Controversy over James DeMeo’s Saharasia hypothesis

This excellent rebuttal of James DeMeo's lecture on patriarchy and desertification is a must read. DeMeo makes a mess of the whole thing with his egregious colonial thinking, "often unwitting affirmation of sanctioned ignorance, their denial of subject status to the colonized, and their reading of the colonial archives.”.

To wit:
"Claiming a Saharan origin of patriarchy occurs in a context of intensely negative racialized portrayal of African societies. DeMeo says he uses anthropological evidence to prove Saharan patriarchy, but modern ethnographic data does not constitute evidence of ancient culture. In the absence of real historical documentation, it is beyond dubious to extrapolate a 6000-old patriarchy based on present-day excision customs, or even on the last 1000 years. Why would Africans not be offended by a claim that people who come from lands like theirs are more likely to create oppressive societies? Such continued inattention to colonial patterns and inaccurate generalizations show profound ignorance about African history."


http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/saharasia.html

By feminist author, Max Dashu.

I felt impelled to write down my thoughts about the controversy that erupted on the last day of the World Congress on Matriarchy in Luxembourg, 2003. An outcry followed James De Meo’s presentation, which proposed that patriarchy arose in “Saharasia” because of desertification. Many people were upset that the moderator cut off his responses. Others, including me, were much more disturbed at the content of the presentation itself, and felt that De Meo, even before his responses were interrupted, wasn’t addressing the concerns being raised. Unfortunately there was no time for most critics to voice our objections.

The North African women felt that De Meo’s analysis seriously misrepresented the Saharan cultures. Malika Grasshoff spoke quite passionately in defense of her Kabyle culture. Helene Claudot-Hawad (who married into a Tuareg community) rejected the presentations as “essentialist.” It collapses the origin of patriarchy down to a single factor, and failed to address the presence of the Tuareg in the Sahara. This striking survival of mother-right culture was simply deleted from the maps De Meo showed, which depicted all of North Africa as one bleak expanse of patriarchy.

The distinguished anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday called the theory “reductionist and dangerous.” She was shocked that De Meo was relying on a discredited data set, “the most flawed data-base I can imagine.” Its “data” was collected before 1956, Sanday explained, by white men “who had no idea what was going on” in the cultures they were studying. Much of it was collected in the 30’s, when ethnology was riddled with racial and gender bias. Sanday later told me that no anthropologist would take seriously conclusions based on this bad information. Even its creator, George Peter Murdock, later came to recognize that it was problematic.

Sanday knows whereof she speaks, having studied with Murdock and worked with these statistical ethnic data collections for decades. It was Sanday, by the way, who first proposed back in 1981 that eco-stressors -- especially food shortages -- may have been a factor in the development of patriarchy (but not the factor). This was long before James De Meo came on the scene. So I ask, why would he be treated as a more credible source than this eminent feminist anthropologist who has been researching women’s status and matriarchy for decades?

Women’s issues seemed to be an afterthought in De Meo’s exposition. Women and patriarchy are missing from his book’s title: Saharasia: the 4000 BCE Origins of Child-Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, in the Deserts of the Old World.
He ignores important differences in the treatment of women and men, as when he showed a slide treating male circumcision and female “circumcision” (genital excision, to be exact) as equivalent. These practices are of entirely different orders of magnitude, not to speak of their contrasting socio-political functions. One cuts around, removing the hood covering the male genital organ, while the other amputates a greater or lesser portion of the female organ itself. One acts to shore up masculine privilege, the other to subordinate women and place their sexuality in service to patrilineage.

Sanday was also disturbed about De Meo’s devotion to the Reichian hypothesis, which she said is not really concerned with patriarchy, but with sexual repression, positing that removing sexual taboos would do away with social ills, without any structural or historical analysis of women’s oppression.

I haven’t read De Meo’s book, not having been able to get hold of a copy. I did look it over at the conference; a chapter heading claiming that women were just as responsible for patriarchy as men didn’t inspire my confidence. (This feeling only deepened when the author sent out a promotional email shortly afterwards asserting, “The lecture by Dr. DeMeo was well-received but stirred a bit of controversy in some quarters where "politically correct" thinking prevailed.” This is not only offensive and inaccurate--there was more than “a bit of controversy”--but it also employs the stock rhetoric used to attack feminism and anti-racism. What follows is based upon De Meo’s own exposition of his desertification theory at the conference, including slides he showed of charts from his book.

De Meo paints a picture of patriarchy beginning with the desertification of North Africa and west Asia. He claims in his summary for the conference program, “The anthropological data, and a correlated global archaeological /historical survey, suggest a source region for armored/ patristic/ dominator cultures within Saharasia predominately after c. 4000 BCE...” when the region began to desertify. He thinks that “Semitic cultural migrations” spread patriarchy from Africa, and Indo-European ones from west-central Asia.

No historical or archaeological evidence shows that patriarchal culture patterns originated in the Sahara. There’s no sign of waves of conquest pouring forth to subjugate people in other places. Au contraire! no empires appear in this region until quite late. And the first of these was (atypically as empires go) matrilineal: the 10th century empire of Ghana. The warrior images that De Meo points to in Saharan rock art date later than the earliest known patriarchal states. And these (Iraq, Egypt, China) occur in river valleys, not deserts.

If we can say anything about the Sahara, it is not a region that stands out as a historical bastion of male supremacy. Rather, it has been characterized by the persistence of mother-right cultures and female liberty. The Tuareg, who have been in the Sahara for a very long time, remained a matrilineal society into the 20th century, and the less-islamicized groups of the north still are today. Another major Saharan people, the Wodaabe, also show significant retentions of female liberty and are less patriarchal than many of the cultures DeMeo counts as matristic (such as in the Pacific and South America). The Fulani and Hausa have become quite patriarchal in modern times, but historical sources are clear that the picture looked very different 400 or 500 years ago.

Another region DeMeo describes as a patriarchal homeland is Arabia. This idea has more to do with modern stereotypes of the Arabs than the facts of early Arabian history. Tribal names and other indicators point to ancient Arab observance of matrilineal descent. Early Muslim writers also remark on matrilocal marriage, women’s right to divorce and marry at will, and female ownership of tents. If anything, a pattern of Arab female power contrasts with the well-watered regions of Iraq or the Levant. Genesis lists a significant proportion of female chiefs among the Arabs of Edom, and Assyrian inscriptions mention Arab queens. We even have evidence of women taking several husbands in matrilocal polyandry. Leila Ahmed points to ‘Aisha’s testimony to the variety of marriage types in pre-Islamic times, concluding that “Islamic reforms apparently consolidated a trend toward patrilineage in 6th century Arabia.” [Women and Gender in Islam, Yale, 1992, p 48]

Counter to popular opinion, veiling and female seclusion originated with bronze age Indo-European peoples, not the Arabs. For many centuries, Arabia was subject to conquest by Assyrians, Romans, and other peoples who were far more patriarchal than their Bedouin contemporaries. Eventually the Arabs began adopting some of these patriarchal customs, including the veil. Contra the stereotype of “Semitic patriarchy,” similar matrilineal and matrilocal patterns have been noted for the Hebrews, by Julian Morgenstern, David Bakan, Savina Teubal and other scholars.

In modern times, it is precisely in the most difficult terrains (and therefore the most inaccessible to conquest) that most matrix cultures have lasted the longest: in remote highlands and deserts, and some islands or peninsulas. This is exactly the opposite of what DeMeo’s thesis predicts. Looking at deserts, we find not only the Tuareg but also the Hopi, the New Mexico pueblos, the Dineh (Navajo). Then there are the Seri of Sinaloa in Mexico and the Wayúu, a matrilineal and matrilocal society whose country is the most arid land in Colombia, the desert of the Guajira peninsula.

The deserts of Nubia were matrilineal into the middle ages, and so were several other circum-Saharan peoples. The Kalahari peoples are not matrilineal, but have kept relatively egalitarian traditions in one of the driest deserts of the world. The Himba in Namibia appear to have been matrilineal in the recent past, though they now show some patriarchal elements. There are, of course, desert patriarchies, but they do not prove that desert life is the catalyst for cultures of male domination, or conquest either.

The theory that patriarchy begins in deserts can be tested another way. If it were true, we should be able to show that male domination in rainforest cultures was imported or imposed by outsiders. But the strongly patriarchal cultures of New Guinea are by all accounts indigenous. There is no archaeological or historical evidence of invasions -- nor do the oral histories testify to them. So how did patriarchy arise in these well-watered, geographically isolated islands of the tropics? The same problem is presented by the Yanomamo and a number of other Amazon basin cultures, as well as patriarchal systems in the Congo basin.

