The Underground

Victory for Internet Freedom of Speech

2009-01-01T14:26:00.002-05:00

Oregon Judge Ancer Haggerty SLAPPS Self-proclaimed Guru in Landmark Victory for Internet Free Speech

New age guru Eric Pepin's attempt to silence online critics was defeated Thursday as Portland-based federal Judge Ancer Haggerty dismissed a defamation suit brought by Pepin's organization, Higher Balance Institute, against an Internet forum that had published critical comments.

Web site SOTT.net, operated by a team of international researchers, initially published pointed criticisms of Pepin's spiritual discovery techniques. After forum participants learned that Pepin had been charged, but acquitted, of having sex with a minor, the site's forum posted opinions that it was “beginning to look like” Higher Balance Institute was a "front for pedophilia" and that Pepin was a "psychopathic deviant" who was "conning the public" into "falling into confluence with psychopathic reality."

Higher Balance Institute sued for defamation, but Judge Haggerty dismissed the case under Oregon's SLAPP ("Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation") statute, which requires plaintiffs complaining of speech on public issues to establish that their case has a reasonable probability of success. The Court ruled that the statements about Pepin and his organization may have been somewhat hyperbolic, but they were opinion on a matter of public interest and protected as free speech.

Pepin, a self-proclaimed psychic and meditation guru, was charged in 2006 with sexual abuse related to an alleged encounter with an underage male employee of Higher Balance Institute. After a trial without a jury in 2007, a Washington County judge acquitted Pepin based on reasonable doubt, although the judge said he believed the acts had probably occurred.

After newspaper articles from the Oregonian about Pepin's arrest and trial were posted and commented on in the SOTT.net forum, Higher Balance sued Laura Knight-Jadczyk and several research and publishing groups she works with, including Signs of the Times (aka SOTT.net), and the Quantum Future Group. Ms. Knight-Jadczyk posted the critical comments that were at the center of the litigation.

SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation. SLAPP statutes, which exist in several states, are intended to prevent wealthy individuals and organizations from silencing critics through expensive but meritless lawsuits. "This is just how the SLAPP law is supposed to operate," said Stephen Kaus of San Francisco's Cooper, White & Cooper LLP, who represented the defendants. "It prevented this wealthy and relatively powerful man and his company from intimidating our clients from saying what they think."

To briefly recap the core of the case, we quote from Judge Haggerty's opinion which can be read in its entirety here:

http://quantumfuturegroup.org/HBI_Case_Documents/Sott_opinion_revised.pdf:

On November 4, 2007, Knight-Jadczyk re-posted portions of The Oregonian newspaper articles concerning Pepin's arrest and acquittal and posted her own commentary which included, in part, the following: "It's really starting to look like this Eric Pepin and his Higher Balance Institute is merely a COINTELPRO and a front for pedophilia."

The court notes that plaintiff focuses its argument upon the "front for pedophilia" posting, and does not advance specific arguments regarding Knight-Jadczyk's other posting. The court has conducted an independent review of Knight-Jadcyzk's other comments and concludes that the following analysis is applicable to all of her postings.

On that same date, Knight-Jadczyk also responded to a post from another forum user who asserted that HBI serves a valid purpose to those seeking answers. Knight-Jadczyk posted, in part, the following:

Horse hockey. There is nothing there except a pathological deviant and his deviant followers conning the public. There's nothing at all about "waking up" there. For example, most meditation will do little but put you back to sleep. It's an act of self-calming and falling into confluence with the psychopathic reality.

Plaintiff's claims against Knight-Jadczyk, therefore, rely upon her assertions that "HBI is a 'front for pedophilia;' HBI is a "cointelpro" organization; HBI markets nothing more than an act of "falling into confluence with a psychopathic reality;" and HBI is "conning" the public. [...]

This court concludes that the postings by Knight-Jadczyk constitute information provided by "another content provider" under Section 230 of the CDA. Therefore, defendants SOTT, QFG, and QFS are immunized against those postings by the CDA. Because plaintiff cannot show a probability of prevailing on its claims against QFG, QFS, and SOTT, involving either the moderators' postings or Knight-Jadczyk's postings, the applicable anti-SLAPP statutes compel that the claims against these defendants are stricken. [...]

Defendant Knight-Jadczyk concedes that the CDA does not prohibit claims against her based on her own postings. Nevertheless, plaintiff cannot show a probability of succeeding on its claims against Knight-Jadczyk individually. [...]

Plaintiff maintains that Knight-Jadczyk's statements are false and defamatory. A defamatory statement is a factual assertion that subjects another to "hatred, contempt or ridicule" or tends "to diminish the esteem, respect, goodwill or confidence in which [the other] is held or to excite adverse, derogatory or unpleasant feelings or opinions against [the other]." [...]

Whether a statement is capable of a defamatory meaning is a question for the court. [...]

This court concludes that Knight-Jadczyk's statements constitute protected opinion.[...]

Finally, the court examined whether the postings were sufficiently factual to be susceptible of being proven. This examination also supports concluding that the postings constitute protected opinion. [...]

For the reasons provided, QFG's Special Motion to Strike Complaint, Knight-Jadczyk's Special Motion to Strike Complaint [28], and QFS and SOTT's Special Motion to Strike Complaint are granted. [U.S. District Court in Oregon, Case 3:08-cv-00233.)

Before ultimately ruling that the statements were Constitutionally protected opinion, and not assertions of fact, Judge Haggerty found that the organizations had immunity under the federal Communications Decency Act, which immunizes "interactive computer service" and "information content" providers from liability for statements made by third-party users. The judge dismissed plaintiff's assertion that moderators who posted allegedly defamatory statements were agents of the defendants, stating that the "moderators are unpaid volunteers who do not represent the opinions of defendants."

For the same reason that the court dismissed plaintiff's defamation claims, it also dismissed Higher Balance's false light, intentional interference with business relationships, and intentional interference with prospective economic advantage claims.

The defendants were represented by Cooper, White & Cooper LLP attorneys Stephen Kaus, Walter Hansell, Merrit Jones, and Leila Knox (www.cwclaw.com). The case was filed in U.S. District Court in Oregon, Case 3:08-cv-00233.

About Signs of The Times: SOTT.net is an independent alternative news and analysis outlet that seeks to shine a spotlight on significant events and trends that affect the entire world. SOTT.net helps bring clarity out of a sea of media spin. The site is funded entirely by donations from individuals and groups that seek to support its work. For more information visit http://www.sott.net

News, Blog, Politics, free speech, constitutional law, First Amendment, Media,

QFG and SOTT.net defend Internet First Amendment rights.

2008-05-02T17:31:00.000-04:00

Web Site Defendant Moves to Dismiss Defamation Suit Under Anti-SLAPP Statute
QFG and SOTT.net defend Internet First Amendment rights.
SOTT.net - May 02, 2008

(PRNewsChannel) / Portland, Oregon - Quantum Future Group, Inc. ("QFG"), the only defendant that has been served in an Internet defamation suit brought by New-Age guru Eric Pepin's sales company, has forcefully challenged the merits of the case and has asked an Oregon federal judge for a dismissal and attorneys fees.

The case concerns postings on a forum hosted by SOTT.net (Signs of the Times), an Internet site devoted to news and analysis in various fields, including analyzing and exposing cults. Citing Oregon's anti-SLAPP ("Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation") statute, QFG contends that the statements about Pepin and his company, Higher Balance Institute, LLC ("HBI") are constitutionally protected. Because HBI cannot show that it probably will prevail, QFG argues, the case must be dismissed before QFG or the other defendants must spend large amounts to defend themselves.

"Without exception," the motion states, "the statements are all constitutionally protected expressions of opinion rather than verifiable assertions of fact. HBI cannot meet its burden to prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that the statements are false, let alone that Defendants knew that they were false or had serious doubts as to their truth."

The statements cited in QFG's complaint question Pepin's meditation techniques and comment on Pepin's 2007 trial on multiple sexual charges involving a 17-year-old male acolyte. The statements at issue include a November 7, 2007 comment that "It's really starting to look like this Eric Pepin and his Higher Balance Institute may be merely COINTELPRO and a front for pedophilia" and a November 4, 2007 comment by an anonymous poster that something "fishy" was going on at HBI.

QFG's motions state that the forum posts are opinion based on stated facts published on a mainstream news source and are constitutionally protected. The motion also argues that the operator of an Internet forum cannot be liable for the posts of third parties under the Communications Decency Act of 1996 ("CDA") and questions Oregon's jurisdiction over QFG, a California non-profit corporation whose primary place of business is in France.

"These are exactly the sort of statements that the First Amendment and recent statutes protect as free speech," said QFG attorney Stephen Kaus, who prepared the papers with his colleagues Walter Hansell and Merrit Jones. "People are entitled to believe in gurus such as Pepin and buy their books and courses for hundreds of dollars or more, but people are also entitled to point out their view that the techniques of telepathy and development of a sixth eye promoted by Pepin are nonsense."

Much of the dispute concerns Pepin's trial on charges of sexual misconduct with a minor. Pepin was acquitted in a court trial because the judge did not feel the charges had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. According to the article in the Oregonian, Washington County Circuit Court Judge Steven L. Price stated that it was, " 'probable that the conduct alleged in all counts occurred,' but he wasn't convinced beyond a reasonable doubt" and "called the leader of a metaphysical Internet sales company manipulative and controlling and his testimony unbelievable, even as he acquitted him today of charges that he had sex with an underage boy."

SOTT.NET posters point out that being found "not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is not the same thing as being found "innocent of all charges."

The sexual charges aside, the SOTT.NET forum topic on Pepin and HBI has been the site of a lively debate on whether he is an exploiter, ever since a visitor posted an inquiry about them in 2006. Several Pepin devotees have posted fervent praise, while others have denounced him as a power-lusting cult leader who takes advantage of gullible followers.

SOTT.NET contends that it is the public's right to examine the claims of any company selling a product or service to the public and to form their own opinion as to whether it is "snake-oil" sold by con-artists or not and that those opinions may be made public for the safety of consumers.

In a previous press release, atty Walter Hansell noted: "HBI's lawsuit is a frontal assault on free speech, and on the free global flow of information and opinion on the Internet. It is a blunt force attack on the discussion of sincere opinions among people sharing common interests."

See: http://www.prnewschannel.com/absolutenm/templates/?a=423&z=4

Following the filing of the motions to dismiss on April 25th, Walter Hansell of Cooper, White & Cooper said: "The intent of this suit by HBI is to stifle free speech, but luckily the anti SLAPP statute allows us to nip the matter in the bud before the cost is out of hand."

About Signs of The Times:
SOTT.net is an independent alternative news and analysis outlet that seeks to shine a spotlight on significant events and trends that affect the entire world. SOTT.net helps bring clarity out of a sea of media spin. The site is funded entirely by donations from individuals and groups that seek to support its work. For more information visit http://www.sott.net

About Quantum Future Group:
Quantum Future Group (QFG) supports activities that bring together people to engage in and to promote the study of scientific ideas and research in all scientific and socio-cultural fields that further the deepest understanding of our world and our place within it without regard to nationality or ethnicity. QFG seeks to increase the understanding of humankind by humankind, as a whole, by sponsoring research into all the parts to see how they fit together. QFG supports documented research that is made freely and widely available to all humanity. For more information visit:http://quantumfuturegroup.org
News, Blog, Politics, Life, free speech, first amendment, defamation, higher balance institute, media

Letters From the Edge

2008-03-15T08:59:00.000-04:00

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
sott.net
Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:41 EDT

Today I'm going to write a letter; a letter to all our readers. I'm also going to include a transcript of a very interesting letter sott.net has received from Prof. Victor Clube. I hope that these letters will change your life, your future, and mine as well.

Here at sott.net, we have been pretty busy working on our legal defense, as if you couldn't guess! I'm sure that everyone notices that we are nowhere near our goal for having enough funds to cover this expense. All of you just remember, if 1,000 people can donate $100.00 each, we are in the clear. If 2,000 people donate $50. each, we are in the clear. And certainly, with over 10,000 of you reading this site every day, we ought to be able to do that!

Just keep in mind what you would be missing if we were gone! Who else would spend days, weeks, months and even years digging down to the deepest levels of our reality to bring you reports and analyses of what is really going on? After all, it is not just a matter of the political chaos out there; there are cosmic reasons for that chaos and historical cycles demonstrate clearly that times such as these generally manifest other symptoms that we all need to be aware of. For example...

Did you catch this one? Antartica: Mysterious Meteorites Stymie Scientists Followed by this one: Meteorites may be remnants of destroyed dwarf planet ? They are both about the same meteorites and the suggestion that there was once another planet in the solar system that was destroyed at some point is something that we here at sott.net have speculated about for years now.

Speaking of missing planets, did you read this one: Mission to the Forgotten Planets? Amazing how long it takes science to catch up with "inspired utterances" isn't it?

Speaking of science "catching up," have a look at this: Utah Crater Mystery Cracked where we read:
[...]
'm thinking about turning this series into a book, (and there is so much more to write about!) but of course, if Eric Pepin prevails in his suit against me - remember, I'm named personally as a defendant - things don't look too good for that book or future books. One might even speculate that the real intent of the suit is to try to seize all my copyrights, put me so deeply into debt that anything I write ever again will be owed to someone else who will then, we suspect, bury it forever.

That IS a possibility, you know. A real one.

In short, this lawsuit isn't just about some weird guy who got ticked off because a small, obscure forum in a backwater corner of the internet, generally suppressed by google (that's a whole other story), published some criticisms of his work and way of life - criticisms based on widely known and publicized events in that life, by the way. Nope. Eric Pepin has got to know that sott.net operates on a shoestring, that there is no gold to be gotten from this source. And, considering my age and lifespan prospects, ole Eric has got to know that even if I flipped burgers until I died, he'd never get anything.

So, yeah, this is more than just an attempt to suppress Free Speech. Connect the dots, figure it out.

And if you really want to know what is going on here on the BBM, you really need to kick yourself into action and either help us out with funds or with spreading the word about this situation because, peeps, Eric Pepin, whoever is behind him, along with the U.S. legal system, could very well snuff the lighthouse.

You gotta tell me if you want to know, and you gotta do it now. Tell me with actions, not words because, at this point, only actions will save the words I have yet to write for you, for your children, for all of us.

Go here to stand up for freedom of speech.
News, Blog, Politics, Eric Pepin, Higher balance institute, Comets, near earth objects, Media, Freedom of speech, Science

Eric Pepin Sues SOTT for 4.5 Million over Forum Comments

2008-03-07T12:52:00.000-05:00

Eric Pepin - Higher Balance Institute Sue SOTT for 4.47 Million Over SOTT Forum Comments! Laura Knight-Jadczyk
sott.net

Yesterday, as I was working on finishing up the next installment of the Comet Series of Articles, FedEx delivered a packet of mail from our corporate registered agent in the U.S. It was "Complaint and Demand for Jury Trial" filed in the State of Oregon by Eric Pepin's Higher Balance Institute, LLC. The reason? A discussion on the SOTT Forum that begins HERE.

Well, that was entertaining enough when you think about the fact that the discussion that he objects to was centered on several newspaper articles that describe his close calls with the legal system in Oregon over charges of sex abuse.The legal document I received is 10 pages long so I'm just going to summarize it here. If you want to read the whole thing (it's hilarious beyond belief!) go HERE for the pdf.....

....And now, Pepin wants to sue QFG and yours truly for talking about these articles, published in a newspaper (though they are no longer on the newspaper's website, but can be found elsewhere on the net)!!

Notice that Pepin, himself, revealed his "sex cult" practices in his own testimony. We'll be getting transcripts of the trial to publish so our readers can hear it from the horse's mouth; stay tuned for that.

Notice also that Pepin's attorney, Houze, accused the victim of bringing charges because he wanted to shake down Pepin. Well, maybe that's what gave Pepin the idea of suing me. Only thing is, he's gonna have a hard time collecting his 4.47 million because I don't own a thing and QFG rarely has more than a grand in the bank at any given time. When we have fund-raisers, the funds disappear almost instantly, repaying loans and covering basic expenses for the site and equipment.

It's also humorous that Pepin is suing QFG which only sponsors a world-wide group of independent researchers who, together, make up sott.net. QFG doesn't own sott, nor does QFG have any employees nor any official oversight of anything that the sott.net researchers say or do.

But the bottom line is this: Eric Pepin is convicted out of his own mouth of being a sexual predator. I mean, what kind of teacher of meditation says that he has sex with all his employees? And all of them young and good looking?

Nope, we aren't backing down. We firmly believe that Eric Pepin is a danger to innocent people looking for spiritual guidance. Obviously, young guys just looking for sex and money and a good time will be delighted to take his pills, listen to his tapes and attend his retreats. But the wider public who are not aware of these things in Pepin's background, that even the judge who acquitted him regretted having to do so, and that the Prosecutor of the case was also convinced that justice had NOT been done, need to be warned about this sexual predator in our midst.
News, Blog, eric pepin, cult, sexual preditor,Media,

Strange things out there in 9-11 Truth land.

2008-02-05T19:20:00.000-05:00

Seems that one of the best researchers on the topic - Laura Knight-Jadczyk - the one who backed the now famous Pentagon Strike video that got the whole ball re-rolling according to the Washington Post, is being made the pariah of the entire 9-11
Truth Movement.

Why?

Well, because she not only appears to be a personal friend of Rich Dolan (author of UFOs and the National Security State) but also because she has zero tolerance for pathological predators and cointelpro in any disguise, even the New Agey types.

See:
http://www.cassiopaea.com/archive/most.htm
http://www.sott.net/signs/forum/viewtopic.php?id=673&p=1
http://www.sott.net/signs/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=25145#p25145

and then see:
http://truthaction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2434&postdays=0&postorder=asc&st
art=0

All things considered, it looks like this organization "truthaction.org" is a front for Vincent Bridges and his cointelpro gang.

News, Blog, Politics, 911 truth movement, Current Affairs,Media,

Wake The World Up Campaign

2007-07-05T13:15:00.000-04:00

How many of you have seen the movie "The Day After Tomorrow?" If you haven't, the thesis of the movie is that Global warming causes large areas of the Arctic to melt, so that the northern Atlantic ocean is diluted by large amounts of fresh water which changes the density of the water layers causing a disruption of the Thermohaline current.. This then leads to a rapid and unnatural cooling of the northern hemisphere which triggers a series of anomalies, eventually leading to a massive "global superstorm" system consisting of three gigantic hurricane-like superstorms, which suck up heat and drop the super-cold upper atmospheric air down onto the planet resulting in an "instant Ice age."

This idea is nothing new and it didn't really originate with Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. A NASA report from 2004 tells us "Andrew Marshall, a veteran Defense Department planner, recently released an unclassified report detailing how a shift in ocean currents in the near future could compromise national security."

In a 2003 report, Robert Gagosian cites "rapidly advancing evidence [from, e.g., tree rings and ice cores] that Earth's climate has shifted abruptly and dramatically in the past." For example, as the world warmed at the end of the last ice age about 13,000 years ago, melting ice sheets appear to have triggered a sudden halt in the Conveyor, throwing the world back into a 1,300 year period of ice-age-like conditions called the "Younger Dryas." It is also now known that the Gulf Stream weakened in 'Little Ice Age'

On 6 December 2005 Michael Schlesinger, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, leading a research team, said "The shutdown of the thermohaline circulation has been characterized as a high-consequence, low-probability event. Our analysis, including the uncertainties in the problem, indicates it is a high-consequence, high-probability event." See also: Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age.

There is another danger that comes with Global Warming: release of huge amount of methane from the methane clathrates buried in the arctic seabed, and even from other subterranean sources as the earth struggles to shift around and balance itself. Methane can contribute to Global Warming, but it is a highly unstable gas. Mostly it just stinks and can kill. Consider a September, 2006 report Methane gas leak kills miners in Ukraine which says:

(read more on site)
News, Blog, Politics, Life, Current Affairs, Media, global warming, Science

Al Gore and the Monolithic and Ruthless Conspiracy

2007-05-24T12:30:00.000-04:00

I've been sitting back observing the little rumbles of awakening that seem to be emerging here and there across the land. Little by little, one by one, there are voices being raised against the Fascist jack-boots that have been trampling our world into a bloody mess for the past six years. Of course, it is difficult for these voices to be heard widely enough because of the control of the media, nevertheless, some of them are managing lately to get a few words in on Prime Time. Al Gore is among the latest to check in with his book "The Assault on Reason".

It's an interesting show. It's like being at the County Fair and watching somebody trying to shoot little ducks that pop up and down as they move along a little conveyor. The Jimmy Carter duck pops up declaiming that Israel is an apartheid state and all the Zionists start shooting at him. Then, Rosie O'Donnel pops up and delights her listeners by saying that 911 was in inside job so her bosses and their bosses start shooting at her. There have been a number of others, and most of them have been taken out by the media ignoring them more than anything else. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the first order of business for any society suffering oppression that seeks to dig their way out of such a mess is to take back the media. The mass media should belong to the people and should answer only to the people. Does that sound Socialistic? Well, yeah. Fact is, Socialism seems to be a heck of a lot more democratic in many respects than the much vaunted American Capitalism which has led the U.S. into the State Corporatism trap of Soviet style Communism.

Anyway, back to Al Gore. I recently read a bit of his book that was being circulated on the net and the main thing that occurred to me as I read the excerpt was "Too bad Gore doesn't understand psychopathy." He writes:...

Continue reading at: Signs of the Times
News, Blog, Politics, Al Gore, conspiracy, Current Affairs, Psychopathy, Media,

Beware The Ides of April: Cho Seung-hui and the Mosaic Distinction

2007-04-23T11:34:00.000-04:00

Laura Knight Jadczyk
Postcards from the Edge of Reality...

The other day I made a comment on the SOTT blog to the effect that things were getting pretty warm for the administration over the past few weeks, what with the Prosecutor's purge and Bush's "Fascist Law Czar" - Gonzales - getting ready to be called on the carpet in a serious way and that now, with the Va. Tech. Massacre as the subject of the latest media feeding frenzy, Gonzales is basically off the hook.

Then, of course, there is the issue of the growing movement for impeachment that is supposed to reach a fever pitch at the California Democratic Convention in San Diego on April 28. That has taken a back seat as well.

Of course, the first thing that I (and others) thought of when I heard of the VA. Tech shootings was "Greenbaum." For those of you not familiar with this Project Paperclip-generated mind control program (or even Project Paperclip), you might want to get up to speed pretty quick. After all, "they" are trying to convince you that a "Cho" could be anyone, anywhere. That's not true, but the truth is pretty scary: there are a lot of mind-controlled people walking the streets, working in average jobs, living next door to anybody, and you really do need to have the knowledge of what you are dealing with in order to protect yourself and your loved ones. And believe, me, it ain't what the MSM is telling you.

Take Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, for example. According to his brother, David Kaczynski, Ted was unwittingly part of the MK-ULTRA-CIA mind control program for three years at Harvard, and then at the University of Michigan and probably U.C. Stanford. In recalling some of the details of his brother's involvement in the covert behavior modification program, David Kaczynski says of his older brother, "In a sense, he wasn't paranoid; he was in a sense conspired against."

This whole incident, of course, takes us back to Oklahoma City...

When I saw the face of the alleged Oklahoma Bomber, Timothy McVeigh, I knew I had seen that expression before. I couldn't quite place the memory until a few days later when I read in a news article that Mr. McVeigh had told someone that the government had implanted a computer chip in his hip to track him! The bells rang and the lightbulb lit! I knew where I had seen that look before.

He was young, about 26 or 27, blond, blue-eyed, clean- cut (read more on site).
News, Blog, VA Tech, Virginia Tech, Cho, school shootings, mental illness, Media, gun control, mind control

The Hope

2007-04-03T11:43:00.000-04:00

My last contribution to the Blogosphere must have been pretty scary. Geeze! You shoulda seen my mail! People going bananas and writing "what to do? what to do!?"

Well, this one's not going to be any better. But let me say in advance that today's particular collection of items will lead us to a certain point of hope which I wish to elucidate at the end.

It is 7.17 am, Eastern Standard Time, on the thirtieth of June [some year in the not-too-distant future]. Suddenly the power fails.

The basement centre of the Defense Communication Operations Unit adjoining the White House is plunged into darkness, and only the distant rumble of early morning traffic reminds the duty officer that another day has already begun. There have been power failures before, however, and there is no hint of impending crisis

Almost immediately, an automatic switch brings in the emergency supply. But now the duty officer observes that something is wrong. Telephone links to the outside world have gone. These include the open links, via commercial cables, to NORAD's bunker a thousand feet under Cheyenne Peak in Colorado, and to the Offutt command post near Omaha

Within seconds it is ascertained that neither the President nor Vice-President, both of whom are out of town, can be contacted: radio communications are blacked out, on all frequencies. Further, because of the telephone failure, none of the Presidential stand-ins scattered around town and country can be expected to call in to give their exact locations, as they would normally if there were a recognized national emergency. However, the Secretary of Defense, third in the chain of command, is at breakfast somewhere in the White House

It has taken 45 seconds to confirm the general breakdown of communications; it takes another 45 seconds to locate the Secretary of Defense and inform him of the problem; and it is another 90 seconds before the Secretary finds himself in the cramped underground Situation Room along with his advisors. He is aware that the travel time of a missile from a hostile submarine off the Atlantic coast to Washington is just over fifteen minutes; three of these minutes have gone

Emergency procedures for transferring authority are now in hand and the Secretary of Defense becomes in effect the new President. The 'gold codes', which would enable him to initiate a nuclear response, are placed before him. The black SIOP books with their theoretical scenarios are produced. The 'Mystic' and 'Nationwide' communication systems are successfully activated utilizing deeply buried, protected cables. He now has control of the National Command Authority, the channel of communication for execution of a nuclear strike; and another two minutes have gone

The underground cables to Cheyenne, Offutt and other SAC bases are now open with secure links to the radar lines covering the northern approaches. None of them - Dew Line, the 55th Parallel or Pine Tree - is functioning properly, however; their screens are strongly upset with many spurious signals: there seem to be huge scattering modes in the ionosphere.

Satellite communication with military forces abroad is impaired. No information is coming in from the big synchronous DSP satellites over South America, the central Pacific or the Indian Ocean; nothing is arriving from the relay stations near Aurora in Colorado or Pine Gap in Australia. And the 'hot line' is dead. On the other hand in the minutes before the confusion they had reported no anomalous infrared emissions and hence no evidence of heat from the exhausts of rising missiles. At the moment all that can be said is that there is a very unusual atmospheric disturbance, that telephone lines are dead and that there are widespread power failures. The disturbed atmosphere might just be some strange effect due to sunspots or the like, but the telephone and power failures are ominous. On such a scale, the only plausible explanation is an electromagnetic pulse caused by nuclear fireballs

Eight minutes into the emergency - if it is an emergency - the Secretary issues a number of precautionary orders. His deputy is ordered upstairs to await the arrival of a helicopter from Quantico Marine Corps base about 30 miles away. This will transport the deputy to the waiting 'Nightwatch', a Boeing 747 which functions as an airborne command post. Another helicopter is dispatched to retrieve the President. A 'flash alert' is sent to Hawaii, to get a second command post aloft, but the message goes unacknowledged. SAC missile silos and bomber bases are put on full alert

Nine minutes on, information begins to flood in from sensors and antennae in orbit, at sea and scattered round the Earth. Much of it is reassuring: there are no patterns of activity on land, sea or air consistent with hostile intentions, no evacuations of barracks or the like are in progress.

But now something deeply disturbing is coming in from one of the DSP satellites. A television screen shows a brilliant patch over south-east Nevada, bright enough to saturate the lead sulphide cells in the satellite. Intense heat is radiating from an area of about ten thousand square kilometres. Distant ground sensors are reporting large tremors emanating from the same area - unnecessarily, as the Situation Room has begun to sway and vibrate, and loud rumblings are coming up from deep under the ground.

Then, from Offutt, comes devastating news. Air Force pilots are reporting a huge explosion in the desert area close to Boulder City. The city itself has gone, reduced to rubble. Las Vegas and other towns within 100 miles are enveloped in huge firestorms. The Hoover Dam has disintegrated. A column of dust and rubble has been sucked up to great altitude and a mushroom cloud is spreading outwards. Huge amounts of smoke are blanketing the state of Arizona and spreading into New Mexico and Mexico itself. The Secretary and his advisors can see it all on their television screens

The Secretary now has a maximum of five minutes in which to discuss and evaluate the information, make any decisions and implement them.

He is informed that the damage corresponds to explosions amounting to at least twenty megatons, and must have been caused by more than one bomb. The possibility of accidental detonations is quickly ruled out, because of its technical improbability and the magnitude of the explosion. Further, he is told that both ground and air bursts must have been involved to disrupt both cable and ionospheric communications. The conclusion seems unavoidable that for some reason the Soviets have targeted bombs on to American territory having somehow circumvented military radars. perhaps armed satellites with low radar cross-section have suddenly been diverted downwards; or perhaps submarine-launched cruise missiles have been fired; or perhaps bombs had already been smuggled into the area.

But why? The desert is a bizarre choice of target, Boulder, Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam of low strategic value. No sense can be made of the attack.

Perhaps, it is suggested, they were chosen because they have little value. The attack may be a prelude to some major military adventure and may be a warning, a "keep out' notice pitched at a level low enough that the risks of 'nuclear response are not justified and yet high enough to demonstrate deadly earnest. Or, the impacts may be intended to disrupt radar and communications for reasons which can only be guessed at

Whatever the merits of such speculations, the Secretary cannot responsibly rule out the possibility that further bombs may follow, completely jamming command and control over nuclear weapons, or even that Washington is an imminent target whose destruction might for example be awaiting only the positioning of armed satellites, already in orbit, over the city, or the arrival of cruise missiles.

Twelve minutes into the emergency, the Secretary's deputy is still on the White House lawn waiting for a helicopter, there is no communication with the President and the only information still coming in confirms that towns over several thousand square miles have been destroyed in nuclear blasts. He has no time left and must come to an immediate decision

He could initiate the dreaded 'Major Attack Option'. This is quickly ruled out because it is beyond reason, leading only to mutual annihilation. He could choose to do nothing. But it is pointed out that in the present situation paralysis could also lead to holocaust. Whether the National Command Authority is 'decapitated' in the next few minutes depends on whether further missiles are about to land. If they are, then all control over the counter-strike force may be lost and, with bombs falling on the USA, a full-scale attack on the Soviet Union will, following standing instructions, be unleashed by individual submarine commanders, and by the one-star generals aboard their Cover All airborne command posts. It is therefore vital to forestall any further nuclear attacks by calling the bluff, that is by retaliating at a similar level. All the options are dangerous. The least dangerous is an immediate 'controlled response'

The discussions are interrupted by confused reports of a storm of missiles, a cataract of fire pouring in over the states of the western seaboard and Canada. But the reports go unconfirmed; again, communications are failing over the whole of the United States

It is 7.30 am, Eastern Standard Time, on the thirtieth of June. In the revamped over-the-horizon radar base near Gomel in ByeloRussia officers are horrified to see, through the confusion of the still disturbed ionosphere, a dozen missile tracks appearing on their screens. Peacekeepers are rising over the plains of Kansas..

Even as they look, however, another unheralded missile is encountering the atmosphere high over the Bernese Oberland. Coming in at sixty thousand miles an hour, a hundred kilometres above Interlaken, the missile is gathering around itself a narrow skin of compressed air whose temperature surges up to about half a million degrees. Waves ripple within the hot air-turned-plasma; atoms, scattering off the waves, reach huge speeds, collide violently, and are stripped to their nuclei; electrons, torn from the atoms, accelerate violently and radiate fiercely at all wavelengths. For the most part this fierce emission is invisible, hard ultraviolet light or soft X-rays, and the atmosphere absorbs these at altitude, 50 to 90 kilometres up.

