My Fellow American ...

The response to my recent post, "Norway's 9/11," has been one-sided: all positive. Among the highlights was an email from Elizabeth Potter of My Fellow American dot US, drawing my attention to the site and to this video:



I hope you will spend a few minutes watching it, and considering the consequences of all our actions.

Moonwalking To Oblivion Without A Billionaire Sponsor: What's A Blogger To Do?

The early death of Michael Jackson has triggered some powerful memories, very few of which have anything to do with Jackson or his sudden demise. Nonetheless, let me take you back 25 years...

In the summer of 1984, Michael Jackson was on his "Victory Tour", moonwalking his way through cuts from "Thriller" in his first public performances after he "set his hair on fire for Pepsi" in late January of that year.

I had spent the early months of '84 trying to piece together the remnants of a jazzy-punky rock band which had finally gelled after months of preparation, played a fantastic set on New Year's Eve, and then imploded -- in my own living room, on the same weekend when Michael's hair was burning.

In our case, the fragments which were not mortally wounded in the implosion eventually reunited, wrote some new material, and played in public together again just a few times before a second implosion. And one of those performances fell on a hot and humid Saturday night almost exactly 25 years ago, a night when Michael Jackson was in town.

Were we crazy to play opposite such a huge concert? Not at all. None of the people who went to see Michael Jackson could be bothered with us, and none of the people who came to see us could be bothered with moonwalking or "Thriller" or any of the other very popular, totally inane artefacts of the little dude who somehow became "The King of Pop".

Forgive me if a bit of disrespect is showing. I will not for a moment deny that Michael Jackson was a fantastic singer, especially as a youngster, or that we would have been very lucky to have such a talented vocalist in our band.

On the other hand, I remain convinced that we made a good move by scheduling a gig when his fans were elsewhere. Our music was direct and honest, often too raw but never too polished, not commercially marketed or even amenable to such treatment. Michael could not have said this of his material, in 1984 or at any stage of his long and very successful career.

We once wrote a song that (among other things) made fun of him. But he never mentioned us. So there's another point of asymmetry.

On the Monday morning after our simultaneous concerts, while I was returning the PA gear we'd rented from a local music store, I heard this on the radio: Scalpers had been getting more for a pair of tickets to see Michael Jackson than it cost us to stage our entire show.

He drew about a hundred thousand fans. We might have drawn a hundred. And we didn't even play well that night. I remember being disappointed about that.

But on the other hand, the people who came to see us that night, the people who came to hear us, the people who came with their eyes and ears open ... they got something they couldn't have found on the Victory Tour, or anywhere else, for that matter. Some of them still talk about that show -- in complimentary terms! It wouldn't have mattered whether we played well or not. What we were doing -- what we were trying to do -- appealed to a few people, maybe one in a thousand, maybe less. But it touched them in a much deeper way than the "King of Pop" -- or anything "pop" -- could have done.

There's a lesson in all this, or a moral to the story, and I'm still not sure what it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it helps to explain why my blog readership never seems to grow, no matter how much or how well I write; neither does it seem to shrink, no matter how rarely I post and no matter what I choose to write about.

What you get here is direct and honest, often too raw but never too polished, not commercially marketed or even amenable to such treatment. It's no wonder so few people are interested. But you can't get it -- or anything similar -- anywhere else.

Maybe it's no big deal, but I got thinking of all this when I heard of Jackson's death, and it all came back to me again when I read this piece from Scholars and Rogues, and even more especially when I considered an earlier, related piece there which deals with a pointed political question: Why don't progressive billionaires fund progressive bloggers (in much the same way that conservative billionaires fund conservative bloggers)?

I would argue that such funding is neither to be expected nor to be welcomed. I would argue that there's no such thing as a progressive billionaire, although there are a few billionaires who might pretend to be leaders and/or funders of a "progressive" opposition.

The earlier S&R post -- "Devil, meet Deep Blue Sea: how much should progressives spend reaching out to progressives?" -- quotes Jane Hamsher of FiredogLake, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos, and John Aravosis of AmericaBlog, all of whom are upset that major Democratic organizations are asking for (and receiving) their support, but aren't supporting them in any tangible way, not even by advertising on their sites.

It may be pointed out that those who obtain support for free have no incentive to pay for it.

Much more importantly, in my view, the sites in question share a common approach to all the most important issues: they bury them if they can't ignore them altogether. This tendency is unfortunately prevalent at all high-traffic "progressive" websites, including the one where I used to volunteer my services.

Markos Moulitsas, the founder and chief director of censorship at DailyKos, was trained by the CIA and makes no bones about the fact that posters who entertain conspiracy theories regarding 9/11 are not welcome at his site.