Continue reading here:

http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/saharasia.html

Black Squirrels & Doppelgangers at Conspiracy Con 9

Adam Gorightly Reports on the 2009 Conspiracy Con event

Conspiracy Con 9 started out rather weirdly for this humble gonzo reporter, when — after checking into the hotel where the event was being been held — I was approached by a middle aged man who asked me if I had “brought the books?” Well, indeed, I had brought some books I was planning to sell at the event, however — as far as I could tell — these bore no relation to this fellow, who I didn’t know from Adam.

Upon further interrogation, it became apparent that this gentleman — who I soon discovered was Roger Tolces, a speaker at the conference — had mistaken me for someone he had just talked to in regards to the aforementioned books, and so I informed Tolces that it was probably my doppelganger he had spoken to, which got a chuckle out of his wife, but left Mr. Tolces somewhat perplexed until he realized I was pulling his leg…sort of. This is not the first (nor will it be the last!) of an alleged Gorightly double sighting at a conspiracy or paranormal conference. Years ago, psychic Eugenia Macer Story informed me that she saw a Gorightly doppelganger at some such conference, although I forget the exact details of Eugenia’s anomalous encounter.

Tolces, it so happens, is a private investigator who specializes in — as he calls them — “electronic countermeasures”, which includes ways to ward off MK-ULTRA-like harassers. Later, I visited briefly with Tolces at his table and related certain experiences, nearly a decade old, I had had with what I perceived as some sort of microwave harassment. Tolces replied that he didn’t think my story was “crazy” and that he has heard similar stories many, many times.

Conspiracy Con inevitably brings about interactions between likeminded spirits from all ends of the conspiratorial spectrum, including meeting up with colleague, and Mothman experiencer, Andy Colvin. After picking Andy up at the San Jose airport and arriving back at the hotel parking lot, another inexplicable incident occurred when a black squirrel crossed our path. In all my years of traveling up and down the Golden State, never before in my life had I witnessed such a spectacle, and Andy was able to snap a photo of said anomalous squirrel before it scampered out of the view. Afterwards, I did a bit of research and discovered that the rare black squirrel is a melanistic variation of the common grey squirrel, in essence a genetic mutation, which a quick web search revealed has been seen on occasion in the greater Santa Clara area, home of Conspiracy Con.

Later inspection of this black squirrel photo revealed a possible MIB (or Man In White, as the case may be) standing behind a tennis court fence, in the background of the photo, apparently monitoring our activities.

The Black Squirrel and The Man In White - Photo by Andy Colvin
Andy and I later evolved several theories explaining the haunting appearance of this white-shirted mystery man and the black squirrel and soon came to suspect that either this odd squirrel was remote controlled, or perhaps even a holographic projection used to mesmerize Andy and myself for means of MK-ULTRA tomfoolery.

Continue reading at;

http://forteanswest.com/wordpress-mu/norcallowfi/2009/06/15/black-squirrels-doppelgangers-at-conspiracy-con-9/

Agent Orange in the City of New Orleans

The War At Home:
Agent Orange in the City of New Orleans

Agent Orange was born and bred in our backyard to tame the thicket of forest and "savage" people that dwelled in another country. It is still lounging about the water tables and the particulate matter in New Orleans.

Jane Crown Reports

In 1929 the stock market crash was on the lips of people in many cities. New Orleans was no different. There would have been people living in the B. W. Cooper housing project then, mostly of Italian descent; one of my aunts (by marriage) lived in one of them until the latter part of the 1930s.

Nobody seemed to notice when Thompson Hayward Co. moved in near the housing project on an acre plot in 1941. Times were still tough; manned industry, progress and business in general must have been seen as prosperous and worthy of a flailing city. Families needed work—some sense of hope that things were growing and changing.

Things were indeed changing in the city in a major way. Thompson Hayward Co. was cooking chemicals indoors. Inside large kettles, a dry production not unlike the spice companies in some ways—a cayenne of some considerable potency—was being manufactured. Like the goods flowing into the new decade, a new product was emerging.

By 1949 production of chemicals was changing. Folks in this era, twenty years after the Great Crash of 1929, Black Thursday to Black Tuesday, were not looking for any more bad signs. There were now large cooking vats outdoors—the largest gumbo pots you can imagine. The rue was now leaning towards a wet product, and residents were starting to get a hint of what was happening at the plant. The neighbors of Gert Town were complaining of dust in the air and “overflowing outdoor vats.”1

What was overflowing from those pots was an herbicide known as 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T). The inherent issue with this toxic defoliant is that once it reaches a peak temperature of 160 degrees Celsius, portions of it can transform into a byproduct called dioxin. Dioxin is the most dangerous human carcinogen known.

Life crawled on until World War II. People must have been too busy to be concerned about what was going on at 7700 Earhart Blvd. Many fathers, sons and brothers were drafted halfway across the world, and those who remained were doing their civic duty, supporting the war effort like any patriotic American would do. A vicious German enemy with a queer little mustache was threatening to rule the world with fascist ideology.

If anybody was thinking about what that secretive little acre held—where cousin Rene or Uncle Salvador may have worked before going off to war—there was little mention of it. They were too busy looking forward. Agent Orange was not used during World War II. “In the early years of World War II, a grant was provided by the National Research Council to develop a chemical to destroy rice crops in Japan (the major food source of the Japanese). 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T (Agent Orange) was the result. A discussion between President Roosevelt and White House Chief of Staff, Admiral William D. Leahy determined that this heinous chemical should not be used." 2

The nuclear age brought with it a fear of bombs and Castro. Kennedy stood down the Cuban Missile Crisis. Again we feared something worlds away which could directly impact us. The year 1961 saw the sale of Thompson Hayward Company and its moniker to T.H. Agriculture (THAN). Although it changed hands, the company still possessed an itching need to destroy our enemies. Deadly toxins were starting to consume the workers behind the large steel doors of Earhart’s sole acre.

One can imagine that many of the men who had returned from World War II were trying to return to some sort of normalcy—going to work for THAN and perhaps inviting their cousins and friends. Jobs had never been an easy thing to come by in New Orleans, in a widespread service industry and a floundering French Quarter that people were calling skid row by the early 1960s. If you were a Gert Town resident, you could very well have been making the chemical dinner inside those gates, and bringing home the proverbial bacon at better wages than most.

By the 1960s the company had been open for business twenty years. Production of herbicides was still actively pursued by THAN. Hippies were out smoking grass and enjoying their own chemical high, preaching free love and peace for mankind. The hard working individuals who were less dreamy lived and conducted daily business in Gert Town, still mostly unaware of the toxins. It was the counterculture revolution and people were more concerned with getting their children into college, and away from the escalating war talk.

Vietnam was on the verge of spilling into something catastrophic, and the company was setting an unparalleled pace to reach its goals in production. Thousands of men were dripping into the jungles of North Vietnam, but they did not go without chemical armor. Their brothers in Gert Town had provided them with a most effective herbicide. Known for the orange stripe on the side of its barrels, some 18 million tons of Agent Orange was used in the era of 'Nam.

Nobody seemed to be looking into the yards to see if there was any change. Nobody was really home, once again, to complain of anything foul reeking in the air. The old clay pipes of New Orleans were just a fact of life. Water is not supposed to have a taste, but New Orleans water has always been a bit grainy and salty. People were simply doing the sign of the cross, shuffling in and out of the Catholic churches and Baptist too, praying for an end to the conflict. The conflict raged on at home and across leagues of a foreign sea.

The year 1971 ushered in many other new bad boys on the block: Diedrin, Aldrin, Chlordane and dry cleaning agents were contained in the old factory. Newer fluids and progressive chemicals suited the community needs. Herbicides were still in fashion for farmer and city dweller alike. The crisis in Vietnam had ended and Agent Orange was now an internationally banned agent, having been used from 1961-1971.

Now here in our story things start to slow a pace. Like the horse and buggy by the curb waiting for an easy fare and jaunt through the Garden District or Quarter, things were sort of limping along. There was no more wet production inside or outside of 7700 Earhart. At the height of disco in 1976, the owners of the company decided to use the building solely for storage purposes.

While you were listening to Credence Clearwater Revival or ABBA, the doors of the company were rusting from the toxic chemicals being contained inside. Nobody was asking questions. The company quietly turned over its ownership in 1981 to Harcros Chemicals, Inc., and again the THAN moniker was sustained. Bell bottoms, Cadillacs and spectators were creeping out of style, but big business and the fast life were enjoying a new rebirth in industrial greed.

By the time tab collars and high-heeled shoes for men changed again, things were morphing inside the doors of Harcros Chemicals. The company finally closed its chemical gates for production in 1986. Harcros still owned the building and the contents were left to be stored. In 1987, the wrists of Harcros and THAN were slapped for dumping something curious into the New Orleans drains, the identity of which was never disclosed. The cost for Harcros/THAN was around 4 million dollars to remediate the dumping, and they were forced to remove thousands of gallons of liquid toxins along with tons of foul soil.


