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    GORGworld conspiracy // 911 // new world order ... part 4 :: The War on Error
    FLU
    FLU --- ---
    prituhuje...

    17.8.2006
    Evropská unie plánuje segregační kontroly cestujících

    Bezodkladně má být zkoumána možnost zavést systém segregačních kontrol cestujících evropskými letadly, v reakci na údajné teroristické spiknutí v Británii z minulého týdne, bylo rozhodnuto v Londýně ve středu na schůzce evropských ministrů vnitra.

    Britský ministr vnitra John Reid trval na tom, že nový systém, který se bude týkat všech domácích i mezinárodních letů v Evropě i z Evropy do jiných částí světa, nebude založen na segregaci podle náboženského či etnického zázemí , ale bude prováděn dlouho před odletem a bude založen na biometrických datech - na elektronické kontrole rohovky či fotografií obličeje.

    http://www.blisty.cz/2006/8/17/art29881.html
    a v originale:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1851860,00.html

    17.8.2006
    Je segregace cestujících při bezpečnostních kontrolách řešením?

    Britští dopravní činitelé uvažují o zavedení segregačních bezpečnostních kontrol, mimo jiné i na základě etnického původu a náboženství, napsaly v úterý internetové stránky společnosti BBC.

    Stoupenci těchto opatření argumentují, že by to odstranilo dlouhé čekání, způsobené podrobným kontrolováním všech, jiní namítají, že segregace cestujících při bezpečnostních prověrkách vyvolá hněv a že je důležitější zmodernizovat bezpečnostní technologii.

    http://www.blisty.cz/2006/8/17/art29882.html
    v originale:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4794975.stm

    TSU23
    TSU23 --- ---
    cywe,ja se snad začnu učit english :o)
    WALKIE
    WALKIE --- ---
    vzhledem k tomu, ze obsah http://medialens.org/alerts/index.php se cas od casu meni, postuju zbytek clanku:

    What does it say about our culture, after all, Thomas asks, that we seem to thrive on violence, both staged and real; that our DVD shops and film channels are simply packed with killing?

    Journalists and politicians also experience the dream-like sense that their actions are disconnected from the suffering they cause. But their actions, also, are very real.

    It is astonishing to reflect, for example, that our mass media system is not in fact state-controlled. Who could guess from the unvarying support of our media corporations for mass violence committed by our government and its allies? From their eager demonisation of leaders and countries labelled 'enemies' of the state? From their consistent indifference to the mass death of our victims? As Respect MP George Galloway recently told one hapless Sky News interviewer:

    "You don't give a damn. You don't even know about the Palestinian families. You don't even know that they exist... Because you believe, whether you know it or not, that Israeli blood is more valuable than the blood of Lebanese or Palestinians. That's the truth, and the discerning of your viewers already know it." (Galloway, Sky News, http://news.sky.com/shared/videoasx/0,,galloway_060806-31200-bb,00.asx)

    But do journalists see themselves as instruments of a killing machine? The idea strikes them as preposterous - they are just doing a job like anyone else.

    In 1999, the journalist John Gray joined a government-inspired chorus of media outrage:

    "Air power alone cannot stop ethnic massacres. Hi-tech weaponry can inflict considerable damage on the military infrastructures of government that sanction such savagery. They cannot round up the ethnic militias which commit the atrocities. For that, the boots of a disciplined army need to be firmly on the ground. The logic of Nato intervention in Kosovo points inexorably to the use of ground troops." (Gray, 'Bring on the boot,' The Guardian, March 31, 1999)

    In response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the Times (London) called for "a worldwide expression of anger at a small nation's sovereignty rudely shattered by brute force". (Leader, 'Iraq's naked villainy,' The Times, August 3, 1990)

    The cause in Kuwait was "simple on a world scale", the Times observed five months later, "the defence of the weak against aggression by the strong". (Leader, 'No mock heroics,' The Times, January 18, 1991)

    As John Pilger recently wrote so well:

