HEARTS AND MINDS

Burning with anger: Iraqis infuriated by new flag that was designed in London

For many Iraqis it was the final insult. Again and again they expressed outrage yesterday that Iraq's US-appointed and unelected leaders had, overnight, abolished the old Iraqi flag, seen by most Iraqis as the symbol of their nation, and chosen a new one.
'What gives these people the right to throw away our flag, to change the symbol of Iraq?' asked Salah, a building contractor of normally moderate political opinions. 'It makes me very angry because these people were appointed by the Americans. I will not regard the new flag as representing me but only traitors and collaborators.'
Fury over the flag highlights the extraordinary ability of US leaders and the Iraqi Governing Council to alienate ordinary Iraqis. And yesterday the flag was burnt in a demonstration of public anger.
Many Iraqis are convinced that their new flag is modelled on the Israeli flag. It is white with two parallel blue strips along the bottom representing the Tigris and Euphrates rivers with a yellow strip in between symbolising the Kurds. Above the stripes is a blue crescent to represent Islam.
Iraqis say the blue stripes are suspiciously like those on the Israeli flag. They also ask why the Kurds have a stripe in the new flag but not the 80 per cent of Iraqis who are Arabs. Could it be because the Kurds are the only Iraqi community fully supporting the US?

NEW WORLD ORDER Flashback ...

Crusade is a dirty word

President Bush talks of a 'crusade'. It's an unhappy word. All this started eight centuries ago when renascent Europe unleashed a colonialising campaign to reclaim the holy places. Venice and France were lead culprits. And this was when 'Islam' was first invented by the west as a single entity, as the face of the other which could be demonised. The security of emergent European states was consolidated by aggression and terrorism.
The Pentagon and the World Trade Centre were American holy places now desecrated. The language of a holy league comes easily to the great power, animated by a puritan sense that the world is divided between the light and the dark, between righteousness and wickedness. And that perception lies behind the instability of America's foreign policy, the violence of its oscillation in history between extremes of isolation and intervention.
Today we suffer the consequences not just of an 800-year-old crusading tradition but also an 80-year-old effect: the joint British-American dismantling of the Ottoman empire after the first world war.

OIL WARS

Drugged US troops laughing in the face of battle

Iraqi resistance fighters have noted that many of the American troops were laughing as they stormed into districts in al-Fallujah. The correspondent wrote that he saw two American soldiers laughing, such as to arouse pity for them, despite all the Resistance gunfire being poured at their position and their comrades dying around them. Both of the Americans were later killed in the battle.
The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent writes that the Resistance learned later from interrogations of captured American Marines that the US military medical service distributes a type of halucinogenic pill to the troops that prompts laughter and reduces the sense of fear in combat conditions.

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

'Weird' meteorite may be from Mars moon

A unique meteorite that fell on a Soviet military base in Yemen in 1980 may have come from one of the moons of Mars. Several meteorites from the Red Planet have been found on Earth, but this could be the only piece of Martian moon rock.
Andrei Ivanov, who is based at the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry in Moscow, Russia, spent two decades puzzling over the fist-sized Kaidun meteorite before he decided that it must be a chip off Phobos, the larger of the two Martian moons. "I can't find a better candidate," Ivanov told New Scientist.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Another 'hijacker' flight trainer crashes

Yesterday Rudi Dekkers was lucky to survive after his helicopter crashed into a river in Florida -- just 24 hours after AP reported he was about to be arrested by the State Attorney's Office on felony fraud charges. That was the second air crash involving owners of flight schools which trained 9/11 hijackers.
There is a chill wind blowing. Not just because it was the coldest day of the year in Southwest Florida on Friday, but because somebody may be cleaning up a few loose ends from the 9/11 terror attack: the man who ran Huffman Aviation -- the flight school which trained Mohammed Atta -- crashed his FH-1100 helicopter into an ice-cold Caloosahatchee River.

[On July 5, 2002 Arne Kruithof, another Dutchman and owner of Florida Flight Training had another lucky escape when a private plane nose-dived to earth after taking off from the Venice Airport. Mechanical failure was believed to be responsible. There seemed to be a great deal of haste in clearing the wreckage. "The plane was almost immediately dragged off to be compacted even though the FAA hadn't yet determined the cause for the crash," one local aviation observer said.
Kruithof's school trained Siad Al Jarrah, who was on the aircraft which crashed in Pennsylvania on 9th September 2001.]

NEW WORLD ORDER

Little old lady pepper-sprayed, dropped and repeatedly stun-gunned by Portland cops

She was 71 years old. She was blind. She needed her 94-year-old mother to come to her rescue.
And in the middle of the dogfight -- in which Eunice Crowder was pepper-sprayed, Tasered and knocked to the ground by Portland's courageous men in blue -- the poor woman's fake right eye popped out of its socket and was bouncing around in the dirt.

Worried a city employee was hauling away a family heirloom, a 90-year-old red toy wagon, she had the nerve to feel her way toward the trailer in which her yard debris was being tossed. Enter the police. Eunice, who is hard of hearing, ignored the calls of Officers Robert Miller and Eric Zajac to leave the trailer. When she tried, unsuccessfully, to bite the hands that were laid on her, she was knocked to the ground and was pepper-sprayed in the face with such force that her prosthetic marble eye was dislodged. As she lay on her stomach, she was Tased four times with Zajac's electric stun gun.
And when Nellie Scott, Eunice's mother, tried to rinse out her daughter's eye with water from a two-quart Tupperware bowl, what does Miller do? According to Ernie Warren Jr., Eunice's lawyer, the cop pushed 94-year-old Nellie up against a fence and accused her of planning to use the water as a weapon.
Police Chief Derrick Foxworth said "This did not turn out the way we wanted it to ... But I feel we need to recognize Ms. Crowder has some responsibility. She contributed to the situation".

[This week, Portland city agreed to settle Ms. Crowder's excessive force lawsuit out of federal court. More ...]

We are not the enemy
Man sentenced to 37 months for "Burning bush" comment

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Sacked for photo Americans weren't meant to see

Last Sunday a newspaper in Seattle, Washington, published a rare photograph of soldiers' coffins, each of them containing the body of an American who had died in Iraq. The coffins, each draped with the Stars and Stripes, had been loaded into the back of a cargo aircraft for a final journey to the US, where they would be buried. There were at least 18 of them in the picture, which was taken by a 50-year-old civilian contractor, Tami Silicio. On Wednesday Ms Silicio was sacked from her job, for taking the photograph and sharing it with news organizations.

Citizens, politicians and soldiers are squaring off over pictures of flag-draped coffins coming home from Iraq.

[The leaking of photos that "Americans were not meant to see", will prompt an unprecedented number to find such images. These arouse subtle "patriotic" emotion that help sell the rulers' control myths to the populace.]

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Robots may fight for the army

Robots, called small unmanned ground vehicles, or SUGVs, will detect the presence of chemical and biological weapons, identify targets for artillery and infantrymen, and ferret out snipers hiding inside urban buildings. Today, humans mainly perform these tasks, often becoming the first casualties of battle while looking for snipers or explosives.
Soldiers in the future, the Army hopes, will be able to pull SUGVs from their backpacks and drop the robots through the windows of buildings where enemies may be hiding.

DID YOU KNOW

Formaldehyde Facts

Formaldehyde is found virtually everywhere, indoors and out, naturally occurring and man-made.
It is a combustion product found in cigarette and wood smoke, natural gas, kerosene, exhaust from automobiles, incinerators and power plants.
It is also widely used in building materials especially glue, Urea-formaldehyde foam insulation and pressed-wood products such as plywood, particle board, paneling and wood finishes.
Many floor coverings contain formaldehyde such as carpet as well as furnishings.
Also used in paper products, cosmetics, deodorants, shampoos, fabric dyes and permanent-press fabrics, inks, and disinfectants. Another common place to find formaldehyde that seems out of place is in products that are supposed to make our homes smell better such as air and carpet deodorizers.
Mobile homes, motor homes, and travel trailers are known for high amounts of formaldehyde since so many of their components may be made from particle board or pressed-wood products.
The number of products that contain formaldehyde are as astounding as it is depressing.