Continue reading at:

http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/agentorange.html

Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam

By Marjorie Cohn

From 1961 to 1971, the US military sprayed Vietnam with Agent Orange, which contained large quantities of Dioxin, in order to defoliate the trees for military objectives. Dioxin is one of the most dangerous chemicals known to man. It has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen (causes cancer) and by the American Academy of Medicine as a teratogen (causes birth defects).

Between 2.5 and 4.8 million people were exposed to Agent Orange. The spraying covered 1.4 billion hectares of land and forest - approximately 12 percent of the land area of Vietnam.

Vietnamese who were exposed to the chemical have suffered from cancer, liver damage, pulmonary and heart diseases, defects to reproductive capacity, and skin and nervous disorders. Children and grandchildren of those exposed have severe physical deformities, mental and physical disabilities, diseases and shortened life spans. The forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam have been devastated and denuded. They may never grow back and if they do, it will take 50 to 200 years to regenerate. Animals that inhabited the forests and jungles have become extinct, disrupting the communities that depended on them. The rivers and underground water in some areas have also been contaminated. Erosion and desertification will change the environment, contributing to the warming of the planet and dislocation of crop and animal life.

The US government and the chemical companies knew that Agent Orange, when produced rapidly at high temperatures, would contain large quantities of Dioxin. Nevertheless, the chemical companies continued to produce it in this manner. The US government and the chemical companies also knew that the Bionetics Study, commissioned by the government in 1963, showed that even low levels of Dioxin produced significant deformities in unborn offspring of laboratory animals. But they suppressed that study and continued to spray Vietnam with Agent Orange. It wasn't until the study was leaked in 1969 that the spraying of Agent Orange was discontinued.

US soldiers who served in Vietnam have experienced similar illnesses. After they sued the chemical companies, including Dow and Monsanto, that manufactured and sold Agent Orange to the government, the case was settled out of court for $180 million which gave few plaintiffs more than a few thousand dollars each. Later the US veterans won a legislative victory for compensation for exposure to Agent Orange. They receive $1.52 billion per year in benefits.

But when the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange sued the chemical companies in federal court, US District Judge Jack Weinstein dismissed the lawsuit, concluding that Agent Orange did not constitute a poison weapon prohibited by the Hague Convention of 1907. Weinstein had reportedly told the chemical companies when they settled the US veterans' suit that their liability was over and he was making good on his promise. His dismissal was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The chemical companies admitted in their filing in the Supreme Court that the harm alleged by the victims was foreseeable although not intended. How can something that is foreseeable be unintended?

Continue reading

http://www.truthout.org/061509R



What this article doesn’t say is Agent Orange was created in New Orleans and that the U.S. “hot spot” for Agent Orange is New Orleans.

See, Jane Crown, The War At Home: Agent Orange in the City of New Orleans

http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/agentorange.html

The CIA’s Torture Teachers

Two Psychologists – James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen -- Helped the CIA Exploit a Secret Military Program to Develop Brutal Interrogation Tactics

Mark Benjamin is a national correspondent for Salon.com. He joins us from Washington, D.C. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Mark.

MARK BENJAMIN: Thank you so much for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you have discovered.

MARK BENJAMIN: Well, what we’ve learned is that there is a special school, a secretive school, called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. And that’s where we train elite troops to resist, if captured by an enemy who ignores the Geneva Conventions, things like waterboarding, stress positions, sexual humiliation, isolation, that sort of thing. And reporters, including myself, have been working for years now to try to show that it looks like the Pentagon sort of reverse-engineered those tactics to use to interrogate real prisoners. The Pentagon said, “No, no, no,” until last month. You mentioned an Inspector General report that came out and said, well, yes, in fact, the Pentagon did do that. What we’ve learned now is that it appears that the CIA, working very closely with the Pentagon, did the same thing very early in the war on terror, relying on psychologists very close to this program. And because both agencies turned to this program they call the SERE program early in the war on terror, it suggests very high-level coordination in the Bush administration.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain just what the SERE program is.

MARK BENJAMIN: The SERE program is a Cold War era program, where we literally set up mock prisons at places like Fort Bragg, North Carolina, which is where we have sort of the flagship program, where elite soldiers—for example, Special Forces soldiers—are subject to brutal mock interrogations. As I mentioned, waterboarding is just one of the things that they face—isolation in very, very small pens, hooding, that kind of thing, stress positions. And it is intended to teach those soldiers to resist those illegal tactics if they are captured.

And that raises an obvious problem. If you’re going to take that training, which is designed to get people to resist illegal interrogations, and flip it around to interrogation tactics, which is now what we’re learning the Pentagon and the CIA both did, you’re very likely, obviously, to come up with tactics that are violations of the Geneva Conventions. That’s a problem for the Bush administration, which has been saying that their tactics are safe, effective and legal. SERE training is not designed to be safe, effective or legal.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about two CIA-employed psychologists who are under investigation right now. Explain who they are.

MARK BENJAMIN: The two psychologists are named James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, and these are psychologists who have been affiliated with this training program—again, called the SERE program—for years. What we have learned is that the Senate Armed Services Committee—this is a committee run by Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan—is now looking into the activities of these two psychologists, in particular.

What our sources on Capitol Hill and, in fact, some of Mitchell and Jessen’s own colleagues say is that these guys, these psychologists who are affiliated with the military’s SERE training, were then employed by the CIA as contractors to do the same thing that the military was doing, which was to flip these tactics around and use them on real terrorists. And, in fact, Jane Mayer from the New Yorker, who’s done some wonderful reporting also on this issue, put one of these guys, James Mitchell, in the room with a high-level CIA detainee in early 2002, and, according to Mayer, he was urging some very rough stuff.

AMY GOODMAN: Who is investigating them?

MARK BENJAMIN: The Senate Armed Services Committee is looking into these guys, and, in fact, based on Carl Levin’s request, the Department of Defense has ordered anybody associated with the Department of Defense, in a memo to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others, that any document that has the name of these two guys, Bruce Jessen or James Mitchell, has to be preserved, and nobody can destroy documents associated with those two guys, because they’re part of this Senate investigation.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the letter that psychologists have written to the American Psychological Association and the controversy that’s brewing within this organization of close to 150,000 psychologists?

MARK BENJAMIN: There is a major rift in the American Psychological Association, a professional association for psychologists. In 2005, the American Psychological Association came up with ethics guidelines that essentially say that a psychologist can help participate in a military interrogation. This is a big deal, because the American Psychiatric Association for psychiatrists said no, we won’t have any part of it. It turns out that six of the ten individual psychologists who helped draft those ethics guidelines for the American Psychological Association were affiliated with the military. And, in fact, several of them were affiliated with this SERE school.

This issue has been really tearing apart the American Psychological Association for years now, and there is an expanding group of psychologists who are very, very concerned that the American Psychological Association’s own ethical guidelines are allowing psychologists, like these guys Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, to reverse-engineer training tactics into really brutal interrogation techniques. And there’s a bunch of letter-writing back and forth, frankly, to the head of—the president of the American Psychological Association, objecting to these ethic guidelines and perhaps the use of these tactics.

AMY GOODMAN: You write about the dozens of psychologists who made public a joint letter to the American Psychological Association President Sharon Brehm, fingering another CIA-employed psychologist. He was one of the ten on that committee in 2005 that was convened to look at psychologists’ involvement in these interrogations. Explain who he is.

MARK BENJAMIN: That’s a guy whose last name is Shumate. He’s a psychologist for the Counter Terrorism Center at the CIA. This is the center that reported—at the time of 9/11 was a guy named Cofer Black was in charge of that unit. You may recall Cofer Black is very well known for going up to Congress early in the war on terror and saying, you know, “There’s a before-after-9/11 and there’s an after-9/11; after 9/11 the gloves come off.”

What the psychologists are concerned about is that their fellow psychologists who are associated with that center, the Counter Terrorism Center, seem to be also, you know, crucial in reverse-engineering these tactics, these training tactics in the brutal interrogation techniques, or at least that’s the concern among these psychologists. And what they’re doing is alerting their organization that there could be a real problem here.

AMY GOODMAN: Of course, Cofer Black now involved with Blackwater, the private security company based in North Carolina, and an offshoot of that around intelligence. Now, R. Scott Shumate was one of the ten people involved in this PENS Task Force, this advisory task force that ultimately advised that the psychologists could continue in these military interrogations, despite the fact that three of the members—we had two of them on on Democracy Now!—have expressed great concern about them, one of these members handing over all of her notes leading up to the meeting and afterwards, the email listservs, over to the Senate Armed Services Committee, as they conduct their investigation.