The other sites mentioned above are a bit less pointed and a touch more subtle but they are nevertheless written by and for people who are not much interested in certain very inconvenient facts: facts about 9/11 in particular; facts about bogus terrorism in general; facts about how the entire "global war on terror" (or whatever Obama wants us to call it this week) is based on a fictional view of history and our role in it; facts about how the Democrats have been complicit in selling both the fictional history and the endless, limitless war it entails.

Would I want to see these sites better funded? Would I want to see them drawing even larger audiences? Would I want their reporting even more constrained by vague doubts about what the billionaire sponsor might think? Dare I even hint of the possibility of explicit instructions from such a sponsor? Or, conversely, can anyone imagine a billionaire-sponsored website without an explicit list of instructions?

An alliance between faux-progressive billionaires and faux-progressive bloggers would be a powerful way to destroy any hope of a meaningful political opposition arising in 21st-century America. But then again, there's no need to destroy things that don't exist.

And that's why it won't happen. There's no need for it. And it wouldn't matter anyway, because 99% of all Americans surveyed have already said ... that given the choice ... they'd prefer moonwalking!

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please help to put this article on Scoop's front page!

If It's Not Corporate TV, Then What Is It?

What is it, indeed? It's Not Corporate TV, a sharp new set of interlocking video blogs, with interesting entries in each of the following categories:

Project For The New American Century
911
Iran, Iraq, the Petrodollar
Bogus Terror Propaganda
John Pilger Documentaries
Mainstream Corporate Media and Propaganda
Electronic Voting

For instance, on the "Bogus Terror Propaganda" page, you can watch a piece called The Origin and Myth of 'Al Qaeda'. It's an excerpt from the BBC series The Power Of Nightmares, and it's well worth the ten minutes it will take you to watch it.

That's just one example, and there's much more, including links to some very fine blogs! It's nothing like the corporate TV you're used to, if you're used to corporate TV. And that's why it's Not Corporate TV -- bright, honest, and very well done!

Ha ha! One for the good guys!!

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Cossiga Spills More Beans On Our "Security Blanket"

Chris Floyd's site has been problematic lately; here is his most recent piece, in full (with a few comments):

Security Blanket: Western Democracy and the Strategy of Tension

by Chris Floyd | November 24, 2008

The idea that a democratic government would deliberately create fake "extremist groups" then send them out to foment violence and terrorism -- in order to discredit legitimate opposition to elite rule and to "justify" authoritarian powers -- has long been derided in "serious" circles as that worst of modern heresies: "conspiracy theory." Anyone advancing such a preposterous notion is instantly relegated to the ranks of the "lunatic fringe," and dismissed with varying degrees of contempt and condescension.

And the woeful fact that millions of the ruminants out there in the vast public herd swallow these wild tales and believe that their betters are up to no good is also widely deplored in the higher circles of public discourse. As any fully-accredited, perk-laden, sinecured think-tanker can tell you, democratic governments are led by men and women devoted to public service. Sure, there can be fierce disputes over policies and approaches and outcomes and ideologies and competence. Sure, some people may step over a line here and there in their pursuit of what they believe is the nation's best interests. But just as western democracies do not torture, do not launch aggressive wars, do not spy upon their own people or imprison them by the millions, they most assuredly do not create and support extremist groups and instigate acts of terror and chaos to advance authoritarian agendas.

It is indeed unfortunate that the general public is prey to these disturbing theories, which breed such a widespread distrust of the noble intentions and essential (if occasionally misguided or incompentently executed) goodness of our leading men and women. However, there is a very reasonable explanation for the credence given to these fringe beliefs:

They happen to be true.

We've written often here of the Pentagon's plan to foment terrorism where needed to achieve the goals of the "National Security State." This is but one of a staggering array of examples of the use of "the strategy of tension" by the "advanced" Western democracies of the modern world. This week came yet another. As Robert Mancini reports in the Guardian, the former president of Italy, Francesco Cossiga [photo], let a great many cats out of the bag when he gave some sage advice to Italy's current interior minister, Robert Maroni, on how to deal with the ongoing protests by students and professors over funding cuts for higher education.

Cossiga had previously let more than a few cats out of the same bag, when he said everybody on the inside knows that 9/11 was an inside job, planned and executed by the CIA and Mossad.

Chris Floyd continues:

As Mancini notes, Cossiga -- who had once been interior minister himself, as well as prime minister -- told the Quotidiano Nazionale [Italy's National Daily]:

"Maroni should do what I did when I was secretary of the interior. He should withdraw the police from the streets and the universities, infiltrate the movement with secret (provacateurs) agents, ready to do anything, and, for about 10 days, let the demonstrators devastate shops, set fire to cars and lay waste the cities. After which, strengthened by popular consent, the sound of ambulance sirens should be louder than the police cars. The security forces should massacre the demonstrators without pity, and send them all to hospital. They shouldn't arrest them, because the magistrates would release them immediately, but they should beat them up. And they should also beat up those teachers who stir them up. Especially the teachers. Not the elderly lecturers, of course, but the young women teachers.

