Sunday, October 17, 2004
The Daily Battle Against Subjectivity 

Signs of The Times

 
SITE MAP

Daily News and Commentary

Glossary

The Signs Quick Guide

Note to New Readers

Archives

Search

Message Board

Books

 
 
SOTT Podcast logo
Signs of the Times Podcast
 
P3nt4gon Str!ke logo
P3nt4gon Str!ke by a QFS member
 

High Strangeness
Discover the Secret History of the World - and how to get out alive!

 

High Strangeness
The Truth about Hyperdimensional Beings and Alien Abductions

 

The Wave
New Expanded Wave Series Now in Print!

 

Support The Quantum Future Group and The Signs Team

How you can help keep Signs of The Times online...

 
The material presented in the linked articles does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the editors. Research on your own and if you can validate any of the articles, or if you discover deception and/or an obvious agenda, we will appreciate if you drop us a line! We often post such comments along with the article synopses for the benefit of other readers. As always, Caveat Lector!

(Bookmark whatsnew link! In case site is down, info will be there!)

 
Printer Friendly Version    Fixed link to latest Page

New! Article - High Strangeness

New! Article - The Blair Belief Project

New! P3nt4gon Str!ke Presentation by a QFS member

Picture of the Day

©2004 Pierre-Paul Feyte

Governments, Conspiracies and You

SOTT Analysis
17/10/2004

As most readers are aware, the main purpose of the Signs of the Times page is to uncover and present the truth - to as great an extent as we can uncover it - about our world, the nature of the people that inhabit it, and the many and varied groups involved in attempting to control it. In the interests of objectivity and a deeper understanding of the dynamics at work, it may be useful for us, at this particular point in time, to stop for a minute and consider the state and nature of human existence on our planet at present.

There are approximately 6 billion of us on this planet. The lives and fortunes of this 6 billion people are directed in various ways by a relatively small group of elected or unelected individuals who, together, make up what is called "government".

No individual or group alive today can lay claim to having come up with the idea that an individual or a small group should be in charge of everybody else. All of us were born into a world where some form of government or another already existed, including those individuals who, during their lifetime, became part of the ruling class. There is obviously a power - a "line of force" - behind these governments, but we will leave that aspect of the question aside for the moment. For now, we want to look at very specific issues.

There are two possible explanations as to why some form of government or another - a ruling class vis a vis the masses of humanity - has existed now for many generations.

The first explanation is the argument that it is fundamental to human nature to look to a leader or leaders to take and enact decisions on behalf of the larger group. The argument goes that, due to another fundamental aspect of human nature - the tendency towards service to self - leadership by an individual or small group is necessary to ensure that a structured society, even the most primitive, can succeed without descending into anarchy, violence and survival of the fittest, and that even those humans who wish that it were not so, innately understand this and therefore willingly embrace a hierarchy as a necessary evil. Leadership, or government, then, is a structure that is put in place essentially to protect the people from themselves while maintaining the structure of society for the benefit of all, and places power into the hands of the few who present themselves as most able to do the job.

Let us notice this important fact: by and large in recent history, those that have presented themselves, or have been presented by others, as being fit for the job of leadership, have been elected or selected as a result of their own claims, or the claims of others, as to their competence rather than due to any stunningly evident leadership qualities. That is to say, society is too large for direct contact and intimate knowledge of the leaders by the people, so we end up having to trust their claims or the claims of their pals.

This, of course, leads to the question of who will protect the people from the leaders and regulate their actions if such a need arises?

This issue does not seem to be provided for in any practical or rational way, and the 'governees' are left to paradoxically hope that the leaders somehow possess, or will develop, the benevolent qualities befitting those who aspire to positions of power.

The paradox is, of course, in the fact that the lack of these benevolent qualities in humans in general, including the leaders, is what creates the need for leaders in the first place!

The second explanation, while accepting that human beings tend towards self service, proclaims that it is not by any means a 'black and white' issue and that there exists also an altruistic aspect to human nature, if only in potential. Furthermore, it is proposed that the degree to which self centeredness and altruism are manifested can vary greatly from person to person. It is further argued that there exists the possibility that, if the human potential for altruism were to be cultivated, a very different social structure might have a chance to develop. With this as its basis, the second explanation asserts that the concept that a few must naturally govern the many is not necessarily true and, in fact, is most often promoted by those in whom the service to self nature is strongest.

Indeed, it can be convincingly argued that, for those people of a predominantly self-serving nature, the first explanation is in fact very true, but only for them, and it is in this idea that a foundational problem of our existence arises.

In a world where some people possess the potential for service to others, and some do not, those that do not will, by their very nature, be able to provide false evidence that the first explanation is the truth, that anarchy does indeed result from a lack of leaders, which then precludes the possibility that anything other than a hierarchical structured society can ever exist. Furthermore, and again as a result of their predominating service to self nature, we see that it is from the ranks of these people that the few that rule the many are most often drawn. Some might also call such a scenario "catch 22".

Another strategy is to agree that mankind is able to evolve and develop the altruistic seed within, and then propose that this is best done by a small elite who knows best what altruism really means. Synarchy is one form of this strategy.

By the beginning of the 21st century, the process of electing leaders and governing the masses by the few has become so refined as to be virtually an automated procedure (the 2000 US presidential elections being a case in point). Those predisposed to self-serving ideals join and rise up through the ranks of the existing leaders and continue the job of governing the many. A natural and closed clique among the leaders results, and today's citizenry, whose ancestors long ago relinquished power to what has today become a self-perpetuating organism, must simply sit, wait, hope, and ultimately lie to themselves in order to believe that their leaders will act in the best interests of all.

Having said that, the "best interests of all" from the point of view of the leaders, is to maintain the status quo, the status quo being that the many continue to believe that their leaders really are acting for the good of all, even when their innate human nature leads them to act only in their own interests. This naturally forces those in government to resort to acts of deception in order to maintain the illusion as they go about the job of serving their own interests.

The people however are not completely denuded of any resources to search for and uncover the truth about the real intention of their leaders. Deception is only an attempt to hide an already existent truth, it does not wipe out the existence of the truth. As such, those citizens of a diligent and truth-loving disposition can, with enough effort and desire, still discover evidence to corroborate the truth of the idea that was lost to our ancestors - that those who actively seek and attain political or government office are, by their nature, generally unfit for it. Democracy merely enlarged the pool from which psychopaths and self-centered people could be brought into the ruling elite.

We see these games of deception going on every day in the news. The invasion of Iraq and the lies used to justify this act - criminal under international law - are but one example. The stories told by the Israelis to justify the murder of Palestinian children is another horrifying example.

Now that we are all happily unburdened by the indecision over whether or not our leaders "would do that", and are abundantly furnished with the proof of logical reasoning which shows that, by their very nature, they would indeed and always have "done that", we can confront objectively the events of September 11th, 2001 and it's aftermath.

There exists copious amounts of evidence which strongly suggests that the WTC and Pentagon attacks were but one more deceptive act in a long history of deceptive acts by our leaders. That evidence is available for all to see on this and other sites. However, we understand that some of our readers, being in some respects still under the sway of government propaganda, will not yet be ready to put their faith in the writings of "conspiracy theorists".

For this reason, today we will present verified, historically accurate, evidence which shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that leaders and governments have time and again carried out attacks against their own citizens and those of other coutries in order to further their own self-serving goals, and that they have subsequently done all in their power to cover up the evidence.

Click here to comment on this article


Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962

National Security Archive

In his new exposé of the National Security Agency entitled Body of Secrets, author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba by the Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS. This document, titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba” was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods.

Written in response to a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),” faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes that Operation Northwoods “may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.”

Click here to comment on this article


30-Year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War

By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon
July 27, 1994

Thirty years ago, it all seemed very clear.

"American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers; Move Taken to Halt New Aggression", announced a Washington Post headline on Aug. 5, 1964.

That same day, the front page of the New York Times reported: "President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and 'certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam' after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin."

But there was no "second attack" by North Vietnam -- no "renewed attacks against American destroyers." By reporting official claims as absolute truths, American journalism opened the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam War.

A pattern took hold: continuous government lies passed on by pliant mass media...leading to over 50,000 American deaths and millions of Vietnamese casualties.

The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an "unprovoked attack" against a U.S. destroyer on "routine patrol" in the Tonkin Gulf on Aug. 2 -- and that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a "deliberate attack" on a pair of U.S. ships two days later.

The truth was very different.

Rather than being on a routine patrol Aug. 2, the U.S. destroyer Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers -- in sync with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force.

"The day before, two attacks on North Vietnam...had taken place," writes scholar Daniel C. Hallin. Those assaults were "part of a campaign of increasing military pressure on the North that the United States had been pursuing since early 1964."

On the night of Aug. 4, the Pentagon proclaimed that a second attack by North Vietnamese PT boats had occurred earlier that day in the Tonkin Gulf -- a report cited by President Johnson as he went on national TV that evening to announce a momentous escalation in the war: air strikes against North Vietnam.

But Johnson ordered U.S. bombers to "retaliate" for a North Vietnamese torpedo attack that never happened.

Prior to the U.S. air strikes, top officials in Washington had reason to doubt that any Aug. 4 attack by North Vietnam had occurred. Cables from the U.S. task force commander in the Tonkin Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick, referred to "freak weather effects," "almost total darkness" and an "overeager sonarman" who "was hearing ship's own propeller beat."

One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who gained fame later as a POW and then Ross Perot's vice presidential candidate. "I had the best seat in the house to watch that event," recalled Stockdale a few years ago, "and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets -- there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power."

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson commented: "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there."

But Johnson's deceitful speech of Aug. 4, 1964, won accolades from editorial writers. The president, proclaimed the New York Times, "went to the American people last night with the somber facts." The Los Angeles Times urged Americans to "face the fact that the Communists, by their attack on American vessels in international waters, have themselves escalated the hostilities."

An exhaustive new book, The War Within: America's Battle Over Vietnam, begins with a dramatic account of the Tonkin Gulf incidents. In an interview, author Tom Wells told us that American media "described the air strikes that Johnson launched in response as merely `tit for tat' -- when in reality they reflected plans the administration had already drawn up for gradually increasing its overt military pressure against the North."

Why such inaccurate news coverage? Wells points to the media's "almost exclusive reliance on U.S. government officials as sources of information" -- as well as "reluctance to question official pronouncements on 'national security issues.'"

Daniel Hallin's classic book The "Uncensored War" observes that journalists had "a great deal of information available which contradicted the official account [of Tonkin Gulf events]; it simply wasn't used. The day before the first incident, Hanoi had protested the attacks on its territory by Laotian aircraft and South Vietnamese gunboats."

What's more, "It was generally known...that `covert' operations against North Vietnam, carried out by South Vietnamese forces with U.S. support and direction, had been going on for some time."

In the absence of independent journalism, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution -- the closest thing there ever was to a declaration of war against North Vietnam -- sailed through Congress on Aug. 7. (Two courageous senators, Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska, provided the only "no" votes.) The resolution authorized the president "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."

The rest is tragic history.

Nearly three decades later, during the Gulf War, columnist Sydney Schanberg warned journalists not to forget "our unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident."

Schanberg blamed not only the press but also "the apparent amnesia of the wider American public."

And he added: "We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth."

Click here to comment on this article


Do Freedom of Information Act Files Prove FDR Had Foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor?

March 11, 2002
Robert B. Stinnett, Douglas Cirignano
An Interview with Robert B. Stinnett by Douglas Cirignano

On November 25, 1941 Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto sent a radio message to the group of Japanese warships that would attack Pearl Harbor on December 7. Newly released naval records prove that from November 17 to 25 the United States Navy intercepted eighty-three messages that Yamamoto sent to his carriers. Part of the November 25 message read: “…the task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow…”

One might wonder if the theory that President Franklin Roosevelt had a foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack would have been alluded to in this summer’s movie, Pearl Harbor. Since World War II many people have suspected that Washington knew the attack was coming. When Thomas Dewey was running for president against Roosevelt in 1944 he found out about America’s ability to intercept Japan’s radio messages, and thought this knowledge would enable him to defeat the popular FDR. In the fall of that year, Dewey planned a series of speeches charging FDR with foreknowledge of the attack. Ultimately, General George Marshall, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, persuaded Dewey not to make the speeches. Japan’s naval leaders did not realize America had cracked their codes, and Dewey’s speeches could have sacrificed America’s code-breaking advantage. So, Dewey said nothing, and in November FDR was elected president for the fourth time.

Now, though, according to Robert Stinnett, author of Simon & Schuster’s Day Of Deceit, we have the proof. Stinnett’s book is dedicated to Congressman John Moss, the author of America’s Freedom of Information Act. According to Stinnett, the answers to the mysteries of Pearl Harbor can be found in the extraordinary number of documents he was able to attain through Freedom of Information Act requests. Cable after cable of decryptions, scores of military messages that America was intercepting, clearly showed that Japanese ships were preparing for war and heading straight for Hawaii. Stinnett, an author, journalist, and World War II veteran, spent sixteen years delving into the National Archives. He poured over more than 200,000 documents, and conducted dozens of interviews. This meticulous research led Stinnet to a firmly held conclusion: FDR knew.

“Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars,” was Roosevelt’s famous campaign statement of 1940. He wasn’t being ingenuous. FDR’s military and State Department leaders were agreeing that a victorious Nazi Germany would threaten the national security of the United States. In White House meetings the strong feeling was that America needed a call to action. This is not what the public wanted, though. Eighty to ninety percent of the American people wanted nothing to do with Europe’s war. So, according to Stinnett, Roosevelt provoked Japan to attack us, let it happen at Pearl Harbor, and thus galvanized the country to war.

Many who came into contact with Roosevelt during that time hinted that FDR wasn’t being forthright about his intentions in Europe. After the attack, on the Sunday evening of December 7, 1941, Roosevelt had a brief meeting in the White House with Edward R. Murrow, the famed journalist, and William Donovan, the founder of the Office of Strategic Services. Later Donovan told an assistant the he believed FDR welcomed the attack and didn’t seem surprised. The only thing Roosevelt seemed to care about, Donovan felt, was if the public would now support a declaration of war. According to Day Of Deceit, in October 1940 FDR adopted a specific strategy to incite Japan to commit an overt act of war.

Part of the strategy was to move America’s Pacific fleet out of California and anchor it in Pearl Harbor. Admiral James Richardson, the commander of the Pacific fleet, strongly opposed keeping the ships in harm’s way in Hawaii. He expressed this to Roosevelt, and so the President relieved him of his command. Later Richardson quoted Roosevelt as saying: “Sooner or later the Japanese will commit an overt act against the United States and the nation will be willing to enter the war.”

Comment: Three and a half years ago, what percentage of American citizens would have wanted nothing to do with a war in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention an endless "war on terror" leading, inexplicably, to a clamp down on civil liberties at home? After 9/11, of course, they had no choice, they were "victims" of an "unprovoked" and "surprise" attack by "Arab terrorists", just as American citizens were "victims" of an "unprovoked" and "surprise" attack by the Japanese.

Click here to comment on this article


Bodies of TWA 800 victims contained shrapnel of metal not part of boeing 747

by Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media - June. 25, 2002

The TWA Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization, FIRO, has taken the unusual step of filing a petition with the National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB, asking for reconsideration of the findings on the probable cause of the crash of TWA Flight 800. Such petitions are entertained only if new evidence has been found or a showing that the NTSB findings were erroneous. FIRO claims that some evidence that the NTSB kept secret and which has now become available for public scrutiny is new evidence that shows that the official findings were erroneous.

