Mayday!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9-11 Anniversary Propaganda Special!: Demolition theory challenged by Cambridge University engineer

Comment: Well, an anniversary wouldn’t be an anniversary without something a little special to mark the occasion, to let you know that folks are still thinking for you, oops, of you! Today is no exception, with the BBC kindly sending this reminder of why everything is just great and why we should all go back to sleep.

Demolition theory challenged

An analysis of the World Trade Center collapse has challenged a conspiracy theory surrounding the 9/11 attacks.

The study by a Cambridge University engineer demonstrates that once the collapse of the twin towers began, it was destined to be rapid and total.

Comment: Above we have a few key words to frame the article for the reader: analysis; study; engineer; and demonstrates. This sets up the expectation that one is reading new and useful information, data to shed light on the Twin Towers collapse from a credible source, Cambridge no less, the renowned MI5 recruiting ground.

But that aside, here at Signs of the Times, we are all for useful data and information, lets see if we can find any…

One of many conspiracy theories proposes that the buildings came down in a manner consistent with a “controlled demolition”.

Comment: Indeed, lets hope the good Dr. can solve the mystery of how these steel framed buildings collapsed at near free fall speed due to fire when no other buildings have have suffered similar fates after far more extreme blazes. How steel girders were cut cleanly by fires not hot enough to melt them. How molten steel amassed in the rubble and burned on for weeks, of how steel beams were ejected hundreds of feet laterally from the towers.

The new data shows this is not needed to explain the way the towers fell.

Comment: New data? So far lots of words, but nope, no DATA. Maybe that’s further on..?

Over 2,800 people were killed in the devastating attacks on New York.

Comment: At last some information! Sadly this does not help us to better understand the collapse, but useful perhaps only as an emotional anchor point to remind the reader, lest any doubt creep in.

After reviewing television footage of the Trade Center’s destruction, engineers had proposed the idea of “progressive collapse” to explain the way the twin towers disintegrated on 11 September 2001.

Comment: Oh, so “analysis” and “study” are in fact “reviewing television footage”. Lets hope they had some good clear shots to work with, with all the pulverized concrete dust clouds in the way.

This mode of structural failure describes the way the building fell straight down rather than toppling, with each successive floor crushing the one beneath (an effect called “pancaking”).

Comment: And completely collapsing at near free fall speed? - Billiard Balls!

Resistance to collapse

Dr Keith Seffen
set out to test mathematically whether this chain reaction really could explain what happened in Lower Manhattan six years ago. The findings are published in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics.

Comment: Well, still no data. But hey, why not pay a visit to the Journal of Engineering Mechanics to read the good Dr’s. findings? Here’s the link as posted by the BBC, can you find Dr. Seffen’s work? No, neither can we. LOTS of words going on the page here but, still no DATA.

Previous studies have tended to focus on the initial stages of collapse, showing that there was an initial, localised failure around the aircraft impact zones, and that this probably led to the progressive collapse of both structures.

In other words, the damaged parts of the tower were bound to fall down, but it was not clear why the undamaged building should have offered little resistance to these falling parts.

Comment: So what then led to the collapse of Building 7, that was not hit by a plane and suffered only minor fires yet still collapsed into its own footprint at free fall speed?

“The initiation part has been quantified by many people; but no one had put numbers on the progressive collapse,” Dr Seffen told the BBC News website.

Dr Seffen was able to calculate the “residual capacity” of the undamaged building: that is, simply speaking, the ability of the undamaged structure to resist or comply with collapse.

His calculations suggest the residual capacity of the north and south towers was limited, and that once the collapse was set in motion, it would take only nine seconds for the building to go down.

Comment: And do the calculations provide any clue as to how each floor’s reinforced concrete managed to pulverize itself into dust, erupting like a volcano? Do we find evidence of a stack of ‘pancaked’ floors at ground zero?

This is just a little longer than a free-falling coin, dropped from the top of either tower, would take to reach the ground.

Comment: A free falling coin dropped from where on the tower? The top, the middle, the point of impact? Where is the DATA? Billiard Balls!

‘Fair assumption’

The University of Cambridge engineer said his results therefore suggested progressive collapse was “a fair assumption in terms of how the building fell”.

“One thing that confounded engineers was how falling parts of the structure ploughed through undamaged building beneath and brought the towers down so quickly,” said Dr Seffen.

Comment: Apparently the good Dr. is not at all confounded by the miraculous collapse of Building 7. No need to even mention it. What a pity the BBC did not have comments open for this article so that informed readers might put the question.

