Momentum Builds for Liberia Intervention Force

By David Clarke
Sat June 28, 2003 09:03 PM ET

MONROVIA (Reuters) - Momentum was building on Sunday for an international force to deploy to Liberia in a bid to end fighting that has left hundreds dead and a war that has spread chaos in West Africa for more than a decade.

The United States, because of historic ties to a country founded by freed American slaves, is under most pressure to lead a mission demanded by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Britain, France and legions of tired and frightened Liberians.

Liberia said Saturday it was already talking to the United States and West African countries about sending troops. Annan, a Ghanaian, said the U.N. Security Council should meet immediately to approve a force to seal a shaky truce on the ground.

Even that news brought some relief for the tens of thousands of terrified Liberians packed into Monrovia with little idea where to turn for refuge and without adequate food or water.

"Well, at least someone out there has been able to listen to our cries. When the U.N. speaks, we know something will happen. That is why we decided to go back home," said Bokar Samoki. [...]

So far, the Bush administration has not decided on sending any force, although the issue is under discussion. Britain's U.N. ambassador, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, publicly urged the United States last week to lead a multinational force.

"There are at least talks of further intervention, whether that's necessary or appropriate. I don't know at this point," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday. [...]

West Africa pledges 5,000-troop force for Liberia

Associated Press
17:47 Saturday 28th June 2003

West African leaders have promised at least a 5,000-member peace force for warring Liberia after a ceasefire has been reached.

Ghana President John Kufuor announced the peace force, after the arrival of French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin on a two-day visit.

Kufour, current head of West Africa's regional leaders bloc, said the group is mobilising an at least 5,000-troop deployment for Liberia, where fighting between rebels and Charles Taylor's government has killed hundreds in the capital this week.

"Any sacrifice would be made to restore peace to Liberia," Kufuor said.

Kufuor said France is ready to assist with troops, as well as "other logistics."

West African officials have spoken of deploying a 5,000-member force, drawn from the region, between government and rebel sides in Liberia, if and when a ceasefire holds there.

De Villepin, without confirming any French military contribution, made clear France is open to the possibility.

He cited French troops already deployed in Congo and the former French colony of Ivory Coast, trying to enforce ceasefires there.

"It will not be difficult for us to do the same with any disposition force in Liberia," the French foreign minister said. "But the first thing that must be done is the cease-fire."

The French diplomat indirectly rebuked President Bush for the American leader's call to Taylor to cede power, as promised, in the interest of peace in Liberia.

"In such conflict resolution, outside dictatorship does not help anybody," de Villepin said. "Rather, neighbouring countries should be encouraged to take charge while we lend our support, and not the other way around."

Comment: "I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-soaked fingers out of the business of these [Third World] nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own.... And if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the "haves" refuse to share with the "have-nots" by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don't want and above all don't want crammed down their throats by Americans."

-- General David Sharp, former US Marine Commandant,1966

USA Thinks Multipolar World Harmful

06/28/2003 13:51

Rice says the notion of a multi-polar world is a necessary evil that sustained the essence of war but did not promote peace. The Bush Administration thinks the idea of a multipolar world is unhappy and even harmful as it may entail rivalry between the greatest powers of the world, the one similar to the "cold war". The idea was suggested by US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice at London-s International Institute for Strategic Studies. The White House has circulated the text of Rice's speech in Washington.

According to Condoleezza Rice, instead of a multipolar world, the USA suggests that other democratic countries should join their efforts on the basis of similar interests and values for solution of their common problems, including repulsion of global threats and settlement of regional conflicts. Rice says that the notion of a multi-polar world, the one that still enjoys the support of many countries, has never resulted in integration, but on the contrary it has always been "a necessary evil that sustained the essence of war but did not promote peace."

"Multipolarity is a theory of rivalry, of competing interests and, at its very worst, of competing values," she told the assembly of experts on international and security affairs. Now, Rice believes, "the rivalry theory represents a danger for solution of serious problems" such as repulsion of threats from the international terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. [...]

Comment: So the US thinks a multipolar world is "harmful", but harmful to who and to what? Of course a multipolar world does not work when you have a country like the US who wants to dominate all. Rice's "suggestion" that other countries should join the US' efforts is just another way to say "either you are with us or you are against us"

"How dare Americans allow their government to cause such misery [in the world]"
-- Ramsey Clark, former United States Attorney General and human rights activist

U.S. Adviser Rice Presses on with 'Road Map' Talks

By Maia Ridberg
Sat June 28, 2003 09:02 PM ET

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice meets Israeli leaders Sunday to push forward a Middle East peace plan, which could be propelled by a truce by Palestinian militants and an Israeli army withdrawal. [...]

Rice is due to have talks with Sharon and other ministers after meeting Abbas Saturday in Jericho in the West Bank.

Her visit puts the weight of U.S. pressure on Palestinians to enforce a truce by militants, and on Israelis to carry out a troop withdrawal in the Gaza Strip and Bethlehem.

In the past few days, Palestinian militant groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas said they had agreed in principle to a conditional, three-month halt to attacks.

Islamic Jihad leader Mohammad al-Hindi, speaking just before Rice arrived in the region, said Saturday he expected the truce to be announced formally within 24 hours. Hamas said on Friday it had decided to suspend attacks.

But the groups, behind scores of bombings against Israelis in a 33-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation, have said they will only stick to the truce if Israel ends track-and-kill raids against militants and meets other terms.

Israel says it did not negotiate the truce and is only bound to agreements with the Abbas government. Israel agreed in principle with the Palestinian Authority Friday to withdraw troops from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

The Myth of Tiny, Little Israel: Zionist Tentacles Everywhere

Sam Hamod, Ph.D.

06/26/03: (todaysaltnews.com) No decent human being in this world can see Sharon and his zionist minions killing women, children and elderly, destroying their homes, schools and hospitals and not feel a moral repugnance. There are many Jews as well as others who abhor this, in fact, these Jews are among the most heroic in fighting this brutality that is being used against the Palestinians and the espionage Mossad is perpetrating all over the world. This group includes such people as Nurit Peled (the winner of the Sakharov Prize for Peace in Israel), Anthony Lewis, Professor Naom Chomsky, Rabbi Michael Lerner and many other courageous and moral people. So let it be known that we must get past the myth of "tiny, little Israel" to see the truth about Israel and her supporters whose tentacles have spread throughout the world. [...]

Too few people in the world realize that this “little nation” of Israel has its tentacles throughout the world, in terms of its political action committees, appointees and elected officials in governments and the hiring out of its active or retired Mossad agents. I write this article to awaken people to the reality of what is actually going on, so that they may wipe away the myths spread by the Israeli propaganda machine that has mainline access to American media (newspapers, TV, radio and film) and enormous influence on the politics and economies of many nations, among them, America, Britain, Venezuela, Germany and others [...]

STILL No Arabs On Flight 77

Thomas R. Olmsted, M.D.

I am an ex Naval line officer and a psychiatrist in private practice in New Orleans, a Christian and home school dad. It troubled me that we rushed to war on the flimsiest of evidence. I considered various ways to provide a smoking gun as to who perpetrated Sept 11th.

Astute observers noticed right away that there were no Arabic sounding names on any of the flight manifests of the planes that “crashed” Sept 11. A list of names on a piece of paper is not evidence, but an autopsy by a pathologist is.

