Antidote

The Secret Covenant

2006-04-13T04:54:00.000-07:00

An illusion it will be, so large, so vast it will escape their perception.
Those who will see it will be thought of as insane.
We will create separate fronts to prevent them from seeing the connection between us.
We will behave as if we are not connected to keep the illusion alive.
Our goal will be accomplished one drop at a time so as to never bring suspicion upon ourselves.
This will also prevent them from seeing the changes as they occur.
We will work together always and will remain bound by blood and secrecy.
Death will come to he who speaks.
We will keep their lifespan short and their minds weak while pretending to do the opposite.
We will use our knowledge of science and technology in subtle ways so they will never see what is happening.
We will use soft metals, aging accelerators and sedatives in food and water, also in the air.
They will be blanketed by poisons everywhere they turn.
The poisons will be hidden in everything that surrounds them, in what they drink, eat, breathe and wear.
We will create medicine that will make them sicker and cause other diseases for which we will create yet more medicine.
We will render them docile and weak before us by our power.
Their minds will belong to us and they will do as we say. If they refuse we shall find ways to implement mind-altering technology into their lives.
We will use fear as our weapon.
We will establish their governments and establish opposites within.
We will own both sides.
They will perform the labour for us and we shall prosper from their toil.
Our families will never mix with theirs.
Our blood must be pure always, for it is the way.
We will make them kill each other when it suits us.
We will keep them separated from the oneness by dogma and religion.
We will control all aspects of their lives and tell them what to think and how.
We will guide them kindly and gently letting them think they are guiding themselves.
We will foment animosity between them through our factions.
When a light shall shine among them, we shall extinguish it by ridicule, or death, whichever suits us best.
We will make them rip each other's hearts apart and kill their own children.
They will bathe in their own blood and kill their neighbours for as long as we see fit.
We will benefit greatly from this, for they will not see us, for they cannot see us.
We will continue to prosper from their wars and their deaths.
We will make them live in fear and anger.
We will use all their tools we have to accomplish this.
The tools will be provided by their labour.
We will make them hate themselves and their neighbours.
We will always hide the divine truth from them, that we are all one.
This they must never know!
Drop-by-drop; drop-by-drop we will advance our goal.
We will take over their land, resources and wealth to exercise total control over them.
We will deceive them into accepting laws that will steal the little freedom they will have.
We will establish a money system that will imprison them forever, keeping them and their children in debt.
When they shall ban together, we shall accuse them of crimes and present a different story to the world for we shall own all the media.
When they shall rise up against us we will crush them like insects, for they are less than that.
They will be helpless to do anything for they will have no weapons.
We will recruit some of their own to carry out our plans, we will promise them eternal life, but eternal life they will never have for they are not of us.
The truth will be hidden in their face, so close they will not be able to focus on it until its too late.
Oh yes, so grand the illusion of freedom will be, that they will never know they are our slaves.
When all is in place, the reality we will have created for them will own them.
Their minds will be bound by their beliefs, the beliefs we have established from time immemorial.
But if they ever find out they are our equal, we shall perish then. THIS THEY MUST NEVER KNOW.
If they ever find out that together they can vanquish us, they will take action.
They must never, ever find out what we have done, for if they do, we shall have no place to run. No one shall give us shelter.
This is the secret covenant by which we shall live the rest of our present and future lives, for this reality will transcend many generations and life spans.
This covenant is sealed by blood, our blood!

Written by Unknown Author,

MySpace Is The Trojan Horse Of Internet Censorship

2006-03-17T05:02:00.000-08:00

MySpace isn't cool, it isn't hip and it isn't trendy. It represents a cyber trojan horse and the media elite's last gasp effort to reclaim control of the Internet and sink it with a stranglehold of regulation, control and censorship.

Since Rupert Murdoch's $580 Million acquisition of MySpace in July 2005, it has come from total obscurity to now being the 8th most visited website in the world, receiving half as many page hits as Google, despite the fact that on first appearance it looks like a 5-year-old's picture scrap and scribble book.

MySpace is the new mobile phone. If you don't have a MySpace account then you belong to some kind of culturally shunned underclass.

What most of the trendy wendy's remain blissfully unaware of is the fact that MySpace is Rupert Murdoch's battle axe for shaping a future Internet environment whereby electronic dissent, whether it be against corporations or government, will not tolerated and freedom of e-speech will cease to exist.

MySpace has been caught shutting down blogs critical of itself and other Murdoch owned companies. They even had the audacity to censor links to completely different websites when clicking through for MySpace. When 600 MySpace users complained, MySpace deleted the blog forum that the complaints were posted on. Taking their inspiration from Communist China, MySpace regularly uses blanket censorship to block out words like 'God'.

Earlier this week Rupert Murdoch sounded the death knell for conventional forms of media in stating that the media elite were losing their monopoly to the rapid and free spread of new communication technologies. Murdoch stressed the need to regain control of these outlets in order to prevent the establishment media empire from crumbling.
MySpace is Rupert Murdoch's trojan horse for destroying free speech on the Internet. It is a foundational keystone of the first wave of the state's backlash to the damage that a free and open Internet has done to their organs of propaganda. By firstly making it cool, trendy and culturally elite for millions to flock to establishment controlled Internet backbones like MySpace, Murdoch is preparing the groundwork for the day when it will stop being voluntary and become mandatory to use government and corporate monopoly controlled Internet hubs.

The end game is a system similar to or worse than China, whereby no websites even mildly critical of the government will be authorized.

The Pentagon admitted that they would engage in psychological warfare and cyber attacks on 'enemy' Internet websites in an attempt to shut them down. The fact that the NSA surveillance program spied on 5,000 Americans tells us that the enemy is the alternative media and that it will be targeted for elimination. Google has been ordered to turn over information about its users by a judge to the US government.

The second wave of destroying freedom of speech online will simply attempt to price people out of using the conventional Internet and force people over to Internet 2, a state regulated hub where permission will need to be obtained directly from an FCC or government bureau to set up a website.

The original Internet will then be turned into a mass surveillance database and marketing tool. The Nation magazine reported, "Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out."
The original Internet will deliberately be subject to crash upon crash until it becomes a useless carcass of overpriced trash and its reputation will be defiled by the TV and media barons cashing in on the perfectly streamlined Internet 2, the free for all network that just requires you to thumbscan in order to log on! Those with a security grading below yellow on their national ID card will unfortunately be refused access. Websites that carry hate speech (ones that talk about government corruption) will be censored for the betterment of society.

For the aspiring dictator, the Internet is a dangerous tool that has been seized by the enemy. We have come a long way since 1969, when the ARPANET was created solely for US government use. The Internet is freedom's best friend and the bane of control freaks. Its eradication is one of the short term goals of those that seek to centralize power and subjugate the world under a global surveillance panopticon prison.

Rupert Murdoch's MySpace and its ceaseless promotion by the establishment media as the best thing since sliced bread is part of this movement. In saying all this we do encourage everyone to set up a MySpace account, but only if you're going to use it to bash MySpace, Rupert Murdoch and copy and paste this article right at the top of the page! See how long it is before your account is terminated.

2006-03-01T17:04:00.000-08:00

No Bravery!

2006-02-15T13:59:00.000-08:00

Short Movie.

The Sun's influence on climate change

2006-01-02T08:36:00.000-08:00

The Sun's influence on climate change

29 September 2000
Are variations in the Sun´s brightness an important cause of climate change? Could changes in the Sun´s magnetism affect the Earth´s clouds? Why do temperature trends in the lower atmosphere give a different impression of global warming from measurements at ground level? The latest results from spacecraft that observe the Sun and the Earth provoke many such questions. They are being debated this week on the Spanish island of Tenerife, where scientists who calculate climate change due to manmade greenhouse gases will meet others who argue that solar effects have been underestimated.

The European Union and the European Space Agency are sponsoring the conference entitled "The Solar Cycle and Terrestrial Climate", 24-29 September. It is hosted in Santa Cruz de Tenerife by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. More than 40 speakers from 15 countries will review the Sun´s erratic behaviour and its possible climatic effects, in the most comprehensive meeting on this subject for many years.

"To those of us who observe it every day, the Sun is a wild beast, and no one doubts that its variations affect the climate to some degree," says Brigitte Schmieder of the Observatoire Paris-Meudon, France, co-chairman of the scientific committee that planned the meeting. "The arguments in Tenerife will be about the mechanisms of the solar influence, and its importance compared with the human factor."

Claus Fröhlich of the Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium, Switzerland, will report the latest results from his VIRGO instrument on the ESA-NASA SOHO spacecraft. These show an increase of about 0.1 per cent in visible solar radiation since SOHO was launched in 1995, at the last sunspot minimum. But this is a cyclical variation and comparisons with results from earlier spacecraft show no overall increase since the 1980s.

The relatively small variations in the Sun´s brightness observed by satellites encouraged the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to propose in 1990 that global warming in the 20th Century was due mainly to carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases added to the air by human activity. It predicted severe global warming in the 21st Century as a result of this enhanced greenhouse effect.

These opinions were reconfirmed in a later report, Climate Change 1995. A third major assessment is now in preparation. Sir John Houghton of the Intergovernmental Panel´s science working group will report at the Tenerife meeting on the issues being addressed. One is a reconsideration of the historical role of other natural agents of climate change, including the Sun.

There were no satellites in 1700, when the Sun was unusually inactive and Europe was very chilly, but many experts suppose that solar radiation has intensified since then. Two conference speakers, Marcel Fligge of the ETHZ Institut für Astronomie, Switzerland, and Sami Solanki of the Max-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie, Germany, have just published estimates that the average visible light increased by 0.2 % during the past 300 years, and ultraviolet rays by 0.7 %.

"It requires precise space observations to detect the subtle solar brightening at the peak of the sunspot cycle," Solanki notes. "To evaluate long-term climatic effects, we have to make the most of just two decades of space measurements and use models to reconstruct the larger changes in the past."

A discovery made with help from the ESA-NASA Ulysses spacecraft is that the Sun's magnetic field in the Earth´s vicinity doubled in strength during the 20th Century. Mike Lockwood of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, will discuss this symptom of a more active Sun. It can be used to estimate increases in brightness, which were apparently greater in the first half of the century than in the second half.

The intensifying magnetic field, carried by the solar wind, also reduced the number of cosmic rays reaching the Earth from the Galaxy. According to another speaker, Henrik Svensmark of the Danish Space Research Institute, the shortage of cosmic rays reduced the Earth’s cloudiness, so enabling the world to warm up. In 1996, Svensmark found that cloudiness gauged from weather satellites such as Meteosat apparently varied according to the intensity of cosmic rays.

Using improved data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project, Svensmark and his colleague Nigel Marsh now link cosmic-ray variations chiefly with low clouds over the tropical oceans. Meteorologists have been sceptical about any effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation, but in April this year atmospheric chemists at the University of California, Los Angeles, suggested a mechanism. In clean oceanic air, cosmic rays may facilitate the formation at low altitudes of sulphuric acid particles, on which cloud droplets form.

