www.emf-health.com-blog-2006-01-dr-george-carlo-radio-interview-your.html
Scientists estimate that our daily exposure to EMF radiation is 100 million times higher than it was in our grandparents' time. This has been referred to as the "largest biological experiment ever." The purpose of this blog is to report on the health consequences of this experiment as they are now being discovered by experts, and to offer viable solutions to protect you and your family from this ever-present, albeit invisible, presence in our environment. Read on...
Watch TV News Report:
Brain Tumors Now Cause More Deaths Than Any Other Forms of Cancer
Monday, January 16, 2006
Dr. George Carlo Radio Interview: "Your Cell Phone is Dangerous"
Dr. George Carlo is known as the epidemiologist and public health scientist who headed the multimillion dollar research funded by the cell phone industry. The project was launched in 1993 as part of a deal made with Congress to keep the industry from being regulated. After six years, Dr. Carlo's research yielded alarming findings that linked cell phone radiation to serious health diseases, including cancer. When he submitted his results to the industry executives, he expected that they would do something about it. Instead, they distanced themselves from him and tried to find ways to discredit his research and reputation.
Dr. Carlo has appeared on 20/20, 60 Minutes, World News Tonight, CBS News with Dan Rather and The Today's Show, as well as on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. In July 2006, a documentary film of his work will be released in major theaters.
In this candid interview, Dr. Carlo disclosed not only his research findings that question the safety of cell phone use but also the industry politics and shenanigans that keep cell phones in the market with minimal government intervention. There is no more qualified person to talk about the dangers of cell phone use than the man who headed a multimillion dollar research program into its safety--a program funded by the cell phone industry itself. It took a lot of courage (and still does) for him to go against the corporate giants and risk his career, reputation and even physical safety. This is one interview you do not want to miss! Listen now
http://www.emf-health.com/blog/2006/01/dr-george-carlo-radio-interview-your.html
Dr. George Carlo's Letter to AT&T Chairman & CEO
http://www.emf-health.com/reports-carlo-att.htm
7 October 1999
Mr. C. Michael Armstrong
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
AT & T Corporation
32 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 100313-2412
Dear Mr Armstrong:
After much thought, I am writing this letter to you, personally, to ask your assistance in solving what I believe is an emerging and serious problem concerning wireless phones. I write this letter in the interest of the more than 80 million wireless phone users in the United States and the more than 200 million worldwide. But I also write this letter in the interest of your industry, a critical part of our social and economic infrastructure.
Since 1993, I have headed the WTR surveillance and research program funded by the wireless industry. The goal of WTR has always been to identify and solve any problems concerning consumers' health that could arise from the use of these phones. This past February, at the annual convention of the CTIA, I met with the full board of that organization to brief them on some surprising findings from our work. I do not recall if you were there personally, but my understanding is that all segments of the industry were represented.
At that briefing, I explained that the well-conducted scientific studies that WTR was overseeing indicated that the question of wireless phone safety had become confused.
Specifically, I reported to you that:
* The rate of death from brain cancer among handheld phone users was higher than the rate of brain cancer death among those who used non-handheld phones that were away from their head;
* The risk of acoustic neuroma, a benign tumour of the auditory nerve that is well in range of the radiation coming from a phone's antenna, was fifty percent higher in people who reported using cell phones for six years or more, moreover, that relationship between the amount of cell phone use and this tumour appeared to follow a dose-response curve:
* The risk of rare neuro epithelial tumours on the outside of the brain was more than doubled, a statistically significant risk increase, in cell phone users as compared to people who did not use cell phones;
* There appeared to be some correlation between brain tumours occurring on the right side of the head and the use of the phone on the right side of the head;
* Laboratory studies looking at the ability of radiation from a phone's antenna to cause functional genetic damage were definitively positive, and were following a dose-response relationship.
I also indicated that while our overall study of brain cancer occurrence did not show a correlation with cell phone use, the vast majority of the tumours that were studied, were well out of range of the radiation that one would expect from a cell phone's antenna. Because of that distance, the finding of no effect was questionable. Such mis-classification of radiation exposure would tend to dilute any real effect that may have been present. In addition, I reported to you that the genetic damage studies we conducted to look at the ability of radiation from the phones to break DNA were negative, but that the positive finding of functional DNA damage could be more important, perhaps indicating a problem that is not dependent on DNA breakage, and that these inconsistencies needed to be clarified. I reported that while none of these findings alone were evidence of a definitive health hazard from wireless phones, the pattern of potential health effects evidenced by different types of studies, from different laboratories, and by different investigators raised serious questions.
Following my presentation, I heard by voice vote of those present, a pledge to "do the right thing in following up these findings" and a commitment of the necessary funds.
When I took on the responsibility of doing this work for you, I pledged five years. I was asked to continue on through the end of a sixth year, and agreed. My tenure is now completed. My presentation to you and the CTIA board in February was not an effort to lengthen my tenure at WTR, nor to lengthen the tenure of WTR itself. I was simply doing my job of letting you know what we found and what needed to be done following from our findings. I made this expressly clear during my presentation to you and in many subsequent conversation with members of your industry and the media.
Today, I sit here extremely frustrated and concerned that appropriate steps have not been taken by the wireless industry to protect consumers during this time of uncertainty about safety. The steps I am referring to specifically followed from the WTR program and have been recommended repeatedly in public and private for and by me and other experts from around the world. As I prepare to move away from the wireless phone issue and into a different public health direction. I am concerned that the wireless industry is missing a valuable opportunity by dealing with these public health concerns through politics, creating illusions that more research over the next several years helps consumers today, and false claims that regulatory compliance means safety. The better choice by the wireless industry would be to implement measured steps aimed at true consumer protection.
Alarmingly, indications are that some segments of the industry have ignored the scientific findings suggesting potential health effects, have repeatedly and falsely claimed that wireless phones are safe for all consumers including children, and have created an illusion of responsible follow up by calling for and supporting more research. The most important measures of consumer protection are missing: complete and honest factual information to allow informed judgement by consumers about assumption of risk; the direct tracking and monitoring of what happens to consumers who use wireless phones; and, the monitoring of changes in the technology that could impact health.
I am especially concerned about what appear to be actions by a segment of the industry to conscript the FCC, the FDA and The World Health Organization with them in following a non-effectual course that will likely result in a regulatory and consumer backlash.
As an industry, you will have to deal with the fallout from all of your choices, good and bad, in the long term. But short term, I would like your help in effectuating an important public health intervention today.
The question of wireless phone safety is unclear. Therefore, from a public health perspective, it is critical for consumers to have the information they need to make an informed judgement about how much of this unknown risk they wish to assume in their use of wireless phones. Informing consumers openly and honestly about what is known and not-known about health risks is not liability laden - it is evidence that your industry is being responsible, and doing all it can to assure safe use of its products. The current popular backlash we are witnessing in the United States today against the tobacco industry is derived in large part from perceived dishonesty on the part of that industry in not being forthright about health effects. I urge you to help your industry not repeat that mistake.
As we close out the business of the WTR, I would like to openly ask for your help in distributing the summary findings we have complied of our work. This last action is what always has been anticipated and forecast in the WTR's research agenda. I have asked another organization with which I am affiliated, The Health Risk Management Group (HRMG) , to help us with this public health intervention step, and to put together a consumer information package for widespread distribution. Because neither WTR nor HRMG have the means to effectuate this intervention, I am asking you to help us do the right thing.
I would be happy to talk to you personally about this.
Sincerely yours
George L. Carlo Ph.D, M.S., J.D
Chairman
Wireless Technology Research LLC
1711 N. Street, NW, Suite 400, Washington DC 20036-2811”
Dr. George Carlo, an epidemiologist and public health scientist who headed a research program funded by the cellphone industry, co-authored with journalist Martin Schram the book, Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Thursday, July 06, 2006
SYNTH-ARCHIVE#25: "Hemp/Energy & the Economy"
original posting: 3 march 2002
from The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer
www.jackherer.com/bookch09.html
Energy & the Economy
The book Solar Gas, Science Digest, Omni magazine, The Alliance for Survival, the Green Party of Germany, the United States and others put the total figure of our energy costs at 80% of the total dollar expense of living for each human being.
In validation, 82% of the total value of all issues traded on the New York Stock Exchange and other world stock exchanges, etc., are tied directly to:
- Energy producers such as Exxon, Shell Oil, Conoco, Con-Edison, and so forth.
- Energy transporters such as pipeline companies, oil shipping and delivery companies.
- Refineries and retail sales of Exxon, Mobil, Shell, So. California Edison, Con-Edison, etc.
Eighty-two percent of all your money means that roughly 33 of every 40 hours you work goes to pay for the ultimate energy cost in the goods and services you purchase, including transportation, heating, cooking, lighting. Americans - 5% of world population - in our insatiable drive for greater "net worth" and "productivity," use 25-40% of the worlds' energy. The hidden cost to the environment cannot be measured.
Our current fossil energy sources also supply about 80% of the solid and airborne pollution which is quickly poisoning the environment of the planet. (See U.S. EPA report 1983-96 on the coming world catastrophe from carbon dioxide imbalance caused by burning fossil fuels). The best and cheapest substitute for these expensive and wasteful energy methods is not wind or solar panels, nuclear, geothermal and the like, but the evenly distributed light of the sun for growing biomass.
On a global scale, the plant that produces the most net biomass is hemp. It's the only annually renewable plant on Earth able to replace all fossil fuels.
In the Twenties, the early oil barons such as Rockefeller of Standard Oil, Rothschild of Shell, etc., became paranoically aware of the possibilities of Henry Ford's vision of cheap methanol fuel,* and they kept oil prices incredibly low - between one dollar and four dollars per barrel (there are 42 gallons in an oil barrel) until 1970 - almost 50 years! Prices were so low, in fact, that no other energy source could compete with it. Then, once they were finally sure of the lack of competition, the price of oil jumped to almost $40 per barrel over the next 10 years.
* Henry Ford grew marijuana on his estate after 1937, possibly to prove the cheapness of methanol production at Iron Mountain. He made plastic cars with wheat straw, hemp and sisal. (Popular Mechanics, Dec. 1941, "Pinch Hitters for Defense.") In 1892, Rudolph Diesel invented the diesel engine, which he intended to fuel "by a variety of fuels, especially vegetable and seed oils."
By the year 2000, the U.S. will have burned 80% of its petroleum resources, while our coal reserves may last 100-300 years longer. But the decision to continue burning coal has serious drawbacks. This high-sulfur coal is responsible for our acid rain, which already kills 50,000 Americans and 5,000-10,000 Canadians annually. In addition, the acid rains destroy the forests, rivers, and animals.
(Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1986.)
Conversion to biomass fuels should begin immediately to stop both planetary pollution and lemming-life genocide, and to make us naturally energy independent.
"Marine Management is All at Sea" Japan Times
http://interspecies.com/pages/onlinenews0706.htmlNOTE: An excellent article on Japan's obsession with whaling.
Marine Management Is All at Sea
By Stephen Hesse, for the Japan Times
Our oceans and seas are in deep trouble, and if the Japanese government is to be believed, part of the blame rests with the whales. This is nonsense, of course. The degradation and resource depletion that threaten marine ecosystems worldwide are solely due to human activity.
Still, Japan has struggled for decades to end an International Whaling Commission moratorium on whaling that went into force in 1986, and it is difficult not to sympathize with their frustration, if not with their cause.
It's not that Japan can't kill whales. For years they have been harpooning hundreds of minke whales each year as part of a "scientific research" program carried out in the South Pacific and Southern Ocean, and the number killed is increasing steadily. In its own coastal waters, too, Japanese kill thousands of porpoises and dolphins annually.
But Japan does not need more whales because people are clamoring for steaks and chunks of fried blubber. These days there is not even enough demand to finish off the small mountain of whale meat that is processed each year. Japan has an embarrassing surplus when it comes to whale carcasses.
So why is the Japanese government still so eager to slaughter?
For years the argument was cultural, that whales are a unique part of Japan's fishing and dietary traditions. That seemed reasonable to many observers, but Japanese mariners still preferred catching more profitable fish, and consumers continued to prefer anything but whale.
Government spokespeople then began touting whale meat as a solution to feeding the world's starving masses. That argument, too, seemed reasonable -- but rather disingenuous. After all, Japan had spent years criticizing the cultural imperialism of anti-whaling nations that did not accept the unique role whales play in Japanese culture. Now, the same government was suggesting that non-whale eaters change their own diets.
Most recently, Japanese delegates to the IWC have been preaching that whales eat far too many fish and threaten the food security of coastal nations. In short, whales are eating our fish!
The solution? Kill the whales and there will be more fish for human consumption.
Fortunately no amount of hubris can change the fact that such simple manipulation of the planet's ecosystems is impossible.
Myriad, constantly evolving interdependencies between plants, animals and natural systems form complex ecosystems that are the foundation of human survival, providing food, fuel, pharmaceuticals and material for clothing and shelter -- the very backbone of our economic system. If marine and terrestrial ecosystems collapse, so too will the economic house of cards we have built upon them.
Yes, there is trouble on the high seas, but the whales are not the problem; they are simply another species, like the tuna, swordfish, salmon and sharks that are falling victim to human ignorance and rapacious consumption.
Even as we recognize that oceans are perhaps our best and last resort for food sustenance, we continue to dump our wastes into them, including industrial and agricultural chemicals, oil waste and petroleum products, heavy metals and radioactive materials.
Incredibly, these are the same waters from which we pull much of the fish and shellfish we eat. Almost 20 percent of the animal protein consumed worldwide comes from seafood. Ocean fisheries are some of the most important resources for food security, and yet we are undermining their survival.
Earlier this month, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the World Conservation Union (IUCN), an international organization headquartered in Gland, Switzerland that cooperates with 81 nations, 120 government agencies, 800 NGOs and experts in 181 countries, released a report that highlights the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde nature of our relationship with the planet's oceans.
"The conservation and sustainable use of the vulnerable ecosystems and biodiversity in deep waters and high seas are among the most critical oceans issues and environmental challenges today. Immediate impacts and threats, such as those posed by fishing, have to be reduced urgently. Activities that generate long-lasting pollution, alter climate, disrupt oceanic circulation regimes and acidify ocean waters have to be addressed, while we still can," warns the report.
Kristina M. Gjerde, High Seas Policy Adviser to IUCN's Global Marine Program, authored the report, titled "Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Deep Waters and High Seas." Readers interested in marine policy management can view it on the Web (see addresses below). But even for those interested in just knowing more about our oceans, the report contains an array of intriguing information about what goes on in the dark depths of our deep waters and high seas.
Here, for example, are some morsels to chew on next time you order chu toro (fatty tuna) and the sushi chef tells you they've run out:
"In the last 42 years, capture of wild marine fish for human consumption increased from 20 million tons to 84.5 million tons," states the report.
In addition, "52 percent of global fish stocks are fully exploited," while "overexploited and depleted species have increased from about 10 percent in the mid 1970s to 24 percent in 2002," according to Gjerde.
Are you a fan of shark fin soup? You might find it less palatable if you knew that each year 100 million sharks and related species are caught, and many thrown back into the sea finless. Unable to swim, they are left to flounder and die.
In short, we are taking more and more and leaving less and less. Over 75 percent of fish populations are fully or overexploited, and the stocks of large fish with high commercial value, such as tuna, cod and swordfish, have declined as much as 90 percent in the past 100 years.
Meanwhile, the world's population has climbed to more than 6.2 billion and demand for marine resources continues to grow.
To feed these billions there are now as many as 3.5 million fishing boats plying the world's oceans, and "1 percent of those are classified as large, industrial vessels, which have the capacity to take around 60 percent of all the fish caught globally," states the report.
How much of the global catch does Japan consume? According to a Bloomberg story by Yasumasa Song that appeared earlier this month in The Japan Times, looking at tuna alone, Japan accounts for about 630,000 tons annually -- one third of the world's total consumption.
Unfortunately, waste is also rampant in the fishing industry. According to the IUCN-UNEP report, global by-catch (marine species that are caught then thrown back dead or dying because they are not commercially valued) amounts to 20 million tons a year, or approximately 25 percent of all the fish caught worldwide.
Abuses, too, prevail. Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) catches worldwide total between $ 4.9 billion and $ 9.5 billion. So even if most fishers do their best to conserve fish stocks, others are catching and selling fish illegally, undermining essential conservation efforts.
Gjerde notes that 90 percent of our oceans are unexplored, and only about 0.0001 percent of the deep seafloor has been subject to biological investigations. Nevertheless, human impacts can be seen shore to shore across the high seas:
Over 46,000 pieces of plastic litter are floating on every sq. mile (2.56 sq. km) of ocean. In the central Pacific, there are up to 6 pounds (2.72 kg) of marine litter to every pound (0.45 kg) of plankton. Plastic waste kills up to 1 million seabirds, 100,000 sea mammals and countless fish each year, says the report. That's not to mention the millions of tons of human sewage and toxic waste that make their way into our rivers, bays and majestic oceans.
So what can we do to restock, conserve and sustainably exploit the unique resources hidden beneath our seas?
Gjerde calls for "integrated oceans management based on 'ecological boundaries' rather than political ones." She also suggests greater protection for vulnerable species, such as deep-sea fish, and for biologically and ecologically significant ecosystems.
For those wondering how difficult this might be, imagine China, Japan and Korea sitting down and agreeing to manage their shared ocean boundaries cooperatively, the same waters where patrol boats now face off. Or imagine Japan volunteering to cut its consumption of tuna by half in order to help bluefin and yellowtail stocks rebound.
There is too much wealth beneath the waves for nations to cooperate willingly. It is likely to take more crashing fish stocks, more lost coral and more toxic spills before countries worldwide awaken to the critical challenges that face us and our oceans.
And even if we do rise to the challenge, there is no guarantee that we will respond in time. After all, if the world's greatest marine consumer, Japan, still seeks to lay partial blame for the state of our oceans on whales, what hope is there for rational and informed policymaking anytime soon?
SPACESHIP EARTH quote, Adlai Stevenson, 1964
"We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent upon its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of man, half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all."Adlai Stevenson, US Ambassador to the United Nations, 1964
Al Gore and Some Inconvenient Truths about "global warming"
Al Gore and some inconvenient truths about global warming"...all scientists agree that we're in a period of increased solar activity. The sun, of course, provides all of the heat for earth except the insignificant amount generated by humans. The heat from the sun has increased over the past 100 years and especially over the past 20 years."
"THOSE EVIL REPUBLICANS ARE DESTROYING THE SOLAR SYSTEM!" http://www.mcculloughsite.net/stingray/2006/06/13/al-gore-and-some-inconvenient-truths-about-global-warming.php
Global warming has become a big issue over the past few months with the release of Al Gore's idiotic movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Just two days ago, as a matter of fact, Bill Clinton blamed the increasing number of hurricanes on “Republican policies.” While the press is fawning over the movie and Gore, they have once again neglected — or refused — to do their research. It turns out there are quite a few inconvenient truths for Al Gore and his movie.
History is overwhelmingly inconvenient for Gore. The earth's temperature, CO2 levels, and other environmental conditions are well within the norm for the past 1,000 years and don't even show up as a blip on the screen for the past 50 million years. Wild weather swings are the norm in our planet's history and we are living in an exceptionally stable climatic period.
While our ancestors were spearing woolly mammoths and painting cave walls, the climate was wobbling wildly. A few centuries of warm, wet, calm climate alternated with a few centuries of cold, dry, windy weather. The climate jumped between cold and warm not over centuries, but in as little as a single year. Often, conditions “flickered” back and forth between cold and warm for a few decades before settling down.
Remember that 1,000 years ago the Vikings were growing grapes in Greenland. Now the area where they lived is too cold to sustain any reasonable amount of agriculture. Perhaps there were some evil proto-Republicans around 1,000 years ago to cause the global cooling.
A really, really inconvenient truth for Gore is that all scientists agree that we're in a period of increased solar activity. The sun, of course, provides all of the heat for earth except the insignificant amount generated by humans. The heat from the sun has increased over the past 100 years and especially over the past 20 years.
According to observations by V. Ramanathan, B. R. Barkstrom, and E. F. Harrison, clouds have a net cooling effect of -17 W/m2 . Svensmark and Friis-Christensen conclude from the diminution of this cooling effect between 1986 and 1990 that the solar irradiance has increased by about 1.5 W/m2 within these three and a half years. A change of this order is quite remarkable, since the total radiative forcing by carbon dioxide accumulated since 1750 has been estimated by the IPCC not to go beyond 1.5 W/m2 . This means that cosmic rays, strongly modulated by solar activity, achieve an effect within three and a half years for which the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere needs centuries. This shows clearly to what extent the greenhouse effect has been overestimated in comparison with the solar contribution to climate change, which turns out to be the most important factor.
According to NASA, Mars is experiencing global warming, too:
And for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress.