Mancini notes that Cossiga's advice tracks closely with his own experience at the head of Italy's security organs in the 1970s:

For students of Italian political history, the interview is fascinating for the light it sheds on Cossiga's political views and in particular his activities between 1976 and 1978 when he too was interior minister, presiding over the police. In 1977, a demonstration by the Radical Party (partito radicale) was attacked by armed individuals who opened fire causing the death Giorgiana Masi, a 20 year-old girl.

Cossiga could not, or would not, explain what took place that day. More specifically, he was unable to shed light on whether the attackers came from within the police force....

Hence the interest in the recent interview, which sheds light on one of the most secretive periods of Italian history - the so-called "strategy of tension" that began with the 1969 bombing of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Milan (carried out by the far-right and blamed on anarchists) through to the events at the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001 where the mysterious right-wing "black-blok" group created the mayhem and destruction which brought forth the police violence against thousands of anti-globalisation protestors.

Yes, the story of terrorist creation, chaos and murder by Western governments is an old one -- especially in Italy, the epicenter of Operation Gladio, which I outlined in a Moscow Times column some years ago:

"You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force…the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

This was the essence of Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of terrorism and deceit directed by the intelligence services of the West – against their own populations.

Hundreds of innocent people were killed or maimed in terrorist attacks – on train stations, supermarkets, cafes, offices – which were then blamed on "leftist subversives" or other political opponents. The purpose, as stated above in sworn testimony by Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra, was to demonize designated enemies and panic the public into supporting ever-increasing powers for government leaders – and their elitist cronies.

First revealed by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in 1991, Gladio (from the Latin for "sword") is still protected to this day by its founding patrons, the CIA and MI6. Yet parliamentary investigations in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have shaken out a few fragments of the truth over the years. These have been gathered in a new book, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, by Daniele Ganser, as Lila Rajiva reports on CommonDreams.org.

Originally set up as a network of clandestine cells to be activated behind the lines in case of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, Gladio quickly expanded into a tool for political repression and manipulation, controlled and funded by NATO and Washington. Using right-wing militias, underworld figures, government provocateurs and secret military units, Gladio not only carried out widespread terrorism, assassinations and electoral subversion in democratic states like Italy, France and West Germany, but also bolstered fascist tyrannies in Spain and Portugal, abetted the military coup in Greece, and aided Turkey's ferocious repression of the Kurds. All of this in the name of "preserving democracy" and "defending civilization."

Among the "smoking guns" unearthed by Ganser is a Pentagon document, Field Manual FM 30-31B, which detailed the methodology for launching terrorist attacks in nations that "do not react with sufficient effectiveness" against "communist subversion." Ironically, the manual states that the most dangerous moment comes when leftist groups "renounce the use of force" and embrace the democratic process. It is then that "US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger." Naturally, these peace-throttling "special operations must remain strictly secret," the document warns.

Indeed, it would not do for, say, the families of the 85 people ripped apart by the August 2, 1980 bombing of the Bologna train station to know that their loved ones had been murdered by "men inside Italian state institutions and…by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence," as the Italian Senate concluded after its investigation in 2000.

The Bologna atrocity is an example of what Gladio's masters called "the strategy of tension" – fomenting fear to keep populations in thrall to "strong leaders" who will protect the nation from the ever-present terrorist threat. And as Rajiva notes, this strategy wasn't limited to Western Europe. It was applied – with gruesome effectiveness – in Central America by the Reagan-Bush administrations. During the 1980s, rightwing death squads, guerrilla armies and state security forces – armed, trained and supplied by the United States – murdered tens of thousands of people throughout the region, often acting with particular savagery at those times when peaceful solutions to the conflicts seemed about to take hold....

And as we have often noted here, similar operations -- the "El Salvador option," death squads, "High-Value Targeting," etc. -- have been an integral part of the Anglo-American subjugation of Iraq. Indeed, they are a pillar of the "counterinsurgency doctrine" proclaimed by the other president-in-waiting, David Petraeus, and now avidly embraced by the War Machine. As Tara McElvey reports in The American Prospect, the Pentagon is eager to apply "High-Value Targeting" and refinements of the "Phoenix Program" -- in which U.S. forces and local proxies murdered more than 20,000 people -- and the whole panoply of "psy-ops" to imperial imbroglios around the world, applying them "to Afghanistan, then Pakistan, the Philippines, Colombia, Somalia, and elsewhere."

