Earlier this week, TV cable channel Showtime began the second season of Sleeper Cell: American Terror. The clip, from the show’s season opener, begins with mastermind Farik (played by Oded Fuhr) facing torture at the hands of his American interrogators.

“Terrorist” characters on the show mock people who don’t believe the official government explanation for Sep. 11. The character of a Bosnian terrorist, Ilija Korjenic (played by Henry Lubatti), shares an intimate moment with fellow terrorist, Mina (portrayed by Thelka Reuten). For a few moments, they sarcastically repeat familiar 9/11 conspiracy theories. (more…)

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) has denied to the Miami Herald that footage of her in a coming British documentary called “638 Ways to Kill Castro” in which she welcomes the Cuban dictator’s assassination is a spliced rendering of words she said in a different order.

Though Ros-Lehtinen says publicly that she would not mourn Castro’s death, she claims that the footage in the documentary is inauthentic.

The makers of the documentary stand by the clip.

The footage is available below, followed by excerpts of an AP article about the controversy.

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Barnes:…and the day before he leavers office—carry out the military option in Iran. Wipe out their nuclear facilities….

That’s just wonderful. Bomb Iran and leave it for the next president to clean up. That’s the type of spot on analysis that makes Fred Barnes a true American hero. Memo to John Carroll. I wasn’t being serious by calling Fred Barnes a hero.

Source: Crooks and Liars

Professor of geopolitics points the finger at US Neoconservatives and Israeli Zionists, Highlights past co-operation to make Iran a nuclear nation

An Iranian political science professor has said today that Iran and the US signed an agreement in 1978 which allowed Tehran to seek nuclear technology in order to meet its future energy demands but no one now talks about the agreement. He has also asserted that Zionists in Israel in co-operation with neoconservatives in the US have intentionally been trying to divide Iran for decades.

As reported by the IRNA news agency, Professor of Political Geography and Geopolitics at Tehran’s Tarbiat Moadarres University, Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh, said it was the US that encouraged Iran to develop nuclear energy. (more…)

Soon to be published account will detail the plot and cover up of the number 30 bus bombing

A soon to be published narrative of the number 30 bus bombing on 7/7 in London claims that the Hackney bus was diverted to Tavistock Square by two unmarked cars which then left the scene at high speed after the drivers had conversed with police in the area.

The witness, named “Daniel”, has a blog here and a website here. He states:

I was aboard the lower deck of the bus that was blown up on July 7th. I rang the emergency hotline to report the 2 dark cars I saw holding the bus up and diverting it towards Tavistock Square. Instead of being asked to provide a statement what followed was 7 months of police surveillance and Harassment. My experiences are contained in a book called Statement: The 4th Bomb (as yet unpublished)

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WASHINGTON — The United States on Monday denied reports in Britain that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was listening to Princess Diana’s phone calls hours before she was killed in a 1997 automobile accident in Paris. “This is an old story for us. It all started when she died in 1997,” a US official told Deutsche Presse-Agentur, dpa. “In (19)97 we said were were not involved in any way, we’re still standing by that statement.”

“What would American intelligence gain from tapping her phone?” the official added. “It’s all based on rumours.”

The first British report into the death of Diana will be made public this week in London. The long-awaited report by Sir John Stevens, formerly the head of Scotland Yard and Britain’s top policeman, is expected to confirm that the car crash was an accident and refute conspiracy theorist allegations that she was intentionally targeted. (more…)

The tension between the Bush administration and the members of the Iraq Study Group, illustrates the widening chasm between old-guard U.S. imperialists and “Israel-first” neoconservatives. The divisions are setting the stage for a major battle between the two camps. The winner will probably decide US policy in the Middle East for the next decade.

The failed occupation of Iraq has put the entire region on the fast-track to disaster. That’s why James Baker was summoned from retirement to see if he could change the present trajectory and mitigate the long-term damage to US interests. Baker was opposed to the invasion from the onset but his 4 day trip to Baghdad convinced him that something had to be done quickly. The ISG report reflects the unanimous view of its authors that Iraq is disintegrating into chaos and that action must be taken to reduce the level of bloodshed. (more…)

Since I’ve given up watching the chattering class on cable news and the network Sunday talk shows, I don’t know what phony controversies they are currently stirring up. If one of them is the old “war on Christmas,” don’t buy it.

Christmas is a Christian holiday, but you don’t have to repent of your sins and be baptized to enjoy it. The Christmas tree and the exchange of gifts are not part of the religious aspects of the holiday. Anybody who wants to can have a Christmas tree and exchange gifts. Even Santa Claus is today only remotely connected to St. Nicholas, the patron saint of Russia.

