Many can survive a Biological, Chemical or Nuclear Terrorist Attack
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March 2002 DEAR WORLD CITIZENS: All donations will be greatly appreciated and will be used in our worldwide battle against terrorism. Our slogan from the beginning is "We pledge to do our all for the betterment of mankind and to help maintain peace in the world for all". A Biological Weapons Terrorist Attack is the greatest threat that you should realistically worry about. It is also one of the easiest threats for you to protect yourself against. Below, we have assembled a Biological Weapons Kit and Instructions that will help save many lives in the event of biological or nuclear terrorist attack: (1) Visit or call your Doctor and ask him to give you prescriptions for a 30-day supply each of Ciprofloxacin 500 MG and Doxycycl HYC 100 MG Tab Zeni. Ciprofloxacin is a fluoroquinolone antibiotic to treat bacterial infections. Doxycycl HYC will take care of your immediate medical and emergency infection needs during a BW weapons-attack. Anthrax and Small Pox are present threats to think about! . You will need these prescriptions for each person in your home! You can get Cipro by telephone too! Call toll free 1-888-647-6527 for the necessary 10-day supply. Using The-online-pharmacy-at-lowest-cost-Cipro-in-the-Country. No-prescriptions-necessary:
http://www.1onlinepharmacy.com-or- http://www.medsmex.com/index.htm Pay-by-PayPal-Visa-or-MS-creditcard-check (your choice).
(2) A. Go to your local Health Food Store and get a good supply of Nutri-biotic or grapefruit seed extract. This extract is also used to prevent food poisoning bacteria. Take 10 drops in a glass of water after-suspected-infection. Use 10 drops or more to sterilize your water by the gallon. It kills staff, food poisoning, viruses and bacteria that have now grown resistant to modern antibiotics. They have become hybrids and medical research just cannot seem to create fast enough new germ killing drugs to keep up with them. See full information by Dr. Williams under the headline;
"Take Notice" Please Beware: The Killer Bacteria Are Coming!
For prevention and the best whole body protection against over 650 bacterial and viral diseases, i.e. Small Pox, Anthrax, surface skin infections, HIV, Hepatitus C, Cancer etc. Have one ounce of Colloidal Silver and two capsules of super strength milk thistle in along with all of your daily nutrients supplement schedule. This should better increase your chances of not getting disease in the first place!
Do all you can to keep your immune system super charged. Drink at least 40 oz of charcoal filtered water daily. Filter water and air in house using 1 micron filters if possible.
the product numbers 4010. The best of natural antibiotics that nature can provide. No artificial ingredients – pure minute silver particles, that are electromagnetically charged and suspended in purified water.
(3) Get, and keep on hand, a supply of DMSO (Dymethyl Sulfoxide) solvent. It will protect you against radiation poisoning applied directly to the body. You must be clean first. DMSO is a hydroscopic carrier and will carry medications, like Insulin and other poisons, into the blood stream. I drank it at 1 tablespoon in 8 oz. Of water to help heal a bleeding ulcer and get rid pyorrhea of the gums. Mouth rinse with 10 drops in glass of water. In addition, it is great to use for arthritic and muscle pain, as well as many other pains and for anti-bacterial and anti-fungus uses. Even protects body tissue from freezing at 50 degrees below zero. Always have handy! DMSO may be ordered in roll-on, gel or liquid forms from this site http://www.dmso.com/.
(4) Stock up on the following: (some of these items have uses other than for terrorist attacks)
(a) A FACE MASK. Go to your hardware store, and buy a mask used to protect your face from toxic dust. Learn to fit one tightly to your face. A good one offers almost complete protection 10-30 miles downwind from BW release. It will also protect you from the greater danger of radioactive fallout (inhalation), especially if you limit the other dangers by washing such fallout off your body, clothes, and surroundings. In addition, it will protect from pollen allergies, flu epidemics, and the debris clouds of natural or manmade disasters, as happened in New York.
Fox News Channel mentioned that while hundreds of U.S. health officials stand by in case of an attack in Super Bowl city New Orleans, the government has already taken steps to protect against a nuclear attack.
The fancy name for these masks are "filtering face piece particulate respirators" or respirators for toxic/harmful dust". The best are rated for the percentage of particles they filter out – up to 99.97% -- rated P100 or N100 by the U.S. government, with equivalent standards elsewhere. It is essential that your facemask fit tightly. The more expensive ones fit better than the cheaper ones. Average price about $27.00. Once fitted properly you can sleep in your mask when necessary.
Thompson said the U.S. government has recently stockpiled "millions of doses" of potassium iodide in case of a nuclear attack.Thompson's remarks come in the wake of revelations that terrorists may have been planning a 9/11-type jet plane attack on a nuclear power plant.
The release of radioactive fallout from a plant, or even the explosion of a primitive, easy-to-make dirty nuclear device, could cause heavy casualties.
Most of the loss of life in such an attack would likely be caused from radioactive fallout.
Fallout includes radioactive iodine, which can be carried hundreds of miles upwind from a release point, and which enters people's bloodstreams.
Once in the body, the radioactive iodine can be absorbed by the human thyroid - a potential cause of sickness and death.
By immediately taking potassium iodide, however, a person can saturate the thyroid with non-radioactive iodide, blocking absorption of radioactive material.
Thompson noted that the U.S. government has already moved supplies to the vicinities of potential nuclear danger spots.
He noted that only a short time exists after the release of fallout, and said individuals in some case would only have minutes to begin taking potassium iodide.
Despite the critical need for this substance, he encouraged citizens not to stockpile it themselves.
Earlier this year, we broke the story that the U.S. had no civilian stockpiles of the critical substance in case of a nuclear attack.
Thompson said he is less worried about a nuclear attack than a new wave of biological or chemical attacks.
Thompson said "the weakest link" in America's homeland defense was the food supply.
He said terrorists could access the nation's food supply and contaminate food with biological and chemical weapons.
The best prices for "Potassium Iodide and nuclear attack protection supplies here. Don't waite untill too late stock up now! Have total protection on hand.
(b) One-month supply of bottled water, storable food, fresh batteries in a flashlight, spares, portable radio, a full tank of gas in your vehicle in case you have to move to safer grounds.
(5) Know what to do if there is a terrorist attack:
(a) The preceding sections suggest the basics: Keep your perspective, tune in the media for information, and be ready to use your facemask and other supplies immediately.
(b) The question that will face you in an emergency is whether to stay where you are or to move. Here are some guidelines: If you are not in the range of the immediate physical effects of a terrorist attack (and you will know that right away), consider whether you might be subject to downwind effects – dust and debris (as in the World Trade Center attack), radioactive fallout, or a BW cloud. To judge downwind effect, decide which way the wind is blowing between the target and you. You should make it a point to know how the wind generally blows in your locality. In addition, you may see the direction of a debris cloud on television (as people did on September 11).
(c) If you are not in a likely downwind direction or within 3 miles of a conventional attack, 20 miles of a nuclear attack, or 300 miles of a biological release, stay where you are. With a well fitting facemask, you can stay where you are 30 miles (more or less) away from a BW release, if you know where that is, but it would be wise to seal your room for the night. If it is daylight or raining, there is no point to avoid BW. If you do decide to move, move at right angles with the direction of the wind. This is the fastest way to get out of danger.
Do your part now in order to survive the coming ordeals. Once you have your BW Kit together, make a list of your supplies and the steps you need to take for your safety. Keep this list with your supplies at all times. Be prepared and train your family! Designate at least two hours one day per week to gather your family together to check your list of supplies and go over all that you must do for each type of emergency. By being prepared, you can increase your chances of survival by 99%. Try to avoid accidents during and after emergencies. This is the only unknown. Keep all personal medications filled and emergency clothing ready. Be sure you can cover all of your body and skin. We trust that most of you who have received this program will follow it to the letter and survive.
To summarize the above: The first line of defense is prevention. To help prevent infection first, (a) make sure that you make your dwelling airtight. Cover vents on your roof with non-pores black or white Polly and do it airtight! Do it around windows, doors from inside and any other opening in dwelling that may allow contaminants to leak-into-dwelling. (b) At first sign of biological attack, begin taking antibiotics is suggested. After infection may not be as effective. Do not take vitamins for 2 to 3 hours before or after taking antibiotics. It will carry the medication out of your system. Take good doses of Vitamin C and a good 1-a-day multiple vitamins daily to build a strong immune system in your body. Last but certainly not least, Let us all keep praying. For (Prayer) is the most powerful tool in our arsenal. . (Urgent Notice) October 17, 2001 – The possibility that all mail and packages can get infected via a contaminated "Parcel or Letter" with "Anthrax Powder". There could be billions of letters in the Postal Services! Use gloves and take precautions! An extra "precaution" that we are taking is having all of our services and anyone whom sends us a bill, letter or written correspondence of any kind, to do it electronically. By fax or email! Then we in turn will pay our bills and respond electronically-by-computer. If you need a computer or Email source, contact us.
https://www.angelfire.com/or/don9840/fact.html
and visit our other web sites linked in hot links. You will learn much more.Sincerely,
Donald A. Huard
Senior PI, and President
Heritage International Private Investigations (since 1968)
DAH: gv
P.S. Other valuable suggestions: (a) if possible, have a charcoal filter for your water system. (b) Keep your hot water tank as hot as possible to kill bacteria in the water. Then use only hot water after it has cooled enough for comfort, for bathing, washing dishes, clothing, and other cleaning chores. (c) Use anti-bacterial liquid soap to wash. (d) Use anti-bacterial spray in the dwelling air. Do everything possible to keep bacteria down. The weapons most likely will be bacterial. (e) If you have to use antibiotics, have some acidophilus on hand to take to replace the good bacteria in your intestines. Antibiotics kill both good and bad bacteria. Along with registered membership in program, You will be on exclusive advanced warning Email program 24 hours a day! (Sign up today and become an associate too!)
Terrorist trouble spots around the world
There are many terrorist organizations throughout the world. Most have in common the same roots. Islamic, Communist and Marxist-Lennon idiologies. Enter Here and study the Terrorist Organization Profiles. Best to be well educated in all facts these days!
Beware of False Religion in these days.
Here you will find the evidence for which I know and beleive. Just below in Ezekiel Chapter 38 you will find the end result of what will happen to the "enemies of the USA and Israel who attack us in these times. Also read Ezekiel. Ch. 39-40, Revelation Ch. 16, Daniel Ch. 12, Mark Ch. 13 re: the parable of the fig-tree and the generation that began in 1948. Read and understand just these chapters in the Bible and their references and then you will have peace of mind. You will also know why we must be held captive for just a short time. Then Rev. Ch. 9, The time of the locus, as any farmer knows is five months. The reign of the antichrist, (Satan, the false christ that comes first.) He will soon come in giving peace and prosperity to the world. Looking like Christ and a great leader. Yes, he will rule from the temple in Israel. Watch the News my friends, don't be deceived!
The KJV Strong's Version For your benefit, I put in parentaces and bold the translation from Hebrew to English taken from the Strongs Hebrew, Greek and Chaldean Dictionary. Study and show thyself approved of the Lord and just maybe you will be spared! And YES, I know tomorrow as you know yesterday. You who understand, know who and what I am! Don, His End Time Watchmen
Ezekiel 38
38:1
And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
38:2
Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, (Russia) the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him,
38:3
And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, (Leader of Russia) the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal:
38:4
And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords: (Great military, vehicles and modern weapons)
38:5
Persia, (Iran & Iraq) (Ethiopia, African Nations) and (Libya) with them; all of them with shield and helmet:
38:6
Gomer, and all his bands; ( Assyrian, Celts ) the house of Togarmah (Russian part of old Assyria)of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.
38:7
Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company (Military Allies) that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.
38:8
After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains (people) of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.
38:9
Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee. (By air and land)
38:10
Thus saith the Lord GOD; It shall also come to pass, that at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought: (War and terrorism)
38:11
And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, (Outside Jerusalem) and having neither bars nor gates,
38:12
To take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land.
38:13
Sheba, and Dedan, (Arabian States)and the merchants of Tarshish, (Spain)with all the young lions thereof, shall say unto thee, Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?
38:14
Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, Thus saith the Lord GOD; In that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know it?
38:15
And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army:
38:16
And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes.
38:17
Thus saith the Lord GOD; Art thou he of whom I have spoken in old time by my servants the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in those days many years that I would bring thee against them?