Only a tiny fraction of the radiation reaches the ground as visible light. Even so, Europe is lit up as if with a flashbulb: survivors from Ireland to Austria and from Denmark to Italy later describe 'a bluish white light, too bright for the naked eye', or 'a fire brighter than the Sun', or 'a thunderbolt ... blinding in its intensity'.

Approaching from the south east, the missile passes on a long, shallow trajectory, throwing moving shadows over the Jungfrau, Berne and Basle. It crosses the sky in a few seconds, leaving a wake of hot, luminous debris and air surrounded by a rapidly expanding red trail. Ten seconds after its first encounter with the atmosphere, the missile has penetrated the ionosphere, passed through the stratosphere and is moving rapidly into the lower atmosphere

Here at an altitude between 10 and 15 kilometres, the missile hits significantly denser air and suddenly disintegrates. It never reaches the ground therefore and instead unloads its stored-up power, 200 megatons of impact energy, into the air over Louvain, a medium-sized town in central Belgium. The missile vaporizes in a third of a second. It is now, momentarily, an incandescent cylinder a few kilometres long and a few hundred metres across. The temperature within the cylinder is over100,000 C. The pressure for an instant reaches some tens of thousands of tons per square inch; the missile blows up into a ball of fire radiating X-rays of huge intensity. These are absorbed within a few metres by the surrounding air; but, in doing so, the envelope of atmospheric gas acquires their energy. Simultaneously, hot, compressed material is thrusting rapidly outwards from the point of disintegration and snowploughing the air ahead of it. A blast wave develops; 'the fireball expands. From the first trace of incandescent tail high over Interlaken, to the beginnings of the fireball over Louvain, less than eleven seconds have elapsed.

When the fireball has reached about four miles in diameter the shock wave breaks away and races ahead of it. The corresponding blast brings a wind speed of over a thousand miles an hour. Survival at this distance is impossible; Louvain, directly under the fireball, disappears in less than a second. The fireball meanwhile inflates and soars rapidly upwards for several kilometres until, in the stratosphere, it flattens out and takes the classical mushroom shape. The cloud is seen from Copenhagen to Florence, from Edinburgh to Budapest. And over the whole of Europe, the ground shakes and buildings sway dangerously. Trains are derailed in southern England and beneath the Channel. The mushroom cloud is quickly broken up by jet streams at about 60 kilometres altitude and is subsequently dispersed around the globe

Within 25 kilometres of Louvain, all buildings are reduced to rubble. A few girder bridges survive due to accidental cancellation of pressure waves from above and below. The shock wave reaches Brussels to the west and Liege to the east. The buildings within these cities collapse, domino-like, as the wave sweeps through; and all traces of roads are immediately erased by rubble.

Beyond 25 kilometres, some structures survive, although few houses remain intact. Throughout Antwerp, for example, about 50 kilometres from ground zero, roofs are stripped bare of tiles and window frames and doors are blown in. Beyond this the damage becomes lighter: about 100 kilometres to the north, the blast, sweeping through Eindhoven, blows tiles off roofs and shatters windows

People out of doors and 25 kilometres from Louvain are hurled about to metres and are usually killed. Flying glass, though, is the greatest hazard. Shopping precincts and office complexes within 50 kilometres find themselves swept without warning by lethal blizzards of flying glass. Indeed, shards of glass account for most of the loss of life in these areas. Even 100 kilometres from the epicentre of the explosion, the blast is still strong enough to flatten forests

Nuclear reactors within reach of the ground tremors and air waves are damaged, their coolant pipes snapped and containment vessels cracked. Some begin the process of meltdown. Already, swathes of radioactive debris are pouring into the atmosphere, mingling with the dense chemical smog, drifting into Germany, and destined for Poland and Scandinavia

Immense destruction is caused by fire as well as blast. Serious flash burns from the thermal pulse of the fireball are sustained over an area of several thousand square kilometres, and virtually all exposed individuals within about 50 kilometres of ground zero receive third degree burns (charred skin) requiring labour-intensive hospital treatment, but in the hours and days following the impact it is impossible for medical services from outside to reach, let alone cope with, the seriously burned, and many of the injured die untreated from shock within twelve hours

The intense heat from the rising fireball sets off fires at a range of 70 kilometres or more. Fanned by the updraft of air sucked in behind the rising ball, these merge into a mass fire, a single all-consuming conflagration. Such fire services as have survived are immobilized in a sea of debris, deprived of water and overwhelmed by the extent of the raging fire.

The Sun eventually sets, but Europe is already dark, only the light from raging fires penetrates the smoke

Sixteen hours after the event the Sun rises again, but it shines down only on a dense, choking smog created by blazing cities and petrochemical complexes. Aerial survey is impossible. Within a circle of radius 50 kilometres, the dead greatly outnumber the living. Even without the mass fire which is still blazing, penetration of the area is impossible as roads are strewn by debris and wrecked vehicles. It will be several days before the fires burn themselves out and the smog disperses enough to reveal the flattened cities and towns, villages and farms. Belgium, it will turn out, has been obliterated. And several weeks would need to pass before French, German and Dutch forces have the capacity to clear the roads, shelter the living and bury the dead. Belgium, however, will wait in vain ...

For the Earth has encountered a cosmic swarm.

Twelve hours later, the death-dealing fusillade is peppering the other side of the globe. Indeed, the bombardment continues for nearly a night and day, the planet rotating all the while, first presenting one face, then the other, until eventually it emerges on the far side of the swarm.

Compared with the fireball over Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War, that over Boulder was a thousand times greater whilst that over Louvain was ten times bigger again, but they are just two of the several hundred pieces of grape-shot that meet the Earth, and they are trivial compared with the larger pieces of ordnance in train. These rarer missiles are each capable of unloading as much energy as would be unleashed in a major nuclear war, and in their case the atmosphere provides relatively little protection. Thus unlike their smaller counterparts, these larger bodies get through to the surface of the Earth, an ocean impact generating a tsunami, a land impact generating a small crater.

There is another difference: each huge fireball is now too energetic to be properly contained by the atmosphere. As before, it ascends, laden with dust, but now it breaks through generating a vacuum in its wake which is filled by a vast stream of air. Thus, on the ground, once the initial blast has swept past, there is a counter flowing hurricane, itself sweeping up dust thrown up by the impact, and blowing it upwards after the rapidly receding fireball. Within minutes the fireball has reached an altitude of several hundred kilometres, in the high stratosphere. Here it stabilizes, and the dust begins to spill outwards over the top of the atmosphere

Closer to the ground, the intense heat of impact from one large fireball has generated hundreds of fires over an area about the size of France. Essentially everything combustible along the line of sight of the rising fireball has caught fire. Loss of life over this area, already massive from the prompt effects of blast and heat, becomes almost complete when these fires merge into a single, all-consuming conflagration. About fifty million tons of smoke pour upwards, in dense plumes rising 10 kilometres into the atmosphere

Within a few days, the wildfires are almost global in extent. Tens of millions of tons of fine dust lofted into the stratosphere, and a comparable amount of smoke in the lower atmosphere, have spread over the northern hemisphere and are beginning to cross into the southern one. At ground level, sunlight is blocked from reaching the ground, and all activity takes place in a black, choking smog. There is no question of mounting any rescue operation to save the devastated areas: the damage is so widespread that communications around the globe have now effectively ceased to exist; individual regions are virtually isolated; devastated populations are thrown back on their own resources; dozens of cities are reduced to smouldering rubble; river pollution is rife; and forests throughout the world are ablaze. Life as we know it is drawing to a close

The cosmic encounter is over. Our planet has finally emerged from the swarm. Both continue, of course, along their predestined paths, the swarm merely a few missiles less, the Earth now charred and encased in a lingering veil of dust and smoke. With the destruction of cities and urban areas, the infrastructure of civilization has already gone; with the loss of sunlight, continental land temperatures have already plummeted to those of a Siberian winter; thick ice covers rivers and lakes; storms of unprecedented intensity rage along the continental margins; with animal and plant life devastated, farming and agriculture have already collapsed. Soon, the disrupted weather patterns will cause the continental land masses to be blanketed in a thick covering of snow

After several months, the Sun begins to be seen through a hazy sky. When, eventually, the dust clears, the land masses of the northern hemisphere are covered in a snowfield which, reflecting sunlight back into space, has become permanent. The snowfield is added to each year, centimetres at a time. A thousand years on, North America and Europe are covered in ice sheets half a mile thick and the ocean level has dropped by about fifty metres. The Earth is locked into a new ice age. Mankind has survived, but the human population has crashed and society has dissolved into hungry marauding bands. A new ecological balance is being worked out on the blasted landscape: indeed the struggle for survival has only just begun... [The Cosmic Winter, Victor Clube and Bill Napier]

In short, the Hammer of God struck.

Victor Clube and Bill Napier are not members of some whacked out "Doomsday Cult" as I have been accused of being after first presenting the idea that the Earth is facing a date with a swarm of cometary bodies over 13 years ago. At the time the book quoted above was written, Clube was Senior Research Fellow in Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and had also been Acting Director of the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. Napier was an astronomer at the Royal Observatory. They were cited by Firestone et al, whose scientific work on the Holocene Extinction suggests that the planet encountered a massive "swarm" of cometary bodies that nearly destroyed every living thing on Earth about 12000 years ago. As Firestone et al wrote:

Until recently, the astronomical mainstream was highly critical of Clube and Napier's giant comet hypothesis. However, the crash of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter in 1994 has led to a change in attitudes. The comet, watched by the world's observatories, was seen split into 20 pieces and slam into different parts of the planet over a period of several days. A similar impact on Earth, it hardly needs saying, would have been devastating.

The question is, of course, whether or not such a future is really lining up for the human race. As I mentioned in my previous article, we have been keeping track of these things and, it doesn't look good.

Admittedly, almost nothing can be done about such a scenario. It is the fate of ALL species to become extinct and certainly, the other human-like species have already done so. Mankind is not the be-all and end-all of Earthly existence, though he might like to think so. And, considering the behavior of our leaders - those we allow to lead us - throughout history, and particularly over the past 100 years or so, culminating in the obscenity of George W. Bush and his cronies, it might be better if at least one sub-set of the human species did become extinct: psychopaths and other pathological deviants.

Clube and Napier tell us that an asteroid in a Taurid orbit, carrying 100,000 megatons of impact energy, coming out of the night sky, would be visible in binoculars for only about six hours before impact. By the time you could see it with the naked eye, you would have only half an hour. But, if adequate preparations had been made, that would be enough time - for many.

Considering the seriousness of the threat against the survival of humanity, as more and more scientists are beginning to agree, and noting the billions of dollars spent in the War on Terror and "Homeland Security" Bird flu and AIDS, which are, most definitely, lesser hazards, you would think that rational human beings who actually CARE about humanity, about the future of our children and their children, would begin to focus on what is truly important. However, I would like to point out that almost no money is being spent on sending up satellites to monitor what is "out there;" it is all being spent on killing people down here.

Discovering and tracking what is "out there" is certainly technically feasible. Diverting a small asteroid is technically feasible. It would also be helpful for money to be spent on unbiased scientific study of what has actually happened to the Earth in the past, an attempt made to discover the risks and conditions and effects, and to analyze these so that proper preparations can be made for maximum survival of those elements of our civilization that are most conducive to bringing needed knowledge and insight to future inhabitants of our planet.

But the main problem at the moment is the lack of awareness of the real problem. It's all smoke and mirrors and "Global Warming" and "terrorists" out there. After all, there's no real money to be made by arms industry if there isn't somebody to kill or populations to oppress. There is considerable political capital invested in maintaining the status quo and this is what induces the establishment - even the scientific establishment - to continue to cover up what is really going on out there. They have a deep investment in making people believe that the cosmos is non-violent and our Earth is sailing along safely even if human beings, themselves, do nothing but find bigger and better and more effective ways of killing each other. For them, as Clube and Napier point out, Temporal Power takes precedence over the fate of the human race.

The Thought Police have done their job well. Now, in addition to the late Osama and Saddam, we have Global warming to keep us busy and get humanity accustomed to total oppression.

Let's take a look at how this actually works.

One of the SOTT editors, Henry, regularly attends meetings of a sort of "social activism" group in a nearby town. This little group is mostly into social issues, and they often schedule films to be shown to the attendees that are about things like unfair taxation, justice in the workplace, and so on. You know, your basic do-gooder types who claim to care about people and want to do something positive. But, apparently, there is a limit to those they care about and want to do good for; it doesn't extend to future generations that might survive a global cataclysm.

The other night, the film that was on the agenda of the meeting was Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." (Naturally, it was dubbed in French.) After the film was over, Henry reports that everyone was all worked up and saying "what to do? what to do?" and the discussion began. After a period of time listening to the blame game (humanity getting the brunt of it, mostly Western industrialism (which we all can agree is a problem, but that's not the point here)) , Henry managed to get a word in and pointed out that it wasn't just the Earth that was warming up. He informed the gathering of about 150 people that several other planets in the Solar System were also experiencing Global Warming and, as far as he knew, there were no industrial civilizations on any of them.

The moderator of the discussion was a bit taken aback, but apparently recovered quickly and said something like, "Oh, yes, we know that SOME Global Warming can be due to the activity of the Sun, but that's only a small percentage, blah blah blah... we need to focus on what we can fix now blah blah."

Apparently, in the "Inconvenient Truth" film, there is some mention of the Thermohaline Current and how it was affected by Global Warming 12,000 years or so ago and that this was due to abundant ice melt of the glaciers in Canada. Henry says (I haven't seen the film) that this is said as though it just started heating up for no reason and melting, and that was that. Of course, as we know very well, all of those events occurred because of cometary or meteor impacts as demonstrated conclusively by Firestone et al, and reported in my previous article.

So, Henry brings the attention of the crowd to this matter that was mentioned in the film, and points out that the apparently gradual "Global Warming" of that time was followed by meteor or cometary impacts which then brought on a sudden ice age.

The moderator said: "So?"

Henry then asked if anyone in the room was aware of the news reports that a jetliner had just narrowly missed being hit by a meteorite, and had anybody been noticing the unbelievable increase in the numbers of cosmic bodies entering the Earth's atmosphere, some of them even causing significant damage?

Missing the entire point, the moderator cut him off and again, said the equivalent of "so? There's nothing we can do about that... but there IS something we can do about THIS, i.e. "human caused global warming."

Can we say "Ostrich with head in sand"?

It's actually kind of synchronous that I had just written about this very attitude.

Humanity is facing a global cataclysm of Atlantean proportions in the near future from which very little of our modern world will emerge intact - if anything at all....

Sure, I know that a lot of people - if you brought it to their attention - would just shrug and say "Well, there's nothing I can do about it, so just let me live my life as I see fit until it happens and when it does, I'll be happy that I did what I wanted."

That is exactly how most people have been programmed to think. They are so concerned with what affects them now that they don't even perceive how their altruistic impulses have been trapped, twisted, and diverted from what really matters: the FUTURE OF OUR CHILDREN! However, there were several people who wanted to know more. Henry pointed out to them that the whole hullabaloo about Global Warming is designed to distract from the real issues. If all the attention that is being put on Human Caused Global Warming was being put on our governments to get rid of psychopaths and install systems that were actually democratic, manned by psychologically healthy people who worked for the PEOPLE, the possibilities of getting through whatever may be heading our way would be greatly enhanced for many people, and most particularly for humanity at large. And this is where we come to those people who feel a sort of responsibility to the future of humanity and to our children, and it is those people we are speaking to.

It is possible that the PTB ARE thinking about their future and the future of humanity in terms of them surviving and coming out on top and making slaves of anyone else who might happen to have survived, and for some reason, that idea really irks me. If someone I loved were to survive some terrible cataclysm on earth, I certainly wouldn't want them to survive only to be made into a slave. (If you want a good idea of what such a life might be like, just read The Thrall's Tale!) If you can consider your children and your children's children living such a life and it doesn't bother you, then you obviously aren't SOTT reader material, so move along and go back to sleep! (And if you believe in reincarnation and want to be born into such a world, go ahead and ignore what I'm saying here!)

But I digress. Getting back to the emails I received about the last article, all the people asking "what to do?"

What do I tell them? It's simple: Knowledge Protects. The more knowledge you have, the more protection you can activate in your life in every sphere of your life.

The main preparation that people need is a good education about human psychology; and here I don't mean what passes for psychology today, (which, like everything else, has been co-opted by pathological deviants), but accurate knowledge of individuals and larger social systems. Why? Because it is in this kind of knowledge that we have our first layer of protection. If we really know about lies and liars and evil and deception, we are less likely to be fooled by Wolves in Sheep's Clothing. They cannot penetrate and subvert our action groups; they cannot penetrate and subvert all the fields of government and education and religion and so on, which is how they have taken control of our world and why it is in the condition it is in. Because human beings do not have this knowledge, they are at the mercy of The Cult of the Plausible Lie.

Now, we have a real problem here and we don't have a lot of time to solve it, either. The main thing that is standing between humanity and the solution is a bunch of psychological deviants: Pathocrats who, as Clube and Napier said above, care more about Power than the human race. It would take an entire generation to undo the damage they have done to the minds of ordinary people, to straighten out the mess that passes for logic in this world. Sure, we need to round up the most virulent of the deviants and exclude them from society and we need to undertake some serious scientific studies about them so that if there are ways to prevent their emergence in society, we can implement those safeguards. But right now, the first problem we need to solve seems to me to be to really help people to understand that the house is on fire and we gotta go outside and form a bucket-brigade, like NOW. More than that, we have do this against the manipulations of the lunatics who have nailed the doors shut because they can't see the fire, can't feel the fire, and even if they did, they don't care. If they see one of us trying to open the doors, they will hit us over the head and keep talking hypnotically to everyone else telling them that "don't listen to that crazy person who's trying to open the door! There's no fire! And if there was, WE would take care of you! After all, we only have your best interests at heart!"

Yeah, right.

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'Hostage Crisis' Or End Game?

2007-03-31T10:05:00.000-04:00

Up until the 23rd March 2007, it seemed unlikely that the 'creative destructionists' 1. and 'reality-makers' in the Pentagon and Tel Aviv would get to "liberate" Iran in the way they have liberated 26 million Iraqis (1 million of them from their bodies). The past 3 years of subtle and not-so-subtle slander and demonisation of the Iranian president and people by the American, British and Israeli governments and their media had been largely ineffective in further provoking the anti-Islamic ire of Joe six-pack. After all, with the US invasion of Iraq either a war crime or a quagmire (depending on your political perspective and depth of conscience) Bush's political capital account was seriously overdrawn, rendering the idea of extending the Middle East madness into an attack on Iran nothing but a Zionist pipe dream.

Or so it seemed.

Political capital and its raw material - human emotion - is, you see, much like crude oil, self-replenishing, all you need to know is where to look and where to 'drill', and the flow can be re-established in an instant.

In yet another amazing coincidence of the type to which most people have become immune since September 11th 2001, 15 British marines were captured by Iranian soldiers in the Persian Gulf, just one day before the UN security council was to meet to decide whether to impose further immoral sanctions on 80 million Iranians 2. Of course, the timing of the capture of the British marines could have been a coincidence and the direct result - a slam dunk on the sanctions vote - just a piece of uncanny bad luck for Ahmadinejad.

Likewise, the fact that the US government somehow 'bungled' the Iranian President's visa application, preventing him from presenting his case to the Security Council on the same day, could also have been mere chance. After all, we need only remember how John Ashcroft was warned by an unknown confidant not to fly on commercial planes just a few days before 9/11 or that a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli army gave Israel's most recent suicide bomber a lift to his destination, to understand that strange coincidences are the norm rather than the exception in the world of the Zionist-Neocon War of Terror.

That the capture of the British marines was to be transformed into a causus belli was evident right form the get go with the purportedly moderate BBC News taking a page from Necon Rupert Murdoch's Fox and Sky news song sheet and running day-long 'crisis specials' on the event, complete with ad-nauseum repetitions of the 'details'. For example, the following (verbatim) is an example of one of the repeated "clarifications" by BBC newscasters in response to comments by an alleged "expert":

Reporter: "so you're saying that they were definitely captured in Iraqi waters"

and

Reporter: "again, let me just be clear on this, you're saying that this could seriously effect tomorrow's UN Security council vote".

If you have been watching the news or reading the papers over the past week, you should already be aware that someone is protesting a little too much, and it ain't the Iranians.

Since the arrest of the 15 useful idiots, the Western public has been subjected to a week-long barrage of simplistic anti-Iranian propaganda that has sought to capitalise on the event and pitch the Iranian government as the aggressor. As you might expect, however, there is far more to this story than is being told in the mainstream press.

First of all, consider the strange fact that just hours before she was arrested, the only female among the Marines, leading Seaman Specialist Faye Turney, gave an exclusive interview to the UK Independent in which she spoke of her "devotion to her job and three-year-old daughter, Molly, and the guilt of leaving her behind at home in Plymouth to be cared for by her husband Adam, a Petty Officer in the Royal Navy."

It was also leading Seaman Specialist Turney who was chosen by the Iranian government to speak when she and some of her colleagues appeared on Iranian television a few days later, and it was Turney who penned two probably scripted 'confession' letters to her parents where she apologizes for to the Iranian people for trespassing on Iranian territory and calls on the British to leave Iraq. All in all it was emotional stuff, or rather it was meant to jerk the emotional chains of the great British (and Western) public if we allow ourselves to be guided by recent headlines from the UK's largest (and Rupert Murdoch-owned) daily, the Sun:

It should be noted that the above headline: "who do you think you are kidding Mr Ahmadinejad" is not as innocuous as it might at first seem, but rather is evidence of the very insidious yet subtle propaganda methods used by the mainstream media to undermine the critical thinking abilities of the average UK citizen. Virtually every Brit will recognise (most likely unconsciously) the headline as a play on the theme tune from the wildly popular British sitcom Dad's Army (1968 -1977) which portrayed the British home guard during WWII as a bunch of bumbling idiots. The chorus from the theme tune was: "Who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler". The replacement of 'Hitler' with 'Ahmadinejad' of course being the slur of choice of American, British and Israeli Zionists.

That their opinions are being directly manufactured by such subtle propaganda and disinformation is unfortunately lost on her Majesty's loyal subjects, most of whom remain blissfully unaware that what is now being called a "hostage crisis" is part of a deliberate policy by Western government officials to manipulate them and make them willing accomplices in an upcoming attack on their fellow human beings in Iran. Likewise, a recent US poll claims that almost 60 percent of Americans believe that Iran is "helping the Shiites in Iraq by providing weapons to them." The fact that every one of those polled would have serious problems telling the difference between a Shiite and a Shish kebab is of course not the point - the point is that they, and those who read about the poll, now believe, know, that Iran = bad.

The warmongers in the British, American and Israeli governments (and those behind them) realise that there can be no war with Iran without public backing, if only temporarily (as was the case with the invasion of Iraq) and with the fabricated Downing street dossier and WMD lies still relatively fresh in our minds, most members of the public are ill-disposed to being fooled twice. Blair and his cronies understand very well however that, in the absence of a direct threat to their lives, a certain blood-lust can be conjured up among the masses by somehow involving them personally in the conflict.

Because the public of any nation does, and always will, strongly identify with their troops (they generally view them as ordinary people just like themselves) any high-profile 'crisis' that involves military personnel, particularly in the case where they are 'humiliated' in some way, invariably has the immediate effect of repressing logical and rational thought and replacing it with thinking of a distinctly emotional flavor. Hence the current "hostage crisis" and a proliferation of headlines such as this form the Scotsman this week:

But how exactly did this "crisis" come about? As I have already mentioned, it is rather suspicious that it occurred one day before the UN Security Council was due to vote on further sanctions on Iran, and what are the odds that Seaman Specialist, Faye Turney would have given a personal and heartfelt interview only hours before her arrest?

We know that the basics of the story are that the Iranians claim that the British Marines strayed into Iranian waters and were, reasonably enough from the Iranian point of view, arrested. The British government, on the other hand, without directly stating it, has suggested that the Iranian military captured the British Marines in Iraqi waters where, we are told, they were engaged in their normal, almost 'humanitarian' daily routine of searching boats in the Persian Gulf in an attempt to stop "smugglers". The truth of what the British sailors were actually doing that day is however rather different.

The crew of HMS Cornwall (including the 15 arrested Marines), had been part of a massive military operation codenamed "Operation Troy", instigated three years ago after "suicide bombers" in three dhows attacked the Al Basra and Khawr Al Amaya oil terminals, killing three Americans. A three-kilometre exclusion zone was thrown up around each of the terminals - which pump out 90 per cent of Iraq's crude oil. From this, it becomes obvious that, like the rest of the British and American military in Iraq, the arrested Marines were in the role of corporate mercenaries, hired to ensure that Iraq's oil remains flowing in the hands of government-associated Western oil companies.

Context, as they say, is everything.

But what of British government claims that the Marines were 1.7 nautical miles within Iraqi waters? So far, the British Navy has produced a map with the locations of the Marines inflatable boat, HMS Cornwall, and the demarcations of Iraqi and Iranian waters.

The British Ministry of Defence has also produced a series of numbers, apparently GPS co-ordinates, which apparently place the Marines' boat in Iraqi waters at the time of their arrest. A British Navy Commodore however, was quoted by the UK Independent as saying that the Marines were just half a mile inside Iraqi waters.

For their part, the Iranians have presented two different sets of coordinates that placed the Marines in both Iraqi and Iranian waters and yesterday, an Iranian officer appeared on Iranian television to say that a captured British GPS device showed five violations of Iranian waters.

With both the British and Iranians making contradictory and confusing claims, we suspect that the exact details of where the Marines were are largely irrelevant. Indeed, such nitpicking would seem pointless in light of the fact that it appears that there is no definitive agreement on the precise boundaries of Iraqi and Iranian waters. The Shatt al-Arab waterway was divided in half by the Iranian and Iraqi governments in 1978, and up until recent years the median line was marked simply with buoys. The demarcation of the waterway has however suffered in recent years with the boundaries of the waterways described as "very complicated".

According to British Admiral Alan West a commission would usually meet every two or three years to agree exactly where the median line should be:

"The commission is meant to sit regularly to discuss and arbitrate exactly where the median line down the Shatt al-Arab goes because it does move with the seasons and each year it moves in shifts because it's quite a flow of water."

"The commission would consist of representatives, principally of Iran and Iraq, sitting around a table and deciding where the line would be. There are other people involved to mediate."

The commission had not met for a few years because of the war, he added.

Richard Schofield, an expert in international boundaries at King's College London, questioned whether the dispute would be eased if the Royal Navy released co-ordinates of where the sailors were seized:

"Releasing the co-ordinates wouldn't necessarily help us as there is no formally agreed boundary"

"It isn't clear the incident happened off the water of Shatt al-Arab. We are talking about territorial waters beyond."

"Iran and Iraq have never agreed a boundary of their territorial waters. There is no legal definition of the boundary beyond the Shatt al-Arab."

Of course, if there is "no legal definition of the boundary between Iraq and Iran's territorial waters", then we have to wonder where the British DOD got the map that appears to show those exact demarcations? Was it just a matter of DOD officials drawing a line on a map to suit British claims? I am also still waiting for someone to explain to me how, if the Marines were in Iraqi waters when arrested by the Iranians, why were the Iranians allowed to pass unchallenged into Iraqi waters?

Whatever the case, the main point here is that the "Iran crisis" has begun. Blair and his cabinet cronies now have a drum to beat, and it seems they mean to beat it as loudly as possible. Already Blair has waxed indignant about the "parading" of the British Marines on Iranian television, heck, he even became somewhat "disgusted" over it:

"I just think it's completely wrong, a disgrace actually, when people are used in that way, that's contrary to all international laws and conventions, and is not going to make any difference to us.

[...] "I really don't know why the Iranian regime does this [show captives on TV]," because it just arouses disgust, he told reporters Friday.

"We need all 15 released because they were doing their job under a United Nations mandate. There is no justification whatsoever for taking them in that way."

In an example of the ignorance, arrogance and paramoralistic thinking that is rife among British establishment figures, Labour party member and MP for Shrewsbury Daniel Kawczynski opined thusly on the "crisis":

"Obviously I have been raising this issue in the Commons. I feel extremely angry the Iranians have paraded them on television. It totally contravenes international protocol. We would not do that in a million years in our country."

Of course, I forget, this is Britain, Western 'Democracy', a paragon of virtue. I admit it, Blair and the British MP are correct, British or American soldiers and politicians would never sanction the "parading" of captured foreign nationals on television...such acts are disgusting. Piling prisoners naked into pyramids with bags over their heads on the other hand, is totally kosher, especially when it's in the prisoners own country.

Compare and contrast:

'Parading' and feeding = "disgusting"

Naked prisoner pyramid with head bags = "liberation"

Of course Blair, being a man without a conscience, has no problem with the inherent hypocrisy in such statements. For Blair, the arrest and good treatment of 15 British personnel by Iran is a "disgrace", while the abduction, torture and long-term imprisonment of innocent people by the CIA and British intelligence is good old British fair play. It is for this reason that Blair, confronted with the opportunity to resolve the issue, chose to respond to the Iranian offer to release Leading Seaman Faye Turney, by marching off to the UN in an attempt to steamroll a resolution "deploring" the Iranian action. As it turned out, Russia, China, Indonesia and Qatar objected to the use of the word, preferring "grave concern" and rejecting the inclusion of a statement that the Royal Navy team was "illegally arrested outside Iranian waters". Apparently the days when all bowed to British "pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war" are long gone.

As for the Bush government and media; given that the US military in Iraq is still holding the five Iranian diplomats abducted in Iraq last month with no consular access, no charges brought against them and no information about where they are being kept and under what conditions, you might think that they would want to keep a low profile on this one, and in any normal world you would be right, but not in this one, not in the good old US of A! The US media is instead joyously profiting from the "hostage crisis" to ramp up the Iran war rhetoric for the US population, and the US government has enthusiastically backed the British government position, even as Bush and Co continue to imprison hundreds of innocent people in Guantanamo bay and issuing condemnations to other countries for arresting political opponents. So just in case you are still wondering, the answer is 'yes' this is an astonishing double standard and one that has been the hallmark of the Fascist Blair-Bush-Israel triumvirate.

But wait! I forget...those innocent inmates in Guantanamo, the unfortunates who are "rendered" by the CIA, the 10,000 Palestinian men, women and children in Israeli jails and the Iranian diplomats all have two things in common: they are Muslims and therefore are "terrorists", while the British troops who share the blame for 1 million dead Iraqis are "liberators". We must not forget that important point.

From the Iranian point of view, there are two fronts on which the "hostage crisis" must be managed.

On one level, there is international opinion and the need to project a moderate stance in an effort to offset three years of Western media slander that has sought to pitch Ahmadinejad as a new "Hitler".

On another level there is Iranian public opinion and public opinion in the Arab world.

At present, Iran is militarily encircled by US and British forces, with no justification. American troops are based in almost every country bordering Iran - Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Azerbaijan (not to mention 121 other countries around the world). Added to that is the fact that, last month, most of the developed world voted at the UN to sanction Iran for its non-existent (in terms of being a threat) nuclear programme. Meanwhile, the Israeli Mossad has been murdering Iranian scientists, rescuing their long-term spies from the Iranian government, and calling for Ahmadinejad to be assassinated (simply because he took a leaf out of Bush's book and called for regime change in Israel). And all of it against a nation that has never attacked or threatened another country for several hundred years.

Understandably, all of this makes for a certain amount siege mentality among the Iranian ruling class, not to mention frustration and annoyance among the Iranian people.

