Censorhip Comes to America (Oct 13, 2001)

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TiM Bulletin 2001/10-3

Oct. 13, 2001

“Free press exists if you own one” (A.J. Liebling, New York Times)

Censorship Comes to America

Our WW II “Good Guys” Planned to Wipe Out Germany with Anthrax; U.S. Closes Sarajevo Embassy, as Bosnian Muslims Voice Support for Osama bin Laden

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Benjamin Franklin)

PHOENIX, Oct. 13 - First he cuts off the flow of “classified” information to all but eight members of the American people’s representatives in Congress. Then he lashes out at the American media for acting “irresponsibly” by showing an Osama bin Laden videotaped statement released after the start of our bombing of Afghanistan. Then he goes on national TV to urge American kids to donate money for the Afghan children who manage to survive his bombs.

Imperial autocracy coupled with arrogance laced with cynicism. In its wake, (voluntary) censorship is coming to America, “the land of the (once) free.”

He, of course, is our glorious President - George W. Bush - the self-proclaimed leader of the “free

world.” Never mind that what was once indeed a free world is becoming less so with every autocratic move by this narrowly elected president. Never mind that with every civilian casualty American bombs are causing in Afghanistan, Bush Jr. is approaching the unindicted war crimes counts of his predecessors in the Bill Clinton administration. Never mind that his claim that his is a war on terrorism, not on Islam, is falling on deaf ears in most Islamic countries. Never mind that with every innocent Muslim life snuffed out in an act of revenge for what happened on Sep. 11, thousands of other Muslims will be aching to avenge the victims of U.S. bombs and kill more innocent Americans at home and abroad.

“(State) terrorism begets (individual or group) terrorism,” we said in our first Special Editorial Comment, “Collateral Damage” Hits Home, written the morning of Sep. 11. We also warned of the “futility of violence.” Only to see futility in trying to reason with warmongering leaders of the New World Order. And with the countless of our dumbed-down fellow-citizens who are being pulled by their noses into new disasters:

"94% of Americans support George Bush s decision to bomb Afghanistan" Washington s main news radio station announced Sunday, as attacks began. "This is an unprecedented level of support -- even during the Gulf campaign, only 74% of Americans supported military action. America is truly united."

The report followed the release of a poll by CNN-USA Today-Gallup, stating that 30% of Americans blame the September 11 attack on US-Israeli Policy, but 92% believe the US should join forces with Israel in fighting it s war.

But those reports were in stark contrast to polls that appeared outside of the US media. A poll released by Reuters to the Israeli press showed that 58% of Americans believe that US Israel policy was primarily responsible for the attack, and that a plurality of Americans -- 46% to 43% -- believe that the US should begin withdrawing from the Middle East and particularly reducing or cutting aid to Israel. That poll never made it onto Washington news shows.”

Of course, we in America, the “land of the (once) free,” don’t get to see and hear about the polls such as the one the Israeli public did. By contrast to the U.S., Israel has some of the world’s freest media. That’s because of a voluntary censorship that the U.S. establishment media impose on themselves. As the New York Times’ A.J. Liebling noted half a century ago, “free press exists if you own one.” We, the people, certainly don’t. Our “free media” is owned by some folks to whom freedom of the press may be the last thing on their minds. Just as was the case with the now largely defunct communist media.

“If there were always the truth in media, there would be no need for the Truth in Media,” has been the banner headline at the TiM web site ever since the site was launched in 1997. As you saw from the letters in the TiM Readers Forum, many Americans and other nationals from over 80 countries around the world have come to appreciate the significance of that.

We cut our teeth on the establishment media lies and distortions in the early 1990s, when the first Balkan wars broke out (see this writer’s 1991 OpEd column in the New York Times). We sharpened our focus on their lies and distortions during the Kosovo war in 1999, especially those by CNN, which some TiM readers have dubbed - Communist News Network (see “Orwell Would Have a Blast Today,” Apr. 3, 1999).

We’ve said all along that CNN and New York Times, for example, are the epitomes of manipulative media whose partisan news coverage makes a mockery of their slogans (“all the news that’s fit to print,” in the Times’ case). Others, like CBS, MCNBC, Fox, or BBC are not far behind.

But don’t take our word for it. Let’s check in with some of the leaders of the New World Order media. Here’s, for example, what the CBS news anchor, Dan Rather, a CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) member, by the way, said after the Sep. 11 attack:

"George Bush is the president, he makes the decisions, and, you know, as just one American, (if) he wants me to line up, just tell me where."

And that’s how a free and independent media work? No wonder independent-minded viewers are tuning out from such broadcasters, as you saw from the letters to the TiM editor.

The CNN put its and other major networks’ acceptance of censorship on the air and at its web site. Here’s what it said:

“The U.S. administration urged U.S. television networks on Wednesday (Oct. 10) to curb broadcasts of bin Laden's statements, saying he might be trying to tell his followers to launch new attacks.

News chiefs from ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC television networks pledged to vet incoming feeds and not broadcast them live. CNN said it would no longer air statements from al Qaeda live, and would review them first before deciding how to handle them.

"CNN's policy is to avoid airing any material that we believe would directly facilitate any terrorist acts," the network said. "In deciding what to air, CNN will consider guidance from appropriate authorities."