38:18
And it shall come to pass at the same time when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the Lord GOD, that my fury shall come up in my face.
38:19
For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel;(Bombs)
38:20
So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains (World Governments)shall be thrown down, and the steep places (Communications and weapon Satellites) shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.
38:21
And I will call for a sword (Judgement)against him throughout all my mountains, (US Government, Canada, England and Christian Nations) saith the Lord GOD: every man's sword (Weapons)shall be against his brother. (Different ethinic races in USA, not family!)
38:22
And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones *, fire, and brimstone.(Radiation and Biological weapons)
38:23
Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the LORD.
The KJV Strong's Version
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Dear readers and good citizens of the World: As many of you know, we have been publishers of many Web-Sites in many languages around the World since 1999. We publish from all over the world.
Our main purpose and message is to inform all mankind of important world situations as they happen and where they fit in prophecy of today. As well as where we fit in Prophecy of today. To offer to the public valuable "FREE" software and services. To assist all mankind everywhere in the strugle for life, health, happiness, prosperity where and when possible. To investigate and fight against terrorism, crime and corruption world-wide. The on-line and private full time Study and Educattion regarding prophecy and where we are on "God's callender" today. To keep you informed on "news and many personal subjects" of interest to all, and to do our best in assisting the world to help maintain "peace and security" in troubled times. In this we have given it our all. Our time, health, finances and in many cases our own life.
We are a private, independent, and a self supporting organization. Most are well educated and trained in all fields of law enforcement, military, and private business and occupations of every major catagory in the world. We began our united world-wide venture to assist and observe mankind in 1968.
Our past and present force of independent operatives numbers 7,000 world-wide. Our group consist of all men except a team of two women.
When one dies or is killed, he is replaced with the best possible trained replacement.
Although our main occupation is International Private Investigations, we all specialize in many different fields or occupations. Therefore we have specialist in each professional field in order to be the best undercover or covert operatives.
Since 1970, by unanimous decision, we decided to keep most of our activities secret from the world. To this day, other than a few public law enforcement and government leaders and agencies throughout the world and former clients, except on a need to know basis, we have managed to remain anonymous.
Our parent company, Heritage International is a member of the United States Chamber of Commerce and most individual operatives are members in various professional trade organizations, societies, medical and legal organizations etc. We are registered with Dun & Bradstreet under a parent holding company name which is given out to clients only, on a need to know basis.
We have been totally self supporting and funded. No government grants, outstanding corporate loans or assets other than personal and individual small business office assets and homes. We are all independent agents and responsible for our our personal State or Country tax liabilities and licensing where and when necessary.
All of us are now over the age of 50 years and with Heritage for at least 25 years. Some of us like myself (Don Huard)are disabled due to on the job wounds and injuries while in the line of duty. I now only assist in the publishing of our web-sites and WWW distribution. Due to being self supporting and the decission to maintain low profiles in life, none of us are of any great financial wealth.
Due to the recent terrorist activities, and past, our commitments to mankind and the on going world war, along with our international travel and investigations expences, we are nearly out of all personal and reserve funds, savings and past donations from former clients and services payments. Or accounts receivables as you might put it. As I mentioned, some of us suffer great pain daily due to disability, injuries and the continuece of our services which we are each totally dedicated and committed to no matter what it takes.
Ninety percent (90%) or more of our works to this day have been without pay, due to the nature and privacy of the investigations, the inability of individuals to pay for services rendered, as well as our duties and loyal commitments to mankind.
Even though many of us have been injured on duty, even unjustly at the hands of our own authorities sometimes, or military that we may have assisted, none of us has ever been involved or filed a civil suit or demand for funds do to liability of others at any time in our history. Law enforcement throughout the world have been legally liable in many of the situations too!
We ourselves suffered the pains both physical and financial in order to maintain our high standards and principles.
Any and all Federal, State, Local or Country civil suits that may ever have been lodged or filed against us over 30 years has been won in our favor. In most cases we acted pro-per or defended ourself or company without legal defence.
Truth always wins, is what we believe!
If you will take the time to read some of our web-sites, you will personally know what we are about and our commitment to man-kind. Each and every one of us always believe that God will take care of our needs. So without begging or borrowing, we feel that there are some readers out there that will hear and understand our financial needs.
In prayer and faith, we will waite to hear from you.
Meantime, everyone please keep us in your prayers. We are not getting any younger and we are trying to achieve what many feel may be impossible. I am sure you know what we are saying.
Dun & Brad ID # 11 836 6681
Tel: 541-759-3280
Bilderberg will seal off the Westfields Marriott, just seven miles south of Washingtons Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Va., for its annual meeting of the super-rich and super-famous on the weekend of May 30-June 2.
While it is the closest Bilderberg has ever come to Washington for annual secret meetings to plot the worlds future, Westfields is ideal for the security-paranoid international elite. Westfields stands in lonely grandeur with much space separating the resort from tall brick buildings in a luxury office park.
Perhaps coincidentally, neighboring office buildings are home to numerous spy organizations.
The last time Bilderberg met in Virginia was 1962, when the secret gang of international financiers and political leaders took over all of Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Va. Bilderberg tends to meet on the same continent as the Group of Eight economic summits, which follow shortly afterwards, featuring heads of state from the worlds industrialized nations. The G-8 will meet in Alberta, Canada June 26-28.
Bilderbergs junior varsity, the Trilateral Commission, will meet April 5-7 in Washington at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Bilderberg and the TC have an interlocking leadership and a common global agenda. David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger are powers in both groups.
Trilaterals have about 320 participants while the more exclusive Bilderberg has about 120. The TC includes Japan, while Bilderberg draws only from Europe and North America. Both high-powered groups plan the future, together, of the entire world.
BILDERBERGS AGENDA
High on their common agenda this year is how to exploit the war on terrorism to increase their control of the world without borders while generating immense profits. The Trilaterals will meet behind closed doors at the Ritz Carlton but not seal off the entire downtown hotel. Bilderberg will have armed guards blocking the entrance to Westfields and none but participants will be permitted inside. There will be no other guests.
Sources inside both groups say they will try to exploit the new war on terrorism to advance an old agenda: Establishing NATO formally as the United Nations standing army, imposing a direct UN tax on the world, global gun control and selling the Free Trade Area of the Americas as a necessary step to ward off future attacks.
It is all part of a grand design to establish a world government under the UN. As NAFTA expands through out the Western Hemisphere as the FTAA it is to evolve into the American Union and dollarization is to be come the common currency, as the euro is in Europe. Bilderberg luminaries have directly acknowledged this to an American Free Press reporter.
Other Bilderberg sources said the site near Washington was chosen for several reasons.
Dulles is considered one of the most secure airports in the wake of 9-11 and it is a short ride in flag-draped limos to Westfields. While instant communication with the White House has always been easy, wherever in the world Bilderberg hides, it is a 30-mile drive for any high official of the administration who may be summoned on short notice. High officials of the administration will be attending the full three-day session anyway.
But more are prepared to come like a dog to the whistle if called.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/03_31_02/BILDERBERG_FOUND/bilderberg_found.html
You are cordially invited...
The Bilderbergers are throwing a party, and we're all invited (not).
Well, at least we know where their secret bash will be held, which means its not a secret any more.
Therfore, we should cordially invite ourselves, to meet with the puppetmasters who control the IMF, G8, NATO, UN, US, World Bank, EU, and possibly Domino's Pizza and Hooters....
Bring party hats, party masks and raw vegatables for an ad hoc salad bar.
Never in the history of humankind have so many countries owed
so much money with so little prospect of ever getting out
of debt. The total amount of international debt owed by the
Third World nations amounted to just under 100 billion dollars
in 1973. By 1997, it stood at a staggering sum of $2 trillion.
This sum of money is certainly large by any standard. But
ironically, more money flows from poor 'Developing Countries'
into the richer 'Developed Countries', than is given back
in aid and new loans. Since 1987 multilateral institutions
like the IMF have received, from all 'Developing Countries',
net transfers of over $13 billion. Between 1983 and 1993 the
IMF in particular took $2.9 billion more from the less 'Developed
Countries' than it gave in new loans. 'Third World' debt is
ever growing, with devastating consequences on the people
due to structural adjustment conditions attached.
The strings attached to loans Nations receiving loans are asked to, devalue their currency, lower their import barriers, remove their restrictions on foreign investments, remove their subsidies for local industry, lower their social welfare funding, pay lower wages, reduce government spending in general, and expand production and export of their timber, minerals, and agriculture. The results are almost universally the same, wages fall, poverty worsens, health care decreases, education decreases. Adding to all of these problems is the purpose of all the changes, the price of the export commodities are forced down. And then the real trouble cycle begins.
The international debt game is played according to an upside
down logic, that one would think would be blatantly obvious
to all. But it continues like an endless chess game with pawns
continuously placed in strategic positions in order to be
sacrificed to keep bishops and kings going. During the Clinton administration in his
tour of Africa, President Clinton made a move to place Africa
in a strategic position in the American plan. After admitting
that "For centuries, other nations exploited Africa's
gold, Africa's diamonds, Africa's minerals...". He coloured
his speeches with phrases like "It is time for Americans
to put new Africa on our map", "Now Africans are
embracing economic reform", "Americans of both political
parties want to increase trade and investment in Africa...".
These amount to an agenda of loans and 'aid' to African countries
in order to invest in further exploitation of raw materials
and to boost consumption of US products. This has been happening
in the same way for centuries, only this time more cleverly
so. President Clinton only seeked to beat the European Union
in the new scramble for Africa. Being the biggest competitor
to the US, the European Union has announced its own "economic
encounter with Africa" in the year 2000 and on. Neither the
US nor the EU will offer to increase trade and investment
by removing their unfair trade barriers on secondary or tertiary
products or by investing in real manufacturing and industrial
development. This is because Capitalism is the rule of the
game, and they make the rules, using instruments like GATT.
Like the IMF, GATT is a crucial tool in the game, since loans
and 'aids' on their own are not sufficient to maintain the
continuous exploitation of 'Third World' countries. Through
it, strategically selected barriers are raised and lowered
in such a way as to steer the economic growth of 'Third World'
nations. These conditions which complement the IMF loan conditions
are not the same for the powerful. The US is the most indebted
country in the world, with foreign debt amounting to about
$1.5 trillion out of a total Federal debt of $5.5 trillion.
Yet it stands as the leading nation of the world due to its
political and ideological will and its influence in setting
the rules and playing the game. The existing 'Third World'
regimes have abandoned their political will in order to pursue
these structural adjustment policies and therefore have little
prospect of ever getting out of the vicious cycle. In the
following paragraphs, we analyze how the international debt
game is played, its implications and consequences and the
Islamic viewpoint on it.
The ends do not justify the means
The
reason why 'Third World' countries borrow at the international
level is to finance projects in the country. But the bulk
of the projects are not addressing the fundamental requirements
of these nations. They often involve the construction of infrastructure
and production systems that benefit the creditor nations of
the West far more than the debtor. These include large irrigation
dams as in the case of Morocco or power plants supplying non-domestic
electricity as in the case of Zaire and arms to keep ailing
dictatorships in power. At face value, these projects may
seem very beneficial to the borrowing 'Third World' country.
But the actual consequence of the borrowing can be seen as
follows:
The loan is provided on the basis of regular interest payments.
These loans have to be paid back in Dollars or Pound Sterling,
and to earn this currency, the borrowing country needs to
export goods, or to purchase foreign currency on the international
market. In order to achieve this, government expenditure on
basic necessities such as food and other commodities is diverted
to other products such as cash crops that can be sold on the
international market for the desired currency. These crops
are usually produced by many other debtor nations, resulting
in low market prices. At the same time, due to the emphasis
on cash crops and the like, the borrowing country has not
invested in developing its own agricultural base for feeding
its population. Consequently, it needs to purchase its food
from the 'First World', thus living at their mercy; and to
do that it needs to borrow. Then the cycle begins all over
again. When the borrowing nation defaults or is in danger
of doing so, the IMF is invoked. The IMF has one and the same
solution to all such problems, - the imposition of austerity
measures designed to increase foreign exports and reserves
in order to make more payments. This means more suffering
and poverty for the people.
