Former IAEA chief: Iraq war killed “a million innocent civilians”

By Patrick Martin
3 April 2010

The former head of the UN’s chief nuclear agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, said in an interview with the British newspaper Guardian Wednesday that those who launched the war in Iraq were responsible for killing a million innocent people and could be held accountable under international law. He was clearly referring to US President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and their top military and security aides. 

It was his first interview with an international publication since ElBaradei returned to his native Egypt, after a decade heading the International Atomic Energy Agency, where he won the Nobel Peace Prize, in large measure because of his opposition to the efforts by the Bush administration to use concocted charges about “weapons of mass destruction” as an all-purpose pretext for military intervention throughout the Middle East.

“I would hope that the lessons of Iraq, both in London and in the US have started to sink in,” he told the Guardian. “Sure, there are dictators, but are you ready every time you want to get rid of a dictator to sacrifice a million innocent civilians? All the indications coming out of [the Chilcot inquiry in Britain] are that Iraq was not really about weapons of mass destruction but rather about regime change, and I keep asking the same question―where do you find this regime change in international law? And if it is a violation of international law, who is accountable for that?”

This suggestion that Bush and Blair were guilty of war crimes, coming from a high-ranking former UN official, would ordinarily be considered major news. The Guardian interview was reported by the main British and French news agencies, Reuters and AFP, but the entire American corporate media gave it zero coverage. Not a single major American newspaper or television network mentioned it.

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Not Just Guantanamo: U.S. Torturing Muslim Pre-trial Detainee in New York City

by Bill Quigley

Today in New York City, the U.S. is torturing a Muslim detainee with no prior criminal record who has not even gone to trial.

For the last almost three years, Syed Fahad Hashmi has been kept in total pre-trial isolation inside in a small cell under 24 hour video and audio surveillance. He is forced to use the bathroom and shower in full view of the video. He has not seen the sun in years. He takes his meals alone in his cell. He cannot see any other detainees and he is not allowed to communicate in any way with any prisoners. He cannot write letters to friends and he cannot make calls to anyone but his lawyer. He is prohibited from participating in group prayer. He gets newspapers that are 30 days old with sections cut out by the government. One hour a day he is taken into another confined room where he is also kept in total isolation.

Children are taught that the U.S. Constitution protects people accused of crimes. No one is to be punished unless their guilt or innocence has been decided in a fair trial. Until trial, people are entitled to the presumption of innocence. They are entitled to be defended by an attorney of their choice. And the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

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Crimes of the NWO super-class exposed: Invisible Empire TRAILER #2

Filmmaker Jason Bermas has collected a truly monumental amount of video archive and document material to render completely obsolete claims that the agenda of today’s ruling elite is not the open move towards a global totalitarian world government, which will be run to the detriment of The People but in the interest of the tiny ruling class that sit atop the power pyramid.

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US Recants Claims on HVD Abu Zubaydah

The Justice Department has quietly recanted nearly every major claim the Bush administration had made about "high-value" detainee Abu Zubaydah, a Guantanamo prisoner who at one time was said to have planned the 9/11 attacks and was the No. 2 and 3 person in al-Qaeda.

Additionally, Justice has backed away from some of the claims intelligence officials working in the Clinton administration had also leveled against Zubaydah, specifically, that he was directly involved in the planning of the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa.

Zubaydah's name is redacted in some instances in the 109-page court document the government filed in US District Court in Washington, DC in response to 213 discovery requests Zubaydah's attorneys made in connection with his habeas corpus case, which sought evidence to support, among other Bush administration claims, that Zubaydah was a top al-Qaeda official and close confidant of Osama Bin Laden.

The Justice Department asked the judge presiding over the case to deny virtually every discovery request, explaining, in some instances, that the government no longer relied upon the explosive allegations the Bush administration made about Zubaydah when he was captured and subsequently tortured.

