By Ellis Shuman July 12, 2001
According to unconfirmed media reports, Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz presented the government on Sunday with an updated plan for an all-out attack on the Palestinian Authority. The London-based Foreign Report reported that the plan calls for an invasion of Palestinian-controlled territory by some 30,000 Israeli soldiers, with the clearly defined mission of destroying the infrastructure of the Palestinian leadership and collecting weaponry currently possessed by the various Palestinian forces, and expelling or killing its military leadership.
As reported in the Foreign Report this week and disclosed locally by Maariv, Israel's invasion plan -- reportedly dubbed Justified Vengeance -- would be launched immediately following the next high-casualty suicide bombing, would last about a month and is expected to result in the death of hundreds of Israelis and thousands of Palestinians.
PA Chairman Yasser Arafat would no longer be in control in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at the end of the military action, the IDF assumes, according to the London weekly. The report also discloses the assumption that the massive Israeli military action would result in the stationing of an international peacekeeping force in the territories, but by the time that such a force would arrive, facts on the ground would be quite different, with improved security conditions for Israel.
The Foreign Report suggests that the outlook of the top echelon of IDF commanders has changed recently, and reflects the position of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who wants a more active role for the army.
Foreign Affairs Minister Shimon Peres said no such plan was ever submitted or discussed by the government. "I'm so happy to see that such an important journal has such a fertile imagination. It simply didn't happen," Peres told Army Radio.
Who would succeed Arafat?
According to the Qatari daily Al-Watan, Israel recently relayed to European officials a list of eight possible successors to Arafat. The newspaper, citing unnamed sources in London, said the list includes Palestinians who would be more flexible on the peace process than Arafat.
One of the names included on the list is Arafat's deputy, Abu Mazen. The Qatari newspaper reports that Arafat's relationship with Abu Mazen has soured, possibly as a result of Abu Mazen's meeting with high-level officials in the Bush administration whereas Arafat has been persona non grata with the Americans. Arafat reportedly feels this was an attempt by Abu Mazen and the Americans to undermine his leadership.
Peres continues to press the Israeli government into resuming a dialogue with Arafat. "It would be a mistake on our side to ignore the fact that Arafat represents the Palestinian people," Foreign Affairs Minister Shimon Peres said yesterday. "It is an illusion to think that if Arafat would go, our problems would be solved," he said.
While Prime Minister Sharon insists that he is not leading Israel into war, and that he will continue with Israel's policy of restraint in the face of repeated Palestinian terrorist attacks, he has reportedly been leading an international campaign to discredit Arafat. According to media reports, Sharon told visiting Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman last night of Arafat's direct connection and involvement in terrorist activity. This was apparently part of Sharon's message to international leaders on recent trips to Germany and France as well.
Yesterday MK Michael Kleiner (Herut) called on Israel to either assassinate or topple Arafat. Kleiner's words came in response to a Maariv article that reported Arafat instructing his forces to "kill a settler every day." Kleiner suggested replacing Arafat, even if it meant the Hamas would take his place. According to Kleiner, the entire world recognizes the Hamas as a terrorist organization so Israel's continued efforts against a radical Palestinian leadership would not be condemned.
An Israeli action against Arafat and the Palestinian Authority would not have guaranteed results, according to the coordinator of government activities in the territories, Major General Yaakov Or. In an interview with Ha'aretz, Or warned against any Israeli action aiming to replace Arafat. "History teaches us that [such actions] lead to great disappointment," Or said.
Commentators have noted similarities between the invasion plan and the one that was implemented by Sharon as Defense Minister in Lebanon during 1982. Then, too, the goal was to destroy PLO infrastructure and weapons, and to expel or kill Arafat and his armed forces. The trigger for that invasion was the assassination attempt against Israel's Ambassador in London.
Palestinians reportedly consider the Foreign Report story accurate. Mohammed Dahlan, head of the Palestinian Authority's Preventive Security in Gaza, charged that Israel is seriously considering taking military action to topple the Palestinian Authority. In a newspaper interview, Dahlan claimed that Israel already has a detailed plan of attack, but the plan would never succeed because the Palestinian people are united in support of Arafat's leadership.
Apr. 03, 2002
Hog manure overflowed from a 770,000-gallon pit at a Fulton County, Pa., farm and coursed into a stream 150 yards away, turning it black, state officials said yesterday.
The amount spilled at the south-central Pennsylvania pig farm was unknown, since investigators do not know how long the manure was overflowing before it was first reported Friday.
A Fish and Boat Commission official called the spill "rather large." George Geisler, the agency's regional manager of law enforcement, predicted "significant" environmental damage and said the farm's owner might face criminal charges.
The ground near the barn was saturated with the overflow, and a water sample from a well that supplies the pigs' drinking water tested so high for nitrates that a county lab could not record the reading, said Delmas Bard, chairman of the Brush Creek Township Board of Supervisors. The sample is being sent to a lab with more sophisticated equipment.
The farm, near Crystal Spring, has room for 2,000 hogs. It is a high-density operation in which pigs are crowded into a barn, with their manure accumulating in a giant "lagoon" underneath. Opponents of such operations have dubbed them "factory farms."
Such farms, long controversial in North Carolina and Iowa, have come under increased scrutiny in Pennsylvania, drawing the ire of environmentalists, small farmers and neighbors. Supporters say the farms are an efficient means of providing pork inexpensively to consumers.
The number of Pennsylvania farms with 2,000 or more hogs has nearly doubled in the last decade, from 100 to 190.
One environmental lawyer called the spill a case of "I told you so."
"This system of agriculture that we've given birth to is very dangerous to our health and to the environment," said Tom Linzey, head of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in nearby Chambersburg. "If you have the manure lagoons, you always have the possibility of something like this happening."
No figures
The DEP did not immediately have figures on how many manure spills occur in Pennsylvania a year. Linzey said his office received notice of about three a month but said this one appeared to be the largest he had heard of.
Bard, the township supervisor, said: "I think we're going to advise residents that live nearby to have their wells checked."
In addition to polluting wells, manure spills also can rob a stream of oxygen and kill fish. No fish kills have been reported from the unnamed waterway that is a tributary of Brush Creek. The state has designated Brush Creek a "high-quality" stream, giving it special environmental protection.
Steve Fowler, owner of the farm where the lagoon overflowed, did not return requests for comment.
State officials were at his farm, where the lagoon measures 79 feet by 203 feet, until 10 p.m. on Friday and have returned every day since.
Overflowing again
They ordered Fowler to pump out the manure remaining in the lagoon and spray it on his fields, which he did on Saturday, but when they returned on Sunday the lagoon was overflowing again, said Karen Sitler, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Using a backhoe, a contractor dug a trench to intercept any additional manure flow before it reaches the stream. As of yesterday the stream had started to run clear again, and the trench, a round hole measuring eight feet across and seven feet deep, was full, officials said.
It was unclear how much of the substance in the trench was manure and how much was rainwater, said Sara Smith Wuertenberg, manager of the county Conservation District, the agency that monitors manure application on behalf of the state.
Assigning blame
In a news release, DEP regional director Michael R. Steiner blamed the spill on "poor management practices."
Geisler, the Fish and Boat Commission official, said Fowler could be charged with a third-degree misdemeanor and could face a fine of up to $5,000, 90 days in jail, or both.
The DEP also may file civil charges, officials said. Discharging manure into streams is a violation of the state's clean-streams law.
The fish commission had been scheduled to stock trout in the Brush Creek later this month, but the manure spill may have changed things, Geisler said.
"I'm not too sure that we're going to at this point," Geisler said.
Several neighbors said they had been concerned about the farm for years but declined to be quoted by name.
Bard said several spoke angrily about the farm at a meeting Friday night. He said he understood their concerns, but he also was thinking of the farmers' livelihood.
"As township supervisors, I guess we're walking a thin line," Bard said. "We want to protect the water and the way of life for those that live in the township. We also have to consider the farmers and those that make a living in the township."
This is a bit scary as the North Carolina Pfisteria Outbreak was caused by pig poo getting into the rivers during a flood and mutating organisms in there. Effects of Pfisteria include sudden onset memory loss. Is this something we want to happen to workers at 3 mile Island nuclear reactor which is located near this river? We could end up with a scenario of an episode of the Simpsons blended with the recent episode of the West Wing.
Thursday, April 4, 2002
(THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE)
Much of Yellowstone National Park's terrain was arranged courtesy of a mammoth volcanic eruption 640,000 years ago.
The next eruption is likely to be on a decidedly smaller scale, said Robert Christiansen, a U.S. Geological Survey researcher. Christiansen discussed the potential for future eruptions in Yellowstone during a meeting in Salt Lake City on Tuesday about the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
Yellowstone features what is known as a caldera, which is a large crater formed after the volcanic event 640,000 years ago. The caldera stretches across half of the national park.
Many envision the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens as the only kind of volcanic eruption. The Yellowstone plateau's last major eruption sent about 1,000 times more lava, ash and gases airborne than the Mount St. Helens eruption.
Molten rock beneath the plateau caused enough pressure to create fractures, allowing lava to reach the surface. The caldera is created when the ground above the magma chamber collapses, since there is no material left beneath to provide support.
Christiansen, the scientist-in-charge of the volcano observatory, said it is unlikely that another devastating, caldera-forming eruption is in the works anytime soon. These massive eruptions have taken place three times over the past two million years and none in recorded history.
"It's not beyond the realm of possibility," Christiansen cautioned of a fourth major eruption. But he said a significant build-up would probably herald the arrival of such a sizable eruption.