MARK BENJAMIN: That’s right. And some of the psychologists, as you mentioned, these civilian psychologists, sort of feel like they were railroaded or misled or, you know, in other words, the military folks who were on that panel which came up with these ethics guidelines sort of ran the show. I think that’s sort of what you’re referring to there. And, yes, there’s very serious concern about these psychologists, that their own fellow professionals may have played a vital role in flipping these techniques around, both at the Pentagon and, now we’ve learned, also at the CIA, into some really brutal interrogation techniques.

Continue reading:
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/6/25/the_cias_torture_teachers_psychologists_helped


See this article which states that the two are Mormons.

Dr Mengele Award Goes To James Mitchell & Bruce Jessen

http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/dr-mengele-award-goes-to-james-mitchell-bruce-jessen/

Mexico: Alleged UFO Over Teotihuacán?

This week Prof. Ana Luisa Cid sends us a photo of an alleged unidentified flying object taken from the summit of one of the pyramids in the Teotihuacán archaeological zone, northeast of Mexico City. This photo was taken on March 8, 2009 at 14:28 hours using a Sony DSC W30 camera.

Many thanks as always to Prof. Cid for sharing her photographs with us!

It's a Bird! No, it's a paint job

The U.S. is currently terrorizing the people of Afghanistan with this bird in the skies. Imagine being a child and looking up and seeing that?

U.S. puppet in Peru doing America's dirty work

Corporate Capitalism = “Give the People What They Don’t Want!”


The Peru Free Trade Agreement kills indigenous people and hurts the environment. Ever think maybe they don’t want or need our crap in the Amazon rain forest?


US-Peru FTA Sparks Indigenous Massacre

from truthout.org

During the last week, deep in the Peruvian Amazon, confrontations between nonviolent indigenous protesters and police have left up to 100 people dead. The vast majority of the casualties are civilians, who have been conducting peaceful demonstrations in defense of the Amazon rain forest.

For almost two months, as many as 30,000 indigenous people have been blocking road and river traffic, demanding the repeal of presidential decrees issued last year to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement. According to the indigenous leaders, several of these decrees directly threaten indigenous territories and rights. After having attempted several times to negotiate with the government the repeal of the most egregious of the decrees, and faced with a permanent influx of extraction equipment into the region, the people decided it was imperative to "put their bodies in front of the machines" in order to prevent this equipment from entering their territory.

On Friday, June 5, the government decided the protests needed to end and launched an aggressive assault against the people protesting on the road outside of Bagua. The dislocation was conducted from helicopters and the ground, with police and army using automatic weapons and heavy equipment against people armed with only rocks and spears. As videos, photos and testimonies from the region slowly emerge, it is clear that this was designed to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, and deter those in other regions from continuing protests. Pictures circulating on the Internet depict snipers in uniform firing at protesters from the streets, tanks and from on top of buildings. On Saturday, in Lima, Peru's capital, a large spontaneous demonstration in support of the Amazonian indigenous was broken up by police.

In the wake of what appears to be a massacre perpetrated by the police, the government of President Alan Garcia is mounting a massive propaganda campaign, claiming that indigenous protesters attacked the police, and accusing them of being terrorists. Human rights lawyers have accused Peru's government of a cover-up, and have been impeded from getting in to investigate more fully. The Bishop's Vicariate for the Environment for Jaen, Nicanor Alvarado, said "The main problem is that injured and deceased civilians are being transferred to the "El Milagro" military base ... so, it's possible that a group of injured and deceased people are disappeared later on."

Credible accusations are emerging that the police are systematically disappearing civilian bodies by burning or throwing then in rivers. Right now, people in the region are preparing lists of those missing to document the large number of civilians disappeared. Amnesty International has issued a warning expressing concern for the scores of demonstrators who were detained last weekend.

Continue reading

http://www.truthout.org/061109B





http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2009/06/105777.shtml

REPEAL THE PERU FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

ACTIVISTS CHAINED THEMSELVES TO DOORS OF CHUCK SCHUMER'S OFFICE BUILDING IN PROTEST OF HIS VOTE FOR THE PERU FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

A One World Order, and happiness for All, unless you disagree, then you are not needed.

The United States - Peru Trade Promotion Agreement was signed on April 12, 2006. Eighty percent of U.S. exports of consumer and industrial goods to Peru and more than two-thirds of current U.S. farm exports to Peru will be duty-free immediately upon entry into force of the Agreement. This comprehensive free trade agreement will eliminate other barriers to goods and services, promote economic growth, and expand trade between the two countries.

http://www.ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/peru-tpa/final-text

Absurdity: A Dick and Jane Porn Story

The story of how Don Rumsfeld met his demise because of Dick Cheney's dog (revised edition)

The title (above) is the link to the article

The Unsolved Murder of Robert F. Kennedy

The new issue of Paranoia is now posted on the website.

Please Pre-order now by paypal, or send $7 to the address at the website.


http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/


Featuring Shane O’Sullivan on Bobby Kennedy and Sirhan-Sirhan

Interview with Shane O’Sullivan on Irish talk show, author of "Who Killed Bobby? The Unsolved Murder of Robert F. Kennedy". O'Sullivan also has produced a documentary, "RFK Must Die." http://www.rfkmustdie.com/






“RFK Epilogue” - Shane O’Sullivan’s update to “RFK Must Die” featuring new audio evidence that suggests a second gunman fired the shot that killed Bobby Kennedy. http://www.rfkmustdie.com/






1st of eleven parts by Discovery Channel. A sound recording of Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, unknown to the world for 39 years, is found and analyzed. Did the second gun belong to security guard, Thane Cesar?

It's raining tadpoles in Japanese town

Fafrotskies! Where are you, Charles Fort?

"People speculate that a waterspout picked them up and dropped them from the air," said an official at a local weather observatory. "But from a meteorological point of view, I have to say it is most unlikely."



Meteorologists in Japan say the rainy season has just started in Tokyo, but residents in a small coastal town have reported a different phenomenon -- tadpoles dropping out of the sky.

An office clerk in Nanao said he first noticed the anomaly when he heard a dull thud in a parking lot last week, news reports said. Looking around, he saw about 100 dead amphibians splattered on car windshields and the ground.

More reports followed from bewildered residents in Nanao.

"People speculate that a waterspout picked them up and dropped them from the air," said an official at a local weather observatory. "But from a meteorological point of view, I have to say it is most unlikely."

"We have checked the weather conditions of last week, thinking gusts of wind might have hit the area but confirmed no damage," he said. "To be honest, I don't think it was anything caused by a weather condition."

Similar events -- in what is sometimes called the "Fafrotskies" phenomenon, short for "fall from the sky" -- have been reported around the world, with whirlwinds passing over water bodies and picking up frogs, jellyfish or other unfortunate animals before dumping them back to earth. –

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-06-10-its-raining-tadpoles-in-japanese-town

William Bramley Interviewed in 2008 by Linda Moulton Howe

I was just wondering whatever happened to William Bramley and came upon this great interview by Linda Moulton Howe

This one is 2 of 3 and is really awesome!

Was Horus Crucified?

By D.M. Murdock

In my book Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection, I delve deeply into various parallels between the Jewish godman Jesus Christ and the Egyptian gods Horus and Osiris. Along with the claim that Horus was born on "December 25th" or the winter solstice of a virgin called Mery comes the contention that he was "crucified between two thieves," as Jesus is depicted to have been in the New Testament. Although I included this motif in my book The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, this assertion does not originate with me but can be found in older sources, as highlighted in Christ in Egypt ("CIE"), which contains a 40-page chapter on the subject entitled "Was Horus 'Crucified?,'" with 120 footnotes citing primary sources as well as the works of respected Egyptologists and other scholars in relevant fields. This chapter in CIE also provides 18 images to illustrate the various points, such as the abundance of Pagan gods and goddesses in cruciform or cross shapes.

The list of sources cited in the chapter "Was Horus 'Crucified?'" includes: ancient Egyptian primary sources such as the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, Book of the Dead and other artifacts; the writings of the ancient historians Herodotus and Plutarch, philosophers Plato and Philo, and the Egyptian priest Horapollo; the Bible; noncanonical early Christian writings such as the Epistle of Barnabas, Acts of John and Acts of Pilate; the writings of early Church fathers Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Minucius Felix; Gnostic writings; Coptic writings such as the Kebra Nagast; the Catholic Encyclopedia; the works of modern Egyptologists Drs. Erik Hornung, Raymond O. Faulkner, Jan Assman and Barbara S. Lesko; and the works of various theologians, historians and other professional scholars such as Pope Benedict XVI, Jean Doresse, Joseph Campbell, Dr. Roger Beck and Dr. Tryggve N.D. Mettinger.