CASHLESSNESS

Chip implant gets cash under your skin: mark of the beast?

Applied Digital Solutions of Palm Beach, Fla., is hoping that Americans can be persuaded to implant RFID chips under their skin to identify themselves when going to a cash machine or in place of using a credit card. The surgical procedure, which is performed with local anesthetic, embeds a microchip, which some manufacturers have managed to shrink to half the size of a grain of sand.
They listen for a radio query and respond by transmitting a unique ID code, typically a 64-bit identifier yielding about 18 thousand trillion possible values. Most RFID tags have no batteries. They use the power from the initial radio signal to transmit their response.
When embedded in human bodies, RFID tags raise unique security concerns. First, because they broadcast their ID number, a thief could rig up his or her own device to intercept and then rebroadcast the signal to an automatic teller machine. Second, sufficiently dedicated thieves may try to slice the tags out of their victims.
ADS is running a special promotion urging Americans to "get chipped." The first 100,000 people to sign up will receive a $50 discount.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Aboriginal woman puts curse on PM

An Aboriginal woman clad in possum skins put a traditional curse on Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Tuesday, apparently in retaliation for government plans to abolish Australia's top indigenous elected body.
Howard encountered the woman on a visit to Colac, an outback town with 500 people in the state of Victoria. Supporters turned up to greet the prime minister along with angry Aboriginal protesters and the woman, known only as Moopor.
Painted in traditional tribal makeup and wearing possum skins, Moopor stood silently and cast the curse by pointing an inch-long bone at Howard as he climbed into a waiting car. Howard smiled and waved at Moopor before leaving.

[Traditional Aborigines believe that when a tribal Gadicha Man points a bone at someone it places a curse strong enough to cause death. Such is the effect of social excommunication.]

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

Depleted uranium and Anglo-American infanticide in the wake of the Gulf War

Warning: Photographs on this link are extremely disturbing. They vividly portray the ravages of Gulf War I, 10 years on -- they show the fruits of man's inhumanity towards man -- grossly affecting infants through their DNA expression.
Dr. Siegwart Horst-Gunther, president of the International Yellow Cross, reported, "I have heard stories of visitors to Iraq who spoke with mid-wives there. These mid-wives are purported to have said they no longer look forward to births as.... "We don't know what's going to come out."

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

More murmers that US will plant WMDs in Iraq ready for pre-election discovery

Bush demonstrates surprising confidence that after a year the US will 'find out the truth about the weapons'.
At an April 13 press conference Bush said: "I thought it was very interesting that Charlie Duelfer, -- he's the head of the Iraqi Survey Group -- [... said] he was amazed at how deceptive the Iraqis had been ... deceptive in hiding things. We knew they were hiding things -- a country that hides something is a country that is afraid of getting caught. And that was part of our calculation. Charlie confirmed that. He also confirmed that Saddam had a -- the ability to produce biological and chemical weapons. In other words, he was a danger.
"Even knowing what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons, I still would have called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein. See, I happen to believe that we'll find out the truth on the weapons. That's why we've sent up the independent commission. I look forward to hearing the truth, exactly where they are. They could still be there. They could be hidden.
"But it will all settle out, John. We'll find out the truth about the weapons at some point in time."

[An article by Professor Ira Chernus said "Mehr News Agency has discovered, through a source in the Iraq Governing Council, that the U.S. has been secretly unloading parts for long range missiles in Southern Iraq. It seems as though "ordinary cargo ships were used to download the cargo, which consisted of weapons produced in the 1980s and 1990s." It also appears that the weapons being unloaded are weapons that the "U.S. obtained through confiscations during banned arms sales over the past two decades." According to the Mehr News Agency's source, "the parts are old ones, just like the kind the U.S. gave to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s."
Another article states that the weapons parts are being transported around Iraq in crates marked Maersk in trucks with fake Jordanian license plates. Apparently, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council discovered what was going on and contacted an Iranian news service.]

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Iraq doublespeak pronouncements Orwellian in their defiance of reality

Bush's series of statements stand at almost surreal odds with the truth.
'Iraq will be free, Iraq will be independent,' he promised, just as soon as the 'transfer of sovereignty' is complete on June 30.
But look at the reality. On July 1 Iraq will still have up to to 130,000 foreign troops on its soil as well as 14 'enduring' US military bases. Every move of the new authority - with no democratic mandate whatsoever - will be subject to the approval of a 'US embassy' which will administer some $18.4 bn in reconstruction funds and be the largest such mission in the world.
Iraqi infrastructure, from the electricity grid to the courts, will be reshaped and run out of the embassy. Iraqi industry will be on sale to foreign ownership and the Iraqi military will still take its orders from the US commander.
So June 30 will not be a handover of 'sovereignty' at all, and Iraq will be neither 'free' nor 'independent', at least not according to any common-sense definition of those terms. Yet Bush and Blair continue to speak of the end of June as if it was Iraqi independence day.
And that's nothing compared with the rest of the Bush-Blair show. Behold the comedy of the president's declaration that 'our coalition has no interest in occupation'. Or the prime minister's insistence that no 'outside' forces will be allowed to determine Iraq's future - as if the US and British armies are not outside forces doing precisely that.
These are examples of doublethink to rival Bremer's exquisite remark to an American interviewer earlier this month that the Iraqi resistance is made up of people who 'think that power in Iraq should come out of the barrel of a gun. That's intolerable and we will deal with it'.

NEW WORLD ORDER

Senator says US may need military draft to boost Iraq force

A senior Republican lawmaker said that deteriorating security in Iraq may force the United States to reintroduce the military draft.
"Why shouldn't we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?" Hagel said, arguing that restoring compulsory military service would force "our citizens to understand the intensity and depth of challenges we face".

FREE SPIRIT

"I am a symbol that a free spirit can survive. Nobody can destroy the will of the man who wants to be free. You cannot destroy the human spirit."

Israeli nuclear whistleblower walks free ... happy and sane

Released Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, who walked out of the Shikma prison in the Israeli town of Ashkelon on Wednesday, where he was imprisoned for 18 years, said he was "proud and happy at what he had done".
He said Israel's Mossad spy agency and Shabak (domestic intelligence), also known as the Shin Bet security services, "did not succeed in breaking me … to make me crazy".
"I suffered cruel, barbaric treatment by Israeli spies Mossad, Shabak agents. The guards inside the prison were only obeying orders from Shabak, Mossad", Vanunu said.

NEW WORLD ORDER

Richard Perle: Taliban-style leader in a suit

This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq, then we take a look around and see how things stand. This is entirely the wrong way to go about it ... If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war ... our children will sing great songs about us years from now. -- Richard Perle

Ricard Perle resigned as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, however he is still on the committee. Perle is the 'brains' behind the US policy of 'total war' and 'creative destruction', the latter which is designed to lead to complete subjugation of the Middle East.
Perle helped set up the crypto-fascist Project for the New American Century. Other founders include Vice-President Dick Cheney, the defence secretary Rumsfeld and deputy secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
Perle is managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme's main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi (who brokered billions of dollars in arms and aircraft sales for the Saudi royal family), is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defence. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore. Trireme is a direct beneficiary of war with Iraq.

NEW WORLD ORDER

Children trained to accept Martial Law conditions

On Friday, March 21, 2003 schoolchildren at Milbourne Elementary School were eager to get out early for spring break. One of kid's the parents became concerned when his 10 year-old son did not arrive home on time.
His son arrived an hour and a half late and told his father he was denied food while being forced to watch 'red alert' videos for three or four hours a day -- the screenings included terrifying video of terrorist attacks and archived battle footage.
The father reported that school employees told the children that they were not going to be allowed to leave. Then men in dark blue uniforms armed with rifles locked the children and their teachers in their classrooms. The children's fear intensified when they noticed that their teachers did not know what was going on and were afraid themselves, trying in vain attempts to get out.
The children were then marched outside where flat buses were waiting. The children clearly saw 'US ARMY' on the sides of the buses.
The children were then marched back to their classrooms and the uniformed men (not local police) disappeared. The children were only then allowed to go home.
In 1999, infowars.com obtained an Associated Press report about a federal program administered by FEMA that was training schools to load children (handcuffed, in many cases) on school buses and take them to 'emergency centers.'

