New! Film Review: The Manchurian Candidate

Picture of the Day

Emerald Lake
©2004 Pierre-Paul Feyte

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave Department

On This Day In 1964: Three civil rights activists found dead

The bodies of three civil rights workers missing for six weeks have been found buried in a partially constructed dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation found the three young men - two white and one black man - about six miles from the town in a wooded area near where they were last seen on the night of 21 June.

They were Michael Schwerner, aged 24, Andrew Goodman, 20, both from New York and James Chaney, 22, from Meridian, Mississippi. All were members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) dedicated to non-violent direct action against racial discrimination.

Click here to comment on this article

Mississippi unlocks racist past

Wednesday, March 18, 1998

Many of the details of America's fight against the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s have been revealed in the newly opened files of a southern state's secret spy agency.

The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission (MSC) was one of many agencies established by southern states to resist desegregation.

It was reputed to be one of the most zealous in its efforts to track down and discredit civil rights activists, and has been compared to the Stasi, East Germany's secret police.

The information collected by the MSC was given to police and employers, but much of it was also passed to the Ku Klux Klan who conducted a reign of terror against civil rights activists.

Almost all of the 132,000 pages of documents produced, from the agency's founding in 1956 until it disbanded 21 years later, have been made available, having been kept under lock and key for more than 20 years.

Unsolved murders

The archive's contents are explosive. There is information on 17 of the 18 unsolved murders of civil rights activists, as well as surveillance reports by informants who infiltrated civil rights groups and the voting records of politicians on issues affecting segregation.

Scores of people queued to get into the Mississippi Department of Archives and History where the files are now available.

One of the first people to view the files was Vernon Dahmer Jr who was looking for more information on the murder of his father. Mr Dahmer Sr was burned alive when the Ku Klux Klan firebombed his home and shop. His 'crime' was helping fellow blacks to get the vote.

Three separate files deal with the case of Mack Charles Parker, a black Mississippian lynched 32 years ago, allegedly because he flirted with a white woman.

Black cynicism

"I'm relieved it has finally happened," said David Ingebretsen, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Unions (ACLU), who led a 20-year court fight to force the state to open the files.

"It's a story of very courageous people, ordinary people who stood up for their rights against all the powers that the state could muster to deny them those rights," he said.

"It was virtually a police state back then."

However, some people are cynical about the exercise.

"The general reaction among blacks is that the real stuff is not in there - that a lot of things were blotted out, and that this won't have a great impact," said Latifa Turner, whose grandfather was a lawyer for Martin Luther King.

Click here to comment on this article

Republican candidate admits supporting eugenics

By Amber McDowell in Nashville, Tennessee
04 August 2004

The Republican congressional candidate James L Hart has acknowledged that he is an unapologetic supporter of eugenics, the fake science that resulted in thousands of people being sterilised in an attempt to purify the white race.

He believes the country will look "like one big Detroit" - which has a large African-American population - if it doesn't eliminate welfare payments and immigration. He believes that if blacks were integrated centuries ago, the automobile would never have been invented.

Mr Hart has been said to turn up at voters' homes wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a gun, telling them that "white children deserve the same rights as everyone else".

But, despite his radical views, Mr Hart may end up winning the Republican nomination in a north-western Tennessee district because he is the only Republican candidate on the ballot in tomorrow's primary. His presence in the campaign has embarrassed Republican leaders, who were blind-sided by Mr Hart after they didn't bother fielding a candidate. John Tanner, a Democrat, has held the seat for 15 years.

"I would characterise him as a racist, an elitist," said Dennis Bertrand, a financial analyst and former military officer who also stood as a candidate. "His idea of ... genetically altering the human race in order to build a super race with super intelligence is appalling."

Much of Mr Hart's platform revolves around eugenics, which developed before the Second World War as a pseudoscientific movement to solve social problems by preventing the "unfit" from having children. It inspired 33 US states to pass laws that allowed the sterilisation of some 65,000 people, and Nazi Germany used the US examples to justify programs that sterilised and killed millions.

Comment: Notice that at one time, not so long ago, 33 states in the US supported the idea of sterilising people so that they could not have "impure" children. Note also the comment that it was the US eugenics research that lead Hitler to conceive of the idea of a "master race" which in turn lead him to attempt to exterminate Germany's minorities...

Click here to comment on this article

Flashback: Hitler's debt to America

The Nazis' extermination programme was carried out in the name of eugenics - but they were by no means the only advocates of racial purification. In this extract from his extraordinary new book, Edwin Black describes how Adolf Hitler's race hatred was underpinned by the work of American eugenicists

Friday February 6, 2004
The Guardian

At 4am on November 12 1915, a woman named Anna Bollinger gave birth at the German-American Hospital in Chicago. The baby was somewhat deformed and suffered from extreme intestinal and rectal abnormalities, as well as other complications. The delivering physicians awakened Dr Harry Haiselden, the hospital's chief of staff. Haiselden came in at once. He consulted with colleagues. There was great disagreement over whether the child could be saved. But Haiselden decided the baby was too afflicted and fundamentally not worth saving. It would be killed. The method: denial of treatment.

Catherine Walsh, probably a friend of Bollinger's, heard the news and sped to the hospital to help. She found the baby, who had been named Allan, alone in a bare room. Walsh pleaded with Haiselden not to kill the baby by withholding treatment. "It was not a monster - that child," Walsh later told an inquest. "It was a beautiful baby. I saw no deformities." Walsh had patted the infant lightly. Allan's eyes were open, and he waved his tiny fists at her. Begging the doctor once more, Walsh tried an appeal to his humanity. "If the poor little darling has one chance in a thousand," she pleaded, "won't you operate to save it?"

Haiselden laughed at Walsh, retorting, "I'm afraid it might get well." He was a skilled and experienced surgeon, trained by the best doctors in Chicago. He was also an ardent eugenicist. Allan Bollinger duly died. An inquest was convened a few days later. Haiselden defiantly declared, "I should have been guilty of a graver crime if I had saved this child's life. My crime would have been keeping in existence one of nature's cruellest blunders." A juror shot back, "What do you mean by that?" Haiselden responded, "Exactly that. I do not think this child would have grown up to be a mental defective. I know it."

After tempestuous proceedings, the inquest ruled: "We believe that a prompt operation would have prolonged and perhaps saved the life of the child. We find no evidence from the physical defects that the child would have become mentally or morally defective." But they also decided that Haiselden was within his professional rights to decline treatment. No law compelled him to operate on the child. He was released unpunished, and efforts by the Illinois attorney general to indict him for murder were blocked by the local prosecutor. The doctor considered his legal vindication a powerful victory for eugenics. "Eugenics? Of course it's eugenics," he told one reporter.

Haiselden became an overnight celebrity, known for his many newspaper articles, his speaking tours and outrageous diatribes. In 1917, Hollywood came calling. The film was called The Black Stork. Written by Jack Lait, a reporter on the Chicago American, it was produced in Hollywood and given a massive national distribution and promotion campaign. Haiselden played himself in a fictionalised account of a eugenically mismatched couple whom he advises not to have children because they are likely to be defective. Eventually, the woman does give birth to a defective child, whom she then allows to die. The dead child levitates into the waiting arms of Jesus Christ. It was unbridled cinematic propaganda for the eugenics movement; the film played at movie theatres around the country for more than a decade.

National publicity advertised it as a "eugenic love story". One advertisement quoted Swiss eugenicist Auguste Forel's warning: "The law of heredity winds like a red thread through the family history of every criminal, of every epileptic, eccentric and insane person. Shall we sit still ... without applying the remedy?" In 1917, a display advertisement for The Black Stork read: "Kill Defectives, Save the Nation and See 'The Black Stork'." Various methods of eugenic euthanasia - including gassing the unwanted in lethal chambers - were a part of everyday American parlance and ethical debate some two decades before Nevada approved the first such chamber for criminal executions in 1921.

As America's eugenics movement gathered pace, it inspired a host of imitators. In France, Belgium, Sweden, England and elsewhere in Europe, cliques of eugenicists did their best to introduce eugenic principles into national life; they could always point to recent precedents established in the United States.

Germany was no exception. From the turn of the century, German eugenicists formed academic and personal relationships with the American eugenics establishment, in particular with Charles Davenport, the pioneering founder of the Eugenics Record Office on Long Island, New York, which was backed by the Harriman railway fortune. A number of other charitable American bodies generously funded German race biology with hundreds of thousands of dollars, even after the depression had taken hold.

Germany had certainly developed its own body of eugenic knowledge and library of publications. Yet German readers still closely followed American eugenic accomplishments as the model: biological courts, forced sterilisation, detention for the socially inadequate, debates on euthanasia. As America's elite were describing the socially worthless and the ancestrally unfit as "bacteria," "vermin," "mongrels" and "subhuman", a superior race of Nordics was increasingly seen as the answer to the globe's eugenic problems. US laws, eugenic investigations and ideology became blueprints for Germany's rising tide of race biologists and race-based hatemongers.

One such agitator was a disgruntled corporal in the German army. In 1924, he was serving time in prison for mob action. While there, he spent his time poring over eugenic textbooks, which extensively quoted Davenport, Popenoe and other American ethnological stalwarts. And he closely followed the writings of Leon Whitney, president of the American Eugenics Society, and Madison Grant, who extolled the Nordic race and bemoaned its "corruption" by Jews, Negroes, Slavs and others who did not possess blond hair and blue eyes. The young German corporal even wrote one of them fan mail.

