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Loose Change Final Cut * RAND * Poems


25 November 2007
Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.

Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.

And let them bear the guilty burden before the world,
Of this innocent soul.
Let them bear the burden before their children and before history,
Of this wasted, sinless soul,
Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the protectors of peace.


-- Jumah al Dossari

The above is called Death Poem by Jumah al Dossari,
who is a 33-year old Bahraini who has been held at
Guantanamo Bay for more than five years. He has been
in solitary confinement since the end of 2003 and,
according to the U.S. military, has tried to kill
himself twelve times while in custody.

1) Loose Change Final Cut Truth-Wide-Open
- - Explosive and Revealing Quotations about 9/11 Completely Ignored
2) World Reports the Collapse of the Internal US Balance of Power
- - Moussaoui judge questions government
- - FBI's Forensic Test Full of Holes
- - Did RAND Corporation Pen the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act?
- - "End Game - Blueprint for Global Enslavement" by Alex Jones
3) Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak
- - Guantanamo detainees' testament to the power of the human spirit
4) Media Consolidation: A primer on making your opinion heard
- - Stop More Big Media Owner-Consolidation

Editor’s Notes:

What a divide between mainstream news and truth! But the generations’ revival, aware of the blatant lies surrounding the September 11 cover-up, JFK assassination, Gulf of Tonkin, Operation Mockingbird (CIA control of media).. we were destined to meet at this pivotal issue. Loose Change is a phenomenon with what appears to be integrity as its basis for being. The Colonial Theatre this Tuesday will premiere the northeast USA debut of Loose Change Final Cut, with Dylan Avery and Jason Burmas for Q&A. Proceeds will benefit the FealGood Foundation, supporting 9/11 First Responders.

The Collapse of the Internal US Balance of Power seems to be the sign of the times; item two begins with an excerpt on this from World Reports. The next article is on a judge questioning the government’s case with conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui. “U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said she can no longer trust the CIA and other government agencies on how they represent classified evidence in terror cases.” An honest judge is hard to find. The next article “FBI's Forensic Test Full of Holes” by the Washington Post is about FBI ballistic junk science, used since the Kennedy Assassination investigation. It had been used to convict hundreds of possibly innocent individuals. Meanwhile, another Thanksgiving, JFK assassination anniversary, and Leonard Peltier is incarcerated, and the FBI knows it was NOT his rifle used in a murder; when will he be free?

But there is more in this second item, too; don’t miss reading Did RAND Corporation Pen the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act? Plus, note the following article to watch, or purchase Alex Jones latest film: "End Game - Blueprint for Global Enslavement". Item three is on a new book, Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak, and a review on it by Jerry Mazza. Item four is on Media Consolidation. We have until December 11 to make our voices heard.


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LOOSE CHANGE FINAL CUT
Northeast Theater Premiere Showing

Nov. 27, 2007 - Colonial Theater, Keene, NH
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The Boston Tea Party and Conference
for 9/11 Truth!
Scientists & Citizens Speak Out!

December 15 & 16, 2007

Keene, NH
Thursday, December 13th, 7pm
Richard Gage AIA Architect
presents:
9/11: Re-examining the 3 WTC High-rise "Collapses"
Keene State College — Redfern Arts Center
229 Main Street Keene, New Hampshire 03431


Valley 9/11 Truth
PRESENTS
"Oil Smoke & Mirrors"
Film screening and following discussion at the
Media Education Foundation, Northampton, MA

Wednesday, December 12, 2007; 7:00pm

MUSIC BENEFIT 9/11 TRUTH
Featuring
John Heartson
Also
John Coster and Mary Serreze
at
Evolution Cafe
To benefit
Valley 9/11 Truth and Flyby News
Thursday, December 20, 2007; 7:00 to 9:00 pm



1) Loose Change Final Cut Truth-Wide-Open

- - Explosive and Revealing Quotations about 9/11 Completely Ignored

Loose Change Final Cut Is Here!

This movie could be the catalyst for a new independent investigation, in which the family members receive answers to their questions, and the TRUE PERPETRATORS of this horrendous crime are PROSECUTED and PUNISHED.

Loose Change Final Cut is the third installment of the documentary that asks the tough questions about the 9/11 attacks and related events.

Loose Change, a documentary ..which just might be the first Internet blockbuster.
-Vanity Fair

Loose Change is a... blizzard of statistics, photographs, documents, eyewitness accounts
and expert testimony set to a trippy hip-hop backbeat.

- TIME MAGAZINE

millions of people have heard its message.
Like it or loathe it, you can't ignore Loose Change.

-The Guardian-

Visit the Loose Change website

Loose Change The Final Cut

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Infowars.net | November 9 , 2007
Loose Change: Final Cut Is Here
BY Steve Watson


Loose Change: Final Cut has arrived. Two days ahead of the original schedule, the long awaited final version of the film that took the 9/11 truth movement mainstream is now available to buy on DVD.

The original Loose Change and Loose Change 2nd Edition have been viewed at least 50 million times over the Internet, making it one of the most watched movies in history, but the Final Cut goes above and beyond, making it not simply the third in a trilogy but a completely new film with oodles of unseen footage, commentary, interviews and eyewitness testimony.

In an effort to be the catalyst for a new independent investigation of 9/11, the film features new and exclusive interviews with firefighters, EMT’s, first responders and other officials who were all eyewitnesses to multiple secondary explosions in the twin towers and around the ground zero area.

View the official trailer below.
http://feareffect.wordpress.com/2007/11/11/loose-change-final-cut-is-here/

Part of the revenue from the sales will be donated to 9/11 victim’s charities such as The Feal Good Foundation and WTC Families for Proper Burial.

The film will be subject to selected cinematic release in 2008, but many grassroots and selected theatres have already agreed to pick up the movie from December onwards across the U.S and Europe and the Loose Change team are encouraging activists to ask that their local theatre to screen the documentary.

Throughout the year Dylan Avery Jason Bermas and Corey Rowe, have been negotiating with various different producers in Hollywood in hope of securing a mainstream release. However, the team recently decided to forgo such a deal in order to retain full editorial control of the film.

“This just wasn’t an option for us, as the integrity of our message is ultimately all that we have, and we feared that ‘the machine’ would corrupt or squash our film and its movement.” an official statement read.

The trio are also extremely proud of the manner in which their initial release of the internet phenomenon documentary has spawned a move that has seen the release of scores of successful independent grassroots films. The team wish to continue to challenge the traditional marketing channels and reinvent the way that films are distributed.

Alex Jones worked with the trio in an executive producer role on the film and has partly financed it’s production and distribution.

Other consultants on The Final Cut include Professor David Ray Griffin, author of three widely read studies of the 2001 attacks.

In the coming weeks and months we expect to witness the launch of a fresh wave of attacks against the 9/11 truth movement by neocon hacks such as Bill O’Reilly, who has regularly equated the movement with terrorists , a tactic that has since been echoed by other mainstream gatekeepers.

