According to a report of the programme from the state RIA Novosti agency, two men, aged 30 and 32, were named as spies. A third diplomat named as a spy was an aide to MI6's Moscow desk officer, the only MI6 agent officially declared to the FSB, and a fourth had a role in funding Foreign Office projects.

The programme focused upon an alleged secret transmitter hidden in a square in central Moscow. The FSB officer said: "At first we thought it was a classic drop point - a container camouflaged with a stone. Then ... it became clear there was an electronic device inside it." They said the stone contained a battery and a device to transmit and receive. It had been fastened into the walls using wooden screws and sealed to make it watertight.

The programme described how Russian agents for MI6 and the British diplomats communicated by passing by the stone with a PDA handheld computer which would send or receive data from the device inside at up to 20 metres.

The FSB officer said the device did not work properly, causing the four diplomats to visit the square regularly in the autumn. One diplomat was filmed dressed "as a student", a rucksack on his back. A Russian had been caught using the stone and later admitted to spying. One diplomat, 27, educated at a university in the north of England, was named as the recruiter for MI6 agents. The programme said his work put him in contact with many NGOs. The FSB officer showed paperwork he claimed proved this diplomat had funded several Russian NGOs. One paper, apparently dated last week, gave a media organisation £5,719 to produce a newspaper.

The focus comes just after the Kremlin rushed into law a bill that NGOs say will hamper their work. The Kremlin says NGOs are a front for spying; last year the FSB accused the British medical relief charity Merlin of espionage, a claim it firmly denies.

The British embassy in Moscow declined to comment. In London, the Foreign Office said: "We are surprised at these allegations. We reject any allegation of improper conduct in our dealings with Russian NGOs. It is well known that the UK government has financially supported projects implemented by Russian NGOs in the field of human rights and civil society. All our assistance is given openly and aims to support the development of a healthy civil society in Russia." Allegations about British intelligence, notably MI6, are invariably met with a response that the government never comments on intelligence matters.

Backstory

Vladimir Putin's administration has in recent years cracked down on potential fronts for espionage, prompting accusations of renewed cold war-esque spy fever from the security services, the FSB. Increased counter-intelligence, though in keeping with efforts to reinforce state control, has boosted accusations of a crackdown on dissent. FSB director Nikolai Patrushev each year reveals the number of foreign spies unearthed, usually about 100. One of the four alleged British spies named had official links to NGOs, and their exposure now will prompt accusations that the timing was to justify a law signed on January 10.

Sergei Prokopov, a spokesman for Russian prosecutors, said the blasts might be the work of "extremists bent on worsening Russian and Georgian relations". He could not rule out the involvement of Chechen-linked militants who are active in Russia's North Causasus.

But Mr Saakashvili called the blasts "a serious act of sabotage on the part of Russia on Georgia's energy system". He told Reuters: "Basically what happened is totally outrageous and we are dealing with an outrageous blackmail by people who do not want to behave in a civilised way."

Relations between Georgia and Russia have deteriorated considerably since Mr Saakashvili came to power after a pro-western "rose revolution", yet yesterday's recriminations marked a new low.

The Kremlin has sought to tighten its control over the energy industry, and analysts suggest Russia intends to retain its influence over former Soviet states and beyond by manipulating the price and supply of oil and gas. It has doubled the cost of gas for Georgia but has frozen the price for its more loyal neighbour, Belarus.

The explosions also disrupted gas supplies to Armenia.

Last night, Georgian officials were waiting for the Russian state energy giant Gazprom to increase the pressure of gas delivered to neighbouring Azerbaijan, so that it could send it on to Georgia. The move would provide a stopgap during the four days needed to fix the Russian pipeline.

Aleko Khetaguri, an aide to the Georgian minister for energy, said electricity supplies, currently meeting 60% of demand, would fall to 40% when people began to use electricity to heat their gas-less homes. Mr Khetaguri warned that the cold could cause fatalities and said Azerbaijani gas could not be used to boost power supplies until this morning, leaving Georgians to face a night of -15C without gas.

The incident is the third energy crisis in as many weeks to hit Russia's G8 chairmanship. On January 1, Moscow took up the role against the backdrop of a gas price dispute that led Gazprom to cut supplies to Ukraine for 24 hours. Last week, a cold snap in Russia forced the company to cut supplies to Italy and Hungary, and electricity to Finland.

Avishai Yechieli, a driver who had worked for the embassy since 1987 was so trusted by British diplomats that he acted as an intermediary with the local body calculating the annual bonuses that must be paid to all Israeli employees.

But instead of giving the embassy the official figures, he forged documents setting out much higher rates, which were paid to more than 250 local staff year after year. His altruistic but criminal redistribution of UK taxpayers' cash won him the predictable soubriquet of Robin Hood in the Israeli press - but he pocketed significant sums for himself.