Even with all of the scholarship put together in Christ in Egypt, there remains much confusion concerning this subject, because many people erroneously believe that the contention is that Horus or Osiris were killed via crucifixion, as allegedly happened to Jesus. In actuality, the most common myths concerning the deaths of Osiris and Horus are that the former was rent into pieces, while the latter was stung by a scorpion, after which both were resurrected. In this regard, the same Greek word used by historian Diodorus Siculus in the first century BCE to describe Horus's resurrection - anastasis - is utilized by later biblical writers in the New Testament to depict Christ's resurrection (e.g., Mt 22:23).

It needs to be emphasized that the claim is not that Horus was a human being thrown to the ground and nailed to a piece of wood. In CIE, I discuss the etymology of the word "crucify," which comes from the Latin crucifigere, composed of cruci/crux and affigere/figere, meaning "cross" and "to fix/affix," respectively. Crucifigere and its English derivation "to crucify" mean "to fix to a cross," but not necessarily to throw down and nail to a piece of wood. What we are interested in, then, is whether or not pre-Christian gods and goddesses were depicted as fixed to a cross or in cruciform, appearing as a crucifix. This motif of a pre-Christian or non-Christian god or man on a cross or cross-shaped is expounded upon by the Church fathers Tertullian (c. 160-c. 200) and Minucius Felix (2nd-3rd cents.). In his Apology (16), Tertullian remarks:

"We have shown before that your deities are derived from shapes modelled from the cross. But you also worship victories, for in your trophies the cross is the heart of the trophy. The camp religion of the Romans is all through a worship of the standards, a setting the standards above all gods. Well, as those images decking out the standards are ornaments of crosses. All those hangings of your standards and banners are robes of crosses." (Roberts, ANCL, 85)

The place where Tertullian had "shown before" his contentions about the Pagan gods being cross-shaped was in his work Ad Nationes (12), in a lengthy treatise which includes the following remarks:

"...The Heathens Themselves Made Much of Crosses in Sacred Things; Nay, Their Very Idols Were Formed on a Crucial [Crosslike] Frame.

"...your gods in their origin have proceeded from this hated cross... if you simply place a man with his arms and hands outstretched, you will make the general outline of a cross...." (Roberts, ANF, III, 122)

In his Octavius (29), Minucius echoes the same sentiment:

"...The Egyptians certainly choose out a man for themselves whom they may worship... Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for. You, indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods. For your very standards, as well as your banners, and flags of your camp, what else are they but crosses gilded and adorned? Your victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross, but also that of a man affixed to it." (Roberts, ANF, IV, 191)

Continue reading at:

http://stellarhousepublishing.com/washoruscrucified.html

Extra! Extra! David Carradine: Killed By An Illuminatus?

Loren Coleman exposes the secret:

David Carradine may have been killed by an illuminatus, a supposed enlightened one, even if the victim also turns out to be the perpetrator. Maybe he was murdered because he had become a "seeker"? Carradine, it appears, was investigating "secret societies."

It turns out:

“While this image may be graphic, it seems to have certainly thrown into doubt the "cover story" by local law enforcement in Bangkok that this was a clear-cut suicide. Carradine's hands, bound, are shown over his head, and how one could tie up their own hands is now being questioned.”

Read here:

http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/

Is “Animal Rights Terrorism” really on the rise in North America?

sent to me by Jason Miller

According to Fox News “Animal Rights Terrorism” is on the rise in North America.

Is it rather animal abuse awareness that’s on the rise?

From The North American Animal Liberation Press Office

http://www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/

Says Jason Miller; "One of the primary reasons the North American Animal Liberation Press Office exists is to counter-balance mainstream media distortions like this one."

Fox News (Fair and Balanced???)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525039,00.html

So who are the terrorists here?

Answers provided by Jason Miller

Julie Leyva recently submitted some questions to the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. Jason Miller wrote the reply:

5/26/09

What is your occupation and for how long?

There are four of us serving as press officers for NAALPO:

Jerry Vlasak is a board certified trauma surgeon, a former vivisector, and a seasoned animal liberation activist who speaks, writes and debates on behalf of nonhuman animals. Jerry co-founded NAALPO and has been a board member of Sea Shepherd and the spokesman for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Camille Hankins has over 20 years of corporate marketing and management experience; co-founded Win Animal Rights (WAR), a group dedicated to shutting down Huntingdon Life Sciences, in 2004; founded the New York Animal Liberation Front Supporters in 2003; and is heavily involved in outreach to educate the public about the underground animal liberation movement.

Lin Bingham works as a writer and graphic designer. He is a vehement advocate of total liberation, including humans, nonhuman animals and the Earth. He specializes in “propaganda and agitation” and is willing and available to speak anytime one or more persons are willing to listen.

Jason Miller started with NAALPO about two months ago and is the newest press officer. I have worked as a supervisor in a call center for nine years where I've cultivated respectable problem-solving, conflict resolution, and communication skills. An ardent and seasoned animal liberation activist, I also founded the notoriously radical blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, in 2004. TPC has become a popular site for activists to go for education and inspiration and to interact via comment threads. Like Lin, I too am a writer who specializes in “propaganda and agitation.”

What is the Animal Liberation Front all about?

I'll begin with NAALPO's disclaimer:

Disclaimer: The Animal Liberation Press Officers do not engage in illegal activities, nor do they know any individuals who do. Neither does this website or the Press Office intend to encourage illegal actions. Rather, the Press Office receives and posts communiqués from anonymous parties and provides comment to the media.

Since there isn't a way to contact individuals working underground (their identity is not known to anyone in the aboveground movement), the use of communiques is one way the underground communicates with the public at large. Communiques can be sent directly to anyone including the press, underground support groups, aboveground animal rights groups, etc.

Because the individuals who engage in underground actions cannot reveal their identities to anyone, a North American Animal Liberation Press Office has been created to try to answer some of the questions as to why these actions may have been carried out, and to place the actions in a historical and philosophical context. Since we do not engage in illegal activities ourselves, we do not know the details of these actions, but we can try to the best of our ability to give you a better understanding of why a particular action may have been carried out.

Now, about the ALF:

The Animal Liberation Front is a grass-root, underground, militant direct action group that frees nonhuman animals from laboratories, fur farms, factory farms and other places in which they are imprisoned and tortured. Besides rescues, the ALF also engages in the destruction of equipment and property used in the oppression and exploitation of other animals.

Rooted in the UK's hunt saboteur movement in the mid-1970s, the ALF is anarchist in structure, meaning there is no conventional leadership or central organization. Anyone who is a vegan and commits an act of sabotage against animal exploiters or frees other animals (while taking the necessary precautions to avoid taking a human life) can rightfully consider themselves a member of the ALF.

In the tradition of the Underground Railroad, John Brown, and the Jewish anti-Nazi resistance, the courageous members of the ALF are freedom fighters, fighting for those who cannot fight for themselves.

And they have been effective, as evidenced by the fact that they've cost the animal exploitation complex hundreds of millions of dollars since their inception and by our corporatist government's foaming-at-the-mouth response to their actions. The FBI has labeled the freedom fighters of the ALF, who are engaged in extensional self-defense of nonhuman animals—sentient beings whom are being holocausted at the rate of billions per year— the “number one domestic terrorist threat.” So who are the terrorists here? Animal-defending members of the ALF or ruthless animal-slaughtering corporations and their government protectors?

Why do scientists test on animals?

There are four principal reasons that scientists continue to test on nonhuman animals, despite the availability of other means of conducting research and testing. These include:

— Money : Like most aspects of the pernicious socioeconomic paradigm of capitalism, the number one driving force behind vivisection is money. Vivisection (nonhuman animal testing) is big business for the companies that supply nonhuman animal research subjects (by capturing them or by breeding them in captivity); manufacture and supply cages, food, lab equipment and other accessories; and that do the actual research and testing. Researchers (vivisectors) who work for public institutions (like universities) and perform vivisection, can obtain federal grant money much more readily than those who don't do animal testing. Institutions and universities have also grown dependent on the large grants they receive for vivisection.

– Careerism : Because grant money is readily available and because institutions rely so heavily on that grant money, researchers who pursue nonhuman animal advance their careers much more readily than those who don't. Also, in the “publish or perish” environment of academia, employing the widely accepted practice of vivisection greatly enhances a researcher's chances of getting published.

— Inertia : Nonhuman animal testing is a practice dating back to the nineteenth century. While an immediate conversion to other means of research and testing may be unrealistic, there are many viable avenues scientists could pursue to eventually eliminate the abjectly immoral practice of torturing nonhuman animals in the interest of “science.” However, as is the case in most instances, there is a tremendous amount of resistance to radically changing the status quo. Vivisection has been the prevailing method of drug, procedure, and product testing for over a century and as new scientists are educated and trained, they are indoctrinated to believe that animal testing is both necessary and morally acceptable. Vivisection has become dogma. Therefore convincing scientists to embrace other means of research will be no easy task.

