If you look at close-up video you see puffs of explosives coming out the sides of the buildings as they topple. An advertisement that makes this allegation has been airing in New York for months. It ends with a voice saying: "Reopen the investigation and address the unanswered questions of 9/11."

If you go to the website reopen911.org you find a series of even more startling claims.

Did a plane actually hit the Pentagon? Photos taken on September 11, 2001, show no cabin, no tail and no engines.

The ads and website are the brainchild of Jimmy Walter, who is convinced the US Government was involved in a conspiracy.

Why would American leaders want to kill nearly 3000 of their fellow countrymen? Mr Walter points to a September 2000 document called Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century, produced by a neo-conservative think tank, Project for the New American Century.

It argued for a dramatic build-up in US military spending, but warned this transformation "is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event - like a new Pearl Harbour".

He is offering $US1 million ($1.36 million) to anyone who can prove that explosives were not used in the World Trade Centre.

Any bounty hunter might want to start with the 43 reports of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has produced 10,000 pages of evidence on how and why the buildings collapsed.

It said this: "NIST found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to September 11, 2001." It adds that there is no evidence that missiles were fired at the towers either.

Someone seeking Mr Walter's US$1 million could also cite the 567-page official 9/11 Commission report, which meticulously details the movements of the 19 hijackers before September 11.

Then again, it's that report that Mr Walter thinks covered up the truth, so you are unlikely to get his money using that.

Mr Walter's conspiracy theory goes further: the aircraft were robot planes; the passengers were mainly military contractors; the aircraft were only 10 to 25 per cent full, while all other planes that day were booked out; the airlines blamed this on a "computer glitch".

But what about the phone calls by passengers from the hijacked planes? "You can't make calls from aircraft," he says.

Dozens of websites peddle similar allegations. What sets Mr Walter aside from other conspiracy theorists is his money. He inherited a fortune from his father, a successful builder, and intends to spend it on uncovering the truth, as he sees it. So far he has spent more than $US5 million - three-quarters of his net worth.

Why is he spending his money on this? "I'm 58 years old, I have no kids, no wife, no family."

He is now living in Austria, where he moved after his car was attacked. When the phone line drops out, he jokes about the CIA. "Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you," he says.

So is Elvis still alive? "Well, now you are going too far. But John F. Kennedy was not killed by a lone gunman …"

DON'T SAY IT'S NOT TRUE

Roswell UFO crashlands in New Mexico, July 1947. Bodies of aliens recovered. Authorities claim the spaceship was a weather balloon.

Marilyn Monroe Her demise involved the Kennedys and the Mob boss Sam Giancana.

Da Vinci Code Jesus allegedly left a lineage and wanted the mother of his children, Mary Magdalene, to head the church.

Alireza Jafarzadeh said the secret construction of missiles extends well beyond Parchin, a military zone 20 miles (30 kilometers) southeast of the Iranian capital. Jafarzadeh told reporters in September about the Parchin tunnels.

On Monday, Jafarzadeh said that on orders of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian defense ministry has taken over an area in eastern and southern regions of Tehran.

Jafarzadeh is credited with having aired Iranian military secrets in the past, but US officials consider some of his assertions to have been inaccurate.

The vice president made multiple trips to the CIA headquarters to "talk" to the analysts. When one veteran CIA man was asked if that was unusual, he said: "No, it's not unusual. It's unique. I've been here 28 years, and it's the first time."

Let me give you a quote from Tom Friedman, columnist for The New York Times. He's quoted by Scott McConnell in an article that appears in the American Conservative magazine:

"It's the war the neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite. ... I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened," Friedman said. Perhaps that's true. After all, we do live in a media world.

The president is calling his Democratic critics revisionists. Well, the Democrats are not trying to rewrite history; they're just trying to get the president to fess up that he played fast and loose with the truth.

What the war-sellers did was not make stuff up out of whole cloth; they just distorted the evidence and ignored all the doubts the intelligence community was expressing. Aluminum tubes, for example, were cited as evidence of Iraq's nuclear program, but the president and his crowd knew that (1) the State Department intelligence people didn't believe they were nuclear-related; and (2) the U.N. nuclear experts said they definitely were not suitable for nuclear work.

But Vice President Dick Cheney goes on national television and says, grim-faced, "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has reconstituted his nuclear-weapons program and is amassing weapons of mass destruction," etc. and so forth.

They are telling still another whopper when they claim that "everyone agreed there were weapons." No, the French, Russians, Chinese and Germans didn't agree. That's why they refused to give Bush the war resolution he and his British lap dog lobbied so hard to get.

When German intelligence told the Bush administration they thought one of the so-called defectors was a loony, the administration ignored German intelligence and passed the defector's information on as fact. The administration set up a special organization in the Defense Department to short-circuit both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. An Air Force colonel who worked in that office has blown the whistle on the operation.

It's a bad thing to lie about anything. It's bad to lie under oath. It's bad to have sex in the Oval Office. But, in a rational society, it ought to be considered unforgivable to mislead the American people into a war. More than 2,000 young Americans have died in the springtime of their lives, and another 13,000 will carry wounds and scars into what's left of their futures.

And for what? Let's review: There is no doubt Saddam Hussein was not trying to build nuclear weapons; he did not possess and was not amassing any other weapons of mass destruction; he had no connection with al-Qaida and was not involved in the attacks against New York and Washington. What he was was a half-mad bloody tyrant writing romance novels and building palaces and monuments to himself. He was not a threat to the U.S.

I, too, possess a biology degree, and I am as well qualified to determine someone's cause of death as I am to perform open-heart surgery. So I asked Chris Milroy, professor of forensic pathology at the University of Sheffield, to watch the film. He reported that "nothing indicates to me that the bodies have been burnt". They had turned black and lost their skin "through decomposition". We don't yet know how these people died.

But there is hard evidence that white phosphorus was deployed as a weapon against combatants in Falluja. As this column revealed last Tuesday, US infantry officers confessed that they had used it to flush out insurgents. A Pentagon spokesman told the BBC that white phosphorus "was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants". He claimed "it is not a chemical weapon. They are not outlawed or illegal." This denial has been accepted by most of the mainstream media. UN conventions, the Times said, "ban its use on civilian but not military targets". But the word "civilian" does not occur in the chemical weapons convention. The use of the toxic properties of a chemical as a weapon is illegal, whoever the target is.

The Pentagon argues that white phosphorus burns people, rather than poisoning them, and is covered only by the protocol on incendiary weapons, which the US has not signed. But white phosphorus is both incendiary and toxic. The gas it produces attacks the mucous membranes, the eyes and the lungs. As Peter Kaiser of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told the BBC last week: "If ... the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because ... any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons."

The US army knows that its use as a weapon is illegal. In the Battle Book, published by the US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, my correspondent David Traynier found the following sentence: "It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets."

Last night the blogger Gabriele Zamparini found a declassified document from the US department of defence, dated April 1991, and titled "Possible use of phosphorus chemical". "During the brutal crackdown that followed the Kurdish uprising," it alleges, "Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam may have possibly used white phosphorus (WP) chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil ... and Dohuk provinces, Iraq. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships ... These reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly ... hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas." The Pentagon is in no doubt, in other words, that white phosphorus is an illegal chemical weapon.

The insurgents, of course, would be just as dead today if they were killed by other means. So does it matter if chemical weapons were mixed with other munitions? It does. Anyone who has seen those photos of the lines of blind veterans at the remembrance services for the first world war will surely understand the point of international law, and the dangers of undermining it.

But we shouldn't forget that the use of chemical weapons was a war crime within a war crime within a war crime. Both the invasion of Iraq and the assault on Falluja were illegal acts of aggression. Before attacking the city, the marines stopped men "of fighting age" from leaving. Many women and children stayed: the Guardian's correspondent estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians were left. The marines treated Falluja as if its only inhabitants were fighters. They levelled thousands of buildings, illegally denied access to the Iraqi Red Crescent and, according to the UN's special rapporteur, used "hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population".

I have been reading accounts of the assault published in the Marine Corps Gazette. The soldiers appear to have believed everything the US government told them. One article claims that "the absence of civilians meant the marines could employ blast weapons prior to entering houses that had become pillboxes, not homes". Another said that "there were less than 500 civilians remaining in the city". It continued: "The heroics [of the marines] will be the subject of many articles and books ... The real key to this tactical victory rested in the spirit of the warriors who courageously fought the battle. They deserve all of the credit for liberating Falluja."

But buried in this hogwash is a grave revelation. An assault weapon the marines were using had been armed with warheads containing "about 35% thermobaric novel explosive (NE) and 65% standard high explosive". They deployed it "to cause the roof to collapse and crush the insurgents fortified inside interior rooms". It was used repeatedly: "The expenditure of explosives clearing houses was enormous."

The marines can scarcely deny that they know what these weapons do. An article published in the Gazette in 2000 details the effects of their use by the Russians in Grozny. Thermobaric, or "fuel-air" weapons, it says, form a cloud of volatile gases or finely powdered explosives. "This cloud is then ignited and the subsequent fireball sears the surrounding area while consuming the oxygen in this area. The lack of oxygen creates an enormous overpressure ... Personnel under the cloud are literally crushed to death. Outside the cloud area, the blast wave travels at some 3,000 metres per second ... As a result, a fuel-air explosive can have the effect of a tactical nuclear weapon without residual radiation ... Those personnel caught directly under the aerosol cloud will die from the flame or overpressure. For those on the periphery of the strike, the injuries can be severe. Burns, broken bones, contusions from flying debris and blindness may result. Further, the crushing injuries from the overpressure can create air embolism within blood vessels, concussions, multiple internal haemorrhages in the liver and spleen, collapsed lungs, rupture of the eardrums and displacement of the eyes from their sockets." It is hard to see how you could use these weapons in Falluja without killing civilians.

