Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#25
  • BLOG INDEX FOR MAY 30th 2002
  • US Customs To Give Inspectors Radiation Detectors By January
  • Defiant Pakistan Threatens To Use Nukes On India
  • Paper: U.S. plans mass evacuation from India, Pakistan over nuke fears.
  • Earthquake experts 'can be terrorism neighbourhood watch'
  • Famine stalks 10 million southern Africans
  • Get Ready for Nicotine Water
  • Government Will Ease Limits on Domestic Spying by F.B.I.-New Justice Department guidelines to be unveiled today will give FBI field agents latitude to monitor Internet sites, libraries and religious institutions without first having to offer evidence of potential criminal activity.
  • Tearful FBI Agent Apologizes To 911 Victim Families
  • Ex-FBI Agent Insider Stock Scam Linked To 911?
  • Current United Airlines CEO John Creighton sat on the board of an oil company that did what in 1997?
    a. Lobbied against importing Iraqi oil
    b. Threw Taliban delegates a party in Texas
    c. Created a 200 mpg diesel fuel
    (from maximonline-of all places)
  • EU Law Would Turn ISPs Into Spies
  • Britain's young offenders face electronic tracking
  • Adult smallpox immunity doubtful from early jab
  • "The Washington Times is responsible to let the American people know about God."
    -Owner Rev. Moon's Speech Raises Old Ghosts as the Times Turns 20
  • Who is the Rev. Moon?
  • 65 yo Georgia Man claims Ear of God-"He told me everything about everything. My eyes is like a camera. It's like making a movie. I see everything. I see it all."
  • UK Chemist obtains UFO secrets
  • The Israel Lobby (TheNation.com)
  • Message About LA Times Anti-semitic Cartoon Outdated (ADL.org)
  • ADL Calls on European Central Bank President to Publicly Condemn Wife's Anti-Semitic and Jewish Conspiracy Statements
  • An industrial chemical is collecting inside you. It gathers in your fat, accumulating year after year. You can't avoid absorbing it: The substance is all around you -- in your computer, your TV, your sofa, your rugs, your walls, your car, and the container you'll heat your lunch in. It's there, and almost everywhere else -- in seals, fish, birds, air, soil. No one knows what route it takes to get inside you. And no one knows exactly what it does, but scientists have linked it to thyroid imbalances and learning disabilities.
  • Expert proposes world eco-cops to guard resources
  • PSYCH SLEUTH -80-year-old Margaret Singer has made history delving into the psychology of brainwashing
  • Is God A Woman?
  • Britain's Queen urged to say sorry for Empire
  • "Was Athanasius Kircher the coolest guy ever, or what?"-A Postmodernist of the 1600's Is Back in Fashion
  • Palestinian Woman Tells of Changing Her Mind, Calling off Planned Suicide Attack
  • CHRONOLOGY-Suicide bombings in Israel
  • Lawmaker who said she can 'communicate with the dead' said Chandra body found where she envisioned it
  • You don't have to come from another planet to see ultraviolet light
  • Mystery Virus Hits London Hospital

  • Defiant Pakistan Threatens To Use Nukes On India
    5-30-2
    United Nations (PTI) - Pakistan has threatened to use nuclear weapons even if India stuck to conventional arms in any conflict, asserting that it has never subscribed to "no-first-use" of atomic weapons and that ruling out their use would give New Delhi a "license to kill."
    "India should not have the license to kill with conventional weapons while Pakistan's hands are tied regarding other means to defend itself," said its new ambassador to the United Nations Munir Akram.
    The highly bellicose and provocative statements by Akram on the second day on the job yesterday surprised diplomats and officials at the United Nations who declined to make an immediate comment.
    Pakistan, he said, has to rely on the "means it possessed to deter Indian aggression" and would not "neutralise" that deterrence by any doctrine of "no-first-use."
    To a question at his first news conference after taking over the job, Akram said any action by India across the border, any aerial attack on Pakistani territory and its assets, and any action to economically strangle it would be "viewed" as aggression and would be "responded to by Pakistan."
    Noting that both India and Pakistan possessed nuclear weapons, he said while that should instill restraint on both sides, "it does not seem to do so on the Indian side."
    The launching of a sharp attack less than 48 hours after taking over, some diplomats believe, could mean that Pakistan plans to use the United Nations for anti-Indian propaganda.
    Akram, who had been his country's ambassador to the UN at Geneva, is known for his rhetoric against India and in previous years had also made highly provocative statements on Kashmir during debates whether the occasion demanded or not.
    Pakistan, Akram claimed, believed in "no-first-use of force." That was the reason, he said, that Islamabad had offered non-aggression pact to New Delhi but India had rejected it.
    "If India reserved the right to use conventional weapons, how could Pakistan - a weaker power-be expected to rule out all means of deterrence."
    The United Nations Charter, the Pakistani ambassador said, prohibited the use of force and India should be committed to "non-use-of-force".
    Akarm said the Security Council should address the issues of tensions between India and Pakistan which "constituted a threat to international peace and security."
    "Whenever there is a threat of use of force against a member state and a threat to international peace and security, there is an obligation for the Council to address that situation," he told the news conference.

                                                                                              

  • Earthquake experts 'can be terrorism neighbourhood watch'
    (Ananova)
    29th May 2002
    Earthquake experts are offering to help keep watch for terrorist activity around the world.
    Seismologists say their monitoring equipment can detect illicit bomb tests and identify mystery explosions.
    Scientists at the University of Arizona are developing a new speciality called "forensic seismology".
    Researchers say their network of sensors across the world can analyse terrorist bombings and help investigators work out where the explosives came from.
    Seismologist Terry Wallace has already worked with the FBI to analyse the 1998 truck-bombing at the US embassy in Kenya.
    The blast was recorded by earthquake equipment at the University of Nairobi - allowing scientists to work out the exact time and size of the bomb.
    The university team carried out a series of controlled truck bomb explosions to see what difference they made to seismic data.
    Mr Wallace said: "There's a huge number of seismometers out there, our ears to the ground. They're needed for earthquakes, but anything that makes a thump is going to be recorded.
    "Sometimes what seismology can contribute is the only information we have on the bomb. It's really important for providing independent constraints on what happened. If authorities know something about the truck, they can then begin to speculate on the type of explosive used, who had access to such explosives and so on."
    He says earthquake experts will be able to build up a portfolio of seismic signals to identify events like secret nuclear tests, terrorist attacks, pipeline explosions and plane crashes.
    I guess they'll be the first to know internationally if the Indo-Pak tension goes nuclear. I wonder if the shockwaves would travel thru the planet to the other side? I wonder if you looked at the antipodes of Nevada you'd see an earthquake zone? Like the mexicans who were complaining of quakes recently during the afghan bombing campaign.

  • Famine stalks 10 million southern Africans
    LONDON, May 29 (Reuters) - At least 10 million people in four southern African countries could starve to death unless the international community quickly mobilises vast quantities of food aid, senior United Nations officials said on Wednesday.
    "In a worst case scenario, 11-12 million people won't have adequate food," James Morris, head of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), the world's biggest food aid agency, told Reuters.
    Hartwig de Haen, Assistant Director-General of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which tracks food crises, said southern Africa faced its worst food shortages in a decade following two years of poor harvests.
    The shortages were most acute in Malawi, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland where at least 10 million people were threatened by potential famine, the two food agencies said in a statement after joint crop assessment missions in the four countries.
    "They will face grave food shortages as early as June 2002, which would continue up to the next main harvest in April 2003," the statement said.
    "The overall picture will become even bleaker when the report on Zambia and one on some parts of Mozambique are added to the assessment of an already critical humanitarian situation," it said.
    Two successive years of poor harvests caused by drought, floods and frost, coupled with economic crises and disruption of farming, have slashed food output and availability across the region. Prices of the staple food maize are soaring.
    WFP is already feeding 2.6 million people in Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, aid officials say.
    Over the next year, nearly four million tonnes of food will have to be imported to meet the minimum needs of the people.
    The famine-threatened countries need some 1.2 million tonnes of immediate emergency food aid.
    NEW APPEAL
    Morris said WFP was planning a further appeal to governments for food aid and estimated the international aid operation for southern Africa could cost around $400 million.
    Other agencies have put the cost of aid at $1.8 billion.
    The two U.N. agencies appealed to governments to respond quickly and generously with food donations to avoid a famine.
    "We have to get the message out to donors -- a famine can be averted if they act quickly," said Judith Lewis, WFP's regional director for southern and eastern Africa.
    "Much needs to be done, and we need to do it now."
    WFP officials also said they were worried about a possible recurrence of El Nino and its impact on crops in Africa.
    U.S. climatologists have warned that El Nino, a periodic warming of part of the Pacific Ocean, could return this year. El Nino can cause drought in some countries and floods in others.
    U.N. food agency officials declined to estimate how many people in southern Africa had already died from starvation, saying the picture was complicated by unreliable official figures and death from disease linked to hunger.
    Many people in southern Africa had died because hunger had reduced their resistance to widespread HIV/AIDS, they said.
    I see Bono planning Live-aid 2 now.

  • Get Ready for Nicotine Water
    (WEbMD)
    May 28, 2002 -- Nicotine-spiked bottled water is the latest in a line of controversial products being marketed to smokers who want to satisfy their cigarette cravings without lighting up. Like the nicotine-laden lollipops and lip balms outlawed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in April, NICO Water is drawing sharp fire from antismoking advocates.
    But the FDA has taken no action to keep it off store shelves, and its marketer says the water will be widely available by late June.
    Steve Reder, president of California-based Quick Test Five, tells WebMD that the company will soon have the capacity to distribute 1 million bottles of the nicotine-laced water each month to drug and convenience stores throughout the country. He says the water is being marketed exclusively to the adult smoker and is in no way intended for sale to children and nonsmokers.
    "We are giving people with this addiction an alternative to cigarettes," says Reder, who does not smoke. "There are 48 million smokers in America alone who are addicted to cigarettes. I would love for everybody to stop smoking, but that is impossible."
    Critics charge that products like this one, designed to deliver nicotine without the cigarette, help people to maintain their addiction because they can be used in places where smoking is not allowed. Each bottle of the water contains 4 milligrams of nicotine, which is the equivalent of that found in about four cigarettes or a stick of nicotine gum.
    Antismoking advocate Danny Goldrick says the new products are no different from the light and low-tar cigarettes popular a generation ago. They were marketed as safer than regular cigarettes, but studies showed that people simply smoked more of them or inhaled deeper to get their nicotine fix. Goldrick is director of research for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
    "In essence, (light and low-tar cigarettes) were a public health disaster and they probably stopped a lot of people who were concerned about smoking from quitting," Goldrick tells WebMD. "The last thing we need is a whole new generation of these products that discourage people from quitting, abet their nicotine addictions, and contribute to the hundreds of thousands of smoking deaths every year."
    Critics are also skeptical that the nicotine water can be kept out of the hands of children. Reder says he strongly favors a voluntary carding program to make sure the water is not sold to people under the age of 18. But Goldrick counters that carding is only marginally effective in preventing the sale of cigarettes to minors, even though such sales are illegal.
    Late last year, 20 health organizations -- including Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Cancer Society, and the American Medical Association -- petitioned the FDA to ban the sale of nicotine-spiked water and four other nicotine-delivery products until their safety is determined through independent testing. FDA spokeswoman Kathleen Kolar tells WebMD that these petitions are under review but have not been acted on.
    Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the FDA has no current authority to regulate the sale, manufacture, or marketing of tobacco products. But Goldrick says the agency does have the authority to regulate bottled nicotine water, because nicotine has never been approved as an additive to foods and it is clearly addictive, toxic, and potentially dangerous.
    "It is ludicrous to think that you can put a hazardous and highly addictive product in a bottle of water and sell it down at the corner store with absolutely no oversight or safety testing by the FDA," he says. "We just think that they should submit, like every other food manufacturer or drug manufacturer, to the safety and effectiveness testing that the FDA does."
    I need a drink.

  • Government Will Ease Limits on Domestic Spying by F.B.I.-New Justice Department guidelines to be unveiled today will give FBI field agents latitude to monitor Internet sites, libraries and religious institutions without first having to offer evidence of potential criminal activity.
    (NYT)
    WASHINGTON, May 29 — As part of a sweeping effort to transform the F.B.I. into a domestic terrorism prevention agency, Attorney General John Ashcroft has decided to relax restrictions on the bureau's ability to conduct domestic spying in counterterrorism operations, senior government officials said today.
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    Mr. Ashcroft and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, plan to announce on Thursday a broad loosening of the guidelines that restrict the surveillance of religious and political organizations, the officials said. The guidelines were adopted after disclosures of domestic F.B.I. spying under the old Cointelpro program, and for 25 years they have been among the most fundamental limits on the bureau's conduct.
    The revision will shift the power to initiate counterterrorism inquiries from headquarters to the special agents in charge of the 56 field offices, the officials said.
    "We are turning the ship 180 degrees from prosecution of crimes as our main focus to the prevention of terrorist acts," a senior Justice Department official said tonight. "We want to make sure that we do everything possible to stop the terrorists before they can kill innocent Americans, everything within the bounds of the Constitution and federal law."
    Officials at the American Civil Liberties Union criticized the new guidelines, saying they represent another step by the Bush administration to roll back civil-liberties protections in the name of improving counterterrorism measures.
    "These new guidelines say to the American people that you no longer have to be doing something wrong in order to get that F.B.I. knock at your door," Laura W. Murphy, director of the national office of the A.C.L.U., said. "The government is rewarding failure. It seems when the F.B.I. fails, the response by the Bush administration is to give the bureau new powers, as opposed to seriously look at why the intelligence and law enforcement failures occurred."
    Under the old guidelines, agents needed to show that they had probable cause or information from an informer that crimes were being committed to begin counterterrorism investigations. Under the new guidelines, agents will be free to search for leads or clues to terrorist activities in public databases or on the Internet.
    Under the old guidelines, surfing the Internet for the sole purpose of developing leads was prohibited.
    Among other changes, the new guidelines let agents search Web sites and online chat rooms for evidence of terrorists' planning or other criminal activities, the officials said.
    The bureau will also use commercial "data-mining services" from companies that collect, organize and analyze marketing and demographic information from the Internet to help develop leads on potential crimes like threats to the security of computer networks. Businesses routinely use the information, but the bureau has been constrained from using those services.
    The guidelines were imposed in the 1970's after the disclosures about Cointelpro, a widespread domestic surveillance program that monitored antiwar militants, the Ku Klux Klan and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among others, while J. Edgar Hoover was bureau director.
    Beyond the reports of the spying, a political firestorm arose over what many critics regarded as the abuse of power. The surveillance guidelines have since then defined the operational conduct of the bureau in inquiries of domestic and overseas groups that operate in the United States.
    Since Sept. 11, the guidelines have been criticized by many law enforcement officials as an outmoded counterterrorism tool that hampered efforts.
    A senior agent in the Minneapolis office, Coleen Rowley, complained on May 21 in a letter to Mr. Mueller that officials at headquarters had repeatedly held back agents in the field office who sought to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui aggressively in the four weeks before Sept. 11.
    Senior officials said today that Mr. Ashcroft's new guidelines addressed some of Ms. Rowley's complaints. Ms. Rowley, general counsel in the Minneapolis office, also complained that agents there had no idea that an agent in Phoenix wrote in a memorandum to headquarters in July that Arab men, possibly connected to Osama bin Laden, had trained at a flight school in Arizona.
    Under the new guidelines, field offices will no longer have to await approval for intelligence investigations from headquarters. Headquarters would often take weeks or even months before deciding whether an inquiry was warranted.
    Instead, the field offices could begin counterterrorism inquiries themselves. Inquiries can last from 180 days to one year before being reviewed by senior officials.
    "Agent Rowley's concerns are thoroughly addressed in the F.B.I. reorganization and the attorney general's guidelines," a senior official said tonight. "We are devolving power to begin and conduct investigations to the field offices and freeing their hands to do everything possible within the bounds of the Constitution and federal law to protect us from terrorists."
    Under the current guidelines, the bureau cannot send undercover agents to investigate groups that gather at places like mosques or churches unless investigators first find probable cause or evidence that leads them to believe that someone in the group may have broken the law. Such full investigations cannot proceed without the attorney general's consent.
    Many investigators have complained since Sept. 11 that Islamic militants have sometimes met at mosques, apparently knowing that religious institutions are usually off limits to F.B.I. surveillance squads.
    A lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, Gregory T. Nojeim, predicted that the new guidelines would cause a flood of new information that the bureau will have trouble analyzing.
    "The problem with the 9/11 investigation was a failure to analyze and act on relevant information," Mr. Nojeim said. "And their solution is to gather exponentially more information that they have no possible way to properly analyze."
    A senior official at the Justice Department dismissed that criticism.
    "Under the new rules," the official said, "we allow the field to conduct the investigations and we will give headquarters the ability to analyze the information. No longer will there be disparate pieces of information floating around in isolation in different parts of the country. Now you will have a much greater ability to connect those dots."
    "The Ministry of Truth" is out there, and possibly soon in here. Once again Philip K. Dick (Minority Report) is more prophetic than Nostradamus but gets less press.