O’Reilly admits right off the bat that he has not even seen Loose Change, following in the trend of his fellow debunkers who have already arrived at a judgment without even checking the evidence. O’Reilly has made the argument that ” Loose Change should be banned just as some books should be banned.”

Orders are now being taken for the DVD

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Loose Change Northeast Theatre Premiere Showing
Loose Change Final Cut ~ November 27, 2007
Colonial Theatre – Main Street, Keene, N.H.
7:00 PM + Q&A with Dylan Avery and Jason Burmas.

Admission: $ 10
All events proceeds shall be donated to the Fealgood Foundation
for the benefit of 911 first responders and their families.

Many 9/11 First Responders are ill and dying from exposure to toxic dust released by the destruction of the World Trade Center. Organizing this event are the Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Monadnock 9/11 Truth Alliance, and WeAreChange.org

About
Dylan Avery - Director, Editor, Founder
{from LooseChange911 website}:

In May 2002, after spending three months doing construction work on Vines, I had a half hour conversation with James Gandolfini at the opening party. To make a long, drawn out conversation short, James told me, "If you want to be a successful director, you have to have something to say to the world."

It was that month that I began writing "Loose Change," a fictional story about my friends and I discovering that September 11th was not a terrorist attack, but rather, an attack by their own government.

Upon researching for the movie, it became apparent that the subject matter may not have been entirely fiction. Over two years time, adding more and more information, the fictional movie evolved into what it is today; a documentary.

In May 2004, I moved down to Washington, DC, at the time when "Loose Change" was beginning to take shape. Bouncing from couch to couch, technically homeless, eventually landing a job and an apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland, the entire time I worked on the documentary with every spare moment and dollar to my name.

In January 2005, DJ Skooly moved into my apartment fresh out of Los Angeles, and donated a rich soundtrack and recording equipment which is responsible for "Loose Change"'s unique presentation.

In April 2005, after a financial boost from Phil Jayhan of Letsroll911.org, a 1,000 DVD pressing of the original Loose Change was released on the internet, mostly on a whim.

Approximately 200 pre-orders, from the course of the past two months, were hand-addressed and packaged by my girlfriend Jessica and I. Orders started to come in at anywhere from 1 to 5 a day, something which at the time was alarming in its own right.

Eventually, word spread, and the movie started collecting a grassroots fanbase. Whenever I wasn't waiting tables at Red Lobster, Jessica and I were in the living room, addressing and stuffing envelopes, one by one. The people at the post office became curious as Jess and I put stamps on hundreds of individual orders at once, creating an assembly line inside the Post Office.

In June 2005, my best friend Korey departed from the United States Armed Forces to come support the cause, and by July 2005, after a trip to California to visit KPFK 90.7 FM and Sofia Shafquat, it was apparant that Loose Change had taken on a life of its own.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Loose Change and Loose Change 2nd Edition were edited on a $1500 Compaq Presario Laptop, using Adobe Premiere Pro 7.0 and After Effects 6.5 (2nd Edition).

The original Loose Change, including the laptop, footage, and other expenses, cost only $2000 to make, and its success is responsible for putting us where we are today.

Jason Bermas Jason Bermas - Producer, Designer. email

A Graphic Designer located in Upstate New York , I have been independently researching 9/11 for over three and a half years. After realizing that something was very wrong I began showing people the video and photographic evidence that contradicted the official version of events.

Through a mutual friend I was introduced to Dylan and Korey, and the rest will be history. I was lucky enough to help out on the second edition of the most well produced and concise 9/11 documentary out there, and for that I am eternally grateful.

My goals in this situation are simple, FIGHT this WAR through PEACEFUL INFORMATION until those truly responsible are tried for their CRIMES, and the RESTORATION of the CONSTITUTION and BILL of RIGHTS is complete!

Loose Change Final Cut available!
$19.95 from lc911.com! Click here!

www.lc911.com/lc911/catalog/Loose-Change-Final-Cut-DVD-p-44.html

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- - Explosive and Revealing Quotations about 9/11 Completely Ignored
by the Mainstream Media

By Arabesque
November 16, 2007

These explosive and revealing comments about 9/11 have been completely ignored by the Mainstream Media. While talking about the 9/11 Commission, 9/11 family member Patty Casazza reveals that FBI translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds had incriminating insider information about the 9/11 attacks:

The Government knew… other than the exact moment… they knew the date, and the method of which the attacks were supposed to come ... And none of this made it to mainstream media. None of it made it into the Commission.

And yet, again, all of your Representatives, on the day that the Commission book came out, were on their pulpits saying, "What a fabulous job this Commission has done. A real service to this nation." And it was anything but a service. It was a complete fabrication.

Family member Patty Casazza is not alone in her belief that we do not have the whole truth about 9/11 .

The lack of Mainstream news coverage of these views is very apparent. Fox News in a secret memo implicitly admits that there is a problem with the 'official story' of 9/11:

"The so-called 9/11 Commission has already been meeting. In fact, this is its eighth session. The fact that former Clinton and both former and current Bush administration officials are testifying gives it a certain tension, but this is not ' what did he know and when did he know it' stuff. Don't turn this into Watergate."

In fact, a similar sentiment was expressed by the 9/11 commissioners in their book Without Precedent:

"We were supposed to be independent, not necessarily confrontational. We were investigating a national catastrophe, not a White House transgression; this was 9/11, not Watergate."

One way to avoid controversy is to avoid placing blame:

"In… blaming everybody a little, the Commission blames nobody." Benjamin DeMott of Harpers Magazine

"The purpose of a government investigatory commission is to place blame where it does the least harm politically." Paul Craig Roberts

"Our aim has not been to assign individual blame." 9/11 Commission Report, p. xvi

"This was not something that had to happen… There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed." December 17-21, 2003: 9/11 Commission Chairman Says 9/11 Attacks Were Preventable

They "failed" and yet no one was fired or held accountable for it. Instead, those who were in charge of US defense on 9/11 were promoted. No one was fired or reprimanded.

Omission is one of the most powerful tools of disinformation used by the MSM. We see this every day when they do not cover those questioning the official story of 9/11, or when they fail to do this job themselves as implied in this Fox Memo. When they do, they highlight the weakest theories and unprovable speculation along with the ad-hominem "conspiracy theorist" and "conspiracy theories".

We also see omission when they make entire hit pieces, like the History Channel's 9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction, in which they pretend that they have all of the answers to the questions.

Another gem of a quotation was provided by NIST. They were tasked with explaining the collapse of the WTC towers and Building 7 on 9/11. In response to a request for correction by 9/11 family members and scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, NIST replied:

"We are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse".

That's what many 9/11 skeptics have been complaining about for a long time. Here is how George Washington puts it:

Well, yes! That's exactly the point the petitioners are trying to make. No modern steel frame high-rise building has ever collapsed before or after 9/11 due to fire other than at WTC 1, 2 and 7, even though other fires have burned longer and hotter . And even if they somehow did start to collapse, the collapse would not have occurred at virtual free-fall speeds while creating enormous dust clouds right from the start.

