Enzo Titolo

Politics, Paranoispiricies, neologisms, diary, creative, ruminations

Monday, December 01, 2008

Mexico's Unspeakable Truth about the 1968 Massacre

Mexico's President in 1968 felt it was time to end student uprisings in Mexico City and he declared for them to end. A large rally ensued on October 2nd.

Shots were fired, and then the Mexican Army massacred dozens of students in the Plaza. Communist infiltrators were blamed. An investigation was scuttled. No one was held responsible for the massacre.

This is what has finally been uncovered:

The Mexican Army surrounded the plaza with the students. Above them were stationed the Presidential Guards who purposely shot at the the Mexican Army. Thinking that they were being shot at by the students, the Army massacred them and cleared the plaza, ending the uprising.

I guess that there wasn't enough confidence in the Mexican Army to brutally massacre the students unless they were firing in self-defense. This makes sense. Army troops rarely like shooting at civilians, much less ones from their own country.

It seems the President sent his own force to shoot at the troops as agents-provocateur impelling the massacre. The Communist Infiltrator boogey-man was probably prepared at that same time.

This outrage should be investigated and prosecuted immediately.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Green DoD

Many of us are projecting our hopes onto Barack Obama's new administration. I have a specific proposal that I hope gets noticed or has already been thought of: make energy security, especially alternative energy, a national security issue. We can literally do this with making green fuel and fuel efficiency a high priority for the U.S. Department of Defense.

The U.S. military is the world's largest fuel consumer. The image of U.S. troops and materiel occupying or being based in oil rich nations is all the more poignant when we realize that fuel supplies security are not just a priority for U.S. consumers but also for the military, which runs on oil. The U.S. learned this lesson in World War II when we beat Rommel to the Mid-East's oil producers, and it was Franklin Roosevelt who established the U.S.' relationship with the number one source of oil, Saudi Arabia.

The D.o.D. spends millions, perhaps billions of dollars, on vehicle development and military research. Two great outcomes of that research include manned spaceflight, basically putting a can of men on top of a huge missile, and the Internet, originally DARPANet, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency project connecting cold war researchers through a non-hierarchical network that would continue working after a nuclear attack. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower, impressed by the Autobahn and its ease for his tanks advancing across Germany sponsored the U.S. Federal Highway development.

The military could and should put its considerable funding behind the search for alternative fuels.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Joe 'the Plumber' another Jeff Gannon/Guckert?!







Remember the fake journalist practically blowing President Bush in those 2005-2006 press conferences, Jeff Gannon, actually Jeffrey Guckert, tax scofflaw and male prostitute? He was a plant from a fake conservative news organization using questions based on Rush Limbaugh comedy sketches as if they were factual. He even used his credentials to interview Ambassador Joseph Wilson with planted questions, as if going to Niger as a volunteer were a junket.

If you catch his latest incarnation as a now-out gay blogger you see that in August 2008, he states that what Obama and Osama have in common is that they are buddies with terrorists who attacked the Pentagon, Hani Hanjour and Bill Ayers of the Weathermen! Bill Ayers was the supporting character in last night's debate, and has been echoing around Sarah Palin's speeches.

These neo-cons swim in a very shallow puddle. They don't have much of a back-bench, but they have message discipline, since they say the same inane smokescreening things repeatedly. I guess if you are the permanent minority seeking the most power and wealth, you do what you feel you must to win.

Which brings me to last nights main character in the debate: Joe 'the Plumber,' yet another conservative shill and plant, not an independent undecided voter, worrying about buying a business that will earn him $250,000 but faces 9% higher taxes.

There are no records of Joe Wurzelbacher being a registered plumber or even in the Yellow Pages of Toledo, but there are records of him having registered Republican, voting in this winter's Republican primaries, and he says that he was a member of the ultra conservative Natural Law Party. We don't really know who Joe Wurzelbacher is, what he does, or who sent him.

We do know, that like Jeff Guckert, he owed taxes. We also know that if his story were true, then his tax situation would improve with Obama's plan, and that the Plumbers' Union has endorsed Obama.