  • Tearful FBI Agent Apologizes To 911 Victim Families
    CNSNews.com
    5-30-2
    Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - In a memorandum written 91 days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an FBI agent warned that Americans would die as a result of the bureau's failure to adequately pursue investigations of terrorists living in the country.
    FBI Special Agent Robert Wright, Jr, who wrote the memo, led a ten-year investigation into terrorist money laundering in the United States.
    Wright began crying as he concluded his remarks at a Washington press conference Thursday. "To the families and victims of September 11th - on behalf of [FBI Special Agents] John Vincent, Barry Carmody, and myself -- we're sorry," Wright said before walking out of the room.
    Vincent and Carmody have also expressed a desire to expose information regarding alleged FBI missteps prior to Sept. 11.
    Wright's June 9, 2001 "Mission Statement" memo warned, "Knowing what I know, I can confidently say that until the investigative responsibilities for terrorism are transferred from the FBI, I will not feel safe.
    "The FBI has proven for the past decade it cannot identify and prevent acts of terrorism against the United States and its citizens at home and abroad," Wright continued. "Even worse, there is virtually no effort on the part of the FBI's International Terrorism Unit to neutralize known and suspected international terrorists living in the United States."
    The summary of Wright's attempts to expose the alleged failures of the FBI's anti-terrorism efforts ended with a solemn conclusion.
    "Unfortunately, more terrorist attacks against American interests -- coupled with the loss of American lives -- will have to occur before those in power give this matter the urgent attention it deserves," he wrote.
    He's right, we should give those powers to 'neutralize' to the local police. Then we could all sleep easy.
      
  • Ex-FBI Agent Insider Stock Scam Linked To 911?
    (NewsDay)
    5-30-2
    In a criminal case with a specter of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, prosecutors disclosed yesterday that classified information had been found during a search of possessions of a former FBI agent allegedly part of an insider trading conspiracy.
    The tantalizing revelation was made by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Breen in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn during the arraignment of Lynn Wingate, who is on administrative leave from the FBI, and former agent Jeffrey Royer on charges they were involved in a stock trading racketeering conspiracy.
    During arguments over whether Royer should be given bail, Breen said that the former agent posed a risk of flight, partly because of classified information about "another subject matter" that was unearthed during the execution of a search warrant of his possessions.
    Royer, 39, who left the FBI in December 2001, faces charges that he obtained confidential agency material both while he was an agent and after he left and passed it on to Amr I. Elgindy. A self-styled Wall Street whistle-blower and noted short seller of stocks, Elgindy was charged Friday with being the kingpin of the conspiracy.
    Breen did not elaborate in court yesterday but said the confidential data found was material Royer had no legitimate reason for having and might lead to "something more serious."
    Judge Raymond Dearie indicated that prosecutors might have to make use of special court procedures reserved for classified information if they wanted to use it in opposing bail for Royer.
    Royer remained free yesterday but had to wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet pending a hearing tomorrow. Wingate was free after posting a $100,000 bond secured by property she owns in Colorado and her parents own in Florida.
    Breen also disclosed that investigators found some of the divorced Royer's property at Wingate's Albuquerque, N.M., home.
    The indictment accused the defendants of running an insider trading conspiracy in which Royer allegedly leaked confidential FBI information to Elgindy who then would make trades based on the data. The indictment also charges that when Royer left the FBI, he continued to access confidential FBI files through Wingate, 34.
    Elgindy, 34, was being held without bail. During a hearing in San Diego last week, Breen said that Elgindy's attempt to liquidate the trust accounts of his children on Sept. 10 might "perhaps" mean he had "pre-knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks, and, rather than report it, he was attempting to profit from that information."
    Defense attorney Jeanne G. Knight scoffed at that suggestion and said it was an attempt by the prosecution to smear Elgindy, a U.S. citizen and native of Egypt, with "terrorist innuendos."
    http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-nyfeds292724422may29.story
    The story on the street.

  • Current United Airlines CEO John Creighton sat on the board of an oil company that did what in 1997?
    a. Lobbied against importing Iraqi oil
    b. Threw Taliban delegates a party in Texas
    c. Created a 200 mpg diesel fuel
    (from maximonline-of all places)
    Strange Boardfellows
    By Eric Scigiliano
    (Via the 'first-up-against-the-wall' The Nation)
    January 2002
    What goes down comes around. Amidst all the attention to United Airlines' post-September 11 woes, no one noticed the ringing irony of its tapping John W. Creighton Jr. as the new CEO to pull it out of a downward spiral. John Creighton is best known as the Weyerhaeuser president who turned the timber giant around in the early 1990s, but he's held another position closer to the events that sent one United jet crashing into the World Trade Center and another into the Pennsylvania countryside two months ago. Creighton has sat on the board of the California-based oil multinational Unocal since 1995--the period in which Unocal became the main American corporate suitor seeking to do business with the Taliban.
    When it comes to building in war zones and dealing with unsavory regimes, Unocal has long been renowned as what Burma democracy activist Larry Dohrs calls "the bottom feeder of the oil business." It completed a billion-dollar gas pipeline in Burma even after Texaco and Arco bowed to environmental and human rights protests. And in 1995, during the scramble for Central Asia's newly opened oil and gas bonanza, it conceived an audacious plan: a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. It enlisted Saudi, Pakistani, Japanese, Korean and Indonesian partners. And it embarked on a fossil-fuel version of the Great Game against the Argentine firm Bridas, which also sought the pipeline franchise.
    In December 1997 Unocal hosted Taliban delegates in Texas and even took them to the beach. It also gave nearly $1 million to a job-training program in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, out of up to $20 million it spent on the pipeline effort. It hired former US ambassador to Pakistan Robert Oakley to press its case; hired special ambassador John J. Maresca to, in Unocal spokesman Barry Lane's words, "look at corporate responsibility globally"; and hired Henry Kissinger to cap the Turkmenistan side of the deal. "We didn't focus on the Taliban," Lane insists. "We also sponsored a training program in Northern Afghanistan," and hosted some of the warlords now in the Northern Alliance. But with the Taliban gaining, and controlling the pipeline's southern route, the focus was inevitable. "If the Taliban leads to stability and international recognition," Unocal executive vice president Chris Taggart declared after the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, "then it's positive."
    That merely mirrored the US government's complacent, fumbling Afghan dealings; Lane claims, and Ahmed Rashid confirms, in his book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, that Unocal even disadvantaged itself against Bridas by admonishing the Taliban on human rights. But the company hung in even after women's groups protested, after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called Taliban practices "despicable" in 1997 and after Taliban guest Osama bin Laden declared a fatwa against the United States in 1998. After the summer 1998 embassy bombings and US missile reprisals, Unocal had to pull out of Afghanistan. In December 1998 it formally withdrew from the project.
    Jack Creighton became Unocal board chairman in 2001 but stepped down on August 31. Unocal spokespeople will say only that this resignation was prompted by his United Airlines appointment. His new office at United will say only that "Any inquiries regarding Unocal or its business practices--past, present or future--should properly be directed to the Unocal Corporation." Creighton remains on Unocal's board.

  • EU Law Would Turn ISPs Into Spies
    Wired.com
    5-29-2
    A broad coalition of civil liberties groups is urging the European Parliament to reject a proposal that would require European countries to retain detailed information on citizens' phone and Internet use for policing purposes.
    The 626-member assembly is scheduled to vote Thursday on the Communications Data Protection Directive, which is part of a larger overhaul of Europe's telecommunications laws.
    If approved, the legislation would require the European Union's 15 member countries to draft laws requiring ISPs and telephone companies to keep track of phone calls, Internet surfing, e-mails, faxes and even pager messages, for an unlimited time period in case the data is needed by law enforcement authorities.
    The proposal has been attacked by 40 different civil liberties groups in Europe and the United States, and an online petition has gathered over 16,000 signatures urging parliament members to vote against the data-retention measure.
    "This proposal would allow European governments to put ISPs and phone companies in the spy business," said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which is based in Washington, D.C. "This basically means open-ended surveillance of all users."
    European telecommunications companies have also opposed the measure, which they say will be costly to implement.
    An amendment by parliament member Marco Cappato to eliminate the data retention clause from the telecommunication legislation altogether will also be considered on Thursday.
    Current EU telecommunications law requires customers' data to be eliminated shortly after the billing cycle expires.
    The European push to track communications gained speed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in the United States. In October, President George Bush sent a list of 47 recommendations to the Parliament that would align Europe with the U.S. war on terrorism, including longer retention of communication data.
    If the European Parliament approves the directive, the 15 member states would be required to pass national legislation in accordance with its provisions, legal experts said.
    Ironically, similar efforts to track communication data in the United States as part of the U.S. Patriot Act were rejected by U.S. legislators.
    http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52829,00.html
    "Hello, I noticed in a recent email to a friend you expressed an interest in purchasing a DVD system? We are currently offering all AOL customers a 20% price-break.."

  • Britain's young offenders face electronic tracking
    LONDON, May 29 (Reuters) - Britain rolled out a scheme to track young criminals with electronic tags on Wednesday, allowing the early release of offenders into the community and easing demand on overcrowded detention centres.
    Police and probation officers have criticised the scheme, which will operate in England and Wales, saying it will not help to reduce crime, but the government said tagging young offenders would toughen a curfew enforced as part of a community sentence.
    "This is no soft option," Home Office Minister Beverly Hughes said. "Young offenders will continue on a tough programme of reparation, curfews and training."
    Around 1,500 youths are currently serving part-custodial, part-community based sentences in Britain, and demands on young offenders' institutions are increasing. Under the scheme, miscreants will have their stay in custody cut short and will instead serve a longer part of their sentence in the community.
    Electronic transmitters a little larger than hospital tags will be strapped around youths' ankles. Straying too far from home during curfew hours or attempting to remove the bracelet will alert authorities, who could return a youngster to custody.
    "It is just a bracelet on their ankle," said Harry Fletcher, speaking for probation officers' union NAPO. "Some of them certainly see it as a gimmick to show their friends."
    "It will not cut crime because it is a night-time curfew and most crime is committed in the day... The reason that they are letting them out is because of prison overcrowding," he added.
    Police chiefs criticised the scheme when it was first announced by Home Secretary David Blunkett in February, saying that tagging would not stop a determined criminal from breaking bail conditions.
    Under the current system, most criminals between 12 and 17 are sentenced with Detention and Training Orders of up to two years, only half of which is served in custody and the rest at home. Pilot schemes have operated in six areas since Blunkett's announcement.
    Wouldn't a simple ball and chain or stocks be more cost effective? They could modernise the ball-design somewhat -add a little tick or something or put the stocks next to Sainsbury's.

  • Adult smallpox immunity doubtful from early jab
    LONDON, May 29 (Reuters) - Adults given smallpox vaccinations as children before the disease was eradicated in the mid 1970s have probably lost their immunity to the highly infectious disease, according to U.S. scientists.
    New research in the United States is the latest evidence that people vaccinated decades ago may no longer be protected.
    "This study is, to the best of my knowledge, the only one since eradication which tries to look at the durability of immunity," Michael Sauri, director of the Occupational Medicine Clinic in Maryland, told New Scientist magazine on Wednesday.
    "It's showing us that after 20 years, immunity is not going to be there."
    The study of 621 microbiologists, who were vaccinated again between 1994 and 2001 because of the type of work they do, found that only about 40, or six percent, were still immune to the disease from their earlier vaccinations.
    The new research heightens the debate about whether pre-emptive mass vaccinations are needed or if "ring vaccination" of people in an affected area could contain an outbreak of the disease following a bio-terrorist attack.
    The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta favours limited vaccination because little is known about what determines long-term immunity.
    But Bill Bicknell of Boston University, a former public health official, believes selective mass vaccination may be the best policy because of the threat of the terrorist use of smallpox.
    He said vaccination could minimise the impact of smallpox as a weapon and the risk to the general population.
    "I am advocating vaccination of first responders -- emergency workers, hospital workers, doctors, nurses and other staff and wider groups of people essential for the maintenance of civil society," Bicknell told Reuters.
    He suggested vaccinating about 100,000 emergency and hospital workers and then looking at the side effects and re-evaluating the situation before expanding the programme to more emergency workers and later to the public.
    Smallpox is one of the world's most feared diseases. It kills about 30 percent of its victims and leaves many others disfigured.
    Let's hope something doesn't go awry and they end up killing off the entire medical profession.

  • Paper: U.S. plans mass evacuation from India, Pakistan over nuke fears.
    05/30/2002
    (USA TODAY)
    As border tensions heighten between nuclear powers Pakistan and India, a U.S. government team is in India to plan the possible evacuation of 1,100 U.S. troops and up to 63,000 U.S. citizens from both countries.
    India's foreign minister urged Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday to honor pledges to halt terrorism in contested Kashmir and warned of "the urgency of the situation."
    The Pentagon needs no such warning.
    About 1,000 U.S. troops are on three military bases in Pakistan, and an undisclosed number of special operations forces are hunting al-Qaeda leaders in the country's western provinces. In addition, about 100 commandos are completing a military training exercise, code-named Balance Iroquois, with Indian forces in Agra, site of the Taj Mahal.
    Officials from the State Department and the military's Pacific Command have begun drawing up evacuation plans for 50,000 to 60,000 U.S. civilians, virtually all of them in India, a Pentagon official with access to the plans said Wednesday.
    An airlift of that magnitude would dwarf the evacuations of Americans from Vietnam, which Washington and U.S. forces abandoned in early 1975, said a military official familiar with U.S. airlift capabilities.
    State Department officials lack specific numbers of Americans in Pakistan and India. The most recent tally comes from 1999, when the department reported that 4,231 citizens registered with the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan and 15,369 with the embassy in India.
    Few tourists or business travelers bother to contact the embassies, and government employees are not included in the count.
    On Friday, the State Department warned U.S. citizens to avoid traveling to Pakistan and India and said Americans in the countries should consider leaving.
    A senior Pentagon official close to war planners said the presence of U.S. troops in Pakistan and India might be deterring war. But Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh warned Tuesday that the presence of U.S. troops "is not an inhibiting factor" as his government considers going to war.
    India and Pakistan have fought three wars since 1947, including two over the Kashmir province that each claims. Both have nuclear weapons.
    The latest flare-up has stalled the hunt for al-Qaeda members, Pentagon officials say. Asked what Pakistan was doing to find al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, the senior Pentagon official replied, "Not much. We're very concerned."
    Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, Musharraf's spokesman, said India "is trying to take an unfair advantage by massing troops knowing Pakistan is fully involved in fighting terrorists."
    He said "a lot" of troops were shifted to the Indian border.
    Withdrawing U.S. forces from Pakistan would damage the continuing hunt for al-Qaeda, Pentagon officials say. There are 7,200 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but virtually all the al-Qaeda leaders are believed to be hiding in Pakistan.
    DEFCON five-star.
     