    "How silent are these crusaders now, their selective compassion reserved demonstrably for causes of state, 'our' causes." (Pilger, 'Bloodshed and hope,' Guardian Unlimited, July 28, 2006)

    Thus, Mary Dejevsky, who writes, tragicomically, this week in the Independent:

    "As a die-hard opponent of the war in Iraq - a war that flouted the will of the UN, ignored history, relied on faulty intelligence and has now reaped the whirlwind - I regret that the anti-war movement has aligned itself so swiftly, and so uncritically, with those who object to Israeli action against Hizbollah." (Dejevsky, 'Israel has an entitlement to defend its security,' The Independent, August 9, 2006)

    Imagine Dejevsky declaring herself a "die-hard opponent of the war" in 2002 and early 2003, when it mattered. The suggestion that the war merely flouted the UN, ignored history, and relied on faulty intelligence, indicates the truth of Dejevsky's "die-hard" opposition to what was in fact the supreme war crime. Dejevsky adds:

    "It is easy from the comparative safety of Britain or the US to assert with all confidence that Israel's action against Hizbollah has been 'disproportionate'... However contentious its origins, however, Israel has the same right as any other state to national security and the same right to defend its borders."

    And it is easy to toss exhausted platitudes in the face of mass death - children blasted and buried in their hundreds, a million lives shattered - when the blood is of a lesser value.

    Anyone who recommended a ground invasion of Israel in response to Lebanon's "sovereignty rudely shattered by brute force" would of course be deemed quite mad by our media.

    In November 2002, we raised many a liberal hackle when we observed that the Guardian's George Monbiot had written:

    "... if war turns out to be the only means of removing Saddam, then let us support a war whose sole and incontestable purpose is that and only that..." (Monbiot, 'See you in court, Tony,' The Guardian, November 26, 2002)

    We noted that Monbiot would doubtless deny to his last breath that his support for an assault against just this shattered Third World country as a last resort had anything to do with the relentless effusions of the Bush/Blair propaganda machine. (Media Alert Update: Iraq - Panorama Editor and Guardian Editor Respond;
    http://www.medialens.org/alerts/02/021127_Guardian_Panorama_Iraq_Reply.HTM)

    Monbiot's comments, however, +were+ symptomatic of the insidious power of state propaganda to shape reality - our sense of what is conceivable and reasonable - in a society where conformity is relentlessly rewarded and dissent heavily punished.

    Noam Chomsky has suggested that, but for the catastrophic turn of events in Iraq, Venezuela might well have been the next target for US-UK "humanitarian intervention". In which case, who can doubt that our press would have filled with assertions that, alas, military intervention was the only way to save the Venezuelan people from dictatorship? Currently, of course, no such suggestions are being made - the idea seems bizarre to most people - but that would quickly change if the state propaganda machine cranked into action.


    An Elemental Struggle

    Earlier this month, Tony Blair declared:

    "What is happening today out in the Middle East, in Afghanistan and beyond is an elemental struggle about the values that will shape our future.

    "It is in part a struggle between what I will call reactionary Islam and moderate mainstream Islam but its implications go far wider." ('Blair calls for complete rethink of Middle East policy,' Press Association, August 1, 2006)

    In the real world, the struggle is not "elemental" but merely political. Robert Pape, author of the forthcoming book, Dying to Win: Why Suicide Terrorists Do It, writes:

    "Researching my book, which covered all 462 suicide bombings around the globe, I had colleagues scour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures and testimonials and biographies of the Hizbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places and other personal data for 38. We were shocked to find that only eight were Islamic fundamentalists; 27 were from leftist political groups such as the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union; three were Christians, including a female secondary school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon.

