© Art Institute of Chicago'Mars Chastising Cupid', by Bartolomeo Manfredi
The Romans named this month Martius after the god of war, Mars. Before the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, March was considered the first month of the new year. War, greed, plague and destruction marked the end of the Roman imperial adventure. Today's empire looks set to meet a fate essentially the same. Symbolic perhaps of its tenacity in the face of imperial pressure to conform, Iran still celebrates Nowruz, or 'New Day' on the 21st of the month, the Spring Equinox.
How to kick-start a War on People in the US
Last month's warnings (or threats?) from the US director of national intelligence Dennis Blair and the UK's Metropolitan police's head for public order, David Hartshorn, that the economic crisis could trigger a return to the "violent extremism" of the 1920s and 1930s, and that the UK was heading for a "summer of rage", marked a significant expansion in the rhetoric of the authorities and therefore in what we can expect from the elite.
Even with that in mind, we were quite shocked to learn this month that a Missouri police report on militias and terrorists identifies bumper-stickers for third-party candidates, talk of conspiracies and 'subversive literature, as warning signs of "terrorist" associations. It mentions discussions about the North American union, the America: Freedom to Fascism video and the Zeitgeist movie among other signs of potential "paramilitary" activity. The document (which can be downloaded here) includes alarming fragments such as this one:
[...] These groups communicate through forums, yahoo groups, blogs, and social networking sites. Websites and online talk shows have been established to push rhetoric, usually a skewed version of current events. [...] Militias are recruiting members and supporters through the following means: gun shows, online forums, websites, social networking sites, and informal social networks. Additionally, militia recruitment may be done at events or meetings held by organizations that share ideologies with the militia.The indictment of "websites [that promote] a skewed version of current events" seems to be forbidding the promotion of any view of reality that diverges from the official government line. In essence, a terrorist is anyone that attempts to discern and publicly disseminate ideas about what is really happening on our planet.
The report is also remarkable for placing very dissimilar groups in one basket and thus adding to the general confusion. In effect, it makes virtually anyone a potential target. As far as the authors of the report are concerned, anti-abortionists, defenders of constitutional rights and people who discuss the 'New World Order', FEMA 'concentration camps' or Zionism, all fall into the same category as white supremacist paramilitaries, Neo-Nazis and anti-Semites. It is also quite ironic that the document warns that the militias are motivated by conspiracy theories about a fascist government when the document itself shows an overtly fascist face and promotes a wild conspiracy theory.
The report was created by the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC), one of 58 "fusion centers" nationwide created by the Department of Homeland Security to collect local intelligence. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has called fusion centers the "centerpiece of state, local, federal intelligence-sharing" for the future. It's the Elite's version of online discussion groups.
Interestingly, the Restore the Republic movement was planning a Campaign For Liberty Regional Conference in St. Louis Missouri at the end of March. A funny coincidence, given that the movement shares many of the characteristics described in the MIAC document. They do not however appear to be "militiamen and terrorists", describing themselves instead as "peaceful freedom lovers". The fact that the document was made public at this time almost suggests that someone was seeking to spark a confrontation between police on the ground - who would have been looking for the 'signs' described in the report - and participants in the event.
Although the Missouri Department of Public Safety retracted and apologized for the document a few weeks later - that is, only after former presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr, who were identified by the document as icons of the militia movement demanded it - we are still waiting for the DHS to do the same. They are ultimately responsible for this document and we have no guarantee that similar policies are not being covertly put in place by other states or on a nationwide basis. Furthermore, even with a retraction, the damage has been done by contributing to the normalization of making suspects out of everyone, one step at a time.
The MIAC document is also interesting in that it resonates strongly with a certain discourse that has been running lately in Fox News. Perhaps you remember last month's Glenn Beck show discussing the possibility of a "civil war" led by American "Bubba" militias against a 'socialist' Barack Obama. In fact, the MIAC would have to go after Glenn Beck, as he recently revealed he had been researching the FEMA prison camps and that they were real - although he backpedaled on that less than a day later.
Coincidentally, American Free Press is spreading a rumor which seems to have been taken from the script of The Manchurian Candidate. A certain Tom Fife assures us that he heard during a visit to Moscow 18 years ago that Obama was being prepared as a communist candidate to win the US elections. While it is possible that Obama has been picked and prepared by the system for a few years for his current role, he has shown no signs whatsoever of socialism or communism. It is apparent then that a certain type of disinformation is aimed at promoting a confrontational attitude between certain right-wing sectors of the American public and the US government - or at least at making us believe that the confrontation is real.
There are further signs that the 'war on people' is on the cards. Michel Chossudovsky reports that back in January, a bill entitled the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act (HR 645) was introduced in the US Congress, for the purpose of establishing six national emergency centers in major regions in the US to be located on existing military installations. HR 645 states that the camps can be used to "meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security." This is the same Homeland Security that gave us the MIAC report.
There was also a little-noticed crossing of an important line as a result of the Alabama shootings. It turns out that the US Army has launched an inquiry into how and why active duty troops from Fort Rucker, Ala., came to be placed on the streets of the town of Samson during a murder spree in the small south Alabama community. The use of the troops was a violation of federal law, as the army is not supposed to engage in law enforcement. Is this another possible way to openly target the population - crossing that line here and there at every opportunity until it becomes natural and accepted? Just WHO are the real law-breakers in the US of A?
We are reminded that the trend we speak of here has been ongoing for quite some time now - at least since the attacks of 9-11. As we tried to explain in our last installment, the pattern we see today is a shift from the 'war on terror' aimed mainly at Arabs and Muslims, to an expanded 'war on people' in which virtually everyone is a suspect. Perhaps because this shift is now taking place, and we are meant to believe that Obama will undo past evils, we are getting more revelations about the Neocons' War on Terror, such as details of its secret laws, a secret report by the Red Cross concluding that the Bush administration's treatment of captives "constituted torture," and investigative reporter Seymour Hersh's description of Dick Cheney's 'executive assassination ring', also known as the Joint Special Operations Command.
That is the situation at the heart of the Empire. But what about the rest of the world? The pattern of targeting people and promoting confrontation can be found in many examples - most notably, but not exclusively, in Northern Ireland and the UK, and Pakistan.
How to kick-start a War on People around the world
Two British soldiers and a policeman were murdered in Northern Ireland, allegedly by IRA dissidents. Two days before the attacks, Hugh Orde, chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, warned that the "threat from dissident republicans in Ulster was the highest for seven years." One day before the first attack on the Massereene Army Barracks, Orde announced the return of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), (a deep-cover military unit cut from the same cloth as the SAS), to operations in the country. With wounds barely healed from decades of brutality inflicted on both the Loyalist and Nationalist populations by the British government's Dirty War, Nationalist party Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness saw the writing on the wall, calling the move "stupid and irresponsible."