Their petition cites as one important example metals of "unknown origin" that were found in the bodies of many of those who died in the crash on July 17, 1996. The FBI asked the Brookhaven National Laboratory to analyze pellets found in the bodies. They contained zirconium and barium, indicative of an incendiary device foreign to a Boeing 747airliner. The NTSB acknowledges that the source of these pellets is unknown and that the FBI did not try to determine the source.

The Suffolk County coroner, Dr. Wetli, found shrapnel in 89 of the bodies he examined. The FBI compiled a secret eight-page list describing the metal found in each of the bodies. FIRO has sued under FOIA to obtain this list. The court ordered the FBI to release it, but they are trying to get that reversed on privacy grounds, claiming it invades the privacy of the dead. That is a spurious argument because the dead have no privacy rights, but FIRO is not arguing that point. It says it is not interested in the names of those in whose bodies the shrapnel was found. What it wants is its description of the metal found in each of those bodies. It is believed that a lot of it will be pellets.

Retired Brigadier General Benton Partin, who helped design missiles for the Air Force, has said that the Brookhaven Laboratory’s analysis of the composition of the mysterious pellets suggests to him that they came from a missile.

Click here to comment on this article


The Lavon Affair

By David Hirst

Excerpts from his book: The Gun and the Olive Branch, 1977, 1984, Futura Publications

In July 1954 Egypt was plagued by a series of bomb outrages directed mainly against American and British property in Cairo and Alexandria. It was generally assumed that they were the work of the Moslem Brothers, then the most dangerous challenge to the still uncertain authority of Colonel (later President) Nasser and his two-year-old revolution. Nasser was negotiating with Britain over the evacuation of its giant military bases in the Suez Canal Zone, and, the Moslem Brothers, as zealous nationalists, were vigorously opposed to any Egyptian compromises.

It therefore came as a shock to world, and particularly Jewish opinion, when on 5 October the Egyptian Minister of the Interior, Zakaria Muhieddin, announced the break-up of a thirteen-man Israeli sabotage network.

The trial established that the bombings had indeed been carried out by an Israeli espionage and terrorist network. This was headed by Colonel Avraharn Dar --alias John Darling-- and a core of professionals who had set themselves up in Egypt under various guises. They had recruited a number of Egyptian Jews; one of them was a young woman, Marcelle Ninio, who worked in the offices of a British company. Naturally, the eventual exposure of such an organization was not going to improve the lot of the vast majority of Egyptian Jews who wanted no-thing to do with Zionism. There were still at least 50,000 Jews in Egypt; there had been something over 60,000 in 1947, more than half of whom were actually foreign nationals.

The welfare of Oriental Jewry in their various homelands was, as we have seen, Israel's last concern. And in July 1954 it had other worries. It was feeling isolated and insecure. Its Western friends-let alone the rest of the world-were unhappy about its aggressive behaviour. The US Assistant Secretary of State advised it to 'drop the attitude of the conqueror'.53 More alarming was the rapprochement under way between Egypt, on the one hand, and the United States and Britain on the other. President Eisenhower had urged Britain to give up her giant military base in the Suez Canal Zone; Bengurion had failed to dissuade her. It was to sabotage this rapprochement that the head of Israeli intelligence, Colonel Benyamin Givli, ordered his Egyptian intelligence ring to strike.

On Givli's instructions, the Egyptian network was to plant bombs in American and British cultural centres, British-owned cinemas and Egyptian public buildings. The Western powers, it was hoped, would conclude that there was fierce internal opposition to the rapprochement and that Nasser's young regime, faced with this challenge, was not one in which they could place much confidence. Mysterious violence might therefore persuade both London and Washington that British troops should remain astride the Canal; the world had not forgotten Black Saturday, 28 January 1951, in the last year of King Farouk's reign, when mobs rampaged through downtown Cairo, setting fire to foreign-owned hotels and shops, in which scores of people, including thirteen Britons, died.

The first bomb went off, on 2 July, in the Alexandria post office. On 11 July, the Anglo-Egyptian Suez negotiations, which had been blocked for nine months, got under way again. The next day the Israeli embassy in London was assured that, up on the British evacuation from Suez, stock-piled arms would not be handed over to the Egyptians. But the Defence Ministry activists were unconvinced. On 14 July their agents, in clandestine radio contact with Tel Aviv, fire-bombed US Information Service libraries in Cairo and Alexandria. That same day, a phosphorous bomb exploded prematurely in the pocket of one Philip Natanson, nearly burning him alive, as he was about to enter the British-owned Rio cinema in Alexandria.

His arrest and subsequent confession led to the break-up of the whole ring-but not before the completion of another cycle of clandestine action and diplomatic failure. On 15 July President Eisenhower assured the Egyptians that 'simultaneously' with the signing of a Suez agreement the United States would enter into 'firm commitments' for economic aid to strengthen their armed forces.55 On 23 July --anniversary of the 1952 revolution-- the Israeli agents still at large had a final fling; they started fires in two Cairo cinemas, in the central post office and the railway station. On the same day, Britain announced that the War Secretary, Antony Head, was going to Cairo. And on 27 July he and the Egyptians initiated the 'Heads of Agreement' on the terms of Britain's evacuation.

The trial lasted from 11 December to 3 January. Not all the culprits were there, because Colonel Dar and an Israeli colleague managed to escape, and the third Israeli, Hungarian-born Max Bennett, committed suicide; but those who were present all pleaded guilty. Most of them, including Marcelle Ninio, were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. But Dr Musa Lieto Marzuk, a Tunisian-born citizen of France who was a surgeon at the Jewish Hospital in Cairo, and Samuel Azar, an engineering professor from Alexandria, were condemned to death. In spite of representations from France, Britain and the United States the two men were hanged. Politically, it would have been very difficult for Nasser to spare them, for only seven weeks before six Moslem Brothers had been executed for complicity in an attempt on his life. Nevertheless Israel reacted with grief and anger. So did some Western Jews. Marzuk and Azar 'died the death of martyrs', said Sharett on the same day in the Knesset, whose members stood in silent tribute. Israel went into official mourning the following day. Beersheba and Ramat Gan named streets after the executed men. Israeli delegates to the Egyptian-Israeli Mixed Armistice Commission refused to attend its meeting, declaring that they would not sit down with representatives of the Cairo junta. In New York there were bomb threats against the Egyptian consulate and a sniper fired four shots into its fourth-floor window.56

This whole episode, which was to poison Israeli political life for a decade and more, came to be known as the 'Lavon Affair', for it had been established in the Cairo trial that Lavon, as Minister of Defence, had approved the campaign of sabotage. At least so the available evidence made it appear. But in Israel, Lavon had asked Moshe Sharett for a secret inquiry into a matter about which the cabinet knew nothing. Benyamin Givli, the intelligence chief, claimed that the so-called 'security operation' had been authorized by Lavon himself. Two other Bengurion proteges, Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres, testified against Lavon. Lavon denounced Givli's papers as forgeries and demanded the resignation of all three men. Instead, Sharett ordered Lavon himself to resign and invited Bengurion to come out of retirement and take over the Defence Ministry. It was a triumphant comeback for the 'activist' philosophy whose excesses both Sharett and Lavon had tried to modify. It was con-summated, a week later, by an unprovoked raid on Gaza, which left thirty-nine Egyptians dead and led to the Suez War Of 1956. 57

When the truth about the Lavon Affair came to light, six years after the event, it confirmed that there had been a frame-up-not, however, by the Egyptians, but by Bengurion and his young proteges. Exposure was fortuitous. Giving evidence in a forgery trial in September 1960, a witness divulged on passant that he had seen the faked signature of Lavon on a document relating to a 1954 'security mishap'.58 [...]

But Lavon was not the only real victim. There were also those misguided Egyptian Jews who paid with their lives or long terms of imprisonment. It is true that when, in 1968, Marcelle Ninio and her colleagues were exchanged for Egyptian' prisoners in Israel, they received a heroes' welcome. True, too, that when Miss Ninio got married Prime Minister Golda Meir, Defence Minister Dayan and Chief of Staff General Bar Lev all attended the wedding and Dayan told the bride 'the Six-Day War was success enough that it led to your freedom'.61 However, after spending fourteen years in an Egyptian prison, the former terrorists did not share the leadership's enthusiasm. When Ninio and two of her colleagues appeared on Israel television a few years later, they all expressed the belief that the reason why they were not released earlier was because Israel made little effort to get them out. 'Maybe they didn't want us to come back,' said Robert Dassa. 'There was so much intrigue in Israel. We were instruments in the hands of the Egyptians and of others ... and what is more painful after all that we went through is that this continues to be so.' In Ninio's opinion, 'the government didn't want to spoil its relations with the United States and didn't want the embarrassment of admitting it was behind our action'.62

But the real victims were the great mass of Egyptian Jewry. Episodes like the Lavon Affair tended to identify them, in the mind of ordinary Egyptians, with the Zionist movement. When, in 1956, Israeli invaded and occupied Sinai, feeling ran high against them. The government, playing into the Zionist hands, began ordering Jews to leave the country. Belatedly, reluctantly, 21,000 left in the following year; more were expelled later, and others, their livelihood gone, had nothing to stay for. But precious few went to Israel.

NOTES

49. Jerusalem Post, 12 December 1954.
5O. 13 December 1954.
51. 13 December 1954.
52. Berger, op. cit., p. 14.
53. love, Kennett, Suez: The Twice-Fought War, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1969, P. 71.
54. Ibid., p . 73.
55. Ibid., p. 74.
56. Love, op. cit., P. 77.
57. See p. 198.
58. New York Times, 10 February 1961.
59. Ibid
60. Jewish Chronicle, London, 17 February 1971.
61. Ha'olam Hazeh, 1 December 1971
62. Associated Press, 16 March 1975.

Comment: Right here, dear readers, we have concrete evidence that the concept of a "false flag" operation formed a central part of Israeli intelligence operations over 50 years ago. Yet even before that, certain factions within the movement known as "Zionism" were already selling out their "own people" while maintaining that they were acting in the best interests of all.

Click here to comment on this article


Zionism Convicts Itself

51 Documents:
Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis
by LENNI BRENNER
On June 21, 1933, the German Zionist Federation sent a secret memorandum to the Nazis:

"Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition, which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one's own tradition. Zionism recognized decades ago that as a result of the assimilationist trend, symptoms of deterioration were bound to appear, which it seeks to overcome by carrying out its challenge to transform Jewish life completely.

"It is our opinion that an answer to the Jewish question truly satisfying to the national state can be brought about only with the collaboration of the Jewish movement that aims at a social, cultural and moral renewal of Jewry--indeed, that such a national renewal must first create the decisive social and spiritual premises for all solutions.

"Zionism believes that a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group. For the Jew, too, origin, religion, community of fate and group consciousness must be of decisive significance in the shaping of his life. This means that the egotistic individualism which arose in the liberal era must be overcome by public spiritedness and by willingness to accept responsibility."

Comment: In the above three paragraphs, the "Zionists" are essentially stating that they agree with Hitler's stance on the Jewish question, and in veiled language are proposing a "renewal" or rebirth of Jewish society and identity. It was a clear reference to the Zionist desire to create a Jewish "homeland" in Palestine and their intention to co-operate with the Nazi regime in creating the "conditions" that would facilitate this. One of those "conditions", of course, was the understanding among Jews that Europe was an extremely hostile environment for them, and that they should flee or accept deportation to their new "homeland". One has to wonder in this case just where and with whom the "Jewish question" originated.

By 1936, the Post ran a news flash, "German Zionists Seek Recognition":

"A bold demand that the German Zionist Federation be given recognition by the Government as the only instrument for the exclusive control of German Jewish life was made by the Executive of that body in a proclamation today. All German Jewish organizations, it was declared, should be dominated by the Zionist spirit."

Zionist factions competed for the honor of allying to Hitler. By 1940-41, the "Stern Gang," among them Yitzhak Shamir, later Prime Minister of Israel, presented the Nazis with the "Fundamental Features of the Proposal of the National Military Organization in Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi) Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the NMO in the War on the Side of Germany."

Avraham Stern and his followers announced that

"The NMO, which is well-acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans, is of the opinion that:

1. Common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO.

2. Cooperation between the new Germany and a renewed folkish-national Hebraium would be possible and,

3. The establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East.

Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany's side."

They hanged people all over Europe after WW II for notes to the Nazis like these. But these treasons against the Jews were virtually unknown in the run up to the creation of the Zionist state in May 1948

Click here to comment on this article


"51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis"

Review by William Hughes
History can be deceptive. It’s fair to say that some of the sensational never-published-before documents, in this book, will shock those who have accepted Zionism and its supposed history, at face value, as a political movement that was the hope of the Jews. Lenni Brenner, the intrepid author of “Zionism in the Age of Dictators,” reveals disturbing new evidence in his latest effort, that suggest just the opposite. In fact, he makes a compelling case that the Zionist record was “dishonorable.” You can consider this excellent tome as a worthy sequel to his first expose’ on the myopic Zionist zealots of that bygone era.

For openers, Brenner showed how the Zionists had a long history of shameless cooperation with the Nazis, especially after the dictator Adolph Hitler had came to power in 1933. The Zionists were also in bed, to some extent, with the other members of what later became known as WWII’s “Axis of Evil,” that included Benito Mussolini’s Italy, and Tojo Hideki’s Japan. For example, on March 29,1936, Zionists praised Il Duce, and his regime, at the opening of a maritime school, funded by the Fascist government, at Civitavecchia. This is where a Zionist youth group, the “Betar,” trained its sailors for the future Revisionist state. The speakers ignored the fact that on Oct. 3, 1935, Italian troops had invaded Abyssinia.

The Zionist also had a trade plan with the Berlin government by which German Jews could redeem their property in Nazi goods exported to then British-occupied Palestine. And to top it all off, the infamous SS-Hptscharf. Adolf Eichmann, had visited Palestine, in October, 1937, as the guest of the Zionists. He also met, in Egypt, with Feivel Polkes, a Zionist operative, whom Eichmann described as a “leading Haganah functionary.” The chain-smoking Polkes was also on the Nazis’ payroll “as an informer.”

Brenner isn’t the first writer to address the mostly taboo subject of how the Zionist leadership cooperated with the Nazis. Rolf Hilberg’s seminal “The Destruction of European Jews”; Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem”; Ben Hecht’s “Perfidy”; Edwin Black’s “The Transfer Agreement”; Francis R. Nicosia’s “The Third Reich and the Palestine Question”; Rudolf Vrba and Alan Bestic’s “I Cannot Forgive”; and Rafael Medoff’s “The Deadening Silence: American Jews and the Holocaust,” also dared, with varying public success.

After the Holocaust began in 1942, Eichmann dealt regularly with Dr. Rudolf Kastner, a Hungarian Jew, whom he considered a “fanatical Zionist.” Kastner was later assassinated in Israel as a Nazi collaborator. At issue then, however, was the bargaining over the eventual fate of Hungary’s Jews, who were slated for liquidation in the Nazi-run death camps. Eichmann said this about Kastner, the Zionist representative, “I believe that [he] would have sacrificed a thousand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal. He was not interested in old Jews or those who had become assimilated into Hungarian society. ‘You can have the others,’ he would say, ‘but let me have this group here.’ And because Kastner rendered us a great service by helping keep the deportation camps peaceful. I would let his groups escape.”

Readers, too, will be surprised to learn, that after the Nuremberg Anti-Jewish Race Laws were enacted in Sept., 1935, that there were only two flags that were permitted to be displayed in all of Nazi Germany. One was Hitler’s favorite, the Swastika. The other was the blue and white banner of Zionism. The Zionists were also allowed to publish their own newspaper. The reasons for this Reich-sponsored favoritism was, according to the author: The Zionists and the Nazis had a common interest, making German Jews emigrate to Palestine.