I wonder if he's related to Cincinnati's Samuel Wurzelbacher, Charles Keating's son-in-law who looted billions from a Savings and Loan, stealing folks' investments and retirements, before serving over three years in prison? The same Charles Keating whom Cindy McCain invested in real estate with, and the one who supported McCain's early Senate career with serious donations! Cincinnati is 200 miles south of Toledo.

As I've said before, these guys have a limited pool of dedicated operatives and shills to work with, but the following 'separated at birth' pictures are too funny. Let's hope the late night shows pick this up.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

No Blank Check Bail-Out --- Invest in Infrastructure, Communities, and People

Woah! Let’s slow down on this first $750 Billion blank check installment towards whatever the Executive Branch deems necessary.

George W. Bush’ Administration has a poor track record of using emergencies for terrible and costly policies – the Patriot Act rushed to vote during the Anthrax Scare a month after the September 2001 plane attacks, the Iraq Occupation which enriches military contractors and oil companies while increasing Al Qaida recruitment and distracting us from fighting the enemy in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, and the de-populationing of New Orleans in the wake of the botched hurricane response, a major failure of Bush’ Homeland Security Mega-Department.

This first $750 Billion bail-out installment will cost me and each citizen $2000 and it will saddle our children and grandchildren with debt, higher interest rates, higher inflation, and a lower dollar worth.

It also significantly and further weakens Congress’ power over the Budget and Executive Oversight. I was already distressed by Congress’ weakened powers over the past sixty years, but the use of alarmism in the last eight years has greatly usurped Congressional power.

Congress should push for and get for our hundreds of billions of dollars these things:

• Consent and Oversight as to how the money is invested not spent;
• Equity or Warrants to buy bail-out equity at a good value;
• Strengthened Community Reinvestment Act (CRA);
• Revitalized and modernized Glass-Steagall Act;
• Demand-driven (consumers), not supply-side investments, such as
• Refinancing at-risk-of-foreclosure properties, including subsidized interest;
• Financing for worthy renters of foreclosed homes and buildings to buy the properties they rented as cooperatives, condominiums, or mutual housing associations, as long as they were responsible payers;
• Increased student loan financing and increased interest rate subsidies;
• Subsidized Financing for Microloans, Credit Unions, Economic Development Corporations;
• Subsidized financing for research, including energy, medicine, information, and space technology;
• Bridge loans with subsidized rates to Non-Profit Organizations, State and City Governments;
• Subsidized financing for infrastructure development and repair, mass transit, and affordable housing development and preservation;
• The financial institutions can earn profits from servicing these bonds, mortgages and loans, and will repay Congress;
• The financial institutions must keep jobs in the USA and not outsource their activities;
• All institutions receiving investment must blatantly report their lobbying activities;
• No Golden Parachutes for Executives of companies that Congress invests in.

While you're at it... Reign in the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts' Excesses

To my Congressperson:

Please join Representative Ron Paul of Texas and co-sponsor the American Freedom Agenda Act.

The American Freedom Agenda Act would:

bar the use of evidence obtained through torture;
require that federal intelligence gathering is conducted in accordance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA);
create a mechanism for challenging presidential signing statements;
repeal the Military Commissions Act, which, among other things, denies habeas corpus to certain detainees;
prohibit kidnapping, detentions, and torture abroad;
protect journalists who publish information received from the executive branch; and ensure that secret evidence is not used to designate individuals or organizations with a presence in the U.S. as foreign terrorists.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Pre-empting Pre-emptive Pardons, a letter you might send to Congress

As we approach the end of the Bush Administration we are likely to experience a flurry of Presidential pardons.

President Bush has expanded his powers at every opportunity. For the first time in our republic, we are at risk of pre-emptive pardons, pardons for crimes that may be uncovered in the future.

The pardon was not meant for members of one’s administration, oneself, or for crimes that haven’t yet been prosecuted. This would not be a pardon, but a license to break the law. This means that the Bush Administration can try to put itself above the law, which is not what pardons are for or were intended to be.

President Nixon once asserted that if the President does it, it cannot be illegal. President Bush seems to think similarly.

Now is the time to write the President warning him of your concern and to sponsor legislation in the House/Senate to prevent the President from such an abuse of power.