The poor borrow
their own money
This is a well-known phenomenon to American bankers. They
take funds that 'Third World' elites have appropriated from
their countries and loan them back to countries for supposedly
productive uses, earning a nice spread each way. These banks
are adept at designing complex schemes to help their wealthy
clients ferry money out of their country's offshore trusts,
fake investment companies, parallel foreign exchange swaps
that avoid national banks, and 'back to back' loans in which
the bank 'loans' the client his own money. Their inventiveness
is amazing! The big western banks in the game have whole departments
dedicated to this, with agents world-wide. One dollar out
of every three loaned to Latin America by banks between 1979
and 1983 made this round trip. It was estimated that a net
of $418 billion of borrowed funds flowed right back between
1982 and 1990. This is more than double that was spent to
rebuild Europe after World War II. This wealth that is skimmed
off by the elite of Developing Countries and deposited in
foreign banks, is a large factor in the developing world's
debt burden.
Compulsory purchase
Another mechanism for ensuring Third World debt is that they
are almost without exception tied to import from the donor
country. These types of bondage deals are usually done discretely.
To cite an example of one such deal that became public in
1988, George Younger, the British Defense Secretary, signed
a deal with Malaysia linking $1 billion in arms sales with
an aid package to build the Pergau Dam. More generally, it
has now become a common practice for Western companies to
persuade poor countries to buy their goods and services even
if they don't have money to pay. They make it part of the
deal that they will secure aid on their behalf from their
country or a loan from the World Bank or any such bodies.
Hence the money simply remains in the donor country. It is
reported that over 80% of America's foreign aid returns immediately
through exports tied to that aid.
Compound interest
In the Capitalist world, interest must be paid on debt. Now,
unless a country is running a trade surplus, it must borrow
the funds necessary to make interest payments. Thus the annual
amount that must be borrowed gets larger and larger, even
if the trade deficit itself does not expand. As debts grow,
interest payments grow. As interest payments grow, debt grows.
As time passes the rate of debt accumulation speeds up, even
if the basic trade deficit remains constant. This magic of
compound interest is that it ensures that almost all of the
'Third World' countries will alaways remain in debt. To illustrate
with numbers, $1 trillion dollars compounded at 10% per year
will become $117 trillion in fifty years and $13.78 quadrillion
in one hundred years. This would correspond to about $3.5
million for every man, woman, and child in the 'Developing
World'. But their debt is twice this and has been compounding
at twice that rate - over 20% per year between 1973 and 1997,
from under $100 billion to $2 trillion. Most of these debts
are incurred without the recipient country receiving any lasting
benefits. In fact, only about $400 billion of that $2 trillion
debt was actual borrowed finance capital; the rest was runaway
compound interest.
The Islamic Perspective
The taking of foreign aids/loans by the Islamic State could
be haram or mubah depending on the strings attached. Firstly,
if it comes with interest, it becomes haram as Allah (swt)
has forbidden interest. But even if this could be circumvented
somehow, it does not automatically become permitted by Islam.
The reason is that it could bring harm to the state's authority,
its economy and its security. This is based on the Shari'ah
principle which states that if any particular action that
is allowed (mubah) leads to harm then this individual action
becomes haram.
The curse of
foreign aid
The clear and present danger of foreign loans is that they
constitute a sophisticated war tool that has been used historically
and is still being used to control debtor states. Strange
as it may sound, one of the goals of the leading mercantilist
nations is to sell as many consumer products as possible to
an enemy, while embargoing machinery and technology, so as
to keep them dependent and weak. High priority is placed on
selling to any society that is an ideological threat, as is
the case between Islam and the West. The resulting inability
of the dependent society to develop its own skilled labor,
innovations, industry and wealth, is well understood. Modern
aid is intended by 'Developed Countries' to perpetuate the
above. Additionally, as the debt grows to unrepayable levels,
the debtor country becomes permanently enslaved with the creditor
country invoking all sorts of rights to intervene.
England colonized Egypt through debts. Under the pretext of
recouping their loans, an English administrative officer was
sent to supervise public revenues and a French one to supervise
expenditure. This developed later to establishing a mixed
cabinet, with the English in the ministry of Finance and the
French in the ministry of works. Through this, Egypt was colonized.
In a similar way, France also occupied Tunis through debts.
But most telling was the establishment of the Ottoman Debt
Council (1881-1944) through which the Western states extended
their direct influence on the Khilafah in its last days.
What is most likely to happen today or in the future is that
international bodies will be used to control the Khilafah
if it falls into the debt trap. This was what happened to
the lesser European states during the inter-war period, especially
Austria, Hungary and Greece, when international financial
control was established by the League of Nations over them.
The modern equivalent of the 'League of Nations', the UN and
its daughter organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank,
are already doing the job. These are in fact tools in the
hands of the rich Western nations. Notwithstanding this, if
the Khilafah evaluates that none of the above dangers exist,
taking a loan, without interest, would be permissible.
Conclusion
The Islamic State is and must be an ideological nation. Since
it is clear that such interventionist actions as outlined
above are motivated by political and ideological considerations,
it must steer clear of this danger. As has been proven in
many historical cases, these debts are not absolute necessities
for advancement. On the one hand, there are countries especially
in the Muslim World that are even richer than their Western
masters, and yet they are so technically backward that they
cannot even defend their borders. On the other hand, there
have been many examples of countries which were boycotted
and actually ended up better off in terms of developing their
own resources while countless more that were tempted or coerced
to keep borrowing ended up worse off. The lesson stands that
the most important tool of advancement is the ideological
and political will of a nation rather than anything else.
Yes I agree that it is quite clear that their are two camps amongs the Muslims worldwide. Which camp are you in? Are you in the camp that condones the killing of the non-believers? Or are you in the camp that will do all possible to make peace with the enemy? Which would God (Allah) prefer?
It is becoming more and more apparent that Muslims are waking up to their identity defined by Islam. We discuss here what defines the two camps and thier charcteristics in detail. The important question is whether Muslims are happy to be in the camp which may gain them helfire if their philosophy and teaching is truely ordained of God (Allah).!
The two groups in the world today when considering Muslims:
Usuli Muslims Muslims that follow the Quran, Sunnah, Shariah and decide according to Usul-ul-fiqh are known as Usuli Muslims.
illumi Muslims b Muslms that attest to following the Quran, possibly some of the Shariah and the law of the land*. Who make decisions according to their own limited minds are known as Illumi Muslims.
Remember, sincere Muslims living in the Muslim lands are being oppressed by goverments that have been planted by the West eighty or more years ago.
The Russians made a pact with America in 1956 whereby they both carved up the world into two spheres of control as a means to oppress the Muslim populations. Both USA(UK) and Russia made secret pacts that to destroy ISLAM. Russia was to carryout untold oppression against Muslims while the US looked on as a nation promoting Freedom. But freedom came at a cost and that was for the Muslims to become moderates and for them to impliment kaffir policies that contradicted ISLAM.
Eventually after decades of suppression the new sons of the Muslims would give up their fight for a Khilafah Islamic World State and follow the mainstream democratic capitalist governments.
History can prove that the US and Russia played this dreadful game at the expence of Muslim lives - they continue to do so under the guise of the failed New World Order. Let Muslims not be mislead into thinking that the United States is a seperate entity, it is no doubt a staging post for the New World Order and the UK as its military CNC (Command&Control) and should be seen as such.
Governemnts planted in the Muslim lands attest to being devout illumi Muslims and must not be supported by true Usuli Muslims. Instead these governments need to be removed and replace by a true Islamic Government as defined by ISLAM - read consitiution defined on this website.
And again I repeat myself, it has become more and more apparent that Muslims are waking up to their identity defined by Islamic writings. We discussed what defines the two camps and thier charcteristics in detail. The important question is whether Muslims are happy to be in the camp which may gain them helfire if their philosophy and understanding of GOD (Allah) is correct! Or is it another philosophy of man to control mankind?
Don't forget that we all were designed by the same Creator in the first place. Ancient races over 100,000 years ago, the yellow race over 14,000 years ago, the black, grey and brown about 14,000 years ago and the Adamic or light skin race 6,000 years ago. All of these races exist today! Even the seeds of Cain whose father was the "devil"!
The creator made us all in a certain order for a reason and purpose. That purpose is coming into play in this generation. Do you know your place on the Creators callender and His purpose for you?
Could it be the seeds of Cain that are running the show at this time?
George Bush declared to the world that either Muslims are with the Kaffir or they are with the terrorists (i.e usulli Muslims who are working for the restablishment of ISLAM as a political power on eartth). Muslims worldwide reject the Kaffir and support Muslims who call for the Khilafah Islamic State. Muslims are obliged to re-establish ISLAM as a political power because Allah(swt) demands this from the best of the Muslims. Muslims must determine whether they are Usuli or illumi.
This is if their religious teaching is truely ordained of God (Allah) A wise man will not listen to the words of any man and seek out truth for himself. If your heart is pure, the truth will be made known to you!
Their are indeed two groups in the world today when considering Muslims as I outlined above. Which do you want to be?
In the Old Testament Bible it states that in these end time Israel would be hated by all nations and the enemy will be knocking down their doors from house to house. Keep in mind that it is referring to all of the 13 tribes of Israel and not just Judah! To mention too that England is where the Tribe of Epherim settled with some of the Royal Tribe of Judah. (The Royal Family) via Scotland and Ireland. And the USA is where the Tribe of Mennaseh came and settled from England on the Mayflower.
So all Israel will be hated and surrounded by the enemy. Russia to our north via Alaska and Cuba to the South and China to our south, via the Panama Canal and the South seas. Europe will stand off and wait for Israel to be defeated and then come to collect the spoils like vultures.
But, then read (2 Chron. 20:29) And the fear of the GOD (Father) was on all the Kingdoms of those Countries when they had heard that the LORD fought against the enemies of Israel. Israel is God's chosen people in the end times to fulfill His final works! Are You An Enemy of Israel and GOD?
Can't you now see that we are in the last days as mentioned in Prophecy? Open your heart and eyes my friends, God has already taken His "blessings and protections" away from "America in 1992" because she went a hoaring and allowed the dog (homo-sexuals) See (Rev. 22:15) in the military camps and did not put them out! Also see Re. 21: and read all about the seven vials and seven plagues be poured out on man at this time. Both scripture and news below will confirm all!
The fact or quality of being humane; kindness, mercy, sympathy, etc.
During this time of world globalization, the human race is even more interconnected with one another than ever before, through economic and mass communication mediums. It is obvious that we depend on one another in order to maintain a stable economy and we all feel the ripple effects of a failed economy equally all through out the world. This also holds true with regards to our humanity.
Mass communication today delivers to us first hand information for us to witness upfront human suffering that unfortunately still exists in the world today. It is unavoidable for us not to be witness. Though, unlike the world economy, we do have a choice to either assist those who are suffering or to shut them out completely from our conscience.
Our individual choice to help or ignore human suffering is completely up to us and we must take responsibility for our actions on behalf of all mankind. It should be our obligation. Let us not leave our human rights in the hands of soldiers who are trained to kill and to politicians who train us to accept and justify the killing of children. Take humanity off hold by affirming in solidarity that all human beings shall enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms without discrimination. Until then, humanity is on hold.
See Revelation 12:7-10 "satan and his 7000 angels cast to earth. Revelation 9:3-11, satan's rule for 5 months, Revelation 11:3-10 The two physical witnesses of the end times and their death after 3 1/2 years. Then satans reign comes to an end at the battle of Hamongog and Armageddon. 1st Cor. 15:52 Our physical bodies are all changed to spirit bodies at Christ return!
Armageddon at the Valley of Meggido in Israel and Hamongog is Alaska.
Terrorism is hard to define. In its broadest sense terrorism can be thought of as the use or threatened use of force against civilians designed to bring about political or social change. Moreover, while we think of terrorism as being both a political and irrational act (especially suicide terrorism), terrorism can also be thought of as a rational act conducted specifically because of the impact -- fear, confusion, submission -- it will have.
Given the U.S. government's pledge to wage a war against terrorism, it is important to look at its definitions. According to both the Department of Defense (DOD) and the FBI, terrorism is "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives." The DOD definition adds that a goal of terrorism can be "inculcating fear" (thus the psychological dimension), while the State Department is more elaborate, specifying that terrorism may include the use of biological, chemical or nuclear devices as well as the act of "assassination."