Not only is our red neighbor heating up, but Neptune's largest moon, Triton, is also experiencing global warming:
The Earth is not alone in suffering global warming. According to observations made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and several ground-based instruments, temperatures on Neptune's largest moon have increased dramatically since the Voyager space probe swung by in 1989. So much so, in fact, that Triton's surface of frozen nitrogen is turning into gas, making its thin atmosphere denser by the day.
“At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming,” confirms astronomer James Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Percentage-wise, it's a very large increase.”
There are thousands of references on the Internet about Triton's global warming but Al Gore conveniently omits those truths in his movie.
Further, the big boy in our solar system, Jupiter, is also undergoing global warming.
The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe.
The global change cycle began when the last of the white oval-shaped storms formed south of the Great Red Spot in 1939.
Finally, Al Gore's movie conveniently omits the fact that water vapor — not carbon dioxide or other man-made compounds — is responsible for about 95% of the greenhouse effect on our planet. The amount of water vapor in the air is controlled by nature and human activity has no effect on water vapor.
Here is a summary of inconvenient truths that Al Gore conveniently fails to mention in his movie. Use these as talking points the next time you talk to someone about global warming:
- Global warming is occurring on Earth, Mars, and Jupiter and Triton in our solar system. If global warming is occurring throughout the solar system, then this is not the fault of humans and casts doubts upon the claims that humans are responsible for global warming on earth.
- Solar activity and heat output has been increasing for 100 years and virtually ALL heat on earth depends on the sun, not humans.
- Our current climate changes are within the norm for the past 1,000 years and unusually stable in comparison to the last 150 million years.
- Water vapor, the concentration of which does not depend on humans, is responsible for 95% of the greenhouse effect. A large percentage of other global warming gases — like methane from termite mounds — come from nature, not humans. The effect that humans have on the greenhouse effect is minimal.
- Al Gore's movie, and the global warming wackos, conveniently omits all of these facts. Global warming is a political issue, not a scientific issue, and unfortunately people are being fooled by Al Gore and scientists with a political agenda.
Global warming is a phony issue cooked up by politicians and scientists with an agenda. I am all for sound environmental policies (I worked in the environmental business for 15 years) but in my work, unlike Democrats and most journalists, I have to deal with facts, not fantasy. We cannot depend on the American mainstream media to give us the facts because most reporters have an agenda and are willing to accept whatever the Democrats say without checking their statements for accuracy.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
"Greenland's Ice Sheet is Slip-Sliding Away"
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-greenland25jun25,0,1308610.story
From the Los Angeles Times
TIMES SPECIAL REPORT
Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Slip-Sliding Away
"The massive glaciers are deteriorating twice as fast as they were five years ago. If the ice thaws entirely, sea level would rise 21 feet."
By Robert Lee Hotz
Times Staff Writer
June 25, 2006
JAKOBSHAVN GLACIER, Greenland — Gripping a bottle of Jack Daniel's between his knees, Jay Zwally savored the warmth inside the tiny plane as it flew low across Greenland's biggest and fastest-moving outlet glacier.
Mile upon mile of the steep fjord was choked with icy rubble from the glacier's disintegrated leading edge. More than six miles of the Jakobshavn had simply crumbled into open water.
"My God!" Zwally shouted over the hornet whine of the engines.
From satellite sensors and seasons in the field, Zwally, 67, knew the ice sheet below in a way that few could match. Even after a lifetime of study, the raffish NASA glaciologist with a silver dolphin in one pierced ear was dismayed by how quickly the breakup had occurred.
Wedged between boxes of scientific instruments, tent bags, duffels and survival gear, Zwally had no room to turn inside the cramped passenger compartment of the twin-engine Otter. He passed the whiskey bottle over his shoulder to geophysicist Jose Rial from the University of North Carolina, squeezed on a jump seat between a surveyor and a sleeping climatologist.
Homeward bound — windburned, bone-chilled and greasy after weeks on this immense ice cap tilted like a beret flopped across the top of the world — they all had been in a celebratory mood.
Somber now, Zwally and Rial shared a drink in silence as the shadow of the plane slipped across azure meltwater lakes, rust-red tundra and silver tongues of ice.
The Greenland ice sheet — two miles thick and broad enough to blanket an area the size of Mexico — shapes the world's weather, matched in influence by only Antarctica in the Southern Hemisphere.
It glows like milky mother-of-pearl. The sheen of ice blends with drifts of cloud as if snowbanks are taking flight.
In its heartland, snow that fell a quarter of a million years ago is still preserved. Temperatures dip as low as 86 degrees below zero. Ground winds can top 200 mph. Along the ice edge, meltwater rivers thread into fraying brown ropes of glacial outwash, where migrating herds of caribou and musk ox graze.
The ice is so massive that its weight presses the bedrock of Greenland below sea level, so all-concealing that not until recently did scientists discover that Greenland actually might be three islands.
Should all of the ice sheet ever thaw, the meltwater could raise sea level 21 feet and swamp the world's coastal cities, home to a billion people. It would cause higher tides, generate more powerful storm surges and, by altering ocean currents, drastically disrupt the global climate.
Climate experts have started to worry that the ice cap is disappearing in ways that computer models had not predicted.
By all accounts, the glaciers of Greenland are melting twice as fast as they were five years ago, even as the ice sheets of Antarctica — the world's largest reservoir of fresh water — also are shrinking, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Kansas reported in February.
Zwally and other researchers have focused their attention on a delicate ribbon — the equilibrium line, which marks the fulcrum of frost and thaw in Greenland's seasonal balance.
The zone runs around the rim of the ice cap like a drawstring. Summer melting, on average, offsets the annual accumulation of snow.
Across the ice cap, however, the area of seasonal melting was broader last year than in 27 years of record-keeping, University of Colorado climate scientists reported. In early May, temperatures on the ice cap some days were almost 20 degrees above normal, hovering just below freezing.
From cores of ancient Greenland ice extracted by the National Science Foundation, researchers have identified at least 20 sudden climate changes in the last 110,000 years, in which average temperatures fluctuated as much as 15 degrees in a single decade.
The increasingly erratic behavior of the Greenland ice has scientists wondering whether the climate, after thousands of years of relative stability, may again start oscillating.
The Theory at Work
Huddled inside a red cook tent atop 3,900 feet of ice, Zwally shoveled snow into a pot simmering on a two-ring propane camp stove.
He had to melt enough to boil lobster tails for dinner. Zwally, who works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., had purchased them at Costco and lugged them to Greenland.
The beating wings of a 30-mph wind slapped against the tent fabric. Every 15 minutes, a gust sucked open the door and frosted the room.
The tent — buried in drifts and entered by a ladder through a hatch in the roof — was part of Swiss Camp, located 155 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
For those assessing the effect of global warming, there may be no more perfect place than this warren of red tents on the Northern Hemisphere's largest ice cap. Here, the theoretical effects seen in computerized climate models take tangible form.
University of Colorado climatologist Konrad Steffen set up Swiss Camp in 1990 to study the weather along the equilibrium line. As a precaution, Steffen, 54, built the camp on a plywood platform to keep it afloat when the ice turns into summer slush and open lakes before refreezing in the fall.
Even so, Steffen and Zwally often spent days chiseling out tables and chairs had frozen in floodwater into a single block of ice.
Zwally joined his colleagues there on May 8 in the regular spring migration of scientists to the Arctic.
He has been coming to Swiss Camp every year since 1994 and has been studying the polar regions since 1972, monitoring the polar ice through satellite sensors.
Eventually he realized he had to study the ice firsthand.
The ice sheet seemed such a stolid reservoir of cold that many experts had been confident of it taking centuries for higher temperatures to work their way thousands of feet down to the base of the ice cap and undermine its stability.
By and large, computer models supported that view, predicting that as winter temperatures rose, more snow would fall across the dome of the ice cap. Thus, by the seasonal bookkeeping of the ice sheet, Greenland would neatly balance its losses through new snow.
Indeed, Zwally and his colleagues in March released an analysis of data from two European remote-sensing satellites showing the amount of water locked up in the ice sheet had risen slightly between 1992 and 2002.
Then the ice sheet began to confound computer-generated predictions.
By 2005, Greenland was beginning to lose more ice volume than anyone expected — an annual loss of up to 52 cubic miles a year — according to more recent satellite gravity measurements released by JPL.
The amount of freshwater ice dumped into the Atlantic Ocean has almost tripled in a decade.
"We are clearly seeing the effects of climate change starting to kick in," Zwally said.
Since Steffen started monitoring the weather at Swiss Camp in 1991, the average winter temperature has risen almost 10 degrees. Last year, the annual melt zone reached farther inland and up to higher elevations than ever before.
There was even a period of melting in December.
"We have never seen that," Steffen said, combing the ice crystals from his beard. "It is significantly warmer now, and it happened quite suddenly. This year, the temperatures were warmer than I have ever experienced."
At this time of year, the sun never sets, and at Swiss Camp, the pace of field work slackens only for dinner.
Layered in fleece, the field researchers gathered around a makeshift plywood table littered with heels of whole grain bread, pots of raspberry jam and crumbs of granola. A ridge of ice 6 inches high encased an electrical cable running between their feet.
Their cheeks were coarse with stubble. Their hair rose in waxy spikes. Their eyes had reddened from insomnia and too much midnight sun.
While one researcher spooned out the first course — pasta in a sauce of sun-dried tomatoes — another opened the last bottle of the 2003 Cotes du Rhone.
Zwally tended the pot on the stove.
The Greenland ice sheet was in the same predicament as his frozen lobsters, steaming in meltwater.
Getting Into the Ice
The pilot refused to land. There were too many crevasses.
Steffen waved him on to fly farther inland. He checked their position by satellite every few hundred yards.
After 34 years in the Arctic, Steffen was attuned to its subtleties. Where a novice could only see a monochromatic plain stretching to the horizon, Steffen could discern the undulating outlines left by seasonal lakes and riverbeds.
Clear of the hazard, the Otter touched down and glided on its skis to a halt on an inviting featherbed of snow.
Steffen and his crew unloaded crates of equipment and began drilling into the ice. Zwally, stripping wires with bare fingers in the biting wind, hooked up a satellite receiver.
Within the hour, they erected a tall mast festooned with monitoring instruments.
They continued to hopscotch by air across the ice sheet, planting sensors at every stop.
As spring comes earlier each year, alpine glaciers recede, hurricanes gather power and other signs of climate change accrue, the research team tries to understand how the Greenland ice sheet can respond so quickly to rising temperatures.
"How does climate change get into the ice?" Zwally asked.
