I am a selfish person.
I have no good feelings about Dentists. Everytime I go to a dentist I lose a tooth. Over the years I have had many teeth, which felt loose. Everytime I went to a dentist and told about the broblem tooth, I lost that tooth. One time the dentist pushed a piece of paper under the tooth when I refused her the removal of the tooth. The tooth got worse and it was so loose I went into the walk in Clinic in Bristol and it was pulled out easily. I recieved a letter asking me to come into the Dental Unit in the BRI for an investigation into the care my dentist had in her mind when she attended to me. I as an anarchist did not attend.
Most of the teeth which got loose and not removed by an over enthusiastic dentist went back to the normal way. So I decided that there is a connection between my teeth and other muscles in my body. At the moment I am investigation into the connection between my teeth and the muscles in my bak. I got a lot of feeling I might be able to get the Docters interested.
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I am trying to make everything I think and do simple without 'ifs' and 'buts', so that I can have an easy life.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Caught On Tape
I am a selfish person.
Israeli Occupation Forces Shoot Gaza Farmer
18th February 2009
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Israeli Occupation Forces Shoot Gaza Farmer
18th February 2009
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Sunday, February 22, 2009
Living With Mices
I am a selfish person.
? How do they know there is something inside a plastic bag?
? Do they sense it by smell, sight or they will chew it anyway?
About a couple of months ago I noticed a mouse running around my flat.I live in a small one bedroom flat. It is small in floor size, but easily accomodate a ten foot giant in the living and bed rooms. I thought a mouse is OK as long as it does not live inside with me. But then it became two mice in the flat. I decided the flat is too small for three of us.
By this time my back pain has grown into a undesirable state. I could not do the least amount of cleaning, like the cupboards etc. Little at a time I noticed that there is a distict smell in the kitchen area. I decided to investigate.
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? How do they know there is something inside a plastic bag?
? Do they sense it by smell, sight or they will chew it anyway?
About a couple of months ago I noticed a mouse running around my flat.I live in a small one bedroom flat. It is small in floor size, but easily accomodate a ten foot giant in the living and bed rooms. I thought a mouse is OK as long as it does not live inside with me. But then it became two mice in the flat. I decided the flat is too small for three of us.
By this time my back pain has grown into a undesirable state. I could not do the least amount of cleaning, like the cupboards etc. Little at a time I noticed that there is a distict smell in the kitchen area. I decided to investigate.
If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!
Zionist Dog Gets a Million Dollars From Zionists
I am a selfish person.
Don't you laugh. It is serious.
Tony Blair wins million-dollar prize for global leadership
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Don't you laugh. It is serious.
"Tony Blair has won a prestigious million-dollar (£697,000) prize for his leadership on the world stage, it was announced today.
The former prime minister, now a Middle East peace envoy, will receive the Dan David prize for "his exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict"."
Tony Blair wins million-dollar prize for global leadership
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Something For Your Photo Album
You may copy this for distribution. No Copy fucking rights
I am a selfish person.
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Friday, February 20, 2009
Is This Happening In UK?
I am a selfish person.
Jailing Kids for Cash
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As many as 5,000 children in Pennsylvania have been found guilty, and up to 2,000 of them jailed, by two corrupt judges who received kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities that benefited. The two judges pleaded guilty in a stunning case of greed and corruption that is still unfolding. Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan received $2.6 million in kickbacks while imprisoning children who often had no access to a lawyer. The case offers an extraordinary glimpse into the shameful private prison industry that is flourishing in the United States.
Take the story of Jamie Quinn. When she was 14 years old, she was imprisoned for almost a year. Jamie, now 18, described the incident that led to her incarceration:
"I got into an argument with one of my friends. And all that happened was just a basic fight. She slapped me in the face, and I did the same thing back. There [were] no marks, no witnesses, nothing. It was just her word against my word."
Jamie was placed in one of the two controversial facilities, PA Child Care, then bounced around to several other locations. The 11-month imprisonment had a devastating impact on her. She told me: "People looked at me different when I came out, thought I was a bad person, because I was gone for so long. My family started splitting up ... because I was away and got locked up. I'm still struggling in school, because the schooling system in facilities like these places [are] just horrible."
She began cutting herself, blaming medication that she was forced to take: "I was never depressed, I was never put on meds before. I went there, and they just started putting meds on me, and I didn't even know what they were. They said if I didn't take them, I wasn't following my program." She was hospitalized three times.
