*          *         *          *

 The Master Plan

for World Domination --

Date: Thu, Nov 29, 2001,

 Hello everyone;

This compilation focuses on the oft-repeated realization

 that what happened on September 11

 was not merely caused by some Muslim extremists,

but was deliberately allowed to happen.

 There never was an intelligence failure.

 There was a conspirational intent

to create a traumatic event that

would enable a master plan

whose consequences are

frighteningly clear now.

Jean Hudon

Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator

http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000

"The government's actions

in the period since September 11

 constitute the most serious

and sustained attack

on civil liberties in US history."

Bush Administration Quietly Overturning

Environmental Rules in Name of Security

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Did the government have

 knowledge before the attack?

"How nothing could have been picked up

 [by U.S. intelligence agencies regarding the coming attack]

is beyond me."

- Kenneth Katzman, Terrorism Expert,

 Congressional Research Service

According to the information provided

 by the mainstream media the attack

upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon

caught the U.S. government by complete surprise.

 There were no efforts to prevent the attack

before it was launched and no steps taken

to stop it after it was underway.

 A surprising amount of information

 has come to light since September 11

that supports the conclusion

that the government knew quite a bit

 about the attack beforehand.

 

Was it a massive failure of our intelligence capability ~

or was the failure to act intentional?

Pertinent Items

1.. David Schippers, The Democrat from Chicago,

 who served as Counsel to the House Managers

 during the Clinton impeachment proceedings,

was interviewed on October 10, 2001.

 

He represents a group of FBI agents in

Chicago and Minnesota who state that they are not

 being permitted to arrest certain terrorists.

 They warned that there was going to be

an attack on lower Manhattan.

They were willing to testify under oath

about the information that they had uncovered.

Schippers called top government officials in Washington

before September 11.

 All said they would get back to him

 but he heard nothing from any of them.

1.. Although the media has said little about it

 there is abundant and clear evidence

that forewarned investors profited handsomely

 from their knowledge of the WTC attack

by large purchases of options.

"Put options"

provide the holder a highly leveraged

 profit potential where stocks drop in price.

 

 There were heavy purchases of put options

 on stocks that were particularly harmed

by the WTC attack on the days just before the attack.

Morgan Stanley's main office was in the WTC

 and heavy purchases of put options

were made just a few days before the attack.

 The two airlines, American and United,

which had planes destroyed in the attack

were the subject of heavy option purchases

 just before the attack.

 

"Shares in Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Co.

which occupied 22 floors of the 110 story World Trade Center,

 experienced pre-attack option trading of more than 25 times

the usual volume in put options, according to Bloomberg data."

"One day before two American Airlines jets

 were hijacked and crashed, 1,535 contracts

[each contract is for 100 options]

changed hands on options that let investors

profit if AMR stock falls below $30.00

per share before Oct. 20.

That was almost five times the total number

of those put options traded before Sept. 10.

AMR shares fell $11.70

[on the first day of trading after the attack] to $18."

 

1.. The connection with the CIA and Deutsche Bank's

 Alex Brown unit that handled at least one of the trades

which is unclaimed with a profit of $2.5 million

- is reported by Michael C. Ruppert. See his report

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/illegaltrades.html

The Belligerent Bunch:

 Rabid Journalists and Pundits Push Bush to Extremes

November 21, 2001

A rabidly pro-war cadre of journalists and pundits

have become cheer-leaders for an aggressive

and expansive war, and increasingly

draconian domestic policies,

following the terrorists attacks of Sept. 11.

As the Bush administration rapidly expands

 law enforcement power and national security authority.

A phalanx of white male commentators

with magazines of opinion like the New Republic

& the Weekly Standard have become a steady bellicose chorus,

 flirting with macabre doomsday scenarios.

 

Their voices urge the administration to escalate

 the battle beyond Afghanistan and to use more force.

By calling for Bush to step up the war effort,

 curtail civil liberties, consider torture,

and imagine the deaths of tens of millions of Muslims.

These writers and TV personalities

have dominated the intellectual debate.

By grossly distorting the positions of critics,

they have helped to give Bush a free ride

and undermine healthy discourse.

