New Article!
Mysterious Smoke Ring or When is a Cloud not a Cloud?

Laura has also updated yesterday's article with photos:
Ross Institute: COINTELPRO or Agent of Mossad?

On this day in 1969

United States Congress passed the ET law, part 1211 of the Aeronautics and Space Federal Guidelines. It gave NASA the ability to indefinitely quarantine, fine $5000, and/or jail for one year any person thought to have been exposed, even indirectly, to extraterrestrial artifacts, environments or life forms. It seems to have been repealed in 1991, so Bush is safe from prosecution - at least from this law.

The Educational System Was Designed to Keep Us Uneducated and Docile

thememoryhole.org

[...] By the turn of the century, America's new educrats were pushing a new form of schooling with a new mission (and it wasn't to teach). The famous philosopher and educator John Dewey wrote in 1897:

Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth.

In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly—the future Dean of Education at Stanford—wrote that schools should be factories

"in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

The next year, the Rockefeller Education Board—which funded the creation of numerous public schools—issued a statement which read in part:

In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.

At the same time, William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906, wrote:
Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.

In that same book, The Philosophy of Education , Harris also revealed:

The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places.... It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.

Several years later, President Woodrow Wilson would echo these sentiments in a speech to businessmen:

We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.

Writes Gatto: "Another major architect of standardized testing, H.H. Goddard, said in his book Human Efficiency (1920) that government schooling was about

'the perfect organization of the hive.'"

While President of Harvard from 1933 to 1953, James Bryant Conant wrote that the change to a forced, rigid, potential-destroying educational system had been demanded by "certain industrialists and the innovative who were altering the nature of the industrial process."

In other words, the captains of industry and government explicitly wanted an educational system that would maintain social order by teaching us just enough to get by but not enough so that we could think for ourselves, question the sociopolitical order, or communicate articulately. We were to become good worker-drones, with a razor-thin slice of the population—mainly the children of the captains of industry and government—to rise to the level where they could continue running things.

This was the openly admitted blueprint for the public schooling system, a blueprint which remains unchanged to this day. Although the true reasons behind it aren't often publicly expressed, they're apparently still known within education circles.

Clinical psychologist Bruce E. Levine wrote in 2001:

I once consulted with a teacher of an extremely bright eight-year-old boy labeled with oppositional defiant disorder. I suggested that perhaps the boy didn't have a disease, but was just bored. His teacher, a pleasant woman, agreed with me. However, she added,

"They told us at the state conference that our job is to get them ready for the work world…that the children have to get used to not being stimulated all the time or they will lose their jobs in the real world." [...]

Strong Earthquake Shakes Maldives Islands

Wednesday July 16, 2003 7:49 AM

NEW DELHI, India (AP) - A strong earthquake in the Indian Ocean shook buildings in the Maldives on Wednesday, but there was no immediate report of any damage or casualties in the low-lying island nation, officials said.

The Indian Meteorology Department in New Delhi said the quake's magnitude was 7.6.

A Maldives government official said the epicenter was about 90 miles off nation's the southernmost island.

No unusually high tides have been reported, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Earthquakes in the ocean can cause dangerous high tides or even tsunami in the Maldives, an archipelago of low-lying islands slowly sinking into the ocean, some 745 miles off the southern tip of India.

Asteroid Hunters Discover Near-Earth Object With New Camera

PASADENA, Calif., July 15 (AScribe Newswire) -- NASA astronomers in pursuit of near-Earth asteroids have already made a discovery with the newly installed Quasar Equatorial Survey, or 'Quest,' camera mounted in mid-April on Palomar Mountain's 1.2-meter (48-inch) Oschin telescope.

"The Quest camera is still undergoing commissioning trials," said Dr. Steven Pravdo, project manager for the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking Project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "But that doesn't mean we can't do some real science in the meantime. What we found was a near-Earth asteroid, estimated to be about 250 meters (820 feet) in size."

