How you can help keep Cassiopea online

New! August 16, 2002 - Dresden's record flood yet to peak - The Elbe, which has already smashed a 157-year record with highs of 9.3 metres (30.5 feet) on Friday, was predicted to rise a further 30 centimetres to crest at 9.6 (31.5 feet) metres on Saturday - Tens of thousands of people have fled the historic town and art galleries and museums have tried to rescue great pieces of art works from the murky, muddy waters. - Ten people have died across the country while the figure for Europe as a whole is in three figures. - To help lower water levels, a railway bridge downstream from Dresden was demolished with explosives to open up a flood plain to reduce the flow in the main river channel, military officials said.

Top Republicans Break With Bush on Iraq Strategy - Leading Republicans from Congress, the State Department and past administrations have begun to break ranks with President Bush over his administration's high-profile planning for war with Iraq, saying the administration has neither adequately prepared for military action nor made the case that it is needed. - These senior Republicans include former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, the first President Bush's national security adviser. - Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska said that Secretary Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, had recently told President Bush of their concerns about the risks and complexities of a military campaign against Iraq, especially without broad international support. But senior White House and State Department officials said they were unaware of any such meeting. - Lawrence S. Eagleburger [...] told ABC News that unless Mr. Hussein "has his hand on a trigger that is for a weapon of mass destruction, and our intelligence is clear, I don't know why we have to do it now, when all our allies are opposed to it."

Nebraska Senator Hagel Charges US Attack on Iraq to Provide Cover for Transfer of Palestinian Population - Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, who was among the earliest voices to question Pres. George W. Bush's war plans against Iraq, said on Aug. 15 that the Central Intelligence Agency had "absolutely no evidence" that Iraq possesses or will soon possess nuclear weapons. - "You can take the country into a war pretty fast," Mr. Hagel said, "but you can't get out as quickly, and the public needs to know what the risks are." He added, "Maybe Mr. Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad." Hagel's reference is to Richard N. Perle, a fanatical Zionist and former Reagan administration official, who has been orchestrating an urgent American atack on Iraq, along with Senator Joseph Lieberman and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

With some top Republicans expressing doubts about the administration's planning for Iraq, President Bush said Friday he will use the latest intelligence to make up his mind about how to deal with Saddam Hussein. - In an opinion piece published Friday in The Wall Street Journal Scowcroft, Bush's father's national security adviser, said attacking Iraq now would be a mistake. Scowcroft warned "an attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counter-terrorist campaign we have undertaken." He said if the Iraqis are backed into a corner, they may attempt to use biological or chemical weapons in the hope of starting a war between Israel and the Arab states. - But Bush said that while he will take note of all opinions on the issue, his decision will be made based on other criteria. [Oh boy! We're in trouble now!]

Human rights groups are criticizing Israel over something called the 'neighbour technique.' They says it's nothing more than the Israeli army using Palestinians as human shields.

Deadly Madagascar flu infects thousands - An outbreak of influenza in Madagascar has now killed at least 374 peoople, and infected more than 5,000 over the past two months, according to the government.

Russia's Iran nuclear link angers US - The real question is: why is President Putin so prepared to risk his good relations with George Bush in order to cosy up to Iran? - On the streets of Tehran, Iranians make clear their anger at being called part of America's axis of evil.

A Saudi newspaper close to the government has called for a review of the kingdom's long-standing and close relationship with the United States. - The article comes only a day after relatives of victims of the 11 September attacks launched a big lawsuit against people they accuse of helping finance the al-Qaeda network, including members of the Saudi royal family. - "We must question those who think that America is our strategic option that cannot be substituted."

Koreas unite against Japan - Today, Japan is committing fresh wrongs by distorting historical facts, worshipping executed war criminals, seeking to dispatch its troops abroad and building up its arsenal

Landslide in China kills 28 - Another 35 people were reported to be missing as at least 10 villages were hit by a wall of mud and rock. "We have never seen such a mudslide. One like this is very rare, it is record-making," he told Reuters news agency. It was the second deadly landslide to hit Yunnan in less than a week. In the central province of Hunan, also badly hit by recent flooding, the army has been called in to evacuate flood victims and rebuild roads. So far this year, nearly 1,000 people have been killed in storms and flooding in China. China's northern provinces, in contrast, are suffering a severe drought, threatening millions of farmers and large areas of crops.

Secret Diana tapes used in US film - Secret tape recordings made by the late Diana, Princess of Wales, have been used in a film to be screened on US television on 1 September, the fifth anniversary of her death. - The tapes were made for a book written by Andrew Morton and include passages about her marriage to the Prince of Wales and her suicide attempts. There are currently no plans to screen it in the UK.

A four-year-old boy has died after he was swept out to sea by a freak wave on the coast of Northern Ireland.