Robert Smith, a University of Utah geologist who is a coordinating scientist for the observatory, said it is unclear what specific signs would lead up to a caldera-forming event. "I don't know what to really look for," Smith said. "It's like a surgeon making the first cut into a body -- what do you expect to see?"
Part of the observatory's purpose is to better understand Yellowstone's active volcanic system. The caldera rose several feet from the 1920s to the 1980s. The feature then fell for a decade before beginning its current rise.
Christiansen said the next volcanic activity at Yellowstone is most likely to occur outside the caldera. It would probably be an eruption of basaltic lava, the dark kind that can be found in Hawaii.
Magma churning miles underground powers park landmarks including Old Faithful and other geysers.
Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, which was created last year, is the newest of five U.S. facilities: Hawaiian Volcano Observatory; Alaska Volcano Observatory; Cascades Volcano Observatory, Vancouver, Wash., and Long Valley Volcano Observatory, Mammoth Lakes, Calif.
Smith said the Yellowstone observatory relies on seismic, Global Positioning System and satellite equipment. Data from research equipment in the field are sent to the U. for analysis.
Other areas of research discussed at the conference, which ends today, include magmatic, tectonic and hydrothermal systems.
Thoroughly unreassuring
(JerusalemPost)(March 27) - Nearly 25 years after Elvis Presley's death, two Canadian filmmakers are tackling what they believe to be two vital questions: Was Elvis Jewish and, if so, does anyone care?
To answer those questions, the Montreal-based Diversus Productions crew traveled through the American South on a journey to Memphis, and then to Israel, in summer 2000. Accompanying them was Schmelvis, a proselytizing hassidic Elvis impersonator, and Rabbi Reuben Poupko of Montreal, who served as the film's spiritual adviser.
The result of their quest is a 76-minute documentary, Schmelvis: Searching for the King's Jewish Roots, scheduled to premiere at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival in April and open to American audiences at New York's Knitting Factory in May.
The film's star is Dan Hartal, a hassid from Montreal. When he dons his rhinestone-studded white jumpsuit adorned with an oversized Star of David belt buckle and a red cape also covered with stars, he becomes Schmelvis. Although Hartal claims to have "a deep spiritual connection" with Presley, Schmelvis can often be fuzzy on the details, such as the lyrics to "Blue Suede Shoes."
It doesn't matter that Schmelvis doesn't know Elvis's lyrics, because he usually makes up his own. Hartal's rendition of "Heartbreak Hotel," for instance, includes the lyrics, "I'm leaving town tomorrow / I'm leaving town for sure / Going to yeshiva / Won't be coming here no more / Well that's all right Yiddishe-mamma."
While the film's producers expected such desecration of the classic Elvis narrative to elicit a backlash in the South, they were surprised when most people they asked were ambivalent about the King's newfound heritage.
"Elvis had a good influence on them," said Max Wallace, the director. "They have a lot of tolerant values. Maybe it's his grandmother's Jewish roots that inspired that."
But some Elvis purists proved to be not so agreeable. In the film, Schmelvis tried to enter the Images of Elvis impersonator contest in Memphis. Doc Franklin, the contest's organizer whose claim to Elvis legitimacy is his stint as veterinarian to Presley's pet chimpanzee, Scatter, would not allow Schmelvis to present his hassidic version of the King.
"No religion and no politics," Franklin told Schmelvis. Schmelvis slumped away as the voice of the film's producer, Evan Beloff, intoned, "Elvis would have wanted Schmelvis to get up there. He had an affection for Jews, and he would have understood where Schmelvis was coming from."
But in a later scene in Israel, some hassidim reveled in Presley's Jewish roots, which can be traced to his maternal great-great-grandmother, Nancy Burdine Tackett, a Jew. Religious identity is matrilineal, according to Jewish law.
While in the Dead Sea with a cameraman and sound technician in tow, the filmmakers came across two shirtless hassidim floating. The locals were able to shed light on the relevance of Elvis's Jewishness.
"Do you think that is important or not important that Elvis may have been Jewish?" asked Jonathan Goldstein, the film's coproducer.
"It is," one replied. "Music changes a person upside down."
Beloff then asked if the king of rock and roll, the so-called messiah of pop culture, being Jewish would constitute another sign of the coming of the Messianic Age.
"It is," the other hassid said.
THE FILM'S spiritual adviser said the hassidim were fascinated that someone with Jewish roots could affect the world like Presley did. "The very religious found it a vindication of their mystical notion of the sparks of holiness being scattered with Elvis's music," Poupko said in an interview.
While Elvis may have scattered holiness with his music, Schmelvis's contribution includes a small step in resolving tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. In Abu Ghosh, just outside Jerusalem, where the crew stopped for lunch at the Elvis Inn, a restaurant and memorabilia store devoted to the King, Schmelvis played an impromptu concert for a group of Palestinian schoolchildren on a day trip from the Gaza Strip. The children and their chaperones danced merrily around Schmelvis as he sang and played his guitar at the foot of what is believed to be the world's largest Elvis statue.
As the children boarded their bus to go home, Schmelvis jumped aboard and said, "I just want to tell you that Schmelvis brings peace to you. And I want to thank you very much, you've been a wonderful audience."
In his desire to spread Presley's spirit, Hartal said he is attempting to parlay any success the film may have into advancing his career as Schmelvis.
"I'm not going to make fun of Elvis," said Hartal, who can be booked through his Web site, www3.sympatico.ca/dluxenberg000, for parties, bar mitzvas, weddings, and funerals. "There's a lot of Jewish to Elvis."
Whatever the fate of Schmelvis, Presley's Jewishness may be larger than the crew behind the film.
In one of the movie's most touching moments, Beloff interviews Jeannette Fruchter, for whom a teenage Presley served as a Shabbos goy.
Fruchter, who with her late husband Alfred, an Orthodox rabbi, lived in an apartment above the Presleys on Memphis's Alabama Avenue, said Elvis always carried a yarmulke in his pocket and loved eating matza ball soup. Gladys Presley wanted her son to be a doctor, Fruchter said.
The Presleys' Alabama Avenue landlord, Fagie Shaffer, said young Elvis had cosmetic surgery before his career took off, prompting Wallace to declare his faith in Presley's Jewishness.
"Elvis' mother wanted him to be a doctor, he loved matza ball soup, and he had a nose job," he said. "If that doesn't prove that he's Jewish, nothing will."
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 4, 2002
Representatives of some of the nation's largest financial firms met yesterday to discuss using consumer databases to catch terrorists, alarming privacy advocates who cautioned that the information could be misused.
The meeting in New York was organized by the Center for Information Policy Leadership, a division of the Atlanta law firm Hunton & Williams. About 20 companies participated, including the investment firms JP Morgan and Fidelity Investments, lender CapitalOne, and credit-card companies American Express and Visa.
"We have to think about how to use information to create profiles about what a bad guy might look like," Marty Abrams of the Center for Information Policy Leadership told the Associated Press. The center consults with businesses, consumers and lawmakers on privacy and related policy issues.
The meeting was originally formed to combat identity theft, but companies became interested in how they could use their databases to cash in on the recent push for anti-terrorism measures.
Their consumer databases include information on credit-card activity and whether the person is a homeowner, travels frequently or has a job. The group is expected to present its findings to government officials in six months.
Proponents of the plan said that building profiles through monitoring consumer information could help find terrorists, who have raised red flags with their travel and spending patterns. Mr. Abrams said the group hopes to find a way to use the information without infringing on people's privacy.
But privacy advocates argue that the idea of using consumer databases to hunt down terrorists is risky.
"I think there are a number of major questions that need to be answered here," said James Dempsey, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington and author of the book "Terrorism and the Constitution."
"What exactly are these companies planning to look for? To whom will they discuss the findings, and what opportunity will an individual have to rebut or confront any accusation made against them?"
Similar advocates questioned the feasibility of using consumer databases for anti-terrorism measures.
"My reaction would be that this is a good deal, as long as it's clear who can look at the information. But the proof of this will be how effective it is," said Stephen Keating, executive director of the Privacy Foundation in Denver. "They shouldn't just do it for the sake of doing it."
Using databases to profile people is not new. Companies have been doing it for years as a way to market their products and, in many cases, to protect their customers. For instance, if a credit-card company notices an unsually large amount of activity on a card, a representative will call that card's owner to check whether it was stolen. But transferring that technology to fighting terrorism may be tricky, some say.
"I'm skeptical," Mr. Dempsey said. "People often enter into these dicussions assuming data-mining is effective. But these databases are oftentimes inaccurate and were designed for purposes quite unrelated to counterterrorism."
Recent legislation such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, both passed in 1999, outline strict rules on how much information companies can use from consumer databases. But with heightened concerns over national security after the September 11 terrorist attacks, privacy has taken a back seat, some advocates say.
"This fits the theme of proposals being put forth in the name of national security that are obvious threats to privacy," Mr. Dempsey said.
Mr. Keating concurred: "When there's a national security issue, that will typically supersede privacy concerns."
Thu Apr 4
WASHINGTON - A new look at an asteroid orbiting the sun shows it could possibly smash into the Earth with the explosive force of millions of tons of TNT. But experts say the potential impact is still 878 years away, time enough for the speeding space rock to alter its course.
Named 1950 DA, the asteroid — six-tenths of a mile wide — is the most threatening to the Earth of all of the known large asteroids, but the odds are only about one in 300 that it would impact the planet, researchers said Thursday in the journal Science.