This looks to me like a convincing explanation of the damage done to Falluja, a city in which between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians might have been taking refuge. It could also explain the civilian casualties shown in the film. So the question has now widened: is there any crime the coalition forces have not committed in Iraq?

"It will matter to us if Iraq totally collapses into civil war, if it becomes a failed state the way Afghanistan was, where terrorists are free to basically set up camp and launch attacks against us," she said. (AP)

A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency.

The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.

A source said last night: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.

"He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.

"There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do - and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

A Government official suggested that the Bush threat had been "humorous, not serious".

But another source declared: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

Yesterday former Labour Defence Minister Peter Kilfoyle challenged Downing Street to publish the five-page transcript of the two leaders' conversation. He said: "It's frightening to think that such a powerful man as Bush can propose such cavalier actions.

"I hope the Prime Minister insists this memo be published. It gives an insight into the mindset of those who were the architects of war."

Bush disclosed his plan to target al-Jazeera, a civilian station with a huge Mid-East following, at a White House face-to-face with Mr Blair on April 16 last year.

At the time, the US was launching an all-out assault on insurgents in the Iraqi town of Fallujah.

Al-Jazeera infuriated Washington and London by reporting from behind rebel lines and broadcasting pictures of dead soldiers, private contractors and Iraqi victims.

The station, watched by millions, has also been used by bin Laden and al-Qaeda to broadcast atrocities and to threaten the West.

Al-Jazeera's HQ is in the business district of Qatar's capital, Doha.

Its single-storey buildings would have made an easy target for bombers. As it is sited away from residential areas, and more than 10 miles from the US's desert base in Qatar, there would have been no danger of "collateral damage".

Dozens of al-Jazeera staff at the HQ are not, as many believe, Islamic fanatics. Instead, most are respected and highly trained technicians and journalists.

To have wiped them out would have been equivalent to bombing the BBC in London and the most spectacular foreign policy disaster since the Iraq War itself.

The No 10 memo now raises fresh doubts over US claims that previous attacks against al-Jazeera staff were military errors.

In 2001 the station's Kabul office was knocked out by two "smart" bombs. In 2003, al-Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a US missile strike on the station's Baghdad centre.

The memo, which also included details of troop deployments, turned up in May last year at the Northampton constituency office of then Labour MP Tony Clarke.

Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh, 49, is accused under the Official Secrets Act of passing it to Leo O'Connor, 42, who used to work for Mr Clarke. Both are bailed to appear at Bow Street court next week.

Mr Clarke, who lost at the election, returned the memo to No 10.

He said Mr O'Connor had behaved "perfectly correctly".

Neither Mr O'Connor or Mr Keogh were available. No 10 did not comment.

He added that there was "no justification" for the sense of grievance displayed by July 7 bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan in a video recorded before his suicide attack. Khan claimed to be fighting on behalf of oppressed Muslims.

"We have got to challenge this because there is no justified sense of grievance," he told the gathered chairmen of all the Commons select committees.

The Prime Minister also defended Government plans to deport terror suspects, which critics argue will break international refugee and human rights conventions enshrined in international law.

In the wide-ranging questioning by the liaison committee, the Prime Minister also admitted that Britain faces "difficult and controversial decisions" on climate change and energy supply.

He also defended his education and health reform programs.

He said he did not regret abolishing grant maintained schools, and denied proposed changes to the state education system, designed to give parents more say over the way in which schools are run, would favour the middle classes over poorer families.

The tiny Johnson County Airport is home to Aero Contractors Corp., a firm described by the New York Times as “a major domestic hub of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret air service,” that shuttles prisoners abroad for interrogation and suspected torture. The Times reports Aero was founded in 1979 by the chief pilot for Air America, a CIA “front” in Vietnam.

In addition to Kelly, those arrested Friday included residents of a Raleigh Catholic Worker house and members of Stop Torture Now, a project of the Center for Theology and Social Analysis in St. Louis, Missouri. Protesters walked onto company property and lowered the flags to half-mast before being arrested.

Local supporters included members of the North Carolina Council of Churches, Amnesty International, and the War Resisters League. They participated by dressing like Guantanamo prisoners in orange jumpsuits, holding a banner that said “Aero Contractor CIA Torture Taxi,” and delivering a four-count “indictment” to current and former heads of the CIA and company officials for violating U.S. and international laws against torture.

Kelly, a leader in the movement to stop the U.S. war on Iraq, said she got arrested because of a growing concern over the government “becoming increasingly blatant about its role in torture. People need to stand up before it becomes more risky.”

Asked what she meant by that, she replied, “At this point here in the U.S., we don’t face any of the risks of people who stood up against the Salvadoran death squads. We are perhaps inconvenienced, but there are no massacres, our family members aren’t being killed. That’s why we need to stand up now.”

What worries her most, she explained, are not reports of torture coming out of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq or secret sites around the world. “The U.S. has always excepted itself from international norms of human decency…but now some are starting to say, ‘It’s ok. We’re the U.S. We have to do anything to make sure we’re never attacked again.’ It’s disturbing to see how tolerant we’ve become.”

“You hear people say, ‘Well, Saddam was a lot worse than the CIA so we have to do it in order to keep people like Saddam from hurting people.’ That is really faulty thinking,” the Nobel Peace Prize nominee added. “We are using some of the exact same torture cells Saddam used! When we apprehend Iraqis they might be good guys, but by the time they leave after three days, they’re bad guys, is how one soldier explained it. And look at the woman bomber arrested in Jordan. She had three brothers killed in Iraq and the person she married was held three days and tortured. If we think terrifying people is a way to build security, we’re misguiding ourselves in a terrible way. Real protection lies in building just and fair relationships.”

While Kelly and the others were being arrested Friday morning, copies of the “indictment” were delivered to members of the Johnston County Council and the Johnston County Airport Commission asking that officials take action to revoke Aero Contractors’ lease for engaging in illegal activities at the public airfield.

After her arrest at the Johnston County Airport, Friday, Kelly traveled to Ft. Benning, Georgia, to join over 15,000 people gathered for the annual protest against the Army’s School of the Americas, which critics say trains Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency tactics including torture. She and the 13 people arrested outside Raleigh were released on $500 bond and given dates in January to appear in court in Johnston County.

Col Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Colin Powell, the secretary of state in Mr Bush's first term, said he had no doubt that the US military had tortured detainees.

White House officials argue that "torture" is an unfair description of US interrogation practices.

Mr Goss said there was a "huge amount of misinformation swirling about on the subject of detainees".

"We use lawful capabilities to collect vital information and we do it in a variety of unique and innovative ways, all of which are legal and none of which are torture," he said.

Duncan Hunter, the Republican head of the House Intelligence Committee, said that CIA interrogators were so worried about a prosecution that they were not doing their job properly.

On Monday, all parties to the three-day meeting called by the Cairo-based Arab League agreed to the formula: "Resistance is a legitimate right of all peoples", said Mizhir al-Dulaimi, a Sunni Muslim from the west of Iraq.

Shaikh Imad Muhammad Ali, an official of the Sunni Muslim Iraqi People's Gathering, confirmed the agreement.

The Iraqi government, which depends on US military support, has opposed any language that could be interpreted as support for armed groups that are opposed to the US presence in Iraq and have been fighting to drive US-led troops out of the country.

Sunni Muslims opposed to the government have argued that US occupation is the root cause of the violence in Iraq and US troops should leave as soon as possible.

In the debate in Cairo, Iraqi government representatives conceded a theoretical right to resist occupation, but said that as elected representatives of the people, the government had decided to end foreign occupation gradually, as Iraq builds its own security forces to replace the foreign troops.

Timetable

In an Aljazeera talk show recorded in Cairo on Monday, Hadi al-Amiri, chairman of the Badr Brigades, said the US withdrawal timetable depended on the security situation in Iraq. The Badr Brigades is the Iran-backed military wing of the Shia Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

"The conferees in Cairo were notified that, before asking for a US withdrawal timetable, there should be a timetable for building strong Iraqi armed forces," he said.

"When this timetable is achieved and implemented successfully, and Iraqi forces can tackle the security situation in Iraq properly, Iraqis can ask for a US withdrawal timetable."

Interior minister

Iraqi troops will be ready to take charge of security in the country by the end of next year, so this month's UN Security Council extension of the mandate for US-led forces in Iraq could be the last, the Interior Minister and senior SCIRI member, Bayan Jabr, said on Monday.

Speaking on Aljazeera, Jabr criticised attacks against foreign forces in Iraq, saying: "What is happening in Iraq has nothing to do with resistance but it is terrorism. They try to target an American tank and it [a bomb] could hit the target once but misses dozens of times and explodes in the middle of our people."

He said foreign troops should stay in Iraq until the country's security forces were trained and ready.

"By mid-next year, we will be 75% done in building our forces, and by the end of next year, it will be fully ready."