While NIST is "unable to provide a full explanation", Physicist Steven Jones had already made this observation when he characterized the NIST report as a "pre-collapse" report:

The NIST team fairly admits that their report 'does not actually include the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached.' (NIST, 2005, p. 80, fn. 12; emphasis added.) Quite a confession, since much of the external evidence for explosive demolition typically comes after collapse initiation, as seen in cases of acknowledged controlled demolition. (Harris, 2000.) The NIST report could be called the official 'pre-collapse theory.'

In other words, NIST had already admitted that they couldn't, or wouldn't provide a full explanation when they specified their report would only deal with "collapse initiation". How the 110 floor World Trade Center Towers crumbled completely to the ground when they were specifically designed to survive plane crashes of the type seen on 9/11, is left unanswered by NIST.

Dr. Steven Jones, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, and others have their own theory.

---------------
Source URL: http://arabesque911.blogspot.com/2007/10/two-revealing-quotes-about-911.htm
Also posted:
www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20071122221952157



2) World Reports the Collapse of the Internal US Balance of Power

- - Moussaoui judge questions government
- - FBI's Forensic Test Full of Holes
- - Did RAND Corporation Pen the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act?
- - "End Game - Blueprint for Global Enslavement" by Alex Jones

- - The Collapse of the Internal US Balance of Power
The following is an except from Christopher Story’s
latest issue from via World Reports -22 November 2007
ADMINISTRATION BYPASSES CONGRESS AND THE BUDGET
WANTAGATE SCANDAL ESCALATES INTO CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS


[EXCERPT]

THE COLLAPSE OF THE INTERNAL U.S. BALANCE OF POWER
In recent printed publications, the Editor of this service has displayed a two-part diagram depicting the balance of power in both the United States and the former Soviet Union, which is identical.

It can be described in simple terms as follows:

The upper segment shows a triangle (pyramid) with of course three sides. The left-hand flank represents the INTELLIGENCE POWER, The right-hand flank represents the MILITARY POWER. The base of the triangle represents THE PARTY.

In the United States THE PARTY is represented by false ‘opposites’ called the Republican Party (currently: THESIS) and the Democratic Party (currently ANTITHESIS). SYNTHESIS is represented by the (INTELLIGENCE) power that controls and manipulates both these controlled ‘opposites’ in order to yield the INTENDED outcome (i.e., the SYNTHESIS). This is the classic, Leninist control methodology, replicated of course in the ‘former’ Soviet Union (which is the label-changed USSR).

The most powerful of the three powers is the INTELLIGENCE POWER, because it has the resources and capability of penetrating the other two powers. Therefore, in both countries, the INTELLIGENCE POWER holds the upper hand, which is both extremely dangerous and most unhealthy – not least because democracy is a myth and the intelligence power is typically amoral, deceitful, wedded to lies, deception and all Works of Darkness, and is incapable of straight dealing.

The lower segment of the Editor’s two-part published diagram shows a single thick black rule, three times the thickness of each side of the triangle in the upper segment. The thick rule represents the collapse of the corrupt INTELLIGENCE POWER upon the other two sides, signifying the hegemony of the INTELLIGENCE POWER. This is the situation prevailing today in the United States.

For the complete article, see:
http://worldreports.org/news/99_administration_bypas

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- - Moussaoui judge questions government
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer
November 20, 2007

A federal judge expressed frustration Tuesday that the government provided incorrect information about evidence in the prosecution of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and raised the possibility of ordering a new trial in another high-profile terrorism case.

At a post-trial hearing Tuesday for Ali al-Timimi, a Muslim cleric from Virginia sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for soliciting treason, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said she can no longer trust the CIA and other government agencies on how they represent classified evidence in terror cases.

Attorneys for al-Timimi have been seeking access to documents. They also want to depose government witnesses to determine whether the government improperly failed to disclose the existence of certain evidence.

The prosecutors have asked her to dismiss the defense request. The government has denied the allegations but has done so in secret pleadings to the judge that defense lawyers are not allowed to see. Even the lead prosecutors in the al-Timimi case have not had access to the information; they have relied on the representations of other government lawyers.

After the hearing, the judge issued an order that said she would not rule on the prosecutors' motion until the government grants needed security clearances to al-Timimi's defense lawyer, Jonathan Turley, and the lead trial prosecutor so they can review the secret pleadings.

Brinkema said she no longer feels confident relying on the government briefs, particularly since prosecutors admitted last week that similar representations made in the Moussaoui case were false.

In a letter made public Nov. 13, prosecutors in the Moussaoui case admitted to Brinkema that the CIA had wrongly assured her that no videotapes or audiotapes existed of interrogations of certain high-profile terrorism detainees. In fact, two such videotapes and one audio tape existed.

Moussaoui, who had pleaded guilty to terrorism charges, was sentenced to life in prison last year. Because Moussaoui admitted his guilt, it is unlikely that the disclosures of new evidence would result in his conviction being overturned.

Turley, al-Timimi's defense lawyer, praised Brinkema for taking a skeptical view of the government's assertions in addressing al-Timimi's case.

"We believe a new trial is warranted," he said in a phone interview. "We are entirely confident that there are communications that were not turned over to the defense. These are very serious allegations."

Al-Timimi challenged his conviction in 2005 after revelations that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to conduct certain types of domestic surveillance without a search warrant. Turley contends that the program is illegal and that any evidence obtained from such surveillance should have been turned over to defense lawyers.

He is confident that al-Timimi, a prominent U.S. Muslim cleric who was known to keep close ties with radical Saudi clerics would have been a target of the surveillance program.

Brinkema made no rulings during the brief, 20-minute hearing in Alexandria, but her displeasure at the government was apparent. Prosecutors did not have the opportunity to speak during the hearing, except to note their appearance for the record.

Al-Timimi, a born U.S. citizen from Fairfax, was convicted after prosecutors portrayed him as the spiritual leader of a group of young Muslim men from the Washington area who played paintball games in 2000 and 2001 as a means of preparing for holy war around the globe.

After Sept. 11, they said, al-Timimi told his followers that the attacks were a harbinger of a final apocalyptic battle between Muslims and nonbelievers and exhorted them to travel to Afghanistan and join the Taliban to fight U.S. troops.

Several of his followers admitted that they traveled to Pakistan and received training from a militant Pakistani group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, but none actually joined the Taliban.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria declined to comment Tuesday.

Source URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071120/ap_on_re_us/terror_paintball

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- - FBI's Forensic Test Full of Holes
Lee Wayne Hunt is one of hundreds of defendants whose convictions are in question now that FBI forensic evidence has been discredited.

By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 18, 2007; A01

Hundreds of defendants sitting in prisons nationwide have been convicted with the help of an FBI forensic tool that was discarded more than two years ago. But the FBI lab has yet to take steps to alert the affected defendants or courts, even as the window for appealing convictions is closing, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and "60 Minutes" has found.

The science, known as comparative bullet-lead analysis, was first used after President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. The technique used chemistry to link crime-scene bullets to ones possessed by suspects on the theory that each batch of lead had a unique elemental makeup.