The detection of the near-Earth object, 2003 NL7, occurred on the evening of July 8. It has been confirmed by follow-up measurements from three other observatories and subsequently certified by the official clearinghouse of the solar system's smaller inhabitants, the Minor Planet Center. While 2003 NL7 has been labeled a near- Earth asteroid, it is considered non-hazardous, with a 2.97-year orbit of the Sun in which its closest approach to Earth's orbit is about 25.1 million kilometers (15.6 million miles). [...]

Rocks in Elma, Washington may be remains of a meteor

Crop circles cause chaos and create questions in Knobel, AR

To say Knobel, AR is a quiet town is an understatement so when crop circles showed up, word spread fast.
The circles appeared June 7th near a small cemetery and got big attention. [...]

Whatever it is, people around the world are talking about Knobel, AR and Tammy Wilson says that's not all bad. "It's better attention than we normally get. It's usually drug busts around here. This is better than that."

Comment: The circles may have already been plowed under but Scientists say crop circles were no prank,

"The fact that under the microscope we can see both spherical and partially ablated particles here, the fact that there were no magnetic particles found in the control soils, and the fact that the concentration in the circle samples was so great, all indicate that this formation was not mechanically-flattened" Talbott reported. [...]

Talbott also noted that interviews with witnesses revealed that energy was emanating upwards to at least 800 feet above the formation. [...]

Moon to eclipse Mars tonight

Lunar conjunction comes as Mars gains brilliant brightness.

16 July 2003
MICHAEL HOPKIN

Mars and Earth will soon be at their closest for 60,000 years.

The Caribbean skies will host a rare spectacle tonight when the Moon eclipses Mars. The event comes as a prelude to the red planet's closest Earth approach in 60,000 years.

Onlookers in Florida, Central America and northwestern South America should see the bright red dot of Mars disappear behind the Moon's much larger disc in the early hours of Thursday morning. [...]

ET alive and on Mars: astronomers

By Leigh Dayton and Steven Swinford
July 15, 2003

NASA found evidence of life on Mars in 1976, but dismissed the findings as impossible, two British astronomers claim. Mars: will we find life?

Now, evidence from missions such as the Mars Global Surveyor suggests that the early observation was correct after all. [...]

Icebound telescope probes the Universe

By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor

The first ever map of the neutrino sky has been produced by a novel telescope encased in ice at the South Pole.

The neutrinos come from deep space
From beneath the Antarctic ice, astronomers have been able to detect neutrinos - particles that trace the most violent events in the cosmos - many of them yet to be explained.

Sensors in the ice have detected the rare and fleeting flashes of light caused when neutrinos interact with the ice.

Researchers say it is just the beginning of opening a new window on the Universe. Past experience has shown them that when they do that they find many surprises.[...]

The Prince of Darkness

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda

When Machiavelli's premise "The end justifies the means" is applied to diplomacy.

In his book The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) claims that a successful end justifies whatever means are used to achieve it, however immoral these may be.

Today, we see a sequel in real-life, modern-day diplomacy, with two leaders, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, claiming that their action in Iraq , however immoral or illegal, was wholly justified because Iraq is a better place today now that Saddam Hussein has been toppled. [...]

Machiavelli and his contemporaries would smile in their graves at the notion that a war was waged based upon allegations stemming from lies built around forged documents and exaggerated and unfounded claims.

Mass murder has been committed, on purpose. This was no case of mistaken identity or a lamentable accident. It was planned, it was programed, it was projected and it was executed in cold blood. Execution is the word. Tens of thousands of civilians have been slaughtered.

Yet President Bush and Prime Minister Blair continue to claim that nothing could be better. After all, Saddam Hussein was responsible for killing civilians as well. Where is the logic? That it is better for the US and British pilots to kill the Iraqis before Saddam could do so? That Saddam was evil to kill civilians but the US and British pilots are heroes?