  • "The Washington Times is responsible to let the American people know about God."
    -Owner Rev. Moon's Speech Raises Old Ghosts as the Times Turns 20
    (Washington Post)
    May 23, 2002
    At Tuesday night's celebration of the Washington Times' 20th anniversary, its founder, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, gripped a podium at the Washington Hilton and delivered an impassioned, hour-long evangelical sermon in Korean saying he established the newspaper "in response to heaven's direction."
    During the sermon, he set the course for the Times' next 10 years: "The Washington Times is responsible to let the American people know about God." Later, he added: "The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world."
    By this point, several Times staffers had exited for the Hilton's bar, either because the party was alcohol-free or -- possibly -- because they needed a stiff drink.
    Moon's sermon tossed gasoline on the long-smoldering embers that some Times staffers have spent two decades trying to extinguish: the accusation that their paper is a mouthpiece for Moon's religious movement, the Unification Church. Or, at best, a public relations outlet for conservative values and the Republican Party.
    The charges were not helped by allegations of former reporters, who say stories were changed to favor conservatives; by editors who quit, claiming church tampering; or by obscurity surrounding the paper's finances. It has been years since many of those incidents, though, and five years since Moon's last mass wedding in Washington, which inevitably pulled the Times into scrutiny. For the past few years, the Times has enjoyed a relatively Moon-free zone.
    Now, that has changed.
    Yesterday, Times employees parsed Moon's words. According to one staffer, many were "embarrassed," some "humiliated." Others described the speech as "painful to watch." Though staffers trust their top editors to maintain editorial independence, they were worried that the paper's critics would use the religious leader's words as weapons. Moon's charge to the paper to spread his gospel did not appear in yesterday's Times account of the party.
    Editor in Chief Wesley Pruden issued a statement yesterday afternoon, which read in part: "This morning, we printed the 7,305th edition of The Times, and no one can show me a single line, in any of those 7,305 editions of The Times, of promotion or propaganda for Rev. Moon and his church. If the proof is in the pudding, how much pudding do you need?"
    Newspaper consultant John Morton said Moon's statements "go against everything that a newspaper tries to do."
    But he added: "If [the Times] continues in the future as it has in the past, I suspect this won't have much of an impact. So far in my experience, [Moon] has not unduly influenced how the paper conducts its journalism."
    First published on May 17, 1982, the Times was established by Moon to combat communism and be a conservative alternative to what he perceived as the liberal bias of The Washington Post.
    Since then, the paper has fought to prove its editorial independence, trying to demonstrate that it is neither a "Moonie paper" nor a booster of the political right but rather a fair and balanced reporter of the news.
    "A newspaper is a hell of a place to hide an agenda," Pruden said in an interview earlier this week. "We're conservative on the editorial page and in story selection, but we do not strive to write conservative stories."
    The paper is something of a journalistic curiosity -- a money-losing, church-subsidized newspaper with an editorial policy of "puncturing politically correct pomposity," said Pruden. The Times eschews what Pruden calls "victim stories," which he defines as articles about "people who were mistreated or think they were mistreated." His advice to them: "Get a life," which could well be the paper's motto.
    The Times has never climbed out of the red or earned substantial income from advertising; it is supported by a subsidy from its owner, News World Communications, a private company wholly owned by Moon's Unification Church.
    The paper's finances, as well as those of Moon's worldwide businesses, have been difficult to pin down. Moon owns land in South America as well as several papers in Latin America. The businesses run the gamut from commercial fisheries to Atlantic Video -- a Massachusetts Avenue video post-production facility -- to a cable channel called the GoodLife TV Network, which airs family fare, such as "Highway to Heaven."
    The office of News World President Douglas D.M. Joo did not return phone calls for this article. But interviews with several former and current Times staffers have helped to piece together a look at the paper's finances.
    In its first year, the paper spent about $100 million to renovate the building that serves as its headquarters on New York Avenue, said James Whelan, the paper's founding editor, who quit after two years, saying the Unification Church wanted to take editorial control of the paper.
    The paper's operating expenses for that year were about $40 million, with revenue of about $20 million from sales of the paper, advertising and commercial printing, he said. In 1983, expenses stayed at about $40 million, with revenue in the $25 million to $30 million range, Whelan said.
    "Advertising then as now was a very, very small share of our income," said Whelan, 68. Whelan oversaw an editorial staff of about 300, which is now down to about 225. The Times once had eight staffed foreign bureaus; now it has none, relying on "super-stringers" to cover overseas news. The paper maintains three national bureaus.
    By the mid-'80s -- as the paper was launching ambitious projects, such as its national weekly edition; its weekly newsmagazine, Insight; and its monthly scholarly journal, The World & I -- the Times' yearly subsidy had risen to about $50 million, said a former Times executive. Insight launched with a yearly subsidy of about $40 million, which has now shrunk to about $4 million, the former executive said. By the early '90s, the Times' subsidy was down to about $32 million.
    As of this year, Moon and his businesses have plowed about $1.7 billion into subsidizing the Times, say current and former employees.
    The Times will not disclose its current subsidy or the percentage of its revenue generated by advertising except to say that the subsidy has been decreasing over the past eight years, with a slight bump up last year, said Richard H. Amberg Jr., the paper's vice president and general manager.
    Typically, newspapers fill about 60 percent of their pages with advertising. The Times averages between 30 percent and 40 percent, Amberg said. Further, because the Times' circulation is about one-eighth that of The Post's, its ads cost about one-eighth as much.
    A 2001 survey conducted for The Post by Alexandria's QS&A Research and Strategy, polling government "decision-makers" such as congressional staffers and presidential appointees, found that 85 percent of those polled read The Post at least three out of every four days. Eighteen percent read the Times. Six years earlier the same survey had the Times' readership among decision-makers at 35 percent, with The Post's at 91 percent.
    Despite what some might see as the Times' waning influence, Amberg said he has received three offers over the past three years from potential buyers. He would not identify them other than to say one was a newspaper chain, another a small paper chain and the third "a very wealthy individual."
    Still, Amberg said, "we don't expect to achieve profitability in the next few years."
    In its early years, the Times' circulation was as much of a mystery as its budget. During Whelan's two-year tenure, the paper claimed as many as 125,000 subscribers. But then Whelan found out his circulation department was boosting its numbers by throwing away "thousands and thousands" of papers each day at recycling drop-offs in Alexandria.
    "At least they had a sense of civic conscience," he said, with a chuckle.
    From 1989 to '92, the Times' circulation was not audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the independent agency that monitors newspaper circulation. The paper "voluntarily withdrew" from the bureau, Amberg said, because its numbers "were not in order."
    As of March, the most recent report available, the Times' Monday-Friday daily circulation is 109,049. On Saturdays, that number is 86,950; on Sundays, it is 49,862. By comparison, The Post's daily circulation is 811,925 through the week, 735,329 on Saturdays and 1.1 million on Sundays.
    According to September 2001 data, the Times sold 24,084 daily copies in the District, 39,882 in Maryland (concentrated in Montgomery and Prince George's counties) and 37,137 in Virginia, with 2,549 sold outside the region.
    The Times is the 25th-fastest growing newspaper in the country, upping its circulation by 1.6 percent over last year, Amberg said, citing industry data.
    Similar curiosity has swirled around the Times' news coverage. Because its editorial pages are conservative, its news columns are sometimes labeled as conservative as well.
    Many former and current staffers report that their copy has not been changed to reflect a political bias. Major Garrett, a former CNN reporter, spent seven years on the Times' national desk as a reporter and editor. "I never found the editing ideologically or journalistically objectionable," he said.
    But others have experienced such rewrites, often called "Prudenizing." They have occurred in ways both large and small.
    In October 1991, Dawn Weyrich was covering the Clarence Thomas Senate confirmation hearings for the Times. Weyrich recalled that, of the many witnesses testifying one day, only one had made scathing remarks about Thomas's accuser, Anita Hill. Convinced this was of lesser news value, Weyrich wrote a story playing down that testimony and filed it for the paper's first edition.
    The headline on her story read: "Thomas accuser lauded, assailed."
    Weyrich stayed at the paper after the first edition and watched as Pruden rewrote the top of her story to include the anti-Hill testimony. A new headline was put on her story for the second edition: "Miss Hill painted as 'fantasizer' "
    "I screamed bloody murder," recalled Weyrich, 38, who, as daughter of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, said she took pains to make sure her stories were politically balanced. She quit the following day. Worse, she said, staffers told her that Pruden said she had quit as a rebellion against her father. "He looked at me as if I were a child," she said. "Damn it, I had a good reputation."
    Pruden said he "couldn't imagine" making such an assertion because Weyrich's departure was a personnel matter, which he did not discuss with staffers.
    Yesterday, some Times staffers wondered if Moon's Tuesday night pronouncements would mark a turn for the paper either in mission or public perception. Others saw it as more of the same. At 82, Moon appears to be proselytizing vigorously, even though church membership has steadily declined from its high point in the early '70s. When he dies, his wife will take over the ministry and a son will head the church's media business, a former Times executive said.
    "I don't get any body language at all that we're not going to be around in a year or five years," Amberg said. "But we want to reduce the subsidy and act like a paper that cares about profit. There's no endless spigot. We have finite resources."
    If he had any editorial sway wouldn't you expect UPI, LATimes, WASHtimes and Insight to be full of articles with a strong anti-North Korea and China slant? Bill Gertz anyone? How embarrassing to work for an organisation headed by a religious nutter though. I guess this is what the Justice Dept must feel like these days.
            
