U.S. HANDS OFF CUBA!

August 12, 2006

Considering that Cuba is setting the example for fossil fuel free, sustainable community-based agriculture, the following action is extremely important. If the neocons succeed in their intentions with regard to Cuba, you can be sure that Cuba's current agricultural experiment would be discontinued under a favorable regime.

Join the campaign to say, "Hands Off Cuba!"

Please join our campaign to demand U.S. Hands Off Cuba, by signing on to the online message to the Bush Administration on the current declarations make by President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in response to recent developments in Cuba and  and sending emails to President Bush, your senators, your congressperson, key congressional leaders and the media telling them you want the U.S. to end its warmongering campaign against Cuba NOW! A copy of the letter and the list of signers will be forwarded to the Instituto Cubano de Amistad con Los Pueblos in Cuba.

Monsanto Whistleblower Says Genetically Engineered Crops May Cause Disease

By Jeffrey M. Smith

Monsanto was quite happy to recruit young Kirk Azevedo to sell their genetically engineered cotton. Kirk had grown up on a California farm and had worked in several jobs monitoring and testing pesticides and herbicides. Kirk was bright, ambitious, handsome and idealistic—the perfect candidate to project the company’s “Save the world through genetic engineering” image.

Continued at The Institute for Responsible Technology

Death of the Mexican Presidency

By JOHN ROSS
Mexico City.
September 6, 2006
The tableau of 155 leftist deputies and senators storming the tribune of congress here September 1 to prevent President Vicente Fox from delivering his sixth and final State of the Union address (the "Informe") should be mandatory viewing for members of both houses of the U.S. Congress who, year after year, burst into servile applause for George Bush when each January he imposes his own infernal Informe upon the citizens of Gringolandia.

One crucial political distinction between these two distant neighbor nations is the presence of a third party in the Mexican mix, one that at least purports to be left of the center. Swindled out of the presidency by fraud this past July 2, the party of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO)--the Party of the Democratic Revolution or PRD--appears to have broken with the political class and traditional cronyism.

It is not that the PRD's hands are clean­ its legislators have regularly prostituted their wares - but in the wake of the stolen election and having been frozen out of any power positions in the brand-new congress despite being Mexico's second political force, the Party of AMLO has little to lose, and is suddenly speaking its truth to power, a singular position for any politico right or left.

Despite rampant corruption, regular vote stealing, and authoritarian tendencies, Mexico's multi-party system makes U.S. "democracy" with its two-headed single party rule, look a lot more like Idi Amin's Uganda than what the Boston tea party had in mind for the future citizens of the United States of North America.

The spectacle of elected officials being pissed off enough to stare down tin-plate potentates like President Vicente Fox topped off weeks of scuffling in and around the 10 kilometer steel wall Mexican troops had thrown up around the Legislative Palace to keep Lopez Obrador's die-hard supporters from congregating in shouting distance of the congress of the country. On the government side of the barricade, 6000 preventative police (drawn from the military) and Fox's own presidential guard or the Estado Mayor had turned the congressional precinct into a war zone. One side in this standoff was equipped with clubs, electric shields, tear gas, water cannons, light tanks, live ammunition, and snipers up on the rooftops. The other only with its dreams and its "coraje" (righteous anger.) Guess which side won?

Continued at Counterpunch

Pakistan signs peace deal with pro-Taliban militants

Critics say treaty, which calls for end to terrorist actions, seems 'a total capitulation' by Islamabad.

By Arthur Bright  | csmonitor.com

September 6, 2006
In a move that some say appears 'a total capitulation' to pro-Taliban forces, Pakistan signed a peace deal with tribal leaders in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan Tuesday, and is withdrawing military forces in exchange for promises that militant tribal groups there will not engage in terrorist activities.
The Associated Press reports that the agreement is meant to end five years of fighting in the province, located along the border with Afghanistan, that has claimed the lives of over 350 Pakistani troops and hundreds of militants and civilians.

Under the pact – signed by a militant leader, Azad Khan, and a government representative, Fakhr-e-Alam – no militant in North Waziristan will shelter foreign militants.

Militants also will not target Pakistani government and security officials or pro-government tribal elders or journalists, North Waziristan lawmaker Maulana Nek Zaman said.

For almost five years, Pakistani soldiers and paramilitary forces have battled local tribesmen, many believed to be allied with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, in the fiercely independent mountain region where central government powers do not reach. Bin Laden is also believed to be hiding along the porous Pakistani-Afghan frontier.

The New York Times reports that the deal "is widely viewed as a face-saving retreat for the Pakistani Army, which has taken a heavy battering at the hands of the mountain tribesmen and militants, who are allied with the Taliban and Al Qaeda." But while the militants have promised to cease attacks across the border into Afghanistan and to expel foreign fighters, the treaty has given them a significant loophole.

Continued at The Christian Science Monitor

Court ruling blocks Alaska oil lease sale

By Yereth Rosen
Reuters
 Sep 8, 2:01 AM ET
A federal judge issued a preliminary ruling on Thursday that temporarily blocks the U.S. administration's plan to allow oil development in the sensitive wetlands near vast Teshekpuk Lake in Arctic Alaska.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) failed to properly consider the impact of oil development in areas near the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on the state's North Slope region, U.S. District Court Judge James Singleton said.

The marshy tundra that lies between Teshekpuk Lake, the biggest inland water body in Arctic Alaska, and the Arctic Ocean is prized for both its wildlife and its petroleum potential.

Singleton said that, unless the BLM can convince him to change his mind, the Teshekpuk Lake sale, scheduled to take place on September 27, might not be held because it was based on flawed environmental assumptions.

If the BLM sold oil and gas leases for the 1.7 million acres adjacent to Teshekpuk Lake, it would be difficult to alter development rules in the future, he said.

"This would constitute an irreparable injury," he wrote in the ruling.

The U.S. Interior Department has estimated that the land holds 1.4 billion barrels of oil and, after a review lasting several years, the BLM scheduled a lease sale that included stipulations intended to limit surface disturbance and environmental damage.

