Fine Young Cannibals We | Media Control | Sorrows of Empire | Shock Doctrine | 64KB

	<start with the Conclusion>  the media pied piper is a luxury of venal citizens and their hypocrisy about the cannibalism of their culture ...deliberately and corporately (evil) - just dumb monkeys doing their job
	http://www.amazon.com/Media-Control-Second-Spectacular-Achievements/dp/1583225366 Media Control, Second Edition: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda by Noam Chomsky 47 of 59 people found the following review helpful: small book... powerful ideas., January 13, 2003 By  Pen Name? "mlarsony" (Toledo, OH United States) - See all my reviews Media Control is perhaps the best short introduction to Chomsky's thought on politics and propaganda around. Whereas books like 9-11 and "What Uncle Sam Really Wants" are choppy and prone to misunderstood interpretations by readers not already accustomed to Chomsky, Media Control is coherent, in depth and very easy and quick to read. The essay is from the time after the U.S. invasion of Iraq known as "Desert Storm" and traces the uses of propaganda and misinformation from that era back to the Wilson era and Walter Lippmann's theory of media control. Chomsky perhaps displays his dry wit in this short volume more than anywhere else, with his comparisson of the typical slogan "support our troops" to the absurd slogan "support the people in Iowa." What this makes clear, is the emptiness of the slogan. The question "do you support our troops?" cannot be answered with a "no" unless one is completely depraved. That question however masks the underlying question "do you support our policy?" which is something that elites in the govt. and media would prefer you not think about, because the answers would be more ambiguous and require real democratic discussion. The rulers and media heads would prefer to make those decisions for you, through what Lippmann dubbed "consent without consent". The mass media (now controlled largely by six major firms who all have holdings and enter into joint ventures with one another.) constrain debate on issues to within a moderate range, so of course most of the media will look to be at the "liberal" end of the allowed spectrum, but that only has the effect of cutting anything further to the "left" out of the discussion, so arguments many tend to go between something like the "hawks" who are for immediate war, unilaterally, and the "doves" largely represented in the media, who may tend to stand for "multi-lateralism" or waiting for more info. Thus, many who have other ideas on the subject are left out of mainstream debate, and thus seem to not exist. What we are left with is a host of false-dichotomies and debates that we don't even want to be in. ... Also, this new edition of Media Control is expanded to include transcript of a talk, previously printed in FAIR, which is a little thought experiment about how a journalist from Mars ... would cover the "war on terrorism." .../...  Permalink | Chomsky is brilliant, but ..., July 31, 2007 By  Gary Ark "GaryA" (Winchester, MA United States) - See all my reviews     Brilliant, very insightful. I have only one problem with Noam Chomsky's position - his absolution of general population from responsibilities of their government [which is the logic exploited by US Govt to justify the crushing of humans in other places -- BECAUSE 'they' are explicitly culpable for the circumstances 'they' created] . Yes, America is a big bully and there is a lot of propaganda, but isn't it what the majority wants to hear? Doesn't it feel good when we can beat up on countries like Yugoslavia to make us feel good about our might? The problem with Iraq and Vietnam is that, as with all bullies, if you fight back, the bully turns cowardly. Continuing resistance of Iraqis makes Americans, and media, feel insecure about themselves - with all that might and money we cannot control a few cavemen! Propaganda is successful not because there is a government conspiracy with media - it is successful because we want to hear ( palliatives, sugar-coated cornpone, the teevee toob-fed opiate of the comatose masses) what the media says. [it provides the plausible deniability, the '(DELIBERATE) Incompetence' the alibi of innocence from actual calibrations of mass genocide and cannibalism /js zog]
	http://www.amazon.com/Sorrows-Empire-Militarism-Republic-American/dp/0805070044 The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (American Empire Project) by Chalmers Johnson   516 of 555 people found the following review helpful: 'War is a Racket' - General Smedley Butler USMC, April 1, 2004 By  Augustine Redux (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews Am I the only one who thinks the the rest of his countryman are nuts? For the past 60 years and three generations, Americans have been led to believe that that spending billions for the Defense of the country is not only necessary but patriotic. Forget conspiracy theories and ideological agendas, just contemplate one fact: The USA spends more on military and intelligence funding in 2004 than it has spent at any one time in history. Fourteen carrier groups to defeat the two remaining countries of the axis of evil, N. Korea and Iran? 750 and counting military bases outside the USA? However, the government tells us it is powerless to defend the country against an attack from a terrorist group with WMD??? So, the next time you watch television and the commentator tells you why we need another aircraft carrier, more tanks, more F-16's, etc., ask yourself: Who are we defending ourselves against? And, as Chalmers Johnson points out, follow the money! This book is an excellent primer on how our beloved country is being led down the road to ruin by a group of people who are lining the pockets of themeselves and their friends and supporters. All of this is being done in the name of Democracy, Freedom and Globalization. But, why do we want to liberate people who sit on oil while those <other> countries being ruthlessly exploited and practcially enslaved are ignored since they can contribute little or nothing to the "world economy" (pick any poor third world country)? This review is written by a conservative American, cold war supporter and US Navy veteran (like Chalmers Johnson)who believes in the old Republic (when is the last time you heard that word mentioned in the era of the imperial presidency). Forget whether you are democrat or republican, take the blinders off and seek the truth, excellently told by Chalmers Johnson. 229 of 269 people found the following review helpful: essential truths rather than pablum and propaganda, January 16, 2004 By  L. F Sherman "dikw" (Wiscasset, ME United States) - See all my reviews     Essential truths are discomforting but critically important while there may still be time to save the United States from its worst enemies - antidemocratic ruling cliques that are part of the military industrial-complex (now oil and communications industries included) at its worst. This is not the pabulum and propaganda of most of the press and right wing think tanks or corporate media but rather a tough minded well documented and truly scary reality that most would prefer to ignore -- at their own risk. The American Empire of Bases, hidden expenses and private corporate military contracts, together with a plethora of lies make for mass hallucination that has but an inkling of truth. One chapter could stand on its own as a great description of recent economic and military history "What Happened to Globalization?". The chapter also effectively highlights how mythological is the "free market capitalism" that is ideology and far from reality. It is clear that the problem is not new - but also that is far worse than ever with the megalomaniac boy emperor and his irresponsible quest that is destroying everything from the Constitution to the economy. The practical first step - not mentioned directly by Johnson - is to get Bush out of office and work for major restoration of the promise of America for the people and the world rather than a few oil and war profiteers. Wake up! Pray there is still time to restore our country! Johnson does not say it in so many words but it becomes clear that no one has done more to make enemies and reduce our security than this President and his administration. After reading this one is not likely to be a total 'sucker' like Goering's public that could be manipulated by freaking people out about their enemies abroad and calling anyone who disagrees unpatriotic or traitorous.
	http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805079831/ The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein 118 of 152 people found the following review helpful: The New "New Economy", September 18, 2007 By  Panopticonman "panopticonman" (Brooklyn, NY USA)     In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein brilliantly proposes a compelling counter-story to the prevailing fable of free market infallibility. Buttressed by painstaking and wide-ranging research, and an ability to see connections where others only see coincidence, Ms. Klein amply shows that profit-making is not the essence of democracy as Milton Friedman and his minions would have it. She shows instead that the machinery of the state and the requirements of "disaster capitalism" are now so tightly synchronized in their exploitation of disasters both man-made and natural as to be virtually one in the same. Citing pertinent examples to prove her thesis that "disaster capitalism" is now rampant around the world - in Russia, in China, in Iraq to name just a few - she describes how in times of crisis, elites everywhere have learned that they can profit by implementing policies, e.g., "shock therapy" or "shock and awe," that would have been vigorously opposed in normal times. When these changes to Friedmanite free-market dicta are opposed, as they were in Chile, a third shock is implemented. This, according to Klein is a shock that is entirely man-made - the torture and murder of those who would stand in the way of the takeover of the public sector, or, as neo-liberal economists would have it, the bringing forth of a new birth of freedom. During the "Reagan Revolution," Klein argues, the notion of the `Entrepreneur As Hero' was buffed to a high gloss though the influence of right-wing think tanks whose pronouncements were reported by a cowed and obedient media. A decade later in the dot.com era, entrepreneurs were burnished to blinding sheen when the media fed the world images of swashbuckling venture capitalists who were touted as bringing forth a new millennium through the Internet. Klein maintains that George W. Bush's "public offering" -- the War on Terror - covered slavishly and avidly by the media, has been wildly successful, lining the pockets of investors in the new Homeland Security sector as promises of taxpayer money everlastingly flowing into the coffers of the military-industrial-energy complex have been fulfilled. This is the new "new economy:" the looting of the public sector through the now tried-and-true methods of disaster capitalism. THE SHOCK DOCTRINE reveals the many wounds that disaster capitalism has inflicted upon the body politic both here in the U.S. and throughout the world over the past 25 years. It is a breathtaking achievement. Highly recommended. Read this Book, November 17, 2007 By  Aimee Montes De Oca "Truth Lover" (Beaches of Florida) - See all my reviews     If you want to understand the difference between democracy and capitalism, read this book. If you want to know why the world's problems never seem to get solved, read this book. I had never read a book on economics before, but this one is riveting. The book of Revelation describes the United States as appearing like a lamb, but having the voice of a dragon. The Shock Doctrine details the fulfillment of that prophecy made 2000 years ago. After you read this book, study Revelation to prepare for everything else that is about to happen.

Iraqi Holocaust Censored By Your Proud Sponsor Deliberate Incompetence

	The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy by David Brock (Author) "WHEN JOURNALIST EDITH EFRON died at age seventy-nine in April 2001, Virginia Postrel, the editor of the libertarian magazine Reason, for which Efron had been..." (more) Key Phrases: think tank network, message machinery, professional news organizations, New York Times, Washington Post, White House (more...)
	http://www.amazon.com/Republican-Noise-Machine-Right-Wing-Democracy/dp/1400048753/ref=cm_syf_dtl_txt_22_rdssss0 thank you amazion
	70 of 86 people found the following review helpful: http://www.amazon.com/review/R17YDYXKUT6ZAR/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm good insights into ideology and propaganda, June 29, 2004 By  lajollaf "lajollaf" (la jolla ca.) - See all my reviews Anyone familiar with the history of propaganda and public relations is aware of how much the strategies of mass persuasion have served ideologies representing radically different worldviews. Ideologues can benefit deeply from one another because content is less important than form:  .../... .../... showing all the craft and design that has gone into the Republican talking-points apparatus. Not only does he document the huge decades-long financing that has stealthily and steadily (with the complicity of centrist media) created a radical right-wing juggernaut, but he also demonstrates how right wing ideologues have circumvented the standard academic peer-review processes that are in place to weed out junk research and impression mongering disguised as consequential results. The researchers in this tradition often cry that academic institutions are against their research, but what they don't tell you is that they'd rather publish in venues where their work is looked at less critically, because it is often unsupportable, and where they simply earn more than they ever would at universities. Perhaps the biggest boondoggle to deliberative discussion in American public discourse is how the media misrepresents these researchers as "scholars" affiliated with think tanks, giving a patina of depth and authority to ideology driven drivel. What the media audience generally doesn't know is that these think tanks are bastions of uniformity with coordinated messages spread by well-dressed commentators whose ideological conformity are the envy of former Soviet apparatchiks. For those who want to understand why American discourse has coarsened in style and become monochromatic in content, this book provides a good starting place. For those with a broader historical perspective, it helps one to see that America's ideologues may be more dangerous than ideologues of other perspectives because they've been demonstrably more successful:  .../...
	198 of 237 people found the following review helpful: Brilliant. Comprehensive. The Definitive Record., May 18, 2004 By A Customer .../...  Brock begins at the beginning, with a treatise by a woman named **Efron** arguing that the GOP and business interests need their own distinct media. Efron gets Nixon's attention, Nixon tries to put Efron's plan into action, Nixon runs into the Watergate buzzsaw. But the seed is planted, back in the 1970's, and then cultivated by GOP activists like William Simon, financed heavily by Richard Mellon Scaife, Olin, Coors dynasties etc. (who Brock calls the four sisters). Until the whole thing flowers: all of a sudden a huge battery of propaganda houses like Heritage and American Enterprise, funded by oil companies and GOP financiers, are churning out a counter history of the American experience. Anything counter to GOP orthodoxy is branded 'liberal'; Murdoch and Sun Myung Moon's media empires swiftly join the cause, whose committed purpose is to subdue America's independent media and convert it into service of corporate interests generally and GOP political figures specifically. Throughout this book, which will be the standard text in colleges and for historians, Brock's tone is calm and steady and he lets the facts speak for themselves (very unlike his earlier books, which are overly polemical -- duh). The research here is encyclopedic. (In a book about media, virtually every quote is on the record). It is amazing to this reviewer how our media could have been so thoroughly corrupted. How our politicians could have so haplessly junked the Fairness Doctrine which would have smothered the entire Fox News Propaganda Machine in its cradle. It is amazing to me that a small and toxic band of right wing ideologues, (nevertheless armed with billions of dollars of their patrons' money) could so effectively intimidate and cow the so-called guardians of our democracy. Is the triumph of the radical right wing the fault of the Neo-cons, or is it our fault, for our complacency and our timidity?
	107 of 134 people found the following review helpful: The Vast Right Wing exposed, June 3, 2004 By  Anthony E Reichenberger (St. Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews     I completely agree with what this book is about. The political right in America has elevated message control and "echo chambering" to a higher level unseen in previous political discourse. The way they manipulate "facts" to their ends, and are able to put them out into the mainstream media largely intact and unqualified is an incredible achievement. The fact there are so many out there that agree lockstep with everything the right says or does without thinking about it demonstrates their successes in this. However, there are problems with the book. As good as the book chronicles the mechanisms the right has to accomplish this, I believe it would have been far more effective had it been more objective--taken from a viewpoint that this is a sad example of how political discourse is in America; democrats have them too, they just aren't nearly as effective  .../...
	11 of 12 people found the following review helpful: Follow the money, February 23, 2006 By  Alfonse Tomato "forging ahead" (Decatur, Ga) - See all my reviews Brock follows the money flowing from Bradley, Scaife, Olin and other foundations dedicated to the rise of ultra-conservative ideology that budded in the 1994 Gingrich revolution and flowered in the 2000 Bush seizure of the presidency. He displays how it is that a few well-paid people generating a constant flow of dis- and mis-information can drown out the reasoned voice of the masses and convince them to vote against their own economic and social interests again and again, in spite of the heroic efforts of volunteer truth-speakers. Brock proves that money is distorting American media and political discourse and exposes the bankruptcy of the Supreme Court's equilibration of spending and free speech in their First Amendment interpretation. Truth withers on the vine in the face of the organized ideological assault Grover Norquist has marshaled at the behest of old industrialist fortunes.
	14 of 15 people found the following review helpful: Great Book -- Explains so much, April 1, 2006 By  Bart McGowen (Evanston, IL) - See all my reviews David Brock's book points out how, how, over the past 20 years, a wish list of beliefs that the far right wanted to be echoed by mainstream america has been beaten in to the public conversation by a massively financed corporate media - Think about it: Almost all broadcast news comes from one of six huge conglomerates: Viacom, General Electric's NBC, Time Warner, Disney, Fox NewsCorp, and Clear Channel. A republican controlled congress and White House means tens of billions extra profit for each of these companies via favorable Tax and Deregulation policies. Yet the right would like you to believe that these companies generate liberal spin ?!?! Please. This is the same "Liberal" media that rapidly labeled 2 tour Vietnam combat veteran John Kerry a coward, and labeled George Bush, the man who went AWOL from a cushy slot in the Texas Air Guard, a gutsy, heroic straight shooter.  .../...
	**Efron** http://georgemustgo.blogspot.com/2004/06/republican-noise-machinechapter-one.html .../...Edith Efron (who would later become a longtime contributor to the conservative magazine Reason). The News Twisters was really the first attempt by the right wing to declare and systematically prove liberal bias in the mainstream media, and Republicans hailed it as unimpeachable proof of their long-held suspicions, but Brock describes Efron's "research" methods as "admittedly derived not from accepted principles of social science but from her own 'logic.' " The book's entire focus was on media coverage of the 1968 presidential election, and Efron somehow managed to make everything seem like liberal bias. As Brock describes: Reviewers noted that in Efron's idiosyncratic world, a report on Nixon being met by college hecklers was an example of anti-Nixon bias, while a report on Humphrey being met by college hecklers was listed not as an example of anti-Humphrey bias but as liberal bias: "reporter supports demonstrators." Nor could she explain how her own data tables contradicted her sweeping conclusions, as when she counted the words spoken for and against liberals on the three networks combined and found 20 percent for liberals and 80 percent against. When CBS news took the extraordinary step of hiring a research firm to do an analysis of the broadcasts Efron cited, it found that she grossly misrepresented the plain meaning of the transcripts. One CBS script that read, "Nixon says he is warning his staff against overconfidence, but he himself hardly looks worried," was listed by Efron as an "anti-Nixon editorial" that "says Nixon is overconfident; suggests he is a liar." Even to this day you see these strategies applied in the right wing's criticism of the media -- witness the outrageous contortions Ann Coulter will endure to try and read anti-conservative bias into places where it doesn't exist.

Check out those Falsies!

Check out those Falsies!

http://survey.prwatch.org/public/survey.php?name=falsies2007

Help choose the winners of this year's Falsies Awards

Welcome to the fourth annual "Falsies Awards" contest, sponsored by the Center for Media and Democracy to recognize the people and players responsible for polluting our information environment. This year, we are asking you to help identify the worst spinners and propagandists of 2007. Please read through the list of nominees below and rank them. You can also nominate additional candidates in our readers' award section.

Please note: you can vote for multiple winners in each category and the CMD judges will take the recommendations into account when deciding the falsest of the false.

Please fill out the survey before 5:00 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday November 30, 2007 to make sure your votes are tallied.

Thanks for your input, and stay tuned to www.prwatch.org in December for the announcement of this year's "Falsies Awards" finalists!

