28 September, 2008

Robert Fisk Interview about Sami al-Hajj

Pacifica Radio | Flashpoints Saturday, September 27, 2008

Robert Fisk, author, Middle East expert and correspondent for the Independent of London, is interviewed in-studio by Dennis Bernstein, and discusses the tense situation at the Afghan-Pakistan border as US aggression continues, and the case of Sami al-Haj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who was beaten, abused and humiliated at the US detention facility at Guantanomo in the name of the war on terror.

33:27 5.74MB http://www.radiodujour.com/people/fisk_robert/mp3/20080926_dennisbernstein_robertfisk.mp3



Sami al-Hajj
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posted by u2r2h at Sunday, September 28, 2008 6 comments

23 September, 2008

2nd World Trade Center Attack of 9/11 - 42 angles



Nearly all the known angles shot of the 2nd plane hitting the South Tower of the WTC at 9:02;54 (seismic data) or 9:03;11 (9/11 Commission Report).

Try to pick out the altered or otherwise fake videos.

Contents:
1. ABC LIVE (replay)
2. Naka Nathaniel New York Times (distant, face shot obscured by Woolworth building)
3. CBS LIVE #1 (closeup misses plane)
4. CBS LIVE #2 ("replay" of plane descending behind towers)
5. Edited NBC-MSNBC LIVE #1 without cut to the extreme closeup [not included in this collection] - impact is a replay of LIVE #1)
6. Park Foreman, amateur at 1:30, aired 9/11 evening (face of building obscured by Woolworth Building)
7. "tinacart" (YouTube channel), at 1:43, unknown amateur shot broadcast on 9/11
8."Moussaoui" shot supposedly from Al Qaeda website first seen 12/04/2003
9. Scott Myers
10. Naudet (see documentary titled 9|11)
11. Earth Station (unknown videographer, footage discovered at earthstation1.com
12. "tinacart" 9/11 witness reactions #2
13. Ronald Pordy
14. Luis Alonso
15. WB11
16. Michael Hezarkhani - face impact
17. Pavel Hlava, first aired September 2003 - face impact
18. "Shizzzham" (YouTube 2007 - face impact)
19. Jennifer Spell (zoomed face impact)
20. "Mindblower" unknown, (poor quality face impact)
21. Evan Fairbanks (face impact at 4:53, broadcast 9/11 evening without audio)

(CameraPlanet Archive clip at 5:04 not counted... oops)

22. Brian Gately (Camera Planet)
23. History.com, unknown amateur (distant face impact)
24. Luc Courchesne (face impact closeup with audio)
25. WNYW LIVE FOX5 Chopper 5
26. History Channel, unknown amateur
27. "rocer" (SAMPLE text obscures video)
28. NY1 "LIVE" but not
29. CBS 9:05 am "replay" from behind Empire State Building
30. Devin Clark
31. Peter Strid (YouTube user peterstrid, uploaded 2006)
32. Gamma Press (at 7:58, BBC version) - amateur
33. CBS 11 amateur shot from North
34. BBC World, distant amateur zoom from water
35. "Jersey Shore" shot, BBC version
36. FOX5 Marta - blue tinted
37. "Columbine shot" - featured in Michael Moore's film Bowling for Columbine - unknown amateur
38. CNN 9:10 am
39. Spiegel TV, unknown amateur zoomed face shot
40. Clifton Cloud
41. PAX-TV (FOX5 version) - fast birds
42. WNBC - MSNBC leaning towers, no background


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA_-w-fsI9Q
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posted by u2r2h at Tuesday, September 23, 2008 1 comments

PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT - issues? gossip!!

==========================================

Review: Alpha Dogs by James Harding

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 16/08/2008

Robert Colvile discovers how political spin became a global business

In early 2006, a Nepali citizen was kidnapped by Maoist rebels. In return for his release, they demanded not money, nor the release of political prisoners, but polling data.

The hostage had been carrying out opinion surveys on behalf of an American firm, to find out what the people of this newborn democracy really believed. For the Maoists, such information was far more valuable than cash.

The last few decades have seen democratisation sweep across the world. But with that came a remarkable opportunity for those, such as that firm working in Nepal, who could tell the new presidents and political parties how elections really worked, and explain the right way to burnish their own images and tarnish their rivals'.

As James Harding, editor of The Times, explains in this fascinating history of the phenomenon, nobody was better at this than the Americans.

Especially successful was the Sawyer Miller Group, the small firm whose staff, the swaggering "alpha dogs" of the title, could be found whispering in the ears of opposition groups, leaders and corporate titans around the world.

Such spin, as Harding points out, is nothing new. Cicero urged electioneers to stir up "scandalous talk... about the crimes, lusts and briberies of your competitors". John Beckley, who worked on Thomas Jefferson's campaign, was equally eager to "go negative", accusing George Washington of embezzling public funds. Since then things have become a lot more professional.

In the 1996 election in Israel, Arthur Finkelstein, the American consultant who had turned "liberal" into a swearword, used polling data to pinpoint precisely the issue over which Israelis would reject a deal with the Palestinians - the division of Jerusalem - and propel Benjamin Netanyahu to a victory based on exemplary scare-mongering.

Such techniques could also be used for good. Sawyer Miller's staff were originally idealists, convinced of the power of mass communication to create a new bond between rulers and ruled. In a Chilean plebiscite on the dictatorship of General Pinochet, they used feel-good advertising to guide the opposition to an unlikely victory.