Most of the computer models on which climate predictions are based did not take the dynamics of the glaciers into account.
Contrary to appearances, the monolith of ice is constantly on the move, just as Southern California, driven by plate tectonics, inches every year toward Alaska.
In that sense, the Swiss Camp is a measure of shifting property values.
The camp has been rafting on the ice stream toward the sea, on average, at about 1 foot every day. Since Steffen pitched the main tents, the camp has moved about a mile downhill.
When Zwally started tracking the velocity of the ice with Global Positioning System sensors in 1996, the ice flow maintained a steady pace all year.
But he soon discovered that the ice around Swiss Camp had abruptly shifted gears in the summer, moving faster when the surface ice started to melt. By 1999, the ice stream had almost tripled its speed to about 3 feet a day.
In an influential paper published in Science, Zwally surmised that the ice sheets had accelerated in response to warmer temperatures, as summer meltwater lubricated the base of the ice sheet and allowed it to slide faster toward the sea.
In a way no one had detected, the warm water made its way through thousands of feet of ice to the bedrock — in weeks, not decades or centuries.
So much water streamed beneath the ice that in high summer the entire ice sheet near Swiss Camp briefly bulged 2 feet higher, like the crest of a subterranean wave.
"This meltwater acceleration is new," Zwally said. "The significance of this is that it is a mechanism for climate change to get into the ice."
To better track the seasonal movements, Zwally and Steffen set up two new GPS stations around Swiss Camp, while a team led by University of Vermont geophysicist Tom Neumann erected an additional 10 GPS sensors to map the changing velocity of the local ice.
At the same time, University of Texas physicist Ginny Catania pulled an ice-penetrating radar in a search pattern around the camp, seeking evidence of any melt holes or drainage crevices that could so quickly channel the hot water of global warming deep into the ice.
To her surprise, she detected a maze of tunnels, natural pipes and cracks beneath the unblemished surface.
"I have never seen anything like it, except in an area where people have been drilling bore holes," Catania said.
No one knows how much of the ice sheet is affected.
Since 2002, Greenland's three largest outlet glaciers have started moving faster, satellite data show.
On the eastern edge of Greenland, the Kangerlussuaq Glacier, like the Jakobshavn, has surged, doubling its pace. To the west, the Helheim Glacier now appears to be moving about half a football field every day.
In all, 12 major outlet glaciers drain the ice sheet the way rivers drain a watershed, setting the pace of its release to the ocean.
If they all slide too quickly, there is a possibility that, perhaps decades from now, they could collapse suddenly and release the entire ice sheet into the ocean.
"They are like the buttresses of the high cathedral," said Rial, the North Carolina geophysicist. "If you remove the buttress, the cathedral will collapse."
The accelerating ice flow has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in seismic activity, as the three immense streams of ice shake the Earth in their wake.
The lurching ice has generated swarms of earthquakes up to magnitude 5.0, researchers at Harvard University and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University reported in March.
Last year alone, the Harvard and Columbia researchers detected as many ice quakes as the total recorded from 1993 through 1996, with five times as many in the summer as in the winter months.
"Instability is the key," Rial said.
In the Swiss Camp laboratory tent, Rial moved his finger along the jagged seismic trace displayed on his iBook screen.
The signal had been detected by the 10 sensors he had placed around the camp six days before.
The ice sheet was trembling.
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles
From the Los Angeles Times
TIMES SPECIAL REPORT
Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Slip-Sliding Away
"The massive glaciers are deteriorating twice as fast as they were five years ago. If the ice thaws entirely, sea level would rise 21 feet."
By Robert Lee Hotz
Times Staff Writer
June 25, 2006
JAKOBSHAVN GLACIER, Greenland — Gripping a bottle of Jack Daniel's between his knees, Jay Zwally savored the warmth inside the tiny plane as it flew low across Greenland's biggest and fastest-moving outlet glacier.
Mile upon mile of the steep fjord was choked with icy rubble from the glacier's disintegrated leading edge. More than six miles of the Jakobshavn had simply crumbled into open water.
"My God!" Zwally shouted over the hornet whine of the engines.
From satellite sensors and seasons in the field, Zwally, 67, knew the ice sheet below in a way that few could match. Even after a lifetime of study, the raffish NASA glaciologist with a silver dolphin in one pierced ear was dismayed by how quickly the breakup had occurred.
Wedged between boxes of scientific instruments, tent bags, duffels and survival gear, Zwally had no room to turn inside the cramped passenger compartment of the twin-engine Otter. He passed the whiskey bottle over his shoulder to geophysicist Jose Rial from the University of North Carolina, squeezed on a jump seat between a surveyor and a sleeping climatologist.
Homeward bound — windburned, bone-chilled and greasy after weeks on this immense ice cap tilted like a beret flopped across the top of the world — they all had been in a celebratory mood.
Somber now, Zwally and Rial shared a drink in silence as the shadow of the plane slipped across azure meltwater lakes, rust-red tundra and silver tongues of ice.
The Greenland ice sheet — two miles thick and broad enough to blanket an area the size of Mexico — shapes the world's weather, matched in influence by only Antarctica in the Southern Hemisphere.
It glows like milky mother-of-pearl. The sheen of ice blends with drifts of cloud as if snowbanks are taking flight.
In its heartland, snow that fell a quarter of a million years ago is still preserved. Temperatures dip as low as 86 degrees below zero. Ground winds can top 200 mph. Along the ice edge, meltwater rivers thread into fraying brown ropes of glacial outwash, where migrating herds of caribou and musk ox graze.
The ice is so massive that its weight presses the bedrock of Greenland below sea level, so all-concealing that not until recently did scientists discover that Greenland actually might be three islands.
Should all of the ice sheet ever thaw, the meltwater could raise sea level 21 feet and swamp the world's coastal cities, home to a billion people. It would cause higher tides, generate more powerful storm surges and, by altering ocean currents, drastically disrupt the global climate.
Climate experts have started to worry that the ice cap is disappearing in ways that computer models had not predicted.
By all accounts, the glaciers of Greenland are melting twice as fast as they were five years ago, even as the ice sheets of Antarctica — the world's largest reservoir of fresh water — also are shrinking, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Kansas reported in February.
Zwally and other researchers have focused their attention on a delicate ribbon — the equilibrium line, which marks the fulcrum of frost and thaw in Greenland's seasonal balance.
The zone runs around the rim of the ice cap like a drawstring. Summer melting, on average, offsets the annual accumulation of snow.
Across the ice cap, however, the area of seasonal melting was broader last year than in 27 years of record-keeping, University of Colorado climate scientists reported. In early May, temperatures on the ice cap some days were almost 20 degrees above normal, hovering just below freezing.
From cores of ancient Greenland ice extracted by the National Science Foundation, researchers have identified at least 20 sudden climate changes in the last 110,000 years, in which average temperatures fluctuated as much as 15 degrees in a single decade.
The increasingly erratic behavior of the Greenland ice has scientists wondering whether the climate, after thousands of years of relative stability, may again start oscillating.
The Theory at Work
Huddled inside a red cook tent atop 3,900 feet of ice, Zwally shoveled snow into a pot simmering on a two-ring propane camp stove.
He had to melt enough to boil lobster tails for dinner. Zwally, who works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., had purchased them at Costco and lugged them to Greenland.
The beating wings of a 30-mph wind slapped against the tent fabric. Every 15 minutes, a gust sucked open the door and frosted the room.
The tent — buried in drifts and entered by a ladder through a hatch in the roof — was part of Swiss Camp, located 155 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
For those assessing the effect of global warming, there may be no more perfect place than this warren of red tents on the Northern Hemisphere's largest ice cap. Here, the theoretical effects seen in computerized climate models take tangible form.
University of Colorado climatologist Konrad Steffen set up Swiss Camp in 1990 to study the weather along the equilibrium line. As a precaution, Steffen, 54, built the camp on a plywood platform to keep it afloat when the ice turns into summer slush and open lakes before refreezing in the fall.
Even so, Steffen and Zwally often spent days chiseling out tables and chairs had frozen in floodwater into a single block of ice.
Zwally joined his colleagues there on May 8 in the regular spring migration of scientists to the Arctic.
He has been coming to Swiss Camp every year since 1994 and has been studying the polar regions since 1972, monitoring the polar ice through satellite sensors.
Eventually he realized he had to study the ice firsthand.
The ice sheet seemed such a stolid reservoir of cold that many experts had been confident of it taking centuries for higher temperatures to work their way thousands of feet down to the base of the ice cap and undermine its stability.
By and large, computer models supported that view, predicting that as winter temperatures rose, more snow would fall across the dome of the ice cap. Thus, by the seasonal bookkeeping of the ice sheet, Greenland would neatly balance its losses through new snow.
Indeed, Zwally and his colleagues in March released an analysis of data from two European remote-sensing satellites showing the amount of water locked up in the ice sheet had risen slightly between 1992 and 2002.
Then the ice sheet began to confound computer-generated predictions.
By 2005, Greenland was beginning to lose more ice volume than anyone expected — an annual loss of up to 52 cubic miles a year — according to more recent satellite gravity measurements released by JPL.
The amount of freshwater ice dumped into the Atlantic Ocean has almost tripled in a decade.
"We are clearly seeing the effects of climate change starting to kick in," Zwally said.
Since Steffen started monitoring the weather at Swiss Camp in 1991, the average winter temperature has risen almost 10 degrees. Last year, the annual melt zone reached farther inland and up to higher elevations than ever before.
There was even a period of melting in December.
"We have never seen that," Steffen said, combing the ice crystals from his beard. "It is significantly warmer now, and it happened quite suddenly. This year, the temperatures were warmer than I have ever experienced."
At this time of year, the sun never sets, and at Swiss Camp, the pace of field work slackens only for dinner.
Layered in fleece, the field researchers gathered around a makeshift plywood table littered with heels of whole grain bread, pots of raspberry jam and crumbs of granola. A ridge of ice 6 inches high encased an electrical cable running between their feet.
Their cheeks were coarse with stubble. Their hair rose in waxy spikes. Their eyes had reddened from insomnia and too much midnight sun.
While one researcher spooned out the first course — pasta in a sauce of sun-dried tomatoes — another opened the last bottle of the 2003 Cotes du Rhone.
Zwally tended the pot on the stove.
The Greenland ice sheet was in the same predicament as his frozen lobsters, steaming in meltwater.
Getting Into the Ice
The pilot refused to land. There were too many crevasses.
Steffen waved him on to fly farther inland. He checked their position by satellite every few hundred yards.