"One in 300 is pretty long odds," said Jon D. Giorgini, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the first author of the study. "I'm not personally going to worry about. It is so far in the future that lots of things could change."
Tom Morgan, chief scientist of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's small planet program, said there are approximately 1,000 asteroids bigger than six-tenths of mile that can pass near the Earth in their orbit of the sun. About 580 have been found and their orbits plotted. Of these, only 1950 DA represents a possible threat, and that is centuries in the future. Morgan said NASA (news - web sites) continues an effort to identify all the other large asteroids that pass near Earth.
"It is my great hope that we don't find any that are greater threats," Morgan said.
If 1950 DA did hit the Earth, said Giorgini, it would have planetwide effects, setting off fires, changing the weather and perhaps creating immense tidal waves. But it would not be a planet killer like the asteroid thought to have snuffed out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. That asteroid was about 16 times larger than 1950 DA, he said.
In any case, said Giorgini, if scientists determine in the coming centuries that 1950 DA does represent a threat, there'll be plenty of time to take action.
"This is not an urgent thing," said Giorgini. "We can spend a century thinking about it, another century deciding who is going to do something and then another century figuring out what to do. Three hundred years from now — we can't even imagine how they will handle the problem."
Asteroid 1950 DA was first discovered on Feb. 23, 1950, but then not noted in astronomy logs again for decades. It was rediscovered in 2000 and in March 2001 whizzed within about 77 million miles of Earth, giving astronomers a chance to gather visual and radar readings.
From that, the astronomers projected the orbital path 1950 DA would take on its next 15 near passes of the Earth — over a period covering nearly nine centuries.
For the 15th near pass, on March 16, 2880, the analysis showed it was mathematically possible, though unlikely, that the asteroid could hit the Earth.
"What we are predicting is like figuring out a 15-bank shot in a game of pool," said Giorgini. "We can predict the first 13 banks really well, but it is the last few that we need to know more about."
More observations and perhaps close-up views will improve the accuracy of the prediction.
"Once we know more about the physical properties of the asteroid — what it's made of and how it spins — then we can refine that 15th bounce. But it may take decades to get that kind of information," said Giorgini.
He said the highest probability is that the asteroid in the year 2880 will miss the Earth by about 180,000 miles — a distance closer than the 230,000-mile orbit of the Moon around the Earth.
But the range of mathematical probabilities also include a possible impact.
The asteroid's orbit carries it around the sun every 2.2 years. It passes within 77 million miles of the sun and then loops back into space, passing Mars' orbit and reaching a point some 241 million miles from the sun. In its endless wandering through space, it only infrequently passes near the Earth.
(LondonTimes)
March 30, 2002
VATICAN documents have come to light showing that the wholesale massacre of the Knights Templar in the Middle Ages for alleged “heresy, idolatry and sexual perversion” — an episode still shrouded in mystery — took place even though the Pope had exonerated them in a secret trial.
The revelation will put pressure on the present Pope, who has asked the Muslim world for forgiveness for the Crusades, to apologise for the persecution of one of the main Crusading orders as well. The Templars, whose legendary power and wealth still exert a fascination, were disbanded by Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne in France in 1312.
L’Avvenire, the Catholic daily, said that the record of the Pope’s investigation was thought to have been lost when Napoleon looted the Vatican during his invasion of Italy in the 18th century, and that its rediscovery was an exceptional event.
The Templar Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was burnt at the stake on the orders of Philip IV of France (known as Philip the Fair), who coveted the Templar order’s land and treasure and began a campaign of dawn arrests and torture in 1307. At least 2,000 Knights were killed in an attempt to obliterate the order altogether. It was revived in the 18th century as part of the masonic movement, which is said to have inherited some of the Templars’ secret rituals.
Barbara Frale, a researcher at the Vatican School of Paleontology, said that the consensus among historians was that Clement V, who was himself French and a former Archbishop of Bordeaux, had been pliant and weak, and had colluded in Philip the Fair’s scheme to wipe out the Templars and seize their fortune. But documents found in the Vatican archives, including a long-lost parchment, proved that the Pope had in fact manoeuvred “with skill and determination” to ensure that his own emissaries questioned de Molay and other leading Templars in the dungeons of Chinon castle in the Loire in 1308, in what amounted to a papal trial.
Signora Frale, who is writing a book based on the Chinon parchment, told the Italian monthly Hera, a journal of historical mysteries, that the result was the complete exoneration of the Knights.
The Pope had accepted the Knights’ explanation that the charges against them of sodomy and blasphemy were due to a misunderstanding of arcane rituals behind closed doors which had their origins in the Crusaders’ bitter struggle against the Muslims, or Saracens. These included “denying Christ and spitting on the Cross three times”, as well as “kissing other men’s behinds”. Adriano Forgione, editor of Hera, said that these were intended to simulate the kind of humiliation and torture that a Crusader might be subjected to by the Saracens if captured. They were taught how to abuse their own religion “with the mind only and not with the heart”.
The Knights Templar — properly called The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon — were founded during the early Crusades in the 12th century, when they protected pilgrims to the Holy Land, together with the Hospitallers (or Knights of St John). The Templars were so called because they were given part of the former Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem as their headquarters.
Noting that de Molay and the Knights had asked his pardon, the Pope wrote: “We hereby decree that they are absolved by the church and may again receive Christian sacraments.” Signor Forgione said that the Pope had failed to make this absolution public because the scandal of the Templars had aroused extreme passions and he feared a church schism. Philip IV had de Molay and other Templar leaders put to death before the Pope’s verdict could be published, and it was subsequently lost.
(NEW YORKER)
Dec 03 2001
Lieutenant General Hamid Gul was the most influential figure in the I.S.I. in the eighties, and for a time its director. He was responsible for the military doctrine that reinforced Zia's policy toward Afghanistan. Called "strategic depth," the theory was that, in the event of an invasion by India, Pakistan would need Afghanistan as a military hinterland, a place of retreat and continued resistance. This doctrine may have been, as a former colleague of Gul's put it, "hoax and humbug," but that didn't much matter: for Gul, it was enough to justify a decade's worth of meddling and military intervention.
I met General Gul, who is now retired, in his house in a military district of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, where he lives in spacious comfort. I was shown into a reception room, and I sat on a sofa waiting for the General to appear. Beside me, on a low table, a piece of the Berlin Wall was on display—a gift, it seemed, from the West German foreign-intelligence service. The engraving read, "With deepest respect to Lt. General Hamid Gul who helped deliver the first blow."
General Gul, I'd been told, believed that he had set in motion the events that destroyed the Soviet Union. He was, it appeared, not entirely alone in that view. He was a key proponent of the policy of fighting the Soviet invasion as a holy war, rather than as a national struggle. He had boasted of how he recruited radicals from all over the Muslim world—an Islamic international brigade, as he saw it—and had financed and encouraged the powerful Islamic militants who were now on the streets crying for Musharraf's downfall.
The General bustled into the room. He is a small man with a neat gray mustache, and was dressed in a shalwar kameez. He spoke rapidly, in long rhetorical bursts, and was eager to describe his strategic vision. He appeared to have no regrets, or doubts, about the legacy of his encouragement of Islamist extremists. If things had recently taken a dangerous turn, he argued, it was because the United States had made a critical mistake by neglecting the Taliban in the nineties and by attacking them now.
"The nation that gifted you your superpower status today—that nation is being ravaged and destroyed once again," he said. "I am very much a supporter of the Taliban, because they have brought to Afghanistan what it needed most—central authority, law and order, elimination of poppy cultivation, de-weaponization, all those things. It was like a miracle. I never thought they could do it in such a short time, but I saw it with my own eyes. Now you have destabilized a society that had stabilized. It's a great tragedy. A great cruelty, I would say. A great inhuman act."
The Taliban, he told me, had been pushed into a corner. If the United States had tried a different approach, things would have been different.
"And you could have got everything you wanted from the Taliban," he said, with the exasperated manner of a schoolmaster explaining an obvious point to a particularly obtuse pupil. "They would have been eating out of your hands. But you never talked to them, because you thought that they were not honorable. You thought you could pick up bin Laden like you picked up Noriega from Panama. But Afghanistan is not Panama."
General Gul resented the United States' relationship with India and its lack of support for Pakistan over Kashmir. He resented, too, the military sanctions that were imposed after Pakistan exploded six nuclear devices, in 1998. For him, the United States' decision to attack the Taliban and Al Qaeda was the beginning of the apocalypse. "The jihad call has been given," he told me. "It will bring the Muslim masses out of their slumber. You cannot say that it's not a war against Islam, that it's a war against terrorism, nameless, faceless terrorism. Who are the terrorists? All the people who took part in this great tragedy are still hiding in America. I can't believe that it's just those nineteen people and they all got killed and that's that. There must be a very elaborate command-and-communications system, a logistics system, people who provided the safe haven as well as the training. And it is simply not possible that someone got six months' training flying the aircraft. You can't fly a jumbo jet like that. It's all bunkum. There had to be somebody manipulating the air traffic-control, somebody who switched off the warning system for the Pentagon. Somebody who asked the Air Force not to scramble for seventy-four minutes. Those people are still inside America."
The September 11th attack was, he said, part of a much bigger conspiracy, an attempted coup against the White House. I asked him who was behind it, anticipating as I put the question the answer that would come.