More impressive still was the way in which Mark Malloch Brown, now a self-important Foreign Office minister but then a self-important journalist, shaped the message of Cory Aquino as she struggled - successfully - to unseat the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines.

There were limits to their powers, however. If a candidate was not up to the task, there was little the spin doctors could do.

One of the best chapters in the book concerns Sawyer Miller's attempts to shepherd the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa to the presidency of Peru. After Vargas Llosa staffed the campaign with his own relatives, insisted thousands would lose their jobs in Thatcherite economic shock therapy and displayed a disdainful attitude towards the poor and non-white, his vast lead in the polls collapsed.

"The blame game that followed," says Harding, "resembled a drunken gathering of amateur knife throwers. Everyone ended up a little wounded."

There was more bloodshed to come. Sawyer Miller sold its political techniques to US executives, persuading firms to position and defend themselves in the same way as candidates for elections.

While immensely lucrative, this introduced the tension that would cause the company to fall apart: should it follow the pay cheques on Wall Street, or the buzz of the campaign trail?

Harding chooses to focus on the politics - with good reason, given his enthusiasm for the subject. Indeed, the result is a wonderful read for any politics obsessive. But it is also a dispiriting one. The techniques spread across the world by Sawyer Miller and its kind have, Harding says, done little to improve the quality of political discourse, or of the candidates who win elections.

Instead, local differences have slowly been ground away by the globalisation of spin. "There is a parochial notion that elections are different everywhere," says Mark McKinnon, ad man to George W Bush and Sawyer Miller alumnus. "They are not... The things that drive elections are the same in Nebraska as they are in Ghana."

Much hope has been pinned on the internet to turn things around, but Harding is not hopeful.

Sawyer Miller, he points out, believed the same would be true of television, the path to "a newer, truer, healthier democracy".

In a world where the Tories are prepared to pay their spin doctor two-and-a-half times more than their party leader, it is a fair bet that the back-room boys will be with us for a long while to come.

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posted by u2r2h at Tuesday, September 23, 2008 0 comments

21 September, 2008

Robert Fisk - Black Panther - participatory democracy

Why does the US think it can win in Afghanistan?

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2355/2164810756_e66b7673b4.jpg?v=0

The Taliban are better trained, and -- sad to say -- increasingly tolerated by the local civilian population.

Poor old Algerians. They are being served the same old pap from their cruel government. In 1997, the Pouvoir announced a "final victory" over their vicious Islamist enemies. On at least three occasions, I reported -- not, of course, without appropriate cynicism -- that the Algerian authorities believed their enemies were finally beaten because the "terrorists" were so desperate that they were beheading every man, woman and child in the villages they captured in the mountains around Algiers and Oran.

And now they're at it again. After a ferocious resurgence of car bombing by their newly merged "al-Qa'ida in the Maghreb" antagonists, the decrepit old FLN government in Algiers has announced the "terminal phase" in its battle against armed Islamists. As the Algerian journalist Hocine Belaffoufi said with consummate wit the other day, "According to this political discourse ... the increase in attacks represents undeniable proof of the defeat of terrorism. The more terrorism collapsed, the more the attacks increased ... so the stronger (terrorism) becomes, the fewer attacks there will be."

We, of course, have been peddling this crackpot nonsense for years in south-west Asia. First of all, back in 2001, we won the war in Afghanistan by overthrowing the Taliban. Then we marched off to win the war in Iraq. Now -- with at least one suicide bombing a day and the nation carved up into mutually antagonistic sectarian enclaves -- we have won the war in Iraq and are heading back to re-win the war in Afghanistan where the Taliban, so thoroughly trounced by our chaps seven years ago, have proved their moral and political bankruptcy by recapturing half the country.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3193/2728490250_e7c3024192.jpg?v=0


It seems an age since Donald "Stuff Happens" Rumsfeld declared,"A government has been put in place (in Afghanistan), and the Islamists are no more the law in Kabul. Of course, from time to time a hand grenade, a mortar explodes -- but in New York and in San Francisco, victims also fall. As for me, I'm full of hope." Oddly, back in the Eighties, I heard exactly the same from a Soviet general at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan -- yes, the very same Bagram airbase where the CIA lads tortured to death a few of the Afghans who escaped the earlier Russian massacres. Only "terrorist remnants" remained in the Afghan mountains, the jolly Russian general assured us. Afghan troops, along with the limited Soviet "intervention" forces, were restoring peace to democratic Afghanistan.

And now? After the "unimaginable" progress in Iraq -- I am quoting the fantasist who still occupies the White House -- the Americans are going to hip-hop 8,000 soldiers out of Mesopotamia and dump another 4,700 into the hellfire of Afghanistan. Too few, too late, too slow, as one of my French colleagues commented acidly. It would need at least another 10,000 troops to hope to put an end to these Taliban devils who are now equipped with more sophisticated weapons, better trained and increasingly -- sad to say -- tolerated by the local civilian population. For Afghanistan, read Irakistan.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/02/iraq_key_maps/img/maps/iraq_surround5_map485.gif

Back in the late 19th century, the Taliban -- yes, the British actually called their black-turbaned enemies "Talibs" -- would cut the throats of captured British soldiers. Now this unhappy tradition is repeated -- and we are surprised! Two of the American soldiers seized when the Taliban stormed into their mountain base on 13 July this year were executed by their captors.

