He's Lean, he's green, and he's not too keen on reading. Frankenbush, he may not be smart, charismatic, or even a worthwhile human being, but he's the Prez and he has control of the worlds largest cache of WMD.

This roving nomad of a man is Karl Rove pulling a history buff costume right outta the 3rd Reich. We hear he borrowed the uniform from Dubya's Grand Daddy's Closet.

Done up in this skimpy number is the NSA(National Security Advisor) Condoleeza Rice: decked out and ready to bleed the world dry. Careful, one bite and you will become a gluttonous oil-seeking madman, ready to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqi kiddies in your quest for the Black Gold.

Wolfowitz. Enough said.

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Lex Luthor had cloned Jesus instead of Superman...Well, John Ashcroft has. He figures that on Halloween he should dress as the thing that scares him most. Rove put his foot down, and wouldn't let anyone else dress as a Nazi, so he became....BIZZARO JESUS!

A Scary Tale for Halloween

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away....

...a great war was waged against an Evil Empire. Over sixty million died. During the final days of the Great Battle Between Good and Evil, the receding armies of the Mad Magician, Supreme Leader of the Dark Side, left behind agents in the formerly occupied lands. The liberating armies enclosed the Evil Doers from two sides, the East and the West. Although these two groups were Allies against the Darkness that was now surrendering, having been temporarily thrown together to fight a common enemy, they had themselves longstanding differences, differences that would soon come to the fore as the common threat was vanquished.

Those of the West, known by the name of Atlantis, decided it would be strategically advantageous to make an alliance with the former members of the Evil Empire against the new "Threat from the East." Thus, after the war, rather than arresting and bringing to trial the former Evil Doers who remained in the West, the Leaders of Atlantis made peace with them and integrated them into their intelligence system.

These men and woman were known as the "Stay-Behinds."

In the Land of the West, the former members of the Dark Side were given their own organization known as the Office for Political Coordination. It's first director was Frank G. Wisner. Wisner was full of energy in his new post, setting up in the first year, 1947, a world-wide network. Included among this network were a number of occult groups bringing together fascist Christians and Royalty, including the Order of the Priory of Sion, well known for its links to the Rennes le Chateau affair.

In the early fifties, the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency of Atlantis, forced the OPC to join his organization. The Atlantean government admitted then that this OPC had existed, but they insisted it had been dissolved as its activities were illegal. They were to redissolve this already dissolved organization in the seventies and again in 1990.

Although Wisner was now under the authority of the Director of the CIA, the means at his disposal had greatly improved, including the Psychological Warfare Center at Fort Bragg under Major-General Robert A. McClure. This was later renamed to the Special Warfare School (1956-68), the Institute for Military Assistance (1969-83), and finally the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (since 1983), an "honor" that the murdered President might not be too proud of.

According to the Church Report, this network included 3,000 collaborators, 47 foreign posts, and had a budget of $200 million in 1952. Wisner claimed responsibility for the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran (1953) and Jacopo Arbenz in Guatemala (1954), as well as the founding of the non-communist trade unions in Europe after the war, most likely through the work of AFL-CIO representative Irving Brown in Paris, in charge of the work of the Stay-Behinds in the left.

In 1958, Richard M. Bissell took over from Frank G. Wisner. He was followed by Richard M. Helms, Desmond Fritzgerald, Thomas H. Karamessines and William E. Colby.

In 1973 the office was once again rearranged under the name Operations Direction and has had as Directors William Nelson, William Wells, John N. McMahon, Max C. Hugel, John H. Stein, Clair E. George, and Richard F. Stolz. It focused its activities in Latin Atlantis, carrying out assassinations of opposition leaders. They used the network in Europe to track down and eliminate those who tried to flee. The training of these agents was done at the infamous School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, renamed in 2001 the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC). The school is well-known as the place where the tortures of the military dictatorships in Latin Atlantis got their training.

The Stay-Behind network was very active during the Cold War in building and maintaining the hysteria around the Red Menace, as the threat from the East had been labeled. This began in the years immediately following the war. Edward W. Barrett, member of the stay-behind network, director of the Interdepartmental Psychological Strategy Board - IPSB, and columnist at Newsweek, organized a campaign to manipulate public opinion. The use of the media to impose an officially sanctioned version of events became very useful after the assassination of Kennedy.

In Europe, the network was involved in the coup d'état that brought De Gaulle back to power in 1958. De Gaulle was supposed to secure Algeria and prevent it from becoming independent. The Stay-Behinds were worried that Algeria would become a Soviet ally and form an additional enemy to Israel. When De Gaulle decided to withdraw from Algeria, the Stay-Behinds tried a second coup in 1961, this time to remove De Gaulle. This was done behind the back of Kennedy. De Gaulle, who had an idea of the tactics, having profited from them, was able to take to the airwaves and call for public support against the generals in Algiers.

It was also the period of the Bay of Pigs. The man in charge was Richard M Bissell, the head of the Stay-Behind network, who worked very closely with anti-Communist crusader and Vice-President Richard Nixon.

In his work, The Taking Of America, 1-2-3, Richard Sprague brings together evidence that shows that the same group was responsible for the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy's assassination, the killing of Robert Kennedy, the shooting of George Wallace, the framing of Ted Kennedy at Chappiquiddick, and the carrying out of the Watergate break-in. These operatives were all part of the Stay-Behind network.

But there was another man who made a curious phone call on the day Kennedy was murdered

George H. Bush: An Unauthorized Biography

On the day of the Kennedy assassination, FBI records show George Bush as reporting a right-wing member of the Houston Young Republicans for making threatening comments about President Kennedy. According to FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act,

On November 22, 1963 Mr. GEORGE H.W. BUSH, 5525 Briar, Houston, Texas, telephonically advised that he wanted to relate some hear say that he had heard in recent weeks, date and source unknown. He advised that one JAMES PARROTT had been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.

PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in politics in the Houston area.

According to related FBI documentation, "a check with Secret Service at Houston, Texas revealed that agency had a report that PARROTT stated in 1961 he would kill President Kennedy if he got near him." Here Bush is described as "a reputable businessman." FBI agents were sent to interrogate Parrott's mother, and later James Milton Parrott himself. Parrott had been discharged from the US Air Force for psychiatric reasons in 1959. Parrott had an alibi for the time of the Dallas shootings; he had been in the company of another Republican activist. According to press accounts, Parrott was a member of the right-wing faction of the Houston GOP which was oriented towards the John Birch Society and which opposed Bush's chairmanship. 19 According to the San Francisco Examiner, Bush's press office in August, 1988 first said that Bush had not made any such call, and challenged the authenticity of the FBI documents. Several days later Bush's spokesman said that the candidate "does not recall" placing the call.

One day later after he reported Parrott to the FBI, Bush received a highly sensitive, high-level briefing from the Bureau:

Date: November 29, 1963
To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State
From: John Edgar Hoover, Director
Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963 advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in US policy, which is not true.

Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the US but to all Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.

An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that those individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W.T. Forsyth of this Bureau.

The Bush clique later denied (in 1988) that the Bush mentioned in the report was the future president and father of King George the Second. But "other" George Bush was tracked down and signed an affidavit swearing that he had never received this memo.

What is striking about the phone call is that on the very day that Kennedy was struck down, Bush calls to give himself an alibi. Convenient, no?

Bush's phone call is similar to the actions of Donald Rumsfeld on September 11. But more on that below.

After getting Nixon elected in 1968, the Stay-Behinds were prepared to reap the rewards. But it appears that Nixon and Kissinger were to repeat the ungrateful actions of General Charles De Gaulle. Once in office, they came to believe that Atlantis could not wage a successful war in Asia without the backing of the Atlantean public. Kissinger's realpolitik replaced the containment strategy of the Stay-Behinds. We do not think for a minute that this put either Nixon or Kissinger on the road of freedom for the world's oppressed. It looks more like a quarrel over means within the ruling elite. The Nixon/Kissinger strategy was détente, the negotiation of the SALT and ABM Treaties, and plans to take on the Red Menance via economic means and covert actions, essentially the strategy employed by Breszinski to entice the Soviets into Afghanistan. And we know how that ended.

After the liberation of Saigon by the Viet Cong, Congress cut back on the military budget, much to the anguish of the arms producers and their cronies in the Stay Behinds. This included the Space Race. The Space Race had been an important part of Stay-Behind strategy since Werner von Braun and SS his rocket scientists were brought into the Atlantis under Operation Paperclip in the period after the war. The Stay Behinds wanted control of space and the militarization of space. They were behind the Star Wars project of Reagan in the eighties and have brought the issue back to the fore under Donald Rumsfeld in the Bush Reich. We'll look at this below.

In the post-Watergate era, the Stay Behinds took a public beating. Information came out about their operations including Operation Paperclip, which continued recruiting former Nazis into the sixties. However, were these people "former" Nazis? In another project, Nazi doctors were continuing experiments on 700 "volunteers" from the US Army at Edgewood, Maryland. These were continuations of the chemical arms experiments started at Dachau.

But the Stay Behinds were quick to reorganize. Gerald Ford cut a deal with Nixon prior to being named Vice President after Spiro Agnew resigned. He would pardon Nixon and get rid of the tapes. He also had to calm public opinion and give the appearance of rooting out the "evil" that had settled in Washington during the Nixon years. Of course, the evil was there long beforehand and well knew how to look after itself. Ford had been a member of the Warren Commission, the official cover-up to the conspiracy by the Stay-Behinds to liquidate Kennedy. He admitted in 1997 that he had rewritten a passage in the report that described the wound in Kennedy's back, moving it several inches up in order to fit the description of the bullet that supposedly hit both Kennedy and Connelly.

In order to calm the tensions between Kissinger and the hawks, as well as to throw a bone to public opinion, Ford carried out what became to be known as the Halloween Massacre on November 3, 1975. He confirmed Kissinger as Secretary of State, but took away his title as National Security Councilor. He gave that position to General Brent Scowcroft. He got rid of Secretary of Defense James Schlessinger and replaced him with the White House Chief of Staff, a man by the name of Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld's job went to a guy by the name of Dick Cheney. The director of the CIA, William Colby was replaced by George H. Bush.