– Corporate cowardice : Corporations continue to employ nonhuman animal testing on their products to shield themselves from tort liability. If a human consumer of their products is harmed, injured, or killed, a corporation hides behind the defense that it tested the product on nonhuman animals and “determined it was safe.” Also, the FDA requires pharmaceutical manufacturers to rigorously test their drugs on other animals before beginning human clinical trials. Thus as is usually the case, the corporate-state complex sacrifices life to protect property and profit.

If we do not test on animals then what should we test on?

There are a host of research methods and technologies, both extant and developing, that do not involve vivisection and which have proven to be effective or potentially effective. These include but are not limited to: clinical and epidemiological studies (which revealed the cause and effect relationship between smoking and lung cancer after years of animal testing did not); human autopsies, biopsies, and post-mortem studies; post-marketing studies of drugs and other products; imaging scans (that have produced significant anatomical and physiological discoveries); in vitro and tissue culture tests; computer models; biochips containing human enzymes and cells, which can be used to predict how a human body will respond to a drug; specific types of human cells cultivated from embryonic stem cells; and tissue models to replicate human organs. While it is true that there is no ideal means of testing new drugs, medical procedures, foods, or consumer goods, vivisection is a barbaric practice that needs to end on moral grounds and can, from a pragmatic standpoint, be replaced by equally efficacious techniques.

Who/what do companies that do not test on animals test on?

I covered this in my answer to number four. Your question raises a valid point though. The fact that there are companies that do not employ animal testing ( http://search.caringconsumer.com/ offers a search feature which identifies companies that DO and companies that DO NOT test on other animals) provides further evidence that vivisection is an unnecessary and malevolent practice that can and should end.

Is there anything out on the market that has been tested on animals that is safe for humans?

Sure, there are plenty of products which have been tested on other animals that have proven to be safe for humans. However, in addition to the fact that nonhuman animals feel pain and experience suffering like humans, thus making vivisection abjectly immoral, there are vast physiological, genetic and behavioral differences between humans and other animals, making nonhuman animal testing very unreliable in terms of predicting the effect a product will have on people. Thus there are also many products that were tested on nonhuman animals which have proven to be highly detrimental or lethal to humans. For instance, adverse prescription drug reactions are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States.

What are alternatives to animal testing?

Please see my response to question 4. Again, let me emphasize that the transition from the prevailing paradigm of vivisection will not be simple, and may not happen immediately, but it is morally imperative that we end the torment and murder of other animals for money, career advancement, those who fear change, and corporate protection from lawsuits.

I also recommend that you read “Alternative Methods To What?” by Prof Pietro Croce at http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Animal%20Testing/Vivisection/AlternativetoWhat.htm

Jason Miller is a relentless anti-capitalist, vegan straight edge, animal liberationist, and press officer for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. He is also the senior editor and founder of Thomas Paine's Corner.


http://www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/essays/2009-05-25_whoaretheterrorists.htm

help I'm alive!

To Devin LaRue,

Welcome Home after three months in the hospital getting new heart valves!

Here's to many happy years, even though you say it beats too loud . . .

This song is for you!

My Life as a Joke Personal Ad

the title is the link :)

Econocide: A Silent (and Violent) Epidemic

by Nick Turse

After David B. Kellermann, the chief financial officer of beleaguered mortgage giant Freddie Mac, tied a noose and hanged himself in the basement of his Vienna, Virginia, home, The New York Times made it a front-page story. The stresses of the job in economic tough times, its reporters implied, had driven him to this extreme act.

"Binghamton Shooter" Jiverly Wong also garnered front-page headlines nationwide and set off a cable news frenzy when, "bitter over job loss," he massacred 13 people at an immigration center in upstate New York. Similarly, coverage was brisk after Pittsburgh resident Richard Poplawski, "upset about recently losing a job," shot four local police officers, killing three of them.

But where was the front-page treatment when, in January, Betty Lipply, a 72-year-old resident of East Palestine, Ohio, "who feared she'd lose her home to foreclosure hanged herself to death" shortly after "receiving her second summons and foreclosure complaint from her mortgage lender"? And where was the up-to-the-minute cable news reporting on the two California dairy farmers who "killed themselves ... out of despair over finances, according to associates"?

Last summer, in the pages of the Nation magazine, Barbara Ehrenreich called attention to people turning to "the suicide solution" in response to the burgeoning financial crisis. Months later, major news outlets started to examine the same phenomenon. Last fall, a TomDispatch report on suicides and a range of other extreme acts - including self-inflicted injury, murder, arson, and armed self-defense - in response to foreclosures, evictions, bankruptcies, and layoffs, was followed, months later, by mainstream media attention to the notion of "econo-cide" - prompted, in large part, by a spate of familicides (murder/suicides in which both parents and their children die).

While it's impossible to know the myriad factors, including deeply personal ones, that contribute to people resorting to drastic measures, violent or otherwise, many press reports suggest that the global economic crisis has played no small part in a range of extreme acts.

An analysis by TomDispatch of national, regional, and local news reports in 2008 and early 2009 indicates that a silent, nationwide epidemic of drastic measures may be underway. News of such acts linked to economic woes - from armed robberies to pay the rent to financially-motivated suicides - has filtered out of cities and towns in no less than 30 states, many of which have seen multiple incidents. And since only a fraction of such acts ever receives media coverage, what is being reported, even if mostly in local newspapers, qualifies as startling.

Continue this sad story here

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175079

USA Military = Christian Taliban

Scary stuff folks, the title is the link...

Homeland Security

by Don Grabau, http://www.starpathvisions.com

9/11 STRANGE COINCIDENCES

1: Unknown to JFK on 3/13/62, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on Lyman Lemnitzer's Operation Northwoods, a plan to blow up a US airplane, committing terrorist murders against U.S. citizens on American soil, and blaming it on Cuba to justify an invasion there. Kennedy demoted Lemnitzer 11/'62, and was assassinated 11/22/'63 (ABC News 05/1/'01)

2: In 1975, President Ford appointed Lemnitzer to the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States (aka the Rockefeller Commission) to investigate whether the Central Intelligence Agency had committed acts that violated American laws.

3: 2/3/'64: WTC Engineer John Skilling issued white paper analysis stating WTC would survive Boeing 707 hitting it at at 600mph. (Seattle Times 2/27/'93)

4: Design of the structural framing of the 1,350-ft high Twin Towers gave the exterior columns great reserve strength, > 2,000% increase before failure (Engineering News Record 4/2/64)

5: John Hinckley, George HW Bush's associate who shot President Reagan in 3/30/'81, is the 'black sheep' of the family

6: The technology to fly a Boeing 720 remotely-controlled existed in 1984 (NASA)

7: Saddam, then a recipient of massive US military aid, said frigate USS Stark was mistaken as Iranian and refused a US request to interview the Iraqi pilot after a 17/5/1987 missile attack killed more than a sixth of the crew and almost sunk it. (Robert Fisk 12/31/'06)

8: From 1987 to 2000, Dov Zakheim was CEO of System Planning Corp (SPC). Through subsidiary Tridata Corp, oversaw the investigation after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. He had access to the buildings blueprints

9: SPC sells the Command Transmitter System, a remote control system for planes, which allow an operator to control a pilotless aircraft or drone within about 40 miles of the active transmitter (SPC)

10: SPC sells a radar simulator for target acquisition used by US Navy, the Ballistic Missile Defense Org (BMDO) Countermeasure Group, and DARPA (SPC)

11: SPC sells the Flight Termination System, a system used to destroy target drones in the event of malfunction or "misses" (SPC)

12: George H W Bush gave his speech calling for a New World Order on 9/11/90, eleven years before 9/11/01

13: George Bush succeeded in business only after the investment of reputed al Qaeda financiers Salem bin Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz. The bin Ladens and Bushes are family friends; Osama is the 'black sheep' of the family. (Forbes 3/18/'02)

14: 5/24/95: Only 150 lbs of explosives leveled the OK City Murrah Building's significant remains as planned, leaving the adjacent parking structure intact (AP, 5/24/95)

15: Unocal rep testified before congress in Feb 98 that an Afghan pipeline needed a stable Afghan gov't and asks the US to use its influence to end conflicts there (Washington Post 10/5/98)

16: 2/20/'98: Project for New American Century (PNAC) called for a war in Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein (Wikipedia)

17: On 2/23/98 bin Laden proclaimed from his Afghan redoubt, "To kill Americans ... is an individual duty of every Muslim", to this day his strongest link to 9/11. (Al-Quds al-'Arabi, 2/23/98)