The latter would suggest that assassinating bin Laden would be a terrorist act by our definition of the word; the former that allied forces in the fire bombings of cities in Dresden, and specifically the U.S., through its use of nuclear weapons to end World War II and of chemical weapons in Vietnam, has already engaged in terrorist activities, although the moral calculus and justification for these actions varies widely and in comparison with the terrorism of the enemies, such as Nazi Germany.
This is the grand conundrum of defining terrorism; it is very difficult to separate it from acts of war, just or unjust. We all have heard the saying, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." And indeed, Osama bin Laden and his comrades were hailed as freedom fighters in the 1980s by the American government at a time when politicians like Dick Cheney considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist.
Further, the UN definition of terrorism states that "all war crimes will be considered acts of terrorism," in which case most every government in the world (especially the major military powers, Pakistan, Israel, the major Muslim states, most Latin American governments) has committed terrorism, though few have ever faced justice or even opprobrium for doing so.
2. What is the history of terrorism?
The first recorded use of "terrorism" and "terrorist" was in 1795, relating to the Reign of Terror instituted by the French government. The use of "terrorist" to signify anti-government activities was recorded in 1866 referring to Ireland, and in 1883 referring to Russia.
Throughout history humans have terrorized their neighbors to generate fear and compel changes in behavior. At the dawn of China's imperial age, T'ai Kung, the first Chinese general and progenitor of strategic thought, described the "spreading of civil offensives" to sow dissension, demoralize the populace and incapacitate the government.
In the modern period, all regular armies have recruited "irregulars" to do their dirty work: Cossacks, hunters, Hussars, all were used to draw a civilized veil over the actions of their sponsors as they raped and pillaged in towns and across countrysides. (Ironically, Ivan the First had to subdue the very Cossacks he used to pacify the Muslim regions of Russia; today the U.S. is forced to "subdue" the Muslims we used to pacify Russia.)
Today terrorism must be viewed within the context of the modern nation-state. Indeed, it was the rise of a bureaucratic state, which could not be destroyed by the death of one leader that forced terrorists to widen their scope of targets in order to create a public atmosphere of anxiety and undermine confidence in government. This reality is at the heart of the ever more violent terrorism of the last 100 years, from anarchists' assassinations to hijackings and suicide bombings.
3. Who and where are terrorists today?
According to the U.S. State Department, there are at least 45 terrorist groups outside the United States. Currently, at least seven "rogue states" -- Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, North Korea, Cuba and now Afghanistan -- are accused by the U.S. of "supporting terrorism."
But the label of who is and isn't a terrorist is still fuzzy. Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat was a terrorist, and now isn't. Jerry Adams of Ireland's Sinn Fein and Nelson Mandela of South Africa were terrorists, now they're statesmen. At least three Israeli Prime Ministers were either self-avowed terrorists or could be legitimately accused of engaging in terrorist activities. Our newest ally in the war against terror, Russian President Vladimir Putin, continues to lead a dirty war in Chechnya that could be described as terrorist in the ferocity of its atrocities against civilians.
Thirty years ago Noam Chomsky reminded us that two thirds of the national-security states using torture and terrorism were clients of the United States. Moreover, almost every Middle Eastern government, including our strongest allies, engage in state-terrorism against its people or its neighbors. To cite just one small example, Pakistan, our major security partner in Central Asia, is about to execute Dr. Yunis Shaikh, a leading humanist and peace activist [ go to http://free-drshaikh.org/ for more information and to help free him ] on concocted charges of "blasphemy," precisely in order to stifle any dissent against the government's policies. And yet President Bush has ignored this human rights abomination, waved American sanctions imposed after the detonation of the Pakistani bomb and is putting together new aid packages for the Pakistan government.
4. From where does the trail of Osama bin Laden, and terrorists more generally, originate?
We are only beginning to understand the incredibly complex logistical, financial and personnel network behind the likes of Osama bin Laden. This complexity suggests the deeper we dig, the wider the circle grows. What has long been clear is that bin Laden's main support comes from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, both major U.S. allies and pivots in our Middle Eastern and Central Asian security system.
The U.S. remains the lead arms supplier and patron of the Saudi regime, and was close to Pakistan during the Afghan war, while the dictator Zia ul-Haq (one of the world's more ruthless) was in power. The CIA was a main funnel of over $3 billion in funds to the Afghan resistance, which became the core of the current terrorist network. The Soviet Union was likewise a supporter of the previous generation of Arab terrorists, such as Abu Nidal, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and other Palestinian groups.
The U.S. alliance with the Saudi royal family goes back to the 1940s, when the Roosevelt administration pledged to ensure the survival of the royal family as long as it ensured a supply of cheap oil. Thus was born the petrodollar-arms cycle, in which dollars sent to the Saudis in the form of oil revenues were recycled back to the U.S. through arms purchases. To understand the finances of terrorism it is important to keep in mind this petrodollar cycle, which keeps the vast majority of oil revenue in the hands of corrupt regimes and thus out of reach of most citizens of the region.
If we turn to the question of who is harboring and financing terrorists, once again the West and its allies in the Middle East and global south are implicated. For its part, the U.S. is involved, through foreign aid and weapons sales totaling hundreds of billions of dollars during and since the Cold War (from just 1993 to 1997, the U.S. government sold, approved or gave away $190 billion in weapons to virtually every nation on earth). The same has been true for the Soviet Union, though on a smaller scale. Whether in Latin America, Africa, Asia or the Middle East, regimes that have engaged in acts of terror could not have survived without the support of the two (and now one) superpower and our G-8 allies.
But blame cannot just be laid with superpowers. If bin Laden could not survive without the Taliban, the Taliban could not exist were it not for Pakistan's patronage and support of hundreds of "madrasas," or religious schools, that train thousands of young men to do little else other than hate and kill in the name of God. In fact, the major financiers of the bin Laden and the Taliban have been Saudi intelligence and eminent Saudis such as the Governor of Riyadh and the Grand Mufti of the country. Ironically, bin Laden has been linked to Saddam Hussein.
Yet it is not only princes and sheiks who are to blame: average people through small donations have helped to sustain myriad terrorist organizations, whether its Arabs giving to duel-function groups like the Muslim Brotherhood or the Hamas that provide social services and support violent activities, or poor Pakistanis who still manage to give a rupee or two to add to bin Laden's millions. It could also be argued that average citizens in France, Israel or the U.S. do likewise through their tax dollars that pay our policies.
5. What do Judaism, Christianity and Islam have to say about terrorism?
The concept of terrorism arose centuries after the classic texts of the three religions were handed down to humanity, so it is difficult to discuss the concept of terrorism in this sense. However, all three Abrahamic faiths allow war and set limits on when, how and against whom it can be waged.
If we start with Judaism, certainly the Bible, in the Ten Commandments, admonishes "thou shalt not kill," which clearly would prescribe any sort of violence against non-combatants. Indeed, the Prophet Hosea warned Israel that her sins would cause "the tumult of war [to] arise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed… mothers dashed in pieces with their children." Yet the Bible also describes the Lord as "a man of war" who orders Israel to "go and smite Am'alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." In one sense, this is not an act of terrorism, since the goal isn't political. Yet in the larger context of teaching a lesson to Israel's enemies by making Am'alek an example, it would seem to meet the criteria. Moreover, if we consider the Egyptians' killing of all the first born of the Hebrews, and God's doing likewise to Egypt as the tenth plague preceding the Exodus, both could be interpreted in a modern context as "terroristic" because they involved the killing of innocent non-combatants for political ends -- i.e., the changing of attitudes and policies on each side.
Of course, by definition God cannot engage in an act of evil, yet when Job questioned God, He did not answer directly, but instead replied, "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand... Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?" Even the prophets could not answer the question of evil and innocent suffering in a world created in God's image.
If we turn to Christianity, the example of Jesus's doctrine of blessing peacemakers and turning the other cheek has influenced pacifist movements to this day. Instead of an "eye for an eye," Jesus said, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." Yet he did not challenge the Roman soldiers to give up their profession—which certainly included "terrorism" as a matter of course—while Paul in Romans exclaims that "He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil."
As Christian theology developed with Augustine and later Aquinas, the doctrine of "just war" helped define the rules and limits of war, and are now being used by the Vatican to indicate its support for the war against terrorism. Augustine explained, "We do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to war that we may have peace. Be peaceful, therefore, in warring, so that you may vanquish those whom you war against, and bring them to the prosperity of peace."
Such solipsisms are easily distorted to justify any sort of barbarity, even as the just war doctrine prohibited "private individuals" (like Osama bin Laden) from "summoning together the people," to quote Aquinas. Yet Augustine's definition of a just war as "one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly" sounds just like the justifications offered by terrorists everywhere for their extreme actions. And indeed, the commonly accepted contemporary criteria for a just war -- having a "just case," being under "proper authority," fighting for justice and not reasons of self-interest or aggrandizement -- can all be claimed by terrorists as well as "just" states. Finally, we should remember that the Crusades or Inquisition, which were executed largely through terroristic means, were authorized directly by the Church.
Arriving at Islam, the concept of Jihad, or "struggle," which in recent decades has been at the theological core of justifying Muslim acts of terrorism, traditionally meant the spiritual and moral struggle of an individual Muslim against his or her evil inclinations. The lesser jihad, that is, war against other human beings, is in classical Muslim sources a "defensive" war with limits that cannot be "transgressed," even when fighting those who "try to force you to adopt another religion or to leave your home." In fact, the conservative Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran just called the fight against terrorism a "holy war" -- that is, a jihad.
Yet while the Koran has plenty of verses that talk about peace, even with Muhammad's enemies, there are also verses that advocate war and violence. Indeed, God exclaims in Sura 8:12, "I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them." Moreover, while the Koran prohibits suicide, and the Prophet clearly prohibited killing noncombatants, women and children, destroying property or even poisoning wells (the precursor to chemical warfare), there are hadith (prophetic sayings) that list jihad as among the highest religious duties, higher even than performing the pilgrimage to Mecca, which is one of the five pillars of the faith. And although it is not always clear which jihad is being spoken of, the fact that the Prophet is quoted as saying that booty will be the reward for "Jihad for God," and that women should make the pilgrimage instead of jihad, one can assume that the martial sense of jihad is intended at least some of the time.
Ultimately, the theological roots of terrorism or war in general would seem to be moot, for religion has long been used to justify politics and warfare. Nonetheless, this has not stopped the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon from considering themselves to be good Muslims, nor the Jews who uproot Palestinian homes or Serbs who kill Muslims in Bosnia from considering themselves to be good Jews or Christains. Arguing with them about the "true" nature of their religion is a waste of time. They might indeed by "good" Christians, Muslims or Jews, but are in the end bad human beings.
6. What are the most common acts of terrorism?
Since 1968, when the United States government began keeping such statistics, more than 7,000 terrorist bombings have occurred worldwide. The State Department currently lists 30 "designated foreign terrorist organizations" and another 14 as "other terrorist organizations". [ report containing full list at http://www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/1999report/appb.html ]
According to the State Department, the number of terrorist acts has hovered between 300 and 500 per year during the 1980-1999 period. Perhaps surprisingly, about two thirds of all acts of terrorism are against business, numbering five-fold more than attacks on diplomatic, military and government personnel or property, or civilians. Moreover, while the Middle East dominates media coverage of terrorism, in fact Latin America, followed by Western Europe, suffered the most attacks in 1999 (96 and 30 respectively out of a total of 169), with bombings the most popular method of attack, followed by firebombing, kidnapping, arson, and hijacking.
But the State Department numbers are misleading, because an incident is classified as international terrorism only if it involves the citizens or territory of more than one country; thus terrorism within countries not harming foreign nationals is not counted. A more accurate accounting comes from Pinkerton Security's Annual Risk Assessment, which show an average of almost 5,000 incidents per year during the last decade, with terrorism confined to one country. Yet even these numbers don't account for terrorist actions by governments. Indeed, while hijackings and suicide bombings get the most attention, the fact is that the most common act of terror is torture committed by states against their own citizens, as Amnesty International reports that tens of thousands of cases of torture and extra-judicial killings occur each year (and complains that more often than not, the U.S. "shares the blame" for them).
