terça-feira, 23 de fevereiro de 2010

Scholars examine the facts: Who was the real Jesus?

2010

Who was the real Jesus?

Do recently discovered ancient manuscripts reveal a different Jesus? Or…does the evidence reveal that the Jesus of the New Testament is the real Jesus?

Read it all on the website: www.y-jesus.com



Source: http://www.y-jesus.com

Miracles and Anomalies: Magic, Psi, and Science

February 5, 2010


"Do you believe in Miracles?" For me, the question would be: Do you know what you're talking about? The topic has been a masterpiece of human non-thought [in most quarters] and many people think that this is inevitably so. I, probably foolishly, don't think that non-thought is the way to go, even on this subject. I particularly don't want it to slide into the "Well, it's just a mystery" category, because my intuition feels that it is central to the understanding of many types of anomalies. So, "Devil take the Hindmost", here's a try at this.

Let's begin with something non-philosophical: Lourdes, one of the poster-children of the concept of "miracles". [In the interest of disclosure, I am a Catholic]. Here's the background: the Marian apparitions took place in 1858. Claims of miraculous cures began almost immediately. Despite what many people think, the Church is not keen on modern miracles, and rather fears them as wild-cards that occur outside the jurisdiction of the hierarchy, and sources of potentially high embarrassment, if they turn out to be bogus. Because this case was immediately so "public" and sensational [newspapers of the day were screaming headlines about the newest cure], the Church decided to try to protect itself by initiating a "Medical Bureau" composed of professional people [deliberately open to non-Catholics] to evaluate alleged cures. As time progressed, the standards that an alleged cure would have to meet to be declared a "miracle" became almost impossible to meet, even if the incident was extremely remarkable. Many instances were recognized as "cures" but, out of many hundreds of cases only 67 have been designated "miracles". Some of the qualifying criteria are: the cure must be "immediate", "complete", and "permanent", and whatever the problem was has to be termed "incurable" due to anything happening at the time or even capable of happening in terms of treatment et al. The lists of the cures are available widely on the web, and you can read about them there and make up your own minds. For our discussion here, the "miracles" at Lourdes are felt by the people who studied them to have occurred outside the bounds of what Medicine and Science deems possible.

And that, of course brings us to the debate. There are at least four main opinions about miracles. "Science" has one. "Religion" has one. People who see the world in terms of "Magic" have one. And people who see the world in terms of "Parapsychology" have one. "Science", if such an entity exists, parrots, still today, the opinions of David Hume--the ultimate restrictive reductionist. Hume said:"A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined... no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle...." Hume was exactly in the spirit of the so-called "Enlightenment" in this, and may be credited as the foundational philosopher of that sort of view. His argument above is based on the premise that there is nothing but empirically-derived physical law and so anything that does not seem to match that set of laws is impossible. If you are a materialist reductionist, you can make that argument [sort-of], but you've prejudiced all discussion a priori. Our favorite girl, Catherine Crowe, as we have seen, saw right through this restrictive prejudice. As it turns out "Science" isn't this reductionist thing that Hume imagines. The picture in the upper left of the collage shows three "scientists". Langmuir, in the upper left, ferociously opposed all "irrationality" whether he understood anything about it or not. He was a mindless skeptic [and that included basically all "anomalies"]. George Gaylord Simpson was an avowed atheist-materialist. He judged things through the lens of automatically denying anything having to do with "spirit". Nicola Tesla, on the other hand, had no time for any of that B.S., and was, in his science, simply trying to explore no matter where it might lead. Depending on what your "philosophy" was, you would be more or less sympathetic to anomalies or miracles on an incident by incident basis.

The other "philosophies", of course take wildly different stances. "Magical" thinking is a bridge between science and psi, in its more thoughtful school, but completely non-think in its other. The non-think school just says "stuff happens"--pop!--no cause. Well, that's beneath comment. The thoughtful side says: there are "recipes" that one can learn about or discover, which if performed according to proper "ritual", will produce certain "behavior" in the world, which is not understood by science. In this, magical thinking is just like empirical science [a discovery process, leading to a type of "law" of the creation, and the establishment of a set of useful tools and a "protoscience"]. Whether you can actually do any of that is, of course, another story, but people who believe in magic feel so. In earlier times, what we call science today was called "natural magic".

Parapsychology, in its more enthusiastic membership, is quite allied with magical thinking, whether they want to be or not. This is because psychic research sees the root cause of these non-physical law phenomena as "psychic" in nature--i.e. having to do more with the powers of consciousness than matter. If a "Magician" would be successful, the parapsychologist would attribute that success to psychic ability not mysterious properties embedded in the "stuff" of the universe. If he/she had to perform a ritual, that was to get them into the proper mental state. Olde-time Religionists, of course, thought that all such miracles were just part of the immediate ability of GOD to do whatever He wanted to--the "ZAP" hypothesis. That turns out to be the way most religionists still {non-}think today, but it is not the position of current Church theology--more about that later. Hopefully everyone is getting many intuitions as to how all this might come to dominate thinking about anomalies.

So, to push at least my thinking a little further: what's a "Miracle"? At a first try: "A Miracle is a Surprise which occurs without us being able to understand it on the basis of the functioning of physical laws". Maybe all schools of thought would agree with that so far. But now I'll make my enemies. This Surprise occurs because either we have an incomplete set of physical laws or understandings, [the UFO anomaly is one which will be solved, in my opinion, not by the spiritual or paranormal, but by our discovering the rest of the elements of the physical universe, i.e. E.T]; or we have not integrated the psychic and spiritual elements resident in the Creation into our cosmology. By this I mean to indicate that we might feel that something is a Miracle, but it will be well understood some day on the basis of "scientific" physical laws, but other things that we see as Miracles will never be understood on that basis, and will demand the inclusion in our thinking of spiritual or psychic "laws". Our difficulties in dealing with Miracles and certain other commonly experienced anomalies are due to our pathetic incompleteness when it comes to our pursuit of our "Theories of Everything".

The Church's "new" theology of Miracles rejects the concept that they are violations of the laws of the Creation. This new Theology says that GOD uses the potentialities already resident in the fundamental laws of the Universe to produce what we see as the miraculous. Well, OK as far as that goes. What the theologians [minus some real adventurers like Herbert Thurston, who wrote the terrific study The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism], are missing is the psychic side of all this. If there are parapsychological potentialities resident in reality, then GOD is loaded with such ability too. Are not there psychic "laws" embedded in this Universe? Even if pedestrian "science" can't get a handle on them?

