News_&_Current_Events_issue

Since many reports herein are from other sources, a copyright would be of little use in those cases.
But, all reports herein, reprints are permitted if proper credit is given as to source - Rocky View
with URL of this page or the homepage referenced above.

Why are Children out of School for the Summer? Do you have any idea? Have you ever thought of it? Do you care?

Now you are wondering why the question is even being asked. The ILLEGAL immigration matter is the impetus for shaking your brain. So, now you want to know that is the connection between children being out of school for the Summer and ILLEGAL immigration. There is not one, and that is the point.

Before we explore that, consider how if you were to do ANYTHING "ILLEGAL", that there is hardly a gestapo agent (cop or code man and others) who would salivate at jumping on your case. They would arrest you, impound your car, evict you from you own home, all because your grass is a little too high or for going 39mph in a 35mph zone.

Then there are these ADMITTEDLY "ILLEGAL" aliens who are brandishing their ILLEGAL status and demanding something of yours (gubment benefits, jobs, medical care, et cetera). Where are the cops and code man when you need one?

So, now we revisit the original question of "Why are Children out of School for the Summer?". There was time when our children helped in local businesses as parttime apprentices and seasonal labor, or simply worked in the family business. We chose to let the children out of school for the season to help with planting, harvesting, selling and all those other things that are often considered more or less menial work.

For youngin's, this kind of work was (and still could be) a great character builder. How many of our children today lack good character? MOST.

Do we need ILLEGAL interlopers in our country? NO. Should we want them? NO. Do we available to us a better way? YES.

If you think about it, the very nature of what ALLOWED these ILLEGALS to get into this country in the first place is the very same nature of what allows an alleged terrorist to enter this country.

So, do you want to continue in this high security mode where your liberties are taken (or even given) away, or do you want to put your children back to building good character?

Bush is never going to solve the massive negatives he is suffering as a result of the war in Iraq. His best shot is to distract Americans with a stellar performance in a new crisis, and the rise in gas prices comes along at just the right time.

Microsoft intensified its anti-piracy program by introducing an extension of the Windows Genuine Advantage program. This new program will automatically scan Windows and let users know if their MS Office copy is legal or not. Called the Office Genuine Advantage, the new program will seek to weed out computers that have counterfeit copies of Office suite.

After a user downloads and installs a Notification Tool, the PC will be scanned and if found to be illegal, a message appears saying, "It appears that you could be a victim of software piracy. The copy of Windows installed on this computer is not considered to be genuine by Microsoft."

This message will continue to be displayed whenever you login to Windows or even at start-up. "The notification will continue to display until your computer is running genuine Microsoft Windows," the initial dialog box warns the user.

The OGA program is being launched as a pilot project in seven languages, which are Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Greek, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Russian and Spanish. Redmond has already introduced an Office Validation Assistant tool last November. This product will eventually be integrated with the OGA, the company said.

The program is being first tested in the United States, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. Analysts say that this is the second step that Redmond is taking to stop piracy, "Phase 1 was withholding certain things, such as downloads. But that wasn't going to make sure that people get legal, so they went on to the next phase.

Now Microsoft's going to remind them at boot, when the system wakes from sleep, that there's something funky about their Windows," said Joe Wilcox of JupiterResearch. Microsoft is also withholding certain features in its new Operating System, the Windows Vista, which will release later this year. Only genuine copies of Vista will have full features.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
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Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.

But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.

Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.

Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts.

Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University law professor who has studied the executive power claims Bush made during his first term, said Bush and his legal team have spent the past five years quietly working to concentrate ever more governmental power into the White House.

''There is no question that this administration has been involved in a very carefully thought-out, systematic process of expanding presidential power at the expense of the other branches of government," Cooper said. ''This is really big, very expansive, and very significant."

For the first five years of Bush's presidency, his legal claims attracted little attention in Congress or the media. Then, twice in recent months, Bush drew scrutiny after challenging new laws: a torture ban and a requirement that he give detailed reports to Congress about how he is using the Patriot Act.

Total regulation rules are close at hand, a new internet will kill free speech and weed out anything deemed "inappropriate"

In the space of a few months debate has gone from "pressure on internet service providers" to make available user records to calls for all out mandatory ISP snooping on all US citizens.

In a display of bi-partisanship, both Democrats and Republicans are calling for such measures.

“Last week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a Republican, gave a speech saying that data retention by Internet service providers is an ‘issue that must be addressed.’ Child pornography investigations have been ‘hampered’ because data may be routinely deleted, Gonzales warned,” reports Declan McCullagh of CNET News.

Now Democratic member of the Congressional Internet Caucus, Diana DeGette, wants an an amendment that would make such data deletion illegal.

DeGette says that any Internet service that ‘enables users to access content’ must permanently retain records that would permit police to identify each user. The records could not be discarded until at least one year after the user's account was closed.

This may mean that any normal website or blog would have to fall into line with such new rules and suddenly total web regulation would become a reality.

The excuse for this as either a standalone measure or as an amendment to a broad telecommunications bill that is moving rapidly through the House, is that it is designed to protect children.

We are being led to believe that a vast army of maniac pedophiles are on the loose and we must do away with all forms of privacy in order to stop them. This is akin to saying that blanket cctv prevents crime. As if to say "if we film everyone all the time, even innocent people, then no one will ever commit any crimes."

Increasingly we are seeing this in every aspect of our lives. Recording, tracking and retaining our data in the name of keeping us all safe. Everyone is now treated as guilty until proven innocent.

In reality the amendment would mean that such data would be accessible to any local or state law enforcement official investigating anything from drug possession to tax evasion.

Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the free-market Cato Institute, said: "This is an unrestricted grant of authority to the FCC to require surveillance."

"The FCC would be able to tell Internet service providers to monitor our e-mails, monitor our Web surfing, monitor what we post on blogs or chat rooms, and everything else under the sun,"

We have previously exposed how moves are also afoot to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.

This would be a faster, more streamlined elite equivalent of the internet available to users who were willing to pay more for a much improved service. providers may only allow streaming audio and video on your websites if you were eligible for Internet 2.

Of course, Internet 2 would be greatly regulated and only "appropriate content" would be accepted by an FCC or government bureau. Everything else would be relegated to the "slow lane" internet, the junkyard as it were. Our techie rulers are all too keen to make us believe that the internet as we know it is "already dead".

Let's take a look at the possible effects that such moves would have on websites such as infowars and prisonplanet.

Given that they are already blocked by many regular filters because they are deemed to contain "inappropriate content" (even though 90% of our material is simply mainstream news) we would face the prospect of not being able to stream audio or video or of being locked out entirely if a telecom disagreed with our content.

Without the ability to stream our material we would have to rely on newsletters and mailing lists. However, the first steps in a move to charge for every e mail sent have already been taken. Under the pretext of eliminating spam, Bill Gates and other industry chieftains have proposed Internet users buy credit stamps which denote how many e mails they will be able to send. This of course is also the death knell for political newsletters and mailing lists.

With demands placed upon us to provide records of all our visitors, streaming audio and video gone, our ability to mass mail our content killed off and our position on Internet 2 DENIED, the sites would virtually be shut down.

The move to demonize the Internet and tar its reputation has been underway for a long time. The boom in blogs and alternative news websites has plunged the mainstream media into a panic. Their newspaper sales and hits to their websites are plummeting as people seek their own information from multiple sources. The mainstream has engaged in a desperate attempt to paint the internet as a dark place where criminals and weirdos are everywhere and all information is inaccurate and unbalanced.

AOL is still running ads equating Internet users with terrorists. In the next few years we may see a staged Internet shutdown which is blamed on cyber terrorists.

In reality it is the mainstream that is inaccurate and unbalanced, providing a one sided story firmly rooted in the past on printed paper or the nightly news.

For the aspiring dictator, the Internet is a dangerous tool that has been seized by the enemy. We have come a long way since 1969, when the ARPANET was created solely for US government use. The Internet is freedom's best friend and the bane of control freaks. Its eradication is one of the short term goals of those that seek to centralize power and subjugate the world under a global surveillance panopticon prison.

"An orderly resolution of global imbalances will require ... the U.S. dollar would need to fall significantly"

measures to facilitate a rebalancing of demand across countries and a realignment of exchange rates over the medium term," the IMF said, saying this means the U.S. dollar would need to fall significantly as currencies in surplus countries, such as some in Asia and oil producers.

WASHINGTON, April 19 (Reuters) - Restoring balance to the world economy will require shifts in global demand and exchange rates, and governments must not stand in the way of the process, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday.

In the April edition of the semiannual World Economic Outlook, the IMF renewed a warning about the threat posed by trade distortions, saying a fall in the dollar and a rise in some Asian currencies is one prerequisite to resolving them.

IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan later said while the fund was not urging a weaker dollar, it was pressing governments to remove rigidities in foreign exchange markets.

"I'm not asking for a depreciation of the dollar by any means," he told a news conference.

"Exchange markets do what they do. What is important is to allow them to do what they do -- which is to remove rigidities in areas where those rigidities exist so that exchange rates can support the adjustment," he added.

The funds warnings over imbalances came as it projected another year of brisk expansion for the world economy, lifting its forecast for 2006 global growth to 4.9 percent from a September projection of 4.3 percent.

Should that forecast materialize, it will be the fourth straight year global growth has topped 4 percent, a stellar performance underpinned by favorable financial market conditions and accommodative fiscal and monetary policies.

"The baseline forecast is for continued strong growth, although risks remain slanted to the downside, the more so since key vulnerabilities -- notably the global imbalances -- continue to increase," the IMF said.

The fund lamented the lack of action to tackle this risk, citing only "modest signs" of improvement in U.S. savings, limited adjustments in exchange rate policies in emerging Asia, and more room for reforms in the euro zone and Japan.

"An orderly resolution of global imbalances will require measures to facilitate a rebalancing of demand across countries and a realignment of exchange rates over the medium term," the IMF said, saying this means the U.S. dollar would need to fall significantly as currencies in surplus countries, such as some in Asia and oil producers.

"The longer the adjustment is delayed, the larger these exchange rate adjustments will ultimately need to be and the greater the risk of overshooting," it added.

"Looking ahead, limited excess capacity in the oil sector is likely to persist well beyond 2006 and prices will continue to be susceptible to geopolitical events," the fund said.

So far, oil prices have not hit the world economy as hard as some had feared. Rajan said the fund was keeping a close eye on the current spike to new record highs.

"It is a danger, it is a risk, and we are watching it very closely and urging everybody -- oil producers, oil consumers -- to do their part to reduce the effects as much as possible."

Geopolitical uncertainties in the Middle East are stoking oil price rises, with options trading data suggesting a 15 percent chance oil prices will spike above $80 per barrel by mid-2006, the IMF said.

Oil held above $72 a barrel on Wednesday on fears Iran's intensifying dispute with the West may lead to supply cuts from the world's fourth-largest exporter.

The fund will enter its spring meetings this weekend with major shareholders pressing for reforms and for alterations in the IMF power structure to give Asia more voice.

The United States wants the fund to fashion itself into a global currency watchdog and IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato called a meeting of wealthy and emerging economic powers in Washington on Friday to talk about prescriptions to reduce global distortions.

The rebalancing of demand and exchange rates had to happen in tandem, the IMF said.

U.S. manufacturers and some lawmakers blame China's rigid exchange rate policy for feeding its trade gap and the Bush administration has urged Beijing to let its yuan currency trade freely on foreign exchange markets.

China's President Hu Jintao is scheduled to visit Washington this week and President George W. Bush has pledged to press him on steps to help cut the trade shortfall.

Economists are uncertain how the massive shortfall in the U.S. current account -- the broadest measure of trade and investment flows -- will resolve itself.

The global picture is further skewed by massive surpluses elsewhere, including in Asian nations such as China, and oil exporters like Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Some policy-makers, including new U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, believe trade imbalances are market-driven and government policies can do little to help.

The IMF suggested the imbalances could be resolved through a private-sector led adjustment without government action, a process that would see U.S. private savings rise gradually as interest rates increase and the housing market slows, accompanied by exchange rate adjustments.

A more abrupt and disorderly unwinding could spark a messy dollar slide, a larger increase in interest rates and a sharp economic contraction or recession.

US President George W. Bush said the September 11 revolt of passengers against their hijackers on board Flight 93 had struck the first blow of "World War III."

In an interview with the financial news network CNBC, Bush said he had yet to see the recently released film of the uprising, a dramatic portrayal of events on the United Airlines plane before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

But he said he agreed with the description of David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, who in a Wall Street Journal commentary last month called it "our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war -- World War III".

Bush said: "I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack to World War III.

"It was, it was unbelievably heroic of those folks on the airplane to recognize the danger and save lives," he said.

Flight 93 crashed on the morning of September 11, 2001, killing the 33 passengers, seven crew members and four hijackers, after passengers stormed the cockpit and battled the hijackers for control of the aircraft.

The president has repeatedly praised the heroism of the passengers in fighting back and so launching the first blow of what he usually calls the "war on terror".

In 2002, then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer explicitly declined to call the hunt for Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group and its followers "World War III."

What follows is an exchange in response to rebuttal/response of Scott, circa April 26, 2006, regarding the article of April 23, 2006, entitled "No National Sales Tax. Tax is NEVER fair, tax is a burden".

Bob: I like this "sharing of the exchange of views." You should do it more often.
PS: Sorry, but I agree with Scott.

Tribble: The more replies I get, the more I print them. Thanks for your reply.

I may have missed making my point, but I rather agree with Scott, IF we ignore the "use" of the tax. IF we are ONLY looking at what constitutes a more fair tax, then surely a sales tax is more fair.

BUT, was I not clear that the use of the funds does NOT support anything in this country (previous newsletter articles have covered this)? At best, allowing the collection of these and similar taxes encourages and promotes gubment largess, and at worst it encourages and promotes non-domestic control of this country, neither of which benefits this country or its people. Hence, the collection, by whatever form is not justified.

Note, I am saying "more fair", which is not the same as "fair", as 2 bad apples are both bad, but one is not as bad as the other. More importantly, "more fair" or "fair" is NOT the same as lawful.

Am I to understand that people (maybe you) do not care how the funds are used, so long as the collection is more fair. I suppose you do not care if a guy breaks into your home and steals your things, so long as all the people in your neighborhood were treated the same - fairly, equally.

Is it OK if military and police agents violate you, so long as they are equal opportunity violators, so long as they treat everyone the same - fairly?

In the same thinking, am I to understand that you think all peoples should be given gubment benefits regardless of whether they are legally or illegally in this country, so long as everyone gets treated the same - fairly?

IF it is ONLY a matter is which is more fair, the you and Scott and I agree. But, such a position is myopic and allows the further enslavement of the people. Sadly, many people are begging for control and manipulation.

Bob: Amazingly, we are virtually together 100% on this. I agree that adding a tax is wrong and we 3 agree that replacement of the Income tax by a National Sales tax is better BUT the use that any of these taxes are put to makes either method of taxing wrong as it (they) are misappropriated. We (Debbie and I) are really fed up with the taxation situation here in Ohio. They seem to continually add things that are subject to sales tax and find new ways of taxing your money even before you spend it. We currently pay income tax to: the IRS, State of Ohio, City of Powell, City of Westerville and the City of Gahanna. They are now talking about a Franklin County income tax... Tuesday, despite our efforts of letter writing and sign posting in our yard, the Gahanna voters passed a 7.9 mill school levy (with no expiration date) which will cost us $500 more per year on our property taxes (it passed by less than 500 votes out of 11,000 cast out of 30,000+ eligible voters). They got ignorant voters to vote for it (or not vote) with a huge (well funded) sign campaign and volunteers standing on street corners and letters sent to residents by local celebrities who don't even live in our town and saying that "the poor kids will suffer because we will have to cut back on school programs" while in actuality the money is mainly for administrators salary increases and some really unneeded school enhancements.
Anyway, I'm looking for an effective way of starting a peaceful tax revolt. Any ideas?

Tribble: It matters not that the people do not want a tax or arena or some other thing, the money people behind these endeavors can and will keep putting before the people till they finally get 50%+1 of the vote. Notice I did not say voters, for as you illustrated, not all voters vote. All that is need is like what congress did in 1913 during xmas vacation. They had a very small number of member on hand and voted for Fed Income Tax and So So Security. Now look what we have. This is a contrived maneuver to put some things to a vote during times of low turn out. Usually people will not go to the trouble except during the midterm and regular term elections. BUT, then many people have learned that the vote process has been rigged and is so more every year. The use of electronic (paperless) voting machines truly takes the vote away from the people. The act of going to a precinct is a formality and no longer "counts" literally. The tallies will be determined by Diebold who is not required to reveal the algorithm and workings of their machines, for counting the public trust. There has been MUCH reported on the ails of going electronic voting, but he obvious is that your vote truly no longer "counts". But, we have digressed.

Rarely, in this modern age, do the moneys go where they are promoted to go. This is most true when the promotion is "for the children".

I again encourage all to check on the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR)

The blatant arrogance exhibited by gubment agents with each passing day, week, month and year is ever more frightening. Usually a team or player will take more chances the closer they are to their goal and when their risk of loss is low. So, what does that tell us about those agents of the public and secret gubments?

As for your prayer of "a peaceful tax revolt", I remind you what Thomas Jefferson said.

They can steal your smartcard, lift your passport, jack your car, even clone the chip in your arm. And you won't feel a thing. 5 tales from the RFID-hacking underground.

James Van Bokkelen is about to be robbed. A wealthy software entrepreneur, Van Bokkelen will be the latest victim of some punk with a laptop. But this won't be an email scam or bank account hack. A skinny 23-year-old named Jonathan Westhues plans to use a cheap, homemade USB device to swipe the office key out of Van Bokkelen's back pocket.

"I just need to bump into James and get my hand within a few inches of him," Westhues says. We're shivering in the early spring air outside the offices of Sandstorm, the Internet security company Van Bokkelen runs north of Boston. As Van Bokkelen approaches from the parking lot, Westhues brushes past him. A coil of copper wire flashes briefly in Westhues' palm, then disappears.

Van Bokkelen enters the building, and Westhues returns to me. "Let's see if I've got his keys," he says, meaning the signal from Van Bokkelen's smartcard badge. The card contains an RFID sensor chip, which emits a short burst of radio waves when activated by the reader next to Sandstorm's door. If the signal translates into an authorized ID number, the door unlocks.

The coil in Westhues' hand is the antenna for the wallet-sized device he calls a cloner, which is currently shoved up his sleeve. The cloner can elicit, record, and mimic signals from smartcard RFID chips. Westhues takes out the device and, using a USB cable, connects it to his laptop and downloads the data from Van Bokkelen's card for processing. Then, satisfied that he has retrieved the code, Westhues switches the cloner from Record mode to Emit. We head to the locked door.

He waves the cloner's antenna in front of a black box attached to the wall. The single red LED blinks green. The lock clicks. We walk in and find Van Bokkelen waiting.

"See? I just broke into your office!" Westhues says gleefully. "It's so simple." Van Bokkelen, who arranged the robbery "just to see how it works," stares at the antenna in Westhues' hand. He knows that Westhues could have performed his wireless pickpocket maneuver and then returned with the cloner after hours. Westhues could have walked off with tens of thousands of dollars' worth of computer equipment - and possibly source code worth even more. Van Bokkelen mutters, "I always thought this might be a lousy security system."

RFID chips are everywhere - companies and labs use them as access keys, Prius owners use them to start their cars, and retail giants like Wal-Mart have deployed them as inventory tracking devices. Drug manufacturers like Pfizer rely on chips to track pharmaceuticals. The tags are also about to get a lot more personal: Next-gen US passports and credit cards will contain RFIDs, and the medical industry is exploring the use of implantable chips to manage patients. According to the RFID market analysis firm IDTechEx, the push for digital inventory tracking and personal ID systems will expand the current annual market for RFIDs from $2.7 billion to as much as $26 billion by 2016.

RFID technology dates back to World War II, when the British put radio transponders in Allied aircraft to help early radar system crews detect good guys from bad guys. The first chips were developed in research labs in the 1960s, and by the next decade the US government was using tags to electronically authorize trucks coming into Los Alamos National Laboratory and other secure facilities. Commercialized chips became widely available in the '80s, and RFID tags were being used to track difficult-to-manage property like farm animals and railroad cars. But over the last few years, the market for RFIDs has exploded, driven by advances in computer databases and declining chip prices. Now dozens of companies, from Motorola to Philips to Texas Instruments, manufacture the chips.

The tags work by broadcasting a few bits of information to specialized electronic readers. Most commercial RFID chips are passive emitters, which means they have no onboard battery: They send a signal only when a reader powers them with a squirt of electrons. Once juiced, these chips broadcast their signal indiscriminately within a certain range, usually a few inches to a few feet. Active emitter chips with internal power can send signals hundreds of feet; these are used in the automatic toll-paying devices (with names like FasTrak and E-ZPass) that sit on car dashboards, pinging tollgates as autos whiz through.

For protection, RFID signals can be encrypted. The chips that will go into US passports, for example, will likely be coded to make it difficult for unauthorized readers to retrieve their onboard information (which will include a person's name, age, nationality, and photo). But most commercial RFID tags don't include security, which is expensive: A typical passive RFID chip costs about a quarter, whereas one with encryption capabilities runs about $5. It's just not cost-effective for your average office building to invest in secure chips.

This leaves most RFIDs vulnerable to cloning or - if the chip has a writable memory area, as many do - data tampering. Chips that track product shipments or expensive equipment, for example, often contain pricing and item information. These writable areas can be locked, but often they aren't, because the companies using RFIDs don't know how the chips work or because the data fields need to be updated frequently. Either way, these chips are open to hacking.

"The world of RFID is like the Internet in its early stages," says Ari Juels, research manager at the high tech security firm RSA Labs. "Nobody thought about building security features into the Internet in advance, and now we're paying for it in viruses and other attacks. We're likely to see the same thing with RFIDs."

David Molnar is a soft-spoken computer science graduate student who studies commercial uses for RFIDs at UC Berkeley. I meet him in a quiet branch of the Oakland Public Library, which, like many modern libraries, tracks most of its inventory with RFID tags glued inside the covers of its books. These tags, made by Libramation, contain several writable memory "pages" that store the books' barcodes and loan status.

[To read the remainder of this story, sue the links in the heading of this article. -- Tribble]

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

A Martian nerd of a figure, Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, is likely to be nominated to be the new director of the CIA. The former director of the National Security Agency, and now deputy to the director of national intelligence (DNI), has been the most out-front and aggressive defender of the NSA's domestic surveillance program. He was NSA director when the spying program was launched in 2001. On January 23, 2006, in an appearance before the National Press Club, Hayden acted out an alarming ignorance of the Fourth Amendment.

The last journalist to get in a question at the Press Club, Jonathan Landay, an investigative reporter for Knight-Ridder, observed that Gen. Hayden repeatedly referred to the Fourth Amendment's search standard of "reasonableness" without mentioning that it also requires "probable cause" (supported by affirmation). Hayden seemed to deny that the amendment included any such thing.

QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. [Regarding] the standard...you use to target your wiretaps. I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American's right against unlawful searches and seizures.

GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually -- the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, "We reasonably believe." And a FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say "we reasonably believe"; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court, and say, "we have probable cause."

And so what many people believe is that what you've actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of "reasonably believe" in place of probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that?

GEN. HAYDEN: Sure. I didn't craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order.

Just to be very clear -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. [I]t is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you've raised to me -- and I'm not a lawyer-- what you've raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is "reasonable." ...I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable.

Porter Goss has been criticized as director of the Central Intelligence Agency for causing some of the best professional analysts to leave, contributing to institutional chaos, and generally demoralizing the Agency. This is strikingly comparable to an indictment of Hayden's seven-year tenure as director of this country's premier technical intelligence collection bureaucracy. A sitcom about NSA could be called "Hayden's Heroes" (as in Hogan) with a twist.

The twist is that Hayden, through an unprecedented public relations campaign aimed at the media and Congress, succeeded in convincing the public that NSA is an ace intelligence agency employing new communications technologies to track indications and warnings of global terrorism. But some NSA professionals have been cited in published reports that provide a quite different story. They point to an agency wracked by poor morale, questionable outsourcing of contracts that have the potential to compromise the most sensitive sources and methods, and an independent intelligence agency being too close to the White House.

Hayden's shocking extra-legal arrogance on display at the National Press Club undoubtedly appeals to the "unitary executive" minds of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and former White House counsel, now Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. However, it is not known if Hayden, as NSA director back in 2001, responded to a lawful order from the White House, or the Justice Department, or the Defense Department, that authorized him to act.

Had he, in fact, acted on his own to institute a covert, warrantless, pervasive, domestic electronic eavesdropping program, in the aftermath of 9/11, and then presented it as a fait accompli to a White House he was all too eager to please? He certainly did not come up to the Senate and House Intelligence committees and ask them how to do it legally!

It is reported that President Bush has been especially impressed with Hayden's unrelenting public defense of the surveillance program, which began under his direction. Under the program, the NSA monitors telephone calls and e-mail between the United States and overseas when one participant is suspected of links to terrorists. In addition, it has been alleged that it monitors calls and e-mails solely within the United States. The Administration continues to assert that it does not need court approval because of the president's inherent war powers. No room for the Fourth Amendment there.

In various public appearances, after all, Hayden has argued that the program was necessary for more "agility" in combating a nefarious enemy and that obtaining warrants would be impractical, even though the law permits intelligence tapping for 72 hours before getting court approval.

Will Senators on the Intelligence and Judiciary committees--not to mention the larger body of 100--flinch over performing their clear duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States against not only foreign, but domestic enemies as well?

While Minuteman civilian patrols are keeping an eye out for illegal border crossers, the U.S. Border Patrol is keeping an eye out for Minutemen -- and telling the Mexican government where they are.

According to three documents on the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Web site, the U.S. Border Patrol is to notify the Mexican government as to the location of Minutemen and other civilian border patrol groups when they participate in apprehending illegal immigrants -- and if and when violence is used against border crossers.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman confirmed the notification process, describing it as a standard procedure meant to reassure the Mexican government that migrants' rights are being observed.

"It's not a secret where the Minuteman volunteers are going to be," Mario Martinez said Monday.

"This ... simply makes two basic statements -- that we will not allow any lawlessness of any type, and that if an alien is encountered by a Minuteman or arrested by the Minuteman, then we will allow that government to interview the person."

Minuteman members were not so sanguine about the arrangement, however, saying that reporting their location to Mexican officials nullifies their effectiveness along the border and could endanger their lives.

"Now we know why it seemed like Mexican officials knew where we were all the time," said Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. "It's unbelievable that our own government agency is sending intelligence to another country. They are sending intelligence to a nation where corruption runs rampant, and that could be getting into the hands of criminal cartels.

Officials with the Mexican consulate in Washington, D.C., could not be reached for comment Monday.

Martinez said reporting the location of immigrant apprehensions to consulate representatives is common practice if an illegal immigrant requests counsel or believes they have been mistreated.

"Once an illegal alien is apprehended, they can request counsel," he said. "We have to give their counsel the information about their apprehension, and that includes where they are apprehended, whether a Minuteman volunteer spotted them or a citizen."

Martinez said Mexico's official perception of the civilian groups is that they are vigilantes, a belief the Border Patrol hoped to allay by entering into the cooperative agreement.

