Friday, March 31, 2006

Hiroshima & 9/11

This is a photograph taken from Hiroshima, Japan, the day after it was hit with a nuclear weapon.

Notice the steel frame buildings that still stand, dotting the landscape.


The U.S. Government would have you believe that on September 11, 2001, two of New York's steel frame towers were knocked down by airplanes crashing into them. Pools of jet fuel supposedly melted the steel between the 94th and 98th floors, bringing the buildings down at free fall speed not an hour after the collision.

Consider the image of Hiroshima.

I put it to you - what is more devastating: an atomic bomb, or an airplane crash?

Please pass this on. Click the envelope icon below the headline and send it to your friends.

It is time to seriously question the events of September 11, 2001.

Ohio's "Drugged Driving" laws

Let's talk about pot.

It is bad for you to smoke. Smoking in general is bad. If you are high you should not be driving a vehicle. In Texas, we have a universal catch-all law. If a driver is thought to be impared by a cop, it is a "DWI" or, Driving While Intoxicated. This usually deals with alcohol, but it has been used to prosecute people on perscription medication, pot, coke, etc.

Today, the Ohio legislature passed a new law aimed specifically at "Drugged Drivers." The unfortunate thing is that it does not take into account the real effects of drugs, specifically pot.

Pot stays in your system for up to two weeks. When you smoke it, you are high for a few hours. Under this new law, a completely sober person could be pulled over and charged with driving drugged.

From NORML ...
NORML regrets to inform you that earlier this week the House and Senate gave final approval to Senate Bill 8, Ohio’s proposed per se “drugged driving” bill. While some of our allies on the House Criminal Justice Committee valiantly tried to address some of our concerns by introducing several amendments to the bill, SB 8 – as approved by both chambers – would still potentially punish marijuana smokers for "drugged driving," even if the individual is neither under the influence nor impaired to drive.

The bill is expected to be signed into law by the Governor, whose administration lobbied for its passage, and will take effect 90 days after his approval. Ohio is only the third state to pass per se DUID legislation for motorists with trace levels of THC in their blood, and it is the sixth state to criminalize motorists who drive with levels of non-psychoactive marijuana metabolites in their bodily fluids. (Please see NORML’s comprehensive report, You Are Going Directly To Jail: DUID Legislation – What It Means, Who’s Behind It, and Strategies to Prevent It, for more information about state DUID laws, penalties, and how these laws disproportionately impact cannabis consumers.

You may access the report here: http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6492

This pending law represents an all out assault on Ohio’s marijuana smoking community. Because marijuana's main metabolite, THC-COOH, remains detectable in certain bodily fluids, particularly urine, for days and sometimes weeks after past use, this legislation seeks to define sober drivers as if they were intoxicated. Someone who smokes marijuana is impaired as a driver at most for a few hours; certainly not for days or weeks. To treat all marijuana smokers as if they are impaired, even when the drug's effects have long worn off, is illogical and unfair.
The rest of the story ...

I swear, I don't wear tin hats ...

... But this video from Free Press International makes my skin crawl. Could all of this stuff be coincidence? I'll be the first to say, I have no idea. But I thought I'd share this anyway.

Blackwater Mercs officially "for hire"

This is creepy. The same people who were doing the shooting in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina have now raised a private army for hire.
Blackwater USA says it can supply forces for conflicts
By BILL SIZEMORE, The Virginian-Pilot

Stepping into a potential political minefield, Blackwater USA is offering itself up as an army for hire to police the world's trouble spots.

Cofer Black, vice chairman of the Moyock, N.C.-based private military company, told an international conference in Amman, Jordan, this week that Blackwater stands ready to help keep or restore the peace anywhere it is needed.

Such a role would be a quantum leap for Blackwater and raises a host of policy questions.

Until now, the eight-year-old company has confined itself to training military and police personnel and providing security guards for government and private clients. Under Black's proposal, it would take on an overt combat role.

"We're low-cost and fast," Black was quoted as saying. "The issue is, who's going to let us play on their team?"

The rest of the story ...

MySpace definitely censoring me and others

Alright, this is just too much of a coincidence.

The Associate Editor of The Lone Star Iconoclast, Nathan Diebenow, can no longer post to MySpace forums. The "post this topic" button has been removed. He sent some info to me on the biggest immigration myths, but I cannot view his message. I got a bunch of friend requests, many of them student activists, immigration activists and 9/11 Truth-ers, and I am not able to approve their requests.

Three days ago I got a friend request from a student activist group that has been organizing protests of the new immigration bill. I approved the request. When I tried to put this profile into my "top eight," it no longer existed.

Better still, I cannot post the story about the exploding human bio-weapons to The League of Gonzo Journalists. It gives me a preview of the topic, but takes me to the Forums Index every time I click submit.

The Fox News barron is censoring political content on MySpace in an attempt to disrupt the overpowering wave of activism that such a powerful networking tool has brought to the masses of pissed off students.

New drug turns humans into exploding bio-weapons?

This is about the strangest thing I've ever heard of ...

The Sun Online has a new article about a guy named Nav Modi, who willingly entered these clinical trials in exchange for about 2,000 Euros. He was injected with a new drug called TGN1412, developed by a German firm called Te Genero. 24 hours later, his entire body had swollen up several times the normal size, and he was not the only one who suffered these effects. He was promised that monkeys had been injected with the drug and experienced no ill effects. He only got a fraction of the dose they put in the animals.

A few excerpts from the story ...

Nav’s terror deepened when he was moved with the five other drug victims to intensive care in the early hours of the day after the trial.

Drugged and slipping in and out of consciousness, he was too weak to speak as he felt medical tubes, wires and monitoring equipment being plumbed into his tortured body. At 10am the next day — 26 hours after he was given the drug — he was allowed a visit from his 22-year-old girlfriend Divya Vegda.

She collapsed in shock and burst into tears the moment she saw his hideously bloated frame.

Nav said: “I had no idea how I looked — I’d been drugged and had been too out of it to ask for a mirror.

“But when Divya saw me in hospital for the first time, her shocked reaction spoke volumes.

“She reeled backwards in shock unable to speak and just burst into floods of tears.

“A nurse had to comfort her before she could come back but she could barely speak to me and tears were still running down my face as she sat at my bedside.

“She’s told me since that — without exaggeration — my head had swelled up to at least twice its normal size, just like the Elephant Man in the movie.

“My whole body — limbs, torso, everything — was puffed up and swollen beyond recognition and I had tubes and wires going into my neck, legs and arms.

“Looking back I’m glad I didn’t realise how dreadful I looked because that might have pushed me over the edge.

He is out of the hospital, having survived the experience. But others in the trial are still in critical condition. And two weeks ago, The Sun Online ran a front page that read, "We Saw Human Guinea Pigs Explode."

Now, isn't that just disturbing? Here's the full story ...

MySpace removes hundreds of thousands of "objectionable" profiles

This is interesting. I thought that profiles on MySpace were being weeded out by Rupert Murdoch's "child safety czar" for pornographic content. But according to this article, all it requires to get thrown off the site sporting over 66 million users is "objectionable" content. Details below.
MySpace acts to calm teen safety fears
By Joshua Chaffin and Aline van Duyn in New York
Published: March 30 2006 20:26

MySpace.com, the fast-growing community website hugely popular with American teens, has removed 200,000 “objectionable” profiles from its site as it steps up efforts to calm fears about the safety of the network for young users.

The site, which allows users to create their own profiles with details of their interests that can be viewed and linked to by other MySpace.com “friends”, was acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp last year and its phenomenal growth has placed it at the centre of the media company’s internet strategy.

Ross Levinsohn, head of News Corp’s internet division, said some of the material taken down contained “hate speech”. Some of it, he said, was “too risqué”.

“It’s a problem that’s endemic to the internet – not just MySpace,” Mr Levinsohn said. “The site, in the last two months, I think has become safer.”

