New Article: Jupiter, Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, and the Return of the Mongols - Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12

Picture of the Day

Cumulonimbus
©2004 Pierre-Paul Feyte

To be able to exercise one's free will, one must first of all have Will. Acquiring this Will is acquiring self-mastery, the ability to ignore the impulses that push and pull one away from one's aim and to focus on those tasks that take one towards one's aim.

Of course, one might suggest that Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon have tremendous Will. Once Bush and his keepers had decided to invade Iraq and topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, even prior to 9/11, and once Ariel Sharon had decided to wipe out the Palestinians for the goal of Greater Israel, they have worked with the appearance of great Will towards these goals.

So the next question after that of Will is that of Intent -- is one's intent to align one's Will with Entropy, deciding that one will wilfully trample upon the Will of anyone who gets in your way or who threatens your own goal; or is one's intent to align one's Will with Creation and to work to promote the conditions wherein everyone around you is encouraged to also develop their Will.

The first choice aligns us with the material world and man's animalistic Personality and the 'I' of the body; the second aligns us with the Soul and man's higher, spiritual self, the real 'I'. Will can be consciously developed in either direction.

However, looked at from another angle, one could define the Will of the lower centres, that is, the Will with an intent aimed at the material world, as desire, and recognise only the Will of the real 'I' as Will in the sense we are discussing today. For with the exception of those who have consciously aligned themselves with the descending path of entropy, we recognise not so much Will as desire as the motivating force in their actions. But desire can also become the door of escape for those who have recognised the ephemeral nature of material success and sensual pleasures but who have not yet developed their Will. Without Will, one can still have the desire to escape. By channeling this desire, one can begin the process of developing one's Will.

"Of the desires expressed the one which is most right is the desire to be master of oneself, because without this nothing else is possible. And in comparison with this desire all other desires are simply childish dreams, desires of which a man could make no use even if they were granted to him."
[Gurdjieff, quoted by Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, P; 103.]

But what does it mean to become master of oneself?

The Esoteric Tradition has a story that illustrates self-mastery:

Esoteric science indicates the possibilities and the means of freeing one-self from this law. It helps us to begin a new and purposeful life; first to become logical with ourselves, and finally, to become our own master.

But to begin effectively on this way, one must first clearly see the situation as it is [to recognise objective reality - ed.]. A parable found in the most ancient sources permits us to get a clear picture of this, and so keep this condition in mind. It is the parable of the Coach.

This image represents the characteristics of man by a coach. The physical body is represented by the coach itself; the horses represent sensations, feelings and passions; the coachman is the ensemble of the intellectual faculties including reason; the person sitting in the coach is the master.

In its normal state, the whole system is in a perfect state of operation: the coachman holds the reins firmly in his hands and drives the horses in the direction indicated by the master. This, however, is not how things happen in the immense majority of cases. First of all, the master is absent. The coach must go and find him, and must then await his pleasure. All is in a bad state: the axles are not greased and they grate; the wheels are badly fixed; the shaft dangles dangerously; the horses, although of noble race, are dirty and ill-fed; the harness is worn and the reins are not strong. The coachman is asleep: his hands have slipped to his knees and hardly hold the reins, which can fall from them at any moment.

The coach nevertheless continues to move forward, but does so in a way which presages no happiness. Abandoning the road, it is rolling down the slope in such a way that the coach is now pushing the horses, which are unable to hold it back. The coachman, fallen into a deep sleep, is swaying in his seat at risk of falling off. Obviously a sad fate awaits such a coach.

This image provides a highly appropriate analogy for the condition of most men, and it is worth taking as an object of meditation.

Salvation may however present itself. Another coachman, this one quite awake, may pass by the same route and observe the coach in its sad situation. If he is not in much of a hurry, he may perhaps stop to help the coach that is in distress. He will first help the horses hold back the coach from slipping down the slope. Then he will awaken the sleeping driver and together with him will try to bring the coach back to the road. He will lend fodder and money. He might also give advice on the care of the horses, the address of an inn and a coach repairer, and indicate the proper route to follow.

It will be up to the assisted coachman afterward to profit, by his own efforts , from the help and the information received. It will be incumbent on him from this point on to put all things in order and, open eyed, to follow the path he had abandoned.

He will above all fight against sleep, for if he falls asleep again, and if the coach leaves the road again and again finds itself in the same danger, he cannot hope that chance will smile upon him a second time; that another coachman will pass at that moment and at that place and come to his aid once again. [Boris Mouravieff, Gnosis, Vol I, pp. 6-7. Gurdjieff uses the same parable in ISOTM, p. 92.]

To illustrate this parable, think back to last time you received an emotional shock. Perhaps you were angry about something; perhaps you found yourself enamoured of someone; perhaps you felt insulted or that someone was trying to control or manipulate you. Your emotions take charge. Regardless of the thoughts coming from the more rational part of yourself, you find yourself charged with passion. The horses are running out of control. You recognise that if the emotions are not brought under control, the coach could be heading over the precipice, in spite of any warnings coming from the driver, your intellect. It is not a given that the intellect will be able to take back control.

Self-mastery in this case means learning how to bring the emotions under the control of your intellect so that the carriage can be guided towards the goal set by the intellect while being fueled by the energy of the emotions. The emotions are due to the release of chemicals into the body. These are the lower emotions and are strictly chemical in nature, but they provide fuel to the coach.

This is the first step. The next is to bring the coach as a whole under the guidance of the Master riding within, the Master who is telling the driver where it is he wishes to go. This is the question of Intent and Will. The Master is the Will. From the esoteric viewpoint, there is little point in simply bringing the driver, horses, and coach into balance and going no further in the Work if the coach is continuing towards the precipice.

It is necessary to bring the coach under control in order to be able to hear the wishes of the Master. When one is constantly struggling against the horses or a defective coach, the Master's voice can be lost in the struggle, the galloping of the horses, the screeching of the coach, and the shouts of the driver.

Most of us are still struggling to bring the coach under control. The horses are pulling us where they wish.

Another example.

Perhaps in reading the Signs of the Times, you find yourself overcome with grief at the state of the world or frustrated and angry that someone like Bush is driving the world towards catastrophe. You can SEE the hopelessness and the terror of the situation. This SEEing can provoke strong negative emotions. When we understand that these emotions are chemicals racing through our bodies like mad horses, we can attain a certain objectivity to them. We can stop identifying with them and being carried away. We can constate: "There is anger," and notice the physiological changes these chemicals are causing in the body. When we are able to do this, we can then recognise the energy of this passion and choose to use this energy for something else. We can use our intellect to choose how this energy will be used.

Some may choose to, or even unconsciously, use this energy to elaborate plans of revenge; that is, they will feed the emotional energy into the negative side of the intellectual centre, the dark side of the driver as it were, and continue towards the precipice, but at a more leisurely pace.

Others will begin to use this energy to find the way out of the prison within which the coach is turning in circles. They will begin to listen for the voice of the Master within.

The struggle to master our emotions and submit them to the Will of the Master is a long, painful, and difficult process. Some days we are better at it than others, but by observing the times when we are having the most difficulty, we can have valuable insights into our programmes and look out for the signs the next time similar situations arise.

This work of bringing the coach under control of the master is the work of developing our Will. It is the first step in our becoming, in the development of our BEing, and of our being able to DO.

US tanks deploy in Baghdad as Shiite radicals take to streets

April 4, 2004

BAGHDAD (AFP) - US tanks deployed in the Iraqi capital to stop hundreds of angry protestors marching on the coalition's city-centre headquarters as Shiite Muslim radicals took to the streets across central and southern Iraq.

The protest in the capital turned violent as some supporters of radical leader Moqtada Sadr threw themselves at the US tanks and a police officer said at least two of the demonstrators had been crushed.

There was no immediate confirmation of the deaths from police headquarters or the US military.

Huge protests were also held in the central pilgrimage city of Najaf and as far south as Amara, while unarmed militiamen from Sadr's Mehdi Army paraded in Sadr City, a sprawling mainly Shiite neighbourhood of the capital regarded as a radical stronghold.

Sadr's followers have held almost daily demonstrations to protest the decision by the coalition last Sunday to close his weekly newspaper for 60 days on charges of inciting violence.

Early Saturday, Sadr supporters took to the streets of Najaf, reacting to unfounded rumours that Spanish coalition soldiers had detained Mustafa Yaacubi, the head of his office in the city.

Spanish commanders "categorically" denied the charge in a statement that was distributed to the crowd that formed outside the headquarters of the Spanish-led Plus Ultra Brigade in Najaf until mid-evening. [...]

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US tanks crush Iraqi protesters: police

AFP
Sunday, April 4, 2004. 6:01am (AEST)

At least two followers of Shiite Muslim radical leader Moqtada Sadr have been killed after throwing themselves in front of US tanks during a demonstration in central Baghdad.

"There were two or three dead among the protestors who threw themselves under American tanks, which could not avoid them on Tahrir square," said Sergeant Abbas Mohamad.

The report could not immediately be confirmed by police headquarters or the US-led coalition.

Earlier, as the protestors marched down Baghdad's main commercial thoroughfare towards the square, an AFP correspondent saw one young man lunge towards a US tank.

The tank stopped abruptly without harming him. [...]

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Iraq Restarts Oil Pipeline to Turkey

AP
Sat Apr 3, 1:31 PM ET

ANKARA, Turkey - Iraq began pumping oil to Turkey through its northern pipeline Saturday after a nearly three-week lull, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

Service resumed at about 8 a.m. at an initial rate of 400,000 barrels a day, Dow Jones reported. The prewar capacity of the pipeline — from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk to Turkey's southern Ceyhan port — was about 900,000 barrels.

Oil has not been pumped to Ceyhan from Iraq since March 17.

The oil flow through the pipeline has halted several times since last year, often because of sabotage and other problems.

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Bush and Blair made secret pact for Iraq war

· Decision came nine days after 9/11
· Ex-ambassador reveals discussion

David Rose
Sunday April 4, 2004
The Observer

President George Bush first asked Tony Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after the terror attacks of 11 September, 2001.