The fact is, the Iranian people have serious and justified historical grievances against the Americans, British and Israelis to which Ahmadinejad must cater. For example, 6 months after the 2003 illegal US invasion of Iraq, the Iranian people were mourning a 50 year-old US and British intervention in their country, one that had terrible and lasting consequences:

Iranians mourned this week the consequences of Anglo-American regime change as they marked the 50th anniversary of a CIA coup that toppled their democratically elected prime minister.

Organized by the CIA and the British SIS [MI6] to secure Iran's oil resources [sound familiar?] from a possible Soviet takeover and secure Iran's oil resources, the coup marked America's first intervention in the Middle East. Its aftershocks are still being felt.

The end of Iran's first democratic government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship by Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, who relied on US aid and arms. The anti-American backlash in 1979 shook the whole region and helped spread Islamic militancy.

"If there had not been a military coup, there would not have been 25 years of the Shah's brutal regime, there would not have been a revolution in 1979 and a government of clerics," says Mr. Yazdi, who served briefly as foreign minister in the first cabinet after the fall of the Shah. "What we have now is a result of the coup."

Kind of puts a different spin on Israeli, American and British denunciations of Iranian "extremists" and the need to prevent them from acquiring a single nuke, does it not?

The current "hostage crisis" therefore must be handled carefully by Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah Khamenei. With the aforementioned history and most Iranians understandably suspicious of any British government, its intelligence agencies and military, there is little scope for the Iranian government to simply release the British troops and kowtow to pompous British demands, particularly in the case that the British Marines did indeed trespass into Iranian waters. The Iranian government has asked for a simple apology from the British to appease public opinion (and possibly the Iranian military command which has a significant say in Iranian domestic and foreign affairs). At the same time however, the British government would rather "refuse to negotiate" in an effort to incite British public opinion in preparation for a Zionist-inspired attack on Iran.

Sounds a little like 'end game' to me.

In all of this, there is one group that has been conspicuous by its silence - Israel. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the Zionists, even more so that the Bush government, have a vested interest in the escalation of this particular "crisis". More than that, Israel has something of a track record in setting one group against another and profiting from the resulting conflict. Consider the following extract from ex-Mossad officer Victor Ostrovsky's book The Other Side of Deception, and see if you notice anything that stands out in relation to the events surrounding the capture of the 15 Marines last week:

Shimon activated Operation Trojan in February this year. I'd still been in the Mossad when that order was given, and because of my naval background and acquaintance with most of the commanders in the Navy, I participated in the planning for the operation as liaison with the Navy,

A Trojan was a a special communication device that could be planted by naval commandos deep inside enemy territory. The device would act as a relay station for misleading transmissions made by the disinformation unit of the Mossad and intended ot be received by American and British listening stations. Originating from an IDF navy ship out at sea, the prerecorded digital transmissions could be picked up by the Trojan. The device would then rebroadcast the transmission on another frequency, one used for official business in the enemy country, at which point the transmission would finally be picked up by American ears in Britain.

The listeners would have no doubt that they had intercepted a genuine communication, hence the name Trojan, reminiscent of the mythical Trojan horse. Further, the content of the messages, once deciphered, would confirm information from other intelligence sources, namely the Mossad. The only catch was that the Trojan itself would have to be located as close as possible to the normal origin of such transmissions, because of the sophisticated methods of triangulations the Americans and others would use t verify the source. [...]

[Once the Trojan was in place and transmitting], by the end of March the Americans were already intercepting messages broadcast by the Trojan, which was only activated during heavy communication traffic hours. Using the Trojan the Mossad tried to make it appear that a long series of terrorist orders were being transmitted to various Libyan embassies around the world. As the Mossad had hoped, the transmissions were deciphered by the Americans and construed as ample proof that they Libyans were active sponsors of terrorism. What's more, the Americans pointed out, Mossad reports confirmed it.

Heads of the Mossad were counting on the American promise to retaliate with vengeance against any country that could be proven to support terrorism. The Trojan gave the Americans the proof they needed. The Mossad also plugged into the equation [Libyan leader] Qadhfai's lunatic image and momentous declarations, which were really only meant for internal consumption.

Operation Trojan was one of the Mossad's greatest successes. It brought about the air strike on Libya that President reagan had promised - a strike that had three important consequences:

First, it derailed a deal for the release of the American hostages in Lebanon, thus preserving the Hizb'allah as the number one enemy in the eyes of the West.

Second, it sent a message to the entire Arab world, telling them exactly where the United States stood regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Third, it boosted the Mossad's image of itself, since it was they who, by ingenious sleight of hand, had prodded the United States to "do what was right".

I have to admit that I did wonder how it was possible that the British, with all of their modern satellite positioning equipment and 4 years experience patrolling the Shatt al_Arab waterway, could have made the mistake of trespassing into Iranian waters, unless their GPS tranmissions somehow gave them wrong information.

Likewise, I was perplexed as to why the Iranians should have made the serious move of arresting 15 British Marines without having a very good reason to do so - for example, if they picked up a transmission that a British commando team were planning to infiltrate Iranian territory.

I can't say if this manufactured crisis is but the opening gambit or as good as it's gonna get in terms of the Israeli/American/British case for war on the Iranian people, what is clear however is that an attack on Iran will happen, within the next few months, and that it will have serious repercussions for every man woman and child on the planet.

You have been warned. It's time, yet again, to wake up.

Stay tuned for updates.

Notes:

1. In The War Against the Terror Masters, Neocon Michael Ledeen stated:

First and foremost, we must bring down the terror regimes, beginning with the Big Three: Iran, Iraq, and Syria. And then we have to come to grips with Saudi Arabia. ... Once the tyrants in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia have been brought down, we will remain engaged. ...We have to ensure the fulfillment of the democratic revolution. ... Stability is an unworthy American mission, and a misleading concept to boot. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize.

Rejecting stability as "an unworthy American mission," Ledeen goes on to define America's authentic "historic mission":

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. ... [W]e must destroy them to advance our historic mission.

2. Note that I say that the sanctions will be imposed on the Iranian people, not the Iranian government directly. In case you are unaware of the fact, let me make it clear: the source of power of every modern government is the people. The best way to attack a government therefore is to attack the people from which it derives its power.
News, Blog, Politics, hostage crisis, british marines, Blair, Persian Gulf, Media, Iran,

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: The Wally-World of Wickedness!

2007-03-19T11:41:00.000-04:00

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: The Wally-World of Wickedness!

Not too long following the revelation that CNN and BBC broadcast videos indicated that both news sources had reported the collapse of WTC7 at least 20 minutes BEFORE it was “pulled,” (which suggests government and media complicity in the 911 attacks), Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man accused of masterminding the 9/11 attacks, has now appeared before a closed hearing at Guantanamo Bay where he is said to have confessed leading involvement in the September 11 attacks.

Not only! In addition, Sheikh Mohammed ALSO confessed to playing a leading role in THIRTY - yes, count them: 30 - additional terrorist plots! This a stunning range of terrorist activities he claims to have had a hand in including both the 1993 and 2001 assaults on the World Trade Center, as well as the beheading of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, attacks on Heathrow airport, Big Ben and Canary Wharf in UK, and still more!

Time Magazine remarks - with tongue in cheek, I suspect - that KSM “came across as an earnest, somewhat chatty mass murderer taking credit for plans to detonate the Panama Canal as well as New York City landmarks like the stock exchange. He also mentions assassination plots directed at former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton as well as Pope John Paul II. Several of the conspiracies he cited, notably the one involving President Carter, have not previously been disclosed.”

Yes indeedy! KSM is your veritable one-stop shopping Terrorist Super Store! The Wally-World of Wickedness!
Well, I was wondering what all the hullabaloo about the “scripted” 911 news reporting was leading up to. That, put together with George Monbiot’s recent spittle-spewing rant about crazed 911 Conspiracy Idiots, suggested to us here at SOTT that something was definitely up - and if it wasn’t already in the pipeline, they would throw something together pretty quick!

After all, with the growing clamor for a new, independent investigation of 911, with the numbers of Americans suspecting their government of complicity in the 911 attacks, with the growing evidence that every word that comes out of the mouths of the Ziocons is monstrously twisted at best, an out and out lie at worst, what’s a bunch of Pathocrats to do?

Why, produce distractions and more distractions, of course!

It is so “WMDs”, you know! It is amazing that the Neocons actually think they can pull this off.
But then, they’ve pulled everything else off so far, haven’t they?

Even the so-called political “perfect storm” that hit Bush and gang a week ago has now passed into history. Just think about it, in one week, not only was there escalating violence in Iraq at a time when it was quite clear that the majority of the American people want the troops out of Iraq NOW, (and Bush is just sending in more); there was also the Walter Reed scandal where wounded soldiers told Congress about neglect, bad housing and bureaucratic nightmares; and finally, Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s conviction of perjury and obstruction of justice in the case of the leak of the identity of a CIA operative Valerie Plame.

That combination would have taken down any president in prior American History. Geeze, remember Clinton and Monica? Wouldn’t we all like to have a president who only philanders!

But nope, not a whimper from the American public.

Well, that’s not exactly true. As it happens, the early reports of the exit polls after the last election clearly showed that one of the main concerns of the American people was corruption in government. It seems that the American people who voted saw corruption and the Iraq war as part of the same whole problem, and they were sick of it and turned out in record numbers to vote against it. Of course, despite the fact that the majority of Americans voted for anybody BUT Republicans, a surprising number of Republicans held their seats or were voted in. Can we say “fraudulent election”?

Be that as it may, immediately following the election, after a token word or two about “we’re gonna kick butt in Congress,” the new Democratic majority managed to do … well… exactly nothing. It’s corruption business as usual only wearing a different name tag.

I’ve said repeatedly that the main reason Bush and the gang began their illegal wiretapping operation was not to spy on ordinary Americans “looking for terr’rists”, but rather to gain the upper hand over all the branches of government. You could say that blackmail is a kind of “torture” and based on their actions, it’s obvious that the entire government in the U.S., with vanishingly rare exceptions, is under the iron-fisted control of some group that does not have America’s best interests at heart.

Which brings us back to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his amazing Terrorist Super-hero activities. Geeze, you’d think he could leap tall buildings with a single bound, stop speeding bullets and locomotives, and certainly get the best looking girl at the end.

Obviously, that’s not the case. The guy who could pull off the most carefully planned, expensive and comprehensive terrorist operation in all of Terrorism’s history and even wanted to take out Jimmy Carter, got nabbed so early in the game that we wonder now why it was all blamed on Osama bin Underthebed!
But I digress. I want to draw your attention to a news item I found in the SOTT archive by searching on the term “Guantanamo” that may have some bearing on the events of the present moment, providing a peek behind the scenes at a possible connection between a couple of seemingly disparate events: the scandal surrounding the firing of U.S. Prosecutors and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confession. Here’s the first item:

U.S. Prosecutors Claim Guantanamo Trials Rigged
01 Aug 2005
As the Pentagon was making its final preparations to begin war crimes trials against four detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, two senior prosecutors complained in confidential messages last year that the trial system had been secretly arranged to improve the chance of conviction and to deprive defendants of material that could prove their innocence.

The electronic messages, obtained by The New York Times, reveal a bitter dispute within the military legal community over the fairness of the system at a time when the Bush administration and the Pentagon were eager to have the military commissions, the first for the United States since the aftermath of World War II, be seen as just at home and abroad.

During the same time period, military defense lawyers were publicly criticizing the system, but senior officials dismissed their complaints and said they were contrived as part of the efforts to help their clients.
The defense lawyers’ complaints and those of outside groups like the American Bar Association were, it is now clear, simultaneously being echoed in confidential messages by the two high-ranking prosecutors whose cases would, if anything, benefit from any slanting of the process. […]

Among the striking statements in the prosecutors’ messages was an assertion by one that the chief prosecutor had told his subordinates that the members of the military commission that would try the first four defendants would be ‘’handpicked'’ to ensure that all would be convicted.

The same officer, Capt. John Carr of the Air Force, also said in his message that he had been told that any exculpatory evidence — information that could help the detainees mount a defense in their cases — would probably exist only in the 10 percent of documents being withheld by the Central Intelligence Agency for security reasons.

Captain Carr’s e-mail message also said that some evidence that at least one of the four defendants had been brutalized had been lost and that other evidence on the same issue had been withheld. The March 15, 2004, message was addressed to Col. Frederick L. Borch, the chief prosecutor who was the object of much of Captain Carr’s criticism.

The second officer, Maj. Robert Preston, also of the Air Force, said in a March 11, 2004, message to another senior officer in the prosecutor’s office that he could not in good conscience write a legal motion saying the proceedings would be ‘’full and fair'’ when he knew they would not.

At this point in the article there is some damage control nonsense about how the military investigated these charges and it was all a “misunderstanding” and “forget about it, go back to sleep.” But then, the article addresses some of the issues about the new laws that the Bush Reich have passed regarding such trials which amount to evidence manipulation from the get-go.

The Bush administration and the Pentagon have faced criticism about the legitimacy of the military commission procedures almost since the regulations describing them were announced in 2002.
The rules, which in essence constitute a new body of law distinct from military and civilian law, allow, for example, witnesses to testify anonymously for the prosecution. Also, any information may be admitted into evidence if the presiding officer judges it to be ‘’probative to a reasonable person,'’ a new standard far more favorable to the prosecution than anything in civilian law or military law. It is unclear whether information that may have been obtained under coercion or torture can be admissible.
Now, here is where it gets squirrely:

The trials of the first four defendants began last August in a secure courtroom in a converted dental clinic at the naval base at Guantanamo. Before they could start in earnest, the trials were abruptly halted in November when a federal judge ruled they violated both military law and the United States’ obligations to comply with the Geneva Conventions.

But a three-judge appeals court panel that included Judge John G. Roberts, President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee, unanimously reversed that ruling on July 15.

Defense Department officials have said they plan to resume the trials in the next several weeks. They said they also planned soon to charge an additional eight detainees with war crimes.

What is clear is that control of the judiciary is very important to the Bush criminals and, at that point, they did not have complete control, even with illegal wiretapping. And, darn those pesky principled prosecutors!

In his March 2004 message, Captain Carr told Colonel Borch that ‘’you have repeatedly said to the office that the military panel will be handpicked and will not acquit these detainees and we only needed to worry about building a record for the review panel and academicians who would pore over the record in years to come.”
Captain Carr said in the message that the problems could not be dismissed as personality differences, as some had tried to depict them, but ‘’may constitute dereliction of duty, false official statements or other criminal conduct.'’

He added that ‘’the evidence does not indicate that our military and civilian leaders have been accurately informed of the state of our preparation, the true culpability of the accused or the sustainability of our efforts.'’ The office, he said, was poised to ‘’prosecute fairly low-level accused in a process that appears to be rigged.'’

He said that Colonel Borch also said that he was close to Maj. Gen. John D. Altenburg Jr., the retired officer who is in overall charge of the war crimes commissions, and that this would favor the prosecution.
General Altenburg selected the commission members, including the presiding officer, Col. Peter S. Brownback III, a longtime close friend of his. Defense lawyers objected to the presence of Colonel Brownback and some other officers, saying they had serious conflicts of interest. General Altenburg removed some of the other officers but allowed Colonel Brownback to remain.

In his electronic message, Captain Carr said the prosecution team had falsely stated to superiors that it had no evidence of torture of Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al-Bahlul of Yemen. In addition, Captain Carr said the prosecution team had lost an F.B.I. document detailing an interview in which the detainee claimed he had been tortured and abused.

Major Preston, in his e-mail message of March 11, 2004, said that pressing ahead with the trials would be ‘’a severe threat to the reputation of the military justice system and even a fraud on the American people.'’
Let me run that by you one time..

{finish reading here:}
News, Blog, Politics, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Current Affairs, Rants, Media,

Speaking frankly about Israel and Palestine

2006-12-12T09:40:00.000-05:00

Speaking frankly about Israel and Palestine

By Jimmy Carter
LA Times
December 8, 2006

I signed a contract with Simon & Schuster two years ago to write a book about the Middle East, based on my personal observations as the Carter Center monitored three elections in Palestine and on my consultations with Israeli political leaders and peace activists.

We covered every Palestinian community in 1996, 2005 and 2006, when Yasser Arafat and later Mahmoud Abbas were elected president and members of parliament were chosen. The elections were almost flawless, and turnout was very high - except in East Jerusalem, where, under severe Israeli restraints, only about 2% of registered voters managed to cast ballots.

The many controversial issues concerning Palestine and the path to peace for Israel are intensely debated among Israelis and throughout other nations - but not in the United States. For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.

It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. Very few would ever deign to visit the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza City or even Bethlehem and talk to the beleaguered residents. What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land.

With some degree of reluctance and some uncertainty about the reception my book would receive, I used maps, text and documents to describe the situation accurately and to analyze the only possible path to peace: Israelis and Palestinians living side by side within their own internationally recognized boundaries. These options are consistent with key U.N. resolutions supported by the U.S. and Israel, official American policy since 1967, agreements consummated by Israeli leaders and their governments in 1978 and 1993 (for which they earned Nobel Peace Prizes), the Arab League's offer to recognize Israel in 2002 and the International Quartet's "Roadmap for Peace," which has been accepted by the PLO and largely rejected by Israel.

The book is devoted to circumstances and events in Palestine and not in Israel, where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status.

Although I have spent only a week or so on a book tour so far, it is already possible to judge public and media reaction. Sales are brisk, and I have had interesting interviews on TV, including "Larry King Live," "Hardball," "Meet the Press," "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," the "Charlie Rose" show, C-SPAN and others. But I have seen few news stories in major newspapers about what I have written.

Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely to visit the occupied territories, and their primary criticism is that the book is anti-Israel. Two members of Congress have been publicly critical. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for instance, issued a statement (before the book was published) saying that "he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel." Some reviews posted on Amazon.com call me "anti-Semitic," and others accuse the book of "lies" and "distortions." A former Carter Center fellow has taken issue with it, and Alan Dershowitz called the book's title "indecent."

Out in the real world, however, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I've signed books in five stores, with more than 1,000 buyers at each site. I've had one negative remark - that I should be tried for treason - and one caller on C-SPAN said that I was an anti-Semite. My most troubling experience has been the rejection of my offers to speak, for free, about the book on university campuses with high Jewish enrollment and to answer questions from students and professors. I have been most encouraged by prominent Jewish citizens and members of Congress who have thanked me privately for presenting the facts and some new ideas.

The book describes the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. An enormous imprisonment wall is now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers. In many ways, this is more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid. I have made it clear that the motivation is not racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine, and then to forcefully suppress any objections from the displaced citizens. Obviously, I condemn any acts of terrorism or violence against innocent civilians, and I present information about the terrible casualties on both sides.

The ultimate purpose of my book is to present facts about the Middle East that are largely unknown in America, to precipitate discussion and to help restart peace talks (now absent for six years) that can lead to permanent peace for Israel and its neighbors. Another hope is that Jews and other Americans who share this same goal might be motivated to express their views, even publicly, and perhaps in concert. I would be glad to help with that effort.
News, Blog, Politics, Jimmy Carter, Israel, Current Affairs, Palestine, Media, Religion,

John F. Kennedy

2006-12-05T20:20:00.000-05:00

The Debris of History

"Over the past few days I've been thinking a lot about John Kennedy and what our world might have been like if he had lived. These thoughts didn't just come out of the blue, they are the result of the fact that I have just finished reading one of the saddest books ever written: Farewell America by the pseudonymous author, James Hepburn.

Farewell America is pretty well accepted to have been authored by the French equivalent of our CIA, and based on hard intelligence gathered from French, Russian, and even American sources. It was originally published in French in 1968, but it was unavailable in the United States for many years. With the coming of the worldwide web, it became available and I truly wish that every American citizen would read it. [...]"

News, Blog, Politics, Life, John F. Kennedy, Current Affairs, JFK, Media,

Jeff Rense Retains Lawyer; Uses Coercion and Intimidation

2006-06-06T10:50:00.000-04:00

After the publication of an article that I wrote for WING TV entitled Jeff Rense: A Reinvention of What?, we now have official confirmation that Jeff Rense has retained the services of a lawyer who is resorting to coercion and intimidation tactics in trying to pressure Patricia Smullin (owner of KOBI-TV in Oregon) into reversing herself by signing a pre-scripted statement in order to avoid a potential “defamation lawsuit.”

In fact, this is what Attorney-at-Law Eugene V. Anderson wrote in a letter dated May 31, 2006 in which he wants Ms. Smullin to actually sign a statement that he himself wrote and SCRIPTED for her in advance. The next three paragraphs are what Jeff Rense's legal gun "suggests" that Ms. Smullin write and sign:

“You had virtually no day to day contact with Mr. Rense during his tenure at KOBI-TV where he worked under the then news director, Alan Goldberg, as an anchor/director, from May 1983 to June 1984. While at KOBI Mr. Rense worked extremely hard, producing, writing, and anchoring both the 6-7 and the 11 pm newscasts, Monday through Friday. Mr. Rense was a superb anchor/producer and he earned KOBI an Arbitron rating for his newscasts of a 53 point share, which is unprecedented in our station's history.

I categorically deny the quotations attributed to me in the Wingtv.net article titled “Jeff Rense: A Reinvention of What?” by Lisa Guliani. I deny stating that Jeff Rense is a ‘compulsive liar’. I deny stating that Jeff Rense is ‘not known for his honesty.’

I deeply regret the totally untrue statements attributed to me in the Wingtv.net article, and I hereby issue a heartfelt, formal and public apology to Mr. Rense. I personally have a great deal of professional respect for Jeff Rense.”

To read Attorney Anderson’s entire letter, click here:Jeff Rense Lawyer (page one)Jeff Rense Lawyer (page two)

Now remember, Ms. Smullin didn’t write a single word above; Jeff Rense’s lawyer did! And, of course, if Ms. Smullin ever signs this SCRIPTED statement (that she didn’t even write), then Jeff Rense (by dangling the threat of a defamation lawsuit in her face) would publish it on his website and pull a bait-and-switch in a transparent attempt to discredit my article. But as can be seen from the SCRIPT, his underhanded tactic has now been exposed.

Jeff Rense: Mr. Insider
News, Blog, Politics, Life, jeff rense, cointelpro, Rants, Media, intimidation,

A War of Nerves

2006-06-01T22:17:00.000-04:00

On May 31, 2006 at 4:30 pm I received an unexpected phone call from Patsy Smullin, owner of KOBI-TV Channel 5 in Medford, Oregon. If you read my latest article entitled, Jeff Rense: A Reinvention of What?, then you know that Patsy Smullin is Jeff Rense’s former employer. This was our third conversation in a weeks’ time, and regrettably it wasn’t as cordial as our previous exchanges.

Ms. Smullin began the conversation by asking, “Have you heard from the Eugene attorney yet?” She sounded extremely nervous and agitated and her voice was shaking.

I responded with, “An attorney; for what? No, I haven’t heard from anybody. What is this about?”

Smullin was having great difficulty expressing herself, and I was trying to put together the gist of what she was attempting (but unable) to say.

Smullin: You called me asking for Jeff Rense’s dates of employment and I had to do a lot of work to get that information for you. I had to go into another building to get that information for you.”

Me: “Yes, and I thank you. But what are you talking about now? What attorney? I don’t understand what you mean.”

Smullin: “You need to remove those two sentences from your article.”

Me: “Which sentences?”

Smullin: “The ones about Jeff Rense being a compulsive liar, and about him not being known for his honesty. You need to remove those.”

Me: “Why should I remove them? I didn’t misquote you at all. I wrote down exactly what you said. I have it in my notes. You knew I was writing an article.”

Smullin: (in a low voice): “That’s not the way I remember it.” (A pause, then excitedly) “You don’t seem to understand. I’m trying to help you.”

Me: “No, I don’t understand, because you haven’t told me what you’re talking about. That’s not the way you remember it? We just spoke YESTERDAY. What are you saying? Are you now suddenly denying that you made those comments? Are you calling me a liar? I wrote exactly what you told me.” No response to my questions. (Another pause.)

Smullin: “I’m saying you need to be very careful. I can’t say anymore.”

Me: “I need to be careful? Careful of what? Are you saying somebody’s going to sue me? If so; for what … for quoting you?”

Smullin: “No, no. I really can’t say anymore. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called, I’m sorry. I can’t say anymore.” Click.

Well, well, well; isn’t this interesting? Patsy Smullin seemed frightened – not at all the way she had sounded during our first two conversations. Previously, she’d sounded upbeat, friendly and more at ease. We’d had two very pleasant phone conversations; one on Friday, May 26, 2006 and the second on Tuesday, May 30, 2006. Ms. Smullin was indeed very helpful in providing the requested dates of employment as I’d requested. She was also quick to respond to my questions, and related recollections of Jeff Rense, her former employee.

At this point, I’d like to be very clear: Patsy Smullin knew perfectly well why I had contacted her. I fully identified myself right from the start, both with her secretary/assistant and to her personally. It is not my tendency to beat around the bush with people, so I told her that I’m an independent freelance writer and the purpose for my call was fact checking. In addition, I laid it out in no uncertain terms (within the first two minutes of our initial contact on May 26, 2006) that I was working on an article about Jeff Rense, and that this fact-checking was necessary in order to verify some information contained in online bios referencing his previous broadcast journalism career.

Let’s get this straight: Nobody forced Ms. Smullin to return my phone messages, to respond to my inquiries, or to answer any single question posed to her. Nobody tricked her, lied to her, or twisted her arm to do any of the above, and no one made her call on May 30th to provide me with the dates of Jeff Rense’s previous term of employment at KOBI-TV. She did these things of her own free will. To be honest, I didn’t expect her to call me back at all. I suspect that others in her position simply would not.

Moreover, I quoted Smullin’s responses precisely, as in verbatim-word-for-word regarding every single statement attributed to her in my article. Any and all of those comments she did make, voluntarily, and without embellishment, exaggeration or assistance from me.

Apparently, 24 hours after my article hit the Internet, “Somebody” had a real problem with the fact that I talked to Patsy Smullin. It is my distinct impression that “Somebody” wasn’t expecting this particular connection to happen. Surprise, surprise, Jeff. “Somebody” was undoubtedly blindsided by this piece – and I’m telling you right now, it wasn’t Patsy Smullin. My impression is that Smullin is a very nice lady, and someone is trying to intimidate her based upon this peculiar phone call I’ve just described “for the record”.

Thus far, I have not been contacted by the aforementioned “Eugene attorney,” but if this does happen, I’ll certainly apprise everyone of the situation. I’m a little amused at how little time it took for “Somebody” to completely unravel and start throwing their weight around behind the scenes over this latest article I’ve written. I’ll give you three guesses as to who is driving the intimidation machine. Nah, this one’s a no-brainer. Make that one guess. Question: Is this how Jeff Rense intends to respond to my article? By putting the “thumb” on people? Fine, Jeff. If that’s how you want to play, then so be it.

Just so everybody; and particularly “Somebody” knows: I stand behind every single word written in my article – completely, and 110%. Furthermore, I do not intend to remove anything, including and particularly, the two sentences in which I quoted Patsy Smullin during our conversations. The two sentences that allegedly needed removal addressed the “honesty” of Jeff Rense and were the personal opinion of someone who actually knew him, as related to me over the course of two separate phone discussions. Patsy Smullin’s statements were quoted by me accurately, verbatim, and in their proper context; and it should be noted that she would be considered a very credible source of information.

Let it be known that I have never once in my life removed or retracted truthful information from any of my articles, and I am not going to be intimidated into such a cowardly act now by anybody, including a convoy of legal guns from Eugene, Oregon. I stand by EVERY SINGLE WORD in that piece. Patsy Smullin should be commended for telling the truth. Maybe the monkey should get off her back. She didn’t write the article. I did.

Message to Jeff Rense: You know exactly where I am and how to contact me. So, if you’ve got something to say to me, then be a man and do it directly, if you have the cajones. Unlike you, I don’t cower in shadows, wear wigs to disguise my identity, or put the squeeze on people - whether overtly or behind the scenes. Furthermore, it is not in my nature to shrink from cowards, hypocrites, liars, bullies, or from truth. I confront each of these squarely head-on, and will most certainly not shrink from the likes of you or any of your “legal thugs”. One would hope you’re adult enough to do the same.

I do not – and never will - fear the truth. Interestingly enough, it appears that you do. If you want to come after someone, well, here I am.

It’s your move.
News , Blog , Politics , jeff rense , rense.com , cointelpro , disinformation , Media ,

Jeff Rense: A Reinvention of What?

2006-05-31T22:14:00.000-04:00

Patsy Smullin has run KOBI-TV for the last 30 years, and her father founded it. If anybody would have known Jeff Rense and the supposed 5,000 newscasts he claims to have made, it would be Patsy.

As it happens, Patsy Smullin does remember Jeff Rense, and in two different telephone conversations I had with her over the past few days, she confirmed that he did have a position at her television station for a brief time as a reporter and news anchor. Smullin stressed that Jeff Rense, or “a guy calling himself Jeff Rense” (her words), was employed at KOBI (an NBC affiliate) from June 1983 to May 1984, and she is not aware of him working at any other station in the state of Oregon either prior to his employment at KOBI-TV or afterward. [I would think if he'd worked at other stations previous to his KOBI position, these would be listed on his job application or resume when given to KOBI-TV.]

Patsy had more to say. She revealed that in her experience as Jeff Rense’s employer (and this is a direct quote), “He was not known for his honesty.” Think about it. Patsy Smullin was Rense’s employer some twenty-odd years ago. After all this tiime, the characteristic that has remained clearly in her memory is that “he was not known for his honesty”. What does that say to you? According to Ms. Smullin, at that time Jeff was also involved in several court battles with other people. One wonders if it has anything to do with him not being known for his honesty?

When asked if she could elaborate on the comment she'd made regarding Rense not being known for his honesty, her response was: "Sure. He was a compulsive liar." Also, when questioned as to the claim that Jeff anchored and produced “5000 newscasts,” Patsy Smullin laughed heartily and stated, “This is absolutely false. He never did that here.” Okay, if not at KOBI-TV, then where? Perhaps Jeff Rense will reveal this to us all at some point so we can check it out.

But on his own website, Jeff Rense claims to have been an award winning news director and TV news anchor for 10-12 years (accounts vary). If not at KOBI, then where?

An American Treasure

"…an award-winning television News Director and News Anchor for over ten years, Jeff continually pushed for higher standards of journalism and responsible, intelligent reporting and inquiry. Regrettably, those goals were often at odds with the irrevocable TV news obsession for tabloid exploitation of the trivial, the tragic and the sensational. The situation became so dubious and distasteful that one day he walked away from his highly-successful news anchor/news director career (as high as a 53 Share of the audience - Nielsen) and moved to radio, recognizing it as the last viable approach to bringing reality to the American public...and now with the internet, to the world."

Interesting that Rense declares himself to have worked as a news director and TV news anchor. An online search to verify this claim will return only Jeff’s words – repeated endlessly ad nauseum - as to the truthfulness of this assertion. There is literally no data to substantiate this claim anywhere on the Internet. The claim exists only on the Rense website and a few other websites that have copied and pasted the Rense claims onto their own pages.

Here’s another variation on the same theme: Jeff Rense Hosts Sightings

"During 12 years as an award-winning broadcast journalist, Jeff anchored and produced more than 5,000 television newscasts. This devoted single dad is also author of the book AIDS Exposed and passionately investigates ways to prevent diseases and extend life. His brother is Rip Rense, longtime reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Jeff first did radio while an education major at the University of California Santa Barbara, and in 1994 he returned to this first love with the talk radio show "End of the Line." In 1997, by agreement with Henry ("the Fonz") Winkler and Paramount Pictures, this show transformed into the ratings star "Sightings."

_______________________________________________________________

Based on the following article he was a former news anchor at KOBI-TV. However, if one searches KOBI, there is no information on the former popular TV news anchor/news director Jeff Rense to be found.