Fraud investigators were dispatched from London two years ago when a senior diplomat became suspicious. They established the 52-year-old driver had been ripping off the embassy for at least four years. He confessed to police, and is on trial in Israel.

The three physicians held a consultation, and the grave view they took of the patient's case was seen in the bulletin issued at eight o'clock, announcing that the Queen showed signs of diminishing strength and that her condition "again assumes a more serious aspect". All day and all night too a patient crowd waited at the lodge gates.

Three Indian gentlemen in the bright garb of their country drove up to the lodge and signalled to the driver to go on. The police stopped them, and after a parley turned them back. After a while the party returned, and made, this time, towards Osborne Cottage, where the Duke and Duchess of Connaught reside.

Gently but firmly the police again interrupted and demanded explanations. The Indians, who spoke good English, explained that they were on a lecturing tour round the world and that they had cancelled their engagement to come to Osborne and pay tribute to "our Empress". "But," they added, "your conventionalities seem to stand in the way."

They expressed a wish to be allowed at least to see the Queen's Indian secretary, but this gratification was also denied them, and they departed for Cowes to await the result of official communications.

The people of Cowes seem stunned by the calamity, which affects them peculiarly. It is not merely that the trade of the town is sure to suffer; they had a real affection for the Queen. They knew how much she desired their prosperity and how fairly she distributed her patronage. Two or three times a week she would drive through the streets of the town. The country generally did not know of these drives. None the less they were taken as a mark of the Queen's confidence in the townsfolk. She always went about unattended. It is feared that the Prince of Wales will not care to keep up the establishment here.

People were talking tonight about the title of the new King. "Albert Edward I," suggested somebody.

"Oh no," was the reply; "he will be Edward VII; we don't want King Alberts" - a statement that met with general approval.

The Madness of King George is a wonderfully entertaining and satirical film made in 1994 and based on a true story.

The king in question is the British monarch, George III (1738-1820) who, in the later years of his reign, was deemed to be insane and locked away in Windsor Castle while his son governed as the prince regent.

Delivering bad news to a monarch is always a tricky business - especially when the news is that he's unfit for office. There is no tactful way to put it, and there's always a risk that he'll punish the messenger.

In the film, all sorts of intrigue and machinations are set in motion - in the royal court, in parliament, and within the royal family itself - as the king's behaviour becomes odder and people plot to remove him from office.

The leading doctors of the day are also drawn into the crisis, each of them pursuing their own pet theories about his illness and all ignoring one salient fact pointed out by the servant in charge of the royal chamber pot - that the king's urine has turned blue (it can happen, apparently, and may have been a sign that he was suffering from a rare disease called porphyria).

I was reminded of The Madness of King George by events in Kuwait last week, because I suspect the film may be able to tell us more about what is going on behind the scenes in the princely palaces there than anything we are likely to read in the newspapers.

The story concerns three elderly princes, Sheikh Jaber, Sheikh Saad and Sheikh Sabah, all members of the Sabah family that has ruled Kuwait ... well, since the reign of Mad King George, actually.

Sheikh Jaber, who had been the Emir of Kuwait for 29 years - apart from a brief interruption when the Iraqis invaded - died just over a week ago. He was 78 and, because of his poor health over the last few years, Sheikh Sabah, the prime minister, had in effect been running the country.

Following Sheikh Jaber's death, Sheikh Saad, the crown prince, was automatically proclaimed emir. Sheikh Saad, aged 76, is patently not in good health and hasn't uttered a single word in public since coming to the throne. He attended the late emir's funeral in a wheelchair, and TV pictures showed him giving little reaction when Kuwaiti citizens offered their condolences.

So far, there has been no authoritative statement on Sheikh Saad's real state of health. He had emergency surgery for a bleeding colon in 1997, and his health is said to have deteriorated since then. Last year, he was treated in hospital for hyperglycaemia, and has had further treatment abroad, most recently in August. There have also been reports that he is suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

One option for Kuwait - though not a particularly satisfactory one - would be to let Sheikh Saad continue as the titular head of state with Sheikh Sabah, the prime minister, running the country as he did towards the end of Sheikh Jaber's reign.

However, there are two legal problems with that. One is that, according to Kuwait's law of succession, a new emir coming into office must "be of sound mind" - and it is not at all clear whether Sheikh Saad is.

The second is Article 60 of the constitution, which says a new emir cannot start to perform his duties until he has taken the oath of office at a special sitting of parliament. The oath consists of a single sentence reading: "I swear by Almighty God to respect the constitution and the laws of the state, to defend the liberties, interests, and properties of the people, and to safeguard the independence and territorial integrity of the country."

