Operation Bite: War with Iran April 6, 2007

Russian sources report imminent war with Iran on April 6, 2007. I first read about this on governmentdirt.com, but it appears to have originated at the Online Journal. Let's hope this is completely inaccurate.

Operation Bite: April 6 sneak attack by US forces against Iran planned, Russian military sources warn
By Webster G. Tarpley
Mar 26, 2007, 01:02

WASHINGTON DC, -- The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 am on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly “Argumenty Nedeli.” Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.

The attack is slated to last for 12 hours, according to Uglanov, from 4 am until 4 pm local time. Friday is the sabbath in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.

The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out.

The attacks will be mounted from a number of bases, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is currently home to B-52 bombers equipped with standoff missiles. Also participating in the air strikes will be US naval aviation from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, as well as from those of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Additional cruise missiles will be fired from submarines in the Indian Ocean and off the coast of the Arabian peninsula. The goal is allegedly to set back Iran’s nuclear program by several years, writes Uglanov, whose article was reissued by RIA-Novosti in various languages, but apparently not English, several days ago. The story is the top item on numerous Italian and German blogs, but so far appears to have been ignored by US websites.

Observers comment that this dispatch represents a high-level orchestrated leak from the Kremlin, in effect a war warning, which draws on the formidable resources of the Russian intelligence services, and which deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness by pro-peace forces around the world.

Asked by RIA-Novosti to comment on the Uglanov report, retired Colonel General Leonid Ivashov confirmed its essential features in a March 21 interview: “I have no doubt that there will be an operation, or more precisely a violent action against Iran.” Ivashov, who has reportedly served at various times as an informal advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is currently the vice president of the Moscow Academy for Geopolitical Sciences.

Ivashov attributed decisive importance to the decision of the Democratic leadership of the US House of Representatives to remove language from the just-passed Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill that would have demanded that Bush come to Congress before launching an attack on Iran. Ivashov pointed out that the language was eliminated under pressure from AIPAC, the lobbing group representing the Israeli extreme right, and from Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni.

“We have drawn the unmistakable conclusion that this operation will take place,” said Ivashov. In his opinion, the US planning does not include a land operation: “ Most probably there will be no ground attack, but rather massive air attacks with the goal of annihilating Iran’s capacity for military resistance, the centers of administration, the key economic assets, and quite possibly the Iranian political leadership, or at least part of it,” he continued.

Ivashov noted that it was not to be excluded that the Pentagon would use smaller tactical nuclear weapons against targets of the Iranian nuclear industry. These attacks could paralyze everyday life, create panic in the population, and generally produce an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty all over Iran, Ivashov told RIA-Novosti. “This will unleash a struggle for power inside Iran, and then there will be a peace delegation sent in to install a pro-American government in Teheran,” Ivashov continued. One of the US goals was, in his estimation, to burnish the image of the current Republican administration, which would now be able to boast that they had wiped out the Iranian nuclear program.

Among the other outcomes, General Ivashov pointed to a partition of Iran along the same lines as Iraq, and a subsequent carving up of the Near and Middle East into smaller regions. “This concept worked well for them in the Balkans and will now be applied to the greater Middle East,” he commented.

“Moscow must exert Russia’s influence by demanding an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to deal with the current preparations for an illegal use of force against Iran and the destruction of the basis of the United Nations Charter,” said General Ivashov. “In this context Russia could cooperate with China, France and the non-permanent members of the Security Council. We need this kind of preventive action to ward off the use of force,” he concluded.

Resources:

http://fr.rian.ru/world/20070319/62260006.html

http://fr.rian.ru/world/20070321/62387717.html

Stars and Planets to Scale

A star over 2 billion miles in diameter should have the effect of making you feel quite insignificant in relation to the universe.

John McCain's MySpace Page Hacked

I just had to put this up. What 70 year old straight man doesn't want to see two passionate females loving each other?


Visit TechCrunch for the full story.