I undertook by FOIA request, to obtain that autopsy list of the people on Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon. You are invited to view it below. Guess what? Still no Arabs on the list. In my opinion, the monsters who planned this crime made a mistake by not including Arabic names on the original list to make the ruse seem more believable.

When airline disasters occur, airlines will routinely provide a manifest list for anxious families. You may have noticed that even before Sep 11th, airlines were pretty meticulous about getting an accurate headcount before takeoff. It seems very unlikely to me that FIVE Arabs sneaked onto a flight with weapons.

This is the list provided by American of the 56 passengers:

On September 27th, the FBI published photos of the “hijackers” of Flight 77:

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), does a miraculous job and identified nearly all the bodies on November 16th 2001.

The AFIP suggest these numbers:189 killed, 125 worked at the Pentagon and 64 were “passengers” on the plane. The AA list only had 56 and the list just obtained has 58. They did not explain how they were able to tell “victims” bodies from “hijacker” bodies. In fact, from the beginning NO explanation has been given for the extra five suggested in news reports except that the FBI showed us the pictures to make up the difference, and that makes it so.

Now, being the trusting sort, I figured that the government would want to quickly dispel any rumors so we could get on with the chore of kicking Osama/Sadaam’s butt (weren’t these originally two different people?). It seemed simple to me. . .produce the names of all the bodies identified by the AFIP and compare it with the publicized list of passengers. So, I sent a FOIA request to the AFIP and asked for an expedited response. Fourteen months later, a few US soldiers dead, many Iraqi civilians pushing up daisies, and I finally get the list. Believe me that they weren’t a bit happy to give it up, and I really have no idea why they choose now to release it.

No Arabs wound up on the morgue slab. However, three ADDITIONAL people not listed by American Airline sneaked in. I have seen no explanation for these extras. I did give American the opportunity to “revise” their original list, but they have not responded. The new names are: Robert Ploger, Zandra Ploger, and Sandra Teague. The AFIP claims that the only “passenger” body that they were not able to identify is the toddler, Dana Falkenberg, whose parents and young sister are on the list of those identified.

The satanic masterminds behind this caper may be feeling pretty smug about the perfect crime, but they have left a raft of clues tying these unfortunates together. Stay tuned for part two for a much closer look of the cast of characters on this ill-fated flight.

Arabs seen as the new villains of Hollywood

By Roger Dobson
29 June 2003

Hollywood has a new top villain, who has taken over from those old foes, red Indians and Communists.

Now the Apache have become respected native Americans, the Iron Curtain gone, and Russia almost an ally, Arabs are pretty much the only villains in town. According to a new report, they are portrayed in a derogatory way 96 per cent of the time. [...]

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only Light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction...
The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the darkness... of annihilation."
Martin Luther King, Jr

Truce announcement delayed, Palestinian official says

Sunday, June 29, 2003

West Bank (AP) -- A joint truce declaration by Palestinian militias, initially expected Sunday, has been delayed, a Palestinian Cabinet minister said.

In the statement, armed groups would declare a three-month suspension of attacks on Israelis.

The minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said he expected the announcement to be made Monday, with statements issued simultaneously from Cairo, the West Bank town of Ramallah and from Gaza City.

However, members of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction expressed last-minute objections to the declaration, and it was possible there would be further delays. The wrangling is over the wording of the introduction to the actual truce announcement

US seeking alliance to block weapons exports by North Korea, Iran

Sunday June 29, 2:38 PM

(AFP) - The United States is seeking an international alliance to block exports of weapons of mass destruction and missiles by North Korea and Iran, it was reported here.

The report by Asahi Shimbun follows allegations that the United States may scuttle an international project to build light-water reactors in North Korea, a deal contingent on the Stalinist state's adherence to a pact freezing its nuclear arms programme.

North Korea publicly declared this month it was seeking nuclear weapons.

A senior US administration official said Washington would help establish a "voluntary alliance" of countries that would boost inspections of ships and aicraft against the hardware shipments, the Japanese daily said.

Leaders of the 11-country bloc are the United States, Japan and Australia, which met in Madrid on June 12 to plot strategies to thwart the spread of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and missile components, the influential daily quoted an unidentified official as saying.

Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain have confirmed they would make best use of existing laws to intercept such exports, the official said.

The countries were to meet July 9-10 in Australia to plan better cooperation in tracking the shipments.

China and Russia, both with close links to North Korea, were to be consulted by the United States in an effort to pursue "stronger action," based on a UN resolution, to halt weapons exports, the official said. [...]

Nader Blast Plutocrats, Bush & Iraq War

Friday, June 27 2003

"Nader emphasized how just “400 individuals in this country received $70 billion in income last year. This top one percent of the rich are equal to the bottom 95 percent of the other income producers in the economy. The bottom one third of the workers earn the lowest living wage of any Western country." [...]

Missing US soldiers found dead

Associated Press
13:43 Saturday 28th June 2003

Two US soldiers missing for days from a checkpost north of Baghdad have been found dead, a senior US army officer says.

The soldiers and their Humvee went missing on Wednesday from the town of Balad, 25 miles north of Baghdad.

A massive search including Apache attack helicopters had been scouring the area around Balad, and US interrogators have been questioning at least six men arrested in the disappearance.

The soldiers were identified as Sgt. 1st Class Gladimir Philippe, 37, of Linden, New Jersey, and Pfc. Kevin Ott, 27, of Columbus, Ohio.

At least 61 US troops have died in Iraq since major combat was declared over on May 1, including at least 23 in attacks.

Powell Calls For 'Patience' Amid Rising US Iraq Death Toll

6-28-3

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell called on Americans to be patient in the face of mounting US casualties in Iraq, and amid growing concern over armed resistance against the US-led occupation force.

"I would say to the American people that we always recognized this would be a dangerous operation," Powell said in an interview on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" program on Friday.

"And even though major combat action is over... we always expected there would be this residual problem of Fedayeen, of the Baath Party members, of old Saddam cronies and others who are coming in to make mischief, and they would have to be dealt with," Powell said.

"I hope the American people will demonstrate the patience and the understanding of the situation," he added. [...]

US vows to track down Saddam

BBC Online

The chief US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer has said the chances of catching Saddam Hussein are "very high".

In a BBC interview, Mr Bremer said the failure to capture or kill the deposed Iraqi president was hampering coalition efforts to control the country.

Mr Bremer said the attacks on coalition forces which have killed at least 30 troops since the end of the war were likely to continue for some time...

"I think the chances of catching Saddam are very high," Mr Bremer said.

"The fact that we have not been able to show his fate allows these remnants of the Baathist regime to go around... and say Saddam will come back, and we will come back, so don't co-operate with the coalition," he said.

Mr Bremer accused these "remnants" of the attacks on coalition troops.

"Unfortunately it is the case that we will continue to take casualties... but there's no strategic threat to the coalition," he said.

"We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or, if necessary, kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country," he said...

He listed achievements in restoring electricity to pre-war levels, getting all the country's hospitals and 95% of its health clinics operational, improving the water supply in Basra, starting a vaccination programme and distributing food.

"There's a lot of good news that tends to get lost in the noise here," he said.

Comment: Didn't someone in the US government once vow to track down Osama bin Laden?

Iraqi elections cancelled by U.S.
Army hand-picks its own mayors

Frustration builds among citizens

WILLIAM BOOTH AND RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

SAMARRA, Iraq—U.S. military commanders have ordered a halt to local elections and self-rule in provincial cities and towns across Iraq, choosing instead to install their own hand-picked mayors and administrators, many of whom are former Iraqi military leaders.

