There is something ominous about the current wave of attacks on
Christian and Muslim religious sites in and around Jerusalem. The
pro-Israel media asserts that these attacks are the handiwork of an
extremist fringe. This is not the case. They are part of a determined
policy carried out by, for and with the approval of the Israeli
government, under army and police protection.
While Israel's occupation authorities, as a matter of routine, obstruct
Palestinians from worshipping in Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third most sacred
in Islam, they allow illegal Jewish settlers to enter in order "to
perform religious rites". No right-thinking mind would accept this
parody. And yet, last Friday, for the first time since the occupation
began in 1967, soldiers were stationed on the rooftop of the main prayer
area of Al-Aqsa (in the area of the silver dome).
It does not take much to figure out that if Al-Aqsa Mosque had any value
to these Jews, they would never commit acts of profanity and indecency
therein. If they really had any religious affinity to the Noble
Sanctuary, they would show due reverence and respect. Instead, they
think that having military might and the power to deface and destroy the
mosque gives them ownership rights; it doesn't. Nothing alters the fact
that Al-Aqsa and it's environs belong to the Muslims, including the
so-called "Wailing Wall", whose ownership was determined by a British
Mandate inquiry before Israel was created in Palestine. Similarly, the
discussions currently taking place in the Knesset to ban the Muslim call
to prayer (adhan) in Jerusalem and Israel will not change anything,
other than illustrate further the increasingly racist and extremist
nature of the Israeli state.
As distressing as the current situation in Al-Aqsa Mosque may be, it is
not unique. Similar acts of desecration are perpetrated daily against
Christian and Muslim religious sites throughout historic Palestine. This
week saw the defilement of the Baptist church in Jerusalem where
insulting remarks against Mary, the mother of Jesus, were scrawled on
its walls. The fate of Al-Hamra Mosque in Safad and Al-Mujadalah Mosque
in Akka are other examples. Such is the rule of law and religious
freedom in democratic Israel - 'the light unto nations'.
The timing of this escalation is not without significance. It comes amid
growing international concern with the situation in Syria. The
Netanyahu government has decided to seize the opportunity to complete
the Judaisation of occupied Jerusalem. Despite several Security Council
resolutions (476 and 478) declaring its 1980 Basic Law 'null and void',
the Israeli parliament recently started discussions to amend the law to
make Jerusalem the capital of all Jewish people wherever they be.
Al-Aqsa Mosque, however, remains a major obstacle toward this symbolic
objective. It has always been the heart of the holy city of Jerusalem.
Netanyahu and his extremist coalition government hopes that by provoking
confrontation and creating disorder, it will have a pretext to impose
order and a division of the mosque, as Israel has done over the years at
the Mosque of Abraham in Hebron, and restrict access even further for
Muslims to fulfill their religious obligations and worship.
As is usually the case, Israel's Western allies, Britain included,
remain in thrall to the pro-Israel Lobby and indifferent to its
outrages. Eight months ago, the Cameron government prevented Sheikh Raed
Salah from completing a speaking tour in the United Kingdom on the
pretext that the issue of Al-Aqsa was 'sensitive' and Salah's discourse
was likely to create community tensions. When challenged in court, the
Home Secretary claimed that Mr. Salah's warnings about Israel's ulterior
motives towards Al-Aqsa Mosque were untrue. After this week's public
calls by Jewish settlers' leaders for material help to destroy the
mosque, it would be interesting to hear what Theresa May has to say now.
Putting aside the motives, it is now evident that the future of Al-Aqsa
Mosque has become one of the central issues of the conflict in
Palestine. For decades, Israelis asserted there was no religious
dimension to the conflict in the Holy Land; that it is only about
politics. By attacking Al-Aqsa Mosque in the manner that they have, the
Israelis have committed a fateful blunder from which they will emerge
the losers. There is only one Al-Aqsa. It may be in Palestine but it
does not belong to the Palestinians. Nor does it not belong to the 300
million Arabs. It is the sanctuary of 1.4 billion Muslims the world
over.
Thus, when a Palestinian leader delivers a Friday sermon in Al-Azhar
Mosque in Cairo, as Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh did this week, and
women stand side-by-side with their menfolk at the doors of Al-Aqsa to
defend it's sanctity, it means that something fundamental has changed in
the dynamics of the conflict. The troika masquerading as a democratic
government in Israel, led by the triad of Netanyahu, Lieberman and
Barak, may continue to deny this but it is only a matter of time before
they realise the folly of their racist policies and see the inevitably
devastating results. Israel has indeed committed a fateful blunder.
Afghans
shout slogans during anti-US protest over burning of Qurans at a
military bass in Afghanistan, in Ghani Khail, east of Kabul Friday, Feb.
24,2012. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
February 26, 2012
(updated below)
Most American media accounts and commentary
about the ongoing violent anti-American protests in Afghanistan depict
their principal cause as anger over the burning of Korans (it’s just a book: why would people get violent over it?) — except that Afghans themselves keep saying things like this:
Protesters
in Kabul interviewed on the road and in front of Parliament said that
this was not the first time that Americans had violated Afghan cultural
and religious traditions and that an apology was not enough.
"This is not just about dishonoring the Koran, it is about disrespecting our dead and killing our children,"
said Maruf Hotak, 60, a man who joined the crowd on the outskirts of
Kabul, referring to an episode in Helmand Province when American Marines
urinated on the dead bodies of men they described as insurgents and to a
recent erroneous airstrike on civilians in Kapisa Province that killed eight young Afghans.
"They always admit their mistakes," he said. "They burn our Koran and
then they apologize. You can’t just disrespect our holy book and kill our innocent children and make a small apology."
Members of Parliament
called on Afghans to take up arms against the American military, and
Western officials said they feared that conservative mullahs might
incite more violence at the weekly Friday Prayer, when a large number of
people worship at mosques.
"Americans are invaders, and jihad against Americans is an obligation," said Abdul Sattar Khawasi, a member of Parliament
from the Ghorband district in Parwan Province, where at least four
demonstrators were killed in confrontations with the police on
Wednesday.
The U.S. has violently occupied their country for more than a decade. It has, as Gen. Stanley McChrystal himself explained, killed what he called an "amazing number" of innocent Afghans in checkpoint shootings. It has repeatedly — as in, over and over — killed young Afghan children in air strikes. It continues to imprison their citizens for years at Bagram and other American bases without charges of any kind and with credible reports of torture and other serious abuses. Soldiers deliberately shot Afghan civilians for fun and urinated on their corpses and displayed them as trophies.
Meanwhile, the protesters themselves continue to be shot, although most American media accounts favor sentences like these which whitewash who is doing the killing: "running clashes with the police that claimed the lives of another five Afghan protesters" and "in Nangarhar Province, two Afghans protesting the Koran burning were shot to death
outside an American base in Khogyani District" and "protesters angry
over the burning of Korans at the largest American base in Afghanistan
this week took to the streets in demonstrations in a half-dozen
provinces on Wednesday that left at least seven dead and many more injured." Left at least seven dead: as As’ad AbuKhalil observed, "notice that there is no killer in the phrasing."
It’s
comforting to believe that these violent protests and the obviously
intense anti-American rage driving them is primarily about anger over
the inadvertent burning of some religious books: that way, we can
dismiss the rage as primitive and irrational and see the American
targets as victims. But the Afghans themselves are making clear that
this latest episode is but the trigger for — the latest symbol of — a
pile of long-standing, underlying grievances about a decade-old,
extremely violent foreign military presence in their country. It’s much
more difficult to dismiss those grievances as the by-product of
primitive religious fanaticism, so — as usual — they just get ignored.