This was followed shortly by the formation of the Atlantean Enterprise Institute, the neocon think tank that has been behind the right wing brainwashing of the Atlantean public. Scoop Jackson, the Senator from Mississippi, was the front man, and his group included Richard Perle.

The security concern of the moment was the Country of the Red Menace. The arms merchants needed an enemy, the Stay-Behinds were on a crusade. All they needed was some proof of a threat. Ford set up two committees to investigate the Red threat. Team A was comprised of experts from the CIA. Team B was made up of members of the Stay-Behinds including Paul H. Nitze, Eugene V. Rostow and William R. Van Cleave. Also on Team B was George Bush, who managed to get himself on both teams. Team B's report was written by, among others, Richard Pipes, Paul Wolfowitz, and General Lyman Lemnitzer (part of the infamous Northwoods report from the early 60s, the report that suggested the US might need to arrange an attack on itself in order to justify invading Cuba).

The final reports were deposited in December 1976, just prior to Ford leaving office after his defeat to Jimmy Carter.

The Team B report argued that the Country of the Red Menace was preparing to attack Atlantis, a position in contradiction to the analysis of the CIA. Are we starting to see any similarities here to what happened around Iraq? Richard Pipes published an abridged version of the report in Commentary in July 1977 under the title "Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War." On the basis of this report, Congress reactivated the arms program. Von Braun's former SS squad had been perfecting the intercontinental ballistic missile. The Challenger and Atlantis programs were started to bring the Atlantean military into space.

Richard Pipes is the father of Daniel Pipes, neocon in the Bush Reich, fanatical Zionist and racist whose speeches, were they about the Jews, would be labeled hate literature. He was recently nominated the head of the Atlantean Institute of Peace. These guys have a real sense of humor.

Here we see the same split between the CIA and the Stay-Behinds that we have seen in the last year over Iraq. Carter was subjected to the same harassment by the Stay-Behinds as Clinton would later face during his presidency.

Under Reagan, the Stay-Behinds were back in power. Rostow and Van Cleave were nominated to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Richard Pipes was the White House's Kremlinologist. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who had contributed generously to the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, one of the neocon fronts set up at the time of the Atlantean Enterprise Institute, was named ambassador to the UN. Michael Novak, investor in the AEI, was named Atlantean representative to the International Commission on Human Rights. Donald Rumsfeld became the Special Councilor on Arms Control, in which capacity he visited Baghdad in 1983 and made a deal with Saddam Hussein.

Reagan began his war on terror in Latin America, stifling any opposition to Atlantean economic and political interests, and declared the Country of the Red Menace the Empire of Evil. He started up the Star Wars program, implementing the stay-behinds program for the militarization of space.

The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush says that Bush was pretty much running things during the Reagan presidency. Reagan was the front man, telling funny stories, but doing nothing more than reading scripts. He needed long naps in the afternoon. Reagan was manipulated through the influence of James Baker on Nancy Reagan, a vain and shallow woman who was mostly interested in how she was perceived in the press.

The Bush Reich

Running through the program of the stay behinds since WWII was the preoccupation of space. They wanted to see Atlantis achieve military hegemony in space. At the close of the century, Rumsfeld put space back on the agenda, serving as chairman of the Commission to Assess Atlantean National Security Space Management and Organization. In their report, he had this to say about a possibly necessary "Space Pearl Harbor":

Report of the Commission to Assess U.S. National Security Space Management and Organization

History is replete with instances in which warning signs were ignored and change resisted until an external, “improbable” event forced resistant bureaucracies to take action. The question is whether the U.S. will be wise enough to act responsibly and soon enough to reduce U.S. space vulnerability. Or whether, as in the past, a disabling attack against the country and its people—a “Space Pearl Harbor”—will be the only event able to galvanize the nation and cause the U.S. Government to act.

We are on notice, but we have not noticed.

Returning to the psychology of the Northwood's report, Rumsfeld foresaw how such an attack would "galvanize the nation and cause the Atlantean Government to act." It seems he then proceeded to organize said "disabling attack."

Rumsfeld returned to the Pentagon as Secretary of Defense under George the Second. He formed what he referred to as "The Cabal", made up of his cronies from the Ford years. As happened then, two teams were set up to produce evidence for an invasion of Iraq, one of CIA experts, the other of the same group who had formed Team B under Ford. And guess what? The same thing happened again. The Cabal produced a long list of lies and manipulations in order to convince the Atlantean public that Saddam Hussein was 1) involved in 9/11, 2) was an immediate threat to the security of Atlantis, 3) was the possessor of a large cache of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The morning of September 11, 2001, Rumsfeld was in his Pentagon office discussing the best ways of making a profit on killing people. Just minutes prior to the first plane hitting the first tower of the WTC, he remarked:

Inside, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had some people in to talk about missile defense and the risk that terrorism seen in the past would happen again. "Let me tell ya," he said, "I've been around the block a few times. There will be another event." Two minutes later, a plane smashed into the first World Trade Center tower and proved him right. »
A day beyond belief for all America, par Calvin Woodward, Associated Press, 16 September 2001.

Not bad. Give the guy an A for his intelligence. Continuing on, he made the following prediction:

"If we remain vulnerable to missile attack, a terrorist group or rogue state that demonstrates the capacity to strike the U.S. or its allies from long range could have the power to hold our entire country hostage to nuclear or other blackmail,'' he said. "And let me tell you, I've been around the block a few times. There will be another event. " He repeated it for emphasis : "There will be another event. " Within minutes of that utterance, Rumsfeld's words proved tragically prophetic."
Chairman Cox's Statement on the Terrorist Attack on America, Christopher Cox, 11 September 2001.

Two for two! Way to go, Donald! This guy really knew something! But that's not all. The prophetic Mr. Rumsfeld continued with his predictions:

Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence, was in his office on the eastern side of the building, in a meeting with Christopher Cox, the defence policy committee chairman of the House of Representatives. Mr Rumsfeld, recalls Mr Cox, watched the TV coverage from New York and said : "Believe me, this isn't over yet. There's going to be another attack, and it could be us." 
Revealed : what really went on during Bush's 'missing hours', William Langleyere, The Daily Telegraph, 16 December 2001.

Give the man the cigar! Boy, if they had had intelligence this good prior to going into Iraq...

A month later, after the preparations for the invasion of Iraq were underway, Rumsfeld made the following comment in a interview:

Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Parade Magazine

Friday, Oct. 12, 2001

They [find a lot] and any number of terrorist efforts have been dissuaded, deterred or stopped by good intelligence gathering and good preventive work. It is a truth that a terrorist can attack any time, any place, using any technique and it's physically impossible to defend at every time and every place against every conceivable technique. Here we're talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filed with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center. The only way to deal with this problem is by taking the battle to the terrorists, wherever they are, and dealing with them.

Is this a Freudian slip? Rumsfeld admits that the Pentagon was hit by something other than a commercial jet.

How does this scary tale end? We don't know. Legend has it that Atlantis was involved in a great war with the "Athenians" who narrowly won. However, afterwards they were both subjected to a great cataclysm that wiped all traces of their great civilizations from their planet.

It also appears there was a priestly caste, sworn to worship a blood-thirsty god who demanded human sacrifice. Followers of the blood-lust god had to cut off part of their sexual organs to appease the god. There are indications that this priestly caste was intimately linked with the Stay-Behind network on Atlantis, however these tales are too scary even for Halloween.

Much of the information in this section not otherwise attributed was freely translated from several articles on the French site Réseau Voltaire, including Stay-behind : les réseaux d'ingérence américains and Les marionnettistes de Washington. This is the site of Thierry Meyssan, the French journalist who wrote the book uncovering the problems in the official story on what happened at the Pentagon.

German MP sparks Jewish row

A German MP has caused a storm of protest by linking Jews to execution squads in the Russian Revolution.

Conservative Martin Hohmann said a large numbers of Jews were active in execution squads and could therefore be described as a nation of perpetrators.

His speech triggered an angry response from the Jewish community and members of his CDU party, with some calling for him to stand down.

The Christian Democrats have faced allegations in the past about members having links to the extreme right. Mr Hohmann's comments were made during a speech nearly a month ago, but have only surfaced now.

'Perpetrators'

He compared the killings, which he said were orchestrated by Jews in Russia's violent 1917 revolution, with the murder of Europe's Jews during the Holocaust of the Second World War.

According to a transcript of his speech shown on the website of his local CDU branch in Neuhof, Mr Hohmann said: "Jews were active in great numbers in the leadership as well as in the Cheka (Soviet secret police) firing squads.

There is no place for anti-Semites in the German parliament

Dieter Wiefelspuetz
"Thus one could describe Jews with some justification as a Taetervolk (a race of perpetrators).

"That may sound horrible. But it would follow the same logic with which one describes the Germans as a race of perpetrators."

The speech has since been taken off the site.

The BBC's Ray Furlong in Berlin says Mr Hohmann has now gone further in defending his remarks on national television.

He said the MP demanded "justice" for Germans and that they should not define themselves as the nation who caused Auschwitz.

Taboo

The head of Germany's Jewish community, Paul Spiegel, called Mr Hohmann's speech "a reach into the lowest drawer of disgusting anti-Semitism".

He said he had spoken to CDU leader Angela Merkel and assured reporters "she shared my views".

Our correspondent says any criticism of Jewish people is still a taboo in Germany, which makes this extremely embarrassing for Mr Hohmann's party.

The CDU's secretary-general, Laurenz Meyer, said he had urged Mr Hohmann to apologise as quickly as possible, but refused to comment on whether he would be forced to give up his seat.

Dieter Wiefelspuetz, a senior parliamentarian for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats, took a harder line.

