The claims have emerged since November 2, when the Washington Post newspaper reported that "black site" prisons were, or had been, located in eight countries including Thailand, Afghanistan and "several democracies in Eastern Europe" since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The paper also said that the CIA had used planes to send more than 100 suspects to the hidden global internment network, not including prisoners picked up from Iraq.

Its report did not name the European countries involved, but Poland, a European Union member, has denied being one of them, as has Romania.

There have been widespread reports that the alleged network could involve both the transport and torture of undeclared detainees.

The EU has meanwhile threatened sanctions against any of its member states found to have been operating such prisons, or allowing their territory to be used for the transport of the phantom detainees.

The United States on Wednesday promised a timely and forthright reply to the EU concerns.

In Thursday's report the Guardian said flight logs its reporters had seen showed that CIA planes visited Germany 96 times and Britain 80 times, though when charter flights were added this figure rose to more than 200. France was only visited twice and Austria not at all, the newspaper said.

The logs also showed regular trips to eastern Europe, including 15 stops in the Czech capital Prague.

"Only one visit is recorded to the Szymany airbase in north-east Poland, which has been identified as the alleged site of a secret CIA jail," The paper added.

Among other reports relating to alleged secret flights through European countries:

- The Danish transport ministry said in September that it had recorded at least 20 illegal overflights by CIA planes since 2001.

- The Hungarian government said last month that two CIA craft had landed at Budapest airport in the past two years.

- Iceland said it was not satisfied with Washington's response to allegations that CIA planes had landed on its territory at least 67 times since 2001.

- Portuguese Foreign Minister Diogo Freitas do Amaral said he would report to parliament on December 13 on reports of illicit CIA flights passing through the country, including three incidents last March.

- Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said his government would be looking into reports that US planes had both flown over and landed in his country on secret missions that could be linked to transports of undeclared terrorism suspects.

Planes allegedly operated by the CIA have also been spotted at airports in Finland, Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain and Sweden as well as Morocco.

The conservative newspaper said the first flight was that of a Learjet which landed in Brest after arriving from Keflavik in Iceland on March 31, 2002 and took off again for Turkey.

Officials at Brest airport told Le Figaro that the jet headed for another stopover in Rome, with the crew saying there were no passengers on board.

The second flight arrived at Paris Le Bourget airport from Oslo on July 20 this year, the paper said quoting Norwegian daily Ny Tid. The plane was a Gulfstream III.

The United States was facing mounting embarrassment as allegations continued to emerge of a shadowy network of both secret prison camps and CIA "torture flights" carrying undeclared detainees through European and other countries.

British newspaper The Guardian said Thursday it had seen navigation logs showing that more than 300 flights operated by the CIA had passed through European airports, as part of a network that could be involved in the clandestine detention and possible torture of terrorism suspects.

There have been widespread reports that the alleged network could involve both the transport and torture of undeclared detainees.

The EU has meanwhile threatened sanctions against any of its member states found to have been operating such prisons, or allowing their territory to be used for the transport of the phantom detainees.

Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said in Washington on Thursday that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will make a statement on the row over reported secret CIA prisons when she visits Europe next week.

Japan and South Korea help with reconstruction, but Britain and Australia provide substantial support forces and Italy and Poland train Iraqi troops and police. Their exodus would deal a blow to American efforts to prepare Iraqis to take over the most dangerous peacekeeping tasks and craft an eventual U.S. exit strategy.

"The vibrations of unease from within the United States clearly have an impact on public opinion elsewhere," said Terence Taylor of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington. "Public opinion in many of these countries is heavily divided."

Although the nearly 160,000-member U.S. force in Iraq dwarfs the second-largest contingent - Britain's 8,000 in Iraq and 2,000 elsewhere in the Gulf region - its support has shrunk substantially.

In the months after the March 2003 invasion, the multinational force numbered about 300,000 soldiers from 38 countries. That figure is now just under 24,000 mostly non-combat personnel from 27 countries. The coalition has steadily unraveled as the death toll rises and angry publics clamor for troops to leave.

In the spring, the Netherlands had 1,400 troops in Iraq. Today, there are 19, including a lone Dutch soldier in Baghdad.

Ukraine's remaining 876 troops in Iraq are due home by Dec. 31, fulfilling a campaign pledge by President Viktor Yushchenko. Bulgaria is pulling out its 380 troops after Dec. 15 parliamentary elections, Defense Minister Veselin Bliznakov said.

In his strategy for Iraq, announced Wednesday, President Bush said expanding international support was one of his goals. He also seemed to address the issue of more allies withdrawing.

"As our posture changes over time, so too will the posture of our coalition partners," the document says. "We and the Iraqis must work with them to coordinate our efforts, helping Iraq to consolidate and secure its gains on many different fronts."

Struggling to shore up the coalition, Bush stopped in Mongolia on his recent Asia trip and praised its force of about 120 soldiers in Iraq as "fearless warriors."

At least 2,109 U.S. service personnel have died since the beginning of the Iraq war, according to an Associated Press count. At least 200 troops from other countries also have died, including 98 from Britain. Other tolls: Italy, 27; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 17; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Slovakia, three; Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, two each; Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, one each.

Underscoring mounting opposition in nearly all coalition countries, a poll published in Japan's Asahi newspaper this week showed 69 percent of respondents opposed extending the mission, up from 55 percent in January. No margin of error was given.

Japan's Kyodo News service reported Wednesday that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Cabinet would decide Dec. 8 to allow its 600 troops to stay for another year, but it could decide later to withdraw troops around May.

A British drawdown would be the most dramatic.

Although Prime Minister Tony Blair's government insists there is no timetable and British forces will leave only when Iraqi troops can take over, Defense Secretary John Reid suggested last month that a pullout could begin "in the course of the next year."

South Korea, the second-largest coalition partner after Britain, is expected to withdraw about 1,000 of its 3,200 troops in the first half of 2006. The National Assembly is likely to vote on the matter this month.

Italy's military reportedly is preparing to give parliament a timetable for a proposed withdrawal of its 2,800 troops. Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government has said it plans to withdraw forces in groups of 300, but in accordance with the Iraqi government and coalition allies.

Poland's former leftist government, which lost Sept. 25 elections, had planned to withdraw its 1,400 troops in January. The new defense minister, Radek Sikorski, visits Washington this weekend for talks on Poland's coalition plans, and the new government is expected to decide by mid-December whether to extend its mission beyond Dec. 31.

"Some formula of advisory-stabilizing mission could remain on a smaller scale, of course, and our commanders are prepared for several variants," Col. Zdzislaw Gnatowski of the Polish army's general staff told The Associated Press.

Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, head of the Australian Defense Force, has said about 450 troops in the southern province of Muthanna could leave by May. Australia has about 900 troops and support staff across Iraq.

Many coalition members have pledged to stay in Iraq for all of 2006; at least one, Lithuania, has committed to the end of 2007. And the coalition is still drawing new members, most recently Bosnia, which sent 36 bomb-disposal experts in June.

"We are getting letters of gratitude from the U.S. commanders for our peacekeepers' excellent service," said Ilgar Verdiyev, a Defense Ministry spokesman in Azerbaijan, which has 150 troops in Iraq and is one of the few mostly Muslim countries to contribute.

Such fanaticism masquerades as "idealism," but is in reality a mental affliction, a kind of madness akin to megalomania in which the victim believes himself to be endowed with god-like powers. As Seymour Hersh and others relate, the president lives in a fog of "religious idealism": his apparent belief in his own near-supernatural abilities would seem to exempt him from the laws of God and man, and endow him with a mission that must be finished no matter what. The problem is that there is no end in sight, as the very sharp Karen Kwiatkowski put it recently:

"This is, in fact, unfinishable. It is unfinishable in the sense that the objective never included a U.S. military withdrawal. It is unfinishable because it was never intended to liberate Iraqis, or to ensure their self-determination. It is unfinishable because 'success' requires the ongoing maintenance of regional lines of communication and a large number of massive military bases in Mesopotamia. It is unfinishable because the invasion was conducted precisely to facilitate and create new operational missions against Syria, Saudi Arabia, and later Iran and Pakistan."

Bush and his fan club believe history will absolve him. More than a few bystanders may suffer in the process, but 20 or 30 years from now he'll be hailed as a far-seeing leader who resisted the naysayers and pulled off a stunning success – a success only visible in hindsight. His is a greatness for the ages!

As a senior White House aide once confided to writer Ron Suskind:

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

It is futile to argue with this administration, to debate the terms of our engagement in the Middle East – or anywhere else, for that matter. Every attempt to remind them of the facts of reality runs up against a wall of indifference to the truth: these people believe they can create their own truth, by sheer coercion. The interaction of neoconservative intellectuals and administration policymakers is, in this instance, a perfect illustration of the co-dependence of what Ayn Rand called "Attila and the Witch Doctor." As Attila moves in for the kill, the Witch Doctor rationalizes the carnage – without referring to facts, but to nebulous aims, goals, and words, words, words.

To such people, words have a mystical – even magical – significance. In the mind of an ideologue, words have the power to transform reality, to defy the laws of nature and overcome all earthly powers. Are we losing the war? Well, then, let us have more words – a presidential speech, preferably delivered before an audience of adoring Praetorians, is enough to turn the tide.