Drugs and Toxicity

This chart is from an article by Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic on the toxicity of drugs. The chart represents the level of toxicity for a few of them. The numbers represent how many more doses you would need to take of a drug to die, in relation to its effective dose. For heroin to be lethal it would only take a dose of about 5 more times its point of effectiveness. Not surprisingly, marijuana takes more than 1,000 doses for it to kill you. Read the article here.

Occult Serial Killings in a Texas Border Community

In April of 1989, a south Texas border community was brought to its feet by the discovery of bizarre, ritualistic and torturous killings which occurred in a small ranch outside of Matamoros, Mexico. One of the 13 mutilated bodies discovered was that of Mark Kilroy, a 21 year old student at the University of Texas at Austin. Kilroy had been tortured mercilessly; his skull split open and his brain removed. Authorities later discovered Mark Kilroy’s brain in a cast-iron cauldron called a Nganga among other remains which included: various animals, spiders, scorpions, a horseshoe, a turtle shell and a human spinal column – all which had been boiled in blood.

The uncovering of remains

The mastermind behind the murders was a Cuban immigrant and drug-smuggler named Adolfo Jesus de Constanzo. Constanzo and company sacrificed their victims and used their body parts in magical incantations and rituals – rituals that were very loosely based on a religion known as Palo Mayombe. (In truth, however, many of the cult members who participated in the slayings practiced a combination of Palo Mayombe, Roman Catholicism and Santeria.) Palo mayombe, according to Wikipedia, originated in central Africa but was spread to Cuba by slaves. In the mid 19th century, Palo Mayombe spread to Haiti and the Dominican Republic and to other Afro-Latino communities in the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Puerto Rico. The focus of worship revolves around a consecrated religious receptacle or alters known as Nganga. Just as was found in Adolfo’s site of sacrifice, the Nganga is usually filled with sticks (palos), human remains and other items. As an infant in Cuba, Constanzo’s father convinced a Palo Mayombe practicing priest that his son was a “chosen one” who was “destined for great power”. With the full blessings of his Palo Mayombe-practicing mother, Constanzo began an apprenticeship with a Haitian priest in Miami when he was only 10 years old.

Constanzo’s mother Delia Aurora Gonzalez was often in trouble with the law but always managed to elude prosecution. Delia believed that her religion gave her magical powers to evade punishment for her crimes. She would often move from place to place with her son, often leaving homes despoiled and blood-stained, often littered with remains of animals which had been sacrificed. Obviously, this had a profound effect on Adolfo and he too began to believe that Palo Mayombe provided magical protection from harm. When he was 19 years old, Constanzo pledged his allegiance to Kadiempembe, an African-based deity most often associated with the Christian version of Satan. With the blessing of his mentor, he devoted himself to the worship of evil for profit – specifically using his religion to help his own drug dealings and cursing and/or killing members of rival gangs.

Mark Kilroy wasn’t the first to be sacrificed, but he was the one victim who inadvertently brought about the downfall of this dangerous murdering cult. Unlike the other victims, Mark Kilroy was an American; he was Anglo, came from a well-to-do family and had an uncle in the U.S. Customs Service. Immediately after his disappearance, his family made television appearances and offered a $15,000 reward for anyone with information regarding his disappearance. Adolfo and his gang soon realized that they had picked on the wrong guy. Many of their victims at that time had been rival drug dealers, members of their own cult, or individuals who were simply not missed. Unfortunately for the Kilroy family, Adolfo had killed Mark Kilroy almost immediately upon taking him to the ranch known as Rancho Santa Elena.

Rancho Santa Elena was discovered when farmers around the area reported hearing “strange noises” coming from the site during the middle of the night. In fact, people around the area were afraid of the site because they believed it was evil and heard that “witches” would often congregate there. Fearful, many who knew those details remained quiet for a long time. When the discovery was made, however, all hell broke loose and the media frenzy began.