A proposed experiment at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory in Geneva, is intended to test mechanisms like that. Jasper Kirkby from CERN will explain how pulses of particles can simulate cosmic rays, in a purpose-built cloud chamber matching conditions in the atmosphere. Besides the atmospheric and particle physicists, space scientists from the Danish Space Research Institute and the UK´s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have joined the team for this experiment, called CLOUD.

Meanwhile, various combinations of natural influences and manmade emissions have been compared with the sequence of temperature changes of the 20th Century, in a computer model at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, UK. Simon Tett will describe the results at the Tenerife meeting. The warming in the early part of the century is best explained by changes in solar brightness, a scarcity of explosive volcanoes, and internal climate variability. On the other hand, the model indicates that the human influence was the chief cause of recent warming.

"The effect of greenhouse gases was masked by the cooling effect of anthropogenic sulphate aerosols until the 1960s," Tett comments. "This allowed the Sun and other natural forcings to play their part in climate change. Now we see the gases beginning to overcome the cooling effects of volcanoes and anthropogenic sulphate aerosols. Since the 1963 eruption of Agung the cooling from volcanic aerosols has offset the small warming from increases in solar irradiance and this cooling has been overwhelmed by warming from greenhouse gases."

Another puzzle from the satellites remains. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville will report that in 1999-2000 the lower atmosphere over the tropics is cooler than at any other time in the past 22 years. He will cite data from US weather satellites that detect temperature-sensitive microwave emissions from oxygen in the air, and independent confirmation by balloon-borne thermometers. "This is curious," Christy says. "According to the climate models used to calculate the enhanced greenhouse effect, the warming should have been particularly rapid in the air over the tropics."

Europe will join in the watch on atmospheric temperatures from space, when the first Metop satellite, being developed by ESA for Eumetsat, goes into a polar orbit in 2002. Its instruments will include an advanced microwave sounding unit provided by the USA.

The climate conference in Santa Cruz de Tenerife is accompanied by other meetings about the Sun. Sessions organized on 29 September by the Joint Organization for Solar Observations will review data handling, instruments, and the August 1999 solar eclipse. On 30 September, the European Solar Magnetometry Network will convene. In the following week, 2-6 October 2000, helioseismologists of SOHO and the ground-based GONG project will gather for a workshop on "Helio- and Asteroseismology at the Dawn of the Millennium".

Paal Brekke of ESA will give a popular talk on "The Sun through the eyes of SOHO" on 29 September at 20:00 in the Cajacanarias Conference Center. ESA will publish the proceedings of "The Solar Cycle and Terrestrial Climate" conference in a few months time.

Craig Murray

2006-01-02T07:52:00.000-08:00

December 29, 2005
Damning documentary evidence unveiled. Dissident bloggers in coordinated exposé of UK government lies over torture.

Help us beat the British government's gagging order by mirroring this information on your own site or blog!

Constituent: "This question is for Mr Straw; Have you ever read any
documents where the intelligence has been procured through torturous means?"

Jack Straw: "Not to the best of my knowledge... let me make this clear... the British government does not support torture in any circumstances. Full stop. We do not support the obtaining of intelligence by torture, or its use." - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, election hustings, Blackburn, April 2005

I was summoned to the UK for a meeting on 8 March 2003. Michael Wood gave his legal opinion that it was not illegal to obtain and to use intelligence acquired by torture... On behalf of the intelligence services, Matthew Kydd said that they found some of the material very useful indeed with a direct bearing on the war on terror. Linda Duffield said that she had been asked to assure me that my qualms of conscience were respected and understood. - Ambassador Craig Murray, memo to the Foreign Office, July 2004

With Tony Blair and Jack Straw cornered on extraordinary rendition, the UK government is particularly anxious to suppress all evidence of our complicity in obtaining intelligence extracted by foreign torturers.

The British Foreign Office is now seeking to block publication of Craig Murray's forthcoming book, which documents his time as Ambassador to Uzbekistan. The Foreign Office has demanded that Craig Murray remove all references to two especially damning British government documents, indicating that our government was knowingly receiving information extracted by the Uzbeks through torture, and return every copy that he has in his possession.

Craig Murray is refusing to do this. Instead, the documents are today being published simultaneously on blogs all around the world.

The first document contains the text of several telegrams that Craig Murray sent back to London from 2002 to 2004, warning that the information being passed on by the Uzbek security services was torture-tainted, and challenging MI6 claims that the information was nonetheless "useful".

The second document is the text of a legal opinion from the Foreign Office's Michael Wood, arguing that the use by intelligence services of information extracted through torture does not constitute a violation of the UN Convention Against Torture.

Craig Murray says:

In March 2003 I was summoned back to London from Tashkent specifically for a meeting at which I was told to stop protesting. I was told specifically that it was perfectly legal for us to obtain and to use intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers.

After this meeting Sir Michael Wood, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's legal adviser, wrote to confirm this position. This minute from Michael Wood is perhaps the most important document that has become public about extraordinary rendition. It is irrefutable evidence of the government's use of torture material, and that I was attempting to stop it. It is no wonder that the government is trying to suppress this.

First document: Confidential letters from Uzbekistan

Letter #1
Confidential
FM Tashkent
TO FCO, Cabinet Office, DFID, MODUK, OSCE Posts, Security Council Posts

16 September 02

SUBJECT: US/Uzbekistan: Promoting Terrorism
SUMMARY

US plays down human rights situation in Uzbekistan. A dangerous policy: increasing repression combined with poverty will promote Islamic terrorism. Support to Karimov regime a bankrupt and cynical policy.

DETAIL

The Economist of 7 September states: "Uzbekistan, in particular, has jailed many thousands of moderate Islamists, an excellent way of converting their families and friends to extremism." The Economist also spoke of "the growing despotism of Mr Karimov" and judged that "the past year has seen a further deterioration of an already grim human rights record". I agree.

Between 7,000 and 10,000 political and religious prisoners are currently detained, many after trials before kangaroo courts with no representation. Terrible torture is commonplace: the EU is currently considering a demarche over the terrible case of two Muslims tortured to death in jail apparently with boiling water. Two leading dissidents, Elena Urlaeva and Larissa Vdovna, were two weeks ago committed to a lunatic asylum, where they are being drugged, for demonstrating on human rights. Opposition political parties remain banned. There is no doubt that September 11 gave the pretext to crack down still harder on dissent under the guise of counter-terrorism.
Yet on 8 September the US State Department certified that Uzbekistan was improving in both human rights and democracy, thus fulfilling a constitutional requirement and allowing the continuing disbursement of $140 million of US aid to Uzbekistan this year. Human Rights Watch immediately published a commendably sober and balanced rebuttal of the State Department claim.

Again we are back in the area of the US accepting sham reform [a reference to my previous telegram on the economy]. In August media censorship was abolished, and theoretically there are independent media outlets, but in practice there is absolutely no criticism of President Karimov or the central government in any Uzbek media. State Department call this self-censorship: I am not sure that is a fair way to describe an unwillingness to experience the brutal methods of the security services.

Similarly, following US pressure when Karimov visited Washington, a human rights NGO has been permitted to register. This is an advance, but they have little impact given that no media are prepared to cover any of their activities or carry any of their statements.
The final improvement State quote is that in one case of murder of a prisoner the police involved have been prosecuted. That is an improvement, but again related to the Karimov visit and does not appear to presage a general change of policy. On the latest cases of torture deaths the Uzbeks have given the OSCE an incredible explanation, given the nature of the injuries, that the victims died in a fight between prisoners.

But allowing a single NGO, a token prosecution of police officers and a fake press freedom cannot possibly outweigh the huge scale of detentions, the torture and the secret executions. President Karimov has admitted to 100 executions a year but human rights groups believe there are more. Added to this, all opposition parties remain banned (the President got a 98% vote) and the Internet is strictly controlled. All Internet providers must go through a single government server and access is barred to many sites including all dissident and opposition sites and much international media (including, ironically, waronterrorism.com). This is in essence still a totalitarian state: there is far less freedom than still prevails, for example, in Mugabe's Zimbabwe. A Movement for Democratic Change or any judicial independence would be impossible here.

Karimov is a dictator who is committed to neither political nor economic reform. The purpose of his regime is not the development of his country but the diversion of economic rent to his oligarchic supporters through government controls. As a senior Uzbek academic told me privately, there is more repression here now than in Brezhnev's time. The US are trying to prop up Karimov economically and to justify this support they need to claim that a process of economic and political reform is underway. That they do so claim is either cynicism or self-delusion.

This policy is doomed to failure. Karimov is driving this resource-rich country towards economic ruin like an Abacha. And the policy of increasing repression aimed indiscriminately at pious Muslims, combined with a deepening poverty, is the most certain way to ensure continuing support for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They have certainly been decimated and disorganised in Afghanistan, and Karimov's repression may keep the lid on for years – but pressure is building and could ultimately explode.

I quite understand the interest of the US in strategic airbases and why they back Karimov, but I believe US policy is misconceived. In the short term it may help fight terrorism but in the medium term it will promote it, as the Economist points out. And it can never be right to lower our standards on human rights. There is a complex situation in Central Asia and it is wrong to look at it only through a prism picked up on September 12. Worst of all is what appears to be the philosophy underlying the current US view of Uzbekistan: that September 11 divided the World into two camps in the "War against Terrorism" and that Karimov is on "our" side.

If Karimov is on "our" side, then this war cannot be simply between the forces of good and evil. It must be about more complex things, like securing the long-term US military presence in Uzbekistan. I silently wept at the 11 September commemoration here. The right words on New York have all been said. But last week was also another anniversary – the US-led overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile. The subsequent dictatorship killed, dare I say it, rather more people than died on September 11. Should we not remember then also, and learn from that too? I fear that we are heading down the same path of US-sponsored dictatorship here. It is ironic that the beneficiary is perhaps the most unreformed of the World's old communist leaders.
We need to think much more deeply about Central Asia. It is easy to place Uzbekistan in the "too difficult" tray and let the US run with it, but I think they are running in the wrong direction. We should tell them of the dangers we see. Our policy is theoretically one of engagement, but in practice this has not meant much. Engagement makes sense, but it must mean grappling with the problems, not mute collaboration. We need to start actively to state a distinctive position on democracy and human rights, and press for a realistic view to be taken in the IMF. We should continue to resist pressures to start a bilateral DFID programme, unless channelled non-governmentally, and not restore ECGD cover despite the constant lobbying. We should not invite Karimov to the UK. We should step up our public diplomacy effort, stressing democratic values, including more resources from the British Council. We should increase support to human rights activists, and strive for contact with non-official Islamic groups.

Above all we need to care about the 22 million Uzbek people, suffering from poverty and lack of freedom. They are not just pawns in the new Great Game.

MURRAY

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter #2
Confidential
Fm Tashkent
To FCO

18 March 2003

SUBJECT: US FOREIGN POLICY
SUMMARY

1. As seen from Tashkent, US policy is not much focussed on democracy or freedom. It is about oil, gas and hegemony. In Uzbekistan the US pursues those ends through supporting a ruthless dictatorship. We must not close our eyes to uncomfortable truth.