When a "Miracle" or a "True Anomaly" occurs, its presentation to us is [usually] "physical" {yes, pure information-transfer anomalies occur such as clairvoyance or telepathy, but let's stick with a physical analysis for the moment}. That physical presentation or "change" may have occurred at one of several "scales of nature" as far as normal science is concerned. It could have happened grossly on the macroscopic level. [like a whole new arm suddenly appeared]. It could have happened at the microscopic level [physiological systems, molecular actions--like an immunity-related cure--cancer, diabetes, artery-clearing, slow regrowth etc]. It could occur at the atomic level [transmutations, radioactive decay]. Or it might be as deep as the level of the fundamental forces [action-at-a-distance, levitation, ---dare we say psi?][by the way, it is a "dirty little secret" of science that "action-at-a-distance" is a ubiquitous phenomenon, totally unexplained by causal models/mechanisms...i.e., a miracle]. Lourdes-like miracles probably don't occur grossly. But they well could occur by the parapsychological manipulation of molecular and deeper levels of our physical world. The theologians are not yet ready to so openly welcome the terminology of the paranormal, due to old hang-ups about it being dangerous and potentially the Devil's Workshop, but that is where they need to go. A very good book, Miracles, by Scott Rogo [quite recommended], would disagree with me on my merging of miracles and the psychic, but that is where I respectfully disagree.

What we are missing is the inclusion of the spiritual/psychic. Catherine saw that as a colossal cultural error, and it is a colossal "scientific" one as well. We will never get the Theory of Everything until the spiritual/psychic "dimensions" are included alongside the 9,10,whatever number of force dimensions that the mathematicians are fooling with now. Down deep within the engines and gears of creation, there are more elements of "force-projection" and phenomena- manifestation than restricted science is willing to contemplate. "They" will never get there. What they will resist until their last breath [when they'll have a huge shock as the "light-tunnel" shows up] is the centrality of Observership. Not only is the Prime Observer "governing" the stability of the physical laws, as originated at the Big Bang, but constant other observerships are at work, some more consciously than others. Sometimes such observership might be from the Deity, making a traditional "miracle", sometimes it might be from one of us, making a psychic or self-healing "miracle". Sometimes it might even be a spirit entity or a "folkloric" one, doing something "impossible". All of these might occur outside the bounds of restricted "physical" law, and, on that ground, "impossible" [a priori] for Hume. Well, OK. But for "Enlightenment", that is a dim bulb indeed.


I believe that despite the ongoing great discoveries that science will make--and we should all cheer that on-- the reductionist practitioners will ultimately have to change or lose face completely. The hated "Miracles" [spiritual/psi/anomalistic] will continue to happen despite their wishing them away. In the face of those events, they have reduced themselves to only one, [ironically mindless] response: as the avatar of Langmuir and Simpson, and CSICOP, says in the picture above, when faced with the parting of the Red Sea: "Fluke". We have a job in this search for truth that is bigger than what we might feel. It's our job to be little Charles Forts saving the things which don't fit, and obnoxiously bringing them to the attention of---everyone. So mount your chargers; even though you suspect that you are more like Don Quixote than Isaac Newton. What's the option? David Hume?

Last thought: in my old age I have become precisely in the chorus of Minneapolis story-teller-singer, Peter Mayer. Reflecting on the difference of old-style religion and where he has grown into today, he sings: "Wine from water is not so small. But an even better magic trick is that anything is here at all. So the challenging thing becomes. Not to look for Miracles...but finding where there isn't one. "



Source: http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com

Sea Levels Erratic During Latest Ice Age

February 11, 2010
By Sid Perkins



Cave research finds new evidence of surprising rise 81,000 years ago

Cave formations along the coast of an island in the Mediterranean Sea hold evidence that sea level can rise and fall abruptly during an ice age, a finding that casts some doubt on current notions about how those lengthy cold spells develop and progress.

At the height of an ice age, immense volumes of water are locked up in land-based ice sheets, and ocean levels can be as much as 130 meters below where they are today. By contrast, when that ice melts during warm periods, sea level can be a few meters higher than the modern-day standard, says Jeffrey Dorale, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Now, Dorale and his colleagues report in the Feb. 12 Science that during a brief interval well within the most recent ice age, sea level suddenly and inexplicably rose to a height more than one meter above today’s.

Evidence supporting that conclusion comes from cave formations on the Spanish island of Majorca, the researchers say. As sea levels rose and fell, waters sloshing into coastal caves left crusts of minerals on their walls and floors as well as on existing cave formations, Dorale says.

Radioisotope dating of mineral crusts in one cave along Majorca’s southern coast indicates that sea level sat about 2.6 meters higher than today between 121,000 and 116,000 years ago, during the last warm spell between ice ages. That level is consistent with sea level data gathered at other sites worldwide, Dorale notes.

But three samples from other crusts in the same cave — samples deposited about 1.5 meters above modern-day sea level — yielded surprising results. Those crusts formed around 81,000 years ago, well after the most recent ice age — which lasted from roughly 110,000 until 10,000 years ago — had begun, Dorale says. Similar analyses of samples from nearby caves show that between 80,000 and 82,000 years ago, sea level ranged between 1.25 and 1.6 meters above today’s standard.

“The [team’s] results are strong but not absolutely watertight,” comments R. Lawrence Edwards, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. One possible confounding factor, for instance, could be the rebound of Earth’s crust in the region since the end of the most recent ice age. After the ice mass smothering Northern Europe melted and ran to the sea, pressure from viscous material at the top of Earth’s mantle would have lifted the area, thereby influencing apparent sea level.

But Dorale and his colleagues contend that tectonic uplift hasn’t affected their data. He cites similar analyses of now-submerged mineral crusts in Majorcan caves indicating sea level was about 20 meters below today’s level about 85,000 years ago and about 15 meters below the modern standard about 79,000 years ago — readings that match most data gleaned elsewhere at those times.

Studies at a handful of sites worldwide have noted that sea level reached an exceedingly brief and similarly enigmatic high point around 81,000 years ago, says Dorale. Those results have been controversial and, for the most part, have been “politely ignored because they don’t fit the presumed pattern” of how ice ages develop and progress, he says.

Scientists have long noted erratic dips and jumps in sea level during Earth’s ice ages, but debate has typically focused on the magnitude of those swings, says Dorale. The new findings are somewhat disturbing because they suggest that at some points during an ice age, sea level can rise as much as 2 meters over the course of a century. “It’s tough to explain how to melt that much ice that fast,” he admits.


Source: http://www.sciencenews.org

UFOs, Holograms & the Blue Beam Project

2010


A interesting look of the last 50 years UFO conspiracies, with the Blue Beam Project and the New World Order





Source: http://www.youtube.com

Scientists Grow Solar Cell Components in Tobacco Plants

January 29, 2010
by Lisa Zyga


Over billions of years, plants have evolved very efficient sunlight-collecting systems. Now, scientists are trying to harness the finely tuned systems in tobacco plants in order to use them as the building blocks of solar cells. Scientists predict that the technique could lead to the production of inexpensive, biodegradable solar cells.

In a recent study, scientists from UC Berkeley led by Matt Francis have demonstrated how to program tobacco plants to take advantage of the efficient way that they collect . Rather than attempt to reprogram all the cells of a mature tobacco plant, the scientists genetically engineered a virus called the tobacco mosaic virus to do the job for them. The researchers sprayed the modified virus on a crop of tobacco plants, and the virus caused the plant cells to produce lots of artificial chromophores, which turn photons from sunlight into electrons.