Thank you.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Deep History Consistencies - Anthrax and Iraq

One thing that is consistent about the W-Cheney Administration is that they use the same cast of characters, like they are from a stable, and they do the same things-- lie, fabricate, war-monger, aggrandize their own power, and see that it all works for the bottom lines of their coteries.

Throughout the spring of 2003 I was expecting an Iraqi WMD 'discovery,' assuming it would be a plant.

In early July 2003, Judith Miller wrote a NYTimes article about how Stephen Hatfill created a mobile bio-weapons lab to train the Delta Force to discover WMD.



We are now learning, more and more (Ron Susskind's latest book details that the W-Cheney Administration forged documentation falsely proving Iraqi bio-weapons capability, and Sy Hersh told the Center for American Progress that Cheney's staff seriously discussed having Navy Seals under an Iranian false flag to start hostilities with the US Navy to start a war), that this Administration lies to get what it wants and infects our entire governmental apparatus to do so. Politicization is too kind a word.

In July 2003, in Fort Bragg, we have Hatfill's life-size, workable, mobile bioweapons lab to train the Delta Force. I don't know why a small model or drawings couldn't suffice for training purposes. Who authorized this?

Was this full-scale prototype taken to Iraq? Were there plans?

That same month, Rove and Cheney's team destroys Valerie Plame-Wilson, the leading Middle East's WMD covert expert's career, and compromises her network and her entire cover. I speculate that the heat was too hot, especially with an election season coming up, to plant such a lab in Iraq to 'prove' that the war was justified, just as Ambassador Joseph Wilson was showing that the emperor was naked.
Such a hoax, if discovered, would have taken the Administration down.

Hatfill's previous project, according to Scott Shane, then of the Baltimore Sun, was for the CIA commissioning a study of what would happen in an office with an envelop of Anthrax in it. It's author, William C. Patrick III, denies writing it. Around this time, Hatfill also worked on a previous mobile weapons lab for training special operations forces in Guam.




In any case, there are lots of unanswered questions, and we need a powerful, apolitical investigation of this matter, and unlike the 9/11 Commission it shouldn't have a mandate not to assign blame, nor should it have administration people on the executive staff. Something more along the lines of a special prosecutor.


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/02/us/after-war-biological-warfare-subject-anthrax-inquiry-tied-anti-germ-training.html?scp=1&sq=Subject&pagewanted=all

AFTER THE WAR: BIOLOGICAL WARFARE; Subject of Anthrax Inquiry Tied to Anti-Germ Training

This article was reported and written by William J. Broad, David Johnston and Judith Miller.
Published: Wednesday, July 2, 2003


Three years ago, the United States began a secret project to train Special Operations units to detect and disarm mobile germ factories of the sort that Iraq and some other countries were suspected of building, according to administration officials and experts in germ weaponry.

The heart of the effort, these officials said, was a covert plan to construct a mobile germ plant, real in all its parts but never actually ''plugged in'' to make weapons. In the months before the war against Iraq, American commandos trained on this factory.

The tale of the mobile unit provides a glimpse into one of the most secretive of military and intelligence worlds, that of germ warfare defense. But here, two stories intersect. The first involves this previously unknown aspect of the Iraq war. The second involves the investigation into who sent letters containing anthrax that killed five people in the United States in late 2001.

Officials familiar with the secret project say that to design an American version of a mobile germ unit, the government turned to Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, then a rising star in the world of biological defense but more recently publicly identified by the Justice Department as ''a person of interest'' in the anthrax investigation.

It was unclear why investigators focused on Dr. Hatfill. Officials now say a major reason he came under suspicion was his work on the mobile unit.

Dr. Hatfill has been subjected to greater scrutiny than anyone else in the anthrax investigation, but the government has brought no charges. He has repeatedly denied any role in the attacks and has said he knows nothing about anthrax production.

Dr. Hatfill, people close to him say, is proud of his work on the mobile unit and says it demonstrates his desire to assist the government in biodefense, even though investigators tried to use his work against him. In any case, investigators found no evidence suggesting that the plant ever made anthrax, his friends, government experts and investigators all agree.