So it's now official: “CNN will consider guidance from appropriate authorities.” As we all know from the Kosovo War, the CNN owner - AOL, has already been practicing for years what CNN now OPENLY preaches - a censorship of its customers’ views that are disagreeable with policies of the U.S. government (see “Why Not Quit the Big Brother's ISP - AOL!”).

“In Australia, media mogul Rupert Murdoch said his networks would not broadcast bin Laden video if it contained coded messages. "We'll do whatever is our patriotic duty," said Australian-born Murdoch, now a U.S. citizen. His family interests control News Corp, whose holdings include the Fox News channel, Fox Television, Twentieth Century Fox, television stations and a stable of newspapers.”

As you can see, therefore, Big Brother has arrived in America and has taken on the facial features of one George “Dubya” Bush. George Orwell would be pleased. He never even suspected that America’s Big Brother would bear his name. Stand by for a major consolidation of all above heretofore separate media entities into a Big Brother Network (BBN).

Meanwhile, major television networks outside the “land of the (once) free” say they will continue to air statements by Osama bin Laden despite White House calls to show caution because they might contain coded messages, CNN reported.

All but one Italian news broadcaster, for example, have decided not to ban bin Laden video statements. Only TG4, a center-right news broadcaster, has said it will no longer air old or future bin Laden material. Albino Longhi, director of TG1, told Reuters: "We think news cannot be censored or hidden."

So it looks like the new Washington-controlled “freedom” of the press will be limited mostly to the U.S. establishment media. Which is why the time has come for Americans to brush up on reading between the lines of such “free press,” by inserting the opposites and inverting the meanings (see “Orwell Would Have a Blast,” Apr. 3, 1999):

We are living them now. Orwell was off by 15 17 years. Consider today's NWO reality:

Plus, we've already said many times before that the true motto of the New World Order is: "Perpetual commerce through perpetual war," NOT its NWO mantra: "World peace through world trade."

Among some of the news that never made it to the U.S. audiences are the following items:

· When the U.S. attempted to invoke the ANZUS treaty -- a mutual defense treaty linking Australia, New Zealand, and the United States -- New Zealand repudiated the treaty and withdrew from the alliance, saying that unity with the United States' aggressive foreign policy was not in line with New Zealand's obligation to provide for it's people's sovereignty and security. The news never reached the American public. Instead they only heard the refrain “The entire world supports us.”

· When the AP newswire ran a story telling of tens of thousands of Greek soccer fans burning American and Israeli flags shortly after the September 11 attacks, the news didn’t hit American newspapers front pages. And when the BBC reported that three-fifths of Greek “right-wingers” and three-quarters of Greek “left-wingers” opposed U.S. policy, that result never made it across the Atlantic, either. Again there was only one refrain: “The entire world supports us.”

TiM Ed.: Another TiM source in Greece disagreed with the above right-wing, left-wing figures. “It's

probably nearer 90% on both sides,” he said. “There's still enormous resentment here about the NATO strikes against Serbia.”

· And when the strongest evidence of international dissatisfaction at the bombing of Afghanistan came forward -- A Gallup poll showing that while the world’s GOVERNMENTS may be supporting the US out of fear of American military power, in only three countries in the world -- the U.S., Israel and India -- did the majority of PEOPLE support the actions, there was silence. It wasn't that the American media hadn't heard it -- it's just that the news was suppressed.

On the other hand, there was no hesitation on the part of CNN et. al. to air footage of Palestinians cheering the WTC/Pentagon terrorist strikes, and burning American flags in the immediate aftermath of the Sep. 11 attacks.

Furthermore, levelheaded people around America and the world should be wondering why did Washington pick the poor Afghanistan to pick on? The answer to that question lies in understanding the New World Order’s geopolitical realm. True, there are vast deposits of oil in Central Asia, which includes Afghanistan. So the U.S. neo-imperial presence there would ensure the stake in the ground for the “Princes of the New World Order,” the multinational companies that wag the NWO government dogs.

“The third prong of NWO's anti-Russian policy is its support for the Islamic nations along Russia's southern underbelly - not only, Turkey, a NATO member, but also a number of new Islamic "countries" which the NWO carved out of the former Soviet Union (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan etc.).”

In other words, Washington’s projection of power into the Central Asian region fits in with the NWO long-term goals, at least as we divined them over six years ago, notwithstanding what happened on Sep. 11. This American tragedy only helped accelerate the plan by moving it from the drawing board to implementation.

The Emperors-Clothes web site writers, for example, Jared Israel, Rick Rozoff and Nico Varkevisser, also appear to agree with our assessment:

“[...]Afghanistan is strategically placed, not only bordering Iran, Pakistan, and even, for a small stretch, China (!) but, most important, sharing borders and a common religion with the Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union (SU): Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. These in turn border Kazakhstan, which borders Russia.

Central Asia is strategic not only for its vast deposits of oil, as we are often told, but more important for its strategic position. Were Washington to take control of these Republics, NATO would have military bases in the following key areas: the Baltic region; the Balkans and Turkey; and these Republics. This would constitute a noose around Russia's neck.