    "What these suicide attackers - and their heirs today - shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation." (Pape, 'What we still don't understand about Hizbollah,' The Observer, August 6, 2006)

    Responding to Blair's latest lesson in sixth form ethics, Patrick Wintour and Ewen MacAskill wrote in the Guardian:

    "Tony Blair will face down his critics today over his controversial handling of the Middle East crisis by insisting that he has been working throughout for a ceasefire in Lebanon and that his position has been misunderstood. He will argue at a Downing Street press conference that he wanted a ceasefire, but only if it was coupled with a clear understanding that the Hizbullah militia would be disarmed. Mr Blair, who returned from his US trip yesterday, will say that he is trying to secure a durable settlement, rather than a short-term fix which would leave armed militias operating on the border of Israel." (Wintour and MacAskill, 'Blair: You've misunderstood me over the Middle East,' The Guardian, August 3, 2006)

    As Vietnam veteran Claude Anshin Thomas suggests, it is absurd to believe that violence is just about the pilots who drop the bombs, or the soldiers who fire the guns. Violence is born in bias, in prejudicial compassion and indifference to others. Wintour and MacAskill became part of the killing machine by reporting as uncontroversial, as unworthy of comment, Blair's insistence that just Hezbollah - dismissed as "armed militias" - should be disarmed. Would the Guardian provide some kind of 'balancing' comment, some alternative viewpoint, if a world leader suggested that agreement was impossible until the Israeli Defence Force had been completely disarmed while Hezbollah retained its weapons? If these weapons constituted one of the world's premier military machines, including several hundred nuclear weapons?

    This is how 'objective' news reporting consistently fuels violence - the 'controversial' voices of our 'enemies' are balanced by counter-arguments, the 'respectable' voices of our leaders are not. This directly conditions us to support mass violence over and over again, decade after decade.

    Thus BBC online reported US-UK obstructionism at the Middle East summit in Rome in an article entitled '"World backs Lebanon offensive"'. The article reported: "Israel says diplomats' failure to call for a halt to its Lebanon offensive... has given it the green light to continue." The BBC cited Israel's Justice Minister Haim Ramon:

    "We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world... To continue the operation." ('"World backs Lebanon offensive,'" BBC Online, July 27, 2006)

    Not only did the BBC's title give credence to this outrageous lie but no contradictory viewpoints were provided anywhere in the piece. Ramon was even given space to argue, again without challenge: "All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah."

    Three days later, 28 of these "terrorists", including 16 children, were bombed to death in Qana.


    Crushing The Scorpions

    In an August 7 discussion, ironically, of the power of propaganda, the BBC's Newsnight programme focused on alleged tampering of photographs of Israeli attacks on Beirut. Had a photographer added an extra flare falling from an Israeli bomber for dramatic effect? Did the same photographer alter clouds of smoke to make them seem more ominous? Had Hezbollah propagandists needlessly carried the body of a dead child around in Qana to ensure journalists got the picture?

    More importantly, but undiscussed - what was the moral value of promoting scepticism, based on such trivial concerns, towards the overwhelming evidence of the undeniable catastrophe that has befallen Lebanon? What was the moral value of muddying the reality that the Lebanese child really had been killed by an Israeli attack on Qana? Can we imagine a discussion of whether the fiery colours at the heart of the fireball from the second jet to hit the World Trade Centre on 9/11 was enhanced for effect? Would journalists have highlighted the issue on national television, or would they have dismissed it out of hand? How can we explain the difference? The answer lies in the value of blood.

    The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner reported that Israeli critics likened the Israeli army's campaign against Hezbollah to someone "using a sledgehammer to kill a scorpion" - "quite a good analogy", Gardner observed. (BBC News 24, August 1, 2006)

    Imagine the furore if a BBC journalist expressed approval for a Hezbollah description of Israeli forces as vermin to be crushed. But Hezbollah, like Hamas and insurgents in Iraq, are consistently treated as less than human by our media. It rarely occurs to journalists to bother to estimate Hezbollah's military casualties, for example. Every last Israeli or British military death is worthy news - but not the dead on the other side. For the same reason, the "scorpions" are reflexively depicted as crazed fanatics responding to "fundamentalist values" rather than genuine political grievances. This is convenient as it obviates the need to consider rationally our own role in these grievances. Much better to talk of "values" when the political realities are so ugly.