"Ariel Sharon," he replied. The Israeli Prime Minister, he said, had been enraged by George W. Bush's being in the White House. Al Gore was the man who would have done Israel's bidding. General Gul then listed what he claimed were Israel's demands: the destruction of Pakistan's nuclear program, the disarming of its Arab neighbors, the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's "headquarters," and a definitive "no" to a Palestinian state. These, he concluded, were the real objectives of the September 11th attacks. "No wonder that Henry Kissinger and Shimon Peres and Netanyahu—all of them!—are saying, 'America, you have the might! Do it now! Destroy them! Finish them off!' It's a crusade against the Cross and the Crescent, both. And the inspiration? The same people who inspired the medieval crusades. The Jews."
The people of Pakistan, General Gul insisted, shared his view, except, he admitted, for what he called "a handful of intellectuals who occupy Islamabad. But what's Islamabad?" he went on. "Only an island in the sea called Pakistan. And a storm rising out of Pakistan will submerge Islamabad. General Musharraf seems to think that this storm is a small thing, that we are a tiny minority. He says that it's no more than ten or fifteen per cent of the people, without realizing that, even going by his figures—though they are not correct—ten per cent means fourteen million activists and fifteen per cent means twenty-one million. And these activists are the ready-to-die types. If they rise against the government, the government will not be able to stand up to them." He added, "The Army has been known to join the people."
An Old Foe Returns. (Newsweek)
Afghan police have no doubt that ruthless Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was behind a plot, uncovered last week, to destabilize the interim government of Hamid Karzai. In raids that netted 160 suspects in Kabul, most of them members of Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami party, officials say they found remote-controlled bombs, two-way radios, heavy weapons and plans for what Interior Minister Younis Qanooni called a campaign of “terror, abduction and sabotage.”
Less clear is what else Hekmatyar may have planned. Fundamentalist and virulently anti-Western, he has been dealt out of the political process that will produce a new Afghan government this summer. Proteges of his former arch- enemy, Ahmed Shah Massoud, dominate Karzai’s cabinet. As with other sidelined warriors, including former Northern Alliance chieftain Burhanuddin Rabbani and Pashtun warlord Abdul Rab Rasul Sayaf, his options are dwindling. Violence remains his most viable option. One Afghan intelligence official says the warlord has tapped former allies in Pakistan to help recruit troops and stockpile weapons near Khowst. Others claim he has met with former Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and residual forces of Al Qaeda near the Pakistani border to plot a guerrilla campaign for this spring. Clearly, the Kabul plot will not be his last. Babak Dehghanpisheh
(Reuters)
HAVANA, Cuba (March 29) - Scientific investigators said on Friday they hope to better determine later this year if an unusual rock formation deep off Cuba's coast could be a sunken city from a previously unknown ancient civilization.
"These are extremely peculiar structures ... They have captured all our imagination," Cuban geologist Manuel Iturralde said at a conference after a week on a boat over the site.
"If I had to explain this geologically, I would have a hard time," he told reporters later, saying examination of rock samples due to be collected in a few months should shed further light on the formation off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula on Cuba's western tip.
Iturralde, research director of Cuba's Natural History Museum, has joined Canadian exploration company Advanced Digital Communications (ADC) in efforts to solve the mystery of the smooth, geometrically shaped, granite-like rocks. They are laid out in structures resembling pyramids, roads and other structures at more than 2,000 feet in a 7-3/4 mile-square area.
ADC has suggested they might belong to a civilization that colonized the American continent thousands of years ago, possibly sitting on an island that was sunk to great depths by cataclysmic earth movement such as an earthquake.
That theory, and its inevitable parallel with the myth of the lost city of Atlantis, has provoked skepticism from some scientists around the world who say the depth and age -- ADC has spoken of at least 6,000 years' old -- were not credible.
Some European archaeologists said the stones, stumbled upon in July 2000 while ADC was hunting with sonar equipment for treasure and sunken Spanish galleons, could be formed by natural limestone.
But Iturralde's conclusion that there is no immediately apparent natural explanation for the rocks has lent credence to ADC's theory.
"It appears like there is some kind of intelligent design in the structure's configuration and planning," ADC's Soviet-born Canadian ocean engineer, Paulina Zelitsky, said on the sidelines of the geophysical conference in Havana.
"I have worked in this field over 30 years and I have never before seen natural structures shaped with such intelligent symmetry and plan. From the very first moment, I was suspecting that these structures were not natural."
While Iturralde gave evidence in his paper on Friday for seismic movement at the site, and possible submerging of the land, he drew short of definitively concluding the rocks were not shaped by nature. If, however, that theory was proven, it would revolutionize understanding of the history of the Americas, he told reporters.
"It would change a lot our knowledge of humans and the evolution of the Americas," Iturralde said.
"Recently, a French archaeologist found some evidence of people being here in South America 40,000 years ago, something we never expect, so you need to be always open to things that you are not expecting, that are not in the framework of present-day knowledge ... We may have found something that nobody has thought about."
ADC plans to take a specially designed robot to the site in a few months to take samples of the rocks and the sediment they are embedded in to try to date them and seek signs they may have once been on dry land. They will also be searching for any sign of human life such as drawings, sculptures or artifacts.
"To drill samples from these structures is not easy because they look like granite. And to drill granite at a depth of 600 meters is very difficult," Zelitsky said.
She said their discoveries could make history. "I think we are talking about the origins of the American continent. There are many hypotheses about how the continent was colonized ... There is quite a controversy, and I think our discovery will be the first physical evidence of the true origins of developed civilization in the Americas."
Nuclear Event in North America
see by Richard B. Firestone, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and William Topping, Consultant, Baldwin, Michigan "Our research indicates that the entire Great Lakes region (and beyond) was subjected to particle bombardment and a catastrophic nuclear irradiation that produced secondary thermal neutrons from cosmic ray interactions. The neutrons produced unusually large quantities of 239 Pu and substantially altered the natural uranium abundance ratios ( 235 U/238 U) in artifacts and in other exposed materials including cherts, sediments, and the entire landscape. These neutrons necessarily transmuted residual nitrogen ( 14 N) in the dated charcoals to radiocarbon, thus explaining anomalous dates."
At the height of the glaciation of the last Ice Age, the main ice sheets covered eastern North America, Greenland, and across the North Sea to Northern and Western Europe. The peak was only about 15000 years ago. By contrast it was ice free from Eastern Europe across Siberia and into Alaska, and Siberia was enjoying a temperate climate.
Suddenly all the ice melts in the huge ice cap of North America, Greenland doesn't melt at all and the European ice cap melts slowly - indeed its remnants are still melting today.
Neither does Antarctica suddenly melt, but there is some evidence that the ice cap suddenly extends into new regions.
This is not the sequence that should happen! Ice requires a lot of energy in order to melt, and that energy has to be delivered to it. North America still has a very cold climate with short summers and long winters. It is still frozen for much of the year. You would not expect an ice cap to melt rapidly. By contrast Europe has a much warmer climate, with energy delivered by the atlantic ocean, you might expect the ice to melt here first.
Siberia's temperate climate for much of the ice age is also wrong. There is no warm ocean currents to bring energy to it. At the distance it now is from the North Pole, it should have had a colder climate than now.
The Ice was Centered on the Pole
It makes much more sense to suggest that the ice is always centered on the pole
For the last main glaciation period the north pole of rotation was in the region between North America and Greenland. This makes sense of the extent of the glaciation over Europe, which was then much closer to the pole. It makes sense of the climate in Siberia, which then was in temperate latitudes, and it also makes sense of the build up of ice in Antarctica.
At the moment, Antarctica is a cold desert. There is very little movement of water vapour into the interior from the coast, yet in the past there must have been weather patterns that moved vast amounts of water to fall as snow on the ice caps. If the South pole of rotation was offset from its present position for much of the last ice age, then the weather patterns would have blown into the interior, rather than round the continents edges, which is what is required to produce the snowfall.
Why should the poles move
The earth is an almost liquid sphere spinning with huge rotational energy. Like a spinning top, its axis will stay the same. It cannot suddenly flip!
However it will always rotate around its center of mass. It cannot rotate with any imbalance. If there is any change in the distribution of mass of the earth, the axis of rotation must change in exact synchronisation.
The build up of ice caps is unlikely to cause a change in mass because of the plasticity of the crust. As ice builds up, slowly over tens of thousands of years, the ground surface sinks beneath it. Basic hydrostatic forces will ensure that there is no change in mass distribution. The axis of rotation stays the same.
But we know that when the ice melted, it melted very much faster than the hydrostatic forces and plasticity could react to. The regions that were glaciated are still recovering from the weight that has been removed today.Because this demonstrates that the center of mass is not in equilibrium, it proves that the axis of rotation has also moved.
The melting of the ice is very peculiar
Conventional glaciology agrees that the melting of the ice cap has been very anomalous, with the huge North American ice cap melting suddenly. Not an even melting all round the axis of rotation. Because this melting was far to fast for the earths crust to recover its position, it has to result in movement of the axis of rotation. Because the axis of rotation has to be round the center of mass, the change in the axis of rotation will be to move the North pole of rotation directly away from the region that has suddenly lost its mass.
This is exactly what we observe. The North pole of rotation moves to where it is now, Europe has been from arctic to temperate and Siberia moves from temperate to arctic. Antartica moves from off center at the south pole to more centered and becomes a dry polar desert. Note that nothing physically has moved. It is the axis of spin that has been forced to move by redistribution of mass.
There was no reason for it to melt
There was no reason for an ice cap on land at the North Pole to melt!
But it did!, and it did locally, and there is strong evidence of a major local nuclear event in North America (Not my words) Part of the ice cap melted in the position where it should have been last to melt. It melted the ice so rapidly that the axis of rotation was moved to the middle of the arctic ocean. The only position where the world would then emerge from the depths of the ice age.