Zubaydah is identified on the first page of the filing by his real name, Zayn Al Abidin Muhammad Husayn. He was the first detainee captured after 9/11 who was subjected to nearly a dozen brutal torture techniques, which included waterboarding, and was the catalyst, the public has been told, behind the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation" program. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has publicly admitted that personally approved of Zubaydah's waterboarding.

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CIA given details of British Muslim students

Personal information concerning the private lives of almost 1,000 British Muslim university students is to be shared with US intelligence agencies in the wake of the Detroit bomb scare.

The disclosure has outraged Muslim groups and students who are not involved in extremism but have been targeted by police and now fear that their names will appear on international terrorist watch lists. So far, the homes of more than 50 of the students have been visited by police officers, but nobody has been arrested. The case has raised concerns about how the police use the data of innocent people and calls into question the heavy-handed treatment of Muslim students by UK security agencies.

This week, MPs criticised the Government's key policies on countering extremism which they said were alienating Muslim communities.

Last year, The Independent reported on the alleged harassment of young Muslims by the police and security service, MI5, whose officers had tried to recruit them as spies. In the latest case, details of students from University College London (UCL) were handed over to police by the university's student union, after detectives visited the campus in early January 2010 during their continuing investigation into the attempted Christmas Day bombing in Detroit by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Abdulmutallab studied engineering at UCL in 2005-08, and was president of the UCL Islamic Society in 2006-07.

Police had first approached UCL's Islamic Society, which refused to hand over the information. Mojeed Adams-Mogaji, the society's president, said: "I was concerned about what they would do with the data. At another meeting with the Metropolitan Police, they told us they would keep it for seven years and would share the data with other intelligence agencies if requested. Obviously, I'm very concerned with what they plan to do with this information."

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Judge: Bush overstepped wiretapping authority

The ruling Wednesday by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco focused on the surveillance of a single organization, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation - the only plaintiff in dozens of wiretapping lawsuits around the nation that had evidence its calls were intercepted.

But Walker's reasoning struck at the heart of the program President George W. Bush authorized after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, allowing agents to intercept phone calls and e-mails between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists without a warrant.

When Bush acknowledged the surveillance in December 2005, he claimed the power to override a 1978 law, passed in response to revelations of wiretapping of political dissidents, that required the government to obtain advance court approval for each act of eavesdropping.

Walker said Wednesday that Bush lacked that authority.

Under the argument advanced by the Bush administration, "executive branch officials may treat as optional ... a statute (the 1978 law) enacted specifically to rein in and create a judicial check for executive-branch abuses of surveillance authority," the judge said.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/31/BANU1CNUF6.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0jqWHe0wq

Fed Reveals Bear Stearns Assets It Swallowed in Firm’s Rescue

April 1 (Bloomberg) -- After months of litigation and political scrutiny, the Federal Reserve yesterday ended a policy of secrecy over its Bear Stearns Cos. bailout.

In a 4:30 p.m. announcement in a week of congressional recess and religious holidays, the central bank released details of securities bought to aid Bear Stearns’s takeover by JPMorgan Chase & Co. Bloomberg News sued the Fed for that information.

The Fed’s vehicle known as Maiden Lane LLC has securities backed by mortgages from lenders including Washington Mutual Inc. and Countrywide Financial Corp., loans that were made with limited borrower documentation. More than $1 billion of them are backed by “jumbo” mortgages written by Thornburg Mortgage Inc., which now carry the lowest investment-grade rating. Jumbo loans were larger than government-sponsored mortgage buyers such as Fannie Mae could finance -- $417,000 at the time.

“The Fed absorbed that risk on its balance sheet and is now seen to be holding problematic, legacy assets,” said Vincent Reinhart, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington who was the central bank’s monetary- affairs director from 2001 to 2007. “There is both an impairment to its balance sheet and its reputation.”