Jamie Quinn is just one of thousands that these two corrupt judges locked up. The Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center got involved when Hillary Transue was sent away for three months for posting a Web site parodying the assistant principal at her school. Hillary clearly marked the Web page as a joke. The assistant principal didn't find it funny, apparently, and Hillary faced the notoriously harsh Judge Ciavarella.
Jailing Kids for Cash
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Labels:
Money,
Neither will exist if not the other,
People,
Politics
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
UK police seize Gaza aid vans
I am a selfish person.
Did you hear about this?
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Did you hear about this?
British police have seized three vans that were to form part of a 100 vehicle aid convoy headed for Gaza.
Lancashire police said on Saturday that the seizure was made as part of an anti-terror raid in the northwest of England.
The convoy had been organised by the pro-Palestinian organisation Viva Palestina and left central London on Saturday, the group's website said.
It said the vehicles, which include a fire engine and ambulances, were carrying clothes, blankets and children's toys.
It said volunteers planned to drive 8,000km through France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt where they had hoped to cross the border at Rafah into Gaza on March 2.
Lancashire police said the cargo from the three seized vehicles was being "thoroughly checked by search officers who are working as quickly as they can to ensure that the parcels can be released and continue on to their destination".
Lancashire police said they were searching five houses in the town of Burnley on Saturday after arresting nine men under anti-terrorism laws on a motorway near Preston on Friday.
Six of the men have been released and the remaining three are still in custody. Police can hold them without charge until Sunday night.
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Birds Know It And Do We Follow?
I am a selfish person.
Study: Many North American species spending winters farther north
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When it comes to global warming, the canary in the coal mine isn't a canary at all. It's a purple finch.
Snow geese, like the ones shown here, are spending the winter more than 200 miles farther north than they used to in 1966. (Donald Metzner / Cornell Lab of Ornithology via AP)
As the temperature across the U.S. has gotten warmer, the purple finch has been spending its winters more than 400 miles farther north than it used to.
And it's not alone.
An Audubon Society study to be released Tuesday found that more than half of 305 birds species in North America, a hodgepodge that includes robins, gulls, chickadees and owls, are spending the winter about 35 miles farther north than they did 40 years ago.
The purple finch was the biggest northward mover. Its wintering grounds are now more along the latitude of Milwaukee, Wis., instead of Springfield, Mo.
Bird ranges can expand and shift for many reasons, among them urban sprawl, deforestation and the supplemental diet provided by backyard feeders. But researchers say the only explanation for why so many birds over such a broad area are wintering in more northern locales is global warming.
Over the 40 years covered by the study, the average January temperature in the United States climbed by about 5 degrees Fahrenheit. That warming was most pronounced in northern states, which have already recorded an influx of more southern species and could see some northern species retreat into Canada as ranges shift.
Study: Many North American species spending winters farther north
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Labels:
nature,
Neither will exist if not the other,
Science
The economic crisis could spark a resurgence in the Far Right, a close ally of Gordon Brown has suggested.
I am a selfish person.
As I explained to a mate of mine a few months ago it is already promised by an polititian. Wonder how long it will take to get into the Taxi service in Bristol? White Eastern Europeans do not have to worry about right now, but there might be a time in a few months time, when things go so bad for the majority of local posse that they will have to take action. Wonder where I stand in all this as a country-less person of dubious parentage?
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As I explained to a mate of mine a few months ago it is already promised by an polititian. Wonder how long it will take to get into the Taxi service in Bristol? White Eastern Europeans do not have to worry about right now, but there might be a time in a few months time, when things go so bad for the majority of local posse that they will have to take action. Wonder where I stand in all this as a country-less person of dubious parentage?
Ed Balls, the Children's and Schools Secretary, said the downturn was likely to be the most serious for 100 years, and his comments appeared to raise the prospect of a return to the Far Right politics of the 1930s and the rise of Facism.
Ed Balls fears rise of fascism amid economic gloom (Photo: Julian Simmonds) His warning, in a speech to activists at the weekend, came after a trade union baron warned that far right parties were trying to hijack the campaign for "British jobs for British workers".
The row over foreign workers has gathered momentum in recent weeks and Mr Balls seemed to suggest the recession could trigger a return to the Far Right politics that prospered in the Great Depression of the 1930s.
He told Labour's Yorkshire conference: "The economy is going to define our politics in this region and in Britain in the next year, the next five years, the next 10 and even the next 15 years.