After 34 years in the Arctic, Steffen was attuned to its subtleties. Where a novice could only see a monochromatic plain stretching to the horizon, Steffen could discern the undulating outlines left by seasonal lakes and riverbeds.
Clear of the hazard, the Otter touched down and glided on its skis to a halt on an inviting featherbed of snow.
Steffen and his crew unloaded crates of equipment and began drilling into the ice. Zwally, stripping wires with bare fingers in the biting wind, hooked up a satellite receiver.
Within the hour, they erected a tall mast festooned with monitoring instruments.
They continued to hopscotch by air across the ice sheet, planting sensors at every stop.
As spring comes earlier each year, alpine glaciers recede, hurricanes gather power and other signs of climate change accrue, the research team tries to understand how the Greenland ice sheet can respond so quickly to rising temperatures.
"How does climate change get into the ice?" Zwally asked.
Most of the computer models on which climate predictions are based did not take the dynamics of the glaciers into account.
Contrary to appearances, the monolith of ice is constantly on the move, just as Southern California, driven by plate tectonics, inches every year toward Alaska.
In that sense, the Swiss Camp is a measure of shifting property values.
The camp has been rafting on the ice stream toward the sea, on average, at about 1 foot every day. Since Steffen pitched the main tents, the camp has moved about a mile downhill.
When Zwally started tracking the velocity of the ice with Global Positioning System sensors in 1996, the ice flow maintained a steady pace all year.
But he soon discovered that the ice around Swiss Camp had abruptly shifted gears in the summer, moving faster when the surface ice started to melt. By 1999, the ice stream had almost tripled its speed to about 3 feet a day.
In an influential paper published in Science, Zwally surmised that the ice sheets had accelerated in response to warmer temperatures, as summer meltwater lubricated the base of the ice sheet and allowed it to slide faster toward the sea.
In a way no one had detected, the warm water made its way through thousands of feet of ice to the bedrock — in weeks, not decades or centuries.
So much water streamed beneath the ice that in high summer the entire ice sheet near Swiss Camp briefly bulged 2 feet higher, like the crest of a subterranean wave.
"This meltwater acceleration is new," Zwally said. "The significance of this is that it is a mechanism for climate change to get into the ice."
To better track the seasonal movements, Zwally and Steffen set up two new GPS stations around Swiss Camp, while a team led by University of Vermont geophysicist Tom Neumann erected an additional 10 GPS sensors to map the changing velocity of the local ice.
At the same time, University of Texas physicist Ginny Catania pulled an ice-penetrating radar in a search pattern around the camp, seeking evidence of any melt holes or drainage crevices that could so quickly channel the hot water of global warming deep into the ice.
To her surprise, she detected a maze of tunnels, natural pipes and cracks beneath the unblemished surface.
"I have never seen anything like it, except in an area where people have been drilling bore holes," Catania said.
No one knows how much of the ice sheet is affected.
Since 2002, Greenland's three largest outlet glaciers have started moving faster, satellite data show.
On the eastern edge of Greenland, the Kangerlussuaq Glacier, like the Jakobshavn, has surged, doubling its pace. To the west, the Helheim Glacier now appears to be moving about half a football field every day.
In all, 12 major outlet glaciers drain the ice sheet the way rivers drain a watershed, setting the pace of its release to the ocean.
If they all slide too quickly, there is a possibility that, perhaps decades from now, they could collapse suddenly and release the entire ice sheet into the ocean.
"They are like the buttresses of the high cathedral," said Rial, the North Carolina geophysicist. "If you remove the buttress, the cathedral will collapse."
The accelerating ice flow has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in seismic activity, as the three immense streams of ice shake the Earth in their wake.
The lurching ice has generated swarms of earthquakes up to magnitude 5.0, researchers at Harvard University and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University reported in March.
Last year alone, the Harvard and Columbia researchers detected as many ice quakes as the total recorded from 1993 through 1996, with five times as many in the summer as in the winter months.
"Instability is the key," Rial said.
In the Swiss Camp laboratory tent, Rial moved his finger along the jagged seismic trace displayed on his iBook screen.
The signal had been detected by the 10 sensors he had placed around the camp six days before.
The ice sheet was trembling.
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles
SYNTH-ARCHIVE#24: "The Raising of the Djed" Moira Timms
original posting: 27 feb. 2002"The Raising of the Djed: Remembering the Center" Moira Timms
www.portalmarket.com/history.html
Because Egypt is both the center of the Earth's land mass, and the place where the Djed originated around the beginning of the present cycle, it is appropriate that the main event of The Raising of the Djed, occur there. However, readers are reminded that in the holographic model every sacred site is also the "center"- as is every individual. The "center" can also be created, where ever you are, by invoking and honoring the four directions.
The Djed was the Eqyptian symbol of human, planetary, and cosmic stability, continuity, and regeneration,. As the cosmic axis, it was the "cylinder," the column of light, that linked Earth to the pole star-the still point, or stable point of reference, around which the heavens revolved. To raise the Djed was also to erect the backbone of Osiris, the lunar, underworld, god of regeneration. The Djed represented continuity of nature's cycles, as well as ascension and resurrection of the human spirit.
Historically, the Djed was raised at crucial transitional times between cycles, evoking light and stability to dispel darkness and chaos. Such periods were the annual Winter solstices, the failing years of a reigning monarch or the coronation of a new one. However, according to the texts of the Temple of Horus at Edfu, the Djed served its greatest purpose and revealed its greatest mystery at the ending of one world age, and the beginning of another. Winter solstice, December 21, 1992, according to the ancient calendric reckoning, inaugurates such a period.
The Raising of the Djed
Re-membering the Center
by MoiRa Timms
Centering
The two universal forces that most concerned ancient peoples seem to have been those of cosmos (harmony, and the organized, known order) and chaos (the forces of entropy, confusion, and the unknown). Preserving cosmos and repelling chaos have kept us busy and preoccupied since time immemorial. When the magnetic Center that controls the periphery fails to hold, things fall apart and the chaos that was in the beginning begins to return. Chaos, of course, has always been the most feared of all the primal powers. Beyond the known order--the light of the campfire, the walls of the city, the edge of the forest or horizon--loomed the unknown, the domain of darkness, danger, and demons.
There has never been anything quite like the unknown, of course, for bringing up our fears, and providing a fertile back-drop for our worst projections--especially those of our own "shadow." Being "afraid of one's own shadow" is, in fact, the crux of the whole matter where chaos is concerned. And so it was since primitive times that outsiders were regarded with suspicion, feared, and often hated. In the harsh struggle for survival, the security of one's own kin, clan, or tribe was primary. While alien "others" were always lower or less--"butt-faces" and "barbarians"-- only one's own kind were believed to be the real human beings. At worst, "they" were not fully human and held in contempt as flawed animals, or even demons. For the most part, that which was of the unknown was dealt with by means of superstition and magic. Remnants of these attitudes still prevail today, reflected in class systems, racist attitudes, the separative dogmas of the religious right, and hate crimes.
The world over, ancient and indigenous cultures had an innate sense of themselves as existing at the Center of the universe, and the coherence of their world depended upon maintaining their connection with it. To that end, archetypal symbols --such as circle, spiral, tree, pillar or pole--were magically and ritually employed to preserve essential order. To provide safe space, central space "on call," people learned to do just that. They called upon the four directions, defining the boundaries of sacred space and time to create an instant mix of Center, the directions of above and below forming the central vertical axis that connected heaven and Earth. The Center of the Center was the direction found within each individual.
Every major culture of antiquity revered as sacred its particular version of the World Tree with its roots and branches linking Earth (as matter) and sky (as spirit.) Every sacred mountain became the center of the world, the navel of the Earth, as did every sacred city. This was the holographic model, whereby the center was everywhere and the periphery nowhere.
Out of this context the divine kingship of early cultures became an institution whereby the ruling monarch was the living conduit between heaven and Earth. The person of the god-king himself was the central source and mediator of life, abundance and stability for the entire kingdom. For this reason, when King Arthur was sick, the kingdom fell into decline and disarray. (The word "king" derives from the Indo-European root for "kin," in the sense of family, and "divine procreator"--in which case, I guess it is OK for a Queen to have a "kin(g)-dom.") Unlike American Presidents who, despite a lack of competence can be elected for two terms, rulers of some prehistoric king systems were ritually sacrificed after serving one seven year term, and held personally accountable for acts of Nature such as crop failure, famine, plague, and war1 .
Today, it is believed that we are responsible for our own reality, so we must all be accountable. When an evolving species learns to split the atom and unlock the secrets of nature that fuel the stars, it brings about its own demise if the resultant technology is not harnessed in the service of the planet. Is that what happened in previous cycles? Atlantis? Lemuria? Today, the whole systems that maintain the working harmony of our biosphere are breaking down because we screwed up and disconnected wisdom from knowledge. We have been ripping the web of life to shreds, basically to support profits.
Better we should support prophets instead.
From the great traditional cultures of the past a number of identical prophecies have survived to warn us, so that we may preserve harmony and avoid catastrophe by acting appropriately to influence the train of events. Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, the African Bushmen, the Kogi of Columbia, the indigenous peoples who gathered at the World Summit in Brazil, issue to us a collective warning: "You are killing the Great Mother. We cannot say when the world will end, but your looting will destroy it." They declare "the changing of the worlds" is close and urge us to revise our perception of reality before it is too late. They tell us we must return to our Center. But this is the root of the problem--Western culture doesn't have one! And this is why we now look back to the past to rediscover what it means in both mythic and practical terms.
The Turning Point
"In the beginning" the One set out to become the many. In ever widening circles of complexity, the great spiral of creation evolved a complete menu out of the primal soup. From the gas that burned the minerals, that cooked the plants, that fed the animals, that in turn fed the humans who analyzed and named everything down to the last quantum particle, the One has indeed become as many as it could possibly be. Now the turning point of history has arrived when matter begins to merge gently back into spirit ,and the many can again become the One. But the spiral has swung so far out it has lost its curvature. The evolutionary journey is supposed to be a round-trip, not a one-way ride to oblivion. Historically, we are at the fork in the road where the choice between two paths must be made. The problem, however, is that under the linear, left-brain, materialistic, patriarchy, the outer reaches of the evolutionary spiral have taken on the forward thrust of a line and the Center is no longer holding.
To facilitate the necessary "turning point" a counter-force must nudge the linear vector ("koyannisqatsi"--world out of balance, according to the Hopi) back on course as a continuing spiral. This is why the feminine, right-brain, conserving principle of the circle has now arisen as the multiple forms of The Goddess, the consciousness of Gaia as the Power of Nature (Earth changes), the Great Mother (Women unite.) Line and Circle, in union, create the spiral--the form of the evolutionary force.