This Year's Nominees:

1. Glowing Green: The Nuclear Energy Institute -- with help from its PR firm, Hill & Knowlton -- launched the "Clean and Safe Energy Coalition" in April 2006 to promote the idea that building new nuclear reactors would help solve global warming. To head the coalition, it hired two people with seeming credentials as environmentalists: Christine Todd Whitman and Patrick Moore. Moore barnstormed the United States calling for the construction of "100 or 200" new nuclear power plants and insisting that storing high-level nuclear waste on the banks of the Connecticut River is "perfectly safe and secure." Whitman penned editorials declaring that nuclear power "stands out as the way to seriously address our energy needs." As the Columbia Journalism Review observed, many journalists treated Moore and Whitman "as dedicated environmentalists who have turned into pro-nuke cheerleaders ... the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Herald, the Baltimore Sun, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Rocky Mountain News, the New York Times, and CBS News all referred to Moore as either a Greenpeace founder or an environmentalist, without mentioning that he is also a paid spokesman for the nuclear industry." Reporters also generally failed to note that Moore left Greenpeace in 1986 and has been working since then as a flack for the logging, mining, biotech, nuclear and other industries. Whitman, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under the Bush administration, also got a free ride. Two thirds of the news stories that mentioned her support for nuclear power ignored the fact that she was on the nuclear payroll.

2. War More Years: The U.S. Democratic Party won control of both houses of Congress in the 2006 elections on a platform calling for change, with the war in Iraq the top issue on voters' minds. Once in power, however, other concerns rose to the surface, including the fear of being labeled "soft on national security." Rather than end the war, Democratic politicians, under the leadership of House speaker Nancy Pelosi, crafted "compromise" legislation to provide an additional $93 billion in funding for the war, combined with a few tepidly-worded, optional "benchmarks" of progress in Iraq that Bush was supposed to certify were being met in order to keep the money flowing. The liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org threw its weight behind the Pelosi bill, arguing that it would force "the Republicans to choose between an increasingly isolated president and the majority of the Congress and the majority of the American people." After Bush vetoed the Pelosi bill, the Democrats caved completely in May 2007 and gave Bush virtually everything he wanted in funding and unrestricted license to continue waging the war. In November, Pelosi was hard at work crafting a similar compromise -- yet another $50 million for the war, combined with a nonbinding "goal" that troops should be withdrawn by December 2008 -- a target date which accomplishes nothing other than ensure that Democrats can run as the anti-war party during next year's November elections.

3. Tricky Wiki: Computer programmer Virgil Griffith has created an online website called WikiScanner, which documents the organizational affiliations of numerous people who have anonymously edited Wikipedia. It found tens of millions of anonymous edits performed by more than 180,000 organizations, some of them in clear violation of Wikipedia policy. Perpetrators include the FBI, CIA, Britain's Labour Party, the Vatican, Wal-Mart, the Republican and Democratic parties, the Church of Scientology, Dell Computers, Microsoft, Apple, the United Nations, and Diebold, the maker of electronic voting machines. Wikiscanner also helped us catch several sneaky edits by various leading PR firms. At Weber Shandwick, for example, someone anonymously promoted its work on elections in Scotland; Ketchum sanitized a mention of its PR work for the government of Bangladesh; Hill & Knowlton whitewashed the human rights abuses of its client, the government of the Maldives; and Freud Communications edited articles on its clients including Pizza Hut and Carphone Warehouse. Gold award Silver award Bronze award Dishonorable mention No prize

4. Impeding Breast Feeding: The infant formula industry and its trade association, the International Formula Council (IFC), continue to pursue marketing strategies designed to undermine breastfeeding, even though babies that are not breast fed suffer higher rates of health problems including sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), diabetes, lymphoma, leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, obesity, high cholesterol and asthma. Peggy O'Mara, the editor of Mothering Magazine, has noticed several IFC-affiliated "stealth" websites "that appear to be grassroots advocacy sites, but are actually mouthpieces for the formula industry." The websites, MomsFeedingFreedom.com and Babyfeedingchoice.org, are campaigning against proposed restrictions on the free bags of infant formula being given to new parents by hospitals. BanTheBags, which supports a ban on free samples, observes that the sites "use classic formula company strategies, paying lip service to benefits of breastfeeding even as they promote formula. When breastfeeding is mentioned, it�s a chore and a bother." The formula industry was especially vocal about frank ads being developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to warn about the consequences of not breastfeeding. According to the Washington Post, HHS bowed to industry pressure and toned down the ads so significantly that after they aired, the rate of breastfeeding in the U.S. actually dropped measurably.

5. For More Wars: Freedom's Watch, founded by prominent neoconservatives including former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, is working with the American Enterprise Institute and other pro-war front groups to lobby for continuing the war in Iraq and starting a new war with Iran. According to the New York Times, "The idea for Freedom's Watch was hatched in March at the winter meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Manalapan, Florida, where Vice President Dick Cheney was the keynote speaker. ... One benefactor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the group was hoping to raise as much as $200 million by November 2008. Raising big money 'will be easy,' the benefactor said, adding that several of the founders each wrote a check for $1 million. ... Since the group is organized as a tax-exempt organization, it does not have to reveal its donors. ... Among the group's founders are Sheldon G. Adelson ... sixth on the Forbes Magazine list of the world's billionaires; Mel Sembler ... who served as the ambassador to Italy and Australia; John M. Templeton Jr., the conservative philanthropist from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania; and Anthony H. Gioia, a former ambassador to Malta."

6. The Vaccine for Cancer: The Merck pharmaceutical company, currently reeling from billions of dollars in legal settlements over Vioxx, its prescription pain reliever that has been linked to an increase in heart attack risk, has a new miracle drug it's selling -- Gardasil, a vaccine for Human Papillomavirus (HPV). Gardasil can prevent 4 strains of HPV, which is a leading cause of cervical cancer and pre-cancerous cervical conditions. Using the PR giant Edelman, Merck funded non-profit organizations including the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation and Step up Women's Network to create a sense of fear and urgency in women and parents of girls. While cervical cancer does cause the deaths of more than 3,500 women each year in the U.S., it is not one of the leading causes of female mortality, and can be reliably detected and treated if regular Pap smears are performed. Merck has also lobbied heavily to make the vaccine mandatory for schoolgirls girls as young as 11 or 12 -- even though vaccination costs nearly $400 per person, and the drug has not been tested with that age group in mind. Merck's urgency to sell as much Gardasil as fast as possible is linked to its temporary monopoly on the market, but at least one competing drug will be presented for FDA approval within months. Gold award Silver award Bronze award Dishonorable mention No prize

7. To Thine Own Self Be Falsie: As the wildfires raged in California, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency held a FAKE news briefing, which was carried on Fox News..../...

8. Deleting [Global] Heating: An investigation by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found "hundreds of instances" where Philip A. Cooney, an oil industry lobbyist appointed to head the the White House Council on Environmental Quality, edited government reports to downplay the impact of human activities on global warming trends. Cooney, who has no scientific credentials, worked for the American Petroleum Institute prior to his White House stint and is now working for Exxon Mobil. Cooney worked closely with Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of 43 think tanks funded by ExxonMobil to cloud public understanding of global warming and delay action on the issue. Another think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, offered a bounty of $10,000 to scientists and economists for writing articles criticizing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the top interrnational scientific body involved in studying the problem. Yet another, the Illinois-based Heartland Institute, spent $1 million on an advertising campaign to publicize the global warming skepticism of Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus.

9. The Best Falsies TV Has to Offer: In 2006, CMD published two ground-breaking reports on the widespread use of undisclosed fake TV news. Despite our airing its dirty laundry, and the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) levying of first-ever fines for the practice, TV newsrooms still use video news releases (VNRs) produced by PR pros for corporate clients as if they were real journalism. In fact, over the course of just six weeks, CMD documented that WGTU-TV 29 (Traverse City, Mich.) aired at least three VNRs, two with no disclosure and one with a fleeting acknowledgment of the source. The "news" anchor when each VNR was broadcast was Lori Puckett, who is actually WGTU's production and promotions manager. She introduced each VNR as if the on-air publicists were actual reporters. According to its website, "since ABC 29 & 8 first went on the air in 1971, our goal has been to take advantage of the best that television has to offer. Our staff is dedicated to providing the greatest viewing experience to our audience..." The station, which has no news director, made no public comment after the CMD report was released.

10. Smoke Your Moneymaker: While other medical schools have divested their tobacco stocks, Virginia Commonwealth University and its president, Dr. Eugene Trani, have been working to make VCU more tobacco-friendly. VCU includes a major regional medical center, a medical school, and schools of public health, pharmacy and nursing. Trani's tobacco-friendly actions have included negotiating a new smoking policy that explicitly permitted smoking in 41 out of 42 of the University's facilities; inviting Philip Morris CEO Michael Szymanczyk to be the keynote speaker at VCU's graduation ceremony in 2003; and accepting numerous grants totaling millions of dollars from cigarette maker Philip Morris. Dr. Trani also serves as a director of the Universal Corporation, a holding company that owns Universal Leaf Tobacco, the country's largest purchaser and supplier of tobacco leaf. According to an August 9, 2007 filing with the Securities Exchange Commission, he owns 6,250 shares of stock in Universal and thereby privately profits from domestic and foreign cigarette sales, while publicly appearing concerned about health care.

11. Dezenhall's Doublespeak: PR strategist Eric Dezenhall has been hired by the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which represents leading scientific publishers such as Elsevier and the American Chemical Society, to oppose open access for scientific research. The U.S. Congress recently approved legislation that would provide free public access to published research funded by the government. (Unfortunately, President Bush is expected to veto it.) The scientific journals regard open access as a threat to their profits, which are based on charging large subscription fees. In a leaked memo (PDF available here), Dezenhall advised the publishers to develop a PR strategy that targets a "more elite group of decision makers employing strategies that emphasize 'high-concept' rhetoric and in-the-trenches political-style communications. ... Develop simple messages (e.g., Public access equals government censorship; Scientific journals preserve the quality/pedigree of science; government seeking to nationalize science and be a publisher)." Dezenhall's message points figure prominently on the website of AAP's lobbying arm, the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM). Gold award Silver award Bronze award Dishonorable mention No prize

12. Mercenaries for Mercury: The National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, a "nonprofit organization" funded by the seafood industry, issued a report urging pregnant women and nursing mothers to eat more fish than recommended by health agencies concerned that mercury contamination in fish can hurt babies. The report claimed that women who avoid seafood to limit exposure to mercury deprive their babies and themselves of essential nutrients. The report was funded with $74,000 from the National Fisheries Institute, a client of the Burson-Marsteller PR firm. Another food industry front group, the Center for Consumer Freedom, chimed in with a news release calling for environmental groups to apologize for creating "panic" about mercury in foods. Respected health organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, responded to the report by re-emphasizing their advice to avoid excessive fish consumption. Gold award Silver award Bronze award Dishonorable mention No prize

13. Support Our Dupes: On its surface, America Supports You (ASY) was a program organized by the Pentagon through which Americans could send gifts and messages of support to U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In May 2007, however, complaints forced the Pentagon to investigate charges of improper fundraising and unauthorized spending. Through a multi-million-dollar contract to the PR firm of Susan Davis International, ASY organized activities such as recruiting Americans back home to "text-message" their support to the troops on their cell phones, even though those messages aren't actually sent to the troops. ASY also organized Operation Straight Up, a Christian evangelical entertainment troupe that actively proselytizes among active-duty members of the US military. According to a report by Max Blumenthal, Operation Straight Up's activities include sending soldiers Christian evangelical tracts for use in "proselytizing efforts among Iraqi civilians," along with copies of "the controversial apocalyptic video game, 'Left Behind: Eternal Forces,'" in which players vie to "kill or convert all the non-believers left behind after the rapture." Meanwhile, soldiers injured in Iraq have been "supported" with substandard medical care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and family members of killed soldiers have testified before Congress that the circumstances of their deaths remain mired in secrecy in cases where those deaths conflict with official Pentagon propaganda. Gold award Silver award Bronze award Dishonorable mention No prize

14. Add your own nominee. Who or what did we miss in the list above? Please use this section to nominate the person, company, think tank, PR firm, or organization that you feel deserves a Falsies Award as the most shameless shill and twister of truth for 2007. http://survey.prwatch.org/public/survey.php?name=falsies2007

Its Terrorism To Stop Drinking The Kool-Aid

	Infowars Digg: http://digg.com/world_news/Wiesenthal_Center_presents_9_11_sites_alongsi... CORRECTION: Bruce Hoffman is a former, not current RAND employee. Text corrected below. On Tuesday, November 6, 2007, a House Homeland Security Subcommittee had a hearing on "Terrorism and the Internet".* The hearing featured presentations from several groups, including a former employee of the RAND Corporation, and Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The hearing was chaired by Democratic Rep. Jane Harman, and ranking Republican, Rep. Dave Reichert. Toward the end of the hearing, Weitzman rolls out a PowerPoint presentation that presents a few 9/11 truth sites sandwiched in between websites that offer training in terrorist tactics, and a website that glorified the attack of 9/11. Among the websites presented under the heading "Internet: Incubator of 9/11 Conpiracies and Disinformation", are Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and other sites, such as Killtown's, who brought this Hearing to our attention. Now, we wouldn't want anybody getting the wrong idea here. Here at 911blogger we are opposed to any and all terrorist activities, including STATE SPONSORED TERRORISM. Don't really care who the state is either. It's all bad. Californians, if Harman is your representative, please set her straight. Washington state, if Reichert is your critter, don't let him absorb this crap with no static. CSPAN has been more than fair to 9/11 skeptics. Last year they broadcast Alex Jones' American Scholars Symposium, in 2005, they broadcast David Ray Griffin, and they will probably listen to feedback regarding this broadcast. View the hearing as a video stream here -- the pertinent section begins at the 43:31 mark, but I recommend watching the entire program, because there is so much disinformation in the broadcast itself, it's hard to know where to begin unraveling it. Homeland Security - Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_... Please ask the Simon Wiesthenthal Center (Mark Weitzman in particular) to stop conflating terrorist violence with 9/11 truth, and even though he has not extended the courtesy to us, be polite; mweitzman@swcny.com * Exact Hearing title: "Using the Web as a Weapon: the Internet as a Tool for Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism"
	June 26, 2003 The Terrorist Hunter Speaks An amazing story of an Iraqi Jew at the heart of dismantling terrorism. A Q&A by Kathryn Jean Lopez http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/interrogatory062603.asp .../...Anonymous was revealed as Rita Katz, director of the Site Institute, an international terrorist-investigation and information group. (Katz has written for NRO, here and here and here.) Katz, born an Iraqi Jew, recently talked to NRO about her book, the lawsuit, the war on terror, Iraq, and her terrifying job, among other things. Kathryn Jean Lopez: You are the "anonymous" "Terror Hunter." Did you expect to be outed when you decided to write the book? Where you prepared for it? .../... Lopez: What do you hope people come away from the book with? Katz: Although my book is a story, my story, and not a textbook on terrorism per se, I wrote it mainly to deliver two important messages through this story. One is to reveal the gravity and the extent of Islamic fundamentalism in America. Even now, after 9/11, many believe that radicalism is something that is prevalent only in the Middle East or in Afghanistan. From what I'd learned by attending mosques, conferences, and rallies, fundamentalism is a major problem right here, in our own backyards. I give numerous examples in my book of statements that I had recorded, some of which are blood chilling, and of others that openly call for jihad. I wanted my book to demonstrate that and to explain how we have to fight this phenomenon in order to be able to eradicate terrorism. The other point I make in Terrorist Hunter is that although many in the American public believe that now, after 9/11, government agencies all work together as one to fight terrorism, unfortunately, this is not the case. I give several examples in Terrorist Hunter of how certain government agencies fight amongst themselves, how they hide information from others, how they try to take over investigations, how they even deliberately slow down terrorism investigations. All this is happening now, almost two years after 9/11. I wanted the American public to know that, because knowing about it is the necessary first step toward fixing what is wrong. Lopez: You grew up a Jew in Iraq. What was that like? I grew up in a rich family, surrounded by love and by servants who took care of all my needs. We lived in a huge mansion and went to a private school. We were happy. I had no idea that we were sitting on a ticking time bomb until my father was suddenly taken by Saddam's people and accused of spying for Israel. Since that day, our world fell apart. We suffered terrible abuse, all of us, until we were able to leave Iraq. Lopez: When and why did you leave Iraq? Katz: My father was tried in one of Saddam's kangaroo courts and hanged in broad daylight, in Baghdad's central square, to the cheers of a half a million spectators. My family and I we were held under house arrest in a small hut in Baghdad, and we suffered additional abuse and other tragedies, until my mother was finally able to orchestrate a daring escape. My father was hanged in 1969, and we escaped two years later, through Iran, to Israel. Lopez: Have you been back to Iraq since liberation? If not, do you hope to? Katz: No, I have not been to Iraq yet after we left it three decades ago, but I would definitely go there when it becomes possible. I would very much like to try to retrieve my father's remains and bring them to a decent burial in Israel. That could finally bring closure for me, and even more so for my mother. And although it is a very long shot, I would also like to try to find some documents that might reveal what exactly happened and why my father was chosen as a scapegoat by Saddam's people. There are many questions in my mind that remain unanswered, and perhaps I will be able to retrieve something in Iraq to help me learn what actually transpired there. Lopez: What are your thoughts about the current state of things in Iraq? Katz: The situation in Iraq is complicated by a number of factors. One is the conflict between Iraqi Shiites, the majority of the population, and the Sunni minority that ruled the country until the regime was recently overthrown. Into this already tumultuous powder keg come in countries with strong interests in the region, causing serious tensions in the Muslim and Arab world. The Sunnis, mainly Saudi Arabia and Syria, on the one hand, and the Shiites — Iran — do not want to lose control of the region. Another important factor is the current movement of Muslim terrorist organizations into Iraq, into parts that are becoming no man's land, perhaps similarly to Afghanistan, as operatives from al Qaeda, Jihad, and al Gamaa are moving in to fight the Americans. Some of the most ferocious battles our soldiers had to fight in Iraq were against non-Iraqis. Lastly, being a country that never had the privilege of democracy, it may be a long process before a stable regime can be established there. Lopez: You do a lot of consulting with government intel and law enforcement. Is that a sign of U.S. intelligence shortcomings still? Katz: I do work with government agencies on counterterrorism investigations, but this is not a sign of the government's shortcomings. On the contrary, this is a very positive development. As I describe in the book, my research is based mostly on public records: old publications, tax documents, trial transcripts, and so on. I compile the information I find, I connect the dots, and then give my conclusions as leads to the government. As I have studied many Islamic terrorist organizations, their front groups, and their financiers in great depth, and as I understand their mentality and their language well, I could assist the government in such investigations. However, I do not provide "intel" information per se. The government gets its intel by recording, wiretapping, surveillance, etc. Before 9/11, I tried to give the government important leads, but many of these leads weren't taken seriously. These same leads of mine, and, of course, many others, were picked up by the government after 9/11 — and a large number of investigations stemmed from them.
	.../... Lopez: Since the terror attack in Riyadh last month, do you have any reason to believe progress has been made vis-à-vis our relationship with the kingdom and the kingdom itself cracking down on al Qaeda and other terror groups within? Katz: Saudi Arabia plays an important role in educating and funding Islamic radicalism and worldwide terrorism. I explain in my book why the Saudis want jihad and what their reasons are to finance worldwide jihad. I give examples of the radicalism they teach in their schools, and I give examples of how the Saudi government funds terrorist organizations, both directly and indirectly. The Saudis claim now that they are our allies in the war on terror. This is not unlike their claim that they have been "cracking down" on terrorism funding during the last decade. But in reality nothing has changed in Saudi Arabia in that respect. The recent attacks in Riyadh were not targeted against Saudi Arabia, but against the West. Claims that the Saudis have suffered too, even if it is only via collateral damage, are nonsensical; Bin Laden himself responded to a question about the embassy bombings in Africa, when he was asked about the hundreds of Muslims who perished in the attack, by saying that they all went to heaven. For the terrorists who attacked in Riyadh, the target was the West. In their twisted minds, the collateral damage — including their own lives — is only paving those people's path to paradise. And thus, to eradicate Islamic terrorism and radicalism, the U.S. government has to apply pressure on the Saudis to stop educating for jihad and funding terrorists. Only then could a new generation grow in Saudi Arabia that will be willing to hear the moderate voice, which now is non-existent there. Lopez: There are miles to go yet, though, as you tell vividly in your book. What have been our (the U.S.) biggest mistakes? What must be addressed if we are ever to win the war on terror? Katz: Changes need to be made both in strategy and in tactics. As for the latter, the short-term fight needs to include the capture of al Qaeda operatives and the destruction of their infrastructure. To do that effectively and to be able to prevent another attack on us, law enforcement agencies have to correct some critical operational flaws. The most serious, in my view, is the competition between agencies and the way some agencies refuse to cooperate with others in the war on terror. I give a number of very disturbing examples demonstrating that pattern in my book. Another problem is that certain law-enforcement agencies approach Islamic terrorism as if it were a criminal investigation: find the culprits if you can, put them in jail, end of story. But Islamic terrorism is different from organized crime on several levels and it needs to be confronted accordingly. For terrorists, money is not a goal, but rather a means. Islamic terrorists, unlike other criminals, have no value for life, not even their own. Without understanding their motives and way of thinking, they cannot be defeated. Therefore, Islamic terrorism needs to be studied in depth, and it needs to be addressed as a global, long-term problem. Which brings me to the strategic planning of the war on terror. The only way we can win this war is if we, the West, will force countries, governments, and organizations that educate, preach, and fund jihad to stop what they are doing. As long as radical Muslim clerics will preach for jihad, and as long as Saudi textbooks will teach their youngsters that we, the "infidels," will always be their enemies, Islamic terrorism will not be eradicated. Through political pressure, diplomacy, sanctions, and similar measures, the West, spearheaded by the U.S., has to force governments such as that of Saudi Arabia to stop spreading this incitement and to engender a new generation that does not have that blind, vicious hate against the West and everything it represents. And then — in a generation — we will be able to win this war once and for all.