And now it turns out that four of the 10 French troops killed in Afghanistan on 18 August surrendered to the Taliban, and were almost immediately executed. Their interpreter had apparently disappeared shortly before their mission began -- no prizes for what this might mean -- and the two French helicopters which might have helped to save the day were too busy guarding the hopeless and impotent Afghan President Hamid Karzai to intervene on behalf of their own troops. A French soldier described the Taliban with brutal frankness. "They are good soldiers but pitiless enemies."

http://www.az.ngb.army.mil/TFDesertHawk/Pics/C1285/images/Bagram%20Ramp_JPG.jpg

The Soviet general at Bagram now has his amanuensis in General David McKiernan, the senior US officer in Afghanistan, who proudly announced last month that US forces had killed "between 30 and 35 Taliban" in a raid on Azizabad near Herat. "In the light of emerging evidence pertaining (sic) to civilian casualties in the ... counter-insurgency operation," the luckless general now says, he feels it "prudent" -- another big sic here -- to review his original investigation. The evidence "pertaining", of course, is that the Americans probably killed 90 people in Azizabad, most of them women and children. We -- let us be frank and own up to our role in the hapless Nato alliance in Afghanistan -- have now slaughtered more than 500 Afghan civilians this year alone. These include a Nato missile attack on a wedding party in July when we splattered 47 of the guests all over the village of Deh Bala.

http://files.blog-city.com/files/aa/2370/p/f/barack_obama.jpg

And Obama and McCain really think they're going to win in Afghanistan -- before, I suppose, rushing their soldiers back to Iraq when the Baghdad government collapses. What the British couldn't do in the 19th century and what the Russians couldn't do at the end of the 20th century, we're going to achieve at the start of the 21 century, taking our terrible war into nuclear-armed Pakistan just for good measure. Fantasy again.

http://www.culture.pl/en/culture/fo_conrad_1920

Joseph Conrad, who understood the powerlessness of powerful nations, would surely have made something of this. Yes, we have lost after we won in Afghanistan and now we will lose as we try to win again. Stuff happens.


========================================


The Problem Is Empire

By Tom Hayden

http://media.sacbee.com/smedia/2008/06/23/17/127-2N24N1HAYDEN.embedded.prod_affiliate.4.JPG


Tom Hayden delivered these remarks to a gathering of activists at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. It appears as part of the Moral Compass series, focusing on the spoken word.

04/09/08 "The Nation" -- - Let me tell you some of my story and lessons I have learned over these past five decades. I have always tried to improve my country, always trying from the places around me.

I was smart and ambitious and athletic, but something never felt right in my suburb, school and church. I felt more at home with the underdogs and misfits than with the authorities. I was Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye against Alfred E. Newman at Mad magazine.

I editorialized against overcrowded classes in high school. I editorialized against racist fraternity discrimination at the university. I went to the Democratic Convention in 1960 and was moved by Martin Luther King and John Kennedy, and a new student movement.

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0gne5IUf54axr/340x.jpg


I moved to Georgia, became a Freedom Rider, got beaten up for civil rights. I helped start a movement on campuses called Students for a Democratic Society that believed in what we called participatory democracy, the right of everyone to a voice in the decisions affecting their lives. We wanted to bring the spirit of the Southern movement to the North.

I left graduate school and became a community organizer in the slums of Newark for four years. During that time the US government, led by the Democratic Party, invaded Vietnam with hundreds of thousands of troops after promising not to. The draft started up, and I was classified IY, the category for potential troublemakers.

http://www.affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/Watts_1965_small.jpghttp://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/wp-content/uploads/imageslife-2dwatts-2d1965-2daug-small.jpg


Watts blew up in 1965. My Newark neighborhood became an occupied war zone in 1967, and that was it for the war on poverty. I wanted to know who we were really fighting, so I went to North Vietnam in December 1965, my first trip outside America. I was shocked at the civilian destruction, and the brave resistance of a small nation of peasants. I came back and immediately lobbied for a negotiated withdrawal, and got nowhere.

http://www.ngb.army.mil/Images1/today/0811.jpg


Now I was living in two worlds, still knocking on doors in Newark and opposing a war that was ending the war on poverty I believed in. The contradictions becoming too much, I helped organize antiwar protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. Nixon, the FBI and even Lyndon Johnson said we were part of an internationally funded communist conspiracy. I was still fighting against wrongdoing at home, while my father's generation thought we were pawns of an enemy abroad.

racism racist black nigger negores white power kkk usa mlk
I went back to Berkeley set on organizing youth and student communities. I was yanked away to be indicted by the Nixon government for the street riots in Chicago. I spent about five years, including five straight months on trial, living under a cloud, until the courts threw out the case of the Chicago 8. I really didn't know if we were descending into a police state or not. During our trial, one defendant, Bobby Seale, was chained and gagged, and two Panthers working on his legal defense were shot with ninety police rounds while sleeping in their apartment.




I went back to mainstream antiwar work trying to defund the Indochina war, from 1972 until 1976. I supported George McGovern as a peace candidate, Vietnam veterans against the war like John Kerry, the Berrigan brothers' civil disobedience, and those who went underground to Canada. I didn't join them, but I thought the Weather Underground was completely predictable and understandable.

After the long radicalizing interruption of the war, I tried to combine community organizing and electoral politics. I served in the California legislature for eighteen years, once again returning to local and state issues. Based on the early vision of participatory democracy, and building on the progress towards political rights like voting, I helped build a statewide grass roots campaign for economic democracy, pressuring the great corporations to become accountable.

Some of the issues we worked on were these:

• Protecting the right to local rent control, which saved Santa Monica residents alone about $500 million over little more than a decade.

• Stopping a nuclear power plant in Sacramento by a democratic vote of the people.