  • Who is the Rev. Moon?
    (christian letusreason.com)
    Moon was born in 1920, in the province of Pyungan Buk-do, in what is now North Korea. Moon was reared in a Presbyterian family. However, despite his supposed Christian upbringing he developed an interest in Spiritism which was evident from his early childhood. Unification Church leaders have claimed that while in his teens Moon had a visitation from Jesus on Easter morning, 1936. During this encounter Jesus supposedly "revealed that he was destined to accomplish a great mission in which Jesus would work with him" (Young Oon Kim, The Divine Principle and Its Application, p. 8). A host of responsibilities were delegated to him. Some claim Jesus actually told Moon he would be the "completer" of man's salvation, the "Savior, the Lord of the Second Advent, the Messiah" - a claim Moon made himself. (Today's World, September 1992, pp. 20-21). When asked how he knew this was Jesus he said, he looked just like his pictures, an answer that should be concerning to anyone, even the non Christian. For Jesus to tell Mr. Moon is to go against everything that the Jesus of the bible has spoken. But this doesn't seem to bother his followers since moon has already taught them not to pay heed to what the bible says but only what he says the bible says. "You can do it even without the Old and New Testaments. You do not need them anymore." (Sun Myung Moon, "My Life of Faith", Today's World, May, 1995, p. 15).
    The Moonies teach that the Bible is "not the truth itself, but a textbook teaching the truth." Divine Principle p.9) Moon's 536-page the Divine Principle (1952), is considered to be their scriptures (supposedly revealed directly to Moon by Jesus Christ), and interprets the Bible. In it we read such wonderful words as The New Testament words of Jesus and the Holy Spirit will lose their light in later times as new truth is revealed; just as the Old Testament words lost their light when Jesus and the Holy Spirit came. (DP p.118)
    This is not true because Jesus will constantly quote the OT to prove what he was teaching and who he was.
    His first encounter with Jesus was followed by communication to the dead. Moses, Buddha and a numerous others. Something the bible strictly forbids, which shows the source of his revelation is not God but in fact Satan the very one he assumes to have conquered.
    Moon later changed his name to Sun meaning "someone who has clarified the Truth, Shinning Sun and Moon), who changed his name from Young Myung Moon. Clearly this is a case of blinded by a light.
    How did this all begin?
    A group in North Korea which was deeply involved in mystical revelations and awaited the impending arrival of a new messiah. This comes from a cult text of the 15th cent by Chung Kam Nok. They believed Korea was the new Jerusalem and that the messiah would be born in Korea. Somehow this missed what the scriptures say about Jerusalem and about his already being born and coming back the same way he left, via the sky. This apparently made an impression on Moon as these elements would later be found in his theology and in the Divine Principle.
    Moon claims he got the call at 16 years of age in Korea from God on a mountain side while he was deep in prayer. Moon's states that he did not accept the call because he realized the great responsibility and importance of such a request. It was through contact with the good spiritual world, Jesus Christ, Saints, that Moon learned the deep mysteries of the Bible. He was told the true mission of the Messiah, the original sin, and how God has worked through history to prepare the world to receive the Messiah. By this contact of spirits he learned that the original plan was not for Jesus to die, this was a "second option." It was required because of the lack of faith of the Jewish people to receive their Messiah.
     A spirit connection
    In 1965 Moon and his close advisor, Bo Hi Pak, participated in a séance with famed spirit medium Arthur Ford. Ford channeled a spirit he called "Fletcher." In this séance "Fletcher" described Moon: those who will be the human instrument through whom the World Teacher will be able to speak...Jesus of Galilee will not return - it is not necessary...the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, can speak through Moon more clearly - more completely - than he is able to speak through any one individual today...There is but one Christ. He may wear different names, because men speak different tongues, but there is but one God, one Christ, on Spirit of Truth....Remember to make the distinction between the Spirit of Truth, which is the Christ, and any individual with a human name...The Spirit of Truth didn't begin with any man - it ends with no man - it uses men. Right now it is using in a very remarkable way the man who is in your presence." This world teacher is well known in new age circles by the name of Matreiya who Benjamin Creme is playing the role of John the Baptist for.
    Moon's involvement with Spiritism is still evident today as he "continually receives 'new revelations,' practices a form of soul travel whereby he allegedly projects himself into the spirit realm to see Jesus and the saints, and claims to be an 'expert' on the spirit world." (James Bjornstad, The Moon Is Not The Son, p. 30).
    That occult visitations come from his involvement in Spiritism is evidenced in Moon's book, God's Warning to the World, in which he states, "Early in my life God called me for a mission as His instrument...I committed myself unyieldingly in pursuit of truth, searching the hills and valleys of the spiritual world. The time suddenly came to me when heaven opened up, and I was privileged to communicate with Jesus Christ and the living God directly. Since then I have received many astonishing revelations" (p. 10). Further insight is gained from the introduction of the Unification Church manual, Outline of the Principle - Level 4. Referring to Moon, it states, "Only God really knows the kind of path he traveled. He freely communicated with Jesus and the saints in Paradise" (p. 2, 1980 ed.). "When I was a teenager I had a trip to the Spirit world. I met Jesus. John the Baptist. When I came back the Bible took on an entirely new meaning. If you don’t believe me go to the Spirit world and contact them yourself." Well I don’t think we are going to see a rush of people to validate his experience. Except maybe the Mormon church and channellers.
    Bo Hi Pak's Washington Times newspaper, which is reportedly losing $200 million a year Rev. Sun Myung Moon made headlines again in sometime ago when reports surfaced that the Korean-born leader of the Unification Church was "channeling" voices from the dead and that he had contacted his late son, Heung Jin Nim Moon.
    More striking were revelations that a black church member from Africa was being possessed by Heung Jin Nim, who had been killed in a 1984 car crash at age 17. According to the Washington Post, church members were startled by the news, but they went along with it because it came from Moon. (they dare not go against Father) But as the bizarre story started to unfold the appearance and subsequent coronation of the unnamed Zimbabwean as Moon's son, some church members became skeptical, others had been working to quench rumors of theological differences inside the church.
    The Zimbabwean, described as a baby-faced black man in his early 20s, has been a member of the church for the past three years. Last year he began claiming to hear the voice of Heung Jin Nim. After a church-sponsored investigation concluded that the man probably was Moon's son, he came to America and met with Moon. According to the Post, the man knew the answers to five questions only Moon's deceased son could have known, and thus won Moon's enthusiastic acceptance.
    His dead son seems to still speak as messages come through, "Of course, in order that the Ministers feel at home, you must declare your love to Brother Jesus, but at the same time do not forget your goal, which is to bring them to the Lord of the Second Advent." (supposedly by the spirit of Heung Jin Moon, The Victory of Love, The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, 1992], p.41.)
    Dr. Tyler O. Hendricks, President of the Unification Church of America, writes, in the Unification News of December 1995, "The Messiah is the incarnation of God, the Creator who deserves our infinite gratitude because he bestowed upon us infinite love" (p. 29). He continues, in the same article, "...the UC is the church which demands continual sacrifice of its members, centering on the fate of one individual, the Messiah, Reverend Sun Myung Moon" (p. 29). Moon, himself states, in his speech given on True Parent's Day, April 18, 1996.
    True parents day is one of four holy days to the Unification church. Moon believes when the whole world celebrates all these holidays it will be a sign that the Unifications God has redeemed us all ,Heaven is the place we enter after celebrating God’s day Parents day, world day and Children’s day on a worldwide level." (National WFWP conference in Boston Unification new Nov.1993).
    According to Moons philosophy a new age dawned in 1960 "At that time the marriage of the lamb prophesied in the 19th chpt of Rev. took place. Thus the Lord of the 2nd advent and his bride became the true parents of mankind. (this occurred by his marrying Hak Ja han) (The Moon is not the Son p.62-63). He also claims that he is the only one who can open the scroll sealed with 7 seals in the book of Revelation (Divine Principle pp. 133,519).
    Clearly Moon and his followers believe, and teach: he is the third Adam, he and his wife are the True Parents, his is the True Family; it is restore the first perfect God-centered family on earth. With this one model as a center, all the rest of the world can be adopted into this family" (God's Warning, pp. 145-46). Through this "restoration," he asserts, "True ancestry from God will be established and heaven on earth can then be literally achieved" (Ibid., p. 147-48).One of Moon's mission that was commissioned from Jesus was to form a large family siring perfect children. In the spring of 1980 this was accomplished with his 12th child born, salvation has been won.
    Is this so? Recently they have been embarrassed publicly when Moon's elder son, Hyo Jin Moon, and his wife Nansook, got a divorce. It was the Rev. Moon who matched and "blessed" them in marriage as Hyo Jin married Nansook a 15 year-old school girl at the time. So much for the perfect family and marriage. moon cannot blame this on the girl for reason that he picked. But more serious findings squash any excuse from the Rev. Nansook described a pattern of abuse, coming from drug abuse. She describes Hyo Jin beating her in 1994 while she was seven months pregnant. Nansook complained that her in-laws did next to nothing to confront Hyo Jin although aware of his problem. "Although Hyo Jin's family knew of his addictions and his abuse of me and the children, I received very little emotional or physical support from them," Nansook wrote. "I was constantly at the mercy of Hyo Jin's erratic and cruel behavior." It is these stories that are hidden from the members and public .
    The recent divorce has brought to the publicmuch of what they would want hidden. His ex-wife has accused Hyo Jin of adultery, both physical and mental abuse, drug and alcohol abuse which he himself admitted to. He has frequented the Betty Ford clinic for treatment and was released from the program for refusing to follow the orders of doctors.
    Nan Sook Hong told a Boston Globe reporter that she was chosen to be Hyo Jin's wife by a psychic in Korea who Moon had sought out. Considering Moon's mission is to choose marriage partners for his followers he did not do this for his son instead he went to a psychic for advice in marriage.
    The Jesus of the Rev. Moon
    What the Unification Church presents publicly and to their members are two different things. It's intentions of strengthening the family through strict moral discipline and serving the needs of humanity seems wonderful commendable and even Christian. That is on the surface and what they want you to see, but the true Unification Church is a mind control cult of no equal.
    Moon teaches some outright bizarre things about Christ '...His body was invaded by Satan, and He was killed. Therefore, even when Christians believe in and become one body with Jesus whose body was invaded by Satan, their bodies still remain subject to Satan's invasion. In this manner, however devout a man of faith may be, he cannot fulfill physical salvation by redemption through Jesus crucifixion alone '(Divine Principle, p. 148).
    The Bible, shows the opposite in that Satan was defeated at the cross and presently in the lives of Christians.(Col.2:17, 1 John 3:8)
    For Moon, Jesus' death was failure. For Paul, it was the central point of the Gospel, the purchase of salvation, the guarantee of liberty from both sin and the Law -Moon has stated with reference to Jesus nature Jesus was this Messiah, the second Adam. But he doesn’t end there, John the Baptist is also a failure (D P p. 156-162). Moon teaches, "Abraham was the father of faith, Moses was a man of faith, Jesus was the son of man, trying to carry out his mission at the cost of his life. But they are, in a way, failures." (Sun Myung Moon, "Victory or Defeat, " from Master Speaks, March 31, 1973, p. 1.)
    Moon in Jesus' place teaches: "I am now making a prototype of the perfect family, accomplishing what Jesus could not do." (Sun Myung Moon, from the Unification Church Magazine, Today's World, May, 1995, p.12.) It is after many great spiritual battles with Satan, Moon achieved perfection and became one with God, qualifying him to be Jesus replacement.
    Mr. Moon himself said of himself, "I had to accomplish all left unaccomplished by my predecessor. . . .When you think of that, you must feel indebted to me and cannot lift your face before me." (Master Speaks, 7/4/73, p.3) This sounds like the humility found in Christ doesn't it? Who is the one who left things unaccomplished? Jesus.
    Moon's goal to start a new human race under his leadership. "I must save America… I know the direction that human kind must go, and I, with the help of God, will lead the world there…my wife and I can now stand on a worldwide foundation as true first true parents." (True parents and the completed testament age" (Speech given during Mr. and Mrs. Moons 32 city tour in USA May 13 June 27 1993). Adam failed to accomplish this task. Jesus, the second Adam, also failed in this mission. Thus, according to Moon, full salvation requires a "completer." When Jesus failed to accomplish his purpose "it became God's desire to send another Messiah, a second son here on earth" (DP, p.135). This is the third Adam, the Lord of the Second Advent. (Ibid., p. 145).
    Moon's own Kingdom of God on earth will be established by what he identifies as the "third Adam". The "third Adam" is Rev. Moon and that he has already begun to establish God's kingdom. "He [God] is living in me. I am the incarnation of Himself... The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate the world."
    According to Rev. Moon, "Adam and Eve were God's first children" and were placed in the garden to mature into perfection in God. Moon teaches it was God's intent to "make Adam and Eve one in heavenly matrimony" at which point "they would have borne sinless children and become the mother and father for all humankind. They would have been the 'True Parents,' establishing the heavenly Kingdom on earth" (Ibid., p. 37). "Humankind needs the Messiah. The Messiah comes as the True Man who can establish the sinless family just like Adam and Eve were supposed to establish in the Garden of Eden for all humankind. Once the Messiah's family is established, all human beings can be engrafted into it and we can build a society, nation and world." (Sun Myung Moon, Unification Church Magazine, Today's World, September 1996, pp. 8-9).
    Moon teaches "Through adultery, the archangel who became Satan stole the intended bride of heaven." (Sun Myung Moon, Today's World, May/June 1994, p. 22.) According to Unification doctrine, however, they failed in this mission as Eve succumbed to the seduction of the archangel, Satan, having sexual intercourse with him. Her eyes were then opened and, realizing what she had done, she attempted to correct this by having relations with Adam, prior to God's appointed time. Eve successfully seduced Adam and, after having sexual relations with her, his eyes were also opened and he felt fear and shame over what he had done. (Unification Theology and Christian Thought, pp. 60-63). (when she was 16-17 years old- Moon teaches that if she had only made it to the age of 21, then she would have been perfect- and her children with Adam would have been perfect ).
    The bible teaches from the beginning they were told to be fruitful and multiply, so all this is nonsense. The serpent seed doctrine (Lucifer having sex with Eve) has been taught by numerous other non believers and some who claimed to be believers) It is heretical and pure fantasy, as is the majority of moon's teachings
    Moon states when humanity finds its true parent to free itself from the grips of Satan. "To help fulfill this very purpose I have been called upon by God… I have suffered persecution and confronted death with only one purpose in mind, so that I can live with the heart of true parents to love races of all colors in the world."
    This teaching concerning the "True Parents" is the central tenet of Unification theology, for it is through this alone that mankind will be restored to God. "By the restoration of True Parents we will be reborn as children of our heavenly Father, God. This will mean full salvation as His true children, not merely salvation as the adopted children." (Ibid., p. 42). "All people will be made new through the True Parents.
    "Thus, we have to attend Rev. and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon as the True Parents of humankind coming with the seed of the true child of new life. Also, we have to experience rebirth through the International Holy Blessing, which is the divine ceremony to transfer lineage through receiving the seed of the child of true life" (Prof. Taek Yong Oh, Today's World, June, 1997, p. 17) .
    One cannot find a hint of any of this from the bible however Moon is able to get away with these teachings, even claiming Jesus as inspiration because his followers are complete bible illiterate's.
    His theology is that Jesus may be savior of our spirits, but not our bodies. So we need Reverend Moon, to accomplish our physical salvation, to accomplish what Jesus failed to do. Why? Because he did not marry.
    All people will be empowered to bring sinless children into the world...This is the day when God's original ideal will be realized for the first time...His own son as perfected third Adam will initiate an entirely new history upon the earth. On that day, we shall become living images of God. God will bring His kingdom to earth" (Unification Theology and Christian Thought, p. 43).
    "Even Almighty God cannot experience the values of love, life, and His ideal when He is alone. That is why God created His object, His image, man and woman...So man and woman together are the visible form of God, and God is the invisible form of man and woman...Human being is incarnate God...So man and woman, the object of God, is as important in value as God Himself" (Ibid. p. 4-5). "God desired to substantiate Himself in the world, and He finally approached that point with the birth of the original parents, Adam and Eve" (Ibid., p. 12).
    Here, in his theology of Adam and Eve, one gets an even clearer picture of Moon's erroneous view of man and God. "God is the father of Adam and Eve, and naturally He must have some resemblance to them...Before Adam and Eve fell they were the walking, physical God here on earth. As the visible form of God, they were to take over Lordship of the physical world, whereas God remained the invisible Lord of the entire spirit world...Why did God create human beings? God wanted to assume tangible form and the day Adam and Eve were born was almost like the day of God's own birth. As Adam and Eve grew to completion, God spiritually grew into a greater fulfillment together with them. God and his children were one and the same person actually..." (Ibid.). I’m not sure if he’s reading Copeland’s material or Copeland's reading his. Another alternative is that they are receiving revelation from the same source.
    "Jesus knew that God was looking forward to having his only begotten daughter, so Jesus looked forward to restoring a woman in that position" (Ibid., p. 38). "God intended him [Jesus] to bring forth upon this earth his own sinless children. Then Jesus and his bride would have become the True Parents for humankind, and all humankind would have found life by grafting onto them" (Ibid., p. 42).
    "Should Jesus have married? Jesus should have married. Is Jesus a woman or a man? If there is a woman saint, would Jesus not desire to marry her?" ( Buenos Aires Sheraton hotel speech Nov.23 1996) Moon is not the least bit concerned in inserting his own carnal thoughts to Jesus.
    Moon's speeches which span a lifetime consists of thousands of volumes, all recorded as it is to them Holy Doctrine. Moon's teachings, his belief system are far beyond the scope of just an article or a book to address. We can take note that everything he says counters what the bible says almost 100%.
    What of the essentials of the Christian faith for 2,000 years. He says In contradiction concerning Jesus, he is not God but a man in whom God is incarnate. "In like manner Jesus, being one body with God may be called a second God (Image of God) but he can by no means be God himself. It is true that he who has seen Jesus has seen God ;but Jesus did not say this to indicate that he was God himself," (Divine Principle p.211) "We must understand that this (John 8.58) also does not signify that Jesus was God Himself Jesus, on earth was a man no different from US except for the fact that He was born without original sin." (Divine Principle p. 212).
    The principle does not deny the attitude faith held by many Christians that Jesus is God, since it is true a perfected man is one body with God." (D P p. 209)
    Since he was crucified before marrying, Jesus did not complete his mission." and like Adam and Eve before Him, Jesus failed. His death on the cross only effected a partial, salvation that was incomplete. He only accomplished salvation in the spiritual level, leaving salvation in the physical realm yet to be accomplished (Ibid., p. 78). And that would be done by the Lord of the 2nd advent, himself.
    This moon explains, "We, therefore must realize that Jesus did not come to die on the cross (p.144) Jesus failed in his mission which was to marry and have perfect children. Moon teaches it was God's plan for Jesus to marry and for he and his wife to become the True Parents, succeeding where Adam failed. According to Unification theology, it is God's ultimate desire to give a physical bride (not just the symbolic church) to His son. Moon states, "Jesus came to this earth to be the true, everlasting father of humankind" (Ibid.), thus fulfilling that which Adam failed to accomplish. He further teaches Jesus did not come to earth to die; it was not God's plan for him to go to the cross. However, man, in his lack of faith and because of his sinfulness, crucified Jesus and thwarted God's original plan (Ibid., pp. 122, 129-35) This should be absolutely rejected by Christians of the least discernment. This makes Jesus a sinner like anyone else and would even make other Christian cults blush. Moon who is bold enough to be a self proclaimed messianic pretender seems to have no limits to his attacks on historic Christianity. Jesus did not fail but Moon has, by not seeing the simplicity of the Gospel. There is a lesson to be learned here for all those who follow new revelators of the last days. they all share a commonality they are unable to read the Bible for its literal interpretation. They deny its essential message.
    Here from a speech that appeared in Midweek of march 19th of this year with a 2 page ad we find the most ridiculous revelations yet. I read a lot of cult material in my research but much of what he said are so graphic, bizarre and disgusting it boggles the mind how the paper allowed this to go to print. So I cannot mention it all and it certainly was not pleasant to read.
    "What did Adam and Eve plant in the garden of Eden? It was the seed of free sex. Can that be denied. That is the reason they covered their lower parts."…"If the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil were a literal fruit, then Adam and Eve should have covered their mouths or their hands. So why did they hide their lower parts? Reverend Moon is an intelligent man. I am not doing what I am doing because I am inferior to you.. It cannot be denied that the fall was caused by fornication.( Buenos Aires Sheraton hotel speech Nov.23 1996) Mr. moon certainly shows what he thinks of many things especially himself.
    "Look at the OT era….Look at Rebecca the wife of Isaac. Isn’t she the one the one who stole the blessing for Jacob by cheating her eldest son. , Esau, and her own husband Isaac? Why would God love such a woman? How can we have faith in such a God? No one until now has answered these questions. Rev. Moon is the first person to provide the answers, because Rev. Moon is the only one who knows all the secrets of God." Now let us discover the dividing line between heaven and hell. Is it up in the air? Where is it? It is your sexual organ. This is a serious matter….Who can deny this." "If you wonder whether Rev. Moon will go to heaven or hell, please check Spirit world. There you will find out…You have to realize Rev. Moon overcame death hundreds of times in order to find this path. Rev. Moon is the person who brought God to tears hundreds of times. No one in history has loved God more than Rev Moon has".( Buenos Aires Sheraton hotel speech, Nov.23 1996).
    He has even the audacity to say "No one throughout history has known God better than I do." (Sun Myung Moon, "In Search of the Origin of the Universe", Today's World, September, 1996, p. 9.)
    It is for this very reason this man is so dangerous. Most cult's are in the hands of a body of leaders, Moon by himself has enormous wealth and power over his subjects. With control over people in such a way that he can marry thousands and next year plans are to be millions. This can at anytime have the potential to become a Heaven's gate or a Jim Jones with this kind of dementia.
    "Actually, have you ever stopped to wonder if there is anything that Father doesn't do? There's no such thing; he does everything. Now we know these are phenomena of the Last Days. So what is the conclusion? Pay no attention to anything else; just hold on to Reverend Moon. Thus, when Father gives a direction, we can reply confidently, "Yes." We don't discuss it; we just go ahead, because we know that we are better off that way” (Proclamation of the Messiah by Reverend Sun Myung Moon). Yes don’t discuss he would rather have it that way. What better tool to implement mind control than to not question anything said.
    What Does the Reverend who was visited by Jesus have to say about Christians who follow Jesus?
    After speaking on atheists being silent he says of Christians, "On the other side Christians entrap us, crying heresy because our doctrines differ, and they try to destroy us. But in this case, this so called heretical cult is on the side of truth" ( Buenos Aires Sheraton hotel speech Nov.23, 1996). Are they? How would they know? Because the good Rev. told them so.
    "America, representing the right wing, struck Reverend Moon. The left wing, as well as Christianity and Islam also struck Reverend Moon. The fact that they struck Reverend Moon, without any clear reason, puts them on Satan's side. Ironically, this Christian nation struck Reverend Moon and is now on Satan's side. This fact has never occurred to them. It means they are striking God” (Proclamation of the Messiah by Reverend Sun Myung Moon). Here is Moons control, if you are against him your Satan and are fighting God. This is classic cultism. He gives no specific reason to explain any of this except to fall back on his mission which he interpreted to be from God, and in fact is not.
    “Even the religious people are now on Satan's side. The Jews and the Christians came against me and God. "... How could America, which God fostered, and which was so righteous, decline in a mere 40 years? It is because they opposed Reverend Moon and God. Reverend Moon has established the historical record for bearing suffering and persecution…. All of this is the result of Reverend Moon being struck and persecuted so much, so Father doesn't mind being struck. (Thank you, Father.)” … There is not a single person, family, tribe or country that did not come against Father. Everyone went against Reverend Moon” ( Proclamation of the Messiah by Reverend Sun Myung Moon)
    Rev. Moon has bluntly said, "I know the established Christian theology....I know the enemy, but the enemy doesn't know me. Thus the enemy has already lost the war" (Rev. Moon, Today's World, Feb 95, p. 14). In some ways he is right , we have numerous people who have become comrades with him despite his claims to be the Messiah and God. There are those who will side with anyone as long as the money comes in. Then there is the prestige of being seen with a modern day moral leader, a martyr for a cause. But can anyone come to this conclusion after reading some of his material where his focus is on sex. He is more a disguised liberal, who is false messiah, prophet/teacher that has in essence gained the whole world and in reality lost his own soul. But then that was Jesus' words and we don't need Him anymore, we have Moon!
    Moon is soon to exit this world, then what will his followers do?
    I dunno, perhaps we should give our derision of Kim Il Sung a break for a while.

  • 65 yo Georgia Man claims Ear of God-"He told me everything about everything. My eyes is like a camera. It's like making a movie. I see everything. I see it all."
    05-29-02
    WOODBURY, Ga. (AP) _ Beyond the beer cans that litter the lawn, beside stale stacks of empty juice cartons, beneath spray-painted pocketbooks strung from a rotten ceiling sits an old man who believes he is a prophet.
    In the musty wood-frame house where he was born 65 years ago, Jessie Marshall takes phone calls from people who want winning lottery numbers, their cancer cured or simple direction in a wayward life.
    Gray-bearded and frail, Marshall claims he has talked to God for years, mostly on behalf of people who have heard his legend and sought his help.
    "I been hooked up since I was a kid," he says, rambling but clear. "He told me everything about everything. My eyes is like a camera. It's like making a movie. I see everything. I see it all."
    And people in this tiny town _ the ones who aren't afraid of him, at least _ believe it.
    Every morning, Marshall emerges from his ramshackle home and walks. The west Georgia town of Woodbury, population 1,148, knows him for that _ ambling around, talking to anyone who will listen.
    He walks to the post office, where he purchases exactly one first-class stamp, although the clerk does not know why, nor does he care to talk about it. And he walks to the little bank, sometimes taking out money, sometimes depositing a check or two.
    And then he walks home to Rose Avenue, to the unmistakable house he calls the Palatial Palace of Prayer.
    In the front yard, there are old boxes of frozen dinners, children's toys, upended flower pots. Out back, there are tomato stakes with shopworn shoes hung top to bottom, a rusty bike, a waffle iron, a conch shell.
    It is a monument to what some people in the South call folk art, and what most everyone else calls junk. To Marshall, it is treasure, arranged just so, and he would not dream of cleaning it up.
    "All my life, I've seen things," he says. "Here, I've put it all together. I don't like to throw nothing away. It's like death. I don't like death."
    It is inside this house, boxed in by walls entirely obscured by old newspapers that he has saved and nailed up, that Marshall takes calls from people who want his help. The phone rings constantly.
    "Most people ain't gonna pray for themselves, so I pray for them," he says. "They want their lives straightened out. That's what most of them need. They need balance. You need balance in your life."
    His work is serious business in Woodbury. Legend has it the Department of Transportation came here once, to get Marshall to clean up the leg of his property that borders State Route 85. Then townsfolk told the state workers his story.
    "After a while, they just let him keep it there," says Gene Oxford, a neighbor. "They were afraid to move it."
    "He just has a way of knowing some things. He just knows."
    Tammy Johnson is leaning in conspiratorially from her station at the teller stand at Woodbury Banking Co., just off the modest strip of one-story businesses in the heart of town.
    She was a skeptic herself. But Marshall came into the bank one day and predicted a stroke of bad luck would befall her family. Soon after, Johnson's mother was diagnosed with kidney cancer.
    Then Johnson had Marshall pray for her recovery. Today the woman is in near-perfect health.
    "For some reason or another," Johnson says, "his prayers are always answered."
    Another town legend has it that Marshall, who moved here in the 1970s, predicted ill health for a former mayor _ just before doctors discovered an aneurysm.
    Years later, another mayor needed a heart transplant, and people in Woodbury claim Marshall foresaw that, too.
    "He stays in touch," says Robert Lovett, who works at the town water plant. "He knows what's going on."
    Allen Stephens, who serves as Woodbury mayor when he is not tending his flower shop, says people who have heard the Marshall legend send him letters, asking him to mail back items he has blessed.
    "He blesses bird seed a lot," the mayor says. "And from what I understand, it's worldwide."
    Marshall does not ask for anything in return, he says _ although a man who won several thousand dollars on lottery numbers he recommended once paid to have the roof redone on Rose Avenue.
    But people pay anyway. The tellers at the bank say they have seen Marshall deposit single checks from out-of-town, or even out-of-state, for thousands of dollars.
    Most people who know Marshall _ and most everyone in this town does _ will talk freely about him, smiling and shaking their heads at what he has predicted in the past.
    "People are afraid of him. They think he can put spells on them," says Tommy Davis, who works at Four Point LP Gas downtown. "It's like a root doctor. People are scared. The ol' country folks, they believe that, and they won't cross him, and that's all there is to it."
    Marshall laughs off the notion. He sincerely believes he is a prophet, but does not make much of it. All he has done, he says, is harness the power of prayer.
    He grew up poor and Baptist, in a family that clung to God because God was all there was.
    And today, he will tell you he believes in simple things _ love, happiness, purity, fairness. He has a deep love of country, and has tacked up spray-painted messages of patriotism all over his house.
    "We didn't have nothing. That is what my family depended on _ God and working," he says. "God is the only one I look up to. I've been everywhere, and I ain't never seen anyone smarter."
    I think of all the contenders this guy shows the most promise.