One of the documents on the Web site, "Actions of the Mexican Government in Relation to the Activities of Vigilante Groups," states that Mexican consulate representatives stay in close contact with Border Patrol chiefs to ensure the safety of migrants trying to enter the U.S., those being detained and the actions of all "vigilantes" along the border.

"The Mexican consul in Presidio also contacted the chief of the Border Patrol in the Marfa Sector to solicit his cooperation in case they detect any activity of `vigilantes,' and was told to immediately contact the consulate if there was," according to the document.

"Presidio" refers to Presidio County, Texas, which is in the Big Bend region and a gateway to northern Mexico.

The document also describes a meeting with San Diego Border Patrol sector chief Darryl Griffen.

"(Griffen) said that the Border Patrol will not permit any violence or any actions contrary to the law by the groups, and he is continuously aware of (the volunteer organizations') operations," according to the document. "Mr. Griffen reiterated to the undersecretary his promise to notify the General Consul right away when the vigilantes detain or participate in the detention of any undocumented Mexicans."

The documents specifically named the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and its patrols, which began monitoring Arizona's southern border in April 2005, as well as Friends of the Border Patrol, a Chino-based nonprofit.

TJ Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union representing more than 10,000 Border Patrol agents, said agents have complained for years about the Mexican consulate's influence over the agency.

"It worries me (that the Mexican government) seems to be unduly influencing our enforcement policies. That's not a legitimate role for any foreign nation," Bonner said, though he added, "It doesn't surprise me."

Border Patrol agents interviewed by the Daily Bulletin said they have been asked to report to sector headquarters the location of all civilian volunteer groups, but to not file the groups' names in reports if they spot illegal immigrants.

"Last year an internal memo notified all agents not to give credit to Minuteman volunteers or others who call in sightings of illegal aliens," said one agent, who spoke on the condition he not be identified. "We were told to list it as a citizen call and leave it at that. Many times, we were told not to go out to Minuteman calls."

The document also mentions locations of field operations of Friends of the Border Patrol, which patrolled the San Diego sector from June to November 2005. Mexican officials had access to the exact location of the group founded by Andy Ramirez, which ran its patrols from the Rough Acre Ranch, a private property in McCain Valley.

Ramirez said that for safety reasons, he disclosed the location of his ranch patrol only to San Diego Border Patrol and law enforcement officials. The group did not apprehend or spot any undocumented migrants in that area.

"We did not release this information ... to the media or anyone else," Ramirez said. "We didn't want to publicize that information. But there it is, right on the Mexican government's Web site, and our government gave it to them."

The impending opening of the Iranian International Oil Bourse (IOB), set to commence trading next week on the island nation of Kish, strongly increases the chances of an imminent nuclear American-Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear and financial facilities. The electronic oil bourse, much discussed by terrorism expert Webster Tarpley, appears ready to launch in the coming weeks or even days. Because it will offer oil in euros, it may trigger the rapid collapse of the U.S. dollar.

Over the past four days, the Western media has finally ended their blackout and acknowledged the possibility of an imminent dollar collapse, as gold reaches nearly $700 an ounce.

On Friday, May 5, the Associated Press covered the oil bourse with their article “Iran wants oil market in Euros.” The article warns of a rapid decline in the dollar while feebly attempting to minimize the importance of the oil bourse.

Nevertheless, the AP quotes a top Wall Street analyst who gives a far more realistic assessment: “But if one day the world's largest oil producers allowed, or worse demanded, euros for their barrels, ‘it would be the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike,’ said A.G. Edwards commodities analyst Bill O'Grady.

‘If OPEC decided they didn't want dollars anymore,’ he added, ‘it would signal an end of American hegemony by signaling an end to the dollar as the sole reserve currency status.’

Incredibly, some neocon warmongers are now openly calling for a strike on Iran because of the bourse.

On May 8, Bush apologist Jerome Corsi penned an editorial entitled “Iran Signs It’s Own Death Warrant.” Corsi is the same GOP hack who helped sponsor the Swift Boat ads & wrote Unfit for Command during the staged 2004 presidential election. In his article he admits a major reason for the US invasion of Iraq was the oil-for-euros policy of Saddam Hussein, and warns of China’s interest in the oil bourse.

He then goes further, predicting an imminent US attack: “If Iran wants also to seriously threaten the dollar's position as a dominant foreign reserve currency, a war becomes almost certain. The Iranian oil bourse may never be mentioned by U.S. policymakers as a official reason the United States decides to go to war with Iran, but it may end up being the straw that broke the camel's back.”

According to Forbes, the bourse may open this week. In their May 7 coverage, they suggest the electronic oil market is ready for trading: “Iran's oil ministry on Friday also made a move to establish an oil-trading market denominated in euros instead of U.S. dollars, granting a license for the bourse, according to a report from the country's state-run television.”

Warren Buffett who is a well known Rothschild banker is predicting demise, Bill Gates, George Soros are all predicting economic demise

The Forbes coverage echoes another article from April 26, when the Iranian state media reported their oil-for-euros market will open some time in the next week. Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh made the announcement at the 10th General Assembly of International Energy Agency and consultations with OPEC member states.

Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting the bourse will not open for another two months, based on quotes from President Ahmadinejad.

So assuming the bourse opens sometime between now and the next two months, how might it disrupt the fragile geopolitical balance which has reached near Cuban Missile crisis proportions?

Clearly the economic threat of the Iranian Oil Bourse is one of the main motives behind the pending US invasion, rather than the bogus official claims of a nuclear threat. The National Intelligence Estimate from the US State Department acknowledges Iran is at least 10 years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Even the more hawkish estimates from within the White House estimate Iran is at least three years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

On April 30, Al-Jazeerah reported the oil bourse has widespread international support, and “Some of the major oil-producing countries such as Venezuela (which has boosted its economic ties with Iran) and a few of the larger oil consuming countries, most notably China and India, have already announced their support for the IOB.”

The Al-Jazeerah article, entitled “Petro-Euro: A reality or distant nightmare for U.S.?” warned that the Iranian oil bourse could sink the U.S. dollar and lead to the rise of the euro as the world’s reserve currency: “Such a move could lead to a collapse in value for the American currency, potentially putting the U.S. economy in its greatest crisis since the depression era of the 1930s.”

The same article mentions how Saddam Hussein’s decision to trade oil for euros in 2000 may have been a major trigger for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Al-Jazeerah also quotes American security expert William Clark as predicting that “if Iran threatened the hegemony of the U.S. dollar in the international oil market, the White House would immediately order a military attack against it.”

Before this week, the mainstream media had tried desperately tried to blackout news about the bourse. A small mention came in a UPI article from April 25, while an April 2 piece in the San Francisco Chronicle warned, “the bourse would rival the New York Mercantile Exchange and International Petroleum Exchange in London -- the twin centers of the oil-trading world. They quoted the cogent analysis of finance scholar Krassimir Petrov, who wrote, “The Iranian government has finally developed the ultimate 'nuclear' weapon that can swiftly destroy the financial system underpinning the American Empire."

Why would Iran’s oil exchange present such a threat to the U.S. dollar and worldwide economy?

The dollar accounts for more than two thirds of all central bank reserves worldwide because all international oil transactions have to be in US Dollars. This reserve status creates a constant demand for dollars, despite the underlying weakness of the U.S. economy. Hence, central banks are willing to overlook the massive trade and budget deficits are expanding with on-the-books Federal debt at record highs over 9 trillion and a fiscal gap estimated at $72 trillion.

But the United States is an economy on life support and nearing default, ravaged by agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA, and MFN trade status with China (all under the auspices of the WTO). The industrial and machine tools factories in America have been eviscerated, with Ford posting a quarterly loss of 1.2 billion. GM posted a quarterly loss of $325 million and both companies had their bonds cut to junk status back in 2005.

Ravaged by capital flight, mired in debt, and borrowing $2 billion a day just to stay afloat, the U.S. economy is increasingly reliant on this petrodollar reserve status. The vast size of U.S. liabilities means that any threat to the dollar hegemony could result in a rapid currency collapse, sinking the world into recession. Hence the dire threat of the Iranian Oil Bourse, which may put an end to the fiat currency charade that began after the US defaulted on its gold payments in 1971.

On Wednesday May 3, the dollar fell to one-year lows against the euro and the lowest level since 1970 against the Canadian dollar. A Telegraph article entitled “Dollar drops as great sell-off looms” described the impending currency crisis as the dollar loses its role as the world’s reserve currency: “Greenback liquidation comes amid growing concerns that global central banks and Middle East oil funds are quietly paring back their holdings of US bonds… Gold leapt to a 25-year high of $660.95 an ounce on fears the dollar decline could spiral out of control, disrupting the global financial system.”

The demise of the dollar looms as the Federal Reserve stopped releasing M3 money supply numbers on March 20. Some unconfirmed internet rumors claim the Fed recently ordered 2 trillion greenbacks printed. While such reports may seem outlandish, new Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a speech in 2003: “"The US government has a technology called a printing press that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

A February 6 article in the London Telegraph expounded on Bernanke’s reputation as an inflationist. Discussing Bernanke’s position, they wrote: “Ultimately, the Fed can flood the system by buying any kind of asset, or even dropping bank notes from helicopters, he said. The speech earned him the epithet ‘Helicopter Ben’"

Even before Bernanke took over, Alan Greenspan helped direct the Fed’s desperate scheme of raising interest rates 15 times since June 2004, vastly increasing liquidity, and debasing the value of the U.S. dollar.

The Financial Times reported on May 16 that the dollar was facing a freefall collapse, in an article entitled “Fears for dollar as central banks sell US assets.” The article explained the recent sell-off in the dollar was triggered by dollar divestiture by the European central banks: “The world's central banks were net sellers of US assets in March for the first time since September 2002, according to figures that may hint that the recent rebound in the dollar will be temporary. Central banks sold a net $14.4bn in US assets during the month, the largest sale since August 1998, the US Treasury revealed.”

Russia’s Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin recently warned of a dollar collapse on April 21 at the opening spring session of the International Monetary Fund. He said “Russia cannot consider the dollar as a reliable reserve currency because of its instability. This currency has devalued by 40% against the euro in recent years.” Two years ago Russia had nearly 90% holdings in US dollars and today that proportion has fallen to below 80%

The same IMF conference featured the release of the 2006 World Economic Outlook, which warned of a U.S. dollar collapse due to global trade imbalances, spiraling U.S. debt, and the demise of the petrodollar reserve standard. The report stated, "global current account imbalances are likely to remain at elevated levels for longer than would otherwise have been the case, heightening the risk of sudden disorderly adjustment".

“Disorderly adjustment” is the newest banker euphemism for the hyperinflationary spiral and worldwide economic depression which will accompany a dollar collapse.
On that same day of April 21, Sweden’s Riksbank recently cut their dollar holdings in half, instead favoring Euros. Reuter reported that, “The Riksbank's move to increase its euro holdings to 50 percent of its reserves follows comments by Gulf central banks in recent weeks that they are considering increasing the share of the euro in their reserves.

Back in February, South Korea shocked the currency markets when they announced a move away from dollar-denominated assets. CNN reported, “The world's fourth-largest stockpile of reserves that has traditionally been held in U.S. debt…announced its plans to diversify into other currencies.”

Recently, currency shocks hit Iceland and New Zealand and may portend a global financial meltdown in its growing stages.

Within hushed circles on Wall Street, the impending dollar crisis has been long predicted. In a closed-door meeting in 2004, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley, Stephen Roach, predicted “economic Armageddon.”

The Boston Herald article reported Roach’s comments as follows: “His prediction: America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic "Armageddon…Roach sees a 30 percent chance of a slump soon and a 60 percent chance that ‘we'll muddle through for a while and delay the eventual Armageddon.’"
Furthermore, globalist banker & billionaire Warren Buffett is warning of a global financial collapse and the precipitous drop in the dollar in a recent Forbes Magazine. Buffett has personally bet at least $20 billion against the U.S. dollar, and said the following: "The rest of the world owns $10 trillion of us, or $3 trillion net. If lots of people try to leave the market, we'll have chaos because they won't get through the door."

The article went further: “A continuing fall in the dollar ‘could cause major disruptions in financial markets. There could be unpredictable side effects. It could be precipitated by some exogenous event like a Long-Term Capital Management,’ Buffett says, referring to the 1998 collapse of a steeply leveraged hedge fund.”

Warren Buffett is strongly linked to the Rothschild banking syndicate, and Buffett brought Arnold Schwarzenegger to visit Lord Jacob Rothschild’s Buckinghamshire estate in 2002. Buffett’s dire warnings likely represent the sentiments of the Rothschilds and others in European financier dynasties dominating the New World Order overclass; those who hope to use a worldwide depression to seize assets, depopulate the planet of “useless eaters,” and create a unipolar biometric police state.

Billionaire software kingpin and Bilderberg member Bill Gates, who recently hosted Chinese police state head President Hu, is also shorting the dollar. Last January, Bloomberg quoted Gates predicting a collapse in the U.S. currency. He said, “I’m short the dollar. The ‘ol dollar, it’s gonna go down…It is a bit scary. We're in uncharted territory when the world's reserve currency has so much outstanding debt.”
The article continued: “Gates's concern that widening U.S. budget and trade deficits are undermining the dollar was echoed in Davos by policymakers including European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.”
Billionare investor and Bilderberg member George Soros recently predicted a U.S. recession in 2006 or 2007. Soros believes a the U.S. housing bubble will soon collapse the Fed cannot keep the dollar propped up. Soros told the press, “Europe is growing relatively well... but a hard landing in the U.S. will be associated with a decline in the dollar which would hurt the European economy,"

It appears the bottom may already be falling out from under the financial house of cards. The fiat currency ponzi scheme, bloated by hundreds of trillions in leveraged derivatives, hedge fund manipulations, and unregulated currency speculation, appears doomed.

In order to stave off the collapse, the Cheney-led shadow government and their Anglo-American financiers appear ready to launch a nuclear strike on Iran, destroying the oil bourse and shutting off oil shipments at the Straits of Hormuz. The larger invasion of the Middle East appears to be a plan to limit oil supply and spike prices, as Iraq is now a net importer of oil since the US/UK invasion.

Major financial analysts are now warning of $100 a barrel oil, which will further increase the artificial demand for dollars and perhaps stave off a dollar collapse. Daniel Eustulin and Jim Tucker reported back during the 2005 Bilderberg, the New World Order announced the coming $120 a barrel oil at the secret world government conference.

In June 2005, Eustulin wrote, “A British Bilderberger noted that oil at $120 a barrel will greatly benefit Britain and the US, but that Russia and China would be the biggest winners.” Eustulin also described the strong sentiment for moving away from the dollar and toward the euro for the world currency.

The insane plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons will likely backfire, producing massive financial upheaval and a potential Armageddon. The inflation caused by $120+ a barrel oil will likely shock markets and the dollar will collapse regardless. The neocon endgame, which envisions an apocalyptic “World War 4” conflict against Russia and China, might become inevitable.

The Anglo-American oligarchs and their shadow government moles inside the Pentagon are desperate to stop the Iranian bourse and seize control of the oil in the tiny region Khuzestan (containing 90% of Iran’s oil wealth). The possibility of a false-flag terror attack or joint Israel-U.S. strike during the months of May or June appears more grave than ever before.

Recent mainstream reports of TOPOFF 2 drills in Chicago and a wave of other drills in May and June may indicate the final planning for a synthetic terror attack is complete.
Additionally on July 18, the Defense Department is wargaming a military strike on Iran. The Asia Times reports, “This particular ‘war game’ is the fifth in a series that has also included exercises related to a purported avian-influenza pandemic and a crisis in Pakistan.’

Will the Iranian Oil Bourse be the final straw that inspires one of these drills to go live? Will the potential dollar collapse usher in the next stage in insane neocon push toward World War Three?

Monday, May 8, 2006

By Michael Ireland, Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

DALLAS, TEXAS (ANS) -- Daystar Television Network, which owns and operates 50 television stations across the United States, will be the first Christian network to broadcast into every home in Israel with 100 percent Christian content.

Marcus D. Lamb, president of Daystar Television Network, made the surprise announcement on Thursday, March 23 on a 'live' broadcast.

He stated they had just been granted a contract giving them rights to become the first TV Channel to broadcast 100 percent Christian programming into every home in Israel.

"This is a first. Never before has the nation of Israel granted a license for a 100 percent Christian Channel to broadcast into all of Israel. Up until now, it has either been: illegal, impossible, or impractical. The message of the Gospel will now be going into every home in Israel 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. This is a moment in time that we will always remember," said Lamb.

The opportunity came after a year of negotiations with Jewish leaders and a six month trial of Daystar’s flagship shows: Celebration and the Joni show.

"A lot of people have tried; I don’t know why the Lord let us do it. There are many out there that are more qualified than us, but I am grateful to the Lord..," Lamb commented.

According to details provided to the media, Daystar can now be seen in Israel on the HOT Cable System on channel 98 which has about 1,000,000 homes. That is strategic placement, next to the Knesset Channel on channel 99. Daystar is also on the YES Direct to Home Satellite system in Israel on channel 110, which has about 635,000 homes. Plus, Daystar is on the Hotbird 6 Satellite, which has about 185,000 homes in Israel. As a result, Daystar is now available to virtually every home in the nation of Israel.

A press release states that Daystar Television Network is the second largest and fastest growing Christian Television Network in the world. It can be seen in over 50 million U.S. homes and over 200 countries worldwide. Daystar's singular goal is to reach as many people as possible with the good news of the Gospel through an extensive blend of interdenominational and multi-cultural programming.

The release says Daystar provides award-winning family-friendly, and relevant faith-based programming. Included in Daystar's line up are contemporary music videos, children's animation, and topic driven talk show programs as well as the nations most requested national ministry programs. Daystar also specializes in 'live' remote broadcasts of major Christian events.

Daystar can also be seen on DirecTV, DISH Network, affiliated stations, various cable systems and the internet at www.daystar.com.

[Correction from the originator of this article]: This article in its original form was inaccurate. The study involved two types of air purifiers, those commonly called ionic and those that employ a process called ozonolysis. Only those using ozonolysis were found to contribute to ozone levels that can in some cases exceed air quality standards. “Ionic air purifiers do emit ozone,” said lead researcher Sergey Nizkorodov, a chemistry professor the University of California, Irvine. But he added that “none of the ionic air purifiers produce enough ozone when they are used properly to exceed smog alerts.” The confusion was generated in part by a UC Irvine press release that did not clearly distinguish between these two types of machines. LiveScience regrets the error and any confusion it may have caused. The article has been revised.

Here's how to create your own personal Stage 2 Smog Alert: Buy a personal air purifier that emits high levels of ozone.

These devices are marketed to reduce pollen and particulates in room air. One variety, though, can generate ozone levels in a room that exceed high-smog days in Los Angeles.

Lead researcher Sergey Nizkorodov, a chemistry professor at the University of California at Irvine, noted that all “ionic” air purifiers emit some ozone. However, only purifiers based on ozonolysis appeared to result in the high ozone levels noted in his study. Unfortunately, not all manufacturers and retailers clearly distinguish between these two varieties of air purifiers. (LiveScience regrets any confusion resulting from an earlier version of this article that itself did not make this difference clear.)

Air purifiers are popular in urban areas. They are touted as getting rid of dust, pollen and other airborne particles.

Ionic air purifiers, one type of these devices, are said to work by charging airborne particles and then attracting them to metal electrodes. They emit small amounts of ozone as a byproduct of this ionization process. The other machines, which employ ozonolysis, emit more ozone.

In a small and poorly ventilated room, the ozone adds to existing ozone and creates potentially unhealthy concentrations.

"People operating air purifiers indoors are more prone to being exposed to ozone levels in excess of public health standards," Nizkorodov said.

The research, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, was announced today and is detailed in the Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association.

Ozone high in the atmosphere protects Earth from damaging ultraviolet radiation. Down here, it is the main component in smog. Ozone can damage the lungs and cause shortness of breath and throat irritation, and it can also exacerbate asthma, scientists say.

Nizkorodov and colleagues tested various air purifiers in homes, offices and cars. In many cases, according to a statement, ozone levels inside climbed above 90 parts per billion, exceeding California's basic safety threshold. In some cases, ozone soared higher than 350 parts per billion, which if measured outside would trigger a Stage 2 Smog Alert, an event that hasn't occurred in the Southern California coastal air basin since 1988.

California lawmakers are considering legislation to reduce emissions from indoor air purifiers. Meanwhile, both the state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have issued advisories discouraging the use of the worst ozone emitters among these devices.

"These [ozonolysis] machines are insidious," said Barbara Riordan, acting chairperson of the California Air Resources Board (ARB), in a warning last year. "Marketed as a strong defense against indoor air pollution, they emit ozone, the same chemical that the ARB and … U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have been trying to eliminate from our air for decades. More chilling is that some people susceptible to the ill effects of ozone will eagerly bring these Trojan horses home."

Science does not even suggest that all air purifiers do what they're purported to do.

An EPA fact sheet has this to say about air purifiers: "Available scientific evidence shows that at concentrations that do not exceed public health standards, ozone has little potential to remove indoor air contaminants. Some manufacturers or vendors suggest that ozone will render almost every chemical contaminant harmless by producing a chemical reaction whose only by-products are carbon dioxide, oxygen and water. This is misleading."

Washington (AP) - Businesses and individuals continue to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes each year on some long-distance telephone calls even though three federal courts say the levy is invalid.Companies have convinced the appeals courts that the 3 percent excise tax on local, long-distance and wireless calls does not apply to some current long-distance billing plans.

The tax dates to 1898, when telephones were a luxury and lawmakers needed money to help pay for the Spanish-American War.

The government can expect to collect $52 billion over the coming decade from all telephone excise taxes, according to a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office.

The report said there is a "significant likelihood" the Internal Revenue Service will continue losing in court and eventually stop collecting the tax on some long-distance calls.

While cases work through the courts, the IRS says it still is instructing telephone companies to keep collecting the tax.

After losing in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the IRS issued a notice stating the it would continue to assess and collect the tax. After losing in the 6th Circuit, the IRS asked all judges on that court to hear the appeal. The IRS also lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

If the tax is terminated, the government could owe three years of refunds to businesses and individuals who request them, the budget office said. The law gives them a three-year window of opportunity to claim a refund.

For most people, a 3 percent tax on long-distance calls amounts to very little. The average household telecommunications bill, including taxes, totaled $114 a month in 2003, including $16 for long-distance, according to a Federal Communications Commission report.

For businesses with high telephone usage or a toll-free line, the tax bill can be high. Companies have found it worth the time and expense to seek tax refunds in court.

"You've got to have an enormous amount of usage to make it worthwhile," said Stephen Rosen, a lawyer with Levine, Blaszak, Block & Boothby. The Washington telecommunications law firm has represented several companies pursuing refunds.

Since its origin, the tax has been repealed and reinstated. Rates have fluctuated over time.

The parts now under debate were written in 1965. One company, AT&T, held a monopoly on long-distance telephone service and lawmakers targeted the tax to calls billed according to the distance and length of a call.

Times have changed and so have billing plans, which often now ignore distance. Large companies say that means the tax no longer applies.

The government says the law always intended to tax long-distance calls and remains in force. The IRS said it would not comment while cases continue to wind through the courts. Treasury Secretary John Snow said the government may have to re-evaluate its position after the next ruling from the 6th Circuit.

Telecommunication companies, which collect the tax from their customers and pass it along to the government, say they are stuck in the middle.

"It's time for the IRS to admit defeat and stop enforcing the illegal application of this tax," said Allison Remsen, spokeswoman for the United States Telecom Association, which represents 1,200 local, long-distance, wireless, Internet and cable television companies. "Also, it's time for Congress to step in to permanently and completely repeal this outdated levy."

Shortly after the IRS announced it would keep collecting the tax despite losing in the courts, the law firm Baker & McKenzie filed suit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on behalf of RadioShack and an unnamed class of businesses and individuals buying long-distance service that is billed without regard to distance.

"To go hire a lawyer is going to cost more than the refund. Just the first hour is going to cost more than your typical refund," said A. Duane Webber, a lawyer with Baker & McKenzie.

Webber said that even if taxpayers do not get refunds, the suit will have served its purpose if it succeeds in forcing the IRS to stop collecting the tax.

Chimicles & Tikellis, a class action law firm in Pennsylvania, filed a class-action suit in the Court of Federal Claims this month. The suit seeks to halt tax collections and secure refunds for taxpayers who have not applied for them, lawyer Nicholas Chimicles said.

Jack Miles, a lawyer with Kelley, Drye & Warren who said he has spent 11 years representing businesses pursuing refunds, said a class-action case should not lead consumers to expect an IRS refund check.

Tax laws lay out specific procedures for refund applications that require individuals and businesses to first pay the tax, then ask for a refund and await an IRS response.

"The IRS requires everyone to go through a lot of hoops before getting any refund," Miles said.

By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: The NSA record collection program

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.

The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency's domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program.

The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, declined to discuss the agency's operations. "Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide," he said. "However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."

The White House would not discuss the domestic call-tracking program. "There is no domestic surveillance without court approval," said Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, referring to actual eavesdropping.

She added that all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government "are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists." All government-sponsored intelligence activities "are carefully reviewed and monitored," Perino said. She also noted that "all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States."

The government is collecting "external" data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting "internals," a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for "social network analysis," the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.

AT&T recently merged with SBC and kept the AT&T name. Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T are the nation's three biggest telecommunications companies; they provide local and wireless phone service to more than 200 million customers.

The three carriers control vast networks with the latest communications technologies. They provide an array of services: local and long-distance calling, wireless and high-speed broadband, including video. Their direct access to millions of homes and businesses has them uniquely positioned to help the government keep tabs on the calling habits of Americans.

Among the big telecommunications companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the sources said. According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants.

Qwest's refusal to participate has left the NSA with a hole in its database. Based in Denver, Qwest provides local phone service to 14 million customers in 14 states in the West and Northwest. But AT&T and Verizon also provide some services — primarily long-distance and wireless — to people who live in Qwest's region. Therefore, they can provide the NSA with at least some access in that area.

Created by President Truman in 1952, during the Korean War, the NSA is charged with protecting the United States from foreign security threats. The agency was considered so secret that for years the government refused to even confirm its existence. Government insiders used to joke that NSA stood for "No Such Agency."

In 1975, a congressional investigation revealed that the NSA had been intercepting, without warrants, international communications for more than 20 years at the behest of the CIA and other agencies. The spy campaign, code-named "Shamrock," led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was designed to protect Americans from illegal eavesdropping.

Enacted in 1978, FISA lays out procedures that the U.S. government must follow to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches of people believed to be engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States. A special court, which has 11 members, is responsible for adjudicating requests under FISA.

Over the years, NSA code-cracking techniques have continued to improve along with technology. The agency today is considered expert in the practice of "data mining" — sifting through reams of information in search of patterns. Data mining is just one of many tools NSA analysts and mathematicians use to crack codes and track international communications.

Paul Butler, a former U.S. prosecutor who specialized in terrorism crimes, said FISA approval generally isn't necessary for government data-mining operations. "FISA does not prohibit the government from doing data mining," said Butler, now a partner with the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington, D.C.

The caveat, he said, is that "personal identifiers" — such as names, Social Security numbers and street addresses — can't be included as part of the search. "That requires an additional level of probable cause," he said.