Comment: Those tasked with the job of leading the people seem to believe that the very fact that they find themselves in a position of power, proves that they "deserve" or possess some innate right to be in such a position - a self-fulfilling prophecy if you will, and it matters not what they had to do to get there. In fact, the "resourcefulness" that they exhibited to climb the ladder of success is simply further proof that they are eminently deserving of their position.

By this thinking, it follows, then, that, if the "great unwashed" find themselves in a position of powerlesness, then they also "deserve" to be there. It is an ideology based on survival of the fittest, or, rather, the most ruthless. In short, the scum always rises to the top.

Click here to comment on this article


Israeli Intelligence And The Demonising Of Saddam

Extracts from: "The Other Side of Deception" by Victor Ostrovsky ex-Mossad agent

The Mossad realized that it had to come up with a new threat to the region, a threat of such magnitude that it would justify whatever action the Mossad might see fit to take.

The right-wing elements in the Mossad (and in the whole country, for that matter) had what they regarded as a sound philosophy: They believed (correctly, as it happened) that Israel was the strongest military presence in the Middle East. In fact, they believed that the military might of what had become known as "fortress Israel" was greater than that of all of the Arab armies combined, and was responsible for whatever security Israel possessed. The right wing believed then - and they still believe - that this strength arises from the need to answer the constant threat of war.

The corollary belief was that peace overtures would inevitably start a process of corrosion that would weaken the military and eventually bring about the demise of the state of Israel, since, the philosophy goes, its Arab neighbors are untrustworthy, and no treaty signed by them is worth the paper it's written on.

Supporting the radical elements of Muslim fundamentalism sat well with the Mossad's general plan for the region. An Arab world run by fundamentalists would not be a party to any negotiations with the West, thus leaving Israel again as the only democratic, rational country in the region. And if the Mossad could arrange for the Hamas (Palestinian fundamentalists) to take over the Palestinian streets from the PLO, then the picture would be complete.

The Mossad regarded Saddam Hussein as their biggest asset in the area, since he was totally irrational as far as international politics was concerned, and was therefore all the more likely to make a stupid move that the Mossad could take advantage of.

What the Mossad really feared was that Iraq's gigantic army, which had survived the Iran-Iraq war and was being supplied by the West and financed by Saudi Arabia, would fall into the hands of a leader who might be more palatable to the West and still be a threat to Israel.

The first step was taken in November 1988, when the Mossad told the Israeli foreign office to stop all talks with the Iraqis regarding a peace front. At that time, secret negotiations were taking place between Israelis, Jordanians, and Iraqis under the auspices of the Egyptians and with the blessings of the French and the Americans. The Mossad manipulated it so that Iraq looked as if it were the only country unwilling to talk, thereby convincing the Americans that Iraq had a different agenda.

By January 1989, the Mossad LAP machine was busy portraying Saddam as a tyrant and a danger to the world. The Mossad activated every asset it had, in every place possible, from volunteer agents in Amnesty International to fully bought members of the U.S. Congress. Saddam had been killing his own people, the cry went; what could his enemies expect? The gruesome photos of dead Kurdish mothers clutching their dead babies after a gas attack by Saddam's army were real, and the acts were horrendous. But the Kurds were entangled in an all-out guerrilla war with the regime in Baghdad and had been supported for years by the Mossad, who sent arms and advisers to the mountain camps of the Barazany family; this attack by the Iraqis could hardly be called an attack on their own people. But, as Uri said to me, once the orchestra starts to play, all you can do is hum along.

The media was supplied with inside information and tips from reliable sources on how the crazed leader of Iraq killed people with his bare hands and used missiles to attack Iranian cities. What they neglected to tell the media was that most of the targeting for the missiles was done by the Mossad with the help of American satellites. The Mossad was grooming Saddam for a fall, but not his own. They wanted the Americans to do the work of destroying that gigantic army in the Iraqi desert so that Israel would not have to face it one day on its own border. That in itself was a noble cause for an Israeli, but to endanger the world with the possibility of global war and the deaths of thousands of Americans was sheer madness.

The previous august (1989) a contingent of the Maktal (Mossad reconnaissance unit) and several naval commandos had headed up the Euphrates, their target was an explosives factory located in the city of Al-Iskandariah. Information the Mossad had received from American intelligence revealed that every thursday a small convoy of trucks came to the complex to be loaded with explosives for the purpose of manufacturing cannon shells. The objective was to take position near the base on Wednesday August 23rd and wait until the next day when the trucks would be loaded. At that point, several sharpshooters would fire one round each of an explosive bullet at a designated truck while they were in the process of loading, so that there would be a carry on explosion into the storage facility.

The operation was quite successful and the explosion generated the sort of publicity the Mossad was hoping for in attracting attention to Saddam's constant efforts at building a gigantic and powerful military arsenal. The Mossad shared its "findings" with the Western intelligence agencies and leaked the story of the explosion to the press.

Since this was a guarded facility Western reporters had minimal access to it. However, at the beginning of September, the Iraqis were inviting Western media people to visit Iraq and see the rebuilding that had taken place after the [Iran-Iraq] war, and the Mossad saw an opportunity to conduct a damage assessment.

A man calling himself Michel Rubiyer saying he was working for the French newspaper "le figaro", approached Farzad Bazoft, a thirty one year old reporter freelancing for the British newspaper the Observer. Rubiyer was in fact Michel M. a Mossad agent.

Michel told Farzad that he would pay him handsomely and print his story if he would join a group of journalists heading for Baghdad. The reason he gave for not going himself was that he had been black-listed in Iraq. He pointed out the Bazoft could use the money and the break especially with his criminal background. Michel told the stunned reporter that he knew of his arrest in 1981 for armed robbery in Northhampton England. Along with the implied threat he told Bazoft that he would be able to print his story in the Observer as well.

Michel told Bazoft to collect information regarding the explosion ask questions about it get sketches of the area and collect earth samples. He told the worried reporter that Saddam would not dare harm a reporter even if he was unhappy with him. The worst the Saddam would do was kick him out of the country, which would in itself make him famous.

Why this particular reporter? He was of Iranian background and would make punishing him much easier for the Iraqis and he wasn't a European whom they would probably only hold and then kick out. In fact, Bazoft had been identified in a Mossad search that was triggered by his prying into another Mossad case in search of a story involving an ex-Mossad asset Dr Cyrus Hashemi who was eliminated by mossad in 1986. Since Bazoft had already stumbled on too much information for his own good - or the Mossad's for that matter - he was the perfect candidate for this job of snooping in forbidden areas.

Bazoft made his way to the location as he was asked and as might be expected was arrested. Tragically, his British girlfriend, a nurse working in a baghdad hospital was arrested as well.

Within a few days of his arrest, a Mossad liaison in the US called the Iraqi representative in Holland and said that Jerusalem was willing to make a deal for the release of their man who had been captured. the Iraqi representative asked for time to contact Baghdad, and the liaison called the next day, at which point he told the Iraqi representative it was all a big mistake and severed contact. Now the Iraqis had no doubt that they had a real spy on their hands, and they were going to see him hang. All the Mossad had to do was sit back and watch as Saddam proved to the world what a monster he really was.

On March 15th 1990 Farzad Bazoft, who had been held in the Abu Gharib prison met briefly with the British Ambassador to Iraq.

A few minutes after the meeting he was hanged.

The world was shocked, but the Mossad was not done yet. To fan the flames generated by the brutal hanging, a Mossad sayan in New York delivered a set of documents to ABC television with a story from a reliable Middle Eastern source telling if a plant Saddam had for the manufacturing of uranium. The information was convincing and the photos and sketches were even more so.

It was time to draw attention to Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

Only three months before, on December 5, 1989, the Iraqis had launched the Al-Abid, a three-stage ballistic missile. The Iraqis claimed it was a satellite launcher that Gerald Bull, a Canadian scientist, was helping them develop. Israeli intelligence knew that the launch, although trumpeted as a great success, was in fact a total failure, and that the program would never reach its goals. But that secret was not shared with the media. On the contrary, the missile launch was exaggerated and blown out of proportion.

The message that Israeli intelligence sent out was this: Now all the pieces of the puzzle are fitting together. This maniac is developing a nuclear capability (remember the Israeli attack on the Iraqi reactor in 1981) and pursuing chemical warfare (as seen in his attacks on his own people, the Kurds). What's more, he despises the Western media, regarding them as Israeli spies. Quite soon, he's going to have the ability to launch a missile from anywhere in Iraq to anywhere he wants in the Middle East and beyond.

After the arrest of Bazoft, Gerald Bull, who was working on the Iraqi big gun project called Babylon, was visited by Israeli friends from his past. The visitors (two Mossad officers) had come to deliver a warning. They were both known to Bull as members of the Israeli intelligence community. The Mossad psychological department had studied the position Bull was in and analysed what was known about his character. It arrived at the conclusion that, even if threatened, he wouldn't pull out of the program but would instead carry on his work with very little regard for his personal safety.

Ultimately, Bull's continuing with the program would play right into the Mossad's hands. Through the bullet riddled body of Gerald Bull the world would be made to focus on his work: the Iraqi giant gun project. The timing had to be right though; Bull's well publicised demise had to come right after an act of terror by the Baghdad regime, an act that could not be mistaken for an accident or a provocation. The hanging of the Observer reporter on March 15 was such an act.

After the reporter's execution in Baghdad, a Kidon (Mossad assassination) team arrived in Brussels and cased the apartment building where Bull lived. It was imperative that the job be done in a place where it would not be mistaken for a robbery or an accident. At the same time, an escape route was prepared for the team and some old contacts in the Belgian police were revived to make sure they were on duty at the time of Bull's elimination so that, if there was a need to call on a friendly police force, they'd be on call. They weren't old of the reason for the alert, but would learn later and keep silent.

When Bull reached the building at 8.30pm, the man watching the entrance signaled the man in the empty apartment on the sixth floor (Bull's floor) to get ready: the target had entered the building. The shooter then left the apartment and hid in an alcove.

Almost immediately after the elevator door closed behind Bull, the shooter fired point blank at the man's back and head. The shooter then walked over to Bull and pulled out of his tote bag a handful of documents and other papers, which he paced in a paper shopping bag he had with him. He also collected all the casings from the floor and dropped the gun into the shopping bag.

In the following weeks, more and more discoveries were made regarding the big gun and other elements of the Saddam war machine. The Mossad had all but saturated the intelligence field with information regarding the evil intentions of Saddam the Terrible, banking on the fact that before long, he'd have enough rope to hang himself.

It was very clear what the Mossad's overall goal was. It wanted the West to do its bidding, just as the Americans had in Libya with the bombing of Qadhafi. After all, Israel didn't possess carriers and ample air power, and although it was capable of bombing a refugee camp in Tunis, that was not the same. The Mossad leaders knew that if they could make Saddam appear bad enough and a threat to the Gulf oil supply, of which he'd been the protector up to that point, then the United States and its allies would not let him get away with anything, but would take measures that would all but eliminate his army and his weapons potential, especially if they were led to believe that this might just be their last chance before he went nuclear. [...]

Comment: The above account of covert operations needs little comment other than to mention that government sponsored agencies have been conducting operations of this kind for many years. In doing so, they are able to shape not only global public opinion but incite and provide justification for wars, leading to the deaths of many millions of people. The events of 9/11 and the endless war that they have given rise to, fit very well into the government covert operation category.

Click here to comment on this article


The British War Against Nasser

In their dealings with Nasser (Egyptian Prime Minister 1952-1970) the British used any means necessary, including espionage, diplomacy, bribery and even direct military might to retain control over Egypt and the Suez Canal. The newly founded CIA also became interested in Egypt when Nasser showed signs of tilting to the Soviet Union. Aburish explains h ow this new avenue of intrigue evolved.

"According to CIA agent Miles Copeland, the Americans began looking for a Muslim Billy Graham around 1955... When finding or creating a Muslim Billy Graham proved elusive, the CIA began to cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim mass organization founded in Egypt but with followers throughout the Arab Middle East... This signalled the beginning of an alliance between the traditional regimes and mass Islamic movements against Nasser and other secular forces." (1)

The CIA was following the example of British Intelligence and sought to use Islam to further its goals. They wanted to find a charismatic religious leader that they could promote and control and they began to cooperate with groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. With the rise of Nasser the Brotherhood was also courted more seriously by the pro-Western Arab regimes of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. They needed all the popular support that they could muster against the rise of Nasser-inspired Arab nationalism to keep their regimes intact.

The Muslim Brotherhood was an obvious ally against Nasser, because he had abolished it from Egypt after it was involved in a failed assassination attempt on his life in 1954. The Brotherhood rejected Nasser's policy that, for the most part, kept religion out of politics. Officially the Brotherhood was an outlawed organization, but it remained influential and active within Egypt working against the secular regime, often hand-in-hand with British Intelligence. In June of 1955 MI6 was already approaching the Brotherhood in Syria to agitate against the new government that showed strong left-wing tendencies and a desire to merge with Egypt (2). The Brotherhood became an even more important asset after Nasser announced the Egyptian takeover of the Suez. Author Stephen Dorril documents how this move was viewed from Britain,

"On 26 July in Alexandria, in a calm speech, but one that was described by London as hysterical, Nasser made his nationalisation announcement, which from a strictly legal point of view was no more 'than a decision to buy out the shareholders.' That night in Downing Street, [British Prime Minister] Eden's bitterness at the decision was not concealed from his guests... Eden summoned a council of war, which continued until 4 a.m. An emotional Prime Minister told his colleagues that Nasser could not be allowed, in Eden's phrase, 'to have his hand on our windpipe.' The 'muslim Mussolini' must be 'destroyed.' Eden added: 'I want him removed and I don't give a damn if there's anarchy and chaos in Egypt.'" (3)

Former Prime Minister Churchill had fueled Eden's fire by counseling him about the Egyptians, saying, "Tell them if we have any more of their cheek we will set the Jews on them and drive them into the gutter, from which they should have never emerged." (4)

Sir Anthony Nutting, a member of the Foreign Office at the time, recalls an irate phone call from Eden who was upset at the slow pace of the campaign against Nasser. Eden raged, "What's all this poppycock you've sent me? ... What's all this nonsense about isolating Nasser or "neutralizing" him, as you call it? I want him destroyed, can't you understand? I want him murdered..." (5)

To prepare the way for the desired coup the British Information Research Department (IRD) was called into action. They ratcheted up their efforts to control radio broadcasts into Egypt and they planted false stories in the BBC, the London Press Service and the Arab News Agency. Forged documents were created that suggested that Nasser was planning to take over the entire Middle East oil trade, and a bogus report was disseminated that alleged that Egyptian dissidents were being sent to a concentration camp manned by ex-Nazis. (6)

Comment: We hope that the above historical data presents enough evidence to convince even the most skeptical reader that the process of leading or governing, or rather controlling, the people and resources of this planet by a select and inherently self-serving minority has always involved deceit and manipulation.

Coming back to the present, we can now consider the following two stories in a different light perhaps...

Click here to comment on this article


Nuclear equipment vanishes in Iraq

12 October 04
NewScientist.com news service

Nuclear equipment - and in some cases whole buildings - have vanished in Iraq, the UN’s nuclear watchdog is warning, amid fears that the material could be used to make nuclear weapons.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has raised concerns “about the widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq’s nuclear programme”, since coalition forces wrested power from Saddam Hussein.