Add to that Washington's effective domination of the former Soviet Republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia, in the south, and the US would be positioned to launch externally instigated 'rebellions' all over Russia. [...]”

That Russia seems to be cooperating with the NWO in an action that ultimately may lead to its diminished influence in this part of the world at best, or to more “Chechnya’s” at worst, makes one wonder about Vladimir Putin's leadership. For, only two possibilities come to mind: Is Russia’s president stupid or bought?

In other words, has Putin now become an NWO stooge? The latter probability was heightened in this week’s White House press conference during which Bush kept referring to Putin as “my friend” (also see “New Détente: Russia Softening Its Opposition to NATO Expansion,” Oct. 3, 2001)”

Meanwhile, back home, thanks to the media warmongering distortions, most Americans confuse foreign interventionism, carried out through such “just wars” as the current one Bush is waging on Afghanistan as a part of the NWO’s hegemonic agenda, with American patriotism. The two have nothing to do with each other. They are united only by the NWO media and government propaganda. If we have per se an un-American government in Washington (see this writer’s May 1, 1999 speech at the White house for more on this), that answers first and foremost to the Princes of the NWO, not the American people, how can supporting such a government’s foreign interventions be a patriotic act?

Let’s turn to Pat Buchanan, a former presidential candidate, and a red-bloodied American whose patriotism no one can question, for council on this conundrum. Here’s an excerpt from his Sep. 14 column titled, “U.S. Pays The High Price of Empire:”

“In the presidential campaign of 2000, we failed to make foreign policy the issue. But what I said then retains relevance: "How can all our meddling not fail to spark some horrible retribution .... Have we not suffered enough--from Pan Am 103, to the World Trade Center (1993), to the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam--not to know that interventionism is the incubator of terrorism. Or will it take some cataclysmic atrocity on U.S. soil to awaken our global gamesmen to the going price of empire?"

"America today faces a choice of destinies. We can choose to be a peacemaker of the world, or its policeman who goes about night-sticking troublemakers until we, too, find ourselves in some bloody brawl we cannot handle."

In his intervention in Lebanon's civil war, President Reagan made a rare blunder. But when our Marines were massacred, he did not send a mighty army to avenge them. He used U.S. power to exact a price, then extricated us from that war. There is no vital American interest at risk in all these religious, territorial and tribal wars from Algeria to Afghanistan. Let us pay back those who did this, then let us extricate ourselves. Either America finds an exit strategy from empire, or we lose our republic.”

Yet, instead of an “exit strategy,” the post-Sep. 11 events have had exactly the opposite effect. Instead of extricating ourselves from other people’s wars, Washington has now drawn us even deeper into them. The Middle Eastern and Central Asian wars are now being fought on American soil, with innocent Americans as victims.

Or maybe we are not so innocent. In democracies, we ELECT governments, past and present. We have put into office the Clinton’s and the Bush’s of this world, whose disastrous foreign policies have brought the wrath of much of the Muslim world upon us. So we, the people, are not exactly innocent. At the very least, we are guilty of silence and complacence.

And silence means acquiescence. Acquiescence facilitates usurpation of power by un-American NWO governments in Washington. Which leaves us, the people, as dumbed-down and disenfranchised NWO cannon fodder; the walking targets for the avengers of our government’s imperialism and state terrorism. Warns Buchanan in a Sep. 28 column:

“If the United States invades Iraq, bombs Hezbollah and conducts strikes on Syria and Iran, this war will metastasize into a two-continent war from Algeria to Afghanistan, with the United States and Israel alone against a half-dozen Arab and Muslim states. The first casualties would be the moderate Arabs - Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states - who were our Cold War and Gulf War allies.

The war Netanyahu and the neo-cons(servatives) want, with the United States and Israel fighting all of the radical Islamic states, is the war bin Laden wants, the war his murderers hoped to ignite when they sent those airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

If America wishes truly to be isolated, it will follow the neo-conservative line.”

Make that a neo-imperialist line. Or just the NWO line. For, the hawks favoring foreign interventions also include the so-called “liberals.” That became abundantly clear during the eight years of the Clinton presidency.

The only way peace will return to America is when we “just say no to NWO!”; when we bring our troops home; when we stop playing favorites to some, while beating up on other nations. Alas, given the current warmongering climate in our country, such an outcome looks like but a distant dream.

GLASGOW, Scotland, Oct. 14 - Every war has to have the “good guys” and the “bogeys.” Just like in sports. There cannot be any gray areas. Otherwise, the crowd wouldn’t know who to cheer for, would it?

Well, as any careful student of history might have concluded by now, there are no “good guys” in any war. There no “just wars.” All wars are destructive, and thus inherently bad. Mankind always loses in a game of war no matter how hard the “good guys” shout that glorious victory is at hand. And as that old truism reminds us at the outset of each war, “the truth is the first casualty of war.”

Which is why we often have to wait for decades to find out the awful truth about the people we believe to be the “good guys.” At a time when the anthrax scare has been sweeping America, an Scottish paper, Sunday Herald, published a story about a monstrous plan by the WW II allies, the “good guys” in our history books, to wipe out Germany using this deadly chemical.