"There is no place for anti-Semites in the German parliament," he said.

Comment: Mr Hohmanns comments are borne out by historical fact, the only problem being that certain historical facts concerning the actions of Jews are repeatedly covered up. Anyone attempting to review the "official" history of certain Jewish leaders is, as Mr Hohmann is experiencing, immediately vilified by the many powerful Jewish lobby groups.

For some strange reason, the question that is never asked is why an objective look at Jewish history elicits such an extreme and sometimes violent reaction from Jewish groups? Surely the truth stands up for itself? The fact that "official" Jewish history is essentially a "no go" area, strongly suggests that there is something to hide. Mr Hohmann is one of very few Germans with the courage to ask very pertinent questions. The label "Holocaust denier" has become a very effective censorship tool. Yet there is the question of the holocaust of 40 million Russians, 10 million Ukrainians, etc. The question then is, who are the real "holocaust deniers"?

Flashback: "51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis"

Book Review by William Hughes

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

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

On another front, the "Third Congress of the Jewish Community of the Far East," was held in Jan., 1940, in Harbin, Manchuria, then reeling under a brutal military occupation by the Japanese imperial forces. At that time, too, Tokyo was already aligned with Hitler and Italy’s Mussolini, in the notorious Anti-Comintern Pact. Also, keep in mind, that the Japanese’s murderous "Rape of Nanking," had occurred in Dec., 1937, and the "Crystal Night" incident on Nov. 9, 1938. Nevertheless, the Zionist confab went out of its way to legitimize the Japanese occupation by certifying it as a guarantor of the "equality of all citizens," in that beleaguered land.

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

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

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

Holocaust is 'no excuse,' Mahathir says

Reuters KUALA LUMPUR
October 31, 2003

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, speaking on the eve of his retirement, said yesterday that the Jewish people's past sufferings in Europe were no excuse for taking Arab land and persecuting Muslims.

The 78-year-old Muslim leader, who steps down today after 22 years in power, said the Jews were now guilty of persecuting Muslims in the same way that Europeans had persecuted Jews down the ages.

"They must never think they are the chosen people who cannot be criticized at all," Mahathir said yesterday when asked if he had one last message for the world's Jews.

His October 16 speech to leaders of Islamic nations had centered on the need for Muslims to join the modern world, use their brains, make peace and stamp out suicide bombing. [...]

But Mahathir said the past suffering of Jews was a source of sadness for Muslims. "They suffered a great deal in the past. They were killed, they were massacred," he said. "We sympathize with them. We were very sad to see how the Jews were so ill-treated by the Europeans."

Mahathir denies being anti-Semitic and says he has Jewish friends. He reiterated yesterday that the root problem between Jews and Muslims was the occupation of Arab land to form the state of Israel. "It is not religion at all. It is territorial. You take somebody's land and they will fight for it."

Silenced witnesses

In a seven-week period this spring, two overseas observers were killed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, and a third left brain dead. But has the truth yet been told? John Sweeney investigates

30 October 2003

James Miller taught my children to surf. Together, the two of us went to Kosovo, Chechnya and Zimbabwe. He was funny, decent to the core, a genius behind the camera lens. Together, we celebrated winning a Royal Television Society gong by having one shandy too many. I fell into an argument with an irritating cove in a penguin suit. James stepped in, threatening to take said cove outside and sort him out. At which point, some PR floozie whispered in my ear: "Do you know who that is?" No. "It's the head of ITV." Don't watch it much anyway. James and I had so much fun and, occasionally, we did the work.

I was in Baghdad when I heard the news. He had been shot in Rafah, at the fag-end of the Gaza Strip, and was dead.

I phoned his widow Sophy immediately, and wept buckets. When the BBC decided to investigate James's killing, they asked me to report for the film. I couldn't say no.

James was not the first international witness to fall silent in Rafah. He was the third. This spring, in less than seven weeks, and within a radius of less than three miles, the American human-shield activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer; the British photographer and peace activist Tom Hurndall was shot in the head and rendered brain-dead; and James Miller was shot dead.

To understand what happened to James, it made sense to investigate the killing of Rachel and the maiming of Tom, whose family are currently discussing with doctors whether or not his life-support machine should be switched off. One day we filmed Tom lying in his hospital bed at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in Putney, south-west London. On the wall was a battery of photographs showing Tom with a whole life ahead of him. The bleep-bleep of the monitor was the only sound. That afternoon, we had travelled to a Devon village to film Sophy Miller, James's widow, and their children, Alexander, three, and Lotte, not yet one.

Making our film, When Killing Is Easy, has been the most harrowing ordeal of my professional life. But it is vital that it is evidential - and that is really tough when the Israeli government and the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) have refused to speak to us. From mid-August we faxed and telephoned the Israelis repeatedly, asking them to explain their actions. All we got was a series of old press releases.

Rachel Corrie was the first of the three victims. She was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). They are young idealists, mainly European and American, who offer themselves as human shields. You could call them naive, even foolish. There is no doubting their guts. They stand between the Israeli bulldozers and their targets, the Palestinians' homes that the IDF wants to flatten.

The Israelis have their reasons. Rafah is a stronghold of Islamic extremism in Gaza. The Palestinians dig tunnels underneath the Israeli-controlled border to their relatives in Egypt. The tunnels, the Israelis say, are used to smuggle guns and bombs. It is fair to point out that few, if any, suicide bombers have come from Gaza, for the simple reason that the Israelis have made it virtually impossible for ordinary residents to leave the strip. Even so, to make the tunnelling more difficult the IDF has created a Berlin Wall-style "death strip". The ISM people come along and get in the way. The Israeli government calls them "irresponsible", "illegal" and "terrorist sympathisers".

All of this must be seen in the context of the second intifada, where Israeli military actions have frequently occurred in response to Palestinian suicide bombings. So far, 800 Israelis have been killed and 2,200 Palestinians.

On 16 March this year, Rachel and her friends from the ISM were defending the home of Dr Samir Nasser Allah from the bulldozers. The human shields had been successful in getting in the way. Tom Dale and Alice Coy, fellow ISM activists, watched a bulldozer rumble straight towards Rachel. She stood her ground. The bulldozer didn't stop. Dale, an Oxford undergraduate, had a clear view of the incident. "He [the driver] knew absolutely she was there. The bulldozer waited for a few seconds over her body and it then reversed, leaving its scoop down so that if she had been under the bulldozer, it would have crushed her a second time. Only later when it was much more clear of her body did it raise its scoop."

Rachel was able to tell Coy: "My back is broken." She died soon afterwards. A still photograph of the scene clearly shows the ISM activists gathered around the mortally wounded Rachel. In the background is the bulldozer. Connecting the two are straight bulldozer tracks.

The Israeli pathologist Dr Yehudah Hiss noted that Rachel appeared to have been run over by a bulldozer, and found the cause of death to be "pressure to the chest". Rachel's shoulder blades had been crushed, her spine broken in five places and six ribs broken. Her face was apparently slashed by the blade.

The IDF produced a field report that stated that "Corrie was not run over by an engineering vehicle", and, for good measure, that she was "hidden from view of the vehicle's operator". The IDF backed up its version by allowing Israeli television to do a sound-only interview with the soldier who drove the bulldozer. He said: "When I was doing the earthworks, I picked up a load of earth and pushed it along. Nobody was there at the time. Maybe she was buried there. I don't know. I didn't see her." There was a second soldier in the bulldozer. What did he see? We don't know.

The IDF report goes on to assert that Rachel "was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete, resulting in her death". But what about the Israeli pathologist's finding of multiple crush injuries, which is not consistent with a single slab of concrete falling on her? Curiously, when the military police later carried out a criminal investigation, they concluded that she was not "hit by a bulldozer" but had stumbled on building waste.

The family of Rachel Corrie believe the defence force's version of events to be a blatant fabrication. The IDF wouldn't talk to us about Rachel's death; the Israeli military police's investigation is complete and no Israeli soldier has been charged with any wrongdoing.

Tom Hurndall was shot in the head on 11 April. The IDF has admitted shooting Tom, but they imply that they had good reason to do so; he was wearing camouflage fatigues and firing a gun at an IDF outpost. The IDF's field report even provides two diagrams showing the location of the gunman firing at them.

Tom's father, Anthony Hurndall, a City of London property lawyer, has investigated his son's shooting. The two diagrams in the IDF report locate Tom's position when he was shot in two different places. The sites are contradictory. Thirteen eyewitnesses and two chains of photographs locate Tom in a different place, about 100 metres further away from the death strip. The eyewitnesses say that Tom was not firing a gun at the Israelis, but helping a Palestinian toddler who had frozen under Israeli fire.

Immediately after Tom was shot, he was moved out of the firing line by two Palestinian youths to a safer place where he could be given first aid. Two photographers took a series of stills showing Tom being picked up. Blood is spurting from his head, so you can tell the pictures were taken within seconds of him being shot. In the background of both sets of photographs are some distinctive Hamas graffiti, nailing the site of Tom's shooting to the location identified by the eyewitnesses.

The IDF field report asserts that Tom was wearing camouflage fatigues. ISM activists deliberately wear bright fluorescent jackets, to identify themselves and to distinguish themselves from Palestinian terror groups. The South African photographer Garth Stead took black-and-white pictures, but one of them shows clearly that Tom is wearing a distinctive jacket. The second set of stills and an amateur video recording prove the jacket to be, not camouflage fatigues, but orange. I asked Stead whether it would be possible to mistake orange for camouflage. He replied: "Not unless he was an orange-picker."

The family of Tom Hurndall also believes the IDF's version of events to be a fabrication. His father, after six weeks of investigation, reluctantly came to the conclusion that "this is a case of attempted murder. If Tom dies, and that is a likelihood, then it will be murder." A military investigation continues.

James Miller was shot on 2 May. He had been in Rafah for more than two weeks, for a good part of the time basing himself in a private home that the IDF called "the house of the journalists". On the last night of filming there had been some gunfire, mainly or exclusively from the Israeli armoured personnel carriers, at Palestinian targets.