"I think that this is a financial crisis more extreme and more serious than that of the 1930s and we all remember how the politics of that era were shaped by the economy."
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Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Secret police unit set up to spy on British 'domestic extremists'
I am a selfish person.
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A secret police intelligence unit has been set up to spy on Left-wing and Right-wing political groups.
The Confidential Intelligence Unit (CIU) has the power to operate across the UK and will mount surveillance and run informers on ‘domestic extremists’.
Its job is to build up a detailed picture of radical campaigners.
Targets will include environmental groups involved in direct action such as Plane Stupid, whose supporters invaded the runway at Stansted Airport in December.
The unit also aims to identify the ring-leaders behind violent demonstrations such as the recent anti-Israel protests in London, and to infiltrate neo-Nazi groups, animal liberation groups and organisations behind unlawful industrial action such as secondary picketing.
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Sunday, February 08, 2009
"Yes I Am Emotional About Torture SIR!"
I am a selfish person.
Shami Chakrabarti SAVAGES UK Minister Geoff "Buff" Hoon over the US attempts to BLACKMAIL Britain into silence over evidence of Torture.
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Shami Chakrabarti SAVAGES UK Minister Geoff "Buff" Hoon over the US attempts to BLACKMAIL Britain into silence over evidence of Torture.
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Saturday, February 07, 2009
Irish Call for Justice for Palestine
I am a selfish person
What the hell is this?
Israel's bombardment of Gaza killed over 1,300 Palestinians, a third of them children. Thousands have been wounded. Many victims had been taking refuge in clearly marked UN facilities.
This assault came in the wake of years of economic blockade by Israel. This blockade, which is
illegal under International Humanitarian Law, has destroyed the Gazan economy and condemned its population to poverty. According to a World Bank report last September, "98% of Gaza's industrial operations are now inactive".
The most recent attack on Gaza is only the latest phase in Israel's oppression of the Palestinian
people and appropriation of their land. Israel has never declared its borders. Instead, it has continuously expanded at the expense of the Palestinians. In 1948, it took over 78% of Palestine, an area much larger than that suggested for a Jewish state by the UN General Assembly in 1947. Contrary to International Law, Israel expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. These refugees and their descendants, who now number millions, are still dispersed throughout the region. They have the right, under International Law, to return to their homes. This right has been underlined by the UN General Assembly many times, starting with Resolution 194 in 1948.
In 1967, Israel occupied the remaining 22% of Palestine: the West Bank and Gaza. Contrary to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel has built, and continues to build, settlements in these occupied territories. Today, nearly 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the illegal settlements in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and the number grows daily as Israel expands its settler programme.
Israel has resisted pressure from the international community to abide by the human rights provisions of International Law. It has refused to comply with UN Security Council demands to cease building settlements and remove those it has built (Resolutions 446, 452 and 465) and to reverse its illegal annexation of East Jerusalem (252, 267, 271, 298, 476 and 478). Since September 2000, over 5,000 Palestinians, almost 1,000 of them minors, have been killed by the Israeli military. 11,000 Palestinians, including hundreds of minors, languish in Israel jails. Hundreds are detained without trial. In addition, Israel is breaking International Law by imprisoning them outside the occupied territories, thereby making it almost impossible for their families to visit them. Every year, hundreds of Palestinian homes are demolished. The Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza lives imprisoned by walls, barriers and checkpoints that prevent or impede access to shops, schools, workplaces, hospitals and places of worship. They are subjected to restrictions of every kind and to daily ritual humiliation at the hands of occupation soldiers and checkpoint guards.
Invasion, occupation and plantation of their land is the reality that Palestinians have faced for
decades and still face on a daily basis, as their country is reduced remorselessly. Unless, and until, this Israeli aggression is halted, and the democratic rights of the Palestinian people are vindicated, there will be no justice or peace in the Middle East. Israel's 40-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza must be ended.
The occupation can end if political and economic pressure is placed on Israel by the international
community. Recognizing this, the Palestinian people continually call on the international community to intervene.
We, the signatories, call for the following:
* The Irish Government to cease its purchase of Israeli military products and services and call
publicly for an arms embargo against Israel.
* The Irish Government to demand publicly that Israel reverse its settlement construction, illegal occupation and annexation of land in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions and to use its influence in international fora to bring this about.
* The Irish Government to demand publicly that the Euro-Med Agreement under which Israel has privileged access to the EU market be suspended until Israel complies with International Law.
* The Irish Government to veto any proposed upgrade in EU relations with Israel.