He added that his calculations showed this was a “very ordinary thing to happen” and that no other intervention, such as explosive charges laid inside the building, was needed to explain the behaviour of the buildings.

Comment: A “very ordinary thing to happen”, aside that is from three steel framed buildings never having collapsed into their own footprint such a way before, ever.

The controlled detonation idea, espoused on several internet websites, asserts that the manner of collapse is consistent with synchronised rows of explosives going off inside the World Trade Center.

This would have generated a demolition wave that explained the speed, uniformity and similarity between the collapses of both towers.

Comment: Correction: the similarity between the collapses of all THREE towers

Conspiracy theorists assert that these explosive “squibs” can actually be seen going off in photos and video footage of the collapse. These appear as ejections of gas and debris from the sides of the building, well below the descending rubble.

Other observers say this could be explained by debris falling down lift shafts and impacting on lower floors during the collapse.

Comment: Miraculous! Debris falls faster inside a building than it does free-falling on the outside!

Dr Seffen’s research could help inform future building design.

Comment: Indeed it may. If he were ever to provide any useful DATA for analysis and peer review that is.

Taking Action In The Face Of Collapse

Carolyn Baker
Speaking Truth to Power
Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:58 EDT

Every time I write an article on collapse such as my most recent one “Happy Independence Day; You Have No Government”, I am bombarded with emails asking me “what should I do?” For those who have just discovered this site, that is a legitimate question because for them, the reality of collapse may be new. Those who have been following this site for some time have heard many suggestions on what to do, but this article will offer those and other suggestions again more clearly and more adamantly than they have been offered here before.

The intensity you are likely to hear in this piece is driven by the urgency which I and many of my peers are feeling at this moment. Quite frankly, it’s time to quit screwing around with talking about collapse and start acting. The Rubicon has been crossed, we’re not living in Kansas anymore, and we are living in the closest thing we’ve seen to pre-World War II Germany than anything since then. Suit up and stop theorizing and speculating.

It’s showtime.

The first thing I’m not going to tell you is that collapse can be avoided or that human ingenuity and technology will come up with something to spare us from it.

I’m not going to tell you that there will be some mass movement-some magic - that will organize progressives into a groundswell of protest, writing letters to Congress, creating blogs and websites, supporting the “right” candidate, and asking for donations.

No, what I’m going to tell you is that as a nation and as a planet, we are screwed, fucked, and shit out of luck, or if you prefer Spanish, estamos jodidos.

The second thing I’m not going to tell you is what you’d like to hear-how you can just keep living the lifestyle you’re living but that somehow you can avoid collapse.

I’m not going to tell you that you can keep banking with Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citibank, or any of the other satanic financial monsters and it will make no difference to you or anyone else.

I’m not going to tell you that you can keep buying your food at your local supermarket or Walmart, and everything will be fine.

I’m not going to tell you to go out and vote for a presidential candidate in 2008 when even if there is an election, whoever is selected by the electronic voting industrial complex, will be that complex’s man or woman-body, mind, and soul.

I’m not going to tell you to get a hybrid vehicle or put solar panels on your house.

In fact, before I tell you to do anything, I’m going to invite you to engage in doing nothing.

Tim Bennett and Sally Erickson, creators of the documentary “What A Way To Go: Life At The End Of Empire”, have suggested five things you can do, and I’d like to elaborate on those.

Unlike ancient cultures, America is a society of manic doers. Before we have even understood the problem, we are frantically rushing to find a solution. So I’m going to ask you first of all to stop-dead in your tracks and do nothing. In fact, I’m going to suggest that you go out in nature, sit down on a quiet log, tree stump, rock, or on the grass, and do and say nothing. Look into a river or stream, study a blade of grass, pick up a handful of soil, focus on a colony of ants, but whatever you do-pay attention. Look, listen, smell, and above all, feel your own emotions as you:

1) “fully acknowledge and internalize that the culture of Empire is destroying the support systems on which the community of life depends, and robbing us of our essential humanity.”

Acknowledge that all of your efforts and those of everyone you know and love cannot and will not prevent collapse.

In addition, feel the powerlessness, helplessness, and hopelessness that courses through your body as you do this.

Feel the forever loss of the stream or grass, or soil, or animal that you might be looking at. Imagine in its place the extinction of everything you are now perceiving. All that you are now observing has been supporting you, and soon, it will be gone.

How does that feel?

Yes, I know. Sad, tragic, horrifying, enraging-and now you feel even more despair. It’s OK. Let yourself feel it-really, really feel it. This is sacred time.