     

  • UK Chemist obtains UFO secrets
    June 6, 2000 07:04 CDT
    A Wales, UK, chemist has apparently pierced Britain's government secrecy on reported UFO sightings, said the London Observer over the weekend.
    In an article distributed by the Observer's news service, author Antony Barnett says a British government ombudsman intervened to enable Wales chemist Colin Ridyard to receive two reports of UFO encounters in 1999 from "a little-known department in the ministry known as Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a, the secretive section which collates reports of unidentified flying objects that cross British airspace."
    Barnett said the British government "has traditionally treated reports of UFO sightings as highly classified and only released information to the public after 30 years." Ridyard had asked the Ministry of Defense for information relating to UFO reports by pilots or radar between July, 1998 and July, 1999. The ministry refused until parliamentary ombudsman Michael Buckley urged the it to do so.
    And while Ridyard received two reports, the Observer said the British Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has additional sightings reports that Defense did not disclose.
    Even so, the two reports Ridyard received recount high-speed objects, one flying over the Midlands region in late 1998, described as an aircraft with "very bright strobe lights flashing once every 20 seconds." It was reported by a commercial pilot.
    The other report, from Feb. 15, 1999, came from an air traffic controller in Scotland, who noticed "something strange on his radar screen," said the Observer. "A bright blip on his screen suggested there was a very large object traveling at 3,000 mph over the Scottish coastline heading southwest. The size of the blip suggested the object was 10 miles long and two miles wide. Two minutes later, the object disappeared." That same month, according to CAA reports, a pilot flying over the North Sea was "startled when his aircraft became illuminated by and incandescent light, with three other aircraft in the area (also) reported seeing a ball of light moving at high speed." No air traffic radar picked up the object, but five minutes later, a weather station did on its radar.
    And another incident reported by the CAA to the Defense Ministry in June, 1999 involved a Boeing 757 jet pilot's report of an unidentified military looking aircraft over the North Sea, with no targets reported either by the 757's or air traffic controllers' radar.
    "This is not about little green men, but about freedom of information," Ridyard told the Observer. "It is clear that there are many strange incidents that happen in the British skies that are kept secret. There may be issues of aircraft safety or natural phenomena, but by keeping this information secret these incidents cannot by scrutinized by the public or the scientific community."
    How many airplanes are brought down by meteors, like the official report on TWA800 suggested? 2 or 3 a year? Or very few indeed?

                                          

     

  • The Israel Lobby
    June 10, 2002
    by Michael Massing,TheNation.com
    On May 2 the Senate, in a vote of 94 to 2, and the House, 352 to 21, expressed unqualified support for Israel in its recent military actions against the Palestinians. The resolutions were so strong that the Bush Administration--hardly a slouch when it comes to supporting Israel--attempted to soften its language so as to have more room in getting peace talks going. But its pleas were rejected, and members of Congress from Joe Lieberman to Tom DeLay competed to heap praise on Ariel Sharon and disdain on Yasir Arafat. Reporting on the vote, the New York Times noted that one of the few dissenters, Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, "suggested that many senators were after campaign contributions."
     Aside from that brief reference, however, the Times made no mention of the role that money, or lobbying in general, may have played in the lopsided vote. More specifically, the Times made no mention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It's a remarkable oversight. AIPAC is widely regarded as the most powerful foreign-policy lobby in Washington. Its 60,000 members shower millions of dollars on hundreds of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. It also maintains a network of wealthy and influential citizens around the country, whom it can regularly mobilize to support its main goal, which is making sure there is "no daylight" between the policies of Israel and of the United States.
    So, when Congress votes so decisively in support of Israel, it's no accident. Yet, surveying US newspaper coverage of the Middle East in recent months, I found next to nothing about AIPAC and its influence. The one account of any substance appeared in the Washington Post, in late April. Reporting on AIPAC's annual conference, correspondent Mike Allen noted that the attendees included half the Senate, ninety members of the House and thirteen senior Administration officials, including White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who drew a standing ovation when he declared in Hebrew, "The people of Israel live." Showing its "clout," Allen wrote, AIPAC held "a lively roll call of the hundreds of dignitaries, with individual cheers for each." Even this article, however, failed to probe beneath the surface and examine the lobbying and fundraising techniques AIPAC uses to lock up support in Congress.
    AIPAC is not the only pro-Israel organization to escape scrutiny. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, though little known to the general public, has tremendous influence in Washington, especially with the executive branch. Based in New York, the conference is supposed to give voice to the fifty-two Jewish organizations that sit on its board, but in reality it tends to reflect the views of its executive vice chairman, Malcolm Hoenlein. Hoenlein has long had close ties to Israel's Likud Party. In the 1990s he helped raise money for settlers' groups on the West Bank, and today he regularly refers to that region as "Judea and Samaria," a biblically inspired catch phrase used by conservatives to justify the presence of Jewish settlers there. A skilled and articulate operative, Hoenlein uses his access to the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council to push for a strong Israel. He's so effective at it that the Jewish newspaper the Forward, in its annual list of the fifty most important American Jews, has ranked Hoenlein first.
    Hoenlein showed his organizing skills in April, when he helped convene the large pro-Israel rally on Capitol Hill. While the event itself was widely covered, Hoenlein, and the conference, remained invisible. An informal survey of recent coverage turned up not a single in-depth piece about Hoenlein and how he has used the Presidents Conference to keep the Bush Administration from putting too much pressure on the Sharon government.
    Why the blackout? For one thing, reporting on these groups is not easy. AIPAC's power makes potential sources reluctant to discuss the organization on the record, and employees who leave it usually sign pledges of silence. AIPAC officials themselves rarely give interviews, and the organization even resists divulging its board of directors. Journalists, meanwhile, are often loath to write about the influence of organized Jewry. Throughout the Arab world, the "Jewish lobby" is seen as the root of all evil in the Middle East, and many reporters and editors--especially Jewish ones--worry about feeding such stereotypes.
    In the end, though, the main obstacle to covering these groups is fear. Jewish organizations are quick to detect bias in the coverage of the Middle East, and quick to complain about it. That's especially true of late. As the Forward observed in late April, "rooting out perceived anti-Israel bias in the media has become for many American Jews the most direct and emotional outlet for connecting with the conflict 6,000 miles away." Recently, an estimated 1,000 subscribers to the Los Angeles Times suspended home delivery for a day to protest what they considered the paper's pro-Palestinian coverage. The Chicago Tribune, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Miami Herald have all been hit by similar protests, and NPR has received thousands of e-mails complaining about its reports from the Middle East.
    Do such protests have an effect? Consider the recent experience of the New York Times. On May 6 the paper ran two photographs of a pro-Israel parade in Manhattan. Both showed the parade in the background and anti-Israel protesters prominently in the foreground. The paper, which for weeks has been threatened with a boycott by Jewish readers, was deluged with protests. On May 7 the Times ran an abject apology. That caused much consternation in the newsroom, with some reporters and editors feeling that the paper had buckled before an influential constituency. "It's very intimidating," said a correspondent at another large daily who is familiar with the incident. Newspapers, he added, are "afraid" of organizations like AIPAC and the Presidents Conference. "The pressure from these groups is relentless. Editors would just as soon not touch them."
    Needless to say, US support for Israel is the product of many factors--Israel's status as the sole democracy in the Middle East, its value as a US strategic ally and widespread horror over Palestinian suicide bombers. But the power of the pro-Israel lobby is an important element as well. Indeed, it's impossible to understand the Bush Administration's tender treatment of the Sharon government without taking into account the influence of groups like AIPAC. Isn't it time they were exposed to the daylight?
    I take offense to your reporting of my taking offense.

  • Message About LA Times Anti-semitic Cartoon Outdated
    (ADL.org)
    ADL has received complaints about an editorial cartoon, "Worshipping Their God" by Michael Ramirez of the Los Angeles Times, which portrayed two men worshipping at a wall labeled "hate." The complaints are based on an e-mail message that has recently circulated on the Internet. This e-mail message contains information long outdated.
    This Ramirez cartoon appeared in the Times and in other newspapers in October of 2000. The cartoon depicted a Jew and an Arab (not two Jews) praying before a wall labeled "Hate." The wall was not intended to be the Western Wall, though many in the Jewish community assumed it was.
    Although the subject of controversy at the time, the matter has long since been put to rest.
    Shortly after the cartoon appeared, ADL produced a survey of editorial cartoons, which explained the incident as follows:
    The Ramirez cartoon, "Worshipping Their God," which appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Oct. 6, 2000 after surfacing on the Times Internet site three days earlier, was syndicated to newspapers across the country and also widely disseminated across the Internet. After a barrage of complaints, including from major Arab and Jewish organizations, that the cartoon was unfair and insensitive, the cartoonist himself issued a public response: "There seems to be a misperception by some that my cartoon depicts the Western Wall and that I blamed the Israelis solely for the hatred and violence in the Middle East. Actually, the metaphor depicts BOTH Israelis AND Palestinians worshipping "hate."
    The Los Angeles Times published a letter from ADL criticizing the cartoon the following day. This was followed on October 15 by a lengthy commentary by the newspaper’s ombudsman, Times Associate Editor Narda Zacchino, who described the public outcry as "unprecedented." She stated: "Obviously, the cartoon failed to communicate his (Ramirez’s) message. In addition, virtually no one saw the image as anything but the Western Wall, the use of which in the cartoon was careless and insensitive."
    I saw this. Unless you knew that Jews don't kneel to pray, it was very hard to recognise what was going on and it looked like two Jews at the Wailing Wall worshipping "Hate". Not very funny anyway. Well, except for the flap it caused amongst the Linda Richman set.

  • ADL Calls on European Central Bank President to Publicly Condemn Wife's Anti-Semitic and Jewish Conspiracy Statements
    (ADL.org)
    New York, N.Y., May 30, 2002 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today called comments made by the wife of the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) which blamed “rich Jews” and the “rich American Jewish lobby” as the cause of the “deplorable conditions” in which the Palestinians live, “outrageous and a throwback to long-time anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.” The League requested that ECB President Willem Duisenberg publicly reject these comments.
    In a letter to President Duisenberg, Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, said:
    We are writing to request that you publicly reject recent public comments made to the media by your wife, Greta, blaming "rich Jews," and "the rich American Jewish lobby," as the "cause of the deplorable conditions in which the Palestinian people live, because they enable the existence of Israel." Ms. Duisenberg further stated that "the tremendously powerful Jewish lobby in the United States keeps on being obsessed with supporting Israel. All presidents elected and reelected, have to do whatever the lobby wants."
    Mrs. Duisenberg's outrageous comments are not a simple political commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Rather, her specific accusations against "rich American Jews" hark back to long-time anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of Jewish control and domination of the world.
    While your wife is a private citizen and is entitled to her own opinions, she is given a public platform by virtue of your position as President of the European Central Bank. We urge you to immediately and publicly reject these expressions.
    The ECB, similar in its functions to the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, is the regulating body of the European currency, the EURO. The ECB is headquartered in Frankfurt Am Main, Germany and has branches in each of the member states of the European Union.
    The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.
    ADL accepts ECB prez "Stupid Cow, these are my best customers" comment as percieved apology.


  • An industrial chemical is collecting inside you. It gathers in your fat, accumulating year after year. You can't avoid absorbing it: The substance is all around you -- in your computer, your TV, your sofa, your rugs, your walls, your car, and the container you'll heat your lunch in. It's there, and almost everywhere else -- in seals, fish, birds, air, soil. No one knows what route it takes to get inside you. And no one knows exactly what it does, but scientists have linked it to thyroid imbalances and learning disabilities.
    (prospect.org)
    PCBs All Over Again: -Introducing an industrial chemical that's everywhere -- and that you've probably never heard of.
    An industrial chemical is collecting inside you. It gathers in your fat, accumulating year after year. You can't avoid absorbing it: The substance is all around you -- in your computer, your TV, your sofa, your rugs, your walls, your car, and the container you'll heat your lunch in. It's there, and almost everywhere else -- in seals, fish, birds, air, soil. No one knows what route it takes to get inside you. And no one knows exactly what it does, but scientists have linked it to thyroid imbalances and learning disabilities.
    "Surely," you may be saying to yourself, "the government must be at least monitoring such a threat." But it's not. Poly bromo diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are flame retardants added to furniture foam, electronics, and plastics. While their makers insist that the chemicals protect people from deadly fires, researchers are becoming more and more anxious about the data they see on these thus far unregulated chemicals. PBDEs seem to fall into the category of "persistent organic pollutants" -- a designation shared by the well-known toxins Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and DDT. And PBDEs, in fact, exhibit many of the same behaviors that frightened Congress into banning PCBs in 1976: They mimic estrogen and disrupt the thyroid system; accumulate in each step of the food chain; collect in fat and don't go away, except when shed in breast milk; and migrate all over the globe.
    So why haven't you heard more about them? Two reasons: Because our regulatory structures are behind the curve, and because there's money involved.
    Bromine has been used in flame retardants since the 1970s, when the chemical industry was casting around for a substitute for now famously disastrous chlorine compounds like PCBs. While some bromine compounds were also banned, PBDEs are still being produced at a rate of 67,000 metric tons per year, creating a $400 million industry. Combine the manufacturers with the companies that buy their products -- computer and TV makers, textile and furniture producers, automakers -- and you have a very powerful lobby indeed.
    One PBDE defender is Bob Campbell, the director of corporate regulatory affairs at Great Lakes Chemical and spokesman for the Brominated Flame Retardant Industry Panel, a group of PBDE producing companies. Campbell acknowledges the health concerns surrounding PBDEs, but he insists that the benefits of preventing fires outweigh the possible environmental risks. Campbell's company is participating voluntarily in studies to research the risks posed to children by the chemicals.
    "Everybody has slogans these days," Campbell says, "and maybe it's a little corny, but ours is 'we're for the world we all want.'"
    It doesn't sound corny. It sounds nebulous. Everyone wants a world where fires don't kill people or damage property, but at what cost? While the industry denies that its products are dangerous, and even questions whether PBDEs detected in the environment were produced by the companies currently manufacturing them (one industry scientist suggests they were perhaps synthesized naturally by marine sponges), many independent researchers are alarmed at the chemical levels they're finding.
    Scientists first detected PBDEs in fish off the coast of Sweden in 1981. By the year 2000, PBDEs were being found in everything from seals to fertilizer sludge. But it was the discovery of high -- and rapidly accumulating -- PBDE content in human breast milk that finally galvanized European scientists into action. Their work with environmental groups pressured the European Union (EU) Council and EU Parliament into banning the "penta" PBDE formulation -- the type judged to pose the greatest human health risk -- by the year 2003. The EU Parliament has also proposed general ban on all PBDEs by the year 2007.
    U.S. researchers, by contrast, have only recently begun to study PBDEs, but their initial findings have sent shock waves through toxicological circles. The levels detected in the first tests on American breast milk are on average 40 times higher than those reported in Europe.
    One scientist not surprised, though, was Robert Hale of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Hale recently published studies on sludge from waste-management facilities and fish in Virginia rivers, and his results rival the world's highest known levels of PBDEs. "We look at sludge as an early-warning sign," he says. "Fish are next, then ... people."
    We have already begun to see the potential effects on human health at lower levels of the trophic web. When tested on rodents, PBDEs caused memory and learning problems, neurological deficiencies, and thyroid imbalances, effects that were shown to worsen as the animals grew. There is also evidence to suggest that PBDEs exacerbate the already-known effects of similar toxins. This leads researchers to worry that "PBDEs and PCBs may be working additively to reduce the intelligence or behavior of children," in the words of a California Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official.
    "It's sort of like PCBs all over again," says Linda Birnbaum, Division Director at EPA's National Health Lab and one of a handful of people at the agency who know about PBDEs. "We banned PCBs with a lot less information than we have now. Anyone who has studied PCBs is going to say, 'God, this reminds me.'"
    Birnbaum holds that bioaccumulation itself should ring warning bells, because any chemical building up in the body is likely to reach a toxic level eventually -- at which point it's too late to remove exposure. She has been holding talks with government scientists and policymakers to do what she calls "consciousness raising" before history repeats itself.
    If consciousness is in fact rising, though, it's not happening quickly. The EPA has no immediate plans to track PBDEs and claims that not enough information has been gathered for a thorough risk assessment. EPA toxicologists contacted Hale regarding his results early last year, but he says he is still waiting to hear what they plan to do.
    "[The EPA] was somewhat shocked to see the data that they are widely distributed in the US environment," Hale says. "But we haven't heard much from regulatory folks or people involved in environmental monitoring, which is somewhat surprising to us."
    Some don't find the EPA's inaction so surprising. For example, Peter de Fur, an associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and formerly a scientist on the EPA's first chemical advisory committee, claims the EPA often balks at regulations that might upset the market.
    "The EPA has a great deal of difficulty with uncertainty in policy arenas, particularly when there are large vested financial interests," he says. Yet de Fur's insight obscures the more disturbing fact that the EPA's hands are tied.
    "U.S. chemicals law is so fundamentally flawed that right now EPA couldn't ban PBDEs if they wanted to," says Jeremiah Baumann, an environmental health advocate with U.S. PIRG. "Industrial chemicals have no testing process."
    What Baumann means is that of the 80,000 industrial chemicals in use today, less than a third have undergone an assessment of health or environmental risks. The EPA can place a chemical it has concerns about on its "right-to-know" list, but the process of actually banning a chemical under current law generally takes about 10 years. In other words, EPA rarely acts quickly even to ban the chemicals it's worried about. That role has historically fallen to Congress.
    But in this case, most lawmakers have never heard of PBDEs. The only dim ray of legislative hope shines in a bill introduced by Independent Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont to implement a treaty the United States signed in Stockholm last year banning twelve of the aforementioned "persistent organic pollutants," or POPs. The United States has already stopped using most of the substances listed in the treaty, but the agreement also includes provisions for adding other pollutants to the list; PBDEs are among the candidates being discussed. Republican Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire, however, has introduced a competing bill from the Bush administration that bans only the so-called "dirty dozen" worst chemicals and provides no way to ban new chemicals if the international community chooses to add one, such as PBDE, to the accord.
    Meanwhile, countries that have already banned or will ban PBDEs are nervous. European leaders worry that the pending EU standards may inspire PBDE-dependent industries to join forces and mount a World Trade Organization (WTO) challenge to the upcoming legislation. These corporations, through Chapter 11 provisions of NAFTA and a general pro-business climate within the WTO, have already posed formidable challenges to environmental regulation. The Ethyl Corporation (the mother company of PBDE manufacturer Albemarle) used NAFTA in 1997 to force Canada into repealing its ban on the gasoline additive MMT, a known human neurotoxin, and fork over $13 million in an out-of court settlement.
    It's too early to tell what the EU laws will mean for manufacturers of flame retardants. Some say the industry already sees the writing on the wall, and will discontinue them voluntarily in order to avoid the bad PR of complying with a ban. And alternatives do exist that seem much safer, although they, too, need further testing.
    In any case, the alacrity the EU showed in responding to PBDEs reflects a stark difference between the American and European approaches toward the regulation of health hazards. Europeans tend to favor a precautionary approach toward products. And scientists and environmentalists on both sides of the Atlantic are now saying that U. S. inaction on PBDEs is indicative of a larger innocent-until-proven-guilty regulatory attitude, one that drives policy for the benefit of industry, frequently at the expense of public health.
    "Too often the government has waited for the bodies in the street before they'll take any action," says Steven Lester of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice. Many environmentalists echo this sentiment, calling for a fundamental gestalt shift in how we regulate chemicals. Don't wait for people to get sick, they say; if a chemical is building up our bodies, assume that it's toxic and make it a priority to find an alternative.
    Everyone agrees that fires are bad. But it's starting to look like the cure -- brominated flame retardants -- may be worse than the disease. PBDEs have only recently begun to emerge as an environmental hazard, but the tale they tell is an old one. It's the story of a government with a childlike trust in industrial chemicals, and, as a result, a slothful response to evidence of their harmful effects -- especially if responding would mean stepping on industry toes. And so even if PBDEs were banned tomorrow, that's not enough for a happy ending. Until we adopt a more cautious regulatory policy and stop assuming that the chemical industry always has our best interests in mind, the story of PBDEs -- or PCBs, or future chemicals like them -- will continue to repeat itself.

