DRUGGED NATION

Ecstasy trials for combat stress

American soldiers traumatised by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are to be offered the drug ecstasy to help free them of flashbacks and recurring nightmares.
The US food and drug administration has given the go-ahead for the soldiers to be included in an experiment to see if MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, can treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
Scientists behind the trial in South Carolina think the feelings of emotional closeness reported by those taking the drug could help the soldiers talk about their experiences to therapists.
Animal studies suggest that it lowers levels of the brain chemical seroton, however the South Carolina study marks a resurgence of interest in the use of controlled psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs. Several studies in the US are planned or are under way to investigate MDMA, LSD and psilocybin.

'Ecstasy' Use Studied to Ease Fear in Terminally Ill
This month, in a little-noted administrative decision, the Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to a Harvard proposal to test the benefits of the illegal street drug known as "ecstasy" in patients diagnosed with severe anxiety related to advanced cancer.
The drug, also known as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, has been referred to by psychiatrists as an "empathogen," a drug especially good at putting people in touch with their emotions. Some believe it could help patients come to terms with the biggest emotional challenge of all: the end of life.
The FDA's approval puts the study on track to become the first test of a psychedelic substance since 1963 at Harvard, where drug guru Timothy Leary lost his teaching privileges after using students in experiments with LSD and other hallucinogens.

RULE OF LAW?

International law: illegal imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay

Two and a half years have passed since their imprisonment, Mamdouh Habib has been set free but the other Australian , David Hicks, is still held.
The US claims they were 'enemy combatants' and no established regime of international law applies to them.
The Australian Section of the International Commission of Jurists (ASICJ) argues that Hicks is a prisoner of war (POW) under the Third Geneva Convention, and that Habib was a suspected criminal who should have been dealt with under the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (ICCPR).
The ASICJ says there is no category of 'enemy combatant' under international law and that labelling the prisoners such does not get around existing law in respect of their treatment.

Perhaps is is just that George W Bush has a thing about guys named David Hicks.

FEELING A DRAFT

Should college students pack their bags for Canada?

The 'weekend warriors' of the Army Reserve and the National Guard now make up almost half the fighting force on the front lines, and young officers in the Reserve are retiring in droves. The Pentagon, which can barely attract enough recruits to maintain current troop levels, has involuntarily extended the enlistments of as many as 100,000 soldiers. Desperate for troops, the Army has lowered its standards to let in twenty-five percent more high school dropouts.
Uncle Sam wants you. He needs you. He'll bribe you to sign up. He'll strong-arm you to re-enlist. And if that's not enough, he's got a plan to draft you.

RIGHTS TRASHED

Freed detainee Habib says he was tortured throughout US custody

Mamdouh Habib still has a bruise on his lower back. He says it is a sign of the beatings he endured in a prison in Egypt. Interrogators there put out cigarettes on his chest, he says, and he lifts his shirt to show the marks. He says he got the dark spot on his forehead when Americans hit his head against the floor at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
After being arrested in Pakistan in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, he was held as a terror suspect by the Americans for 40 months. Back home now, Mr. Habib alleges that at every step of his detention - from Pakistan, to Egypt, to Afghanistan, to Guantánamo - he endured physical and psychological abuse.
The physical abuse, he said, ranged from a kick "that nearly killed me" to electric shocks administered through a wired helmet that he said interrogators told him could detect whether he was lying.
Speaking publicly for the first time since he was freed two weeks ago, Mr. Habib, a 49-year-old Australian citizen born in Egypt, also described psychological abuse that seemed intended to undermine his identity - as a husband, a father and a Muslim man.

Former spy claims Australian government covered up Iraq prisoner abuse

A former Australian spy contradicted government claims that no Australian was involved in interrogating Iraqi prisoners, saying he himself witnessed and reported the alleged abuse of Iraqis by their US captors.
Rod Barton, a former senior analyst for the Defense Intelligence Organisation (DIO) and a long-time Iraq weapons inspector, said he personally interrogated an Iraqi detainee at Camp Cropper, a US center which held so-called "high value" prisoners.
Barton said he raised concerns with an Australian defense official about the abuse of inmates at Camp Cropper before the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib became public, but no action was taken.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

CIA agent provocateur

Davao City bomber Michael Meiring. An FBI team whisked Meiring out of a Philippine hospital and back to the US, two legs lighter, after an explosive device prematurely detonated in his hotel room, and - significantly - before he could face awkward questions and pesky charges. (If the name sounds unfamiliar, search this site for earlier posts.)
I'd thought that now the Philippines has formally asked the United States for assistance in returning Meiring, the story might finally break in the US media. But no. Nothing. And to be perfectly honest, I really didn't expect anything else. The Meiring case is a difficult story to tell in America, as it makes no sense within the official paradigm of the "War on Terror."

One person was killed and nine were injured when a blast hit a bus depot in the southern city of Davao on Mindanao island at dusk. Earlier Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said five people had been killed, but Davao officials insisted she misspoke.

The citizen-led Mindanao Truth Commission, after almost nine months of conducting investigations, has claimed that the government itself could be the possible leading perpetrator in the bombings all over the island that have led to the death of 95 people and the wounding of 490 others.

HONEY TRAPS

Mossad femme fatale Sylvia Rafael to be buried in Israel

Sylvia Rafael, a legendary Mossad hit woman convicted of mistakenly assassinating a Moroccan waiter in Norway 31 years ago, is to be buried secretly in Israel according to her last wishes.
Rafael, 67, died over the weekend in her native South Africa, reportedly from leukemia.
Little was known of her exploits beyond her part in one of the Mossad's greatest fiascos. In July 1973, Rafael joined a hastily assembled team of agents to track down a man they believed to be Ali Hassan Salameh, the Black September's operation chief in Europe.
It was a time of wholesale vengeance for the Mossad, ordered by then prime minister Golda Meir, against the Palestinians responsible for the massacre of Israel's 11 Olympians at Munich in 1972.
In the lonely Norwegian village of Lillehammer -- host of Winter Olympics 21 years later, the team gunned down a Moroccan waiter called Ahmed Bouchiki in front of his pregnant wife instead of Salameh.

MEANWHILE
Israeli diplomat Amir Lati was apparently ejected from Australia by ASIO for espionage. It has been speculated Lati was chasing women in sensitive positions in an attempt to gather intelligence for his bosses back in Israel, an accusation he denies.

Diplomat Aryeh Sar who was due to replace the alleged Mossad spy in Canberra was reportedly photographed nude with under-age girls when on a posting to Brazil five years ago.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz said the country's foreign ministry is now holding off sending the new consul to Australia.

HIVE MIND

Can this black box see into the future?

According to a growing band of top scientists, a small random number generating computer has quite extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the 'eye' of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world events.
The machine apparently sensed the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre four hours before they happened - and last December, it also appeared to forewarn of the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that precipitated the epic tragedy.

See also The Merlin Project with related article here.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

John Rendon: the Pentagon's information warrior

The Rendon Group's contract with the Pentagon was awarded on a no-bid basis, reflecting the government's determination to hire a firm already versed in running overseas propaganda operations. Rendon specializes in 'assisting corporations, organizations, and governments achieve their policy objectives.' Past clients include the CIA, USAID, the government of Kuwait, Monsanto Chemical Company, and the official trade agencies of countries including Bulgaria, Russia, and Uzbekistan.

Regarding Uzbekistan: US looks away as new ally tortures Islamists

Abdulkhalil, a 28-year-old farmer sentenced to 16 years in prison, was a victim of Uzbekistan's security service, the SNB. His detention and torture were part of a crackdown on Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), an Islamist group.
Last week his father saw him for the first time since that day on a stretcher in a prison hospital. His head was battered and his tongue was so swollen that he could only say that he had "been kept in water for a long time".
According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death.
Muzafar Avazov died a horrible death. His body is scalded a myriad of colors from head to toe.
Human-rights activists and Avazov's mother said the wounds are proof that the 37-year-old died after being boiled alive inside Uzbekistan's notorious Jaslik prison in mid-2002. There are other signs of torture in other photographs; his fingernails and toenails apparently were all pulled out and nearly every one of his teeth is smashed.
When his mother, Fatima Mukadirova, released the photos and spoke out to foreign journalists, the 62-year-old was jailed for "anti-constitutional activity."