UPDATE: Beyond all these points, it’s perversely fascinating to watch all of this condescension — it’s just a book: who cares if it’s burned? – pouring forth from a country whose political leaders were eager to enact a federal law or even a Constutional amendment to make it a criminal offense to burn the American flag (which, using this parlance, is "just a piece of cloth"). In fact, before the Supreme Court struck down
such statutes as unconstitutional in 1989 by a 5-4 vote, it was a crime
in 48 states in the nation to burn the flag. Here is what Chief Justice
William Rehnquist wrote in dissent about why the Constitution permits the criminalization of flag burning (emphasis added):
The
American flag, then, throughout more than 200 years of our history, has
come to be the visible symbol embodying our Nation. It does not
represent the views of any particular political party, and it does not
represent any particular political philosophy. The flag is not
simply another "idea" or "point of view" competing for recognition in
the marketplace of ideas. Millions and millions of Americans regard it
with an almost mystical reverence, regardless of what sort of social, political, or philosophical beliefs they may have.
Might
one say the same for Muslims and the Koran? Along those lines, just
imagine what would happen if a Muslim army invaded the U.S., violently
occupied the country for more than a decade, in the process continuously
killing American children and innocent adults, and then, outside of a
prison camp it maintained where thousands of Americans were detained for
years without charges and tortured, that Muslim army burned American
flags — or a stack of bibles — in a garbage dump. Might we see some
extremely angry protests breaking out from Americans against them? Would
American pundits be denouncing those protesters as blinkered, primitive
fanatics?
No Explanation for Mysterious ‘Lake Music’ Reported by Many Yellowstone Visitors (BELOW)
There are several locations around the world
known for their iconic sounds. Most
famous are the hums of Taos, Bristol, and Bondi. Now comes the news that
America's most famous
national park is haunted by ethereal bells around its namesake lake.
Rarely mentioned yet known for years, the elusive source of these unique
sounds has yet to be teased out by anyone. Halfway across
the globe a Mysterious Night Time Noise Plagues Derry.(BELOW) Even
more reports are popping up about strange noises in the night sky with
no clear answers. Authorities are keeping mum and
playing dumb as civilians cover their ears hoping to catch, at least,
twenty out of forty winks. Could Big Brother be behind the Unexplained Sounds?
(BELOW) Nick
Redfern quotes Linda Howe on Coast to Coast speculating that the Defense
Department may be trying to direct sound waves directly into people's
minds, a topic Redfern wondered about himself in his book Final Events.
No explanation for mysterious ‘lake music’ reported by many Yellowstone visitors
139
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Some
Yellowstone National Park visitors have reported hearing odd sounds in
the skies above Yellowstone Lake on clear days in the early mornings.
(Ruffin Prevost/Yellowstone Gate)
By Ruffin Prevost
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — Yellowstone Lake and the rugged
backcountry that surrounds it is a place where millions go seeking
solitude and silence. Yet it in a well-documented but rarely discussed
phenomenon, some visitors to the Lake area have experienced remarkable
celestial sounds of unknown and unexplained origin.
“They resemble the ringing of telegraph wires or the humming of a
swarm of bees, beginning softly in the distance, growing rapidly plainer
until directly overhead, and then fading as rapidly in the opposite
direction,” wrote Hiram M. Chittenden in 1895 in his book, “The Yellowstone National Park.”
Chittenden’s description is one of several in the historical record —
as well as many more from popular anecdotal accounts — of strange
sounds or “lake music” coming from the skies around Yellowstone Lake and
Shoshone lake.
Hiram
M. Chittenden built roads and bridges in Yellowstone National Park and
wrote a book for visitors called "The Yellowstone National Park."
Chittenden was an accomplished engineer with rigorous scientific
discipline who built roads and bridges in the park, as well as locks in
Seattle’s Lake Washington Ship Canal. He was not given to idle
speculation or unsubstantiated gossip about seemingly magical events.
But he is hardly the only — or even the first — prominent Yellowstone
visitor to write about the strange and unexplained lake sounds.
Edwin Linton, a professor of biology at Washington and Jefferson
College and a specialist in marine parasites was working in Yellowstone
in the summer of 1890 as part of a project for the U.S. Fish Commission.
Linton, his colleagues and his guides heard the mysterious sounds more
than once during that trip, and he drew from his own diary entries when
he wrote an account of the odd experience for the Nov. 3, 1893 edition of the prestigious journal Science.
“On the following morning, we heard the sound very plainly,” Linton
wrote. “It appeared to begin directly overhead and to pass off across
the sky, growing fainter and fainter towards the southwest. It appeared
to be a rather indefinite, reverberating sound, characterized by a
slight metallic resonance.”
Linton and others have described the sounds as “harp-like” or similar
to human voices or the sound of metal cables crashing against each
other, but no satisfactory explanation has yet been offered for their
origin.
Lee Whittlesey, historian at Yellowstone Park and a longtime resident
of the region, said that the Yellowstone Lake sounds aren’t often
discussed by park insiders.
“There are a number of pieces written about it, but it’s often deeply buried in the literature,” he said.
Despite how far-fetched the phenomenon sounds, Whittlesey said he’s
confident the sounds have existed and the historical accounts about them
are credible.
“It has been reported by too many people for it to be any kind of Bigfoot thing or something like that,” he said.
Respected scientists and prominent park figures have reported hearing
the sounds, and accounts have appeared in books, journals and
newspapers, Whittlesey said, although the last new written report may
have been as far back as the 1930s.
Typically, accounts of the sounds state that they take place at or
near Yellowstone Lake or Shoshone Lake on a clear day when there is
little or no wind and the waters are still, usually in the morning.
Frank
Bradley, in tent, relaxes with his colleagues in Yellowstone National
Park during an 1872 geological expedition. Bradley reported hearing
strange sounds along the shore of Yellowstone Lake.
Geologist Frank H. Bradley explored and documented Yellowstone’s
natural wonders as a member of the Hayden Expeditions, and wrote in 1873
about hearing odd sounds along the shore of Yellowstone Lake.
“While getting breakfast, we heard every few moments a curious sound,
between a whistle and a hoarse whine, whose locality and character we
could not at first determine, though we were inclined to refer it to
water-fowl on the other side of the lake,” Bradley wrote in his account of the geologic survey of the area.
“I have listened for it because I found it so interesting,” said
Whittlesey, who has lived and worked around Yellowstone for more than 35
years.
“I first learned of it in the early 70s, and over the years kept
running into references to it here and there,” he said. “So I listened
for it any time I was camped in the backcountry anywhere near
Yellowstone Lake or Shoshone Lake, and I never have heard it.”
Terry Dolan, a tour guide based in Cody, Wyo, said he has not only
never heard the sounds, but was not familiar with details of the
historical accounts of them.
There have been various explanations proposed for the sounds, ranging
from fanciful speculation to educated guesses, often centered around
the park’s unique geology.
An August 1930 article in Popular Science magazine cited “mild
earthquakes, their sounds possibly magnified in underground caverns like
sound boxes” as one potential explanation.