In The Passing of the Great Race, Grant wrote: "Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilisation of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race."

One day in the early 1930s, Whitney visited Grant to show off a letter he had just received from Germany, written by the corporal, now out of prison and rising in the German political scene. Grant could only smile. He pulled out his own letter. It was from the same German, thanking Grant for writing The Passing of the Great Race. The fan letter called Grant's book "his Bible". The man who sent those letters was Adolf Hitler.

Hitler displayed his knowledge of American eugenics in much of his writing and conversation. In Mein Kampf, for example, he declared: "The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring is a demand of clearest reason and, if systematically executed, represents the most humane act of mankind. It will spare millions of unfortunates undeserved sufferings, and consequently will lead to a rising improvement of health as a whole."

Mein Kampf also displayed a familiarity with the recently passed US National Origins Act, which called for eugenic quotas. "There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but [the US], in which an effort is made to consult reason at least partially. By refusing immigrants on principle to elements in poor health, by simply excluding certain races from naturalisation, it professes in slow beginnings a view that is peculiar to the People's State."

Hitler proudly told his comrades how closely he followed American eugenic legislation. "Now that we know the laws of heredity," he told a fellow Nazi, "it is possible to a large extent to prevent unhealthy and severely handicapped beings from coming into the world. I have studied with interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."

Nor did Hitler fail to grasp the eugenic potential of gas and the lethal chamber, a topic that was already being discussed in German eugenic circles before Mein Kampf was published. Hitler, who had himself been hospitalised for battlefield gas injuries, wrote: "If at the beginning of the war and during the war 12,000 or 15,000 of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our best German workers in the field, the sacrifices of millions at the front would not have been in vain. On the contrary: 12,000 scoundrels eliminated in time might have saved the lives of a million real Germans, valuable for the future."

On January 30 1933, Hitler seized power. During the 12-year Reich, he never varied from the eugenic doctrines of identification, segregation, sterilisation, euthanasia, eugenic courts and eventually mass termination in lethal chambers. During the Reich's first 10 years, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler's plans as the logical fulfilment of their own decades of research and effort. Indeed, they were envious as Hitler rapidly began sterilising hundreds of thousands and systematically eliminating non-Aryans from German society. This included the Jews. Ten years after Virginia passed its 1924 sterilisation act, Joseph Dejarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, complained in the Richmond Times-Dispatch: "The Germans are beating us at our own game."

Most of all, American raceologists were proud to have inspired the strictly eugenic state the Nazis were constructing. In those early years of the Third Reich, Hitler and his race hygienists carefully crafted eugenic legislation modelled on laws already introduced across America and upheld by the supreme court. Nazi doctors, and even Hitler himself, regularly communicated with American eugenicists from New York to California, ensuring that Germany would scrupulously follow the path blazed by the US. American eugenicists were eager to assist.

This was particularly true of California's eugenicists, who led the nation in sterilisation and provided the most scientific support for Hitler's regime. In 1934, as Germany's sterilisations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenic leader and immigration activist CM Goethe was ebullient in congratulating ES Gosney of the San Diego-based Human Betterment Foundation for his impact on Hitler's work. Upon his return in 1934 from a eugenic fact-finding mission in Germany, Goethe wrote Gosney a letter of praise. The foundation was so proud of Goethe's letter that they reprinted it in their 1935 annual report.

"You will be interested to know," Goethe's letter proclaimed, "that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the intellectuals behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought, and particularly by the work of the Human Betterment Foundation.

"I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."

· Extracted from War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, by Edwin Black. Edwin Black is also the author of the New York Times bestseller, IBM and the Holocaust.

Comment: Few people are aware of the extent to which Hitler was aided and abetted by US and European governments. Even fewer are aware of the fact that so called Zionists of that time used the US-inspired policies of the Nazi regime as leverage for the establishment and seeding of a Jewish state in the Middle East. Today we are witnessing the legacy of those manipulations....

Click here to comment on this article

A Wave of Jews Returning to Russia

By Anatoly Medetsky
Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 4, 2004. Page 1.

As the Iron Curtain began to fall, Igor Dzhadan left the Soviet Union with his family, bound for Israel and a longforbidden opportunity.

Dzhadan was luckier than most of the 11,000 Soviet doctors who rushed to Israel around the same time, 1990, under Israel's Law of Return. He was able to continue practice and research. Still, he returned to Russia in 2001 to become an editor at Moscow's Jewish News Agency.

"It was interesting for me to live in a Jewish state, but I feel more comfortable in Russia," Dzhadan said. "I knew from the experience of others that I could find work here and my life prospects wouldn't be worse than in Israel."

Dzhadan is part of a tide of emigrants who have returned to Russia from Israel over a litany of concerns: the second intifada, Israel's worsening economy, an inability to adapt to cultural and social realities. According to a study released this March, at least 50,000 emigrants returned from Israel from 2001 to 2003.

[...] Israel had two waves of Russian immigration that altogether boosted its population from 5 million to 6 million, according to Gorin. In the first wave, 200,000 Jews left the Soviet Union in the 1970s. The second wave, which coincided with perestroika in 1986, brought 800,000 more Soviet Jews.

Under the Law of Return, anyone having at least one Jewish grandparent may seek citizenship.

Recently, however, Israel has seen its population growth subside, with citizens leaving not only for Russia, but also Europe and the United States. Only 20,000 to 30,000 immigrants entered Israel from 2001 to 2003, which was for the first time less than the outflow, Gorin said, citing the study.

According to the Israeli Embassy in Moscow, up to 100,000 Jews left Russia annually in the 1990s; last year the number was down to 10,000.

Comment: The emigration of Jews from Israel has become a threat to the continued existence of the Zionist state. When you are stealing land from somebody, you better have more force and more hands than those you are stealing from. To ensure continued immigration to Israel, the Zionists are relying on the tried and true methods they have always used to convince Jews to move: scare tactics and fear. This is the real cause of the rise of so-called "anti-Semitism" in the world: it is a plan to scare Jews to move to Israel.

Does that sound outrageous? Well, then read these quotes from Zionist leaders:

FLASHBACK!

Greatest Hoax Ever Perpetrated On The Jewish People: Zionism And Anti-Semitism

Jews Against Zionism
7-19-4

We implore and beseech our Jewish brethren to realize that the Zionists are not the saviors of the Jewish People and guarantors of their safety, but rather the instigators and original cause of Jewish suffering in the Holy Land and worldwide. The idea that Zionism and the State of "Israel is the protector of Jews is probably the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the Jewish People. Indeed, where else since 1945 have Jews been in such physical danger as in the Zionist state?!

[...] It has been the age-old intention of Zionism to intentionally stir up anti-Semitism anywhere possible, and even more commonly, to take advantage of any Jewish suffering anywhere in order to enhance its cause. Indeed, hatred of Jews and Jewish suffering is the oxygen of the Zionist movement, and from the very beginning has been to deliberately incite hatred of the Jew and then, in feigned horror, use it to justify the existence of the Zionist state this is, of course, Machiavellianism raised to the highest degree. Thus, the Zionists thrive on hatred and suffering of Jews, and seek to benefit thereby through keeping Jews in perpetual fear, causing them to ignore the true nature of Zionism, and instead to consider the Zionist state is their salvation.

[...] As far as Zionism is concerned, the founder of Zionism and apostate, Theodor Herzl, sought to intensify hatred of the Jew in order to enhance the cause of political Zionism. Here are some of his "pearls:

"It is essential that the sufferings of Jews. . . become worse. . . this will assist in realization of our plans. . . I have an excellent idea. . . I shall induce anti-semites to liquidate Jewish wealth. . . The anti-semites will assist us thereby in that they will strengthen the persecution and oppression of Jews. The anti-semites shall be our best friends." (From his Diary, Part I, pp. 16)

Additional words from the vivid imagination of this dreamer, from p. 68 of Part I of his Diary.

"So anti-Semitism, which is a deeply imbedded force in the subconscious mind of the masses, will not harm the Jews. I actually find it to be advantageous to building the Jewish character, education by the masses that will lead to assimilation. This education can only happen through suffering, and the Jews will adapt."

[...] There is a huge amount of literature describing how the Zionists made it very difficult to save Jews during and after World War II. As various individuals and organizations were trying to arrange departures of Jews to western countries, the Zionists worked overtime to prevent this from happening. They expressed the opinion that building up the Jewish population of Palestine was more important than enabling Jews to go to third countries, and they insisted to western powers that Jews should not be accepted anywhere other than Palestine. Indeed, Yitzchak Greenbaum, a famous Zionist, proclaimed that "one cow in Palestine was worth more than all the Jews in Poland. The infamous David Ben-Gurion said in 1938:

"If I knew it was possible to save all the children in Germany by taking them to England, and only half of the children by taking them to Eretz Israel, I would choose the second solution. For we must take into account not only the lives of these children but also the history of the people of Israel."

For more information about the brutal Zionist role during World War II, Click Here.

After the war, a Zionist 'religious' leader, Rabbi Klaussner, who was in charge of displaced persons presented a report before the Jewish American Conference on May 2nd, 1948 :

"I am convinced people must be forced to go to Palestine...For them, an American dollar appears as the highest of goals. By the word "force", I am suggesting a programme. It served for the evacuation of the Jews in Poland, and in the history of the 'Exodus'... To apply this programme we must, instead of providing 'displaced persons' with comfort, create the greatest possible discomfort for them...At a second stage, a procedure calling upon the Haganah to harass the Jews."