It's true, of course, that the American people -- and Europeans, as well -- are showing signs of growing weariness and wariness of the heavy-handed security regimes their governments have imposed upon them. There also seems to be little enthusiasm for plowing ahead in the various killing fields opened up by their elites to reap the enormously profitable blood fruits of war. Public toleration for this extravagant adventurism will be even more diminished as the cratering of the global economy -- caused by the greed and deceit of those same elites -- continues to deepen.

But more war is exactly what we've been promised by our agents of change. More war, an even bigger War Machine, "tougher" security measures, national ID cards packed with personal data and tracking devices, more surveillance cameras, new "preventive detention" laws -- and more unbounded authority to use public money to bail out the elite. Yet how to make this happen in the current atmosphere of exhaustion and anxiety? How to catalyze the public into continuing to support the Security State? How to discredit the rising chorus of opposition to neocolonialism, elite cronyism, rampant militarism and growing authoritarianism?

It's not a tough question, really:

Elite elders like Francesco Cossiga know the answer: the strategy of tension. The Gladio way. Was this the kind of thing Joe Biden was talking about, when he said the "young president" would be tested by a crisis, and forced to take unpopular measures in response?

It seems our "interesting times" are going to continue unabated in this bold new era.

The 9/11 Denial Movement still sings refrains like "Nobody would ever do such a thing", and "Nobody would even think such a thing". But as Francesco Cossiga has admitted, all the national security insiders know it's standard practice ... besides which, the falsity of the official story was obvious from Day One.

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Ludicrouser And Ludicrouser: The Alleged Liquid Bombing Plot, Revisited Again

In the UK, the prosecution has laid out its case against the alleged terrorist plotters who have come to be known as the "Liquid Bombers", and it's much different than the stories that were leaked just after the suspects were arrested, two years ago this weekend.

Those stories sparked considerable interest at this blog, where chemistry is no barrier. And the previous leaked versions of the alleged plot were utterly preposterous, as I've pointed out several times since they were leaked.

But the new alleged plot -- the one testified to in court by British authorities -- is even more ludicrous than the alleged plots in any of the previously leaked stories.

The technical difficulties inherent in the new alleged plot have been hinted at -- just barely -- in mainstream media reports, such as one from New York Times reporter Elaine Sciolino, as published in the Seattle Times, which read:

Using a sealed 17-ounce sports drink, the men planned to drain the plastic bottle through a tiny hole in the bottom and then inject an explosive mix of concentrated hydrogen-peroxide, along with food coloring to make it look like the original beverage. Super Glue would seal it shut. AA batteries filled with the explosive HMTD would serve as the detonator; a disposable camera would serve as the trigger.

Prosecutors said the men planned to carry the components onto seven trans-Atlantic planes, assemble them and then explode them in midair.

WOW! Is that ALL they were trying to do?

Is this admirable brevity, or lying by omission? You decide.

Instructions for such a plot, in plain English, would run like this:

Go get some AA batteries, and start taking them apart. But do it very carefully; make sure you don't damage them. We have to be able to put them back together later -- without the cores -- and make them look like new.

What? It sounds tough? Don't worry: that's nothing compared to the other things we have to do.

Buy some bottles of sports drink -- Oasis, Lucozade, it really doesn't matter. And get a syringe, too. We'll use it to empty the bottles, and we'll use it again to refill them later. Remember to inject air into the bottles while emptying them; otherwise they'll collapse.

And that would be no good, because we need to keep them in mint condition. That's why we're not going to unscrew the tops. But don't worry. With enough patience, this part of the job is easy.

Also, buy some hydrogen peroxide -- lots of it. We won't need much, but the peroxide we need is much stronger than what you can buy in the shops. So we'll have to boil it down ourselves. This part of the process will be difficult and dangerous, but don't worry.

The danger has to do with the nature of hydrogen peroxide. It decomposes spontaneously, producing water and oxygen and heat. So if you boil it, you've got additional heat, and a strong possibility of spontaneous detonation. But don't worry. The concentrated peroxide we produce will be our ticket to paradise -- and countless virgins!

Get some Tang, and some cherry Kool-Aid, too. We'll add them to our concentrated peroxide, once it's ready, to make it look like the original sports drinks.

Then, using the syringe, we'll refill the bottles. This is going to be difficult and time-consuming. Remember to draw air from the bottle with each injection. We don't want the pressure in the bottle to build up.

It's dangerous, but not too dangerous. So don't worry. Just don't let any of the concentrated peroxide touch you -- or your clothing -- because it'll burst into flame.

Get some disposable cameras. We'll re-wire the flash and use that surge of electricity for something else. Ha ha ha!