© Special Reconnaissance RegimentBeware the Praetorian Guard: The coat of arms of Downing Street's own "Executive Assassination Ring"?
The next day the barracks were hit. But even McGuinness can't have expected a reaction from 'dissidents' so soon. The timing is just so... what's the word . . . scripted? The soldiers' murders were obviously carried out by people who have killed before, given the brazen nature of the attack. Two gunmen showered the entrance to the barracks with a hail of bullets, then coolly walked up to the dying soldiers and executed them at point-blank range. Yet this was claimed to be the work of a couple of enthusiastic loose cannons!
With MI5 now firmly at the helm of surveillance and essentially a law unto themselves, 'dissidents' cannot so much as rant without the security state knowing about it.
Only after the media had fingered 'dissident Republicans' for the attack did an anonymous phone call to an Irish journalist claim responsibility for the attacks on behalf of the Real IRA. This 'al-Qaeda-in-Ireland' pseudo-gang (effectively a database of provocateurs, informers and unconscious dupes whose only solid connection to each other routes through the counter-intelligence desks of Her Majesty's finest) was immediately blamed. Bear in mind that 'dissident' is really the security state's euphemism for outspoken doubters of the British government's real intentions with regard to the 'peace process.' It's noteworthy that In the 11 years spent investigating the Real IRA's role in the horrendous car-bomb attack in Omagh - "the bomb to end all bombs" - the only fact that has been established is that MI5 was fully aware of the plans for the bomb attack and therefore, at the very least, implicitly allowed it to go ahead.
The March 7th attack on the army barracks was eerily reminiscent of the manner in which Jean Charles de Menezes was executed in broad daylight at London's Stockwell Tube Station in 2005. For good reason too; the SRR was the very same unit which then introduced the infamous 'Shoot-to-kill' policy to the wider British public, although it has long been a fact of life in Northern Ireland. De Menezes worked as a contract electrician for London Underground and had been under surveillance since the 7/7 attacks. It seems he knew too much about the 'power surge' initially reported on the morning of the simultaneous Tube explosions because SRR men were later tasked with hunting him down and executing him in front of onlooking passengers.
Shoot-to-kill has long been the form of "justice" meted out by British imperialism to "IRA suspects" in Northern Ireland. With the pretext of the "terrorist threat", the oppression that has historically been visited by British imperialism on the Catholic population of Northern Ireland - internment without trial, no-jury courts etc - is now being brought "home" with a vengeance. In the operation that culminated in the death of de Menezes, the Metropolitan Police were assisted by a shadowy army regiment which, according to The Guardian (4 August 2005), was set up in April 2005 "to help combat international terrorism." The Guardian article notes that the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) "absorbed 14th Intelligence Company, a plainclothes unit set up to gather intelligence covertly on suspect terrorists in Northern Ireland". Appointed to run the SRR was one Brigadier Gordon Kerr who was named in a file handed to the Director of Public Prosecutions by the Stevens Inquiry investigating collusion between British security forces and Loyalist paramilitaries in the killing of Catholics, including Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane in 1989.Another high-profile lawyer assassinated by one of the security service's pseudo-gangs was Rosemary Nelson. She was taken out in 1999 after having successfully defended innocent victims of the military occupation. One of her clients was the man now charged with the Massereene barracks attack. The British authorities have clearly been after 'dissident' Colin Duffy for a long time; they failed to frame him on two previous occasions. Third time lucky?
Britain's shenanigans in Ireland are as deep as they are murky. Threatened by the indigenous civil rights movement rising up from the institutionalised marginalisation of the Catholic-Irish population, the government commenced COINTELPRO-style operations in the early 1970s thanks largely to the psychopathic genius of Frank Kitson, whose pathological methods of subduing popular resistance in occupied countries were honed in the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. His Military Reaction Forces (MRF), from which today's SRR are directly descended, were also active at that time in Aden, where "in 1967 they dressed as Arabs and would use an Army officer to lure Arab gunmen into a trap and kill them."
© UnknownBritish counterinsurgency agents caught red-handed in Iraq
Guess where the SRR have been during the wilderness 'peace process' years of Northern Ireland? Busy applying lessons learned at the Experimental School of Ulster Black-ops in Iraq where two members of the secret army unit were caught red-handed 'dressed in Arab garb' and armed to the teeth with weapons for use in false-flag operations to be blamed on Iraqi 'insurgents.'
Who or what stands to gain from destabilising the fragile peace in Northern Ireland? Not the man in the street anyway, where the fear is once again palpable. As Simon Davies explains, the timing has provided the British government with a useful tool in that it will justify repressive measures against people responding to the economic plunder of their futures:
It is clear to us that the British government was behind at least the first if not both sets of murders in Northern Ireland. With a propaganda campaign in full swing telling us how violent the summer is going to be, a newly ignited terror threat from Northern Ireland will be a very useful tool in the hands of those that will go to any lengths necessary to prevent the formation of a viable, coherent and peaceful body of protest which seeks change to the rapacious system in which we find ourselves and halt the daylight robbery taking place under the guise of banking rescues.Faced with growing opposition to the surveillance leviathan that has transformed the country into an open-air prison, the UK government felt compelled to inject a little terror into its subjects. We also wonder if the renewal of 'dirty tricks' in the occupied six counties of Northern Ireland was made with one eye on Ireland's intransigence towards the Project for the New European Superstate and its government's relatively outspoken stance against a certain dirty little war in Gaza. A jolt from the big boys to ensure safe passage of the Lisbon Treaty at the second time of asking, perhaps?
In the fog of fear and confusion generated by the apparent randomness of terrorist attacks on the local stage, grand moves on the chessboard are taking place. There is far too much at stake for small nations like Ireland and the Czech Republic to stand in the way of the rapacious Pathocracy's consolidation of European power. The Czech government collapsed the day after its Prime Minister warned fellow member-states that the EU was taking the "road to hell" by following the US lead into economic oblivion, while the knives are out for the Irish government.
One thing is clear; besides subduing the masses, the generation of terror proves most productive for the agenda when directed towards resolving sticking points, by way of "exerting an irresistible pressure upon international politics" (Leon Pinsker, a 'founding father' of Zionism, in Auto-Emancipation).
John Anthony Hill's story connects the various strands. In February this English expatriate living in Ireland was served a European Arrest Warrant. He currently awaits a court's decision on whether to extradite him to the UK where he stands accused of "attempting to pervert the course of justice" for sending copies of his DVD '7/7 Ripple Effect' to the foreman of the jury in a show trial investigating matters peripheral to the London Bombings of July 2005. Only a psychopath could accuse him of such a crime as he was obviously doing his utmost to correct the aberrant course of in-justice! It's not difficult to understand why they want to shut him up. The contents of Hill's self-produced documentary clearly implicate the British security state along with the MOSSAD in orchestrating the bombings on the London transport system on July 7th, 2005. At the very least Hill demonstrates that the four Muslim 'suicide bombers' were patsies in a conspiracy they knew nothing about. The strategy of terrorising people requires darkness to work and it certainly can't abide selfless 'vigilantes' like Mr Hill shining light on the true culprits.
