Bhutto Allegation Bin Laden Had Been Murdered

Jenna Orkin


In an interview November 2, 2007 with Sir David Frost, Benazir Bhutto mentioned in passing "Omar Sheikh" who, she said, had murdered Osama Bin Laden.

The camera remained fixed on the assassinee to be, so Frost's reaction is forever lost to enquiring minds, but he did not follow up with any questions concerning this eyebrow-raising bombshell.

The comment comes off as a possible slip of the tongue but even as such, provokes questions. Where exactly was the slip? On the words "Omar Sheikh," "Osama Bin Laden" or "murdered?"

A corollary question arises about whether the Omar Sheikh (a common name) to whom Bhutto was referring was the ISI associate who was convicted in 2002 of murdering Daniel Pearl. This Omar Sheikh, according to the Times of India, also wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta shortly before the 9/11 attacks.

Of course, Bhutto's not around to clarify but a trip to her party's website yielded a reference dated November 8, after the Frost interview, which refutes her statement:

"The United States alone has given the Musharraf government more than $10 billion in aid since 2001. We do not know exactly where or how this money has been spent, but it is clear that it has not brought about the defeat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, nor succeeded in capturing Osama bin Laden, nor has it broken the opium trade."

A remarkable aspect of the interview is the fact that apart from Al Jazeera, no mainstream press have investigated its surely newsworthy allegation. This, of course, is not surprising in the United States, but the Asian and other Middle Eastern presses might have been expected to show some curiosity.

The Pakistan People's Party website did not provide contact information beyond an email address. This blog emailled an enquiry Saturday but has not received a response. According to my experience, Saturday and Sunday are work days in Muslim countries.

Permaculture Principles
Total Information Highways
India Fears Blackberries Threat to National Security
...RIM insists that its technology is impregnable to spies. After France barred MPs and their advisers from using the system last year, RIM said that "rumors speculating that can be intercepted and read by the National Security Agency in the U.S. or other 'spy' organizations are based on false and misleading information."

Guidelines for Epidemics: Who Gets a Ventilator
This appeared opposite an article about how a flu epidemic was a question not of 'if' but of 'when.'
Guns for Oil
...Apple described a "lethal cycle" where Sudan sells China oil and uses that income to purchase China's weapons.

Gulf States Under Pressure to Sever Links with Dollar
President Convenes With Plunge Protection Team
Venezuela Requires Euros for Some Oil Deals
SAS Man Says Mark Thatcher Was Involved in Guinea Coup
Symbolism of Space Exploration Insignia

Spitzer, We Hardly Knew Ye But Don't Let That Stop Us From Opining

Jenna Orkin


Thank God for Eliot Spitzer. Not only did the White Knight/Client 9 rescue us from the siege of CNN by Britney Spears; he also cleverly timed his fall from his high horse (in German, "Spitze" means "top") to camouflage the far greater implosion of the street whose own dirty tricks he'd investigated.

Such heroism comes at a price, of course. The knight's shining armor has gotten bloody in the process. So while the Ph.D.'s weigh in, from blame-the-wife Dr. Laura to "Go figure" Dr. Janet Taylor, with equal relish (though less censure) I leap into the fray not as a shrink but, in true New York tradition, as an ex-analysand.

The titillating bit about this uniquely American scandal (uniquely American not because of the behavior, which was cliche, but because of our professed shock) is the abrasive prosecutor's self-destructiveness. He had powerful enemies but in the end, he was his own worst etc., etc. Like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime until the cops finally nab him; like a fireman who reveals his inner pyromania by setting a record-breaking fire, Spitzer threw his career on the very sword with which he had won it.

For there can be little doubt that a piece of him wanted to get caught. Spitzer was not just any politician discovered red-handed, with his pants down. (Sex turns all metaphors into double entendres.) He was the former Attorney General who had ridden to fame investigating prostitution rings.

While this conundrum has elicited outraged cries of, "Hypocrite!" such epithets don't get us very far. ("Karma" is another one that's been going and coming around.) What was said "hypocrisy" made of? The scourge of money-laundering schemes knew how to follow the money. And therefore, better than anyone, he knew how to leave a trail of breadcrumbs.