War Is Barbaric To All Combatants

updated  9:50PM   Sept 11 2007

My god, what did we do?  By Dalia Karpel

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/922009.html

One night, Tamar Yarom was awakened by one of the soldiers in her unit. He said he wanted to show her something in the basement of the abandoned building where they were staying. "Before we opened the door, I heard this awful noise from a generator and there was a strong smell of diesel fuel. I saw a middle-aged Palestinian detainee lying with his head on the generator. His ear was pressed against the generator that was vibrating, and the guy's head was vibrating with it. His face was completely messed up. It amazed me that through all the blood and horror, you could still see the guy's expression and that's what stayed with me for years after - the look on his face." Yarom, now a film director, made two films following her army service as a mashakit tash (welfare officer) in an infantry company in the territories. She was drafted in 1989 and served at a basic-training base near Jerusalem until her unit was transferred to Gaza. She accompanied the recruits from their first day in the army and felt close to them, and they told her about what they did in the territories. "I tried not to judge them. Mostly I was glad that they were feeling good and finally had self-confidence." That's how it works, she adds: "When you're told things that you don't see with your own eyes, you can prettify them in your mind." But then she was taken to that basement. Why did the soldier take her there? "He wanted to share the horror with me," she says. "Maybe he hoped that I'd do something, that I'd raise an outcry. I don't remember how we left there or what happened afterward. The next day I asked one of the commanders what happened in the basement and he politely explained to me that I mustn't interfere in things that were none of my business. That detainee I saw taught me something about myself that I would never have learned in years of university. And he's imprinted in my memory, engraved in every cell of my being. I saw a person in the lowest, most suffering state. A victim of cruelty I didn't know existed. And I stood there unmoved, apparently." Sandler cleans bodies In 2002, 12 years after completing her military service, during the second intifada, Yarom directed the drama "Hatza'it dema'ot" ("Sob Skirt" - a nickname for a female welfare officer), based on her experiences during the first intifada. It won the best drama prize at the Haifa Film Festival that same year, but Yarom felt she hadn't yet given full expression to the trauma - "the real thing," as she calls it. Now Yarom was ready for the real thing. Her second film, "Lir'ot im ani mehayekhet" ("To See If I'm Smiling"), is a documentary. It focuses on the testimonies of six female soldiers about their service in the territories during the first and second intifadas. Yarom spent four years working on the film - to be aired on November 15th on cable Channel 8 - which won the best documentary award at the most recent Haifa Film Festival. "I wanted to make a film that shows admiration for these girls, who are coping with crazy pressure and have daily responsibility for human lives. I got to know female soldiers who served as lookouts, operations sergeants, whose job was to apply make-up to soldiers going undercover as Arabs. A whole world of women on the 'second' line, in 'combat support.' I was impressed by the way they grappled with the difficulties and the psychological pressures. One of the comments I most identify with was by Meytal Sandler at the beginning of the film: 'Sometimes I think that I'm insane, because I have memories that are not connected to reality and maybe never happened. But I know that they did happen because of the intensity with which I feel them today.'" Meytal Sandler has gone to Cologne, Germany to do a master's degree in linguistics and Jewish and Islamic Studies. In the army she chose to be a medic, because she wanted to learn a profession. She was also an idealist, she says in the film. She was posted in Hebron as a medical organization officer, responsible for evacuating the wounded. Sandler was the only person who declined to be interviewed for this article. She now has another life and is "okay," she says, but in the film she is the most fragile, the most touching. She says that during the filming she drank every day "to forget the horrors of Hebron." In the film she says she didn't tell anyone what happened to her in the army because Hebron operated by its own rules. The first time she encountered death was when she was handed the baby Shalhevet Pas, killed in 2001 by a Palestinian sniper. "There was a baby girl who was wounded and we couldn't treat her very well and there was a feeling that she was in my care because I was the local commander. The next morning I saw the baby's picture in the paper. People said: 'Congratulations, you've had your first dead person,'" she says in the film. As part of her job, Sandler also had to handle the corpses of Palestinians. "I was in the office with my medics and my doctor-commander asked, 'There's a body, who wants to come see it?' It was a cell they'd pursued for a while and one member was killed. I immediately said: 'I want to see!' I remember riding in the ambulance [with the body] and sitting across from Uriel (one of the soldiers), who looked at me and wanted to throw up the whole time," she says in the film. "I wanted to throw up, too, but I couldn't say that. And the body stank. I gave him a blanket and I took one, and we wrapped them around us to keep out the smell ... They then come and take the body to the clinic and tell us that before it's returned to the Palestinian Authority, we have to clean it, so there won't be any signs of blood on it, so they won't see what we've done to it. This was my task. Because he'd been struck in the head, but didn't die right away, and only bled and died slowly, he lost control of his bowels - that's what happens ... He's just lying there with his eyes open and I close his eyes because Uriel tells me he's afraid. "I close his eyes and keep on cleaning and scrubbing and at some point the eyes open up again. It's automatic, and it's a very frightening moment. It's like he came back to life. Giving me this stare. People say to me: 'What did you do? You cleaned a corpse?' and they're disgusted. I can't allow myself to be disgusted by it." Dealing with corpses became routine. Sandler describes another incident when one was brought to her and was taken to be rinsed by the bathroom: "Something very funny happens: He has an erection. A corpse with an erection. And people laugh a little because it's awkward. Anyone can come and see, and a few female soldiers come in - girls I know. One has a camera and without thinking, I say: 'Hey, take my picture.' And I sit next to the body and have my picture taken." Sandler is embarrassed by the photo, and told no one about it. "Who wants to deal with the evil within himself, the alienation?" she says. But then she wanted to see the photo again: "I wanted to see if I was smiling." Abramov gets revenge Was Sandler authorized to deal with bodies? The IDF Spokesman's Office says: "Care of bodies is not included within the framework of the medical organization officer's job; such a procedure is unknown. The likelihood of this being done systematically is small, and if it was done - it was an aberration." Libi Abramov served as a Border Police officer at an Israel Defense Forces checkpoint. In the film she describes her friend Hani Abramov (no relation), who was shot in the jaw and skull in October 2001 during an operation near Tul Karm - the first female Border Police officer to be wounded during the intifada. Libi was so upset that she decided to take revenge on Arabs who passed through the checkpoint that day. "With every Arab I see, I see Hani in my mind. In one shift, there were as many as 70 or 80 people whom I delayed. I stood them in a line and decided that they would stay with me for the whole 12- to 14-hour shift, in the sun, in the heat. I made them stand there with me and had them do all kinds of exercises. I stood them in threes, as if they were my soldiers. I started shouting at them and asked them 'Why did you do that to Hani? What did she do to deserve it?' No one else was around except my fighters, and they accepted this; it didn't seem strange to them." One night Abramov was sitting alone in an armored vehicle and saw an Arab staring at her. "I stared right back and he started making obscene gestures. I took a good look at him. I wanted to remember what he was wearing and how he looked. And I can still remember: He was wearing three-quarter-length red pants, a white shirt and short black hair. As soon as he saw that my soldiers were coming back, he ran away. As soon as they got in the vehicle, I was ready to go. I drove really fast. When we found and caught him he realized who I was and what was happening. We took him to one of the alleyways and I started screaming at him. I made him look me in the eye and repeat in words what he'd done, and he of course tried to ignore me. He kept his eyes down. We stripped him until he was only in his underwear and just abused him." Behar regrets to inform you Education in the territories was also a whole different story. Education officer Dana Behar says she dealt "only with death." She grew up in Nes Ziona; her father was a doctor and her mother led youth trips to Poland. Before her enlistment, Behar did a year of service leading hiking trips for youths. She looked forward to enlisting because she wanted to "continue to contribute." She enlisted in the summer of 2001. After taking a course to be a mashakit hinuch (education officer), her main job was to work with commanders to make sure that whenever battle orders were given, about 10 minutes were first devoted to discussing values and humanism. She was assigned to the 50th Nahal paratroops battalion - "quality people, kibbutzniks and so on. An elitist population that's known in the IDF as 'the yellows': Ashkenazim, who are soft in comparison to the 'blacks,' who are not just punks, but also violent." In her second week, she just wanted everyone to like her. "There were 500 guys and 10 girls. One day the soldiers from the company came back from Qalqilyah. The bus let off all these dusty soldiers and I'm walking around there, wanting to hear their experiences, and they see a new girl, fresh meat. So they boasted that they had souvenirs - prayer beads and little Korans that they took from the houses. It shocked me. I was taught that this was plundering." Two days later, she had her first meeting with the battalion commander. "This was in Hebron ... and he asks me how I liked being an education officer. I said it was fine, but that I'd seen things going on. Horrified, he called up the company commander in my presence, who said: 'The girl's a liar. I don't know why she's making this stuff up, probably to impress you.' The battalion commander promised to take care of it and I kept on in my job." A few days later, soldiers from the same company came to the area and recognized Behar. "They said: 'Oh, you're that bitch who ratted on us to the battalion commander?' I said I didn't rat on them, I just told what I'd seen. From that moment the ostracism began. I wasn't allowed to enter their company, which was the most humiliating thing. Whenever they saw me, they spit on the floor and cursed ... A few months later, when the company commander who led the revolt against me was replaced, the treatment I got from about 100 soldiers finally changed. Today I know something that I didn't know then: Hardly any IDF soldier is without a souvenir from some Palestinian house." Subsequently she decided to go to an officers' course because she wanted to work with more senior commanders, and says, "I also wanted to stop washing dishes in the battalion. The women soldiers always get stuck with the dishes." In the film Behar recalls coming out of the kitchen all wet when she heard shouting, and saw soldiers who'd returned from an operation taking pictures with the bodies of two Palestinians. "At the time it didn't look strange. The territories are a crazy place. The big strong IDF just killed some terrorists; it's the soldier's job to take down an important terrorist. It's the 'highlight' of his service. Now it's clear to me that these were the most sickening pictures I ever saw in my life." She thrived as education officer for the brigade. "The first two months in Hebron everything went well. My assignment was nice for my ego. It's considered an important assignment, and only strong and assertive women are sent there." In November 2002 she left on a weekend furlough. She was at home and her mother suddenly knocked on the door and told her the news was reporting a terror attack in Hebron. "I came out of the shower and called my commander, and he yelled, 'Get to Hadassah [University Hospital in] Ein Kerem right away!'" Why? You were just an education officer. Behar: "Yes, but he insisted so my father drove me and on the way I learned that the brigade commander, Dror Weinberg, and 12 others had been killed. I got to Hadassah and found that in this emergency situation, all of a sudden, I'd become an adjutancy officer and it was my job to relay information to the families of the injured. I was ordered to go into the rooms and bring lists of those who were seriously injured ... and those who had died from their wounds. I was in the hall waiting for a doctor when I suddenly heard a shout - 'Clear the hallway!' I got out of the way and then, like in a movie doctors rushed by with the wounded on stretchers, all cut and bleeding ... One of them was the boyfriend of a friend, and I had to tell her that he died of his wounds." Behar returned to the brigade in Hebron. The death of Colonel Weinberg, the most senior officer killed in the second intifada, sowed terror and chaos. "I prepared large memorial boards on which to hang texts and photographs, and memorial candles are placed beside them, for the brigade commander and the other casualties, and I asked the commander's permission to put them up. He screamed at me hysterically, 'No! No! Go into your room where no one can see you, and stay there until you're called.' There was no point trying to explain. Anxiety had taken over and there was also fear of another assault." Within two weeks, there were more casualties. "We knew there was no point trying to sleep or shower, that there were be another event, more death and grief. I organized memorial displays, albums, ceremonies and movies about the fallen and also had to go to the parents' homes. My women soldiers were falling apart, and I - without any support from the officers or anyone else, including the main education office - dealt with this hell all by myself." Once, during her service, she asked a friend who was an information officer if she could come with him to the home of a bereaved mother, an immigrant from Russia whose only son was killed. "We come to this fairly poor neighborhood and go in the apartment, and he tells the mother what happened and how her son was killed. She fixes her gaze on me, caresses my hand, and says, 'You're so pretty, you won't die, you shouldn't be there.' It was all I could do to keep from falling to pieces." In the film Behar describes how she realized that she had to save herself. "I understood that something bad happened to me. I told my mother to find me a psychologist and I went to therapy. Now I'm a third-year psychology major at the University of Haifa, and I see how right it was to try to save myself." What mark did your military service leave on you? Behar: "I've become a very light sleeper. Every little noise wakes me up and I think it's an alarm and that I have to rush to the war room in Hebron. I've vowed never to enter the territories again, because I want to forget." Why did you take part in the film? "Because it's important for people to know that something bad happened there. The IDF makes great efforts for it not to happen and I've never seen such big efforts made anywhere else, but still it happens. Because the reality is horrible. I want as many men and women soldiers as possible to talk about what happens there, for it to be a part of the discourse. I served there because my parents brought me up on the values of Zionism, on the idea that wherever I'm most needed is where I should go. I wanted to make a difference and I'd do it again despite everything." Ben Sira-Morag gets a club In Golani, they salute blondes, and Tal Ben Sira-Morag was then a blonde soldier. In the film she says her army service was not without humor: "We were next to a muezzin, next to a mosque, we were always next to a mosque. And suddenly we hear coming out of the mosque, instead of 'Allahu Akbar,' the song 'I've Got the Power.' [The soldiers had] taken over the place and switched the tapes!" Today she's married, a mother of two who lives in Kfar Vitkin. Her father is Tnuva chairman Naftali Ben-Sira. As a 10th-grader, Ben Sira-Morag was active in the founding of the Democratic School in Hadera, which she attended. She enlisted in February 1990 and wanted to be a welfare officer, and just as she'd hoped, "I got a Golani basic training base in the Jenin sector. Everything was great. I was a queen. The atmosphere was amazing. I did an officers' course and since I'm leftist I didn't want to serve in the territories, but I was convinced since I didn't have much choice and was assigned to a brigade in the Khan Yunis area." The base overlooked an entire sector in which were located the Shimshon Battalion, the civil administration, Shin Bet security people and other battalions. "It was a 'hot' sector and there was a high concentration of wanted men and they brought a Golani brigade there. Then two Palestinians disguised as women - because they didn't search women - managed to open fire and a soldier was killed and others were wounded. Then we got an order that a female officer with a weapon would be added to every operation." On her 20th birthday, Ben Sira-Morag set out on an operation that lasted about 14 hours. She sat in a Jeep with senior officers and waited in the dark. The objective was to blow up two houses. She heard over the radio the word "Now!" and the commander ordered her to move to a Border Police Jeep as rockets and RPGs were whizzing around. The Border Policemen were asking if she wanted them to bring her flowers from the wanted man's house, but then they got a call that they had to break up disturbances in the Tel Amal quarter. "We drove there quickly and got to an area that was full of people of all ages running everywhere and throwing rocks. The noise was terrible and the fear that a rock would smash you was just as bad," she recalls. She stayed in the vehicle until one of the soldiers came back with a club that had cracked in two after it was used to beat a woman. "Grab a club, put on a helmet and come out to hit," he told her. "I came out but I certainly wasn't going to hit anyone. I saw a baby crying in fright and my instinct was to go pick him up, but then his mother came and gave me the worst look I've ever seen in my life. That's when it really dawned on me: I understood that I was the enemy in uniform." Later, she had to conduct body searches of Palestinian women. "It's a terrible experience. The women are wrapped in layers and the smell is strong, and why should I be prying around their bodies? I passed a metal detector over them, including their private parts. Two or three security guards stood with their backs to me, but nearby. I tried to speak gently, but was horrified by the way I had to intrude." During one operation, while checking women, "I suddenly hear a scream and the soldier beside me has kicked the women who was supposed to pass through inspection. He'd noticed a knife that was sticking out of her sleeve. I was without a helmet and my neck was exposed. The knife went flying, they put the woman on the side and guarded her. When I finished inspecting, and the bullets were still whistling, I stood in front of the woman who was screaming in fear. The soldiers roared at me, 'Finish her off, she tried to kill you.' "Time stopped and I felt like everything was moving in slow motion and at that moment something was erased from my memory. I think I also gave her a little kick, I don't remember. I shook her and shouted, 'Stop screaming!' I put handcuffs on her and took her away. It was a Saturday. They gave me the knife and said, 'Now call your mother and tell her to recite the 'blessing for deliverance' in the synagogue. I called. My mother asked the rabbi at the Kfar Vitkin synagogue and he recited the blessing." Aside from that time, Ben Sira-Morag did not tell her parents about her experiences in the territories. "I was very unpleasant and aggressive then. My parents also weren't that attentive and couldn't absorb what I was going through. Once my father had occasion to come to the base and he told me it wasn't so bad." She knows that he told her mother, 'It's better you don't know." When Channel 1 did a report on her unit, her parents didn't watch it. After the knife incident, Ben Sira-Morag became emotionally detached from her surroundings. Her requests to transfer elsewhere were rejected: She was told she was doing a great job and her contribution was vital, and so she stayed on until August 1993. After her discharge, she traveled to the Far East with a friend and in Vietnam she suddenly suffered an anxiety attack: "People in Saigon were running and jumping on buses, the buildings were pocked with bullet holes and there were lots of beggars. It reminded me of Khan Yunis. I went into a panic and said to my friend, 'I don't have a weapon! I don't have a weapon!' It took me a while to calm down. I kept a journal during the trip and sent my parents letters in which I did a reckoning with them and with myself." In one letter, she wrote: "It was so hard for me after my discharge and you weren't able to deal with it. I understand; it's hard. One day I'll tell you everything I went through there, all the hard things I've been carrying, inside day in and day out, all the horrors I saw. In a while, when I'm better, I'll start to write and reconstruct what I went through for the sake of the future." In 2005, Ben Sira-Morag did that: She mounted the play "Shovrim shtika" ("Breaking Silence") at the Teatronettto festival, based on her own experiences. Today she says: "I don't think I was shell-shocked. What happened to me was because of the burden of the job." But she still suffers side effects. Crowded places make her nervous. She won't wear a watch or listen to the news or read newspapers. "My army service screwed up my ability to love," she says. "It took a long time until I met my husband. I have angry outbursts sometimes. I don't hit or throw chairs, but I scream and yell." Michelzon gets a report It should just not be boring - that's all Inbar Michelzon, from Karmiel, wanted out of her army service. Though her views were quite leftist, there was no question that she would serve in the army, and as a sambatzit (operations officer), because she was told that it's "the closest thing to the real thing" - i.e., combat. "I was the commander of an operations room and an aide to an operations officer," she said this week. "There were seven companies under us. We relayed orders and managed things." The war room where she served was in charge of the Erez checkpoint, the Erez industrial area and the settlements in the northern Gaza Strip: Dugit, Nissanit and Elei Sinai. She says she cried during her first month. Her brother, who had been a deputy commander in the criminal investigation division, had told her that it was hell on earth, but she ended up in Gaza, in October 2000. Her commander told her that only "the good ones" get to serve there. Michelzon remembers the first time she saw the Erez checkpoint: "It was like mouse cages. I was in shock. I'd never seen Palestinians from Gaza carrying sacks on their head, dressed in rags. The poverty stunned me. This is Israel's backyard. I had to change my skin to fit in there - everything was said there with shouting, everything's a matter of life and death." Her fellow soldiers briefed her on the way things are done: "You say to someone: 'You want to pass through? Bring cigarettes.' Or [a Palestinian] would present an entry permit that took two months to get, and they'd switch it with another paper that they'd rip up in front of the guy's face, just to see his reaction, and then they'd laugh and hand back the original do0cument." "Death to Arabs" was emblazoned on one soldier's flak jacket, she remembers, adding that the soldiers thought she was a spoiled little girl. It didn't take long to see that there was no one to talk to. "The guys would sit there laughing about how a sniper hit a Palestinian so that he'd be crippled the rest of his life." But Michelzon felt that her job was important and that she was contributing, and there was a lot of action: "There was gunfire every night. I'd come out of the war room and all the girls would be running to the protected room and I'd run to the war room and feel like a heroine in a war movie. It was fun until our soldiers started getting killed." One night, she recalls, "my commander found a 13-year-old boy sitting next to a Border Police outpost. He asked the soldiers what the kid was doing there and they said, 'We kept him here and played with him a little.' My commander returned to the war room and said that by the morning, he wanted an investigative report from their commander. The report was submitted and it said that the soldiers beat the boy and stubbed out cigarettes on him. I brought the report to my second commander. He reviewed it and said, 'Call the company commander and tell him that if he doesn't submit another report within a few hours to me, the police investigative division will be here." And so Michelzon found herself roaming the base with two reports about the abuse of the boy: the original report and an "improved" version. She imagined herself calling up Israel Radio reporter Carmela Menashe: "I knew I had to do something so people would know what's really happening. I knew I had the proof, but I didn't do anything. It scared me. It was impossible for me to betray my comrades and my commander. It would be like betraying myself. I continued as usual." Morality, she says now, "is a privilege of people who weren't in these places. It's very hard to look at yourself and understand that you're not the person you thought you were. I came to the army from a youth movement that touts equality and the value of every human being and I got a slap in the face. When I saw the film at the Haifa Film Festival I couldn't stop crying. I cried for what we did. Dear God, what we did." The day she was discharged from the IDF she had to attend the funeral of a friend, Anatoly Kursik, whom, she says, "was killed in a stupid operation: A battalion commander decided to go into an area he wasn't supposed to be in to catch terrorists, and Anatoly was killed by friendly fire. That day I felt like everything was falling apart. I went through a tough period of depression." What did you do about it? Michelzon: "I didn't want to go to therapy. I ran away to India for six months and there I talked about it a lot." She says she believes that not just she, but the entire public, must engage in some serious soul-searching. At present Michelzon volunteers in the ALON organization for social involvement, lives in Tel Aviv with her husband, and is writing her master's thesis about how Mizrahi girls deal with the degrading "bimbo" image. Yarom's position All the women in "To See If I'm Smiling" describe themselves as victims of circumstances. But of course that's just one way to see what they felt and did there, and what happened to them. Asked what her film's political stance is, director Tamar Yarom seems momentarily nonplussed. Her film has no political stance, she says. "It's a mainstream film. Otherwise, people will switch channels. Because who wants to see a film that tells horror stories about military service in the territories?" She adds: "The film is political only in that the Israeli viewer comes to this subject and projects a lot of his own political meanings onto it. The only thing that has value is the attempt to relate the experience of service in the territories, and women are good at describing emotional situations. Through them you can understand the psychology of the guys who serve in the territories. It's not different, it's just more extreme. It makes no difference what your job is. If you're in the territories you'll be sullied by this thing and come out a different person. I went into the territories with an excellent upbringing and came out a different person. I was afflicted by moral confusion there. That's my position, and the position of the film."W

