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Article! War
As Mind Control
911
Eye-witnesses
P3nt4gon Str!ke Presentation by a QFS member
New
Publication! The Wave finally in book form!
The
Wave: 4 Volume Set
Volume 1
by
Laura Knight-Jadczyk
With a new
introduction by the author and never before published, UNEDITED sessions
and extensive previously unpublished details, at long last, Laura Knight-Jadczyk's
vastly popular series The Wave is available as a Deluxe four
book set. Each of the four volumes include all of the original illustrations
and many NEW illustrations with each copy comprising approximately 300
pages.
The Wave
is an exquisitely written first-person account of Laura's initiation at
the hands of the Cassiopaeans and demonstrates the unique nature of the
Cassiopaean Experiment.
Pre-order
Volume 1 now. Available at the end of November!
Why
People Won't See
How your government gets away with murder |
by John Kaminski
skylax@comcast.net
11-21-04 |
I receive 200-500 e-mails per
day. Needless to say I can't read them all, never mind answer them
all. But many of them are like this one, and these I always try
to answer these even though I really don't have THE ANSWER when
people ask me, "What can I do to stop this madness?"
"Hello, John. Thanks for the education. I am wondering, what
is that makes most people "uneducable?" Fear? Denial?
Upbringing?
"I have a friend who had opened up a bit to the idea that
9/11 was pure theatre, but now is sliding back to "I don'twant
to talk about it ... after saying to me, 'What are you trying to
prove that the government is wrong? Why should people care?'
"I guess I must examine my own fears: the feeling I had when
I first started e-mailing people — after learning just enough
on 9/11 to be convinced it was an inside job. Maybe it's just the
crowd mentality ....
"So I am asking you, what do you think is the main reason
why people are uneducable?
"I'd appreciate your opinion.
"Craig R."
Craig, I think there is one overriding reason that prevents people
from confronting the lies their government tells them, and it's
the hardest one to realize. And by your phrasing, I can see you're
already onto it.
Sure, you can blame a lot of the American public's indifferent
and uninvolved behavior on a deliberately retarded school system
that prioritizes regimentation as far more important than enlightenment,
or our bozo media industry that reduces everything to lowest common
denominator pandering to our baser instincts.
Or, you can suspect the mentally debilitating effects of fluoride,
chemtrails, and food additives — not to mention the omnipresent
radioactivity increasing in our atmosphere by the day, or the conscience-numbing
aphasia of antidepressant drugs — as possible reasons for
this detached malaise that causes many people to be completely disinterested
in the vital processes that control and diminish their own lives.
But really, you hit it on the head when you speculated that you
must examine your own fears.
I've said this before, and I'll never stop saying it.
The real opportunity for growth and learning when studying the
events of 9/11 is this.
Once you realize that 9/11 was an inside job,
conceived and carried out by members of the highest levels of the
American government, a window opens in your mind that reveals the
hypocritical and destructive nature of American behavior over time,
and you begin to see that all these heroicized wars that have been
conducted in the name of democracy and freedom were really something
quite different.
At this point, it becomes a matter of do you have genuine integrity
or don't you? As we all know, the first requirement of true integrity
is admitting your own faults. I think there is no question in anyone's
mind at this moment that America has no integrity (hell, you just
need to look at the Indian treaties to realize that). Certainly
the mainstream American media has absolutely no integrity, in that
it's obvious to everyone the real stories about the Iraq war, depleted
uranium, public corruption, fixed elections, and on and on ad infinitum
are never mentioned by the hateful robots you see reading the "news"
on TV).
But the larger question is: Do WE have integrity? I'm talking about
you and me.
Are we willing to look at the truth as we perceive it and try to
identify and admit our own complicity in all these atrocities, as
the American government runs around the world shooting innocent
women and children in the head over reasons we KNOW are lies. I
mean, we're supposed to be fighting terrorists, right, but we KNOW
these terrorists are not Muslim malcontents, and that most likely
they are CIA/Mossad-contracted mercenaries assigned to kill Iraqi
aid workers, behead innocents and blow up churches and mosques in
order to inflame the situation to kindle support from the braindead
public, who then mindlessly cheer the genocidal tactics of George
W. Bush and pretend not to notice that not only did America CREATE
the terrorists and start the war with phony evidence, we now continue
the war as viciously as we can, continually murdering innocents
and turning our own troops into raging psychopaths. Why? Increased
profits for the military contractors, of course, which means increased
under-the-table payments for our elected officials.
In a way, the easiest way to deal with that guilt
is to pretend it's not really happening, which is what most Americans
are doing right now.
But in the conversation between you and me, Craig,
we both know that WE are partly responsible — not matter how
small or unwilling a part — for the American mass murder in
Iraq, because we know we are American citizens and as such have
a responsibility for controlling what our government does, at least
if we are to believe and endorse the fact that America is a participatory
democracy in which the people are ultimately responsible for what
their government does.
Of course on another level, we have absolutely no control over
what our government does. The Congress and most elected officials
throughout America are bought off by the financial powers-that-be,
and they do what they want, ordinary people like you and me be damned.
But again, if we have integrity, we can trace a small shard of responsibility
back to ourselves, to some small event in our histories in which
we did not stand for principle, but instead held back and let some
innocuous hypocrisy pass us by unchallenged with the rationalization
that "there's nothing we could have done about it" or
"it didn't affect me that much."
Although these events seemed unimportant at the time, these small
defeats, multiplied by the American population total — some
300 million — have combined to produce the situation we face
today — an endless war aimed at stimulating hatred and conflicts
for the ubiquitous and ever-present purpose of increasing profits
for the goons who make and sell the weapons.