DETAIL

2. Last year the US gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan, about a quarter of it military aid. Bush and Powell repeatedly hail Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least seven thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without freedom of speech, without freedom of media, without freedom of movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom of religion. It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands. Most of the population live in conditions precisely analogous with medieval serfdom.

3. Uzbekistan's geo-strategic position is crucial. It has half the population of the whole of Central Asia. It alone borders all the other states in a region which is important to future Western oil and gas supplies. It is the regional military power. That is why the US is here, and here to stay. Contractors at the US military bases are extending the design life of the buildings from ten to twenty five years.

4. Democracy and human rights are, despite their protestations to the contrary, in practice a long way down the US agenda here. Aid this year will be slightly less, but there is no intention to introduce any meaningful conditionality. Nobody can believe this level of aid – more than US aid to all of West Africa – is related to comparative developmental need as opposed to political support for Karimov. While the US makes token and low-level references to human rights to appease domestic opinion, they view Karimov's vicious regime as a bastion against fundamentalism. He – and they – are in fact creating fundamentalism. When the US gives this much support to a regime that tortures people to death for having a beard or praying five times a day, is it any surprise that Muslims come to hate the West?

5. I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see these are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I understand at American urging).

6. From Tashkent it is difficult to agree that we and the US are activated by shared values. Here we have a brutal US sponsored dictatorship reminiscent of Central and South American policy under previous US Republican administrations. I watched George Bush talk today of Iraq and "dismantling the apparatus of terror… removing the torture chambers and the rape rooms". Yet when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in international fora. Double standards? Yes.

7. I hope that once the present crisis is over we will make plain to the US, at senior level, our serious concern over their policy in Uzbekistan.
MURRAY

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter #3

CONFIDENTIAL
FM TASHKENT
TO IMMEDIATE FCO

TELNO 63
OF 220939 JULY 04

INFO IMMEDIATE DFID, ISLAMIC POSTS, MOD, OSCE POSTS UKDEL EBRD LONDON, UKMIS GENEVA, UKMIS MEW YORK

SUBJECT: RECEIPT OF INTELLIGENCE OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

SUMMARY

1. We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.

2. I gather a recent London interdepartmental meeting considered the question and decided to continue to receive the material. This is morally, legally and practically wrong. It exposes as hypocritical our post Abu Ghraib pronouncements and fatally undermines our moral standing. It obviates my efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop torture they are fully aware our intelligence community laps up the results.

3. We should cease all co-operation with the Uzbek Security Services they are beyond the pale. We indeed need to establish an SIS presence here, but not as in a friendly state.

DETAIL

4. In the period December 2002 to March 2003 I raised several times the issue of intelligence material from the Uzbek security services which was obtained under torture and passed to us via the CIA. I queried the legality, efficacy and morality of the practice.

5. I was summoned to the UK for a meeting on 8 March 2003. Michael Wood gave his legal opinion that it was not illegal to obtain and to use intelligence acquired by torture. He said the only legal limitation on its use was that it could not be used in legal proceedings, under Article 15 of the UN Convention on Torture.

6. On behalf of the intelligence services, Matthew Kydd said that they found some of the material very useful indeed with a direct bearing on the war on terror. Linda Duffield said that she had been asked to assure me that my qualms of conscience were respected and understood.

7. Sir Michael Jay's circular of 26 May stated that there was a reporting obligation on us to report torture by allies (and I have been instructed to refer to Uzbekistan as such in the context of the war on terror). You, Sir, have made a number of striking, and I believe heartfelt, condemnations of torture in the last few weeks. I had in the light of this decided to return to this question and to highlight an apparent contradiction in our policy. I had intimated as much to the Head of Eastern Department.

8. I was therefore somewhat surprised to hear that without informing me of the meeting, or since informing me of the result of the meeting, a meeting was convened in the FCO at the level of Heads of Department and above, precisely to consider the question of the receipt of Uzbek intelligence material obtained under torture. As the office knew, I was in London at the time and perfectly able to attend the meeting. I still have only gleaned that it happened.

9. I understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured. Indeed this is true – the material is marked with a euphemism such as "From detainee debriefing." The argument runs that if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured.

10. I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry, nor my shame that I work in and organisation where colleagues would resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact

11. The torture record of the Uzbek security services could hardly be more widely known. Plainly there are, at the very least, reasonable grounds for believing the material is obtained under torture. There is helpful guidance at Article 3 of the UN Convention;
"The competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the state concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights." While this article forbids extradition or deportation to Uzbekistan, it is the right test for the present question also.

12. On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant. Article 2 of the Convention, to which we are a party, could not be plainer:

"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

13. Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless – we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU and its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform.

14. I was taken aback when Matthew Kydd said this stuff was valuable. Sixteen months ago it was difficult to argue with SIS in the area of intelligence assessment. But post Butler we know, not only that they can get it wrong on even the most vital and high profile issues, but that they have a particular yen for highly coloured material which exaggerates the threat. That is precisely what the Uzbeks give them. Furthermore MI6 have no operative within a thousand miles of me and certainly no expertise that can come close to my own in making this assessment.

15. At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.

16. I have been considering Michael Wood's legal view, which he kindly gave in writing. I cannot understand why Michael concentrated only on Article 15 of the Convention. This certainly bans the use of material obtained under torture as evidence in proceedings, but it does not state that this is the sole exclusion of the use of such material.

17. The relevant article seems to me Article 4, which talks of complicity in torture. Knowingly to receive its results appears to be at least arguable as complicity. It does not appear that being in a different country to the actual torture would preclude complicity. I talked this over in a hypothetical sense with my old friend Prof Francois Hampson, I believe an acknowledged World authority on the Convention, who said that the complicity argument and the spirit of the Convention would be likely to be winning points. I should be grateful to hear Michael's views on this.

18. It seems to me that there are degrees of complicity and guilt, but being at one or two removes does not make us blameless. There are other factors. Plainly it was a breach of Article 3 of the Convention for the coalition to deport detainees back here from Baghram, but it has been done. That seems plainly complicit.

19. This is a difficult and dangerous part of the World. Dire and increasing poverty and harsh repression are undoubtedly turning young people here towards radical Islam. The Uzbek government are thus creating this threat, and perceived US support for Karimov strengthens anti-Western feeling. SIS ought to establish a presence here, but not as partners of the Uzbek Security Services, whose sheer brutality puts them beyond the pale.

MURRAY

Second Document - summary of legal opinion from Michael Wood arguing that it is legal to use information extracted under torture:

From: Michael Wood, Legal Advisor

Date: 13 March 2003

CC: PS/PUS; Matthew Kidd, WLD

Linda Duffield

UZBEKISTAN: INTELLIGENCE POSSIBLY OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

1. Your record of our meeting with HMA Tashkent recorded that Craig had said that his understanding was that it was also an offence under the UN Convention on Torture to receive or possess information under torture. I said that I did not believe that this was the case, but undertook to re-read the Convention.

2. I have done so. There is nothing in the Convention to this effect. The nearest thing is article 15 which provides:

"Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made."

3. This does not create any offence. I would expect that under UK law any statement established to have been made as a result of torture would not be admissible as evidence.

[signed]

M C Wood
Legal Adviser

Antidote

2005-02-22T06:42:00.000-08:00

Antidote

Ruppert and Hopsicker

2005-02-15T15:18:00.000-08:00

Ruppert and Hopsicker
Co-Opting the 9-11 Truth Movement
Or
Exposing the Big Con –
Lies and Disinformation At The End Of Civilisation As We Know It

Joe Quinn

Febuary 7 2005: In looking at the best known "big names" among those individuals allegedly attempting to uncover the truth about 9-11, high up on the list (at the moment anyway) we find Mike Ruppert of ‘From the Wilderness’.

Ruppert has been making alternative news headlines for the past few months over two issues: the flack he has been taking, and giving, in a war of words with several high profile 9-11 investigators, and the issue of "Peak Oil". Quite often the two controversies are related.

It all began, it seems, with another 9-11 investigator, Dick Eastman, and some comments that he made about Ruppert's focus, or lack thereof, on the Pentagon attack and the evidence for the "no plane" scenario. Ruppert, true to his apparent love of litigation, threatened to sue Eastman, which, not being the most diplomatic response, got Eastman all flustered and the games where on.

Allegations flew back and forth, but sadly for corporate America, no lawsuits. Enter Victor Thorn (real name Scott Makufka) and owner of the Wing TV website. Thorn, apparently just your average dedicated 9-11 investigator, soon became aware of the spat between Ruppert and Eastman and decided that the best place for Ruppert and Eastman to discuss the matter like civilised truth seekers was on Thorn’s internet radio show. Thorn however, made the mistake of mentioning Eastman’s allegations in his invitation email to Ruppert, which was construed by Ruppert as an attack and resulted in Thorn joining the ranks of those threatened with legal action by Ruppert.

Now I have never met nor corresponded with Mr Ruppert, so I have to rely on the opinions of others who have met him or had some interaction with him to come to some idea of what kind of a guy he is. In all of the opinions of Ruppert that have been bandied about in recent months, the one that keeps popping up, and which is admitted to by even his friends, is that he is somewhat ‘excitable’. Frankly, given Mike’s situation, I can understand.

If we look at what thrust Mike into a unique position among 9-11 researchers, we find that it was not his research into 9-11, but rather his shocking revelations about "peak oil". Now it is no surprise that, from Mike’s point of view, this particular issue would eventually eclipse the events of 9-11 altogether, as he stated in his recent lecture at Washington University. After all, what’s the point in pursuing the prosecutions of Cheney and the boys when a large percentage of the population, according to the peak oil scenario, will never get to enjoy the trial anyway?

Thinking a little more deeply about the matter, I would venture to say that, if it were I that had uncovered - (alone or with the subtle help of parties unseen) - information that "proved conclusively" that there was no more oil and that mechanised humanity was in for a very nasty surprise, complete with the whole die off scenario etc, I might be a little testy sometimes too. If I subsequently realised (by my own efforts or with the subtle help of parties unseen), that the dissemination of this all-important information was my responsibility alone, I hope I would be excused for getting a little paranoid now and then. And in the case that I had come to the conclusion (alone or with the subtle help of parties unseen), that there would be lots of people out there pretending to be 9-11 researchers who, in reality, were just attempting to discredit me and my very important message to humanity, I’m damn sure I might strike people as ‘uptight’. Heck, I might even get defensive and aggressive at times, especially in my dealings with people that I suspected to be such disinfo artists - which could be anybody. I might even threaten to sue a bunch of them.

We should all therefore be reading between the lines with Mike and his temperament, but we should not waste too much time on it, and look more closely instead at his message.

If we look at the situation dispassionately (not an easy thing to do given the subject matter - "you’re all gonna die" - tends to make people a little emotional don’t ya know), what seems to be true about Mike’s message is that it is so shocking that it tends to have the effect of suspending the critical thinking capabilities of people who hear it. In a way it is like one of those doomsday cults where blind faith is asked for and given because: "we’re all gonna be toast pretty soon anyway, so what have you got to lose?"

