Five Time Bombs 

There are several timebombs facing Bush/Blair. When I first mentioned Enron in the INK newsletter it had exploded on the net, writes Ian Henshall, but US Democrats had not yet decided to fight back on the issue. Since then it has become a big mainstream issue and seen the fall of John Wakeham in the UK.

Timebomb One: Enron

The facts on Enron are even worse than the corporate media allows. The pension fund rip-off is only half of it. Enron was used by a mafia-like criminal conspiracy as a shell company through which to defraud the financial markets of several billion dollars. The money was moved through the `partnerships` in the usual tax havens, laundered, and will never be recovered. Bush has lied about his involvement with Enron (the relationship with `Kenny boy` in fact goes back to 1986), and Cheney seems to have so much to hide that he will not even tell the Congress who he met from Enron. The death of whistleblower Clifford Baxter was pronounced as suicide, but the police still have the file open. Baxter is the second Enron whistleblower to die in suspicious circumstances.

What is it they need to hide when one of the world's most famous corporations flagrantly shreds documents, knowing that they will be caught and the corporation likely be wound up as a result? This is what happened at Arthur Anderson. Enron's accounting was overseen by Tory Mr Fixit John Wakeham who now faces a criminal investigation. Wakeham accepted kickbacks (described as consultancy fees), which is in breach of accounting ethics and probably the law.

Blair has taken Enron money for the Labour Party, in return for the usual favours. Blair made the extraordinary appointment of Wakeham to head the committee on Lords reform. Blair seems to do everything that Bush wants even if it will split and possibly destroy the Labour Party. It is time to consider the hypothesis that Blair is a full member of the Bush/Enron crime family. If it turns out that 911 was a fraud, part of a strategy of tension (see below) Blair will also need to explain why he sacked Robin Cooke out of the blue to replace him with `lifelong friend of Israel` Jack Straw, and why one of his first acts as PM was to give Russian boss Putin support for his own fraudulent `war against terrorism` in Chechenia.

Timebomb Two: US public opinion

In one of the stupidest comments so far Mathew Engel in The Guardian said Bush was flying `higher than Abraham Lincoln` in popularity. The truth is that Bush is President and Commander in Chief of a psychologically insecure country now at war - as such his headline approval rating (currently falling) is irrelevant to his role as politician. The Washington bubble distorts reality as much as the Westminster bubble. Liberal ideologues like Engel are probably oblivious to the most dangerous dissent: from the populist Right in the US - see time bombs below.

A better indicator of US opinion is the public response to the brilliant writer/broadcaster Michael Moore and his book Stupid White Men, top of the Amazon best seller list and, astonishingly, third place in the Wall Street Journal list. His recent book signing tour has led to unprecedented scenes. Here is an inspiring report from Michael Moore himself....

http://www.michaelmoore.com

Dear friends,

This is just a quick note of thanks for the support all of you have given my book... By the fifth day of release, the book had gone into its 9th printing.

 Last night in Santa Rosa, at the local high school, they had a thousand people packed inside and another 500 out on the lawn who couldn't get in. It's like this in all the places I visit. Hundreds, thousands, turning out to discuss all the sorry excuses for the state of the nation.

 People have had it with keeping silent for the past 6 months. They resent having felt like if they chose to question what the government is up to or, God forbid, dissent, they would somehow be considered unpatriotic.  

Let's get one thing straight -- this is what it means to be "unpatriotic:"

 1. When you shred our constitution and eliminate our civil liberties, passing laws that make it illegal to encourage opposition to the government's actions, THAT is un-American.

 2. When you send our kids to go fight and die on a foreign land so that you can finally build a pipeline for your oil backers across that country, THAT is un-American.

 3. When you use the dead of September 11 to try to get huge tax cuts passed that will only benefit your rich benefactors, THAT is un-American.

 4. When you allow criminals who are stealing the pensions of workers and retirees to come in and hand-pick the head of the agency which is supposed to be regulating them, and then you place some of the criminals' top brass in your administration to "serve" as the secretary of the army and White House counsel, and then these criminals turn out to be your number one financial backers -- and their law firm turns out to be your #3 backer -- and, in spite of all this you still haven't resigned in disgrace, THAT is un-American.

 This tour has taken me to Ridgewood, New Jersey (area that always returns its Republican congressman), Arlington, Virginia (a town filled with military people), Grass Valley, California (in the middle of nowhere in a congressional district represented by a right-wing Republican). In each of these towns it's been a literal mob scene.