Eight children and an adult have escaped serious injury when they were swept into the sea by a large wave off the coast of County Antrim. The incident happened at the Giant's Causeway on Thursday. - The children's uncle, Ian Humphrey, said the wave was of "freak proportions". "It came in, hit the rocks, broke on the rocks, but carried on over the rocks and came in over our heads and flattened everybody."

Resources on Nonconsensual Human Experimentation - Discussion and links to sites that discuss: 1. The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male (the official title of the Tuskegee Experiment) 2. Experiments performed by Nazi doctors on victims in concentration camps 3. Experiments conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission on civilians and military personnel 4. Experiments in which unwitting subjects were given LSD by the CIA or U. S. Army (a part of the project sometimes called MKULTRA) 5. Experiments on children and pregnant women 6. The Milgram experiment, which tested the willingness of subjects to participate in an experiment which seemed to harm other subjects. This is not a "conspiracy rant," but rather a compendium of factual information assembled by Dr. Steven Hale, Humanities Division, DeKalb College.

Cassiopaea comments: Many of the above experiments are linked to the ongoing denial by the government of the "Alien Presence" on our planet. This is thoroughly discussed in Richard M. Dolan's new book: UFOs and the National Security State. Dolan, who studied at Alfred University and Oxford, and did his graduate work in history at the University of Rochester, is a scholar of Cold War Strategy, Soviet History and culture, and international diplomacy. His thorougly documented and factual account reveals how, from the early 1940s to the 1970s, military personnel around the globe encountered unidentified flying objects hundreds and even thousands of times. In some cases, these encounters involved injury and even death to military personnel.

Based on the documents assembled by Dolan, it is obvious that the governments of the world saw this invasion as a very, very serious matter. In the course of assembling the documents and reporting the events, Dolan came to the inescapable conclusion that there exists an "Above Top Secret" group with access to all available UFO data, and that this group "straddled" the worlds of government, military, and industry. The evidence proves circumstantially - and in some cases, via limited documentation - that the military created a complete fiction for public consumption that the UFO problem was "nonexistent." They were assisted in pulling the wool over the eyes of the public by "heavy handed official media and culture," and they were obviously under orders to consistently and repeatedly "debunk" the idea that aliens were ensconced in our world.

Europe's flood part of global deluge - At 4 a.m. Wednesday, firemen began banging on doors in Prague's medieval Old Town, forcing families and shop owners to flee to higher ground. The streets filled with frightened people carrying bundles, a sight unseen here since World War II. Several residents fought against the forced evacuation, hoping to save some of their belongings. - "Rainfall is becoming more intense," says Prof. Phil Jones of the Climactic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, a prominent European meteorological institution. "This is not a [natural] cycle." - While in the United States the scientific community is split between those who believe unnatural climate change is occurring and those who don't, in Europe experts tend to agree in the view that the global climate is undergoing massive changes and that human activities and industry play a large role. - Already, the flooding is reviving European calls for implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, which would set limits on the industrial emissions believed to cause global warming. Ratified by many European countries, the treaty was rejected by President Bush last year. - "This is a terrifying,," says fireman Martin Fucik, resting briefly between rescue efforts. "This flood is unnatural. We have had floods every year for the past eight years. That was bad, but it was nothing compared to this."

Trillions of dollars of America's stock wealth have disappeared. Vanished. Poof. - Stock market tumbles affect the top 20 percent of American households far more than the other 80 percent of households, according to Dean Maki, an economist with Boston-based Putnam Investments. - Don't expect a rapid return to prosperity.

New! August 15, 2002 - Indians blame mystery attacks on UFOs - Panic-stricken Indian villagers are blaming UFOs for a spate of attacks that have killed several people and injured many others in Uttar Pradesh state. - In the past week seven people have died of unexplained injuries, while many others have been burnt. - Ramji Pal, was one such fatality, dying recently in Shanwa. His neighbor, Raghuraj Pal told The Associated Press that "a mysterious flying object attacked him in the night." "His stomach was ripped open. He died two days later." - But doctors have dismissed the stories as mass hysteria. "More often than not the victims have unconsciously inflicted the symptoms themselves," AP quoted Narrotam Lal, a doctor at King George's Medical College in Lucknow, the state capital, as saying. [Yeah, right!]

Space Weather - The Sun is once again covered with spots. The largest, active region 69, spans an area an area equal to thirty-two Pacific Oceans - and poses a threat for powerful flares. The big spot is easy to see from Earth - but never stare directly at the Sun! - A coronal mass ejection that left the Sun on August 14th could buffet Earth's magnetic field on August 15th or 16th.- Asteroid 2002 NY40, will glide by Earth on August 17th and 18th only a little farther from our planet than the Moon. -

L. A. Times: Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision - Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace. - The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties. - Ashcroft hopes to use his self-made "enemy combatant" stamp for any citizen whom he deems to be part of a wider terrorist conspiracy. - Aides have indicated that a "high-level committee" will recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps. - Before we allow Ashcroft to denude our own constitutional landscape, we must take a stand and have the courage to say, "Enough." [ People! It's time to get out of the Numb state and actually DO something! How hard will it be to write, email, FAX YOUR representatives and demand a congressional investigation and maybe some action taken on behalf of the PEOPLE? AND some elections are coming up! Let 'em know that they better get moving on this or they won't stay in office!] Go HERE to email YOUR representatives! Do it before it's too late!