This is the moment of truth; this is your meditation on what is so, and you can’t do anything else-not really, not effectively until you feel these very feelings. In other words, surrender to the idea of collapse. Stop running from it, imagine it, feel it. The more you focus on doing, the less you’ll focus on feeling, and your doing will not work for you until you feel the feelings behind your doing.

And then, when you’ve experienced those very precious and necessary moments of sacred truth, take yourself into the company of those you love and begin talking about what is so:

2) “Talk about your concerns with everyone you know. Make peak oil, climate change, mass extinction and population overshoot household words.”

There will be many people you cannot discuss these with. Find those with whom you can. This is the beginning of “finding your tribe”-finding those individuals who get it, who feel what you feel and are no longer in denial about collapse. They have probably been looking for you as much as you have been looking for them.

Talk not only about the facts, the research, the events of collapse, but equally or even more importantly, about your feelings about it. This really isn’t hard to do.

If you have children, think about their future. What do you feel?

Yes, I know you want to know more about what to do, but slow down. You’re moving too fast. Keep feeling. Keep talking.

The very first action steps really have to do with you and your inner world. You need to think and feel about who YOU want to be in the face of collapse. What kind of work do you really want to be doing?

3) “Find your work in the world to preserve life, change this culture and /or create restorative ways for individuals and communities to live in harmony with each other and the non-human world.”

Does the work you’re doing help to preserve life? Do you need to relocate to another part of the country or world so that you and your loved ones can live lifestyles that prepare yourselves for collapse? What are you doing to take responsibility for your food supply? How are you preparing to live in a post-petroleum world? Can you even fathom what that means? Such dramatic change does not happen overnight; it’s a transition, but remember, you don’t have all the time in the world. Several dozen species have become extinct while you’ve been reading this article.

4) “Assess what you actually need during this transition in order to live and do your work. Only buy what you need and buy from local sources in order to support the creation of local economies.”

And now comes an enormously important exercise: What do I need and what don’t I need? Preparation for collapse will change as much in your life as will collapse itself. Every step of preparation is a meditation, a paring down, and gathering together, always informed by “Who do I want to be? What’s really important? What do I really not need? What do I really need?”

I believe that one reason collapse is so unthinkable for many individuals is that they have no spiritual (I did not say religious) basis for navigating it. On the other hand, some individuals can think deeply about and realize its daunting reality, but they approach it with cynicism and bitterness. All of the above questions I have suggested entertaining are essentially spiritual questions because they are questions of the soul.

5) Therefore, “find or deepen your spiritual connection to that which is greater than you. Ask and then listen for guidance about how to live joyfully and creatively in the face of these unprecedented times.”

One of my favorite mantras is a quote from Derrick Jensen:

“We’re fucked, and life is really, really good.”

Amid the dismal we need fun, joy, play, lightness of heart, art, music, poetry, songs, stories, and creativity of infinite varieties. Yes, I know, it’s a tremendous challenge holding such opposite emotions in the same body, but that is our work in the face of the end of the world as we have known it. Recall the words of Morpheus in “The Matrix”: “I didn’t say it would be easy, I just said it would be the truth.”

I will be away from the computer and Truth To Power from July 14-28. Not only do I need two weeks away from the website, but I need to gather with my “tribe” as we spend days and nights in nature sharing our feelings and planning how we might create and maintain a community for navigating collapse.

People often ask me what I’m doing to prepare and where I might relocate. Even if I were able to tell you, what I would tell you isn’t necessarily what you should be doing or where you should be going. Only you can discover that for yourself. My wish for you is that you will use these two weeks to contemplate your future and where you need to be and what you need to be doing.

Remember: There are no “solutions” but only options as the fascist empire concretizes around us. Part of the empire’s agenda is to keep you, like a dog chasing its tail, looking for solutions and bashing people who don’t offer them to you but tell you the truth instead-that the future of you and your loved ones is entirely in your hands and no one else’s.

The sooner you let go of your illusions about avoiding collapse and someone or something being able to prevent and cure it, the more energy you will free up to act on behalf of yourself and your tribe.

OK, now I’ve told you what to do. If you don’t want to do it or refuse to do it, please don’t call me “dismal”, “negative” or a “purveyor of hopelessness.” Look in the mirror and ask yourself how it is that after all this time, despite all the information you have, you still don’t get it.

Someone has said, “Deal with reality or reality will deal with you.”

Do you want to deal with reality when collapse is in your face, or do you want to take action to prepare for it now? Ground yourself in your authentic feelings about your collapsing world, then join with your tribe to build lifeboats.

