Four Deformations of the Apocalypse–(By the Man Who Made It Possible)

[Stockman knew what he was doing, when he did it.  He sold the country an explosive pile of shit that is now just clogging our fans.]

“I mean, Kemp-Roth [Reagan's 1981 tax cut] was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate…. It’s kind of hard to sell ‘trickle down.’ So the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really ‘trickle down.’ Supply-side is ‘trickle-down’ theory.” Of the budget process in his first year on the job, Mr. Stockman is quoted as saying: “None of us really understands what’s going on with all these numbers,”

Four Deformations of the Apocalypse

By DAVID STOCKMAN

IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.

This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.

The first of these started when the Nixon administration defaulted on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world. Now, since we have lived beyond our means as a nation for nearly 40 years, our cumulative current-account deficit — the combined shortfall on our trade in goods, services and income — has reached nearly $8 trillion. That’s borrowed prosperity on an epic scale.

It is also an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves. Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct.

It may be true that governments, because they intervene in foreign exchange markets, have never completely allowed their currencies to float freely. But that does not absolve Friedman’s $8 trillion error. Once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors.

In fact, since chronic current-account deficits result from a nation spending more than it earns, stringent domestic belt-tightening is the only cure. When the dollar was tied to fixed exchange rates, politicians were willing to administer the needed castor oil, because the alternative was to make up for the trade shortfall by paying out reserves, and this would cause immediate economic pain — from high interest rates, for example. But now there is no discipline, only global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve.

The second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40 percent of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970. This debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.

In 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts, matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration’s hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces — the welfare state and the warfare state — that drive the federal spending machine.

Soon, the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget — entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion.

Through the 1984 election, the old guard earnestly tried to control the deficit, rolling back about 40 percent of the original Reagan tax cuts. But when, in the following years, the Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, finally crushed inflation, enabling a solid economic rebound, the new tax-cutters not only claimed victory for their supply-side strategy but hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts.

By fiscal year 2009, the tax-cutters had reduced federal revenues to 15 percent of gross domestic product, lower than they had been since the 1940s. Then, after rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures, George W. Bush surrendered on domestic spending cuts, too — signing into law $420 billion in non-defense appropriations, a 65 percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy.

The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector. Here, Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation. As a result, the combined assets of conventional banks and the so-called shadow banking system (including investment banks and finance companies) grew from a mere $500 billion in 1970 to $30 trillion by September 2008.

But the trillion-dollar conglomerates that inhabit this new financial world are not free enterprises. They are rather wards of the state, extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives. They could never have survived, much less thrived, if their deposits had not been government-guaranteed and if they hadn’t been able to obtain virtually free money from the Fed’s discount window to cover their bad bets.

The fourth destructive change has been the hollowing out of the larger American economy. Having lived beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore. In the past decade, the number of high-value jobs in goods production and in service categories like trade, transportation, information technology and the professions has shrunk by 12 percent, to 68 million from 77 million. The only reason we have not experienced a severe reduction in nonfarm payrolls since 2000 is that there has been a gain in low-paying, often part-time positions in places like bars, hotels and nursing homes.

It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.

The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing — as suggested by last week’s news that the national economy grew at an anemic annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter. Under these circumstances, it’s a pity that the modern Republican Party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach — balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline — is needed more than ever.

David Stockman, a director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, is working on a book about the financial crisis.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard ‘digging mass graves for US soldiers’

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is digging mass graves for American soldiers in preparation for a war over its nuclear programme, according to a former senior commander.

By Richard Spencer
Published: 5:26PM BST 10 Aug 2010

The scene in the south of Iran where hundreds of mass graves have been dug

General Hossein Moghadam, the Guard’s former deputy chief, was speaking after film footage showed strings of freshly dug graves in the south of the country.

They were close to the site of war graves for the dead of the long war betweenIran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which devastated the region in the 1980s.

“The mass graves that used to be for burying Saddam’s soldiers have now been prepared again for US soldiers, and this is the reason for digging this big number of graves,” Gen Moghadam told the Associated Press, which obtained the footage.

The warning is unlikely to be more than symbolic. No-one expects a land invasion, should the White House authorise a strike on nuclear facilities, while Iran has so far suggested counter-action is most likely to be aimed at American allies in the Gulf and Western bases there.

Gen Moghadam’s claims might be a sign that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is increasingly reliant on the Revolutionary Guard for political backing, is feeling the heat of international diplomatic pressure over his aggressive posture on Iran’s uranium enrichment programme.

Washington has made full use of the diplomatic victory it won in forcing through a new United Nations sanctions package, with the unexpected support of both Russia and China, in June.

Iranian businessmen both inside and outside the country say the economy is suffering, while President Ahmadinejad’s many enemies from within the ranks of his own conservative faction in the leadership are frequently outspoken on his domestic record across the board.

Last week Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the American joint chiefs of staffs, kept up President Barack Obama’s double-handed approach, saying that he had prepared an attack plan focusing on Iran’s nuclear plants while at the same time accepting he was unwilling to use it.

Both sides are open about the brinkmanship threats of force involve, with the wider Middle East fearing it will be sucked into open conflict. Gen Moghadam went on to say: “If the US decides to take a pre-emptive action and attack Iran, Iran will have no choice but to strike the American bases in the region.

“The heavy costs of such a war will not be just on the Islamic Republic of Iran. America and other countries should accept that this would be the start of an extensive war in the region.”

Afghan security contractors undermine the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy.

Afghan security contractors undermine the U.S. …, posted with vodpod

Russia deploys S-300 missiles to protect Georgia rebels

Russia deploys missiles to protect Georgia rebels

By Dmitry Solovyov

MOSCOW | Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:58am EDT

(Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday it had deployed high-precision air defense missiles in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia, sending a defiant signal to Tbilisi and the West two years after a war with Georgia.

The formidable S-300 missile system bolstered Moscow’s military presence in the disputed territory and drew an angry response from Georgia.

General Alexander Zelin, the commander of Russia‘s air force, said that air defenses of other types had been deployed in Georgia’s other Russian-backed rebel region, South Ossetia. His comments, two years after Russia routed Georgian forces in a five-day war that badly strained Moscow’s ties with the United States and Europe, were reported by Russian news agencies.

“The task of these air defenses is not only to cover the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but also to avert violations of their state borders in the air and destroy any vehicle illegally penetrating their air space, whatever the goal of its mission,” Zelin said.

Zelin said the air defense systems would also protect Russian bases in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

“At the same time, the task of air defense of Abkhazia and South Ossetia will be also implemented by frontline and army aviation carrying out combat duties there,” Zelin said.

Georgia reacted promptly, accusing Moscow of “strengthening its image and role as an occupying country.”

“It shows … not only that Russia does not intend to withdraw its troops from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but that it is actually strengthening its military control over these territories,” Eka Tkeshelashvili, Georgia’s National Security Council secretary, told Reuters.

RUSSIA BUILDS BASES, U.S. DISPLEASED

The two rebel regions have been out of Georgia’s control since the early 1990s. In August 2008Russia crushed a Georgian assault on South Ossetia, launched after days of clashes between Georgian and rebel forces.

Since then, Moscow has recognized the two territories as independent states, strengthened its control over them and signed deals with them to build permanent military bases.

Georgia remains a close U.S. ally and aspires to join NATO, but its unresolved territorial disputes and Russia‘s growing presence in the rebel regions have made this goal more distant.

Last month U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Tbilisi and voiced concern over Russian plans to build up military bases in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, calling on Moscow to end its “occupation” of Georgian lands.

The S-300, codenamed “Favorite” in Russia, is a mobile, long-range air defense system that can detect, track and destroy ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and both high- and low-flying aircraft.

The United States and Israel have repeatedly voiced concern over possible deliveries of S-300s to their foe Iran.

Russia had long insisted on its right to carry out a contract to sell the missiles to Iran. But Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in June that Moscow would freeze their delivery after Russia backed new U.N. sanctions against Iran.

Washington and Israel feared the missiles could give Tehran the means to withstand potential air strikes on its nuclear sites.