DEAD SCIENTISTS SOCIETY

Spate of scientists and microbiologist deaths raises suspicion

'The insurance industry uses scientific tables to accurately predict death rates. Based on the 1997 CSO Mortality Tables, the odds that all of these men could collectively die during a 30 month period is a staggering 14,000,000,000:1
This makes it logically impossible for any reasonable person to deny that the world's leading microbiology researchers are being murdered, beginning with the anthrax attacks thru last month.
The question is why are they being killed, and by whom?'

CONCENTRATE, CONCENTRATE

The Lady in Red One

"For more than 18 hours a day she was kept in solitary confinement in Red One because she was screaming and uncontrollable," said refugee advocate Bernadette Wauchope.
"We visited the centre often and detainees told us they were worried about a woman they called Anna, who was screaming all day and night in her cell. They said she wouldn't talk to anyone, muttered in German and was clearly mentally unstable and needed help.
"She was locked up in an isolation cell for more than 18 hours a day. When she was allowed out of her room for a few hours' exercise it would take up to six riot officers to force her back into her room fighting and screaming.

"One man who had been in Red One said he could hear her screaming in her cell for hours.
"A guard said she was just putting it on as she just wants to get out."
An immigration spokesman confirmed Ms Rau had been locked in Red One, where detainees are kept in isolation in a bare cell under 24-hour camera observation.
Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists chairwoman Louise Newman said she and others tried to see the woman at Baxter in December but were denied permission.
"We were told she had not asked for an outside assessment so we couldn't see her," Dr Newman said. "But obviously she was psychotic and incapable of making any such request. Her situation was deteriorating rapidly in the conditions in which she was being kept.

Inquiry should be open, says family

Cornelia Rau's sister is disappointed the inquiry into her detention will be held in private and that the head of the inquiry will not have powers to compel witnesses.

The family of a mentally ill woman wrongly held in a detention centre says a Federal Government inquiry into how she came to be locked up should be an open investigation.
Federal Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone announced the inquiry into Cornelia Rau's situation will be held in private to protect Ms Rau's privacy.
Ms Rau was held in a Queensland prison and at the Baxter detention centre as an illegal immigrant for a total of 10 months.
Ms Rau's sister, Chris, says the Government should not be concerned about attempting to preserve the privacy of her sister or the Rau family.
"Poor Cornelia, her entire illness has been on every media outlet in the country, our privacy has already been sacrificed now," she said.
Chris Rau says an open inquiry should be held, with the more sensitive evidence being given in camera.
"We would have preferred an open inquiry which could hear Cornelia's psychiatric history in camera," she said.
"We feel the commissioner should have the power to compel witnesses and to make sure that people who do give eyewitness accounts aren't some how punished in the future."
Senator Vanstone announced that former Australian Federal Police (AFP) commissioner Mick Palmer will conduct the private inquiry and report back to the Government on March 24.

NORTH OF THE BORDER

US nationals' eye Canada after election

In the Niagara of liberal angst just after Bush's victory on Nov. 2, the Canadian government's immigration Web site reported a surge in inquiries from the United States, to about 115,000 a day from 20,000.
After three months, memories of the election have begun to recede. Yet immigration lawyers say that Americans are not just making inquiries and that more are pursuing a move above the 49th parallel, fed up with a country they see drifting persistently to the right and abandoning the principles of tolerance, compassion and peaceful idealism they felt once defined the nation.
America is in no danger of emptying out. But even a small loss of population, many from a deep sense of political despair, is a significant event in the life of a nation that thinks of itself as a place to escape to.

VISION THING

Natasha Demkina 'fails' x-ray vision test

We recruited six volunteers, who each had adifferent medical condition visible on X-rays, plus a "normal" subject who had none of the six target conditions.
The test -- which required her to match at least five of the target medical conditions to the correct subjects -- should have been a breeze. She didn't have to scan their entire bodies for unknown conditions. She was told exactly what to look for and exactly where to look. Yet, it took her more than four hourss to complete the test and she only matched four of the conditions correctly -- a score that everyone prior to the test had agreed upon would not justify further testing.
Natasha's most dramatic misdiagnosis was her failure to see a large metal plate covering a missing section of skull in a man who had a large brain tumor removed. Instead, sheindicatedthat she 'saw'ametal plate and missing skull section in a man who had a removed appendix but normal skull.

[A previous diagnosis was one that helped prompt interest in the test.]

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

First Amendment no big deal, students say

A 2-year survey of more than 100,000 high school students from across USA has discovered that a third of the students polled think the press has too much freedom, half believe the government has the right to censor the Internet, and two-thirds think it's illegal to burn the flag.
But perhaps the most disturbing revelation is that nearly four in ten believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing.

Rights over-rated, say teens

EARTH CHANGES

'Unheard of' seismic events continue in quake areas

Unusual events "unheard of in the history of seismology" have been recorded in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, with more than 120 such events being recorded in the last one month, according to seismologists.
Seismologists have recorded over 120 such unusual events in the islands following the December 26 earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale that triggered tsunamis which wreaked havoc in several parts of the country.

Something strange happening in the tectonic plates

The bizarre pattern of aftershocks ranging between 5.2 and 6.2 Richter continues in the Tsunami hit Nicobar island of India.
The tribal people are saying that many miles below the earth's surface, something is happening they never experienced before.

M5.8 earthquake jolts eastern Hokkaido

An earthquake registering a preliminary magnitude of 5.8, jolted eastern Hokkaido Monday evening, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Earthquake jolts Indonesia's Aceh again

An earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale on Monday shook the tsunami-hit Indonesian province of Aceh, where more than 20 aftershocks have been reported since a powerful earthquake triggered a tsunami on Dec. 26.

Another quake jolts Wellington region

An earthquake measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale struck the lower North Island of New Zealand.

Earthquake jolts Indonesia’s Java island

An earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale rocked Indonesia’s Java island early Tuesday but there were no reports of casualties or damage, seismologists said.

Bulgaria, Greece rocked by quakes

A light earthquake was registered in Bulgaria around midnight, the Seismological Centre at the Bulgarian Academy of Science reported.
The quake measured 2.8 on the Richter scale and its epicenter was located 180km southeast of Sofia.

New hot springs flow in wake of Palu earthquake

A new phenomenon has stunned the people of Central Sulawesi, in the wake of a recent 6.2-magnitude earthquake in the region.
New hot springs have emerged in Bobo subdistrict, Donggala regency, southeast of Palu, shortly after the quake jolted the area on Jan. 24.
The biggest hot spring had formed a pool 6 meters square, while dozens of smaller ones were also scattered around the subdistrict. Many residents were surprised to find water boiling up in the new springs with a distinct sulfuric odor. According to local residents, it takes just two minutes to poach an egg.

Man feared dead after PNG volcano erupts

A volcano on the Papua New Guinea island of Manam is spewing lava, rocks and ash onto villages, leaving one man missing and several others injured, officials have said.
Hundreds of Manam islanders were evacuated to the mainland after the eruption early Friday.

Ebeko volcano awoke in Paramushir Island

The Ebeko volcano has awoken with a jolt at the North Kuril island of Paramushir in the Russian Far East.

DIG THIS

Suppressed photo reveals mysterious dig beneath US Capitol

A secret dig appears to be underway beneath the U.S. Capitol, according to an exclusive photo released today by the online entertainment network @lantisTV after it successfully appealed a federal court order that had blocked its publication for months.
The photo, taken from an undisclosed location in February, 2004, captures a massive excavation beneath the U.S. Capitol.

“They’re digging up the National Mall, looking for something,” said one exasperated U.S. Senator from a large industrial state who requested anonymity. “They’ve been at it for years, all under the guise of ‘renovations’ for the monuments or ‘security upgrades.’ Let me tell you, at this point there’s more to see of Washington, D.C., under the Mall than above ground. Talk about a shadow government. I think it’s a horrific abuse of taxpayer money.”

