Robert Sterling
Editor, The Konformist
http://www.konformist.com

Robalini's Note: Few things better prove the utter moral bankruptcy and 
fraudulence of our current "War on Terrorism" than this.  The idea that 
Somalia and Afghanistan are the greatest threats to mankind in the world is 
absolutely ludicrous.  What do Somalia and Afghanistan have in common?  The 
following:

1. They are both extremely impoverished countries.
2. They have vast untapped oil reserves that Western korporations want to 
swindle.

Any questions?

Wednesday December 19 12:50 PM ET 
US Says Could Target Somalia, Maybe Not Militarily BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The 
United States' top soldier said on Wednesday that Somalia could be a target 
in the war against terrorism, but action there would not necessarily involve 
military force.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was responding 
to a comment by a senior German official that Washington was likely to 
target Somalia next in its assault on Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden's 
al Qaeda network.

``There are...countries that worry us because they actively support and 
harbor (terrorists). It's one thing to have a cell in your country, it's 
another to actively support them,'' Richard Myers told reporters at NATO's 
headquarters in Brussels.

``And Somalia is one potential country -- there are others as well -- a 
potential country where you might have diplomatic, law enforcement action or 
potentially military action. All the instruments of national power, not just 
one.''

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday Yemen and Sudan were known 
to harbor active al Qaeda cells and Somalia had hosted leaders of the 
network in the past.

The senior German official said after Rumsfeld briefed NATO allies: ``It's 
not a question of 'if' but of 'how' and 'when'.''

He added: ``Anyone who rules out Somalia would be a fool.''

Rumsfeld said Washington needed no new authorization from the U.N. 
Security Council to strike suspected terrorist targets outside Afghanistan, 
adding: ``Every country has the right to self-defense.''

Myers sought to discourage discussion of where the United States might take 
military action next.

``We are not going to speculate on any next operation other than to 
say...this is a global war on terrorism,'' he said.

``The objective continues to remain terrorists and their networks, those 
that support them and those that conduct research or produce weapons of mass 
destruction that could fall into terrorists' hands. I don't know why people 
want to focus on one particular country, I don't think that's useful.''

A U.S. diplomat, Glenn Warren, arrived in Mogadishu on Tuesday on the first 
visit in years by an American official but the U.S. embassy in Nairobi 
declined to link his talks with Somalia's transitional national government 
directly to the war on terrorism. 

*****

The Illuminati in Haiti
33 Men Involved in Coup Attempt

Wednesday December 19 2:37 AM ET 

Police Hunt for Conspirators in Haiti
By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press Writer 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Police hunted for the leaders of an assault on 
Haiti's National Palace and some opposition leaders charged the failed coup 
was really staged by the government as a pretext to crush dissent. 

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide called Monday's assault by armed men a 
failed coup and afterward hundreds of his supporters armed with machetes and 
revolvers burned opposition offices and homes across the country. They 
killed at least two people. 

On Tuesday, banks and schools reopened, street vendors returned to their 
stalls and Haiti's international airport reopened, but the border with the 
Dominican Republic remained closed. Streets in the capital still smelled of 
smoking tires. 

``The so-called coup d'etat was a masquerade,'' opposition leader Evans Paul 
said. The former Port-au-Prince mayor's party headquarters were destroyed 
Monday - for the third time in 10 years - by Aristide supporters. 

Aristide was not in the palace at the time of the assault. 
Authorities say 33 heavily armed men killed two police officers and took 
over one wing of the building for seven hours before they fled. 
Two passers-by were shot by fleeing attackers. 

Paul, who was Aristide's campaign manager in 1990 but now leads an 
opposition party, pointed to what he called the ``absurdity'' of 33 men 
attacking the palace, which is guarded by hundreds of police officers. He 
also said it is widely known that Aristide rarely spends the night there. 

Authorities said one of the attackers was killed in a gunbattle at the 
palace in central Port-au-Prince and a wounded gunman was captured at a 
roadblock near the border with the Dominican Republic. 
The rest escaped. 