Psychic and Political Numbing in Preparations for War - Psychic numbing, according to the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, builds on well-known defense mechanisms, such as repression, denial, and projection, to create an exclusion of feeling and disconnectedness. Aided by the surfeit of stimuli from televisual culture and media-manipulated images, people may tune out those realities and possibilities that threaten their own sense of connection to the world. - Part of the political numbing that the Bush Administration has visited on the American public is intimately connected to the fear and intimidation launched by the Ashcroft's jack-booted Department of Justice (sic). With overwhelming Congressional support, the USA Patriot Act was passed, establishing a wide variety of legal mechanisms to undermine the Bill of Rights. - Legislation is in place to deter real opposition to the policies of an increasingly authoritarian government. - Perhaps it may be time to raise the whole matter of the "F" word. It certainly seems reasonable to call this erosion of liberties and rights creeping fascism... - Promising a war without end and hiding behind a jingoistic veil of war against terrorism, the Bush Administration is promoting its own narrow interests in oil and order. War-making was as essential to Italian and German fascism as it is to this illegal and illegitimate ruling clique in Washington, DC. If we are to avoid being dragged into further fascistic adventures, we need to throw off this psychic and political numbing and to mobilize at every level to oppose the policies and plans of a war-mad power elite. See also: Look Now, Not Later, at the Dangers of War.

Phil Donohue exposing 9/11 - DONAHUE: What is the nature of the lawsuit to which you will attach your own name, as an attorney at law, that is to be filed in this country this week? BRISARD: I’m simply part of that effort to bring to justice those who sponsored, financed or give any facility to al Qaeda and to Usama bin Laden during those years for him to be able to carry out such a tragedy as the September 11th attacks. - DONAHUE: So-wow. Well, Jean Charles Brisard, we’ll watch with interest your lawsuit to be filed this week on behalf of loved ones of the victims of 9/11. And I thank you very much for sharing this intriguing story with us. Next, a September 11th widow-not unconnected here-demands an investigation into the act of terrorism that led to her husband’s death. [Note: Even though we do not think for a minute that Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks, we find it to be heartening that some people are wanting to find out who WAS responsible. Perhaps, under oath, with accountability waiting in the wings, the REAL culprits will be exposed. See our article: Who Benefits? for hints...]

BREITWEISER: And he said, “I didn’t want you to worry. I just wanted you to know that I’m OK and that it’s not my building and that I love you and I just didn’t want you to worry.” I said, “OK,” you know? He said, “Turn the television on,” and I turned the TV on. And he’s, like, “I have to go. We’re going to go watch it on the television. Don’t worry, though. I love you.” And I’m, like, “OK, just be careful.” And that was the last I spoke to him. And about three minutes later, I saw his building explode. DONAHUE: So you’re watching live television. You have received the call from your husband saying “Don’t worry.” You turn on the TV, you see the second plane hit and you know, don’t you? [...]

BREITWEISER: I knew right away. I knew approximately where his office was because he said that he was looking directly across at tower one. And I just had a feeling inside. And then when I saw the building subsequently collapse, I just said, “My God, he is gone.” And I fell to the floor and... [...]

BREITWEISER: ... I saw the picture of the president in, I think it was “Newsweek” or “Time” magazine, and I read the caption. And the caption said, you know, “Andy Card telling the president about the second plane.” And then I read that he proceeded to read for 25 minutes to the 2nd-graders. He was in a Sarasota school that morning for a reading program. And I read it again, and I thought it was, you know, misreported. And it wasn’t, and I got upset. I said, you know, this nation was under attack. It was clear that we were under attack. Why didn’t the Secret Service whisk him out of that school? He was on live local television in Florida. The terrorists, you know, had been in Florida. I mean, we find out that out now. He was less than 10 miles from an airport. [...] I want to know why the Secret Service did not whisk him away. I want to know why he is the commander-in-chief of the United States of America, our country was clearly under attack, it was after the second building was hit. I want to know why he sat there for 25 minutes.

I think that I have a lot of problems with the Pentagon. I don’t understand how a plane could hit our Defense Department, which is the Pentagon, an hour after the first plane hit the first tower. I don’t understand how that is possible. I’m a reasonable person. But when you look at the fact that we spend a half trillion dollars on national defense and you’re telling me that a plane is able to hit our Pentagon, our Defense Department, an hour after the first tower is hit? There are procedures and protocols in place in this nation that are to be followed when transponders are disconnected, and they were not followed on September 11th.