Quiet followed, and then the troops in the personnel carriers addressed James and his reporter Saira Shah. (The pair had made two stunningly successful films in Afghanistan, winning many awards.) James's camera recorded that the Israeli troops were calling out to them, not in Hebrew, but in Arabic. It is believed that they were from the Bedouin Desert Patrol Unit; Arab volunteers who fight for the Israelis for money. The Bedouin are not nervous Israeli reservists but battle-hardened volunteers who serve in Rafah for long periods of time.

They called out in Arabic: "Do you like Fairuz?" (a Lebanese folk singer) and: "Do you wear perfume?" - a catchphrase from an Egyptian sitcom. Saira Shah thought them so outspoken that they might have been high on something.

There were two cameras recording the scene; James's and that of a Palestinian stringer working for Associated Press TV News (APTN). Two personnel carriers that had been in the area shut off their engines and switched off their lights. It's an old soldier's trick; to see in the dark you douse your lights and your natural night vision improves dramatically. You can see them; they can't see you. Moreover, thanks to American military aid, the IDF has some of the best night-vision equipment in the world. The armoured personnel carriers in Rafah routinely carry two rifles equipped with Aquila night-sights, which draw in the available light and give fourfold magnification. James and his team were sitting in a well-lit veranda. The soldiers in the personnel carrier would have seen them clearly with their natural night vision and brilliantly through their night-sights.

The IDF field report into James's death remains confidential, but we have seen a leaked version. It clearly states that, after some shooting, the night fell quiet.

James had been filming in the hope of recording the Israelis dynamiting one of the abandoned homes on the edge of the death strip, but it looked as though the IDF had stopped work for the night. The team decided to leave the house from where they had been filming and return to their (much safer) flat in the centre of Rafah. It was the last day of filming.

They decided to be open and straightforward; to approach one of the personnel carriers directly and ask for safe passage. James, Saira and their local fixer Aboud headed directly for the vehicle, shouting in English and Arabic. Saira was holding a British passport, Aboud held a white flag on to which James was shining a torch. From the veranda, the APTN cameraman filmed the scene. On tape you can clearly hear that the night is deathly quiet. There is no sound of crossfire. Had there been any, the team would not have taken the risk.

They had walked about 20 metres from the veranda when the first shot rang out. The team froze. For 13 seconds, there is silence broken only by Saira's cry: "We are British journalists." Then comes the second shot, which killed James. He was shot in the front of his neck. The bullet was Israeli issue, fired, according to a forensic expert, from less than 200 metres away.

Immediately after the shooting, the IDF said that James had been shot in the back during crossfire. It later retracted the assertion about where in his body he was shot, but until today it has maintained that he was shot during crossfire. There was no crossfire on the APTN tape.

The Israeli Defence Force and the government of Israel chose not to talk to us about James Miller's case. A military investigation continues.

Since the start of the second intifada, 2,200 Palestinians have been killed. Nine Israeli soldiers have been indicted for various offences, but none has been convicted of unlawful killing. But this, from the killing fields of the Occupied Territories, is something new: the killing and maiming of Western journalists and peace activists. And, unlike the Palestinians, the families of the international victims have been able to bring pressure to bear. They have, however, had precious few satisfactory answers.

We showed the APTN film of James's shooting to a serving Israeli soldier. He noted that the television team did not look like Islamic terrorists and concluded: "That's murder."

Oh what a stupid war

By Aluf Benn

The declaration of diplomatic war against the Geneva understandings is one of the more stupid undertakings of the Sharon government. Not only is it giving free publicity to Yossi Beilin and political authority to a virtual agreement he worked out with his Palestinian friends, it also exposes the paucity of initiative on the part of the government.

Once again, it brings back memories of the days of Yitzhak Shamir when there was a law prohibiting meetings with PLO officials. Ariel Sharon marketed himself as a moderate leader, preaching "painful concessions," but his government is operating according to its right flank: building fences and settlements, along with empty mumblings about a political arrangement sometime in the future. [...]

Sharon says Israel ready for peace talks

The Straits Times
Oct 31, 10.21 am

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Thursday that he was ready to negotiate with the new Palestinian Prime Minister at any time, but US officials took a tougher stance, saying the Palestinians must first dismantle terror organisations. [...]

Comment: If Sharon is ready for peace, why is he preparing remote-controlled bulldozers and finishing up the "Security Wall"?

"Go to the West Bank" Yelled the Soldier

Nick Pretzlik - 22 October 2003

The first that Fares Abu Mohamer and his wife knew of the catastrophe, which was about to befall them was when they heard that roar of the bulldozer. That was at 9 o'clock this morning and their baby was still asleep in his cot. They were given 10 minutes to collect a few items and told to vacate the black tent and corrugated zinc shack which passed as their home.

Fifteen minutes later Fares stood with his pregnant wife, his young son, his two sisters and his mother looking at the rubble of their home. Many of the family's possessions had been destroyed. There was no time to save the baby food and the police and soldiers even refused Fares a few extra minutes to salvage his wife's jewellery - her only personal possession. Instead the soldiers yelled at him "Go to the West Bank".

Of course the irony is that were Fares and his family already in the West Bank there would have been nothing unusual about the dawn demolition of their house. It happens there all the time. But Fares does not live in the West Bank. He lives in Wadi al Naam in Israel's northern Negev and, like all Negev Bedouin, Fares and his family are Israeli citizens. They pay taxes and vote in national elections. [...]

A Few more assassinations associated with the Bush clan from Bush Body Count:

Governor Mel Carnahan
In the midst of a heated race for the Senate against John Ashcroft, the Governor died in a plane crash on October 16, 2000. His death affected Democrats in two ways - it would hurt their chances of seizing control of the US Senate, and it would strongly impact the Presidential race between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Said St. Louis University political scientist Ken Warren, "There will be a sympathy vote, but that won't be enough to allow him to win. "I don't think the race will be very close. It's over." As we know now, Ashcroft lost to a dead man. Carnahan was elected by a landslide.

Dan Rocco
He died on April 1, 2002, in a plane crash in Gainesville, Georgia. He was an executive vice president at ChoicePoint, the firm that gained infamy with their faulty "felons" list supplied to Katherine Harris during the 2000 election in Florida. As a result of this list, thousands of voters (mostly African-American voters) were wrongly identified as felons and purged from the rolls.

Paul Wilcher
His partially decomposed body was found in his home, still seated on the toilet. According to the Washington Times, "...he was investigating the theory of an 'October Surprise' conspiracy during the 1980 federal election campaign. He had been interviewing an inmate who claimed to have piloted George Bush to Paris so he could secretly seek to delay the release of 52 American hostages in Iran."

Senator John Tower
He was appointed by the Reagan/Bush Administration to chair the bipartisan committee to investigate the Iran/Contra scandals. He directed the Tower Report and had all the Iran Contra documents that told the real story. He was killed in an airplane crash later in Georgia in 1991. Also killed was his daughter, Marian.

Mohammed Zia al-huk
Dictator of Pakistan, and knew all about Iran/Contra, the training, funding, and arming of narco-terrorists like Osama bin Laden. In August 1988, the same day George Bush got the Republican nomination, his plane crashed into the ground with all engines running. The Pakistanis kept the bodies around (in violation of Islamic custom) for weeks, awaiting US experts. They showed up three weeks later and never checked the bodies. Why?

William Colby
This former CIA director disappeared in an apparent boating accident, and a body was later discovered (minus the life jacket Colby's friends insisted he always wore while boating) and buried promptly. John DeCamp, a lawyer from Lincoln, Nebraska, and Colby's close friend and confidant, said Colby's death was not an accident. He stated that Colby was prepared to disclose that missing P.O.W.'s were working for a dope smuggling operation orchestrated by General Colin Powell, Pentagon official Richard Armitage, and George H. W. Bush.

Olof Palme
He was the prime minister of Sweden, assassinated in 1986. Oliver North, the golden boy of the Bush/Reagan machine, had met with Mr. Palme to discuss the possibility of obtaining false end-user certificates for the plethora of weapons that were being purchased, so that they would seem to have come from a country other than the U.S. Mr. Palme refused to participate, after the plan was presented to him. He was dead within weeks.

William Casey
William Casey was CIA Director during the Reagan/Bush Administration. He died 2 days before he was to testify about his and others' involvement in the Iran/Contra scandal.

The moral of the story: Don't get on a small plane, and don't travel alone at night if you have done dirty work or refused to do dirty work for the Bush's. There are many more mysterious deaths listed at the above link. Also notice the silenced voices section of the list. Why do people who start to figure out the terrifying consequences of a Bush in power suddenly decide to commit suicide?

Edmond J. Safra
Banker Edmond J. Safra died mysteriously when a fire swept his Monaco penthouse apartment. His banks had been used for laundering money by the Bush Iran/Contra traitors.

Steve Kangas
His web site, Liberalism Resurgent, was meticulously researched and presented such a problem to the right, especially Richard Scaife, that he hired a private detective to look into Kangas' past. Steve Kangas was found in a 39th-floor bathroom outside of Scaife's offices at One Oxford Centre, in Pittsburgh, an apparent suicide.
Mr. Kangas, a very prolific writer, left no note. He had brought a fully-packed suitcase of clothes with him to Pittsburgh. He bought a burglar alarm shortly before he left for Pittsburgh. Why did he need a burglar alarm if he was going to commit suicide? An avowed advocate of gun control, he nevertheless bought a gun. What was he afraid of? Why did he go to Pittsburgh? After his death, his computer was sold for $150 and its hard drive wiped clean. Everything in his apartment was thrown away.

Danny Casolaro
He was working on a book that tied together the scandals surrounding the presidency of George H. W. Bush. He told his friends he was going to "bring back" the head of the Octopus. Instead, his body was found in a hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, on August 10, 1991, an apparent suicide.