Satellite imagery has revealed the disappearance of entire buildings which housed high-precision, "dual use" equipment, as well as the removal of materials from open storage areas, warned Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the IAEA, in a letter to the UN Security Council on 1 October. Dual use equipment has commercial uses but could also be harnessed to manufacture nuclear arms.

Their disappearance, along with materials such as high-strength aluminium “may be of [nuclear] proliferation significance", says ElBaradei.

Eye in the sky

The IAEA has been required to give six-monthly reports verifying Iraq’s nuclear capabilities since April 1996. However, since the beginning of the war in March 2003 and despite the overturning of Hussein’s regime, IAEA inspectors have not been able to return to Iraq. As a result, they have been unable to resume on-site monitoring. Instead, they have been tracking locations of interest through commercial satellite imagery.

Iraq is obliged to inform the IAEA of any changes at these sites, but the agency says it has “received no such notifications" from any nation involved.

"There’s clearly a problem because the IAEA has flagged it up," says John Eldridge, editor of Jane’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defence. A “sinister aspect” to the disappearance of dual use equipment is that there is a terrorist market for them, he says.

“Even if it isn't going somewhere directly it may well end up as somebody’s bargaining chip. There’s a huge amount of collusion between terrorist organisations,"he says. [...]

Click here to comment on this article


Conspiracy threat to anti-nuke treaty

10:39 17 June 04
The US and UK governments will this week be accused of conspiring to break the international agreement to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

The claim will be backed by detailed evidence of the large-scale collaboration by the two countries to develop their nuclear arsenals, an activity that the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) is specifically designed to prevent.

The claim comes from the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), a think tank based in London and Washington DC. Although the UK and the US cooperated on nuclear matters throughout the Cold War, the extent of their collaboration since then has never been documented. [...]

Accusations of hypocrisy

The UK Ministry of Defence insists that the Mutual Defence Agreement is "fully compatible" with the NPT. Jon Wolfsthal, a nuclear policy expert who used to advise President Clinton, thinks that the agreement does not violate the NPT.

"However, there can be no denying that the US-UK nuclear cooperation undercuts the moral position of both as they work to prevent other countries from seeking nuclear weapons," he says.

The accusation comes at a difficult time for the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which is due to be reviewed in 2005. "The accusations of hypocrisy are harder to deflect as non-nuclear weapon states' resentment intensifies," says Chamberlain.

Comment: We have limited our analysis thus far to the question of the true, corrupt nature of our leaders, yet it seems that there are many among the masses who are only to ready to prove, through acts of brutality and ruthlessness, their eligibility to lead us all into that "brave new world", which, it seems, will feature a much reduced multitude.

Click here to comment on this article


Daily Meditation

As you read the following article, pay attention to your reaction. Pay attention to the physical changes in your body and your emotions. Let the truth of this piece sink in. Ponder the meaning and ramifications.


Israeli cleared for shooting schoolgirl
By Khalid Amayreh in Jerusalem
Saturday 16 October 2004, 15:53 Makka Time, 12:53 GMT
The Israeli army has cleared a commander serving in the southern Gaza town of Rafah of any wrongdoing a few days after he riddled a Palestinian girl's body with bullets.

The company commander, whose identity was not revealed, shot 13-year-old Iman al-Hams as she was on her way to school in Rafah. A few minutes later he riddled her body and head with 15 to 20 bullets to make sure she was dead.

The practice, known as verification of killing, is used widely in the Israeli army after shootings of Palestinians.

Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Moshe Yaalon on Friday concluded that the platoon commander acted properly and that no action should be taken against him.

In a briefing to the Israeli cabinet last week, Yaalon argued that the officer should be given the benefit of the doubt, saying he suspected she could have been used by Palestinian fighters to divert soldiers' attention and lure them from their positions.

Witnesses

However, soldiers serving under the officer's command gave damning evidence, suggesting he killed the girl in cold-blood before "emptying his entire magazine to her head".

"We saw her from a distance of 70m," one of the soldiers is quoted as saying.

"She was fired at and shot from the outpost. She tried to flee but was wounded badly. I understand she was dead.

"The commander walked toward her, he shot her two additional bullets before returning to the outpost. Then he returned to the girl, put his weapon on the automatic mode and emptied his entire magazine."

"Our hearts ached for her - just a 13-year-old girl. How can anyone spray a girl from close range? The commander was hot for a long time to take out Arabs and shot the girl to relieve pressure."

The Israeli army radio, Gali Tzahal, on Thursday quoted another soldier as saying that the commander was "waiting impatiently to see an Arab pass by to kill him".

Changing story

When the incident occurred nearly 10 days ago, an Israeli army spokesperson said the girl might have been carrying a bomb in her school bag, and that she had to be killed to rule out any risk to troops.

It was also said that she might have tried to lure out soldiers so Palestinian snipers could shoot them.

The Israeli army later said the girl entered a closed military zone and had to be killed.

Since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli military occupation more than four years ago, the Israeli army and paramilitary Jewish settlers have killed an estimated 600 to 700 Palestinian children and minors.

Civilian victims

Since the beginning of October alone, the Israeli army has killed at least 124 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the bulk of them civilians.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation B'tselem, up to 30 children were among the victims, including nine-year-old Ghadir Mukhaimar who was shot by an Israeli sniper last week while sitting in her class in Khan Yunis, south of Gaza City.

Israeli army spokespeople normally explain child fatalities as happening in "crossfire" or "in vague circumstances".

However, Palestinian officials and human rights groups argue that the killing of Palestinian children and civilians is carried out "knowingly and deliberately".

"Do you think all these kids were killed by mistake?" said Muhammad Yusuf, head of the disaster management unit at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Gaza.

"The fact that a disproportionate number of Palestinian civilians are killed by the Israeli army in this unequal conflict shows there is a deliberate and conscious Israeli policy to kill civilians."

Trigger happy

He told Aljazeera.net Israeli troops often fire artillery shells at crowded streets and neighbourhoods, aware that the shells will kill and maim children and civilians.

Asked why he thought the army would target civilians, he said: "Criminality toward the Palestinians is an old and intrinsic instinct in the overall Israeli mentality.

"They are taught to kill the Palestinians when they are very young. They are taught that another holocaust could happen if they don't destroy their enemies. That is why Israeli soldiers murder our kids without the slightest guilt."

And the Israeli media does little to deny that the army is occasionally light on the triggers.

Indeed, the newspaper Haaretz quoted a high-ranking officer earlier this month as saying: "Our troops will not be meticulous about the direction of their bullets."

Moreover, it is clear that the Israeli army views the killing of Palestinian civilians as an integral part of the losses Palestinians must incur as punishment for their uprising against occupation.

One Israeli soldier was quoted as saying on Thursday: "We have erected 100 mourning tents for them," alluding to the killings in Gaza during the past two weeks.

Comment: Revelations, 13:10 He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

For more on the nature of the Beast, see Laura's article. If you are a Christian who is upset with the phoney Christianity of Bush, then you might appreciate the site of Bob Fraley.

Click here to comment on this article


Israelis invade another Palestinian refugee camp after much-touted withdrawal
CBC News
07:39 AM EDT Oct 17

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered a Palestinian refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip early Sunday, firing machine-guns at nearby homes, witnesses said.

No injuries were reported.

The witnesses said 10 tanks and three bulldozers entered the Rafah refugee camp just after midnight. They said there were no injuries.

The Israeli military said its troops were engaged in an operation aimed at rooting out weapons smuggling tunnels in the area.

Rafah, abutting the Egyptian border, has been a frequent hotbed of friction between Palestinian militants and the Israeli army.

The move came a day after Israeli officials said a broad offensive into the northern Gaza Strip had struck a heavy blow to Palestinian militants who have fired rockets into southern Israel.

But the officials conceded the operation was unlikely to halt the rocket attacks altogether and stressed the army was prepared to move back into the area.

The 17-day campaign, launched after a deadly rocket strike on the Israeli border town of Sderot, ended after nightfall Friday, when Israel withdrew tanks and ground forces from populated areas in northern Gaza.

At least 110 Palestinians, including dozens of civilians, were killed, making it the bloodiest offensive in northern Gaza in four years of fighting. Five Israelis died in the Sderot attack, including two preschoolers.

Palestinians awoke to a scene of heavy damage Saturday, sifting through rubble in search of belongings. Dozens of homes were destroyed, farmland was uprooted and roads and infrastructure were torn up. Residents accused the army of wanton destruction.

A military official said the offensive "managed to dramatically reduce" the ability of militants to fire rockets, although the threat of future attacks remains.

The official, who requested anonymity, said the operation had eliminated many militant cells, adding civilian casualties were regrettable.

In a television interview, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said while Israeli forces had pulled back in northern Gaza, troops remain committed to battling the rocket threat - a strong hint Israel believes more will be launched.

"We are continuing to fight against the Qassams," he said, referring to the homemade Palestinian rockets.

Throughout the fighting, Palestinian militants managed to fire rockets toward southern Israel, although the frequency and intensity of the attacks decreased.

The Israeli operation focused on the Jebaliya refugee camp and the towns Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, the main launching grounds for hundreds of Qassam rockets in the last four years.

Much of the fighting took place in densely populated areas of the refugee camp. Residents accused the army of causing unnecessary damage, saying the narrow alleyways made it impossible to launch rockets.

"There wasn't a single rocket fired from here," said Abdel Hadi Daher, a 52-year-old resident of Jebaliya.

"Their real intention was to humiliate us."

The army has accused militants of using civilian areas for cover and said soldiers only destroyed buildings used to stage attacks.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza said at least 80 homes were demolished during the offensive, including 60 in Jebaliya and 20 in Beit Lahiya. The group said dozens of homes, shops and public buildings were damaged.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia called the offensive "part of a series of planned Israeli attacks to bring our people to their knees but this will never happen."

In the eastern part of Jebaliya, at least 45 homes and a partially built mosque were razed. On the ground floor of the mosque, which had been in use for the last five months, carpets and holy books were covered in sand.

Latife Abu Oudeh, 55, was sitting on a pile of rubble as her daughter-in-law carried mattresses, children's clothing, a pink teddy bear, silverware and a bag with cosmetics and perfume from the ruins of their house.

Abu Oudeh's seven-year-old grandson, Ahmed, looked at the teddy bear and said: "It looks very dirty. We need to wash it."

He took the toy and ran away.

Abu Oudeh said her four-room house, home to 16 people, was destroyed at the beginning of the offensive. She said the family received no warning and was sleeping when a bulldozer approached before dawn.

Many Palestinians in northern Gaza have criticized the rocket attacks, saying they provoke harsh Israeli reprisals.

However, Abu Oudeh said her heart is now set on revenge.

"I am happy rockets were fired and I want more to be fired," she said bitterly.

The fighting in northern Gaza has complicated Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from the entire Gaza Strip next year.

Sharon said the withdrawal, which is to be accompanied by a pullback from four small settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan River, will boost Israel's security after four years of fighting with the Palestinians. He said the continued occupation of Gaza, where 8,000 Jewish settlers live amid 1.3 million Palestinians, is untenable.

Comment: On one side, a powerful army financed and armed by the mightiest military power on earth.

On the other, a people cornered into the last few kilometers of their land, a land stolen from them by the rest of the world and handed over to an invader.

The world continues to stand by doing nothing.

Worse, it buys into the entire "war against terror", a very real "war" against a largely fictitious enemy designed to sow fear and hatred against the Arab and Islamic world, planned and carried out by the very forces who now claim they are seeking justice.

Are there really "Islamic fundamentalist terrorists"? Yes. But probably not in the numbers promoted in the headlines.

And where have they come from? Many were financed by the US and Israel to fight against and destabilise the old Soviet Union. Such was the origin of the new devil Osama bin Laden. The new generation is being created as we speak through a politics of annihilation and humiliation, creating despair and hatred towards the Western and Zionist invaders who come and destroy land, property, the means of livelihood, and the lives of thousands of innocent people.

The killing of civilians, of men, women, and children who are not carrying arms, is "collateral damage". Arab life is cheap for the invader.

Israel. Claiming to be the "outpost of democracy" in the Middle East. The United States. Claiming to be the "leader of the free world". Partners in war crimes whose goal is ever-growing chaos in the Arab and Moslem world.

What would you do if your homes were razed, if your children and brothers or sisters or parents were killed in cold blood on the way to school or work? If your neighborhood was turned to rubble, your ancient olive grove, the means of sustenance for generations, was bulldozed into oblivion?

What would you do if troops from a foreign country rolled their tanks across your front yard or down the main street in your town or city, the soldiers taking pot shots at your children as they raced away on bicycles?

It may happen sooner than you think, although those troops may be from your own army.

911 was planned and executed by Israel and the neocons to justify the agenda of tyranny they are now imposing upon a shaken and compliant world.

Who is standing up to the cabal? Let us repeat: He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. Revelations, 13:10

Click here to comment on this article


Vanunu Interview
By Johannes Wahlstrom

Ten minutes stroll northward from the lively alleyways of the Old City and its renowned Golden Dome lays one of the Holy Land's smallest parishes; the Anglican Church, with its neo-gothic St George Cathedral. The massive towers and defence-walls give the impression of an impregnable bastion, while inside one finds a green oasis of tranquillity. In the inner yard, surrounded by grapes, almonds, olives, pomegranates, sage, narcissus, cypress, oleander, roses and all other imaginable and unimaginable biblical plants, lays a Guesthouse. Here, weary Jerusalem pilgrims rest their sore feet after a long day in the Holy City. And here for the past four months, a fellow-Anglican, the nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has taken his refuge.

A technician at the Dimona nuclear weapons production plant, he blew the whistle, and revealed the Israeli nuclear arms program to the nation and the world; a revelation that would cost him dearly. After being kidnapped Israeli Mossad agents in Rome, Vanunu was sentenced at a secret trial to 18 years of jail, 12 years out of them he served in solitary confinement

In the solitude of the jail, he wrote:

I am your Spy. I am the clerk, the technician, the mechanic, the driver. They said: Do this, do that, don't look left or right, don't read the text. Don't look at the whole machine. You are only responsible for this one bolt. For this one rubber-stamp. This is your only concern. Don't bother with what is above you. Don't try to think for us. Go on, drive. Keep going. On, on.

"I refused to be a bolt in the deadly machinery", Vanunu says after his release in an exclusive interview. After receiving death threats from Jewish extremists and being placed under surveillance and travel restrictions by the Israeli government, Vanunu has taken refuge at St George Cathedral in East Jerusalem. Here Vanunu attends services, rings the bells, and dreams to leave the unyielding clutches of the Jewish state – for England or elsewhere.

He is suntanned, his handshake is firm, and his stare is fixed. The only mark bearing witness to the 18 years of torment and isolation is his stern face. What makes a man follow his heart and beliefs and to pay so dearly for his convictions?

Vanunu pours a bottle of local Palestinian beer into his glass. The golden label reads Taibeh, or 'tasty' in Arabic. "Ever since I was a child I have learned to be open to other views", he says, "to criticize, to be independent, and most importantly to be faithful to the truth. This is why I have always tried to serve mankind, by contributing to peace and foremost to justice for the much-suffering Palestinians."

Vanunu has however paid the price of refusing conformity, of being independent. In the 70's he supported the Palestinian cause, and lost his job. In the 80's he entered the Anglican Church and was ostracized by his Jewish family. When he revealed the Israeli nuclear program in order to avert a nuclear holocaust, he was imprisoned. Now again he refuses to be subdued as he rejects the restrictions placed upon him by the Israeli government.