With 66m users, and 250,000 new users signing up every day, MySpace has become one of the top internet destinations.

All the rest ...

My concern with this new development is that the Fox News barron has purchased MySpace because of its potential as a catalyst for revolution. Much of the student walk-outs and protests that have been staged in cities all over the nation over the last few weeks were organized on MySpace. It has become increasingly political, and increasingly "left," if you want to pidgeon-hold it into a political graph. In fact, I am writing a feature article about this for The Lone Star Iconoclast.

And then there is that "hate speech" comment that Levinsohn made. I am on MySpace, and I can personally attest to the censorship of some political content. I've made attempts at posting bulletins which go out to my entire network of friends, only to have the system take me to the home page instead of dispersing the updates. When this has happened, I tried altering a few keywords, such as "fascist" and "dictator." For some reason, that usually worked. The MySpace technical crew told me that the bulletins were not going through because of faulty html code ... but I know better.

In fact, a lot of people know better. Check out this discussion group: Will Rupert Murdoch shut this thing down? The group's founder, Alex Jones, has really stepped up his operations on MySpace. Some brand him fringe left, but I disagree. He is unique unto himself, and his websites, Prison Planet and Info Wars, may tilt far off the radar of the mainstream, but damnit, someone has to seed the fields. I have contacted Mr. Jones for an interview regarding MySpace censorship and the rebirth of the civil rights movement.

It should be interesting.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Vegas in the shadow of a mushroom cloud

Friends, the most frightening thing to all of humanity is a nuclear holocaust. No matter who you are, in the event of all-out I.C.B.M. warfare, you will die. And today, the U.S. Government announced plans to test an 700-TON bomb in Nevada at the end of June, 2006.

They have dubbed this weapon "Divine Strake."


This is the largest explosive ever created in the HISTORY of mankind. It will be the first atomic explosion inside American borders since the government stopped testing these weapons of mass destruction nearly two decades ago.

See below for further details on this horrorfying development.

==========================
U.S. To Test 700-Ton Explosive
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

The U.S. military plans to detonate a 700 ton explosive charge in a test called “Divine Strake” that will send a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas, a senior defense official said March 30.

”I don’t want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that you’ll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons,” said James Tegnelia, head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Tegnelia said the test was part of a U.S. effort to develop weapons capable of destroying deeply-buried bunkers housing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

”We have several very large penetrators we’re developing,” he told defense reporters.

”We also have — are you ready for this — a 700-ton explosively formed charge that we’re going to be putting in a tunnel in Nevada,” he said.

”And that represents to U.S. the largest single explosive that we could imagine doing conventionally to solve that problem,” he said.

The aim is to measure the effect of the blast on hard granite structures, he said.

”If you want to model these weapons, you want to know from a modeling point of view what is the ideal best condition you could ever set up in a conventional weapon — what’s the best you can do.

”And this gets at the best point you could get on a curve. So it allows U.S. to predict how effective these kinds of weapons ... would be,” he said.

He said the Russians have been notified of the test, which is scheduled for the first week of June at the Nevada test range.

”We’re also making sure that Las Vegas understands,” Tegnelia said.

American Muslim tortured, jailed for talking about killing Bush

Read this story from CNN, then scroll down for a lesson in reading between the lines. Nothing is as it appears. I believe that nobody deserves to die, no matter their crime. But today, Americans live in the middle of an invisible information war. Every citizen must take it upon him or herself to recognize propaganda for what it is: the dumbing down of reason and the process that supports democracy.

This CNN story is a solid example of simple-minded propaganda that fails to measure up to the standards of objective journalism. See story below for the real story.
===========================

American sentenced for Bush plot
Virginia Muslim gets 30 years for assassination plan
Wednesday, March 29, 2006; Posted: 6:23 p.m. EST (23:23 GMT)

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (AP) -- An American Muslim was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison for joining al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President Bush.

Prosecutors had asked for the maximum -- a life sentence -- for Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a 25-year-old U.S. citizen who was born to a Jordanian father and raised in Falls Church, Virginia.

"The facts of this case are still astonishing," prosecutor David Laufman said. "Barely a year after September 11 the defendant joined the organization responsible for 3,000 deaths."

But U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee said 30 years was sufficient punishment. He compared the Abu Ali case to "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, who received a 20-year sentence. (Full story)

Abu Ali's actions "did not result in one single actual victim. That fact must be taken into account," the judge said.

Abu Ali, wearing a green prison jumpsuit, declined to speak before his sentence was imposed. Defense lawyers said they plan to appeal.

Prosecutors said Abu Ali traveled to Saudi Arabia and joined al Qaeda out of hatred for the United States. The Saudis arrested Abu Ali in June 2003 as he was taking final exams at the Islamic University of Medina.

The rest of the story ...
=============================

And now, the ugly truth behind what seems to be a "cut and dry" conviction ...

=============================

The Strange Case of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali:
Troubling Questions about the Government's Motives and Tactics

By ELAINE CASSEL
FindLaw's Writ

The case is far from as open-and-shut as the FBI might suggest. Indeed, a number of aspects of the prosecution are deeply troubling.

The Early History of Abu Ali's Case: The Government Reverses Itself

At the end of the 2003 academic year at the Saudi university he was attending, Abu Ali failed to return home to the U.S. As a result, his family - Jordan-born, naturalized U.S. citizens living in Northern Virginia where I practice - contacted me to see if I could help.

In August 2004, attorneys filed suit in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, on behalf of Abu Ali's parents, in order to obtain his release. Among the attorneys was renowned constitutional rights scholar and Georgetown University law professor David Cole.

The day the suit was filed, the State Department - which had previously refused to provide information to Abu Ali's parents - notified them that their son would be charged with crimes of terrorism in Saudi Arabia. But that never happened. Instead, the question of whether Abu Ali could be returned to the U.S. was litigated.

Before U.S. District Judge John Bates, the government took the position that Abu Ali was far too dangerous to ever be returned to the United States, and that the reason was so serious that it could not be disclosed even to the family's attorneys. In other words, the government sought to proceed on secret evidence.

Then, the government reversed itself dramatically. It transported Abu Ali to the United States itself - thus mooting the question before Judge Bates of whether the government could proceed upon secret evidence to block his return.

In 2004, when Abu Ali's parents had been begging the U.S. government to intervene, it had refused - claiming it was up to the Saudis whether he was released. With his return, however, it began to seem evident that the Saudis had been holding Abu Ali with U.S. consent - indeed, even at the U.S.'s behest. It now appears that FBI agents had the Saudis remove Abu Ali from his university class and take him to a Saudi facility for questioning in the summer of 2003.


It also became apparent that the U.S. could, all the time, have ensured Abu Ali's return to the U.S. whenever it felt like it. After all, federal prosecutors had, during this time, extradited from Saudi Arabia to Alexandria another man in Saudi custody who was alleged to be (and acquitted of being) a terrorist and involved in the case of the Alexandria 11.

Apparently, however, the U.S. had taken advantage of this U.S. citizen's choice to attend school abroad, to make sure he was held in prison there - where torture would be permitted, and counsel would not be provided. Indeed, unidentified sources have been quoted in the Washington Post and New York Times as saying that the government certainly would have preferred to have left Abu Ali in Saudi Arabia.

It was only Judge Bates's interest in Abu Ali's case that changed the government's mind. Laudably, Bates was concerned - as we all should be -- about the potentially indefinite imprisonment of a U.S. citizen, with the U.S.'s consent, in a foreign prison where due process is ignored and torture is common.

The rest of the story ...
==========================

Case in point: Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, an American born in Houston, Texas, was arrested abroad for talking about ways to kill the president. But he is not charged with any conspiracy. The government tried to prosecute him before an independent judge with secret evidence that was so classified, not even the court was allowed to see it. They changed their minds after he was tortured in the hands of the Saudi's. His video-taped confession that came from agonizing coersion was admitted into court. He was held without charge or legal representation for three years.