It is also, coincidentally, a very good way to focus attention away from 9-11.

Of course, I am not saying that Mike is running a cult of any description, I am just saying that, whether Mike is aware of it or not, his message tends to promote emotional rather than critical thought, and thinking with our emotions tends to exacerbate an already problematic situation.

I think I can say without much fear of disputel, that, whether he planned it or not (or whether someone else planned it with him in mind), Mike has become somewhat of a saviour for his followers.

By his own admission, the following are Mike’s core beliefs about what needs to be done:

Instead of advocating war I oppose it. Anyone who has attended any of my more than 35 lectures in eight countries (more than 15,000 live audience members) will know, of a certainty, that my position on solutions is absolutely clear. I advocate an immediate cessation of all military conquest and imperialism by the US government and industrialized powers; an end to the war on terror.

I advocate an immediate convening of political, economic, spiritual and scientific leaders from all nations to address the issue of Peak Oil (and Gas) and its immediate implications for economic collapse, massive famine and climate destruction (partially as a result of reversion to coal plants which accelerate global warming). This would, scientifically speaking, include immediate steps to arrive at a crash program – agreed to by all nations and in accordance with the highest spiritual and ethical principles – to stop global population growth and to arrive at the best possible and most ethical program of population reduction as a painful choice made by all of humanity.

I hope that the sharp and sudden increase in heart rate and blood pressure that the words "population reduction" must surely have caused in readers was not too much to handle, and that we can continue and rationally consider the practicality of just what is being suggested by Mike.

The first question that can be reasonably asked is: "What planet has Mike been living on for the past 50 years?"

Please tell me when exactly the wonderful, life-respecting, spiritual beings took over the planet? Was it while I was at the toilet?

Seriously though, can ANYONE imagine Cheney or Putin or Blair or Zhu Rongji, or any other world leader for that matter, who by definition of their position of power have been completely corrupted by that power, suddenly exhibiting "the highest spiritual and ethical principles"? Just about every world leader, including the supposedly "spiritual" ones, have been presiding over mass depopulation for centuries, and they didn’t need any stinkin’ ethics or morals to do it; glee and relish was all it took!

When Mike was challenged by Victor Thorn of Wing TV about his stance on the depopulation question, he stated that, ideally, the job of depopulation would:

" […] include people of more humane vocations than those of the economists, politicians, and financiers who are currently in charge of most domestic and international institutions".

Sure, we would all like to have those "of more humane vocations" included, Mike, but, last time I checked, it was still the "economists, politicians, and financiers" that were running the show. Better yet, let’s have more humane people make the decisions, not simply those who are in positions where the illusion of humaneness is part of the job description.

Mike continues in this vein with his basic point being that it would be better that the several billion of us that sadly have to "go", be put to sleep by the Dalai Lama than prematurely euthanised by the Nazi Neocons.

Again, really Mike, it’s not much of a choice. Either way you are asking us to make the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ in order to clear the board for the "economists, politicians, and financiers" to just start all over again. THAT is the reality of the situation and it’s time we all grew up and accepted it.

The bottom line with Ruppert is that, while his alarmist, doomsday message is a real attention grabber, his solution to the problem really isn’t a solution at all, and for this reason it would be better if he were to just make his point and quietly sit down.

Another troubling aspect of the whole Mike Ruppert travelling show is the fact that he enjoys a level of exposure that is denied most other 9-11 researchers. He seems to have few problems in securing speaking appointments in places like Washington University or the Commonwealth club and having his book "requested by more than 120 press agencies from around the world", including "the largest and most powerful", and certainly the many lawsuits that he has either started or threatened to start must require considerable cash flow.

If there is one thing that the honest modern day truth seekers must come to terms with, it is that nothing is ever made easy. Everything must be worked for, and exposing the truth generally does not pay well in monetary terms. That is not to say that all those penniless "alternative" editorialists are on the level, but if you have a product to sell and maintain, be it a lie or the truth, you need exposure, and the type of exposure Ruppert is getting is usually beyond the reach of those of us who ARE on the level and attempting to scrape a living from it.

It is indeed strange to realise that, for all Mike’s supposed savvy as an ex-LAPD cop, he, like Hopsicker, seems unable to really grasp the true nature of the people that control this planet. On the contrary, Mike would have us believe that he and his little band of researchers should be credited with uncovering and bringing the "reality" of Peak oil, not only to the little people, but also to the Finance Ministers of the world’s seven largest nations! As he triumphantly stated in an essay last October:

WE DID IT!

World’s Seven Largest Economies (G7) Admit They Have No Idea How Much Oil Is Left - Issue Emergency Call for Transparency at DC Summit

A Challenge to the Flat-Earth, Abiotic Oil Advocates and Cornucopian Economists - It’s Now or Never

by Michael C. Ruppert

In the article, Ruppert claims that he and, "a group of dedicated men and women, recognized as being in the forefront of the movement to place Peak Oil front and center on the world’s agenda" had singled-handedly brought the reality of peak oil to the attention of the world’s leaders. Misunderstood ‘new-age’ platitudes about a single person being able to ‘change the world’ aside, is it really reasonable to think that a group of citizens would just stumble upon information as important as "peak oil" BEFORE the people that have been using oil to control and manipulate the world for decades?

If your answer is yes, as Mike’s seems to be, then we humbly propose that both you and Mike are woefully ignorant of the true nature of the control system on this planet.

But then again, wishful thinking WILL get you, EVERY time.

In a final flourish to the article Ruppert states that: "this book may change the outcome of the (2004) election". To which we say: if Mike’s election predictions are anything to go by, we can all relax about "Peak oil" as he presents it.

According to Mike, when big government and big oil exploration and drilling companies proclaim to the world that "we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here folks", it is not that these patently corrupt men are attempting to manipulate world opinion, but rather that, faced with the dire consequences that peak oil portends for humanity, they are simply concerned for our well-being and future. Ruppert fails however to address the question of whether or not it is reasonable to believe that such men would suddenly undergo a complete reversal of the ethics that had motivated them up until that point in their lives.

As we all know, oil does not naturally flow out of the ground pre-refined into the various forms that are required to keep the post-industrial world turning and well-fed. There is a long and costly process involved in getting the oil to the gas station, and it would not happen if it were not financed by the large multinational oil companies that naturally have very close ties to the governments that require the oil in order for them to have a country and a population to rule over.

If there is an alleged shortage of oil, it is just as plausible that such claims are the result of some new government/corporate strategy rather than the actual drying up of resources.

Consider also the fact that, if we are to believe that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were solely to steal the oil resources of those countries, then things have not panned out as the Neocons hoped. Most reports have been telling us that the expected reserves in Iraq are just not there. Which begs the question: are we really to believe that all the big brains in the US "think-tanks" did not foresee this?

Of course I am not for a moment suggesting that depopulation does not form a part of the plans of ‘the powers that be’. There is too much evidence that governments have, for many years, been working on developing ever better ways to kill ever more people. My problem with Ruppert is that by promoting his "peak oil" debate, he ever so subtly diverts attention away from those who are really responsible for our current predicament and lays the blame for the impending demise of civilisation as we know it at the door of mother nature and the unfortunate fact that she has run out of oil.

How tragic.

While I cannot prove it, I would venture to say that Ruppert is being backed; possibly financially, probably with information, and almost definitely in terms of exposure. Having said that, it is possible - but not likely - that he himself knows little about where the money, information or exposure are really coming from. Such is the nature of the murky world of CoIntelPro and the fate of those who unwittingly become mired in it.

Which brings us to another high profile 9-11 investigator. Daniel Hopsicker of Mad Cow Morning News. The bulk of Hopsicker’s research centers around alleged chief hijacker Mohammed Atta and his association with the CIA and their drug running activities in Florida. Hopsicker’s "smoking gun" is that Atta and 6 other hijackers got their "wings" at a Florida Flight School that was also used for drug running by the CIA. Added to that is evidence that the hijackers received further training at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Hopsicker states:

"The most extraordinarily-damning fact that’s been dredged up so far about the 9-11 attack is this one, unearthed in Florida:

"During the same month that Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi began flying lessons at his flight school, the flight school owner’s Lear jet was seized by DEA agents who found 43 pounds of heroin aboard."

It goes to the heart of the relationship between Mohamed Atta and his Hamburg cadre and their criminal hosts here in the U.S. and leads directly to the network supporting, employing, and/or doing business with the terrorists.

Now, I am not contesting any of these details, in fact, it is rather curious that Hopsicker is able to glean such detailed and explosive information about the undoubtedly "top secret" activities of the phoney hijackers, purely as a result of honest and diligent research. Get real!

Hopsicker raises further suspicion and further dilutes his credibility by insisting that all roads simply HAVE to lead to Saudi Arabia, summing up his stance by saying:

Any 9-11"expert" whose revelations don’t frequently use the word "Saudi" in conjunction with the word "Florida" is peddling a red herring.

There are a lot of problems with "the Saudis did it" argument, the most obvious being that this is the main allegation not-so-subtly hinted at by Michael Moore in his widely advertised docu-movie, Fahrenheit 9-11. Given what we know about the mainstream media and it’s subservience to US government interests, it is unlikely that such a movie would have received such publicity if the allegations therein were actually factual.

Secondly there is the problem of the Saudi/bin Laden link. By now most serious researchers should be aware that bin Laden has been a CIA asset since the time of the Russo-Afghan war. During those years, bin Laden was the CIA’s man in Afghanistan and was used to recruit, train and funnel money and arms to the small group of fundamentalist Islamic ideologists and fighters that gave the Russians such a hard time. Of course, the CIA did not dirty their hands directly, preferring to use bin Laden’s folks in the Saudi regime as their middlemen. Having successfully schooled this band of merry Islamophiles in the art of expelling a world superpower from their country, they were then used as the scapegoats in various false flag operations that culminated in the 9-11 attacks. The BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares" does a good job of summing up this aspect of the global shell game.

Thirdly there is the problem of the major source of the Saudi Arabia/9-11 link - Pakistani Intelligence – an organisation that is generally accepted as being little more than the CIA in SW Asia.

Did the Saudis know about 9-11?

A new book claims that Saudi princes and a Pakistani official knew Osama bin Laden would strike America that day. But some critics say the whole story could be a neoconservative fabrication.

By Mark Follman Oct. 18, 2003

When U.S. and Pakistani special forces raided a house on the outskirts of Faisalabad, Pakistan, on March 28, 2002, and successfully nabbed top al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah, the mood at CIA headquarters was upbeat. Langley watched the early morning raid via satellite, and once a Pakistani intelligence officer and some quick voice prints confirmed Zubaydah’s identity, the CIA knew it had captured one of its most sought-after adversaries, a figure who could potentially reveal the full story of the 9-11 terrorist plot. Shot several times in the raid, Zubaydah was given enough medical treatment to ensure his survival and hauled away for questioning. According to a new book, what Zubaydah said -- after being subjected to highly controversial interrogation methods -- stunned intelligence officials.