(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Additional reporting by Margarita Antidze in Tbilisi; Editing by Steve Gutterman and Paul Taylor)

Alternative History–from a Historical Perspective

[The basis of all "conspiracy theories" is the idea that popular history is altered to suit the "official version" of controversial, pivotal events, such as the Kennedy Assassination, or 911.  Clearly, "history," as we know it, is written by the winners to reflect their versions of these events.  This rewriting of history is so pervasive, that it extends into every instance of the written word where events are being cataloged for the sake of future posterity, this even applies to our holy books.  Great religious schisms have developed over the centuries because of differing interpretations of doctrine, or differing records of historical figures.  This theory of alternative histories, or the idea of hidden histories, extends back to the dawn of civilization itself...even before that.  There is a whole body of research into the history of man before that of the first known great civilizations.  Science cannot explain the relics that are far older than "civilization," some which were of superior craftsmanship than that which followed.  There is no explanation for why the great civilizations have left behind legacies which were all more advanced at their beginnings than at their ends--as if science and learning did not advance during these dynasties--it regressed.

The following authors provide excellent documentation, as they map-out a journey into the unknown past.]

Ancient Civilisations: Six Great Enigmas

By WILL HART & ROBERT BERRINGER

—

We stand today at an unprecedented turning point in human history. In recent years two versions of ancient history have formed. One, we shall call ‘alternative’ history, the other we shall refer to as ‘official’ history. The former ponders over a variety of anomalies and tries to make sense out of the corpus of evidence, i.e., the pyramids and timelines, why they were built, by whom and when. The latter conducts digs, catalogues pottery shards, and tries to defend its proposal there are no enigmas, and virtually everything is explained.

At one point perhaps as late as fifteen years ago these two camps seem to be engaged in an informal dialogue. That all changed after, 1) the Great Sphinx redating controversy caught Egyptologists off guard and, 2) the impact of Chris Dunn’s book The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt at the end of the last decade.

There is no more dialogue and no more polite, gloves on debate. The proponents of ‘official’ history have taken an increasingly political and ideological approach to the issue. They now do little more than offer pronouncements of the historical ‘truth’ on the one hand, and denounce of all those who dare challenge officialdom on the other.In this context we offer evidence that our ‘scholars’, the gatekeepers who control our institutions of ‘higher learning’, refuse to consider.

The Great Pyramid – Precision Engineering

This colossal structure, the last of the seven ancient wonders and the largest stone building in the world, still provokes awe, controversy and a plethora of theories that inspire bitter debate to this day. Instead of going over the well-established mysteries, we would like to shine new light on this important enigma that appears out of place in ‘Stone Age’ Egypt.

The real challenge the Great Pyramid still poses to us in the opening decade of the Third Millennium is the physical plant itself. Theorists have gone on endlessly speculating about how it was built and the metaphysical, cultural and religious significance and/or symbolism behind its construction. Though several authors have offered tantalising possibilities, none have been conclusively proven.

The mystery remains unsolved.

To begin with, the massive size – the staggering volume and weight of the building blocks – remain problematic. With an estimated 2.3 million blocks with a weight of about 4 million tons, the pyramid is two-thirds the mass of the Hoover Dam. The sheer size and the numbers of blocks that had to be quarried and moved into place, presents numerous architectural, construction and engineering headaches.

These issues have been raised time and again, yet are still unsettled. It is time to move on and define the even more difficult issues. We consider the core ‘hard’ problems to be those that reflect precision engineering and assembly line manufacturing accomplished on a massive scale. The primitive tools scenario concocted by Egyptologists does not explain the following tasks:

1. Creating precision-cut casing blocks weighing 16 tons, fitted together and held by a super-glue mortar that maintained a tight seal forming a nearly seamless shell.

2. Leveling the 13-acre limestone bedrock base to a degree of accuracy only recently achieved with laser technology.

3. Squaring the base to True North with minimal deviation.

4. Excavating the ‘Descending Passage’ 350 feet into solid bedrock at a 26-degree angle while keeping the tunnel arrow-straight for its length.

5. Bringing the massive 48-story pyramid together around complex internal structures, retaining the true shape to enable the builders to form the apex. (These internal structures include four enigmatic ventilation shafts and a coffer in the King’s Chamber that is too large to have been moved through the opening. It shows evidence of having been cut with a jewel-tip saw.)

6. Extensive usage of different types of machined granite inside the Great Pyramid chambers.

The father of modern Egyptology, Sir Flinders Petrie, marvelled at the precision and size of the casing blocks. He carefully measure the blocks and found that “the mean thickness of the joints are .020 and therefore, the mean variation of the cutting of the stone from a straight line and from a true square, is but .01 on length of 75 inches up the face, an amount of accuracy equal to most modern opticians’ straight-edges of such a length.”

The modern international engineering firm of Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Menendhall conducted a forensic analysis of the Great Pyramid. Their findings are evaluated in an article published in Civil Engineering.

The pyramid was oriented with its major sides either north-south or east-west. This in itself was a remarkable undertaking, given the accuracy to which it was done, because the Egyptians had to perform the work using astronomical or solar observations – the compass had not yet been invented. The dimensions of the pyramid are extremely accurate and the site was levelled within a fraction of an inch over the entire base. This is comparable to the accuracy possible with modern construction methods and laser levelling.1

The summary speaks volumes between the lines. The problems with the Descending Passage are numerous. For starters the tunnel is less than 4 x 4 feet, enough for no more than one excavator wielding a hammer-stone at any given moment. How would our proposed digging crew negotiate the space in the suffocating darkness once they had dug down 50 feet and more? In addition how would the 26-degree angle be set and maintained without lights or levels? The lack of carbon deposits on walls and ceiling indicate that torches were not used.

Once again, Petrie measured the passage and found an amazing accuracy of .020 of an inch over 150 feet and a mere .250 inch over 350 feet of its constructed and excavated length. We submit that this passage with its smooth surfaces, squared shape, and accurate angle could not have been tunnelled with primitive tools and methods.

The Great Pyramid remains the world’s greatest wonder and ancient enigma. We suggest researchers should pay more attention to these details and ask about the materials used inside the Great Pyramid, especially near the ventilation shafts. We now have two doors blocking a very important shaft, the one that pointed to the star Sirius in 2450 BCE.

The Origin Of Dogs – Biogenetic engineering

Now we turn to a mystery that nearly equals the pyramid, though it is a little known conundrum hidden in the mists of remote antiquity. Let us start with a simple question that appears to have an obvious answer: what is a dog? It turns out geneticists in the past decade have shown the answer is not so obvious. In fact, generations of anthropologists, archaeologists and wildlife biologists turned out to be dead wrong when it came to the origins of “man’s best friend”.

Prior to DNA studies conducted in the 1990s, the generally accepted theory posited that dogs branched off from a variety of wild canids, i.e., coyotes, hyenas, jackals, wolves and so on, about 15,000 years ago. The results of the first comprehensive DNA study shocked the scholarly community. The study found that all dog breeds can be traced back to wolves and not other canids. The second part of the finding was even more unexpected – the branching off occurred from 40-150,000 years ago.

Why do these findings pose a problem? We have to answer that question with another question: how were dogs bred from wolves? This is not just difficult to explain, it is impossible. Do not be fooled by the pseudo-explanations put forth by science writers that state our Stone Age ancestors befriended wolves and somehow (the procedure is never articulated) managed to breed the first mutant wolf, the mother of all dogs. Sorry, we like dogs too, but that is what a dog is.

The problems come at the crucial stage of taking a male and female wolf and getting them to produce a subspecies (assuming you could tame and interact with them at all). Let us take this one step further by returning to our original question, what is a dog? A dog is a mutated wolf that only has those characteristics of the wild parent, which humans find companionable and useful. That is an amazing fact.

Think about those statements for a moment. If you are thinking that dogs evolved naturally from wolves, that is not an option. No scientist believes that because the stringent wolf pecking order and breeding rituals would never allow a mutant to survive, at least that is one strong argument against natural evolution.