Charlotte Izerbyt, former Head of Policy for the Department of Education (1980-1984) provided Infowars.com ago with internal Department of Education documents announcing that public schools would be used to brainwash children into accepting a societal shift into authoritarian control.

Red alert? Stay home, await word
Military to 'assist' in event of Homeland attack

OIL WARS

Condi's Chevron connection more ...

Judge says ChevronTexaco could be liable for alleged rights abuse in Nigeria

A US federal judge says ChevronTexaco Corp. could stand trial on allegations one of its subsidiaries was linked to the deaths of nine people during oil protests. The suit was filed in 1999 following attacks on an offshore oil platform in May 1998, and on residents of two villages in January 1999.
ChevronTexaco argued the company is not liable for wrongful death and other damages to survivors, and that it cannot be sued in American courts for the actions of its subsidiary, Chevron Nigeria Ltd., known as CNL.
The survivors allege that Chevron in the United States profited from CNL's oil production which was made possible, or at least was protected by, the military's allegedly abusive force to quell unrest in Nigeria.

OIL WARS

Flashback (May 5, 2001)

Chevron gives oil tanker a new name: "Condoleezza Rice" too blatant perhaps?

Leaving a wave of controversy in its wake, one of the most visible reminders of the Bush administration's ties to big oil - the 129,000-ton Chevron tanker Condoleezza Rice - has quietly been renamed the "Altair Voyager", Chevron officials acknowledged yesterday.
Asked if Rice or the White House had specifically requested the name change, Chevron spokesman Fred Gorell said, "that's not for me to discuss."
A month prior, it was reported that the White House had faced questions over the appropriateness of the tanker's name -- particularly as California struggled with the effects of an energy crisis.
The giant vessel was part of the international fleet of the US-based multinational oil firm, christened several years ago in honor of Rice, a longtime Chevron board member. She served on Chevron's board from 1991 until Jan. 15, when she resigned after Bush named her his top national security aide.
Chevron has been sued for alleged human rights abuses in Nigeria.

Bush and big business: While both main parties have close ties to corporate America, the new president does seem particularly keen to legislate in the interests of business. What is clear, though, is that big money pulls a big punch in the new administration. Vice President Dick Cheney was, until last year, the CEO of Halliburton, the world's largest oil field services company.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

A Boeing Joint Unmanned Combat Air System X-45 aircraft releases a dummy bomb in testing.

Robot plane drops bomb in successful test

A robotic plane deliberately dropped a bomb near a truck at Edwards Air Force Base on Sunday, marking another step forward for technology the U.S. military hopes will one day replace human pilots on dangerous combat missions.
Under human supervision but without human piloting, a prototype of the Boeing Co. (BA)'s X-45 took off from the desert base, opened its bomb bay doors, dropped a 250-pound Small Smart Bomb and then landed. The inert bomb struck within inches of the truck it was supposed to hit, Boeing said, adding that had the bomb contained explosives, the target would have been destroyed.

OIL WARS

Private commandos shoot back on the Iraq firing line

Ex-military commandos armed with M4 rifles are fighting insurgents in Iraq as part of a private contracting force, many of them hired by the US-led coalition, raising some deep concerns.
About 15,000 personnel from private military firms (PMFs) were operating in Iraq, making them more numerous that even the biggest US ally, Britain, estimated Peter Singer, author of 'Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry.

OTHER PEOPLE

AIDS scare shuts down porn studios

Many major pornographic movie producers, including the industry's largest, have agreed to shut down sets for 60 days because two stars tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS.
At least 45 men and women were under voluntary quarantine because they had sex with the HIV-positive performers or their sex partners, said Sharon Mitchell of the nonprofit Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation.
The first performer to test positive was a male, Mitchell said.
She also confirmed that one of about a dozen women the performer had sex with in films also tested HIV-positive.
The Los Angeles Times identified the performers as actor Darren James and actress Lara Roxx.

OIL WARS

Hired guns: military contractors run amok

The ambush and gruesome killing of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, has sparked some of the most intense combat since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last spring.
It has also brought the actions of private military contractors—hired by the U.S. government to provide extra manpower and firepower in Iraq—into sharp focus, with reports that they are fighting their own battles with their own weapons, helicopters, and intelligence networks.

Deaths of scores of mercenaries go unreported

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Once America's friend, now forgotten

Somewhere inside a vast, sprawling U.S. prison compound near Baghdad, the man known as Prisoner No. 152333 remembers the praise that the Americans lavished on him just a few months ago. He was the first mayor of the first civilian government in postwar Iraq.
He was a crucial voice of support to the foreign invaders when they desperately needed local allies. The American army awarded him a certificate for his 'truly historic' assistance to the U.S.-led coalition. It said his 'leadership and dedication' were 'an inspiration to leaders throughout the world.'
Today, Najim Abed Mahdi is a forgotten man. He is in his fourth month of detention in a U.S. jail cell. His career as an English teacher is ruined, his family has gone without income for three months.
The respected 53-year-old educator, widely known as Teacher Najim in his hometown of Umm Qasr, is among thousands of prisoners in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. No charges have been filed against him and he appears to be the victim of a Kafkaesque ordeal that began when he was swept up in a raid by American soldiers.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Jeddah, here 15 of the 19 terrorist hijackers obtained visas: consulate officer speaks out

Former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah is Michael Springman, says because of Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book, “The Grand Chessboard,” national security advisor for Jimmy Carter and a founding member of the Trilateral Commission, that they actually staged that Afghan war and got the Afghans to attack the Soviets, to then set up this entire nest and take control of the oil and the other little goodies that grow on top of poppies there.

MICHAEL SPRINGMAN: The American people don’t get the full story. The mainstream press doesn’t want to hear any of this stuff. And it seems to go from bad to worse. I thought that by raising hell and eventually losing my job over making the agency look bad, that all of this had stopped. But fifteen of the nineteen people who had gotten visas, who allegedly were responsible for flying airplanes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Towers, they came from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and got visas at the Consulate there.

WEIRD SCIENCE

Area 51 microbiologist Dr Dan Burisch ready to talk

Dr. Dan Burisch has first-hand knowledge of the U.S. government's involvement in funding the creation of designer viruses for use in biowarfare and other applications. He is also intimately privy to other covert operations that violate normal standards of human ethics.
He is presently working on the Lotus project at Area 51 north of Las Vegas, in a secret extra-budget operation under the umbrella direction of a non-elected shadow international governing body that has covert ties to the U.S. government and with extraterrestrials.
The Lotus project involves studies of what is called a 'Ganesh particle' which is capable of repairing damages cells. The Ganesh particle itself, which gives off light, has characteristics of being a living intelligence.
Burisch is witness to human subjects being held against their will for experimentation per covert treaties between the U.S. government and extraterrestrial governing bodies. The treaty, called Tau-IX, allows for abduction, removal of blood and reproductive samples and tissue; and does not control whether humans are maimed, tortured or killed.

NEW WORLD ORDER

Defence department to 'assist' in event of Homeland attack

In a terrorist attack on America, NORTHCOM -– which defends land, air and sea approaches to the United States -- would provide support to US civil authorities, Verga noted.
This, he explained, would include "military support to civilian law enforcement agencies, military assistance for civil disturbances, and incident management operations in response" to an attack using weapons of mass destruction.

[Sounds like more preparations for the introduction of Martial Law - ed.]

NEW WORLD ORDER

Britain's Big Brother getting bigger

Day after day, and sometimes late into the night, Felix Codrington watches the people of Wandsworth. The 48-year-old is one of three local government officials charged with monitoring the 567 cameras that scan the streets and other public areas of the London borough. Sitting on a swivel chair in a dimly lit room, Codrington scrutinizes the rows of screens on the wall in front of him, looking for suspicious behavior.
A couple of youths loiter near an ATM, and he zooms in. When they move on, he turns his attention to another screen, where shoppers are browsing in a street market. "We don't miss much," says Codrington, twiddling the joystick on his desk. "We've got cameras all over the place now".