Fair Wages A Moral Issue--BUT for Immigrants ALSO

SCRUBS Cast and Writers Picket Together http://unitedhollywood.blogspot.com/ http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_vvJf_DsAHBs/RzPrFkYAiZI/AAAAAAAAAAU/aw2Rhj0QWDI/s320/Scrubs+Photo.JPG (From Left to Right) Ken Jenkins ("Dr. Kelso"), Zach Braff ("J.D." and WGA member), Bill Lawrence (creator, executive producer) and Sarah Chalke ("Elliot") of SCRUBS. Posted by United Hollywood at 9:07 PM 12 comments

Some Clarifications and a Gentler Appeal to the Scabs Some things you should know: 1. This blog  [ http://unitedhollywood.blogspot.com/  ] is a loosely-run, grass-roots effort created by strike captains. We do our best to tap the resources of the WGA, but they are kinda busy right now. Go figure. The opinions expressed herein are those of the individual writer or, in the case of what I'll call "The Google Gambit," those of a writer who contacted the admins and bribed us with a doughnut he got from by Jay Leno. 2. My friend Mike Schur, the guy who came up with the strike's best catchphrase thus far (The Internet! For which we get zero dollars!) is crediting me with coming up with Steve Carell's "enlarged balls." But in fact, that account was sent to me by a source who attended a Guild debrief meeting and added that we wished Carell "a slow recovery." I can not take credit for this line which has now become America's favorite urban legend. 3. In just eleven days, we have attracted some amazing readers. I've been humbled by the response to this blog. The other admins and I can't keep up with the emails you're sending. But scanning the subject lines as they pour in, it's clear that there are thousands of you who aren't content just to read about the strike, you want to DO something about it. "Where can we send our Tabasco and peanuts?" you plead. Soon, we'll be telling you about ways you can help bring this mess to a conclusion. But there's one simple thing you can do right now: Tell people about what is going on! Talk about it, blog about it, get the word out. Send your friends to this site. Invite some folks to come down and picket with us. Stay informed and spread the word. 4. Talking about scabs really pushes people's buttons. In the comments of that post, I have restated my position on scabs without any bizarre metaphors or juvenile nicknames to detract from the seriousness of the issue. Sorry to ruffle your feathers, Scabworth! (Couldn't resist.) Posted by John Aboud at 12:16 AM 9 comments