Very few of us today can claim to be one of the "real" human beings because we are still in the striving mode; we are more like "human becomings." Each of us is one of the many that the One has become. Through the mobilizing archetype which gives meaning to symbols of the Center, we evolve back into Oneness. Such a symbol always arises from the depths of the collective unconscious at the conclusion of major historical cycles when primal chaos again threatens to engulf the world. Not everyone perceives the symbol. And out of those who do, few recognize its significance. However, such images are themselves keys or codes that inform our consciousness, whether we understand it with our rational mind or not. The advantage of understanding, however, is that it increases our effectiveness in co-creating and consciously participating in the process that is unfolding.
At this time in history, as chaos again presses in and the cycle draws to a close, the Djed as the oldest known type of the central World Tree, emerges once more into our collective awareness, activating the imagination, appearing in dreams and art as an archetypal image full of mystery and power. It allows the ancient wisdom to work through us, awakening and aligning the divine in each of us with the transcendent Self--and each other. In this way, the many again get to become the One.
Two Paths
Most, if not all, ancient civilizations shared a comprehension of time as cyclical. This enabled them to plan for the short term, and to predict and prophesy with astonishing accuracy for the long term. This is why the various world prophecies form a coherent whole, and why most archaic traditions share similar cosmologies and eschatologies. Western culture's linear march- of-time model, however, has been the means of our undoing and is responsible for ecological and planetary crisis on a scale unprecedented in human history. So, to understand where we have come from helps us to understand where we are going. The legacy of high wisdom from past and present traditional cultures awaits our comprehension. It is our blueprint to the future; the means of our survival.
The prophecy cycle that began in l945 with the advent of the atomic bomb is predicted to end around the year 2,000. The remaining years until 2012 AD. are designated as a sorting out period known to the Maya as "the beak of time."
The engines of history are roaring, accelerating us, "fast forward," to an evolutionary crossroads, and the choice between two paths. This choice appears throughout many of the ancient prophecies. The linear path vectors off into chaos and annihilation, while the other one spirals on to a new phase of human evolution. Which path have we/will we collectively choose?
The Christian concept of the broad and narrow paths conveys the general idea, whereby the broad path is the way of the world, full of materialistic enticements, greed, and tawdry pleasures. The narrow path is the Christian way, being "in the world but not of it." To those who chose the broad path salvation is still possible, however, if they "repent" and "believe on His [Jesus'] name."
The Hopi Life Plan, carved on a rock at Oraibi, Arizona, spells it out pretty clearly, too. The horizontal path of materialistic white culture is above, the Hopi path in harmony with nature is below. The first vertical line is the original meeting of the two cultures and the opportunity to change paths. The two circles on the lower line are the two world wars. The second vertical line is the last-minute chance to change life paths before the third world purification results in the end of the materialistic path and the continuance of the Hopi one attuned to Nature.
The Great Pyramid contains prophecy in the form of geometric interpretations along a measured time-scale. Ascending and descending passageways both incline at an identical angle of slope. Each symbolizes a choice and direction of life path. Just before the descending passage ends in the pit, there is an opportunity to "get back on track." A tortuous, vertical, tunnel connects with an upper passage leading to the (initiatory) King's Chamber--a dangerous, difficult, but possible climb.
Osiris
Mythic themes are emerging as dominant archetypes now because they are becoming real-ized in our collective experience. Myths provide a contextual understanding for our existential predicament, clarifying what is being played out, what our role is, and who we are in the greater scheme of things.
The story of Osiris is in the shamanic tradition, and it begins with Osiris' murder by his evil brother, Set. One version says his body was cast into he river, washed ashore and entombed within a great tree (a type of the Djed) that grew around him. Eventually he was discovered and extricated from the tree by the great goddess Isis. The bare bones of the other version are that his body was dismembered and scattered throughout Egypt, but that after a long and arduous search, Isis retrieved and re-membered his parts. Both accounts end with Isis raising Osiris' spine to a vertical position, "making him stable," and resurrecting him to life by means of the words of power taught her by Thoth, the Master Initiator of Light.
The dismembered parts of Osiris represent the spiritual fragmentation of the human condition. His re-memberment is the restoration of the human spiritual body and the realization of the gnosis. (Seven distinct spiritual bodies comprised the risen "Osiris" body). As such, the raising of Osiris was the central fact in the structure of the Egyptian universe, for each person aspired to become resurrected after death; to become "Osirified"--just as we aspire to become "Christed." In the Egyptian book of the Dead, for example, the chapter on "Making the Transformation Into the God [Osiris] Who Giveth Light in the Darkness" is directed at "uniting the two fighters [Horus and Set, deities who represent the principles of light and darkness] who live in my body, with the enchantment of my utterance . . . raising him that hath fallen [Osiris] . . . I have re-membered him . . . I have overthrown the destroyers . . . I have lighted the darkness." These are noble thoughts, expressed with an eloquence that today still touch one's heart with light and meaning.
The Djed
The Djed is a pillar, a type of the central World Tree, representing stability, continuity, and regeneration. The Festival of The Raising of the Djed dates back more than 5,000 years to predynastic times--as does the Egyptian Book of the Dead which identifies the Djed as both the backbone of Osiris and the support and backbone of the universe. The Djed, however, is more than just an object; it is a mythic complex that existed long before Osiris emerged from the dark realm of the collective unconscious.
Historically, the Djed was raised at crucial transitional times between cycles, evoking light and stability to dispel darkness and disorder. Such periods were the Winter solstices, the failing years of a reigning monarch or the coronation of a new one. However, according to the texts of the Temple of Horus at Edfu, the Djed served its greatest purpose and revealed its greatest mystery at the ending of one world age and the beginning of another. This is such time!
The Djed is the supreme unifying symbol of all polarities, connecting us to the transcendent reality of the whole, the One. It symbolizes the macro and microcosmic "axis." As the cosmic axis the Djed is the "cylinder," the column of light linking the Earth to the pole star. It represents stability because it aligns the North pole of Earth with the still-point of the revolving "dome" of the heavens--the pole star. Beyond the pole star were/are the realms of the "gods" and higher dimensions of being. In the microcosm, within us, the human axis is the spinal column, the time-tunnel of the transformative journey from the gross materialism of homosapiens to the Self-realization of homoChristos at the crown chakra. It is through this chakra that we, too, are aligned with the energies of the pole star.2
At a time when the planetary grid (Earth's geometrically arranged energy system web) was understood and, it is believed, consciously administrated by a global network of high initiate engineers, the Djed was a sacred instrument in the powerful technology of "cosmos regeneration" (a domain explored by the work of Reich and Tesla.) From the geodetic and astronomic perspective, the raised Djed is the fixed reference point which makes firm the bond between Earth and sky, evoking geophysical stability at a time of increased potential for Earth changes. And, as we approach the end of the prophecy sequence and the final 20 years of the current cycle, the Djed replaces the prospect of Earth changes and geophysical "pole shift" with that of "pole stability."3
The Djed is being raised again--globally, annually, at the Winter solstice (and various other times--the 1996 Spring equinox, in particular) until the closing of the cycle in 2012AD. Because Egypt is at the center of the Earth's land mass, and the place where the Djed originated around the beginning of the present cycle (3,100BC), it is appropriate that The Raising of the Djed, be reinaugurated at its original site in Egypt. However, readers are reminded that in the holographic model every sacred site, every community gathering, is also the "Center"--as is every individual. Reerrecting the Djed today serves well its ancient purpose, for it is the archetype of stability and continuity for the current transitional phase.
In the ancient Egyptian creation myth the Pillar of Shu (god of atmosphere) was the column of light that separated the union of Earth and Sky, setting them apart and in correct relationship to each other. The dome of the sky overlay the surface of the Earth according to the divine blueprint of creation so that, in the words of Thoth the great Master Initiator of Light, "That which is above is like that which is below."
Today the stars no longer guide our navigation, orchestrate our time-keeping, or pace our planting and harvesting, because we replaced them when we invented the compass, clock, and calendar, to name a few. Over the millennia, we became governed by our own material creations, and our fundamental connection to "all our relations" within the greater whole was lost. Not only was it lost, it was also forgotten.
Although we are now beginning to remember the importance of our connection with the Earth, there is only the faintest glimmer of a reciprocal connection with the heavens. But it is coming. We are approaching it through astrology, through rediscovering the myths of gods/goddesses and celestial archetypes, not to mention the more "grounded" reality of the space program. Raising the Djed in ceremony, with the right consciousness, reestablishes the primordial connection between Earth and Sky, matter and spirit. When we experience our own connection between the two a resounding"Yessss!" will synaptically ricochet throughout the global brain, the morphogenetic field of the planet, (and the Internet.) Our conscious reconnection with the wisdom of our own origins, and the rediscovery of the archaic celestial/terrestrial technologies, initiates us into "whole" consciousness.
It is possible that the peoples of prehistory may not have been entirely primitive, but were reduced to grubbing around with stones and living in caves after some great global upheaval obliterated all traces of civilization. The clues lie within the myths of history, and within the timeless precincts of sacred rituals preserved by indigenous peoples who know how to access the "mind of Nature." We know that as the wheel of time revolves it allows us to recover buried or repressed psychic structures so as to incorporate the recurring patterns of meaning into the present. In this sense we are reminded that in psychoanalysis the cure is often associated with the recovery of a forgotten memory. But within cyclical time it is not memory that calls up the past, but the past itself that returns4 for healing, completion and apotheosis. As we prepare to catch the wave of the past this time around, the image of the Djed and the World Tree rise into our collective awareness. Through them we may enter once more the precincts of the recurrent golden age.
The Raising of the Djed has been called the "mystery of mysteries."5 It appears to have been a physical ritual with psychospiritual and interdimensional implications--which renders it an event of profound significance for our time. Through its enactment Thoth's words can again come alive--for, performed correctly and at the appropriate geodetic coordinates, it is suggested that the Raising of the Djed is instrumental in the periodic, historic, realignment of the planetary and celestial grid meridians. We believe this realignment is an integral part of the formula for "holon"6 hook-up--the matching of our personal and planetary Light bodies with their overlighting celestial template. There is cause here for deep reflection and inner questing as we set with the concept, allowing its' meaning to percolate throughout the sacred chambers of the heart and the fertile recesses of the collective mind.