At the time, I was 9 years old and vividly remember the panic that ensued right after the grizzly discovery. The timing of such a case was extraordinary as Geraldo Rivera (as many of you remember) was in the midst of scaring Americans to death with his reports that Satanists were all over the country sacrificing babies and such. This case at the time only solidified the belief that Satanists were in fact real and sacrificed individuals without remorse – all in the name of Satan. To make matters worse, this was happening in my very own backyard. In order to quantify the panic, you need to understand that I was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley, located at the southernmost tip of Texas. Predominantly Hispanic, the area to this day is serious about their Catholicism and uber-sensitive to anything involving the supernatural. In addition, the area is considered one of the poorest regions in the United States and not surprisingly, many are also poorly educated. So not only was Geraldo Rivera scaring the shit out of well-informed, educated Americans – he was also doubly scaring those who simply didn’t know any better. This was evident by the rampant rumors that soon started after the revelation that people had, in fact, been sacrificed – and all just a stones throw away from our own homes.

News channels in the area reported that schools across the Rio Grande Valley had begun to receive calls that children were to be kidnapped and sacrificed in retaliation for disturbing a sacred site. In fact, schools really were receiving threats, but many of these were later attributed to sick individuals bent on having a little fun at everyone else’s expense. To make matters worse, Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo and his disciples had not been caught. The gang was on the run and numerous sightings across the region and as far north as Chicago were being reported almost daily. In my particular case, the doors of my school were locked and every single student was corralled into the cafeteria. The only way we were allowed to leave was if our parents personally came to the school and signed us out. Cities along the border instated curfews and many required that all children be accompanied by an adult. News agency’s also reported that children should not be left outside to play unsupervised – even in the middle of the day! This scene was repeated at almost every school and city across the Rio Grande Valley, a large region that runs 100 miles east and west along the Rio Grande River, extending out to the Gulf of Mexico.

Some time during the big brouhaha, a church in Pharr, Texas was burned to the ground by angry locals because it was believed to be a Satanic Church. Rumor had it that this church was responsible for the kidnapping threats and had ties to the Constanzo cult. Although the church had existed within the community for 16 years, its name dealt its fate. The Church of Fire, as it was unfortunately named, was in fact a Bible-based Christian church. Many of its members’ homes were also threatened with the same fate despite this fact. As this case illustrates perfectly, panic trumped all reason.

The communities affected by this bizarre case tried desperately to return to normal to no avail. Those who were capable of committing such a horrendous crime time and time again were still out there. On April 24, 1989, one of the cult members Jorge Montes was arrested in his home and wasted no time in implicating Adolfo as the mastermind behind the murders. Unfortunately, he proved to be no help in locating Adolfo and other cult members. On May 2nd at a hideout in Mexico City, Sara Maria Aldrete, one of the cult members wrote a note on a piece of paper and threw it out the window because she feared for her life. The note read:

"Please call the judicial police and tell them that in this building are those that they are seeking. Tell them that a woman is being held hostage. I beg for this, because what I want most is to talk--or they’re going to kill the girl."

Unfortunately, the note fell into the hands of a passerby who believed it to be a joke and did not report what he had found. On May 6th, police began going door-to-door looking for a missing child from an unrelated case. When the police approached Adolfo’s hideout, he assumed they were there for him and opened fire with a machine gun. Ala-Hitler, Adolfo instructed one of his cronies to kill him and another member – and if he didn’t, things would go bad for him in hell. With that prompt, Adolfo was killed by his own machine gun.

Three remaining members were found alive in the home and were immediately arrested and sentenced between 35-67 years in prison. In a Mexican prison, that’s as good as a death sentence. Additionally, 11 other members were indicted on various charges related to the murders at Ranch Santa Elena. When the remaining members of Constanzo’s crew were interviewed, they explained that the true inspiration for human sacrifice came from the motion picture, The Believers (1987) which Adolfo made them watch 14 times. In the movie, a high-priest uses human sacrifice to gain supernatural powers.

Arrested cult members
The true number of victims will never be known. Police discovered 13 mutilated bodies at the ranch. However, according to crimelibrary.com, Mexico City reported 74 unsolved ritualistic killings between 1987 and 1989 with 14 of them involving infant children. Police suspect that Constanzo’s cult was responsible for 16 of those – all of which involved children or teenagers, but the lack of evidence prevented the authorities from pressing charges.