Are the insurgents gaining popular support, to the point where even the elected Iraqi government our soldiers are dying to protect has declared that Iraqis have the "right of resistance"? Well, then, the answer is to re-name them "rejectionists," denounce them as "terrorists," and insist that we will henceforth describe them as "enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government" instead of insurgents. As Arianna Huffington wittily put it, it's "victory through vocabulary." This sums up not only Bush's "victory plan" but also the radical subjectivist mindset of the War Party.

This is the essence of Bushevism – the same radical subjectivism that worships "revolutionary will" and led Mao to decree the creation of backyard steel furnaces during China's "Great Leap Forward." No steel was produced by those Maoist mini-foundries, however: instead of going forward, China slid back into a state of economic and political chaos.

As the disaster unfolded, the Maoist high command – Mao and the "Gang of Four," including his wife, C'hiang C'hing – ignored the consequences as best they could, and, through their control of the massive machinery of propaganda, managed to hold on to power, all the while painting a rosy portrait of China embarked on the road to a communist paradise.

It wasn't until the crisis reached its height, and the Chinese state apparatus started to come apart at the seams, that Mao relented and reined in the Gang – albeit not until they had inflicted much damage. It took China decades to recover from the traumatic "Cultural Revolution" inaugurated by Madame Mao and her clique.

The "Great Leap Forward" being attempted by this administration is the democratization of the entire Middle East, a goal explicitly referred to in the recently-published "Victory Plan." This document, which is nothing more than a glorified PowerPoint presentation, constantly invokes the need to inspire and otherwise assist a wave of "reform" supposedly sweeping through the region. It doesn't matter that this wave is an upsurge of enraged nationalism and religious fanaticism, inspired by opposition to the invasion of Iraq: those aren't Egyptian Jeffersonians who are being elevated to power and prominence by that nation's recent elections, but members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that combines Islamist fanaticism with a hatred of all things Western. The neoconservatives, who have been running our foreign policy since 9/11, believe in deception as a matter of policy, especially self-deception, a practice they have elevated to a high art.

The War Party, backed into a corner, is snarling its defiance at the American people: far from pulling back, they are barreling full speed ahead with their messianic mission. Led by a president who believes God has chosen him to carry out His divine will, we are headed to Syria, to Iran, and perhaps a lot further afield than that. Confronted with an increasingly assertive Congress, the strategy is to reframe the debate in terms of supporting the troops or failing to do so. This president is daring Congress to cut off the funds that make this war possible – and counting on their cowardly refusal to do so.

The gathering antiwar opposition, led by Rep. Jack Murtha – and, in the GOP, by Walter B. Jones and Ron Paul – is calling on George W. Bush to establish a timetable for withdrawal. Yet the president has made clear he's having none of it, and the ball is back in the congressional court. Congress must set the timetable, and declare: after six months, we'll cut off your funding.

A war is like any other government program, except that its destructive effects are immediately and dramatically apparent: once started, they are almost impossible to end, because so many powerful groups in society are benefiting. With the advent of the American empire, a new wing of the ruling elite – the colonial class – has emerged full-grown like Athena from the head of Zeus. Since they are almost exclusively native to Washington, D.C., and environs, they are extremely well-placed to lobby for the continuation of an imperialist foreign policy. The colonial class is made up of administrators, policy wonks, publicists, and party hacks – such as the Lincoln Group, which, as the Los Angeles Times reported, is funneling "news" stories to Iraqi newspapers on behalf of the U.S. government, planting items to give a good "spin" to the occupation.

Too clever by half, these geniuses have come up with a novel method of implanting an pro-American regime in hostile soil: push anti-Americanism for all it's worth. This is done indirectly, in the first place, by bombing civilians – in what Seymour Hersh calls the great unreported story of this war, bombing raids are causing massive civilian casualties and creating enemies out of the people we pledged to "liberate." When we aren't bombing them, we're using Iraqi civilians for target practice – and videotaping ourselves doing it. And as the tide of anti-Americanism reaches tsunami proportions, we've put the scribes of the Lincoln Group to work invoking it explicitly in the Iraq media, as the New York Times reports:

"Titled 'The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq,' an article written this week for publication in the Iraqi press was scornful of outsiders' pessimism about the country's future. 'Western press and frequently those self-styled "objective" observers of Iraq are often critics of how we, the people of Iraq, are proceeding down the path in determining what is best for our nation,' the article began."

Those evil Americans, you know how they are: so arrogant and self-centered that they don't understand how Iraq's death squads are really instruments of "democratic" righteousness. They fail to see that Ahmed Chalabi, instead of being a scoundrel, is a hero, the Iraqi version of George Washington. After all, he fooled the Americans, didn't he? Why, those clueless peaceniks – why don't we go out and kidnap a bunch of them?

To be fair, much of the outrage we hear over this manufactured "news" operation in Iraq is feigned. After all, the same methods were used by the Clinton administration during the Kosovo war: remember those "psy-ops" guys who were taken on at CNN? We didn't hear much of anyone protesting when that operation was exposed. The Rendon Group conducted an "information war" in cyberspace, setting up a "Balkan Information Exchange" Web site to get out the Clintonian pro-war message. This is the same Rendon Group, by the way, that virtually created the Iraqi National Congress and that sold Chalabi as our exile leader of choice. However, unlike my distinguished "libertarian" colleagues over at the Cato Institute, I'll take my outrage, real or feigned, where I can get it. Timothy Lynch, director of Cato's Project on Criminal Justice, observes that Clinton, too, lied us into war – in Bosnia, he says, although it was Kosovo. Lynch demands an end to this double-standard, and avers that if an investigation into prewar intelligence is going to be conducted in the case of Iraq, then we must do the same with our Balkan misadventure. Barring that, he says,

"Congress ought to establish some neutral criteria for prewar representations regarding future conflicts, criteria that can lay down markers for all presidents in all circumstances. Does an impeachment proceeding for deception depend upon which political party controls the White House? Does honesty and candor about war depend upon the particular war aims of the president? Does impeachment for deceit depend upon how well the war is going? Or is candor on such a fundamental matter simply indispensable to the proper functioning of a constitutional republic in all circumstances? Let's put some neutral criteria to a vote so that we can get some of these opportunistic and hypocritical politicians on the record."

Lynch, in short, wants to regulate how and under what circumstances our government can lie to us. We need "neutral criteria" to tell us when to impeach a public official for misrepresenting facts before we rashly condemn them – after all, government officials have feelings, too! Besides that, this president is forging ahead with his bold plan to "transform" the Middle East – not just mucking about in the Balkans, as Clinton did. Yes, Clinton got away without incurring a single American casualty, although hundreds of Yugoslavs were killed in the bombing raids, but do we really want to hold our commander-in-chief to that standard – do idealistic motives count for nothing? Finally, candor is not always the bedrock of good statecraft, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt showed. That this is Lynch's view is implied when he brings up the example of how an American president lied us into World War II "for our own good," citing Professor Thomas Bailey of Stanford University:

"'Because the masses are notoriously shortsighted and generally cannot see danger until it is at their throats, our statesmen are forced to deceive them into an awareness of their own long term interests,' writes Mr. Bailey. Presidents must therefore act like physicians, who must sometimes tell lies 'for the patient's own good.'"

Lynch doesn't dare come right out and say he agrees with Professor Bailey, but the implication is clear:

"Can you imagine the uproar if Messrs. Bush and Cheney responded to the recent Democratic attacks by saying, 'Yes, we did lie about Iraq, but it was for the good of the country'? Sen. Ted Kennedy would doubtless call for impeachment proceedings."

Well, then, why shouldn't he? In Lynch's view, such a call for impeachment would be misguided: after all, would Sen. Kennedy call for impeaching the great Roosevelt?

This is how to tell that someone is a neocon, the genuine article and not a cheap imitation: for them, it is always 1938. Roosevelt, Pearl Harbor, and Hitler – always Hitler, looming just beyond the horizon. Candor, in the neocon view, is not only quite dispensable, it is impossible to express: all that they can really be honest about is their program, which is about creating reality rather than responding to it.

"Neutral criteria" my ass – the neocons just want the public to shut up and Congress to mind its place as a subordinate extension of the Imperial Presidency. That the formerly libertarian Cato Institute is reduced to this – invoking the shade of That Man in the White House to head off a congressional investigation and popular outrage over a costly and ill-conceived war – marks their final degeneration into a grotesque mutant species of regime "libertarians." As Charles V. Pena, former director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, put it in an article for the Beirut Daily Star:

"The right, or conservative, side of the policy marketplace spectrum essentially espouses the now familiar Bush administration talking points, first for going to war against Iraq and then for spreading democracy. Conservative – even libertarian – organizations have signed on to a Republican version of Wilsonianism, at least in Iraq if not in the rest of the Middle East and the world. Seeking coveted access to the White House, they allow themselves to believe that they are influencing administration thinking. The reality is just the opposite: it is the administration that is shaping think-tank policy. As a result, the institutions are becoming cheerleaders and losing one of their most important qualities in the process: independence, which in turn erodes their credibility."

No wonder Cato hasn't published anything of consequence on the Iraq war since June: they don't want their grassroots base among authentic libertarians to know that they've become shills for the War Party, just yet. After all, sometimes people have to be lied to "for their own good" – you know, like that great libertarian, Franklin Roosevelt.