This pundit group has upped the ante

for the Bush administration,

 either pushing it further to the right,

 or providing it with cover to keep pushing the envelope -

- no matter how far the Bush administration goes

 in expanding security power and

remaking the international landscape,

 the war boys will still be calling for more.

 

Surprisingly, the Washington Post Op-Ed page

has become what may be the friendliest environment

to many of these writers. It used to be that the

Wall Street Journal's Op-Ed page

 was the most reactionary and predictable.

The national print press

 has stiff competition, as Michael Massing

notes in the Nation:

 "Since September 11th, the Washington Post

Op-Ed page has been a playpen for columnist-commanders.

No fewer that seven regular contributors

compete to offer the toughest,

manliest views on the conflict.

 

 William Kristol has used the page to attack Colin Powell,

George Will to thumb his nose at the State Department

and Robert Novak to deride the CIA."

 

Massing adds that the most ferocious of the

 bellicose boys writing for the Post

is Charles Krauthammer, who expresses

"contempt for the administration's food drops

and concern for civilian casualties."

 

"Why have we not loosed the B-52s and the B-2s

to carpet-bomb Taliban positions?" Krauthammer asks.

 Evidently six weeks of relentless bombing is not enough.

 

War expansion is a major goal of the belligerent bunch,

and now a defacto goal of the Post,

 "since the paper has run at least a dozen columns

demanding the overthrow of Sadaam Hussein

 yet not a single one has bothered to consider

how daunting the task might be," writes Massing.

Nor has the Post considered what an attack on

 Iraq's impact might be on civilian populations.

No doubt this steady drumbeat for war

 in the corridors of the capital has

its effect on the policy makers,

as most of the warrior pundits appear

regularly on TV and are quoted

by newsmen like Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

The far-right hysteria put forth by these militants

 of the chattering class strengthens the position

of the right in the Bush administration.

One result, for example is Bush's support of

 the Ashcroft plan for the establishment of kangaroo

military courts to jail or execute non-Americans.

President Bush admitted that this plan would involve

"dismissing the principles of law and the rules of evidence"

 that provide the foundation for the U.S. legal system.

As conservative columnist William Safire

explains in the NY Times.

 The Bush kangaroo court can conceal evidence

 by citing national security and make up its own rules.

It can find a defendant guilty even if a third

of the officers disagree, and execute the alien with

no review by any civilian court.

 

In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls

this Soviet style abomination :

"a full and fair trial."

Fox News Network the most conservative

 of the cable news operations has

also sounded a steady pro-war drumbeat.

 

 Here's their star prime-time "go to guy," Bill O'Reilly:

 "The US should bomb Afghan infrastructure to rubble -

- the airport, the power plants, their water facilities,

the roads. The Afghans are responsible for the Taliban.

We should not target civilians, but if they don't rise up

against this criminal government, they starve, period."

Perhaps the most disturbing

of the B-Boy habits

 is their uncontrolled lust for revenge -

Revenge for the actual events of 9/11

 and for theoretical future attacks.

 In fact, doomsday scenarios,

 like terrorists exploding a nuclear bomb in D.C.

 seem to have been conjured up by the writers

themselves to instill fear and justify their positions.

It truly seems like a dark time

 for debate and dissent  in America.

 Many patriotic critics, who offer complex,

nuanced responses, have been shut out

 of the discourse, despite some willingness

 to promote military response.

The current public debate

 needs more light and far less heat,

 as the future of the globe

is at stake.

Policy makers need to hear from and understand

the wide range of thoughtful patriotic opinion

 that tends to be able to think short-term

and long-term at the same time,

 a useful skill that is sorely missing

among the impulsive rants

currently distorting public debate.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

* A REAL EYE-OPENER!

ãBush's war at home:

    a creeping coup d'étatä

By the WSWS Editorial Board 7 November 2001

In the period since the September 11

 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington,

 the United States has undergone a radical transformation

in the structure of the government,

 in the relationship between the people

and the police and armed forces,

and in the legal and constitutional framework.

 

The White House has assumed vast new powers

for internal repression, establishing by executive order

 an Office of Homeland Security

 that is not subject to either congressional oversight

or any vote on the personnel appointed to run it.

