Monday, July 12, 2004

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Giuliani Destroys Evidence in Unsolved Anthrax Murder Case, Gets Adulation

Decontamination Starts at Florida Anthrax Building
Sun Jul 11, 2004 02:19 PM ET

MIAMI (Reuters) - Workers began the cleanup on Sunday of a Florida building contaminated by anthrax in a series of incidents that rattled the United States shortly after the Sept 11, 2001 airliner attacks on New York and Washington.
Gas pumped into the Boca Raton building that once served as headquarters for supermarket tabloid publisher American Media Inc. was expected to rid it of deadly anthrax spores, which killed a photo editor there and prompted a biological warfare scare nearly three years ago.

"It's started," a Boca Raton police dispatcher said of the cleanup.

Robert Stevens, a photo editor at the AMI building, was the first of five people to die as a result of anthrax attacks in Florida, New York and the Washington area. Tainted letters were sent to media outlets and to government officials.

The three-story AMI building, which housed the National Enquirer and other tabloids, was quarantined in Oct. 2001 and was sold to developer David Rustine for $40,000 in April 2003.

In January, Rustine picked Bio-ONE, a partnership between Giuliani Partners, a consulting company headed by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and Sabre Technical Services, to cleanse the building using chlorine dioxide gas. Bio-ONE was expected to use the building as its headquarters when the quarantine is lifted.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=5637371

Sunday, June 06, 2004

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U.S. Military Luring Kids With Video Games

It's comforting to know that our kids have the opportunity to learn about and train for a career in the military, with the help of these games. Of course, if you are poor you might not want to pay for your training game. Download it FREE from the U.S. Army itself!

Here is your mission, according to one game's website:

A devastating wave of terrorist attacks spreads across Europe and Southeast Asia, targeting specifically U.S. and U.K. interests, including embassies, regional corporate headquarters, and even western retail and restaurant chains. After months of intense hunting, U.S. intelligence tracks the source of the attacks to the tiny eastern nation of Zekistan.

Zekistan was born seemingly overnight with the fall of the Soviet Union, resulting in a struggling third-world nation, torn by ethnic and sectarian strife, armed with a large surplus of Soviet-era military hardware and a critically weak government. Barely a year after its independence, the nation fell into brutal civil war between ethnic Zekis and settlers from surrounding nations. The Zekis were defeated by fundamentalist dictator Mohammad Jabbour Al Afad, who wasted no time in ordering the ethnic cleansing of the native Zekis.

After the U.S-led operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, thousands of ex-Taliban and Iraqi loyalists crossed the borders of Zekistan seeking asylum by invitation of the nation’s dictator, Al Afad. It wasn’t long before the same terrorist training facilities and death-camps that the U.S. fought to remove in Afghanistan were operating again under full sponsorship by Al Afad’s government. After repeated warnings and failed diplomatic resolutions in the UN, NATO votes to invade Zekistan to depose Al Afad, eliminate the terrorist element, and stop the ethnic cleansing of the Zeki people.

Pakistan grants the U.S. fly-through access to their airspace, and the operation begins. For several consecutive nights, carrier groups USS Carl Vinson and USS Ronald Reagan in the Arabian Sea launch thousands of sorties to take out air defense, armor, and enemy bases. With the dust barely settled, Infantry and Armor from seven NATO nations begin to land at captured air bases in southern Zekistan. The land invasion is underway…

Thursday, May 13, 2004

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Letters From Soldiers

Click here to read a series of remarkable letters sent by American soldiers to Michael Moore. I promise from here on out that when I say something is a must-read, I wholeheartedly think so. These letters are a must-read.

Monday, May 03, 2004

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Keep Your Eyes on the Carlyle Group

What has seemed most egregious to inquiring journalists and public interest groups has been Carlyle's consultants, like former President Bush, whose ties to ruling elites in Saudi Arabia (including the Bin Laden family) and South Korea have resulted in lucrative holdings and investments in these countries for Carlyle. As noted by the executive director of the Center for Public Integrity: "(Former President) George Bush is getting money from private interests that have business before the government...And, in a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions, through his father's investments." In fact, George W. benefited in the past from Carlyle by being put on the board of a Carlyle investment, Caterair, an airline-catering company during his Texas business career days.

Similar to the Enron situation, the Bush family and others have enriched their careers and political fortunes with their ties to the Carlyle Group. However, this is a scandal that still hasn't gained the attention and measures necessary to prevent its scandalous continuance.

Thursday, April 22, 2004

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How the NSS wooed Academia

[ The CIA asked University of California administrator Earl Clinton Bolton, who was spending some time at CIA headquarters, to suggest ideas on how to improve relations between the Agency and academia. ]

5 August 1968
MEMORANDUM FOR: [deleted]
SUBJECT: Agency-Academic Relations

This is an attempt to make some observations and suggestions about Agency-academic relations. In doing so I am grateful for the stimulus furnished by your outline. Although I believe I have addressed myself to most of the questions you have raised I have done so in free form rather than by a point by point consideration. I have also used "head notes" for purposes of organization and in an attempt to highlight the crucial questions in the subject.

Justifying an Agency-Academic Relationship: Let me stress at the outset that I believe Agency-academic relations are for the most part very good. Though I have no quantitative data to support such a conclusion my guess is that 99% of the members of the academy would be willing to assist the Agency if properly and skillfully approached, and that only a small fraction of that other 1% would be angered by an invitation to assist or would attempt to embarrass the Agency in any way.

However, on occasion when a university or an individual has acknowledged any contact with the Agency there has been some outcry by a few vocal members of the academic community.

In a later part of this paper I suggest "an affirmative program" designed to improve the Agency's reputation in academic circles and thus decrease the risks (costs) of association with the Agency. However, until either the passage of time or an image bolstering plan changes the cliches of the moment an educational institution or individual electing to assist the Agency may be on the defensive.

In my view the best way to defend association with the Agency when such a defense is necessary is:

1. By relating work for the Agency to one of the traditional functions of a university; and

2. By basing the defense or rejoinder on long established academic values.

REST OF MEMO

Monday, December 22, 2003

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Closer to Destruction?

Bush is blamed for pulling out of the And-Ballistic Missile Treaty and deciding to go ahead with the Nuclear Missile Defense.

I am no expert on this, but from a cursory reading of the material, it seems that this was already on the cards under Clinton. There were sharp disagreements between Clinton and Putin and there were detailed proposals to scrap the ABM and go ahead with the NMD. Indeed, it seems that funding for the program was higher under Clinton than Bush.

See this site for interesting details as well as budgetary allocations that actually seem to have dropped under Bush.

Also, Russia is developing a new generation of nuclear missiles that will not be stoppable by the NMD.

Closer to the end of the species?