It is ironic that the Zionists proclaim their State as the safe haven for the Jewish People, when since World War II no place on earth has been as dangerous for Jews, both spiritually and physically, as the Zionist state.

The Zionists worked relentlessly to create fear among Jews in the Arab countries after the Zionist state was established. Their tactic work most successfully in Yemen, Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia.

The goal of the Zionists appears to be different than that which they proclaim. Rather than providing a safe haven for Jews, they are building a large concentration camp ruled by violence. Could their long-term goal be the elimination of the Jews by corralling them together in the "Promised Land" where a few nukes could eliminate millions in a flash?

Click here to comment on this article

US warns citizens to leave Gaza, Israel

www.chinaview.cn 2004-08-04 11:06:09

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- The US State Department on Tuesday asked its citizens to leave the Gaza Strip immediately and to defer travel to Israel or the West Bank in light of the volatile situation there.

"The Department of State warns US citizens to depart Gaza immediately and to defer travel to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza due to current safety and security concern," the State Department said in a statement.

"The situation in Israel, Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank remains extremely volatile with continuing terrorist attacks, confrontations and clashes," the statement said.

Americans who remain in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza should avoid going to such public places and crowded venues such as restaurants and cafes, shopping centers, market areas, pedestrian zones, public buses and bus stops, the statement said.

Click here to comment on this article

Suspected Israeli spy alleged to be using Canadian passport

Last Updated Wed, 04 Aug 2004

OTTAWA - Canadian authorities are investigating reports that a suspected Israeli spy is using a stolen Canadian passport to travel through Asia.

Foreign Affairs spokesman Reynald Doiron confirmed that Ottawa is investigating allegations that Zev William Barkan is using a Canadian passport under the name Kevin William Hunter.

Barkan is alleged to be one of three suspected Mossad agents who tried to illegally obtain a New Zealand passport.

Two Israeli men were sentenced last month to six months in prison for their part in the New Zealand passport scheme. But they denied they belong to Mossad, Israel's secret service.

New Zealand imposed diplomatic sanctions on Israel following the incident.

The passport allegedly being used by Barkan was reported stolen in China in April.

In 1997, two Mossad agents were caught with phoney Canadian passports after a bungled assassination attempt of a Hamas leader in Jordan.

Canada filed a formal protest and received assurances from Israel that its agents would never again use Canadian passports.

Comment: Those Mossad agents, they just do not know when to quit. One would have thought that September 11th was enough to satisfy them, but it appears not. Who knows, they may even be planning a third anniversary special, sometime in early September...

Click here to comment on this article

Source: Attack to be in early September

BY KNUT ROYCE
WASHINGTON BUREAU
August 3, 2004

WASHINGTON -- More financial institutions than previously disclosed may be at risk of attack, and an al-Qaida operative has told British intelligence that the group's target date is early September, intelligence sources said yesterday.

The operative, described as "credible" by British intelligence, told his debriefers that the attack would take place "60 days before the presidential election" on Nov. 2, according to a former senior National Security Council official. On Sept. 2 President George W. Bush is expected to address the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden.

Counterterrorism officials are analyzing data from a computer seized in Pakistan last month to see if financial institutions in addition to the five disclosed Sunday are at risk of attack, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The former senior National Security Council official said he was told by British intelligence that they are interrogating an al-Qaida operative who confirmed that financial institutions are being targeted and that an attack was planned for September. [...]

Comment: For those wondering if "terror" will actually be used on or before this year's US election day, we can categorically state that it will. The reason we state this with such certainty is due to the fact that "terror" is being used against the American and world populations as we speak. It may not, in fact, be necessary to perpetrate an actual fake "terror attack", it may simply be sufficient to continue the bombardment of "war and rumors of war" to ensure that the American people will opt for Bush and his war-loving cronies. Alternatively, they could just steal this election as well.

On the other hand, if the Mossad or the CIA actually carry out a phony attack this year, one thing is for sure, stick close to Bush, Cheney or any of their friends and family and you will be quite safe...

Click here to comment on this article

Laura Bush & Twins Hold Photo Op Monday in "Terror Site" Citigroup Building

As reported on the Bloomberg newswire, Laura Bush and the daughters Barbara and Jenna Bush held a photo-op at the Citigroup Center in New York City on Monday, the first day of Ridge's new Orange alert. This was one of the target buildings, according to Ridge. George W. Bush sent his entire family to the very place that was supposedly about to be blown to smithereens?

I don't think so. George W. Bush and his administration officials are using terrorism - the fear of it, the fight against it - to manipulate domestic American politics. They are, as they have every day for almost three years now, using September 11 against their own people. They are also getting stumblingly obvious about it. We are being lied to, clumsily, again.

Comment: Indeed, and as Hitler said: "Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death". It seems to be so that, as much as Hitler learned from US politicians, US politicians are now applying the lessons learned by and from Hitler.

Talking about "fear of death", watch out! Kim Jong Il is out to get ya!

Click here to comment on this article

North Korean nuclear missile 'could reach US'

Jonathan Watts, east asia correspondent
Wednesday August 4, 2004
The Guardian

North Korea is deploying a new missile which may be able to strike the US mainland with a nuclear warhead, a report in Jane's Defence Weekly says today.

In the most alarming and detailed picture yet painted of Pyongyang's deterrent force, the authoritative military publication said the navy had customised a dozen scrapped Russian submarines to launch ballistic weapons of mass destruction.

Rumours have been circulating for several years that North Korea is developing an intercontinental missile - the Taepodong 2 - but the latest report suggests that the country's leader, Kim Jong-il, may also have ordered his military to attempt a short cut.

If confirmed, North Korea would join an exclusive club capable of covertly launching atomic weapons from submarines.

Only the five permanent members of the United Nations security council - the US, UK, France, China and Russia - and possibly Israel possess such a strategic advantage.

The article, which appears in this week's edition of Jane's, says North Korea's new systems appeared to be based on a decommissioned Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missile, the R-27.

It notes that several Russian missile experts from Chelyabinsk, a city in the Urals, were blocked in an attempt to enter North Korea in 1992, but others succeeded in subsequent years.

Much of the technology was reportedly transferred in the form of scrap in 1993, when a Japanese trading firm sold 12 decommissioned Foxtrot and Golf II class submarines to North Korea.

Although many key mechanisms were removed, the magazine said the vessels still contained launch tubes and stabilising sub-systems.

By customising these devices, it said, North Korea had developed and deployed a land-based missile with a range of 2,500km to 4,000km, as well as a sea-based missile with a range of 2,500km (1,500 miles).

The version of the missile capable of being launched from submarines or ships "is potentially the most threatening," Jane's said.

"It could finally provide its leadership with something that it has long sought to obtain - the ability to directly threaten the continental US."

North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes have long been a concern to the world.

In 2002, President George Bush named North Korea, alongside Iran and Iraq, as part of an axis of evil.

Pyongyang is now locked in a standoff with Washington over its withdrawal last year from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Although the country has never successfully tested a nuclear weapon, it is thought to have reprocessed sufficient plutonium for one to eight warheads.

According to the South Korean military, North Korea has 600 Scud missiles with a range of 600km and 100 Nodong missiles with a range of 1,300km. It also test-fired a multi-stage Taepodong 1 rocket over Japan in 1998.

A second-generation Taepodong capable of hitting Hawaii, Alaska and possibly the western seaboard of the US is under development.

Although the CIA believes that North Korea possesses an arsenal of biological and chemical weapons, Jane's news editor, Ian Kemp, said there was no doubt that the new missiles were primarily designed to carry nuclear warheads.

But Japanese military analysts are sceptical that North Korea possesses the miniaturisation technology to fit a nuclear warhead into a missile.

Comment: In a SOTT exclusive, we have obtained the actual US intelligence agency evidence that comprehensively proves that the threat from North Korea is REAL people!

At this point, we should all be much more inclined to believe the Japanese analysis of the North Korean threat than that of the US warmongers. We have all allowed ourselves to be deceived many times before. From Pearl Harbor, to JFK, to Saddam, how much more BS are we willing to swallow before we stand up and refuse to be lied to any longer?..

Click here to comment on this article

Hawaii was surprised; Washington was not

In 1915, a German submarine torpedoed the British passenger ship Lusitania, and 128 Americans perished. In the United States, the incident was used to fan anti-German sentiment and to beat war drums. What the American public did not know was that the Germans sunk the Lusitania because it had in its hold six million rounds of ammunition bound for England. Subsequent official inquiries suppressed this fact, and Woodrow Wilson even ordered the ship's manifest to be sealed and placed in U.S. Treasury archives.

It is instructive to note that when the ship went down, Franklin D. Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and Winston Churchill was head of the British Admiralty. Before the incident, Churchill had ordered a study to determine the political impact if an ocean liner were sunk with Americans on board.

According to Commander Joseph Kenworthy, then in British Naval Intelligence, "The Lusitania was sent at considerably reduced speed into an area where a U-boat was known to be waiting and with her escorts withdrawn." Some 25 years later, FDR and Churchill would again be principals during the engineering of an Anglo-American war effort.

Click here to comment on this article

Flashback: Time To See The Truth About Ourselves And Iraq

The below article is by the former U.N. Assistant Secretary General who resigned in moral protest against the genocide being perpetrated on the Iraqi people.