By the end of last week, there were press reports that at least four Republican legislators and 17 staffers and former staffers were the targets of the Justice Department investigation into the Abramoff affair. The Wall Street Journal named DeLay, Congressman Robert Ney of Ohio, Congressman John Doolittle of California, and Senator Conrad Burns of Montana as targets, as well as several former Bush administration officials. The Washington Post reported that prosecutors had informed Congressman Ney that he was the subject of a bribery investigation and added that the wives of DeLay and Doolittle had also been linked to Abramoff's influence-peddling schemes.

The Abramoff affair could have much wider implications. A reporter for BusinessWeek, on a television interview program, said that his Justice Department sources had told him that as many as 60 congressmen could be implicated in the bribery scandal-far more than enough to threaten control over the House of Representatives, where the Republican majority is 231-202, with one independent.

The Associated Press named eight more congressmen and senators who received contributions engineered by Abramoff in return for political favors, four Republicans and four Democrats. The Republicans were congressmen Charles Taylor of North Carolina, J. D. Hayworth of Arizona, Todd Tiahrt of Kansas and Dave Camp of Michigan. The Democrats included three senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota (the senior Democrat on the committee now investigating the Abramoff affair), and Congressman Dale Kildee of Michigan.

Previous press accounts have noted that House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois, a Republican, and the leading Democrat in the Senate, Minority Leader Harry Reid, received substantial campaign contributions from groups directed by Abramoff, most of them Indian tribes seeking congressional favors for their casino gambling operations.

While some of these contributions went to leading Democrats, particularly members of the Indian Affairs committees of both houses, the bulk of the cash went to the Republicans-both because they had the deciding role, as the majority party in both houses, and because Abramoff built his lobbying empire on his longstanding ties to top Republican figures like DeLay, chief Bush political aide Karl Rove, anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition.

When Abramoff was president of the National College Republicans in the mid-1980s, his two top deputies were Norquist and Reed. All three went on to prominent positions in far-right politics. Abramoff turned to lobbying for the Nicaraguan contras and anti-communist terrorist groups in southern Africa, and then, especially after the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, to lobbying for commercial and business interests.

With the installation of the Bush administration, the well-connected Republican lobbyist could virtually name his price for influence-peddling, and he rapidly became a multi-millionaire wheeler-dealer, representing, among other companies, Tyco International and Unisys Corp.

The essential mechanism of Abramoff's operations, as detailed in press accounts and Senate hearings over the past 18 months, was to plunder the extensive lobbying funds provided by Indian tribes with lucrative gambling operations. Abramoff directed much of these funds to Scanlon, who left DeLay's office in 2000 to set up a publicity firm in Washington to cash in on his high-level Republican connections. Scanlon then kicked back half the profits secretly to Abramoff.

From 2001 to 2004, according to documents filed in federal court in Washington DC, Abramoff and Scanlon together raked in some $82 million in payments from the Indian tribes. Scanlon himself billed four Indian tribes $53 million during this period, while kicking back $19 million under the table to Abramoff.

The 35-year-old Scanlon, who was still paying off college loans from his congressional staff salary in 1999, became a millionaire overnight, buying several million dollars in beachfront property in Delaware shortly after going into business for himself. Five years later, even after agreeing to $19 million in restitution to the tribes, according to one press account, he still retains significant personal wealth.

Abramoff manipulated the Native American tribes, using his influence with Christian fundamentalist groups opposed to gambling in order to extract what amounted to political protection money. In the most notorious case, Abramoff mobilized the Christian fundamentalists to spike the bid of a smaller Indian tribe to establish a casino that would have undercut the profits of his clients, the Louisiana band of Coushatta Indians.

The Coushattas hired Abramoff and Scanlon to shut down a casino run by the Jena band, another Louisiana tribe, at Livingston, Texas, on the Texas-Louisiana border. At Abramoff's direction, the Coushattas funneled money to various Republican political action committees and conservative groups, including two campaign committees run by DeLay, ARMPAC and TRMPAC.

Abramoff and Scanlon used Ralph Reed as their contact with Christian right groups and also contacted John Cornyn, then the Texas attorney general, now a US Senator, seeking legal action to block the Jena casino. Reed organized a group of 50 pastors to meet with Cornyn. He subsequently told Abramoff in an e-mail, "We have also choreographed Cornyn's response. The AG will state that the law is clear... and pledge to take swift action to enforce the law." The ministers were reportedly unaware that their moral outrage at gambling was being used to aid one gambling interest against another.

Even more brazen was the effort of Abramoff and Scanlon to funnel millions of dollars through Reed for a campaign to shut down the El Paso, Texas casino run by the Tigua tribe. After the casino was shut down, Abramoff and Scanlon induced the Tiguas to hire them to wage a campaign to allow the casino's reopening. Although the Tiguas paid out millions, however, this effort failed.

Abramoff and Scanlon discussed their devious operations in language of unvarnished cynicism, as revealed in e-mail exchanges made public by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. In one memo to Abramoff, Scanlon wrote, referring to the Christian fundamentalists: "The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees. Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."

This could serve as a crude but nonetheless telling summary of the entire political strategy of the Bush administration: mobilize the "wackos" while keeping everyone else in the dark.

While there has been substantial media publicity over Abramoff's gulling of the Indian tribes, the Republican lobbyist has been indicted so far only in an unrelated case of business swindling in south Florida, when he and an associate took control of SunCruz, a cruise line that offered gambling tours, using allegedly fraudulent financial information and bad checks.

With Scanlon's testimony, however, an indictment for swindling the Indian tribes could be forthcoming shortly. The most recent Wall Street Journal and Washington Post accounts reveal that the Justice Department task force looking into the influence-peddling cases has grown to 35-40 people, suggesting that multiple high-level criminal cases could be brought.

Particularly ominous, from the standpoint of targeted congressmen, is the prospect that criminal bribery charges could be brought over campaign contributions, even though the cash did not go directly into the congressmen's pockets, but to finance their reelection efforts. The whole purpose of the elaborate Federal Election Commission ritual has been to legalize the escalating financial subsidies from corporate interests to legislators.

One of Abramoff's favorite tactics was to hire the wives of congressional staffers or of the congressmen themselves, providing what amounted to a direct payoff under the cover of employment. One Abramoff-linked company, Alexander Strategy Group, run by former DeLay staffers Edwin Buckham and Tony Rudy, hired Christine DeLay, the congressman's wife, "to determine the favorite charity of every member of Congress," according to a Washington Post account. This not terribly complex job-presumably 435 phone calls would have sufficed-resulted in payments to Christine DeLay of $3,200 to $3,400 a month for three years, for a total of $115,000. The DeLays' family lawyer, Richard Cullen, told the Post, "It wasn't like she did this 9 to 5, but it was an ongoing project. This was something that she found to be very interesting, very challenging and very worthwhile."

As the criminal information published by the Justice Department in connection with Scanlon's guilty plea states, the contributions to the congressional campaign funds as well as personal gifts, such as Super Bowl tickets, vacation trips, and expensive restaurant meals, were "in exchange for a series of official acts." These included passing legislation, agreeing to put statements into the Congressional Record, contacting federal officials to influence decisions, meeting with Abramoff's clients, and awarding contracts for improvements in congressional office buildings.

While the Republican lobbyist has so far only been indicted in the Florida case, and has not yet been convicted of any crime, the details flooding out into the media demonstrate the extraordinarily corrupt alliance of Christian fundamentalists, Jewish ultra-Zionists, anti-tax zealots and rabid neo-conservative ideologues in the service of corporate America.

The scandal-the word is unavoidable but inadequate, since it is here describing the rule, not the exception, in today's Washington-reaches into the highest rungs of the Republican Party leadership and the Bush administration. DeLay, forced to step down as House Majority Leader after his indictment on an unrelated political corruption case in Texas, is the first top-level casualty. He once described Abramoff as "one of my closest and dearest friends."

A mid-level White House official, David Safavian, chief procurement officer at the Executive Office and previously chief of staff at the General Services Administration, was indicted last month on charges that he lied to federal investigators about a junket he took with Abramoff, Reed and Congressman Ney to Scotland.

There may well be further White House reverberations. According to documents released November 9, Abramoff sought a $9 million payment from the West African nation of Gabon to arrange a meeting with President Bush. Abramoff asked for the money to be paid through wire transfers to a company he controlled privately, rather than to the lobbying firm of Greenberg Traurig, where he was then employed. President Omar Bongo met with Bush in the Oval Office 10 months later, but there has as yet been no confirmation that he either made the payment to Abramoff or received the invitation in return. White House officials denied any connection, claiming that the Bongo visit was "part of the president's outreach to the continent of Africa."

Last year Ohio Republican Representative Bob Ney, one of Tom DeLay's lieutenants, coasted to re-election by a 2-to-1 margin over an obscure foe.

Next year Ney will face an aggressive, well-financed challenge from a former state legislator who is currently the Democratic mayor of one of his district's largest cities.

Why the sharp rise in Democratic prospects? Was it mounting frustration with the Iraq War? Concern about the damage done to Ohio's industries by Bush Administration free-trade policies? DeLay's indictment?

All were factors in Chillicothe Mayor Joe Sulzer's decision to take on Ney. But the real appeal of the race--as it is with contests involving a growing number of GOP Congressmen--is Ney's link to an old-fashioned bribery and influence-peddling scandal that has already sullied the reputations of some of Washington's most powerful Republicans and that could muddy the 2006 re-election prospects of dozens more.

