While I was in the VA hospital recovering from the Old Soviet Bio-Weapon that I got hit with in a bunch of flowers, the VA confirmed recovery from a infectious agent via urinalysis. Several vials of blood were take for anti-body analysis and exploitation
We had no hope and no one else and we had to know, Osama had to be stoped
I note the following and the fact that the President of the United States has been noticably absent from the Media lately despite the storm hiting our coast and millions being dispalced.
This is better than TV, now I know why the Catholics are gun shy of guys who play with geometry and telescopes. I think that they had the same problem with Da Vinci
2001 – Chief of Intelligence Training to the Saudi Arabian National Guard under the auspices of the Vinnell Arabia Corporation. My office complex was bombed by AL Queada last year. During my tenure there in 2001 I identified an inside agent network of Islamic fundamentalist supporters that was subsequently identified passing data to Al Queada. I reported this development prior to 9/11 during my Defense Security Service periodic investigation but the information was ignored.
Thanks Ivan,
Terrorist Situation Update
Ed, it is not as dark as it seems. In yours: This is like at Waco where the followers were conditioned to accept a world view of events the leader promulgated that colored their perspective on the world. Just like in Waco when pressed the leader was able to create a condition in the mind of the followers that the end of the world had come or it was time to go on the offensive as they were and instrument of Gods will as manefested by signs, information and teachings professed by the leader.
The article below offers good insight into the world that produces the terrorist bombers and the nature of the problem we face. Into this world comes the preachers of hate and killing as described by the above posting which I concure with for the most part.
Ed, I think the process in pursuit of these distortedly "brainwashed" criminals is four fold:
Ivan,
Why would Brits bomb their own?
Interesting to note that the government still contiues to employ Psi but has contracted it out
Unconfirmed reports indicate that a test subject co-opted into the, Star Gate Project for Operation Iraqi Freedom managed to induce effects at the facility managed by Dr. May at a distance of 3000 miles. The events surrounding it are highly classified by Technical Intelligence. Foreign Technology Division at Wright Paterson AFB is believed to be involved in evaluating the effects.
Test results of the subject in question when given a standard Stargate era remote viewing test indicated 85% accuracy. This places the individual beyound any previous Stargate member.
CIA-Initiated Remote Viewing
After reviewing a large amount of data regarding Osama. I believe that he has or is currently operating on the Afghanistan/Iran Border, possibly near Zehedran.
COUNTDOWN TO PEACE IN ISLAM
Well said messenger,
How the Shepherd Saved the SEAL
Dan Sherman
Strange story, but Sherman's prenatal experience may not be unique, from what I've read on the matter.
Starange Things happen Ivan,
WILL WE SACRIFICE OUR CHERISHED HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST EXTREME COERCION?
House Votes to Extend Patriot Act By GLEN JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
A couple of articles regarding the effect the bombings have had. Unfortunately the effects are in keeping with my projection of Terrorist aims and objectives. Besides the foot soldiers that execute these crimes against humanity, there is a 24/7 network of computer support personnel and analysts that support these bombers that scan the web for information like that which is contained within these two stories. This is then cross referenced against the sermons and press releases coming out of political and religous leaders. The terrorists then adjust operations to maximize the effect of their future strikes based on information like that contained below. Coded sermons and code speak based upon the Koran and terorrist training/religious doctrine is then used to relay data regarding future targets and current operations.
Sharm el-Sheikh Bombed
I've looked at the Sharm el Sheikh bombings and concur with the assessment that they are tied via a decentralized network of terror to the bombings in London and Iraq; with information regarding the techniques of bomb making being shared via the world wide web by a 24/7 terror network.
I have this strange sense of Deja Vu regarding this entire tip on terrorist low level terrorist cells penetrating the United States College Campuses....
Ed, you are right that this is but a loose connections of terrorist cells whose common aim is to do as much damage as possible to our way of life. It's a life they cannot have, do not share in its joys and pains, and have no understanding given their "pre-Bronze Age" mentality. We are dealing with an abject people who are essentially disconnected from reality, and thus insane. They may appear well organized, purposeful, hard bitten in their intent. In reality, they are misguided, terribly un-Godly, coerced by fears, and led by "chaperone managers", their masters who will pull the detonator for them, so these carrier of death destruction are sure to go off. Notice the new suiciders never work alone, they always have an accomplice who makes sure they detonate. After fasting, reading ancient accounts of alleged martyrs, and preparing themselves for this un-holy task, to do the devil's work, they are led to their targets as human bombs. They prepared themselves for this horror by sometimes paying off debts, writing a farewell, making a video, so they could be shamed should they failed, and making a list of the 70 names who will be "guaranteed" passage into their sick version of paradise. They then are led by their masters to their death. Note how confused and scared they become when the bombs fail to detonate. They know their masters are watching, and they will pay. So their sole purpose is to kill others. How utterly bizarre is this whole episode. That men, and sometimes women, of the 21st century should subjugate themselves to such an atrocity is beyond reason. Truly, we are witnessing the sad masquerade of the macabre, the insane.
Ex-CIA official blasts Bush on leak of operative's name Democrats' radio address focuses on White House aides' role
The Monitor's View
I found this article to be in keeping with my assessments on Terrorism and the decentralized nature of the threat we are facing. It also ties Iraq into the equation in a way that supports my assessment of the terrorist efforts, aims objectives and operating base of support.
I have recieved a tip from some of my contacts that a bombing or terorist attack in Isreal and/or the Republic of India may be in the planning or execution stages.
I did some checking after recieving the tip on a possible terrorist attack in India and found the following article. Retalialtion from militants is highly likely after this incident. Thus supporting the information I recieved regarding a possible upcoming terrorist attack in India.
As for what I have done, just like the intelligence network I rebuilt to break the Czech Warplans I have rebuilt a network of laid off Intelligence Analysts and Military officers that were seperated from service during the Post Cold War downszing.
They prepared themselves for this horror by sometimes paying off debts, writing a farewell, making a video, so they could be shamed should they failed, and making a list of the 70 names who will be "guaranteed" passage into their sick version of paradise. They then are led by their masters to their death.
Well said Ivan,
I think this project stargate stuff is fairly scary.
Assessment of Israeli/Palestinian Situation
Poll: Americans? views of Islam warming
Homeland Security concures with our assessment of Terrorist Cells being present in the United States. I assess they are likely already engaged in plans for London/Madrid style attacks.
In time there is hope even for the most violent of terrorist organizations when faced with stiff oposition, citizens that reject violent and dedicated soldiers....
New York subway and bus riders are being told to look out for passengers with clenched fists, or who are sweating profusely, or reek of excessive cologne ?
"All four" London (failed) bombers arrested, one in Rome.
3. Within their numbers in their ethno-cultural group will be those who are sympathetic supporters of their misbegotten cause. To throw a loop around them too may include many innocent individuals, so it is not an easy task to separate those who are potential suicider killers from those who merely secretly wish them success. This includes the religious teachers of hate. They should all be accounted for.
Al Qaeda uses Web as a weapon
Oh "the horror, the horror", the primitives dance with their cutoff heads to the glee of butcher soldiers of their evil god against the infidels. The horror, the horror.... Now on sale at your favorite street video stall, or see it live on the internet.
"I'm So Sorry"
The following article is a fair representation of the conspiracy to suppress all information and deflect blame from the intelligence officials and Bush Admistration that were responsible for the failure to prevent 9/11 and manipulate intelligence to get us into the war in Iraq.
Asia; 115 people were injured with 350 bombs detonating.
Indonesia Cuts Sentences for Bali Bombers By IRWAN FIRDAUS, Associated Press Writer
"Bangladeshi authorities said they had received reports of bomb blasts from 36 districts across the country.
Unfortunately it seems that Al Queda is actively filling its ranks with a new generation of terrorists skilled in improvised bombs and urban combat and that as the war in Iraq drags on these veterans of the war are returning to their home countries to expand their terror networks.
The Problem of Islam (cont.):
A very good analysis of the situation Ivan.
In terms of Terrorism and my discussion above the following is a quote from an interview with Hugo Chavez questioning him on his support of terrorism and some of the most vile terrorist groups in the Americas. From his answer you can see the psychology of a man that has not renounced violence and would led his people to ruin in pursuit of a revolution for an ideology that has failed the test of time.
What are the Iraqis made of? Just to reiterate: the good Muslim majority, if it exists as such, will, if it wants to save Islam, have to do more than merely persuade, through theological arguments, their extremist/jihadist/terrorist brothers & sisters. They will actually have to fight them physically. It is an expensive, tragic, and stupid distraction from what ought to have been the main effort--apprehending bin Laden and dismantling his terrorist network. Rather than that, that terrorist network has grown exponentially as a result of the invasion of Iraq, a country that is now in a state of constant terror.
It seems I struck a nerve with my cross post on Islamic Terorism. People who have never traveled the middleast and get their intelligence from the newspapers should have care regarding the threat posed by Islamic Jihadists. Those that would paint Islam with one brush are destined to go down the path that the Jihadists would like you to travel rather than open a meaningful dialog with Islam they would attack it in all apsect furthering the tensions between the religions.
Yup Ed, we stirred them up some. Always good to have multiple points of view. Islamic terrorism is a serious enough problem worldwide to have intelligent minds scrutinize what drives it, and how to stop it. Until we see some serious steps towards greater tolerance, the issue is wide open, and openly deadly. The coercive forces that drive terroristic Islamic ideology is the main threat to future world civilization. How many new churches or synagogues had been built in Islamic countries of late, for example, even secular places like Turkey? How about human rights for women? There's the bottom line.
free!
By Anonymous on Tuesday, March 1, 2005 - 10:58 pm:
Terrorists live by coercion. The want to win by coercions against innocents. Satan be damned, but in the name of freedom and rule of law, laws of agreement, we will win against terrorsim. No matter our religion, we who are free will win in the name of God.
By JC on Monday, April 11, 2005 - 05:33 pm:
By Edward Chesky on Sunday, June 12, 2005 - 07:53 pm:
The following was just released by the media...the effect on the middleast of the full log release will be un-imaginable and cause many to flock to the banner of Osama Bin Laddin...You don't win by crossing a line....what is acceptable to us is not acceptable to a billion Islamic people who are for the most part kind and caring people....We accept coercion of many kinds in the United States because our culture has been one of preparing us for the turmoil of the workplace...and living in an open society...in Islamic society the people have been repressed beaten and subjugated...this type of behavior when released undermines our credabilty accross the globe....
As I review this information I am reminded of the words of Jesus Christ on the Cross...Father forgive them for they know not what they do....This information will result in more death...more soldiers being injured and mained and more flocking to the banner of Osama...
I shudder to think what will happen if it is confirmed that we crossed the line and used chemical interrogation as well....
The document titled "Secret ORCON: Interrogation Log Detainee 063" included the following entries
Essay: Inside Guantanamo
Exclusive: Inside The Interrogation Of Detainee 063
Related Article: Understanding 9/11
Posted Sunday, Jun. 12, 2005
23 November 2002
0225: The detainee arrives at the interrogation booth a Camp X-Ray. His hood is removed and he is bolted to the floor. SGT A and SGT R are the interrogators. A DoD linguist and MAJ L (BSCT) are present
0235: Session begins. The detainee refuses to look at SGT A "due to his religion. This is a rapport building session.
0240: Detainee states he's on hunger strike. SGT A explains the affects of a hunger strike on the body. SGT A runs "love of brothers in Cuba" approach.
0320: The detainee refused to answer whether he wanted water. SGT R explained with emphasis that not answering disrespects SGT A and embarrasses him. The detainee said no, he didn't want water. The detainee continues to say he's on hunger strike.
0345: The detainee dozed off during a break. SGT R woke him up.
0355: SGT R wakes up detainee again.
0450: Interrogators take a break. Detainee goes to the bathroom
0520: Interrogations resumes. The detainee refuses food and water.
0540: SGT A begins 9/11 theme. The detainee asks to pray and is refused.
0550: Detainee drinks __ bottle of water and states after this he is on strike, he refuses food.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13 December 2002
1115: Interrogators began telling detainee how ungrateful and grumpy he was. In order to escalate the detainee's emotions, a mask was made from an MRE box with a smily face on it and placed on the detainee's head for a few moments. A latex glove was inflated and labeled the "sissy slap" glove. The glove was touched to the detainee's face periodically after explaining the terminology to him. The mask was placed back on the detainee's head. While wearing the mask, the team began dance instruction with the detainee. The detainee became agitated and began shouting.
20 December 2002
1115: Detainee offered water—refused. Corpsman changed ankle bandages to prevent chafing. Interrogater began by reminding the detainee about the lessons in respect and how the detainee had disrespected the interrogators. Told detainee that a dog is held in higher esteem because dogs know right from wrong and know how to protect innocent people from bad people. Began teaching the detainee lessons such as stay, come, and bark to elevate his social status up to that of a dog. Detainee became very agitated.
21 December 2002
2223: As I began to inform the detainee of the changes the Saudi government has been making in order to support the efforts of peace and terror free world I began to engage closeness with the detainee. This really evoked strong emotions within the detainee. He attempted to move away from me by all means. He was laid out on the floor so I straddled him without putting my weight on him. He would then attempt to move me off of him by bending his legs in order to lift me off but this failed because the MPs were holding his legs down with their hands. The detainee began to pray loudly but this did not stop me from finishing informing the detainee about the Al Qaeda member, Qaed Salim Sinan al Harethi aka Abu Ali, that was killed by the CIA.
From the Jun. 20, 2005 issue of TIME magazine
By Ivan A. on Friday, June 24, 2005 - 08:34 pm:
There's a great set of article in the June 2005 NewScientist magazine about "Animals and Us", one of which is titled "You hypocrites!" by Gary L. Francione. The author explores the concept of a misplaced 'anthropomorphism', since we are justifying coercing animals for our purposes by denying them humanlike characteristics, in a kind of "anthropodenial", as coined by Frans de Wall in another article titled "Suspicious minds". So we could exploit animals for our purposes of convenience, whether live experimentation, killing for food, or just for amusement, without any sense of guilt on our part because they are not human. However, animals display sentience and intelligence that in some ways surpasses that of some humans. Should we justify the same coercion then on humans who are in some way mentally incapacitated, say in a coma or imbecillic? I am sure the Nazis would think so, though they did not use humans for food that we know of, but felt no compunction about killing those they deemed defficient. So is coercion of animals a 'necessity', to suit our purposes, or is it of necessity that we do no coerce our fellow animals? After all, are we not the animals too? If we no longer coerce other humans, ideally, then why are we still coercing our not too distant cousins, the animals? Would you eat your cousin, of necessity? Of course not. Is it not time to stop anthropomorphising our coercions of animals, and get out of our anthropodenial? If we do not then do we not validate the Nazi doctors? We should think about this, because our futures is both us and the animals, all of them. The animals are us.
Ivan
By Edward Chesky on Saturday, June 25, 2005 - 01:57 pm:
I offer no excuse of the men and women on both sides of the global war on terrorism and in Iraq that crossed the line, both enemy and friendly. I myself was subjected to intense coercion to continue with predictive analysis to support combat operations in Iraq and the War on terrorism because a number of corporations felt my gift at analysis, like Dr. Nashes' genius, should be used to make them a profit and gain contracts with the government. Profit drove that train, while solgans of religon and pariotism were bandied about.
During each war the great minds are drafted to the cause and come home with some degree of damage as well. In World War II it was the Great Battle of the Atlantic, where the u-boats almost won the war for the NAZI's against that we threw the greatest mathmatical genuses that we had to break the engima code...I broke the old NZAI Code with compass and straightedge while recovering from this last war...in the hands of a master of oragami or compass and staightedge, such common items can work feats of mathmatics that are beyound imagination. As NASA has learned with regards to folding solar arrays for storage based on oragami.
The sad fact is that coercison was not all necessary, all they had to do was ask and I would have done it even despite the psychological toll that would have taken on me much as the same way the old greats of the enigma program during World War II did. it was because they had the vision to see through the NAZI lies and understood what type of world that they would have built.
In this day and age like in an other there are humans that would, for a number of reasons, volunteer to test the drugs and surgical procedures, and there are alternatives to animal testing could be found as well.
I would say that recent events prove that coercion even with the best of intensions is a blade that cuts both ways and will turn in your hand when you try to use in battle.
Adapted from the script by Craig Delaval and Laura Rabhan
MSNBC
Lester Holt
MSNBC TV premiere's "Coming Home" on Sunday at 9 p.m. ET
Beyond the homecoming parades and yellow ribbons, a quiet struggle rages on the homefront as the roughly one million men and women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan begin to rotate out of combat. But how much do we all understand about what these service members have experienced and the kind of support they now need?
Lester Host hosts “Coming Home,” a one-hour documentary which premieres Sunday, June 26 at 9 p.m. ET. “Coming Home” begins and ends with homecomings. But we learn that the war does not end when our veterans arrive in the U.S. -- for these men and women, it is just the beginning of a long road home.
Mark O'Brien's journey home
It’s homecoming day. The people and the towns are unique, but the scenes are the same -– a final arrival for troops who’ve spent months in harm’s way. Not since Vietnam have so many troops returned home from war.
The arrival home is the easy part but what follows is a complicated transition to life back in the states. In order to really understand what it takes to come home you have to return to the war zone that these men have just left.
Iraq is a particularly brutal conflict. It is a guerrilla war of hidden explosives, suicide bombers and ambush attacks. It is a place where there are no frontlines; no safety zones.
Mark O’Brien is a 21 year-old marine corporal in Golf Company. Mark’s platoon battled the insurgency in Iraq’s Sunni triangle. Under constant threat, his fellow marines became family.
Mark’s safety zone was the size of a gun truck. They called it the beast. The man in charge was Gunnery Sergeant Miller -– or Gunny. Also in the truck was 27-year-old Nathan Mcdonell, known as Doc. He served as a company combat medic.
At six foot one, Mark towered over the other marines in his gun truck. He is known to be fearless.
Mark, Doc, and Nathan were in the cradle of the insurgency. As Doc McDonell commented, “There were times where a battle would be raging and you feel that terror in the pit of your stomach.”
And the unit was about to be tested. It was November 8, 2004. The enemy was in front of them, maybe about 150 yards. The insurgents were trying to coax them into the “kill zone”. Four rocket-propelled grenades were fired on them. Three missed, hitting various explosions in and around their area. But then one rocket propelled grenade slammed into Mark’s gun truck. It was an armor piercing round and it punched through the door and it exploded, basically, on him. Mark recalled, “At first I just kinda had the wind knocked out of me and I kinda shook it off. And I looked down and something was burning on my chest so I went to go hit it off with my right arm. Well, my right arm was like a rope. Then I looked down at my leg and saw my femur was snapped in half – you could have stabbed somebody with it, it was so sharp.”
The rocket blew apart his right arm and his right leg.
That November day, the men of Golf Company saved Mark’s life. There would be no body bag, no homecoming parade either. Twenty one year old corporal Mark O’Brien would return home without two of his limbs.
Corporal Mark O’Brien’s trip home from Iraq took him through a series of operating rooms and hospitals and has brought him to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. Mark is just one of more than 12,000 troops injured in the war. He joins hundreds of other service members whose limbs have been destroyed in the war. Now Mark has to learn how to live life as a double amputee.
“Losing the leg really isn’t that bad. ‘Cause if I wear pants, and I walk no one can know, or no one can tell that I have a fake leg cause I walk pretty much perfect," says Mark. "The arm is
the hardest thing. It’s your hand and I can’t do a lot of things now. I wrote right-handed and I did all these things right handed. So I have to teach myself how to write left-handed. When I get married and have a kid, how am I going to teach him to throw a baseball? Or go outside to play catch with him? I can’t. I can’t put a glove on."
Beyond the physical challenges, Mark is fighting a psychological battle. “Sleep is almost non-existent. I sit there all the time and I think about how I could have changed things," he says. "There are a million different scenarios you can run through your mind.”
In Iraq, Mark was a vital member of a combat platoon and faced death on a daily basis. There, he had his fellow marines but now he must fight without them.
Across the country Mark O’Brien’s platoon is about to come from war. They’ve been away for seven months. Their families eagerly await their arrival at Camp Pendleton in California. Mark, after months of rehabilitation, was able to fly there to see his brothers-in-arms come safely home. The last time he saw them he was on the verge of bleeding to death.
While his platoon's voyage home from Iraq may have been longer, Mark's trip from the Amputee Center at Walter Reed to this moment -- signals the end of a personal war.
“I just want to be one of the guys," he says. "I don’t want anybody to think of me any different. I’ve been waiting to see my friends since the day I got hit. The last time I saw them, they were patching me up.”
Five long months of separation ended as Golf Company marched in. Mark spotted one by one the dear friends he was separated from so violently.
“They’re just great friends of mine," Mark says. "I just trusted them with my life for so long. If I had to go back and do it again I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s hard to explain. I’d definitely go back with them again and I’d give my other arm and leg for them. I’d give my life.”
Finally Mark gets to see Doc McDonell - the man who saved his life. Their simple words say it all.
“I’m nervous. Last time I saw him I was bleeding all over the place. I didn’t think I was going to make it. But, here I am," Mark says.
"I was nervous to see him … it was weird," Doc says. "I was nervous. I was carrying my gear and I saw him down there and it just flashed back to me the last time I saw him. When I hugged Mark I felt my eyes water up with tears and it was a joy. It was a happiness. His struggles are always going to be something that I don’t know anything about but he’ll beat it and, we know that he’s still with us."
The fight for legislation:
Jeremy Feldbusch, now blind, was once an elite army ranger. On April 3, 2003, in a fight to control the second largest dam in Iraq, Jeremy manned a mortar for 36 hours under enemy fire, destroying a missile defense system and 45 of Saddam Hussein’s soldiers. Then, a small piece of shrapnel from an artillery shell pierced his right temple, destroyed his sight and damaged his brain.
Former staff sergeant Heath Calhoun was wounded on November 7, 2003 when a rocket propelled grenade exploded into his truck.
Former staff sergeant Ryan Kelly’s convoy was ambushed by Iraqi insurgents in July, 2003. His lower right leg was destroyed in the attack.
In past wars many of these men and women in combat would have bled to death or died from catastrophic wounds but because of today’s medical technology, rapid access to care, and high tech body armor wounded troops are surviving at a rate never seen before.
Severe injuries change lives of troops and their families in an instant. The physical damage is horrific -- and as if that wasn’t hard enough to bear, for some there’s an unforeseen and grim financial struggle that starts when soldiers are injured and families rush to be with them in hospitals far from home.
The long rehabilitation and recovery period is a financially tough time for severely wounded troops. They lose extra pay associated with combat and being away from home. And they can’t get their veterans benefits until they leave the military - a complicated process that can take months.
Kelly, Feldbusch, and Calhoun knew first-hand the battlefield they had to conquer on the home front.
Ryan Kelly needed a full 13 months at Walter Reed to master life with a prosthetic limb. While his family kept him in the dark about their financial stress, he saw the pressure his friends were under.
So from his hospital bedside, Ryan decided he had to solve the problem. He came up with an idea -- create a new insurance program for troops. Under his plan, a severely injured service member would immediately get $50,000 to cover all the emergency expenses.
Now, no longer bedridden, Ryan Kelly decided to make his idea a reality. He went to Washington and he took Jeremy Feldbush and Heath Calhoun with him.
So on a bright April morning, these three recently wounded veterans -– two who have lost limbs and one who is blind -– mounted an assault on Washington to fight for a bill to protect their comrades from the financial hardship that they faced during their own rehabilitation.
They proposed a bill that would put in place an insurance program that would immediately pay out $50,000 to each severely wounded soldier to cover emergency expenses. But these three, now spokesmen for the Wounded Warrior Project, need to drum up support on The Hill. After weeks of planning they came to knock on as many doors as possible.
The wounded warriors managed to book one high level meeting –- with democratic Senator Barak Obama of Illinois, a rising star in Washington.
Senator Obama took them very seriously. But what the group really needs is the backing of a powerful Republican senator with enough clout to push their bill through congress. And so, the unlikely group of lobbyists soldiered on. They traveled through Washington trying to schedule more meetings.
Their final meeting was with Senator Larry Craig, the powerful Republican Chairman of the Senate Committee on Veteran’s Affairs. For the wounded warriors, this was the most important meeting of the trip. The stakes are high but they only get 15 minutes to make their pitch.