7. What are the most renowned acts of terrorism?
The attacks of September 11 may become the most famous acts of terror ever perpetrated, and are linked to other terrorist attacks apparently sponsored by bin Laden on U.S. embassies in Africa and the USS Cole in Yemen. Yet many of the most famous terrorist attacks of the modern era were attacks on individual political leaders. The turn of the 20h century, like today, was rife with terrorism, as evidenced by anarchist killings of a French and Spanish Prime Ministers (Sadi Carnot and Antonio Canovas), Empress Elizabeth of Austria, Italy's King Umberto I, and the assassination of the Arch Duke Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, which sparked the first World War. Anarchist mail bombs in the U.S. started the Palmer Raids in 1920, one of the worst violations of civil liberties by U.S. government in U.S. history.
In the post-war period, acts of terrorism have included the Munich Olympic massacre in 1972, plane hijackings and airport shootings throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the 1993 World Trade Center attack, the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City and the murderous acts of the Ted Kazinsky, the "Unibomber," the latter three of which signaled the arrival of large-scale terrorism as permanent fact of life on American soil.
Finally, the Tokyo sarin subway attack by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995 has augured a new era in terrorism, now crowned by the September 11 attacks. Yet while we focus on high-tech problems and responses, these attacks reveal that the new dynamics of terror combine devoted militants, often well-educated, using relatively primitive means to commit acts of extreme and indiscriminate violence.
8. Does terrorism work; and if so, how can it be stopped?
Terrorism by the IRA, the PLO and other Palestinian groups, Sikhs, Tamils, Basques, Philippino Muslims -- none of these has succeeded in altering the policies of the affected states. Neither has state-sponsored terror by Rogue states led to the defeat of an enemy. However, if the goal of terrorist acts by these groups is to prevent peace and reconciliation, terrorism has worked.
The variables determining the success or failure of acts of terror are thus indeterminate and complex. Perhaps the most we can say is that terror can help the stronger party in a conflict win more quickly and with less loss of life on its side (the rationale underlying the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings or the massacre of Palestinians in 1948). Yet as perpetrators of terrorism move away from single issue causes (freeing Northern Ireland or Palestine) and become more apocalyptic, hoping like Osama bin Laden to start war on a global scale, the standard for measuring success changes, as the worst possible scenario on all sides is exactly what is hoped for.
In such a situation it becomes all the more important for citizens and leaders in the West and its allies in the Muslim world -- in fact, all people everywhere -- to understand the role their policies, and indeed the whole world system as presently and unequally structured, plays in the fostering and sustaining this new generation of terrorists. Yet the scope and horror of the violence inflicted by the new terrorism makes such introspection all but impossible. In this sense, Osama bin Laden and his comrades around the world might achieve their goals through their very destruction.
9. Does violence stop terrorism?
All we have to do is look at both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide to understand that violence, including terrorism by a state or occupied population, rarely stops further violence as long as the grievances motivating them are not addressed.
In that context, 15 years ago Connor Cruise O'Brien warned that "the free, or capitalist, world provides highly favorable conditions for terrorist recruitment and activity." Why? Because the number of frustrated were increasing along with their awareness of how good life was for the few and better off. Ten years later, Bill Clinton made the "war on terrorism" a lynchpin of his reelection campaign just as the neo-liberal paradigm of globalization he championed achieved unparalleled power in international policy-making. It should come as no surprise, then, that in pushing for Star Wars funds, the U.S. Space Command's pamphlet "Vision for 2020" argues that "the globalization of the world economy" will widen the gap between haves and the have-nots, and thus the U.S. government has a mission to "dominate the space dimension of military operations" in order to protect the U.S. from the rest of the world.
In the context of a world were conservative estimates declare half of humanity to be living on less than $2 a day, asking the CIA or other military agencies to fight terrorism is probably not going to work, as the "blowback" from policies that produce ever-widening gaps between rich and poor between and within countries will likely be at least as bad as the blowback produced by the CIA overthrow of the Mossadeq Government and installation of the Shah of Iran in 1953.
Even on an operational level, as former CIA officer Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote only months before the 9/11 attacks, it has proved impossible to place even the best trained Muslim operative into the tight-knit structures that constituted contemporary terrorist organizations. As for America's technological supremacy, President Clinton sent dozens of cruise missiles after bin Laden, none of which hit their target.
From a broader perspective, the ever growing world trade in arms, which fuels violence at all levels, has multiplied opportunities for anyone with a grievance to spread terror anywhere, including here. Yet our entire military-industrial system is based on the large-scale trade in arms, which helps to fund our own defense budget. Finally, since much of the rest of the world, especially citizens of the Global South, harbor deep resentments against the United States for its "cultural invasion" as much as for its economic and foreign policies, using unilateral acts of large-scale violence in the war against terrorism will only feed that hatred.
10. What are the alternatives to our current policies on terrorism?
There have been two phases of the U.S. approach to fighting terrorism. The first, lasting until September 11, has been a "defensive approach" (also called "antiterrorism") that sought to protect against terrorism through increased security measures in airports and cooperation among intelligence services. With the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. has officially changed its policy to a more "offensive approach" (called "counter-terrorism") that focuses on the "sources of violence," that is the terrorists themselves and those who harbor them. A host of bills have also been proposed, including the "Combating Terrorism Act," the "Anti-Terrorism Act" and the "Public Safety and Cyber Security Enhancement Act," all of which civil libertarians argue go well beyond any necessary response to terrorism.
However, in terms of international law, there is a clear recourse in situations of this sort: going through the UN Security Council, the only body under international law that can authorize military action, or even authorize the equivalent of an international arrest warrant. Moreover, there are at least nine international multilateral terrorism conventions that the U.S. can use as the basis for a legal war against terrorism through international law, rather than unilateral war. [ report containing list at http://www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/980817_terror_conv.html ]
There is also the International Criminal Court in the Hague, which has the moral and legal basis to enter this process, be it state of non-state actors who are ultimately accused of engaging in and/or supporting terrorism. This would clearly constrain the range and freedom of action of the U.S. government in prosecuting its war on terrorism, but that is precisely the point of the UN -- to limit the use of violence by member nations to secure international peace and security.
In the last analysis, breaking the cycle of terrorism, and the incredible violence that fuels it, requires a radical rethinking of a world system that forces half of its members to live in abject poverty and destroys ever more of the earth that sustains it. Today we all stand under judgment: colonizer and colonized, exploiter and exploited. As the philosopher Slavoj Zizek wrote in the wake of 9/11, "the only way to ensure that it will not happen HERE again is to prevent it going on ANYWHERE ELSE." Only then will the war on terrorism see victory.
This page is largely about the meaning of Revelation 13:16-18 - Some translations of The Bible talk about 'the number of man' which is accurate, and others (such as the King James Version) 'the number of a man'.
"He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, freeman and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand (meaning your works) or in his forehead, (what is in tour head? Your brain, mind!) so that no-one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast (Satan's controlled government) or the number of his name.(Satan = 666) This calls for wisdom, if anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person (Satan) and it's number is 666." Rev 13:16-18
Testimony from a Greek Monastery - The Schengen treaty, barcodes and Electronic ID's The End of Death: 'Soul Catcher' Computer Chip Due...
In Hebrew and Greek - the 'gammatria' code:
The standard numerical code for letters in Greek and Hebrew followed this pattern: A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4, E=5, F=6, G=7, H=8, I=9, J=10, K=20, L=30, M=40, N=50, O=60, P=70, Q=80, R=90, S=100, T=200, U=300, V=400, W=500, X=600, Y=700, Z=800. (Quoted by David H Stern in the Jewish New Testament Commentary) [TG]
Use the 666 calculation machine on the web to try various names against various letter/number codes
And why not get these up-to-date resources to help in your studies:
Jewish New Testament Commentary, David H Stern, pub. Jewish New testament Publications, ISBN 965 359 008 1
Complete Jewish Bible, trans. David H Stern, Jewish New Testament Publications Inc., ISBN 965 359 015 4See also http://www.dccsa.com/greatjoy/anti.html
A message from Don - an independent researcher on 666 and Revelation
'This is where wisdom is needed; those who understand should count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person, and its number is 666.' Revelation 13:18 (Jewish New Testament)
Hello, I am Don Huard And there is no organisation is behind me, but please read the following comments regarding the number of the beast, which is the number of a man, or man´s number or a human number or even the number of mankind.(I found all these different translations).
Maybe, you can send this information to some of your friends and people whom you think are interested in the earnest of our times...
Info in Relation to 'the Number of the Beast is 666'
Try following words: (A=6, B=12, C=18, D=24 etc...... Z=156 - I found this calculation scheme maybe at 8 - 10 different places...)
Calculate also JESUS (In Greek it is = 888)
LUCIFER (the name of the devil).
SANTA CLAUS
KISSINGER Board of Bilderberg (see www.bilderberg.org) Board of Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, his company in NEW YORK has its fingers in a lot of World dealings. One of the major players. Committee of 300 as well. Related to the British Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA).
GORBATCHOV (original German way of writing) He still is a major player in the drive for One World. President of the Green Cross International. The Gorbachev Foundation gets money from the Rockefeller as far as I understand.
VAN DEN BROEK (Committee of 300 <the ultimate secret society> - you find the complete story by former intelligence officer Dr. John Coleman. - This committee is central in the drive for one World Government. VDB participated several times at Bilderberg meetings. Was the EU Commissioner who got the job to unify Europe - had to leave the job last year when scandals in the EU Commission became public. Was the President of the MAASTRICHT meeting. MAASTRICHT was the birthplace of the United Europe. Old German (?) way of writing MAASTRICHT is MASTRICHT (I have a picture and a map like that). Was the spokesman for Europe at the "Peace" Conference between the Arabs and the Israelis 1991, when the KISSINGER led George Bush government worked for "Peace" in the Middle-East.). Bush and GORABTCHOV were also there.
LUSTIGER. Cardinal of France, archbishop of Paris. From the tribe of Levy. One of the most powerful man in the World Church according to the Jerusalem Post. Was long considered as possibly becoming next pope. But now he is a bit old. According to what I know he was much influenced by Freemason and Jesuit thinking. Then we have the word KATHOLISCHE in German, what means catholic. Another equivalent of 666. And we have the official title of the Pope (Vice of the Son of God) in Latin you write in VICARIVS FILII DEI, in Latin values again 666. The catholic church is the Great Harlot (who has many daughters as well...). But I believe each pope was also a false prophet, and got also the value of 666 writen in letters on his papal crown (Tiara)...!!! Another title of the Pope is Pontifex Maximus which was the title ot the pagan highpriest who adored Jupiter.
We have also CESAR NERON (Emperor Nero) in Aramaic or Hebrew letters which is again a value of 666. I personally believe he is the Beast who was and is not (when the Revelation was written) and comes from the abyss and will go to destruction. Please read Rev. 17,6-18. Also Rev. 11,7. The great city in 17,18 can be nothing else then Rome according to my understanding.
I PERSONALLY KNOW WHO WILL BE THE TWO PERSONS AT THE END. WHOM THE BIBLE CALLS THE BEAST FROM THE SEA AND THE BEAST FROM THE EARTH (according to Rev. 19,20 the 2nd Beast destroys the False Prophet, I consider him as being the Antichrist, Satan) the one who declares himself to be Messiah). It could not be any that we find them above. This is sure. It easely could also be that the False Prophet (= the Messiah) should be calculated in Hebrew. By the way, if you transcribe Shirinowsky to Hebrew it is again an equivalent of 666...
DEUTSCHLAND (= Germany) was after World War II totally down. They destroyed it so completely that they believed they have finished with it. But wonder over wonder. Germany rose up in rather short time. And when I understood in 1988 that DEUTSCHLAND is an equivalent of 666. I started to speak about in early 1989 that the Wall in Berlin will fall soon and that Germany is soon reunited. People laughed at me, but it happened already in late 89 resp.1990. Germany is reunited and is the driving force in the European Union which is according to many biblical scholars nothing else than a kind of rebirth of the Roman Empire. But you will a "letter calculation machine" in the Web, find it and try HITLER. I believe Germany will play a leading role in the end.- Think about and please comment. Try for exemple NEWYORK (you have to write it like that in the calculating machine, elsewhere you get a wrong number) and think about. The United Nations are already now a kind of provisory World Government (you find some information regarding the UN Commission on Global Governance on the Net).. The Rockefeller Empire is there (Bilderberg, Trilateral, Council on Foreign Relation, Chase Manhattan <biggest bank of USA, EXXON>). The Kissinger Associates are there - who are very powerful. The Wall Street ist there. And I think the Lucis Trust - which originally was called Lucifer trust !!!! - is still there. Before he was in the building of the United Nations. Now he is a UN NGO as far as I know. - Is New York the Capital of the Beast already now ??? - The seat of the NEW YORK FEDERAL RESERVER who dominates the FED completely and the Fed of New York has its seat in the very important Bank for International Settlements in Basle/CH. Is New York the Capital of the Beast already now. In Revelation we see the beast coming from the sea. The word coming means it takes some time. How many decades or even longer is the beast coming out of the sea??? - According to Daniel 7 there is always a beast in power - but not the two final persons who according to Rev. 19,20 are called the Beast and the False Prophet. (According to all serious biblical scholars we still are in the time of the 4th Beast of Daniel 7, which is the Roman Empire).