 

An all-encompassing political police agency

is coming into being, through the passage of

an "anti-terror" law that effectively

amalgamates the FBI and CIA

and abolishes the longstanding separation

between overseas spying and domestic policing.

Side by side with the bombing of Afghanistan ~

The Bush administration has declared,

 ãthere is a second front in the war,

the war at home.ä

 The federal government issues vague and

unsubstantiated "terror alerts," which fuel anxiety

while providing no protection to the public.

 

Government spokesmen urge the population

to get used to measures like random police searches

 and roadblocks as a permanent feature of life.

 National Guard troops patrol the airports, harbors,

 bridges, tunnels and even the US Capitol.

Fundamental constitutional safeguards-

the right of habeas corpus, the right

of the accused to know the charges against them,

 the right of arrested persons to see a lawyer,

even the presumption of innocence

-have been set aside for millions of immigrants

from the Middle East and Central Asia.

 

The right to privacy has been all but abolished

for the entire population, with government intelligence

agencies given the green light to plant bugs

and wiretaps, monitor financial transactions,

and conduct other forms of spying,

virtually at will.

If the average American had been shown

 on September 10 a picture of the

United States as it is today,

the response would likely have been:

 "This is not the America I know.

This looks more like a police state."

 

The bitter irony is that such a sweeping attack

on democratic rights has been perpetrated

in the name of a war to defend "freedom"

 and "democracy" against terrorism.

 

 But neither the Bush administration,

nor its Democratic Party collaborators,

 nor a compliant and complicit media bother

 to explain the following contradiction:

 

the United States government never secured

powers such as these at any point

 in the twentieth century.

 

Not in World War I,

World War II or the Cold War,

when the antagonists were powerful

and heavily armed states,

was such a radical restructuring of the governmental

and legal framework carried out.

 

Why is this happening today,

when the alleged enemy

is a small band of terrorists operating out of caves

in one of the poorest countries in the world?

The anti-terrorism law

One of the key elements of the assault

on civil liberties is the new "anti-terrorism" act,

which was rushed through Congress and signed into law

only five weeks after the terror attacks.

 

 The law defines terrorism in such a way

as to include political activity and speech

previously protected by the Bill of Rights

of the US Constitution.

It provides wide-ranging authority for police agencies

to carry out secret searches, conduct expanded electronic

 surveillance, and indefinitely detain terrorism suspects.

 Non-citizens, including legal permanent residents,

 can be denied reentry to the US for expressing

 political views, and can be deported for having

 even the most incidental association with organizations

designated as "terrorist" by the government.

Attorney General John Ashcroft last week

expanded the number of groups

so designated from 46 to 74.

Among the most ominous provisions of the law

is the abolition of the "firewall" between foreign

and domestic intelligence agencies.

 The Central Intelligence Agency

now has the authority to share information

 with the Federal Bureau of Investigation

and thereby collaborate with the FBI in

conducting domestic surveillance

and preparing criminal prosecutions.

The FBI is likewise authorized to share

 with the CIA information collected

during grand jury proceedings,

without a court order, giving the US spy

agency access to domestic intelligence

 it had been barred from receiving in the past.

 

An article in the November 4 Washington Post

 carried the ominous headline,

"An Intelligence Giant in the Making:

Anti-Terrorism Law Likely to Bring

Domestic Apparatus of Unprecedented Scope."

It noted that the media focus on the electronic surveillance

 and wiretapping provisions of the new legislation

deflected attention from other provisions

of the bill that will fundamentally alter the

 operation of US intelligence-gathering agencies.

According to the Post, one of the most significant

aspects of the law is that it "empowers the government

to shift the primary mission of the FBI

from solving crimes to gathering domestic intelligence."

The law reverses legal reforms enacted under

the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978,

which segregated the FBI's criminal investigation

function from its intelligence-gathering operations

 against foreign spies and international terrorists.

 

The Post comments, "the bill effectively

tears down legal fire walls erected 25 years

ago during the Watergate era,

when the nation was stunned by disclosures

about presidential abuses of domestic

 intelligence-gathering against political activists."

These changes go beyond a mere quantitative

expansion of certain investigative powers.