  • PSYCH SLEUTH -80-year-old Margaret Singer has made history delving into the psychology of brainwashing
    May 26, 2002
    (SanFranciscoChronicle)
    Berkeley -- The boots of the cult thug clunking on her porch practically every night for a week about 2 a.m., the silence hanging thick and menacing as he hunkered in her doorway, the cryptic notes in her mailbox - it all finally got to her.
    So Margaret Singer leaned out her second-floor window the next time she heard the guy at her doorstep, and she yelled with all the bluster she could muster in her quavery, 80-year-old voice: "I've got a 12-gauge shotgun up here with a spray pattern that'll put a three-foot hole in you, sonny, and you'd better get off my porch or you'll be sorry! And tell your handlers not to send you back!"
    Months later, as she sits at the kitchen table of her rambling old house in the East Bay hills, Singer still chuckles at the memory of the man skittering to the sidewalk, never to return. "If that shotgun hadn't worked, I have a World War II machine gun that can do the trick," she says, pounding a thin, bony hand on the Formica top.
    She points to the bottle of Bushmill's Irish whiskey she'd just clanked down on the middle of the table, eyes sparkling behind her oversize spectacles.
    It is evening, it has been another day of fielding half-a-hundred calls from shrinks, cult victims or their worried relatives, fellow scholars (she's a psychology professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley) and all the others who seek her out daily for advice, and so a little relaxation is in order.
    "Pour me one if you please, sonny," Singer says, holding out a martini glass full of ice cubes. "And fill yours up, too." She sips slowly, daintily, like . . . well, as she would put it, like "a lady."
    Singer drinks like she thinks, smart and solid, and when she sees her visitor noticing that, she laughs. "I might look like a little old grandma, but I'm no pushover," she says, tossing back the dregs of the glass and waving for another.
    Name any major cult or near-cult in America in the last half of the 20th century, and this teacher and author of "Cults in Our Midst" has probably researched it, debriefed its victims, or helped the cops nail its leaders.
    The Symbionese Liberation Army, Charles Manson's freakish "Family," Jim Jones' Jonestown followers, the Heaven's Gate UFO wackos, David Koresh's Waco cluster, the paramilitary Synanon, even "The Family" arrested in Marin in February after a rickets-riddled baby allegedly starved to death - the list of those who have drawn her incisive gaze stretches on. And on - into cults nobody has ever heard of, bizarre little numbers centered around horses, flying saucers, giant reptiles, weight lifting, music camps, get-rich schemes. You name it.
    She's also given expert testimony to help jail dozens of bunko artists who bilked oldsters of their money, done ground-breaking research on the brainwashing of Korean and Vietnam war prisoners, counseled more than 4,000 current and former cult members, and advised the military and FBI on everything from the Oklahoma City bombing to how to pick fighters who best withstand pressure. Along the way she has been hassled or fought by cults, nontraditional religions and even academics who simply disagree with her.
    For a slight lady whose friends cheerily admit comes off like the most disarming old gentlewoman around - right down to the grandma-from-the-'40s lacy dress, brooch and sensible black shoes - the work doesn't match up with the appearance. It seems almost like a trick, it makes such little sense.
    She's so frail that a few weeks ago when she stumbled into her antique iron bathtub at home, she lay there - inside the tub - for 23 hours straight until her husband came back from a trip and rescued her. She's unfailingly polite. Soft-spoken. Walks at a turtle's pace.
    But rile her up, and she's ready to rumble. Anyone who ever battled her knows this, and just a few months ago she was showing her 10-year-old grandson how to do a headlock - which she can still pull off with some respectable force.
    She'll also gladly demonstrate the neat little trick she calls the "necktie takedown," where she grabs your necktie, pulls you to the floor and steps on your face. The last time she used that one was many years ago at a hockey game,
    where some belligerent yahoo stole a hockey stick from her daughter, but she swears she's still up to it.
    "He gave the stick back, all right," Singer chortles. "And he apologized. I'd do the same today."
    What you see with Singer is what you get: velvet-covered steel.
    "She looks just the like the little old lady from Pasadena - until she speaks," says lawyer Paul Morantz, who led the effort to take down the violent Synanon drug-treatment cult in Marin in the 1970s (and got bit by a rattlesnake that the cult sicced on him in the process). "Then she just grows in stature, and you see how incredibly smart she is. And tough.
    "She is one of a kind, the foremost expert on brainwashing in the entire world. There is no replacement for her. She is a national treasure."
    Even the bathtub disaster didn't surprise her friends. "I was just mad that I'd fallen in," Singer says as she sits with her crowd of friends on their usual Tuesday night get-together at a Berkeley restaurant.
    "Well, you came out of it intact, just like always, right?" says retired UC Berkeley psychologist Seymour Kessler, playfully punching her shoulder. "That's such a typical Margaret story. Tough as nails."
    You'll hear the same from just about anyone in Singer's widespread orbit - particularly police and prosecutors whose job it is to shut down cults and flimflam artists. And that's even though she's gone to bat for people like Patty Hearst and Manson's killer women - arguing they were brainwashed beyond their own control - as ferociously as she fights to flatten the bad guys.
    "She is the most recognized expert in her field in the whole world, and that's why I sought her out," says San Francisco Assistant District Attorney Dennis Morris, who teamed up with her several times to put con artists behind bars.
    "She's also a real doll, and a very decent human being, above and beyond everything else."
    Sit at Singer's kitchen table - where all welcome visitors are beckoned to chat - and you'll hear the phone ring almost ceaselessly while she rhapsodizes about the cases she's worked, the places all over the world where she's lectured, from Germany to Venezuela, the seminars she is teaching, the book she's trying to finish about elder abuse. She loves to reel it out.
    "It's that Irish gab thing, I suppose," she'll tell you with a grin. Her curriculum vitae alone, stuffed with awards from the American College of Psychiatrists, National Institute of Mental Health and others, requires 23 pages to list the achievements and research subjects in her half-century career. She's got so many books, knickknacks and piles of reports lying around that she and her husband Jerome ("Jay") own two houses just to hold all their stuff; the houses perch not far from each other like citadels of academic calm,
    surrounded by huge, leafy trees and stone and brick steps.
    You'd never know from looking at the main home's serene, wood-shingled sides that a little old lady who has analyzed some of the most mind-twisting killers in history lives there. But that's probably just as well, given the hassles she gets from wackos she takes on.
    Jay Singer, a UC Berkeley physics professor emeritus who has done pioneering work in developing magnetic resonance imaging, long ago stopped trying to figure out what drove his wife of 44 years - and mother of their two children - so hard. She's a force of nature, he'll tell you, and needs no help from him.
    "I don't get involved in her studies," he says with one of his trademark wry smiles. "I have enough problems managing the psychology of the other people around me, without taking on hers, too." He stops, and the smile gets a tad wider.
    "Doesn't mean I'd ever try to stop her from doing what she does, though," says Jay, who is also 80. "Nobody else seems to be able to."
    That's been a big relief to the cops and prosecutors who have needed her expertise in more than 200 court cases.
    Morris, the assistant D.A., first enlisted Singer's prowess in the early 1990s when he was going after William von Weiland, a 48-year-old sweet talker who dragged a 93-year-old San Francisco woman to a cheap wedding chapel in Tahoe so he could bilk her of millions of dollars. Catherine Doliani suffered from Alzheimer's and dementia, and was so hoodwinked by von Weiland that she was unable to see him as anything but a loving husband. Singer scientifically proved she had been brainwashed in an elaborate scheme by Weiland, his live-in boyfriend and their accountant, Morris says.
    "Margaret was such a phenomenal witness that at one point, when the defense attorney was cross examining her, the judge looked over to him and said somewhat quizzically, "You gonna give up?' " Morris recalls with a chuckle. "Her strength is that she doesn't come off as a stately academic. She puts things into very understandable terms, still using enough scientific phraseology to make it authoritative, and she is very congenial.
    "I've taken her to speak with me at statewide district attorney associations, and let me tell you, especially in the law enforcement and legal end of things, we all think nothing but the best of her."
    Even former U.S. Attorney James Browning Jr., now a retired San Mateo County Superior Court judge living in Arizona, has kind words for Singer and her mind-control research on behalf of former SLA member Patricia Hearst - despite having crossed swords with Singer when he prosecuted Hearst for bank robbery in 1976.
    "The brainwashing stuff I didn't agree with, but Mrs. Singer was a very nice lady," he says. "And I have to admit it was fun to delve into."
    It actually makes all the sense in the world that Singer wound up specializing in the realm of cults.
    She was raised an only child in Denver, where her Army sergeant father got a postmilitary job as chief operating engineer at the U.S. Mint. Her mother was secretary to a federal judge.
    "I really loved school, even though most kids didn't, and I was just fascinated at how words created mental pictures," Singer recalls. She did a stint as a cellist in the Denver Civic Symphony, but the allure of a college degree in speech - "I was always comfortable speaking to groups," she says - overrode any musical ambitions.
    Bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Denver, with speech and special education concentrations, led to a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, therapy jobs - and then, to the transformational experience that launched her toward the study that would consume her life.
    In 1953, Singer went to work as a psychologist for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C., where she made a specialty of studying returned prisoners of the Korean War.
    Struggling to make sense of how so many strong, young Americans had come back mentally broken and often politically twisted around at the hands of the enemy led her to deeper historical research. She found that patterns of similar brainwashings - "coercive persuasions" - had existed in various forms for centuries.
    "After the Roman Empire, there were spectacular clairvoyant cults that came up, where the leaders would have you go talk to the wall and someone hidden would talk back," Singer says. "You had the Oneida Community in New York in the mid-1800s" - a utopian "group marriage" cult that died out as a philosophy but led to the non-cultish silver plate giant today - "and in post-World War II Japan there were cults everywhere led by men who said they were divine.
    "You find it again and again - any time there is great upheaval, a big change in a society and people feel vulnerable, there are always sharpies around who want to hornswoggle people."
    Research with the National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Air Force, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and more followed, with heavy emphasis on schizophrenia, and Singer began to realize that not much of anyone else was studying this sort of thing. And so, having moved to the Berkeley area to take an adjunct professor job in the late 1950s when her husband signed onto the UC faculty there, Singer was uniquely primed for the craziness that became the cult scene of the 1960s and '70s.
    "I started hearing from families who had missing members, many of them being young kids on our campus or others, and they all would describe the same sorts of things," Singer says. "The person would have a sudden change in personality, a new way of talking, would hang out with one of the many cultic groups that were springing up in those days, and then they'd disappear.
    "And bingo - it was the same sort of thing as with the Korean War prisoners.
    I recognized the same sort of thought-reform processes, the social controls. Only now it was happening right here at home."
    She began counseling people, helping with what was then the nascent practice of "deprogramming" cult members. Her academic reputation grew, and then in the mid-1970s she was enlisted to determine if SLA member Patricia Hearst had been brainwashed into spouting their ideology.
    Described back then by legendary Chronicle crime reporter Carolyn Anspacher as "a fair-haired disarming woman whom many consider the nation's top research psychologist," Singer electrified the already electrifying trial by concluding that the SLA had written Hearst's most incendiary speeches denouncing establishment "pigs" and calling for revolution. She determined this through studying the group's thought and speech patterns and exhaustively interviewing Hearst.
    Though the judge said he admired her work, he bowed to prosecutor Browning's demands that Singer's conclusion be barred from the jury because such study was "in a field that has never before been accepted as a subject upon which expert testimony can be given."
    But the mark had been made.
    "She was so far ahead of everybody else, a trailblazer, that she became the expert after that trial," says Dr. Steve Morin, UCSF psychiatry professor and former longtime aide to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco. "Every time there was a breaking case, it was natural for people to go to Margaret first, so she's been pulled, whether she wanted to be or not, into the highest- profile cases of our time."
    When Charlie Manson's deranged soldiers went "helter skelter," Singer was called to debrief the women - and, eventually, Manson, too.
    When Jim Jones duped his hundreds of victims, Singer helped dozens escape his clutches before the cult died in Guyana - "it was murder at his hands, not suicide," Singer insists to anyone who will listen.
    When Synanon attacked Morantz and took on Singer's partner in cultic studies at UC Berkeley, professor Richard Ofshe, she was there to help make sense of the mess and counsel the victims. And when the tearful East Bay relatives of the spiritual slaves who burned to death at David Koresh's Branch Davidian compound came to her and said they longed to pray for the dead, but could never again trust anyone saying they represented God, Singer counseled them: "Just look up to the sky and talk to God yourself. You don't need an organization to do that.
    "They're all the same, really, these groups - they prey on the most lonely, vulnerable people they can find, cage you with your own mind through guilt and fear, cut you off from everyone you knew before, and when they're done doing that, they don't need armed guards to keep you," Singer says. "You're afraid that if you leave, your parents will die, you will die, your life will be ruined."
    She stops and her lips curl in disgust. It's a frequent expression when she gets rolling on this stuff.
    "Flim-flam men, pimps, sharpsters - that's what they are," she says, biting off the words. "Liars. Tricksters. It's been the same ever since Eve got the apple, and I doubt it will ever change."
    These spiritual mutations have little to do with real religions, she adds. "A real religion is truthful, you can come or go from it if you wish," she says. "And most importantly, there is no one leader claiming he is a god. Big, big difference."
    Naturally, in a field of study as incendiary as cults and mind control, there are differing views. Even the term "brainwashing" is debated by academics and organizations. Over the years, two main camps have emerged on the overall topic: Those who define cults broadly, like Singer and the American Family Foundation, one of the nation's leading cultic educational organizations, and those who say they are simply more accepting of unconventional groups.
    J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, comes down on the side of the latter. He was sucked into a battle Singer got into with sociologists of religion in the mid-1980s, when they called brainwashing study a flawed discipline, and he says the quibble is basically over the definition of what constitutes mind control.
    "It's one thing to say if you hang around what some people would call a cult, you'll be influenced by it," Milton says. "But that doesn't mean you'll lose your free will."
    He's alluding to his defense of the bigger groups like the Church of Scientology - though he's quick to add that when it comes to true nut cases, "people who do bad things" like Charlie Manson or the SLA, "we're all in agreement."
    Singer and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, the Church of Scientology and a few other groups have had publicized go-rounds in court, but that's one subject off limits with Singer. Likewise any spats with her fellow scholars and those on the other side of the brainwashing field. Best left alone, she'll say, citing issues of respect.
    Besides, she's plenty busy these days with new groups and new fights, including helping the cops nail those who scam seniors. And, she reminds us, cults are growing more numerous - about 5,000 in the United States today, most of them tiny ones "started by some self-proclaimed god who says, "I have special powers, special knowledge - follow me.' And some," she says, leaning forward with a mischievous gleam in her eyes, "are stranger than others."
    Sure, there are the ones she worked on like Heaven's Gate, where 39 members committed suicide in 1997 so they could hitch a lift in a spacecraft trailing the Hale-Bopp Comet. She first encountered the cult in the 1970s when she counseled one of their ex-members in Berkeley; back then it was just another wacko UFO cult, and the body count two decades later took Singer by surprise as much as anyone.
    But does that really trump the "Breatharians," whose members believed they could exist on only air, not food - until they caught their guru snarfing junk food? Or the flying saucer cult still recruiting carpenters and metal workers so that when an expected batch of aliens crash-lands on earth they will be able to fix the saucers so they can fly away and avoid intergalactic war here?
    Or the health-fad nut who made his devotees drink their own urine and take repeated coffee enemas?
    Ask Singer, and she shrugs. "They're all basically, really, the same," she says after a moment of contemplation. "Con men."
    The one thing she hardly ever sees is devil-worship cults. Surprisingly.
    "The scary movies have done a lot to give publicity to Satanism-type cults, but the ones we have are very, very small, very few," Singer says. "And the guys who were at the head of them are in the slammer."
    But even more chilling than the wackiness - and sometimes murderous frenzy -
    of cults, Singer says, is their very ordinariness. That is, their seemingly benign exterior to the outside world, which often is not aware of what's going on behind closed doors.
    "Most of them don't recruit in the poor end of town, because people in the poor end are street smart and know when someone's out to steal their lunch money," Singer says.
    "No, they come off very nice at first, go for vulnerable people who are looking for answers, lonely." That means educated, open-minded, middle-class people - "what you'd call Ônormal people,' " she says. Like the smart kids that became SLA recruits, Manson's women, David Koresh's victims in Texas.
    "These sharpsters, when they're very good at what they do, can get people to believe anything," Singer says. "Anything. You might think you'd never get taken in - but don't bet on it."
    Naturally, if a con man is sharp enough to dupe intelligent folks, he's also brazen enough to mess with an old lady. The old adage of poke a snake, and it bites back, applies here in spades.
    Over the decades, cult operatives have fished through Singer's trash, sent her death threats and picketed her lectures. They've released dozens of live rats at her house, put dead ones on her doorstep (hearts skewered with lollipop sticks) and hacked into her computer so many times she doesn't use one any more. Once a cultist talked her way into working in Singer's campus office, then stole a sheaf of term papers and sent bizarre notes to the students.
    "One of those groups went through my mom's mail and knew everything about us - my girlfriend's name, where we went, what we bought, all kinds of stuff," says her son Sam Singer, a publicist in San Francisco. "We all put up with a lot, but nobody more than her.
    "I really look up to her, because she really goes up against some bad guys, and she stays tough," Singer says. "I never resented it, and my sister (Martha,
    a doctor) and I came out OK, so "" He gives a shrug identical to his mother's.
    Ask Singer why she keeps fighting at an age when most folks would be fishing or snoozing in front of "Oprah" (which she likes, almost as much as she adores scanning TV news), and it's one of the only times she stumbles on her words. "I suppose it just makes me feel good to help people get free," she says, rubbing her chin. "Besides, I got some pretty good security measures in now, too."
    These days, she's spending more time than ever writing, perhaps because she realizes she'd better get her expertise down on paper before it starts to fade.
    In 1995 she penned the book "Cults in our Midst" (Jossey-Bass), considered a landmark of its field ("Margaret Thaler Singer stands alone in her extraordinary knowledge of the psychology of cults," Robert J. Lifton, the City University of New York psychology professor who was a pioneer in the study of Nazi and Chinese thought reform, wrote in the foreward.) A year later,
    she followed with "Crazy Therapies," about rip-off therapists.
    Both books were co-written with Janja Lalich, a former cult member who teaches sociology at Chico State University and has done editing for the American Family Foundation.
    "She's a lot more fun than most people ever know," Lalich says. "She's got that Irish knack of storytelling - who could have guessed that in such a warrior?"
    Well, the pals who have known her for decades could, that's who. Those would be the ones she still hangs out with, and consults, never missing their Tuesday night get-togethers for Irish coffees and grub. The common denominator for their gathering is Singer; they all have stories to tell - and most of those stories involve Singer.
    "A lot of people don't know, but she used to write a "Dear Abby'- type advice column in the old Berkeley Gazette," says Pat Crossman, a social worker who once took on unhinged shrinks who killed a child in "rebirthing therapy" by smothering the girl to simulate a womb.
    Singer wrote the Gazette column in the 1970s, when her son Sam was an editor there. "It was pretty funny stuff," Crossman says.
    "Yeah, I called it, 'Ask Dr. Bridget,' because that's my middle name," Singer says as a basketball game blares overhead and she and Crossman dig into French bread. Killer cults, fluffy advice - it's all grist for the mill, isn't it?
    "I gave real practical answers, like 'Don't shoot your mother-in-law,' " Singer deadpans in reply.
    Crossman giggles. "What we've really been trying to do with Margaret for 30 years is give her advice, like how to change her hairstyle (flat, straight and short) and clothing," she says. "But does she listen? No! She's too busy to listen!"
    There's no sign of any letup of that anytime soon, either, which is just the way Singer likes it. There are seminars to address, like the group of "town and gown" elderly folks she gave advice to in Berkeley a few weeks ago on how to spot a con artist. The phone still rings about 50 times a day - with reporters around the world hunting expertise, other scientists wanting to hobnob, cops looking for opinions. And of course, many of those calls are from cult victims desperate to escape or clear their minds after getting out, or worried relatives wanting help.
    Back at the house a few days after her regular Tuesday get-together, on a crisply chill afternoon, Singer sits in the living room and listens while the phone machine takes message after message. The last one before nightfall is from a cult escapee who's been phoning for years from Canada and calls her "Grandma."
    "I keep telling her not to call me that, but what can you do?" Singer says with a heavy sigh. "Oh, well."
    "Those ones - the people who've come out of cults - I don't charge them. I'm not in this for the money, but anyway, how could I charge? They've given all their money to their guru and their families are mad at them."
    You'd think after taking on so many torqued versions of spirituality that Singer might have discarded anything resembling a spiritual group, or some form of it, just for a sense of neutrality. But no, she sticks to her guns about the true difference between religion and cults. And this may come as a surprise to any of the many groups that have gotten in her face - but she's still a firm Catholic and believes in God.
    She doesn't know what that God looks like, but after all her research she does know one thing.
    "He doesn't look a bit like Jim Jones," Singer says, leaning back in her chair and grinning. "Of that I am sure."
     