Why people try to hide in their own indifference is a very old
question. So is why they are uneducable.
But beyond the political ramifications of this widespread indifference
are the spiritual dimensions, the conversations each of us has with
ourselves, either lying on a pillow in the dark late at night or
taking that first hard glance in the mirror before shaving in the
morning.
To a degree, you are right about the crowd mentality. Everybody
wants to fit in. Our minds create and accept authority figures,
and we try to live our lives according to these dictates we have
accepted as legitimate to our own self-worth.
But a deeper reason exists with regard to what we choose to believe.
And let me preface this by admitting I’ve been saying this
for a long time, and haven’t found all that many who agree
with my opinion. But that doesn’t stop me from repeating it.
I believe that religions are ultimately debilitating
to the spirit, because they try to make us believe things that we
know are not true, and in accepting the tenets
of any religion, we leave ourselves open to a pattern of behavior
that accepts things on faith, without examining them rationally.
And this process habituates us to accepting lies as truth, as long
as they emanate from an authority figure we have conditioned ourselves
to respect.
Once you are willing to accept something that deep in your psyche
you know goes against what you perceive to be rational truth —
e.g., Jesus died for our sins and rose again from the dead —
THEN YOU CAN BE MADE TO BELIEVE ANYTHING,
whether it is true or not, as long as it comes from an authority
figure to whom you have given credibility in your mind.
I believe this is a central component in the phenomenon of a majority
of the American people believing the government’s bogus story
about 9/11, and in their willingness to accept the psychotic carnage
in Iraq as being somehow relevant to their own well-being.
Thus, according to the tenets of the psychological process known
as transference (in which we take the feelings of trust and dependence
that we feel as children toward our parents and transfer them as
adults to a relationship with an imaginary sky god to maintain our
inner feelings of security), we want to accept what George W. Bush
tells us because we have embedded ourselves in American society,
and our whole meaning becomes challenged and distorted when we lose
that focus by realizing that probably everything that has come out
of Dubya’s mouth in his whole life has been a cynical and
sarcastic rich boy’s lie.
Therefore, challenging his public statements can be disorienting
to those who are not committed to their own integrity or trapped
in the psychological prison of a fictitious belief system that can
be proven false, should such believers suddenly develop the courage
to confront the lies they are telling themselves.
In some cases, confronting these lies can totally shatter a person’s
sense of self, which is why the majority choose not to do that.
Unfortunately, not confronting these lies is very likely to shatter
our world into little radioactive bits, a profoundly ugly process
we see happening — and accelerating — as we speak.
Thanks for writing, Craig. |
Mr. Bush why are you killing all these simple, innocent people
in Iraq? Why are you destroying their homes, their holy shrines,
their churches and mosques? Why are your troops raping their women
and children and why is the mob you sent abusing them sexually?
Just tell us what have the Iraqi people done to you or to the
US? Why did you send your troops to kill an elderly man praying
in a mosque, a place of refuge and serenity? Haven't you been
told even a wild boar when entering a church, is safe from hunters?
Mr. Bush do you really realize what the US is doing in Iraq? Do
you think just one second about the tremendous consequences of
your deeds?
You say you are a Christian, a believer? How on Earth can a
Christian send his troops and death machines to slaughter innocent
people who have done nothing to you or to your people? Do you
have a Christian counselor, a minister, and a God fearing man
to listen to?
It is just unfair what is being done in Iraq. Did you see Mr.
Bush the horrifying scenes of your soldiers shooting in a mosque,
God's dwelling place, shooting a wounded defenseless old man.
Is this freedom you came to preach in Iraq? Is this the democracy
you intend to impose in Iraq? Is this what your Gospel tells you
to do? Mr. Bush have you read your Bible? Do you know that every
innocent Iraqi you are killing is the image of a Christ you are
crucifying every day in Iraq?
Did you see the old wounded man being shot in the mosque? Mr.
Bush, I know professional killers surround you, but by shooting
a wounded elderly man you are shooting all humanity and you are
killing every human noble practice. Blessed is the old man murdered
while in the hands of his Lord. He is for sure resting in immense
peace. I am sure he has been welcomed to the bosom of the Lord.
You old man slaughtered during your prayers, while talking to
your lord, your heart filled with faith, prays for Iraq, amen!
Yes Mr. Bush your country crucified Iraq for thirteen years
killing hundreds of its innocent civilians through the inhuman
embargo and now you are devastating this country by using the
most horrible chemical, nuclear and biological weapons.
Mr. Bush where is your human conscience? If you don't know what
a conscience is then where is your Christian education?
I do respect your beliefs, but how can you sleep at night or
be respected by your own family and daughters when they see what
the US is doing in Iraq?
Mr. Bush, when someone is that violent, it doesn't mean he is
strong. In fact, and this is a proven psychoanalytical point of
view, it demonstrates that he is frightened to death. When you
exercise violence towards the others, it really means that you
are violent to yourself, towards your kin, and towards your family.
As you know violence as a practice can't be split (i.e. I am violent
with others but I am forgiving and serene with my people'). No
this doesn't work like that, unless the person concerned is a
psychopath, or is badly suffering from a syndrome called schizophrenia,
whose symptoms are the ambivalence of thoughts, feelings and paradoxical
behavior, which makes someone out of touch of reality. Only your
dual personality can explain what is going on in Iraq! In the
church you beg, "forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven
our debtors." while your troops slaughter the innocent in Bethlehem,
I mean in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq.