Now, if our Paleolithic ancestors could have pulled off this feat, and the actual challenges posed by the process are far more taxing, then wolf/dog breeders today certainly should have no problem duplicating it. But like the Great Pyramid, that does not seem to be the case. No breeders have stepped up to the plate claiming they can take two pure wolves and produce a dog sans biogenetic engineering techniques.

The evolution of the domesticated dog from a wild pack animal appears to be a miracle! It should not have happened. This is another unexplained enigma.

Mohenjo Daro – Civil Engineering

Since indoor plumbing did not arrive in modern societies to any extent until the 20th century, and urban planning has still not been adopted much to this date in history, what we find in the ancient city of Mohenjo Daro is anomalous indeed.

This city in the Indus Valley was built on a grid system about 4,500 years ago, obviously planned out and drawn up before the first brick was laid. It had houses, some with indoor plumbing, a granary, baths, an assembly hall and towers all made out of standard size bricks. The streets were about eight to ten feet wide on average, and were built with well-engineered drainage channels.

Mohenjo Daro was divided into two parts; the Citadel was on the upper level and included an elaborate tank called the Great Bath that was made of fine quality brickwork and drains. The Great Bath was 40 feet long and 8 feet deep, a huge public facility by any standards. A giant granary, a large residential building, and several assembly halls were also on this upper level.

The Great Bath was made watertight by the use of two layers of brick, lime-cement and then finally sealed with bitumen (tar). The bath included a shallow section for children.

We should wonder how an ancient culture of which nothing is known, not even their language, created this sophisticated city at a point in time many thousands of years ahead of the curve? Civil engineers do not crawl out of thatched-roof huts able to draw up plans for a complex urban environment. We need to address the following question to archaeologists and historians:

1. Where are the cities that demonstrate the path of urban development, social and technical organisation, leading to Mohenjo Daro?

2. How do you explain the sudden emergence of a complex society when 99.99% of the rest of humanity were living primitively?

These issues cannot be brushed aside with some arrogant pretence that the questions have already been addressed and answered by digging up and labelling pottery shards and other artefacts. We have been and are being overly indulgent with our “soft sciences” regarding their cavalier assertions about having all the answers. In fact, they have very few, so why are they throwing stones at independent researchers from behind glass towers?

Extraordinarily little is known about the Indus Valley civilisation that once spanned nearly a thousand miles with other cities matching the description of Mohenjo Daro.

We file this under our list of great enigmas and challenge orthodox scholars to prove differently as with the first two of our mysteries.

We note that the Indus Valley civilisation was contemporary with the Great Pyramid. It is often said this was one of the first three civilisations, having a written script that has never been deciphered. Now we turn next to the mother of all civilisations, Sumer.

Sumeria – The Source Of Civilisation

Are we missing something or are our historians looking at our earliest civilisations through a strange and distorted lens? Like Egypt and the Indus Valley, the biblical ‘Land of Shinar’ – the birthplace of Abraham – was a brutally hot, largely barren, empty desert with a mighty river cutting a swath through it. Does this sound like the magnet that would attract late Stone Age tribes to hunker down and pull wonders out of a hat?

In fact, historians thought Shinar was a piece of biblical fiction until the mid-19th century, but now they know everything about it with complete certitude that we, the unwashed masses, dare not question. Nonetheless, we encourage readers to maintain an attitude of healthy skepticism and dare to question ‘official history’.

As is the case with the culture that built the cities of the Indus Valley, no one knows who the ancient Sumerians were or where they came from. They called themselves ‘the black-headed ones’ and spoke a strange language that was unrelated to the languages of the Semitic tribes in the region. Some linguists note a similarity between the Sumerian language and that of the Basques, another anomalous culture.

We find it curious that any primitive peoples would choose the rigours of a hostile desert environment to settle in and build a civilisation. Why not a gentle river in a forested mountain valley? Especially in light of the fact that Sumeria contained very few resources, no forests, no minerals, not even the rocks that were plentiful in Egypt.

How are we to explain the fact this mysterious culture managed to invent all of the core components of civilisation under such restrictive conditions? It occurs to us that a culture would need minerals like copper, gold, silver and tin immediately available to experiment with over the course of generations in order to create process metallurgy. There is nothing simple or accidental about making the connection between raw ores, the metals they contain, and how to reduce them out of their native state using high heat.

Nevertheless, the Sumerians not only figured out geology, how to obtained the ore, knew the levels of heat needed and how to build kilns to achieve it, they also took very different metals and created the first alloy, bronze. As metal-smiths were performing these feats, other citizens were apparently creating the wheel, building cities, ziggurats, inventing writing, movable type, the ox-drawn plow, cereal crop agriculture, and advanced mathematics, to mention the most notable of their innovations.

Something is wrong with this picture. Most human beings were counting using their fingers, if at all, hunting animals and gathering plants for their meals. Yet, we find the Sumerians in classrooms learning the principles of the sexigesimal math system. Yes, the very same 60-base system we use today to keep track of hours, minutes and seconds. This advanced system was the first to reveal that a circle has 360 degrees and can be subdivided using 60, 30, 15, 12, etc., all fractions of the root number.

Teotihuacán – Anomalous Technical Evidence

Teotihuacán, in Mexico, is an immense, even overwhelming archaeological site, oriented along a twin axis. In the 1960s a team of archaeologists and surveyors mapped out the entire complex in great detail. The resultant map revealed an urban grid centred around two principal, almost perpendicular, alignments.

From the Pyramid of the Moon at the north end, the complex extends south along the Avenue of the Dead beyond the Ciudadela and Great Compound complexes for about 3.2 kilometres. To this north-south axis we must add an east-west alignment that led from a point near the Pyramid of the Sun to a spot of prime astronomical significance on the western horizon.

Anthony Aveni, an astronomer-anthropologist, discovered that on the day the Sun passes directly overhead in the spring of the Northern Hemisphere (May 18), the Pleiades star cluster makes its first annual predawn appearance. It was at this point on the western horizon that the Pleiades set, and the builders aimed the east-west axis.

Additionally, the Sun also sets at this point on the horizon on August 12 – the anniversary of the beginning of the current Mesoamerican calendar cycle (5th Sun) – determined by a consensus of academic and independent scholars to have begun on August 12, 3114 BCE.

It is very clear Teotihuacán was laid out according to a set of alignments that reflected celestial, geographic, as well as geodetic relationships. Walking along the avenue from one pyramid to another, up the steps to the top, and surveying the site from a multitude of angles, one is struck by the sense of being in the middle of some vast geometric matrix.

Teotihuacán was the first true urban centre in the Americas. At its peak around 500 CE, it boasted a population of an estimated 200,000. George E. Stuart, archaeologist and the editor of National Geographicmagazine sums up our ignorance:

We speak of it with awe, as we do the pyramids of Egypt, but we still know next to nothing about the origins of the Teotihuacános, what language they spoke, how their society was organised, and what caused their decline.2

As for one the most anomalous of artefacts on the planet, in the 1900s archaeologists discovered a sheet of mica in the upper tiers of the Pyramid of the Sun. This was no ho-hum pottery shard to catalogue and file away in a dusty box, yet that is about how archaeologists treated the find. To anyone with even a smattering of technical knowledge, discovering a large sheet of mica in an ancient pyramid site comes as a shock. In fact, it is one of the great ‘smoking guns’ that turn archaeologists mum.

Mica is an inflammable and non-conductive mineral that grows in fairly weak plate-like structures. It is not at all useful as a structural building material. NASA uses it as a radiation shield in space vehicles. Mica is also utilised in electronic components and microwave ovens, and it is a good shield for electromagnetic radiation, like radio waves. Like the Great Pyramid, the Pyramid of the Sun has a subterranean cavity under the middle of the pyramid. A large pyramid with layers of thick mica would be an excellent EMI shield.

Its placement in the complex raises questions that we could only answer today after the development of electronic, atomic and space age technologies.

Thick sheets of mica were also found by archaeologists about 400 meters down the avenue from the Sun Pyramid, these precision-cut sheets were of considerable size: 27.5 meters square. They were located under a rock-slab floor of a complex now called “the Mica Temple”.

