news & stories 6
	Erde im Endkampf um die Weltherrschaft! 23.04.05 FUFOR-Eigenbericht-Autor: Karl-Heinz Siegert Alles passt zusammen: Kurz nach dem offiziellen Ende des Irak Krieges 2003 gingen bei FUFOR Info’s ein, wonach die USA 2005 alle RD-UFO-Basen angreifen wollen, um eine große Wiedervereinigung zu verhindern. Da sehr viele Basen im Meer liegen, wurden bereits letztes Jahr große Marine-Einheiten in Marsch gesetzt. Genau genommen waren es die größten Militärbewegungen seit Ende des 2.WK!! Alle Atomwaffen der Navy an Bord der Flotte! (FUFOR berichtete). Bereits Anfang Dezember erhielt FUFOR Info’s, wonach sich zu Weihnachten etwas Schwerwiegendes nuklearer Art abspielen soll, dann bekannt geworden als Weihnachts-Tsunami!! Ein Angriff auf Neuschwabenland in der Antarktis und eine Tiefseebasis im indischen Ozean mit den verheerenden Folgen und 2 U-Boot-Verlusten der Navy sowie einem schwer beschädigtem U-Boot. Militärinformationen zu Folge muß mit Strahlentoten im Laufe der Zeit in Höhe einer siebenstelligen Zahl ausgegangen werden. Eine weitere Info die FUFOR vorlag, gab eine Warnung für Ostern bekannt. Und vom 28.3. auf den 29.3.ereignete sich ein weiterer Angriff im indischen Ozean. Das gesamte Gebiet bis hinauf nach Somalia weist eine erhöhte Gammastrahlung auf. Entsprechende Info’s stammen aus militärischen Kreisen.
	Dies waren nur wenige Beispiele aus einer ganzen Reihe von Seebeben und Erdbeben, die keine natürlichen Ursachen haben, sondern im Bereich einer militärischen Auseinandersetzung anzusiedeln sind. Dies hat absolut nichts mit Nibiru etc. zu tun. Auch nichts mit esoterischer Weichspülerei ala pao-web, die ja schon glattweg behaupteten, die galaktische Föderation hat den USA alle Chemtrail-Flüge verboten. Warum gibt es sie denn noch immer? Derzeit scheinen sich die kriegerischen Aktivitäten an den Polen (USA und Russland gegen UFO’s) stark zu verschärfen, auch hier kommen wieder FUFOR Informationen zum Tragen, die besagen, dass ab Ende April mit einer Verschärfung der Lage zu rechnen sei! Zwischen Mai und Juli ist dann mit sehr unschönen Aktionen zu rechnen, die dann entgültig den Machtwechsel auf der Erde einläuten! Was glauben denn Sie, wenn es in Kürze einen Polsprung geben würde, hängt das Weltgeschehen mit dem Auftauchen Nibirus, oder was auch immer auftaucht, zusammen? Was würden Sie sagen, wenn die noch letzte existierende Großmacht zur Erringung der Weltherrschaft die Apokalypse auslöst!? Also, die Apokalypse - ausgelöst von Satan! Gott würde das uns doch nicht antun, denn wer in seinem Königreich Liebe gibt, kann doch nicht’s Böses tun!!
	Warum ist der Südpol zur Erlangung der Weltherrschaft so wichtig? Dies hat der Vater der Raumfahrt, Hermann Oberth als erster erkannt! Geboren am 25.Juni 1894 in Rumänien im Ort Sibiu (Hermannstadt) in Siebenbürgen brachte er Deutschland die Raketentechnik. Er beriet Jule Verne bei seinen Büchern und bekam Kontakt zu einem Visionär: Wernher von Braun. Dieser wurde Hermann Oberth’s Schüler und erlernte die Grundlagen der Raketentechnik. Hermann Oberth wusste damals schon: Das beste Startfenster zum Kosmos, welches immer offen ist, liegt genau am Südpol!! Wer Raumfahrt betreiben und den Kosmos bereisen will, muß den Südpol als ideale Startrampe in Besitz nehmen! Die Deutschen taten es und geben ihn nicht mehr her. Der Südpol ist die Einflugzone zur inneren Erde! Der Deutsche Raumfahrtheld starb am 28. Dez. 1989 in Nürnberg. http://www.weltchronik.de/bio/cethegus/o/oberth.html
	http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/04/12/rususwargames.shtml Russia, U.S. Launch Joint Missile Defence Wargames Created: 12.04.2005 13:42 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 13:42 MSK MosNews Russia and the United States have begun joint missile defence wargames aimed at protecting vital installations in a third country in the course of future international operations, a Russian Defence Ministry release said Monday. The wargames will last until April 23. According to the Russian Defence Ministry, the 4th Central Research Institute of the Ministry in Moscow is hosting the joint theater-wide ballistic missile defence (BMD) command-post exercise (CPX). “The exercise is focused on crafting co-ordination techniques for use by non-strategic air defence and ballistic missile defence units in providing BMD coverage of a third country during a coalition operation under the aegis of international organizations,” the release said. Computers will be used to simulate the operation of theatre-wide BMD systems, non-strategic ballistic missile attacks, interception, communications and early-warning data exchange, it said. The current exercises are the fourth in a series of theatre-wide BMD CPXs, launched in 1996. Two of the previous exercises were conducted in the U.S. and the other in Russia. “The theater-wide BMD exercise program is designed to further promote Russian-U.S. cooperation aimed at building trust and bolstering the positive relations between the two militaries,” the Ministry of Defence release said.