The Senator listened intently as Heath Calhoun explained how wounded soldiers are forced to hold out their hands to meet emergency expenses.
Eleven days after Ryan Kelly and his friends lobbied Capitol Hill to protect wounded soldiers from the financial hardship of coming home comes a breakthrough. The three young veterans joined Senator Larry Craig as he announced that he will take their bill to the senate floor.
Now called the Craig Amendment, the bill gives payments of up to $100,000 to cover emergency expenses of the severely wounded and it will be funded by service members -- at under $1 a month.
A week and a half before the announcement, the wounded warriors were struggling to get meetings. Just 11 days later, Jim Nicholson, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, stepped forward with the following announcement:
"On behalf of The President I am pleased to join with Senator Craig to support this vital legislative initiative. This legislation may not be able to fully rebuild broken bodies but it can help rebuild broken dreams and broken families," Nicholson said.
On May 11, 2005, The President signed The Wounded Warriors’ bill into law. Though it will be many years before a monument to the veterans of the war in Iraq will be built, these young veterans have already left their mark on Washington. It’s called Senate Amendment 564 and it offers traumatic injury insurance to all active duty members of the armed forces.
By Ivan A. on Saturday, June 25, 2005 - 02:31 pm:
to the skill and brave hearts of our soldiers
fighting against fanatical terrorism. I heard
separately that it is now difficult to get a bed
at the VA because there are so many casualties
already occupying them, some with very severe
wounds from which they will never be whole again.
War is such an incredible tragedy. To me
personally, though I had never known war firsthand
but born to parents who survived WW II both as
combatants and prisoners in the Nazi camps, I know
something of the horrors. Strange, but sometimes
my father would smile while talking of them, and
like the soldiers above, he had a very special
heart attachment to his tank buddies. When will
our world mature enough where human beings will no
longer be subjected to such body breaking,
killing, horrors? Will we every evolve beyond
finding coercions 'necessary', into a world where
agreements serve our human emotional and rational
needs so much better? For now we have what we
have, and the brave lads and women who sacrifice
themselves to keep the horror at bay are to be
cherished. Maybe in the future it will be
different, where they will not need to be such
sacrifice. Their sacrifices should never be
forgotten.
Ivan
By Edward Chesky on Monday, June 27, 2005 - 01:07 pm:
While I oppose the war in Iraq I am realist enough to understand what will happen if we pull out now. I am still a stragetic analyst and follow the geo-politicaal news. I also have a network of firends and contacts that keeps me up to date on the real side of things in the Middle East and ealse where in the world. I once ran a network that was better than the CIA's and still dabble from time to time in terms of finding out what is realy going on in the middleeast.
Part of what drove me to leave my job was that I saw the falsified intelligence on the war in Iraq. I read the traffic that was coming in and saw the briefings that were being presented to the leaders in Washington DC. There was an intentional disconnect on what was happening on the ground as people in the Chop Chain on the briefs presented to the decison makers changed the information in them, like the current admistration individual who re-wrote the science in the report on global warming did.
These people then jumped ship to lucrative contract jobs in the Military Industrial Complex. I was disgusted with it and it was part of what drove me out the door. I have since been punished finacially and have been subject to religous and political pressure to punish me for breaking slience on the issue, but I have mostly gotten over it and take the long view on things. I also know who ordered the use of coercion on me to perform predictive analysis and then dangled money and a security clearence in front of me to keep me on the job. For those individuals it would be easy to find them by reviewing the paperwork on my security clearence, however, that would do nothing and serve nothing except to damage an admistration that is already damaged beyound repair from a credability perspective.
Each Admistration has its scandles, in the past it was the S&L raiding of the government coffers, the cost of which was paid by the middle class in its taxes. This time its war and the cost is paid in blood and treasure all paid by the middle class in terms of money and most of the lives being lost. In effect we have been all hoodwinked into this war in Iraq by a system that in my opinion betrayed the men and women who are fighting and dying in Iraq much like what happened in Vietnam.
As I said earlier;
I would say that recent events prove that coercion even with the best of intensions is a blade that cuts both ways and will turn in your hand when you try to use in battle.
All they had to do was ask and I would have gladly picked up my compass and ruler and gone back to war
By Edward Chesky on Monday, June 27, 2005 - 07:05 pm:
As a young officer I broke the Czech War Plans during the height of the Cold War. This included their complete transition to war strategy, deployment positions and command and control sites. I also did this for the Soviet Central Group of Forces and was working on the East German Army Military District III plans as well.
The cost to the WARSAW Pact of this compromise was staggering in terms of time and money lost. While I was doing it spies in NATO and the United States Army Europe passed what I was doing on to the WARSAW Pact and I was identified. These spies were later caught and tried but not everything they did came out. Like the prisoners in GITMO they still harbor secrets they had not spoken of.
I was to have been on PANAM 103 over Scotland that blew up. There was to be a number of people on that plane, it was target of opportunity identified by intelligence supplied by the WARSAW Pact via cut outs to the Libyans. The Czechs provided the plastic explosive. It was to be pay back in part for the breach of Czech security. I changed my plans and did not make the flight. The how and why of that I may post later.
Suffice to say this was the beginning a journey for me that has led me to were I am now. I have lived with terrorism for a long time and have many deaths on my consciousness. At the time it was just part of the great game. Today I see it for the madness that it was.
I hope that in todays world this may shed some enlightment on why I walked out the door and what was don to me to keep me on the job
All My Best
Ed Chesky
By Anonymous on Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - 01:50 am:
By Edward Chesky on Thursday, July 7, 2005 - 12:20 pm:
1. Rhe attack was conducted by an Al Queda, "Franchise" or Affiliate
2. The attack was timed to coincide with the raise in world oil prices, tied to the severe storm in the United States, as well as the G8 Summit.
3. The attack was intended to inflict economic damage on the United States economy causing Wall Street to react.
4. It was designed to boost the moral of the terrorists on a a Global Basis.
5. The timing of the attacks also comes during a month of events central to the creation of Isreal and the beginning of the Palistinian conflict. It provides a pyschological boost to the terrorists invovled in that conflict. It also comes during the month Algeria and Syria Won their independence from France and Britian.
6. It bears all the clasic signs of Al Queda planning excellent timing to link it to local and world events as well as meticulus planning and sycronization of execution.
7. I expect the group that conducted it includes transnational terorists, from but not limited to Algeria, Egypt, possibly Palestine and Suadi Arabia.
I hope this assists
Ed Chesky
By echesky on Thursday, July 7, 2005 - 05:54 pm:
Ojectives
1. Boost Terrorist moral on the Global stage by conducitng spectacular terorist attacks. These attacks are designed to disrupt western economies, inflict psychological distress and force the expenditure of large amounts of men and material to counter them.
2. Couple these attacks with continued attacks in the Middle East and Iraq to undermine our moral and force European withdrawl from the Middle East.
3. Undermine support for the continued existence of the state of Isreal and increase efforts to disrupt the peace process and transfer of land to the Palestinians
4. Set conditions for the establishment of a Pan-Islamic World State under the leadership of the Terrorist Islamic Parties.
Terrorist Support System
1. Planning is decentralized using the internet and coded transmissions. This is supplemented by couriers and face to face meetings. Coded language based on the Koran is used to facilitate operations and pass data.
2. Targeting is performed using a integrated multi-disciplinary approach, using the best information obtainable via the internet to maximize the effects of the attack, ie psychological, economic, political, and spiritual.
3. Technical support for the Terrorist networks is provided by a network of Islamic Militants trained based in the West, Asia and the Middle East on 24/7 schedule. Tools available to them include but are not limited to computer hacker tool sets, encryption technology and high speed data transmission networks.
I will post more as I review the events surrounding this bombing
I hope this helps
Ed Chesky
By Humancafe on Friday, July 8, 2005 - 01:36 pm:
As the world sends its condolences to London for the innocent victims killed, and the tragedy of those injured, the world did not succumb to this latest round of misguided evil attack on our societies. The stock markets did not collapse, nor the price of oil surge. London's emergency crews immediately handled the crisis as trained, so lives were saved. Morale of the strong willed British people was not broken, and they carry on today as they will do. Our economies were not thrown into crisis. Scotland Yard and the police will track down this latest "wanabe" Al Qaeda cell, and punish the perpetrators, wherever they hide. Most Arabs are peaceful, only a handful of these evil misquided perpetrators of terror are at fault, and with help from good citizens, they will be caught.
The objective of these hate filled coercive beings is to impose their vile version of Koranic interpretation on the whole world. They will fail. This is an Arab problem that must be solved by the Arab world internally, and the fact that it has migrated into the non-Arab world only adds to their plight, because we are watching. We will respond to coercion, whether internal or external, with appropriate force, and sometimes with excessive force. So it behooves the Arabs to clean up their incubators of hatred, primarily their evil mullahs who teach innoncent young minds a perverted version of their Koran. The resulting graduates of these evil schools have no place in society, whether their own or ours, and shutting them down must be a primary directive by all governments worldwide.
The timing of this attack may have esoteric origins, where the number 777 (i.e., their version of 666) played a part. On another post (Humanity forward or back), this is explained numerolgically as "the seventh day of the seventh month, of 2005, which numerolgically is 7. But that only displays the insane irrationality of these ill guided terrorists, those who would impose their vile society on others. The number 777 now stands as a symbol of atavistic coercion, and they are put on notice, fair warning, because we will go after them. Like a social cancer, there is no cure but to cut them out.
Lastly, it is the question of Israel. The Israeli people live under a democratic law and are a shining example of what a successful society can become in that god foresaken Middle East desert from which the Arab tribes had sprung. The greatness of Araby is lost today, suppressed under evil teachers and corrupt leaders. They have much to learn from the rest of the world. If Arab scholars were once exemplar, they are no longer. Watch the shining light of Israel, and learn from them, because they are your gate to a better world.
The world has not and will not succumb to terrorism in any form. And the British measured calm response is the right way to deal with these deadly, socially and psychologically dysfunctional, individuals. Europe is on heightened alert, as it should be, because the evil ones can strike anywhere, at any time their small insane minds deem it numerlogically necessary. Because of this, their coercive activities, and their stupid efforts to disrupt thousands of years of civilization, will bring only greater scrutiny on themselves, and the immasculation of their evil cause. The world should turn away from these primitives, and turn them in to the authorities for prosecution.
Humancafe, editors
By Edward Chesky on Friday, July 8, 2005 - 02:02 pm:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/08/london.muslims/index.html
Arab view: 'Enough, enough'
Some Muslims fear backlash after UK bombs
By Octavia Nasr
CNN Senior Editor for Arab Affairs
Friday, July 8, 2005; Posted: 10:10 a.m. EDT (14:10 GMT)
Muslims in Britain and across the world expressed outrage at the terrorist attacks in London, with the dominant viewpoint summed up by one person who wrote on a Web site, "Enough ... enough."
I also note that the attacks came on the celebration of Key Events to the achievments of Sir Issac Newton...and the Aquital of Joan of Arc on charges of witchraft....Everyone was attacked
Ed Chesky
By Edward Chesky on Friday, July 8, 2005 - 09:39 pm:
While we have withstood the effects of the London bombing its impact continues to reverberate.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050708/ts_nm/security_britain_dc
“The blasts battered financial markets on Thursday, but oil prices recovered to head back toward record highs near $62 on Friday and European share indexes rose by more than 1 percent, recouping most of the losses made on Thursday. British shares also recouped their losses, but sterling slid further.”
Those that conducted this attack have learned from Osama well. He has designed the strategy that is being executed now. What we need to be aware of now is that Osama and his organization is counting on an overreaction on our part that can be used for propaganda/psychological warfare purposes. Osama is counting on the average uneducated individual in the street to react violently, much like Hitler used the hatred of the Jews and other groups to manipulate the masses and achieve a political objective. This psychological warfare effort coupled to further outrages in Iraq and elsewhere will be used in an effort to prompt an over reaction on our part and by Israel. Hence why and how the incidents at Abu Graib and GITMO were used against us in the Islamic World by Osam and the Militants and needed to be addressed and made open and transparent.
Ed Chesky
By Edward Chesky on Friday, July 8, 2005 - 10:03 pm:
Once in power Adolf Hitler began to openly express anti-Semitic ideas. Based on his readings of how blacks were denied civil rights in the southern states in America, Hitler attempted to make life so unpleasant for Jews in Germany that they would emigrate. The campaign started on 1st April, 1933, when a one-day boycott of Jewish-owned shops took place. Members of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) picketed the shops to ensure the boycott was successful.
The hostility of towards Jews increased in Germany. This was reflected in the decision by many shops and restaurants not to serve the Jewish population. Placards saying "Jews not admitted" and "Jews enter this place at their own risk" began to appear all over Germany. In some parts of the country Jews were banned from public parks, swimming-pools and public transport.
Germans were also encouraged not to use Jewish doctors and lawyers. Jewish civil servants, teachers and those employed by the mass media were sacked. Members of the SA put pressure on people not to buy goods produced by Jewish companies. For example, the Ullstein Press, the largest publisher of newspapers, books and magazines in Germany, was forced to sell the company to the NSDAP in 1934 after the actions of the SA had made it impossible for them to make a profit.
Many Jewish people who could no longer earn a living left the country. The number of Jews emigrating increased after the passing of the Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race in 1935. Under this new law Jews could no longer be citizens of Germany. It was also made illegal for Jews to marry Aryans.
The pressure on Jews to leave Germany intensified. Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich organized a new programme designed to encourage Jews to emigrate. Crystal Night took place on 9th-10th November, 1938. Presented as a spontaneous reaction of the German people to the news that the German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, had been murdered by Herschel Grynszpan, a young Jewish refugee in Paris, the whole event was in fact organized by the NSDAP.
During Crystal Night over 7,500 Jewish shops were destroyed and 400 synagogues were burnt down. Ninety-one Jews were killed and an estimated 20,000 were sent to concentration camps. Up until this time these camps had been mainly for political prisoners. The only people who were punished for the crimes committed on Crystal Night were members of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) who had raped Jewish women (they had broken the Nuremberg Laws on sexual intercourse between Aryans and Jews).
After Crystal Night the numbers of Jews wishing to leave Germany increased dramatically. It has been calculated that between 1933 and 1939, approximately half the Jewish population of Germany (250,000) left the country. This included several Jewish scientists who were to play an important role in the fight against fascism during the war. A higher number of Jews would have left but anti-Semitism was not restricted to Germany and many countries were reluctant to take them.
Ed Chesky
By Ivan A. on Friday, July 8, 2005 - 10:31 pm:
Quote:
The West has progressed beyond Nazi like tactics against members of society no matter how distasteful they had become. If they are citizens, Arab or otherwise, they are protected by legal certain rights; and even if illegals, they are still protected by human rights. There will be no "Islamic Crystal Night in the West."
God help us if there were, since we would then have lowered ourselves to the same depraved level of the primitives, the ignorant terrorists.
Ivan
By Ivan A. on Saturday, July 9, 2005 - 11:10 am:
Think of it this way: historically, all societies operated on a principle of obedience to the powerful chief, caliph, or king. We of the West figured out a better way, where agreement in the form of contract, social agreements, the social contract, and the rule of law in a democratic process insures the right of each individual. We no longer allow for a slavish obedience to power, and say that each human being has a right to be who they are, provided they do not violate the right of others. What the criminals do is violate those rights of others, and in the case of terrorists, they violate those rights very brutally by killing innocent people. Even Arabs are agains this, since it is in their teachings not to kill women and children and the elderly, though they may still harbor secretly in their hearts that to kill men in their pursuit of spreading Islam is a good thing. It is not a good thing, even if Mohammed said it is 26 times in the Koran. That is a conceptual error, and they have to address it, or they are lost to the world. Everyone in civilized society will show them where they are wrong. Criminal activity cannot be condoned. Men and women in our modern age of freedom are equal. Slavery had been abolished so that an assumed obedience to the powerful is no longer the way. This is a fundamental change that is here to stay, and the old dreamed for Caliphate which once spanned North Africa to Europe and as far as India will not happen again. Their dream is not only to reestablish this ancient caliphate, but to have it spread worldwide in a new kind of pan-Arabism. Imagine a world totally ruled by a principle of total obedience and slavishness. There's no way the clock can be turned back to that kind of atavistic social repression, not after the fundamental achievements of freedom which arose from the European Enlightenment and American Revolution, where the rights of man were defined. What puzzles me is that the Arabs who migrated to these countries, and many of them are very happy and successful in their new homelands, would want to subvert the freedoms they enjoy and return to their former oppressive ideology. (It's surprising that they want to go back to the oppression and poverty from which they ran away. Maybe they can't make the connection that it is the oppression and corruption that keeps them poor back home?) That is truly a misguided conundrum, and one which they will have to address. The danger is that if they do not, they will eventually no longer be welcomed, in the same way Palestinians must go through numerous check points to get into Israel. If that happens, then we all lose, because in the process some of our natural freedoms are suppressed.
So let's see what Arab leaders and intellectuals can do. First, they'd better address their "Koranic" schools, because the problem starts there. If they cannot interpret the teachings of Islam within a peaceful context in this world, and can only see the violent context, then the problem will not go away for a very long time. But if they can root out the errors so that mullahs stop teaching violence and hatred, then Arab society and the whole worls will benefit. Regardless of how the Arabs address this problem, we are not going back to barabarism. Their choice.
Ivan
By Edward Chesky on Saturday, July 9, 2005 - 03:51 pm:
I concur with your assessment. The issue is that the objectives of the terrorists are decoupled from reality and the world they are operating in means that they can justify anything in the name of their cause.
That said we need to understand there are a number of Islamic Terorist organizations that range from mostly secular, i.e the PLO to the Hamas and Al Qaeda. The most dangerous are the ones that exist in this detached reality of qausi Islamic Fundamentalist Spirituality that sees the world through color lenses. These are the ones that perpetrated the London Blasts and the others.
I have seen the media and the training video tapes that are generated by these groups and the world that they live in. The tapes are master pieces of fiction and tailored history and Koranic teachings. They are also master pieces of propaganda. The danger is that these tapes and tailored media along with the main stream Arab reporting tend to support each other in terms of a world view.
Over all its a very scary world they live and operate in but to counter them we need to understand their world view and objectives.
Ed Chesky
By Ivan A. on Saturday, July 9, 2005 - 05:50 pm:
Ivan
By Edward Chesky on Saturday, July 9, 2005 - 06:20 pm:
I and my wife have many Islamic friends athat are repulsed by the militant radical fundamentalists.
That said I have been doing some analysis. I wish I had a copy of the Koranic verse that was posted after the London Bombing in English, but I don't. There are a number of associations with Joan of Arc and Tony Blair and his famility that come up with regards to this bombing. His children attend Joan of Arc School, He attends Joan of Arc Chruch with his wife. I don't like the associations or timing of this. I also note that July 7 in the Gregorian Calander is the point at which there are only 177 days left in the year. If I was a betting man I would bet in the warped world of Islamic terrorism they sent a very tailored threat to Tony Blair and his family with the timing of the blast. I also don't like the 177 day count down, it feels like a timer just waiting to go off.
Hope This Helps
Ed Chesky
By Edward Chesky on Saturday, July 9, 2005 - 09:56 pm:
My Best Ed Chesky
By Edward Chesky on Saturday, July 9, 2005 - 11:04 pm:
Ed Chesky
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8524679/
Experts fear 'endless' terror war
Analysts say al-Qaida is mutating into a global insurgency Updated: 8:38 p.m. ET July 9, 2005
New York and Washington. Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, Madrid. And now London.
When will it end? Where will it all lead?
The experts aren’t encouraged. One prominent terrorism researcher sees the prospect of “endless” war. Adds the man who tracked Osama bin Laden for the CIA, “I don’t think it’s even started yet.”
By Anonymous on Sunday, July 10, 2005 - 02:16 pm:
Both groups have cooperating in the past but recent events indicate only Al Qaeda is actively engaged in direct operations. I believe that Jemaah Islamiyah is now in a lesson learned mode and is watching the war on terrorism and adapting its organization in preparation for futher operations while letting Al Qaeda bear the brunt of the West's counter terorism operations.
By Anonymous on Sunday, July 10, 2005 - 06:48 pm:
Thanks from the people of this planet
By Anonymous on Sunday, July 10, 2005 - 08:15 pm:
By Anonymous on Sunday, July 10, 2005 - 08:20 pm:
This guy knows what he is talking about. Look at all the people the Bush Administration pushed out of government and shut up over the Iraq War!
By Anonymous on Sunday, July 10, 2005 - 08:37 pm:
He was put in twice for a Bronze Star the records show theat they were downgraded. One was for a DMZ shooting incident in Korea in the 1980's. The second was for Gulf War I,
He was put in for Legion of Merit but it was downgraded.
He is a true hero and has been shuffled off in the cornor by the United States Military and current administration
By Anonymous on Sunday, July 10, 2005 - 11:01 pm:
Just one of many...in time they will be rewarded, but not I expect until the current administration is out of office, along with its pack of ideologs who twist the truth to suit extremist politics
By Anonymous on Monday, July 11, 2005 - 01:32 am:
1. Yes I did trisect the angle
2. Yes I am one of the most decorated majors in the intelligence corps and most accomplished analysts it had
3. Yes there was a conspiracy to manipulate the intelligence to get us into the Iraq War. They even had a pert chart and used techniques just like the terrorists that staged 9/11 did. Will we find them probably not, at least without using lie dectors and sodium penethal on the entire Intelligence Corps and right wind extremists
4. Was I poisoned yes as confirmed by multiple lab tests, just like Yashinko.
5. Did I predict earthquakes yes I did, just like I trisected the angle
6. Was I shuffled off by the United States Government yes I was and was I never recognized for my accomplishements yes I was. As a LT I ws involved in a DMZ shooting incident that was classified.
7. As to the rest I will post it here later
8. In the old days i would have been given a post in a University for my efforts and accomplishments or nice federal job, today its a minor paycheck and a escort out the door.
9. DId I see God the angels and Jesus Christ, well after being hit with an old Soviet Bio-weapon and drinking neurotoxin laced water and cofee you tell me....
10. During all of it and the recovery did I think I saw a being that looked like a watered-down version of Mr. Spock, yes I did. He said he had been locked up by the government, and told me he had two hearts and terraformed 8 planets. On behalf of the Human race I applogized to him and asked him to forgive us for the exploritory surgery the government did on him. Did I see him while I was in the hospital revovering from the Soviet Bio-weapon...well that the government knows and is not saying.
10. Each night I look up at the stars and think about the guy with two hearts pointy ears and a very powerful starship and a scar that ran from his through to his navel and think about the CIA, DIA and the Security officials of the United States and hope that I really did see Jesus because I really think we made a whole bunch of folks made by this war in Iraq and soem of them have very large and pwerful starships
Ed Chesky
By Anonymous on Monday, July 11, 2005 - 02:41 am:
It was after that I was poisoned and pumped full of chemicals to keep me alive.
Now its up to the United States Government to confirm or deny what happened, I have copies of all the lab tests CT SCANs EEGs EKGs and MRIs.....
By Anonymous on Monday, July 11, 2005 - 04:45 am:
By Edward Chesky on Monday, July 11, 2005 - 06:40 am:
Timeline of Personal Military History
Confirmed by Military Records and Un-classified Cold War Information
1986 - Korean DMZ Shooting incident 1986. The incident was subsequently classified by DOD. The incident involved the movement and redeployment of 5,000 North and South Korean troops. Thermal surveillance tapes of incident recorded by my unit were seized by the G2 2 ID and Commander in Chief U.S. Forces Korea. As result of the action, the North Korean’s identified me by unencrypted radio transmissions monitored by North Korean listening posts. A dossier was started on me by the North Koreans and shared with Chinese and Soviet Intelligence.