According to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington, who was at the dinner when Blair became the first foreign leader to visit America after 11 September, Blair told Bush he should not get distracted from the war on terror's initial goal - dealing with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Bush, claims Meyer, replied by saying: 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.' Regime change was already US policy.

It was clear, Meyer says, 'that when we did come back to Iraq it wouldn't be to discuss smarter sanctions'. Elsewhere in his interview, Meyer says Blair always believed it was unlikely that Saddam would be removed from power or give up his weapons of mass destruction without a war.

Faced with this prospect of a further war, he adds, Blair 'said nothing to demur'.

Comment: Another rat is leaving the sinking ships of state in the US and Britain. In this case, it is the former British Ambassador to Washington. While we are enjoying the spectacle of these outings by formers members of the two governments, we wonder where they were when Afghanistan and Iraq were being reduced to barbarism by Bush and Blair.

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Rice scrapped 9/11 speech didn't mention al Qaeda

National security adviser Condoleeza Rice planned to deliver a speech on September 11, 2001, about national security that said nothing about Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda or Islamic fundamentalist groups. A description and excerpts of that undelivered speech were first reported in The Washington Post on Thursday, and the excerpts were confirmed by administration sources. But the administration disputed suggestions that the speech showed the administration was not focused on terrorism before the deadly attacks.

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Rice saw Russia, China as the major threats

Documents reveal Cold War mindset of Bush administration before Sept. 11

In the months and days leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, senior White House officials were obsessed not with Islamic terrorism, but with Russia and China, which they believed posed the most serious threats in the world. Documents illustrating this Cold War mindset emerged as U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice announced that she will testify next Thursday before a congressional commission into the administration's failure to anticipate or prevent the Sept. 11 attacks. Her 2½ hours of televised testimony will likely focus on her dedication to the superpower rivalries of another era, and her belief that the threat of Islamic terrorism was a relic from the previous administration.

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US Doubts Resolution Will Keep Spain Troops in Iraq

April 2 — By Saul Hudson

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United States raised doubts Friday that an expected U.N. resolution will go far enough to stop Spain from withdrawing its troops from Iraq.

The incoming Socialist government has said it will pull out its 1,300 soldiers unless the United Nations takes "political control" through a resolution Washington has agreed to seek before the formal American-led occupation ends June 30.

But Secretary of State Colin Powell, who confirmed for the first time Thursday that Washington would back a U.N. resolution, appeared unwilling to give the United Nations enough authority to keep its coalition partner in Iraq.

"I don't know if any resolution would go that far, so the Spanish government is sovereign, free to make their own judgment and we'll respect that judgment," Powell said in an interview with East European media. [...]

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Thailand considering withdrawing troops from Iraq after June 30, government says

By Associated Press
4/3/2004 01:29

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Thailand may withdraw its forces from Iraq earlier than planned due to concerns about violence in the country after the United States transfers power to Iraqis on June 30, a government spokesman said Saturday.

The Defense Ministry will conduct a review on whether 443 Thai soldiers on a humanitarian mission in Iraq should come back in September as planned or sooner, ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Palangun Klaharn said. [...]

Thailand's main concern is that violence against coalition forces by insurgents opposed to the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq could increase after June 30 when the United States plans to relinquish governance, Palangun said.

"If there are other troops withdrawn, then senior military officials and the (Thai) government will have to review the policy," Palangun said. [...]

Comment: It seems the US may start losing its "allies" in Iraq, one by one - unless there is a new development in the War on Terror.

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Policeman, four Madrid suspects dead in blast

April 4, 2004

MADRID (AFP) - A policeman and four suspects in the March 11 Madrid train bombings died in a police operation in a suburb of the Spanish capital, Spanish media reported.

The interior ministry neither confirmed the information nor gave the identities of the suspects who blew themselves up Saturday after they were surrounded in a massive security stake-out.

At least one of them was on a list of suspects wanted by investigators for ties to the March 11 attacks on four commuter trains in Madrid that killed 191, in Spain's worst terrorist attack.

Interior Minister Angel Acebes said Saturday that three suspects had been killed in the blast, as well as an officer of the police special forces.

Eleven police officers also sustained injuries of varying degrees in the blast in a residential area in Leganes, a suburb south of Madrid and the site of two of the four train explosions on March 11. [...]

"With the explosion it will be very difficult to recognise the bodies ... under all of the debris", he said. [...]

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Ringleader of Madrid Attacks Dies in Raid

Comment: How convenient. Looks like a cover-up... The question is, who is behind it?

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French anti-terror police net arms, explosives in ETA raid

Sat Apr 3,12:29 PM ET

BAYONNE, France (AFP) - A swoop by anti-terror police in southwestern France has netted explosives and arms belonging to Spain's Basque separatist organisation ETA, police said.

The raid by French and Spanish police on the apartment of Felix Ignacio Esparza Luri, alias Navarro, the current logistics chief of ETA, in Bagneres-de-Bigorre on Friday unearthed weapons, explosives, a computer and computer material, police said, without giving further details.

In Madrid, Spanish Interior Minister Angel Acebes said the raid had turned up four explosive devices.

"Two bags, one carrying two explosive devices prepared in pressure cookers and the other two limpet bombs ready to be used" were found, Acebes said.

The two explosive devices were "ready to be used shortly," he said.

A French police officer said the use of limpet bombs by ETA commandos was not unusual but bombs in pressure cookers were less frequently used by Basque extremists. [...]

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Chirac and Putin renew calls on terror

By Elizabeth Pineau
Reuters
Saturday April 3, 06:01 PM

KRASNOZNAMENSK, Russia - The presidents of Russia and France have called for renewed efforts to halt terrorism stretching through Europe and Asia and to tackle the root causes behind it.

Vladimir Putin and Jacques Chirac, holding talks after an unprecedented tour for a Western leader of a satellite command centre, also said they had "near total convergence" in their views of conflicts in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chirac announced that the Kremlin leader had accepted an invitation to attend high-profile 60th anniversary celebrations of the D-Day landings in Normandy -- and said it was recognition of the Soviet Union's war effort.

Putin told reporters "terrorist attacks" in Moscow, Madrid and Uzbekistan had "caught the world unawares, without a clear system of joint action worked out despite an obvious threat.

"An effective system of liquidating the international terrorist network and undermining its financial base are needed," he said alongside Chirac at the Krasnoznamensk satellite facility, 40 km (25 miles) west of Moscow.

Chirac called for efforts to remove "the fertile ground in which terrorism develops. This includes unresolved conflicts, misery, famine, poverty and the humiliation which people are justified in feeling". [...]

Comment: Notice that Chirac's comment on terrorism is quite a bit different than Bush's usual, "They hate us because of our freedoms" rant.

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The sphinx

Peter Beaumont
Sunday April 4, 2004
The Observer

This week President Bush's National Security Adviser, and his most trusted aide, will be grilled on why she failed to warn her government about the attacks of 11 September. But did she fail to understand the extent of the threat to America, or is she the target of jealous colleagues?

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US gov't warns of summer bomb plots

www.chinaview.cn 2004-04-04 12:45:54

BEIJING, April 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Trains and buses in major U.S cities may be targeted this summer by terrorists using bombs hidden in bags or luggage, federal counterterrorism officials have told law enforcement and transportation officials in a nationwide bulletin.

FBI and Homeland Security Department officials said they had received uncorroborated intelligence reports about a plot by terrorists to target commercial transportation systems. The bulletin, issued late Thursday, mentioned no specific cities or dates and did not elaborate on the source of the information.

A senior federal law enforcement official, speaking Friday on condition of anonymity, said the intelligence, coupled with the deadly March 11 commuter train attacks in Madrid in which bombs went off inside backpacks, has increased the level of wariness about a similar attack in the United States.

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From Amman, on Fallujah

Dahr Jamail, April 3, 2004

Amman, Jordan - By now I imagine everyone has been properly inundated with the images of the scorched bodies of the 'American Civilians' (as properly parroted by the corporate media) in Falluja. In case I missed it before departing, I had one last chance to catch it on the countless televisions in JFK airport, then on the front page of the NY Times on the plane.

I thought it was interesting, because what accompanied this story was a strange little phenomenon I've seen many times in Iraq. The first bit of news released on the attack referred to the men killed as 'contractors', and even showed an Iraqi man handling the dog tags of one of them, and another man was holding a Department of Defense badge from another of the U.S. fighters the Iraqis had killed. The same report mentioned that a collection of weapons was in one of the vehicles as well.

Of course that was the last of that footage I saw. From then on, it was 'Americans killed by Iraqis!', or 'Contractors Killed', over and over ad nauseum.

Well, it turns out these 'Americans killed by Iraqis' just happened to be four mercenaries working for a N.C. Security Firm called Blackwater Security Consulting.

This subcontractor, along with countless others, is working to provide 'security' in Iraq. Check out their website: because they even provide training for SWAT teams and former special operations personnel.

I've been in Falluja when the entire city has been under collective punishment, which occurs nearly everytime someone attacks a U.S. patrol there. People are enraged, and rightly so. So when one of those white, shiny SUV's with the big black antenna drives by with guys with crew cuts in them wearing body armor holding guns (yes, it is THAT obvious and easy to see),what do you think might happen to them?

The other reason I bring this up is because of this: Last night I'm going through customs at the airport in Amman, and I find myself standing in line behind five men with crewcuts and their 'handler', a little bit older fellow from Turkey (I saw his passport). The men were all in their late 20s, to late 30s I'd say, and from their discussion had all been in Iraq before.

They wouldn't tell me who they were working for, but when they were lugging huge plastic boxes with locks on them off the baggage belt, then went and hopped into their nice, white SUV, it was pretty much a no-brainer.