The claim is also a telling insight into the mindset of these men and those who keep them in power. Gone for them is the age of chivalry, of decency, of moral values, of honesty, of trust. These were the values which they were elected to respect. These are the values which they have insulted, derided and ignored. [...]

Comment: This is a spoof on the MSNBC propaganda graphic embedded in a glowing report on the "situational awareness center", an entirely illegal operation using the military to spy on Americans. It's here folks. Welcome to the new world order.

N Korea accuses US of taking "unfriendly and hostile" steps

Press Trust of India
United Nations, July 15

North Korea has accused the United States of taking "unfriendly and hostile" steps against it and warned the Security Council against taking any action under Washington's pressure.

The "hostile acts," it said, included increased military aid to South Korea and deployment of more troops in the area.

Iraq seeking uranium ore 'meaningless,' says UK professor

London, July 15, IRNA - A British professor of theoretical physics suggested Tuesday that the raging controversy over intelligence claims that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium ore from Niger is meaningless. [...]

"Without enrichment facilities this material is useless for nuclear weapons," he said. "The US and the UK knew Iraq did not possess any enrichment plants since they were all dismantled by UN inspectors before 1995," he said. [...]

Cheney under pressure to quit over false war evidence

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Marie Woolf
The Independent
16 July 2003

Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President and the administration's most outspoken hawk over Iraq, faced demands for his resignation last night as he was accused of using false evidence to build the case for war.

He was accused of using his office to insist that a false claim about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium from Africa to restart its nuclear programme be included in George Bush's State of the Union address - overriding the concerns of the CIA director, George Tenet. [...]

The Country That a President Never Gets to See

By MARC LACEY

AGOS, Nigeria, July 13 — President Bush has come and gone, but in the opinion of many Nigerians he was never really here.

He did Africa in five days, stopping at the requisite game park, slave market, AIDS clinic and presidential villa. But he never had a bowl full of isi ewu, a peppery Nigerian delicacy made of goat head that would have left his taste buds numb. [...]

Femi Kuti, the renowned Afrobeat musician, said he would have staged a raucous party for Mr. Bush, with music that brought a message about Nigeria's plight.

"He may be aware of the corruption and the poverty but he won't see it," said Mr. Kuti, speaking just before Mr. Bush arrived. "He'll go from the airport to the hotel. He'll be insulated. He won't go to the slums. He won't see the suffering eye to eye."

Mr. Kuti, a voluble commentator on the country's struggles, would have kept the president up late talking about how corruption drains so much from a country and its people. [...]

Comment: No doubt Bush would have quite a bit to contribute to such a discussion.

Timing is fatal flaw for missile defense

18:06 15 July 03
NewScientist.com news service

Timing is the fatal flaw in long-range missile defences that target ballistic missiles during their vulnerable launch phase, says a report from the American Physical Society.

[...] the long-awaited APS study concludes that those advantages are most likely to be unobtainable, because the three to four minute boost phase of most rockets leaves too little time for the interceptor missiles to reach their targets. [...]

Faked intelligence on Iraq just the tip of the iceberg: senator

WASHINGTON (AFP) Jul 15, 2003

A leading Democrat in Congress accused the White House Tuesday of a broad pattern of dissembling in making its case for waging war on Iraq. [...]

"The misleading statement about African uranium is not an isolated incident. There is a significant amount of troubling evidence that it was part of a pattern of exaggerations and misleading statements," he said. [...]

Iraqis Plan War-Crime Court; G.I.'s to Stay Until Elections

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and PATRICK E. TYLER

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 15 — Iraq's postwar government moved today to form a special war-crimes court to try members of President Saddam Hussein's government, and the top American civilian official in Iraq said American troops would leave as soon as the government ratified a new constitution and held valid national elections. He did not give a timetable for elections.

"The timing of how long the coalition stays here is effectively now in the hands of the Iraqi people," L. Paul Bremer III, the American occupation administrator in Iraq, said at a news conference here. He also said American officials still had a daunting amount of work to "undo the enormous economic damage" done by Mr. Hussein.