Mandate

This month, the Security Council voted unanimously to extend the mandate of the nearly 180,000-strong US-led force in Iraq for a year, a decision the United States called a sign of the international commitment to Iraq's political transition.

"In my opinion, this is the last extension for coalition forces, then Iraq security forces will be in charge within Iraq," Jabr said.

He called fighters to join security forces to bring the withdrawal closer.

"I am asking you to tell them to join. I want to recruit 1200 members and I ask some of those who call themselves resistance fighters to come and join us in the National Unity battalion that includes, Kurds, Shabak, Yazidis, Shias and Sunnis and Turkmen," he said, referring to the country's different ethnic and religious groups.

It’s called caveat emptor (buyer beware).

It goes something like this: If I (the executive branch) provide you (the Congress) with intelligence that proves to be completely wrong and I (the executive branch) exaggerate and hype the meaning of this intelligence and you (the Congress) are gullible enough to vote with me on the basis of this false intelligence and my spin, you are as guilty as sin for your vote and shouldn’t complain to anyone.

There are lots of problems with this approach being taken by President Bush to the decision by Congress -- supported by a number of congressional Democrats -- to commit troops against Saddam Hussein. First, it basically alters -- perhaps forever -- the relationship between the president and Congress on matters of national security.

Throughout the previous administrations of both parties, there has been a level of trust between Congress and the executive branch when the security of our country is at stake. When members of Congress vote to commit troops, they assume that the president is providing them with accurate information and the president and his people are not hyping the intelligence.

The mantra of this president is that Democrats had the same intelligence that the president did and thus should not now complain about the decision to go to war against Iraq when many of them supported that decision.

This brings us to the question of trust.

Intelligence is made available to members of the House and Senate by providing it to the Intelligence Committees of the two chambers. A total of 21 (out of 435) House members serve on the House Intelligence Committee, and a total of 15 (out of 100) senators serve on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Intelligence provided to those two committees is kept under lock and key in small rooms in the Capitol. Any congressman or senator can go to the committee rooms and inspect the intelligence. Most members do not. They rely on summaries of the intelligence provided to them by the administration, normally done orally in briefings at the White House or in the Capitol.

Congressmen and senators assume that the briefings being given to them by the executive branch are factual and not loaded with hype or spin. The national security of the country is too important for typical political spin.

That, of course, is not what happened this time. Then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others engaged in an enormous amount of spin, hyping the intelligence to assure Congress that Saddam Hussein was well on his way to developing nuclear weapons and that he certainly had vast supplies of chemical and biological weapons at his disposal.

I attended one of those briefings with Rice at the White House.

So what is the administration’s response now? Members of Congress should not have been so foolish as to rely on Dr. Rice’s presentation; All 435 members of the House and all 100 senators should have crowded into those small rooms in the Capitol and personally inspected every piece of intelligence.

There are several problems with this line. First, the intelligence provided to the congressional committees was incomplete. It did not reflect that much of the information on chemical and biological weapons was provided by a single ultimately discredited Iraqi dissident source (dubbed “Curveball”); that there was dissent inside the administration over the accuracy of this data, and that none of the data had been verified by any of our own operatives on the ground in Iraq.

Additionally, the administration only belatedly acknowledged that there also was dissent inside the intelligence community about Saddam’s progress on developing nuclear weapons. This information was provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee in a National Intelligence Estimate just days before the vote in Congress and was never acknowledged publicly by the administration when making its case to the American people.

Secondly, saddling Congress with a caveat emptor obligation means that future Congresses may never accept information and evaluation of that type of information provided by a future President in times of national emergency. That is more harmful to our nation than anything that has happened in Iraq in the past three years.

Martin Frost served in Congress from 1979 to 2005, representing a diverse district in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. He served two terms as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, the third-ranking leadership position for House Democrats, and two terms as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Frost serves as a regular contributor to FOX News Channel, and is currently a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He holds a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a law degree from the Georgetown Law Center.

Likudniks are notoriously unable to deal with being criticized, so my simple and accurate characterization of the party as having colonialist and fascistic tendencies has driven its acolytes on this side of the Atlantic into a piranha-like frenzy. Being cultists of a sort, they play all sorts of dishonest political games, such as equating criticism of their party with racism (?), or equating their party with Israel itself and then saying that I called Israel a fascist state because I had so characterized the Likud. (I did not, of course, but then the surrogate American Likud has millions of dollars with which to smear me and an easy in with the major media, whereas I just have this little web site; so their megaphone is rather louder than mine.)

It would be rather as though American Latinos should take vehement exception to any criticism of Argentina's colonels and their authoritarian and murderous state in the 1980s. No one ever complains about people "maligning" Argentina, but the Likudniks have an obsession that their party be completely above criticism (or as they would call it, "slander.")

So how delicious it is that Sharon has left the Likud because it is too fascistic even for him! The party's highly authoritarian politburo was an albatross around Sharon's neck. Its strident insistence on continuing to steal Palestinian land and never trading land for peace would have accelerated the engorgement of the West Bank by Israel and the consequent transformation of Israel into a binational state. You can't annex the West Bank without getting a couple of million Palestinians into the bargain. The very hard line Likudniks would deal with that prospect by just ethnically cleansing the Palestinians, but Sharon is enough a man of the world to know that the US (and especially Condi), the European Union, and the Muslim world would never put up with that Milosevic-like war crime.

If Israelis really care about their future, they will swing behind the new Labor leader, Amir Peretz. In fact, a new coalition of those seeking a negotiated settlement with security hawks like Sharon could allow Labor and Sharon's new party to marginalize the "Greater Israel" (i.e. expansionist, colonizing and fascistic) tendency in Israeli politics, which is mainly sited in the Likud.

The lack of a strong Palestinian leader, and Sharon's refusal to deal with the Palestinian leadership that now exists, make it unlikely that there will be real progress on Arab-Israeli peace any time soon. You can't declare peace unilaterally, the way you can war. But if the Likud can be gotten out of office, at least the ruling party in Israel won't be actively attempting to destroy any peace process.

Pollard focused his anger on Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, blaming Mofaz "personally" for his imprisonment. Pollard alleged Mofaz' unwillingness to help him was a "calculated refusal."

"Mofaz has knowingly abandoned a soldier," Pollard said.

Pollard's wife, Esther Pollard, appeared on Lapid's television show to forward her husband's cause. She said that Pollard was in a dire psychological state, and that every day he survived in prison was an accomplishment. She added that he was in serious danger in prison as there was much violence against Jews.

Since Israel has not recognized Jonathan Pollard as an Israeli agent, Pollard bears no special criminal status within the American penal system. Pollard's wife argued that this made Pollard's treatment far more severe.

Both Pollard and his wife said that the Israeli government had consciously disposed of him. Esther even said that the Israel wanted him to commit suicide.

Pollard, in frustration, called the Israeli government a "mafia," which only protected its own.

Jonathan Pollard, a former US Navy intelligence analyst, is serving a life sentence for spying for Israel.

In what can realistically only be described as a form of legalized bribery, it is well known that wealth buys access to power. In a nutshell: those with money have access to power that those without money do not. In a society divided by socioeconomic class, the result is that the average American working family has little representation in government. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (November 2004), the mean annual income across all occupations in the United States is $37,440. Contrast this figure with the income of the people elected to serve in Congress. There are four hundred and thirty five members in the House of Representatives. Of that number one hundred and twenty three had at least one million dollar incomes. As bad as this is, the disparity in the Senate is far greater.

Here’s an example. Republican Senate Majority leader Bill Frist recently reported an income of forty-five million dollars. Ironically, Frist’s counterpart in the Senate, Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, was among the least wealthy elected officials.

Congressional wealth, however, is bipartisan. In 2002 forty three percent of incoming freshmen had annual incomes of at least one million dollars. By contrast, only one percent of the public have incomes of one million dollars or more. On the Democratic side of the isle are names including Kennedy and Rockefeller, whose ill gotten fortunes boggle the mind of ordinary working people.

The income chasm between members of Congress and that of ordinary Americans is a primary reason why so many working class people have dropped out of the political process. They know that the ‘appearance’ of choice in political races is little more than an illusion of choice. So vast are the sums of money needed to run a major political campaign today that only the wealthiest people can afford to run. This leaves ninety-nine percent of the population out in the cold.

The situation underscores why we need to get the special interest money out of politics. The playing field can be leveled and integrity restored to the process through publicly financed campaigns. By publicly funding political campaigns all of the candidates would have equal funding. The wealthy would have no special advantage. Working class Americans could reenter the political process and have a real chance of winning elections and thus gaining representation.

The result of having too many wealthy people in office is having calamitous impacts on America’s working class families—the backbone of our society. It has resulted in the breakdown of the family unit. Wealthy people are likely to look out for their own financial interests rather than the welfare of society, especially the poor. This form of government excludes the vast majority of the citizenry from the process and leaves them utterly without representation. It leaves them alone and vulnerable to predation by the rich.

Owing to the huge sums of money needed to run viable political campaigns, the wealthy are heavily recruited to run for office. The wealthy can afford to self finance their campaigns—the poor cannot. Thus they enjoy enormous advantages over those without money.