At this point, we are fighting for an independent investigation, an investigation into 9/11 removed from the political process. We don’t feel comfortable with Congress investigating itself, basically. You have congressional committees that had oversight duties with the FBI and the CIA. We want politics removed. We want pure accountability, and we feel that an independent investigation is needed to have that. We’ve had independent investigations with regard to Pearl Harbor, with regard to the shuttle accident. If there’s a car accident, you have an investigation. We have waited 11 months, and I think it is deplorable that these women and myself have to leave our children, our homes, and go down to Washington and beg for answers. To have the right to have answers, we have to beg. And it’s disgusting.

ISRAEL POISED TO STRIKE AGAINST IRAQ - The decision to do so comes after Mossad agents inside Iraq have concluded that Saddam intends to launch a pre-emptive strike against Israel, “probably between September and the onset of Ramadan”, according to one Mossad source Globe-Intel spoke to.

Truck, missile movement reported in Iraq - Meanwhile, the U.S. Central Command said British and U.S. warplanes struck at military targets in Iraq Wednesday "in response to recent Iraqi hostile acts against coalition aircraft monitoring the southern no-fly zone." It said the aircraft targeted two military air defense targets with precision-guided missiles at about 5 p.m. EDT. The assessment of damage is ongoing.

Why George Bush REALLY Wants To Go To War - The reality is that US President George W Bush needs a major distraction from his shocking domestic failures including economic mismanagement and the fall-out from gangster-style capitalism. Across Europe there are growing signs of little or no support for a military strike. Chancellor Gerhard Schroder wrote in Germany’s popular tabloid Bild Zeitung that a war against Iraq would “destroy the international alliance against terror.” - While George Bush has been banging his war drum from the Oval Office, Saddam Hussein has spent his time quietly despatching his own envoys to garner support among his Arab neighbours. Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri has met political leaders from Jordan, Syria, Algeria and even Iran which is still reeling for being lumped in to George Bush’s so called Axis of Evil. Lures of free-trade agreements, cheap oil and lucrative building contracts are thought to have been offered to friends and foes alike.

For the mainstream press version see: Bush talks economy, security in Midwest - "I understand and you know that this economy of ours is challenged," Bush said at the Iowa State Fair. "Anytime somebody wants to work and can't find a job, it says to me, we've got a problem. We've got hard-working Americans here trying to put bread on the table for their families and they can't find a place to work, and we'd better do something about it." [And we know his solution: War.]

FAKE TERROR - THE ROAD TO DICTATORSHIP - What Cicero only dreamed of, Adolph Hitler succeeded in doing. Elected Chancellor of Germany, Hitler, like Crassus, had no intention of living with the strict limits to his power imposed by German law. Unlike Cicero, Hitler's thugs were easy to recognize; they all wore the same brown shirts. But their actions were no different than those of their Roman predecessors. They staged beatings, set fires, caused as much trouble as they could, while Hitler made speeches promising that he could end the crime wave of subversives and terrorism if he was granted extraordinary powers. Then the Reichstag burned down; a staged terrorist attack. [And we have our own "Reichstag Fire," the Attack on the World Trade Center.]

TWA 800 CASE FILES - It has been five years since TWA 800 was shot down south of Long Island. The government of the United States, despite the embarrassment of having been caught in court rigging lab tests and lying in its reports, still officially attributes the disaster to a spark in the center fuel tank, while government spokespeople insist that the witnesses who saw a missile hit the jumbo jet are all drunks. -

Last Summer reporter W. Michael Pitcher of "The Southampton Press" newspaper broke the story of a Riverhead, Long Island resident who mistakenly received faxes of official documents related to the federal TWA Flight 800 investigation. The resident, Dede Muma, had a telephone line connected to her own fax machine with a number close to the number being used to direct investigation-related faxes to FBI and other personnel on Long Island. A transposition of the last two digits in the intended destination's phone number by the sender connected the sending fax machine to Ms. Muma's fax machine instead. The coversheet of the fax Ms. Muma received indicates it was from a worker at Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical in San Diego to a coworker helping the FBI on Long Island. The fax, actually multiple faxed pages, concerns rear structures of a drone aircraft Teledyne Ryan manufactures for the US military: the "Firebee" drone. - After reading the above linked article, consider what the Cassiopaeans had to say about it on November 23, 1996 - especially the use of the term "drone.":