1986-1989 - I identified a Soviet/Czech/East German agent network active in passing NATO War Plans to the WARSAW Pact, I reported this to counter intelligence but it was ignored. In response I rebuilt a low level DOD agent network in Czechoslovakia which resulted in complete comprise of all Czech War and Deployment Plans. From the data I and VII Corps Artillery updated a Nuclear Targeting Campaign that would have destroyed the 1st Czech Peoples Army and Soviet Central Group of Forces and most of Western Czechoslovakia using Lance Missiles and Artillery delivered nuclear munitions. I was subsequently visually identified by and spoken too by a Czech Signals Intelligence Listening Post Commander during a NATO exercise where he was posing as an Armor officer observing our exercises under the auspices of a NATO Treaty. He and I both pretended to be maneuver officers, but in reality knew who each other were. Subsequent to this encounter the Czech’s transferred a large quantity of SIMTEX Plastic Explosive to Libya. I was scheduled to fly on PANAM 103 that was bombed over Lockerbie Scotland but changed my plans at last minute after receiving information report from German Intelligence that a Terrorist cell had been broken that had bomb materials designed specifically to destroy commercial aircraft had been found.
1989-1999 - Gulf War Company Commander. Also served in variety of sensitive positions including Asian Pacific Non-Proliferation Officer for Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons. During this period I was involved in several international crisis involving China, Taiwan, North Korea, India and Pakistan as well as Iraq. During this period I also inadvertently discovered an unclassified backdoor into our DOD Command and Control and Nuclear Release/Planning Systems. It is also at this time that I started to experience of unexplained medical problems and was diagnosed with high levels anti-bodies indicating exposure, according to Boston VA Medical Hospital, to a possible neurotoxin. The source of this initial exposure was never identified.
2001 – Chief of Intelligence Training to the Saudi Arabian National Guard under the auspices of the Vinnell Arabia Corporation. My office complex was bombed by AL Queada last year. During my tenure there in 2001 I identified an inside agent network of Islamic fundamentalist supporters that was subsequently identified passing data to Al Queada. I reported this development prior to 9/11 during my Defense Security Service periodic investigation but the information was ignored.
2002 – Senior military computer systems analyst and trainer. During my tenure I was involved in developing computer simulation systems for DOD and information management systems for the United States State Department. During my tenure on these programs I identified an number of security breeches in the software that could allow foreign government’s potential backdoors into our State Department Information management systems and military command and control systems. Both programs were eventually terminated. I also note that during the course of my work on the United States State department program I had my laptop stolen. The laptop contained unclassified but sensitive data that could be used to intrude into the United States State Department information management system that was being constructed. During the program I also noted unauthorized intrusions into the system from unidentified personnel in Republic of India. I reported all intrusion attempts and loss of my computer to my company. After I did this I became violently ill and experienced a number of symptoms consistent with drugging or poisoning. Subsequent hospitalization in Tampa occurred following an unexplained reaction to food, this reaction included swollen tongue, respiratory distress and unexplained heart palpitations consistent with neurotoxin exposure. This experience was chalked up to being a possible severe reaction to MSG even though I am not allergic to MSG.
2004 - Senior Ground military analyst Operation Iraqi Freedom. During this operation I became aware of abuses of prisoners in U.S. Custody and objected to both it and apparent manipulation of intelligence to support political and conservative Christian religious goals and view points. I protested this activity and was subsequently laid off of work. I also experienced a number of health issues during this time from which I have now recovered.
I leave it up to the readers to judge the truth and place my military record up against that of our president and Kerry and wonder why its so hard for me to find a federal job with decent health benefits....
By Anonymous on Monday, July 11, 2005 - 06:57 am:
By Ivan A. on Monday, July 11, 2005 - 02:37 pm:
Quote:
This is scary stuff Ed, since we know what happened next, 911. A similar pattern may eventually emerge in last week's London bombings. It appears to be a small splinter Islamic sect that kept under the radar, but one wonders what information was passed over without serious awareness of what it represented. Now they're scouring video, photo, voice, and eyewitness data. Often it is too late, and the criminals are already in some foreign country planning their next return to strike. They need to be caught at the borders, but with the new EU, excepting the fine work done by Italian, Spanish, French and German police where many rabids had been identified and arrested, there is still little sense of urgency at the border. Illegals, some potentially dangerous, keep streaming in. Perhaps now, regrettably after more victims, there will be a heightened sense of intelligence.
By the way, another famous man not well known in the States, but well remembered in Europe for standing up for what he believed was Giordano Bruno. He was innocent of the crimes against him, but they burned him anyway.
Ivan
By Anonymous on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 - 01:16 am:
Sometimes I let my frustration boil over, having been the best analyst in the Army for 23 years I tend to get frustrated since being out of a senior analyst position and not recognized for bravery in combat and my accomplishments during the Cold War. It does hurt to be put in for award like the Bronze Star and Legion of Meriot and have them downgraded for no reason by a middle managment This frustration with the current administration is limited to a middle layer of officials that many other analysts have identified as being involved in shading the intelligence prior to the Gulf War.
I still support the troops but the failure to recgonize and deal with the post conflict issues boggles my mind and has lead in my mind to many unnecessary deaths.
That said I am rebuilding my life and moving on to other things like into acareer field that will allow me the flexability to deal with the post conflict issues and working with those that need help recovering from this war.
My Best
Ed
By Edward Chesky on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 - 02:52 am:
As to the pattern of events Ivan,
I saw an interesting interview with a young counter terrorism analyst who said recruiting of teenagers for terrorism in England is ongoing and that the recruiters have a plan that if there is a crack down on the Islamic community they will unleash a wave of bombings. This finding is in keeping with my assessment about the night of crystal scenario that would be manipulated to further the terorist's agenda and would be manipulated by them. The analyst said he attended some meetings and got his information first hand.
The danger in these small enclaves is for a group of spiritual leaders to get control of a number of followers and put them on a path leading to where the leaders control the flow and interpretation of information.
This is like at Waco where the followers were conditioned to accept a world view of events the leader promulgated that colored their perspective on the world. Just like in Waco when pressed the leader was able to create a condition in the mind of the followers that the end of the world had come or it was time to go on the offensive as they were and instrument of Gods will as manefested by signs, information and teachings professed by the leader.
In this case it does not mater what reality is because the leader has dragged everyone under his control into a common frame of reference and viewpoint that he dictated from his view of the world and interpretation of scripture.
Its scary but a fair assessment of how these groups operate and what we can expect to see in the future
Ed Chesky
By Anonymous on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 - 09:54 am:
Quote:
In this case it does not mater what reality is because the leader has dragged everyone under his control into a common frame of reference and viewpoint that he dictated from his view of the world and interpretation of scripture.
I see them as on the losing end, a dead end nowhere strategy that often ends in some violent catharsis. This is how Waco ended, though the Islamic rabid Imams who espouse violent overthrow of western cultures have a much larger and better organized "end of times" structure in place. This means it will not end as easily as most splinter extremists groups do, usually with a standoff with the police. Here, being such a large worldwide problem, the police operates on a grander scale of covert intelligence and cooperation between nations, and of course military. The fanatical rabies infections had been allowed to run deep, so the sick fruits of this all is a large population of Islamic youth who are eager to join in this misguided Jihad cause. But they are still merely a splinter group, not supported by world society, even if they want to make it look that way. And the dissolution of the hatred teaching "Koranic" schools should be a first step within European countries to reverse this fanatical tide.
Remember, the Imams think they can overthrow European civilization, and American, by terrorizing good people and using their own liberal laws of human rights, so to harbor their evil activities with the same protection given normal citizens, and then overthrow the governments. This is pure illusion, insanity, because it puts coercion at the top of the list to achieve their goals. The dead end part of this is that coercion kills itself, usually in the way mafia families fight amongst each other, so that competing factions of evil break up the homogeneity of the movement into splinter groups. Remember Caesar's "divide and conquer". They'll do that to themselves. The real solution to this problem of the sick rabid dysfunction of the violently coercive religious fundamentalist fanaticals is to arm all citizens with an understanding of what these foaming at the mouth hate rabids represent, destruction of all good things. We need to better teach all citiziens them an understanding of how our democratic society works, and how it strives to operate on principles of law of agreements rather than coercion. We live in a world rule of law ensuring each person's freedom within that law, that is our strength. They live in a world rule of confused religious fervor mixed with extreme coercive actions, which makes them appear terrifying, but they are really just like the shamans behind horrific masks. Take off their masks, and they are blinking in the light like anybody else. That is what the rebellious disaffected Islamic youth of Europe need to be shown, that their shamans are nobodies. They had followed the false prophets of hate. Once they can see this, the reality reasserts itself that their is no going back to the ancient ways of master and slave, but that society has a responsibility to each individual equally before the law, and each individual has a responsibility to society. That is the free exchange that makes modern western society work. Because the disaffected youth are not shown this properly, they operate under the shamanic spells of the Imams, which is easy to do to while the "teachers" operate in secret. Expose them.
Youth will always be rebellious and look for a cause. Give them a better one, where freedom and anti-coercive actions, and rule of agreemeents is the future. The future is not that scary.
By Edward Chesky on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 - 01:56 pm:
"The fanatical rabies infections had been allowed to run deep, so the sick fruits of this all is a large population of Islamic youth who are eager to join in this misguided Jihad cause. But they are still merely a splinter group, not supported by world society, even if they want to make it look that way. And the dissolution of the hatred teaching "Koranic" schools should be a first step within European countries to reverse this fanatical tide."
The swamp described below and its like around the globe has produced terrorists for generations, anarchists in the old days, communist, neo-nazi's, IRA bombers and now it produces suicide bombers and jihadists...the difference being this time its tied to a global movement, of significant size, based on hate supported by technology and schools around the globe. Places like this regenerate suicide bombers at a rate tied to socio-economic, security and religeous factors, in Iraq the rate of bomber regeneration is high in England and the United States it is low the variables in the equation being almost quantifiable. The key to defeating and defusing such things is how to move into such an anrea and take on the preachers of hate on their own terms in their owen environment and as many have said that needs to be an internal Islamic Issue....
Shabby, mundane world of a sleeping jihadi
Activities of U.K.'s best documented al-Qaida cell amateurish, low-rent
Updated: 9:34 a.m. ET July 12, 2005
LONDON - If the London bombers were foreign Islamist terrorists "sleeping" within the British population, as many believe, their neighbors probably saw them as "straightforward blokes," "unassuming family men," who were "friendly but never talkative."
These phrases were all applied to members of an al-Qaida cell in Leicester, the trial of two of which in 2003 resulted in the first important convictions in the U.K.'s domestic war against terror. It also gave a fascinating public insight into the milieu of Islamist terrorists operating in the U.K. Predictably, the lives of jihadis living in Britain were furtive and based on multiple deceptions. What also emerged, as the judge and jury waded through seas of evidence, was just how shabby and mundane they were.
It is a world of run-down rented houses in immigrant districts where men traveling on false passports doss down among cardboard boxes stuffed with gory videos of suicide bombings and war-zone atrocities. The furniture is of battered chipboard in most poor homes. But in the terrorist safe houses, the drawers are stuffed with forged documents, the unsorted documentation of credit frauds and propaganda espousing hatred of Jews and the west.
Lucky break
It is thanks only to a lucky break that the two Leicester men are no longer quietly committing their frauds and recruiting British-born Muslims to travel abroad for terrorist training. In 2001 the Dubai authorities arrested Djamel Beghal, the al-Qaida officer who allegedly recruited "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, on passport offences. Under interrogation, Beghal, who lived in Leicester between 1998 and 2000, admitted to plotting a bomb attack on the American embassy in Paris.
News of the arrest panicked an accomplice of Beghal, Kamel Daoudi. He fled Paris for the improbable terrorist hotspot of the Midlands city, a workaday place with a large Muslim population. He had been there just months before, visiting his contact Brahim Benmerzouga. The illegal immigrant from Algeria, 31, had arranged a trip for Daoudi to a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.
This time MI5 was watching, on high alert following the Sept. 11 attacks on New York, in which Beghal was later implicated. With the police in tow, they swooped on the homes of Benmerzouga and his associate Bagdad Meziane, arresting both men along with their unexpected guest, who had arrived in the early hours of the morning. Daoudi, a computing expert, was carrying a laptop containing computer files on guerrilla warfare and the Taliban.
Daoudi was extradited to France, where he was this year jailed along with his mentor Behgal for the embassy bomb plot. The Leicester court had jailed Benmerzouga and Meziane for 11 years each two years earlier. They were convicted of raising about $434,000 (250,000 pounds) for al-Qaida through a series of credit card frauds. They were also found to have provided false passports, visas and military radio parts.
Polite but distant
The two men appeared calm, even cheerful as they sat in a bomb-proof dock at Leicester crown court during the lengthy trial, which included a five day hiatus for deliberations by the jury. Local people said the pair had always been polite but distant. The poor Prospect Hills district where they lived is ethnically diverse, with a large Bangladeshi population. However, the two Algerians, thought to have been radicalized by the savage civil war in that country, did not mix with Asian co-religionists. They worshipped at a small mosque where the preaching was in Arabic, rather than Bengali or English.
The two men arrived in the U.K. separately in 1997, traveling on false passports, although Meziane, 38, later succeeded in claiming political asylum. They both worked for a while in a factory in Corby making sandwiches, the kind of low-paid work where illegal immigrants face few questions. Mostly they subsisted through benefits fraud. They also appeared to make money by buying and selling old cars, which they repaired in the street.
Observers who sat through the endless hours of evidence in court were struck by how amateurish and low-rent the activities of the U.K.'s best documented al-Qaida cell were. It was the porousness of borders and the lack of checks on identities — arguably important elements to the free society Islamist extremists despise — that made it possible for the men to remit large sums to terrorists overseas.
The environment in which Meziane and Benmerzouga operated was similar to that evoked by Joseph Conrad in "The Secret Agent," a novel about eastern European anarchists sheltering in London in the 19th century. There, too, the activities of plotters living on the margins of normal society seemed cheap and trivial.
By Ivan A. on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 - 10:43 pm:
1. freeze there assets
2. hunt them down in their lairs
3. secure borders against illegal entry
4. eliminate the source of their hatreds
It's the last one that will be hard to do, since it is two fold: a) monitor what their imams are teaching them in school, especially those in the West, and then root out primitive influences of cultural hatreds, or calls to do violence against their adopted country; and b) educate them with a real education of what their adopted country is all about: civic duties, philosophy, history, democratic government (rule of law, of the people and by the people), religious tolerance, human rights; and how secularity is not a threat to their religion, that tolerance of other cultures is a virtue, and that violence, coercion, and fraud are not acceptable behaviors for modern human beings. Then if they still persist, they will be prosecuted by law as criminals, or excluded from the host country. The fact that many of these recruiters for terror are often foreigners, who flock to their self dellusory "jihad", makes it difficult for peaceful people in any country if left unprotected. (Viz. 80% of the suiciders in Iraq are from outside Iraq.)
These will not be a guaranteed success against rabid fanatical killers, but it's a start. Securing borders against illegal entry, and good police work will at least minimize the foreign elements. Education that will help them earn a living is also a must. Economic opportunity is important, since many come from impoverished countries without skills, so land on the dole in that country they ran to, but now hate so much.
Lastly, any person's faith is their direct link with God. So under any circumstances, NEVER attack the religion of Islam. It is not the religion that is at fault. It is only some people's evil interpretations of the scriptures, with which they then subverted the holy teachings into their personal vengenful causes of hatred.
Hatred is NEVER the Love of God.
By Edward Chesky on Thursday, July 14, 2005 - 01:29 pm:
I concur with you on your points.
As per my assessment of Asian terrorist attackes with have had a major attack in Thailand from a splinter cell of Islamic Terrorists in Thailand.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8569298/
Alleged separatists launch attacks in Thailand
One person killed, 19 wounded in four strikes in restive southern regionin Thailand.
This was not linked directly to Jemaah Islamiyah but likely coordinating operations with them. I also note the Federal Government has issued an threat advisory for Indonesia regarding further bombings by Jemaah Islamiyah. Right in line with my assessment of Asian Islamic Terrorism.
Just for the record I got a tip last week about an up coming operation in Asia from some contacts hence why I posted my assessment on the conflcit between Jemaah Islamiyah and AL Qaeda.
I have been trying to rebuild a network of moderate Islamic, Christian, Buddist and Hindu contacts to see if we can provide alerts on militant operations. This time it paid off
My Best
Ed
By Anonymous on Thursday, July 14, 2005 - 11:00 pm:
Extremist recruiters target students, underachievers, those down on luck
By Ron Allen
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 6:47 p.m. ET July 14, 2005
Ron Allen
Correspondent
LONDON — Police may have a few clues about why several British men turned to terrorism.
Friends says both Shahzad Tanweer, 22, and Hasib Hussain, 18, recently had turned to religion. They'd traveled to Pakistan to study. And, like Mohamed Sadique Khan, another suspected bomber who also visited Pakistan, the three may have spent time at a terror training camp.
They met together often at a local mosque. And somewhere, they apparently embraced a radical form of Islam preached in some mosques where terrorism recruiters also stalk for volunteers.
A British government report last year warned that extremist recruiters were targeting college students with computer and engineering skills, or underachievers, often with criminal records and sometimes found in prisons.
“Those men actually go through a lot of ideological and military training,” says Abdul Bari Atwan, the editor of Al-Quds, an Arabic newspaper. “After that, they pick up the most vulnerable, the most idealistic, the most courageous ones.”
That government report says many British Muslims are angry about a lack of opportunity. They are three times more likely to be unemployed than other Britons.
Men like Niaz Khan — two men recruited him.
Khan recalls, “He said, ‘Are you ready for jihad?” I say, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘You be missing your family?’ I say, ‘No, no.’ ”
Khan says al-Qaida then sent him to Pakistan for training.
But the main motivator, the British report says, is the war in Iraq. It is vehemently opposed by many Muslims who are angry that so many of their brothers and sisters are suffering.
British officials believe fewer than 1 percent of the Muslim community supports terrorism. But a few are so radical they’d die for whatever it was they believed
By Anonymous on Sunday, July 17, 2005 - 03:36 pm:
Interview with Dr. Edwin C. May of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory
May 12th, 1996
Dr. Edwin C. May is an active psi researcher and is currently the director of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, based in Palo Alto, California.
RPKP: How did you originally get involved in psi research, and what was your attitude towards such things before you started?
May: I did not know anything about psi during my physics education and post doc. Having become uninterested in experimental, low-energy nuclear physics, I was intellectually drifting about looking for something interesting.
I ran into Chuck Honorton and some other smart parapsychologists and became mildly interested. Along the way, I had some experience in physiology and EEG and decided to return to India to search for evidence of anything out of the ordinary. After 9-months there and with many great contacts I failed at that mission. When I returned to the US I worked with Honorton at Maimonides Medical Center and saw more psi than I had ever seen in India.
In 1976 I joined the staff that was conducting psi research at SRI International and became it's project director in 1985. In 1991, I shifted the project to another defense contractor, Science Applications International Corporation. Through the years, I have presided over 70% of the projects's $20M funding and been responsible for over 85% of the data collected under US Government contracts.
In 1996 we moved the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory from SAIC to the Laboratories for Fundamental Research (LFR).
RPKP: How did the secret US government work come about? Which agency was it, what were they interested in particularly, and what type of research was carried out?
May: The CIA started the government's secret work at SRI in 1972. Overall they put a total of approximately $250,000 during the 24-year, $20,000,000+ program. So the CIA were not major players. It is possible to see what has been declassified and some details of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory at http://www.jsasoc.com/~csl/index.html.
RPKP: Why did all this become public last year? What has been the status of LFR since?
May: All this became public because US Congress directed it to be so. LFR is a formal California Corporation that, among other things, will be conducting psi research. We are seeking funding and have a number of proposals pending.
RPKP: What were the basic conclusions of this work?
May: ESP, or what we now call anomalous cognition, meets every scientific criteria to assure that it exists. Our view is that it is mediated through some sensory system that we guess will be very similar to the five that we currently know about.
We have developed a model that, for the first time, incontrovertably rejects a particular mechanism for a class of psi experiments called Random Number Generators. The model is called Decision Augmentation Theory which holds that since ESP is real, that it would be very unlikely that we would not integrate that additional, albeit weak and unreliable, into the normal decision processes. When we formulate that idea and apply it to the vast RNG database, it shows our model to be correct.
Lastly, we have, for the first time, identified a physical variable that correlates with the quality of the ESP. That is the more of this "stuff" in the target, the better will be the anomalous cognition of it.
RPKP: How did Decision Augmentation Theory come about, and who else was involved in its development?
May: DAT resulted from a carefully conducted RNG study we did for the Army in 1979. We spent over $250,000 on that single experiment so that if we saw an effect we would be certain from an engineering point of view to learn how it happened. Well we did see an effect and could prove that the hardware was not changed. The only thing left was that subjects were being statistical opportunists to capture deviant subsequences from otherwise unperturbed sequences. Beverly Humphrey and Jessica Utts are my colleagues from the beginning. James Spottiswoode joined much later but has also contributed.
RPKP: Could you elaborate on the basic hypothesis of DAT?
May: An RNG experiment is like an electronic coin flipper. Imagine that someone flipped a fair coin 10,000 times and wrote on a very long piece of paper the results. Might look something like this: htthhthttthhththhhhh.... Suppose I gave you a red pen and asked to walk along this long piece of paper and mark a spot where the next 10 coin flips had far too many heads in a row. You would have no problem making such a "decision." In the DAT model, subjects use psi to make a similar decision.
RPKP: How did you go about gathering evidence for the theory?
May: We looked at the substantial database on RNG experiments dating back to 1969.
RPKP: What's been published thus far?
May: On DAT, the current issue of the Journal of Parapsychology has two major articles. The first is a definition paper on the model and the second is the application of the model to many data sets. Both are rather technical. Similarly there is a technical article in the Journal for Scientific Exploration.
RPKP: What kind of reactions have you received?
Most everyone now accepts the model in that RNG's do not function because mind reaches in to "force" binary bits to be different from what they would otherwise be. Dean Radin of the Consciousness Research Laboratory believes he can build a thought switch. If DAT is correct, and most think that it is, Dean can't.
RPKP You've stated before that you don't think quantum mechanics can be used to explain PK. I assume then that you don't agree with the suggestion of Schmidt, et. al.that, say, unobserved binary data on a disk or tape could exist in a superimposed or indeterminate state.
May: That is simply bad physics. Large things like transistors at room temp are not in the QM superimposed state. They are in some unknown eigenstate whose distribution is the classical one. There is an extensive QM literature on exactly this point. In fact the QM world is even worse. What Mendel has shown at University of Rochester is that if a QM system could be measured, but it still has not been, that that circumstance, alone, is enough to force the system into an eigenstate. Sorry...Schmidt is simply incorrect on this point.
RPKP: DAT has serious implications for our project, as we're particularly interested in retroPK and the seeming violations of causality associated with it. The basic experiment design we're in the midst of setting up involves a hierarchy of "levels". Level 0 is a "practice" level, availiable to all via WWW, and via which we recruit talented subjects into the higher levels for "formal" experiments. For practical reasons, we'd planned to use quasirandom data (seeded by the time at which the subject presses a key to start a "run") on Level 0, and genuinely prerecorded, unobserved true-random data for the higher levels.
May: You may know there is not one piece of evidence that suggests that pseudo RNG's do anything different that what their instructions tell them to do. In fact, in the RNG literature there are some very good experiments (Radin) to show that the bits do not change under "PK attack."
RPKP: If correct, DAT suggests that certain individuals will be able to succeed on Level 0, by "augmenting the decision" regarding the moment at which the key is pressed. But at higher levels, surely there is no decision for them to augment.
May: Sure there is. You say that the formal levels use true RNG's. So when does a subject sign onto the WEB? Who and when are these decisions made?
RPKP: But if the times at which people subscribe have no bearing on the generation times of the data, then the decision would be mine, when I press the ENTER key to run the RNG software, perhaps weeks before the experiment... So it would seem that individual subjects shouldn't be able to carry over any ability from Level 0 to Level 1, and any success at Level 1 would be due to my own "decision augmentation". Would you comment on this?
May: It might be possible to design a pseudo random generator and protocol such that no psi would happend. We are looking into it, but it is not a simple task. In the Journal of Parapsychology theory paper, because we discuss the number of decisions argument in detail.
RPKP: In the quasi-random scenario, where the subject can augment a decision, s/he is presumably attempting to "tune in" to some "inner fluctuation" which correlates with the success of the experiment which would result from a keypress at the moment in question. "What" do you believe the subject is tuning into? You've mentioned that you think humans might be doing this all the time, that the ability occured through evolution. Would you care to speculate on what the mechanism might be, and how far reaching its (subconcious) application could be in everyday life?