Mr. Bremer said that within weeks, Iraq's electricity system would be producing as much power nationwide as it was before the war, though he emphasized that that would still leave the nation more than 30 percent short of demand, especially in the capital, where the power shortage is hurting efforts to provide power for basic services. [...]

Comment: This article is a nauseating example of the blatant lies and simply stunning hypocrisy that are characteristic of Bush and his gang of murderers.

Countries warned against sending troops to Iraq

Reuters

Dubai - Two previously unknown Iraqi groups on Tuesday warned countries against sending troops to Iraq, where US troops are facing daily attacks, Arab television channels said on Tuesday. [...]

The hitherto-unknown Armed Islamic Movement warned it would continue to target American troops and promised
to "break their backs".

Baghdad sexual violence 'rising'

By Pam O'Toole
BBC regional analyst
Wednesday, 16 July, 2003, 02:49 GMT

Sexual attacks have increased in Baghdad since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a new report. [...]

And for the first time, there are reports of girls and women being abducted from the street, sometimes in broad daylight. [...]

"I talked to another girl who was 15 years old. She had been taken with two sisters to a house outside of Baghdad where she was kept for about a month before she escaped.

"She believes the reason she was kept was to be sold, to be trafficked." [...]

U.S. having trouble recruiting peacekeepers

9:20 PM EDT Tuesday, Jul. 15, 2003

Brussels — France's President ruled out Tuesday sending French troops to Iraq, following India and Germany in rejecting U.S. calls for help without approval from the United Nations.

Although a few nations are sending troops, near daily guerrilla attacks — many of them deadly — and growing doubts about the basis for the war are complicating Washington's search for peacekeepers to replace American troops in Iraq. [...]

Report on Bonuses Raises Ire

By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Bush administration doled out $1.44 million in bonuses to 470 political appointees last year, according to an Office of Personnel Management report. [...]

Bush - Busted Again: State of the Union Behind the Scenes With Photo

CIA: Assessment of Syria's WMD exaggerated

By WARREN P. STROBEL and JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Posted on Tue, Jul. 15, 2003

[...] U.S. officials told Knight Ridder that Bolton was prepared to tell members of a House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee that Syria's development of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons had progressed to such a point that they posed a threat to stability in the region.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies said that assessment was exaggerated.[...]

Bolton set off a controversy in May 2002 when he asserted in a speech that Cuba has a biological warfare program. A State Department intelligence expert, Christian Westermann, recently told a closed-door Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that available intelligence data don't support that assertion, U.S. officials have said.

The first U.S. official said that after months of complaining about pressure to skew their analyses, rank-and-file intelligence officials "have become emboldened" by the recent public debate over Iraq.

"People are fed up," he said.[...]

Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers: The Ordeal of Attorney Jesselyn Radack

By ELAINE CASSEL
CounterPunch

D.C. attorney Jesselyn Radack was once employed in the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (an oxymoron these days, if you ask me, but that is another article). She was the wrong woman in the wrong place at the right time. In 2002, Ashcroft was trying to get the lethal injection for young John Walker Lindh. To hear Ashcroft describe him, Lindh, the misguided, naive, well-to-do student of Islam, was the anti-Christ himself.

FBI and DOJ had some explaining to do about Lindh's so-called confessions and whether his Miranda rights (not to be questioned without an attorney present, if he so chose) were violated. At first, Justice said he never asked for a lawyer. Then they conceded that his father asked for a lawyer but they didn't know about it. Then they said that his father asked for a lawyer and they did know about it, but that didn't count because his father did not have the right to ask for a lawyer for his son. His son had to ask. But then, Lindh did ask. Sort of. He said I think my dad is getting me a lawyer. DOJ interrogators, who had removed Lindh from Afghanistan to some ship and kept him in a cargo box, kept on questioning and Lindh made what to the government were incriminating statements.