The article also referenced a theory put forward by F. C. Marvin,
chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau, who based his ideas on observations by
Glen Jefferson, a Yellowstone meteorologist.
Marvin noted that temperature inversions are not uncommon above
Yellowstone Lake, where warmer air above the lake sits atop cooler air
near the water’s surface.
He posited that such inversions “may alter the normal way that the
air conducts sound,” the article states. “It might produce sound
mirages, in which distant noises of geysers, birds or steamboats might
appear to come from near at hand.”
A
frozen horizon hangs in the far distance as cloudy skies loom over
frozen Yellowstone Lake. At least one scientists believes temperature
inversions over the lake may explain why some Yellowstone National Park
visitors hear odd sounds there.
Other theories are referenced dismissively by Stephen Forbes, of the
Illinois State Natural History Survey, who wrote about hearing the lake
sounds while on the same expedition as Linton.
“No scientific explanation of this really bewitching phenomenon has
ever been published, although it has been several times referred to by
travelers, who have ventured various crude guesses at its cause, varying
from that commonest catch-all of the ignorant, ‘electricity,’ to the
whistling of the wings of ducks and the noise of Steamboat Geyser,”
Forbes wrote. “It seems to me to belong to the class of aerial echoes,
but even on that supposition I cannot account for the origin of the
sound.”
If the sounds are related to the park’s geology, they come and go
along with thermal features like geysers or hot springs, which wax and
wane over years or even decades depending on a complex set of natural
factors.
It’s possible that some people in recent years have heard the sound
but kept mum about it for fear of sounding foolish or being ridiculed,
Whittlesey said, but for whatever reason, the lake sounds are not a
topic most guides discuss with visitors.
“I was a tour guide and a ranger naturalist, and I don’t remember
ever using it in a program,” Whittlesey said. “It’s just not something
that is well known among Yellowstone interpreters or Yellowstone tour
guides.”
Despite the lack of any recently documented lake sounds and the lack
of a solid explanation for them, Whittlesey is sure the sounds existed
as described.
“I feel quite certain these people all heard what they wrote about,” he said.
------------------------------------------
Published on Wednesday 22 February 2012 17:35
People in Derry are being plagued by a mysterious noise coming from the air, it has been claimed.
SDLP MLA Pat Ramsey says scores of
people are being kept awake by unexplained activity in the night sky -
and the noise it creates.
He says if it is caused by police or military activity then the authorities must offer an explanation.
“I
have received a number of calls from concerned residents who have been
unsettled and whose sleeping pattern is being affected by what can only
be described as a relentless and disturbing buzzing noise in the Derry
sky over recent days,” he says.
“There has been an issue
regarding the use of the PSNI Helicopter that has been frequently
deployed which has caused annoyance, and I have been in contact with the
Police Air Support Unit to ascertain some information in respect of the
deployment of the helicopter.
“That having been said, the
helicopter has not been visible in recent days when this noise has been
reported, and is obviously operating at a high altitude.
“If
the PSNI confirm they are not responsible for the noise, then it is
only logical, given enquiries that I have carried out, that the British
Army are responsible for the operation of whatever device is causing
grief to my constituents. I intend to write to the Secretary of State
to confirm if this is indeed the case, as the presence of the noise is
causing considerable anxiety.”
He added:”We need answers to
these important questions and I do intend to continue to pursue
statutory agencies to find out who is responsible.”
In three half-hour segments, investigative reporter Linda Moulton Howe
discussed the large number of strange and unexplained horn-like sounds
filling the air since March 2011 and possible causes. The phenomenon
surfaced after a number of videos were uploaded on YouTube from such
divergent places as Norway, Costa Rica, Tennessee and Kiev, Ukraine (BELOW).
Recently, Linda interviewed two witnesses in Tennessee, who in separate
locations, heard the Kiev-like horn sounds on January 18-19, 2012. One
of the witnesses, retired real estate agent Cindy Smith was packing her
car for a trip when the air was filled with the Kiev horn sounds coming
from every direction. The strange sounds lasted about 30 seconds and
left Cindy frightened, wanting to know what happened.
A woman inTopeka, Kansas (BELOW) told Linda she was awakened on September 3,
2011 at her Perry Lake vacation home by the sound of "a television
turned on in the distance with voices we could not make out." Yet, as
she and her husband discovered, no television was on in their home when
the sounds were heard. (BELOW). In January 2012, an Azerbaijan geophysicist named Elchin Khalilov released an article
in which he suggested the strange sounds people are hearing are related
to "acoustic-gravity waves caused by powerful solar flares and plasma
emissions from the sun." However, when Linda interviewed NASA solar
physicist David Hathaway he doubted that solar activity could be
connected with the sounds. Read her full interview with him.
Linda raised an interesting hypothesis-- "what if some of the strange
sounds heard around the world...were part of an American government test
of what some have called 'voice of God' weapons?" Around the time of
9-11, there were rumors that the Defense Dept. wanted to try sending
directed sound waves into the minds of Middle East terrorists, she
noted. Linda also presented a report
on the increased number of dolphins stranded and dying in Cape Cod
& the New Jersey shore since January 2012. She spoke with marine
biologist Trevor Spradlin who found the incidents to be unprecedented
and perplexing.
“Like An Old TV Playing in the Distance,”
September 3, 2011, 3 AM Central,
Lake Perry, Kansas
Perry Lake is about 30 miles northeast of downtown Topeka, Kansas.
Topeka, Kansas, is upper left red circle. Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee,
are lower right red circles.
One Kansas couple picked out
the Norway video as the closest they could come to what sounded to them
like a “muffled TV set in the distance.” The sound woke them up on
September 3rd, 2011. Maura Dingman, the wife, sent me an email about
their strange experience.
Maura is 54-years-old and has lived in the Topeka, Kansas, region all
her life. Her husband, Bud, is 64, and the couple have made a living
selling properties and restoring houses. At the end of 2010, they
purchased a summer house at Perry Lake that is about 30 miles northeast
of their Topeka home. That’s where they were Labor Day weekend on
September 3rd, 2011, when Maura was the first awakened around 3 AM by a
very strange sound that went on for at least fifteen minutes.
Maura Dingman, 54, Topeka, Kansas about Labor Day weekend strange sound at Perry Lake vacation home:
“What I first was hearing I thought was the television on upstairs - and not just on, but loud. But it wasn't the TV.
Typically when I'm downstairs, I don't hear the television at all
actually - just never usually that loud and so that was kind of weird,
but I thought, ‘Did it come on on its own?’ I thought, ‘Well, I've got
to get up and let the dogs out, but first I'm going to go up and see why
the television is on! (laughs)’
So I go upstairs and I get up there and it's not that at all (TV is
off). And I'm baffled. After I discovered it wasn't TV, I went back
downstairs because we have sliding doors out of the bedroom into a
little fenced area for the dogs. And when I got outside, I heard the
noise in a clearer way and I could not tell where it was coming from. It
was just strange - echoey - and when I say echoey - it just had a kind
of everywhere quality to it. It made me think of the echo of a muffled
television.
I kept trying to tell myself, ‘Someone has a window open and there's a
TV on, but gosh, it's loud!’ You know, in this setting we all have at
least a half acre of ground the way the houses are situated, so my
closest neighbor is up the hill a bit and all their lights were out. I
don't know what the sound was except to say that it was strange!