"I'm being punished for no crime," Vanunu says while cautiously squeezing the beer cap in his hand. "I'm not allowed to leave the country for a year; I have to report to the police of my whereabouts, and even if I want to overnight elsewhere I have to get their permission." Vanunu is not allowed to talk to foreign press, to pass in the vicinities of embassies, borders or airports, write e-mails or chat by internet. He is well aware that by defying the restrictions in giving this interview, he can once again be incarcerated.

The Israeli court regards Vanunu as a 'security threat'. And although he has served his sentence, emergency regulations from the time of the British Mandate have been enforced upon him. These laws have become part of Israeli legal practise and can revoke the fundamental democratic rights of a citizen if an army general regards him as a "security threat".

What kind of security threat is Vanunu? Is he biding his time to reveal more nuclear secrets? "I have no secrets that I haven't already revealed." Besides, he points out, "I live among Palestinians, the 'enemy'. So why can't I speak to foreigners?"

Vanunu speaks his mind without weighing his words; maybe this is what they are afraid of? "I repeat all the things that Israel wants to be kept silent; I remind of Israel's nuclear weapons program, I speak of the barbaric treatment in Israeli prison, and I express my political views of the conflict," he sums up.

One of the most astounding revelations that Vanunu gave concerned the size of Israel's nuclear arsenal. The photos he took and the calculations he conducted at Dimona nuclear centre showed that apart from manufacturing hydrogen bombs, Israel was producing 40 kg of plutonium yearly, and at the time had a capacity of 200-300 atomic weapons, sufficient for turning Europe into a parking lot many times over. While pondering why they needed so many bombs, Vanunu came to the conclusion that "it was like a factory production; while the first ones are expensive to make, the rest are cheap."

Despite of Israel's nuclear capacity, Vanunu believes the bombs are useless. "It's not an issue of UN resolutions; the world would intervene if Israel used its holocaust weapons." When it comes to having them as a deterrent, Vanunu explains: "the problem isn't Iran, Iraq or North Korea, its Israeli aggression. Iraq didn't have any nuclear weapons, I'm sure that neither does Iran. If Israel wasn't so aggressive with its nuclear arms, none of the other countries would even need to get them." He concludes that the international community should intervene and stop the Israeli aggression before it gets out of hand.

Vanunu's voice takes on a tense and serious tone when Israel is described as 'the only democracy in the Middle East'. "First they invade a sovereign nation while kidnapping me in Rome. Then they sentence me at a secret trial, where neither I nor my attorney is allowed take part of the evidence. They imprison and torture me for the crime of talking to a journalist. And still they deny me my freedom of speech and the freedom of movement." He explains that the phrase may have been valid in the 50's. "But what kind of democracy is it now, with all these emergency laws? I am a living proof that Israel is not a democracy." The anger on his face seems to subside; he reaches for the perspiring glass on the table.

At Vanunu's release from prison in April, he was not only welcomed by world media and a crowd of supporters, but equally by an angry mob chanting for his death. The Israeli newspaper Maariv published a census showing that a majority of Israelis disagreed with letting him free; 33 percent thought he should be executed. Now he doesn't venture into the Jewish-held parts of the city, the chance of being lynched is much too real; in a few instances he has even been assaulted by Jewish extremists outside of the church.

If the Israelis were fooled about their country's nuclear arms why do they consider Vanunu a traitor? "This is one of the reasons I refuse to speak to Israeli press," he explains. "They played a cruel game on me and spread vicious lies while I was in total isolation, saying I celebrated suicide bombings and so on".

Vanunu has now filed a multimillion shekel lawsuit against the Israeli tabloid, Yediot Aharonot for falsely accusing him in providing nuclear production skills to Hamas. According to Vanunu, the media incited the Israeli public for they perceived him as a Christian that betrayed the Jews.

He is convinced that his baptism is a greater issue than the nuclear revelations, where both the media as well as the court would have treated him differently had he not converted. "They could have lived with the revelations; I could even have been treated as a hero among the Jews," Vanunu explains. "They are not really thinking about nuclear weapons, they think I'm a traitor for going to the gentiles. But I had to turn to the British press, since the Israeli media is completely infiltrated; they all work for the Mossad." Even Vanunu's parents are more concerned with his conversion, and he explains that "if there is one thing they can't accept it's the rejection of Judaism".

On Sundays, at the back row of St George church, Vanunu participates in the local Palestinian mass. One by one the members of the parish line up to receive the Holy Communion. From Edward VII church tower, the Jerusalem courthouse reminds of its presence just down the road; here Vanunu was sentenced 18 years ago. Opposite the courthouse is the ministry of Justice; two armed men in black patrol the entrance and guard it from intruders and curious journalists. Further down the road, hundreds of Palestinian women and men have gathered at the fortified gates of the Ministry of Interior. Today, as they do every other day, they stand in line to receive their mandatory ID-cards asserting which zones they are allowed to visit.

Vanunu passes here every day as he ventures outside the protective keep of the cathedral. The constant presence of soldiers and guards checking on ID-cards at every corner reminds him that he is still not free. "Just like the Palestinians I want to have my rights and the freedom to go wherever I want, to do whatever I please. Israel has to become a secular democratic state; a state without apartheid and Jewish laws, a state that respects freedom of speech and other religions."

But Vanunu doesn't want to talk on behalf of the Palestinians. "They have their own representatives. I am just a man with my views, and I have to be able to express them, it can't be reasonable to be imprisoned for talking to journalists."

Out on the street, Palestinians passing by wave at Vanunu; sometimes they approach, press his hand respectfully and invite him for coffee or dinner. For many of them he is a symbol of hope and coexistence with the Israelis. For Vanunu it is in the Palestinian society that he feels free and appreciated.

During his years of isolation, Vanunu developed an intricate friendship with his Palestinian inmates at the Ashkelon Prison. Although they had never met they would always leave him a glass of tea with mint at the courtyard, and during Ramadan they would give him the traditional Arabic sweets, baklawa. Once the prison guards forgot to bring him in and he got the chance to meet his benefactors. "Those twenty minutes at the courtyard was the only time we met. We talked and laughed, we became friends, and then the guards came and we parted forever."

In prison, Vanunu was incarcerated at the 'Agaf seven', a secret section run by the security service. Here he was tortured and abused. And even as the prison guards did all they could to make him aggressive, he refused to play by their rules. Once he couldn't keep his temper and called them Nazis. "Then they got a reason to hit me. After that I learned not to give them any more such chances." Instead Vanunu relied upon his faith and international support.

In 1987 Vanunu was granted the "Right Livelihood Award", better known as the Alternative Peace Prize. The real Nobel Peace Prize, Vanunu reminds bitterly, was given to Shimon Peres, the man responsible for his kidnapping and the driving force behind Israeli nuclear ambitions. Since his initial incarceration Vanunu has received numerous awards, the latest of which was Yoko Ono's Lennon Peace grant. The award, given with the motivation that he had "spoken out for the benefit of the human race", will, due to the restrictions placed upon him, be sent to the care of St George Cathedral rather than being delivered in person at the UN building in New York.

Vanunu now pleads to the international community: "I'm waiting for the world to intervene, to deal with Israel." And he adds that "the only way to be free is to be free from Israel." In order to leave the country Vanunu is trying to cancel his Israeli citizenship, but for the authorities to approve of it, he needs a foreign one. While he has applied for Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Irish and even Palestinian citizenship, his application for British citizenship has yet to receive any clear response. Yet it was a British newspaper that published his revelations, and he was trapped by the Mossad on British soil.

Vanunu moved to Israel as a 10 year old Jewish child from Morocco, now he indeed feels as though he has long since overstayed his welcome in the country. "If I where you", he says, "I wouldn't be here, I would rather sit somewhere in peace and quiet, study history and write a book." In the holy city of Jerusalem, Vanunu wants nothing more than to get away from the constant patrolling of police and military, away from oppression, away from occupation and walls. As a convalescent after years of laying-in, he cautiously walks the streets, discovers the simple pleasures of a swim, of a friendly company, of a dinner with fork and knife.

Outside the protective keep of the cathedral the streets are full of life. In the green tranquillity of the inner yard Mordechai Vanunu wonders whether after 18 years he will finally be free.

Comment: Vanunu is one who has stood up.We also note that his origins are in Morocco. This fact suggests that he is of Sephardic Jewish origins, not Ashkenazi.

Click here to comment on this article


Of settler crimes and media silence
Aljazeera
Wednesday 13 October 2004, 18:22 Makka Time, 15:22 GMT

If Americans appreciated the scale of human-rights abuses committed by Israeli colonists in the occupied territories, they would condemn the journalists who keep them in the dark, a US peace activist says.

Kim Lamberty, a member of the Christian Peacemakers Teams (CPT), has told Aljazeera.net on Tuesday that a cruel and criminal practice is largely going unreported: settlers are routinely attacking children on their way to school.

And Lamberty should know. Unable to walk since a vicious attack on 29 September by Jewish colonists, she says physical assaults on schoolchildren and the volunteers who escort them have all increased in the past two weeks.

"Human-rights abuses are being carried out by Israeli settlers on a massive scale, but the US media continues to choose not to present the whole Palestine/Israel story - just the Tel Aviv version," she says.

"Dozens of volunteers from Amnesty International, CPT, Operation Dove, as well as numerous parents, and of course Palestinian schoolchildren, have all been assaulted this week alone.

"We are not talking verbal abuse, taunts and pushes - we are talking punctured lungs, broken arms, fractured ribs and whipping with chains. But Israeli police are not investigating."

When contacted by Aljazeera.net, no Israeli Defence Force spokesperson was prepared to comment on whether the latest attack on children and volunteers (last Sunday) - or the assault on Lamberty - was being investigated.

No coverage

But the absence of interest in investigating attacks on schoolchildren and international peace volunteers is matched by a western media disinterest in reporting it.

Alison Weir, the executive director of ifamericansknew.org, says that while Americans are well informed about the deaths of Israeli children, very few realise that approximately six times more Palestinian children have been killed.

"For three and a half months [at the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada], Palestinian children were being killed - often by gunfire to the head - and the world's governments did nothing," she says.

Weir blames a western media bias in Israel's favour, and her views are backed up by studies into headlines from prominent US newspapers. One such investigation into the coverage of deaths in Israel and Palestine in 2003, revealed a major pattern of omission.

San Francisco study

Analysis of the San Francisco Chronicle has shown that headlines reported prominently on Israeli children's deaths at a rate 30 times greater than Palestinian ones.

While 150% of Israeli children's deaths had resulted in headline coverage (some deaths generated multiple stories), only 5% of Palestinian children's deaths received similar coverage.

But studies of media omissions on Palestinian issues are not limited to the US. Academics studying BBC coverage have reached similar conclusions.

Greg Philo and Mike Berry of the Glasgow University Media Unit in the UK studied television news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reached some startling conclusions regarding its effect on audiences.

BBC reporting criticised

Based on an audience sample of more than 800 people and a detailed analysis of TV news over a two-year period, the main conclusion was that BBC television news on the Israel/Palestinian conflict confuses viewers and substantially features Israeli government views.

Israelis are quoted and speak in interviews over twice as much as Palestinians, and there are major differences in the language used to describe the two sides, the researchers discovered.

Speaking to Aljazeera.net on Wednesday, Philo said TV news says almost nothing about the history or origins of the conflict.

"The majority of those surveyed did not know Palestinians had been forced from their homes and land when Israel was established in 1948. In 1967 Israel occupied by force the territories to which the Palestinian refugees had moved.

"Most viewers did not know that the Palestinians subsequently lived under Israeli military rule or that the Israelis took control of key resources such as water, and the damage this did to the Palestinian economy," he said.

"And because there was no account of historical events such as the Palestinians losing their homes, there was a tendency for viewers to see the problems as 'starting' with Palestinian action."

Settlements

Philo also found that Israeli actions tended to be explained and contextualised - they were often shown as merely "responding" to what had been done to them by Palestinians.

The study concluded that there is also a tendency to present Israeli settlements in the occupied territories as vulnerable communities, rather than as groups of colonists playing a role in imposing the occupation.

But as the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has written, they have a key military and strategic function. They have been built on hilltops to give a commanding position and their occupants are often heavily armed.

"Most viewers knew very little of this - one participant expressed his surprise at learning that the settlements controlled over 40% of the West Bank," Philo concluded.

Subversive language

However, a few western mainstream journalists are not afraid to speak out about the issue of poor and confusing media coverage from the occupied territories.

Twice chief Middle East correspondent for the BBC, Tim Llewellyn has pointed out the way language is used to spin a one-sided story in the book Tell Me Lies.

"For a short while on BBC news, 'occupied territories' became 'disputed'. We heard much of Palestinian 'claims' of occupation rather than of the 33-year-long fact of it," he writes.

"Illegal Jewish settlements near Jerusalem became 'neighbourhoods'. Palestinians are killed (it happens); but Palestinians killing Israelis (that is deliberate); dead Israelis have a name and identity, dead Arabs are - just, well, dead Arabs.

"When Palestinians die their bereaved vent 'rage' at apparently riotous funerals; Israeli survivors express shock. The list goes on. The news-speak of the crisis is adjusted to favour the Israeli side."

Activist speaks out

And with nothing to suggest that western media coverage is about to change anytime soon, CPT activist Chris Brown wonders how the system of apartheid currently practised in the occupied territories is going to change.

Suffering a punctured lung for merely walking Palestinian children to school himself, Brown says that the settlement his attackers came from is not "even supposed to be there. It was supposed to be dismantled".

However, he believes Americans do increasingly appreciate that it is their $16 million a day in taxation that allows the settlements to survive.

Brown says he can see a day when statements "from the floor of the House and the Senate that this kind of thuggery is not accepted in any democratic society" will be made.

It just saddens him that this may happen despite western media coverage rather than because of it.

Comment: We looked at Western news yesterday. Today we see more examples. Tomorrow there will be yet again more.

However, the real information is out there for those who wish to know the truth. Just don't expect that it will be spoon fed to you on the nightly news.

For how much longer will this information remain available on the Internet? We carried earlier this week the story of the seizure of the Indymedia servers in the UK, closing down Indymedia sites in many cities across Europe. Your days of possiblity are numbered.

Click here to comment on this article


FBI shuts down 20 antiwar web sites: an unprecedented act of Internet censorship
By the Editorial Board
13 October 2004

The US government move to shut down nearly two dozen antiwar, anti-globalization web sites on October 7 is an unprecedented exercise of police power against political dissent on the Internet. The World Socialist Web Site denounces the attack on the Indymedia sites and demands a halt to all such attempts at suppressing political criticism of the US government.

The shutdown was carried out by Rackspace, a US-based web-hosting company with offices in San Antonio, Texas, and greater London, in response to an order from the FBI requiring it to turn over two of its British servers that were hosting dozens of Indymedia sites. There are conflicting accounts of the legal process, with Indymedia attributing the order to a US federal district court, while the Electronic Freedom Foundation, which is supplying legal representation to the group, describes it as a "commissioner's order" directly from the FBI itself.

At least 20 national web sites, including those for Brazil, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Uruguay were taken down when the hard drives for the servers were given to the FBI. Most of the sites were restored to service by the end of the weekend, but they may have lost significant digital content because of the removal of the hardware.

The seizure appeared to be politically timed. It came just one week before the start of the third session of the European Social Forum (ESF), a large gathering of antiwar and anti-globalization activists, scheduled to take place in London October 15-17. The ESF was to be broadcast live via streaming video on many of the Indymedia sites.

The FBI said the action was taken at the request of Italian and Swiss authorities, under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, which provides for cooperative efforts by various national police agencies against international terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering. According to a statement issued by the web-hosting firm, "Rackspace is acting as a good corporate citizen and is cooperating with international law enforcement authorities."