© Sean MackOne people under pathocratic rule: street mural in Derry reminds the British authorities that the Civil Rights Movement remains a just cause.
With the UK now on 'severe' terror alert and the SRR brought back into the fold, Downing Street has been busy amplifying the shock value generated by the renewal of state terrorism in Ireland. It came as no surprise when two weeks later UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced the publication of the UK government's new counter-terrorism strategy, which promises to "take the war against terror to a new level". With the general public quite fed up already with this 'war on terror' charade, this move would probably not have been possible without the events in Northern Ireland. Just to cement the psychological effect, the Home Office decided to scare the British public by announcing that the possibility of a "dirty bomb" attack was "more realistic than it may have been in the recent past". In other words, they may have one waiting in the wings to "prove" their point!
Some of the examples of 'security measures' in the UK border on the ridiculous. Consider the case of London, where the Police have imposed a de-facto curfew on under-sixteens; or the 'revelation' by West Yorkshire police that 200 schoolchildren in Britain, some as young as 13, have been identified as potential terrorists! (We've been telling people since 2001 that the War on Terror is really a War on the People, now you are seeing it in real time!)
In Pakistan everyone is becoming a suspect terrorist too. The difference seems to be that the country as a whole is undergoing a process of destabilization, courtesy of Western and 'hidden' powers. We have been observing terrorist attacks for months now, which can only have negative consequences on this country; think of the Marriot bombing in Islamabad or the attacks in Mumbai which were blamed on Pakistani based groups. This month, the Sri Lankan national cricket team was victim of yet another mysterious terror attack plagued with contradictions. Heavily armed gunmen attacked the team's bus and left the area undisturbed as the police arrived 45 minutes later. The number of attackers fluctuates between three or four to fourteen, depending on which report you read. Lahore saw more violence before the month was out when a brutal assault on a police academy by "elements of the Taliban" left 11 police cadets and officers dead and supposedly ended with the besieged terrorists being fast-tracked to martyrdom by blowing themselves up.
The Pakistani state could collapse within six months if immediate steps are not taken to remedy the situation, warned a top adviser to the US Central Command. According to American government officials, operatives in Pakistan's military intelligence agency support the Taliban's military campaign. All of this is, of course, propaganda and excuses for further direct intervention in Pakistan.
In France, a bio-terror training exercise was held in January in preparation for future attacks of supposed "anti-capitalist terrorists" - an apocalyptic threat which is just as fantastic as that of Muslim terrorism.
In Mexico we are being asked to believe that government and society are collapsing because of drug gangs that have always operated there under the patronage of the CIA and which depend entirely on US consumption. Such political hubris leads us to believe that Mexico should be counted among the many countries that are being destabilized in one way or another in order to provide excuses for the expansion of global social control. Indeed, the Obama administration plans to send more agents and equipment to the southwestern border to fight Mexican drug cartels and keep violence from "spilling over" into the US. Again, even when Dennis Blair eventually accepted that the Mexican government was far from collapse and that the mafia related violence was in fact a product of that government's crackdown on drug cartels (or at least on some drug cartels, we should add), the damage is already done.
It's the New World Order, stupid!
Enter the G20, the group of finance ministers and central bank governors from the largest world economies plus the EU, and one of the most important architects of the world economic system. If there is any way to define the so-called 'New World Order', we would say it is the global system of minute economic control over the masses supported and complemented by technological and social instruments of total control. Therefore, we can expect the G20 to have an overwhelming influence on how this 'order' is being developed and implemented, especially now that the global crisis has provided them with a unique opportunity. On the one hand, the economy needs some urgent re-engineering; on the other, the world population will riot and rage as a result (or so we and the G20 are being told). What sort of 'solution' will our smart, economic Big Brother come up with?
© Toby Melville/ReutersDemonstrators attend the Put People First march through central London, beginning several days of protest surrounding the G20 summit
Before exploring the possible answer to that question, consider that the G20 is meeting this week in London, and most interestingly, the Metropolitan police has contacted a number of protest groups days in advance, warning that the main day of protest, Wednesday, 1 April would be "very violent". Senior commanders have insisted that they are "up for it, and up to it", should there be any trouble. Furthermore, the police have refused to rule out the use of anti-terror legislation (how lucky it was in place!), and have ignored the efforts from the protest groups to start a dialog. The police operation will involve thousands of officers from six forces armed with Tasers.
Let's stop to think about this for a second, bearing in mind everything we know so far as outlined above and from the last few months. How could the London police possibly know that a demonstration would turn violent in advance? Are they provoking the demonstrators, do they have insider knowledge about agents provocateurs, or both? Two UK members of Parliament correctly - albeit a bit naively - observed:
[...] David Howarth, a Liberal Democrat MP who is leading a parliamentary group of observers at the protests next week, said: "I am increasingly worried that what the police are saying about the protests will end up in a self-fulfilling prophecy. By talking up the prospect of violence they will put off peaceful demonstrators and start to attract other sorts."Well, yeah! That's basic psychology 101 but, as we said, rather naive.
Andrew Dismore MP, who chairs the joint common human rights, said police language in recent days had been "not very helpful".
"The police have a duty under the Human Rights Act to facilitate protest and not frustrate it. If they act in a confrontational way and use confrontation language, they will start to provoke the kind of behaviour they are seeking to prevent. There may well be a fringe element that want to incite violence. But that doesn't mean police should criminalise every protester."
Lets get back to the question of the sort of solutions that the economic elite might come up with. We do not have all the answers, but we do have some clues. Here is one which is important: China supports Russia's idea to replace the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. Apart from the fact that this will knock-off the historical and systemic advantage of the US economy over the rest of the world, is this a first step towards a world currency? If so, what could be the purpose if not to more easily micromanage the economic lives of the world population as a whole? Notice that the proposal is that the International Monetary Fund (yeah, the IMF!) issues the reserve currency. By God, they could not have chosen an institution less interested in the well-being of the people, could they?!
© Chris Bok/Akron Beacon Journal
There are further signs of economic control over the population. Simon Davies notes that the UK, the US, France and Germany have been the main countries behind the Financial Actions Task Force's 40 recommendations and 9 special recommendations on 'terrorist financing', which together with an attack on bank secrecy, are "a precis in the totalitarian control of all money in the world."
Indeed, once again we have reason to suspect that the financial crisis and the confusion that comes with it, is nothing else but a maneuver to put in place even more tools for the control of everything and everyone. Technology provides possibilities for this; a cashless society represents the ultimate management model. E-money means total surveillance and the power to manipulate movement and transactions of each and every individual not willing to starve. Alarmingly, a UK paper reports:
In fact, [the cashless society is] already happening. This week, the cash machine maker NCR announced it is to end manufacturing at its site in Dundee, blaming the state of the global economy.Would you dare to express dissent in a world in which your money is never in your pocket, but in some banker's database that tracks your every transaction and therefore physical movement?