Aristide said police had made ``a strategic retreat'' to allow the attackers 
to get away so they could ``snare them in a fish net.'' 

Aristide became Haiti's first freely elected president in 1990 but was 
ousted by the army in 1991 after eight months in office - despite protests 
by thousands of people who took to the streets to protect their new 
democracy and president. 

Aristide loyalists, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of 
anonymity, acknowledged that demonstrations Monday in response to the 
violence at the National Palace weren't spontaneous. They said pro- Aristide 
organizers told them Sunday night, hours before the attack, that something 
was happening and that they should mobilize. 

Aristide said police were searching for dozens of conspirators on Tuesday. 
Palace spokesman Jacques Maurice said the attackers wore the khaki and 
camouflage fatigues worn by the army that Aristide disbanded in 1995. 

The United States appealed Tuesday to the Haitian government and opposition 
parties to reach agreement in their long-running conflict over election 
issues. 

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher condemned the raid on the palace 
and the mob violence that followed, saying it ``underscores the need for 
dialogue and reconciliation among all elements of Haitian society.'' 

Haiti has been plagued by eight major revolts and thwarted or successful 
coups since 1986, when the Duvalier family was ousted in a popular uprising 
after a 29-year dictatorship. 

After the 1991 coup, Aristide spent three years in exile before President 
Clinton sent 20,000 troops to restore him to power. In 1996, he stepped down 
because of term limits and was replaced by his protege. 

In November 2000, Aristide was re-elected following disputed legislative 
elections earlier in the year that led the international community to freeze 
most aid. He took office in February. 

*****

mikemail@cloud9.net
12/20/01

Hail George, Conqueror of Evildoers!

Dear George W. Bush:

Hats off to you, sir, for a job well done! The Soviets tried for ten years 
to do what it took you only two months to accomplish in Afghanistan. How did 
you do that? It's funny how a couple months ago there were all these 
Taliban, and now -- there aren't any! You must be some kind of super 
magician -- almost as good at disappearing acts as ol' Osama (or, as they 
say on the Fox Nuisance Channel, "Usama" -- I like their spelling better, 
like "We put the 'USA' in USAma!"). He did exist, didn't he? I would hate to 
have gotten myself all worked up over the wrong evildoer! I loved that last 
tape of his, the home video of his sleepover with that sheik. What a party 
animal, that guy!

And how 'bout that Northern Alliance! Thanks to them, my weekly supply of 
heroin will finally be reinstated. Whoo-hoo -- and just in time for New 
Year's Rockin' Eve! Those Taliban simply did NOT have the best delivery 
system for the stuff, kinda like why you never see Beaman's gum anymore -- 
poor distribution and shelf placement. According to the New York Times, the 
Northern Alliance has put all the poppy farmers back to work, and they are 
promising a "bumper crop" by spring. 

But Mr. Bush, I am most impressed with how you have used those who died on 
September 11th to justify your lining the pockets of your rich friends and 
campaign contributors. Your "Economic Stimulus Bill" -- pure genius! You 
actually got the House of Representatives to pass a bill eliminating the law 
that said corporations have to pay at least a token minimum tax every year. 

See, most people forget that back in your daddy's day (when he was VP) 
thousands of companies were able to lawyer their way out of paying any taxes 
at all! Then a law was passed to stop that. Now you got the House to agree 
to give all these corporations back ALL the minimum taxes they have paid 
since 1986!! That's $140 billion of givebacks ($1.4 billion to IBM, a 
billion to Ford, $800 million to GM, etc.). And you got this passed, all 
under the guise of "September 11th!" How do you get away with this without 
the American public whoopin' your behind? Man, you are THE MAN!

Hey, and tell your top sheriff, Big John Ashcroft, that his refusal to let 
the FBI look at the files of gun background checks that the Justice 
Department keeps -- to see if any of the terrorists or suspected terrorists 
have purchased weapons in the past two years -- took some balls! Even though 
checking those files might turn up information that could protect us in 
possible future attacks, Ashcroft was more concerned with not upsetting the 
NRA than in helping his own FBI catch the bad guys. Now that's what I call 
getting your priorities straight. Big John may have lost his Senate seat 
last year to a dead guy, but he sure as heck ain't gonna lose me as a huge 
admirer!