In his book "Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9-11," Gerald Posner makes an explosive allegation: Top figures in the Saudi and Pakistani governments had been directly assisting Osama bin Laden for years and knew al-Qaida was going to strike America on Sept. 11. Posner cites two unnamed U.S. government sources, both of whom he asserts are "in a position to know," who he said gave him separate, corroborating reports. One source is from the CIA and the other is a senior Bush administration official "inside the executive branch," he told Salon in an interview.

According to Posner’s account, four Saudi princes and the head of Pakistan’s air force were deeply involved with Osama bin Laden for years, some of them meeting with him well after al-Qaida began its terror attacks on U.S. targets overseas in the mid-1990s. The fact that some of the figures were so highly placed makes it hard to dismiss the possibility, if the allegations are true, that the heads of the Saudi and Pakistani governments signed off on the policy.

Saudi, Pakistani and U.S. government officials (the latter off the record) have dismissed the story as false. Zubaydah himself subsequently recanted his claims, saying he lied to avoid torture, according to Posner. But Posner thinks the allegations are credible -- not least because four of the five supposed conspirators died under strange circumstances -- and believes the U.S. wants to downplay them for an obvious reason: They’re too hot to handle, painting as they do two crucial allies as working hand-in-hand with America’s Public Enemy No. 1.

But several intelligence analysts and experts on Saudi Arabia doubt the story’s authenticity. While acknowledging that Saudi Arabia has supported fiery proponents of militant Islam and took an early see-no-evil approach to bin Laden, they say it would be highly unlikely that top members of the Saudi royal family would be so deeply involved with a global terrorist organization -- one that seeks to destroy the Saudi regime itself as part of a worldwide jihad against infidels and their allies.

As if to perpetuate the myth of a bona fide "war on terror", Hopsicker also repeatedly makes reference to "the terrorists", apparently taking as gospel the government - spun lie that "Arab terrorists" actually exist as an organised group dedicated to destroying everything American. Again, readers should watch the BBC-aired documentary "The Power of Nightmares" for evidence of this. It is hard to believe that a seasoned supersleuth like Hopsicker is not aware of the vast amount of evidence to suggest that the entire concept of an organised worldwide terrorist network is completely bogus.

Hopsicker is also insistent that the "no plane at the Pentagon" crowd are disinfo artists. Thankfully however, and as if to save us wasting any more time, Hopsicker graciously gives his CoIntelPro position away completely by claiming that anyone caught promoting the idea that the 9-11 airplanes could have been flown by remote control are obviously disinfo artists. Which, if Hopsicker is correct, means that Boeing must also be part of the 9-11 truth movement.

The more we look into the backgrounds of the main players involved in 9-11 research, the more links we find. Ruppert was a member of Hopsicker’s CIA drug running online discussion list. It is interesting therefore that Hopsicker and Ruppert have since had somewhat of a falling out in recent months, mainly due to information that Hopsicker dug up on Pinnacle Quest International (PQI), a company offering "little-known insider secrets of wealth creation" to its customers and from which Ruppert had accepted 4 all expenses paid trips to Cancun with a $1,000 dollar speaking fee. Hopsicker claims that PQI runs scam operations, and with a price tag of $7,500 for 21 CDs, we tend to agree with him. Unsurprisingly, as a result of this interaction with Hopsicker, Ruppert threatened to sue.

Now all of this gives the impression that Hopsicker and Ruppert are on opposing sides and one of them is telling the truth and the other is selling the lie. But as I have already mentioned, nothing is ever that simple in the world of CoIntelPro. You see, even with his "peak oil" slant, Ruppert and his message ran the risk of being just one more voice in the melee of 9-11 investigators and investigations currently entrenched on the internet. In the world of CoIntelPro, there are many ways to draw attention to the lie that you have to sell, and each particular method is tailored to be most effective in deceiving a specific audience. In the case of the conspiratorially-aware members of the alternative news communities on the net, one way to draw attention to disinformation is to have someone attack it AS disinformation.

The benefit of this tactic is that a very convincing argument can be made that the lie is in fact a lie, but care must be taken to leave the issue unresolved and ambiguous. Once the attack has been launched, it is then time to proclaim loudly that the lie is being attacked because it is the truth, which goes down well with conspiracy theorists. This type of CoIntelPro operation presents a more or less win-win scenario for CoIntelPro. In the best-case scenario, that section of public opinion that recognises that our leaders lie to us all of the time will tend to believe that the person being attacked is most likely to be telling the truth. If this is not successful, then, at the very least, much-needed attention is drawn to the lie and invariably infighting in the ranks of genuine truth seekers will have been fomented.

Not bad for a day's work.

The really interesting thing about Hopsicker and Ruppert however, is not what they disagree on but what they seem to agree on.

As stated, many people make the mistake of thinking that the job of CoIntelPro is to simply provide false leads and directly attack genuine 9-11 truth seekers. The fact is that their task is much more complex. Quintuple reverse psychology is not out of the question here, and I'm not joking.

Looking at the current infighting going on at present, it would appear that CoIntelPro agents have done a fine job. No one knows who is who anymore, everyone suspects everyone else, and those members of the public whose minds are not, as yet, welded shut will be the ones to suffer most from the lack of coherent information about what really happened on 911, who really is to blame, or what the real issue is.

For any 9-11 investigator to come out and say that a 757 plane definitely hit the Pentagon is to rob the public of the singularly most important aspect of 9-11 and the one that has the chance to blow the whole dastardly plot wide open.

Certainly, there is much evidence that shows that Flight 11 and Flight 175 really did hit the twin towers, forcing 9-11 investigators to resort to other, and less convincing, aspects of the events of that day to make their case that it was an inside job.

This brings us to the point about the Pentagon attack which is that there exists striking evidence to suggest that it was NOT a 757 that hit the Pentagon, and it is for this very reason that Flight 77 presents THE best opportunity to bring the 9-11 deception to public awareness.

Think about it. If it can be proven that something other than Flight 77 bored that hole through 3 rings of Rummy’s fortress, then it is not necessary to dig for non-existent "smoking gun" evidence that someone "stood down" America’s air defences or about any of the many other suspicious "anomalies" on 9-11, because the game would be up.

Even among those researchers who have spent time and effort on the Pentagon Strike, I know of very few that have looked at one of the most intriguing questions about that event. If we accept the evidence that points clearly to some sort of modified drone craft equipped with a warhead, like the "Global Hawk", having struck the Pentagon, the next question we must ask is, what reasoning was used to decide which part of the building to hit and who to ‘take out’?

Consider the following most interesting news report:

[…] Vice Adm. Darb Ryan, chief of naval personnel, was in his office at the Navy Annex about halfway between Trapasso’s home and the Pentagon. Having learned that New York had been attacked, he was on the telephone recommending the evacuation of the Pentagon "when out of the corner of my eye I saw the airplane" a split second before it struck.

Ryan was overheard reporting some of the initial damage assessment, which included spaces belonging to the chief of naval operations (CNO), the Navy’s tactical command center on the D-ring, an operations cell and a Navy intelligence command center. These included up to four special, highly classified, electronically secure areas. Many of the enlisted sailors involved were communications technicians with cryptology training who are key personnel in intelligence gathering and analysis. Some personnel were known to be trapped alive in the wreckage.

OTHER NAVY PERSONNEL confirmed the admiral’s initial assessment and said the dead numbered around 190, 64 on the aircraft. Among them was Lt. Gen. Timothy Maude, who was in the Army support and logistics section. Many others were Navy captains, commanders and lieutenant commanders with offices between the fourth and fifth corridors (the western wedge of the Pentagon). The Navy’s special operations office, which oversees classified programs, had moved out of the spaces only a few days before. All but one of the senior Navy flag officers were out of the building. Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn, deputy CNO for warfare requirements and programs, was near the impact area but escaped without injury.

One of the aircraft’s engines somehow ricocheted out of the building and arched into the Pentagon’s mall parking area between the main building and the new loading dock facility, said Charles H. Krohn, the Army’s deputy chief of public affairs. Those fleeing the building heard a loud secondary explosion about 10 min. after the initial impact.

The E-ring floors above the tunnel dug by the aircraft collapsed, leaving a gap in the Pentagon’s outer wall perhaps 150 ft. wide. Fuel triggered an intense fire that caused the roof of the damaged E-ring section to give way at 10:10 a.m. It was still burning 18 hr. later. Fire fighting was hampered by reports that twice sent personnel fleeing the area. First, at around 11:28 a.m., a warning that "an aircraft is in the air" sent police, FBI and other security personnel to passages under I-395 that lead away from the Pentagon. They quickly returned, but at 11:34, shouted and radioed warnings of another possible explosion sent people running again. However, by 11:40 FBI teams had returned with brown paper bags and gloves to scour the Pentagon grounds for debris in an area bordered by Pentagon City, Arlington Cemetery and the Potomac River.

F-16s from the District of Columbia Air National Guard periodically circled the Pentagon at altitudes low enough to frighten grade school teachers and students in nearby Alexandria. Later, the patrols were shifted to a higher altitude and continued through the night.

Confusion about what had happened, among the 20,000-24,000 employees leaving the Pentagon on foot in long lines, largely reflected where they were in the building when the aircraft struck. The Navy and Army spaces absorbed the damage. Navy officers not in the aircraft’s direct path reported heavy safes being flung across rooms and people thrown from their chairs. They variously identified major damage between the fourth and fifth or third and fourth corridors. No one knew the full extent of the damage. Air Force officers on the opposite side of the building heard or felt nothing until alarms went off. Even then, they thought it was a false fire alarm until orders were passed to evacuate the building.

Just what, we wonder, was so special about those "four special, highly classified, electronically secure areas" belonging to the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) that they had to be ‘taken out’ along with many Navy "communications technicians with cryptology training"? Clearly there is an important lead to be followed here, but both Hopsicker and Ruppert give it a wide berth, preferring to tell the public that Flight 77 really did hit the Pentagon piloted by Arab terrorists and "the 9-11 cause is no longer useful as a political tool by activists" respectively.

It is for these reasons that I frown upon researchers like Hopsicker, Ruppert and others who either refuse to seriously consider or dismiss out of hand the idea that a 757 did not hit the Pentagon. If we look at their reasoning for this stance, we find that there is none, other than that they appear to simply not like the idea that something other than Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. Perhaps such a concept sits outside of their personal realm of belief, but, if so, it is, as I have already stated, a mistake to make emotional judgements when the intellect is called for, and it is an outright crime to attempt to pull the public into one’s subjective world. It is only through a rigorous pursuit of *objective* truth, without pity for our own illusions and beliefs that the big lie about 9-11 can and will be exposed.

Suspicions are further compounded when we discover that these same people who want us to suspect Saudi Arabia and to believe that a 757 hit the Pentagon, combine their promotion of this "party line" with vigorous condemnation of the "Israel did it" crowd. There is much to explore on the Israel question and much evidence, going way back, that Israel, to all intents and purposes, calls the shots in the US.

Just how far does the power of the Pro-Israel lobby go? Powerful enough to play a leading role in 9-11?