Time Shift
Changing our perception of reality, as the indigenous peoples of the world exhort us to, means keeping our ear to the ground for messages of the "planet drum," and our eyes on the horizon for the metaphorical smoke signals. As we approach the turn of the century both the pace of life and the passage of time seem to be accelerating. The time-keeping system of the Maya provides some clues.
In l992, the Maya calendar entered its final 20 years, highlighting an event that was code named "Time Shift" because it marked the beginning of a change in the timing frequencies affecting Earth's evolution. Like a train changing tracks in the shunting yard, this shift (according to the scholarship of Jose Arguelles) is ultimately expected transform our concept of linear, symbolic, time into cyclical, real, time. We know that spiritual causes gestate into physical effects, but we don't know how long the incubation period may be. So the question becomes "how long after a 'time-shift' might it take for the physical counterpart of 'pole-shift' to occur?" We suspect that this is where the Djed factors into the equation.
The frequency at which matter vibrates has been speeding up, causing an acceleration of personal and planetary karmuppance.7 This, and associated phenomena, are purifying and transforming the world into something considerably more refined than the physical plane as we have come to know it. Like the ice-cube that transforms from frozen solid, to water, to steam, then vapor, the physical world itself is now becoming spiritualized. We are seeing this process unfold as science and prophecy, physics and metaphysics, begin to segue and come into agreement. Increasingly, we can expect to experience the apparent separation between past and future, inner and outer, dreamtime and waking, self and other, as a semipermeable membrane allowing oneness with and flow between.
Hindu yogic teachings explain that as time speeds up synchronicity increases. As awareness begins to stabilize in the higher chakras the polarities within us reconcile. And, we are told, that when the Self is real-ized temporal time ceases to exist altogether! Modern Chaos Theory seems to agree, and asserts that maximal chaos ultimately resolves into synchronicity. So, "no problem!". . .
If the boundary between cosmos and chaos, control and confusion, known and unknown, is a function of perception then that boundary dissolves proportionate to the expansion of our consciousness. "What we see is what we get" because it is our own externalized un-consciousness; our "shadow." This means there is actually nothing outside of ourSelf. All that is unlike love can be released along with the age-old, "us vs. them" program. Getting with the real program means accessing the source of our highest mutual good--the repository of our highest collective wisdom--our higher Selves. We are all more similar than we are different. So, order or chaos, light or dark, like it or not--it is all us!
BECOMING THE OSIRIS
Osiris "Djedi" was a title of Osiris, as the Great One,8 Lord of the Universe (the universal, Self-generating life principle of the Center--i.e. the transcendent Self). The "Djedi" were the "stable ones"--wisdom keepers of one mind and one spirit who, as initiates of the Osirian mysteries, comprised the living, terrestrial body of the archetypal, celestial Osiris. Contemporary Djedi are self-selecting regenerators of cosmos. They are those who, regardless of race or creed, are awakening to mission in service to the planet and the epochal imperatives of stability, continuity and regeneration.
Egyptologist Sir Wallis Budge quotes the ancient expectation that "Since Osiris was raised to life by the words and ceremonies which Thoth taught Isis, and since Osiris has gained immortality by means of them, these same words and ceremonies will raise us to life and give us immortality also."9 The "secret Books of Thoth" containing those formulae no longer exist. But they are deeply encoded within the repository of our collective dreamtime, informing our DNA and waiting like seeds to be activated in due season by the right evolutionary imperative and guiding initiatory archetype.
It is the world soul and the force of history that now calls for, and causes, the Djed to be raised. Like the flag with its emblem raised aloft in the thick of battle to rally the flagging energies of the army, the Djed is a beacon raised in the battle for the soul of the planet. (Horus and Set are at it again . . .) And, like the warrior heroes who have throughout history stood tall as champions of the many during times of great danger and crisis, the Djedi come forth that the Djed may be raised.
The Djedi sense, and know Osiris's arising as their own. As Osiris awakens from the sleep of the aeon, the Djedi also "rise to the occasion," moving into resonant relationship as the reconstellated members of the collective Osiris. Therefore, as the mighty bones creek and the ancient One stirs, let the Djedi return. This is the historical moment of our awakening and our call. The impulse and the need for us to ritualize these events in global celebration arise, naturally, in resonance with the mythic awakening of the archetype and because it is now alive in each of us.
Now, we move from the quickening to the gathering.
"S-aha Djed!"
("Djed be raised!")
SYNTH-ARCHIVE#23: Ministry of Truth coming soon to media near you!
original posting: 27 feb. 2002
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=137884
"No Expenses Spared Domestic Propaganda"
by New York Times 2/20/02
"Global diplomacy as envisioned in the [as of yet unnamed] office will
inject patiotism into the punishing 24-hour, seven-day news cycle officials
said.
"WASHINGTON - President Bush has decided to transform the administration's
temporary wartime communications effort into a permanent office of global
diplomacy to spread a positive image of the United States around the world
and combat anti-Americanism, senior administration officials said today.
[indymedia comment:] "The Ministry of Truth is in place, do you think
someone found a copy of 1984 at the white house and thought it was a
policy document?"
[indymedia comment:] "yeah... this is really frightening... I am extremely
concerned about this matter... i used to think bush was simply dumb,
butnow i'm beginning to wonder if i had underestimated his propensity for
evil. did his dad give him a hit list on his inauguration day or something,
detailing all the "bad guys" he never got to whack because of that pesky
issue known as american public opinion? i guess that issue won't be so
"pesky" anymore. this is sad. really really sad. and so un-american."
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=137884
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=137884
"No Expenses Spared Domestic Propaganda"
by New York Times 2/20/02
"Global diplomacy as envisioned in the [as of yet unnamed] office will
inject patiotism into the punishing 24-hour, seven-day news cycle officials
said.
"WASHINGTON - President Bush has decided to transform the administration's
temporary wartime communications effort into a permanent office of global
diplomacy to spread a positive image of the United States around the world
and combat anti-Americanism, senior administration officials said today.
[indymedia comment:] "The Ministry of Truth is in place, do you think
someone found a copy of 1984 at the white house and thought it was a
policy document?"
[indymedia comment:] "yeah... this is really frightening... I am extremely
concerned about this matter... i used to think bush was simply dumb,
butnow i'm beginning to wonder if i had underestimated his propensity for
evil. did his dad give him a hit list on his inauguration day or something,
detailing all the "bad guys" he never got to whack because of that pesky
issue known as american public opinion? i guess that issue won't be so
"pesky" anymore. this is sad. really really sad. and so un-american."
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=137884
SYNTH-ARCHIVE#22: Ad-busters Intimidation Hot-line
original posting: 27 feb. 2002
AD-BUSTERS INTIMIDATION HOT-LINE
www.adbusters.org/
If you do not want to continue receiving these updates, send an email
to jammers-unsubscribe@lists.adbusters.org
Adbusters Magazine The Media Foundation
1243 West 7th Ave Vancouver BC Canada V6H 1B7
p. 604.736.9401
f. 604.737.6021
www.adbusters.org
AD-BUSTERS INTIMIDATION HOT-LINE
www.adbusters.org/
Have your activities come under increased scrutiny in the aftermath of
S11?
Ours have.
Recently, our Corporate America Flag billboard in Times Square, New
York, attracted the attention of the federal Department of Defense,
and a visit by an agent who asked a lot of pointed questions about
our motivations and intent. We wondered: What gives?
"Just following up a lead from a tip line," the agent admitted.
That's the kind of fourth quarter it's been for many social
activists. Any campaign that dares to question U.S. economic,
military or foreign policy in these delicate times, any critical
appraisal of the handling of the "War on terrorism," risks casting
the critic as a kind of enemy of the state, if not an outright
terrorist.
Vigilance we can live with. Intimidation that amounts to persecution
is another bucket of fish. According to some of the emails and phone
calls we've received lately, many other groups have also found
themselves under investigation in a political climate that's starting
to take on shades of McCarthyism.
Our response to all of this is to set up our own "rat line." If you
know of social marketing campaigns or protest actions that are being
suppressed, or if you come across any other story of overzealous
government "information management," please tell us your story. Go to
If you do not want to continue receiving these updates, send an email
to jammers-unsubscribe@lists.adbusters.org
Adbusters Magazine The Media Foundation
1243 West 7th Ave Vancouver BC Canada V6H 1B7
p. 604.736.9401
f. 604.737.6021
www.adbusters.org
SYNTH-ARCHIVE#22: Ad-busters Intimidation Hot-line
original posting: 27 feb. 2002
AD-BUSTERS INTIMIDATION HOT-LINE
www.adbusters.org/
If you do not want to continue receiving these updates, send an email
to jammers-unsubscribe@lists.adbusters.org
Adbusters Magazine The Media Foundation
1243 West 7th Ave Vancouver BC Canada V6H 1B7
p. 604.736.9401
f. 604.737.6021
www.adbusters.org
AD-BUSTERS INTIMIDATION HOT-LINE
www.adbusters.org/
Have your activities come under increased scrutiny in the aftermath of
S11?
Ours have.
Recently, our Corporate America Flag billboard in Times Square, New
York, attracted the attention of the federal Department of Defense,
and a visit by an agent who asked a lot of pointed questions about
our motivations and intent. We wondered: What gives?
"Just following up a lead from a tip line," the agent admitted.
That's the kind of fourth quarter it's been for many social
activists. Any campaign that dares to question U.S. economic,
military or foreign policy in these delicate times, any critical
appraisal of the handling of the "War on terrorism," risks casting
the critic as a kind of enemy of the state, if not an outright
terrorist.
Vigilance we can live with. Intimidation that amounts to persecution
is another bucket of fish. According to some of the emails and phone
calls we've received lately, many other groups have also found
themselves under investigation in a political climate that's starting
to take on shades of McCarthyism.
Our response to all of this is to set up our own "rat line." If you
know of social marketing campaigns or protest actions that are being
suppressed, or if you come across any other story of overzealous
government "information management," please tell us your story. Go to
If you do not want to continue receiving these updates, send an email
to jammers-unsubscribe@lists.adbusters.org
Adbusters Magazine The Media Foundation
1243 West 7th Ave Vancouver BC Canada V6H 1B7
p. 604.736.9401
f. 604.737.6021
www.adbusters.org
SYNTH-ARCHIVE#21: "Canadian TV airs Emperor's Clothes 'Guilty for 9-11' Evidence"
original posting: 27 feb. 2002
CANADIAN TV AIRS EMPEROR'S CLOTHES 'GUILTY FOR 9-11' EVIDENCE!