Q: (T) About Flight 800. Pierre Salinger claims that the info floating around on the internet is accurate. He says that the Navy downed the flight.
A: Close. Pierre Salinger is an impeccable journalist and not one to "fly off the handle."
Q: (T) Very true. And that is why I am amazed that the rest of the journalism community is attacking him.
A: Why should you be amazed? They are "bought and paid for."
Q: (T) What did happen to flight 800?
A: This was the result of an experiment gone awry. So was KAL "007" in 1983.
Q: (L) What was the nature of the experiment?
A: Testing of secret impulse guidance system using civilian airliner as an arbitrary "bounce" guidance target. Instead, it became the "homing" target, and a different aircraft became the bouncer. This was because the programmers did not anticipate the lower than expected altitude of the 747. Warning: this must stay in this room for the present!!!!!!!!!! The facts will eventually be discussed by others. At that time, the danger is lifted. [At this point, it has been discussed in the exact same terms as described here in a reputable, national magazine.] Now, about KAL 007... that one is not dangerous to know. The plane was deliberately instructed to fly off course in order to trigger the Soviet's Pacific air defense system, to "see what they were made of" in that area. The plane was lost, but the experiment worked. They did not expect them to shoot down a civilian airliner. Now, all moving targets create electronic impuses. These can be "read" by the proper extremely high tech equipment. Older radar guided systems are subject to malfunctions in weather conditions that are severe, as one example. Also, the impulse system is an offshoot of the electromagnetic pulse experiments being carried out at Montauk, Brookings and elsewhere as part of the HAARP project! In connection with Pentagon missile tests, HAARP has many interesting tie-ins, not the least of which is your cell phone towers. Now, the homing target can be any moving object. It can be whatever is entered on the computer. It can be a squirrel in a tree, a jogger on the beach, a building, whatever you want. The system looks for any moving target in order to establish recognition to the computer, in order to establish recognition of match pattern of pulse. TWA 800 was flying at the exact same altitude that was supposed to be designated for the "drone" craft. The drone plane was farther out at sea. The "bounce" target was to be any moving object in the air within 400 square miles.
Q: (L) So, TWA 800, through a series of problems, happened to find itself at the right altitude, a restricted altitude, within the parameters of the experiment. Anything further on this?
A: Not for now.

COINTELPRO The Sabotage Of Legitimate Dissent - See also: Is Cassiopaea a Cult, as alleged by COINTELPRO AGENTS? and Has Nibiru/Planet X Been Sighted? - an idea promoted by COINTELPRO in the New Age. For real live examples of New Age COINTELPRO, do a web search on Rosemary Ellen Guiley, columnist for Fate Magazine. See also our review of Pincknett and Prince's The Stargate Conspiracy.

The history the government hopes you DON'T learn!

Hamdi case tests U.S. government resolve and constitutional limits - If Yaser Esam Hamdi - A Louisiana-born 21-year-old accused of being a soldier in the al Qaeda war on America - can be imprisoned in a military jail with few of the constitutional protections afforded Americans facing criminal prosecution, then other U.S. citizens could be similarly held, some legal scholars say. - "So, the Constitution doesn't apply to Mr. Hamdi?" U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar snapped during a testy standoff with Justice Department lawyers Tuesday. - The Justice Department calls Hamdi an enemy combatant, a term describing a wartime prisoner who does not play by the rules of war and is thus ineligible for protection as a prisoner of war. Those prisoners may be held without charges or trial and interrogated without a lawyer present. They are supposed to be released when the war is over. - The government maintains the power to classify someone an enemy combatant resides with the president and that courts have little role to play. - "If the government succeeds in this case, if its arguments are upheld it would mean that anybody, anytime could be labeled an enemy combatant by the attorney general and arrested in the middle of the night and locked away in a military brig," Dycus said.

Drought grips much of U.S. - NOAA's monthly drought assessment placed 49 percent of the contiguous United States in "moderate to severe" drought conditions -- due in part to the fifth-warmest July on record. - Drought and searing summer heat have dropped rivers and reservoirs to dangerously low levels, dealing a serious blow to fish populations and forcing wildlife officials to order anglers off rivers.

El Nino means 6, not 8, hurricanes this year - NOAA said the U.S. would begin to feel El Nino's impact sometime in September. - NOAA officially announced El Nino's arrival last month. The agency forecast it would be much milder than the extraordinary 1997-98 episode which claimed 24,000 lives.

Rain and storms spread from Gulf of Mexico to Great Lakes

Dresden is being hit by the same floodwaters that have flown through Prague. The Vltava that runs through the Czech capital then pours into the Elbe 270 kilometres (180 miles) north. - Exodus scenes, with people fleeing to the suburbs with their luggage, were described as being reminiscent of World War II. - "We're sitting here in a bathtub without a plug," Alfred Riedl, the Mayor of Grafenwoerth in Lower Austria, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying. He described an "almost deserted" ghost town after authorities evacuated the village.

Death on Vancouver Island blamed on rare fungus - It's the first human case of the VG-1 strain of the fungus, known as cryptococcal neoformans, although it has showed up previously in porpoises. "After it is breathed in it causes a lung infection and sometimes the fungus can spread from the lungs to other organs, mostly the central nervous system," said Stanwick.

Mexican President Vicente Fox on Wednesday canceled a trip to Texas scheduled for later this month in protest at the U.S. state's execution of a Mexican national.

Scientists create 'endurance' mouse The research is published in this week's edition of the journal Nature.

IBM on Tuesday said the total number of employees who lost their jobs as a result of its cost cutting efforts in the second quarter exceeded 15,600, more than twice what some company watchers had estimated.