Denis J Halliday
The Guardian - 2 August 2000

Here we are in the middle of the millennium year and we are responsible for genocide in Iraq. Saddam Hussein certainly gave Bush and Thatcher a gift when he invaded Kuwait in 1990. He facilitated the opening of the much-needed respectability of a UN umbrella for a US-led alliance to destroy Iraq.

Why? Because despite the costly debacle of the war with Iran, Saddam Hussein remained the only Arab head of state capable of providing Arab leadership and resistance to neo-colonial US/UK and western domination of the Middle East, and its oil.

The war was always about controlling oil supplies, and never really about Kuwait. But Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, in breach of international law, provided the opportunity for showing American military muscle, damaged by the Vietnam defeat; for experimentation with depleted uranium; and for the destruction of Iraq, combined with impoverishment of the rich Arab world .

All of us that live in the silent democracies are responsible for sustained genocide in Iraq. Today the prime minister, Tony Blair, is on the defensive on a range of largely domestic issues. He does not appear to be on the defensive over genocide. His unending endorsement of the Clinton/Albright programme for killing the children of Iraq is seldom mentioned.

Have decision-makers learned nothing from the Pinochet humiliation? Or do they still feel immune under international law for crimes against humanity?

What does that say about us all? Does it say that, after 10 long decimating years of the UN economic embargo on the people of Iraq, we simply do not care? We do not care when Unicef reports that 5,000 children under five years old die each month unnecessarily from embargo-related deprivation. And Unicef does not count the teenagers, the adults and the aged that die.

Do we not care that the UN allies, in breach of Geneva conventions, destroyed the lives of civilians through direct bombing and destruction of electric power capabilities, clean water systems, sanitation and health care?

Do we not care that Iraqi society, culture and learning, rooted in the cities of Mesopotamia, is dying alongside its people? Are we really that racist? Are we really that anti-Islamic? Could Britain stand by and watch the same holocaust within a white Christian state?

What can be done? Why not set aside US propaganda and demonisation and do a Nixon to China, or a Clinton-Putin outreach to Pyongyang - ie, communicate. Begin to understand what is happening in Iraq, and begin perhaps to influence change and better relations within the Middle East.

Why not address the concerns of the Kuwaiti and Saudi leadership, who fear a resurgence of Iraqi regional ambition, by encouraging their political collaboration with Baghdad? At the same time ease fears through control of purchasing by, and sales to, Iraq of offensive weapons of mass or other forms of destruction. Demand the removal of weapons of mass destruction from the region, including Israel, as in the US-drafted paragraph 14 of UN Resolution 687.

Critically, end the economic embargo and allow the Iraqi economy to resurface. End malnutrition and high child mortality rates. Get people back to work. Re-establish the dinar and its purchasing power. Repair the power, water and urban sewage systems. Rebuild agricultural production, health care and education.

End the killing now. Remove any excuse that Baghdad has today for the ongoing catastrophe. End human rights abuses by the UN via the embargo. Demand an end to civil and political rights abuses by Baghdad.

Acknowledge we have reduced the Iraqis to refugees in their own country, being fed inadequately despite use of their own oil revenues.

Let us not be blinded by wasteful expenditures on palaces or luxury cars. Should we expect a higher standard in Iraq when the UK spends millions of pounds on a dome while British people are homeless and hungry?

Let us be honest. We do not care for democracy in the Middle East as much too threatening to that oil cow Saudi Arabia and its offspring Kuwait. Admit the US/UK governments want country stability so that they can invest profitably and be sure of oil but regional instability so that demand for arms manufacturing and sales is sustained.

Let us invest in people and peaceful coexistence in the world, including the Middle East. Let's rally around the world as the one small threatened unit it is today, just as the Iraqis have rallied around Saddam Hussein under western attack.

Let us recognise the calamity of the US/UK- driven UN economic embargo on Iraq. Calamitous not only for Iraq and its people, but for us all, including the very survival of the UN itself as a credible instrument for peace and security.

Let us take some risks. Let us even remain ultimately self-serving and yet visionary - by responding to such global crises as Africa, global poverty, HIV-Aids, the environment, globalisation ills - the things that really matter, while allowing the children of Iraq to live.

Comment: Honorable words, yet they fail to see the reality of the situation and the fact that Bush and Co could not care less about dead Iraqi children, they are more concerned with how best to control the masses back home and make sure that if they ever do find out what a bunch of murdering psychopaths they are, they will have the necessary tools in place to "quell unrest"...

Click here to comment on this article

9/11 panel dismayed by Bush's reaction
INTELLIGENCE CHIEF: Director needs real clout, members say

Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Wednesday, August 4, 2004
San Francisco Chronicle

Washington -- Two members of the Sept. 11 commission criticized President Bush's proposal to create a national intelligence director, telling Congress on Tuesday that the White House plan fails to give the new spy chief the executive powers needed to revamp the nation's intelligence agencies.

Without the power to set budgets and hire and fire senior managers, the new intelligence czar will lack the clout to make major changes at the nation's 15 spy agencies, the commissioners told lawmakers at the first House hearing prompted by the panel's 567-page report on the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

"The person that has the responsibility needs the authority," Democratic commissioner Bob Kerrey, a former Nebraska senator, told the House Government Reform Committee. "Absent that, they're not going to be able to get the job done."

Republican commissioner John Lehman, a former Navy secretary who has been seen as a possible replacement for retiring CIA Director George Tenet, also urged the president to reconsider his proposal to base the director outside the White House. The commission recommended establishing the position within the White House to keep the director from being overshadowed by powerful Cabinet members, such as the defense secretary.

"Our recommendations are not a Chinese menu," Lehman said. "They are a whole system. If all of the important elements are not adopted, it makes it very difficult for the others to succeed."

Comment: The smoke and mirrors continue as the powers that be in Washington argue over how the police state needs to be implemented in the US. Rather than getting to the truth of the 9/11 coup, the debate will focus on how to put into place the measures proposed by the 9/11 Commission, giving Republicans and Democrats the chance to grandstand on the nightly news while American rights and freedoms go down the toilet...

Click here to comment on this article

US officials defend terror alert

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday August 4, 2004
The Guardian

US officials yesterday insisted they were right to raise the alert over a potential terrorist attack against a US financial target, despite the fact that much of the information that prompted the warning was years old.

During a day of claims of political motives in the handling of the alert, a senior Bush administration official told the New York Times that the cache of al-Qaida surveillance material captured in Pakistan contained photographs taken last January of financial centres in New York and Washington.

Earlier, Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland security, conceded that almost all the evidence found on computer files seized recently in Pakistan pointed to al-Qaida surveillance of key financial establishments that pre-dated September 11 2001.

He said that some of the information had been updated as recently as January, but added there was "no evidence" of more recent surveillance. That did not mean there was no imminent threat, he argued, because of al-Qaida's reputation for long-term planning.

"I would point out that this is the most significant, detailed piece of information about any particular region that we've come across in a long, long time, perhaps ever," he said.

The Washington Post yesterday quoted a "senior law enforcement official" as questioning the motivation behind the alert declared on Sunday of a possible attack on financial centres in New York, Newark and Washington.

"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," the official said. "Why did we go to this level?"

Mr Ridge rejected suggestions that the high alert was politically motivated. "We don't do politics in the department of homeland security," he said. [...]

Comment: Wow. It doesn't get more blatantly hypocritical than this. They don't need to "do politics" in the department of homeland security because the department of homeland security IS politics. It was created by politicians for the purpose of doing what politicians do best - lying to the people. Ridge realises that he simply has to keep the lies coming thick and fast, because, if he did not, the truth of what the US government is planning for its citizens might leak out. For example, how would US citizens react if they knew that many of them may soon be seen as "terrorists" themselves, to be rounded up and interned in "detention centers"...

Click here to comment on this article

US Army Units Trained For 'Civil Insurrection'

July 31 2004

The below, posted on TBR News, is allegedly from a White House Press Corp member

"More info about Ashcroft’s desire to put us all in camps for "reeducation as loyal Americans and true Christians." I mentioned Ashcroft’s "ideas" about "neutralizing" evil influences in the United States. Special U.S. Army units are trained for putting down any kind of civil insurrection. These units are small, very well-equipped and are considered to be the most elite units the Army now possesses. They have not seen any foreign combat duty: They are designed solely as domestic control units. I can give you some interesting specifics and there is a lot more where this comes from.

There are centers around the United States where these units are based. For instance, Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois is one such base. These units have an interesting form of rapid deployment command centers. These consist of what appear to be commercial tractor trailers with such things as the names of well-known moving van companies, or other major corporations such as Wal-Mart or Radio Shack on the sides. These units are not for transporting goods but are prefab command centers. The special units can move these via the highways in perfect safety from a base of operations to a "hot" area where "domestic terrorists" might be operating.

These "domestic terrorists" might be peace groups, irate farmers, angry union workers and so on. The mobile command centers move into an area disguised, as I have said, like standard commercial vehicles. Then, when a defense perimeter has been established, the units are put together in squares, four to a side, and these are, in turn, linked together, forming a large, fully-equipped Army center, complete with all electronic gear needed to supervise the command of troops that will be airlifted into the secured area by helicopters. Targets in the "main areas of resistance" will have been identified previously and the incoming troops will be directed to these areas, preferably at night. I want to point out that there are sixteen such bases throughout the United States to include Hawaii but not Alaska. There are standing orders on file, and some have been leaked, as to how to deal with "civil disobedience" in general. Specific orders about individual targets are prepared on an as-needed basis.