Things slowly returned to normal in this south Texas region but remnants of that experience remain to this day. The following year, many schools across the region decided to tone down any attempt at celebrating the occult (i.e. Halloween) and banned all costumes which contained an “occult” theme, this included fairies, ghosts, smurfs, witches (good and bad) - even Casper the Ghost was banned! Some schools banned Halloween altogether and many of these districts still enforce the bans to this day.

For more in-depth information about the killings, check out the following links:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/constanzo/8.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_mayombe
http://www.theisticsatanism.com/asp/realcrime.html
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/web/crj0061a.html

Maglev: Fastest Train in the World

Magnetic levitation technology has allowed us to view train travel in a whole new way. Maglev trains require no engine and travel using a magnetic field produced by electromagnetic coils. Because maglev trains never touch the track, no friction is created, allowing maglev trains to accelerate and travel at ridiculous speeds. The Shanghai Maglev Train was recorded traveling at a top speed of 313mph. Traveling at those speeds would get you from Paris to Rome in a little over 2 hours.

Check out this video of a maglev toy train which exemplifies this process well.



The video below is 10 minutes long but gives you an idea of how quickly a maglev train can accelerate. This is the Shanghai Maglev - this particular train ride reached a speed of 430km/h (about 269 mph). A look out the window at this speed is mesmerising, if a bit nauseating!



For more info visit: http://www.howstuffworks.com/maglev-train.htm

Screenshots of Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10 with Beryl (A Linux OS)

Forget about Vista! The screenshots and video clip below are of my desktop computer with a Linux desktop environment called Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10 with Beryl Windows Manager installed on a 2002 1.9GHz Gateway Intel Pentium 4 computer with 256MB Memory and an NVIDIA GeForce2 MX graphics card.

Although ease of use hasn't been Linux-based operating systems strong point, things have recently begun to change. With large Linux communities like linuxquestions.org and linux.org, it is becoming easier to find the support needed to make the transition from Windows to Linux. There are some pros and cons to every OS out there, but Linux platforms like Ubuntu (especially their latest Edgy Eft release) can make older computers run like new and have very little (if any) virus threats.

The proof is in the proverbial pudding: Below is a video clip and a few screenshots of my own desktop with Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10. Note that the Edgy Eft download does not provide you with the type of window manipulations you see below - rather that is the product of a windows manager called Beryl:

"Beryl is a combined window manager and composite manager written in C using OpenGL to provide acceleration. It is designed to be highly flexible, extensible, and portable, all the while keeping in mind that the users know how they want their desktops to act better than we do. With Beryl the rather esoteric concept of the computer desktop is brought down to a more human level, allowing for a more native and intuitive understanding of your workspace. To learn more about Beryl and its features visit our Feature Spotlight," (from http://www.beryl-project.org).

I have had this particular setup for about 4 months now, a few months before Vista's release. In fact, Edgy Eft has been available since October, 2006.

Despite the pros, Edgy Eft with Beryl is sometimes unstable, especially on older computers. About once every couple of weeks some weird graphics problem will arise like frozen windows. In addition, I've noticed that some p2p clients like Limewire will not work for me when I have Beryl running. I probably experience this more than most since my computer dates back to 2002. When this happens, however, I simply revert back to the default Gnome Desktop setting that comes with Edgy Eft and everything resumes normal operation - and all without restarting my computer.(As an ex-Windows user, the same computer with an XP OS was crashing almost daily.) Despite the minor disruptions, I am still very impressed with the amazing windows graphics and functionality that I am currently getting. Overall, I am really enjoying my desktop environment, something I haven't done in a long time. Plus, Ubuntu and Beryl are both FREE!

The fact that I can have the type of functionality shown below with the following computer specs is simply amazing!