The influence of corporate money in politics has made a mockery of the whole political process. The result is that we have big business regulating itself—to the detriment of public health. To call this form of corporatism democracy is beyond absurd. It is a slap in the face of working class people and an assault upon their dignity. Industry has placed its own in the highest offices of every governmental regulatory agency. Thus it writes the legislation that it is supposed to follow—and to hell with concerns about fairness and public safety. It is the bottom line that owns the day; and it is working class people and the poor who incur the cost. Foxes left to guard the hen house are bad news for the hens.

Funded by huge contributions from the banking industry, Congress recently passed legislation that makes it extremely difficult for private citizens to declare bankruptcy—to make a new beginning. This is happening even while the world’s largest and wealthiest corporations continue to receive massive public subsides, while reaping obscene profits. Corporations like Wal-Mart are being subsidized by the public dollar, while Wal-Mart employees cannot earn a living wage and have few or unaffordable health benefits.

Multinational corporations are receiving massive corporate welfare to subsidize their enormous profits, while working families are being forced onto public assistance—public assistance whose funds are being drained by massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporate welfare. This is a gross injustice exacted upon working class families who are being preyed upon by corporate America, and the millionaires club serving the corporate interest in Congress. Political corruption and unadulterated greed is tearing the social fabric of American society asunder and making a mockery of representative government.

Of the national treasury collected through taxes, only ten percent come from corporations. Some of the wealthiest corporations pay no tax at all. View this against the backdrop of record breaking profits being raked in by the oil companies. Exxon-Mobil, the largest oil company in the world, had after tax profits last year that increased fifty-two percent over its profits from the previous year. Chevron-Texaco realized an increase in profits of eighty-five percent in 2004. Shell Oil’s profits increased forty-eight percent. Under this fraudulent system of non-representative government, the fat cats are making out just fine, while working families are barely able to scrape by.

A particularly blatant example of how the millionaires in Congress are bleeding the American people is revealed by the severe predatory behavior of the banking and credit card industry. A high proportion of working class families are carrying crippling debt loads. While Congress enacted new bankruptcy laws forcing millions of working class families into debt slavery, the credit card industry has recently doubled the minimum payment requirements to card holders. It little matters to the millionaires serving the banking industry in Congress that these families are already stretched to the limit. What are these people supposed to do? What recourse do they have? The banking industry is draining their life blood and Congress is enabling them.

By now it should be painfully obvious who the majority of the members of Congress serve. Representative government in America, as envisioned by the founding fathers, is dead. Democracy is dead. Welcome to the New World Order!

But as bleak as things are: we are not without hope. Eighty years ago one of organized labor’s shining luminaries, Joe Hill, was executed by a firing squad in Utah. Joe Hill was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, the IWW. Hill was a Wobbly. As a member of the working class, I continue to believe that the Wobblies hold the key to justice for working class people. The idea is to form One Big Union—a global union—of working class people from all walks of life. Unless we organize as a class on a global scale, the wealthy will bleed us to death. We are already dangerously anemic. We need to grow a revolution and we must do it quickly. Working class people must organize. A good place to begin would be to throw all of the millionaires out of Congress and replace them with people like us.

Charles Sullivan is a furniture maker, photographer, and free lance writer residing in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at earthdog@highstream.net.

Only three Democrats voted in support of the Republicans' Iraq withdraw proposal: Representatives Wexler, Serrano and McKinney. And their point was well made. They want the troops home now and they don't care who wrote up the legislation or the reasons why they did it. It was the right move to make. If US troops were pulled out tomorrow, Iraq would be a safer place for all of us.

A handful of House Democrats did take the podium to express their seething disgust over the Republicans' political feat. Talk is cheap, however. Votes are what count. If there ever was a subject that should gash the thin-skinned Democratic Party, it'd be the Iraq war. But as the House vote verified, the Democrats don't want US troops home now, let alone in six months as Rep. John Murtha proposed last Thursday.

Murtha, a veteran war hawk who championed the Iraq invasion from its inception, announced at a teary eyed press conference that he wished to withdraw the nearly 160,000 US troops in Iraq "at the earliest predictable date." Recent polls indicate that the majority of Americans agree with Murtha's call to pull out US forces, which wasn't even close to an "out-now" proposition. Regardless, the Democrats took cover as Rep. Murtha began making headlines with his remarks.

"I don't support immediate withdrawal," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid released in a statement following Murtha's call to exit troops.

"Mr. Murtha speaks for himself," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi gasped as reporters asked for her takes on the matter.

The Democratic leadership in Washington was making it crystal clear that they won't be cut and running from Iraq but from Murtha and the movement that prompted his change of heart.

The Democrats, however, are proving to be the Avian Flu of the antiwar movement. They are willing to divvy out just enough fodder in hopes of luring in the antiwar crowd, and then they strike.

First it was the Senate lock out, which ended up being nothing more than a charade masked as opposition. After all, debating pre-war intel is a non-issue -- what we need to be worried about is how to bring our troops home now. But as we well know, the Democrats have neither a plan nor the desire to bring them home anytime soon.

Senator John Kerry and even Donald Rumsfeld are calling for a reduction of US troops after December. But the troops they both want to bring home are the ones they sent over to monitor Iraq elections in the first place. Pulling them out afterward was the plan all along. The Democrats, like the Republicans, still believe there is a mission to be accomplished here. What this mission is, nobody knows.

US presence in Iraq is only enflaming more anti-American sentiment in the Middle East and worldwide. It's only increasing potential threats against the United States. Surely it can't be democracy the Democrats and Republicans want. If that were the case they'd have yanked out troops months ago as Iraqis have overwhelmingly declared that's what they desire. No, this ongoing mission is only about one thing: smug American pride. President Bush and his Democratic enablers can't admit that this war was waged for no reason whatsoever. They can't admit that all the lives lost have been for nothing.

The Democrats in Washington, despite sporadic glimmers of hope, is a feckless lot. So don't take their bait. Like all the shrapnel and bullets flying through the air in Iraq -- the Democratic Party is a killer.

For liberals and leftists Chavez's fiery salvos have been a welcome respite from the weak-kneed groveling of congressional Democrats and the congratulatory purring of media brown-nosers. So far, the Venezuelan president has been the only leader on the world stage to state the obvious, that Bush and his maniacal group of liars, carpet-baggers, and war criminals are savaging the planet and putting millions at risk.

That doesn't mean that Chavez hates the American people; far from it. Following the vast devastation of Hurricane Katrina Chavez responded more quickly than FEMA, offering to send cheap fuel, humanitarian aid and relief workers to the disaster area. He offered to provide $1 million of free petroleum via the state run Petroleos de Venezuela and its subsidiary CITGO for the relief effort.

According to civil rights leader, Jesse Jackson, Chavez also offered two mobile hospital units, 120 rescue and first aid experts, and 50 tons of food; considerably more than "Brownie" was able to produce.

"We have drinking water, food, and we can provide fuel," Chavez told reporters

None of this was, of course, was reported in the American media which consistently lambastes Chavez as a "radical leftist".

Huh?

The self-proclaimed socialist, Chavez, is seen as a serious threat to expanding capital markets in the southern hemisphere and, therefore, ripe for regime change. This explains the hostile language the media uses in describing the ebullient and charismatic Chavez.

Chavez succeeded in using Katrina to blast away at the callousness and cynicism of the Bush administration saying, "Before the hurricane, they knew Katrina was coming and refused to evacuate people. In Cuba, when they know a hurricane is coming, chickens, hens, and people are all evacuated. A hurricane recently destroyed many towns in Cuba but not a single person died because no one was there. The government prepared its people and took them to shelters, whereas here they left the poor, without protection, especially the blacks. That's horrible!"

"The government had no evacuation plan. The world's only superpower is so involved in Iraq ...but left its own people adrift," Chavez said on live TV. "And, that cowboy, the king of vacations, stayed at his ranch and said nothing but, 'You have to flee'. It's incredible."

"The king of vacations"?

Ouch!

Chavez also got his digs in at the recent economic summit at Mar Del Plata, Argentina where he was the center of attention. A throng of 35,000 celebrated his arrival and filled the local soccer stadium with protestors chanting, "Bush is the terrorist. Bush is the fascist".

Chavez gave a 2 hour speech railing against Bush, his "immoral war" and his ruinous "neoliberal economic policies"

"The US has bombed entire cities, used chemical weapons and napalm, killed women and children and thousands of soldiers. That's terrorism," said Chavez. "The US government is a threat to humanity."

The summit at Mar del Plata was billed as a "showdown" between Bush and Chavez and many of those attending anxiously awaited the face-off. Chavez even joked to reporters that "he would sneak up on Bush and scare him".

No need. The normally boastful Bush was uncommonly subdued during the activities and slinked away to the safety of Air Force 1 as soon as he spotted an opening. The Crawford peacock had no intention of going nose to nose with his Venezuelan nemesis.

Bush prefers to limit his displays of bravado to televised appearances on the flight-deck of American aircraft carriers, cinched up in a warrior-jumpsuit and cod-piece, surrounded by a phalanx of security guards.

Yee-hah!

Chavez summarized Bush's stealthy departure saying, "The real failure here was Mr. Bush. He left defeated, and he will keep being defeated. This century will be for the people of Latin America."

Last week, Chavez took another swing at the Bush team by ordering the delivery of "12 million gallons of discounted home-heating oil to local charities and 45,000 low-income families in Massachusetts next month." (Boston Globe)

The deal will provide nine million gallons of oil to institutions that serve the poor, such as homeless shelters. Families will be able to buy heating fuel at discount rates, keeping them from freezing to death in the bitter New England winter.

The plan is yet another blow to the administration and the rickety system of predatory capitalism.

Massachusetts congressman William Delahunt explained that there was a "desperate need" for affordable home heating oil that would not be met by state or federal governments.

No wonder. There's been a 13% rise in the number of American's living below the poverty line since Bush took office, and the fissures in the "free market" edifice are beginning to appear everywhere.

Bush has reinforced the feudal system of upward redistribution, creating even greater structural injustices that are hurting those who are least able to protect themselves. Chavez's generosity shines a light on a voracious system that is increasingly turning inwards and wreaking havoc on the poor. Washington continues to siphon off the nation's wealth to a small cadre of venal elites while others are struggling just to keep warm.

Chavez's gift will be distributed by officials from Citizens Energy of Boston and CITGO, a Houston-based subsidiary of Petroleos de Venezuela. It should help to minimize the suffering of the working people who face a 50% increase in the price of oil.

The political implications of Chavez's move are enormous. It's a slap in the face to George Bush, who tried to remove Chavez 4 years ago in a failed-coup attempt. It also demonstrates that Bush's "survival of the fittest" neoliberal policies have fallen on hard times. Chavez has assumed the mantle of Franklin D. Roosevelt redistributing Venezuela's prodigious oil wealth to the people who need it the most, while the blinkered Bush has become a modern-day Herbert Hoover paving the way for economic Armageddon by shifting $1.3 trillion of wealth from the middle class to his friends at the top of the fiscal food-chain.

Just this week, Bush slashed another $700 million from the food stamp program leaving 235,000 needy Americans without enough to eat. These same people face the prospect of a frigid Bush-winter unless they can get help from Chavez.

Who could have imagined just 5 years ago that American citizens would be getting charitable assistance from Venezuela?

Viva Chavez.

The senior Jemaah Islamiah operative - blamed for both Bali bombings and a series of other attacks - has time and again escaped the clutches of the law during the past three years.

Just two weeks ago he slipped through a massive dragnet again, even though counter-terror officers did shoot dead Azahari Husin, Noordin's bombmaker partner.

Among the few things left behind by Noordin was a graphic video in which he specifically warned Australia that his band of Islamic extremists would strike again.

Comment: OK, this is the set-up. Be scare. Be vary scared. Shut down your critical capacities and accept whatever we dish up next.

In Azahari's hideout police found plans for a "Bom Pesta" - or bomb party - this coming Christmas with several churches and shopping malls earmarked for attack.

As fears rise, reports say some police in notoriously superstitious Indonesia believe Noordin may have the ability to hypnotise people, using his mental powers to escape his pursuers and recruit more bombers.

Comment: So, these reports come from "superstitious" police officers, except they don't actually say the police are superstitious; they just happen to come from a superstitious country. A "notoriously" superstitious country.

"A village chief fell unconscious after kissing the hand of a man resembling Noordin," one policeman told the latest edition of Tempo news magazine.

Comment: "A man resembling Noordin". Gee, that sounds like a match to us!

The magazine said the chief's mind went blank "like he was hypnotised" after meeting a "tabib", or traditional healer, who looked like Noordin.

One officer said police believed even a skilled religious preacher would have difficulty finding so many followers willing to kill themselves for a cause.

Comment: See, that suicide bomber cover story just isn't working. People aren't buying it, especially after the former president of Indonesia said he thought that Indonesian military intelligence had something to do with it.

Belief in the supernatural is widespread in Indonesia. Crime is sometimes blamed on tricksters with magical powers and people regularly take their problems to fortune-tellers and witchdoctors, known as dukun.

Against this social background, one policeman told Tempo that JI used "unconventional recruitment techniques" to boost its ranks.

Investigators believe Noordin is an expert at disguise, perhaps using many different ID documents.

Noordin is JI's chief recruiter, Islamic ideologue and strategist, and there are now fears that he and at least 14 recruits are preparing to unleash a new wave of bombings.

Comment: Remember! Be scared! Be very scared!

Security near and around international style hotels and shopping malls have been boosted after a website last week laid out explicit details on how to shoot and launch grenade attacks against foreigners.

There has been some progress, though.

Australian Federal Police chief Commissioner Mick Keelty said on Monday this month's raids had provided "a better understanding of Jemaah Islamiah than what we ever had".

While Keelty did not give details, Indonesian police said the plans uncovered in Azahari's house called for bombings on towns around Batu and Malang in east Java.

Included on the target list were the 109-year-old Jesus Sacred Heart Catholic church in Malang and and the 71-year-old Cathedral Mount Carmel, Singapore's Straits Times newspaper said.

Police in Malang said they had since increased surveillance of the churches.

In Jakarta, security was also being boosted in at least two major shopping malls favoured by Westerners and singled out in the terrorist website.

The website, set up on Noordin's orders by one of the Bali suicide bombing suspects, recommended attacks be launched on overhead walkways and traffic snarls, where Westerners would be trapped in their vehicles.

Security guards at the upmarket Plaza Senayen and the Ambassador Mall, popular for electronic goods and pirated DVDs, said they had increased searches.

"We have been told by managers to search everyone with extra care," a guard named Idris told AAP, adding that foreign shoppers had stayed away over the weekend.

National police spokesman Sunarko Danu Ardanto described the website, which has since been shut down following fresh travel warnings by Australia, Britain and the US, as a "threat to national security".

National Police chief General Sutanto said the terrorists were being forced to fund their operations by selling prepaid mobile phone vouchers after backing from Saudi Arabian supporters was shut down.

"They are facing financial difficulties now. Their way out is by selling vouchers, for which they get a daily profit of up to five million rupiah ($677)," he said.

Comment: Telephone vouchers!!!

Indonesia has promised to tighten surveillance of prepaid mobile phone vouchers, which can presently be purchased anonymously.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at magnitude 2.4, said Joyce Bagwell, retired director of the Earthquake Education Center at Charleston Southern University.

"That's what we call a preliminary reading. You really need to get all your data in," Bagwell said.

Bagwell, who lives in Summerville, said she didn't feel the quake, but her son and grandchildren did. A quake has to be at least magnitude 2 to be felt, she said.

Pat Allan of Summerville said he felt and heard the quake. "It made a sonic boom, and it shook. It made more noise than it made shaking," he said.

Allan said Summerville quakes are not of particular concern to him. "I worry more about taxes," he said.

Marlena Myers, wife of Summerville Mayor Berlin Myers, said she didn't feel the quake, and neither did her husband. "That was news to me. I think that's a little scary," she said.

Kay Phillips, executive director of the Dorchester Children's Center, said she felt it at her home. "It was a pretty decent rumbling. It lasted for several seconds, enough for us to look at each other while it was going on," she said.

Cheri Tornabene was in a store in downtown Summerville when the quake happened at 3 p.m. "It sounded like someone fell in the room above us," she said. It wasn't much to Tornabene, who said she was in a major earthquake in Panama.

Summerville is the hot spot for earthquakes in South Carolina, but most of them are not felt.

The area was the epicenter of the great Charleston earthquake of 1886, the type of quake that occurs about every 500 years, Talwani said. The town sits on the "Woodstock fault," the fault line identified as the cause of the Charleston earthquake, he said.

The area experienced a magnitude 2.15 quake Feb. 22. Twelve small quakes struck in 2004; 22 in 2003.

The earthquake rocked wide areas of the main southern island of Kyushu at 12.36am, the meteorological agency said. It was focused off Tanegashima island, 1 000km south-west of Tokyo.

"We have no reports of damage or injuries," a Kyushu police spokesperson said.

The tremor did not cause tsunami waves.

An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale shook northern Japan a week ago, forcing hundreds of residents to flee their homes as small tsunami waves hit the Pacific coast.

Editor’s Note [Consortium News]: The assassination of John F. Kennedy was one of the darkest moments in modern American history. But one of its most pernicious legacies has been the notion that average Americans must be shielded from what really happens on matters of national security, even something as important as the murder of a president.

Since the Warren Commission probe of the JFK assassination, other investigations of serious government wrongdoing, one after another, have been truncated – CIA abuses, Iran-Contra, Contra drug trafficking, Iraq-gate, misuse of Iraq War intelligence, Abu Ghraib – supposedly because the full stories would undermine morale or otherwise not be “good for the country.”

Ultimately, of course, this loss of a true history is corrosive to the concept of a democratic republic, and it has been one of our goals as a publication to flesh out the facts of those failed investigations. In that light, we are publishing a report from JFK assassination expert Lisa Pease on a recent historical conference in Washington:

Forty-two years ago, on Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, Texas. In Bethesda, Maryland, this past weekend, a group of distinguished journalists, historians, scientists and others gathered to discuss and debate the evidence of conspiracy in the JFK case.

While the research community has often slammed the mainstream media for not covering the facts of the case, the blame must go both ways. The conference organizers offered no handouts, no summaries of what is new in the case this year, or any hook upon which a journalist might hang a story.

As one of the reporters said in a panel discussion, this is a story without an ending, and how satisfying is that?

But that is a tragedy, in light of the Downing Street Memo and other evidence that the Bush administration’s case for war in Iraq was built on a false platform. The common thread throughout the weekend was that secrecy and democracy cannot safely coexist, that the more we have of the former, the less we have of the latter.

The credentials of the speakers this year was more impressive than in previous conferences. Featured speakers included former presidential candidate Gary Hart, author James Bamford, journalists Jeff Morley and Salon founder David Talbot, and historians David Wrone and John Newman (who was a military intelligence analyst), and the former head of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, G. Robert Blakey.

Former Sen. Hart, a Colorado Democrat, recounted his experiences on the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, more popularly known as the “Church Committee” after its leader, Sen. Frank Church.

Hart began with a disclaimer saying he didn’t read the assassination books, hadn’t reviewed his Church Committee files, and warned that everything he said should be prefaced with, “as I recall.”

Little Interest

According to Hart, there was little interest among Committee members in seriously investigating the intelligence community. There had been little oversight of the CIA since its creation 28 years earlier. Reviewing the CIA’s operations seemed both a gargantuan and ultimately unnecessary task. The Vietnam War was in its last days, and there was the sense that poking around in Agency business might undermine morale.

The Committee members also realized that if there was even one leak, their work would be over. That’s one of the reasons there was so little oversight in the years up to that point. Simply put, the CIA did not trust Congress to keep its secrets. So they implemented strict security.

One day, CIA Director William Colby asked for even more security than ever before. He wanted the room swept for bugs before they began. Colby also insisted only members, not their staff, attended.

At that session, Colby presented Committee members with the 600-page Inspector General report on Agency abuses, a document popularly known as the “family jewels.” Included in that document were tales of drug experiments on both witting and unwitting subjects, the wholesale opening of mail, bugging operations, and plots to overthrow governments including -- “with almost demented insistence,” Hart said -- the attempts to kill Fidel Castro.

The Committee members were shocked. And significantly, Hart said that only a few items from that report have ever made it to the public, begging the question of what other abuses occurred. How can we measure the success of Congressional oversight if we don’t know if any of those other abuses were successfully handled?

Comment: They were shocked!? What kind of dream world do they live in? Oh, yeah, right. We're talking about elected officials here. Sorry for the distraction.

Hart recounted an episode where he had the chance to meet one of the CIA’s top contract assassins, known only as QJ/WIN. After a long series of instructions, Hart arrived at the location, only to find QJ/WIN did not want to talk to him. Hart wrote about that episode in fictional form in the novel Double Man (co-written with William Cohen).

When Hart ran for president, he said he was frequently asked what he would do about the Kennedy assassination. He promised if elected, he would reopen the investigation. But then he was caught with Donna Rice on a boat in Florida. “If you’ve seen the movie ‘Bullworth,’ you know that now we can assassinate people with cameras,” he said.

Few Theories

Most of the speakers did not offer theories as to who killed Kennedy, but presented instead the context of the event within the framework of the Kennedy administration during the Cold War.

On that point, there was considerable agreement that John and his brother Robert Kennedy found themselves increasingly isolated within their own administration. They were at war with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA over Cuba and Vietnam.

Bamford discussed documents from Operation Northwoods, a plan that called for a wave of terrorism inside the United States that falsely would be blamed on Fidel Castro and become the justification for invading Cuba.

At one point, all the Joint Chiefs had signed off on these plans. Kennedy stood alone in opposing this, and one is left wondering if that was one of the prime motives for his murder.

Professor Blakey’s hands shook slightly as he spoke to the group gathered for dinner on Saturday night. He confessed that he had trusted the CIA too much.

CIA Director Stansfield Turner showed Blakey a letter in which Turner admonished CIA people not to lie to the committee members. Blakey believed that was enough. He finds now that was not the case.

Blakey denied that his long background dealing with organized crime was the reason he chose to focus on the Mob as the conspirators in the Kennedy assassination. He said when he looked for a group that could connect both Oswald and Ruby, the choice seemed clear that the Mob fit the bill. He said if proof surfaced that Oswald had been framed, that would indicate conspirators other than the Mob, which did not have that capability.

CIA Obstacles

Blakey spoke specifically about George Joannides, a CIA psychological warfare expert and the focus of several of Jeff Morley’s articles about the case. Joannides had been in charge of the anti-Castro Cuban student organization known as the DRE.

Carlos Bringuier of the DRE fought verbally with Oswald in the streets of Miami, which led to the arrest of Oswald just weeks before the assassination, and later put Oswald on the air in a DRE-sponsored program in which Oswald said he was a Marxist.

During the House investigation, Blakey assigned two of his young law school student assistants, Edward Lopez and Dan Hardway, to the CIA. They were set up in an office at CIA and given great freedom to request documents.

The Agency was forced to comply. But when Lopez and Hardway started pressing for more of the DRE documents, Joannides, who had been brought back from retirement to oversee the investigation, went to Blakey and complained that Lopez and Hardway were too aggressive, that they were pushing too hard.

Blakey said at the time, he believed the CIA. Now he wished he had backed up Lopez and Hardway.

In addition, Blakey had originally used the Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA), a method for testing metal composition in bullets, as the basis for saying that – despite the acoustical evidence of conspiracy – Oswald had fired the fatal shots. Now, in light of the exposes about the inaccuracies of NAA, Blakey called that “junk science.”

Blakey’s mea culpa met with mixed reaction from the crowd, who asked him several questions, including why he had not continued with the effort in effect to file perjury charges against senior CIA official David Atlee Phillips after he was caught red-handed lying to the Committee. (Blakey claimed not to know anything about that effort, which was in essence shut down upon his arrival.)

The crowd did applaud him, however, for being the first public official to go on record saying there was a probable conspiracy in the assassination. He based that on the acoustical evidence.

The Dictabelt

In regards to the acoustical evidence, two presenters spoke back to back on Saturday about the Dictabelt tape – a tape a motorcycle cop made inadvertently during the shooting of Kennedy in Dealey Plaza.

The House assassination committee hired two different companies to evaluate the evidence and both agreed the tape showed five distinct shots. Blakely only asked the Committee to evaluate the evidence for four of the shots, one of which purportedly came from the “grassy knoll.” (Blakey did not see the point in looking at five shots when four was enough to prove conspiracy and a knoll shot.)

Richard Garwin, whose program biography did not include his work for the CIA (which he acknowledged during the Q&A), presented an opaque argument that the sounds on the Dictabelt tape came a minute too late to have been any of the shots in Dealey Plaza. Presenting charts and graphs that confused most people in the audience, and fumbling over his sound files, Garwin was not well received.

Garwin was followed by Don Thompson, who had written an article on the acoustical evidence for the well-respected British publication Science & Justice (2001 – see http://www.forensic-science-society.org.uk/Thomas.pdf).

Thompson presented a stark contrast to Garwin. Thompson began by asserting that the number on the tape Garwin tested was not the number of the tape the House assassination committee tested. He also pointed out that there is a difference in recording speed and playback speed, and that Garwin’s team had applied one which made the shot sounds no longer line up with the House committee analysis.

Thompson provided slides that made clear the points he was making. One could feel the change in the room. People now felt they could follow along as Thompson lined up each sound with the motorcycle’s probable position, and then showed us pictures from the Zapruder film and others that confirmed that the motorcycle cop, Officer H.B. McLain, was indeed in those positions at those times.

Lone Assassin?

Former military intelligence analyst John Newman was the only speaker willing to speculate about a potential conspirator, based on the documentary record.

Professor Newman reviewed how CIA reports of Oswald’s trips to the Cuban and Soviet embassies was a key factor in getting President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Warren Commission members to go with the Oswald as lone assassin line.

Newman described how the reports in essence created a “World War III” virus, such that after the assassination, no one wanted to look too closely at who Oswald served, lest it touch off a nuclear war with the Soviets or the Cubans.

Newman traced how false information that helped promote this WWIII virus got into Oswald’s file and concluded that the person who controlled the file at those points was Ann Egerter, one of the six or so hand-picked operatives working in James Jesus Angleton’s CI/SIG unit – the Special Investigations Group within the larger 200-man Counterintelligence group at CIA.

Newman also pointed out how many in the Agency feared Angleton, feared for their lives if they crossed him, and suggested Egerter would not have manipulated Oswald’s file on her own, but only under express instructions from Angleton himself.

The U.S. 'Empire'

Virginia lawyer Dan Alcorn spoke of the parallels between George Washington’s farewell address, in which he warned against the danger of maintaining a standing army, and Eisenhower’s admonition to beware the Military-Industrial complex.

“I think what’s at stake is the identity of our country and what kind of country we want to be,” Alcorn said. “The world ‘empire’ has been thrown around. I can’t believe people around Washington have seriously discussed describing themselves as an empire.

“But we were not founded to be an empire. A free republic cannot be an empire. I think people have lost touch with the ethic of the country and what the country should be. [We’ve converted ourselves into] a global domination state…

“If morality doesn’t concern us, practicality should. The reason we’re a free republic is that it’s a self-sustaining system on an ethical basis. Lessons of history are that empires do not succeed.”

Kennedy’s consistent refusal to allow America to become an empire, and his desire to avoid a “pax Americana” may have been key motives for his assassination.

The topic of the Iraq War and the lies that took the nation to war was a frequent sub-theme at the conference. To many of the 135 people gathered, history is one long through line. By not confronting the lies we were given about the assassination and demanding government accountability, we essentially agreed to look the other way, empowering government to lie to us about other events.

To study the assassination is to peer into the yawning chasm between what we are told happened, and our true history. Information empowers us to take corrective action. Disinformation – or a lack of information – keeps us out of the loop, unable to make appropriate choices for oversight. Nowhere has that point been brought home more strongly than in the buildup to war in Iraq.

Irving, an expert on the Third Reich who has claimed that Adolf Hitler knew nothing about the systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews, was detained November 11 in the southern province of Styria on a warrant issued in 1989 that makes Holocaust denial a crime.

"A charge was filed in relation to two speeches in 1989 in which he denied the existence of gas chambers," prosecutor Otto Schneider said.

The charges stemmed from speeches Irving delivered that year in Vienna and in the southern town of Leoben.

Most of the 6 million child deaths a year are not due to starvation but rather to neonatal disorders and diseases like diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria and measles which would be easily curable if the victims were not weakened by lack of nutrition.

Of the 530,000 annual deaths of women due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth, 99 percent are in developing countries, the report says, with hunger contributing to those deaths in many cases.

Anemia, often caused by malnutrition, is a risk factor in hemorrhaging, which causes one quarter of maternal deaths. Obstructed labor, which causes 8 percent, can be caused by stunted growth in mothers who were undernourished as girls.

We are nearing the end of the "World Year of Physics", otherwise known as Einstein Year, as it is the centenary of his annus mirabilis in which he made three incredible breakthroughs, including special relativity. In fact, it was 100 years ago yesterday that he published the most famous equation in the history of physics: E=mc2.

But instead of celebrating, physicists are in mourning after a report showed a dramatic decline in the number of pupils studying physics at school. The number taking A-level physics has dropped by 38% over the past 15 years, a catastrophic meltdown that is set to continue over the next few years. The report warns that a shortage of physics teachers and a lack of interest from pupils could mean the end of physics in state schools. Thereafter, physics would be restricted to only those students who could afford to go to posh schools.

Britain was the home of Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Paul Dirac, and Brits made world-class contributions to understanding gravity, quantum physics and electromagnetism - and yet the British physicist is now facing extinction. But so what? Physicists are not as cuddly as pandas, so who cares if we disappear?

You should care, and this is why. First, physicists reveal the beauty of the universe. E=mc2 provides us with an incredible insight into how the universe works, showing us that energy (E) and mass (m) can be converted into each other, so that a tiny amount of mass can be destroyed to create a vast amount of energy. That is how the Sun shines. Four million tonnes of the Sun literally vanishes every second, only to reappear in the form of sunshine - energy that lights up our lives.

John Keats talked of "unweaving the rainbow", suggesting that Newton destroyed the beauty of nature by analysing light with a prism and splitting it into different colours. Keats was being a prat. Physicists also smile when we see rainbows, but our emotional reaction is doubled by our understanding of the deep physics relating to the prismatic effects of raindrops. Similarly, physicists appreciate sunsets more than anybody else, because we can enjoy the myriad colours and at the same time grasp the nuclear physics that created the energy that created the photons that travelled for millions of years to the surface of the Sun, which then travelled eight minutes through space to Earth, which were then scattered by the atmosphere to create the colourful sunset. Understanding physics only enhances the beauty of nature.

If you want a concrete return, then physics can deliver that too. E=mc2 underpins the nuclear power industry, which could provide more energy in the future. If nuclear power replaced fossil fuels, we would pump less carbon into the atmosphere and thereby halt global warming. If, instead, you want clean energy via solar cells or wind turbines, then an understanding of solid state physics or the physics of fluids will get you several steps closer to an economically viable solution. Either way, physics provides the best hope of saving the planet.

Also, it should not be forgotten that A-level physicists have a direct impact on the economy, because some of us become the inventors, innovators and engineers that create high-quality jobs and major exports. The people behind Google and Microsoft and Apple did physics at high school, as opposed to majoring in psychology or media studies.

So, without British physicists, our country will not win any more Nobel prizes in physics, we will not do our part in fixing global warming - and UK plc will go down the drain. And yet nobody in power really cares. Physics in British schools has been going downhill for a couple of decades, but both Labour and Conservative governments seem to have taken no notice. After all, nobody is going to die because A-level physics is going out of fashion. There are no photo opportunities in being seen with a physicist.

Personally, the desperate state of British physics education was brought home to me when I reflected on why my parents migrated to this country in 1950. They came here so that their children had the guarantee of a good education. However, today India produces more mathematicians than the whole of the European Union.

A budding boffin in Bangalore probably stands more chance of having good mathematics and physics teachers than the equivalent bright young spark condemned to a British science education. A British politician in 1950 would have laughed at the thought of Indian schools ever being better than British schools, but last year's Physics Olympiad shows how things have changed. In this international competition for schools students, India won two gold medals, two silvers and a bronze, whereas Britain won only two bronzes.

With Britain's negligent attitude to physics education, we do not deserve to be celebrating the centenary of Einstein's annus mirabilis. Instead, perhaps we should be marking 2005 as the 50th anniversary of his death, which would be in keeping with the moribund status of A-level physics

· Simon Singh has a PhD in particle physics. He is the author of Big Bang, a history of cosmology.

Do you know your Newton from your neutrons?

1. A metal plate is heated to 200C with a bunsen burner. It subsequently cools by emitting what kind of radiation?
a) Ultraviolet waves b) Gamma rays c) Infrared rays d) Radio waves

2. You're in the back of a stationary car with a helium balloon. When the car accelerates, which way does the balloon move?
a) Forwards b) Backwards c) Up d) It doesn't move

3. What two properties of a particle does Heisenberg's uncertainty principle say you can't measure at the same time?
a) Energy and mass b) Position and momentum c) Position and mass d) Momentum and velocity

4. A skater is spinning on a spot with her arms outstretched. What happens when she pulls her arms in?
a) Nothing b) She changes direction c) She spins more slowly d) She spins more quickly

5. A big wooden ball and a small ball bearing sit at the top of a slope. When they are released, which reaches the bottom first?
a) The wooden ball b) The ball bearing c) They both get there at the same time d) Depends on the masses of the balls and the angle of the slope

6. If the Sun were to disappear right now, how long would it be before we noticed?
a) Straight away b) About 8 minutes c) Just over an hour d) Almost a day

· Answers: 1c, 2a, 3b, 4d, 5c, 6b Alok Jha

Graziella Magherini, president of Italy's Art and Psychology Association, reported the preliminary findings of her year-long study at a symposium at the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence where the naked marble man attracts 1.2 million visitors a year. She said David can have a particular emotional impact on a certain kind of visitor.

"I've called it the David Syndrome. It causes mind-bending symptoms and affects mostly those traveling on their own or in couples," Magherini told Discovery News.

The condition is similar to the dizzy and disorientating "Stendhal Syndrome" Magherini identified in the late '70s.

Named after the French writer, its most famous victim, after he was overwhelmed by the frescoes in Florence's Church of Santa Croce in 1817, the condition causes symptoms ranging from queasiness, disorientation and temporary panic attacks to bouts of madness.

Stendhal gave a detailed description of the phenomenon, describing "ecstasy," "celestial sensations" and "heart palpitations."

"Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling," he wrote.

In the past 10 years, Magherini studied more than 100 people who had been rushed to Florence's Santa Maria Nuova hospital suffering from the syndrome as they were absorbed in contemplation of great works of art.

The artistic intoxication is caused by a combination of several things, including the stress of the trip, an "overdose" of beautiful art and the degree of sensitivity of the person, according to the researcher.

"We should not forget that a work of art is a very powerful stimulus and can stimulate memories in our unconscious, sometimes triggering a crisis," Magherini said.The David statue may cause symptoms similar to the Stendhal condition — "more rarefied, but equally mind bending," she said.

Interviews outside the museum and comments in the gallery's guest book indicate that gazing upon the recently restored 500-year-old masterpiece can cause heavy perspiration, rapid heartbeat, stomach pains, dizziness and even exaggerated reactions such as aggressive feelings and hallucinations.

"Some think that the statue is alive and talking to them. We have also recorded iconoclastic [destructive] impulses," Magherini said.

The sculpture has raised passions and controversy ever since it was displayed beside the main doorway of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence in 1504, when political protesters threw stones at it.

[Piece missing in original... ]probably because Di Duccio felt he was too unexperienced for such statuary work.

After laying unused for 10 years, the marble was then taken by another sculptor, Antonio Rossellino, who discarded it after a few months.

Michelangelo stepped in in 1501, and promised to carve a statue from the block without cutting it down or adding other pieces of marble.

Three years later, on Sept. 8, 1504, David was displayed beside the main doorway of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. It remained there, at the mercy of the elements, until 1873, when it was moved to its present location in the Galleria dell'Accademia.

In 1527, the statue's left arm was broken into three pieces during an uprising against the ruling Medici family.

In the mid 19th century, it was damaged by acid used in cleaning solution, and in 1991, a mentally deranged artist named Piero Cannata attacked it with a hammer, demolishing one of its toes.

Magherini's study is backed by art historian and Florence's artistic superintendent Antonio Paolucci. He was not surprised by the emotions the statue can trigger: "This is one of the five or six most famous masterpieces in the world, a universal totem of art," Paolucci said.

Americans are the most sensitive to both the David and Stendhal syndrome, Magherini said. Italians, on the contrary, seem to be immune to the conditions, along with the Japanese.

"They are so organized in their sight-seeing that they rarely have time for emotional attacks," Magherini said.

Since May, 2004, the EU has shared with U.S. authorities 34 categories of information on airline passengers flying to U.S. destinations, including name, address, all forms of payment information and contact phone numbers.

The agreement sprang from one of the anti-terrorism laws passed by U.S. Congress in response to September 11, 2001, attacks using hijacked aircraft.

A court statement said: "Neither the (European Union) Council decision approving the agreement nor the (European) Commission decision holding that information be sufficiently protected by the United States have an adequate legal basis."

If the European Court of Justice accepts the advice of its adviser the data-sharing system will be made illegal.

The Luxembourg-based court will likely rule next year. It follows the lead of its advisers in most cases.

The data case began last year when the European Parliament sued the other two branches of the European Union, arguing they lacked authority to conclude the data-sharing agreement.

David Henderson, a spokesman for the Association of European Airlines that includes about 30 major airlines, said the announcement "generates a great deal of uncertainty ... It is unclear what will happen."

Dutch European Parliament member Sophie in 't Veld said the opinion of Advocate General Philippe Leger was "so clear it will be difficult to ignore." Governments "take all kinds of tough measures which are not well thought out and have insufficient democratic legitimacy," she said.

"If we're right, these boreholes are showing that the Earth is more sensitive to whatever is forcing the climatic change," said Robert N. Harris, an associate professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University and a principal investigator in the study.

Results of the research by Harris and colleague David S. Chapman of the University of Utah were just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The researchers also will present their data in December at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Borehole temperatures have been measured since the 1920s, but only recently has this temperature analysis been applied to global warming studies. Unlike most "proxy" methods to reconstruct climate models, which depend entirely on statistical analysis, borehole temperature research is based on the physics of heat diffusion.

Harris offers an analogy to describe how it works.

"On a smaller scale, it's similar to underground pipes freezing in the spring instead of during the coldest part of winter," he said. "It takes time for the cold winter temperatures to propagate through the ground. Similarly, if you put one end of a steel poker into a fire, and hold the other end, the heat propagates toward your hand.

"If at some later time you take a series of temperature measurements along the length of the rod, you would be able to estimate the temperature of the fire and how long the poker had been in the fire. The distance the poker had warmed is related to time, and the amount of warming is related to the temperature of the fire."

In the ground, rocks are such poor conductors of heat that the effect of a changing surface temperature 500 years ago is felt at a depth of about 200 meters, Harris says. The scientists make careful temperature measurements in boreholes that are as deep as 500 meters. These temperatures reflect the adjacent rock and tell the researchers how temperatures have changed over long periods of time.

What the research cannot tell scientists is what the temperature may have been for a particular year, Harris said.

"Heat diffusion causes the signal to get smeared out, so the deeper you look, the smaller the signal," he pointed out. "Eventually, the signal is lost in background noise. This process also means that you only get multi-year averages."

Harris and Chapman examined temperature data from boreholes throughout the Northern Hemisphere, which helps eliminate regional anomalies in their findings. They estimate that the Earth has warmed 1.1 degrees C. over the past 500 years - more than double the 0.4- to 0.5-degree estimates suggested by most tree-ring analysis.

In their article, they say the difference may be that tree-ring analysis primarily reflects temperatures when trees are actively growing during the warm season, but doesn't reflect changes in winter temperatures. Much of the annual warming recorded by instruments over the past 100 years has occurred during the winter season, they add.

The boreholes used in the research were generated from a variety of sources, including mineral exploration, dry water wells and those done specifically for the temperature research. The best environment for drilling, Harris says, is where the rock is solid and impermeable, limiting advection.

A typical borehole may be six inches in diameter and 200 meters deep. Much deeper and the temperature differences become too minute to pick up, Harris said. However, that depth allows them to take measurements that go back about 500 years - or roughly the time Columbus was first approaching the New World.

"We know by comparative data that borehole analysis, as remarkable as it may seem, really works," Harris said. "For the periods of overlap when we can compare with recorded temperature data, the correlation is excellent. Beyond that, it is simply a matter of applying the physics of heat diffusion. "And those measurements tell us the Earth is warming faster than we previously thought."

TEL AVIV, Israel -- On November 8, the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth published a report on the 40th anniversary of SETI, the institute whose stated purpose is to "explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe".

While participating in a conference celebrating SETI and its search for 'intelligent life beyond our own planet', Professor Sergei Yazeb of the Academy of Sciences in Russia, where the conference was held, put forward a startling proposal.

In a report distributed to all conference participants, Yazeb detailed six attributes of our solar system that distinguish it from all other discovered solar systems.

"Today, according to the knowledge we have," concluded Dr. Yazeb, "we don't have any other explanation of the founding of the solar system, other than by the intervention of a superior civilization".

Meanwhile, in a quiet Tel Aviv coffee shop, Israeli Kobi Drori, a guide for the Raelian movement within Israel, sips hot chocolate while calmly describing much the same thing.

"We're talking," he says, "of the third hypothesis on how life was created on Earth. The first is by an Almighty God; the second is the theory of evolution."

The third, according to the 60,000-strong Raelian movement, is that life on Earth was created by scientists belonging to a superior, alien civilization, who created man "in their own likeness".

"On December 13, 1973," explains Drori, "a young French journalist called Claude Vorilhon saw a flying saucer. It landed close to him, and steps came down."

Out of the spaceship, he relates, came a human-looking figure, roughly 130cm in height, who spoke to Vorilhon in perfect French, explaining that it "knew all the languages of the world". For the next six days Vorilhon and the alien met once a day for an hour, during which time the alien explained why Vorilhon had been chosen.

"It had chosen him for two very important missions," says Drori, "First, to tell the people of the world who they really are. And second, our creators want to come back and meet us. But they respect us so much that they won't come unless they are invited. And how do we invite them? By building them an embassy."

Renamed "Raël" by the alien visitor, Vorilhon immediately set about establishing the movement, which today claims to have members in 92 countries worldwide.

According to the Raelian movement, information in each major religion's key text offers clues as to this "true" creation of man. This, says Drori, is especially present in the Jewish Torah, or Old Testament. Here, he says, distortion over the centuries has hidden the true meanings of many descriptions.

For example, he says, the Hebrew word for god - Elohim - actually means 'Messengers', or 'those who came from the sky' and does not refer to a notion of one supreme God, with which the word has become associated. The Biblical image of angelic creatures arriving on wings from the sky is, he says, just a centuries-old misinterpretation of the beings who arrived in a spacecraft.

Similarly, another Hebrew word for God, he says, is Adonai, a plural rather than a singular, which can be translated as "Lords". This, believe the Raelians, points clearly to the existence of humankind's true creators, to whom they still refer as the Elohim.

While stories abound of the Raelians' alleged 'cult' activities, Drori is keen to point out that Raelian members simply intend to "inform, without convincing".

Every Friday near a small park on Tel Aviv's trendy Sheinkin Street, they set up a small stand - complete with pictures of UFOs and green aliens with almond-shaped eyes - and try to engage in dialogue with passersby.

It is, Drori admits, not a movement "for everyone", though he feels it is easier to talk to Jewish people, because they generally have some knowledge of the Bible, from which the Raelians have picked out a large part of their supporting material. Indeed, the Jewish people, says Drori, have a very special part to play in the aims of the Raelian movement.

"Everyone else," he explains, "was created in laboratories. But Jewish people are a combination of the Elohim and man" - they are part Eloha, part human - "so they feel more emotional toward the Jewish people". This, he continues, is why they want to build their embassy in Jerusalem: "To be among their children, their sons." This, to an outsider, stirs up Orwellian overtones: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Currently, work on the Elohim Embassy in Jerusalem cannot proceed, since the Israeli government has not granted extra-territoriality to the land on which they propose to build.

"Up until now," says Drori, "we've asked more than seven times. We got a 'no' from Rabin, and Barak said he didn't have time to deal with it. From Sharon's office, we received a message saying that 'we shouldn't be afraid we're forgotten,' and our request has been passed on to an official department at the Prime Minister's Office."

"In our Israeli army," he continues, "there's a special unit whose goal is to search for extraterrestrial [ET] knowledge. They know it's there, but like many governments in the world, they hide it. Someone in our government knows."

The Raelians were, he says, contacted by officials in the Lebanese government, who offered to grant them permission to build their embassy in Lebanon. The offer, however, came on the condition that they did not display their symbol on top of the building (a Star of David, containing a swirling pattern). The Raelians declined the offer.

Despite the controversy surrounding followers of the movement - particularly in the light of their 2002 claims that they had successfully cloned a human child, who now also lives in Israel - Kobi Drori speaks with conviction about his work.

"Our movement," he says, "can be the bridge between Muslims, Jews and Christians. We are teaching for a peaceful life. It can be the bridge for real peace, for real understanding of our origins."

In the last three years, he says, they have started to establish branches of the movement in Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, and next summer, they will hold a conference between "Israeli and Arab Raelians".

"It will be a small bridge," he says, "to show other people we can live in peace and harmony ... At our seminars, I meet people from Arab countries and I hug them like my brothers. I feel closer to them than to other Raelians. Our Website," he adds, "is also available in Arabic".