They constitute a basic restructuring

of the police and intelligence apparatus

 to vastly expand its scope and reach.

In recent days, federal officials have urged

the lifting of legal restraints on

state and local police powers.

 Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson

lamented that Justice Department agents

"don't have enough eyes and ears"

to monitor terrorist suspects, and said restrictions

on local police departments "need to be looked at."

Many local police departments are already

scrapping rules on intelligence-gathering that

were established to protect First Amendment rights.

 

The Los Angeles Police Commission voted

 last month to relax intelligence restrictions

adopted in the early 1980s, following disclosures

that police were monitoring anti-war protesters,

 liberal politicians and other political dissidents.

 

Other big city police departments are moving to

revive the surveillance methods utilized

 by "Red Squad" operations of the past.

Terrorizing the public

On October 29, the government issued its second

general terrorism alert in less than three weeks.

Declaring that major terrorist attacks against the

US or US interests around the world were in the offing,

Attorney General Ashcroft was utterly vague

as to the likely targets, methods or perpetrators.

 He provided no information to support the claim

of imminent danger. He gave no instructions

as to how the public was to respond to the alleged danger.

 However, he issued an advisory to 18,000

state and local police agencies to "continue on

highest alert and to notify immediately the

FBI of any unusual or suspicious activity."

Instructing the public

 to accept extraordinary measures,

such as random stops or searches by police

or National Guard troops, or questioning by FBI agents,

Ashcroft said, "We ask for the patience and cooperation

of the American people, if and when they encounter

 additional measures undertaken by local law enforcement

or federal law enforcement authorities and others

who are charged with securing the safety of the public."

As an immediate consequence of the alert,

 National Guard troops were deployed in a number

of states at transportation centers, water supplies

and nuclear power plants.

These are in addition to the troops who have

patrolled major airports since the September 11 events.

At week's end, House Minority Leader

Richard Gephardt announced that Congress,

with bipartisan support, was authorizing the posting

of armed soldiers at the Capitol building.

 

The Supreme Court subsequently announced

it would bar the public from its hearings.

 

The government claims that the "terror alerts"

have been issued in order to warn and protect the public.

But with no specific information provided

about the imminent threat-when and where

 the terrorists might strike-what is public expected to do?

 Their vacuous character

 demonstrates that these alerts

are essentially fraudulent.

 Their real purpose is to accustom the

population to invasions of privacy,

the dismantling of constitutional safeguards,

and a general militarization of society.

 

The authorities want people to accept

as a normal state of affairs the deployment

of armed troops at airports, public buildings,

bridges, border checkpoints and in the streets.

 

The Bush administration has seized on the anthrax attacks

as an additional means of bludgeoning the public

into accepting such far-reaching restrictions on civil liberties.

Although the evidence so far made available

 suggests that extreme right-wing elements of the

 Timothy McVeigh stripe are the most likely suspects,

the White House and the media constantly suggest

 that Osama bin Laden is responsible for the

anthrax attacks, depicting his Al Qaeda network

as a pervasive and all-powerful threat.

 

Periodic alerts such as those issued October 11

and October 29 are intended to facilitate the

 consolidation of the new apparatus of internal repression.

 

 On October 29, the same day as the most recent alert,

President Bush presided over the first meeting

of the Council of Homeland Security.

 

This new and unprecedented body

 includes-in addition to former Governor Tom Ridge,

who has been named the director of the

Office of Homeland Security-the vice president,

 the attorney general, the secretaries of defense,

 treasury, transportation and health and human services

and the heads of the CIA and FBI.

 

 The powers of this council as well as those of

the Office of Homeland Security are vague

 and undefined, and therefore virtually unlimited.

Following that meeting, Bush announced

the establishment of yet another agency

with unspecified police powers-

the "foreign terrorist tracking taskforce,"

 headed by Ashcroft.

 

The establishment of this task force is

part of a new border policy that will enable

the government to more easily bar entry

to immigrants alleged to have terrorist connections,

and to carry out a general crackdown on those

 applying for or holding student visas.

Mass arrests among immigrants

These far-reaching changes come under

conditions where the national security dragnet initiated

after September 11 is expanding, with the number

of people rounded up now standing at more than 1,100.