In 2004, however, the nation's most prestigious scientific body concluded that variations in the manufacturing process rendered the FBI's testimony about the science "unreliable and potentially misleading." Specifically, the National Academy of Sciences said that decades of FBI statements to jurors linking a particular bullet to those found in a suspect's gun or cartridge box were so overstated that such testimony should be considered "misleading under federal rules of evidence."

A year later, the bureau abandoned the analysis.

But the FBI lab has never gone back to determine how many times its scientists misled jurors. Internal memos show that the bureau's managers were aware by 2004 that testimony had been overstated in a large number of trials. In a smaller number of cases, the experts had made false matches based on a faulty statistical analysis of the elements contained in different lead samples, documents show.

"We cannot afford to be misleading to a jury," the lab director wrote to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in late summer 2005 in a memo outlining why the bureau was abandoning the science. "We plan to discourage prosecutors from using our previous results in future prosecutions."

Despite those private concerns, the bureau told defense lawyers in a general letter dated Sept. 1, 2005, that although it was ending the technique, it "still firmly supports the scientific foundation of bullet lead analysis." And in at least two cases, the bureau has tried to help state prosecutors defend past convictions by using court filings that experts say are still misleading. The government has fought releasing the list of the estimated 2,500 cases over three decades in which it performed the analysis.

For the majority of affected prisoners, the typical two-to-four-year window to appeal their convictions based on new scientific evidence is closing.

Dwight E. Adams, the now-retired FBI lab director who ended the technique, said the government has an obligation to release all the case files, to independently review the expert testimony and to alert courts to any errors that could have affected a conviction.

"It troubles me that anyone would be in prison for any reason that wasn't justified. And that's why these reviews should be done in order to determine whether or not our testimony led to the conviction of a wrongly accused individual," Adams said in an interview. "I don't believe there's anything that we should be hiding."

The Post and "60 Minutes" identified at least 250 cases nationwide in which bullet-lead analysis was introduced, including more than a dozen in which courts have either reversed convictions or now face questions about whether innocent people were sent to prison. The cases include a North Carolina drug dealer who has developed significant new evidence to bolster his claim of innocence and a Maryland man who was recently granted a new murder trial.

Documents show that the FBI's concerns about the science dated to 1991 and came to light only because a former FBI lab scientist began challenging it.

In response to the information uncovered by The Post and "60 Minutes," the FBI late last week said it would initiate corrective actions including a nationwide review of all bullet-lead testimonies and notification to prosecutors so that the courts and defendants can be alerted. The FBI lab also plans to create a system to monitor the accuracy of its scientific testimony.

The Post-"60 Minutes" investigation "has brought some serious concerns to our attention," said John Miller, assistant director of public affairs. "The FBI is committed to addressing these concerns. It's the right thing to do."

The past inaction on bullet-lead contrasts with the last time the FBI's science was called into question, in the mid-1990s, when 13 lab employees were accused of shoddy work and of giving overstated testimony involving several disciplines, including explosives as well as hair and fiber analysis. Back then, the Justice Department reviewed hundreds of cases in which FBI experts testified, and it notified prisoners about problems that affected their convictions. The government did so because prosecutors have a legal obligation to turn over evidence that could help defendants prove their innocence.

Current FBI managers said that they originally believed that the public release of the 2004 National Academy of Sciences report and the subsequent ending of the analysis generated enough publicity to give defense attorneys and their clients plenty of opportunities to appeal. The bureau also pointed out that it sent form letters to police agencies and umbrella groups for local prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers.

Even the harshest critics concede that the FBI correctly measured the chemical elements of lead bullets. But the science academy found that the lab used faulty statistical calculations to declare that bullets matched even when the measurements differed slightly. FBI witnesses also overstated the significance of the matches.

The FBI's umbrella letters, however, glossed over those problems and did little to alert prosecutors or defense lawyers that erroneous testimony could have helped convict defendants, one of the recipients said.

"Frankly, the letters that they sent them, you know, were minimizing the significance of the error in the first place," said defense lawyer Barry Scheck, whose nonprofit Innocence Project has helped free more than 200 wrongly convicted people. The letters said that "our science wasn't really inaccurate. Our interpretation was wrong. But the interpretation is everything."

The FBI said last week that the 2005 letters "should have been clearer." Scheck has now been asked to assist the FBI's review.

Since 2005, the nonpartisan Forensic Justice Project, run by former FBI lab whistle-blower Frederic Whitehurst, has tried to force the bureau to release a list of bullet-lead cases under the Freedom of Information Act. The Post joined the request, citing the public value of the information. But the government has stalled, among other things seeking $70,000 to search for the documents.

"By stonewalling and delaying the release, Justice has ensured that wrongfully convicted citizens are deprived of their right to appeal or seek post-conviction relief because the statute of limitations in many states has expired," said David Colapinto, the lawyer for the group.

As part of its review, the FBI will release all bullet-lead case files involving convictions.

The Scope of the Cases

Most of the estimated 2,500 instances in which the FBI performed bullet-lead exams involved homicide cases that were prosecuted at the state and local levels, where FBI examiners often were summoned as expert witnesses for the prosecution.

To compile an independent list, The Post and "60 Minutes" conducted a nationwide review, interviewing dozens of defense lawyers, prosecutors and scientific experts. The effort also included a sweep of electronic court filings conducted by four summer associates at the New York law firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom.

In many of the cases that raise the most compelling questions, the inmates might have a hard time winning the public's sympathy. Some had criminal backgrounds and most were convicted with at least some additional circumstantial evidence linking them to gruesome crime scenes. But the common thread is that removing the flawed bullet-lead evidence has created reasonable doubt about guilt in the minds of legal experts, the courts and at least one juror.

In North Carolina, Lee Wayne Hunt, 48, remains in prison after being convicted 21 years ago of a double murder. Hunt was an admitted marijuana dealer, but has steadfastly denied involvement in the killings. The FBI testified that its bullet-lead analysis linked fragments from the victims to a box of bullets connected to Hunt's co-defendant. That was the sole forensic evidence against Hunt. State prosecutors recently conceded that the analysis should not be considered "scientifically supported and relied upon."

In addition, the attorney for Hunt's co-defendant, who committed suicide in prison, has since declared that his client carried out the murders alone.

Despite both developments, Hunt has been denied a new trial.

"What they're relying on here is technicalities to keep an innocent man in prison," said Richard Rosen, Hunt's attorney.

Another North Carolina case highlights the impact that FBI bullet-lead testimony had on local jurors. James Donald King faces execution after being convicted of killing his two wives. He admitted to killing his first wife, spent time in prison, was released on parole, remarried and then was convicted of murdering his second wife.

The court is considering whether to grant a new trial.

"If the state had not introduced evidence linking a bullet in Mr. King's car to the bullet fragments in the victim, there would have been reasonable doubt in my mind as to Mr. King's guilt," juror Michelle Lynn Adamson said in an affidavit supporting his appeal.

Other defendants have had mixed results:

* In Maryland, the Court of Appeals last year reversed the murder conviction of Gemar Clemons and ordered a new trial, concluding that the FBI's bullet-lead conclusions "are not generally accepted within the scientific community and thus are not admissible."

