Forum

Bonsoir à tous.

Depuis plusieurs jours je me tracasse au sujet de ce que j’ai pu lire et voir sur le site dont le lien est en fin de post.

Ce site décortique au ralenti les différentes images de la journée du 11/09 et d’autres sujets relatifs aux manipulations exercées par l’administration BUSH

Concrètement, on voit le deuxième avion ( celui de la TOUR Sud) lancer un missile peu avant son entrée dans le bâtiment.

Le site insiste sur le fait que cet avion n’est pas un Boeing de tourisme, mais Un B767 de ravitaillement. Autrement un boeing militaire.

Dépourvu de hublots, avec une manoeuvre digne d’un avion de chasse très performant, cet avion semble laisser perpexle pas mal d’observateurs.

D’après le site, les médias seraient au parfum mais participent au merdier orchestré en Haut Lieu.

J’aimerais avoir votre avis, à chacun de vous.

Ces images sont elles réelles?

Cette monstruosité est elle concevable?

A savoir qu’un gouvernement tue sciemment des milliers de personnes afin d’asseoir politiquement un président super mal élu, afin de plonger tout le secteur aérien dans une crise sans précédent ( justement Boeing laisse Airbus se charger des projets dans le civil car il ne peut plus rivaliser aujourd’hui, mais qu est ce que les contrats du Pentagone sont rentables pour Boeing!!)
Afin, bien sûr de trouver un prétexte, bancal, mais prétexte quand même pour aller créer un chaos bien loin de chez eux, au coeur du moyen orient, qui a besoin de tout, sauf des américains.

Je poste ça parce que je suis ahuri du peu de réaction de tous par rapport à tout ça.

De toutes façons, il suffit de voir les retours en bénéficent qui profitent à toute cette bande de criminels, pour douter sérieusement de tout ce pipotage et de la version US, toujours prompte à plonger dans le virtualisme, comme vous le dites si souvent, à juste titre.

le site en question
http://www.letsroll911.org/

et une des nombreuses vidéos disponibles sur ce site.
http://www.thewebfairy.com/911/letsroll911/Web/missileignitionandlaunch.swf

merci à vous tous de bien vouloir dire quelle impression ça vous laisse de consulter un site comme celui ci!

Je m’inquiète de plus en plus des l’état des libertés en France.
Participant au forum fr.soc.politique, je me suis déjà vu menacé par mon FAI de coupure de ma ligne, non en réponse aux propos certainement non politiquement correct que je tenais, mais sous le prétexte, entièrement non justifié, que j’effectuais du spamming (difficile de dire, dans un pays prétendument libre, que l’on vous prive de votre droit d’expression pour des raisons politiques).
J’ai donc utilisé un proxy pour éviter que l’on ne remonte trop facilement à ma ligne réelle. Depuis une dizaine de jours, l’accès à fr.soc.politique à travers un proxy (certains proxys?) est interdit.
Une chappe de plomb est en train de tomber sur la France. Si vous vous exprimez sous votre nom, on coupe votre ligne (au mieux), si vous masquez votre identité, on vous interdit l’accès au NewsGroups.
A quelle distance se trouve le régime actuel du totalitarisme ?

Mike

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-diamond10jun10.story
COMMENTARY
An Eyewitness to the Iraq Botch
By Larry Diamond

June 10, 2004

When I went to Baghdad in early January as a senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority, I believed that a democracy of sorts could gradually be constructed in Iraq, despite the formidable obstacles. Although I had opposed the war, I accepted the invitation because I believed that the United States could not allow postwar Iraq to sink into chaos and that the Iraqi people deserved an opportunity to live in freedom. This did not seem to me to be an unrealistic goal.

But I returned three months later sorely disappointed. Because of a long catalog of strategic and tactical blunders, the United States has failed to come anywhere near meeting the postwar expectations of Iraqis. It now seems clear that the occupation will leave a mixed, and on balance negative, record when the Americans hand over power June 30. Though we leave behind a framework for political transition, it is hobbled by two huge deficits: security and legitimacy.

Previous international efforts to build democracy after violent conflict counsel one clear, overriding lesson: “It’s security, stupid.” If a decimated country doesn’t restore enough security to rebuild its infrastructure, revive commercial life, employ workers and enable civic organizations to mobilize, political parties to campaign and voters to register and vote, it can’t craft a decent political order — certainly not a democratic one.

The aftermath of tyranny and war is never going to be perfectly tranquil. But to build a democratic state, a country must first build a state, and the transcendent imperative for that is to establish a monopoly over the means of violence. In Iraq, this meant moving quickly to prevent a resurgence of violence on the part of the defeated Baathists, radical Islamists, external jihadists and others threatened by the new political order. But despite warnings from the Rand Corp. and others, the Pentagon plunged blithely ahead with only half the necessary force (less than 150,000 troops). Our inability to control the savage looting that swept Baghdad in April 2003 signaled the hollowness of the U.S. posture and emboldened the die-hard Baathists to regroup for the insurgency that has devastated postwar reconstruction.

By the time I arrived, the signs of insecurity were pervasive. Iraqi translators and drivers at the palace where the CPA has its headquarters told me of the threats to their lives and the murders of their co-workers, while our soldiers confessed frankly that they could do nothing to protect those Iraqis outside the Green Zone. Repeatedly I had to cancel trips to meet Iraqis outside of the compound because we could not obtain the armored cars or helicopters that would enable me to travel with some measure of safety.

Today, in place of security, Iraq has a welter of heavily armed militias serving not the new Iraq but political parties, incipient regional warlords and religious leaders.