The secret trainer is similar to the mobile units that the Bush administration has accused Iraq of building to produce biological weapons. Neither its existence nor Dr. Hatfill's work on it has previously been disclosed publicly. Pat Clawson, Dr. Hatfill's spokesman and friend, said Dr. Hatfill would not comment on any secret project or any role that he might have played. Mr. Clawson also declined comment.

Dr. Hatfill helped develop the mobile plant while working for Science Applications International Corporation, a leading contractor for the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, the officials and the experts said.

They said the unit was set up last fall at Fort Bragg, N.C., to help Delta Force, the Army's elite Special Operations unit, learn what to look for in Iraq and how to react if it found dangerous mobile gear.

Several people familiar with the Delta Force trailer, including senior counterterrorism officials, said it was intended solely for training. They emphasized that its components were not connected and that it could not have made lethal germs.

Even after the F.B.I. began investigating Dr. Hatfill, the Pentagon continued to draw on his expertise. But tensions arose between the Justice Department and the Defense Department over their access to the mobile unit, the weapons experts said.

The trainer's equipment includes a fermenter, a centrifuge and a mill for grinding clumps of anthrax into the best size for penetrating human lungs, these experts said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, suspecting that components from the Delta trainer might have been used to make the anthrax mailed in late 2001, examined the unit, officials and experts said. But investigators found no spores or other evidence linking it to the crime, they said.

The mobile unit is part of the government's secretive effort to develop germ defenses.

Critics say such biodefense projects often test the limits of the 1975 global ban on germ weapons, which the United States championed.

But the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the anthrax letters only weeks later prompted the Bush administration to greatly expand the number of such clandestine projects.

Elisa D. Harris, a Clinton administration arms control official now at the University of Maryland, said developing a mobile germ trainer would not violate the treaty. But she questioned the wisdom of it.

''It will raise concerns in other capitals,'' Dr. Harris said, ''in part because the United States has fought tooth and nail to prevent the international community from strengthening the germ treaty.''

Senior Pentagon officials declined to discuss the mobile unit. An administration official said the Pentagon had reviewed the unit to ensure legal compliance with the germ treaty.

The American mobile unit was not a first. About 50 years ago, when the United States made germ weapons, scientists drew up plans for mobile units that could produce enough anthrax to kill almost everyone in a large city, said William C. Patrick III, a former head of product development at Fort Detrick, Md., then the military's center for developing germ weapons. The goal, Mr. Patrick said in an interview, was to create a reserve in case an enemy destroyed the nation's germ factories, in Arkansas and Maryland at the time.

Over the decades, other countries, including Iraq, have also sought such mobile gear.

After Iraq lost the 1991 Persian Gulf war and agreed to destroy its unconventional arms, Iraqi officials told United Nations inspectors that Baghdad had once considered making mobile germ plants. A United Nations official said that inspectors ''kept that in the back of their minds'' while looking for evidence of mobile germ plants. They found none.

In the fall of 1997, Dr. Hatfill, a medical doctor, entered the world of germ defense by taking a job at Fort Detrick, where he studied protections against deadly viruses like Ebola. In late 1998, he began working at Science Applications, a company based in San Diego that has offices in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. Among other things, it helps the government develop defenses against germ weapons.

At Science Applications in Virginia, because of an increase in anthrax hoaxes, Dr. Hatfill helped commission a paper from Mr. Patrick to assess the risks of spores sent through the mail. The February 1999 paper compared the probable physical characteristics of anthrax that could be produced by amateurs with the known traits of American weapon-grade anthrax; it said nothing about anthrax production.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other senior American officials have said that in late 1999 a defecting Iraqi chemical engineer told American officials he had supervised operations at a mobile germ unit, and that Baghdad was making a fleet of them.

By 2000, the United States appears to have concluded that the rumored Iraqi mobile plants were probably real.

At his job, Dr. Hatfill took on the mobile trainer project with enthusiasm, colleagues recalled. At times, one said, he asserted that he was its instigator.

Military officials said that the effort was financed by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, an arm of the Pentagon that works to counter biological, radiological and chemical weapons.

Experts said that Science Applications assigned the project to Dr. Hatfill and Dr. Joseph F. Soukup, a vice president for biomedical science, who helped commission the 1999 anthrax report.