In theory, reading it should not be too daunting a task for anyone. But according to reports, the speaker of parliament was informed that the new emir might have difficulty reciting the necessary words, and was asked whether the oath might be shortened. The speaker, very properly, was said to have refused.

In the meantime, there have been plenty of private discussions among senior members of the Sabah family - including moves by some of them to oust Sheikh Saad and install Sheikh Sabah in his place. Sheikh Sabah, incidentally, is not in robust health either. He is aged around 77 and has a heart pacemaker.

In addition to the legal issues, there are several other complications. If Sheikh Saad continues as emir, Sheikh Sabah will almost certainly be named as crown prince. The question then is whether he will also keep the post of prime minister. The two jobs were combined in the past but eventually separated in 2003, and there appears to be a strong body of opinion in parliament that wants to keep them separate.

As in the case of George III, the arguments over Sheikh Saad's future can also be viewed in the context of a tussle between parliament and the monarchy over their respective powers.

Apart from the post of emir, the ruling family wields considerable executive power. Ten out of 23 ministers in the current government - plus the governor of the central bank and the ambassador to the US - are members of the Sabah family, and it is difficult to believe they were all appointed purely on merit.

The Sabah family itself is clearly divided over the succession. Since 1915, the post of emir has normally alternated between two branches of the family known as the Jaber branch and the Salim branch. The late emir belonged to the Jaber branch, and Sheikh Saad, the incoming emir, belongs to the Salim branch.

This alternation is an informal arrangement rather than a fixed rule, and has been broken once before during the 60s. However, removing Sheikh Saad after little more than a week and replacing him with Sheikh Sabah (a member of the Jabir branch) might be considered unfair to the Salim branch.

Emboldened by the quarrel within the ruling family, several Kuwaiti journalists have taken the unprecedented step of suggesting (very politely) that Sheikh Saad should step down.

An Islamist writer in the al-Anbaa newspaper paid tribute to his long service to the nation, but advised him "to rest in light of his health condition". Similarly, a front-page comment in the al-Qabas newspaper said national burdens had exhausted Sheikh Saad and urged him to make one further sacrifice by "leaving it to who is able among the sons of the honourable ruling family".

Last Friday, supporters of the prime minister among the Sabah family visited him at his palace and "reaffirmed the trust bestowed upon him by the late emir", according the official news agency. They also called on him to continue to lead the country until it reached the "shore of safety".

This peculiar meeting had all the hallmarks of the pledge of allegiance traditionally given to a new Arab ruler, though it stopped short of actually anointing him as emir.

The rival faction in the family fought back with a letter, supposedly written and signed by Sheikh Saad, stating that he intended to take the oath of office as soon as possible. Even if he proves capable of reciting the oath, however, there is still the question of whether he is "of sound mind" as required by the law.

If the battle is not resolved through a back room deal, it seems likely that the cabinet (in which the Sabah family is heavily represented) will seek a medical report from a committee of doctors. The findings might then be presented to parliament for a vote, but it would take a two-thirds majority to remove Sheikh Saad.

The fact that these issues are being aired in the Arab media is, perhaps, a sign of changing times. In the old days, there would have been nothing but rumours, and perhaps tanks on the streets, followed in due course by a fait accompli.

Even so, there's a lack of transparency on the crucial point: is Sheikh Saad "of sound mind" or not? So far, it's a bit like a court case in which the lawyers spend all their time arguing but fail to produce any evidence.

Compare, for example, Ariel Sharon's illness and the wealth of medical information made available about it. Some of it, certainly, had been given an over-optimistic spin, but leading neurologists from around the world were able to study the bulletins and comment on them.

The Arab countries, by contrast, have a long tradition of pretending that their leaders are as strong as an ox right up to the moment when they finally keel over. Even when some mention of illness becomes unavoidable, the exact nature of it remains shrouded in secrecy - as seen with the various ailments of President Mubarak in Egypt or, more recently, President Bouteflika, who was whisked off from Algeria for treatment in France.

Visiting Saudi Arabia a few years ago, I was struck by newspaper accounts of a speech that King Fahd (despite being incapacitated by a stroke) had reportedly made in the Shura Council, the kingdom's unelected parliament. Afterwards, I asked a Saudi newspaper editor: "Did the king really make that speech?" The editor burst out laughing. "Of course not," he said.

Certainly, patients are entitled to privacy. But the health of political leaders is also a matter of public interest. The condition of Sheikh Saad is not purely the concern of his closest relatives. All Kuwaiti citizens are stakeholders in the succession and have a right to know the facts.