The decision to deny Iraqis a direct role in selecting municipal governments is creating anger and resentment among aspiring leaders and ordinary citizens, who say the U.S.-led occupation forces aren't making good on their promise to bring greater freedom and democracy to a country dominated for three decades by former president Saddam Hussein.

The go-slow approach to representative government in at least a dozen provincial cities is especially frustrating to younger, middle-class professionals, who say they want to help their communities emerge from post-war chaos and to let, as one put it, "Iraqis make decisions for Iraq."

"They give us a general," said Bahith Sattar, a biology teacher and tribal leader in Samarra who was a candidate for mayor until that election was cancelled last week. "First of all, an Iraqi general? They lost the last three wars! They're not even good generals. And they know nothing about running a city."...

In Baghdad, U.S. officials never scheduled elections for a city government but have said they are forming neighbourhood councils that at some point will play a role in selection of a municipal government.

L. Paul Bremer, the civil administrator of Iraq, said in an interview that there is "no blanket prohibition" against self-rule. "I'm not opposed to it, but I want to do it a way that takes care of our concerns. ... Elections that are held too early can be destructive. It's got to be done very carefully."...

Bremer promises that as soon as an Iraqi constitution is written and a national census taken, local and national elections will follow. But that process could take months.

Ten weeks into the occupation, the cities and towns outside of Baghdad are largely administered by former Iraqi military and police officers and people who had close ties to the Baath Party. Iraqi generals and police colonels, for example, are now mayors of a dozen cities, including Samarra, Najaf, Tikrit, Balad and Baqubah.

Comment: Plus ça change... Yes, let's "do it a way that takes care of our concerns" that people "we" can't control take over the country and deny America access to the oil fields... You can hear those US crooks in Iraq thinking to themselves: "Democracy must be learned. These foolish people, heck, they might even think we mean what we say...it all takes time, years, so many years."

Death on the road to Basra

By Tristana Moore
BBC correspondent in Basra
Saturday, 28 June, 2003, 11:57 GMT

It is another sweltering day in Iraq. The temperature gauge in our car says it is 48C outside - but our translator, Wissam, says it is far hotter than that.

Basra highway: Major military route to Baghdad

We left Baghdad several hours ago. We are driving along the motorway built during Saddam Hussein's rule linking the capital with Iraq's second-largest city, Basra.

The road stretches ahead of us - a long straight line - the desert lying on either side. The only sign of life is the odd Bedouin herding his camels.

The land is arid and inhospitable. Every so often, there is a picnic stop by the side of the road. It seems incongruous in the desert.

We pass a number of American military convoys all heading towards Baghdad.

The Americans have set up bases along the motorway signalling the occupation is settling in. As we drive further south, Baghdad seems a world away.

It is a long journey - I feel exhausted, my cameraman is nodding off beside me.

Dark discovery

I still do not know why it caught my eye, why I looked ahead when I did - but I glimpsed a dark shape lying in the middle of the road.

The driver swerved to avoid it, braking sharply. As we passed I looked through window and caught sight of a body. Not the body of an animal, but the body of a child.

I asked the driver to stop, and we drove back. It was indeed the body of a young boy, his blood-soaked clothes scattered across the road. A few metres away, a girl is crying, screaming. She is inconsolable.

We see an American soldier and ask him to call for help. Ten minutes later, officers from the US Military Police turn up. In the blazing sun, a crowd is now gathering.

The girl is still crying - her name is Sabrina, she is 13 years old. She is barefoot and wears a ragged dress. She has dark eyes and long, brown hair.

She tells me how she saw her 11-year-old brother, Muhannad, had run up to an American military convoy trying to sell something to the soldiers, but was run over as he crossed the road.

The Americans did not stop. [...]

Iraqi children are suffering

By MARK MacKINNON
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Saturday, Jun. 28, 2003 2:09 AM EDT

Baghdad — Three-year-old Ibrahim Issam is clearly in pain. Clad in an orange jumpsuit, sitting on his father's knee in the Central Teaching Hospital's waiting room, he screams incessantly, unable to express where it hurts. In the already sweltering June heat, his forehead is even hotter to the touch.

His parents think he's got gastroenteritis, a stomach disease that dehydrates children rapidly and that has plagued this country since the United Nations imposed sanctions here 12 years ago, a trading embargo that left Iraq without chlorine to treat its water. His sister Aisha, just 18 months old, dozes on the hospital bed behind Ibrahim. She has the same symptoms.

The sanctions are gone now, but children like Ibrahim and Aisha still suffer. The situation, many say, is worse now. Even in big cities like Baghdad, the water remains undrinkable, and in the summer heat, many families have taken to drawing water directly from the polluted Tigris River.

"They have problems in their stomachs, diarrhea and vomiting. They're sick because the drinking water is dirty," the children's father, Issam Khalil, says. "Things are not better now than during the sanctions."

Doctors here agree. In interviews this week, three of Iraq's top pediatricians said that although no statistics are available, they believe the rate of child mortality — among the highest in the world during the past 12 years — has risen even higher since Saddam Hussein's regime fell and the United States took over governing the country. [...]

Comment: "America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us. When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women and children." - George W. Bush

Propaganda Works!

Kuwait awakens to new nightmare

By Mehrdad Balali

KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwait's euphoria over the overthrow of its former occupier Saddam Hussein is fading as the country wakes up to the reality of economic and social problems that had long been overshadowed by the Iraqi menace.

The ousting of Iraq's president, who invaded Kuwait in 1990 and occupied it for seven months, was seen by many Kuwaitis as a harbinger of better days, but the oil-rich country is now facing growing frustration over unemployment, alleged corruption, political mismanagement and rising Islamist zeal. [...]

Comment: Something is going right for someone in Kuwait, because there is some evidence that Iraqi oil might be in the process of being pumped over to Kuwait. The man who presents the evidence regarding the oil pipe line also has something interesting to say about 9/11: . "They spent months, maybe years, planning this thing [9/11 terrorist attacks]," he says. "But it had to come down to a last-second call, because there was a hurricane coming up the coast and a cold front moving out.

"Think about it: September is the worst month in the world to be planning anything in the air on the East Coast, because you're at the height of hurricane season. In fact, climatologically speaking, Sept. 3 is the worst day of the entire year to plan a flight. And yet, you had this day where the weather was perfect, from Maine all the way down to Washington. You can't plan that far out and hope you get lucky.

"What I'm saying is, I think they had a weather guy on their team to help set it up."

Revealed: the truth behind the 45-minute warning  

Exclusive: By Neil Mackay
The Sunday Herald
 
DELIBERATELY misrepresented intelligence at least 10 years old was used by the British government to claim that Iraq could deploy chemical weapons in just 45 minutes.

'We are talking about information relating to the first Gulf war and afterwards,' a senior intelligence source said. 'We told the government when this information was handed over that it was old and they ignored that fact,' he added.

The 45-minute claim relates to information about Iraqi missile systems, including Scuds. The source added: 'These were mobile missiles. A good Iraqi team would take about 20 minutes to get them active, an average team would take 45 minutes -- that is where the government claim comes from.

'The government elected to use this to say Saddam Hussein could deploy chemical weapons in 45 minutes. But it's total rubbish. Saddam's capabilities were destroyed. [...]

Supreme Court bars prosecution of old sex crimes

By DAVID KRAVETS

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - An estimated 800 California child molesters will have their convictions overturned or their pending cases dropped following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring states from retroactively erasing statutes of limitations, the state's top prosecutor says.