The area provides an important habitat for migratory waterfowl from three continents during their featherless molting period. It is also home to a herd of caribou, hunted by residents of seven nearby Inupiat Eskimo villages, a representative of one of the environmental plaintiffs said.

"The wetlands around Teshekpuk Lake are among the most important in the entire Arctic," said Stan Senner, executive director of Audubon Alaska, one of the plaintiffs.

The judge has given both sides in the dispute until September 15 to respond to his preliminary ruling.

Deirdre McDonnell, a Juneau-based attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice who is representing the plaintiffs, said she expected the preliminary ruling to stand.

"The clients have taken the position that they should cancel the lease sale. They don't think it's appropriate to be leasing in this sensitive area at all," she said.

A BLM spokeswoman said the agency was still examining the ruling and what it should do next.

The BLM has held three lease sales in the petroleum reserve since 1999, reaping over $222 million in high bids and resulting in a flurry of exploration drilling and some discoveries in the northern section.

Methane Bubbles Make Global Warming Worse

By Ker Than

06 September 2006

Methane gas bubbles up from Siberian lakes at up to six times the rate previously thought as a result of global warming, a new study suggests. The result: more global warming.

As the planet warms, frozen ground called "permafrost" in high latitude-regions like Siberia and Alaska thaws out.

One consequence: Carbon in the permafrost is released into the atmosphere. Another is that thawing permafrost along the margins of a lake dislodges frozen plant and animal remains, causing them to sink to the bottom of the lakes, where they decompose and produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Some of the methane diffuses through the lake water and into the air, but the majority of it escapes by bubbling to the surface. Until now, this bubbling, or "ebullition," process has been hard to measure because of the difficulty involved in determining where and when the bubbles will occur.

In the new study, researchers used a combination of aerial surveys, remote sensors and year-round measurements of places in two Siberian lakes where methane bubbling was known to occur. To identify bubble hot spots, they surveyed the lakes in autumn, when bubbles rising to the surface freeze in place, leaving behind visible trails.

Extrapolating their data to Siberia's other lakes, the researchers estimate that more than 4 million tons of methane is being released each year. This is between 10 and 63 percent higher than present estimates.

The study, led by Katey Walter at the University Alaska, Fairbanks, is detailed in the Sept. 7 issue of the journal Nature.

Continued at Live Science

Why Bush Really Came Clean About the CIA's Secret Torture Prisons

A Fear of War Crimes Tribunals and Impeachment

By MARJORIE COHN
With great fanfare, George W. Bush announced to a group of carefully selected 9/11 families yesterday that he had finally decided to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 13 other alleged terrorists to Guantánamo Bay, where they will be tried in military commissions. After nearly 5 years of interrogating these men, why did Bush choose this moment to bring them to "justice"?

Bush said his administration had "largely completed our questioning of the men" and complained that "the Supreme Court's recent decision has impaired our ability to prosecute terrorists through military commissions and has put in question the future of the CIA program."

He was referring to Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which the high court recently held that Bush's military commissions did not comply with the law. Bush sought to try prisoners in commissions they could not attend with evidence they never see, including hearsay and evidence obtained by coercion.

The Court also determined that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to al Qaeda detainees. That provision of Geneva prohibits "outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment."

Bush called on Congress to define these "vague and undefined" terms in Common Article 3 because "our military and intelligence personnel" involved in capture and interrogation "could now be at risk of prosecution under the War Crimes Act."

Continued at Counterpunch

US Attempts to Sabotage Venezuelan Elections

August 31, 2006
The Rev. Obed Juan Vizcaino Najera
The governor-candidate has returned after meeting with the USA Ambassador in foreign lands (just as we had predicted a few days ago). He went to meet his political and financial mentors and to fetch the government plan for Venezuela that some Cuban-American “intellectuals” prepared. He went to receive instructions.

The trip was not entirely pleasant for the coup-participant-governor ... he was reprimanded by Bush’s envoys.

Among the reprimands received were:
- his inability to gather a large number of followers on the day of his launching as candidate.

- not having been able to convince the Venezuelan people with his mediocre speech.

According to sources from “Un Nuevo Tiempo” (A New Time), Rosales received orders to buy off as many pre-candidates as possible and by whatever means. The objective: to influence world opinion by creating the illusion that a “single, unified candidate” is running against Chavez.

The empire’s tactic is to keep a low profile on Sumate while distancing themselves from the people of Rumbo Propio (Own Path). These two things can be held against Carmona’s supporter (Rosales).

The empire wants the governor to avoid all confrontation with Chavez but wants him to hold debates with the other pre-candidates who, in turn, will lose and drop out of the race thus making it look as if Rosales is the winner of the debates.

• The empire has supplied a large amount of dollars so that the media will announce the one candidate of the north American embassy as “the winner.”

The true confrontation with Chavez will take place when the TV and radio stations edit, publish and generate an altered publicity campaign, carefully orchestrated by the Bush administration, mercenaries, and coup-participant-Venezuelans dwelling in Miami. All this is being financed by the US Department of State with funds from questionable origins.

According to some separatist leaders from Zulia, Rosales met secretly with the Governor of Florida. They discussed all the possible ways that can be used to intervene with and rig the Venezuelan Election, including CANTV technology, akin to what was done in the state of Florida during Bush’s fraudulent election.

According to sources close to Rosales, he also met with Venezuelan mercenaries and coupster militaries as well as Jewish and Miami-Cuban sectors who are committed to financing the dirty campaign against Chavez. The money from the US Department of State will be laundered through foreign businesses. During a dinner conversation at a luxurious restaurant in Zulia some leaders of Nuevo Tiempo and members of other organizations that support the separatist candidate had too much to drink; thus allowing the conspiracy information to leak out.

Continued at VHeadline

Scholars for 9/11 Truth Assailed

Members & Movement attacked from many directions

Madison, WI (PRWEB) September 9, 2006 --- Three professors who are members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth have been threatened with the loss of their positions for their research and teaching about the events of 9/11. Other attacks are coming from national magazines, such as TIME and U.S. NEWS, which have cover-stories this week suggesting that those who believe 9/11 involved a conspiracy may need psychological counseling. In addition, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Popular Mechanics have published pieces intended to bolster the official account of 9/11.