WATER WARS

Nile states hold 'crisis talks'

The 10 states that share the Nile waters met in Uganda to discuss the future of the river. The talks came amid growing regional tensions over the world's longest river.
Egypt is reported to have said it would regard any attempt to alter the Nile status as an act of war.
The Nile is vitally important to the survival of 160 million people who share the basin in which it flows, but to Egypt the river is a matter of life and death, as the country has almost no other source of water.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Deaths of scores of mercenaries unreported

At least 18 000 mercenaries, many of them tasked to protect US troops and personnel, are now believed to be in Iraq, some of them earning $1000 a day. But their companies rarely acknowledge their losses unless - like the four American murdered and mutilated in Fallujah three weeks ago - their deaths are already public knowledge.
But although many of the heavily armed Western security men are working for the US Department of Defence - and most of them are former Special Forces soldiers - they are not listed as serving military personnel. Their losses can therefore be hidden from public view.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

New reports of US planting WMD In Iraq

Sources in Iraq speculate that occupation forces are using the recent unrest in Iraq to divert attention from their surreptitious shipments of WMD into the country.
An Iraqi source close to the Basra Governor's Office told the MNA that new information shows that a large part of the WMD, which was secretly brought to southern and western Iraq over the past month, are in containers falsely labeled as containers of the Maeresk shipping company and some consignments bearing the labels of organizations such as the Red Cross or the USAID in order to disguise them as relief shipments.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Bush coy about admitting mistakes

"I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have," he said. "I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."

Four times during his prime-time press conference, George W. Bush was asked whether he has made any mistakes in his presidency, whether there was anything -- his decision to invade Iraq on what turned out to be false pretenses, his failure to take decisive action in response to a memo that warned of terrorist attacks in the United States -- for which he might apologize.
Three times, Bush gave rambling responses that addressed everything but the questions presented. The fourth time, the president took a deep breath, blew it out, looked at the ground, looked at the ceiling, stalled for time, then said: "You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet."

IDENTITY DISORDER

Chip implants on the path to fashion accessory

Baja Beach Club owner Conrad Chase wanted something unique to identify his VIP patrons. Other clubs had special jewelry or key chains, but he was looking for something special. After brainstorming, he came up with the idea to implant his VIP members with VeriChip's implantable microchip.
Alex has spoken many times over the years about how the making the chip 'fun' and how by giving it an elite status soon an entire of young teenagers will be arguing with their parents demanding that they let them be implanted so that they can be in the 'in' crowd. The Baja Beach Club and Chase have proved that the trend has started.

SKY IS FALLING

Australians watching for big asteroids spot three in first month

A NASA-funded project employing Australian astronomers to watch the southern skies for asteroids cutting across Earth's path has found three in its first month.
On March 29 two asteroids were spotted whizzing by the Earth. One, about 100 metres across and travelling at 10 kilometres a second, missed the Earth by 3 million kilometres. That same night, a second, 300 metres wide and travelling at 18 kilometres a second, passed at a distance of 20 million kilometres.
On Friday a third "new" asteroid, probably 100 metres across, was spotted. It is still approaching but will miss Earth by 2.25 million kilometres next Tuesday.

[Impact damage computer for when the hot rock barbecue begins.]

BIRD BRAINS

LA Airport power failure given the bird

Officials blamed a bird on a power line for a seconds-long power failure that disrupted air traffic at Los Angeles International Airport. The power failure caused delays of 15 minutes to 90 minutes for an estimated 80 to 100 Los Angeles-bound flights, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Donn Walker said.
Apparently, a bird came in contact with the 34.5 kilovolt supply line and at the same time touched a cross-arm or some other grounded device, the DWP said in statement. The line re-energized moments later.
"We didn't find the bird on the ground, so it might have flown away," said city Department of Water and Power spokeswoman Carol Tucker.

[A bird grounded a 34,500 volt power line, and then flew away! Like that is going to actually happen]

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Americans slaughtering civilians in Falluja

An endless stream of women and children who'd been sniped by the Americans were being raced into the dirty clinic, the cars speeding over the curb out front as their wailing family members carried them in.
One woman and small child had been shot through the neck -- the woman was making breathy gurgling noises as the doctors frantically worked on her amongst her muffled moaning.
The small child, his eyes glazed and staring into space, continually vomited as the doctors raced to save his life.

More from the Falluja atrocity:
Vengeance, time, and US idiocy
No end in sight as Fallujah death toll approaches 700
Destroying a town in order to save it
US tactics condemned by British officers

NEW WORLD ORDER

Never get in the way of a perfectly good train wreck

"FBI information ... indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York. The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May saying that a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives."

- President's Daily Brief, August 6 2001

SKY IS FALLING

When the hot rock barbecue begins ...

This handy program will estimate the seismic, blast wave, and thermal effects of an impact as well as the size of the crater produced by the impact. The crater size is determined using pi-scaling.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Uncovered: A 1935 US plan for invasion of Canada

In February 1935, the War Department arranged a Congressional appropriation of $57 million dollars to build three border air bases for the purposes of pre-emptive surprise attacks on Canadian air fields. The base in the Great Lakes region was to be camouflaged as a civilian airport and was to "be capable of dominating the industrial heart of Canada, the Ontario Peninsula" from p. 61 of the February 11-13, 1935, hearings of the Committee on Military Affairs, House of Representatives, on Air Defense Bases (H.R. 6621 and H.R. 4130). This testimony was to have been secret but was published by mistake. See the New York Times, May 1, 1935, p. 1.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Whistleblower coming in cold from the FBI

As the focus of the 911 Commission's investigations zeroes in on the crucial months and weeks prior to September 11, 2001, Sibel Edmonds, a 32-year-old former translator at the National Security Agency, has her turn in the spotlight. She has been trying to direct the attention of government officials and Congress to her explosive contentions. Edmonds says that a cabal of spies, associated with Turkish intelligence, was working inside the NSA listening station, where electronic messages and other sorts of "chatter" are picked up, sifted, and translated, and that they tried to recruit her.
They wanted her to refrain from translating certain taped phone conversations and other surveillance, and threatened her when she refused. In an affidavit filed with the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ms. Edmonds testified that "investigations are being compromised, incorrect or misleading translations are being sent to agents in the field. Translations are being blocked and circumvented.

MYSTERIOUS FIRES

Blazing mystery is straight from the ‘X-Files’

"Every time some new scientist comes to town, they arrive thinking the whole thing has been invented or that they’re going to solve the mystery in two minutes. They’ve all been wrong. Someone wrote to us saying the solution was to sacrifice a black goat and collect its blood. At some point, that’s going to start looking like a good idea.”

- Pedro Spinnato, mayor of the Sicilian town of Canneto Di Caronia, where household appliances and other inanimate objects have been bursting into flames for no apparent reason.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Rumsfeld plan to incite more terror attacks

According to a classified document prepared for US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, a new organization -- the 'Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)' -- will carry out secret missions designed to 'stimulate reactions' among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to 'counterattack' by U.S. forces.
This astonishing admission was buried deep in a Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times. There -- in an article by military analyst William Arkin, detailing the vast expansion of the secret armies being massed by the former Nixon bureaucrat now lording it over the .

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Prober: I knew in days US 'wrong' on Iraqi WMD

The CIA's former weapons hunter in Iraq realized within days of arriving in Baghdad last summer that dictator Saddam Hussein was no longer stockpiling a banned arsenal, according to a new report.
David Kay, with whom the Bush administration placed its hopes of finding Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, sent a startling E-mail to CIA Director George Tenet in early July 2003.
'I wrote that it looks as though they did not produce weapons,' Kay reveals in an interview with the new Vanity Fair."

NEW WORLD ORDER

Blix: Iraq worse off now than with Saddam

Iraq is worse off now, after the US-led invasion, than it was under Saddam Hussein, Hans Blix told a Danish newspaper Tuesday.
'What's positive is that Saddam and his bloody regime is gone, but when figuring out the score, the negatives weigh more,' the former chief UN weapons inspector was quoted as saying in the daily newspaper Jyllands Posten.
'That accounts for the many casualties during the war and the many people who still die because of the terrorism the war has nourished,' he said. 'The war has liberated the Iraqis from Saddam, but the costs have been too great.'