As it turns out, they never had to do it, having defeated Germany and Japan by “conventional means.” Which included incinerating several hundred thousand innocent civilians in places like Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And yes, sometimes our “good guys” even sacrificed their own people, such as Winston Churchill did with the city of Coventry (ostensibly so as not to reveal to the Germans that Britain had broken the code of its ultra-secret Enigma machine). And our “good guys” also sometimes threw their former allies to the (communist) wolves once they were no longer useful to them (see “Kocevje: Tito’s Bloodiest Crime”).

So it looks like the modern-day terrorists were good students of history. They may have learned their evil schemes and designs from our “good guys” in WW II. Which should be an ample warning to the open-minded people about our “good guys” in today’s war on terrorism. God forbid that our ancestors should read some day, decades from now, about some heinous crimes that our today’s “good guys” had committed, while leading us into another “just war.”

With this as a preamble, here are some excerpts from the Sunday Herald story, which was forwarded to us by Anita Bujak, a TiM reader from Windsor, Canada:

“I'm a frequent visitor to your site & enjoy your articles . I thought this item would be useful to you . It was found on the following site:

AS THE world recoils at the horrific possibility of al-Qaeda terrorists waging anthrax war against United States citizens, the Sunday Herald can reveal that Britain manufactured five million anthrax cattle cakes during the second world war and planned to drop them on Germany in 1944.

The aim of Operation Vegetarian was to wipe out the German beef and dairy herds and then see the bacterium spread to the human population. With people then having no access to antibiotics, this would have caused many thousands -- perhaps even millions -- of German men, women and children to suffer awful deaths.

The anthrax cakes were tested on Gruinard Island, off Wester Ross, which was finally cleared of contamination in 1990. Operation Vegetarian was planned for the summer of 1944 but, in the event, it was abandoned as the Allies' Normandy invasion progressed successfully.

Details of the wartime secret operation are contained in a series of War Office files (WO 188) at the Public Record Office in Kew. Some of the files are still classified. The man whose task was to carry out Operation Vegetarian was Dr Paul Fildes, director of the biology department at Porton Down near Salisbury in Wiltshire. Fildes had previously been in charge of the Medical Research Council's bacterial chemistry unit at Middlesex Hospital. […]

The anthrax was manufactured by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries at its veterinary laboratory in Surrey. An Oxford academic named Dr E Schuster was set to work devising the pump to inject the bacilli into the cattle cakes. The Porton Down scientists settled on cube-shaped cardboard containers, 18cm square, to carry the infected foodstuff.

Each held 400 cakes. They would be fitted with a steel handle 'of a size which enables the operator to grasp the handle without difficulty when wearing thick leather or moleskin gloves ...' Thirteen women were then recruited from various soap-making firms, sworn to secrecy and given the job of injecting the cattle cakes with anthrax spores.

At the same time, Fildes and his team were working on the best way to deliver the diseased cattle feed to the German herds.

The RAF's research unit came up with a simple solution -- easily made wooden trays that fitted on to aircraft flare chutes. Their Bomber Command Lancasters, Halifaxes and Stirlings were chosen for the job.

By the beginning of 1944, Operation Vegetarian was ready to go. It was crucial to mount any attack in the summer months. […] But, by the time Fildes's operation was ready to go in the summer of 1944, the Normandy invasion had taken place and Allied armies were crashing through northern France and up through Italy. The war against Nazi Germany was instead being won by conventional means. At the end of 1945, five million anthrax-infected cattle cakes were incinerated in one of Porton Down's furnaces.”

SARAJEVO, Oct. 17 - During the Bosnian war, the New World Order establishment media and government spokesmen depicted the Bosnian Muslims and the Croats as the “good guys” whom Washington has been supporting, while the Serbs were supposedly the “bogeys.” Well, looks like our Bosnian “good guys” have dropped their masks sooner than expected.

According to a story just in from Sarajevo, that we received via Beograd.com, and which was also confirmed by a CNN report (http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/10/17/statedepartment.closings/index.html), the U.S. government has closed its embassy in the Bosnian capital because of a security threat due to rampant expressions of support for Osama bin Laden by the Bosnian Muslims. We are told that graffiti “all over Sarajevo” depict bin Laden as a hero, and America as the villain.

And as you can see from this photo (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/bosniashoutpic15_1014161119.jpeg) of Islamic supporters taken in Zenica (a Central Bosnia town) last year, the support for bin Laden and Islamic fundamentalism is not limited just to Sarajevo. The banner (written in Arabic) reads, "Allah is the only one, and Mohammed is his envoy on Earth."

The extremists include hardcore terrorists, some with ties to Osama bin Laden, protected by militant elements of the former Sarajevo government, according to an Oct. 15 Los Angeles Times story. Bosnia-Herzegovina is "a staging area and safe haven" for terrorists, one former senior State Department official told the LA Times.

A secret report, prepared late last year for the Clinton administration, warned of problem passport-holders in Bosnia (foreign “mujahedeens”) in numbers that "shocked everyone," he said. " One of bin Laden's top lieutenants, a Palestinian linked to major terrorist plots in Jordan, France and the United States, had operatives in Bosnia and was issued a Bosnian passport, according to U.S. officials.