The Supreme Court on a 5-4 vote Thursday overturned the nation's only law designed to ensnare molesters who committed their crimes decades ago. [...]

LSU Professor Accused Of Mailing Stalking Letters To Herself

Probe Pulled Officers Off Serial Killings Case, Police Chief Says

BATON ROUGE, La. -- A professor at Louisiana State University has been accused of sending threatening letters to herself and pulling police away from the serial killer investigation. [...]

In the past year, at least two other Baton Rouge women have been accused of making false reports during the investigation into serial killings.

How Ramsey Clark Labored to Protect Nazi Émigrés ...and he's still doing it

By Jared Israel and Nico Varkevisser
Emperor's Clothes

[...]Clark is generally described as a Left wing attorney. He has helped redefine this concept to include defending people once considered enemies of the Left: violent anti-Semites of various varieties.

In this article, we examine the specific case of the former Nazi concentration camp boss, Karl Linnas. We see that in the late 1980s, Ramsey Clark championed Linnas, defending him against deportation, flying to his deathbed in Leningrad and later using his case to appeal for compassion for East European Nazis. In making this appeal, Clark outdid the Reagan administration official, Pat Buchanan, who, in the 1980s, was a ferocious defender of East European Nazis. [...]

The Democratic Hopefuls and Bush: You Call This an Alternative?

By ALAN MAASS
Counterpunch.org
June 28, 2003

How can George Bush be stopped? Many people among the millions who oppose Bush's wars abroad and at home are asking that question. And even though Election Day is more than 16 months away, a good number have already pinned their hopes on the 2004 presidential vote.

The urgency about stopping Bush is certainly justified. Since stealing the White House in 2000, he has carried out a hard-line right-wing agenda across the board--from the warmongering Bush Doctrine for expanding U.S. power overseas, to his take-no-prisoners domestic policies deliberately aimed at making corporations more powerful and the rich richer.

Even more frightening to those who oppose this agenda is the way that Bush is already considered--according to the conventional wisdom in Washington anyway--the odds-on favorite in 2004. Since the September 11 attacks two years ago, Bush's job approval rating has remained consistently high compared to past presidents. And with a series of mega-fundraisers in the coming months, the Bush reelection drive is already on the verge of breaking the campaign cash records it set last time around.

So it's little wonder that the 2004 election was, for example, an underlying issue at the United for Peace and Justice national conference of antiwar activists in Chicago in early June. Beating Bush at the ballot box was an even more explicit theme a few days earlier, at the Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C., organized by the liberal Campaign for America's Future.

In contrast to much smaller gatherings previously, this year's Take Back America conference drew some 1,600 people--and not only staffers for unions, liberal groups and the Democratic Party, but grassroots activists, including from the antiwar movement.

This was another symptom of the anger with the Bush administration--and the desire to do something about it. But what should be done? And can the Democrats be trusted to do it?

* * *

AFTER ALL, one major reason that the Bush administration has gotten away with so much has been the cowardly behavior of the Democrats. Especially since September 11, but even before, the Democratic leadership in Washington has caved again and again to the White House, providing Republicans with an often comfortable margin of victory on the resolution authorizing war on Iraq, the USA PATRIOT Act, the misnamed "partial-birth" abortion ban, and both of Bush's tax cut giveaways to the rich, to name just a few examples.

At one level, this is nothing new. The Democratic Party's claim to represent ordinary people has always hidden a different reality. In any election, the Democrat is likely to be to the left of the Republican. But the differences between the two, important though they may be, are really quite small compared to what they share--an agenda that puts the interests of big business first, even if the two parties sometimes disagree about how.

Ultimately, the Democrats are not a party that represents the interests of working people. They represent big business. Whenever its preferred choice, the Republicans, becomes too discredited to win elections, Corporate America can count on the Democrats, waiting in the wings with predictable and non-threatening policies.

This is ultimately why the Democrats--to the great frustration of many of their most dedicated supporters--usually give up ground to the Republicans, and not the other way around. But despite this record, the same appeal is made at every election--that while the Democrats may not be perfect, at least they are the "lesser of two evils."

In the 2000 election, discontent with this Republican and Democratic "duopoly" over national politics produced the most successful left-wing challenge in half a century--the Green Party presidential campaign of Ralph Nader, who won nearly 3 percent of the vote nationwide. Despite the abuse he took from Democrats for supposedly throwing the election to Bush--actually, Al Gore has only himself to blame for the miserable campaign he ran in an election that was his to lose--Nader was a lightning rod for millions of people fed up with a system that offers so little choice.

The 2004 election will shape up very differently. Already, many Nader supporters--even members of the Green Party itself--are talking about supporting the Democratic candidate in order to defeat Bush. [...]

THE MESSAGE is clear: Any Democrat is better than Bush. But is this true? [...]

Comment: At higher levels, the issue of Democrat versus Republican is irrelevant. Americans are simply presented with the illusion of choice. Nothing in politics happens by accident. Does it really matter if Bush is reelected or if someone like Howard Dean wins? You don't get to be the president of the United States by being a servant of the people - you get there by serving self to the extreme. Each candidate will tell the people what he/she thinks they want to hear. And if any candidate is actually honest and ready and willing to truly help Americans and the U.S., they are dealt with swiftly and harshly.

Poll finds public want Blair to step down

19:25 Saturday 28th June 2003

The time has come for Tony Blair to stand down, according to a poll.

Most voters say Mr Blair is no longer trustworthy, the Mori survey showed.

A majority say his record on health, crime, transport and asylum-seekers is poor. Half say he is doing a good job as Prime Minister in difficult circumstances.

But more, 53%, say he has run out of ideas and just 45% say he should stay on while 46% want him to quit. [...]

Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside Man

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Counterpunch.org
June 28, 2003

Steven Griles is finally on the run. Griles is Interior Gale Norton's top lieutenant, the man who holds the keys to the nation's oil and mineral reserves. For the past two years, he's used those keys to unlock nearly every legal barrier to exploitation, opening the public lands to a carnival of corporate plunder. He became the toast of Texas. But now Griles is hiding out from reporters and congressional investigators after accounts of his ongoing sleazy relationships with his former associates in big oil have begun to ooze out into the open.

Griles's recent misfortunes are scarcely a surprise. From the time he took his oath of office, Griles was a congressional investigation waiting to happen. The former coal industry flack was one of Bush's most outrageous appointments, an arrogant booster of the very energy cartel he was meant to regulate. His track record could not be given even the slightest green gloss. A veteran of the Reagan administration, Griles schemed closely with disgraced Interior Secretary James Watt to open the public lands of the West to unfettered access by oil and mining companies, many of whom funded Watt's strange outpost of divinely-inspired environmental exploitation, the Mountain States Legal Center.

As Deputy Director of Surface Mining, Griles gutted strip-mining regulations and was a relentless booster of the oil-shale scheme, one of the most outlandish giveaways and environmental blunders of the last century. He also pushed to overturn the popular moratorium on off shore oil drilling on the Pacific Coast, a move of such extreme zealotry in the service of big oil that it even caught Reagan off guard.

After leaving public office, Griles quickly cashed in on his iniquitous tenure in government by launching a DC lobbying firm called J. Stephen Griles and Associations. He soon drummed up a list of clients including Arch Coal, the American Gas Association, National Mining Association, Occidental Petroleum, Pittston Coal and more than 40 other gas, mining and energy concerns, big and small, foreign and domestic.

Then Griles was tapped as Norton's chief deputy. After contentious senate hearings that exposed his various and lucrative entanglements with the oil and gas industry, Griles was finally confirmed to office on July 7, 2001. He later signed two separate statements agreeing to recuse himself from direct involvement any Interior Deparment matters that might involve his former clients. He has since flouted both of those agreements, as disclosed by his own calendar of meetings, liberated through a Freedom of Information Act filing made by Friends of the Earth.

As the calendar and meeting notes reveal, Griles has used the cover of the 9/11 attacks and the war on Iraq to advance his wholesale looting of the public domain for the benefit of some of his former clients and business cronies. He has pushed rollbacks in environmental standards for air and water; advocated increased oil and gas drilling on public lands; tried to exempt the oil industry from royalty payments; and sought to create new loopholes in regulations governing stripmining. [...]

Big Sites Hoard Links

Technology Research News
June 23, 2003

The Internet is scale-free, meaning it is made up of a few nodes, or servers, that have many links, and many nodes with only a few links. It is also a small-world network—you can get to any node via only a few links among adjoining nodes.

University of London researchers have uncovered another clue about the Internet's structure—the rich-club phenomenon. Large, well-connected nodes have more links to each other than to smaller nodes, and smaller nodes have more links to the larger nodes than to each other.

The researchers found that 27 percent of connections are among the largest five percent of nodes, 60 percent connect the remaining 95 percent to the largest five percent, and only 13 percent of connections are between nodes not in the top five percent.

The findings suggest that the Internet is more dependent on the larger nodes than previously thought, which makes it more vulnerable to a targeted attack, according to the researchers.

The findings could contribute to better strategies for optimizing network traffic flow, network reliability and security, and building network topology simulators; it could be applied to practical systems into three years, according to the researchers.

UCSD scientist, teacher was expert on infectious diseases

By Cheryl Clark
STAFF WRITER
June 26, 2003

Dr. Leland Rickman of UCSD, an expert in infectious disease who helped the county prepare to fight bioterrorism after Sept. 11, died Tuesday while on a teaching mission in southern Africa...

Physicians within UCSD and in private practice said he was especially effective during the tense times after Sept. 11, 2001, as San Diego County officials grappled with how to respond to a possible attack of anthrax, sarin gas, smallpox or other bioterrorism threat.

With other infectious disease experts, Dr. Rickman toured the county, talking to medical and citizen groups about how to distinguish symptoms of biological agents from ordinary illnesses such as the flu.

He was an author and the editor of a report on bioterrorism by the Group to Eradicate Resistant Micro-organisms (GERM) that was sponsored by the San Diego County Medical Society and distributed to all local health care providers.

Dr. Rickman, who had done much research with pox viruses, helped counsel health workers reluctant to be vaccinated for smallpox, several colleagues recalled.

Dr. Joshua Fierer, UCSD's chief of infectious disease, said Dr. Rickman "loved to study the symptoms of people coming back from exotic places, figuring out where they had been and what they might have been exposed to."...

Dr. Rickman also had a penchant for bad puns, photography and funny neckties.

"He could make puns about anything, and they were just atrocious," said Dr. Sharon Reed, UCSD professor of pathology and medicine. "And he had an impish sense of humor, wearing ties covered with (microscope images of) bacteria."

Comment from a QFS member: Is that just too much of a coincidence that those infectious disease scientists died just before the outbreak of SARS? Another famous infectious disease scientist died last week. Cause of death is unclear. It seems that there is more to come: either more fear- generating trial runs, which is what SARS seems to be - or something more serious.

Bioweapon labs will bring threat of lethal viruses to urban America

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
29 June 2003

A network of high-security laboratories for storing and investigating some of the most lethal viruses known to mankind is being built across the US, leaving communities in uproar. They not only fear the risk of the viruses escaping, but also contend that the programme, part of the $6bn (£3.5bn) Project BioShield, is a stunning case of overkill. For none of the germs to be studied is related to bioweaponry...

This is not just a matter of nimbyism. The protesters cannot understand why they should risk exposure to the tiny clutch of diseases requiring the construction of maximum-security "level 4" biosafety facilities - there are just five of them - when none has any known practical utility as a guerrilla weapon. The diseases the national security people are most worried about - anthrax, smallpox and plague - are either level 2 or level 3, and plenty of laboratories at those levels exist already.

"There is no benefit to our community. Not a single one," said Samantha McCarthy, who is leading efforts against the Davis biolab.

In Davis, in particular, there are serious security concerns. This is a university that managed to spread major contamination in a 1950s experiment to irradiate beavers. The clean-up is still going on. In February, a rhesus monkey used in disease experiments mysteriously disappeared from campus and has never been found. Now, the university is proposing to contract out security for the new biolab to Los Alamos, the nuclear laboratory in New Mexico embroiled in numerous security lapses - most recently when it lost what it called a "small" amount of low-grade plutonium.

Comment: Now, you could explain this by human greed; you could explain this by human competition among researchers ("I want one, too"); you could explain this as another peg in the campaign to impose a culture of fear in the US. You could also see it as part of a plan to eliminate 90% of the human population...but that would be too outlandish, wouldn't it?

South Africans rape children as cure for Aids

David Beresford in Nelspruit
Sunday June 29, 2003
The Observer

Nelspruit, the provincial capital of Mpumalanga, previously known as Eastern Transvaal, is running out of space for graves. Cemeteries expected to last another 50 years are now full. The announcement, another marker in a growing pandemic, comes as a new parliamentary report has condemned as lamentable the health facilities in one of the world's epicentres of Aids.

An estimated 31 per cent of Nelpruit's population of 600,000 is infected. Now the city has another problem, a dramatic increase in child rape caused by the myth that sex with a virgin cures HIV.

Until 2000 most rape victims were adults. but there was an abrupt turn-around from 2001, when 65 to 70 per cent of victims were children, some as young as two weeks old. The city seems helpless in the face of its woes. The ANC's provincial Health Minister, Sibongile Manana, has been placed under 'curatorship' - the Minister of Housing and the Minister of Public Works are going to help her do her job...

Not many are being saved from the dying. South Africa's Constitutional Court has ordered the authorities to administer anti-retrovirals to pregnant mothers and their newborns to block transmission, but the syrup by which the drugs are administered is not available in Mpumalanga.

Rape victims get anti-retrovirals immediately after an attack, but if they are found to be HIV-positive treatment stops. Barbara Kenyon, who runs a counselling service for rape and HIV/Aids victims, says they have seen an extraordinary turnaround in the incidence of rape.

She attributes this to the myth that HIV/Aids sufferers can be cured if they have sex with a virgin. Kenyon recalls how a senior policeman who recently overheard her rebutting the widespread belief interrupted her. 'But it does!' he said.

Doctors Call For End to Government Tax Breaks for Tobacco Promotions

Thursday, June 26, 2003

(Ottawa) - Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada is calling on the Canadian government to end its practice of allowing tobacco companies to write-off the costs of advertising and promoting cigarettes against their corporate income taxes.

"The government gives over $100 million each year to Big Tobacco in the form of tax breaks for advertising expenses," explained PSC president, Dr. Atul Kapur. "This tax write-off is almost double what the federal government spends on all programs to discourage smoking, or to help smokers quit."