The Carolina Bays are an interesting phenomena that appear to date from the same time. These are a series of shallow craters that can be found from Canada right down to the Gulf Of Mexico.
For a detailed analysis see http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cbayint.html
However it stretches my credulity too far to suggest that each part of a commetary debris explodes at just the right height above the ground to produce its crater - as suggested as the only possible explantion.
see also http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cbaymenu.html
Another explanation is that they are a natural feature developed by man http://www.srarp.org/bay.htm
Could they be the result of blowing up the ice cap, where a nuclear explosion is used to eject the main ice cap south into a warmer climate where it would melt rapidly. This would give the right trajectory and low velocity for the fragments to create craters in the sandy ground but leave no debris behind.
Throughout the ice age the interiors of most continents where arid and inhospitable. Most or all humans would have lived on the coastal plains which are now submerged.
Then we have a tradition in many societies that somebody went round warning them that there was a flood coming and they must move, with all their livestock and possessions onto higher ground.
Hypothesis
It is my hypothesis that the ice cap in North America was deliberately melted by a technological civilisation with the deliberate intent of moving the axis of rotation into the middle of the arctic ocean and bringing the Ice Age to an abrupt end. Siberia and the coastal plains were sacrificed in order to make the continents habitable.
They used fusion weapons to blow up and to melt the ice.
Well, however made this decision. It was nice of them to tell Noah to build a boat. Shame they didin't give him acouple of wooly mammoths to put on it.
If you havn't already done so read the Introduction
These theories were developed originally to explain the development and formation of tornados. They involve no new science theory, merely application of what we already know.
I was struck by the similarities to an exercise used to teach students how to analyse information scientifically and with an open mind. See My UFO project
The coincidences seemed remarkable, so I did a little more research to see if anybody else was working in the same area. The matches came not from modern science, but translations of ancient Indian writings.
Now I would normally simply discard that as an interesting coincidence, nothing more.
But I decided to see if this could be used as another student exercise in analysing data and rationl scientific analysis.
The ancient Indian writings describe a technical civilisation with flight capabilities, possibly space flight, and this civilisation ends with horrendous weapons and what could be a very accurate description of a nuclear holocaust.
So what do we need before we can say, that on the balance of the evidence, this civilisation was real?
In order to start developing a knowledge of science and a technological base you must have copper, lead, tin, and iron, and be mining, smelting and processing these in sufficient quantities to leave a trace worldwide in ice cores. The Greek and Roman industrial development left a clear signature. Our ancient civilisation, if it existed, must also have left a similar trace.
Nuclear fission leaves a clear signature, and the fallout from a nuclear war should be clearly visible in cores of coral reefs.
Glass produced by a fission or fusion bomb over desert fusing the desert sand will remain.
Climatologists today emphasise that a nuclear winter would almost certainly follow a nuclear war, so too we should expect a nuclear winter to show its clear signature in ice cores and in the coral cores.
One of the less pleasant aspects of our current civilisation is the rapid loss of many of the larger animal species. We should expect a similar megafauna extinction event to have accompanied an ancient civilisation.
So, we have set our test for an ancient technological civilisation.
But there is a problem with dating the past.
If an ancient nuclear war did occur then carbon isotope ratios would not show a steady year by year change. During the period in which nuclear fusion and fission devices were in operation carbone isotopes would be produced that would make dating that period using carbon 14 analysis chaotic. This becomes another prerequisite of our test for a nuclear civilisation. Undisturbed sediment cores, ice cores and carbon from well stratified layers show chaotic dates.
We cannot use carbon 14 as the method of dating because of this possibility. Instead we must rely on counting year by year the ice in deep cores from the fluctuations in summer and winter snows, and in counting year by year through sediment cores from lakes where the bottom has never been disturbed, and the layers from the annual cycle is visible. We can do the same for coral growth. And tree rings from logs preserved in peat deposits provide another year by year counting method.
The ice cores can show temperature as well as mineral dust, and there are now complete cores from the middle of the greenland ice cap.
Coral absorbs uranium from the surrounding sea water, Uranium decays radioactively into U234, and then into Thorium 230, at a known rate. So the thorium/uranium ratio accurately indicates the age of the coral, and by working back from the present concentration we can work out the concentration of uranium in the coral when it was alive. This same method can be used to date formations in limestone caves.
The Evidence for an Ancient Technological (Nuclear) Civilisation
When you plot graphs of all the key criteria I have set out against time and mark all those points that could be significant, they all line up at one point!
They line up at the end of the Dryas period!
The ice cores show that at the end of the last ice age temperatures increased steadily for the next thousand years. Traces of copper, tin and lead show marked increases!
The Older Dryas period ends abruptly with a dramatic drop in temperatures.
This may co-incide with megafauna extinction events of Mammoths as well as the megafauna of North and South America
Uranium concentrations in coral jump dramatically from about 1.5 parts per million to over 4 parts per million at about this period
Radio carbon dates at this period are chaotic! Studies of layered deposits laid down by lakes provide confirmation of irregularities in the chronological record. Fiedel cites studies of a Scandinavian lake-bed sequence, where a date reversal occurs in the deposits lying just beneath deposits indicating the onset of Younger Dryas. A radiocarbon date of 10,750 +/- 100 years B.P. occurs 16 centimeters below a date of 10,995 +/- 75. That 16 cm is possibly equivalent to about 500 years of deposition according to the lake-bed research. Fiedel says the 10,750 date is sandwiched between dates of 11,065 +/- 150 and 11,630 +/- 190 radiocarbon years.
This research by Svante Bjorck of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues on lake-bed deposits in Scandinavia revealed large jumps in radiocarbon age from around 11,400 to 10,900 years ago. Their Swedish lake-bed sediments dated by accelerator mass spectrometer and coeval German tree ring data revealed that after 11,000 to 10,900 radiocarbon years ago, radiocarbon dates suddenly leaped to 10,600 (Folsom-age). Further, Bjorck and colleagues reported that before a radiocarbon dip at around 12,600 years ago, there appears to have been an increased ratio of carbon-14 and that was preceded by another dip that began about 13,200 years ago.
Carbon-14 dates for pollen-bearing strata at Rotsee, Switzerland, show a comparable pattern. Fiedel reports that the stratigraphic sequence from the Swiss core reveals the following reversal in the column: at 795 cm, approximately 11,600 and 11,200 radiocarbon years; at 790 cm, 11,350 years; at 780 cm, 10,600 years; at 770 cm, 11,000 years; and at 760 cm (just after onset of the Younger Dryas), 10,400 years. He notes that similar reversals of AMS radiocarbon dates between 10,660-10,900 years ago have been reported in Atlantic Canada lake-bed cores, for example at Splan Pond, where a radiocarbon date of 10,970 +/- 90 overlies a date of 10,690 +/- 80. ( see http://www.peak.org/csfa/mt12-4.html)
Fused desert sands have been found, notably in the Egyptian desert, but dates from fision track analysis (which assumes non nuclear origin) contradict geological observations on the ground.
Was there an ancient nuclear civilistation?
All the evidence supports the hypothesis that a technological civilisation developed in the 1000 years immediately after the last ice age. It mined and smelted copper, lead, tin and almost certainly iron. During this period it hunted and destroyed all the megafauna predators from all continents, and destroyed most of the Mammoths, and the megafauna in the Americas. It developed a nuclear capability and then destroyed itself in a nuclear holocaust. The nuclear holocaust was followed by a nuclear winter that returned the world to an ice age for a further 1000 years before the warmth returned.
It has taken 8000 years to recover from a nuclear war!!!
There is no evidence that suggests the nuclear winter was a natural event. It doesn't fit in with the expected global warming of the climate models.
So the evidence supports the hypothesis of an ancient technological civilisation - what are the implications?
My theories are based on the ability of charged particles to move within electrostatic and electromagnetic fields. Mercury is particularly interesting because it is a metallic conductor that is also a liquid. All electromagnetic effects are produced by the net movement of electrons within a conductor, but except in superconductors, the electrons collide frequently and in fact only drift slowly through the metal. In mercury the charge can move at vastly greater velocities through mass movement of the mercury, and a charge can move through the body of the mercury itself to adopt new positions in response to electrodynamic forces.
The first mercury experiment is using these properties of mercury to model the dynamics of a tornado within a laboratory. Mercury experiment
A translation of ancient texts - The Samarangana Sutradhara
"They were propelled by air and inside is placed a mercury engine with an iron heating apparatus beneath. By means of the power latent in the mercury sets the driving whirlwind in motion. When it has been heated by the controlled fire from the iron containers a thunder power is developed through the mercury. If the iron engine with the properly wielded joints be filled with mercury and fire conducted into the upper part, it develops the power with the roar of the lion."
"..inside it (the vimana) one must place the mercury-engine with its iron heating apparatus beneath. By means of the 'power latent in the mercury' which sets the driving 'whirlwind' in motion, a man sitting inside may travel a great distance in the sky in a most marvelous manner.
Similarly by using the prescribed processes one can build a vimana as large as the temple of the God-in-motion. Four strong mercury containers must be built into the interior structure.
When these have been heated by controlled fire from iron containers, the vimana develops thunder-power through the mercury. And at once it becomes a pearl in the sky.
Moreover, if this iron engine with properly welded joints be filled with mercury, and the fire be conducted to the upper part it develops power with the roar of a lion."