An upsurge in poaching to feed a growing demand for so-called traditional medicines is threatening to wipe out the already endangered Asian Rhino, the World Wildlife Fund warned Wednesday. - Of the three Asian species, the Sumatran and Javan Rhinos are considered the most endangered. From an estimated global population of 600 Sumatran Rhinos in 1994, the WWF says there are now fewer than 300. Javan Rhinos are even rarer with an estimated 50-60 animals in Indonesia and eight or less thought to survive in Vietnam.

Tracking people by cell phone - The movie "Enemy of the State" featured high tech bugs, small enough to fit into the sole of a shoe. But in the real world you may not need such sophisticated devices to pin down a target -- at least not if they're carrying a mobile phone.

New! August 14, 2002 - FreeRepublic Admits Defeat: Loses Copyright Infringement Case - The legal precedent for online copyright infringement has been clearly established by a state District Court, a Federal Appellate Court, and denied in certiorari by the United States Supreme Court. The suit is resultant of FreeRepublic.com's practice of posting whole-length articles, without approval of their authors and publishers, and, as in the case of the Times/Post, in violation of the publishers' requests to "cease and desist" in said practice. Robinson resisted requests from the Times/Post to adopt a "fair-use" policy of clipping the first paragraph of such articles, and followed by a link directly back to the site-of-origin, citing 1st-amendment and "fair-use" privileges.

Visitors to US from 2004 must have microchip IDs in their passports - Legislation signed into law by President Bush in May, will require all 28 states in the US government's visa-waiver programme to provide biometric data on all newly issued travel documents. The new law, which is aimed at tightening up security following the terrorist attacks on September 11th, has prompted the Department of Foreign Affairs to reconsider biometrics, and the consequences of the new US legislation. - Documents obtained by The Irish Times show the Department considered the need for biometric identifiers on passports as early as August 2001. [Just before the attack on the World Trade Center. Interesting coincidence, eh?] Under the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Reform Act, US visas will also feature biometric data that can be read by scanners at all ports of entry into the US. The move would be opposed by many civil liberties groups as an infringement on privacy.

Heavy winds battering the Czech capital are raising the spectre of a storm surge that could sweep aside the defensive barriers protecting the city from its worst flood in 500 years. - Other countries badly hit include Romania, Austria and Germany. "We are very concerned about Romania," John Sparrow, of the International Red Cross, said. - The flooding is being called the worst for a century also in Austria, where thousands of people have been evacuated from the Salzburg and Upper Austria provinces. - The eastern state of Saxony has seen its worst flooding in its history, claiming six lives, state officials told Reuters. - Russia has suffered twice this summer from severe flooding. Most of the victims in the latest downpours have been Russian tourists taking their holidays on the Black Sea. - The situation could be complicated by new storm warnings being issued for the area.

Zimbabwe 'eviction drive begins' - Mugabe said the government would not back down on its controversial policy, despite domestic opposition and sanctions being imposed by western nations, and that the August 8 deadline for whites to leave their farms remained in place. - Adrian Laguna, spokesman for the Freedom For Zimbabwe campaign, told CNN: "The farming community has been devastated by the policies of Robert Mugabe and his regime, and... we now have six million people facing starvation. - Up to 13 million people, close to half of them in Zimbabwe, could starve over the next six months as a result of drought and political mismanagement across six countries in the region, the U.N. World Food Program has warned.

The storming of a West Midlands mosque by riot police three weeks ago to seize Farid Ahmadi, his wife Feriba, and their children Hadia, six, and Seear, four, provoked a public outcry in Britain. - Supporters of an Afghan family who were forcibly removed by police after they sought sanctuary in a mosque have reacted angrily to news they have been deported from Britain to Germany. - Ahmadi, 33, a mechanic, and his 24-year-old wife, who aimed to train as a nurse, fled Taliban-controlled Afghanistan two years ago, saying they had been tortured and persecuted because Ahmadi was the son of an army brigadier who was prominent in the pre-Taliban regime. - Protesters blocking the path of a four-vehicle convoy as it left the centre with the Ahmadis were pulled aside by police. - A British judge ruled last Saturday that the Ahmadi children, Hadia, six, and Seear, four, who had been staying with family friends in Britain, should be held along with their parents in a detention centre until the family was deported.

Airport screener arrested after rampage - An airport screener who is a registered sex offender faces life in prison after a weekend rampage in which he fired shots throughout his apartment complex and then set fire to one of the buildings, officials said. - State prosecutors said a simple background check would have revealed Kewanyama's status as a registered sex offender.

New! August 12, 2002 - US may seize Arab airports by force to attack Iraq - The report said that US President George W. Bush would unleash the military offensive in January 2003 as he has to wait the outcome of the midterm elections of the Congress in November. ``Bush prefers to have Arab support for his war to remove Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the US forces would have facilities in several neighboring Arab airports,'' the report said. - Meanwhile, the report revealed that the Bush administration has allowed Israel to strike back in the upcoming confrontation against Iraq if the Arab country fires Scud missiles at Israel like it did in 1991.