* The Irish people to boycott all Israeli goods and services until Israel abides by International Law.
If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!
What the hell is this?
Israel's bombardment of Gaza killed over 1,300 Palestinians, a third of them children. Thousands have been wounded. Many victims had been taking refuge in clearly marked UN facilities.
This assault came in the wake of years of economic blockade by Israel. This blockade, which is
illegal under International Humanitarian Law, has destroyed the Gazan economy and condemned its population to poverty. According to a World Bank report last September, "98% of Gaza's industrial operations are now inactive".
The most recent attack on Gaza is only the latest phase in Israel's oppression of the Palestinian
people and appropriation of their land. Israel has never declared its borders. Instead, it has continuously expanded at the expense of the Palestinians. In 1948, it took over 78% of Palestine, an area much larger than that suggested for a Jewish state by the UN General Assembly in 1947. Contrary to International Law, Israel expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. These refugees and their descendants, who now number millions, are still dispersed throughout the region. They have the right, under International Law, to return to their homes. This right has been underlined by the UN General Assembly many times, starting with Resolution 194 in 1948.
In 1967, Israel occupied the remaining 22% of Palestine: the West Bank and Gaza. Contrary to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel has built, and continues to build, settlements in these occupied territories. Today, nearly 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the illegal settlements in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and the number grows daily as Israel expands its settler programme.
Israel has resisted pressure from the international community to abide by the human rights provisions of International Law. It has refused to comply with UN Security Council demands to cease building settlements and remove those it has built (Resolutions 446, 452 and 465) and to reverse its illegal annexation of East Jerusalem (252, 267, 271, 298, 476 and 478). Since September 2000, over 5,000 Palestinians, almost 1,000 of them minors, have been killed by the Israeli military. 11,000 Palestinians, including hundreds of minors, languish in Israel jails. Hundreds are detained without trial. In addition, Israel is breaking International Law by imprisoning them outside the occupied territories, thereby making it almost impossible for their families to visit them. Every year, hundreds of Palestinian homes are demolished. The Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza lives imprisoned by walls, barriers and checkpoints that prevent or impede access to shops, schools, workplaces, hospitals and places of worship. They are subjected to restrictions of every kind and to daily ritual humiliation at the hands of occupation soldiers and checkpoint guards.
Invasion, occupation and plantation of their land is the reality that Palestinians have faced for
decades and still face on a daily basis, as their country is reduced remorselessly. Unless, and until, this Israeli aggression is halted, and the democratic rights of the Palestinian people are vindicated, there will be no justice or peace in the Middle East. Israel's 40-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza must be ended.
The occupation can end if political and economic pressure is placed on Israel by the international
community. Recognizing this, the Palestinian people continually call on the international community to intervene.
We, the signatories, call for the following:
* The Irish Government to cease its purchase of Israeli military products and services and call
publicly for an arms embargo against Israel.
* The Irish Government to demand publicly that Israel reverse its settlement construction, illegal occupation and annexation of land in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions and to use its influence in international fora to bring this about.
* The Irish Government to demand publicly that the Euro-Med Agreement under which Israel has privileged access to the EU market be suspended until Israel complies with International Law.
* The Irish Government to veto any proposed upgrade in EU relations with Israel.
* The Irish people to boycott all Israeli goods and services until Israel abides by International Law.
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Britain ready to follow U.S. lead on capping bank bonuses
I am a selfish person.
They are at it again. Down with the Bankers, the filth.
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They are at it again. Down with the Bankers, the filth.
Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays are set to splash hundreds of millions of pounds on staff bonuses.
RBS is 70 per cent owned by the taxpayer, and Lloyds Banking Group is 47 per cent publicly owned after the firms tapped a £50 billion bail-out fund.
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Thursday, February 05, 2009
The Spy Factory
I am a selfish person.
The Spy Factory
"it (the NSA) also has turned its giant ear inward, listening in without warrant on thousands of American citizens, many of whom are on the government’s secret watch list, now more than half-a-million names long."
Video By PBS - Broadcast - February 03, 2009
The Spy Factory, an eye-opening documentary on the National Security Agency (NSA) by best-selling author James Bamford and Emmy Award-winning producer Scott Willis, NOVA exposes the ultra-secret intelligence agency's role in the failure to stop the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent eavesdropping program that listens in without warrant on millions of American citizens.