Nuclear Event in North America
see by Richard B. Firestone, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and William Topping, Consultant, Baldwin, Michigan "Our research indicates that the entire Great Lakes region (and beyond) was subjected to particle bombardment and a catastrophic nuclear irradiation that produced secondary thermal neutrons from cosmic ray interactions. The neutrons produced unusually large quantities of 239 Pu and substantially altered the natural uranium abundance ratios ( 235 U/238 U) in artifacts and in other exposed materials including cherts, sediments, and the entire landscape. These neutrons necessarily transmuted residual nitrogen ( 14 N) in the dated charcoals to radiocarbon, thus explaining anomalous dates."
My Commentary
I am still trying to confirm that this is a genuine extract from a genuine old document: The Samarangana Sutradhara.
The Vymaanika Shaastra is not an ancient document, but was written in early 1900. There is always the possibility that it was a document learnt by heart and later re-written, but its content, where intelligible, reflects the interests and technology of the late 1890s and 1900, plus recipes for making various types of glass. I would tend to discount it.
I have been investigating the validity of these translations and of the text itself. There is no doubt that some of these texts exist, and there may be more scattered in old monasteries. There are many references to these texts in Indian government and scientific publications.
The original language of the text deals in concepts, and the interpreter has used their own understanding of science in creating the english language version. It seems highly likely that the texts contain more highly developed concepts than the present translation indicates. The texts cover a very wide range of topics, from town planning, health and hygiene including a detailed description of vaccination, to wide ranging discussion of mechanics and scientific observation, method and theories.
All the areas that I have looked at reveal a local civilisation with knowledge and skills in many areas similar to our own in 2001. There is no reason to doubt from those texts that this civilisation did exist.
So when I examine some of the scientific works of these texts, I am reading them as a scientist accepting the text at face value. I find descriptions of electricity and mechanics that are in full agreement with todays science. I find descriptions of vimana, aircraft of many designs, that are all scientifically feasible, except that they require a powerful and controllable power source.
Now the text quoted above is one description of such a power source, but the translation is by a person who doesn't understand the concepts.
My translation:
"They were propelled by air and inside is placed a mercury engine with an iron box containing a radioactive source beneath. By means of the power latent in the mercury sets the driving vortex in motion. When it has been radiated by alpha particles from the iron containers a thunder power (proton proton fusion is catalysed by the mercury.) If the iron engine with the properly welded joints be filled with mercury and the hot mercury plasma is channeled into the upper part, it develops the power with the roar of the lion."
The hot mercury plasma could be used to drive a turbine, or directly used as the primary coil of a transformer to develop extremely powerful electromagnetic fields, and electricity.
After reading descriptions from the ancient Indian writings about the vehicle powered by the contents of a ,metallic box and mercury, it seems to me that the contents of the metal box is simply a source of powerful alpha radiation. This would charge the mercury with alpha particles.
Heating the mercury would increase the velocity of rotation and the electrodynamic forces of attraction between the alpha particles (which are helium nuclei) could reach the coulomb barrier, at which point fusion would occur with release of energy. Hence the warnings for experiment 2! . Mercury fusion experiment
If these experiments don't support my hypothesis then the ancient writings will remain for me an unexplained riddle. But if they do support my hypothesis, then I would change to 99% the probability of there having been a local technical civilisation somewhere on this planet in the past.
But remember why those ancient books were written. If the science and technology they describe stands up to close scrutiny, and it seems to, then the history and the reasons for writing the books should also be examined with care.
These books were written some time after a nuclear war in which two great civilisations destroyed themselves.
The remnants of these civilisations were attempting to record their knowledge for the future. They may have been written some time after the destruction, when the writers themselves may not have been the scientists who fully understood the concepts being described.
Changes may have been made in the texts as they were copied and recopied over the generations.
Please contact me if you can help with any of the following:
It should be possible to date this conflict using radioactive measurements of sediment cores taken in the great Indian rivers - assuming the civilisation was somewhere in India, but the remnants of the population displaced by nuclear war may have evacuated to India, and the battle may have taken place in another region of the world.
There are several glass deserts, where the desert surface has been fused to glass, and looks just like the effects of a fision or fusion bomb. Has anyone dated this glass to test the hypothesis that these were the sites of ancient bomb tests or war?
Are there any language scholars out there who can provide an english translation of concepts, rather than trying to identify the science, of the ancient texts.
There are a few plants that could only have been distributed round the world at some time in the past by people. Papyrus is one of these. It originates in Egypt and the Sudan, but is also found in lake Titicaca in the Andes and on Easter Island. Has anyone done sediment cores in these lakes that could identify when it first started growing there?
UFO relevance
These ancient flying vehicles powered by a fusion engines may have survived to the present day. It is much more likely than any alien hypothesis.
They are most likely to have survived away from any seismic zone, in a very dry atmosphere, and in underground caverns.
Those still flying today may be piloted by people who do not understand how they work, who have simply found them, or belong to a dynasty charged with looking after them, who no longer know their history or why they are there. People just like you and me, not aliens.
If you have access to an old vimana please let me know.
The arc of the covenant may have been an old vimana fusion power source, nothing magical, just a metal box containing powerful emitters of alpha radiation, and mercury. Opening the box will probably kill you!
Artefacts?
There is one well documented artefact that is difficult to explain unless they have survived from this Dryas civilistation.
An aluminium belt from a tomb in China.
There have probably been many more artefacts found and discarded because of the ridicule heaped on any archaeologist who suggests that our civilisation may not have been the first. If you find such an artefact, it is vitally important to keep everything that surrounds it to help with dating.http://www.violations.dabsol.co.uk/descent/descentpart2.htm
Devices such as the calculating device from the floor of the Mediterranean may appear out of their time, but gear trains were well known and understood in ancient greece, and the mechanism of construction does not suggest it is out of place.
See http://etl.uom.gr/mr/Antikythera/price.htm
Development of science in our society has been hindered by beliefs in magic, astrology, alchemy, religion and the scientific establishment. The key developments have been made by a few individuals prepared to accept the evidence of their own senses, and to devise experiments to explore further, and a willingness to create new hypotheses and discard any that do not match the evidence. There is no reason why small groups of individuals working to explore how the world works, could not have achieved much of todays macro science in a period of 1000 years. There are many aspects of todays science that they may not have investigated, such as our computers and electronic systems. We do not need to give them any superhuman characteristics ar achievements.
They may also have developed their own religious belief systems. They need not have been any better or any worse than any of ours today.
Science may have developed in a very small group of people living in a small geographical area. They may have had no interest in teaching the scattered stone age tribes of the rest of the world.
After their holocaust, the people who understood the science may have been destroyed. What was passed on was a few artefacts, and a verbal history of their race with an injunction to preserve the history as carefully as possible.
This knowledge, a little of which could be understood and a few artefacts, gave great power and religious significance to those who held it and passed it on. It was passed on because it gave such power. It became the esoteric knowledge of secret societies, garbled and missunderstood.
The secrecy made the knowledge vunerable to destruction as stronger fighting forces sacked the ancient cities.
With the passing of time artefacts would stop working and fusion power sources would fail as the alpha particle sources decayed. A mercury fusion engine is described as being used to frighten elephants with its noise!
Many documents may have survived as far as the great library of Egypt. Solon certainly indicated this was true. He may not have been able to read scientific texts, but maps would be understood, and mathematical texts could also probably be understood.
Many of our myths and legends may be the garbled history of a brief civilisation that flowered in the Dryas period before destroying itself.
So they could fly but had no local drive-time radio? Or seemingly draw a picture containing correct perspective?
Just after the Deluge, at the dawn of the present time cycle, an era the Egyptians called Zep Tepi, "The First Times", a mysterious group of "gods" appeared to initiate the survivors in the rudiments of civilisation.
From Thoth and Osiris in Egypt, to Quetzacoatal and Viracocha in the Americas, traditions worldwide subscribe the origins of contemporary civilisation to this sophisticated group. Despite the popularity of Von Danikan journalism, evidence from around the world indicates these people were the hi-tech survivors of the previous civilisation.
Like the nuclear survival bunkers and secret research facilities of our own civilisation, there were those who arose from the underground "cities of the Gods" after the dust settled. They were the "prediluvian patriarchs", like Enoch and Methuselah, the "giants and heroes of old", mentioned in Genesis.
The enigmatic gods of ancient Summer, Egypt and India all hail from the fabulous times before the Flood. Since the declassification of the new ground-penetrating radar 2 years ago, the most staggering data has emerged of complex and labyrinthine underground systems in various parts of the world.
At places like Guatemala in Central America, tunnels have been mapped under the Mayan pyramid complex at Tikal which extend a full 800 kilometres to the opposite side of the country. Investigators remarked, it was possible to understand how half a million Mayan Indians escaped the decimation of their culture. In similar fashion, the SIRA radar was deployed in Egypt as early as 1978, mapping an extraordinary subterranean complex beneath the Egyptian pyramids.
Arrangements made with President Sadat of Egypt, resulted in three decades of top secret excavations to penetrate the system. At a recent meeting in Australia, one of the key scientists on the Giza project, Dr. Jim Hurtak, showed film footage of work in progress called, Chambers of the Deep, due to be released at the end of the century. The film reveals the discovery of a vast megalithic metropolis 15,000 years old, reaching several levels below the Giza plateau. While the rest of the New Age speculate about a hidden chamber under the left paw of the Sphinx, the legendary "City Of The Gods" lays sprawled beneath complete with hydraulic underground waterways.
The film shows massive chambers the size of our largest cathedrals, with enormous statues the size of the Valley of the Nile carved in-situ. Researchers risking their lives with lights and cameras, carefully negotiated rubber dinghies across subterranean rivers and kilometer-wide lakes, to penetrate sealed chambers beyond.