What possible reason could the builders have had for including a layer of mica in any structure? It was obviously not decorative. To add greatly to the growing mystery, the particular mica used was traced to Brazil. Now we are getting in deep. How would a supposedly indigenous “Stone Age” culture know that mica existed 3200 kilometres away in the jungles of Brazil? Not only that, how did they transport these large sheets over that long distance intact without wheeled vehicles? Surely not via relay teams on foot travelling overland! No large seagoing boats or ports have ever been found in ancient Mexico.

High Technology In Stone Age Peru

Lake Titicaca borders Bolivia and Peru in the Andes. The highest large lake in the world, there are many signs it was once exposed to the ocean. Megalithic structures like the Gateway of the Sun in Tiahuanacu, Bolivia, also indicate a long lost past. The gateway was carved out of one solid block, the hard way to make a gate.

Moving northward near Cuzco, Peru, we find even more large, impressive and mysterious structures. Here we find walls built with complex jigsaw type megalithic blocks similar to the more familiar walls found at nearby Machu Picchu. Some of the megalithic structures contain complex cut-rocks weighing over 100 tons; a few were joined together by bronze clamps. Some of the bronze had obviously been poured in place, a skill not available in pre-Columbian Peru.

Like Sumer, the high Andes is an unlikely location for Stone Age cities, evidence of advanced technologies, and seminal agricultural discoveries. It is well established that the region around Tiahuanco, at 12,500 feet elevation, had been turned into a highly productive agricultural zone. That was achieved by the building of dikes, dams, canals and raised beds that created microclimates which protected the plants from frost.

We have attempted to show our planet is full of ancient wonders and mysteries that have yet to be solved. You can find more information as well as our theories on who and what created these enigmas in our books, The Genesis Race (by Will Hart) and Ancient Gods and Their Mysteries: Will They Return in 2012 AD? (by Robert Berringer).

.

Footnotes:

1. ‘Program Management BC’, Civil Engineering, June 1999, Craig Smith, P.E.,www.pubs.asce.org/ceonline/0699feat.html

2. ‘The Timeless Vision of Teotihuacán’, National Geographic magazine, December 1995

.

Will Hart is a journalist, photographer, and filmmaker who has investigated ancient mysteries and evidence of extraterrestrial intervention on Earth since 1969. His first bookThe Genesis Race: Our Extraterrestrial DNA and the True Origins of the Species is the outcome of three decades of research. Robert Berringer is the author of Ancient Gods and Their Mysteries: Will They Return in 2012 AD? which is distributed by Book Clearing Housewww.bookch.com and available from www.CloudriderBooks.com. He can be contacted atrtberringer@netzero.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 90 (May-June 2005).

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John Dewey: Education Was Never About Learning

(left, John Dewey 1859-1952 institutionalized stupidity in our school system)

Illuminati Communism in Our Schools

by L.C. Vincent

for henrymakow.com

No one has had a more pernicious effect on American education, and by extension the corruption of American society today than John Dewey. Born in 1859, John Dewey turned historic American values and logic upside down.

In Dewey’s view, the individual existed only to serve society. “Socialization” (i.e., the individual’s conformity to a group) was seen as more important than factual learning. This twisted view of education infected all of his work, resulting in a century of ever diminishing American academic achievement, with the resultant corruption of American society.

TURNING EDUCATION UPSIDE DOWN

John Dewey received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University about 1883, and joined the staff of the University of Chicago in 1894. In 1899 he was elected President of the American Psychological Association and from 1904 until his death in 1952, he was a professor of philosophy at Columbia University and Teacher’s College in New York.

According to Dewey, learning was only relevant in context of what Society, and by extension The State, deemed necessary. The acquisition of knowledge for its own sake was regarded as a selfish indulgence.

Feelings and emotions were far more valid a barometer of a student’s “adjustment” towards society than information, or the use of logic and reason. It should come as no surprise, then, that throughout most of his professional life, Dewey proudly wore the label of a “Social Progressive.”

Dewey was a great admirer of Edward Bellamy’s book, “Looking Back” (1877) which described a Utopian society built upon the ashes of capitalism.

According to Dewey, Government comes first and its needs must therefore be paramount over the individual. Society (government) shapes individuals, not vice-versa, claimed Dewey.

Incredibly, Dewey ridiculed the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, declaring that knowledge was only valid and worthwhile if “society” decided so.

If the Powers That Be (“society”) decided literature, or geometry, or chemistry is no longer a valid pursuit, but multicultural studies, minority oppression, and remedial basket weaving are, then the individual should have no alternative to that course of education.

Every virtue, including curiosity, resourcefulness, competitiveness, ethical conduct, right reasoning, rhetorical skills, logic and inventiveness –  could be considered to be “vices” overnight if the Powers That Be (“Society”) decided they were no longer desirable.

In Dewey’s world, there was no absolute truth. Therefore everything was malleable and changeable. There was no bedrock, no anchor upon which mankind might attach and secure their intellect, their character, or their conduct. Everything was continually in a state of flux, with the only constant being one’s “duty” to society, to serve it however society chose to dictate through its institutions.

An emphasis on group participation, group learning, group problem solving and group activities hammered home the one unbending principle that the individual’s  must always subservient to the “group.”

Learning and achievement in any field of study, declared Dewey, was “selfish,” the means whereby a child might separate him or her self from their peers.

Above all, Dewey wanted “top down” control of society. His philosophy was essentially the Rockefeller’s, who sponsored the universities. Dewey wanted to create cogs for America commerce, just sufficiently intelligent to follow instructions. The goal of self-improvement were seen as a dangerous and detrimental deviation.

In our schools today, the current constant whirlwind of parties, drugs, sports, movie stars, sexual promiscuity, video games, violence, gangs, and celebrities — the real unwritten core curriculum of today’s centers of higher education — are the “new normal.”

Children who differ from this norm leave themselves open to ridicule, hostility, sabotage and disparagement for being “different” than their group-herd mentality peers.

Part Two Tomorrow

More from the IDF UAV Hariri Route

More from the IDF UAV Hariri Route, posted with vodpod

IDF UAV Dogging Hariri’s Final Route

IDF UAV Dogging Hariri’s Final Route, posted with vodpod

Sayyed Nasrallah Press Conference – Evidence On Mahmoud Raf’e Israeli Spy

Sayyed Nasrallah Press Conference – Evidence On…, posted with vodpod

Scientist Develops Brain On A Chip

The brain cell chip developed by Dr. Naweed Syed at the University of Calgary, showing the area where the tissue is cultured and the input/output connections.

Naweed Syed’s lab cultivated brain cells on a microchip.

By Jesse Emspak

Using electrodes to detect brain activity is a bit like trying to eavesdrop on a conversation in a crowded room; you can only hear the very loudest voices.

But now it’s possible to listen in on what brain cells are saying to each other with much greater precision, at least in principle.

Dr. Naweed Syed at the University of Calgary cultured some brain cells from a snail and put them onto a small chip. The cells are each contained in a small well, but can communicate with each other through tiny channels that behave just like the ion channels in a living brain.

The result is the ability to measure the current in the ion channels, rather than just the large bursts that happen when neurons fire.

Ordinarily, Syed said, brain cells communicate with each other all the time. But they do so relatively quietly, without the large current spikes that we can usually see on an electroencephalogram, or EEG. On top of that, it’s hard to know which cells are communicating with each other and what kind of activity it is.

But Syed’s chip can tell what kind of ions are moving between the cells. That would allow for scientists to see what kind of activity is affected by a certain drug.

Syed used snail brain cells because they are larger, easier to manipulate – the cells are actually bigger than those of a human or rat. They also reproduce on their own. “That’s the great thing about invertebrates,” he said. “If they get injured they regenerate.”

The brain cells are kept alive in a culture medium on the chip, and they start to communicate with each other the same way they would in the snail’s brain.

Syed said if this technique can be applied to other kinds of animal cells, including humans, then doctors could develop drugs specific to a patient more easily.

For example, a treatment for epilepsy involves removing some brain tissue to control the seizures, but that doesn’t always work. If the tissue could be tested with such a system then the ion channels could be monitored, and a drug devised that would inhibit or stimulate exactly the right kind of brain activity.