"The Spy Factory" is based on Bamford's best-selling 2008 book, The Shadow Factory, praised as "important and disturbing" in the Washington Post by former senator Bob Kerrey, who was a member of the 9/11 Commission. (Read our excerpt.)
In this program, NOVA chronicles the NSA's role in eavesdropping both before and after 9/11. Drawing on dozens of interviews with agency insiders and probing publicly available sources as well as transcripts of terrorist trials and an FBI chronology of the terrorists' movements, NOVA assembles a detailed picture of events leading up to the 9/11 attacks.
The program sheds light on the vital data known inside the NSA but only partly relayed to other agencies. The trove of information the NSA had access to in advance included Osama bin Laden's now-disconnected direct satellite phone, which the NSA tapped starting in 1996. Exclusive footage shows the three-story house in Yemen that served as Al Qaeda's communications and logistics headquarters. The NSA was listening in on phone communications to and from the house for years prior to the 9/11 attack.
Three times the size of the CIA and far more secret, the NSA is comprised of top linguists, mathematicians, and technologists trained to decipher all kinds of communications—epitomizing the hidden world of high-tech, 21st-century surveillance. To show how this eavesdropping operates, NOVA follows the trail of just one typical e-mail sent from Asia to the U.S. Streaming as pulses of light into a fiber-optic cable, it travels across the Pacific Ocean, coming ashore in California, and finally reaching an AT&T facility in San Francisco, where the cable is split and the data sent to a secret NSA monitoring room on the floor below. This enables the NSA to intercept not only most Asian e-mail messages but also the entire U.S. internal Internet traffic.
Thus, since 9/11, the agency has turned its giant ear inward to monitor the communications of ordinary Americans, many of whom are on the government's secret watch list, now more than half-a-million names long.
But how effective is this monumental monitoring effort in countering security threats? The NSA is faced with an enormous and ever-expanding archive of phone calls and e-mail messages. Many experts in data mining and analysis are skeptical about the value of collecting so much information without the ability to understand it, as it may lead to critical clues being lost in the static. (Listen to a podcast about the challenge even powerful computers have in decoding human speech.)
Among those interviewed on "The Spy Factory" are former NSA, CIA, and FBI analysts and officials, many speaking publicly for the first time. Among these is Mark Rossini, the senior FBI agent in the CIA's Osama bin Laden tracking unit. For the first time, Rossini tells how intelligence agency turf wars prevented him from notifying his FBI superiors that Al Qaeda terrorists were heading for the U.S. with valid visas in early 2000.
Surprisingly, the 9/11 Commission never looked closely into the NSA's role in the broad intelligence breakdown behind the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. If they had, they would have understood the full extent to which the agency had major pieces of the puzzle but never put them together or disclosed their entire body of knowledge to the CIA and FBI. Traditionally, the NSA didn't share its raw data with those other agencies, an institutionalized reluctance that played a critical role in the failure to stop the 9/11 plotters. (Hear from Eleanor Hill, a former Staff Director of the House Intelligence Committee, on the myriad dangers inherent in such a tradition.)
In what Bamford calls "one of the largest ironies in the history of American intelligence," he notes that weeks before the attacks, the terrorists were staying in a hotel near NSA headquarters in Maryland, almost within sight of the office of then-NSA Director Michael Hayden. Hayden, who was later appointed director of the CIA by President Bush, was never held accountable for his agency's failure, and after 9/11 he spearheaded the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping activities in the name of making the nation safe from terrorists.
Addressing the question, Are we any safer now than we were before?, Bamford says, "We should have been safe the way it was. NSA had all the information that it needed to stop the 9/11 hijackers. It had laws that allowed it to track the hijackers." Bamford adds that those same laws also protected the privacy of ordinary Americans in ways that have since vanished. (On this website, Bamford answers viewer questions about the NSA and other organizations and issues covered in the program.)
Program Transcript
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The Spy Factory
"it (the NSA) also has turned its giant ear inward, listening in without warrant on thousands of American citizens, many of whom are on the government’s secret watch list, now more than half-a-million names long."
Video By PBS - Broadcast - February 03, 2009
The Spy Factory, an eye-opening documentary on the National Security Agency (NSA) by best-selling author James Bamford and Emmy Award-winning producer Scott Willis, NOVA exposes the ultra-secret intelligence agency's role in the failure to stop the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent eavesdropping program that listens in without warrant on millions of American citizens.