His lawyer, Dan Sheinman, has called numerous witnesses to attest to his good behaviour, including ecologists with whom Sharon junior has campaigned on environmental issues, in the hope of alleviating his sentence.

The defendant was in court for Monday's hearing despite the fact that he has kept up a near constant vigil at his father's bedside at a Jerusalem hospital.

Ariel Sharon remains seriously ill in a coma following a massive brain haemorrhage on January 4.

The court case follows a police investigation into allegations of illegal financing of Ariel Sharon's successful 1999 campaign for the Likud leadership.

Omri has been a key backroom ally of his father but has kept a low profile since his guilty plea. Judicial sources said he was expected to be sentenced at the end of the Israeli week on Thursday.

China and Saudi Arabia signed an energy cooperation agreement during a landmark visit by Saudi King Abdullah that both sides said would usher in an era of closer economic ties.

King Abdullah, who arrived Sunday on his first trip outside the Middle East since taking the throne in August, met President Hu Jintao on Monday at the Great Hall of the People.

King Abdullah and Hu oversaw the signing of five agreements, including one on "oil, natural gas and mineral cooperation," and another on "economic, trade and technical cooperation".

Agreements were also signed to "avoid dual taxation", allow for a Saudi loan to improve infrastructure in the city of Aksu in China's oil-rich Xinjiang region, and to facilitate "cooperating in vocational training".

Neither side immediately provided further details of the agreements, although Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal spelt out before the signing ceremonies the main interest of both nations.

"China is one of the most important markets for oil and Saudi oil is one of the most important sources of energy for China," said the prince, who is accompanying the king on Monday.

Prince Saud said the energy deal would set the framework for specific energy investments, but agreements on the projects would have to be signed between the two countries' oil companies.

He suggested specific agreements could be signed soon.

The visit by the Saudi king comes at a time when China, the world's second biggest oil consumer, is scouring the globe for more oil to fuel its unprecedented economic transformation.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil supplier with the largest known reserves, is seeking to diversify its economy and ease its dependence on the United States, the biggest oil consumer.

At the welcoming ceremony, Hu said the fact that King Abdullah had chosen China as the first destination of his first official trip outside the Middle East since ascending the throne had been noted and welcomed in Beijing.

"This will write a new chapter of friendly cooperation between China and Saudi Arabia in the new century," Hu said, who called the king "a respected and familiar old friend" of China.

King Abdullah, who is making the first visit by a Saudi leader to China since the two nations established diplomatic ties 16 years ago, also said he looked forward to stronger bilateral ties.

"What makes us happy is that since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1990 our two countries have had fruitful cooperation in many fields," he said.

"We hope this cooperation will develop even more in the future."

Analysts said King Abdullah's choice of China as the first country of his Asian tour, which will also take in India, Malaysia and Pakistan, was a strategically sound move.

"China has the fastest growing market and Saudi Arabia has the right product to sell," said a Hong Kong-based oil analyst who requested anonymity.

Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at People's University in Beijing, said China had "a very focused interest in Saudi Arabia".

"China wants secure sources of oil," Shi said.

China's oil demand has been increasing by about 15 percent annually. The Asian giant imported a record 130 million tonnes of crude last year, up 3.3 percent from 2004, after growth of more than 30 percent a year earlier.

Oil imports from Saudi Arabia have already risen from 8.8 million tonnes in 2001 to about 20 million tonnes last year, according to previous figures published in China's state media.

Among other energy deals already in place, China's Sinopec is drilling for gas in the Saudi desert and building a refinery with Saudi oil firm Saudi Aramco in China's Fujian province.

Aramco is also beginning engineering work with Sinopec on a second refinery in China's Qingdao city.

Despite the growing bilateral ties, Shi said neither China nor the Saudis would want to alarm the United States.

"China will be very cautious, it won't buy oilfields in Saudi Arabia. That would make the US very sensitive," Shi said.

Beijing also hopes Riyadh will be an ally on Middle East issues, such as Iran's nuclear standoff with the United States, according to Shi.

Bolton wrote in his letter: "Who is the high-level official within the secretariat who approved use of the map for the event? Does the United Nations intend to use the map in future U.N.-sponsored functions and events?

"In light of prohibition under U.S. law to fund events such as this one, do you consider it appropriate for the United Nations to advertise and promote the event on its general Web site and other venues, which do in fact benefit from U.S. funds?"

The threat to cut U.S. support for U.N. general advertising budgets "is a matter of serious concern to Mr. Annan's aides, who have been under intense pressure to reform the United Nations in the wake of last year's scandals,” according to the Sun.

The Palestinian observer at the United Nations, Riad Mansour, said a pre-1948 date is clearly marked on the map. He added that in 1981, the "committee for the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people" decided that the map and the flag of "Palestine as it existed in 1948" should be displayed in the room where the event was held.

