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'Meteorite' narrowly misses Perth boy

August 10, 2003

Fragments of what could be a meteorite which narrowly missed a 10-year-old boy when it smashed into his driveway would be scientifically tested in Perth, the youngster's mother said today.

Anthony Elliss-Galati saw an odd-shaped object in the sky, heading towards him on Thursday as he played outside his Safety Bay home, about 50km south of Perth. Anthony told his mother Jennifer Elliss he hid behind her car and watched the bird-sized object smash a hole in the driveway and shatter.

"I heard something hit the bitumen and then Anthony came inside and said there were rocks coming out of the sky," Ms Elliss said. "He then handed me a piece and it didn't look like a normal rock - it was dull on the inside and silver on the outside and looked as if it had melted."

Ms Elliss said she went outside and was surprised at the large hole the flying debris had left. "Anthony said he had seen it coming across the park and had to duck down behind my car to avoid being hit by it," she said.

Ms Elliss said although it was not massive, she believed the object was a meteorite. "The pieces look exactly like a real meteorite I saw when I was a kid."

Ms Elliss has contacted the WA Museum and the Perth Observatory and will be taking the fragments to Perth tomorrow to have them scientifically tested.

Comment: It is startling to see the amazing lack of media attention given to the rapidly increasing number of fireballs and even small meteorite hits that get very little attention other than a dry report as though this were "normal."

July 5 2001:

Q: [Can you] describe to us, the catastrophic situation in our future, our near future?

A: It seems as though it will be a progression. Like the beginning of rain, when the first few big, cold drops fall; and then a pause followed by a few more drops; and then, a downpour. [...] I see rocks - but they aren't very large. They are like the size of your fist. Just a few. And they make something of a stir. An uproar. People will be excited... very upset. It looks like just two - two small rocks. And then nothing else happens for awhile, and then they forget about it. It all dies down. And then, a third, a fourth, a fifth and a sixth - and maybe even a seventh... isolated events, or so it seems. Still small.

And then, a big one.

All this will go on over a period of months.

Orbital Oddities: Why Mars will be So Close to Earth in August

By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
21 January 200O

Anyone who had a Spirograph drawing toy as a kid has a head start in grasping why Earth and Mars will be closer to each other this August than ever in recorded history. The drawing wheels with the little toothy gears were very simple, yet they produced amazingly complex patterns that seemed to change, ever so slightly, for as long as you kept them moving.

The relationship in space between Earth and Mars is never exactly repeated either. Each planet orbits the Sun on its own elliptical path, and those paths actually rotate through space over thousands of years...

On Aug. 27 this year, Mars will be 34.65 million miles (55.76 million kilometers) away...

Prior to the 1988 close pass, the two planets were even closer in 1971, just 34.9 million miles (56.2 million kilometers) apart. The 2003 approach is less than 1 percent closer than the one in 1971, Standish points out.

Comment: Recent events, the approach of Mars combined with the extreme weather patterns, throw new light on some comments made by the C's.

September 30, 1994

Q: (L) Was Noah's flood caused by the close passage of
another celestial body?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Which body was that?
A: Martek.
Q: (L) Do we know this body in our solar system now?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) What name?
A: Mars.

While the term "close passage" might refer to a Velikovskian-type catastrophe, it might well be referring to Mars coming closer to the planet than it has been in at least 60,000 years.

November 19, 1994

Q: (L) [One of the destructions of Atlantis] was caused by the close passage of Mars?
A: Yes. And comets.
Q: (L) Was Mars and the comets loosely interactive?
A: Yes.

Here we see the added element of comets. Apparently there is something important about the "interaction" between a "close approach" of Mars with comets. Look at our meteor pages to see the regularity of the earth's "interaction" with objects falling from the sky.

October 7, 1994

Q: (L) Does this cluster of comets orbit around the Sun?
A: Yes. Your government already knows they're coming close again.
Q: (L) You said that the orbit is around the Sun. Where does it enter the plane of the ecliptic?
A: Varies.
Q: (L) Does it enter between Mars and Jupiter, for example?
A: Sometimes.
Q: (L) Is the orbit perpendicular to the plane of the
ecliptic? Or is it at an angle?
A: In between.
Q: (L) What degrees of angle does it intersect the plane of
the ecliptic?
A: Not correct idea structure. Picture a spirograph.
Q: (L) Do the comets orbit around themselves. Do they have a sort of axis?
A: No.
Q: (L) How many are in this cluster?
A: Varies.
Q: (L) Do they lose or pick any up from time to time?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) How big is the biggest one at this time?
A: 900 miles diameter. Spirograph.

This is another clue. Spirograph. The term spirograph describes tha pattern of the arriving comet cluster. When it arrives, the individual comets will be arriving from many directions at once. We will be bombarded on all sides. However, that does not preclude a second meaning of the word, its use as a clue pointing to something else. That is why the use of "spirograph" in this article stood out.