Mr. Bush you could be a perfect Pharisee, "You are like white
washed tombs which look beautiful on the outside; but on the inside
are filled of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the
same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but
on the inside, you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
There is something you should know Mr. Bush that the Iraq, you
are crucifying today on the cross of genocide via chemical weapons,
and that you think you are burying for ever, is going to rise
again, then we shall see what your end will be. |
OSLO - Malnutrition among the youngest
children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the U.S.-led invasion of
that country, according to a survey done by Norwegian researchers,
the United Nations and the Iraqi government.
The survey discovered the rate of acute malnutrition in children
under five years old shot up to 7.7 per cent from four per cent
since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The study was conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in co-operation
with Norway's Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies and
the UN Development Program.
The report, released by the Norwegian institute, said about 400,000
Iraqi children are suffering from "wasting" — a
condition marked by chronic diarrhea and deficiencies in protein.
"It's in the level of some African countries," said Jon
Pedersen, deputy managing director of the Fafo Institute.
The World Food Program, a UN agency, reported in September that
6.5 million Iraqis were dependent on food rations. Its program in
Iraq is aimed at providing food to more than 1.7 million children.
Pedersen says given those statistics, he is baffled by the extent
of the malnutrition problem in Iraq.
"Given the fact that World Food Program has distributed a
lot of food, it's quite clear that one could expect some malnutrition,
but the level that there is, it's a bit difficult to explain."
The report offers some explanation, blaming deteriorating conditions
in Iraq. Unreliable supplies of electricity have made it hard to
boil water for safe drinking. In poor areas, people rely on kerosene
to fuel their stoves but high prices and a lack of jobs has aggravated
the health situation of Iraqis.
The country's infrastructure is in disarray, including the sewer
system. Sixty per cent of rural residents and 20 per cent of urban
residents don't have access to clean water.
Violence has also driven away international aid agencies, who provide
food aid and medical help. |
Let's assume for a second, as
the law does, that a corporation is a person.
If a corporation is a person, then how come we don't see biographies
of corporations?
We're not talking about "official" biographies -- those
written by people in the pocket of the corporation.
Of course they exist.
By why not warts-and-all biographies of major American corporations?
Like -- the Life and Times of General Motors?
Actually, a historian by the name of Brad Snell has been working
for years on such a biography about General Motors -- warts and
all. He says he's almost finished.
In 1974, Gerard Colby Zilg wrote a book titled "DuPont: Behind
the Nylon Curtain," which was a biography of DuPont Corporation
-- warts and all.
Zilg claimed that his publisher, under pressure from DuPont, buried
the book -- and it went nowhere.
Now comes Jack Doyle.
Doyle is trying to make a career out of writing critical corporate
biographies.
In 2002, under contract with the Environmental Health Fund, Doyle
wrote his first corporate biography, titled Riding the Dragon: Royal
Dutch Shell & The Fossil Fire.
Now, to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster,
Doyle is out with Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic
Century (Common Courage Press, 2004).
At midnight on December 2, 1984, 27 tons of lethal gases leaked
from Union Carbide's pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, immediately
killing an estimated 8,000 people and poisoning thousands of others.
Today in Bhopal, at least 150,000 people, including children born
to parents who survived the disaster, are suffering from exposure-related
health effects such as cancer, neurological damage, chaotic menstrual
cycles and mental illness.
Over 20,000 people are forced to drink water with unsafe levels
of mercury, carbon tetrachloride and other persistent organic pollutants
and heavy metals.
Activists from around the world -- including human rights, legal,
environmental health and other experts -- are mobilizing over the
next two weeks to demand that Dow Chemical, the current owner of
Union Carbide, be held accountable.
Here we are 20 years after this disaster, and the company responsible
for this catastrophe and its former executives are still fugitives
from justice. Union Carbide and its former chairman, Warren Andersen,
were charged with manslaughter for the deaths at Bhopal, but they
refuse to appear before the Indian courts.
Many events worldwide are taking place to coincide with the 20th
anniversary, including the release of Doyle's book-length rap sheet
against Dow.
Doyle took the title of his book "Trespass Against Us"
from Lord's prayer:
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
We asked Doyle if he was urging humanity -- those who have been
polluted by Dow chemicals -- to forgive Dow for its trespass against
us.
"Not at all," Doyle said. "By using the 'trespass
against us' phrase, I am trying to make visible the invisible --
trying to show that there are boundary lines being violated daily
by toxic substances. Corporations are making a profit on the invasion
of my personal space, my biology. They are not controlling the full
costs of their operation, and we are picking up the tab for their
externalities in form of disease, illness, lower immunity, altered
reproduction, birth defects, cancer. That's not right. That's a
mortal trespass, an unforgivable transgression that must be stopped.
We are certainly not calling on consumers to ask that companies
be forgiven -- quite the opposite. They need to be prosecuted. Companies
like Dow are getting away with biological trespass daily."
And his book documents this.
In honor of the dead and dying in Bhopal, we urge you to buy Doyle's
book. Every time you use common plastic items, think of the destruction.
Every time you use Saran Wrap (originally a Dow product), question
the consequences.
And in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the crime of Bhopal,
we present here 20 things to remember about Dow Chemical -- the
company now responsible for Bhopal and a fugitive from justice.
20. Agent Orange/Napalm -- The toxic herbicide and jellied gasoline
used in Vietnam created horrors for young and old alike -- and an
uproar back home that forced Dow to rethink its public relations
strategy.
19. Rocky Flats -- The top secret Colorado site managed by Dow
Chemical from 1952 to 1975 that is an environmental nightmare for
the Denver area.