patriots question 911--professors list

	http://patriotsquestion911.com/professors.html  (about half were excluded from my list, below)   William Willers, PhD – Professor Emeritus, Biology and Microbiology, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Founder and President, Superior Wilderness Action Network. Editor of Learning to Listen to the Land and Unmanaged Landscapes: Voices For Untamed Nature. Essay 12/15/06: "On December 8, The Nation ... published an essay by Christopher Hayes ... titled "9/11: The Roots of Paranoia," in which the author ... disparages the "so-called" 9/11 Truth Movement, which he calls "a rabbit hole of delusion." ... Two of the scholars he identifies by name: theologian David Ray Griffin and physicist Steven Jones. ... Regarding investigative thoroughness, the two scholars cited, Griffin and Jones, are scrupulous in their investigative methodology. Moreover, James Fetzer, a leading 9/11 skeptic and retired professor of philosophy, has written numerous well-received books on research technique and cognitive inquiry. Hayes' suggestion that the Truth Movement is based on half-baked ideas and lies is simply untrue. Nor are 9/11 skeptics of note only in academe. Go to www.patriotsquestion911.com (really, go to it) and find an astonishing list of figures who flatly reject the official version of the 9/11 Commission. They include individuals from the U.S. Senate (e.g., Mark Dayton, D-MN), the House (e.g., Curt Weldon, R-PA), the FBI (e.g., Louis Freeh, former director), the CIA (e.g., Raymond McGovern and Bill Christison), the Departments of Defense (e.g., Morton Goulder, under Nixon, Ford and Carter), Treasury (e.g., Paul Craig Roberts, under Reagan), Labor (e.g., Morgan Reynolds under Bush II), Justice (e.g., John Loftus, under Carter and Reagan), State (e.g., George Kenny, under Bush I), and the U.S. Military (e.g., Major General Albert Stubblebine). Given that such open expressions are dangerous for one's professional life, it is safe to assume that for each one who comes forward, there are many remaining silent. ... Yes, the Truth Movement "raises questions", and the questions are of vastly greater importance than any theories that might arise from them. It is not necessary -- perhaps not even desirable -- to resort to scenarios that can then be dashed by the belittling label of "conspiracy" which, like the word "paranoia", can be applied to neutralize valid concerns. The questions themselves are so numerous and significant that demands for honest answers are implicit within them." http://www.dissidentvoice.org ----------=======----------======= ----------=======----------======= James Petras, PhD – Bartle Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Binghamton University, SUNY, New York, and Adjunct Professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Author and co-author of numerous books on society, economic systems, and social justice, including: Mediterranean Paradoxes: The Politics and Social Structure of Southern Europe (1994), Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the 21st Century (2001), The Dynamics of Social Change in Latin America (2004), A System in Crisis: The Dynamics of Free Market Capitalism (2004), Social Movements and State Power (2005), Empire with Imperialism: The Globalizing Dynamics of Neoliberal Capitalism (2006) Essay 4/6/03: "... Al Queda as an effective international terrorist organization never existed - nor has it even come into existence under conditions of maximum Western terrorist assault on a Muslim population. The idea of an 'international terrorist conspiracy' was completely fabricated by Washington and embellished by the empty bellicose rhetoric of Bin Laden, a leader without a following, a leader created by the mass media, a leader incapable of directing a single operative terrorist attack. If there is no evidence of the operative existence of Al Queda, and if Bin Laden has no effective following, it is clear there never was any terrorist conspiracy. The idea was fabricated by Washington to justify previous plans designed by Wolfowitz and Perle (1992, 1998) to conquer the Middle East. The fact that the 'worldwide terrorist conspiracy' is a clear fabrication, raises fundamental questions about the event which triggered the US drive for military conquest - 9/11. It is now a well known fact that there was no connection between Iraq and Bin Laden/Al Queda, despite forceful efforts by Colin Powell to present the UN with bogus evidence. But what is equally important, the US, the UN, Tony Blair, the Afghan narco-warlords and other US allies have never found a single piece of evidence linking Bin Laden/Al Queda with the terrorist incidents of 9/11. ... The logical conclusion is that Bin Laden/Al Queda had at best a marginal role, if any. What we do know is that several of the terrorists easily obtained multiple entry visas in Saudi Arabia from the US embassy. That at least two of the hijackers were trained at US military bases. That the FBI and CIA had prior notice of a hijacking and let the operatives proceed. That Condaleeza Rice admitted to prior knowledge of a "traditional hijacking" a short time before it occurred. That US airforce planes were not commanded to action until after the hijackers succeeded. ... At the least we can say that those who fabricated stories of weapons of mass destruction, of Iraqis welcoming US invaders, of all- powerful international terrorist organizations are at the least capable of fabricating the story of 9/11." http://www.rebelion.org Bio: http://en.wikigadugi.org/wiki/James_Petras ----------=======----------======= ----------=======----------======= Michael Keefer, PhD – Professor, College of Arts, University of Guelph. Former President, Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English. Graduate, Royal Military College of Canada. Essay, a rebuttal to Alexander Cockburn 12/16/06: "As anyone who presumes to hold forth on this aspect of the 9/11 evidence should know, what is really incriminating about the failure to intercept the aircraft which were flown on that day into the Twin Towers and (by the official account) into the Pentagon is not the simple absence of fighter-interceptors over New York and Washington, but rather the fact that that absence was ensured by a series of concurrent military exercises which had transferred most of the available interceptors out of the northeastern region, and which for a crucial period that morning left the military air traffic controllers responsible for vectoring the remaining fighters into position unable to determine which of the many blips appearing on their radar screens represented actual as opposed to simulated threats. We can add to this what seems the no less incriminating testimony of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta to the 9/11 Commission, which suggests very strongly that Vice President Cheney had ordered a stand-down of missile defenses protecting Washington DC. ... But like the 9/11 Commission, he [Cockburn] manages quietly to forget about the collapse of WTC 7 late in the afternoon of 9/11: this [610 feet tall] 47-story steel-framed tower, which was damaged by debris from the North Tower but not struck by any aircraft, collapsed at free-fall speed into its own footprint in what half a dozen different videos show to have been a classic implosion demolition. Significantly, FEMA and NIST have failed to offer any plausible alternative explanation of this collapse. As to the questions of how, when, or by whom demolition charges may have been planted: there is evidence, though Cockburn may not be interested in exploring it, of activity on unoccupied floors of the Twin Towers just prior to 9/11 that is consistent with the placing of such charges." http://www.911truth.org Member: Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice Bio: http://www.mos.umu.se ----------=======----------======= ----------=======----------======= Diana Ralph, PhD – Associate Professor, School of Social Work, Carleton University. Author of Work and Madness: The Rise of Community Psychiatry. Contributing author, The Hidden History of 9/11 ("Islamophobia and the "War On Terror": The Continuing Pretext for U.S. Imperial Conquest"), published by Elsevier, 2006: "Researchers are uncovering extensive, credible evidence that the official account of the 9-11 attacks is untenable. Although al-Qaeda may have had the resources to get hijackers onto planes with box cutters, it did not have the power to shut down FBI investigations of suspected hijackers, to set up distracting war games on 9-11-2001, to issue stand-down orders preventing effective military response, or to cause two WTC towers [each 1300+ feet tall, 110 stories] plus Building 7 [610 feet tall, 47 stories, and not hit by an airplane] to collapse using demolition explosives. ... Western intelligence knew about the 9-11 attack plans as early as 1995, and may have facilitated and exploited them for their own ends. Some suggest that the U.S. may even have directly planned and carried them out. Regardless of whether it simply facilitated the attacks or carried them out themselves, there is little doubt that the U.S. was involved." Member: Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice. Association Statement: "Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice is a non-partisan organization consisting of independent researchers and activists engaged in uncovering the true nature of the 9/11 attacks." ----------=======----------======= ----------=======----------======= Benjamin Demott, PhD (1924 - 2005) – Mellon Professor of Humanities Emeritus, Amherst College. Former board member, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Author of several works of cultural criticism, including Junk Politics: The Trashing of the American Mind (2005), Killer Woman Blues: Why Americans Can't Think Straight about Gender and Power (2000) and The Trouble With Friendship: Why Americans Can't Think Straight about Race (1995). Essay in Harpers Magazine, 10/04 Whitewash as Public Service: "The plain, sad reality—I report this following four full days studying the work—is that The 9/11 Commission Report, despite the vast quantity of labor behind it, is a cheat and a fraud. It stands as a series of evasive maneuvers that infantilize the audience, transform candor into iniquity, and conceal realities that demand immediate inspection and confrontation. ... At the core of all these failures lies a deep wariness of earnest, well-informed public debate. ... There's little mystery about why the Commission is tongue-tied. It can't call a liar a liar. ... The Commission, in sum, offers peace through exculpation, evasion, and entertainment—and in doing so dangerously reenergizes a national relish for fantasy." http://www.harpers.org Bio: http://www.boston.com ----------=======----------======= ----------=======----------======= Clare Brandabur, PhD – Assistant Professor, English Literature, Dogus University. Statement to this website 1/12/07: "When I first watched the mesmerizing pictures of the collapse of the Twin Towers and Building Number 7, my reaction was a kind of numb disbelief which later gave way to a perception of the whole event as an elaborately staged piece of theatre. ... But it had to be made to look like an attack by Arab/Islamic terrorists. Many researchers have now shown how the so-called hijackers were set up as a cover for the real professional state-terrorists who actually coordinated the attacks. ... Although I have spoken to people who fear what will happen if the public at large finds out the truth, I believe that dismantling the 9/11 hoax and exposing to public view the real perpetrators is essential for salvaging American democracy. Link to full statement Member: Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice. Association Statement: "Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice is a non-partisan organization consisting of independent researchers and activists engaged in uncovering the true nature of the 9/11 attacks." Bio: http://cosmos.ucc.ie ----------=======----------======= ----------=======----------======= Bryan Sacks – Adjunct Professor, Department of English and Philosophy, Drexel University. Contributing author to Elsevier's The Hidden History of 9/11 ("The Compromised 9-11 Commission"). Essay 6/26/04: "... several FBI "street-level" investigations into the activities of the 9/11 terrorists were stymied by higher-ups in the weeks prior to 9/11, each under strange circumstances, and well before the street-level agents felt like they had reached their "logical end". ... 1) Ken Williams of the Phoenix FBI office sent a now-famous July 10, 2001 memo to the counterterrorism division of the FBI suggesting that the organization institute a national program to keep tabs on suspicious flight-school students. ... Williams ... also warned of a possible "effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the US to attend civil aviation universities and colleges" ... His suggestion for a national program was ignored before 9/11; 2) FBI agent Robert Wright of the Chicago field office, who had been investigating a suspected terrorist cell for three years, was informed in January 2001 that the case was being closed. This despite Wright's contention that his case was growing stronger. ... Three months before September 11, Wright wrote a stinging internal memo charging that the FBI was not interested in thwarting a terrorist attack, but rather "was merely gathering intelligence so they would know who to arrest when a terrorist attack occurred." ... 3) Legal officer Colleen Rowley worked in the FBI's Minneapolis field office when agents arrested Zacarias Moussaoui in August of 2001. ... The Minneapolis [office] felt so strongly about the need to detain him that a request was sent to FBI headquarters to search Moussaoui's laptop computer under the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act. Approximately 10,000 requests under FISA over the past 20 years had been made without a single request being turned down, but the Minneapolis agency's request never got out of the FBI. ... the request was never forwarded for FISA consideration, spurring Rowley to charge that the FBI was "sabotaging" the case, and another agent to charge that headquarters was "setting this up for failure." ... 4) On Aug 28, 2001 the New York FBI office requested opening a criminal investigation in soon-to-be hijacker Khalid Almihdhar based on evidence he had been involved in the USS Cole bombing. The request was turned down, on the basis that, as Griffin puts it, "Almihdhar could not be tied to the Cole investigation without the inclusion of sensitive intelligence information." This led one frustrated FBI agent to write in an email that "someday someone will die--and. . . the public will not understand why we were not more effective."... There are several other aspects about the FBI’s behavior pre- and post-9/11 that scream out for further investigation." http://www.count ----------=======----------======= ----------=======----------======= Lt. Col. Stephen L. Butler, EdD, U.S. Air Force (ret) – Former Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at the Defense Language Institute. Served as a B-52 Radar Navigator in the Gulf War. 24-year Air Force career. Article 6/4/02: "Of course Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism." http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.06E.butler.bush.htm ----------=======----------======= ----------=======----------======= Eric Karlstrom, PhD – Professor of Geography, California State University, Stanislaus. Former Professor of Geography at Northern Arizona University and The University of Kansas. Author or co-author of 23 professional papers on soils, geomorphology, and paleoclimate which have been published in peer-reviewed national and international journals. Author of 20 additional papers which have appeared in non-refereed journals, guidebooks, and books. Director and composer of the documentary film An Awakening Journey - Songs and Voices from the Earth (2006). Composer, recording artist and performer (piano, guitar, banjo and vocals) of nine CDs. 75-page monograph 9/11 Was an Inside Job and a "Psy-Op" 9/20/06: "While overwhelming evidence indicates 9/11 was an inside job, even the FBI now admits that no credible evidence points to Osama bin Laden and the 19 alleged "terrorists" as perpetrators. No trial or impartial investigation of the crime has yet occurred. In fact, the official 9/11 story, that 19 alleged hijackers with box-cutters fooled the best military/defense system in the world, is itself an outrageous conspiracy theory. Certainly these men, at least six of whom are still alive, lacked the motivation and the ability to carry out the attacks by themselves. Certainly, 9/11 was not an "intelligence failure," as the government/media complex has characterized it. Rather, 9/11 was an elaborate hoax, a staged "war pretext incident," engineered to fool the American people into accepting wars of aggression abroad as well as a rollback of their civil liberties. As such, 9/11 is a typical example of "state-sponsored, false-flag terrorism" and a covert, "black op" orchestrated by rogue elements within the U.S. government. It is "false-flag" because it was blamed on a political target group, the Muslims." MS Word doc at http://erickarlstrom.com/Articles Website: http://erickarlstrom.com/index.html
	Bruce R. Henry, PhD – Professor Emeritus, Mathematics and Computer Science, Worcester State College. Former guidance systems engineer for Polaris and Trident missiles, General Electric Co. Statement to this website 6/11/07: "It is clear extraordinarily powerful explosives were used to destroy the WTC Twin Towers. Careful scrutiny of video of the collapse of the South Tower (WTC2) shows the upper segment (above the airplane strike) listing, then dropping, then disintegrating or pulverizing. There was a massive explosion near ground level immediately before those events. The tilt-then-drop sequence shows the building's central structural steel core ... had by some agency been made insubstantial and unable to bear weight. Putting that together with the ground level blast and the subsequent pulverization it is clear very powerful explosives had to have been in play. The airplane strike was a mere smokescreen. Who planted the explosives? What kind of explosives were used? When were they planted? And for what reasons would someone destroy ... the Twin Towers? Simple logic requires of a credible account of the 9/11 events that it explain ALL details clearly shown in documentary footage, together with all other known facts. The Official Story does not even come close to meeting that standard." Article 8/12/06: "The sudden collapse, the seamless downward cascade of the crumbling WTC towers planted doubt in Bruce Henry's mind. The way the buildings fell didn't seem right. The implosion-like plummeting, the absence of central beams and girders refusing to fall, the speed of the collapse -- all raised suspicion for the retired mathematics professor from Worcester. "To me it seems so transparent with a minimal amount of reflection that there's something catawampus," or cockeyed, with the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Finally, he came to a shocking conclusion that runs counter to the accepted history of America's darkest day: The towers, he believes, "were brought down by planted explosives." http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=14428 Member: Scholars for 9/11 Truth
	William Rice, PE – Former Professor of Engineering at Vermont Technical College where he taught engineering materials, structures lab, and other building related courses. Registered Professional Civil Engineer who worked on structural steel and concrete buildings in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Essay Vermont Guardian 3/1/07: "Having worked on structural steel buildings as a civil engineer in the era when the Twin Towers were designed and constructed, I found some disturbing discrepancies and omissions concerning their collapse on 9/11. The interesting fact is that each of these 110-story Twin Towers fell upon itself in about ten seconds at nearly free-fall speed. This violates Newton’s Law of Conservation of Momentum that would require that as the stationary inertia of each floor is overcome by being hit, the mass (weight) increases and the free-fall speed decreases. Even if Newton’s Law is ignored, the prevailing theory would have us believe that each of the Twin Towers inexplicably collapsed upon itself crushing all 287 massive columns on each floor while maintaining a free-fall speed as if the 100,000, or more, tons of supporting structural-steel framework underneath didn't exist. Controlled demolition is so politically unthinkable that the media not only demeans the messenger but also ridicules and "debunks" the message rather than provide investigative reporting. Curiously, it took 441 days for the president’s 9/11 Commission to start an "investigation" into a tragedy where more than 2,500 WTC lives were taken. The Commission’s investigation also didn't include the possibility of controlled-demolition, nor did it include an investigation into the "unusual and unprecedented" manner in which WTC Building #7 collapsed. http://www.vermontguardian.com/commentary/03...
	Horst Ehmke, PhD – Professor of Law, University of Freiburg. Former Minister of Justice (West Germany). Former Minister for Research and Technology. Cabinet Member under Chancellors Kurt Kiesinger and Willy Brandt 1966 - 1974. Author of Politik der praktischen Vernunft: Aufsätze und Referaten (Pragmatic Politics) (1969), Politik als Herausforderung (The Challenge of Politics) (1974), Democratic Socialism and Eurocommunism: The Policy of Detente and Ideological Controversy (1977), Das Portrait, Horst Ehmke: Reden und Beiträge (Self Portrait of Horst Ehmke: Speeches and Essays) (1980), Beiträge zur Verfassungstheorie und Verfassungspolitik (Writings on Constitutional Theory and Politics) (1981), A Second Phase of Detente (1987), Mittendrin: Von der grossen Koalition zur deutschen Einheit (In the Midst of It: From the Federal Republic to German Unification) (1994). Article 7/22/04: "Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with four hijacked planes without the support of a secret service." http://www.guardian.co Bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Ehmke
	Francis Boyle, PhD, LLD – Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, Champaign. A leading practitioner and advocate of international law. He was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. He served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia- Herzegovina at the World Court. He holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University. Article 12/13/06: "The real culprits behind the 2001 anthrax attack on Congress were most likely US government scientists at the army's Ft. Detrick, MD., bioterrorism lab according to a former government biological weapons legislator and University of Illinois Professor. Dr. Francis A. Boyle says the FBI covered up these facts and has also quite clearly stated that he doubts the official government story that 19 arabs with boxcutters perpetrated the attacks of 9/11. "I believe the FBI knows exactly who was behind these terrorist anthrax attacks upon the United States Congress in the Fall of 2001, and that the culprits were US government-related scientists involved in a criminal US government bio-warfare program," Boyle says in his new book Biowarfare and Terrorism. Boyle goes on to inquire, "Could the real culprits behind the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, and the immediately following terrorist anthrax attacks upon Congress ultimately prove to be the same people? Could it truly be coincidental that two of the primary intended victims of the terrorist anthrax attacks - Senators Daschle and Leahy - were holding up the speedy passage of the pre-planned USA Patriot Act ... an act which provided the federal government with unprecedented powers in relation to US citizens and institutions?" http://infowars.net Bio: http://www.law.uiuc.edu/faculty
	Paul Zarembka, PhD – Professor of Economics, State University of New York at Buffalo. Editor, The Hidden History of 9-11-2001, published by Elsevier, 2006. Essay: Initiation of the 9-11 Operation, with Evidence of Insider Trading in The Hidden History of 9-11-2001: "The peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Business by Allen Poteshman (2006) trumps casual new remarks about whether the stock market and/or airline stocks were going down before 9-11 as an explanation for rising put-option purchases. .. it goes beyond anecdotal comments ... . It is a complicated statistical exercise ... Poteshman finds ... these purchases [of options on American Airline stock] ... had only 1 percent probability of occurring simply randomly. We have focused on option trading in AA [American Airline] and UA [United Airline]. But there is a lot more to be discussed in a more complete study. For example, Mathewson and Nol (2001) report: At Morgan Stanley ... put options jumped between Sept 6 and Sept 10 , almost 27 times a previous daily average ... We are not surprised that the Commission avoided any and all such types of information." Editor's note: The 9/11 Commission states in its Monograph on Terrorist Financing, "The U.S. government investigation unequivocally concluded that there was no evidence of illicit trading in the U.S. markets with knowledge of the terrorist attacks. The Commission staff, after an independent review of the government investigation, has discovered no reason to doubt this conclusion." For more information on 9/11-related investment irregularities, see Ernst Welteke and William Bergman. Website: http://ourworld.compuserve.com
	Morgan Reynolds, PhD – Professor Emeritus, Economics, Texas A&M University. Former Director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis. Former Chief Economist, U.S. Department of Labor under George W. Bush 2001 - 2002. Video 6/2/06: "I first began to suspect that 9/11 was in inside job when the Bush-Cheney Administration invaded Iraq. … We can prove that the government’s story is false." http://video.goo Essay 6/9/05: "It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause(s) of the collapse of the twin towers [each 1300+ feet tall, 110 stories] and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely [to] prove to be sound." http://www.l... [Editor's note: WTC Building 7 was 610 feet tall, 47 stories, and was not hit by an airplane. It would have been the tallest building in 33 states. However, no mention of its collapse appears in the 9/11 Commission's "full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks." Watch the collapse video here. And 5 1/2 years after 9/11, the Federal government has yet to publish its promised final report that explains the cause of its collapse.] Bio: http://nomoregames.net/index.php?page=bio
	John D. Maguire, PhD – President Emeritus since 1998 of the Claremont University Consortium, and a Senior Fellow and faculty member of Claremont Graduate University's School of Politics and Economics. He concurrently serves as a fellow at the Institute for Democratic Renewal, directing projects on racial and social justice and the renewal of democracy. He served as president of the State University of New York's College at Old Westbury from 1970-81. Dr. Maguire serves on the boards of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, the Eureka Communities and Union Theological Seminary. Former Director of the Salzburg, Austria Seminar. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Fellow of the Society for Values in Higher Education. Senior Consultant to Project Change. Review of The New Pearl Harbor 4/27/04: "I found Griffin's book a profoundly disturbing compendium of all the arguments for why there has been a conspiracy around 9/11. He begins with a table of eight levels of complicity, from little to overwhelming and lets the reader decide where along the scale reality may lie. Two reminders of my Yale training jumped to mind: one was Leslie Weatherhead's distinction between the permissive and ordaining wills of God; some things God allows to happen; other things God directs to happen. (Application. Since it is overwhelmingly clear the the Bushies knew such an attack was coming, did they--so overwhelmed with a passion to get into a war with Iraq--simply allow the events of 9/11 or actually conspire and were involved in various ways in their happening?) The other "ancient artifact" is Griffin's style of presentation. It reminded me deeply of St. Thomas' Summas, more Contra Gentiles than Theologica. Griffin methodically lays out the argument, gives you counter arguments and leads you to the profoundly disturbing conclusion that not only was there complicity, there was conspiracy." http://www.amazon.com Bio: http://www.race-democracy.org/ABOUT_BIOS.htm