Blackwater Security Consulting won a $35.7 million contract to train over 10,000 soldiers from several states in the U.S. in the art of 'force protection,' according to Mother Jones magazine. They also hire mercenaries from South Africa and other countries as well, and the pay in Iraq is $1,000 per day. Wonder how that makes our soldiers feel, who make barely over that each month?

So the residents of Falluja are about to be 'pacified' because some of the resistance fighters there killed what were most likely mercenaries who regularly attack and detain residents of Falluja. The fog of war grows thicker in Iraq, as the privatization contracts continue to be signed.

Comment from a QFS member: Here's a personal take on those American merc--er, civilians killed in Iraq this past week. I met this journalist in person last week, when he came through our area giving a talk and slide show on the reality in Iraq; he's a US citizen, from Anchorage Alaska no less (his name, Dahr Jamail, reflects his Lebanese ancestry), who tired of the mainstream media propaganda about Iraq and decided to go over there, see for himself what was going on, and report it over the Internet. He himself is personable; his words and images make it clear that Iraq these days is a hell on Earth.

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Iraq's mercenaries: Riches for risks

By Clare Murphy
BBC News Online

The severe lack of security in Iraq has opened up a highly profitable market for private security contractors.

The brutal murders of four American security men in Falluja on Wednesday 31 March is unlikely to deter the many would-be mercenaries willing to accept the risks involved in providing security amid the instability of post-war Iraq, according to one security firm.

The US has so far spent $20bn on reconstruction in Iraq. The companies which have won these contracts currently expect to spend about 10% of their budgets on providing personal security planning and protection for their workers.

Hence a highly lucrative market has sprung up.

Industry insiders say the war has proven a godsend for British security firms - which have picked up much of the work. Their revenues are estimated to have risen fivefold, from around $350m before the invasion to nearly $2bn.

Tidy rewards

The firms themselves offer handsome sums to attract the personnel, with an average daily wage of $550.

"Doing this kind of work for a year means some people have enough to retire on," says Duncan Bullivant, head of the small British firm Henderson Risk, which has around 40 employees operating in the country.

"Iraq is something of a goldmine at present. The profit margin is incredibly high, way in excess of the risk factor. I wouldn't give it more than another year at this level, the bubble will burst, but there's an immense drive to cash in while it lasts."

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Brazil refuse to let UN inspectors to nuclear facility: report

WASHINGTON (AFP) Apr 04, 2004

The Brazilian government has refused to allow UN nuclear inspectors to examine a facility for enriching uranium under construction near Rio de Janeiro, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Citing unnamed Brazilian officials and diplomats in Vienna, the newspaper said the International Atomic Energy Agency and Brazil were at an impasse over the inspections.

Brazil maintains that the facility in Resende will produce low-enriched uranium for use in power plants, not the highly enriched material used in nuclear weapons, according to the report.

Nonetheless, Brazil refuses to let IAEA inspectors see equipment in the plant, citing a need to protect proprietary information, the paper said. [...]

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Iran insists it has no secret nuclear sites, not violating enrichment deal

TEHRAN (AFP) Apr 04, 2004

Iran insisted Sunday that it was not hiding any of its nuclear facilities from UN inspectors, and that its resumption of work on a key part of the nuclear fuel cycle was not a violation of its commitment to suspend uranium enrichment activities.

"There is no nuclear site that the (International Atomic Energy) Agency is not aware of and that we have hidden from IAEA inspectors," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters ahead of a key visit by the UN watchdog's director, Mohammed ElBaradei. [...]

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China arrests popular Tibetan musicians

Fri Apr 2,10:33 PM ET

BEIJING (AFP) - Chinese state security officials have arrested a popular Tibetan singer and a composer, apparently because of the implicit political content of their music, an official said.

The singer and composer, known as Namkha and Bakocha respectively, were taken into custody around March 10 in Tongde county, a traditionally Tibetan area now part of northwest China's Qinghai province, a police officer and the US-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) said. [...]

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Bush is the 'most corrupt president', says Nixon aide jailed for Watergate perjury

By Julian Coman in Washington
The Telegraph
04/04/2004

John Dean, Richard Nixon's legal counsel who was jailed for his part in the Watergate scandal, has accused the Bush administration of trumping even the Nixon regime in secrecy, deception and political cynicism.

In the latest book to attack the conduct of the current United States administration, Mr Dean says that it has created potentially the most corrupt, unethical and undemocratic White House in history. [...]

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Deputy at Homeland Security Resigns

What we're about to tell you is actually old news, but since roughly half our viewing audience gets 95% of its knowledge of current events solely from Mac web sites, there's a decent chance you haven't heard about it yet. According to The Inquirer (as pointed out by faithful viewer mrmgraphics), the Deputy Chief Information Officer of our illustrious Department of Homeland Security, one Laura Callahan, finally resigned last week, after months of controversy about her qualifications. Specifically, her degrees and "doctorate in computer information systems" came from Hamilton University, a learning institution that "emphasizes the individual needs and goals of the degree candidate." As in, "I need a few degrees to pad my résumé and my goal is to get them by writing you a check."

In other words, Hamilton U. is allegedly a "diploma mill," an unlicensed and unaccredited "school" selling doctoral degrees to anyone with $3,600 to pay for one (credit cards not accepted). Government Computer News reports that it's run by "two or three people" out of an old motel. And so "Dr." Laura Callahan is no more a Doctor of Information Systems than we are Doctors of Love, except that our Certificates of Mastery of the Arts of Gettin' Freaky only cost us ten bucks each the last time the carnival rolled through town. (Well, plus framing costs; you don't buy certification like that without displaying it proudly on the wall, ya know.)

[...] Now, okay, true, Laura had been "on administrative leave with pay" since last June (wow, she was raking in paychecks and government benefits for doing nine months' worth of nothing? Sign us up for a fake degree or three!)...

Comment: Next time you hear somebody going on about welfare bums, tell 'em this story. The biggest welfare bums are the ones like this, being paid to do nothing, while people in genuine distress are insulted and humiliated.

When Anna met Arnie: Why a British TV presenter is suing the Governor of California

By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent<
The Independent
03 April 2004

After vanquishing killer cyborgs and medieval warriors on screen, California's film-star governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is set to face his own judgement day in an English court.

Mr Schwarzenegger, 57, will be forced to defend allegations that he made unwelcome advances towards several women including the British television presenter Anna Richardson. She is expected to file a £100,000 libel suit next week.

Ms Richardson alleges that during a pre-recorded television interview with the actor he pulled her on to his knee and squeezed her nipple.

When Mr Schwarzenegger, who starred in three Terminator films, was first confronted with the allegation he is said to have claimed that Ms Richardson had encouraged this behaviour.

The legal action will centre on whether Mr Schwarzenegger or his team have damaged Ms Richardson's reputation as a professional interviewer by presenting her as someone who uses sex as part of her interview technique. Negotiations between the two sides have broken down and the case is expected to be set for trial later this year.

As British court cases go, it could be the most high-profile yet, eclipsing the recent privacy battle of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones against Hello! magazine. The couple won their High Court encounter but at a cost of £1m in legal fees and a lot of bad publicity.

Other women allegedly groped by Mr Schwarzenegger are also expected to give evidence in court.

Six women who have met Mr Schwarzenegger since the 1970s have made similar allegations that were reported by the Los Angeles Times in the run-up to the gubernatorial election in California. A further 10 are being investigated. Ms Richardson's claim is thought to be the most recent and stems from an interview with the actor for an LWT film show, The Big Screen, in London in December 2000.

In Ms Richardson's original interview with The Sun about the alleged groping incident, she said: "He kept saying how fantastic I looked and staring at my boobs. When I went to shake his hand he pulled me on to his knee, saying, 'I really want to know if your breasts are real'. I told him they are an F-cup. Before I knew what was happening he circled my nipple with his finger and gave it a squeeze. He then said, 'Yeah, they are real.' I stood up and said, 'You're making me nervous'. He told me not to be nervous and pulled me back on his knee. I said, 'Can I go, please?' He said, 'Yeah', and patted my bum as I went off."

Last year, Mr Schwarzenegger, a former bodybuilder who has made millions of dollars from Hollywood blockbuster movies, said of the allegations: "A lot of what you hear in those stories is not true. But as I've always said : 'Where there's smoke, there's fire.'" [...]

Comment: This is the man that is currently running the state of California. He also happens to be famous and wealthy. If any other man was accused of the same crimes, does anyone doubt that he would get away with it so easily? Americans are told that they are all equal, yet there is a preponderance of evidence in the news every day that shows this equality to be an illusion. The psychopaths rule, and every day they get away with theft, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and even murder.

Either the American people just don't care, or they don't protest because they themselves desire the same type of freedom from the law - freedom from responsibility for their actions. Add a touch of denial into the equation, and it is no surprise that Arnie's good buddy Bush can get the whole country behind him when he desires to invade foreign lands based on a bunch of lies.

Those in power have nothing to lose, and everything to gain - or so they think. It seems that those who refuse to take responsibility for their choices are denying what is. They will sow the wind, confident that they will always be able to avoid the whirlwind. Yet it seems that in the long run, there is no free lunch - if you think there is, you are lunch!

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Thought Control for Middle East Studies

April 3, 2004
by Joel Beinin

A band of neoconservative pundits with close ties to Israel have mounted a campaign against American scholars who study the Middle East. Martin Kramer, an Israeli-American and former director of the Dayan Center for Middle East Studies at Tel-Aviv University, has led the way in blaming these scholars for failing to warn the American public about the dangers of radical Islam, claiming they bear some of the responsibility for what befell us on September 11. In 2003, proponents of this position took their complaints to Congress. The Senate is expected to review them soon, as it discusses the Higher Education Reauthorization bill.

The neocons initially urged Congress to reduce the appropriation for Title VI of the Higher Education Act. Since 1958 this legislation has provided federal funding to universities to support study of less commonly taught languages, such as Arabic, Turkish, and Persian. Now they want to set up a political review board to discourage universities and scholars from tolerating bad thoughts.