The Bear Stearns deal marked a turning point in the financial crisis for the Fed. By putting taxpayers at risk in financing the rescue, the central bank was engaging in fiscal policy, normally the domain of Congress and the U.S. Treasury, said Marvin Goodfriend, a former Richmond Fed policy adviser who is now an economist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

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Bankers return to their bad habits

FT

After spending a week in Hong Kong talking to bankers and other assorted grandees, I am beginning to question whether the financial crisis actually happened.

I am pretty sure that the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the near-failure of AIG and the dance of death performed by Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in 2008 were not figments of my imagination.

But after listening to the regional heads of large Wall Street and European firms extolling the virtues of fast-growing economies, speaking admiringly of bulging “deal pipelines”, and spouting clichés about the “world moving east”, one does wonder about the short-term memory of some financial wizards. All the talk in the glass-clad skyscrapers overlooking Hong Kong’s magnificent harbour was of the princely pay packages commanded by star bankers moving firms. In a week in which Kenneth Feinberg, the US “pay tsar” announced a retroactive probe into the compensation of Wall Street executives during the crisis, Asia’s financial titans could not stop swapping stories on the size of the bonuses being paid to new recruits.

Some even tried to claim that the industry was showing admirable restraint by limiting “guaranteed bonuses” – an oxymoronic ruse to lure coveted bankers – to “just” one year instead of the two or three popular before the crisis.

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Algerian authorities arrest Mossad agent holding forged passport

ALGERIA, (PIC)-- Algerian newspaper revealed on Sunday that the authorities in Algeria arrested a secret agent working for the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence apparatus, and holding a forged Spanish passport.

According to Al-Nahar newspaper, the Algerian security apparatuses arrested an Israeli spy called Alberto, 35, in the city of Hassi Messaoud near an Egyptian office providing service for oil companies.

It pointed out that the spy used a cloned Spanish passport to enter Algeria and obtained the visa through one of its embassies in Europe.

The newspaper also affirmed that as the Alegerian security apparatuses embarked on investigation into the issue of this spy, the US administration intervened and sent a high-ranking official to Algeria in this regard.

The newspaper said that assistant head of the FBI John Pistole visited last Thursday Algeria to convince the authorities to release Alberto, adding that the Mossad agent was fluent in Arabic and frequented popular neighborhoods in Hassi city either to pray in the mosque of Bilal or to sit in Arabian cafes and chat with citizens.

Supply fears start to hit Treasuries

FT

The bond vigilantes are finally flexing their muscles. A long period of stability for the US government bond market showed signs of cracking this week as a lack of investor appetite for new debt sent the benchmark 10-year yield to its highest level since last June.

For more than a year, analysts have been warning that record sized debt sales by the US Treasury were at odds with a 10-year yield sitting comfortably below 4 per cent. This week, the yield on 10-year notes jumped from 3.65 per cent to a peak of 3.92 per cent on Thursday. On Friday it was 3.87 per cent.

Falling inflation, rising unemployment, the housing market slump, the Federal Reserve’s policies of a near zero overnight borrowing rate and its purchase of up to $1,700bn in bonds have all helped keep Treasury yields near historic lows.

But this week the mood shifted as yields for $118bn of new US debt were much higher than forecast, sparking overall selling of Treasuries. Sentiment also deteriorated in the UK bond market after the government’s budget ahead of a general election expected in May failed to resolve doubts over future spending and debt reduction.

The term “bond vigilantes” was coined in the 1980s when bond investors pushed up long-term yields to force central banks into taking action to curb inflation. This time, bond investors are less worried about inflation: they are fretting about huge fiscal deficits and the looming bond supply needed to finance them.

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Scientists Say F.D.A. Ignored Radiation Warnings

NY TIMES

WASHINGTON — Urgent warnings by government experts about the risks of routinely using powerful CT scans to screen patients for colon cancer were brushed aside by the Food and Drug Administration, according to agency documents and interviews with agency scientists.

After staying quiet for a year, the scientists say they plan to make their concerns public at a meeting of experts on Tuesday called by the F.D.A. to discuss how to protect patients from unnecessary radiation exposures. The two-day meeting is part of a growing reassessment of the risks of routine radiology. The average lifetime dose of diagnostic radiation has increased sevenfold since 1980, driven in part by the increasing popularity of CT scans. Such scans can deliver the radiation equivalent of 400 chest X-rays.