Oh, right! The primary charge. Here's the sort of dangerous part. We're going to make some HMTD. That's "hexamethylene triperoxide diamine". We can make it with common household items, so you'd better buy some nitrogen-based fertilizer, and some bleach or strong acid, too.

Once we've made the HMTD, we're going to put the batteries back together with HMTD inside them. Take your time with this stuff; HMTD is sensitive to shock and friction, so we always have to be careful with it. But Allah will protect us. So don't worry.

Then we'll sneak everything onto airplanes, and be cool about it. Once we're safely aloft, we'll tape the battery to the bottle, wire it to the disposable camera, and presto! An anti-aircraft bomb.

The sugar in the Tang will give it even more explosive power. Just wait and see.

When the Lucozade bottles are full, seal the holes with Super Glue. This is where it gets tricky. But don't worry.

The concentrated peroxide will continue to decompose, giving off oxygen and building up pressure in the bottles. The bottles are not designed to hold pressurized contents; so it won't take much to rupture them. And that's why -- as I say -- things might get a bit tricky once they're sealed.

Because after we seal them we're going to put them in our pockets, and we're going to carry them to the airport that way, and of course if any of the bottles burst from the pressure, our clothing will burst into flame immediately. So we'll pray for Allah to be with us -- and maybe we should also pray for some help from the maniac who thought this plan would work.

Where is he, anyway? Why is he never around when you need him? And do you really think the conspiracy theorists are crazy when they say he must have been working for ISI -- and MI6?

I'm not claiming the "instructions" quoted above were delivered. We have good reason to believe no instructions of the sort were ever delivered to anyone. But that's a bit of a problem for the British authorities.

The jury is out in this case -- they've been out for a while, and now they're enjoying a two-week holiday. From the look of things, they appear set to deliberate forever. According to published media reports, it seems they haven't got enough evidence to convict the accused "terrorist plotters", and in the virulently anti-Muslim political climate of the day, they clearly haven't got enough confidence to acquit them. So there it hangs -- in a fine and apparently synthetic balance.

The prosecution showed the jury a video of a bomb exploding. They said this was the sort of bomb that the alleged plotters were allegedly plotting to make. And the explosion was terrific. In fact the bomb components were so sensitive that the police had to assemble the demonstration bomb with a robot -- in order not to risk injuring anyone through premature detonation.

But the judge had to remind the jury that the explosion they saw had come from a bomb made by the police, and that the alleged plotters had made no such bomb.

The police seized many bottles of garden-variety [3%] hydrogen peroxide, and one bottle of highly concentrated peroxide. The prosecution showed surveillance tapes of the alleged plotters visiting the shops, buying Lucozade and glassware ... but where did the concentrated peroxide come from? Nobody's saying. Why isn't this question of interest? I have my ideas.

Concentrated peroxide cannot be obtained without credentials. Who in this case had credentials? Who could obtain peroxide without leaving an incriminating trail? Who had the ability to plant evidence?

The alleged plotters met in a flat they had bought for about $270,000. Where did the money come from? Nobody's saying. Why isn't this question of interest? I have my ideas.

Several of the alleged plotters have already pleaded guilty to planning to cause a disturbance. But they all deny that they were trying to destroy airplanes, and the prosecution doesn't appear to have proven that they were.

The police had a surveillance camera in the alleged plotters' flat. The saw and heard everything that went on there. And yet they don't have enough evidence to convince a jury that the alleged plotters were doing what they were allegedly doing. So the jury continues to deliberate.

We could see this coming a long time ago. The police began a search of the woods near where the suspects lived two years ago, on August 9th. On that day, they claim, they found a suitcase presumably owned by the suspects, containing bomb-making materials, presumably put there by the suspects. But they continued to search the woods, apparently finding nothing, and the search was finally called off in December, having cost the taxpayers tens of millions.

If I were on the jury, I'd be saying:

Let's get out of here. If the cops had access to the flat to install a video camera, they had access to plant evidence. If they can't show where the most incriminating stuff came from, it's only logical to assume they put it there themselves. What are we gonna do, miss the rest of our lives sitting here arguing about it? We've been had, again. Enough is enough. What are we waiting for?

I might not convince everybody, but that wouldn't be my goal. I'd be waiting for the judge to indicate that a unanimous verdict wasn't necessary, that 11-1 or 10-2 would be good enough -- just like in the most famous previous HMTD case, and then I would only have to find nine intelligent life forms among the other eleven jury members, and we could all get out of there alive.

Not that it would matter much. The alleged plotters aren't smart enough to disassemble AA batteries without destroying them, much less get over all the other technical hurdles. But that's not a knock; nobody's smart enough to do things that are impossible.