The Truth Is Up There

"Presiding over this conspiratorial miasma is talk-radio host Jeff Rense, whose weeknight show, Sightings, is broadcast from a studio somewhere in Southern Oregon. (Citing threats to his life, Rense asked WW not to print his exact location.) Five nights a week, millions of Americans (including an estimated 21,000 Portlanders) in 120 cities tune in to Rense to catch up on the latest news on alien abduction, Bigfoot, paranormal phenomena--and chemtrails. A former news anchor at KOBI-TV in Medford, Rense began to hear reports of chemtrails in 1999."

________________________________________________________________

The above page also says:

"...By the late 1980s, Rense had worked for a handful of network affiliates in the West. He said his ratings were high, and he got 'lucrative offers' from several Oregon stations. But he had also become disillusioned with TV news and decided to quit the business...." "...After walking away from his TV career path, Rense returned to Santa Barbara and opened three pet stores..."

"...By the early 1990s, he had sold his All About Pets outlets and in 1994 approached KTMS with his idea for a talk-radio show, or at least his version of one..."

A Professional Broadcast Journalist

"As an award-winning broadcast journalist, Mr. Rense has anchored and produced well over 5,000 live 30-and 60-minute television newscasts… He began his End of the Line radio show which is now in its fourth highly successful year. Recently, the End of the Line was acquired by the Premiere Radio Networks, one of the top two radio syndicators in the U.S., and renamed Sightings On The Radio through an agreement with Paramount."

"As a journalist and private citizen, he became aware of the misinformation and propaganda surrounding the worldwide AIDS epidemic. Devoting three years of his life to researching, collecting, and compiling information, Mr. Rense authored the underground best-seller, AIDS Exposed, published in 1996. This 420-page book has been acclaimed as 'overwhelming,' 'invaluable' and 'the supreme public service' by broadcasters, medical professionals, and educators alike. Appearing on scores of radio and TV talk shows as an author, Mr. Rense has also been invited to lecture at such institutions as the University of California and USC. He has also written numerous articles, papers, and reports on a wide range of subjects and acts as a consultant on many different issues."

Rense's radio show "End of the Line" was renamed "Sightings on the Radio" with Paramount's backing.

An extensive online search for articles, journalistic reports and papers from Rense’s purported pre-Rense.com prior journalism career yields nothing.

How can this possibly be if he has written ‘numerous articles, papers and reports’? His book, AIDS Exposed, does not appear to be available anymore, with the exception of potential availability of a random used copy, if you’re lucky.

A search on the publisher of this book, Bioalert Press, coughs up nothing as far as any listing for a company website. The top link on Google search for Bioalert Press says: Bookstore-- Balaam's Ass Suggests you Read These Good Books-- Health AIDS Exposed-- Jeffrey Rense-- BioAlert Press-- Order from Jeffrey Rense, Box 764, Goleta, CA 93116. www.balaams-ass.com/bookstor/health.htm -

The above Google link would not come up for me in multiple attempts on different days. Regarding the Balaam’s Ass link, one has to order the book directly from Jeff Rense. Is Bioalert Press really just Rense? Has anyone out there ever heard of BioAlert Press?

I find it very ironic that Rense claims to have become so disillusioned with the nature of the mainstream news broadcast business and its inclination to report tabloid style and sensationalistic material, when all anyone has to do is peruse the Rense.com website for 10 minutes to realize that this well-funded site – funded by the same mainstream businesses that Rense claims to detest – is full of nothing but a never-ending series of sensationalistic, tabloid-type, speculative, unsubstantiated or fabricated “news” articles. I have to ask: Is it only wrong, disillusioning and distasteful when “other” people do it, Jeff? Or are you doing it for them?

Furthermore, online searches for any evidence of Jeff Rense’s longstanding claims regarding his extremely elusive broadcast journalism career path result in even more dead ends. There is an article on the Rense website entitled “The Most Dangerous Man in Talk Radio”, authored by an alleged LA writer named Kennedy Grey.

In this article, Kennedy Grey tells us, “When Jeff Rense walked away from a #1 rated Oregon TV news anchor position, people suspected job burnout. But Rense wasn't burned out on his job - his dissatisfaction was with the entire news media mainstream itself. Grey also states that Jeff spent “Twelve years as on on-air news anchor and News Director "up and down the west coast". Grey further says, “Rense set out to re-invent himself into a liberator of truth from the confines of a corrupt and bloated news broadcast industry.” He directly quotes Jeff Rense, who states that “Radio is theatre of the mind - a classroom of the mind."

Very interesting comments, aren’t they? The news anchor/news director statement is impossible to verify via the Internet, and thus far Jeff Rense is not forthcoming with information in spite of email sent to him containing a link to our website inquiry dated Friday, May 26, 2006 entitled Who is "Jeff Rense"?.

Does anyone have a copy of any of these 5,000 Jeff Rense newscasts? We’d sure like to see one. Thus far, we have not been able to locate anyone other than one person who remembers seeing Jeff Rense anchoring a TV newscast.

Only one TV news station’s call letters has been identified thus far. KOBI-TV 5 out of Medford, Oregon, which is an NBC affiliate. Pretty slim pickings. Nevertheless, I made a few phone calls to Medford, Oregon. One would think that as popular as Jeff Rense supposedly was, surely someone would remember him from the 1980s – particularly if he had produced and anchored 5000 newscasts up and down the West Coast. I contacted the Mail Tribune and spoke with an employee in the newsroom there. She had never heard of Oregon’s (former) #1 top rated news anchor, Jeff Rense. I’m awaiting a call back from Bob Hunter, editor of the Mail Tribune newspaper, to see if he has any recollections on this matter.

“5000 newscasts” is a lot of face-time, wouldn’t you agree?

Three calls to Rense’s former place of employment, KOBI-TV, speaking to four people who worked there didn’t help Rense very much. The first three individuals I spoke to had never heard of Jeff Rense and have no idea who he is. The fourth person was the owner of KOBI-TV, Patsy Smullin.

Jeff claims to have left KOBI due to his disillusionment with the mainstream news business and the tendency of TV news to sensationalize and dip into tabloid reporting, as stated above. I read Jeff’s published claims about this to Patsy Smullin. She responded, “That’s not the reason he gave to us at all. He said he was leaving to join his wife in their pet store.” (I am currently checking out the pet store information.)

Overall, Patsy Smullin did not give the impression that Jeff Rense had been a good employee while at KOBI-TV. In fact, her remarks lead one to believe that he was dishonest and untrustworthy. It was all I could do to restrain myself from asking if he conducted newscasts while wearing a wig.

The question we are entitled to ask is: why would Jeff Rense make so many claims about himself, and why would he twist the truth and make public assertions that are simply not true? Isn’t the “reinvented Jeff Rense” supposed to be all about truth and realism as opposed to sensationalistic, tabloid-style garbage? If one looks through his massive website, is it conceivable that a person might have some difficulty trying to discern the difference between Rense shinola and honest-to-god truth? Where does one end and the other begin? Furthermore, is Jeff Rense the person we really want to ask? Maybe that’s a little like asking the Bush Gang to investigate 911? (Oh, right! That’s already been done. Vanity Fair called it a “whitewash.”)

----------------------------------------

“Jeff Rense” is a familiar name to countless political/conspiracy talk radio listeners and web surfers. In these circles, virtually everyone has heard of Rense.com. What very few people realize, or have even stopped to think about, is that very little is known about Jeff Rense himself. The available online biographical information is vague and deals in generalities, and has been copied and pasted from one web page to another over the years. The Rense legend has been dished out for public consumption in small, measured doses over time in word-bytes, with hardly anyone daring to openly question its veracity. Rense fans embrace, and often even vehemently defend the legend; those who don’t end up being ridiculed and attacked. That’s a curious feature of Rense’s position as a “Don of Conspiracy Theory.”

Jeff Rense is an interesting guy, wouldn’t you say? He’s almost a “legend,” and is even listed on a government site as the number one purveyor of “misinformation.” That’s quite an accomplishment in a world where “conspiracy theories” are mostly ignored and/or ridiculed. You could even say that it’s very good PR to get on such a list.

My curiosity about Jeff Rense began to grow when I realized that he has maintained a large Internet presence for over a decade, and despite this, there is virtually no information on him other than that which one finds on his website. How has Jeff Rense managed to keep information about himself off the world wide web all these years? That’s an interesting question.

We live in a time that discourages curiosity about the ‘wrong” topics – that’s a hallmark of the Fascist Bushistas - and it seems that questioning Rense is definitely “off limits”. We have to wonder why that is? Asking questions about the ‘wrong” people is treated almost as sacrilege. We love to hold our heroes and gurus high, don’t we? But we have learned the hard way that questions are only discouraged by those who have something to hide.

What could such a nice guy, such a great “patriot” as Jeff Rense possibly have to hide?

After spending some time combing through his claims and trying to find verification, I began to realize that “Jeff Rense” is little more than a reinvention. He has made some very interesting claims over the years, particularly with respect to his former stints in broadcasting and journalism; claims that served as building blocks in the creation of a legend, a legend constructed from the twisting of truth.

Well, let’s look at “Jeff Rense” shall we?

Claim #1: On the Rense.com homepage, we see the following:

“7-time Peabody Award Nominee”

Rense Peabody Talkers claim

Peabody Awards

Truth: The Rense.com website claims 7 Peabody Award nominations. The Peabody Awards do not have nominees. Anyone can fill out an entry, and then later the winners are announced. The following is an email from the Peabody Awards Foundation:

"The Peabody Awards program receives between 1,000 and 1,200 entries each year. We have a 15 member judging panel that meets several times during the judging season, as well as listening to/watching entries alone in their homes. They discuss all entries as a group, usually awarding between 30 and 35 Peabodys each year. There are no set number of awards given, and the board does not choose winners according to categories. We do not have a list of finalists or "nominees" as other awards programs have.

Basically we have entrants and winners.

Danna L. Williams Senior Administrative Assistant, emailed Feb. 6th 2006 "

In other words, you could nominate me, I could nominate you, and we could all nominate Bozo the Clown. The Peabody panel will most likely be interested in these suggestions, but ultimately it is THEY who choose the winners – not the public. There are no official lists of “nominees”. Rense’s website claim to be a “7 Time Peabody Award Nominee” is not only misleading, it means essentially nothing. It is presented to create a false impression of Rense’s achievements, basically it’s deceptive bullshit.

Talkers Magazine

Claim # 2: The Rense website states: “Talkers magazine top 100 Host”

Talkers Magazine ‘Heavy Hundred’

Truth: Please note that Jeff Rense isn't listed in the top 100, and he isn't even listed in the additional 250 names cited in the rest of Talkers Top Radio Show Host picks for 2006. Rense failed to make the cut for 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, etc. Rense was on the list once about 6 or 7 years ago, according to a response to my inquiry from Talkers. In fact, they find it pretty interesting that Jeff Rense is continuing to present this claim on his website, creating the appearance of his inclusion on this popular list, when in fact he is currently not listed. Talkers characterized this misleading representation in one word: “deceptive”, saying they will be keeping an eye on Rense and any Talkers-related claims from here on. Take a look at the list linked above. Call Talkers Magazine and ask them yourself if he is indeed on the Heavy Hundred list.

Claim #3: Rense’s Myspace web page at:

Rense My Space Profile lists his location as Ashland, Oregon – yet his Rense.com fan page says he is in California. Which is it? Oregon or California? Does Rense have two residences? If so, how does one afford two residences on an Internet radio income?

Of course, the answer could be that one is his residence and the other is his business address, but again I ask: if he is just doing his thing because he is a “true patriot,” knowing how hard it is for other true patriots to make ends meet, we have to ask who is paying for his office? What money is backing him? His MySpace page states an income of $100,000-$150,000 per year. That’s a pretty good chunk of change for a guy who claims to be in the business out of the goodness of his heart and his interest in truth.

Claim #4: Jeff Rense From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Former television news anchorman Jeff Rense, who lives in Santa Barbara, California, is a popular conspiracy theorist and is the host of the Jeff Rense program which is broadcast on terrestrial radio and on the Internet. He originally became famous in the 90's with the program "Sightings". His radio program and website (See below) cover such subjects as UFO reports, paranormal phenomena, conspiracy theories, reports of new diseases and a plethora of other material rarely covered by the mainstream media. Jeff Rense leans towards a populist approach regarding politics and media. Rense does not subscribe to any conventional political standpoint and many of his views are simultaneously left and right leaning. Rense has one brother: writer, Rip Rense. His step mother, New York socialite and editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest Magazine, is Paige Rense. His father, now deceased, was sports journalist, Arthur F. Rense (1917-1990). Jeff Rense is also a vegan."

Here we learn that Rense’s views are simultaneously both left-leaning and right-leaning. Sounds like an impossible contortion to me. It is also established from more than one source that Jeff’s father, Arthur Rense, formerly a sportswriter and sometime poet, also landed a job at Douglas Aircraft doing PR. How does a poet and sports writer qualify for work as a public relations director at Douglas Aircraft, one of the biggies of the Military Industrial Complex? Here is the NY Times obituary for Arthur Rense:

Arthur F. Rense, Public Relations Executive, 74
Published: January 5, 1991
“Arthur F. Rense, a retired public relations executive, died on Dec. 28 at his home in Las Vegas, Nev. He was 74 years old. He died of leukemia, said his wife, Paige Rense, editor in chief of Architectural Digest. Mr. Rense had been director of public relations for the Summa Corporation, owned by Howard R. Hughes, until he retired in 1985. He had been public relations director for the missiles and space systems division of Douglas Aircraft Company and director of public relations at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif. Besides his wife, Mr. Rense is survived by three sons from a former marriage, Kirk of Irvine, Calif., Jeff of Santa Barbara , Calif., and Rip of Sherman Oaks, Calif.; four brothers, Randy, Andy and Frank, all of Cleveland, and William of Denver; and two grandchildren.”

Regarding Summa Corporation: The Washington Post for April 1, 1975, carried this information:

Summa Corp. is the financial umbrella under which most of (Howard)Hughes' worth is contained. . . .Most recently, another Summa "asset" hit the news: the $350 million Hughes Glomar Explorer vessel that Hughes built at the behest (and the expense of) the Central Intelligence Agency . . . Mormons, Hughes, & CIA

Summa Corporation has been tied to CIA contracts on more than one occasion, to say the least. Douglas Aircraft Company is also well-known for its numerous government contracts, not to mention the starring role it is now playing in Bush’s Endless War. So again I ask: how did “poet and sports writer” Arthur Rense end up as public relations director for Douglas Aircraft and Summa Corp? In bed with the Feds? More importantly, what kind of connections does his son Jeff have with these same gangs? After all, his views are “both left and right” which suggests that he could have “left” views to vacuum in his audience all the while subtly converting them to “right” views.

Douglas Aircraft also has ties with RAND Corporation:

RAND (Encyclopedia)

The RAND Corporation is an American think tank.

"A think tank is a group of individuals dedicated to high-level synergistic research on a variety of subjects, usually in military laboratories, corporations,... first formed to offer research and analysis to the U.S. military. The organization has since expanded to working with other government and commercial organizations Project RAND was set up in 1945 by the USAAF, under contract to the Douglas Aircraft Company. An interesting aside, Condoleezza Rice is a former RAND CorporationTrustee 1991-1997 and current Secretary of State for the United States, a war whore if ever there was one."

Okay, I think everybody knows that Summa, Douglas Aircraft, and RAND are all major players with DOD, military and intelligence agencies in the fascist government that Jeff Rense claims to oppose. Yet we find that his father, Arthur Rense, poet, sports writer, was “somehow” a public relations director for both Douglas Aircraft and Summa Corporation? I would very much like to hear Jeff Rense publicly discuss this curious fact one of these fine days and explain how he could live much of his life with alphabet soup guys swarming around and avoid being sucked into the game. Funny how this topic never seems to come up, isn’t it? Perhaps he just keeps forgetting to mention it.

Now I want to come back to the fact that Jeff Rense has been “honored” by being listed on an official government website as a major purveyor of “disinformation.” Among the conspiracy minded crowd, that is a high kudo indeed. But is it evidence that Jeff truly is a news source standing in opposition to the Bush Reich and their Endless Wars of Lies and Agression? Maybe not. As Robin Ramsay, Editor of Lobster Magazine, wrote in the February issue of Fortean Times:

Recently, the US State Department has begun trying to rebut some of the current conspiracy theories about America. Their first targets were a couple of websites - www.rense.com and Conspiracy Planet - and the late Joe Vialls, an Australian. What a boost for the named sites! Attacked by the State Department![...]

[Y]ou don't have to be a PR genius to see that what you simply mustn't do is launch official attacks: all they do is amplify and legitimise the theories by announcing that they are deemed to be worth attacking. [Fortean Times 206, February 2006, p. 19]

What a coup for Rense and Alex Jones! To be officially declared the primo disinfo sites! Now, if you know anything about COINTELPRO, you expect that the real COINTELPRO operations will be attacked "officially" in order to legitimize them exactly as Robin Ramsay has described. That also means that those who are honest and sincere seekers of truth and who do their homework and expose the lies of the Bush Reich will most certainly NOT be martyred by the official government. It's way too dangerous and gives them legitimacy. Rather, they will be defamed by the “officially designated disinformation agents” – and dare we say it? – agents of COINTELPRO - such as Jeff Rense, Alex Jones and similar disinformation agents that have received the Bush Reich seal of approval. In fact, it seems that this is a well-orchestrated plan that is described in detail in that much maligned document, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” A really good way to keep your eye on the ball is to consider Protocol 12...

Now, it is important when reading the Protocols to not assign it's origin to any national, ethnic, or religious group. Rather, consider it to be a statement of any group that seeks to control and dominate and use the public for their own gain Then you will truly begin to understand who is who. (Excerpts of Protocol 12: Control of the Press are located at the end of this article):

Recently, Jeff Rense accused WING TV of engaging in deception, trickery, subterfuge, lying, slandering and libel, just to name a few of the charges. He has publicly called Victor Thorn and myself “dirtball scum” and together with Alex Jones and their groupies, charged us with being “cointelpro assets, government agents and un-American operatives." True to form and apparently attached to Rense at the hip and the lip, (and linked on the official government site, I should add), Alex Jones reinforces, endorses, and repeats Rense’s vomitus, only louder. What’s amusing about this is that Rense, Jones, nor any of their groupie parrots have yet to substantiate any of these bogus charges made against us.

Let me get this straight: nobody has to qualify with data anything they say, including (and particularly) veteran journalist Jeff Rense? Alex Jones has yet to qualify any of his ridiculous comments about us either, and he refuses to hold himself accountable for his own words.

Ask yourself: Why? Is it conceivable to anyone out there that they cannot PROVE the things they say about WING TV? Moreover, this begs the question, can they prove any and all of the other “gospel-truth” claims they’ve made over the years? That is another very good question.

You see, we are supposed to just believe what they say simply because they say it. Forget about facts, data or substantiation. Forget about showing evidence of their assertions; forget about journalistic ethics; just nod your head and agree. Don’t ask questions. Gobble up the lies and twisted half-truths and get your fill of the fix du jour. After all, in the words of Jeff Rense, it is all a “theater of the mind”.

What we observe is that both Rense and Jones pander to a “least common denominator” audience demographic, the people out there who don’t bother to check things out for themselves and will just repeat what they hear and read over and over, like good little automatons. This is the ideal Rense-Jones target audience, one which will worship blindly, surrender critical thinking skills, believe without questioning or disagreement, and of course, shell out the bucks.

Incidentally, I did a search on Kennedy Grey, the LA writer who penned the article about Rense entitled “The Most Dangerous Man in Talk Radio”. He (she) is supposedly the founder of a group called RAS, an acronym for ‘Rock Against Suicide’. Unfortunately, a Google search for Kennedy Grey did not yield a website for the RAS group anywhere, but there is an interview with Kennedy Grey on this website: The Internet Nirvana Fan club.

Nirvana Fan Club. Oh boy, how impressive. A Curt Cobain suicide website.

I was not able to find any links online to Grey’s organization, RAS, or to Kennedy Grey, other than the single article he wrote which is published on Rense.com. I would like to find Kennedy Grey and ask whether he/she even bothered to check out any of the claims Rense made to him in the interview. I’d like to learn if Kennedy Grey is a real person, for that matter, or just a construct of Rense. Whatever the case may be, it doesn’t look like Grey checked out any of the statements Rense made in that interview. If some fact-checking had been done, Grey’s article would probably be written a bit differently. At the very least, it should have been.

Rense and Alex Jones enjoy howling that “Honest-to-God patriots" NEVER attack other patriots. That sounds a lot like:

"For any attempt to attack us, if such still be possible, we shall inflict fines without mercy…. No one shall with impunity lay a finger on the aureole of our government infallibility. The pretext for stopping any publication will be the alleged plea that it is agitating the public mind without occasion or justification." [Protocols]

The fact is, those who do the research know that the Founding Fathers engaged in a great deal of spirited, heated, sincere dispute with one another. Some of them hated one another with a passion, yet in spite of this animosity, worked together for the common good of all; as the cause was greater than themselves, and they all knew this to be true. So where do Rense and Jones come off bellowing such obnoxious bullshit, especially when we consider the fact that merely branding oneself a “patriot” does not necessarily make it so. I could call myself “Madonna”, but that doesn’t mean I AM Madonna.

Appearances can be very deceiving, especially when some so-called “patriots” choose to hide behind microphones in undisclosed locations, behind wigs and a couple of re-touched, photo-shopped cartoon pictures of themselves, and when all they choose to disclose is a limited amount of extremely vague babble about their alleged past accomplishments, achievements, or experience designed solely to “create a legend”.

And then, when we discover, with a minimum of investigation, that their claims do not hold up, that it is all completely manipulated, twisted, exaggerated, amplified and contorted facts designed to present a false front, we are entitled to question everything else. Why do people tell lies, whether overtly or by omission? Some do it because of mental issues, some do it for profit, and some do it just because they can.

Bottom line: Jeff Rense has falsely accused WING TV of trading in lies, deception, duplicity, innuendo, disinformation and trickery. Jeff Rense better start looking in the mirror, because I see a so-called “patriot” that needs to come clean about a few things, someone who is “not known for his honesty”.

Definitions of deception on the Web:

• misrepresentation: a misleading falsehood
• the act of deceiving
• magic trick: an illusory feat; considered magical by naive observers
• Deception is providing intentionally misleading information to others.
• To practice deceit.
• To give a false impression: appearances can deceive.
• To cause to believe what is not true; mislead.
• to cause to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid intransitive verb : to practice deceit
• be false to; be dishonest with - 2: cause someone to believe an untruth

Stay tuned, because this investigation is not over. More to follow soon.

"The big print giveth and the small print taketh away."
~ Tom Waitts ~

Protocol 12: Control of the Press

1. The word "freedom," which can be interpreted in various ways, is defined by us as follows –

2. Freedom is the right to do what which the law allows. This interpretation of the word will at the proper time be of service to us, because all freedom will thus be in our hands, since the laws will abolish or create only that which is desirable for us according to the aforesaid program.

3. We shall deal with the press in the following way: what is the part played by the press to-day? It serves to excite and inflame those passions which are needed for our purpose or else it serves selfish ends of parties. It is often vapid, unjust, mendacious, and the majority of the public have not the slightest idea what ends the press really serves. We shall saddle and bridle it with a tight curb: we shall do the same also with all productions of the printing press, for where would be the sense of getting rid of the attacks of the press if we remain targets for pamphlets and books? …

For any attempt to attack us, if such still be possible, we shall inflict fines without mercy…. No one shall with impunity lay a finger on the aureole of our government infallibility. The pretext for stopping any publication will be the alleged plea that it is agitating the public mind without occasion or justification.

I BEG YOU TO NOTE THAT AMONG THOSE MAKING ATTACKS UPON US WILL ALSO BE ORGANS ESTABLISHED BY US, BUT THEY WILL ATTACK EXCLUSIVELY POINTS THAT WE HAVE PRE-DETERMINED TO ALTER. WE CONTROL THE PRESS

4. NOT A SINGLE ANNOUNCEMENT WILL REACH THE PUBLIC WITHOUT OUR CONTROL. Even now this is already being attained by us inasmuch as all news items are received by a few agencies, in whose offices they are focused from all parts of the world. These agencies will then be already entirely ours and will give publicity only to what we dictate to them.

5. If already now we have contrived to possess ourselves of the minds of the GOY communities to such an extent that they all come near looking upon the events of the world through the colored glasses of those spectacles we are setting astride their noses; if already now there is not a single State where there exist for us any barriers to admittance into what GOY stupidity calls State secrets: what will our positions be then, when we shall be acknowledged supreme lords of the world in the person of our king of all the world ....

6. Let us turn again to the FUTURE OF THE PRINTING PRESS. Every one desirous of being a publisher, librarian, or printer, will be obliged to provide himself with the diploma instituted therefore, which, in case of any fault, will be immediately impounded. With such measures THE INSTRUMENT OF THOUGHT WILL BECOME AN EDUCATIVE MEANS ON THE HANDS OF OUR GOVERNMENT, WHICH WILL NO LONGER ALLOW THE MASS OF THE NATION TO BE LED ASTRAY IN BY-WAYS AND FANTASIES ABOUT THE BLESSINGS OF PROGRESS. Is there any one of us who does not know that these phantom blessings are the direct roads to foolish imaginings which give birth to anarchical relations of men among themselves and towards authority, because progress, or rather the idea of progress, has introduced the conception of every kind of emancipation, but has failed to establish its limits .... All the so-called liberals are anarchists, if not in fact, at any rate in thought. Every one of them in hunting after phantoms of freedom, and falling exclusively into license, that is, into the anarchy of protest for the sake of protest.... FREE PRESS DESTROYED

7. We turn to the periodical press. … if there should be any found who are desirous of writing against us, they will not find any person eager to print their productions. Before accepting any production for publication in print, the publisher or printer will have to apply to the authorities for permission to do so. Thus we shall know beforehand of all tricks preparing against us and shall nullify them by getting ahead with explanations on the subject treated of.

8. Literature and journalism are two of the most important educative forces, and therefore our government will become proprietor of the majority of the journals. This will neutralize the injurious influence of the privately-owned press and will put us in possession of a tremendous influence upon the public mind .... If we give permits for ten journals, we shall ourselves found thirty, and so on in the same proportion. This, however, must in no wise be suspected by the public. For which reason all journals published by us will be of the most opposite, in appearance, tendencies and opinions, thereby creating confidence in us and bringing over to us quite unsuspicious opponents, who will thus fall into our trap and be rendered harmless.

9. In the front rank will stand organs of an official character. They will always stand guard over our interests, and therefore their influence will be comparatively insignificant. 10. In the second rank will be the semi-official organs, whose part it will be to attack the tepid and indifferent.

11. In the third rank we shall set up our own, to all appearance, opposition, which, in at least one of its organs, will present what looks like the very antipodes to us. Our real opponents at heart will accept this simulated opposition as their own and will show us their cards.

12. All our newspapers will be of all possible complexions -- aristocratic, republican, revolutionary, even anarchical - for so long, of course, as the constitution exists .... Like the Indian idol "Vishnu" they will have a hundred hands, and every one of them will have a finger on any one of the public opinions as required. When a pulse quickens these hands will lead opinion in the direction of our aims, for an excited patient loses all power of judgment and easily yields to suggestion. Those fools who will think they are repeating the opinion of a newspaper of their own camp will be repeating our opinion or any opinion that seems desirable for us. In the vain belief that they are following the organ of their party they will, in fact, follow the flag which we hang out for them.

13. In order to direct our newspaper militia in this sense we must take special and minute care in organizing this matter. Under the title of central department of the press we shall institute literary gatherings at which our agents will without attracting attention issue the orders and watchwords of the day. By discussing and controverting, but always superficially, without touching the essence of the matter, our organs will carry on a sham fight fusillade with the official newspapers solely for the purpose of giving occasion for us to express ourselves more fully than could well be done from the outset in official announcements, whenever, of course, that is to our advantage.

14. THESE ATTACKS UPON US WILL ALSO SERVE ANOTHER PURPOSE, NAMELY, THAT OUR SUBJECTS WILL BE CONVINCED TO THE EXISTENCE OF FULL FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND SO GIVE OUR AGENTS AN OCCASION TO AFFIRM THAT ALL ORGANS WHICH OPPOSE US ARE EMPTY BABBLERS, since they are incapable of finding any substantial objections to our orders. ONLY LIES PRINTED

15. Methods of organization like these, imperceptible to the public eye but absolutely sure, are the best calculated to succeed in bringing the attention and the confidence of the public to the side of our government. Thanks to such methods we shall be in a position as from time to time may be required, to excite or to tranquillize the public mind on political questions, to persuade or to confuse, printing now truth, now lies, facts or their contradictions, according as they may be well or ill received, always very cautiously feeling our ground before stepping upon it .... WE SHALL HAVE A SURE TRIUMPH OVER OUR OPPONENTS SINCE THEY WILL NOT HAVE AT THEIR DISPOSITION ORGANS OF THE PRESS IN WHICH THEY CAN GIVE FULL AND FINAL EXPRESSION TO THEIR VIEWS owing to the aforesaid methods of dealing with the press. We shall not even need to refute them except very superficially.

16. Trial shots like these, fired by us in the third rank of our press, in case of need, will be energetically refuted by us in our semi-official organs.

17. Even nowadays, already, to take only the French press, there are forms which reveal masonic solidarity in acting on the watchword: all organs of the press are bound together by professional secrecy; like the augurs of old, not one of their numbers will give away the secret of his sources of information unless it be resolved to make announcement of them. Not one journalist will venture to betray this secret, for not one of them is ever admitted to practice literature unless his whole past has some disgraceful sore or other .... These sores would be immediately revealed. So long as they remain the secret of a few the prestige of the journalist attacks the majority of the country - the mob follow after him with enthusiasm.

18. Our calculations are especially extended to the provinces. It is indispensable for us to inflame there those hopes and impulses with which we could at any moment fall upon the capital, and we shall represent to the capitals that these expressions are the independent hopes and impulses of the provinces. Naturally, the source of them will be always one and the same - ours. WHAT WE NEED IS THAT, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS WE ARE IN THE PLENITUDE POWER, THE CAPITALS SHOULD FIND THEMSELVES STIFLED BY THE PROVINCIAL OPINION OF THE NATIONS, I.E., OF A MAJORITY ARRANGED BY OUR AGENTUR. What we need is that at the psychological moment the capitals should not be in a position to discuss an accomplished fact for the simple reason, if for no other, that it has been accepted by the public opinion of a majority in the provinces.

19. WHEN WE ARE IN THE PERIOD OF THE NEW REGIME TRANSITIONAL TO THAT OF OUR ASSUMPTION OF FULL SOVEREIGNTY WE MUST NOT ADMIT ANY REVELATION BY THE PRESS OF ANY FORM OF PUBLIC DISHONESTY; IT IS NECESSARY THAT THE NEW REGIME SHOULD BE THOUGHT TO HAVE SO PERFECTLY CONTENDED EVERYBODY THAT EVEN CRIMINALITY HAS DISAPPEARED ... Cases of the manifestation of criminality should remain known only to their victims and to chance witnesses - no more.

I think that all of the above may sound very familiar to all of you reading this. The only difference is that now we work with the Internet and not printed materials. But the principles are the same.
News, Blog, Politics, Jeff Rense, cointelpro, conspiracy, Media,

New Doctored Video of Pentagon Attack Release

2006-05-17T15:42:00.000-04:00

Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
17/05/2006

(See website for images referenced here) It only took four and a half years, but finally the U.S. government has seen fit to confirm what so many of us have been saying all along - Pentagon security cameras recorded no evidence of a Boeing 757 hitting the Pentagon.