The usefulness of the NSA's domestic phone-call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear. Also unclear is whether the database has been used for other purposes.

The NSA's domestic program raises legal questions. Historically, AT&T and the regional phone companies have required law enforcement agencies to present a court order before they would even consider turning over a customer's calling data. Part of that owed to the personality of the old Bell Telephone System, out of which those companies grew.

Ma Bell's bedrock principle — protection of the customer — guided the company for decades, said Gene Kimmelman, senior public policy director of Consumers Union. "No court order, no customer information — period. That's how it was for decades," he said.

The concern for the customer was also based on law: Under Section 222 of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, telephone companies are prohibited from giving out information regarding their customers' calling habits: whom a person calls, how often and what routes those calls take to reach their final destination. Inbound calls, as well as wireless calls, also are covered.

The financial penalties for violating Section 222, one of many privacy reinforcements that have been added to the law over the years, can be stiff. The Federal Communications Commission, the nation's top telecommunications regulatory agency, can levy fines of up to $130,000 per day per violation, with a cap of $1.325 million per violation. The FCC has no hard definition of "violation." In practice, that means a single "violation" could cover one customer or 1 million.

In the case of the NSA's international call-tracking program, Bush signed an executive order allowing the NSA to engage in eavesdropping without a warrant. The president and his representatives have since argued that an executive order was sufficient for the agency to proceed. Some civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, disagree.

The NSA's domestic program began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the sources. Right around that time, they said, NSA representatives approached the nation's biggest telecommunications companies. The agency made an urgent pitch: National security is at risk, and we need your help to protect the country from attacks.

The agency told the companies that it wanted them to turn over their "call-detail records," a complete listing of the calling histories of their millions of customers. In addition, the NSA wanted the carriers to provide updates, which would enable the agency to keep tabs on the nation's calling habits.

The sources said the NSA made clear that it was willing to pay for the cooperation. AT&T, which at the time was headed by C. Michael Armstrong, agreed to help the NSA. So did BellSouth, headed by F. Duane Ackerman; SBC, headed by Ed Whitacre; and Verizon, headed by Ivan Seidenberg.

AT&T, when asked about the program, replied with a comment prepared for USA TODAY: "We do not comment on matters of national security, except to say that we only assist law enforcement and government agencies charged with protecting national security in strict accordance with the law."

In another prepared comment, BellSouth said: "BellSouth does not provide any confidential customer information to the NSA or any governmental agency without proper legal authority."

Verizon, the USA's No. 2 telecommunications company behind AT&T, gave this statement: "We do not comment on national security matters, we act in full compliance with the law and we are committed to safeguarding our customers' privacy."

Qwest spokesman Robert Charlton said: "We can't talk about this. It's a classified situation."

In December, The New York Times revealed that Bush had authorized the NSA to wiretap, without warrants, international phone calls and e-mails that travel to or from the USA. The following month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T. The lawsuit accuses the company of helping the NSA spy on U.S. phone customers.

Last month, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales alluded to that possibility. Appearing at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Gonzales was asked whether he thought the White House has the legal authority to monitor domestic traffic without a warrant. Gonzales' reply: "I wouldn't rule it out." His comment marked the first time a Bush appointee publicly asserted that the White House might have that authority.

The domestic and international call-tracking programs have things in common, according to the sources. Both are being conducted without warrants and without the approval of the FISA court. The Bush administration has argued that FISA's procedures are too slow in some cases. Officials, including Gonzales, also make the case that the USA Patriot Act gives them broad authority to protect the safety of the nation's citizens.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., would not confirm the existence of the program. In a statement, he said, "I can say generally, however, that our subcommittee has been fully briefed on all aspects of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. ... I remain convinced that the program authorized by the president is lawful and absolutely necessary to protect this nation from future attacks."

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., declined to comment.

One major telecommunications company declined to participate in the program: Qwest.

According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest's CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA's assertion that Qwest didn't need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers' information and how that information might be used.

Financial implications were also a concern, the sources said. Carriers that illegally divulge calling information can be subjected to heavy fines. The NSA was asking Qwest to turn over millions of records. The fines, in the aggregate, could have been substantial.

The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information — known as "product" in intelligence circles — with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest's lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.

The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.

Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

In June 2002, Nacchio resigned amid allegations that he had misled investors about Qwest's financial health. But Qwest's legal questions about the NSA request remained.

Unable to reach agreement, Nacchio's successor, Richard Notebaert, finally pulled the plug on the NSA talks in late 2004, the sources said.

The corporate telephone industry and gubment are trying to "throttled" your internet surfing, ensuring large companies (who often work hand-in-hand with governments) would come up quickly on your computer, while smaller sites, such as individual blogs and other small content providers, would come up slowly or perhaps not at all.

By Michael Socolow
Originally published May 9, 2006
Congress wants to change the Internet.

This is news to most people because the major news media have not actively pursued the story. Yet both the House and Senate commerce committees are promoting new rules governing the manner by which most Americans receive the Web. Congressional passage of new rules is widely anticipated, as is President Bush's signature. Once this happens, the Internet will change before your eyes.

The proposed House legislation, the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE), offers no protections for "network neutrality."

Currently, your Internet provider does not voluntarily censor the Web as it enters your home. This levels the playing field between the tiniest blog and the most popular Web site.

Yet the big telecom companies want to alter this dynamic. AT&T and Verizon have publicly discussed their plans to divide the information superhighway into separate fast and slow lanes. Web sites and services willing to pay a toll will be channeled through the fast lane, while all others will be bottled up in the slower lanes. COPE, and similar telecom legislation offered in the Senate, does nothing to protect the consumer from this transformation of the Internet.

The telecoms are frustrated that commercial Web sites reap unlimited profits while those providing entry to your home for these companies are prevented from fully cashing in. If the new telecom regulations pass without safeguarding net neutrality, the big telecom companies will be able to prioritize the Web for you. They will be free to decide which Web sites get to your computer faster and which ones may take longer - or may not even show up at all.

By giving the telecoms the ability to harness your Web surfing, the government will empower them to shake down the most profitable Web companies. These companies will sell access to you, to Amazon.com, Travelocity.com and even BaltimoreSun.com, etc. What if these companies elect not to pay? Then, when you type in "amazon.com," you might be redirected to barnesandnoble.com, or your lightning-quick DSL Internet service might suddenly move at horse-and-buggy speed.

It might appear that the direct ramifications of this bill are somewhat obscure. Why should you care, if your Internet fee isn't altered? Or if your Web surfing will (possibly) be only minimally disrupted? (The telecoms understand that completely barring access to certain sites - especially the most popular ones - would be counterproductive.)

You should care because any corporate restriction on information gathering directly counters the original purpose of the World Wide Web.

"Universality is essential to the Web," says its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee. "It loses its power if there are certain types of things to which you can't link."

If calling up the Web site of your favorite political commentator takes far longer than surfing to a commercial site, the new laws will have a direct impact on the Web's democratic utility. The proposed laws also facilitate future steps toward corporate censorship. Do you think that the telecoms, under the proposed regulations, would make it easy to visit the Web sites of their disgruntled - or possibly striking - employees?

The proposed new rules have received surprisingly sparse media coverage. The new laws have economic, political and social ramifications. There are several explanations for the silence.

The most probable is simply that because the laws have strong bipartisan support in both houses of Congress, they do not appear particularly newsworthy. COPE has been promoted vigorously in the House by both Texas Republican Joe L. Barton and Illinois Democrat Bobby L. Rush. While a few legislators are attempting to preserve net neutrality - most notably Democratic Rep. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Republican Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine - they are clearly outnumbered.

The history of American telecommunications regulation does not offer a promising model for the future of net neutrality. In the late 1800s, Congress approved of Western Union, America's telegraph monopoly, censoring the Associated Press. The 1934 Communications Act resulted in political discussion over the national airwaves being tightly moderated by CBS and NBC.

Most telecom laws are sold to the public as the "natural evolution" of communications technology. Yet there is no truly natural evolution to our telecommunications laws. Only very rarely is regulation completely ordained by physics or technological limits. More commonly, it emerges from the political process. This is news to many Americans unaware of their own media history.

Many people believe the Internet's decentralized structure guarantees that no company or oligopoly could control it. Internet censorship - whether by corporate or state interests - simply sounds impossible. Yet not only is it theoretically possible, but the history of telecommunications regulation tells us it is probable. By the time the telecoms start changing what you see on your screen, it will be too late to complain.

Michael Socolow is an assistant professor of communication and journalism at the University of Maine. His e-mail is michael.socolow@umit.maine.edu.

An Englishman’s home is his castle, but that does not mean that once he steps outside his moat, his life and movements become a free-for-all.

Keep your head down, stay out of trouble, and your movements, utterance and actions are surely no one’s business but your own.

For the past few years a little mentioned revolution has taken place, which has changed entirely the concept of what it means to be a private person in a public space.

We all know about CCTV cameras, of course. There are 4 million of them in the UK, that is one for every 15 people.

A few years ago it caused a rumpus when Bournemouth council decided to hide cameras in the shrubs on the cliffs to keep an eye on the beach; today we take such surveillance for granted.

Today every move is being scrutinised by someone, somewhere for purposes that are not always entirely clear.

It is all in the interest of our security we are told that ghastly 21st century ‘catch- all phrase used to justify prying, blocking and making your life miserable.

The latest development in surveillance technology comes from the USA. Over there, CCTV is not nearly as common as over here.

The threat in the USA comes instead from private surveillance, the use of cheap modern microchip and tracking technology to monitor the position and movements of individuals at all times and in all places.

So dramatic is the potential use – and abuse – of this technology that last weekend at the American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science festival, geographer Jerome Dobson of the University of Kansas warned of the relentless rise of ‘geoslavery’ – the tyranny of being unable to escape surveillance wherever you are.

The people doing the surveillance are not – for most part the traditional Big Brother suspects i.e. State or shadowy security agencies; instead, we are seeing the emergence of a myriad ‘little brother’s’.

Employers, wives, husbands, parents, lovers, as well as greedy retailers, stalkers and other criminals are – or soon will be – able to take advantage of new techniques to monitor whoever they want 24 hrs a day.

Bosses love the new technology. Already in the US more than 50,000 employees are tracked on a routine basis, using mobile phone locaters. But the capability is available right now to extend to millions more and in Britain too.

The ability to do all this comes from sudden maturing of several technologies. Mobile phones, when they are switched on, emit a constant signal allowing them to lock in to the nearest base station.

This means the operating company is able to track the movement of the phone. It is how Hussain Osman, the London bombing suspect, was tracked as he moved across Europe this summer, until eventually arrested in Rome.

You can go to websites and, with a bit of hacking, turn any mobile phone into a tracking device – without the owner’s knowledge. Armed with this technology, any suspicious husband / wife can become their own private detectives.

Then there are little gizmos called RFIDs – or radio frequency identification tags. These are the smallest, simplest, cheapest – and therefore most dangerous of tacking devices.

Tiny unpowered radio transmitters, they can be smaller than a grain of rice, and work by sending a signal to a receiver when they pass within a few yards of a fixed scanner.

These chips were invented for the retail industry as a sort of ‘super barcode’ – incredibly useful for tracking the movement of objects, in warehouses and so on. But now they are being used to track people.

In Ohio, a company called City Watcher has implanted the chips into the arms of two employees – to allow them access to secure areas.

This operation – a simple injection under local anaesthetic – was done only after the workers volunteered for it.

But it is easy to see how this sort of surveillance could become compulsory in all but name: ‘If you want a job with us, you will have to be tagged.’

You could enlist the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. These send out signals that GPS receivers – like those in cars – can use to find out exactly where they are.

But these receivers can be made not much larger than a postage stamp. With a combination of these, radio chips and the right sort of mobile phone you would find it easy to keep tags on someone day and night, anywhere in the world.

Not surprisingly, these gadgets are now being used that have nothing to do with their inventors ‘intent’. In Minnesota, a company called Digital Angel has produced a range of tiny devices that can be tracked by GPS.

In a recent poll by broadcaster CNN, 24% of American parents said they would like a chip like this inserted under their children’s skin.

Britain’s proposed ID cards will be equipped – naturally with radio chips, so your movement can be tracked, should you pass near any detectors.

True this technology has undoubted benefits. It also has the potential to improve our efficiency and customer service, improve our security – the police can use this technology to identify potential terrorists and other criminals, their racial and social profile etc. etc.

But there is a very thin line between improved security and the abuse of this technology of our freedom.

And when you add it all up, you have to wonder who really benefits. Supermarkets loyalty cards, employees tracking benefit the employer, suspicious minds in domestic issues and relationships.

The problem with all this it is not rocket science, its simple, its cheap technology. That is why resisting it will be difficult – and difficult to justify. And as Jeremy Crampton another geosurveillance expert who spoke at the American conference says: “It is hard to be ‘against’ security.’

But not impossible. If you have any suspicions that you are being tracked, then turn your phone off when you are not using it. Throw away your ‘loyalty’ card.

And pray that we never get to the stage when any boss even contemplates putting a chip in the arm of a British employee.

(AgapePress) - A farmer in Bedford County, Virginia, has received a notice of zoning violation from his jurisdiction for allowing a "cowboy church" to hold services inside a barn on his property. In response, the religious-freedom advocate law firm Liberty Counsel has warned County officials of the farmer's basis for a federal lawsuit.

Garland Simmons allows The Cowboy Church of Virginia to hold a service every Thursday night in a barn on his 900-acre property. But a recent notice from Bedford County says the gathering is a code violation because Simmons' farm is not zoned for religious services and permits cannot even be issued to allow them. Simmons has 30 days to appeal -- but the only response thus far has been a letter from Liberty Counsel, written on behalf of the church's pastor, Raymond Bell.

Mat Staver, president and general counsel of that legal group, says the County policy targeting religious use, but allowing any other kind of barn activity, violates federal law.

"You can apparently use barns for all kinds of things. You can use a barn to have a dance to the tunes of Toby Keith or Reba," he suggests, "but a church service, reciting the Psalms of David or praise and worship with Casting Crowns, as an example, [is] prohibited."

Specifically, says Liberty Counsel, the County is violating the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, often referred to as RLUIPA. Staver says the measure was passed by Congress in 2000, just because of such indiscriminate prohibitions against religious gatherings.

"What we found leading up to that Act is that churches were having discriminatory zoning laws applied against them all over the country," the attorney explains. "Some municipalities were saying that churches could not even locate, you couldn't have worship in your home -- or if you already were located, you couldn't expand your ministry. So, as a result, the RLUIPA law ... was passed."

The letter, which alleges the County is also violating Simmons' First Amendment rights, demands officials withdraw the notice of violation and threatens a possibly federal lawsuit. The County, says Staver, is "treading on unconstitutional ground."

(AgapePress) - A federal district court judge has ruled that actions designed to prevent two Christians from preaching and proselytizing near a homosexual event in a Pennsylvania city park were unconstitutional restrictions of free speech. The declaratory judgment follows a jury's similar finding last December regarding one of the men's subsequent arrest during a 2003 "Pridefest" event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Prior to the arrest of Pastor Jim Grove, he and Repent America leader Michael Marcavage were prevented from making contact with or preaching to people entering Riverfront Park for the Pridefest celebration while they were inside a permitted festival area that was not being used at the time. Police also tried to enforce an imaginary 50-foot no-speech zone against the two men to keep them away from the homosexual event.

Alliance Defense Fund-affiliated attorney Leonard Brown represents Grove and the Christian organization to which he belongs, Worldwide Street Preachers Fellowship. The lawyer says U.S. District Judge William Caldwell of the 3rd Judicial Circuit ruled that both actions by the police were violations of the Christians' free-speech rights.

"Our clients were outside of the confined area," Brown points out, "in an area of the park that people were using like people normally use a park -- to walk their dogs, to ride their bikes, to jog -- and the police kicked them out because of the content of their message. So that's what the judge said was unconstitutional."

The outcome in this case, Worldwide Street Preachers Fellowship v. Reed, is important to Christians who want to witness at Pridefest and other future events in the park, the ADF-allied attorney asserts. Hopefully, he says, the judge's ruling has helped to "seal the deal" legally on a religious free-speech victory.

There are two parts to the ruling, Brown explains. "We had a jury trial in December, where a jury found the two officers had arrested Pastor Grove in violation of the First Amendment," he notes. "The second part was asking the court for an injunction and declaration, as a matter of law, that what the city was doing violated the Constitution."

The ADF-member litigator says he and his clients are pleased that the court correctly recognized the unconstitutionality of the Harrisburg officials' actions. "Mr. Marcavage and Mr. Grove's right to free speech in Riverfront Park and elsewhere can no longer be hindered by the city's restrictive ordinance," he says.

"Christian speech should not be treated differently than any other kind of speech," Brown insists. He says the ruling in this case clearly shows that other Harrisburg officials violated basic constitutional guarantees when they had a city police officer stop Groves and Marcavage from speaking in the vicinity of the Pridefest celebration.

ADF has won major decisions in two other similar free-speech cases in separate federal districts this year. Brown believes those court victories may have helped to set a precedent for the ruling in the case involving Pastor Groves. The attorney says he hopes this latest win will put an end to any policy of discrimination against public street preachers by the city of Harrisburg.

by BILL COSBY

"They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk:

Why you ain't,
Where you is,
What he drive,
Where he stay,
Where he work,
Who you be...

And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk.

Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.
In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living. People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around.

These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids. $500 sneakers for what? And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics. I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit.

Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol? And where is the father? Or who is his father?

People putting their clothes on backward: Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong?

People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something? Or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body?

What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail.

Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem.

We have got to take the neighborhood back. People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' -- or men or whatever you call them now. We have millionaire football players who cannot read.

We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We as black folks have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us.

We have to start holding each other to a higher standard. We cannot blame the white people any longer."

On 17 May 2004, at an NAACP event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that struck down school segregation, entertainer Bill Cosby voiced the assertions quoted above. In his exposition to that assembly, the man known to television viewing audiences as lovable, kindly, yet permanently bemused patriarch Dr. Huxtable spoke harshly about his perception of the ills affecting black American society. He cited elevated school dropout rates for inner-city black students and criticized low-income blacks for not using the opportunities the civil rights movement has won for them. Blacks, by their unplanned pregnancies, poor parenting, lack of education, non-standard English, counter-culture dress, and involvement in crime, fail the black community as well as themselves, he said.

Parts of that May 2004 speech were cobbled together into "We Can't Blame White People," a widely-circulated essay that has been both damned and praised.

Bill Cosby has not repudiated his controversial pronouncements or attempted to distance himself from them. Instead, he has chosen to expand upon his theme on subsequent occasions and to make himself a spokesperson for black self-empowerment through education and better parenting. In serving this cause, he draws upon his celebrity to make his voice heard but, unlike many entertainers who take to the soapbox to decry their bêtes noires, he brings far more to the podium than merely a recognizable face and a fan base. This man who is best known to the world as a comedian holds a doctorate in education. He is also highly regarded in the African-American community, where he and his wife, Camille, are prized for their philanthropy. (The Cosbys were present at the NAACP event that sparked the e-mail quoted above in order to be honored for their open-handed generosity in donating money to black
colleges.)

Cosby defended his comments almost as soon as he made them. The day after, he said in an interview: "It makes no sense to claim that these are things that belong quietly in the black community. We have to figure out how do you get parenting back into the home. This is a problem of epic proportion." Then, in a statement released shortly after the NAACP gala, he made clear his purpose: "I think that it is time for concerned African-Americans to march, galvanize and raise the awareness about this epidemic, to transform our helplessness, frustration and righteous indignation into a sense of shared responsibility and action." In another interview, he said: "I feel that I can no longer remain silent. If I have to make a choice between keeping quiet so that conservative media does not speak negatively or ringing the bell to galvanize those who want change in the lower economic community, then I choose to be a bell ringer."

In July 2004, he again took to the public soapbox to expound upon his thesis. In a speech given at Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition/PUSH Coalition conference in Chicago, he said: "You've got to stop beating up your women because you can't find a job, because you didn't want to get an education and now you're (earning) minimum wage. You should have thought more of yourself when you were in high school, when you had an opportunity."

In December 2004, he addressed a panel at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, telling them: "Stop waiting for a leader. Get Up! Tell your friends. And if they can't get up, we must see about them because they are true victims ... It's time to study four hours a day with your children. Teach them how much they'll be worth when they have A's instead of F's."

While the criticisms voiced by Bill Cosby are greeted by some as a long-needed airing of problems everyone recognizes but no one talks about, others regard them as unfairly saddling lower-income blacks with sole responsibility for their plight. "He unerringly and wrongly blames the poor. He seems to think that if they would only change their minds, all their problems would go away," said Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland.

Critics also fear that citing failures of lower-income blacks to make the most of educational opportunities and to eschew choices that limit potential for success (poor use of language, early parenting, often unpartnered) gives white people the much-welcomed easy out of declaring themselves devoid of any responsibility for the cause or continuation of black poverty in America: "See? It's not us that puts them in the ghettos or keeps them there, it's them." Such disavowal, while comforting to those who instinctively seize it when it appears to have been offered, ignores the possibility of racial economic disparity's being the result of a combination of contributing factors rather than an either/or "If you did it, then I didn't" proposition.

Last, Cosby's black-negative assessments could, as some have pointed out, serve as confirmations long sought by racists of their view that African-Americans are inherently incapable of helping themselves, which they would hold up as proof of their theory of black genetic inferiority.

While the relative merit of Bill Cosby's pronouncements is in dispute, what is not is the sincerity of the man who made them.

Don Rumsfeld briefed the president.
He told Bush that 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq.
All the color ran from Bush's face.
He collapsed into his desk, head in hands and asked, "Just how many is a brazilian?"

In 1974 Congress adopted many of the recommendations of the Advisory Commitee and made clear that the use of the Social Security number would be restricted. Hence 5 USC 552(a)(7)(1)

"It shall be unlawful for any Federal, State or local government agency to deny to any individual any RIGHT, BENEFIT or PRIVILEGE provided by law because of such individual's refusal to‚disclose his social security account number.".

Admittedly, this code seems to be referencing what gubment agencies may not do, but if a corporation or company or other entity is regulated (or licensed or funded or blah) by the gubment, then they too are bound by this code. I think any "limitation" on anyone to refuse to do business with people who decline to supply their SSN's should rightly fall within the scope of laws already on the books. -- Tribble]

WASHINGTON--Democratic and Republican politicians on Thursday both promised to enact new federal laws by the end of the year that would restrict some commercial uses of Social Security numbers, which are often implicated in identity fraud cases.

"Whether Social Security numbers should be sold by Internet data brokers to anyone willing to pay, indistinguishable from sports scores or stock quotes... to me, that's a no-brainer," Texas Republican Joe Barton, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, said at a hearing. Such a practice should not be allowed, he said, "period, end of debate."

In both the House and the Senate, there are at least three pieces of pending legislation that propose different approaches to restricting the use and sale of SSNs. Politicians have expressed astonishment at what they see as a rising identity fraud problem, frequently pointing to a 2003 Federal Trade Commission survey that estimated nearly 10 million consumers are hit by such intrusions each year.

One bill, sponsored by Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey, would require the FTC to make new rules limiting the sale and purchase of those identifiers, with exceptions for law enforcement, public health, certain emergency situations and selected research projects.

Another measure, sponsored by Florida Republican Clay Shaw, would restrict the display of SSNs on credit reports and on various government-issued documents and identification tags. It would also make it illegal in certain cases for anyone to refuse to do business with people who decline to supply their SSNs.

Testifying at Thursday's hearing, FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz stopped short of endorsing either bill, but he readily acknowledged that the identifiers "are overused, and they are underprotected."

"Users of Social Security numbers should migrate toward using less-sensitive identifiers whenever possible," he said, adding that companies also need to do more to protect the data they possess.

The SSN hasn't always had such broad applications. Back in 1935, Congress first directed the Social Security Administration to develop an accounting system to track payments to the fund. Out of that mandate came a unique identifier that has ultimately found applications in everything from issuing food stamps to tracking down money launderers.

One use of particular concern to the privacy community is the vast databases compiled by commercial "data brokers" about the American population that financial institutions can use to verify identities. One such company, ChoicePoint, grabbed headlines last year after a breach of its database came to light. That incident and other high-profile breaches unleashed a number of proposals in Congress, some of which target what some deem unregulated data brokers.

The controversy over the connection between SSNs and identity fraud is hardly new, and a number of states have already enacted restrictions in that area. Several federal laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA, also include restrictions on use and disclosure of the identifiers.

As they pursue new laws, politicians said they're facing a difficult "balancing act" between rooting out abuses of Social Security numbers and protecting uses that tax collectors, the financial sector and law enforcement officials, among others, claim are invaluable.

Numerous industries have found a number of "beneficial uses" for SSNs, said Oliver Ireland, who testified on behalf of the Financial Services Coordinating Council. That group represents trade associations for the banking, securities, and insurance industries.

The numbers, for instance, "are critical for fraud detection," Ireland said in prepared testimony.

Also on Thursday, a California Senate committee approved an identity fraud bill that would improve state residents' ability to freeze their own credit reports when mischief is suspected.

Accountant, arguing salaries aren't taxable, found not guilty of evading federal income tax; IRS says his clients must pay nevertheless

A Bay Shore accountant has been acquitted of income-tax evasion charges after he filed returns for 36 clients claiming that salaries cannot be legally taxed. But don't get ready to go rushing out to your tax preparer next April. While the tactic initially saved the clients $500,000 in taxes, the Internal Revenue Service has since required them to pay tax on their salaries, according to court records.

The acquittal Tuesday by a jury in U.S. District Court in Central Islip was the second time in three months that the government has failed to convict Paul Petrino of charges of aiding and abetting false tax filings from 1999 to 2001. His defense was based on arguments from the tax-protester movement, which questions the validity of the federal income tax laws. Petrino prepared the returns in his home office and most of his clients were from Long Island.

The case was a retrial of the same charges in February that resulted in a hung jury, split 6-6, according to Petrino's attorney, Robert Fink.

The jurors who acquitted Petrino, who faced 6 1/2 years in prison, were angry that they had to do so, Fink acknowledged after speaking with them yesterday. But he said they accepted his argument that there was "reasonable doubt" that his client was intentionally committing a crime.

He called the verdict a victory for the average man "over the overwhelming power of the federal government, the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service."

While acknowledging that they could not immediately think of a situation in which a criminal case based on tax-protester logic has resulted in an acquittal, officials of the Justice Department and the IRS cautioned yesterday that Petrino's case was unusual and that it would probably have no impact on the average citizen's tax filings.

"The verdict in this case does not change the tax laws," said Gerard Sullivan, a spokesman for the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS. "The jury simply did not find beyond a reasonable doubt that Paul Petrino was guilty of the charges brought against him. It is important to understand that [as a taxpayer] you are ultimately responsible for all of the information on the tax return. And if the return is bad, it is the taxpayer ... that will be responsible for paying the additional taxes, penalties and interest."

The tax-protest movement has made a number of arguments to contend that the federal income tax law is illegal or that citizens are not required to pay income taxes. But courts have ruled the arguments frivolous, according to federal officials and tax law experts.

In Petrino's case, he told his clients of one theory common in the tax-protest movement: that wages and salaries are not taxable because they are simply a return for an individual's labor - "his blood, sweat and tears," according to Fink.