18. Body burden -- In March 2001, the Centers for Disease Control
reported that most Americans carry detectable levels of plastics,
pesticides and heavy metals in their blood and urine.
17. 2,4-D -- An herbicide produced by Dow Chemical. It is still
in use today. Used for killing lawn weeds, crop weeds, range weeds,
along utility company rights-of way, railroads. One of the key ingredients
in Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant used in Vietnam. 2,4-D is the
most widely used herbicide in the world.
16. Mercury -- In Canada, Dow had been producing chlorine using
the mercury cell method since 1947. Much of the mercury was recycled,
but significant quantities were discharged into the environment
through air emissions, water discharges, waste sludge and in end
products. In March 1970, the governments of Ontario and Michigan
detected high levels of mercury in the fish in the St. Clair River,
Lake St. Clair, the Detroit River and Lake Erie. Dow was sued by
state and local officials for mercury pollution.
15. PERC -- Perchloroethylene, the hazardous substance used by
dry cleaners everywhere. Dow tried to undermine safer alternatives.
14. 2,4,5 T -- One of the toxic ingredients in Agent Orange. Doyle
says that "Dow just fought tooth and nail over this chemical
-- persisted every way it could in court and with the agencies,
at the state and federal levels, to buy more time for this product.
They went into a court in Arkansas in the early 1970s to challenge
the EPA administrator. They did that to buy some extra marketing
time, and they got two years, even though it appears that Dow knew
this chemical was a bad actor by then, caused birth defects in lab
animals, and was also being found in human body fat by then. But
it wasn't until 1983 that Dow quit making 2,4,5-T in the U.S., and
1987 before they quit production in New Zealand. And 2,4,5-T health
effects litigation continues to this day."
13. Busting unions -- In 1967, unions represented almost all of
Dow's production workers. But since then, according to the Metal
Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, Dow undertook an "unapologetic
campaign to rid itself of unions."
12. Silicone -- Key ingredient for silicone breast implants, made
by a joint venture between Dow and Corning (Dow Corning). Made women
large, but also made them sick. Ongoing illness and litigation.
11. DBCP -- Toxic active ingredient in Dow pesticide Fumazone.
Doctors who tested men who worked with DBCP thought they had vasectomies
-=96 no sperm present.
10. Dursban -- Chlorpyrifos, a toxic pesticide, a product that
proved to have the nerve agent effects that Rachel Carson warned
about. Also tested on prisoners in New York in 1971 and in 1998
at a lab in Lincoln, Nebraska. Took over for DDT when DDT was banned
in 1972. Huge seller. In June 2000, EPA limits use.
9. Dow at Christmas -- "Uses of Dow plastics by the toy industry
are across the board," boasted Dow Chemical in an internal
company memo one Christmas season -- "and more and more of
our materials are found under the Christmas tree and on the birthday
table, make some child, some toy company, and Dow, very happy indeed."
Among the chemicals used in these toys -- polystyrene, polyethylene,
ethylene copolymer resins, saran resins, PVC resins, or vinyls and
ethyl cellulose. And a Happy New Year.
8.The Tittabawassee -- River and river basin polluted by Dow in
its hometown, Midland, Michigan.
7. Brazos River, Freeport, Texas -- February 1971 headline in the
Houston Post read: "Brazos River is Dead." In 1970 and
1971, Dow's operation there was sending more than 4.5 billion gallons
of wastewater per day into the Brazos and on into the Gulf of Mexico.
6. Toxic Trespass -- Doyle writes: "Dow Chemical has been
polluting property and poisoning people for nearly a century, locally
and globally -- trespassing on workers, consumers, communities,
and innocent bystanders -- on wildlife and wild places, on the global
biota and the global genome. ... Dow Chemical must end its toxic
trespass."
5. Holmesburg Experiments -- In January 1981, a Philadelphia Inquirer
story reveals that Dow Chemical paid a University of Pennsylvania
dermatologist to test dioxin on prisoners at Holmesburg Prison in
Philadelphia. Tests were conducted in 1964. Seventy inmates tested.
4. Worker deaths -- Dow has a long history of explosions and fires
at its facilities, well documented by Doyle in Trespass Against
Us. One example, in May 1979: an explosion ripped through Dow Chemical's
Pittsburgh facility, killing two workers and injuring more than
45 others.
3. Brain tumors -- In 1980, investigators found 25 brain workers
with brain tumors at the company's Freeport, Texas facility -- 24
of which were fatal.
2. Saran Wrap -- The thin slice of plastic invaluable to our lives.
Produced by Dow until consumers were looking for Dow products to
boycott. Dow decided to get out of consumer products for this reason
-- they sold off Saran Wrap -- and since just makes chemicals that
make our consumer products.
1. Bhopal -- Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our
trespasses, as we seek to bring to justice those who trespass against
us. |
A senior Sunni Muslim cleric has been killed
in a drive-by shooting in the northern city of Mosul, medical
sources say.
Assailants in a vehicle shot Shaikh Faidh Muhammad Amin al-Faidhi
as he was leaving a place of worship in Mosul's al-Rifaq district
at about 9am (0600 GMT) on Monday.
"The cleric was shot four times, in his
chest and abdomen, and died shortly after he was transferred to
hospital," said Abd al-Jabbar Muhammad, a doctor at Madinat
al-Tib hospital.
The cleric was a member of influential Iraqi Muslim body
the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), and the brother of the
organisation's spokesman in Baghdad, Muhammad Bashar al-Faidhi.