So I sat there for a good ten or fifteen minutes trying to - it just
really affected me because it was an odd sound. (laughs) It was an
echoey somewhat mechanical sound, which television is. You just hear
that quality, that electronic waaaa waaa type of a sound.
THIS WAS A SOUND THAT WAS CHANGING THE WAY VOICES WOULD CHANGE IF YOU WERE HEARING A TV IN A BACKGROUND?
I couldn't make anything out, you know? But yet I kept trying to
think that it was voices. (Maura mimics again). You know, it sounded
like television and I know this is going to sound strange, but at the
time I kept thinking like old television - like childhood television
sounds. It haunted me because it was such a strange event.
Maura's Husband Woke Up, Too,
and Thought TV Was On
And to go on, I stayed out and listened and then finally went back in
and my husband was asleep. As it turned out the next morning, I'm
telling him about this and he says, ‘'Well, I heard that, too, and I
went upstairs.’ And this is a man who is deaf in his left ear and was
sleeping on his good ear. Typically when that is happening, if the phone
rings by his bed or even if the alarm goes off in the morning, he never
hears it. I have to wake him up. So, that was strange.
SO HOW DID HE HEAR THE SOUND?
I know! (laughs) With him, once he can turn that good ear, he said he
heard the sound and thought also that it was television and so he went
upstairs to find that our television was not on. It was a strange experience at 3 AM in the morning!
Maura's Nephew in Los Angeles
Heard Kiev-Type Sound
And I didn't know anything about all this sound stuff around the
world at the time until December 2011 when my nephew from California,
who I had just hooked up with Facebook like a week before. He posted
after - I think it was December 1, 2011, a little after 1 AM. And he
woke up to high winds and went outside and heard these strange sounds,
trumpet sounds, in the night.
November 30 to December 3, 2011, powerful Santa Ana winds gusting
near 100 mph knocked over trees in the Los Angeles, California region,
including
this Redlands home on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. IPhone image by Brian Weed.
He did not record and he posted on Facebook the next morning. A bunch
of his friends said, 'Oh, I heard that, too!' He's young, like
23-years-old. He linked it to this Kiev video, so that really caught my
attention - the trumpet sounds that people have been experiencing in
different places. He linked it to this Kiev video that so many people
have seen.
And that was my first time to see that. And in that process as
YouTube does, it made other suggestions including this video from Norway
(September 23, 2011) and that's when I found something that really was
very similar to what I experienced that night. And my husband agreed
that it sounded a lot like what he thought he heard as well. But the
point that it reminded me was about 34 seconds into the video and
it kind of almost sounds like muffled voices. And I would love an
explanation as I'm sure everybody would!
LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING, MAURA. WHEN I HEAR THAT YOU AND YOUR
HUSBAND BOTH WENT UPSTAIRS THINKING THAT THE TV WAS LEFT ON - OR HAD
COME ON - WHAT COMES INTO MY MIND IS A SOUND OF VOICES TALKING, BUT
THAT NEITHER YOU NOR YOUR HUSBAND COULD MAKE WORDS OUT OF WHAT SOUNDED
LIKE TELEVISION PEOPLE TALKING.
Yeah, I would say that is definitely true because that night when I
did go outside, I kept trying to figure it out. And it did have that
quality, but yet we never heard any particular words - kind of an old
television sound.
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT - WHATEVER THESE SOUNDS ARE - IS COMING TO US
FROM SOMETHING THAT IS DIRECTING OLD TELEVISION PROGRAMS AT US, BUT IN A
GARBLED FASHION? OR ARE TRYING TO GET OUR ATTENTION WITH VARIOUS SOUNDS
THAT MIGHT MAKE HUMANS PAY ATTENTION FOR REASONS THAT ARE UNKNOWN?
That's an interesting thought I hadn't really thought of - that's
like projecting things back at us they think might make some sense - or
at least have people react.
And then I listened to some of the other videos from other places
and that Norway one really - that's when I went to my husband and said,
‘Listen to this. Does this remind you at all of that night?’ And he
agreed that it somewhat did for him.”
“Voice of God” Weapon?
What if some of the strange sounds around the world were part of an
American government test of what some have called “Voice of God
weapons”? Around the time of 9/11, there were rumors that the Defense
Department wanted to try directing sound waves into the minds of Middle
East terrorists as the voice of Allah that would order terrorists to put
down their suicide belts.
Wired.com published a July 6, 2008, article entitled “The Microwave
Scream Inside Your Skull,” which described the U. S. Army's effort to
develop a non-lethal microwave weapon that would create sounds inside
human heads. That project was called MEDUSA - an acronym for Mob Excess
Deterrent Using Silent Audio. A beam of microwaves would be turned into
sound as the waves interacted with the target’s head. Nobody else can
hear the microwave sound unless they are in the beam as well. But the
shock to the target's skull was more likely to make MEDUSA a death ray
and allegedly that project was dropped.
However, last week Wired.com writer Noah Shachtman described a brand
new DARPA “Magic Plan: ‘Battlefield Illusions’ to Mess with Enemy
Minds.” DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the U.
S. Department of Defense responsible for the development of new
military technology. Schachtman reported that on February 13, “DARPA
introduced a new $4 million investigation into technologies that will
manage the adversary's sensory perception in order to confuse, delay,
inhibit or misdirect his actions.”
The goal of “Battlefield Illusion” electro-optical warfare is to find
ways to “jam laser-based communications and sensor systems - just like
today's radio frequency jammers mess with cell phones and radars.”
-------------------------------------------- THE KIEV SOUNDS
Larry Sand – John William Pope Center January 4, 2012
There are many reasons for the
lamentable state of education in the United States today, but perhaps
none is greater than our schools of education.
My experience at California State
University, Los Angeles in the 1980s was typical. The courses were easy.
Rigor was non-existent. I took eleven courses for credit, receiving ten
As and one B and never once feeling intellectually
challenged. There was typically an easy mid-term and a final and a paper
(which was supposed to show that I knew how to deliver a lesson).
Sometimes the courses were like being
back in grade school. I had a lot of fun in my methods classes,
especially in Physical Education, where we played games all period.
The required course work included ten
weeks each of classes in music and art, but science and social science
were combined into one five-week class. A basic course in classroom
management, something that would have been a great benefit to future
teachers, was non-existent.!!!!!
Rather than focusing on the best
techniques for teaching students the skills and concepts they need,
professors drummed into us that we should not “drill and kill,” nor be
the “sage on the stage,” but instead be the “guide on the side” who
“facilitates student discovery.”!!!!! The children’s feelings were to be
engaged first and foremost. Legions of students who have had teachers
who were trained in these progressive techniques can barely add or read,
but they probably have extremely high self-esteem.!!!!!
By the time I got to the classroom, I felt less prepared to teach than the day I began Cal State.
“Whole language” was the regnant theory
of the day. It drops the traditional, successful, phonics method of
teaching reading and replaces it with a “holistic” approach in which
students are taught to use “critical thinking strategies” to guess the
meaning of words they don’t recognize. It was a disaster for student
reading ability, but is still prominent in education schools today.
(Whole language advocates have taken to calling it by other names, such
as “balanced literacy.”)
Then, in the 1990s, the fad of
multiculturalism took hold and it has grown to epidemic proportions.
Teachers-to-be were forced to learn about this ethnic group, that
impoverished group, this sexually anomalous group, that
under-represented group, etc.—all under the rubric of “Culturally Responsive Education” (CRE).