An estimated 70 million CT (for computed tomography) scans are performed in the United States every year, up from three million in the early 1980s, and as many as 14,000 people may die every year of radiation-induced cancers as a result, researchers estimate.

The use of CT scans to screen healthy patients for cancer is particularly controversial. In colon cancer screening, for instance, the American College of Radiology as well as the American Cancer Society have endorsed CT scans, in a procedure often called a virtual colonoscopy, while the American College of Gastroenterology recommends direct examinations in which doctors use a camera on a flexible tube.

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US deaths double in Afghanistan as troops pour in

AP NEWS

The number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period last year as Washington has added tens of thousands of additional soldiers to reverse the Taliban's momentum.

Those deaths have been accompanied by a dramatic spike in the number of wounded, with injuries more than tripling in the first two months of the year and trending in the same direction based on the latest available data for March.

U.S. officials have warned that casualties are likely to rise even further as the Pentagon completes its deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and sets its sights on the Taliban's home base of Kandahar province, where a major operation is expected in the coming months.

"We must steel ourselves, no matter how successful we are on any given day, for harder days yet to come," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a briefing last month.

In total, 57 U.S. troops were killed here during the first two months of 2010 compared with 28 in January and February of last year, an increase of more than 100 percent, according to Pentagon figures compiled by The Associated Press. At least 20 American service members have been killed so far in March, an average of about 0.8 per day, compared to 13, or 0.4 per day, a year ago.

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CIA paper reveals plans to manipulate European opinion on Afghanistan

'Out-of-the-box' CIA think tank proposes concerns over women's rights, fear of terrorism as ways to boost support for Afghan war

Evidently spooked by the collapse of the Dutch government over the country's involvement in Afghanistan, the CIA has put together a strategy proposal to prevent what it fears could be a "precipitous" collapse of support for the war in Afghanistan among European allies.

A document marked "confidential / not for foreign eyes," posted to the Wikileaks Web site, suggests strategies to manipulate European public opinion on the war, particularly in France and Germany.

The document doesn't propose any direct methods by which the CIA could achieve this -- there are no references to planting propaganda in the press, for example -- but it does lay out what it sees as the key talking points to changing hearts and minds on the war. Among its proposals, the policy paper suggests playing up the plight of Afghan women to French audiences, as the French public has shown concern for women's rights in Afghanistan.

For the German audience, the document suggests a measure of fear-mongering about the possible fallout of NATO failure in Afghanistan. "Germany’s exposure to terrorism, opium, and refugees might help to make the war more salient to skeptics," the document asserts.

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Alex Jones Inside CNN Attack Piece (PT 2/2)

Alex was on fire during this CNN interview. I doubt if they'll have the nerve to air the interview because the truth of what Alex was saying can not be denied by any knowledgeable person!

CNN, during the build up of the "Shock and Awe" campaign, continually pushed erroneous info about WMD'S. So, they are partially responsible for the deaths of more than 1 million Iraqi citizens. I won't mention the 1.2 million refugees or the depleted uranium problem.

Thank you, Alex!

BTW, I loved the Malcolm X reference!

Alex Jones Behind the Scenes of CNN’s Attack Piece (PT 1/2)

In this important interview attempting to link the Patriot movement and the Tea Parties with "violence", Alex Jones shows us what goes on behind the scenes of the CNN attack piece apparently set on demonizing tea parties and pro-Constitutional movements as "violent".

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Congressman Lies About IRS Enforcing Healthcare Tax/Penalty/Fine

This is a video of Bill O'Reilly VS Congressman Anthony Weiner. Bill asks him 5 times or more... what arm of the federal govt will enforce the penalty when Americans refuse to buy healthcare from the private Wall Street insurace companies. Who is going to enforce the Obamacare mandate to buy HC? The IRS! They are hiring 16,500 new agents to do the dirty deed.