US opposition to Iraq attack grows - "It's almost certain that if we did attack Saddam that he then would use the weapons of mass destruction because he'd have nothing to lose in response to that kind of an attack," Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said. Last week, Republican Dick Armey, the majority leader in the House of Representatives, caused a stir when he broke ranks and said the Iraqi leader should be left to rant and rave on his own, warning against taking action without "proper provocation". - Iraq has made a number of gestures towards compromise in recent days, saying it is willing to discuss allowing UN weapons inspectors back into the country. Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said the US administration was "confused" in its thinking about Iraq and was using weapons inspections as a way of aggravating the crisis.

US Iraq Campaign Has Its First Engagement - The fact of the matter is that American military concentrations are already unobtrusively present in northern and southern Iraq. The US campaign to oust Saddam is therefore unfolding already, albeit in salami-fashion, slice by slice, under clouds of disinformation and diversionary ruses – like the latest statements by President George W. Bush (No date set yet for the offensive) and British premier Tony Blair (Plenty of time before the war begins), or the grave reservations issuing from the Russian, French and German leaders. - Tuesday August 6, at 0800 hours Middle East time, US and British air bombers went into action and destroyed the Iraqi air command and control center at al-Nukhaib in the desert between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The center contained advanced fiber optic networks recently installed by Chinese companies. DEBKA-Net-Weekly ’s military sources say the raid made military history. For the first time, the US air force used new precision-guided bombs capable of locating and destroying fiber optic systems. The existence of such weaponry was hitherto unknown. - Two days later, on Wednesday night, August 8, Turkey executed its first major military assault inside Iraq. [It's hard to tell if this Israili Intelligence Website is or is not just better and deeper disinformation, so caveat lector.]

U.S. to Begin Fingerprinting Aliens - The Justice Department has chosen Sept. 11 as the starting date for a new program that will require tens of thousands of foreign visitors to be fingerprinted and photographed at the border, U.S. officials announced Monday. - The government says the security system will target: –All nationals of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria.

Torrential rains leave flooded Europe in chaos - The Austrian city of Salzburg declared a disaster area and a state of emergency announced for large parts of the Czech Republic - the worst flooding since 1997. - Shipping was suspended on the river Danube, where water levels are threatening to rise above 10 meters (30 feet). - Late Monday, waters were rising steadily in the historic center of Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart. - A state of emergency was declared in several districts in southern Bavaria over the weekend, and heavy rains on Monday caused further traffic chaos by closing the main A8 highway, with waters as high as 1.5 metres (five feet) in some areas. - In Switzerland, activity in the river port of Basel ground to a halt after heavy rains swelled the Rhine river, forcing the closure of a section linking France and Switzerland. - Turkey meanwhile was dealing with a different sort of weather problem, with temperatures in the western city of Izmir reaching a record 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday, the hottest since 1939, the Anatolia news agency reported. See Photos. Also see: El Nino blamed for weather chaos

Comets: A key to a parallel universe - Comets may be composed of matter hitherto unknown to science, according to a physicist in Australia. If he's right, we may at last have found the identity of the mysterious "dark matter" believed to make up at least 90 per cent of the mass of the universe. What's more, it could mean there is another universe occupying our own, complete with invisible stars, planets and even life.

Close encounters of the crop-eating kind - UFOs are destroying the plains of fertile central Greece, according to farmers who claim to have spotted alien aircraft landing in their fields. - The Guardian calls this a "silly story," but we wonder?

'Brown haze' is blanketing Asia and changing weather, warn scientists.

Tony Blair is interrupting his holiday today to meet the French Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, in an attempt to heal the rift between Britain and the rest of Europe over war with Iraq.

In an interview in Baghdad with the Labour backbench MP George Galloway, President Saddam said he was prepared to implement all United Nations resolutions. He also appealed to Britain to take a more "independent" line from the United States.

On August 15, 1952, one of the worst flash floods ever to have occurred in Britain swept through the Devon village of Lynmouth. Thirty five people died as a torrent of 90m tons of water and thousands of tons of rock poured off saturated Exmoor and into the village destroying homes, bridges, shops and hotels. The disaster was officially termed "the hand of God" but new evidence from previously classified government files suggests that a team of international scientists working with the RAF was experimenting with artificial rainmaking in southern Britain in the same week and could possibly be implicated.

New! August 11, 2002 - Torrential rain continues to sweep across Europe from England to the Ukraine. Europe's worst flooding in decades has turned rivers and streets into torrents, causing havoc and the loss of dozens of lives. - Rescue workers in the worst affected region, the Baltic coast of Russia, have retrieved 49 bodies so far, but the death toll is recorded at 58, mainly tourists. The overall death toll across Europe is 65. One area has received about a month's equivalent of rain in the past 24 hours. - Meanwhile, so far this year, around 900 people in China have been killed in seasonal floods, Reuters reports.