But Israel's deputy ambassador to the U.N., Daniel Carmon, said: "You can't have a U.N.-sponsored event that displays a map that obliterates a member-state."

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told the Sun that Annan "much hopes" that the U.N. body that organized the annual event will "consider not displaying the map in the future."

The bottom line, according to an earlier statement by Bolton, is: "To say that Israel is treated as a normal nation at the U.N. would be a statement of fantasy.”

Before I dive into the concept of Matriotism, let's explore the word "patriotism." Dictionary.com defines it as: love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it. When we all know that patriotism in the US means: exploiting others' love for country by sending them and their children off to sacrifice for my bank balance!

There have been volumes written about patriotism, defining it, supporting it, challenging the notion of it, etc. I believe the notion of patriotism has been expediently and nefariously exploited, and used to lead our nation into scores of disastrous and needless wars. The idea of patriotism has virtually wiped out entire generations of our precious young people and has allowed our nation's leaders to commit mass murder on an unprecedented scale. The vile sputum of "if you aren't with us, then you are against us" is basically the epitome of patriotism gone wild. After the tragedy of 9/11 we were on our way to becoming a fledgling Matriotic society until our leaders jumped on the bandwagon of inappropriate and misguided vengeance to send our young people to die and kill in two countries that were no threat to the USA or to our way of life. The neocons exploited patriotism to fulfill their goals of imperialism and plumder.

This sort of patriotism begins when we enter kindergarten and learn the nationalist "Pledge of Allegiance." It transcends all sense when we are taught the "Star Spangled Banner," a hymn to war. In our history classes the genocide of the Native American peoples is glossed over as we learn about the spread of American Imperialism over our continent, though it wasn't named until the 1840's, when the doctrine of Manifest Destiny was expounded to justify the USA's conquest of and "civilizing" of Mexican territories and Native American populations. Manifest Destiny sought to spread the "the boundaries of freedom" to the American Continent, with the notion that we have a special mission from God. Sound familiar?

All though school, we are brainwashed into believing that some how our leaders are always right and certainly have our best interests at heart when they wave the flag and convince us to hate fellow human beings who stand in the way of making immense profits from war. As Samuel Johnson said, patriotism is the "last refuge of a scoundrel."

Matriotism is the opposite of patriotism…not to destroy it, but to be a yin to its yang, and balance out the militarism of patriotism.

Not everyone is a mother, but there is one universal truth that no one can dispute no matter how hard they try (and believe me, some will try): Everyone has a mother! Mothers give life, and if the child is lucky, mothers nurture life. And if a man has had a nurturing mother he will already have a base of Matriotism.

A Matriot loves his/her country but does not buy into the exploitive phrase of "My country right or wrong." (As Chesterton said, that's like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober.") A Matriot knows that her country can do a lot of things right, especially when the government is not involved. For example, I know of no other citizens of any country who are more personally generous than those of America. However, a Matriot also knows that when her country is wrong, it can be responsible for murdering thouands upon thousands of innocent and unsuspecting humans. A true Matriot would never drop an atomic bomb or bombs filled with white phosphorous, carpet bomb cities and villages, or control drones from thousands of miles away to kill innocent men, women and children.

There is one most important thing that matriots would never do, however, and this is the key to stopping killing to solve problems: a matriot would never send her child or another mother's child to fight nonsense wars…and would march into a war herself that she considered just to protect her child from harm. Aha! Matriots would fight their own battles, but take a dim view of having to do so, and would seldom resort to violence to solve conflict! Patriots cowardly hide behind the flag and eagerly send young people to die to fill their own pocketbooks.

Women flocked to Camp Casey in August to run the huge enterprise and work for peace, and women from all over the US and the world have invited me to visit and speak and advocate for true and lasting peace. Men, who are in touch with the matriot inside of them, have also been important to the cause of eradicating war.

Whether you are a male or female Matriot, Code Pink Alert, endorsed by Gold Star Families for Peace, is calling for an International Day of Peace on March 8 th…called for, organized by, and supported by women. Women and men with matriotic tendencies can get more info and endorse the call for peace at: www.womensaynotowar.org. It is past time for we Matriots to get together to stridently call for an end to the immoral bloodshed in Iraq.

I know one thing from the bottom of my heart. My son, Casey, who was an Eagle Scout and a true American patriot, was not served well by his idea of patriotism. I will never forgive myself for not trying to counteract more the false patriotism he was raised on, with a true sense of Matriotism.