BODY AND SOUL

Mindfulness and happiness

Thanks to important work by Joseph LeDoux at New York University, we know that a person can be conditioned via their amygdala and thalamus to be scared of things that really aren't worth being scared of. We also know that it is extremely hard to override what the amygdala 'thinks' and 'feels' simply by conscious rational thought.
That said, there is some fascinating early work that suggests Buddhist mindfulness practice might tame the amygdala. Paul Ekman of the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, a renowned researcher on basic Darwinian emotions, is, like Davidson, in the early stages of studying Buddhist practitioners. So far, he has found that experienced meditators don 't get nearly as flustered, shocked or surprised as ordinary people by unpredictable sounds, even those as loud as gunshots. And Buddhists often profess to experience less anger than most people.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Bush attacks environment 'scare stories'

UK's Observer newspaper has obtained a remarkable email sent to the press secretaries of all US Republican congressmen advising them what to say when questioned on the environment in the run-up to November's election. The advice: tell them everything's rosy.
It tells them how global warming has not been proved, air quality is 'getting better', the world's forests are 'spreading, not deadening', oil reserves are 'increasing, not decreasing', and the 'world's water is cleaner and reaching more people'.
Among the memo's assertions are 'global warming is not a fact', 'links between air quality and asthma in children remain cloudy', and the US Environment Protection Agency is exaggerating when it says that at least 40 per cent of streams, rivers and lakes are too polluted for drinking, fishing or swimming.
It gives a list of alleged facts. For instance, to back its claim that air quality is improving it cites a report from Pacific Research Institute - an organisation that has received $130,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998.

[The memo directly contradicts assertions made in a secret report by the Pentagon to the White House that cities will be sunk beneath rising seas and that countries will be plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world, the report warned.]

BIG BROTHER

Protecting your privates

The Bush-Ashcroft Justice Department is attempting to force hospitals and clinics to turn over medical records on thousands of abortions.
Ashcroft claims these records will help him defend a new law prohibiting partial-birth abortions. Doctors are challenging the law on the ground that it prevents certain abortions even when they're medically necessary.
Fundamentally, Bush's claim is that the government can instruct doctors on the needs and treatment of their patients. One function of law is to set precedents. If the government has the right to dictate one aspect of medicine, and if that right is unchallenged and/or upheld, then a precedent has been set for government to dictate other medical priorities. But if government can dictate something so intimate and personal then what, according to that precedent, can it not dictate?
This being an election year, Bush been forced to flip-flop back slightly. Justice withdrew subpoenas from Planned Parenthood clinics, stating that "we will not move at this time" but might "renew our requests if necessary." For "if necessary" read "if re-elected." Hospitals are still being harassed.

[In 2000, Bush ran on a platform that loudly supported medical privacy. He has said, "I believe privacy is a fundamental right."]

CRIME AND TIME

Whistleblower to be released -- into a bigger prison

After 18 years, 11 in solitary confinement, Mordechai Vanunu is due for release on April 21. The time in solitary took its toll. There were paranoid episodes when he thought the paint colours in his cell were messages from Mossad. For three years in the early 1990s the man who spilled Israel's nuclear weapons secrets made no contact with anyone outside the prison.
Security sources have said Israel would ban him from travelling abroad after his release.

NEW WORLD ORDER

Red alert? Stay home, await word

If the US escalates to 'red alert,' which is the highest in the color-coded readiness against terror, you will be assumed by authorities to be the enemy if you so much as venture outside your home, the New Jersey's anti-terror czar says.
Sid Caspersen, NJ's director of the office of counter-terrorism and a former FBI agent, was briefing reporters when, for the first time, he disclosed the realities of how a red alert would shut the state down.
A red alert would also tear away virtually all personal freedoms to move about and associate.
A red alert means there is a severe risk of terrorist attack, according to federal guidelines from the Department of Homeland Security."

BIG BROTHER

Pentagon to Track American Consumer Purchases

A massive database that the government will use to monitor every purchase made by every American citizen is a necessary tool in the war on terror, the Pentagon said.
Edward Aldridge, undersecretary of Acquisitions and Technology, told reporters that the database, which he called another "tool" in the war on terror, would look for telltale signs of suspicious consumer behavior.
Examples he cited were: sudden and large cash withdrawals, one-way air or rail travel, rental car transactions and purchases of firearms, chemicals or agents that could be used to produce biological or chemical weapons.
It would also combine consumer information with visa records, passports, arrest records or reports of suspicious activity given to law enforcement or intelligence services.

Rear Adm. John Poindexter, former national security adviser to President Reagan, is developing the database under the Total Information Awareness Program. Poindexter was convicted on five counts of misleading Congress and making false statements during the Iran-Contra investigation. Those convictions were later overturned, but critics note that his is a dubious resume for someone entrusted with so sensitive a task.

TIME AND TIDE

Artist's concept of the LISA mission. LISA needs to measure the distance between proof masses, separated by five million kilometers, with an accuracy of 10 picometers (10 millionths of a micron).

LISA to attempt gravity wave detection

Gravitational waves passing through the solar system will generate small changes in the distance between three spacecraft in an equilateral formation, 5 million kilometres apart.
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, will observe gravitational waves from very massive black holes found in the centers of many galaxies.
Gravitational waves are one of the fundamental building blocks of our theoretical picture of the universe, yet they have not been observed.

TEUTONIC REMEDY

Picking a winner by ... a nose

"With the finger you can get to places you just can't reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner. And eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body's immune system. Medically it makes great sense and is a perfectly natural thing to do. In terms of the immune system the nose is a filter in which a great deal of bacteria are collected, and when this mixture arrives in the intestines it works just like a medicine. Modern medicine is constantly trying to do the same thing through far more complicated methods, people who pick their nose and eat it get a natural boost to their immune system for free."

So says Austrian lung specialist Professor Doctor Friedrich Bischinger, and he should know.

CONSCIOUS UNIVERSE

Study shows psychic mediums really can read your deep secrets

Researchers at the Scottish Society for Psychical Research (SSPR) say mediums who took part in their tests beat odds of a million to one to correctly reveal information about volunteer test subjects.
Tricia Robertson, vice-president of the SSPR, a registered charity with around 250 members, said: “We were not trying to prove the existence of the afterlife or that personalities live on, but I think it is now important to recognise that mediumship can honestly gain information that ordinary people can’t.

THE OTHERS

Spidery 'man' in silver spooks anglers then disappears

Kevin: “You couldn’t see no facial. Its head didn’t move, its arms didn’t move, ‘til it turned, a little bit, and it took one step and it was gone. It kind of moved sideways and gone, disappeared.”
That’s when Steve threw his fishing pole in the water, took off running.
Tim: “I didn’t have fear, but him taking off like that with the panic that he had there, it was like, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, maybe we should get out of here’.”
Kevin: “What really got us to go and run, was when it stepped off that tree, it disappeared. It didn’t drop into the water, it just disappeared.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Making noise over the hum

The Kokomo hum is drone so incessant that some claim it is making their lives miserable and ruining their health. While residents realize not everyone can hear their hum, they say it's time for the state to hear their pleas.
'We are appealing to the state, 'Will you help us?' ' said Gael Deppert, an Indianapolis attorney who said she is volunteering her services to help residents. 'We need to bring in scientists knowledgeable in various fields to try to grapple with this situation. We're asking the state to come in with an open mind.'
More than 100 people -- including Jeff Symmes, a Lafayette-area resident who says he became ill while working in Kokomo -- have complained of severe headaches, nausea, joint pain, debilitating heart problems or memory loss after they began feeling or hearing the hum.

[Testing HAARP's RHIC-EDOM, Radio-Hypnotic Intracerebral Control & Electronic Dissolution of Memory technology, perhaps?]

EARTH CHANGES

Global warming spirals upwards

Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have jumped abruptly, raising fears that global warming may be accelerating out of control.
Measurements by US government scientists show that concentrations of the gas, the main cause of the climate exchange, rose by a record amount over the past 12 months. It is the third successive year in which they have increased sharply, marking an unprecedented triennial surge.
Scientists are at a loss to explain why the rapid rise has taken place, but fear that it could show the first signs that global warming is feeding on itself.