The videos comprise the footage from each of the two security cameras stationed close to each other at one end of the Pentagon. The first video contains nothing new given that it is simply the footage from which 5 stills were taken and released in early 2002 by the Pentagon, the extra footage merely being the scene after the impact. The second video comprises previously unseen footage from the security camera that is slightly closer to the impact point. The Pentagon alleges that in this video the "nose cone" of a plane can be seen in one frame. It should be noted that the security cameras appear to be the standard type installed in train stations and airports around the world. Most people will have seen footage from such cameras showing people walking in "jumps", which is due to the fact that the camera records a still image every 2 seconds or so.

Basically then, while the mainstream press is trumpeting the line that "the Defence Department has released "the video of Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon", nothing could be further from the truth because there is still no evidence of a Boeing 757 in the security camera footage. If mainstream press reporters were to be honest (for once in their lives) the most they could state would be that: "the DOD has released a video of the attack on the Pentagon in which something appears in one frame of the footage and the U.S. government claims that this 'something' is the nose cone of Flight 77."

Let's take a look at this "nose cone":

This, ladies and gentlemen, is "Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon". This, is supposed to "finally put to rest" the "conspiracy theory" (backed up by massive evidence) that Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon. This, is apparently the best the DOD can do, or is prepared to do, to convince the world that they are telling the truth about what happened on 9/11. It doesn't say much for their confidence in their own story, does it.

Below is a zoom of the same "nose cone". Is it more clear now? Can you see Flight 77 in all its glory? All we can see is an amorphous white blob that looks more like a car than the nose cone of any aircraft. Obviously the images are too grainy to be of any use to anyone. At this point then, the most we can say is that an amorphous white blob with definite Islamic terrorists leanings hit the Pentagon on 9/11.

The above image comprises one frame and 2 seconds (7 and 8) of the footage, the next and subsequent frames show the explosion, there is nothing in between, at least not on this camera footage. On the footage from the second camera, from which the original five stills were cut, an image of "Flight 77" moving between the right most edge of the camera angle and the Pentagon facade is visible. Perhaps you remember it. For old times' sake, let's have a look:

As you can see, this image, along with the new image of the "nose cone" appears to back up the idea that it was indeed an amorphous white blob that hit the Pentagon. Case closed? Well there is still the problem of where the hell the plane is in the above still. If, as the government claims, this image shows Flight 77 a few dozen feet the Pentagon, we are still left with the question of, "where the hell is the plane!?"

The side of the Pentagon is 971 feet long and the "blob" or smoke trail in the above image is no more than 750 feet (250yards) from the camera. Remember the indelible images of those huge planes flying into the World Trade Center towers? The WTC planes were approximately the same distance from the observers on the ground as the "blob" in the above image was from the camera. So why can't we see a large 757 in the above image?

To sum up: At this stage, absent any new future video from the DOD, the U.S. government's "evidence" that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon consists of:

the "nose cone" frame

the white smoke trail or "blob" frame

the explosion at the Pentagon frames.

Convincing stuff, eh? This evidence is all the more suspect given the fact that the FBI confiscated tapes from at least two other video cameras in the area that would surely provide a more complete picture, but they refuse to release them.

The release of the DOD video footage comes at a very interesting time. Some readers may be aware that the pre-eminent Cannes film festival is just starting. Fewer however will be aware that the "Pentagon Strike" Flash animation is being shown at this year's festival. While we are not paranoid per se, we couldn't help but feel it was a little strange that the DOD would release their videos on the very day that our team set off to Cannes to promote the Pentagon strike flash. If we were "paranoid", we might say that the release of these videos is an attempt at pre-emptive damage control over potential exposure at Cannes. Of course, it will also simply help to raise the profile of all things 'Pentagonian', which can only help our team in Cannes.

A word on the response from alternative new pundits and 9/11 researchers about the new videos: Most appear to agree that there is nothing new in the videos that in any way discredits the sound allegations that a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon. A few notable editorialists however are attempting to revive the dead horse that is the claim that the "no Boeing at the pentagon" theory is one big government-sponsored Psyops. The theory goes that government spooks are deliberately fuelling the "no Boeing" theories in an attempt to draw in as many researchers as possible - a honey trap for conspiracy theorists if you will - and then, when enough have been lured in, destroy their reputations by releasing a definitive video that shows clearly that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.

While possible, in a remote sort of way, I seriously doubt that if the U.S. government has had access to a tape for four and a half years that could prove categorically that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, that they would have put up with so much rabble rousing from the "fringe" rather than simply quashing their claims from the outset. The simple truth is that the U.S. government has NO recourse to any evidence that can disprove the claims of serious 9/11 researchers because no such evidence exists.

Serious 9/11 researchers claim that a section of the U.S. government and military helped to orchestrate the 9/11 attacks, that the WTC towers were deliberately demolished, and that Flight 77 was very obviously not the plane that hit the Pentagon. The U.S government, and the agencies that are tasked with preserving its hold on power, have been actively running interference over the threat of exposure of the truth about 9/11 by the alternative media for the past four years.

The decades-old tactic of the CIA's Counter Intelligence Programs where their agents infiltrate "movements" in an attempt to sow discord from within is a major part of this "running interference". It is noticeable therefore that the only area of discord among 9/11 "truth seekers" is the Pentagon attack and whether or not Flight 77 was involved. Let me put it bluntly: The success of government Psyops on 9/11 is measured not by how many people can be made to believe the "no Boeing at the Pentagon" claim but rather by how many 9/11 researchers can be convinced that the "no Boeing at the Pentagon" claim is a government Psyop and should be avoided.

The attack on the Pentagon is the real Achilles heel of the official 9/11 story.

Let me explain:

Even in the event that evidence for the obvious controlled demolition of the WTC towers were to be publicly revealed and accepted, the U.S government could plausibly claim that 'al-Qaeda' somehow managed to plant explosives in the buildings, that this evidence had somehow been overlooked due to "incompetence" in the 9/11 investigation. The incompetence angle could be used, as it has been already, as a plausible explanation for many other areas that would ordinarily point to government complicity. The Pentagon attack, however, is a very different matter. If it were ever to be publicly revealed that it was not Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon, there is simply no way that the U.S government continue to claim that "al-Qaeda did it" or lie its way out of it, because they would have to explain what happened to Flight 77 and its passengers. It is for this reason that the "no Boeing at the Pentagon" theory has been thoroughly attacked and maligned by government shills and many alleged 9/11 investigators.

The Pentagon attack holds the key to the entire 9/11 mystery, it presents the best opportunity to blow the lid completely off the entire sordid deal and reveal the very, very disturbing reality of the nature of the U.S. government and that other Middle Eastern agency and the roles they both played in wantonly murdering almost 3,000 American citizens on September 11th 2001.
News, Blog, Politics, 9/11, pentagon, pentagon video, conspiracy, Media,

Neocon Plan to Wreck the Economy

2006-04-11T15:32:00.000-04:00

Kurrt Nimmo
April 08th 2006

If we are to believe Sterling Seagrave, “co-author of Gold Warriors and an extremely well-connected financial source in both the US and China as well as Europe,” the White House, that is to say the Straussian neocons in control of the White House, have ordered the Federal Reserve to print a whopping two trillion in funny (or not so funny fiat) money. “The U.S. Treasury is allegedly running printing presses 24/7 to accommodate that order” and this “probably explains why the US Treasury Secretary resigned several months ago and was replaced by a Bush flunkey, and why Greenspan resigned from the Fed several weeks ago, not wanting to go down with the Titanic…. We have been predicting this over the past two or three years, as the inevitable consequence of the Bush administration’s bizarre policies, although we were not certain exactly when it would occur.”

If accurate, this will mean your already worthless money will be even more worthless and hyper-inflation will eventually decimate what remains of the so-called middle class. If Seagrave is correct, the neocons are engineering a New Serfdom for the vast majority of Americans, most who remain utterly clueless about what the Straussian neocons have in mind for them and their children.

“The war in Iraq, and other unwise decisions that caused Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil to quit the Administration in protest over the lack of a sound policy process, have drained the piggy bank,” Seagrave continues. “Bush may well be printing money, and he is probably also selling off ‘futures’ like crazy. We could have a major crisis prior to 2008 that demands a restructuring of the government along with a very rapid re-appreciation of what our national strategy needs to be.”

Seagrave, however, does not provide an explanation why Bush would do such a thing, although he notes that the “White House apparently hoped that by the time anyone found out about the flooding of the market with dollars, they could stage an event, such as an air attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, that would distract the public entirely.” Of course, an attack on Iran (more details on this revealed by Seymour Hersh) will not be launched primarily as a distraction—it is a key objective of the Straussian neocon plan.

In addition to the obvious fact the government is now rife with criminal embezzlers and thieves (note the few trillion missing from the Pentagon), the criminal Straussian neocons plan to restructure American society and warp its once lofty ideals (already seriously eroded through neoliberal globalism) via economic strangulation and perpetual conflict, first in the Muslim Middle East and then, as promised, elsewhere (China and Russia are at the top of the list).
It should be remembered the core Straussians are basically Trotskyites and Leon Trotsky advocated “permanent revolution,” that is to say a radical change through Stagism, or the Theory of Stages (a crucial tenet of neoliberal globalism). Of course, Trotsky was a communist and supposedly believed in the proletariat taking power through violence and overthrowing the bourgeoisie. The Straussian neocons, however, are not interested in a revolution of the proletariat—they are interested in elevating themselves to the very pinnacle of state power and ruling as Machiavellian princes over the benighted masses.

“The ancient philosophers whom Strauss most cherished believed that the unwashed masses were not fit for either truth or liberty, and that giving them these sublime treasures would be like throwing pearls before swine,” Shadia Drury, a leading scholarly critic of Strauss, told Danny Postel. “In contrast to modern political thinkers, the ancients denied that there is any natural right to liberty. Human beings are born neither free nor equal. The natural human condition, they held, is not one of freedom, but of subordination—and in Strauss’s estimation they were right in thinking so.” As the Straussian would have it, the masses are “selfish, slothful, and indolent” and “can be inspired to rise above their brutish existence only by fear of impending death or catastrophe,” or for that matter an economic depression coupled with perpetual war, as Orwell envisaged (”Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia”). The attacks of September 11, 2001, a “new Pearl Harbor,” were the beginning of this Straussian revolution, an event many Straussians believe was squandered because “democracy” got in the way (and because people naturally avoid a perpetual state of war in favor of peace, even partial peace).

Strauss borrowed a lot from the “Marxist of the right,” Alexandre Kojève (a student of the Nazi lover Martin Heidegger), and the Nazi jurist and advocate of totalitarianism, Carl Schmitt. “Kojève lamented the animalization of man and Schmitt worried about the trivialization of life,” explains Drury. “All three of them were convinced that liberal economics would turn life into entertainment and destroy politics; all three understood politics as a conflict between mutually hostile groups willing to fight each other to the death. In short, they all thought that man’s humanity depended on his willingness to rush naked into battle and headlong to his death. Only perpetual war can overturn the modern project, with its emphasis on self-preservation and ‘creature comforts.’ Life can be politicized once more, and man’s humanity can be restored…. The combination of religion and nationalism is the elixir that Strauss advocates as the way to turn natural, relaxed, hedonistic men into devout nationalists willing to fight and die for their God and country.”

Drury continues:
If America fails to achieve her “national destiny”, and is mired in perpetual war, then all is well. Man’s humanity, defined in terms of struggle to the death, is rescued from extinction. But men like Heidegger, Schmitt, Kojève, and Strauss expect the worst. They expect that the universal spread of the spirit of commerce would soften manners and emasculate man. To my mind, this fascistic glorification of death and violence springs from a profound inability to celebrate life, joy, and the sheer thrill of existence.

Our current crop of Straussians, well ensconced in the White House and the Pentagon, are in the process overturning the “modern project” and a not so modern project, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This will be accomplished through economic catastrophe and engineered war. Deprived of opportunity, income, and even food—and for those unable to provide for themselves, consider the Super Dome in New Orleans as a grim reminder—the masses will do whatever is required, especially if darksome devils and frightful Islamic enemies are unrelentingly portrayed at the ready with dirty nukes. In dire straits, with the prospect of wheelbarrows of money to buy loaves of bread as inflation shoots skyward by the hour, people will do almost anything asked of them.

I don’t claim to be an economist. On the other hand, as a novice student of history, I understand how government manipulates people through economic manipulation and engineered crises. I believe the Straussian neocons are fascists masquerading as “conservatives” and even a cursory examination of their cobbled together philosophy—a large dose of Straussian “ethics,” a dash of Trotsky’s perpetual revolution, a pinch of Jacobin militancy and debauchery—and a general overview of history reveals what they have in mind for us. I believe they are capable, through their sock puppet Bush the Minor, a “dry alcoholic” and Manichean nihilist parading as a “conservative,” of looting the treasury, siphoning off trillions from the Pentagon, and engineering the crash of the economy in order to realize their vision of a Machiavellian hell on earth where they rule and the superstitious masses, infused with coarse nationalism and religion, are expected to follow.

Of course, they are insane and will ultimately destroy the planet.
However, one must ask, are we insane as well to let them get away with it? Click here to read the original.
News, Blog, Politics, nimo, neocon, Current Affairs, economy, federal reserve,

Abovetopsecret.com

2006-03-25T18:01:00.000-05:00

Signs of the Times Attacked by Abovetopsecret.com Psy-ops!

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
23 Mar 06

As many of our readers are probably aware, we had a little "to do" with a gang we consider to be agents of Pentagon psy-ops - abovetopsecret.com and friends - last night. We were up until 3 a.m. dealing with the backlash from this situation.

What is clear from this Stealth Attack that ran amok is that Signs of the Times is probably the most dangerous site on the internet from the perspective of the Powers That Be. For them to take the risk of exposure as they did (and did they get exposed!) only convinces us that the issues in question are of such importance that they will pull out all stops to defame, harass, stalk, and intimidate us with the ultimate goal of destruction. They want to see SOTT disappear from the Web, that is certainly clear and it is now becoming even clearer just WHO is behind it.

It was only this morning that we understood that this event was supposed to be a "stealth" attack. We were never supposed to see the letter from abovetopsecret.com's attorney, Wayne C. Jaeschke, Jr. of Morrison & Foerster LLP in McLean VA . It was sent to our host server, not to us. In fact, after the ridiculous letters claiming "copyright infringement" that I published on my blog back in January, it is clear why: ATS knew that such nonsense - even if written by an attorney - would not fly with us because they do not have a legal leg to stand on. Writing a critique of an article is NOT making a "derivative" work - and if journalists, scientists, scholars in all fields, are denied the ability to critique nonsense such as the article published by abovetopsecret.com - there is no future for any intellectual progress in our society. We might as well declare science, journalism, research of any kind, dead and buried.

In any event, this stealth attack intimidation letter was sent not to us, but to our site host. It was probably only because the tech's were so upset that they sent it to us. And of course, once I had it - the "smoking gun" so to say - you bet I published it!! Here was proof positive that Joe Quinn's article debunking the debunking of the Pentagon Strike was seen as a BIG THREAT! Within FIVE minutes, poor, pitiful Wayne knew that he had shot himself in the foot and was on the phone to the server screaming that he was now getting death threats because I published his contact details!! Well, hell's bells... it's public info on the internet! Click the link and visit Wayne - see his friendly face.

Possibly utilizing the "special psychological knowledge" of the psychopath that Andrew Lobaczewski describes in his work on Ponerology, good ole Wayne did such a number on those poor tech guys that they folded instantly. They took the site down again. So, we were back on the phone with them again pointing out that, when we chose their company, we explained the nature of our site and the nature of the likely attacks that would come out of the woodwork against us and they had declared that it was NO PROBLEMO. So, knowing that and seeing that Mr. Jaeschke still managed to intimidate the heck out of them really makes you wonder just what kinds of things he said to them on the phone? Geez! Didn't Hannibal Lecter convince a guy to swallow his own tongue? But I digress... what happened was that the server techs were so scared, they took the site down again. They told us we had to remove Wayne's letter from the forum where I had published it. We pointed out that there was no way we could do that without having access to the forum which we didn't because they had pulled the plug on our site. So, they agreed to put it back up so I could make the adjustments.

I was IN THE PROCESS of doing it, trying to upload the changes, when the site disappeared again!

Back on the phone. Apparently, poor Wayne was so frantic that a few minutes were going by with his connection to abovetopsecret.com exposed for all the world to see that I just wasn't doing it fast enough and he had to dial up those poor guys and terrorize them some more.

Well, we patiently explained that Wayne is just a cointelpro agent and internet psy-ops game player using his position as an attorney to intimidate them. They were REALLY scared! So, after they got calmed down a bit, the site went back up and they stayed on the phone until I gave them the signal that the letters had been removed from all three threads.

I actually felt sorry for those poor fellas! And that kind of terror is what psychopaths count on and that is why it is so important to study psychopathy, to know them fully and well so that you are not susceptible to their maneuvers and manipulations! In this day and time, a course about psychopaths ought to be required for anybody in a position to be intimidated or coerced by such blatant strong-mouth manipulation. But I digress again.

What is evident is that what Wayne was really upset about the publication of his close association with abovetopsecret.com - after all, as one of the posters to our forum points out: "MoFo is a heavyweight law firm. Sort of like the Mercedes-Benz of law firms. These aren't ambulance chasers. Their meat and potatos are IP law and other big corporation stuff. Intel retains them, among others. They don't usually bother with harassment suits, but as long as your coin is good (and plenty), they'll do whatever you want. Whoever is behind this has a lot of coins to throw around." Having said that, there are two Wayne Jaeschke's at MoFo (is that name symbolic?), most likely father and son, of which our Wayne is the son. It seems that while MoFo might be the 'Mercedes Benz' of law firms, Wayne junior isn't up to much other than intimidating customer support at server companies and trying to find new ways to build bigger and better speakers, probably so he can listen to a recording of his own voice telling himself what a big, powerful lawyer he is.

This brings me to something else most interesting, the whole so-called Project SERPO hoax that abovetopsecret.com - with the gleeful assistance of attorney Wayne Jaeschke - has been running on the internet since last fall. There is a discussion about that on our forum also, and on this page of that discussion you will see a very interesting image about half way down.

This is an image of an email that Bill Ryan of Project SERPO sent to me claiming that it had been sent to him by "friends" who were on the list of recipients. When I published it, I blacked out the name of the sender because I wasn't at all sure that a respectable attorney with a reputable law firm would actually be doing what this email suggests he is doing: creating disinformation to propagate via abovetopsecret.com. But now I can tell you who wrote that email because his involvement with ATS is now on the record: it was Wayne Jaeschke of Morrison & Foerster LLP in McLean VA.

Gee, isn't that right down the road from the CIA?

In short, this high-end corporate attorney is VERY thick in the whole Abovetopsecret gang activity. Funny, QFG only ever had ONE attorney member and he only lasted about a week.

Readers, if you want to know the deep, dark, nitty gritty details behind this abovetopsecret.com cointelpro operation, you will not want to miss a single one of my blog posts on that subject:

Is Is the Above Top Secret Forum COINTELPRO?

COINTELPRO Updates: Above Top Secret Forum

Abovetopsecret.com COINTELPRO Update

AboveTopSecret.com COINTELPRO Update 2

More Inside Scoops on Abovetopsecret.com!

The Spider and The Fly: SkepticOverlord and COINTELPRO

Abovetopsecret: Ethics and Google Bombs

as well as our related forum discussions.

Simon Grey: Christian Bailey: Abovetopsecret?

‘Project SERPO’ story: Needs Research

Now, we are no strangers to COINTELPRO. We have been targeted since I started investigating UFOs in 1993 and talking about it back in 1995. It seems that the reason we have been targeted for such constant and outrageous harassment for the past three years is because of our work on the "Pentagon Strike."

The subject of the Pentagon Strike was subjected to intense cointelpro activity from the very beginning so that now, even the so-called 911 truth seekers will nod their heads sagely and say "Yeah, it's just a set-up to make the whole 911 truth movement look silly."

I beg to differ.

I admit that I thought exactly the same thing in the beginning when our readers began to write to me and ask me about Theirry Meyssan's book. In fact, I even wrote comments to that effect and urged everyone to NOT touch this one with a mile long pole.

But even though I had made that initial assessment, I still put our researchers on it because I WAS curious. And as the info kept coming in, it looked more and more like the Pentagon was, indeed, the "smoking gun" of 911 - even moreso than the collapse of WTC building 7.

I wrote my article "Comments on the Pentagon Strike" based on what info we had collected, adding to it as time went by and as more info came to light.

The Pentagon Flash Video was based, in part, on this article. What really shocked us was the way the video "took off" on its own. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that it has been viewed by at LEAST 500 million people. Yeah, half a BILLION (and that was six months ago when we assembled the data for a count). It took down about five dedicated servers that were hosting it. It also triggered some VERY interesting reactions. But what I want to point out here is that the extraordinary popularity of this video says one thing: people know subconsciously that it is TRUE, that there was no Flight 77 at the Pentagon. Now notice carefully that I do not say that there was no PLANE, because there certainly was. It was just not Flight 77 nor anything like a Boeing 757.

This short little video did what no other work on 911 "Truth" had done up to that point: it triggered a whole lot of active "damage control" as we will see in a few moments.

What I noticed about the reactions to the Pentagon Strike that we have received is that they are overwhelmingly positive. Sensible people who can see through Bush and the Neocons have no problem seeing that there was no Flight 77 at the Pentagon. The negative reactions are also interesting; they fall into two categories: 1) honest, sincere people who have been influenced by the cointelpro/psy-ops who then, without even being aware, become de facto cointelpro agents; 2) the REAL cointelpro/psy-ops agents.

To give an example of what I think is the former type: not too long ago, Jeff Wells, on his Rigorous Intuition blog made the astonishing remark that

"I've posted a number of times on the blog about the mistake of constructing 9/11 "truth" upon the sand of physical evidence. The "no plane" hypothesis (more than a hypothesis for many; more like an unforgiving creed) is one of the most egregious missteps. One I believe encouraged, if not led, by COINTELPRO."

First of all notice that, like a robot, he is repeating "no plane," as though that is what is being said. It is not. What is being said is that it was NOT a Boeing 757. But this is the first clue that Jeff Wells is mechanically repeating something that has impressed itself on his mind in some way.

The second thing to note is this astonishing phrase: The "sand of physical evidence" ??? !!!!

Now, let me say right up front here that being accused of being cointelpro ourselves is truly bizarre, but not unexpected. After all, that's what cointelpro does: muddy the waters, create foodfights, and generally make it impossible for people to get together and actually make a difference. The very fact that Jeff Wells can say that (and I think he's a sincere guy) just proves my point about psy-ops and how it affects the mind. It literally begs the question as to how someone can be so mentally divided that, on the one hand, they can question why anyone can't see through Bush and the Neocons, and on the other hand, believe that "witness testimony" is more reliable than physical evidence. Isn't that something of a contradiction? That's the same kind of general hystericization that has taken over the minds of Americans and makes it almost impossible to show them facts about Bush and Gang and to get them to see the reality. That's the same kind of mindset that allows Americans to sit by complacently while Bush and the Neocons wage pre-emptive war, torture, divest Americans of their rights, engage in illegal spying, vote fraud, destroy the economy of America, and the whole host of criminal activities going on in this country. And if anybody thinks that this gang of criminal psychopaths can't run psy-ops to produce "innocent" witnesses to say anything they want them to say, or to even buy witnesses, think again! And if you still think you can vote the bastards out of office, you had better wake up before it is too late.

So, when somebody says: "the mistake of constructing 9/11 "truth" upon the sand of physical evidence" what he is really saying is that he MUST acknowledge that the physical evidence (or lack thereof) is compelling, but still - because somebody SAID something different, and because the cointelpro activity waged against this was so thorough from the start - he just has to go with the "witnesses." And many people will do that because the alternative is far too horrible to contemplate.

And that is the big problem with the whole 911 truth movement. COINTELPRO that produces such muddled thinking as is evidenced in Jeff Wells, a guy I used to read faithfully and really admired.

Moving along now... In Joe's Flying Fish article that abovetopsecret.com and Wayne Jaeschke and their bosses in the Pentagon are so desirous of making disappear from the internet, Joe Quinn wrote the following::

We notice that very few items of so-called "conspiracy theory" have rattled the "Bushes" quite like our Pentagon Strike Flash did. The Pentagon Strike video came out on August 23rd 2004. Probably nobody really noticed it at that point, but it hit a chord of response in the hearts of millions of people around the world. They began to madly download and forward it to their friends and relatives. Latest stats on how many people have viewed it to date are 500 million!

Apparently it even landed in the email box of the Editor of the Washington Post, which is why Carol Morello sent us an email asking for an interview. Or so she said. My suspicion was that the Post was instructed to do "damage control", albeit oh, so gently!

Now, look at this mini-timeline:

August 23rd 2004: Pentagon Strike Video which propagates wildly for a month.

September 11, 2004: CatHerder post to Above Top Secret forum.

September 21st 2004: First contact by Carol Morello of the Washington Post

October 7th 2004: Washington Post article
It was an interesting feeling to know that if they hadn't seen the Pentagon Strike before, certainly George and Dick, Karl and the gang were watching it after the Washington Post wrote an article about it.
October 19th 2004: George Bush visits New Port Richey - a previously unscheduled "whistle-stop" on his campaign trail. NPR is very small, not likely to be a major target of any presidential candidate, but it just happens to be Laura Knight-Jadczyk's hometown. It was our initial reaction that Dubya's visit to Laura's little home town - certainly of no importance on the campaign trail - was deliberately done to send a message to her. Fact is, her daughter's ex-boyfriend wrote to tell her that he had been among those selected to shake the hand of George W. himself! Now, how's that for a coincidence?

As to exactly what Carol Morello of the Washington Post wrote to Laura, here is the pertinent passage which is actually quite revealing:

A couple of editors here saw the video/film, and I was asked to find out what I could about it. As you can imagine, we continue to have an intense interest on the attack on the Pentagon and the people who were affected.

I've just begun reporting, so it would be premature to tell you what "perspective" my story would have.

My initial impressions are that the questions and theories expressed in the video got a spurt of attention in early 2002, after the publication of a best selling book in France, then the furor died down for a while, and now they have re-emerged with the extraordinarily wide dissemination of this video on the Internet.

The 911 Commission report appears to have done little to dampen the controversy. I hoped to speak to you about how and why you posted it on your web site, what kind of response you've received and what you think about it. […]

Notice that she attributes the resurgence of interest in the "Pentagate" problem to the Pentagon Strike video. Can we say "damage control"?

And if there is damage control, then that means there is damage.

Up to this point in time, the only acknowledgement the administration ever gave to such issues was to refer vaguely and dismissively to "conspiracy theories". Now, suddenly, it seems that dealing with the "conspiracy theories" in a direct manner was seen to be imperative. "9/11: Debunking the Myths" came out in Popular Mechanics Magazine in March of 2005, just five months after the Washington Post article. That's pretty fast work.

Under the tutelage of Editor in Chief Jim "Oh look, a tank!" Meigs, Popular Mechanics assembled a team of researchers, including "professional fact checkers" (impressive eh?) to debunk the 16 most common claims made by conspiracy theorists about 9/11. Unsurprisingly, the PM editors claim that, in the end:

"we were able to debunk each of these assertions with hard evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned that a few theories are based on something as innocent as a reporting error on that chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate."

In fact, a careful analysis of the article shows that at most, just three of the sixteen claims could have been the result of "reporting error", forcing us to assume that, in the razor-like, emotionally unclouded cerebrum of Jim Meigs, at least 13 of the conspiracy claims about 9/11 are the result of "cynical imaginations aiming to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate".

The sad fact is that, while Popular Mechanics claims to be interested in understanding what really happened that day, their rebuttal of sixteen of the most common claims by so-called "conspiracy theorists" about 9/11 isn't worth the $3.57 of server space that it has so far cost them to publish it.

If there is one glaring hole in the arguments put forward by 9/11 conspiracy "debunkers", it is the fact that such people have never come up with a reasonable argument to explain why, in the wake of 9/11, so many obviously intelligent citizens became gripped by the uncontrollable urge to continually waste their time recklessly and fecklessly "injecting suspicion and animosity into public debate" for no apparent reason. It really is a mystery. Maybe they're trying to take over the world or something.

On the other hand, it doesn't take a degree in psychology to understand the primary motivations of the conspiracy debunkers. You see, the very last thing that many Americans (and others) want to believe is that their government would attack its own people. For 9/11 "debunkers", logic and intellect have no part to play in investigating the question of what really happened on 9/11. It's pure emotion all the way. [...]

Most people think that "conspiracy theories" are made up by "conspiracy theorists", but the term "conspiracy theory" is most often used by those people who have most to gain from the ridicule of the allegations that are directed at them. The tactic has been used to such great effect over the years that certain high crimes committed by government have become the touchstone by which all other "conspiracies" are measured.

Take the folks at Popular Mechanics. In dealing with 9/11 they simply couldn't resist referencing that other most despicable crime committed by a US government - but of course, to them it's just another "theory":

"Don't get me wrong: Healthy skepticism is a good thing. Nobody should take everything they hear--from the government, the media or anybody else--at face value. But in a culture shaped by Oliver Stone movies and "X-Files" episodes, it is apparently getting harder for simple, hard facts to hold their own against elaborate, shadowy theorizing."

Did you catch it? The reference to Oliver Stone can mean only one thing: Jim's "fact checkers" contacted the CIA, and they told him straight up that some bullets really can do magic things.

So far, we have been generous to the people at Popular Mechanics. We have assumed that they are simply well-intentioned but misguided souls. However, it appears that there is a more sinister, and dare we say it, "conspiratorial" side to Popular Mechanics' "innocent" debunking of 9/11 conspiracy theories. You see, it turns out that one of the main contributors to the article is one Benjamin Chertoff, a cousin of the new Dept. of Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff.

American Free Press' Christopher Bollyn, who dug up the information, also claims that Ben Chertoff's mother was a Mossad agent. While there is, as of yet, no evidence of any working relationship between the two, it is certainly noteworthy that the cousin of the current Homeland Security Chief, (who, in his previous incarnation as head of the Justice Department's criminal division was instrumental in the release of obvious Israeli spies before and after 9/11), happens to be behind a high-profile attempt to debunk 9/11 conspiracy theories. [...]

According to another 9/11 researcher:

"The editors of Scientific American followed in the footsteps of Popular Mechanics in exploiting a trusted brand in order to protect the perpetrators of the mass murder of 9/11/01. The column by Michael Shermer in the June, 2005 issue of Scientific American, titled Fahrenheit 2777, is an attempt to deceive the magazine's readers into dismissing the overwhelming evidence that 9/11 was an inside job without ever looking at that evidence. More specifically, Shermer attempts to inoculate readers against looking at the decidedly scientific refutation of the official story… […]

According to another 9/11 researcher:

"The editors of Scientific American followed in the footsteps of Popular Mechanics in exploiting a trusted brand in order to protect the perpetrators of the mass murder of 9/11/01. The column by Michael Shermer in the June, 2005 issue of Scientific American, titled Fahrenheit 2777, is an attempt to deceive the magazine's readers into dismissing the overwhelming evidence that 9/11 was an inside job without ever looking at that evidence. More specifically, Shermer attempts to inoculate readers against looking at the decidedly scientific refutation of the official story… […]

Shermer's column exhibits many of the same propaganda techniques as the ambitious feature article in the March issue of Popular Mechanics by Benjamin Chertoff, for which Shermer professes admiration:

'The single best debunking of this conspiratorial codswallop is in the March issue of Popular Mechanics, which provides an exhaustive point-by-point analysis of the most prevalent claims.'