• Stopping a Liquified Natural Gas terminal on Indian land in Santa Barbara.

• Empowering neighborhoods to bargain effectively with big developers. Saving the oldest building in LA from the wrecking ball.

http://www.jerryhadden.com/salmon/salmon.jpg


• Saving salmon, stream beds, wetlands, deserts and redwood forests from the power of developers and special interests.

• Trying to replace the war on gangs, mass incarceration and unconstitutional police misconduct, with gang peace processes and employment opportunities, from LA to El Salvador.

• Involvement in over fifty political campaigns at local levels, including some of the earliest elections of feminists, gays and lesbians, renters, Asian-Americans and former '60s radicals.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/44/152827879_5c149f36a9.jpghttp://english.pravda.ru/img/idb/photo/1-619.jpg

• Getting Hollywood celebrities engaged in supporting political causes and candidates.

It was said by Washington consultants that we had the greatest grassroots organization in the national Democratic Party. But it was also the '80s, and Ronald Reagan was invading Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, and placing nuclear missiles in Europe. My world of domestic issues became small and secondary again, like my days in Newark when Vietnam was escalating. And I noticed that our foreign policy interventions were creating a wave of new refugees who could be exploited either as cheap labor or scapegoated as my Irish ancestors were the century before.

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/08_02/055Mattelfactory_468x310.jpg


And so it has gone. Even when the Soviet Union collapsed. Even when Bill Clinton was elected on the strategy of "it's the economy, stupid," we soon were bombing the Balkans, inventing new doctrines of humanitarian war and expanding NATO. By carving Kosovo out of the former Yugoslavia, we were creating an incentive for Georgia to invade South Ossetia--and try to reignite the cold war.


Then came 9/11, and a legitimate security crisis was transformed into the invasion of Iraq along with the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan and perhaps soon Iran. The neocons and hawks applauded and funded Israel's ill-considered war with Hezbollah and Lebanon, completing a new battlefield of the war on terrorism to replace the cold war.

So there you are. We will have to go back to the lessons Roman and British empires to learn the painful lessons of imperial overextension. The lessons in blood bravely shed in lost or dubious causes. The lesson of a weakened capacity to fund healthcare, education, our children's futures. The lesson that democracy is diminished as the secrecy of the warmaking state expands. The lesson of being hated in a world where alliances are a necessity, not a choice.

For too long we have divided our movement labor between domestic and foreign policy issues. Sometimes there are contradictions, for example, when the cold war liberals--today's humanitarian hawks--believed we could have both guns and butter, the world's most massive arsenal, fueled by oil, combined with robust domestic initiatives on healthcare or the environment or inner city jobs. It just hasn't worked out that way. The richest country in the world still lacks a national healthcare program, still is pockmarked by ghettos and barrios, still has massive school drop out rates combined with the largest incarceration rate in the whole world.

And despite any evidence of significant success, the wars go on, the war on terror, the war on drugs and the war on gangs.

Despite the evidence, the organized peace movement is weaker than any other social movement, or network of NGOs, in America. The peace movement is a mainly voluntary expression of antiwar feeling that rises and falls depending on the body counts and media coverage. The peace movement is not institutionalized, not in comparison with the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the environmental movement. It is not funded by the great liberal foundations nor by the wealthy liberals of Hollywood or other moneyed circles.

The point I am making is that our progressive priorities are wrong. Any hope for transformational domestic change depends on reversing the entrenched interests driving the dual agenda of military and corporate empire, including the Pentagon and the oil industry and the narrow elitist thinking of most national security and economic experts.

The battle is between the empire, or whatever euphemism by which is goes, and participatory democracy.

http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/eci_logo.jpg


Our adversaries, who once favored monarchy and then white supremacy, have done a successful makeover and attempted to steal the banner of democracy. For example, they are exuberant about imposing democracy by force across the Middle East and to the borders of Russia, but they show no enthusiasm for the democratic process sweeping away the former dictatorships that our government backed in Latin America. Our government is opposed to democracy on our borders if those democracies reject our military bases, our special forces and our corporate dominance over their resources and services. Venezuela, Bolivia and, of course, Cuba are being targeted for isolation and subversion, while Colombia is the American spear in the Andes.

http://aulamagica.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/20060429havana_hugo_chavez_fidel_castro_evo_morales640.jpg


Latin America is the brightest democratic spot on the planet today. But its democratic revolution is not enough; an enormous shift in global finance, investment and trade policies is needed to address underdevelopment and poverty. The resources to build a movement here against military intervention in Latin or Central America are sorely needed. An alternative to the Monroe Doctrine is sorely needed. An alternative to the top-down secretive WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA and FTAA models is sorely needed. The movement for immigrant rights and labor rights is where domestic policy and Latin American policy should meet.

http://swordattheready.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/obama-revolution.jpg


I am campaigning for and voting for Barack Obama not because I agree with him on every foreign policy issue but because I think we need to unleash the energy of those who fight for justice and housing and healthcare and jobs and the environment here at home.


http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb31/myclassicrat/OBOMA123.jpg


The Obama movement is registering and mobilizing millions of new voters, young people, working class, people of color and poor. The mere fact of their being mobilized will create a pressure for new priorities on the economic home front against the present priorities of militarization abroad. The fact that Obama rose to his present position on the tide of antiwar sentiment forces Obama and the Congressional Democrats to pay greater attention to our needs at home or pay a political price. If he expands the quagmires in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we will have to oppose those wasteful wars as well.