This could happen to you.


Be careful what you say.

The thought police are on the march.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

"At the president's peril"

The New York Times has a very interesting article that peels off the veil of secrecy from the infamous FISA court, established by congress to oversee intelligence gathering efforts in America. According to the judges ...
If a law like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is duly enacted by Congress and considered constitutional, Judge Baker said, "the president ignores it at the president's peril."
The rest of the story.

Hmm. Now, when are we going to get around to ENFORCING those laws? I'm thinking ... next year. January or so. After Democrats sweep the Federal Elections. That sounds like a reasonable timeline. Republicans in the Senate just keep trying to change the laws or quash debate on the floor. How productive. The fearless leader knowingly broke a law which carries a penalty of five years behind bars, and his enablers do nothing but put up a smokescreen.

Why aren't the details of Bush's wiretapping being disclosed to the court established to oversee such a thing? This illegal spy program is not for catching terrorists, it is for blackmailing detractors and political dissidents.

And we still don't have ex-CIA asset Osama bin Laden. I wonder why that is.

I.T.M.F.A.

Here's something kind of funny that has really caught fire on these here internets ... an underground movement within the circles of logic that puts its message to observers in a very polite way - Impeach the Mother Fucker Already. Otherwise known as I.T.M.F.A.

I am so buying one of their bumper stickers.


Poverty and the Modern Christian

Poverty and the Modern Christian
By Stephen Webster
Investigative Reporter
Publication date: March 31, 2006

A couple weeks ago Dr. Jim Ozier, pastor of Trietsch United Methodist church in Flower Mound, Texas, called me with a great idea for a story. He planned to give a sermon about poverty, and the responsibility of Christians to help the least of those among them. Ozier reached out to me, as something of a rookie Investigative Reporter, to go to his church under cover.

I was to be homeless, if only for one day.

Me, on a good day

Once I accepted the assignment I realized that I had bought a ticket for a ride that I could not abandon, like it or not. In order to better articulate the soul-crushing hopelessness of poverty, I refrained from bathing and shaving for 10 days. I spent my evenings leading up to the infiltration drinking heavily and eating little. I picked up some clothes from a local thrift store and soiled them with liquor, beef stew, syrup and coffee creamer. I spent the night before the service sleeping on the floor. I simply could not bring myself to crawl into a warm bed.

I awoke early Sunday morning and put together my ensemble. I wore a tattered suit jacket with rips under both armpits. It covered a dirty black shirt featuring art from the first album by the band Incubus. Mangled, crusty sweat pants draped my legs and flip-flops from a dollar store padded my feet. My fiancée was absolutely disgusted. It was perfect.

I drove to Trietsch and parked about a quarter-mile down the street. I turned off my car and popped the top of a beer, downing it as fast as possible. The smell of alcohol was thick, but the stench of days-old stew far overpowered it. I somberly walked toward the church, deciding it would be best to approach from behind.

At first I was intimidated. This place, this house of worship, is huge. Beautiful vehicles lined the parking lot. I stopped and gawked at a sight rarely seen outside of a car dealership: four Hummers, each a different color, parked within mere feet of each other. All of them sported “Support the Troops” ribbons and “Bush/Cheney ‘04” stickers. A strange coincidence, I thought. As though the cars’ owners all got together after service one Sunday and planned their parking arrangement. I wondered aloud if they all sprint to church each week to snag those same spots.

As I strolled down the sidewalk, sandals flipping at my heels, a woman holding a tray of what looked to be cupcakes approached me. “Oh, hmm,” she said in passing, her gaze locking on me for about six steps. As the distance between us widened her pace doubled as she shuffled away, downwind.

I entered the building through a door near one of the two playgrounds I spotted. The first thing I saw was a Sunday School class full of children sitting on the floor. Several of them stared at me as I walked past. Nobody said a word. I pressed on through the hall, walking past a couple of adults. They were engaged in conversation and did not look at me.

I walked up the stairs and came upon a row of tan-colored plastic bins. A printed sign on the wall read, “Food Donations.” I opened one bin and looked inside. A Nutri-Grain bar was the first foodstuff I spotted. Picking it up I tore open the wrapper and shoved about half of it into my mouth, crumbs falling all over the floor as I smacked the snack between my teeth. A girl of probably 13 or 14 years approached me. “Hey, that’s not yours!” she exclaimed. “Oh,” I said, posing my best startled expression. “I’m so sorry! Is it yours?” I offered the half eaten treat to her with both hands, bits of fruit goop and wheat flakes still falling from my mouth. She looked at me like I had just kicked a small animal. “Ach!” she exclaimed, rolling her eyes. She then turned on heel and walked in the opposite direction.

Approaching the sanctuary, the sound of music floated through the hall. I walked up to a door and paused, gazing through the window. A couple approached from behind. I turned and smiled, nodding my head in acknowledgement. I opened the door and motioned for them to enter before me. “Thank you,” said the woman. That common phrase would be the only words of kindness I heard all morning.

Once in the sanctuary, I found my way to an unoccupied pew toward the back-left. I sat down behind a man who looked to be in his late 20’s or early 30’s. He looked over his left shoulder at me and grimaced, then moved about eight feet to his right, to the very end of his pew. There I sat for the entire sermon, focused intently on the pastor’s message.

Ozier spoke about the people Jesus loved, and reminded the congregation that Jesus was a peacemaker above all. He repeated the fact that helping the poor was the topic most frequented by the Christian savior. He even went as far as mentioning the Iraq war, emphasizing the importance of understanding ethnic and religious differences around the world. I would have gone much further with this line of thought if I had the pulpit.

As the sermon approached its end, Ozier called upon the parishioners to welcome any newcomers into the fold. He reminded them that Christ calls Christians to be accepting of all his children, big and small, young and old, rich and poor. I stood and began walking out with the rest of the group, making my way toward the closest door. As before, nobody said a word.

When I left the church, I felt an odd sense of relief, as though a damning judgment had just been overturned. I suddenly felt at peace, having come to a conclusion as to what I would convey from this experience. Leading up to this undercover black-op, I troubled myself with how I could describe my experience as well as address the sprawling human stain that is poverty on an individual, community, state, national and world-wide level.

I realized my freedom to editorialize on this topic through the knowledge that no matter what my experiences were, no matter how I was treated, and no matter what I say in the aftermath, only the shock of becoming broke and homeless themselves is enough to move common people of any faith to action.

I was raised a literalist Christian in a very poor, mostly-immigrant town on the Texas gulf coast. Even then, the religious affluent did not come to the aid of those suffering in the streets outside. Indeed, the town simply split into several parts – the rich, white neighborhoods and the poor, non-white neighborhoods. This “flight” of sorts can be seen in all aspects of our society.

But things have changed since I was a child. Today’s reality is not as much “white flight” as it is “rich flight.” The middle class of America is the Upper Class of the world. And those fortunate enough to be pulling down millions in our country are literally the global elite, even if they don’t flex that muscle but for their own benefit. As our monies become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, those left without economic Manifest Destiny are simply locked out. Now the infamous gated neighborhoods run by Home Owners Associations like miniature banana republics are becoming the desirable norm for the elite. I call this phenomenon what it really is: a Gulag for the rich, increasingly paranoid from being surrounded by “undesirables” of the lower class.

Why should the well-to-do help the poor and forgotten when there is so much undeveloped land to aid the further spread of this sociological oddity? Broaden the tax base, they say. Expand the infrastructure - damn the torpedoes. Those left behind when the wealth moves elsewhere are stuck in what has literally become economic apartheid. My freedom from this self-imposed oppression came in knowing that no matter what I say or do, things simply do not change without consensus. And consensus is the farthest thing from reality in modern America, let alone between Christian denominations and the world’s major religions.

