Nexus - 0901 - New Times Magazine-pages

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Page 20 of 86
Nexus - 0901 - New Times Magazine-pages

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More ominous was a piece in the September 28 edition of the Washington Post, stating that officials with the instant messaging irm of Odigo in New York have confirmed that two employees in Israel received text messages warning of an attack on the WTC two hours before the planes crashed into the buildings. The firm's Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Alex Diamandis, said it was possible that the warning was sent to other Odigo members, ut they had not received any reports of such. Military forces had been on a heightened state of alert for sever- al days before the attack, and several psychics claimed to have ad a premonition that something was afoot. Even the Russians got in on the act. Dr Tatyana Koragina, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Macroeconomic Researches, part of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development, gained credibility due to her July prediction that an unusual catastrophe would strike America in late August, ruining the economy. In a Pravda interview, she stated: "The US has een chosen as the object of financial attack because the financial centre of the planet is located there. The effect will be maximal. The strike waves of economic crisis will spread over the planet." Following the September 11 attacks, Dr Koragina was inter- viewed again and asserted that the "powerful group" behind the attacks will make new strikes. "When [Americans] understand after the upcoming, new strikes that their government can guaran- tee them nothing, they will panic, causing a collapse of their financial system." Asked who was really behind this odious plan, she replied that it is not the 19 terrorists identified by the FBI but, rather, a larger group seeking to reshape the world. She said this group of extremely powerful private persons hold total assets of about $300 trillion and intend to legitimise their power under a new global government. technology could be used to commandeer an aircraft from the ground and control it remotely in the event of a hijacking. Needless to say, there are those today who question if Global Hawk's first truly operational use might have been conducted on September 11. After all, as all experienced aviation and military persons well know, if a technology such as Global Hawk is pub- licly revealed, it most probably has been in secret use for several years. But regardless of how the planes with the terrorists were controlled, it is clear that their managers had information, if not help, from inside the government. BIN LADEN AND THE MEDIA And what of Osama bin Laden? What did he have to say about all this? Don't look to the corporate mass media to inform you, as they have all agreed not to broadcast anything that might detract from the official government story, even though it is acknowl- edged that Bush's media denunciations of bin Laden have been more filled with descriptions like "evil" and "evil-doer" than spe- cific evidence. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAR) noted that, on October 10, network executives representing ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and CNN were involved in a conference call with National Security Adviser and Council on Foreign Relations heavyweight Condoleezza Rice. The execs apparently agreed to limit how and what they broadcast regarding bin Laden or his al-Qaeda group. Bush people even tried unsuccessfully to have al-Jazeera, called "the CNN of the Middle East", broadcasting from Qatar, tone down its coverage of bin Laden. They were more successful with members of Congress when they threatened to cut off intelligence reports if members spoke offhand to the media. The next day, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, already on the record as saying Americans "need to watch what they say", extended this constraint by contacting major newspapers and asking that they not print full transcripts of bin Laden's interviews. According to a FAR news release: "The point is not that bin Laden or al-Qaeda deserve ‘equal time’ on US news broadcasts, but that it is troubling for government to shape or influence news content. Withholding information from the public is hardly REMOTE-CONTROLLED AIRCRAFT A REALITY Thanks to newly revealed technology, it is now possible to the- orise that none of the hijackers intended to die. "Global Hawk" is the name of the latest version of a high-altitude, long-endurance. unmanned air vehicle (UAV); in other words, an unmanned drone plane that can take off, conduct missions such as pho- tographing battlefields and land by remote electronic control. a This Buck Rogers equipment made its first opera- ff tional flight on October 7 when it was used for recon- i naissance over Afghanistan in preparation for US air ( and missile strikes against the Taliban regime. But _ this remote-controlled plane, similar to a Boeing 737 commercial airliner, was successfully tested earlier in 2001, first at Edwards Air Force Base and later at Edinburgh Air Force Base in South Australia. T When news of Global Hawk was first released, there was speculation that the UAV technology might be used to thwart airline hijackings. Once a hijacking took place, the Global Hawk technology would be trig- = gered and the captured plane flown to a landing at a = safe location regardless of the actions of the flight crew or the hijackers. In fact, following the attacks the New York Times, in a September 28 article on increasing air safety, mentioned "new technology, probably far in the future, allowing air traffic controllers to land distressed planes by remote control". This made it seem that such technology is not yet available, but earlier in 2001 a former chief of British Airways suggested that such “Looks LIKE cremicad) oRige OF - MANO jailed 8 QM Fis ae! a4 piles —s ; —_ LN, at SF \ ( : EBV we ZIP ee 7 Taras CPX Z sw hh. —_ NEXUS +19 DECEMBER 2001 — JANUARY 2002 www.nexusmagazine.com