WATCH THE SKIES

Canadian PM has airborne close encounter with fiery asteroid

What the prime minister's plane and many others saw that night was almost certainty a chunk of a comet or an asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere and burned up into fragments.
An amateur astronomer in Calgary captured the blazing streak on videotape. And it appears one or more such fireballs were seen by people across the Prairies and as far east as Quebec.

OUR COSMOS

Earth on the 'Wimp highway'

Earth would be sitting in this stream of Wimps (Image by David Low)
Mysterious sub-atomic particles from another galaxy could be raining down on planet Earth, according to a collaboration of astronomers. If so, it could explain controversial results from a particle-detection experiment deep inside mountains to the east of Rome.
The story concerns Wimps - weakly interacting massive particles - which astronomers think may make up the bulk of the Universe. For every kg of material made up from atoms like the ones we have in our bodies, or which make up the stars, there are up to 20kg of something completely different, whose principal quality is that it has never been actually observed directly by scientists.
Which is why they call it dark matter. But they know it is there because its effect on the movements of galaxies can be weighed.
If Wimps exist, they would fill the spaces between the stars, and would interact with normal matter so weakly that they would pass right the way through the Earth.

NEW WORLD ORDER

Lies and character assassination are hallmarks of Team Bush

FBI translator Sibel Edmonds charged before some '50 reporters and 12 television cameras,' following yesterday's depositions to the 9/11 commission, that she was offered a 'substantial raise and a full time job to encourage her not to go public that she had been asked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to retranslate and adjust the translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received before September 11, 2001, by the FBI and CIA.'
"Attorney General John Ashcroft told me he was invoking 'State Secret Privilege and National Security' when I told the FBI I wanted to go public with what I had translated from the pre 9-11 intercepts."
And what was in her original translations that Ashcroft wanted suppressed? 'My translations of the pre 9-11 intercepts included [terrorist] money laundering, detailed and date specific information enough to alert the American people, and other issues dating back to 1999 which I won't go into right now'.

DID YOU KNOW

Supreme commander. suppreme irony

Military rules used in 1974 to ground two Washington Air National Guard airmen with access to nuclear weapons also applied to a Texas Air National Guard unit where Lt. George W. Bush was a fighter pilot.
Some military researchers and a former Texas Guard lieutenant colonel believe the stringent regulations -- known as the Human Reliability Program -- may have been invoked to stop Bush from flying Texas Air National Guard jets in 1972.

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

Earth has near miss by 25m asteroid

Another small asteroid flew past Earth this weekend. 2004 FY15, which measures about 25 meters (75 feet) across, was only 0.6 lunar distances from our planet on March 27th (20:00 UT). At closest approach, the space rock was about as bright as a 14th magnitude star; now it's receding and fading fast.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

FLEETING GLIMPSE: Chevron's oiltanker the Condoleezza Rice, named when she was on the board, plies the Caspian Sea.

White House Trying to Explain Rice Policy

Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser to President Bush, says the Bush administration has a good story to tell about fighting terrorism and she's pouring it out in television appearances, interviews and newspaper articles.
The one place she won't talk is in public, under oath, before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

CRIME TIME

French lawyer to defend Saddam

The French lawyer known for defending Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and guerrilla Carlos the Jackal says he had accepted the job of defending Saddam Hussein and suggested his strategy would focus on the role played by the United States and other countries in supporting the Iraqi leader in the 1980s.
'We know very well that the Anglo-Americans armed Saddam Hussein, that the chemical weapons were sold by the allies," Verges said in a telephone interview. Washington helped Saddam obtain intelligence and military equipment and, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control document in the U.S. Senate record, Iraq also obtained from the United States biological agents that could have been turned into weapons.
Verges singled out U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a key advocate of last year's U.S.-led war to oust Saddam, for his role 20 years ago as a special envoy of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

[In an interview with ABCNews, Verges stated, "The United States considers they are the master of the world and they are not to be judged."]

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Operation Iraqi Infoganda


Real journalism may be reeling, but faux journalism rocks. As an entertainment category in the cultural marketplace, it may soon rival reality TV and porn. Television is increasingly awash in fake anchors delivering fake news, some of them far more trenchant than real anchors delivering real news.
Turn on real news shows and you might find Jayson Blair, the lying former reporter of The New York Times, continuing to play a reporter on TV as he fabricates earnest blather about his concern for journalistic standards.
Elsewhere on the dial you'll learn that a fake news show has been in a booking war with a real news show over who would first be able to interview the real (I think) Desmond Tutu.
At such absurd moments, and they are countless these days in our 24/7 information miasma, real journalism and its evil twin merge into a mind-bending mutant.

WATCH THE SKIES

NASA believes test jet hit Mach 7

Three years after its first test flight ended in an explosion, NASA on Saturday successfully launched an experimental jet that the agency believes reached a record-setting speed of about 8000 kph.
Flight engineer Lawrence Huebner said preliminary data indicated the needle-nosed jet reached a maximum speed of slightly over seven times the speed of sound after a rocket accelerated it.
Huebner said it was the first time an "air-breathing" jet had ever traveled so fast. The rocket-powered X-15 reached Mach 6.7 in 1967.

WEIRD SCIENCE

Scientists create magnetic carbon 'nanofoam'

Researchers have created a new form of carbon: a spongy solid that is extremely lightweight and, unusually, attracted to magnets.
The new structure was created when physicists at the Australian National University in Canberra bombarded a carbon target with a laser capable of firing 10,000 pulses a second. As the carbon reached temperatures of around 10,000 ºC, it formed an intersecting web of carbon tubes, each just a few billionths of a metre long. The researchers have called the solid a 'nanofoam'.
It is the fifth form of carbon known after graphite, diamond and two recently discovered types: hollow spheres, known as buckminsterfullerenes or buckyballs, and nanotubes.

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

Mars rover parked at edge of ancient seashore

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity is parked by the shore of what used to be a salty martian sea, scientists say.
'We think Opportunity is now parked on what was once the shoreline of a salty sea on Mars,' said Steve Squyres, principal investigator for the science payload on Opportunity and its twin Mars exploration Rover, Spirit.
"This dramatic confirmation of standing water in Mars' history builds on a progression of discoveries about that most Earthlike of alien planets," said Ed Weiler, NASA associate administrator for space science.

NEW WORLD ORDER

Airport security as political bullying

A recent trip by Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, 79, to see for herself what is happening to Palestinians under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza ended with shocking humiliation.
Epstein says she was questioned for five hours by a security team at Israel's Ben Gurion airport. After it was discovered that she had visited the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem and Qalqilya and participated in protests against the separation wall Israel is building, she was taken off to a side room.
A woman security officer carried out a "strip search of every part of my naked body," she recalls. "The only shame these security officials expressed was to turn their badges around so that their names were invisible.

Shot British peace activist dies

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

Asteroid scare prompts NASA to formalise responses

An asteroid flew past Earth last week so close that it nearly entered an orbital halo where weather satellites roam. Scientists spotted it March 15 and watched it zoom by just three days later. It posed no threat, but there are hundreds of thousands more where that one came from.
And while asteroid 2004 FH, as it is known, was watched calmly by astronomers, a more frightening scenario unfolded two months earlier:
An unprecedented asteroid scare in January had astronomers worried for a few hours over a rock that had a 1-in-4 chance of hitting Earth within days. At the time, some of the scientists were unsure who should be notified. The event has prompted NASA to set up a formal process for notifying top officials in the future of any impending impacts, SPACE.com has
learned.

FORTEAN FIRES

Mysterious fires and rain of stones in India

The people of Ratria village in Neemuch, a district in western Madhya Pradesh, for the last one week have been coping up with unexplained fires and stone pelting. And they do not know who is behind them.
Not only the villagers, even the district administration and the police have till now failed to provide any solace to the villagers.
To the horror of the villagers fire outbreaks soon became very common. "Fire breaks out anywhere in the village and at anytime of the day," said Sardar Singh Gurjar, the headman of Ratria village.
And according to the villagers, they suddenly have to face showers of stones. "Many people have been injured in the stone pelting till now," said the chief.

