Paul E. Ester's Flogger

Kim Jong Il Receives President of Washington Times Corporation
ÊÊÊ Pyongyang, August 16 (KCNA) — Leader Kim Jong Il Tuesday received Joo Dong Mun, president of the Washington Times Corporation, on a visit to Pyongyang.
On the occasion the president offered his congratulations to Kim Jong Il on the 60th anniversary of Korea’s liberation. ÊÊÊ
Kim Jong Il welcomed the Pyongyang visit of the president, had a cordial talk with him and posed for a photograph with him…. Rest of Article

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 – The Sept. 11 commission was warned by a uniformed military officer 10 days before issuing its final report that the account would be incomplete without reference to what he described as a secret military operation that by the summer of 2000 had identified as a potential threat the member of Al Qaeda who would lead the attacks more than a year later, commission officials said on Wednesday.
The officials said that the information had not been included in the report because aspects of the officer’s account had sounded inconsistent with what the commission knew about that Qaeda member, Mohammed Atta, the plot’s leader.
But aides to the Republican congressman who has sought to call attention to the military unit that conducted the secret operation said such a conclusion relied too much on specific dates involving Mr. Atta’s travels and not nearly enough on the operation’s broader determination that he was a threat.
The briefing by the military officer is the second known instance in which people on the commission’s staff were told by members of the military team about the secret program, called Able Danger.
The meeting, on July 12, 2004, has not been previously disclosed. That it occurred, and that the officer identified Mr. Atta there, were acknowledged by officials of the commission after the congressman, Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, provided information about it.
Mr. Weldon has accused the commission of ignoring information that would have forced a rewriting of the history of the Sept. 11 attacks. He has asserted that the Able Danger unit, whose work relied on computer-driven data-mining techniques, sought to call their superiors’ attention to Mr. Atta and three other future hijackers in the summer of 2000. Their work, he says, had identified the men as likely members of a Qaeda cell already in the United States.
In a letter sent Wednesday to members of the commission, Mr. Weldon criticized the panel in scathing terms, saying that its “refusal to investigate Able Danger after being notified of its existence, and its recent efforts to feign ignorance of the project while blaming others for supposedly withholding information on it, brings shame on the commissioners, and is evocative of the worst tendencies in the federal government that the commission worked to expose.”
Al Felzenberg, who served as the commission’s chief spokesman, said earlier this week that staff members who were briefed about Able Danger at a first meeting, in October 2003, did not remember hearing anything about Mr. Atta or an American terrorist cell. On Wednesday, however, Mr. Felzenberg said the uniformed officer who briefed two staff members in July 2004 had indeed mentioned Mr. Atta…. Rest of Article

Mr. Felzenberg confirmed an account by Mr. Weldon’s staff that the briefing, at the commission’s offices in Washington, had been conducted by Dietrich L. Snell, one of the panel’s lead investigators, and had been attended by a Pentagon employee acting as an observer for the Defense Department; over the commission’s protests, the Bush administration had insisted that an administration “minder” attend all the panel’s major interviews with executive branch employees. Mr. Snell referred questions to Mr. Felzenberg.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 – More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.
In the summer of 2000, the military team, known as Able Danger, prepared a chart that included visa photographs of the four men and recommended to the military’s Special Operations Command that the information be shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the congressman, Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, and the former intelligence official said Monday…. Rest of Article

Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double that amount of subsidy. But Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project.
He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained – and often illiterate – workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use “pictorials” to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.
“The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario,” Fedchun said.
In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.
“Most people don’t think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage,” he said…. Rest of Article

I am a Japanese School Teacher
By: Azrael
In August 2003 I moved to Kyoto, Japan as a part of the JET program. I am an assistant language teacher in three Jr. High schools. The experience has been…interesting to say the least. Interesting enough to warrant it’s own editorial.
However, there isn’t just one editorial that could cover everything about my experiences here. So I decided to make it into an editorial series. This is the main page – check here for updates…. Rest of Article

“The tradecraft was beyond appalling,” said an intelligence official with long experience in clandestine affairs. “I’d have to wonder if these were CIA officers trained in the clandestine arts.”

Some suggested the operation could have been carried out by intelligence officials from the FBI or the U.S. military.

… Rest of Article

Most Americans now believe that President George W. Bush’s administration “intentionally misled” the public in going to war in Iraq, according to a poll.The ABC News/Washington Post poll came on the eve of a key speech in which Bush will seek public support for the war, which 53 percent of Americans who were surveyed said was not worth fighting.

A record 57 percent say the Bush administration “intentionally exaggerated its evidence that pre-war Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons,” according to the poll.

It was the first time a majority said the administration “intentionally misled” the public, the survey said.
… Rest of Article

Meanwhile, two Britons attempted to transport trillions of dollars in fake US treasury notes to Switzerland through an international courier company last week.

But NBI agents arrested Paul Edward John Flavell and Sam Beany, residing at Room 305, CEO Apartments, Jupiter St., Makati City before they could ship the fake federal bank reserves out of the country.

According to NBI Anti-Graft Division Head Agent Manuel Eduarte, the bureau received a call from DHL Phil. last April 14 about the suspects’ pending shipment.

Eduarte said the suspects had gone to the DHL office on Chino Roces Avenue to send out an iron-cast chest to a certain Mr. Rotondo and Mr. Z.M. Bayram in Zurich, Switzerland.

The chest, with the words “Treaty of Versailles” emblazoned on its lid, contained a metal scroll and 13 iron-cast boxes with bogus reserve certificates from Chicago, Illinois. Each box contained 250 fake certificates allegedly issued in 1934 worth $1 billion each, Eduarte said.

“The US government issues only up to $10,000 in reserves,” Eduarte stressed, adding that the suspects sold the bonds to unsuspecting buyers for a lower price.

After the suspects paid the shipment bill, NBI agents who had been monitoring their activities asked them to open the chest. The operatives arrested the Britons after they had confirmed from a US Embassy official that the notes were fake.

Charges of treasury or bank notes forgery, and illegal possession and use of treasury and bank notes were filed against the suspects in the Makati City Prosecutor’s Office…. Rest of Article

The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government’s top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

Several U.S. officials defended the abrupt decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.

Last year, the number of incidents in 2003 was undercounted, forcing a revision of the report, “Patterns of Global Terrorism.”

But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s office ordered “Patterns of Global Terrorism” eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush’s administration’s frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism…. Rest of Article