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/deception.htm
CANADIAN TV AIRS EMPEROR'S CLOTHES 'GUILTY FOR 9-11' EVIDENCE!
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/deception.htm
Join our email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm
Receive about one article/day.
www.tenc.net [Emperor's Clothes]
CANADIAN TV AIRS EMPEROR'S CLOTHES 'GUILTY FOR 9-11' EVIDENCE!
by John Flaherty
[Posted 5 February 2001]
For the first time material from Emperor's Clothes series 'GUILTY FOR 9-11' has appeared on a network TV show.
The program was "The Great Deception". (1) It aired Jan. 28 on the Insight Mediafile at Vision TV, a network with 2 million distinct viewers a week. Vision programs are seen across Canada and can reach from 100 to 150,000 people.
Hosted by Barrie Zwicker, the program used research and material from 'GUILTY FOR 9-11, Section 1', the 'Update to Section 1, and 'Section 2' or 'Cheney's Cover Story.' (1a)
After watching the program, Emperor's Clothes Editor Chris Black contacted Barrie Zwicker to congratulate him for taking this brave step.
Mr. Zwicker wrote back:
[Letter begins here]
Dear Christopher Black:
What a joyful surprise to receive your e-mail.
Amidst the avalanche of e-mail I'm trying to cope with, I want to respond immediately to yours.
I discovered www.emperors-clothes.com I don't know how long, maybe well over a year, ago. I learned to trust it. I have been educated and nurtured by it. And increasingly, inspired.
So for me to receive your e-mail was a complete and genuine and gratifying surprise. I do not consider myself to be in your league as to investigative journalism.
I was suspicious about the 9/11 thing from the outset. For me to be the first, apparently, to ask these questions on air is ridiculous. Big media should have done it already.
[Regarding the information on Andrews Air Force base] really, there must be thousands of people who have first- or second-hand knowledge of complicity. Just take the number of people who live on Andrews AFB who know their interceptors stayed put until too late. I don't think they can keep the lid on this for much longer.
Thank you, Christopher, Israel and the rest, for your wonderful work all along.
Gotta run. I hope to be in touch again. In peace and networking for light.
Barrie Zwicker,
A producer and host
The MediaFile
[LETTER ENDS HERE]
Here's the transcript of the part of the TV show based on Emperor's Clothes research:
[START EXCERPT FROM 'GREAT DECEPTION' TRANSCRIPT] (2)
"For large scheduled aircraft, tracked throughout on radar, to depart extravagantly from their flight paths, would trigger numerous calls to the military, especially after two have hit the World Trade Centre and now one is speeding toward Washington, D.C.
"It flies over the White House, turns sharply and heads toward the Pentagon. Everyone - and I mean everyone - now knows these planes are very bad news. It's been reported on all TV networks for more than half an hour that this is a terrorist attack.
"Now, Andrews Air Force Base is a huge installation. It's home to Air Force One, the President's plane. It's home base for two combat-ready squadrons of jet interceptors mandated to ensure the safety of the U.S. capital. Andrews is only 12 miles from the White House. (3)
"On September 11th the squadrons there were: The 121st Fighter Squadron of the 113th Fighter Wing, equipped with F-16s The 321st Marine Fighter Attack Squadron of the 49th Marine Air Group, Detachment A, equipped F/A-18s (4)
"This information was on the website of the base on September 11th. On September 12th, Andrews chose to update its website. I find it odd that after the update there's no mention of the F-16 and F-18 fighters. The base becomes, according to the website, home to a transport squadron only. (5)
"Yet at 6:30 the evening of September 11th NBC Nightly News, along with many outlets, reported:
"'It was after the attack on the Pentagon that the Air Force then decided to scramble F-16s out of the DC National Guard Andrews Air Force Base to fly ... a protective cover over Washington, D.C.' (5a)
"Throughout the northeastern United States are many air bases. But that morning no interceptors respond in a timely fashion to the highest alert situation. This includes the Andrews squadrons which have the longest lead time and are 12 miles from the White House.
"Whatever the explanation for the huge failure, there have been no reports, to my knowledge, of reprimands. This further weakens the "Incompetence Theory." Incompetence usually earns reprimands.
"This causes me to ask - and other media need to ask - if there were 'stand down' orders."
[END EXCERPT FROM 'GREAT DECEPTION' TRANSCRIPT]
Elsewhere in the show, Mr. Zwicker talked about the Payne Stewart tragedy. As you may recall, Mr. Stewart's small business jet ceased to respond to Air Traffic Controllers. The plane continued flying on autopilot.
Here is how Mr. Zwicker describes what happened:
"9:19 a.m.: the flight departs 9:24: The Learjet's pilot responds to an instruction from air traffic control 9:33: The controller radios another instruction. No response from the pilot. For 4 1/2 minutes the controller tries to establish contact. 9:38: Having failed, the controller calls in the military. Note that he did not seek, nor did he require, the approval of the President of the United States, or indeed anyone. It's standard procedure, followed routinely, to call in the Air Force when radio contact with a commercial passenger jet is lost, or the plane departs from its flight path, or anything along those lines occurs. 9:54 - 16 minutes later -- the F-16 reaches the Learjet at 46,000 feet and conducts a visual inspection. Total elapsed time: 21 minutes."
[END EXCERPT FROM 'GREAT DECEPTION' TRANSCRIPT]
There appears to be an error here. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report on the Payne Stewart tragedy (6) does not state when the military was contacted. Other reports indicate that it took half an hour for the FAA to notify the military. (7)
Several sources state that planes from Tyndall Air Force Base were the first ones sent to intercept the failing jet. (8) But the Tyndall planes don't even figure in the NTSB report. (It also appears that the NTSB report does not state when the military was notified.)
Moreover, the NTSB switches from Eastern Time to Central Time in mid-report. Barrie Zwicker reported a lapse of 16 minutes from the time Stewart's plane stopped responding to radio communication to the time interceptors actually reached the Lear Jet. But given the switch from Eastern to Central Time in the NTSB report, this apparently took over an hour. Again, this is a bit murky; it is possible that planes from the Tyndall Air Force base were dispatched and then recalled, and this is just not mentioned in the NTSB report.
Emperor's Clothes made a similar mistake in 'Cheney's Cover Story.' (9) In the initial post, we stated that when Stewart's plane went off course, the FAA 'immediately' contacted the military. It's fine to make undocumented statements in general argument, but in a Summary of Evidence one needs to document matters of time as much as possible. Since it is difficult to be sure of the exact timing of events in the Payne Stewart case, we have cut out the word 'immediately.'
In any case, the question of how quickly the FAA contacted the Military about the Payne Stewart jet is not worth a lot of research time. Regarding 9-11, the important thing is that the Payne Stewart case shows that, contrary to Vice President Cheney's assertions on MEET THE PRESS, intercepting planes does not means shooting them down. And as Barrie Zwicker pointed out, it does not require presidential approval to intercept a plane, again contrary to Mr. Cheney. These are the key points.
The question of how long it took the military to respond has to be put in context. This was a small business jet plane flying on autopilot towards a low-population area. It was not a hijacked jumbo jet, one of four airliners hijacked on 9-11, of which two had already crashed into the biggest buildings in New York. And it was not the third hijacked airliner, which turned around in Ohio and was flying back to Washington, DC.
Clearly on 9-11 the FAA went on emergency footing. Vice President Cheney says that after the first airliner hit the World Trade Center, the FAA had open lines to the Secret Service. Newsday reports that by 9:06 the FAA had ordered the entire air corridor from Cleveland to Washington, DC shut down. That is, the FAA shut down the route which, we are told, American Flight 77 took heading back to the Pentagon. (10)
It is one thing if the FAA or the military was slow responding to a small business jet on autopilot flying over unpopulated areas, and it is another thing for those in charge of Andrews Air Force Base not to scramble fighter jets when there was an obvious deadly threat to key US military and government installations, not to mention that Flight 77 was heading for an urban area inhabited by several million souls.
-- John Flaherty
=======================
Further Reading:
=======================
(1) 'The Great Deception'
http://www.visiontv.ca/programs/insight/Deception.htm
(1a) The sections of 'GUILTY FOR 9-11' aired on Canadian TV:
* Section 1: 'Why Were None of the Hijacked Planes Intercepted?'
[Posted 14 November 2001]
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-1.htm* Update to GUILTY FOR 9-11 Section 1:
[Posted 18 November 2001]
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indictupdate.htm* Section 2: 'Mr. Cheney's Cover Story'
[Posted 20 November 2001]
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-2.htm
(2) 'Great Deception' Transcript
http://www.visiontv.ca/programs/insight/mediafile_Jan28.htm
(3) http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-1.htm#b
(4) http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-1.htm#k
(5) 'Update to GUILTY FOR 9-11 - Section 1'
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indictupdate.htm
(5a) 'NBC Nightly News,' "Attack on America," (6:30 PM ET) 11 September 2001, "Tuesday President Bush returns to White House on Marine One," Anchor: Tom Brokaw, Jim Miklaszewski reporting.
See transcript at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/nbc911cover.htm
(6) NTSB Report
Accident No.: DCA00MA005
Operator or Flight Number: Sunjet Aviation
Aircraft and Registration: Learjet Model 35, N47BA
Location: Aberdeen, South Dakota
Date: October 25, 1999
http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/2000/aab0001.htm
(7) AP Chronology on Payne Stewart Crash http://www.usatoday.com/sports/golf/stewart/stewfs13.htm
(8) http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/plane102599.html
(9) * Section 2: 'Mr. Cheney's Cover Story'
[Posted 20 November 2001]
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-2.htm
(10) 'Newsday' 23 September 2001, "Air Attack on Pentagon Indicates Weaknesses" by Sylvia Adcock, Brian Donovan and Craig Gordon
Web version (does not link direct to part of article with reference to closing of air corridor) :
http://www.newsday.com/ny-uspent232380681sep23.story
Backup with direct link to reference to closing of air corridor is at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/nd923.htm#a
'Map & Timetable for American Airlines Flight 77'
[Posted 8 December 2001]
http://emperors-clothes.com/images/maptime.htm
'Map of Andrews Air Force Base'
[Posted 20 November 2001]
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/andrewsmap.htm
Frequently Asked Questions on 9-11
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/faq.htm
Includes: 'FAQ #1 - Nobody was prepared for 9-11' and
'FAQ #2 - Planes did scramble on 9-11. They just arrived late.'
'Reader Says Emperor's Clothes Wrong on bin Laden, 9-11'
A very interesting debate.
[Posted 28 September 2001]
http://emperors-clothes.com/letters/wrong.htm
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