Also, "Regional Detention Centers" have been designated and prepared for use if and when they are needed. These lie in remote areas such as northern Maine, west Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana and eastern Washington state. There are eleven such Regional Detention Centers now prepared for immediate use with prefab barracks, wire perimeters and military positions constructed on any approaches to these very easily supervised camps. Urban areas have been excluded from this program because civilians are under no circumstances to be aware of their existence nor will access from the civilian sector be easy or permitted. (Here, I am quoting from an official overview but minus the weird military terminology) I may move to Israel if this keeps up! Now in all objectivity, merely setting these things up does not mean they will be used…but they can if the circumstances warrant it and Ashcroft and other are bending the President’s ear about this. Not everyone is happy about this sort of thing and probably the strongest detractors are, oddly enough, the professional military. [...]

Comment: While it is not possible to verify the authenticity of the above, many recent reports of what are clearly crowd control weapons being distributed to US police and military would seem to suggest that the US government is indeed preparing for domestic disruptions at some time in the not too distant future. It is difficult to predict the circumstances that would give rise to such "disruptions", clear and publicly available evidence that the Bush gang were attempting to defraud the people again this November might do it. Of course, such a scenario would simply play into the hands of "the powers that be", providing justification for what would be the ultimate clamping down on the "freedoms" that America has become infamous for.

Click here to comment on this article

Terrorist Warnings Another Way To Steal Election

By Jason Leopold
Tuesday, 3 August 2004, 1:40 pm

It's official. I'm a conspiracy theorist.

I'm probably one of thousands-maybe tens of thousands-who believe President George W. Bush will do anything to retain control of the White House. It's not safe to have a healthy dose of skepticism like this these days. But this has to be said. I don't believe the country is going to be attacked by al-Qaeda anytime soon. I don't care how specific the so-called threat is. I don't care how many targets have been identified. I don't care how solid this new information is. I don't buy any of it. What I do believe is whenever Bush's approval ratings start slipping the president's administration issues a terrorist warning saying an attack is imminent. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Consider the evidence.

This past Memorial Day weekend right through mid-June Bush's approval ratings yo-yoed due to bad news coming out of the war in Iraq. By mid-June, 51% of Americans disapproved of the way Bush was handling the war in Iraq, up about four points from May, according to polling results from Zogby, Gallup and Pew.

Bush was taking a beating in the press in May and June because of the Abu-Ghraib prison scandal and the high number of American military casualties the U.S. suffered in Iraq. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, on May 26, Attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference warning the public that al-Qaeda "wants to hit America hard." Ashcroft didn't release specific information because he didn't have any. He said that somewhere in this country seven al-Qaeda operatives were planning an attack. That's hardly information that warrants a press conference. His announcement didn't even elevate a change in the color coded terrorist alert system. In fact, it was all a smokescreen to change the news cycle. It worked. Bush's numbers went back up soon after Ashcroft's press conference.

However, the Wall Street Journal reported a couple of days later that the Department of Homeland Security found that Ashcroft's dire warnings of an attack on American soil "had been known for some time" and "was not new or specific enough to merit an announcement or other action."

Ashcroft cried wolf on a half-dozen other occasions too; last July 4, last Christmas and right before the Super Bowl, to name a few. Those alleged terrorist threats identified banks, shopping malls, power plants and stadiums, obvious targets for a militant group that wants to rack up a high number of casualties.

So when Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge announced Sunday that terrorists want to blow up the Citicorp building in Manhattan's financial district, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. and the Prudential Building in Newark, N.J. the threat seemed more real, more imminent, because, for the first time, we got specific information. But as far as I'm concerned, the Bush administration picked those targets out of a hat. The only way this administration can rebuild its credibility is if one of those targets is blown up or an attack is thwarted. [...]

Click here to comment on this article

Comment: Speaking of blowing up one of the targets...

Nearly 3,000 Pounds Of Ammonium Nitrate Stolen In N.C.

Volatile Fertilizer Often Used In al Qaeda Truck Bombs

By J.M. Berger
UPDATED: 8/3/2004, 2:52 p.m.

Nearly 3,000 pounds of stolen ammonium nitrate are unaccounted for in North Carolina, even as the U.S. braces itself against a possible al Qaeda truck bomb attack.

Two and a half tons of ammonium nitrate were stolen from a Royster-Clark fertilizer plant in Winston-Salem, N.C. in early July, according to the Winston-Salem Police Department, consisting of one hundred 50-pound bags.

Mixed with fuel oil, ammonium nitrate is a favored ingredient used in al Qaeda truck bombs. Nearly a month after the theft was reported, 59 bags of the volatile fertilizer are still unaccounted for, police said Monday. Dozens of similar 50-pound bags were purchased by Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh for use in the Oklahoma City bombing.

A July 30 bulletin from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warned of al Qaeda's frequent use of ammonium nitrate as a bomb component, also noting its use in Oklahoma City. The bulletin also cited recent instances in which al Qaeda has stockpiled ammonium nitrate abroad.

The unsolved theft from a North Carolina facility looms large as local and federal authorities responded to a Department of Homeland Security bulletin warning that al Qaeda may be planning a truck bomb attack against U.S. financial centers in New York City and Washington, D.C.

Lt. Connie Southern of the Wintston-Salem Police told INTELWIRE Monday that police had recovered 41 of the stolen bags, leaving 2,950 pounds of ammonium nitrate still missing.

Winston-Salem police have no leads in the case, Southern said, and there were no clues to indicate who might have stolen the material. According to the Winston-Salem Journal, which first reported the theft on July 9, most of the recovered bags were found in vacant houses in the area and in an area home.

Southern said the investigation was expanded to include the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. But a source at the ATF who asked not to be named would say only that the bureau was aware of the theft. The ATF source could provide no information on the status of the investigation nor any details of the case.

A call to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. was referred to the FBI's Charlotte field office. A call to the Charlotte office had not been returned at the time of this update. A call to the Department of Homeland Security was not returned at the time of this update. As of the latest update, INTELWIRE could not confirm that any active investigation of the case currently exists at the federal level. [...]

Ammonium nitrate, a commercial fertilizer, is a favored component for truck bombs of the type mentioned in Sunday's announcement by DHS. It can be purchased with few controls at a wide variety of outlets, but large scale purchases can arouse suspicion.

Police recently discovered a half-ton cache of ammonium nitrate being stored by suspected al Qaeda terrorists in London. Several British news outlets reported today that an attack in the U.K. was indicated in the same intelligence that prompted the U.S. alert. [...]

Timothy McVeigh destroyed the Alfred E. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City with a bomb employing four to five thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate, mixed with a volatile racing fuel.

The 2002 Bali nightclub bombing is believed to have used ammonium nitrate as its main component. The fertilizer was also used in an attack on the U.S. embassy in Karachi in 2002. Al Qaeda is believed to be linked to both those attacks. Authorities have recovered large caches of the fertilizer from suspected terrorists in various southeast Asian locations since the Bali attack. Several tons of ammonium nitrate were recently reported stolen in Australia.

Other reports of explosives theft have surfaced around the country. [...]

According to the Juneau Empire Online, "an unknown quantity of safety fuse and one-pound canisters of Pentex cast boosters, a high explosive," were stolen from an Alaskan company in July.

Comment: So someone is running around the US, conducting surveillance and attempting to infiltrate various government and industrial buildings.. we wonder who that could be...

Click here to comment on this article

Flashback: Israelis caught Attempting to Enter US Naval Base

By LIZ HAMPTON
Florida Times-Union
Sat., May 22, 2004

ST. MARYS, Ga. -- Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base was locked down for security reasons Friday after two Israelis were detained for questioning.

Base spokesman Ed Buczek said two Israeli men attempted to enter the base about 10:30 a.m. They were hired by a moving-and-storage company to pick up some household goods in base housing, he said.

One occupant of the vehicle was unable to provide base security personnel with proper credentials after arriving at the Franklin Gate entrance, Buczek said.

Base personnel then inspected the van. Military dogs trained to detect bombs were called in.

"The military dogs were alerted to a scent in the cab of the truck," Buczek said. "Guards closed access to the base and notified the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service."

St. Marys police closed access to an area one-half mile out surrounding the base, and a bomb squad was called in, Buczek said. A briefcase was removed from the vehicle with a remote control robot, but nothing was found in it.

"The dogs were called in again for a second pass of the vehicle, and they didn't pick up anything," he said.

The two men, whose names were not released, were detained and later taken into custody by federal immigration officers in Savannah for possible deportation, Buczek said.

And as we commented at the time: Okay, let's see if we have this straight: Two Israelis in a moving truck try to con their way into a US Navy submarine base. They are stopped by US authorities. What happens next? Questioning? Interrogation? Why no! They are handed over to immigration officers for deportation! Might these two men have perhaps possessed some important information relating to "US national security" perhaps?? We suspect so! But then again, nowadays US national security is dependent on what is good for Israel and it's crazed fundamentalist leaders. Think about what would have happened if the two men were Arabs instead of Israelis. Obviously, they would immediately have been regarded and treated as terrorists. Yet again, we have a case of Israelis, moving companies, and a certain interest in key terrorism targets in America. How much more proof do people need??