The AMS has called for a boycott of elections
planned for 30 January. It says its members have been targeted
by US and Iraqi security forces and also by armed fighters trying
to fuel sectarian unrest.
The AMS was formed after Saddam Hussein's ousting last year
by US-led forces to try and fill a political vacuum among Sunnis.
It maintains ties with anti-US Shia groups, such as the movement
led by leader Muqtada al-Sadr. [...] |
US marines have killed several
Iraqi civilians after opening fire at a bus which drove through
a checkpoint in the city of Ramadi, the US military and Iraqi
police say.
Police said seven died on Saturday while the military
said three.
"The driver ignored verbal warning and several warning shots,"
the military said in a statement.
"As US marines in the vicinity of the checkpoint attempted to
disable the van, the van accelerated toward the marines. The marines
then fired upon the vehicle to protect themselves and the integrity
of the checkpoint."
Ramadi police chief Brigadier Jasim al-Dulaimi said seven died
in the shooting near the central governorate building where US
troops are positioned.
Reuters Television footage showed the bus peppered with bullet
holes. Some of the windows were shattered and others spattered
with blood.
Flies buzzed around corpses in the vehicle, as men carried away
bodies and loaded them into cars. [...] |
PARIS - French doctors who carried
out tests on the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat discovered
no trace of any known poison, his nephew Nasser al-Qidwa said, while
adding that he could not rule out the possibility of poisoning.
After receiving the medical report on his uncle's death, Qidwa
said there was still no clear cause of death and the poisoning theory
could not be ruled out definitively, even though there was no clear
evidence of it.
"I have not had the time to study the report and obviously
I am not competent because I am not a doctor," he said.
"But two central points remain. There is no clear diagnosis
of the reason for the death, and second the toxicological tests
were made and no known poison was found."
Qidwa, who is also the Palestinian representative at the United
Nations, was expected to deliver the 558-page report to a Palestinian
ministerial committee which is looking into the causes of Arafat's
death on November 11.
"A question mark remains for us because of the lack of a diagnosis,"
Qidwa said. Asked about poisoning, he went on: "I am not excluding
this but not asserting it either. There is no proof." [...]
Qidwa said that "Arafat does not belong to a person or a family,
but the whole Palestinian people. I will hand over the report to
the Palestinian Authority, and a committee has been designated to
study it.
"I can understand the feeling of a wife to keep the information
and to remain the unique source but we have to consider the political
view ... not only the personal," he said.
He said the report "contains all the details related to the
medical history. It does not have anything new, no secrets, only
the information we were told earlier."
For his part Faruq Qaddumi, who succeeded Arafat as head of the
mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement, reaffirmed Monday his belief
that the Palestinian leader had been poisoned.
"He died due to poison. All the treatments
and medical examinations have ruled out all the illnesses that you
could think of, like leukaemia or the loss of immunity," he
said in Beirut.
"Why had all the blood platelets continued to disintegrate?
There is no other reason," he told reporters at a news conference
with Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud.
Last week doctors who treated Arafat at a French military hospital
outside Paris were quoted in the authoritative daily Le Monde as
saying he died of a blood clotting disorder called disseminated
intravascular coagulation (DIC).
However the doctors said they had not detected
the underlying cause of the condition, which could be a viral infection
or a cancer. They had looked at the possibility of poison but had
ruled it out, they said.
Arafat was airlifted from his offices in the West Bank town of
Ramallah on October 29 and lapsed into a coma on November 3 from
which he never emerged. He was declared dead early on November 11.
|
JERUSALEM - Despite a slowdown
in fighting, the Palestinian economy remains
crippled by four years of violence with Israel, with nearly half
the population living in poverty on less than $2 a day, the World
Bank said in a report released Tuesday.
The international development bank paints a dire picture in its
first assessment of the Palestinian economy since May 2003. Economic
activity has plummeted, while poverty and unemployment climbed sharply
since the current wave of violence began in September 2000, the
report said.
The report was issued ahead of next month's meeting of international
donors, including the United States and European countries, whose
money sustains the Palestinian economy.
The report cites Israel's "closure" policies
— a series of restrictions on the movement of Palestinian
people and products meant to boost Israeli security — as the
main cause of economic hardship in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
It also calls on the Palestinians to carry out further economic
reforms. [...] |
WASHINGTON: The US Congress denied the Bush
administration funds to study a new generation of nuclear weapons,
omitting the money from a huge mop-up spending bill it passed over
the weekend, lawmakers said overnight.
The final $US388 ($NZ552.86) billion spending bill did not include
the $US36.6 million President George W Bush sought to study so-called
bunker-busting nuclear weapons that would be used to destroy underground
facilities as well as smaller nuclear arms with half the power
of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The White House said it had no plans
to build such weapons, but wanted to keep the door open to their
development to deal with emerging threats. [...] |
The President of the United States has been
assassinated by a gunman in Dallas, Texas.
John F Kennedy was hit in the head and throat when three shots
were fired at his open-topped car.
The presidential motorcade was travelling through the main business
area of the city.
Texas Governor John Connally was also seriously injured when
one of the unknown sniper's bullets hit him in the back.
The men were accompanied by their wives, who were both uninjured.
Vice-president Lyndon Johnson - who was following in a different
car - has been sworn in as the new US leader. [...] |
LOS ANGELES - A new video game to be released
Monday allows players to simulate the assassination of President
Kennedy.
The release of "JFK Reloaded" is timed to coincide with the
41st
anniversary of Kennedy's murder in Dallas and was designed to
demonstrate a lone gunman was able to kill the president.