But there are other signs that the days of actually needing a piece of paper with a drawing on it are numbered. Earlier this month, Barclaycard and Orange announced that they are developing the technology to allow shoppers to pay for items costing less than £10 by simply waving their mobile phone over a reader.
It's an idea that has already proved popular in Asia, and the hope is it will be available [in the UK] next year. [...]
Many stores in Germany now use a digiPROOF system that allows customers to pay at the till in a manner usually reserved for police stations: all they have to do is put their finger in a reader and the machine reads the print.
A very clever scheme, is it not?
But that is not all. Surveillance is one of the key elements in the disciplining of society even without the elimination of cash. We have always made an effort to track Orwellian policies and it is with dismay that we continue to see the further erosion of our privacy justified by the same old excuses. For two examples, the Obama administration and some European nations are passing a new law to allow the searching of PC's, laptops, and media devices; while the UK government is seeking to store personal information from sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook and from every phone call, email and internet visit made by everyone in the country. The fact that this is revealed a few weeks after public outrage against Facebook's attempt to retain user information even after deleting their accounts speaks of the complete contempt that the authorities have for the common people.
The night flower and the pushover
"A lobby is like a night flower. It thrives in the dark and dies in the sun."
- Steven Rosen, former member of AIPAC accused of spying for Israel
© paramentis/Photobucket
So while all the above little clues about the coming final demise of our remaining civil and economic liberties were taking place, what was that hero of the people known as Barack Obama doing? He was 'choking in anger' about AIG's bonuses while bailing it out and being pushed over by the Israel lobby, of course!
Charles Freeman, Obama's pick to head the National Intelligence Council withdrew following a campaign from the pro-Israel lobby about his stance on Israel.
Justin Raimondo makes an important observation:
The Lobby was desperate to keep Freeman out of the NIC because it's an agency that provides key intelligence for the President and Congress. If you'll recall, that's how the War Party lured us into fighting an unnecessary war against Iraq - by manipulating the intelligence, and even resorting to forgery to achieve their ends. With Freeman at the helm of the intelligence-gathering machinery, they'd never be able to pull if off again. In his absence - well, they just might. That's just what they're getting ready to do in the case of Iran, which, we are told, is gathering "weapons of mass destruction." Part of the NIC's job is to prepare the daily presidential briefings, and with such access to the President, Freeman would have been in a good position to block the War Party's machinations.It is a key position because it would feed the minds of both the President and Congress. The Lobby knew it, and they pulled their dirtiest tricks to get someone who could not be relied on as an ally out of the way.
This episode also provides some insight on the sort of person Barack Obama really is. Stephen M. Walt - one of the two academics who 'dared' to speak the truth about the influence of the Israel lobby - comments on the issue:
[T]his incident does not speak well for Barack Obama's principles, or even his political instincts. It is one thing to pander to various special interest groups while you're running for office -- everyone expects that sort of thing -- but it's another thing to let a group of bullies push you around in the first fifty days of your administration. But as Ben Smith noted in Politico, it's entirely consistent with most of Obama's behavior on this issue.On the other hand, Uzi Arad, who is expected to serve as national security adviser in the next Israeli government, has been barred from entering the United States for nearly two years on the grounds that he is an intelligence risk, because he is mentioned in the indictment of Lawrence Franklin. Franklin is a former Pentagon analyst who pleaded guilty in 2005 to providing classified information about Iran in a conversation with two employees of the AIPAC. Arad is a former director of intelligence for the MOSSAD.
The decision to toss Freeman over the side tells the lobby (and others) that it doesn't have to worry about Barack getting tough with Netanyahu, or even that he's willing to fight hard for his own people. Although AIPAC has issued a pro forma denial that it had anything to do with it, well-placed friends in Washington have told me that it leaned hard on some key senators behind-the-scenes and is now bragging that Obama is a "pushover." Bottom line: Caving on Freeman was a blunder that could come back to haunt any subsequent effort to address the deteriorating situation in the region.
A CIA report, Israel will fall in 20 years, was authored by Franklin Lamb and predicts a shift away from a two-state solution to the pursuance of one state in which Arabs could easily become the majority, and estimates the emigration to the US of 2 million Israelis within the coming 15 years, along with another 1.5 million to Europe and Russia.
In relation to the CIA report, it is interesting to note that the U.S. Joint Forces Command recently brought Israel's nuclear capacity officially 'out of the closet': U.S. Army document describes Israel as 'a nuclear power'.
Choosing sides
Russia feels the pressure to join the bullies. Apparently, Obama offered to withdraw the missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Russia agrees to pressure Iran to stop its non-existent nuclear weapons program. Turkey also seems to be mulling over its allegiances as the US and Russia compete to be its main ally.
Russia has yet to fulfill a contract deal in arms sales with Tehran, signed in 2005, regarding the sales of advanced S-300 ground to air missiles to the Persian state. Though reports surfaced that Russia might freeze the deal altogether, we have yet to see an official report from Moscow to confirm or refute these reports, and it appears that Russia might be using this uncertainty as a way to enhance their own "bargaining leverage with Washington". If indeed Russia decides to break the contract with Tehran and withhold the sales of the S-300 missiles, this move will be gleefully received by the US/Israel governments, since it will provide Israel with an opportunity to succeed in an air strike mission on Iranian nuclear sites. The missiles would have enabled Iran to "establish a more comprehensive, multilayered air defense network that would make it much harder for American or Israeli warplanes to attack the Bushehr reactor site or other targets in southern Iran."
Curiously, a few days later a Russian 'military expert' spoke as if possessed by a Neocon spirit. He was not speaking for the Russian government, but we can assume he is part of a strategy of political pressure to get Russia on the side of the Axis of Evil (and here we are not implying that Russia is one of the 'good guys'; that is yet to be seen and unlikely anyway.)
Russia, however, is not bending to pressure. On the contrary, it is responding in New Cold War style by announcing it may land strategic bombers at Cuban and Venezuelan airfields while conducting patrols; and revealing a military plan to protect its interests in the Arctic. Not much reading between the lines is needed here.
Press TV reports that "the soon-to-be prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes that "a national emergency" such as Israel's involvement in a major war would help him in his frantic attempts to form a new ruling coalition." Israeli Army Home Front Command Major General Yair Golan confirmed that Israel is preparing for all-out war on multiple fronts that include Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Israeli Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin also boringly repeated that "the Iranian threat is a threat to the global order and not just to Israel."