For two weeks this website will be in “hibernation”. It could be sacred time–time to reflect, time to feel, time to act-before time runs out.

Comment: Ms Baker is quite correct that, as things stand, we are screwed, but not, perhaps, for the reasons she thinks. She is also absolutely correct that the first thing that must be done is to acknowledge the dire straits that the human race finds itself in right now.

We must acknowledge that our civilization is on the verge of imminent collapse and that, as things stand, we are powerless and helpless to change anything.

We must acknowledge that we can do nothing until we surrender to the idea that all that human beings ought to value is already gone: our essential humanity.

And certainly, we must allow ourselves to really FEEL this. We must stop trying to do the WRONG things until we can FEEL the right things. And when we feel what we have lost - our humanity - that will direct us to what is REALLY wrong and show us what we must really DO.

What is that?

We must all acknowledge that we have allowed criminal psychopaths - a deviant minority - to act in our midst like a Trojan Horse, to take over our lives, our culture, our very minds, and they - through us - will destroy everything we hold dear. We must acknowledge that they have been enabled to do this mainly via Fascist monotheistic religion and the culture that emerges from such beliefs and that we, the rest of humanity, have bought into these lying systems because of our laziness and weakness.

We must find our “tribe,” as Carolyn so aptly puts it, but more important than trying to create a safe place, is the fact that we must engage with our tribe to strategize about how to wake up the rest of the people who might be capable of awakening to the horrible truth that the planet is dominated and run by pathological deviants who have used lies and manipulations to rise to the top and they have been allowed to do so because of the laziness and weakness of humanity.

Ms. Baker asks you to ask yourself: “Who do I want to be? What’s really important? What do I really not need? What do I really need?” She later says that she intends to plan on how to “navigate collapse.” She also talks about “preparing” or “relocating” to survive collapse. Obviously, Ms. Baker is not aware that there is more to the problem than she has considered. She may think that the collapse is just economic and climatological. She doesn’t seem to be aware that the human cycle mirrors the cosmic cycle of Catastrophe.

When you consider this, you realize that - as things stand - there is probably no way you can survive a cosmic catastrophe AND a global economic collapse, so the issue of bodily survival is already a waste of time; as things stand.

When the “end” comes, as it surely will, the only issue of any importance will be: “Who do I want to be and what do I want to be doing when I meet my destiny?” If there is survival of the spirit - as we consider to have a high probability - do you want to face yourself and realize that you did not do everything you COULD have done to stand for truth, to be a light in the falling darkness of global lies and madness?

If there is ANY chance at all, it will only come for those, and by means of those, who have given up any and all thought of bodily survival for the self, and who have dedicated themselves to the future of humanity, to stand for truth right to the end for the sake of their children and their children’s children, and do NOT give up.

Those that follow that part of themselves that is small, become small men; those that follow that part of themselves that is great, become great men…

Al Gore and the Monolithic and Ruthless Conspiracy

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

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

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

Not long before our nation launched the invasion of Iraq, our longest-serving Senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor and said: “This chamber is, for the most part, silent - ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate.”

Yes, indeed, Robert Byrd was rather vocal against the War and other things for awhile, but then he rolled over with the rest of the democrats in confirming Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court even against a massive grass-roots letter writing campaign. He’s been rather quiet since. Wonder why. Could it have anything to do with all that illegal wiretapping Bush was doing (while he was also getting rid of prosecutors!)? Over a year ago, on March 12, 2006, I wrote:

First of all, let’s consider some of the headlines. We are now told that Bush’s popularity is at the lowest ever. The latest poll says that Bush’s Approval Rating Falls to New Low - fewer Americans consider Bush likable, honest, strong and dependable. Meanwhile, we read Americans take their ringside seats for the great conservative crack-up.

Sounds pretty exciting, doesn’t it?

But what was Congress doing while all this evidence that their great leader’s capital has gone seriously into the red was being trumpeted? Why, following the Bush/Neocon agenda, of course!First of all, in spite of the fact that there are 30 US Reps for Bush Impeachment Inquiry, which one might assume includes the charge that Bush lied the US into a war, Congress is still Pimping for the Neocons: US congressmen press for Iran sanctions bill. Doesn’t it occur to them that this whole Iran thing is identical to the Iraq lies about WMDs? Or are they really that stupid.

Meanwhile, on the home front, Congress is still following the Neocon agenda of destruction of the U.S. as a democracy in which the people have any rights at all: G.O.P. Senators Say Accord Is Set on Wiretapping and this Illegal Spying, Spineless Congress: Oversight by Capitulation, and then more destruction of citizens rights in this one: House votes to dump state food safety laws.