The invocation of such a treaty against a group of left-wing web sites with no link to any form of terrorism is an outrageous smear. Indymedia was formed in 1999 to provide live on-the-spot coverage of the anti-globalization protests in Seattle. It has expanded into a worldwide network of 140 locally based sites that provide extensive coverage of political activities that are frequently blacked out by the corporate-controlled media.

According to a statement issued by the Indymedia network, the group was asked by the FBI last month to remove a story posted on one its member sites about Swiss undercover police. The story included photographs of two secret police officers who had acted as agents provocateurs during anti-globalization protests last year outside the G-8 summit meeting in Evian, France. The FBI conceded that the posting of this information did not violate any US law, and Indymedia did not take down the information.

The two policemen had engaged in violent actions in the center of Geneva, the Swiss city adjacent to Evian, where most of the anti-globalization protests took place. These provocations became the pretext for police attacks on peaceful demonstrators. The Indymedia report gave the names and addresses of the undercover cops as well as their photographs.

Indymedia said it could not be sure that the FBI action was related to the Swiss police exposure "since the order was issued to Rackspace and not to Indymedia." Two other possible motives have been suggested: one relating to the politics of Italy, the other relating to the US elections.

According to some Internet reports, the federal prosecutor for the Italian city of Bologna, Marina Plazzi, has begun an investigation of Indymedia for possible "support of terrorism," claiming a link between the group and attacks on Italian soldiers in the Iraqi city of Nasiriya last November. Plazzi claims to have contacted the FBI as well as the Italian Department of Justice.

Several leaders of the neo-fascist National Alliance party have demanded the outright shutdown of Indymedia, including Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the fascist dictator. National Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini is the deputy prime minister in the coalition government headed by billionaire Silvio Berlusconi, and a fervent supporter of Italian participation in the occupation of Iraq.

According to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which condemned the Indymedia shutdown, this action may be related to a court case heard September 30 in San Jose, California, against some Indymedia activists who helped expose security flaws in the electronic voting machines that will be used by tens of millions of voters in the November 2 US elections.

Aidan White, general secretary of the IFJ, declared, "We have witnessed an intolerable and intrusive international police operation against a network specializing in independent journalism.... The seizing of computers and the high profile nature of this incident suggest that someone wanted to stifle these independent voices in journalism."

A representative of the US-based Electronic Freedom Foundation said, "The Constitution does not permit the government unilaterally to cut off the speech of an independent media outlet, especially without providing a reason or even allowing Indymedia the information necessary to contest the seizure."

Reporters Without Borders, an international group defending freedom of the press, also condemned the seizure of computer equipment in an open letter to David Blunkett, the British Home Secretary. The letter declared: "This intervention is the responsibility of the British authorities because it relates to a hosting company operating on their territory. Closure of websites is a serious step, the reasons for which should definitely be made public."

This intervention by American police to shut down antiwar web sites has been widely reported in Europe, with accounts carried in the British Guardian and Independent and by the French news agency Agence France-Presse, among others. But nothing has appeared as yet in the American mass media. This silence only underscores the role of the American corporate media as the accomplice of the Bush administration's attacks on democratic rights, both at home and abroad.

The suggested connection between the Indymedia shutdown and the US elections is especially significant. At the September 30 court hearing in northern California, federal judge Jeremy Fogel ruled in favor of two Swarthmore College students and the Online Policy Group, an Internet service provider that hosts an Indymedia site, in their suit against Diebold Election Systems, a leading manufacturer of electronic touch-screen voting machines.

The two students had web-posted internal Diebold company memos describing flaws in the software of the voting machines that would permit vote rigging and alteration of vote totals. The Online Policy Group was a party to the suit because it served as the Internet service provider for the San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia web site, which posted a link to the memos.

Diebold had brought lawsuits against several other groups that posted the memos, but the two students, active in the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons, filed a civil suit against Diebold claiming that it had unfairly used provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Judge Fogel ruled that Diebold had violated provisions in the act that make it illegal to knowingly misuse copyright law to stifle free speech. He ordered the giant manufacturer to pay damages as well as court costs and lawyers' fees.

Comment: The clampdown is coming. Some people see it, others don't. Some are raising their voices, others will not until it is too late, and yet more will never care one way or another They are happy and content, mindlessly going about their lives.

But what if we are still in the prologue to a much greater spectacle yet to come? What if there is an enemy, a real enemy, about which no one is speaking? Perhaps it is climate change that could reduce "civilisation" to civil war in its search for food and shelter? Perhaps it is disease that could once again kill millions? Perhaps it is a visitor from the heavens, a comet or meteor storm, that could reduce large portions of the globe to barbarism? Perhaps it is all of these events and more?

Before you reject these possibilities, ask yourself, what do you really know about these areas? What real research have you done to either confirm or refute the emotional reaction you have to discussion of future catastrophe?

Of course, on these pages we are preaching mainly to the choir. But if you are a new reader, and if you find our ideas to be "fringe" or "impossible", ask yourself - honestly - and as if your life depended upon it - how much do I really know?

And then consider this...

Click here to comment on this article


Roman Comet 5,000 Times More Powerful Than A-Bomb
By John von Radowitz, Science Correspondent, PA News
10:28am (UK)

People living in southern Germany during Roman times may have witnessed a comet impact 5,000 times more destructive than the Hiroshima atom bomb, researchers say.

Scientists believe a field of craters around Lake Chiemsee, in south-east Bavaria, was caused by fragments of a huge comet that broke up in the Earth's atmosphere.

Celtic artefacts found at the site, including a number of coins, appear to have been strongly heated on one side.

This discovery, together with evidence from ancient tree rings and Roman reports of "stones falling from the sky", has led researchers to conclude that the impact happened in about 200BC.

However the claim still needs to be verified by other experts.

The crater field was uncovered after amateur archaeologists working in the area found pieces of metal containing unusual minerals.

A team of geologists led by Kord Ernston, from the University of Wurzburg in Germany, went to the site and discovered evidence of a cataclysm that would have left the region devastated for decades.

Not only would trees and homes have been flattened for many miles by the blast, but the local climate would have changed for years afterwards.

Tree rings show that vegetation growth slowed down in around 207BC, possibly because of the "nuclear winter" effect of dust blotting out the sun.

More than 80 craters were found in an elliptical area 36 miles long and 17 wide, ranging in size from 10 to 1,215 feet across. The largest, filled with water, now formed Lake Tuttensee.

Around the site the team found clues that suggested an impact from space, including rock heated into glass and minerals associated with meteorites.

The most likely cause was a low-density comet, 0.7 miles (1.1 kilometres) wide, that broke up at an altitude of 43 miles and fell in pieces to Earth, the scientists reported in Astronomy Magazine.

They wrote: "The main mass of the projectile struck the ground at 2,200 miles per hour, releasing an amount of energy equivalent to 106 million tons of TNT."

The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War had an explosive force of just 20,000 tons of TNT.

The scientists gave a graphic description of what it might have been like to experience the impact.

"About two seconds after the strike, people six miles away (10 kilometres) would have felt the ground shake as it would in a magnitude six earthquake. The air blast, arriving 30 seconds after impact, would have swept through at a speed of 500 miles per hour and produced a peak pressure of about 1.4 atmospheres, easily collapsing buildings, especially wooden ones.

"Even from 10 kilometres away, sound from the impact would have reached 103 decibels – loud enough to cause strong ear pain. Up to 90% of the trees would have blown over; the rest would have lost their branches."

Forest beneath the blast would have ignited suddenly, and continued to burn until the shock wave blew the fire out, said the scientists.

The conflagration had left a thin layer of ash in and between the craters.

Roman authors at the time wrote about showers of stones falling from the sky and terrifying the local population.

Because of these events, the Senate in 205BC ordered that a conical meteorite known as the Needle of Cybele, which had been worshipped in Asia Minor, be brought to Rome.

"The impact undoubtedly had a major effect on the environment and people then living in the vicinity of Altoetting-Chiemgau," wrote Ernston's team.

"The region must have been devastated for decades. We are currently looking for gaps in the historical and archaeological records during the time we propose for the impact to better understand both the event itself and its cultural effects."

Dr Benny Peiser, a leading expert on impact events from Liverpool John Moore's University, said the report should be treated with caution until more was known.

He said the date was speculative, and pointed out that asteroids or comets a kilometre wide struck the Earth on average only once every 500,000 years. Generally such a large impact would cause much more severe and obviously traceable damage.

"In short, this is an an intriguing find, but I remain sceptical for the time being," said Dr Peiser. "The impact cratering research community has not assessed these claims yet. That's what needs to be done next."

Comment: We can imagine that this part of Germany was not as highly populated in 200 BC as it is today. Imagine such an explosion over a city such as New York, London, Tokyo, or New Delhi?

Another such event occurred about 740 years later, again in Europe. It may well have been the cause of what has come to be known as The Dark Ages. We know, as well, of the Tunguska blast in 1908 over a portion of Siberia, a blast so great that people in London could read their newspapers at night by its light. And these events were relatively small.

And what effect would it have on an already chaotic climate?

Click here to comment on this article


At the Historic Arkansas Museum

Saturday, October 16, 2004 8:50 PM CDT
Perrin Jones

[...] Currently there is a fine exhibit of Latino arts and crafts in the main display area and I was able to revisit the wonderful display of Bowie knives, long known as "Arkansas Toothpicks" that has drawn me back there over and over.

For those who don't know the story of the Bowie knife and Arkansas, briefly, Jim Bowie, who stopped off in Arkansas on his way to Texas and his death in the Alamo with Davy Crockett, William Travis and the other heroes of the frontier, it is said asked a blacksmith in Old Washington, Ark. to make a knife of his design that was followed by a whole family of knives used all over the world.

The original Bowie knife, by legend, was made from a piece of meteor from another world and was sort of magic in that Bowie could kill most anything or anybody with one. One of the knives on display has the inscription of "J. Bowie" engraved on the blade, but no claim is made that it is the original or even the one he carried when he was killed.

Click here to comment on this article


PM 'agrees to host US missiles'
BBC News
American interceptor missiles are to be stationed on British soil after Tony Blair agreed a secret deal with the United States, it has been reported.

The Independent on Sunday says Downing Street has agreed in principle to a Pentagon request to base missiles at RAF Fylingdales in North Yorkshire.

The weapons would allow the US to destroy incoming missiles and form part of the Son of Star Wars defence system.

But a Ministry of Defence spokesman said no formal approach had been made. [...]

According to the Independent on Sunday, the deal to permit missiles was brokered in Washington last May by senior official from the British Embassy and the US State Department.

It is reported the British agreed the deal in principle, but asked that it be kept under wraps until after the next election.

A spokesman for the MoD said no formal request had been made by the US to base missiles in the UK.

He said: "We are not to going to comment on this alleged secret deal.

"What we will say is that no formal approach has been made to the UK to base missiles here.

"Nor have we decided whether we need our own missile defence system here in the UK."

Comment: Ah, lies, lies, and more lies. "George, we think this is a great idea, but, uh, could you keep it under wraps until after the election"!

Click here to comment on this article


France 'unaffected' by oil surge
BBC News
Oil's record-breaking run has not hit consumer demand in France, the fastest growing euro zone economy, said Budget Minister Dominique Bussereau.

Speaking on Radio Inter, Mr Bussereau said that "there are no signs of a slowdown in overall consumption".

Mr Bussereau's comments came as barge operators protested in Paris on Saturday, calling for state help to offset the effects of high oil prices.

Consumer spending is a key driver of worldwide economic growth.

On Friday, US Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan also tried to play down the threat posed by surging oil prices.

As crude futures set a new record of $55 a barrel in New York, Mr Greenspan said that the higher costs do not yet put the US economy in danger.

French growth is enjoying an upturn, and the government forecasts that the economy will expand by 2.5% both this year and the next.

Comment: French president Jacques Chirac put political rival Nicolas Sarkozy into the Finance Ministry earlier this year hoping he would fall flat on his face. That doesn't seem to be the result.

If we consider the idea that the economy is a manipulation, then we could ask "who is giving France an economic push under Sarkozy and why do they want to promote him?"

Looking at Sarkozy's pro-American, pro-Israel politics might give an indication as to the answer.

Click here to comment on this article


Bush signs global anti-Semitism law
AFP
October 16, 2004

SUNRISE, Florida (AFP) - US President George W. Bush said he had signed into law a bill requiring the State Department to monitor global anti-Semitism and rate countries annually on their treatment of Jews.

"This nation will keep watch; we will make sure that the ancient impulse of anti-Semitism never finds a home in the modern world," Bush said as he campaigned in the key battleground state of Florida. The state's Jewish population is the third largest in the world after Israel and New York.

Comment: Since when is anti-Semitism "ancient"? But then, we sometimes forget that Bush considers reading the bible to be historical research...

The US State Department had opposed the legislation, saying it was unnecessary as the department already compiles such information in its annual reports on human rights and religious freedom.

"Defending freedom also means disrupting the evil of anti-Semitism," Bush told thousands of cheering supporters packed into a sports arena usually used by the Florida Panthers professional ice hockey team.

"Today, I signed the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004. This law permits the government to keep a record of anti-Semitic acts throughout the world, and also a record of responses to those acts," he said.

Florida is the richest haul among the battleground states expected to decide the November 2 presidential election, with 27 electoral college votes out of the 270 needed to win.

Jewish voters are thought to favor Democrats historically, but the Bush campaign hopes that his strong support for Israel and aggressive outreach efforts could win a majority of Florida's sizeable Jewish community.

The State Department had drawn fire for its position from Jewish groups -- which wield significant political power especially during a presidential election year -- and in September, more than 100 prominent Americans signed a letter to US Secretary of State Colin Powell saying that stance was "wrong."

"The fight against anti-Semitism deserves specific, focused attention," said the letter which was signed by former Republican vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp and ex-UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick among others.

The bill, known as the Global Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, was introduced by California Democratic Representative Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor in the US Congress, in response to recent acts of anti-Semitism in Europe and the Middle East.

Comment: Ah yes, the recent acts of anti-Semitism in Europe and the Middle East. Would the European attacks be like the story in the following article where the event was later found to be faked? Would the anti-Semitic attacks in the Middle East be those allegedly committed by the Palestinians against the Israelis - you know, the ones where the Palestinians send in suicide bombers and shoot themselves in the foot time and time again?

Jewish groups have hailed passage of the bill which they said provided a new avenue to fight anti-Semitism.

Under the legislation, the State Department will have to produce an annual report on anti-Semitism around the world and form a specific office headed by a special envoy to document anti-Semitic abuses and design strategies to combat them.

It requires the department to document acts of physical violence against Jews, their property, cemeteries and places of worship abroad, as well as local governments' responses to them and take note of instances of anti-Jewish propaganda and governments' readiness to promote unbiased school curricula.

By tradition, Bush, who signed the legislation on his official Air Force One jet on his way to Florida, will treat the law's requirements more like strong advice and guiding principles because of the separation of powers.

Click here to comment on this article


Flashback: Fine for anti-Jew-attack faker

The Weekend Australian
July 28, 2004

A FRENCH woman who lied about being the victim of a vicious anti-Semitic attack - a claim that sparked nationwide outrage - has been handed a four-month suspended sentence.

Marie-Leonie Leblanc, 23, was also given two years' probation and ordered to get psychiatric treatment for "reporting an imaginary crime" after falsely telling police she had been assaulted on a suburban Paris train on July 9.