Comparing the two attack pieces is instructive. Both pieces mention a similar range of issues, with Shermer adding Jewish conspiracy rumors and UFOlogists to the mix...

This last is undoubtedly a direct reference to Signs of The Times, while avoiding giving a direct link to our website out of fear that the reader might be influenced.

Shermer uses an array of deceptive methods to persuade the reader that challenges to the official story of the 9/11 attack are worthy only of ridicule and should not be scrutinized. His primary technique is to use hoaxes and unscientific ideas to "bracket" the valid ideas that he seeks to shield the reader from.

That Shermer went to such great lengths to thoroughly misrepresent the painstaking, scientific, evidence-based work of many researchers is a testament to the success of the Pentagon Strike Video! It really stepped on a sore toe. And that tells us something important, the same thing Carol Morello of the Washington Post wrote:

"…the questions and theories expressed in the video got a spurt of attention in early 2002, after the publication of a best selling book in France, then the furor died down for a while, and now they have re-emerged with the extraordinarily wide dissemination of this video on the Internet."

We notice that never, in any of the two major "debunking" articles that followed fast on the heels of the Pentagon Strike video, was the video ever even mentioned by name, nor was our website mentioned. Other books, other researchers, other web sites were mentioned, but the deliberate avoidance of Signs of The Times - the origin of the Pentagon Strike, was conspicuous. We notice the same trend in the Above Top Secret forum.

Again we point out: debunkers are sent in only when damage control is needed. And damage control is only needed when it is thought that there might be damage. That means that the Pentagon Strike is understood clearly, in the minds of the perpetrators, to be the weak link in their chain of lies.

Debunkers are sent in not to give answers to the outstanding questions, but to push the emotional buttons of the public, to reassure people who really want "a reason to believe" that their government is not lying to them. [...]

As Laura Knight-Jadczyk notes in her book 9/11:The Ultimate Truth, the attack on the Pentagon is the Achilles Heel of the entire 9/11 coverup, and for one very good reason: while we all saw repeated footage of Flight 11 and Flight 175 crash into the WTC towers, and we all saw the wreckage of Flight 93 and have hundreds of eyewitness testimonies that a commercial airliner did indeed crash in Pennsylvania, there is no reliable evidence that a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon on September 11th 2001. No one has seen any footage that shows Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, and the tapes that actually exist that could easily and immediately prove what did hit that day, have been confiscated by the FBI and the U.S. government studiously refuses to release them.

The US government claims that a Boeing 757 impacted the Pentagon on 9/11, many people dispute this, yet the same American government refuses to release video tapes that would put the matter to rest and show once and for all what hit the Pentagon. Use your head and ask yourself, "why?"

There is one very obvious answer.

In other words, you can push the WTC building's collapse from now 'til doomsday and get nowhere... Even if you prove that it collapsed due to explosives, you can't ever prove that those planes that flew into the WTC buildings were not big passenger jets with Arab hijackers onboard. Even if you forced the government to admit that, yes, there were explosives that brought down the building, it could be attributed to "terrorists" in a big discovery and bait and switch. That's why they don't really worry too much about the WTC attacks. That's why all manner of conspiracy theories about the WTC are tolerated with disdainful amusement.

But notice that there is NO real amusement about the Pentagon Strike. Oh, sure, they work really hard to poke fun at it, but the fact is, the Pentagon Strike video baited the Beast from his lair and it was for THAT reason that special "agents" like The Washington Post, Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, abovetopsecret.com and Wayne Jaeschke have been employed to stop it! To STAMP it out! To get RID of it! At ALL costs! Heck, that's probably what was on Dick Cheney's mind when he shot his buddy... he was having a waking dream and thought he was pointing the gun at the SOTT team!

The fact is, there is NO defense against the facts on the ground at the Pentagon except the word of a small group of "special" witnesses against another small group who say that it was NOT Flight 77.

The truth is: NOBODY saw Flight 77 fly into the Pentagon. It didn't happen.

Joe Quinn's rebuttal of the Pentagon Strike rebuttal created and propagated by abovetopsecret.com is just too dangerous to be allowed to continue to be "out there."

Even if it is completely legal to write a critical analysis as Joe Quinn did - utilizing the original article for the critique (how else can you write an analysis?), covert intimidation and coercion from a fancy lawfirm in Virginia has been initiated to force the removal of this article from the internet after the pathetic efforts of the abovetopsecret.com 3 "Amigos" didn't do the job.

Discerning those whose intent is to deceive from those who are already deceived, but sincere, it is very difficult but it can be done if people will begin to educate themselves and deal with the FACTS.

Really and truly grokking COINTELPRO and the damage it does, and learning how to combat it, is a MUST if anything positive is ever to happen on this god-forsaken planet.

Now those of you that have read this far, let me mention that we removed our fundraiser, our fun little "Send Dick Cheney to the Moon" thing because, after a month, we raised less that 20% of our target - that is, double digits in thousands, not triple digits. Meanwhile, we know that the moveon.org people who haven't yet awakened to that fact that all their efforts and all their money is just going down the drain were able to raise several million dollars.

Do you see moveon.org getting attacked? Do you see their website being taken down? In fact, please try to think of any other website that has been so thoroughly subjected to defamation, repeated DOS attacks, personal harassment, stalking, and now outright assault and intimidation from people with obvious connections to the Bush Neocons.

You can't. There isn't another website that can demonstrate with hard evidence, documentation, the level of attack that SOTT has been subjected to for the past five years.

Think about it.

And think about how much you might want us to continue to be available to you for news, analysis, commentary, and just the TRUTH.

When we are gone, who will take our place?

From the 'Protocols of the Pathocrats':

[T]o sow discord in all parties, to dislocate all collective forces which are still unwilling to submit to us, and to discourage any kind of personal initiative which might in any degree hinder our affair. THERE IS NOTHING MORE DANGEROUS THAN PERSONAL INITIATIVE: if it has genius behind it, such initiative can do more than can be done by millions of people among whom we have sown discord.

So if you want us to be able to continue, you must show some personal initiative and stand behind us now, please. Give as generously as you can because we see a long and expensive fight coming. And if we don't get the funds to be able to fight this battle, then we will know that not enough people want what we are offering: just the Truth. If you want us to be here for you tomorrow and after tomorrow, give today! Please! And Thank all of you who have already given!

News, Blog, Politics, abovetopsecret.com, Humor, Current Affairs, psyops, Media, cointelpro, ponerology

Abovetopsecret.com EXPOSED!!!

2006-03-23T10:57:00.000-05:00

Abovetopsecret.com EXPOSED!!!

Some of you may have noticed that signs of the times was down for awhile today. This was due to the actions of the website abovetopsecret.com. As I have speculated, they were given the task to run cointelpro on Joe Quinn's article:

Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn't Impact the Pentagon on 9/11 - and Neither Did a Boeing 757

which was an analysis of the "catherder" article on abovetopsecret which essentially was support for the Bush Neocons conspiracy theory about the events of September 11.

As anyone who is familiar with copyright law knows, this is perfectly legal under standard copyright law.

However, abovetopsecret.com, like Bush and the Neocons, make up their own laws. As I have chronicled on this blog, their urgent demands that we remove this article because it was a violation of their "creative commons" copyright was absurd and simply evidence of their position as an active cointelpro/psy-ops propagator on the internet. It isn't copyrights they are concerned about, it is google bombing and running psy-ops. And now, they have proven it.

Here is the letter we received from our server people after being notified by about a hundred people via email that the signs of the times site was down:

From: "James" **** To: Arkadiusz Jadczyk
Subject: FW: Notice of Copyright Infringement
Date sent: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:55:32 -0500
Date forwarded: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:38:12 -0600

Hi, we received the following complaint from your site. Please investigate this and let us know.
James

From: Jaeschke, Jr., Wayne [mailto:WJaeschke@****.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2006 2:35 PM To: dmca@velcom.com Cc: mark@abovetopsecret.com; skepticoverlord@abovetopsecret.com Subject: Notice of Copyright Infringement

Sirs:

Our firm represents AboveTopSecret.com LLP ("ATS"). ATS is the owner of numerous copyrighted articles being displayed in an infringing

manner on a website hosted by your company. That website is http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/> http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/.

The infringing articles appear at:

http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/Above_Top_Secret_article.htm>

http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/Abo … rticle.htm ("the 757
article")
And

http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/signs/signs20050909.htm>

http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/signs … 050909.htm ("the FEMA article")

The original articles appear on the Abovetopsecret.com website at:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread167902/pg1>

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread167902/pg1

And
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread79655/pg1>
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread79655/pg1
The republication of each of these articles is governed by the Creative
Commons 2.5 Deed ("the CC Deed").

The 757 article may be republished in accordance with the terms and conditions specified here:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/cc.php?tid=79655&pid=816414>
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/cc. … pid=816414

The FEMA article may be republished in accordance with the terms and conditions specified here:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/cc.php?tid=167902&pid=1685907>
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/cc. … id=1685907

Pursuant to the CC Deed, these articles, each of which is owned by ATS and is the subject of a registration in the United States Copyright Office 1) may not be published on sites/pages with commercial advertisements; 2) may not be used to make "derivative works"; and 3) must provide proper attribution to the author and a link to the original article.

In each instance of content owned by ATS appearing on the "signs-of-the-times.org" website, all three of these conditions of the terms of use is violated. The owners/operators of ATS have attempted to contact the operator of signs-of-the-times.org and have this situation corrected by either removing the articles or republishing them in a manner that complies with the CC Deed. The operators of the Signs-of-the-times.org websites, Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Arkadiusz Jadczyk, have failed to comply.

We must therefore request that Velcom.com, as hosts for the Signs-of-the-times.org website, remove these pages from publication.

Moreover, this letter constitutes notice to the operators of Velcom.com that ATS believes that have a right to enforce their copyright under Canadian and U.S. law and reserves the right to take further action in the U.S., Canada, or both without further notice.

As well, this letter is also to serve notice on Velcom.com that the owners of ATS have rescinded all rights to the operators of signs-of-the-times.org under the CC Deed, in view of their continued non-compliance with the terms and conditions of use of original, copyright content appears on the abovetopsecret.com website.

Please contact me at ******* if you have any questions with regard to this matter. Otherwise, we look forward to the prompt and amicable resolution of this matter.
Regards,
Wayne Jaeschke

Wayne C. Jaeschke, Jr. Morrison & Foerster LLP
********************
McLean, VA 22102
phone: ****
fax: ****
wjaeschke@****.com
================================================

To ensure compliance with requirements imposed by the IRS, Morrison & Foerster LLP informs you that, if any advice concerning one or more U.S. Federal tax issues is contained in this communication (including any attachments), such advice is not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of (i) avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code or (ii) promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any transaction or matter addressed herein.
For information about this legend, go to
http://www.mofo.com/Circular230.html
=

This message contains information which may be confidential and privileged. Unless you are the addressee (or authorized to receive for the addressee), you may not use, copy or disclose to anyone the message or any information contained in the message. If you have received the message in error, please advise the sender by reply e-mail @mofo.com, and delete the message.

Now folks, come on, how many websites that were just started by an ordinary guy who took on a couple of "ordinary" partners, and is just a hobby and sharing on the internet, are able to afford a copyright attorney in McLean Virginia???

This action also is highly suggestive of the idea that the Pentagon Issue is a LOT more sensitive than anyone has thus far suspected! Do take note of THAT!

I hope that everyone who reads this will spread this information far and wide because these people are EVIL Bush supporters, Cyber Nazi Brown Shirts.

See the blog posts:

Is Is the Above Top Secret Forum COINTELPRO?

COINTELPRO Updates: Above Top Secret Forum -- this post is most pertinent to the current Simon Grey issue.

Abovetopsecret.com COINTELPRO Update

AboveTopSecret.com COINTELPRO Update 2

More Inside Scoops on Abovetopsecret.com!

The Spider and The Fly: SkepticOverlord and COINTELPRO

Abovetopsecret: Ethics and Google Bombs

See also forum threads on abovetopsecret.com and project SERPO:

http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/for … 3015#p3015

http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/for … php?id=523

Our research team is out there digging up info. This is back already:

Did a search on their lawyer, Wayne Jaeschke. Here is the official bio from his law firm's site (www.mofo.com!):

Mr. Jaeschke is a patent attorney in Morrison & Foerster LLP's Intellectual Property group. Wayne has been admitted to practice before the USPTO since 1994 and has substantial experience preparing and prosecuting patent applications in many fields, including: computer software, surface and polymer, electromechanical and optical devices, and pharmaceuticals. Wayne has also successfully handled internet domain name litigation and dispute resolution; copyright infringement litigation, inter partes reexamination, novelty, infringement and validity opinions for all technical disciplines; patent licensing, collaborative research agreements with major U.S. universities, and related intellectual property matters.

Prior to joining Morrison & Foerster, Mr. Jaeschke worked for Allied- Signal's water treatment polymer group where he assisted clients in the areas of papermaking, mining, oil refining, and municipal water treatment. After Allied Signal, Mr. Jaeschke worked for Betz' Laboratories paper chemicals group where he was a process specialist in the field of wet-end paper chemistry, recycled fiber usage and overall papermaking performance enhancement through the use of specialty chemical technology.

Mr. Jaeschke holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, received the degree of Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the American University's Washington College of Law and is registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

His law firm, Morrison & Foerster (hence the mofo) has this about the firm. Sounds like a high-powered and expensive one:

Morrison & Foerster maintains one of the largest intellectual property practices in the world, with more than 300 lawyers providing a full range of services, including counseling, prosecution, litigation, dispute resolution and licensing transactions in patent, trademark, and copyright matters.

The firm's practice has been consistently ranked by independent observers as one of the top intellectual property practices in the country. In 2003, the firm was short-listed for the USA Intellectual Property Law Firm of the Year Award by Chambers & Partners in London. In Managing IP's latest rankings of the top law firms in this field, Morrison & Foerster was one of only a small number of full-service firms (as opposed to IP boutiques) included in the Top 25 based on volume of U.S. contentious and non-contentious matters.

Morrison & Foerster's IP practice serves clients in a wide range of industries, including biotechnology, medical devices and healthcare; electronics, software, telecommunications, Internet and semiconductors; chemistry, chemical engineering and materials science; and media and entertainment. The firm's attorneys, including partners Tom Ciotti, Kate Murashige and Gladys Monroy, have played a significant role in the creation and protection of many of the landmark patent portfolios in the information technology and life science industries.

And this, regarding the complaint:

"... derivative works"; and 3) must provide proper attribution to the author and a link to the original article."

Frozen fish is not technically a derivative work. A derivative use of the original would be if you made a movie using the article as a script, or if you translated the original article into another language. Although this is somewhat of a gray area:

http://www.chillingeffects.org/derivative/

"In short, a derivative work is a whole work based on one or more other whole works"

Criticism is protected under copyright law:

http://www.chillingeffects.org/fanfic/notice.cgi?NoticeID=7

"The most significant factor in this analysis is the fourth, effect on the market. If a copier's use supplants demand for the original work, then it will be very difficult for him or her to claim fair use. On the other hand, if the use does not compete with the original, for example because it is a parody, criticism, or news report, it is more likely to be permitted as "fair use.""

So, it appears that ATS is claiming that Frozen Fish will supplant demand for the original article.

To decide whether a use is "fair use" or not, courts consider:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit education purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and,

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. 17 U.S.C. 107(1-4)

Number one in the above list is why ATS has been harping on the links to book sales.

Joe Quinn, author of the critique of the abovetopsecret.com article has sent the following:

The "derivative work" claim is BS, pure and simple. I did not "alter, transform, or build upon" the ATS piece, so it is not a derivative work. Commercial use would be if they were some charge for people to access the work - there is none. The use of the ATS piece was criticism, therefore it was not competing with the original work.

Notice that in the lawyer's email, he does not make reference to any law, Why? Because there is no legal infringement. Of course, all of this is academic since the server folks are not in the business of defending their clients, they will bow down to the mighty dollar, or the threat of having to spend some, every time. So psychopathic manipulative tactics win the day, as usual. I think a lawyer joke is in order.

The devil visited a lawyer's office and made him an offer. "I can arrange some things for you, " the devil said. "I'll increase your income five-fold. Your partners will love you; your clients will respect you; you'll have four months of vacation each year and live to be a hundred. All I require in return is that your wife's soul, your children's souls, and their children's souls rot in hell for eternity."

The lawyer thought for a moment. "What's the catch?" he asked.

The best we can do is use this episode to further expose the abovetopsecret.com crowd for what they are: the Internet equivalent of the national Enquirer: disinfo, psy-ops and just plain trash.

News, Blog, Politics, abovetopsecret, cointelpro, Current Affairs, pentagon, Media, 9/11, conspiracy

Terrorism and the Three Sillies

2006-03-19T09:13:00.000-05:00

This weekend's edition of Signs of the Times carries several important pieces that I would like to bring to everyone's attention and then I am going to present a fable that I read as a child that will shed some light on our present situation.

The first article is by Paul Craig Roberts: Is Another 9/11 in the Works? Paul points out that what is happening in global politics - i.e. Bush planning another war in the midst of losing the first one - is totally insane. Yet, as anyone can see, the rhetoric leading up to bombing Iraq was identical to the mad propagandistic ravings that pass for political discourse concerning Iran today. "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The immediate past tells us that Bush and the Neocons very definitely intend to make war on Iran. And yet, that is so insane that most of us can't grok it. The US Army is stretched to the breaking point, the economy is floating on illusion, the American people are a heartbeat away from unimaginable financial disaster, and yet Bush and the Warmongers are planning another hideously expensive war... or so it seems. Roberts states the case succinctly:

First of all, Bush lacks the troops to do the job. If the US military cannot successfully occupy Iraq, there is no way that the US can occupy Iran, a country approximately three times the size in area and population.

Second, Iran can respond to a conventional air attack with missiles targeted on American ships and bases, and on oil facilities located throughout the Middle East.

Third, Iran has human assets, including the Shia majority population in Iraq, that it can activate to cause chaos throughout the Middle East.

Fourth, polls of US troops in Iraq indicate that a vast majority do not believe in their mission and wish to be withdrawn. Unlike the yellow ribbon folks at home, the troops are unlikely to be enthusiastic about being trapped in an Iranian quagmire in addition to the Iraqi quagmire.

Fifth, Bush’s polls are down to 34 percent, with a majority of Americans believing that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

If you were being whipped in one fight, would you start a second fight with a bigger and stronger person?

That’s what Bush is doing.

So, since Bush doesn't have the manpower or the moneypower (or even the cojones) to wage a proper war (I'm being sarcastic here since no war is ever "proper"), what's he gonna do?

The obvious answer is: Nukem!

Yup. It seems pretty clear that this is the answer that will suit. And Bush and gang have plenty of resources already on hand to do the job without making another blip in the current economic crisis; and just maybe, as a sideline, they can end up nuking Iraq too and "kill two birds with one stone". I mean, if you are going to start nuking, no reason to hold back, right? Solve all your problems with the same solution!

But there is a problem here: nuking Iran without provocation will absolutely enrage the whole rest of the world that is already feeling a lot of hostility toward the U.S. because there were no WMDs in Iraq not to mention the growing belief all over the planet that Bush and Co were complicit in the 911 attacks.

So, what to do? How to get justification to nuke Iran?

The answer is simple: "Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The history indicates that Bush and Co are certainly quite capable of engaging in False Flag operations against their own country in order to justify their actions (things they wanted to do and planned to do in advance). As noted above, 911 is most likely just such a scenario even if I think that the Bush Gang were only complicit and did not carry out the entire conspiracy on their own. In that sense, I think that a lot of commentators are correct: the U.S. couldn't have pulled that off alone. But I digress.

Justifying the nuking of another country is going to take a bit more than a 911 type attack; you know, "like attracts like." That means that what we (at Signs of the Times) have been saying for some time is becoming more and more likely to transpire: a nuclear attack on the US devised and carried out as a False Flag operation designed to lay blame on Iran. Roberts presents this idea in the following way:

Readers, whose thinking runs ahead of that of most of us, tell me that another 9/11 event will prepare the ground for a nuclear attack on Iran. Some readers say that Bush, or Israel as in Israel’s highly provocative attack on the Jericho jail and kidnapping of prisoners with American complicity, will provoke a second attack on the US. Others say that Bush or the neoconservatives working with some “black ops” group will orchestrate the attack.

One of the more extraordinary suggestions is that a low yield, perhaps tactical, nuclear weapon will be exploded some distance out from a US port. Death and destruction will be minimized, but fear and hysteria will be maximized. Americans will be told that the ship bearing the weapon was discovered and intercepted just in time, thanks to Bush’s illegal spying program, and that Iran is to blame. A more powerful wave of fear and outrage will again bind the American people to Bush, and the US media will not report the rest of the world’s doubts of the explanation.

Reads like a Michael Crichton plot, doesn’t it?

Fantasy? Let’s hope so.

I'm afraid that I don't exactly agree with this version. I don't think that minimizing American deaths will be an objective. On the contrary, I think that maximizing American deaths will be deliberately sought so as to maximize the fear and hysteria. That means a nuke attack on American soil - not on a ship - and probably highly populated soil at that.

Moving on to the next item that caught my eye from the weekend edition of Signs: Robert C. Koehler writes a piece entitled Trust Us. In this article he tells the story of Ion Sancho, the election supervisor of Leon County, Fla., my home state. Koehler writes:

The problem is, there's an anti-democratic force rampaging across the country that wants ... privately conducted, secrecy-shrouded elections. The state of Florida even has a bizarre law outlawing manual recounts of election results. This removes all chance of public scrutiny from the process.

I humbly submit that this is nuts, and that if we don't scream out at the top of our lungs we're going to lose our democracy. What we're witnessing, I fear - and what isolated watchdogs like Sancho are warning us about, but cannot prevent all by themselves - is democracy's transition to expensive charade.

I've been talking about this since the last election. When I saw what happened then, when the Signs Team had collected certain data, it was clear that fraudulent elections were already a fact of life in the U.S. Certainly, the 2000 election was the last fair election that was ever held in this country and that one was "given" to George Bush by trickery, bribery, coercion, blackmail, and having certain elements in place at the right place and time according to a devious plan. Once Bush had been declared president, he and his minions were then able to suppress any process that might have undone the "appointment." What's more, there were then able to set into motion the plan that ensured that whoever they want gets into office whereever and whenever they choose: manipulatable electronic voting.

So folks, its already a done deal. It's all over but the crying. There is NO chance whatsoever of anyone getting rid of the "Powers That Be" in the U.S. by way of the exercise of the vote. Anybody who suggests anything different to you is just living in denial or deliberately blowing smoke.

The third item on the Weekend Signs Page that I want to talk about is J. Crofts The Two Americas. He writes:

There are two Americas.

There's the America most of you reading this actually believed in-or still believe in. That America is the fabled "land of the free, home of the brave".

That America was founded on the principles of Freedom, limited authority, a free hand to make your own destiny in this life with what talent and smarts you were able or willing to bring forth from yourself, on a legal, social and economic level playing field. That America was the place where your individual beliefs were respected, was where anyone from anywhere could come and start over with the same opportunities as a person born here from a family going back ten generations.

That America was a land and people who had a limited, representative government that guarded them and their Freedom, and more importantly, was held in check by a document known as the Constitution, that enshrined an article called the Bill of Rights-which didn't deliniate individual rights so much as made boudaries beyond which the government could not trespass.

Now reading that, think; do you live in this America?

No. You, me-we all live in a different America.

This America, in reality a kind of federal empire, drapes itself in the trappings of the America we were all taught was the way this nation was as a form of ideological disguise. We were lied to. This America, the fabled "land of the free, home of the brave", uses that quote as a slogan, a sugar coating on the many poison pills of lawyer-made laws, regulations, taxes, fines, agencies, and the corrupt ruling class that wields all that power for its own good.
In this America, Freedom is a sugar coated lie to get us to accept the many political and social controls imposed upon us. ...
Promoted by criminals in three piece suits, known as career politicians.

These criminals in three piece suits unfortunately operate not a Constitutionally limited government, but a hydra-headed monster of a government that masquerades itself as many federal, state and local institutions. This monster's tentacles never stop reaching for more power, more authority, more of YOUR MONEY AND LIFE'S WORK, seizing it and stealing it from YOU! In fact, this monstrous federal government's reach into our lives is so pervasive, so overwhelming, only the largest of corporations can operate in the country with any degree of latitude.
At the pinnacles of power there is a small group of inbred elitists who regularly go back and forth from private life as CEO's and Directors in the corporate boardrooms to positions of power in government. They are greedy and corrupt beyond description, and have perpretrated literally every act of treason against us-and gotten away with it. ...
So, two Americas; one's a illusory piece of propaganda genius, and we're stuck in the one with no level playing field, no limited representative government, no guarantee of Rights. It's a insider's game and conditions have been ratcheted to squeeze out as much initiative, drive, intelligence and resources out of the American People as possible.

It's sad, but all too true. This leads us to John Kaminski's piece Who made this plan? where he writes:

Americans aren't the good guys anymore. Hollow TV pitchmen still insist our boys are dying for their country, but more and more people know that those lives are being wasted on corporate profits, deliberately squandered for somebody's twisted big score scheme.
And you know who's making the money. The very pervs who are orchestrating all these wars. Repeat after me: Carlyle Group.

Maybe the most frightening thing is that so many Americans are going along with the scam. And the more I find out about American history - from George Washington butchering French traders in their sleep on Christmas Eve - maybe they always have.

How many thousands of supposedly responsible Americans are keeping their mouths shut about what really happened on 9/11, or how they knew always the reason for the Iraq war was one big lie? ...

People want to talk about politics, candidates? I see a one-party system in the United States dominated by nongentile bankers aligned with the forces of Europe's old money, which likely in and of itself is nongentile as well, since the major controlling mechanism of human society - the Rothschild controlled banks, whose emblem is the prototype of the flag of Israel - have dominated the world financial scene since long before they pilfered from American citizens the right to control their own money way back in 1913.

But today's news is worse.

Scheduled start of World War Three was due March 20, when they tried to start up the Iranian bourse (European term for "stock exchange") trading oil in euros in Tehran.

Doesn't it give you a warm feeling when you know the sclerotic, twitching finger of Dick Cheney is fiddling with the nuclear button? Here's a man who has never been stopped, and he can produce the spilled blood to prove it.

Who knows what the latest twist will be in this stranger-then-coincidence confrontation with Iran over another pack of lies? The U.S. picks wars with whomever it wants, and because its citizenry is so drugged-out by bad schools, medicine and food, they roar their drunken approval of these atrocities. ...

How many Americans have gone down the rabbithole morally in recent years? Yes, America has always been a cesspool of rape and plunder largely covered over by those who write the history books. There may never have been a time in history when the populace got the straight scoop from the powers that be.

It seemed, though, in the last half of the 20th century in which I spent the better part of my life, that I grew up with a degree of confidence in a system that could produce people like Edward R. Murrow and Joe McCarthy, a world that could conduct a civilized debate and arrive at a logical solution.

Perhaps I was naive. Once upon a time, I loved my country. Now I am very afraid of it.

This brings us to the last news item that catches my attention: Nazis of the Nineties. (Notice that this article was written in 1998!) This is the piece that puts it all together when it tells us:

In his book "The Road to Serfdom," Friedrich Hayek warned Americans in 1944 that despite their military war against Nazis, they were travelling the philosophical and economic road to that the Nazis were travelling. The Americans ignored that warning. Now along the Americans we are left with the consequences that are coming home to roost in the nineties: a government of omnipotent size and power using its power to kill innocent, peaceful citizens at home and abroad. Today, the number of its victims is in the millions. But at the end of this road lie the deadly bombing and concentration camps for the multitudes. ...
The name of the new game to be played in the last year of the twentieth century is "catastrophic terrorism" and it has been made frightening, not because it conceivably could really happen but because of what people who choose to dwell on the possibility, however remote, want to do about it. The anti-biological and anti-weapons of mass destruction American propaganda and actions are already duplicating Hitler's prior to World War-II tactics.

Any further terrorism from now onwards would be justified in the name of combating "catastrophic terrorism," which is defined as going far beyond what the US Secretary of Defence William Cohen calls "the conventional type of terrorism." That is the work of "cowards," he says, who "rejoice in the agony of their victims." They then "retreat to villages where they hide behind the skirts of women and the laughter of children and dare you to strike back - and strike back we will."

"We have to depend upon intervention" he declared on December 8, 1998 and the same views have been expressed by Ashton Carter, John Deusch and Philip Zelikow, two former high-level Defence Department Officials, and a former staff member of National Security Council, in the Foreign Affairs magazine. This propaganda would justify the US armed attack in any part of the world as "prevention" of the sensed danger. Afghanistan and Sudan were probably the first victims of an undeclared Nazi agenda for dominating the world.

The word "Nazi" might offend some Americans but a thorough research can pale Nazi atrocities by comparison with what the US has done and is doing in the name of national interest. CIA, with the help of CNN, BBC and ABC etc., is waging a major propaganda war against the Muslim world in particular, with the help of capitalist media elite and some powerful politicians. Their lies were once totally disregarded by most people, but today, the majority of the people seem to believe the anti "rogue states" propaganda.

We still have too many people, who do not believe that the present American attempts are leading to a US world order and total domination of those nations, which are considered anti-American. They, like the unbelievers in 1939, will not take the time to research the American intentions and wrong doings. If they did, they would see that these warnings are indeed accurate and timely. What the world fails or refuses to recognise is that the concentration camps were simply the logical extension of the Nazi agenda and mind-set. It doesn't matter if there were six million killed - or six hundred - or six - or even one.

The evil is the belief that the US government should have the power to sacrifice even one individual for the good of the American "nation" and "interest." Once this basic philosophical premise and political power are conceded, innocent people, beginning with few and inevitable ending in multitudes, will be killed, because "the good of the nation" always ends up requiring it. The UN and rest of the world seem to have conceded this authority to the US so that it freely exercise its Nazi practices. ...

And like the German people of the 1930s, Americans either refuse to see it happening, or they rationalise what is happening so that they do not have to deal with it. ...

On international level, we observe that Hitler's words have been put to practice in the form of CNN and BBC. According to Hitler, "the task of propaganda lies not in a scientific training of the individual, but rather in directing the masses towards certain facts, events, necessities, etc., the purpose being to move their importance into the masses' field of vision." We can see this at CNN and BBC, as they also stick to a few main points and repeat them over and over. ...

Hitler believed that propaganda had to be very simple, so the average person, with very short attention span, could understand it. The thesis is: "If any terrorism conceivably could happen, we must assume that it will, and do something about it now, before it is too late." This is itself the very essence of psychological terrorism that the world community is constantly ignoring. ...

Policy of the Nazis of the nineties is now being established in such a manner that any nation capable of posing a threat to US interests at any time in the future is a legitimate target for American attacks. It is the intention of the Nazis in Washington to so bring the nations into such despair that they will gladly give themselves over to the new despotism. They are prepared to give up their hopes and dreams, their religions and economies for the brief promise of rest from the turmoils placed before them. ...

The Nazi regime of the thirties set out to gain control by focusing on three main areas: regulatory, persuasive and intimidatory. Regulation is being done through different UN resolution and their selective enforcement; persuasion is being done through electronic and print media and intimidation through missile strikes from the pirate ships. Resolutions passed by the Security Council in the early nineties have been the catalyst to the transformation of US to a nazified, and the world as a whole to be its centralised state.

In late thirties, the history was transformed to emphasise the superiority of German civilisation, with German heroes coming to the forefront. German failures were either left out of the unit or blamed on the Jews. The same is happening in the late nineties with the American heroes giving details of their ruthless bombings on the CNN with pride in militarism. Like Nazis, the US administration wants to create a static world society whereby nations act unquestionably, and do little thinking for themselves. ...