The burgeoning controversy surrounding Jack Abramoff, a conservative lobbyist whose Washington ties stretched deep into the Bush White House and the Republican Capitol, has yet to gain anywhere near the media attention accorded the CIA Plamegate leak investigation or DeLay's indictment. Yet with the bank fraud indictment of Abramoff now part of a Florida grand jury inquiry and the guilty plea by Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay aide who became Abramoff's partner, on charges of conspiring to bribe a Congressman, the scandal is creating headaches for Republicans--and opportunities for Democrats to turn a national scandal into political pay dirt.

Even the Wall Street Journal admits that the Abramoff imbroglio "raises the risk of serious embarrassment to the [GOP] before next year's congressional elections."

Ohio's Sulzer is making the risk a reality with an in-your-face challenge to Ney, who accepted overseas trips, gifts and hefty campaign donations from Abramoff, allegedly in exchange for using his office to advance the interests of the Indian tribes and casinos that were Abramoff's big-ticket clients. Sulzer says Ohioans "need a Congressman who will...be getting headlines for providing better healthcare or better jobs for our district, not for ethics scandals and investigations."

There is every reason to believe that candidates in other states can pick up on that theme. Ney is, after all, only "Representative No. 1" in the Justice Department investigation of how Abramoff used ties to top Republicans--going back to college alliances with Grover Norquist, one of Washington's best-connected conservative activists, and Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition--to build a powerful DC lobbying operation. The investigation is already examining his relationships with DeLay, Representative John Doolittle and Senator Conrad Burns, as well as seventeen current and former Congressional aides and two former Bush Administration officials.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Abramoff had working relationships with dozens of Congressmen, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who collected more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from Abramoff's firm and clients between 2001 and '04 and in 2003 urged Interior Secretary Gail Norton to favor the lobbyist's clients in an Indian-gaming dispute; House majority leader Roy Blunt, who accepted at least $8,500 for his PAC and campaign from Abramoff's firm and clients between 1999 and 2003 and who intervened at least three times in matters involving those clients; and California Representative Dana Rohrabacher, who accepted thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Abramoff and turned up as a financial reference for the lobbyist's purchase of a casino cruise line. Dozens of GOP House members have banked direct contributions from Abramoff.

The agency served a warrant at the farm and discovered the quails living in unsanitary conditions with a multitude of illnesses.

All the animals were seized on Nov. 12 and were tested.

The bureau's veterinarian determined many of the birds had a variety of diseases, fast-moving respiratory ailments, infections, injuries and lesions. Most disturbing was the diagnosis of a low pathogenic strain of avian influenza among the quails, which had been raised and kept at the facility.

The birds had been raised for human consumption.

Gold, used as jewelry and investment, has been on the rise as investors diversify their portfolios on worries about geopolitical tensions, such as the threat of terrorist attacks, and inflation.

Spot gold was quoted at $503.60/504.20 an ounce in late trade, up slightly from $503.00/503.75 last quoted in New York on Thursday. Some dealers expected gold to trade in a wide range of between $490 and $510 for the rest of the day.

Gold climbed to $509.20 an ounce in February 1983. Anything above that level will bring the metal to its highest since January 1980, when it hit a record high of $850 an ounce.

"Where do we go from here? I guess if we stay above $500, we may well be targeting $510," said Darren Heathcote, head of trading at N M Rothschild in Sydney.

"The funds are still happily buying, they are still happily holding gold at the moment. But I suspect the longs are still very overbought ... susceptible to a downturn," he said.

The latest weekly report released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a U.S. regulator, showed that speculative net long position in New York's COMEX gold were close to record high levels.

Friday's gains in the spot market were also driven by Tokyo futures, where benchmark October contract on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange rose by the daily 50-yen limit to end at a 15-year high of 1,974 yen per gram as a tumbling yen sparked buying.

The yen's fall beyond the 120 yen level against the dollar lent support to Tokyo gold futures because a weaker Japanese currency usually has the effect of raising the value of yen-based commodities prices.

"We've seen downward corrections this week, but we've also confirmed that prices are very solid," said Shuji Sugata, assistant manager of Mitsubishi Corp. Futures Ltd.

"Gold is unlikely to face major liquidation that would alter the current bullish sentiment." [...]

The national poll -- commissioned by WakeUpWalMart.com, a union-funded group that has been pressuring Wal-Mart to raise employee wages and benefits -- surveyed 1,012 randomly chosen adults on their attitudes toward the world biggest retailer.

Respondents were asked to choose which of two statements more closely fit their personal opinions.

The majority, or 56 percent, picked: "I believe that Wal-Mart is bad for America. It may provide low prices, but these prices come with a high moral and economic cost for consumers." Thirty-nine percent agreed that "Wal-Mart is good for America. It provides low prices and saves consumers money every day."

Wal-Mart questioned the timing of the poll, which was conducted from November 15 to 18 -- a week when many of the retailer's critics organized events to highlight their concerns about the company, and screened a widely publicized documentary that cast Wal-Mart in a negative light.

"This poll is another way for them (WakeUpWalMart) to reach out for something to try to validate their efforts because they don't have anything else to hang their hat on," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah Clark said.

The poll was released on the same day that Wal-Mart reported a 4.3 percent increase in November sales at its U.S. stores open at least a year -- a key retail measure known as same-store sales. Wal-Mart has about 3,700 U.S. stores and 2,400 international locations, and is expected to generate more than $300 billion in revenues in the current fiscal year.

Wal-Mart, the largest U.S. private-sector employer, faces intense pressure at home from unions, environmental groups and others who say the company pays poverty-level wages, offers poor health-care benefits and gobbles up green space with its massive big-box stores.

At the same time, Wal-Mart is defending a record-large class-action lawsuit that charges it with discriminating against women in pay and promotions.

Wal-Mart denies those claims, and points out that it often receives thousands of applications for a few hundred jobs when it opens new stores.

Wal-Mart, which hired a team of public relations experts to help polish its image, said critics' efforts to discredit the company have had little success, judging from the more than 100 million U.S. customers who shop its stores every week. [...]

Guards told journalists at CBC's French-language service that Wal-Mart had hired them to spy on employees at the store in Jonquière, 200 kilometres north of Quebec City, early in 2005. It corresponded to the time the world's largest retailer announced the store would close for financial reasons.

A documentary on the subject will be broadcast Friday on the program Zone Libre. In it, the guards say their surveillance targeted union leaders and workers sympathetic to the drive.

One former guard said he patrolled the store in civilian clothes, watching employees. Another agent said the store's surveillance cameras were used to follow certain workers.

Wal-Mart Canada president and CEO Mario Pilozzi denied the allegations.

"No, we wouldn't tolerate the situation you mentioned," Pilozzi told Radio-Canada. "No idea about what you're talking about."

Spying on union leaders or sympathizers is illegal under the Quebec Labour Code.

In August 2004, the United Food And Commercial Workers succeeded in a drive to unionize the store's 200 workers. But a contract was never signed. The store closed in April.

A second Wal-Mart in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, won union certification in January 2005.

In February, Wal-Mart was chastised by the Quebec Labour Relations Board for attempting to intimidate workers who wanted to form a union at a third Quebec store in Sainte-Foy, just outside Quebec City.

Wal-Mart has 235 stores in Canada, employing more than 60,000 people.

The move is an escalation of action taken against smokers. Several countries have introduced legislation banning smoking in pubs, restaurants and public places, while some employers ban smoking on their premises.

The WHO has taken the lead in the fight against tobacco, which it says kills 5m people a year.

Its job advertisements now carry the statement "WHO has a smoke-free environment and does not recruit smokers or other tobacco users". Applicants will be asked if they are smokers and if so, if they would continue to smoke if employed by the WHO.

The ban will not apply to existing WHO staff or those on temporary contracts who apply for permanent jobs for the next two years. But the agency said it was already offering programmes to help staff to stop smoking.

In the US, a number of employers have recently launched recruitment bans, driven by concern about rising health insurance premiums for smokers.

As a United Nations agency, the WHO has fewer employment constraints than many national companies. But in the UK and other countries, experts said there were no specific anti-discrimination clauses that protect smokers.

Simon Clark, director of Forest, a pro-smoking group, said: "This is very discriminatory. It could mean a loss of jobs for what is a perfectly legal habit."

Amanda Sandford, research manager at ASH, the UK anti-smoking lobby, said: "We don't think this is a very good way of tackling the issue." It was better to help people quit, she said.

The Bethnal Green and Bow MP's latest comments came after he was introduced as "a former member of the British Houses of Parliament" during a live interview with Qatari Al-Jazeera television.

He responded: "I am still a member of parliament and was re-elected five times. On the last occasion I was re-elected despite all the efforts made by the British government, the Zionist movement and the newspapers and news media which are controlled by Zionism."

Mark Gardner, Director of Communications at the Community Security Trust, said: "This is despicable language for a Member of Parliament to use. Suggestions of Jewish media control can only give encouragement to anti-semites of every type."

During the interview, which was broadcast on 17 November, Galloway accused Israel, Britain and the United States of targeting Syria because of the "good things" it had done, such as supporting "Palestinian resistance" and refusing to make peace with Israel.

He also described Senator Norm Coleman, the leader of the US Congressional investigation into Galloway's alleged oil deals with Saddam Hussein's regime, of being "the strongest supporter of Israel in Washington".

He added: "Almost all politicians in Washington blindly support Israel. Senator Norman Coleman, the senator who was accusing me is the closest friend of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee."

Ben Novick, Director of Media Relations at BICOM, dismissed Galloway's allegations about zionist control of the media, adding: "We hope that Al-Jazeera's premonition of Galloway as a former MP will soon become a reality."

Galloway has a long history of controversial comments about Israel and zionism. In September he told an American radio station that "Israel and dirty tricks have a long history".

At the time, he told TJ: "I believe that Zionism has exploited the Jewish people as much as the Palestinian people and has turned the people of Einstein and Epstein into one apparently represented by Sharon and Netanyahu."

Galloway himself was unavailable for comment yesterday, but a Respect Party spokesman said the interview with al-Jazeera was in-line with his stated views.

Galloway ousted Labour's Jewish MP Oona King in May's general election.

By all accounts, ethnic Jews have a powerful influence in the American media -- far larger than any other identifiable group. The extent of Jewish ownership and influence on the popular media in the United States is remarkable given the relatively small proportion of the population that is Jewish.28 In a survey performed in the 1980s, 60 percent of a representative sample of the movie elite were of Jewish background (Powers et al. 1996, 79n13). Michael Medved (1996, 37) notes that 'it makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture. Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names. This prominent Jewish role is obvious to anyone who follows news reports from Tinsel Town or even bothers to read the credits on major movies or television shows.'

Media ownership is always in flux, but the following is a reasonably accurate portrait of current media ownership in the United States by ethnic Jews:

The largest media company in the world was recently formed by the merger of America On Line and Time Warner. Gerald M. Levin, formerly the head of Time Warner, is the Chief Executive Officer of the new corporation. AOL-Time Warner has holdings in television (e.g., Home Box Office, CNN, Turner Broadcasting), music (Warner Music), movies (Warner Brothers Studio, Castle Rock Entertainment, and New Line Cinema), and publishing (Time, Sports Illustrated, People, Fortune).

The second largest media company is the Walt Disney Company, headed by Michael Eisner. Disney has holdings in movies (Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, under Walt Disney Studios, includes Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Caravan Pictures, Miramax Films); television (Capital Cities/ABC [owner of the ABC television network], Walt Disney Television, Touchstone Television, Buena Vista Television, ESPN, Lifetime, A&E Television networks) and cable networks with more than 100 million subscribers; radio (ABC Radio Network with over 3,400 affiliates and ownership of 26 stations in major cities); publishing (seven daily newspapers, Fairchild Publications [Women's Wear Daily], and the Diversified Publishing Group).

The third largest media company is Viacom, Inc., headed by Sumner Redstone, who is also Jewish. Viacom has holdings in movies (Paramount Pictures); broadcasting (the CBS TV network; MTV [a particular focus of criticism by cultural conservatives], VH-1, Nickelodeon, Showtime, the National Network, Black Entertainment Television, 13 television stations; programming for the three television networks); publishing (Simon & Schuster, Scribner, The Free Press, and Pocket Books), video rentals (Blockbuster); it is also involved in satellite broadcasting, theme parks, and video games.

Another major media player is Edgar Bronfman, Jr., the son of Edgar Bronfman, Sr., president of the World Jewish Congress and heir to the Seagram distillery fortune. Until its merger with Vivendi, a French Company, in December 2000, Bronfman headed Universal Studios, a major movie production company, and the Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company (including Polygram, Interscope Records, Island/Def Jam, Motown, Geffen/DGC Records). After the merger, Bronfman became the Executive Vice-Chairman of the new company, Vivendi Universal, and the Bronfman family and related entities became the largest shareholders in the company.29 Edgar Bronfman, Sr. is on the Board of Directors of the new company.

Other major television companies owned by Jews include New World Entertainment (owned by Ronald Perelman who also owns Revlon cosmetics), and DreamWorks SKG (owned by film director Steven Spielberg, former Disney Pictures chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, and recording industry mogul David Geffen). DreamWorks SKG produces movies, animated films, television programs, and recorded music. Spielberg is also a Jewish ethnic activist. After making Schindler's List, Spielberg established Survivors of the Shoah Foundation with the aid of a grant from the U.S. Congress. He also helped fund Professor Deborah Lipstadt's defense against a libel suit brought by British military historian and Holocaust revisionist David Irving.

In the world of print media, the Newhouse media empire owns 26 daily newspapers, including several large and important ones, such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Newark Star-Ledger, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune; Newhouse Broadcasting, consisting of 12 television broadcasting stations and 87 cable-TV systems, including some of the country's largest cable networks; the Sunday supplement Parade, with a circulation of more than 22 million copies per week; some two dozen major magazines, including the New Yorker, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Vanity Fair, Bride's, Gentlemen's Quarterly, Self, House & Garden, and all the other magazines of the wholly owned Conde Nast group.

The newsmagazine, U.S. News & World Report, with a weekly circulation of 2.3 million, is owned and published by Mortimer B. Zuckerman. Zuckerman also owns New York's tabloid newspaper, the Daily News, the sixth-largest paper in the country, and is the former owner of the Atlantic Monthly. Zuckerman is a Jewish ethnic activist. Recently he was named head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella organization for major Jewish organizations in the U.S.30 Zuckerman's column in U.S. News and World Report regularly defends Israel and has helped to rejuvenate the America-Israeli Friendship League, of which he is president.31

Another Jewish activist with a prominent position in the U.S. media is Martin Peretz, owner of The New Republic (TNR) since 1974. Throughout his career Peretz has been devoted to Jewish causes, particularly Israel. During the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, he told Henry Kissinger that his 'dovishness stopped at the delicatessen door,' and many among his staff feared that all issues would be decided on the basis of what was 'good for the Jews' (Alterman 1992, 185, 186). Indeed, one editor was instructed to obtain material from the Israeli embassy for use in TNR editorials. 'It is not enough to say that TNR's owner is merely obsessed with Israel; he says so himself. But more importantly, Peretz is obsessed with Israel's critics, Israel's would-be critics, and people who never heard of Israel, but might one day know someone who might someday become a critic' (Alterman 1992, 195).

The Wall Street Journal is the largest-circulation daily newspaper in the U.S. It is owned by Dow Jones & Company, Inc., a New York corporation that also publishes 24 other daily newspapers and the weekly financial paper Barron's. The chairman and CEO of Dow Jones is Peter R. Kann. Kann also holds the posts of chairman and publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

The Sulzberger family owns the New York Times Co., which owns 33 other newspapers, including the Boston Globe. It also owns twelve magazines (including McCall's and Family Circle, each with a circulation of more than 5 million), seven radio and TV broadcasting stations; a cable-TV system; and three book publishing companies. The New York Times News Service transmits news stories, features, and photographs from the New York Times by wire to 506 other newspapers, news agencies, and magazines.

Jewish ownership of the New York Times is particularly interesting because it has been the most influential newspaper in the U.S. since the start of the 20th century. As noted in a recent book on the Sulzberger family (Tifft & Jones 1999), even at that time, there were several Jewish-owned newspapers, including the New York World (controlled by Joseph Pulitzer), the Chicago Times-Herald and Evening Post (controlled by H. H. Kohlsaat), and the New York Post (controlled by the family of Jacob Schiff). In 1896 Adolph Ochs purchased the New York Times with the critical backing of several Jewish businessmen, including Isidor Straus (co-owner of Macy's department stores) and Jacob Schiff (a successful investment banker who was also a Jewish ethnic activist). 'Schiff and other prominent Jews like ... Straus had made it clear they wanted Adolph to succeed because they believed he 'could be of great service to the Jews generally' -- (Tifft & Jones 1999, 37-38). Ochs's father-in-law was the Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the founder of Reform Judaism in the United States.

There are some exceptions to this pattern of media ownership, but even in such cases ethnic Jews have a major managerial role.32 For example, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation owns Fox Television Network, 20th Century Fox Films, Fox 2000, and the New York Post. However, Peter Chernin is president and CEO of Fox Group, which includes all of News Corporation's film, television, and publishing operations in the United States. Murdoch is deeply philosemitic and deeply committed to Israel, at least partly from a close relationship he developed early in his career with Leonard Goldenson, who founded the American Broadcasting Company. (Goldenson was a major figure in New York's Jewish establishment and an outspoken supporter of Israel.) Murdoch's publications have taken a strongly pro-Israel line, including The Weekly Standard, the premier neo-conservative magazine, edited by William Kristol.

Murdoch ... as publisher and editor-in-chief of the New York Post, had a large Jewish constituency, as he did to a lesser degree with New York magazine and The Village Voice. Not only had the pre-Murdoch Post readership been heavily Jewish, so, too, were the present Post advertisers. Most of Murdoch's closest friends and business advisers were wealthy, influential New York Jews intensely active in pro-Israel causes. And he himself still retained a strong independent sympathy for Israel, a personal identification with the Jewish state that went back to his Oxford days. (Kiernan 1986, 261)

Murdoch also developed close relationships with several other prominent Jewish figures in the New York establishment, including attorney Howard Squadron, who was president of the AJCongress and head of the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, and investment banker Stanley Schuman.

Another exception is NBC which is owned by General Electric. However, the President of NBC is Andrew Lack and the President of NBC News is Neal Shapiro, both of whom are Jewish. In addition, the Bertelsmann publishing group is a Germany-based company that is the largest publisher of trade books in the world and also owns magazines, newspapers, and music. Most of Bertelsmann's influence is outside the United States, although it recently purchased the Random House Publishing Company.

Even granting the exceptions, it is clear that Jews enjoy a very powerful position in U.S. media, a position that is far more powerful than any other racial/ethnic group. The phenomenal concentration of media power in Jewish hands becomes all the more extraordinary when one notes that Jews constitute approximately 2.5% of the U.S. population. If the Jewish percentage of the American media elite is estimated at 59% (Lichter et al. 1983, 55) -- probably an underestimate at the present time, the degree of disproportionate representation may be calculated as greater than 2000%. The likelihood that such an extraordinary disparity could arise by chance is virtually nil. Ben Stein, noting that about 60% of the top positions in Hollywood are held by Jews, says 'Do Jews run Hollywood? You bet they do -- and what of it?'33 Does Jewish ownership and control of the media have any effect on the product? Here I attempt to show that the attitudes and opinions favored by the media are those generally held by the wider Jewish community, and that the media tends to provide positive images of Jews and negative images of traditional American and Christian culture.

As many academics have pointed out, the media have become more and more important in creating culture (e.g., Powers et al. 1996, 2). Before the 20th century, the main creators of culture were the religious, military, and business institutions. In the course of the 20th century these institutions became less important while the media have increased in importance (for an account of this transformation in the military, see Bendersky 2000). And there is little doubt that the media attempt to shape the attitudes and opinions of the audience (Powers et al. 1996, 2-3). Part of the continuing culture of critique is that the media elite tend to be very critical of Western culture. Western civilization is portrayed as a failing, dying culture, but at worst it is presented as sick and evil compared to other cultures (Powers et al. 1996, 211). These views were common in Hollywood long before the cultural revolution of the 1960s, but they were not often expressed in the media because of the influence of non-Jewish cultural conservatives.

Manfred Nowak, special investigator for the UN Human Rights Commission.

Manfred Nowak, a special investigator for the UN Human Rights Commission, visited detention centres in Beijing, Tibet and the Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang in November, and met with top Chinese prosecutors and justice officials, as well as family members of alleged torture victims.

"The practice of torture, though on decline particularly in urban areas, remains widespread in China," the world body said in a statement released at the end of Nowak's trip.

The UN has been trying to investigate torture claims for more than 10 years. Beijing would repeatedly agree to allow visits by UN torture investigators but would then postpone them.

Nowak said he faced a lot of obstruction during his investigation. Officials tried to keep him from taking photographs of prisons and prisoners, and they tried to intimidate the families of prisoners he wanted to interview.

"Victims and family members were intimidated by security personnel during the visit, placed under surveillance, instructed not to meet with him or physically prevented from meeting with him," said the statement.

China outlawed torture in 1996, but human rights groups have said many people are tortured to death each year in police custody, mostly common criminals but also political and religious dissidents.

Authorities usually tell relatives the prisoner died of natural causes or committed suicide.

Nowak, a law professor from Vienna, will include his findings in a report to be submitted at next year's meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission.

Speaking to the Belgian newspaper La Dernière Heure, Degauque's parents, Jean and Liliane, described the typical growing pains of an adolescent girl. She had a talent, they said "for sticking with the difficult kids" . On one occasion they had to travel 170km to the Ardennes to find her. Of her boyfriends, her mother said: "I don't know how many there were."

But Murielle Degauque's life began to take a more sinister turn when the former bakery assistant met a Belgian of Moroccan extraction, Issam Goris, who took her to Morocco and helped her convert to Islam. It was a liaison which led the 37-year-old daughter of a hospital secretary to travel to Baghdad, strap explosives around her belt and detonate them in an attempt to kill American troops in Iraq. In the event, only Degauque died. But her death has left her family, friends and former neighbours wondering about the past and a nation fearing for the future. Degauque's relationship with Goris was not her first serious one; she had already married and divorced a Turkish man and met and then left an Algerian.

But the later attraction to Goris was to prove fatal. By now Degauque was unemployed and at risk of losing her state benefits. Degauque's parents said Goris claimed to have a house in Morocco, horses and a Mercedes and three motorbikes. They never learnt whether it was true.

When she returned to Belgium, Liliane and Jean Degauque found that their daughter had changed. She changed her name to Myriam and wore a veil. When visiting the family home in Monceau-sur-Sambre, Issam Goris would eat with Jean; the women would stay in another room. Neighbours noticed the change too. Ms Samain recalled the last time she saw Murielle eight months ago: " She was veiled. By that time she would just say bonjour and that was it." Some reports suggest that the couple travelled to Iraq in the autumn by car via Turkey. In any event it appears that Issam was killed by American forces.

For a month Murielle's parents were unable to make contact with their daughter, getting only her answerphone and, when they heard on Tuesday evening's news about a suicide bomber in Iraq, they thought immediately of Murielle. When Liliane Degauque saw police arriving on her doorstep on Wednesday, she said she knew immediately what it was about. Belgian prosecutors say Murielle Degauque exploded her device on 9 November near an American military patrol in Iraq but she was the only person killed. Although they were aware of the problem of Islamic cells in Belgium, the police could not conceal their surprise. [...]

The epicenter was about 40 kilometers below the seabed.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries because it sits atop four tectonic plates. A 7.2-magnitude earthquake shook northeastern Japan in August, injuring at least 59 people, triggering landslides, damaging buildings and causing widespread power outages. (AP)

In the middle of the night, Jan Helen McGee awoke, shaking, images of murder bouncing around her head.

A dozen years ago, she dreamed of two men dining together. An argument erupted, escalated into a fight and ended as one man shot the other.

"I've been having nightmares about murder my whole life," she said while seated in her home on North Eighth Street in Lebanon, her legs crossed at the knee, her hands flailing with nervous energy. "I woke up with a gasp. ... I was shaking, and I told my (now) ex-husband about my dream. He told me I should go to the police."

The next morning, McGee said, a voice told her to get the newspaper.

In its pages, she read of the death of a man named Mark Arnold. Police found his body in his South Lebanon scale house, a single bullet hole in his chest.

McGee's psychic abilities, especially as they relate to this case, will be featured at 9 p.m. tomorrow on The Learning Channel program "Psychic Witness."

McGee recalled the cold February day in 1993 when she decided to confide in an acquaintance she had in the Lebanon County Detective Bureau. She picked up the phone and called Detective Paul Zechman.

"We had talked about a few cases prior to the Arnold case, but this was the first time we really, actually worked on an active case together," Zechman said yesterday. "This was the first time I took her to a crime scene."

Zechman, now the chief of the county detective bureau, traveled with McGee to Arnold's tiny house, a small structure where loads of grain were once weighed, just off a set of railroad tracks next to an abandoned feed mill at the end of Evergreen Road. His Lincoln Town Car, wallet and close friend were missing.

"She just observed and walked around, none of that animated stuff you see in movies," he explained. "I don't remember her exact words, but she said she felt or saw our suspect, down, southeast of here, at an ocean, or a beach, maybe Rehoboth or Ocean City, Maryland."

McGee knew eerie details about the case, details not released to the public. She said she knew he collected black rotary telephones, but only one was connected. Police found his living quarters cluttered with old phones.

She knew the two men had shared a meal. When Zechman took her to the murder scene, a pan full of congealed meat sat rotting on the stove.

Zechman knew the prime suspect, Robert Wise, a friend of the victim, had contacts around the two beach towns. Based on McGee's vision, he called the authorities in both Rehoboth, Del., and Ocean City, Md. Sure enough, within a few weeks, Rehoboth police found Wise sleeping in the back seat of Arnold's car, parked in a shopping center in the seaside town.

In his possession, police found Arnold's wallet and the murder weapon. Wise had grown a beard like Arnold's and resembled the image on his driver's license.

"You say to yourself, you should never dismiss anything during a murder investigation," Zechman said. "She pointed this investigation in the right direction. We had a suspect in mind, but we didn't know where he was."

In the run-up to her star turn on "Psychic Witness," McGee was interviewed on the Fox News Channel Monday night. Several local news stations and newspapers have contacted her, asking her to share her story.

Her 14-year-old son, Gavin, said he thinks all the attention swirling around his mother this week has been "pretty neat."

"She's going to be on TLC, and A&E just called," he said, sprawled across a couch in their living room.

As a typical teenager, living under his mother's watchful eye, Gavin said McGee's talent probably resembles most other motherly sixth senses.

"I think she can just tell when I'm lying," he said, his mother just out of earshot in the next room. "But I don't think there are any psychic abilities needed for that."

McGee entered the room, adjusting her earrings.

"He has it, too," she said, pointing to her son. "He has the same gift. He just doesn't know it yet."

As a full-time music teacher, McGee only works with police on the side. She accepts no fee.

The study of paranormal activity, however, consumes most of her free time. In the future, she'd like to work for the police, educating law enforcement on the difference between what she calls "good psychics" and "scam psychics."

When she's not giving piano lessons at Marty's Music in Annville or teaching voice classes at One Broadway dance studio in Hershey or Do Wray Mi Pianos in Lemoyne, she goes to libraries and checks out books on the paranormal.