In order for the chromophores to work, however, they must be spaced at a precise distance from one another - about two or three nanometers. A little closer or further apart, and the will either be halted or the will be very difficult to harvest.

Thankfully, tobacco plant cells have evolved to space chromophores at this exact distance, lining them up in a long spiral hundreds of nanometers long. By exploiting this structure, the researchers could take advantage of billions of years of evolution to grow perfectly spaced strands of chromophores.

"Over billions of years, evolution has established exactly the right distances between to allow them to collect and use light from the sun with unparalleled efficiency," said Francis.

Since the modified themselves don’t generate electricity, the researchers must harvest the plants and extract the chromophore structures. Then, the scientists can dissolve the structures in a liquid solution, and then spray the solution on a glass or plastic substrate to create a solar cell. So far, the scientists have not yet demonstrated that the resulting can turn light into electrical energy.

Compared with traditional solar cells, those made from plants could have several potential advantages. For instance, they don’t require the use of toxic chemicals, they’re biodegradable, and they’re inexpensive to produce. On the other hand, bio-based solar cells would likely have a shorter lifetime than silicon solar cells.

In addition to using tobacco, the researchers also demonstrated how to manipulate E. coli bacteria to produce chromophore structures. In this case, the researchers didn’t use a virus, but modified the bacteria directly.


More information: Michel T. Dedeo, Karl E. Duderstadt, James M. Berger and Matthew B. Francis. “Nanoscale Protein Assemblies from a Circular Permutant of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus.” Nano Lett., 2010, 10 (1), pp 181-186. doi:10.1021/nl9032395


Via: Discovery News
© 2010 PhysOrg.com
Source: http://www.physorg.com

The Difference Between Religion and “Spirituality”

February 11, 2010


To start, the reason why “spirituality” is in quotations is because there truly is no label for what I am trying to convey in this article. Also, there has been so much identification and many beliefs created within what some call “spirituality” that have really beaten the word to a new meaning. So as I continue, when I speak of “spirituality,” all I am really referring to is that beyond what we see in front of us, that which is our true essence. I am not referring to any belief system or set of beliefs within any structure.

Generally, we can come to a conclusion on something through a set of thoughts experienced within the mind, which is really nothing more than reading something or being told something and taking it as absolute truth based on that set of thoughts. This is a belief system – Religion. Or we can cease to make our thoughts our identity and remain much closer to our true essence, where we can see without blinders (the mind or set of thoughts) what we are experiencing.

Being religious is essentially an identity the ego grasps onto in order to keep itself fulfilled in a role it is choosing to play. Essentially, the ego now thinks that through thought, which is very limiting, it has found and experienced an absolute truth and in order to keep its identity alive, the very nature of “absolute,” will not allow it to “die.” Since the ego’s main goal is survival, it achieves this very easily by attaching to religion. (thinking, believing a set of thoughts)

It comes down to being locked up in the mind (thought and belief) vs. allowing the ego to not have an identity, not allowing the ego to strive to find a role it can latch onto. There is a general fear that we must BE something or know who we are and what we are about – “we” do not, only our ego does. When you recognize the awareness behind the labels and beliefs you have, you have found the consciousness or SELF behind the ego, showing you “spirituality” – that which lies beyond the false sense of self.

Now, I understand this is a touchy subject for where we are all collectively playing right now, but remember conflict will only come as a result of defense triggered in our minds (ego/reptilian) as it fights for survival because the information just presented was challenging. Use this experience and whatever emotions this article brings as a point of observation. Are you agreeing with it and feeling superior to others? Are you getting mad? Are you feeling some truth to it but are not quite there?

In any case, allow the feelings to be and don’t allow them to charge you. Take observation as to what presented for you. Are you limiting your experience by latching onto thought as absolute truth?

I wish to end this with a quote that came to mind that might spark something. It comes from a very fitting movie:

“Unfortunately, no one can be told what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”

-The Matrix


Peace and Love
Joe


Source: http://www.collective-evolution.com

sábado, 13 de fevereiro de 2010

Apocalypse Predictions Includes A Threat from the East and Fire from the Sky

January 26, 2010
by Margarita Troitsina


In his “Centuries,” Nostradamus mentioned a “threat from the East” that will cause the apocalypse. The famous prophet also spoke of “fire that will fall from the sky.” Saint Matrona Moskovskaya of Russia predicted a cataclysm when “everything will fall through the ground.” “Everything will melt like ice,” predicted Vanga, a famous Bulgarian prophet back in 1979.

Prophesies about the impending apocalypse have always existed. Different dates were named, but fortunately, the horrific predictions have never come true. What does the future have in store for us? This article will analyze the most famous apocalyptical predictions in an attempt to figure out whether there is truth to them.

“Threat from the East” and “Fire from the Sky”

Nostradamus (1503-1566) mentioned a “threat from the East” that will cause the apocalypse i n his “Centuries.” What does the image of “fire that will fall from the sky” he mentioned frequently really mean?

Some interpreters believe that he was talking about an asteroid that would fall on Earth. Others are convinces that he described the beginning of World War III, while another group thinks he meant a nunciate of the re-division of the world.

Advent of the Anti-Christ

There were many prophecies regarding advent of the Anti-Christ. Russian Saint Seraphim Sarovsky (1759-1833) predicted that the entire Earth would burn down and nothing would be left, and this would happen when the “Anti-Christ” comes to Earth. He also mentioned several times that Russian Kazan Cathedral would be “lifted into the air.” The prophecy might be an allegory, as the Cathedral still exists.

The Sleeping Prophet’s Mistake

American psychic Edgar Casey (1877-1945) claimed that a global cataclysm on Earth would happen. He predicted shifting of the poles that would cause volcanic eruptions in the tropics. He predicted that the contours of Europe would change, a crack would appear in the Western part of the American continent, while Japan would submerge into the sea. The biggest consolation is that the predicted events were to happen in the end of the last century. But what if the prophet confused the dates?

“Everything Will Fall Through the Ground”

Saint Matrona Moskovskaya (1881-1952) predicted the Great October Revolution, World War II, and many other events. She also had some obscure predictions like “There will be no war, you will all die without a war, there will be many victims, you all will be lying on the ground dead…In the evening everything will be on the ground and in the morning you will rise – everything will fall through the ground.”

It can be suggested that she meant a global natural catastrophe.

“The Three Days of Darkness and “ The Era of Light”

Padre Pio (1887-1968), a Capuchin priest from Italy , is one of the most famous prophets of the last century.

In the beginning of the 21 century, he said, an earthquake would destroy “one of the most powerful cities in the world.” He said that on the last night of “the three days of darkness” the Satan himself, spreading fear and grief around the world, would appear. Then, the Blessed Virgin would come, bringing the era of light.