 The Virginia bookstore says that "this crowd is an all-time record." The line is out the door in downtown Ridgewood, and the store does not have enough books. In Grass Valley, so many have come from hundreds of miles across the Sierras that can't get in, so I tell the hundreds out in the street that I'll stick around and do a second show. Three hours later they are still there, and I do it all over again... (ends)

Time bomb three

You may have seen veiled comments in the corporate press along the lines that Israel knew about 911 and didn't pass on the warnings. This is a reference to another time bomb. In the summer of last year the DEA (Drugs Enforcement Agency) and other agencies arrested a series of Israeli `art students` for espionage. The US government denies this now but the very detailed DEA report has been leaked and is available on the web. It is devastating.

The main relevant facts are: the spy ring contained at least 30 operatives who were discovered as they tried to penetrate US security establishments. The Israelis admitted they were acting illegally, and that several were army explosives experts. Several of the addresses where they resided were within hundreds of yards of addresses used by Bin Laden's alleged hijackers.

There are also reports of two other Israeli spy rings, one had penetrated pretty much the whole of Washington with phone taps and had stolen state of the art computer mass surveillance software (PROMIS). This was reported in detail on Fox News, but the report was subsequently removed from Fox's web site (it is widely available elsewhere on the web). Another ring is more mysterious, the `movers ring`. It has been reported that several of these were arrested while cheering and filming the collapse of the WTC.

There is also a report that Israelis were arrested with guns and bombs in the Mexican Parliament shortly after 911.

Many US dissidents believe the 911 attack was a so-called false flag operation by elements of Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Pilots have argued that the manoeuvres carried out by the hijackers were impossible for amateur flyers, and that the planes were guided by some sort of remote control autopilot system. The anthrax attacks are now semi-officially ascribed to a known zionist within the CIA. The evidence is accumulating that 911 was part of a worldwide strategy of tension and that Bin Laden and the hijackers were duped.

Ref for DEA report http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/fishwrapper.html

Timebomb four: dissent within the US law enforcement community

There have been numerous anonymous postings the web apparently from air traffic controllers, military officials etc stating that the official conspiracy theory of 911 (that bin Laden's people did it all by themselves) cannot be true. The DEA report above was presumably leaked by people like this. The FBI proved that Timothy McVeigh was responsible for the Oklahoma atrocity when the rest of Washington was screaming about Arab terrorists. Much the same thing has happened over the anthrax attacks. There are reports of rows in the FBI with Attorney General (and militant Christian Zionist) John Ashcroft trying to get Israeli suspects released.

The problem for the sort of criminal gang that ran Enron and perhaps runs Bush/Blair is that by definition most people are not in on it. This leaves many high ranking powerful people who have no interest in defending either a possible 911 fraud or any cover-up. My guess is that if and when the official story does finally collapse it will come through whistleblowers that The Guardian would call horribly right wing.

Time Bomb Five: Dissent on the Web

When John Kennedy was assassinated only one useful independent film was made of the events. The Zapruder movie, which proved that Kennedy was killed by more than one assassin, was purchased by a media corporation but withheld from the public for years and it was many more years before the official lone assassin theory finally fell apart and the Senate found that there was `probably` a conspiracy.

Fast forward to now. There are cameras everywhere. Virtually every frame put out by the media is recorded and can be posted around the web. Clumsy attempts to remove information rebound (eg by Fox News above or the changes to the web site for Andrews Airbase which should have scrambled planes to intercept the Pentagon attack but failed to). Evidence can be ignored by the corporate media, but now there is an awful lot more of it and we have the web to spread it. A small example: Mark Hosenball reported in Newsweek, in a few lines tucked away, that several high ranking Pentagon officials cancelled flights on September 10. Hundreds of thousands of people now know this.

Recently the two web sites below have been flooded with visitors as people discovered that the Pentagon's own footage of the 911 attack could be enhanced and that the enhanced pictures appear to be inconsistent with a large airliner crash.

http://www.bosankoe.btinternet.co.uk

http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm

Here are some more web sites which dispute the official story of 911:

http://www.public-action.com 

http://www.emperors-clothes.com/ (mirrored at www.tenc.com)

http://www.copvcia.com (ex-copper who helped unravel Iran Contra scandal)

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com

http://www.apfn.org (right wing populists)

http://www.rense.com

http://www.narconews.com

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/

http://www.truthout.com

http://www.humanunderground.com

The author, Ian Henshall, is chair of INK, the umbrella organisation for the UK alternative press. This article is written in a personal capacity and not necessarily the opinion of INK members. To receive regular comment mailings from Ian Henshall, or to read past ones, go to www.coffee.uk.com/crisis