Christ commanded his followers to help the poor; indeed, the book of Proverbs calls such kindness a form of worship. Buddha said that a man with love in his heart considers the entire world part of his family. The prophet Mohammed urged disciples to live the “ideal” life by rejecting greed and giving a portion of their wealth to the poor. And in spite of the shared goals of these faiths, America – the melting pot of the world, the home of all cultures, the most affluent and wealthy nation on the face of the planet – claims more poverty-stricken citizens than all third-world countries combined.

What did I learn from my covert invasion of this local house of worship? Poverty is truly a flaw in the human character, fueled by greed, perpetuated by war, in a cycle that will not end until we as a species heed the words of our most followed philosophers. Until the actions of our faithful reflect the teachings of their prophets, mankind is doomed to repeat its own torrid history.

Stephen Webster is an Investigative Reporter and Syndicated Columnist with The News Connection, a Staff Columnist with George W. Bushs hometown weekly The Lone Star Iconoclast, and a former Contributor to The Dallas Morning News Science & Technology section. For more of Webster's musings, visit The Gonzo Muckraker.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

I'm not giving my opinion on this one

What can I say? Looks like I was on the right side of this issue ...

Son of Denton County DA jailed on gun charge

05:20 PM CST on Monday, March 27, 2006

By BRANDON FORMBY / The Dallas Monring News

The 18-year-old son of Denton County District Attorney Bruce Isaacks was being held in Denton County jail Monday, charged for the second time in less than 14 months with a gun-related crime.

Adam Isaacks is accused of firing a shotgun Feb. 28 in the backyard of his parents’ Carrollton home in the 1500 block of Sugar Creek Drive. According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Adam Isaacks was teaching another man how to shoot the 12-gauge shotgun. Police said the other man, Max White, is about Adam Isaacks’ age but has not been arrested on his warrant yet.

The affidavit said both admitted shooting at a tree in the backyard and “that it was stupid.”

Adam Isaacks declined a jail interview Monday. His father did not return phone calls Monday. His mother, state District Judge Vicki Isaacks, said through an employee Monday that she does not discuss family matters with the media. Mr. White could not be reached.

Adam Isaacks turned himself over to Denton police and was booked into the city’s jail late Sunday. A municipal judge set his bond at $500. He was transferred to Denton County jail on Monday.

Police were called to the Isaacks’ block by men who were loading shingles into a truck next door. One of the men said after the second shot, a plastic shot cup from a shotgun shell landed at his feet.

“He stated he heard laughing and a door closing from the backyard,” the affidavit says.

The incident occurred one week before the March primary elections, in which Bruce Isaacks was defeated in the GOP primary by former employee Paul Johnson. The arrest warrant was signed March 10, three days after the election. But police said Adam Isaacks received no special treatment and he was not arrested immediately because they wanted to build a stronger case.

The rest of the story ...

I would just like to point out that last paragraph.

The incident occurred one week before the March primary elections, in which Bruce Isaacks was defeated in the GOP primary by former employee Paul Johnson. The arrest warrant was signed March 10, three days after the election. But police said Adam Isaacks received no special treatment and he was not arrested immediately because they wanted to build a stronger case.

Anyone else would have been arrested immediately. This happened THREE DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION. The arrest warrant was signed on March 10, and filled 18 days later? Come ON! If only I had been in the loop. I keep telling my editor that he should buy a police scanner ... Oh well. It was all just a little bit of history repeating.

An examination of the 9/11 Truth movement, part two

Attention TNC readers!

By now you probably know that this series will not continue in The News Connection. However, The Lone Star Iconoclast has expressed a deep interest in continuing the series, and I have been getting a lot of positive feedback from their readers. Not so much up here in North Texas, though.

Journalist Henry Louis Mencken, 1880-1956, once said, "The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you've probably seen me invoke Mencken more than once. He is still right, even today.

We as Americans fear for our freedoms, and watch with horror at how vicious the attacks against them have been since 9/11/01. If something stinks about the "official" story of what really happened that day, wouldn't you want to know the truth? Wouldn't you begin compiling research from every source you could uncover? Wouldn't you want to tell others that there is a major controversy brewing over this traumatic, catalyzing event?

Well, I've got a bombshell for you. The Government is lying about 9/11.

I'm not stopping this series for anyone. If I did, I doubt I could maintain my sanity here in this propaganda matrix.

I hope you'll keep reading.

Stephen Webster

------------------------------------------

The Webster Retort
By Stephen Webster
Investigative Reporter
Publication date: March 31, 2006

An examination of the 9/11 Truth movement, part two

It is funny, really, how the collective human consciousness works. As I pecked away at my keyboard last week, ready and willing to discuss a topic that has been neigh-taboo for any American save the president, I had no idea that the forces of Hollywood were marshalling to the same ends. Charlie Sheen, famed star of such classics as, um, Navy Seals and The Arrival, has gone public with his doubts about the government’s version of the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Sheen is just the first. He is the only soul in the government’s fifth branch to stand up and express doubt, and he is right to do so. Nevertheless, his presence in the debate is unfortunate. Introducing the ever-growing 9/11 Truth movement to the dollops of brain-washed network newshounds is nearly impossible, but a person like Charlie Sheen is perfect for the task because he is easily discountable. Well known, but not well liked. “Attack the messenger, not the message” really does work, as our recent history has shown. But there are others willing to stand up. And when the networks decide these painfully sober questions must be asked and seriously discussed, there are real people with real science ready to take the case of logic to America.

Paul Craig Roberts is one such person. Roberts, the former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan Administration, does not like the state of our nation. Like many conservatives these days, Roberts is angry with the Bushes for completely ignoring Reagan’s policies. He argues that “true conservatives” were the “first victims” of Team Bush, and that to continue on our current path will “bring about Armageddon.” He raises a serious quandary with statements like, “We know the government lied about Iraqi WMD, but we believe the government told the truth about 9/11.” A troubling impasse, indeed.

Another such individual is Morgan Reynolds, former Chief Economist for the United States Department of Labor under Shrub Jr. Reynolds is a professor emeritus at Texas A&M University and the former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas. “I think it is pretty clear that 9/11 was an inside job,” he claims. Since that fateful day, Reynolds has been an active in a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

Many of Reynolds’ critics point to one of his theories that many members of the truth movement have discredited. Aside from believing that the 9/11 attacks were carried out primarily through controlled demolition methods, Reynolds has claimed that passenger airliners were not used to hit either tower or the Pentagon. He claims that fake planes or military drones were used to distract observers from the previously planted explosives. Many among the Scholars group disagree with the theory, and it has been effectively debunked. Though the idea crops up in several popular 9/11 Truth documentaries, it has been pretty well established that real planes with real passengers hit those buildings.

These two men bring to the table extensive credentials as members of two Republican administrations. But all the credibility in the world will not make a Nationalist pay attention to a detractor. To the experts we go.

FEMA’s official disaster report attributed the collapse of WTC 1 and 2 on “structural damage sustained by each tower from the impact, combined with the ensuing fires.” Once the floor-supports liquidated, the collapse began from the top with each level “pancaking,” eventually bringing the entire structure down. However, Underwriters Laboratory executive Kevin Ryan wrote a letter to the government team studying the physics of the collapses and asked they “eliminate the confusion regarding the ability of jet fuel fires to soften or melt structural steel.” Ryan’s company certified the WTC steel for its ability to withstand fire. According to him, the steel frame had been tested at temperatures over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. “[T]he buildings should have easily withstood the thermal stress caused by pools of burning jet fuel,” concluded Ryan.

If the “pancake” report is indeed correct, it would have taken at least 30 seconds or longer for WTC One, Two and Seven to hit the ground. I am no physics expert, but the second law of Thermodynamics is not that obscure! Towers One and Two both fell within 10 seconds. WTC 7, which was not hit by an airplane, only suffered minimal damage from debris and fell in just seven seconds – a half second longer than free fall speed.