"It is despicable," said David Smith, a spokesman for Massachusetts
Sen. Edward Kennedy, the late president's brother. He was informed
of the game on Friday but declined further comment.
Kirk Ewing, managing director of the Scottish firm Traffic Games,
which developed the game, said he understood some people would
be horrified at the concept, but he insisted he and his team had
nothing but respect for Kennedy and for history.
"We believe that the only thing we're exploiting is new technology,"
said Ewing, a former documentary filmmaker and senior executive
with Scottish developer VIS, responsible for games like "State
of
Emergency." He said he sent Edward Kennedy a letter before the
game's release.
Ewing said the game was designed to undermine the theory there
was some shadowy plot behind the assassination. "We
believe passionately there was no conspiracy," he said.
[...] |
Customs and immigration
officers have been ordered to conduct secondary checks on
all citizens of Saudi Arabia entering
the country in advance of next week's visit from U.S. President
George W. Bush. The confidential alert originated from
the U.S. Secret Service, airports sources said.
The bulletin ordered officers to "refer all holders of Saudi
passports for further inspection."
"Officers are to conduct progressive and thorough examinations
to establish subject identification, bona fide of their trip and
admissibility."
It advised officers to conduct mandatory background checks on
the Saudis by using Canadian and U.S. police databases. "This
is a precautionary measure," one officer said. "No detail is being
left to chance for the visit."
Air Force One touches down in Ottawa next Tuesday.
It was not known yesterday if any Saudis have been detained
at Pearson.
Patrizia Giolti, of the Canada Border Services Agency, dismissed
allegations by some airport workers that the CBSA is using race
to profile Saudis.
"(Our) officers use 'indicators of deception,' " to profile
travellers, she said
Airport officers said the alert is aimed at
Saudis due to an increase in recent intelligence chatter. |
ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. (CP) - Stormy seas kept
containment crews at bay Monday as estimates of an oil spill off
the coast of Newfoundland increased dramatically.
As much as 170,000 litres of oil could have dumped into the
ocean during a malfunction aboard the Terra Nova oil platform.
Original estimates said about 40,000 litres had spilled. "It's
a large spill," said Fred Way, acting chairman and CEO of the
Canada-Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board, which monitors the
industry in the province. "It's not an Exxon Valdez category,
but it's a large spill."
The board has suspended operations at Terra Nova until further
notice.
Bob O'Brien, of the environmental group Ocean Net, said the
area is home to many nesting birds and there will be habitat destruction.
[...] |
BAGUIO, Philippines : An air-borne bacterial
outbreak has killed six people and ravaged the tourist industry
at a northern Philippine mountain resort, officials said.
Local health officials said meningococcemia struck eight residents
of the city of a quarter million people this month, killing five
including four last week. An 11 year-old girl who suffered from
symptoms associated with the disease also died in Manila last
weekend.
Three other people are recovering from symptoms of the disease
at Baguio hospitals, assistant city health officer Rowena Galpo
told reporters.
Fearful residents here have resorted to wearing face masks and
cleaning up drugstore shelves of self-prescribed antibiotics.
[...] |
BEIJING—Witnesses said they heard an explosion
and saw "a big fireball" overhead before a passenger plane
crashed in an ice-covered lake in northern China seconds after
takeoff.
The China Eastern Airlines plane went down in Baotou, a city
in the Inner Mongolia region 530 kilometres northwest of Beijing,
"only about a dozen seconds" after takeoff, Xinhua News Agency
reported yesterday.
All 53 people aboard and one person on the ground were killed
after an apparent mid-air explosion, the official government agency
said.
There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash, which
was the country's deadliest in more than two years and a setback
to China's efforts to improve air safety following a string of
accidents in the 1990s.
The plane, a Bombardier CRJ-200, was headed for Shanghai with
47 passengers and six crew members when it crashed into the lake
in Nanhai Park.
Wang Yongqiang, who lives near the park, said he saw black smoke
billowing from the tail of the plane before it crashed and broke
into fiery fragments, Xinhua said. He also heard "a big blast"
when the plane was still in the air. A house next to the park
was damaged and several boats were scorched. |
HOUSTON (AP) - A private jet that was en
route to Houston to pick up former president George H. W. Bush
clipped a light pole and crashed Monday as it approached Hobby
Airport in thick fog, killing all three people aboard.
The Gulfstream G-1159A jet, coming into Houston, went down about
6:15 a.m. in an undeveloped area about two kilometres south of
the airport, officials said. The former president, who is the
father of current President George W. Bush, had been scheduled
to travel to Ecuador for a conference. [...]
The jet, en route from Love Field in Dallas, was approaching
the runway when it clipped the light pole, losing part of a wing,
authorities said. Wreckage extended about 100 metres from there,
Williams said.
The crash site is a field near the Beltway 8 tollway. No one
on the ground was injured, but one car was hit with debris while
another was hit with jet fuel, Williams said.
Roger Smith, a spokesman for the Houston
Airport System, said the pilot didn't indicate any problem, and
the landing was routine until communications abruptly stopped.
Dense fog blanketed most of the area. [...] |
BIRCHWOOD, Wis. - As several
deer hunters made their way through the woods of northern Wisconsin,
they were startled to come upon a stranger in their tree stand.
Asked to leave, the trespasser, wearing blaze-orange and carrying
a semiautomatic assault rifle, opened fire on the hunters and didn't
stop until his 20-round clip was empty, leaving five people dead
and three wounded, authorities said. One of the injured hunters
died Monday.
The shooter was eventually captured.