http://www.irc-online.org/content/images/GGN.wuerker-parade.jpg


So I am saying that domestic groups--organized around issues from civil rights to the environment--cannot afford to leave peace simply to the peace movement. And the peace movement has to point every day to the domestic costs, including energy costs, of the Iraq War and the larger empire. And we must define an alternative vision to the undemocratic structures of corporate and military power that promise security but bring us war, that promise jobs but lower our standard of living. We need a new model of political economy that is equitable and sustainable, not one that expects every country in the world to meet our needs, including our appetite for their resources. And finally, we must build a progressive movement inside and outside the Democratic Party, one that respects the autonomy of single-issue movements, that brings our community organizing experiences to bear on this frustrating political process, that can build and strengthen a progressive power base that can fight everyday for our needs, not the empire's needs.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/intervention/2003/0710imperialmap.jpg


It is not enough to liberalize the empire; the task is to peacefully and steadily bring it to an end, making democracy safe for the world as some organizers said fifty years ago. In place of empire, we need to understand the world as a multipolar one, and drive it towards participatory democracy through social movements. Those social movements will not only pressure their existing governments but energize a global civic society that can achieve enforceable new norms on human rights, a global living wage and corporate accountability, a healthy environment instead of global warming, and the steady reduction of nuclear weapons.

http://www.zmag.org/FCKFiles/image/may08zmoimages/Wuerker-Madman-ZMag0508.gif


Tom Hayden is the author of The Other Side (1966, with Staughton Lynd), The Love of Possession Is a Disease With Them (1972), Ending the War in Iraq (2007) and Writings for a Democratic Society: The Tom Hayden Reader (2008).




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posted by u2r2h at Sunday, September 21, 2008 0 comments

pakistan Islamabad marriott crater bomb analysis


This was no truck bomb ....

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a381/Techno-Architect/ISLAMABAD/Islamabad-MarriottHotel-Exterior-02.jpghttp://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20080921/2008_09_21t003804_450x298_us_pakistan_blast.jpg?x=400&y=265&q=85&sig=Nivg4VaVXnDATjeZapDRpw--

NEWS JUST IN:

ISLAMABAD, Sep 21 (APP): The US Department of Defence at Pentagon has confirmed the deaths of its two marines in Marriott blast in Islamabad. According to GEO News, the Pentagon said that its two marines succumbed to injuries in the blast.The soldiers were deployed in US embassy in Islamabad. Pentagon said names of the US marines could not be revealed prior to informing families of the victims.

Was there a top secret and mysterious operation of the US Marines going on inside the Marriott when it was attacked on Saturday evening? No one will confirm it but circumstantial evidence is in abundance.

Witnessed by many, including a PPP MNA and his friends, a US embassy truckload of steel boxes was unloaded and shifted inside the Marriott Hotel on the same night when Admiral Mike Mullen met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and others in Islamabad.

Both the main gates (the entrance and the exit) of the hotel were closed while no one except the US Marines were either allowed to go near the truck or get the steel boxes unloaded or shift them inside the hotel. These steel boxes were not passed through the scanners installed at the entrance of the hotel lobby and were reportedly shifted to the fourth and fifth floors of the Marriott.

Besides several others, PPP MNA Mumtaz Alam Gilani and his two friends, Sajjad Chaudhry, a PPP leader, and one Bashir Nadeem, witnessed this mysterious activity to which no one other than the PPP MNA objected and protested.

A source present there told The News that after entertaining them with refreshments at the Nadia restaurant at midnight when Mumtaz Alam, along with his friends, was to leave the hotel, he found a white US embassy truck standing right in front of the hotel's main entrance.

Both the In-gate and the Out-gate of the hotel were closed while almost a dozen well-built US Marines in their usual fatigues were unloading the steel boxes from the truck. No one, including the hotel security men, was either allowed to go near the truck or touch the steel boxes, which were being shifted inside the hotel but without passing through the scanners.

Upon inquiry, one of the three PPP friends who was waiting for the main gates of the hotel to open to get his car in, was informed that the suspicious boxes were shifted to the fourth and fifth floors of the hotel. Mumtaz Alam was furious both at the US Marines and the hotel security not only for the delay caused to them but also for the security lapse he was witnessing.

On his protest, there was absolutely no response from the Marines and the security men he approached were found helpless. Mumtaz Alam told the hotel security official that they were going to endanger the hotel and its security. He was also heard telling his friends that he would never visit the hotel again. He also threatened to raise the issue in parliament.




Was it an attack on US Marines?

Sunday, September 21, 2008

By Ansar Abbasi

ISLAMABAD: Was there a top secret and mysterious operation of the US Marines going on inside the Marriott when it was attacked on Saturday evening? No one will confirm it but circumstantial evidence is in abundance.

Witnessed by many, including a PPP MNA and his friends, a US embassy truckload of steel boxes was unloaded and shifted inside the Marriott Hotel on the same night when Admiral Mike Mullen met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and others in Islamabad.

Both the main gates (the entrance and the exit) of the hotel were closed while no one except the US Marines were either allowed to go near the truck or get the steel boxes unloaded or shift them inside the hotel. These steel boxes were not passed through the scanners installed at the entrance of the hotel lobby and were reportedly shifted to the fourth and fifth floors of the Marriott.

Besides several others, PPP MNA Mumtaz Alam Gilani and his two friends, Sajjad Chaudhry, a PPP leader, and one Bashir Nadeem, witnessed this mysterious activity to which no one other than the PPP MNA objected and protested.