CRE means “understanding that one’s way
of thinking, behaving, and being is influenced by race, ethnicity,
social class, and language.” Prospective teachers are required to
examine their own “sociocultural identities” and the inequalities in
schools and society that support “institutionalized discrimination,”
whichpreserves a “privileged society based on social class and skin color.”
Those ideas, incidentally, are not
presented as theories, but as facts that are not open to question.
Education schools are thus indoctrinating their students in a
tendentious idea that encourages them to see all social problems as
stemming from “discrimination” and “privilege.”
Instead of devoting their time to learning how to teach students fractions or paragraphing,teacher candidates are supposed to inspect and confront any negative attitudes they might have toward cultural groups.This
boils down to saying that the dominant culture needs to understand that
it has been oppressing everyone else and must make amends.
Among the offshoots of CRE is anti-racist math which
has now been embraced in a number of school districts. In Newton,
Massachusetts, for example, the top objective for the district’s mathematics
teachers is to teach “respect for human differences.” Students should
“live out the system-wide core value of ‘respect for human differences’
by demonstrating anti-racist/anti-bias behaviors.” The problem is that
you can do all of that to perfection and not learn a smidgeon of
mathematics.!!!!!
In 2008, education reform professor Jay Greene showed how bad the multiculturalism problem had become. Writing in City Journal,
he and a research assistant explored the number of multicultural
classes offered in our teachers’ colleges. They counted the number of
course titles and descriptions that
“…contained the words
‘multiculturalism,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘inclusion,’ and variants thereof, and
then compared those with the number that used variants of the word
“math.” We then computed a ‘multiculturalism-to-math ratio’—a rough
indicator of the relative importance of social goals to academic skills
in ed schools.”
The results were telling.
“The average ed school, we found, has a
multiculturalism-to-math ratio of 1.82, meaning that it offers 82
percent more courses featuring social goals than featuring math. At
Harvard and Stanford, the ratio is about 2: almost twice as many courses
are social as mathematical. At the University of Minnesota, the ratio
is higher than 12. And at UCLA, a whopping 47 course titles and
descriptions contain the word ‘multiculturalism’ or ‘diversity,’ while
only three contain the word ‘math,’ giving it a ratio of almost 16.”
In my state, California, thirty percent
of students entering the formerly vaunted University of California
system now need remedial help. For the Cal State schools, which include
most of the state’s schools of education, sixty percent of the students
need remediation and for the city and community colleges a whopping 90
percent need remediation.
This means that we are not educating
children properly in our K-12 systems. The lack of rigor and misplaced
focus in education schools bear much of the responsibility.
Can our education schools be turned around?
Arizona State University, with the
largest undergraduate teacher prep program in the country, has just this
year unveiled a “radical” new program, in which students must
demonstrate mastery of specific teaching skills as measured by a popular
teaching framework. ASU is using the Teacher Advancement Program, a
model run by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching.
After examining the description of this new approach to
teacher education, I must say that it looks solid. Rather than using
the standard “touchy-feely” methods, the program employs objective
measures to evaluate teachers. It remains to be seen whether the
entrenched “progressive” forces will kill off or subvert the Teacher
Advancement Program, but it is a challenge to the status quo.
Most of our education schools have been
getting away with malpractice that would not be tolerated in any other
profession. Unless we start doing something radically different than we
have been doing, we will continue to turn out teachers who miseducate
the children of America.
Here in Moscow I recently received a dark-blue folder dated 1975. It
contains one of the most well-buried secrets of Middle Eastern and of
US diplomacy. The secret file, written by the Soviet Ambassador in
Cairo, Vladimir M. Vinogradov, apparently a draft for a memorandum
addressed to the Soviet politbureau, describes the 1973 October War as a
collusive enterprise between US, Egyptian and Israeli leaders,
orchestrated by Henry Kissinger. If you are an Egyptian reader this
revelation is likely to upset you. I, an Israeli who fought the
Egyptians in the 1973 war, was equally upset and distressed, – yet still
excited by the discovery. For an American it is likely to come as a
shock.
According to the Vinogradov memo (to be published by us in full in
the Russian weekly Expert next Monday), Anwar al-Sadat, holder of the
titles of President, Prime Minister, ASU Chairman, Chief Commander,
Supreme Military Ruler, entered into conspiracy with the Israelis,
betrayed his ally Syria, condemned the Syrian army to destruction and
Damascus to bombardment, allowed General Sharon’s tanks to cross without
hindrance to the western bank of the Suez Canal, and actually planned a
defeat of the Egyptian troops in the October War. Egyptian soldiers and
officers bravely and successfully fought the Israeli enemy – too
successfully for Sadat’s liking as he began the war in order to allow
for the US comeback to the Middle East.
He was not the only conspirator: according to Vinogradov, the
grandmotherly Golda Meir knowingly sacrificed two thousand of Israel’s
best fighters – she possibly thought fewer would be killed — in order to
give Sadat his moment of glory and to let the US secure its positions
in the Middle East. The memo allows for a completely new interpretation
of the Camp David Treaty, as one achieved by deceit and treachery.
Vladimir Vinogradov was a prominent and brilliant Soviet diplomat;
he served as ambassador to Tokyo in the 1960s, to Cairo from 1970 to
1974, co-chairman of the Geneva Peace Conference, ambassador to Teheran
during the Islamic revolution, the USSR Deputy Minister of Foreign
Affairs and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.
He was a gifted painter and a prolific writer; his archive has hundreds
of pages of unique observations and notes covering international
affairs, but the place of honor goes to his Cairo diaries, and among
others, descriptions of his hundreds of meetings with Sadat and the full
sequence of the war as he observed it unfold at Sadat’s hq as the big
decisions were made. When published, these notes will allow to
re-evaluate the post-Nasser period of Egyptian history.
Vinogradov arrived to Cairo for Nasser’s funeral and remained there
as the Ambassador. He recorded the creeping coup of Sadat, least bright
of Nasser’s men, who became Egypt’s president by chance, as he was the
vice-president at Nasser’s death. Soon he dismissed, purged and
imprisoned practically all important Egyptian politicians, the
comrades-in-arms of Gamal Abd el Nasser, and dismantled the edifice of
Nasser’s socialism. Vinogradov was an astute observer; not a conspiracy
cuckoo. Far from being headstrong and doctrinaire, he was a friend of
Arabs and a consistent supporter and promoter of a lasting and just
peace between the Arabs and Israel, a peace that would meet Palestinian
needs and ensure Jewish prosperity.
The pearl of his archive is the file called The Middle Eastern
Games. It contains some 20 typewritten pages edited by hand in blue ink,
apparently a draft for a memo to the Politburo and to the government,
dated January 1975, soon after his return from Cairo. The file contains
the deadly secret of the collusion he observed. It is written in lively
and highly readable Russian, not in the bureaucratese we’d expect. Two
pages are added to the file in May 1975; they describe Vinogradov’s
visit to Amman and his informal talks with Abu Zeid Rifai, the Prime
Minister, and his exchange of views with the Soviet Ambassador in
Damascus. Vinogradov did not voice his opinions until 1998, and even
then he did not speak as openly as in this draft. Actually, when the
suggestion of collusion was presented to him by the Jordanian prime
minister, being a prudent diplomat, he refused to discuss it.