Back to Jesselyn Radack. Her story, earlier versions of which were reported in The New Yorker and Newsweek, has taken a turn for the worst. As reported in The American Lawyer, not only was Radack forced to resign from DOJ, she has been fired by the law firm that subsequently hired her. And she may be facing criminal prosecution.[...]

Clintons to Pay Most Whitewater Bills

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia authorized a payment of about $85,000 — a small fraction of the $3.5 million the Clintons had sought. The costs stemmed from the Whitewater investigation, which lasted more than seven years and cost the government $70 million.

Blaming Everyone But Bush: The Pretend Captain

By WALTER BRASCH
CounterPunch

[...] Most of the Democrat presidential candidates and most of Congress put their pinky fingers into the wind. They decided it was too risky to challenge the President, especially since the politically-adept administration the one that created the Patriot Act made sure the media and the people knew that opposition to this president was nothing short of unpatriotic treason.

When it became apparent after the war the President lied to the people, the President's political action team went into overdrive. It wasn t the President's fault, they moaned. Others, like the CIA, gave him bad information, they whined. The British were at fault, they blamed. The president doesn t have responsibility for anything, they wailed.[...]

Suspected al-Qaeda agent refused bail in Montreal

Tue, 15 Jul 2003 21:47:10

MONTREAL - A Moroccan man accused by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service of being an al-Qaeda agent will not be released on bail, a Federal Court judge decided Tuesday. [...]

Despite testimony from character witnesses stating Charkaoui had no association with terrorists, the judge decided to keep him behind bars until his trial date, slated for September. [...]

Israel arrests protesters as 'security risk'

By Justin Huggler in Jerusalem
16 July 2003

Eight foreign nationals have been arrested in the occupied territories as Israeli authorities clamp down on international peace activists on the ground that they pose a "security risk". [...]

In particular the army is keen to put a stop to the activities of one particular organisation, to which the eight arrested are all affiliated: the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). The organisation has attracted hundreds of young peace activists here from Europe and the US since the start of the intifada. [...]

For Jews in France, a 'Kind of Intifada'

Escalation in Hate Crimes Leads to Soul-Searching, New Vigilance

By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 16, 2003; Page A01

PARIS -- The phone message is one of 10 waiting for Sylvain Zenouda at the local office of the Jewish Community Council of greater Paris: A gang of 15 North African teenagers, some of them wielding broom handles, had invaded the grounds of a Jewish day school on Avenue de Flandres in northeast Paris the previous evening. They punched and kicked teachers and students, yelled epithets and set off firecrackers in the courtyard before fleeing. [...]

Elsewhere on this steamy July afternoon, he will meet with a businessman whose kosher restaurant was torched recently, a young man assaulted for wearing a Star of David necklace and a congregation of frightened synagogue-goers, some of whom are talking seriously of emigrating to Israel.

The file grows almost daily: 309 incidents in the past 15 months in the Paris region, according to Jewish council officials, and more than 550 since the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, broke out in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in September 2000. The National Consultative Committee on Human Rights, a government-funded body, reported a sixfold increase in acts of violence against Jewish people and property in France from 2001 to 2002. [...]

Antarctic's weird worms face warming threat

By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent

Climate change could imperil the unique creatures which have made their home in the inhospitable waters of Antarctica, scientists believe. [...]

The sealife which has developed there resembles some life forms around North America and Europe millions of years ago.

But global warming could allow predators from warmer seas to colonise the Antarctic.

If that happens, a highly sensitive sea floor community could vanish, the scientists say.[...]

Comment: It may be hard for some of us to generate any sympathy for giant, poisonous mucus secreting worms and giant sea spiders that the article describes. But the heat is getting to us also . . .

The Weather is Becoming Very Unusual

by I.N.

All around the world are reports of either very hot or very cold conditions.

Scientists explained that a global increase in temperature of only 6 degrees Celsius could lead to the extinction of mankind.