I also know that the women of the world who don't have a voice, such as the mothers of Iraq who are struggling just to survive in their needlessly destroyed country, are counting on us women who do have voices to use them to end George Bush's manifestly idiotic doctrine of preemptive wars of aggression based on the justification that "I think that country might be dangerous to me and my pals."

War will end forever when we matriots stand up and say: "No, I am not giving my child to the fake patriotism of the war machine which chews up my flesh and blood to spit out obscene profits."

"It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens." ~ Baha'u'llah

Matriotism above all is a commitment to truth and to celebrate the dignity of all life.

Our population has nearly doubled, and our culture is much more corrupted. I, as an elementary-school kid, could roam my town and even out in the country and woods alone without fear. By the time I had children, I wouldn’t even leave them alone at a school bus stop. I waited until they were safely on the bus. Where did all of these child molesters come from? I’m sure there were some in the past—probably always have been—but when you look at the thousands of registered sex offenders, it makes you wonder.

Of course, in those days, you had to rely on National Geographic magazine if you wanted to see a picture of a naked woman—or you could just look at the mothers who nursed their babies in public. The public media—the movies, radio, magazines and advertising—were not saturated
with sexual images.

It could be that the current saturation of sexual images and violence in the media is a factor in producing so many sex offenders.

We have certainly become a more vulgar, profane and violent country, and I think the reason is plain: Bad behavior is tolerated because government has intimidated good people.

If you whack some lout over the head today, you’ll almost surely be arrested, prosecuted and packed off to prison. A government that cannot control crime for some reason often gets hysterical when good people defend themselves.

That is less true in the South than in the North, but the attitude of 100 percent dependence on the government is reinforced constantly on television. The message is that regardless of the circumstances, it is bad, bad, bad to “take the law into your own hands.”

To which I reply, horse apples. In a sane society, it would be the criminals who lived in fear, not the good people.

The point, however, is not to bemoan or try to resist change. Change is inevitable and unstoppable. The point of general semantics is to remember to always base our actions on the present reality and not on illusions made of memory.

If you’re over 30 years old, then the country you grew up in is gone forever. Life is a process, and just as we change, our environment changes.

I freely admit that if I could, I would choose to live in the past, but we can’t. The only world we’ve ever had, have now and ever will have is the present moment. Whatever living we are going to do we must do right now.

There’s a phrase I’ve heard preachers quote: “Now is the time, and the time is now.” That’s quite true. The world you wake up in is never the same as when you went to sleep.


(Issue #5, January 30, 2006)

Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute - as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003

Experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that could spread easily between people, sparking a pandemic.

The new genetic findings double the amount of genetic information for scientists who study how viruses evolve, and may give them clues about why some are more dangerous.

Clayton Naeve of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., and his colleagues found the H5N1 strain has a protein that seems to set it apart.

The protein, called NS1, is made once the virus infects a cell.

The protein seems to help the virus to cause more damage to a cell in bird flus compared to human flus, the team reports in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Researchers need to test if the protein makes the virus more virulent. If so, scientists could look for it when trying to predict which flu viruses are likely to cross between birds and humans before a pandemic.

The H5N1 bird flu virus and the virus that killed millions of people in the 1918 pandemic both carried the protein, the team found.

But viruses that normally circulate every flu season do not carry the avian protein, and neither did the viruses that caused less deadly pandemics in 1957 and 1968.

All of the viral genetic sequences are now available in a publicly available database for scientists to study.

It broke the Grandfather Mountain wind record of 195.5 mph, set April 18, 1997. Those winds are believed to be the strongest ever measured in the Carolinas.

The winds were created by a strong storm system over the Northeast. That system pumped chilly air into the Carolinas and the rest of the eastern United States, allowing temperatures to fall into the lower and middle 20's this morning. The low at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport today was 23 degrees, second-coldest this month behind a 22-degree reading Jan. 7.

The coldest readings reported in the Piedmont this morning were 21 degrees at Concord, Albemarle and Lexington.

Morton said the most amazing effect of the winds late Tuesday and early Wednesday was the lifting of a 300-pound boulder in the parking lot of the Visitor Center, at the 5,280-foot level of the mountain -- about 700 feet below the summit. Gusts forced the boulder, which was cemented to the parking lot, to roll over.

"One of our staff members has a picture of that," Morton said.

The winds also blew out several windows in the Visitor Center and caused other damage.

Winds were considerably calmer at the base of the mountain, where the tourists attraction's offices are located. Morton said the top of the mountain was closed to tourists Wednesday.

"It's calmer today," he said. "Earlier this morning, we had some gusts down here of about 50 mph. That means up at the Visitor Center, it was probably gusting around 100 mph."

Morton said that in high wind events, tourists are able to visit the animal habitats and museum at the base of the mountain, but the higher levels are closed.