* In New Jersey, courts have reversed and reinstated convictions in cases involving bullet lead. The conviction of one defendant, Michael Behn, was reversed, but he recently was re-convicted on other evidence.

* Shane Ragland's conviction in the 1994 killing of a University of Kentucky football player was reversed after Kathleen Lundy, an FBI bullet-lead examiner, pleaded guilty to giving false testimony in his case about bullet-lead manufacturing. A few weeks ago, Ragland pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and is now free.

Ernest Roger Peele, a retired FBI agent who testified about bullet matching in 130 cases, stands by his testimony but said that sometimes the nuances of science get "lost in the adversarial nature of the courtroom." He said he would no longer tell jurors that bullets can be linked to specific boxes because of the science academy's findings.

Peele, who said he was frustrated that he was never contacted by the academy, added that his bullet matches were meant to be "a part of a puzzle" and never the only forensic evidence. "Is it possible there are innocent people in jail? Yes. Is it possible that bullet lead was part of that process? Yes."
The Origins of the Science

The FBI's bullet-lead analysis was created more than four decades ago to link suspects to crimes in cases in which bullets had fragmented to the point where traditional firearms tracing -- based on gun-barrel groove markings -- would not work.

So FBI scientists used chemistry to try to find matches. Their assumption was that bullets made from the same batch of lead would have the same chemical composition. U.S. bullet-makers recycle lead from car batteries and melt it down in huge amounts, and it was believed that each batch would produce bullets sharing the same trace elements.

The FBI first used the technique after Kennedy's assassination, hoping to determine whether various bullet fragments came from the same gun. In July 1964, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote to the commission investigating the assassination that the bureau's findings were "not considered sufficient" to make any matches.

By the early 1980s, the bureau was the only practitioner of the science and routinely used it to help state and local police link crime-scene bullets to those in a gun or a box owned by a suspect. There are few federal murder statutes, but the FBI routinely helps local law enforcement by providing forensic expertise in homicide cases.

In the mid-1990s, Lundy used the science to help prove that Clinton White House lawyer Vincent W. Foster committed suicide, internal FBI documents show.

In the early days, bullet fragments were subjected to neutron beams that would allow scientists to measure the presence and amounts of at least three chemical elements: antimony, arsenic and copper. If two bullets had similar measurements of those three elements -- the FBI allowed for a small margin of error -- they were declared a match.

In 1996, the bureau switched to a new method called "inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy," in which scientists identified and measured seven trace elements in the bullets, adding the elements bismuth, cadmium, tin and silver. The goal was to increase the precision of the tests. But at the same time that it was measuring more elements, the FBI doubled the margin of error for declaring matches.

"Not enough suspects were being caught in the new net using seven elements, so they chose to use a bigger net," said Clifford Spiegelman, a statistician at Texas A&M University who reviewed the FBI's statistical methods for the science academy.

The bureau conducted a study in 1991 that called bullet-lead analysis a "useful forensic tool" that produced "accurate" and "reproducible" matches.

The study, however, raised two concerns.

First, it found that bullets packaged 15 months apart -- a span that assumed separate batches of lead -- had the exact composition, potentially undercutting the theory that each batch was unique.

Second, it found that bullets in a single box often had several different lead compositions. That finding, it cautioned, should have "significant impact on interpretation of results in forensic cases."

Peele, the retired bullet-lead examiner, was the primary author of that study. He said he still felt comfortable having told jurors in the past that bullets from the same box could be expected to match, as long as his remarks were carefully qualified.

In the Hunt case, he testified that his match of the crime-scene bullets to those in the suspects' box was "typical of everything we examined coming from the same box or the next closest possibility would be the same type, same manufacturer, packaged on or about the same day."

Peele said that he always tried to tell jurors that some bullets in the same box might not match. Still, he said it was reasonable for jurors to conclude that matching bullets could have come from the same box. "I don't think it's misleading as long as it's fully explained," he said.

Some of Peele's colleagues went further. FBI examiner John Riley told a Florida jury: "It is my opinion that all of those bullets came from the same box of ammunition." A New Jersey prosecutor suggested that the bullets matched by the FBI were as unique as a "snowflake or fingerprint."

Today, the FBI regards all such testimony as inaccurate. "The science does not and has never supported the testimony that one bullet can be identified as coming from a particular box of bullets," said Adams, the retired FBI lab director.
A Challenge From Within

The FBI's about-face was prompted by a challenge from within its ranks.

William Tobin, an FBI lab metallurgist for a quarter-century, won accolades working on cases such as the crash of TWA Flight 800, in which he helped prove that the plane was downed by an accidental fuel-tank explosion, not terrorism. Shortly before he retired, Tobin was approached by a woman who believed that the bullet-lead science used against her brother, a New Jersey murder defendant, was flawed. Still employed by the bureau, Tobin was not permitted to help.

But when he retired in 1998, he decided to look further. Bullet matching had always been done by the lab's chemists, and as a metallurgist, Tobin wondered about their assumptions. Soon he joined with Erik Randich, a metallurgist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

By 2001, the two had finished a study that challenged the key assumptions that the FBI had been making about bullet lead. They found that bullets made from the same batch did not always match, because subtle chemical changes occurred throughout the manufacturing process. Tobin bought bullets at several stores in Alaska and found that a large number of bullets with the same composition and manufacturing date were often sold in the same community, suggesting that it was wrong to assume that a bullet match could be narrowed to one suspect.

"It hadn't been based at all on science but, rather, had been based on subjective belief," Tobin said in an interview. "Courts, and even practitioners, had been seduced by the sophistication of the analytical instrumentation for over three decades."

Soon, Tobin began appearing as a witness for defendants challenging FBI bullet-lead matches. Courts began to take notice, too, and the FBI suddenly faced a barrage of questions about a science that had gone unchallenged for three decades.

Adams asked the National Academy of Sciences in 2002 to examine the FBI's work, temporarily halting new bullet-lead matches. Two years later, the academy's findings stunned the bureau.

The panel concluded that although the FBI had been taking accurate bullet-lead measurements in its lab, the statistical methods and its expert testimonies were flawed.

The science "does not . . . have the unique specificity of techniques such as DNA," and "available data does not support any statement that a crime bullet came from a particular box of ammunition," the panel concluded. All the FBI could say going forward was that bullets made from the same batch "are more likely" to match in chemical makeup than those made from different batches. Adams soon declared that such testimony was so general that it had no value to jurors, and he ended the technique.

Truncated, for the complete article, see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2007/11/17/ST2007111701983.html?sid=ST2007111701983

For the Nov. 18, 2007 CBS TV-segment of Sixty Minutes:, see:
“Evidence Of Injustice”
FBI's Bullet Lead Analysis Used Flawed Science
To Convict Hundreds Of Defendants


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- - Did RAND Corporation Pen the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act?

