Well ... I’m back — temporarily.  Recent events have compelled me to “come out of exile”, and write another politically-incorrect review of the news.

Sudan

It is truly unfortunate that many Americans are only learning about the humanitarian crisis in Sudan in the past couple of weeks.  I was aware of the crisis ten years ago, when I ran for Congress in my former hometown in Upstate New York.  Prior to that, because of my Air Force duties, I was aware that Sudan was a leading host for Islamist terrorist training camps and a financial sponsor of terrorism.

And, just as the average American has been duped into thinking that this is a recent and sudden crisis in Sudan, the “mainstream” news media is also using the dupe-phrase “ethnic cleansing” again.  The humanitarian crisis in Sudan is not a case of ethnic “cleansing”, although there are some ethnic elements associated with it.  The problem in Sudan — like similar problems in the Balkans, and in Rwanda — is religious warfare.

As I wrote in my MND column “Louder Than Words” (and elsewhere), religious warfare was the real cause of US involvement in the Balkans.  President Clinton chose to help the Muslims (Bosnians) against two Christian factions, while all three factions are ethnically the same.  And, in Rwanda, the war was against a tribe that is predominantly Christian.  Now, again in Sudan, the real was is against the Christians.  (In an apparent effort at containment, one former ambassador emphasized that the conflict was ethnic, “not religious”.  The facts, however, outweigh the statement of one CFR member.)

Muslims, mostly of Arab descent, control the government of Sudan.  Hundreds of years ago, their ancestors swept across North Africa for the purpose of spreading Islam at the point of a sword.  Islamist Arabs control the government of Sudan, and thus its oil wealth.  One of the lesser-known philosophies of Shari’a (the law of Islam) is that of allowing non-Muslims to live as second-class citizens.  (Under the rules of Shari’a, a non-Muslim has only three options:  convert to Islam, live second-class, or die.)  But, in the southern part of Sudan (which borders on Ethiopia), the majority Black population has a centuries-long tradition of Orthodox Christianity.  These people, like the saints that they revere from their history, would rather die than convert to Islam.  After more than a decade of rounding up these Christians to become slaves, the Islamist government of Sudan has begun a widespread slaughter.

It was Josef Stalin that said, “One murder is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.”  America sat idly by when almost a million Rwandans died as a result of anti-Christian persecution.  (Even when images of thousands of bodies clogging rivers were shown on the TV news, our country did not rise up.)  Now, the death toll in Sudan is nearing one million, and all we have done is send a few senators on a fact-finding trip, and threaten to support United Nations sanctions.  As I also explained in “Louder Than Words”, the ideology of the UN is decidedly pro-Communist, pro-Islamist, and anti-God.  Therefore, Secretary Powell’s recent statement about possible sanctions rings hollow.  (Powell, of course, should know this.  After a dozen years of hollow UN sanctions against Iraq, the United States had to invade Iraq without UN support.)  The UN is about as likely to come to the aid of persecuted African Christians as it was to aid the persecuted Mizrahi.

Interestingly, a recent news item about a policy change in Syria has confirmed my assertion that there is a strong link between Islamism and Communism.  The link was so strong that, until recently, members of the Baath Party were called “comrade”.

There is no valid strategic reason for US involvement in the Balkans (nor Haiti).  But, there are valid reasons — both strategic and humanitarian — for US intervention in Sudan.  And, without intervention, the Islamist domination will continue.  America has the will and the means to intervene in Sudan.  Will it actually happen?

Flight 800 lawsuits — part one

Although the downing of TWA Flight 800 occurred almost eight years ago, two major court battles are quietly going on — well below the radar of the “mainstream” news media.  The official government story is that the center wing-mounted fuel tank (CWT) spontaneously exploded.  The story, of course, is preposterous.  At the time of the explosion, Boeing 747s had been in commercial flight for 29 years, and Flight 800 was the only case in which such a theory had ever been proposed as the cause of a crash.  Moreover, that particular aircraft (tail # 17119) had previously landed safely — after a direct hit by lightning (see pages 23-24 of Cmdr. Donaldson’s report).

The “mainstream” news media, though, has dismissed most stories that conflict with the official government version.  The dismissal usually is justified by “a lack of credible evidence”.  That lack, however, no longer exists.  And, if one man has his way in court later this month, the amount of evidence could grow substantially.