"The Spy Factory" is based on Bamford's best-selling 2008 book, The Shadow Factory, praised as "important and disturbing" in the Washington Post by former senator Bob Kerrey, who was a member of the 9/11 Commission. (Read our excerpt.)
In this program, NOVA chronicles the NSA's role in eavesdropping both before and after 9/11. Drawing on dozens of interviews with agency insiders and probing publicly available sources as well as transcripts of terrorist trials and an FBI chronology of the terrorists' movements, NOVA assembles a detailed picture of events leading up to the 9/11 attacks.
The program sheds light on the vital data known inside the NSA but only partly relayed to other agencies. The trove of information the NSA had access to in advance included Osama bin Laden's now-disconnected direct satellite phone, which the NSA tapped starting in 1996. Exclusive footage shows the three-story house in Yemen that served as Al Qaeda's communications and logistics headquarters. The NSA was listening in on phone communications to and from the house for years prior to the 9/11 attack.
Three times the size of the CIA and far more secret, the NSA is comprised of top linguists, mathematicians, and technologists trained to decipher all kinds of communications—epitomizing the hidden world of high-tech, 21st-century surveillance. To show how this eavesdropping operates, NOVA follows the trail of just one typical e-mail sent from Asia to the U.S. Streaming as pulses of light into a fiber-optic cable, it travels across the Pacific Ocean, coming ashore in California, and finally reaching an AT&T facility in San Francisco, where the cable is split and the data sent to a secret NSA monitoring room on the floor below. This enables the NSA to intercept not only most Asian e-mail messages but also the entire U.S. internal Internet traffic.
Thus, since 9/11, the agency has turned its giant ear inward to monitor the communications of ordinary Americans, many of whom are on the government's secret watch list, now more than half-a-million names long.
But how effective is this monumental monitoring effort in countering security threats? The NSA is faced with an enormous and ever-expanding archive of phone calls and e-mail messages. Many experts in data mining and analysis are skeptical about the value of collecting so much information without the ability to understand it, as it may lead to critical clues being lost in the static. (Listen to a podcast about the challenge even powerful computers have in decoding human speech.)
Among those interviewed on "The Spy Factory" are former NSA, CIA, and FBI analysts and officials, many speaking publicly for the first time. Among these is Mark Rossini, the senior FBI agent in the CIA's Osama bin Laden tracking unit. For the first time, Rossini tells how intelligence agency turf wars prevented him from notifying his FBI superiors that Al Qaeda terrorists were heading for the U.S. with valid visas in early 2000.
Surprisingly, the 9/11 Commission never looked closely into the NSA's role in the broad intelligence breakdown behind the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. If they had, they would have understood the full extent to which the agency had major pieces of the puzzle but never put them together or disclosed their entire body of knowledge to the CIA and FBI. Traditionally, the NSA didn't share its raw data with those other agencies, an institutionalized reluctance that played a critical role in the failure to stop the 9/11 plotters. (Hear from Eleanor Hill, a former Staff Director of the House Intelligence Committee, on the myriad dangers inherent in such a tradition.)
In what Bamford calls "one of the largest ironies in the history of American intelligence," he notes that weeks before the attacks, the terrorists were staying in a hotel near NSA headquarters in Maryland, almost within sight of the office of then-NSA Director Michael Hayden. Hayden, who was later appointed director of the CIA by President Bush, was never held accountable for his agency's failure, and after 9/11 he spearheaded the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping activities in the name of making the nation safe from terrorists.
Addressing the question, Are we any safer now than we were before?, Bamford says, "We should have been safe the way it was. NSA had all the information that it needed to stop the 9/11 hijackers. It had laws that allowed it to track the hijackers." Bamford adds that those same laws also protected the privacy of ordinary Americans in ways that have since vanished. (On this website, Bamford answers viewer questions about the NSA and other organizations and issues covered in the program.)
Program Transcript
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Monday, February 02, 2009
Ambassador warns of Iranian nuclear threat
I am a selfish person.
YUVAL ROTEM: The best way to handle it will be some kind of a better leadership in the Middle East, realignment of forces that can handle and can address the main strategic challenge that we're all going to face in the upcoming month, and that's going to be Iran.
At this point the Ambassador asked Channel 7's crew to switch off their camera.
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YUVAL ROTEM: The best way to handle it will be some kind of a better leadership in the Middle East, realignment of forces that can handle and can address the main strategic challenge that we're all going to face in the upcoming month, and that's going to be Iran.
At this point the Ambassador asked Channel 7's crew to switch off their camera.
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