So we have "close approach", "comets", and "spirograph". Mars alone coming "close" doesn't have a great effect, but Mars with the comets brought on the Deluge.....

The War Against Ourselves

An Interview with Major Doug Rokke
Yes! Magazine

Doug Rokke has a PhD in health physics and was originally trained as a forensic scientist. When the Gulf War started, he was assigned to prepare soldiers to respond to nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare, and sent to the Gulf. What he experienced has made him a passionate voice for peace, traveling the country to speak out. The following interview was conducted by the director of the Traprock Peace Center, Sunny Miller, supplemented with questions from YES! editors.
 
QUESTION : Any viewer who saw the war on television had the impression this was an easy war, fought from a distance and soldiers coming back relatively unharmed. Is this an accurate picture?

ROKKE : At the completion of the Gulf War, when we came back to the United States in the fall of 1991, we had a total casualty count of 760: 294 dead, a little over 400 wounded or ill. But the casualty rate now for Gulf War veterans is approximately 30 percent. Of those stationed in the theater, including after the conflict, 221,000 have been awarded disability, according to a Veterans Affairs (VA) report issued September 10, 2002.

Many of the US casualties died as a direct result of uranium munitions friendly fire. US forces killed and wounded US forces.

We recommended care for anybody downwind of any uranium dust, anybody working in and around uranium contamination, and anyone within a vehicle, structure, or building that's struck with uranium munitions. That's thousands upon thousands of individuals, but not only US troops. You should provide medical care not only for the enemy soldiers but for the Iraqi women and children affected, and clean up all of the contamination in Iraq.

And it's not just children in Iraq. It's children born to soldiers after they came back home. The military admitted that they were finding uranium excreted in the semen of the soldiers. If you've got uranium in the semen, the genetics are messed up. So when the children were conceived'the alpha particles cause such tremendous cell damage and genetics damage that everything goes bad. Studies have found that male soldiers who served in the Gulf War were almost twice as likely to have a child with a birth defect and female soldiers almost three times as likely.

Q: You have been a military man for over 35 years. You served in Vietnam as a bombardier and you are still in the US Army Reserves. Now you're going around the country speaking about the dangers of depleted uranium (DU). What made you decide you had to speak publicly about DU?

ROKKE: Everybody on my team was getting sick. My best friend John Sitton was dying. The military refused him medical care, and he died. John set up the medical evacuation communication system for the entire theater. Then he got contaminated doing the work.

John and Rolla Dolph and I were best friends in the civilian world, the military world, forever. Rolla got sick. I personally got the order that sent him to war. We were both activated together. I was given the assignment to teach nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare and make sure soldiers came back alive and safe. I take it seriously. I was sent to the Gulf with this instruction: Bring 'em back alive. Clear as could be. But when I got all the training together, all the environmental cleanup procedures together, all the medical directives, nothing happened.

More than 100 American soldiers were exposed to DU in friendly fire accidents, plus untold numbers of soldiers who climbed on and entered tanks that had been hit with DU, taking photos and gathering souvenirs to take home. They didn't know about the hazards.

DU is an extremely effective weapon. Each tank round is 10 pounds of solid uranium-238 contaminated with plutonium, neptunium, americium. It is pyrophoric, generating intense heat on impact, penetrating a tank because of the heavy weight of its metal. When uranium munitions hit, it's like a firestorm inside any vehicle or structure, and so we saw tremendous burns, tremendous injuries. It was devastating.

The US military decided to blow up Saddam's chemical, biological, and radiological stockpiles in place, which released the contamination back on the US troops and on everybody in the whole region. The chemical agent detectors and radiological monitors were going off all over the place. We had all of the various nerve agents. We think there were biological agents, and there were destroyed nuclear reactor facilities. It was a toxic wasteland. And we had DU added to this whole mess.

When we first got assigned to clean up the DU and arrived in northern Saudi Arabia, we started getting sick within 72 hours. Respiratory problems, rashes, bleeding, open sores started almost immediately.

When you have a mass dose of radioactive particulates and you start breathing that in, the deposit sits in the back of the pharynx, where the cancer started initially on the first guy. It doesn't take a lot of time. I had a father and son working with me. The father is already dead from lung cancer, and the sick son is still denied medical care.

Q: Did you suspect what was happening?

ROKKE: We didn't know anything about DU when the Gulf War started. As a warrior, you're listening to your leaders, and they're saying there are no health effects from the DU. But, as we started to study this, to go back to what we learned in physics and our engineering'I was a professor of environmental science and engineering'you learn rapidly that what they're telling you doesn't agree with what you know and observe.