Petrino reported his clients' salaries on the line on the income tax form that called for it - Line 7, according to court records, but then declared the exact amount as a loss on the line for other income - Line 21, according to court records.

Petrino's technique unraveled when a colleague of one of his clients heard the person bragging at work about how he had paid no taxes on salary and the colleague reported the co-worker to the IRS, according to court records.

Linda Geller, a tax expert at Hofstra Law School, and Noel Cunningham, the head of the graduate tax program at New York University Law School, said an acquittal was rare, if not unheard of, in a case using tax-protester ideas.

Starting this summer, there will be a lot more organic food on supermarket shelves, and it should cost a lot less.

Most of the nation's major food producers are hard at work developing organic versions of their best-selling products, like Kellogg's Rice Krispies and Kraft's macaroni and cheese.

Why the sudden activity? In large part because Wal-Mart wants to sell more organic food — and because of its size and power, Wal-Mart usually gets what it wants.

As the nation's largest grocery retailer, Wal-Mart has decided that offering more organic food will help modernize its image and broaden its appeal to urban and other upscale consumers. It has asked its large suppliers to help.

Wal-Mart's interest is expected to change organic food production in substantial ways.

Some organic food advocates applaud the development, saying Wal-Mart's efforts will help expand the amount of land that is farmed organically and the quantities of organic food available to the public.

But others say the initiative will ultimately hurt organic farmers, will lower standards for the production of organic food and will undercut the environmental benefits of organic farming. And some nutritionists question the health benefits of the new organic products. "It's better for the planet, but not from a nutritional standpoint," said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. "It's a ploy to be able to charge more for junk food."

Shoppers who have been buying organic food in steadily greater quantities consider it healthier and better for the environment. Organic food — whether produce, meat or grain — must be grown without pesticides, chemical fertilizers and antibiotics. Then, before it is sold, the food cannot be treated with artificial preservatives, flavors or colors, among other things.

When Wal-Mart sells organic food on a much broader scale, it will have to meet the same Agriculture Department requirements. But nutritionists say the health benefits of many of these new offerings are negligible.

Wal-Mart says it wants to democratize organic food, making products affordable for those who are reluctant to pay premiums of 20 percent to 30 percent. At a recent conference, its chief marketing officer, John Fleming, said the company intended to sell organic products for just 10 percent more than their conventional equivalents.

Food industry analysts say that with its 2,000 supercenters and lower prices, Wal-Mart could soon be the nation's largest seller of organic products, surpassing Whole Foods. Already, it is the biggest seller of organic milk.

While organic food is still just 2.4 percent of the overall food industry, it has been growing at least 15 percent a year for the last 10 years. Currently valued at $14 billion, the organic food business is expected to increase to $23 billion over the next three years, though that figure could rise further with Wal-Mart's push.

Harvey Hartman, president of the Hartman Group, a consulting firm in Seattle that is working with Wal-Mart on its organic food initiatives, asserted: "What Wal-Mart has done is legitimized the market. All these companies who thought organics was a niche product now realize that it has an opportunity to become a big business."

Kellogg and Kraft say they began working on organic Rice Krispies and organic macaroni and cheese before having conversations with Wal-Mart. But David Mackay, chief operating officer at Kellogg, says it was helpful knowing that a big customer like Wal-Mart was enthusiastic about the product.

In July, Kellogg is planning to introduce organic Raisin Bran and organic Frosted Mini Wheats, with packages featuring the word 'organic' at the top in giant letters.

Other food companies say they are working on products at Wal-Mart's direction. General Mills and Pepsi say they plan to introduce new organic versions of some of their well-known brands late in 2006. These products are expected to appear in Wal-Mart first and then at other major retailers.

Officials at General Mills, the producer of Cheerios, Yoplait yogurt and Green Giant vegetables, among other things, and at PepsiCo, which owns the Tropicana and Quaker brands, declined to identify those products.

DeDe Priest, senior vice president for dry groceries at Wal-Mart, said the company had been urging food suppliers for the last year to embrace organic foods. At a recent conference in Rogers, Ark., near the company's headquarters in Bentonville, she said, "Once we let the companies know we were serious about this and that they needed to take it seriously, they moved pretty fast."

Bruce Peterson, head of perishable food at Wal-Mart, said that it aimed to change the way people think about the retailer.

"Consumers that gravitate to organic products don't always think of Wal-Mart as a top-of-mind destination to pick up those products," Mr. Peterson said. "We want to let customers know, 'Hey, we're in that business.' "

The strategy of working with food makers to tie in organic products with well-known brands represents a departure from the approach many of Wal-Mart's competitors are taking. Safeway, Kroger and SuperValu, which is set to acquire Albertsons, have private label organic lines with names like Nature's Best and O that they sell at prices below those of brand organic products.

Mr. Peterson said he thought that Wal-Mart's method would be more effective in appealing to customers because it relies on powerful brand names that have million of dollars in advertising backing them up.

But Wal-Mart's new push worries Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, an advocacy group that lobbies for strict standards and the preservation of small organic farms. He said Wal-Mart did not care about the principles behind organic agriculture and would ultimately drive down prices and squeeze organic farmers.

"This model of one size fits all and lowest prices possible doesn't work in organic," Mr. Cummins said. "Their business model is going to wreck organic the way it's wrecking retail stores, driving out all competitors."

Part of the problem, Mr. Cummins said, is that Wal-Mart is making a push into organics at a time there is already heavy demand and not enough supply.

"They're going to end up outsourcing from overseas and places like China," he said, " where you've got very dubious organic standards and labor conditions that are contrary to what any organic consumer would consider equitable."

Currently, some 10 percent of the organic food consumed in the United States is imported, according to the Agriculture Department. Kelly Strzelecki, an agricultural economist there, said she expected that share to increase.

Mr. Peterson, the Wal-Mart executive, says Wal-Mart is not now getting any of its organic products from overseas, but cannot predict if that will change. And he says Wal-Mart does not pay organic farmers less than others do, in part because the demand is so high. He said the lower prices offered to consumers were made possible by Wal-Mart's enormous volume and by having efficient distribution and inventory systems.

Some organic food advocates also fear that large-scale organic farming will not use the crop-rotation practices of the small farms, hurting the fields and reducing the health benefits of organic food.

Mr. Peterson's view of organic agriculture is markedly different from many of those involved in the field.

"Organic agriculture is just another method of agriculture — not better, not worse," he said. "This is like any other merchandising scheme we have, which is providing customers what they want. For those customers looking for an organic alternative in things like Rice Krispies, we now have an alternative for them."

Organic agriculture arose in the 1970's as a reaction to large-scale farms that confined animals and the increased use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers on crops. Many advocates of organic produce consider conventional agriculture to be harmful to the environment and to human health.

But Wal-Mart and some large food manufacturers are careful not to position their organic versions as superior to the original. "We have no intent to send a message that the standard Rice Krispies are somehow not great brands," Mr. Mackay of Kellogg said.

Organic Rice Krispies are made with cane juice instead of high-fructose corn syrup and without the artificial preservative BHT.

Mr. Hartman, the Seattle consultant, said organic now means different things to different people. "It's a multifaceted symbol representing everything from quality to health to ideology, and everything in between," he said. "It's something that lets people feel even better about their choices."

With processed products like organic Rice Krispies and organic macaroni and cheese soon to appear on store shelves, the organic movement seems to be fitting itself more into the wide variety of food available to Americans.

"People want you to offer them organic and natural," said David Driscoll, a food analyst at Citigroup. "But sometimes, they just want to eat a Pop-Tart."

(AgapePress) - A federal court has refused to dismiss a lawsuit against the City of San Diego by a church that claims it has been singled out for unequal and unfair treatment.

Canyon Ridge Baptist Church rents a city-owned facility and is charged a higher fee than similar, non-religious groups. Last December, attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund sued the city, claiming the rental practices are unconstitutional.

Although attorneys for the City of San Diego asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit, ADF-affiliated lawyer Tim Chandler says the court rejected that request, so the legal action will go forward. "This is an important issue for churches, especially in California where land and buildings are so expensive," he explains.

"For churches that are just starting out, a lot of times their only option is to try to meet in a public building," Chandler continues. "And [it can get expensive] when these cities try to hike up their costs -- to give you the example here, this church is paying about $4,000 a month to use this building for eight hours a week."

In other cases, the attorney notes, religious organizations are charged up to 21 times more than what other community groups are charged for renting city-owned facilities. "We see a lot of discrimination against churches in a lot of land use contexts," he says.

One reason for this frequent discrimination against churches, Chandler points out, is because the religious establishments do not pay property taxes. Therefore, he says, municipal governments often do not want churches in certain buildings that could perhaps be generating more tax revenue for the city if they were rented to some secular entity.

"This is a widespread problem in a lot of areas," the pro-family lawyer observes. "And so ADF is committed to making sure that churches are treated equally when they're trying to rent or purchase land."

ADF filed suit against the City of San Francisco in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in December last year. The legal alliance, which specializes in religious liberty and discrimination cases, has won significant victories in a number of cases involving attempts by government officials to charge churches or other religious organizations higher fees than other groups were asked to pay.

"Enforcing different fee schedules based on a group's [religious status or] speech is clearly constitutional," Chandler notes. He says Canyon Ridge Baptist Church's case is founded on well-established legal precedent, and ADF looks forward to making sure the city does not continue to mistreat the church.

(AgapePress) - This Friday, May 19, The Da Vinci Code is scheduled to debut in theatres across the nation. The book has sold more than any fictional work in U.S. history and the movie is expected to place among the top 20 feature films of all time.

Although much of The Da Vinci Code is based on factual errors, none of its assertions is more egregious than the claim that Emperor Constantine of Rome financed a staff to manipulate existing biblical texts to make Christ divine. The Da Vinci Code advocates that before the Council of Nicea in 325, "Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet ... a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless."

One should understand, however, what prompted the persecution of thousands of Christians in the Roman Empire, long before the Council of Nicea. Major, empire-wide persecution was in full force by the mid-second century, and often the followers of Christ were led to the arenas to face horrific deaths for their faith in one great concept -- that Jesus alone was Lord.

Two such persons were Vibia Perpetua, a young wife and mother of noble descent, and Felicitas, a slave girl who was eight months pregnant. Both lived in Carthage at the end of the second century; both were part of the rapid growth of Christianity in North Africa.

Although historically accurate, Linda Holland in her book, Alabaster Doves, explains with some artistic license the dangers Christians like Perpetua and Felicitas readily faced:

"The clip clop of horses' hooves on the stone street signaled the crowd of approaching Roman legionaries. People dashed from the center of the street, leaving a path for the equestrian procession, as three soldiers bearing the insignia of the proconsul prance their steeds into the center of the market place and reared to a stop. The lead soldier unrolled a scroll, and holding it before him, shouted a decree:

'Ye men of Carthage, be it known to you that the divine Imperator has commanded that all men everywhere be loyal citizens. There has arisen in the Empire a superstition endangering the peace, prosperity, and happiness of our subjects. Be it known to you that throughout our land ignorant fellows have made a god of a malefactor condemned by Roman law. They are despisers of our laws. They will not sacrifice to the throne and crown. For years, in patience, we have waited that these childish people might return to the obedience due the state, but they refuse, and so we now decree that they be brought to judgment.

'You are commanded that wherever you may find them to take and hold them, and to bring them to the consul. Let it be done. Farewell.'"

Perpetua, Felicitas, and many other Christians were rounded up under such orders, imprisoned, scourged and eventually condemned to die. While in prison, Felicitas reportedly gave birth just before she and Perpetua were sent to the arena. The great church father, Tertullian, recorded the story of their incredible martyrdom, along with other Christian brethren:

"The day of their victory dawned and they marched from their prison with calm faces, trembling, if at all, with joy rather than fear. Perpetua went along with shining countenance and calm step, as the beloved of God, as a wife of Christ, putting down everyone's stare by her own intense gaze. With them also was Felicitas, glad that she had safely given birth so that now she could fight the beasts, going from one blood bath to another, from the midwife to the gladiator, ready to wash after childbirth in a second baptism. For the young women, however, the devil had prepared a mad heifer. This was an unusual animal, but it was chosen that their sex might be matched with that of the beast. So they were stripped naked, placed in nets and thus brought out into the arena. Even the crowd was horrified when they saw that one was a delicate young girl and the other was a woman fresh from child-birth with the milk still dripping from her breasts. And so they were brought back again and dressed in unbelted tunics.

First the heifer tossed Perpetua and she fell on her back. Then sitting up, she pulled down the tunic that was ripped along the side so that it covered her thighs, thinking more of her modesty than of her pain. Next she asked for a pin to fasten her untidy hair for it was not right that a martyr should die with her hair in disorder, lest she might seem to be mourning in her hour of triumph.

Then she got up. And seeing that Felicitas had been crushed to the ground, she went over to her, gave her hand, and lifted her up .... Then she called for her brother and spoke to him together with the catechumens [persons who had professed Christ, but had yet to be baptized] and said: 'You must all stand fast in the faith and love one another, and do not be weakened by what we have gone through'. All of them were thrown in their usual spot to have their throat cut. But the mob asked that their bodies be brought out into the open that their eyes might be the guilty witnesses of the sword that pierced their flesh. And so the martyrs got up and went to the spot of their own accord as the people wanted them to, and kissing one another they sealed their martyrdom with the ritual kiss of peace. The others took the sword in silence and without moving .... Perpetua, however, had yet to taste more pain. She screamed as she was struck on the bone; then she took the trembling hand of the young gladiator, and guided it to her throat. It was though so great a woman, feared as she was by the unclean spirit, could not be dispatched unless she herself were willing."

Think of it. In a religiously pluralistic and liberal-minded society like Rome, Perpetua could have returned to her wealthy family and comfortable surroundings. Felicitas could have been released to raise her newborn baby. If only they were willing to take a pinch of incense and place it on a fire before a graven image of Caesar, they would have been set free. Instead they chose to die of unspeakable tortures rather than deny Christ by reducing Him to just another god in a Roman pantheon. To them He was more than a god -- more than just "a mortal prophet ... a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless." To them He was none other than the one and only true God, the King of kings and Lord of lords. For that belief and confession, which was considered seditious by Roman authorities, they were willing, if necessary, to suffer the loss of everything.

Moreover, the sacrifice of Perpetua and Felicitas is a smack in the face of that damnable notion perpetuated by The Da Vinci Code which argues the church has smeared and degraded the role of women in the church for centuries. For heaven's sake, the Catholic Church venerates Perpetua and Felicitas as Saints, along with many other women. Even the largest and most conservative Protestant denomination, Southern Baptists, have named two of their annual missions offerings after two highly esteemed female missionaries, Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong.

What has driven thousands upon thousands of men and women to give their lives in sacrifice for Christ since Christianity's beginning, century after century, has always been one all-consuming conviction: Jesus is the Lord of life and death. (Romans 10:9) He is God in human flesh and whatever one loses or gives in obedience to Him, whether life, liberty or lands, shall ultimately be returned by Him with incredible interest (Matthew 19:29). No other confidence could ever possibly motivate innumerable masses throughout the ages to so terribly, willingly, patiently, confidently and even happily suffer without retaliation at the hands of their oppressors.

Indeed, the voice of the martyrs, sealed with the testimony of their own blood, cry out well before the Council of Nicea -- "Jesus is the Lord God Almighty."

The United States government, like all governments, is a puppet. Its players, our “elected,” are marionettes dancing to international bankers and lobbyist bribes, which pull strings for international banks in exchange for power and cash. This song and dance began in 1913 with the advent of the Federal Reserve System, also known as fake money, enforced debt, and pretend ownership.

In order that the American people fall for this political burlesque, we had to believe that our nation was a sovereign nation, and that our dollar bills, our Federal Reserve notes, were real money – that a $5.00 bill was actually worth $5.00. We also had to believe that it was our option to enter into debt in order to “own” things like houses and property. Our politicians and economists knew better, but they didn’t want to tell us that our “economic” system was built to entrap labor, to feed corporate aristocrats and profit, and to control indebted populations and nations, their natural resources AND, ultimately, who lives and who dies.

It’s a complicated system, as one might expect, as complex bureaucracies were invented to keep the masses out of the loop, but it is a system that needs to be understood by every American who IS responsible for this despicable and treacherous system and the people who brought it into our nation. With that said, I am going to recommend a book and a commentary, which will help you to get up to speed on why your life styles are degrading, why you’re not making any money, and why your taxes and interest rates keep climbing and climbing while your life styles are keep getting chiseled down to smaller and smaller sizes. To understand the web of professional and aristocratic deceit, please read the following, and you will be a far wiser people:

As with most American people, I am in the process of learning about my nation’s economic system for the first time. I, too, am a new student. I can tell you very honestly that I resisted the task, and to this day find the material difficult to digest. However, I have learned a great deal – most of which being that if I had known what I know today, ALL financial decisions in my life would have been made very differently – all of them.

Our money that we take to the grocery store, that we mail to mortgage bankers, credit card companies, and that we pay to doctors, veterinarians, mills, and gas stations is “play” money – like Monopoly money. It’s not real. It is fake money. Therefore, whenever you buy things, you are actually not paying for them, which translates into the fact that you actually don’t own what you buy.

Now, this fact operates on many, many levels. For instance, you may feel that you “own” your house, free and clear, because you paid your mortgage in full, but your house can, nonetheless, be taken from you for failure to pay your property taxes or through Eminent Domain. And another reason why you never own your house free and clear is because the money you paid to your mortgage lender was 1) not real money, and 2) that un-real money was borrowed to begin with, and 3) was borrowed money before YOU borrowed it to buy your house.

The originating point of the borrowed money system comes from the international banking system in Europe. So, let me explain your debt – you borrowed borrowed money from Europe, and this is the operating principle and procedure of the Federal Reserve System. International banking cartels own America’s debt. The Federal Reserve System is the middleman, who collects our interest payments, to repay International loans. However, the “money” that we borrow to buy our houses and properties is not real money. That means that $5.00 is worth nothing – not even a penny – which is why, in fact, you don’t own anything – including your paid off houses.

Now, when the international banking cabals get their interest payments from their international loans, they buy (and hoard) gold, silver, platinum, etc., and they buy land, natural resources, politicians, and corporations. They then set up philanthropic organizations and give grant money to those governments and organizations willing to forward their political and economic agendas, and they take these agendas into and through national governments. These international banking cabals are also members of the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderburg group, and other cabal organizations, and I strongly suspect that at the apex of that group are a very few people and “families.”

I’m no genius, and I’m a far better cook than social commentator, but it has become very clear to me that our belief in the right to own property, and its link to “freedom,” is 1) absolutely true and 2) the biggest deception that the American people have been operating under for AT LEAST the last 100 years.

Do you recall our president stating, several years ago, that the goal was to have all American families own houses? And do you recall the drop in interest rates for about 5 years or so, as we all went out and bought houses and property like bees to honey? And we all bought more than we could actually afford due to those low interest rates - living large, so to speak?

What do you suppose is going to happen when 1) the real estate bubble bursts, and the value of our mortgaged properties drop like dead birds in flight, and 2) our pretend money, which purchased pretend “homes to own,” becomes unusable – say in an “emergency,” or a Martial Law scenario, where all banks and money can be “legally confiscated,” as so decreed by Executive Order? What if the banks won’t give us our money or our gold? What if “the dollar” is no longer accepted as a primary currency since the world knows FAR BETTER THAN AMERICAN CITIZENS that “the dollar” has no monetary value whatsoever, as it is ALL BORROWED MONEY from FOREIGN CREDITORS?

I suppose it then becomes a “global dilemma,” and will require “global intervention.” Let’s ask our “globally appointed,” shall we? Let’s ask our World Bankers, our World Trade Organization, our United Nations, and our International Monetary Fund(ers). Let’s ask Congress and our president. Or let’s ask Bill or Hillary or Al Gore.

In August 1980, Howard Odum stated in Fusion Magazine: "The United States has a new and exciting leadership role in the world. We will lead the world down. We will help the world down to a lower plateau in energy use." Global planners and their think tank social circles believe "it is necessary that the United States cut its population by two-thirds within the next fifty years." 2/3rds? Hmmm. Just how does one do that minus MONUMENTAL crisis? Does the media darling “pandemic” ring a bell?

And then there is the "Global 2000 Report to the President" and "Global Future: A Time to Act," -- political statements of intent on the part of groups such as the CFR, the Trilateral Commission, Federal Reserve, and the IMF to pursue policies that were to result in the deaths of upwards of 2 billion by 2000. The Global 2000 formula signed by Jimmy Carter and followed by his successors, remains, in fact, the guiding the economic, legislative, and foreign policies of the US. And the goal of Global 2000? Depopulation and enslavement by aristocrats and their self-made one-world government - where they, alone, govern all humanity.

Is it not humbling, America, when you have elected, time and time again and in droves, the partners and destroyers of freedom, human dignity, human potential, and the futures of your children and grandchildren? And please, don’t be offended. I include myself in the humbled pile. They only question left for all of us is this – are we going to allow our “elected” representatives to continue to draw their paychecks while being relentlessly loyal to the another governmental structure, and all the while dismantling ours? If you are a 2-Party man or woman, you’d better take a good, hard look at the condition of this nation and ask yourselves who is to blame. We’re all in for a very bumpy and history-making ride.

For all those who want to know what to do, read and study Devvy Kidd, Dr. Edwin Vieira, Dr. Dennis Cuddy, Dena Spingola, and Frosty Wooldridge to begin. More importantly, attend the April 17th rally in Washington D.C., of which details are listed below. This rally is something that each and every one of you can commit to and do for your nation and for your children. This is your last chance, as American citizens, to actively help to restore your country and your freedom. Elected freaks have been waggin’ the sleeping dogs – meaning us. It’s time wake up, rise up, and act.

Tuesday May 10th 2005 is the day that future historians will note as The Day America Changed. On this date, the Senate of the United States of America passed legislation that will bring about a national ID card. President G. W. Bush is expected to sign the bill on May 12th 2005. The national ID card scheme will take three years to implement.

The question is whether May 10th 2005 will be known as the day the American people simply rolled over and accepted this, or as the beginning of a struggle to restore our birthright?

Will the individual States resist federal encroachment on their rights under the US Constitution? Will those responsible for this unconstitutional atrocity be booted out of office in the 2006 mid-term elections? Will those who believe that a national ID number is truly the Mark of the Beast make their voices heard? Will those who fear a surveillance state work to expel totalitarians from power?

The New Hampshire House recently passed an amended bill to prohibit that state from participating in any national ID card system. Although the state Senate, by a narrow vote, turned aside the amendment, this move may indicate that some of us are waking up. Some innocent citizens, however, have already been snared in the ID trap. For example, Deb Davis thought her time commuting to work would be better spent reading and working than driving. So she decided to start riding a public bus. But on the first day, while the bus was stopped at the Denver Federal Center, which houses various government offices—none of which are high security areas—a security guard boarded the bus and demanded the identification of every passenger. Feeling uneasy about the situation and not sure what to do, Davis, like all the other passengers, followed the guard’s orders. The guard barely glanced at her ID and handed it back to her without comparing it to any “no ride list” or “terror watch list.” Davis went on to work and rode the bus home without any trouble.

However, when she got home, she began to think more about what had happened that morning. She began to reflect on what she remembered about her rights as a citizen and restrictions on law enforcement agents. Davis remembered from her eighth-grade Civics class that she was not required to carry an ID. So why, she wondered, could she be forced to provide the guard with an ID? Not able to think of a good answer to that question, Davis decided that she would not provide the guard with her ID the next time he asked.

On September 26, 2005, Davis’ bus pulled up at the Denver Federal Center. A guard boarded and demanded to see everyone’s identification. When the guard reached Davis and asked if she had ID with her, she said “yes.” He then asked to see it, to which she replied “no.” When the guard asked why, Davis responded that she didn’t have to. The guard then ordered her off the bus, but she refused. The guard returned with a federal agent, who demanded to see her ID. Again, Davis refused. Another law enforcement agent arrived, and they explained to Davis that she had to show her identification to the police any time they asked for it—regardless of where she might be.

Davis again explained to the guard and two agents that she was simply trying to commute to work. The agents then arrested and handcuffed her. However, the government, under criticism, later decided to drop the charges.

While this story is disturbing, it is not without historical precedent. In fact, the idea of requiring citizens to carry a national identification card is not new. Many authoritarian regimes of the past have used the ID system to control the people. Indeed, the idea of a national ID card has an uncanny resemblance to identification cards used throughout history by nations to commit genocide.

For instance, in Nazi Germany during the 1930s, Jews were required to possess a “J-stamp” identification card at all times to identify Jews who were to be deported to death camps in Poland. In the 1990s, a national identification card was used in Rwanda to assist in ethnic cleansing. As one expert noted, “an ID card with the designation ‘Tutsi’ spelled a death sentence at any roadblock.” “No other factor,” the expert wrote, “was more significant in facilitating the speed and magnitude of the 100 days of mass killing in Rwanda.”

Presently, many countries in Europe, Asia and South America require all citizens to carry specific documents at all times. If caught without the proper identification, they can be punished.

The term “national identification card” includes a broad range of various technologies. Most, if not all, of these cards are “machine readable,” allowing any government agent to scan for any information necessary. Of the suggested ID cards, the most discussed and the one with the most potential for privacy invasion would be a card that included an RFID (radio frequency identification). RFID is a type of automatic identification system.

The purpose of the RFID system is to enable data to be transmitted by a portable device, called a tag, which is read by an RFID reader and processed according to the needs of a particular application. Currently, RFID is used in many ways, including by private businesses to track the quantity of a product available on the shelf. But RFID has other potential uses, such as allowing the government to track the moment-by-moment movements of American citizens—even in their homes.

Also included within the broad definition of national ID cards is the use of memory devices within the card itself. For instance, these cards (suggested to replace traditional drivers’ licenses and passports) would store information about their holder. This information could be as basic as the person’s name, birth date and place of birth. But the card could also store private information including a person’s Social Security number, fingerprint, retina scan and personal, criminal and financial records.

Congress’ vote to enact the Real ID Act of 2005 is a giant step closer to requiring Americans to always possess a national ID. This law requires states to satisfy federal standards for issuing drivers’ licenses. If the license does not satisfy the law’s standards, the cardholder will not be permitted to use the license to satisfy federal demand for everyday activities such as boarding an airplane, opening a bank account or entering a federal building.

According to the law, beginning May 11, 2008, federal agencies, including the Transportation Security Administration (the agency that checks identification before boarding an airplane), will not accept a state driver’s license unless it includes stored data required by the Department of Homeland Security. To date, this data includes the driver’s full name, date of birth, gender, permanent address, signature, driver’s license number and digital photo of the person’s face. Furthermore, the card must be machine readable and include physical features that are yet to be determined.

Corporations and politicians, eager to please security-conscious voters, have jumped at the opportunity to provide and produce a national ID card. Former Congressman Tom DeLay (R-TX), for instance, argued, “If these commonsense reforms had been in place in 2001, they would have hindered the efforts of the 9/11 terrorists, and they will go a long way toward helping us prevent another tragedy like 9/11.”

However, as many opponents of a national ID card point out, such arguments are unfounded. After all, the terrorists on 9/11 used identifications issued by the government. Moreover, “Claims that the government will protect the privacy of Americans when implementing a national identification card ring hollow,” Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) argues. “We would do well to remember what happened with the Social Security number. It was introduced with solemn restrictions on how it could be used, but it has become a de facto national identifier.”