PATENT BULL

Hudson's Australian patent: orbitally rearranged monoatomic elements

"This invention relates to the monoatomic forms of certain transition and noble metal elements, namely, gold, silver, copper, cobalt, nickel and the six platinum group elements.
More particularly, this invention relates to the separation of the aforesaid elements from naturally occurring materials in their orbitally rearranged monoatomic forms, and to the preparation of the elements in their orbitally rearranged monoatomic forms from their commercial metallic forms.
The materials of this invention are stable, substantially pure, non-metallic-like forms of the elements, and have a hereto unknown electron orbital rearrangement in the 'd', 's', and vacant 'p' orbitals.
The electron rearrangement bestows upon the monoatomic elements unique electronic, chemical, magnetic, and physical properties which have commercial application.
This invention also relates to the recovery of the metallic form of each of the aforesaid transition and noble metal elements from the orbitally rearranged monoatomic forms. "

BIG DICK

Cheney's green parka and boots stand out

Vice President Dick Cheney's utilitarian hooded parka and boots stood out amid the solemn formality of a ceremony commemorating the liberation of Nazi death camps, raising eyebrows among the fashion-conscious.
Cheney replaced the zipped-to-the-neck green parka he sported in Thursday's blowing snow and freezing wind with a more traditional black coat - red tie and gray scarf showing underneath - for his tour of Auschwitz on Friday.

[What shade of green we wonder.]]

ESCHATOLOGICAL EXEGESIS

Apocalypse soon: The signs are all there

The Rapture Index stands at 153 today, up only one point since 2005 began, and it makes you wonder whether the folks at raptureready.com who compile it. Many experts regard the index as the Dow Jones Industrial Average of "end time activity" have got their heads screwed on right. Or maybe they haven't been keeping careful track because they're too busy with other things, such as packing. If the end is coming anytime soon, you don't want to have forgotten your toothbrush when you join the righteous dead in heaven.
According to raptureready.com, a Rapture Index reading over 145 means "Fasten your seat belts," so when it hits the mid-150s it has to be telling us to close our tray-tables and make sure our seat-backs are in the full upright position.

UNCLEAN, UNCLEAN

Mad cow disease found in French goat

European scientists have found mad cow disease in a French goat – the first naturally occurring case known to hit an animal other than cattle.
The finding immediately raised fears that bovine spongiform encephalopathy – which can cause variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in people – has crossed to other species eaten by humans.
The goat, which was slaughtered in France in 2002, was first believed to have scrapie, a disease of goats and sheep similar to BSE but not infectious for humans.
It took more than two years to determine that the illness was likely BSE because scientists implanted the infected material into mice to see if they would develop the illness. They did.
At least 148 people in Britain alone have died from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease after eating tainted meat during an outbreak of mad cow disease there in the 1990s.

BUSH BRAIN

Seymour Hersh: We've Been Taken Over By a Cult

George Bush thinks this is the right thing. He is going to continue doing what he has been doing in Iraq. He's going to expand it, I think, if he can. I think that the number of body bags that come back will make no difference to him. The body bags are rolling in. It makes no difference to him, because he will see it as a price he has to pay to put America where he thinks it should be. So, he's inured in a very strange way to people like me, to the politicians, most of them who are too cowardly anyway to do much.

HEATED DEBATE

Global warming approaching point of no return, warns leading climate expert

Global warning has already hit the danger point that international attempts to curb it are designed to avoid, according to the world's top climate watchdog.
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told an international conference attended by 114 governments in Mauritius this month that he personally believes that the world has 'already reached the level of dangerous concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere' and called for immediate and 'very deep' cuts in the pollution if humanity is to 'survive'.
His comments rocked the Bush administration - which immediately tried to slap him down - not least because it put him in his post after Exxon, the major oil company most opposed to international action on global warming, complained that his predecessor was too 'aggressive' on the issue.

Countdown to global catastrophe

The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.

FOX HUNTING

Reporters challenge renewal of Fox's licence for distorting and falsifying news

Two former WTVT, Channel 13, reporters filed a petition Monday with the Federal Communications Commission to deny renewal of the station's license for 'intentionally airing false and distorted news reports'' in 1997.
Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, who worked for Channel 13 in 1996 to 1997, say the station violated the public trust by ordering them to put a favorable slant on news reports they were preparing about a growth hormone given to dairy cattle in Florida.
The married couple, who now live in Jacksonville, say Fox-owned WTVT feared a lawsuit from hormone maker Monsanto because their reports would have raised questions about health hazards.

TECHNO FEAR

Army prepares 'robo-soldier' for Iraq

The US Army is preparing to send 18 remote-controlled robotic warriors to fight in Iraq beginning in March or April.
A SWORDS [Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems] robot shoots only when its human operator presses a button after identifying a target on video shot by the robot's cameras.
'The only difference is that his weapon is not at his shoulder, it's up to half a mile a way,' said Bob Quinn, general manager of Talon robots for Foster-Miller Inc., the Waltham, Mass., company that makes the SWORDS. As one Marine fresh out of boot camp told Quinn upon seeing the robot: 'This is my invisibility cloak.'

[The more like a video game war becomes, the less compassion there will be for our fellow man.]

GUILTY SECRETS

Rumsfeld cancels trip fearing war crime suit

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cancelled a planned visit to Germany after a US human rights organisation asked German authorities to prosecute him for war crimes, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) has learned.
Rumsfeld has informed the German government via the US embassy that he will not take part in the Munich Security Conference in February, conference head Horst Teltschik told DPA on Thursday.
The New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights filed a complaint in December with the Federal German Prosecutor's Office against Rumsfeld accusing him of war crimes and torture in connection with detainee abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Rumsfeld made it known immediately after the complaint was filed that he would not attend the Munich conference unless Germany quashed the legal action.

EVA BROWN

Rice defends her imaginary friends: Integrity and Truth

'We can have this discussion in any way that you would like, but I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity,' Rice told Boxer. 'I really hope that you will not imply that I take the truth lightly.'

Condoleezza Rice's response when California Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer argued that the Bush administration had shifted its justification for the war because it had failed to find stocks of biological and chemical weapons it had asserted were there.
"You sent them in there because of weapons of mass destruction. Later the mission changed when there were none," Boxer told Rice. "Let's not rewrite history, it's too soon to do that."

SOUL SEARCHING

Lest the abyss stare back?

Parade performers at the US Preznit-dental in-augur-ation will have security escorts to the bathroom, and they've been ordered not to look directly at President Bush or make any sudden movements while passing the reviewing stand.
Parade spectators have been banned from bringing eskys (coolers), folding chairs, bicycles, pets, papier-mache objects, displays such as puppets, mock coffins, props and "any items determined to be a potential safety hazard" ... and weapons.

BRAIN SPACE

The future of lying

Imagine the Pentagon equipped with a machine which can read minds. Sound like the plot of a Hollywood thriller? Well, it might not be that far away.
The US Department of Defense has given Dr Jennifer Vendemia a $5m grant to work on her theory that by monitoring brainwaves she can detect whether someone is lying.
Her system involves placing 128 electrodes on the face and scalp, which translate brainwaves in under a second. Subjects only have to hear interrogators' questions to give a response.
"In the United States it could be unconstitutional because, under the Fifth Amendment, citizens have a right not to self-incriminate themselves," says Steven Aftergood, of the Federation American Sciences.
"If there was a machine which was able to read people's minds, it would give greater urgency to questions of people's privacy."

BRAIN FINGERPRINTING
Brain fingerprints under scrutiny

Brain Fingerprinting, developed by Dr Larry Farwell, chief scientist and founder of Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, is a method of reading the brain's involuntary electrical activity in response to a subject being shown certain images relating to a crime.

Matching evidence from a crime scene with evidence on the perpetrator

Dr. Lawrence A. Farwell has invented, developed, proven, and patented the technique of Farwell Brain Fingerprinting, a new computer-based technology to identify the perpetrator of a crime accurately and scientifically by measuring brain-wave responses to crime-relevant words or pictures presented on a computer screen. Farwell Brain Fingerprinting has proven 100% accurate in over 120 tests, including tests on FBI agents, tests for a US intelligence agency and for the US Navy, and tests on real-life situations including actual crimes.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Media training now required for Iraq-bound soldiers

As the US military approaches nearly two years in the Iraq conflict, media training for soldiers going into the war zone has been stepped up, becoming mandatory for Army troops since October, 2004.
The first talking point in a slide show for troops at Fort Bragg was: "We are not an occupying force".