In June of 1991, when I got back to the States, I was sick. Respiratory problems and the rashes and neurological things were starting to show up.

Q: Why didn't you go to the VA with a medical complaint?

ROKKE: Because I was still in the Army, and I was told I couldn't file. You have to have the information that connects your exposure to your service before you go to the VA. The VA obviously wasn't going to take care of me, so I went to my private physician. We had no idea what it was, but so many good people were coming back sick.

They didn't do tests on me or my team members. According to the Department of Defense's own guidelines put out in 1992, any excretion level in the urine above 15 micrograms of uranium per day should result in immediate medical testing, and when you get up to 250 micrograms of total uranium excreted per day, you're supposed to be under continuous medical care.

Finally the US Department of Energy performed a radiobioassay on me in November 1994, while I was director of the Depleted Uranium Project for the Department of Defense. My excretion rate was approximately 1500 micrograms per day. My level was 5 to 6 times beyond the level that requires continuous medical care.

But they didn't tell me for two and a half years.

Q: What are the symptoms of exposure to DU?

ROKKE: Fibromyalgia. Eye cataracts from the radiation. When uranium impacts any type of vehicle or structure, uranium oxide dust and pieces of uranium explode all over the place. This can be breathed in or go into a wound. Once it gets in the body, a portion of this stuff is soluble, which means it goes into the blood stream and all of your organs. The insoluble fraction stays'in the lungs, for example. The radiation damage and the particulates destroy the lungs.

Q: What kind of training have the troops had, who are getting called up right now'the ones being shipped to the vicinity of what may be the next Gulf War?

ROKKE: As the director of the Depleted Uranium Project, I developed a 40-hour block of training. All that curriculum has been shelved. They turned what I wrote into a 20-minute program that's full of distortions. It doesn't deal with the reality of uranium munitions.

The equipment is defective. The General Accounting Office verified that the gas masks leak, the chemical protective suits leak. Unbelievably, Defense Department officials recently said the defects can be fixed with duct tape. [...]

MoD IN ANTHRAX BLUNDER

Aug 10 2003
By Rupert Hamer
Sunday Mirror
 
DEFENCE chiefs put thousands of troops at risk during the first Gulf War - by ignoring safety guidelines on vaccinations.

Soldiers were given the anthrax vaccine with other multiple jabs when guidelines warned the injection "should be given alone".

Now the Ministry of Defence looks set to admit the blunder - opening the way to massive compensation claims.

Up to 5,000 veterans of the 1991 war claim they have suffered what has become known as Gulf War Syndrome after receiving up to 28 jabs.

Defence officials have so far refused to acknowledge any breach in safety guidelines.

But health minister Lord Hunt made the shock disclosure about the vaccine just before he quit in protest over the Government's policy in Iraq.

Now the Royal British Legion has taken up the case and the MoD has promised to respond to its questions on vaccine guidelines "very shortly".

Last night Shaun Rusling, President of the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association, said: "This admission would be a major step to getting justice for thousands of veterans."

It follows last week's Sunday Mirror revelations that the troops will also be tested for depleted uranium, a possible factor in Gulf War Syndrome.

Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium

By LARRY JOHNSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER FOREIGN DESK EDITOR

[...]Today, nearly 12 years after the use of the super-tough weapons was credited with bringing the war to a swift conclusion, the battlefield remains a radioactive toxic wasteland -- and depleted uranium munitions remain a mystery.

Although the Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted uranium, Iraqi doctors believe that it is responsible for a significant increase in cancer and birth defects in the region. Many researchers outside Iraq, and several U.S. veterans organizations, agree; they also suspect depleted uranium of playing a role in Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans.[...]

The National Gulf War Resource Center

International Depleted Uranium Study Team

[...] Lingering effects: Nearly 12 years after the U.S. used DU on Iraqi forces retreating from Kuwait to Basra, the highway remains a radioactive toxic wasteland.[...]

Comment: With a map showing where DU has been used in the world, breaking down how it has been used. Seven locations in the United States, and it is currently used in training in Nevada.

Depleted Uranium: How the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers & Civilians with DU Weapons

Discounted Casulties: The Human Cost of Depleted Uranium

Comment: A few titles of articles available at this site: Friendly fire-Body full of shrapnel and bone cancer, Battlefield tour -No mention of contamination, Secondary contamination - Wife harmed through intercourse, A delayed casualty - Suicide after 8 years of pain, A 27 minute life - Son born with congenital defect, Army Nurse - Immunity lost at front, Educational video suppressed - Military fears public reaction, Laws for veterans - Inadequate treatment and compensation, Defense Department - "No scientific connection to disease", Iraqi children attacked by cancer, Terror of radiation pervading the earth, Leukemia, congenital defects - 430,000 US troops in contaminated areas . . . and many more articles that will make any one with a soul sick at the pervasive suffering caused by DU.