The official version of the October war holds that on October 6,
1973, in conjunction with Hafez al-Assad of Syria, Anwar as-Sadat
launched a surprise attack against Israeli forces. They crossed the
Canal and advanced a few miles into the occupied Sinai. As the war
progressed, tanks of General Ariel Sharon crossed the Suez Canal and
encircled the Egyptian Third Army. The ceasefire negotiations eventually
led to the handshake at the White House.
For me, the Yom Kippur War (as we called it) was an important part
of my autobiography. A young paratrooper, I fought that war, crossed the
canal, seized Gabal Ataka heights, survived shelling and face-to-face
battles, buried my buddies, shot the man-eating red dogs of the desert
and the enemy tanks. My unit was ferried by helicopters into the desert
where we severed the main communication line between the Egyptian armies
and its home base, the Suez-Cairo highway. Our location at 101 km to
Cairo was used for the first cease fire talks; so I know that war not by
word of mouth, and it hurts to learn that I and my comrades-at-arms
were just disposable tokens in the ruthless game we – ordinary people –
lost. Obviously I did not know it then, for me the war was a surprise,
but then, I was not a general.
Vinogradov dispels the idea of surprise: in his view, both the
canal crossing by the Egyptians and the inroads by Sharon were planned
and agreed upon in advance by Kissinger, Sadat and Meir. The plan
included the destruction of the Syrian army as well.
At first, he asks some questions: how the crossing could be a
surprise if the Russians evacuated their families a few days before the
war? The concentration of the forces was observable and could not escape
Israeli attention. Why did the Egyptian forces not proceed after the
crossing but stood still? Why did they have no plans for advancing? Why
there was a forty km-wide unguarded gap between the 2d and the 3d
armies, the gap that invited Sharon’s raid? How could Israeli tanks
sneak to the western bank of the Canal? Why did Sadat refuse to stop
them? Why were there no reserve forces on the western bank of the
Canal?
Vinogradov takes a leaf from Sherlock Holmes who said: when you have
eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must
be the truth. He writes: These questions can’t be answered if Sadat is
to be considered a true patriot of Egypt. But they can be answered in
full, if we consider a possibility of collusion between Sadat, the US
and Israeli leadership – a conspiracy in which each participant pursued
his own goals. A conspiracy in which each participant did not know the
full details of other participants’ game. A conspiracy in which each
participant tried to gain more ground despite the overall agreement
between them.
Sadat’s Plans
Before the war Sadat was at the nadir of his power: in Egypt and
abroad he had lost prestige. The least educated and least charismatic
of Nasser’s followers, Sadat was isolated. He needed a war, a limited
war with Israel that would not end with defeat. Such a war would release
the pressure in the army and he would regain his authority. The US
agreed to give him a green light for the war, something the Russians
never did. The Russians protected Egypt’s skies, but they were against
wars. For that, Sadat had to rely upon the US and part with the USSR. He
was ready to do so as he loathed socialism. He did not need victory,
just no defeat; he wanted to explain his failure to win by deficient
Soviet equipment. That is why the army was given the minimal task:
crossing the Canal and hold the bridgehead until the Americans entered
the game.
Plans of the US
During decolonisation the US lost strategic ground in the Middle
East with its oil, its Suez Canal, its vast population. Its ally Israel
had to be supported, but the Arabs were growing stronger all the time.
Israel had to be made more flexible, for its brutal policies interfered
with the US plans. So the US had to keep Israel as its ally but at the
same time Israel’s arrogance had to be broken. The US needed a chance to
“save” Israel after allowing the Arabs to beat the Israelis for a
while. So the US allowed Sadat to begin a limited war.
Israel
Israel’s leaders had to help the US, its main provider and
supporter. The US needed to improve its positions in the Middle East, as
in 1973 they had only one friend and ally, King Feisal. (Kissinger
told Vinogradov that Feisal tried to educate him about the evilness of
Jews and Communists.) If and when the US was to recover its position in
the Middle East, the Israeli position would improve drastically. Egypt
was a weak link, as Sadat disliked the USSR and the progressive forces
in the country, so it could be turned. Syria could be dealt with
militarily, and broken.
The Israelis and Americans decided to let Sadat take the Canal while
holding the mountain passes of Mittla and Giddi, a better defensive
line anyway. This was actually Rogers’ plan of 1971, acceptable to
Israel. But this should be done in fighting, not given up for free.
As for Syria, it was to be militarily defeated, thoroughly. That is
why the Israeli Staff did sent all its available troops to the Syrian
border, while denuding the Canal though the Egyptian army was much
bigger than the Syrian one. Israeli troops at the Canal were to be
sacrificed in this game; they were to die in order to bring the US back
into the Middle East.
However, the plans of the three partners were somewhat derailed by
the factors on the ground: it is the usual problem with conspiracies;
nothing works as it should, Vinogradov writes in his memo to be
published in full next week in Moscow’s Expert.
Sadat’s crooked game was spoiled to start with. His presumptions did
not work out. Contrary to his expectations, the USSR supported the Arab
side and began a massive airlift of its most modern military equipment
right away. The USSR took the risk of confrontation with the US; Sadat
had not believed they would because the Soviets were adamant against
the war, before it started. His second problem, according to Vinogradov,
was the superior quality of Russian weapons in the hands of Egyptian
soldiers — better than the western weapons in the Israelis’ hands.
As an Israeli soldier of the time I must confirm the Ambassador’s
words. The Egyptians had the legendary Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles,
the best gun in the world, while we had FN battle rifles that hated
sand and water. We dropped our FNs and picked up their AKs at the first
opportunity. They used anti-tank Sagger missiles, light, portable,
precise, carried by one soldier. Saggers killed between 800 and 1200
Israeli tanks. We had old 105 mm recoilless jeep-mounted rifles, four
men at a rifle (actually, a small cannon) to fight tanks. Only new
American weapons redressed the imbalance.
Sadat did not expect the Egyptian troops taught by the Soviet
specialists to better their Israeli enemy – but they did. They crossed
the Canal much faster than planned and with much smaller losses. Arabs
beating the Israelis – it was bad news for Sadat. He overplayed his
hand. That is why the Egyptian troops stood still, like the sun upon
Gibeon, and did not move. They waited for the Israelis, but at that time
the Israeli army was fighting the Syrians. The Israelis felt somewhat
safe from Sadat’s side and they sent all their army north. The Syrian
army took the entire punch of Israeli forces and began its retreat. They
asked Sadat to move forward, to take some of the heat off them, but
Sadat refused. His army stood and did not move, though there were no
Israelis between the Canal and the mountain passes. Syrian leader al
Assad was convinced at that time that Sadat betrayed him, and he said so
frankly to the Soviet ambassador in Damascus, Mr Muhitdinov, who passed
this to Vinogradov. Vinogradov saw Sadat daily and asked him in real
time why he was not advancing. He received no reasonable answer: Sadat
muttered that he does not want to run all over Sinai looking for
Israelis, that sooner or later they would come to him.
The Israeli leadership was worried: the war was not going as
expected. There were big losses on the Syrian front, the Syrians
retreated but each yard was hard fought; only Sadat’s passivity saved
the Israelis from a reverse. The plan to for total Syrian defeat failed,
but the Syrians could not effectively counterattack.