Here where I live in Cape Town, we haven't experienced any winter yet. We normally don't have the cold winters like Europe and in general we should experience temperatures ranging between 7 and 18 degrees Celsius for the month of July,
but instead we are experiencing the mid 20's.

Today Cape Town will exceed 30 degree Celsius!

A cold front is on its way and hopefully it will bring much needed rain. We've almost had no rain this winter and with spring around the corner, this is bad news for the farmers.

This part of South Africa only receives winter rain and as shown on the statistics page, we were supposed to have received a fair share of it already. Maybe we can blame the unusual closeness of Mars for this; surely it can't be human interaction...

Here is a news article that tells another sad story on the weather front globally: Tip of the melting iceberg

Record High Temperature in Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City experienced the highest recorded temperature since 1939, reaching 105 degrees as recorded at Salt Lake City International Airport. The previous high temperature record was 103. [...]

Temperatures, power use hit all-time highs

Monday's Phoenix high temperature hit a record 116 degrees and energy provider Salt River Project also hit a record high for energy demand of 5,446 megawatts. [...]

Much of Europe Blisters Under Heat Wave

By JAMEY KEATEN
Associated Press Writer

PARIS (AP)--Rome is considering water rations. London will reward anyone who can invent an air conditioning system for the sweltering Tube. In Paris, the city's fountains have become wading pools.

Summertime has arrived with a vengeance in parts of Europe, forcing dehydrated tourists to run for cover as officials from England to Romania scramble to limit the damage from drought and heat.

In Paris, where the mercury rose to 93 degrees Tuesday, water vendors were out in force, ice cream parlors did brisk business and weary tourists took refuge just about every place they could.[...]

The higher temperatures had a silver lining for some parts of Europe. Places like England, Berlin and some Baltic countries were basking in uncommonly balmy conditions more reminiscent of summer in the Mediterranean.[...]

Thunderstorms swept across western France late Tuesday, causing at least one death and an unknown number of injuries, fire officials said. Southwest England was to have heavy rains Wednesday.

But scorching temperatures in Italy prompted authorities Tuesday to discuss whether to declare a state of emergency in the country's north because of a weekslong drought.[...]

Rome officials spoke about rationing water in dozens of the capital's districts, and Italian newspapers warned that fruit and vegetable prices could rise by 30 percent because output from parched fields was shrinking.[...]

Levels in some of Europe's leading rivers were dropping. German officials said the Rhine was at five-year lows, and ships along the Danube faced the risk of running aground in Romania.

The economic fallout was poised to hit agriculture too.

In Austria, farming groups warned that drought is likely to cut this summer's harvest of various crops--such as grains, peas and corn--in many places down to about 60 percent of normal levels.

At least four brush fires broke out on Corsica on Tuesday, prompting firefighters to fan out across the French Mediterranean island to battle the blazes.[...]

Swiss Alps Crumbling in Heat Wave; Climbers Evacuated, AFP Says

July 15 (Bloomberg) -- A heat wave in Europe is melting Switzerland's glaciers and causing chunks of the Swiss Alps to break off, prompting the evacuation of climbers and hikers, Agence France-Presse reported.[...]

Power and Transmission Outages Strain Power Supply

Jul 14, 2003

FOLSOM, Calif. — California's electricity supplies were stretched Monday by three plant outages and a transmission glitch that occurred when a logging truck drove under a high-voltage power line. [...]

The Brain's 'Timex': Biological Clock More Influenced By Temperature Than Light

Getting over jet lag may be as simple as changing the temperature --your brain temperature, that is. [...]

QUB boffins unravel ozone's mysteries

15 July 2003
By Gary Grattan

SCIENTISTS at Queen's University and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development have made an important discovery about one factor contributing to the depletion of the earth's ozone layer.

The threat to the ozone layer posed by the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other man-made organochlorine compounds has been widely recognised for a number of years and the production of these compounds is now banned or severely restricted under the terms of the Montreal Protocol.