The killings baffled authorities and stunned residents in a state
where deer hunting is a rite of autumn — a sport practiced
by thousands of people who scour the woods for nine days each November
with hopes of bagging a trophy buck. [...] |
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Relentless gale-force
winds are making life miserable for Austrians, and as if two weeks
of accidents, property damage and bad hair days haven't been enough,
forecasters say more is on the way.
"I hate wind!" Herbert Hufnagl wrote Monday in a commentary
for the Kurier newspaper, capturing the frustration and wind fatigue
sweeping the alpine nation along with the howling gales.
The blustery weather is no laughing matter in Austria, where
it's been blamed for road fatalities, or in neighboring Slovakia,
where record-high winds devastated huge swaths of forest over
the weekend.
Powerful winds have made driving a treacherous, white-knuckle
experience as motorists struggle just to keep their vehicles on
the road. Authorities say gusts exceeding 60 mph have blown cars
across the median and into head-on collisions, some resulting
in deaths and serious injuries.
Boats plying the Danube have had to deal with stomach-churning
whitecaps and swells, and a federation representing Austria's
trucking industry said Monday the recent closures of key highways
for several hours at a time has cost shippers hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
Those who have stayed home have had to cope with blown-off roof
tiles and fallen trees that have damaged buildings and snapped
overhead power lines, cutting electricity to thousands of households.
[...]
In Slovakia, gusts clocked at 108 mph
-- the strongest since records began being kept in 1936 -- wiped
out an estimated half of all the timber in the country's High
Tatras mountains. Officials put the loss at tens of millions
of dollars.
The government asked the European Union for emergency financial
assistance, and residents described the
windstorm as an "apocalypse." [...] |
MANILA : Fifty-eight fishermen are missing,
feared drowned as the death toll from a severe storm that battered
the Philippines rose to 24.
Hopes were fading for dozens of fishermen who were lost at sea
south of the main island of Luzon when tropical storm Muifa unexpectedly
changed course and struck the region on Friday.
Coastguard spokesman Armando Balilo told AFP the missing men
had spent more than 48 hours in raging waters and that aerial
searches of the region were underway. "We are using choppers (helicopters)
to look for them," he said. [...]
Big waves and strong winds sank or capsized the vessels on Saturday,
killing two other crew members. Thirty-four other crew members
were rescued by other vessels.
The government agency reported three other deaths by drowning,
two by hypothermia, one struck by a falling tree, five by a tornado
near Roxas town on Mindoro, and 11 others due to unspecified causes.
Three other people are also missing, while 79 were injured.
Muifa destroyed or damaged more than 27,000 houses and displaced
more than 60,000 people, it added. [...] |
(New Zealand) - An earthquake measuring 7.2
on the Richter scale struck off the coast of the South Island today.
The quake hit at 9.26am 240 km southwest of Te Anau, at a depth
of 33km, a Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS) spokesman told
NZPA.
"We would expect very minor damage," GNS seismologist Peter
McGinty said.
However, the quake would have been felt widely throughout the
South Island, and in the North Island as far north as New Plymouth
which was on the same fault line, he said.
Mr McGinty said it was a "moderate to deep" quake, but would
not cause too many problems because it was so far offshore. [...] |
YORBA LINDA, Calif. - An small earthquake
struck in Orange County on Sunday, but there were no immediate
reports of damage or injury, authorities said.
The magnitude-3.0 quake hit at 9:39 p.m. and was centered about
2 miles southeast of Yorba Linda and about 5 miles northeast of
Orange, according to a preliminary report from the U.S. Geological
Survey.
A county sheriff's department watch commander said there were
no reports of damage or injury. |
An earthquake shook the border
area between Greece and Albania earlier today, but there were no
reports of damage or injuries.
The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 5.5 and struck at 4.26am
(0226 GMT), the Athens Geodynamic Institute said.
The epicentre was about 50 miles north of the Greek city of Ioannina,
on the other side of the border and inside Albania.
An earthquake of a magnitude between 2.5 and 3 is the smallest
generally felt by people.
A quake of magnitude 4 to 5 can cause moderate damage in populated
areas. |
A volcano erupted in south-western Colombia,
hurling rocks for a distance of two miles and blanketing the ground
with ash, but causing no injuries, the country's Institute of
Geology and Mines said.
The eruption of the 14,028ft Galeras Volcano also sent a column
of smoke high into the Andean air.
Galeras, 12 miles from the city of Pasto, has a long history
of activity. More than 100 minor tremors were felt in the city
during the volcano's last eruption, in April 2002, although no
damage or injuries were reported then |
TAGAYTAY CITY, Cavite, Philippines -- Two
weeks after Taal Volcano started showing signs of activity, the
Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs)
has maintained the alert level in a 10-km radius around the picturesque
volcano, officials said Sunday.
Quoting the latest Phivolcs advisory, Senior Superintendent
Roberto Rosales, Cavite provincial police chief, said activities
around the volcano's main crater were still prohibited as alert
level 1 was still up in the area.
Rosales said the Phivolcs monitoring center recorded at least
two high-frequency volcanic earthquakes the other day.
The Phivolcs report said its seismic network registered a total
of 31 high-frequency volcanic earthquakes in a span of seven days.
It noted that while there had been no visible "steaming activity
of reactivated vent" at the volcano's main crater on Tuesday,
there had been "weak steaming (about) 5 meters high" on Nov. 10.
|
Reports of the mysterious booms
first felt in North Side neighborhoods are now coming from other
city sections and beyond.
Folks from the Fan District, Lakeside, Short Pump and New Kent
County all say they have sensed the shock.