Mark Lombardi
He was an accomplished conceptual artist who, while chatting on the phone with a banker friend about the Bush savings and loan scandal, started doodling a diagram and was inspired to create a complex series of drawings and sketches that charted the details of the scandal. According to the New York Times, "He was soon charting the complex matrices of personal and professional relationships, conflict of interest, malfeasance and fraud uncovered by investigations into the major financial and political scandals of the day; to keep facts and sources straight, he created a handwritten database that now includes around 12,000 3-by-5-inch cards."

On the evening of March 22, 2000, Mark Lombardi was found hanging in his loft, an apparent suicide.

James Hatfield
Mr. Hatfield was the author of Fortunate Son, an unauthorized biography of George W. Bush. The book detailed Bush's cocaine use and cover up of a cocaine arrest. He was found Wednesday, July 18, in a motel room, an apparent suicide.

Assassination is a way of life for the Bush's. The stench of death refuses to haunt these murderers since the Zombified American populace no longer has the energy to care. The life force has been sucked right of them by these vampires. If there ever was evidence for mind control and dark cultic thinking patterns, it is the fact that the world is being pillaged, there own way of life is being destroyed, and the right of the Bush Reich to maim is defended. Defending murder is even equated with faith in Jesus Christ for some.

Evil reigns over as all. So many are imprisioned in the dark dungeons of their own minds, where no one can hear them scream:

"One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors - conceptual structures. The frames are in the synapses of our brains - physically present in the form of neural circuitry. When the facts don't fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored."

In other words, forget winning on the facts or the science. It's all about the story. And once stories take hold, they're hard to dislodge. [...] [George Lakoff as quoted in the article This Is Your Brain on Public Relations]

Is the whole world trapped in a haunted house of mirrors, where all we see is a distorted reflection of reality due to these limits or frames we have placed on our own minds? Have we all refused to protest the siege, against the sanctuary of the mind from these hobgoblins? It appears the majority have. The human mind has become a rat infested sewer, and the Bush Reich can dump what ever they want into it due to years of dumbing down of the American populace. Welcome to reality. Perpetual war and perpetual Halloween on our haunted planet. Nightmares now reign on planet earth:

FLASHBACK: During the 1930's, Nazi Germany's rise to totalitarian power was well under way. Warning signs of the terror to come was being felt by increasing numbers of people. Among them was a young woman of great courage and insight. Charlotte Beradt recorded and collected people's dreams about the Nazi government's domination of their lives; dreams that tell of the painful political realities of the emerging Nazi State. In his essay at the conclusion of the volume, published in 1966, Bruno Bettelheim remarked that it was a shocking experience reading this book of dreams and seeing how effectively the Nazis murdered sleep, "forcing its enemies to dream dreams that showed that resistance was impossible and that safety lay only in compliance."

FLASHBACK: Is War a Ritual Human Sacrifice? - This mental illness, also called religion, is profound in the human species, and is at the root of practically all wars, those of the 20th century included, despite claims by religionists that Nazism and Communism were "godless" and "atheistic," a charge also laid against early Christians for their disbelief in the typical form of the supernatural. [...]

World War II did not happen in a vacuum. It was preceded by millennia of the same behavior on a smaller scale involving the same type of players. In particular, the history of the Germans and the Jews is oddly intertwined, beginning over 1,000 years ago in Germany. However, the conflict between these groups goes back to the time of the foundation of Judaism, i.e., the creation of the oppressive Law (7-6th centuries BCE) that Jewish or "Zionist" leaders imposed upon their often hapless followers. [...]

In reality, the creation of Christianity was an attempt to unify these various warring factions, while on the one hand raising up the Jews and their God as "the chosen" ("salvation is from the Jews" Jn. 4:22) and on the other striving to end the exploitative Law and bloody sacrifices of the priesthood, which included human sacrifice and cannibalism. Of course, Christianity also incorporated human sacrifice in its exhortations to martyrdom. Furthermore, in order to end human sacrifice, the Christians had to sacrifice millions of humans! [...]

[A] number of the pogroms against the common Jews of Europe over the centuries are alleged to have been not just mindless "anti-Semitism" by Christians bent on stealing their assets but deliberate sacrifices arranged by the elite and the ruling parties in continuation of their ancient practices.

VIDEO: John Pilger's Breaking the Silence.

Comment: John Pilger asks, "Who are the real terrorists?"

"35 or 40" countries able to make nuclear weapons: IAEA chief

AFP
Friday October 31, 2:50 AM

Up to 40 countries are believed to be capable of manufacturing nuclear weapons, underlining the need to reinforce and update the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told a French newspaper.

The treaty, which came into force in 1970, has been overtaken by a world in which developing nuclear arms has become attractive not only to many countries, but also to "terrorist groups," ElBaradei told Friday's issue of Le Monde. [...]

Comment: It appears that Frankenbush, Rummy the Mummy, and Werewolfowitz have a lot of work to do.

Putin sacks top aide over Yukos

Friday 31 October 2003, 8:43 Makka Time, 5:43 GMT

Russian President Vladimir Putin's chief of staff Alexander Voloshin has become the latest casualty as the Kremlin reels over the Yukos affair.

Voloshin handed in his resignation - and according to rumours over the past few days he quit - after finding about the arrest of Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky ... only after it happened.

[...] Voloshin, who survived the Yeltsin era to cross over and serve Putin, was also the leader of a faction in the Kremlin sympathetic to Khodorkovsky.

Bush election donors share $8bn bonanza

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
The Guardian

Major donors to George Bush's election campaigns were the main beneficiaries of an $8bn (£4.7bn) bonanza in government contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq, an investigation published yesterday said. [...]

U.S. Firm Bechtel Defends Iraq Record

By Sue Pleming
Thu Oct 30, 7:55 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - San Francisco engineering company Bechtel on Thursday strongly defended its work in Iraq and said allegations it won sweetheart deals, overcharged the U.S. government and excluded Iraqis were "simply not true."

Bechtel is lead contractor in Iraq for the U.S. Agency for International Development and has so far clocked up just over $1 billion in business there for infrastructure work such as restoring power and water and rebuilding schools and bridges. [...]

Bechtel was particularly upset by a letter to the White House Office of Management and Budget from Waxman. The letter said a general told a congressional delegation about a $15 million estimate from the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild a cement plant in Iraq while an Iraqi company managed to do it for $80,000.

Waxman wrote these Army Corps estimates were often based on consultations with private contractors such as Bechtel and Halliburton Co., the oil services company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney that is repairing Iraq's oil industry. [...]

Private Firms Do U.S. Military's Work

By JIM KRANE
Associated Press Writer

[...] Their dead aren't added to official body counts. Their duties - and profits - are hidden by close-mouthed executives who won't give details to Congress. And as their coffers and roles swell, companies are funneling earnings into political campaigns and gaining influence over military policy - even getting paid to recommend themselves for lucrative contracts.
For the civilians handling these soldierly jobs, the risks are high.

Worldwide, private military companies earn about $100 billion in yearly government contracts, Singer believes. Ninety private military companies are listed on the Web site for the Center for Public Integrity. In comparison, the U.S. defense budget is about $380 billion this year, excluding emergency spending, and is expected to rise to more than $400 billion.
Some of the firms working in Iraq are huge, politically connected conglomerates like Halliburton - corporate parent of Kellogg, Brown & Root and formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. Others are little known, like Erinys, a security firm chocked with former South African special forces that will train 6,500 Iraqis to guard oil installations.
The world of military contracts is a murky one. [...]

To the consternation of U.S. lawmakers, there is little or no Congressional oversight of contractors hired by the executive branch of government - whether through the State Department, Pentagon or the CIA. [...]

Cheney's hawks 'hijacking policy'

By Ritt Goldstein
October 30, 2003

A former Pentagon officer turned whistleblower says a group of hawks in the Bush Administration, including the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, is running a shadow foreign policy, contravening Washington's official line.

"What these people are doing now makes Iran-Contra [a Reagan administration national security scandal] look like amateur hour...it's worse than Iran-Contra, worse than what happened in Vietnam," said Karen Kwiatkowski, a former air force lieutenant-colonel.

"[President] George Bush isn't in control...the country's been hijacked," she said, describing how "key [governmental] areas of neoconservative concern were politically staffed". [...]

Comment: Just in case you are unaware of who these "hawks" are: Paul "Werewolfowitz", Dick "Chainsaw massacre", Donald "Bloodsfeld", Karl "Death-Row", Richard "Perilious in the extreme"

War with NATO not impossible, says Russian general

31/10/2003

A top Russian general warned today that war with a Nato member was not out of the question and that such a conflict would be disastrous for Russia.

"It is impossible to completely exclude the possibility of a war with some Nato state, but for Russia, a war with Nato would be deadly," Colonel General Yuri Baluyevsky, the deputy head of the Russian General Staff, told a government newspaper

The statement echoed the negative tone Nato officials have recently noted from the Russian Defence Ministry in spite of the closer relationship they have established over the past few years.

Earlier his week Nato chief Lord Robertson said that calling the defence alliance a potential threat – as the Russian Defence Ministry did in a recent, widely publicised policy paper – ran contrary to the spirit of partnership between Russia and the alliance.

In a Kremlin meeting yesterday, President Vladimir Putin tried to reassure Lord Robertson that Russia remains committed to deepening the relationship in spite of what he called "many outstanding problems."

"We have increasingly been getting a sense of partnership between us and the need for each other," Putin said.

Baluyevsky said that there was "no comparison" between Russia and Nato in regards to weapons or troop strength, and that the western alliance was only expanding, with the future accession of the three former Soviet republics in the Baltic region.

In contrast to the United States’ €232.6bn defence budget, he said, Russia’s is just €4.4bn.

"We, the military men of Russia, have many questions about the level and point of improving Nato as a military mechanism," Baluyevsky said.

"Why do Nato and the United States need to develop high-precision weapons? Why do they need to improve … the system of defence and use of weapons of mass destruction?"