[A similar event occured recently in Sicily. More... and Still more... ]

TIME AND TIDE

Test examines mystery of time

An aptly titled ''Time Shift Experiment'' combines some of the most complicated physics concepts with simple machines and -- Florida physics professor Carlos Dolz said -- may prove that time travel is possible.
Time shifts are not uncommon, the professor said. There have been experiments in the past that compared atomic clocks on fast-flying planes to those on the ground. The clocks on board the planes showed a slight shift forward.
He said he became even more fascinated by time when he was studying gravity -- he found that he could not truly understand one without the other.
The experiment involves putting a digital clock under immense force by spinning it on a centrifuge.
The basic idea behind the experiment is to speed up the frequency of the pulses, or ticks, produced by the clock with force to push it ahead.

OUR COSMOS

'God particle' may have been seen

A scientist says one of the most sought after particles in physics - the Higgs boson - may have been found, but the evidence is still relatively weak.
Peter Renton, of the University of Oxford, says the particle may have been detected by researchers at an atom-smashing facility in Switzerland.
The Higgs boson explains why all other particles have mass and is fundamental to a complete understanding of matter."

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Soldier resists: 'This war is evil'

A Florida National Guard soldier from Miami who served six months in Iraq refuses to return and seeks conscientious objector status.
A Miami soldier who served six months in Iraq and then refused to return after a leave said Monday ''I can no longer be an instrument of violence,'' and turned himself in to military authorities.

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

New 'planetoid' Sedna raises possibility of another Earth-sized object in our Solar System

Scientists can't figure out how Sedna, the most recently-discovered planetoid -- about three-quarters the size of Pluto, came to have such a strange orbit around the Sun. Sedna's path is highly elliptic. It ranges from 76 astronomical units (AU) when it is closest to the Sun to 1,000 AU when it is farthest.
'How on Earth could anything get into an orbit like that,' wonders astronomer Brian Marsden. He suggests another sort of Earth might have had something to do with putting Sedna on its current, odd course.

Richard A. Muller's Nemesis theory -- that our Sun has a companion star responsible for recurring episodes of wholesale death and destruction here on Earth -- seems to reemerge periodically like microbes after a mass extinction. It's a theory that has many detractors. And it's a theory that has been beaten down and left for dead in the minds of most scientists.
Yet it is a theory that just won't die.
Nemesis is cautiously supported by a handful of scientists. Muller meanwhile acknowledges the possibility that the whole idea could turn out to be wrong, but he is nonetheless confident that Nemesis will be found within 10 years.
Nemesis, as Muller sees it, is a dwarf star that would be visible if only we knew which of some 3,000 stars to look at. These are stars that have been cataloged, but their distances are not known. Muller figures Nemesis' orbit ranges from 1 to 3 light-years from the Sun.
On its closest approach, the lethal companion would pass through a vast, but sparsely populated halo of primitive comets called the Oort Cloud, which surrounds our solar system from beyond Neptune's orbit out to nearly a light-year away. (The Sun's nearest known star, Proxima Centauri, is about 4.25 light-years away).
During this passage through or near the Oort Cloud, the gravity of Nemesis would scatter a furious storm of primordial comets that had been relatively undisturbed for 4.5 billion years, since the solar system came into being.

MIND AND BRAIN

Memories harder to forget than currently thought

While it might not seem so the next time you go searching for your car keys, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that memories are not as fluid as current research suggests.  Their findings challenge the prevailing notion on how memories are stored and remembered or that a recalled memory could be altered or lost as it is "re-remembered."
According to the researchers, the prominent theory of how memories are stored cannot account for the return of a supposedly forgotten memory. Accounting for the temporary loss of memories following the act of remembering will require further study.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

US charged with war crimes: the evidence file

The complaint is directed against members of the U.S. armed forces—who are not yet identified— for war crimes described below, against the officers who commanded them in as far as those officers have given orders for illegitimate military actions, or have failed to act to the best of their abilities, when they had knowledge about orders given with respect to these violations or of facts indicating the start of their execution while in the ability to prevent their continuation or stopping them. This is particularly the case for Colonel Bryan P. McCoy, commander of the Third Marine Battalion of the 4th Regiment who has encouraged his men to fire at ambulances and civilians.
This complaint is likewise directed against General Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. and U.K. forces involved in the recent war on Iraq during which numerous war crimes, described below, particularly the massive and repeated use of cluster bombs against civilian targets, couldn’t have been committed if not on the orders of the highest commander of the troops. In any case, this commander should have had knowledge about orders given with respect to the execution of such a violation of facts indicating the start of their execution. Being the highest commander, General Tommy Franks could have prevented the continuation of these war crimes or stopped them.

[The video and pictures in this report contain graphic images of the reality and horror of the invasion of Iraq.]

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Bush camp exposed as 'serial liars'

US President George Bush and his four top advisers made a combined total of 237 misleading public statements on the threat posed by Iraq.
The claim was made in a congressional report released on Tuesday.
Most of the statements were misleading because they expressed certainty where none existed or failed to acknowledge the doubts of intelligence officials, according to the report.
Ten statements were just completely false.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

US videos, for TV news, come under scrutiny

Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines.
The videos are intended for use in local television news programs.

DEATH OF DEMOCRACY

Diebold, electronic voting and the vast right-wing conspiracy

If Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has his way, Diebold will receive a contract to supply touch screen electronic voting machines for much of the state. None of these Diebold machines will provide a paper receipt of the vote.
Diebold, located in North Canton, Ohio, does its primary business in ATM and ticket-vending machines. Critics of Diebold point out that virtually every other machine the company makes -- ATMs and ticket vending machines -- provides a paper trail to verify the machine’s calculations. Oddly, only the voting machines lack this essential function.
Proponents of a paper trail were emboldened when Athan Gibbs, President and CEO of TruVote International, demonstrated a voting machine at a vendor’s fair in Columbus that provides two separate voting receipts. Mr Gibbs died in a car crash earlier this month.

[Diebold’s current CEO Walden "Wally" O’Dell, is on record stating that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President" this year.]

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Bush out of touch ... with the earth

For days now, the job at one US national park has been to follow the order from the White House through the Secret Service and down to the park workers: 'The president's feet are not to touch the dirt.'
So all yesterday, large crews drawn from all county parks worked to ensure that, as always in his life, George Bush's feet do not touch the ground when he appears in the big park today."

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

It's another world . . . but is it our 10th planet?

NASA is expected to announce today the discovery of the space object, which some experts believe could be a new planet. It is provisionally known as Sedna, after the Inuit goddess of the sea.
Measurements suggest Sedna's diameter is almost 2000km – the biggest find in the solar system since Pluto was discovered 74 years ago. It is believed to be made of ice and rock, and is slightly smaller than Pluto.

TALIBAN IN SUITS

Tax cuts for the rich -- because "wealth is a mark of God's favor"

We in the enlightened West smile at theocratic quibbling: Imagine, national leaders insisting that a modern state be governed solely by divine authority! Governments guaranteeing the right of religious extremists to impose their views on society!
But the "Constitution Restoration Act of 2004" is no joke; it was introduced last month by some of the Bush Regime's most powerful Congressional sycophants. If enacted, the Act will effectively transform the US into a theocracy, where the arbitrary dictates of a 'higher power' can override law.
The Act -- drafted by a minion of television evangelist Pat Robertson -- is the fruit of decades of work by a group of extremists known broadly as "Dominionists." Their openly expressed aim is to establish "biblical rule" over every aspect of society -- placing "the state, the school, the arts and sciences, law, economics, and every other sphere under Christ the King." Or as Attorney General John Ashcroft -- the nation's chief law enforcement officer -- has often proclaimed: "America has no king but Jesus!"

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Agency initiates steps for selective draft

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is adamant that he will not ask Congress to authorize a draft, and officials at the Selective Service System, the independent federal agency that would organize any conscription, stress that the possibility of a so-called 'special skills draft' is remote.
Nonetheless, the agency has begun the process of creating the procedures and policies to conduct such a targeted draft ... just in case.