Already, remarkable caches of records and artifacts have been found. It is the legacy of a civilisation and a technology beyond our own. A technology capable of creating a vast underground city, of which the sphinx and pyramids are merely the surface markers.
The project scientist Dr. Hurtak, likens it to the impact of contact with an advanced extraterrestrial culture. He described it as the discovery of the Fourth Root culture, the so-called Atlantean civilisation, destroyed by the last earth tumble. It presents unequivocal evidence that all languages, cultures and religions trace back to a single common source which Dr. Hurtak refers to as the "Parent Civilisation". The technology unearthed is beyond machine technology as we know it. As Arthur C. Clark once joked, "any technology beyond our own would seem like magic to us."
According to Dr. Hurtak, this was a culture who cracked the genetic code and possessed the keys of the physical spectrum - the "Higher Light Physics" of the ancients. Everything old Gilgamesh went searching for in his famous trek to the lost "City of the Gods" to search the tunnels beneath "Mt. Mashu" in the desert lands.
Hurtak refers to a "language of light" and a great priest-scientist of the previous time cycle named ENOCH, who is associated with the building of the Great Pyramid complex Hurtak alludes to a grand spiritual science, a science which describes a genetic stairway to the stars. The priest-scientist ENOCH is a prediluvian patriarch, one of the most famous and seminal characters of the previous time cycle.
Father of Methuselah and great grandfather of Noah, Enoch is credited in the Bible as architect of the original Zion, the legendary "City of Yahweh", as well as inventor of the alphabet and calendar. Enoch is also historys first astronaut, who "is taken aloft by the Lord" and shown "the secrets of earth and heaven". He returns to earth with the "weights and measures" for all humankind.
Known to the Egyptians as THOTH the "Lord of Magic and Time" and to the Greeks as HERMES "messenger of the gods", he is remembered in the Celtic tradition as the enigmatic wizard Merlin, who disappears up an apple tree to mythic Avalon, seeking the secret of immortality and vowing to return.
As one who attained immortality, the secret of how we "might become as gods", Thoth/Enoch promises to return at the end of time "with the keys to the gates of the sacred land."
In the controversial Dead Sea Scrolls, revealing the lost Books Of Enoch removed from the Bible by early religious leaders, Enoch describes a wondrous civilisation in the past who misused the keys of higher knowledge and were unable to save themselves from the last cataclysm. Both literally and figuratively when they lost the "keys", they lost all higher knowledge. Yet, Enoch, along with many traditions, even the Mayan legend of Quetzacoaeal, promises a return of this knowledge at "the end of time" the end of the present time cycle. Biblical Revelations promise "all will be revealed" at the end of the present world.
The extraordinary discoveries in Egypt and other parts of the world, describe not just an advanced technology but an evolutionary path beyond our present state. Careful scientific examination of the worlds key pyramid sites, reveal them to be sophisticated harmonic structures, not only mirroring positions of the planets and stellar systems but, designed to mimic the chakras and harmonic cavities of the human body.
Each stone within the Great Pyramid is harmonically tuned to a specific frequency or musical tone. The sarcophagus in the centre of the Great Pyramid is tuned to the frequency of the human heartbeat.
Astonishing experiments, conducted by Dr. Hurtak and colleagues at the Great Pyramid and other sites in the America's demonstrate the pyramids to be voice-activated "geophysical computers."
Intoning specific ancient sounds, the scientific team produced visible standing waves of light, above and within the pyramids, and were even able to penetrate, hitherto, inaccessible chambers. Subsequent discoveries indicate the ancient priest-scientists employed some sort of harmonic sound technology within the temple structures.
The lost Enochian knowledge reveals the mother tongue as a "language of Light" known to the ancients as HIBURU, it is the primal seed language, introduced at the beginning of this time cycle. Modern research confirms the most ancient form of Hebrew to be a natural language, the alphabetic forms emerging from the phosphene flare patterns of the brain. The same shapes, in fact, born of a spinning vortex. It is a true language of light coursing through our very nervous system. Encoding the natural waveform geometries of the physical world Hiburu is a harmonic language, mimicking the waveform properties of light.
The "keys" Enoch speaks of turn out to be sound keys, keys to the vibratory matrix of reality itself, the mythic "Power of the World".
The Enochian knowledge describes sonic equations encoded within the ancient mantras and god names, capable of directly affect the nervous system and producing profound effect of healing and higher consciousness states.
As the ancient texts declare, "If you would speak with the gods you must first learn the language of the gods." DNA, the ancient cabalistic "Tree Of life" portrayed in the Biblical Torah, is now coming to be viewed as a live vibrating structure, rather than a fixed tape recording.
Many modern scientists regard DNA as a shimmering waveform configuration, able to be modified by light, radiation, magnetic fields or sonic pulses. The legacy of Thoth/Enoch suggests this "language of Light" the harmonic science of the ancients, could actually affect DNA.
The evidence in Egypt, indicates this was the grand 6,000 year genetic experiment attempted by the Egyptians. It is the quest for immortality and the stars, a quest described by the great ones of old initiated by Gilgamesh so very long ago. The Egyptians were not fixated on the afterlife as thought by early Christian translators but, focused on creating a higher type of human. They believed DNA came from the stars and was destined to return.
The knowledge of Thoth/Enoch implies humans are meant to evolve beyond our present terrestrial form. As the Bible tells us "we may become greater than angels."
The Egyptians record stories of the "Star Walkers" occasional individuals who, like Enoch, travelled "beyond the Great Eye of Orion" and returned to walk like gods amongst men.
Despite the bleaching of semi-divine beings from modern consciousness, could it be possible, as the ancient texts insist, we are destined to "become as gods"? Are the Mayan "Lords of Light" and the Egyptian/Tibetan "Shining Ones" really a higher form of human?
According to many earth legends, such beings are supposed to return regularly, at the beginning and end of each time cycle, the 13,000 year half-point of our solar systems 26,000 year zodiacal orbit around galaxy centre. Because of conditions on our galactic orbit, these 13,000 year intervals or "worlds" seem to be separated by cataclysmic upheaval.
According to the "calendar in stone" of the Great Pyramid, which describes the so-called "Phoenix Cycle" of our galactic orbit, the present time period ends converted to our present calendar) in the year 2012 AD.
The Greek word PHOENIX derived from the Egyptian word PA-HANOK, meaning "The House of Enoch". The Enochian knowledge suggests these regular cataclysmic changes act as an evolutionary agent provocateur, to quicken the resident life forms to the next evolutionary phase prior to exodus from the womb planet.
Human evolution may proceed more rapidly than previously thought. The evidence now appearing records civilisations before us who mastered the physical continuum and progressed beyond this world. There were also those who failed. We, too, have equal opportunity to make it or break it.
The discoveries emerging from Egypt describe the existence of a world wide pyramid temple system in prehistory, mounted like antennae on the key energy meridians, which were employed by ancient priest-scientists as a musical system to stabilize the tectonic plates of the planet, cataclysmic geology at its finest.
From the mother tongue word JEDAIAH, meaning "the way of the Word" or "the power of the Word", the ancient JEDAI priests used the language of Light to tune the planet like a giant harmonic bell. Much is being rediscovered in the last days of this time cycle. In the words of Dr. Jay Franz, of the Omega Foundation, "even if we don't dare to name it, there is a universal feeling of something impending on the world stage."
Geoglyph Map of the Nazca Pampa
1. Killer whale 2. Wing 3. Baby Condor 4. Heron Bird 5. Animal 6. Spiral 7. LIzard
8. Tree 9. Hands 10. Spiral 11. Spider 12. Flower 13. Dog 14. Astronaut 15.
Triangle 16. Whale 17. Trapezoids 18. Star 19. Pelican 20. Condor Bird 21. Trapezoid
22. Hummingbird 23. Trapezoid 24. Monkey 25. Llama 26. Trapezoids
Hugh Auchincloss Brown holds the "Doomday
Toy,"
illustrating his theory of the shift in the earth's axis,
which is
precipitated by the interaction of a polar
ice-cap with the force of
gravity.
What immense force was able to preserve, in the Siberian tundra, living animal specimens from prehistoric times? By what process were entire tropical forests and volatile raindrops instantly arrested and fossilized? What sensible explanation can be given to the fact that each stratum of the earth's composition seems formed by a different climate?
Material for the theories set forth in this book has been collected by Hugh Auchincloss Brown for more than fifty years. The weight of evidence led him to formulate a startling concept, one which may point to the solution of geological mysteries that have long puzzled man.
Considerable evidence indicates that the continual growth of the South Polar ice cap, interacting with gravitational force, at first produces a a distortion, or wobble, in the earth's normal spin. Eventually, every six to eight thousand years, a sudden and radical shift of the earth's axis is caused. Continents and sea areas are rearranged and the once tropical regions, may become lands of snow and ice.
It is thus that the Great Flood of Noah's day resulted from the latest careening of the globe, at a time when records testify that Noah had been living in what is now Madagascar or Southeast Africa -- then about as far front the North Pole as New York City is today. Mr. Brown's well. founded investigation into these phenomena will fascinate layman and scientist alike.
I remember as a kid I had an (irrational, I guess) fear of the world turning upside down. With the survivors clinging precariously to those trees and structures able to withstand the reversal of gravity. I wonder now if was not a buried ancient memory?
MUNICH, Germany, April 7 (Reuters) - Strange lights in the sky baffled Bavarians late on Saturday as hundreds of panicked callers jammed police telephone lines seeking an explanation for the phenomenon.