A list of "wallet-card" talking points given to a group of Marines heading to Iraq included:
* The Marine Corps is trained, resourced, and ready to accomplish its missions. We are committed to the cause and will remain in Iraq as long as we are needed.
* The fight in Iraq is tough, but we will remain steadfast and not lose heart.
* We are moving forward together with the Iraqi government as partners in building a future for the sons and daughters of Iraq.
* Coalition forces will help our Iraqi partners as they build their new and independent country and take their rightful place in the world community.
* Our troopers and their families are our greatest and most treasured resource.
* The Corps is a national institution -- it has never failed to do the will of the American people.

VOICE OF TREASON

What the Pentagon can now do in secret

The CIA will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as 'facilitators' of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Ali G star escapes 'lynching' over hoax

Sasha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G) has been escorted from an American rodeo after infuriating a crowd by claiming that President Bush drinks blood and singing a mangled version of the American national anthem.
Cohen, posing as his Kazakhstani journalist character Borat, convinced rodeo organisers in Salem, Virginia, that he was filming a documentary about America.
He told them he supported the war on terrorism and said: "I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards. And may George W Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq."
Then he asked if he could show his appreciation by singing the Star Spangled Banner. His version ended with the words "your home is the grave".
"If he had been out there a minute longer, I think someone would have shot him," said local Robynn Jaymes.

DUH!

Bush says we can't find Osama because "he's hiding"

As for perhaps the most notorious terrorist, Osama bin Laden, the administration has so far been unsuccessful in its attempt to locate the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Asked why, Bush said, 'Because he's hiding'.

MISSIONARY POSITION

Villagers furious with 'Christian' aid workers

Rage and fury has gripped this tsunami-hit tiny Hindu village in India's southern Tamil Nadu after a group of Christian missionaries allegedly refused them aid for not agreeing to follow their religion.
Jubilant at seeing the relief trucks loaded with food, clothes and the much-needed medicines the villagers, many of who have not had a square meal in days, were shocked when the nuns asked them to convert before distributing biscuits and water.
"We are staunch followers of Hindu religion and refused their request. And after that these people with their aid materials are leaving the village without distributing that to us," Rajni Kumar, a villager said.

NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

Huygens loses communication line with Cassini spacecraft

The communications failure occurred on Cassini, not Huygens, and was caused by an error "as simple as throwing a switch to, 'On.' We did not set the Cassini software to 'On' and it's our fault," said Jacques Louet, head of science projects at ESA. "Space does not forgive stupid mistakes, and we made a stupid mistake. I take full responsibility.

SHEARING THE SHEEPLE

Campaign designed to promote allowing workers to invest superannuation in stockmarket

White House allies are launching a market-research project to build pressure on lawmakers to allow workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market.
The campaign will use Bush's campaign-honed techniques of mass repetition, never deviating from the script and using the politics of fear to build support -- contending that a Social Security financial crisis is imminent when even Republican figures show it is decades away.

DEATH OF REASON

It's official: my brother died in vain

"My brother was Sgt. Sherwood Baker. He was a member of the Pennsylvania National Guard deployed a year ago with his unit out of Wilkes-Barre. He said goodbye to his wife and his 9-year-old son, boarded a bus and went to Ft. Dix, N.J., to be hastily retrained. His seven years of Guard training as a forward observer was practically worthless because he would not face combat. All he needed to do was learn how to not die.
"He received a crash course in convoy security, including practice in running over cardboard cutouts of children. We bought him a GPS unit and walkie-talkies because he wasn't supplied with them. In Iraq, Sherwood was assigned to the Iraq Survey Group and joined the search for weapons of mass destruction."

EARTH CHANGES

How the Earthquake affected Earth

NASA scientists studying the Indonesian earthquake of Dec. 26, 2004, have calculated that it slightly changed our planet's shape, shaved almost 3 microseconds from the length of the day, and shifted the North Pole by centimeters.
Dr. Benjamin Fong Chao of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Dr. Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said all earthquakes have some effect on Earth's rotation. It's just that the effects are, usually, barely noticeable.
This one was not usual: The devastating megathrust earthquake registered nine on the new 'moment' scale (modified Richter scale), making it the fourth largest 'quake in one hundred years.

SCENE SETTER

Congress passes 'doomsday' plan

With no fanfare, the U.S. House has passed a controversial doomsday provision that would allow a handful of lawmakers to run Congress if a terrorist attack or major disaster killed or incapacitated large numbers of congressmen. 
"I think (the new rule) is terrible in a whole host of ways - first, I think it's unconstitutional,'' said Norm Ornstein, a counselor to the independent Continuity of Government Commission, a bipartisan panel created to study the issue.
"It's a very foolish thing to do, I believe, and the way in which it was done was more foolish."

GHOST TOWN

Fallujah: the real story of the fall

Last November, US military forces, backed by British soldiers from the Black Watch, launched their biggest ever assault on the city of Falluja, Operation Phantom Fury.
Over the last two weeks, Ali Fadhil, an Iraqi doctor turned film-maker for Guardianfilms, has succeeded in making it into the city and the surrounding refugee camps. He discovered people had been shot in their beds, rabid dogs were feeding on corpses, and there was little to no water, electricity or sewage. A city of over 300,000 people had been destroyed and its inhabitants were homeless.
With just two weeks until the Iraqi elections, not a single voter in Falluja has received a ballot paper. Far from stabilising the region in preparation for the election, it seems the US military's decision to use the Iraqi National Guard against this Sunni city has fanned the flames of civil war in the entire country.

EARTH CHANGES

No coast safe from wave of destruction

Tsunamis can have their origins in space. Australian geographer Professor Ted Bryant points out that a meteorite striking the ocean can have a devastating effect. He maintains that on February 22, 1491, a meteorite strike caused tsunamis more than 130m high along the Australian coast.
Like earthquakes, volcanoes can cause these surges, and often do. One of the most destructive tsunamis in recent history occurred when the island volcano of Krakatoa erupted in 1883.
Bryant has found signs of tsunami waves more than 100m high on such unlikely places as coastal southeast Australia and the Scottish coastline north of Edinburgh.
In 1958, a landslide into Lituya Bay, Alaska, created tsunami waves reportedly more than 400m high along a wilderness coastal area, stripping the forest to bare rock to an incredible height of more than 500m above sea level.

WEIRD SCIENCE

Merlin a high-tech way to forecast the future

MERLIN is a computer-based forecasting technology that combines equations derived from planetary time cycles with past historical data and blends that information into a chronograph® or Timetrak® that plots the chronology of future events. It was created by Boston-based futurist Paul Guercio and physicist Dr. George Hart excimer laser co-inventor and currently a BMDO contractor performing work related to GPS test target characterization of the TMD-GBR radar and interceptor laser radar technology development.

Prediction for 2005: At the end of 2005, something profound will happen. They're not sure what, exactly, but it could be an asteroid strike or a massive UFO invasion.

ANIMAL CUNNING

Did animals' 'sixth sense' save them from tsunami?

Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami, adding weight to notions they possess a "sixth sense" for disasters, experts said on Thursday.
Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.

Tsunami kills thousands of people in Sri Lanka but few animals, wildlife experts say

An Associated Press photographer who flew over Sri Lanka's Yala National Park in an air force helicopter saw abundant wildlife, including elephants, buffalo, deer, and not a single animal corpse.
Floodwaters from Sunday's tsunami swept into the park, uprooting trees and toppling cars onto their roofs -- one car even ended up on top of a huge tree -- but the animals apparently were not harmed.

Yala, Sri Lanka's largest wildlife reserve, covers 1000 square km. 200 people were killed at Yala when waves sent floodwater surging 3.5km inland.

[The tsunami was triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean last week which is expected to have killed more than 100,000 people. ]

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

Generation of kids was washed away

In country after country, children have emerged as the biggest victims of Sunday's quake-born tidal waves -- thousands and thousands drowned, battered and washed away by huge walls of water that have decimated an entire generation of Asians.

TSUNAMI STRANGENESS

Baby floats to safety on mattress in tsunami

A 20-day-old baby sleeping on a mattress has survived the tsunamis triggered by an earthquake off the Indonesian coast.
The girl floated to safety after Malaysia's Penang island was hit by the killer waves, according to local media reports.
S Tulasi was sleeping in a room behind her father's food stall on Penang's popular Batu Ferringhi beach when the waves hit.