A source present there told The News that after entertaining them with refreshments at the Nadia restaurant at midnight when Mumtaz Alam, along with his friends, was to leave the hotel, he found a white US embassy truck standing right in front of the hotel's main entrance.

Both the In-gate and the Out-gate of the hotel were closed while almost a dozen well-built US Marines in their usual fatigues were unloading the steel boxes from the truck. No one, including the hotel security men, was either allowed to go near the truck or touch the steel boxes, which were being shifted inside the hotel but without passing through the scanners.

Upon inquiry, one of the three PPP friends who was waiting for the main gates of the hotel to open to get his car in, was informed that the suspicious boxes were shifted to the fourth and fifth floors of the hotel. Mumtaz Alam was furious both at the US Marines and the hotel security not only for the delay caused to them but also for the security lapse he was witnessing.

On his protest, there was absolutely no response from the Marines and the security men he approached were found helpless. Mumtaz Alam told the hotel security official that they were going to endanger the hotel and its security. He was also heard telling his friends that he would never visit the hotel again. He also threatened to raise the issue in parliament.

One does not know whether the PPP MNA revisited the hotel after that mysterious midnight but his brother Imtiaz Alam, who is a senior journalist, was in the same hotel when the truck exploded at the main gate of the hotel. Imtiaz Alam had a lucky escape and found his way out of the hotel with great difficulty in pitch darkness.

One of the lifts he was using fell to the ground floor just after he forced the door open on the 4th floor and got out of it.


The Pakistani government has released security camera video footage



Reminder: Truck Bombs DO NOT PRODUCE A CRATER (see below)

Malik said it was a targeted attack by a suicide bomber, who used a six-wheeled dumper meant to carry construction material. The vehicle arrived at the main entrance of the hotel and the driver wanted to enter the hotel by breaking the barrier but it could not. Soon there was a small blast and the front part of the truck caught fire even as the driver was killed, Malik said. “They had placed some construction material on it (the truck) and it could not be checked,” he said adding that experts say the terrorists used RDX and TNT explosives. “They used high-quality explosives. If the bomber had managed to reach the lobby of the hotel by breaking the glass wall, it could have led to much more damage,” Malik said. According to the official, as the hotel caught fire, the temperature inside rose to 400 Celsius in less than an hour and this was the reason why rescue operations could not be carried out immediately. Malik replied in the negative when asked if Pakistan would accept the US offer of help in the investigations. “We have our own experts and we trust them.” He said it was difficult to say who was behind the attack. “I promise to produce handlers and people behind the blast in front of the press in next few days. Please give us some time,” said Malik.Replying to a question, he said there might have been US marines in the hotel but it was difficult to say whether they were the target.He said the investigative agencies had got hold of the footage of CCTV cameras and it would be released to the media in due course. “We have some other vital information which I cannot share with you,” said Malik.


The footage shows a large truck ram the front security gates of the hotel. A suicide bomber then detonates a small first explosion that sends the security guards fleeing momentarily. A small fire raged in the cab of the truck for three to four minutes while guards bravely but ineffectually sprayed the truck with a small fire-extinguisher. The footage released by the authorities did not show the moment when an estimated 600kg of military explosives in the rear of the truck finally detonated.But the main blast was said to have come a full four minutes after the initial detonation by the bomber.


ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Video footage was released on Sunday showing the last moments before a truck laden with 600 kg of explosives blew up outside Islamabad's Marriott Hotel, killing at least 53 people and wounding more than 260. "The truck was stopped at the barrier and there was an altercation between the attacker and the guards," said Rehman Malik, the top official in the Interior Ministry, which released the images, told a news conference. "A doctor was on an emergency call and was standing behind the truck. He asked the guards to remove the truck so that he could drive in to attend a patient," Malik continued. Sniffer dogs then detected something wrong and guards shouted to people to run. The footage showed the truck driver tried to ram the retractable metal barrier and bar at the security checkpoint at the entrance to the hotel's forecourt and parking area. Some accounts given earlier had suggested that there had been an exchange of fire between the truck driver and the security guards on duty, but that wasn't clearly evident from the closed circuit television images. Most of the guards retreated when the truck tried to ram the barrier. What happened next appeared to have been a small explosion in the cabin .... Flames were seen spreading from the front to the rear, of the hydraulic dumper truck as cars passed by on the road behind. After the explosion some guards moved in before retreating once again, and finally one came back with a fire extinguisher, but failed to make an impression on the blaze. Then the screen turned blue, presumably as the final explosion let rip, killing immediate bystanders. Other victims were felled by flying glass and from the subsequent fire that swept through the building. Malik said he expected the investigation to point to the tribal areas used as bases by Taliban and al Qaeda fighters on the border with Afghanistan. "Preliminary investigations revealed that 600 kg explosives were used," Malik said. "High explosives RDX and TNT were used." "Unlike previous attacks, aluminium power was also used... When the fire balls hit the building, the aluminium power fueled the fire," he said, explaining the ferocity of the blaze.


ANOTHER VERSION... THREE EXPLOSIONS:

Islamabad, Sep 21 (IANS) A lone suicide bomber driving a truck blew himself up before the powerful blast that rocked the Marriott Hotel here Saturday evening killing 53 people and injuring another 266, CCTV footage obtained by the media shows.

The video clip, obtained from the private security agency hired by the hotel, clearly shows a heavy truck usually used to carry building material driving towards the main entrance of the hotel and stopping at the security barrier outside.