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security is currently scheduling hearings related to this bill. 911Truth.org will update readers as we learn details of those hearings, media coverage of them, and any other useful information. This week and next, while your Senators are home, contact them! Point out the potential anti-Constitution ramifications of this bill and demand they vote no. They have no clue that we 9/11 truth advocates, patriotic Americans working hard to restore our Republic, were equated with jihadists in House subcommittee hearings... don't let that happen in the Senate without our loud, justifiably outraged voice being heard.
— [911truth.org] Ed.

Did RAND Corporation Pen the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act?
Kurt Nimmo
TruthNews
November 22, 2007

According to Jessica Lee of Indypendent and Kamau Karl Franklin of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act was penned with plenty of help from the RAND Corporation.

“Rep. Jane Harman, Democrat from California, has had a lengthy relationship with the Rand Corporation,” Lee tells Democracy Now, although she was unable to determine if RAND wrote the bill. On the 12th anniversary of the OKC bombing, Rep. Harman, as chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment, introduced the bill in the House of Representatives.

“The ‘Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007' seeks to address the roots causes of radicalization, and would establish a grant program to provide funds to States to foster badly needed vertical information sharing from the Intelligence Community to the local level and from local sources to state and federal agencies,” explains Harman’s website. “It also creates a Center of Excellence for the Prevention of Radicalization and Home Grown Terrorism to examine the social, criminal, political, psychological and economic roots of domestic terrorism and to propose solutions, and promotes international collaboration on strategies to combat radicalization.”

Franklin mentions Brian Michael Jenkins, an “expert” on “terrorism, counterinsurgency, and homeland security,” according to RAND. Jenkins is “someone who helped the United States in counterinsurgency measures in Vietnam,” states Franklin. “In addition to that, he wrote a book, and in his own book” Jenkins declared that “in their international campaign, the jihadists will seek common ground with leftists, anti-American and anti-globalist forces, who will in turn see radical Islam comrades against a mutual foe.”

In short, according to Kamau Karl Franklin, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act is more about domestic political activism than Islamic terrorism, although it appears Jenkins—and neocons such as the former Marxist David Horowitz—are attempting establish a link between the two, an absurdity at best, as the best way to discredit both the antiwar and patriot movements.

According to a Center for Constitutional Rights factsheet, RAND is a key player in the “domestic terrorism” prevention effort detailed in this draconian bill. A RAND study “Trends in Terrorism,” Chapter 4 on “homegrown terrorism,” advocates “special attention to environmentalist, Anti-globalization activist and anarchists as potentially new terrorist in the making.”

Not surprisingly, RAND is intimately connected to the global elite and the military-industrial-intelligence complex: “The interlocks between the trustees at Rand, and the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations were so numerous that the Reece Committee listed them in its report (two each for Carnegie and Rockefeller, and three for Ford). Ford gave one million dollars to Rand in 1952 alone, at a time when the chairman of Rand was simultaneously the president of Ford Foundation,” notes SourceWatch (Rene Wormser, Foundations: Their Power and Influence, p65-66). “Two-thirds of Rand’s research involves national security issues. This is divided into Project Air Force, the Arroyo Center (serving the needs of the Army), and the National Defense Research Institute (providing research and analysis for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, and the defense agencies).”

As Lee Rogers notes, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, in its effort to flush out “terrorists,” including those opposed to the sort of globalism supported by Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations, will perform an end-run around the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The bill “states in the first subsection that in general the efforts to defeat thought crime shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights and civil liberties of the United States citizens and lawful permanent residents. How does this protect constitutional rights if they use vague language such as in general that prefaces the statement? This means that the Department of Homeland Security does not have to abide by the Constitution in their attempts to prevent so called homegrown terrorism.”

This bill is completely insane. It literally allows the government to define any and all crimes including thought crime as violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism. Obviously, this legislation is unconstitutional on a number of levels and it is clear that all 404 representatives who voted in favor of this bill are traitors and should be removed from office immediately. The treason spans both political parties and it shows us all that there is no difference between them. The bill will go on to the Senate and will likely be passed and signed into the law by George W. Bush. Considering that draconian legislation like the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act have already been passed, there seems little question that this one will get passed as well. This is more proof that our country has been completely sold out by a group of traitors at all levels of government.

“With overwhelming bipartisan support, Rep. Jane Harman’s ‘Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act’ passed the House 404-6 late last month and now rests in Sen. Joe Lieberman’s Homeland Security Committee. Swift Senate passage appears certain,” write Ralph E. Shaffer and R. William Robinson for the Baltimore Sun. “Not since the ‘Patriot Act’ of 2001 has any bill so threatened our constitutionally guaranteed rights.”

Harman’s “proposed commission is a menace through its power to hold hearings, take testimony and administer oaths, an authority granted to even individual members of the commission—little Joe McCarthys—who will tour the country to hold their own private hearings. An aura of authority will automatically accompany this congressionally authorized mandate to expose native terrorism.”

Ms. Harman’s proposal includes an absurd attack on the Internet, criticizing it for providing Americans with “access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda,” and legalizes an insidious infiltration of targeted organizations. The misnamed “Center of Excellence,” which would function after the commission is disbanded in 18 months, gives the semblance of intellectual research to what is otherwise the suppression of dissent.

While its purpose is to prevent terrorism, the bill doesn’t criminalize any specific conduct or contain penalties. But the commission’s findings will be cited by those who see a terrorist under every bed and who will demand enactment of criminal penalties that further restrict free speech and other civil liberties. Action contrary to the commission’s findings will be interpreted as a sign of treason at worst or a lack of patriotism at the least.

While Ms. Harman denies that her proposal creates “thought police,” it defines “homegrown terrorism” as “planned” or “threatened” use of force to coerce the government or the people in the promotion of “political or social objectives.” That means that no force need actually have occurred as long as the government charges that the individual or group thought about doing it.

As Shaffer and Robinson note, examples of “resulting crackdowns on such protests include the conviction and execution of anarchists tied to Chicago’s 1886 Haymarket Riot.” Additionally, we might add that the FBI’s COINTELPRO—targeting civil rights, antiwar, and national liberation movements—may serve as a template for “insidious infiltration of targeted organizations.” Although the official history would have us believe COINTELRPO was shut down in the 1970s, events since that time reveal the government is still in the business of illegally going after Americans who exercise their constitutional right to petition the government. For more on these recent events, see Brian Glick’s COINTELPRO Revisited: Spying and Disruption.

Thus it makes perfect sense that the corporate media—compromised by the CIA under Operation Mockingbird beginning in the 1950s—would employ the likes of Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly to characterize the antiwar, truth and patriot movements—and even supporters of Ron Paul—as potentially violent advocates of “domestic terrorism.” No doubt, in the weeks and months ahead, we should expect more such propaganda as Harman’s “proposed commissions,” little more than federally mandated inquisitions, get up to speed.

Finally, as noted above, it is only a matter of time before the so-called Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 becomes law. The bill has been referred to the Senate where it awaits scrutiny from the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and is almost certain to pass.