2002 Gateway Intel Pentium 4
1.9GHz
256MB Memory
GeForce2 MX/AGP/SSE2

For Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10 please visit www.ubuntu.com
For Beryl Windows Manager visit www.beryl-project.org

Linux - Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10 with Beryl
Uploaded by elguercoterco

Illegal Immigration

This is the definition of a vicious cycle. We need to figure this out quick. Hopefully we can come to some resolve, and soon. For the sake and lives of those crossing, and for those of us here in the U.S. who are forced to support them. I understand why they come. They have nothing. I blame that on the caste system in Mexico. The white rich and mestizo poor. The poor are poor because their jobs just don't pay. And those jobs are the same jobs that support our own middle class in the U.S. In Monterrey, for example, Mexico's Rich Industrial Center, public school teachers get paid on average of $200-$300 dollars a month. That's about $6 to $10 dollars a day. Even with a wall, they will continue to find ways to get into this country because their life depends on it. So what to do?

Below is a paragraph from Wikipedia on illegal immigration which illustrates the cycle well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States

The United States Government Accountability Office estimates that “between 400,000 and 700,000 unauthorized migrants have entered the United States each year since 1992.” A substantial portion did so by crossing either the United States–Mexico border or the United States-Canada border.[4]

According to the Pew Hispanic Center somewhat more than half of the unauthorized migrant population entered the country illegally rather than overstay their visas, where "Some evaded customs and immigration inspectors at ports of entry by hiding in vehicles such as cargo trucks. Others tracked through the Arizona desert, waded or swam across the Rio Grande or American Canal in California or otherwise eluded the U.S. Border patrol which has jurisdiction over all the land areas away from the ports of entry on the borders with Mexico and Canada." [5]

Stricter enforcement of the border has failed to significantly curb illegal immigration, instead pushing the flow into more remote regions, slightly reducing the rate of apprehensions and increasing the cost to taxpayers of each arrest from $300 in 1992 to $1700 in 2002. [6] Border Patrol activity is concentrated around big border cities such as San Diego and El Paso, which do have extensive border fencing, diverting illegal immigrants into rural mountainous and desert areas. The border between Arizona and Mexico has become a major entrance area for illegal immigration to the United States, due in part to the increased difficulty of crossing illegally in California.[7] Each year there are several hundred immigrant deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border. The number of deaths has been steadily increasing since the middle 1990s with exposure (including heat stroke, dehydration, and hypothermia) a leading cause.[8]

The tightening of border enforcement has disrupted the "traditional" circular movement of migrant workers from Mexico by increasing the costs and risks of crossing the border, thereby reducing their rate of return migration to Mexico. The difficulty of the journey has prompted many migrant workers to stay in the United States longer or indefinitely.[9]

Why the Towers Fell: Two Theories

Why the towers fell: Two theories
By William Rice
Vermont Guardian
March 1, 2007
http://www.vermontguardian.com/commentary/032007/TwinTowers.shtml

(William Rice, P.E., is a registered professional civil engineer who worked on structural steel (and concrete) buildings in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. He was also a professor at Vermont Technical College where he taught engineering materials, structures lab, and other building related courses.)

Having worked on structural steel buildings as a civil engineer in the era when the Twin Towers were designed and constructed, I found some disturbing discrepancies and omissions concerning their collapse on 9/11.

I was particularly interested in the two PBS documentaries that explained the prevailing theories as determined by two government agencies, FEMA and NIST (National Institute of Science and Technology). The first (2002) PBS documentary, Why the Towers Fell, discussed how the floor truss connectors failed and caused a “progressive pancake collapse.”

The subsequent 2006 repackaged documentary Building on Ground Zero explained that the connectors held, but that the columns failed, which is also unlikely. Without mentioning the word “concrete,” the latter documentary compared the three-second collapse of the concrete Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building with that of the Twin Towers that were of structural steel. The collapse of a concrete-framed building cannot be compared with that of a structural steel-framed building.

Since neither documentary addressed many of the pertinent facts, I took the time to review available material, combine it with scientific and historic facts, and submit the following two theories for consideration.