So yeah, Gore, Byrd was very eloquent in the bit you quoted but it doesn’t make a hill of beans difference. He’s as whipped as the rest of you. Gore continues:

Why was the Senate silent?[…]

Read more here:

The HopeLaura Knight-Jadczyk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the Earth has encountered a cosmic swarm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In short, the Hammer of God struck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The moderator said: “So?”

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

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

Can we say “Ostrich with head in sand”?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, right.
(cont. on site)

Terrorism and the Three Sillies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s what Bush is doing.

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

The obvious answer is: Nukem!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fantasy? Let’s hope so.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are two Americas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Promoted by criminals in three piece suits, known as career politicians.

These criminals in three piece suits unfortunately operate not a Constitutionally limited government, but a hydra-headed monster of a government that masquerades itself as many federal, state and local institutions. This monster’s tentacles never stop reaching for more power, more authority, more of YOUR MONEY AND LIFE’S WORK, seizing it and stealing it from YOU! In fact, this monstrous federal government’s reach into our lives is so pervasive, so overwhelming, only the largest of corporations can operate in the country with any degree of latitude.
At the pinnacles of power there is a small group of inbred elitists who regularly go back and forth from private life as CEO’s and Directors in the corporate boardrooms to positions of power in government. They are greedy and corrupt beyond description, and have perpretrated literally every act of treason against us-and gotten away with it. …

So, two Americas; one’s a illusory piece of propaganda genius, and we’re stuck in the one with no level playing field, no limited representative government, no guarantee of Rights. It’s a insider’s game and conditions have been ratcheted to squeeze out as much initiative, drive, intelligence and resources out of the American People as possible.

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

Americans aren’t the good guys anymore. Hollow TV pitchmen still insist our boys are dying for their country, but more and more people know that those lives are being wasted on corporate profits, deliberately squandered for somebody’s twisted big score scheme.

And you know who’s making the money. The very pervs who are orchestrating all these wars. Repeat after me: Carlyle Group.

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

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

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

But today’s news is worse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The name of the new game to be played in the last year of the twentieth century is “catastrophic terrorism” and it has been made frightening, not because it conceivably could really happen but because of what people who choose to dwell on the possibility, however remote, want to do about it. The anti-biological and anti-weapons of mass destruction American propaganda and actions are already duplicating Hitler’s prior to World War-II tactics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Put together with this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, that was one big silly.

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

So that was another big silly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Food for thought.

Bush is now completely and certifiably out of control. But to remove the last restraint on the creation of a new American dictatorship they must install one more lock down vote on the Supreme Court, in the person of Sam Alito.

Despite Alito’s extreme right wing voting record and lifelong ideological agenda, nobody expects him to show up at his hearing sporting a tail and horns wearing a red suit. Instead he will lie and evade like some Wal-Mart smiley face, just as he did when in his confirmation for the Court of Appeals he promised to recuse himself from cases involving his own investments. Then he fought to do precisely otherwise. He will make absolutely any misrepresentation of his views and his agenda to try to sneak past public accountability yet again, while his record shouts otherwise. And only your voices speaking out now can turn the tide against this judicial coup.

http://www.usalone.com/alito.php

We are planning a two-stage action. First with the action page above we will build a consensus that ANY replacement for Sandra Day O’Connor must be no worse than a true moderate and centrist. Then after the conclusion of the hearings we will speak out AGAIN on specific question of the final vote in the Senate. Please submit every possible action page you can get your hands on, and keep speaking out until we prevail, just as we did on ANWR and the torture prohibition.

But remember that Alito was the author of the tactic of Bush trying to spin acts of Congress with so-called “signing statements” in hopes that some future Supreme Court (including now guess who) would give them weight over the will of the people. And Bush did just that with the anti-torture bill, declaring that he really didn’t consider himself bound at all. Every day from now on must be STOP Alito day, otherwise our democracy is doomed.

http://www.usalone.com/alito.php

Even if you have submitted something else recently, please go to the page above and take a moment to submit it. There are lots of good references in the arguments section below the form if you would like some additional support or ideas for your personal comments, or just cast your vote with one click and go. We have nearly 100,000 participants in our system and we are counting on at least 25,000 of you to speak out now. This battle must be won, there must be a filibuster, or all else will be ultimately lost.