What is not so generally appreciated is that more than 20% of stratospheric ozone destruction is due to naturally produced compounds.[...]

Floods, landslides ravage China

Monday, July 14, 2003

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Weeks of heavy rain have caused at least three landslides along with heavy flooding in central and eastern China.

The landslides happened over the weekend in Tibet, Sichuan, and Hubei provinces, China's official Xinhua news agency said Monday. [...]

Claudette pounds Texas, then lets up

7/15/2003 11:54 PM

PALACIOS, Texas (AP) — Hurricane Claudette sloshed ashore on the Texas Gulf Coast on Tuesday, peeling off roofs, knocking out power and flooding low-lying areas before its whistling wind began to let up.

At least one death was reported, a 33-year-old woman in Victoria who was hit by a limb from a storm-weakened tree, authorities said. The Coast Guard had to rescue two men whose 92-foot shrimp boat sank.

Claudette became a hurricane, the first of the Atlantic storm season, early Tuesday when sustained wind around its eye reached 74 mph. By the time it hit land at midday, its sustained wind topped 80 mph and gusts of 88 mph were recorded at Wadsworth, site of the South Texas Project nuclear power plant. [...]

Mystery boom rattles Greece (NY) neighborhoods

Staff Reports

(July 14, 2003) - GREECE - A loud sound shook houses in town Sunday morning and sent some residents scurrying into the street. However, area fire departments reported that there was nothing wrong on the ground.

Several area residents in the Ridgewood Road and Benjamin Avenue area said they heard a house-rocking sound about 10:47 a.m. Sunday.

Calls to two area firehouses turned up no known source of the noise; no fire calls were received at North Greece fire stations No. 1 and No. 2. [...]

Vaccine Induced Polio - Ugandan Kids Die By 1,000s

From Ned Sloane

A Transcript of a talk given by Kihura Nkuba at the National Vaccine Information Center's Third International Public Conference on Vaccination November 7-9, 2002 - Arlington, Virginia, aired on C-Span 2 on November 7, 2002. [...]

INTRODUCTION by Barbara L. Fisher:

We're now going to look at oral polio vaccination conducted in Africa. Our next speaker, known in the pan-African world as Kihura Nkuba, which means "one who handcuffs lightning and puts thunder in jail", is founder of Greater African Radio and president of the East African World Broadcasters Association, and director of the Pan-African Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Several years ago he began hearing from villagers who were being subjected to repeated forced live oral polio vaccinations despite reports of injuries and death among the children. On his radio program he began to speak out and questioned the safety of giving the children - especially children with HIV - so many live oral polio vaccinations, rather than giving them the safer "killed" polio vaccine used in the U.S. and Canada.

Since that time, he tells me, he has been persecuted by the government, World Health Organization and UNICEF, and his radio station has been driven into bankruptcy. Kihura is appearing here at great personal and professional risk to tell his story. It is my great honor and privilege to introduce you to the recipient of the National Vaccine Information Center's humanitarian award - my good friend and colleague, Kihura Nkuba. [...]

Encephalitis kills 110 children in India

HYDERABAD, India (AP) — A rare summertime outbreak of mosquito-borne encephalitis has killed 110 children in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh over the past six weeks.

Most of the victims were poor, malnourished children from rural areas who may have succumbed because of a sudden change in weather from intense summer heat to monsoon rains. [...]

Fifty years on, Norway's 'whore children' fight for justice and proper compensation

By Julia Stuart in Oslo
12 July 2003

Norway's "whore children" still get spat on in the street. Between 10,000 and 12,000 of them were born to Norwegian women, fathered by occupying German soldiers during the Second World War - and the abuse they endured is thought to have been unprecedented in recovering Europe. [...]

Now aged in their sixties, the survivors announced this week they are taking their battle for compensation against the Norwegian state to the European Court of Human Rights. [...]