“Everything Will Melt Like Ice”

Back in 1979, a famous Bulgarian prophet Vanga (1911-1996) said: “Everything will melt like ice.”She was confident that apocalypse was unavoidable. But before it happens, the human race is to experience terrible diseases, hunger and thirst (which is not surprising considering current ecological conditions), and natural disasters.

Many plants and animals will gradually disappear. First, garlic, onions and pepper, then bees (scientists are already concerned with genetic experiments that interfere with natural balance).

Scientific Approach

Scientists also create apocalyptical predictions. According to Alexander Tutukov, PhD., a member of the Institute for Astronomy, several billion years from now the Sun will start expanding, its outer layer will reach Mercury orbit, than Venice, and then Earth.

Before the Sun destroys there planets, they will heat to the temperature so high that they will start evaporating. The solar system will cease its existence in the present form.

The good news is that by the time it happens, our civilization will either perish or move to other worlds more favorable for existence.


Originally published by our story partner English.Pravda.Ru.


Source:http://www.ufodigest.com

Lost City of Atlantis Could be Buried in Southern Spain

Januari 2010
by Fiona Govan



Archaeologists have begun the search for an ancient civilization in southern Spain that some believe could help pinpoint the legendary lost city of Atlantis


A team of researchers from Spain's Higher Council for Scientific Study (CSIC) are examining a marshy area of Andalusian parkland to find evidence of a 3,000-year-old settlement.

They believe that Tartessos, a wealthy civilization in southern Iberia that predates the Phoenicians, may have had its capital in the heart of what is now the Donana national park.

Until now historians had dismissed the region as a possible site believing that it had been submerged since the ice age. But it is claimed new evidence suggests the waters may have receded in time for the Tartessians to build an urban centre, which was later destroyed in a tsunami.

The Hinojos marshes, an area close to the mouth of the Guadalquiver river where it meets the Atlantic, have now been pinpointed as the site most likely to provide evidence of a lost city.

Archaeological findings have already proved the existence of Tartessian culture at sites on the opposite bank of the river.

"If they existed on the other side, they must also have been here (in Donana)," Sebastian Celestino, the archaeologist leading the project told the newspaper El Pais.

"There were earthquakes and one of them caused a tsunami that razed everything and which coincided with the era in which Tartessian power was at its height."

Aerial photos show the existence of large circular and rectangular forms that could not have been produced by nature.

The images, together with literary accounts by ancient Greek geographers have given weight to the theory that a great Tartessian city once existed within the park.

The Tartessian civilization, which developed in southern Spain between the 11th and 7th centuries BC and became rich trading gold and silver from local mines, has long been linked by mythologists to the Atlantis legend.

While the Spanish researchers refuse to speculate on whether they are on the brink of discovering Atlantis others believe their research could be a breakthrough in a centuries old quest.

"Evidence is mounting that suggests the story of Atlantis was not mere fiction, fable or myth, but a true story as Plato always maintained," said Georgeos Diaz-Montexano, a Cuban archeologist who has spent the last 15 years searching for the submerged city.

"Atlantis is not exactly where the CSIC is looking, but it is close," he claimed.

The theory is just the latest in a long list of suggested locations for Atlantis, including various Mediterranean islands, the Azores, the Sahara desert, Central America and Antarctica.


Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Go Back To Sleep, There’s No New World Order

February 11, 2010
by Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com



You can trust us, we’re owned by the military-industrial complex; Newsweek says there’s no agenda for global government, as every globalist on the planet calls for it

A major Newsweek hit piece against the Tea Party movement and Alex Jones claims that the move towards a global government and the fact that governments commit acts of false flag terrorism is all an invention of “conspiracist kooks” who wear “tin foil hats”. Like we’ve never heard that one before.

Self-described “conservative” Jonathan Kay invokes Obama regulation czar Cass Sunstein in railing against ideas he describes as “dangerously detached from reality” by labeling vehemently proven facts as “conspiracy theories” and thereby exposing himself as the only person dangerously detached from reality in his article, Black Helicopters Over Nashville.

In the hit piece, Kay smears Alex Jones as a “modern day prophet” of the Tea Party movement that he goes on to relentlessly attack as progenitors of “toxic fantasies”.

Kay contacted Alex Jones’ office nearly a year ago seeking an interview about 9/11 truth. Of course, he spewed the usual baloney about “wanting to understand our perspective” while all along preparing to unleash a vitriolic hit piece without one iota of the “balance” establishment journalists always claim that they adhere to.

When we explained to him that in order to understand the 9/11 attacks in context, a brief exploration of the documented and manifestly provable examples in history where western governments have staged attacks in order to advance their agenda was necessary, Kay wasn’t interested.

We’re talking about events such as Operation Northwoods, a plan signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon to to “kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war”.

We’re talking about Operation Ajax, where the CIA instituted a program of false flag terror to crush Iran’s first democratic government in the 1950’s, killing around 300 people. Far from being a “conspiracy theory,” the CIA admits to the program on their own website.

We’re talking about Operation Gladio, a “decades-long covert campaign of terrorism and deceit directed by the intelligence services of the West — against their own populations” run by NATO in collusion with the CIA, a campaign which included the 1980 bombing of the Bologna train station which killed 85 people.

Kay wasn’t having any of it, he merely wanted to hang around Alex Jones for days on end and try and catch him out by seizing upon ambiguous one-liners that could be spun out of context to make us look like mentally unstable extremists, which is precisely the tactic he uses against several other people in his Newsweek article.

According to Kay, a one world government run by the United Nations that will implement greenhouse gas taxes is another “toxic fantasy” of those crazy Tea Party lunatics. In that case, I guess we must have all just imagined UN Secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s December 16 2009 Los Angeles Times interview during the Copenhagen summit in which he stated, “We will establish a global governance structure to monitor and manage the implementation of this.”

Ban Ki-moon’s October 2009 New York Times editorial in which he wrote that efforts to impose restrictions on CO2 emissions “Must include an equitable global governance structure” is also a figment of the imagination if you subscribe to Kay’s world view.

Yes – shocking as it is – top globalists like Herman Van Rompuy, Gordon Brown, Al Gore and others have all publicly and repeatedly called for a new world order and a global government. This is why even Bloomberg writers like David Reilly and former Democratic advisors like Dick Morris are finally admitting that those tin foil hat wearing kooks Kay derides in his article were right after all – a secret cabal of bankers and industrialists really does run the world.

Of course, if you still believe Kay’s fairytale make-believe world in which there is no “new world order” and no march towards a “global government” which would include a “global currency,” then the following You Tube compilation of top power brokers saying those very things since the 1950’s doesn’t exist either.

Of course, Kay’s dismissive scorn for so-called conspiracy theorists hasn’t stopped him from leeching off their increasing prominence by authoring a book about them to be published by HarperCollins.

We’ve witnessed a noticeable drop in the amount of hit pieces against us over the last 12 months as everything we said about the global government takeover and the financial meltdown comes to pass and our credibility soars while that of the mainstream plummets yet further.