18: Left-handed Osama bin Laden was declared the US taxpayer's No. 1 fugitive. On 8/20/98 you wrecked just thousands of dollars' worth of his obstacle courses, field barracks, and tents with $79 million in cruise missiles, voiding any US claim that 9-11 was unprovoked (New Yorker, 1/24/'00)

19: In the 11/98 issue of Foreign Affairs, Philip Zelikow, part of President Bush's transition team in 2000-2001, speculated in an article, Catastrophic Terrorism that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had succeeded, "an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history [involving] loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America's fundamental sense of security ... The United States might respond with ... scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow ... Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently." (Wikipedia)

20: Bin Laden was a CIA asset, with al Qaeda cells fighting alongside the US in the Balkan conflict as recently as 1999

21: Unocal suspended Afghan pipeline work in Aug '98 due to political instability (Unocal)

22: Filming began in March 2000 for The Lone Gunmen's 'pilot' episode that depicts a US plot to crash an electronically hijacked Boeing 727 into WTC and blame foreign terrorists to provoke war and increase military's budget (Kansas City Star, 3/'01)

23: PNAC, 2000: need for a 'new Pearl Harbor' to advance militaristic plans, by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearle, Dov Zakheim, Feith, Bill Kristol and others (Rebuilding America's Defenses, p. 51 (2000))

Continue at

http://www.nc911truth.org/911_Coincidences.html

Popery

Sotomayor would be 6th Catholic on Supreme Court

NEW YORK-If Judge Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed to the U.S Supreme Court, she will be the sixth Roman Catholic of the nine justices. On the high court, Sotomayor would join a group of regular Mass attendees: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Justice Anthony Kennedy regularly attends the annual Red Mass, a worship service for Catholics in the legal field, in the Archdiocese of Washington. Two other justices--Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer--are Jewish. When Justice David Souter, an Episcopalian, soon retires, Justice John Paul Stevens will be the lone Protestant.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_rel_sotomayor_catholics

A little known period of mid-19th century American history concerns the "Know Nothing" movement, or American Party, which popularized the notion of a Roman Catholic or Vatican conspiracy directed against WASP America. Samuel Morse (1791-1872), the inventor of the single-wire telegraph and Morse code, even wrote a book called: "Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States", describing the plot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing_Party

War is Sin

By Chris Hedges

The crisis faced by combat veterans returning from war is not simply a profound struggle with trauma and alienation. It is often, for those who can slice through the suffering to self-awareness, an existential crisis. War exposes the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. It rips open the hypocrisy of our religions and secular institutions. Those who return from war have learned something which is often incomprehensible to those who have stayed home. We are not a virtuous nation. God and fate have not blessed us above others. Victory is not assured. War is neither glorious nor noble. And we carry within us the capacity for evil we ascribe to those we fight.

Those who return to speak this truth, such as members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, are our contemporary prophets. But like all prophets they are condemned and ignored for their courage. They struggle, in a culture awash in lies, to tell what few have the fortitude to digest. They know that what we are taught in school, in worship, by the press, through the entertainment industry and at home, that the melding of the state’s rhetoric with the rhetoric of religion, is empty and false.

The words these prophets speak are painful. We, as a nation, prefer to listen to those who speak from the patriotic script. We prefer to hear ourselves exalted. If veterans speak of terrible wounds visible and invisible, of lies told to make them kill, of evil committed in our name, we fill our ears with wax. Not our boys, we say, not them, bred in our homes, endowed with goodness and decency. For if it is easy for them to murder, what about us? And so it is simpler and more comfortable not to hear. We do not listen to the angry words that cascade forth from their lips, wishing only that they would calm down, be reasonable, get some help, and go away. We, the deformed, brand our prophets as madmen. We cast them into the desert. And this is why so many veterans are estranged and enraged. This is why so many succumb to suicide or addictions.

War comes wrapped in patriotic slogans, calls for sacrifice, honor and heroism and promises of glory. It comes wrapped in the claims of divine providence. It is what a grateful nation asks of its children. It is what is right and just. It is waged to make the nation and the world a better place, to cleanse evil. War is touted as the ultimate test of manhood, where the young can find out what they are made of. War, from a distance, seems noble. It gives us comrades and power and a chance to play a small bit in the great drama of history. It promises to give us an identity as a warrior, a patriot, as long as we go along with the myth, the one the war-makers need to wage wars and the defense contractors need to increase their profits.

But up close war is a soulless void. War is about barbarity, perversion and pain, an unchecked orgy of death. Human decency and tenderness are crushed. Those who make war work overtime to reduce love to smut, and all human beings become objects, pawns to use or kill. The noise, the stench, the fear, the scenes of eviscerated bodies and bloated corpses, the cries of the wounded, all combine to spin those in combat into another universe. In this moral void, naively blessed by secular and religious institutions at home, the hypocrisy of our social conventions, our strict adherence to moral precepts, come unglued. War, for all its horror, has the power to strip away the trivial and the banal, the empty chatter and foolish obsessions that fill our days. It lets us see, although the cost is tremendous.

Continue reading

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090601_war_is_sin/

Selling War

And the facebook account was free!

I saw this on CNN this morning. CNN was pushing it. The program had propaganda written all over it.


U.S. military takes Afghanistan mission online

(CNN) — The U.S. military is taking its Afghanistan mission into cyberspace, launching social-networking efforts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It’s the “first-ever effort by the military in Afghanistan to engage nontraditional audiences directly with news, videos, pictures and other information from Operation Enduring Freedom,” according to a news release from the military.

As of early Tuesday, the Facebook page had drawn nearly 5,000 followers, following about two weeks of testing and its official launch on Monday. Messages of appreciation poured in, along with well wishes for service members’ safety. The multimedia effort is aimed at "rapidly delivering an unfiltered view of the war from troops on the ground, and opening a two-way dialogue with people around the world interested in the Afghanistan mission," the military said.

http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/02/u-s-military-takes-afghanistan-mission-online/

$100 Billion for War

Democrats agree on $100 billion for war funding

02 June 2009
WASHINGTON-A House Democrat aide says top House and Senate Democrats have reached a tentative agreement on a nearly $100 billion war funding bill, with a generous new line of credit for the International Monetary Fund. At the core of the measure is President Barack Obama's war spending request, which included $76 billion for Pentagon operations.
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_12498971

The Managing Director of the IMF is Dominique Strauss-Kahn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn

Remember all that pretentious dissimulating nonsense during the 2008 campaign about the Democrats being "anti-war"? But as long as the masses are absorbed with childish millionaire pro-sports players, "The Apprentice", "Dancing With the Stars", "The Bachelor", "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!", Twitter and BlackBerries you can do anything. Where have all those phony anti-war Hollywood actors and actresses gone?

PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader Book

Dear Paranoia Reader, Advertiser, Author, Subscriber:

In 2008, 525 magazines ceased publication; in 2007, about 590 closed shop. In addition, the largest magazine distributor in the U.S. filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 27, 2009:

http://www.mediafinder.com/public.cfm?page=pressReleases/525MagazinesCeasedPublicationIn2008

http://delawarebankruptcy.foxrothschild.com/tags/source-interlink-bankruptcy/

In truth, the magazine is not a viable format in a shrinking economy, since the unsold copies are destroyed by the retailers and never returned to the publisher. Although we pay to print all of them, in this economy more than half are destroyed. It’s paper waste on a grand scale. As a result of this downward trend, the next issue of PARANOIA (August 2009, #51) is the last issue we will publish in the magazine format.

But Don’t Worry - Be Happy!

In response to the shifting horizon, Paranoia is changing to a more sustainable “print-on-demand” book format. It will be just as easy, if not easier, to obtain PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader Book.

It will be available from paranoiamagazine.com, or by mail at P.O. Box 1041, Providence, RI 02901. It will also be available from amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and any book store. Book stores or book catalogs may purchase the book from Ingram or Baker & Taylor.

At this time, we have the following information:

· PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader Book will contain the same cutting edge political commentary, interviews, paranormal and UFO articles, fringe ideas and Paranotes. Each volume will be like a double issue of the magazine.

· Planned publication date: April 2010 (Volume 1). Size: 7.5 X 9.25, approx. 140 pages, frequency 1X per year. No subscriptions available. Price per volume: $14, plus $2 shipping. (ISBN 978-0-615-29995-2)

· There will be no ads in the book. Advertisers, please contact devinlarue@gmail.com for very affordable web ad rates.

· Please expect the August issue of Paranoia (Issue 51) by late August. In the meantime, our back issues are available as usual, and we have some very nice package deals here: http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/backissues.html

· You can pre-order issue 51 at www.paranoiamagazine.com by paypal, or send $7 to Paranoia, PO Box 1041, Providence, RI 02901-1041, specifying issue 51.