  • Palestinian Woman Tells of Changing Her Mind, Calling off Planned Suicide Attack
    Associated Press
    May 30, 2002
    JERUSALEM (AP) - Tawriya Hamamra, a young Palestinian woman, had barely an hour's training in preparation for a suicide bombing. All she really needed to remember was how to work the detonator button that rested on her hip.
    But Hamamra had second thoughts about the attack, and instead of going to Jerusalem as planned, she went to her aunt's home in the West Bank. She was arrested shortly afterward by Israeli security forces.
    "I didn't feel fear. I am not afraid of dying. I went for personal reasons. I was afraid of how God would look on me if I came for impure reasons," the 25-year-old told a small group of journalists selected by the Israeli authorities to interview her. Her account appeared in newspapers Thursday.
    Another Palestinian woman, Arin Ahmed, 20, was arrested Wednesday at her home near Bethlehem on suspicion she had planned to take part in a double suicide bombing. She also backed out, according to Israeli intelligence officials cited in the newspapers. However, a second bomber, a 16-year-old boy, struck last week in the Israeli city of Rishon Letzion, killing two Israelis.
    In a statement Thursday, the Israeli government said security agents learned of Ahmed after they detained a Palestinian and his Israeli wife, who drove a suicide bomber to Rishon Letzion on May 22. The city was to be Ahmed's target. The security agency did not say how agents found Hamamra.
    Of the more than 60 Palestinian suicide bombers who have struck since the current violence erupted in September 2000, two have been women. In a third case, it was not clear whether the woman was planting a bomb or intended to blow herself up.
    Palestinian women have not traditionally engaged in fighting, although they have led some marches. Palestinians say the involvement of women shows the depth of frustration against Israel because of hardships brought on by Israeli restrictions, which have crippled the Palestinian economy and caused widespread poverty. The Israelis say the restrictions, including roadblocks and a ban on entry into Israel to work, are necessary to stop militants.
    According to the Israeli military, 208 Israelis have been killed in suicide attacks - many of them young children, women and the elderly. Among the sites targeted were an ice cream parlor, shopping malls, discos and a hotel restaurant where families had gathered for the traditional Passover Seder.
    The Palestinian Authority, headed by Yasser Arafat, has denounced the suicide attacks as harmful to Palestinian interests and international opinion. In a statement after a bombing last week, the Palestinian Cabinet said the attacks "give Israel an excuse to retaliate." However, polls show a large majority of Palestinians favor the bombings.
    In the interview, Hamamra said she volunteered to carry out an attack through someone she knew from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia linked to Palestinian leader Arafat's Fatah movement.
    Hamamra, who described herself as a devout Muslim, wore conservative clothes and frequently adjusted her head scarf during the interview. She acknowledged her reasons for wanting to blow herself up were more personal than political, but did not elaborate.
    In recounting the episode, she said she was uncomfortable when her handlers told her to dress like a modern Israeli woman, with her hair loose, makeup, sunglasses and tight-fitting trousers.
    "I didn't want to do this because it was against my religious beliefs," she told the newspapers.
    Her disillusionment with her handlers grew when she was told that she should blow herself up before she reached the target if she thought she was going to be caught.
    "Blow up for nothing? What is this - trading in the blood of martyrs only so that my handlers can say that they executed the operation?" she said.
    One of 10 siblings, Hamamra worked as a dressmaker and a florist and lived with her parents in a village near Jenin, a militant stronghold in the West Bank. No one in her family has been killed or wounded in the current conflict, but she said she had been affected by the daily hardships faced by Palestinians.
    "Everyone has emotional distress. You are killing our people and we are killing yours," she told reporters.
    The planning for the attack was brief and simple, she said.
    Hamamra was taken to Nablus, a nearby city, where she was briefed for about an hour and fitted with an explosives vest that overwhelmed her slender frame. Her handlers then decided to put the 35-pound package of explosives packed with nails into a backpack for her to carry.
    The plan was to go the next day - May 20 - to Jerusalem to carry out the attack. But doubts gnawed at her and she slipped away from Nablus without the bomb, going to her aunt's house in Tulkarem instead.
    A few hours later, she was arrested by Israeli security forces, who had received information on her whereabouts.
    Hamamra said in her village she would be considered a "woman warrior," but called on Palestinian women not to follow in her footsteps.
    "Now I believe it is the role of women to raise families and that the real struggle for men and women is follow the path of Islam," she said.
    She showed no emotion in the interview until the end, when she cried when speaking about her parents. "I don't know what I'm going to say to them. I can only ask for forgiveness," she said.

  • CHRONOLOGY-Suicide bombings in Israel
    LONDON, May 27 (Reuters) - Two people died and at least 50 were wounded in a suicide bombing outside a shopping centre in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva on Monday.
    Following is a chronology of the main suicide bombings since a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip began in September 2000.
    2000
    Oct 26 - Suicide bomber strikes near an Israeli army post in the Gaza Strip, wounding a soldier.
    - - - -
    2001
    March 28 - Suicide bomber kills himself and two Israeli teenagers in Newe Yamin, near central city of Kfar Saba.
    April 22, 2001 - Suicide bomber kills doctor and wounds 41 people in rush-hour attack in Kfar Saba.
    May 18 - Suicide bomber kills five people and wounds around 60 at crowded Netanya shopping mall.
    June 1 - Twenty-two people killed in suicide bomb blast among teenagers waiting to enter Tel Aviv nightclub.
    July 16 - Palestinian suicide bomber from Islamic Jihad group kills two Israeli soldiers at bus stop in Israeli town of Binyamina.
    Aug 9 - Palestinian suicide bomber blows himself and 15 people up in pizza restaurant in Jerusalem in revenge for Israeli missile strike.
    Sept 9 - Israeli Arab blows himself up at railway station in Nahariya, northern Israel, killing three people.
    Nov 29 - Palestinian blows himself up on bus in Hadera, killing three Israelis.
    Dec 1 - Ten Israelis killed and more than 150 hurt in double Palestinian suicide bombing and car bomb in central Jerusalem.
    Dec 2 - Palestinian suicide bomber kills 15 people and wounds 40 on bus in Haifa.
    - - - -
    2002
    Jan 27 - First Palestinian woman suicide bomber, Wafa Idrees, 28, from Al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah, kills two people and wounds 111 on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem.
    Feb 16 - Palestinian suicide bomber kills himself and two Israelis and wounds 20 people in shopping centre in Jewish settlement of Karnei Shomron.
    March 2 - Palestinian suicide bomber kills nine people, including five children. and himself in ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood of Jerusalem.
    March 5 - Suicide bomber blows himself up on bus in Galilee city of Afula, killing one Israeli.
    March 9 - Suicide bomber kills 13 people and injures more than 50 in crowded Moment Cafe in Jerusalem near Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's residence.
    March 20 - Bomber kills at least seven people including himself and wounds 27 on bus near Israeli Arab town of Umm al-Fahm..
    March 21 - Bomber kills himself and three other people in heart of West Jerusalem.
    March 27 - Suicide bomber kills 29 people and wounds more than 100 in lobby of seaside Park Hotel in resort town of Netanya.
    March 29 - Woman suicide bomber kills two people and wounded 20 at supermarket in Kiryat Yovel suburb of Jerusalem.
    March 31 - Suicide bomber kills 15 people, wounds 44 in restaurant run by Israeli Arabs in northern Israeli port Haifa. Six people wounded at Jewish settlement of Efrat in West Bank in second suicide attack.
    April 10 - Suicide bomber kills eight Israelis and wounds 12 on bus crowded with commuters near Haifa.
    April 12 - Female suicide bomber kills six people and wounded nearly 100 at Jerusalem's main outdoor Mahane Yehuda market.
    May 8 - Bomber kills 15 Israelis, wounds 60 at snooker club in Rishon Letzion south of Tel Aviv.
    May 19 - A suicide bomber blows himself up in a market in Netanya killing three other people and wounding at least 35.
    May 22 - Suicide bomber kills two people, wounds 27 at town of Rishon Letzion.
    May 27 - Two people dead, at least 50 wounded in suicide bombing outside shopping centre in Petah Tikva.

  • Lawmaker who said she can 'communicate with the dead' said Chandra body found where she envisioned it
    Morris News Service
    SAVANNAH -- Vindication?
    Retiring state Rep. Dorothy Pelote thinks so.
    Last fall, the Savannah Democrat caused a stir when she announced on the Georgia House floor that she had channeled then-missing intern Chandra Levy. She said at the time that she had a psychic vision of Levy lying in a ditch in a wooded area.
    Pelote said Thursday that her vision, and the Washington, D.C., crime scene she viewed on television, were identical.
    ''Everything fits what I saw,'' said Pelote, who retired from politics last month after a decade in the House and six years on Chatham County Commission. ''This thing brings chills down your spine. It's something, it's awesome.''
    In September, Pelote was derided in cartoons and columns when she announced while delivering the House's daily devotional message that she ''can communicate with the dead'' and had last been visited by Levy. Her remarks were featured on CNN, USA Today and ''Inside Edition,'' not to mention News of the Weird and a number of paranormal Web sites.
    She was reluctant to talk about the incident Thursday and was screening her phone calls, which she said were coming in from around the world. Pelote said she would rather ''leave this one alone because the media distorts things,'' but did hope the news would silence her critics.
    ''I do have the gift. I can prophesize, and they laughed at me and it's unfortunate,'' she said. ''Unfortunately, I have the last laugh -- God gave me that last laugh.
    ''I saw what I saw, and I will stand on my mother's grave and say that.''
    Others, however, say there's no evidence that anyone can communicate with the dead, and Pelote's claims aren't going to change that.
    Joe Nickell, author of the book ''Crime Science'' and editor of ''Psychic Sleuths,'' said many people have claimed to channel Levy, but in the months since her disappearance, nobody made the trip out to Rock Creek Park and pointed to her remains.
    ''I, too, envisioned Chandra lying in a wooded area -- most bodies that are searched for are found in heavily wooded areas. It's obviously not going to be left in a parking lot,'' Nickell said from his New York office. ''This case was broken by the sensory ability of a dog.''
    Most psychic investigators, he said, use a technique called ''retrofitting.'' They give vague clues -- like seeing water, or the number seven -- and then attempt to match them with evidence found at a crime scene.
    ''I know of no case where anyone using psychic powers has solved a case,'' he said.
    Pelote told legislators last fall that her psychic experiences began during childhood after she nearly drowned, after which she had a vision of a bright fireball turning in the sky. Later, she had visions of the dead, a power she said grows stronger the older she becomes. Colleagues take Pelote at her word.
    ''She takes her gift seriously,'' said state Rep. Lester Jackson, D-Savannah. ''She believes in her gift, and her belief is enough for me.''