Science Applications declined to discuss the project or Dr. Hatfill's involvement. ''It's highly classified,'' Ron Zollars, a company spokesman, said. Dr. Soukup did not return phone calls.

To learn about mobile production, Dr. Hatfill again called on Mr. Patrick and his encyclopedic knowledge, said experts familiar with their work. Mr. Patrick, who also declined to comment, described the old American plans in detail, these experts said.

The collaboration, experts said, produced a novel design that demonstrated a number of ways to multiply viruses and bacteria, including the use of fermentation, chicken eggs and tissue culture. It was not meant to replicate Iraqi or American designs but instead to illustrate a range of mobile biological threats.

In 2000, Dr. Hatfill began gathering parts for the mobile unit, an expert said. Another quoted Dr. Hatfill as saying he had bought parts for the Delta trailer long before its construction and stored them in a warehouse.

''It's all the ordering of equipment that in hindsight looks suspicious,'' said a third expert, who is familiar with the secret federal projects that Dr. Hatfill worked on.

The trainer's construction began in September 2001, one expert said. Dr. Hatfill supervised it at A.F.W. Fabrication, a metalworking plant on the outskirts of Frederick, Md. The shop was a mile from Dr. Hatfill's apartment outside Fort Detrick's main gate.

Although Dr. Hatfill seemed fully engaged in biodefense work, his world began unraveling. That summer, the C.I.A. had rejected his application for a high-level intelligence clearance after he failed a polygraph test, associates and officials said. Then, in September 2001, the anthrax attacks began and Dr. Hatfill soon found himself under scrutiny.

Science Applications fired him in March 2002. The secret Delta trailer, a person close to Dr. Hatfill said, was then half built.

Mr. Zollars of Science Applications said Dr. Hatfill did no further work for the company and received no further pay. Experts familiar with Dr. Hatfill said he continued to work on the germ trainer. ''He was doing it on his own, using his own money,'' one recalled.

Later, as the Delta trailer was being hauled to Fort Bragg, F.B.I. agents and experts pulled it over and thoroughly checked it for anthrax and other deadly germs.

''The F.B.I. wanted to confiscate it,'' one expert recalled.

After tense discussions, the Pentagon kept the Delta trailer, which was set up at Fort Bragg last fall in preparation for the war with Iraq. Experts said many troops used it in training sessions run at times by Dr. Hatfill and at other times by Mr. Patrick.

''This is a sensitive thing,'' Col. Bill Darley, spokesman for the United States Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., said of the mobile unit in an interview. He declined to disclose details, other than to say it was used exclusively for training.

''We are not growing anthrax or botulinum toxin,'' Colonel Darley said. ''None of this equipment is functional. It looks like -- it is -- the real stuff, but it's nonfunctional.''

Friends said Dr. Hatfill was deeply committed to following through on the project because it was for the Special Forces, in which he had tried to serve while in the Army at Fort Bragg. ''I had given my word,'' one friend quoted him as saying. ''I wasn't about to break it.''

Photo: Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, shown last year, has denied any role in the anthrax attacks of 2001 and has said he knows nothing about producing anthrax. (Getty Images)(pg. A17)

Correction: July 5, 2003, Saturday An article on Wednesday about a link between a biodefense training program and a doctor who has been questioned in the 2001 anthrax attacks described a statement he made about anthrax incorrectly. The doctor, Steven J. Hatfill, said in a news conference last year that he had never worked with anthrax; he did not say he knew nothing about its production.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Did the Democrats Kill Tim Russert?

The U.S. Presidential Election Year is too long, especially since it lasts over two years.

I am sure that the stress of the long Democratic Primaries of 2008 killed Tim Russert.

All that coverage was practically political pornography, or something addictive and time-consuming, but ultimately leading to a far-off, indefinite payoff.

And think of the money wasted with these long primaries, hundreds of millions of dollars. And what does it buy? Fat-Cats' access.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world and our national business justs kills the clock, waiting for the election and the new administration. Waiting for a better deal, someone else to negotiate with, maybe to test.

Back when we were a rural nation, using horses for travel and communication, our quadrennial elections made sense, but we really need either a longer single term, or a Parliamentary system in which the leader leads with the confidence and support of Congress and the public.

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