A similar procedure could be done for depression or other neurological problems. “It would be better than Prozac,” Syed said, “because that’s a shotgun approach. It just shuts part of your brain down so you don’t feel depressed or engage in self-harm,” rather than attacking the underlying problem.

Caspian division inches forward

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only

by John C.K. Daly
Washington DC (UPI) Apr 20, 2009
Since 1991, the Caspian basin has emerged as the world’s leading untapped energy source. According to the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration, the Caspian’s 143,244 square miles and attendant coastline could contain as much as 250 billion barrels of recoverable oil besides an additional 200 billion barrels of potential reserves. Additionally, the EIA places the Caspian basin’s natural gas reserves at up to 9.2 trillion cubic meters of recoverable natural gas; even with oil at $50 a barrel, down from its July 11 record high of $147.27 per barrel, the region’s recoverable oil alone is worth $12.5 trillion.

Such exploitable riches have involved the region in a fierce competition, primarily between Russian and U.S. concerns, but other political organizations and nations are entering the fray, including the European Union, China, Japan, India and South Korea, to name but a few.

The biggest roadblock to the full development of these hydrocarbon resources remains the fact that 18 years after the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, no treaty definitively delineating the Caspian’s offshore waters has been concluded between the five nations now rimming the Caspian — Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran.

Accordingly, the five coastal states have all operated on an ad hoc basis on developing their close inshore waters, most notably Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, as the last document to delineate the Caspian’s legal status — the 1940 Soviet-Iranian treaty, which replaced the 1921 Treaty of Friendship between the two countries — awarded each signatory an “exclusive right of fishing in its coastal waters up to a limit of 10 nautical miles.” The treaty further declared that the “parties hold the Caspian to belong to Iran and to the Soviet Union.” Now, after 18 years of claims and counterclaims, there are signs that the complex skein of legal issues surrounding the Caspian’s water and seabed may be moving toward resolution.

On April 14, the two-day 25th meeting of Caspian Sea littoral states’ working group opened in Moscow.

The gathering was significant because more than three years have passed since the previous meeting held in the Russian capital in March 2006. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for European and C.I.S. Affairs Mehdi Safari was in attendance, along with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin and the deputy foreign ministers of Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. All the real diplomatic posturing took place between the Russian and Iranian delegations, however, with the Turkmen, Azeri and Kazakh ministers largely on the sidelines.

Safari pressed for the delegates to accelerate their efforts to finalize a convention, commenting, “Considering the emphasis laid by the heads of state on the accelerated finalization of the Caspian Sea legal regime convention, I stress it is necessary that this document be finalized at the earliest time in a bid to pave the way for an increase in useful mutual cooperation among the littoral states of the Caspian Sea.”

Russia’s ambassador at large, Aleksandr Golovin, was equally voluble, telling journalists, “We should do complex mathematical calculations to determine the readiness percentage of the document. The text is 70 to 80 percent ready.” He added that certain provisions of the document remained to be finalized, saying, “This is related to the delimitation of the bottom. We should also focus on the delimitation of the water area.”

Golovin’s bland optimism could not paper over the single outstanding issue that has stymied negotiations since 1991 — how to achieve an equitable “delimitation” of the Caspian’s seabed and waters. Shorn of diplomatic intricacies, Iran insists that all Caspian nations should receive an equitable 20 percent of the Caspian, while Russia has consistently maintained that Caspian nations should receive their portion based on the length of their coastline. Under the Russian formula, Iran’s sector would consist of 12 percent to 14 percent of the Caspian’s waters and seabed.

While Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have consistently supported the Kremlin’s position, Turkmenistan under its mercurial former leader, president for life, self-styled “Turkmenbashi,” or “Father of the Turkmen,” Saparmurat Niyazov, veered between supporting Russia and Iran. Niyazov’s unexpected death in December 2006 removed his inconsistent diplomacy and was followed by foreign audits confirming Turkmenistan’s massive natural gas reserves, leading his successor, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, to move increasingly toward outright support of Russia’s position, weakening Tehran’s hand.

The lack of a definitive treaty has blocked a number of Western-supported initiatives, such as a proposed $5 billion, 30 billion-cubic-meter annual capacity undersea Trans-Caspian natural gas pipeline, originating at Turkmenbashi and stretching westward to Baku. Such a project would find it difficult if not impossible to secure international funding in the absence of a treaty clearly delineating seabed sovereignty.

While nothing definitive was concluded at the meeting, there are signs that Iran is becoming more flexible. Safari said at a news conference, “There has been no change in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s position,” but his subsequent comments indicated a more malleable stance. The deputy foreign minister continued, “Every side defends its national interests. We’re going to bring closer our positions through talks. Different means of Caspian Sea delimitation are being discussed at various levels. We continue discussions with our Turkmen and Azerbaijani colleagues. We’re exchanging views on the delimitation of the sea, discussing economic problems and navigation on the Caspian Sea.” Inducing a note of caution, Safari added, “There are divergences in our positions. The way to bring them closer is long.”

Pressing all sides in the dispute is the region’s potential, thus far limited to onshore and largely inshore coastal production. Since 1991, the Caspian’s percentage of global oil production has risen steadily to the point of accounting for nearly 16 million barrels per day of global oil production and consumption of approximately 86 million bpd, a percentage certain to increase dramatically when significant offshore production begins.

Western governments and energy executives will not have long to wait for the next development, as Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov commented that the Caspian nations would hold the third annual summit of the littoral states’ presidents in Baku before the end of the year, a development that Safari endorsed. Lavrov remained cautiously optimistic, telling attendees, “Now a couple of words about the work on the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian; I do not want to belittle the fact that there still remain questions that need to be agreed on, but from contacts with my colleague ministers of foreign affairs of Caspian states, I have gathered the impression that the participants of the negotiation process are coming closer to mutual understanding on the issues that are still open, primarily those concerning delimitation of the water area across the Caspian and the demarcation of the seabed in its southern part.”

Behind Lavrov’s comment is a veiled threat to Iran, as, according to Golovin, “Russia has approved and signed an agreement with Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan on the delimitation of the northern part of the Caspian Sea.” Russia needs only Turkmenistan to complete its isolation of Iran on the subject, and Berdimuhamedov’s administration has made developing the country’s reserves a high priority, which the current impasse stymies. If Iran is to receive its portion of the Caspian’s estimated $12.5 trillion hydrocarbon largesse, then it might ultimately find that 12 percent to 14 percent of such a sum made available relatively quickly holds more attraction than 20 percent of such riches postponed to the distant future.

New ‘superbug’ found in UK hospitals

Enzyme NDM-1 was detected in the bacteria E.coli

By Michelle RobertsHealth reporter, BBC News

NDM-1 has been found in E.coli bacteria

A new superbug that is resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics has entered UK hospitals, experts warn.

They say bacteria that make an enzyme called NDM-1 have travelled back with NHS patients who went abroad to countries like India and Pakistan for treatments such as cosmetic surgery.

Although there have only been about 50 cases identified in the UK so far, scientists fear it will go global.

Tight surveillance and new drugs are needed says Lancet Infectious Diseases.

NDM-1 can exist inside different bacteria, like E.coli, and it makes them resistant to one of the most powerful groups of antibiotics – carbapenems.

These are generally reserved for use in emergencies and to combat hard-to-treat infections caused by other multi-resistant bacteria.

And experts fear NDM-1 could now jump to other strains of bacteria that are already resistant to many other antibiotics.

Ultimately, this could produce dangerous infections that would spread rapidly from person to person and be almost impossible to treat.

At least one of the NDM-1 infections the researchers analysed was resistant to all known antibiotics.

Similar infections have been seen in the US, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands and international researchers say that NDM-1 could become a major global health problem.

Infections have already been passed from patient to patient in UK hospitals.

Another Baloch National Party Leader Murdered In Khuzdar

BNP-Awami Leader Shot Dead in khuzdar

The Baloch Hal News

QUETTA: Unidentified people shot dead a leader of Balochistan National Party (BNP-Awami) in Khuzdar district, some 350 kilometers on southeast of Quetta, on Tuesday night.