Just a couple of weeks ago two Israelis were stopped driving another moving van in a remote part of the Appalachians. In that incident they were seen to discard a bottle containing a liquid mixture that could have been used as a "culture for the development of some sort of bug (virus)". What happened to these two ex-IDF Israelis? Jail? Of course not. After the FBI attempted to dismiss the case as insignificant, the men were tried for immigration violations, and subsequently released!

Click here to comment on this article

Statue of Liberty Reopens to Public

By VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press
Wed Aug 4, 2:34 AM ET

NEW YORK - The Statue of Liberty, hailed once again as "a beacon of hope," welcomed tourists inside on Tuesday for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks, with hundreds of visitors returning despite warnings of terrorist threats.

In an hour-long reopening ceremony, Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged Americans to visit the statue and demonstrate that the country would never be "coerced into abandoning any symbol of America." [...]

Visitors found tightened security measures at the 117-year-old national monument, including a new anti-bomb detection device that blasts air into clothing and then checks for particles of explosive residue.

Tourists now can go only as high as the statue's feet, where they can gaze up through a glass partition at the steel girders bracing the landmark's hollow interior. [...]

The statue and Liberty Island were closed after Sept. 11; although the island reopened to the public two months later, the statue remained off-limits. [...]

Comment: The country will never be coerced into abandoned any symbol of America, but it might close such symbols to the public for almost three years. It is rather appropriate that visitors are now restricted to groveling at the feet of Lady Liberty, separated from the rest by a glass barrier.

Click here to comment on this article

Future Warrior Exhibits Super Powers

By Phil Copeland
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, July 27, 2004 – The Army's future soldier will resemble something out of a science fiction movie, members of Congress witnessed at a demonstration on Capitol Hill July 23.

The newest concepts for lightweight, lethal uniform systems to be worn by the future soldiers in battle were displayed at the Russell Senate Building here.

Two uniform systems are under development. The Future Force Warrior system will be available for fielding to soldiers in 2010. The Vision 2020 Future Warrior system, which will follow on the concept of the 2010 Future Force Warrior system, is scheduled to be ready 10 years later.

The two new uniform systems are being developed under the Future Combat System Program. "This Army initiative will develop and demonstrate revolutionary capabilities for the future soldiers in battle," said Jean-Louis "Dutch" DeGay, a Soldier Systems Center representative.

The new systems include a weapon, head-to-toe individual protection, onboard computer network, soldier-worn power sources, and enhanced human performance.

"The Future Force Warrior will be a responsive and formidable member of an invincible battle space team," DeGay explained, describing the system scheduled to be fielded by 2010.

"The 2010 Future Force Warrior system will meet the more immediate, short-term demands of our fighting warriors in the battle space, while the 2020 model will remind you of an ominous creature out of a science fiction movie," DeGay said. He added that the system will leverage all the technologies and lessons learned from Afghanistan and Iraq. [...]

The uniform from the waist down will have a robotic-powered system that is connected directly to the soldier. This system could use pistons to actually replicate the lower body, giving the soldier "upwards of about 300 percent greater lifting and load-carriage capability," DeGay said. "We are looking at potentially mounting a weapon directly to the uniform system and now the soldier becomes a walking gun platform." [...]

Comment: Soon to be seen on an American street near you, guns leveled at US citizens..

Click here to comment on this article

Sudan camp 'at breaking point'

Tash Shifrin
Wednesday August 4, 2004

Aid agency Oxfam has today warned that cholera could break out "at any time" in Darfur, Sudan, as it sends another planeload of aid for the refugees fleeing attacks from government-backed militia.

Water and sanitation facilities at Kalma camp in Southern Darfur are "at breaking point" the charity warned, leading to the spread of diarrhoea and the imminent threat of cholera.

[...] Around 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes, with hundreds of thousands seeking refuge in makeshift camps in Sudan and over the border in Chad.

Click here to comment on this article

Questioned at gunpoint, shackled, forced to pose naked. British detainees tell their stories of Guantánamo Bay

Vikram Dodd and Tania Branigan
Wednesday August 4, 2004
The Guardian

Britain and the US last night faced fresh allegations of abuses after a British terror suspect said an SAS soldier had interrogated him for three hours while an American colleague pointed a gun at him and threatened to shoot him.

The allegation is contained in a new dossier detailing repeated beatings and humiliation suffered by three Britons who were captured in Afghanistan, then held in Guantánamo Bay for two years, before being released in March without charge.

Rhuhel Ahmed, one of the "Tipton Three", claims in the 115-page dossier that shortly after his capture in November 2001 he was interviewed in Afghanistan by a British interrogator who said he was from the SAS. Mr Ahmed alleges he was taken by US guards to be interrogated by the British officer in a tent. "One of the US soldiers had a gun to his head and he was told if he moved they would shoot him," the report says. The SAS officer pressed him to admit he had gone to Afghanistan to fight a holy war. Last night the Ministry of Defence said it would investigate the allegation.

Click here to comment on this article

Greece to probe beating of TV crew

Last Updated Tue, 03 Aug 2004 14:18:10 EDT

ATHENS - Olympic organizers announced Tuesday an investigation into the alleged beating of a Mexican TV crew by Greek coast guard officers, after the crew refused to stop filming an off-limits Athens port where cruise liners will dock for the Games.

"We strongly regret what happened yesterday in Piraeus," Michael Zacharatos, an Athens Organizing Committee spokesperson, told reporters. "We have issued strict instructions that this incident is not repeated."

On Monday, a three-person crew from Mexico's Grupo Televisa network attempted to film outside the port of Piraeus, considered off-limits to anyone except security officials, cruise ship passengers and personnel.

According to Alejandro Diaz, the Mexican ambassador to Greece, security officers pushed the journalists into an unmarked car and took them to a holding area, where they allegedly beat two members of the crew. After being detained for several hours, the men were released. [...]

Click here to comment on this article

Paraguay blaze toll rises to 464

AP, Asunción
Wednesday August 4, 2004
The Guardian

The death toll from a weekend fire at a supermarket in Paraguay's capital, Asunción, rose to 464 yesterday as a security guard told investigators he had been ordered to lock the building's doors after the blaze began, officials said.

The disclosure came as investigators questioned the shop's owner, manager and security guards over reports that doors were locked, trapping shoppers during Sunday's fire.

The attorney general's office put the death toll at 464, saying 325 of the victims had been identified and 139 others had not. Officials also said 409 people remained in hospital.

The blaze broke out during lunch hour at the three-story Ycua Bolanos supermarket in a suburb of Asunción. Flames quickly filled the supermarket, food court and car park, causing one floor to collapse.

Prosecutor Edgar Sanchez, who is leading the investigation, said a security guard claimed he had received orders over a radio to lock the doors to prevent theft at the outset of the fire. Mr Sanchez said the guard "didn't know" who had given the order. The cause of the disaster has not been determined but police said an exploding gas canister may be to blame.

Click here to comment on this article

Saudi diplomat in London indicted on childsex allegations walks free

Mon Aug 2

LONDON (AFP) - A Saudi diplomat in London suspected of sexual impropriety against an 11-year-old girl was allowed to walk free due to his diplomatic status, police and the Foreign Office said.

The 41-year-old was arrested and briefly held on July 26 but "he was released with no further action by police and we have reported the matter to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office," a Scotland Yard spokesman said after revelations in the Sun tabloid.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said it was in touch with the Saudi embassy, adding: "In normal circumstances, in such cases, there is a request to waive diplomatic immunity."

The embassy was not immediately available to comment on the case.

Comment: Is it any wonder why so many psychopaths get into politics...

Teenagers murdered women in crocodile river, court is told

By Kathy Marks in Darwin
04 August 2004

Two Australian teenagers confessed to murdering two Thai-born prostitutes by tying them up and throwing them into a crocodile-infested river, a court heard yesterday.

A post-mortem examination showed that Phuangsri Kroksamrang, 58, and Somjai Insamnan, 27, drowned in the Adelaide river, south of Darwin, last March. Their floating bodies were discovered by a tour group being taken on a crocodile-spotting cruise.

Rex Wild, the Northern Territory's director of public prosecutions, told a committal hearing that Ben McLean and Phu Trinh, both 18, had confessed to murdering the women in police interviews.

Mr Trinh claimed he carried out the killings by himself, strangling the women in the back of a car and then throwing them off a bridge into the river. But Mr McLean admitted that he was also involved.

Mr Wild said that, despite Mr McLean's account, "the cause of death in both cases appeared to be drowning, which indicated that both women were alive when they went over". He said they might have been unconscious at the time.

The court heard Ms Kroksamrang and Ms Insamnan worked as prostitutes in Darwin. The teenagers had sex with them before allegedly killing them. When their bodies were found, their ankles and hands were tied and each had a red rope around her neck. A car battery had been tied to both bodies to weigh them down.

Mr McLean and Mr Trinh, who both appeared barefoot in Darwin magistrates' court, did not enter a formal plea. Mr Wild said they had been working at Mr Trinh's family vegetable farm at Marrakai, near the river, at the time of the murders. After being questioned by police, they flew to Brisbane and were arrested in a friend's house, where they were found hiding in a bedroom cupboard.

Mr Trinh allegedly contacted the women and bought zip ties, rope and packing tape before picking them up from the motel. He gave no reason for the murders, while Mr McLean claimed he wanted to pay off a drugs debt. Mr Wild said the prosecution did not accept that explanation.

Ms Kroksamrang was known to carry large amounts of cash, and kept $50,000 (£19,000) in a safety deposit box. A sum of $1,800 (£700) was allegedly withdrawn from her account after she disappeared.