Source URL: www.truthnews.us/?p=941

www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2007112390813364

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- - "End Game - Blueprint for Global Enslavement" by Alex Jones

"End Game - Blueprint for Global Enslavement" [Film]
by Alex Jones [2 hour 20 minute documentary]
http://tinyurl.com/ytaa7w

[The following excerpts a review, received by Email]

For the first time, crusading filmmaker Alex Jones reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME. Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest wars — creating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire."

I have watched tens of documentaries in recent years, chronicling the rise of the globalists through propaganda, media control, lies and manipulations. This documentary goes well beyond exposing the truth of 9/11, the assault on our Constitution and Bill of Rights, the globalist's desire for destruction of US sovereignty, our middle class, and our dollar -- and their desire for how the world as we know it should end. This fully researched documentary is one of the most troubling and action-provoking ones I have ever seen, and I highly recommend that you take the time to educate yourself, watch it, and alert everyone you know to watch it as well.
-- Don B.

You can watch it here => http://tinyurl.com/ytaa7w

For more information and to purchase the DVD, see:
http://infowars-shop.stores.yahoo.net/endgamedvd.html



3) Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak

- - Guantanamo detainees' testament to the power of the human spirit

Poems from Guantanamo –

"At last Guantanamo has found its voice."
--Gore Vidal


"Poetry, art of the human voice, helps turn us toward what we should or must not ignore. Speaking as they can across barriers actual and figurative, translated into our American tongue, these voices in confinement implicitly call us to our principles and to our humanity. They deserve, above all, not admiration or belief or sympathy-but attention. Attention to them is urgent for us."
-Robert Pinsky

"Poems from Guantanamo brings to light figures of concrete, individual humanity, against the fabric of cruelty woven by the 'war on terror.' The poems and poets' biographies reveal one dimension of this officially obscured narrative, from the perspective of the sufferers; the legal and literary essays provide the context which has produced--under atrocious circumstances--a poetics of human dignity."
--Adrienne Rich

Book Description
Since 2002, at least 775 men have been held in the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. According to Department of Defense data, fewer than half of them are accused of committing any hostile act against the United States or its allies. In hundreds of cases, even the circumstances of their initial detainment are questionable.

This collection gives voice to the men held at Guantánamo. Available only because of the tireless efforts of pro bono attorneys who submitted each line to Pentagon scrutiny, Poems from Guantánamo brings together twenty-two poems by seventeen detainees, most still at Guantánamo, in legal limbo.

Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak

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- - Guantanamo detainees' testament to the power of the human spirit
Review
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor

Nov 22, 2007, 01:18

Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak
Edited by Marc Falkoff
University of Iowa Press

This slender volume brings together 22 poems by 17 detainees, the collective voice of some 775 men held in the US detention at Guantanamo, Cuba. According to Department of Defense data, less than half are accused of committing any hostile act against the US or its allies. The very circumstances of the initial detainment of hundreds of these men are questionable, more like a national disgrace.

Yet this volume exists due to the tireless efforts of brave pro bono attorneys who submitted each line for Pentagon scrutiny. Most of its authors are still at Guantanamo in legal limbo. If as Plato said in his dialogue Ion, “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history,” then now we hear truth’s voice. Some of these verses were originally written in toothpaste, others scratched onto foam drinking cups with pebbles and hastily handed to attorneys. They are at once the highest and most basic form of art, i.e. communication, accessible to any reader.

Editor Mark Falkoff is an assistant professor at the Northern Illinois University College of Law and the attorney for 17 Guantanamo prisoners. His brief but eloquent notes recreate the environment and brutal conditions under which these poems were written and these men lived. Falkoff tells of “the stress positions, sleep deprivation, blaring music and extremes of heat and cold during endless interrogations. They [the prisoners] had been sexually humiliated, their physical space invaded by female interrogators who taunted them, fully aware of the insult they were meting out to devout Muslims.

“They were denied basic medical care. They were broken down and psychologically tyrannized, kept in extreme isolation, threatened with rendition, interrogated at gunpoint, and told that their families would be harmed if they refused to talk. They were also frequently prevented from engaging in their daily prayers tone (one of the five pillars of Islam) and forced to witness American soldiers intentionally mishandling the holy Qur’an.” That is in addition to being held in total isolation and repeatedly abused over a period of three years.

At first, Falkoff explains, “there was little that we could with this information.” The military claimed that anything the detainees told them represented “a potential national security threat and therefore could not be revealed to the public until cleared by a Pentagon ‘Privilege Review Team." Initially, the team used its power to suppress all abuse and mistreatment evidence. Notes were returned and stamped “classified,” unsuitable for public release since they revealed interrogation techniques which the military had “a legitimate interest in keeping secret.” Only threats of litigation forced the Pentagon to reconsider classification decisions. And only then did the public start to hear, albeit in a truncated way, from the detainees themselves.

To this day, detainees remain completely isolated from the rest of the world, ignorant of all current events, all references to present world events cut from occasional letters allowed to be received from family members. Even their lawyers cannot tell them personal or general news unless it relates directly to their cases. Given this stranglehold, it’s tough to see how hope can live here. In fact, dozens of prisoner have attempted suicide by hanging, hoarding medicine to overdose, or by slashing their wrists. The military, shades of George Orwell, describes these incidents as “manipulative self-injurious behavior.” When three detainees succeeded in killing themselves in June 2006, the military called the suicides acts of “asymmetric warfare.”

Absent of any meaningful judicial oversight, the DoD has managed to follow in the footsteps of the Nazis in their prison camps, the Russians in their Gulags, and closer to home, the US treatment of Japanese Americans in their interment camps. In the first year of detention, detainees were denied use of pen and paper. In addition to drafting short poems on Styrofoam cups with pebbles, some detainees traced letters on cups with toothpaste and passed them cell to cell. They would end at the bottom of the day’s trash bin. Yet the poems of Shaikh Abdurraheem Muslim Dost, a Pakistani poet released in April 2005 -- were rewritten from memory and included in the collection.

All 22 poems, whether you read poetry or not, you will understand as testaments to the power of the human spirit to cope with and transcend some of the worse adversities life could provide. When, after the first year, writing materials were provided, Falkoff began receiving some poems. Abdulsalam Ali Abdulrahman Al-Hela had written his verses in Arabic after spending extended periods in an isolation cell. The poem is a cry against the injustice of arbitrary detention and a hymn to the comforts of religious faith. Then, after questioning other lawyers, Falkoff found out Guantanamo was filled with amateur poets.

Regardless of content, the poems express the humanity of these men vilified as “the worst of the worst” evildoers on the planet. We all recognize from whom that title comes, an apt contender for the title himself. In fact, despite the rant of al Qaeda participation, only 5 percent of the detainees were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan. Less than half are accused of committing a hostile act against the US. It would seem the unjust detention and criminalization of these men is a criminal act itself, especially the US government creating a loophole by calling them “enemy combatants,” in order to violate the protocols of prisoner treatment set down by the Geneva Convention.

Though his collection is slender, not totally complete, it is due in part to the widespread confiscation of material. Poems were destroyed or confiscated before even lawyers could view them. For instance, nearly 25,000 lines of poetry written by Shaikh Abdurraheem Muslim Dost came back to him as a handful of lines on his release from Guantanamo. “Why did they give me a pen and paper if they were planning to do that,” he asked a reporter after his release. “Each word was like a child to me -- irreplaceable.” Yet I will attest to the fact that what remains of the collection resonates and shines.