Fortunately for our safety, Congress rejected the neocon proposal to reduce support for foreign language study.

Having failed in their first effort, the neoconservatives are now attempting to assert political control over teaching, research, and public programs of the international area studies centers. In June 2003, Stanley Kurtz, a contributing editor of National Review Online and a fellow of the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank located on the campus of Stanford University, testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. His testimony summarized the arguments of Martin Kramer's attack on American Middle East studies. Kurtz asserted that "Title VI-funded programs in Middle Eastern Studies (and other area studies) tend to purvey extreme and one-sided criticisms of American foreign policy." He urged legislators to take action to ensure "balance." Kurtz, Kramer, and other neocons such as Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum who have written on this subject are concerned that Middle East scholars often say things American politicians don't want to hear –including criticism of U.S. Middle East policy and criticism of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. Some might conclude that perhaps scholars who study the modern Middle East know something worth listening to. But the neocons already know what they want to hear. They have not been able to win in the marketplace of ideas. Critical and inconvenient thoughts continue to be expressed. So the neocons want the government to help crush wayward ideas.

Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-Michigan) obliged by introducing the International Studies in Higher Education Act, designated H.R. 3077. The bill passed the House of Representatives, after a suspension of the rules, by a voice vote in October 2003. The bill was then referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, which is now taking up the issue.

H.R. 3077 calls for establishing an International Higher Education Advisory Board with broad investigative powers "to study, monitor, apprise, and evaluate" activities of area studies centers supported by Title VI. The board is charged with ensuring that government-funded academic programs "reflect diverse perspectives and represent the full range of views" on international affairs. "Diverse perspectives," in this context, is code for limiting criticism of U.S. Middle East policy and of Israel.

This proposal represents a dangerous threat to academic freedom. The advisory board could investigate scholars and area studies centers, applying whatever criteria it pleases. The criteria almost certainly would be political. The whole point of the legislation is to impose political restraints on activities of Middle East centers.

The legislation, if passed, could actually diminish our national security. No first-rank university would accept direct government intrusion into the educational process. Such institutions would likely refuse to accept Title VI funding if it were subject to political oversight. The already dangerously low number of Americans competent in Middle Eastern languages would then be reduced.

Neocons believe it is better for the government to control teaching and research rather than to allow established policy to be questioned. But we are more likely to understand "why they hate us," and what we can do about it when old ideas can be challenged without fear. Freedom, including academic freedom, is the best way to make Americans safe.

Odigo says workers were warned of attack

By Yuval Dror
Apr 04 2004

Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen, and the company has been cooperating with Israeli and American law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying to find the original sender of the message predicting the attack.

Micha Macover, CEO of the company, said the two workers received the messages and immediately after the terror attack informed the company's management, which immediately contacted the Israeli security services, which brought in the FBI.

"I have no idea why the message was sent to these two workers, who don't know the sender. It may just have been someone who was joking and turned out they accidentally got it right. And I don't know if our information was useful in any of the arrests the FBI has made," said Macover. Odigo is a U.S.-based company whose headquarters are in New York, with offices in Herzliya.

As an instant messaging service, Odigo users are not limited to sending messages only to people on their "buddy" list, as is the case with ICQ, the other well-known Israeli instant messaging application.

Odigo usually zealously protects the privacy of its registered users, said Macover, but in this case the company took the initiative to provide the law enforcement services with the originating Internet Presence address of the message, so the FBI could track down the Internet Service Provider, and the actual sender of the original message.

Comment: The above story was first reported not long after 9/11. Today it makes a reappearance on Haaretz, we wonder why...

The rumour that Odigo had been warned of the 9/11 attacks was denounced as anti-Semitism after the attack because it implied that the force behind 9/11 was not "Islamic terrorists." In the two and one-half years since, much evidence has come out to suggest that this is in fact the case. The Bush administration has yet to produce the slightest hard evidence that the hijackers were the men they claim or to show the slightest proof that the attackers were part of the mythical al Qaeda.

Notice the ridiculous explanation by the CEO of the company that received the message. It is not clear whether "Odigo" is an American company, an Israeli company or an Israeli-American company. Whatever the case, Odigo, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, had an office in the WTC itself, as well as offices in Herzliya in Israel. The article states that the ISP information was eventually given to the FBI, and we assume that the FBI checked into the ISP and the sender, so who was it? Well, perhaps we don't need the FBI to make the first obvious connection. In the article we notice that that two employees of Odigo that received the warning immediately contacted Israeli intelligence. While the article above does not state it, this would seem to suggest that the two employees were in the Israeli office, and that the message originated either in Israel or somewhere else in the Middle East.

The Israeli offices of Odigo are noteworthy for their location - Herzliya, a resort city to the north of Tel Aviv, which was named after one of the founders of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl. Most significant however is that the actual office building of Odigo in Herzliya is right next to the "Herzliya Interdisciplinary Centre", a private university financed by US donors, mainly the trader Marc Rich, the Israeli criminal and lobbyist that Clinton was "forced" to pardon. Thierry Mesan has this to say of the centre on his " Reseauvoltaire" site" (translated from the original French):

[...] the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Centre, a private university near Tel Aviv and financed by US donors, mainly the trader Marc Rich (Glencore). It comes from the International Institute on Politics and Counter-Terrorism that has made its specialty to the supposed links between Palestinian resistance movements, Al Quada, and the "Axis of Evil." The institute is notoriously linked to the secret services of the Israeli army, and two of its former directors sit on the Institute's Board of Directors: Generals Shlomo Gazit and Eli Zeira. The offices of the Institute are next to those of the private telecommunications firm Odigo that announced the attacks on the World Trade Centre two hours before they were perpetrated.

Interesting indeed. We find it unlikely that a internet messaging business would be located so close to the heart of Israeli intelligence without there being some co-operation between the two.

If we look at 9/11 from the point of view of who benefited, there are only two countries in the world: Israel and the United States. Israel has used the attacks to justify their ruthless murder of Palestinians; the United States to justify their intervention in the internal affairs of Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Raiders of the Lost Ark

By Nadav Shragai

The firemen manning the two fire trucks dispatched to the Western Wall on July 28, 1981 were still wondering what they were supposed to do there when they were suddenly told to return to the station. Yehuda Meir Getz, the rabbi of the Western Wall, had ordered the fire trucks and was also the one that hastily canceled the order after he discovered that all the firemen on the way to the Western Wall were Arabs. He feared that his plans - to dig under the foundations of the Dome of the Rock in order to find the site of the Holy of Holies, and the place where the Temple artifacts had been concealed - would be discovered too soon.

The firemen had been assigned a secondary role in the project: to pump out hundreds of cubic meters of muddy water from the huge tunnel, chiseled eastward. Getz, along with workers from the Religious Affairs Ministry, had cleared the opening secretly during work aimed at uncovering the full length of the Western Wall. [...]

A new book about Rabbi Getz makes new revelations about the affair. The author, Hila Volberstein, reveals that he was not alone in his plan to tunnel from the Western Wall eastward under the Temple Mount. He had a partner - Rafi Eitan, advisor on terrorism and security to three prime ministers (Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres), who later gained fame as the man who recruited and handled Jonathan Pollard.

The book about Getz, who was involved extensively in kabbala and for whom the Western Wall tunnels were a second home, is being published almost eight years after his death. In the volume, which was commissioned by the family, Getz is described as he was: an enterprising man of many talents, a philanthropist (who gave charity in secret), a man with a spiritual approach to life, an army officer and a mystic both in action and dress - with a black robe and white headdress, a prayer book and Bible in his pocket and pistol on his hip. He was among the first to settle in the renewed Jewish Quarter after the Six-Day War. Of his 11 children, most live in Judea and Samaria. One son, Yair, was killed in Samaria in the mid-1980s when the car he was driving was hit by a truck driven by an Arab. Getz was convinced that he had been murdered for nationalistic reasons. Another son, Avner, was killed in the battle for the Old City in the Six-Day War.

Volberstein reveals extensive excerpts from Getz's diaries, just a small proportion of which had been made public before. She presents numerous testimonies, such as that of Naftali Kidron, formerly an engineer in the Religious Affairs Ministry, according to which the source of the rabbi's almost total devotion to the project to uncover the Western Wall was his intense desire to find the Temple artifacts.

Getz, who served for many years as rabbi of the Western Wall on behalf of the Religious Affairs Ministry, clung ardently to his plans to find the Temple artifacts, refusing to relinquish his program even after the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, advised him to stop. The Lubavitcher Rebbe warned Getz that anyone who found the Temple artifacts was placing his life in danger, although he did make it clear that finding the artifacts used in the Temple would bring Jewish redemption closer. Rabbi Getz, writes Volberstein, "decided to be the atonement for the Jewish people, to search for the Temple artifacts and to do whatever he could to speed up the redemption. However, he was waiting for the right moment to open the tunnels in the easterly direction."

Eitan's testimony

One of the most fascinating testimonies in the book is that of Eitan. "As the excavation of the tunnels progressed," says Eitan, "I met with Rabbi Getz almost daily. Together with him, I studied the structure of the Holy Temple and its dimensions. [...]

Eitan reveals that the opening was planned at first for the floor under the level where the excavation to uncover the Western Wall was being carried out at the time, "and in this way, it was not supposed to be discovered at all. We planned to go in, see the tunnels and move ahead in the direction in which we estimated that the foundations of the Holy of Holies would be found. We were of the view that without heavy tools, using a delicate chisel, we could chip away at the soft limestone walls. We thought that in that way, we could advance quietly and secretly to discover the hiding place where the priests had concealed the Temple artifacts and arrive at the spot just under the Holy of Holies, the place where the Ark of the Covenant was hidden." [...]

The Ark of the Covenant, which has not been seen since the destruction of the First Temple, was perhaps the most important of artifacts in the Temple, defined as the principal seat of the divine spirit. Some believe that it is still hidden in the tunnels excavated by King Solomon under the Holy of Holies. The tractate Shekalim of the Mishna states: "There once was a priest (in the time of the Second Temple) who while working in the Temple noticed that the part of the floor was different from other parts (and realized that at that spot there must be an entrance to a subterranean passage). He told another priest, but barely had he finished speaking before his soul expired, and it was clearly known that that was where the Ark was hidden." [...]