To the security deficit was added a yawning legitimacy deficit. The CPA delayed local elections and imposed one unwieldy transition plan after another while leaning too heavily on Iraqi exiles, especially the widely distrusted Ahmad Chalabi. Crippled by a severe shortage of American officials fluent in Arabic (as well as the steady loss of Iraqi translators to intimidation and assassination), and distanced from Iraqi society by formidable walls of security, the CPA never adequately grasped Iraqi preferences, hopes and frustrations.

While I was there, the CPA repeatedly misjudged and underestimated the most important Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and finalized in early March an interim constitution that most Iraqis (including Sistani) felt gave too sweeping a veto to minorities and too little participation to the people. When I traveled the country speaking about this new document, I was stunned by the anger and frustration of Iraqis who felt excluded from the process. But by then, the CPA was interested only in “selling” the document (for which we hired an expensive advertising agency). Too often, our engagement with ordinary Iraqis was a one-way conversation from above.

Today, as the U.S. continues to battle the radical Shiite insurgency led by cleric Muqtada Sadr while trying to sell Iraqis on its post-occupation plans, the challenges are as tough as ever. The new interim government includes a number of politically shrewd Iraqis, some with roots in Iraq’s crucially important tribes, who may yet prove capable of mobilizing support for the political transition. But the new government will not be viable and the elections for a transitional parliament will drown in bloodshed and fraud unless the new Iraqi state can defeat the former regime loyalists, the terrorists, the organized criminals and the militias. To do that, a recommitment from the United States — and a smarter American strategy — will be needed.

————————————————————————————————————————
Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Fiabilité des sources, recoupement, ... y a du boulot

(en provenance de Secrecy News, http://www.fas.org)

INTEGRITY OF STATE DEPT TERRORISM REPORT QUESTIONED

A new report from the Congressional Research Service cautiously
notes that the State Department’s annual “Patterns of Global
Terrorism” report suffers from a variety of statistical and
methodological flaws, and that for the first time an errata
sheet to the latest edition will be provided.

The CRS report was first described in the Los Angeles Times
today.

See “The Department of State’s Patterns of Global Terrorism
Report: Trends, State Sponsors, and Related Issues” by Raphael
Perl, Congressional Research Service, June 1, 2004:

    http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL32417.pdf

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) was more blunt about the terrorism
report’s defects.

“It appears… that the decline in terrorism reported by the
State Department results from manipulation of the data, not an
actual decline in terrorism incidents,” he wrote to Secretary
of State Colin Powell on May 17.

“This manipulation… calls into serious doubt the integrity of
the report,” Rep. Waxman wrote.  See his letter here:
    http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_cr/waxman051704.pdf

Oui, cela en devient éreintant à la fin : subir ce “ping pong” événementiel où l’on ce dit que ce sera la der des der : on ne nous aura plus avec la rouerie de l’administration bushienne. Mais non, les retrouvailles du D-Day, émouvantes il est vrai,  passent pour la façade politiquement correcte des bonnes relations entre ces éminents représentants autours du berceau des valeurs atlantistes: parce que les valeurs communes demeurent entre nous, paraît-il…? Laissez-moi pleurer : Les juristes US estiment que Bush n’est même pas lié par le principe d’interdiction de la torture (articles ci-dessous).
Pourtant, j’y crois à cette renaissance de l’Europe, enfin adulte par sa capacité à tourner la page de ses luttes fatricides. Mais nos élites peuvent-elles assumer le poids de leur responsabilité : représenter les citoyens au travers d’institutions transparentes par un lien direct (no authority without accountability).
L’actuel (non)débat entourant les élections du parlement européen exprime de manière assourdissante le malaise induit par des échafaudages institutionnels (25 scrutins nationaux…) dont les citoyens n’entendent que puic. C’est là pourtant , qu’il faut “porter le fer” si l’on veut éviter les dérives populistes. Mais le traité constitutionnel se fait désirer… Alors, débacle imminente… Nous le saurons bientôt. Mais déjà, on entend gronder les tendances “souverainistes”...

June 8, 2004
Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn’t Bind Bush
By NEIL A. LEWIS and ERIC SCHMITT
ASHINGTON, June 7 - A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation’s security.

The memo, prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also said that any executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons.

One reason, the lawyers said, would be if military personnel believed that they were acting on orders from superiors “except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful.”

“In order to respect the president’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign,” the lawyers wrote in the 56-page confidential memorandum, the prohibition against torture “must be construed as inapplicable to interrogation undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority.”

Senior Pentagon officials on Monday sought to minimize the significance of the March memo, one of several obtained by The New York Times, as an interim legal analysis that had no effect on revised interrogation procedures that Mr. Rumsfeld approved in April 2003 for the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“The April document was about interrogation techniques and procedures,” said Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman. “It was not a legal analysis.”

Mr. Di Rita said the 24 interrogation procedures permitted at Guantánamo, four of which required Mr. Rumsfeld’s explicit approval, did not constitute torture and were consistent with international treaties.

The March memorandum, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, is the latest internal legal study to be disclosed that shows that after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks the administration’s lawyers were set to work to find legal arguments to avoid restrictions imposed by international and American law.

A Jan. 22, 2002, memorandum from the Justice Department that provided arguments to keep American officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated was used extensively as a basis for the March memorandum on avoiding proscriptions against torture.

The previously disclosed Justice Department memorandum concluded that administration officials were justified in asserting that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees from the Afghanistan war.

Another memorandum obtained by The Times indicates that most of the administration’s top lawyers, with the exception of those at the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, approved of the Justice Department’s position that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the war in Afghanistan. In addition, that memorandum, dated Feb. 2, 2002, noted that lawyers for the Central Intelligence Agency had asked for an explicit understanding that the administration’s public pledge to abide by the spirit of the conventions did not apply to its operatives.

The March memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, was prepared as part of a review of interrogation techniques by a working group appointed by the Defense Department’s general counsel, William J. Haynes. The group itself was led by the Air Force general counsel, Mary Walker, and included military and civilian lawyers from all branches of the armed services.

The review stemmed from concerns raised by Pentagon lawyers and interrogators at Guantánamo after Mr. Rumsfeld approved a set of harsher interrogation techniques in December 2002 to use on a Saudi detainee, Mohamed al-Kahtani, who was believed to be the planned 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 terror plot.

Mr. Rumsfeld suspended the harsher techniques, including serving the detainee cold, prepackaged food instead of hot rations and shaving off his facial hair, on Jan. 12, pending the outcome of the working group’s review. Gen. James T. Hill, head of the military’s Southern Command, which oversees Guantánamo, told reporters last Friday that the working group “wanted to do what is humane and what is legal and consistent not only with” the Geneva Conventions, but also “what is right for our soldiers.”

Mr. Di Rita said that the Pentagon officials were focused primarily on the interrogation techniques, and that the legal rationale included in the March memo was mostly prepared by the Justice Department and White House counsel’s office.

The memo showed that not only lawyers from the Defense and Justice departments and the White House approved of the policy but also that David S. Addington, the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, also was involved in the deliberations. The State Department lawyer, William H. Taft IV, dissented, warning that such a position would weaken the protections of the Geneva Conventions for American troops.

The March 6 document about torture provides tightly constructed definitions of torture. For example, if an interrogator “knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith,” the report said. “Instead, a defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his control.”

The adjective “severe,” the report said, “makes plain that the infliction of pain or suffering per se, whether it is physical or mental, is insufficient to amount to torture. Instead, the text provides that pain or suffering must be `severe.’ ” The report also advised that if an interrogator “has a good faith belief his actions will not result in prolonged mental harm, he lacks the mental state necessary for his actions to constitute torture.”

The report also said that interrogators could justify breaching laws or treaties by invoking the doctrine of necessity. An interrogator using techniques that cause harm might be immune from liability if he “believed at the moment that his act is necessary and designed to avoid greater harm.”

Scott Horton, the former head of the human rights committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, said Monday that he believed that the March memorandum on avoiding responsibility for torture was what caused a delegation of military lawyers to visit him and complain privately about the administration’s confidential legal arguments. That visit, he said, resulted in the association undertaking a study and issuing of a report criticizing the administration. He added that the lawyers who drafted the torture memo in March could face professional sanctions.

Jamie Fellner, the director of United States programs for Human Rights Watch, said Monday, “We believe that this memo shows that at the highest levels of the Pentagon there was an interest in using torture as well as a desire to evade the criminal consequences of doing so.”

The March memorandum also contains a curious section in which the lawyers argued that any torture committed at Guantánamo would not be a violation of the anti-torture statute because the base was under American legal jurisdiction and the statute concerns only torture committed overseas. That view is in direct conflict with the position the administration has taken in the Supreme Court, where it has argued that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are not entitled to constitutional protections because the base is outside American jurisdiction.

Kate Zernike contributed reporting for this article.

-
Memo Offered Justification for Use of Torture
Justice Dept. Gave Advice in 2002
By Dana Priest and R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, June 8, 2004; Page A01
In August 2002, the Justice Department advised the White House that torturing al Qaeda terrorists in captivity abroad “may be justified,” and that international laws against torture “may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations” conducted in President Bush’s war on terrorism, according to a newly obtained memo.
If a government employee were to torture a suspect in captivity, “he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the Al Qaeda terrorist network,” said the memo, from the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel, written in response to a CIA request for legal guidance. It added that arguments centering on “necessity and self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability” later.
The memo seems to counter the pre-Sept. 11, 2001, assumption that U.S. government personnel would never be permitted to torture captives. It was offered after the CIA began detaining and interrogating suspected al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the wake of the attacks, according to government officials familiar with the document.
The legal reasoning in the 2002 memo, which covered treatment of al Qaeda detainees in CIA custody, was later used in a March 2003 report by Pentagon lawyers assessing interrogation rules governing the Defense Department’s detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At that time, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had asked the lawyers to examine the logistical, policy and legal issues associated with interrogation techniques.
Bush administration officials say flatly that, despite the discussion of legal issues in the two memos, it has abided by international conventions barring torture, and that detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere have been treated humanely, except in the cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq for which seven military police soldiers have been charged.
Still, the 2002 and 2003 memos reflect the Bush administration’s desire to explore the limits on how far it could legally go in aggressively interrogating foreigners suspected of terrorism or of having information that could thwart future attacks.
In the 2002 memo, written for the CIA and addressed to White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, the Justice Department defined torture in a much narrower way, for example, than does the U.S. Army, which has historically carried out most wartime interrogations.
In the Justice Department’s view—contained in a 50-page document signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee and obtained by The Washington Post—inflicting moderate or fleeting pain does not necessarily constitute torture. Torture, the memo says, “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.”
By contrast, the Army’s Field Manual 34-52, titled “Intelligence Interrogations,” sets more restrictive rules. For example, the Army prohibits pain induced by chemicals or bondage; forcing an individual to stand, sit or kneel in abnormal positions for prolonged periods of time; and food deprivation. Under mental torture, the Army prohibits mock executions, sleep deprivation and chemically induced psychosis.
Human rights groups expressed dismay at the Justice Department’s legal reasoning yesterday.
“It is by leaps and bounds the worst thing I’ve seen since this whole Abu Ghraib scandal broke,” said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. “It appears that what they were contemplating was the commission of war crimes and looking for ways to avoid legal accountability. The effect is to throw out years of military doctrine and standards on interrogations.”
But a spokesman for the White House counsel’s office said, “The president directed the military to treat al Qaeda and Taliban humanely and consistent with the Geneva Conventions.”
Mark Corallo, the Justice Department’s chief spokesman, said “the department does not comment on specific legal advice it has provided confidentially within the executive branch.” But he added: “It is the policy of the United States to comply with all U.S. laws in the treatment of detainees—including the Constitution, federal statutes and treaties.” The CIA declined to comment.
The Justice Department’s interpretation for the CIA sought to provide guidance on what sorts of aggressive treatments might not fall within the legal definition of torture.
The 2002 memo, for example, included the interpretation that “it is difficult to take a specific act out of context and conclude that the act in isolation would constitute torture.” The memo named seven techniques that courts have considered torture, including severe beatings with truncheons and clubs, threats of imminent death, burning with cigarettes, electric shocks to genitalia, rape or sexual assault, and forcing a prisoner to watch the torture of another person.
“While we cannot say with certainty that acts falling short of these seven would not constitute torture,” the memo advised, “. . . we believe that interrogation techniques would have to be similar to these in their extreme nature and in the type of harm caused to violate law.”
“For purely mental pain or suffering to amount to torture,” the memo said, “it must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years.” Examples include the development of mental disorders, drug-induced dementia, “post traumatic stress disorder which can last months or even years, or even chronic depression.”
Of mental torture, however, an interrogator could show he acted in good faith by “taking such steps as surveying professional literature, consulting with experts or reviewing evidence gained in past experience” to show he or she did not intend to cause severe mental pain and that the conduct, therefore, “would not amount to the acts prohibited by the statute.”
In 2003, the Defense Department conducted its own review of the limits that govern torture, in consultation with experts at the Justice Department and other agencies. The aim of the March 6, 2003, review, conducted by a working group that included representatives of the military services, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the intelligence community, was to provide a legal basis for what the group’s report called “exceptional interrogations.”
Much of the reasoning in the group’s report and in the Justice Department’s 2002 memo overlap. The documents, which address treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, were not written to apply to detainees held in Iraq.
In a draft of the working group’s report, for example, Pentagon lawyers approvingly cited the Justice Department’s 2002 position that domestic and international laws prohibiting torture could be trumped by the president’s wartime authority and any directives he issued.
At the time, the Justice Department’s legal analysis, however, shocked some of the military lawyers who were involved in crafting the new guidelines, said senior defense officials and military lawyers.
“Every flag JAG lodged complaints,” said one senior Pentagon official involved in the process, referring to the judge advocate generals who are military lawyers of each service.
“It’s really unprecedented. For almost 30 years we’ve taught the Geneva Convention one way,” said a senior military attorney. “Once you start telling people it’s okay to break the law, there’s no telling where they might stop.”
A U.S. law enacted in 1994 bars torture by U.S. military personnel anywhere in the world. But the Pentagon group’s report, prepared under the supervision of General Counsel William J. Haynes II, said that “in order to respect the President’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign . . . [the prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority.”
The Pentagon group’s report, divulged yesterday by the Wall Street Journal and obtained by The Post, said further that the 1994 law barring torture “does not apply to the conduct of U.S. personnel” at Guantanamo Bay.
It also said the anti-torture law did apply to U.S. military interrogations that occurred outside U.S. “maritime and territorial jurisdiction,” such as in Iraq or Afghanistan. But it said both Congress and the Justice Department would have difficulty enforcing the law if U.S. military personnel could be shown to be acting as a result of presidential orders.
The report then parsed at length the definition of torture under domestic and international law, with an eye toward guiding military personnel about legal defenses.
The Pentagon report uses language very similar to that in the 2002 Justice Department memo written in response to the CIA’s request: “If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network,” the draft states. “In that case, DOJ [Department of Justice] believes that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.”
The draft goes on to assert that a soldier’s claim that he was following “superior orders” would be available for those engaged in “exceptional interrogations except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful.” It asserts, as does the Justice view expressed for the CIA, that the mere infliction of pain and suffering is not unlawful; the pain or suffering must be severe.
A Defense Department spokesman said last night that the March 2003 memo represented “a scholarly effort to define the perimeters of the law” but added: “What is legal and what is put into practice is a different story.” Pentagon officials said the group examined at least 35 interrogation techniques, and Rumsfeld later approved using 24 of them in a classified directive on April 16, 2003, that governed all activities at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon has refused to make public the 24 interrogation procedures.
Staff writer Josh White contributed to this report.

Puisque l’on en est à parler de psychiatrie ...

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4636.shtml

Bush Leagues
Bush’s Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Jun 4, 2004, 06:15

President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind.

In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.”

Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

“It reminds me of the Nixon days,” says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. “Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That’s the mood over there.”

In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be “God’s will” and then tells aides to “fuck over” anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration.

“We’re at war, there’s no doubt about it. What I don’t know anymore is just who the enemy might be,” says one troubled White House aide. “We seem to spend more time trying to destroy John Kerry than al Qaeda and our enemies list just keeps growing and growing.”

Aides say the President gets “hung up on minor details,” micromanaging to the extreme while ignoring the bigger picture. He will spend hours personally reviewing and approving every attack ad against his Democratic opponent and then kiss off a meeting on economic issues.

“This is what is killing us on Iraq,” one aide says. “We lost focus. The President got hung up on the weapons of mass destruction and an unproven link to al Qaeda. We could have found other justifiable reasons for the war but the President insisted the focus stay on those two, tenuous items.”

Aides who raise questions quickly find themselves shut out of access to the President or other top advisors. Among top officials, Bush’s inner circle is shrinking. Secretary of State Colin Powell has fallen out of favor because of his growing doubts about the administration’s war against Iraq.

The President’s abrupt dismissal of CIA Directory George Tenet Wednesday night is, aides say, an example of how he works.

“Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn’t hear of it,” says an aide. “That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying ‘that’s it George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now.”

Tenet was allowed to resign “voluntarily” and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as “God’s will.”

God may also be the reason Attorney General John Ashcroft, the administration’s lightning rod because of his questionable actions that critics argue threatens freedoms granted by the Constitution, remains part of the power elite. West Wing staffers call Bush and Ashcroft “the Blues Brothers” because “they’re on a mission from God.”

“The Attorney General is tight with the President because of religion,” says one aide. “They both believe any action is justifiable in the name of God.”

But the President who says he rules at the behest of God can also tongue-lash those he perceives as disloyal, calling them “fucking assholes” in front of other staff, berating one cabinet official in front of others and labeling anyone who disagrees with him “unpatriotic” or “anti-American.”

“The mood here is that we’re under siege, there’s no doubt about it,” says one troubled aide who admits he is looking for work elsewhere. “In this administration, you don’t have to wear a turban or speak Farsi to be an enemy of the United States. All you have to do is disagree with the President.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the record.

© Copyright 2004 Capitol Hill Blue

http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=212089

Par Libération.fr
vendredi 04 juin 2004 (Liberation.fr - 13:19)

Un rapport encombrant pour Tenet
Selon le «New York Times», le patron de la CIA a démissionné avant la publication d’un rapport du Sénat très gênant sur les activités de l’agence en Irak.

George Tenet, le patron de la CIA, a trébuché sur l’Irak. Selon le New York Times

Une histoire locale, évidemment tragique pour son protagoniste, qui n’aura comme vertu que d’éclairer la tragédie globale qu’est l’état d’esprit aux USA actuellement.

The FBI’s Art Attack
Offbeat Materials at Professor’s Home Set Off Bioterror Alarm

By Lynne Duke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page C01

NEW YORK—“A forensic investigation of FBI trash.” On the telephone, Beatriz da Costa says it wryly. Her humor sounds bitter. She’s talking about the detritus of a terror probe at the Buffalo home of her good friends, the Kurtzes.

She’s talking about the pizza boxes, Gatorade jugs, the gloves, the gas mask filters, the biohazard suits: the stuff left by police, FBI, hazmat and health investigators after they descended on the Kurtz home and quarantined the place.

The garbage tells a story of personal tragedy, a death in the Kurtz household, that sparked suspicions (later proved unfounded) of a biohazard in the neighborhood. And it tells a story of the times in which we live, with almost daily warnings about terror, and with law enforcement primed to pounce.

Steve Kurtz, a Buffalo art professor, discovered on the morning of May 11 that his wife of 20 years, Hope Kurtz, had stopped breathing. He called 911. Police and emergency personnel responded, and what they saw in the Kurtz home has triggered a full-blown probe—into the vials and bacterial cultures and strange contraptions and laboratory equipment.

The FBI is investigating. A federal grand jury has been impaneled. Witnesses have been subpoenaed, including da Costa.

Kurtz and his late wife were founders of the Critical Art Ensemble, an internationally renowned collective of “tactical media” protest and performance artists. Steve Kurtz, 48, has focused on the problems of the emergence of biotechnology, such as genetically modified food. He and the art ensemble, which also includes da Costa, have authored several books including “Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media” and “Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas,” both published by Autonomedia/Semiotext(e).

The day of his wife’s death, Kurtz told the authorities who he is and what he does.

“He explained to them that he uses [the equipment] in connection with his art, and the next thing you know they call the FBI and a full hazmat team is deposited there from Quantico—that’s what they told me,” says Paul Cambria, the lawyer who is representing Kurtz. “And they all showed up in their suits and they’re hosing each other down and closing the street off, and all the news cameras were there and the head of the [Buffalo] FBI is granting interviews. It was a complete circus.”

Cambria, the bicoastal Buffalo and Los Angeles lawyer best known for representing pornographer Larry Flynt, calls the Kurtz episode a “colossal overreaction.”

FBI agents put Kurtz in a hotel, where they continued to question him. Cambria says Kurtz felt like a detainee over the two days he was at the hotel. Paul Moskal, spokesman for the Buffalo office of the FBI, says the bureau put Kurtz in a hotel because his home had been declared off limits. The probe, Moskal says, was a by-the-books affair from the very beginning.

“Post-9/11 protocol is such that first-responders have all been given training about unusual things and unusual situations,” Moskal says.

And obviously, says Lt. Jake Ulewski, spokesman for the Buffalo police, what the cops eyeballed raised some alarms. “He’s making cultures? That’s a little off the wall.”

Erie County health officials declared the Kurtz home a potential health risk and sealed it for two days while a state lab examined the bacterial cultures found inside. Officials won’t divulge what precisely was examined, but it turned out not to be a danger to public health. And the house was reopened for use.

Still, federal authorities think something in that house might have been illegal, Cambria surmises. But Cambria denies there was anything illegal in the house. William Hochul Jr., chief of the anti-terrorism unit for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Western District of New York, would not comment on the investigation.

Kurtz, on Cambria’s advice, isn’t speaking to the press either.

Da Costa, a professor at the University of California at Irvine who has flown to Buffalo to help out, says Kurtz is “depressed” and dealing with the loss of his wife, who died of a heart attack. Today the Buffalo arts community will memorialize her.

Adele Henderson, chair of the art department of the State University of New York at Buffalo, where Kurtz has tenure, is among the people who’ve been questioned by the FBI.

On May 21, she says, the FBI asked her about Kurtz’s art, his writings, his books; why his organization (the art ensemble) is listed as a collective rather than by its individual members; how it is funded.

“They asked me if I’d be surprised if I found out he was found to be involved in bioterrorism,” she says.

Her response? “I am absolutely certain that Steve would not be involved.”

They also asked about “his personal life,” Henderson says, but she would not describe the questions or her responses.

The investigation, she says, will have no bearing on Kurtz’s standing at the university, where he is an associate professor. (Prior to Buffalo, he taught at Carnegie Mellon University.)

“This is a free speech issue, and some people at the university remember a time during the McCarthy period when some university professors were harassed quite badly,” she says.

Nonetheless, considering the kind of art Kurtz practices and the kind of supplies he uses, “I could see how they would think it was really strange.”

For instance: the mobile DNA extracting machine used for testing food products for genetic contamination. Such a machine was in Kurtz’s home. His focus, in recent years, has been on projects that highlight the trouble with genetically modified seeds.

In November 2002, in an installation called “Molecular Invasion,” Kurtz grew genetically modified seeds in small pots beneath growth lamps at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, then engineered them in reverse with herbicide, meaning he killed them.

“We thought it was very important to have Critical Art Ensemble here because we try to have our visiting artist’s program present work that takes our curriculum to the next step,” says Denise Mullen, vice dean of the Corcoran College of Art and Design, whose Hemicycle Gallery hosted Kurtz’s molecular exhibit.

Beyond the cutting edge of art, she says, “we want work that is really bleeding edge.”

In Buffalo, in the aftermath of the bioterror probe that has found no terror, activist artists have scooped up the refuse from the Kurtz front yard and taken it away, perhaps, says da Costa, to create an art installation.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Ce qui se déploie chez les rédacteurs de DeDefensa comme l’analyse et la critique du virtualisme, risque de faire passer sous silence l’analyse et la critique d’un “fictionnement” du réel, c’est-à-dire de sa construction et de sa transformation au sens de l’art politique.
La part d’illusion que comporte ce processus est aisée à démasquer, tant la fiction plaquée est grossière. Néanmoins, cette facilité ne doit pas masquer que le fictionnement en cours transforme la réalité bien au delà des fables virtualistes et cela avec une possibilité de réalisme et de prospective impitoyable.

Si le virtualisme est chaque jour mis en défaut comme représentation erronnée et caricaturale du réel, comme une pure projection du système, de ses préjugés et de ses intérêts, et bien il n’en reste pas moins qu’il est participe directement à la construction d’une nouvelle réalité, de nouvelles perceptions, que par ses “provocations”, ses “maladresses”, sa “stupidité” elles-mêmes il créé une nouvelle situation, de nouvelles perceptions, de nouveaux ennemis. Les analystes commentent généralement ces ces contre-coups, ces retours de réalité comme des échecs du virtualisme, se plaçant au niveau de celui-ci, c’est à dire du commentaire du spectaculaire, alors qu’ils n’en sont que les effets. Voir dans ces effets un échec du virtualisme, c’est en rester soi-même au même premier degré et confondre le virtualisme avec le fictionnement du réel qui s’opère à travers lui et parfois à l’encontre de ses valeurs explicitées.

Or quel est le réel ainsi fictionné, créé par le virtualisme ? Quelle est la réalité du monde de demain qui se dessine par son effet combiné à celui de la force brutale. Bien-sûr pas celui qu’il vise explicitement à établir, bien qu’il ne s’en cache pas. Quel est-il ?

Tout concourre à penser que la révolution réactionnaire virtualiste à la fois révèle, masque et accomplit une vision du monde compatible avec les valeurs, les comportements et les intérêts d’une génération de dirigeants -économiques, militaires et politiques- qui ont été gagnants dans un contexte économique d’équilibre géo-capitalistique verrouillé et renforcé par un contexte de guerre larvée permanente. C’est tout simplement cette réalité-là qu’il s’agit de “recréer autrement”, autant que de conserver, bouleversée qu’elle est par la fin de la guerre froide, la prévisibilité d’une crise sociale sans précédent en Occident par suite de la mondialisation, l’émergence de la Chine comme ressource financière excédentaire à la place du Japon et qu’il s’agit d’ancrer dans la logique d’équilibre et de transferts d’investissements de confiance avec la zone déficitaire Etats-Unis et Europe.
Si telle est la réalité fictionnée sous nos yeux, de façon systématique, ostensible mais brouillée sous le bavardage virtualiste, alors même les “maladresses”, les “bévues”, les “erreurs psychologiques”, les “provocations” trouvent une explication et révèlent l’envers de la médaille du virtualisme qui montre un visage de réalisme cynique. Alors la guerre contre le terrorisme (que l’on a annoncé “globale et permanent” comme l’a été la guerre froide), de la guerre Irakienne en tant que ferment de “guerre des civilisations”, et peut-être même l’absence coupable de réaction aux annonces des événements déclencheurs du 11 septembre 2001 qui sont alors à rapprocher du précédent également annoncé à l’avance de Pearl Harbor ; alors l’appel de fond public sans précédent aux USA pour le budget de la défense, c’est à dire de capitaux asiatiques pour relancer l’économie américaine, alors la torture pornographique mise en scène et diffusée au monde arabe ainsi que ses conséquences “civilisationnelles” cessent d’être les bourdes de virtualistes dépassés par la réalité, mais se déploient sous nos yeux comme une pratique sensée conduite avec réalisme. Il est vrai que les bons sentiments sirupeux du virtualisme holliwoodien impregnent désormais à ce point les analystes politiques, économiques, les médias et le public qu’il devient presque inconcevable de formuler ou de publier tant de cynisme. Il est vrai que l’opinion publique mondiale, virtualisée et construite médiatiquement, reste circonscrite dans des modèles de comportement prévisibles, sauf erreur grossière, mais en elle-même révélatrice de l’étendue du cynisme et de la banalisation du mensonge à grande échelle d’un Aznar.

La révolution virtualiste est donc bien une révolution conservatrice. Le nouvel ordre mondial établi et maintenu par les “virtualistes” américains armés à crédit par la sueur des ouvrières chinoises pour conduire la “guerre sans fin contre le terrorisme” n’est autre que le prolongement de l’ancien ordre mondial avec quelques changements de rôles, la Chine nouvelle remplaçant le Japon rassi comme puissance investisseuse, le monde musulman et le mouvement social global assimilé au terrorisme remplaçant la menace communiste.
Face à cette perspective, outre les incalculables dégâts humains et sociaux déjà vécus et prévisibles, deux dangers guettent : la perte même de l’essence-même de l’humanité et de sa conscience d’elle-même dans la virtualité construite pour à la fois accomplir et masquer la réalité de la domination ; un scénario global sur le modèle de la catastrophe de l’Ile de Pâque sur une planête désormais trop petite pour nous permettre sans risque majeur un nouveau cycle de “croissance” de 30 ans prévisible selon ce modèle.

copyleft avec mention des sources
notv.info
Pascal Bitsch
mai 2004

  Clair-Nette-Precis.
  (avec Proyection Strategique)-Felisitations.
  (Grand Merci)
  a/m.Austral.
  epulev.-

  Absolument:...extraordinaires
        et tres graves.-
        (Et crisis Psycologique:ergo)-
 
        ‘004-05-28-a/m.
        AmericAustral.

http://www.courrierinternational.com/article.asp?obj_id=23553&provenance=accueil&bloc=07

Courrier international - 27 mai 2004
ANTIMONDIALISME - La réclame aryenne de Coca-Cola s’expose à Londres  
Le divertissement politique fait recette, et le comédien anglais Mark Thomas l’a bien compris. Dans son émission sur la chaîne de télévision britannique Channel 4, l’équivalent anglais de Michel Moore multiplie les actions coup-de-poing contre la guerre en Irak, la cupidité des multinationales ou la privatisation du système de santé. Et c’est dans les musées qu’il entend mener son nouvel assaut. 

“En collaboration avec l’artiste Tracey Sanders-Wood, Thomas a choisi d’exposer à Londres les publicités nazies de Coca-Cola”, indique le quotidien The Independent. Il ne pouvait rêver sujet plus polémique : d’après The Independent, “la société Coca-Cola a diffusé des publicités dans les journaux nazis, s’est exposée dans les foires industrielles du parti et a même installé une usine d’embouteillage dans la région envahie des Sudètes”.

Fondée par Max Keith, la filiale allemande Coca-Cola GmbH occupait une place de choix lors de ces foires dédiées au “peuple créateur”. Elle participa même à l’effort de guerre nazi et fut dirigée par l’ancien boxeur Max Schmeling, symbole malgré lui de la suprématie aryenne. De nombreux sites antimondialistes se sont d’ailleurs fait un plaisir d’entonner avec ironie des “Coca über alles” ou autres “Coca macht frei”.

Le tour de force de Thomas et de sa comparse est d’avoir réuni quelque 400 pièces d’exposition, affiches, slogans et bouteilles, qui, selon The Independent, “se combinent de façon troublante avec la propagande hitlérienne”. Les deux artistes déclarent “vouloir faire réfléchir les gens à chaque fois qu’ils boivent un Coca”. 

Il est à craindre que notre grand symbole néo-européen qu’est Lech Walesa, ait attrapé une bien mauvaise maladie au contact des vrais néo-cons de Washington.
Le voilà qui vient d’oublier qu’il fut un ardent défenseur de la guerre, et insiste maintenant sur le fait qu’il a toujours été contre. D’ailleurs, eut-il été encore président de la Pologne, jamais il n’aurait envoyé des troupes.

Au passage il en profite pour assassiner la gestion de la guerre ... par les français et les allemands !

——

http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1433_A_1217538_1_A,00.html

Lech Walesa: Germany and France Share Blame for Iraq War  
 
  Walesa opposed sending Polish troops to Iraq
 
 
The former Polish president and Nobel Peace Prize winner says Germany and France are partially to blame for the Iraq war, because they failed to convince other EU members of their case against invasion.

In an interview with German public broadcasters ARD and Deutsche Welle, Lech Walesa said he would not have sent Polish troops to Iraq if he were still president. The former leader also pointed his finger at the two bigger EU members, France and Germany, blaming them for failing to prevent the Iraq war.

“If I had still been president of Poland at the time, I would not have sent troops to Iraq,” Walesa said. “I would have met with the heads of government from Germany and France and worked for a common European position. It’s not the United States that is to blame for the war, but rather the EU, and in particular Germany and France. They knew the war was coming and they failed to prevent it.”

“They neglected to bring together the old and new EU member states,” he added. “Such an important organization as the European Union should have spoken out with one voice against the war. If that had been the case, the United States could not have ignored it. Instead, France and Germany allowed Europe to split on the issue, and therefore we had war. France and Germany are responsible.”

Poland, a staunch U.S. ally in Iraq, contributed combat troops to last year’s war and now commands a multinational stabilization force that includes 2,400 of its own soldiers. After Spain pulled back its troops earlier this year, Europe looked to Poland to follow suit, but current President Aleksander Kwasniewski has said his country will not back out.

In response to the current situation Walesa said: “Some things are going wrong in Iraq at the moment. We don’t have to support that.”

Walesa, the founder of the Solidarity movement and a key figure in the toppling of communism in Poland, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. He was president of Poland from 1990 until 1995, when he lost his re-election bid to Kwasniewski.

In an extensive interview, Deutsche Welle asked Walesa whether he plans on running for president again and how he views the future of Poland within the EU.
———

Pour un rappel des faits, voici ce que déclarait notre prix Nobel pas plus tard que début 2003:

——-

“WARSAW, Poland - Former Polish President Lech Walesa, the winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize, on Wednesday urged the U.N. Security Council to back a U.S.-led war on Iraq and criticized the United Nation’s “ineffectiveness” so far.
...
“International authorization for the United States is today the only way to solve common problems,” Walesa said in a statement. “In view of the ineffectiveness of U.N. actions, the international community must authorize the United States and its allies, as its representatives, to take the necessary action.”

“Otherwise, there will be further conflicts and mutual accusations will weaken cooperation between the nations of the democratic world,” Walesa added. “

(Retrouvé sur un site peu engageant http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/000202.shtml )

———

Voir original http://fr.news.yahoo.com/040526/202/3tnxp.html

mercredi 26 mai 2004, 16h44

Le New York Times admet avoir été trompé par ses sources avant la guerre

NEW YORK (AFP) - Le prestigieux New York Times a reconnu mercredi ses erreurs dans sa couverture des événements et arguments ayant conduit à la guerre en Irak en mars 2003, admettant avoir été trompé par de fausses informations transmises par des exilés irakiens.

“Nous avons trouvé que plusieurs couvertures n’ont pas été aussi rigoureuses qu’elles auraient dû l’être”, écrivent les rédacteurs en chef dans un message occupant un bon tiers de page et intitulé “Le Times et l’Irak”.

Les informations, qui pouvaient déjà être sujettes à débat avant la guerre et qui aujourd’hui sont fortement contestées, ont été “insuffisamment nuancées” ou n’ont pas même été mises en doute, admettent-ils.

“Avec le recul, nous regrettons de ne pas avoir été plus pugnaces en réexaminant les affirmations alors que de nouvelles preuves émergeaient - ou manquaient”, ajoutent-ils.

Selon le Times, la plupart des articles écrits par différents journalistes dépendaient en partie d’informations transmises par des Irakiens en exil, dont la priorité était le renversement de Saddam Hussein.

Leur crédibilité a depuis été mise en cause, reconnaît le quotidien, qui mentionne l’exemple du chef du Congrès national irakien (CNI), Ahmed Chalabi, cité dans des articles du Times depuis 1991 et tombé aujourd’hui en disgrâce.

“Compliquant la tâche des journalistes, les éléments donnés par ces exilés étaient souvent confirmés avec enthousiasme par les responsables américains convaincus de la nécessité d’intervenir en Irak”, relève le journal, qui ajoute, concernant notamment la question de l’arsenal irakien, avoir “l’intention de poursuivre un travail acharné pour établir la réalité”.

voir original : http://fr.news.yahoo.com/040526/5/3tnww.html

mercredi 26 mai 2004, 16h28
Blair minimise les divergences avec Washington sur l’Irak

LONDRES (AP) - Le Premier ministre britannique Tony Blair a tenu mercredi à minimiser les divergences apparues la veille entre Londres et Washington sur l’interprétation de leur projet de résolution conjoint sur l’Irak.

Devant la Chambre des communes, lors de la séance des questions, une députée travailliste s’est déclarée “ravie de voir qu’il y a des divergences politiques entre (Blair) et le président Bush sur l’Irak”.

Ce à quoi Tony Blair a répondu: “je suis désolé d’avoir à décevoir mon honorable amie (...) mais nous sommes tout à fait d’accord sur le fait que la souveraineté totale doit être transférée au peuple irakien et que la force multinationale doit rester sous commandement américain”.

Reste que la veille, Tony Blair avait été plus loin que ne semble le prévoir le projet de résolution en l’état actuel: il avait estimé que le futur gouvernement provisoire irakien devrait avoir un droit de veto sur les opérations militaires majeures de la coalition. Et pris l’exemple de l’assaut américain en avril contre Falloujah: “s’il y a une décision politique à prendre, pour savoir si on va dans tel endroit d’une manière particulière, cela doit être fait avec l’accord du gouvernement irakien”, a-t-il dit lors d’une conférence de presse: “Le contrôle politique final revient au gouvernement irakien. C’est ce que le transfert de souveraineté veut dire”. Avant de juger “essentiel que, le plus vite possible, on donne la responsabilité opérationnelle de la sécurité aux Irakiens eux-mêmes”.

Interrogé sur ce son de cloche divergent venu de Londres, le Secrétaire d’Etat américain Colin Powell avait fait une mise au point, précisant que les forces armées américaines “feraient ce qui est nécessaire pour se protéger” ainsi que pour “accomplir leur mission”.

Mercredi, M. Blair a réaffirmé sa position: “la prise de décision ultime en matière stratégique et politique passe au gouvernement irakien après le 30 juin”, a-t-il déclaré devant les Communes, ajoutant que “bien sûr, une fois que les décisions stratégiques ont été prises, la gestion de toute opération est de la responsabilité de la force multinationale”. Et, bien entendu, ces forces seront en mesure de se protéger et resteront sous commandement américain ou britannique, a-t-il conclu.

Membre du Conseil de gouvernement irakien, Adnan Pachachi a estimé pour sa part que la résolution devait être “clarifiée” pour ce qui est des relations entre les forces étrangères et le futur gouvernement irakien. “Nous comprenons que toute opération devra avoir l’approbation du gouvernement irakien”, la force multinationale restant en Irak “avec le consentement” dudit gouvernement, a-t-il déclaré à la BBC.

Car le projet de résolution américano-britannique ne précise pas les relations entre le gouvernement irakien et la force multinationale. Elles devraient être fixées via un échange de lettres avec le futur gouvernement provisoire, estiment les auteurs du texte. AP

nc/v275