Devastating drought in U.S. - an extended drought in Ohio and much of the United States is fast becoming one of the worst in the last century. - Drought has taken a grip on more than half of the United States, experts calculate. Twenty-six states are suffering severe drought conditions and "exceptional drought" -- the worst level of drought measured -- has blanketed thirteen states, including New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah. - In Monticello, Georgia, south of Atlanta, officials this week banned all outside watering, saying creek levels were so low that the area could run out of water in 30 to 45 days. - In Jasper County, South Carolina, more than 100 people turned out last week for a meeting with state officials after a drop in an underground aquifer left them without water. Rural residents blamed business operators for using too much water. - The conditions are near those seen during the country's most devastating drought in the 1930s -- the "dust bowl" years, when some 60 percent of the United States was affected.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney delivered Wednesday simultaneous speeches on the nation's fiscal health. Hecklers interrupted Vice President Dick Cheney as he talked Wednesday about corporate fraud, a topic he ducked later when asked about the company he used to run that's under investigation.

The best time to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower is between 2 a.m. and dawn when the constellation Perseus is highest in the sky. The Perseids usually start appearing around 10 p.m. Some of the early ones streak more slowly, providing longer and more spectacular meteors.

Scientist under scrutiny denies anthrax link - "I acknowledge the right of the authorities and the press to satisfy themselves as to whether I am the anthrax mailer," Hatfill said. "This does not, however, give them the right to smear me and gratuitously make a wasteland of my life in the process."

West Nile virus is an "emerging" epidemic that could spread throughout the United States, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday. - At highest risk for becoming infected with the mosquito-borne virus are the elderly, those with compromised immune systems and young children.

Saudi Arabia is interrogating 16 suspected al Qaeda fighters handed over by Iran and is sharing the information it collects with the United States, a Saudi official said Sunday.

Iraq's military is "ready to rise up" against Saddam Hussein, an Iraqi opposition leader told reporters Saturday after speaking with top U.S. officials.

Relations between China and Taiwan are being tested again

The New York Times, as the 'paper of record', truly appears to believe that it must take action to debunk any and all conspiracy theories that might arise in the masses, for fear that such theories might create dissension and unrest. Right after the time of the anthrax attacks, a noticable slew of scientists involved in microbiology began to die, often in striking ways. This led to the not unreasonable thought that these scientists were being killed because of something they knew or were thought to have known concerning the attacks. Fortunately, and predictably, we now have a NYT article to explain away the whole matter and comfort us in our moment of unease. The article itself is almost a model of debunking, and should receive whatever prizes are awarded for pacification of the peasantry. More...

UK government has dismissed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's promise to a British politician that he would allow U.N. inspectors back.

At least 75 people, many of them women and children, were hacked to death in fighting this week in northeastern Congo.

The Rockefeller File - The Rockefeller File is not fiction. It is a compact, powerful and frightening presentation of what may be the most important story of our lifetime, the drive of the Rockefellers and their allies to create a one-world government, combining super-capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control. - The picture that is revealed when The Rockefeller File is finally opened may shock you. In this book, you will learn why the Rockefellers follow the policies they do, what their goals are, where they intend to take America ... and why it is essential they be stopped.

Ashcroft’s Master Plan to Spy on Us - The July 17 editorial in The Boston Globe was headlined, "Ashcroft vs. Americans." It began: "Operation TIPS—The Terrorism Information and Prevention System—is a scheme that Joseph Stalin would have appreciated. Plans for its pilot phase, to start in August, have Operation TIPS recruiting a million letter carriers, meter readers, cable technicians, and other workers with access to private homes as informants to report to the Justice Department any activities they think suspicious." - The Boston Globe went on to say, "Ashcroft’s informant corps is a vile idea not merely because it violates civil liberties . . . or because it will sabotage genuine efforts to prevent terrorism by overloading law enforcement officials with irrelevant reports about Americans who have nothing to do with terrorists. Operation TIPS should be stopped because it is utterly anti-American."

Volunteers for Operation TIPS, John Ashcroft's citizen spy army, are being steered to the Fox crime show "America's Most Wanted." Is the merger of tabloid TV with the federal snooping operation funny or scary or both?

Signs of the Times Archive 5

Signs of the Times Archive 4

Signs of the Times Archive 3

Signs of the Times Archive 2

Signs of the Times Archive 1

Contact Webmaster at signs-of-the-times.org
Cassiopaean materials Copyright ©1994-2014 Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk. All rights reserved. "Cassiopaea, Cassiopaean, Cassiopaeans," is a registered trademark of Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk.
Letters addressed to Cassiopaea, Quantum Future School, Ark or Laura, become the property of Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Republication and re-dissemination of our copyrighted material in any manner is expressly prohibited without prior written consent.