CNN has become the most effective brainwashing tool, showing no victims of the 400 cruise missiles they way they show Israeli victims of a single Hizbollah rocket. None of us try to wait and reach to the root causes of the issue before making a pro-American mind after seeing these images.

They say "might is right" but this saying cannot be proven in actual history. "Might" just falls harder when it is "not right." The US actions may not have surpassed the Nazi atrocities. But that's today.

Again, let me mention that the above article was written in 1998 and already some of its predictions have been validated. This is the article that made me think of the folk tale of my childhood. When I read the following:

Hitler believed that propaganda had to be very simple, so the average person, with very short attention span, could understand it. The thesis is: "If any terrorism conceivably could happen, we must assume that it will, and do something about it now, before it is too late." This is itself the very essence of psychological terrorism that the world community is constantly ignoring. ...

Put together with this:

"We have to depend upon intervention" he declared on December 8, 1998 and the same views have been expressed by Ashton Carter, John Deutsch and Philip Zelikow, two former high-level Defence Department Officials, and a former staff member of National Security Council, in the Foreign Affairs magazine. This propaganda would justify the US armed attack in any part of the world as "prevention" of the sensed danger. Afghanistan and Sudan were probably the first victims of an undeclared Nazi agenda for dominating the world.

If any terrorism conceivably could happen, we must assume that it will, and do something about it now, before it is too late. This propaganda would justify the US armed attack in any part of the world as "prevention" of the sensed danger.

This leads us to the story of the Three Sillies by Joseph Jacobs:

Once upon a time there was a farmer and his wife who had one daughter, and she was courted by a gentleman. Every evening he used to come and see her, and stop to supper at the farmhouse, and the daughter used to be sent down into the cellar to draw the beer for supper. So one evening she had gone down to draw the beer, and she happened to look up at the ceiling while she was drawing, and she saw a mallet stuck in one of the beams. It must have been there a long, long time, but somehow or other she had never noticed it before, and she began a- thinking. And she thought it was very dangerous to have that mallet there, for she said to herself: “Suppose him and me was to be married, and we was to have a son, and he was to grow up to be a man, and come down into the cellar to draw the beer, like as I’m doing now, and the mallet was to fall on his head and kill him, what a dreadful thing it would be!” And she put down the candle and the jug, and sat herself down and began a-crying.

Well, they began to wonder upstairs how it was that she was so long drawing the beer, and her mother went down to see after her, and she found her sitting on the settle crying, and the beer running over the floor. “Why, whatever is the matter?” said her mother. “Oh, mother!" says she, “look at that horrid mallet! Suppose we was to be married, and was to have a son, and he was to grow up, and was to come down to the cellar to draw the beer, and the mallet was to fall on his head and kill him, what a dreadful thing it would be!” “Dear, dear! what a dreadful thing it would be!” said the mother, and she sat her down aside of the daughter and started a-crying too. Then after a bit the father began to wonder that they didn’t come back, and he went down into the cellar to look after them himself, and there they two sat a- crying, and the beer running all over the floor. “Whatever is the matter?” says he. “Why,” says the mother, “look at that horrid mallet. Just suppose, if our daughter and her sweetheart was to be married, and was to have a son, and he was to grow up, and was to come down into the cellar to draw the beer, and the mallet was to fall on his head and kill him, what a dreadful thing it would be!” “Dear, dear, dear! so it would!” said the father, and he sat himself down aside of the other two, and started a-crying.

Now the gentleman got tired of stopping up in the kitchen by himself, and at last he went down into the cellar too, to see what they were after; and there they three sat a-crying side by side, and the beer running all over the floor. And he ran straight and turned the tap. Then he said: “Whatever are you three doing, sitting there crying, and letting the beer run all over the floor?”

“Oh!” says the father, “look at that horrid mallet! Suppose you and our daughter was to be married, and was to have a son, and he was to grow up, and was to come down into the cellar to draw the beer, and the mallet was to fall on his head and kill him!” And then they all started a-crying worse than before. But the gentleman burst out a- laughing, and reached up and pulled out the mallet, and then he said: "I’ve travelled many miles, and I never met three such big sillies as you three before; and now I shall start out on my travels again, and when I can find three bigger sillies than you three, then I’ll come back and marry your daughter.” So he wished them good-bye, and started off on his travels, and left them all crying because the girl had lost her sweetheart.

Well, he set out, and he travelled a long way, and at last he came to a woman’s cottage that had some grass growing on the roof. And the woman was trying to get her cow to go up a ladder to the grass, and the poor thing durst not go. So the gentleman asked the woman what she was doing. “Why, lookye,” she said, “look at all that beautiful grass. I’m going to get the cow on to the roof to eat it. She’ll be quite safe, for I shall tie a string round her neck, and pass it down the chimney, and tie it to my wrist as I go about the house, so she can’t fall off without my knowing it.” “Oh, you poor silly!” said the gentleman, “you should cut the grass and throw it down to the cow!" But the woman thought it was easier to get the cow up the ladder than to get the grass down, so she pushed her and coaxed her and got her up, and tied a string round her neck, and passed it down the chimney, and fastened it to her own wrist. And the gentleman went on his way, but he hadn’t gone far when the cow tumbled off the roof, and hung by the string tied round her neck, and it strangled her. And the weight of the cow tied to her wrist pulled the woman up the chimney, and she stuck fast half-way and was smothered in the soot.

Well, that was one big silly.

And the gentleman went on and on, and he went to an inn to stop the night, and they were so full at the inn that they had to put him in a double-bedded room, and another traveller was to sleep in the other bed. The other man was a very pleasant fellow, and they got very friendly together; but in the morning, when they were both getting up, the gentleman was surprised to see the other hang his trousers on the knobs of the chest of drawers and run across the room and try to jump into them, and he tried over and over again, and couldn’t manage it; and the gentleman wondered whatever he was doing it for. At last he stopped and wiped his face with his handkerchief. “Oh dear,” he says, "I do think trousers are the most awkwardest kind of clothes that ever were. I can’t think who could have invented such things. It takes me the best part of an hour to get into mine every morning, and I get so hot! How do you manage yours?” So the gentleman burst out a-laughing, and showed him how to put them on; and he was very much obliged to him, and said he never should have thought of doing it that way.

So that was another big silly.

Then the gentleman went on his travels again; and he came to a village, and outside the village there was a pond, and round the pond was a crowd of people. And they had got rakes, and brooms, and pitchforks, reaching into the pond; and the gentleman asked what was the matter. “Why,” they say, “matter enough! Moon’s tumbled into the pond, and we can’t rake her out anyhow!” So the gentleman burst out a- laughing, and told them to look up into the sky, and that it was only the shadow in the water. But they wouldn’t listen to him, and abused him shamefully, and he got away as quick as he could.

So there was a whole lot of sillies bigger than them three sillies at home. So the gentleman turned back home again and married the farmer’s daughter, and if they didn’t live happy for ever after, that’s nothing to do with you or me.

It's a pretty funny story, yes? Most of the silliness of human beings is as generally innocuous as the examples in this story. Of course, the dingbat trying to get the cow on the roof killed her cow and died herself in the exercise of her silliness, so that warns us that our ignorance and simple-mindedness can be fatal. But in general, silliness isn't fatal. It is only fatal when this tendency of human beings is used by those who do not have the best interests of the masses at heart.

Can you imagine what the farmer and his family would have done if the gentleman caller, instead of pointing out that their imaginations were the cause of their distress and that the answer was simple: remove the object that was triggering their imaginations to run wild, had rather decided to play on their fears for his own agenda? What if he wanted to take the land of an enemy? He could have told the farmer and family that this neighbor had planted the mallet in the ceiling to cause exactly the tragedy that the farmer's daughter feared. They would have then taken up their pitchforks and firebrands and gone at once to the home of the declared evildoer, killed him and taken his possessions.

If any terrorism conceivably could happen, we must assume that it will, and do something about it now, before it is too late. This propaganda would justify the US armed attack in any part of the world as "prevention" of the sensed danger.

That is exactly how the American people are being controlled. They have been "hystericized" and this process has been ongoing for the past 50 years or more - since the Nazi scientists were brought back to America from Germany and put to work to help the US achieve global dominance, to become the Seat of the New World Order. As Abid Ullah Jan wrote on 5 Jan 1998:

In his book "The Road to Serfdom," Friedrich Hayek warned Americans in 1944 that despite their military war against Nazis, they were travelling the philosophical and economic road to that the Nazis were travelling. The Americans ignored that warning. Now along the Americans we are left with the consequences that are coming home to roost in the nineties: a government of omnipotent size and power using its power to kill innocent, peaceful citizens at home and abroad. Today, the number of its victims is in the millions. But at the end of this road lie the deadly bombing and concentration camps for the multitudes. ...

It's here, it's now. The only thing that will save us now is a global cataclysm from the "outside." And that will exact its own heavy toll. But maybe that is what is really meant by the "Second Coming?"

Food for thought.

News, Blog, Politics, Life, Ponerology, Current Affairs, Schizoidal Psychopath, Media, Lobaczewski, terrorism

What Can You Do?

2006-02-09T13:19:00.000-05:00

Signs of the Times and Cassiopaea

The other day SOTT received an email from a popular “Activist” website soliciting funds. The message said:

Dear member,

Yesterday 6,613 of us contributed $389,900 towards our $3.5 million field organizing plan for the election, smashing our goal of $250,000 for the week. Amazing. This generosity gives us a great deal of hope--and we've got to keep the momentum going. Can we make it to $600,000 by Friday?

A contribution of $100 from 2,100 more of us will get us there. Can you pitch in? You can contribute by credit card or check at the link below—it takes just a minute.

Wow! In one day they were able to raise $389,900.00 !!! And they are shooting for Three and a Half MILLION? What for?

Well, for their political ads and campaigns.

We wondered just what planet the people live on who gave this kind of money? Haven't they been paying attention? Don't they know that there is absolutely NO possibility that buying political ads or backing political candidates is going to make one bit of difference?

Think about it: Bush and the Neocons have been spying illegally for over a year now, and he has the gall to brag about it and shove it in our faces, and to declare that he's going to continue. In the midst of this uproar, he even gets his court pick accepted ensuring that no legal action will ever be taken against him. And while we are on the subject, just WHO have the Neocons been spying on that were such sensitive targets that they couldn't even be bothered with getting a rubber stamp approval?

The object of the illegal spying wasn't really to target innocent Americans as the Neocons would like us all to think.

Does anyone actually think that Bush and Gang would spend their time listening in on conversations between Junior and his granny in Pakistan? Does anyone seriously think that the arrogant Karl Rove is going to waste his time on “average Americans?” Do you think he - or ANY of them - really think that there are "terrorists" in America?

Of course not. They know that the whole "terrorist threat" is manufactured. They aren't going to waste their time looking for something that they created in their sick imaginations.

So, WHO are they REALLY spying on? And why did they out themselves as Bush did just before Christmas?

Sure, we read that it was done because the NY Times was going to publish a story that they had withheld for over a year. "President George W. Bush was so desperate to stop The New York Times' secret spy program story he summoned Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Executive Editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office to try to talk them out of running it, Newsweek reported on its Web site on Monday."

That smacks of smokescreen. Does anyone really believe that if the President wanted the NY Times to keep quiet that there would be a problem? After Judy Miller? Not a chance.

The whole thing stinks of a smokescreen. So, what are they trying to hide? What are they trying to distract attention away from? As Paul Craig Roberts has written:

We have reached a point where the Bush administration is determined to totally eclipse the people. Bewitched by neoconservatives and lustful for power, the Bush administration and the Republican Party are aligning themselves firmly against the American people. Their first victims, of course, were the true conservatives. Having eliminated internal opposition, the Bush administration is now using blackmail obtained through illegal spying on American citizens to silence the media and the opposition party.

Before flinching at my assertion of blackmail, ask yourself why President Bush refuses to obey the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The purpose of the FISA court is to ensure that administrations do not spy for partisan political reasons. The warrant requirement is to ensure that a panel of independent federal judges hears a legitimate reason for the spying, thus protecting a president from the temptation to abuse the powers of government. The only reason for the Bush administration to evade the court is that the Bush administration had no legitimate reasons for its spying. This should be obvious even to a naif.[...]

The years of illegal spying have given the Bush administration power over the media and the opposition. Journalists and Democratic politicians don't want to have their adulterous affairs broadcast over television or to see their favorite online porn sites revealed in headlines in the local press with their names attached. Only people willing to risk such disclosures can stand up for the country.

So, what other journalists, congressmen, judges, various other government officials are they REALLY spying on? After all, considering the nature of these creatures that have taken over the U.S., you have to know that they are only going to expend their energy on things that will bring them the biggest rewards of money and power. The hoopla about spying on innocent Americans to ferret out terrorists is just a smokescreen; it was, purely and simply, to spy on political opponents, journalists, and to obtain material for blackmail so as to completely control the political process.

And that means that all those hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars even, that are flowing into the coffers of various “Political Action” groups are all going to waste. It's all for nothing. Nothing will change. They will spend your money, make a big show, make a good living off of it, and nothing, NOTHING, will change.

Yes indeed, the desire for change in the country is intense – 60% think America is on the wrong track.

Yes, President Bush is very unpopular. Only 39% approve of him in one poll – his polls are as bad as Nixon's were around Watergate.

No, the news isn't any better for Congress; 63% of Americans want Congress to move in a new direction. Based on very good information it seems that many members of Congress did NOT approve of the confirmation of Samuel Alito. But he was confirmed anyway with some notable Democratic switchovers! (A little domestic spying bearing fruit?)

Yes, it is true that the Republican-controlled Congress' approval ratings are at 29%, but don't think for a minute that the wheels are coming off the right-wing machine. Sure, Karl Rove is under scrutiny, Tom DeLay is under indictment and the Abramoff scandal keeps everyone titillated while the Neocon juggernaut just keeps on stomping across America.

Yes, it is true that everywhere, on all the issues, the people are rejecting the Bush/Neocon agenda from Iraq to Social Security to budget cuts, to funding the war machine, to drilling in the Arctic. But none of it makes one bit of difference to an administration that owns the media, the Intelligence agencies, the military, the Congress and now, the Supreme Court. While the pundits tell us Bush is in trouble, he continues to get his victories on the ground.

Nothing that the political activists have done or said or advertised about has made one whit of difference. Nothing. The same game is being played with Iran that was played with Iraq, and if something doesn't change in a very fundamental way very, very soon, America IS going to be embroiled in a global war that may, indeed, be the end of America.

With so many of our readers writing to us asking “What to do?”, we thought that we would make an experiment. We fought like hell against the Alito confirmation for weeks. We activated our group members, wrote letters, sent emails, made phone calls, sent FAXes, day after day after day. We blogged, we posted to internet forums, we listened to the agreement of hundreds of thousands of people who stood with us against the confirmation of Alito.

We KNOW we were having an effect because, toward the end, there WERE notable congressional reps responding to this pressure and calling for the filibuster. We don't think for a minute that they were serious, we think that rather they were giving lip-service to the idea to calm down all the activists.

The facts “on the ground” are that Alito was confirmed. He was confirmed because the Neocons OWN everything, including the Democrats. It's that simple.

As it now stands, the Republican juggernaut is unbreakable. The corruption scandals, the admitted lying, the low approval ratings, none of that makes any difference. This fall, there is absolutely NO chance of ending the Republican stranglehold on Congress. Anybody who does not see this is deluding themselves and taking you for your money. It's that simple.

As long as the Neocons own the media, the intelligence agencies, the military, the courts, congress AND the voting machines, NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE.

Would it make a difference if the Democrats returned to power?

MoveOn.org, the organisation who's email we cited above, is a front for the Democratic Party in the US. They serve to rally and deflect liberals who want to do something in the face of the Bush gang into doing exactly the kinds of activities that can change nothing. Their latest plan is to try and raise money to fight the Republicans in the next election. What? So that the spineless and equally corrupt Democrats, who have allowed Bush to capture the Supreme Court, illegally spy on Americans, get away with phoney commissions about 9/11, allowed the neo-cons and Israel to get away with 9/11, allowed Israel to continue its genocide of the Palestinians, who say that Bush needs to get serious about the war in Iraq and win it, who may not have received as much money from Abramoff as the Republicans, but who have their own lobbyists and slush funds, be put into power in order to improve things??? Is it really going to change anything? Is any dollar given to this cause going to be better spent than if it were thrown into a fire and burned?

You might as well imagine that Ariel Sharon going to rise from his sickbed and lead the Palestinians to a just and equitable one-state solution.

If there is no political opposition in the United States, if none of this anti-Bush busy work can have any beneficial affect, we come back to the question "What can I do?"

We receive many emails from people asking us this question. They can objectively see the situation in the United States, they understand that the Bush gang are imposing fascism, that the neo-cons and Israel were behind 9/11, that the administration lies, that the US Constitution has been torn into tiny pieces... they understand all that. So they ask us, "What can we do?"

As John Kaminski says with his usual eloquence in his article "Pain in the Brain":

Over and over I keep repeating: It doesn't matter who gets elected. All that stuff is a waste of time. America will continue to bomb and poison the world no matter who's in the White House.... The conversation on the radio show was about peace demonstrations. I commented that large peace events were nice for meeting people, but didn't accomplish anything, except reinforce the hollow illusion that we have free speech in the USA.

Indeed. Letters to the editor, peace marches, petitions, phone calls to your congressmen, these are only symbolic acts, moments when one can take a stand for the truth, doing so with no thought or anticipation to the outcome. They will change nothing... yet.

No amount of money that you give to any political organization is going to make any difference whatsoever.

That's the bad news. Activism based on the old model simply doesn't work against fascism.

Is there any good news? What does work? Can anything work? What can we DO?

We think there IS something that can be done, but it is going to require something that we talk about a lot on this website: Networking, colinearity and nonlinear dynamics. To just briefly explain, colinearity is when a lot of people are networked together, all going in the same direction. Nonlinear dynamics are the laws of physics that tell us that constantly applied pressure can keep building and building until it reaches a “popping” point when EVERYTHING shifts, and no one can know beforehand exactly when, where or how that critical mass will be reached.

We think that the solution to the problems facing America today can't yet be seen because there aren't enough people going in the same direction, all applying the pressure to the same goal/point.

That has got to change. And that can only change by a mass change of thinking. Americans needs to stop wasting energy on the wrong things and start spending it on the right things in the right way at the right time. We think that those who are sincerely working for change need to network together, to support each other not only in word and deed, but financially.

Yes, we have a plan. But like any plan, it requires funding. And unlike useless political plans, we can't reveal all the details because we want the plan to work. For those of you who have figured it out, yes, this is an information war, and we don't have the trillions of dollars that the Pentagon has to wage it. We have very limited funds, in fact.

In order to begin to implement our plan, we are going to need a lot of money. But we aren't asking you for that money, we aren't asking you for $3.25 million like certain political activist groups that don't accomplish anything. We are asking for something quite different. We are asking you to help us fund a real, significant Conscience Network. We already contribute financially to several 9-11 researchers and Activists who are struggling to stay afloat. We need to do more. Every day we see the sincere one, the ones that can't be bought off or co-opted, falling by the wayside, giving up in frustration and despair. Everyday we see the agents of COINTELPRO spreading their clever lies wrapped in truths over an ever widening sphere of influence, and those who can see, those who KNOW, are helpless. If they say a word, the small income they have will be cut off and they will have no further means of continuing to speak out.

That's how it works. First they try to buy off the sincere Truth seeker and speaker. If that doesn't work, then they try to destroy them financially. If that doesn't work, then they try to destroy your reputation. We've seen it and experienced it.

If you read these pages, it is likely to be because you get something from them. Readers of Signs of the Times and the Cassiopaea sites, as well as Laura's books, tell us how much our work means to them. You have come across this work, and it has touched you. It may even have changed you.

You know this to be true.

What if you could help us to support others of like mind, and then to help more and more people to have access to that work? And then, what if those others began to open their eyes and minds to what a true NETWORK is all about?

Up until now limited financial resources have meant that we have not been able to compete with the Pentagon COINTELPRO and Propaganda Budget. We've had to bootstrap every phase of our activity for the past eight years. You, the reader, can see the changes, the development of the site, the spreading influence and increasing readership. That has been due mostly to steady and consistent work, word of mouth advertising, and extremely positive feedback. But, it has now become clear that unless we can get make some serious moves, we will never reach those millions of people that are asking serious questions, thirsting for answers and receiving only lies and disinformation from their government and mainstream media. We won't reach them in time. And if we don't reach them in time, the rest of our plan cannot be put into effect. It all depends on a shift in mass consciousness.

Last year, we asked our readers to help to us raise the money to buy new computer and sound recording equipment in order to improve the services that we offer to our readers free. Thanks to your generosity, the Signs Team has been equipped with the necessary tools to increase our ability to give back, to reach more people, and it has caused a dramatic increase in our readership. More and more people are looking for exactly what Signs of the Times offers: a daily charting of the changing face of our world that keeps our readers abreast of essential information, the news behind the news, that may literally save their lives.

Now, more than ever, as galloping fascism stalks the world, there is a need for as many people as possible to be appraised of the reality of the world in which they live so that this knowledge can be utilised to protect themselves and those they love. It is clear that there is absolutely no chance that the mainstream media will ever provide this service to the people of the world.

It is also clear that there are plans afoot to shut down the Internet as a source of alternative news and points of view that point out the lies, that give people an accurate account of what is happening on our planet, and that demand that the will of the majority be respected. When that happens, sites like Signs of the Times will no longer be available, the information that you get today for free will not even be available if you were willing to pay. To prepare for this, we have been publishing as much of our material as possible as books. To date, we have books totalling over 4000 pages. We have plans for much more during the coming year.

But the books serve no purpose if they sit on shelves or boxed up in cartons. They need to move, they need to get out into bookstores, and from bookstores into homes. For that, we need to advertise. And that costs money. People thirsty for knowledge need the opportunity to learn about our work so that they, too, will understand the gravity of the situation we face and can see the possibility of a different way of living, of be ing.

We CAN make a difference; we just have to go about it in an altogether different way than has been tried up to this point. We need a bootstrap to the next level. That's what we are asking you for.

But we don't have much time. We need to work fast. The Darkness is falling and we need a lot of fuel to keep the lighthouse going. As Bob Dylan put, “It's not dark yet, but it's getting there”.

If every one of our daily readers could give $100.00 to help us counter the propaganda of the dark forces occupying America and open the eyes of others to the infinite possibilities of a colinear network pushing the envelope, we could create a network of Light and Truth that will shine from Sea to Shining Sea.

At this point, none of us have anything to lose anymore, except the last vestiges of our freedom. So, please, dig as deep as you can TODAY. If you can't possibly afford $100, then give what you can. It's time to Rock and Roll!

Click here to donate now!
News, Blog, Politics, Life, alternative news, Current Affairs, fundraiser, Media,

Experts Claim Official 9/11 Story is a Hoax

2006-02-03T15:21:00.000-05:00

Scholars for 9/11 Truth call for verification and publication by an international consortium.

Duluth, MN (PRWEB) January 30, 2006 -- A group of distinguished experts and scholars, including Robert M. Bowman, James H. Fetzer, Wayne Madsen, John McMurtry, Morgan Reynolds, and Andreas von Buelow, have concluded that senior government officials have covered up crucial facts about what really happened on 9/11.

They have joined with others in common cause as members of "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" (S9/11T), because they are convinced, based on their own research, that the administration has been deceiving the nation about critical events in New York and Washington, D.C.

These experts suggest these events may have been orchestrated by elements within the administration to manipulate Americans into supporting policies at home and abroad they would never have condoned absent "another Pearl Harbor."

They believe that this White House is incapable of investigating itself and hope the possibility that Congress might hold an unaccountable administration accountable is not merely naive or wishful thinking.

They are encouraging news services around the world to secure scientific advice by taking advantage of university resources to verify or to falsify their discoveries. Extraordinary situations, they believe, require extraordinary measures.

If this were done, they contend, one of the great hoaxes of history would stand naked before the eyes of the world and its perpetrators would be clearly exposed, which may be the only hope for saving this nation from ever greater abuse.

They hope this might include The New York Times, which, in their opinion, has repeatedly failed to exercise the leadership expecedt from our nation's newspaper of record by a series of inexplicable lapses. It has failed to vigorously investigate tainted elections, lies leading to the war in Iraq, or illegal NSA spying on the American people, major unconstitutional events. In their view, The Times might compensate for its loss of stature by helping to reveal the truth about one of the great turning-point events of modern history.

Stunning as it may be to acknowledge, they observe, the government has brought but one indictment against anyone and, to the best of their knowledge, has not even reprimanded anyone for incompetence or dereliction of duty. The official conspiracy theory--that nineteen Arab hijackers under control of one man in the wilds of Afghanistan brought this about--is unsupportable by the evidential data, which they have studied. They even believe there are good reasons for suspecting that video tapes officially attributed to Osama bin Laden are not genuine.

They have found the government's own investigiation to be severely flawed. The 9/11 Commission, designated to investigate the attack, was directed by Philip Zelikow, part of the Bush transition team in the NSA sector and the co-author of a book with Condoleezza Rice. A Bush supporter and director of national security affairs, he could hardly be expected to conduct an objective and impartial investigation.

They have discovered that The 9/11 Commission Report is replete with omissions, distortions, and factual errors, which David Ray Griffin has documented in his book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. The official report, for example, entirely ignores the collapse of WTC7, a 47-story building, which was hit by no airplanes, was only damaged by a few small fires, and fell seven hours after the attack.

Here are some of the kinds of considerations that these experts and scholar find profoundly troubling:

* In the history of structural engineering, steel-frame high-rise buildings have never been brought down due to fires either before or since 9/11, so how can fires have brought down three in one day? How is this possible?

* The BBC has reported that at least five of the nineteen alleged "hijackers" have turned up alive and well living in Saudi Arabia, yet according to the FBI, they were among those killed in the attacks. How is this possible?

* Frank DeMartini, a project manager for the WTC, said the buildings were designed with load redistribution capabilities to withstand the impact of airliners, whose effects would be like "puncturing mosquito netting with a pencil." Yet they completely collapsed. How is this possible?

* Since the melting point of steel is about 2,700*F, the temperature of jet fuel fires does not exceed 1,800*F under optimal conditions, and UL certified the steel used to 2,000*F for six hours, the buildings cannot have collapsed due to heat from the fires. How is this possible?

* Flight 77, which allegedly hit the building, left the radar screen in the vicinity of the Ohio/Kentucky border, only to "reappear" in very close proximity to the Pentagon shortly before impact. How is this possible?

* Foreign "terrorists" who were clever enough to coordinate hijacking four commercial airliners seemingly did not know that the least damage to the Pentagon would be done by hitting its west wing. How is this possible?

* Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, in an underground bunker at the White House, watched Vice President Cheney castigate a young officer for asking, as the plane drew closer and closer to the Pentagon, "Do the orders still stand?" The order cannot have been to shoot it down, but must have been the opposite. How is this possible?

* A former Inspector General for the Air Force has observed that Flight 93, which allegedly crashed in Pennsylvania, should have left debris scattered over an area less than the size of a city block; but it is scattered over an area of about eight square miles. How is this possible?

* A tape recording of interviews with air traffic controllers on duty on 9/11 was deliberately crushed, cut into very small pieces, and distributed in assorted places to insure its total destruction. How is this possible?

* The Pentagon conducted a training exercise called "MASCAL" simulating the crash of a Boeing 757 into the building on 24 October 2000, and yet Condoleezza Rice, among others, has repeatedly asserted that "no one ever imagined" a domestic airplane could be used as a weapon. How is this possible?

Their own physics research has established that only controlled demolitions are consistent with the near-gravity speed of fall and virtually symmetrical collapse of all three of the WTC buildings. While turning concrete into very fine dust, they fell straight-down into their own footprints.

These experts and scholars have found themselves obliged to conclude that the 9/11 atrocity represents an instance of the approach--which has been identified by Karl Rove, the President's closest adviser--of "creating our own reality."
News, Blog, Politics, Life, 9/22, Current Affairs, conspiracy, Media, hoax

Bridge Over Troubled Waters

2006-01-30T19:29:00.000-05:00

Bridge Over Troubled Waters

SOTT
Laura Knight-Jadczyk
January 30, 2006

Smoking Mirrors: And Down Will Come Baby, Cradle and All.

Reading the above linked blog nearly made me cry. Why? Well, because I have heard the same frustration and despair expressed by other sincere activists for World Peace in the past couple of weeks. The despair of the front line is setting in. Yes, it looks like COINTELPRO is winning. The depression is spreading among those who have been keeping up the good fight for so long; we are succumbing to the disease. But is that really true?

Perhaps with understanding we can find a remedy, a Bridge Over Troubled Water.

When you're weary, feeling small, when tears are in your eyes, I’ll dry them all. I'm on your side, oh, when times get rough and friends just can't be found, like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.
When you're down and out, when you're on the street, when evening falls so hard, I’ll comfort you. I'll take your part, oh, when darkness comes and pain is all around, like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.

Sail on silver girl, sail on by. Your time has come to shine, All your dreams are on their way. See how they shine, oh and when you need a friend, I'm sailing right behind Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind. [© 1969 Paul Simon]

First of all, I think that Lobaczewski has produced about the most valuable document for our times (or any times) that I have ever encountered. Every activist needs to read this material and read it carefully. You can't go into battle without studying the opposition, knowing their strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and so on. Lobaczewski and those other activists and resistance fighters have already been through this. They studied it and mapped it. And the fact is, if you don't study what you are up against, you will make stupid mistakes, you will think you are winning when you are losing, and conversely, you will think you are losing when the opponent is just bluffing.

This information is crucial. A good activist can NOT ignore it. He or she does so only at his or her own peril. Yeah, sure, it seems like a huge burden to have to deal with accusations and counter-accusations in the COINTELPRO world, but if we don't, we are toast. As Lobaczewski tells us:

"If physicians behaved like ethicists, i.e. left in the shadow of their personal experience of relatively un-esthetic disease phenomena because they were primarily interested in studying questions of physical and mental hygiene, there would be no such thing as modern medicine. Even the roots of this health-maintenance science would be hidden in similar shadows. In spite of the fact that the theory of hygiene has been linked to medicine since its ancient beginnings, physicians were correct in their emphasis upon studying disease above all. They risked their own health and suffered sacrifices in order to discover the causes and biological properties of illnesses and, afterwards, to understand the patho-dynamics of the courses of these illnesses. A comprehension of the nature of a disease, and the course it runs, after all, enables the proper curative means to be elaborated. "[Political Ponerology]

Just now, activists are the physicians of society. We can't do a thing if we don't know the nature of the disease and that is what Lobaczewski lays out for us in all its horrible detail. We don't want to give up in despair thinking we have incurable cancer when it is just the measles or something that must run its course and can lead to full recovery if proper nursing is applied.

The questions about COINTELPRO backed groups and individuals MUST be asked, but it must be asked in the proper context. The question is: Are such groups and individuals just "victims" of the social disease, or are they vectors? Are they innocently manipulated by the special psychological knowledge of those with serious psychological pathologies, or are they carriers?

Either way, COINTELPRO is deliberate and planned at some level, whether the individual or group is privy to that planning or merely it's dupe. The REAL "enemies" are those individuals pulling his strings. The bottom line is, if the individual cannot be cured, if their egos are so big they cannot admit that they have been or are being manipulated, then those who seek "health" need to contain them like Typhoid Mary.

Modern COINTELPRO has been developed to an all new level of complexity and sophistication even if they still use many of the old tried and true methods of defamation and slander. After all, they have had access to some excellent talent to figure out how the human mind works and to know how to get to people and even to "trigger" them at a distance. I'm not talking about mysterious "mind control" experiments here, but simple psychological knowledge, though I won't discount the direct experimentation. After all, if you have some control over what kind of psychological "diet" is being fed to a society, you can pretty well set them up to do what you want right there in front of God and everybody. Education, religion, television, video games, control of the media for "ideological vectoring," etc. It's a pretty formidable array.