However, there are still establishment lackeys precariously perched on their peanut gallery howling the same tired old clichés about “kooks” wearing “tin foil hats” seeing “black helicopters,” completely oblivious to the fact that the rest of the world has come to accept the fact that yes – shocking as it is – powerful men do actually get together and conspire about how to increase their power over humanity.

Our message to Kay and his ilk is a simple one – dudes, it’s over for you!

The mainstream media has lost all credibility. Acting as apologists and liars for decades in service of the military-industrial complex that has you bought and paid for comes at a cost. You no longer dictate to the rest of us what construes reality when every single indicator screams from every single direction that you are wrong. 2 plus 2 will never equal 5, no matter how many times you insist that people who say it equals 4 are “dangerously detached from reality”.

The manifestly provable and universally acknowledged fact that the invasion of Iraq came as a result of a conspiracy to manufacture a phony pretext for war remains a fact no matter how many times people like Tony Blair claim it is nothing more than a conspiracy theory.

Governments do commit acts of terror to further their political agendas, and globalists have openly stated that they are centralizing power in order to create a system of global governance.

By continuing to deny and label those who talk about such brazenly obvious facts as conspiracy kooks only makes you look ridiculous, Mr. Kay.

Claiming that the idea of a global government run by the UN which controls greenhouse gas taxes is a creation of “militant oddballs” while the United Nations’ own Secretary General writes editorials and gives interviews saying those very things only confirms that the distance from which you are detached from reality renders your inane hackery completely irrelevant.


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Source: http://www.prisonplanet.com

Professor's Alien Life 'Seed' Theory Claimed

February 2010

New evidence from astrobiology "overwhelmingly" supports the view that life was seeded from outside Earth, a scientist has claimed.

Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe of Cardiff University says the first microbes were deposited on Earth 3,800m years ago. The astrobiologist has helped developed the panspermia theory which suggests an extra-terrestrial origin for life. He argues for a cycle of life as microbes find their way into comets and "multiply and seed other planets".

In the article, published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, Monday, he argues humans and indeed all life on Earth is of alien origin, brought onto the planet by comets hitting the planet.

Prof Wickramasinghe, of Cardiff University's centre for astrobiology, says there is a cyclical transfer process of life from planet to planet.

He believes comets hit planets and push living organic matter out into space, some of which survives and in turn gets transferred to developing planetary systems over a timescale of millions and millions of years, seeding life on the newly formed planets.

He accepts this model still does not explain how life actually began in the first place, but says there is no hard evidence to support the theory that life only began in a "primordial soup" on Earth, or other places.

Over the past three decades research has shown that large swathes of the Milky Way are strewn with gigantic dust clouds full of organic molecules, which some people have argued shows life emerging independently from new in these clouds.

In his paper, he says recent interpretation of spectra readings from the organic molecules found in interstellar clouds has indicated that they are in fact the remains of bacteria which has been broken down, rather than being built up.

"Interstellar clouds appear to be the graveyard of life not its cradle," he said. "Each time a new planetary system forms a few surviving microbes find their way into comets. These then multiply and seed other planets," he said. He adds: "We are thus part of a connected chain of being that extends over a large volume of the cosmos. Evidence is pointing inexorably in this direction."

The professor and his late colleague Sir Fred Hoyle championed the panspermia theory from the 1960s.


Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk

Spray-on Liquid Glass is About to Revolutionize Almost Everything

Februari 2010
By Lin Edwards


Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products.


The fissure was induced in order present an image which shows the characteristics of the coating.
The image shows the SiO2 coating on a filament of a microfibre.

The liquid glass spray (technically termed “SiO2 ultra-thin layering”) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand. Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated. There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface because of the quantum forces involved. According to the manufacturers, liquid glass has a long-lasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily.


Liquid glass was invented in Turkey and the patent is held by Nanopool, a family-owned German company. Research on the product was carried out at the Saarbrücken Institute for New Materials. Nanopool is already in negotiations in the UK with a number of companies and with the National Health Service, with a view to its widespread adoption.

The liquid glass spray produces a water-resistant coating only around 100 nanometers (15-30 molecules) thick. On this nanoscale the glass is highly flexible and breathable. The coating is environmentally harmless and non-toxic, and easy to clean using only water or a simple wipe with a damp cloth. It repels bacteria, water and dirt, and resists heat, UV light and even acids. UK project manager with Nanopool, Neil McClelland, said soon almost every product you purchase will be coated with liquid glass.

Food processing companies in Germany have already carried out trials of the spray, and found sterile surfaces that usually needed to be cleaned with strong bleach to keep them sterile needed only a hot water rinse if they were coated with liquid glass. The levels of sterility were higher for the glass-coated surfaces, and the surfaces remained sterile for months.

Other organizations, such as a train company and a hotel chain in the UK, and a hamburger chain in Germany, are also testing liquid glass for a wide range of uses. A year-long trial of the spray in a Lancashire hospital also produced “very promising” results for a range of applications including coatings for equipment, medical implants, catheters, sutures and bandages. The war graves association in the UK is investigating using the spray to treat stone monuments and grave stones, since trials have shown the coating protects against weathering and graffiti. Trials in Turkey are testing the product on monuments such as the Ataturk Mausoleum in Ankara.

The liquid glass coating is breathable, which means it can be used on plants and seeds. Trials in vineyards have found spraying vines increases their resistance to fungal diseases, while other tests have shown sprayed seeds germinate and grow faster than untreated seeds, and coated wood is not attacked by termites. Other vineyard applications include coating corks with liquid glass to prevent “corking” and contamination of wine. The spray cannot be seen by the naked eye, which means it could also be used to treat clothing and other materials to make them stain-resistant. McClelland said you can “pour a bottle of wine over an expensive silk shirt and it will come right off”.

In the home, spray-on glass would eliminate the need for scrubbing and make most cleaning products obsolete. Since it is available in both water-based and alcohol-based solutions, it can be used in the oven, in bathrooms, tiles, sinks, and almost every other surface in the home, and one spray is said to last a year.

Liquid glass spray is perhaps the most important nanotechnology product to emerge to date. It will be available in DIY stores in Britain soon, with prices starting at around £5 ($8 US). Other outlets, such as many supermarkets, may be unwilling to stock the products because they make enormous profits from cleaning products that need to be replaced regularly, and liquid glass would make virtually all of them obsolete.


Article from: PhysOrg.com


[Ed Note: The article is has the feel of a sales pitch, but the product has interesting ramifications, nevertheless. Videos found were PR releases.]

Press Releases

Nanopool Product Demonstration



Nanopool Wine Industry





Related



Source: http://www.redicecreations.com

Elves, Fairies, Leprechauns And Nessie: The Unseen, Unwritten Part Of Human History

January 21, 2010
by Doc Edwards



While we humans somewhat flatter ourselves and stroke our collective egos by believing that everything that is important to know about human history has already been recorded and told in our history books, the truth is that there is a much bigger, and far more incredible and all-inclusive story of the history of humanity that has gone unwritten, and for the most part,... even unknown during the long ages since man first walked this earth.