And meanwhile the forces of tyranny already have everything they could have asked for from this case: There's ridiculously tight airport security all over the world now, all because of this palpably bogus story. And that's just the beginning of what they have gained.

The fear injected into the political echo machine two years ago reverberated for a long time -- long enough to provide some "political capital" for those who fight this bogus Terror War -- and played no small part in the passage of the Military Commissions Act, which gives our unelected president retroactive immunity for having ordered torture, as well as the power to define what shall constitute torture in the future.

This outrageous presidential power is much more important than putting a handful of knuckleheads in prison.

And so, even if the alleged plotters are acquitted, the forces of darkness will have won -- again!

~~~

I'll have more on this story again soon.

thirty-fourth in a series

~~~

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Big Surprise In Buffalo: The Art Professor Wasn't A Terrorist After All!

After a four-year nightmare, art professor Steve Kurtz has finally shaken free of the Department of Homeland Terror.

The trouble for Kurtz started in May of 2004, when his wife died suddenly in her sleep. Police came out to investigate the unexpected death, and while searching the home, they found harmless scientific and art supplies, which they claimed were evidence of terrorism.

Over the next almost-four years, a bundle of alphabet agencies did their best to misrepresent Kurtz and his art supplies as a threat to our security, but -- amazingly -- the case against him was thrown out of court, with a federal judge calling the government's entire indictment "insufficient on its face."

Kurtz spoke with Amy Goodman the other day; here's an excerpt from their conversation:

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to our next story, almost unfathomable, but true, about art in a time of terror. Even Kafka might have had trouble conjuring up this one.

Steve Kurtz is a professor of visual studies at SUNY, Buffalo — that’s State University of New York, Buffalo — a founding member of the award-winning art and theater group, Critical Art Ensemble. On May 11, 2004, his wife Hope tragically died in her sleep. When he called 911 for help, a nightmare that would last for the next four years began to unfold.

The police became suspicious of his art supplies and harmless bacteria cultures that he was using for an antiwar project about the public health impact of germ warfare programs. Kurtz was detained as a suspected bioterrorist, his home raided by the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Homeland Security. His belongings, his cat, even his wife’s body, were seized.

After a federal grand jury refused to charge Kurtz with bioterrorism, Kurtz and his colleague Robert Ferrell of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health were charged with federal mail and wire fraud concerning the acquisition of $256 of harmless bacteria. Under the PATRIOT Act, they could have faced up to twenty years in prison.

After four harrowing years, on April 21, a federal judge dismissed the government’s entire indictment against Kurtz as “insufficient on its face.” He’s been cleared of all charges.
...

Why don’t you tell us your story, beginning that day, May 11, 2004?

STEVE KURTZ: Well, that was a very dark day for me. I woke up that morning and found that my wife had died in her sleep. And kind of after a moment of shock that slowly broke into a kind of panic, I made my way to the telephone, called 911. They came quite rapidly. And as they looked around, they did as they had to do when a woman who, quite young at this age, forty-five, dies in their home and called the police. And the police came out and secured my home, and then three detectives showed up. And for the rest of that day, I was pretty much interrogated as a murder suspect.

And one of the things that caught the police attention’s eye was my home lab, which was filled with pretty basic innocuous equipment that I primarily use for molecular biology, for DNA experiments. And they wondered why I had that, and I explained to them that I was a professor at UB, University of Buffalo, and that my specialty was the intersection between art and science, and this was part of the basic equipment I needed to have, that the university didn’t supply us studios, so we had to create our own space for it. And, you know, I showed them work I had done online, showed them my resume, showed them catalogs. But they weren’t particularly convinced by that, and they were more convinced by the idea that if someone has scientific equipment in their home that they’re probably up to something nefarious. And as the detectives left that afternoon, they were of the opinion that the FBI was going to want to talk to me.

So the following day, as I went out to go to the funeral home to make arrangements for my wife’s cremation, about three or four FBI cars came screeching up, and I was put into illegal detention and basically soft-rendered, meaning I didn’t have to get drugged and flown off to Guantanamo. It was much nicer than that. It was the pleasant way to get rendered. They take you to a hotel and hold you there without charge, without being Miranda-ized, and put you through a lighter style of interrogation.

Thus began the incredible -- but true -- saga. Well, maybe it's not so incredible anymore, not in BushLand. If a skyscraper a quarter of a mile tall can disintegrate in 10 seconds -- just because of gravity -- and if that can happen three times in the same day -- but only on that day -- then nothing's incredible anymore, is it?

When the police initially searched the Kurtz home, they found an invitation with Arabic writing on it. They used this bit of Arabic to "prove" that Steve Kurtz was a terrorist, and this "proof" was then used to "justify" a warrant.