Click here to comment on this article

Man slashes 15 children, kills one

August 4, 2004 - 9:40PM

A gatekeeper wielding a knife at a Beijing kindergarten went on the rampage on Wednesday, slashing 15 young children and killing one of them - a four-year-old boy, Chinese state media and medical sources have said.

Three teachers were also injured when the man attacked children and staff at the Beijing University Number One Hospital's kindergarten with a kitchen knife in the morning, they said.

The shocked and injured children were taken to hospital, where one of them died, a nurse told AFP. "He was a four-year-old boy," she said.

Click here to comment on this article

Home Schooling Is on the Rise

By BEN FELLER, AP
August 4, 2004

WASHINGTON - For more and more students, homeroom has become a room at home. Almost 1.1 million students were home-schooled last year, a 29 percent increase since the last government survey in 1999. The growth comes as more parents, frustrated with traditional schools and limits on curriculum, say they would rather handle lessons themselves.

The estimated figure of students taught at home comes from parent surveys. The results were released Tuesday by the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department.

Parents offered two main reasons for choosing home schooling: 31 percent cited concerns about the environment of regular schools, such as drugs, lack of safety and negative peer pressure; 30 percent wanted the flexibility to teach religious or moral lessons. Sixteen percent said they were dissatisfied with academic instruction at other schools. [...]

Click here to comment on this article

Lightning kills boy, injures four girls as storms lash Britain

August 4, 2004

LONDON (AFP) - A 14-year-old boy was killed by lightning as violent storms swept across Britain causing flooding in the capital and closing down sections of London's underground train system, police said.

The youngster was killed when lightning struck as he played in the garden of his home in the Staffordshire town of Bloxwich.

In London, four 15-year-old girls were rushed to hospital after they were struck by lightning at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, police said.

The storms later spread south where they then lashed the capital.

The sudden rise in water levels in the streets of London after torrential downpours caused several underground stations to close and hail damaged several houses and commercial buildings in the centre of the city, British Transport Police said.

The flood waters notably swept through the ground floor of the BBC television centre in west London, disrupting the recording of at least one daily news magazine programme.

Click here to comment on this article

Commuter Trains Crash in Zimbabwe, 70 Hurt

Click here to comment on this article

Six Die As Small Plane Crashes Into House

By JIM VERTUNO, Associated Press Writer
Wed Aug 4, 2:35 AM ET

LAKEWAY, Texas - A small plane crashed into a house bordering a golf course in suburban Austin and burst into flames Tuesday, killing the six people aboard. Three people inside the luxury two-story home escaped unharmed.

Two children, their parents, a pilot and another person were killed after their plane refueled and took off from Lakeway Airpark just before noon, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman John Clabes said.

Witnesses said the plane apparently had engine trouble and could not gain altitude. The skies were clear in the area at the time of the crash.

"We just looked up and saw the aircraft and it was going slow, wings level," said Bert Brown, a retired American Airlines pilot who was golfing with a friend when the plane crashed. "I saw him try to either make a left hand turn or stalling out. ... With that, he lost lift and crashed right into the ground." [...]

Click here to comment on this article

India Tunnel Collapse Kills 28, Work to Resume

Wed Aug 4,12:44 AM ET

LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) - The deaths of 28 workers when a tunnel collapsed in heavy rains will not prevent India resuming work on a dam deep in the Himalayas in an area vulnerable to earthquakes, an official said on Wednesday.

Dozens of workers were in the tunnel when it caved in late on Monday near the site of the huge Tehri dam that environment groups say is dangerous because it is being built in mountains prone to earthquakes.

Rescue workers had pulled out 25 bodies by Wednesday morning, the state official said, adding that at least three more bodies were still buried under the debris.

Nine workers were in hospital with injuries. "We don't think there is anybody else trapped inside," said A.S. Napalchyal, principal secretary for disaster management in the northern Uttaranchal state. Construction of the 860-feet Tehri dam, the highest in Asia, has forced the relocation of tens of thousands of people as the main town of Tehri and some 125 surrounding villages are gradually submerged as it fills.

Work on the dam, which is part of a huge hydro-electric project for power-starved India, had been suspended, but would resume soon, Nepalchyal said. [...]

Click here to comment on this article

Massive flooding surges across Asia, UN agency reports

Tue Aug 3, 3:58 PM ET

GENEVA (AFP) - Freak weather conditions since June have led to widespread flooding in much of East and South Asia, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported.

"The floods and and the associated mountain torrents, landslides and mud-rock flows caused loss of life, destroyed houses, roads, railways and farmlands," the WMO, a United Nations specialized agency, said in a statement.

Among the countries worst hit are Bangladesh, China, India, Japan, both Koreas, Nepal, the Philippines and Vietnam.

"The intensification of the Bai-u front (which brings seasonal heavy rain to southern Japan and parts of China) in June and July, the Indian monsoon and the tropical cyclones in the southwest Pacific were the cause of the heavy rains and floods," the statement said.

"Continued heavy rain and floods are expected in some countries into August."

Each of these weather conditions is abnormal, the WMO continued, "but with the combination of monsoonal rains, the intensity of the Bai-u front and tropical cyclones, the abormalities have resulted in disasters." [...]

Click here to comment on this article

N Korea crops hit by heavy rains

Heavy rains and floods have devastated swathes of North Korea, leaving hundreds of people homeless and severely damaging crops, reports say.

The North's official news agency, KCNA, said at least 100,000 hectares (247,105 acres) of farmland had been washed away by the unusually strong monsoon rains.

It said homes of more than 1,000 families were destroyed in July alone.

Some five million North Koreans depend on foreign food aid, and famine has caused many to flee the country.

"At least 100,000 hectares of paddy and non-paddy fields were submerged or washed away and dwelling houses for more than 1,000 families and public buildings destroyed," KCNA said.

"It is hard to expect any harvest from the fields washed away and silted. Harvest in many fields is expected to drop 30%," the agency added.

It said hundreds of sections of roads and railways were destroyed and communications links affected, without providing any details on casualties. [...]

Click here to comment on this article

25 killed in monsoon downpour in western India

Tue Aug 3, 2:02 PM ET

AHMEDABAD, India (AFP) - At least 25 people have been killed in torrential rains which destroyed mud homes and washed away 50,000 hectares (123,500 acres) of farmland in the western Indian state of Gujarat, police and officials said.

"It has been raining for four days and this has created havoc in southern Gujarat," said a police spokesman in Gujarat's commercial capital Ahmedabad, adding the death toll had risen to 25 in the past 24 hours.

The bodies of two adults and three children were found after a mud house caved in Monday in Halasa village in the state's Anand district, the spokesman said.

"Another woman died Tuesday when a mud wall collapsed on her in Gujarat's Bharuch district," he added.

Two women were killed when house collapsed in the Mankni village of Baroda district and two men were swept away in the creeks in Udhna in Surat district late on Tuesday.

The driving rain also caused road accidents. In one incident, a van carrying four people was swept away by the rain-fed Karjan river in Bharuch district. [...]

The local meteorological department has forecast more monsoon rain for the region overnight Tuesday and on Wednesday. [...]

The official said about 382 villages were affected by the rains and about 26,000 people had been evacuated to relief camps in Surat district. [...]

Click here to comment on this article

Hurricane Alex Grazes N.C. Outer Banks

By AARON BEARD
Associated Press
August 4, 2004

BUXTON, N.C. - Hurricane Alex, stronger than expected but sparing the North Carolina coast a direct hit, brought plenty of wind, rain and flooding to the Outer Banks, cutting power to thousands and flooding Hatteras Island's only link to the mainland.

Now the communities of North Carolina's barrier islands must clean up after the storm brushed the coast Tuesday. Winds reached 100 mph, sending trash bins and other debris floating along a flooded Highway 12.

"It blew a whole lot harder than what people expected," said Ollie Jarvis, who owns Dillon's Corner, a souvenir and tackle shop. "Last week we weren't even thinking about it. It came up on us quick."

The storm's glancing blow was a blessing for some communities still recovering from last year's devastating Hurricane Isabel. That storm made landfall Sept. 18, 2003, damaging more than 53,000 homes. [...]

Click here to comment on this article

UBC threatened by wildfire

By HAYLEY MICK
Canadian Press

Vancouver — It was a close call for the University of British Columbia as a wildfire ripped through the forested area surrounding the campus early Sunday morning.

Forty firefighters, eight trucks and three helicopters responded to the blaze, which scorched four square kilometres on the cliffs overlooking Wreck Beach, a popular bonfire and party spot.

Officials said the fire was likely sparked by people, rather than natural causes such as lightning, but hadn't determined exactly how it was lit just after 3 a.m.

The blaze was another example of the effects of a drought and soaring temperatures that have settled over the province in recent weeks.

There were 324 wildfires burning in B.C.'s tinder-dry interior on Sunday and hundreds of firefighters from Eastern Canada and the United States arrived over the weekend to help put them out.

Information officer Steve Bachup said Sunday that crews continued to make progress on the province's largest fire at Lonesome Lake, which has promoted the evacuation of dozens of people and consumed a pioneer lodge. [...]

Click here to comment on this article

Fires put Seattle on alert

Monday, August 02, 2004
By Jennifer Sullivan
Seattle Times staff reporter

Police will step up patrols in the North Seattle neighborhoods hit by a series of fires early yesterday that drew hundreds of people into the streets and stretched firefighters to their limits, officials said.

