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Ray McGovern at Busboys and Poets, Washington DC March 8, 2006 - BackTalk - Google Video: " "

Dateline

Archives - March 01, 2006
	How the US Learned to Love the Bomb (Again)
	The slightly bizarre idea of 'user-friendly' nuclear weapons. On the whole score of proliferation we're always hearing plenty about the dangers posed by the Irans and North Koreas of this world but, as we're about to see, while all that has been going on the US itself has been quietly beavering away on a program aimed at completely upgrading its nuclear arsenal, including the development of tactical weapons - mini-nukes that could be used on the battlefield. Thom Cookes reports. 22:41 secs

Washington Post
In emotional testimony in the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui today, the former manager of an Arizona flight school that trained one of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers told a federal jury that she had expressed alarm about her student to the Federal Aviation Administration and cried when she learned he had flown an airliner into the Pentagon.

Margaret Chevrette said she helped train hijacker Hani Hanjour at Pan Am International Flight Academy in Mesa, Ariz., near Phoenix, from late December 2000 until March 2001. She said Hanjour, a Saudi who is believed to have piloted the American Airlines plane that crashed into the Pentagon, was a poor pilot who spoke limited English.


"She said she had been 'worried that he was going to hurt himself or hurt someone else because he didn't have the skills' to fly an airliner and risked causing an accident.
Chevrette said she reported her concerns to the FAA during Hanjour's training at the flight school but that the agency did little in response. She said an FAA official who oversaw her school suggested she obtain an English interpreter for Hanjour, which was against the agency's own regulations."

Helen Thomas to Wolfgang: "Well you ask tough questions... .. You asked President Clinton why he wouldn't resign"

Michigan IMC
"All the justifications that German physicians and eugenics advocates used to rationalize their programs were already extant in America. Even the most heinous of German eugenic actions had its American counterpart.
--Jeffrey A. Hodges, 'Dealing with Degeneracy: Michigan Eugenics in Context' "

GlobalResearch.ca

The Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear War by Michel Chossudovsky February 17, 2006

... Senate Republicans John Warner (R-VA) and Wayne Allard (R-CO) buried a small provision in the 2001 Defense Authorization Bill that would have overturned these earlier restrictions... Senators Warner and Allard imagine these nuclear weapons could be used in small-scale conventional conflicts against rogue dictators, while leaving most of the civilian population untouched. As one anonymous former Pentagon official put it to the Washington Post last spring, "What's needed now is something that can threaten a bunker tunneled under 300 meters of granite without killing the surrounding civilian population." Statements like these promote the illusion that nuclear weapons could be used in ways which minimize their "collateral damage," making them acceptable tools to be used like conventional weapons." (See http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001 / click v54nl, italics added)

This article elaborates on two earlier texts by the author: Nuclear War against Iran, January 2006 Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran, May 2005 Is THIS a VIDEO Example?

Michel Chossudovsky's Video Presentation on The Dangers of a US Sponsored Nuclear War at the Perdana Peace Forum, Kuala Lumpur, December 2005

Dennis Kucinich says Bush Admin Let 911 Happen:

I want to call to the attention of the House the juxtaposition of two news stories. One [..] relating to 9-11. It says 'Federal officials where repeatedly warned in the months before the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that Osama bin Laden and Al-Queda were planning aircraft hijacking suicide attacks according to a new report that the Bush administration had been supressing'. And this.. from the front page of the Washington post, 'a newly leaked video recording the high level government deliberation the day before Hurricane Katrina hit shows disaster officials infatically warning President bush that the storm posed a catastrophic threat to new Orleans and the gulf coast, and a grim faced bush personally assuring state leaders that his administration was fully prepared [..] to help'.



Do we see a pattern here? 9-11? Katrina? They knew something was going to happen and they didn't act. They knew that if they went into Iraq that we were looking at a disaster, that there was no way we were going to be able to run that country. They know that global climate change poses a threat to the entire planet, nothing is being done, a pattern of recklessness, indifference, callousness. The implications are deadly for the people of the United States.

Michigan Legal Milestone Marker

Located in the lobby of the Penobscot Building at Griswold and Fort in downtown Detroit