It is definitely NOT beyond the realm of possibility, and it is NOT for Ruppert Hopsicker or anyone else to assert outright that it is, particularly when they refuse to fully investigate the matter. Their position is similar to that of the Bush gang who also rule out, a priori, that it was something other than a conspiracy hatched by a man living in a cave and carried out by 19 crazed "Arab terrorists" several of whom happen to have been confirmed to be still living.

The truth is that the real reasons for the events of 9-11 are much more insidious than any of the theories that have to date been proffered. As part of the process of investigation, most 9-11 investigators have, at least once, suggested that if everyone were just to look to "who benefits", the solution to the whole enigma would quickly present itself. The important thing to remember about the "who benefits" approach however, is that, having identified the party that benefits the most from an event, that lead must be doggedly pursued, regardless of the lack of evidence of that party’s involvement in the event. Indeed, in such a case, a lack of evidence can constitute the most important piece of evidence if we consider that those with the most to gain often have the most to lose if their involvement were to be revealed. And in this case, the wherewithal needed to pull off such a major attack and deception is so vast, that those responsible would certainly have the means and know-how to plant evidence to blame it on others while eliminating the evidence that points back to the truly guilty parties.

As the twin towers crumbled to the ground, the average Western citizen’s perception of Arabs, already suffering from long years of subtle propaganda by the Western press, took an equally disastrous nose-dive. In one fell swoop, millions of people in that big nebulous area of the world known to many Americans as "the Middle East" became "dangerous terrorists" and the soon-to-be recipients of the whipped-up fury and indignation of the American people, conveyed on their behalf by the "world’s most awesome military machine". 9-11 then, certainly secured the enthusiastic consent of the American people for an invasion of whichever country the US government decided to frame for the attacks.

However, it is our contention that Ruppert’s argument that the 9-11 attacks were carried out to facilitate an oil grab by the US government in the face of "peak oil" also makes little sense.

As a result of the first gulf war and under the oil for food program, any Iraqi oil resources that were required for American consumption had already been secured by US interests, so there was therefore little to be gained by the US government embroiling its military in what was always going to be a costly and unwinnable guerrilla war. One has only to look at the pre-eminent global position of the US over the past 50 years to see that its policies were already working quite nicely. So why risk military and economic catastrophe by invading Iraq? Indeed, there was little to be gained from the most recent US invasion of the Middle East if it is understood only in terms of securing oil for consumption. The invasion, in fact, uses up VAST quantities of oil, to what end?

Imagine that, for whatever reason, you were planning a radical reshaping of the Middle East, and you had concluded that, to get the job done, war and the destruction of an entire race of people therein was necessary. Imagine also that you are well aware that you cannot just unilaterally set off a major conflagration, principally because public opinion and certain other nations would not stand for it. Realising that you need some way to mould public opinion towards accepting war and at the same time render impotent those nations that pose a threat to your plans, what might be the best way to do it?

By far the most effective tool for shaping public opinion is fear. And by far the best way to control other nations is economically, or rather, through the control of their oil supply. Hence, 9-11 and the "war on terror".

Unless the US actually physically controls Middle Eastern oil reserves, however, they have no way of controlling to whom those reserves are sold. The only way to do so is to fabricate a reason for invading each oil-rich country in turn and either permanently occupy them or install a proxy government that will do your bidding. This, it would seem, is the process we see unfolding currently with the "war on terror" and the invasion of Iraq. Iran is probably next. Venezuela may follow. Of course, the public must be given a plausible reason as to why the wells have "run dry", which is the reason for the dissemination of the peak oil myth.

However, maintaining the military necessary for such a task demands tremendous economic and human resources. The costs are driving the United States further and further into debt. At the same time, Bush is giving tax breaks to his wealthy support base, narrowing the income base within the US to pay for his military follies. This makes the US more and more dependent upon foreign governments to shore up the US debt, to the cost of nearly $2 billion a day. The day that the rest of the world decides to take a hit on the value of their dollar reserves in order to bring the US predator to its knees, is the day the war machine will begin to collapse, bringing down with it the fabled "American Way of Life".

But what can be the motivation behind such an insane plot? What can drive a group of people, against all reason and logic, to risk the economic destruction of their own country and therefore their power base?

Such a question cannot be answered without looking at the one country for which successive US governments have bent over backwards to accommodate; which takes us back to Israel.

There is much evidence to warrant an in-depth investigation of the role played by agents of Israel in the 9-11 attacks. Yet the ubiquitous, tiresome and completely baseless threat of being labelled "anti-Semitic" for criticising the actions of the Israeli government effectively prevents all but the most courageous from following the leads. Coincidence? We think not.

During the Clinton years, significant efforts had been made to bring the plight of the Palestinian people and the need for a just solution to the Middle East conflict to the attention of the international community. While Israel had successfully scuppered the Camp David peace talks by making demands which they knew the Palestinian people, and therefore Arafat, could not accept, Israel was finding itself increasingly isolated and increasingly pressured to make the concessions that peace required. Once 9-11 happened, all bets were off.

In fact, on September 10th 2001, the Washington Times ran an article entitled, "U.S. troops would enforce peace under Army study" which detailed the findings of an elite U.S. Army study center plan devised for enforcing a major Israeli-Palestinian peace accord that would require about 20,000 well-armed troops stationed throughout Israel and a newly created Palestinian state. The most interesting aspect of the report was the mention of a 68-page paper by the Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) drafted to analyse the daunting task facing any international peacekeeping force if Israel and the Palestinians ever reached a peace agreement back by the United Nations.

In the report, we are told that:

"the School for Advanced Military Studies is both a training ground and a think tank for some of the Army’s brightest officers. Officials say the Army chief of staff, and sometimes the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ask SAMS to develop contingency plans for future military operations. During the 1991 Persian Gulf war, SAMS personnel helped plan the coalition ground attack that avoided a strike up the middle of Iraqi positions and instead executed a ‘left hook’ that routed the enemy in 100 hours."

The exercise was undertaken by 60 officers dubbed "Jedi Knights," as all second-year SAMS students are nicknamed. The SAMS paper attempts to predict events in the first year of a peace-enforcement operation, and sees possible dangers for U.S. troops from both sides. It calls Israel’s armed forces a "500-pound gorilla in Israel. Well armed and trained. Operates in both Gaza [and the West Bank]. Known to disregard international law to accomplish mission. Very unlikely to fire on American forces. Fratricide a concern especially in air space management."

Of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, the SAMS officers say: "Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act."

The day after the 9-11 attacks, then former Israeli Prime Minister and current Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when asked what he thought about the event, stated that it was "very good for Israel".

Indeed it was.

9-11 created much-needed sympathy and vindication for the "war on Arab terrorism" that Israel fraudulently claims it has been silently fighting for many years. Again we must ask, who had the motive AND the capability to carry out the 9-11 attacks, and who stood to benefit the most?

Just hours after the attacks, George Friedman proclaimed Israel as the primary beneficiary. "The big winner today, intended or not, is the state of Israel," wrote Friedman, who said on his Internet website at stratfor.com adding: "There is no question that the Israeli leadership is feeling relief." Again we come back to the question that all serious criminal investigators begin with – "Who benefits?"

There exists much evidence, conveniently overlooked by certain 9-11 investigators, including Ruppert and Hopsicker, to strongly suggest that agents of Israel were deeply involved in the events surrounding the 9-11 attacks. For example:

There is the fact of the Israeli spy ring, as exposed, surprisingly, by Fox News’ Carl Cameron. In the four part series aired on Fox News in December 2001 Cameron reports many interesting facts such as:

Two Israeli companies Amdocs and Comverse InfoSys, (now called Verint), manage just about every aspect of the US telephone system.

Amdocs is responsible for billing and records for almost all phone calls in the US. Cameron states: Amdocs has contracts with the 25 biggest phone companies in America, and more worldwide. The White House and other secure government phone lines are protected, but it is virtually impossible to make a call on normal phones without generating an Amdocs record of it.

In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies have investigated Amdocs more than once. The firm has repeatedly and adamantly denied any security breaches or wrongdoing. But sources tell Fox News that in 1999, the super secret National Security Agency, headquartered in northern Maryland, issued what's called a Top Secret sensitive compartmentalized information report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands in Israel, in particular.

Investigators don't believe calls are being listened to, but the data about who is calling whom and when is plenty valuable in itself. An internal Amdocs memo to senior company executives suggests just how Amdocs generated call records could be used. "Widespread data mining techniques and algorithms.... combining both the properties of the customer (e.g., credit rating) and properties of the specific ‘behavior….’" Specific behavior, such as who the customers are calling.

Note the comment that "the White House and other secure government phone lines are protected." Well, it just so happens that Comverse InfoSys provides the wiretapping equipment and software for US law enforcement agencies. Cameron tells us:

Every time you make a call, it passes through the nation's elaborate network of switchers and routers run by the phone companies. Custom computers and software, made by companies like Comverse, are tied into that network to intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them to investigators.

The manufacturers have continuing access to the computers so they can service them and keep them free of glitches. This process was authorized by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Senior government officials have now told Fox News that while CALEA made wiretapping easier, it has led to a system that is seriously vulnerable to compromise, and may have undermined the whole wiretapping system.

Indeed, Fox News has learned that Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were both warned Oct. 18 in a hand-delivered letter from 15 local, state and federal law enforcement officials, who complained that "law enforcement's current electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than they were at the time CALEA was enacted."

Comverse insists the equipment it installs is secure. But the complaint about this system is that the wiretap computer programs made by Comverse have, in effect, a back door through which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by unauthorized parties.

Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in Israel, Comverse works closely with the Israeli government, and under special programs, gets reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade. But investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide.

To this last comment we have to ask: Just what level of power do Israeli interests wield in the halls of power in the US that any investigation into Israeli spying activities on US soil against US intelligence agencies can be so completely quashed? Would this constitute a level of power and control that would allow those interests to carry off a terrorist attack like 9-11 and have it blamed on "Arab terrorists"?

Most assuredly.

Cameron goes on to tell us that a group of 140 Israeli spies were arrested prior to September 11, 2001, in the US as part of a widespread investigation into a suspected espionage ring run by Israel inside the US.

US Government documents refer to the spy ring as an "organised intelligence-gathering operation" designed to "penetrate government facilities". Most of those arrested had served in the Israeli armed forces – but military service is compulsory in Israel and a number also had an intelligence background. Many were posing as art students.

These spies were spread out across the US, usually living close to suspected Arab terrorist cells. One group were living just a few blocks away from chief Hijacker Mohammed Atta in Hollywood, Florida. Cameron reports that, according to intelligence sources within the US, a number of the terrorist cells that they had been watching changed their activities and routines immediately after having cover taps put on their communications by intelligence agents.

Now think about this. You have a group of at least 140 Mossad agents and/or their accomplices running around the US with apparent impunity prior to 9-11 conducting a "spying" operation that is designed to "penetrate government facilities". You have two Israeli companies that control the entire US telephone and telephone wiretapping technology that are suspected of passing sensitive information to Israel. You have US intelligence agencies realising that, on a number of occasions, terrorist suspects that they had sought to wiretap and survey immediately changed their telecommunications processes and acting much differently as soon as the, supposedly secret, wiretaps went into place.