Clearly, we are at a crucial crossroads in American history. And it is our response as citizens that will determine whether we have a “government of wolves.” Remember, it is the sheep who get eaten.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

RNU.com – (Raiders News Update) - A growing doctrine within the New Age Movement claims that the origin of the gods, and the human race as we know it today, is the direct result of extra-terrestrial "UFO" activity. In the introduction to his bestselling book, CHARIOTS OF THE GODS?, Erich von Daniken, who, it might be argued, is one of the fathers of the New Age Movement as it relates to ufology, said:

“I claim that our forefathers received visits from the universe in the remote past, even though I do not yet know who these extra-terrestrial intelligences were or from which planet they came. I nevertheless proclaim that these ‘strangers’ annihilated part of mankind existing at the time and produced a new, perhaps the first, homo sapiens.”

As was illustrated in the Hollywood films Contact, and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Erich von Daniken's hypothesis took America by storm in the 1960's with the proposition that mankind was possibly the offspring of an ancient, perhaps ongoing, extra-terrestrial experiment. New Age ufologists like Daniken assert that the gods of mythology may have been themselves evidence of, and a reaction to, an encounter with other-world beings. They claim that ancient men would have considered space travelers as gods and would have recorded their arrival, their experiments, and their departure, in hieroglyphs, megaliths, and stone tablets, as a "supernatural" encounter between gods and men. Mr. Daniken continues:

“While [the] spaceship disappears again into the mists of the universe our friends will talk about the miracle—‘The gods were here!’....they will make a record of what happened: uncanny, weird, miraculas. Then their texts will relate—and drawings will show—that gods in golden clothes were there in a flying boat that landed with a tremendous din. They will write about chariots which the gods drove over land and sea, and of terrifying weapons that were like lightning, and they will recount that the gods promised to return. They will hammer and chisel in the rock pictures of what they had seen: shapeless giants with helmets and rods on their heads, carrying boxes in front of their chests; balls on which indefinable beings sit and ride through the air; staves from which
rays are shot out as if from a sun.”

Von Daniken also claims that the odd appearance of some of the gods as depicted in various hieroglyphs (human-like creatures with falcon heads; lions with heads of bulls, etc) could be viewed as evidence that "aliens" conducted experiments of cloning and cross-mutating both ancient people and animals. Some people accept this part of Daniken's hypothesis as a humanistic alternative to the Biblical account of creation. It's uncertain how many people believe such a theory, but a full eighty percent of Americans claim they believe in the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. Some, like the 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult that committed suicide in Rancho Santa Fe, California and believed they were being summoned by a UFO trailing the Hale-Bopp Comet, subscribe to an eerie amalgam of mysticism and conventional religion. Not suprisingly, the growing interest in UFOs and the paranormal has given birth to a host of popular television specials and weekly programs depicting such other-world creatures and those who claim to have encountered them. One of the more disturbing aspects of such UFO phenomena are the reports, which continue to come in from around the world, of nightime abductions by small wide-eyed creatures who supposedly pilot UFOs and conduct various medical experiments on their abductees. The New Age Movement argues that such activity would be proof of an ongoing experiment between humans and aliens, and they note that the radical aspects of such experiments have included impregnating abductees and returning later to remove the hybrid embryos.

Ancient Chinese folklore told of a distant land of "flying carts.” A Sanskrit text—the Drona Parva, documented "dogfights" by gods in flying machines. But men like Von Daniken claim that the Bible is their best advocate and the "greatest UFO book of all time!" The "wheel" in Ezekiel 1:15; the "pillar of cloud" in Exodus 13:21-22; and Elijah's "chariot of fire" (2 Kgs 2:11), are all viewed as examples of "UFO" sightings by New Agers. And, it's true, we do find a biblical record of mysterious celestial creatures invading the earth and conducting procreative experiments. In Genesis 6:4 we read, "When mankind had spread all over the world, and girls were being born, some of the supernatural beings saw that these girls were beautiful, so they took the ones they liked....In those days, and even later, there were giants [nepheli] on the earth who were descendants of human women and the supernatural beings" (TEV). But is Genesis chapter six a description of reproductive experiments conducted by advanced extra-terrestrial creatures? Or is it a record of something even more sinister?

Regardless of one's interpretation of these and other ancient records, one fact remains. Thousands of years ago heavenly beings visited the earth. They engaged in sexual experiments resulting in a race of mutant beings called nepheli. The final result appears to have been an immediate judgment from God, who ordered Israel to destroy the nepheli and it’s descendants. Thousands of years later Jesus spoke of the events that occured during the days of Noah as being comparable to the days leading up to the rapture of the Church (Matthew 24). This prophecy is remarkable when one realizes that after God judged the celestial beings who cohabited with the Noahtic women, all such comparable activity apparently ceased until about the year 1940. Then, following the infamous Roswell incident which occured in New Mexico in 1947, people from around the world began encountering strange creatures conducting procreative experiments with increasing regularity.

One is forced to wonder: What's going on? Who are these creatures? Are the current "UFO" visitors the same as those of Noah's day? If so, what is this reproductive experimentation about? Perhaps the answer to this question (the Christian's analysis vs the New Age view on "aliens") is hidden in the first six chapters of Genesis. Very soon after the Fall of man we find in Genesis 3:15 the protoevangelium (the promise that the seed of the woman would someday bring forth a child [Jesus] capable of destroying the serpent's [Satan's] power). In response to the promise, supernatural beings (fallen angels?) appeared from the heavens and performed reproductive experiments on human women (Genesis chapter six). Was Satan attempting to intercept, pollute, and thereby destroy the righteous seed? Was he trying to cut off the birth line of the Messiah? Perhaps. Satan's ancient goal included cutting off the line leading to the Messiah. Satan led Pharoah to destroy the Hebrew children so the deliverer might not be born. Herod sought the baby Jesus in the New Testament in order to have Him killed. In Revelation, chapter 12, we see the devil (dragon) waiting to destroy the messianic seed as soon as it is born of the woman. But Dr. I.D.E. Thomas, in his book, The Omega Conspiracy, suggests that Satan had even bigger plans at work in the sixth chapter of Genesis. He claims that Satan (as opposed to aliens) was trying to produce a race of mutant warriors by breeding fallen angels with women in an effort to exterminate the children of God. From a Christian's point of view this could explain how people like the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, who were enemies of Yahweh, appeared from out of nowhere around B.C. 3500, bringing with them a pantheon of deities, the first written language, and a superior knowledge of earthly sciences. This may also explain why many of the religions that followed Sumerian mythology—including Greek mythology—emerged from the original idea that powerful beings, with names like "Zeus" and "Apollo,” visited the earth, intermarried with women, and fathered half-human children. Dr. Thomas believes recent "UFO" abduction activity may point to the birth of a new race of anti-God warriors, as we approach the end of the age and the coming of Armaggedon.

A question arises: Does Genesis chapter 6 support the New Age theory that alien creatures traveled from distant planets in UFOs, performed reproductive experiments on women, and were afterward honored in the images and folklore of the gods of mythology? Or, is Dr. I.D.E. Thomas correct in stating that the story in Genesis is a record of fallen angels acting in accord with Satan? What, if anything, could this tell us about the origin of the gods and the current intersteller phenomena? Are we experiencing an ongoing invasion of earth by intergalactic scientists, or is Satan busy advancing the most sophisticated con in history?

We know that the rapture of the Church will be accompanied by "...fearful sights and great signs...from heaven" (Lk 21:11). Perhaps Satan is contriving an "alien invasion" to explain the disappearance of so many people at once! If eighty percent of the population believes in the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence, wouldn't this be a powerful form of deception? And since New Age theology produces a growing belief among some contemporary church groups that flying saucers will be the method "God" uses to retrieve the Christian community during the Rapture, couldn't the UFO sightings phenomenon play a part in the great deception that will pervade the earth following the Rapture? We read in 2 Thessalonians 2:8-12, "And then shall that Wicked [one] be revealed....whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders....And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." The world authorities remaining to make up the governments of the Antichrist will need an explanation for those taken in the Rapture. People from around the world will be missing! Now imagine: If the Rapture was followed by hundreds of "space craft" landing on earth piloted by creatures who appeared to be advanced humanoids, couldn't these beings claim to have removed the Christians into some kind of a high-tech "rapture,” and simultaneously present their leader (antichrist?) as the messiah? Couldn't they point to ancient mysteries, megaliths, pyramids, and the gods of mythology, as proof of an ancient visitation of planet earth? The late Pulitzer Prize-winning author and agnostic Carl Sagan was, until his death, working on a screenplay about the ramifications of just such a savior who appears in the coming millennium! Humanists like Mr. Sagan argue that evidence such as the meteorite which has been hypothesized as indicating that microscopic life existed on Mars millions of years ago, is proof that prehistoric life forms (E T's) could have moved throughout the universe for untold millennia.

Not long ago people who supported UFO activity were the object of scorn. Because of accumulating evidence and reputable eye-witness accounts, this is no longer the case. That some kind of unexplained phenomenon, called the UFO experience by some, occurs, is beyond question. UFO reports are coming in at the alarming world-wide rate of about six sightings per hour! Whatever or whoever they are, the reality of this activity can no longer be doubted. One concludes that these beings are either advanced humanoids from outer space, or that this activity signals an ongoing deception of demonic design. If the current UFO activity is demonic and indicates Satan has for centuries planned an "alien" visitation in order to, among other things, explain the rapture of the church, wouldn’t it be reasonable to believe that his plans have heretofore included indoctrination and advanced intelligence? Military invasions always involve preliminary and clandestine maneuvers, and one should believe Satan's plans to deceive the past, the present, and the future World Order, would first involve covert strategies of brainwashing, political manipulation, and the positioning of his agents in places of power. While I believe the New Age Movement's interpretation of UFO phenomenon and the origin of the gods is erroneous, I do credit New Agers for recognizing the high possibility that the gods of mythology were a result of—and perhaps a first step towards—the developing of the schemes of a super intelligent force, a power which may energize the UFO phenomenon today. But, what New Agers describe as the goals of a "highly advanced alien civilization," I call the plotting of an evil supernaturalism.

The biblical (and I believe correct) view of the origin of the pagan gods begins with Original Revelation. This means there was a perfect revelation from God to man at the time of creation. The first man Adam was at one with God and perceived divine knowledge from the mind of God. The human was "in tune" with the mental processes of God, and understood, therefore, what God knew about science, astronomy, cosmogony, geology, eschatology, and so on. After the fall, Adam was "detached" from the mind of God, but retained an imperfect memory of the divine revelation including a knowledge of God's plan of redemption. Two things began to occur in the decades after the Fall: 1) information from the original revelation became distant and distorted as it was dispersed among the nations and as it was passed from generation to generation; and 2) the realm of Satan seized upon this opportunity to receive worship, and to turn people away from Yahweh, by distorting and counterfeiting the original revelation with pagan ideas and "gods". This point of view seems reasonable when one considers that the earliest historical and archeological records from civilizations around the world have consistently pointed back to and repeated portions of the original story.

In their startling book, The Discovery of Genesis, the Rev. C.H. Kang and Dr. Ethel R. Nelson confirm that prehistoric Chinese ideographic pictures (used in very ancient Chinese writing) report the story of Genesis, including the creation of the Man and Woman, the garden, the temptation and Fall, Noah's flood, and the tower of Babel. In his book, The Real Meaning Of The Zodiac, Dr. James Kennedy claims that the ancient signs of the Zodiac also indicate a singular and original revelation—a kind of Gospel in the stars—and that the message of the stars, although demonized and converted into astrology after the fall of man, originally recorded the Gospel of God. He writes:

“There exists in the writings of virtually all civilized nations a description of the major stars in the heavens—something which might be called their ‘Constellations of the Zodiac’ or the ‘Signs of the Zodiac,’ of which there are twelve. If you go back in time to Rome, or beyond that to Greece, or before that to Egypt, Persia, Assyria, or Babylonia—regardless of how far back you go, there is a remarkable phenomenon: Nearly all nations had the same twelve signs, representing the same twelve things, placed in the same order....The book of Job, which is thought by many to be the oldest book of the Bible, goes back to approximately 2150 B.C., which is 650 years before Moses came upon the scene to write the Pentateuch; over 1,100 years before Homer wrote the Odyssey and the Illiad; and 1,500 years before Thales, the first of the philosophers, was born. In chapter 38, God finally breaks in and speaks to Job and to his false comforters. As He is questioning Job, showing him and his companions their ignorance, God says to them: "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or
canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?" (Job 38:31,32)

We see here reference to the constellations of Orion and Pleiades, and the star Arcturus. Also in the book of Job there is reference to Cetus, the Sea Monster, and to Draco, the Great Dragon. I would call your attention to Job 38:32a: "Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?" Mazzaroth is a Hebrew word which means "The Constellations of the Zodiac." In what may be the oldest book in all of human history, we find that the constellations of the zodiac were already clearly known and understood....Having made it clear that the Bible expressly, explicitly, and repeatedly condemns what is now known as astrology, the fact remains that there was a God-given Gospel [universally acknowledged original revelation] in the stars which lays beyond and behind that which has now been corrupted. “

In his book Dr. Kennedy strongly condemns the practice of astrology, while asserting his view that the constellations of the zodiac were likely given by God to the first man as "record-keepers" of the original revelation of God.

If the primary assumption of the Biblical View is correct—that an original revelation was corrupted after the fall of man and subsequently degenerated into the mythologies of the pagan gods—one should be able to find numerous examples of such corruption from as far back as the beginning of history and within various civilizations around the world. Since the myths behind the gods would thus be "borrowed" ideas, the corrupted texts would be similar to the original truth, and, in that sense, evidence of a singular and original revelation. Furthermore, If the distortions of the original revelation were in fact energized by an evil supernaturalism, the goal of the alterations would be to draw people away from the worship of Yahweh. In certain ancient legends—such as the Enuma elish, the Adapa Epic, and the Epic of Gilgamesh—we discover early traces of the kaleidoscope of the original revelation plagiarized for the purpose of constructing the mythologies of the pagan gods.

Evidence suggests that the earliest legends of mythology were preceded by a belief in "the God" (Yahweh to the Hebrews) as the creator of all things and the "ruler of heaven." Later, Satan was described as "the god of this world" (2 Cor. 4:4), and the prince of the "air" (Eph. 2:2). A fascinating struggle between the "ruler of the heavens" versus the "power of the air" occured in early Sumerian mythology after Enki, the god of wisdom and water, created the human race out of clay. It appears that Anu, who was at first the most powerful of the Sumerian gods and the "ruler of the heavens," was superseded in power and popularity by Enlil, the "god of the air." To the Christian mind this is perceived as nothing less than Satan, the god of the air, continuing his pretence to the throne of God, and his usurpation of Yahweh—"the Lord of the heavens." It also indicates a corruption of the original revelation and perhaps an effort on the part of Satan to trick the pagan Sumerians into perceiving him as the "supreme" god (above the God of heaven) and therefore worthy of adoration. Correspondingly, in the Enuma elish (a Babylonian epic), Marduk, the great god of the city of Babylon, was exalted above the benevolent gods and extolled as the creator of the world. Marduk was symbolized as a dragon (as is Satan in Revelation 12:9) called the Muscrussu, and his legend appears to contain several distortions of the important elements of the biblical account of creation. The Adapa Epic tells of another Babylonian legend that is also roughly equivalent to the Genisis account of creation. In it, Adapa, like Adam, underwent a test on food consumption, failed the test, and forfeited his opportunity for immortality. As a result of the failure, suffering and death were passed along to humanity. Finally, the Epic of Gilgamesh is a Sumerian poem, which, like the Adapa Epic, is deeply rooted in ancient Assyrian and Babylonian mythology. In 1872 George Smith discovered the Gilgamesh tablets while doing research on the Assyrian library of Ashurbanipal at the British Museum. Because of the strong similarity to the biblical account of Noah and the great flood, Bible scholars have viewed the Gilgamesh epic with interest (and suspicion) since its discovery. As the legend goes, Gilgamesh, the king of the city of Uruk, was told about the flood from his immortal friend, Utnapishtim (the Sumerian equivalent of Noah). Utnapishtim described for Gilgamesh how the great god Enlil decided to destroy all of mankind because of its "noisy" sins. A plague was sent but failed to persuade mankind of better behavior, and, consequently, the gods determined a complete extermination of the human race. Enki, the lord of the waters, was not happy with the other gods for this decision and warned Utnapishtim of the coming deluge, instructing him to tear down his house and build a great boat. Utnapishtim obeyed Enki, built a great vessel, and sealed it with pitch and bitumen. The family of Utnapishtim loaded onto the boat together with various beasts and fowl. When the rains came, the doors were closed and the vessel rose up above the waters. Like Noah, Utnapishtim sent out a dove, and later a swallow, to search for dry land. They both returned. Later, a raven was released and it never came back. After several more days the boat came to rest on the top of a mountain where Utnapishtim built an altar and offered a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the gods. As the gods smelt the sweet offering, all but Enlil repented for sending the flood.

In my first book, Spiritual Warfare—The Invisible Invasion, I described a interesting example of the original revelation of God as distorted and plagiarized by Satan in order to draw men away from the worship of Jehovah. Concerning Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, I wrote:

“At the base of Pergamums hill stood the shrine of Asclepius, equipped with its own library, theater, sleeping chambers used in healing rituals, and long underground tunnels joining various other shrines to which pagans journeyed to receive the healing powers of Apollo's favorite son. The Christian Church considered these mystical powers as demonic, for the worship of Asclepius focused on the image of a serpent, sometimes called Glycon, an enormous serpent-figure some historians see as the origin for the modern symbol of healing—a serpent winding about a pole. Asclepius carried the lofty title, the hero god of healing.

In Numbers 21, Moses designed the brazen serpent on a pole that was used of God as an oracle of healing. 743 years later, in 2 Kings 18:4, we find that Israel had began to worship the brazen serpent with offerings and incense. From here the image was adopted into Greek mythology where it became the symbol of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing.

Asclepius was reported to have cured untold numbers from every conceivable disease—even raising a man from the dead. This caused Apollo through his Oracle at Delphi to declare, ‘Oh Asclepius!, thou who art born a great joy to all mortals, whom lovely Coronis bare to me, the child of love, at rocky Epidaurus.’ Such a healer was he reported to be, that Pluto, god of Hades, complained to Zeus that hardly anyone was dying anymore, and so Zeus destroyed Asclepius with a thunderbolt. Afterward, Apollo pleaded with Zeus to restore his son and this intercession so moved Zeus that he not only brought Asclepius back to life, but immortalized him as the god of medicine. First at Thessaly, and finally throughout the Greek and Roman world, Asclepius was worshiped as the saviour god of healing.”

Thus we find a glaring example of God's "revelation" plagiarized for demonic purposes. Greek mythology stated that Asclepius had the power to heal the sick and to bring the dead back to life by drawing blood out from the side of the goddess of justice. Asclepius was symbolized by a serpent winding about a pole, and he was called the great "Physician." The obvious intention of the serpent on a pole in Numbers 21 was to focus mankind on the coming Messiah, the true Great Physician, who would hang upon a pole and would deliver His followers from sickness and from death by the blood that ran out from His side.

Time does not allow for a full disclosure of the many other examples of corruption that occurred with regard to the Original Revelation. They include distortions or "knock-offs" of the virgin birth, heaven and hell, the resurrection and final judgement, water baptism, communion, etc. In addition to the corruptions of the original revelation which pre-dated the gods of mythology, the Biblical View of the origin of the gods makes the following important assumptions: 1) that there exists within our universe real and supernatural powers; 2) that these powers are divided by their nature into two separate camps or "kingdoms"—one evil, the other good; 3) that these kingdoms are presided over by rulers—the biblical Satan over the evil and Yahweh over the good; and 4) that the kingdom of Satan provided the historical energy or "life" within and behind the gods of mythology as Satan’s kingdom solicited human worship through the elements of idolatry. Quoting again from Spiritual Warfare—The Invisible Invasion, I conclude:

“...the worship of Asclepius and other such idolatries were, as Paul would later articulate in 1 Corinthians 10:20, the worship of demons. In Acts 7:41-42, we find that when men serve idols they are worshiping ‘the army of heaven’ (Jerusalem Bible). Psalms 96:5 says, ‘For all the gods of the nations are idols’ ('elilim, LXX daimonia). Demons. Many other biblical references indicate evil supernaturalism as the true dynamic of idolatry and reveal that idols of stone, flesh, or other imagery are simply 'elilim (empty, nothing, vanity), but that behind these images exist the true objects of heathen adoration: demons.”

John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost that millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen. The Biblical View of the origin of the gods affirms the idea that "In the beginning" Yahweh created the heavens (celestial beings, planets, etc) and the earth. Lucifer, “the light bearer,” was a crowning achievement of God's heavenly creation and a chief servant of the creative Yahweh. But Lucifer became jealous of the worship Yahweh was receiving from his many creations, and proudly proclaimed, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God....I will be like the most high" (Is.14:13-14). Somehow Lucifer convinced one-third of the celestial creatures to join him in a great rebellion, with the uprising ultimately resulting in Lucifer and his followers being cast out of heaven. Lucifer (now Satan), driven by a quest for worship and thirsty for revenge with Yahweh, tempted Eve, and, after the fall with its resulting separation between man and God, moved to corrupt the divine truths contained within the Original Revelation by proclaiming himself (the god of the air) more worthy of worship than was the God of heaven.

If such an assumption of the Biblical View is correct—that a real and evil supernatural presence exists and has for centuries drawn men away from worshipping Yahweh through the dynamics of various mythologies—the following questions arise: Were the angels that joined Lucifer in the fall also driven by a lust for worship? Did the images and attributes ascribed to the gods of mythology somehow reflect the real and spiritual characteristics of certain unseen personalities operating behind them? More importantly, is the kingdom of Satan still at work in this manner? That is, do the living entities of the ancient gods continue to walk among us? If so, do such spirits embody themselves in trees, earth, and idols of stone, or should we assume that modern idolatry has acquired a more selective sophistication and social manifestation? In THE GODS WHO WALK AMONG US, Thomas Horn and Donald Jones search for the answers to these questions through a comparison of the various aspects of the gods of mythology. But, be warned, their conclusions may startle you.

Frustration mounts by millions of Americans who have done the hard research and even those who haven't had access to factual historical documents on the income tax and the privately owned "Federal" Reserve, but realize things are worsening by the day. Why? Because members of Congress continue to refuse to address the core mechanisms destroying this republic and instead, appear determined to continue down the path of America's destruction. The progressive, massive federal income tax is destroying any hopes the average American has of putting a few dollars into a savings account for retirement. The privately owned "Federal" Reserve continues to plunder the people's treasury with the total cooperation of a corrupt and largely ignorant Congress.

Sixteen long years ago I found out the truth about the private banking cartel running our country; who is pulling the strings and who are the puppets. That research led me to the fraud of the income tax. The more I researched the more new leads I ended up pursuing because I found all these agencies, organizations and taxing entities were all tied together. As the picture began to unfold by studying all these components, I came to one single conclusion: We the people are being used to enslave ourselves and our children by stripping us of our rights and bankrupting us in the process. All being carried out by allegedly elected and non elected individuals.

There are thousands of books and hundreds of videos and DVD's chronicling these various treasonous organizations; see my Reading Room for the ones I have read/viewed and highly recommend. Americans involved in the process of trying to "take back" our country from the greedy money lenders know that we have no voice on "mainstream" or cable television. No voice in any major print media or even local town newspapers. Neutralizers like Limbaugh, Shallow Shawn Hannity and socialist Bill O'Reilly have a monopoly on the radio air waves. The Masters of the Game have finally gobbled up all these information vehicles and are diligently working to see the Internet censored because it is and has been our sledgehammer in getting the documented truth to our fellow Americans for almost a decade.

On the upside, my friend, Aaron Russo, has produced a new documentary which could once and for all blow a hole so big in the web of deception, the course of history will be changed. We finally have the opportunity to drive the moneylenders and their scavengers (Congress) out into the light of day and expose the grand plan to destroy our beloved republic. Aaron sent me a copy of his new documentary, America: From Freedom to Fascism, so I could watch it at home and give my honest opinion.

America: From Freedom to Fascism is a powerful presentation. As a documentary, Aaron begins with questions and then embarks upon a journey of seeking the truth. He plays no favorites, he doesn't endorse any one group over another. The sequence begins with the voluntary nature of the federal income tax and segues into each major component being implemented to take over America for the world elite. The interviews with former IRS agents to Americans who have been acquitted by juries who could see through the deception are captured and presented in a balanced manner. One interview that is especially powerful is that of Marcella Brooks who was the jury fore person for Whitey Harrell's tax trial. I have had the distinct honor of meeting and getting to know this remarkable woman who has more courage than any hundred members of Congress.

Phil Hart, a friend and representative who serves in the Idaho State Legislature and Dr. Edwin Vieira, author of Pieces of Eight, also give excellent interviews. A stunner is the interview with Congressman Ron Paul. How many Americans know the privately owned "Federal" Reserve Banking System isn't really part of the government and that there has never been an audit? The great majority of the poltroons who serve in the U.S. Congress have no clue as to how this system even works, i.e., this is a short excerpt of testimony by William Grieder, an insider, who wrote a book most Americans will never bother to read, but should: Secrets of the Temple:

"The veil of secrecy certainly does enhance the mystique surrounding the Fed - and the general ignorance about it. Otherwise confident and intelligent people including members of Congress - defer to the Fed's wisdom mainly because they do not understand it. They are understandably intimidated by its mystery and power..."

"And, as every governor freely acknowledged to me, the Fed also makes mistakes just like the rest of us mortals. The difference is that the Fed's mistakes can have devastating impact on the lives and fortunes of millions. It can sink viable business enterprises and force debtors to the wall and put millions of people out of jobs. It can reward some investors and punish others....

"Given these vast powers, it is fatuous to pretend that the Federal Reserve can somehow be insulated from politics. And, indeed, it is not. As any candid governor will tell you, the institution is bombarded constantly with pleas and demands and unsolicited advice from selected interests. As a matter of style, lobbying the Fed is done more delicately and discreetly than, say, lobbying Congress or the White House, but the private and semi-private dialogues surrounding monetary policy go on continuously - between the Fed and financial markets, banks and brokerages and other major player, both foreign and domestic.

"The only players who are left out of this conversation are the American people and, to a large extent their elected representatives. Instead, they are provided a frustrating stream of evasive euphemisms and opaque jargon and platitudinous generalities and, sometimes, even downright deception. As more than one Federal Reserve governor confided to me, it would be very difficult - perhaps impossible - for the Fed to have an honest discussion of monetary policy with Congress or the public because the level of ignorance is so profound.

"In other words, if you are serious about reforming the Federal Reserve, you will necessarily have to think about changing more than the institutional behavior of the Fed. The lack of accountability is not simply a function of Fed mystique. Among elected politicians, there is also a widespread willingness not to know or understand. In fairness to Congress, the news media encourages this deference by promoting the conventional wisdom about the institution. Any politician who dares to become a critic can count upon damaging attacks from both editorial writers and news reporters....