Indeed, despite denials by the Sarajevo government of its former ties to, and collaboration with, Osama bin Laden, a German reporter claims to have met bin Laden in 1994 at the office of the Bosnian Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, also an Islamic fundamentalist whom the U.S. government has been supporting at least since 1991, when the fighting in Croatia and Bosnia broke out.

Renata Flotau, a Belgrade-based correspondent for the Hamburg-based “Der Spiegel” (Mirror) magazine, shared her impressions of bin Laden from their brief encounter in a recent interview with the Serbian-language Politika. On Oct. 3-6, the Belgrade daily published a three-part series of articles about it. They were sent to TiM, courtesy of Milan Radovich, a librarian at the University of Wisconsin.

Nor is this anything new for those who have traveled through Bosnia during the way, such as the TiM editor. Here are also some of the wartime photos which show both the Bosnian Muslims’ support of Islamic fundamentalism, and the extreme brutality that they have used against the infidels - the Christian Serbs.

But we have to warn those of you who venture to our web site to view these images. They are EXTREMELY GRUESOME and not suitable for the faint at heart. That is why we have not posted them by now, even though we’ve had them since 1992, when these crimes were committed.

We are doing it now reluctantly, with the foregoing warning, and only by providing a link to the images, not by incorporating them into the TiM article, only because it is important for Americans and the western public to know what kinds of people our government has been supporting in the Balkans wars of the 1990s. And why it is not surprising that the same thugs are now turning against us. And for that, we only have OUR GOVERNMENTS to blame! And the West’s duplicitous foreign policy.

1. Charred body of a Serb victim, roasted alive on a spit in 1992 by his Muslim captors in the style the Turkish Ottoman Empire occupiers used to publish the rebellious Serb Christians (for more on that, read “The Bridge on the Drina,” a Nobel-prize winning novel by Ivo Andric): Bosnia-roast-82.jpg

2.-4. Tanjug news agency photos of beheaded Bosnian Serbs, found on a killed Saudi Arab mercenary in 1992, along with this “mujahedeens’” travel documents showing "International Islamic Relief Org." as his cover:

Tanjug/muja82-1.jpg (an Islamic "mujahedeen" holding a head of a decapitated Serb victim)

Tanjug/muja82-2.jpg (three heads of decapitated Serbs, each identified by name in a Tanjug photo)

As to Washington’s second Balkans ally, the Croats, also depicted as the “good guys” by the NWO media during the Balkans wars, the following excerpt from the Oct. 10 HINA (Croatia’s national news agency) should put that notion to rest, too:

LORA PRISON TRIAL WITNESS: SUPERIOR OFFICER SAID 'DO WHATEVER YOU WANT' TO PRISONERS

SPLIT, Croatia, Oct 11 (Hina) -- A Split County Court investigating judge on Thursday (Oct. 11) heard a witness in an enquiry regarding tortures and crimes committed in the Lora military prison in 1993. A former military police officer, Mario Barisic, from Sibenik, said that during one of his visits to the prison's C block he noticed nine prisoners wearing uniforms of the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), some of whom were making gurgling sounds as if their tongues had been cut off, while some were missing ears and eyes.

"They were all deformed," Barisic said. His superior officer, Tvrtko Pasalic, who took Barisic to the C block together with other military police officers, said "you will now see prisoners who have not been registered anywhere and with whom you might do whatever you want," Barisic testified.

When he visited Lora for the second time, Barisic said he saw none of the prisoners he had seen the previous time. When he asked about their whereabouts, military police officers said two had been exchanged for Croatian soldiers, and seven had been killed and thrown into a pit.

The witness claimed he had written a report about the case and informer Tvrtko Pasalic and the then president Franjo Tudjman about it. Pursuant to his written report in April 1993, two commissions of enquiry were founded, with the only results, Barisic said, being him fired and those who had committed the crimes promoted, and the case swept under the carpet.

The investigation about events in the Lora prison began two weeks ago. Seven out of eight suspected military police have been arrested, while one is still on the run.

Police are also making enquiries into death threats made to witnesses, the county prosecutor and investigating judge involved in the case. One of the witnesses was physically assaulted on Tuesday at the Split court building.

TiM Ed.: It is to the credit of the Croatian media, such as HINA, that the truth about what really happened in 1991, and what kinds of people the U.S. government supported during the Yugoslav civil wars, is finally coming out.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 - No, there is no typo in the above headline, nor the need for you to reread it. Especially not after having read about our WW II “good guys” in the preceding article. Yes, the Jorge Dubya Arbusto’s (George W. Bush’s) administration did, in fact, try to put a sock in the mouths of former American hostages who suffered for 444 days as prisoners of Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamic revolutionaries, one of the most infamous periods of Jimmy Carter’s presidency (1976-1980).

WASHINGTON (AP), Oct. 16 - The Bush administration lost a court battle to block testimony against Iran by former U.S. hostages who said they should receive compensation because they were "America's first victims of terrorism." […]

"The U.S. government ought to be ashamed of itself" because it is playing "a surrogate role for Iran," Barry Rosen, the former embassy press attache in Tehran, said in an interview before he testified Monday about his captivity. "I believe the U.S. government is doing this only because of the events of September 11," Rosen said.