Comment: It is not sufficient for "the powers that be" to bury the truth from humanity, they must also present us with "reality". In general, this view of reality will be wholly false with a healthy dose of emotionally provocative belief systems to seal in the lie. In this way they ensure that they need not do all the work of fooling the people, the people themselves will willingly believe the illusion, just as long as it promises them salvation from having to face the true reality and " the terror of the situation". Take the below story from yesterday's Signs page for example.

Apocalypse Now

How a hologram, a blimp, and a massively multiplayer game could bring peace to the Holy Land.

By Joshua Davis

Yitzhaq Hayutman holds the key to peace on Earth - it's on a floppy disk in his pants pocket. With his full white beard, bald pate, and well-pressed khakis, the 61-year-old Israeli cybernetics expert and tech investor looks like Moses done over for a Banana Republic ad. Right now, he's showing me how he wants to position an airborne hologram over the Dome of the Rock, a gold-capped shrine that's one of the most holy sites in Islam. "The blimp will go there," Hayutman says pointing into the blue. "And eventually the Messiah will come."

Hayutman is excited by the prospect - perhaps too excited. Twenty yards away, two flak-jacketed Israeli police officers finger their machine guns while four plainclothes members of the Islamic Trust - the Muslim force that protects Islam's holy sites - move cautiously toward us. Violence has a habit of erupting here on the Temple Mount, the world's most explosive plot of land.

Let there be light: The site is the sky above the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The project includes a laser-projected temple. The goal: to summon the Messiah.

For 1,500 years, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have fought for control of this 35-acre plateau in the heart of Jerusalem. The dispute remains one of the main obstacles to peace in the Middle East. Jewish teachings say that a temple must be built here - many say on the exact spot where the Dome now stands - in order to induce the arrival of the Messiah and the coming of peace on Earth. Fundamentalist Christians interpret this to mean the Second Coming of Christ and actively encourage Jewish building efforts. Muslims categorically oppose any encroachment on their holy site, from which they believe Mohammed ascended to heaven to receive the Koran.

All sides acknowledge that tensions on the hill have the potential to start a war, but Hayutman believes he has found a way to resolve the intractable conflict. "What most people see is that if the Muslims are here, surely there is no temple," Hayutman says. "They do not understand that technology has given us the tools to realize the prophecy right now."

He has two big ideas, two ways to engineer the apocalypse. The first: a hovering holographic temple. Hayutman wants to set up an array of high-powered, water-cooled lasers and fire them into a transparent cube suspended beneath a blimp. The ephemeral, flickering image, he says, would fulfill an ancient, widely revered Jewish prophecy that the temple will descend from the heavens as a manifestation of light. Hayutman hopes to finance the project with some of the proceeds from a $20 million patent-infringement suit he and his partners have filed against Palm. [...]

THE DEUTSCH DEVILS

Barry Chamish

Rabbi Marvin Antelman was right all along. Way back in 1974, he identified the source of all the evil against Jews and humanity but his message and style were too unaccessible to get through to anyone but the most advanced students of anti- semitism. What he lacked most was simplicity, a common enough failure of thinkers decades in advance of their contemporaries. What he needed was someone to put out a Cliff's Notes simplified explanation of his thesis...and someone, without intention, just did.

The name of the book is, 50 Jewish Messiahs by Jerry Rabow (Gefen Publishing, Jerusalem). It is an informative but shallow overview of just what the title says, but in its shallowness lies vital depth. We begin with Chapter 17, about the "most damaging messiah to the Jewish people," Shabbatai Zvi. First we'll read Rabow and then add commentary opening Rabbi Antelman's work to the wide world.

pp 91 - Shabbatai Zvi was born in Smyrna, Turkey on the ninth of Av, 1626. The ninth day of Av is the day of a triple tragedy for the Jewish nation. According to tradition, the First Temple, the Second Temple and Bar Kokhba's Betar fortress all fell on this day.

pp 93 - He changed the holiday celebrations and violated the dietary prohibitions. All of this followed from his declaration that the usual rules were inapplicable to messianic times.

pp 95 - He declared that the coming of the messianic era meant that the biblical commandments were no longer binding. He proclaimed that God now permitted everything.

** This is Rabbi Antelman's central assertion; that Shabbataism was the polar opposite of Judaism. That Shabatai Zvi's program was to destroy all the tenets of the Torah and replace them with their opposites. Incredibly, more than half the Jews of the world at the time, believed he would be revealed as their promised messiah: **

pp 101 - Then he finally made the announcement for which the Jewish community had been waiting for 1600 years - he would begin the Redemption on the 15th day of the month of Sivan, June 18, 1666.

** There are many who will recognize the significance of the date. June is the sixth month, 18 divided by three is 6+6+6 and 1666 is clear enough. Either he knew what he was doing or the prophesies of the emergence of an evil false messiah or anti-Christ are right, and Shabbatai Zvi was him. **

pp 110 - Through all of this, Shabbatai continued to issue proclamations of the theological changes wrought by the coming of the messianic age. Shabbatai's new prayer was, "Praised be He who permits the forbidden." Since all things would be permitted in the age of the messiah, Shabbatai declared many of the old restrictions of the Torah no longer applicable. He abolished the laws concerning sexual relationships. He eventually declared that all of the thirty six major biblical sins were now permitted and instructed some of his followers that it was their duty to perform such sins in order to hasten the Redemption.

** Shabbatai's fall from grace among the great masses of Jews came in September 1666, when the Sultan of Turkey threatened him with torture unless he converted to Islam. He relented and most of Jewry abandoned him. But not all. A core of his followers kept their messiah alive and kicking hard. **

pp 112 - In order to bring on the Reformation, Shabbatai had descended into the darkness of the Muslim world to gather the scattered fragments of the light of creation hidden there. There was an outward reality and an inner reality. Nathan transformed Shabbatainism into a theology of paradox. Once the followers accepted the concept of paradox, they would be able to keep on believing in Shabbatai Zvi...An inner circle of his followers accepted the explanations of Nathan and continued to believe in Shabbatai the Messiah.

** The Shabatai followers continued their hidden life in the Turkish sect of the Donmeh, whose activities continue to this day, as reported extensively this year, even by the staid Jerusalem Post. One of the Donmeh followers was Jacob Frank, who would transform Europe and the world into a Shabbataian hell barely a century later. **

pp 121 - The Donmeh now converted the Shabbatain Purim into an annual orgy, when members exchanged spouses for a ceremony called "extinguishing the lights." The Donmeh justified their Purim orgies, and their regular practise of sharing wives and engaging in other sexual activities, by citing biblical precedents.

pp 123 - Although Jacob Frank (1726-1791) was born fifty years after the death Shabbatai Zvi, he deserves to be regarded as Shabbatai's true successor.

pp 125 - Frank's followers requested ecclesiastic protection on the grounds that their own beliefs were not Jewish but rather, "anti-Talmudist."..The bishop declared that the "anti-Talmudists", Frank's followers, were entitled to practise their religion, and ordered that all copies of the Talmud within his diocese be seized and burned. Now under the protection of the crown, adoring followers gave Frank huge donations to his movement.

pp 127 - He extended the paradoxical teachings of Shabbati Zvi that the coming of the messianic age had transformed sexual prohibitions of the bible into permissions and even obligations. According to Frank, engaging in sexual orgies now became the means to purify the soul from its sins. Debauchery became therapy...Frank convinced his followers that the only way for their special form of Judaism to survive was for them to outwardly become Christians, just as the Donmeh had descended into the world of Islam...In February, 1759, the Frankists told the Church they were ready to be baptized...The Frankists promised to deliver 5000 new Christians from Poland, Moravia, Hungary and Turkey.

pp 130 - The Frankists also became involved in international political intrigue, and sent secret emissaries to the Russian government and the Eastern Orthodox Church offering to help in the overthrow of Poland and the Catholic Church...By 1786, Frank suffered temporary financial problems, and moved his court to Offenbach, near Frankfurt. There Frank's money problems were somehow solved. The source of Frank's immense wealth is not clear. He may have used his movement's system of secret messengers and clandestine cells to engage in the constant political turmoil involving Austria-Hungary, Turkey and the Balkans.

** And how we reach the final depth of Rabow's understanding and let Rabbi Antelman take over. **

Frankfurt at the time was the headquarters of the Jesuit, Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Illuminatti, as well as Rothschild Brothers' financial empire. This is worth repeating: Frankfurt was the birthplace of both the Illuminatti and the Rothschild empire. When Jacob Frank entered the city, the alliance between the two had already begun. Weishaupt provided the conspiratorial resources of the Jesuit Order, while the Rothschilds contributed the money. What was missing was a means to spread the agenda of the Illuminatti and that the Frankists added with their network of agents throughout the Christian and Islamic worlds.

Jacob Frank became instantly wealthy because he was given a nice handout by the Rothschilds of Frankfurt. There is no other explanation.

And from this starting point, Rabbi Antelman gave us a blueprint for the war against Judaism and all its good, and indeed against humanity and all its moral treasures. A movement of complete evil now took hold. The Jesuits' goal was the destruction of the Protestant Reformation leading to a return of one pope sitting in judgement on all mankind. The Rothschilds goal was to control the wealth of the planet. And the Frankist vision was the destruction of Jewish ethics to be replaced by a religion based on the exact opposite of God's intentions. When these factions blended, a bloody war against humanity, with the Jews on the front lines, erupted and it is reaching its very pinnacle at this moment. [...]