	Major John M. Newman, PhD, U.S. Army (ret) – Professor of History and International Relations, University of Maryland. Former Executive Assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency. Former military attaché in China. 21-year career in U.S. Army Intelligence. Congressional briefing testimony 7/22/05 (p.36): "It falls to me this morning to bring to your attention the story of Saeed Sheikh, whose full name is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and his astonishing rise to power in Al Qaeda, his crucial role in 9/11, which is completely, utterly, missing from the 9/11 Commission report… The 9/11 Commission which studied US intelligence and law enforcement community performance in great detail, (maybe not so much great detail, but they did), neglected to cover the community’s performance during the weeks following the attacks to determine who was responsible for them, not a word about that in the Report. The Report does discuss the immediate US responses but the immediate investigation is never addressed, and anyone who has closely studied the post-9/11 investigation knows that the first breakthrough came two weeks into the investigation when the money transfers from the United Arab Emirates to the hijackers were uncovered. Furthermore, if you have studied that investigation, you know there is no disputing that while investigators may have struggled with the identity of the paymaster, they were clear about one thing, he was Al Qaeda’s finance chief. For this reason alone you have to ask why the 9/11 Commission Report never mentions the finance chief’s role as the 9/11 paymaster." http://www.vt911.org
	Carolyn Baker, PhD – Adjunct Professor of History, New Mexico State University. Author and former psychotherapist. Her books include U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You (2006), The Journey of Forgiveness: Fulfilling The Healing Process (2000), and Reclaiming the Dark Feminine: The Price of Desire (1996). Review of 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out 1/18/07: "Professors David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott have edited a masterpiece of critical thinking and scholarly analysis in this collection of articles by intellectuals who have broken silence on the atrocities of September 11, 2001. ... In my opinion, one of the most important aspects of critical thinking is asking questions which is due, in part, to my preference for questions rather than answers written in stone. This is the paramount reason for my enthusiastic support for the 9/11 truth movement. As long as a community of thinkers, and indeed, the citizenry at large, continue to question the events of September 11, there is at least a spark of hope that at some point, with the proper conditions and at the right time, that spark might be fanned into a flame of revolution." Link to the review Article originally published in From the Wilderness 9/06 : "On this fifth anniversary of the horror that gripped America on September 11, 2001, one thing feels extraordinarily appropriate to me: Acknowledging not only our grief for the innocent victims of that day’s butchery, but our grief for all of the valiant men and women who have sacrificed everything but their lives to illumine the reality of the coup d’etat that took place on that day as the United States government orchestrated the attacks then immediately implemented its pathetic, shabby coverup which non-questioning Americans have accepted ever since." http://www.intellectual Bio: http://carolynbaker.org/administrative/about-me
	Eric Larsen, PhD - Professor of English, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York 1971 - 2006. Author of A Nation Gone Blind - America in an Age of Simplification and Deceit (2006) and two novels, An American Memory (1989) and I Am Zoë Handke (1994). Endorsement of The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions: "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions ...... Exactly what it says. If you read the actual commission report and then read Griffin's point by point perusal and rebuttal of it, you'll be overwhelmed. Even if you don't read the actual report first, Griffin's effect is very nearly the same, since the care he takes to synopsize wherever necessary or useful, the ease of his pace, and the measured, calm, never sensational quality of his method and his voice all fill you in not only about what is in the report but what isn't. The result overall: Anyone who reads Griffin's book with an open mind and with an empirically based acceptance of commonsense logic—no such person will leave Omissions and Distortions without have been convinced that the "Kean Commission Report" is an enormous, partisan coverup, or, as Griffin himself has says, "a 571-page lie." http://www.ericlarsen.net Essay "The Great Crime of 9/11" 11/5/06: "Book after book (see the bibliography at the end of Part Four), article after article, scholar after scholar—all of them provide overwhelmingly numerous examples of the absolute absurdity not only of the "official theory" itself of 9/11 but also of the "Kean Commission" report—and at the same time they show the absolute obviousness of 9/11 having been in fact a "black flag operation," a self-inflicted wound and self-generated "attack," whether one that was planned and perpetrated by the Bushiscti themselves (probably not), or by what Webster Tarpley calls the "oligarchy" or the "invisible" or the "rogue" government that's actually in control of the nation—these questions are matters for scholarship, and they've been and are still being ever more deeply and accurately explored through scholarship." http://www.ericlarsen.net Member: Scholars for 9/11 Truth Bio: http://www.ericlarsen.net/about.html
	Robert Scheer – Director of the Privacy Project and Clinical Professor, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. Former instructor University of California; Irvine campus, Los Angeles campus, and Berkeley campus. 30-year journalistic career. Former Managing Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Ramparts magazine. For 15 years, National Correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Currently, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of truthdig.com, an online magazine. Author of Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I and Clinton (2006), The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us about Iraq (2003), Essays on the Pornography of Power (1991); With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War (1982), and America After Nixon: The Age of Multinationals (1974). Essay Gaping Holes in the 9/11 Narrative 9/11 06: "What we still don’t know about 9/11 could kill us. By "we" I mean the public that has been kept in the dark for five years by a president who may know the truth but has chosen to ignore it. ... Last week, Bush conceded that there were indeed secret CIA prisons, when finally announcing that the group of "key witnesses" to the 9/11 disaster would be moved to Guantanamo and for once afforded visits from the Red Cross and minimal legal representation. Some of them have been interrogated in secret for up to five years, with the Bush Administration left as the sole interpreter of what they revealed. After five years of official deceit, it is not too difficult to believe that the isolation of those prisoners was done less for reasons of learning the truth about 9/11 and more in an effort to politically manage the narrative released to the public. There is glaring evidence that the latter was the case. The 9/11 Commission report contains a disclaimer box on page 146, in which it is stated that the report’s account of what happened on 9/11 was in considerable measure based on what those key witnesses allegedly told interrogators, and that the commissioners were not allowed to meet the witnesses or their interrogators. "We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no control over whether, when or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting." In short, the most cited source that we have on what happened on 9/11, the much celebrated 9/11 Commission Report, was stage-managed by the Bush administration, just as it has controlled and distorted so much other information. In light of that sorry record of the propagandistic exploitation of the 9/11 tragedy for partisan political purpose, is it any wonder that large numbers of Americans have doubts about all of it and that a considerable industry of documentaries and investigative reports has sprung up with alternative theories ranging from the plausible to the absurd? http://www.commondreams.org Bio: http://annenberg.usc.edu
	Joseph C. Hough, Jr., PhD – President of the Faculty and William E. Dodge Professor of Social Ethics, Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University. Former Dean, Vanderbilt Divinity School. Ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, Congregational. Author of Christian Identity and Theological Education (1985), Beyond Clericalism: The Congregation As a Focus for Theological Education (1988), Theology and the University (1991), The Theological Work of the University Scholar (1992). Endorsement of The New Pearl Harbor: "Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor ought to be read by any American who values our democracy and understands the importance of retaining the basic trust of the people for any such democracy to survive over time." http://physics911.ca Bio: http://www.uts.columbia.edu/index.php?id=319
	Richard A. Horsley, PhD – Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Former Chair of the Department of the Study of Religion, University of Massachusetts, Boston. Author of more than fifty articles and a dozen books on religion and society, including; Christian Origins: A People's History Of Christianity (2006), Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit (2003), Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder (2002). Endorsement of Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11 7/1/06: "Do American Christians want the United States to act like the New Rome, invading other countries to impose its imperial rule and its control of other peoples’ resources? That, however, is just what the US is doing, increasingly so since 9/11, explains David Griffin. In this gripping summary of evidence for the truth behind 9/11 and the 9/11 Commission report, Griffin makes a compelling case that the imperial practices of the American government have become a destructive force in the world. And he clarifies the biblical and theological basis for Christians to challenge the resurgent American imperialism that often claims divine blessing on its destructive actions." http://www.amazon.com
	Clark A. Kucheman, PhD – Arthur V. Stoughton Professor of Christian Ethics, Claremont McKenna College. Former Assistant Professor, Divinity School, University of Chicago. Former Lieutenant, U.S. Air Force. Contributing author, Ethics, Religion, and the Good Society: New Directions in a Pluralistic World (1992) and Terrorism, Justice and Social Values (1990). Editor, The Life of Choice: Some Liberal Religious Perspectives on Morality (1978). Review of The New Pearl Harbor 4/8/04: "Having been kept awake nights in the Bachelor Officer's Quarters at McGuire Air Force Base, NJ, by both Air Force and Navy jet fighters revving and taking off through the night in defense of New York City, I have wondered why, contrary to standard operating procedure, no McGuire jets were scrambled on 9/11. The standard operating procedure is to intercept aircraft that are off course or out of communication, but - even after the first tower was hit - this was not done. Having read Griffin's book, and even though he does not claim to have a conclusive answer to my question, I am beginning to understand. In fact, I am aware of and beginning to understand much much else as well. And I shudder. It may be too hot for the popular media to handle, but everyone - especially Air Force and Navy Air Corps veterans - should read and think carefully about the evidence and arguments considered in this book." http://www.amazon.com Bio: http://academic.claremontmckenna.edu/faculty
	Robert S. Ellwood, PhD – Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Religion, University of Southern California. Author and editor of over 25 books on religion, including; The Encyclopedia of World Religions (1998 - 2007), Religions of the World (9th Edition 2004), The Dictionary of Religion (2001), The Politics of Myth (1999), Mysticism and Religion (1998), Many People, Many Faiths (1995). Review of The New Pearl Harbor 3/28/04: " 'Life is short, and the list of conspiracy theories is long,' says this author. So, why does he ask us to spend time on yet another supposedly far-out tale? A good initial reason is that he is David Ray Griffin, known from his other works to be an extremely meticulous and disciplined scholar and researcher. Carefully scrutinizing the evidence of the attacks of 9-11, the official explanations, and the work of critics, he presents the reader with numerous and disturbing questions. Griffin does not claim to have the final answers, only to have made a strong case that an independent, well-funded investigation is desperately needed. He makes his case a hundred times over." http://www.amazon.com Review of The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions: "[This book] challenges the received explanation of the 9/11 attacks--now given official sanction by the Commission -- with an Everest of evidence showing the probable complicity of high-level members of the military and the present Administration. In the Introduction Griffin gives a key reason why the supposedly impartial Commission, staffed by five Republicans and five Democrats, carried out a highly partial investigation and produced a report that amounts to a coverup. A pivotal reason for this is that the commission's executive director, who "pick[ed] the areas of investigation, the briefing materials, the topics for hearings, the witnesses, and the lines of questioning ... was Philip Zelikow, who was deeply involved in the Bush administration. http://www.amazon.com Robert S. Ellwood Bio: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~ellwood/
	Rev. David P. Polk, PhD – Former Vice President of Christian Board of Publication and Editor-in-Chief of Chalice Press 1990 - 2003 (ret). Former Harold Glen Brown Associate Professor of Pastoral Ministry, Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University. Also taught at Lexington Theological Seminary and at Coe, Mt. Mercy, and Drury Colleges. Former Senior Pastor, First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Author, co-author, and editor of numerous books on religion, including; Chalice Praise: Pew Edition (2004), Shaken Foundations: Sermons from America's Pulpits After the Terrorist Attacks (2001), You Might Be a Disciple If (1997), And the Angels Wept: From the Pulpits of Oklahoma City After the Bombing (1995), Now What's a Christian to Do? (1994), If Only I Had Known: Dramatic Monologues for Advent and Lent (1994), Partners in Prayer (1996), Education of the Practical Theologian (1990), On the Way to God: An Exploration into the Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (1988). Review of Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11 10/9/06: "Discovering the courage to confront a demonic American empire This is truly two books in one. Each half is vitally important to all Americans, but especially to those of us who wish to be identified as Christians. Part I explores the question of how complicit members of the Bush administration were in the tragedy of 9/11. ... In Part I he [David Ray Griffin] offers compelling evidence that 9/11 was an American "false flag" operation in which previously planted explosives allowed the THREE towers of the World Trade Center--including one building not even struck by the passenger jets! [WTC 7] --to implode in the manner of controlled demolitions. ... The point is that this is a vital issue about which we Americans ought to be crying loudly to be examined by some subsequent commission of inquiry that will not simply gloss over or totally ignore discrepancies, inconsistencies in testimony, and unexamined facts." http://www.amazon.com
	Kerry S. Walters, PhD – Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Gettysburg College. Co-founder of the Center for Nonviolent Living. Director of PeaceWay: A Ministry of Christian Nonviolence. Co-editor of Episcopal Peace Witness the national quarterly of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship. Author and editor of numerous books on philosophy and ethics, including; Merciful Meekness: Becoming A Spiritually Integrated Person (2004), Finding Perfect Joy With St. Francis of Assisi (2002), Godlust: Facing the Demonic, Embracing the Divine (2000), Benjamin Franklin and His Gods (1998), Re-Thinking Reason - New Perspectives in Critical Thinking (1994), Rational Infidels: The American Deists (1992) Review of The New Pearl Harbor 3/17/04: "We ignore this book at our peril. I've just spent an entire night and part of a day rereading and rereading Professor Griffin's thoroughly researched, judiciously argued, and incredibly disturbing book. Griffin takes on the task of investigating the official account of the 9/11 attacks, asking questions that beg to be asked,... analyzing possible scenarios, and asking what kinds of evidence would properly address unanswered questions. Griffin invites the reader to examine two possible explanations to account for the inconsistencies: the "incompetence" theory and the "complicity" theory. The former rests on the assumption that stupid mistakes were made both before and after the attack. The latter rests on the assumption that false official accounts were made about advance notice of the attacks and/or that after-the-fact obstruction of investigations took place. Griffin's conclusion is that it's reasonable to suppose that complicity rather than incompetence is the more likely explanation, and he painstakingly makes his case by examining five major challenges to the official version of what happened. On the second anniversary of 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld made the shocking public claim that the attacks were really blessings "in disguise." Rumsfeld's point was that the US was motivated by the attacks to ramp up its military strength. But if even part of Griffin's analysis is on the money, the "blessing," which has led to great subsequent loss of life and expenditures of monies in Afghanistan and Iraq, is built on a deception. A frightening, but not implausible, possibility." http://www.amazon.com Bio: http://www.gettysburg.edu
	James Fetzer, PhD – Distinguished McKnight University Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. Former Captain, U.S. Marine Corps. He has published more than 100 articles and reviews and authored, co-authored, and edited over 20 books on the philosophy of science, the theory of knowledge, and the theoretical foundations of computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science, including: Computers and Cognition: Why Minds are not Machines (2002) and The Evolution of Intelligence (2004). Essay 9/11: Rational Beliefs are not Paranoid 12/8/06: "The impact of the planes cannot have caused enough damage to bring the [World Trade Center] buildings down, since the buildings were designed to withstand them (as Frank De Martini, the project manager, has observed), the planes that hit were very similar to those they were designed to withstand, and they continued to stand after those impacts with negligible effects. ... WTC-7 came down in a classic controlled demolition at 5:20 PM/ET after Larry Silverstein suggested the best thing to do might be to "pull it", displaying all the characteristics of classic controlled demolitions: a complete, abrupt, and total collapse into its own footprint, where the floors are all falling at the same time, and so forth, an event so embarrassing to the official account that it is not even mentioned in THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT. There are more, especially about the alleged hijackers, including that they were not competent to fly the planes and their names were not on any passenger manifest. Several have turned up alive and well and living in the Middle East. The government has not even produced their tickets as evidence." http://www.scholarsfor... Co-founder: Scholars for 9/11 Truth Bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Fetzer
	James K. Powell II, PhD – Visiting Assistant Professor, Buddhist Studies, Department of the Languages and Cultures of Asia, University of Wisconsin. Essay: Regarding the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center: "... having seen some 12 times the collapse of Building 7 throughout these videos, it has dawned upon me what a dupe I have been. Everyone has been. The DVD captures news anchors and experts at the time commenting at how like a demolition job the destruction seemed. In the videos we see an official deciding whether to "pull it" meaning Building 7. From whatever source, I urge skeptics to watch building 7 just make a free fall. Compare the destruction of these buildings with that of the Madrid Hotel that raged with fires but still did not fall. It is up to citizens to investigate the smoke that points to the fire. As Franklin indicated, those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither." http://mujca.com/powell.htm
	Four Arrows, aka Don Trent Jacobs, EdD, PhD – Professor of Educational Leadership, Fielding Graduate University. Associate Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning, Northern Arizona University. Former Dean of Education, Oglala Lakota College. Former U.S. Marine Corps officer. Author of 12 books, including Primal Awareness and Teaching Virtues: Building Character Across the Curriculum; lead author American Assassination: The Strange Death of Senator Paul Wellstone. Editor of the University of Texas Press text, Unlearning the Language of Conquest. Contributing author to Elsevier's The Hidden History of 9/11 ("The Military Exercises of 9/11: Bizarre Coincidence or Something Else?"). Statement to this website 1/9/07: "Available evidence casts grave doubt on the government's official story about what happened on and before September 11, 2001, and it should be the responsibility of every world citizen to bring forth the truth." Member: Scientific Panel Investigating Nine-Eleven Association Statement: "We have found solid scientific grounds on which to question the interpretation put upon the events of September 11, 2001 by the Office of the President of the United States of America and subsequently propagated by the major media of western nations." Member: Scholars for 9/11 Truth Association Statement: "Research proves the current administration has been dishonest about what happened in New York and Washington, D.C. The World Trade Center was almost certainly brought down by controlled demolitions and that the available relevant evidence casts grave doubt on the government's official story about the attack on the Pentagon." Bio: http://www.fielding.edu/elc/faculty/jacobs.htm
	David Gabbard, EdD – Professor, College of Education, East Carolina University. Editor, Public Resistance, an Academic Journal to Confront the Lies of the Right Statement to this website 1/8/07: "The truth about 9-11 is that we do not know the truth about 9-11. Our government does not want us to know the truth about 9-11. If you want to know the truth about 9-11, then please help us lift the gag order that former Attorney General John Ashcroft placed on former FBI translator, Sibel Edmonds, and call for a truly independent investigation of the information contained in the documents she translated while working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation after 9-11. She said, "If they were to do real investigations we would see several significant high level criminal prosecutions in this country. And that is something that they are not going to let out. And, believe me; they will do everything to cover this up." Member: Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice. Association Statement: "Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice is a non-partisan organization consisting of independent researchers and activists engaged in uncovering the true nature of the 9/11 attacks." Bio: http://web.mac.com/publicresistance
	Walter E. Davis, PhD – Associate Professor, College of Education, Health and Human Services, Kent State University. Essay "September 11th And The Bush Administration - Compelling Evidence for Complicity" 8/31/03: "As I outline below, there are numerous aspects regarding the official stories about September 11th which do not fit with known facts, which contradict each other, which defy common sense, and which indicate a pattern of misinformation and coverup. ... In this article, I outline twenty-two items of evidence and questions, each one sufficient reason to demand an investigation into why September 11th was not prevented. Together, these items suggest that the most plausible explanation of events is that the Bush Administration was complicit in the terrorist attacks. This should be a national and international scandal." http://www.informationclearinghouse Member: Scientific Panel Investigating Nine-Eleven Association Statement: "We have found solid scientific grounds on which to question the interpretation put upon the events of September 11, 2001 by the Office of the President of the United States of America and subsequently propagated by the major media of western nations." Bio: http://physics911.ca
	Richard W. Behan, PhD – Professor Emeritus of Natural Resource Policy and Dean Emeritus of the School of Forestry, Northern Arizona University 1975 - 1993. Former Professor of Natural Resource Policy, University of Montana. Former Member of the Board of Directors of the Forest History Society, American Forestry Association, and Council of Forestry School Executives. Author of nearly 100 articles and papers on public land management, economics, and politics. Author of Plundered Promise (2001) and Ecology, Economics, Environment (1971). Essay 12/3/06: "The controversies rage on yet today about the events of 9/11. No steel building has ever collapsed from fire alone. Buildings falling precisely into their footprints are the marks of deliberate (and expert) demolition. The collapse of a third building that was not hit at all. The short-selling of airline stock in previous days. The Pentagon hit by a missile, not a civilian airliner. The smokescreen includes the coverup of the 9/11 attacks on the Trade Towers and the Pentagon. Initially and fiercely resisting any inquiry at all, President Bush finally appoints a 10-person "9/11 Commission." Its report places the blame on "faulty intelligence." President Bush and Vice President Cheney ... are not required to testify under oath, and they need not even testify separately. At the insistence of the White House, they are "interviewed" together in the Oval Office, with no transcription permitted. We need to know the truth and all the truth. The time has come, as well as the opportunity, for formal, Congressional investigations, based on subpoenas, sworn testimony, and direct evidence about 9/11 and about the created reality of the "war on terror." If such inquiries clearly exonerate the Bush Administration, the nation can breathe deeply and go on. If they do not, then but only then should impeachment be undertaken." http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1203-21.htm Bio: http://www.rockisland.com/~rwbehan/author.html
	Note of acknowledgement: Most of this excellent data was compiled by Alan Miller. For the latest version of this chart on his website: http://patriotsquestion911.com/professors.html. Please note that most of the individuals listed above are not affiliated with this website. A PERSONAL NOTE ABOUT THE WEBPAGE FROM ALAN MILLER .../...And so I began a several month period of researching the events of 9/11. I found a great deal of material challenging the 9/11 Commission Report on web sites like 911truth.org, physics911.net, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and many others. I attended a lecture by Prof. David Ray Griffin. I learned much about what has become known as the 9/11 Truth Movement. My objective, at this point, is to have our government launch a new, extremely thorough and impartial re-examination of the terrible acts of 9/11 and the events leading up to them. In my opinion, and in the opinion of the above listed experienced individuals, the current 9/11 Commission Report is seriously inadequate in explaining what really happened. For the sake of those who died on 9/11, their families, the American people, and for the sake of peace in the world, please continue to seek the truth about 9/11. Demand a thorough and impartial reinvestigation of 9/11. Write or call your elected representatives in Congress. http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/index.html or http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt Write or call national newspapers, radio, and television. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=111 Write or call your local newspapers and media. http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/media LINKS TO RELIABLE 9/11 RESOURCES, 9/11 COMMISSION WEBSITE 9/11 Truth Websites Free 9/11 Videos 9/11 Commission Defenders 9/11 Families 9/11 Information Center 9/11: Press For Truth 9-11Commission.gov Families of September 11 Complete 9/11 Timeline Loose Change Nat. Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Peaceful Tomorrows ScholarsforTruth911.org Prof. Griffin on C-SPAN Popular Mechanics Sept. 11 Families Assoc. 911Truth.org 9/11 Mysteries WTC United Family Group Physics911.net Painful Deceptions PentagonResearch.com September 11 Revisited Veterans for 9/11 Truth 911 Eyewitness 911blogger.com  www.patriotsquestion911.com