As an example, we once lived along side of, and co-existed with, other intelligent species, intelligent beings and entities that now only exist as part of our myths like a faraway remembrance in the collective unconscious of the race. Even beyond, or rather in addition to, our being overseen by our original inter-galactic progenitors from far out in the cosmos, we were once closer to "other" inter-dimensional neighbors much nearer (as far as the word "nearer" can be applied when you are speaking of inter-dimensional connections) to us in the multi-dimensional make-up of life, right here on earth. It would be well for us to remember here what all of our so-called myths really are: just ancient old family stories of our species that have been told and retold so many times that we hardly believe now they ever happened, or ever existed.

Much of the real story of our species on this planet --- and its long involvement with other species and beings, that no longer are apparent in our present reality, seem but a faded and fond reminiscence out of the long ago childhood of our race. Specifically I am referring to beings who once co-existed with us in an inter-dimensional relationship and bond, a bond respected not only by the boundary of the different dimensions from which we sprang and evolved but also by our mutual respect for our differences as well as likenesses. Of course, I am referring here to fairies, elves, and leprechauns, and even such elusive creatures as Nessie, who obviously resides in the nether world between a lake in Scotland and an inter-dimensional lake overlapping the same ancient map. So much time has now passed since those days when we and they all shared the same warmth of the same sun that these beings and entities not only seem unreal, but mythological as well. And though most humans no longer see them, these entities have not lost their corporeality nor their reality. They are as ever present around us as they ever were; but rather it is we who have lost our ability to see and experience and interact with these other dimensions and the beings who populate them. In all truthfulness, though, we have not so much "lost " the ability as it is we simply have forgotten how to use it. Indeed, there was a time when man could just as easily see, hear, smell, and feel in other dimensions as well as this one that we are so very familiar with today.

But of course, those times when man conversed with fairies and consorted with elves have long since come and gone --- at least for most of humanity, anyway --- though a glimmer of that inter-dimensional light and possibility still hangs like a psychic mist over many a vale and many a grove that once was our mutual meeting place in the now lost, distant past.

It is this history, the history of men and elves and fairies and all sorts of other inter-dimensional beings, that has slid between the cracks, so to speak, the cracks that we humans, over the ensuing millennia, have resourcefully filled-in with what many now believe to be only the fantastic, mythological stories, made up long, long ago by our prehistoric ancestors to stuff the empty spaces and explain the gaps and missing parts that were left in our true history on this planet. Certainly these beings co-existed with human beings, as freely and easily as the many other species of flora and fauna, that fill this planet, do today. These beings were once truly our inter-dimensional neighbors; and in a way they are indeed still sentient cousins who share the same intelligence and memory and history of the greater deeds that we all once did in the long ago era of men and elves and fairies.

It is important to remember here that human beings have changed drastically over the many millennia that we have existed on this planet. As I pointed out in a previous chapter, we have "de-evolved" rather than evolving --- at least as far as it concerns our psychic sensitivity and perception of everything that is truly going on in the reality around us, including inter-dimensional beings like those of which I speak.

Humans have become so focused and centered on our own affairs, our own priorities, most of which deal exclusively with phenomena and circumstances strictly based in the hard and objectified reality that we have placed around ourselves like a stone fortress of singular, egotistical exclusivity that we have gradually filtered out everything else that did not directly concern this narrow perspective, thus some of our psychic attributes of greater inter-dimensional sensitivity have almost atrophied: Humans once were far more connected to, and aware of, the other inter-dimensional states that exist all around us, as even, today,our modern science recognizes to exist. Slowly though, as human consciousness, awareness, and human concerns (brought about primarily by the many wars that were being fought among ourselves during these prehistoric times) became more and more ensconced and focused primarily on the one dimension of hard, physical reality, which has become, as a consequence of this ancient single-mindedness, the dimension that we are predominantly focused in, out of the many dimensions that were once accessible to our consciousness and awareness; and our present reality and focus became the only reality that the great majority of us would recognize. Our inter-dimensional neighbors began to fade, more or less, leaving a great gap in the explanation and description of our true, ancient, collective history and reality.

Even the "missing gaps," involving our extra-terrestrial and alien connected past, filled in and patched back into the whole fabric of our human record by such adept writers and historians as Zecharia Sitchin and Erick von Daniken, have not, in and of themselves, gone far enough in telling the whole "secret" and so-called, prehistoric, story of man and his long and profound involvement with these "other", inter-dimensional beings. While I do not think anyone, at least anyone who has seriously studied, pondered, and analyzed the historical, as well as the anecdotal, evidence, doubts the in-depth involvement of alien life from elsewhere in the universe, directly affecting and involving itself in historical human events and circumstances, many have overlooked, and perhaps even dismissed as "pure myth" what has been shown to me (by my admittedly, unusual, "other" sources) as "the even bigger 'more correct' story," the story of the truth behind the existence and involvement of many different types of inter-dimensional life forms in the development and evolution of human life and history on this planet.

Hopefully, before you are through reading this article, you might begin to think of J.R.R. Tolkien more as a very accurate historian than merely a writer of fantasy and myth. I think that the imminent and late Austrian psychologist, C.G. Jung would have agreed with me when I say : What Mr.Tolkien actually did (probably unbeknownst to himself while he was writing) was to connect with and tap directly into the "collective unconscious" of the race/ species as a whole through the natural raising of his own awareness and brain wave function. In all probability Mr. Tolkien wrote far more actual history than mere myth and fantasy. The same is also true of other so-called "fantasy" writers like the late C.S. Lewis, to name another. Of course, this is certainly psychologically and spiritually understandable, given most writer's proclivity to psychically loose themselves in their work," giving themselves up", if you will, to a total absorption and immersion in the story unraveling before them from out of the depths of their "collective unconscious." Quite literally, under the aegis of such an intense, internal spell, and natural state of brain wave acceleration, it makes perfect sense that what would naturally come through is not invention at all, but rather "truth," and the story of probable real events as they occurred long, long ago, before "the age of the dominance of man" as Tolkien would have put it.

We can learn and condition ourselves, once again, to be able to see, encounter, and even inter-act with these inter-dimensional neighbors. I have found the key to this is the one and same key that unlocks all of our higher abilities of perception, whether you call them clairvoyance, precognition, remote viewing, or whatever, it is the one and same key to the one and same door, the door of our higher psychic sight, spiritual acumen, and inter-dimensional attunement. This key can only be found and activated by learning to accelerate, and literally speed-up, as it were, our own brain wave activity. On my website,www.tomorrowsprophecy.com, I give more details and explanation of how it is possible to do this.