Rabbi Antelman's account continues. To corrupt the Jews, the Frankists adopted, at first, a humane policy of sorts. With Rothschild money and Jesuit power, the so-called Enlightenment was initiated by the German Jewish apostate Moses Mendelsohn. Napolean was financed to liberate the Jews wherever he conquered and from Germany, the Reform and Conservative movements were financed to further dilute the faith and introduce totally foreign concepts to their congregations. But the pace wasn't fast enough. The ornery Jews just weren't cooperating with evil, so those stubbornly accepting Torah morality would have to be removed permanently and only those practising Shabbatainism would be permitted to survive.

Yes, in the 2000 years of European Jewish history there were pogroms, Crusades and Inquisitions, the latter aided and abetted by the Jesuits. But compared to what happened from the 1880s on, life was a tolerable picnic. The turning point in the final war against the Jews was the founding of Zionism by the Shabbataians. The final aim of the movement was to establish a Shabbataian state in the historical land of the Jews, thus taking over Judaism for good.

To foment the idea, life had to made so intolerable for Europe's Jews, that escape to Palestine would appear to be the best option. [...]

Once the situation turned foreboding, the German writing intellectuals took over. In Vienna in 1885, the journalist Natan Birnbaum fired the opening salvo which successfully planted the fast-growing seeds of Zionism. He w as followed by another Vienna writer, Peretz Smoleskin who provided more intellectual justification for returning to a safe home in Israel. However, neither man had the charisma of still another Vienna writer, Theodore He rzl. He could rally the masses as neither of them could and he was chosen to be the spokesman and symbol of the movement.

Read any honest biography of Herzl and the same quandary appears. Herzl claimed he wrote the Judenstaat one summer in Paris. But Herzl wasn't in Paris when he said he wrote the most influential book of Zionism. It had to have been written for him. Anyone who reads Herzl's dreadful plays, has to doubt his sudden departure from literary mediocrity.

In 1901, Herzl appeared in Britain where he was not well received. We are told he backed another option, creating a Jewish sanctuary in British controlled East Africa. If the idea caught on, it would neutralize the Shabbataians' game plan. Herzl died not long after and not one biography of him tells us how. He entered a Paris sanatorium for a not known condition and never emerged. This was highly fortunate for the British Freemasons doing the Shabbataians' bidding, for they replaced Herzl with one of their own, a German- educated Jew named Chaim Weizmann. In time, a cockamamie legend was created involving the Balfour declaration creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine as a reward for Weizmann finding a way to make acetone for explosives from dried up paint. Not one explosion in World War One came from this magic process. But the British took great pains to capture Palestine from the Turks and appoint the leaders of the upcoming Shabbataian state.

Meeting in London during the War, Weizmann and Balfour had to deal with the problem of the people already living in Palestine, most of whom were religious Jews, who were the majority in such major centers as Jerusalem, Sfat and Tiberius. [...]

To neutralize the religious Jews, many of whom had been living in the land since antiquity, Balfour and Weizmann inducted Rabbi Avraham Kook into the fold and after the war, he was appointed the first Chief Rabbi of the enterprise, while Weizmann was made the first head of the Jewish Agency. Kook proceeded to strip the landed Orthodox Jews of their real estate and political rights, while introducing a new concept into Judaism; the purity of land redemption. His philosophy was based on profound historical truth, nonetheless, his followers don't understand how he and they are playing out the Shabbataian nightmare.

Stage one was complete. Now the real business at hand was revved up. Rabbi Antelman proves that the American President Woodrow Wilson was thoroughly corrupted by the Frankists through their agent Colonel House. It was Wilson who put an end to America's open immigration policy. Until then, despite all their despair, most Eastern European Jews rejected Palestine as an escape route, the majority choosing America as their destination. From now on very few would enjoy that option. It would have to be Palestine or nowhere.

We now jump to 1933. Less than 1% of the German Jews support Zionism. Many try to escape from Naziism by boat to Latin and North American ports but the international diplomatic order was to turn them back. Any German Jew who rejected Palestine as his shelter would be shipped back to his death. [...]

By 1934, the majority of German Jews got the message and turned to the only Jewish organization allowed by the Nazis, the Labour Zionists. For confirmation of the conspiracy between them and Hitler's thugs read The Transfer Agreement by Edwin Black, Perfidy by Ben Hecht or The Scared And The Doomed by Jacob Neuberger. The deal cut worked like this. The German Jews would first be indoctrinated into Bolshevism in Labour Zionism camps and then, with British approval, transferred to Palestine. Most were there by the time the British issued the White Paper banning further Jewish immigration. The Labour Zionists got the Jews they wanted, and let the millions of religious Jews and other non- Frankists perish in Europe without any struggle for their survival. [...]

Before the Sabbataians introduced it, there was no such thing as Jewish self- hatred. Their religion and heritage came as naturally as breathing. This was the state the Eastern Jews were in when they were driven to Israel. There, the Frankists had to apply all the lessons they learned turning German Jews into their image to change the newcomers. Every effort was made to divest these peoples of their faith and the results were often shattering. This is one reason, for instance, why Moroccan Jews who fled to France are so much better off than their families in Israel.

Initially, the American Frankists supported the new nation, believing it would soon spread darkness to the nations. But the Jews didn't cooperate and held on to their decency. That is when the CFR unleashed its evilest Frankists on the Jews once again. The most prominent of this lot is the German-born Henry Kissinger but the list is long and includes the Austrian-educated Madeleine Albright, and German descendents such as Joe Lieberman and Sandy Berger. [...]

Rabbi Antelman was right. He looked at the enemy and saw the mirror opposite of real Judaism. A war to the finish is on in Israel and it is being spread to the rest of the planet. Our salvation can only arise when the Arabs realize the Jews of Israel are fighting the same battle they are and against the same enemies. If they can't overcome the brainwashing and hatred, they'll go down along with Israel. And then the rest of the planet will follow.

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KERRY, GAZA AND THE NEW SABBATEAN HOLOCAUST

by Barry Chamish

[...]

And what did we recently discover; why Kerry is Jewish on his father's side. Somehow, he forgot the fact that his grandparents were prominent Jewish business people in Prague and that his father is 100% Jewish. Ask yourself, do you know anyone who doesn't know his father's religious background?

As rare as it must be, that affliction runs rampant in CFR circles. Former CFR Secretary-of-State Madeleine Albright also forget that both her parents were Jews, even though she was raised in the Jewish home of her relatives in London.

If you don't feel like voting Kerry, there is Wesley Clark waiting in the wings. Uncannily, he is also a CFR member who only discovered his father was Jewish while he was burning Bosnia to ashes.

Now how come, no matter which Democrat you choose, you get a CFR half- Jew who forgot all about it? The answer is found in the Sabbatean (also Shabbataian and similar spellings) policy of having their Jewish apostate followers converting and hiding their roots and beliefs. [...]

On February 1/04 I visited Gefen Books in Jerusalem to pick up some copies of my Hebrew book, Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin and David Morrison's book, Lies - The Rabin Assassination And Israel's Secret Service.

Dr. Morrison's book has made a powerful case for a conspiracy behind the Rabin assassination. One of the favors he did for me was, as a psychiatric doctor, confirming that my analysis of Rabin's medical records was the correct one. Though I had met him just once, he has aided my cause enormously.

That time I met him was in my home when he and Gefen publisher, Ilan Greenfield arrived to hear me out and decide whether to publish a Hebrew edition of my Rabin book, or not. Ilan told me something I didn't know. "If it wasn't for David, I would never have published your book. I left your place and told him you were coocoo. He answered that if I didn't publish your book, he'd never talk to me again. As a psychiatrist he watched you carefully and concluded you were totally sane. He told me, "He thinks differently than us, that's why he can see how the truth works. That's not called crazy, it's called gifted." [...]

Then he showed me the other Morrison book, Heroes, Antiheroes And The Holocaust. I struck gold.

David Morrison's book on the secrets of the Holocaust stands with Perfidy, The Transfer Agreement and The Scared And The Doomed as one of the great studies of how Labor Zionism prevented the rescue of European Jewry. [...]

Kerry and Clark are not the only world leaders who deliberately forgot their Jewish fathers. Numerous sources have claimed that Adolph Hitler's real father was a Rothschild and this assertion is not off the wall. Hitler's mother was working as a maid on a Rothschild estate when her son was conceived either through an affair or rape. No less an authority as the History Channel, in a Jan./04 series on dictators, revealed that Hitler razed the Austrian town he was born in, "to destroy all hints of his Jewish father." Could Hitler have been a Sabbatean?

The initial financiers of Labor Zionism and Theodore Herzl were barons of the Rothschild clan. Their goal was the creation of a state in the image of their Sabbatean beliefs: that is, anti-Torah, anti-Talmudic, anti-religious and anti-Jewish. To the Sabbateans, any Jew who does not accept anti-Judaism is fit for execution. Israel has chosen morality and God, and that means execution is the correct punishment.

Rabbi Antelman is not alone in tracing the Rothschild path to an American financial takeover. Hundreds, if not thousands of researchers have proven that the European Rothschilds sent their German agents of the Schiff, Astor and Warburg families to serve the interests of the cabal formed by the Jesuit illuminati, British Freemasonry and Sabbateanism. [...]

Now we dive into the bowels of the plot. Schiff backed the Rockefeller railroad interests, which led ultimately to the foundation of the CFR in 1922 by the same J.D. Rockefeller. E.H. Harriman was the company George Jr.'s grandfather, Prescott Bush, was working for when he funneled millions of dollars to Hitler. This connection has been documented by numerous writers including Sutton and John Loftus. The Rothschild method was to identify crooked robber barons and promise them total wealth and control, if they follow and promote the illuminati/Sabbatean line. The CFR is the diplomatic arm guiding America and the world into a global satanism. And no matter who the American voter chooses, he gets the CFR and more. If Bush wasn't elected last time around, Al Gore would have been president. His daughter is married to the grandson of Jacob Schiff, assuredly meaning he is Sabbatean.

Rabbi Antelman asserts that the Sabbateans sent more than financiers from Germany to infiltrate American Jewry. He insists the Conservative, and moreso, the Reform Movements, are tools used to draw American Jews away from their traditions and into the arms of the Sabbateans. [...]