"Frankly, the Fed does not even have to confront intelligent scrutiny from those the people have elected to represent them. That is, the Congress. In my experience, congressional oversight hearings are usually a dispiriting mixture of posturing and bile and trick questions that the Federal Reserve governors find quite easy to fend off. It is hard to take most of the congressional questioning seriously and not surprising that many at the Federal Reserve do not.

"Wright Patman once referred to the existing arrangement as `a car with two drivers.' One driver has a foot on the gas, the other on the brake. He meant that the fiscal policy of spending and taxation is controlled by Congress and the Executive, while the money and credit policy is controlled by the central bank. These two levers interact powerfully with another - sometimes with contradictory results. "Yet, believe it or not, there is absolutely no requirement in the law that the two levers must be coordinated with one another. There is not even an intelligent process by which monetary policy and fiscal policy can be viewed together as pieces of an overall economic strategy... In 1998, when Congress passed the Reagan economic program, the massive tax cuts and defense buildup were powerfully stimulative to the economy. But the Federal Reserve was simultaneously embarked on the opposite course: suppressing economic growth with extraordinarily high interest rates in order to squeeze out price inflation ... The stark fact is that the government was pushing the national economy in opposite directions at once. The car with two drivers wound up in a ditch - first deep recession, then an awesome accumulation of debt - and we are effectively still in it." [End of quote]

Dr. Edwin Vieira has warned America about the coming banking crisis. Unfortunately, without a medium like Aaron's film getting into theaters nationwide, most Americans will never hear that warning. Another particularly telling interview is with a former IRS Commissioner that blows your socks off. I had already seen this interview at Aaron's home last year when he was just beginning to put some of the filming into edit mode. It was very good then, but put into context in this documentary, it becomes very powerful. Once Aaron established complete doubt in anyone's mind about the income tax and the "Fed," the natural progression into the other tentacles of forging America into a one world government, first by claiming we are a democracy (we are not), then breeding Americans to socialism, then fascism and finally totalitarian government is exposed for all to see.

As one watches the segments on unconstitutional trade treaties like NAFTA, GATT and CAFTA, open borders and the illegals invasion, the plot literally reaches a crescendo with the ending being an attempt to force all Americans to have a biochip inserted in their body and carry a national ID. Of course, people like me will never accept this and we will fight. It doesn't surprise me that audiences who have seen this film during special showings recently walked out of the theater in tears. Betrayal hurts.

Major funding to make this documentary primarily came from a source I cannot disclose, but he is a dedicated, generous American. This individual believed in Aaron and his documentary doesn't disappoint. I don't know if folks remember, but back in 1998, the documentary, WACO: The Rules of Engagement, was nominated for an Oscar. You could have knocked me over with a feather that such a powerful movie thoroughly documenting mass murder by our government would actually be nominated for an Oscar, but it was. I believe that America: From Freedom to Fascism can also achieve such a lofty status if it can be shown in enough movie theaters throughout this country.

Aaron is targeting July 4, 2006 for national release. While the initial funding was substantial, marketing of any movie or documentary requires at a minimum, a million dollars. A documentary like America: From Freedom to Fascism has an even more formidable task in getting into as many theaters as possible because unlike a documentary on say, terrible living conditions in South America for children, Freedom to Fascism exposes the big picture of how Americans have been deceived, it attacks the feeding artery (IRS) of the magical money machine (FED) and weaves a factual presentation so frightening, some who have seen it during the limited showings, walked out of the theater in a state or rage or total fear. Aaron doesn't force anyone to just swallow what's presented, but rather uses real people with real credentials and historical information to bring the truth to the audience. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Would you like to see this powerful documentary? Would you like to see tens of thousands in your local area see the truth in living color? Aaron's people are working day and night trying to get this documentary into theaters nationwide under a well thought out marketing plan, but it takes money. It takes publicity. It takes demand by the consumer. Aaron is a dedicated American, a family man and just like you and me, he knows what's coming with this freight train of totalitarian government bearing down on us unless tens of millions get the truth. Here is what Aaron would like you to do:

1. Please visit the web site for the movie; see here. There is a unique section to send "E-Cards"
2. Let your entire mailing list, friends, family, business colleagues and members of your church know about this movie and ask them to help.
3. If you have a web site, put up a banner ad on the front page to help get the word out. This will build momentum as what happened with Mel Gibson's marketing plan for Passion of the Christ.
4. Visit your local theater and ask the manager to get the documentary booked; direct them to the web site.
5. Make a donation for the marketing. This documentary won't get in mainstream theaters and movie houses in small towns all across this country without adequate funding. Once it breaks out in as many theaters as possible, it has to be backed up with advertising besides word of mouth.

America: From Freedom to Fascism represents a very real tool to educate and activate millions of Americans. Making this documentary was a huge undertaking. I hope you will support Aaron and his effort to get this documentary into as many movie theaters as possible.

Aaron will premier his documentary at the Cannes Film Festival in France during the week of May 17-28, 2006.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A little-known spy agency that analyzes imagery taken from the skies has been spending significantly more time watching U.S. soil.

In an era when other intelligence agencies try to hide those operations, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, is proud of that domestic mission.

He said the work the agency did after hurricanes Rita and Katrina was the best he'd seen an intelligence agency do in his 42 years in the spy business.

"This was kind of a direct payback to the taxpayers for the investment made in this agency over the years, even though in its original design it was intended for foreign intelligence purposes," Clapper said in a Thursday interview with The Associated Press.

Geospatial intelligence is the science of combining imagery, such as satellite pictures, to physically depict features or activities happening anywhere on the planet. A part of the Defense Department, the NGA usually operates unnoticed to provide information on nuclear sites, terror camps, troop movements or natural disasters.

After last year's hurricanes, the agency had an unusually public face. It set up mobile command centers that sprung out of the backs of Humvees and provided imagery for rescuers and hurricane victims who wanted to know the condition of their homes. Victims would provide their street address and the NGA would provide a satellite photo of their property. In one way or another, some 900 agency officials were involved.

Spy agencies historically avoided domestic operations out of concern for Pentagon regulations and Reagan-era executive order, known as 12333, that restricted intelligence collection on American citizens and companies. Its budget, like all intelligence agencies, is classified.

On Clapper's watch of the last five years, his agency has found ways to expand its mission to help prepare security at Super Bowls and political conventions or deal with natural disasters, such as hurricanes and forest fires.

With help, the agency can also zoom in. Its officials cooperate with private groups, such as hotel security, to get access to footage of a lobby or ballroom. That video can then be linked with mapping and graphical data to help secure events or take action, if a hostage situation or other catastrophe happens.

Privacy advocates wonder how much the agency picks up - and stores. Many are increasingly skeptical of intelligence agencies with recent revelations about the Bush administration's surveillance on phone calls and e-mails.

Among the government's most closely guarded secrets, the quality of pictures NGA receives from classified satellites is believed to far exceed the one-meter resolution available commercially. That means they can take a satellite "snapshot" from high above the atmosphere that is crisply detailed down to one meter level, which is 3.3 feet.

Clapper says his agency only does big pictures, so concerns about using the NGA's foreign intelligence apparatus at home doesn't apply.

"We are not trying to examine an individual dwelling, for example, because what our mission is normally going to be is looking at large areas," he said. "It doesn't really affect or threaten anyone's privacy or civil liberties when you are looking at a large collective area."

His agency also handles its historic mission: regional threats, such as Iran and North Korea; terrorist hideouts; and tracking drug trade. "Everything and everybody has to be some place," he said.

He considers his brand of intelligence a chess match. "There are sophisticated nation states that have a good understanding of our surveillance capabilities," including Iran, he said. "What we have to do is counter that" by taking advantage of anomalies or sending spy planes and satellites over more frequently.

Adversaries who hide their most important facilities underground is a trend the agency has to work at, he said.

NGA was once a stepchild of the intelligence community. But Clapper said it has come into its own and become an equal partner with the other spy agencies, such as the CIA.

Experience-wise, the agency is among the youngest of the spy agencies. About 40 percent of the agency's analyst have been hired in the last five years.

"They are very inexperienced, and that's just fine. They don't have any baggage," said Clapper, who retires next month as the longest serving agency director. "The people that we are getting now are bright, computer literate. ... That is not something I lie awake and worry about."

For those of us who have been consulting alternative as well as mainstream sources for information before forming an opinion on certain subjects, we understand that conspiracies can be proven with facts and evidence. We have a tendency to be so busy proving new conspiracies as they come along that we forget to look back on what we have already proven. Dennis Grover, for the crew at "With Liberty and Justice for All," a syndicated, bi-monthly community access cable program from Reno, Nevada, has given us a marvelous opportunity to review "conspiracies" that can no longer be dismissed as "theories." The show, in its eighth year (175 episodes) and sponsored by the Nevada Libertarian Party, has been a forum where most of the issues facing the world today have been discussed. Following is Grover’s review of what we have learned over the last decade or so. Placed end to end, we can plainly see that conspiracies abound and nary a "theory" is to be found.

After eight years of hosting the Public Access television program "With Liberty and Justice For All" and interviewing hundreds of guests on a multitude of topics, I have reached my conclusions on Conspiracy Theories.

I have interviewed many doctors and talked about natural healing as opposed to "conventional" medical treatments. Case after case of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and many other horrors cited have been reversed and healed. The Conspiracy Theory people would say that pharmaceutical companies and chemical companies train our doctors to prescribe their drugs and treatments in order to keep us sick, incoherent and paying big bucks for their drugs.

I have talked with authors who have researched secret societies, councils and committees directly associated with our elected leaders and their staffs. Conspiracy Theory people would say that these organizations hide behind closed doors and plan a course for our country that would give total financial, health and production control to a few elite people who believe that they should be in charge of this planet.

I have talked to researchers about Juries and Jury nullification. Jury nullification means that a juror can judge the law as well as the facts. The Conspiracy Theory is that juries are instructed by judges that they cannot judge the law leaving them powerless to nullify the thousands of unconstitutional laws now in existence that have even more thousands of people incarcerated for crimes against the state or victimless crimes.

Much discussion on attorneys, judges and court procedures and jurisdiction has also been broadcast. The Conspiracy Theory is that our courts are not constitutionally inspired or governed. Judges and lawyers are all required to be members of a non-government organization called the British Aristocracy Register commonly known as the B.A.R. association that dictates their behavior. They are also given a title of nobility, Esquire, which means 1- "a man of English gentry ranking next below a knight" 2- "a candidate for knighthood serving as attendant to knight" and is "used as a title of courtesy."

I have presented investigative reporters and researchers who have searched way beyond the government-prepared stories read on the major news media. They have factually documented events such as Waco, Oklahoma City bombing, Flight 800, Gulf War I, 9/11, Gulf War II, and on and on. The conspiracy Theory folks say that these events were not presented to the American people with complete facts and many feeble attempts were made to cover up the truth of what really happened.

I have discussed minor parties such as the Libertarians, the Greens, the Independent American Party and compared them to the major parties, Democrats and Republicans. I have found that minor parties are dismissed as misfits and complainers. Legislation has been passed at both the federal and state levels to cripple the ability of minor parties to be heard and be on ballots. We have also found out that major parties rant and rave over minor issues, while minor parties discuss solutions to major issues. Again the Conspiracy Theory folks say that the suppression of minor parties is planned in an effort to gag those who would present the truth, provide common sense solutions to problems that were for the most part created by those in power to further the illusion that big government is necessary for all of us intellectually challenged underlings who would walk into walls without their guidance.

I have presented volumes of documentation on the addition of fluoride to our public water supply. The Conspiracy Theorists would have you believe that it is really hydrofluorisilic acid, an industrial waste that is unlawful to simply flush into our streams and rivers. It comes from the aluminum and fertilizer industries and is highly toxic to the human body and brain. These industries are using the American people as millions of filtering and storage units with the side benefit to the wannabe controllers of keeping people confused and walking in circles.

I have presented to you a vast amount of unpublicized documentation, ingredients and explanations given for vaccinations. Those Conspiracy Theory people would have you believe that vaccination puts harmful products in your body serving only to subdue, suppress and maim those who would otherwise be capable of an independent, responsible, healthy and prosperous life. They present volumes of documentation showing direct links to autism and sudden infant death syndrome.

I have presented all the science on mercury and how a dentist can put it in your mouth as a filling but do jail time for putting it in the ground. The Conspiracy Theory types argue that, since the American Dental Assn. holds patents on mercury amalgam fillings, they don’t want their money tree to die and government gets to enjoy the side benefit of yet another neuro-toxin helping to maintain the American people’s dumbed-down state.

A mountain of information has been presented regarding the drug "war" as it’s called along with medical marijuana and its sister plant hemp. Conspiracy Theorists say that legalizing drugs will take the profit and incentive away from drug dealers and that the dangers of marijuana have been exaggerated to justify the ongoing criminal prosecutions of those who grow, sell or use it. Furthermore, they believe that the hemp plant, which grows like a weed, requires no pesticides and can be used for paper, building materials, gasoline, clothing and 1,000s of other uses, is illegal to protect the commercial interests of chemical companies that produce synthetic fibers and the cotton industry.

I have had guests and researchers who have explained the various means used, from your living room TV set to project HAARP in Alaska, to manipulate and control the minds and thought processes of Americans. Conspiracy Theory types say that all this technology and media is being used to subdue Americans, instill fear in their hearts and minds, and render them complacent and compliant.

I have interviewed Ranchers who have had their cattle seized for nonpayment of permit fees. The Conspiracy Theory groups say that the seizures are a sophisticated form of cattle rustling under the guise of protecting and preserving land for future generations of Americans. This scheme requires several bloated agencies, many new pickup trucks and lots of wannabe cowboys.

I have questioned and discussed the daily criss-crossing trails in the sky from airplanes creating an overcast. The government finally admitted to causing chemtrails but it claims to be trying to reflect the sun back into space to stop global warming. We have discovered that most people can’t raise their heads over 90 degrees from the ground anyway and so don’t even see them. Conspiracy Theory people however, tell us that these trails are laced with chemicals detrimental to the health of humans and other plants and animals on planet earth.

I have discussed the National Education System, its mandates and grants to local school boards. Those Conspiracy Theory guys constantly harp on the fact that a large percentage of high school graduates cannot read, write or think. They believe that the wannabe controllers need it this way in order to have an obedient labor pool.

I have presented facts on many different organized religions and charitable foundations. The Conspiracy Theory people say that these entities have been compromised by the IRS through acceptance of the dictates from IRS chapter 501(c)3 and cannot teach or express any truthful facts on government behavior.

I have raised the issue of the many electrical co-generating plants (cogens) springing up around the country burning hundreds of tons of wood chips daily, claiming their fuel is from lumber mills that disappeared 10 years ago. The air quality people however have reassured us that they are merely firing these plants with millions of tons of "urban fuel." The Conspiracy Theory people, after their investigations, found out that these innocent looking facilities are actually burning toxic garbage and the emissions are poisoning residents of communities where they are located.

I tell you about all the county, state and federal agencies that dictate to you the use of your property. If you don’t comply with what they determine to be "community standards" put forth by yet another bureaucracy called "community development," you are penalized in any way necessary to make you fall in line. The Conspiracy Theory people come forward again with documented proof of written codes, ordinances and plans telling you that government is trying to take your property. This is governmental takings without just compensation...really it is "inverse condemnation."

I have discussed the Social Security system, which by the very definition of the words means that you are zipped up at a party. I assume that its real name of "Life Long Theft for an Old Age Pittance" was too long and too hard to sell to the public. The Conspiracy Theory people however claim that no trust fund was ever set up and it is just another Ponzi scheme for taxes.

I have had shows that tell all sorts of bad things and inconsistencies about the IRS. Many guests have told their horror stories in dealing with its agents and trying to get answers to simple and direct questions. The Conspiracy Theory people claim that the IRS is not a government agency and the taxes they collect do not go to run the country but instead are all interest payments to the Federal Reserve System’s elite owners. They also say that the Federal Reserve, with its debt money system, is based on misrepresentations and our money is backed by nothing but hot air.

You see, by the definitions of the words alone Conspiracy and Theory I can truthfully say that there is no Theory in documented facts and hard proof. I subscribe to Conspiracy Facts.

For the person who says it is great to live in a free country… there are three things wrong: 1) it is no longer great 2) you are not living (you are surviving) and 3) you are not free.

He wakes up in the morning, smiles at his WIFE next to him feeling secure that they are legal since they have a license to be together.

He opens the window, gazes at the streaked, wispy white sky and sucks in a deep breath of toxic morning air.

He takes a warm shower laced with chlorine and fluoride, dresses himself in petroleum-based synthetic fibers and heads down to breakfast. A little short on time, he grabs an energy bar with the only recognizable and pronounceable ingredient being oatmeal and heads out the front door.

There in his yard are the people hurrying him and his licensed wife off to work. His mortgage banker is demanding $200 principle, $800 interest for the bank and if he doesn’t pay, his home will be taken from him. Next to him is his sheriff demanding property taxes or he will take the home. Next is the insurance man demanding premium payments on his home, boat, car, trailer, life and health because the law says he must have insurance. Next are six credit card people demanding a minimum of $1 principle on each of his credit cards and $30 apiece for interest, late charges and penalties. Next are the utilities folks asking for a fee increase with threats of turning off his lights, heat, water, sewer and leaving his garbage in the street. Next are the code enforcement officers waiting for his lawn to grow too much, his paint to flake or any one of his numerous licenses to expire.

JOHN pats his licensed dog on the head and remembers that his pet is due for more shots and the yearly renewal of his license.

JOHN gets into his licensed VEHICLE, thankful that he is able to renew the privilege of maintaining and insuring it by paying the DMV every year. He makes sure he has his license to be a DRIVER on him also.

JOHN scrapes together his last $10 for 3 gallons of gas that will get him to work but he doesn’t feel bad; that $10 wasn’t enough for lunch anyway.

JOHN loses three hours of pay because he has to appear in court for a zoning violation of having in his back yard and old car he is restoring as a hobby. He should have known by now that the county requires it to be licensed and operable before he can commence repairs to make it operable and licensable. He finally gets his time in court and loses because his attorney spent his time preparing the bill instead of the case.

JOHN gets back to work and his boss tells him that his retirement pension has been cut in half due to bad investments and he will have to continue working twice as long to collect half as much.

JOHN receives his paycheck and an additional sheet of deductions paid to various tax and insurance agencies. He realizes that tomorrow morning he must duck out the back door to avoid the money hungry group in the front yard.

JOHN drives home with the knowledge that officers of any county, city or federal police agency could stop him for any reason. He is aware that the only probable cause they need is a presumption that he is breathing.

JOHN arrives home just in time to pay the tow company sent by the county to remove his unlawful, unlicensed and inoperable old car that he dearly loved.

JOHN greets his WIFE at the door both knowing full well that their house could have been "legally" entered and searched by a multitude of special agents from a multitude of government agencies in compliance with the new U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act and it’s sidekick Homeland Security. His WIFE has also had a similar day at her work and, since they are both tired, they work together to make a scrumptious meal from something from a box and a can. They lace it with tap water having its own distinct odor and place it in the microwave for a prescribed time. Bingo! They have dinner. They chase their meal with a pink chalk compound that will subdue the intestinal kickback that they know is coming.

JOHN’S teenage son comes in wearing pants that defy all laws of gravity. JOHN tells him to take the garbage out and the child’s government education kicks in with the exclamation that Abe Lincoln already freed the slaves and a father has no right to tell his son what to do because he is sure that the Constitution grants children that right. Furthermore, if JOHN pursues any more unreasonable demands he will be sued. The young mercenary then demands food and reminds his father that his Ritalin prescription needs to be picked up in the morning.

Next his teenage daughter who has become pregnant as a result of being starved for love, attention and family values asks what she can do as she is now concerned with her graduation plans and future. JOHN and his WIFE have no clue.

After all this exciting home life they sit down and watch an hour of nightly propaganda followed by a couple of fantasy laced sit-coms and then retire for the night.

Finally in bed with JOHN’S mind and body the consistency of jello, his WIFE says, "Honey, my body needs some pleasure." With his remaining strength he reaches over and gives her his last bottle of clean air that he had saved from the 50s. She gets to breathe and he gets to sleep.

Now let’s consider a day in the life of John Q. Informed, an American citizen.

John wakes up rested and in comfort from all the room in his bed. Only his wife is there since they chose to honor and love each other instead of getting a license and having the state, county, FBI and IRS in bed with them.

John looks out the window at the criss-crossed skies, greets them with little effort since it only takes one finger and draws a confident deep breath knowing his home is equipped with air purifiers.

He drinks some herbal tea and has fresh organic fruit knowing that his body can recognize such and will not have to trap it in an irritating knot in his stomach.

He goes out the front door and no one is waiting for him on his patented property as he has not granted any of them permission. He gets into his car, that he learned to rename from vehicle, with the knowledge that he is going to operate it for personal conveyance rather than drive it in commerce and so he is not required to have a DRIVERS license.

He is almost immediately stopped by an armed member of his city’s CORPORATE POLICE and calmly explains to the Rambo looking person why neither he or his car requires a license. John even produces copies of the laws of his state that back him up. John starts to explain that he is not JOHN and realizes that he has exceeded the 28-second attention span of the officer. Rambo exposes his reading challenges, repeats the script of his "training," places his hand directly on his manhood in his holster, gives John a citation demanding payment to the city and threatens him with jail next time if he continues to not comply with the laws he is not required to comply with. John shrugs and pulls away from the curb knowing that when he gets back home he has to write another "bite me" letter with appropriate law cites and prepare himself for the "non answer, so shut-up and sit down" responses he will have to deal with to put this matter to rest.

He goes to his state University as he has a documentary on 9/11 and another on the IRS that he wishes to share with the youth there. A map of the campus is put in front of him designating the "free speech" zones available. From his heart he exclaims that he believes America to be a free speech zone. The response he gets is arrogant smirks with explanations that universities are institutions of higher training, not higher learning. He looks at the their application anyway and finds out that the "free-speech zones" would only accommodate a small number of people and the information required amounted to him, his immediate family, living relatives and pets being licensed and standing naked in a crowd of government inspectors.

John moved on to try and rent a local theater. The owner presented him with the same application requirements, a high amount rental contract, a stipulation that John pay for additional rental cops since such a controversial subject matter as truth could cause a riot and then said that he was reluctant to even do it since providing factual documentation to a large group of citizens could cost him his license.

John decides to think it over and see if he can find a financial backer. Deep inside he knows he will find plenty of people who say "yes John, you are right, keep up the good work but I won’t risk my money on spreading the truth."

Back in his car, he turns on the radio and gets a sudden Rush of propaganda totally produced to divide the American people. John hears that this country is a democracy to be cherished and if he doesn’t agree he is undoubtedly a mental incompetent, in need of pharmaceuticals that will assuredly cause his happy place to shrivel up and fall off. The queasy alarm in his stomach goes off and John realizes that his stomach must be listening also. He realizes that "from the jawbone of an ass" has taken on a new meaning. He changes the station only to be confronted with someone screaming to an irregular drumbeat that killing cops is good for all the people out there who perform unthinkable acts with their mothers. Off goes the radio.

He’s hungry now, but understands the difference between eating bulk-junk and nutritious intake. He passes a chicken colonel; a king, a sea captain, a music-box guy and a clown with their heart-attack-in-a-sack drive through windows to find a restaurant with organic food. He pays twice as much money for half as much food but gets 10 times more nutrition. His body says thank you by not emitting embarrassing sounds from body orifices.

Back on the road he dodges potholes, endures a boom-box-Honda, and faces sudden death at the hands of those aiming their vehicles at him in a chemically-induced stupor. John passes a hospital with a long line of cars leading to it. Closer investigation reveals that people are handing over $35 for a flu vaccination by just sticking their arm out the window. He wishes to himself that the evening news would report this as drive-by shootings. He then passes an IRS office with another line of people and smiles to himself as his vision of sheep shearing becomes vivid.

Remembering that when he left home his unlicensed and unvaccinated pet bird needed new flooring for his cage, John stops at the corner newsstand for either a local or national newspaper. Several people are standing around reading papers and commenting on the enlightened info they were receiving. John graciously offers a few facts and their reactions immediately tell him that he has just been labeled and packaged as "one of them" as taught in the papers they were reading. Before walking away he takes another look into their eyes to confirm that what he is seeing is the inside of the back of their heads.

His next stop is an appointment with his Homeopathic Doctor to get a vein and artery cleansing chelation treatment and perhaps a vitamin B shot. He walks in on three genderless types stripping the doctor of his license for failure to follow "accepted medical directives," failure to prescribe enough pharmaceuticals, and conspiracy to teach people health and healing.

He proceeds on to his car dealership because his car has a little red flashing "theft" light that is annoying him and he wants it disconnected. The service manager looked at John like he was nuts and said it was against federal law to disable that system and besides that they were not given any manuals telling what the thing is, where the thing is, or how to disconnect it. John found a mechanic who told him that it was a transponder sending out his vehicle ID number so that the car could be located wherever it was. John proceeded to pull every fuse from his car only to find out that he had disabled every system necessary for his car to run while the objectionable little light continued to flash.

He was only a mile from home so he headed there but managed to mouth a common two single syllable word phrase as well as a middle digit salute to each of the 27 street corner cameras tracking his travel.

Finally home, he finds two special agents from another new agency that even he hadn’t heard of yet inventorying his subversive properties. They had stolen his extra month of food and water storage, his copy of the Constitution and real newspapers, books and videos explaining the truth about America’s course. He asked them if their inability to qualify for the "Special" Olympics was their credentials for becoming "special" agents? They of course didn’t understand the question and stormed off.

His wife arrives home tired after three interviews for work that she is highly qualified for but the business owners reluctantly wouldn’t give her a job because she had explained that her name was Mary not MARY, she didn’t have a government tracking number and wouldn’t say, because she didn’t know or care, that she was even a small part of whichever minority they needed to hire that day. John of course faced the same dilemma.

John helped Mary prepare a nutritional raw food dinner from their home grown garden knowing their Heritage seeds and garden were now illegal because their seeds, which can reproduce, were not the one season controlled terminator seeds. At the dinner table John Jr., his teenage son, produced a report card that should have sported high academic grades but told his parents that his teachers were failing him because he spent too much time in individual thought and didn’t always go along with the group. His teachers gave him a list of careers that would suit him and told him to stop dreaming about anything else. John and Mary knew immediately that John Jr. was crumbling under Goals 2000, Cradle to Grave, No Child Left Behind, and the host of other programs aimed at socially engineering their son to be a mindless moron. Home school was immediately decided on so that John Jr. could retain his personal thought process and wouldn’t be in danger of being force medicated with Prozac or another mind-altering drug given to other brilliant children to keep them dull and not able to think.

Next, their daughter Suzi chimed in on how hard it was to get along at school because her clothes concealed her body and she didn’t have any tattoos or piercings. She had no objection to any of it, but simply didn’t want it for herself. This was considered to be personal choice and she was labeled a troublemaker by not going along with the group. Suzi was also offered the same option of home school and the glee was readily apparent.

Their like-minded friends come over and since they are ever conscious of the need to learn they put in a good informational DVD from "With Liberty and Justice for All."