Nothing could have been further from the truth, but it doesn't matter anymore, not in BushLand.

STEVE KURTZ: And when the prosecutor was questioned about it in the first hearing, the judge asked, "You mean if he had a Koran in his house, you would have confiscated that and used that in this manner?" And the prosecutor said, "Yes."

Well, there you have it. If you can read or write Arabic, or if you possess the tiniest sample of Arabic writing, even if you doesn't understand what it says, you may not actually be a bioterrorist, but you'd better be very wary of the police, especially if your wife happens to die in the middle of the night.

But don't worry; they're keeping us safe from art teachers.

Donuts In The Parking Lot: Toronto "Terror Plot" Not What It Seemed, Says Gov't Mole

Thomas Walkom in the Toronto Star:

In the first full-fledged trial coming out of the case of the Toronto 18, the Crown is arguing that a youth (who cannot be named) participated in a "shocking and sensational" terrorist plot "to cause harm and death by attacking innocent lives."

But in a Brampton courtroom yesterday, RCMP informer Mubin Shaikh – the government's star witness – acknowledged that while this particular youth may have been an unsuccessful shoplifter (he was caught – twice), he knew nothing about alleged schemes to blow up buildings or behead politicians.

Rather, Shaikh said, he knew the young man as a quiet, shy, considerate teenager – a recent convert to Islam – who wanted to please the alleged ringleaders of the alleged plot but who, in the main, was just trying to fit in.

And he described the antics of those attending a Washago training camp as a comedy of errors, where the alleged jihadis melted holes in the soles of their running shoes, locked one vehicle's keys in the car, almost set a sleeping bag on fire and – instead of keeping a low profile – did doughnuts in a Canadian Tire parking lot.

This is the same Mubin Shaikh who said last week that this alleged training camp was actually quite serious and not just an exercise in "picking daisies."

But that was when he was being questioned by Crown prosecutor John Neander.

Yesterday, under questioning from defence lawyer Mitchell Chernovsky, Shaikh agreed that, really, nothing much happened during the December 2005 camping trip.

This is the big deal that the Canadian media have been scared of for the past two years? This is the face of international terrorism?

A camping trip where nothing much happened, according to the government's star witness!

Malkom continues:

He said a recorded lecture on jihad played to the group of teens and young men was so boring that some dozed off.

He said the so-called military training consisted of getting the campers to march up and down a road to keep warm.

He said that when an illegal handgun was used for target practice, the youthful campers were "freaked out" by the noise.

He agreed that the campers wore camouflage outfits mainly to protect their clothes during paintball games.

Last week, Shaikh testified that one of the alleged ringleaders gave a long allegorical speech in which he spoke of the need for Muslims to bring down "Rome" – which the RCMP informer said was a reference to the U.S.

Yesterday, Shaikh acknowledged that many of those present – including the person now on trial – wouldn't have a had a clue what the speech meant.

And he summed up the Washago adventure with these words: "Nobody knew what they were doing ... Idiocy seemed to be a constant theme."

I would go farther and suggest that idiocy seems to be a constant theme among those who support the so-called "Global War On Terror".

But it's not the only theme. Some people are getting rich. And some are getting their jollies. And many are getting killed, and more are having their lives destroyed, and even those who do not appear to be affected by terrorism or counter-terrorism are having their futures sucked out from under them, not to mention the futures of their children, and their grandchildren, and so on ... and on and on ...

And it's all bogus. Or at least most of it is. 9/11 was clearly bogus. The London 7/7 bombings were bogus. Neither attack was even investigated; instead the governments involved spent millions telling us what they want us to believe. The same thing has happened with the Madrid bombing and both bomb attacks in Bali -- and since then we've had a long string of bogus terror plots that were infiltrated if not created by government moles, and actual terror strikes by groups of actual terrorists who are funded and motivated by our government -- and that's bogus too, but in an even worse way!

And we can't even talk about any of this in the national media -- because why?

Because it's all bogus, that's why! The terror is bogus and the media is bogus! And every now and then they let a little bogus detail slip out, and a reporter writes a column about it, and then it disappears under a carpet of lies, never to be seen again -- except in blogs like this, which nobody reads anyway.

And there you have it: justification for the destruction of humanity. And it's all bogus!

Phantoms Of The Terror War: Daan de Wit on the Liquid Bombers

The stories we know about the most famous terrorists and the best known terrorist plots do not match up with the facts.

Thus begins an excellent article called "The phantom terrorists of the War on Terror: Part 1 - The Liquid Bombers", written in Dutch by Daan de Wit, translated into English by Ben Kearney, and published at Atlantic Free Press.