At least seven security guards are seen moving towards the truck and arguing with the driver. As one of the guards moves towards the driver’s door, a blast occurs and the front portion of the truck catches fire.

Experts say the suicide attacker may have killed himself with a hand grenade but failed to detonate the explosives placed in the back of the truck.

The first blast forced the guards to move back and two of them ran to the hotel building to get fire extinguishers, the footage shows.

About a minute later, a man comes close to the truck and tries to extinguish the fire with a red extinguisher. Some security persons and some in civilian clothes come closer to the truck and then there is another blast, probably in the truck engine, about two minutes after the first blast, the video clip shows.

Once again, the guards are seen moving towards the truck and some are looking inside it after which people are seen running. This continues for about two minutes. The footage ends there, indiating the point when the explosives went off destroying the hotel.





Foto of the "truck" (it seems to be just a van!)
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/09/21/pakistan.islamabad.marriott.blast/art.pak.hotel.expls.geo.jpg
CNN: A truck burns at the gate to the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad before a larger, deadly explosion Saturday.
A small explosion erupted inside a truck before the larger, deadly explosion that ripped through the Marriott Hotel in the Pakistani capital, according to security video released Sunday by Pakistani authorities.

A large truck crashes into the security gate, sending one security officer scurrying for safety. As security guards approach the truck, the top of the vehicle explodes and the security guards flee.

A small cloud of smoke appears above the truck. Minutes later, it's engulfed in flames. One of the security guards tries to put out the fire with a hand-held fire extinguisher, to no avail. The guards then walk away from the truck and the camera freezes on the burning truck.

It's unclear if the impact of the second, more powerful blast caused the closed-circuit television camera to malfunction or if the Interior Ministry stopped the video before the explosion.




TWO EXPLOSIONS - TWO BOMBS !!
.. like in Bali? First a very small bomb (detonated by real islamist extrememists (covertly helped along by CIA/Mossad/Mi6/ISI) and then a HUGE BOMB (from the air, hence the crater?)

AP: One of the four, who identified himself only as Tony, said they had been moving toward the rear of a Chinese restaurant inside the hotel after a first, small blast when a second explosion hurled them against the back wall.
Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad, Zarar Khan, Munir Ahmad in Islamabad

Pakistan_Bomb_AlJazeera---fBPpyLpN7gg.mp4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBPpyLpN7gg
Another eyewitness said this vehicle was followed by a dumper truck that bumped against the security barrier and stopped. Its engine caught fire and within seconds, there was a deadly explosion from the truck. (the youtube aljazeera video quotes an eyewitness who talks about "engine on fire" but nothing about security barrier.



The Czech Republic's ambassador to Pakistan was among dozens killed in Saturday's suicide truck bombing at Islamabad's Marriott Hotel, police confirmed Sunday.
CZECH REPUBLIC is a major weapons manufacturing country.
Most of the fatalities appeared to be drivers who were waiting with their cars outside the Marriott, and hotel staff -- most of them security guards, Geo TV's Mir said.

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080920/capt.19657c817a714d168618e34c13e1802d.pakistan_explosion_xan112.jpg?x=400&y=266&q=85&sig=woUgzGfJ6wEQRgUHxGqpTg--

Embbeded Media report: The nearly 300-room hotel served as the headquarters for the international media during the 2001 war against the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. It lies just off a busy thoroughfare, less than a mile (a little more than a kilometer) from the presidential offices and Parliament. The heavy security gate stood only 60 feet (18 meters) from the main building -- well within the range of the blast wave. Witnesses said they saw a dump truck drive up to the fortified main gate of the hotel at about 8 p.m. (1400 GMT), when its restaurants would have been packed with diners, including Muslims breaking the Ramadan fast. Mohammed Asghar, a worker from a nearby office with a makeshift bandage round his head, said there was more than one man in the truck and that they had argued with the hotel guards."Then, there was a flash of light, the truck caught fire and then exploded with an enormous bang," he said.Senior police official Asghar Raza Gardaizi estimated that the blast, which reverberated throughout Islamabad, was caused by more than 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of explosives.



Marriott Hotel Islamabad, 21.Sept 2008. Amazing Bomb.
Car bomb. In 2005 New Mexico Tech’s Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center loaded a 1987 Toyota Celica with 225 kilograms of Ammonium Nitrate and fuel oil


Mythbusters 1, cement truck


You know, I have never seen a blast that big before. That’s really impressive.


New Mexico Tech energetic materials research and testing center
In the US television series Mythbusters they detonated a truck full of explosives. It was completely wiped out. It left no crater.



source: pakistan.blast.sunday.ap_384x216_dl.flv
http://edition.cnn.com/video/savp/evp/?loc=int&vid=/video/world/2008/09/20/pakistan.blast.sunday.ap


Does anyone know what type of measuring device this is?A Pakistani soldier was carrying such a thing inside the bomb crater, he seemed to be measuring something. Is this a geiger counter?

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080920/capt.def0eb9a1d5a4f89953ce9e094457f27.pakistan_explosion_xan110.jpg?x=400&y=249&q=85&sig=ElQEgSnjRWVEb6j_rMsYbQ--


ATTENTION -- FALSE AL QUEDA ALERT. (it was a military bomb!)

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20080920/i/r3657193952.jpg?x=400&y=266&q=85&sig=R1Ax_.qMRSkf7vR.YzEwpA--

a Truck Bomb does NOT leave a crater!
See FOOL ME TWICE video @ minute 56 ... below
In the US television series Mythbusters they detonated
a truck full of explosives.
It was completely wiped out. It left no crater.


http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/afp/20080920/capt.cps.nqq08.200908220955.photo02.photo.default-467x512.jpg?x=314&y=345&q=85&sig=.pDVzBSt4giPUnwrmfSznA--
Same fire and burn victims as in Bali 2002?