May: Simple precognition... :-)
RPKP: Why do you think the parapsychology community, with all its talented researchers, advanced technology, etc. has never been able to reliably demonstrate the existence of psi to the "mainstream" science community?
May: For those that look, we have no problem. The problem we have is poor marketing by most of our research colleagues.
RPKP: Obviously skeptics would argue that the lack of reliable, high-profile demonstrations of psi was evidence for its nonexistence, but you've seen it with your own eyes.
May: I have successfully "sold" the research to two separate defense contractors, the government which includes members and staff of Congress, agency officials, and government scientists and more scientific oversight committees than you would like to know.
Mostly, it is how the data are presented. They can speak for themselves, but because most people have an incorrect view of what the claims are, low-key and scientifically honest presentations have always carried the day for me.
RPKP: What do you believe is the future of PK research? Do you believe such a "reliable demonstration" will ever be possible?
May: With a slight hesitation with regard to bio-PK, I don't think it exists. There is a general problem with the definitions we have for psi. PK is what happens when nothing else should. Boy...it is very expensive and requires considerable knowledge to assure that nothing else did happen. Most psi researchers, while well-meaning, do not have the financial resources nor the technical expertise to do either.
RPKP: Thanks for your time.
May: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to present my and our ideas. We have an excellent team who feel as passionately as I do about the above.
By Anonymous on Monday, July 18, 2005 - 02:24 am:
Reports, also unconfirmed indicate at least one if not all previous members of the Star Gate team have had effects occur at various locations possibly attributed to the subject forcibly co-opted into the Star Gate Project for Operation Iraqi Freedom. The effects reportedly include telekinetic effects and burn marks of some sort. All effects all highly classified by Technical Intelligence.
By Anonymous on Monday, July 18, 2005 - 07:00 am:
By Anonymous on Monday, July 18, 2005 - 01:34 pm:
At Stanford Research Institute
by H. E. Puthoff, Ph.D.
Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin
4030 Braker Lane W., #300
Austin, Texas 78759-5329
Abstract - In July 1995 the CIA declassified, and approved for release, documents revealing its sponsorship in the 1970s of a program at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, to determine whether such phenomena as remote viewing "might have any utility for intelligence collection" [1]. Thus began disclosure to the public of a two-decade-plus involvement of the intelligence community in the investigation of so-called parapsychological or psi phenomena. Presented here by the program's Founder and first Director (1972 - 1985) is the early history of the program, including discussion of some of the first, now declassified, results that drove early interest.
Introduction
On April 17, 1995, President Clinton issued Executive Order Nr. 1995-4-17, entitled Classified National Security Information. Although in one sense the order simply reaffirmed much of what has been long-standing policy, in another sense there was a clear shift toward more openness. In the opening paragraph, for example, we read: "In recent years, however, dramatic changes have altered, although not eliminated, the national security threats that we confront. These changes provide a greater opportunity to emphasize our commitment to open Government." In the Classification Standards section of the Order this commitment is operationalized by phrases such as "If there is significant doubt about the need to classify information, it shall not be classified." Later in the document, in reference to information that requires continued protection, there even appears the remarkable phrase "In some exceptional cases, however, the need to protect such information may be outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information, and in these cases the information should be declassified."
A major fallout of this reframing of attitude toward classification is that there is enormous pressure on those charged with maintaining security to work hard at being responsive to reasonable requests for disclosure. One of the results is that FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests that have languished for months to years are suddenly being acted upon.1
One outcome of this change in policy is the government's recent admission of its two-decade-plus involvement in funding highly-classified, special access programs in remote viewing (RV) and related psi phenomena, first at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and then at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), both in Menlo Park, CA, supplemented by various in-house government programs. Although almost all of the documentation remains yet classified, in July 1995 270 pages of SRI reports were declassified and released by the CIA, the program's first sponsor [2]. Thus, although through the years columns by Jack Anderson and others had claimed leaks of "psychic spy" programs with such exotic names as Grill Flame, Center Lane, Sunstreak and Star Gate, CIA's release of the SRI reports constitutes the first documented public admission of significant intelligence community involvement in the psi area.
As a consequence of the above, although I had founded the program in early 1972, and had acted as its Director until I left in 1985 to head up the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin (at which point my colleague Ed May assumed responsibility as Director), it was not until 1995 that I found myself for the first time able to utter in a single sentence the connected acronyms CIA/SRI/RV. In this report I discuss the genesis of the program, report on some of the early, now declassified, results that drove early interest, and outline the general direction the program took as it expanded into a multi-year, multi-site, multi-million-dollar effort to determine whether such phenomena as remote viewing "might have any utility for intelligence collection" [1].
Beginnings
In early 1972 I was involved in laser research at Stanford Research Institute (now called SRI International) in Menlo Park, CA. At that time I was also circulating a proposal to obtain a small grant for some research in quantum biology. In that proposal I had raised the issue whether physical theory as we knew it was capable of describing life processes, and had suggested some measurements involving plants and lower organisms [3]. This proposal was widely circulated, and a copy was sent to Cleve Backster in New York City who was involved in measuring the electrical activity of plants with standard polygraph equipment. New York artist Ingo Swann chanced to see my proposal during a visit to Backster's lab, and wrote me suggesting that if I were interested in investigating the boundary between the physics of the animate and inanimate, I should consider experiments of the parapsychological type. Swann then went on to describe some apparently successful experiments in psychokinesis in which he had participated at Prof. Gertrude Schmeidler's laboratory at the City College of New York. As a result of this correspondence I invited him to visit SRI for a week in June 1972 to demonstrate such effects, frankly, as much out of personal scientific curiosity as anything else.
Prior to Swann's visit I arranged for access to a well-shielded magnetometer used in a quark-detection experiment in the Physics Department at Stanford University. During our visit to this laboratory, sprung as a surprise to Swann, he appeared to perturb the operation of the magnetometer, located in a vault below the floor of the building and shielded by mu-metal shielding, an aluminum container, copper shielding and a superconducting shield. As if to add insult to injury, he then went on to "remote view" the interior of the apparatus, rendering by drawing a reasonable facsimile of its rather complex (and heretofore unpublished) construction. It was this latter feat that impressed me perhaps even more than the former, as it also eventually did representatives of the intelligence community. I wrote up these observations and circulated it among my scientific colleagues in draft form of what was eventually published as part of a conference proceedings [4].
In a few short weeks a pair of visitors showed up at SRI with the above report in hand. Their credentials showed them to be from the CIA. They knew of my previous background as a Naval Intelligence Officer and then civilian employee at the National Security Agency (NSA) several years earlier, and felt they could discuss their concerns with me openly. There was, they told me, increasing concern in the intelligence community about the level of effort in Soviet parapsychology being funded by the Soviet security services [5]; by Western scientific standards the field was considered nonsense by most working scientists. As a result they had been on the lookout for a research laboratory outside of academia that could handle a quiet, low-profile classified investigation, and SRI appeared to fit the bill. They asked if I could arrange an opportunity for them to carry out some simple experiments with Swann, and, if the tests proved satisfactory, would I consider a pilot program along these lines? I agreed to consider this, and arranged for the requested tests.2
The tests were simple, the visitors simply hiding objects in a box and asking Swann to attempt to describe the contents. The results generated in these experiments are perhaps captured most eloquently by the following example. In one test Swann said "I see something small, brown and irregular, sort of like a leaf or something that resembles it, except that it seems very much alive, like it's even moving!" The target chosen by one of the visitors turned out to be a small live moth, which indeed did look like a leaf. Although not all responses were quite so precise, nonetheless the integrated results were sufficiently impressive that in short order an eight-month, $49,909 Biofield Measurements Program was negotiated as a pilot study, a laser colleague Russell Targ who had had a long-time interest and involvement in parapsychology joined the program, and the experimental effort was begun in earnest.
Early Remote Viewing Results
During the eight-month pilot study of remote viewing the effort gradually evolved from the remote viewing of symbols and objects in envelopes and boxes, to the remote viewing of local target sites in the San Francisco Bay area, demarked by outbound experimenters sent to the site under strict protocols devised to prevent artifactual results. Later judging of the results were similarly handled by double-blind protocols designed to foil artifactual matching. Since these results have been presented in detail elsewhere, both in the scientific literature [6-8] and in popular book format [9], I direct the interested reader to these sources. To summarize, over the years the back-and-forth criticism of protocols, refinement of methods, and successful replication of this type of remote viewing in independent laboratories [10-14], has yielded considerable scientific evidence for the reality of the phenomenon. Adding to the strength of these results was the discovery that a growing number of individuals could be found to demonstrate high-quality remote viewing, often to their own surprise, such as the talented Hella Hammid. As a separate issue, however, most convincing to our early program monitors were the results now to be described, generated under their own control.
First, during the collection of data for a formal remote viewing series targeting indoor laboratory apparatus and outdoor locations (a series eventually published in toto in the Proc. IEEE [7]), the CIA contract monitors, ever watchful for possible chicanery, participated as remote viewers themselves in order to critique the protocols. In this role three separate viewers, designated visitors V1 - V3 in the IEEE paper, contributed seven of the 55 viewings, several of striking quality. Reference to the IEEE paper for a comparison of descriptions/drawings to pictures of the associated targets, generated by the contract monitors in their own viewings, leaves little doubt as to why the contract monitors came to the conclusion that there was something to remote viewing (see, for example, Figure 1 herein). As summarized in the Executive Summary of the now-released Final Report [2] of the second year of the program, "The development of this capability at SRI has evolved to the point where visiting CIA personnel with no previous exposure to such concepts have performed well under controlled laboratory conditions (that is, generated target descriptions of sufficiently high quality to permit blind matching of descriptions to targets by independent judges)." What happened next, however, made even these results pale in comparison.
Coordinate Remote Viewing
To determine whether it was necessary to have a "beacon" individual at the target site, Swann suggested carrying out an experiment to remote view the planet Jupiter before the upcoming NASA Pioneer 10 flyby. In that case, much to his chagrin (and ours) he found a ring around Jupiter, and wondered if perhaps he had remote viewed Saturn by mistake. Our colleagues in astronomy were quite unimpressed as well, until the flyby revealed that an unanticipated ring did in fact exist.3
Expanding the protocols yet further, Swann proposed a series of experiments in which the target was designated not by sending a "beacon" person to the target site, but rather by the use of geographical coordinates, latitude and longitude in degrees, minutes and seconds. Needless to say, this proposal seemed even more outrageous than "ordinary" remote viewing. The difficulties in taking this proposal seriously, designing protocols to eliminate the possibility of a combination of globe memorization and eidetic or photographic memory, and so forth, are discussed in considerable detail in Reference [9]. Suffice it to say that investigation of this approach, which we designated Scanate (scanning by coordinate), eventually provided us with sufficient evidence to bring it up to the contract monitors and suggest a test under their control. A description of that test and its results, carried out in mid-1973 during the initial pilot study, are best presented by quoting directly from the Executive Summary of the Final Report of the second year's followup program [2]. The remote viewers were Ingo Swann and Pat Price, and the entire transcripts are available in the released documents [2].
"In order to subject the remote viewing phenomena to a rigorous long-distance test under external control, a request for geographical coordinates of a site unknown to subject and experimenters was forwarded to the OSI group responsible for threat analysis in this area. In response, SRI personnel received a set of geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude in degrees, minutes, and seconds) of a facility, hereafter referred to as the West Virginia Site. The experimenters then carried out a remote viewing experiment on a double-blind basis, that is, blind to experimenters as well as subject. The experiment had as its goal the determination of the utility of remote viewing under conditions approximating an operational scenario. Two subjects targeted on the site, a sensitive installation. One subject drew a detailed map of the building and grounds layout, the other provided information about the interior including codewords, data subsequently verified by sponsor sources (report available from COTR)."4
Since details concerning the site's mission in general,5 and evaluation of the remote viewing test in particular, remain highly classified to this day, all that can be said is that interest in the client community was heightened considerably following this exercise.
Because Price found the above exercise so interesting, as a personal challenge he went on to scan the other side of the globe for a Communist Bloc equivalent and found one located in the Urals, the detailed description of which is also included in Ref. [2]. As with the West Virginia Site, the report for the Urals Site was also verified by personnel in the sponsor organization as being substantially correct.
What makes the West Virginia/Urals Sites viewings so remarkable is that these are not best-ever examples culled out of a longer list; these are literally the first two site-viewings carried out in a simulated operational-type scenario. In fact, for Price these were the very first two remote viewings in our program altogether, and he was invited to participate in yet further experimentation.
Operational Remote Viewing (Semipalatinsk, USSR)
Midway through the second year of the program (July 1974) our CIA sponsor decided to challenge us to provide data on a Soviet site of ongoing operational significance. Pat Price was the remote viewer. A description of the remote viewing, taken from our declassified final report [2], reads as given below. I cite this level of detail to indicate the thought that goes into such an "experiment" to minimize cueing while at the same time being responsive to the requirements of an operational situation. Again, this is not a "best-ever" example from a series of such viewings, but rather the very first operational Soviet target concerning which we were officially tasked.
"To determine the utility of remote viewing under operational conditions, a long-distance remote viewing experiment was carried out on a sponsor-designated target of current interest, an unidentified research center at Semipalatinsk, USSR.
This experiment, carried out in three phases, was under direct control of the COTR. To begin the experiment, the COTR furnished map coordinates in degrees, minutes and seconds. The only additional information provided was the designation of the target as an R&D test facility. The experimenters then closeted themselves with Subject S1, gave him the map coordinates and indicated the designation of the target as an R&D test facility. A remote-viewing experiment was then carried out. This activity constituted Phase I of the experiment.
Figure 3 shows the subject's graphic effort for building layout; Figure 4 shows the subject's particular attention to a multistory gantry crane he observed at the site. Both results were obtained by the experimenters on a double-blind basis before exposure to any additional COTR-held information, thus eliminating the possibility of cueing. These results were turned over to the client representatives for evaluation. For comparison an artist's rendering of the site as known to the COTR (but not to the experimenters until later) is shown in Figure 5.....
Were the results not promising, the experiment would have stopped at this point. Description of the multistory crane, however, a relatively unusual target item, was taken as indicative of possible target acquisition. Therefore, Phase II was begun, defined by the subject being made "witting" (of the client) by client representatives who introduced themselves to the subject at that point; Phase II also included a second round of experimentation on the Semipalatinsk site with direct participation of client representatives in which further data were obtained and evaluated. As preparation for this phase, client representatives purposely kept themselves blind to all but general knowledge of the target site to minimize the possibility of cueing. The Phase II effort was focused on the generation of physical data that could be independently verified by other client sources, thus providing a calibration of the process.
The end of Phase II gradually evolved into the first part of Phase III, the generation of unverifiable data concerning the Semipalatinsk site not available to the client, but of operational interest nonetheless. Several hours of tape transcript and a notebook of drawings were generated over a two-week period.
The data describing the Semipalatinsk site were evaluated by the sponsor, and are contained in a separate report. In general, several details concerning the salient technology of the Semipalatinsk site appeared to dovetail with data from other sources, and a number of specific large structural elements were correctly described. The results contained noise along with the signal, but were nonetheless clearly differentiated from the chance results that were generated by control subjects in comparison experiments carried out by the COTR."
For discussion of the ambiance and personal factors involved in carrying out this experiment, along with further detail generated as Price (see Figure 6) "roamed" the facility, including detailed comparison of Price's RV-generated information with later-determined "ground-truth reality," see the accompanying article by Russell Targ in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 10, No. 1. Click here to read the abstract.
Additional experiments having implications for intelligence concerns were carried out, such as the remote viewing of cipher-machine type apparatus, and the RV-sorting of sealed envelopes to differentiate those that contained letters with secret writing from those that did not. To discuss these here in detail would take us too far afield, but the interested reader can follow up by referring to the now-declassified project documents [2].
Follow-on Programs
The above discussion brings us up to the end of 1975. As a result of the material being generated by both SRI and CIA remote viewers, interest in the program in government circles, especially within the intelligence community, intensified considerably and led to an ever-increasing briefing schedule. This in turn led to an ever-increasing number of clients, contracts and tasking, and therefore expansion of the program to a multi-client base, and eventually to an integrated joint-services program under single-agency (DIA)6 leadership. To meet the demand for the increased level of effort we first increased our professional staff by inviting Ed May to join the program in 1976, then screened and added to the program a cadre of remote viewers as consultants, and let subcontracts to increase our scope of activity.
As the program expanded, in only a very few cases could the clients' identities and program tasking be revealed. Examples include a NASA-funded study negotiated early in the program by Russ Targ to determine whether the internal state of an electronic random-number-generator could be detected by RV processes [16], and a study funded by the Naval Electronics Systems Command to determine whether attempted remote viewing of distant light flashes would induce correlated changes in the viewer's brainwave (EEG) production [17]. For essentially all other projects during my 14-yr. tenure at SRI, however, the identity of the clients and most of the tasking were classified and remain so today. (The exception was the occasional privately-funded study.) We are told, however, that further declassification and release of much of this material is almost certain to occur.
What can be said, then, about further development of the program in the two decades following 1975?7 In broad terms it can be said that much of the SRI effort was directed not so much toward developing an operational U.S. capability, but rather toward assessing the threat potential of its use against the U.S. by others. The words threat assessment were often used to describe the program's purpose during its development, especially during the early years. As a result much of the remote-viewing activity was carried out under conditions where ground-truth reality was a priori known or could be determined, such as the description of U.S. facilities and technological developments, the timing of rocket test firings and underground nuclear tests, and the location of individuals and mobile units. And, of course, we were responsive to requests to provide assistance during such events as the loss of an airplane or the taking of hostages, relying on the talents of an increasing cadre of remote-viewer/consultants, some well-known in the field such as Keith Harary, and many who have not surfaced publicly until recently, such as Joe McMoneagle.
One might ask whether in this program RV-generated information was ever of sufficient significance as to influence decisions at a policy level. This is of course impossible to determine unless policymakers were to come forward with a statement in the affirmative. One example of a possible candidate is a study we performed at SRI during the Carter-administration debates concerning proposed deployment of the mobile MX missile system. In that scenario missiles were to be randomly shuffled from silo to silo in a silo field, in a form of high-tech shell game. In a computer simulation of a twenty-silo field with randomly-assigned (hidden) missile locations, we were able, using RV-generated data, to show rather forcefully that the application of a sophisticated statistical averaging technique (sequential sampling) could in principle permit an adversary to defeat the system. I briefed these results to the appropriate offices at their request, and a written report with the technical details was widely circulated among groups responsible for threat analysis [18], and with some impact. What role, if any, our small contribution played in the mix of factors behind the enormously complex decision to cancel the program will probably never be known, and must of course a priori be considered in all likelihood negligible. Nonetheless, this is a prototypical example of the kind of tasking that by its nature potentially had policy implications.
Even though the details of the broad range of experiments, some brilliant successes, many total failures, have not yet been released, we have nonetheless been able to publish summaries of what was learned in these studies about the overall characteristics of remote viewing, as in Table 5 of Reference [8]. Furthermore, over the years we were able to address certain questions of scientific interest in a rigorous way and to publish the results in the open literature. Examples include the apparent lack of attenuation of remote viewing due to seawater shielding (submersible experiments) [8], the amplification of RV performance by use of error-correcting coding techniques [19,20], and the utility of a technique we call associational remote viewing (ARV) to generate useful predictive information [21].8
As a sociological aside, we note that the overall efficacy of remote viewing in a program like this was not just a scientific issue. For example, when the Semipalatinsk data described earlier was forwarded for analysis, one group declined to get involved because the whole concept was unscientific nonsense, while a second group declined because, even though it might be real, it was possibly demonic; a third group had to be found. And, as in the case of public debate about such phenomena, the program's image was on occasion as likely to be damaged by an overenthusiastic supporter as by a detractor. Personalities, politics and personal biases were always factors to be dealt with.
Official Statements/Perspectives
With regard to admission by the government of its use of remote viewers under operational conditions, officials have on occasion been relatively forthcoming. President Carter, in a speech to college students in Atlanta in September 1995, is quoted by Reuters as saying that during his administration a plane went down in Zaire, and a meticulous sweep of the African terrain by American spy satellites failed to locate any sign of the wreckage. It was then "without my knowledge" that the head of the CIA (Adm. Stansfield Turner) turned to a woman reputed to have psychic powers. As told by Carter, "she gave some latitude and longitude figures. We focused our satellite cameras on that point and the plane was there." Independently, Turner himself also has admitted the Agency's use of a remote viewer (in this case, Pat Price).9 And recently, in a segment taped for the British television series Equinox [22], Maj. Gen. Ed Thompson, Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, U.S. Army (1977-1981), volunteered "I had one or more briefings by SRI and was impressed.... The decision I made was to set up a small, in-house, low-cost effort in remote viewing...."
Finally, a recent unclassified report [23] prepared for the CIA by the American Institutes for Research (AIR), concerning a remote viewing effort carried out under a DIA program called Star Gate (discussed in detail elsewhere in this volume), cites the roles of the CIA and DIA in the history of the program, including acknowledgment that a cadre of full-time government employees used remote viewing techniques to respond to tasking from operational military organizations.10
As information concerning the various programs spawned by intelligence-community interest is released, and the dialog concerning their scientific and social significance is joined, the results are certain to be hotly debated. Bearing witness to this fact are the companion articles in this volume by Ed May, Director of the SRI and SAIC programs since 1985, and by Jessica Utts and Ray Hyman, consultants on the AIR evaluation cited above. These articles address in part the AIR study. That study, limited in scope to a small fragment of the overall program effort, resulted in a conclusion that although laboratory research showed statistically significant results, use of remote viewing in intelligence gathering was not warranted.
Regardless of one's a priori position, however, an unimpassioned observer cannot help but attest to the following fact. Despite the ambiguities inherent in the type of exploration covered in these programs, the integrated results appear to provide unequivocal evidence of a human capacity to access events remote in space and time, however falteringly, by some cognitive process not yet understood. My years of involvement as a research manager in these programs have left me with the conviction that this fact must be taken into account in any attempt to develop an unbiased picture of the structure of reality.
Footnotes
1 - One example being the release of documents that are the subject of this report - see the memoir by Russell Targ elsewhere in this volume.
2 - Since the reputation of the intelligence services is mixed among members of the general populace, I have on occasion been challenged as to why I would agree to cooperate with the CIA or other elements of the intelligence community in this work. My answer is simply that as a result of my own previous exposure to this community I became persuaded that war can almost always be traced to a failure in intelligence, and that therefore the strongest weapon for peace is good intelligence.
3 - This result was published by us in advance of the ring's discovery [9].
4 - Editor's footnote added here: COTR - Contracting Officer's Technical Representative
5 - An NSA listening post at the Navy's Sugar Grove facility, according to intelligence-community chronicler Bamford [15]
6 - DIA - Defense Intelligence Agency. The CIA dropped out as a major player in the mid-seventies due to pressure on the Agency (unrelated to the RV Program) from the Church-Pike Congressional Committee.
7 - See also the contribution by Ed May elsewhere in this volume concerning his experiences from 1985 on during his tenure as Director.
8 - For example, one application of this technique yielded not only a published, statistically significant result, but also a return of $26,000 in 30 days in the silver futures market [21].
9 - The direct quote is given in Targ's contribution elsewhere in this volume.
10 - "From 1986 to the first quarter of FY 1995, the DoD paranormal psychology program received more than 200 tasks from operational military organizations requesting that the program staff apply a paranormal psychological technique know (sic) as "remote viewing" (RV) to attain information unavailable from other sources." [23]
References
[1] "CIA Statement on 'Remote Viewing'," CIA Public Affairs Office, 6 September 1995.
[2] Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ, "Perceptual Augmentation Techniques," SRI Progress Report No. 3 (31 Oct. 1974) and Final Report (1 Dec. 1975) to the CIA, covering the period January 1974 through February 1975, the second year of the program. This effort was funded at the level of $149,555.
[3] H. E. Puthoff, "Toward a Quantum Theory of Life Process," unpubl. proposal, Stanford Research Institute (1972).
[4] H. E. Puthoff and R. Targ, "Physics, Entropy and Psychokinesis," in Proc. Conf. Quantum Physics and Parapsychology (Geneva, Switzerland); (New York: Parapsychology Foundation, 1975).