This was the time to punish Sadat: his army was too efficient, his
advance too fast, and worse, his reliance upon the Soviets only grew due
to the air bridge. The Israelis arrested their advance on Damascus and
turned their troops southwards to Sinai. The Jordanians could at this
time have cut off the North-to-South route and king Hussein proposed
this to Sadat and Assad. Assad agreed immediately, but Sadat refused to
accept the offer. He explained it to Vinogradov that he did not believe
in the fighting abilities of the Jordanians. If they entered the war,
Egypt would have to save them. At other times he said that it is better
to lose the whole of Sinai than to lose a square yard on the Jordan: an
insincere and foolish remark, in Vinogradov’s view. So the Israeli
troops rolled southwards without hindrance.
During the war, we (the Israelis) also knew that if Sadat advanced,
he would gain the whole of Sinai in no time; we entertained many
hypotheses why he was standing still, none satisfactory. Vinogradov
explains it well: Sadat ran off his script and was waited for US
involvement. What he got was the deep raid of Sharon.
This breakthrough of the Israeli troops to the western bank of the
Canal was the murkiest part of the war, Vinogradov writes. He asked
Sadat’s military commanders at the beginning of the war why there is the
forty km wide gap between the Second and the Third armies and was told
that this was Sadat’s directive. The gap was not even guarded; it was
left wide open like a Trojan backdoor in a computer program.
Sadat paid no attention to Sharon’s raid; he was indifferent to this
dramatic development. Vinogradov asked him to deal with it when only
the first five Israeli tanks crossed the Canal westwards; Sadat refused,
saying it was of no military importance, just a “political move”,
whatever that meant. He repeated this to Vinogradov later, when the
Israeli foothold on the Western bank of became a sizeable bridgehead.
Sadat did not listen to advice from Moscow, he opened the door for the
Israelis into Africa.
This allows for two explanations, says Vinogradov: an impossible
one, of the Egyptians’ total military ignorance and an improbable one,
of Sadat’s intentions. The improbable wins, as Sherlock Holmes observed.
The Americans did not stop the Israeli advance right away, says
Vinogradov, for they wanted to have a lever to push Sadat so he would
not change his mind about the whole setup. Apparently the gap was build
into the deployments for this purpose. So Vinogradov’s idea of
“conspiracy” is that of dynamic collusion, similar to the collusion on
Jordan between the Jewish Yishuv and Transjordan as described by Avi
Shlaim: there were some guidelines and agreements, but they were liable
to change, depending on the strength of the sides.
Bottom line
The US “saved” Egypt by stopping the advancing Israeli troops. With
the passive support of Sadat, the US allowed Israel to hit Syria really
hard.
The US-negotiated disengagement agreements with the UN troops in-between made Israel safe for years to come.
(In a different and important document, “Notes on Heikal’s book Road
to Ramadan”, Vinogradov rejects the thesis of the unavoidability of
Israeli-Arab wars: he says that as long as Egypt remains in the US
thrall, such a war is unlikely. Indeed there have been no big wars since
1974, unless one counts Israeli “operations” in Lebanon and Gaza.)
The US “saved” Israel with military supplies.
Thanks to Sadat, the US came back to the Middle East and positioned itself as the only mediator and “honest broker” in the area.
Sadat began a violent anti-Soviet and antisocialist campaign,
Vinogradov writes, trying to discredit the USSR. In the Notes,
Vinogradov charges that Sadat spread many lies and disinformation to
discredit the USSR in the Arab eyes. His main line was: the USSR could
not and would not liberate Arab soil while the US could, would and
did. Vinogradov explained elsewhere that the Soviet Union was and is
against offensive wars, among other reasons because their end is never
certain. However, the USSR was ready to go a long way to defend Arab
states. As for liberation, the years since 1973 have proved that the US
can’t or won’t deliver that, either – while the return of Sinai to Egypt
in exchange for separate peace was always possible, without a war as
well.
After the war, Sadat’s positions improved drastically. He was hailed
as hero, Egypt took a place of honor among the Arab states. But in a
year, Sadat’s reputation was in tatters again, and that of Egypt went to
an all time low, Vinogradov writes.
The Syrians understood Sadat’s game very early: on October 12, 1973
when the Egyptian troops stood still and ceased fighting, President
Hafez el Assad said to the Soviet ambassador that he is certain Sadat
was intentionally betraying Syria. Sadat deliberately allowed the
Israeli breakthrough to the Western bank of Suez, in order to give
Kissinger a chance to intervene and realise his disengagement plan, said
Assad to Jordanian Prime Minister Abu Zeid Rifai who told it to
Vinogradov during a private breakfast they had in his house in Amman.
The Jordanians also suspect Sadat played a crooked game, Vinogradov
writes. However, the prudent Vinogradov refused to be drawn into this
discussion though he felt that the Jordanians “read his thoughts.”
When Vinogradov was appointed co-chairman of the Geneva Peace
Conference, he encountered a united Egyptian-American position aiming to
disrupt the conference, while Assad refused even to take part in it.
Vinogradov delivered him a position paper for the conference and asked
whether it is acceptable for Syria. Assad replied: yes but for one line.
Which one line, asked a hopeful Vinogradov, and Assad retorted: the
line saying “Syria agrees to participate in the conference.” Indeed the
conference came to nought, as did all other conferences and
arrangements.
Though the suspicions voiced by Vinogradov in his secret document
have been made by various military experts and historians, never until
now they were made by a participant in the events, a person of such
exalted position, knowledge, presence at key moments. Vinogradov’s notes
allow us to decipher and trace the history of Egypt with its
de-industrialisation, poverty, internal conflicts, military rule tightly
connected with the phony war of 1973.
A few years after the war, Sadat was assassinated, and his
hand-picked follower Hosni Mubarak began his long rule, followed by
another participant of the October War, Gen Tantawi. Achieved by lies
and treason, the Camp David Peace treaty still guards Israeli and
American interests. Only now, as the post-Camp David regime in Egypt is
on the verge of collapse, one may hope for change. Sadat’s name in the
pantheon of Egyptian heroes was safe until now. In the end, all that is
hidden will be made transparent.
Postscript. In 1975, Vinogradov could not predict that the 1973 war
and subsequent treaties would change the world. They sealed the fate of
the Soviet presence and eminence in the Arab world, though the last
vestiges were destroyed by American might much later: in Iraq in 2003
and in Syria they are being undermined now. They undermined the cause of
socialism in the world, which began its long fall. The USSR, the most
successful state of 1972, an almost-winner of the Cold war, eventually
lost it. Thanks to the American takeover of Egypt, petrodollar schemes
were formed, and the dollar that began its decline in 1971 by losing its
gold standard – recovered and became again a full-fledged world reserve
currency. The oil of the Saudis and of sheikdoms being sold for dollars
became the new lifeline for the American empire. Looking back, armed
now with the Vinogradov Papers, we can confidently mark 1973-74 as a
decisive turning point in our history.
ISRAEL SHAMIR has been sending dispatches to CounterPunch from Moscow.
March 31, 2008: In late 2007, Geert Wilders, a member of
Tweede Kamer (House of Representatives of the Dutch Parliament) for the
Party for Freedom, announced that he would make a 15 minute movie about
Islam. The movie intends to expose the Koran's violent and intolerant
teachings. It is also "a call to shake off the creeping tyranny of
Islamization", according to Geert Wilders. Released on March 27, 2008,
"Fitna", which is Arabic for "disagreement and division among people" or
a "test of faith in times of trial".