Silver Bullet: Depleted Uranium

Depleted uranium is the super weapon of the '90s; used in the Gulf War and the conflict in Kosovo. But now Canadian troops, soldiers and peacekeepers alike, may be exposed to depleted uranium with its potential danger. Now this threat wasn't one raised by a hostile enemy, but by the arms used by the United States and other NATO allies. They defeated the toughest armoured vehicles with the use of depleted uranium. It packed a knockout punch, but what soldiers often didn't know was that depleted uranium poses a threat to victor as well as vanquished. [...]

Gulf War II Syndrome?

Military Equipment and "Pneumonia"

By STAN GOFF
CounterPunch

[...] What troops often haven't had yet, and what many don't have until after their tours of duty, is the epiphany that they are equipment. Equipment with an expiration date.

The Department of Defense does not care if a soldier retires and dies three weeks later. In fact, the Veterans Administration bean counters would see that as positive. The Department of Defense does not care if a soldier who was getting out anyway, finishes his or her three or four year hitch, then comes down with mysterious and debilitating ailments, as long as that ailment can plausibly be denied as "service-connected." Note how many millions have been spent by the US government to deny that Gulf War Syndrome existed, and how hard they've fought liability for Agent Orange.

Now there is a "pneumonia" breaking out among the troops, which may very well be related to inhalation of microscopic particles of the highly toxic and radioactive depleted uranium, a heavy-metal slag used in another bit of expendable military equipment, US anti-tank ammunition. [...]

Comment: Stan Goff is a retired Special Forces master sergeant, and the father of an active duty soldier. Good article to pass on to those sitting in comfortable air conditioned homes, taking a break from watching sit coms, to regurgitate propaganda about U.S. troops defending freedom.

Military Men Are Dumb, Stupid Animals

author: doubleplusgood

Many people have asked about the origin of a quote from Henry Kissinger regarding military men, which came from Woodward and Bernstein's "The Final Days" (1976). Here is the complete paragraph--and for context, the one following--excerpted from pages 194-195 of the second Touchstone paperback edition (1994). [...]

[...] In Haig's presence, Kissinger referred pointedly to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy. [...]

BRING THEM HOME NOW!

[A] coordinating committee of military families, veterans, active duty personnel, reservists and others opposed to the ongoing war in Iraq and galvanized to action by George W. Bush's inane and reckless challenge to armed Iraqis resisting occupation to "Bring 'em on."

Our mission is to mobilize military families, veterans, and GIs themselves to demand: an end to the occupation of Iraq and other misguided military adventures; and an immediate return of all US troops to their home duty stations.

The truth is coming out. The American public was deceived by the Bush administration about the motivation for and intent of the invasion of Iraq. It is equally apparent that the administration is stubbornly and incompetently adhering to a destructive course. Many Americans do not want our troops there. Many military families do not want our troops there. Many troops themselves do not want to be there. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis do not want US troops there.

[...]Bush says "Bring 'em on." We say "BRING THEM HOME NOW!"

Comment: We are only one of many who decry the barbaric and psychopathic Bush Doctrine. We wonder if the Bring Them Home Now site receives many emails like we have that spout a rather prevelant cliche these days. Just three little words that somehow are used to justify so much terror, death and destruction in their minds: "War is Hell". Is that what they would tell their son as cancer eats away his body after a tour of duty?

Impeachable offenses

By Belva Ann Prycel

This week as President Bush and his closest advisors altered stories in an ongoing effort to deflect blame about "intelligence failures," I am reminded of a quote by Oliver North from his Iran-Contra testimony, "I was provided with additional input that was radically different from the truth. I assisted in furthering that version."

One cannot help but ask if these false and terrifying depictions of Iraq's destructive capabilities were really the products of intelligence failures, or if they were part of an ongoing and systematic policy on the part of those at the very head of government.[...]

Comment: It seems pretty evident after examining all the information above who the real culprit is in using WMD against the American people.

Microbiologists With Link to Race-Based Weapon Turning Up Dead

Exclusive to American Free Press
By Gordon Thomas

Dr. David Kelly—the biological warfare weapons specialist at the heart of the continuing political crisis for the British government—had links to three other top microbiologists whose deaths have left unanswered questions.

The 59-year-old British scientist was involved with ultra secret work at Israel’s Institute for Biological Research. Israeli sources claim Kelly met institute scientists several times in London in the past two years. [...]

There have been persistent reports that the institute is also engaged in DNA sequencing research. One former member of the Knesset, Dedi Zucker, caused a storm in the Israeli Parliament when he claimed that the institute was "trying to create an ethnic specific weapon" in which Arabs could be targeted by Israeli weapons.