Then we have the Image of the Beast - how far did we come?
We have TV full with devilish and bestial indoctrination and one world ideology. We have the COMPUTER by whom you soon can do everything. We have the TELETEXT. We have the INTERNET (alphabetical reversed conversion.). And the World Wide Web (www) is in Hebrew 666..... So the very serious question is how far can we go without adoring or worshiping the Image of the Beast. This is a serious question which we have to answer in front of the living God. - If you have another opinion please state! Thank you. Read in this connection Rev. 14:9-12. So there will be a great grace upon mankind when this angel will speak to all people - but unfortunately, only part will hear and obey.
Then we have the Mark of the Beast.
The products of daily life in the supermarkets etc. are marked with bar-codes (EAN-Code (which stands for European Article Number Code), the EAN-Code International and the UPC-Code (Universal Product Code)). All of them containing hidden 666. Do the goods already belong to the nowbeing beast??
Animals are more and more marked with microchips. People as well. US-Patent 5 878 155 is a tattoo for people, for example a bar-code with three six, with invisible ink for sales transaction.
Where does this numerological code originate?
In the ancient manuscripts in Hebrew, The Old Testiment!
The Facts on this web site and related links may shock the world!
I have been a Heritage Associate and operative for over 25 years. I am a mix blood of Canadian Indian, American Navajo, Quebec French, Irish Jew and Arab. I was a college professor and investigative reporter for half my life. With all of my worldly education, I can't explain what and why we have the problems in the world that we have. Except that it is a well thought out plan to not only destroy America, but to bring civilization as we know it to an end. In the 1980's when he was working with the CIA, Usama bin Laden told me that Americans did not understand the Middle East. Just last week, in a little shuttle bus shouldering its way through curtains of rain across the Iowa prairies, I opened my copy of the Des Moines Register and realised that he might be right. "BIG HOG LOTS CALLED GREATER THREAT THAN BIN LADEN," announced the headline. Iowa's 15 million massive pigs, it seems, produce so much manure that the state waterways are polluted. "Large-scale hog producers are a greater threat to the United States and US democracy than Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, says Robert F Kennedy Junior, president of... a New York environment group... 'We've watched communities and American values shattered by these bullies,' Kennedy said..." I took out my pocket calculator and did a little maths. Cedar Rapids, I reckoned, was 7,000 miles from Afghanistan. Another planet, more like.
I've been travelling to the United States for years, lecturing at Princeton or Harvard or Brown University, Rhode Island, or San Francisco, or Madison, Wisconsin. God knows why. I refuse all payment as is our policy and take just a business-class round trip from whereever I am because I can't take 14 hours of screaming babies in each direction. American college students are tough as nails and bored as cabbages, and in some cities Washington is top of the list I might as well talk in Amharic. If you don't use phrases like "peace process", "back on track" or "Israel under siege", there's a kind of computerised blackout on the faces of the audience. Total Disk Failure. Why should my latest bout of Americana have been any different?
Sure, there were the usual oddballs. There was the old black guy whose first "question" on the Middle East in a Chicago University lecture theatre was a long and proud announcement that he hadn't paid taxes to the IRS since 1948 a claim so wonderful that I forbore the usual threat to close down on him. There were the World Trade Centre conspiracists who insisted that the US government had planted explosives in the twin towers. There was the silver-haired lady who wanted to know why God couldn't be made to resolve the hatred between Israelis and Palestinians. And a Native American Indian in Los Angeles who ranted on about a Jewish plot to deprive his people of their land. A bespectacled man with long white hair in a ponytail shut him up before declaring that the Israeli-Palestinian war was identical to the American-Mexican war that deprived his own people of... well, of Los Angeles. I began to calculate the distance between LA and Jenin. A galaxy perhaps.
And there were the little tell-tale stories that showed just how biased and gutless the American press has become in the face of America's Israeli lobby groups. "I wrote a report for a major paper about the Palestinian exodus of 1948," a Jewish woman told me as we drove through the smog of downtown LA. "And of course, I mentioned the massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin by the Stern Gang and other Jewish groups the massacre that prompted 750,000 Arabs to flee their homes. Then I look for my story in the paper and what do I find? The word 'alleged' has been inserted before the word 'massacre'. I called the paper's ombudsman and told him the massacre at Deir Yassin was a historical fact. Can you guess his reply? He said that the editor had written the word 'alleged' before 'massacre' because that way he thought he'd avoid lots of critical letters."
By chance, this was the theme of my talks and lectures: the cowardly, idle, spineless way in which American journalists are lobotomising their stories from the Middle East, how the "occupied territories" have become "disputed territories" in their reports, how Jewish "settlements" have been transformed into Jewish "neighbourhoods", how Arab militants are "terrorists" but Israeli militants only "fanatics" or "extremists", how Ariel Sharon the man held "personally responsible" by Israel's own commissioner's inquiry for the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacre of 1,700 Palestinians could be described in a report in The New York Times as having the instincts of "a warrior". How the execution of surviving Palestinian fighters was so often called "mopping up". How civilians killed by Israeli soldiers were always "caught in the crossfire". I demanded to know of my audiences and I expected the usual American indignation when I did how US citizens could accept the infantile "dead or alive", "with us or against us", axis-of-evil policies of their President.
And for the first time in more than two decades of lecturing in the United States, I was shocked. Not by the passivity of Americans the all-accepting, patriotic notion that the President knows best nor by the dangerous self-absorption of the United States since 11 September and the constant, all-consuming fear of criticising Israel. What shocked me was the extraordinary new American refusal to go along with the official line, the growing, angry awareness among Americans that they were being lied to and deceived. At some of my talks, 60 per cent of the audiences were over 40. In some cases, perhaps 80 per cent were Americans with no ethnic or religious roots in the Middle East "American Americans", as I cruelly referred to them on one occasion, "white Americans", as a Palestinian student called them more truculently. For the first time, it wasn't my lectures they objected to, but the lectures they received from their President and the lectures they read in their press about Israel's "war on terror" and the need always, uncritically, to support everything that America's little Middle Eastern ally says and does.
There was, for example, the crinkly-faced, ex-naval officer who approached me after a talk at a United Methodist church in the San Diego suburb of Encinitas. "Sir, I was an officer on the aircraft carrier John F Kennedy during the 1973 Middle East war," he began. (I checked him out later and he was, as my host remarked, "for real".) "We were stationed off Gibraltar and our job was to refuel the fighter jets we were sending to Israel after their air force was shot to bits by the Arabs. Our planes would land with their USAF and Marine markings partly stripped off and the Star of David already painted on the side. Does anyone know why we gave all those planes to the Israelis just like that? When I see on television our planes and our tanks used to attack Palestinians, I can understand why people hate Americans."
In the United States, I'm used to lecturing in half-empty lecture halls. Three years ago, I managed to fill a Washington auditorium seating 600 with just 32 Americans. But in Chicago and Iowa and Los Angeles this month, they came in their hundreds almost 900 at one venue at the University of Southern California and they sat in the aisles and corridors and outside the doors. It wasn't because Lord Fisk was in town. Maybe the title of my talk "September 11: ask who did it, but for heaven's sake don't ask why" was provocative. But for the most part they came, as the question-and-answer sessions quickly revealed, because they were tired of being suckered by the television news networks and the right-wing punditocracy.
Never before have I been asked by Americans: "How can we make our press report the Middle East fairly?" or much more disturbingly "How can we make our government reflect our views?" The questions are a trap, of course. Brits have been shoving advice at the United States ever since we lost the War of Independence, and I wasn't going to join their number. But the fact that these questions could be asked usually by middle-aged Americans with no family origins in the Middle East suggested a profound change in a hitherto docile population.
Towards the end of each talk, I apologised for the remarks I was about to make. I told audiences that the world did not change on 11 September, that the Lebanese and Palestinians had lost 17,500 dead during Israel's 1982 invasion more than five times the death toll of the international crimes against humanity of 11 September but the world did not change 20 yearsago. There were no candles lit then, no memorial services. And each time I said this, there was a nodding of heads grey-haired and balding as well as young across the room. The smallest irreverent joke about President Bush was often met with hoots of laughter. I asked one of my hosts why this happened, why the audience accepted this from a Briton. "Because we don't think Bush won the election," she replied.
Of course, it's easy to be fooled. The first local radio shows illustrated all too well how the Middle East discourse is handled in America. When Gayane Torosyan opened WSUI/KSUI for questions in Iowa City, a caller named "Michael" a leader of the local Jewish community, I later learnt, though he did not say this on air insisted that after the Camp David talks in 2000, Yasser Arafat had turned to "terrorism" despite being offered a Palestinian state with a capital in Jerusalem and 96 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza. Slowly and deliberately, I had to deconstruct this nonsense. Jerusalem was to have remained the "eternal and unified capital of Israel", according to Camp David. Arafat would only have got what Madeleine Albright called "a sort of sovereignty" over the Haram al-Sharif mosque area and some Arab streets, while the Palestinian parliament would have been below the city's eastern walls at Abu Dis. With the vastly extended and illegal Jerusalem municipality boundaries deep into the West Bank, Jewish settlements like Maale Adumim were not up for negotiation; nor were several other settlements. Nor was the 10-mile Israeli military buffer zone around the West Bank, nor the settlers' roads, which would razor through the Palestinian "state". Arafat was offered about 46 per cent of the 22 per cent of Palestine that was left. I could imagine the audience of WSUI/KSUI falling slowly from their seats in boredom.
Yet back at my folksy, wooden-walled hotel, the proprietor and his wife P Force volunteers in the Kennedy era had listened to every word. "We know what is going on," he said. "I was a naval officer in the Gulf back in the Sixties and we only had few ships there then. In those days, the Shah of Iran was our policeman. Now we've got all those ships in there and our soldiers in the Arab countries and we seem to dominate the place." Osama bin Laden, I said to myself, couldn't put it better.
How odd, I reflected, that American newspapers can scarcely say even this. The Daily Iowan there are no fewer than four dailies in Iowa City, press freedom being represented by the number of newspapers rather than their depth of coverage had none of my hotel landlord's forthrightness. "The situation in the Middle East is one that many Americans do not adequately understand," it miserably lamented, "nor can they be reasonably articulate about it." This rubbish that Americans were too dumb to comprehend the Middle East bloodbath and should therefore keep their mouths shut was a pervasive theme in editorials. Even more instructive were the reports of my own lectures.
The headline, "Fisk: Who really are the terrorists?" in the Daily Iowan last week at least caught the gist of my message, and included my own examples of American press bias in the Middle East, although it failed on the facts, wrongly reporting that it was the United Nations (rather than the far more persuasive Israeli Kahan Commission) which concluded that Sharon was "personally responsible" for the Sabra and Chatila massacre. The Des Moines Register's account of one of my talks was intriguing. It concentrated on my interviews with Osama bin Laden which I had indeed mentioned in my lecture and then referred to my account of how an Afghan crowd beat me up last December. I had told the American audience that the Afghans were outraged by US bombing raids that had just killed their relatives around Kandahar and how important it had been to include this fact in my own report of the fray to give context and reason to the Afghan attack on me. The Register used my words to describe the attack but then itself made no mention of the reasons. Long live, I thought, the Iowa City Press-Citizen, whose own headline "Middle East reporter slams media" got the point.