State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Tuesday that the government's intervention in the case "has absolutely no connection to the war on terrorism." […]

In court papers, the Justice Department said the government sought "the prompt termination" of the lawsuit in part "to protect the nation's foreign policy and national security interests generally." "Notwithstanding how it may appear ... we're not intervening to defend the interests of Iran," Justice Department lawyer James Gilligan said in court Monday.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said it was "totally inexcusable ... outrageous" that the administration waited until last Friday afternoon to notify the court it was intervening in the nine-month-old case. Sullivan, who will decide how much compensation to grant, refused to block testimony in which witnesses described beatings, mock executions and pistols being held to their heads by Iranian security forces.”

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 - It is encouraging to know that there are some of our representatives in Washington who have not sold out their and their constituents’ interests to the globalist “elite.” Ron Paul, a Republican Representative from Texas, is one of them. While most of the nation seems to have gotten caught up in the Washington-driven jingoistic flag-waving hysteria, Rep. Paul has issued a stern rebuke of the (also Republican) Bush administration’s latest sellout of the American sovereignty - bringing the NATO air surveillance to America.

Rep. Paul called the move “a sad day for America.” And indeed it was. Especially coming from our un-American White House cheerleaders who are wearing U.S. flag pins on their lapels, while shredding the American liberties and sovereignty with their actions. Here’s what Rep. Paul thought of the NATO move:

“I strongly denounce the loss of US sovereignty demonstrated by the use of NATO surveillance planes to patrol American skies.

For the First time in American history, we are unable to defend our own borders and skies. National security is the most basic sovereign duty of the federal government in our constitutional republic. Neither Congress nor the President can cede that duty to a foreign nation or body. We cannot allow the security of our own borders to become the responsibility of any coalition or international organization, whether it's NATO or the United Nations. The national security of the US is the province of the American people - and the American people only.

It is tragic that our interventionist foreign policy has spread military forces so thin. As a result we find ourselves unable to deal with the legitimate military crisis posed by the September 11 attacks. How much longer can we continue to defend so many other nations, but not our own? The United States has sufficient military might to provide for national defense and conduct the war on terrorism in the Middle East, but only if our forces are not deployed in hundreds of countries around the globe.

The stunning delegation of our national air defense to foreign forces marks a sad day for America. The war on terrorism provides us with an opportunity to strengthen national unity, but we must begin by reaffirming American sovereignty and defending our own borders.”

For a direct URL to Rep. Paul’s original statement, click on… http://www.house.gov/paul/press/press2001/pr101001B.htm . And if you don’t want NATO patrolling our skies, call your congressman and senators right now and give them an earful about it. Before these pseudo-patriots in Washington drop the masks and their U.S. flag pins into the New World Order U.S. Constitution shredder.

MEXICO CITY, Oct. 15 - Two armed Israelis were arrested last Wednesday (Oct. 10) inside the Mexican Legislature when confronted by a group of sugar union workers on a tour of the facility. The workers were spooked by what they thought was the Israelis’ suspicious behavior, such as shooting photos from the hip. The incident caused a massive temporary mobilization of Mexican police in the area, then died on the vine of the major media after a few brief news reports.

But one California based news source, an organization that calls itself “La Voz de Aztlan” (Voice of Aztlan, an old Mexican term for the American Southwest), tried to keep the story alive by publishing two reports that alleged an Israeli conspiracy to blow up the Mexican Congress so as to get the supposedly reluctant Mexican government in line with Jorge Dubya Arbusto’s (George W. Bush - pronounced Horhay Dubya Arbusto J) anti-terrorist coalition.

The TiM editor has held back on our commentary regarding this incident until we have had several additional confirmations and explanations of the event. Which we have now had (from six different sources, to be exact). And our conclusion is that the La Voz etc. conspiracy theory is a far-fetched stretch. But since we do believe in and practice freedom of speech, we’ll let you draw your own conclusions based on our research.

So here it goes, starting with some excerpts from the contemporaneous Mexican media reports about the event, translated into English by the NarcoNews.com:

-- They were armed with 9mm pistols, nine grenades, explosives, three detonators and 58 bullets

The Attorney General is investigating and interrogating two Israelis (one already a nationalized Mexican) who were detained in the House of Representatives Wednesday with two 9mm pistols, nine grenades, explosives, three detonators and 58 bullets, to determine if they belong to any group connected with terrorists or subversive groups. Salvador Gersson Smike, 34, a retired Israeli military official and nationalized Mexican, and Sar Ben Zui, 27, of Israeli nationality, were held yesterday in the installations of the metropolitan offices of the Attorney General, headed by the assistant attorney general for criminal process Gilberto Higuera Bernal. They were interrogated to clarify the source of the arms that they carried and to determine if they are guilty of a crime.

Up until now the authorities have not declared about the status of investigation number PGR/11-15-01 and they will wait until tonight when the constitutional limit for determining the legal situation of the arrested parties expires. Both subjects were detained in the installations of the legislative palace of San Lazaro when a group of sugar industry workers that had met with the Speaker of the House, Beatriz Paredes, left to discuss their issues in the lobby and the two arrested persons arrived and began photographing them.