Comment: "Ethnic Specific Weapons?" Hmmm... maybe the Israelis have forgotten that the Arabs are genetically identical to the Jews... ? What will kill an Arab will kill a Jew.

We have long been suggesting that the ultimate agenda of the Global Reich is to set Israel up and do the most fiendish double cross of all; and now we may have a clue as to how they plan to do it.

Look out, Israel, you have all been herded into a corral by the Balfour Agreement, your leaders have been calling you home to Israel for years... aided and abetted by England and America - those whose sympathies with the Nazis are well known; and you think they are "serving you" ??? On a platter, maybe...

One dead as Hezbollah shells Israel

10/08/2003

Hezbollah guerrillas fired shells over northern Israel, killing one person and injuring four, officials said today. Three 57 mm anti-tank shells were fired at the town of Shlomi, near the Israeli-Lebanese border, a senior Israeli security official said.

The militant group Hezbollah said in Lebanon that it had fired anti-aircraft shells at Israeli fighter jets flying over southern Lebanon. One man died and four people were hurt, one seriously, the Magen David Adom ambulance service said.

Dore Gold, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the shelling constituted "unbridled escalatory attacks ... an intolerable state of affairs." The Lebanese militant group, which is backed by Iran and Syria, routinely responds to Israeli air force flights over Lebanon with anti-aircraft fire, but tensions have worsened in recent days.

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom demanded that Syria and Lebanon restrain Hezbollah militants, or "we will have no choice but to defend ourselves."[...]

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Sheik Naeem Qassem said that Hezbollah "is fully prepared and ready to respond in the proper manner to any Israel aggression or threat."

U.S. Says It Holds Former Iraqi Interior Minister

Sat August 9, 2003 02:41 PM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Saturday that Saddam Hussein's former interior minister, number 29 on a U.S. list of the 55 most wanted, was in custody. [...]

Tension Grows Between U.S. Troops, Iraqis

By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI
The Associated Press
Saturday, August 9, 2003; 3:15 PM

JAZEERAT EL-ANBAR, Iraq - The tribal leader had just been freed after 12 days in an American prison. Well-wishers flocked to his house. They kissed his cheek. They cried. Mostly, they cursed their U.S. occupiers.

Sheik Saad Naif Mish'hen al-Hardan, wearing a yellow Arab robe, looked pale and dazed. "History will record this," the 40-year-old leader told his followers.

"Everything that begins must end," he said, shaking his head. "And no incident will be forgotten." [...]

Family shot dead by panicking US troops

By Justin Huggler in Baghdad
10 August 2003

(The Independent) The abd al-Kerim family didn't have a chance. American soldiers opened fire on their car with no warning and at close quarters. They killed the father and three of the children, one of them only eight years old. Now only the mother, Anwar, and a 13-year-old daughter are alive to tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they screamed for the Americans to stop.

"We never did anything to the Americans and they just killed us," the heavily pregnant Ms abd al-Kerim said. "We were calling out to them 'Stop, stop, we are a family', but they kept on shooting." [...]

British troops face rioting Iraqi mobs

18:12 Saturday 9th August 2003

British troops are trying to control rioting mobs in the Iraqi city of Basra after a power cut raised temperatures to boiling point. [...]

The soldiers are also having to contend with behind-the-scenes provocation of crowds by anti-coalition elements suspected of engineering the power cut to destabilise the city. [...]

Al-Qaeda henchman says Iraq furnished chemical, biological arms aid: WHouse

CRAWFORD, Texas (AFP) Aug 09, 2003

A high-ranking al-Qaeda operative in custody has disclosed that Iraq supplied the Islamist militant group with material to build chemical and biological weapons, the White House said Friday. [...]

The report quoted the unnamed prisoner as saying al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden turned to Iraq after concluding his group could not produce chemical or biological weapons on its own in Afghanistan. [...]

Iraqi trailers made hydrogen, not weapons, DIA experts tell press

NEW YORK (AFP) Aug 09, 2003

The two laboratory trailers found in Iraq produced hydrogen for weather balloons and not illegal weapons, intelligence analysts told The New York Times in a report published Saturday.

The Defense Intelligence Agency experts contradicted a document released May 28 by the DIA and the Central Intelligence Agency, saying that the trailers were used to produce biological weapons. [...]

Discovering WMD

Robert Novak
August 9, 2003

WASHINGTON -- Former international weapons inspector David Kay, now seeking Iraqi weapons of mass destruction for the Pentagon, has privately reported successes that are planned to be revealed to the public in mid-September.

Kay has told his superiors he has found substantial evidence of biological weapons in Iraq, plus considerable missile development. He has been less successful in locating chemical weapons, and has not yet begun a substantial effort to locate progress toward nuclear arms. [...]