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RUN FOR OFFICE YOURSELF OR FIND US SOMEONE WHO IS

We received many inquiries from candidates who want to win, and we are setting everybody up with their easy-to-use forms for creating action forms on your own campaign web site. The most important thing you can do is launch your own STOP Alito initiative to show your constituents how much you are out there fighting for them now, and not just talking about what you WOULD do if elected. Build your track record and prominence identified as someone out there fighting to protect the rights of the people. Contact us at once and we will set you up. There is no charge for any of our services ever.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.

and Neither Did a Boeing 757

by Joe Quinn

After the release of the QFG Pentagon Strike Flash Animation on August 23rd, 2004, a veritable onslaught of new articles were published that sought to dismiss the “no plane at the Pentagon” theory. One such article, that is frequently referenced by certain ‘9/11 reseachers’ was authored by a member of the forum at the “Above Top Secret” (ATS) website. Interestingly, the article was written just a few weeks after the release of the Pentagon Strike Flash animation, which by then, was winging its way around the world and into the inboxes of millions of ordinary citizens. Perhaps you were one of them…

The claim that promoters of the “no plane at the Pentagon” theory were doing immense damage to the truth/accountability movement was raised in Mike Ruppert’s book Crossing the Rubicon. In a stunning piece of warped logic, Ruppert claimed that, while he is quite convinced that it was not Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon, he chose not to talk about or deal with the subject as part of his overall case for conspiracy because of the “implications”. According to Ruppert, the “implications” are that anyone that suggests that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, is then forced to answer the question as to what actually happened to Flight 77. If that’s the case, then we better just wrap up the whole 9/11 Truth Movement and go home and have a beer.

Ruppert balks at the idea of offering an answer to this question to his readers because, he claims, most people would be unable to accept it, and, he suggests, 9/11 researchers serve only to alienate the public support that they wish to attract by stretching the boundaries of the collective belief system. What Ruppert doesn’t explain is why any member of the public would happily accept that U.S. government officials participated in the slaughter of the passengers on Flights 11 and 175 and the occupants of the WTC towers (as he details in his book) yet would be unable to accept the idea that the same government officials played a part in disposing of the passgengers of Flight 77 in a much less imaginative way. Let’s be honest here, in the context of 9/11 being the work of a faction of the US government and military, the answer to the question as to what happened to Flight 77 if it didn’t hit the Pentagon, is quite obvious - Flight 77 and its occupants were flown to a specific destination and “disposed of” by the conspirators. That’s pretty simple; cut and dried; no need for much stretching there! But, for some reason, Ruppert (and others affected by this paramoralism) seems to think that killing thousands of citizens by crashing airplanes is easier to accept than cold bloodedly murdering them “in person,” as it were.

Since Ruppert’s declaration about the “no plane at the Pentagon” theory, many other “9/11 researchers”, such as Mark Rabinowitz and Jim Hoffman , have seized upon Ruppert’s idea and even expanded upon it by suggesting that the “no planers” are actually government agents trying to discredit the REAL 9/11 researchers with the ‘kooky’ “no plane” theory.

In order to really understand the insidiousness of this patronising claim that the public could not accept the implications of the idea that a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon, let’s look at the “evidence” as presented by the ATS member that it really was Flight 77 that impacted the Pentagon that bright September morn.

First, however, I would like a few observations about 9/11 research in general.

Anyone who takes on the formidable task of digging into the events of 9/11 is immediately at a disadvantage because the US government has already declared the case closed. The government knows how it happened and who did it and have informed the entire world. As a result, there is no possibility of access to the raw data, to the crime scene or analyses of same. Here is where we meet the major obstacle: since the US government is the prime suspect, we cannot simply take as truth everything - or anything - that they say in relation to the case.

Investigation of the 9/11 attacks should be appoached like any murder investigation. When confronted with a murder case (like 9/11) and a suspect that has a history of deceit and murder (like the US government and its agencies) and who had an opportunity and a motive to commit the murder, do you take as fact any claims by the suspect that he did not commit the murder? Do you seek to fit the facts around his claim that he did not commit the murder? When you confront evidence that suggests that the suspect is lying about his account of where he was and what he was doing, or you find inconsistencies and logistically impossible scenarios in his account, do you ignore these and focus only on the fact that he said he did not commit the murder and try to find and present evidence that backs up his claim to innocence?

The fact is that, researchers coming to the 9/11 investigation after the fact and after the case has been officially closed, are not only confronted with the task of trying to find out what actually happened, they also face the already well established public belief, by which they themselves are also influenced, that the official story is the truth. The best approach for any 9/11 researcher with honest intentions is to, if possible, wipe from their minds the official version of events and take the attitude of someone who has just returned from a 5 year trip to the outer reaches of the solar system, during which time they had no communication with planet earth. Begin with a beginner’s mind, turn off the sound of all the conflicting voices and their claims, and just LOOK at the evidence without prejudice.