    On the day of one particular attack in Iraq, the BBC told us this week, four US soldiers had been drinking whisky and practising golf strokes at a checkpoint south of Baghdad. According to sworn testimony, one of the soldiers, Steven Green, said he "wanted to go to a house and kill some Iraqis". The BBC report added:

    "The four eventually went to a house about 200 metres away and put the parents and their five-year old daughter in the bedroom, but kept the older girl in the living room.

    "According to Mr Barker's statement, he and Mr Cortez took it in turns to rape or attempt to rape her.

    "Mr Barker heard shots from the bedroom, and Steven Green emerged with an AK-47 in his hand saying 'They're all dead. I just killed them.'

    "According to the testimony, Mr Green then also raped the girl and shot her dead. Her body was doused in kerosene and set alight." ('Troops "took turns" to rape Iraqi,' http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/5253160.stm August 7, 2006)

    Who was responsible for this atrocity? Was it the young troops drowning in the madness and death of a ferocious war, sent by cynics to kill and die for the ugliest of causes? What about the people who sent them and supported their sending - people sitting in air-conditioned offices, not under constant threat of violent death, not required to witness the killing and maiming of close friends?

    What was the BBC's role? As we have documented many times, the BBC, like the rest of the media, is a powerful conditioning force that has made the Iraq war possible. Endless 'objective' BBC reports have passed on Blair's obvious lies as impassioned sincerity. Endless reports avoided even the most childishly obvious objections to claims about weapons of mass destruction, about alleged Iraqi obstructionism, and about alleged benevolent US-UK dreams of democracy. BBC journalists did not physically rape and kill the 14-year-old Iraqi girl, but they helped create the conditions out of which that violence emerged - they share responsibility with those four US soldiers. That seems inconceivable to a journalist sitting at a desk in a London office, but it is the reality.

    The Guardian's Emma Brockes claims to have experienced a personal epiphany regarding the chaotic state of the world. One night last week, she writes, the 10'clock news was packed with endless horrors: Israel sending troops and tanks into Lebanon, people crawling out of bomb-damaged housing, three British soldiers killed in an ambush in Afghanistan, a further British soldier killed in a mortar attack in Iraq, and so on. Brockes's conclusion is that we are in deep trouble. Her response:

    "There is nothing to do, of course, or at least there is nothing constructive to do." (Brockes, 'Oh God (redux),' The Guardian, August 5, 2006)

    This from the journalist who, last November, did her utmost to smear the efforts of an individual, Noam Chomsky, who has moved mountains in precisely 'doing something'.

    But Brockes is exactly wrong - it is impossible for nothing to be done. To do 'nothing' means 'getting on with our lives', which means focusing primarily on our personal needs and the needs of the people closest to us. And this matters, Claude Anshin Thomas reminds us, because everything is interconnected. If we reserve our compassion for a select few - ourselves, our family, our troops, our civilian victims of violence - then we are acting to place other men, women and children beyond the circle of compassion. That means they are more likely to be bombed, shot, incinerated, raped and killed to serve our needs. That is the reality that faces everyone who does and says anything - journalists very much included.

    And of course there is plenty that can be done in the other direction. We can withdraw support from dangerously delusional leaders like Tony Blair, from compromised newspapers and conformist journalists who support violence. We can resign, as Labour MP Jim Sheridan has courageously done. We can educate ourselves and others to see options beyond the fraudulent 'tough choices' of realpolitik. We can refuse to cooperate - we can obstruct, protest, resist and build alternative movements to change the world around us.

    We can strengthen compassion in ourselves and others based on the undeniable truth that all blood, all suffering, all heartbreak, is equal. We can learn even to be outraged at our ingrained tendency to act in our own favour as though this were not the case. We can learn to act on the understanding that the interests of two, three, 100, 1 million people really do take precedence over the interests of one - ourselves.

    If this were not absolutely, demonstrably the case, the world's propaganda machines - which thunder so relentlessly, so ruthlessly, in their determination to manipulate us - would be silent and still.
    WALKIE
    WALKIE --- ---
    MEDIA ALERT: THE VALUE OF BLOOD

    "My job in Vietnam was to kill people. By the time I was first injured in combat (two or three months into my tour), I had already been directly responsible for the deaths of several hundred people. And today, each day, I can still see many of their faces."

    So writes Claude Anshin Thomas of his role as a crew chief on US assault helicopters in the Vietnam war. Thomas recounts one particular incident among many:

    "We flew in with a heavy-fire team... opened fire, and without thought destroyed the entire village. We destroyed everything. The killing was complete madness. There was nothing there that was not the enemy. We killed everything that moved: men, women, children, water buffalo, dogs, chickens. Without any feeling, without any thought. Simply out of this madness. We destroyed buildings, trees, wagons, baskets, everything. All that remained when we were finished were dead bodies, fire, and smoke. It was all like a dream; it didn't feel real. Yet every act that I was committing was very real." (Thomas, At Hell's Gate - A Soldier's Journey From War To Peace, Shambhala, 2004, p.20)

    Like veterans of every conflict on all sides, the war never ended for Thomas. The suffering he had inflicted and experienced drove him to further violence, hatred, self-hatred, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, homelessness, the brink of suicide and other torments. In his book, At Hell's Gate - A Soldier's Journey From War To Peace, Thomas describes how he found sanity in awareness and acceptance of his suffering, and in compassion for himself and others. Having ordained as a Zen Buddhist monk, Thomas has devoted his life to peace activism, visiting war zones around the world, and completing a 5,000-mile peace pilgrimage from Auschwitz in Poland to Vietnam.

    Thomas has a key message for all of us about the real nature and origins of violence:

    "It is important to realise that veterans are not the only ones who bear responsibility for the atrocities of war. Nonveterans sanction war, support the waging of war, supported troops being sent to Vietnam - and it is nonveterans who so often turn their backs on the returning soldiers in an effort to avoid their own complicity in the war... But if we look deeply into this matter, we can know that those who don't fight are not separate from those who fight; we are all responsible for war. War is not something that happens external to us; it is an extension of us, its roots within our very nature. It happens within all of us."

    http://medialens.org/alerts/index.php
    WALKIE
    WALKIE --- ---
    MARSHUS: budes-li to prezentovat jako George Galloway Interview on Sky News s tim, ze prilozis puvodni odkaz, nevidim pb...
    MARSHUS
    MARSHUS --- ---
    WALKIE: hmm vidím pár auditek kam by se tohle hodilo napostovat :)
    WALKIE
    WALKIE --- ---
    TSU23:
    "... pred 24 lety... invaze Izraele do Libanonu... hnuti Hisbalah = soucast narodniho odboje, kt. se snazi odsunout Izraelce ze sve zeme, coz se jim do roku 2000 temer povedlo, a osvobodit tisice unesenych z izraelskych veznic... Je to Izrael, kdo utoci na Libanon a okupuje ho, a ne naopak... Izrael usmrtil 30× vice libanonskeho civilniho obyvatelstva nez Hisbalah...
    "... Izrael stale okupuje cast libanonskeho uzemi i po r. 2000... tisice Libanoncu bylo uneseno behem 18 let nezakonne okupace jizniho Libanonu Izraelem... tyto vezne je treba propustit vymenou za izraelske vojaky, kt. byli zajati na pocatku teto vlny krize... "
    (potom jako reakce na namitku, ze Iran dodava Hisbalahu zbrane, jimiz je schopno zasahnout Tel Aviv): "To je blahove. USA poskytly Izraeli zbrane, kt. mohou zasahnout nejen jakekoli mesto v Libanonu, ale jakekoli mesto v arabsko-muslimskem svete, vc. Iranu. Proc by mely mit USA narok poskytovat zbrane dlouheho doletu Izraeli, vc. stovek atomovych raket, zatimco Iran..."
    hlasatelka: "... protoze je poskytuje teroristicke organizaci."
    GG: "Ale oni nejsou teroristickou organizaci. Jen v mysli programu Sky Ruperta Murdocha, Times a The Sun [...] Docela se mylite, kdyz tvrdite, ze v ocich vetsiny lidi je hnuti Hisbalah teroristicke. V ocich vetsiny lidi je Izrael teroristicky stat. To je fakt a vy ho nedokazete pochopit. To vede k predpojatosti, s niz informujete ve vsech vasich zpravach a formulujete kazdou otazku, kterou jste mi polozili v tomto interview."
    otazka: "Proc, namisto toho, aby se Hisbalah priklonil k politickemu reseni, radeji unesl izraelske vojaky?"
    GG: "Protoze Izrael okupuje jejich zem a vezni tisice jejich krajanu... [Odpoved] je opravdu velmi jednoducha az na pripad, kdy premyslite v casovem horizontu, kt. jde nazad jen par tydnu... Vite, ze zarodky konfliktu jsou stare nekolik desetileti, ale chcete, aby si lide mysleli, ze konflikt je meren hodinami, ktere zacaly tikat na Sky News.
    "[...] Hisbalah vitezi ve valce, kterou ukazujete na 2. polovine obrazovky. Hisbalah je dnes v Libanonu popularnejsi nez kdy predtim. Je to Izrael, kdo prohral tuto valku, a Bush a Blair, kteri politicky organizovali tuto valku, prohrali politicky. Vsem je to jasne krome vas.
    "Tento konflikt bude pokracovat (OSN nevyresi nic, Libanonu neda nic, veznum v Izraelskych veznicich neposkytne nic) ... az do chvile, kdy dosahneme obecne dohody. Toto reseni znamena, ze se Izrael stahne ze vsech okupovanych uzemi od dob valky '67, ze propusti vsechny politicke vezne a [uzna] stat pro Palestince s vychodnim Jerusalemem jako hlavnim mestem...
    "... vam je to jedno. Vy se vubec nestarate o palestinske rodiny. Ani nevite, ze existuji. Neznate ani jedno jmeno z tech 7 rodin, ktere byly zavrazdeny na plazi v pasmu Gazy... Neznate ani jejich jmeno, zato znate jmeho kazdeho izraelskeho vojaka, ktery byl zajat v tomto konfliktu... Protoze vy verite, at uz to vite nebo ne, ze izraelska krev ma vetsi hodnotu nez krev Palestince nebo Libanonce. To je pravda a ti bystrejsi z vasich divaku to uz chapou."

    tolik preklad. pokud anglictinari usoudi, ze jsou vynechany podstatne pasaze nebo ze doslo k chybnemu prekladu ci k prekrouceni vyznamu, at je doplni nebo me opravi.
    JAXXE
    JAXXE --- ---
    TSU23: same politicky nekorektni veci o situaci na blizkem vychode...
    TSU23
    TSU23 --- ---
    hmmm a co říká,vůbec mu totiž nerozumím...
    WALKIE
    WALKIE --- ---
    JAXXE: no, tak to se fakt povedlo.. 1*
    JAXXE
    JAXXE --- ---
    George Galloway Interview on Sky News - unmissable

    Click here to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68eSYm96Jdo
    JAXXE
    JAXXE --- ---
    Feds Probe "Fake News" at 77 Stations

    Todd Shields

    AUGUST 14, 2006 -

    Federal regulators are asking scores of broadcasters whether they failed to tell viewers about the sponsors behind corporate video releases presented as news, a practice criticized by watchdog groups who say showing "fake news" is an illegal breach of trust with local communities.

    The Federal Communications Commission has issued 42 formal letters of inquiry to holders of 77 broadcast licenses, the office of Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said Monday.