Frank A. DeMartini, who oversaw the WTC towers’ construction, claims the buildings were built to withstand hurricanes, bombs and multiple impacts from a Boeing 707’s – the largest jetliner in service at the time. The jets that hit the towers - Boeing 747’s – are 10 feet wider and 10 feet longer, and carry 1,000 gallons more fuel, but fly much more slowly. He likened the jet’s impact to a pencil poking a hole in a metal screen. It would cause damage, but would not compromise the structure as a whole. But fires caused the collapses? The facts seem to contradict this assertion.

If the floors had “pancaked,” there would have been large chunks of concrete and broken office equipment everywhere. Parts of the towers would have toppled over sideways and caused additional damage to other buildings. Enormous steel rods would have been protruding from the wreckage hundreds of feet into the air. Instead, one member of the cleanup crew said that the largest piece of office equipment he found was a fourth of a telephone keypad. All the concrete in the tower was turned into a fine powder. The massive support rods were found snapped into sections 30-feet or shorter. FEMA loaded the steel onto trucks and shipped it to Asia to be melted down.

The WTC buildings are the only steel-frame towers to have collapsed because of fire damage in our recorded history. Last year, the Windsor Building in Madrid, Spain burned for almost 20 hours. When the fire was extinguished, the steel core of the building was intact. Everything else burned away. Officials expected the building to fall, just like the WTC towers. But it performed as it was designed. Even in the aftermath of an atomic bomb, steel frame buildings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still standing.

Interestingly enough, a few days after the attacks, FEMA claimed to have found one of the hijackers passports several blocks away from ground zero. But the plane that this person was on? They never even recovered the black box, let alone parts of its engines or cabin. And the 19 hijackers the FBI named? Six of them are alive and well. More on that next week.

In the mean time, I wholeheartedly recommend reading “The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions” by David Ray Griffin. It’ll tighten your wig.

Stephen Webster is an Investigative Reporter and Syndicated Columnist with The News Connection, a Staff Columnist with George W. Bush’s hometown weekly The Lone Star Iconoclast, and a former Contributor to The Dallas Morning News’ Science & Technology section. For more of Webster’s musings, visit The Gonzo Muckraker.

We only believe what we want to

I was right. Here's the follow-up from our friend, sent the very same day I posted his last grumbling missive. He sent this to my editor as well -- an action that deserves much stronger words than I wil render here. I post the letter for your enjoyment. Let it never be said I cannot take criticism with a sardonic grin. My response is below.
Hello Mr. Webster,

I just wanted to get this out to you the same day you asked for it. The fiver is yours. When would you like to collect it?

You branded me a hater. How does the offering of an opposing view become hate? It is only in your interpretation. I intend to rebut your diatribe point-by-point. I wonder if you will print this response or simply claim that you correctly predicted it.

You were wrong that I failed to address the Halliburton issue. That was the actual subject of my letter to the editor of your employer. All of the emails between us about the matter were written in response to a second note that I wrote. In the first email, printed in part in the paper and in your weblog, I first touched on the Executive Order regarding FEMA and then on USNORCOM. I then wrote:

“Emergency facilities and detention centers may be established should the need arise. This need could be due to a larger than normal influx of illegal aliens. It could also be due to destruction of homes by military or natural means which result in a massive population migration. KBR was awarded the nearly $400 million, 5-year contract to build these facilities, just as they were awarded the previous contract in 2000. That earlier contract yielded KBR $6 million, but could have been much more if they needed to build those facilities. Perhaps the plan should have been implemented years ago and there would have been additional shelter during the past hurricane season. Regrettably it was not, and we have seen the devastating results of poor planning coupled with natural disaster.

Mr. Webster stated that the plan to build the “concentration camps” described above, in conjunction with President Bush’s argument that Posse Comitatus be overturned, were evidence that the current administration is seriously considering martial law. Posse Comitatus has been virtually ineffective and bypassed for many years except in cases where it quite neatly blocks beneficial effects of military involvement, such as troop movement to assist in hurricane aid. One does not need to look far to discover past administration’s use of the military for aid in blocking smuggling and immigration operations (with sometimes regrettable results as encountered in 1999).”

Please direct your criticism of my sloppy rebuttal to the person responsible for cutting this portion out. The fact is that I did address the central issue of your column. The fact is that the detention camps have existed for quite some time. The fact is that they have been seriously overcrowded since the previous administration of the US stepped up efforts to regain control over immigration issues. The fact is that KBR has been given a contract to build more. The contract is basically an extension of one they had been awarded during that previous administration. The only thing that is not a fact (and the one thing you are clinging to) is that they are currently building more.

You state that I accused you of plagiarism. I did say that it appeared you had used the bulk of someone else’s idea without proper credit. After you had written back I changed my opinion and said that “your opinion piece sounds more like a "me-too" reactionary post on a forum than an incisive presentation.” I stand by that statement. Also, while I am disagreeing, presenting reasonable discussion of the topic in the process, you are living up to my prediction of further liberal name-calling (yes, I realize I just called you a liberal – my stars! You say I am a garden variety NeoCon, but I would term myself a paleoconservative.) You condescendingly ask me to be like another jackass. You start cursing at me in German. Damn swine? Please. You call me a politi-thug and say I am intolerant. Who is doing the shouting in this match?

My claim that you mangle facts is backed by, for example, your link to President Bush’s proclamation of May 1 as Loyalty Day in 2003. You suggest this was the idea of the current administration and was intended to be intolerant and divisive. Loyalty Day has been celebrated since the 30’s in various ways as an alternative to the May Day celebration. It was originally meant to celebrate the process of being and becoming an American. It was made a legal holiday in 1958 by President Eisenhower. Maifest, another reference you made, is a German holiday period for the Spring – a calendric counterpart to Oktoberfest. It does not refer to anything remotely sinister.

I have no intention of trying to whip up a frenzy in my community. The only person I am trying to prod is you, Mr. Webster. On that front I would say, mission accomplished. I will continue to address things with which I disagree as they come up. If you are the source, so be it. If you think that I have any other agenda I would say that you are just being paranoid.

The last point I would like to address is where you claim I have called you a traitor. I did no such thing. I mentioned your self-branded patriotism and said that I would call it something quite different. That statement was bait, Mr. Webster. Thank you for taking it. I would brand you an antiestablishmentarianist. By the way, a disestablishmentarianist is someone who opposes the establishment of a state religion. I don’t think that was what you intended.

Mark Everett
Flower Mound, TX

Mark.Everett@Inficon.com
Three excerpts ...

"(yes, I realize I just called you a liberal – my stars! You say I am a garden variety NeoCon, but I would term myself a paleoconservative.)"

My Stars! He has aligned himself with a crushed and forgotten sect of the ruling party. The Paleoconservatives opposed Civil Rights, The New Deal, and even The League of Nations. I wonder how the now-powerless underling feels about the new immigration policy that would classify over 11 million hard working people as felons. Given their track record for isolationism, I'm sure our friend would have a much more extreme version of the bill in mind. But that is an assumption.

Also of interest - Famous Paleoconservative and now-dead former Senator Prescott Bush helped fund - and profited handsomely from - the rise of Germany's Third Reich. Ha! Ich hatte Recht, auf Deutsch zu verfluchen! Für immer Wahrheit!

The only thing that this person and I (probably) agree on is that the World Trade Organization (WTO) is downright evil. But I do find it interesting that he insists on being part of the "Believe Bush First" crowd. One would think he may fall in with Paleos who feel they were the first victims of Bush's deceptive platform ... like Texas Congressman Ron Paul (who is The Man for opposing the Iraq war, in my opinion).
============================

"My claim that you mangle facts is backed by, for example, your link to President Bush’s proclamation of May 1 as Loyalty Day in 2003. You suggest this was the idea of the current administration and was intended to be intolerant and divisive. Loyalty Day has been celebrated since the 30’s in various ways as an alternative to the May Day celebration."

To wit, I quoth Des Prez ...

"NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2003, as Loyalty Day. I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance. I also call upon government officials to display the flag of the United States on all government buildings on Loyalty Day."

Now, Therefore, I, Stephen C. Webster, writer of little or no regard, do hereby proclaim March 28, 2006 as Logic and Reason Day. I call upon the readers of this blog and the network of weeklies that publish my column to rise up against those who would seek to control their minds with a false sense of Loyalty and Nationalism. INASMUCH as one of my belittled stature could invoke the names and sayings of those who came before me, I do so now as a Free Thinking citizen of a country befouled. For as Socrates said, "I am not Athenian or a Greek, I am a citizen of the world." And indeed, our famed man of science, Albert Einstein, considered Nationalism "an infantile disease" -- "the measles of mankind." I find myself recalling the teaching of Buddha in these days of turmoil. "To him in whom love dwells, the whole world is but one family." I could only hope to speak such truth before my time amongst my people expires.

Enlightenment, it seems, has its virtues.

============================

"I would brand you an antiestablishmentarianist. By the way, a disestablishmentarianist is someone who opposes the establishment of a state religion. I don’t think that was what you intended."

Ah, so very right. Half the time I do not even know the definition of these words that pour off my fingers. I knew I should have paid attention in English class! CURSES! Those perfidious educators!

Ho-ho. The term "DISESTABLISHMENTARIANIST" describes exactly where I stand in the religious debate. The NeoCons are fueled by religious supporters who would love nothing more than mandatory Christian prayer in schools. And the push has already begun. They seek to influence domestic and foreign policy through religion, thereby establishing a state-sponsored faith. For a good example of this, see American involvement in Afghanistan. The sad part is, even the forgotten Paleo's circle their wagons around the "moral center." But they seemingly ignore the fact that the NeoCons are FAKE CHRISTIANS who only seek the support of America's faithful to further their agenda of endless war.
============================

That is all the time I will spend on this and future letters.

If I have learned one thing from these pointless exchanges, it is that I should never respond to a reader with more than "Thank you for taking the time to write" ... let alone sending my research notes to one who simply seeks to cause me headaches by running to my editors every time he disagrees with me.

Mai liefern Ihre Geschichte die Zukunft, die Sie verdienen.

And so ends this experiment in unprofessionalism.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Hate Mail

I love getting hate mail. Here are two select pieces from this past week.

This one, sent in response to my coverage of a local anti-war protest, is pretty venomous. But, like most hate mail, the writer fails to use his own God-given sense of logic. Note the nuiance of our Intelligent Designer ...
After reading Stephen Webster's homage to the Democrat party (Anti-war rally held in Denton, 3/24) I sincerely hope that there will be equal time given to the other side. One can hardly think that "nearly 100 protestors" constitutes a mandate for pullout, chicken out, censure or 
impeachment. The first paragraph of your "investigative reporter's" article was a dead giveaway a to the direction it was going to take. Perhaps if Mr. Webster had done even a marginal amount of "investigating", he would have found that a war is made up of many battles, and a battle is made up of many missions. Declaring a mission to be complete does not sign off on the entire war, and when President
Bush declared, "mission accomplished" he was referring to the mission of the men and women on the USS Abrahm Lincoln, not to the entire war in Iraq. Now, elementary journalism can teach you these things, so there has to be another course that Mr. Webster is pursuing in his writing. And with a large percentage of the article being a direct transcription of a man who would be Justice Of The Peace (and others) rattling off a diatribe consisting of an obvious political hatred for anything conservative and a payload of non-constructive tripe that would make Howard Dean begin adoption proceedings , I wonder what that course could be.If Stephen Webster wants to espouse his extreme left political views andcall it investigative reporting, then I can just as easily choose to notkill someone and then call myself a lifesaver.Thank you for your time.

Stubie Doak
Double Oak, TX
A quote from the above letter - "I sincerely hope that there will be equal time given to the other side."

Stubie, let me update your world view: every single day in North Texas is "given to the other side." If you remember, Denton County recently held party primary elections. Every single one of the county's important offices were decided by Republican voters. Just five percent of the county's voters decided to cast a ballot. TNC devoted a wealth of front-page space to covering Republican candidates. I went months writing about rich, white people who love their abstinence-based sex education programs. Oh, and I'm not a Democrat. I's an indie. I just like common sense better than party loyalty.

So, equal time. Indeed.

You're doing a heck of a job, Stubie.

Here is another one from a frequent detractor of mine. This person is at least intelligent enough to organize his thoughts on the topic of his ire. However, after a series of emails back and forth, he failed to express his thoughts about the fact that Halliburton is building "Immigrant Detainment Facilities" in America. This hater swaps reason and truth (the camps exist - to disagree is to lie to yourself) for a smokescreen of political distortion. This is good example of a garden variety NeoCon trying to turn a serious issue into a partisan shouting match ...

In Stephen Webster’s retort regarding “Oliver North and the rebirth of the American Gulag” he has presented a view so compromised by his political bent that his arguments lose almost all credibility. I realize that it is an opinion piece, but such an opinion deserves a response. At the risk of simply being a foil for further liberal name-calling (e.g. Oliver North: traitorous scum) and mangled facts, I offer an opposing view. Mr. Webster implies that the objective of 1988 Executive Order 12656 was to suspend the Constitution and to provide for FEMA to set up a government under martial law. In fact, the order was issued to replace orders from 1952 and 1969, which were in need of revision. It was not specifically written to give FEMA outrageous powers, but to include FEMA and other agencies and branches in crisis planning. The order specifically states that the Constitution should be followed and the constitutional government of the country should be preserved. Mr. Webster also states that the U.S. Northern Command’s establishment expressly readied our country for a military government. The U.S. Northern Command was established in 2002 as an umbrella to encompass agencies and roles such as NORAD, defense planning and security cooperation. There are other command structures set up across the world, including the U.S. Southern Command, which is tasked with contingency planning and operations. The intention is to be ready for action should the North American theater host a war or suffer grave losses from other disasters. The governmental policies cited by Mr. Webster should be seen not as backdoor politics but as proper and crucial planning. I would categorize his interpretation as something quite different than his self-branded patriotism, and that is, of course, my opinion.


Mark Everett
Flower Mound

Clearly, my "self-branded patriotism" is not a good enough reason for me to express distrust of our fearless leaders. I must be a traitor. Hang me, please. Or better still, be like that last jackass who slashed my tires. I'm sure it would make you feel better. Mr. Everett (who reads my blog), should organize a campaign to remove me from my job. I hope he whips up a frenzy in our little Pleasentville over this writer. I'd be honored. Maybe he could get a resolution through one of the local towns that declares me a threat to public safety. Or National Security. Ah, that's it. Give them your best fabrication as to why I should be the first to get thrown into your newly endorsed gullags, you Verbündete Schweine! Der Reich reitet wieder!

Everett, and all the other shills in the "shout-them-down" ranks, are getting pretty desperate lately. To attack my sources (Everett accused me of plagarism in a previous email), my politics and my patriotism is par for course among this brand of politi-thugs. But to completely neglect a rebuttal to the very point of my column is just sloppy. Like Hannity talking about Charlie Sheen's statements questioning the government's version of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001. Screw the facts - attack the individual. Make enough noise and the problem just goes away. Right?

WRONG.

Try again Everett, and bring some friends next time. Hell, it could be a community event. You could make it a yearly festival of intollerance. Kind of like Maifest. Or Loyalty Day. Wir marschieren auf eine Straße der Knochen! Heil Hitler!
"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."
- Henry Louis Mencken, Journalist
1880-1956
I wonder who Mr. Everett admires most. Five dollars says he emails me about it by the end of tomorrow. The clock is ticking.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Okay, I'm convinced ... sort of

I am convinced that one of two things have happened ...

1.) Most people (by an overwhelming margin) believe there is an ongoing government cover up of the events of September 11, 2001.