This comes a day after a car bomb was found in a shopping mall in Haifa. As you would expect, the rumor is being circulated in Israeli media that "Hezbollah or another organization with links to Iran" was to blame. There is however no evidence to support the claim, which is not surprising. This is exactly what the Israeli government needed to revive its much eroded image as the unlikely victim in the euphemistically termed 'Middle East conflict'.
Netanyahu has reached an agreement with Avigdor Lieberman, the far-right, anti-Arab hardliner, who will become Israel's foreign minister and will be in charge of Israel's strategic dialog with the U.S. on issues such as Iran. Lieberman, you may recall, is the man who wanted to give the residents of Gaza the same treatment that the Japanese got from the U.S. during WWII.
Then there is the man who will serve as the new Defense Minister, Moshe "Boogie" Ya'alon, who canceled a trip to London four years ago because he feared being arrested on war crime charges. In July 2002 he masterminded the assassination of Salah Shehadeh, the commander of the military wing of Hamas, and in the process killed fourteen other people, including his wife and children.
US National Intelligence Director Blair - the same guy who announced the coming of the war on people - is actually not so keen on attacking Iran, but it appears that he is already getting the 'night flower' treatment by being pressured by Senators Wicker, McCain and Lieberman (do the names ring any bells?) to harden his stance.
To reinforce the lobby effect, the IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi headed for Washington. He was scheduled to meet James Jones, U.S. President Barack Obama's newly-appointed national security adviser, Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and Dennis Ross, whom U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has appointed to be her Special Advisor for the Gulf and Southwest Asia. He was also going to meet journalists and the heads of AIPAC - surely to compare a few notes on the 'push over' operation.
Apparently, Ashkenazi could not get anyone on a policy making position interested enough to talk to him about Iran. Together with Arad having been barred from the U.S., can we interpret this as a protest from the Obama administration at the too obvious pressure from the Lobby in the Freeman affair? The same can be said about Obama's public message to Iran offering a 'new beginning' in their relationship.
Turkey has always held a strategically important location to the geopolitical contenders. US Secretary of State Clinton's recent visit was heralded as a 'good beginning' for Washington and Ankara. The US is requesting logistical use of Turkey for movement of troops and military equipments out of Iraq and asking for Turkish troops to act as cannon-fodder in Afghanistan.
Obama is expected to visit Turkey between April 6 and 8 to continue to try and improve US-Turkey relations. These were soured in 2003 when Turkey refused to open a northern front to the U.S. in its war in Iraq. In addition to his political discussions, Obama will most likely give a public speech along the lines of his 'new beginning' offer to Iran mentioned above.
Not to be outdone, Russia is pursuing a determined counteractive foreign policy strategy. Turkey and Russia are moving closer economically and politically, with Moscow inviting Turkish President Abdullah Gul to a four day state visit, the highest level of Russian state protocol:
The Government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has shown increasing impatience with not only Washington policies in the Middle East, but also the refusal of the European Union to seriously consider Turkey's bid to join the EU. In the situation, it's natural that Turkey would seek some counterweight to what had been since the Cold War overwhelming US influence in Turkish politics. Russia's Putin and Medvedev have no problem opening such a dialogue, much to Washington's dismay.It will be interesting to see who comes out on top of the Turkey 'tug-of-war'.
Turn off the volume
Some people have thought that some of the responses from the Obama administration towards Israel - the barring of Arad, the cold treatment for Ashkenazi, and the message to Iran - are signs of positive and significant changes in policy. Call us cynical, but we would like to propose a little analogy to put things in perspective. Imagine a couple married for many years. The husband cheats on his wealthy wife, steals money from her, does not let her choose her own friends and occasionally sends his friends to assault her on the street or vandalize her car, just to keep her stressed and frightened of people in general. One day, the wife finds out that he is cheating on her, so she decides it is time to get back at him... by not speaking to him for a day.
Can you guess which one represents Israel and which one the US?
The relationship with the Israel Lobby should serve as an example to prove that Obama - as we have mentioned elsewhere - is simply not in charge, whether he understands and likes this or not.
To further understand why we remain skeptical about the supposed change in policy of the new administration (not only towards Israel, but in general), try a little exercise: Turn off the volume. In other words, look at the actions of the Obama administration and disregard the sweet words. For example, consider Obama's 'choking anger' towards the $135 million in AIG bonuses - all the while the US Treasury gave $183 billion to AIG as a "pass-through" to its counterparties. Yes, that is a thousand times more - but the bonuses get a thousand times more attention, with lots of help from the mainstream media of course.
Another example, directly related to the previous section: Obama has offered a friendly message to Iran - yet earlier this month he extended sanctions against Iran for a year, saying it continues to pose a threat to US national security.
Having said that, it is true that in politics words are so powerful that some speeches may be considered actions in themselves for all intents and purposes and in view of the effect they may have. For this reason, we would not be surprised if the Zionists in Israel and/or their lobbyist allies in Washington decided to punish Obama for this little tantrum. Let us never forget that Mossad does not like to play by anyone else's rules.
The ingredients for a remake of the Nazi nightmare...
The ingredients for a remake of the Nazi nightmare have been well in place for quite some time in Israel, which is now taking the role of Germany during WWII. The situation is ready to turn explosive - as in regional (or global) war, or a further Palestinian Holocaust. It is not only the rise to power of the hardest right-wingers, but a number of signs on the ground too, from within and outside Israel. Judge for yourselves.
© naA T-shirt printed at the request of an IDF sniper showing a picture of a pregnant Arab woman in cross hairs and reading 'one shot two kills.'
After Gaza, Israel Grapples With Crisis of Isolation
In New York synagogue, Israeli settler leader calls for assassination of Abbas
New Israeli deputy defense minister calls for re-occupation of Gaza
Israeli military rabbis distributed booklets inciting violence against "gentiles"
Israeli soldiers admit 'murdering' Gazans
The writing on the wall
Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009
Clashes as Israeli far-right marches in Arab town
Dozens injured after Israeli extremist protest causes riot
Israeli troops could be motivated by religious beliefs to use excessive force
'Israeli military violated medical ethics'
Guardian investigation uncovers evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza
Israel's war crimes coming to light
Israel Dismissive As Fury Mounts
Israel "unlawfully" used white phosphorus in Gaza: rights group
Israel deliberately floods Lebanese farmlands, destroys crops
May the above serve as reminders of why it is so important to track the movements of Israel. May the following serve as a reminder of why the US is complicit in the crimes:
The United States has reacted angrily to a UN report accusing Israel of committing war crimes in its recent 23-day war on the besieged Gaza, including the use of children as human shields.Pushover indeed.
"We've expressed our concern many times about the special rapporteur's views on dealing with that question, and we've found the rapporteur's views to be anything but fair," State Department Spokesman Robert Wood said in a press briefing on Monday, March 23.
"We find them to be biased. We've made that very clear."