Richmond leaders have even been contacted by officials from Fort
Wayne, Ind., and several Canadian provinces where similar booms
have been felt recently, city emergency services spokesman Bill
Farrar said.
"We've gotten anecdotal stories, suggestions and theories
from all over the place," he said. "But from what has
been described to me, I don't believe we are dealing with the same
things."
Tier 1 Data Center.
What exactly the city is dealing with remains unclear.
The booms began Nov. 2 and have occurred several times a week since.
Most have been localized in North Side neighborhoods. After one
of the bigger booms - Sunday about 12:45 p.m. - authorities logged
250 calls to 911 in 90 seconds.
City officials have dismissed construction firms, quarry outfits
and railroad companies as the source of the noise. They have ruled
out military exercises and aviation activities. Public utility personnel
have turned up no evidence of a problem in gas, water or sewer lines.
And scientists say their instruments show no signs of earthquakes
in the Richmond area.
"If a human being felt an earthquake in the Richmond area,
and it was indeed an earthquake, we would record it on one of these
[seismograph] stations," said Waverly Person a geophysicist
with the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information
Center in Golden, Colo. "And we recorded nothing."
The region's long-inactive coal mines are not likely the cause
of the reported booms and shaking because none are near North Richmond,
the Fan or the near West End, said geologist David Spears with the
Virginia Division of Mineral Resources in Charlottesville.
"There's nothing resembling gas- or coal-bearing [rock] strata
in the area," he said.
The collapse of old, man-made underground structures, such as shallow
subway tunnels or water conduits, could cause a shake perceptible
to people but not deep enough to register on seismic scales, ventured
James Beard, Virginia Museum of Natural History geology curator.
"Whatever this is," he said, "it is happening relatively
close to the surface because they are not picking it up on nearby
seismographs."
Another possibility, Beard said, is shifting earth from saturation
of the ground from recent rain events, including the remnants of
Tropical Storm Gaston. But in that case, he explained, the booms
would be followed by landslides.
For now, city officials are considering all options.
Advanced audio equipment that will help pinpoint the origin of
the booms will be set up to monitor North Side neighborhoods and
a seismic activity device is on its way to Richmond, Farrar said.
"There's a lot of energy being expended," he said. "We're
continuing to look for anything that might explain this."
|
Did you see on the news a couple
weeks back the bunch of idiots from North Side, standing out in
the street at midnight, saying they practically had been bounced
out of their beds by a series of "booms" that rocked the
neighborhood?
Well, if you did, I was the idiot on the far left, and that was
Barb standing next to me.
I refer to me and my, I assure you, mostly sound-of-mind neighbors
as "idiots" because that's one hypothesis advanced by
some of the folks in a few city departments downtown.
Nobody exactly said that to us, of course, but they did hint to
members of the media after a few days of investigating that we might
be exaggerating.
Rarely does your old close-to-home columnist here get to be right
in the heart of the news, able to give you the true skinny, but
let me assure you this time I couldn't have been any closer - and
we were not exaggerating.
The event that brought a bunch of people to the intersection of
Palmyra Avenue and Gloucester Road in Greater Ginter Park around
midnight on election night seemed to have occurred directly under
my home.
A canvas of the neighborhood the next day showed that residents
from Brookland Park to Laburnum, Chamberlayne to Hermitage, each
would have made the same claim about their homes. We all thought
our furnaces had exploded.
I've lived in this house for 18 years, and I've never felt anything
like the explosive forces we experienced that night and then again
early the next morning. (Barb and some others had heard booms the
previous night as well, but those had not been as great on the rocked-her
scale.)
I might as well tell you now that there is still no explanation
for what our explosions might have been.'Tis still a mystery.
Barb had worked at the polls for 16 hours that day. So when she
finally got home - after 9 o'clock - and shared a few poll-worker
stories with me, she headed to bed.
When the first explosion came, the pillow under her head fell to
the floor, and the furniture - not the knick-knacks, mind you, but
the end tables - danced around like cartoon furniture at Wile E.
Coyote's place.
Our phone rang almost immediately. "What the Sam Hill was
that?" a neighbor asked, advising us to get the heck out of
the house.
Before I could reply, the second blast went off. The neighbor said
later that that one knocked the phone right out of her hand.
By the time we got to the street, several other neighbors had assembled
in their nightwear. Firetrucks and police officers also were there
very quickly, as several people had called 911.
The firefighters checked out a couple of basements, including ours,
to smell for gas leaks, but they found nothing. Someone suggested
sewer gas as a possibility, and the city representative who showed
up promised to have that checked the next day.
It was right around this time that we first suspected we might
be idiots. Someone from public works asked if we were sure we hadn't
just heard someone shooting off a firecracker to celebrate the election
results.
"Nobody in this neighborhood would be celebrating THOSE results,"
said someone in the group. (Both our precinct and the one adjoining
are liberal strongholds.)
"That being the case," said a fellow from down the street
who obviously had not voted with the neighborhood majority, "maybe
that boom was a message from God for the rest of you to straighten
up."
More people walked up, this time from streets to the west, where
I noticed they wear a better grade of pajamas.
Everyone had a theory. Could it have been an earthquake? Most thought
not, because earthquakes don't go "BOOM," do they?
A methamphetamine lab gone bad? Probably not in a neighborhood
that leans toward Merlot.
A series of sonic booms? Unlikely that they would fall over the
same six- or eight-block radius three days in a row.
The sewer-gas theory was revisited after a neighbor said his basement
had smelled bad of late. Someone asked helpfully, did he own cats?
My personal theory has something to do with flying saucers, but
I am not at liberty at present to give you any details. |
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