Well, I better go before someone from the Office of Homeland Security 
mistakes me for someone who needs to be "interviewed!" Rest assured I'm 
doing my part for the country by shopping my sorry ass off in this week 
before Christmas. Buy! Buy! Buy! Tora! Tora! Tora! Bora! 
Whoo-hoo, Prince O' Peace!! Fight Team Fight! Go get 'em, George, Jr. -- 
we're counting on you to kill all evildoers!

Yours,

Michael Moore
Third in Line to the King of Afghanistan www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com

P.S. You'll beat that Enron rap, just like you beat your other raps! 
Chin up! 
Who needs "energy traders" anyway? I never saw that job on the list from my 
high school counselor!!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - 

* TO SIGN UP AS A NEW SUBSCRIBER, GO HERE:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/Note_re_Topica.html

*****

Non-Konformist, Contradictions of Konformist 12/19/0
Hakan Karaca
karaca23@hotmail.com

Hi there, 
 
First of all, the only reason I am writing this mail is the itch to express 
my thoughts and ideas and knowledge in a more elaborative and integrated 
way. However, I should thank you for your urge to discuss and share the very 
intuitive and genuine ideas, although I don't know what is behind this urge. 
I mean, "Why did you think that cloning is an apocalypse and end of the days 
is getting closer". 
 
The followings will be more of intuition by knowledge and less of 
"extraction throughout experience". I will try touch to each and every 
subject in our brainstorming. The language is not a matter of discussion.
 
I am aware of the progress and experience, and I use my free will, I think 
and I do exist and I am aware of this feeling. I do have the ability to 
differentiate the good and evil and I have the full freedom of choice to 
reject and accept any ideas. I am a human.J Give me any material, I'll give 
it a form, function and utilize it for my use. I will play with nature, 
matter, and creation, life itself… Distort it… Bend it…Play with it…. And my 
very basic reason to exist… I will appreciate the creation….
 
Unfortunately nature didn't give any of the above to any other live physical 
entity although some of them might be very much sophisticated physically and 
further complicated in the evolution sequence.J 
 
THE CLONING and the CONCEPT OF CREATION  
In our brainstorming, I think both of us were on the same ground in 
believing "Allah" as the creator of everything out of nothingness. You were 
defending the idea that, the cloning is against the God's authority, even in 
the abusive hands an act to replace the God as a creator or to continue to 
create from where God left (?). It is not only you who are thinking (?) the 
cloning just because it is a sin, a blasphemy, not only because it is 
against the nature's course.
 
Don't worry; I'll cut it short… The main differentiation today was not the 
cloning and its consequences but the definition of creation… The main point 
I was trying to tell you was, the difference between the famous "Be": 
creating from nothingness and, the so called "distorting, bending" the 
already created for the benefit or whatever"…You might still call the 
designer and builder of a house, the creator itself although he is a mere 
copier, imitator, ruler and formgiver but not a creator under any 
circumstances... You know what, the religious gives your argument to prove 
the God's existence… They say, "If there is a builder, "a creatorJ" for a 
house, there has to be a creator for this universe… I don't see a very sound 
and reasonable analogy in that... As I said this is my own intuitive idea….
 
HUMAN AS A "CONDITIONALLY" FREE CREATION  
In our talk, one of the powerful and "difficult to question", arguments was 
the spiritual side of human beings. Or more precisely the function of 
executing the thinking, and exercising the free will and deciding the good 
and evil, and accumulating the experience, and progressing and passing to 
the following generations… As I said you could master the entire physical 
universe but tell me how you will master the unknown, unseen and 
untouchable…so can you say how much percentage of the creation you have 
control over, even if you have the total control of human reproduction... 
Note: "I put "conditionally free" at top, I am sure Panky knows the Hindu 
names the earth as a prison for the soul…How can you be free , if you are in 
a prison? Hehehehehe..
 