The prevailing theory

The prevailing theory for the collapse of the 110-story, award-winning Twin Towers is that when jetliners flew into the 95th and 80th floors of the North and South Towers respectively, they severed several of each building’s columns and weakened other columns with the burning of jet fuel/kerosene (and office combustibles).

However, unlike concrete buildings, structural steel buildings redistribute the stress when several columns are removed and the undamaged structural framework acts as a truss network to bridge over the missing columns.

After the 1993 car bomb explosion destroyed columns in the North Tower, John Skilling, the head structural engineer for the Twin Towers, was asked about an airplane strike. He explained that the Twin Towers were originally designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707 (similar in size to the Boeing 767). He went on to say that there would be a horrendous fire from the jet fuel, but “the building structure would still be there.”

The 10,000 gallons of jet fuel (half capacity) in each jetliner did cause horrendous fires over several floors, but it would not cause the steel members to melt or even lose sufficient strength to cause a collapse. This is because the short-duration jet fuel fires and office combustible fires cannot create (or transmit to the steel) temperatures hot enough. If a structural steel building could collapse because of fire, it would do so slowly as the various steel members gradually relinquished their structural strength. However, in the 100-year history of structural-steel framed buildings, there is no evidence of any structural steel framed building having collapsed because of fire.

Let’s assume the unlikelihood that these fires could weaken all of the columns to the same degree of heat intensity and thus remove their structural strength equally over the entire floor, or floors, in order to cause the top 30-floor building segment (South Tower WTC #2) to drop vertically and evenly onto the supporting 79th floor. The 30 floors from above would then combine with the 79th floor and fall onto the next level down (78th floor) crushing its columns evenly and so on down into the seven levels below the street level.

The interesting fact is that each of these 110-story Twin Towers fell upon itself in about ten seconds at nearly free-fall speed. This violates Newton’s Law of Conservation of Momentum that would require that as the stationary inertia of each floor is overcome by being hit, the mass (weight) increases and the free-fall speed decreases.

Even if Newton’s Law is ignored, the prevailing theory would have us believe that each of the Twin Towers inexplicably collapsed upon itself crushing all 287 massive columns on each floor while maintaining a free-fall speed as if the 100,000, or more, tons of supporting structural-steel framework underneath didn’t exist.

The politically unthinkable theory

Controlled demolition is so politically unthinkable that the media not only demeans the messenger but also ridicules and “debunks” the message rather than provide investigative reporting. Curiously, it took 441 days for the president’s 9/11 Commission to start an “investigation” into a tragedy where more than 2,500 WTC lives were taken. The Commission’s investigation also didn’t include the possibility of controlled-demolition, nor did it include an investigation into the “unusual and unprecedented” manner in which WTC Building #7 collapsed.

The media has basically kept the collapse of WTC Building #7 hidden from public view. However, instead of the Twin Towers, let’s consider this building now. Building #7 was a 47-story structural steel World Trade Center Building that also collapsed onto itself at free-fall speed on 9/11. This structural steel building was not hit by a jetliner, and collapsed seven hours after the Twin Towers collapsed and five hours after the firemen had been ordered to vacate the building and a collapse safety zone had been cordoned off. Both of the landmark buildings on either side received relatively little structural damage and both continue in use today.

Contrary to the sudden collapse of the Twin Towers and Building #7, the four other smaller World Trade Center buildings #3, #4, #5, and #6, which were severely damaged and engulfed in flames on 9/11, still remained standing. There were no reports of multiple explosions. The buildings had no pools of molten metal (a byproduct of explosives) at the base of their elevator shafts. They created no huge caustic concrete/cement and asbestos dust clouds (only explosives will pulverize concrete into a fine dust cloud), and they propelled no heavy steel beams horizontally for three hundred feet or more.

The collapse of WTC building #7, which housed the offices of the CIA, the Secret Service, and the Department of Defense, among others, was omitted from the government’s 9/11 Commission Report, and its collapse has yet to be investigated.
Perhaps it is time for these and other unanswered questions surrounding 9/11 to be thoroughly investigated. Let’s start by contacting our congressional delegation.