Excerpts :

August of 2006. A group of about 25 terrorists, later to become known as the Liquid Bombers, takes the West by the throat with their plan to crash approximately ten airplanes simultaneously. President Bush addresses the nation: 'If these terrorists had succeeded, they could have caused death on a massive scale. The plot appears to have been carefully planned and well-advanced. They planned to bring the components of their explosives on board in their carry-on luggage, disguised as bottled drinks and electronic devices'. According to Michael Chertoff, head of America's Homeland Security Department, the attack could potentially have resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties. The near-attack by the alleged terrorists gets a lot of publicity because of a huge operation by the police in which a number of airplanes are grounded. This is noteworthy because the suspects had already been under the radar for about one year and hadn't made any reservations, much less purchased tickets.
...

The Liquid Bombers wanted to make the explosive TATP (triacetone triperoxide) on board the aircraft. Gerry Murray of the Forensic Science Agency in Northern Ireland and Peter Fielden of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at the University of Manchester say that it would be extremely difficult to produce TATP by combining liquids in the restrooms of airplanes. A journalist from The Register consulted experts and describes the problems with the terrorist plan. [..] In order to arrive at TATP, sulphuric acid has to be added to acetone and peroxide drop by drop for several hours at just the right cold temperature while stirring continuously. When the axphyxiating fumes are released, they form white crystals at a temperature of below 10 degrees C (50 degrees F) after a minimum of six hours - though probably much longer - which then have to be harvested by way of filtration and dried for several hours. The thermometer has to be closely monitored as well, as TATP is very unstable, as witnessed by its nickname, 'Mother of Satan'. 250 grams of the white crystalline powder resembling sugar is needed for a substantial explosion, which means that per airplane you need sixteen times the content of an airplanes bathroom sink in order for the plan to succeed.
...

One year later [...] it became clear that a number of the Liquid Bombers had been trained by Jundullah (Army of Allah), a terrorist organization which, as ABCNews suggests, is being sponsored by the U.S. in their clandestine battle against Iran. The London Telegraph is even more specific and writes: '[...] the CIA is giving arms-length support, supplying money and weapons, to an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, which has conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan'. Prior to the training by Jundullah, the alleged terrorists - in connection with an earthquake relief operation - were present in camps run by the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), the parent organization of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). LET gets (financial) support form the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, which again is directly connected to the American intelligence agency - the CIA.
...

Even though it is for modern man easier to fall victim to a peanut or to lightning than to a terrorist, the notion of terror is still a reality of daily life. Terrorism is at the top of the agenda. The interests are huge. Large sums of money have been invested, whole careers are at stake and ad agencies - the same people who market everyday products such as deserts and insurance - make a lot of money off of expensive anti-terrorism campaigns...

All of which lends extra emphasis to the following very pertinent question:

What if it had been proven in court that the plan to explode ten or more airplanes with bombs manufactured on the spot was impossible, and all of the anxiety and security measures that followed were actually unnecessary?

The article is the first of a seven-part series that promises much.

I'd read the whole thing if I were you.

Miami Mice: One Aquitted, Mistrial For The Other Six

Almost but not quite lost in the excitement of the weekend:

Federal prosecutors have failed to secure a single conviction in a mass-entrapment operation set up in Florida by yet another FBI informant [read: agent provocateur] (no, not William "Jameel" Chrisman) who tried to incite seven Miami men to attack a Chicago landmark:

In a stinging defeat for the Bush administration, one of seven Miami men accused of plotting to join forces with Al Qaeda to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower was acquitted yesterday, and the case against the rest ended in a hung jury.
...

The White House had seized on the case to illustrate the dangers of homegrown terrorism and trumpet the government's post-Sept. 11, 2001, success in infiltrating and smashing terrorism plots in their earliest stages.
...

The group never actually made contact with Al Qaeda and never acquired any weapons or explosives.

Prosecutors said no attack was imminent, acknowledging that the alleged terror cell was "more aspirational than operational."
...

Lyglenson Lemorin [photo], 32, had been accused of being a "soldier" for alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste. He buried his face in his hands when his acquittal was read.

Lemorin, a legal US resident originally from Haiti, was subject to an immigration hold and would not be immediately released, his lawyer said.
...

Outside the courtroom, jury foreman Jeff Agron said ... the evidence was weakest against Lemorin, who had moved with his wife and children to Atlanta and gotten a job at a shopping mall after splitting with Batiste months before the group was arrested.

In a statement to the FBI, Lemorin said he never wanted to be associated with Al Qaeda and that he knew "nothing good would come from this."

That's for sure.

Federal prosecutor Richard Gregorie said the government planned to retry the six next year, and the judge said a new jury would be picked starting Jan. 7.