  • "Was Athanasius Kircher the coolest guy ever, or what?"-A Postmodernist of the 1600's Is Back in Fashion
    (nytimes.com)
    2002/05/25
    A puckish question was raised on Thursday night at New York University: "Was Athanasius Kircher the coolest guy ever, or what?" For those who have no idea who Kircher was, let's begin with the "or what."
    The German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602-80), a rough contemporary of Descartes and Galileo, was no ordinary man. He studied Egyptian hieroglyphs and helped Bernini with his fountain in the Piazza Navona. He made vomiting machines and eavesdropping statues. He transcribed bird song and wrote a book about musicology (still used today). He taught Nicolas Poussin perspective and made a chamber of mirrors to drive cats crazy. He invented the first slide projector and had himself lowered into the mouth of Mount Vesuvius just as it was supposed to erupt. He proved the impossibility of the Tower of Babel and made a model of how the animals were arranged in Noah's Ark. And he collected the objects that filled the Museo Kircheriano, Rome's first wunderkammer or collection of curiosities.
    Kircher's body is buried in Rome. His heart is buried three hours away, at a shrine for St. Eustace (which he founded). And his star is on the rise. There have been recent conferences on Kircher at Stanford University, the University of Chicago and in Rome. There was an exhibition of Kircheriana, put on by David Wilson at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. On Thursday, the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University threw a symposium for Kircher's 400th birthday.
    Why the revival? Lawrence Weschler, the head of the institute and the author of "Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonders" (a book about the Museum of Jurassic Technology), thinks it is because Kircher is the premodern root of postmodern thinking. With his labyrinthine mind, he was Jorge Luis Borges before Borges. In the years before Kircher's death and for 300 years afterward, he was derided as a dilettante and crackpot. The rationalism and specialization of Descartes had taken over. But now Kircher's taste for trivia, deception and wonder is back.
    Wonder cabinets have become trendy. The J. Paul Getty Museum recently had a show about wonder cabinets called "Devices of Wonder" and the New York Public Library is opening "A Cabinet of Curiosities" in two weeks. The Museum of Jurassic Technology, which is itself a modern-day wunderkammer that includes replicas of Kircher's inventions, now has a small but fervent following.
    At Thursday's symposium, Kircher's postmodern qualities were evoked: his subversiveness, his celebrity, his technomania and his bizarre eclecticism. "In an age of polymaths," said Anthony Grafton, a professor at Princeton University, "Kircher was perhaps the most polymathic of them all." Like other Jesuits, Kircher was a religious man and a world scholar trying to prove that Aristotle and the Bible were right. He knew Hebrew, Aramaic Coptic, Persian, Latin and Greek. But Kircher was also "a wild man," Mr. Grafton argued. He got away with all-out heresy.
    One of Kircher's most daring acts was to write out a long list of Egyptian kings, proving that Egypt existed long before the world was even supposed to have been created. In a dry and sneaky way, Kircher planted the idea that the Bible was wrong. "Kircher found himself imagining deep time," Mr. Grafton said. And that was just the kind of thing that Giordano Bruno, the dogma-hating metaphysician, was executed for.
    Somehow Kircher not only survived but continued to tweak authority in the open air of Rome during the Counter-Reformation. He made translations of Egyptian hieroglyphs (later discovered to be completely fanciful). He guided Bernini in erecting an Egyptian obelisk at the Piazza Navona and may even have helped him with the hydraulics for his fountain, which alluded subversively to Kircher's own ideas about the earth's underground rivers.
    All that may not sound so radical, but in 17th-century Rome it was an "in your face" thing to do, Mr. Grafton said. "I used to think he was a fool," he added. "And then I stood in the Piazza Navona."
    The folks in Rome weren't the only ones Kircher's magic worked on. He had readers all over the world. Paula Findlen, a professor at Stanford University, says Kircher was a celebrity in his own time, with a crazy fan club that extended all the way to the Americas. Kircher wrote some 60 volumes on astronomy, geology, magnetism, music and philology, in which he cited himself over and over again.
    Kircher's books were the first "great coffee-table books," she said. People bought them to prove they were learned, to show that they were part of the international network of reading and writing. They didn't read so much as look at the pictures. One fan cut Kircher's picture out of a book and meditated on it to calm himself. Another fan kept sending Kircher chocolate in order to remain friends with him. Kircher's most ardent fan, a nun in Mexico City, decided to try to make herself over in the mold of Kircher's favorite goddess, Isis, the mother of gods, the ruler of heaven and earth. She also transformed Kircher's name into a verb. Kircherizing, she declared, is making connections among things.
    Could such an astonishing man really have existed? D. Graham Burnett of Princeton University demanded to know why no one in the audience was asking whether Athanasius Kircher, a master of deception, theatrics and play, was himself a fantasy. He got an answer.
    Kircher would be nearly impossible to create, said Michael John Gorman, who is making an Internet archive of Kircher's correspondence at Stanford University. If you wanted to make up Kircher's correspondence out of thin air, he suggested, you would have to write thousands of letters on 17th-century paper in suitable inks. The letters would be from 800 correspondents around the world writing in 30 different languages, including the universal language invented by Kircher himself. And who else, Mr. Gorman asked, would think up such crazy machines as an organ driven by a drum that reproduces bird song, a fountain that lifts up a genie, a vomiting lobster, and a statue that pronounces Delphic oracles?
    What do these puzzling inventions have in common? Mr. Gorman says Kircher used them to explore and explode boundaries.
    Take Kircher's talking statue, which is even trickier than it seems. It has a hidden intercom system. By standing in another room and speaking through a tube connected to the statue, you can make it appear to speak. Or by putting your ear to the tube, you can overhear what the people in the other room with the statue are saying. Kircher, Mr. Gorman said, was playing with "deception and demonology," which was "no laughing matter in the 17th century."
    Kircher also played on the boundary of decency. He made a magnetic Jesus that would walk on water and embrace an image of Peter. And a startling number of his machines do nothing but wretch and vomit. Kircher was not beyond tormenting animals either. He planned a cat piano. If you struck a single key on this piano, a sharp spike would be driven into a cat's tail, causing it to yowl. By arranging many cats according to the pitch of their yowls, Kircher could make music. He produced a donkey choir on similar principles.
    One of Kircher's most cunning inventions was a catoptric box or chamber of mirrors, which could be used in a number of ways. If you put a coin in, you could watch people grab for the illusionary riches. Or if you put a cat in, you could watch it chase the many reflections of itself until it would finally give up in a state of rage and indignation. Kircher, Mr. Gorman said, "made a spectacle of incivility," hoping that "this theater of passions would reveal true natures."
    The last speaker of the evening was Mr. Wilson, the founder of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. He credited Kircher with inspiring a new kind of museum, one that evokes both wonder and skepticism. But isn't it possible that the ghost of Kircher has seeped out of the museum's walls? Mr. Burnett says Kircher did nothing less than set the terms for a new theory of knowledge, an epistemology based on deception and play. Imagine that kind of approach to science. It is, Mr. Burnett said, "a liberating way of thinking." Or as the postmodern Kirchenistas might put it, "cool."

  • Expert proposes world eco-cops to guard resources
    LONDON, May 28 (Reuters) - An advisor to the European Union on illegal logging called on Tuesday for the creation of a specialist group of international environment police to catch criminals plundering the Earth's resources.
    "What is really needed is an efficient Environmental Crime Intelligence Unit set up with an international basis," Frank Madsen told a seminar.
    Madsen, an ex-Interpol detective and former head of security for U.S. drug company Bristol-Myers Squibb, said the proposed eco-cop unit would have to have its basis in an existing organisation such the International Maritime Organisation.
    It would work closely with national government environment units, with Europol and Interpol and with non-governmental organisations but have the power and cross-border abilities currently unavailable to the others.
    "The unit would have to have clout," Madsen told Reuters. "NGOs have their own agendas and are frequently ignored."
    "This would create a win-win situation," he noted, adding that Interpol's efforts to try to set up an environment crime unit were making painfully slow progress.
    On Monday, experts at the two-day seminar organised by the Royal Institute of International Affairs heard that environmental crime was costing up to $40 billion a year -- mostly in illegal logging.
    Eco-criminals were simply thumbing their noses at under-funded and overstretched enforcement agencies.
    From illegal dumping of toxic waste to manufacture of illicit chemicals, illegal trade in endangered species and unlawful logging, the trade thrives across the world from highly organised gangs to ignorant tourists, the experts said.
    Governments are wringing their hands over the trade but the vast amounts of money involved and the frequent political interference had stymied most attempts at control.
    Madsen said the unit he was proposing would conduct stake-outs, surveillance and discreet detective work to track down the smugglers and dumpers and build a watertight case against them for prosecution by national governments.
    Many of the organised gangs worked through legal front companies, laundered their proceeds through legitimate firms or had underhand dealings with above-board enterprises.
    Once tracked back from the small-time operators, these firms, Madsen said, could be prosecuted under corporate governance rules under which the firm had to prove it was not guilty -- reversing the usual criminal justice initial presumption of innocence.
    "The penalties in the United States range from $300,000 to billions. That should be sufficient to deter most of the criminals," he added. "After all they are only in it for the money."
    Somehow I think this idea may have more luck as a tv show idea than a reality.

  • Britain's Queen urged to say sorry for Empire
    LONDON, May 28 (Reuters) - Britain's Queen Elizabeth should embark on a world tour to apologise for the "past sins of the British Empire," a left-wing think-tank said on Tuesday.
    London-based policy body, Demos, said the tour would help modernise the British monarchy and reinvent the Commonwealth group of 54 nations.
    "This could begin with a world tour to apologise for the past sins of Empire as a first step to making the Commonwealth more effective and relevant," Demos director Tom Bentley and head of strategy James Wilsdon said in a joint statement.
    Critics of the British Empire, which at its peak in 1918 covered a quarter of the world's population and area, say its huge wealth was built on oppression and exploitation.
    Demos also urged the Queen to "quit while you're ahead, ma'am," suggesting she hand over the throne before her 80th birthday in four years.
    Other suggested reforms included sending future princes and princesses to state-run schools and using royal land to ease Britain's housing shortage.
    In a foreword to a collection of essays called "Monarchies: What are Kings and Queens For?," Demos said the royal family's recent bid to modernise had been little more than a public relations exercise.
    Demos, set up in 1993 with the aim of influencing government policy and public opinion, said the Queen had stifled debate on the future of the monarchy.
    "There is something absurd about someone declaring that they intend to keep going forever," Bentley and Wilsdon said. "Britain is in danger of replacing its monarchy with (a) gerontocracy."
    The Queen used a speech in April to send a clear message that she had no plans to step aside for her 53-year-old son Charles, the heir to the throne.
    Public support for the royal family appears to be on a high, as many Britons prepare to celebrate the Queen Elizabeth's 50 years on the throne.
    Britons were touched by the royal family's display of grief after the deaths this year of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, the Queen's younger sister.
    In two recent newspaper polls, just over half of those questioned believed Queen Elizabeth should continue to rule until her death.
    This will make her see red for sure. President Bush urged to apologize for Western Civilisation.

  • You don't have to come from another planet to see ultraviolet light
    May 30, 2002
    The Guardian
    In the film K-PAX, Kevin Spacey plays a psychiatric patient who claims to come from another planet. Although he appears human, he can see ultraviolet light. Does this prove his extraterrestrial origin or could it mean something else?
    Professor Bill Stark, of the biology department of Saint Louis University, has carried out extensive research on ultraviolet vision in animals - and can see ultraviolet.
    Light consists of electromagnetic waves. Visible light is measured in nanometres - billionths of a metre. Light with a wavelength of around 700nm is red, at 500nm it is green, 400nm is blue-violet, and anything below that is usually invisible. You can see this invisible light indirectly by fluorescence.
    "Black light" used in discos is UV; some surfaces absorb it and re-emit it in the visible spectrum, giving off a vivid glow. Washing powders contain fluorescent phosphors for this reason; your clean shirt does not just reflect white light, it also has an added glow from the UV in sunlight. Thus it really does appear "whiter than white" in daylight. Just because you cannot see UV does not mean it has no effect on your eyes.
    You can absorb large amounts of invisible UV without realising it. Exposure to high levels of ultraviolet - glare from snowfields or sunlamps - can cause snowblindness when the cornea (the clear part of the eye) is effectively sunburned. This inflammation can cause loss of vision and makes the eyes painfully sensitive to light. The effects usually only last a day or two, but with intense UV, there is a risk of permanent damage.
    These harmful effects are reduced by the lens, which absorbs UV and prevents it entering the eye. When the lens becomes opaque due to cataracts, it may be surgically removed, and can be replaced with an artificial lens. Even with the lens removed (a condition known as aphakia) the patient can still see, as the lens is only responsible for about 30% of the eyes' focusing power.
    However, aphakic patients report that the process has an unusual side effect: they can see ultraviolet light. It is not normally visible because the lens blocks it. Some artificial lenses are also transparent to UV with the same effect. The receptors in the eye for blue light can actually see ultraviolet better than blue. Military intelligence is said to have used this talent in the second world war, recruiting aphakic observers to watch the coastline for German U-boats signalling to agents on the shore with UV lamps.
    However, the origin of the story has proven hard to track down. Ultraviolet vision was discovered in ants in 1882. It was thought to be confined to insects and some birds, but was later found in mice, lizards and other animals. Some flowers have distinctive patterns only visible in the ultraviolet, and some birds have colours in their plumage that are invisible to us but may be important in attracting a mate.
    Other animals have more exotic reasons for seeing into the ultraviolet. Kestrels and other raptors can roam over a large area searching for food. From a great height, they need to identify likely hunting grounds. Rodents mark their runs with trails of urine that absorbs UV, and in 1995, Finnish researchers found that kestrels can see these trails. It seems the birds can spot areas criss-crossed by recent rodent trails and zero in on them. Smaller rodents such as voles urinate almost continuously, so a predator could simply follow a fresh trail to find prey.
    It appears we are blind to wavelengths that are useful to animals, and we would expect an evolutionary reason. One suggestion is that without a UV-absorbing lens, there would be cumulative damage to the retina; but aphakic patients do not seem to suffer seriously even after many years.
    Another possibility is that cutting out UV gives us sharper vision. This is because a lens can only focus a limited range of colours at the same time. Increasing the range of wavelengths leads to a distortion called chromatic aberration, which will be familiar to people with cheap camera lenses.
    The eye represents a compromise between clear focus and breadth of spectrum. What does ultraviolet look like? Prof Stark possesses UV vision because he is aphakic in one eye and, with Professor Karel Tan, has published research on the nearest visible equivalent. His conclusion is that it looks whitish blue or, for some wavelengths, a whitish violet.
    This appears to be because the three types of colour receptor (red, green and blue) have similar sensitivity to ultraviolet, so it comes out as a mixture of all three - basically white, but slightly blue because the blue sensors are somewhat better at picking up UV. Our sensory system does not appear to be geared to revealing additional colours beyond the violet, though other animals will see things differently.
    An illustration of how ultraviolet appears is provided by the Impressionist painter Claude Monet. Following cataract surgery in 1923, his colour palette changed significantly; after the operation he painted water lilies with more blue than before. This may be because after lens removal he could see ultraviolet light, which would have given a blue cast to the world.
    Birds, bees, biology professors and Impressionists may have the ability to see into the ultraviolet, but it is more likely to be a sign of cataract surgery than having come from another world.
    I can see this sometimes. I used to call it the "color that bee's can see". It's one reason I hate flourescent lighting as it seems to give off a lot more than yer regular sodium.

  • Mystery Virus Hits London Hospital
    5/27/02
    LONDON (AP) - More than 100 people at a London hospital have been struck by the same type of virus that infected British soldiers serving in Afghanistan.
    The virus, which causes diarrhea and vomiting, is an increasingly common cause of food poisoning or gastroenteritis cases seen in schools, institutions or other communities, including hospitals.
    Although gastroenteritis is caused by a number of viruses, experts estimate that Norwalk viruses are responsible for about one-third of cases after the age of 2.
    At Whipps Cross Hospital in east London, 63 patients and 38 staff have been struck by a Norwalk-like virus. The first case was confirmed last week and the sick have been isolated and new admissions restricted.
    Earlier this month 38 British marines serving in Afghanistan and connected to a field hospital got sick - some severely - and health officials later identified that in 25 of them, the illness had been caused by a Norwalk-like virus. The rest of the soldiers had been struck by more common tummy bugs.
    There are several Norwalk-like viruses. It is unknown whether the one which struck the London hospital is the same as the one that hit the soldiers.
    The viruses, found worldwide, do not usually cause severe illness. Symptoms seen in Afghanistan were more severe than usual, probably accentuated by the country's heat, defense medical experts have said.
    Norwalk-like viruses usually surface as sporadic outbreaks. Mostly, illness is a result of unhygienic food preparation or contamination of water with sewage.


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