The criminal court in Cergy-Pontoise, northwest of Paris, also ordered Leblanc to pay a symbolic 1 euro ($1.70) in damages to the French national railway SNCF in what presiding judge Jean Idrac called a "warning sentence".

The woman initially told police a gang of six Arab and black youths had slashed her clothes, cut a lock of her hair and drawn swastikas on her stomach after mistaking her for a Jew.

She also said the youths had tipped over her baby carriage with her 13-month- old daughter inside. [...]

But the lie quickly unravelled when no witnesses came forward to back her story and closed-circuit video cameras in the station where Leblanc said the youths had left the train did not show any trace of the supposed gang.

Click here to comment on this article


Flashback: Antisemitism in EU: Israel points finger at France

By Richard Carter
EU Observer
26.01.2004 - 09:02 CET

The Israeli government has released figures showing that 47 percent of antisemitic incidents in Western Europe take place in France, according to a report in Le Monde.

The figures, released yesterday (25 January) also showed that while global incidents in general have almost halved, they have almost doubled in France in the past year.

There were 983 incidents of antisemitism in 2003 - a sharp decline from 1,979 in 2002. The downward trend is reflected in the UK (107 incidents compared to 114) and the US (40 incidents, down from 45 last year).

However, in France, the figure has almost doubled from 77 to 141.

Presenting the figures in Jerusalem, Israeli minister Nathan Chtcharansky said, "The situation for Jews in France is very problematic. Last year, the number of antisemitic incidents doubled and 47 percent of antisemitic attacks in Western Europe took place in France". [...]

Click here to comment on this article


Flashback: France dismisses Israeli charges of rising anti-Semitism

By Peter Popham in Rome
27 January 2004

[...] France dismissed Israeli charges of rising anti-Semitism yesterday, saying attacks on Jews and Jewish property had dropped by 36 per cent last year rather than doubled as Natan Sharansky, the Israeli minister for diaspora affairs claimed. He said 47 per cent of all anti-Semitic attacks in Europe last year were in France, a jump to 141 from 77 in 2002.

The French interior ministry said: "The number of acts registered dropped from 195 to 125."

Click here to comment on this article


Flashback: WHAT IS "ANTISEMITISM?"

Deconstructing the Psychoanalytic Base

by Chad Powers
January 5, 2004

[...] The very serious problem for the Jewish Lobby today, of course, is that with the current right-wing Ariel Sharon government, the state of Israel's many moral crimes against the Palestinians are frequent, blatant, obscene, immoral, and well-publicized (at least in Europe). They are more and more difficult to hide. And they are very, very difficult to explain away, even with the usual Jewish victimhood rhetoric. While everywhere Jewish pundits still decry criticism of Israel's moral depravity as "anti-Semitism," more and more commentators (although few Americans) are withstanding the Jewish defensive assault.

Intensive Jewish propagandizing in all social spheres (mass media, government, the educational apparatus, etc.) since the so-called "Holocaust" of World War II has successfully framed Jewish power, Jewish history, Jewish political activism, and Jewish identity itself to be beyond the realm of reasoned critical inquiry. Anyone who has dared to mount a sustained critique of anything Jewish has faced, at worst, an avalanche of smears, threats, and character assassinations and, at best, the silent treatment: a virtual banishment from the realm of what is declared to be reasoned public discourse. [...]

We live in a kind of Alice in Wonderland world that declares making any kind of critical generalization about Jewry is moral crime. One may, however, make gratuitously positive generalizations, of course. Hence, Jews are smart. Jews are studious. Jews are hardworking. Jews are family-oriented. And so forth, into infinity.

Conversely, the ideology of today's "Antisemitismology" says this: it is entirely kosher (acceptable) to paint in broadly negative generalizations other ethnic and religious groups, at least in the context of the Jewish issue. Hence, Christians are deemed to be generically anti-Semitic. Muslims? Increasingly so. Poles? Russians? Argentineans? The French? And many, many others? Condemned by Jewry as "anti-Semitic," yes, as an entire people. [...]

The crucial premise in Jewry's conception of "anti-Semitism," which has been thoroughly propagandized throughout Western culture, is that "anti-Semitic" bigotry is a one-way street. "Anti-Semites" "hate" Jews and it has never been the other way around. In fact, there is never any forum anywhere, ever, to even pose the question: what have Jews thought about non-Jews throughout Jewish history? [...]

Click here to comment on this article


Flashback: The Jewish Choice: Human Equality or Israel?

by Susan Abulhawa
January 5, 2004

I gave a talk on Thursday to a group of bright students from Council Rock South HS. Of course, it was about the Palestine/Israel conflict. I knew that most of the students were Jewish and likely to have strong opinions, but I was not prepared, initially at least, for an onslaught before I had presented less than five minutes of my talk. The gist of their questions and comments boiled down to a belief that the land between the Mediterranean and Jordan River rightfully belongs to Israel and that Palestinians, who have existed on that land for centuries, millennia even, are but trespassers, squatter, mere accidents of history.

From the corner of my ear, I caught the smiling comment of one boy, "Israel kicked their butts and the rest is war booty." While I pretended not to hear, I will admit that I felt a burning at my core. With such ironic, unrepentant racism, a Jewish American high school student had reduced my entire family and the whole nation to which we belong, to "war booty." For a good few moments, I struggled to subdue images bubbling in my mind: Of my grandmother, the heir to a beautiful stone home inside the Old City wall, rotting away as a refugee in a bug infested shack, while an immigrant Jewish family enjoyed the fruits of her heritage, her furniture, money and personal belongings; The ancient olive farms, passed on from one Palestinian generation to the next like family heirlooms, confiscated and then uprooted to make way for another Jews-only settlement; The countless images of ineffable suffering of human beings dispossessed of home and heritage, of dignity and freedom, of water and life.

The most vociferous students were battle ready. Of these, few came with open ears. And I conceded that anyone is entitled to believe that an immigrant population from Europe, Russian and New York has the right to forcefully take possession of property belonging to the indigenous population; that a soldier has the right to shoot an unarmed child for throwing rocks at an occupation military; or that it is acceptable to promote the welfare of a select group based on their religion, to the terrible detriment of those who do not belong to that religion. But such beliefs do not stand on moral ground, certainly not on legal ground.

I have never understood how an abused child grows up to be an abuser of children, and I shall never understand how a people who endured the foulest racism should come to violate and oppress another people as the Israelis have done for the past half-century. I believe that I shan't ever understand how American Jews, liberal and compassionate defenders of Civil Rights, continue to defend and excuse Israel's horrendous abuses of Palestinians. [...]

Click here to comment on this article


The Brownshirting of America
by Paul Craig Roberts
October 16, 2004

James Bovard, the great libertarian champion of our freedom and civil liberties, recently shared with readers his mail from Bush supporters. For starters here are some of the salutations: "communist bastard," "asshole," "a piece of trash, scum of the earth." It goes downhill from there.

Bush's supporters demand lock-step consensus that Bush is right. They regard truthful reports that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was not involved in the September 11 attack on the US – truths now firmly established by the Bush administration's own reports – as treasonous America-bashing.

As well, Bovard is interpreted as throwing cold water on the feel-good, macho, Muslim butt-kicking that Bush's invasion of Iraq has come to symbolize for his supporters. "People like you and Michael Moore," one irate reader wrote, "is (sic) what brings down our country."

I have received similar responses from conservatives, as, no doubt, have a number of other writers who object to a domestic police state at war with the world.

In language reeking with hatred, Heritage Foundation TownHall readers impolitely informed me that opposing the invasion of Iraq is identical to opposing America, that Bush is the greatest American leader in history and everyone who disagrees with him should be shot before they cause America to lose another war. TownHall's readers were sufficiently frightening to convince the Heritage Foundation to stop posting my columns.

Bush's conservative supporters want no debate. They want no facts, no analysis. They want to denounce and to demonize the enemies that the Hannitys, Limbaughs, and Savages of talk radio assure them are everywhere at work destroying their great and noble country.

I remember when conservatives favored restraint in foreign policy and wished to limit government power in order to protect civil liberties. Today's young conservatives are Jacobins determined to use government power to impose their will at home and abroad.

Where did such "conservatives" come from?

Claes Ryn in his important book, America the Virtuous, explains the intellectual evolution of the neoconservatives who lead the Bush administration. For all their defects, however, neocons are thoughtful compared to the world of talk radio, whose inhabitants are trained to shout down everyone else. From whence came the brownshirt movement that slavishly adheres to the neocons' agenda?

Three recent books address this question. Thomas Frank in What's the Matter With Kansas, locates the movement in legitimate conservative resentments of people who feel that family, religious, and patriotic values are given short shrift by elitist liberals.

These resentments festered and multiplied as offshore production, jobs outsourcing, and immigration took a toll on careers and the American dream.

An audience was waiting for rightwing talk radio, which found its stride during the Clinton years. Clinton's evasions made it easy to fall in with show hosts, who spun conspiracies and fabricated a false consciousness for listeners who became increasingly angry.

Show hosts, who advertise themselves as truth-tellers in a no-spin zone, quickly figured out that success depends upon constantly confronting listeners with bogymen to be exposed and denounced: war protesters and America-bashers, the French, marrying homosexuals, the liberal media, turncoats, Democrats, and the ACLU.

Talk radio's "news stories" do not need to be true. Their importance lies in inflaming resentments and confirming that America's implacable enemies are working resolutely to destroy us.

David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine lacks the insights of Thomas Frank's book, but it provides a gossipy history of the rightwing takeover of the US media. Brock is unfair to some people, myself included, and mischaracterizes as rightwing some media personalities who are under rightwing attack.

Brock is as blindly committed to his causes as the rightwing zealots he exposes are to theirs. Unlike Frank, he cannot acknowledge that the rightwing has legitimate issues.

Nevertheless, Brock makes a credible case that today's conservatives are driven by ideology, not by fact. He argues that their stock in trade is denunciation, not debate. Conservatives don't assess opponents' arguments, they demonize opponents. Truth and falsity are out of the picture; the criteria are: who's good, who's evil, who's patriotic, who's unpatriotic.

These are the traits of brownshirts. Brownshirts know they are right. They know their opponents are wrong and regard them as enemies who must be silenced if not exterminated.

Some of Brock's quotes from prominent conservative commentators will curl your toes. His description of the rightwing's destruction of an independent media and the "Fairness Doctrine" explain why a recent CNN/Gallup poll found that 42% of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 terrorist attack on the US and 32% believe that Saddam Hussein personally planned the attack.

A country in which 42% of the population is totally misinformed is not a country where democracy is safe.

Today there is no one to correct a lie once it is told. The media, thanks to Republicans, has been concentrated in few hands, and they are not the hands of newsmen. Corporate values rule. If lies sell, sell them. If listeners, viewers, and readers want confirmation of their resentments and beliefs, give it to them. Objectivity turns listeners off and is a money loser.

In his book, Cruel and Unusual, Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University, explains how rightwing influence has moved the media away from reporting news to designing our consciousness. "The Age of Information," Miller writes, "has turned out to be an Age of Ignorance."

Miller makes a strong case. His description of how CNN and Fox News destroyed the credibility of Scott Ritter, the leading expert on Iraq's weapons, reveals a media completely given over to propaganda. Ritter stood in the way of the neocon's invasion of Iraq.

CNN's Miles O'Brien, Eason Jordan, Catherine Callaway, Paula Zahn, Kyra Phillips, Arthel Neville, and Fox News' David Asman and John Gibson portrayed Ritter as a disloyal American, a Ba-athist stooge on the take from Saddam Hussein, and compared him to Jane Fonda in North Vietnam.

With this, the rightwing talk radio crazies were off and running. Anyone with the slightest bit of real information about the state of weapons development in Iraq was dismissed as a foreign agent who should be shot for treason.

By substituting fiction for reality, the US media took the country to war. The CNN and Fox News "journalists" are as responsible for America's ill-fated invasion of Iraq as Cheney and Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle.

With a sizable percentage of the US population now addicted to daily confirmations of their resentments and hatreds, US policy will be increasingly driven by tightly made-up minds in pursuit of unrealistic agendas.

American troops are in Iraq on false pretenses. No one knows all the fateful consequences of this mistaken adventure. Bush's reelection would be seen as a vindication of aggression, and more aggression would likely follow. A continuing expenditure of blood, money, alliances, good will, and civil liberties is not a future to which to look forward.

Dr. Roberts served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. During the Cold War era, he was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger. He is a former Associate Editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal editorial page and a former contributing editor of National Review. During 1986-87 he assisted the French government's privatization of socialized firms and was awarded the Legion of Honor. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Click here to comment on this article


New York Times, three other US dailies endorse Kerry for president
AFP
October 17, 2004

NEW YORK - The New York Times endorsed John Kerry for president, becoming the first major US daily to announce its presidential preference, and was joined by small papers in the swing states of Ohio and Minnesota in backing the Democratic senator.

Kerry's "wide knowledge and clear thinking" are the makings of "a great chief executive," the Times said in a lengthy editorial published 16 days before Americans head to the polls on November 2.

The Times said that while Kerry's candidacy initially seemed mostly to tap into public dissatisfaction with US President George W. Bush, over time "we have come to know Mr Kerry as more than just an alternative to the status quo.

"We like what we've seen," the editorial said.

"He has qualities that could be the basis for a great chief executive, not just a modest improvement on the incumbent" the Times said, including a willingness to "re-evaluate decisions when conditions change" and a "strong moral core."

The Times' backing is one of the most coveted and influential of any endorsement during the US presidential campaign, although given the newspaper's somewhat left-of-center tendency, not entirely unexpected.

As for Bush, the Times had few kind words in calling for the end of his presidency, which the paper's editors referred to as "disastrous." [...]

Comment: Gee, it looks like the 2004 election will be a "close race" like the one back in 2000...

Click here to comment on this article


Guantanamo guards admit torture tactics
CBC
Sunday 17 October 2004, 12:28 Makka Time, 9:28 GMT

Uncooperative Guantanamo Bay detainees have been regularly subjected to highly abusive treatment over a long period of time.

The revelations come from unidentified guards at the US military base, intelligence agents and others who worked in the prison who talked to The New York Times.

US military officials have long maintained such treatment had occurred in isolated cases only.

Prisoners at the Cuban base include those captured in Afghanistan and Iraq and suspected of association with or membership in what is termed "extremist" organisations.

Human rights groups have criticised the United States for indefinitely detaining prisoners at the base, most without charges or legal representation.

Earlier this year, photographs of US personnel abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad generated outrage around the world.

Stripped

The Times reported in its Sunday editions that prisoners at Guantanamo deemed uncooperative were stripped to their underwear, shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor and forced to endure strobe lights and loud music played from close loudspeakers.

At the same time, the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels for periods as long as 14 hours.

The treatment was described to the newspaper by a military official who said he witnessed the procedure and others who said they participated in the techniques, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

"It fried them," the newspaper quoted the official as saying.

The unidentified official told the newspaper he spoke because of anger over the treatment of the prisoners.

Pentagon officials would not comment on the details of the Guantanamo allegations, the Times said.

The defence department said in a statement quoted by the Times that the military was providing a "safe, humane and professional detention operation at Guantanamo".

Comment: Rumsfeld and Co. got off easily over the torture accusations last spring. "Hey, it was just a few bad apples. We didn't have anything to do with it."

Another lie, another nail in the coffin. Every time we believe a lie, we lose a part of our soul. Every time we believe a lie, a little part of us dies.

He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. Revelations, 13:10

Click here to comment on this article


Quake hits northeastern Iranian cities
Sunday, October 17, 2004 - ©2004 IranMania.com

LONDON, Oct 17 (IranMania) - An earthquake shook the city of Shahroud in the northeastern province of Semnan Saturday night. According to Iran's State News Agency (IRNA), it was measuring 3.6 degrees on the open-ended Richter scale.