Sabbatean Labor Zionism concocted a dreadful tradeoff with the Nazis, which resulted in 50,000 indoctrinated German Jews escaping to Palestine from 1933 to 1939. The 3 million Jews of Poland were too religious to join the enterprise. And those who weren't religious largely supported the moral and proud scions of Zeev Jabotinsky, known at the time as the Revisionist Zionists. [...]

David Morrison's conclusions are too generous, but his scholarship is invaluable. He has added an essential contribution to the indisputable fact that America's Jewish leaders, led by Stephen Wise, purposely murdered by proxy, the Jews of Europe.

Now they are working on the Jews of Israel, starting with those of Gaza.

Comment: These two articles by Barry Chamish are interesting in light of the following excerpt from the sessions of Laura talking with "Us in the Future."

15 August 98
Q: (L) Who was the author of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion?"
A: Source is "Aryan" in nature.
Q: (L) Was it written to make the Jews look bad, or to cast blame on them?
A: Some.
Q: (L) Was it also written as a disguised protocol for the Aryan plan to take over the world?
A: No.
Q: (A) I heard that the source was in Russia?
A: No, Turkey.

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Arafat Dismisses Sharon Threat to Assassinate Him

By Mohammed Assadi
Sat Apr 3, 1:49 PM ET

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said on Saturday he was unmoved by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's threat to assassinate him.

"I don't care for it. I am caring for my people, for our children, for our women, for our students," Arafat told reporters at his battered Ramallah headquarters. [...]

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If you're on the "list", no job for you

A couple years ago, Alex saw Ridge on C-Span Talking about this. You won't be able to get a job without your driver's licence, which will be a deFacto National ID card. You will also be rated. According to a Mar. 26, 2004 Washington Times article (emphasis added): The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are developing a database that will allow private companies to submit lists of individuals to be screened for a connection to terrorism, the FBI Terrorist Screening Center Director Donna A. Bucella told legislators yesterday.

The database "will eventually allow private-sector entities, such as operators of critical infrastructure facilities or organizers of large events, to submit a list of persons associated with those events to the U.S. government to be screened for any nexus to terrorism," Miss Bucella said at a joint hearing of the House Judiciary and Homeland Security subcommittees.

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ID cards 'very much on the political agenda'

ID cards seem to be back on the fast track as Tony Blair says there are 'no longer' civil liberties issues

The terrorist threat to the UK will lead to ID cards will be introduced "more quickly than even we anticipated", according to the prime minister, Tony Blair. Blair's comments at his monthly briefing to journalists follow on from the "route map" to ID cards unveiled by the UK Passport Service earlier this week.

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Towel Boy: Industrial launderers will save more than $30 million a year by ditching EPA safety procedures.

By Chris Floyd

A warning to readers: This column is obscene. It relates details of an act so depraved that young children should not be exposed to it; even adults will be debased by the contact. The characters described herein exhibit all the human enlightenment and moral engagement of monkeys idly scratching their groins on a hot day at the zoo.

Last November, in one of the innumerable, unnoticed little corruptions that belch forth daily, even hourly, from the geyser of graft that is the Bush Administration, the man who calls himself the president decided that some of the lowliest laborers in America should be left to sicken or die from forced exposure to filthy rags dripping with toxic waste. Why? Because their bosses paid him money.

That's the only reason. They gave George W. Bush a fat roll of cash, so he gave them protection from laws designed to safeguard workers in industrial laundries who handle "shop towels," heavy-duty cleaning rags used to mop up poison chemicals, David Donnelly reported last week in Campaign Money Watch.

Just how crude and blatant was this corporate copulation? As Donnelly notes, in September 2003, Richard Farmer, bossman of the nation's biggest industrial launderer, pitched one of the bribe-orgies known as "campaign fundraisers" for his longtime pal, the Toxic Texan. In a single night, he forked over $1.7 million to Bush. A few weeks later, Bush's minions at the ever-more ironically named Environmental Protection Agency introduced a new rule that would exempt Farmer's industry "from federal hazardous and solid waste requirements for shop towels contaminated with toxic chemicals."

How much quid was this pro quo worth? The EPA says industrial launderers will save more than $30 million a year by ditching safety procedures for their wage slaves, most of them low-paid immigrants. Not a bad return on a $1.7 million investment. But hey, that's our George: He gives great quid.

[...] But is the EPA decision really so awful? Will anyone die from it? Probably not; not immediately, anyway. Oh sure, patches of their skin will fall off, their sinuses will rot, their lungs will deteriorate, they'll be crippled, pain-wracked -- and saddled by crushing debt from a rapacious medical system whose measly public benefits were gutted late last year by yet another quid job between Bush and his corporate johns: more than $46 billion siphoned from the public purse to private health plans, as The New York Times reports.

Of course, the laundry workers will also see their cells fill up with a sediment of cancer-causing toxins -- but most of these time bombs of malignancy won't explode until after Ranger Robert and his fellow Bush barons have squeezed all possible profit from the infected peons' labor.

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Protests flare up across Europe against welfare cuts

www.chinaview.cn 2004-04-04 13:07:08

PARIS, April 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Hundreds of thousands of Europeans poured into streets Saturday in Paris, Berlin and Rome to protest against governmental plan to scale down welfare and pensions as leaders across Europe are struggling to give an impetus to stagnant economies and overhaul creaking social systems.

Billed as part of a "European day of action", the demonstrations sweeping across Europe came as response to the European Trade Union Confederation's call for a two-day protest against welfare and pension cuts introduced by governments.

Organized by trade unions and pensioners' lobby groups, around 10,000 to 15,000 angry protesters marched through the city center in Paris, waving banners reading "Together in Paris and Europe forjobs, social rights, the welfare state and public services" and shouting slogans such as "Chiraffarin, out! We want our money back!"

The outpour of public discontent was triggered by the French government's reform plan to trim the pensions, employment, taxes and social security system, which causes an annual deficit of 11 billion euros (13.3 billion US dollars).

[...] Demonstration organizers said the number of protesters surpassed 200,000 in Berlin alone, and over 420,000 in total across Germany, including Cologne and Stuttgart, while police in Berlin put the figure at around 100,000.

[...] According to Italy's labor unions, around 500,000 people from all over Italy participated in the demonstration in the capital.

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Reviving the Lubyanka Method

By Yevgenia Albats

People do change their views. However, when they change those views 180 degrees from being in harsh opposition to the regime to calling on others to be loyal to the sovereign, i.e. President Vladimir Putin, as Mikhail Khodorkovsky did in his open letter earlier this week, and when they perform such a volte-face not from the comfort of their office but from a prison cell (in anticipation of being sentenced to years in a labor camp, where tuberculosis etc. are rife), such a recovery of sight comes across as a little bit suspicious, doesn't it?

It sounds more like a plea or an entreaty to be pardoned, as opposed to the free expression of the views of a successful businessman, one-time political dissident and one of Russia's most powerful personalities -- as Khodorkovsky used to be.

[...] For scholars of Soviet politics, the method used is not a new one. It was successfully developed by Josef Stalin during the show trials of the 1930s and, with the help of The New York Times reporter Walter Duranty, it was accepted as valid by Western public opinion. However, it was turned into an art form by the KGB's Fifth Directorate (for ideological counterintelligence) in the 1970s, when several famous Soviet political dissidents acknowledged their activities against the regime as being wrongful and caused by misleading Western propaganda.

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Did Neanderthals and humans mix?

By STEPHEN STRAUSS
Saturday, April 3, 2004 - Page F10

One of the abiding questions in human evolution is the intimacy of the relationship between early people and their clear, near relations, the Neanderthals.

At one time, it was hoped that a genetic study of ancient DNA would tell us definitely whether a Neanderthal was our uncle 10,000 times removed, but a recent analysis of the remains of the two species have demonstrated just how difficult that is, and may always be.

[...] Despite a paper entitled "No Neanderthal DNA contribution to early modern humans," the European scientists say there is also a highly negative way to interpret their data. "With our current DNA analysis techniques, we won't be able to resolve this issue and there is nothing we can do about that today," Prof. Paabo says.

Part of the difficulty is the way that modern human DNA now pollutes all sites of anthropological interest. "Human DNA is pervasive in paleontological and archeological remains as well as most laboratory environments. It is therefore currently impossible to differentiate contaminating modern DNA sequences from [native] DNA sequences in human remains," the paper's European authors write.

Simply translated, almost any sample of anything that you looked at would contain modern human DNA. To prove their point, the paper's authors extracted DNA from six cave beer teeth excavated from early human and Neanderthal sites. When standard DNA amplification technology, which is used to multiply the few remain bits of DNA found in ancient bones and teeth, was applied, human DNA was found. Naively interpreted, this would imply that bears and humans once mated.

The paper points out that this confusion is possible because the amplification techniques are so powerful that even a single molecule of DNA is enough to give a false reading to an entire sample. The contamination issue means that you can't look to see if Neanderthals carried any human DNA, but only -- as in the PLoS paper -- if the fossil remains of early humans contained any Neanderthal DNA.

A second difficulty is finding enough DNA to study. To publish its paper, the European group initially looked at 24 Neanderthals and 40 early modern human fossils. However, only four Neanderthals and five humans were judged to be well enough preserved to justify trying to extract DNA.

But the biggest caveat is the very special sort of DNA, so-called mitochondrial DNA, which scientists are forced to use in their research. It degrades less easily than the DNA in the cell nucleus and therefore can be retrieved from ancient fossils. Unfortunately, it is passed on only in women's eggs. This creates huge dead ends in every generation: If a woman had only sons, or only her sons survived long enough to reproduce, none of that family's DNA gets passed on in the species mitochondrial record.

As a consequence, it has been estimated that the more than six billion modern humans alive today may all carry mitochondrial DNA that can be traced back to only two to seven women who lived in the past.