The amount that tobacco companies spend on advertising and promotion was, until recently, a secret closely guarded by the companies. As of early 200, tobacco companies have been required to report all promotional expenditures to Health Canada. The amounts reported were not made public until earlier this month, when a Member of Parliament, Svend Robinson, was able to request the information as a reply to a parliamentary "question on the Order Paper."

"The amount spent by multinational tobacco companies to sell cigarettes in Canada is quite staggering," said Dr. Kapur. "In 2002, they spent over $300 million, even though Parliament has twice passed laws which ban most forms of tobacco advertising."...

Doctors seek smoking ban in public

By Paul Stokes
(Filed: 28/06/2003)
The Dialy Telegraph

People may be banned from lighting cigarettes and pipes in public places next year in an English region where one in three adults is a regular smoker.

Health officials have applied for £5 million in funding to help set up a new Office for Tobacco Control in the North East.

It could mean pubs, clubs and restaurants becoming smoking-free in places such as Newcastle and Sunderland, where tobacco-related health problems are worse than other parts of the country.

The introduction of restrictions similar to those imposed in California 15 years ago is being proposed by the Northumberland, Tyne and Wear Strategic Health Authority...

Since the law banning smoking in public places was passed in California, smoking has been cut by 50 per cent compared to 20 per cent in the rest of the United States.

Dr Milne said there would be no legislative powers in Britain to impose bans initially but believed that eventually the public may demand it...

NASA Hopes Weather Holds for Mars Launch

Sat June 28, 2003 05:11 PM ET
By Broward Liston

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - NASA kept a careful watch on the sky on Saturday, hoping weather would not spoil the night launch of a robotic explorer destined for Mars and a search for long vanished water sources on the Red Planet.

Weather forecasters said there was a 40 percent chance that showers or storm clouds could delay launch of the Delta 2 rocket carrying the second of two Mars Exploration Rovers. They are golf-cart sized robots built to spend at least three months exploring the Martian surface...

They are expected to arrive in early January.

On Earth, life exists wherever natural sources of water are found, which accounts for the space agency's keen interest in ancient sources of Martian water.

NASA does not expect the rovers to find life. But if the robots succeed, scientists will know if water that boiled away eons ago -- when Mars was catastrophically stripped of its atmosphere -- survived long enough for life to generate...

Comment: Notice the line about Mars losing its atmosphere "catastrophically". Gee, wonder how that might happen? They sure don't talk about it, do they? Think it could happen here? Naw!

From "Hoagland, Hyperdimensionality, Space and Time, and Assorted Strange Connections" :

Q: (L) Was the story of Noah's flood the story of the breaking up of Atlantis?
A: Yes. But symbolic.
Q: (L) How many people were on the planet at that time?
A: 6 billion.
Q: (L) Out of this six billion people, how many survived?
A: 119 million.
Q: (L) Was Noah's flood caused by the close passage of another celestial body?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Which body was that?
A: Martek.
Q: (L) Do we know this body in our solar system now?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) What name?
A: Mars.
Q: (L) Was Martek an inhabited planet at that time?
A: No.
Q: (L) Did it have water or other features?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) When it passed close to the earth did it, in fact, overload our planet with water we did not have prior to that time?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Did we, prior to that time, have a water-vapor canopy surrounding our planet?
A: Yes.

[...]

Q: (L) The remark was made that the planet earth, prior to its interaction with Martek, had a water vapor canopy. How was this water vapor canopy suspended?
A: The water vapor canopy was a natural element of the particular composition of your atmosphere at that particular measure point in space/time.
Q: (L) Was the gravity level the same as what it is now?
A: It was somewhat different. But not perceptible to you. That difference is part of the explanation of why that vapor canopy remained suspended.
Q: (L) Did that condition prior to the flood of Noah, the altered gravitational state as well as the water vapor canopy, was that condition more conducive to extended life spans than the conditions that exist on the planet now?
A: Not only those things but all the other conditions that existed on the planet at that particular point in space/time were more conducive to longer life spans. And, by the way, Noah is a symbolic message rather than an historical event.
Q: (L) Do you mean a historical event in the terms of Noah being in an ark or historical event in terms of the flood?
A: First of all, there was no Noah. Secondly there was no actual real flood as depicted in that story. Thirdly, the whole story was a symbolic message as opposed to an actual event.
Q: (L) What did actually occur and what does the symbolism have to tell us?
A: It is a very broad representation. It simply means that there was a cataclysmic event that did envelop the whole planet at that time and that those that were ready to experience that as part of their soul development without exiting the body, were warned ahead of time. But not by trying to manipulate events, but by simply allowing faith to let them acquire knowledge and being naturally drawn into position to experience what they needed to experience to survive the event.
Q: (L) At that time was Martek drawn close to the earth and did it have water on its surface which the earth then robbed or borrowed?
A: That is very close to being the case. It is far more complicated than that so we will leave that at this time.
Q: (L) How many years ago did the flood of Noah occur?
A: 12656.
Q: (L) What land did this symbolic Noah live in, what continent?
A: Atlantis.
Q: (L) Where did the majority of the symbolic 'Noahs' go to after the receding of the waters?
A: Egypt. Americas. Reference: Inca. Aztec. Maya. Hopi Tribe. Pima tribe.
Q: (L) What caused Martek to pass close to the earth at that time since that was many thousands of years before the Venus interaction?
A: Planetary alignment gravitational aberration related to Venus.
Q: (L) So, there was a planetary line-up that caused Mars to be pulled out of its orbit?
A: Yes.

[...]

Q: (L) What are Mars' moons?
A: Disguised bases.
Q: (L) Who built them?
A: Who else? The Lizzies.

From "Adventures with Cassiopaea," Part 30:

08-11-97

Q: (L) OK, what's the scoop on this Mars Rock? [...] Is this rock from Mars?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) How long have they known that rocks from Mars are on the planet?
A: 12 years.
Q:(T) About the same length of time it took them to analyze the soil samples that they got from Mariner probes. (L) OK, Why all of a sudden are they revealing, or releasing this information about this Mars Rock in such a big and manipulative way? (T) You just said it!
A: You have already figured it out yourselves.
Q: [...] (L) Well, OK, but is this Mars Rock, and is this opening of the doors concept, is this leading up to some definite, overt interaction with aliens?
A: Gradually. [...] Notice how you heard nothing about the Mars Probes until the rock
announcement?
Q: (T) This is the new stuff? [...]
A: The excavation robot spacecraft. One Probe is already on its way, another to follow. No further explanation about "loss" of Mars Explorer.
Q: (L) What did happen to the Mars Explorer?
A: Blacked out. You see, 'Too risky.' And too much too soon, due to pressure from Hoagland and others.
Q: (T) My own opinion is that they've already been there, and they know what's there.
A: No. Microbes are easier to swallow than humans in togas!
[...]
Q: (T) OK, you just mentioned that somebody from this planet already launched a Mars Probe. A new Mars Probe, that no one in public knows about. Because it's never been talked about. So, it's a secret probe. Who does it belong to?
A: Was secret US government.
[...]
Q: (T) What is the purpose of these probes?
A: Excavation to display living organisms.
Q: (T) Display? (L) Yes, for public consumption. In other words, not only do we have a rock now, that shows evidence that there was... (T) Oh, display, as when they find it and dig it up, they're going to show it on camera! (L) Yes! (T) Connie Kourek will interview it! (L) Right! (F) First they said they found no evidence, then they said it was inconclusive... Now, who the hell knows what they found! In revealing things, we'll start with fossilized life, and then move on... (L) So, they're going to display the discovery of living organisms on Mars to take the next step to acclimate...
A: Yes.
Q: (L) So, in other words, this process is going to be something of an ongoing thing, and that all of these people who are cranking around about, you know, alien landings...
A: No faces, though.
Q: (L) There's not going to be any 'Faces On Mars?' They are not going to show us...
A: Won't be revealed, what do you think happened with Mars Explorer?
Q: (L) Well, what did happen with the Mars Explorer? (T) Now, now, now, let me...
A: Hoagland forced their hand.
Q: (T) What do we think happened to the Mars Explorer? I think they switched channels. They just moved it from one communication post to another, and it's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing. And they did it in such a way, that the NASA people really didn't know what happened, so that when they were asked, they could say, 'We don’t know what happened to it!' Because they really don't know what happened! (L) When we're talking about attack, as we were before, as in plane crashes, the Olympics, all these different things - this dealing with these Mars Explorers - is all this stuff, or most of this stuff, coming from the 4th density manipulations of human minds, rather than...
A: Yes.
Q: (L)... rather than actual, physical entry [into our plane of existence] and doing of deeds? Is that it?
A: Yes.
[...]
Q: (T) I have a question. They're going to display live organisms, like, how did they put that 'Living organisms'? How big are these living organisms going to be? How advanced?
A: Teeny-tiny.
Q: (T) So, we're still talking about microscopic organisms here?
A: Yes.
Q: (J) So, they won't wave at us!
A: But these will be alive. Can't you see the progression here? "Don't
want to scare Grandma Sally Bible Thumper/Stockmarket Investor!"