If you’re a current subscriber, you will be informed in the August issue of PARANOIA on how to convert your subscription to PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader Book. If you’re not a subscriber, advertiser, author or illustrator in this issue, please send $7 for issue 51 to the above address. Otherwise, you won’t receive a copy of the magazine.

Please spread the word! Got any questions? You can ask here.

The next issue of Paranoia will explain how to convert your subscription to the new Conspiracy Reader Book. Also check the website in a few days for an update on that.

Thanks!

Goodbye GM, by Michael Moore

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=248

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true -- that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.

9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.

100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front -- and the back -- seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The President -- and the UAW -- must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.

So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Argentina: "Invasores" (Invaders) - Alejandro Agostinelli's New Book

Source: Los Andes On-Line
Date: May 31, 2009

Argentina: “Invasores” (Invaders) - Alejandro Agostinelli’s New Book
By Mariana Guzzante

Journalist Alejandro Agostinelli has published a book that reopens the legendary UFO case that bewildered Mendoza in 1968. It is being displayed today in our province. This documentary history is a review of Argentinean sightings that involve Chupacabras, little green dwarves and spiritism. There is a revival of alien culture: “V” is returning to television, and the Star Trek remake is on top of the box office. The invaders are among us once more.

It isn’t hard to picture Alejandro Agostinelli – an interesting journalist, a tracker of mysteries – scouring through the X-Files of this part of the world.

His book is somewhere between the pleasure of the chronicle and the flashback of an archive. That’s how this project should have started. Editorial Sudamericana has recently published it under the name “Invasores”, and that’s how it ended. Over 300 pages written with the perfect excuse of narrating Argentina’s most startling extraterrestrial sightings, including the famous case involving “little green men” that caused an uproar in local ufology in ’68.

A journalist may delight in sleuthing across the paranormal landscape; for he protagonists of these events – the contactees – it is an exhumation of an extreme experience.

For that reason, both Agostinelli and the voices of the protagonists of the close encounter that shook the region in the late ‘60s will be here tonight, journalist Miguel Titiro among them.


A Contactee Event In the Heartland

A couple vanishes in Chascomús and appears instantaneously in Mexico, as though written in the script for the movie “Jumper”. Two employees of the Casino de Mendoza encounter little green men and have a telepathic experience with them; a team of Buenos Aires spiritists makes contact with an “engineer” from Ganymede, the largest moon of Jupiter. A woman named Silvia Perez founds the “Museo del Ovni” in Victoria, Entre Rios.

The stories told in “Invasores” appear to avoid falling into ufological fervor, but nonetheless insert a disquieting description: “true stories”, as stated on the cover. You mean they’re real? “Yes,” says the author, “because these are documented stories. The reader may enjoy the recollections and experiences of their protagonists while having solid historical data at hand. None of the stories is unreal. All of these have appeared in the press, in newscasts and eventually in books on the subject.”

Thus, with several first-person accounts that are sheer narrative gold, Agostinelli chose 11 invasions. What will be the outcome of reading this book, now that the subject of aliens feels slightly retro? “No idea, that’s another mystery,” says the author. It may be, perhaps, a fine opportunity for taking out the folding chair and watching the skies again.

Che Ovni

It is clear that this is a work charged with comparative paranoia, hallucination and longing.

Furthermore, these accounts include the Chupacabras, [the subterranean city of] Erks, tours of Mount Uritorco and strange abductions like that of Zulma Fayad. There is even a translation of “Martin Fierro” (Argentina’s national epic – ed.) into “Varkulets”, an unusual alien lingo. And a constant appears. Unlike other countries, which point to Mars or Venus as the alien homeland, Argentineans connect more closely with visitors from Ganymede, one of the Jovian satellites.

“UFOs, the stories woven around them, and their effect upon culture. Those are the subjects to which I devoted the greatest time and passion throughout my life, “ Agostinelli says frankly.

And how did you come to choose the cases? How did you know that these were the stories, and not others?

”These were the ones that had the greatest impact on me while I studied the subject of UFOs. Furthermore, by having worked on TV documentaries, I have a rather visual training. I know which stories are the most attractive, involving and suggestive. My criteria for selection were double. Moreover, all of the stories had to reveal unknown aspects in the lives of their protagonists. On the other hand, each story should be worthy of a motion picture. If for any reason (a lack of information, the inability to access direct witnesses, that sort of thing) they didn’t click, they went right back to the inkwell.”

It’s hard not to ask which case affected you the most.

“There are two open-ended adventures that contain the hardest mysteries to digest. One of them is the so-called Vidal Case, which began with a news item published in June 1968. It told the story of a couple driving along the road from Chascomus, Province of Buenos Aires, when they drove into a fog bank and lost consciousness. Later, the couple and their car reappeared in Mexico City. In this case I learned that the motion picture “Che Ovni” had been shot almost a year earlier. This film, directed by Anibal Uset, starts with a couple teleported by a flying saucer from Buenos Aires to Madrid, car and all. It opened two months after the Vidal Case. This couple was never found and it’s unlikely they ever existed. But as with all legends, the controversy endures. Anibal uset cannot categorically prove that he created the case to promote his movie. In any event, my book contains hints that support his claim. It is followed, no doubt by the Mendozan question involving the Casino workers.

How did you trace the route to be followed?

“Like I said, once I chose the stories, I arranged them in a more or less chronological order. At other times, I added stories according to geographic proximity. I went to Mendoza in an effort to locate Juan Carlos Peccinetti and Fernando Villegas, the Casino workers, but also other possible protagonists of what appears to have been a prank, based on a clue I was given in Mar del Plata.
Then I visited Chile, where I interviewed physicist and mathematician Pablo Kittl Duclout, the nephew of brothers Jorge and Napy Duclout, who is the only surviving relative of the first Argentinean contactees.

“In the early Fifties, Jorge and Napy were spiritists. During their séances, a spirit they identified as a “talented engineer” would talk to them about life on Ganymede, the planet Jupiter’s largest satellite. I was delighted to find out who was the engineer who contacted them, but I won’t tell you. That’s the end of the story and it would ruin it. The first trip involved climbing to the roof of the Kavanagh Building, where they were summoned to appear by the commander of a saucer that was supposed to arrive from Jupiter. I also visited Santa Rosa, because La Pampa is the homeland of the wave of cattle mutilations that unleashed in 2002, and the city of Victoria, Entre Rios, where Siliva Pérez Simondini’s Museo OVNI operates.”

The fact is that Alejandro found the Earthlings to be infinitely more complex and fascinating than the aliens.

Parenthesis one: “Aníbal Uset was the first Argentinean filmmaker who toured the world to shoot a comedy based on the extraterrestrial rumors of the Sixties, and even more with Martin Rappalini, who was a the time a young writer accused of “concealing the truth” about the legendary marital abduction. These stories merited another chapter.
El Muñeco Mateyko, Pipo Mancera, Javier Portales, Cuchuflito, Jorge Sobral, Marcela López Rey, Erika Wallner and Perla Caron starred in the movie version of the story. A relic? Yes indeed. The odyssey had a musty smell to it until I learned that Catherine Fulop had starred in a Nineties remake of the movie. In Spain, she was also convinced that she’d been transported by aliens.”

Parenthesis two: Pablo Kittl Duclout, the physicist from the Andean foothills, informed the researcher to the fascinating destiny that awaited his uncles, the protagonists of the first announced UFO sighting from the rooftop of the Kavanagh Bulding in 1954). Apparently, an advanced spirit had revealed to them the existence of a higher technology. “Those disclosures were so extraordinary that they inspired Napy to film Argentina’s first 3D motion picture, “Buenos Aires en Relieve (1954),” notes Alejandro.

Three: “I also visited the nursing home where Martha Green now lives. A lovely old lady who was whisked away from Earth in the 1950s by Enis, her interdimensional lover, while her husband, a military man in the Perón regime, was embattled by the Aramburu dictatorship.”

How distant is “Invasores” from ufology?

“I wouldn’t say “light years away” because that would be a wisecrack. But I don’t think that I could’ve written a book like this while I was an ufologist. Or when I was a militant skeptic. I believe that the right distance is having realized that the protagonists were the people I was interviewing. And I chose the first person to take over my own subjective approach.

What about Fabio Zerpa?

Zerpa is convinced that the ones that appear in his stories are aliens. I’m convinced of the existence of human beings, and some of them claim having had experiences involving extraterrestrials.

So, do you or don’t you believe in alien life?

It’s not whether I believe or don’t. It may exist. But in that case, I imagine them as being too smart. To the extent that I doubt they’d bother visiting Earth. Perhaps, if they read “Invasores” they’ll find we’re a very interesting species.

(Translation (c) 2009, Scott Corrales IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Planeta UFO)