Now, if the person with a truly open mind is given all of the publicly available evidence and has been additionally furnished with knowledge of the effects of airplane crashes and that of missile impacts, what would such a person conclude about the most likely cause of the Pentagon damage? Of course, not all of the evidence was made available to the public, but there is still sufficient visual evidence from “ground zero” (both in terms of place and TIME), to form a pretty good “best guess”. For a definitive conclusion to be reached, the “private” evidence, like the video tapes of the event that the FBI confiscated, would have to be released, and we don’t expect that to happen any time soon. Of course, the fact that the definitive evidence of the videos has not been released is in itself a key piece of evidence that suggests that the official story of what hit the Pentagon is not the real story.

The purpose of this small introduction is to prepare the reader for the fact that, in his attempted rebuttal of the no 757 at the Pentagon theory, the ATS article author, CatHerder, appears to have succumbed to the influence of the mainstream media shills that have incessantly parroted the official government story about what happened on 9/11 for the three years prior to the writing of the article. As such, he has failed to don the mantle of objective observer of the available evidence that is so crucial to finding the truth, and instead exerts a lot of effort to make the available evidence fit the government claim that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on the morning of September 11th 2001. Either that, or he/she is part of the “official government cover-up.” After you read everything below, you can make a call on that one yourself.

Here is the ATS article as it appears on the ATS site with my comments interspersed in blue text.

continue reading here:

Finger points to British intelligence as al-Qaeda websites are wiped out
Times Online
July 31, 2005

Over the past fortnight Israeli intelligence agents have noticed something distinctly odd happening on the internet. One by one, Al-Qaeda’s affiliated websites have vanished until only a handful remain, write Uzi Mahnaimi and Alex Pell.

Someone has cut the line of communication between the spiritual leaders of international terrorism and their supporters. Since 9/11 the websites have been the main links to disseminate propaganda and information.

The Israelis detect the hand of British intelligence, determined to torpedo the websites after the London attacks of July 7.

The web has become the new battleground of terrorism, permitting a freedom of communication denied to such organisations as the IRA a couple of decades ago.

One global jihad site terminated recently was an inflammatory Pakistani site, www.mojihedun.com, in which a section entitled How to Strike a European City gave full technical instructions. Tens of similar sites, some offering detailed information on how to build and use biological weapons, have also been shut down. However, Islamic sites believed to be “moderate”, remain.

One belongs to the London-based Syrian cleric Abu Basir al-Tartusi, whose www.abubaseer.bizland.com remained operative after he condemned the London bombings.

However, the scales remain weighted in favour of global jihad, the first virtual terror organisation. For all the vaunted spying advances such as tracking mobile phones and isolating key phrases in telephone conversations, experts believe current technologies actually play into the hands of those who would harm us.

“Modern technology puts most of the advantages in the hands of the terrorists. That is the bottom line,” says Professor Michael Clarke, of King’s College London, who is director of the International Policy Institute.

Government-sponsored monitoring systems, such as Echelon, can track vast amounts of data but have so far proved of minimal benefit in preventing, or even warning, of attacks. And such systems are vulnerable to manipulation: low-ranking volunteers in terrorist organisations can create background chatter that ties up resources and maintains a threshold of anxiety. There are many tricks of the trade that give terrorists secure digital communication and leave no trace on the host computer.

Ironically, the most readily available sources of accurate online information on bomb-making are the websites of the radical American militia. “I have not seen any Al-Qaeda manuals that look like genuine terrorist training,” claims Clarke.

However, the sobering message of many security experts is that the terrorists are unlikely ever to lose a war waged with technology.

Comment: Israel suspects it was British intelligence that closed down the “terrorist” sites… Here’s a good question: Has anyone actually visited one of these alleged sites? Of course not! We would all be afraid of being associated with terrorists, right?

Bush picks conservative judge for US Supreme Court
AFP
July 20, 2005
WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush nominated conservative judge John Roberts to the US Supreme Court, a move that could shape the outcome of battles over volatile issues like abortion for decades.

Republicans welcomed the choice of a candidate with a reputation as a brilliant lawyer with right wing credentials. But senior Democrats expressed doubts, setting the scene for a Senate battle over Roberts’ confirmation.

“The decisions of the Supreme Court affect the life of every American,” the president said in a televised address from the White House, with the 50-year-old federal appeals court judge at his side.