2.) A lot of people are, and they are highly organized and connected and are currently conducting an activist-charged poll campaign to influence major media. AND THAT IS STILL A POSITIVE THING. Even if they are not in the "true" majority (whatever the hell that is), they have just piqued the first television reporting on some very painful questions.

If they are right in some of their further reaching assumptions - bearing in mind that there are several schools of thought at play, and more than a few trojan horses of disinformation - that would explain why the Pentagon's Operation Talon considers the Internet to be an enemy stronghold. Google is right to fight Big Brother and the Justice Department. All the other major search engines handed over their databases hapily. But today I learned that Google did not list the story about Charlie Sheen lending some sort of celebrity to 9/11 Truth. Only after a concentrated web media feeding frenzy did the "Don't be Evil" company list what it seems 2/3rds of the web (and hundreds of thousands on MySpace) is talking about.

I've been amassing research quite obsessively for the past three days. There is an absolute deluge of data to sort through, but I am absorbing as much as I can. I am developing a number of opinions about the "movement" it's self, but I'll save that for the columns. This series of articles may take some time.

Among other things, I do believe that both World Trade Center towers went down in a planned demolition. They were full of explosives.

I consider that to be a fact. With said assumption comes so many more questions than my puny little existence can handle. True, there are factions that point the finger at Bush, at Cheney, at Rumsfield, Wolfowitz ... Even Israel. There is a lot of misinformation, as I said. But I cannot consider this to be a partisan issue. There is scientific proof of previously planted explosives in three NY buildings, and only two were hit by jets.

Why do you think those firefighters charged in so blindly? Why did the FBI confiscate tapes of the first responders' radio transmissions? The answer is right in front of you. But it just brings up more questions.

Obviously, the firefighters who died that day went in after orders that they would attack the fires from several angles. No steel frame building has ever gone down from fires melting its support frame. No fuel gets hot enough to drop that tower straight down. The firefighters knew what they were doing. They train for this exact thing. But there was an extra suprise in the building. They charged in, the towers came down. Their deaths are not forgotten.

Beyond this, I am not sure what the truth is. But I have swallowed the red pill, so to speak. I "officially" do not believe the government's version of what happened on 9/11. I do not give a f--k about Charlie Sheen, but he did a brave thing to lend his celebrity to this cause and give it more visibility. I am ashamed that it took a "movie star" to bring this to light. Regardless, the facts of Professor Stephen E. Jones' paper, "Why indeed did the WTC buildings collapse" really speak for themselves.

If you simply refuse to see it, sitting so plainly before you, then do not bother clicking the link below. You'll see victims of the attacks and New Yorkers closest to the towers collapse who all claim to have seen and heard explosions in the buildings. You can close your ears and eyes and mind, and pretend that this horrible, terrorizing rabbit-hole is not sucking at you like a Hoover vaccuum ... But eventually, the majority will hear the truth. I believe this is just the start. Foreshadowing. A sign of things to come.

Our national debate has shuffled to the edge of a cliff. We are about to plundge headlong into darkness, and we're not quite sure what we will find. This will become a partisan shouting match in less than a week, I promise you that. But if I've reached you before O'Reilly or Caulter or O'Hannity, or any of the shills, the demagaugs of the mainstream media, please know that these questions must be asked. Politics and truth are two wholly seperate things.

If you are of an open mind, and believe that once in a while governments (locally and in greater Americana and the rest of the world) lie, watch this 40 minute film ...


9/11 Truth hits CNN

Charlie Sheen recently went public with his views about a government cover-up of what really happened on Sept. 11, 2001. CNN is the first major media outlet to cover it. The show sparked such a strong public response, the network went directly to one of the most outspoken advocates of the 9/11 Truth movement - Alex Jones of InfoWars.com and PrisonPlanet.com.

Here's the clip.

Today, CNN has a poll on 9/11 - another first. Click here to vote.

Do you think the government is covering up what REALLY happened on 9/11?

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Texas arresting bar patrons for being drunk

The fascists are taking hold! The victims of this egregious encroachment on our rights have committed NO CRIME! If nobody speaks up about this, it will become commonplace around the country. Just like DUI checkpoints on roads outside of bars, this is a shot fired across the bow of American freedom.

Even a middle-school student could tell you this is unconstitutional. It must not stand!


From MSNBC ...

Texas arresting people in bars for being drunk
Undercover agents pursue inebriates in a pre-emptive strategy

SAN ANTONIO, Texas - Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said on Wednesday.

The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission’s Carolyn Beck.

Being in a bar does not exempt one from the state laws against public drunkenness, Beck said.

The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.

“We feel that the only way we’re going to get at the drunk driving problem and the problem of people hurting each other while drunk is by crackdowns like this,” she said.

“There are a lot of dangerous and stupid things people do when they’re intoxicated, other than get behind the wheel of a car,” Beck said. “People walk out into traffic and get run over, people jump off of balconies trying to reach a swimming pool and miss.”

She said the sting operations would continue throughout the state.

The only answer is drugs. Lots of drugs.

This is subtle, but creepy. Watch this video ...



Did you see the twitch? His head jumped to the right, and his shoulder came up. It looked involuntary, didn't it? That was unnatural. And this is not the first time. Bush's little 'tics' have been widely noted, especially after the nomination of Harriet Meyers.

Here is video evidence of Bush's relentlessly twitching jaw.
(QickTime format - Download QuickTime.)

Pardon me for suggesting it, but the only time I have ever seen someone do that is after coccain or methamphetamine use. And I've been around drug people ... This man has his finger on "the button," so to speak, and he cavorts in front of the press like he is a drug addict?

Just what the hell is going on here?

Texas Supreme Court Justice may challenge state's ENTIRE GOP primary results

A former member of the Texas Supreme Court is saying that he may challenge the state's ENTIRE GOP primary election. Whistleblowers are claiming that votes were compromised in many counties, and the numbers seem to agree.

Excerpts from the press release are below. Story via The Brad Blog.

**Read it**

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (March 16, 2006)
CONTACT: David Rogers, Campaign Manager, (512) 923-6188

(Austin)

Former Texas Supreme Court Justice Steve Smith may file an election contest or request for recount, says “serious mistakes were made.”

Former Texas Supreme Court Justice Steve Smith announced today that he has taken the next step towards filing an election contest or request for recount in his race for Texas Supreme Court, Place 2. “Serious Mistakes were made in the counting of ballots in Tarrant County. We want one fair, accurate and complete count,” Smith said. “To that end, we have filed a Public Information Act request with the Tarrant County Elections Administrator seeking to review public documents relating to the Republican Party primary election in Tarrant County,” added David Rogers, Smith's campaign manager.

“Unfortunately, the true result in Tarrant County may never be known,” said David Rogers, Campaign Manager for former Justice Smith. Though there were 211 election day voting locations for the 635 precincts, audit tapes reporting the election results in each machine were run in only 103 locations. One hundred and eight (51%) of the voting locations did not have properly run audit tapes.

Initial results in Tarrant County included 27,895 phantom votes. The final statewide margin between Smith and Willett was 5,441 votes. The first “corrected” result reported by Tarrant County was a margin of 7,922 (62%-38%). That margin is larger in terms of raw votes than the margin in Harris County, Dallas County or Bexar County, all of which have substantially larger populations than Tarrant County. The “corrected” results switched the first and second place results in Tarrant County's 342th District Court.

Those numbers for Tarrant County are suspect in part because Tarrant County voted for Smith in the 2004 primary by 11,423 to 10,331 (53%-47%), and Smith only lost Tarrant County in the 2002 by 17,411 to 15, 215 (47%-53%). In 2002 and 2004, the statewide margins were substantially higher (7% and 6%, respectively) than the statewide margin in 2006 (less than 1%). The combined statewide margin between Smith and his primary opponents over three elections is less than 1/40th of one percent (417 votes). (Smith: 841,586; Rodriguez, Green & Willett combined: 842,003.) If Smith's margin in Tarrant County is actually the same as his margin in either 2002 or 2004, he won statewide.