Madness of March
When states themselves, under cheap and outlandish pretexts, murder people and loot civilian communities, those with certain genetic predispositions are likely to follow suit in their own individual ways. The more pathology is accepted and excused in the world, the more it will spread and infect susceptible minds. In such a world, military rape reports rise, priests steal millions from their church, baby sitters film children as young as two months old engaging in sexual acts with them, and mothers kill their three-months old son in the drier. Unfortunately, the levels of insanity have seen a rise on all fronts this month, and a murderous trend found expression across the globe.
On March 6, the police find a woman and her four children shot dead in their house in Cleveland. Two days later a man shoots and kills the pastor of a Baptist church in Illinois, wounding two more people who try to subdue him and fatally stabbing himself in the end. On March 11, in a shooting rampage, a teenager in Germany kills 15 people at his former high school, before he kills himself. On the same day, another single gunman in Alabama, repeats the exact same act with members of his family. Two days later, a soldier dressed as 'The Joker' stabs a fellow soldier and is then shot by police, in Virginia.
On March 15 another man kills four people at a family gathering in Miami, before killing himself. The next day, four more people are found slain in a Missouri apartment, including two young boys. On March 19, a 78-year old man kills himself after shooting three people at his house, killing one of them. Then on the 29th of March, a gunman walked into a North Carolina nursing home and shot dead 8 people - 7 residents and a nurse, wounding several others; two of them died later in the hospital. Even as we write these words we hear of more reports: six members of a family die in a murder-suicide in California.
In southeast Siberia, a soldier shoots two colleagues dead before turning his automatic weapon on himself on March 10, and six days later in northeast Siberia, four men unrelated to one another, committed suicide using the same method: hanging. Around the same time, a woman from Ukraine is found to have killed her husband who she then dismembered and decapitated.
In mid March, mass hysteria breaks out in northern Nicaragua, affecting at least 43 people from three indigenous communities living near the river Coco. The hysteria crosses oceans, as the president of Gambia, who believes his aunt was killed by witchcraft, is causing terror among the villages as he unleashed the police forces in a witch hunt resembling those of the Dark Ages. One of the victims reports:
"At 05:00 the paramilitary police armed with guns and shovels surrounded our village and threatened the villagers that anyone who tries to escape will be buried six feet under... Fear gripped the village... children were crying and traumatised. They randomly identified over 300 men and women who were forced at gunpoint into waiting buses and ferried to the president's hometown"Allegations of witchcraft are helping predatorial pastors to market their churches in Nigeria, with mostly small children as the victims of this inhumane campaign. How else will the church show its "might", if not via terror and intimidation?
"Once there, they were stripped and forced to drink dirty water from herbs and were also bathed with these dirty herbs. A lot of these people who were forced to drink these poisonous herbs developed instant diarrhoea and vomiting whilst they lay helpless. I stayed there for five days. I experienced and witnessed such abuse and humiliation. I cannot believe that this type of treatment is taking place in Gambia. It is from the dark ages."
The Shaking Planet
© USGS
The activity has sparked the interest of scientists who want to see if small faults crossing under the Salton Sea are transferring energy to a section of the more dangerous San Andreas fault, which has not popped in more than 300 years.Kate Hutton though, a Caltech seismologist, reported that "scientists do not yet know if quakes this small can trigger anything dangerous on the San Andreas". Our guess? We'll live to find out.
An earthquake that starts in Bombay Beach and ripples northwest along the San Andreas fault could be the Big One that devastates Los Angeles, Graham Kent, a research geophysicist at UC San Diego, told the Los Angeles Times.
Here is the list of earthquakes magnitude 4.0 and above:
March 3: Magnitude 5.3 Earthquake Hits Guam
March 3: 5.0 Earthquake Strikes Southeastern Greece
March 3: 4.8 Earthquake Jolts Southern Philippines
March 5: 4.1 Earthquake Hits New Zealand South Island
March 6: 4.7 Earth Tremor Shakes Melbourne, Australia
March 6: US: Earthquake Magnitude 4.2 - Western Montana
March 6: Earthquake Magnitude 6.4 - North of Svalbard Archipelago
March 7: 4.3 Earthquake Hits Southeastern Iran
March 7: 5.3 Earthquake Hits North Japan
March 9: 5.3 Earthquake Off Guatemala's Coast
March 9: 4.0 Earthquake Hits Hawaii Island
March 10: Earthquake Magnitude 5.1 - Chiapas, Mexico
March 10: Magnitude 5.0 Earthquake in Macedonia
March 11: Earthquake Magnitude 5.7 - Costa Rica
March 11: 4.9 earthquake north of Puerto Rico shakes island
March 12: 5.0-magnitude earthquake hits central China
March 12: 5.5-Magnitude Earthquake Rocks Four Regions in Chile
March 12: Another Five Earthquakes Shake Sichuan Province, China
March 13: 4.3 magnitude earthquake hits New Zealand North Island
March 15: 4.7 quake jolts Mindanao, Philippines
March 15: 5.1 earthquake hits W Papua, Indonesia
March 15: 5.0 earthquake strikes off New Zealand coast
March 16: 6.4 quake hits E Indonesia
March 18: 4.6 Earthquake Strikes Southern Australia
March 19: 7.9 quake near Tonga
March 24: 4.7 quake shakes near Salton Sea, California
March 25: Strong 6.0 magnitude earthquake hits Papua New Guinea
March 26: Earthquake rattles northern Peru
March 27: Earthquake Magnitude 5.3 - Guerrero, Mexico
March 27: Earthquake Magnitude 4.5 Off Coast of Jalisco, Mexico
March 27: Strong earthquake strikes off Japan
March 29: Strong 6.0 earthquake hits Indonesia
The intense seismic activity naturally produced some notable volcano eruptions:
Volcano Erupts in Japan
Volcano Erupts in Indonesia
Alaska volcano Mount Redoubt erupts 4 times, and another volcano in Alaska again, Mount Gareloi, shows activity.
Undersea volcano erupted near Tonga in the Pacific Ocean, right in front of curious onlookers - who also happened to film the experience. The resulting lava flow and seismic movements added a new island to the Tongan archipelago.
A recent and "fairly catastrophic" underwater eruption off the coast of New Zealand was missed entirely, only to show up in the latest oceanic surveys. It is interesting that there are no obvious signs of the event in any of the relevant seismic records.
The Living Planet
Remember those Ocean "Dead Zones"? They are spreading:
|
| ©Science/AAAS |
| Dead Zone: Waters with little or no oxygen continue to form in coastal areas worldwide thanks to fertilizer washing off agricultural fields and fossil fuel burning. |
"It's not sort of a local or regional problem, which is how it was thought of in the past," researcher Robert Diaz said. "It is actually a global problem."Shark attacks on Australian beaches continued into the first week of March. As the numbers of casualties increased, this apparent aggression from the animal kingdom quickly became a matter of public concern. Some beaches were closed and warnings were issued to swimmers all over the country. Sharks have begun to venture out and attack humans in previously safe areas, including in-land salt lakes and bays.