John and Mary then turned on their government teleprompter and watched the news. It was the only early warning system they had to alert them of new policies and programs headed their way. Most U.S. citizens were watching the same thing, not seeing the underlying intent and proclaiming how well the government was doing its job of protecting them from themselves. These U.S. citizens then went channel surfing for the nightly nudes, which are probably the only true pictures they will ever understand. John and Mary meanwhile are evaluating what they were just told and determining when they would need to "duck and cover."

Finally, at rest in their bed without company, they proclaim their love to each other but sleep cautiously knowing that on this day they had only observed a fraction of the absurdities being force fed to Americans.

This is not "living" either, but John and his family are healthy, happy and feeling good; they have their own thoughts and they do not live in fear because they know who they are. They also live in an area where their friends are preparing for the end times but with a promise for a better future. They can wake up every morning, knowing they did their best to stop the following scenario from happening.

In the late 2000s we enter one of America’s fenced off human resource areas and find two people secretly talking. Resource Unit No. 57, a female worker unit and Resource Unit No. 92, a male entertainment unit.

UNIT 57: "I know this isn’t supposed to happen, but I’ve grown to trust you 92 and I have some distressing information that I must discuss. I know it’s against the law to talk about these things and especially bad to display any morals but I want you to promise to keep a secret until we can decide what to do."

UNIT 92: "You’re acting very strange, but O.K. I’ll keep your secret. What have you done that is so awful?"

UNIT 57: "You’re the only one who knows and it all started when one of those dreadful patriot units from the twentieth century managed to sneak in and deliver several boxes of information from someone he said was my grandfather, whatever that is, and suggested that I start looking this stuff over. There were some weird old books from a time when school was for everyone and they have taught me to read and realize what these people had before they screwed it up and what they could have done to keep it for us. By the way, did you know that an entertainment unit used to be a piece of furniture?"

UNIT 92: "Very funny 57, I think you’ve gone off the deep end. Look at what we have now. Our leader, Master 666 gives us a space to live in, food, medical treatments and all the TV we want. All we have to do is perform our assigned jobs."

UNIT 57: "Well 92, it just became obvious to me that you are a piece of furniture. Back in the 1900s the people could read, but they didn’t. They had free speech, but they kept quiet. They had unalienable rights, but they gave them up. They could choose partners, but they didn’t cherish them. They could have their own children, but they wouldn’t teach. They could travel freely, but they traded for control. They could learn from a ministry, bu they joined a controlled church. They had thousands of people warning them with the truth, but they ignored them. They could vote, but they didn’t. They could be healthy, but they went to Burger Wizard instead. They had a Constitution, but they trashed it. They had wealth, but they didn’t protect it. They could change things, but they waited for the other guy to do it for them. They had guns, but they laid them down. They had TV—and they watched it."

Dennis is the host of "WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL," The Truth on Television" now in its eighth year of production. www.libertyandjusticeforall.tv

TIKI BARBER, co-anchor: All right now, could implanting a microchip into guest workers coming into the US solve our illegal immigration problem?

BRIAN KILMEADE, co-anchor: Here to tell us right now why this is a viable solution that might be used very shortly, Scott Silverman, CEO and Chairman of Applied Digital. Scott, where is this being used right now?

Mr. SCOTT SILVERMAN (Chairman & CEO, Applied Digital): Well, this chip today is being used for medical applications, to identify high-risk medical patients and their medical records in an emergency and clinical situation. The chip itself was approved by the FDA several years ago as a class-two medical device, specifically for that application. But obviously, it can be applicable for the immigration issues we face today as well.

KIRAN CHETRY, co-anchor: And we're going to take a look at it right now. You have the little chip, and it's next to a penny, so we can see just how small that chip would be. And you have one in you, so let's go ahead and just sort of explain how it would happen.

Mr. SILVERMAN: That's correct. My chip is in the upper right arm; it's been there for about three years. It's a simple injection process just like getting a shot of penicillin.

BARBER: OK. Now how exactly does it work? What does the chip actually contain on it?

Mr. SILVERMAN: Well, the chip itself has a unique, 16-digit identification number, and then through a serial port--if I can. Kiran, on the bottom of the scanner. Through a serial port, it attaches to a computer, where a database would pull up and the medical application—your medical records. But in the immigration application, the registration of a guest worker legitimately here in the United States, that could be used at the border. But it could also be used for enforcement purposes at the employer level.

Mr. SILVERMAN: Absolutely. It's an election on the part of the immigrant or an election on the part of the government, when we ultimately define what that technology is that no one has defined yet.

KILMEADE: Has the government bought this from you and said this is going to be the new immigration policy?

Mr. SILVERMAN: No, they have not. We have talked to many people in Washington about using it as an application for a guest worker program. But we cannot say today that they have actually bought it for immigration purposes.

BARBER: Now, a lot of people would say that's it's dangerous, that it's invasive, it could be used to infringe on our civil liberties by tracking us. But this is not what this is all about.

Mr. SILVERMAN: No, that's correct, Tiki. This is not a locating device; this has no GPS capabilities in it whatsoever. It is purely an identification device that reads a unique 16-digit identifier with a proprietary scanner within a very short range. It's a passive device with no power source under the skin that ties to a database where the relevant information is stored.

KILMEADE: Tiki knows the Secretary of State. Maybe Tiki can get this contract for Scott. Tiki, maybe you can get a cut back. You know, you're not going to be playing forever.

CHETRY: But it is an interesting phenomenon. I don't know how comfortable even if you asked me or Tiki or Brian if we would be willing to do it. It just seems, like--it seems scary.

BARBER: But it really is no different than having a passport and having a way to identify yourself. This just is a way that you won't lose it.

Mr. SILVERMAN: Yeah. It's a benefit to the person that's in the guest worker program, because if you leave your card at home or you leave it at your work, you're not going to be able to go back and forth across the border.

KILMEADE: It's like permanently putting a string on your finger to remind you of something.

CHETRY: It's quite interesting, so, keep us posted if there's more interest in it. Thanks, Scott.

by Noel Sheppard

The New Media Journal, formerly The Rant.us, has been removed from Google News and Google Search for what has been deemed “hate speech.” Many readers here might be familiar with this conservative e-zine, and, as a disclaimer, I have been a contributing writer there since September 2004.

(Update: I was just informed by the proprietor of MichNews.com, another conservative e-zine, that he was terminated by Google about a month ago for the same reason. And, the Jawa Report was so terminated on March 29. In all cases, the offending articles appear to have dealt with radical Islam and terrorism.)

This morning, proprietor Frank Salvato realized that none of today’s content had appeared at Google News or was available through Google Search. As such, he sent an e-mail message to the help desk, and received the following response (permission granted to post):

It turns out that all three articles in question dealt with radical Islam extremists and/or terrorism. In the case of MichNews.com, the three articles that didn't meet Google's "smell test" were of similar content. And, my understanding is that the offending pieces at the Jawa Report also dealt with such radicals. I guess the Google folks are now afraid of being associated with writings about America’s number one enemy.

I invite the reader to look at the three articles in question, and decide whether such views expressed in op-ed form constitute “hate speech.” While doing so, ponder the ramifications of this: the largest search engine in the world can censor content. If it decides to become political, it, in theory, could censor writers and articles on the side of the aisle it opposes, and only feature pieces that are in lock-step with its dogma.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Mexico said Tuesday that it would file lawsuits in U.S. courts if National Guard troops on the border become directly involved in detaining migrants.

Mexican border officials also said they worried that sending troops to heavily trafficked regions would push illegal migrants into more perilous areas of the U.S.-Mexican border to avoid detection.

President Bush announced Monday that he would send 6,000 National Guard troops to the 2,000-mile border, but they would provide intelligence and surveillance support to Border Patrol agents, not catch and detain illegal immigrants.

"If there is a real wave of rights abuses, if we see the National Guard starting to directly participate in detaining people ... we would immediately start filing lawsuits through our consulates," Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez told a Mexico City radio station. He did not offer further details.

Mexican officials worry the crackdown will lead to more deaths. Since Washington toughened security in Texas and California in 1994, migrants have flooded Arizona's hard-to-patrol desert and deaths have spiked. Migrant groups estimate 500 people died trying to cross the border in 2005. The Border Patrol reported 473 deaths in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

In Ciudad Juarez, Julieta Nunez Gonzalez, local representative of the Mexican government's National Immigration Institute, said Tuesday she will ask the government to send its migrant protection force, known as Grupo Beta, to more remote sections of the border.

Sending the National Guard "will not stop the flow of migrants, to the contrary, it will probably go up," as people try to get into the U.S. in the hope that they could benefit from a possible amnesty program, Nunez said.

Juan Canche, 36, traveled more than 1,200 miles to the border from the southern town of Izamal and said nothing would stop him from trying to cross.

"Even with a lot of guards and soldiers in place, we have to jump that puddle," said Canche, referring to the drought-stricken Rio Grande dividing Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas. "My family is hungry and there is no work in my land. I have to risk it."

Some Mexican newspapers criticized President
Vicente Fox for not taking a stronger stand against the measure, even though Fox called Bush to express his concerns.

A political cartoon in the Mexico City newspaper Reforma depicted Bush as a gorilla carrying a club with a flattened Fox stuck to it.

Fox's spokesman, Ruben Aguilar, said Tuesday that Mexico accepted Bush's statement that the sending in the National Guard didn't mean militarizing the area. He also said Mexico remained "optimistic" that the U.S. Senate would approve an immigration reform "in the interests of both countries."

Aguilar noted that Bush expressed support for the legalization of some immigrants and implementation of a guest worker program.

"This is definitely not a militarization," said Aguilar, who also dismissed as "absolutely false" rumors that Mexico would send its own troops to the border in response.

Bush has said sending the National Guard is intended as a stopgap measure while the Border Patrol builds up resources to more effectively secure the border.

In Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas, Honduran Antonio Auriel said he would make it into the U.S.

"Soldiers on the border? That won't stop me," he said. "I'll swim the river and jump the wall. I'm going to arrive in the United States."

A blind man enters a Ladies Bar by mistake. He finds his way to a barstool and orders a drink.

After sitting there for a while, he yells to the bartender, "Hey, you wanna hear a blonde joke?"

The bar immediately falls absolutely quiet. In a very deep, husky voice, a woman next to him says, "Before you tell that joke, sir, I think it is just fair - given that you are blind - that you should know five things:

1) the bartender is a blonde girl,
2) the bouncer is a blonde girl,
3) I'm a 6 feet tall, 180-pound blonde woman with a black belt in karate,
4) the woman sitting next to me is blonde and is a professional weight lifter,
5) the lady to your right is a blonde and is a professional wrestler.

The blind man thinks for a second, shakes his head, and declares, "Nah, not if I'm gonna have to explain it five times."

BALTIMORE -- Baltimore City police arrested a Virginia couple over the weekend after they asked an officer for directions.

WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team reporter David Collins said Joshua Kelly and Llara Brook, of Chantilly, Va., got lost leaving an Orioles game on Saturday. Collins reported a city officer arrested them for trespassing on a public street while they were asking for directions .

"In jail for eight hours -- sleeping on a concrete floor next to a toilet," Kelly said.

"It was a nightmare," Brook said. "I was in there thinking I was just dreaming and waiting to wake up."

Collins reported it was a nightmare ending to a nearly perfect day. He said the couple went to a company picnic and watched the Orioles beat Kansas City. It was their first trip to Camden Yards and asked two people for directions to Interstate 95 South when they left.

Collins said somehow they ended up in the Cherry Hill section of south Baltimore. Hopelessly lost, relief melted away concerns after they spotted a police vehicle.

"The first thing that she said to us was no -- you just ran that stop sign, pull over," Brook said. "It wasn't a big deal. We'll pay the stop sign violation, but can we have directions?"

"What she said was 'You found your own way in here, you can find your own way out.'" Kelly said.

Collins said the couple spotted another police vehicle and flagged that officer down for directions. But Officer Natalie Preston, a six-year veteran of the force, intervened.

"That really threw us for a loop when she stepped in between our cars," Kelly said. "(She) said my partner is not going to step in front of me and tell you directions if I'm not."

Collins reported the circumstances got worse. Kelly pulled 40 feet forward parking next to a curb and put his flashers on while Brook was on the phone to her father hoping he could help her with directions. Both her parents are police officers in the Harrisburg, Pa., area.

"(Brook's father) was in the middle of giving us directions when the officer screeched up behind us and got out of the car and asked me to step out. I obeyed," Kelly said. "I obeyed everything -- stepped out of the car, put my hands behind my back, and the next thing I know, I was getting arrested for trespassing."

"By this time, I was completely in tears," Brook said. "I said, 'Ma'am, you know, we just need your help. We are not trying to cause you any trouble. I'm not leaving him here.' What she did was walk over to my side of the car and said, 'Ok, we are taking you downtown, too.'"

Collins said the couple was released from jail without being charged with anything. Brook is now concerned the arrest may complicate a criminal background check she's going through in her job as a child care worker.

Collins said police left Kelly's car unlocked and the windows down at the impound lot. He reported a cell phone charger, pair of sunglasses and 20 CDs were stolen.

The above graphs, based on the official death numbers as recorded in the Official Year Books of the Commonwealth of Australia, are taken from Greg Beattie's excellent book "Vaccination A Parent's Dilemma" and represent the decline in death rates from infectious disease in Australia. They clearly show that vaccines had nothing to do with the decline in death rates. (Note: Graphical evidence on the decline in death rates from infectious disease for USA, England, New Zealand and many other countries shows the exact same scenario as above).

So what were the true reasons for this decline? From his book 'Health and Healing' Dr Andrew Weil best answers it with this statement;

"Scientific medicine has taken credit it does not deserve for some advances in health. Most people believe that victory over the infectious diseases of the last century came with the invention of immunisations. In fact, cholera, typhoid, tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough, etc, were in decline before vaccines for them became available - the result of better methods of sanitation, sewage disposal, and distribution of food and water."

MEXICO CITY - If Arnold Schwarzenegger had migrated to Mexico instead of the United States, he couldn't be a governor. If Argentina native Sergio Villanueva, firefighter hero of the Sept. 11 attacks, had moved to Tecate instead of New York, he wouldn't have been allowed on the force.

Even as Mexico presses the United States to grant unrestricted citizenship to millions of undocumented Mexican migrants, its officials at times calling U.S. policies "xenophobic," Mexico places daunting limitations on anyone born outside its territory.

In the United States, only two posts — the presidency and vice presidency — are reserved for the native born.

In Mexico, non-natives are banned from those and thousands of other jobs, even if they are legal, naturalized citizens.

Foreign-born Mexicans can't hold seats in either house of the congress. They're also banned from state legislatures, the Supreme Court and all governorships. Many states ban foreign-born Mexicans from spots on town councils. And Mexico's Constitution reserves almost all federal posts, and any position in the military and merchant marine, for "native-born Mexicans."

Recently the Mexican government has gone even further. Since at least 2003, it has encouraged cities to ban non-natives from such local jobs as firefighters, police and judges.

Mexico's Interior Department — which recommended the bans as part of "model" city statutes it distributed to local officials — could cite no basis for extending the bans to local posts.

After being contacted by The Associated Press about the issue, officials changed the wording in two statutes to delete the "native-born" requirements, although they said the modifications had nothing to do with AP's inquiries.

"These statutes have been under review for some time, and they have, or are about to be, changed," said an Interior Department official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name.

But because the "model" statues are fill-in-the-blanks guides for framing local legislation, many cities across Mexico have already enacted such bans. They have done so even though foreigners constitute a tiny percentage of the population and pose little threat to Mexico's job market.

The foreign-born make up just 0.5 percent of Mexico's 105 million people, compared with about 13 percent in the United States, which has a total population of 299 million. Mexico grants citizenship to about 3,000 people a year, compared to the U.S. average of almost a half million.

"There is a need for a little more openness, both at the policy level and in business affairs," said David Kim, president of the Mexico-Korea Association, which represents the estimated 20,000 South Koreans in Mexico, many of them naturalized citizens.

"The immigration laws are very difficult ... and they put obstacles in the way that make it more difficult to compete," Kim said, although most foreigners don't come to Mexico seeking government posts.

J. Michael Waller, of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, was more blunt. "If American policy-makers are looking for legal models on which to base new laws restricting immigration and expelling foreign lawbreakers, they have a handy guide: the Mexican constitution," he said in a recent article on immigration.

"This country needs to be more open," said Francisco Hidalgo, a 50-year-old video producer. "In part to modernize itself, and in part because of the contribution these (foreign-born) people could make."

Others express a more common view, a distrust of foreigners that academics say is rooted in Mexico's history of foreign invasions and the loss of territory in the 1847-48 Mexican-American War.

Speaking of the hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who enter Mexico each year, chauffeur Arnulfo Hernandez, 57, said: "The ones who want to reach the United States, we should send them up there. But the ones who want to stay here, it's usually for bad reasons, because they want to steal or do drugs."

Some say progress is being made. Mexico's president no longer is required to be at least a second-generation native-born. That law was changed in 1999 to clear the way for candidates who have one foreign-born parent, like President Vicente Fox, whose mother is from Spain.

But the pace of change is slow. The state of Baja California still requires candidates for the state legislature to prove both their parents were native born.

The release of new video footage of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon has spurred yet another controversy. In anticipation of the release, CNN’s Kyra Phillips was interviewing Jamie McIntyre Tuesday afternoon, and asked him what happened at the Pentagon on 9/11, as he was reporting live from the scene that day.

Referring to the idea that something other than a 757 hit the Pentagon, McIntyre stated, “Having been there on September 11th, having seen the plane wreckage and photographed it myself personally, I can tell you that’s nonsense… [Click here for sound clip (wav)] I had a camera with me, I took pictures of some of the wreckage, some of the parts of the fuselage of …a part of the cockpit, until they told us we had to move back away from the scene…” [Click here for sound clip (wav)]

However, McIntyre’s comments are in direct contradiction to his original report on 9/11, when he stated, “ …from my close up inspection, there’s no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. The only site is the actual… side of the building that’s crashed in and as I said, the only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you can pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, a fuselage, nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon.” [Click Here for sound clip (wav)]

As a senior veteran reporter for the network, McIntyre sets the standard for accurate reporting and the network depends on reporters of his stature to accurately relay information. McIntyre’s blatant reversal of reported “facts” now brings into question the integrity of not just his reporting, but the credibility of the entire CNN network.

[Those 3 clips can also be had from "The Rockyview" at the following links clip 1, clip 2, clip 3 ]

(AgapePress) - Thursday, May 11, Senate Chaplain Mike Morris delivered the following prayer before the guests and members of the North Carolina Senate:

"This morning we offer thanks, O God, for the unexpected blessing of a $2 billion surplus in the State Treasury. We're also grateful for the Senators who understand such a sum. For the poor in our State, $2 billion is an incomprehensible amount -- a different monetary language. In their world, a few dollars more each month means the difference between despair and hopefulness. So to those of us who know the meaning of $2 billion, help us also respond to the language of dollar bills and pocket change."

After the prayer, I turned to a colleague sitting next to me in the gallery and said: "That prayer was decidedly progressive." In other words, the suggestion of the prayer was that North Carolina lawmakers ought to take the surplus and dole it out in various government programs for the poor.

Unfortunately, we are living in a time when most people would offer a whole-hearted "Amen" to the chaplain's prayer. Yet the chaplain is actually espousing a form of economic deviance -- one far from the teaching of Holy Scripture.

There's no doubt that Christianity is deeply concerned for the poor. But the Scriptures do not authorize the government to be involved in matters of housing, food, child-care, health-care, etc. Romans 13:3-5, the definitive text for understanding the role of government, says government is to bear the sword against evil doers and protect the innocent. The apostle Paul clearly delineates this to be the reason people should pay taxes -- to provide for sufficient military, police, and court services; to protect the public's right to life, liberty, and private property. It's neither altruistic nor compassionate, however, when the government coercively extracts money from one group and gives it as an act of public charity to another -- even when it's needed! Such is just another form of violating the eighth commandment: "Thou shalt not steal."

It's hard to believe that America, which was birthed in part because of its opposition to unjust taxation, would so passively accept a tax burden that is considerably squelching its hopes at opportunity. Taxation that seeks a more equitable distribution of wealth by seizing the property and possessions of those who have in the name of those who don't, significantly suppresses a nation's ability to produce.

Moreover, this approach to economics undermines the strength of the national character.

Alexis De Tocqueville, the famous French philosopher, once warned: "America will last until the populace discovers that it can vote for itself largesse out of the public treasury." For those who might not know, "largesse" means: "liberally vote themselves gifts and handouts from public coffers."

Without question, today government has become the opiate of the people. We look to it to solve all our problems, but in doing so we preempt the genius of private enterprise, the power of private charity, and the profound influence of the church. All of these serve to make us a better people -- to nurture the nation's spirit -- to serve the public more effectively. When the public begins to look to the government as a panacea for all its woes, the end is indolence, vice, and less liberty. Can we honestly deny this is where public or state charity has taken us?

No, Senate Chaplain Morris' prayer shouldn't receive an "Amen," but an "Oh me." It was, whether intentional or not, an unholy alliance with socialism -- pure and simple. In a sermon titled, The Bible and Economics, Dr. D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries rightly notes that such "[i]nstead of drawing people to the church and God who is the provider of every good and perfect gift, it leads them to a more and more secularized state and engenders more and more of a disbelieving populace. Furthermore, it leads to a loss of freedom, to tyranny as we sell our souls to the government store. More and more people are willing to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage or, as somebody said, a pot of socialistic message. They will end up as a people totally dependent upon the state and without liberty."

Indeed, perhaps a better prayer before the N.C. Senate during a time of surplus would have been:

by Mike Adams, Counterthink.org

The Pentagon wasn't hit by a Boeing 757 jetliner. It was hit by a flying grilled cheese sandwich. How do I know? I clearly saw it in the video frames released by the FBI, there on the right. Not everybody sees the grilled cheese sandwich, I admit. Some people see a Boeing 757 jet out of the same blur that I'm pretty sure is a grilled cheese sandwich.

It's astonishing, really. According to almost every reporter in the mainstream media, a Boeing 757 jet, when photographed, looks exactly like an indistinguishable blur. Let's face it: The video frames released by the Pentagon make ghost and UFO photos look downright crisp. And yet, somehow, out of this unrecognizable blur, mainstream media stories are claiming they clearly show a Boeing 757 jet and that all 9-11 conspiracy theories are now dispelled.

They must not be looking at the same video frames I'm looking at, which are the ones released by the FBI (click here to see photos). Instead, they must be accidentally looking at the Photoshopped mock up video frames created to show what a Boeing 757 hitting the Pentagon would really look like if, in fact, a Boeing 757 had hit the Pentagon.

But I'm sticking with my grilled cheese sandwich conspiracy theory, which has something to do with the war on cheese and USDA regulations regarding dairy products, I'm pretty sure. Because the FBI has only released selected video frames, not the entire video sequence, which means they are clearly trying to hide the presence of the flying grilled cheese sandwich. Out of 84 confiscated video tapes that might show what really hit the Pentagon, these few selective frames are the best they can come up with?

People will see what they want to see, I suppose. Some people over at Fox News insist they see a Boeing 757 in these video frames. And why not? I once saw the Virgin Mary on a Mexican tortilla. Years ago, I thought I saw Jay Leno on a pancake (before I ate it, that is). People tend to see what they are told to see, or what they're familiar with. Some folks see letters of the alphabet carved into rocks on Mars.

I have a question for these people: If they can see a Boeing 757 in a blurry video frame, why can't they see the far clearer face of a demon rising out of the smoke from the WTC tower? Click here to see the demon face picture (scroll down the page after you click).

For the record, this demon face is just a coincidental image made of smoke and shadows. You can spot demons, or butterflies, or faces, or practically anything if you spend enough time looking at natural phenomena like smoke, rocks, water or even tree bark.

But no matter how long I stare at the Pentagon video frames, I still cannot see a Boeing 757. I've come to the conclusion that the only way to see a Boeing 757 in the frames released so far is to hallucinate it. Americans are good a hallucinating, especially when such hallucinations are demanded by the mainstream media. Drugged up on fluoride and medications, about half the American population will see anything you tell them to see, as long as it is consistent with current cultural mythology.

Besides, don't you think that if a Boeing 757 had been clearly caught on tape smashing into the Pentagon, Fox News would be showing the video with non-stop repetition like it did with the twin towers tapes? If videos existed that bolstered the government's story, you can bet they'd be circulating. Or maybe, just maybe, they're holding them back in preparation for a grand public announcement intended to embarrass conspiracy theorists. Or perhaps they need more time to Photoshop the video frames. Either way, we'll probably never know.

Actually, it doesn't really matter what hit the Pentagon. This isn't the whole story. It's just a distraction to keep people from talking about the WTC 7 building -- the one that mysteriously collapsed in controlled demolition fashion due to, we're told, a couple of small office fires.

The mainstream media won't touch the WTC 7 question, because there's plenty of video footage showing its controlled demolition, and there's no reasonable explanation for what happened other than the use of pre-planned explosive charges. So, using the oldest magician's trick in the book -- misdirection -- the media keeps people focused on the Pentagon video frames so they won't think about WTC 7.

Using the same straw man argument, the mainstream media leaps to the outrageous conclusion that a few blurry Pentagon video frames dispel all 9-11 conspiracy theories and magically explain everything. If a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon, the thinking goes, then WTC 7 wasn't demolished with explosive charges, either. I know, it makes no sense, but since when did fear mongering and war marketing have to make any sense?

Now maybe I'm wrong about the Pentagon. Maybe a Boeing 757 did strike the building and then vanish into thin air, leaving behind no trace of its passengers, luggage, seats, undercarriage or engines. And maybe the FBI will yet release some more convincing video frames showing this with unquestioning clarity. Maybe the Virgin Mary really did visit that tortilla. Maybe those Pentagon video frames really do show a giant Boeing 757 right smack in the middle of these frames, but my mind unconsciously deletes the jetliner every time I look at the them.

These are all possibilities that must be considered. Some are more likely than others.

But even if these video frames prove nothing, the big question remains: What could have hit the Pentagon and exploded in such an obvious fireball (which is clearly visible in the video frames)?

The conspiracy theorists say it might have been a single-engine US Navy A3 SkyWarrior jet. Or perhaps a remote controlled (but heavily armed) drone. I think it was a high-speed grilled cheese sandwich flung by the hand of Allah, all the way from Afganistan. That's the only thing that can explain both the missing airplane wreckage and the smell of burned toast following the incident. Remember all those civilians combing the Pentagon lawn, looking for something? They were actually looking for cheese. Someone moved their cheese, and they don't know what to do.

There's also another theory that no one has proposed yet: Maybe it's something so darned scary that we don't want to know about it, and perhaps the Pentagon is covering this up just to shield us from something that's a serious national security issue. For example, maybe some high school science geek built a breakthrough antimatter weapon as his science project, then flew it into the Pentagon using a toy remote controlled helicopter. Or, perhaps a member of the Pentagon staff experienced spontaneous human combustion and happened to be standing next to a fuel storage tank.

Maybe China has an orbital laser platform and used it to blast the Pentagon (which would explain why there's no airplane in the video frames and no airplane-sized hole in the side of the Pentagon). Maybe a freak-of-nature ball lightning phenomenon occurred. Perhaps an alien race visited earth, fired proton torpedoes into the Pentagon, then escaped at light speed (which would explain the blur on the video frames). Perhaps it wasn't the Pentagon that exploded, but rather the air around the Pentagon that imploded, sucking the fire right out of the building and leaving no trace of an airplane.