“A nominee to that court must be a person of superb credentials and the highest integrity, a person who will faithfully apply the constitution and keep our founding promise of equal justice under law. I have found such a person in Judge John Roberts,” said Bush.

Bush shrugged off pressure to pick a woman to replace Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor, a moderate conservative who was the first woman to serve on the court and often cast the deciding vote in controversial decisions.

The president urged the Senate, where his Republican party has 55 of the 100 seats, to confirm Roberts by the first week of October, when the Supreme Court opens a new session.

“This confirmation can be done in a timely manner,” said Bush. “So I have full confidence that the Senate will rise to the occasion and act promptly on this nomination.”

But the nomination immediately opened a new partisan divide. “We know Judge Roberts is no Sandra Day O’Connor, and the White House has sent a clear signal,” said John Kerry, the Democratic senator who fought Bush for the presidency last year.

“There are serious questions that must be answered involving Judge Roberts’ judicial philosophy as demonstrated over his short time on the appellate court.”

Other Democrats promised intense scrutiny of Roberts stand on issues such as abortion.

The top Democrat in the Senate, Harry Reid, set the stage for tough questioning by saying the nominee had “suitable legal credentials” but required more scrutiny.

Leading US dailies said Wednesday Bush’s nomination should be carefully vetted by the Senate to determine exactly what if any ideological leaning he might have.

“If he is a mainstream conservative … he should be confirmed. But if on closer inspection he turns out to be an extreme ideologue with an agenda of stripping away important rights, he should not be,” said The New York Times.

While The Washington Post considers Roberts “a man of substance and seriousness” whose nomination “is not a provocation to Democrats,” it cautions that “nobody really knows what (he) believes, because he has been unusually careful about not discussing his views.”

“So sphinx-like has he been,” added the Post editorial, “that some conservatives have suggested he might … not be a real conservative at all.”

Comment: Dream on… Bush nominated him.
Roberts “has a thin record on controversial subjects … (that) gives the other side so little to work with,” said the Times, while USA Today said that “while certainly conservative,” Roberts’ legal record “is largely opaque.”

For this reason, the three newspapers agree that Roberts deserves a careful confirmation hearing by the Senate.

Of special concern, said the Post, are Roberts’ views on abortion rights and “the balance of power between the federal government and the states.”

“If extremists take control of the Supreme Court,” warned the Times, “we will end up with an America in which the federal government is powerless to protect against air pollution, unsafe working conditions and child labor.”

Comment: Well, golly! By all means, give the federal government whatever powers they want! The last thing America needs is a Supreme Court that dares to disagree with the fuhrer! Extremists will take over the Supreme Court, but not to prevent the Bush Reich from exercising their power… After all, Bush is the one who chose Roberts.
For this reason, said the Post, “such a substantial picture of a nominee will require a serious and dignified confirmation process.”

“He should be asked in detail his views of how the Constitution should be interpreted,” said USA Today.

The nomination was Bush’s first chance to reshape the ideological balance of the court, which has immense influence over the lives of Americans as the final arbiter of the constitution and court of last resort.

Because justices serve for life or until they retire, they regularly decide critical and controversial political and legal issues long after the president who picked them is gone.

Roberts’ last notable decision came only last week when his appeals court overturned a lower court decision that the special military tribunals for suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo detention camp in Cuba were illegal.

The decision was a victory for the Bush administration in its handling of the “war on terrorism” detainees. But a new appeal is now expected to go to the Supreme Court.

Comment: And here we have our answer as to where Roberts stands. No wonder Bush is pushing for a quick confirmation…

Roberts graduated from Harvard Law School in 1979, was a clerk to arch-conservative US Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, served in president Ronald Reagan’s White House, and was a senior federal prosecutor under Bush’s father, former president George Bush.

“He is regarded by many people as the best supreme court litigator of his generation,” said James Lindgren, a professor of law at Northwestern University in Illinois, who added that Roberts conservative creed could lead to a “nasty fight” in the Senate.

O’Connor’s retirement opened the first vacancy on the Supreme Court in 11 years. The last justice appointed was the liberal Justice
Stephen Breyer, who was named by president Bill Clinton.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is now the sole woman on the nine justice Supreme Court bench.

Comment: First we read this:

Roberts “has a thin record on controversial subjects … (that) gives the other side so little to work with,” said the Times

And then this:

Roberts’ last notable decision came only last week when his appeals court overturned a lower court decision that the special military tribunals for suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo detention camp in Cuba were illegal.

The editors at the Times obviously didn’t bother to do their homework.