According to the seismological base of Tehran University's Geophysics Institute, the tremor occurred at 19:29 hours local time (15:59 GMT).

In similar incidents, another earthquake, measuring 3.5 degrees on the open-ended Richter, hit the city of Garmsar in the same province Sunday morning.

The seismological base of Tehran University's Geophysics Institute said the tremor occurred at 06:55 hours local time (03:25 GMT).

There were no reports of any casualty or damage to property caused by the quakes. Iran is situated on some of the world's most active seismic fault lines and quakes of varying magnitudes are of usual occurrence.

Click here to comment on this article


Magnitude 5.1 Earthquake - Iran-Iraq Border Region

USGS
2004 October 16 10:04:38 UTC

A moderate earthquake occurred at 10:04:38 (UTC) on Saturday, October 16, 2004. The magnitude 5.1 event has been located in the IRAN-IRAQ BORDER REGION. The hypocentral depth was estimated to be 45 km (28 miles). (This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.)

Click here to comment on this article


Volcano experts keep wary eye on slumbering Mount Vesuvius

THE WASHINGTON POST
Published Sunday
October 17, 2004

NAPLES, Italy - Mount St. Helens, the rumbling volcano in Washington state, has been belching out dramatic columns of steam and ash, but in Naples, volcano experts regard all the excitement across the Atlantic as a mere diversion.

The area around Mount St. Helens is largely uninhabited. But Mount Vesuvius stands within the Naples megalopolis of 5 million inhabitants. Keeping tabs on it is a matter of massive life and death. No volcano on Earth could put as many people in immediate danger.

"Our Vesuvius is the one to watch out for," said Giovanni Macedonio, director of the Vesuvius Observatory, a venerable institution dedicated to keeping tabs on the volcano's mood.

Because Vesuvius has not erupted since 1944, the responsibility on Macedonio and his 90 experts is ever more crucial. The longer a volcano sleeps, the more powerful an explosion is likely to be when it awakens, Vesuvius monitors say.

If the observatory decides that Vesuvius is about to erupt, a series of emergency measures would be set into motion. Chief among them would be the evacuation of 600,000 residents in 18 towns. "We are not working to let tourists know when to visit," Macedonio said.

In the mid-1990s, the Italian government designed a plan for evacuating the slopes of Vesuvius by transferring residents to preselected towns across Italy. But some of the orders attracted ridicule. Citizens of Torre del Greco, a city on the coast, were told to await trains and boats to take them to Sicily.

Evacuation drills have not resolved residents' concerns: Typically, only a few hundred have taken part, boarding buses and being given wine and cake for trips to the Italian hinterland.

In any event, the evacuation plan assumes having at least a two-week notice of an eruption. But some scientists note that the catastrophic 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens was preceded by only a few hours of turbulence. A disastrous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1631 was preceded by weeks of tremors and puffs of smoke, yet 4,000 people died when lava and water blew from the crest of the mountain.

Fear of crying wolf haunts Vesuvius Observatory scientists. "People are skeptical as it is," Macedonio said. If an evacuation is ordered and the mountain does nothing, "imagine the criticism," he said. "Imagine the economic costs of making a mistake. And when would we be able to tell everyone it's safe to return home?"

New technology has given researchers observation tools on land, below ground and in space. Seismic measuring devices are positioned around the mountain, and two sensors have been lowered 200 yards into the mountain to record subterranean shifts. Lately, the observatory has been supplied with European Space Agency satellite feeds that offer real-time recordings of up or down movements of the earth of even a few millimeters.

"We are looking at Vesuvius in more ways from more angles than ever," said Marcello Martini of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology. "But we still don't know all the variables that exist inside Vesuvius. An exact time factor is not in our powers to predict."

Storied history

Mount Vesuvius is arguably the most recorded volcano in history. The eruption in A.D. 79 that buried Pompeii in mud and ash was described by Pliny the Younger, a Roman senator. "Ashes were already falling, hotter and thicker . . . followed by bits of pumice and blackened stones, charred and cracked by the flames," Pliny wrote. "Meanwhile, on Mt. Vesuvius, broad sheets of fire and leaping flames blazed at several points, their bright glare emphasized by the darkness of night." After that, the volcano erupted every century or so for 1,000 years. It then went dormant until 1631. During the next four centuries, it blew its top 21 times.

Click here to comment on this article


People Are Human-Bacteria Hybrid
By Rowan Hooper
Wired News
Oct. 11, 2004 PT

Most of the cells in your body are not your own, nor are they even human. They are bacterial. From the invisible strands of fungi waiting to sprout between our toes, to the kilogram of bacterial matter in our guts, we are best viewed as walking "superorganisms," highly complex conglomerations of human, fungal, bacterial and viral cells.

That's the view of scientists at Imperial College London who published a paper in Nature Biotechnology Oct. 6 describing how these microbes interact with the body. Understanding the workings of the superorganism, they say, is crucial to the development of personalized medicine and health care in the future because individuals can have very different responses to drugs, depending on their microbial fauna.

The scientists concentrated on bacteria. More than 500 different species of bacteria exist in our bodies, making up more than 100 trillion cells. Because our bodies are made of only some several trillion human cells, we are somewhat outnumbered by the aliens. It follows that most of the genes in our bodies are from bacteria, too.

Luckily for us, the bacteria are on the whole commensal, sharing our food but doing no real harm. (The word derives from the Latin meaning to share a table for dinner.) In fact, they are often beneficial: Our commensal bacteria protect us from potentially dangerous infections. They do this through close interaction with our immune systems.

"We have known for some time that many diseases are influenced by a variety of factors, including both genetics and environment, but the concept of this superorganism could have a huge impact on our understanding of disease processes," said Jeremy Nicholson, a professor of biological chemistry at Imperial College and leader of the study. He believes the approach could apply to research on insulin-resistance, heart disease, some cancers and perhaps even some neurological diseases.

Following the sequencing of the human genome, scientists quickly saw that the next step would be to show how human genes interact with environmental factors to influence the risk of developing disease, the aging process and drug action. But because environmental factors include the gene products of trillions of bacteria in the gut, they get very complex indeed. The information in the human genome itself, 3 billion base pairs long, does not help reduce the complexity.

"The human genome provides only scant information. The discovery of how microbes in the gut can influence the body's responses to disease means that we now need more research into this area," said Nicholson. "Understanding these interactions will extend human biology and medicine well beyond the human genome and help elucidate novel types of gene-environment interactions, with this knowledge ultimately leading to new approaches to the treatment of disease."

Nicholson's colleague, professor Ian Wilson from Astra Zeneca, believes the "human super-organism" concept "could have a huge impact on how we develop drugs, as individuals can have very different responses to drug metabolism and toxicity."

"The microbes can influence things such as the pH levels in the gut and the immune response, all of which can have effects on the effectiveness of drugs," Wilson said.

The Imperial College research demonstrates what many -- from X Files stalwarts to UFO fanatics -- have long claimed: We are not alone. Specifically, the human genome does not carry enough information on its own to determine key elements of our own biology.

Click here to comment on this article


NIDS Stops Research into Black Triangle Sightings
NIDsci.org
We at the National Institute for Discovery Science have come to a time in which a decision must be made as to the direction of the Institute. We have labored long and hard, coming to the conclusion to place NIDS in an inactive status.

The reasons for this decision are as follows:

1. We have not had the need to do any major investigative work for well over 2 ½ years.

2. In view of that fact we decided to reduce our staff.

3. Our administrator, Colm Kelleher, has taken a position outside of Nevada to do cancer research. Colm's ambition has always been to do cancer research and was employed in this field prior to his employment with NIDS. We are sorry to see him leave.

It is unfortunate that there isn't more activity, as there was in the past, that warrants investigation. However, we will still retain our Secretary/Receptionist who will remain at NIDS to answer your calls. Her name is Mary Allman and can be reached at (702) 798-1700. She will be talking daily to Mr. Bigelow's assistants Janice and Donna.

Should substantial activity occur with a need for investigation then NIDS will be reactivated with new personnel.

Comment: NIDS previously investigated sightings of the so-called "Black Triangle UFOs". This article is a message posted to their web site indicating that they have shut down due to a lack of activity. They even claim that NIDS has not had to do any major investigative work for over two and half years. As the reader will see from the following article published less than two months ago, something is definitely fishy about their explanation...

Click here to comment on this article


Silent Running: 'Black Triangle' Sightings on the Rise
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer, Space.com
02 September 2004 06:50 am ET

They have become legendary in UFO circles. Huge, silent-running "Flying Triangles" have been seen by ground observers creeping through the sky low and slow near cities and quietly cruising over highways.

The National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), has catalogued the Triangle sightings, sifting through and combining databases to take a hard look at the mystery craft. Based in Las Vegas, Nevada, NIDS is a privately funded science institute with a strong research focusing on aerial phenomena. The results of their study have just been released and lead to some unnerving, still puzzling conclusions.

The study points out: "The United States is currently experiencing a wave of Flying Triangle sightings that may have intensified in the 1990s, especially towards the latter part of the 1990s. The wave continues. The Flying Triangles are being openly deployed over and near population centers, including in the vicinity of major Interstate Highways."

Covert operations?

A key NIDS conclusion is that the actions of these triangular craft do not conform to previous patterns of covert deployment of unacknowledged aircraft. Furthermore, "neither the agenda nor the origin of the Flying Triangles are currently known."

The years 1990-2004 have seen an intense wave of Flying Triangle aircraft, the study observes. Sifting through reports by hundreds of eyewitnesses, the NIDS assessment states that the behavior of the vehicles "does not appear consistent with the covert deployment of an advanced DoD [U.S. Department of the Defense] aircraft."

Rather, it is consistent with (a) the routine and open deployment of an unacknowledged advanced DoD aircraft or (b) the routine and open deployment of an aircraft owned and operated by non-DoD personnel, suggests the NIDS study.

"The implications of the latter possibility are disturbing, especially during the post 9/11 era when the United States airspace is extremely heavily guarded and monitored," the NIDS study explains. "In support of option (a), there is much greater need for surveillance in the United States in the post 9/11 era and it is certainly conceivable that deployment of low altitude surveillance platforms is routine and open."

Open, even brazen

According to Colm Kelleher, NIDS Administrator, the newly completed quasi "meta-analysis" of Flying Triangles melds three major U.S. databases: NIDS, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and data collected by independent researcher, Larry Hatch, the creator and owner of one of the largest and most comprehensive UFO databases in the world.

Kelleher said, the analysis indicates that deployment of Flying Triangles is open, not covert, and involves low-flying, brightly lit aircraft routinely deployed over populated areas including cities and Interstate highways.

"However, I cannot say whether these are U.S. Air Force aircraft. We simply don't know," Kelleher told SPACE.com . "But it does not appear to be consistent with the covert patterns of deployment we saw with the F-117 and B-2 prior to their acknowledgement. This is open, even brazen," he stated.

Stealth aircraft

For example, a perfunctory look at the how past DoD stealth aircraft programs were kept from public eye -- although eventually came to light -- is different from the patterns for the Flying Triangles.

Prior to acknowledgement of the F-117 and B-2 aircraft, only rare night time sightings occurred in the sparsely populated sections of Nevada, California and a few other states. Flying at low altitude over populated areas was rarely reported for the F-117 or B-2.

"In contrast, the Flying Triangle deployment, especially during the 1990s, appears more consistent with the open and public operation of these aircraft," the study explains. The trend of open deployment of the Flying Triangles is not consistent with secret operation of an advanced DoD aircraft.

No attempt to hide

The database-driven study of the Flying Triangle shows the following patterns:

-- Sightings take place near cities and on Interstate highways
-- They are seen at low altitude in plain sight of eyewitnesses
-- They fly at extremely low speed or hover in plain sight of eyewitnesses
-- The vehicles sometime fly with easily noticeable bright lights -- either blinding white lights, or have "bright disco lights" that usually flash combinations of red, green or blue.

The NIDS study emphasizes that the flying of these vehicles may be more in harmony with an attempt to display or to be noticed. There appears to be little or no attempt to hide. That finding has led to a modification of an earlier NIDS hypothesis that the Triangles are covertly deployed DoD aircraft.

While it is too early to dismiss the previously published NIDS correlation between Triangle sightings and a subset of U.S. Air Force Bases, the apparent association with centers of population may point away from a covert program. "Rather, it is consistent with routine and open deployment of an advanced aircraft," the NIDS study concludes.

Clustered on both coasts

During the ensuing years (2000-2004), NIDS received hundreds of reports from people in the United States and Canada reporting large triangular aircraft, often silent and often flying at very low altitude and at low air speed. In many cases, the objects were brightly lit. NIDS files also include reports of Flying Triangles from remote areas.

In mid 2004, NIDS reviewed its database that contains the locations of the Triangle sightings in the United States. The sightings of Triangles appear primarily adjacent to population centers and along Interstate Highways, with sightings clustered on both coasts.

NIDS has amassed almost 400 separate sightings of triangular/boomerang/wedge-shaped objects. Many of these craft are brightly lit, low flying, and traveling at unexpectedly low air speeds.

In earlier reports, NIDS outlined a tentative correlation between reported sightings of Triangles and the locations of Air Mobility Command and Air Force Materiel Command bases in the United States.

Like a Star Trek "uncloaking"

According to ground observers, the features of a Black Triangle are indeed impressive.

For example, the NIDS study includes the observation of a Port Washington Wisconsin person who encountered a large object that flew over her home at 500 feet altitude in October 1998. Her eyeing of the clear starry night was interrupted as the craft came into her field of view.

"Suddenly this monstrosity came out of the 'blue', just like a Star Trek 'uncloaking', no kidding…so quiet I couldn't believe it and so huge…no more than 500 feet or so up, and big enough to take up my field of sky vision," she reported.

Crude mathematics, the witness recounted, would make the vessel about 200 feet wide and 250 feet long.

Two camps

In wrapping up its look at the burgeoning number of Flying Triangle sightings in the United States, NIDS also took into account the work of writers and researchers delving into the topic both in the United States and abroad.

Those analyses fall into two camps: The Triangles are human-made, while the other says they are not.

"In 2004 it is extremely difficult to distinguish between these two possibilities since the former option overlaps heavily with legitimate national security concerns, while in the absence of much more physical evidence, the latter option is not testable," the NIDS assessment concludes.

Comment: This article from Space.com, published only a month and half ago, clearly indicates that NIDS was still actively pursuing its research. All indications were that the sightings were continuing into 2004. Space.com even provides a nice map of the sightings courtesy of NIDS:

Nope, nothing to see here - it's no wonder they closed up shop!

Obviously, something here is amiss. Perhaps a clue lies in the repeated mention of "national security concerns" in a post-9/11 America. If the government assumes that the triangle phenomenon actually does involve some type of craft, there are two main possibilities: either an element of the US government is flying around in black triangles with cloaking devices, or someone or something else is flying around in black triangular aircraft with the ability to "disappear". National security concerns, indeed...

But what if some or all of the sightings don't involve any physical craft at all? For more information, read Laura Knight-Jadczyk's new book The High Strangeness of Dimensions and the Process of Alien Abduction.

NOTE: There is discussion on this this topic, including an article discussing the internal problems at NIDS, at the new Cassiopaean discussion form.

Click here to comment on this article

Readers who wish to know more about who we are and what we do may visit our portal site Cassiopaea.org



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.



Check out the Signs of the Times Archives

Send your comments and article suggestions to us


Fair Use Policy

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.

.