Memories of instances of second sight stretch to her days as a toddler, she said. She recalls standing in the crib, able to see her mother in other rooms of the house. As a young child, she faintly remembers standing in the front lawn, watching neighbors through a big tree and the walls of their houses.

As she aged, she said, she merely tapped into her abilities.

McGee won't talk about any of the other cases on which she's worked. They're confidential. Only the Arnold murder case has been cleared by authorities for public discussion.

As for Robert Wise, the man she helped police find, arrest and eventually convict, he's serving a life sentence for murder.

"I didn't do anything more than any other detective," she said. "That case, in Lebanon, in 1993, I just had the final piece. That's all. It was just one missing piece of the puzzle."

Targeting Americans concerned about exposure to mobile phone and electrical infrastructure, online retailers are selling a growing selection of protective gear. Listings include radiation-blocking boxers, radio curtain shields and pendants for removing electromagnetic frequencies.

"It seems that as our environment becomes more electrified, and we have more wired and wireless devices ... people are becoming more sensitized," said Emil DeToffol, president of online retailer LessEMF in Albany, New York.

DeToffol says sales of protective gear are up. Top sellers include meters for measuring magnetic fields and radio frequencies as well as clothes that shield wearers from electric, radio and microwave emissions.

Gear for frequency-sensitive individuals isn't a new idea. The concept of the tinfoil hat dates back decades. Equipment to reduce radiation from mobile phones has been around almost as long as mobile phones themselves.

But the proliferation of cellular antennae and electricity-sucking gadgetry is heightening concern among those who profess to suffer from electrical sensitivity, an illness triggered by exposure to frequencies emitted by various manmade technologies.

While some scientists believe the ailment's roots are more psychological than biological, retailers are finding a lucrative niche.

"Most people don't realize they're sleeping on a system that attracts EMF," said Rick Cabados, founder of the retailer HealthStores.com and its subsidiary, BlockEMF, which sells EMF Bed Shields, among other protective gear. Cabados says springs inside mattresses attract stray ions emitted from electrical outlets.

Other products purport to mitigate the effects of cyclotronic resonance, a process BlockEMF contends transfers energy from electrical wiring into the nervous systems of people within a home.

New inventions are also in the works. In September, two California men won a patent on a device that could be incorporated in a baseball cap to block radiation from a wireless antenna. Last year, a Taipei inventor patented an electromagnetic-waveproof bra cup.

But Ruth Douglas Miller, chair of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society's Committee on Man and Radiation, says scientific evidence does not support claims that signals emitted by everyday devices are harmful.

"The signals for everything from AM radio up to cell phones and microwaves are really really small," Miller said, noting that electromagnetic energy from natural sources, such as the sun, is much stronger.

Miller's committee maintains studies on electromagnetic hypersensitivity to date have been "overwhelmingly unsuccessful" in linking reported symptoms to electric or magnetic field exposure. The group also warns that many devices on the market falsely claim to reduce RF exposure from cell phones. The Federal Trade Commission has brought charges against some device makers.

DeToffol says he too has seen EMF-blocking products on the market that warrant skepticism. Key warning signs, he said, include questionable scientific explanations of how the product works and marketing that relies on subjective claims.

"That's a real tipoff -- when you see lots of testimonials," he said.

A mystic cult leader who gained fame for his claim that he could be in two places at one time and counted Premier Frank Hsieh as one of his followers, was found not guilty of defrauding his flock on Tuesday by a panel of High Court judges.

There was no concrete evidence to indicate that mystic Sung Chi-li used his "split body" pictures to cheat his followers for financial gain, the court ruled.

"His followers provided financial support to Sung because of their belief in his supernatural powers. It is hard to say that Sung and his disciple, Cheng Chen-tung, defrauded the followers with the pictures," the judges said in the ruling.

Through his images of a "split body," Sung claimed that he could appear in more than one place at a time. The mystic had tens of thousands of followers in Taiwan before he was accused by two former disciples and ex-Taipei City Councilor Chu Mei-feng of "fabricating the supernatural pictures" in 1996.

Sung still claimed earlier this year that last year he took Premier Frank Hsieh on a spiritual tour to Paris. The premier declined to confirm or deny Sung's claim, but he and his wife, Yu Fang-chi, have remained followers of Sung throughout these years.

The High Court judges acknowledged that two photographic professionals had testified to a lower court that portions of Sung's pictures were artificially produced. But they said that all of his followers testified to offering money to Sung out of their belief in his power to bring them peace of mind or solve supernatural problems.

Sung and his disciple Cheng were initially convicted by the Taipei District Court in 1997 on fraud charges and were both sentenced to seven years in jail for forging the photos to cheat followers, some of whom donated millions of Taiwan dollars to show their gratitude and respect.

In 2003, the High Court overturned the decision. The judges argued that law enforcement agencies should not attempt to prove or disprove self-proclaimed supernatural powers to determine whether a religious leader is guilty of fraud.

The High Court judges said in the case of Sung there was no victim of the fabricated pictures and therefore overturned the conviction. The High Court also cited the Constitution's ultimate protection for people's religious freedom in the 2003 verdict.

The Supreme Court ordered the High Court to review the case last August on appeal, and found that the two plaintiffs, Chiang Cheng and Chen Chiang Li-hua -- both ex-followers of Sung -- allegedly initiated the lawsuit against Sung and Cheng because of a personal feud.

The High Court delivered Tuesday's ruling amid clashes between Sung's followers and opponents of the mystic cult leader. A follower of Sung told a reporter with cable news station TVBS that, "there is no victim."

A Sung opponent then challenged the follower, asking, "Did you receive any advantages from Sung? Don't cheat other people; after that you will be cheated (by Sung)" outside the courthouse.

The opponents included Shang Chieh-mei, head of a civil group named "the association for improving clean religion." Shang said he denounced the High Court ruling in favor of Sung.

He also offered to "swallow my association's signboard immediately" if the cult leader could prove his magic powers in front of him.

Andrews, author of the world's first-ever book on the subject, Circular Evidence, has collected over 35,000 photographs, 650 videotapes, and at least 3,000 books and publications. The offer also includes the transfer of all worldwide copyrights on material owned by Andrews.

"I am sure this is one of the most profound phenomenon of our time," says the blurb at eBay. "Universal energy interactions may be at work and the interface between two dimensions register spectacular patterns of great meaning and such depth as man can yet imagine."

The entire package is up for bids with a starting price of $250,000. Not surprisingly, not a single offer has yet been made.

"You're really only left with two possibilities," said Paul Renne of the University of California, Berkeley.

"One is that they are really old hominids - shockingly old - or they're not footprints," he added in a statement.

In 2003, an international team of scientists headed by Silvia Gonzalez of John Moores University in Liverpool, England found about 250 human and animal prints in a layer of volcanic ash.

They estimated that early hunters walked across the ash deposited near a lake 40,000 years ago. Prior to that discovery, humans were thought to have arrived in the Americas across a land bridge from Asia about 11,000 years ago.

But Mr Renne and a team of geologists and anthropologists who used an argon dating technique and another method to analyse the age of fossils said they were about 1.3 million years old.

"We conclude that either hominid migration into the Americas occurred very much earlier than previously believed, or that the features in question were not made by humans on recently erupted ash," Mr Renne and his team said in a report in the journal Nature.

Researchers began investigating the site, at Valsequillo Lake near Puebla in southern Mexico, after the discovery of the footprint-like impressions was made public in July (see "Ancient 'footprints' found in Mexico"). Thomas Higham of the University of Oxford, UK, calculated that they were 40,000 years old, making them the oldest evidence of human occupation of the New World.

But now geochronologist Paul Renne, of the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California, has produced data showing that the volcanic ash layer is so old it is "highly unlikely" that the markings are footprints.

Rocked theory

Renne and his colleagues used two dating techniques, one examining the ratios of chemical isotopes in the ash and another looking for magnetic signals from the sediments. They publish their results online in Nature1.

"I'm totally unconvinced by the argument that they are footprints," says Renne. But he adds that he cannot be absolutely certain, because of the tiny possibility that they were made by an earlier relative of humans.

"It is conceivable there were hominids in the New World 1.3 million years ago," says Renne. "That would make it the find of the century in archaeology."

The oldest Homo sapiens fossils are African and date to 160,000 years ago. The oldest evidence of humans in the Americas is at Monte Verde in Chile, where occupation is dated to about 14,500 years ago.

Shelling out

The original footprint claim was made by Silvia Gonzalez, a Mexican geoarchaeologist at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. The 40,000-year date was based on radiocarbon analysis of shells in the layer above the ash at the nearby Toloquilla quarry.

Neither Gonzalez nor any other member of her team has commented on Renne's report, saying that they will respond with a scientific analysis after reviewing the data.

Gonzalez says she will return to the site early next year to try to find incontrovertible evidence of footprints protected in ash layers. She has been given US$370,000 by Britain's Natural Environment Research Council to pursue her work.

Tim White, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, says that Renne's report indicates "the argument is over" on the markings, "unless indisputable footprints can be found sealed within the ash". Gonzalez's previous evidence "is not sufficient to convince me they are footprints", he adds.

Most people are surprised to learn that there is, in fact, no way to directly determine the age of any fossil or rock. The so called "absolute" methods of dating (radiometric methods) actually only measure the present ratios of radioactive isotopes and their decay products in suitable specimens - not their age. These measured ratios are then extrapolated to an "age" determination.