To be continued in a moment
 
THE BUILT-IN FUNCTION OF FEAR, CURIOSITY etc…  
In a very famous debate of Medieval Islam, "for me of all time", in 
Andalusia…Ibn Rusd
raised an issue by claiming that a human being is able to feel, understand 
and conclude that there is a creature of the things even he's utterly 
isolated… In that case, Hayy Bin Yekzan was our Robinson Crusoe, in an 
isolated island…Anyway the fear and curiosity might be named as the very 
basic drives towards religion and science…The fear of nothingness and death 
and no reason for existence, the curiosity of the meaning and reason for 
existence, the desire for the solution of the problem, question…why…? why?  
If human cannot find an answer to a crucial question, he dies of 
curiosity…God is the answer for anything and the curiosity is satisfied…
 
Who built the universe? There was a big bang. Who did it…mmm..Ok..Ok I 
admit. GOD. The problem is solved till any other theory replaces it… and 
tries to push the God out of frame. As it happened in Theory of Evolution of 
Darwin, Constant Universe of Einstein, Mechanistic View of Atomic Theory 
finally crushed by Quantum and Uncertainty and Chaos, which puts God on the 
wheel of everything in the universe... You said "There are a lot of 
unbelievers around and science itself is Godless" so if there is any 
built-in mechanism in humans, how come we have this people around…
 
 
THE UNBELIEVER, 
 
There might be a number of reasons not to believe any creator, it might be 
totally reaction or an action of arrogance and fulfillment of the built-in 
feeling of greatness that can never be reached or a genuine act of 
unbelieving etc…
 
As I said GOD is the answer and fulfillment for questions and needs. 
You might see the believers are generally of the oppressed and poor… If you 
are urban, encircled by the world of artificial and no exposure to the 
nature and created by the very first hand, probably you wont need a GOD 
ordering you to sacrifice your life for the next one!
 
The mainstream of the history will remark this age as highly urbanized age 
with scientific discoveries and tech advancement. 
etc..a friend of mine came I'll continue if you want to..
This much is enough for now... I'd like to see the response before I invest 
my time…

*****

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011220/wl/argentina_dc.html

Thursday December 20 10:33 AM ET
Argentine Riot Death Toll Rises to 16
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Sixteen people have died in rioting and looting 
across Argentina, police said Thursday as the government declared a state of 
emergency to contain the unrest driven by a staggering economy.

Half of the deaths were in the suburbs of the capital, said police, who 
estimated 20,000 people took part in the looting and thousands of others 
demanded food handouts at grocery stores. Some were shot dead by shopkeepers 
defending their shops.

On Wednesday, police said at least four people had died as thousands of 
looters sacked supermarkets in Buenos Aires, its suburbs and several 
provinces in rage against deepening austerity and poverty spurred famished 
slum dwellers to take matters into their own hands. 
Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to scatter the looters.

Some 1,210 people were arrested for looting in the outskirts of Buenos 
Aires, provincial police said.

Protests overnight in front of the presidential palace and Congress were 
dispersed by police who fired tear gas at crowds of mainly peaceful 
demonstrators. A dozen banks and restaurants as well as the Israeli Embassy 
in the city's center were vandalized during the overnight violence, police 
added.

``Everything is a mess. There's no work and the situation is deteriorating. 
I was here protesting peacefully last night and they tear gassed us,'' one 
protester said at Plaza de Mayo in front of the presidential palace.

Demonstrators returned to the presidential palace by mid-morning on Thursday 
and riot police armed with truncheons arrested dozens of protesters who 
yelled insults or demanded that President Fernando de la Rua resign.

Police managed to clear the square but cars driving around the presidential 
palace blared horns and drummed pots and pans.

Many supermarkets in the heavily populated suburbs of Buenos Aires remained 
closed.

*****

Formal Estimates Of Civilian Afghan Dead At Least 3,767 By Seumas Milne
The Guardian - London
12-20-1

The price in blood that has already been paid for America's war against 
terror is only now starting to become clear. Not by Britain or the US, nor 
even so far by the al-Qaida and Taliban leaders held responsible for the 
September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. 
It has instead been paid by ordinary Afghans, who had nothing whatever to do 
with the atrocities, didn't elect the Taliban theocrats who ruled over them 
and had no say in the decision to give house room to Bin Laden and his 
friends. 
  