GOOD GOVERNMENT

Blunkett charges miscarriage of justice victims ‘food and lodgings’

On Tuesday, UK's Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted.
Blunkett’s fight has been described as “outrageous”, “morally repugnant” and the “sickest of sick jokes”, but his spokesmen in the Home Office say it’s a completely “reasonable course of action” as the innocent men and women would have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they weren’t in prison. The government deems the claw-back ‘Saved Living Expenses’.
A few of examples
Paddy Hill was one of the Birmingham Six. He spent 16 years behind bars for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings by the IRA. Hill now lives on a farm with his wife and children near Beith in Scotland. He has been charged £50,000 for living expenses by the Home Office.
Mike O’Brien spent 10 years in jail wrongly convicted of killing a Cardiff newsagent. His baby daughter died while he was in prison and he was charged £37,500 by the Home Office for his time behind bars.
Vincent Hickey, one of the Bridgewater Four who was wrongly convicted for killing a paperboy, was charged £60,000 for the 17 years he spent in jail. He said: “If I had known this I would have stayed on hunger-strike longer, that way I would have had a smaller bill.”

NEW WORLD ORDER

Memos a blueprint for war?

The group, the Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, was founded in 1997. Among its supporters were three Republican former officials who were sitting out the Democratic presidency of Bill Clinton: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz.
In open letters to Clinton and GOP congressional leaders the next year, the group called for 'the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power' and a shift toward a more assertive U.S. policy in the Middle East, including the use of force if necessary to unseat Saddam.
And in a report just before the 2000 election that would bring Bush to power, the group predicted that the shift would come about slowly, unless there were 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor.'

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

We See That Now

"George W. Bush cannot be, as we've screamed till we're blue in the face, the cretinous finger puppet of an incalculably cynical and malevolent cabal and a ruthless neo-Confederate, bent on creating a plutocratic ruling class at home and a rapacious corporate imperium abroad. He's one or the other. We cannot have it both ways. We see that now."
-- Tony Hendra

OUR ANCESTORS

Phylogenetic tree of early hominids, apes and humans.

A new branch of primitive humans reported found in Ethiopia

Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, member of a scientific team working in Ethiopia, and his colleagues have found dental evidence that elevates the hominid subspecies Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba to its own species, Ardipithecus kadabba. This new species, dating between 5.54 and 5.77 million years old, is the oldest member of the genus Ardipithecus.
Haile-Selassie, curator and head of Physical Anthropology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, said, "Ardipithecus kadabba may also represent the first species on the human branch of the family tree just after the evolutionary split between lines leading to modern chimpanzees and humans.

NEW WORLD ORDER

The ultimate crowd control vehicle unveiled

The new Smar Truck lll concept, designed for America's homeland security was built in partnership with International Truck and Engine Corporation. The vehicle showcases the latest in armor protection, and detection and deterrent capabilities.
Smar Truck lll is equipped with a weapons station module featuring a remote controlled .50-caliber machine gun which rises from the back of the vehicle and has sniper-detection directional sound capabilities.

EARTH CHANGES

Scientist 'gagged' after warning of global warming threat

The UK Government tried to muzzle it's top scientific adviser after he warned that global warming was a more serious threat than international terrorism.
Ivan Rogers, Mr Blair's principal private secretary, told Sir David King, the Prime Minister's chief scientist, to limit his contact with the media after he made outspoken comments about President George Bush's policy on climate change.
In January, Sir David wrote a scathing article in the American journal Science attacking Washington for failing to take climate change seriously. 'In my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism,' he wrote.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

So Dubya, how do you feel about your mom and dad?

"Authoritarian personalities are organised around rabid hostility to 'legitimate' targets, often ones nominated by their parents' prejudices. Intensely moralistic, they direct it towards despised social groups. As people, they avoid introspection or loving displays, preferring toughness and cynicism. They regard others with suspicion, attributing ulterior motives to the most innocent behaviour. They are liable to be superstitious. All these traits have been described in Bush many times, by friends or colleagues."
-- Psychologist Oliver James analyses the behaviour of the American president

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

Large sunspot emerging

A large sunspot, several times wider than Earth, is emerging over the sun's eastern limb. Its potential for solar flares won't be known until it rotates into more direct view. See the spot yourself using safe solar observing techniques.

CAT PEOPLE

'Heartbroken' cat makes the long journey home

A homesick cat walked a hundred kilometres back home after being given away by its Beijing owner, a news report said on Thursday.
The three-year-old cat ran away from its new home and spent 40 days finding its way back to its old owner in the Chinese capital, according to the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily.
The female owner, who had given the cat away to a friend outside the city, was stunned when the cat turned up on her doorstep on Tuesday, the newspaper said.
The cat had shed 2,5kg and weighed just 800g when it arrived home. The owner told the newspaper she would never let the cat go again.

TIME AND TIDE

Time can be turned back

On January 27, 1995, American and British scientists who were conducting investigations in Antarctica noticed some spinning gray fog in the sky over the pole which they believed to be just ordinary particles. However, the gray fog did not change form nor move over time.
US physicist Mariann McLein said the researchers launched a weather balloon with equipment to register wind speed, temperature and air moisture. But the weather balloon soared upwards and immediately disappeared.
In a little while, the researchers brought the weather balloon back to the ground by its tether and were shocked to see that a chronometer aboard the weather balloon displayed the date as January 27, 1965, the same day 30 years ago.
The experiment was repeated several times after the researchers found out the equipment was in good repair. But each time the watch was back it displayed the past time. The phenomenon was called 'the time gate' and was reported to the White House.

[There is a deal of doubt as to the existence of a US physicist named Mariann McLein. Pravda RU appears to be turning into an east bloc National Enquirer/News of the World.]

ANDROPHAGEOUS PETS

Pet spider kills, eats its owner

A MAN who lived in his own “zoo” of lizards and insects was fatally bitten by a pet black widow spider — then eaten by the other creepy-crawlies.
Police broke in to Mark Voegel’s apartment to find spider Bettina along with 200 others, several snakes, a gecko lizard called Helmut and several thousand termites had gorged on his body.
Neighbours alerted police after becoming alarmed by the stink.
A police spokesman said: “It was like a horror movie. His corpse was over the sofa.
“Giant webs draped him, spiders were all over him. They were coming out of his nose and his mouth. There was everything there one could imagine in the world of reptiles.

SYCOPHANT NATION

Australia now cites US alliance as a key reason for joining Iraq war

Both before and after the war, Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer repeatedly cited Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as the principal justification for joining President George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing."
But Howard said Tuesday that in all his public addresses arguing the case for joining the US-led invasion, he had "placed very heavy reliance on the importance of the American alliance."
The change in emphasis came a day after being accused by a parliamentary panel of exaggerating the case for joining the Iraq war.
Australia committed 2000 Australian troops to the US-led conflict.

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

Rosetta probe heads for comet

Europe's Rosetta spacecraft has launched successfully and is now heading into space on its daring journey to chase and land on a comet....Rosetta is primed for a 7bn-km journey to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Once in orbit around the mountainous ball of ice and dust in 2014, the craft will despatch a small lander to the comet's surface to study its chemistry.

POT AND KETTLE

'Blair slept rough as homeless drop-out'

UK Prime Minister's wife Cherie Blair reportedly told guests her future husband was forced on to the streets near London’s Euston station during his gap-year in 1971-72.
The story comes after 15 people were arrested on the first night of a controversial drive to clear beggars off the streets of London’s West End. They were picked up as part of a 48-hour blitz by Westminster Council designed to disrupt and deter begging in the area.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

The whole world is bugged

From the National Security Agency's imposing headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, ringed by a double-chain fence topped by barbed wire with strands of electrified wire between them, America 'bugs' the world.
Nothing politically or militarily significant -- whether mentioned in a telephone call, in a conversation in the office of the secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, or in a company fax or e-mail -- escapes its attention.
Its computers 'vacuum the entire electromagnetic spectrum', homing in on 'key words' which may suggest something of interest to NSA customers is being transmitted.

EARTH CHANGES

New calls for planetary defense

A four-day discussion was kicked off by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the US House Science Committee's Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee with his noting that it took the attacks of Sept. 11 for the world to focus on global terrorism.
"I hope that it won’t take that type of catastrophe for us to start paying attention to the threats of near-Earth objects," he said. Rohrabacher said the political reaction to the worries over space rocks has garnered "a very tepid response" to date, noting that money spent so far on the issue has been "a pittance".