The War According to David Hackworth

by Jonathan Franklin
Salon.com

Retired U.S. Army Col. David Hackworth is a cocky American military commander who for half a century was at the front lines of the Army's most important battles. Most recently, though, Hackworth has been at the front lines of a domestic war: the debate over U.S. military strategy in Iraq, and whether the Bush administration planned well enough to achieve a decisive military victory and keep the postwar peace. [...]

"Soldiers get literally hundreds of flea or mosquito bites and they can't get cream or Benadryl to keep the damn things from itching ... .I am not talking about bringing in the steak and lobster every week. I am talking about basic health and safety issues that continue to be neglected by the Army."

"We did not receive a single piece of parts-support for our vehicles during the entire battle ... not a single repair part has made to our vehicles to date ... my unit had abandoned around 12 vehicles ... .I firmly believe that the conditions I just described contributed to the loss and injury of soldiers on the battlefield." [...]

"In mid April, I wrote a piece that asks for Rumsfeld to be fired, to be relieved. I took enormous heat for that. He went in light, on the cheap, he has misunderstood the whole war, he should go ... Rumsfeld is an arrogant a**hole. That's a quote, by the way."

Critics of US policy are racist, says Rice

By David Rennie in Washington
09/08/2003

Condoleezza Rice, the most senior black woman in the Bush administration, has levelled a charge of racism against critics of the US drive to bring Western freedoms to the Middle East.

In an unusually personal speech, Miss Rice, the national security adviser to President George W Bush, said the push to bring democracy and free markets to the Middle East was "the moral mission of our time", to be compared with the civil rights movement that ended racial segregation in America. [...]

Black Americans should stand by others seeking freedom today, she went on, and shun the "condescending" argument that some races or nations were not interested in or ready for Western freedoms. [...]

Comment: It is more condescending to assume that American culture and "Western Freedoms" are so marvelous that everyone wants them. Freedom these days means that you have the right to be gassed, beaten, and declared an enemy combatant if you disagree with anything Herr Bush says or does.

Americans pay price for speaking out

Dissenters face job loss, arrest, threats, but activists not stopped by backlash

KATHLEEN KENNA
Staff Reporter, The Toronto Star
Aug. 9, 2003. 12:48 PM

He's a Vietnam War hero from a proud lineage of warriors who served the United States, so he never expected to be called a traitor.

After 39 years in the Marines, including commands in Somalia and Iraq, Gen. Anthony Zinni never imagined he would be tagged "turncoat."

The epithets are not from the uniforms but the suits — "senior officers at the Pentagon," the now-retired general says from his home in Williamsburg, Va.

"They want to question my patriotism?" he demands testily.

To question the Iraq war in the U.S. — and individuals from Main St. merchants to Hollywood stars do — is to be branded un-American. [...]

Report Finds Threat Alerts in Color Code Baffle Public

By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 — A new Congressional report has found that the government's much ridiculed color-coded terrorist alert system is so vague in detailing threats that the public "may begin to question the authenticity" of the threats and take no action when the alert level is raised. [...]

The US is starting a nuclear fight that will be hard to stop

The hawks are gunning for a showdown with North Korea and Iran

Simon Tisdall
Saturday August 9, 2003

(The Guardian) John Bolton might be termed an old hand. The US under-secretary of state for arms control and international security, a Yale-educated lawyer, has held a string of senior posts in the state and justice departments. By any yardstick, he is an experienced if conservative-minded diplomat of some gravitas who, it must be assumed, knows what he is doing. But according to an official North Korean statement this week, Bolton is "human scum". [...]

The curious thing about this exchange is not so much its intensity as its timing. Bolton went nuclear, verbally speaking, only hours before North Korea finally acceded to longstanding US demands for multilateral talks on its nuclear arms ambitions. South Korean officials were relieved that the North had not used Bolton's broadside as an excuse for further prevarication. But like the rest of us, they were left wondering whether Bolton had launched a deliberate pre-emptive strike against the nascent diplomatic process.

This raises a key question, as America's twin confrontations with North Korea and Iran over nuclear arms accelerate towards a crunch in the next few weeks. In a nutshell, peaceful, internationally supportable, diplomatic solutions to both disputes are available. Their outlines may be clearly discerned; the mechanisms by which they can be achieved are more or less in place. But does the US actually want to cut a deal? [...]

Australia PM says national airline a missile target

08:26 Sunday 10th August 2003

Australia's Prime Minister John Howard has warned its national airline Qantas is a potential target for terrorists with heat-seeking ground-to-air missiles. [...]

Air France Pilot Arrested for Bomb Claim

NEW YORK (AP) - An Air France co-pilot was in police custody Saturday after allegedly telling an airport security screener that he had a bomb in his shoe.

Philippe Rivere, 50, was arrested Friday night at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Port Authority spokesman Tony Ciavolella said. Rivere was charged with falsely reporting an incident and could face up to seven years in prison. [...]