Graeme Sephton is a radar engineer and researcher, and is vice-president of the Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization (FIRO).  After an internal FIRO debate about going after the government in court, Sephton formed a separate organization:  the Freedom of Information Action Coalition (FOIAC).  On the 22^nd of July — a few days after the eighth anniversary of the crash — Sephton will have another hearing in his ongoing court battle against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Radar information obtained by FIRO a year after the crash shows a piece of wreckage leaving Flight 800 at Mach 2 — the speed of a missile.  The FBI took over the crash investigation, despite Federal laws and rules that make the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) the lead agency in such disasters.  James Kallstrom of the FBI publicly ruled out missile involvement; but, did everything in his power to prevent public exposure of eyewitness testimony and other evidence that suggested there was a missile.

Among that evidence was a group of autopsy reports from the Suffolk County (NY) Medical Examiner.  The reports showed the presence of foreign objects in the bodies of crash victims.  The objects were metal pellets, which were consistent with the “oxidizer pellets” found in missile warheads.  The bodies containing these pellets were seated in the same vicinity as the now-famous “red residue” from solid rocket fuel.  There were no such pellets in the bodies of crash victims seated farther from the apparent path of missile penetration through the passenger cabin.

The FBI confiscated the autopsy reports, classified them Secret, and would not even let the Medical Examiner that prepared the reports have access to them.  Word of their existence, however, somehow reached FIRO.  In 1998, Sephton filed a routine Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request with the FBI, which denied their existence.  Sephton persisted, filing an administrative FOIA Appeal.  The appeal, which was also handled by the FBI, was denied.  So, having exhausted his administrative remedies, Sephton filed a FOIA lawsuit in Federal court.

Sephton’s lawsuit is privately funded by donations.  He is up against a team of lawyers from the Justice Department.  But, in a sure case of the tail wagging the dog, the FBI has lost several rounds.  In fact, the FBI is now the appellant against Sephton.  A judge ruled that the FBI had not been diligent enough in its search of its own files.  (Proof of the existence of the autopsy reports had been obtained separately.  This convinced the judge that, at best, the FBI had been “sloppy” in its record-keeping.  On the 22^nd of this month, we will find out what else might be revealed from the secret FBI files.  One thing that I’m confident will not be found:  proof of a spontaneous CWT fuel explosion.

Flight 800 lawsuits — part two

Another brave soul is fighting the government over the truth of the Flight 800 crash.  At the opposite end of the country, Ray Lahr also has another court hearing coming up.  (Sephton’s case is in Massachusetts; Lahr’s case is in California.  Both are in Federal courts, and both stem from the Freedom of Information Act.  Both cases are also privately-funded.)  The root of this lawsuit is the now-famous “zoom-climb” video.

Like Sephton, the plaintiff in this “zoom-climb” lawsuit cannot be dismissed as a so-called “conspiracy theorist”.  Ray Lahr is a former Navy fighter pilot, who later retired from TWA as an airline captain — and crash investigator.  He is convinced that the official government version of the Flight 800 crash is flawed.  And, he is now suing the government over some of the “proof” of their official story.

Lahr says that the video, which was released to the news media to support the official story, shows an event that is aerodynamically impossible.  And, after the FBI and the NTSB showed the video at a press conference, representatives of Boeing quickly distanced the company from the video (press statement, 18 Nov 1997).  For reasons that are unclear, the video was produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Captain Lahr believes that the official story about the Flight 800 crash cannot be supported by the evidence.  And, when he saw the video, he felt that the public had been duped.  He set out to prove what his gut had told him instantly:  the scenario shown in the computer-animated video is impossible.  Lahr has tried to obtain the calculations used to create the video; but, the NTSB and Boeing have refused to provide them.

In their last major confrontation in court, in December of 2003, the judge made a surprising decision.  Judge Howard Matz added the CIA as a defendant in the case.  Considering that the CIA produced the video, the decision makes sense.  But, common sense is not often so prevalent in court cases, especially against the government.

One of the surprising aspects of both lawsuits is the near-total absence of “mainstream” news media coverage.  In both cases, the government has attempted to contort FOIA beyond recognition.  Normally, this would send scores of reporters and commentators into a frenzy.  But, in the case of Flight 800, the silence is overwhelming.  The public should keep a close eye on both cases, not only to find the truth about Flight 800 in particular, but to see whether the courts keep open the path that FOIA provides.

Tom Kovach