This activity and the form in which they took the pictures (aiming their cameras below the belts of the workers) generated tension among the sugar workers who proceeded to demand their identification immediately.

The Israelis identified themselves as press photographers, but they were not believed and the workers overcame them and then discovered that they were armed with pistols and other high caliber arms.

The Israeli Embassy in Mexico has confidence that its citizen, Sar Ben Zui, will be investigated in accordance with the law and the consul, Elias Luf, is following the investigations, his spokeswoman Hila Engelhart confirmed. She said that the Embassy does not regulate the entrance of Israelis in Mexico and doesn't know anything about what the arrested individual was doing. She said that the citizens of that country that come to Mexico, like all others from Israel, are not required to have any special visa for their travels.

As will be remembered, Sar Ben Zui Was detained, with another subject, when both were allegedly armed inside the House of Representatives. According to statements by elements of the legislative security staff, the suspects carried arms, explosives, nine grenades, bullets and a detonator. In a telephone conversation the spokeswoman assured that the Embassy has confidence in the Mexican institutions to do what is necessary to enforce the law. "We are waiting to find out what happened."

She informed that the Embassy doesn't have a program to monitor Israeli citizens who come to Mexico. In any case, she said, the Mexican secretary of state should have a registry of all persons who enter national territory.

She indicated that relations between the two countries are very good and that tourism is promoted by both countries.

Hila Engelhart recalled that it is not the first time that Mexico has detained an Israeli citizen in its country, however, she said that it is a situation that happens everywhere. She reported that both countries collaborate constantly to monitor exceptional movements that occur and said that "in the case of the arrested Israelis, we hope the situation with be resolved quickly."

TiM Ed.: Then as it turns out, the two Israelis were released on Monday. And this is an excerpt from a follow-up La Voz de Aztlan Oct. 15 story, which shows how the last week’s incident and the subsequent release from prison was seen through the eyes of its reporters. As you can see, La Voz has already pronounced the two suspects as “Zionist Terrorists,” without waiting for any evidence to emerge:

- - -Army general and head of the PGR releases two Israelis arrested with guns and explosives inside the Mexican Congress - - -

Los Angeles, Alta California - October 15, 2001- (ACN) In a mind-blowing development, La Voz de Aztlan has learned that Mexican Army General Rafael Marcial Macedo de la Concha who heads the Procuraduría General de la República (Mexican Department of Justice) has released the retired Israeli Defense Forces colonel and presumed MOSSAD agent Salvador Guersson Smecke and Israeli illegal immigrant Saur Ben Zvi after both had penetrated the security of the Mexican Congress and where in possession of guns, hand grenades and explosives.

This morning La Voz de Aztlan had a personal telephone interview with the Mexican Congressional Press Secretary, Lic. Adriana Lopez, and verified the arrest of the two Israelis after they had entered through the highly secured front entrance of the Palacio Legislativo de San Lázaro. She stated to La Voz de Aztlan that the two terrorists had taken advantage of a situation that occurred around 1700 hours of Wednesday October 10 when a large contingent of Sugar Industry Unionists were entering through the metal detectors. The two Israelis followed about 50 of the unionists to the office of the President of the Mexican Congress Beatriz Paredes. The two Israelis were first pretending to be press photographers but called the attention of the sugar unionists because of their nervous and out of the ordinary behavior. About ten of the unionists confronted them and observed that they were carrying guns and and what looked to them to be explosives. They held the two Israelis until Official Congressional Security personnel took them into custody. The head of Congressional Security Salvador Alarcón verified that the Israelis had in their possession nine hand grenades, sticks of dynamite, detonators, wiring and two 9mm "Glock" automatics.

Mexican Congressional Press Secretary Lic. Adriana Lopez informed La Voz de Aztlan in the telephone interview that Congressional Security then turned the terrorists Salvador Guersson Smecke, age 34, and Saur Ben Zvi, age 27, to the Procuraduría General de la República (Mexican Department of Justice) which is headed by Mexican Army General Rafael Marcial Macedo de la Concha. Initial reports by the Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) were that both Israelis worked for a private security agency and that they both had gun permits.

It turned out that there is no connection of either suspect to any private security agency. The PGR has released the retired Israeli I.D.F. colonel with the official explanation that he had a legal permit to carry a gun. They also released the illegal Israeli immigrant on about $4000 bail and the case turned over to the Mexican immigration authorities. Mexican Congressional Press Secretary Lic. Adriana Lopez was surprised to hear from La Voz de Aztlan of the release of the two Israelis.

La Voz de Aztlan has also learned that the Israeli Embassy used heavy handed measures to have the two Israelis released. Very high level emergency meetings took place between Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Jorge Gutman, General Macedo de la Concha and a top Ariel Sharon envoy who flew to Mexico City specially for that purpose. Elías Luf of the Israeli Embassy worked night and day and their official spokeswoman Hila Engelhart went into high gear after may hours of complete silence. What went one during those high levels meetings no ones knows, but many in Mexico are in disbelief at their release.