“This flurry of activity suggests that the government is becoming desperate in its efforts to keep the truth about 9/11 from the American people,” said James H. Fetzer, the founder and co-chair of the society. “But I don’t think it’s working.” Fetzer finds attacks on faculty members, including Kevin Barrett, a humanities instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Bill Woodward, a professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire, and Steven Jones, a physics professor at Brigham Young University and the society’s co-chair, especially disturbing.

“According to the government, 9/11 is ‘the pivotal event of the 21st century,’ which changed everything”, he observed. “So it obviously deserves to be studied. College and universities are the institutions that undertake the study of significant historical events. The very idea that faculty should not be studying the events of 9/11 verges on the absurd,” he remarked. “And since the official account-that the events of 9/11 involved 19 Islamic fundamentalists hijacking four commercial airliners and perpetrating terrorist acts under control of a man in a cave in Afghanistan-involves a conspiracy, it is impossible to study 9/11 without dealing with conspiracy theories.”

Fetzer thinks the administration wants to suppress serious research on 9/11 because the official account cannot withstand scrutiny. “What the government has told us is just fine if you are willing to believe impossible things,” he observed. “Its truth requires violating laws of physics and engineering that cannot be violated and cannot be changed.” He offered a recent piece from NIST that attempts to resolve “frequently asked questions” as an illustration. “We have posted it on our web site at st911.org along with several critiques. I invite anyone to review that exchange to determine if the official account has any basis in science. It does not.”

An article from Popular Mechanics that has been turned into a book doesn’t fare any better, he observed. Since there is no objective foundation for the official account, there is no ground to suggest that skeptics of the official account need psychological counseling. “Rationality is the tendency to accept, reject, and hold-in-suspense beliefs on the basis of logic and evidence,’” Fetzer stated. “Given what we know now, those who continue to defend the government’s account are the ones whose beliefs cannot be justified by logic and evidence, not the critics. The situation abounds with ironies.”

“Sometimes I wonder if the general public realizes the government has been lying to us about 9/11 from the beginning.” He cites the recent acknowledgment from the FBI that it has “no hard evidence” connecting Osama bin Laden to 9/11 and the President’s response during a press conference that Saddam Hussein had “nothing” to do with 9/11. Only this week a Senate Intelligence Committee report explained that Saddam not only was not collaborating with bin Laden but opposed him. “These were reasons we were given for going to war,” he said. “If the government has been lying about them, we already know the government has been lying about 9/11.”

Scholars, a non-partisan society of students, faculty and experts dedicated to exposing falsehoods and revealing truths about 9/11, includes physicists, mechanical engineers, civil engineers, pilots, and aeronautical engineers among its members. “We have no funds and no budget but are doing this because we believe the American people are entitled to know the truth about their own history. Even I find it difficult to believe that the American government could have attacked the American people and killed 3,000 civilians to promote its political agenda, but that is where the evidence leads.”

from Scholars for 9/11 Truth

Mexico left names own 'president'

By Frank Jack Daniel
MEXICO CITY, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Mexican leftists, who say the July 2 election was stolen, declared their candidate the "legitimate president" on Saturday, a symbolic move reducing the risk of street protests to make the country ungovernable.

Continued at Reuters

Man-made factors fuel hurricanes, study finds

By Beth Daley, Globe Staff  |  September 12, 2006
Global warming caused by humans is largely responsible for heating hurricane-forming regions of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, probably increasing the intensity of the storms, scientists reported yesterday.

The scientists used 22 computer models to simulate how the world's climate works and to help answer a key question: Are hurricanes becoming more intense because of natural influences, or man-made ones?

The scientists, reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said there was an 84 percent chance that human-induced climate change was responsible for most of the ocean warming . Oceans have warmed by about 1 degree in the past century, and natural influences alone could not account for that, they said.

Hurricanes draw their strength from warm seawater, and even small changes in temperature can give a storm much more energy, increasing its fury.

Continued at The Boston Globe

Arctic Ice Melting Rapidly, Study Says

Sep 14, 7:06 PM EDT

By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer
Arctic sea ice in winter is melting far faster than before, two new NASA studies reported Wednesday, a new and alarming trend that researchers say threatens the ocean's delicate ecosystem.

Scientists point to the sudden and rapid melting as a sure sign of man-made global warming.

"It has never occurred before in the past," said NASA senior research scientist Josefino Comiso in a phone interview. "It is alarming... This winter ice provides the kind of evidence that it is indeed associated with the greenhouse effect."

Continued at AP

New forecast downgrades hurricane threat for 2006

09.15.2006, 11:27 AM

PARIS (AFX) - A new forecast for the hurricane season on Friday downgraded expectations for this year's storms, saying it will probably be average in number and in intensity.

Tropical Storm Risk (TSR), a London-based group of scientists, said they expected 13 tropical storms for the Atlantic during the season, which runs from June 1 to November 30.

Six of these would be hurricanes and two would be intense hurricanes, it said.

Four tropical storms will make landfall on the United States, one or two of them hurricanes, TSR said.

'The updated prediction includes a 22 pct probability of an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season, a 52 pct probability of a near-normal season and a 26-pct chance of a below-normal season,' it said in a press release.

The previous forecasts by TSR this year had forecast activity that would be 40 pct above the historical norm.

Continued at Forbes

Chevron says Gulf drilling a success
Well could become the nation's biggest new domestic source of oil, according to newspaper report.
September 5 2006: 12:36 PM EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Chevron Corp. said Tuesday it had successfully drilled for oil in the Gulf of Mexico's deep waters, in what could be one of the most significant finds for the domestic oil industry in a generation.

The successful well, known as Jack 2, reached a record total depth of 28,175 feet, coming in 7,000 feet of water and more than 20,000 feet under the sea floor. Analysts said the find suggested the success of that drilling may mean more oil than previously believed is available under the Gulf of Mexico, a region that already provides a quarter of U.S. output.

One published report suggested the breakthrough could increase U.S. oil reserves by as much as 50 percent.

During the test at record depths and pressure, the Jack No. 2 well flowed at more than 6,000 barrels of crude per day, Chevron said. That puts it on a par with discoveries in exploration hot spots such as the waters off Angola.

With U.S. oil output in decline, big new fields are increasingly rare, and oil companies are widening their search to more difficult places

Chevron, the No. 2 U.S. oil company after Exxon Mobil, did not give an estimate of the field's reserves.

The Wall Street Journal cited Chevron officials as estimating recent discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico could hold as much as 15 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves. That would boost U.S. current reserves by 50 percent.

Continued at CNN

And now a study from Princeton University

Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine

Ariel J. Feldman, J. Alex Halderman, and Edward W. Felten

Abstract  

This paper presents a fully independent security study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine, including its hardware and software. We obtained the machine from a private party. Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities — a voting-machine virus. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab. Mitigating these threats will require changes to the voting machine's hardware and software and the adoption of more rigorous election procedures.

For the complete report, see Center for Information Technology Policy

Also watch the video in the archive:

Proof of Corrupt Election Software

Sgt. Lauro "LJ" Chavez, 9/11 Whistle Blower Speaks Out to the Editor of the Cincinnati Post

Thought I'd share this rant with all you Veterans - It kills me when idiots don't do their homework...

Greetings Mr. White,

I felt it necessary to follow up to a recent story that was published in Cincinnati Post. It was the 1 in 3 believe 9-11 conspiracy theory. I must admit that at first I was overwhelmed with joy that our local paper was actually starting to have real journalism and talk about real issues. Then I read the story and it was a total debunk to make the actual people around the world who feel there was something not right about 9-11, to look like over reacting conspiracy theorists.

Im utterly outraged. My 9 year old daughter could have done more research in this, as opposed to just trying to throw the publics ideas and feelings out. Is this not what journalism is supposed to represent - real issues? There have been many, many polls done in major cities that actually ask people how they felt about the 9-11 tragedy. One such poll is called the Zogby poll; which was offered in New York City.

Honestly I could care less what is done with this letter, but I feel that I should speak my mind and Ill tell you some things that I have not told many people at all. From 1995 till 2002 I was a Sergeant in the United States Army. Not only this, but I was stationed at United States Central Command, which is located at MacDill AFB in Tampa Florida. I was on active duty when 9-11 happened. In the days prior to the tragedies, we were involved in many exercises. Some of these exercises included the scenarios of hijacked planes crashing into, our building the world trade center, the White House, Sears Tower, and the Pentagon. These drills or exercises as we called them, where classified Top Secret. Having a Top Secret rated clearance I was dumbfounded that they would ever push a training exercise above the level of Secret. Over my 8 years in the Army, I had participated in many exercises around the world, none of which were ever classified over the Secret level.

Ill start by saying a few months prior it was announced by President Bush that Dick Cheney would be heading up operations over NORAD our North American Aerospace Defense Command. Along with many of my peers, we were shocked. Over the years, if you research NORAD, it has always been under the command of a Military officer. It was done this way because the defense of this country has always been in the hands of such. Prior to the months before 9-11 this was all of the sudden changed. Like I said, if you research NORAD and the command structure you will find that it was imposed long ago that the military should be in control of the order to scramble planes in the defense of American air space. For some strange reason, Bush changed this and gave that power to a civilian person on his Staff team yes I know, very interesting.

Back to the morning of 9-11; the command was busy with this training exercise. We were instructed to bring all our gear in to prep for a mock (staged) deployment to the Middle East. On the morning of 9-11 I had been on base prepped and ready to go since about 0400am. During my time at the base that morning, they were setting up barriers around the command and placing gun posts on the roofs. When I questioned one of the security officers about the machine gun and shoulder fired rockets on the roof I was given the answer its a precaution for a plane attempting to crash into this building.

So, I was standing in the SCIF (Secure Compartmented Information Facility), which is basically this underground bunker command post for USCENTCOM, when the first plane hit. We were watching the fly patterns of all the planes on the aerospace grid. This contained not only all commercial flights at the time, but all military flights, and fake enemy planes that were supposedly put on there for the exercise. Many of the planes sent to intercept the fake blips were scrambled from Andrews which is an air defense AFB for the East Coast. They were sent across the US and left very few planes to defend the capital. After the first plane hit the tower we were all in disbelief. After the initial shock was over, our questions were what are the odds this could happen for real, during a training exercise thats covering the same scenario? We were all at wits end. Then to top all of this off, Cheney gave NORAD the order to stand down scrambling jets to intercept. A few moments later tower 2 was hit. Only after the Pentagon was hit, did he give the orders to scramble the jets to intercept the plane bound for the White House.

All of this is very interesting to me it sickened me so that I left the Army after coming back from an 8 month deployment to Afghanistan. There were just too many questions that no one could answer, too many things that did not make sense. How is it possible to have a training exercise about planes hitting the WTC and then actually have planes hit the WTC? This kind of thing just does not happen unless its pre-planned. What reason would there be to have this type of exercise on that morning, Ill tell you if you are placing fake planes all over the north American aerospace grid then you have no way of knowing which planes are real and which are fake. Then to thicken the plot you put a civilian in charge of NORAD so that the military does not have the power to initiate the order for jets to be scrambled to intercept. If the military would have still commanded power over NORAD they would have scrambled jets because they would have simply followed the procedures that had been in place for this type of situation for years and years and scrambled jets.

To delve even further, as Im standing there watching the towers collapse, next to me is one of my good friends and a former commander of the Army Corps of Engineers. He is a demolitions expert. He was even more surprised than me. When the towers collapsed he kept saying this isnt right, this isnt right. When I asked him what he was talking about he told me that steel buildings dont fall down that way. Even if they are struck by objects; he went on to say that in theory if the top 10 floors were hit, then possibly just that part of the building would fall over and off, but the rest would remain standing. When I asked him, not understanding the implications of demolitions, he told me that it looked as if they were brought down by controlled demolitions. I was utterly amazed, but after he said that it did sort of appear that way.