Environmentalists to Sue EPA Over Toxic Air Emissions

WASHINGTON, DC, July 14, 2003 (ENS) - [...] "For years, the EPA has promised the public and the courts that it will reduce toxic emissions from motor vehicles - just not yet," said Jim Pew, attorney for the environmental law firm Earthjustice, which is representing U.S. Public Interest Group and Sierra Club in the case.[...]

Buan Designated as Single Candidate Site for Nuclear Waste Dump

Seoul, July 15 (Yonhap) -- An islet off the central west coast has been chosen as the single candidate site for South Korea's first nuclear waste dump, the Commerce, Industry and Energy Ministry said Tuesday.

A 14-member committee is expected to officially choose Wido in Buan County, North Jeolla province, after conducting on-site geological and environmental inspections.

Nine officials punished for allowing serious pollution of river

(Xinhua) Nine environment and industrial administration officials in Shaodong County have been punished for neglect of duty after the disastrous contamination of a local river.

The Shao River flowing through central China's Hunan Province was polluted by a huge discharge of unprocessed waste water from 17 denim dyeing mills along the river.

FDA Eases Health Claims Approval Process

WASHINGTON, DC, July 14, 2003 (ENS) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced broad changes to its policy for approving health claims for food and dietary supplements. The agency says the regulatory changes will help consumers obtain more comprehensive information about the health consequences of food and dietary supplements, but critics say the administration is opening the door to consumer confusion that could harm public health.

The FDA, in a report released Friday, revised the process by which it reviews health claims of manufacturers of food and dietary supplements to allow companies lobby the agency for approval to make health claims instead of having to rely on scientific consensus. The FDA will use a grading system for health claims on labels based on the scientific evidence available.

Comment: These are the same people who approved a biochemical weapon, nutrasweet, for general public consumption.

Bid to Row Atlantic Ended by Navy Over Terror Fear

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Ukrainian's dream of rowing across the Atlantic has ended with the rower in New York and his $100,000 boat drifting somewhere in the ocean, he announced on Monday.

Teddy Rezvoy, who hoped to become the first person to row the 3,354 miles from New York to Brest, France, had to abandon his quest on Thursday only 200 miles into the adventure after being stopped and searched by the U.S. Navy as a terror suspect. [...]

Russian scientist believes, Atlantis lies between Gibraltar and the Azores

The Incredible Mystery of Coral Castle

China's 'Loch Ness Monster' Resurfaces

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's legendary "Lake Tianchi Monster" has surfaced anew, with local officials reporting sightings of as many as 20 of the mysterious and unidentified creatures in a lake near North Korea. [...]

Bear attack first in 30 years in Colorado park

DENVER (Reuters) -- For the first time in more than 30 years, a black bear has attacked people in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, where it ripped through tents and bit or scratched two campers, the park said. [...]

And Finally . . . Something we always knew

Weirdos, it turns out, run the world

Sunday, July 13, 2003

OTTAWA, Canada - Mackenzie King's crystal ball sits on the piano of his library, but don't leap to any conclusions. The prime minister of Canada did not use a crystal ball to consult the spirits.

"Mr. King," explained my guide, Marjolene Alie, "did table-rapping." She pulled open the door to what had been an oversized closet. "This is the room where he did his seances. Now it's our air conditioning system."

William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada's leader during World War II, would retire to this room with a few friends, notably a socialite named Joan Patteson. There, in the darkness of a second-floor closet, King conversed with his dead mother and his brother, Max, chatted with his grandfather and occasionally took advice from his predecessor as party leader, Sir Wilfrid Laurier. [...]

William Gladstone, prime minister of Britain in the 19th century, prowled the London streets lecturing the prostitutes, then went home and beat himself with a whip. John Kennedy and his wife celebrated the night of the 1960 West Virginia primary by taking in a porno flick. Ronald Reagan insisted that the address of his post-presidential home in Los Angeles be changed from 666 St. Cloud Drive to 668, doubtless forcing the devil to move. [...]

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