Reports of an unsettling late-night natural light show came from all over the southern German state as well as the neighbouring region of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
"It had nothing to do with the weather. But I don't think little green men from Mars have landed in Bavaria. It was something burning out in the atmosphere," a meteorologist said.
"It was like a huge firework," a Reuters TV correspondent in Munich said, describing the display. "You could even see it through half-closed blinds. It lasted around three seconds," she said.
Pilots flying into Munich airport radioed the control tower with reports of unusual lights in the sky.
The German police said NASA scientists initially thought the light was caused by space junk -- floating debris in the Earth's atmosphere -- but later said they were still unsure.
The German army reported no unusual movements on its radar.
Scientists said the lights may have the result of a meteor breaking through the Earth's atmosphere.
"There are no signs of impact or damage. We can't say what it was," a police spokesman said.
Paris - Apr 5, 2002
Asteroids in our Solar System may be more numerous than previously thought, according to the first systematic search for these objects performed in the infrared, with ESA's Infrared Space Observatory, ISO. The ISO Deep Asteroid Search indicates that there are between 1. 1 million and 1.9 million 'space rocks' larger than 1 kilometre in diameter in the so-called 'main asteroid belt', about twice as many as previously believed. However, astronomers think it is premature to revise current assessments of the risk of the Earth being hit by an asteroid.
Thursday, April 18, at 9pm, 60 minutes
It's as American as apple pie and vastly more popular.
The hamburger has become our national food: Americans eat more meat than any other people in the world, with the average person devouring three hamburgers a week. And with more meat available than ever before, today's beef costs 30 percent less than it did in 1970, making it that much more attractive to consumers looking for a quick, cheap meal.
Yet despite new federal safety regulations, more than 100 million pounds of meat has been recalled since 1998 due to suspected bacterial contamination. And just last summer, the nation's largest meat processor had to recall 500,000 pounds of beef contaminated with e.coli bacteria from seventeen states.
How much does the average American know about the beef they're eating? Have dramatic changes in the U.S. meat industry compromised the overall safety of American beef? And are the new federal regulations enough to guarantee the safety of the meat we eat?
FRONTLINE explores these and other questions in "Modern Meat," airing Thursday, April 18, at 9 P.M. on PBS (check local listings). Through interviews with current and former U.S. Department of Agriculture officials, meat inspectors, food safety experts, and industry representatives, the one-hour documentary reveals how today's highly-industrialized meat business has fundamentally changed the composition of the typical American burger, causing some to fear the spread of serious -- and even deadly -- bacteria. The program also explores the powerful U.S. meat industry's attempts to resist certain government regulations aimed at preventing contaminated meat from ending up in supermarkets and fast food chains across America.
"I think what the [meat] industry is saying is that they don't want to be accountable for the product that they're selling," says Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, an expose of the meat and fast food industry. "This industry has fought against food safety inspection for a hundred years."
"Modern Meat" takes viewers inside the U.S. meat industry, beginning at the cattle ranch and then moving on to the "feedlot" -- a huge industrial holding pen where as many as 100,000 cattle are held together until they are fat enough to be slaughtered. Then the carcasses make their way down a Detroit-style assembly line -- or "dis-assembly line," as one industry insider quips -- where modern advances have enabled some meat companies to strip as many as 400 carcasses an hour -- nearly three times as many as in 1970.
But such modern efficiency may pose potential health risks.
In "Modern Meat," FRONTLINE speaks with numerous scientists and industry observers who raise serious concerns about today's meat production system. With large numbers of animals being raised together in huge feedlots covered with feces, they say, it's easy for bacteria to spread from one animal to another.
"Cows tend to produce feces [and] feces is primarily bacteria," says Glen Morris, a microbiologist at the University of Maryland and a former USDA official "When those bacteria are spread around, there's ample opportunity for bacteria to be spread from one cow to the next.
"In the larger feedlots," he adds, "there's a greater chance for the passage of microorganisms back and forth. All of that contributes to the spread of microorganisms like e. coli."
Dr. Robert Tauxe is also concerned. "The new highly industrialized way we produce meat has opened up new ecological homes for a number of bacteria," says Tauxe, head of the Centers for Disease Control's Foodborne Illness Section.
Gone are the days, Tauxe says, when a hamburger patty contained the meat from a single cow; with enormous numbers of cattle now being herded, fattened, slaughtered, and ground up together, it's virtually impossible to determine how many cows contribute to a single burger.
"If we take meat from a thousand different animals and grind that together," he says, "we're pooling bacteria from a thousand different animals as well."
What's more, there is increasing evidence that the modern meat industry's widespread use of antibiotics to promote growth and keep livestock healthy may result in the development of bacteria strains that are resistant to antibiotic treatment.
The consequences of bacterial contamination can be deadly. In 1993, Jack in the Box hamburgers contaminated with a deadly strain of e. coli killed four children and injured 750, causing the government to seek a more scientific system for inspecting meat.
For decades, industry experts say, meat inspectors had practiced the "poke and sniff" method of visually inspecting carcasses for signs of disease. Following the Jack in the Box outbreak, the government proposed implementing a new inspection system -- known as "HACCP" (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) -- that would require microbial testing to detect the presence of invisible -- yet harmful -- bacteria such as e. coli and salmonella.
The proposed testing for salmonella, however, was not embraced by the meat industry. In "Modern Meat," FRONTLINE speaks with industry insiders and government officials who say the powerful U.S. food lobby -- which has contributed heavily to key Capitol Hill lawmakers -- aggressively fought including this testing as part of the new regulations.
It's a charge that the American Meat Institute's J. Patrick Boyle denies. "It's not the beef industry that's fighting standards that are meaningful, that improve the wholesomeness of the product," Boyle tells FRONTLINE. "The beef industry has reservations about unscientific standards that have no relation to the safety of our products."
The USDA resisted industry pressure, and in 1996 the U.S. meat industry began making the transition to the new inspection system. Since then, the USDA has reported a marked drop in salmonella contamination of ground beef, while the CDC has also begun to see a drop in some food borne illnesses. Yet the American consumer still faces serious risks.
Each year, the CDC tracks numerous cases of food poisoning, while the USDA maintains a running list of tainted meat recalls. The growth in global trade, meanwhile, has increased the risk of diseased cattle or beef coming into the country and decimating the U.S. livestock population. Last year, for example, USDA Inspector General Roger Viadero discovered that 650,000 pounds of foreign meat from a country embargoed because of foot and mouth disease found its way into America's heartland.
In addition, a recent court ruling threatens to limit the government's enforcement of its new food safety regulations. In "Modern Meat," FRONTLINE examines a lawsuit filed by Texas meat grinding company Supreme Beef against the U.S. Department of Agriculture. When the USDA effectively shut down the company after it failed bacterial contamination tests three times -- once after nearly 50 percent of its meat was found to be contaminated with salmonella -- the company sued. Supported in its lawsuit by the National Meat Association, Supreme Beef charged that the government didn't have the right to shut down its operations simply because it failed to meet the USDA salmonella standards. Last month, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the meat industry, prompting concern from some industry observers.
Carol Tucker Foreman, head of food safety at the Consumer Federation of America and a former USDA official, believes the modern meat production and distribution system leaves consumers vulnerable to a widespread outbreak of bacterial contamination. She points to a case in which sixteen deaths and five stillbirths were connected to Ball Park Franks found to be contaminated with deadly listeria.
"Those hot dogs were shipped everywhere," Foreman says. "And thousands and thousands of them were made every day. So the potential for one mistake rippling out and causing thousands of deaths is there."
April 6, 2002
HALF MOON BAY, Calif. (AP) - At first, Coast Guard sea marshals trolling the California coastline thought they had another oil spill on their hands.
But upon closer inspection last week, they realized the sheen on the beach actually was from millions of deep-blue jellyfish-like creatures known as hydroids, distant cousins of the mighty Portuguese Man-of-War.
These so-called "by-the-wind-sailors" have air-filled pockets within their gelatinous bodies that keep them floating, and use a cellophane-like fin to propel themselves, like little sailboats.
They live life where the wind takes them, and that's usually sailing together in thick schools through temperate and tropical seas around the globe.
"They're normally out to sea, happy and away from the beaches," said George Matsumoto, an oceanographer with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
During the spring months, however, strong winds occasionally send the spineless, brainless critters to their deaths on Central Coast beaches, where they put up quite a stink as they decompose, leaving their internal skeletons to float away on the breeze. "You might start getting calls from people wondering what all these little bits of clear plastic are," Matsumoto said.
Coast Guard Lt. Brenden Kettner said the agency last recorded a visit two years ago.
Now the hydroids are washing ashore from Point Reyes to Santa Cruz at the mercy of winds and tides, Matsumoto said. The creatures, formally known as Velella velella, are too small to be a navigation hazard, and their stinging cells aren't powerful enough to penetrate human skin, he added.
4th April 2002
(ANANOVA)
Scientists examining the death of more than 300 puffins in Norway say a poisonous jellyfish may be to blame.
Many of the birds were undernourished and some had been seen flying erratically before crashing.
Conservationists say they may have been blinded by the jellyfish which are known to have blinded nearby farmed salmon.
The birds normally nest on rocky outcrops and are startled easily but a large number have come ashore and haven't reacted at all to people.
Georg Bangjord, a county environmental official in the region, said: "It seems the birds have gone blind."
The bodies have been sent for examination by vets in Oslo according to Aftenposten.
The economy of Lattke's homeland faces collapse.
March 27, 2002
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