Afghans On Edge of Chaos

Aug 09, 2003
By Robyn Dixon

Two months after a gun attack, the bullet holes in the Datsun sedan have been patched and it runs beautifully. But water engineer Asil Kahn walks with a limp and he still has two bullets in his body, one of them half an inch from his spine.

The vehicle's humanitarian logo made him a victim in the battle for Afghanistan's future, where water engineers, mine-clearers and humanitarian workers — people the country needs most — are prime targets for militants trying to destabilize President Hamid Karzai's interim government.

The May attack on the Afghanistan Development Agency car in Wardak province, south of Kabul on the road to Kandahar, injured Kahn but killed the driver.

"They weren't robbers or thieves," said Kahn, 46. "They just wanted to kill us. They're people against the government. They thought that maybe there would be some foreigners or some officials from aid organizations in the car. That's why they shot us."

U.S. forces have their hands full trying to subdue attacks in Iraq. But with the slow buildup of a national Afghan army, an inadequate U.S. and coalition presence and poor progress on reconstruction projects, Afghanistan is spiraling out of control and risks becoming a "narco-mafia" state, some humanitarian agencies warn.[...]

Comment: "We have come with a might force to liberate your country" GWB 2003

Britain to produce new evidence on Iraqi WMD: report

Fri Aug 8, 7:24 PM ET

LONDON (AFP) - The British government is soon to present new evidence that Iraq had produced biological weapons, it was reported.

Intelligence officials were producing another dossier on Iraqi arms, and "there is said to be hard evidence of cover-up programmes designed to conceal weapons of mass destruction", the British magazine "The Economist" said in its latest issue.

"We would hope to be able to demonstrate in the fullness of time that almost all the information in the dossier (published by the government last September) was accurate", a government insider told the magazine.[...]

Comment: How the hell are they gonna do that?? It has already been conclusively proven that Blair LIED using "evidence" that was the homework of a physics student!

Pentagon Whistleblower Reveals CIA/ DoD Fiascos

20.06.2003

In a world exclusive, Al Martin Raw.com has published a news story about a Department of Defense whistleblower who has revealed that a US covert operations team had planted "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (WMDs) in Iraq – then "lost" them when the team was killed by so-called "friendly fire."

The Pentagon whistleblower, Nelda Rogers, is a 28-year veteran debriefer for the Defense Department. She has become so concerned for her safety that she decided to tell the story about this latest CIA-military fiasco in Iraq. [...]

Bush turns to politics as he greets top fund raisers at a barbecue

WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, August 9, 2003
CRAWFORD, Texas

President Bush brought in his most prolific fund-raisers for a private barbecue down the road from his ranch Saturday as he turned his attention from rebuilding Iraq to re-election politics.

The Bush campaign shuttled in about 350 people, each of whom had helped collect $50,000 by June 30 for his 2004 campaign. Their reward: personal attention from Bush and from Karl Rove, his top political adviser, at the nearby Hickey Broken Spoke Ranch.

Two groups that monitor fund-raising activities, Public Citizen and Texans for Justice, said the barbecue showed that campaign donors get the president's ear and favorable treatment from the Bush administration.

"These people are some of the smartest businessmen in America, and if they didn't continue to see a payback in their investment in the Bush campaign, they wouldn't continue to make these kinds of donations time after time," said Tom Smith, director of Public Citizen for Texas.

He spoke at a news conference a few miles from Bush's ranch. An inflatable White House stood behind him, marked with the sign: "White House for Sale." Secret Service agents and local authorities kept an eye on the event.

"President Bush today is hiding his big donors behind plumes of barbecue smoke," said Craig McDonald, executive director of Texans for Justice.

While individuals are limited to $2,000 contributions apiece, Bush's "pioneer" class of fund-raisers collect at least $100,000 from many donors and channel them to the campaign. This election, Bush created a new class of fund-raisers, the "rangers," who solicit at least $200,000 each.

US teens charged with attacks on homeless

10/08/200

Four teenagers were charged with attacking homeless people with a stun gun as they slept and videotaping the assaults.

Police in Cleveland, Ohio said the teenagers carried out attacks on at least six homeless people sleeping on park benches or in doorways. [...]

EOS to design and build new telescope

6 August 2003

A new telescope dedicated to the search for new planets will be designed and built by EOS Space Systems, a subsidiary of specialist NSW-based telescope manufacturer Electro Optic Systems Holdings (EOS).

The $6m telescope will be designed and built over the next 20 months following a joint agreement between EOS Space Systems and the University of California's Lick Observatory.

Combined with new instruments developed by the university, the completed 2.4m Automated Planet Finder (APF) will detect new planets by measuring small perturbations in a star's motion caused by the gravitational pull of orbiting planets. [...]