The late 1960s were years of great ferment in the United States as militant organizations promoted radical change. Lawrence Robert “Pun” Plamondon—an Ottawa and Ojibwa who had been raised by foster parents in Traverse City—moved to Detroit and joined the counter cultural movement than was then centered on Plum Street near Tiger Stadium. By the mid-1960s, he joined with John Sinclair to create the White Panther Party. This organization was not a white power group. Indeed, they strongly supported the Black Panther Party and were endorsed by Huey Newton of the Black Panther Party. The White Panthers believed that the cultural values of the United States were fundamentally flawed since encouraged the denial of liberties to Americans and promoted wars against liberation movements including the then raging war in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the White Panther Party along with the Symboniese Liberation Army and the Black Panther Party were viewed by many as militant or terrorist groups intent upon force to bring down the federal government and what was then called “The Establishment.” Detroit was center for such groups including the Republic of New Africa founded at the Shrine of the Black Madonna. There were quite a number of attracts upon or bombing of federal facilities attributed to militant organizations. For the most part, bombings were conducted so as to kill no one but blowing up an Army research building at the University of Wisconsin resulted in a death. The office of the CIA in Ann Arbor was bombed in 1968. The FBI assumed the White Panther Party was responsible and, in 1969, its founders—Pun Plamondon and John Sinclair, along with John Forrest—were indicted. Plamondon fled the country—as many indicted militants did at this time—but later returned only to be arrested for littering while driving toward the Mackinaw Bridge. By this time, Pun Plamondon was on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list—the first revolutionary to gain that distinction. I believe he was held by the government for almost three years awaiting trial.

Prior to the trial, Pum Plamondon’s Detroit lawyer—Hugh “Buck” Davis—came to believe that the only evidence against his client resulted from FBI wiretaps of his telephone calls; wiretaps that he thought were obtained without warrants. He sought the contents of the federal government’s electronic surveillance in an evidentiary hearing held before Judge Damon Keith in the federal court for the eastern district of Michigan. The government’s lawyer responded by stating that he had no knowledge of such surveillance but would have the Department of Justice look into the matter. Subsequently, Department of Justice attorneys agreed that Pun Plamondon’s telephone had been tapped and offered to share the content with the bench but not with defense lawyers.

This was not satisfactory to the defense. At this point, President Richard Nixon and Attorney General John Mitchell decided that this was an appropriate opportunity for them to defend the gathering of information from violent terrorists without warrants. A CIA office had been bombed and the FBI was convinced they had arrested the guilty parties. Representing the President and the Attorney General, Department of Justice lawyers argued in the evidentiary hearing that during the late 1960s there were 1523 bombing or attempted bombing by militant or terrorist groups. They contended that since the President and Attorney General had sworn to uphold the Constitution and protect the American public, they had the right and obligation to carry out the electronic surveillance without a warrant.

Judge Damon Keith wrote a terse opinion in which he unambiguously stated that Fourth Amendment and case law prohibited the federal government from conducting electronic surveillance without a court order. Needless to say, President Nixon and Attorney General Mitchell strongly disagreed with Judge Keith’s 1971 decision and appealed his ruling to the United States Supreme Court with the expectation of gaining their approval. The Supreme Court deliberated about this matter and, in June, 1972, came to a unanimous decision upholding Judge Keith’s ruling—the federal government cannot carry out electronic surveillance in the United States unless they first obtain a court order. The Department of Justice, knowing the evidence they gathered about the conspiracy to bomb the CIA office would not be admissible, dropped charges against Pun Plamondon, John Sinclair and John Forrest.

Pun Plamondon played a role in the eventual resignation of President Nixon. The Supreme Court reached their unanimous decision on Friday June 16, 1972 with the intention of announcing it publicly on Monday June 19. Some from the Supreme Court alerted the White House to the forthcoming decision. Prior to this the Committee to Reelect the President had installed bugs at offices of Democrats in the Watergate Building. In view of the impending Supreme Court ruling, someone in the White House—perhaps the President or John Mitchell—called for the removal of those bugs so the espionage group known as the Plumbers was dispatched to Watergate complex that week-end. Their bumbled break-in led to the investigation process that triggered the resignation of President Nixon about two years later.

Governmental pressures and changing values led to the demise of the White Panther Party. Pun Plamondon returned to the rock scene in Detroit and served, for some time, as Bob Seger’s body guard but by the end of the 1970s he suffered from addiction problems. In 1981, he rediscovered his Ottawa racial heritage, and reoriented his life. He became a carpenter in Barry County Michigan where he now resides.

This is a Michigan Legal Milestone Marker—a project of the Michigan Bar Association to commemorate important legal decisions and figures. This location was selected since the library of the Michigan Bar Association was in the Penobscot Building.

Date of Dedication: December 18, 1991.
Use in 2006: Historical Marker
State of Michigan Registry of Historic Sites: Not listed
National Registry of Historic Places: Not listed
Citation for Judge Damon Keith’s ruling: 321 F. Supp. 1074 (Eastern district, Michigan, January 26, 1971)
Citation for Supreme Court decision: 407 U. S. 297 (June 19, 1972).
Autobiography of Pun Plamondon: Lost from the Ottawa Tribe: The Story of the Journal Back Self-published in 2004.
Photograph: Ren Farley; February 3, 2006
Description: February 2006