[Deigo Garcia military base unaffected by tsunamis

The key United States military base in the Indian Ocean has been unaffected by the tsunamis which have devastated parts of Asia, The Washington Post has reported.
Diego Garcia, a British territory about 1,500 kilometres south of India, hosts about 3,200 US military personnel and civilian contractors and many US long-range bombers and Navy ships.]

Earthquake man-made?

What is interesting about this is that the same place where the whale beachings have been taking place over the last 30 days is the same general area where the 8.1 Australian earthquake took place, and this is the same area where they are doing these seismic tests. Then 2 days after the Australian tectonic plate shifted, the 9.0 earthquake shook the coast of Indonesia. A great deal of interest and seismic testing has been taking place in this area

SOYLENT GREEN

Saudi Government Daily accuses US Army of harvesting organs of Iraqis

In the Saudi government daily Al-Watan, an article from Brussels written by Fakhriya Ahmad charges that, based on alleged secret European military reports, the U.S. military in Iraq is harvesting and selling human organs. The following day, the story was also published in the Iranian daily Jomhouri-ye Islami, as well as the Syrian daily Teshreen. The following are excerpts from the article:

'Secret European military intelligence reports indicate the transformation of the American humanitarian mission in Iraq into a profitable trade in the American markets through the practice of American physicians extracting human organs from the dead and wounded, before they are put to death, for sale to medical centers in America. A secret team of American physicians follow the troops during their attacks on Iraqi armed men to ensure quick [medical] operations for extracting some organs and transferring them to private operations rooms before they are transferred to America for sale.'

EARTH CHANGES

Quake biggest natural disaster to date

An earthquake, the fourth largest recorded since 1900 and measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, occurred after a rupture on the Indian Ocean seabed caused by the violent grinding of two tectonic plates. Huge waves swept some 7000 kilometres as far as Africa. The overall death toll currently is estimated at near 30,000. Man more people are expected to die of epidemics in the wake of the tsunami.
Indonesia's Aceh province bore the brunt of the temblor, hit at point-blank range and then battered by a tsunami.

Earth's axis altered

The quake was so powerful it made the Earth wobble on its axis and permanently altered the regional map, US geophysicists said today. The temblor may have moved small islands as much as 20 metres, according to one expert.
"That earthquake has changed the map," US Geological Survey expert Ken Hudnut told AFP.
"Some of the smaller islands off the south-west coast of Sumatra may have moved to the south-west by about 20 metres. That is a lot of slip."
The north-western tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra may also have shifted to the south-west by around 36 metres, Hudnut said.
In addition, the energy released as the two sides of the undersea fault slipped against each other made the Earth wobble on its axis, Hudnut said.
"We can detect very slight motions of the Earth and I would expect that the Earth wobbled in its orbit when the earthquake occurred due to the massive amount of energy exerted and the sudden shift in mass," Hudnut said.

All the planet is vibrating

"All the planet is vibrating" from the quake, said Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute. Speaking on SKY TG24 TV, Boschi said the quake even disturbed the Earth's rotation.

EARTH CHANGES

Arctic lights blamed on climate change

Eskimos and scientists report a strange 'lightness at noon' that is turning the usual all-day darkness of the high Canadian Arctic into twilight, apparently in defiance of natural laws. Canadian government officials say it may be the result of an unusual atmospheric phenomenon caused by global warming.
Inuit hunters are telling the government's weather station at Resolute Bay - Canada's second most northerly village, 1600 kilometres from the North Pole - of a new light in the sky.
And Wayne Davidson, the Canadian government official who runs the station, says he believes it it caused by climate change.

EARTH CHANGES

Massive earthquake felt in Tasmania

The world's biggest earthquake in almost four years has struck 800 km off the coast of Tasmania
'If it happened underneath a population centre in Australia, this would probably have destroyed a whole city,' seismologist Cvetan Sinadinovski said.
'In terms of size, this could have been more than 30 times stronger than the Newcastle event of 1989.'

[On December 28, 1989, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck Newcastle, causing extensive damage and killing 13 people.]

FEAR FACTOR

In US, 44 per cent say restrict Muslims

Nearly half of all Americans believe the US government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll.
The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims' civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.
Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim Americans.
The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising.
Cornell student researchers questioned 715 people in the nationwide telephone poll conducted this fall. The margin of error was 3.6 percentage points.

HISTORY REPEATS

45 per cent of Britons never heard of Auschwitz killings

Nearly half of Britons (45 per cent) have never heard of Auschwitz, according to a new poll conducted among 4000 adults.
The survey uncovered shocking levels of ignorance about the Holocaust, and among women and the under-35s the figure is as high as 60 per cent.

The research was commissioned by the BBC in advance of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

September 11 conspiracy theorist offers prize

Millionaire activist Jimmy Walter, 57, is so convinced of a government cover-up he is offering a $100,000 reward to any engineering student who can prove the World Trade Centre buildings crashed the way the government says.
Walter insists there had to be explosives planted in the twin towers to cause them to fall as they did, and also rejects the official explanation for the damage done at the Pentagon.
"It wasn't 19 screw-ups from Saudi Arabia who couldn't pass flight school who defeated the United States with a set of box cutters," he said. He dismissed the official September 11 commission report, saying, "I don't trust any of these 'facts'."
Walter has spent millions of dollars to bolster support for his case, running full-page ads in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and Newsweek, as well as alternative newspapers and 30-second TV spots.

FLASHBACK

Another time, another Bush

Bush was saying things like 'Keep America moving' and 'We are the change.' Nearby were several homeless people who had to keep moving and hadn't changed in weeks. The irony was not lost on one of them.

SOMA STATE

'God gene' discovered by scientist

After comparing more than 2,000 DNA samples, an American molecular geneticist has concluded that a person's capacity to believe in God is linked to brain chemicals.
His findings were criticised last night by leading clerics, who challenge the existence of a 'god gene' and say that the research undermines a fundamental tenet of faith - that spiritual enlightenment is achieved through divine transformation rather than the brain's electrical impulses.

Bush proposes MANDATORY Mental-health screening of children

President Bush Proposes Screening the U.S. Population for Mental Illness
In an innocent looking attempt to help the poor, whose childrens' problems with ADD and such often go undiagnosed, Bush again assists his corporate donnors such as Eli Lilly (Prozac)
He proceeds to make it into law, despite misgivings by his own FDA that prescribing anti-depressants for kids may INDUCE suicide FDA panel seeks strong warning on antidepressants for minors.

DEMOCRACY DEAD

Not a pretty picture: American born, addicted to happiness

The Bush coup of shamelessly rigged elections in November, 2000 paved the way for illegal mid-term “elections” throughout the country in 2002 and the most recent chapter in the overthrow of the American republic, the psuedo-election of 2004. These events ended democratic elections in the United States and guaranteed that within the next decade we will see the neocon agenda and all its horrors unleashed on the world and on the American people. It will be anything but a pretty picture.

THE GOOD GUYS

Red Cross accuses Bush administration of torture

The Red Cross has accused President George Bush's administration of overseeing the intentional physical and psychological torture of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

Rumsfeld sued for war crimes over Abu Ghraib

American human rights lawyers began an attempt in Germany to prosecute Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes yesterday. A case against the US Defence Secretary could embarrass Gerhard Schröder's coalition government.
Peter Weiss and Michael Ratner of the Centre for Constitutional Rights said they had submitted evidence to Germany's federal state prosecutor in connection with torture at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
He said: "Torture at Abu Ghraib has not been properly addressed by the US courts. The point is to make sure that people who torture have nowhere to hide." His action aims to use a 2002 law which lets prosecutors bring charges against those suspected of war crimes irrespective of nationality or where the crimes were committed.

DEMOCRACY DEAD

Voters to challenge US election

George Bush's victory in the US presidential election will be challenged in Ohio's supreme court today, when a group of Democratic voters will allege widespread fraud.

Voting Machines Count Backwards in Oklahoma
57 Rural Counties Affected - Vote Fraud Suspected

Rural Oklahoma Voting machines know how to count backwards. That looks like what the secretly programmed machines did for Sen. Kerry in President Bush's easily won Presidential Election victory in Oklahoma.
The conservative Tulsa World newspaper reported Nov 3rd that Kerry was winning in 57 of the states's rural counties., with 70 per cent of the vote counted. Turns out that the famous November 3rd report was probably not supposed to be printed.
The 'official' State of Oklahoma Election Board vote totals released later show Kerry not winning; but, losing in all the state's 77 counties, including the 57 rural counties.