While federal officials will not say how many

of these detainees have been released,

a Justice Department spokesperson said

"a majority" of them are still in custody.

 The roundup of these individuals has been

shrouded in secrecy, with the government

 providing no information about the detainees' identities,

 where they are being held, why they are being detained,

and what charges, if any, are being laid against them.

Many are held in solitary confinement.

The whereabouts of some suspects are

unknown to family members,

and others either have no legal representation

or have been denied contact with their lawyers.

Much of the legal action against those in custody

is taking place in secret court proceedings,

with court documents sealed to the public.

All of this is being done to shield the operations

of federal, state and police agencies

 from public scrutiny.

 

The Justice Department has rejected appeals

 from civil liberties groups and some congressmen

for information about the detentions, without giving any

explanation for its blackout. Kate Martin,

director of the Center for National Security Studies,

commented that the government's conduct in the

investigation is "frighteningly close to the practice of

 'disappearing' people in Latin America."

 

Following each of the two national alerts

against terrorism since September 11,

 the number of those rounded up by the government

has risen sharply, tripling in the past few weeks.

 One of the main purposes of the alerts is

to signal state and local police to step up

their surveillance activities and round up more suspects.

 

While the mass murder at the World Trade Center

and the Pentagon is the pretext for the mass arrests,

not a single one of those detained has been charged

with any offense related to the September 11 attacks.

Even the Justice Department claims that at most

10 or 12 of those detained are suspected,

but not proven, of having links to the hijackers.

The vast majority of the arrests have another purpose,

unrelated to any investigation of the terrorist attack:

to intimidate the immigrant population and accustom

 the American people as a whole to methods previously

associated with police-military dictatorships.

A "war on two fronts"

Government officials have emphasized that the

 anti-terror measures adopted in recent weeks

should not be regarded as temporary.

At a briefing on October 29, Ridge declared,

"We want America to be on the highest alert.

And from time to time, we may issue

 the same general alert again."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,

 in a column in the November 1 edition of

the Washington Post, baldly stated that not only

should the American people accept an

open-ended war against terrorism,

but they must "prepare now for the next war -

a war that may be vastly different

not only from those of the past century but also

from the new war on terrorism that we are fighting today."

 

In other words, America is going on a war footing,

not for the duration of a specific conflict

in Afghanistan, but indefinitely.

Consequently, the domestic police measures

being taken now by the government must also be accepted

 as a permanent state of affairs.

One catch phrase

 has more and more routinely appeared

in the statements of Bush administration officials:

 America is fighting

"a war on two fronts."

Announcing his terrorism alert last week, Ashcroft stated:

"I trust the American people to be able to understand

in this context the conflict, where there is a front overseas

and there is another front here in the United States."

Ridge said the following day,

"We are engaged in a two-front war against terrorism."

 In an October 31 speech urging passage of his

economic stimulus plan, Bush repeated this mantra:

 "For the first time in our nation's history,

part of the battle front is here at home."

Precisely what is meant by this "war on two fronts"

 is never explained. But in light of the extraordinary

security measures taken by the government

since September 11, references to a battle on the

"home front" take on a chilling significance.

 

With their attempt to create an atmosphere of fear

and hysteria over impending terrorist threats,

authorities want to identify anyone rounded up ~

In their investigation as the enemy,

 whether or not there is evidence against them.

The same methods will be used against those

who oppose the war against Afghanistan

 and other policies of the government, domestic or foreign.

 

Before and after September 11

The government's actions in the period

since September 11 constitute the most serious

and sustained attack on civil liberties in US history.

No one should believe that this is merely

 a reaction to the attacks on the World

Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Such measures have long been sought by the

most right-wing sections of the ruling elite,

who have seized on the tragic events of September 11

to realize their political agenda at home,

 just as they are using them to launch

a US military intervention in oil-rich Central Asia.

These sweeping changes are the culmination

of two decades of political reaction and attacks

 on democratic rights, which have seen a

 steady buildup of the repressive forces of the state -

 two million Americans in prison,

thousands on Death Row, legal restrictions

 on the rights of defendants, expanded powers

of police spying and electronic surveillance.

This has been accompanied by the emergence of a

fascist-minded right wing with little popular support,

 but enormous influence in the Republican Party,

 in Congress, and now in the White House.

 

Those who want to claim that the recent escalation

of the onslaught on civil liberties is simply a

response to September 11 ignore the critical fact that

 the Bush administration came to power

on the basis of an unprecedented assault

on the most basic of democratic rights -

 the right to vote.

 The drive by Bush and the Republican Party

to hijack the election and take power,

 despite having lost the popular vote nationally,

 was consummated in a ruling by the

 right-wing majority on the US Supreme Court,

which halted a legal recount in the pivotal state

of Florida, handing the presidency to Bush.

 A government that takes power

by methods of fraud and conspiracy

must rule through the same methods.

This is an administration committed to a domestic

 and foreign policy tailored to the interests of the

wealthiest & most privileged layer in American society.

It is also an administration of enormous crisis.

 Prior to the terror attacks, the Bush administration

 was showing clear signs of internal disarray.

 Its already narrow social base of support was eroding

under the pressure of a deepening economic slump,

 both in the US and globally.

The Republicans had lost control of the Senate,

 and on the international front, the Bush administration

 was increasingly isolated, with nominal allies as well

as enemies opposing its aggressive & unilateralist posture.

 

 The events of September 11 were seized on

 by those who run the Bush administration

 as a welcome opportunity to shore up the government

 and rally public support by launching a military attack

on the alleged perpetrators, while preparing for an

upsurge of social struggle over rising unemployment,

 worsening slump and the government's

pro-corporate policies by expanding and

restructuring the police powers of the state.

 

The Bush administration's domestic "anti-terror"

 campaign must serve as a sharp warning.

After the Florida debacle of November and

December 2000, there were complacent commentaries

in the press declaring that, unlike many other countries,

the bitter political struggle in the United States

did not end with tanks in the streets.

Now the tanks are in the streets,

 and soldiers surround the Capitol,

 in what might be called

a slow-motion coup d'état.

All of the traditional norms of bourgeois

democracy in the US are in question.

 The Bush administration expresses the contempt

 for democracy that pervades powerful sections

of the American corporate and financial oligarchy,

 as well as their fascistic allies in the Christian right,

 the gun lobby and the militia movement.

 

They are determined to go as far as they can

 in establishing an authoritarian regime.

Such concepts as the separation of powers

between the three branches of government

 and legislative oversight of the executive branch

are being tossed aside in the effort to vastly expand

 the police powers of the federal executive.

 

It is worth noting that at the height of the anthrax scare,

in mid-October, congressional Republicans favored

 shutting down Congress and adjourning indefinitely,

 the better to give Bush, the FBI, the CIA and the

military a free hand, both abroad and at home.

The Bush administration's war

on democratic rights

has exposed the inability of the Democratic Party

to offer any serious opposition to the extreme-right

forces that dominate the Republican Party.

 

Within hours of the September 11 attacks,

 the Democrats pledged unconditional support

 to the Bush White House, declaring that

political dissent was no longer permissible.

 The Democratic leadership not only lined up

to give Bush an open-ended mandate to wage war

abroad, it insured the passage of his "anti-terror" bill,

suppressed any investigation of the unexplained

intelligence failure that allowed the September 11 attacks

to take place, and sanctioned the trashing of constitutional

 safeguards in the ongoing police dragnet.

The political collapse of the Democratic Party is

the culmination of a protracted process of adaptation

 to the most right-wing sections of the ruling elite.

 

In their craven response first to the

 Republican impeachment conspiracy,

 and then to the theft of the 2000 election,

the Democrats already demonstrated their inability

and unwillingness to defend democratic rights.

While for the moment,

the vast majority of those caught up

 by the government's dragnet are immigrants

of Middle-Eastern and Central Asian descent,

 it is only a matter of time

before these anti-democratic

 methods will be used more widely.

The wholesale attack

on democratic rights can

only be halted through

the independent

 organization

of the working class,

which unites all sections

of the working population-

immigrant and US-born-

in a political struggle

against the financial oligarchy

and its political representatives.

*       *       *        *