The Pentagon has been characteristically coy about how many people it 
believes have died under the missiles it has showered on Afghanistan. 
Acutely sensitive to the impact on international support for the war, 
spokespeople have usually batted away reports of civilian casualties with a 
casual "these cannot be independently confirmed", or sometimes simply denied 
the deaths occurred at all. The US media have been particularly helpful. 
Seven weeks into the bombing campaign, the Los Angeles Times only felt able 
to hazard the guess that "at least dozens of civilians" had been killed. 
  
Now, for the first time, a systematic independent study has been carried out 
into civilian casualties in Afghanistan by Marc Herold, a US economics 
professor at the University of New Hampshire. Based on corroborated reports 
from aid agencies, the UN, eyewitnesses, TV stations, newspapers and news 
agencies around the world, Herold estimates that at least 3,767 civilians 
were killed by US bombs between October 7 and December 10. That is an 
average of 62 innocent deaths a day - and an even higher figure than the 
3,234 now thought to have been killed in New York and Washington on 
September 11. 
  
Of course, Herold's total is only an estimate. But what is impressive about 
his work is not only the meticulous cross-checking, but the conservative 
assumptions he applies to each reported incident. The figure does not 
include those who died later of bomb injuries; nor those killed in the past 
10 days; nor those who have died from cold and hunger because of the 
interruption of aid supplies or because they were forced to become refugees 
by the bombardment. It does not include military deaths (estimated by some 
analysts, partly on the basis of previous experience of the effects of 
carpet-bombing, to be upwards of 10,000), or those prisoners who were 
slaughtered in Mazar- i-Sharif, Qala-i-Janghi, Kandahar airport and elsewhere. 
  
Champions of the war insist that such casualties are an unfortunate, but 
necessary, byproduct of a just campaign to root out global terror networks. 
They are a world apart, they argue, from the civilian victims of the attacks 
on the World Trade Centre because, in the case of the Afghan civilians, the 
US did not intend to kill them. 
  
In fact, the moral distinction is far fuzzier, to put it at its most 
generous. As Herold argues, the high Afghan civilian death rate flows 
directly from US (and British) tactics and targeting. The decision to rely 
heavily on high-altitude air power, target urban infrastructure and 
repeatedly attack heavily populated towns and villages has reflected a 
deliberate trade-off of the lives of American pilots and soldiers, not with 
those of their declared Taliban enemies, but with Afghan civilians. 
Thousands of innocents have died over the past two months, not mainly as an 
accidental byproduct of the decision to overthrow the Taliban regime, but 
because of the low value put on Afghan civilian lives by US military planners. 
  
Raids on targets such as the Kajakai dam power station, Kabul's telephone 
exchange, the al-Jazeera TV station office, lorries and buses filled with 
refugees and civilian fuel trucks were not mistakes. Nor were the deaths 
that they caused. The same goes for the use of anti-personnel cluster bombs 
in urban areas. But western public opinion has become increasingly 
desensitised to what has been done in its name. After US AC-130 gunships 
strafed the farming village of Chowkar-Karez in October, killing at least 93 
civilians, a Pentagon official felt able to remark: "the people there are 
dead because we wanted them dead", while US defence secretary Donald 
Rumsfeld commented: "I cannot deal with that particular village." 
  
Yesterday, Rumsfeld inadvertently conceded what little impact the Afghan 
campaign (yet to achieve its primary aim of bringing Bin Laden and the 
al-Qaida leadership to justice) has had on the terrorist threat, by 
speculating about ever more cataclysmic attacks, including on London. There 
will be no official two-minute silence for the Afghan dead, no newspaper 
obituaries or memorial services attended by the prime minister, as there 
were for the victims of the twin towers. 
But what has been cruelly demonstrated is that the US and its camp followers 
are prepared to sacrifice thousands of innocents in a coward's war.