But it doesn’t end there.

On the morning of September 11th and just as the WTC towers were crumbling the 5 Israelis were caught doing the "happy dance" as they videotaped the Twin Towers fall. They were spotted by a woman who called the police who contacted the FBI. The 5 were apprehended in a moving company van, which contained $4700 in cash, box cutters and recently taken photographs, one image showing a hand flicking a lighter in front of the destroyed buildings as if mocking the event. The driver of the van later told the arresting officers:

"We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem."

Did this most interesting comment give the world a tantalising glimpse into the REAL reason for and, at the same time, reveal the perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks??

The 5 were detained for two months during which time at least two were identified as active Mossad agents. They were subjected to polygraph tests which one of them resisted for 10 weeks before failing. Now ask yourself: What questions might have been asked of this person during the test? We will probably never know, but we can speculate that he was probably asked direct questions about his involvement in the WTC attacks, and he, as a Mossad agent working for the state of Israel, lied.

On their return to Israel, the 5 appeared on an Israeli television show where they made the following telling remark:

"The fact of the matter is we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event."

Which begs the question: How can you document an event if you do not know beforehand that it is going to happen?

We should not forget the fact that an Israeli firm was in charge of the security and passenger screening at Logan airport where both WTC planes took off and that an Israeli instant messaging company, Odigo, received a warning about the WTC attacks 2 hours before the first plane hit the WTC. This warning originated in Israel.

As reported by ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, the Mossad had a secret history of supporting radical Islamic groups for its own purposes, and as Seymour Hersh, veteran investigative journalist writing in The New Yorker on Oct. 8, pointed out:

"many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues about the terrorists’ identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found."

Evidence for the fact that Israeli interests in the US possess vastly disproportionate power was highlighted by US Congressman Jim Moran (Democrat of Virginia) speaking at a 2003 public forum in his congressional district and reported in the New York Times of March 15, 2003, where he stated:

"If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this. The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should."

By "Jewish community" Moran was certainly not talking about the average Jewish American or the average Jew in Israel, but rather the leaders of the Jewish community, those that proclaim to be acting in the interests of ordinary Jews.

The above facts are indisputable and constitute just the tip of the iceberg of what is clearly deep involvement by the agents of the state of Israel in not only the 9-11 attacks but American politics in general.

We will leave it to our readers to decide if there is any disingenuousness in Ruppert and Hopsicker’s dismissal of the Israel question and ponder the implications that such a stance holds for their status as genuine 9-11 researchers.

One of the most interesting aspects of the broader 9-11 investigation that we have recently been exploring concerns the evidence for the fact that there are two very different types of "Jews". Briefly stated (and you will want to read the previous link to get the full and in-depth analysis) those Jewish/Zionist leaders that claim to be acting in the interests of the Jewish people may not in fact be Jewish, in terms of being Semites at all, but are in fact of Aryan origins. Then, there are the truly Semitic Jews - people closely related to the Palestinians, genetically speaking. In the event that the reader does not understand the importance of this issue, read again our report on Ethnic Specific Weapons. For the reader that can read between the lines, this fact should provide serious pause for thought when considered in light of the Nazi agenda during WWII and the many credible attestations of the disturbing actions of certain "Zionists" in relation to the suffering of Jews in the concentration camps and, of course, the events of 9-11 and all that had resulted. The fact is that one of the major results of the last Great War was the creation of the state of Israel at the cost of the lives of several million ordinary Jews along with 60 million other human beings. Strong evidence is available to suggest that that particular war was as manipulated as the current "war on terror" and that certain so-called "Zionists" played a major role in said manipulation. An extremely pressing question that we all need to ponder therefore is: Is another "Great War" looming? And, as has been the case so often in the past, will history once more repeat itself?

Now I understand that all of the above paints a somewhat complicated and complex picture, and you may be struck with the feeling that there is still something missing, some factor that is needed to explain that recklessness with which the main global players are toying with the planet and the lives of every individual on it. One might even say that they are acting like men who have nothing to lose. We have already made a case to suggest that peak oil is a distraction and certainly not the main issue.

So what IS the main issue?

In August 17, 1999, the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau published an article by Robert S. Boyd entitled: Comets may have caused Earth’s great empires to fall which included the following: (emphases, ours)

Recent scientific discoveries are shedding new light on why great empires such as Egypt, Babylon and Rome fell apart, giving way to the periodic "dark ages’’ that punctuate human history. At least five times during the last 6,000 years, major environmental calamities undermined civilizations around the world.

Some researchers say these disasters appear to be linked to collisions with comets or fragments of comets such as the one that broke apart and smashed spectacularly into Jupiter five years ago.

The impacts, yielding many megatons of explosive energy, produced vast clouds of smoke and dust that circled the globe for years, dimming the sun, driving down temperatures and sowing hunger, disease and death.

The last such global crisis occurred between AD 530 and 540-- at the beginning of the Dark Ages in Europe -- when Earth was pummeled by a swarm of cosmic debris.

In a forthcoming book, Catastrophe, the Day the Sun Went Out, British historian David Keys describes a 2-year-long winter that began in AD 535. Trees from California to Ireland to Siberia stopped growing. Crops failed. Plague and famine decimated Italy, China and the Middle East.

Keys quotes the writings of a 6th-century Syrian bishop, John of Ephesus:

"The sun became dark. ... Each day it shone for about four hours and still this light was only a feeble shadow."

A contemporary Italian historian, Flavius Cassiodorus, wrote:

"We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon. We have summer without heat."

And a contemporary Chinese chronicler reported, "Yellow dust rained like snow."

Dendrochronologist, Mike Baillie, established that:

Analysis of tree rings shows that at in 540 AD in different parts of the world the climate changed. Temperatures dropped enough to hinder the growth of trees as widely dispersed as northern Europe, Siberia, western North America, and southern South America.

A search of historical records and mythical stories pointed to a disastrous visitation from the sky during the same period, it is claimed. There was one reference to a "comet in Gaul so vast that the whole sky seemed on fire" in 540-41.

According to legend, King Arthur died around this time, and Celtic myths associated with Arthur hinted at bright sky Gods and bolts of fire. In the 530s, an unusual meteor shower was recorded by both Mediterranean and Chinese observers. Meteors are caused by the fine dust from comets burning up in the atmosphere. Furthermore, a team of astronomers from Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland published research in 1990 which said the Earth would have been at risk from cometary bombardment between the years 400 and 600 AD.

[...] Famine followed the crop failures, and hard on its heels bubonic plague that swept across Europe in the mid-6th century. [...]

Now these are not the voices of the evangelical, "the end of the world is nigh", types, but rather sober university professors who have spent many years in scientific research in their chosen fields. The conclusions they have come to are shocking for sure, but it behooves all of us to put aside our sacred cows for a moment and look at the facts. Over the past few years the incidence of meteorite sightings and impacts around the world has gone through the proverbial roof, as have several of the meteorites, although in opposite directions. We have been charting these events for the past 2 years, and we can safely say that something is definitely ‘up’.

Given the controlled nature of not only the media, but also the academic world, if there was a threat to our planet from some sort of cyclical cometary shower as suggested by Ballie and Boyd, the chances of such information coming to general public awareness, against the wishes of the ruling elite, are very slim. The likelihood is that our leaders would do everything within their power to conceal such information, forcing those members of the public with a drive to know the truth to collect and decipher the bits and pieces of ‘loose’ data themselves. This is exactly what we have been doing for many years now.

The fact is that the idea that the earth experiences cyclical catastrophes, and that a select few of the "elite" are in possession of this information, explains rather well the current warmongering by the US and the political maneuvering by other major powers.

Think about it. If the people who are really in control of the US government know that, in the very near future, the demographics and power balance on the planet are going to be radically and unpredictably restructured by meteorite impacts, they would surely seek to prepare for such an event. Having held power for so long, their preparations would most likely center around a strategy to ensure that, when the dust settles and they emerge from their bunkers, they are able to retake control of the planet. Practically, this would involve a process of conquering as much of the planet and its resources as possible, and we note that this is essentially what successive US governments have been doing for the past 50 years.

If there is one thing above all others that has lead to the precipice upon which we currently sit as a species, it is knowledge, or the lack of it, and the fact that certain small groups of so-called ‘elite’ have always sought to maintain a monopoly on it at the expense of the masses of humanity. Clearly, therefore, it is knowledge that is and always has been the most prized ‘commodity’ on this planet. Unfortunately, the catch 22 to beat them all is the fact that almost no one realises this.

Why?

Because the knowledge that knowledge is key, has been deliberately and rigorously denied them by the propaganda of religion where "faith" and "blind belief" in the leader is the key to salvation. The salient point is that it is, and always has been, only in the darkness of ignorance of the true state of their reality that ordinary people can be merrily led down the path that leads, over and over again, to their own destruction.

In summing up, I will leave the final words to Patrick Mooney of Unlearning.org

Whether Peak Oil is true or not is ultimately irrelevant. The energy crash and the economic chaos it causes have been on the agenda of the Bilderbergers and like organizations for some time now. It is a necessary step to re-drawing the political lines of power across the globe to more accurately reflect the one world police state of inhuman design.

The Earth has reached the point where human consciousness will no longer tolerate authoritarian controls on its destiny. The Illuminists know this and plan to break this spirit with a harvest of blood reaped with war, famine and misery. Ruppert would have us spare the Illuminati the trouble of such an expensive use of energy by getting the most "enlightened" of us to sheepishly march to our own end. Those who remain alive must do so in communities that will seem more medieval than post-modern.

Fortunately, there is a way out of all this, if the planet is willing to see through the present "crisis". The crisis we are in is not one of energy or economy, but of consciousness. As long as our consciousness remains mired in the present problems, we will not be able to transcend them to arrive at enlightened solutions
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/exposing_the_big_con.htm

Predictions for the future

2005-01-07T05:33:00.000-08:00

Predictions for the future

Newshounds
December 31 2004

There was an extremely interesting hour on last night's FOX News Live with Alan Colmes when guests Paul Guercio and George Hart came on to discuss something called the Merlin Project which is, supposedly, a scientific way of predicting the future.

I listened to the entire segment twice and still don't quite understand their theory or how it works but, to quote one of them (it was nearly impossible to distinguish which voice belonged to whom), George Hart, a noted scientist, came up with a computer program that "taps into patterns that are in the universe, time and geometry patterns."

Alan asked them for some predictions for the coming year. Unfortunately, the news does not look good.

Here are their predictions for 2005 and beyond:

Something out of the ordinary starts in the next year or two and culminates at the end of the decade.

At the end of 2005, something profound will happen. They're not sure what, exactly, it may be but it could be an asteroid strike or a massive UFO invasion. (Comment: I swear to you, these guys sounded scientific, not flaky.)

In 2008-2009, something even more profoundly changing will happen that will affect about 4 out of 6 people. Something like a pandemic.

Osama bin Laden will be "in strength" in 2005 and 2006.

Something very peculiar will happen to Sadam Hussein. "He could be sprung loose or perhaps even re-emerge as part of the new government."