Ill tell you what gave this whole thing away was building 7. If they would not have brought this building down, then they probably could have gotten away with it all. It was the most amazing site I have ever seen. Not only was it amazing, it bore reality to the truth of the situation something was not right here. Now, Im going to
tell you all I have learned, but I urge anyone to just spend 1hr reading about this incident on the internet and learning the facts. There have been numerous scholars, numerous physicists that have analyzed this over and over and over again. And they all come to the same conclusion, something does not add up. Building 7 was never directly hit by a plane. Now it was stated that a piece of one of the towers fell onto the side of building 7 and caught one of the floors on fire. A few moments later we all witnessed the most perfect example of controlled demolitions to ever be caught on camera. It could not be proved that building 7 fell due to fire. My friend and I standing there in the SCIF watching in uninterruptible awe with all those other military members; watching building 7 fall perfectly onto its footprint; my friend stating that it was beautifully done.

We all knew then we all realized that this was not some group of unorganized cave dwellers from Afghanistan orchestrating a perfect hit on American soil. It was impossible. Shortly after the Pentagon was struck I called my close friend that I went to Basic Training with. All civilian lines were down and I had to contact him via STU which is a black line classified phone system. He did not answer, but one of his soldiers did. I asked if SGT Worthington was ok and he said yes. I asked if the plane did severe damage and he told me I didnt see any plane. Then when I finally got to speak to my friend, he started acting strange saying he could not talk about the incident over this line. He was shipped off overseas a few weeks later and I never to this day have had the chance to speak with him.

The Pentagon crash tape was released a few months back after 5 years. You need to watch that tape no where can you see a plane strike the Pentagon. This is because it was not a plane. I cannot tell you exactly what hit the Pentagon, but its unanimous; it was definitely not a plane. I can assure you that there is more than one CCTV camera around the Pentagon. On September 25, 4 days before my 25th birthday, I deployed to Afghanistan. Over the 8months I was there I had never seen one intelligent Afghani soldier. They were all tattered and scrawny and could barely shoot their weapons straight. This does not mean that there were not men that could fly a plane, but after what I saw it was extremely hard to believe they could be taught to fly a sophisticated piece of aeronautical equipment.

My point Mr. Editor is that I spent 8 months in combat watching my brothers die in the name of Freedom. I killed, in the name of Freedom and to this day my brothers are still being killed for this illusionary war we call the War on Terror. Where the enemy has no face where there is no clear objective. In this War, anyone with ill thoughts toward this country can be defined as a terrorist. Well, I guess that includes me in this group as well as everyone else who questions the events of 911, because we all hold ill thoughts toward the leadership of this country and I say the real terrorists in this world sit right in the heart of its capital.

I have bled for this country and would do so again in a heart beat but only to protect its people, the true Americans that live here. I would never again offer my life under the leadership whose real goal is oil and money. The same ones who staged the most perfect illusionary tactic in our history that was a pretext to a war on terror that would never again go away. Their goal was to scare the American public into submission making it easier for the world powers to do their evil and get away with it.

Now that may sound like a typical conspiracy theorist I guess, but how many do you actually talk to? Im not here saying that Aliens came down and used laser beams to bring the towers down or control the planes that were flown; Im telling you as a sane, logical and intelligent individual, something does not add up about this. Earlier this year I was watching the Discovery channel. They have a PBS program called Rebuilding America. This particular episode was about the WTC building 7. They interviewed Larry Silverstein (the owner) about building 7. He stated on national TV the following which is the direct quote and can be found here: http://www.wtc7.net/pullit.html

I remember getting a call from the, ER, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, "We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it." And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.

I actually have the program recorded and you are more than welcome to come by my house and watch it. He actually stated this on national TV. I was so amazed that I almost shat myself. I could not believe he actually stated this on a nationally broadcasted TV program. You can ask any person who has done controlled demolitions please interview someone they will tell you it takes weeks of planning to do this. We are expected to believe that this was facilitated and planned in a matter of hours for building 7, while the damn thing was on fire you
have got to be kidding me. If that is not enough to make you believe something was fishy well then nothing will ever do.

Since that time there have been numerous scholars, some of which have actually been publicly broadcasted on CSPAN. The latest program was called: Theories about 9-11. American Perspectives and you can watch this (which I advise you do) per this link: Theories about 9-11 (American Perspectives) or you can go to www.c-span.org and look under their video/audio section to find this title. Its an outstanding video and encompasses the thoughts of not only the American public, but also Dr Steven Jones from Brigham Young University a physics
professor that actually received a piece of the rubble from the WTC. Not only does he profoundly agree that building 7 was a controlled demolition he can prove it. After he analyzed the piece of debris they found; there were large traces of sulfur and Thermite found. If you did not know, Thermite is a chemical compound found in many explosives including C4 which I have used many times in the Army. It leaves a distinct smell and identifiable residue upon explosion. Dr. Jones found large traces of this from the rubble.

Sir, there are many things that I never wanted to know for one that the government that is supposed to be caring for the American people could be corrupt. This was the last thing that I ever wanted to be true but its time we wake up and smell the bullshit because its permeating throughout the American public and we are all starting to realize whats really going on. If your news station actually did a similar Zogby type poll here in Cincinnati, I think you would find that a lot more than 1/3 of the people believe this. I know tons just in this area.

I could literally write you 100 pages of truths that could prove that 9-11 was an inside job, but Id probably just be passed off as some crazy conspiracy theorist. Instead I want to give you the tools to look for yourself because the quest for wisdom is a journey we must all take alone. So, to you I add the following links and if you just spend a small portion of your day reading and watching some of this footage, who knows you may wake up and stand along side the rest of us in utter amazement.


Respectfully,

SGT Lauro Chavez
United States Central Command

Thanks to the Internet, one of the few freedoms we have left, these truths can be sent to the public. Thank God we dont have to rely on news media to get this information out to everyone!

This is only about a 10th of my list of sites. Enjoy; and when you are sick with the truth of things, let me know and Ill buy you a beer to ease your nerves.