Sun of God Horus from Zeitgeist

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/transcript.htm
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Part One: The Greatest Story Ever Told

This is the sun. As far back as 10 thousand B.C.E., history is abundant with carvings [M] and writings reflecting people's respect and adoration for this object [S1]. And it is simple to understand why as every morning the sun would rise, bringing vision, warmth, and security, saving man from the cold, blind, predator-filled darkness of night. Without it, the cultures understood, the crops would not grow, and life on the planet would not survive. These realities made the sun the most adored object of all time.[M] Likewise, they were also very aware of the stars.[M] The tracking of the stars allowed them to recognize and anticipate events which occurred over long periods of time, such as eclipses and full moons.[M] They in turn catalogued celestial groups into what we know today as constellations.[S2] This is the cross of the Zodiac, one of the oldest conceptual images in human history. [M] It reflects the sun as it figuratively passes through the 12 major constellations over the course of a year. It also reflects the 12 months of the year, the 4 seasons, and the solstices and equinoxes [S3] . The term Zodiac relates to the fact that constellations were anthropomorphized, or personified, as figures, or animals.[S4] [M] In other words, the early civilizations did not just follow the sun and stars, they personified them with elaborate myths involving their movements and relationships. [S5] [M] The sun, with its life-giving and -saving qualities was personified as a representative of the unseen creator or god...[M]"God's Sun,"[M] the light of the world, the savior of human kind.[S6] Likewise, the 12 constellations represented places of travel for God's Sun and were identified by names, usually representing elements of nature that happened during that period of time. For example, Aquarius, the water bearer, who brings the Spring rains.[S7] [M] [D] This is Horus.[M] He is the Sun God of Egypt of around 3000 BC [S8] [D]. He is the sun, anthropomorphized, and his life is a series of allegorical myths involving the sun's movement in the sky. [S9] [S10] [M] From the ancient hieroglyphics in Egypt, we know much about this solar messiah. For instance, Horus, being the sun, or the light, had an enemy known as Set and Set [D] was the personification of the darkness or night .[M] [S11] And, metaphorically speaking, every morning Horus would win the battle against Set - while in the evening, Set would conquer Horus and send him into the underworld. [S12] [S13] It is important to note that "dark vs. light" or "good vs. evil" is one of the most ubiquitous mythological dualities ever known and is still expressed on many levels to this day. Broadly speaking, the story of Horus is as follows: Horus was born on December 25th [S14] [S15] of the virgin Isis-Meri.[S16] [S17] [S18] [D] [M] His birth was accompanied by a star in the east [S19], which in turn, three kings followed to locate and adorn the new-born savior [M] [S20] [S21] At the age of 12, he was a prodigal child teacher, and at the age of 30 [S22] [S23] he was baptized by a figure known as Anup [M] and thus began his ministry[S24] [M]. Horus had 12 disciples[S25] he traveled about with, performing miracles[S26] [S27]such as healing the sick[S28] and walking on water[S29]. Horus was known by many gestural names such as The Truth, The Light, God's Annointed Son, The Good Shepherd, The Lamb of God, and many others[S30] [S31]. After being betrayed by Typhon[S32], Horus was crucified[S33] [S34], buried for 3 days[S35], and thus, resurrected.[S36] [S37] [M]. These attributes of Horus, whether original or not, seem to permeate in many cultures of the world, for many other gods are found to have the same general mythological structure. Attis, of Phyrigia, born of the virgin Nana on December 25th, crucified, placed in a tomb and after 3 days, was resurrected. [S38] [S39] [S40] [S41] [S42] [S43] [M] [D] Krishna, of India, born of the virgin Devaki with a star in the east signaling his coming, performed miracles with his disciples, and upon his death was resurrected. [S44] [S45] [S46] [S47] [S48] [M] [M2] [D] Dionysus of Greece, born of a virgin on December 25th, was a traveling teacher who performed miracles such as turning water into wine, he was referred to as the "King of Kings," "God's Only Begotten Son," "The Alpha and Omega," and many others, and upon his death, he was resurrected. [S49] [S50] [S51] [S52] [S53] [M] Mithra, of Persia, born of a virgin on December 25th, he had 12 disciples and performed miracles, and upon his death was buried for 3 days and thus resurrected, he was also referred to as "The Truth," "The Light," and many others. Interestingly, the sacred day of worship of Mithra was Sunday. [S54] [S55] [S56] [S57] [S58] [M] The fact of the matter is there are numerous saviors, from different periods, from all over the world, which subscribe to these general characteristics. The question remains: why these attributes, why the virgin birth on December 25th, why dead for three days and the inevitable resurrection, why 12 disciples or followers? [M] To find out, let's examine the most recent of the solar messiahs. Jesus Christ was born of the virgin Mary on December 25th [D] in Bethlehem, his birth was announced by a star in the east, which three kings or magi followed to locate and adorn the new savior.[D] He was a child teacher at 12, at the age of 30 he was baptized by John the Baptist, and thus began his ministry. Jesus had 12 disciples which he traveled about with performing miracles such as healing the sick, walking on water, raising the dead, he was also known as the "King of Kings," the "Son of God," the "Light of the World," the "Alpha and Omega," the "Lamb of God," and many others. After being betrayed by his disciple Judas and sold for 30 pieces of silver, he was crucified, placed in a tomb and after 3 days was resurrected and ascended into Heaven.[S59] First of all, the birth sequence is completely astrological. The star in the east is Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, which, on December 24th, aligns with the 3 brightest stars in Orion's Belt. [S60] [M] These 3 bright stars are called today what they were called in ancient times: The Three Kings.[S61] [S62] The Three Kings and the brightest star, Sirius, all point to the place of the sunrise on December 25th.[S63] [M] This is why the Three Kings "follow" the star in the east, in order to locate the sunrise -- the birth of the sun.[S64] [M] The Virgin Mary is the constellation Virgo, [S65] also known as Virgo the Virgin. Virgo in Latin means virgin. The ancient glyph for Virgo is the altered "m". This is why Mary along with other virgin mothers, such as Adonis's mother Myrrha [S66], or Buddha's mother Maya [S67] begin with an M.[S68] [M] Virgo is also referred to as the House of Bread [S69] [S70], and the representation of Virgo is a virgin holding a sheaf of wheat. This House of Bread and its symbol of wheat represents August and September, the time of harvest. [D] In turn, Bethlehem, in fact, literally translates to "house of bread". [M] [S71] Bethlehem is thus a reference to the constellation Virgo , a place in the sky, not on Earth.[M] [S72] There is another very interesting phenomenon that occurs around December 25th, or the winter solstice. From the summer solstice to the winter solstice, the days become shorter and colder. From the perspective of the northern hemisphere, the sun appears to move south and get smaller and more scarce. The shortening of the days and the expiration of the crops when approaching the winter solstice symbolized the process of death to the ancients. It was the death of the Sun. [S73] By December 22nd, the Sun's demise was fully realized, for the Sun, having moved south continually for 6 months, makes it to it's lowest point in the sky. Here a curious thing occurs: the Sun stops moving south, at least perceivably, for 3 days.[S74] [M] During this 3 day pause, the Sun resides in the vicinity of the Southern Cross, or Crux, constellation.[S75] [S76] [M] And after this time on December 25th, the Sun moves 1 degree, this time north, foreshadowing longer days, warmth, and Spring.[S77] And thus it was said: the Sun died on the cross, [D] was dead for 3 days, only to be resurrected or born again.[S78] [S79]This is why Jesus and numerous other Sun Gods share the crucifixion, 3-day death, and resurrection concept. [S80] [M] It is the Sun's transition period before it shifts its direction back into the Northern Hemisphere, bringing Spring, and thus salvation.[S81] [S82] [M] However, they did not celebrate the resurrection of the Sun until the spring equinox, or Easter. This is because at the spring equinox, the Sun officially overpowers the evil darkness, as daytime thereafter becomes longer in duration than night, and the revitalizing conditions of spring emerge.[M] [S83] Now, probably the most obvious of all the astrological symbolism around Jesus regards the 12 disciples. They are simply the 12 constellations of the Zodiac, which Jesus, being the Sun, travels about with. [S84] [S85] [S86] [S87] [M] In fact, the number 12 is replete throughout the Bible. [M] This text has more to do with astrology than anything else. Coming back to the cross of the Zodiac, the figurative life of the Sun, this was not just an artistic expression or tool to track the Sun's movements. It was also a Pagan spiritual symbol, [S88] the shorthand of which looked like this. [S89] This is not a symbol of Christianity. [M] It is a Pagan adaptation of the cross of the Zodiac. [S90] [S91] This is why Jesus in early occult art is always shown with his head on the cross, for Jesus is the Sun, the Sun of God, the Light of the World, [S92] the Risen Savior, [S93] who will "come again,"[S94] as it does every morning, the Glory of God [S95] who defends against the works of darkness,[S96] as he is "born again" [S97] every morning, and can be seen "coming in the clouds,"[S98] "up in Heaven,"[S99]with his "Crown of Thorns,"[S100] or, sun rays. Now, of the many astrological-astronomical metaphors in the Bible, one of the most important has to do with the ages. Throughout the scripture there are numerous references to the "Age." In order to understand this, we need to be familiar with the phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes. The ancient Egyptians along with cultures long before them recognized that approximately every 2150 [D] years the sunrise on the morning of the spring equinox would occur at a different sign of the Zodiac. [M] This has to do with a slow angular wobble that the Earth maintains as it rotates on it's axis.It is called a precession because the constellations go backwards, rather than through the normal yearly cycle. [S101] The amount of time that it takes for the precession to go through all 12 signs is roughly 25,765 years. [S102] This is also called the "Great Year," [S103] and ancient societies were very aware of this. They referred to each 2150 year period as an "age." From 4300 b.c. to 2150 b.c., it was the Age of Taurus, the Bull. From 2150 b.c. to 1 a.d., it was the Age of Aries, the Ram, and from 1 a.d. to 2150 a.d. it is the Age of Pisces, the age we are still in to this day, and in and around 2150, we will enter the new age: the Age of Aquarius. [S104] [S105] Now, the Bible reflects, broadly speaking, a symbolic movement through 3 ages, while foreshadowing a 4th. In the Old Testament when Moses comes down Mount Sinai with the 10 Commandments, he is very upset to see his people worshiping a golden bull calf.[S106] In fact, he shattered the stone tablets and instructed his people to kill each other in order to purify themselves. [S107] Most Biblical scholars would attribute this anger to the fact that the Israelites were worshiping a false idol, [S108] or something to that effect. The reality is that the golden bull is Taurus the Bull, and Moses represents the new Age of Aries the Ram. [S109] [M] This is why Jews even today still blow the Ram's horn. [S110] [M] Moses represents the new Age of Aries, [S111] and upon the new age, everyone must shed the old age. Other deities mark these transitions as well, a pre-Christian god who kills the bull, in the same symbology. [S112] [S113] [M] Now Jesus is the figure who ushers in the age following Aries, the Age of Pisces the Two Fish.[S114] [S115] [M] Fish symbolism is very abundant in the New Testament. Jesus feeds 5000 people with bread and "2 fish." [S116] When he begins his ministry walking along Galilei, he befriends 2 fisherman, who follow him. [S117] [M] And I think we've all seen the Jesus-fish on the backs of people's cars. Little do they know what it actually means. It is a Pagan astrological symbolism for the Sun's Kingdom during the Age of Pisces.[S118] [M] Also, Jesus' assumed birth date is essentially the start of this age. At Luke 22:10 when Jesus is asked by his disciples where the next passover will be, Jesus replied: "Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you bearing a pitcher of water... follow him into the house where he entereth in." This scripture is by far one of the most revealing of all the astrological references. The man bearing a pitcher of water is Aquarius, the water-bearer, who is always pictured as a man pouring out a pitcher of water. [S119] He represents the age after Pisces, and when the Sun (God's Sun) leaves the Age of Pisces (Jesus), it will go into the House of Aquarius, as Aquarius follows Pisces in the precession of the equinoxes. Also Jesus is saying is that after the Age of Pisces will come the Age of Aquarius. [S120] [M] Now, we have all heard about the end times and the end of the world. Apart from the cartoonish depictions in the Book of Revelation, the main source of this idea comes from Matthew 28:20, where Jesus says "I will be with you even to the end of the world." [S121] However, in King James Version, "world" is a mistranslation, among many mistranslations. The actual word being used is "aeon", which means "age." "I will be with you even to the end of the age." Which is true, as Jesus' Solar Piscean personification will end when the Sun enters the Age of Aquarius. [S122] The entire concept of end times and the end of the world is a misinterpreted astrological allegory.[S123] [S124] [S125] [S126] [S127] [M] Let's tell that to the approximately 100 million people in America who believe the end of the world is coming. Furthermore, the character of Jesus, a literary and astrological hybrid, is most explicitly a plagiarization of the Egyptian Sun-god Horus.[S128] [S129] [S130] [S131]For example, inscribed about 3500 years, on the walls of the Temple of Luxor in Egypt are images of the enunciation, the immaculate conception, the birth, and the adoration of Horus. [S132] The images begin with Thaw announcing to the virgin Isis that she will conceive Horus, then Nef the holy ghost impregnating the virgin, and then the virgin birth and the adoration.[S133] [S134] [M] This is exactly the story of Jesus' miracle conception. In fact, the literary similarities between Jesus and the Egyption religion are staggering. [M] [S135] And the plagiarism is continuous. The story of Noah and Noah's Ark is taken directly from tradition. The concept of a Great Flood is ubiquitous throughout the ancient world, with over 200 different cited claims in different periods and times. [S136] [S137] [M] However, one need look no further for a pre-Christian source than the Epic of Gilgamesh,[S138] [S139] written in 2600 b.c. This story talks of a Great Flood commanded by God, an Ark with saved animals upon it, and even the release and return of a dove, all held in common with the biblical story, among many other similarities.[S140] [M] And then there is the plagiarized story of Moses. Upon Moses' birth, it is said that he was placed in a reed basket and set adrift in a river in order to avoid infanticide. He was later rescued by a daughter of royalty and raised by her as a Prince.[S141] This baby in a basket story was lifted directly from the myth of Sargon of Akkad of around 2250 b.c. Sargon was born, placed in a reed basket in order to avoid infanticide, and set adrift in a river. He was in turn rescued and raised by Akki, a royal mid-wife.[S142] [S143] [M] Furthermore, Moses is known as the Law Giver, the giver of the Ten Commandments,[S144] the Mosaic Law. However, the idea of a Law being passed from God to a prophet on a mountain is also a very old motif. Moses is just a law giver in a long line of law givers in mythological history. [S145] In India, Manou was the great law giver. [S146] In Crete, Minos ascended Mount Dicta, where Zeus gave him the sacred laws. [S147] While in Egypt there was Mises, [S148] who carried stone tablets and upon them the laws of god were written. And as far as the Ten Commandments, they are taken outright from Spell 125 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. [S149] What the Book of the Dead phrased "I have not stolen" became "Thou shall not steal," "I have not killed" became "Thou shall not kill," "I have not told lies" became "Thou shall not bare false witness" and so forth. [S150] In fact, the Egyptian religion is likely the primary foundational basis for the Judeo-Christian theology. [M] Baptism, [S151] afterlife,[S152] final judgment, [S153] virgin birth [S154] and resurrection, [S155] crucifixion, [S156] the ark of the covenant, [S157]circumcision, [S158] [S159] saviors,[S160] holy communion, [S161] the great flood, [S162] Easter, [S163] Christmas [S164] [S165] , Passover, [S166] and many many more, are all attributes of Egyptian ideas, long predating Christianity and Judaism. Justin Martyr, one of the first Christian historians and defenders, wrote: "When we say that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was produced without sexual union, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into Heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those who you esteem Sons of Jupiter." [S167] In a different writing, Justin Martyr said "He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you believe of Perseus." [S168] It's obvious that Justin and other early Christians knew how similar Christianity was to the Pagan religions. However, Justin had a solution. As far as he was concerned, the Devil did it. The Devil had the foresight to come before Christ, and create these characteristics in the Pagan world. [S169] The Bible is nothing more than an astro-theological literary fold hybrid, just like nearly all religious myths before it. [S170] [S171] [S172] [S173] [S174]In fact, the aspect of transference, of one character's attributes to a new character, can be found within the book itself. In the Old Testament there's the story of Joseph. Joseph was a prototype for Jesus. Joseph was born of a miracle birth, [S175] Jesus was born of a miracle birth. [S176] Joseph was of 12 brothers, [S177] Jesus had 12 disciples. [S178] Joseph was sold for 20 pieces of silver, [S179]Jesus was sold for 30 pieces of silver. [S180] Brother "Judah" suggests the sale of Joseph, [S181] disciple "Judas" suggests the sale of Jesus. [S182] Joseph began his work at the age of 30, [S183]Jesus began his work at the age of 30. [S184] The parallels go on and on. Furthermore, is there any non-Biblical historical evidence of any person, living with the name Jesus, the Son of Mary, who traveled about with 12 followers, healing people and the like? There are numerous historians who lived in and around the Mediterranean either during or soon after the assumed life of Jesus.[S185] How many of these historians document this figure? Not one. [S186] However, to be fair, that doesn't mean defenders of the Historical Jesus haven't claimed the contrary. Four historians are typically referenced to justify Jesus's existence. Pliny the younger, Suetonius, Tacitus and the first three. [M] [S187] Each one of their entries consists of only a few sentences at best and only refer to the Christus or the Christ, which in fact is not name but a title. It means the "Anointed one" [S188] The fourth source is Josephus and this source has been proven to be a forgery for hundreds of years.[S189] Sadly, it is still sited as truth. You would think that a guy who rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven for all eyes to see and performed the wealth of miracles acclaimed to him would have made it into the historical record. It didn't because once the evidence is weighed, there are very high odds that the figure known as Jesus, did not even exist.[S190] [S191] [S192] [S193] The reality is, Jesus was the Solar Deity of the Gnostic Christian sect, [S194] [S195] [S196] and like all other Pagan gods, he was a mythical figure. It was the political establishment that sought to historize the Jesus figure for social control. By 325 a.d. in Rome, emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicea. [S197] It was during this meeting that the politically motivated Christian Doctrines were established and thus began a long history of Christian bloodshed and spiritual fraud. And for the next 1600 years, the Vatican maintained a political stranglehold on all of Europe, leading to such joyous periods as the Dark Ages, along with enlightening events such as the Crusades, and the Inquisition. Christianity, along with all other theistic belief systems, is the fraud of the age. It served to detach the species from the natural world, and likewise, each other. It supports blind submission to authority. It reduces human responsibility to the effect that "God" controls everything, and in turn awful crimes can be justified in the name of Divine Pursuit. And most importantly, it empowers those who know the truth but use the myth to manipulate and control societies. The religious myth is the most powerful device ever created, and serves as the psychological soil upon which other myths can flourish *******