[5] Documented in "Paraphysics R&D - Warsaw Pact (U)," DST-1810S-202-78, Defense Intelligence Agency (30 March 1978).
[6] R. Targ and H. E. Puthoff, "Information Transfer under Conditions of Sensory Shielding," Nature 252, 602 (1974).
[7] H. E. Puthoff and R. Targ, "A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research," Proc. IEEE 64, 329 (1976).
[8] H. E. Puthoff, R. Targ and E. C. May, "Experimental Psi Research: Implications for Physics," in The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World, edited by R. G. Jahn (AAAS Selected Symposium 57, Westview Press, Boulder, 1981).
[9] R. Targ and H. E. Puthoff, Mind Reach (Delacorte Press, New York, 1977).
[10] J. P. Bisaha and B. J. Dunne, "Multiple Subject and Long-Distance Precognitive Remote Viewing of Geographical Locations," in Mind at Large, edited by C. T. Tart, H. E. Puthoff and R. Targ (Praeger, New York, 1979), p. 107.
[11] B. J. Dunne and J. P. Bisaha, "Precognitive Remote Viewing in the Chicago Area: a Replication of the Stanford Experiment," J. Parapsychology 43, 17 (1979).
[12] R. G. Jahn, "The Persistent Paradox of Psychic Phenomena: An Engineering Perspective," Proc. IEEE 70, 136 (1982).
[13] R. G. Jahn and B. J. Dunne, "On the Quantum Mechanics of Consciousness with Application to Anomalous Phenomena," Found. Phys. 16, 721 (1986).
[14] R. G. Jahn and B. J. Dunne, Margins of Reality (Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, New York, 1987).
[15] J. Bamford, The Puzzle Palace (Penguin Books, New York, 1983) pp. 218-222.
[16] R. Targ, P. Cole and H. E. Puthoff, "Techniques to Enhance Man/Machine Communication," Stanford Research Institute Final Report on NASA Project NAS7-100 (August 1974).
[17] R. Targ, E. C. May, H. E. Puthoff, D. Galin and R. Ornstein, "Sensing of Remote EM Sources (Physiological Correlates)," SRI Intern'l Final Report on Naval Electronics Systems Command Project N00039-76-C-0077, covering the period November 1975 - to October 1976 (April 1978).
[18] H. E. Puthoff, "Feasibility Study on the Vulnerability of the MPS System to RV Detection Techniques," SRI Internal Report, 15 April 1979; revised 2 May 1979.
[19] H. E. Puthoff, "Calculator-Assisted Psi Amplification," Research in Parapsychology 1984, edited by Rhea White and J. Solfvin (Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1985), p. 48.
[20] H. E. Puthoff, "Calculator-Assisted Psi Amplification II: Use of the Sequential-Sampling Technique as a Variable-Length Majority-Vote Code," Research in Parapsychology 1985, edited by D. Weiner and D. Radin (Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1986), p. 73.
[21] H. E. Puthoff, "ARV (Associational Remote Viewing) Applications," Research in Parapsychology 1984, edited by Rhea White and J. Solfvin (Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1985), p. 121.
[22] "The Real X-Files," Independent Channel 4, England (shown 27 August 1995); to be shown in the U.S. on the Discovery Channel.
[23] M. D. Mumford, A. M. Rose and D. Goslin, "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications," American Institutes for Research (September 29, 1995).
By Edward Chesky on Monday, July 18, 2005 - 06:15 pm:
I have attached a couple of articles about Zahedren for review as background information.
The Zaheran area has links to smuggling networks that span the globe with regards to the movement of illegal drugs, via air, ship or ground movement. It also has a large Sunni population and is close the Pakistan border near the large city of Karachi.
Ed Chesky
Middle East
Iran's unsung rebellion
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
ZAHEDAN, Iran - The world outside Iran sees political turmoil in the student demonstrations. This, however, is just a small segment of a big canvas. The demonstrations, restricted within campus walls, are nothing but a storm in a teacup compared to other factors that are silently simmering in Iranian society. What is more, it is these other factors that, unlike the students, may constitute a deadly antithesis to the hardline Shi'ite clerical establishment.
An independent study of Iranian society based on conversations with Iranian student leaders, political leaders, clerics and workers suggests that the present political turmoil taking place in Tehran is unlikely to translate into a revolt against the present system. Instead, these protests are likely to be settled through compromises within the existing setup. And, in fact, these compromises are taking place with every passing day.
Iranian religious circles, business groups, artists and workers are not on the verge of revolting against the establishment; what they are doing is trying to mould the establishment into new forms according to their own definition of human rights.
The threat of revolution, if any exists in Iran, will come not from Tehran, but from the fiercely independent Sistan-o-Baluchestan province near the Iranian-Pakistan border. This area contains 70 percent of the country's Sunni population, and used to be the base of the banned Iranian group Mujahideen-i-Khalq Organization (MKO), which translates as the "People's Fighters". The MKO fought the ruling Shi'ite mullahs until, after brutal suppression, its leaders were forced to flee, mostly to Iraq.
The MKO has been characterized at times as a left-wing, pro-socialist organization; at other times as an alliance between left-wingers and supporters of the former Shah. But for residents of Zahedan and Iranian Balochistan, the characterizations are meaningless. Under the pretext of fighting the MKO, all Zahedanis and Balochis were targeted by the central government no matter what their politics and, for this reason, the MKO is heroic in the eyes of many in these regions.
Mohammed (not his real name) is one of these. A resident of Zahedan who runs a grocery store, he has relatives who were associated with MKO. In return, every member of his family has been targeted. "After a rally against the Iranian government in Zahedan several years ago, the Iranian government carried out operations, and soldiers of the Iranian military marched to the area with aerial firing to harass the people. One stray bullet killed my brother," he says.
"I took the body with me and met the concerned army officer and mentioned that they had killed a peaceful citizen. The officer said they were given a task to 'eliminate the dogs, and your brother was of the same lot'. They referred to the Sunni Muslims of Zahedan as 'dogs'."
When this correspondent mentioned statements of the late Imam Khomeini that stressed harmony between Shi'ites and Sunnis, and also pointed out graffiti on the walls of Zahedan that read: "Shi'ite, Sunnis in brotherhood" - Khan provided a different perspective. "When you meet Iranian officials in Tehran, ask them why they do not allow a Sunni mosque in Tehran, despite a good number of Sunnis living there? During the election campaign, President Mohammad Khatami had pledged to allow a Sunni mosque in Tehran. This was nothing but election sloganeering. After he won the elections, he was reminded of his promise but he said that the [Supreme] Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei had not agreed to the proposal."
Mohammed continued, "There used to be a single mosque in Mashad, where the Sunni population is 10 percent. That single mosque was turned into a park in just one night. What justification do Iranian officials have for the demolition of that mosque?"
Apart from religious rights, Zahedanis are also denied basic rights. The representation of Zahedanis in government is very low, while their presence in essential services such as the Iranian army is almost non-existent. Iranian officials generally argue that Zahedanis are generally rustic people who do not have the quality of education to qualify for good jobs.
Apparently it is a valid answer - but that is only because Sistan-o-Baluchestan is the only region of Iran where access to quality education is non-existent. There is only one technical college and no university in Zahedan. Wrong or right, there is a general perception in Zahedan that since the military and police are under the control of the Shi'ite clerics, Zahedanis are not given jobs in these departments.
These feelings are very common in Zahedan and generate a feeling of defiance against the Iranian establishment. It is a fact that Zahedanis are not urbane like Tehranis or Isfhanis. They live near the border area of Pakistani Balochistan and Afghanistan and therefore they share certain tribal values and a way of life with the Balochi-Pashtun belt of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Thus one easily discerns a negative attitude toward the central government among Zahedanis, who generally have no hesitation in defying any Iranian laws. For instance, only certain kinds of music are allowed in Iran. Indian music is not alowed. However, all Iranians from Zahedan to Tehran enjoy listening to Indian music. In Tehran, they listen to it only in their houses; in Zahedan all the taxi drivers play Indian music as loud as they want without fear.
Iranian officials and clerics sitting in Tehran always suspect the loyalties of Zahedanis, but they have never taken any concrete steps to improve their lives. Several sources in Tehran are positive that, in fact, Zahedan will be a real flashpoint if the US were to try to infiltrate by supporting a revived MKO.
Over the past few years, Iranian reformist parties have tried to forge better ties with those living in the belt of Iranian Sistan-o-Baluchestan. The people of Zahedan voted in favor of the reformist parties, but now, even in the second term of President Khatami, they feel that they are still second-class citizens. Thus, years of repression by hardliners and political bungling by reformists in Tehran have created a facet of Iranian society that is dead-set against the ruling clergy, that feels like second-class citizens - and that lies situated dangerously along the Pakistani border.
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Corner of Iran furious over U.S. attacks
20,000 rally in border town
Colin Barraclough, Chronicle Foreign Service
Saturday, October 13, 2001
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Zahedan, Iran -- The Iranian government allowed the public to vent its anger for the first time yesterday at the U.S.-led military assault on Afghanistan -- with frightening results.
In Zahedan, a strategic provincial capital in southeastern Iran just 20 miles from the Afghan border, the upsurge of fury took Iran's battle-hardened security forces by surprise, and, for a few tense minutes, came close to claiming two Western journalists as its victims.
Crowds of angry youths screamed their opposition to the attacks on Afghanistan, and many proclaimed their willingness to fight a holy war against America.
"If the ulema (clergy) give us the order for jihad, we will take up arms against the enemy," said Gholam Reza Yacubi, a volunteer mosque worker in Zahedan. "If there is a war against Islam, we are ready to fight."
Residents fear that civil unrest could grow to an uncontrollable level as militants from the Baluchi tribe, which straddles the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, protest the American attacks.
"There is great danger for the Islamic Republic of Iran," said one man. "There is so much sympathy for the Taliban here."
Even before the Afghan crisis, Sistan-Baluchistan was the most sensitive of Iran's difficult border regions. In addition to its Sunni Baluchi population, the province also is host to thousands of Afghan refugees who have lived here for as long as 20 years. Forty percent of Zahedan's half-million population are from Afghanistan.
PROTESTS AGAINST AFGHAN DEATHS
Both Baluchis and Afghans poured onto the sun-baked streets yesterday morning to protest the deaths of family across the border. Their first target was the Pakistani Consulate, bombarded with a hail of stones.
"Musharraf is a traitor! Hang him!" the crowd screamed, referring Pakistan's president, who is allowing the U.S. armed forces to use bases in his country.
Afghans in the crowd hailed from all corners of the country. The elaborate headdresses of ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Pashtuns mingled in the early morning sun. Hoisting banners, including one that proclaimed "Bush is the biggest terrorist in the world," and burning effigies of the U.S. president, the crowds moved on through the narrow streets.
A protester from Kandahar, Nesar Ahmad Ghaljaee, paused for breath.
"The Americans are not coming for the sake of Afghanistan," he said. "They are trying to create a base here to control this region and the whole Muslim world."
By noon, a crowd of about 20,000 had gathered at the Jameh Maqqi mosque, the largest Sunni mosque in town. They read from a leaflet which accused "the uncivilized and barbaric Europeans" of "looting the Muslim world."
Fired up by an inflammatory sermon blaring from the mosque's 48 speakers, the crowd spotted two Western journalists and quickly grew angry. Explanation turned to accusation, hospitality to hostility. It was only a matter of time before the first stone fell.
The mob began to chant the slogans of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution: "Marg bar Amrika! Marg bar Israel!" -- "Death to America, Death to Israel."
As the mob closed in, only the timely intervention of Iranian security police, who waded into the crowds with batons and shields, saved the foreigners from injury.
DELICATE RELATIONS IN IRAN
This wild, rugged corner of Iran has long represented a security irritant for Iran's Shiite Muslim clerical regime. Militant Sunni extremists, who share their branch of the Muslim faith with the Taliban regime, have clashed with Iran's armed forces in the past. They also stand accused by Iranian officials of orchestrating bomb attacks on prominent Shiite Islamic targets.
In addition, Baluchi drug traffickers, who transport much of the world's illegal supply of opium, heroin and hashish through Iran to Europe and North America, frequently fight pitched battles with Iranian military forces in the desolate stretches of desert surrounding Zahedan.
Smugglers' vehicles, packed with opium and heroin, are driven across remote border areas at night.
"The drivers travel only in darkness, using night-vision goggles to see their way," said Mohammad Fallah, the head of Iran's Drug Control Headquarters.
Iranian anti-narcotics officials say the gangs are highly organized and armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Heavy machine guns, mounted on all-terrain vehicles, protect drug convoys. Iranian officers say the gangs have even shot down Iranian helicopters and warplanes with anti-aircraft weapons.
At Drug Control Headquarters in Tehran, a condolence book names about 2,700 law-enforcement personnel who have died fighting the traffickers since 1979.
Under international pressure, Iran has stepped up its battle against the smugglers. But the Baluchi gangs, given virtual carte blanche from the Taliban in the late 1990s, have struck back. Two years ago, traffickers kidnapped European tourists in the Iranian cities of Kerman and Isfahan in a daring -- and ultimately successful -- attempt to exchange them for jailed comrades.
Over the past month, Iran has dispatched some 30,000 extra police and troops to its eastern provinces, ostensibly to help seal the border with Afghanistan against an expected influx of new refugees. In key towns like Zahedan, however, police and Islamic Revolutionary Guards are now stationed as much to maintain domestic security as to guard against a refugee influx from the east.
If the aerial attacks on Afghanistan continue much longer, police fear they will have much more than a refugee crisis on their hands.
By Anonymous on Monday, July 18, 2005 - 08:24 pm:
Let the evil old men of Islam, nine,
Who send trusting young souls to death, eight,
Be exposed of their hate, seven,
So Islam can be cleansed, six,
Of this horrible evil, five,
So the flower of Islam, four,
Will no longer be used to kill, three,
Sala'am aleikom to all, two,
Aleikom-sala'am in One, one,
To bring Peace back to Islam, now.
With compassion, Allah's lowest messenger
By Edward Chesky on Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - 06:31 am:
My best wishes to you.
Ed Chesky
By Anonymous on Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - 05:36 pm:
Exclusive: The tale of an Afghan's amazing rescue of a wounded U.S. commando
By TIM MCGIRK/KABUL
Jul. 18, 2005
A crackle in the brush. That's the sound the Afghan herder recalls hearing as he walked alone through a pine forest last month. When he looked up, he saw an American commando, his legs and shoulder bloodied. The commando pointed his gun at the Afghan. "Maybe he thought I was a Taliban," says the shepherd, Gulab. "I remembered hearing that if an American sticks up his thumb, it is a friendly gesture. So that's what I did." To make sure the message was clear, Gulab lifted his tunic to show the American he wasn't hiding a weapon. He then propped up the wounded commando, and together the pair hobbled down the steep mountain trail to Sabari-Minah, a cluster of adobe-and-wood homes--crossing, for the time being, to safety.
What Gulab did not know is that the commando he encountered was part of a team of Navy SEALs that had been missing for four days after being ambushed by Taliban insurgents during a reconnaissance mission in northeastern Afghanistan. An initial search mission to find the missing SEALs ended in disaster on June 28, when a Chinook helicopter carrying 16 service members was shot down over Kunar province, killing everyone aboard, in one of the deadliest attacks so far on U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Since then, the bodies of two of the missing SEALs have been recovered; another is still classified as missing, though the Taliban claims he was captured and beheaded.
One member of the team did survive. Though the military has not released the name of the SEAL (the U.S. military seldom gives out the names of its special-operations personnel), TIME pieced together his story on the basis of briefings with U.S. military officials in Afghanistan plus an exclusive account of how Gulab, an Afghan herdsman, rescued the wounded commando. What emerges is the tale of a courageous U.S. fighter facing impossible odds in unfamiliar terrain, stalked by the enemy and stripped of everything but his gun and his will to survive. But it is also a story of mercy and fraternity, showing that even in the war-scorched landscape of the Afghan mountains, little shoots of humanity sometimes have a chance to grow.
The clashes in Kunar province have highlighted a worrying surge in violence in Afghanistan, where 15,000 U.S. troops are based. Several months ago, U.S. and Afghan officials claimed the Taliban was a spent force. But the Islamist fighters and their al-Qaeda allies have sprung back with fresh recruits, new weaponry and advanced bombmaking skills passed on to them by terrorists in Iraq, officials in Kabul say.
It was in response to signs of a mounting threat from Taliban fighters that the four-man commando team found itself in the Afghan forests of Kunar province on June 28, maneuvering under low clouds and a drenching rain. The mission, code-named Operation Redwing, was to find and engage the enemy. But in late afternoon, the commandos sent back a one-line message to the "Ark," a coalition-forces operations room in Kabul. Accompanied by a warning chime, it read, "Troops in contact." Translation: a fire fight was under way.
That was the SEALs' last message. The tracking devices each carried went dead, possibly because the men ditched their heavy rucksacks so they could move unburdened, a U.S. official says. Within minutes of receiving the message, eight commandos and eight crewmen of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment piled into an MH-47 Chinook helicopter and sped out to help the trapped men.
According to accounts provided to U.S. commanders by the surviving Navy SEAL, the commando team had come under fierce attack from a large group of Taliban fighters, who pounded their location with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and a steady hail of small-arms fire. The clatter of the approaching Chinook may or may not have been audible to the SEALs, but the Taliban surely heard it. A second band of fighters turned and took a bead on the chopper, probably with a rocket- propelled grenade, and in what a U.S. official calls "a pretty lucky shot," knocked it out of the sky.
Now the four SEALs were truly alone. With night falling and the fog settling, they managed to slip through the Taliban fighters. Crawling and scrambling, they headed toward the high ridges, and the Taliban--who had them outnumbered, probably 5 to 1--gave chase.
U.S. officials say the commandos kept up a running fire fight with their pursuers for more than two miles. The known survivor recalls seeing two of his friends shot. At one point he blacked out, possibly from a mortar round landing close by. When he regained consciousness, two of his teammates--Petty Officer 2nd Class Danny Dietz, 25, and Lieutenant Michael Murphy, 29--were dead, and a third had vanished in the darkness and fog. The surviving SEAL dragged himself at least another mile up into the mountains. It was there he was found four days later by Gulab the shepherd.
After taking the SEAL to Sabari-Minah, Gulab called a village council and explained that the American needed protection from Taliban hunters. It was the SEAL's good fortune that the villagers were Pashtun, who are honor-bound never to refuse sanctuary to a stranger. By then, said Gulab, "the American understood that we were trying to save him, and he relaxed a bit."
The Taliban was not so agreeable. That night the fighters sent a message to the villagers: "We want this infidel." A firm reply from the village chief, Shinah, shot back. "The American is our guest, and we won't give him up as long as there's a man or a woman left alive in our village." As a precaution, the villagers moved the injured commando out of Gulab's house and hid him in a stable overnight, until it was safe for Gulab to make the six-hour trek down to the U.S. base at Asadabad and report that the SEAL--by then the subject of an intense search--was alive. Sometime later, Gulab went back to his village and then returned to Asadabad with the commando, this time reuniting the wounded and weary SEAL with his jubilant comrades.
The relief at recovering the missing commando has been tempered by the heavy loss of American life--and the knowledge that more fighting lies ahead. The Taliban's offensive shows no sign of waning and is apparently aimed at sabotaging September's parliamentary elections. U.S. Colonel Don McGraw, director of operations of the Combined Forces Command in Kabul, says that in the chaos of Afghanistan today, it is hard to distinguish among what is the work of the Taliban, drug traffickers and criminal gangs.
It is a testament to the persistent insecurity in Afghanistan that Gulab now fears that his act of compassion may mean his death warrant. After returning the SEAL, he went back to grab his family and flee before the Taliban would come round seeking revenge. In the mountains of Kunar, fear is rising again. --With reporting by Muhib Habibi/Asadabad
By Anonymous on Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - 07:04 pm:
Project Preserve Destiny - Government Cover Ups
http://www.burlingtonnews.net/interviewssherman.html
Dan Sherman spent almost three years as an intuitive communicator while serving in the USAF. In ABOVE BLACK he tells of his training, things he learned from his alien contacts and the events that lead him to seek a discharge from the United States Air Force, at all costs.
By coming forward, he hopes his story will encourage other insiders to do likewise. Sherman says, "The information I have come forward with is important in the sense that someone has to start talking... someone from the inside. Preserve Destiny is only one of many alien projects that I suspect the US government, as well as other governments, are heavily involved with. In releasing to the public what I know, I have tried to take a stand against the keepers of the grey flame within the sacred halls of the NSA, CIA, USAF, NRO and other agencies. Hopefully this will open the door for other insiders to peer through and feel more comfortable stepping out into the light of day. If not, 'they' will continue to suppress the most fascinating aspects of our own existence... that others exist!"
Serving over 12 years in the United States Air Force, Dan Sherman has been recognized for heroism and has been decorated with the AF Commendation Medal and the AF Achievement Medal with two oakleaf clusters. He has also received the AF Outstanding Unit Award with three oakleaf clusters as well as being honored for service in the Persian Gulf war. He is married with one child.
Dan Sherman went into the United States Air Force like most other American guys, extremely proud to serve his country and its well trained sophisticated military. During his twelve years in service he was recognised for heroism, and was decorated with the AF Commendation Medal, as well as the AFAchievement Medal with two oakleaf clusters. He also received the Outstanding Unit Award with three oakleafclusters and was honoured for service in the Persian Gulf war.
Everything appeared to be going well for Sergeant Sherman until he was involuntarily recruited into a special programme called "Project Preserve Destiny" (PPD), an ABOVE BLACK programme which would eventually change his life and result in him leaving the USAF for which he was so dedicated.
Sergeant Sherman began his training for (PPD) at the National Security Agency (NSA) whilst at the same time training for a
career in ELINT, a highly sensitive project. The ELINT training, although a genuine programme, was to act as a cover for his
participation in "Project Preserve Destiny".
Arriving at the NSA he was told the following startling news by an Air Force Captain. "To put it bluntly, Sergeant Sherman, in
the summer of 1960 your mother was visited by what the world commonly refers to as aliens. Random tests were being conducted on the general populace at the time to determine compatibility." The Captain explained that whilst he (Sherman) was still in his mother's womb, he had been implanted to enable him to make contact with aliens through "intuitive communications". He was also told that the US government had been in contact with aliens since 1947. Needless to say, Sherman was shocked, but relieved to hear that he was 100% human and not part alien. So began three years with the (PPD) programme and his communication with an alien species.
Sherman's story is as fascinating as they come, and one can't help but sit back in amazement as you learn what allegedly are the facts of a covert operation so secret it goes even beyond the "Black Projects", and is referred to as "Grey Matter" or "Slant Missions". According to Sherman, the alien cover-up is buried deep within the "Onion Effect" - so many layers, and with every alien project - there is a black project hiding it. After he began receiving disturbing abduction data, realising that alien abductions were still ongoing, he decided to take drastic measures to obtain a discharge from the USAF and go public in the hopes that other insiders will follow in his footsteps.
By Ivan A. on Wednesday, July 20, 2005 - 01:00 pm:
Rather strange too that my own mother was hit by ball lightning while I was in the womb, and she had a scary experience while still a child where she and a friend were chase by a "devil" with big eyes. Truth or fiction, a child's imaginings?
Ivan
By Edward Chesky on Wednesday, July 20, 2005 - 02:57 pm:
A similar thing happened when I was child in the woods of Vermont, my parents to this day swear that they saw a UFO that illuminated their vehicle when I was child in the car. Who knows the truth.
When I was recoving from that bio-agent infection and had brain inflamation, I saw that man who had slightly pointy ears almost no pupils and a scar that ran from his throat to his navel....when I came up from a MRI he looked at me and pointed to the X-ray machine port. He said we had too many wires and that we had cut down too many trees to sustain the climate.
In my dazed state I did not know what to believe, but I know he did not look fully human.
Who knows what the truth is.....
Ed Chesky
By Humancafe on Thursday, July 21, 2005 - 09:22 pm:
This has come up of late, the question of whether we must sacrifice our hard earned human rights in order to combat extremist violence. I think the answer is no, that we will not sacrifice these rights, but there will be a price to pay.