Sextus Julius Africanus designated Dec. 25 as Christmas in 221 A.D. It was celebrated in Rome by 336 A.D. During medieval times, when Europe was known as Christendom, it was a very popular holiday, and new religious services were written for it. (more…)

Continued coverage of the Litvinenko Murder

Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-KGB/FBS officer who was recently murdered in London, was working for a British security firm at the time of his death, two well placed British sources who wish to remain unidentified tell RAW STORY.

One of the 12 to 24 polonium contamination sites in the Piccadilly area of London identified by British authorities was the office of the security and risk management company Erinys International Ltd.

Erinys has been a player in international relations since it was founded in 2002 by Sean Cleary, a South African Apartheid-era official with ties to Angolan right wing extremist Jonas Savimbi, and Jonathan Garratt, a former British Guards officer. Cleary left the firm in October 2003. Garratt, for his part, has strong ties to Ahmed Chalabi, the notorious source of Iraq pre-war WMD fabrications, and managed to land Erinys an $86 million dollar contract to guard Iraqi oil pipelines after US-led forces began war with Iraq. (more…)

Iranian students have staged a rare demonstration against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, setting off firecrackers and burning pictures of him as he delivered a speech at Tehran university, reports said.

Iran’s semi-official FARS news agency and a student news Web site reported that a group of students Monday briefly interrupted Ahmadinejad’s speech at Amir Kabir University by booing and chanting “Death to the dictator.”

A student who attended the speech but did not want to be named confirmed those reports to CNN.

But Iran’s official state-run news agency, IRNA, said the students “expressed their views in a cordial atmosphere,” and chanted “Down with dictators,” which was met with agreement by Ahmadinejad, who denounced the “dictatorships” in the United States and Britain. (more…)

This Sunday’s Human Rights Day has been renamed “Human Rights and Impeachment Day,” as groups hold rallies across the United States calling for President Bush and Vice President Cheney to be impeached. This Sunday marks the 58th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“The purpose of the events is to organize people to lobby their Congress Members for investigations and impeachment and to lobby their local and state governments for resolutions in support of impeachment,” Democrats.com co-founder Bob Fertik writes.

The rallies were “kicked off” yesterday at a New York City forum which featured former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, who served on the Judiciary Committee during Nixon’s impeachment hearings, and anti-war “peace mom” Cindy Sheehan, whose son, Casey, was killed while serving in Iraq over two-and-a-half years ago. (more…)

Britain’s most senior murder investigator has called for DNA to be taken from babies.

Commander Dave Johnston said it would build up a database to SOLVE crimes and PREVENT others.

He said samples could also be taken from Britons renewing passports and from migrants arriving here. The head of the Met Police’s Homicide and Serious Crime Unit, went on: “We have 300,000 unsolved cases where we have taken a profile at a crime scene but have not yet matched it.

“As well as solving crime, it would really make someone think twice about committing crime if they knew their DNA was on a database. (more…)

Transferring some money? OK. First, what’s your favorite movie?

Customers of St. Paul-based Western Bank will soon have to jump through a few extra hoops to log into their accounts online.

In addition to their standard username and password, customers at the bank will be instructed to choose a picture from a list of pre-selected options — puppies, butterflies, sunsets, etc — and to make up a phrase, such as “How now brown cow.” They’ll also have to answer questions about their favorite movie or where they went to high school.

The extra steps are intended to make online banking more secure and guard against instances of identity theft and fraud. (more…)

It will be cheaper to build a permanent moon base and keep it running, than it will be to get to the moon. Just do not ask how much, NASA’s boss says.

The U.S. space agency’s newly unveiled grand plan for a continually staffed lunar outpost starting around 2024 does not come with a similarly grand price tag. It does not come with a price tag at all.

“You ask what things will cost, I don’t know yet,” said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, a detail-oriented engineer. “We just rolled out a very preliminary architecture.”

Griffin’s lack of specifics is partly because NASA is budgeting its large cosmic construction projects differently, more “pay as you go” than “get there at all costs.” (more…)

The Christmas season is a time to remember the unfortunate. Among the most unfortunate people are those who have been wrongly convicted and imprisoned.

The United States has a large number of wrongfully convicted. There are many reasons for this. One is that the US has the largest percentage of its citizens imprisoned of all countries in the world, including China. One of every 32 US adults is behind bars, on probation or on parole. Given a wrongful conviction rate, the larger the percentage of citizens in jails, the greater the number of wrongfully convicted.

According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College in London, the US has 700,000 more of its citizens incarcerated than China, a country with a population four to five times larger than that of the US, and 1,330,000 more people in prison than crime-ridden Russia. The US has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. The American incarceration rate is seven times higher than that of European countries. Either America is the land of criminals, or something is seriously wrong with the criminal justice (sic) system in “the land of the free.” (more…)