And again there is a reference to Economics as the means of control. But, getting back to Alternative 3, the next purported fact: "The earth is dying. We have polluted it beyond repair. The increasing 'greenhouse effect' will cause the polar ice caps and glaciers to melt and flood the Earth."

It is an obvious fact that there is most definitely something going on in terms of weather. What we see here is the effort to divert attention away from hyperdimensional manipulations. At the same time, what this manipulates us to feel is that we are in deep doo doo and we need Big Brother to haul us out of the soup.

What seems to me to be true about this line of thinking is that it is a layer of "disinformation" that has been promulgated even to many of the outer circle of the "insiders" in order to induce them to put forth effort to deal with the human population issues as well as the "survival" of the elite. How better to induce scientists to work on such projects than to convince them that the future of the planet depends on it? This means that they will be busy building shelters, seeking technology to "transcend" the problem, and just generally creating an infrastructure of control that they THINK is designed to solve this problem, but which is actually intended for something else altogether.

One of the primary problems of dealing with a large human population in terms such as the above seems to be Economics and most particularly Game Theory. And this brings us to John Forbes Nash and his time at Princeton which is where he came up with his ideas about "Game Theory." Keep in mind, of course, what we discussed in a previous chapter about the "economics" of Stockholm Syndrome - it's a lot more energy efficient to get the victim to like his captivity and even to help you to use and abuse him or her. It's all a matter of Economics.

The Bubble That Broke The World

by Antal E. Fekete
Professor Emeritus, Memorial University of Newfoundland
June 25, 2003

[...] Bond speculators are sitting on a huge pyramid of paper profits they have accumulated as short term rates of interest rates were pushed down from over 20 percent in 1980 to a little over 1 percent in 2003. A measure of the pyramid is the Derivative Bubble, now $140 trillion strong, consisting mostly of bets that interest rates will fall further. We are witnessing the biggest bull market ever, in anything, anywhere, at any time in all history. There has never been a bubble of that size and ferocity before. Tulipomania, the South Sea Bubble, the Mississippi Bubble, the bubble of the Roaring Twenties all pale in comparison.

Lately, speculators have been itching to cash in on their huge winnings, especially in view of the fact that foreign private and official holders appear poised to reduce their holdings of U.S. Treasury securities. Greenspan knows that a bubble so big as this cannot be safely deflated. It could trigger hyperinflation. So he has recourse to a desperate gamble: he is bribing the bond speculators. As the barker at the fair, he is crying to them: "Hang on! The bond bull is far from getting tired! Don’t get out, the fun has just started! Your next bet is on the house! Profits are free for the taking! No risks involved!"

Surely this is an unprecedented sight: the central banker bribing the speculators with promises of untold riches free for the taking. Nothing like this has ever happened in history before, and probably never will. The central banker tips you off to place your bet that the bond price will go up, and, bingo! You have won the jackpot.

Firms falling like flies in autumn

It sounds crazy but is true nevertheless. All this would be very comical if there wasn’t a sad part to it. The Greenspan announcement was designed to prevent prices from weakening and the stock market from collapsing. Yet its effect will in all likelihood be highly deflationary. Falling interest rates will ratchet down prices, and falling prices will ratchet down interest rates even more. As prices fall, the Fed raises the ante and buys more bonds, giving away more free gifts to the speculators. Both prices and interest rates fall into the abyss, and the economy is plunged into deep depression. The capital structure of productive enterprise is fatally weakened. Firms fall like flies in autumn. There is great pressure to cut debt and inventory. Cutting debt lowers interest rates, and cutting inventory lowers prices more. Those firms that can’t do it fast enough are mercilessly forced into liquidation. There is growing unemployment, and falling demand will kick prices down further. Even some of the healthiest firms succumb as they could not collect receivables from their fallen brethren...

ABC in Australia wants your UFO stories

Comment: Of the "big three" networks, ABC (owned by Disney) is the most willing to post UFO related stories, such as the little flap that happened in New Jersey last year. Something strange is afoot on this little planet. Two days ago the Signs team reported that Bush wants funding for "Space Aliens", and Nasa plans on "putting the 'astro' in astrobiology."

Then we have disinfo hack, Whitley "I never met a space alien I didn't like" Streiber, babbling on about contacting all those aliens through group meditations before their mass decent in July and August. He spouts meaningless platitudes for the faithful like, "What we do with the negative energy of those who either want to control contact or prevent it is very much up to us. But remember, energy is energy, whether negative or positive." If they don't happen to arrive as promised he may very well blame that negative energy. Perhaps these individuals, before jumping on the contact the aliens bandwagon, should read John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies, and consider if this is the kind of thing they want to build a bridge to their reality. (Forget the movie which only has a vague relation to the book.)

The Portland Alien Museum, which opened last week in a converted home, is drawing crowds. It features a 3-D alien roller-coaster film and evidence from alleged extraterrestrial encounters. While the masses ponder on these things while zipping about in a virtual roller coaster as a distraction from their weary lives, it sounds like someone is getting nervous in the upper echelons. As Laura has stated, "One thing is clear: the UFO/Alien issue is NOT under the control of the military - or anybody else. But that they continue to debunk and cover it up - in the face of its violations of their own airspace - suggests to us again the analogy of arrogant and powerful Masters of Reality, aided and abetted by their military and intelligence organization servants who, all the while they are obeying the powerful overlords, seek to keep everything quiet while they try desperately to discover the secrets of power so as to arrogate it to themselves. And it seems evident that, in the present time, the game is afoot in the citadels of Power and Secrets. Something is happening and the servants of the alien masters are running scared. They are trying to cement controls, to solidify their power base, because Something Wicked This Way Comes."

Volcanic hot zone seethes five km beneath Arctic ice

Margaret Munro
CanWest News Service
Thursday, June 26, 2003

Scientists have discovered a remarkable hot zone beneath the Arctic ice, where the Earth's thick, rocky crust has come apart at the seams and lava and scalding water spew out of volcanoes and hot vents.