CHRISTIAN, RIGHT?

Thanksgiving in a culture of death

"As TV and radio talking heads waxed poetic about the high-tech 500-pound bombs that would be dropped to "soften" human beings and "break the back of the insurgency," I felt that growing sense of dread that is by now familiar to anyone who doesn't rely on mainstream U.S. news sources. This dread, this feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop, tightens the stomachs of those who were raised to take seriously 'Thou shalt not kill' … that dusty old law around which the Bush administration has found a thousand loopholes." - Dr. Teresa Whitehurst

FEAR AND LOATHING

'Security services foil 9/11 attack in UK'

UK security services report they have thwarted four or five September 11-style attacks on targets including Canary Wharf and Heathrow Airport.
The 'plots' include a number of attacks planned by al-Qaeda since 9/11 that have come to nothing after the authorities intervened, the reports - which cite top security sources - claim.
The disclosure comes as the Government prepares to unveil a series of tough law-and-order Bills in this morning's Queen's Speech, setting out the legislative program for what is expected to be the final session of the current Parliament.

Blunkett plans tough new terror laws

UK Home Secretary David Blunkett said officials were looking at a range of measures - from jury-less anti-terror courts to allowing wire-tap evidence in trials - which could be implemented if Labour is re-elected at the General Election.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Joe Broadhurst's INTL NEWS site mysteriously shut down after Diebold-US election criticism

Joe Broadhurst's "INTL News" blog has contributed much over the past few years to the dissemination of the truth about the double dealing and deception of politicians and government officials.
It appears then that the day has finally arrived where the mere act of posting a link which highlights government mendacity is enough to warrant direct censorship and infringement of the much touted "free speech" - a central tenet of the "freedom and democracy" that the US government is determined to impose on the world.

" [...] As soon as I posted a story directly linking a Diebold employee to manipulating votes in Gaston, N.C. I got a note from my host, ServerFly, that my credit card wasn't being excepted. I checked with my bank and all was fine, I even went out and used the card TWICE to make sure it was fine. Then I posted that I was being shutdown and 45 minutes later I was. They even said I would have to post an APOLOGY if I wanted to reinstate the account. I have since found out that "ServerFly" is based in Houston."

INTL News old site is: http://intlnews.typepad.com/intlnews/

Feds seize Indymedia servers

The FBI yesterday seized a pair of UK servers used by Indymedia, the independent newsgathering collective, after serving a subpoena in the US on Indymedia's hosting firm, Rackspace. Why or how remains unclear.
Rackspace UK complied with a legal order and handed over hard disks without first notifying Indymedia. It's unclear if the raid was executed under extra-territorial provisions of US legislation or the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). Provisions of RIPA make it a criminal offence to discuss warrants, so Rackspace would not be able to discuss the action with its customer Indymedia, or with the media.

FLASHBACK

Union Carbide's pesticide factory in India killed 8000, poisoned thousands more

"I am trying to make visible the invisible -- trying to show that there are boundary lines being violated daily by toxic substances. Corporations are making a profit on the invasion of my personal space, my biology. They are not controlling the full costs of their operation, and we are picking up the tab for their externalities in form of disease, illness, lower immunity, altered reproduction, birth defects, cancer. That's not right. That's a mortal trespass, an unforgivable transgression that must be stopped. We are certainly not calling on consumers to ask that companies be forgiven -- quite the opposite. They need to be prosecuted. Companies like Dow are getting away with biological trespass daily."

To coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, Doyle is out with Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century (Common Courage Press, 2004).

FIRST CASUALTY

Why people won't see

I think there is no question in anyone's mind at this moment that America has no integrity. Certainly the mainstream American media has absolutely no integrity, in that it's obvious to everyone the real stories about the Iraq war, depleted uranium, public corruption, fixed elections, and on and on ad infinitum are never mentioned on the TV "news".

But the larger question is: Do WE have integrity? I'm talking about you and me.
Are we willing to look at the truth as we perceive it and try to identify and admit our own complicity in all these atrocities, as the American government runs around the world shooting innocent women and children in the head over reasons we KNOW are lies. I mean, we're supposed to be fighting terrorists, right, but we KNOW these terrorists are not Muslim malcontents, and that most likely they are CIA/Mossad-contracted mercenaries assigned to kill Iraqi aid workers, behead innocents and blow up churches and mosques in order to inflame the situation to kindle support from the braindead public, who then mindlessly cheer the genocidal tactics of George W. Bush and pretend not to notice that not only did America CREATE the terrorists and start the war with phony evidence, we now continue the war as viciously as we can, continually murdering innocents and turning our own troops into raging psychopaths. Why? Increased profits for the military contractors, of course, which means increased under-the-table payments for our elected officials.

[I believe that religions are ultimately debilitating to the spirit, because they try to make us believe things that we know are not true, and in accepting the tenets of any religion, we leave ourselves open to a pattern of behavior that accepts things on faith, without examining them rationally. And this process habituates us to accepting lies as truth, as long as they emanate from an authority figure we have conditioned ourselves to respect.
Once you are willing to accept something that deep in your psyche you know goes against what you perceive to be rational truth — e.g., Jesus died for our sins and rose again from the dead — THEN YOU CAN BE MADE TO BELIEVE ANYTHING, whether it is true or not, as long as it comes from an authority figure to whom you have given credibility in your mind.
I believe this is a central component in the phenomenon of a majority of the American people believing the government’s bogus story about 9/11, and in their willingness to accept the psychotic carnage in Iraq as being somehow relevant to their own well-being. ]

NEW WORLD ORDER

Peace and the new corporate liberation theology

"The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it and are now in the process of selling it. I speak of Iraq, not because everybody is talking about it, but because it is a sign of things to come."

The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture delivered by Arundhati Roy, at the Seymour Theatre Centre, University of Sydney.

TIANAMEN II

Tanks menace anti-war protest in LA

Two armored tanks showed up at a Los Angeles anti-war protest in front of the federal building in Westwood.
The tanks circled the block twice then stopped in the street directly in front of the area where most of the protesters were gathered.
Enraged, some of the people attempted to block the tanks, but police quickly cleared the street. The people continued to protest the presence of the tanks, but about ten minutes later the tanks drove off.
It is unclear as to why the tanks were deployed to this location. [video 6.8mb]

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Israeli 'mole' in the office of US under secretary of defense for policy

Federal appears to have agents involved in an investigation into an alleged Israeli 'mole' in the office of Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy.
Early reports suggested that the FBI had wiretap evidence that a veteran Iran analyst working in Feith's office at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Larry Franklin, may have passed a classified draft of a National Security Presidential Directive on Iran to an official working for the pro-Israel lobbying organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

MARCH OF FASCISM

CIA plans to purge its agency

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

EQUAL TIME

Schools to teach more than evolution

School officials have revised the science curriculum to allow the teaching of creationism, prompting an outcry from more than 300 educators who urged that the decision be reversed.
Members of Grantsburg's school board believed that a state law governing the teaching of evolution was too restrictive. The science curriculum 'should not be totally inclusive of just one scientific theory,' said Joni Burgin, superintendent of the district of 1,000 students in northwest Wisconsin.

TALIBAN IN SUITS

From Justice Scalia, a chilling vision of religion’s authority in America

"The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible"

DEMOCRACY DEAD

Electronic voting machine woes reported

In many cases, voters said they intended to select John Kerry but when the computer asked them to verify the choice it showed them instead opting for President Bush, the group said.
After 10 minutes trying to change her selection, one Pinellas County resident said she called a poll worker and got a wet-wipe napkin to clean the touch screen as well as a pencil so she could use its eraser-end instead of her finger. Harvey said it took about 10 attempts to select Kerry before and a summary screen confirmed her intended selection. Election officials in several Florida counties where voters complained about such problems did not return calls Tuesday night.

NEW WORLD ORDER

Bush to reporter: "Obviously, you didn't listen to the will of the people"

REPORTER: Mr. President -- thank you. As you look at your second term, how much is the war in Iraq going to cost? Do you intend to send more troops or bring troops home? And in the Middle East, more broadly, do you agree with [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair that revitalizing the Middle East peace process is the single most pressing political issue facing the world?
BUSH: Now that I've got the will of the people at my back, I'm going to start enforcing the one-question rule. That was three questions [laughter].[...]
REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. How will you go about bringing people together? Will you seek a consensus candidate for the Supreme Court if there's an opening? Will you bring some Democrats into your Cabinet?
BUSH: Again, he violated the one-question rule right off the bat. Obviously, you didn't listen to the will of the people.