Despite the fact that Tarrant County Interim Elections Administrator Gayle Hamilton has expressed a desire to count the Tarrant County ballots correctly, attorneys for the Tarrant County District Attorney's office and the Secretary of State's office have told Hamilton she may not count the ballots without a court order, an election contest or request for a recount.

“To date, there has not been a correct count of Tarrant County ballots,” said Rogers. “There has been an incorrect count and there has been an attempt to correct the errors in that count. What we want - and what we understand the County Elections Administrator and the County Republican Chair want - is a single correct count of the ballots in Tarrant County. We know for certain that mistakes were made, and the acknowledged mistakes changed the Tarrant County result by a number of votes more than double the remaining statewide margin. Former Justice Smith thinks that a single accurate count is a reasonable request.”
All the rest.

Brad Blog is also going on about a U.S. Navy Systems Engineer who claims to have been a first-hand witness to a fake election that has just been certified by the local DEMOCRATIC PARTY, in spite of the fact that the results were off by as much as 20 percent from initial returns. Excerpt ...
From: Jerry Lobdill [EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED]
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 7:23 PM
To: TheBradBlog@cville.com
Subject: EXCLUSIVE: Hart InterCivic Whistleblower Warned of Texas, Ohio E-Voting 'Fraud' Concerns in 2004!

I am a retired physicist and system engineer who has specified, designed, tested, and evaluated computing systems for the US Navy for 30 years.

I live in Tarrant County and have been involved closely with the campaign of Doreen Geiger for Democratic Party County Chair. The March 7, 2006 election included the general election for this race. I was there on election night when Tarrant County reported periodic results of the election. The numbers of votes reported were so large that they were astonishing. The results were updated at 90 minute intervals six times. The final reported vote count for County Chair was about 44,000.
He concludes with a bleak statement ...
Tonight the Democratic Party of Tarrant County, in violation of the State Rules voted to approve the vote when they didn't have a quorum present. The incumbent County Chair refused to recognize points of order several times during a heated exchange on the issue. The Chair shouted down several people who rose to a point of order, and rammed the vote through. This Chair behaves as if he had some sort of financial interest in electronic voting.

Democracy is dead here.
All the rest.

MichaelMoore.com plugs my paper

So, I was going through some of my old work from Binary Culture when I found a piece I had reposted from Michael Moore's website. I clicked through because I hadn't seen Mike's site in a while. I thought Fahrenheit 9/11 was a solid film, but really could have gone so much deeper into the sins of the Bush crime family. Nevertheless, I NEVER imagined that a publication I write for would be plugged on his website.

Lo and behold, the Moore has sent your faithful muckraker millions of readers! Note The Lone Star Iconoclast is Mike's "Link of the Week." And let me tell you, that was one hell of an issue. I was particularly fond of Leon's interview with Leuren Moret on how Depleted Uranium munitions cause widespread disease and birth defects. Check it out. While you are at it, take a peek at my contribution to the paper.


Tuesday, March 21, 2006

An examination of the 9/11 Truth movement, part one

The Webster Retort
By Stephen Webster
Investigative Reporter
Publication date: March 24, 2006

An examination of the 9/11 Truth movement, part one

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was leisurely walking out of my college philosophy class when a friend ran up to me. He was short of breath and red in the face. He stopped and panted a few times. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Dude, we’re under attack,” he said. “They flew planes into New York. Anarchy is breaking out!”

I raced home, unsure of what was happening. My vehicle’s radio had broken weeks earlier, so I could only hope to find a television. I parked the car in my driveway and raced into my room, throwing the door open and picking up the remote with one smooth motion. The dial was already tuned to ABC. As the screen came into focus, I could hear the sound of screaming people. “Oh my God! Oh my God!” trembled a voice from off-screen.

Then the first tower collapsed.

As I watched in utter horror, thousands of pounds of debris fell from the skyscraper and into the streets of New York. It collapsed straight down, and the rest of the building went with it. “We have no idea what caused this,” said Peter Jennings. “Anybody who’s ever watched a building being demolished on purpose knows that if you’re going to do this, you’re going to have to get at the under infrastructure of the building in order to bring it down.” Little did Jennings know, he had just given birth to what has come to be called the 9/11 Truth movement.

As the day went on, millions of Americans sat in front of their televisions, transfixed by news broadcasts coming out of New York and Washington DC. Many of the reports aired that day were never revisited by this country’s major news networks. Hundreds of people in New York were caught on tape talking about a series of explosions that rocked the base of the towers hours after the first plane hit.

A firefighter peppered with dirt and blood stared hopelessly into an MSNBC camera, recounting his experience. “As we were gettin’ our gear on and making our way to the stairway, there was a heavy-duty explosion,” he said. An NYPD officer on CBS claimed, “We never even got close to the building. The explosion blew and it knocked everybody over.” On Fox News, a bald man in a white shirt recounted his experience escaping WTC7, the third tower to fall that day. “I was down in the basement. All the sudden we heard a loud bang. The elevator doors blew open and some guy was burnt up. So I dragged him out. His skin was all, hanging off.”

What is the 9/11 Truth movement? It is a collection of 43 authors, 18 professors, historians and theologians, a former Congresswoman, a host of television and print journalists, musicians and actors who have rallied around 49 individuals who lost family members on Sept. 11. According to 911truth.org, an August 31, 2004 Zogby poll found that 49.3 percent of New York City residents and 41 percent of New York state residents believe that the president had knowledge of the coming attacks and “consciously failed” to act. Sixty-six percent of those surveyed called for a new investigation into the attacks in light of questions Congress and the 9/11 Commission failed to answer.

Some of the central organizing tools for the 9/11 Truth movement have surfaced in the form of documentary films such as “9/11 Revisited” and “9/11 – In Plane Sight.” Like any movement without a central organizing group, the “truth” message is split into several factions. Each faction within the truth movement has a slightly different version of the events, but they all agree on one thing: airplanes alone did not bring the towers down.

The “official” finding of the 9/11 Commission is that both towers collapsed upon themselves after the building’s steel frame melted from extended exposure to burning jet fuel. Stephen E. Jones, a professor of physics at Brigham Young University, authored a report titled, “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?” Among his various allegations, Jones insists that the fire could not have melted the steel supports in both towers, as jet fuel burns at a maximum of 1000 degrees Celsius, but steel does not give way until temperatures reach over 1500 degrees Celsius.

“[T]he official theory lacks repeatability in that no actual models or buildings (before or since 9-11-01) have been observed to completely collapse due to the proposed fire-based mechanisms,” writes Jones. “On the other hand, dozens of buildings have been completely and symmetrically demolished through the use of pre-positioned explosives. And high-temperature chemical reactions can account for the observed large pools of molten metal, under both Towers and WTC 7, and the sulfidation of structural steel. The controlled-demolition hypothesis cannot be dismissed as "junk science" because it better satisfies tests of repeatability and parsimony. It ought to be seriously (scientifically) investigated and debated.”

Yet today, no such debate exists in our government or mainstream media.

It is for these reasons that I will be chronicling, to the best of my ability, the various theories that have risen out of the ashes of the World Trade Center towers. From the mysterious attempts by the Bush administration to block an investigation into the attacks to the strange lack of evidence that a plane hit the Pentagon, I’ll be going there, and I’m taking you with me. Over the next few weeks (or months, maybe), this column will be dedicated to exploring this large and growing movement.

For a preview of what I will be covering, point your web browser to www.911revisited.com and click “Watch movie online.” This documentary is a collection of news reports (some of which I have cited above) aired on Sept. 11. Also covered in the film are a couple of speeches aired on C-SPAN, given by scholars who support the 9/11 Truth movement.

Watch it, and keep your tin hats close at hand, campers. This is going to get a little weird.

The Weird, Turned Pro.

Created by The Gonzo Muckraker
Based in Dallas, Texas
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