Thus, Prof. Paabo says, a finding of zero Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA in the newly analyzed samples may simply indicate that what was there faded away in the 30,000 or so years since Neanderthals went extinct.

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UPDATE: Pa. Hepatitis Outbreak Claims 4th Victim

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Anti-Depressants a Problem? We're Shocked!

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
April 3, 2004

Six years after Kip Kinkel, dosed up with Prozac, killed his parents and two students at Thurston High, in Oregon; five years after Eric Harris, dosed with Luvox, embarked on his day of slaughter at Columbine; well over a decade after nay-sayers including Dr Peter Breggin, the Scientologists, and this columnist raised the alarm about links between anti-depressants and violence,the FDA has issued a warning that ten anti-depressants can cause deeper depression and, for gosh sakes, even AGITATION, MANIA, and other forms of VIOLENT behavior, even SUICIDE! Who says government doesn't work?

The FDA issued this ruling on March 21, and applies to Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Luvox, Lexapro, Effexor, Wellbutrin, Serzone Remeron and Celexa. Since the FDA cocks a nervous eye at such important constituencies as the pharmaceutical industry and that industry's political reps in the White House and Congress, it is cautious about over-hasty and tasteless prying into cause and effect. The FDA says it isn't yet clear whether antidepressants contributed to the emergence of suicidal tendencies, such as those that prompted Bill Forsyth, after several days on Prozac, to kill his wife, then himself.

To move towards any conclusions in this issue the FDA will be reanalyzing data compiled by analysts who conducted the original clinical trials for each of the products (technically, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs) about which warnings have now been issued.

So there'll be a pause, during which time the FDA can fend off concerns with comforting talk about "a thorough-going review" and the drug companies can continue to mine their usual extortionate mark-ups from the anti-depressants, for which 213 million prescriptions were issued in the US in 2003. One estimate has 30 million Americans on anti-depressants, with Zoloft in the lead at 32.7 million dispensed prescriptions in 2003 and Prozac loping along in second place with 22.2 million.

The actual review will probably end up with a ringing affirmation of the diligence of the FDA's procedures. In an excellent article in Insight (Feb 17-March 1) Kelly Patricia O'Meara quoted an attorney, Karen Barth Menzies, who has represented victims of SSRIs. According to Menzies, the FDA's planned methodology will be to go back and look at the number of "suicide events" recorded during the drug companies' clinical trials. "The only thing that can come from this panel's review of the data is that they get the same number or FEWER (my caps) incidents of suicide events which will now be based on the panel accepting that the researchers' evaluation was correct." You follow? [...]

And no, the FDA will not release the names of the "independent experts sitting on the panel who may or may not have ties (i.e. boatloads of research funding) from the pharmaceutical companies whose procedures they are scrutinizing. On one advisory committee mustered over a decade ago by the FDA to take a look at Prozac five of the eight members had serious conflicts of interest , including financial backing from Lilly, the drug company selling Prozac. [...]

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Shiveluch volcano turns more active in Kamchatka

04.04.2004, 09.09

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, April 4 (Itar-Tass) - The activity of the Shiveluch volcano is on the rise in the Kamchatka Peninsula.

According to the Kamchatka test seismic group, a series of local tremors took place in the volcano’s area. However, they are of no threat to nearby towns and villages, researchers claimed.

Shiveluch is the northernmost active Kamchatka volcano. It is over 3,200 meters high. The giant became active on November 11. It has been in a state of relative slumber since last November when the volcano eruption, lasting for over two years since May 2001, stopped. Researchers constantly monitor its activity.

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Japan's Kanto Region Was Shaken by M5.6 Earthquake (Update1)

April 4 (Bloomberg) -- An earthquake of magnitude 5.6 jolted Japan's Ibaraki prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, and the surrounding area at 8:02 a.m. local time, the country's Meteorological Agency said on its Web site.

There was no subsequent danger of tsunami, powerful ocean waves caused by seismic activity, the agency said. Train services, including ``Shinkansen'' high-speed trains, were unaffected, according to East Japan Railway Co.

The quake was centered off Ibaraki's coast, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) below the surface. Ibaraki is about 40 kilometers northeast of Tokyo.

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Texas woman who says God told her to smash kids' skulls acquitted

08:07 AM EDT Apr 04

TYLER, Texas (AP) - A Texas woman who claimed God ordered her to bash in the heads of her sons was acquitted Saturday of all charges after a jury determined she was legally insane during the killings.

A jury found Deanna Laney did not know right from wrong May 9 when she killed her two older sons, ages six and eight, in the front yard and left the youngest, now two, maimed in his crib. Laney, 39, was found not guilty by reason of insanity of charges of capital murder and serious injury to a child.

Laney broke into tears as the verdict was read. Her husband, Keith Laney, sat emotionless. A few jurors cried and struggled to maintain their composure.

State law allows Laney to be committed to a maximum-security state hospital. Medical evaluations will dictate when she will be released.

Comment: And what would be the verdict on George Bush who believes God told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq? Would you call that insanity? Isn't it insane to believe that there exists a Supreme Being who intervenes so personally in your life? Or that the brutal suffering of his "son" could somehow compensate for the "sins" of mankind?

Isn't just about everyone living on this planet insane when you really start to think about it? Isn't the "norm" for living on this world insanity?

The Earth is an insane asylum already. After which we are only talking about degrees of mental illness.

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In a whirl over crop circle

LOU ROBSON
The Sunday Mail
04 April 2004

LARGE crop circles with unbroken stems have mysteriously appeared in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

Residents of the small town of Conondale, west of Maleny, say they are baffled by the large areas of flattened grass.

Crop circle enthusiast Chris White gave the complex designs an eight out of 10.

"You can't imagine anyone faking these because the seed heads would be broken and it doesn't look like it's been trampled or crushed.

"There were people in England who set out to do a hoax . . . but even they couldn't fake it. [...]

But the property's owner, who does not want to be named, said there was a much simpler explanation for the crop circles.

"It's the wind creating a whirly-whirly. It spins around in the long grass and that creates the circle," he said.

Comment: A whirly-whirly. Now, that's just ridiculous. Everyone knows that these so-called crop circles are the result of swamp gas and the planet Venus...

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Vampire bats kill 13 people in Brazil

April 3, 2004

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) -- Rabies-carrying vampire bats killed at least 13 people in a remote Amazon town in Brazil's northern state of Para last month, authorities said on Friday.

The state health care department said the thumb-sized creatures had attacked about 300 people -- an unusually high number -- since March 2 in the riverside Portel area, next to the world's biggest estuarine archipelago of Marajo. [...]

The spokeswoman said government scientists suspect the attacks are linked to a change in the bats' migration pattern caused by deforestation. [...]

Vampire bats normally feed on the blood of large birds and sleeping cattle, lapping it from cuts they make with their teeth. They often transmit rabies to cattle.

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Officials Investigate Deaths Of Animals In Johnston County

WRAL
7:17 pm EST April 2, 2004

JOHNSTON COUNTY, N.C. -- Federal and local investigators have a mystery on their hands. More than a dozen animals in Johnston County have died, and experts said it was not from natural causes.

If investigators do not find what or whoever is responsible for the animal deaths quickly, it could mean trouble for the local environment.

Federal agents are on the case.

This week, Doug Holloman walked onto his family's field for the first time since November. That is where he discovered something gruesome.

He found three dead deer, three dogs and two foxes.

Holloman has a degree in environmental science, and he has farmed for years. He said he has never seen anything like this before.

"I knew it was a strange occurrence," Holloman said. "It was not normal to see this many dead animals in this close proximity to one another." [...]

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U.S. investigates hormone implants in veal calves

The government is investigating the illegal use of implanted growth hormones in young calves intended to be slaughtered for veal, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday. Inspectors from the FDA and the Agriculture Department discovered the hormone use in three different groups of animals at two Wisconsin slaughterhouses. Officials said they do not yet know how widespread the practice is, but consumers should not be concerned if they have recently eaten veal.

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Illegal growth hormones in veal spark crackdown

Revelations that up to 90 percent of U.S. veal calves are being fed synthetic testosterone illegally are sending a shock wave through the meat industry, causing a government crackdown and new worries about the impact of hormones on the food supply. In interviews with USA TODAY, veal industry officials said that calves have been fed growth hormones for decades. Officials with the Food and Drug Administration, however, say this has never been legal and the safety of this practice has not been tested.

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FRESH CLUE SHOWS TURIN SHROUD MAY BE GENUINE

By David Edwards
The Mirror
April 3 2004

IT'S been called the longest-running hoax in history - an 800-year-old religious riddle that's taken in popes, scientists and believers from all faiths.

The Turin Shroud has been either worshipped as divine proof that Christ was resurrected from the grave or dismissed as a fraud created by medieval forgers.

But new evidence suggests the shroud might be genuine after all.

As Mel Gibson's film The Passion Of The Christ rekindles interest in Jesus, stitching on the shroud which could have been created only during the messiah's lifetime has been uncovered.

At the same time, tests from 1988 that dated the shroud to between 1260 and 1390 have been thrown into doubt.

Swedish textiles expert Dr Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, who discovered the seam at the back of the cloth during a restoration project, says: "There have been attempts to date the shroud from looking at the age of the material, but the style of sewing is the biggest clue.

"It belongs firmly to a style seen in the first century AD or before."

Her findings are being hailed as the most significant since 1988, when scientists controversially carbon-dated the 14ft-long cloth to medieval times, more than 1,000 years after Jesus died.

Yet experts now say the team unwittingly used cloth that had been added during a 16th-century restoration and it could have been contaminated from handling.

Mark Guscin, of the British Society for the Turin Shroud, says: "The discovery of the stitching along with doubt about the carbon-dating all add to the mountain of evidence suggesting this was probably the shroud Jesus was buried in. [...]

Comment: We don't for a minute think that this is anything other than more propaganda designed to drive people further into genocidal monotheism. Refer to The Grail Quest and The Destiny of Man, Part VII for a discussion of the crucifixion and the earliest historical comments on same.

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