Baluyevsky said an American general had told him that in its strategic planning, the Pentagon targets sites in Russia.

Afghans Tell of Torture During Security Sweep

Villagers say a militia working for the U.S. went on a rampage while hunting Taliban.  

By Paul Watson
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

DAI CHOPAN, Afghanistan — Villagers with broken limbs, deep cuts and severe bruises say Afghan militia fighters working as guides for U.S. troops went on a spree of looting, beatings and torture here during a military sweep last week.

The militiamen frequently guide the Americans on missions to search for Taliban and Al Qaeda guerrillas, wear U.S. military camouflage fatigues and carry assault rifles. [...]

High-Level UN Council Mission Goes to Afghanistan

By Evelyn Leopold
October 31, 2003

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The 15 U.N. Security Council members head to Afghanistan on Friday to evaluate expansion of an international force, prop up the peace process and warn warlords to stop undermining President Hamid Karzai's central government. [...]

Pentagon cordoned off

30/10/2003 22:00  - (SA)   ashington - Authorities briefly closed roads and a bus stop near the Pentagon on Thursday while they investigated a suspicious truck parked nearby, a Pentagon spokesperson said. [...]

Toy gun sparks US Congress alert

The alert prompted a huge search of the building

BBC

Police in Washington say a major security alert on Capitol Hill turned out to be a false alarm triggered by a Hallowe'en costume.

Police initially said they were hunting two intruders armed with a revolver who had breached a checkpoint at an office building belonging to the US House of Representatives. [...]

Iraqis See Israel as Culprit in Bombings

They argue that the ensuing chaos would benefit the Jewish state and say that U.S. forces have a responsibility to provide security.

By Alissa J. Rubin
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

BAGHDAD — As the bombing disaster early this week is cemented into people's consciousness, three emotions dominate: anger, ambivalence about the U.S. role in Iraq and a desire to lay blame at the door of adversaries rather than fellow Muslims.

"I am sure that the people who did this are enemies of Iraq, not the enemies of the Americans," Dunya Khalil Ismail, a 28-year-old college lecturer, said as she left work Wednesday. "Whether it was the Israelis or the Americans themselves, they are aiming at us. [...]

The reasoning goes like this: The people who masterminded the bombings wanted to hurt Iraqis, the vast majority of the victims. Who are Iraq's enemies? Israel is the one nearest at hand and the one that, it is widely assumed here, urged the U.S. to remove President Saddam Hussein. Who will benefit if chaos weakens Iraq? Again, Israel, because it will feel safer. And if Iraq is chaotic, it may force the Americans to keep troops in the country longer. Who wants American troops on Arab soil? Again, the answer is Israel. [...]

Comment: Instead of just objectively reporting the fact that Iraqis are blaming Israel, this staff writer insists on writing it so that it sounds like some deluded conspiracy theory. It is well know that Iraqis want to destroy their own country, because they are so stupid, rather than getting on with the business of life, now why don't they just face up to it, is so the not so subtle strain that flows through this article.

Torture Video Aired

Sky News
10:34 UK, Friday October 31, 2003

A brutal videotape has emerged showing Iraqi soldiers being tortured and executed. The 23-minute tape features members of Iraqi Republican Guard and Saddam Fedayeen militiamen being punished.

One shocking scene shows a man with his hands bound being thrown off the roof of a multi-storey car park. He lands on his back but survives.

Other scenes show fingers being chopped or shot off, tips of tongues being cut off, wrists being broken by hard blows from a wooden rod, lashes by whip or cane, and a beheading involving a sword and knife.

The man who helped taped the footage gave it to the US Army's 308th Civil Affairs Brigade in Iraq.

America's Fox News reported that he is co-operating with US troops and has more tapes.

The Republican Guard was a specially-trained army while the Fedayeen was set up to crush Saddam's domestic opponents.

The footage was most likely recorded at a military installation near Baghdad sometime between 1998 and the fall of the regime, according to the US military.

Comment: This information is most disturbing, given that psychopaths and the regimes they control will accuse others of the crimes they themselves have committed.

Iraqis Set Governor's Office Ablaze in Restive Town

October 31, 2003

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - Furious Iraqis set the governor's office building ablaze in the restive town of Falluja on Friday after police shot dead a local man nearby, residents said.

The building was gutted by fire and smoke billowed into the sky. Two police cars were also set ablaze in the unrest, which locals said followed a bomb blast inside the building. [...]

Unrest in Iraq: Chico soldier shares his discontent with Bush, U.S. military policy

By Tom Gascoyne
Courtesy Of Peter Sleeth of The Oregonian

Just as President Bush is suggesting that the media are portraying an inaccurate and overly negative picture of the situation in Iraq, we've received communication from our source on the ground there that morale among American soldiers continues to sour. [...]

"There is a guy in my company who lost his leg up to the knee, his eyesight, and some of his face doing his commander in chief's bidding. Now the very man who sent this kid--he couldn't even legally drink--to be mutilated and disabled for the rest of his life wants to scale back his entitlements to compensation."

He ends the letter by saying that his three and one-half years in the Army have made him "numb to watching people hung out to dry." What really bothers him, he says, was a photo he saw in The Stars and Stripes of a sign at a gas station in the States showing gasoline selling for $2.07 a gallon.

"Didn't we secure the oil fields? Aren't we a capitalist country anymore? Can't we sidestep OPEC now? Can't we at least, somewhere in the midst of deception, half-truths and outright lies, catch an honest break?

"If we're going to fight for a cause that isn't known, get fired on by our own weapons, and get screwed out of our benefits, then at least for God's sake give us something concrete to say we fought for--even if it's as trivial as being able to fill our gas tanks for 98 cents a gallon." [...]

Comment: The link has a photo of the author removing a pile of American made Iraqi owned mortars. Once again, U.S. soldiers are getting blown up by U.S. made weaponry.

Blair says war in Iraq was 'test case'

CBC News
Thu, 30 Oct 2003 20:17:05

LONDON - British Prime Minister Tony Blair told BBC Radio that the war against Iraq was a "test case" to demonstrate to other countries the world is serious about stopping aggression.

Blair said in an interview that the war in Iraq was justified because of its impact on global security. He says if they had not dealt with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, then "there was no way we could have dealt with any other nation in a similar position." [...]

Comment: So, Iraq was a test case... Tell that to the thousands of dead, mutilated, starving, or homeless Iraqis. Tell that to the soldiers and civilians alike who are being exposed to DU. And then tell all of us how an act of pure aggression against Iraq, backed by WMD evidence that has proven to be a bunch of lies, is going to show the world that the UK and US are serious about stopping aggression.

War 'beast' goes high-tech

Israel deploying remote-control bulldozers Machines used to destroy homes of militants

GAVIN RABINOWITZ
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Oct. 31, 2003. 01:00 AM

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was submitted to the Israeli censor, which made a deletion.

JERUSALEM—The giant Caterpillar bulldozer, used by the Israeli military to destroy Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, now comes with a controversial new feature: remote control.

Israel says its remote-control technology will lower risks to soldiers. But Palestinians fear it will lead to more frequent raids using the machines and make the three-year Mideast conflict even bloodier.

The remote-controlled D-9 bulldozer and a remote-control version of the Humvee, equipped with machine guns, were developed by the Israeli army and the Technion Institute of Technology. Both machines are U.S.-made, with Israeli modifications. They are expected to go into service in the next few weeks.

The army refused to comment or reveal further details about the new equipment. [...]

U.S. embassy spokesperson Paul Patin would not comment on the specific vehicles. He said that when Israel modifies U.S. products, the Pentagon makes sure "they are used in a manner acceptable to our laws." [...]

Economy Grows at Best Pace Since 1984

By Tim Ahmann
Thu Oct 30, 5:24 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy rocketed ahead at its fastest pace in nearly two decades in the third quarter as consumers, their wallets fattened by tax cuts, went on a buying spree, the government said on Thursday. [...]

Comment: Are these the tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor the rich? What about the millions of unemployed Americans? What about the fact that this "buying spree" is being funded by ever increasing consumer debt?

Bush takes credit for surging economy

By PAUL KORING
Globe and Mail Update
4:08 AM EST Friday, Oct. 31, 2003

WASHINGTON — A jubilant George W. Bush, already campaigning for an election still a year away, took credit yesterday for a dramatic upturn in U.S. growth figures, just the kind of rosy economic news that could keep him in the White House for a second term.

He said it was his controversial tax cuts that fuelled the best quarterly growth figures since 1984 — a scorching but unsustainable 7.2 per cent.

"To get the economy going again, I have twice led the United States Congress to pass historic tax relief for the American people," the U.S. President said. [...]

Democrats seeking to oust Mr. Bush focused first on his handling of the economy but have shifted in recent weeks to the difficult and continuing occupation of Iraq, hoping to score political points where the President seems most vulnerable.

Few presidents, however, have been felled by foreign-policy debacles. The only other elected president to fail to win a second term since 1928 was Democrat Jimmy Carter, who lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980 after the year-long humiliation of the Iran hostage crisis.

"If the economy recovers and jobs come back, then barring any terrible catastrophe abroad, George Bush is going to be re-elected," said Allan Lichtman, a political scientist at American University in Washington. [...]

Rice Faults Past Administrations on Terror

By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
October 31, 2003

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — President Bush's national security adviser said on Thursday that the Clinton and other past administrations had ignored evidence of growing terrorist threats and that despite repeated attacks on American interests, "until Sept. 11, the terrorists faced no sustained, systematic and global response" from the United States.

"They became emboldened," the adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said of Al Qaeda, "and the result was more terror and more victims." [...]

Comment: In one respect, we agree with Ms. Rice. To blame any one administration for all of America's woes is ridiculous. As our recent review of the JFK assassination illustrated, the control and manipulation of the American people and the world has been an ongoing process. While we cannot change anything in the past, we can become aware of what has occurred and what is occurring today.