First, let us look at the mind set of the terrorists. They are not adverse to violating all our laws. Fraud, executions, beheadings, kidnappings, hijackings, suicide bombings, killing of both innocents of their own ethno-cultural group as well as outsiders; nothing seems to be outside the pale of their hatred and violence. They respect no diplomatic immunity, care nothing for our laws set up to protect our rights, disdain democratically elected government, in a sense, they are criminal anarchists bent on savage killing. Thus, they are pure criminals first, and only in a very distant manner are they related to any ethno-cultural-religious groups, which for them act more as a shield to hide behind, of near legitimacy in the name of some ill conceived jihadic cause. It is a lie, no such cause can be protected by any religion anywhere in the world. Islam means Peace, and subjugating the teachings of its Prophet for the purpose of murder is a gross travesty on the religion itself. About the only human rights they might respect are those of the leaders of their own anarchic movement, all the way up to their misguided quasi religious leaders corrupting young minds with their evil teachings. These extremists will lie and cheat, and kill themselves, to protect them. Their word has no honor. Essentially, the terrorists are merely fanatical assassins. Everyone, whether civilians, children, the elderly, women and infants, are all targets sacrificed for their mean cause, including themselves, except for their leaders who remain well protected. In short, they have zero awareness of human rights.
This creates for a very difficult situation for the rest of us. If we are to fight against this extreme coercion, especially from within our own society, we are forced into a position of violating our own laws protecting citizens, and our own moral values of human rights. But it need not be so, if we are aware of what the conditions for fighting terrorism demands. Taking measured steps to address their terroristic crimes, let us work down the line of how this should be carried out:
1. Arrests and prosecution of the murderers where they are found, and incarcerated to remove them from society. For their crimes, the laws of human rights do not protect them.
2. Those who support this criminal activity, whether covertly or overtly, should be rounded up, scrutinized for the web of their contacts within their criminal organization, and held without protection of human rights. The noose around them should tighten by their removal from civilized society, including deportation.
3. Within their numbers in their ethno-cultural group will be those who are sympathetic supporters of their misbegotten cause. To throw a loop around them too may include many innocent individuals, so it is not an easy task to separate those who are potential suicider killers from those who merely secretly wish them success. This includes the religious teachers of hate. They should all be accounted for.
4. Lastly, it is the whole ethno-cultural group that is at risk of persecution, both openly by the population at large, and systematically by the government of the country in which they reside. This is where the greatest caution must take place, because not all within the group are guilty, in fact only a few.
As citizens of their host countries, regardless of their religious and ethnic affiliation, they are protected by law from abuse of their human rights. And here lies the difficulty, that within the body of decent citizens of any particular ethno-cultural group will hide those who would be anarchically violent against society. What protection can society afford to give the majority of its members if within it are hidden cells of hatred and death? This is where a price must be paid in loss of freedoms. It need not be so, but to prevent this last category from feeling the pressures of intense surveillance would require cooperation from within by their leadership. Same as all must obey a captain on ship in the event of calamity to save the greatest number of souls, so it must be with society, whether within the group or throughout. Certain rules of social freedoms are suspended, such as arrest on suspicion without a warrant, or covert electronic surveillance, until such time the crisis passes. Thus, though most citizens are well protected under the canopy of such laws, there will be some who will not be and, as in war, become subject to a more marshall type law.
Because the anarchists reside within their communities, it will be for those communities to help patrol their own in order to find them. This may unfortunately entail sometimes wrongful arrests, stricter identification requirements, less leniency on visa violations, and a suspension of our cherished "innocent until proven guilty". The last is the highest price to pay, because in rounding up potential terrorists, or their sympathizers, the arrests must go on the assumption that on suspicion, they are "guilty until proven innocent". It is a bitter pill, but one which, if society is to survive its new predators, cannot be disregarded. Anarchic quasi-religious-fanatic killers are society's new predators who prey on the innocent at large, so they cannot be protected by law.
So this is the hard task at hand, one already expressed by Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharaff, in his fight against extremists in his country. But words within a reasonable time must be followed with results. The same will be required in Europe and America, where the goal will be to loop an ever increasingly larger population of potential killers. First, those who committed the crimes are automatically under restrain; those who teach hatred or support it come second; those who belong to these hate organizations are third, then surveillance of their activity and travel is fourth; and finally the whole ethno-cultural group is watched with greater scrutiny for active and financial support of sympathizers. This last is the greatest breach of our human rights, our rights as citizens, but it is the price that needs to be paid by society to rid itself of these new terrorist predators. The correct way is to enlist the help of the leaders of the ethno-cultural group under surveillance, and with their support and understanding, help them rid themselves of those who would do harm. If handled with aplomb it can be an extremely successful strategy, where the group itself internally rids its community of its wrongdoers. All of us must be more alert and vigilant.
So yes, greater surveillance and self policing is called for, but no, human rights need not be violated, except when confronting those who are ready to commit crimes, or had committed them already. Some benefits of social freedom are suspended, as active prosecution and removal of potential killers from society is a necessity. The protection of society against this new form of fanatical predation is paramount.
We of the Western world are not Nazis, nor the strict authoritarian regimes of Soviet styled Communism, but we must protect our peaceful and decent members of society against primitively savage, anarchic social predators. In this we really have no choice but to root them out. All other considerations of economic opportunity, protection under the law, religious freedoms, must be at least temporarily reassessed to reflect the reality of what our societies face. Teachers of hate cannot be tolerated with a "freedom of speech", for they are teaching coercion, not freedom. The killers have no sense of moral values, no sense of justice in protecting the innocent, no fair play of at least warning their attacks, and no sense of our natural human rights. Thus, as predatory pure criminals, they lose their human rights.
Remember that we have no leisure in pursuing these criminals, for they give us no quarter. This is not a political war, nor even a religious war, not Jihad, but a war against hatred of our human values of freedom and human rights. They cannot win, and will not win, if we do not allow them. Like for the captain of a ship in crisis, there can be no debate about it. It is not politics, nor are we discussing political issues, no debate agreements versus coercions, but instead an extreme attack on the fundamental values of liberty, the fruits of thousands of years of our civilization. The heavy task of our leadership is clear: the terrorists can have no quarter.
Humancafe
By Anonymous on Thursday, July 21, 2005 - 11:46 pm:
WASHINGTON - The House voted Thursday to extend the USA Patriot Act, the nation's main anti-terrorism tool, just hours after televisions in the Capitol beamed images of a new attack in London.
As similar legislation worked its way through the Senate, House Republicans generally cast the law as a valuable asset in the war on terror. Most Democrats echoed that support but said they were concerned the law could allow citizens' civil liberties to be infringed.
After more than nine hours of debate, the House approved the measure 257-171. Forty-three Democrats joined 214 Republicans in voting to renew key provisions of the Patriot Act that were set to expire at the end of the year.
The bulk of the back-and-forth centered on language making permanent 14 of 16 provisions that had four-year sunset provisions under the original law, which Congress passed overwhelmingly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The bill also includes 10-year extensions to the two other provisions set to expire on Dec. 31, one allowing roving wiretaps and another allowing searches of library and medical records.
"While the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism initiatives have helped avert additional attacks on our soil, the threat has not receded," said Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee, said that while "I support the majority of the 166 provisions of the Patriot Act," the extensions could lessen accountability. "Ten years is not a sunset; 10 years is semi-permanent," he said.
President Bush hailed the vote.
"The Patriot Act is a key part of our efforts to combat terrorism and protect the American people, and the Congress needs to send me a bill soon that renews the act without weakening our ability to fight terror," Bush said in a statement released by the White House.
As the House debated the legislation, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved its own extension of the bill, though it included only four-year extensions for the roving wiretap and records search provisions.
A competing bill also has been approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which would give the FBI expanded powers to subpoena records without the approval of a judge or grand jury. That ensured further Senate talks on the terrorism-fighting measure. The House legislation will also have to be reconciled with whatever emerges from the Senate.
The House debate included frequent references to the attacks earlier in the day, two weeks after larger London blasts that killed 56, including four suicide bombers.
The roving wiretap provision, Section 206, allows investigators to obtain warrants to intercept a suspect's phone conversations or Internet traffic without limiting it to a specific phone or identifying the suspect. The records provision, Section 215, authorizes federal officials to obtain "tangible items" such as business, library and medical records.
Advocates argued that such powers already exist in criminal investigations so they should be expressly continued for terrorism investigations. They also cited safeguards in the bill, such as a requirement that a judge approve the records search.
One amendment, passed by a 402-26 vote, requires the FBI director to personally approve any request for library or bookstore records. Another successful amendment sets a 20-year jail term for an attack against a rail or mass-transit vehicle; a 30-year sentence if the vehicle carries nuclear material; and life imprisonment — with the possibility of the death penalty — if anyone is killed in such an attack.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., a former FBI agent, recalled using such tools in gang and child molestation investigations.
"All we do in the Patriot Act is say, `Look, if we can go after child molesters sitting in the library and bombers who we need to sneak-and-peek on a warrant, we ought to be able to go after terrorists,'" he said.
Critics heralded the bulk of the existing law, but said the sunsets were wisely inserted amid the inflamed passions following the Sept. 11 attacks, and should be retained to assess the long-term impact of the law.
"Periodically revisiting the Patriot Act is a good thing," said Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass. "The Patriot Act was an effort to answer the most difficult question a democracy faces: How much freedom are we willing to give up to feel safe?"
Democrats were incensed after Republican leaders blocked consideration of an amendment that would have blocked the library searches. The House approved identical language last month in a test vote.
"If you don't like it, come up and speak against it," said Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who sponsored the amendment. "But it has passed once and it would likely pass again."
___
The House bill number is H.R. 3199.
___
On the Net:
For bill text: http://thomas.loc.gov
By Edward Chesky on Friday, July 22, 2005 - 12:19 pm:
Coupled to this discussion of targets and future operations propagandists fan out after these attacks to argue the case against the west using numbers of Muslems killed and locked in poverty by, the forces of " Western Oppression". This progaganda uses pictures of maimed and starving islamic children men and women to insite young minds to join the cause to strike back as a suicide bomber or terrorist. They count on a backlash and imposition of western laws to limit Islamic activity to increase the frustration in the minds of young islamic men and women to make them, coupled to the teachings in the Koran about myrtardom, candidates for future suicide bomb attacks in an escalating cycle of violence. Hence what they are currently doing in Iraq.
I hope this helps
Edward Chesky
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8666430/
Reuters
New problem for London: Scared tube drivers
If they refuse to work, system could shut down, union official warns
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2424&ncid=2424&e=11&u=/afp/20050722/wl_uk_afp/britainattacksshootmuslims_050722144234
Muslims fear police have 'shoot to kill' policy after bomb attacks 1 hour, 15 minutes ago
LONDON (AFP) - British Muslims said they feared police were operating under a "shoot to kill" policy after a man was gunned down at an Underground train station following a new wave of bomb attacks.
Muslims said the shooting deepened their anxiety about a violent backlash against their community in the wake of two sets of bomb attacks blamed on Islamist militants, including one that killed 56 people on July 7.
The Muslim Council of Britain demanded police explain why an Asian-looking man, reported as a "suspected suicide bomber" by Sky News, was shot dead at Stockwell station in south London on Friday.
Police have confirmed that officers pursued and shot a man who was pronounced dead at the scene, but have offered no explanation for the shooting.
The incident came a day after another apparent wave of would-be suicide bombers hit London's mass transport system, two weeks after four suspected Islamist suicide bombers on trains and a bus killed 56 people.
No one was injured in Thursday's attacks after the bombs apparently failed to go off. A website statement purportedly from the Al-Qaeda terror network claimed responsibility for the attacks Friday but this has not been confirmed.
A Muslim Council spokesman said Muslims were "jumpy and nervous" and feared reprisal attacks.
"I have just had one phone call saying 'What if I was carrying a rucksack?'," said Inayat Bunglawala, referring to the rucksack bombs used in the London attacks.
"It's vital the police give a statement about what occurred (at Stockwell) and explain why the man was shot dead," Bunglawala said.
"We are getting phone calls from quite a lot of Muslims who are distressed about what may be a shoot-to-kill policy."
Witnesses told Sky News that police shot the man five times at close range after shouting at him to stop. Others described seeing many heavily armed plainclothes officers in unmarked cars at the scene.
"There may well be reasons why the police felt it necessary to unload five shots into the man and shoot him dead, but they need to make those reasons clear," Bunglawala said.
The shooting is the latest in a series of incidents which have threatened to create a rift between Britain's large Muslim community and the rest of the population in the wake of the terrorist attacks here this month.
Some radical British Muslim preachers have blamed the government's Middle East policy and the British-backed invasion of Iraq for the outrages, although the vast majority of British Muslims have condemned the bombings.
"Unless British foreign policy is changed and they withdraw forces from Iraq, I'm afraid there's going to be a lot of attacks, just the way it happened in Madrid and the way it happened in London," radical British Muslim preacher Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed told the New York Times this week.
The government is drafting a range of tough new laws to crack down on Islamic extremism and those who advocate terrorism, including setting up special intelligence units to monitor Muslims nationwide.
Prime Minister Tony Blair called Tuesday on Britain's Muslim community to confront the "evil ideology" behind terrorism following a meeting with leaders from Islamic groups.
In another incident Friday, armed police briefly threw a cordon around a mosque in east London, while the home of a Muslim convert identified as one of the suspected July 7 suicide bombers was sealed off after a suspected arson attack.
Analysts said the officers involved in the Stockwell shooting did not appear to be operating according to normal procedures.
...
"The kind of tactics the Met (Metropolitan police) appear to have used this morning are very similar to the very tough tactics that the Israelis use against suspected suicide bombers," he said.
By Anonymous on Friday, July 22, 2005 - 07:30 pm:
Sharm el-Sheikh is seen by the terrorists as a Egyption "Bali" place of decadence frequented by infidals where the rich come to play and vaction while the poor starve under oppression in Egypt. Its tied to the London Blasts, I suspect that they targeted Westerners in these blasts. I strongly condem this attack....
However, its a prime example of what the terrorist campaign plan is and what they are capable of doing....
Rather than build up the Egyption economy and progress the terrorists would rather throw bombs and regress...the sad fact is the people in
Sharm el-Sheikh are the ones that will suffer as stores and buisnesses lose buisness because of this
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050722/ts_nm/egypt_explosions_dc
Explosions in Egypt resorts kill at least 20 4 minutes ago
CAIRO (Reuters) - Explosions in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday killed at least 20 people and wounded about 100, a rescue official said.
Police said the explosions were caused by four car bombs in Sharm el-Sheikh and the nearby resort of Naama Bay.
The explosions caused pandemonium in the resort as people rushed to go home for fear of more car bombs, said one resident, who asked not to be named
By Edward Chesky on Friday, July 22, 2005 - 08:25 pm:
I also go as far as to say this network has penetrated the United States; and I have recieved information that terror groups are active on our college campuses in the form of low level cell networks that share information and conduct planning, research, technical support and propaganda....
Ed Chesky
By Edward Chesky on Friday, July 22, 2005 - 09:05 pm:
The first time it was PAN 103 over Lockerbee and a German intelligence Tip; the second time it was the Rhyad Bombings and 9/11 and penetration and recognition of a Al Queada cell in Vinnell Corporation, Saudi Arabia; the third time it was the recent Bombings in Thailand in the South of the country that has prompted the Prime Minister of Thailand to seek emergency powers, all from at tip from a contact via moderate christians....
Sometimes I think I should take out a 40 foot billboard put a Trisected angle on it with the script on the bottom, Senior Military Intelligence Analyst and Code Breaker, who told the government about the all of the above but had it swept under the rug by the intelligence services because they are too embarrased to addmit a guy that trisects angles in Public over Coffee in Starbucks and breaks terror networks and espianage networks before breakfast and can predict earthquakes via graviational force interactions and geophysical information...lost his job due to a Busch Administration Cover-up and denial operation....
Ed Chesky
By Anonymous on Friday, July 22, 2005 - 11:47 pm:
It makes me want to puke.
By Anonymous on Saturday, July 23, 2005 - 03:45 pm:
Saturday, July 23, 2005; Posted: 3:31 p.m. EDT (19:31 GMT)
Ex-CIA official angered by White House reaction to leak (3:10)
CNN) -- A former CIA intelligence official who once worked with Valerie Plame blasted President Bush and his administration for their response to the role of top White House aides in allegedly leaking Plame's identity as a CIA operative.
Speaking on behalf of Democrats in the party's weekly radio address Saturday, Larry Johnson said, "The president has flip-flopped on his promise to fire anyone in the White House implicated in a leak."
Johnson, a registered Republican who voted for Bush in 2000, said he and Plame have been friends since they began their training at the CIA in 1985.
Her name was disclosed in a column by Robert Novak, who is also a contributor to CNN, in July 2003 -- days after her husband, Joe Wilson, a former ambassador, questioned part of President Bush's justification for invading Iraq in a New York Times op-ed piece.
Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper said last week that Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told him Wilson's wife worked for the CIA but did not say her name. Cooper said also that Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, confirmed that piece of information.
In reference to the investigation, Bush told reporters last week that "If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."
That statement shifted from his previous comment on his response to the reported leak. When asked in June 2004 whether he stood by his promise to fire whoever was found to have leaked Plame's name, Bush replied, "Yes."
A federal grand jury is investigating whether a crime was committed.
Disclosure of an undercover intelligence officer's identity can be a federal crime if prosecutors can show the leak was intentional and the person who released the information knew of the officer's secret status.
Cooper testified before a grand jury last week in connection with the probe.
In Saturday's radio address, Johnson said he was "stunned" by government officials' "ignorance about a matter so basic to the national security structure of the nation."
He strongly responded to some Republican allegations that minimized Plame's role in the CIA. "We must put to bed the lie that she was not undercover," he said.
"Instead of a president concerned first and foremost with protecting this country and the intelligence officers who serve it, we are confronted with a president who is willing to sit by while political operatives savage the reputations of good Americans like Valerie and Joe Wilson."
"We deserve people who work in the White House who are committed to protecting classified information, telling the truth to the American people and living by example the idea that a country at war with Islamic extremists cannot focus its efforts on attacking other American citizens who simply tried to tell the truth," Johnson added.
By Anonymous on Saturday, July 23, 2005 - 03:51 pm:
from the Christian Science Monitor July 08, 2005 edition
Democracy's Heroes
The Monitor's View
Islamic terrorists should learn this: Over the long term, it's simply not possible to stamp out democracy and freedom.
In the Monitor
Friday, 07/22/05
They may puff with pride over perceived victories, such as Thursday's London bombings or the announced killing of Egypt's top diplomat in Iraq.
But even in the terrorists' own backyard, individuals are taking a stand for liberty and human rights. Sometimes they're voters, such as in Lebanon and Iraq. Sometimes they're journalists, such as Akbar Ganji, a political prisoner now in his fourth week of a hunger strike inside Iran's Evin Prison.
And sometimes they're political opposition figures who simply refuse to give up. One of them is Egyptian Ayman Nour. His jailing without charges earlier this year raised his status from parliamentarian to potential democratic hero.
Egyptian authorities eventually came up with a bogus charge against Mr. Nour: forgery of signatures to form his party, Tomorrow. But this week revealed where the true fraud lay. The trial was postponed after a key witness suddenly recanted his testimony, saying he'd been pressured by security forces to implicate Nour.
The trial's postponement until late September clears the way for Nour to run in Egypt's first contested presidential campaign against Hosni Mubarak, who has won four "elections" unopposed and ruled for 24 years.
Even when in jail, Nour said he would run. He reiterated his intention this week, despite the shadow of the unresolved trial, violence against his supporters, and signs that the election will not be fully free or fair.
It's that liberty-driven perseverance that prevails over the oppression of political despots and fanatic terrorists...
By Edward Chesky on Saturday, July 23, 2005 - 06:16 pm:
Ed Chesky
Experts: No Single al-Qaida Mastermind By DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press Writer
28 minutes ago
LONDON - Car bombs at an Egyptian luxury hotel. Explosions in London subways. Suicide blasts in Baghdad. With the frequency of terror attacks apparently mounting, experts searching for common threads behind the attacks suggest that the war on terror is being waged against an ever-increasing well of recruits, bound together by motives and cause ? rather than a single al-Qaida mastermind.
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With havens in Afghanistan under pressure and their finances under scrutiny, militants may take philosophical guidance from the likes of Osama bin Laden but are largely relying on their own resources in carrying operations, experts interviewed by The Associated Press said Saturday.
"They all want to be part of this phenomenon," said Loretta Napoleoni, author of "Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks," as she explained the terror wave. "It's not like someone is telling (the militants), `You bomb on the first of July.'"
Anger over the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also seems to be providing some inspiration, despite early arguments from Bush administration officials that fighting insurgents in Iraq would help prevent them from launching attacks on Western targets. The war has instead turned into a recruiting tool, experts said.
The constant images on Arab language networks of dead and dying civilians ? coupled with U.S. soldiers conducting operations ? has only heightened sensitivities.
"Iraq has been an absolute gift to al-Qaida," said Paul Rogers, a professor of peace studies at Bradford University in northern England. "(Al-Qaida) seems to have no difficulty in getting more and more recruits."
The attack Saturday in Egypt came only two days after four bombs partially detonated on three subway trains and a bus, causing no deaths but spreading panic two weeks after four suicide bombers hit similar targets, killing 52 people.
Magnus Ranstorp, a terror expert at St. Andrews University in Scotland, said few definitive links between the attacks in London and Egypt were likely.
However, the attackers may have taken note of the London attacks and opted to accelerate their plans ? hoping to make people even more afraid and the terror more widespread.
"It's more about the timing ? to overwhelm the West," Ranstorp said, adding the idea may have been to "overstretch the enemy."
He also said al-Qaida itself has been long been divided into two camps ? one that favors targets on secular regimes in the Middle East and another favoring targets among the "crusaders" of the West.
...
The Red Sea resort city was believed to be one of the safest places in the country ? a factor that would have made it harder to carry out any attack without surveillance, expertise and planning. The complication involved suggests the attacks were planned long ago.
"For an attack of this size and nature to happen in such a regionally important center destroys the image of its tight security and sends a clear message to authorities that they can be hit anywhere," said Egyptian terrorism expert Dia'a Rashwan. "We can't blame a small, amateurish group for this."
A strange twist in the Egyptian bombing investigation suggested that while all the attacks might not be related, some of them might be....
[deleted]
...
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who chairs the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, told reporters the fresh attacks only underline the need to study the root causes of violence.
"The whole world is getting very disturbed. The frequency (of terrorist attacks) seems to be mounting," he said. "You just cannot tell these people (the terrorists) to stop."
___
Associated Press Writers Jim Krane in Dubai, UAE; Dale Gavlak in Amman, Jordan; and Maggie Michael and Paul Garwood in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report.
By Edward Chesky on Sunday, July 24, 2005 - 11:47 am:
This is in keeping with recent events and my assessment of terorist operations and their decentralized network of operations.
I can not at this time confirm the credability of the information, as it is second hand data but comes froma reliable source.
Ed Chesky
By Edward Chesky on Sunday, July 24, 2005 - 11:57 am:
Ed Chesky
Sunday July 24, 08:10 PM
Thousands protest in Kashmir after three boys killed
SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Thousands of people protested against the Indian army in troubled Kashmir on Sunday, a day after security forces shot dead three teenaged boys mistaking them for militants, police and witnesses said.
They said at least 5,000 people gathered near Kupwara town to grieve over the bodies of the dead boys and express their anger against the Indian army.
"We want freedom ... Down with the security forces," the protesters shouted as they carried the bodies of the victims on their shoulders to a local police station to protest.
The Indian army said Saturday night's ambush for Muslim guerrillas in Kupwara district, south west of Srinagar, summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, had gone wrong and the three boys had been mistakenly shot dead. A fourth was wounded.
"It is a regrettable incident," army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel V. K. Batra told Reuters.
"When the army's ambush party challenged the four boys, they did not stop. Instead, they started running. The soldiers then opened fire."
On Thursday, police used teargas to disperse hundreds of Muslims protesting the alleged killing of a teenager by Indian troops in south Kashmir.
Authorities said the boy was killed in an exchange of fire between militants and soldiers.
Indian authorities deny systematic violation of human rights in Kashmir and say they probe all such incidents and punish the guilty.