Dead zones are areas where oxygen has become so depleted that little or no marine life is able to survive. They form when excessive plant nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus, run off from the coast and lead to an explosion of algae blooms. When this vastly increased biomass dies and sinks to the bottom, its decomposition leads to the proliferation of oxygen-consuming bacteria. [...]
The major sources of the pollutants that produce dead zones are fertilizer runoff from industrial agriculture and nitrogen-based byproducts of fossil fuel use.
While most of the planet is safe from these exotic dangers, it's not quite the end of the story. Australian crocodiles have become a lot more aggressive, too. A recent increase in precipitation - essentially across the entire Australian land mass, appears to be connected.
A lucky snorkeller at Lizard Island got away with just a few scratches. An 11-year-old girl had a lot less luck in 1.5 metres of water. The missing body of a 5-year-old boy was recovered last month.
The weather in the region was rather interesting as well. Cyclones are a part of the natural order but Hamish was a little different. It emerged suddenly then gathered strength up to Category 5 and proceeded to stalk the Queensland coastline soaking it in rain. This particular cyclone went a lot further south than had been seen in many years, leaving state government and residents of the "more civilised" south-east Queensland rather concerned.
Hamish's south-ward incursion wreaked havoc on a ship travelling in the area causing a massive oil spill off the coast of Brisbane. The toxic - and caustic - leak of low-grade oil destroyed unspeakable lengths of pristine habitat at Moreton Island. 31 containers of fertiliser also went missing into the depths of the ocean. Nobody quite knows how to find them or what sort of danger they pose to the environment.
Moving along then...
Dodging cosmic bullets
Two years ago, Louis Friedman - CEO of the Planetary Society, became outspoken about the need for defense from space-borne rocks.
This past week, I attended the Planetary Defense Conference in Washington, D.C. Despite its title, this was not a military planning exercise to deal with an alien invasion of Earth.His warnings resurfaced in the media when asteroid 2009 DD45 passed Earth within 41,000 miles (just under 66,000 kilometres). That is a very close call, indeed - and we ought to pay attention. An enterprising Australian recorded the following footage in Canberra.
Rather it was a meeting of scientists and engineers looking at potential dangers from asteroids or comets that orbit close by Earth -- including what we might do if one were discovered on a collision course with our planet. (...)
The dangers of NEOs hit the scientific and public consciousness in the 1980s with the realization that 65 million years ago an impact wiped out the dinosaurs and changed the course of evolution on Earth.
We humans, whose ancestors were the beneficiaries of that asteroid, are now paying attention to planetary defense, and considering the smaller impacts that can cause great regional and local damage. These may not end civilization, but they occur far more frequently and can cause much human suffering.
And just when everybody thought we were going to be safe for a while, it happened again. A small space rock dubbed 2009 FH flew within 49,000 miles of our planet (just under 79,000 kilometres). That's two near misses in a month, which is unusual because asteroids of that size usually come this close to Earth every few months.
NASA's Catalina Sky Survey spotted the rock just two days prior to its arrival.
In the meantime, the International Space Station astronauts had a close encounter with a piece of space junk. Only a week later, NASA was worried again about an old Soviet satellite getting too close for comfort to the station. This sort of random encounter with the space station happened only eight times in the past, the last one seven months ago.
Last month we were told that two satellites collided over Siberia. A few days later, fireballs were caught on video over Texas. Now in the space of a week we have two reports of astronauts having to dodge 'space junk'. Were they really pieces of satellites or is there something we are not being told about what is going on in our atmosphere?
(Here is one possibility: NASA TV caught on camera a UFO passing close to the STS-119 Space Shuttle mission, which a viewer recorded and kindly posted on Youtube.)
Around the 20th, Australia had its share of fireworks, among others, but it was towards the end of March when things started to really heat up in the heavens. On Sunday night, the 29th, people all along the East coast of the US heard loud explosions and saw brilliant, streaking lights in the sky. Meteorologist Sonia Mark at the National Weather Service's Wakefield station said that the "phone was ringing off the hook" (read eyewitness reports here). This event came with full cover-up story: we are being told that it was a spent Russian rocket body reentering the atmosphere. Unfortunately for the professional disinformers, SpaceWeather rained on their party by publishing this small but important detail:
[...] According to data published by US Strategic Command, the rocket reentry happened near Taiwan (24° N, 125° E) more than two hours after the Atlantic Coast event.Caught red-handed trying to cover an inconvenient fact, eh?
A few days previously and further south in Pensacola, Florida, residents felt their houses and the ground shake for 15 seconds. There were no reports of sonic booms or other auditory phenomena. The strangest thing? Don Blakeman, an earthquake analyst at the National Earthquake Information Center out of Colorado, insisted that there definitely was not an earthquake in this part of Florida at that time.
We get the feeling that celestial phenomena are occurring way too often for comfort.
Planet Cool
NASA solicits new studies on the current solar minimum - a problem which the agency summarizes as follows:
Causes - Solar outputQuite remarkable, huh? Did you notice that the Sun's inactivity usually happens to coincide with near record-high levels of cosmic rays?
- Lowest sustained solar radio flux since the F 10.7 proxy was created in 1947
- Solar wind global pressure the lowest observed since the beginning of the Space age
- Unusually high tilt angle of the solar dipole throughout the current solar minimum
- Solar wind magnetic field 36% weaker than during the minimum of Solar Cycle 22
- The absence of a classical quiescent equatorial streamer belt
- Cosmic rays at near record-high levels
Consequences© Jimmy Raeder/UNHA computer model of solar wind flowing around Earth's magnetic field on June 3, 2007. Background colors represent solar wind density; red is high density, blue is low. Solid black lines trace the outer boundaries of Earth's magnetic field. Note the layer of relatively dense material beneath the tips of the white arrows; that is solar wind entering Earth's magnetic field through the breach.
- With the exception of 1934, 2008 had more instances of 3-hr periods with Kp=0 than any other year since the creation of the index in 1932
- Cold contracted ionosphere and upper atmosphere
Remarkably persistent recurrent geomagnetic activity.
The Sun's (in)activity leads us back to the issue of global non-warming.
According to a new study, 'global warming' could go into hiding for decades:
Earth's climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.Wow! So the Earth is going through a cooling event and no one knows why?
"This is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950," Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. "Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn't have one."
Another report by a research firm estimates that the next twelve years will be significantly cooler than the past few decades.
At least 14 major weather stations in Alberta, Canada, have recorded their lowest-ever March temperatures. One day in particular, Edmonton International Airport reported an overnight low of -41.5 C, smashing the previous March low of -29.4 C set in 1975.