"Winds that strong could rip the door off your vehicle," he said.

Grandfather Mountain records winds of well over 100 mph several times during the year. Morton said winter is a good time to visit the attraction.

"There are a few days each year when you can see downtown Charlotte from the top," he said. "It takes very clear conditions, and those usually happen in the winter."

Grandfather Mountain is about 100 miles from Charlotte.

The strongest wind in U.S. history was a 231 mph gust measured in 1934 at Mount Washington, N.H.

Grandfather Mountain wasn't alone in feeling the impact of strong winds.

The gusts knocked down trees and power lines across the foothills and mountains. At one time Wednesday morning, more than 10,000 customers were without electricity across the region. All of those outages were repaired by late Wednesday.

This morning's cold weather will be temporary, lasting only a day or two. Despite sunny skies, temperatures today will struggle to reach 50 degrees, which is still 1 degree above normal for this time of year. Then warming will begin.

Highs will climb into the upper 50's Friday and will be near 60 degrees over the weekend.

Forecasters say they see no end in sight to the pattern of the past month -- sporadic, brief cold spells, followed by several days of temperatures well above normal.

''This technology is an assault on the traditional knowledge, innovation, and practices of local and indigenous communities,'' said Debra Harry, executive director of the U.S.-based Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism.

The group is among organizations urging United Nations experts to recommend that governments adopt tough laws against field testing and selling Terminator technology, which refers to plants that have had their genes altered so that they render sterile seeds at harvest. Because of this trait, some activists call Terminator products ''suicide seeds.''

Developed by multinational agribusinesses and the U.S. government, Terminator has the effect of preventing farmers from saving or replanting seeds from one growing season to the next.

The product is being tested in greenhouses throughout the United States. Opponents fear it is likely to be marketed soon unless governments impose a ban.

''Terminator seeds will become a commercial reality unless governments take action to prevent it,'' said Hope Shand of the Canada-based Action Group on Erosion, Technology, and Concentration (ETC Group).

If commercialized, activists said, Terminator would force farmers to return to the market for seeds every year, adding to their annual costs. This also would spell the end of locally adapted agriculture through seed selection, because most farmers in the world today routinely save seeds from their harvest for replanting.

''This seed technology is a fundamental violation of the human rights of indigenous people,'' Harry said of Terminator. ''It is a breach of the right of self-determination.''

Environmental and consumer advocates also have said that genetically modified crops--ranging from Terminator to ''Round Up Ready'' varieties designed to survive the heavy duty herbicide Round Up--offer the promise of fat profits for their developers, marketers, and political supporters while threatening farmers with lean times and consumers with ill-health.

''The promise of increased profit is too enticing for industry to give up on Terminator seeds,'' says Lucy Sharratt of the International Ban Terminator Campaign.

The issue has pitted some governments against their citizens. Canadian government officials at a UN meeting in Bangkok last year pushed for language allowing the field testing and sale of Terminator. But they backed down in response to strong public criticism at home.

For their part, biotech companies have enjoyed limited success in trying to influence governments' policies in favor of using Terminator seeds. Their main argument: that Terminator's higher cost is more than compensated for in improved crop yield and quality at harvest time.

Governments generally have distinguished between different types of genetic modification. Many--especially those in industrially developing regions of the world--have resisted pressure from the biotechnology industry and the U.S. government and maintain a strong stand against Terminator.

The government of Brazil--the world's fifth most populous country and a major agricultural producer--last year enacted a law that prohibits the use, registration, patenting, and licensing of genetically modified (GM) seeds. India, a predominantly agrarian nation and home to more than one billion people, has done the same.

However, a number of governments have agreed with industry statements that other genetic modifications can play a significant role in combating hunger at negligible risk to the environment.

Even so, a 100-page report released last week by Friends of the Earth (FoE), a leading international environmental group, concludes that only a handful of countries have introduced and increased the use of genetically modified crops--and then again, largely because of aggressive lobbying by the biotech industry.

Entitled ''Who Benefits from GM Crops?'' the report says that after 10 years of GM crop cultivation, more than 80 percent of the area cultivated with biotech crops is still concentrated in only three countries: the United States, Argentina, and Canada.

In other countries--including Paraguay and Brazil, GM crops were planted illegally and in Indonesia, they were planted after government officials were bribed, FoE said.

This week's UN talks in Madrid are scheduled to continue until Friday.

"In the annals of science," Daniel Pinchbeck writes in Breaking Open the Head, "it is notable that many scientific insights first appear in dreams and visions":

The German chemist Friedrich Kekule, for instance, dreamt of a snake with its tail in its mouth, and understood that the molecular structure of benzene was a closed carbon ring. The French mathematician Jules-Henri Poincaré, during a sleepless night, saw mathematical symbols colliding until they coalesced into equations. These intuitive levels of insight, whether scientific or artistic, function like the prophetic dreams of shamans.... Hoffman's discovery of LSD was that kind of insight - a flash from a deeper order of the self or, perhaps, from outside the self entirely.