[S1] - Singh, Madanjeet: 'The Sun- Symbol of Power and Life, UNESCO Pub., 1993 [S2] - Krupp, Edwin: In Search of Ancient Astronomies, Mcgraw-Hill, 1979 [S3] - Carpenter, Edward: Pagan and Christian Creeds, DODO Press, Chaper III: "The Symbolism of the Zodiac [S4] - Hall, Manly P.: The Secret Teachings of All Ages, 1928. Page 53-56 [Chapter: "The Zodiac and Its Signs] http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/transcript.htm

Jesus Barabbas Scholars aside OC911 group video

	js zog VIP =3.00 minutes... Whee! all the crucified heroes discarded, even Mithra = Catholic core structure. Jesus vs Horus    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GilQ-MYMAiE
	Once you have the true explanation, you can drop the false one. http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Origina... http://video.google.com/videosearch?q... http://www.freedomdomain.com/relig.htm http://video.google.com/videoplay?doc... http://www.gnosticmedia.com/ (more) (less)
	"Jesus Barabbas" According to the United Bible Societies' text, Matthew 27:17 reads: "...whom will ye that I release unto you? Jesus Barabbas [Greek: Iesoun ton Barabban] or Jesus who is called Christ (Iesoun ton legomenon Christon)"? Some early Syriac manuscripts of Matthew present Barabbas' name twice as Jesus bar Abbas: manuscripts in the Caesarean text-type— the Sinaitic Palimpsest, the Syriac lectionaries and some of the manuscripts used by Origen in the 3rd century— all support Barabbas' name as Jesus Barabbas. Origen consciously rejected the reading in the manuscript he was working with, and left out "Iesous" deliberately, for reverential considerations, certainly a strongly motivated omission. Origen did not want the name Jesus associated with anyone who was a sinner.[citation needed] While Origen was later declared a heretic, much of his theology and philosophy remained influential, and has, to some extent, been traced to the later St. Augustine , who remains one of the most influential church fathers. It is a point of contention how much influence Origen's edits of the text may have had. Some scholars[attribution needed] believe that Mark's parallels between the two men, each a "Jesus, son of the Father," constructing a parable, may have been overplayed, as it does not conform to the modern mainstream concept of Jesus, but more closely parallels the Gnostic Jesus as depicted by earlier Christian texts. "Barabbas", or "Bar-abbas", translates to "son of the father", which could be a surname. It is not common in any other Hebrew text. {Bar-abba is found in the story of Jesus Pandera but bears little relevance. Many scholars have speculated that Jesus was known as "bar-Abba", due to his custom of addressing God as father or 'Abba' in prayer, as well as referring to God as Abba in his preaching. In The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, written by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, there is an idea that Barabbas is son of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. According to authors of the book, this explains why the crowd choose Barabbas to stay alive, because such act will save the dynasty. The alternative possibility, that "Jesus" was unintentionally inserted twice before Barabbas' name, in verses 16 and 17, is unlikely, especially since Barabbas is mentioned first in each verse (thus, dittography is ruled out). It must be noted, however, that all surviving texts that include Barabbas' name as "Jesus" are Syriac translations of the original Greek. Most modern translations of the New Testament do not contain "Iesous" as the name of Barabbas. Additionally, none of the New Testament compilations in the original Greek contain "Iesous" as the name of Barabbas, nor is there any evidence within the Greek grammatical forms that Barabbas was anything more than a proper name and not an epigraph.   Barabbas' crime John 18:40 refers to Barabbas as a lēstēs, "bandit;" Mark and Luke further refer to Barabbas as one involved in a stasis, a riot. Mark 15:7; Luke 23:19. Matthew refers to Barabbas only as a "notorious prisoner." Matthew 27:16. Some scholars[attribution needed] posit that Barabbas was a member of the sicarii, a militant Jewish movement that sought to overthrow the Roman occupiers of their land by force, noting that Mark (15:7) mentions that he had committed murder in an insurrection. The sicarii and the ongoing revolt of Jews against foreign presence in Judea have been discussed by Robert Eisenman;[1] however, many historians maintain that the sicarii only arose in the 40s or 50s of the first century — after Jesus' execution.[2] Various authors contend Barabbas's crime would translate today as terrorism.[3][4][5] He is called a terrorist in the Contemporary English Version of the Bible.[6][7]  Barrabbas in the gospels Three gospels all state unequivocally that there was a custom at Passover during which the Roman governor would release a prisoner of the crowd's choice. Mark 15:6; Matt. 27:15; John 18:39> The corresponding verse in Luke (Luke 23:17) is not present in the earliest manuscripts and may be a later gloss to bring Luke into conformity)[8] The gospels differ on whether the custom was a Roman one or a Jewish one. Such a release or custom of such a release is not recorded in any other historical document. Some[attributeeded] point to the perception of Pontius Pilate's disregard for Jewish sensibilities; the idea of him honouring Jewish Passover in any way may not fit with historical accounts of his character. However, other historians[attribution needed] take the opposite approach, arguing that Pilate showed careful regard to customs in order to avoid revolts in an unruly province, and this may be an example of Pilate creating a tradition ad hoc, in order to avoid a possibly explosive situation. The gospels, however, portray Pilate not as the one in control of the situation, and have him pleading with the crowd that they choose Jesus of Nazareth to be released, then reluctantly surrendering to their decision. An alternate reading of the events involving Barrabbas can also be made, however. Given that Barrabbas was described by some to be a revolutionary or a terrorist, it stands to reason that his acts of terror and revolt would have been directed against the Romans. In this case, it would be logical to assume that Barrabbas might have been viewed by the people as something of a folk hero, in modern terms a freedom fighter or insurgent taking the fight to the Roman occupiers. When Barrabbas is seen through this lens, it appears that Pilate's choice to the people was not much of a choice at all. If Pilate were to offer a local hero to the people as an alternative to Jesus, they would most certainly choose to free the hero. Thus, Pilate could bring about the execution of a dangerous man of God without seeming to actually be responsible for his death. This argument is also supported in the events of Luke 23:6-12. Pilate claims no jurisdiction over Jesus because he is from Galillee (Jerusalem was in Judea) and passes him along to Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, to be sentenced. Despite having ordered the death of John the Baptist, Herod's reaction is to ridicule Jesus for a time, and then to pass him right back to Pilate. The result of Herod's apparent assent to Pilate's jurisdiction over Jesus is said to have brought about a truce between the two men in Luke 23:12. This event, along with the "vote" between Barrabbas and Jesus, and taken with the fact that it was the Jewish Sanhedrin who had brought Jesus before Pilate in the first place, would seem to illustrate that Jesus was something of a political hot potato whom everyone from the leaders of the Temple hierarchy, to the Romans, to the Hebrew aristocracy would just as soon be rid of, but whom no one wanted to take the actual responsibility for killing. When seen in this light, it appears that everyone involved, and therefore no one group or person in particular, is responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. If Pilate did not offer a choice between Jesus and another person, several possible explanations for the origin of such a story have been offered by a number of scholars.  Were Barabbas and Jesus the same person? The name Barabbas is composed of two elements: bar, meaning "son of", and Abba. Abba has been found as a personal name in a first century burial at Giv'at ha-Mivtar and Abba also appears as a personal name frequently in the Gemara section of the Talmud, dating from 200-400.[9] This would mean that Barabbas was the son of one named Abba. Abba also means "father" in Aramaic. Jesus sometimes referred to God as "father;" Jesus' use of the Aramaic word Abba survives untranslated (in most English translations) in Mark 14:36. In the gospels, Jesus rarely refers to himself as "son of God" and never refers to himself as "son of the father."[10]. However, some[attribution needed] speculate that "bar-Abbâ" could refer to Jesus himself as "son of the father". Hyam Maccoby and some other scholars have averred that Jesus was known as "bar-Abba", because of his custom of addressing God as 'Abba' in prayer, and referring to God as Abba in his preaching. It follows that when the Jewish crowd clamored before Pontius Pilate to "free Bar Abba" they could have meant Jesus. Anti-Semitic elements in the Christian church, the argument goes, altered the narrative to make it appear that the demand was for the freedom of somebody else (a brigand or insurrectionist) named "Barabbas". This was in, the theory goes, part of the tendency to shift the blame for the Crucifixion towards the Jews and away from the Romans. (See Hyam Maccoby, Revolution in Judea.) Maccoby identifies Paul of Tarsus for this shifting of blame in The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention Of Christianity, which explains extensively why it was necessary to appease Roman sentiment prior to Constantine I's Edict of Milan (Edict of Tolerance) in 313, which legalized Christianity. The appeasing of Roman sentiment was, Maccoby suggests, confined to the matters of the blame for Crucifixion and over Jesus' "true" mission in life. Maccoby argues that Jesus was an anti-Roman revolutionary and that Paul, who had never met Jesus during his life-time, disagreed strongly with Jesus' actual followers over what Jesus' mission was. In his self-appointed proselytising role of Apostle to the Gentiles, Paul absolved Rome of any blame for the crucifixion so that new Roman converts could more easily accept the miracle of Jesus' resurrection with no guilt for the murder that made it possible. For a Roman convert to accept that Jesus was the messiah he would also be accepting that Rome killed God's only son - so Paul shifted the blame on to the Jews, and the Barabbas/Pilate story and, more famously, the Judas myth, were used as blame shifting tactics to get new recruits to Paul's newly formed religion. Benjamin Urrutia, co-author with Guy Davenport of The Logia of Yeshua: The Sayings of Jesus agrees with Maccoby and others who aver that Yeshua Bar Abba or Jesus Barabbas must be none other than Jesus of Nazareth, and that the choice between two prisoners is a fiction. However, Urrutia opposes the notion that Jesus may have either led or planned a violent insurrection. Jesus was a strong advocate of "turning the other cheek" - which means not submission but strong and courageous, though nonviolent, defiance and resistance. Jesus, in this view, must have been the planner and leader of the Jewish nonviolent resistance to Pilate's plan to set up Roman Eagle standards on Jerusalem'sTemple Mount. The story of this successful resistance is told by Josephus — who, curiously, does not say who was the leader, but does tell of Pilate's crucifixion of Jesus just two paragraphs later in a passage whose authenticity is heavily disputed. (See article Josephus on Jesus, in particular the section "Arabic Version." This version seems to be free of the postulated Christian interpolations, but still makes it clear that Pilate ordered the crucifixion of Jesus.) A different interpretation is that the story derives from the Jewish crowd (many of whom may have been among those who had hailed Jesus as a king perhaps less than a week earlier) calling out for the freedom of the man who referred to the Jewish God as "father" and referred to himself as "son-of the father" (bar-Abba in Aramaic) — namely, Jesus himself. Pilate refused their pleas (and likely would have been disciplined by his superiors in Rome, if he did not punish both insurrectionists and those who claimed to be king of the Jews). Later, when people who did not understand Aramaic retold the story, they still included the petition for freedom, but bar-Abbas became a separate person - incidentally thus making the Romans less culpable, and the Jews more so.[citation needed] Further interpretations[attribution needed] along these same lines raise questions about how much difference there was between Jesus and an insurrectionist. In the gospels, shortly after being hailed as a king by the Jews, Jesus caused a commotion in the Jewish temple by overturning tables and swinging a lash (mentioned only in John) at people. Soon afterwards and just shortly before his arrest, the gospels have Jesus telling his apostles to sell their cloaks and buy swords(Luke 22:36) — and at least one sword turns up in the hands of Peter (named only in John) in the Garden of Gethsemane. Arthur Drews, a German Hegelian philosopher, in his books Christ Myth (1924) and Legend of Peter (1924), argued that first-century Christianity was a social ethical movement which needed no founder to explain its rise. A long standing feature of the Semitic world was an annual sacrifice of a "Son of the Father" — Barabbas, originally called Jesus Barabbas.[citation needed] Of course, in the Hebrew Bible and in Judaism in general, human sacrifice is strongly condemned. Because of this and many other aspects of Drews' research, including the discrediting of Christianity in favor of a national Germanic religion (around the same time as the rise of the Nazi party), most of Drews' research and views are held suspect by the academic community, though he remains a significant source among some of those who argue that Jesus was a mythical creation as opposed to an historical figure. A possible parable This practice of releasing a prisoner is said by some analysts[attribution needed] to be an element in a literary creation of Mark, who needed to have a contrast to the true "son of the father" in order to set up an edifying contest, in a form of parable. An interpretation, using modern reader response theory, suggests no petition for the release of Barabbas need ever have happened at all, and that the contrast between Barabbas and Jesus is a parable meant to draw the reader (or hearer) of the gospel into the narrative so that they must choose whose revolution, the violent insurgency of Barabbas or the challenging gospel of Jesus, is truly from the Father.[citation needed] If this interpretation is true, it means that the fictitious division of Yeshua Bar Abba (Jesus Barabbas) into two different people was already made in the hypothesized Aramaic texts, before the Greek Gospels were written.[citation needed] A critical analysis of possibly fictive elements in Mark's series of ironic parallels, and a comparison with Homer's contest between the beggars for the approval of the suitors in the Odyssey, is laid out in detail in Dennis R. MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark.[11] However, this theory too is rejected by mainstream scholars. [12] It has also been suggested that Barabbas was an allegory for humanity. In this theory, the freeing of Barabbas represents the redemption of humanity from the original sin of Adam, "Son of the Father," through the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. If this is correct, it might suggest that the appellation "Jesus Barabbas" was simply an error made by a scribe who was ignorant of the actual allegorical significance of the narrative.[1] References - see wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barabbas Other uses of "Barabbas" Barabbas (1928): Play by avant-garde Belgian dramatist Michel De Ghelderode. Barabbas (1950): A novel by Swedish author Pär Lagerkvist for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1951. Barabbas (1962): Epic film starring Anthony Quinn, based on Lagerkvist's book. Monty Python's film Life of Brian (1979) features a comic scene with Pontius Pilate having a speech impediment, and asking the crowd if they want him, instead of "Bwian", to "Welease... Woger". The Passion of the Christ (2004): In this controversial film, written, produced and directed by Mel Gibson, Barabbas is described by Pontius Pilate as a "notorious murderer," for which there is little evidence in text. Matthew 27:16 describes Barabbas simply as "notorious," and Luke 23: 19 even implies that his crimes may have been political (noting that he "had been thrown into prison for an insurrection in the city, and for murder.)". He is further portrayed as mad, for which there is no textual evidence whatsoever. Collectively, these editorial choices on the part of the film maker have the net effect of making Barabbas' release more craven than text would support.  External links John Dominic Crossan, "Crowd control": identity, purpose and size of "the crowd" in Mark and its adapted purposes in Luke and John, on the occasion of the Mel Gibson film of 2004. More on the interpretation that Jesus and Barabbas were the same person Why Barabbas Was Released Instead of Jesus Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barabbas" Categories: NPOV disputes | All pages needing cleanup July 04, 2007Top Spending Counties Click here for an interactive map of the top 20 counties with the highest average expenditures per household.  Marin County, California is first, followed by Fairfield, Connecticut and Fairfax, Virginia.  The New York metro is home to 7 of the top 20. Greater DC has 4.  California has 3.  Permalink
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	http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SLcTI4_szY Orange County 9/11 Truth Huntington Beach Pier open season on the weak NOLA aid was deliberately sabotaged "(DELIBERATE) Incompetence" the 100th time made LA a red state by gunpoint relocations resorts will wash away the ex-projects  http://moralsurgeon.blogspot.com/2006/06/usians-toob-fed-daily-bunkum.html  http://wtchoax.blogspot.com/2006/02/scholars-for-911-truth-my-job-was-in.html http://moralsurgeon.blogspot.com/2007/10/shock-doctrine-by-naomi-klein.html
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Sibel Edmonds Gag Order Travesty

http://www.justacitizen.com/KillTheMessenger.html      114kb         ►View Trailer: Windows Media ►View Trailer: QuickTime              Meet the Directors        Mathieu Verboud            Jean R. Viallett mverboud@free.fr              jean.viallet@free.fr    Directors Bios in English  Directors Bios in French       ►An Exclusive Interview with the Directors Join the "Kill the Messenger" Blog (by L. Ryland) Take a Quiz on Edmonds' State Secrets Case (by M. Mejia)   ►From the Sound Track  (by Gary Hood) ►Sibel Edmonds  (song by Gary Hood) (video)   PEN Newman Award     ►PEN America Center Press Release ►Sibel Edmonds Acceptance Speech ►Sibel Edmonds Informal Talk at Award Breakfast (audio)    A Timeline of Secrecy By ACLU   01/26/05 "ACLU" -- -- After her termination, many of Edmonds' allegations were confirmed by the FBI in unclassified briefings to Congress. More than two years later, in May 2004, the Justice Department retroactively classified Edmonds' briefings, as well as the FBI briefings, and forced Members of Congress who had the information posted on their Web sites to remove the documents. ►click to continue   An Inconvenient Patriot  By David Rose    08/15/05 "Vanity Fair" - September 2005 Issue -- -- Love of country led Sibel Edmonds to become a translator for the F.B.I. following 9/11. But everything changed when she accused a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving Turkish nationals. Fired after sounding the alarm, she’s now fighting for the ideals that made her an American, and threatening some very powerful people. ►click to continue   Deep Background By Philip Giraldi   04/24/06 "The American Conservative" -- -- Sibel Edmonds, the Turkish FBI translator turned whistleblower who has been subjected to a gag order could provide a major insight into how neoconservatives distort US foreign policy and enrich themselves at the same time. On one level, her story appears straightforward: several Turkish lobbying groups allegedly bribed congressmen to support policies favourable to Ankara. But beyond that ►click to continue   Material Given to Congress is Now Classified By Eric Lichtblau   05/24/04"New York Times"-- --''What the F.B.I. is up to here is ludicrous,'' Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said in an interview. ''To classify something that's already been out in the public domain, what do you accomplish? It does harm to transparency in government, and it looks like an attempt to cover up the F.B.I.'s problems in translating intelligence.'' ►click to continue

► View Brochure in English (PDF) ► View Brochure in French (PDF)       International TV Coverage French TV: Canal + Belgium TV: BeTV                      International Press Coverage Une femme à abattre (PDF)   Le Monde.fr, 17 Septembre 2006 Le fond du thriller effraie (PDF)   LE CANARD enchaîné, 20 Septembre 2006 Sibel Edmonds: une affaire D' État (PDF)   LE FIGARO, 19 Septembre 2006 Traduction interdite (PDF)    Libération, 19 Septembre 2006 Sibel Edmonds: une affaire D' État (PDF)    Télé 7 jours, Du 16 au 22 Septembre 2006 Brèves télévision: le zapping de la semaine    PARIS (AP), September 17, 2006                                                                A Documentary on State Secrets Privilege & U.S. Whistleblowers  NSWBC, September 18, 2006