Loose Change Volume 2
(An outstanding documentary done about 911 that includes news reports
and live footage of the tragedy and finds that some things are not
what they seem)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1519312457137943386&q=loose+change


Official Pentagon Plane Crash Video
(You tell me where the plane is)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5658198482624505213


Silverstein saying we decided to pull the building
The collapse of building 7
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6455428412411043437&q=WTC+building+7

Another video of bldg 7
(In this you can see the widely noticeable crinkle that is common in controlled demolitions)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9184329400593634920&q=wtc+7


Watch the following in sequence:

1. Showing the Thermite at work.
(In this video you can see the molten concrete and metal spewing out of the WTC. This is what happens when a Thermite type explosive is used to cut down steel pillars)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=545886459853896774&q=thermite

2. Then watch this video
(it shows the spot where the molten metal is coming out the same spot where the building crinkles and collapses)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4763320529356355623&q=wtc+7


Misc Links for research:

http://www.911truth.org/

http://www.st911.org/

http://www.infowars.com/

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2006/020806tapesintensify.htm

Zogby Poll Results
http://www.911truth.org/images/911TruthZogbyPollFinalReport.htm



As you can see, Im not your typical conspiracy theorist I actually have a good job! I thought at first I might send you this from an anonymous email address, but you know what now you know Im not just some stupid kid. Thanks for taking the time to read.

Respectfully,

Lauro "LJ" Chavez
Director of Information Security
Domin-8 Enterprise Solutions
513-492-5831
lchavez@domin-8.com
www.domin-8.com
As the guardians of technology; security shall be our shield and
vigilance our sword

Also See….

Grassroots InfoMedia debunks Popular Mechanics

American Prison Camps Are on the Way

By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet. Posted October 9, 2006.

Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of Bush's "unlawful enemy combatants." Americans are certain to be among them.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."

Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.

Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush's list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.

The bill also strips habeas corpus rights from detained aliens who have been declared enemy combatants. Congress has the constitutional power to suspend habeas corpus only in times of rebellion or invasion. The habeas-stripping provision in the new bill is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will likely say so when the issue comes before it.

Continued at Alternet.org

300 million US consumers make an outsized environmental mark

15/10/06

by Virginie Montet

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States, the only industrialized country with strong population growth, now has 300 million people whose lifestyle makes a disproportionately huge mark on the global environment, experts say.
The world's third most populous country behind China and India, the United States has five percent of the world's population.

But it consumes -- alone -- more than a quarter of the world's natural resources, more than any other country, according to the National Report on Population and Environment, put out by the US-based Center for Environment and Population.

Continued at http://tinyurl.com/y2pyw3

Peace Activists Beware: Homeland Security May Be Reading Your E-Mail, and Passing it on to the Pentagon

By Matthew Rothschild
October 13, 2006
More information keeps coming out, thanks to the ACLU, about the Bush Administration’s equation of protest with terrorism—and the snooping it then engages in.

Homeland Security is monitoring peace groups and even peering at their e-mails.
It then shares that information with Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which include the FBI and state and local law enforcement, as well as with the Pentagon’s notorious Talon (Threat and Local Observation Notice) program.

Continued at The Progressive

Documents Reveal Scope of U.S. Database on Antiwar Protests

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 — Internal military documents released Thursday provided new details about the Defense Department’s collection of information on demonstrations nationwide last year by students, Quakers and others opposed to the Iraq war.

The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show, for instance, that military officials labeled as “potential terrorist activity” events like a “Stop the War Now” rally in Akron, Ohio, in March 2005.

Continued at The New York Times

U.S. Intervention in Venezuela and in Latin America

Wednesday, Oct 11, 2006
Original URL: http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1850

By: Noam Chomsky
A public event on the occasion of the 30th Anniversary of the bombing of Cubana airliner, flight 455, which cost the lives of 73 passengers, was held on October 6th, 2006, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Boston. Participating in this event were political activist and analyst Noam Chomsky, Cuban specialist and French scholar Salim Lamrani and the President of the National Lawyer’s Guild, Michael Avery, for a discussion of US foreign policy towards Cuba and Latin America, and the cases of Luis Posada Carriles and the Cuban Five.

The following is Noam Chomsky’s response to a question from the audience:

Audience Member: With the recent integration and cooperation between Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, obviously the US is paying more attention to these countries.  What in your opinion could be the agenda of secret agents currently in action in Venezuela? and could you please analyze the possibility of military intervention in Venezuela and Bolivia on the part of the US government.

Noam Chomsky: I think your point is well taken.  We know that the US did support a military coup, which briefly overthrew President Chavez and the US had to back down, when he was restored quickly and also had to back down in the face of a very angry reaction in Latin American. In almost all of Latin America, there was a very angry reaction. They take democracy there more seriously then we do here.

Right after trying to overthrow the government by force, the US immediately turned to subversion, supporting anti-Chavez groups.  That’s described in the press, the way it’s described is, the US is supporting pro-democracy groups, which are opposed to President Chavez.

Notice it’s true by definition that if you oppose the president, you are pro-democracy.  It’s completely irrelevant that according to the best polls (Latin America has very good polling agencies which take regular polls on these issues around the continent).  Support for democracy has been declining—not for democracy but for the democratic governments—has been declining through Latin America, for a pretty good reason, the governments have been associated with neo-liberal programs which undermine democracy—IMF, treasury department programs—so your support for the governments are declining.  There are exceptions, and the major exception by far is Venezuela.

Since 1998, when Chavez was elected, support for the elected government as be rising very fast, its now by far the highest in Latin America.  He has won several elections that have been recognized to be free and fair, he has won numerous referendums, but he is a dictator, a tin-pot dictator, which is proven by the fact that our dear leader said so, and since we are voluntary North Koreans, when the dear leader says it, it’s true.  So therefore, he’s a dictator, and if you carry out subversion to overthrow him, that’s pro-democracy by definition.  You have to look hard to find an exception to this, or even a comment on it, just like the other examples I discussed.

We might ask ourselves how we would react if Iran, say, had just supported a military coup that overthrew the government in the United States and when they have to back off from that, immediately turned to supporting pro-democracy groups in the United States that are opposed to the government.  Would we give them ice-cream and candy?  