The Bush Reich has arguably done more that any other administration to implement the fascist takeover of America. Fixed elections, faked terror attacks, faked threats of more terror attacks, reductions of civil liberties, imperialist aggressions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the list goes on. In the Middle East, Sharon is determined to wipe out a large portion of the Semitic population. Regardless of who is actually running the show in various countries around the world, the stories that we report each day seem to be evidence that we are all in for a rough ride - more control, more death, more destruction - all in the name of freedom of one sort or another.

War of the Worlds, Orson Welles, And The Invasion from Mars

The ability to confuse audiences en masse may have first become obvious as a result of one of the most infamous mistakes in history. It happened the day before Halloween, on Oct. 30, 1938, when millions of Americans tuned in to a popular radio program that featured plays directed by, and often starring, Orson Welles. The performance that evening was an adaptation of the science fiction novel The War of the Worlds, about a Martian invasion of the earth. But in adapting the book for a radio play, Welles made an important change: under his direction the play was written and performed so it would sound like a news broadcast about an invasion from Mars, a technique that, presumably, was intended to heighten the dramatic effect.

As the play unfolded, dance music was interrupted a number of times by fake news bulletins reporting that a "huge flaming object" had dropped on a farm near Grovers Mill, New Jersey. As members of the audience sat on the edge of their collective seat, actors playing news announcers, officials and other roles one would expect to hear in a news report, described the landing of an invasion force from Mars and the destruction of the United States. The broadcast also contained a number of explanations that it was all a radio play, but if members of the audience missed a brief explanation at the beginning, the next one didn't arrive until 40 minutes into the program.

At one point in the broadcast, an actor in a studio, playing a newscaster in the field, described the emergence of one of the aliens from its spacecraft. "Good heavens, something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake," he said, in an appropriately dramatic tone of voice. "Now it's another one, and another. They look like tentacles to me. There, I can see the thing's body. It's large as a bear and it glistens like wet leather. But that face. It...it's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate....The thing is raising up. The crowd falls back. They've seen enough. This is the most extraordinary experience. I can't find words. I'm pulling this microphone with me as I talk. I'll have to stop the description until I've taken a new position. Hold on, will you please, I'll be back in a minute."

As it listened to this simulation of a news broadcast, created with voice acting and sound effects, a portion of the audience concluded that it was hearing an actual news account of an invasion from Mars. People packed the roads, hid in cellars, loaded guns, even wrapped their heads in wet towels as protection from Martian poison gas, in an attempt to defend themselves against aliens, oblivious to the fact that they were acting out the role of the panic-stricken public that actually belonged in a radio play. Not unlike Stanislaw Lem's deluded populace, people were stuck in a kind of virtual world in which fiction was confused for fact.

News of the panic (which was conveyed via genuine news reports) quickly generated a national scandal. There were calls, which never went anywhere, for government regulations of broadcasting to ensure that a similar incident wouldn't happen again. The victims were also subjected to ridicule, a reaction that can commonly be found, today, when people are taken in by simulations. [...]

"All unwittingly, Mr. Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater of the Air have made one of the most fascinating and important demonstrations of all time," she wrote. "They have proved that a few effective voices, accompanied by sound effects, can convince masses of people of a totally unreasonable, completely fantastic proposition as to create a nation-wide panic. [...]

In the 1950s, America had another taste of the power that simulations have, to draw people into a world of delusional fantasy, when paired with mass communications. This time it was revealed that a number of television game shows were simulations, in which contestants who knew the answers ahead of time were pretending to guess at their responses. [...]

But in 1990, it happened again. Audiences around the world discovered that they were taken in by the ultimate Hollywood illusion in which two performers faked their own talent, lip-syncing, to create the impression they were singing. What millions of fans had believed were two talented singers was actually a composite, another seamless interweaving of sensory simulations in which two people provided the visuals, while vocalists provided the audio. [...]

More to the point, we live in a time in which the ability to create deceptive simulations, especially for television, has become essential to the exercise of power. And the inability to see through these deceptions has become a form of powerlessness. Those who let themselves be taken in by the multiple deceptions of politics, news, advertising and public relations, are doomed, like the more gullible members of the radio audience in 1938, to play a role in other people's dramas, while mistakenly believing that they are reacting to something genuine.

Comment: The author above omits the most recent mass deception of the American (and world) public: September 11th 2001. On that day the world was duped into believing the ridiculous notion that, inspired only by their "hate for freedom and democracy," a few "Arab terrorists," in an operation that required skill, planning and access to resources that were patently far beyond their grasp, were actually able to simulataneously hijack 4 commercial aeroplanes and crash them into the WTC towers and the Pentagon. It appears that the US public learned nothing from the sage words of GWB:

"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once -- shame on -- shame on you. You fool me, you can't get fooled again."

Or something like that.

Scientists: Think about defending Earth from asteroids

By PETER MUCHA
Philadelphia Inquirer
Thu, Oct. 30, 2003

PHILADELPHIA - So far, thank heavens, no doomsday-size asteroid or comet has been found heading straight for us. The bad news, however, is that they don't make bulletproof vests for planets.

Since the chances of an asteroid hitting Earth are remote but real, scientists and engineers are exploring all sorts of ideas for protecting the planet.

The "Armageddon" strategy - sending up Bruce Willis with a nuke - is likely to fail or even backfire, scientists say.

An asteroid or comet tops the list of suspects for the sudden extinction of half of all species about 200 million years ago, and another may have exterminated the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Congress has mandated that NASA find 90 percent of one-kilometer Near-Earth Objects by 2008. So far, 672 have been detected, and none is a sure threat for roughly the rest of the century.

An asteroid that size doesn't sound so big, but when hitting Earth at 25,000 to 50,000 miles per hour, the heat, smoke and debris could alter the climate and destroy crops, resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths.

The odds of such an event occurring within the next year are about 1 in 600,000, according to a recent MIT study - yet that's far more likely than your next airline flight crashing or your next lottery ticket hitting a multistate lottery.

These aren't the only rocky horrors. There may be a half-million or more smaller, harder-to-detect NEOs capable of devastating a city or region.

Scientists say the time has come to get serious about defending the planet.

Comment: We are continually dumbfounded that these so-called scientists are allowed to get away with peddling this type of BS. If they have not idenitifed all the meteors with impact potential then how can they categorically say that none will hit within the next 100 years!?

Astronomers find biggest, brightest galaxy

HONOLULU (AP) - Astronomers working with telescopes atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea Volcano are studying a galaxy they said is the biggest, brightest, hottest and one of the most ancient star-forming regions yet viewed in the universe.

The explosive galaxy of more than one million hot stars normally could not be examined because its stars were born so long ago and so far away. But a combination of powerful telescopes and natural "gravitational lensing" that enhances Earth's view of the object are credited for the scientific advance.

Discovery of the Lynx Arc cluster, one million times brighter than the somewhat similar Milky Way cluster known as the Orion Nebula and eight million light years farther away, was announced Thursday by the W. M. Keck Observatories and reported in the latest issue of the Astrophysical Journal. [...]

Infrared Flares Seen From Black Hole

European Southern Observatory -- An international team of astronomers led by researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching (Germany) has discovered powerful infrared flares from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way.

The signals, rapidly flickering on a scale of minutes, must come from hot gas falling into the black hole, just before it disappears below the "event horizon" of the monster. The new observations strongly suggest that the Galactic Centre black hole rotates rapidly.

Never before have scientists been able to study phenomena in the immediate neighbourhood of a black hole in such a detail. [...]

"What is that star doing there?" exclaimed Rainer Schödel, one of the MPE scientists in the team working with the NACO Adaptive Optics instrument that delivers razor-sharp images. [...]

General: China Preparing Space War Against U.S.

While speaking at a geo-spatial intelligence conference, Lt. Gen. Edward Anderson, deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command, stated, "In my view it will not be long before space becomes a battleground," reported the Sydney Morning Herald.

"Our military forces ... depend very, very heavily on space capabilities, and so that is a statement of the obvious to our potential threat, whoever that may be," Anderson said.

"They [China] can see that one of the ways that they can certainly diminish our capabilities will be to attack the space systems," said Anderson, who was formerly with U.S. Space Command.

The China Reform Monitor reports that Rich Haver, former special assistant for intelligence to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said he expects battles in space within the next two decades.

"I believe space is the place we will fight in the next 20 years," said Haver. [...]

Brain fakes it

Nerve-cell activity when eyes are shut reveals internal views of the world.

30 October 2003
TANGUY CHOUARD

People's tendency to see what they expect to see may be caused by their brain constantly generating virtual sensations. So suggests a new study of sleeping cats.

When the animals' eyes were closed, researchers recorded spontaneous patterns of neuronal activity similar to those evoked by real scenes. Strikingly, this happened in the primary visual cortex - a region thought to record visual stimuli passively.

Like a detuned television screen flashing up occasional pictures, the resting cortex spontaneously produces clear maps of the outside world. It is as if the eyes were actually looking at objects.

This is not dreaming. Because it happens so low in the normal information processing chain, it is almost as if the mental images had sprung right in front of the eyes.

The meaning of these internal states remains unclear. They might reflect memories, expectations or items most worthy of attention.

If the same is true for humans, these virtual scenes might even represent our brain's best guess of what our surroundings should look like at any given time. Sensory stimulation might then update such preconceptions - provided that we open our eyes.

Comment: Indeed, if more humans were to open their eyes they might find that their internal view of reality is dramtically different to what is really happening, but then that would require them to open their eyes, and that, it seems, is the last thing they are prepared to do...

Cloned food gets closer to market

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY

The arrival of meat or milk from cloned animals in America's grocery stores takes a giant step forward today with the release of a Food and Drug Administration report that says cloned animals pose no greater risk to human health than normally bred animals. [...]