The problem with all radiometric "clocks" is that their accuracy critically depends on several starting assumptions, which are largely unknowable. To date a specimen by radiometric means, one must first know the starting amount of the parent isotope at the beginning of the specimen's existence. Second, one must be certain that there were no daughter isotopes in the beginning. Third, one must be certain that neither parent nor daughter isotopes have ever been added or removed from the specimen. Fourth, one must be certain that the decay rate of parent isotope to daughter isotope has always been the same. That one or more of these assumptions are often invalid is obvious from the published radiometric "dates" (to say nothing of "rejected" dates) found in the literature.

One of the most obvious problems is that several samples from the same location often give widely divergent ages. Apollo moon samples, for example, were dated by both uranium-thorium-lead and potassium-argon methods, giving results, which varied from 2 million to 28 billion years. Lava flows from volcanoes on the north rim of the Grand Canyon (which erupted after its formation) show potassium-argon dates a billion years "older" than the most ancient basement rocks at the bottom of the canyon. Lava from underwater volcanoes near Hawaii (that are known to have erupted in 1801 AD) has been "dated" by the potassium-argon method with results varying from 160 million to nearly 3 billion years.

It's really no wonder that all of the laboratories that "date" rocks insist on knowing in advance the "evolutionary age" of the strata from which the samples were taken -- this way, they know which dates to accept as "reasonable" and which to ignore.

More precisely, radiometric dating is based on the assumption that nothing "really exceptional" happened in the meantime. What I mean by "really exceptional" is this: an event theoretically possible, but whose mechanism is not yet understood in terms of the established paradigms. To give an example: a crossing of two different universes. This is theoretically possible, taking into account modern physical theories, but it is too speculative to discuss its "probability" and possible consequences.

Could such an event change radioactive decay data? Could it change the values of some fundamental physical constants?

Yes, it could.

Is it possible that similar events have happened in the past? Yes, it is possible. How possible it is? We do not know. We do not know, in fact, what would be an exact meaning of "crossing of two different universes."

In addition to considering the idea of cataclysms that could have destroyed ancient civilizations more than once, there is another matter to consider in special relationship to radioactive decay: that ancient civilizations may have destroyed themselves with nuclear war.

Radiocarbon dates for Pleistocene remains in northeastern North America, according to scientists Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and William Topping, are younger as much as 10,000 years younger than for those in the western part of the country. Dating by other methods like thermo-luminescence (TL), geoarchaeology, and sedimentation suggests that many radiocarbon dates are grossly in error. For example, materials from the Gainey Paleoindian site in Michigan, radiocarbon dated at 2880 yr BC, are given an age by TL dating of 12,400 BC.

It seems that there are so many anomalies reported in the upper US and in Canada of this type, that they cannot be explained by ancient aberrations in the atmosphere or other radiocarbon reservoirs, or by contamination of data samples (a common source of error in radiocarbon dating). Assuming correct methods of radiocarbon dating are used, organic remains associated with an artifact will give a radiocarbon age younger than they actually are only if they contain an artificially high radiocarbon keel.

Our research indicates that the entire Great Lakes region (and beyond) was subjected to particle bombardment and a catastrophic nuclear irradiation that produced secondary thermal neutrons from cosmic ray interactions. The neutrons produced unusually large quantities of Pu239 and substantially altered the natural uranium abundance ratios in artifacts and in other exposed materials including cherts , sediments, and the entire landscape. These neutrons necessarily transmuted residual nitrogen in the dated charcoals to radiocarbon, thus explaining anomalous dates. […]
The C14 level in the fossil record would reset to a higher value. The excess global radiocarbon would then decay with a half-life of 5730 years, which should be seen in the radiocarbon analysis of varied systems. […]

Sharp increases in C14 are apparent in the marine data at 4,000, 32,000-34,000, and 12,500 BC. These increases are coincident with geomagnetic excursions. […]

The enormous energy released by the catastrophe at 12,500 BC could have heated the atmosphere to over 1000 C over Michigan, and the neutron flux at more northern locations would have melted considerable glacial ice. Radiation effects on plants and animals exposed to the cosmic rays would have been lethal, comparable to being irradiated in a 5 megawatt reactor more than 100 seconds.

The overall pattern of the catastrophe matches the pattern of mass extinction before Holocene times. The Western Hemisphere was more affected than the Eastern, North America more than South America, and eastern North America more than western North America. Extinction in the Great lakes area was more rapid and pronounced than elsewhere. Larger animals were more affected than smaller ones, a pattern that conforms to the expectation that radiation exposure affects large bodies more than smaller ones. [Firestone, Richard B., Topping, William, Terrestrial Evidence of a Nuclear Catastrophe in Paleoindian Times, dissertation research, 1990-2001. Lawrence Livermore Laboratories.]

The evidence that Firestone and Topping discovered is puzzling for a lot of reasons. But, the fact is, there are reports of similar evidence from such widely spread regions as India, Ireland, Scotland, France, and Turkey; ancient cities whose brick and stone walls have literally been vitrified, that is, fused together like glass. There is also evidence of vitrification of stone forts and cities. It seems that the only explanation for such anomalies is either an atomic blast or something that could produce similar effects.

THOUSANDS of protesters manned barricades on the French-Italian Alpine border yesterday to stop the construction of a controversial high-speed pan-European railway.

Environmentalists and local residents in the Val di Susa have been campaigning for weeks against the new rail link, known by its Italian initials as TAV. The focus of their protests is the Lyon to Turin stretch, with demonstrators opposing a 53km (33-mile) tunnel from St Jean de Maurienne on the French side to Venaus on the Italian side.

Work on the tunnel, estimated to cost €15 billion (£11 billion), was due to start this week. Yesterday, however, the protesters claimed initial victory after confronting 2,000 riot police in the snow to delay the start of construction.

In Venaus the slogan "No TAV" hangs in banners from every house and is sprayed on walls. Yesterday demonstrators huddled round oil-drum fires in the bitter cold while volunteers distributed minestrone soup.

The project, backed by the European Union, also involves a secondary 21km tunnel through Mount Musine, a local landmark. Dubbed "Corridor Five" in EU jargon, the high-speed railway will eventually run from Lisbon to Kiev by way of Barcelona, Lyon, Turin, Trieste and Budapest.

Local residents said that the peace of the Alpine woods and meadows would be destroyed by the 300 goods and passenger trains a day that will thunder through at 150km/h (93mph). There is also fear that the works, expected to last up to 20 years, will cause long-term environmental damage.

For some protesters the focus is Mount Musine, known as the "Magic Mountain" because of its supposed occult powers and magnetic currents.

A cross on the summit, placed there in 1900, recalls the moment in the 4th century when the Emperor Constantine saw a "burning cross in the sky" forecasting his victory over his rival Maxentius, a vision that helped to persuade the Emperor to convert his empire, and hence Europe, to Christianity.

The dark, bare mountain is also associated with Celtic rites, and is the site of frequent alleged UFO sightings. A more practical objection is that tunnelling through the mountain will release both asbestos and uranium, endangering the health both of the workers and local residents.

Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right Government claims that the TAV is vital if commercial traffic is to be lured from the roads to the railway.

Pietro Lunardi, the Transport Minister, said that trans-Alpine road traffic had risen elevenfold in 25 years. He said that for passengers, the rail trip from Turin to Lyon would be cut from four hours to 90 minutes, with the Turin to Paris run cut to three hours.

"This kind of infrastructure project is essential if we are to make Italy competitive," Signor Lunardi said.

He said that the Government had begun talks with the protesters last year, to no avail. "Blocking the Turin to Lyon line will cause enormous damage not just to Italy but to the whole of Europe". Spain and France enjoyed advanced road and rail networks, he said, but Italy lacked both.

The Green Party, which forms part of the centre-left opposition, widely tipped to defeat Signor Berlusconi in April's election, said that it would seek alternative solutions if the Left came to power.

"There is an existing railway which could simply be upgraded," a Green spokesman said.

In the years since the 9/11 attacks, dozens of books have sought to explore the truth behind the official version of events that day - yet to date, none of these publications has provided a satisfactory answer as to WHY the attacks occurred and who was ultimately responsible for carrying them out.

Taking a broad, millennia-long perspective, Laura Knight-Jadczyk's 9/11: The Ultimate Truth uncovers the true nature of the ruling elite on our planet and presents new and ground-breaking insights into just how the 9/11 attacks played out.

9/11: The Ultimate Truth makes a strong case for the idea that September 11, 2001 marked the moment when our planet entered the final phase of a diabolical plan that has been many, many years in the making. It is a plan developed and nurtured by successive generations of ruthless individuals who relentlessly exploit the negative aspects of basic human nature to entrap humanity as a whole in endless wars and suffering in order to keep us confused and distracted to the reality of the man behind the curtain.

Drawing on historical and genealogical sources, Knight-Jadczyk eloquently links the 9/11 event to the modern-day Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She also cites the clear evidence that our planet undergoes periodic natural cataclysms, a cycle that has arguably brought humanity to the brink of destruction in the present day.

For its no nonsense style in cutting to the core of the issue and its sheer audacity in refusing to be swayed or distracted by the morass of disinformation that has been employed by the Powers that Be to cover their tracks, 9/11: The Ultimate Truth can rightly claim to be THE definitive book on 9/11 - and what that fateful day's true implications are for the future of mankind.