An international research team spent two months dangling probes and dredging gear off icebreakers in the high Arctic to get a close look at the "spreading" ridge. It stretches 1,800 kilometres along the seafloor from Greenland to Siberia, most of it in international waters.

The scientists retrieved tonnes of rock, including chunks of "black smokers" created as hot, mineral-rich water gushed out of the seafloor, lava tubes from volcanoes and rare samples of rock from deep inside the Earth.

The researchers describe the scientific treasure fished from the deep in the journal Nature today.

They have also produced the most detailed map yet of the zone, called the Gakkel Ridge.

The ridge is about five kilometres beneath the Arctic ice and is the most remote and deepest spreading ridge on the planet.

Such ridges, which are also found in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, form when hot rock from inside the Earth wells up between the 100-kilometre-thick crustal plates that cover the planet.

"The Earth is pulled apart at these ridges and material from the interior comes up," says Prof. Peter Michael of the University of Tulsa, one of the expedition's chief scientists.

The Gakkel Ridge has proved unexpectedly active. At least 20 volcanoes rise out of the ridge, and one erupted as recently as July 1998, Michael says. The largest rises about two kilometres off the sea floor...

Michael says the Arctic vents are so isolated they likely harbour life that is different from the tube worms, clams and other creatures that inhabit other deep-sea vents.

But Michael, a geoscientist, is most intrigued by the exposed mantle rock they discovered. Mantle is "white-hot" rock that rises from as deep as 2,900 kilometres inside the Earth. Normally, mantel rock is covered by magma and crustal rock, but on the Gakkel Ridge it is exposed in a canyon about 100 kilometres long and two kilometres wide...

Comment:

Feb 27, 1997

Q: (T) Is the Earth expanding? That's just putting it bluntly, but,
is the Earth expanding, how did you put that? (Ark) Yes, that's the
theory: the idea is that the continents move away because the Earth
is expanding, and this is much faster than you know, than geologists
were thinking.
A: Continental "drift" is caused by the continual though variable,
propelling of gases from the interior to the surface, mainly at
points of magnetic significance.
Q: (J) What causes the change in the axis?
A: By slow down of rotation. Earth alternately heats up and cools
down in interior

Outrage as Oxford bans student for being Israeli

By Julie Henry, Education Correspondent
(Filed: 29/06/2003)

An Oxford University professor has provoked outrage by rejecting an application from an Israeli PhD student purely because of his nationality.

Andrew Wilkie, the Nuffield professor of pathology and a fellow of Pembroke College, is under investigation after telling Amit Duvshani, a student at Tel Aviv university, that he and many other British academics were not prepared to take on Israelis because of the "gross human rights abuses" he claims that they inflict on Palestinians.

Prof Wilkie made the comments after Mr Duvshani, 26, wrote to him requesting the opportunity to work in Prof Wilkie's laboratory towards a PhD thesis. Mr Duvshani, who is in the last months of a master's degree in molecular biology, included a CV detailing his academic and outside experience, including his mandatory three-year national service in the Israeli army.

In a reply sent by email on June 23, Prof Wilkie wrote: "Thank you for contacting me, but I don't think this would work. I have a huge problem with the way that the Israelis take the moral high ground from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human rights abuses on the Palestinians because they [the Palestinians] wish to live in their own country.

"I am sure that you are perfectly nice at a personal level, but no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army. As you may be aware, I am not the only UK scientist with these views but I'm sure you will find another lab if you look around."...

A series of attempts have been made to isolate Israeli scholars in protest at their country's operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In Britain, calls for an academic boycott have been led by Steven Rose, an Open University professor.

Last year the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology was forced to hold an inquiry after The Sunday Telegraph revealed that Mona Baker, a professor, had sacked two Israeli academics from the editorial boards of two journals because of their nationality.

A Umist inquiry found that Prof Baker had not acted improperly under its rules because the journals she owns were not connected to the university.

Was Australian ABC Cameraman involved with the CIA?

When a suicide bomb in Iraq killed ABC cameraman Paul Moran, Australians were shocked. Then stories started to circulate about the journalist's CIA links. Patrick Carlyon goes in search of the truth.

[...] At first, the tributes for Moran were simple enough. A generous spirit had been lost. The grieving family at home spoke of the wife and newborn daughter in Paris. Moran's funeral in Adelaide drew 600, including the close-knit group of friends the cameraman had known since childhood. Tales surfaced of Moran clowning around as Humphrey B. Bear when the usual Humphrey was ill, of him wooing his wife with brussels sprouts and describing his newborn daughter, Tara, as his "favourite hobby". He was the unwitting victim of random murder. Australia's sole death in the Iraqi war. A nice guy killed by a suicide bomber. This is what the tributes said.

[...] Two close friends and two of Moran's brothers sat down with an Adelaide journalist the day after the funeral. They drank coffee and reminisced about their friend the altar boy, the sea scout, the livewire. The journalist was inquiring of the cameraman's work in northern Iraq when one of the friends mentioned that Moran worked for a "shadowy" company. Shadowy company, wondered the journalist. Whatever could you mean?

The friend mentioned a name: the Rendon Group. He talked of Moran's involvement in helping an Iraqi defector escape and Moran's work with the INC. Moran, he said, had helped mobilise a popular uprising against Saddam Hussein's regime and trained dissidents in the use of hidden cameras. There were the renowned "Paul Moran channels" – he seemed able to contact important people with little bother – and the "James Bond lifestyle". In short, Moran had spent a decade, on and off, trying to destabilise Saddam Hussein's regime for a company hired by both the CIA and Pentagon...

Moran worked for Rendon on and off during the 1990s. According to Zaab Sethna, an official spokesman for the INC, who worked alongside Moran for years, this work included camera and production work in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, London and Kosovo, but no undercover work...

The Rendon Group helped set up the INC in 1991, and organised an atrocity exhibition to travel around Europe. According to Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession, by Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, the idea was that Iraqi exiles would identify themselves in the exhibition's sign-in book for possible recruiting by the CIA. In Washington, radio skits lampooning Hussein were recorded for broadcasting to the Middle East.

As the authors point out, such propaganda would do little to overthrow Hussein. But, in a time of emerging reports on the effects of United Nations sanctions on Iraq, images of Hussein's brutality would help balance scenes of starving Iraqi babies. The INC was, and continues to be, headed by a former banker, Ahmad Chalabi, a once-exiled millionaire snared in allegations of embezzlement after his Jordanian bank collapsed. Most of the $US23m the INC spent in its first year was funded by the CIA through the Rendon Group...

Chicken tied to helium balloons up for adoption

Associated Press
16:07 Friday 27th June 2003

A chicken that was strapped to 100 helium balloons and sent skyward has received scores of offers of a new home.

Amelia's journey was halted by power lines, and she was finally rescued after a police marksman in San Francisco shot the balloons with a pellet gun.

Authorities say they have yet to identify the prankster, who was apparently imitating a local television advertisement, which has since been pulled.

Staff at a city animal shelter where Amelia is now recovering say she will make a great pet.

Kat Brown, deputy director of the shelter, said: "This is a great chicken, a friendly chicken, a chicken that is ready for a relationship."

Comment: It is heartwarming that while Americans are killing Iraqi civilians, poisoning Iraqi children with depleted uranium, cancelling their elections and siphoning their oil off to Kuwait, they can still dig deep into their hearts and save a chicken...

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