Death toll from European heatwave hits 40 as French three-year-old dies

AFP, Sunday August 10, 10:45 AM

The death toll from the two-week heatwave in Europe has risen to 40, with the latest tragedy a three-year-old French girl dying in the garden of her home. [...]

The girl had climbed into the family car, parked in the garden of her home near the coastal town of Boulogne, while each of her parents thought the other was looking after her.

According to preliminary reports, the girl became ill due to the intense heat and died after spending no more than an hour and a half in the car, which had one door open. [...]

The heat record is on again

Aug 10 2003

The highest ever temperature in the UK is more than likely to be recorded as the scorching weather continues.[...]

Japan storm leaves four dead, 11 missing

10/08/2003 - 9:01:36 am

Nearly a dozen people were missing today after a tropical storm pummelled its way through northern Japan.

Etau – rated a typhoon until it was downgraded on Friday to a tropical storm - hit Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido early today, but gradually lost steam as it moved off into the Pacific Ocean, the Meteorological Agency said. [...]

Seven family members killed in landslide

Associated Press
08:19 Sunday 10th August 2003

Seven members of the same family were killed by a landslide that buried their house while they were sleeping, police in Nepal say. [...]

White Island Volcano (New Zealand)

Sunday 10th August 2003

Over the last few months a substantial lake has formed in the active crater at White Island. This is the largest lake to have formed within this crater and has recently drowned the active vents. As a consequence future eruptions will occur through the crater lake and, if ejected by eruptions, moderate volumes of water could flood down the Main Crater floor towards the sea.

This is a significant change in the nature of volcanic hazards on the island. The current lake volume is large enough that it will influence the next phase of eruptive activity from the volcano and result in a new hazard to people visiting the island.

Yellowstone Volcano (USA)

Saturday 9th August 2003

Scientists plan to set up a temporary network of seismographs, Global Positioning System receivers and thermometers to monitor increasing hydrothermal activity in the Norris Geyser Basin and gauge the risk of a hydrothermal explosion...

The eyes have it

ALEXANDRA GIL

[...] Based on the results of 5,000 case histories, 2,000 questionnaires, 1,500 telephone interviews and a decade of experiments involving 20,000 people, Mr. Sheldrake asserts that intuition is not paranormal, but rather a normal function drawn from our biological past.

This experiment he's performing with me is just one of many he uses to explain his theory that the mind is not confined to the brain, but extends outside the body and actually connects with other images and beings, in some sort of stretchable morphic field.

"I'm saying the mind is more than the brain, just like a magnetic field is more extensive than a magnet," explains the London-based scientist, who has a PhD in biochemistry from Cambridge University.

In his book, Mr. Sheldrake claims that morphic fields link the members of a group together in a self-organizing system and underlie the bonds that form between pets and their owners, or nursing mothers and their babies. This model explains why a flock of birds, or a pack of racing cyclists, can intuit subtle shifts in the group's movement and make fluid split-second turns without colliding into one another, he says. [...]

Explorer finds key to Yeti mystery

Tests by experts at Cambridge University and in Australia have shown hairs and a footprint found on an Indonesian expedition by Newcastle's Andrew Sanderson and two fellow explorers do not belong to any known species.

Seeking answers to big 'mystery ape'

By Marsha Walton
CNN
Saturday, August 9, 2003 15:05 GMT

(CNN) -- From a remote region in the heart of Africa to a genetics lab at the Omaha Zoo, scientists are trying to find out if they have a new big ape on their hands.

"It doesn't look much like a gorilla, it doesn't look like a chimpanzee," said primatologist Shelly Williams, who captured a bit of video of the female mystery ape with a baby.

Pictures of the rare ape are scarce. Wildlife photographer Karl Amman, who was first to spot the mysterious mammals a few years ago, said the animal has feet that are about two inches bigger than the average gorilla and is more flat-faced than other apes. Its behavior also sets it apart from other apes, researchers say. [...]

So what could this animal be? [...]

Pre-Maya society unearthed

By Thomas H. Maugh II
Los Angeles Times
Posted August 9 2003

Nicolas Jarquin was cutting trees in preparation for constructing a warehouse on the property of a Nicaraguan agricultural company when he noticed several large mounds exposed by the activity, some with building foundations on their surface.

Before disturbing the mounds, he called in Spanish and Nicaraguan archaeologists working at the nearby prehistoric village of Karoline to have a look. What they found surprised everyone involved: evidence of a poorly known, complex civilization that existed in the tropical forest just before the Maya began to dominate regions to the north.

The city itself was abandoned between A.D. 400 and 440, according to radiocarbon dating. The top archaeological layer in both the city and the villages is composed of ashes and carbon, indicating that the structures were burned. [...]

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