These are all possibilities that must be considered. Some are more likely than others.

Maybe nothing happened at all. Were you really there? Did you see it with your own eyes? I didn't. It's all second-hand knowledge, or third-hand, or worse. Some people claim the NASA moon landings were faked or that the earth is really flat. I mean, have you ever walked to the edge to find out? So how would you really know? I know the answer to those two questions because I understand the laws of physics. NASA really did land on the moon, and the earth is actually shaped like a giant grilled cheese sandwich.

It all comes down to a basic question of how do we know what we know? And unfortunately, when it comes to 9-11, the only thing we do know for sure is that the laws of physics were still operating that day, and that tells us a lot about what did and didn't happen, especially with the WTC 7 building. But it will never tell us for certain what hit the Pentagon, or why.

Neither will we be told why we're not being shown the full frames of all 84 confiscated video tapes. Perhaps the videos actually show a military official stealing office pens from the Pentagon, and they don't want to make that public. Maybe they show a giant "X" spray-painted on the side of the Pentagon, as in, "Hit it here!" Perhaps the 84 videos were all mysteriously erased by the terrorists who don't want the FBI to study their flight path, or the FBI is so strapped for cash that it's waiting to auction them off on eBay to the highest bidder.

These are all possibilities that must be considered. Some are more likely than others.

The government claims all 84 cameras either didn't capture the impact or that tape in the cameras was mysteriously empty and yet returned as normal to film the cleanup operations.

Judicial Watch has said it will continue to pursue footage from the other 84 cameras. If the government is telling the truth in saying that the tapes show nothing of interest then what are they trying to hide by not releasing them?

Why is air a lot like sex? Because it's no big deal unless you're not getting any

Why is it so hard for women to find men that are sensitive, caring, and good-looking? Because those men already have boyfriends.

What's the difference between a new husband and a new dog? After a year, the dog is still excited to see you

What makes men chase women they have no intention of marrying? The same urge that makes dogs chase cars they have no intention of driving.

Why don't bunnies make noise when they have sex? Because they have cotton balls.

What's the difference between a porcupine and BMW? A porcupine has the pricks on the outside!

What did the blonde say when she found out she was pregnant? "Are you sure it's mine?"

Why do drivers' education classes in Redneck schools use the car only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays?

Did you hear about the Chinese couple that had a retarded baby? They named him "Sum Ting Wong

What would you call it when an Italian has one arm shorter than the other? A speech impediment.

What does it mean when the flag at the Post Office is flying at half-mast? They're hiring.

What's the difference between a southern zoo and a northern zoo? A southern zoo has a description of the animal on the front of the cage along with... "a recipe".

How do you get a sweet little 80-year-old lady to say the F word? Get another sweet little 80-year-old lady to yell *BINGO*!

What's the difference between a northern fairytale and a southern fairytale? A northern fairytale begins "Once upon a time..." A southern fairytale begins "Y'all ain't gonna believe this s....t"

Why is there no Disneyland in China ? No one's tall enough to go on the good rides

Well, since Christianity is an issue with the United Nations, globalist think tanks, and sustainable ecology, one might have guessed that “new Christian developments” might surface all over the media. New books, new discoveries, new theories, and the like – it’s not like we didn’t see this one coming.

I consider myself to be a Christian, though not a church trained Christian. I don’t have faith in today’s church nor a “faith-based” mentality, so to speak, and so I had to work on my faith without the assistance of grant dollar pastors, ministers, or priests. I had to develop a personal relationship with God, and I had to think things through within the context of life experiences, human history, and through prayer. My beliefs are no doubt a hybrid of my making, but they are between God and me, and they are not up for judgment.

As Christianity has been on the global chopping block for a very long time, I figured that “changes” were coming down the pike in one form or another. And, of course, the Bible states that these public alterations, including slaughter, were inevitable.

One thing that has always perplexed me about Christianity in general is that all known books of the Bible have been hidden from the world for around 1,800 years. As a Christian, I would like to have been privy to the full disclosure of historical writings, but the canon pickers, much like politicians, were afraid of public knowledge and public free will. Therefore, they hand picked the canons of their political choosing to form what are now our standard scriptures.

What we do know for sure is that many books were purposefully denied to the public, and as early Christian leadership and their crusaders spilled a whole lot of blood to ensure their version of Christianity stuck, we continue in an on-going Christian dilemma.

Now, what bothers me about all this “new information” is that it leads once again to the “superiority vs. inferiority” argument, which my readers know is an on-going theme in my writing and social commentaries. For about 10 years, the market has been flooded with new books that claim there exists a hereditary bloodline to Jesus and Mary Magdeleine. Or, in other words, a genetic royalty, kingship, or lineage, which immediately hints at “superior” vs. “inferior” gene pools.

As genetic information is now globally collected and databased, and as this bloodline scenario has been the primary focus of Freemasons and other secrets organizations for centuries and all around the world, Christians are once again put into confusing and manipulated circumstances. Add this to the existing question of violent men picking and choosing canons, and then sending armies of crusaders to viciously slaughter differing Christian opinions and tribes, and the pummeling and manipulation of Christian reality continues to this day.

And let us not forget that Jesus was Jewish – the greatest Christian dilemma of all.

One of the best arguments against the global movement to end the Christian religion is that globalist elites do not pound upon all religions. Globalists want the world’s people to believe their sustainability ruse, and they want the world’s people to be pantheists in order that they willingly live as serfs and tenants, but Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and all the others are not slated for planned extinction, as deliberated by global ecology, Agenda 21, and think tankers. Elite globalists are after the demise of Christianity – exclusively.

This may be for the sole purpose of eliminating the United States government, which declares that man has unalienable rights. It may be for the sole purpose of taking down the belief in unalienable rights, which include liberty. You can’t be a global citizen with liberty or property rights, nor can you have a mindset that gives human freedom an omnipotent foundation. Perhaps the ending of Christianity simply gives global rulers the self-proclaimed right to rule without a Divine barrier. Perhaps the belief in God itself is the affront to globalists with long laid plans. Perhaps they cannot act as they do with faith in a loving God. Perhaps, as the Bible states, antithesis is the name of the game.

But the problem for Christians is the same problem that all mankind faces when living beneath the repeated historical BS of elites and aristocrats. They decide what we believe, when we believe it; they manipulate reality, and they historically slaughter all who disagree with their profitable ends and means. There’s nothing new in history, folks. We’re still living, breathing, dying, and jumping to the decisions of those who control the armies and the gold.

Mankind simply refuses to get through its universal mind that too much collective wealth unleashes devastation upon the masses. Yet over and over again, and throughout all human history, the wealthy few enforce personal missions, which always include ruling viciously and unfairly over the inferior masses. And most importantly, the wealth of elites ALWAYS comes from their ability to steal from the masses. I suggest that you consider well the intention of the U.N. to add to your current and illegal taxation their “world” taxes. A body elite is growing that could, in fact, financially level all of mankind – minus them. America is certainly degrading toward tragic economic ends – minus the global public-private grant connected groups and their master corporations.

Therefore, it is important to consider the power behind the grouping of elites. We have the Skull and Bones, Freemasons, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, global think tanks, and many more “collectives” of the rich and powerful. We have a declared intent to erase Christianity, to force consensus pantheism into the minds of all American school children, and the highly successful missions of American universities to implant Socialist pantheism into the minds and politics of young adults. And at the same time, we have new slants taking shape on Christian history – and all at the impeccably orchestrated timing of the educated elite and their media slaves. Let us consider well that when elite groups meet in secret and behind closed and guarded doors, and swear oaths to secrecy, they are, in fact, keeping “horrendous” secrets.

Back in the old days, slaughters and genocide worked like crusading charms because there was no mass media. Today, blatant slaughters are problematic as they are televised. However, things like depleted uranium and anthrax, manufactured super viruses, chemtrailing, and psychotronics – all of which having developed at the behest, desires, and political intentions of global elites and their funding apparatuses – provide camouflage for genocidal activities, as does their total control of mass media. Once again (and over and over again), I direct readers back to the U.N. Agenda 21 whose primary missions are to 1) place ALL land and water under the control of a one-world government and 2) de-populate the planet by about 3/4ths.

Christians remain locked in this elite dilemma. What is true, what is factual, who to believe, and what to do? Why are many of the books of the Bible, to this day and 2,000 years later, still hidden under Vatican and Israeli lock and key, and why did the canon-pickers, our Bible publishers, cause some of the most infamous and barbaric slaughters in all of human history? These are real questions for real thinkers, and not for faith-based sheep.

Here’s how I get through a spiritual day. I thank God for my life and my skills, and I ask for spiritual guidance every day of my life. I ask for clarity and for my faith and truth to be strengthened amidst all the deceptions of those who historically mislead mankind and act according to pathological arrogance, greed, and profit mongering.

I pray for faith, hope, and love, and for the ability to love my fellow man, which ain’t easy.

As Christians, the Jewish, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Native Americans, pantheists, and all the rest, let us pray for all mankind, and to carefully and sincerely search for truth. We are all dealing with the same historical lies and deceptions that have always plagued us throughout history. Hopefully, we’re all getting better at recognizing the enemies of all mankind’s unalienable rights – the one’s who continue to be thoroughly corrupted by power, insatiable greed, cowardice, and money. Genocide in any way, shape, form, or for any reason, is pure evil. On this, the Christian Bible and all of documented history are quite clear.

At this point in history, I’m also praying for “insiders” to step forth, fess up, and to bring truth, hope, and sanity back to the world and to our nation. I am praying for heroes and for our beloved and misused American military to come swiftly and safely home. We need them here during this “horrendous” time in America history.

And as for Jesus Christ, whether he was a Jewish Rabbi, a spiritual revolutionary, a carpenter, or a king, he left a legacy and a promise which gave God to me, for one, and provided a path and a means to morality, human compassion, hope, and a want of spiritual truth. He gave to mankind the concept of forgiveness – both of ourselves and to others, and he defined treachery and deception and explained how to recognize and avoid their influence. So it stands to reason that any attempt to eliminate this kind of influence has dire implications and motivations.

Do we know the complete Christian story? No. But we must follow compassion and morality where we find it. I’ll choose Jesus over Gaia, the think tank god, any day of the week. And for the record, both the Old and New Testaments mandate Earthly stewardship and the compassionate and ethical treatment of animals. I don’t think what these scriptures had in mind was political land confiscation rackets, global forest fire initiatives, multi-billion dollar “non-profit” land trusts like The Nature Conservancy; the DNR, Fish and Wildlife, PETA, or any other political micro-managers or grant-funded manipulators of nature – including people. In fact, I see Biblical-proportion red flags when it comes to “sustainable environmentalism.” What I see are a whole lot of inter-connected money exchangers, the global fattening of corporate elite wallets, and the centralizing of public-private dictatorship. I see the systematic ending of unalienable rights. AND I see the richest of the rich telling all of mankind, once again, what to believe, what to think, how to act, how to live, and how to serve – or else.

I see mankind losing the ability to “sustain” itself on a planet that was given to all for sustenance. When the world’s richest people are trying to lock down all land and water on the entire planet, and at the same time call for the elimination of most of the people on Earth, I see the same elite and historical bullying and viciousness, in another century, but with highly refined weapons of mass intent. I see evil. What do you see? Historical and revolving greed in action? Pray for truth, forgiveness, and for the ability to be loving and useful. Happy Easter.

"Silence is Golden, but when it threatens your freedom, it is yellow" - Sir Edmound Burke

CANNES, FRANCE – Aaron Russo’s incendiary political documentary which exposes many of the governmental organizations and entities that have abridged the freedoms of U.S. citizens had its international premiere at Cannes and won a standing ovation. The event, which was held on the beach and filled to capacity, was open to the public and drew a crowd of people who stood along the boardwalk to watch the film.

Through interviews with U.S. Congressmen, as well the former IRS Commissioner, former IRS and FBI agents, tax attorneys and authors, Russo proves conclusively that there is no law requiring citizens to pay a direct tax on their labor. His film connects the dots between money creation, federal income tax, voter fraud, the national identity card (which becomes law in May 2008) and the implementation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to track citizens. Neither left nor right-wing in perspective, the film concludes that the U.S. government is taking on the characteristics of a police state. Doc will open on multiple screens in cities across the U.S. beginning July 28.

The international audience at Cannes as well as the European media has been fascinated by Russo’s fiery diatribe against the direction America is heading. The discussion that followed the preview lasted for thirty minutes. Actor Nick Nolte, in Cannes for the premiere of “Over The Hedge,” joined Russo during the premiere event. Nolte was the lead actor in “Teachers,” a film produced by Russo that also starred Morgan Freeman.

Russo, who is best known as the producer of feature films including “The Rose” with Bette Midler and “Trading Places” with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd, wrote, produced, and directed the doc. “I am disgusted by the direction America was heading,” says Russo. “I made this movie because I want to live in a free country and I want my kids and grandkids to live in a free country. The American people must abandon the myth that America is still the land of liberty that it once was.”

Russo’s doc already has a tremendous grass root groundswell behind it. The film has previewed in over twenty-five cities with sold out theatres and standing ovations. The website, www.freedomtofascism.com has been had over five hundred thousand (500,000) streams of the video trailer. Additionally, through the website and from grassroots screenings, over $100,000 in non-deductible donations has been collected to help with the theatrical release.







	ABOUT THE DISTRIBUTION COMPANY: Cinema Libre Studio, a full-service mini-studio that offers production, co-production, distribution (theatrical and home entertainment), foreign sales, marketing and post-production services, is best known for producing and distributing provocative independent titles in that include "Outfoxed," "Uncovered: The War On Iraq," Tim Robbins' "Embedded ive" and currently in U.S. theatres, "Giuliani Time," For more information visit www.cinemalibrestudio.com .

“While giving that ridiculous amnesty speech on how he’s going to guard our borders against illegal aliens last Monday,” Los Angeles radio talk show host Terry Anderson said, “Bush looked as nervous as a whore in church.”

After five years of neglecting border protection, Bush offered amnesty to 20 million illegal aliens who have resided illegally in the United States for an extended amount of time. That’s like being the president of a bank—then allowing bank robbers to walk in, rob the bank—stand around for a few days until their robbery blows over—then expect to deposit ‘their’ money like honest citizens—and take up residence in the bank as if it were their home.

In his speech, he offered sad testimony about one illegal alien who was injured while serving in the U.S. military. That’s like giving solace to a bank robber whose been shot for robbing a bank. Bush would have been better off giving solace to Bonnie Eggle, mother of National Park Ranger Kris Eggle who was shot by a Mexican drug smuggler. Bush needs to give solace to the families of Dale Englerth, Justin Goodman, Officer Don Young, John Hessler and thousands of Americans sacrificed in death, disease and drugs by illegals.

After illegals knowingly invaded our borders, Bush proposes amnesty to 20 million criminals with a path to citizenship. How can one man degrade U.S. citizenship to that of a criminal? Let’s look at the reality of what we face.

The fall of the Roman Empire occurred after Emperor Valens opened Rome’s borders in 376 A.D. By 476 A.D., Rome vanished after it allowed the Goth nation to cross the Danube River. If the United States won’t protect its borders, its language or its culture, and will not enforce its laws--it will repeat Rome’s fall. Mexico’s invasion of the United States exceeds the scale of the Goth migration into Rome or any other migration in history.

As a nation we must protect our borders if we expect long term survival of the American Republic. Legal immigrants must demonstrate they intend to become Americans by learning our common language, English, and assimilating into the American culture that honors individual liberty, hard work and self-reliance. We cannot and must not reward criminals whose first act in our country was to break our laws.

The one aspect of Bush’s speech that hasn’t made an impact on Americans yet, is the addition of at least 100 million and up to 193 million people in the next 20 to 30 years. If that Senate amnesty bill moves ahead, we shall be invaded worse than Rome with consequences exactly like Rome. We will become a dead country.

Charles Hurt of Washington Times, May 16, 2006, wrote, “The Senate immigration reform bill would allow for up to 193 million new legal immigrants -- a number greater than 60 percent of the current U.S. population -- in the next 20 years.”

Senator Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican said, “Congress is blissfully ignorant of the scope and impact of the bill, which has bipartisan support in the Senate and has been praised by President Bush.”

This illustrates the ‘gross stupidity’ of our senators and this president who refuse to ‘see’ what a statesman like Sessions sees. Senator Sessions is to be commended for his intellect and common sense.

On the other side of reality, Republican Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Mel Martinez of Florida ‘tossed’ the bill together like a couple of mad chefs giving illegal aliens who have been in the U.S. two years or longer a right to citizenship. They did it in the face of 85 percent of the American public that demands no amnesty and a securing of our borders with troops.

The bill allows the annual flow of legal immigrants to double to more than two million annually. The guest-worker program adds 325,000 new workers annually who could later apply for citizenship.

Just consider 20 million illegal aliens, if not more, being allowed to bring their wives and kids into the USA! If only half the illegals are married, the average Mexican wife has three to six kids, that’s a minimum of 30 million Spanish speaking kids crammed into our classrooms.

Senator Byron L. Dorgan, North Dakota Democrat, said that he would introduce an amendment to strip out the guest-worker program, warning that the legislation would "pull apart the middle class in this country."

America slides into the low wage capitol of the world and suffers the loss of the Middle Class. We’d all become the low class mirroring a Third World country. On top of that, we’d be importing the entrenched poor of other countries with no intellectual tools or skills to maintain or sustain our country.

If enacted, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S.2611) would be the most dramatic change in immigration law in 80 years, allowing an estimated 103 million to as high as 193 million persons to legally immigrate to the U.S. over the next 20 years— fully one-third of the current population of the United States.

Even Newt Gingrich said, “The GOP is drifting toward disaster. I am very worried that the Republican leadership in the Senate and potentially the White House are just going to end up very alienated from the vast majority of Americans on this issue. The Senate bill is an absolute disaster."

Gingrich cited Gallup polling data that underscores the importance of an enforcement-first approach taken by the House:

    *      84% say the U.S. should go after employers who hire illegal immigrants
    *      86% say the U.S. should cut off federal funding for cities and states that refuse to enforce the law
    *      90% say English should be a requirement to become a citizen
    *      85% say citizens should have a voter-identity card to make sure only Americans are voting

As you can imagine how nervous a whore would be sitting in church, we have a president who can no longer lie, duck or deceive his ‘congregation’ which is a increasingly astute American citizenry. He can’t pretend any more. He can’t fool us and Bush cannot ignore us. Illegals work all our jobs! We are the ones being killed, raped, robbed, introduced to TB, leprosy, hepatitis, and our schools and hospitals overrun. We’re tired of this president with no clothes as he parades in his regal falsities against our Constitution.

Beyond his being ‘nervous’ facing U.S. citizens, he can’t keep telling us that we ‘can’t’ deport 20 million illegal aliens. We don’t have to. We simply enforce our laws against employers of illegal aliens. We shut down the rides at Disneyland and the folks go home. No more come to Disneyland. It’s call “Attrition through Enforcement” and it works.

If he allows this massive amnesty bill, our country will pile up in the history books along with Rome.

If Mr. President, you think mass immigration can continue, first tell Americans where our waters are too pure, where the air is too fresh, where there is too little roadway congestion, insufficient urban sprawl, too much biodiversity, not enough energy consumption, under-utilized landfills, too much cheap electrical power, where jobs for underprivileged minorities are too abundant, and where our national parks are not loved to death. Tell us how there is too little gridlock in our cities. Tell us there aren’t two million homeless people in America. Tell us we need more immigrants instead of taking care of millions of our own poor.

How on God’s green earth can an added 100 million to 200 million more people make America better? Is it better in China? How about India? Anyone traveled to Bangladesh lately? Please answer that Mr. Bush, because the fact is, you cannot. With your lack of integrity and ineptitude, I agree with Terry Anderson: Bush should be as nervous as a whore in church.

The detailed route map and each state capital visit schedule is available at www.21stCenturyPaulRevereRide.us We can always work-in another rally, but planning time is running short. Inquire at Frosty's email address for full details on how you can support the PRR Team: Howard Wooldridge at wooldridge@leap.cc Start date is May 29, 2006 in Denver, CO -- with completion in Washington, DC set for 12 Aug 2006.

The information they present regarding the events of 9/11/2001 are quite challenging. The British Parliament is scheduled to view the video on June 14, 2006. So, might it seem obvious that an attack on the film makers at this time is intended to stop any and all viewing of the film.

Well, the Naudet brothers were shooting the final scenes of a documentary on the New York City Fire Department when the terrorist attack occurred. They rode along with the subjects of their documentary to the site of the attack, while keeping their cameras rolling. The result was some of the most priceless historic film footage ever captured.

Dylan Avery and his partners acknowledge the sources of their materials, and this included the Naudet brothers. NOTHING in "Loose Change" indicated any support by some sources of material and gave credit to others who obviously cooperated. But Avery and company did not hide their sources, they were very open about the source of their materials.

On the eve of Parliament viewing "Loose Change" the Naudet brothers have moved to stop Avery and company. Through their attorney, the Naudet brother are alleging infringement of copyright and trademark. In the copyright code is what is known as the "fair use exception" to copyrights.

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Have you ever wondered why talk radio stations do not play the whole of a song? It is because if they do not use the whole song, then they have not infringed on the song performer's rights. Unless the Naudet brothers can prove the 18.00 per CD is garnering a profit, there is nothing in the law to convict Avery and company.

Does ANYTHING in this language indicate contribution or support or agreement with "Loose Change"? NO. In fact, the viewer is encouraged to obtain these videos (possibly even buying them, but that is a choice of the viewer). Hence, surface evidence is that no infringement of the Naudet brothers has occurred.

The Dylan gang continues their credits by expressing contributions "courtesy" of MANY other sources, and indicated their respective cooperative efforts.

So, what is the real base motivation for Franfurt, Kurnit, Klein & Selz to get involved. Maybe the video is getting too much attention and the power-that-be are nervous.

By-the-way, it is recommended you watch "Loose Change". You might discount a few aspects of the claims, but you can not discount all of them.

You can download MWV versions of them and some other good related videos at the following links.

In December 2001 (3 months after the 9/11/2001 attacks) president Bush met with displaced workers in a town hall meeting, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Here is an excerpt from that meeting. Also take note this text is from the horses mouth (the Whitehouse), so this is not a conspiracy theory. -- Tribble]

Q Five, and Jordan is in 3rd grade. And Jordan has a question, if I could give him the microphone.

Q One thing, Mr. President, is that you have no idea how much you've done for this country. And another thing is that, how did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack? (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jordan. Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card -- actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident.
[Did Bush mean he saw the 1st plane hit the 1st tower, or did he mean he saw the 2nd plane hit the 2nd tower? He explains with details how he was OUTSIDE the classroom and witnessed a plane. Where was Bush when the 2nd plane hit?]

But I was whisked off there, I didn't have much time to think about it. And I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my Chief of Staff, who is sitting over here, walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower, America is under attack."
[If MR. Card is telling Bush "a second plane has hit...", then it is evident they already knew of a 1st plane. Where was Bush when this 2nd plane hit? Now we know, he was IN the classroom. So, where was Bush when the 1st plane hit? Bush told you in the previous paragraph, he was OUTSIDE the classroom AND he watched the 1st plane hit. One what TV circuit did Bush watch the 1st plane? No network TV was trained on the towers during the 1st plane hit. How did Bush know to be watching a video of the 1st plane?

Who had prior knowledge? Which conspiracy theory do you believe the less, the one promoted by Bush and company or the others, the likes of "Loose Change" and Alex Jones?]

** As the ‘Great And Powerful Oz' once said to Dorothy, "Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain!" because appearances can be deceiving. You HAVE TO look behind to curtain to learn the truth.
*** Red Herring. The name of this fallacy comes from the sport of fox hunting in which a dried, smoked herring, which is red in color, is dragged across the trail of the fox to throw the hounds off the scent. Thus, a "red herring" argument is one which distracts the audience from the issue in question through the introduction of some irrelevancy. This frequently occurs during debates when there is an at least implicit topic, yet it is easy to lose track of it. By extension, it applies to any argument in which the premisses are logically irrelevant to the conclusion.

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01	=Why are Children out of School for the Summer?	02	=Gas Prices Fuel Bush Rebound
03	=	04	=
05	=	06	=
07	=Microsoft intensifies battle against software piracy, offers Office "Genuine Advantage" =Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws =The Internet is Dead, Long Live the Internet ="An orderly resolution of global imbalances will require ... the U.S. dollar would need to fall significantly" =Bush says fight against terror is 'World War III' =Another Reply to the Article "No National Sales Tax. Tax is NEVER fair, tax is a burden"	08	=
09	=	10	=
11	=	12	=The RFID Hacking Underground =Gen. Michael Hayden: Unreasonable Nominee for Probable Cause =U.S. Tipping Mexico to Minuteman Patrols =Iranian Oil Bourse Opens for Business: A Final Step Toward US Dollar Collapse & Preemptive Nuclear Strike =Daystar Television Network makes Broadcasting History =Rare Mirage Lasts for 4 Hours off East China Shore =Some Air Purifiers Create Smog-Like Conditions =Merchants Fight IRS Over Telephone Taxes =NSA has Massive Database of Americans' Phone Calls
13	=A Fast and Slow Internet =Beware Little Brother =Virginia County Giving Cowboy Church a Rough Ride =ADF Hails Judgment Upholding Street Preachers' First Amendment Rights	14	=
15	="We Can't Blame White People" =Presidential Wisdom ="No one may be denied a right, benefit or privilege ..."	16	=A Tax Foe Acquitted
17	=Wal-Mart Eyes Organic Foods =ADF Helps San Diego Church Fight City's Discriminatory Rental Fees =Before Nicea, the Voice of the Martyrs: 'Jesus Alone Is Lord!' =Planned De-Population & The Global Quest For Power	18	=
19	=Papers, Please! =The National ID Card: Wolf at the Door =The Origin Of The Gods =Storming The Gates Of Deception =Spy Agency Watching Americans From Space =Interview with Scott Silverman re Tagging Immigrants =Google Terminates Relationship With Conservative E-Zines Due to ‘Hate Speech’ =Mexico Threatens Suits Over Guard Patrols =Blonde =Couple Arrested For Asking For Directions	20	=
21	=	22	=Graphical Evidence Shows Vaccines Didn't Save Us
23	=Mexico Works to Bar Non-Natives From Jobs =Redneck Life =CNN 9/11 Reporting Lies???	24	=
25	=	26	=Perhaps a Better Prayer =Pentagon hit by flying grilled cheese sandwich, video frames show =How Flight 77 Hitting The Pentagon Would Really Look? =Something To Offend Everyone =All These New Findings About Jesus =Oz =Cannes Premiere Gets Standing Ovation for Aaron Russo’s AMERICA: FREEDOM TO FASCISM =Bush Nervous As A Whore In Church
27	=	28	=
29	=How do You Stop a Challenge to the Prevailing Regime?	30	=A Reminder, so You will not Forget about Prior Knowledge
31	=	.	.


(A mirage appears off the shore of Penglai City in eastern China's Shandong Province on Sunday, May 7, 2005. Photo: China Photo Press)	(A mirage appears off the shore of Penglai City in eastern China's Shandong Province on Sunday, May 7, 2005. Photo: China Photo Press)