Perhaps that’s why the Pentagon still refuses to permit most of the detainees’ poems to go public. Unbelievably, it argues that poetry “presents a special risk” to national security because of the “content and format,” which perhaps mirrors the Pentagon’s own perfidy. The fear remains that detainees will attempt to smuggle “coded messages” out of the camp. Thus, hundreds of poems, like living beings, remain imprisoned by the military, unlikely to be seen by the US public. Also, most of the released poems were cleared in English translation only.

The Pentagon, in all its wisdom, considers that the original Arabic or Pashto versions are an enhanced security risk as well. To the extent that the lyrics of Francis Scott Key’s Star-Bangle Banner never cease to inspire Americans, whether in battle, schoolrooms, or sporting events, perhaps there’s a wisp of truth there. To the extent that Walt Whitman lifts the American soul to reveal in its diversity, its “barbaric yawp,” perhaps Walt qualifies as dangerously American as well. Perhaps that’s what inspired Hitler to burn libraries full of books in his march to destroy human intelligence and replace it with Third Reich barbarism.

Also, Falkoff explains that because only “linguists with our secret-level security clearances are allowed to read our clients’ communications which are kept by court order in a secure facility in the Washington, D.C. area, it was impossible to invite experts to translate the poems for us." The translations “cannot do justice to the subtlety and cadence of the originals.” That may be. But trust me, the poems make their illuminating points, with a music all their own. And they have a value as human documents of transcendence over injustice and suffering.

Despite all hurdles, Poems from Guantanamo and its representative voices can be heard by more lawyers and lay people who will fight on their behalf. As the courts drag their feet, they move slowly to granting detainees both fair and open hearings. As politicians argue over whether to extend Geneva Conventions protections to detainees, the poems very own words enter the dialogue. Would that these poems, which you must read for yourself, along with the brief and tragic bios of the poets, stir your conscience as they did mine. Optimally, they will move America to right action. That is the power of the poem as humble as it may be.

Additionally, Flagg Miller, linguistic and cultural anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides you with a helpful background on the range of forms and depth of meaning of poetry in Muslim society. Ariel Dorfman, the Chilean American poet, novelist, playwright, and human rights activist who holds the Walter Hines Page Chair of Literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, provides a short but stunning closing essay, “Where the Buried Flame Burns.” And so from cover to cover, Poems from Guantanamo will rekindle your passion for freedom and truth, even in these darkest of days. In the words of Othman Abdulraheem Mohammad’s “I Am Sorry, My Brother,”

I am sorry, my brother.
The shackles bind my hands
And iron is circling the place where I sleep.

I am sorry, my brother,
That I cannot help the elderly or the widow or the little child.

Do not weigh the death of a man as a sign of defeat.
The only shame is in betraying your ideals
And failing to stand by your beliefs.

Jerry Mazza is freelance writer and poet living in New York. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.
Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2663.shtml



4) Media Consolidation: A primer on making your opinion heard

- - Stop More Big Media Owner-Consolidation

Media Consolidation: A primer on making your opinion heard
By Rick KarrRick Karr by Robin Holland
Bill Moyers Journal – PBS TV November 16, 2007

Media laws and regulations are complex. And the process that establishes them is positively byzantine – a complex dance that involves not only the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), but also Congress, the White House, courts, cabinet-level departments, and other agencies, as well.

So here's a primer on how to tell the powers that be what you think about the current controversy over media consolidation that we cover on this week's JOURNAL:

The first steps are likely to be taken by the FCC. Its chairman, Kevin J. Martin, has proposed changing what's known as the ”Newspaper/Broadcast Cross-Ownership Rule” (pdf) – in other words, he wants to let newspapers buy radio and TV stations in the cities where they're published.

Martin argues that the change would only affect the country's 20 largest urban areas, but his Democratic colleagues on the FCC disagree (pdf). Martin has set a deadline of Dec. 11 for public comments; sources in Washington tell us that the FCC is likely to vote a week later, on Dec. 18.

You can file a comment with the FCC online. Click on the circle next to "Media Ownership Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking - Docket 06-121," then click "Continue" at the bottom of the page. You can also send comments straight to each of the five commissioners – or the FCC as a whole – via email, phone, fax, or mail. If you choose one of those routes, make sure you mention that you're commenting on "Docket 06-121" - the bureaucracy's name for Martin's proposal.

Congress is getting involved, too. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) have introduced The Media Ownership Act of 2007, which would delay the FCC vote on Martin's proposal and require the Commission to examine how local communities have been affected by media consolidation. You can find out how to contact your Senators here.

At the FCC hearing in Seattle – which we cover on this week's Journal – Commissioner Michael J. Copps offered one more suggestion: Go straight to the top and let the White House know what you think.

This debate may drag on for months. Martin's agenda has taken flack from Democrats and Republicans alike. Some media firms say it doesn't go far enough. The last time the FCC voted to loosen ownership rules, in 2003, both the Senate and the federal courts got involved.

For article and link-resources, see: www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2007/11/media_consolidation_a_primer_o_1.html


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- - Stop More Big Media Owner-Consolidation

There Is Movement In Congress To Restrain
The Runaway F.C.C. If We Will Support It

Yes, we know there is a holiday coming up fast.

But despite mounting and unanimous public opposition, FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin is trying to rush through essentially the same further media consolidation into the hands of fewer and fewer giant corporations, which was overturned by public pressure in 2003.

Stop The FCC Action Page

A bipartisan bill has already been introduced in Congress, The Media Ownership Act of 2007 (S.2332), to stop this rash and harmful action.

At a public hearing (with the bare minimum advance legal notice) in Seattle on Nov. 9, presumptively to hear citizen input, Martin turned a deaf ear to a thousand protesting voices, and announced the next business day he was going to plow ahead with his destructive plan. FCC Commissioners Adelstein and Copps were appalled at Martin's
obliviousness to the public interest, aiming to push through his gutting of current rules by December 11, just a couple weeks off.

S.2332 would start by requiring a full and fair 90 days for the public to comment on any such proposed rule changes. It would also require protections for localism and diversity of ownership, including female and minorities.

The one click action page above will send your personal message to all your members of Congress, and each every one of the FCC Commissioners, with the subject "Stop further media consolidation by passing S.2332". At the same time you can send your personal comments only as a letter to the editor of your nearest local daily newspaper if you like.

We only have until December 11th to make the biggest public record possible of the opposition of the American public to this bum rush to a virtual media antitrust calamity. We need every possible voice to strengthen the hands of Congress, with clear bipartisan support, to stop the FCC from totally disregarding their obligation to serve the public interest. We need to make the strongest public record of this despite the deliberate and hostile short sheeting of the public comment period.

Stop The FCC Action Page: www.usalone.com/stop_media_consolidation.php

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at www.usalone.com/in.htm - The People's Email Network


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