Well in dictatorial Venezuela, they let them keep functioning.  In fact, even let the newspapers in support of the coup keep functioning.  I could go on with this, but what’s likely to happen?

Well, the US has had two major weapons for controlling Latin America for a long time.  One of them is economic controls, the other is military force.  They have both been used continually.  Both of them are weakening and it’s a very serious problem for U.S. planners.

The Economic, for the first time in its history since the Spanish colonization, Latin America is beginning to get its act together.  It’s moving towards some degree of independence, even some degree of integration.  The Latin American countries have been very separate from one another through their histories, they have a huge gap between the very rich and the huge massive poor, so when we are talking about the countries, we are talking about the rich elites.  The rich elites have been oriented towards Europe and North America, not their own citizens, not each other.  So that Capital flight goes to Zurich, or London, or New York, the second home is in the Riviera, the children study in Cambridge or something like that.  That’s the way it’s been, with very little interaction, and it’s changing.

First of all there are major popular movements, like in Bolivia.  They had a democratic election of the kind we can’t even dream of.  I mean if there was any honest newspaper coverage in this country we would be ashamed at the comparison between their election and ours.  I won’t go through it, but with a little thought you can quickly figure it out, because there is mass popular participation, and the people know what they are voting for, and they pick somebody from their own ranks and their major issues and so on.  It’s unimaginable here where elections are about the level of marketing toothpaste on television, literally.

There are mass popular movements all over and they have begun to integrate to some extent for the first time.
The military weapon has been weakened.  The last effort of the US had to back off very quickly, in 2002 in Venezuela.  The kinds of governments the US is now supporting—forced to support—are the kinds it would have been trying to overthrow not very long ago, because of this shift.

The economic weapon is weakening enormously.  They are throwing out the IMF.  The IMF means the US Treasury Department.  Argentina, it was the poster boy of the IMF, you know, following all the rules and so on.  It went in to a hideous economic crash.  They managed to get out of it, but only by radically violating IMF rules, and they are now, as the President put it, “ridding themselves of the IMF” and paying off their debt with the help of Venezuela.  Venezuela bought up a lot of their debt.  The same is happening in Brazil.  The same is going to happen in Bolivia. 

In general, the economic measures are weakening, the military measures are no longer what they were.  The US is deeply concerned about it, undoubtedly.  We shouldn’t think that the US has abandoned the military effort, on the contrary, the number of US personnel—military personnel—in Latin America is probably as high as its ever been.  The number of the Latin American officers being trained by the US is going up very sharply.  By now, for the first time (it never happened during the cold war) the US military aid is higher than the sum of economic and social aid from key federal agencies- that’s a shift.  There are more air bases all over the place. 

Keep your eyes on Ecuador, there’s an election coming up in about a week, the likely winner, [Rafael] Correa is an interesting person, he was recently asked what he would do with the big Manta US airbase in Ecuador and his answer was, well he’d allow it to stay if the United States agreed to have an Ecuadorian airbase in Miami. 

But these are the things that are going on. There’s a call for an Indian Nation for the first time. The indigenous—in some states like Bolivia—majority is actually entering the political arena for the first time in 500 years, electing their own candidates.  These are major changes, but the US is certainly not giving up on it.

The Military training has been shifted.  Its official focus now is on what’s called radical populism and street gangs.  Well, you know what radical populism means, like the Priests organizing peasants or anyone who gets out of line.  So yeah, it’s serious.  What will they do?

Governments have what are called security interests; they have to protect the national security. If any of you have ever spent any time reading declassified documents, you know what that the means. I’ve spent a lot of time reading them and it’s true, there is defense of the government against its enemy, that prime enemy.  Its prime enemy is the domestic population.  That’s true of every government I know.  So if you read the declassified documents, you find that most of them are protecting the government from its own population.  Not much has to do with anything you might call security interests, in another sense, and that’s true right now.  So we don’t know what they are planning because we have to be protected from knowing what the government is planning.  So we have to speculate.

If you want my speculation, based on no information except what I would be doing if I was sitting in the Pentagon planning office and told to figure out a way to overthrow the governments of Bolivia, Venezuela, and Iran, in fact.  The idea that immediately comes to mind, so I assume they are working on it, is to support secessionist movements, which is conceivable if you look at the geography and the places where the oil is and so on. 

In Venezuela, the oil is in Zulia province, which is where the opposition candidate is coming from, right on the boarder of Colombia (one of the only states [in Latin America] where the US has a firm military presence).  It’s a rich province, pretty anti-Chavez, and it happens to be where most of the oil is, and in fact there is rumor of a Zulia independence movement, which, if they can carry it off, the US could then intervene to protect against the dictator.  That’s Venezuela. 

In Bolivia, the major gas resources are in the low-lands, the eastern low-lands, which is mostly European, not indigenous, opposed to the government, rich area, near Paraguay (one of the other countries where the US has military bases), so you can imagine the same project going on – also secessionist movements. 

In Iran, which is the big one, if you look at it, the oil of the region (that’s where most of the hydrocarbons in the world are) they are right around the gulf, the Shiite sections of Iraq, the Shiite sections of Saudi Arabia and an Arab—not Persian—region of Iran, Khuzestan, right near the Gulf, it happens to be Arab.  There is talk floating around Europe (you know it’s probably planted by the CIA) of an Ahwazi Liberation Movement for this region.  A feasible, I don’t know if it’s feasible or not, but I think the kind of thought that would be occurring to the Pentagon planners is to sponsor a liberation movement, so-called, in the area near the Gulf then move in to defend it.  They’ve got 150,000 troops in Iraq; presumably, you might try that, and then bomb the rest of the country back to the Stone Age.  It’s conceivable, I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if those are the kinds of plans that are being toyed with.

Transcribed for Venezuelanalysis.com by Michael Fox

"Cold War Shivers": War Preparations in the Middle East and Central Asia

By Michel Chossudovsky

October 6, 2006

It is essential that people across America and around the World take cognizance of  the dangers of a Middle East war directed against Iran and act decisively to challenge the US military agenda and reverse the tide of war. 