Comment: And we are expected to believe an FDA report?? Don't forget the FDA approved other wonderful food products such as yummy Aspartame

Tokyo Shaken By Quake Centered in Northern Japan

Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) -- A magnitude 6.8 earthquake centered in northern Japan shook Tokyo at 10:06 local time, NHK television news said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The quake was centered off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) below the surface, NHK said. Fukushima city is about 250 kilometers north of Tokyo.

Moderate earthquake shakes southwestern Bulgaria

09:05 - 30.10.2003

SOFIA (bnn)— A moderate earthquake shook southwestern Bulgaria late Wednesday causing no injuries and damages, the national seismological institute said. The tremor measured 4 on the Richter scale and was felt in the town of Petrich and the adjacent areas about 11:15 p.m. (0915 GMT). Its epicenter was 225 kilometers (140 miles) south of Sofia, out of Bulgaria’s territory.

ANOTHER 3.5 R EARTHQUAKE IN THESSALONIKI

Thessaloniki, 30 October 2003

A small earthquake, recorded at 3.5 on the Richter scale, took place at 11:05 this morning, its epicenter in the area of Nea Mesimvria, Thessaloniki, and according to specialists, it was an aftershock of the main earthquake that was recorded last night, at 4.7 R in the same are.

The aftershock affected the entire city of Thessaloniki and caused some worries as many Thessaloniki residents spent the night afraid of aftershocks, since the main earthquake took place at 23:15.

According to the statements of seismologist Anastasia Kyratzi tou the Macedonian Press Agency, this morning's quake was the strongest of the aftershocks and she underlined that in these cases aftershocks are to be expected and should not cause concern.

Small Group Of Big Bear Residents Refuses To Leave Mountain

BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. -- Wildfires have closed in around the popular mountain resort town of Big Bear Lake, forcing thousands of residents to flee in recent days, but a small group refused to leave Wednesday, insisting faith and firefighters would keep them safe. [...]

Sheriff: 1997 report warned about Columbine gunmen

GOLDEN, Colorado (AP) -- Jefferson County's new sheriff wants investigators to interview a former deputy who apparently was told years before the Columbine High School massacre that the gunmen bragged about making pipe bombs and were looking for a "ground zero."

A report discovered last week indicates then-deputy John Hicks was given information in 1997 about a Web site that included the boast and the "ground zero" reference by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

Sheriff Ted Mink, who took office in July, said Wednesday the investigation of the Web site apparently went no further.

Mink asked Attorney General Ken Salazar to investigate why the 1997 report was never reviewed as part of the probe into the massacre.

Mink said he wants investigators to talk to Hicks, who left the department in 2000 and whose whereabouts were unknown. Salazar's spokesman Ken Lane would not comment on the investigation. [...]

Thousands Given Wrong STD Results

CRANBROOK, British Columbia - About 3,000 people got the wrong results when they were tested for gonorrhea and chlamydia over an 18-month period, health officials say. [...]

Diarrhea downs 247 kids in Tondo

By Beverly P. Movido

Five more children, one reportedly as young as eight months, were hospitalized after drinking contaminated water in various areas in Tondo, Manila, raising the figure of those downed by diarrhea and gastroenteritis to 247. [...]

US TV set for 'Jesus wife' storm

A leading US TV news reporter has said her network is taking a risk with a news special which asks whether Jesus Christ had a wife.

ABC's Elizabeth Vargas said Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci, to be shown in the US on Monday night, was being made "as respectfully as we can".

But she admitted: "You can't talk about this subject without intriguing people or offending people."

The programme is partly based on the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code.

The book alleges Mary Magdalene - a biblical figure widely thought to have been a prostitute - was actually Jesus's wife.

The book also asserts Magdalene fled Jerusalem with Jesus' child after his crucifixion.

'X-ray software' uncovers the past

X-ray vision to see through walls has always been something which belongs in science fiction.

But a software program being developed by the a company called the GeoInformation Group allows people to see under homes and peek through walls and floors to reveal what was there before it was built.

"With this software we can peel back the modern image to reveal what was there 50 years ago," the company's Managing Director Allun Jones told the BBC World Service programme Go Digital.

The system uses modern high resolution aerial photographs, combined with old aerial photographs to build up the picture.

Many of the older images were taken during the Second World War by the Luftwaffe to identify targets for bombing raids.

Iceman mystery solved

By Helen Briggs
BBC News Online

Scientists have pinpointed the likely birthplace of Oetzi the famous Iceman.

The ancient hunter probably spent his childhood in what is now the Italian South Tyrol village of Feldthurns.

Evidence suggests his lifelong travels were confined to a 60-kilometre (37-mile) range south-east of where his body was found.

The 5,300-year-old frozen mummy emerged from a melting glacier along the mountainous border between Italy and Austria in 1991.

Sick cruise liner Britons isolated off Greece

Ananova.com
09:17 Friday 31st October 2003

Doctors have ferried medicine and supplies to a British cruise liner where hundreds of passengers have been stricken with a contagious gastrointestinal virus.

At least 430 passengers have been hit with the stomach virus during a Mediterranean cruise aboard the P&O liner Aurora, which was not allowed to dock by Greek authorities. [...]

Scientists clash over MMR vaccine

Ananova.com
11:51 Friday 31st October 2003

Two scientists at the centre of the MMR controversy have clashed in public, creating more confusion for parents.

Both were involved in the 1998 research which raised public fears about a possible link between the triple jab and autism. [...]

Woman dressed as clown robs bank

2 teens accused in strong arm theft of soda

By Times Staff Writer

PORT RICHEY, Florida - Two teenagers were arrested on strong arm robbery charges Tuesday, accused of stealing a Pepsi. [...]

Delaware Teen In Serious Condition After Pumpkin Attack

Armed burglar disarmed with ham sandwich and rum

Associated Press
10:44 Friday 31st October 2003

Two women have plied an armed man who broke into their home with a ham sandwich and rum until he became groggy and passed out.

Police arrived and arrested Alfred Joseph Sweet, 52, after the five-hour episode in Tampa, Florida.

Cathy Ord, 60, and Rose Bucher, 63, said they tried to befriend the man after he burst through their kitchen window with a sawn-off shotgun.

They made him a sandwich, gave him a bottle of rum and suggested he shower and shave so he could "sort of be disguised in his getaway", Ord said.

"We just treated him with kindness," Bucher said.

She said she had offered the gunman cash and the keys to her Cadillac, but he just sat with them, holding his gun. The intruder never said what he wanted, the women said.

Pheasant Hunters: Be Wary of Meth Labs in Iowa

New Brunswick UFO encounter explored

Sighting of unidentified flying object over Indian Mountain part of Life Network documentary

JORGE BARRERA
Times & Transcript Staff

It was a clear, cold early February morning when Amy Wilbur saw a flying orange orb in the sky.
Now, the only way she can describe it is by what it was not. [...]

Wilbur is not alone. Last year there were 483 reported sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects in Canada, four of those sightings came from New Brunswick, according to the web-based Canadian UFO survey which tallies sightings dating back to 1989. [...]

Boo! It's the Bunny Man!

30-Year Legend Still Spooks Visitors to Fairfax County Bridge

Strange, eerie creatures lurk in ‘triangle' (Massachusetts)

By LANE LAMBERT
The Patriot Ledger

BRIDGEWATER - Twenty-five years later, Joseph DeAndrade still gets a shiver when he recalls what he saw that winter day in 1978: ‘‘A big, tall, strange-looking creature'' lumbering through the trees on the opposite side of a pond in the Hockomock Swamp.

‘‘I've never seen anything like it,'' the former security guard said as he gazed across the still, murky water toward the spot.
DeAndrade's Bigfoot encounter may be the most widely publicized incident from the so-called Bridgewater Triangle. But it's far from the only one.

Over the decades and centuries, local residents have reported sightings of everything from UFOs and cattle mutilations to strange cats and birds within the triangle, which fans out from Abington to south of Taunton. [...]

Weird and wonderful Man chronicles state's strange happenings

BY TIM CIGELSKE
Associated Press

"There's a perception that weird stuff only happens at Halloween," Hendricks said. "But it actually happens all the time — 365 days a year."

Hendricks is most interested in strange happenings in Wisconsin, which he chronicles daily on his Web site, http://www.weird-wi.com/ . The site includes tales of a haunted opera house in Kenosha, legends of a goatman in Washington County and sightings of a serpent monster in Lake Mendota. [...]

Tomb Tourists Have a New Guide in France

AP
Thu Oct 30, 9:20 PM ET

PARIS - Just in time for Halloween, a macabre guide book was released Thursday telling where dead celebrities are buried in France.

The latest "Guide to Celebrity Tombstones" spends 322 pages mapping 7,000 tombs of personalities from literature, cinema, theater, science, religion, sports, politics and military history.

"It's a little like my address book, but the addresses here are permanent," author Betrand Beyern said on France-Info radio. [...]

Vampire killing kit sells for $12,000

10/30/2003

NEW YORK -- Just in time for Halloween, a vampire-killing kit complete with a wooden stake and 10 silver bullets sold for $12,000 at auction Thursday.

The kit, a walnut box that also contained a crucifix, a pistol, a rosary and vessels for garlic powder and various serums, was bought by an anonymous phone bidder.

According to Sotheby's, some experts believe that such kits were commonly available to travelers in Eastern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, while others think the kits were made in the early 20th century, possibly to cash in on interest in vampires sparked by the 1897 publication of Bram Stoker's "Dracula."

Elaine Whitmire, head of 19th century furniture for Sotheby's, said she believes the kit was assembled in the early 20th century and sold to travelers as a souvenir.

"My opinion is this is a memento that you bought while you were in Europe," she said. "I doubt it was cheap to buy."

A label on the kit says: "This box contains the items considered necessary for persons who travel into certain little known countries of Eastern Europe where the populace are plagued with a particular manifestation of evil known as Vampires."

The vampire killing kit was part of Sotheby's sale of 19th century furniture and decorative works of art.

The auction house did not identify the seller of the kit. The price includes Sotheby's auction house's commission.

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