According to police, unknown armed assailants opened indiscriminate firing on, Chief Attaullah Baloch, leader of BNP-Awami, in Khuzdar town and fled the scene under the cover of darkness. Resultantly, Baloch received critical bullet wounds and died on the spot.

On getting information, police rushed to the site and shifted the body to hospital for autopsy. However, motive behind he killing is yet to be ascertained.

I’m Ready to Provide Weapons to Lebanese Army, Even from Underground

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri called on Lebanese authorities to take the “appropriate steps” with respect to the latest revelations made by Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Nasrallah on Monday unveiled footage allegedly intercepted from Israeli surveillance planes of the site of the 2005 murder of former premier Rafik Hariri prior to his assassination.

“Those concerned know what they should do,” Berri said in separate interviews with An-Nahar and As-Safir newspapers. His remarks were published Wednesday.

In response to President Michel Suleiman’s appeal to arm the Lebanese military, Berri expressed readiness to provide the army with weapons.

“The Lebanese army has the right to obtain weapons from anywhere in the world,” he said.

“I’m ready to provide weapons to the army, even from underground,” he added.

Berri believed that what is important is to “maintain the warfare doctrine and national unity.”

Pakistani militants urge rejection of Western aid

Pakistan survivors slam flood aid

Flood victims are rescued by boat in Baseera, a village located in the Muzaffargarh district of Pakistan’s Punjab province on August 10, 2010.
REUTERS/Stringer

By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD | Wed Aug 11, 2010 4:29am EDT

(Reuters) – Pakistani Taliban militants have urged the government to reject Western aid for victims of devastating floods, saying it would only be siphoned off by corrupt officials.

The call from the militants battling the government came as the United States stepped up aid for victims of the floods which have killed more than 1,600 people, forced 2 million from their homes and disrupted the lives of about 14 million people, or 8 percent of the population.

“We urge the government not to take Western aid,” a Pakistani Taliban spokesman, Azam Tariq, said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

“The government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the center are desperate to get it, not for the people affected but to make their bank accounts bigger,” he said, referring to the northwestern province hardest hit by the floods.

Roiling floods triggered by unusually heavy monsoon rain have scoured the Indus river basin leaving a trail of destruction from mountains in the north to the plains of Sindh province in the south.

Hundreds of roads and bridges have been destroyed and waters have not yet crested in the south, meaning the situation could get worse in Pakistan, a U.S. ally.

There is concern that Islamist charities with links to militant groups have been seeking to fill the gap left by what many see as the inadequate response by Pakistani authorities.

The United Nations says the disaster is the biggest the country had ever faced and it would cost billions of dollars to rehabilitate the victims and rebuild ruined infrastructure.

The International Monetary Fund has warned of major economic harm and the Finance Ministry said the country would miss this year’s 4.5 percent gross domestic product growth target though it was not clear by how much.

Pakistani stocks were up 0.68 percent in morning trade but dealers termed this as “pullback” after the KSE-index fell by nearly 4 percent in the last two trading sessions.

“Investors are very confused about the impact the floods would have on the economy as a whole as the picture is still unclear and one cannot get a clear assessment of total damages,” said Mohammed Sohail, director at Topline Securities Ltd.

President Asif Ali Zardari, under fire for his government’s perceived sluggish response to the floods, returned home on Tuesday from foreign visits he embarked on as the disaster was unfolding.

Zardari, the widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was in the southern city of Karachi on Wednesday. Officials said they did not know if he would visit the disaster zone. Earlier they said he was expected to.

Zardari, whose popularity has never matched that of his charismatic wife, enraged his critics by going ahead with visits to meet leaders in Britain and France after the floods began.

The military, which has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its 63-year history, has taken the lead in relief efforts, reinforcing the faith many Pakistanis have in the ability of their armed forces and highlighting the comparative ineffectiveness of civilian governments.

Analysts say the armed forces would not try to take over the country as they have vowed to stay out of politics and are busy fighting militants.

The United States announced an additional $20 million in help on Tuesday amid growing concern over the political, economic and security ramifications of the disaster. [nN10172558]

The United States needs a stable Pakistan to help it end a nine-year war by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The new aid brought to $55 million the amount of funds committed by Washington to relief efforts, along with U.S. military helicopters that have been airlifting survivors trapped by the worst floods in the region in 80 years.

The U.S. efforts may win Washington some support in Pakistan, where anti-American sentiment runs high.

“Let’s not talk about politics. We were trapped here and they came to evacuate us. You cannot imagine the terrible feeling I had and how happy we are now,” Abdul Rehman, 37, who was evacuated by a U.S. helicopter after being stranded with a new-born baby and wife in the Swat valley.

“They’re doing good. Let’s appreciate them.”

(Additional reporting by Sahar Ahmed; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Michael Georgy)