But again, most of it is "terror tactics." We need to study it and find the curative means and employ them.

For example, John Kaminski and Kurt Nimmo have come under COINTELPRO fire quite a bit lately. They are accused of being on the CIA payroll, of being "ex-Navy intell" and so on. How do you tell the difference? If they say they are not, that's what everybody expects them to say if they ARE. It's also what they would say if they aren't. People tend to forget that. It's like Bush pointing the finger at Iraq saying "You have WMD and because you say you don't, you are obviously lying." Then, of course, the truth came out that Iraq was telling the truth. But for a considerable period of time, lots of people bought into the "plausible lie" argument. You might want to reread all the COINTELPRO posts here, especially the one about the above mentioned "Plausible lies," and try to remember that when two people are each saying something completely opposite, it is NOT usually a case of the truth being somewhere in the middle: one of them may very well be lying and the other telling the truth and nothing but the truth. I wrote there:

The truth - when twisted by good liars, can always make an innocent person look bad - especially if he is honest and admits that he has faults. If someone is telling the simple truth, and the other side is lying through their teeth, the basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side telling the truth. Under most circumstances, this shift put together with the fact that the truth is going to also be twisted in such a way as to bring detriment to the innocent person, results in the advantage always resting in the hands of liars.

Also, when you read the post about Plausible lies, you will read something else: how to evaluate the two sides:

Proof is a familiar concept to those used to conventional logical thinking. However what passes for proof in cultural, social, and even legal terms often bears only a superficial resemblance to what would be considered proof by those who really use their minds to think.

For example: in formal mathematics, proof rules are established - postulates are set out and a structure is built based on the postulates and the theorem. Mathematical proof is pretty much inarguable: once a proof is accepted as true it is added to the pool of known truths.

In legal proof there is a set of rules and a theory which the prosecution presents, and attempts to prove the theory by clever argumentation rather than facts. Truth is not the objective. Getting other people to believe the theory is the objective. However, the prosecution's theory is whatever the prosecutor believes that he can get away with based on what is known about the case, or what he can PREVENT from being known. What legal 'proof' does is serve as a structure for convincing a group of people of the guilt of a person, about whom they know nothing.

There is another significant difference: Mathematical proofs are judged by experts in the particular case who are free to study any and all information about the case. Legal 'proof' is judged by people who are guaranteed to be ignorant of the case, who are only allowed to study the information presented during the formal trial, and who are not even allowed to consult the texts for what the rules say.

Our culture is so permeated with this “legal argument” system that it extends into our daily experience: the one who is the slickest at using the structure for convincing a group of people of something, is the one who is believed. Very few people take the time to obtain hard facts by carefully studying any and all information about a situation.

How do I know John Kaminski and Kurt Nimmo are not disinformation artists or in the pay of the CIA or Navy intelligence? I have done due diligence. Not only do they use their real names, they also have a real history of their public life and deeds that is written in an open book for anyone who cares to read it. I also know from personal information that if the CIA has them on their payroll, they haven't ever sent any checks and both of them struggle to survive every day just like the rest of us. They need help and they aren't getting it.

Speaking of which: We (Ark and I and our research group) are portrayed as either beneficiaries of funds from George Soros, French Intell, CIA, or we are thieves who take people in, fleece them by scaring them to death, and then cast them aside like used kleenex. Here is one of the latest posted to a public BB:

Anonymous Coward User ID: 67366 1/28/2006 6:01 AMRe: Ok, enough about Nancy and the Zetas. What do you all know about Laura and the Cassiopaeans?

Is LKJ the same as Il_Bagattel on STA?

'ill bagman' is not laura

he is a retired used car salesman and health food drink peddler from newport beach CA, in his early sixties he means well but is a total C dupe, fanatical, obsessed

he sold his property in CA for over half a mil and followed the cult to france he read some C crapola about CA falling into the ocean, and he was genuinely afraid! laura reinforced the conviction and invited him intor her spider's web

he moved in to the castleopia dungeons but was within days, due to his rather cloying used car salesman personality, made unwelcome by the cult - some of the cultists said he was making unwelcome sexual advances and remarks to younger female C dupes he was banished to a local village nearby, where he still remains the village idiot

what happened to his money?

LOL, take a guess

but even though he was ostracised he still is so mind controlled that he suffers from stockholm syndrome and thus constantly writes (at STA mainly) about apoclayptic and other paranoid crapola but always referencing the larks and Cs and always in a good 'light'

he is a very sad man and he has no idea how his life has been ruined by these archons - no idea

that story can be repeated in many other cases, and i hesitate to guess quite how many, and quite how much money and property has been stolen by these 2 hucksterfrauds, not to mention minds and lives and shattered relationships and marriages

i wonder if the larks understand the concept of karma?

roll on interpol please DO YOUR JOB

webmaster@maar.us

How to deal with nonsense like that? And believe me, this is a mild example. You ain't been COINTELPROd professionally until there are websites set up for the express purpose of destroying your reputation and thusly your ability to do anything positive for others in this battle against Fascism we face today! I reckon we are about the most attacked people on the net, and we were being attacked when it wasn't fashionable. Maybe we're onto something?

Now, you want the truth? Can't you handle the earth-shaking revelation?

First of all, the individual referred to above is not a "used car salesman" or "health food drink peddler" except in the mind of the writer who denigrates him, and seeks to dirty everything he touches, especially us. The man's father was a Car dealer in the American Midwest. The individual in question owned several nightclubs in large cities there; he also was a musician and played drums in a couple of well-known 60s and 70s rock bands. Later, he joined a large vitamin manufacturer as marketing director. Normal life story. But somehow his life was cheapened and vulgarized in a few, short, sentences constructed by a psychopath.

This individual has been a long time reader of our website, a discussion group member, an activist, (he led a movement to stop the building of an airport in CA that would have destroyed an ecologically sensitive environment), and supporter. When he reached retirement age, he saw what was coming in the US - POLITICALLY and economically - and decided he wanted to retire to Europe. Yes, he was scared - nobody in their right mind wouldn't be - , and yes, he thought earthquakes in California were likely at some point in the future (as do many experts), but that isn't what was driving him: his main fear was Bush and the Neocons. Rightly so.

So, he wanted to get out. Since we were the only people he knew in Europe, and since we could sponsor him to come here, it was only natural that we do so. Yes, he sold his house before moving; that's natural. Yes, he stayed with us for 6 months while looking for his "ideal house," and then moved in there. I have no idea how much money he has or how much he made on the sale of his house. He helped out with groceries while he was here, made a loan to us when we needed additional funds to try to get a mortgage to buy a house (that fell through - loans get repaid) but that was it. We helped him, he helped us and that is pretty simple and ordinary stuff in anyone's life. But see what has been made of it? See the filthy allusions and insinuations? See how it has been twisted to contribute "proof" to the claim that we are just con-artists and run a doomsday cult?

Well, obviously, anyone who reads the work on our website knows better. That is why we take note of the sites that do and do not link to us. That is why it was so interesting to observe the reactions to the Pentagon Strike video which I have written about earlier. After the Washington Post made the mistake of publishing a link to our website, all of the damage control machine went to work and the ONE thing they wanted to avoid at ALL costs was publishing a link to our website.

We must scare them to death.

And I should note that the writer of the above nastiness is very likely Vincent Bridges, best buddy and co-author with Jay Weidner, who is best buddy of Jeff Rense. You know, you can follow these links around and with a little digging, figure out who is who... (hint)

Meanwhile, of course, Jeff Rense got listed on a government website as a major source of disinformation. As Robin Ramsay, Editor of Lobster, writes in February's issue of Fortean Times:

Recently, the US State Department has begun trying to rebut some of the current conspiracy theories about America. Their first targets were a couple of websites - www.rense.com and Conspiracy Planet - and the late Joe Vialls, an Australian. What a boost for the named sites! Attacked by the State Department![...]

[Y]ou don't have to be a PR genius to see that what you simply mustn't do is launch official attacks: all they do is amplify and legitimise the theories by announcing that they are deemed to be worth attacking. [Fortean Times 206, February 2006, p. 19]

Even though, as I noted in an earlier post here, Carol Morello of the Washington Post asserted that our Pentagon Strike video was single-handedly responsible for re-awakening the public interest in the "No-Boeing at the Pentagon" theory first put forward by Thierry Meyssan, never, EVER, have we been frontally attacked by any government agency. Nor will we be. As Ramsay notes above: "[Y]ou don't have to be a PR genius to see that what you simply mustn't do is launch official attacks: all they do is amplify and legitimise the theories by announcing that they are deemed to be worth attacking."

So certainly, we would expect real COINTELPRO operations to be attacked "officially" in order to legitimize them, (and that's what they did for Jeff Rense), but those who have figured out the real answers will not be martyred - at least not by the official government. It's way too dangerous. Rather, they will be crucified by "Third Party Agents" of COINTELPRO such as Vincent Bridges and his gang of cyber-psychos. And certainly, it is effective.

The problem is, because so few people really think, and most people are really programmed by the "Cult of the Plausible Lie," when folks like Vincent Bridges and his buddy Storm Bear repeat this nonsense over and over again (and it started back in 2001), the average person tends to think "where there's smoke, there's fire." They don't know that it's ALL smoke and somebody else is blowing it!

The word "cult" has been deliberately made so pejorative that people actually cringe when they hear it. It was used with effective results in relation to the Jonestown people, the Branch Davidians at Waco, the Solar Temple, Heaven's Gate, etc. I certainly thought that those situations were as they were presented by the media myself at the time they happened. It was only later when WE were painted with the same brush that I started to wonder if there wasn't some psy-ops going on there: a deliberate manipulation of people's minds. I started looking into it and it sure looks that way. Do your own research, don't take my word for it.

What matters now is that 90 % or more of the US population still believe the lies about those people. (And I'm not defending their beliefs, whatever they might have been, just their right to have them and live peacefully which they were NOT permitted to do. They were hounded and flamed and infiltrated and lied about until they became so paranoid that they began to act erratically which then led to their destruction. Pure psychological manipulation.) I should mention here that the chief ranter of "cult, cult, cult!" in the case of the Waco tragedy, was Rick Ross, good buddy of Vinnie Bridges and Jay Weidner and probably, by extension, though it is hidden, Jeff Rense. (It is known that Rense has some decided Zionist connections so it strikes me that he could be a tar baby to collect all the anti-Zionist folks together, get info on them, and then subject them to later attacks by seemingly disconnected sources. There are also Zionist connections to Weidner and Bridges, by the way, and most definitely to Rick Ross.) By the way, has anybody but me noticed Jeff's ostensible "Christian Cult" bias?

Are we a cult? Hell no. If anything, we are anti-religion and anti-belief in anything. We prefer to collect data and assign probabilities based on scientific analysis. The REAL cults are protected by the so-called "anti-cult" people. They pretend to be "anti-cult" all the while they are subtly promoting a quite different agenda. Take a look at the maar.us website, the ostensible source of the libelous post I quoted above. This is supposed to stand for "Malevolent Alien Abduction Research." Now, get this: Colleen Johnston is saying that aliens are malevolent. WE are saying that, if aliens really exist as a great deal of evidence suggests they do, then they are malevolent because that is what the evidence points to. So what's Colleen's problem? Why does she have a beef with me?

Easy. And I'll tell you how I know. There are two people on her private discussion group who got curious about me because she wrote so vicious an article about me. (I don't think she wrote it, I think that Vinnie Bridges wrote it in her name - part of the COINTELPRO Greek Chorus strategy). So, these people came to our site to examine the evidence by reading the material we publish. Apparently, they were so disgusted with Colleen's obvious agenda, that they decided to forward to me all the exchanges she has with her group, her "teachings," so to say. It's quite a collection.

Reading this material was truly saddening:the blind leading the blind, but more than that, it was worrisome. You see, Colleen Johnston tells her followers that faith in Jesus is what is going to save them from Malevolent aliens.

Yup. Not a joke. And if they keep getting raped and abused (and how they glory in their descriptions of the "disgusting" sexual encounters with their reptoid tormenters!), then it is obviously because they haven't gotten the exact shade of feeling of faith to ward them off. Either that or it's "god's will" that they suffer.

Now, how can you be angry at something that ignorant and pathetic? (And by the way, if you want to listen in on a real exorcism where I never ONCE mention the name "Jesus," and do the job quite effectively anyway, go to our podcasts and listen to the one on "Channeling and Exorcism")

In any event, the "anti-cult" ranters have done a pretty effective job of making people afraid of the word to the point that it's like the Kitty Genovese case... a person can be being murdered - psychically, psychologically, and even literally - by these thugs and nobody will help because they are afraid of getting tarred with the same brush.

And THAT is the point. That's what COINTELPRO is set up to do. To divide and conquer the TRUE patriots and activists by slime propagated by the Third Party Attack Protocol.

Those who are really working for truth and peace will be attacked and marginalized. And then, if somebody starts to notice anything strange about this, they will set up "fake" attacks on each other to allay suspicion. No sooner had I made a public comment about the fact that Jeff Rense seemed to be curiously untouched by all of this than, lo and behold, within a few days he started publishing articles about how nasty letters were written to him from Zionists and his guests were being "threatened." However, he has never published an article about how *I*, as his guest, was certainly flamed and threatened by his pals Jay Weidner and Vincent Bridges and HE published it himself.

And then along comes Daryl Bradford Smith with his "diet coke COINTELRPO" attack on Rense - you know, the flame with just one calorie?

The other day I saw another piece on Rense.com about how the nasty Zionists were making anonymous phone calls to one of his guests and how upset that guest was. Well, gee whiz, I wish I ONLY got nasty anonymous phone calls! After many, MANY death threats, our names and address were published on the internet with invitations for some right thinking Neocon Zionists in our area to "take care" of us. Not long after, two of my children were nearly killed, (the car was totaled when an anonymous vehicle attacker deliberately ran my daughter off the road and if it hadn't been a Volvo, she would have been killed), our dog was poisoned, and we had enough. And then, of course, the "Greek Chorus" starts chanting: "oh, they are pretending to be activists but they really ran away because they are a cult and fleece people."

Yeah, right.

The problem is, the other side has no limits on what they can and WILL do. Every unethical option is open to them. It is NOT open to those who seek truth. For them, the end justifies the means. For us, the end IS the means: truth, as much as we can figure out, shouted as loudly as we can shout it. (Within safe limits, of course.)

But that doesn't mean that we can't take pages from their playbook.

We notice that their main weapon is something like a combination of a Greek Chorus and "clappers" planted in the audience, while the spellbinding actor weaves his illusion "onstage." It is a kind of psychological "herding" and "corraling."

I don't see anything wrong at all with utilizing a similar tactic.

But to do something like that, you have to have a network and that has to be created very carefully in order to weed out the "agents." That's where studying the phenomenon and doing due diligence comes in.

If such a thing could be done, if such a group would come out in force whenever they see the stalker attacking a "Kitty Genovese", (i.e. any one of the members of said network), the network would come out in force and make it clear that they are not going to tolerate attacks on people who have proved themselves by their bona fides, and by their work.

The problem with forming such a unified network is Ego. So many people are invested in their beliefs and they have to hang on to them and if somebody over there doesn't believe the same way they do, they don't feel that they ought to support them. What we have to understand from the start is that most of these beliefs are part of the program. One has to be completely ruthless in examining the self and what one believes in order to get free of this stuff. Effectively that means that anyone who is attached to a "savior" scenarios is probably part of the program whether he or she is conscious of it or not. There aren't any saviors! No Jesus, no Avatar, no Aliens are gonna help haul our buns out of the fire. It's all up to us! That's it. And we can only do it with knowledge and awareness! But the kind of knowledge and awareness we need cannot be gotten alone!

Our Quantum Future Group has made a huge difference. Yeah, Vinnie and gang like to rant "cult" about the fact that we have a private, members-only group, and it's hard as hell to get in, but I can guaran-damn-tee that this is only because the PTB are afraid of people actually learning how to work together without egos. It's all about relationships and networking to do real research with all biases removed.

QFG is a blessing to me for a lot of reasons and one of these is that it is the members of this group that keep me fighting. Because many of them are there, in the U.S., even though I am here in France and could just relax and retire and let the world go to hell or let somebody else do the work. Heck, I'm 54 this year, I don't have a lot of years left so why am I wearing myself out? I could shuck the whole nonsense, free myself of the grief that I suffer when I am unjustly attacked, the suffering my family has gone through because of those psychopaths, quit working 16 hour days, and just read and watch movies and prune roses. But I can't do that. There are too many people that I love. I will fight for them until I am cut down and I believe that they will do the same for me. I could be wrong, but I don't think so - they are very special people, every one of them!

Yes, there has been a period of "weeding out" COINTELPRO - that's a necessary stage for any group that hopes to remain cohesive and work toward a common goal. Those who have the seeds of selfishness have fallen away under various trials. In this sense, people like Vinnie and Jay are useful. Those who have the instinct for truth can see through them and their lies, and those who prefer lies because it makes things simple and keeps people from being mad at them for bucking the PTB, get taken in. Lobaczewski calls it "transpersonification." It's really that simple. We interact with people daily, monthly, year after year, and because of this they know us on a consistent, personal basis. Most of our group members have been to visit us and have visited each other. This group works together, researches together, and that means that each of them give of themselves daily just like in a family.

When you get to know people personally in such an exchange, you begin to care about them in a deep way. Our group is our real family and families help each other. The neighbors would not have ignored Kitty Genovese's cries for help if they had known her and interacted with her daily, or if they had been family, even "extended" family.

That's what is missing in the Anti-war and 9-11 truth movement. People working together, knowing each other well and personally, leaving their egos and prejudices at the door, doing good research with protocols, sharing and supporting each other for the sake of the goal and not personal fame and glory. The network needs to grow.

The members of the Quantum Future Group are our "Bridge Over Troubled Water." They work tirelessly alongside us on the "frontline," even if we do try to shield them from the flak and take the direct hits from the COINTELPRO gangs ourselves. We are able to stand up and do that because they are behind us, passing the ammunition, food and water, necessary intell, providing distractions and cover fire, and all kinds of things that can be expressed in battle metaphors. The cavalry may make the charge and attract the fire, but it cannot be successful without a kitchen, without an infirmary, without covering artillery fire, and without reconnaissance and foot soldiers.

So, the bottom line is, as long as the Quantum Future Group exists, as long as children who need a future exist, I'm not ready to give up yet. There is way too much at stake. Maybe I am clinging to hope because I am a mother and I want a future for my children and my extended family and their children. Maybe that hope is self-deception, just as a mother might cling to hope that her child will survive some terminal illness. I'll admit that up front. But even so, if my "child" dies, it won't be because I didn't do everything I could, right up to the last instant. And believe me, a desperate mother can be pretty creative when her child's life is at stake. There are all kinds of stories about mothers who did not take the diagnosis as the last word, who did their own research, who found new remedies, and who, in the end, healed their children by virtue of stubbornness, refusal to give up, and just plain cussedness. They can call me crazy, they can laugh at me, accuse me of whatever slime their filthy brains can come up with, gossip about me, flame and abuse me; it has nothing to do with me, and I ain't quittin'. I'll be your Bridge Over Troubled Water.

News, Blog, Politics, Life, COINTELPRO, Current Affairs, Rants, Media,

Return of the Puppet Masters: Ponerological Implications of Toxoplasmosis

2006-01-24T16:25:00.000-05:00

The Return of the Puppet Masters
Carl Zimmer
17 Jan 06

Are brain parasites altering the personalities of three billion people? The question emerged a few years ago, and it shows no signs of going away.

I first encountered this idea while working on my book Parasite Rex. I was investigating the remarkable ability parasites have to manipulate the behavior of their hosts. The lancet fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum, for example, forces its ant host to clamp itself to the tip of grass blades, where a grazing mammal might eat it. It's in the fluke's interest to get eaten, because only by getting into the gut of a sheep or some other grazer can it complete its life cycle. Another fluke, Euhaplorchis californiensis, causes infected fish to shimmy and jump, greatly increasing the chance that wading birds will grab them.

Those parasites were weird enough, but then I got to know Toxoplasma gondii. This single-celled parasite lives in the guts of cats, sheddding eggs that can be picked up by rats and other animals that can just so happen be eaten by cats. Toxoplasma forms cysts throughout its intermediate host's body, including the brain. And yet a Toxoplasma-ridden rat is perfectly healthy. That makes good sense for the parasite, since a cat would not be particularly interested in eating a dead rat. But scientists at Oxford discovered that the parasite changes the rats in one subtle but vital way.

The scientists studied the rats in a six-foot by six-foot outdoor enclosure. They used bricks to turn it into a maze of paths and cells. In each corner of the enclosure they put a nest box along with a bowl of food and water. On each the nests they added a few drops of a particular odor. On one they added the scent of fresh straw bedding, on another the bedding from a rat's nests, on another the scent of rabbit urine, on another, the urine of a cat. When they set healthy rats loose in the enclosure, the animals rooted around curiously and investigated the nests. But when they came across the cat odor, they shied away and never returned to that corner. This was no surprise: the odor of a cat triggers a sudden shift in the chemistry of rat brains that brings on intense anxiety. (When researchers test anti-anxiety drugs on rats, they use a whiff of cat urine to make them panic.) The anxiety attack made the healthy rats shy away from the odor and in general makes them leery of investigating new things. Better to lie low and stay alive.

Then the researchers put Toxoplasma-carrying rats in the enclosure. Rats carrying the parasite are for the most part indistinguishable from healthy ones. They can compete for mates just as well and have no trouble feeding themselves. The only difference, the researchers found, is that they are more likely to get themselves killed. The scent of a cat in the enclosure didn't make them anxious, and they went about their business as if nothing was bothering them. They would explore around the odor at least as often as they did anywhere else in the enclosure. In some cases, they even took a special interest in the spot and came back to it over and over again.

The scientists speculated that Toxoplasma was secreted some substance that was altering the patterns of brain activity in the rats. This manipulation likely evolved through natural selection, since parasites that were more likely to end up in cats would leave more offpsring.

The Oxford scientists knew that humans can be hosts to Toxoplasma, too. People can become infected by its eggs by handling soil or kitty litter. For most people, the infection causes no harm. Only if a person's immune system is weak does Toxoplasma grow uncontrollably. That's why pregnant women are advised not to handle kitty litter, and why toxoplasmosis is a serious risk for people with AIDS. Otherwise, the parasite lives quietly in people's bodies (and brains). It's estimated that about half of all people on Earth are infected with Toxoplasma.

Given that human and rat brains have a lot of similarities (they share the same basic anatomy and use the same neurotransmitters), a question naturally arose: if Toxoplasma can alter the behavior of a rat, could it alter a human? Obviously, this manipulation would not do the parasite any good as an adaptation, since it's pretty rare for a human to be devoured by a cat. But it could still have an effect.

Some scientists believe that Toxoplasma changes the personality of its human hosts, bringing different shifts to men and women. Parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague administered psychological questionnaires to people infected with Toxoplasma and controls. Those infected, he found, show a small, but statistically significant, tendency to be more self-reproaching and insecure. Paradoxically, infected women, on average, tend to be more outgoing and warmhearted than controls, while infected men tend to be more jealous and suspicious.

It's controversial work, disputed by many. But it attracted the attention of E. Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Torrey and his colleagues had noticed some intriguing links between Toxoplasma and schizophrenia. Infection with the parasite has been associated with damage to a certain class of neurons (astrocytes). So has schizophrenia. Pregnant women with high levels of Toxoplasma antibodies in their blood were more likely to give birth to children who would later develop schizophrenia. Torrey lays out more links in this 2003 paper. While none is a smoking gun, they are certainly food for thought. It's conceivable that exposure to Toxoplasma causes subtle changes in most people's personality, but in a small minority, it has more devastating effects.

A year later, Torrey and his colleagues discovered one more fascinating link. They raised human cells in Petri dishes and infected them with Toxoplasma. Then they dosed the cells with a variety of drugs used to treat schizophrenia. Several of the drugs--most notably haloperidol--blocked the growth of the parasite.

So Fuller and the Oxford scientists joined forces to find an answer to the next logical question: can drugs used to treat schizophrenia help a parasite-crazed rat? They now report their results in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (press release). They ran the original tests on 49 more rats. Once again, parasitized rats lost their healthy fear of cats. Then the researchers treated the rats with haloperidol and several other anti-psychotic drugs. They found that the drugs made the rats more scared. They also found that the antipsychotics were as effective as pyrimethamine, a drug that is specifically used to eliminate Toxoplasma.

There's plenty left to do to turn these results into a full-blown explanation of parasites and personalities. For example, what is Toxoplasma releasing into brains to manipulate its hosts? And how does that substance give rise to schizophrenia in some humans? And even if the hypothesis does hold up, it would only account for some cases of schizophrenia, while the cause of others would remain undiscovered. But still...the idea that parasites are tinkering with humanity's personality--perhaps even giving rise to cultural diversity--is taking over my head like a bad case of Toxoplasma.

Comment: Now this is really scary considering something the C's said almost ten years ago:

9 August 1997
Q: Next question: is there any relationship between the fact that Roger de Mortimer,the carrier of the last of the line of the Welsh kings, was the lover of Isabella of France, who was the daugther of Philip the Fair, the destroyer of the Templars, and the murder of Edward II, the first of the English Prince of Wales?

A: Templars are a setup, insofar as persecution is concerned. Remember your "historical records" can be distorted, in order to throw off future inquiries, such as your own.

Q: I know that. I have already figured that one out! But, it seems that no one else has made this connection. I mean, the bloodlines that converge in the Percys and the Mortimers are incredible!

A: You should know that these bloodlines become parasitically infected, harrassed and tinkered with whenever a quantum leap of awareness is imminent.

Q: Whenever a quantum leap...

A: Such as "now." ... Here is something for you to digest: Why is it that your scientists have overlooked the obvious when they insist that alien beings cannot travel to earth from a distant system???

Q: And what is this obvious thing?

A: Even if speed of light travel, or "faster," were not possible, and it is, of course, there is no reason why an alien race could not construct a space "ark," living for many generations on it. They could travel great distances through time and space, looking for a suitable world for conquest. Upon finding such, they could then install this ark in a distant orbit, build bases upon various solid planes in that solar system, and proceed to patiently manipulate the chosen civilizations to develop a suitable technological infrastructure. And then, after the instituting of a long, slow, and grand mind programming project, simply step in and take it over once the situation was suitable.

Q: Is this, in fact, what has happened, or is happening?

A: It could well be, and maybe now it is the time for you to learn about the details.

Q: Well, would such a race be 3rd or 4th density in orientation?

A: Why not elements of both?

Q: What is the most likely place that such a race would have originated from?

A: Oh, maybe Orion, for example?

Q: Okay. If such a race did, in fact, travel to this location in space/time, how many generations have come and gone on their space ark during this period of travel, assuming, of course, that such a thing has happened?

A: Maybe 12.

Q: Okay, that implies that they have rather extended life spans...

A: Yes...

Q: Assuming this to be the case, what are their lifespans?
A: 2,000 of your years. ... When in space, that is...

Q: And what is the span when on terra firma?
A: 800 years.

Q: Well, has it not occurred to them that staying in space might not be better?

A: No. Planets are much more "comfortable."

Q: Okay... imagining that such a group has traveled here...

A: We told you of upcoming conflicts... Maybe we meant the same as your Bible, and other references. Speak of... The "final" battle between "good and evil..." Sounds a bit cosmic, when you think of it, does it not?

Q: Does this mean that there is more than one group that has traveled here in their space arks?

A: Could well be another approaching, as well as "reinforcements" for either/or, as well as non-involved, but interested observers of various types who appreciate history from the sidelines.

Q: Well, SWELL! There goes my peaceful life!

A: You never had one!

Q: Well, I was planning on one! ... Any other comment?

A: You chose to be incarnated now, with some foreknowledge of what was to come. Reference your dreams of space attack.

Q: Okay, what racial types are we talking about relating to these hypothetical aliens?

A: Three basic constructs. Nordic, Reptilian, and Greys. Many variations of type 3, and 3 variations of type 1 and 2.

Q: Well, what racial types are the 'good guys?'

A: Nordics, in affiliation with 6th density "guides."

Q: And that's the only good guys?

A: That's all you need.

Q: Wonderful! So, if it is a Grey or Lizzie, you know they aren't the nice guys. But, if it is tall and blond, you need to ask questions!

A: All is subjective when it comes to nice and not nice. Some on 2nd density would think of you as "not nice," to say the least!!!

Q: That's for sure! Especially the roaches! Maybe we ought to get in touch with some of these good guys...

A: When the "time" is right.

The Return of The Puppet Masters indeed!
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THE NEXT WEEK WILL DECIDE IF DEMOCRACY WILL SURVIVE

2006-01-12T14:24:00.000-05:00

Bush is now completely and certifiably out of control. But to remove the last restraint on the creation of a new American dictatorship they must install one more lock down vote on the Supreme Court, in the person of Sam Alito.

Despite Alito's extreme right wing voting record and lifelong ideological agenda, nobody expects him to show up at his hearing sporting a tail and horns wearing a red suit. Instead he will lie and evade like some Wal-Mart smiley face, just as he did when in his confirmation for the Court of Appeals he promised to recuse himself from cases involving his own investments. Then he fought to do precisely otherwise. He will make absolutely any misrepresentation of his views and his agenda to try to sneak past public accountability yet again, while his record shouts otherwise. And only your voices speaking out now can turn the tide against this judicial coup.

http://www.usalone.com/alito.php

We are planning a two-stage action. First with the action page above we will build a consensus that ANY replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor must be no worse than a true moderate and centrist. Then after the conclusion of the hearings we will speak out AGAIN on specific question of the final vote in the Senate. Please submit every possible action page you can get your hands on, and keep speaking out until we prevail, just as we did on ANWR and the torture prohibition.

But remember that Alito was the author of the tactic of Bush trying to spin acts of Congress with so-called "signing statements" in hopes that some future Supreme Court (including now guess who) would give them weight over the will of the people. And Bush did just that with the anti-torture bill, declaring that he really didn't consider himself bound at all. Every day from now on must be STOP Alito day, otherwise our democracy is doomed.

http://www.usalone.com/alito.php

Even if you have submitted something else recently, please go to the page above and take a moment to submit it. There are lots of good references in the arguments section below the form if you would like some additional support or ideas for your personal comments, or just cast your vote with one click and go. We have nearly 100,000 participants in our system and we are counting on at least 25,000 of you to speak out now. This battle must be won, there must be a filibuster, or all else will be ultimately lost.

NEW UPDATED DESKTOP ACTION PROGRAM AVAILABLE NOW

To help us get as close as possible to 100% submission yield on this question we have made many improvements on the Desktop Action program since its initial release last week. With this program you can speak out directly from your desktop with just one click! Based on your input we have set the program to always be minimized unless you expressly click on its icon, we have now made the interface draggable, and incorporated all of your other suggestions. Though it worked well for most people from day one, we have corrected all minor issues with contact setup and system reboots, and all these small fixes have been confirmed corrected. Even if you already have the program, please download the latest update (1.05) from the main index page at

http://www.usalone.com

RUN FOR OFFICE YOURSELF OR FIND US SOMEONE WHO IS

We received many inquiries from candidates who want to win, and we are setting everybody up with their easy-to-use forms for creating action forms on your own campaign web site. The most important thing you can do is launch your own STOP Alito initiative to show your constituents how much you are out there fighting for them now, and not just talking about what you WOULD do if elected. Build your track record and prominence identified as someone out there fighting to protect the rights of the people. Contact us at once and we will set you up. There is no charge for any of our services ever.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.
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