[In case you think he was joking, watch him speak here.]

MARS MYSTERY

Mars rover gets mystery power boost

One of NASA's Mars rovers has unexpectedly gained power recently.
The rover Opportunity recently experienced an unexplained rejuvenation from what can so far be described only as two or three significant "cleaning events," said Jim Erickson, the rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
"Now we're assuming they're cleaning, but all we can really say is that overnight the solar panels produced between two and five per cent additional power immediately," he said.

BIG PHARMA

California firm will make recombinant drug for strategic national stockpile

Secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services Tommy G. Thompson has announced an $877.5 million contract to VaxGen to produce 75 million doses of a new recombinant anthrax vaccine. VaxGen—a spin-off of the biotech firm Genentech—is receiving the first contract under the 2004 Project Bioshield Act. To prevent cost overruns, HHS has negotiated a fixed-price award with the company.

GREAT BALLS OF ICE

Chilling mystery hits Kent

Its a "chilling" mystery -- how did chunks of ice wind up in an 8-year-old's bed in Kent?
Troy Hualte and his family came home Thursday night around 6 p.m. from their daughter's ballet practice and weren't prepared for what they saw.
There was a hole in the ceiling. On her bed were grapefruit-sized ice balls.
"I climbed up on the roof and noticed that there was one very large hole and must have busted whatever it was up on impact," Troy said.
...
Troy called the FAA and was told the ice probably did not come from a plane. The ice in his daughter's room was clear. Ice chunks that fall from passing planes are blue.

BIG BROTHER

Hi-tech scans eyed at border

US officials are testing cutting-edge technology to scan information from travellers as they leave the U.S.
Travellers will be required to report to border agents as they exit the U.S.

The US-VISIT program requires everyone except Canadian citizens to be photographed and finger-scanned before they're allowed into the United States.
"This applies to anyone who requires a visa," he said. "It is a simple process that enhances the security of the U.S."
The new measures take about 15 seconds, officials said. The fingerprints will be compared against 1.2 million in U.S. police databases, Mocny said.

EARTH CHANGES

Mt. St. Helens lava dome grows 100 metres higher in nine days

The new lava lobe inside Mount St. Helens' crater has sprouted a piston-like protrusion the size of a 30-story building - glowing red at night.
"The magma is pushing the plug upward. It's going high in the sky," said hydrologist Carolyn Driedger of the U.S. Geological Survey at the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, about 50 miles from the southwest Washington mountain.
One section of the new lobe has risen by 330 feet in the past nine days, Driedger said.

SCIENCE SUBVERTED

Governments chief climate advisor warned off global warming topic by NASA

The Bush administration's well-deserved reputation for tailoring scientific information to fit its political agenda was reinforced last week when James Hansen, the government's pre-eminent climatologist, said that he had been instructed by Sean O'Keefe, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, not to discuss publicly the human contribution to global warming. The charge came as part of a broader indictment, delivered in a speech in Iowa, of the administration's refusal to confront the consequences of climate change or to do anything meaningful about reducing the industrial emissions that contribute to it.

Scientists Against Bush: In February of this year, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a policy statement deriding George Bush and his administration for its ideology-driven science programs and its cynical manipulation of science for raw political ends.

LOOSE THREAD

Karl Rove behind latest Bin Laden tape, says veteran newsman

Former CBSNEWS anchorman Walter Cronkite believes Bush adviser Karl Rove is possibly behind the new Bin Laden tape.
Cronkite made the startling comments late Friday during an interview on CNN.
Somewhat smiling, Cronkite said he is 'inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.'
Interviewer Larry King did not ask Cronkite to elaborate on the provocative election eve observation.

REALITY BITES

Welcome to the cult of Neoconservative reality

A White House 'senior adviser' to president Bush, The New York Times reported, explained the cult of Bush's regime to author Ron Suskind in the heady pre-war days of 2002.
The top Bush insider mocked the journalist and all those 'in what we call the reality-based community' i.e., people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' Suskind's attempt to defend the principles of reason and enlightenment cut no ice with the Bush-man.

'That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,' he said. 'And while you're studying that reality, we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'

FEELING A DRAFT

Dover Air Force Base insider puts the lie to Bush’s 'no draft' promise

“In the months before the war, we knew it was coming. The morgue usually keeps a few hundred body bags on hand and in a matter of weeks we had received nearly 5,000. Now obviously we still have a lot of those, but then last week another shipment of at least that many more arrived. I was talking with some buddies and we figure the morgue is now stocked with enough materials to handle another 9/11 and all the causalities so far in Iraq, times two!.
Well obviously somebody thinks we’re going to see a sharp rise in the number of bodies coming back. But that’s not everything. The whole base is ramping up like we’re either getting ready for a second war or we’re going to be deploying a whole lot more troops to Iraq."

“Bottom line, the brass around Dover all had these funny smirks last week after Bush promised that he would not reinstate the draft. I saw regulars (Air Force Personnel) cleaning up some old barracks. Either we’re getting a shitload of new recruits or… "

CRYPTOZOOLOGY

The animal's blue-grey skin is almost hairless and appears to be covered with mange. A closer look at the animal's jaw line reveals a serious overbite and four huge canine teeth, and a long, rat-like tail curls behind the animal's emaciated frame.

Another Texas Chupacabra?

Local animal experts are having a hard time identifying a strange looking animal killed in Angelina County on Friday.

Large dogs in the yard "went nuts" and alerted the family, but would only whine and wouldn't go under the house with the animal. Soon after being shot it was necrotic, its tissue just rotted -- like something that had been dead for a month or so. It had no hair, a severe overbite and its claws were entirely too long for a dog. The animal's front legs were much smaller than it's hind legs, and that despite it's overall ghoulish appearance, it's extremely long canine teeth were in excellent condition. Also, despite having been shot, there was virtually no blood seeping from the animal's carcass. The animal's ear also "broke like a cookie" when it's head was held up for a photograph. The animal was male and weighed between 15 and 20 pounds.

an animal that looks eerily similar to the as yet unidentified 'Elmendorf Beast' killed near San Antonio earlier this year.
A rancher from Elmendorf, located southeast of San Antonio, killed the animal after 35 of his chickens disappeared in one day. The animal was also almost hairless, with blue-grey coloring and four large fangs. The station reported that tissue from the animal has been sent for DNA testing, and that it will be several more weeks before the tests are completed.

CONSPIRACY CORNER

Video shows kidnapped aid worker

A video of a senior charity worker who has been kidnapped in Baghdad has been broadcast on al-Jazeera TV station.
Margaret Hassan has dual Iraqi and British nationality and is married to an Iraqi.
She has lived in the country for 30 years and was abducted by an unnamed group on her way to work as head of Care International's work in Iraq.
Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned the kidnapping and said ... "I think it shows you the type of people we are up against, that they are prepared to kidnap somebody like this," he said.

CONSPIRACY ANGLE: Is the Kidnapping of CARE's Margaret Hassan a CIA-Mossad Op?: Since no one has taken responsibility for the kidnapping it has been proposed that the kidnapping is part of a counterinsurgency operation devised to make the resistance look bad and thus turn world opinion against it. ... more.

'LIVE' FROM PALESTINE

The Days of Penitence: Gaza sinks in a sea of blood

It smells unbelievably bad here. To walk down any street, if you dare to, you skirt, or sometimes unavoidably walk through, pools of blood.
There are shreds of human flesh, some of them unrecognizable as human remains -- all over, on rooftops, plastered to broken windows, on the street.
The stench of rotting blood mixes with the more acrid odor of flesh burnt to black char by the rockets fired by the Israeli Army's American-made Apache helicopters.