Sayyed Nasrallah–Israel behind Hariri’s Assassination

Hussein Assi Readers Number : 8318

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah accused on Monday the Israeli enemy of involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, presenting tangible proof and evidence of an Israeli potential role in the crime as well as other crimes that hit Lebanon during the few past years. His eminence unveiled footage intercepted from Israeli surveillance planes of the site of the 2005 murder of ex-Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri prior to his assassination. Several clips, each minutes long and undated, showed aerial views of the coastline off west Beirut on various days prior to the Hariri assassination. Sayyed Nasrallah was speaking during an exceptional press conference he held at Shahed hall in Beirut’s southern suburb of Beirut. The conference, attended by media outlets’ top editors and journalists, was set to mark political turning point in the case of Hariri’s murder and open new horizons that the court could pick up and build on “if it wanted to be impartial.” ISRAELI AGENT SOUGHT TO DELUDE HARIRI His eminence started his speech by recalling that the Israeli enemy had been plotting to delude former PM Rafiq Hariri since 1993 and make him believe that Hezbollah wants to assassinate him. “In 1993, Hezbollah was organizing a protest in the southern suburb against the signing of the Oslo Accord, after which clashes broke out. At the time, tension increased between Rafiq Hariri and Hezbollah. An Israeli agent at the time told Hariri that Hezbollah wants to kill him and mentioned the name of Imad Mugniyah.” Sayyed Nasrallah was pointing to Israeli spy Ahmad Nasrallah who was arrested and interrogated by the Resistance in 1996. “After interrogating Ahmad Nasrallah and his confession of photographing houses of Hezbollah leaders, he also admitted that he had been blackmailing Hariri. He admitted that he had been trying to control the course of Hariri’s motorcade through deluding him into believing that Hezbollah wants to murder him,” his eminence said. Hezbollah Secretary General went on to reveal that spy Ahmad Nasrallah deluded the former Prime Minister into thinking that Hezbollah had a plan to assassinate his sister, MP Bahia Hariri, and hence to force him to go to Sidon to receive condolences so that he would be assassinated there. “We handed over Hezbollah member Abu Hassan Salameh to the Syrians over a false claim by Ahmed Nasrallah that Salameh had been plotting to murder Hariri, but later on we found out that Salameh was innocent,” Sayyed Nasrallah emphasized. To document the words of Sayyed Nasrallah, a first video was broadcast, showing the Israeli spy Ahmad Nasrallah giving his revelations himself. The video showed the spy confessing that his claims to former PM Rafiq Hariri that Hezbollah aimed to kill him were mere lies. He acknowledged working for Israel and saying that he was asked by his Israeli handlers to warn Hariri’s men of the assassination plot. ISRAEL HAS CAPABILITY TO CARRY OUT HARIRI’S MURDER Hezbollah Secretary General then turned to the second part of the press conference, the part in which he would directly accuse the Israeli enemy of standing behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. After showing another video of Israeli accusations against Hezbollah of involvement in Hariri’s murder, Sayyed Nasrallah decided to change the roles, pointing out that Israel has the capability to carry out an operation like the one that targeted former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri on February 14, 2005. “Israel has the capability to carry out this type of operations, such as Hariri’s assassination and the other assassinations that targeted Lebanon during the few past years,” Sayyed Nasrallah said, recalling that Israel’s history was full of assassination operations against high-ranking figures and leaders. While noting that it has become known that Israel has plenty of spies in Lebanon, Sayyed Nasrallah noted that the Zionist entity also had the motive because the Resistance is Israel’s major enemy. “It has an animosity toward Syria, so it wouldn’t miss a chance to create uproar. Israel wouldn’t miss a chance to create uproar and use Hariri’s blood to drive Syria out of Lebanon and besiege the Resistance,” his eminence said. In this context, Sayyed Nasrallah quoted Syrian President Bachar Assad as personally telling him that an Arab leader in 2004, before the issuing of UN Security Council Resolution 1559, informed him that the US does not mind keeping Syrian forces in Lebanon, but on two conditions: disarming Hezbollah and Palestinian factions in Lebanon. “Assad told them that Hezbollah is part of Lebanon’s national security, hence he denied the US’ request. Then came the project to force Syria out of Lebanon and isolate Hezbollah.” Speaking about Israel’s methods of operation, Hezbollah Secretary General noted that the Israeli enemy has wiretapping devices, aerial and field surveillance in addition to logistic support to carry out the assassination operation in the Lebanese interior. ISRAEL INTERESTED IN PERFORMING OPERATIONS NEAR SEAFRONT In a third part, Hezbollah Secretary General pointed to revelations made by the Israeli collaborators, who were arrested between 2009 and 2010, in an attempt to answer the question about intelligence operations conducted in Lebanon after 2004. Philippos Hanna Sader, who was born in 1964, was the first spy highlighted during the press conference. He started spying for the Israeli enemy in 2006 and was arrested in 2010 by the Lebanese authorities. His role was to gather information about the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and political figures. Israel assigned him to collect information about President Michel Sleiman’s house and its distance from the shore and about Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji’s yacht. “Israel is interested in performing assassination operations near the seafront,” Sayyed Nasrallah said, commenting the data. “Does a spy inspect a site only to gather information, or to also plot for a certain operation?” his eminence wondered. The second spy presented in the press conference was Said Tanios Alam. He was arrested in 2009 and confessed to collecting information about Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea and Prime Minister Saad Hariri. He started spying for the Israeli enemy in 1990. He was asked to monitor Geagea and to determine when Hariri visits him according to official investigations led by the Lebanese authorities, not Hezbollah. “Why does Israel want to monitor Saad Hariri and Samir Geagea, who are March 14 leaders?” Sayyed Nasrallah wondered, commenting the data revealed. “This is the answer for the people asking why March 14 members were the ones who were assassinated. The answer is that Israel wants the blame to fall on Syria and Hezbollah,” his eminence said. Other spies highlighted during the press conference were Nasser Nader, Fayssal Maqlad, Adib Alam and his wife Hayat. Nader, who was arrested in 2009, confessed to being involved in the 2004 killing of Hezbollah official Ghaleb Awali. Maqlad confessed to harboring Israeli troops in Lebanon and transporting weapons. Alam confessed to monitoring Lebanese regions as well as being involved, along with his wife, in the killing of Islamic Jihad Movement officials Mahmoud and Nidal al-Majzoub in 2006 in Saida. While noting that the revelations made by the spies, although they only constitute a sample, confirm that Israeli intelligence operations in Lebanon didn’t stop during the last few years in Lebanon, Sayyed Nasrallah called for collecting the spies’ confessions in order to draw a diagram of their work. “As Israel murdered the Hariri and civil strife didn’t erupt, the enemy planned to murder the Shiite Speaker Nabih Berri to drag Lebanon into the strife which didn’t occur after Hariri’s death,” his eminence warned. EVIDENCE SHOWN: CAPTURING OF MK DRONE IMAGES! “The secret I want to reveal tonight is that before 1997, Hezbollah was able to catch an Israeli spy plane photographing South Lebanon and sending them to an Israeli operations center,” Sayyed Nasrallah went on to say. “Before 1997, the Resistance managed to capture the transmission of an MK drone and we managed to access this transmission which enabled us of capturing the images transmitted by the drone as the enemy’s operation room was receiving them,” Hezbollah Secretary General explained. “The capturing of the MK drone images by the Resistance’s operation room led to the foiling of the enemy’s amphibious assault on Ansariyeh on September 5, 1997,” Hezbollah Secretary General revealed, before showing details of the Ansariyeh operation and explaining how this tactic helped the Resistance fighters foil the Israeli attempt. FOOTAGE: ISRAEL CAREFULLY MONITORED HARIRI’S MOVEMENTS Hezbollah Secretary General then turned to the most sensitive part of the press conference: tangible proof showing the Israeli enemy carefully monitoring the movements of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and his locations. In this regard, Sayyed Nasrallah unveiled footage intercepted from Israeli surveillance planes of the site of the 2005 murder of ex-Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri prior to his assassination. “Israeli drones had carefully monitored the movements of Hariri’s motorcade in Beirut and on the Farayya-Faqra road,” Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out. “Was that a coincidence?” his eminence wondered. “Such footage generally comes as the first leg of the execution of an operation.” Several clips, each minutes long and undated, showed aerial views of the coastline off west Beirut on various days prior to the Hariri assassination.  ”Are there any Hezbollah offices in these areas monitored by Israel? Why is Israel monitoring these locations?” Sayyed Nasrallah wondered. HEZBOLLAH HAS DEFINITE INFORMATION ON ISRAEL’S AERIAL MOVEMENTS ON FEBRUARY 14 This is not everything: another revelation is to be made by Sayyed Nasrallah. “We have definite information on the aerial movements of the Israeli enemy the day Hariri was murdered. Hours before he was murdered, an Israeli drone was surveying the Sidon-Beirut-Jounieh coastline as warplanes were flying over Beirut,” his eminence declared. A video broadcast in this regard shows that Israeli reconnaissance planes flew over Saida on February 13, 2005, while several warplanes flew over Beirut hours before Hariri was killed. On February 14, 2005, an Israeli AWACS plane flew over Beirut along with another Israeli spy plane. “This video can be acquired by any investigative commission to ensure it is correct. We are sure of this evidence, or else we would not risk showing it,” Sayyed Nasrallah said, hinting that Hezbollah keeps other evidence and secrets to be revealed at the appropriate time. SPY GHASSAN JEDD WAS PRESENT AT CRIME SCENE “We have evidence that Ghassan al-Jedd, an alleged Israeli spy who hosted Israeli operations teams, was present at the Rafiq Hariri crime scene,” Sayyed Nasrallah revealed. “We presented the evidence to the Lebanese authorities, but Jedd escaped from Lebanon before he was caught,” his eminence added. Jedd was born in 1940 and became an Israeli spy in the early 1990s, before he escaped from Lebanon in 2009. He hosted Israeli officers in Lebanon. In March 2004, Israeli officers entered Lebanon through the sea and were hosted by Jedd for 50 hours in a location in Mount Lebanon. IGNORING EVIDENCES PROVES STL POLITICIZED Asked about Hezbollah reaction in case the Special Tribunal for Lebanon decided to simply ignore the evidences presented, Sayyed Nasrallah noted that would prove the Resistance party’s belief that the STL was politicized. Sayyed Nasrallah reiterated that Hezbollah does not trust the international tribunal. “However, if the Lebanese government is willing to form a Lebanese commission to investigate the matter, we will cooperate,” his eminence said. “There are some who spent $500 million in Lebanon to distort the image of Hezbollah. That’s why we’re engaging ourselves in a battle for public opinion, especially that some are working night and day to defend Israel’s innocence.”