All of our perception of reality, that is, what we see, and what we are able to see, depends entirely upon the amplitude and frequency of our brain wave activity. Most people stay fairly focused within the more dominate range of what scientists call the"Beta" frequency, which is the frequency that our everyday reality is attuned to; in order to see and experience these alternate views of reality, and the phenomena and entities localized within that reality, we have to learn to accelerate our brain waves to, what science calls, the "Gamma" range of brain wave activity, which is slightly higher than that of our everyday reality.

Most processes that teach you to do this are based upon listening to the rhythym of certain binaural beats, artificially and electronically produced, in order to entrain the brain to this frequency. While this method does indeed work, it brings with it several problems. What works in the laboratory is not all ways workable when you are out in the field. When you go out into the woods and forests, which is where we find that it is sometimes easier to find and access the, so-called,"portals" or "dimensional entrances," leading into these inter-dimensional states, one doesn't always have a CD player with them, so it is important to learn how to access these higher brain wave frequencies in much easier and simpler ways. In my years of research and experimentation in exploring and dealing with this fascinating subject, I have found a far easier, simpler, and more natural way to do this. But whichever way that you should choose to go, one thing is for certain: There is a whole different world waiting for you to view and experience, and possibly even, interact with--- just one step up in your own brain wave frequency.


Excerpts from Doc Edwards' new book on "Alien And Extra-Terrestrial Religion And Spirituality" will be run exclusively in UFO Digest. Be sure to check back from week to week to insure that you have read the latest installment. You can email Doc Edwards at 1luxdei@gmail.com. Check out his new website at www.tomorrowsprophecy.com.


Source: http://www.ufodigest.com

sexta-feira, 5 de fevereiro de 2010

Glaciers discovered in 'cursed' mountains of Albania

January 27, 2010


A team of geographers from the University of Manchester have discovered a group of glaciers in one of Europe's most inhospitable places.

Drs Philip Hughes, Jeff Blackford and PhD student Rose Wilkinson, from the University’s Quaternary Environments and Geoarchaeology Group, found four in the 'Cursed' mountains of Albania last year.

They were following up Dr Hughes' 2006 expedition, funded by the Royal Geographical Society, to a nearby spot in Montenegro researching features carved into the landscape by past glaciers.

But he got more than he bargained for when he stumbled upon the real thing - a glacier which was until that point completely undiscovered. In 2009, they found four more in Albania.

Some of the findings were published in the December 2009 edition of the journal "Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research", and a new research paper will appear in "Earth Surface Processes and Landforms" this year.

The glaciers are at the relatively low level of 2,000 metres - almost unique for such a southerly latitude. Most glaciers at this latitude are usually much higher, and many only survive on higher mountains further north, such as the Alps.

The Prokletije mountains - known as the 'cursed' mountains in Albanian - extend from northern Albania and Kosovo to eastern Montenegro in the Western Balkans.

The glaciers - the largest of which is currently the size of six football pitches - vary in size every year according to the amount of winter snowfall and temperatures during the following summer.

However, the geographers think at least eight glaciers were present in neighbouring mountains during the 19th century, correlating with the culmination of the 'Little Ice Age' in the European Alps.

Physical Geography lecturer at the University’s School of Environment and Development, Dr Philip Hughes said: "We were amazed that - as far as we know - no-one, apart from local shepherds, were aware of the existence of these glaciers and it was tremendously exciting to find them.

"The fact that the mountains were until only recently surrounded by war and lawlessness might explain why they have proved so elusive.

"Only ten years ago, this area was out of bounds and crossing the border from Montenegro into Albania was prohibited.

"Another probable reason why we weren't aware of their existence is that very few people live in these mountains and there's so much late-lying snow and shadow they are not even visible on Google ."

Though the region is experiencing weak signs of recovery, the region is still politically precarious.

But one day the researchers hope the glaciers will be enjoyed by visitors to the area - which is comparable to the Alps in terms of its attractiveness and size.

Dr Jeff Blackford said: "The reason why these glaciers can form at such a low attitude - and so far south - is that there are sufficient quantities of windblown snow and, in particular, avalanching snow.

"Though these remaining glaciers seem to be relatively robust in response to regional climate change, it's clear that there were more glaciers in the area a hundred or so years ago.”

He added: "While more glaciers existed a hundred years ago because of cooler temperatures, it is very difficult to predict the future fate of these remaining glaciers.

“This is because of the strong local controls on climate in the high mountains.

“But if it gets warmer then these glaciers will melt away."

The scientists hope to make it to the Prokletije mountains to continue their research later this year.

PhD student Rose Wilkinson said: "The trip provided me with an important opportunity to progress my research, which looks at how vegetation responds to changes in climate over the past 500 years.

"These glaciers - which have not been studied before - will hopefully create an interesting record of environmental change in this area."


More information

-- Twenty-first Century Glaciers and Climate in the Prokletije Mountains, Albania is published in the journal: "Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research" in December 2009: http://instaar.metapress.com/content/273213h3t4370272/

-- Little Ice Age glaciers in the Balkans: low altitude glaciation enabled by cooler temperatures and local topoclimatic controls in the journal "Earth Surface Processes and Landforms" to be published in 2010 and currently in press: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123206091/abstract


Provided by University of Manchester (news : web)



Source: http://www.physorg.com

The search for aliens should start on Earth not outer space

Januari 2010


The search for alien life forms should be conducted here on Earth rather than in outer space, scientists have claimed


The search for aliens should start on earth not outer space, says scientist
Prof Davies said: We need to give up the notion that ET
is sending us some sort of customised message
and take a new approach.

Photo: GETTY


Professor Paul Davies, a physicist at Arizona University will tell a meeting at the Royal Society that the best way of proving that extra-terrestrial life exists elsewhere in the universe is to use evidence from earth.

The meeting at the Royal Society, which will include representatives from Nasa, the European Space Agency and the UN Office for Outer space Affairs marks the 5th anniversary of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programme. Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society will also lead one of the sessions.

Prof Davies said: We need to give up the notion that ET is sending us some sort of customised message and take a new approach."

He suggested that the search could focus on deserts, volcanic vents, salt-saturated lakes and the dry valleys of Antarctica - places where ordinary life struggles to survive - to find "weird" microbes that belong to a "shadow biosphere".

Felissa Wolfe-Simon, from the US Geological Survey, is currently looking at the possibility that arsenic, found in contaminated places such as the Mono Lake in California, might support forms of life in the same way as other life forms use phosphorous.

However, Professor Colin Pillinger, who led the Beagle 2 Mars landing mission remains sceptical. He said: "I prefer to deal in scientific fact - this is wildly science fiction. You'd be off your trolley to go searching for arsenic-based life."

Prof Pillinger argues that Mars is the most likely place to find alien life.

The conference will also discuss how humans might respond to the discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Albert Harrison, the from University of California, said: "It is easy to imagine scenarios resulting in widespread psychological disintegration and social chaos. but historical prototypes, reactions to false alarms and survey results suggest that the predominant response to the discover of a microwave transmission from light years away is likely to be equanimity, perhaps even delight."


Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk

US waves white flag in disastrous 'war on drugs'

January 2010


After 40 years, Washington is quietly giving up on a futile battle that has spread corruption and destroyed thousands of lives

After 40 years of defeat and failure, America's "war on drugs" is being buried in the same fashion as it was born – amid bloodshed, confusion, corruption and scandal. US agents are being pulled from South America; Washington is putting its narcotics policy under review, and a newly confident region is no longer prepared to swallow its fatal Prohibition error. Indeed, after the expenditure of billions of dollars and the violent deaths of tens of thousands of people, a suitable epitaph for America's longest "war" may well be the plan, in Bolivia, for every family to be given the right to grow coca in its own backyard.

The "war", declared unilaterally throughout the world by Richard Nixon in 1969, is expiring as its strategists start discarding plans that have proved futile over four decades: they are preparing to withdraw their agents from narcotics battlefields from Colombia to Afghanistan and beginning to coach them in the art of trumpeting victory and melting away into anonymous defeat. Not surprisingly, the new strategy is being gingerly aired in the media of the US establishment, from The Wall Street Journal to the Miami Herald.

Prospects in the new decade are thus opening up for vast amounts of useless government expenditure being reassigned to the treatment of addicts instead of their capture and imprisonment. And, no less important, the ever-expanding balloon of corruption that the "war" has brought to heads of government, armies and police forces wherever it has been waged may slowly start to deflate.

Prepare to shed a tear over the loss of revenue that eventual decriminalisation of narcotics could bring to the traffickers, large and small, and to the contractors who have been making good money building and running the new prisons that help to bankrupt governments – in the US in particular, where drug offenders – principally small retailers and seldom the rich and important wholesalers – have helped to push the prison population to 1,600,000; their imprisonment is already straining federal and state budgets. In Mississippi, where drug offenders once had to serve 85 per cent of their sentences, they are now being required to serve less than a quarter. California has been ordered to release 40,000 inmates because its prisons are hugely overcrowded.

At the same time, some in the US are confused and fear that the new commission proposed by Congressman Eliot Engel, a man with a record of hostility to the Cuban and Venezuelan governments, may prove to be a broken reed. As he brought in his bill he added timidly: "Let me be absolutely clear that this bill has not been introduced to support the legalisation of illegal drugs. That is not something that I would like to see."

Part of the reason for the slow US retreat from the "war" is that the strategy of fighting it in foreign lands and not at home has proved valueless. Along the already sensitive frontier with Mexico the effect of US attempts to enforce a hard line by blasting drug dealers away has been bloody. Anxious to keep in check the flood of illegal immigrants into territory that once belonged to Mexico, Washington is building a wall and fence comparable to that which once cut through Berlin and that which is today causing havoc between Israelis and Palestinians.

In the areas of Mexico closest to the US frontier the toll of deaths in drug-related violence exceeded 7,000 people in 2009 (1,000 of them dying in January and February). This takes the death toll over three years to above 16,000, figures far in excess of US fatalities in Afghanistan. The bloodshed has continued despite – or perhaps because of – the intense US pressure on President Felipe Calderon to station a large part of the Mexican army in the region. It is deploying 49,000 men on its own soil in the campaign against drugs, a larger force than the 46,000 Britain sent to take part in the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. But still the blood flows.

As in Colombia, where a multibillion-dollar US subsidy maintains that country's armed forces, there are well-founded suspicions that military operations are often rendered futile because the miserably paid local commanders and individual soldiers are easily bought off by drug dealers.

The quiet expiry of the "war" has dawned slowly on a world focused on the US's more palpable conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last month, the US House of Representatives gave unanimous approval to a bill creating an independent commission to reconsider domestic and international drug policies and suggest better ones. Congressman Engel, a Democrat from the Bronx and the sponsor of the bill, declared: "Billions upon billions of US taxpayer dollars have been spent over the years to combat the drug trade in Latin America and the Caribbean. In spite of our efforts, the positive results are few and far between."

As far back as last May, Gil Kerlikowske, the former police chief of Seattle who was named head of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy and thus boss of the campaign, announced he would not be using the term "war on drugs" any more. A few weeks earlier, former Latin American presidents of the centre and right – Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia – had told the new US President that the "war" had failed and appealed for greater emphasis on cutting drug consumption and the decriminalisation of cannabis.

For the lives and sanity of millions, the seeing of the light is decidedly late. The conditions of the 1920s, when the US Congress outlawed alcohol and allowed Al Capone and his kin to make massive fortunes, have been re-created up and down Latin America.

Mexico's President has not been afraid to point out to Washington that official corruption is at the root of drug trafficking in the US just as it is in Mexico. "I say we should investigate on both sides. I'm cleaning my house and I hope that on the other side as well the house is being cleaned," he said pointedly last April before President Obama came visiting.

Furthermore, President Calderon says that lax gun control laws in the US caused an influx of firearms into Mexico. He has declared that 90 per cent of the 30,000 weapons that government forces seized from drug dealers in Mexico came from north of the border. For their part, the Latin Americans, under a new generation of more self-confident leaders, are tired of being hectored about their failings by the US, the world's principal source of cannabis whose agents continue the drug dealing they indulged in during the Iran-Contra affair of the Reagan years.

Evidence points to aircraft – familiarly known as "torture taxis" – used by the CIA to move captives seized in its kidnapping or "extraordinary rendition" operations through Gatwick and other airports in the EU being simultaneously used for drug distribution in the Western hemisphere. A Gulfstream II jet aircraft N9875A identified by the British Government and the European Parliament as being involved in this traffic crashed in Mexico in September 2008 while en route from Colombia to the US with a load of more than three tons of cocaine.

In 2004, another torture taxi crashed in a field in Nicaragua with a ton of cocaine aboard. It had been identified by Britain and the European Parliament's temporary committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners as a frequent visitor in 2004 and 2005 to British, Cypriot, Czech, German, Greek, Hungarian, Spanish and other European cities with its cargo of captives for secret imprisonment and torture in Iraq, Jordan and Azerbaijan.

Given the circumstances, it is unremarkable that US strictures are being politely ignored. President Evo Morales of Bolivia – criticised by the US for defending Bolivians' practice of chewing coca leaves to assuage hunger and altitude sickness – wants to allow every Bolivian family around the city of Cochabamba to cultivate coca bushes for their own use. He also wants to export coca leaves to his country's neighbours. Mr Morales's authority, recently reinforced by winning a second presidential term in fair elections and by a strengthening of Bolivia's economy, has no need to worry about US criticism.

Venezuela and Bolivia have expelled US narcotics officers from their territory. At the end of last month, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador ended Washington's lease of a large air base on the Pacific from where US aircraft were engaged in the struggle against the region's increasingly powerful left.

This year should be the year that common sense vanquishes the mailed fist in an unwinnable war against an invisible enemy.


Source: http://www.independent.co.uk