Violence involving separatist guerrillas and Indian security forces continues despite a slow moving peace process between India and Pakistan who have two fought wars over the disputed region.
More than 45,000 people have been killed in Jammu and Kashmir, mainly Hindu India's only Muslim-majority state, in the revolt which broke out in 1989.
India says the separatist revolt is aided and abetted by Pakistan. Islamabad denies the charge...
By Edward Chesky on Sunday, July 24, 2005 - 12:15 pm:
These individuals include the best and brightest ELINT analysts, COMIT analysts IMINT analysts and experts in explosives, chemical biological warefare and nuclear weapons and the rest coupled to moderate Christian, Buddist, Islamic and Jewish and Hindu religous instiutions.
We have even reactivated the old Star Gate remote viewing project on our own.
We pass data back and forth and use CIA techniques for signaling and coded messages to try and intercept and predict terrorist operations. Since the government downsized us along with corporate America in the name of efficiency and cost saving we decided to go into buinsess for ourselves. The ELINT and COMINT analysts run signals intercept sites out of their homes using off the shelf equipment. These were the best and brightest of the cold war generations and we now work for low wage jobs at FEDEX and the due to government cut backs.......
We also have a team of wether experts and geological specialists looking at the Global Warming issue....and the fallout from it...doing environmental assessments and the like...
What can I say....Somebody once called me stupid and laid me off from the intelligenc buisness...so I decided to do what I did during the cold war...our current network is establishing itself in the Republic of India...
My best
Ed Chesky
By Ivan A. on Sunday, July 24, 2005 - 10:32 pm:
Quote:
This is amazing, Anon. The 70 names makes a lot of practical sense, if you consider them as a perverse "prospecting list" for the next suicider recruits. What better "referral" source than people you know and may admire your (sic) martyrdom. If the recruiters can even get a couple of new recruits from this list, they score, then the sick game continues. But to accept such a mission must take the brains of an imbecile, or those recruits if highly educated must have camel dung for brains. Neat trick for the recruiters though, if they keep replacing the kids blown away with new ones. That list of 70 is a good place to start. So what does it take? Severe indoctrination, hypnosis, drugs to make them brain dead? You have to be mentally sick to fall for that trick. Naturally, those morbid recruiters don't blow themselves up, do they?
It's a game of the damned. See "Bomber's mother speaks" out.
Finally we're getting positive anti-terrorist statements from the Muslim establishment: UK Muslims issue fatwah. Destruction of innocent lives is "vehemently prohibited". Where are the voices from the rest of Islam? Are they too shy to speak out, or can they not be taken for their word? Speak out!
It's high time for worldwide cooperation to catch these sickos. UK plans global extremist list.
Ivan
By Edward Chesky on Monday, July 25, 2005 - 06:42 am:
My folks have been working with the Churches, Temples, Mosques where we can find moderate clerics as well as with small trusted groups....we exchange data back and forth and protect our sources better than the United States Government, ie look at the Valerie Plame affair. The folks we work with consist of refugees from terror that have data to share, moderate fed up Islamics with no where else to turn and a host of other sources....
The United States dismantled its Human Intelligence Capability at the end of th Cold War to save money...it replaced the old HUMINT experts with signals intercepts, computers and satellights....until such time as the networks can be rebuilt by our Western Intelligence Services I and a number of other former intelligence experts do what we can to gather data from our old sources....I even have old Vietnam experts working old sources from that war in Asia, hence the tip on the Thailand Operation that came down...
Old allies in the great war against the Soviets have steped up to the plate...we remember the days when we presented a unified front....we are still waiting for the current governments to get their collective acts together....
My Best
Ed Chesky
By Anonymous on Monday, July 25, 2005 - 01:36 pm:
"The containers were manufactured in India and imported through one company to Britain, where they were sold in about 100 shops across the country."
LONDON (AFP) - An apparently discarded bomb similar to the four used in failed attacks on London's transport system on July 21 was found in a park, British police confirmed, appealing for information about a type of food container used in all of them.
"Initial forensic examination of the four partially detonated bombs has revealed clear similarities with yet another bomb which was found by a member of the public last Saturday, July 23," said Peter Clarke, head of London police's anti-terrorist branch.
The bomb appeared to have been abandoned in a park at Little Wormwood Scrubs, west London, he said in a news conference.
All five devices used the same type of plastic food storage container, which was placed inside dark coloured rucksacks or sportsbags, he added.
The police appealed to shopkeepers to come forward with details about customers and if they recognised some of the suspects in the botched attacks, whose pictures have been widely published.
The containers were manufactured in India and imported through one company to Britain, where they were sold in about 100 shops across the country.
"The type we are interested in is this six and a quarter litre size container with a white plastic lid," Clarke said.
"My appeal is to any shopkeepers or workers who may have sold five or more of these identical food containers in recent months perhaps to the same customer," the Metropolitan Police officer said.
...[deleted]...
London's police could not confirm a forensic link between the July 21 devices, and those used earlier to deadly effect by the four suicide bombers on Underground trains and a bus on July 7, killing 52 other people.
"We are pursuing various lines of inquiry and keeping an open mind in terms of the devices being related to each other," a Metropolitan Police spokeswoman told AFP.
Police had said the package found on Saturday appeared to have been left in the bushes, rather than hidden.
By Edward Chesky on Tuesday, July 26, 2005 - 04:39 pm:
I have been looking at the situation in Gaza and assessing it with regards to possible Al Qeada or affiliate operations and see a target of opportunity for them to significantly negatively influence the peaceful handover of Gaza to the Palestinians.
The Palestinian Prime Minister has set up a command center in Gaza to command and control the situation from his side as Israel withdraws. The Israelis have done a similar thing on their side. Tensions are very high and control over the Gaza population is fragile at best. Attacks in Israel, the West Bank or Gaza, or against targets in the immediate area related to Israel would greatly undermine the peaceful withdrawal and handover of land. This is one of the prime objectives of Al Qeada and its affiliates.
I expect that Al Qeada reads the situation the same way and is or has planned an operation to take advantage of this situation.
I would advise all security services to be on increased alert during this period of time.
Ed Chesky
By Edward Chesky on Tuesday, July 26, 2005 - 07:32 pm:
London attacks failed to spark U.S. backlash against religion or followers
By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 4:41 p.m. ET July 26, 2005
Alex Johnson
Reporter
The deadly July bombings in London put Americans on alert but created no backlash against American Muslims or Islam, according to a poll released Tuesday. The poll also showed a decline in the percentage of Americans who believe Islam is more violent than other religions.
The survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life was conducted after the July 7 attack on subways and buses in London killed 52 people, leading U.S. authorities to tighten security at transportation facilities. The attack was blamed on four British Muslims, leading some Islamic commentators and others to express concern that Muslims in general could be targeted for retribution.
But the survey found that the percentage of Americans who have a favorable opinion of Muslim Americans continues to rise, from 45 percent in March 2001 ? before the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States ? to 51 percent in July 2003 to 55 percent today. That?s almost exactly the same percentage who hold the same view of evangelical Christians (at 57 percent), compared to 77 percent for Jews and 73 percent for Catholics.
And the more a respondent knows about Islam, the more likely he or she is to regard Muslim Americans favorably, the survey found, indicating that efforts to raise public knowledge about Islam since 2001 are paying off.
Acceptance of Islam rising
Even with recent reminders of radical Islamic terrorism, fewer and fewer Americans believe that Islam itself is more violent than other religions. Two years ago, 44 percent believed Islam ?is more likely to encourage violent behavior among its followers,? Pew said. That figure dropped to 36 percent in the new poll.
....
Particularly striking is the poll?s finding that, by a significant margin, Americans refuse to see themselves as at war with Islam. A clear majority, 60 percent, say the conflict is with a small radical element, compared with only 29 percent who see it as a conflict between the West and Islam itself, down from 35 percent in August 2002.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. political leaders and religious figures have worked hard to educate Americans about the peaceful preaching of Islam to stave off a backlash against Muslim Americans. The Pew poll has mixed news for them.
Nearly four years after the 2001 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, two-thirds of Americans say they still know little or nothing about the religion....
However, the more they knew about Islam, the more likely respondents were to look favorably on it: 44 percent of respondents who reported a high knowledge of Islam said it had a lot in common with their own religion, compared with 12 percent who reported a low knowledge. Likewise, those who knew a lot about Islam were most likely, at 61 percent, to have a favorable view of Muslim Americans.
The survey interviewed 2,000 adults by telephone from July 7 to July 17. It reported a margin of sampling error of 2.5 percentage points.
By Edward Chesky on Tuesday, July 26, 2005 - 07:36 pm:
Ed Chesky
"I and my colleagues already believe that terror cells are here," said Paul Lennon of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Authority.
City Transit Officials Urge Vigilance By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 56 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Subway and commuter train riders must take a greater role in their own security to help thwart a London-style transit attack in the United States, big-city officials said Tuesday.
Transit security officials from New York City, Los Angeles and Washington focused on low-tech solutions, such as asking the public and transit employees to be on guard for suspicious behavior.
"The most important technology that is out there, right there today, is the human element," said William Morange, head of security for New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the city's subways, buses, and commuter trains.
After the hearing before the House Homeland Security subcommittee on emergency preparedness, science and technology, the head of emergency response for the Los Angeles transit system said he believed a London-style terror attack was "inevitable."
"I and my colleagues already believe that terror cells are here," said Paul Lennon of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Authority.
New York subway and bus riders are being told to look out for passengers with clenched fists, or who are sweating profusely, or reek of excessive cologne — all possible indicators of a suicide bomber.
"It's very important that our customers and our employees are fully made aware of their surroundings, and that's something that falls on us," Morange told the panel.
By Edward Chesky on Thursday, July 28, 2005 - 02:06 pm:
IRA Ending Longtime 'Armed Campaign' By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press Writer
32 minutes ago
BELFAST, Northern Ireland - The Irish Republican Army renounced violence as a political weapon Thursday and said it will resume disarmament, taking a dramatic step designed to revive Northern Ireland peace efforts after a 35-year conflict that killed and maimed thousands.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the move "a step of unparalleled magnitude," while Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland said it heralded "the end of the IRA as a paramilitary organization." The White House also welcomed the announcement.
...
"The leadership has formally ordered an end to the armed campaign," the IRA said in a major advance from its opened-ended truce in place since 1997.
"All volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programs through exclusively peaceful means. Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever," the IRA command said in remarks addressed to the group's approximately 500 to 1,000 members.
The IRA killed about 1,800 people and maimed thousands more in hopes of forcing Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom but never came close to achieving that goal. Its last major violence came during a 17-month stretch in the mid-1990s that included massive truck bombings in London, and Manchester, England.
...
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said that as far as he was concerned, the IRA had declared its war over.
"There is a time to resist, to stand up and to confront the enemy by arms if necessary. In other words, unfortunately, there is a time for war," said Adams, who was a reputed senior IRA commander from the mid-1970s until May, when he reportedly stepped down from the seven-man IRA command. "There is also a time to engage, to reach out and put war behind us. This is that time."
The leaders of Britain and the Republic of Ireland warmly praised the IRA's announcement.
"I welcome the recognition that the only route to political change lies in exclusively peaceful and democratic means," Blair said at his office in London. "This is a step of unparalleled magnitude in the recent history of Northern Ireland."
Ahern, who has closely worked with Blair since 1997 to broker compromise in the British territory, said the statement heralded "the end of the IRA as a paramilitary organization."
"If the IRA's words are borne out by verified actions, it will be a momentous and historic development," Ahern said.
...
In March, President Bush greeted the victim's five sisters and fiancee on St. Patrick's Day, while Sinn Fein was barred from the White House for the first time in a decade.
The British, Irish and American governments united behind the position that power-sharing couldn't be restored unless the IRA fully disarmed and went out of business ? disbanding in practice if not in name.
By Ivan A. on Thursday, July 28, 2005 - 10:23 pm:
Quote:
Of course, having lived in New York and ridden the subways, this may not be indicative of abnormal behavior. I always had sweaty palms and clenched fists in my youth, we all did. Though, the cologne part I missed, except for "Canoe", when on a heavy date... God I smelled awful!
J Ivan
By Anonymous on Friday, July 29, 2005 - 02:46 pm:
Fast work, good job.
By humancafe on Friday, August 5, 2005 - 11:57 am:
Quote:
Blair vows hard line on fanatics is a necessary social price paid to preserve our human rights, worldwide.
By Edward Chesky on Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - 08:52 pm:
Zarqawi combines acts on ground with propaganda on the Internet (fair use)
This article is perhaps the best one I have seen with regards to the Cyber support that AL Qaeda has massed in its current war on civilization. Its in keeping with my estimates and assessments of AL Qaeda CYBER capability and related technical support network.
In terms of what is going on, this site and others like it are now on the front lines of the battle for civilization. As this site and its authors stand in opposition to the Terrorists....
My Best Ed Chesky
Updated: 11:18 p.m. ET Aug. 8, 2005
The jihadist bulletin boards were buzzing. Soon, promised the spokesman for al Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers, a new video would be posted with the latest in mayhem from Iraq's best-known insurgent group.
On June 29, the new release hit the Internet. "All Religion Will Be for Allah" is 46 minutes of live-action war in Iraq, a slickly produced video with professional-quality graphics and the feel of a blood-and-guts annual report. In one chilling scene, the video cuts to a brigade of smiling young men. They are the only fighters shown unmasked, and the video explains why: They are a corps of suicide bombers-in-training.
As notable as the video was the way Abu Musab Zarqawi's "information wing" distributed it to the world: a specially designed Web page, with dozens of links to the video, so users could choose which version to download. There were large-file editions that consumed 150 megabytes for viewers with high-speed Internet and a scaled-down four-megabyte version for those limited to dial-up access. Viewers could choose Windows Media or RealPlayer. They could even download "All Religion Will Be for Allah" to play on a cell phone.
Never before has a guerrilla organization so successfully intertwined its real-time war on the ground with its electronic jihad, making Zarqawi's group practitioners of what experts say will be the future of insurgent warfare, where no act goes unrecorded and atrocities seem to be committed in order to be filmed and distributed nearly instantaneously online.
And Zarqawi has deployed a whole inventory of Internet operations beyond the shock video. He immortalizes his suicide bombers online, with video clips of the destruction they wreak and Web biographies that attest to their religious zeal. ... He publishes a monthly Internet magazine, Thurwat al-Sinam (literally "The Camel's Hump"), that offers religious justifications for jihad and military advice on how to conduct it.
His negotiations with Osama bin Laden over joining forces with al Qaeda were conducted openly on the Internet. When he was almost captured recently, he left behind not a Kalashnikov assault rifle, the traditional weapon of the guerrilla leader, but a laptop computer. An entire online network of Zarqawi supporters serves as backup for his insurgent group in Iraq, providing easily accessible advice on the best routes into the country, trading information down to the names of mosques in Syria that can host a would-be fighter, and eagerly awaiting the latest posting from the man designated as Zarqawi's only official spokesman.
"The technology of the Internet facilitated everything," declared a posting this spring by the Global Islamic Media Front, which often distributes Zarqawi messages on the Internet. Today's Web sites are "the way for everybody in the whole world to listen to the mujaheddin."
Little more than a year ago, this online empire did not exist. Zarqawi was an Internet nonentity, a relatively obscure Jordanian ...
By this summer, Internet trackers such as the SITE Institute have recorded an average of nine online statements from the Iraq branch of al Qaeda every day, 180 statements in the first three weeks of July. Zarqawi has gone "from zero to 60" in his use of the Internet, said former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer. "The difference between Zarqawi's media performance initially and today is extraordinary."
?A new generation?
As with most breakthroughs, it was a combination of technology and timing. Zarqawi launched his jihad in Iraq "at the right point in the evolution of the technology," said Ben N. Venzke, whose firm IntelCenter monitors jihadist sites for U.S. government agencies. High-speed Internet access was increasingly prevalent. New, relatively low-cost tools to make and distribute high-quality video were increasingly available. "Greater bandwidth, better video compression, better video editing tools -- all hit the maturity point when you had a vehicle as well as the tools," he said.
The original al Qaeda always aspired to use technology in its war on the West. But bin Laden's had been the moment of fax machines and satellite television. "Zarqawi is a new generation," said Evan F. Kohlmann, a consultant who closely monitors the sites. "The people around him are in their twenties. They view the media differently. The original al Qaeda are hiding in the mountains, not a technologically very well-equipped place. Iraq is an urban combat zone. Technology is a big part of that...."
Videotaped atrocity
After Abu Musab Zarqawi swung the curved blade of his sword and decapitated Nicholas Berg, he picked up the bloodied head of his victim and screamed out praise to Allah. The camera lingered on the dead man's wild eyes.
The exact date of this atrocity is unclear. The date the world came to know about it is not.
On May 11, 2004, a posting with a link to the video appeared on the al-AnsarWeb forum. Soon, it had been downloaded millions of times, freezing up servers from Indonesia to the United States. A wave of copycat beheadings by other groups followed. Zarqawi became a household name.
It was, said Kohlmann, "the 9/11 of jihad on the Internet -- momentous for them and momentous for us. For years, people were saying how the Internet would be used by terrorists. And then all of a sudden somebody was beheaded on camera and it was, 'Holy smokes, we never thought about the Internet being used this way!' "
Televised beheadings were not uncommon in Saudi Arabia. But Zarqawi did not use the long executioner's sword of Saudi government-sanctioned beheadings. Instead, he invoked the imagery of his American captive as an animal.
"They take what anyone who's ever been to a halal butcher shop would recognize as a halal butcher knife and they cut the side of the neck and saw at it, bleed him out, just as they do when they're killing sheep," said Rebecca Givner-Forbes, who monitors the jihadist Web sites for the Terrorism Research Center, an Arlington firm with U.S. government clients...
?Russian Hell?
Khattab, the Jordanian-born commander of foreign fighters in Chechnya, had used the filmed atrocity in the 1990s when he videotaped graphic attacks on Russian forces and packaged them together as videotapes called "Russian Hell," which sold in Western mosques and Middle Eastern bazaars and now circulate on the Internet.
The immediate precursor to the Berg video was the 2002 execution-style killing of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, which was taped and distributed electronically when mainstream news outlets refused to show it. But even the horrific scene of Pearl's throat being slit failed to gain the audience that Zarqawi commanded two years later, coming as it did before widespread availability of broadband Internet to play back the video.
Zarqawi, a veteran fighter who had run his own training camp in the western Afghan city of Herat before fleeing to northern Iraq during the 2001 U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, had never been known as an Internet innovator... The January 2004 letter to al Qaeda urged creation of "armies of mujaheddin."
On April 9, 2004, a short video clip was posted on the Internet, the first attributed to Zarqawi's group, according to Kohlmann. It was called "Heroes of Fallujah," and it showed several black-masked men laying a roadside bomb, disguising it in a hole in the dusty road, then watching as it blew up a U.S. armored personnel carrier.
Later that month, on April 25, Zarqawi issued his first written Internet communique, asserting responsibility for an attack near the southern city of Basra. "We have made the decision and raised the banner of the jihad," it said. "We have taken spearheads and javelins for a boat in our cruise toward glory."
And then it cited a verse from the Koran: "Fight them, Allah will torture them at your hands. . . . "
Winning prominence
"The Winds of Victory" opens with footage of the American bombing of Baghdad. It is nighttime, and the screen is dark except for the violent orange explosions and the wry captions "Democracy" and "Freedom" written in Arabic.
The film was the first full-length propaganda video produced by Zarqawi's organization, complete with scenes of mutilated Iraqi children and the horrors of Abu Ghraib prison -- and it hit the Internet in June 2004, a month after Berg's killing.
For the first time, the video put names and faces on the foreign suicide bombers who had flocked to Iraq under Zarqawi's banner, showing staged readings of wills and young men from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Libya and elsewhere in the Arab world looking alternately scared and playful. Video footage of their explosions followed their testimonials, often filmed from multiple angles.
But the hour-long film was too big to send out all at once online and had to be broken into chapters released one a week. "Hardly ideal for a propaganda video," Kohlmann said.
That same summer, as copycat beheaders circulated footage of their attacks in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Zarqawi was fully exploiting his electronic distribution network. In early July, he released his first audio recording, putting it directly on the Internet -- unlike the tapes of al Qaeda leaders bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, which still go directly to Arab satellite television. His beheading of Berg was completely justified, Zarqawi said, and those Muslims who disagreed were just "slaves."
Later that month, "astonished" at mistaken reports about the group's activities, Zarqawi's organization urged its audience "not to believe this false information." Henceforth, Zarqawi said, "all of our statements are spread by means of the brother Abu Maysara al-Iraqi," making him an official Internet spokesman.
At the same time, Zarqawi was in negotiations in a series of online missives with al Qaeda about pledging allegiance to bin Laden. For months, a main sticking point was Zarqawi's insistence on targeting representatives of Iraq's Shiite majority as well as the U.S. military, bin Laden's preferred enemy.
But Zarqawi had acquired huge new prominence through his Internet-broadcast beheadings. The once-wary al Qaeda leadership seemed to take a new attitude toward him, and the online magazine of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia hailed him as the "sheikh of slaughterers."
...
Instant communication
For 26 minutes, the instructional video lays out in precise detail how to construct the item that more than any other has come to symbolize the Iraq insurgency -- a suicide bomber's explosive belt.
It shows how to estimate the impact of an explosion, how best to arrange the shrapnel for maximum destruction, how to strap the belt onto the bomber's body, even how to avoid the migraine headache that can come from exposure to the recommended explosive chemicals.
The video -- all in Arabic -- appeared on the al-Ansar forum, where it was found one Sunday in December 2004 by the SITE Institute. The forum where Berg's beheading had also first appeared was one of Zarqawi's preferred Internet venues, among the dozens of password-protected jihadi Web forums that have proliferated over the last few years.
This and other Arabic-language forums hosted discussions on the latest news from Iraq, provided a place for swapping tips on tradecraft, circulated religious justifications for jihad, and acted as intermediary between would-be fighters and their would-be recruiters. Most of the sites prohibit postings from unapproved users, but they can be accessed in the open and rely on widely available software called vBulletin ("instant community," promises the software's maker).
Many postings to the boards were not official statements from al Qaeda but unsolicited advice, such as the recent notice called "the road to Mesopotamia" posted on an underground Syrian extremist site, in which one veteran offered a detailed scouting report, down to advice on bribing Syrian police and traveling to the border areas by claiming to be on a fishing trip.
...In one case cited by John Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in California, would-be insurgents in the Sahara Desert were able to ask for -- and receive -- information from the ground in Iraq about how best to build bombs.
Long lists of ?martyrs?
And the bulletin boards keep track of Zarqawi's corps of suicide bombers, with long online lists of the "martyrs" compiled from various sources. Israeli researcher Reuven Paz has a list gleaned from the postings of more than 400 Zarqawi recruits who have died in Iraq. Paz said the biographies are an informal census very much in keeping with the profile of an Arab Internet user -- middle class and highly educated, "people with wives and kids and good jobs," Paz said, "going, as if by magic, after the virtual leader."
In March, one of the al-Ansar forum's own members became another entry. For the previous 11 months, Zaman Hawan had confined his jihad to 178 online postings to the forum. But on March 24, 2005, according to another forum member's announcement, he "carried his soul on his hand, and went to jihad for the sake of Allah," dying in a suicide attack in Baqubah, Iraq. The posting went on to list phone numbers in Sudan for forum members to call Hawan's father and brother and congratulate them on his "martyrdom."
By April, the al-Ansar bulletin board had become too well known as Zarqawi's outlet. The forum closed without notice. ...
As soon as a posting from Zarqawi's group appears now, dozens of new links to it are copied to the other jihadist sites within minutes, making for an intricate game of Internet cat-and-mouse. And even if the forums or fixed Web sites are temporarily out of commission, other ways still exist -- such as mass e-mails sent out several times a day with the latest in Iraq guerrilla videos, communiques and commentary from Yahoo e-groups such as ansar-jehad.
While Zarqawi's group has moved away in recent months from videotaped beheadings of foreigners, the shock value of the Berg beheading has created a race for more and more realistic video clips from Iraq. Filming an attack has become an integral part of the attack itself. In April, a cameraman followed alongside an armed insurgent, video rolling, as they ran to the scene of a helicopter they had just shot down north of Baghdad. The one member of the Bulgarian crew found still alive was ordered to stand up and start walking, then shot multiple times on film as the shooter yelled, "This is Allah's judgment." ...