So far at least eight breadcrumbs have been discovered, possibly amounting to $80,000. They were left in a pattern known as 'smurfing' which, as Spitzer certainly knew, raises red flags with banks' compliance officers.

But why did he do it? Was it guilt? Exhibitionism? The lure of an auto-inflicted auto da fe? Was the governorship less fun than he'd hoped?

Such questions are beyond the reach of at least this idle speculator. But throw out a few more details. The sharks' appetities have only been whetted.

UK Top Cop Who Led CIA Probe Found Dead
Reward for Information on Cartels
France to Renegotiate Military Accords with Africa: Sarkozy

"The French leader was accompanied on his trip by the chairman of French nuclear giant Areva, bidding for a nuclear reactor contract as South Africa struggles to cope with a massive energy shortfall...

Earlier, French power giant Alstom announced a 1.36 billion euro (two-billion-dollar) contract for the construction of a coal-fuelled power plant in the central Mpumalanga province."

The True Cost of War
U.S. Healthcare Gets Boost From Charity
Journalists Suffer WTC Health Effects
The various constituencies suffering health effects from 9/11 are falling into familiar categories. First, of course, were the Ground Zero workers. One of the many lawsuits currently in progress includes four hundred who have already been diagnosed with cancer.

Then came the cleanup workers of buildings in the neighborhood and the residents, office workers and students who were induced or coerced to return to the area while the fires still burned and smoldered. (Contrary to common assumption, contamination is not necessarily reduced when temperatures go down. In fact, it is during smoldering fires that dioxins, which are among the most toxic substances ever created, are released.)

Later, the rescue dogs began falling ill and dying prematurely although one official study purports to show otherwise.

Now come the journalists, a development which has not yet received the media attention you might expect. Perhaps the ones who have manifested symptoms aren't sufficiently reknowned. Or perhaps their bosses are keeping a lid on this new angle.

The powers that be have pitted the various constituencies against each other, funding healthcare for one at the expense of another. So far these tactics have not worked; the separate constituences have fought together for the rights of all. Jenna Orkin

Guantanamo Wind Farm
James Lovelock's Latest
Modular Ecological Design
Judge Orders USDA to Pay Farmer for Sludge-Poisoned Land
Debunking of "No Moon Landing" Nonsense
Chavez-FARC Connection a Fake
More on Philip Agee

Arguments Against Abiotic Oil
Carbon Output Must Near Zero to Avert Danger, New Studies Say
Secrecy News
Panic in Market on Fear of Insolvency at Bear Stearns
Peak Coal
Peak Oil, True or False Michael Kane
Demand Destruction
GAO on Future Combat Systems
AP Finds Drugs in Drinking Water
As in the environmental disaster of 9/11, no effort is being made to calculate the cumulative, much less the synergistic effects of these multiple drugs that have appeared in drinking water around the country. The EPA is quick and relieved to report that little is known about synergy. But studies at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City have shown that if you're both a smoker and an asbestos worker, for instance, the effect is not merely twice as bad as being one OR the other. It's 80 or 90 times as bad. Jenna Orkin
US, China, Resigned to Taiwan Vote
Disinfo Agents Get to Marion Cotillard
As soon as a person in the limelight gets wind of the truth, the disinfo agents swoop in to steer him or her towards lunacy. Towards that end, the idea of a falsified moon landing is a particularly apt decoy. J.O.

First Seeds Arrive in Seed Vault
No one person has all the codes for entrance...

Already three-quarters of biodiversity in crops has been lost in the last century, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Eighty percent of maize types that existed in the 1930s are gone, for example. In the United States, 94 percent of peas are no longer grown.
Follow-Up on Longyearbyen
My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)
Jenkins' Humanure Handbook
The Pentagon's Ray Gun
Obama, Bush Offer Kiss of Death to Africa
China and Russia Cry Foul Over Satellite
FBI Documents Contradict 9/11 Commission Report
Radiation Dose Chart of Common Exposures
Of Cables and Conspiracies