Chain of Command–Zion, Obama, King Abdullah

‘US Downgrades Saudi Arms Deal over Israeli Concerns’

09/08/2010 The Wall Street Journal said Monday that the United States had signed on to sell dozens of F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, but that details in the final deal had been negotiated to quell Israeli concerns over the possible exchange. Last month, an Israeli senior defense source told Haaretz that Israel was trying to prevent the United States from selling new F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia in order to upgrade the 150 F-15s already in the Saudi air force. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak raised the deal in meetings with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and National Security Advisor General Jim Jones over a month ago in Washington. It was also reported that Israel made its reservations clear at a meeting in Tel Aviv between top Israeli defense officials and a delegation led by US under secretary of defense for policy Michele Flournoy. According to the Wall Street Journal report, the Obama administration in fact agreed to sell advanced F-15 fighter jets to the Saudis, however excluding long-range weapons systems as well as other components in order to quiet Israel’s concerns. However, despite the reported Israeli concerns over the weapons deal, US officials, speaking to the Wall Street Journal, made it clear that Washington did not make changes to appease Israel. “It’s not that Barak swoops into town, we suddenly make a bunch of concessions that the Israelis never knew about before, and they’re assuaged,” the official said. “There were no refinements, no changes.” The official concluded that Israel had acquiesced to the deal not because of changes made to it, but as a result of Israeli officials having a better understanding “what the configuration looks like.” The report said that the $30 billion, 10-year package came after US officials offered “clarifications” to Israel about the deal, with officials close to the deal saying that, while Israel still had its reservations, it was unlikely to to challenge the sale. In addition to the exclusion of long-range weapons, according to the Wall Street Journal, the 84 F-15s included in the deal will have onboard targeting systems of the kind the U.S. sells to foreign nations, yet inferior to those in American-used F-15s.

HAARP

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Pakistan: unlucky in everything then? really?

“The worst flooding in Pakistan’s history has now affected more than four million people and left at least 1,600 dead, says the UN.”

• “All wells have been contaminated and water-borne diseases are spreading, officials say.”
• “In Punjab, known as Pakistan’s “breadbasket” for its rich agriculture, more than 1,300 villages have been affected and at least 25,000 homes destroyed, said disaster relief officials in the province.”
• “Meanwhile, forecasters warned of further downpours for the north-west; the region has not seen such flooding since 1929.”
• “Victims have bitterly accused the authorities of failing to come to their rescue and provide sufficient relief.”
• “Particular scorn has been poured on President Asif Ali Zardari because he pressed ahead with a visit to Europe. Mr Zardari is due to launch his son’s political career on Saturday in the British city of Birmingham.”
• “The disaster has piled yet more pressure on an administration struggling to contain Taliban violence and an economic crisis.”
• “Meanwhile, local Islamic charities with unconfirmed links to militant groups have reportedly been stepping into the breach to help flood victims.”

^^^^^^^

Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025, A Research Paper Presented To Air Force 2025 in August 1996, 14 years ago.

via Ahrcanum

In 2025, US aerospace forces can “own the weather” by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications

Table 1 – Operational Capabilities Matrix

DEGRADE ENEMY FORCES	ENHANCE FRIENDLY FORCES
Precipitation Enhancement	Precipitation Avoidance
- Flood Lines of Communication	- Maintain/Improve LOC
- Reduce PGM/Recce Effectiveness	- Maintain Visibility
- Decrease Comfort Level/Morale	- Maintain Comfort Level/Morale
Storm Enhancement	Storm Modification
- Deny Operations	- Choose Battlespace Environment
Precipitation Denial	Space Weather
- Deny Fresh Water	- Improve Communication Reliability
– Induce Drought	- Intercept Enemy Transmissions
Space Weather	- Revitalize Space Assets
- Disrupt Communications/Radar	Fog and Cloud Generation
- Disable/Destroy Space Assets	- Increase Concealment
Fog and Cloud Removal	Fog and Cloud Removal
- Deny Concealment	- Maintain Airfield Operations
- Increase Vulnerability to PGM/Recce	- Enhance PGM Effectiveness
Detect Hostile Weather Activities	Defend against Enemy Capabilities

Chapter 1, Introduction begins: “Scenario: Imagine that in 2025 the US is fighting a rich, but now consolidated, politically powerful drug cartel in South America….”

Chapter 2: Required Capability, Why would we want to mess with the weather?

According to Gen Gordon Sullivan, former Army chief of staff, “As we leap technology into the 21st century, we will be able to see the enemy day or night, in any weather- and go after him relentlessly.”³ A global, precise, real-time, robust, systematic weather-modification capability would provide war-fighting CINCs with a powerful force multiplier to achieve military objectives. Since weather will be common to all possible futures, a weather-modification capability would be universally applicable and have utility across the entire spectrum of conflict. The capability of influencing the weather even on a small scale could change it from a force degrader to a force multiplier.
People have always wanted to be able to do something about the weather. In the US, as early as 1839, newspaper archives tell of people with serious and creative ideas on how to make rain.⁴ In 1957, the president’s advisory committee on weather control explicitly recognized the military potential of weather-modification, warning in their report that it could become a more important weapon than the atom bomb.⁵
However, controversy since 1947 concerning the possible legal consequences arising from the deliberate alteration of large storm systems meant that little future experimentation could be conducted on storms which had the potential to reach land.⁶ In 1977, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution prohibiting the hostile use of environmental modification techniques. The resulting “Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Technique (ENMOD)” committed the signatories to refrain from any military or other hostile use of weather-modification which could result in widespread, long-lasting, or severe effects.⁷ While these two events have not halted the pursuit of weather-modification research, they have significantly inhibited its pace and the development of associated technologies, while producing a primary focus on suppressive versus intensification activities.

Remember this was in 1996.

…Today, weather-modification is the alteration of weather phenomena over a limited area for a limited period of time.¹¹ Within the next three decades, the concept of weather-modification could expand to include the ability to shape weather patterns by influencing their determining factors.¹² Achieving such a highly accurate and reasonably precise weather-modification capability in the next 30 years will require overcoming some challenging but not insurmountable technological and legal hurdles.

A giant social engineering experiment then?

The following notional scenario postulates how weather-modification might become both technically feasible and socially desirable by 2025.

Between now and 2005, technological advances in meteorology and the demand for more precise weather information by global businesses will lead to the successful identification and parameterization of the major variables that affect weather. By 2015, advances in computational capability, modeling techniques, and atmospheric information tracking will produce a highly accurate and reliable weather prediction capability, validated against real-world weather. In the following decade, population densities put pressure on the worldwide availability and cost of food and usable water. Massive life and property losses associated with natural weather disasters become increasingly unacceptable. These pressures prompt governments and/or other organizations who are able to capitalize on the technological advances of the previous 20 years to pursue a highly accurate and reasonably precise weather-modification capability. The increasing urgency to realize the benefits of this capability stimulates laws and treaties, and some unilateral actions, making the risks required to validate and refine it acceptable. By 2025, the world, or parts of it, are able to shape local weather patterns by influencing the factors that affect climate, precipitation, storms and their effects, fog, and near space. These highly accurate and reasonably precise civil applications of weather-modification technology have obvious military implications. This is particularly true for aerospace forces, for while weather may affect all mediums of operation, it operates in ours.

In other words, after the weather causes “massive life and property losses,” people will finally demand that Something Must Be Done about the crazy, deadly weather.

So of course it would be completely ridiculous to suppose that halfway through this plan 1) they already have the technology, and 2) they use it to cause “massive life and property losses,” so that 3) we will beg them to develop the technology and save us from the weather. That would betray an extremely cynical understanding of social engineering and psychopathy.

No. Better to think it’s all just Mother Nature and Acts of God and Remarkable Coincidences and Bad Luck.

As far-fetched as this subject may seem, leaders in the elite global establishment have intimated the existence of this technology and its capabilities. In 1970 Zbigniew Brzezinski published a book titled Between Two Ages. Brzezinski is one of the founding directors of the Trilateral Commission. In this book he said, “Technology will make available, to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised…Technology of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm.”

How to Wreck the Environment, 1968

Among future means of obtaining national objectives by force, one possibility hinges on man’s ability to control and manipulate the environment of his planet. When achieved, this power over his environment will provide man with a new force capable of doing great and indiscriminate damage. Our present primitive understanding of deliberate environmental change makes it difficult to imagine a world in which geophysical warfare is practised. Such a world might be one in which nuclear weapons were effectively banned and the weapons of mass destruction were those of environmental catastrophe. As I will argue, these weapons are peculiarly suited for covert or secret wars.

…As far as military applications are concerned, I conjecture that precipitation enhancement would have a limited value in classical tactical situations, and then only in the future when controls are more thoroughly understood. A nation possessing superior technology in environmental manipulation could damage an adversary without revealing its intent.