"It's the exact reason why we built the Internet, a bargain-basement, redundant system for distributing information," said Kohlmann. "We can't shut it down anymore."
Indeed, just last week, a notice went out on the jihadist bulletin boards: The Ansar forum that had disappeared in April was back up and running.
Information battle
A few weeks ago, al Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers released the third version of its online magazine, Thurwat al-Sinam. This latest issue lectured on the recipe for a successful raid, an almost-scientific procedure involving six steps for planning and executing, with five groups of fighters designated by tasks such as "protection," "gap-making" and "pushing in."
The magazine also held up a model for the Internet campaign that has built Zarqawi's reputation, provided his recruits, served as his propagandist and his carrier pigeon. In an essay aimed broadly at the Muslim world, the magazine claimed the 7th-century Koran as a useful blueprint for today's wired warriors in Iraq, calling its story of the prophet Muhammad's pitch to the people of Mecca "a very good example of how to conduct an information battle with the infidels."
Battles can be won in Iraq but then ultimately lost if they are not on the Internet. ...
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
By Anonymous on Wednesday, August 10, 2005 - 03:13 pm:
How sick they are, those primitive savages, Zarkawi and his brainless "Allah's judgements" of pure coercion, killing the innocent out of pure evil. Their sum is the oxymoron, to use modern technology to promote barbaric ativistic atrocities. How absurd, how crazy. How do the revolting butchers dripping in blood live with themselves?
By Edward Chesky on Monday, August 15, 2005 - 07:26 am:
In emotional private meetings with the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush offers solace?and seeks some of his own.
It often falls to the leadership to pay the price for the failure of subordinates. WIth the drawdown of the military the best and brightest left the intelligence corps. We were replaced with a generation raised on the Left Behind Series and the Bible Code. The result was the War in Iraq and a President that will pay a price for a long time to come
By Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas
Newsweek
Aug. 22, 2005 issue - The grieving room was arranged like a doctor's office. The families and loved ones of 33 soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan were summoned to a large waiting area at Fort Bragg, N.C. For three hours, they were rotated through five private rooms, where they met with President George W. Bush, accompanied by two Secret Service men and a photographer. Because the walls were thin, the families awaiting their turn could hear the crying inside.
President Bush was wearing "a huge smile," but his eyes were red and he looked drained by the time he got to the last widow, Crystal Owen, a third-grade schoolteacher who had lost her husband in Iraq. "Tell me about Mike," he said immediately. "I don't want my husband's death to be in vain," she told him. The president apologized repeatedly for her husband's death. When Owen began to cry, Bush grabbed her hands. "Don't worry, don't worry," he said, though his choking voice suggested that he had worries of his own. The president and the widow hugged. "It felt like he could have been my dad," Owen recalled to NEWSWEEK. "It was like we were old friends. It almost makes me sad. In a way, I wish he weren't the president, just so I could talk to him all the time."
Bush likes to play the resolute War Leader, and he has never been known for admitting mistakes or regret. But that does not mean that he is free of doubt. For the past three years, Bush has been living in two worlds?unwavering and confident in public, but sometimes stricken in private. Bush's meetings with widows like Crystal Owen offer a rare look inside that inner, private world.
...[deleted]...
The most telling?and moving?picture of Bush grieving with the families of the dead was provided by Rachel Ascione, who met with him last summer. Her older brother, Ron Payne, was a Marine who had been killed in Afghanistan only a few weeks before Ascione was invited to meet with Bush at MacDill Air Force Base, near Tampa, Fla.
Ascione wasn't sure she could restrain herself with the president. She was feeling "raw." "I wanted him to look me in the eye and tell me why my brother was never coming back, and I wanted him to know it was his fault that my heart was broken," she recalls. The president was coming to Florida, a key swing state, in the middle of his re-election campaign. Ascione was worried that her family would be "exploited" by a "phony effort to make good with people in order to get votes."
Ascione and her family were gathered with 18 other families in a large room on the air base. The president entered with some Secret Service agents, a military entourage and a White House photographer. "I'm here for you, and I will take as much time as you need," Bush said. He began moving from family to family. Ascione watched as mothers confronted him: "How could you let this happen? Why is my son gone?" one asked. Ascione couldn't hear his answer, but soon "she began to sob, and he began crying, too. And then he just hugged her tight, and they cried together for what seemed like forever."
...
Before Bush left the meeting, he paused in the middle of the room and said to the families, "I will never feel the same level of pain and loss you do. I didn't lose anyone close to me, a member of my family or someone that I love. But I want you to know that I didn't go into this lightly. This was a decision that I struggle with every day."
As he spoke, Ascione could see the grief rising through the president's body. His shoulder slumped and his face turned ashen. He began to cry and his voice choked. He paused, tried to regain his composure and looked around the room. "I am sorry, I'm so sorry," he said.
With Richard Wolffe
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
By Edward Chesky on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 06:41 am:
Like Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer I did my best to warn the intelligence and security services about the danger posed by the Al Qeada Saudi Cell that penetrated the Vinnel Arabia Corporation and provided the recruits for 9/11.
Lt. Col Shaffer tried to do the same. The result is as you see today.
Ed Chesky
Able Danger man identifies himself
Allegations regarding 9/11 intelligence expanded
From CNN Senior Producer Kevin Bohn
Wednesday, August 17, 2005; Posted: 3:17 a.m. EDT (07:17 GMT)
Publicly identifying himself for the first time, a former member of a classified Pentagon intelligence unit elaborated on what he claims were attempts he made to share information about potential al Qaeda operatives in the U.S. before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer claims he alerted the FBI in September 2000 about the information uncovered by the secret military unit "Able Danger," but he says three meetings he set up with bureau officials were allegedly blocked by military lawyer, according to Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., who has set up interviews for Shaffer.
Last week, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, the chairman and vice-chairman of the now-defunct 9/11 Commission, said in a statement that Able Danger "did not turn out to be historically significant, set against the larger context of U.S. policy and intelligence efforts that involved (Osama) bin Laden and al Qaeda."
Shaffer has refused to reveal his identity up until now. Weldon has discussed in the past week the allegations of the blocked meetings.
Shaffer and Weldon allege there was information developed in September 2000 by the Able Danger unit identifying Mohamed Atta as a potential al Qaeda operative in the United States.
They have said the information was developed from "open source" public material, but have not provided any details.
...snip...
Since the allegations gained renewed media interest last week, military officials have said they were looking into Shaffer's allegations and refused to comment further.
Shaffer also met with the 9/11 Commission when it was investigating the government failures that preceded the terror attacks.
After criticism from Weldon and others saying the panel erred in not including these allegations in its final report, Kean and Hamilton issued the statement last week.
Shaffer has identified himself now because "he wants to set the record straight," Weldon told CNN.
In their joint written statement, Kean and Hamilton said the 9/11 Commission first became aware of Able Danger on Oct. 21, 2003, when then-executive director Philip Zelikow and two staffers met at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan with three individuals doing intelligence work for the Defense Department.
...snip...
But the officer "could not describe what information had led to this supposed Atta identification. Nor could the interviewee recall, when questioned, any details about how he thought a link to Atta could have been made by this DOD program in 2000 or any time before 9/11," the statement said.
Kean and Hamilton said Pentagon "documents had mentioned nothing about Atta, nor had anyone come forward between September 2001 and July 2004 with any similar information."
"Weighing this with the information about Atta's actual activities, the negligible information available about Atta to other U.S. government agencies and the German government before 9/11, and the interviewer's assessment of the interviewee's knowledge and credibility, the Commission staff concluded that the officer's account was not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the report or further investigation."
The commission did seek information about the covert operation, eventually resulting in the meeting with the Navy officer in July 2004, they said.
Although the final report did not mention Able Danger by name, the information the commission received about it "contributed to the commission's depiction of intelligence efforts against al Qaeda before 9/11."
By Edward Chesky on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 01:46 pm:
The following confirms re-emergence of the Asian wing of Islamic Militancy in line with my previous projections of expected large scale Islamic Militant attacks.
Bomb blasts shake Bangladesh
From Journalist Tasneem Khalil
Wednesday, August 17, 2005; Posted: 1:21 p.m. EDT (17:21 GMT)
Police examine an explosive device after it was defused in Dhaka.
DHAKA, Bangladesh (CNN) -- A series of bombs exploded nearly simultaneously in dozens of cities across Bangladesh Wednesday, striking regional capitals as well as the national capital, Dhaka, authorities said.
According to police, at least 115 people were injured with 350 bombs detonating. Bangladeshi media reported at least one fatality.
"These are planned incidents," said Minister for Home Affairs Lutfozzaman Babr. "We had intelligence report(s) about such plan but that expired a few days back."
Bangladeshi authorities said they had received reports of bomb blasts from 36 districts across the country.
Jamayetul Mujahedin, an Islamic militant group, claimed responsibility for the attacks in leaflets distributed around many of the blast sites.
Most of the bombs exploded in quick succession in and around the government facilities, police said.
In Dhaka, bombs exploded near the high-security Bangladesh Secretariat, the Supreme Court Complex, the Prime Minister's Office, the Dhaka University campus, the Dhaka Sheraton Hotel and Zia International Airport.
...snip...
Additional reports of bombings were coming from Nilphamari, Rajshahi, Khulna, Barisal, Sunamganj, Netrokona, Bandarban, Jessore, Thakurgaon, Moulvibazar, Faridpur, Narayanganj, Comilla and Chuadanga.
By Edward Chesky on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 04:53 pm:
Wed Aug 17, 8:58 AM ET
The Bangladesh Bombings come on the heels of this reduction in sentencing and is I believed tied to the re-emergence of Jemaah Islamiyah on the World Stage.
I suspect there will be an increase in operations in Asia and the Philipines as time goes on.
These operations are intended to destablize weak regional governments, force crack downs that can be used for porganda purposes in Asia and strech our intelligence and security services to the breaking point.
Due to increased religeous fanaticism within key positions in our government intelligence and military services we are losing many good officers and enlisted personnel who are among the best and brightest of nation.
The TRADOC Commander is one example, even though seperated legally from his wife, and subsequently divorced, he was subject to an extreme view of adultery and removed from office due to draconian rules.
Couple this to increased discrimination on religous, ethnic and sexual orientation grounds due to the extreme religious right that has gravitated to active military service in the intelligence and security services and we have sidelined some of the best and brightest members of intelligence and security services due to imposition of draconian social rules that are based on a extreme interpretation of religous principles and bluring of the line that seperates Church and State.
While our enimies are going on the offensive, we are gutting our intelligence and security serivces due to the influence a a highly organized group of religeous extremists that have secured power under the current administration and spend more time attempting to cover up their failures than coming to grips with the problem.
This same cabal of religous extremists falsified the intelligence on Iraq, suppressed and down played information on Sudan, and a host of other countries like Bangladesh that have now been subjected to the nightmare of Islamic Militancy under depraved spiritual leaders.
I hope that all of us who have held the line during the Cold War can keep things together using all our contacts while we let this group of religous extremists in our own government play out their time in office. I also hope we have learned the lesson about letting religous intolerence drag us into War Again and blind us to the real threat of Islamic Militancy
Ed Chesky
JAKARTA, Indonesia - The Indonesian government Wednesday reduced prison sentences for 19 people, including the alleged spiritual head of an al-Qaida-linked group, convicted in the Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people. One other person was freed.
...snip...
The reductions were met with dismay in Australia, home to most of the victims of the 2002 attacks.
Cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who originally was sentenced to 30 months in prison for his role in the 2002 attacks, had his sentence reduced by 4 1/2 months, said Dedi Sutardi, chief warden at Cipinang Prison in Jakarta.
The reduction, which came on Bashir's 67th birthday, means he could be released from prison in June 2006. Bashir is believed to be the spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant group.
Many in Australia consider the Bali bombings tantamount to an attack on their own country.
The Australian ambassador to Indonesia, David Ritchie, spoke with Indonesian officials but was told nothing could be done to reverse it, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said.
"If there are any further avenues that we can legitimately pursue we will do so, but it should be borne in mind that all countries have a certain independence when it comes to the penal and justice system," Howard said in Sydney.
...snip...
It is an Indonesian tradition to cut jail terms on holidays for some of the country's 105,000 inmates who exhibit good behavior, with only those sentenced to death or life in prison excluded.
"This is a basic right of all prisoners in Indonesia, including Bashir," said Mohammad Mahendratta, a lawyer representing the militant cleric. "Here we consider prison sentences as a way to rehabilitate inmates ? not as revenge."
But Australian Brian Deegan, whose 21-year-old son was killed in the blasts, called the decision "disgraceful" and urged the Australian government to protest angrily to Jakarta.
The sentence reduction for Bashir "just does not reflect the gravity of the crime, and secondly it does not reflect any governmental action to defeat terrorism" in Indonesia, Deegan told The Associated Press.
Bashir, who is bitterly anti-Western, was convicted in March of conspiracy in the near simultaneous bombings on two crowded nightclubs. The Supreme Court recently rejected his appeal.
Jemaah Islamiyah is suspected in several other deadly attacks, including the 2003 J.W. Marriott hotel bombing that killed 12 people, and the September 2004 Australian Embassy bombing that killed 11.
Five in the Kerobokan jail, including accused mastermind Imam Samudra, were excluded from the reductions because three were sentenced to death and two others for life in prison.
Samudra yelled to television reporters that until Indonesia became an Islamic state, it should not celebrate independence.
"We are not independent!" he shouted. "If we were independent we would have Islamic law!"
...
By Ivan A. on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 04:54 pm:
This looks like a concerted effort at pure intimidation, to put across their militant agenda. We had not heard of Bangladesh being on the "hit list" by the Islamist terrorists before, or at least it was not much publicized. So this may be a new development?
Quote:
Jamayetul Mujahedin, an Islamic militant group, claimed responsibility for the attacks in leaflets distributed around many of the blast sites."
This kind of coercion is outside the realm of political agitation for legitimate causes, whether socio-economic, sociological, religious, discriminatory cultural grievances, etc. This seems to be some sort of effort by a small group ("Islamist" militants against Islam?) at a concerted coup d'etat, which is one more indicator that these bomb attacks are not due to some "religious" grievances, but are simply for political control through use of force. Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, is already an Islamist state, so it is Islam at war with itself.
Democratic principles, equality under the rule of law, human rights? Under such predatory antisocial behavior, Islamist militants or otherwise, concepts of human agreements and human rights lose all relevance when faced with such pure coercion. It is reduced simply to criminality. These militant actions are no more than crimes against humanity.
By Edward Chesky on Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - 10:42 pm:
This is a fairly new development and one to be watched carefully.
I am staying busy with a number of things....school and the like...as well as work...
By Ivan A. on Sunday, September 25, 2005 - 11:25 am:
(Ed, I posted this on the Examined Life Philosophy Journal forums, in response to other posts there, but also in response to yours. -Ivan.)
You make very powerful points Pepper. The western liberal-secular mindset is ill equipped to deal with jihadist militancy. I do not think all Muslims are jihadist sympathizers, anymore than I think all western intellectuals are secular liberal apologists, but there is a matter of degree that must be understood as to which class one belongs to. If one were a left leaning liberal in the early days of the Nazi party's rise to power, it would be the same then as in today's well meaning, apologetic, liberal valued person faced with militant jihadists. It is a clear case of reason against force. Which will win?
On the one hand, there is an effort to understand the other, while by the other side it is a target to be destroyed. What meaningful dialogue can result from this very uneven contest? Islam must take this issue at hand and address it internally. So dialogue with well meaning and intelligent leaders and intellectuals of Islam, even if only at a dinner table, is really important here. These are steps that should have been taken long before 9/11. However, if unsuccessful, then it become increasingly a military decision, because we are in their cross-hairs. So it is not simply whether Islamic ideology of today is confused, multilayered with militancy or liberalism, self contradicting with takyah like reasoning, and backwards looking rather than forwards. What is more at stake is whether intelligent and progressive minds within Islam are allowed by their own to be given a voice, to introduce progressive ideas to their young followers, or will they be simply silenced with violence? If silenced, then it is no longer their own internal affair, since their jihadist agenda brings their confused unhappiness to us, and they want to make their so-called self-defense into our fight. The liberal secularists will then wring their hands, hope for appeasement, with feminists wearing burkhas in sympathy with their Muslim sisters, intellectuals apologizing for the poor economic conditions and disenfranchisement that lead to Muslim militancy, etc., and thus real scrutiny of what had gone wrong with Islam is shunned. There lies the problem, that well meaning people faced with bombs and guns cannot act effectively in self defense, and western civilized society becomes at risk. And this is exactly what the bin Laden mindset wants from us, that we will tear ourselves apart from within, faced with their terror, because we are weak and confused in our thinking. The jihadists think our internal debate is a sign of weakness; they do not understand that this is a source of our strength, that we can analyze the threat and act upon it with force when needed. There are always those amongst our ranks who stand ready to act on this when called upon.
The "Kevins" of the world have good intentions, but there is a limit to how much predatory behavior is allowed within society, if that society is to survive. And that is not through apology for the other, or appeasement, but through guts, through cutting through the lies, and as last resort (because we are civilized and not demented jihadists) by stopping force with force. The jihadists are first and foremost, all ideology aside, predatory criminals. However, along each step of this challenge, in response to threats and actual violence, is one more opportunity for jihadists to come to terms with their moderate brethren and reform, or at least talk to their non-jihadist moderate Muslims. But if they fail completely to do this, and instead jihadists get stronger by forcibly silencing all good intentioned Muslims, then their fight is taken from an internal Muslim question to one of world dimensions. It no longer remains "their fight". If that happens, then order is imposed from outside. Like I said, they and their religion come under intense scrutiny. Is this what they really want? Perhaps it is, and that makes it into a very interesting historical event. By forcing us to look at them, in a negative way, Islam is forcing itself to ultimately change. The jihadists cannot be allowed to win this fight.
Ivan
By Edward Chesky on Sunday, September 25, 2005 - 07:40 pm:
I hope with the help of others to raise a network to oppose Osama. If we do not offer some other alternative to him and his kind then the danger to our society grows exponentially.
Throughout the ages qausi social/poltical/religious leaders have risen that have lead people to renounce violence and whose work and life are the stuff of legend and endures for all eternity. Padre Pio, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Ghandi, Salidin the Great - who in the end walked away from violence and a host of others. These men and women walked the path of enlightment and the world is a much better place because of them and their teachings.
History is also full of figures that did not walk away from violence and whose leadership lead their people to ruin. Osama in my opinion is just one of many that fall into this category. He is preceded by many others that if we take the time to study history we can clearly see the folly of their actions. In China we have the example of the Taiping Rebellion where 100 million died due to a religious leader that lead his people into battle trying to establish the Christian Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. We also have the Mahdi who rose in Sudan in 1881 at about the same time as the Taiping Rebellion that tried the same thing for Islam and failed after tens of thousands died.
It is slear for the study of history that if we do nothing to oppose movements like those created by Al Qeada we place many lives at risk.
Hopefully I and my friends and contacts will be able to do something to oppose him, even if it is just showing up to show the people that like the stories of Osama fighting the Soviets through a cloud of nerve gas that we also have men and women that have faced poison or biological weapons but who promote an alternative to the Militant Islamics teachings
Ed Chesky
By Edward Chesky on Monday, September 26, 2005 - 05:32 am:
A CIA study years ago predicted the rise of quasi religious military political leaders as conditions on the planet worsened. The industrial democracies were seen as bastions were civilization would endure.
----------------------------------------------
Experts in Washington claim you are encouraging radical groups throughout Latin America, that you're helping the FARC in Colombia; Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua; Shafik Handal and the FMLN in El Salvador, and Evo Morales and the MAS in Bolivia. Are you?
Shafik is a great friend. We are together in this same revolutionary effort, of course. Daniel Ortega is a close friend, and I think he will be a candidate in the next election. Evo Morales is my friend, another great guy and an Indian leader. Do you want me to support the extreme right wing? I am a revolutionary. Latin America today is going to the left and not to the right.
This is what I face on Curacaos backed covertly by the old cold war networks and Dutch Royal Marines.
Ed Chesky
By X-post on Monday, September 26, 2005 - 10:25 pm:
(Cross post from "The Problem of Islam- cont.")
Quote:
This is quite right, Pepper, but the ensuing fight need not necessarily be a physical war. I think a strong leadership within their geopolitical-religious community can effect change with minimum bloodshed. It would require people of vision, intelligence, strong will, and a conscious awareness of what is at risk here, that a possible annihilation of large groups of people may result. I do not foresee a "madhi" like messianic movement taking Islam forward into some imagined Golden Age, but rather the opposite. What it needs is some smart and strong people at the helm who say: Let's clean this up. The ancient interpretations of biblical-Koranic sources need to be seriously reevaluated, to put Islam on the path a world class religion of the future. Otherwise, they remain stuck in some primitive past mode, which today does not work, and which becomes increasingly "in their face" that they had fallen badly behind. For Islam to reform without bloodshed will require strong leadership from within. In my mind, the question is: Can moderate Islam produce such men, and women?
Kevin, re yours:
I think you are quite right, that Iraq's invasion was a bad turn of events. Whatever Napoleonic ambitions Saddam might have dreamed of, he was an ineffective leader, and squashed like a bug hiding in a spider hole. The alleged WMDs were not there (unless they were found to contain labels "made in USA" and quietly buried?), so the pretense for the war was false. Can't turn back the clock, and it's not as if life was so good for people under Saddam either. What do we do now? Walk away and watch millions of people slaughtered for wanting their world to have a better life? Can't do that. So the world is stuck, and the gods laugh from Mount Olympus, as we try to rectify a messy situation of our own creation. There are good people in Iraq who truly want democracy, constitutional law (even Sharia like, if necessary), human rights (as they see them), and prospects for an economic and political future that is not under the boot of another Saddam. Can the Sunnis eventually join this political process? Can the clerics come to terms with a more secular future for Iraq? Can democracy work in a cultural milieu that never had it? All these are unknowns, but we cannot turn our backs on what we created, even if it was a mistake, and maybe especially because it was a mistake. The fallout of swarming hopefuls joining some imagined "jihad", many of whom are non-Iraqi, is one of the realities that must be faced. We can't turn and run from that either. The mess of Iraq must be seen through, or it will be on America's, and the world's, conscience for centuries. The terrorism dividend, like I said earlier referring to a boil waiting to be lanced, is a fact of life that would not have gone away if Iraq were not invaded, even if invaded for the wrong reasons. I suspect, oil aside, that Saddam had ambitions to work with terrorist groups to place into the West sleeping cells that would do his dirty work. I have a long memory, unfortunately (can't remember what I had for breakfast, though), and remember clearly Saddam Hussein after Desert Storm (remember, Iraq invaded Kuwait?) claiming he will have a standing army inside western soil (America and Europe) who will rise to do his bidding when he says so. I'm not privy to any secret information here, this was a public statement after the 1990s war. I for one believed him.
Quote:
Has our "war on terrorism" been damaged by the Iraq invasion? Not necessarily, because it brings out the obvious into the light of day. Sure it's tough. What fight isn't tough? (Did you fight as a kid in school? It's hard work, it hurts, and bad feelings result- but I would not let my friends down if they were attacked.) People in Iraq are suffering most of all, as daily suicide bombings kills more and more people. Often, the targets are those who want to see their nation into the future, who are eager to join up and help, who are professionals in their fields, who want to repair the infrastructure, etc. How do the suiciders help Iraqi society by killing them? What is your solution? Do we just walk away? Iraq, for perhaps the wrong reasons, is forcing the sympathizers of "violent Islam" to show themselves, and show their hand. I think this gives us the high ground, because we see who they are. And if the gods are laughing from their high perch, let them see what strong willed and intelligent people can do, especially those within Iraqi society. Out of all this horror, good things can come, if the right people under the right conditions of government come to power. That is the perpetual risk of democracy, and we never know the outcome in advance. But when it works, it works very well. I say, let's give the Iraqi people a chance. Let's see what they're made of.
Ivan
By Anonymous on Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 04:36 pm:
Ed Chesky
By Ivan A. on Friday, September 30, 2005 - 11:22 am:
Ivan