It's not that Iowans have any excuse to be unaware of the Middle East. In the small town of Davenport, Israelis have been trained in the systems of the Apache AH-64 attack helicopters used to assassinate Palestinians on Israel's wanted list. According to one local journalist, several Iowa companies, including the regional office of Rockwell, have been involved in military contracts worth millions of dollars with Israel. CemenTech of Indianola supplies equipment to the Israeli air force. The day I arrived in Iowa City, John Ashcroft, the US Attorney General, was telling Iowans that a hundred foreign nationals "from countries known as home to terrorists" had been interrogated in the state. Another hundred were likely to be "interviewed" soon. There was no editorial comment on this.
So Iowa University classes were absorbing. One young woman began by announcing that she knew the American media were biased. When I asked why, she said that "it has to do with America's support for Israel..." and then, red-faced, she dried up. Not so the student in Rex Honey's global studies class. After I had outlined the military trap into which the Americans had been lured in Afghanistan the supposed "victory" followed by further engagements with al-Qa'ida and then, inevitably, daily battles with Afghan warlords and sniping attacks on Western troops he put his hand up. "So how do we beat them?" he asked. There was a gentle ripple of laughter through the room. "Why do you want to 'beat' the Afghans," I asked? "Why not help them build a new land?" The student came up to me afterwards, hand outstretched. "I want to thank you, sir, for all you told us," he said. I had a suspicion he was a military man. Are you planning to join the army, I asked? "No, sir," he replied. "I'm going to join the Marines."
I advised him to stay clear of Afghanistan. In its own way, the American national press was doing the same. Two days later, the Los Angeles Times, in a remarkable dispatch from its correspondent David Zucchino, reported on the bitterness and anger among Afghans whose families had been killed in United States B-52 bomber raids. The recent American battle in Gardez, the report said, had left "bitterness in its wake".
If only the same bluntness was applied to the Palestinian-Israeli war. Alas, no. On the freeway past Long Beach on Friday, I opened the LA Times to be told that Israel "mops up [sic] in the West Bank", while the syndicated columnist Mona Charen was telling readers in other papers that "98 per cent of Palestinians have not been living under occupation since Israel pulled out under the Oslo accords" and that the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Ehud Barak, had offered Arafat "97 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza". This was 1 per cent higher even than the statistic from "Michael" on WSUI/KSUI radio. Arafat "this murderer with the deaths of thousands of Jews and Arabs on his hands" was to blame. The issue between Israel and her neighbours, Charen contended, "is not occupation, it is not settlements and it certainly is not Israeli brutality and aggression. It is the Arabs' inability to live peacefully with others".
Maybe California is organically different from the rest of the United States, but its journalists as well as its students seemed a tad smarter than the Midwest of America. The Orange County Register, a traditionally conservative newspaper in an area that is now 50 per cent Latino, has been trying to tell the truth about the Middle East and was carrying a tough feature by Holger Jensen, which warned that if President Bush didn't rein in Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister "will succeed where Osama bin Laden failed: forcing us into a war of civilisations against 1.2 billion Muslims". When I lunched with senior editorial staff, they invited three members of the Orange County Muslim community to join them.
Cocktails with friends of the Methodist church revealed a sane grasp of the Middle East one of them was deeply disturbed by a recent remark by Israel's Internal Security Minister, Uzi Landau, who had said that "we're not facing human beings, but rather beasts". A black guest commended the UN secretary general Kofi Annan's criticism of Israel. Yet when I flipped on Fox News, there was Benjamin Netanyahu out-Sharoning Sharon, declaring that Palestinian suicide bombers would soon be prowling America's streets, meeting Congressmen to enlist their help in Israel's "war on terror", even while the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was in Israel.
"Why Israel's Mission Must Continue," the New York Times's comment page shouted on Friday. A long and tedious article on Israel's crusade against "terror" by an Israeli army colonel, Nitsan Alon, included several of my favourite cop-out phrases, including the stock reference to "a large number of civilians" who were yes "caught in the crossfire".
By the time I was addressing the more bohemian denizens of an art club in Los Angeles, the newspapers I was attacking were beginning to turn up. Mark Kellner arrived to report for The Washington Times. "He's going to stitch up everything you say," a friend remarked. "The Washington Times is to the right of the Republican Party." We shall see.
But if my audiences had been largely made up of Americans without any Middle East roots, the same could not be said of Sunday's cocktails at the home of Stanley Sheinbaum, the philanthropist, art collector and libertarian we shall forget the period in which he helped to run the Los Angeles Police Department where my little speech was to set off some verbal hand-grenades. Sheinbaum it was who met Syria's President Hafez el-Assad at President Jimmy Carter's request, arranging Assad's extraordinary summit with Carter in Geneva. "Tell me something good about yourself," he said to me. Have you heard nothing good from anyone else, I enquired? "Nope," he said.
But I liked Sheinbaum, a crusty, humorous man in his eighties who encourages every liberal Jewish American to have his say about the Middle East. As the lunchtime fog embraced the rose gardens and villas and swimming pools and hills of Brentwood, up stepped Rabbi Haim dov Beliak to explain how he intends to close down the bingo and gambling operations of one of America's greatest Jewish settlement builders. "Call me when you get back to Beirut by all means write about it." As we scoffed Stanley Sheinbaum's strawberries and sipped his fine Californian red wine, another rabbi approached. "You're gonna have some hostile people in your audience," he said. "Just let 'em hear the truth."
So I did. I talked about the cowardice of Secretary Powell, who dawdled his way around the Mediterranean to give Sharon time to finish destroying the Jenin refugee camp. I talked about the rotting bodies of Jenin and the growing evidence that back in 1982 Sharon's troops handed the survivors of the Sabra and Chatila massacre back to their Phalangist tormentors to be killed. I said that Arafat was never offered 96 per cent of the West Bank at Camp David. I advised the 100 or so people in the room to read the Israeli journalist Amira Haas' courageous reports in Haaretz. I talked about the squalor of the Palestinian camp. I talked of suicide bombings as "evil" but suggested that Israel would never have security until it abided by UN Security Council Resolution 252; that Israel would never have peace until it abandoned all of the West Bank, Gaza, Golan and East Jerusalem.
"I find it very difficult to ask you a question, because what you said made me so angry," a woman began afterwards. Why did I not realise that the Palestinians wanted to destroy all of Israel, that the right-of-return would destroy the state? For an hour I explained the reality I saw in the Middle East; an all-powerful Israel fighting an old-time colonial war. I talked about the 1954-62 Algerian war, its brutality and cruelty, the French army's torture and killings, the Algerians' slaughter of civilians, the frightening parallels with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I talked about the Palestinians who wanted, at the least, an admission of the injustice their people had suffered in 1948, adding that there were Palestinians aplenty who realised that financial compensation would have to suffice for most of those refugees whose homes were in what is now Israel. I talked about Sharon and his bloody record in Lebanon. And about the pressures of the Israeli lobby in America, the fear of being labelled an anti-Semite, and the feeble reporting of the Middle East.
A rabbi was the first to tell me afterwards that the Palestinians were victims, that they should be given a real state. An old lady asked me for the name of the best book on the Algerian war. I gave it to her; Alastair Horne's A Savage War of Peace . A card was pushed into my hand. "Insightful talk!" the owner had written at the bottom and hate though I do the word "insightful" I couldn't help noticing that the name on the card was Yigal Arens, the son of one of Israel's most ruthless right-wing ministers, who had once informed me in Beirut, back in 1982 that Israel would "fight forever" against Palestinian terror.
On the freeway to LAX afterwards, the terminals and control tower looming through the Californian haze, I looked over Saturday's LA Times. A report on page 12 revealed that the BBC's award-winning film on Sharon's involvement in the Sabra and Chatila massacres had been dropped from a Canadian film festival after protests from Jewish groups. The organisers had explained that The Accused "could invite unwanted attention from interest groups" whatever that means. But a paragraph at the end of the report caught my attention. "Sharon, who was the Israeli defence minister at the time, allegedly facilitated the assault on the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps..." There it was again. Allegedly? How many angry letters was that little lie supposed to avoid? Allegedly indeed.
But on reflection, I didn't think the Americans I met would be fooled by this. I didn't think my hotel proprietor would accept "allegedly". Nor the old naval officer from the John F Kennedy. Nor the listeners to KSUI. Nor even Stanley Sheinbaum. Yes, Osama bin Laden told me he thought Americans didn't understand the Middle East. Maybe he was right then. But not any more.
Something sounds and smells rotten in the news regarding Osama bin Laden!
It was reported to us this morning by a very reliable and proven source that the statements made by Oliver North saying that his intelligence claims that Osama is dead! The same intelligence that told us for six months that they had Osama cornered and it was a matter of days before they would have him. The same intelligence that bombed the dickens out of Northern Afghanistan where they claimed Bin Laden was in the month of December. Funny, in mid-December one of our Canadian operatives interviewed Osama in Bagdad. Then followed him to the Sudan. Who were they really bombing at a cost of more than a million dollars an hour.
Our Al-Qaeda source stated that Osama already has his onw man in place in Palistine to take Arafat's place. Arafat will have choice of retiring out of country peacefully, or assasination. And it will be made to look like a CIA and Masad operation. Maybe they are in on it too he said. His Washington, D.C. connection seemed to know about the plan before himself! Why don't the so called intelligence community know these facts? Could they all be in on it together. Even Arafat knows he and Sadam are on Bin Ladens hit list since last year.
Lets see how this one plays out. Remember, we have been telling you the facts for two years well in advance. With 99.9% accuracy. that should tell you something about our team and their sources, hey?
Even before Colin Powell's nine-day trip to the Middle East ends, it already looks doomed to failure underlining how hard it is proving to halt the violence that has gone on since the time of Abraham, let alone restart a genuine process towards a political settlement.
Yesterday the US Secretary of State met the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, again for an hour before a scheduled final session with Yasser Arafat today at the Palestinian leader's compound in Ramallah. This offers a last realistic chance, however slim, of concrete results before General Powell heads for Egypt and then home.
The one idea to emerge from his trip is for a ministerial-level meeting of Israel, the Palestinians, the US and Arab countries that would somehow link progress on the ground with new political moves. But even this is palliative at best. And would mean years of non-productive meetings and summits.
In a hint of a concession, Mr Sharon told Israeli television it was a "secondary issue" who represented the Palestinians. This may mean that Mr Sharon will drop his refusal to have any further truck with Mr Arafat a refusal that would doom in advance any serious initiative while both men are in power.
But US officials were pessimistic about any breakthrough. Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, yesterday scaled back the goal of the Powell mission to one of merely "lessening the violence". With Israel's military operations continuing with blood and revenge in their hearts and no sign of a Palestinian call for a ceasefire, it is doubtful whether even that has been attained.
"There are additional meetings, additional contacts and we'll let that develop," was all Mr Fleischer would say. "The talks haven't broken down, but it doesn't look good either," another US official said.
Neither side has committed itself to the goals sought by the Bush administration. Mr Sharon has promised no more than a partial pullout over the next week, and yesterday Israeli tanks moved into new parts of east Jerusalem.
For their part, the Palestinians say they won't issue any ceasefire statement until Israel ends its 18-day occupation of Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank. "If Secretary Powell leaves the region while the Israeli occupation is still continuing, that would be a severe dilemma," Saeb Erekat, a senior negotiator for Mr Arafat, said yesterday. Knowing well the Arafat's time is short!
But the White House has decided not to risk even more US credibility with an open-ended stay by General Powell without guaranteed results. Even before he left Washington on 7 April, General Powell warned he might return without a ceasefire in place. He was correct!
Yesterday, the Secretary of State did claim to be making progress, but the elusive nature of the quest was evident in his next, rather baffling words: "The specific term 'ceasefire' has not quite the same significance as what actually happens, as opposed to a specific term."
General Powell is said to be proposing a summit in the US in June. "We are with any serious and realistic international conference, but not a conference to exchange smiles," said a former Palestinian negotiator, Mohammed Dahlan, who is now the Gaza security chief. (Does he belong to Osama's team?) "We don't want a conference to cancel 10 years of negotiations but a conference to achieve a solution based on two states: Palestine and Israel."
In the past such contacts, as at the 1991 Madrid conference convened by President Bush's father, have been at summit level. A repeat is impossible because of Mr Sharon's refusal to meet Mr Arafat. But the barring of the latter would be unacceptable to the Palestinians.