The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US  has embarked on a military adventure, "a long war", which threatens the future of humanity. 

This article documents  recent developments, focusing on military deployment and preparations in the event of a US led war on Iran. This text follows a number of earlier reports published by Global Research pertaining to the War on Iran (See Iran dossier, Nuclear War dossier, Lebanon dossier )  

Background

The entire Middle East Central Asian region is on a war footing. 

US-NATO naval deployment is taking place in two distinct theaters: the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean. (See Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, October 2006).

The naval armada in the Persian Gulf is largely under US command, with the participation of Canada. Both the USS Enterprise and Eisenhower Strike groups have been dispatched to the Persian Gulf in a a massive display of US military might. 

Continued at globalresearch.ca

The War in Afghanistan: Drugs, Money Laundering and the Banking System

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

October 17, 2006

<snip>

It must also be recognized that the insurgency is also in part a resistance movement in many regions of Afghanistan. The media "erroneously" calls this movement the "Taliban". On the ground in Afghanistan, however, NATO troops identify the Afghan insurgents as Anti-Coalition Militias (ACMs). This title reflects the fact that NATO is fighting a diverse multi-ethnic movement in Afghanistan that sees NATO as an occupation forces. The issue of human rights abuses by NATO troops and security contractors (mercenaries) has also incited violence amongst the inhabitants of Afghanistan.

In addition to media misinformation there are many misleading or distorted reports. There are also individuals claiming to represent the Afghan people and championing human rights such as the Afghani President and members of the unelected Loya Jirga (Afghani pseudo-Parliament). Many in the international ant-war movement have been deceived by members of the Loya Jirga who have pretended to champion human rights and women’s rights against the United States and the warlords, while in fact they are also supported being by the US. 

This is a form of "manufactured dissent", an opposition ("counter-discourse") which creates the illusion that there is a real political opposition within Afghanistan> it is also used to mislead the anti-war movement.

Continued at Global Research

US ponders market manipulation

Barry Riley
16 Oct 2006

Markets have been moving in directions favourable to the Bush regime

Conspiracy theories have become the normal tittle-tattle of the financial markets. But ahead of the US mid-term elections on November 7, the blogging rants and radio phone-in hysteria have reached a pitch of intensity.

Are the commodities and securities markets being manipulated? Pre-election paralysis on the part of the US Federal Reserve is not unusual. Yet you do not require a suspicious mind to wonder whether smoothing and intervention may be happening on a bigger scale than normal.

President George Bush and the Republican Party are under pressure. The US army’s body count in Iraq is reaching unacceptable levels, let alone the death toll of locals. At home there are fears the country is heading for a serious recession. If the Republicans lose control of Congress, let alone the Senate, the lame duck tail-end of Bush’s second term could be calamitous.

The long-run economic problems are nothing new. Although growth has been excellent, inflation has been running well above target and with the balance of payments deficit being so large, the dollar is in continual danger of tanking. Personal savings are nil and the US is, in effect, being financially supported by China.

Until the summer, the trends appeared ominous. The Fed was raising short rates and inflation was climbing. The price of crude oil stopped short of $80 a barrel. Sales of new homes were dropping off a cliff.

Then, as if by magic, everything changed. The oil price went into reverse, tumbling to under $60 with favourable implications for the Consumer Price Index measure of inflation – although not for the core rate, excluding energy. Similarly, the gold bullion price – an indicator of the potential fragility of the dollar exchange rate – has crashed from its early summer high. The Dow Jones Average two weeks ago advanced to a high, at last beating the bubble top in January 2000.

However, the housing market poses perhaps the biggest threat. On some measures, US residential property inflation has turned negative on a year-on-year basis. The bubble is bursting.

Continued at Financial News Online

Typing – The Dark Side of Paradise

author: by Kim Alphandary

14 Oct. 2006

i recently devoted a considerable amount of time to typing a book, "The Dark Side of Paradise, so that it could be published on the net. But i doubt they'll publish it (just my intuition), or perhaps i should publish it without his permission, it is in the public domain after all ?.... whatever .... anyway i wrote a small piece about it, in case you're interested, here it is.

<snip>

"THE IRONY OF FIGHTING FOR OIL

"The Pentagon is the leading energy consumer in the United States, using more energy annually than all but 21 of the world's nations. Over two-thirds of its energy is supplied by oil, an unusually high proportion, and almost all of this (81%) is burned up in aircraft and ship operations. Any significant increase in U.S. flying or steaming time thus eats up enormous amounts of petroleum, and the recent intensification of military activity in the Persian Gulf area can be accurately summarized as depleting our oil resources in order to save them. In a conventional war for the oilfields, the United States would probably consume more petroleum than victory would bring.

"Source: Center for Defense Information, "The Oil Crisis: Is There a Military Option?" The Defense Monitor (December 1979), pp. 6-7."

Is this STILL true? I imagine so.

Continued at Portland Indymedia

Comment: I suspect that the amount of energy used by the US military is still somewhere in the neighborhood mentioned in this excerpt. Granted, energy efficiency has been gained in some areas, but I don't see any hydrogen powered humvees, tanks, jets or black hawks out there. What is more, I doubt that the original article considered the total energy that is consumed by our military. It is unlikely that they included the energy required to build our weapons of mass destruction, our bases and military installations, or the energy to run, heat and cool the same. Therefore, the amount of energy consumed by the US military could quite possibly dwarf any other energy use in the world. Is anyone aware of more accurate data on this?

Web could be terror training camp in U.S., politician says

Mon Oct 16, 2006 4:49pm ET

BOSTON (Reuters) - Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday.

"We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the Internet," Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police.

"They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination," Chertoff said. "Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites."

Chertoff pointed to the July 7, 2005 attacks on London's transit system, which killed 56 people, as an example a home-grown threat.

To help gather intelligence on possible home-grown attackers, Chertoff said Homeland Security would deploy 20 field agents this fiscal year into "intelligence fusion centers," where they would work with local police agencies.

By the end of the next fiscal year, he said the department aims to up that to 35 staffers.