For at least the past five or six years, global temperatures have been falling. Look at the black trend line on the chart at this link put out by the man who runs NASA's worldwide network of weather satellites.Falling like flies
Also, in the past few months, two studies -- one by the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science and the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology in Germany and another by the University of Wisconsin -- have shown a slowing, or even a reversal of warming for at least the next 10 to 20 years, and perhaps longer.
Astute members of the Sott forum compiled a list of a series of plane crashes this month:
- Plane crash lands in lake Lake Rotoura, New Zealand on March 24th, 2009
- Rainbow Warrior agent dies in crash near the resort of Saint-Sorlin-d'Arves, France on March 24th, 2009
- FedEx plane crashes, explodes on landing in Tokyo, March 23rd
- No one hurt in Portage plane crash Portage County Airport, Ohio on March 22nd, 2009
- Indonesia jet makes emergency landing Batam Island near Singapore on March 22nd, 2009
- Single engine plane crash claims life of area man Aberdeen, Ohio on March 22nd, 2009
- Montana Plane Crash Leaves 17 Dead near Butte, Montana, on March 22nd
- Ecuador army plane hits buildings, six dead, March 20th (and the building did not collapse like the WTC, mind you!)
- New Cessna plane crashes during Kan. test flight El Dorado, Kansas on March 19th
- Small plane crashes after takeoff at Cartersville airport; 2 taken to hospital with injuries; Cartersville, Ga. on March 19th
- Student, pilot recovering; plane destroyed in Lakeville crash; Lakeville, Mn. on March 19th
- Fla. pilot survives crash landing in north Ga. lake, calls 911 from downed airplane Lake Arrowhead in Canton, Ga. on March 18th
- Houston man killed in Paulden, Ariz. plane crash Paulden, Arizona on March 18th
- Pilot killed in Russian training plane crash Moscow, Russia on March 18th
- Man injured in light plane crash Near Esk in the Brisbane Valley in South-East Queensland on March 18th
- 3 Hurt in Waukesha County Crash; Waukesha County, WI. on March 17th
- Plane Crashes Into Fence at SLO AirportSan Luis Obispo County, California on March 17th
- Pilot killed in Turkish military jet crash village in central Turkey on March 17th
- Pilot Sky High on Ecstasy Kills Teen in Plane Crash England on March 17th
- Memorial for pilots killed in crash planned for this weekend Brackett Airfield in La Verne, Ca. on March 14th
- Plane trailed smoke before crash, says report; Suwanee County, Florida on March 10th
- Two Cessna 172 planes crash in the same area; one near Oceanside, California on March 6th and another the very next day at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside
- Leader of small Turkish right-wing party killed in helicopter crash on March 25th ; he was on his way to a meeting prior to local elections held n Turkey on March 29th
Quite apart from conventional explanations, we are interested in trends and patterns because they may be symbolic of something else - assuming that our reality bears a degree of symbolic significance, for whatever philosophical reason. In this case, 'crash' being the key word, just as the word 'collapse' was a key word for a few months before the economic crisis.
Stick People and friends
A sampling of UFO sightings this month:
© Christine Dickey
Military jets chase UFO over Arizona town
Amazingly clear UFO passes STS-119, NASA TV video
Photo: UFO/Alien Caught on Camera in Canadian Wilderness - and a location update
Arizona: UFO Orbs With Mothership Photo
China: UFO seen by many and causes dizziness amongst witnesses
Three F18s scramble to intercept California UFO
Bright lights and unusual movement in the sky were just a part of the big picture. There was some unusual movement on the ground, too. Compare and contrast the following two videos of what looks like bizarre 'stick people':
The above footage is vaguely reminiscent of some older photographs widely discussed on the Internet.
German Pereira, at the time of the photograph was a 33-year-old graduate of the University of Concepcion, and had lived in the area of Santiago, Chile for about a year before taking the photograph seen here. He was a camera buff, and took photographs almost everywhere he went. He owned a Kodak DX6490 digital camera.The black-and-white picture is not as easy to verify. Not much is known about its origin, the time or the author - it has to be taken at face value even though it is most peculiar. Do note, however, that the little stick figure appears to be wearing cute little boots and tiny underwear.
He was a civil engineer, and having off the afternoon of Monday, May 10, 2003, he rode his bicycle to an area called Parque Forstal. When he saw a police patrol (Carabinero) on horseback, he was interested, and took his photograph. He had absolutely no interest in UFOs.
His image shows what appears to be a small being crossing the road during the mounted patrol's journey across a bridge. This is the image that has gone around the world thanks to web sites on paranormal phenomena.
Pereira discussed his photograph at length with reporters, and told them he did not see anything out of the ordinary when he took the photograph, but only noticed the entity when he was transferring photos to his computer.
He was well respected in his community, and had no cause to hoax a photograph. He asked for no notoriety, nor financial reward, but willingly shared the photo with the world. His photograph receives a "high credibility" rating from me.
As always, we invite you to come to your own conclusions.
- Animal mutilations
Trinidad rancher finds mutilated cow
A gruesome discovery dozens of skinned animals found in Atwater
- Weird creatures and new species:
Australia: Name this new sea creature
US: Strange-looking, 200-pound creature spotted in Pennsylvania
US: Striped Cryptid Sighted
England: Big cat sighting in north Norfolk - then it happened again
Eyes Above, So Below
The Connecting the Dots Series intends to provide a glance of the bigger picture as detailed as a single article allows. The underlying idea is that all the events of our world are interconnected in one way or another and we need to understand them not through linear thinking but as a moving mosaic. This way, we fight the social conditioning that would have us compartmentalize our knowledge and thus block creativity and the possibility of a continuously expanding understanding of reality. We do not pretend to have all the answers, precisely because in our quest for more accurate and objective points of view we are open to new perspectives - even some that would be considered too outlandish to discuss openly by most people.
What we have tried to achieve throughout the last twelve months is to track clues on the ground and on the sky; for their factual and symbolic value; in politics, economy and society; as well as in our natural environment both on the surface of our planet and beyond. In all, March has been a very interesting month in all these respects. As the mendacity and skulduggery of the elite become ever more outrageous and overt, suppressing the creativity and free will of the masses to know and understand their reality, 'Mother Nature' appears to be getting more and more frustrated and angry.
This reminds us of a comment by author and expert on comets and cosmology Victor Clube about celestial goings on back in the 1980's:
"Cynics ... would say that we do not need the celestial threat to disguise Cold War intentions; rather we need the Cold War to disguise celestial intentions!"Which for our times could be amended thusly:
"Cynics ... would say that we do not need the celestial threat to disguise the War on Terror intentions; rather we need the War on Terror to disguise celestial intentions!"
On many different fronts life on planet earth is increasingly providing its residents with an opportunity to sit up and take notice that all is not as it seems - above and below. Will you take up the challenge with us?
© Unknown'Prometheus Brings Fire to Mankind', by Heinrich Friedrich Fuger
And nobody does it better then the SOTT editors!