    "The public has a legal right to know who seeks to persuade them so they can make up their own minds about the credibility of the information presented," Adelstein said. "Shoddy practices make it difficult for viewers to tell the difference between news and propaganda."

    In April, Free Press and the Center for Media and Democracy filed a complaint with the FCC after the center conducted a study finding unattributed video news releases had been aired at 77 stations. It said owners of those stations included Sinclair Broadcast Group, News Corp.'s Fox Television Stations, Clear Channel Communications, Tribune Co. and Viacom/CBS. The non-profit groups said the practice "has infiltrated broadcast news programming across the country."

    ...

    http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002986110
    JAXXE
    JAXXE --- ---
    The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?

    I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.

    So this, I believe, is the true story.

    None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

    In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.


    What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

    Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

    ...

    http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2006/08/the_uk_terror_p.html
    PETVAL
    PETVAL --- ---
    Alex Jones - American Scholars Symposium 9/11 + the Neo-con Agenda
    Alex Jones moderates the discussion panel of the American Scholars Symposium 9/11 + the Neo-con Agenda, including Professor Steven Jones, physics; Dr. Bob Bowman, aeronautics and nuclear engineering; Webster Griffin Tarpley, author; Professor James H. Festzer, author.

    25.06.2006, 1h 45min, 702MB
    Direct Download http://video.indymedia.org/download/%5BIndymedia%5D_(2006-08-07)_American_Scholars_Symposium_911.avi
    http://americanscholarssymposium.org
    GORG
    GORG --- ---
    Alex Jones' false-flag terrorism alert mentioned on FOX News
    http://prisonplanet.com/articles/August2006/150806_b_FOX.htm
    PETVAL
    PETVAL --- ---
    (ne ze by nam to pak nejak pomohlo :)) )
    PETVAL
    PETVAL --- ---
    ZHAQ: nasi majitele, neasi. nezapomen, ze vsichni docela slusne "dluzime" sve stale rostouci podily na statnich dluzich. ale na logiku v zabijeni dluznika taky nejak neprichazim, jedine ze tato redukce otroku ukazuje na opravdu kriticke ocekavani vyvoje na trhu surovin. proto investujme do komodit ;)
    ZHAQ
    ZHAQ --- ---
    Petval: Tak to mi pekne vari krev v zilach.. paneboze kdo si mysli, ze jsou.. narizovat chemoterapii.. to je fakt des
    MARSHUS
    MARSHUS --- ---
    More than just a few rotten apples as Jobs is drawn into latest US corporate scandal
    http://news.independent.co.uk/business/analysis_and_features/article1219345.ece

    It is the scandal Wall Street can no longer dismiss as "a few bad apples". In what amounts to systematic corruption, dozens of American companies stand accused of manipulating share options to inflate executive pay artificially, and then lying to shareholders about it.

    As many as 2,000 companies may be involved. So far, 85 have publicly admitted they are under investigation. Directors from nine companies have quit in disgrace. Six executives from two firms are facing criminal charges. Angry shareholders are lining up their lawsuits.

    And now we have the extraordinary possibility that shares in Apple Computer might be thrown off Nasdaq, and that Steve Jobs, the iPod maker's visionary leader, could be questioned by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wall Street regulator.

    The scale of the scandal is breathtaking and the anger felt among shareholders is palpable. Tobias Levkovich, chief equity strategist at Citigroup, said the affair will radicalise shareholders. Already we are in an age in which activist investors and hedge funds appear on shareholder registers to agitate for change; they may find more willing support from traditional shareholders.

    Mr Levkovich said: "From talking to shareholders, I think there is a growing willingness to go along with activist investors and this options issue is making life less hospitable for corporate managements. The whole thing is offensive and an affront. Share options are meant to align the interests of directors and shareholders, but now we find that some companies have perverted and corrupted this capitalist tool so as to reward directors irrespective of the share price."

    Companies, particularly loss-making Silicon Valley firms during the dot.com boom, have always loved share options as it gives directors incentives without having to find any cash to pay them. Shareholders often think they are okay, too, because they like directors who are focused on getting the share price up.