Guns and any kind of explosive is highly illegal for Mexican citizens and the fact that these two Israelis had them inside the Mexican Congress makes their release highly suspect. What is really going on? Jorge Gutman, the Mexican Foreign Secretary, has very strong Zionist connections and himself is of Jewish descent. Mexican Army General Macedo de la Concha has strong connections to the U.S. Military Industrial-Complex and through this to the Israeli Defense Forces. Have any of these connections influenced the decision to release the two Zionist terrorists?

The initial arrests of the two Israelis inside the Palacio Legislativo de San Lázaro made top news on Mexico City television and radio on the evening of October 10. TV Azteca had extensive coverage on the first night and on the following day. La Cronica de Hoy Newspaper and El Universal Newspaper both covered the incident the following two days but now it seems that there is a lack of reports. The PGR has a Press Bulletin on their official website at http://www.pgr.gob.mx/cmsocial/bol01/oct/b69701.html but they have made no updates. No U.S. media has made any mention, that we know, except one by USAJewish.com this Sunday at: http://www.usajewish.com/scripts/usaj/paper/Article.asp?ArticleID=1307 Pravda of Moscow has a note of the initial La Voz de Aztlan article at: http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/10/13/17982.html

What were the Israelis up to? We think we know. The Vicente Fox government has been very careful of involving Mexico in a war against Islam. The Mexican population as well as the two major opposition political parties, the PRI and the PRD will not allow it. President Bush and the U.S. Zionists want Mexico fully involved in the war principally because if things get tough in the middle east and the oil rich Arabs leave the coalition, the U.S. military machine is going to need alternative sources of oil and PEMEX is just across the border. We believe that the two Zionists terrorist were going to blow up the Mexican Congress. The second phase was to mobilize both the Mexican and US press to blame Osama bin Laden. Most likely then Mexico would declare war on Afghanistan as well, commit troops and all the oil it could spare to combat Islamic terrorism.

TiM Ed.: Not so fast, says an independent American journalist, Ken Layne, who has been following the story at his web site (www.kenlayne.com). Layne proves that the La Voz theory about an alleged media cover-up of the Mexican arrest story was just that - a theory. And a wrong one at that.

A former reporter of the Online Journalism Review (a web publication of the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of California) says that some English-language news organizations did, in fact, publish brief stories after the two Israelis were arrested, and made those stories available to U.S. newspapers. Here’s an excerpt:

10/13/2001 04:04:00 PM - […] NarcoNews says this story has been censored by the American press. "The following two stories, from the daily Crónica de Hoy of Mexico City, Oct. 12 and 13, 2001, have not been reported nor refuted by a single U.S. correspondent from wire services or daily newspapers with offices in Mexico," says a message on the site. "The stories are documented with an official Mexican government investigation number and quotes from the Israeli Embassy in Mexico City."

While I haven't heard about this before today -- there are just too many goddamned news stories to keep track of -- a quick search of the Dow Jones database shows five English-language wire reports on Oct. 11 (two from EFE News Service, and one each from Dow Jones, AP, and Notimex), one on Oct. 12 (BBC), and one today (Agence France-Presse).

It sounds pretty crazy, and it smells like some kind of terrorism, at least from the newspaper reports on NarcoNews.

But the seven wire stories make the whole thing seem pretty tame, and probably harmless -- I wasn't there, so all I can do is compare seven different wire reports to the newspaper article, and look for patterns.

The wire stories say the men work for a Mexican company called Private Security Systems Development; that the company's lawyer says the men (both former members of Israel's military; one a naturalized Mexican citizen) have permits for their pistols; that the men were outside the House of Representatives and on their way to a meeting to try to sell their company's security services (Mexico City is plagued by kidnappers who go after anybody worth a ransom payment); that the "nine grenades" was a novelty cigarette lighter; that the "sugar industry" workers were a bunch of farmers having a Sit-In outside the government building; that said sugar farmers were annoyed by the men taking photos of the area, which would be necessary if they were selling private security services to officials who worked there; and that the "bomb" consisted of some cables in a briefcase one of the men carried.

The most telling detail in this story comes from a BBC translation of a Notimex report: "The arrest of the two individuals, one who said he was Mexican and the other Israeli, provoked a huge police mobilization this Wednesday (10 October) at the Congressional headquarters, known as the San Lazaro Palace."

So, with government headquarters around the world on edge, and with Mexico's president firmly behind the U.S.-led war against the bin Laden terrorists, everybody freaked out. And they should. Security should be extremely tight. I don't think the U.S. media "censored" this story. They just didn't think it mattered. There are security scares every hour in every capital. You can't run every four-graf wire story about a freakout ... these days, newspapers would have to print 500 pages a day to print a fraction of the world's nervous response to the terrorism.

TiM Ed.: See what we mean? See how easily one can get caught up in believing in someone’s propaganda rather than the real news and the truth?

Now, of course, it is possible for the partisan western establishment media to doctor up the facts in a story so as to make an incident appear more benign than it was. We’ve certainly seen plenty of examples of that while covering the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, for example. But the main reason we’ve devoted this much space to a “four graf”-story (paraphrasing Layne), was to underline the importance of not jumping to any conclusions until all facts are in, and contradictory views are considered.

Well, now that you have them, you can make up your own mind about what really happened at the San Lazaro palace in Mexico City on Oct. 10.