Be honest, congressman!!

Half of U.S. Home Loan Modifications Default Again

(Bloomberg) -- More than half of U.S. borrowers who received loan modifications on delinquent mortgages defaulted again after nine months, according to a federal report. 

The re-default rate of loans modified in the first quarter of 2009 was 51.5 percent by the end of the year, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision said in a joint report today. The figure, which measures payments at least 30 days late, climbed to 57.9 percent for changes made in the prior 12 months. 

U.S. homeowners are struggling to make payments as depressed housing prices leave them owing more than their properties are worth. About 24 percent of properties with a mortgage were underwater in the fourth quarter, First American CoreLogic said last month. The median price of a U.S. home was $165,100 in February, down 28 percent from its peak in July 2006, according to the National Association of Realtors. 

Modifications are “clearly not working well and it’s not a surprise,” said Sam Khater, a senior economist at First American CoreLogic in Tysons Corner, Virginia. “It’s pointless to rewrite these loans because they’re underwater.” 

The number of homes with mortgage payments at least 60 days late climbed 2.39 million in the fourth quarter, up 13.1 percent from the prior three months and 49.6 percent from the year earlier period, the quarterly Mortgage Metrics report said.

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Social Security to See Payout Exceed Pay-In This Year

NY TIMES

The bursting of the real estate bubble and the ensuing recession have hurt jobs, home prices and now Social Security.

This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office. 

Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said that while the Congressional projection would probably be borne out, the change would have no effect on benefits in 2010 and retirees would keep receiving their checks as usual. 

The problem, he said, is that payments have risen more than expected during the downturn, because jobs disappeared and people applied for benefits sooner than they had planned. At the same time, the program’s revenue has fallen sharply, because there are fewer paychecks to tax. 

Analysts have long tried to predict the year when Social Security would pay out more than it took in because they view it as a tipping point — the first step of a long, slow march to insolvency, unless Congress strengthens the program’s finances.

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55% Favor Repeal of Health Care Bill

Rasmussenreports.com

Just before the House of Representatives passed sweeping health care legislation last Sunday, 41% of voters nationwide favored the legislation while 54% were opposed. Now that President Obama has signed the legislation into law, most voters want to see it repealed. 

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, conducted on the first two nights after the president signed the bill, shows that 55% favor repealing the legislation. Forty-two percent (42%) oppose repeal. Those figures include 46% who Strongly Favor repeal and 35% who Strongly Oppose it. 

In terms of Election 2010, 52% say they’d vote for a candidate who favors repeal over one who does not. Forty-one percent (41%) would cast their vote for someone who opposes repeal. 

Not surprisingly, Republicans overwhelmingly favor repeal while most Democrats are opposed. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 59% favor repeal, and 35% are against it. 

Most senior citizens (59%) also favor repeal. Earlier, voters over 65 had been more opposed to the health care plan than younger adults. Seniors use the health care system more than anyone else.

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AE911Truth signers to press NY City Council Members

“Please, join our coordinated effort to bring justice to my son and the thousands of others who were murdered on September 11th. We can’t let the tenth anniversary of their deaths go by without a real investigation into the events of that horrible day.” – Bob McIlvaine

“Building # What?!” is a phone and fax campaign to help the New York City Council get our message about the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7.

How can you get a WTC 7 investigation?
Starting on Monday, March 15, 2010, NYC CAN asked thousands of concerned citizens in New York and across the country to begin calling and faxing three city council members each day. All 51 council members will be contacted over the course of 17 business days. 

Here's how AE911Truth can help: Each morning, check in at NYCCAN.org for action alerts with the contact info for three city council members’ offices. In our action alerts we will include a set of suggested talking points to use when you call or fax the council members. 

Only 15 minutes is what it will take each day to call or fax all three council members. Thousands of phone calls and faxes will reinforce and pave the way for NYC CAN’s ongoing meetings with individual council members.

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