    Share options give an executive the right to buy company shares at a fixed price - typically the price on the day they were granted - for several years into the future. The greater the share price rise before they are exercised, the greater the profit.

    But getting a company's share price up is hard work for directors. A much easier way to increase the profit on options is to pretend they were granted at a lower price than they really were. With disclosure rules lax before the Sarbanes-Oxley reforms of 2002, and plenty of time allowed before the grant had to be revealed to shareholders, there was ample temptation to wait and to pick the date at which the share price was at its lowest.

    The backdating of options is not explicitly illegal but it is not allowed under most company's stated options plans. The SEC and federal prosecutors have begun to lay charges against executives they claim misled their shareholders and who they allege have faked internal documents to cover their tracks. The former chief executive and two other executives at Brocade Communications Systems, an IT infrastructure company, are charged with doling out backdated options to hundreds of employees. And last week, the former boss and two other executives at Comverse Technology, a telecoms software group, were charged with criminal fraud.

    There will certainly be other charges. There is also likely to be chaos across the technology sector as companies sort out the accounting and tax mess that their deceptions have caused. Because stock options are now accounted for as an expense, companies who secretly backdated grants will have been overstating their profits in recent years and may have to pay higher taxes in future years.

    Mercury Interactive, the first tech company to admit options backdating, took nine months to finalise accurate accounts, during which time its shares had to be suspended. And last Friday, Apple said it might be forced to delist from Nasdaq. It missed the deadline for filing its latest quarterly results, which will have to include significant changes to the old figures and possible reductions to future earnings guidance. The company has a period of grace but will have to meet Nasdaq within the next couple of months.

    Mr Jobs received an option to purchase 10 million shares, dated on the stock's lowest point in January 2000. News of the investigation into that and other executive grants sent Apple shares lower as investors feared the legendary chief executive, who founded the company 30 years ago, might be forced to quit, although there has been no indication of wrongdoing on his part. He faces questions, too, over another of his companies, Pixar, the film animation studio he sold to Disney last year. Two senior Pixar executives received options grants at low points for the share price.

    New companies are admitting they have been drawn into the regulatory investigation at a rate of almost one a day but the scandal has taken a long time to unfold.

    In many ways, the tale of its discovery is a classic detective story. It was maverick academics who first smelt something fishy and pursued their hunch, in the face of an establishment that dismissed them or was slow to respond. Only in recent months have they finally been hailed as heroes.

    In 1997, David Yermack, now a professor of finance at New York University, planted the first germs of suspicion by noting the lucky timing of the average executive options grant, which appeared to come just before a strong rally in a company's share price.

    And as options grants became a more central plank of executive pay during the dot.com years, these coincidences became more frequent and striking. By the time Erik Lie, associate professor at the University of Iowa, compiled statistics on the subject in 2003, he could come up with only one conclusion.

    "The odds of executives being able to predict a rally in the share price over the next few days after a grant were simply astronomical. I thought it was clear they were cherry-picking dates from the past."

    But Mr Lie struggled to find a publisher for the work. At this point, not a single company had been accused of backdating options, and the editors thought it unlikely that this was what was happening.

    It was only in 2004 that the SEC stumbled across backdating at Mercury, and Mr Lie sent his research to the regulator. The SEC has since worked with him and other academics in its search for new companies where there are suspicions of fraud.

    His latest studies continue to provide astonishing new evidence of systematic corruption. At 2,000 of the 8,000 companies examined, there were significant grounds for believing that options dates were chosen after the fact to maximise executive profit. And the introduction of Sarbanes-Oxley rules did not stamp out the practice. Although companies are required to disclose options within two days of granting them, many have simply not complied with the rules and filed the information late. Even since 2002, one in eight grants still has the whiff of suspicion over them, Mr Lie says.

    "I believe that only a minority of firms that have engaged in backdating of option grants will be caught. In other words, we will never see the full iceberg," he said.
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