The Bush administration has learnt one thing: like it or not, it is involved in the Middle East for the long haul. You might say until the enemy has us surrounded too! The White House confirmed last night that Mr Bush will meet Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at his Texas ranch next week. Top of the agenda will be the Saudi plan for Arab recognition of Israel in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied since 1967. But we already know that Bin Laden's team has other plans.
"We are with any serious and realistic international conference, but not a conference to exchange smiles," said a former Palestinian negotiator, Mohammed Dahlan, who is now the Gaza security chief. Does bin Laden own his soul?) "We don't want a conference to cancel 10 years of negotiations, but a conference to achieve a solution based on two states which has never happened in the past and has no chance of happening today either!: Palestine and Israel, arch enemies since the time of Abraham, Isac and Jacob and until Satan the antichrist returns to make the false peace!."
In the past such contacts, as at the 1991 Madrid conference convened by President Bush's father, have been at summit level. A repeat is impossible because of Mr Sharon's refusal to meet Mr Arafat as God has put in his heart. But the barring of the latter would be unacceptable to the Palestinians so as to not loose face yet.
The Bush administration has learnt one thing: that like it or not, it is involved in the Middle East for the long haul until the enemy no longer allows us. The White House confirmed last night that Mr Bush will meet Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at his Texas ranch next week. Top of the agenda will supposidly be the Saudi plan for Arab recognition of Israel in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories.
Who will have the final word, God or Man? Who do you believe?By His End Time Watchmen
Friday, 19 April, 2002 Annan calls for Mid-East peacekeepers
President Bush praised the Israeli withdrawal
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has said a multinational peacekeeping force is needed in the Middle East. Mr Annan told the Security Council that a multinational force was essential because the Israelis and Palestinians have been driven so far apart.
Israel radio said that the army pullout from Jenin had been completed early on Friday.
Israel had pulled its forces out of Jenin town and part of the refugee camp on Thursday, leaving behind what a UN envoy called a "totally unacceptable" situation.
Early on Friday morning a Palestinian man was shot dead as Israeli tanks moved into the edges of Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said.
The Israeli military said it was conducting a "routine operation" in the area, when it came under fire.
"Our forces returned fire towards the armed Palestinians only," an Israeli military source was quoted as saying.
Palestinian sources also said that Israeli tanks entered Qalqilya in the West Bank, one of the town from which the army withdrew last week, amid sporadic gunfire.
The Israeli army refused to comment.
'On schedule'
US President George W Bush said on Thursday that he believed the Israeli withdrawal was going to schedule.
Click here to see town-by-town update Describing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as "a man of peace", Mr Bush said Mr Sharon had begun his promised withdrawal and it was being done "quickly".
Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erekat called Mr Bush's comments "a gift, a reward for Sharon's policy of state terrorism and war crimes".
Israeli officials say that by Saturday troops will have left most West Bank areas apart from Ramallah and Bethlehem. Speaking in New York, Mr Annan said there was a need for a peacekeeping force large enough to take "decisive action" to end the deadly cycle of attacks.
The multinational force should be assembled by countries willing to supply troops and should have "a robust mandate," he said, adding later: "I expect the United States to play an important role."
However, a White House spokesman said only that the US would back civilian monitors.
Ari Fleischer said that President George W Bush "thinks the purpose of America's military is to fight and win wars".
'Horrific' Jenin
UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, who toured the Jenin refugee camp on Thursday, said that the devastation left by Israeli forces was "horrific beyond belief".
He said it was "morally repugnant" that Israel had not allowed emergency workers in for 11 days to provide humanitarian relief.
Palestinians claim hundreds of bodies are buried beneath the rubble, but Israel says the numbers of dead are far fewer.
An British independent forensic expert, Prof Derrick Pounder, says evidence suggests that a massacre has taken place.
Mr Roed-Larsen said the top priority was to bring in search-and-rescue teams. The only rescue efforts currently under way are residents digging though the ruins looking for survivors.
"It is totally destroyed, it looks like an earthquake has hit it," he said.
Israel invaded the Jenin camp on 3 April, saying it was a hotbed of Palestinian militancy and declaring it a closed military zone.
Danny Ayalon, the chief foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said that Israel shared the humanitarian concerns and was already allowing some aid teams to operate.
Israel says troops will continue to surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where a group of armed Palestinians are among more than 200 people who have been holed up for more than two weeks.
April 20, 2002 The whereaboust of Osama bin Laden today?
According to the Istanbul-based daily Hurriyet, a Turkish intelligence agency has confirmed rumours that the Al Qaeda leader had gone underground in the Himalayan border region where Muslim activists have been fighting Indian troops, it said.Afghanistan's former Taliban leader, Mulla Omar, was also confirmed to be living in Afghanistan's Paktia province bordering Pakistan, according to the newspaper.
Osama bin Laden was aiming to provoke a further confrontation between Pakistan and India, should he be arrested in Kashmir, the Hurriyet said.The Turkish intelligence agency has special ties with several groups close to Osama and is said to promptly convey information to the US and Britain, the report said.
Biological attack poses real threat, experts say
Risk is believed to be that civilians will be the target
The terrorist attack that experts most fear would not be seen, heard or felt.
It would ease its way through a city, taking lives without causing even a hiccup in the daily routine. Days afterward, doctors might begin to notice patients with curious complaints who aren't getting better. Eventually, health officials would realize they were treating victims of bioterrorism.
"It's not a question of 'if,' it's a question of 'when,' " said Dr. Donald Henderson, head of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies in Baltimore.
Dr. Henderson and others have come to believe that civilians, not the military, are most vulnerable to a bioterrorist attack. Unlike soldiers, civilians are generally unprotected and might offer an easier target. And an anonymous terrorist would not run the risk of retaliation from one of the most advanced militaries in the world.
Unfortunately, nature has provided agents that, with the right tinkering, might be turned into weapons that are invisible and untraceable.
Last month, Dallas became one of several cities to apply for a share of $158 million in federal money to prepare for a biological attack. It is the first time the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has received funding specifically aimed at responding to bioterrorism. Unlike other disasters, which are met with swarms of sirens and flashing lights, a biological assault might show itself earliest on emergency room gurneys.
The likelihood of such an attack in the United States "is not large, but it's not zero," said Dennis Perrotta, chief of the epidemiology bureau at the Texas Department of Health in Austin.
And the consequences could be devastating, he said, no matter how prepared a city might be. "If this occurs, we will lose people," said Dr. Perrotta, who served recently on a special committee on biological and chemical terrorism assembled by the National Academy of Sciences.
A tough task
The good news, so far, is that bioterrorism doesn't appear to be easy to pull off. And not just any microbe would lend itself to the job.
"We would rate, at the top of the list, smallpox and anthrax as the two organisms we fear the most," Dr. Henderson said. Both spread readily through the air, both are relatively easy to grow, and both can cause widespread disease.
Anthrax is caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. In the soil, it forms a tough spore that can persist for years. Cattle and other grazing animals are the rare natural victims of anthrax when they accidentally ingest spores from the ground.
Although the anthrax bacterium can infect people several ways, it is most lethal when inhaled. When these spores are dried and left in a concentrated powder, they are breathable. In an unintentional human experiment, a secret Soviet biological weapons plant accidentally released such "aerosolized" anthrax in 1979 in Sverdlovsk. Although the breach lasted only hours, a northerly wind carried a narrow plume of bacteria across the city. At least 77 people became ill, and only 11 survived. Sheep and cows up to 30 miles away also died.
An investigation found that the devastation was caused by, at most, a gram of anthrax - less than the weight of a dollar bill. A World Health Organization report estimated that if an airplane released 50 kilograms, or just over 100 pounds, of anthrax spores upwind over a city of 500,000, about 220,000 people would become ill.
But a person probably couldn't just whip up an anthrax aerosol in the basement, said Dr. Philip Brachman, a medical epidemiologist at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta. "You'd have to really know what you were doing to be able to develop an aerosol," Dr. Brachman said. "It would take an unusual bit of equipment."
Outside the United States, at least one terrorist group has tried and failed. Eight or nine times between 1990 and 1995, the Japanese cult Aum Shinri Kyo attempted to spray aerosolized anthrax bacteria, as well as the toxin that causes botulism, from rooftops or vehicles in metropolitan Tokyo. (This surfaced during the cult's trial for the 1995 chemical attack with sarin gas.) The anthrax particles merely dropped to the ground.
A powder would also need some nudging to be inhaled, Dr. Brachman said, referring to a string of hoaxes in which people have sent envelopes of "anthrax," informing the recipients that they have just been exposed.
"If somebody pulled out an envelope, and to the desk fell some white powder, you'd have to put your nose down on the desk and sniff it" to risk inhalation-induced anthrax, Dr. Brachman said.
Furthermore, if the powder remained undisturbed, people farther away wouldn't be in any danger. Anthrax is not spread person to person.
But smallpox is.
An old idea
The idea of using smallpox as a weapon reportedly dates at least to the French and Indian War in the mid-1700s, when British soldiers sent blankets from a smallpox hospital to American Indians.
"Smallpox, if it got started, could continue to spread," said Dr. Robert Shope of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, who was also a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee. A person can be infected with the smallpox virus for two weeks without knowing it, all the while infecting others.
The disease has no cure, and about 30 percent of victims die.
In 1967, a year when 10 million to 15 million people were stricken with the disease, world health authorities began an eradication campaign. Thirteen years later, the disease was conquered and all vaccination stopped. By official accounts, only two frozen stocks of smallpox virus remain. One is housed at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the other in Russia.
Recently, however, reports of unofficial stashes of smallpox have shaken experts in terrorism and international intelligence. In 1992, Ken Alibek, a former first deputy chief of research and production of the Russian biological weapons program, defected to the United States. He describes smallpox stashes hidden throughout Russia.
"What other governments saw as a medical victory, the Kremlin perceived as a military opportunity," Dr. Alibek writes in his recent book Biohazard, about the Soviet biological weapons program. "A world no longer protected from smallpox was a world newly vulnerable to the disease."
Even vaccinated adults would not be protected, because the immunity fades over time. With the Russian economy in ruins, Dr. Alibek and others worry that the fruits of Russian smallpox weapons experiments, as well as the scientists who performed them, might be for sale.
"The disastrous economic conditions in Russia have driven many of our brightest scientists and technicians to seek work wherever they can get it," Dr. Alibek writes.
Other threats
Smallpox and the anthrax bacterium aren't the only agents that haunt bioterrorism experts. The organisms that cause bubonic plague, a bacterial infection known as tularemia and other microbes are just as capable of causing disaster.
However, some scientists are wary of placing too much emphasis on any one disease. The failure of the wealthy Aum cult, despite its best efforts to engage in bioterrorism, is perhaps a demonstration that the technical hurdles are not small.
"The one [large-scale] attack we've had has been salmonella," said Dr. Ronald Atlas of the University of Louisville, who is chairman of the American Society for Microbiology's task force on biological weapons. "More likely I think you'd see that sort of low-tech attack."
The salmonella incident, which occurred in Oregon in 1984, caused 751 people to become ill after 10 salad bars were sprinkled with the bacterium Salmonella typhimurium. Members of a religious commune had contaminated the restaurants to incapacitate voters before a county election.
Dallas has experienced a similar, but smaller, bioterrorist attack: In 1996, a lab worker at St. Paul Medical Center dumped shigella bacteria on her co-workers' breakfast pastries, making 12 people sick. She pleaded guilty in the case last year and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
"I think it's very easy to make other people sick," Dr. Atlas said. "I think it's very hard to cause mass casualties."
Dr. Henderson, of Johns Hopkins, acknowledges that the scariest organisms would be the hardest to use. But he fears that many terrorists, like Aum Shinri Kyo or those sponsored by exiled Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, are organized enough and rich enough to be a concern.
"I don't think it's going to be some yahoo from Montana that's going to get involved in this," he said. "It's become apparent that there are between 10 and 15 countries that are involved in developing bioweapons. They could use surrogates [other terrorists] to disperse them."
He and others who talk about bioterrorism say they are not out to scare the public.
"There are some who maintain that discussing the subject will cause needless alarm," Dr. Alibek states. "But existing defenses against these weapons are dangerously inadequate, and when biological terror strikes, as I'm convinced it will, public ignorance will only heighten the disaster. The first step we must take to protect ourselves is to understand what biological weapons are and how they work."