The movie was first mentioned by the Dutch media on November 27,
2007. Immediately, this sparked massive Muslim and leftist outrage.
Wilders was branded as a "racist" and a "bigot" although he has never
made any racist statements (Islam is a religion, not a race) or any
statements about Islam without using the Koran's own violent teachings,
which commands Muslims to kill Non-Muslims and conquer their lands. It
should also be noted that other major religions, such as Christianity,
Judaism and Buddhism, don't teach or encourage violence. Still, major
protests and countless threats began coming in from ordinary Muslims,
Islamic terrorist organizations and even Islamic governments! Iran is
even threatening to boycott the Netherlands! Al-Qaeda and several other
terrorist groups issued a Fatwa (an Islamic edict for assassination)
against Geert Wilders!
Many Western European nations were also outraged, greatly concerned
for their security, and fearful of the repeat of the Muslim response to
the Mohammad Cartoons "Controversy". In an episode almost identical to
the American comical cartoon series South Park's "Cartoon Wars", "the
Dutch government has expressed great concern about the upcoming film
release and has made emergency evacuation plans available to all its
consulates and embassies worldwide. It is also hardening security
measurements around military installations abroad." Other Western
European governments have done so too.
If all of this wasn't going far enough, Dutch citizens soon began a
"Sorry for Fitna Campaign". They literally apologized for the movie and,
in some cases, even for Geert Wilders and even his existence! What
makes all of this even more absurd and insane is the fact that a
fictional comical cartoon show, South Park, which meant to exaggerate
the Mohammad Cartoons "Controversy" in a parody, turned out to be only a
preview of the actual reality. It has shown exactly how the West
responds to crises, where their freedoms and survival are at stake. In
the South Park episode of "Cartoon Wars", the majority of South Park
tried to figure out how to best "apologize" to Islamic terrorists and
differentiate themselves from a show that would visually depict Mohammad
and ended up deciding to literally bury their heads in the sand, which,
they then actually did.
It's amazing for anyone to write an article defending free speech
and use a comical cartoon as one of their best examples but this is
where the world, especially the West, has come to and Geert Wilders has
already succeeded in exposing the West to itself. The West has buried
its heads in the sand too. Instead of supporting the release of Fitna,
regardless of whether they agree with its content or its message, many
Westerners have yielded to Islamic terrorist threats and have even sided
with the terrorists themselves, by apologizing to them for being
associated with "offensive", "hateful", "bigoted" and "racist"
individuals.
Ironically, it was not the Muslims who caused widespread panic in
the Netherlands, but leftists and the administration of prime-minister
Jan Peter Balkenende. While Wilders wanted to expose Islamic terrorism,
Balkenede's fearful actions achieved the opposite and totally
overshadowed the purpose of the movie, creating a crisis in the
Netherlands far before the release of the movie. To prevent the movie
from being released, Balkenende and his party, the CDA, examined the
possibility to sue Wilders but as Wilders made clear, he stuck to the
law. Balkenende almost called for a state of emergency, warning not only
the Netherlands but the European Union as well to "stay" calm as he
seeked assistance from the EU in case of a "crisis", failing to
understand that the EU is not meant for national issues. Balkenede
repeatedly reminded the Netherlands that Wilders' alleged views on Islam
are not shared by his administration.
What many Westerners have done is side with the enemy. Imagine if
Hitler would've threatened to invade a European country, unless it
didn't quell anti-Hitler and anti-Nazi sentiment in Public and that
country would've actually capitulated to his demands – in fact, that did
happen! Poland literally silenced those who opposed Nazi Germany,
because they feared being invaded. That method worked in making Poland
even weaker, and thus, easier for Nazi Germany to occupy. Today, the
entire West is silencing anyone who dares to criticize Islamic
terrorists in any way, due to fears of violence and terrorism along with
Economic warfare from the Islamic world!
Today, we are in the same situation as we were in the 1930s – the
ATC personally sees 2008 as a new 1938. Back then, few people realized
the Nazi threat. Today, even fewer people realize the theocratic fascist
threat by Islam! Unfortunately it apparently takes a country to be
nearly completely Islamized, as the Netherlands, for a modern Winston
Churchill to show up. In case of the Netherlands, Pim Fortuyn stood up,
created a party, and decided to eliminate the Islamic terrorist threat.
He was killed, allegedly by leftist. Hirsi Ali followed, created a
movie, "Submission", to expose the Islamic treatment of women. Ali got
expelled from the Netherlands, the director of the movie, Theo van Gogh,
got murdered by a Muslim who got "offended" by the movie.
Now Geert Wilders is continuing the battle in the Netherlands for
freedom and justice. His goal is to ensure that every single man, woman
and child understand exactly what is going on just as well as he does.
Most importantly, Geert Wilders wants to prevent another WWII. He wants
us to wake up before it's too late and to prevent any more genocides
from happening, as well as put an end to the ones that are currently in
progress. Already, theocratic fascists have killed more than 100 million
Hindus, 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 to 1923 alone, more than
100,000 Serbs, more than 100,000 Jews, 10,000+ Americans, Dutch, French,
Danish, Italians, British, Spaniards, Thais, 100,000s of Sudanese,
Australians, Russians and many others. It is these same theocratic
fascists that are threatening us with violence and terrorism. Thus, in
fact, the theocratic fascist threat should be more obvious and clear
than the Nazi threat of the 1920s and 1930s ever was to us.
Nevertheless, the release of Fitna was not only being fought from
within the Netherlands, but also outside, in particular the USA. Network
Solutions, the domain and hosting company that hosts the official
website of Lebanese theocratic fascist and terrorist organization
Hezbollah, provides the domain for the official Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
website, to mention a few, banned Wilders' Fitna website. Network
Solutions is the biggest domain name registrar in the USA.
Liveleak.com, where Wilders turned to release his movie instead,
banned, against their will, Fitna from their website after death threats
by theocratic fascists of Islam. Saying that safety comes first,
Liveleak.com has expressed their disappointment and said it was a sad
day for freedom of speech.
Interestingly, Fitna turned out to show only images we know from the
media, ranging form the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the USA to the
Islamic murder of Dutch Islam critic Theo van Gogh, alongside verses
from the Koran that call for such actions. At the end, the viewer is
reminded that in 1945, Nazism was defeated in Europe; in 1989, communism
was defeated in Europe and now, the Islamic ideology hast o be
defeated.
Balkenede, in reaction to the movie, called the movie offensive for
Muslims(!). UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, from South Korea, called
the movie "offensively anti-Islamic". It should also noted that on the
same day, South Korea recognized the existence of Kosovo as an
independent state, despite it being illegal under international laws and
despite that the Western World, led by the USA, illegally attacked
Yugoslavia in 1999, together with Al-Qaeda, to advance the goals of
Albanian Islamic theocratic fascists to establish a state in Serbia
which was planned by Mussolini and Hitler during World War 2 to gain
support from Albanian Islamic theocratic fascists.
It is imperative that this movie be released, for at stake is the
preservation of freedom of speech - our human right; the survival of
freedom, itself; the survival of Western and all other civilization; and
above all, our own survival!
Thus, the ATC announces its intentions to host Fitna. Furthermore, the ATC would be honored to do so.
Update - April 5, 2008: The ATC has obtained a copy of Fitna and it is now online. http://www.atcoalition.com/movies/fitna.php
--------------------------- The movie
Topeka, Kansas, is upper left red circle. Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee,