About Ms. “Charming” Hillary Clinton

“I don’t beleive she said it, and if she said it 26 years ago, so what?” –Ed Koch, former Mayor of New York City, reacting to reports that Hillary Clinton had once called a campain aid a “FUCKING JEW BASTARD”. [New York Post, 15 July 2000.]
HILLARY’S TEMPER: “When you show up in the Senate, you can’t hire, fire, and insult your colleagues if you don’t get along with them.”—Hillary Clinton complaining about Rudy Giuliani during her 1999 listening tour.” It was more than a little odd that Hillary Clinton’s earliest Senate campain attacks on New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani centered on his temperament. He was too abrasive, she said. He didn’t work well with others. His bull-in-the-china-shop style wouldn’t fit into the refined and respectful atmosphere of the Senate, where protocol, deference, and senatorial courteous supposedly reined. “He gets angry quite often,” Mrs Clinton said in December 1999, referring to her then senate opponent’s sharp reaction to the decision by the Clinton housing department to co-opt $60 million in city funding for the homeless. “I can’t be responding everytime the Mayor gets angry about something because that’s all I would do.”[associated press. 22 Dec 1999] While candidate
Hillary pounded away at the notion that Giuliani was too hot tempered to effectively represent New York in the
Senate, the establishment press dutifully reported her every word —without of course, noting her own track record in the temper department.
“She is angry. Not all of the time. But most of the time,” wrote a usually sympathetic Gail Sheehy in her Clinton biography, Hillary’s Choice, which was released just a few months before the first lady began zeroing in on Guiliani’s temper.[Gail Sheehy, Hillary’s Choice{New York Random House,1999}p.11.] The referance was to Sheehy’s first impression of Mrs Clinton, after spending time with her right after the first couple’s triumphant 1992 appearance on 60 Minutes. Long time Hillary aid Carolyn Huber, who saved Mrs Clinton’s buns in 1996 with a convenient cover story about how her mysterious Rose Law Firm billing records magically appeared in the White House book room, described the first lady’s fits of rage to Sheehy as nearly lethal. “The person on the receiving end never gets over it,” Huber remembered, reportedly shivering as she spoke those words.[Sheehy, p.139″] Another former Clinton adviser revealed anonymously that Mrs Clinton “is in a perpetual state of suspended
anger because of all that she has absorbed.”
Others have also noted Mrs Clinton’s rages, though the New York press declined to visit their accounts during her Senate race. During her husband’s 1992 campain, Mrs Clinton once got so mad she threw a breifing book at her husband while the first couple was being chauffeured to church, according to retired Secret Service agent William Bell, who revealed the incident to investigative reporter Ron Kessler in his 1995 best-seller Inside The White House. According to Bell she missed, hitting their Secret Service driver instead.[Ronald Kessler,Inside The White House{New York:William Morrow, 1999}p.231]
HILLARY’S ANGRY PROFANITY: The rages continued even after Mrs. Clinton took up residence in the White House, where she blew up at a Secret Service agent for declining to carry her bags. When the agent explained that he needed to keep his hands free in order to protect her, she replied, “If you want to remain on this detail, get your fucking ass over here and grab those bags.”[Joyce Milton, The First Partner{New York:William Morrow,1999}p.259] According to Richard Gooding, who broke the story of Dick Morris’s fling with a hooker in 19996 for the supermarket tabloid STAR, Mrs. Clinton became so abusive during her husbands impeachment that Secrest Service agents strongly considered filing a formal complaint.
“STAR has learned on nearly a dozen occasions in the last three months, Hillary has viciously lashed out at nemerous Secret Service agents for getting in her way—or for simply doing their jobs…..A young Secret Service officer stationed at the South Portico says he did nothing more than smile and say, ‘Good morning Mrs Clinton.’ Mrs. Clinton brushed by him, actually shoving him out of her way, an imformed source tells STAR. As she did, she snapped at him and cursed, ‘Get Fucked’!” “The officer made a report of Mrs. Clinton’s behavior to his superiors and STAR has learned that about 10 other similarly ugly incidents have also been reported in recent months. In other cases she is reported to have said such things as: ‘Get the fuck out of my way!’ Or, ‘Get out of my face!'” [Star,21 Feb. 2000]. The late Barbara Olson offered perhaps the most intriguing report of Hillary’s volatile temper, one that showed no deference to rank or age. “It was she whose obsession with
secrecy was so intense,” revealed Olson in her 1999 book HELL TO PAY, “that when White House council and former judge Abner Mikva finally bowed to the law and delivered subpoenaed documents, she and her White House scandal team lashed at him with such a vicous streak of profanity that he resigned.”[Barbara Olson, Hell To Pay{Washington,D.C.:Regnery,1999}p.5.]

CLINTON’S PRESS SECRETARY CONFIRMS TEMPER TANTRUMS: Even obstensible allies, like former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers, confirm Hillary Clinton’s penchant for scorching tirades, in an equally revealing account that showed that even Mr Clinton’s top aides weren’t spared from her explosive attacks. Gathering her recollections for a PBS documentary marking the end of the Clinton Administration, Myers recalled the internal administration debate in 1994 over how to handle the then burgeoning Whitewater inquiry. Myers, George Stephanopoulos, and several others in the meeting favored turning all documents from the Clinton’s controversial land deal over the Washington Post. But when Hillary entered the room and demanded to know what was going on, everybody “clammed up.” “Mrs Clinton wanted to know what was going on and she looked at George,” Myers said. “And George began to make the argument that we’d all been making and nobody backed him up. Nobody backed him up.
Everyone just sat there and let George take the beating, you know.” “And Mrs. Clinton got realy angry,” remembered Myers. “She attacked George which everyone knew was coming, which is why I guess nobody was willing to ride in there to the rescue….Here were 12 people in the room who all basically agreed and only one of them was willing to stand up and tell her what she had asked. And that took a lot of courage.”[Dee Dee Myers interveiwed for PBS’s Frontline THE CLINTON YEARS, Jan. 16, 2001, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/clinton/interviews/myers.html%5D
Myers told pbs that Hillary’s penchant for personal attacks could be devastating for anyone on the receiving end. “Anybody that stood up and tried to say this was a bad idea was, you know, smashed down and belittled, very personally,” the Clinton loyalist revealed. “And I mean where I said the president didn’t realy attack people personally, Mrs. Clinton sometimes did…not only would she sort of humiliate you in front of your colleagues or whoever happened to be around,” Myers said, “Hillary tended to kind of campain against people behind their back, and that was certainly my experience.”
HILLARY SCREAMS AT SENATE COLLEAGUE: Throughout her 2000 Senate campain the press kept Hillary’s secret for her, never delving into past accounts of her abusive treatment of both peers and underlings. And even when she exploded at a fellow Senator no one in the media saw it as part of a pattern. In July 2002 incident, Clinton blew a gasket during a closed door Senate meeting, shouting at campain finance reform crusader Senator Russ Fiengold, D-Wis., in an embarassing scene that broke all rules of Senate collegiality and decorum. The former first lady unleashed her notorious temper after Democratic Party campain lawyer Bob Bauer warned Senators that the kind of fund raising tactics Democrats had relied on in past elections could send them to jail under the recently passed McCain-Feingold campain finance law. When Fiengold rose to address the issue, he made the mistake of dismissing the warning, prompting Clinton to “scream,” according to the New York Daily News, “Russ,
live in the real world!…They will be all over you like a June Bug.” Fiengold shot back, “I also live in the real world, Senator, and I function quite well in it.”[New York Daily News, 19 July 2002.] Because it involved another Senator in a debate about an important policy issue, this time the press decided to lift the veil on Clinton’s outburst. A day later she privately apologised to the wisconsin Democrat.
“FUCKING JEW BASTARD”: Only once during her Senate campain did Hillary’s notorously nasty temper ever draw significant media attention. But when it did, the Clinton campain immediately to DEFCON3 damage-control status. The controversy over whether Hillary Clinton had ever called a campain aid a “fucking Jew bastard” is revealing on a number of levels, not the least which was the desperate efforts by news editors to see that the story never reached a mass audience. In fact, months before the news exploded at the height of her Senate campain, the accusers, Paul Frey and his wife Marry Lee, had revealed the toxic tidbit to at least two mainstream reporters. But they promptly deep-sixed the news. A third source who made similar claims about the first lady to NewsMax nearly a year earlier was completely ignored by the mainstream press. The claim that a sitting first lady had used the vile ethnic slur was buried deep inside the pages of State of a Union: Inside The Complex
Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton, by veteran author and one time National Enquire reporter Jerry Oppenheimer. In contrast to other much-ballyhooed Clinton books, this one got almost no advance publicity. But Union turned out to have perhaps the biggest political impact of any book of its genre.
“BOOK CHARGES: HILLARY CALLED AID “JEW BASTARD”, “Blared the “Drudge Report” headline on July 14, 2000. “In one particular shocking passage in the book, Oppenheimer quotes a campain official who describes an angry attack by Hillary in which she screams at him, “You fucking Jew bastard!’ Two sourced eyewitnesses confirmed to Oppenheimer that they heard the verbal assault.” In the ensuing days, three more witnesses to the ethic slur—or other incidents like it—came forward with damming accounts. It was, far and away, the most intense moment of the campainand the only one that offered Republican Senate hopeful Rick Lazio a chance to defeat Hillary. A week after the charged surfaced, Lazio was leading was leading Clinton by 7 points, according to a New York Post poll–the only time he held a lead greater than a polls margin of error during the entire campain. The now legendary confrontation with Clinton campain manager Paul Frey took place in 1974 on election night.
With the election results showing that the future president was going to lose his first bid for office against Representative John Paul Hammerschmidt, the mood at Clinton campain headquarters had deteriorated into recriminations. Hillary had not yet married Bill, but but she had ended her stint on the Senate Watergate committee just three months earlier to work with him in Arkansas. Defeating Hammerschmidt would mean she would get an early reprieve from having to take up residence in Arkansas, a place she despised. But as the final returns trickled in, it became clear that Hillary wouldn’t be living the glamourous life of a congressman’s wife in Washington anytime soon. “By three a.m. it was all over,” Oppenheimer reported. “Clinton had lost by a mere six thousand votes. He, Hillary and Fray went back to Fayetteville in their cars…..The minute Paul walked into the back room at the Fayetteville headquarters that night, Hillary hit him between the eyes. She was angrier
than Paul had ever seen her. ‘You fucking Jew bastard!’ she screamed.”[Jerry Oppenheimer, State of a Union{New York:Harper Collins,2000}p.153]
The accusation would have been easy enough to deflect if it had been merely Hillary’s word against Fray’s. But this time there were at least two other witnessess who heard the outburst and two more from the Clintons past who remembered similar outburts. It mattered not that Mr Fray was Jewish. His father was Jewish and the younger Fray was very proud of his roots.
WITNESSES ATTACKED: Still, within days, the Democratic Party and its media hand-maidens began circling the wagons around Mrs. Clinton. At a dramatic press conference on the front lawn of her Chappaqua mansion, Hillary vehemently denied the charge. Taking their clue from Clinton spinmeisters, the press joined in the effort to discredit three of the five witnesses against her. Fray, the Clinton’s crack dirt-diggers immediately learned, had been disbared for altering court records and suffered from memory loss due to a brain hemorrhage. And Neil McDonald, who told Oppenheimer that he’d heard the slur while listening outside the door, was smeared by President Clinton personaly as business failure who had to move to Dallas to work for his brother because “no one else would help him.” “I was there and Hillary never said it,” Clinton insisted in a call to the New York Daily News. It was a risky strategy. Up till now, only the New York tabloids had covered the story, while the
so called respectable press, not wanting to give credence to to yet another set of whistleblowers from the Clinton’s backwoods past, stuck their heads in the sand and hoped the storm would pass. But Clintons personal testimonial on his wifes behalf forced even the New York Times to report the incident, though Times editors declined to point the slur verbatim. “in 29 years my wife has never uttered an ethnic or racial slur against anybody, ever,” the president protested. “She’s so straight on this she squeaks.”[New York Daily News,19 July 2002.] However, Mr. Clinton did concede that Fray might have got part of the epithet right. “She might have called him a bastard,” he explained to the News. “I wouldn’t rule that out. She’s never claimed that she was pure on profanity. But Ive never heard her tell a joke with an ethnic connotation. She’s so fanatic about it. She can’t tell an ethnic joke. Its not in her.”
While the first family succeeded in raising questions about Mr. Frays credibility, his wife, Mary Lee, who also claimed to have wittnessed Hillary’s outburst, remained a problem. “[She] went after him for losing,” Mrs. Fray told the News. “Paul was not an Ivy League person. She could’ve called him a redneck or any putdown. She chose that, amd it was unfortunate.” And there was more.
NOT THE ONLY ETHNIC SLUR: Even before the Fray’s account appeared in print, Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson, a 32 year law enforcement veteran who helped guard the Clintons from 1986 until they left for the White House, had told a similar story. “It was fairly common for both Clinton’s to tell ethnic jokes and use ethnic slurs about Jews,” Patterson told NewsMax.com in 1999. When asked for the exact words, the trooper responded, “Jew Motherf—r, Jew Bastard.” Paterson later told WABC Radio in New York, “If she disagreed with Bill Clinton or she disagreed with some of the Jewish community in Little Rock–or some of the ethnic community–she would often make these statements.”[Carl Limbacher, “Hillary Slured Jews 10 to 20 Times, Used ‘N’ word Too:Bodyguard,” NewsMax.com, 17 July 2000.] And Dick Morris, the Clinton insider whom Hillary had summoned time and again to rescue her husband’s career, offered another revealing anecdote. “Im Jewish,” he told Fox News
Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes” in November 1999. “And I would often go to the Governor’s mansion and I would often have dinner with them. And it was kind of a joke. Everytime before dinner, Hillary would take me aside and say, ‘Dick, I’m soryy. We’re having pork. I just wasn’t thinking about it’. And I would say, ‘It’s OK, Hillary, I don’t mind pork.’ And the third and the fourth time, I finally said, ‘You’ve asked me this four times. I eat pork. I like pork.’ So we joked about it, we kidded about it.”[Dick Morris, interveiwed on Hannity & Colmes, the Fox News Channel, 4 Nov. 1999] Morris continued: “Then about a year later, I was having a meeting in the breakfest room in the Govenors mansion with Betsey[Wright, Clinton’s then cheif of staff], Hillary, Bill and me. Bill and I were fighting about my fee. I was pushing for more money….And Hillary was upset with the limited income they had to live with and that I was making so much money from their campain. And she was
getting realy annoyed at me for the battle. And she just exploded in anger and I’ll just quote her. “She said, ‘Thats all you people care about is money!’ And I looked up. And I said, ‘Hillary, I assume by “you people” you mean political consultants.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, yeah, thats what I meant, political consultants.'” Perhaps as important as Morris’s story was his revellation that he’d shared the anecdote with Hillary biographer Gail Sheehy for her then upcoming biography, Hillary’s Choice. But when the Sheehy book came out, the Morris “you people ” story about Mrs. Clinton’s money complaint was no where to be found.
PREVIOUS FJB REPORTS QUASHED: Three days after Frays allegation exploded, NBC White House correspondent Andrea Mitchell admitted that the old Arkansas political hand had recounted the incident, including the dynamite charge about Hillary’s anti-simitic slur, during a 1999 interview for the network’s Dateline NBC program. But NBC News editors decided to kill the bombshell report because they doubted Frays credibility, Mitchel claimed.[NBC Nightly News, NBC News Transcripts, 17 July 2000.] Still since Fray’s wife Mary Lee was also a witness to Mrs. Clinton’s outburst, it doesn’t appear that Mitchell or her colleagues tried very hard to confirm the story. Mary Lee Fray shared the blockbuster allegation sheehy for Hillary book. But the author, who has enjoyed special access to Mrs. Clinton over the years, decided not to report the toxic charge. She told Newsday that since Mr. Fray had’nt volunteered his account of the incident during her own conversation with him, the charge
was suspect. Evidently the author decided it wasn’t worth a second call to Fray to see if his wife’s story checked out–even though Morris’s “you people” anecdote would have had any good reporter’s antenna up for such a corroborated tidbit. The media’s obliging indulgence in covering up even the most well corroborated allegations has been the key ingredient in the Clinton’s rise to power and will be indipensible when Hillary makes her bid to reclaim the White House.
HILLAY AND THE JEWS, THE ARABS AND OSAMA: “I don’t beleive she said it, and if she said it 26 years ago, so what?”—Ed Koch, former Mayor of New York City, reacting to reports that Hillary Clinton had once called a campain aide a “Fucking Jew Bastard”.[New York Daily News, 13th Nov. 2000] As a general rule of thumb in New York politics, no Democratic candidate can win statewide office without at least 65% of the Jewish vote. So its a measure of Clinton’s damage control instincts, honed through 20 years of scandal management in Arkansaw and Washington, that she managed to win her Senate seat by a landslide that included a mere 53% of the Jewish vote.
Multiple allegations that Mrs Clinton had used ugly anti-semitic epithet shook her senate campain to its core and might have forced a lesser candidate to withdraw from the race. But within days of the allegations exploding onto the media’s radar screen, a number of prominent Jewish Democrats announced that, in essence, it didn’t matter. Even if they didn’t beleive her denials, it didn’t mean she was an anti-semite. “I don’t believe she said it, and if she said it 26 years ago, so what?” Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch told the new York Post.[New York Post, 15th July 200.] While Koch counts his own Jewishness as one of the things about which he’s most proud, he saw no incongruity in defending Mrs Clinton, even assuming she was guilty as charged. “Did she say it yesterday? he complained. “There must be a statute of limitations.”
Anti-Defamation League head Abe Foxman, who can usualy be counted on to react with outrage at the slightest hint of anti-semitism, also decided to cut Mrs Clinton a country mile worth of slack. “If in fact she said it, that does not make her an anti-semite, because there is a public record of Hillary Rodham Clinton of the past 26 years which has no iota of anti-semitism,” he told reporters.[New York Post, July 15 2000]
Even Clintons opponent Rick Lazio, who suddenly found himself with a 7 point lead over Clinton after two weeks of the controversy, declined to overtly capitalize on what turned out to be his last chance to beat the then first lady. After initially telling reporters he didn’t know whether to beleive the story or not, Lazio even declined to attribute his breakout in the polls to the brewing brouhaha. “I can’t realy say. I don’t know.” he explained to News Max, when asked why Mrs Clintons Jewish support had suddenly taken a disastrous 12-point decline to less than 50%. “All I know is that we had two good appearances this weekend in front of synagogues, one Reform, one sort of ecletic, out on the east end of Long Island. And our reception at both was very very good.” Rather than attribute Clinton’s alleged epithet, Lazio attributed his abrupt success to his reputation for moderation saying, “I think people respond to a mainstream record.”
The rising GOP star, who had built something of a reputation as a giant slayer with his surprise 1994 win over Long Island Democrat Tom Downey, had adopted the tried and true political strategy: Never interfere with an opponent in the process of self-destructing. But like to many Republicans Lazio’s advisers failed to appreciate that the tactic works only for Democrats, who can count on the press to keep ginning up new angles on even the most tipid and stale revellation. Whats more, despite Clinton’s reputation as a ruthless political street fighter, Lazio hadn’t anticipated the lengths to which the Hillary 2000 campain was willing to go to tarnish his image. “WE certainly tried to run a high road campain,” Lazio told News Max two years after he went up against the Clinton’s. “And they had a campain that was reflective of the guy who was realy developing their field operation, Harold Ickles. That was not the kind of person who reflected out kind of values in the campain.
So, they were capable of doing a whole litany of things that we wouldn’t even imagine—and then deny, by the way”.
HILLARY’S HARDBALL PLAYERS: In fact the mere presence of Ickles should have been a major public relations liability for the Clinton campian. Denied an appointment as President Clintons Cheif Of Staff because of his past associations with suspect illegal union activities rendered him unlikely to survive Senate confirmation, Ickles performed all manner of political dirty work for the White House.[Byron York, The american Specter,”Our Guy In The white House,” April 1997]
Fresh from a Senate Whitewater Committee criminal referral that reccomended that he be probed by the Justice Department for possible purgery in his own testimony, Ickles almost immediately cropped up as a central figure in Clintons campain finance scandal.
But Perhaps the episode that tells the most about the son of a top aid to President Franklin Rosevelt had nothing to do with the Clintons. There is, for instance the often alluded to—but seldomed detailed—incident where a young Ickles is said to have actualy bitten another political operative during a particular nasty disagreement. James Vlastro, now a New York City public Relations executive, remembered the attack of more than a quater century ago vividly, in an account to the Associated Press offered during the height of Senator Clintons campain. “I was working with him on a 1973 New York mayoral campain when he got into a knock down fight with the campain manager,” Vlastro said in June of 1999.[Associated Press, 17 June 1999] “I tried to break it up and thats when he bit me. It wasn’t a soft bite either.” Vlastro said he disinfected the wound by pouring vodka on it. Tellingly, though the Associated Press found Ickles’ Mike Tyson like behavior newsworth enough to
report, not a single New York City Daily decided to pick up the story. The kind of hardball tactics practiced by Mrs Clinton’s campain became apparent when the Securities and Exchange Commission in her husbands administration announced that it was launching ans investigation into Lazio’s investments.
More than two years later, the former New York congressman beleives the probe was entirely political. “Absolutely” he told NewsMax.com “[New York State Comptroller and Hillary ally] Carl McCall wrote, among all the other letters he wrote[to the SEC] that they were clearly behind…..There was absolutely no basis for [the SEC probe]. None.”
Lazio explained that the Clinton SEC “did a thorough review and they found that there was no legal basis to believe that there was anything but a proper investment.” He added, “Were talking $10,000, I think. Thats, again, reflective of the [Hillary-Ickles team’s]personal hardball tactics.”[Lazio, 15th Nov 2002] Obviously still stung by the Mrs Clinton’s scorched earth campain style, Lazio complained, “The thing thats disturbing about it is that theres just no limit. Theres no sense of conscience about what kind of impact it has on decent people and their families and the people that are close to them. And so their capable of doing just about anything to win.”
That same commitment to win at all costs had allowed President Clinton to survive a year long sex scandal that exposed him as a perjurer and a sexual predator—and it would see his wife through the revelation of her anti-Semitic slur.
“FUCKING JEW BASTARD” DAMAGE CONTROL: A few weeks after Paul Fray’s allegations hit the press, Adam Dickter, a reporter for the ‘Jewish Forward’, exposed one of Clinton’s campains’s more heavy -handed attempts at damage control. Dickter got his hands on a copy of a memo sent to Clinton’s “Jewish Advisory Committee” by campain aid Keren Adler, which including talking points on how to trash Fray; his wife, Mary Lee; and Neil McDonald–the three witnesses to Hillary’s 1974 anti-Semitic epithet.
While there was nothing particularly unusual about the talking points, distributed to Jewish friends and aquaintances of Mrs. Clinton with instructions to contact the media on her behalf, this particular memo came with a troubling disclaimer. “It is important that you do not say you are calling because the campain asked you to, but because you are outraged with what was said about her….The most important thing is to let them know that you know Hillary and you know that she would never make these kind of anti-Semitic or racist comments.” Mrs. Clinton in other words, was asking her Jewish friends to cover up on her behalf in order to help tamp down the burgeoning scandal.
“I received seven or eight phone calls from people saying that they wanted to go on the record on this subject,” Dickter told WABC Radio. He said he found the rapid succession of the messages left on his answering machine……”suspicious”[Adam Dictker, interviewed by WABC-NY Radio’s Steve Malzberg, 20 July 2000.]

On Nature and Balance

One would think that the editors and contributors to Calhoun Underground were far too caught up in politics. In our defense, I can say that having been raised in a highly political environment in which people were not afraid to speak out in the face of adversity, it comes very naturally. But there is a myriad of other sides to any story and there are many things that come “naturally”.
There must be balance in all things, in fact balance is inescapable in nature, and as humans in a natural world, without balance one would drive themselves completely insane. Balance is in the natural order of things. Everything in nature achieves it’s own balance of a sort eventually, no matter how hard it is pushed upon by humans OR natural forces for that matter. Natural Earth upheaval in all it’s intensity still eventually heals and becomes whole again. Even a lowly beer bottle, tossed by the road carelessly, will ultimately become a terrarium of plant and insect life or shelter for a field mouse to raise her brood. And in the horrendous devastation of mountaintop removal, eventually if left alone long enough, Mother Nature will do her utmost to work with whatever she has and cover the ugly scars left by greedy man.
We who live with nature, in rural areas, on farms, or in our yards and gardens are faced with one fact. We spend our lives fighting back mother nature as best we can with everything from hoes and rakes and lawnmowers, to chain-saws and brush hogs. And no matter how hard we work at our particular job or hobby, if we step back and say “I quit!” for just a couple years, the “mother” simply begins the process of taking back what is rightfully hers to begin with. And in this respect, the strength of nature, West Virginians are particularly wealthy.
In our minds, we find all the trash along the roads to be extremely ugly. At least those who have great reverence for natural beauty. But Mother Nature herself could care less if there are beer cans and MacDonalds cups and old tires tossed here and there. She’ll make use of them eventually.
Mother nature is not your average lady. We think that we humans are ALL THAT. We think we are so smart and so important and that if it were not for our giant Jethro brains, the world would simply go straight to hell. We’ve all got ourselves up on little invisible pedestals, we all think things should be just so, and if they’re not we will complain and cry bitterly until they are. But not so Mother Nature. She’s patient. She’ll just do what she does until finally something will get HER balance a little out of whack and then WATCH OUT! Us humans are nothing more than little ants upon the surface of the Earth and if Mother Nature gets angry, there is not one damn thing we can do about it. We think we are so powerful, but try sitting on the beach at high tide one night with the moon hanging full, or watch the devastation of an earthquake or hurricane or flood and realize WHO WE REALLY ARE in the greater scheme of things.
Our priorities are all messed up. And our balance is gone. We are so busy racing rats, chasing money and comfort for ourselves, we are forgetting how small we really are. We are not gods or kings or masters of any kind. We are just GUESTS here, tolerated nuisances like fleas, and every day that we are ALLOWED to live here and breathe the air and drink the water and eat what Mother Nature has supplied is a day we have been given a GIFT. And until we SEE and UNDERSTAND this, our lives will continue to be plagued by war and hatred and separation. And if we stand separated, we stand alone. But if we stand together as a family, we can’t be defeated.

Thoughts From A Non-Voter…

*Note from Calhoununderground: Now that the weather is getting colder and we spend more time indoors, we wish to post more reprinted articles from various sources for all our readers who may not be so familiar with what’s going on in the “real” world outside Calhoun County. Having been a confirmed  “democrat” and non-voter (who wants to vote for the lesser of evils???) for my entire adult life, I read this this morning, and was astounded, as, aside from some of the personal details, I COULD HAVE WRITTEN THAT MYSELF! So, without having to actually think about it OR take the time to write it, someone else has done it for me. I could not have said it better. This is for all you NON-voters out there who have never had any interest in politics or always voted only for those in “your” party.

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A Non-Voter’s Thoughts on Ron Paul

Bretigne Shaffer
Lew Rockwell.com
Thursday November 15, 2007

As long as it’s just George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft who are evil – a “bad batch” – then you don’t have to kick the habit entirely. Just make sure you get a good batch next time – elect “good” politicians – and you’ll never have to question the political system to which you have become attached.

~ Me, three years ago: “Kick the Habit: Politics Is Not the Answer”

I can’t believe the things that have been coming out of my mouth these past few months. If anyone had told me a year ago that today I’d be sending an e-mail to my friends urging them to vote – and to vote Republican – I would have said that person was either nuts or just didn’t know me.

And yet here I am, writing the e-mails, getting involved in the movement, and trying to explain to my friends – long used to hearing me tell them why voting is worse than a waste of time, how it helps perpetuate a system that is destructive and wrong – why this time it’s different, this time it not only makes sense to vote, but they must vote …and get all of their friends to do it too.

And all the while, a little voice gnaws away at me, asking if I’m not just falling into the same trap I warned against when I wrote about the 2004 elections “Kick the Habit: Politics is Not the Answer”; If I’m not just putting my faith in a politician to solve problems that have no political solution; If I’m not just trying to solve problems with the very mechanism that created them; if I’m not granting legitimacy to the state by participating in its elections. And the truth is, I don’t have a clean answer to any of those questions. I can’t just dismiss them or pretend I’m not in fact falling victim to the same attachment to political solutions – the same addiction – that I saw so clearly as being part of the problem four years ago, and that I still believe is part of the problem.

But neither can I answer the other voice that asks questions just as troubling. Questions like: “so why haven’t you, and the anti-war movement, been able to end the war in Iraq?” and “what exactly is it you’re going to do to stop them from nuking Iran?” I don’t have answers to these questions either, and I am quite frankly tired of feeling helpless in the face of this kind of evil. And I know: that’s how they suck you in. That’s what politicians and drug pushers alike look for in their potential customers: a sense of helplessness, neediness… an emptiness needing to be filled. I know all that.

But I also know that this time something is different. Ron Paul’s entire political career calls into question my beliefs about how political systems work and how politicians survive within them. My understanding of democratic politics may explain everyone else in Washington, but it certainly doesn’t explain Dr. Paul’s success in being elected and returned to office for ten terms. Or maybe he is the exception that proves my rules. Whatever he is, he is not the same animal as the others in Washington, he’s not selling the same stuff. And his candidacy for president forces me – and, I believe, anyone who has taken a principled stand against voting – to re-examine my reasons for not participating in the system.

The truth is, I never was a “principled” non-voter. I’ve always said – jokingly of course – that if a candidate came along who promised to drastically reduce the scope of government, and I trusted them to do so, and that person actually had a shot at winning, I would have to consider voting for that person. Not surprisingly, I have never been faced with this particular dilemma. I suspect that I am not alone among lifetime non-voters who have never really had to examine their stance. As long as there is clearly no point in voting, we are never really forced to dig deeply into the reasons why we don’t vote. And, certainly in my lifetime, there has never been any point in voting in a presidential election. Until now.

I first encountered Ron Paul the last time he was running for president. He was running as the Libertarian candidate, and nobody even pretended he had a chance of winning. As an opportunity to spread ideas about liberty and free markets though, my friends and I thought his candidacy was a good thing. One of my friends wrote to him and asked him to come speak at our school, the University of California at Santa Cruz (think Cuba to UC Berkeley’s Kremlin).

This was 1987, when the “Internet” was little more than a handful of geeks in computer labs engaging in vibrant discussions on a Unix platform and sometimes making little pictures with X’s and O’s across the screen. My friends and I spent one Saturday plastering the UC campus with “Who is Ron Paul?” flyers and did whatever else we could think of to spread the word in advance of his appearance. When the evening came, maybe six or seven people showed up. (One of my co-organizers says it may have been a dozen, but I think she’s being generous.)

The word “gracious” does not describe Dr. Paul’s response to the meager turnout. “Gracious” would have been skillfully concealing his annoyance and soldiering on through the evening. Dr. Paul was not gracious. He was genuine and engaged and seemed to care only about presenting and defending the ideas he cares about so deeply. He was, I imagine, the same person he continues to be as he pursues the Republican nomination today; a person committed to liberty, doing whatever he can to bring it about in our society.

The contrast between our pathetic gathering twenty years ago and the rock-star receptions Dr. Paul receives wherever he goes today is heart-warming and gratifying. It makes me happy that Dr. Paul’s years of tirelessly speaking the same words in defense of freedom are paying off, and it makes me feel that there may yet be hope for this country.

Like many of his supporters, I don’t agree with Dr. Paul on all of his positions. We part ways on abortion and immigration. But the issues where we do agree are so important and there is so much at stake that our differences are not an impediment to my support. More importantly – and I believe this is one of the greatest keys to his success – I know that his stance on each issue is the product of his genuinely held beliefs. He does not choose his words based on opinion polls or on the fundraising successes they have earned other candidates, but on his own understanding of what is right and what is wrong. Because of this I have unending respect for the man.

I don’t think I am alone in this. People are beyond fed up with empty political promises. They are tired of meaningless “choices” at the ballot box. They are rightly cynical about the entire process. Ron Paul has spent over 30 years of his life demonstrating that his promises are not empty and that he is utterly devoted to the pursuit of liberty in this country. Even people who have just been introduced to him see that he means what he says.

And this changes things. People are accustomed to voting for the lesser of two evils. What happens when someone who is not evil shows up? Integrity is not generally an ingredient found in presidential elections and its presence here now changes the entire nature of the game. Ron Paul is not playing by the same rules as everyone else, and by playing by his own rules – by committing the political cardinal sin of meaning what he says – he changes the rules for everyone else. Candidates are now no longer measured against other politicians whose words mean nothing, but against a man of integrity, and in order to succeed they must rise to his level. But they can’t. A reputation earned in over thirty years of dealing with people is not something that can be bought. Nor can it be “spun” out of thin air. Quite simply: Ron Paul has something none of the other candidates have or can get in time for the elections. This fact alone could very possibly win him the Republican nomination and even the presidency.

And that’s when my own words come back to haunt me. There’s that voice, reminding me that I don’t even believe in the process. That I don’t want anyone to be my president, that decisions over how much freedom I have shouldn’t be up to the majority. That by participating in the system, I’m agreeing that they should, that the majority has the right to rule over my life. So, for the record: I don’t want a president. And I don’t grant the majority the right to make decisions over my life.

But what is at stake is so great now that it is just no longer acceptable to not try whatever means I can find to fight what is going on. It is not acceptable to sit by and watch as “my” government lays waste to entire nations of human beings who have never done me any harm. It is not acceptable to sit by as the same government lays waste to the (however imperfect) institutions that evolved to protect citizens’ rights and freedom from tyranny. Not if there’s anything I can do to stop it. So, if there’s even a chance that Dr. Paul can have an impact in these areas, I feel an obligation to help him do that.

It’s not like I haven’t tried other things. I’ve stood out in front of the New York Public Library in sub-zero weather handing out anti-war pamphlets. I’ve written articles. I’ve marched in anti-war demonstrations alongside tens if not hundreds of thousands of other people – demonstrations that, if you get your information from the mainstream media, never happened. I’ve tried what I knew to try, and none of it has worked. The evils committed by the state – in my name and with my money – have only gotten worse and more widespread, and will continue to do so.

The truth is: I just don’t know what else to do.

So, come February, or whenever it is they hold the primaries in my state (I’m told I can only do this in one state, which is disappointing), I’ll be marching myself down to the voting booths and I’ll be pulling a lever… or filling in a form… or tapping on a screen. Actually, I don’t exactly know how I’ll be doing it, but I’ll be doing what I’ve never done before and what I never thought I’d ever do: Voting in an election for a presidential candidate who I believe can make things better.

I’ve long believed that politicians cannot get ahead by delivering more freedom and less government; that the game of politics can be won only by delivering more favors and more of other people’s money to one’s constituents; that the only real winner, ultimately, is the state, and that those who play the game end up serving its expansion. I’ve always qualified my condemnation of politics and politicians with the words “except for Ron Paul.” I’d then usually say something like “but of course he doesn’t actually accomplish anything.” Well I was wrong about that. Really really wrong. For all these years, Dr. Paul has been building something no other politician has – something that when just one person has it, suddenly becomes an incredibly valuable asset: credibility.

The question with regard to Ron Paul is not whether or not he will keep his campaign promises – he will. The only question is whether he will be able to accomplish what he has set out to. Will he be elected? And if he is, how far will he be able to get on his wish list of dismantling the leviathan state to which we have become so accustomed?

I don’t have answers to either of these questions. And anyone who says they do doesn’t understand what is happening here: The very nature of the game is changing and all because one man has insisted all along on playing it his way.

So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it is possible to effect positive change toward a more free society through the political process. Ron Paul has proven me wrong once already and he may just do it again.

I hope he does.

Evil From the Top Down

We suffer from a NAZI style police force. Not just here, but collectively as a nation. Our legal system is in a shambles. Corruption in places of power is the norm. If you were to follow the trail from the lowly court rooms of Calhoun County, the evil leaves it’s dirty slime trail up the ladder to Charleston, to the State Police Barracks, to the Governors office, to the Office of Military Affairs and Public Safety, to the Department of Homeland Security, and directly up the line to the TOP in the White House. It is all interconnected. A person wishing to fight the evil can jump in at any level, pick a spot to start, it’s all the same thing.

I found an article this morning about this particular part of the evil and thought I’d share it here. Many people in these hills and hollers don’t realize just how entrenched we are in the madness. They think if the cops can just lose THEIR evidence, they too will be alright… But it goes so much farther than that. THIS is what we are truley fighting in the long run. The madness of power gone completely insane….

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9/11 Truthers are Nuts!

Or are they?

Let’s take a look:

MILITARY LEADERS

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan (Col. Ronald D. Ray) said that the official story of 9/11 is “the dog that doesn’t hunt” (bio)

Director of the U.S. “Star Wars” space defense program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, who was a senior air force colonel who flew 101 combat missions (Col. Robert Bowman) stated that 9/11 was an inside job. He also said:

“If our government had merely [done] nothing, and I say that as an old interceptor pilot—I know the drill, I know what it takes, I know how long it takes, I know what the procedures are, I know what they were, and I know what they’ve changed them to—if our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. [T]hat is treason!”

U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director, decorated with the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal (Capt. Daniel Davis) stated:

“there is no way that an aircraft . . . would not be intercepted when they deviate from their flight plan, turn off their transponders, or stop communication with Air Traffic Control … Attempts to obscure facts by calling them a ‘conspiracy Theory’ does not change the truth. It seems, ‘Something is rotten in the State.’ ”

President of the U.S. Air Force Accident Investigation Board, who also served as Pentagon Weapons Requirement Officer and as a member of the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, and who was awarded Distinguished Flying Crosses for Heroism, four Air Medals, four Meritorious Service Medals, and nine Aerial Achievement Medals (Lt. Col. Jeff Latas) is a member of a group which doubts the government’s version of 9/11

U.S. General, Commanding General of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, decorated with the Bronze Star, Silver Star, and Purple Heart (General Wesley Clark) said “We’ve never finished the investigation of 9/11 and whether the administration actually misused the intelligence information it had. The evidence seems pretty clear to me. I’ve seen that for a long time.”

Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official (Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski) finds various aspects of 9/11 suspicious

Lieutenant colonel, 24-year Air Force career, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at the Defense Language Institute (Lt. Colonel Steve Butler) said “Of course Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism.”

Two-Star general (Major General Albert Stubbelbine) questions the attack on the Pentagon

U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, former instructor at the USAF Fighter Weapons School and NATO’s Tactical Leadership Program, with a 20-year Air Force career (Lt. Colonel Guy S. Razer) said the following:

“I am 100% convinced that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were planned, organized, and committed by treasonous perpetrators that have infiltrated the highest levels of our government ….

Those of us in the military took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”. Just because we have retired does not make that oath invalid, so it is not just our responsibility, it is our duty to expose the real perpetrators of 9/11 and bring them to justice, no matter how hard it is, how long it takes, or how much we have to suffer to do it.

We owe it to those who have gone before us who executed that same oath, and who are doing the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. Those of us who joined the military and faithfully executed orders that were given us had to trust our leaders. The violation and abuse of that trust is not only heinous, but ultimately the most accurate definition of treason!”

U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, a fighter pilot with over 300 combat missions flown and a 21-year Marine Corps career (Lt. Colonel Shelton F. Lankford) believes that 9/11 was an inside job, and said:

“This isn’t about party, it isn’t about Bush Bashing. It’s about our country, our constitution, and our future. …

Your countrymen have been murdered and the more you delve into it the more it looks as though they were murdered by our government, who used it as an excuse to murder other people thousands of miles away.

If you ridicule others who have sincere doubts and who know factual information that directly contradicts the official report and who want explanations from those who hold the keys to our government, and have motive, means, and opportunity to pull off a 9/11, but you are too lazy or fearful, or … to check into the facts yourself, what does that make you? ….

Are you afraid that you will learn the truth and you can’t handle it? …”

U.S. Navy ‘Top Gun’ pilot (Commander Ralph Kolstad) who questions the official account of 9/11 and is calling for a new investigation, says “When one starts using his own mind, and not what one was told, there is very little to believe in the official story”.

The Group Director on matters of national security in the U.S. Government Accountability Office said that President Bush did not respond to unprecedented warnings of the 9/11 disaster and conducted a massive cover-up instead of accepting responsibility

Additionally, numerous military leaders from allied governments have questioned 9/11, such as:

Canadian Minister of Defense, the top military leader of Canada (Paul Hellyer)

Assistant German Defense Minister (Andreas Von Bulow)

Commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy (Anatoli Kornukov)

Chief of staff of the Russian armed forces (General Leonid Ivashov)

INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS

A 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials (Raymond McGovern) said “I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke”, and is open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job.

A 29-year CIA veteran, former National Intelligence Officer (NIO) and former Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis (William Bill Christison) said “I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. … All three [buildings that were destroyed in the World Trade Center] were most probably destroyed by controlled demolition charges placed in the buildings before 9/11.” (and see this).

20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer, the second-ranking civilian in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, and former CIA clandestine services case officer (David Steele) stated that “9/11 was at a minimum allowed to happen as a pretext for war”, and it was probably an inside job (see Customer Review dated October 7, 2006).

A decorated 20-year CIA veteran, whose Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh called “perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East”, and astounding career formed the script for the Academy Award winning motion picture Syriana (Robert Baer) said that”the evidence points at” 9/11 having had aspects of being an inside job .

The Division Chief of the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs, who served as Senior Analyst from 1966 – 1990. He also served as Professor of International Security at the National War College from 1986 – 2004 (Melvin Goodman) said “The final [9/11 Commission] report is ultimately a coverup.”

Professor of History and International Relations, University of Maryland. Former Executive Assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency. Former military attaché in China. 21-year career in U.S. Army Intelligence (Major John M. Newman, PhD, U.S. Army)
questions the government’s version of the events of 9/11.

The head of all U.S. intelligence, the Director of National Intelligence (Mike McConnel) said “9/11 should have and could have been prevented”

9/11 COMMISSIONERS

The 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials lied to the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements, yet didn’t bother to tell the American people (free subscription required).

Indeed, the co-chairs of the Commission (Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton) now admit that the Commission largely operated based upon political considerations.

9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says “I don’t believe for a minute we got everything right”, that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, that the 9/11 debate should continue, and that the 9/11 Commission report was only “the first draft” of history.

9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that “There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn’t have access . . . .”

9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting”

Former 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It is a national scandal”; “This investigation is now compromised”; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”.

The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry, said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”
SCIENTISTS

A prominent physicist with 33 years of service for the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC (Dr. David L. Griscom) said that the official theory for why the Twin Towers and world trade center building 7 collapsed “does not match the available facts” and supports the theory that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition

A world-renowned scientist, recipient of the National Medal of Science, America’s highest honor for scientific achievement (Dr. Lynn Margulis) said:

“I suggest that those of us aware and concerned demand that the glaringly erroneous official account of 9/11 be dismissed as a fraud and a new, thorough, and impartial investigation be undertaken.”

The former head of the Fire Science Division of the government agency which claims that the World Trade Centers collapsed due to fire (the National Institute of Standards and Technology), who is a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, with more than 25 years experience in fire research and its applications, and is a professor in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at the University of Maryland (Dr. James Quintiere), called for an independent review of the World Trade Center Twin Tower collapse investigation. “I wish that there would be a peer review of this,” he said, referring to the NIST investigation. “I think all the records that NIST has assembled should be archived. I would really like to see someone else take a look at what they’ve done; both structurally and from a fire point of view. … I think the official conclusion that NIST arrived at is questionable.”

Former Director for Research, Director for Aeronautical Projects, and Flight Research Program Manager for NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, who holds masters degrees in both physics and engineering (Dwain A. Deets) says:

“The many visual images (massive structural members being hurled horizontally, huge pyroclastic clouds, etc.) leave no doubt in my mind explosives were involved [in the destruction of the World Trade Centers on 9/11].”

A prominent physicist, former U.S. professor of physics from a top university, and a former principal investigator for the U.S. Department of Energy, Division of Advanced Energy Projects (Dr. Steven E. Jones) stated that the world trade centers were brought down by controlled demolition

A U.S. physics professor who teaches at several universities (Dr. Crockett Grabbe) believes that the World Trade Centers were brought down by controlled demolition

An expert on demolition (Bent Lund) said that the trade centers were brought down with explosives (in Danish)
A Dutch demolition expert (Danny Jowenko) stated that WTC 7 was imploded

A safety engineer and accident analyst for the Finnish National Safety Technology Authority (Dr. Heikki Kurttila) stated regarding WTC 7 that “The great speed of the collapse and the low value of the resistance factor strongly suggest controlled demolition.”

A 13-year professor of metallurgical engineering at a U.S. university, with a PhD in materials engineering, a former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment Senior Staff Member (Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn), is calling for a new investigation of 9/11

A Danish professor of chemistry (Dr. Niels Harrit) said, in a mainstream Danish newspaper, “WTC7 collapsed exactly like a house of cards. If the fires or damage in one corner had played a decisive role, the building would have fallen in that direction. You don’t have to be a woodcutter to grasp this” (translated)

A former guidance systems engineer for Polaris and Trident missiles and professor emeritus, mathematics and computer science at a university concluded (Dr. Bruce R. Henry) that the Twin Towers “were brought down by planted explosives.”

A professor of mathematics (Gary Welz) said “The official explanation that I’ve heard doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t explain why I heard and felt an explosion before the South Tower fell and why the concrete was pulverized”
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS AND ARCHITECTS

A prominent engineer with 55 years experience, in charge of the design of hundreds of major building projects including high rise offices, former member of the California Seismic Safety Commission and former member of the National Institute of Sciences Building Safety Council (Marx Ayres) believes that the World Trade Centers were brought down by controlled demolition (see also this)

Two professors of structural engineering at a prestigious Swiss university (Dr. Joerg Schneider and Dr. Hugo Bachmann) said that, on 9/11, World Trade Center 7 was brought down by controlled demolition (translation here)
Charles Pegelow, structural engineer, of Houston, Texas (and see this)

Dennis Kollar, structural engineer, of West Bend, Wisconsin

Doyle Winterton, structural engineer (retired)

Haluk Akol, Structural Engineer and architect (ret.)

William Rice, P.E., structural engineer, former professor of Vermont Technical College

An architect, member of the American Institute of Architects, who has been a practicing architect for 20 years and has been responsible for the production of construction documents for numerous steel-framed and fire-protected buildings for uses in many different areas, including education, civic, rapid transit and industrial use (Richard Gage) disputes the claim that fire and airplane damage brought down the World Trade Centers and believes there is strong evidence of controlled demolition (many other architects who question 9/11 are listed here)

LEGAL SCHOLARS

Former Federal Prosecutor, Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan; former U.S. Army Intelligence officer, and currently a widely-sought media commentator on terrorism and intelligence services (John Loftus) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Former Inspector General, U.S. Department of Transportation; former Professor of Aviation, Dept. of Aerospace Engineering and Aviation and Professor of Public Policy, Ohio State University (Mary Schiavo) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, Champaign; a leading practitioner and advocate of international law; responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention; served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia- Herzegovina at the World Court, with a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University (Dr. Francis Boyle) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Former prosecutor in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the U.S. Justice Department and a key member of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s anti-corruption task force; former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois (J. Terrence “Terry” Brunner) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Professor Emeritus, International Law, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University; in 2001 served on the three-person UN Commission on Human Rights for the Palestine Territories, and previously, on the Independent International Commission on Kosovo (Richard Falk) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Bessie Dutton Murray Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Director, Center for Human Rights, University of Iowa; Fellow, World Academy of Art and Science. Honorary Editor, Board of Editors, American Journal of International Law (Burns H. Weston) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Former president of the National Lawyers Guild (C. Peter Erlinder), who signed a petition calling for a real investigation into 9/11. And see petition.

Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Troy University; associate General Counsel, National Association of Federal Agents; Retired Agent in Charge, Internal Affairs, U.S. Customs, responsible for the internal integrity and security for areas encompassing nine states and two foreign locations; former Federal Sky Marshall; 27-year U.S. Customs career (Mark Conrad) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Professor of Law, University of Freiburg; former Minister of Justice of West Germany (Horst Ehmke) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Director of Academic Programs, Institute for Policy and Economic Development, University of Texas, El Paso, specializing in executive branch secrecy policy, governmental abuse, and law and bureaucracy; former U.S. Army Signals Intelligence officer; author of several books on law and political theory (Dr. William G. Weaver) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Famed trial attorney (Gerry Spence) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Former Instructor of Criminal Trial Practice, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley 11-year teaching career. Retired Chief Assistant Public Defender, Contra Costa County, California 31-year career (William Veale) said:

“When you grow up in the United States, there are some bedrock principles that require concerted effort to discard. One is the simplest: that our leaders are good and decent people whose efforts may occasionally warrant criticism but never because of malice or venality… But one grows up. … And with the lawyer’s training comes the reliance on evidence and the facts that persuade… After a lot of reading, thought, study, and commiseration, I have come to the conclusion that the attacks of 9/11 were, in their essence, an inside job perpetrated at the highest levels of the U S government.”

MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Current U.S. Senator (Patrick Leahy) states “The two questions that the congress will not ask . . . is why did 9/11 happen on George Bush’s watch when he had clear warnings that it was going to happen? Why did they allow it to happen?”

Current Republican Congressman (Ron Paul) states that “we see the [9/11] investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on”

Current Democratic Congressman (Dennis Kucinich) hints that we aren’t being told the truth about 9/11

Former Democratic Senator (Mike Gravel) states that he supports a new 9/11 investigation and that we don’t know the truth about 9/11

Former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and who served six years as the Chairman of the Military Research and Development Subcommittee (Curt Weldon) has shown that the U.S. tracked hijackers before 9/11, is open to hearing information about explosives in the Twin Towers, and is open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job

FAMILY MEMBERS AND HEROIC FIRST RESPONDERS

A common criticism of those who question 9/11 is that they are being “disrespectful to the victims and their families”.

However, half of the victim’s families believe that 9/11 was an inside job (according to the head of the largest 9/11 family group, Bill Doyle) (and listen to this interview). Many family and friends of victims not only support the search for 9/11 truth, but they demand it (please ignore the partisan tone). See also this interview.

Indeed, it has now become so clear that the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash that the same 9/11 widows who called for the creation of the 9/11 Commission are now demanding a NEW investigation (see also this video).

And dying heroes, soon-to-be victims themselves, the first responders who worked tirelessly to save lives on and after 9/11, say that controlled demolition brought down the Twin Towers and that a real investigation is necessary.

PSYCHIATRISTS AND PSYCHOLOGISTS

Finally, those who attack people who question the government’s version of 9/11 as “crazy” may wish to review the list of mental health professionals who have concluded that the official version of 9/11 is false:

Psychiatrist Carol S. Wolman, MD

Psychiatrist E. Martin Schotz

Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, as well as Radiology, at Duke University Medical Center D. Lawrence Burk, Jr., MD

Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Ruters University Barry R. Komisaruk

Professor of Psychology at University of New Hampshire William Woodward

Professor of Psychology at University of Essex Philip Cozzolino

Professor of Psychology at Goddard College Catherine Lowther

Professor Emeritus of Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies Ralph Metzner

Professor of Psychology at Rhodes University Mike Earl-Taylor

Retired Professor of Psychology at Oxford University Graham Harris

Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nebraska and licensed Psychologist Ronald Feintech

Ph.D. Clinical Neuropsychologist Richard Welser

THOUSANDS OF OTHERS

The roster above is only a sample. There are too many Ph.D. scientists and engineers, architects, military and intelligence officials, politicians, legal scholars and other highly-credible people who question 9/11 — literally thousands — to list in one place. Here are a few additional people to consider:

The former director of the FBI (Louis Freeh) says there was a cover up by the 9/11 Commission

Former air traffic controller, who knows the flight corridor which the two planes which hit the Twin Towers flew “like the back of my hand” and who handled two actual hijackings (Robin Hordon) says that 9/11 could not have occurred as the government says, and that planes can be tracked on radar even when their transponders are turned off (also, listen to this interview)

Perhaps “the premiere collapse expert in the country”, who 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer referred to as a “very, very respected expert on building collapse”, the head of the New York Fire Department’s Special Operations Command and the most highly decorated firefighter in its NYFD history, who had previously “commanded rescue operations at many difficult and complex disasters, including the Oklahoma City Bombing, the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, and many natural disasters worldwide” thought that the collapse of the South Tower was caused by bombs, because the collapse of the building was too even to have been caused by anything else (pages 5-6).

Former Deputy Secretary for Intelligence and Warning under Nixon, Ford, and Carter (Morton Goulder), former former Deputy Director to the White House Task Force on Terrorism (Edward L. Peck), and former US Department of State Foreign Service Officer (J. Michael Springmann), as well as a who’s who of liberals and independents) jointly call for a new investigation into 9/11

Former FBI agent (Robert Wright) says “The FBI, rather than trying to prevent a terrorist attack, was merely gathering intelligence so they would know who to arrest when a terrorist attack occurred.”

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that some of the claims concerning government involvement in 9/11 are credible, that “very serious questions have been raised about what they [U.S. government officials] knew beforehand and how much involvement there might have been”, that engineering 9/11 would not be humanly or psychologically beyond the scope of the current administration, and that there’s enough evidence to justify a new, “hard-hitting” investigation into 9/11 with subpoenas and testimony taken under oath

Former FBI translator, who the Department of Justice’s Inspector General and several senators have called extremely credible (free subscription required) (Sibel Edmonds), said “If they were to do real investigations we would see several significant high level criminal prosecutions in this country. And that is something that they are not going to let out. And, believe me; they will do everything to cover this up”. She also is leaning towards the conclusion that 9/11 was an inside job.

Hmmm . . . maybe 9/11 Truthers are not nuts.

Ronnie Rush Murder Trial Nearly Sabbotaged Again By State Trooper

Reprinted form Hurherald:

JUDGE EVANS DENIES MISTRIAL IN RUSH MURDER CASE
(11/09/2007)

By Bob Weaver

Calhoun Prosecutor Matt Minney was completing his case against accused murderer Ronnie Allen Rush yesterday in Ripley, when Rush’s attorneys moved for a mistrial.

Attorneys Teresa Monk and Rocky Holmes said Cpl. Doug Starcher of the WV State Police talked with at least four jurors during a lunch break, and also conversed with members of the Rush family.

Monk told Judge Evans “There is more than the appearance of impropriety…this jury is now tainted.”

Judge Evans stopped the trial, and interviewed the principal parties involved, including at least four of the jurors who conversed with the officer during the break.

Cpl. Starcher was placed on the witness stand, testifying the conversation was “small talk” about hunting and WVU football, acknowledging he knew the individuals were jurors.

Starcher said he was asked a question regarding another issue by one or more members of the Rush family.

The jurors told the court they talked with Starcher about football and deer hunting, although two of the jurors said they were part of a conversation regarding another state policeman who was an acquaintance of Cpl. Starcher, a friend of one of the jurors.

The four jurors were interviewed independently from their fellow jurors, saying some of the lunch conversation lasted about 15 minutes.

Judge Evans told the court “This is a high stakes trial, with concerns about even the look of impropriety,” saying it is inappropriate for a witness (Starcher) to talk with jurors.

“Cpl. Starcher is an important witness for the state,” Evans said, expressing concern about the conversation between Starcher and a juror regarding a mutual acquaintance.

Prosecutor Minney said “No line was crossed to indicate the need for a re-trial.”

Defense attorney Monk told the court that the rules were not being followed, with a witness (Starcher) and jurors communicating, indicating that if she and co-counsel Holmes had commiserated with the jurors, a mistrial would likely be declared.

Judge Evans denied the motion for a mistrial, saying he did not hear any testimony regarding a discussion of matters related to the case.

“We’re all human beings. There are no perfect trials,” he said.

Rush, now 21, is being re-tried for the double murder of 69-year-old Warden Groves and 60-year-old Mary Hicks, while they slept in their Sand Ridge community home in May 2003. He was 16 at the time.

The re-trial was ordered by the WV Supreme Court after the WV State Police bungled the case. Rush’s public defenders Monk and Holmes appealed the case. Judge Thomas Evans III ordered a change of venue to Jackson County.

The couple was shot to death at close range while they were sleeping in separate beds. Rush had been living in their household. A considerable amount of money was discovered missing, some of which was discovered in a truck Rush was allegedly driving and later, hidden in a trash can in a house occupied by Rush’s parents.

Prosecutor Minney built a case against Rush for what he says is numerous inconsistencies and changes in his account of what happened, suggesting that jurors need to “follow the money.”

The trial is continuing today with closing arguments and could go to jury by afternoon.

Rush is being re-tried on the same charges he was convicted of by a Calhoun jury in 2004. Those charges include murder, robbery, burglary and conspiracy.

An effort to reach a plea agreement in the case against Rush failed earlier this year.

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Here are some past exerpts from news articles relating to all the problems so far with this murder case:

The initial investigation was conducted by Trooper Doug Starcher and Sgt. Jeff Cooper. Monk indicates that officers gave contradictory testimony several different times throughout the trial.
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During a hearing last week in Jackson County, defense attorney Teresa Monk said there are problems with missing money linked to the case, indicating the money had been in the custody of officers of the Grantsville Detachment of the State Police.
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……Cpl. Doug Starcher testified Rush had a red place on his shoulder and red dots on his face, although defense attorney Shannon Baldwin said the gunpowder residue test was negative, and numerous samples taken from his clothing showed no blood stains.
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The defense attorney reviewed police problems with the case, where a State Policeman said Sgt. Dale Fluharty interrupted a lie detector test and then became angry when Rush “lawyered up.”

She said the testimony indicated State Police ignored Rush’s request for an attorney, and a supervisor in Charleston asked the polygraph officer administering the test to not put this information in his report.

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