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080920/capt.98c6a485865c4d0795f45f46fc7b5018.pakistan_explosion_isl117.jpg?x=249&y=345&q=85&sig=BVsj9ICnT_2nxFKtyby9Xw--

60 Dead and 256 injured in Bomb Blast, One US citizen dead and 29 other foreigners

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080921/capt.afee2ce1f1f14b22bbd7ac2af1de27f4.pakistan_explosion_xan120.jpg?x=400&y=261&q=85&sig=gkTFLYmEOVlJM30lRZ9mQA--


According to latest news comming regarding Blast in Islamabad that One US embassy staff was dead in the blast confirmed by White House. 29 foreigners are dead in blast but not yet confirmed by any government official. Still many foreigners are missing in this blast and many injured in hospitals of capital Islamabad.

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20080920/i/r2482923696.jpg?x=400&y=272&q=85&sig=niWW_.eRmRoN24jAhxNwvg--

Nuclear flash and fireball igniting a wide area!

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080920/capt.3c9038ef179f4e30a5ec251ce9ce5c11.pakistan_explosion_xan113.jpg?x=400&y=242&q=85&sig=OCz6ymYiwy.o4sgVFpL.fg--

Fire at a distance ... like the BALI BOMB!


So far 60 dead and 256 injured in hospitals and rescue teams are still working on blast site as still their is fire in building and fears that may be some peoples are still inside.

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080921/capt.43d18e4abacc46d693c7465dd163921a.pakistan_explosion_xan108.jpg?x=400&y=202&q=85&sig=qMimASr2Dr9aetdNrFasrQ--
Another BALI type bomb?

The government ordered the army in to help clear away the piles of concrete and debris after the powerful explosion, which left a huge crater, around 20 feet (six metres) deep and 40 feet wide, at the hotel's main entrance.

Interior ministry official Rehman Malik told reporters the government had received word of a possible attack near the parliamentary offices.

‘We had intelligence reports two days ago that some incident might take place,’ Malik said.
At least two American, two British, two Saudis, one Dane, a Libyan and a Lebanese national are among the injured.

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080921/capt.46683f3733c541bb90b72214887c6530.pakistan_explosion_xan105.jpg?x=278&y=345&q=85&sig=mzd9E4YlZsuVFQo76plzXg--
In the video footage of the crater in Islamabad you can see a soldier walking around with a long vertical tube measuring instrument, a geiger counter?

http://homepage.mac.com/juanwilson/islandbreath/%20Year%202007/17-peace&war/0717-20PDavyCrockettGun.jpg
Davy Crockett US Army nuclear bomb from the 1960s. Now imagine the latest in nuclear bomb technology that has no fall out! The famous red mercury bomb? Clean Plutonium? Pure Fusion bomb? You get incredibly high temperatures that ignites everything!


Car Bombs DO NOT leave craters!

pakistan Islamabad marriott crater bomb analysis
Sun Sep 21, 2:41 AM ET

Soldiers and investigators examine the crater caused by a bomb blast outside the Marriott hotel in Islamabad September 21, 2008.




JDAM do leave craters!





Watch this video IN FULL LENGTH, there is PROOF that car bombs do not leave craters. Fast Forward to 55:55!!





The Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) is a guidance tail kit that converts existing unguided free-fall bombs into accurate, adverse-weather "smart" munitions. With the addition of a new tail section that contains an inertial guidance system and a Global Positioning System guidance control unit, JDAM vastly improves the accuracy of otherwise unguided, general purpose bombs in any weather condition. JDAM is a joint United States Air Force and United States Navy program.


Satellite Map of location:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=33.732968,73.0871&spn=0.002074,0.004828&z=18




http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20080920/i/r3173935210.jpg?x=400&y=262&q=85&sig=yc8sHbKaKt_vouEzNeZdHw--

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20080920/i/r2003769014.jpg?x=301&y=345&q=85&sig=tcToU3s1nH8n3XaRaNw3tQ--http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080920/capt.abb337bdaccf4073aea551d9d38e626a.pakistan_explosion_xan111.jpg?x=225&y=345&q=85&sig=GPY57PBTvyl3te9zQcXE5A--
http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080920/capt.8ac49604117d4411ab3a5fc7bcea120c.aptopix_pakistan_explosion_xan109.jpg?x=400&y=266&q=85&sig=SgVGdwvugz5UiG2dZ4f2_Q--

Police described the blast, which occurred at about 7:30 p.m. (9:30 a.m. ET), after the breaking of the fast during the holy month of Ramadan, as a vehicle bomb.

Trees were felled by the explosion, which occurred hours after newly elected President Asif Ali Zardari addressed a joint session of Parliament and promised to root out terrorism.

Video showed a deep crater in the pavement where, presumably, the bomb detonated. More than a dozen cars were reduced to twisted steel.

TWO EXPLOSIONS TWO BOMBS
.. like in Bali? First a very small bomb (detonated by real islamist extrememists (covertly helped along by CIA/Mossad/Mi6/ISI) and then a HUGE BOMB (from the air, hence the crater?)


keywords: Mossad CIA ISI black-op psyop mininuke micronuke, US Navy demolition team, detonation lightning flash
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posted by u2r2h at Sunday, September 21, 2008 3 comments

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