OILY BUSINESSMEN

The neo-cons tiny revolution

Apparently you just need 8 positions to take over the US government: Chief, Near East and South Asia division of the Department of Defense; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; Deputy Secretary of Defense; Secretary of Defense; Undersecretary of State for Arms Control; Chairman, Defense Policy Board; Vice President; Chief of Staff to the Vice President; and Deputy National Security Adviser.
Of course, it only works if you have a president who needs radio signals to be told what to say and do. If you don't know who held the positions mentioned during 2002-2003, do look them up on google.com, and then compare the holders of these offices to the members of the Project for a New American Century and the signers of the 1996 policy statement done for Israel's Likud Party, "A Clean Break." Both "A Clean Break" and the PNAC documents insisted back in the 1990s on a war against Iraq.

ABDUCTEE PASSES OVER

Woman who gained fame on claim of being abducted by UFO has died

Betty Hill of Portsmouth, who along with her late husband in 1961, had the first publicized and best-documented UFO experience in the White Mountains, died Sunday in her sleep after a battle with lung cancer. She was 85.
On a return trip from Canada, the Hills said they were abducted for two hours by a UFO on Sept. 19, 1961. After going public with their story, the two gained worldwide notoriety.
Their story became the subject of a book and later, a made-for-TV movie starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons.
They traveled across the country and made numerous television and radio appearances telling their story.
When her husband, Barney, died in 1969, Ms. Hill continued the job alone.

More: Betty Hill of Portsmouth, other half of UFO couple, dies at 85

FOOLS AND KINGS

The Dunce

'Bush showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students jumped on him; I challenged him.' When asked to explain a particular comment, said a former Harvard professor Tsurumi, Bush would respond, 'Oh, I never said that.'

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Conspiracy theories flourish on the Internet

The video, "9/11: Pentagon Strike", suggests that it was not American Airlines Flight 77 that slammed into the Pentagon, but a missile or a small plane.
...
Williams created a Web site for the video, then e-mailed a copy to Laura Knight-Jadczyk, an American author living in France whose books include one on alien abduction. Williams, 31, a systems analyst, belongs to an online group hosted by Knight-Jadczyk that blends discussions of science, politics and the paranormal.
On Aug. 23, Knight-Jadczyk posted a link to the video on the group's Web site, www.Cassiopaea.org. Within 36 hours, Williams's site collapsed under the crush of tens of thousands of visitors. But there were others to fill the void.
...
For 2 1/2 years, the attack on the Pentagon has been discussed and researched by members of Knight-Jadczyk's online group, the Quantum Future School.
The group's talks formed the basis for articles in which Knight-Jadczyk argues that after the attack on the World Trade Center, eyewitnesses at the Pentagon were predisposed to see a large airliner. She believes that the Pentagon was attacked by a smaller plane and that members of the Bush administration were somehow complicit because it was beneficial for war-profiteers and Israel.
Interviewed by telephone from outside Toulouse, where she lives with her Polish physicist husband and five children, Knight-Jadczyk acknowledged that her group is considered "fringe."
Knight-Jadczyk, 52, a Florida native, has been a psychic and a channeler. She is now involved in experiments in what she calls "superluminal communication," which she described as involving "time loops" that would enable people to communicate with their former selves.
Knight-Jadczyk said she never imagined anyone outside her group would ever view "Pentagon Strike".

MYSTERY FIRE

No smoke, no embers pose fire death mystery

"I've never heard anything like it," said Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department spokesman Tom Francis. "There's no smoke. There's no smoldering embers. There's nothing."
While fire investigators had not found what caused the fire, they had also not determined what put it out, Francis said.

An apartment fire that burned a couch, blistered walls and likely killed an 86-year-old Jacksonville woman -- while remaining unnoticed by neighbors -- has baffled firefighters who sifted through the scene.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

US military bows to the rule of law

Even the US military appears ready to accept the formerly inviolable principle that a democratic state that cannot sustain charges against individuals must release them. The deputy commander at Guantanamo Bay has said most of the remaining 550 detainees (more than 150 have been freed) will be released or transferred to their own countries because "most of these guys weren't fighting" and "we don't have a level of evidence to feel that we can be confident to prosecute them". They are now said to be "of low intelligence value and low threat status".


[At first, all the detainees held by the US military at Guantanamo Bay were "the worst of the worst", US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, who deserved to be "dealt with as people who have engaged in mass murder".]

BRAIN DEAD?

Death at hospital ruled a homicide

Montrose County Coroner Mark Young said Montrose Memorial Hospital and St. Mary’s Hospital did not follow “accepted medical standards” last month in determining William Rardin, 36, brain dead after shooting himself.
“A test was done on him at St. Mary’s hospital that was not conclusive if brain death had occurred,” Young said. “Everyone is hounding me because I’m not a doctor, but I had an independent neurosurgeon look at it, and he agreed it wasn’t done as well.”
“There’s six tests that can be done to determine if someone is brain dead,” Young said. “Only one was done in this case, and that test wasn’t successfully passed. A confirmatory test should have been completed.”

MY GOD IS BIGGER

Frank Rich: Bush's crusade for the White House

A Newsweek poll shows that 17 percent of Americans expect the world to end in their lifetime. To Karl Rove and company, that 17 percent is otherwise known as the base.
-- NYT columnist Frank Rich.

Bush feels divinely entitled to keep his job even as we stand on the cusp of an abyss in Iraq. In this pious but not humble worldview, faith, or at least a certain brand of it, counts more than competence, and a biblical mission, or at least a simplistic, blunderbuss facsimile of one, counts more than the secular goal of waging an effective, focused battle against an enemy as elusive and cunning as terrorists. That no one in this documentary, including its hero, acknowledges any constitutional boundaries between church and state is hardly a surprise. To them, America is a "Christian nation," period.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons

The US Air Force has forbidden its employees from publicly discussing a new antimatter research program. However, details on the program have come to light in numerous Air Force documents distributed over the Internet prior to the ban.
These include an outline of a March 2004 speech by an Air Force official who, in effect, spilled the beans about the Air Force's high hopes for antimatter weapons.
Kenneth Edwards, director of the 'revolutionary munitions' team at the Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida was keynote speaker at the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) conference in Arlington, Va. In that talk, Edwards discussed the potential uses of a type of antimatter called positrons.

With present techniques, the price tag for 100-billionths of a gram of antimatter would be $6 billion, according to an estimate by scientists at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and elsewhere, who hope to launch antimatter-fueled spaceships.

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

10-year-old Palestinian school girl murdered at her desk

In the early morning of a sunny day, the 10 -year-old year girl, Raghda al-Assar, left her house heading to school in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khanyounis. After less than hour, she was receiving medical treatment in emergency room of Nasser Hospital after having been struck with an Israeli gunshot in the head while she was in her classroom listening to her English teacher. Raghda died yesterday (Wednesday) of her critical wounds she sustained two weeks ago.

Gaza's tragic classroom casualties

During an English lesson girls in the class heard firing outside. They dived for cover, but when the shooting was over, they found their classmate Raghda al-Assar slumped over a desk up at the front, covered in blood. She had been shot through the head.
"We didn't hear the sound of the bullet when it came," says Alaa Assad, who was sitting a few places away from Raghda. Alaa says Raghda was one of the brightest pupils in the class.

HOWARD'S WAY

Sleepwalking with John Howard - Election 2004

'Prime Minister,' a journalist asked at a press conference at the Brisbane Sheraton on Tuesday, 'Tony Blair has told a meeting of the Labour Party in Britain that politicians aren't always able to tell the truth. Do you agree with this statement?'
In a sublime moment, the great organist pulled his head up and replied authoritatively: 'I always tell the truth.'
And as he said it, he slowly scanned the journalists around him, as if daring someone to take issue with him. No one did. For a moment there was a hint of something at the edges of his mouth - was it a smirk, a smile? - but Howard is too disciplined to allow himself any public displays of smugness, and within a question he had the conference on to Medicare and from there, in half a sentence, to interest rates.

DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR

Bush retreats into a substitute reality


During their first debate Kerry touched on Bush's most ambivalent relationship, the father he recently called 'the wrong father,' compared to the 'Higher Father'.
In flustered response, Bush simply insisted on his authority. 'I just know how this world works ... there must be certainty from the US president.' He reverted to his claim that September 11 justified the invasion of Iraq because 'the enemy' - Saddam Hussein - 'attacked us.'
A stunned but swift-footed Kerry observed: 'The president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important ... he just said, 'The enemy attacked us'. Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us.'

In his effort to banish all doubt, Bush had retreated into a substitute reality, a delusional version of Iraq, ultimately faith-based.