At least five of the seven blazes were intentionally set, Mayor Greg Nickels said. [...]

Click here to comment on this article

Quake rocks Bodrum resort in west Turkey, no dead

04 Aug 2004 05:39:55 GMT

ANKARA, Aug 4 (Reuters) - An earthquake measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale struck Turkey's coastal resort of Bodrum on Wednesday, but no deaths or major damage were reported.

CNN Turk television said as many as 15 people sustained light injuries, mainly from trying to escape from windows or balconies onto the street. It showed holidaymakers, some wrapped in blankets, sitting on pavements after the quake.

The earthquake at 6.01 am (0301 GMT) was the fifth and largest in a series of tremors in the area in the past few days.

Click here to comment on this article

Moderate Tremor Occurs In Gokova Bay, Also Felt In Mugla

CihanNews: 8/3/2004

MUGLA (CIHAN) - A moderate earthquake rattled the southwestern Turkish bay of Gökova on Tuesday at 4:11 pm but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The tremor measuring 5,0 on the Richter scale occurred in the Gökova Bay in offing of the Aegean Sea near province of Mugla, southwestern Turkey, the Istanbul-based Kandilli Observatory House website said.

Click here to comment on this article

Quakes rattle San Benito County

Tuesday, August 03, 2004
By Christine Tognetti/Staff Writer

The Pinnacles National Monument felt quite a few rumbles this weekend with one earthquake early Saturday morning and one Sunday afternoon.

The first earthquake shook at 3:35 a.m. Saturday morning, and registered at 3.5 in magnitude. The epicenter was 10 miles northwest of the park and was felt throughout San Benito County, and as far away as San Jose. But Pinnacles Chief Ranger Jerry Case said there were no reports from campers at the park. [...]

The second quake hit at 4:24 p.m. on Sunday, and was smaller, but still felt more than 81 miles away. It registered at 2.6 on the Richter Scale, and Garcia said most people probably didn’t even feel it. The epicenter was 11 miles southeast of the Pinnacles.

Click here to comment on this article

Recent Large Earthquakes

USGS

Magnitude 6.0 - PACIFIC-ANTARCTIC RIDGE - 2004 August 1 19:03:09 UTC

Magnitude 5.4 - NEAR THE SOUTH COAST OF PAPUA, INDONESIA - 2004 August 2 01:05:54 UTC

Magnitude 5.6 - SOUTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA - 2004 August 2 02:36:54 UTC

Magnitude 5.2 - DODECANESE ISLANDS, GREECE - 2004 August 3 13:11:32 UTC

Magnitude 5.0 - SOLOMON ISLANDS - 2004 August 2 22:59:35 UTC

Magnitude 5.3 - DODECANESE ISLANDS, GREECE - 2004 August 4 03:01:07 UTC

Magnitude 5.4 - DODECANESE ISLANDS, GREECE - 2004 August 4 04:19:48 UTC

Click here to comment on this article

U.S. Plans To Expel Volcano Refugees

August 2, 2004
By MATTHEW HAY BROWN, Courant Staff Writer

Marsha Meade always planned to return to Montserrat. When the volcano stopped erupting, she would go back home, help her town dig out and get the island back to work.

But as the months turned to years, and the Soufriere Hills vent showed no signs of quieting, she began to sink roots in the United States - moving into an apartment outside Boston, taking a job at a community college and enrolling her daughter in a private school.

That life now is set to end in February, when mother and daughter will be ordered to leave the country - along with nearly 300 other Montserratians who have been allowed to stay since a 1997 eruption buried much of their tiny Eastern Caribbean island in lava and ash.

U.S. Rep. Major Owens, D-N.Y., says the predominantly black islanders have become the latest targets of an "overwhelming backlash" against immigrants after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"You start with the Pakistanis, the Arabs, pretty soon blacks look like Arabs to you," Owens said. "It's an unfortunate set of circumstances that are playing themselves out, which leads them to use terrorism as an excuse for tightening up on people like these poor people from Montserrat."

The volcano, which has chased more than half the population from the British territory, is still erupting. The southern half of the island, an area that includes the capital, the hospital and the airport, remains uninhabitable.

But Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has ordered an end to the temporary protected status that has allowed islanders to live and work in the United States.

Click here to comment on this article

Cult's school investigated

By Samantha Maiden
August 04, 2004

CHILD protection agency officials will determine the fate of a private school linked to doomsday cult leader William "Little Pebble" Kamm within the next week.

As Catholic officials warned yesterday the church feared for the spiritual care of converts to the "anti-Christ" cult, school officials sought to distance themselves from the cult.

NSW Education Minister Andrew Refshauge confirmed yesterday there had been "serious concerns" for some time about St Joseph's School, which is in the same compound as the cult's headquarters at Cambewarra on the NSW south coast. [...]

Former followers claim the cult's leader has claimed the Virgin Mary told him he would repopulate the world with his "holy seed" after impregnating followers through natural and supernatural methods. Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson said yesterday he would consider any evidence the children were at risk.

Click here to comment on this article

France bans junk food vending machines in schools

AFP
August 01, 2004

PARIS: Amid growing concern over obesity in children, all vending-machines that sell sweets and soft drinks in French schools are to be banned under a public health law voted through by parliament Friday.

The estimated 8000 machines in middle and secondary schools must be removed by the start of the academic year in September 2005, despite opposition from the food industry as well as from some teachers who say they perform a useful social function.

French health officials have warned that obesity has increased by 17 per cent in 20 years to the point where one child in 10 is overweight.

A recent report by the health and education ministries said that 20 per cent of 10-11 year-olds are afflicted.

Click here to comment on this article

Lake’s legend lives? Vacationers see seagull fall prey to snake-like creature

By DAN HEATH, Staff Writer

CHAMPLAIN — Seeing is believing.

Five Maryland residents vacationing here say they had a close encounter with Champ, Lake Champlain’s lurking legend last week.

"I was born in Champlain. I never believed in Champ or the Loch Ness monster," said Bob Gload of Crofton, Maryland. "I believe now."

Bob and four of his grandchildren were enjoying a quiet Wednesday afternoon of bass fishing.

At around 3 p.m., he piloted his 1962 Crestliner to the middle of the lake, partway between Point Au Fer and Isle La Motte, Vt.

Gload, 10-year-old Russell Crim and 7-year-old Kaylee Gload were near the stern, facing Isle La Motte. Matthew Crim, 10, and Taylor Gload, 12, were on the boat’s bow, facing Chazy Landing.

"We heard a seagull crying. It was flapping around in the water about 150 yards away," Taylor said.

Matthew yelled there were three muskies trying to get a seagull, alerting Bob.

"I turned around and saw that explosion from the water. I saw three humps, two- to three-feet tall, about four- or five-feet apart," Bob said.

Taylor scrambled to get the camera, but by then it was too late. The creature had slipped back beneath the water.

"We watched, and it resurfaced farther north, then that was it," Bob said. "It appeared to be undulating, like the way a snake moves."

He quickly looked around to see if any other boats were nearby, but they were alone.

"It was a very calm day. There were no ripples on the water at all," Bob said.

All five saw the creature. Bob said Kaylee appeared a little frightened by what she saw.

Click here to comment on this article

And now for something completely pointless...

by Jason knight

I was sitting at a cafe in France yesterday chewing the fat with my buddy Scott on how I could contribute to the world at large. After some milling over of several elaborate schemes to make gobs of money and leave the world a better place too boot; it hit me. What do I have, in great abundance, that others couldn't live without. Opinions. I have 'em by the boat load. Sometimes I spend hours coming up with opinions on subjects that I quite honestly know nothing about.

Why bother coming up with fresh opinions when you can use mine. Besides I am quite sure that my opinions are far superior logically and holistically than yours. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that your life would be concurrently improved if you stopped thinking for yourselves and decided to use my Canned Opinions.

Canned Opinion #1:

Learning a foreign language is very difficult. To make matters worse, most book/online instructions pretty much go about the whole thing wrong. They always teach you "Hello" first. This won't be too helpful because first off, you only know how to start a conversation. If you are learning French and you walk around saying "Bonjour" all the time then Francophones will think that you speak french and will decide to talk your ear off. Now you are in a pretty pickle, you spent all that time memorizing "Bonjour" and nothing else, so you have no idea how to politely extricate yourself from the conversation without making the both of you look like idiots. You for only knowing one word, and him/her for spending 2 minutes asking you about the weather and how it compares to the current financial crisis in the U.S.

If anything, books and lessons in any language should start with key phrases that will be sure to prevent any kind of conversation. However, we cannot adopt a one size fits all attitude. What we need are Gender specific phrases that will ensure an uncomfortable silence followed by a hasty getaway by the feared native.

Thats all for now kiddies. Tune in next week for Canned Opinion #2 Why made for T.V. Movie Stars shouldn't breed.

Remember, we need your help to collect information on what is going on in your part of the world!

We also need help to keep the Signs of the Times online.

Send your comments and article suggestions to us

Contact Webmaster at signs-of-the-times.org
Cassiopaean materials Copyright ©1994-2014 Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk. All rights reserved. "Cassiopaea, Cassiopaean, Cassiopaeans," is a registered trademark of Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk.
Letters addressed to Cassiopaea, Quantum Future School, Ark or Laura, become the property of Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Republication and re-dissemination of our copyrighted material in any manner is expressly prohibited without prior written consent.

.