The Iraqi elections; "First go round will be useless" but about halfway through the year there could a civil war. We could get a government in January that says they want us out.

The second Bush administration: Bush will be "teetering on the edge of disaster and he'll be lucky to be in office for a full four years."

We'll see.

Comment: According to the Merlin website the background to the Merlin project is:

Physicist, Dr. George Hart first hears Futurist, Paul Guercio with Dr. David Brudnoy on WBZ Radio in Boston in October 1988 and is intrigued with Paul’s theory of “Time-Patterns” since it parallels his own extensive research as a highly respected theoretical physicist and inventor of the excimer laser.

In January 1989 Dr. Hart comes to Paul’s office for a professional consultation. The consultation never took place and instead, the two researchers spent six hours comparing notes on time-related anomalies. The MERLIN Project evolved from a series of five meetings over the subsequent six months.

The MERLIN Project is officially born on July 4, 1989 after Dr. George Hart offers to design software built around Paul Guercio's Theory of Time. A team of SDI (Star Wars) physicists is recruited to design the MERLIN Project software, which becomes known as TimeTrak.

According to its designers Merlin is:

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

MERLIN was initially developed in the summer of 1989. In the fall of the same year, the collapse of the Honicker government in East Germany and subsequent dissolution of the entire Soviet Union, was MERLIN's first and most prescient call to date. The chronographer for the various East European and Balkan satellites (Romania, Albania; various heads of state, etc.) were so unstable and dramatic that we initially thought that if accurate, we were either previewing World War III or the complete collapse of communism. Both seemed equally remote at the time. But clearly a series of unprecedented events was at hand. Then, remarkably, the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended. Abruptly, with barely a whimper. MERLIN had spotted and captured what few analysts had dared to suggest. Just like
that.

It seems that MERLIN went on to notch up repeated successes in predicting major political, social and economic events throughout the 90's to the extent that the Pentagon became interested:

"In 1995, the MERLIN creators were approached by a Strategic Planning Office of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff and asked to provide a long-range forecast and timetable for potential incidents of domestic terrorism over the following seven years. This "white paper" which was submitted in July 1995, included indications of a significant threat culminating in the Fall of 2001, which we now know to be the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon."

So how exactly does MERLIN "predict the future"? Hart and Guercio explain further:

MERLIN sifts through an immense field of tidal intervals in the Universe looking for points of convergence and resonance patterns. In essense, it is a very sophisticated (pattern) detection system (the particular patterns it has been taught to identify are at the moment, proprietary, for obvious reasons.) What we have discovered, however, suggests that "time" has a kind of genetic- like code and behaves much like a musical score.

Think of it this way. Time, in conjunction with your DNA coding influences the relative likelihood of you developing (for instance) early onset coronary artery disease or cancer while not being the ultimate cause/effect mechanism.

Our research suggests that "time" may have a similar genetic-like aspect, when vectored from a particular point in the past and then projected forward. A unique "wave-form" composed of it's own, original array of tidal movements, a little like a symphony. Events as we know them, may be a convergence point for a series of unseen clocks that you helped set into motion (or were set into motion) years before and are now (all) "chiming" simultaneously. The magnitude of the resulting "event" may be determined by the number and sheer size, i.e. interval/duration of the converging curves. The more clocks chiming, the bigger the event that occurs.

MERLIN was designed to "keep track" of these various tidal clocks and output a picture of the resulting convergence pattern in the form of a graph with "realtime" correspondences. A kind of "timetable of the future!"

MERLIN doesn't make predictions anymore than weather computers do. They keep track of converging weather systems, giving the meteorologist a jumping- off point to speculate (often badly) about tomorrow's weather. MERLIN does the same thing with Time! We then attempt to draw conclusions about how that period will playout in the real world. So far, our ability to pinpoint actual turns in realtime events and individuals lives, has been pretty remarkable.

But, it's the TIME SCHEDULE of change, its duration (and often it's magnitude) that MERLIN finds. Not the particulars of circumstance.

For those of you who are Market-oriented, it would be like having the NYSE (market) volume charts, in advance. You'd know the time coordinates of the change and it's size, just not the direction!

And that suggests another intriguing possibility. We may affect, even control to some extent, the particular circumstances that occur, just not the time schedule (or relative impact.)

Pretty interesting eh? What makes it all the more interesting is the fact that one of the co-founders of the Merlin project is Dr. George Hart, a US Naval Research Laboratory physicist and inventor of a variation on the excimer laser, used commercially in eye surgery and which no doubt has some very interesting military applications given that the ONR funded its development. However, developing cutting edge medical technologies is not the only area to which Dr. Hart has dedicated his time:

George Hart specialized in the application of supercomputers to the mathematical modeling of systems exhibiting extremely complex behavior. As a highly respected Pentagon consultant, he continues to work on the next generation of Strategic Defense Initiative The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) is a system proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear missiles. It was first dubbed "Star Wars" by opponent Dr. Carol Rosin, a former spokesperson of Wernher von Braun who was instrumental in the development of ballistic missiles.

The other half of the "brains" behind MERLIN is Paul Guercio:

a nationally-respected futurist and a long-time student of traditional and esoteric predictive systems. His 25 years of research into the Psychical Sciences and subsequent collaboration with Dr. Hart directly resulted in the creation of the MERLIN Project. His clients include many prominent business people, politicians and celebrities.

We are further told that:

the software alone does not make specific predictions regarding the precise nature of a forthcoming event or episode. It cannot provide a detailed forecast for the actual circumstances to occur. Those forecasts require review by an experienced analyst with a solid working knowledge of the cast of characters and overall context of the situation.

So the question is: just who is the "experienced analyst" that fleshes out the probable future events? Is it the "esotericist and futurist" or the "Naval physicist with significant experience in the application of supercomputers to the mathematical modeling of systems exhibiting extremely complex behavior", and from what standpoint do they make such detailed predictions?

Interestingly, we are told that Dr. Hart is currently involved in the next generation of the Regan era "Star Wars" programme which has been scaled back, or rather compartmentalised, since the end of the cold war.

On December 16, 2002 President Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive which outlined a plan to begin deployment of operational ballistic missile defense systems by 2004. The following day the U.S. formally requested from the UK and Denmark use of facilities in Fylingdales, England, and Thule, Greenland, respectively, as a part of the NMD program. The projected cost of the program for the years 2004 to 2009 will be 53 billion U.S. dollars, making it the largest single line in The Pentagon's budget.

In 2003, NMD was changed to GMD (Ground-Based Missile Defense), to differentiate it from other missile defense programs, such as space-based, sea-based, or high-altitude intercept programs.

On July 22, 2004, the first ground-based interceptor was deployed at Ft. Greely, Alaska. The system will be declared operational with the emplacement of five additional interceptors in September. The system will provide "rudimentary" protection; the Pentagon's chief weapons evaluator estimated its likely effectiveness to be perhaps only 20 percent.

What seems to be true then about the entire concept of a "National Missile Defence" programme is that is was, and to this day remains, completely unfeasible, leading us to the conclusion that, like so many other government programmes, its main purpose was to perpetuate the fear factor among the American and world population while at the same time generating vast sums of money for our "leaders". But could there be something else behind the whole idea of the "weaponisation of space"?

In Dr. Hart's bio above, the names Carol Rosin and Wernher von Braun are mentioned. Dr Carol Rosin was the first woman corporate manager of Fairchild Industries (former US defence contractor) a Space and Missile Defense Consultant and the spokesperson for Wernher Von Braun (former VP of Fairchild) in the last years of his life. She founded the Institute for Security and Cooperation in Outer Space in Washington DC and has testified before Congress on many occasions about space based weapons.

In an interview with Steven Greer (of the Disclosure Project) in 2000 for Nexus magazine, Dr. Rosin details a plan, revealed to her by Von Braun, to justify weapons in spaced based on hoaxing an extraterrestrial threat:

"When I was a Corporate Manager of Fairchild Industries from 1974 through 1977, I met the late Dr Wernher Von Braun. We first met in early 1974. At that time, Von Braun was dying of cancer but he assured me that he would live a few more years to tell me about the game that was being played- that game being the effort to weaponize space, to control the Earth from space and space itself. Von Braun had a history of working with weapons systems. He escaped from Germany to come to this country and became a Vice President of Fairchild Industries when I had met him. Von Braun's purpose during the last years of his life, his dying years, was to educate the public and decision-makers about why space-based weapons are dumb, dangerous, destabilizing, too costly, unnecessary, unworkable, and an undesirable idea, and about the alternatives that are available.

As practically a deathbed speech, he educated me about those concepts and who the players were in this game. He gave me the responsibility, since he was dying, of continuing this effort to prevent the weaponization of outer space. When Wernher Von Braun was dying of cancer, he asked me to be his spokesperson, to appear on occasions when he was too ill to speak. I did this.

What was most interesting to me was a repetitive sentence that he said to me over and over again during the approximately four years that I had the opportunity to work with him. He said the strategy that was being used to educate the public and decision makers was to use scare tactics That was how we identify an enemy. The strategy that Wernher Von Braun taught me was that first the Russians are going to be considered to be the enemy. In fact, in 1974, they were the enemy, the identified enemy. We were told that they had "killer satellites". We were told that they were coming to get us and control us-that they were "Commies."

Then terrorists would be identified, and that was soon to follow. We heard a lot about terrorism. Then we were going to identify third-world country "crazies." We now call them Nations of Concern. But he said that would be the third enemy against whom we would build space-based weapons. The next enemy was asteroids. Now, at this point he kind of chuckled the first time he said it.

Asteroids- against asteroids we are going to build space-based weapons.

And the funniest one of all was what he called aliens, extraterrestrials. That would be the final scare. And over and over and over during the four years that I knew him and was giving speeches for him, he would bring up that last card. "And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens and all of it is a lie."

I think I was too naïve at that time to know the seriousness of the nature of the spin that was being put on the system. And now, the pieces are starting to fall into place. We are building a space-based weapons system on a premise that is a lie, a spin. Wernher Von Braun was trying to hint that to me back in the early 70's and right up until the moment when he died in 1977.

The last card that was being held was the extraterrestrial enemy card.

The intensity with which he said that, made me realize that he knew something that he was too afraid to mention. He was too afraid to talk about it. He would not tell me the details."

Which brings us back to the predictions of MERLIN for the year 2005. The various factors involved in producing the prognostications include the expertise of Dr. Hart in mathematically modeling systems exhibiting extremely complex behavior, his knowledge of space-based weapon systems - most notably lasers - coupled with the input of the Strategic Planning Office of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff and a guy who has allegedly spent 25 years studying traditional and esoteric predictive systems and planetary time cycles. The result of such a blend of science, mysticism and government agenda producing the "prediction" that either aliens or a few space rocks may well invade earth this autumn.

The real question, however, that should be troubling all those who place any faith in the skill of MERLIN and its operators is whether or not the predictions are an example of creating your own reality, fulfilling "prophesy" or actually determining some predetermined "future". As the public faces of the project say themselves in relation to their predictions: "we (humanity) may affect, even control to some extent, the particular circumstances that occur".