How did the Amazonian shamans come to discover their complex psychoactive compound of ayahuasca? They say the plants taught them in dreams. And intuition seemed to lead the synthesis of DMT in 1931, nearly 20 years before it was discovered to be a naturally occuring alkaloid in plants. (It wasn't until 1972 that it was found to be an endogenous compound, produced by the human brain.)

Pinchbeck records his ceremonial ingestion of ayahuasca:

The hallucinations started to deepen into a realm that I could not recognize, that I lack language to describe. I found myself wandering across a shimmering space with beings that never stopped changing - porcupine-quilled, tusked, multitongued, amoebic, but even those words are only approximations of entities that could be compared to the darker imaginings of HP Lovecraft. The shaman and the elders seemed to be inhabiting this space with me. Glowing in the light cast by the fire, their features seemed animated by an almost nonhuman intensity. They sang, their words unintelligible, to these creatures, interacting with them, in mystical communion. It seemed that this was the goal of the ayahuasca ceremony, the arrival point. These were "the heavenly people."

The scene is similar to that described by Robert Monroe in Journeys Out of the Body of a hellish layer close to our mundane reality through which he would pass while projecting his astral self, which felt like bait above "a gray-black hungry ocean where the slightest motion attracts nibbling and tormenting beings." He writes that "it is easy to conclude that a momentary penetration of this nearby layer would bring 'demons' and 'devils' to mind as the chief inhabitants." It also recalls the hallucinatory witness to shapeshifting in some accounts of mind control survivors.

DMT frequently induces similar visions of interstellar voids, hungry insectoid intelligences and abduction scenarios indistinguishable from those of UFO encounters, including alien intercourse. Here "Rex" describes his controlled injection in Dr Rick Strassman's DMT: The Spirit Molecule:

When I was first going under there were these insect creatures all around me. They were clearly trying to break through. I was fighting letting go of who I am or was.... They were interested in emotion. As I was holding on to my last thought, that God equals love, they said, "Even here? Even here?" I said, "Yes, of course." They were still there but I was making love to them at the same time. They feasted as they made love to me.... The thought came to me with certainty that they were manipulating my DNA, changing its structure.

Strassman ended his clinical studies of the drug in part because he gave serious weight to the warning of a "highly intuitive" friend who told him she saw "evil spirits hovering around you. They want to come through this plane, using you and the drugs."

If there are many dimensions beyond, or behind, those we normally inhabit, it would seem by the congruity of experience that there are a variety of means to their unlocking. Yet all of them - occult workings, remote viewing, astral projection, UFO abductions and shamanic chemistry - share the trait of inducing altered states of consciousness. And something else they share is the abiding, deep attention of military intelligence.

At this point, someone's likely to mention the "holographic universe" and its alleged implication that "nothing is real." Perhaps instead it means that everything is real, including the "imaginal realm" described by French Islamic scholar Henry Corbin in his 1972 work, Mundis Imaginalis:

Upon returning [from a mystical vision] the beholders of this world are perfectly aware of having been "elsewhere": they are not mere schizophrenics. This world is hidden behind the very act of sense perception and has to be sought underneath its apparent objective certainty. For this reason we definitely cannot qualify it as being imaginary in the current sense of the word, ie, unreal or nonexistent. [It] is ontologically as real as the world of the senses and that of the intellect [perceived by] the "psychospiritual senses."

Psychologist Kenneth Ring talks of "the shamanizing of modern humanity" in his book The Omega Project, which studies the commonality of Near-Death Experience and UFO encounters. Ring writes that "we could be in the beginning stages of a major shift in levels of consciousness that will eventually lead to humanity's being able to live in two worlds at once - the physical and the imaginal." He believes that NDEs and UFOs, like the mystical and visionary states found in shamanic ritual, may be adventing at this time as an evolutionary aid towards the development of "latent capacities for imaginal perception."

I'm not sure I agree with Ring's rosy conclusions drawn from the evident thinning of the veil. I wonder instead whether a nexus of powerful parties on both sides of the portal with investments in control are conspiring to exploit gateways, the result of which may mean a near blunt-force stunting of the development of human consciousness.

I know this is highly speculative, but it's one of those crazy thoughts I have when I look up and see grids in the sky where there were none before, and marvel at the calculation behind our conspicuous dumbing down. What is it about us that is being suppressed, and who most profits by it?

Politics in Ukraine