	http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/2310.asp Thousands of Missiles Fired by Russian and American Forces over Earths Arctic Regions – completely unannounced – Are we fighting extraterrestrial UFOs? Staff Reporter Apr. 14, 2005 Report is reaching of a strange behavior by the American and Russian forces in the Earth’s Artic regions. Completely unannounced, both the super powers are launching thousands of missiles from both land based and aircraft launched these missiles that are being directed out of the earth’s atmosphere into the outer space regions of our planets atmosphere. From various news services however there is being reported that Russia and the United States are conducting Missile Defense War games. The valid question is why was this separate military exercise not previously announced. Some UFO researchers believe that both the forces are jointly fighting something that they are not saying. There are also reports that someone is manipulating the earth’s weather systems in a massive scale. Are American and Russians jointly fighting them? The cosmic bursts hitting the earth are also strange. The Solar flares in recent days have shown extreme abnormal behavior. The increasing earthquakes, floods, droughts and landslides may have been caused by some artificial agents. On the surface the American and Russians are saying these missile launches are mart of military exercises but why are they unannounced. What triggered this massive launch of terrestrial missiles in thousands?
	aus: German Secret Weapons: Blueprint for Mars, Brian Ford ©1969 London, NewYork, deutsche Ausgabe, Die deutschen Geheimwaffen, 1993 Süddeutscher Verlag, 1981 dtsch. Übersetzung Moewig 1981.
	http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index719.htm April 13, 2005 Thousands of Missiles Fired by both Russian and United States Military Forces over Earths Arctic Regions as Large Cosmic Blasts Continue Hitting Planet By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Russian Subscribers Strange reports have reached us today from our Arctic Regions describing thousands of missile launches from both Russian and American military forces, and from both land based and aircraft launched these missiles that are being directed out of the earth’s atmosphere into the outer space regions of our planets atmosphere.  From various news services however there is being reported that Russia and the United States are conducting Missile Defense Wargames, and as we can read as reported by the Moscow Times News Service in their article titled "Russia, U.S. Launch Joint Missile Defence Wargames", and which says, "Russia and the United States have begun joint missile defence wargames aimed at protecting vital installations in a third country in the course of future international operations, a Russian Defence Ministry release said Monday. The wargames will last until April 23. According to the Russian Defence Ministry, the 4th Central Research Institute of the Ministry in Moscow is hosting the joint theater-wide ballistic missile defence (BMD) command-post exercise (CPX)." The strangeness to these missile launches is further compounded by the reporting of these events as being a part of defense wargame between Russia and the United States, and of which no one has had any prior knowledge of.  Neither was there any announcement to the Russian peoples by the Defense Ministry prior to these launches, only afterwards when reports began to be received from these Arctic Regions has the Defense Ministry issued these reports of wargames. These reports are also coming at a time that the earth’s atmosphere is continuing to be bombarded by unknown cosmic blasts, and Western scientists are beginning to agree with our Russian scientists as to the seriousness of these blasts, and as we can read as reported by the BBC News Service in their article titled  "Ray burst is extinction suspect", and which says, "A gamma ray burst could have caused the Ordovician extinction, killing 60% of marine invertebrates at a time when life was largely confined to the sea. These cosmic blasts are the most powerful explosions in the Universe. The scientists think a 10-second burst near Earth could deplete up to half of the planet's ozone layer." I had previously stated in my March 3ed report, titled "Earth's Magnetic Field and Ozone Layer Nearing Total Collapse as Massive Unknown Energy Surges Continue Hitting Planet", that: “To such an extent of damage to our planet being caused by these mysterious energy blasts, even the earth’s protective layer of ozone is being effected, and as I had previously reported in my report of  January 4, 2005, and titled, “Western World Sleeps as Global Cataclysms Approach”, and had said, “Where in past times ozone layer depletion was rightly ascribed to cosmic rays (gamma rays), Western scientists have with their reworked mathematics created a whole new methodology that blames these depletions on CFC’s (chlorofluorocarbons), and which even first term Russian school child would laugh about if this were not so serious an event.” But to these lies of the earths ozone layer being destroyed by any work of human beings even these Western scientists could longer deny, and as we can read from this report from the American scientific website, LiveScience, in their article titled,  "Sun's Temper Blamed for Arctic Ozone Loss", and which says;  "A dramatic thinning of Earth's protective ozone layer above the Arctic last year was the result of intense upper-level winds and an extra dose of space weather, scientists said Tuesday. Ozone, which screens out some of the Sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation, declined by up to 60 percent in the stratosphere over high northern latitudes in the spring of 2004. Officials issued a health warning earlier this year for residents of the far North. In a new study, scientists conclude that an intense round of solar storms around Halloween in 2003 was at the root of the problem. Charged particles from the storms triggered chemical reactions that increased the formation of extra nitrogen in the upper stratosphere, some 20 miles up. Nitrogen levels climbed to their highest in at least two decades." But not to the blaming of the sun are these events to be placed, but to their rightful cause, these continuing series of energy blasts hitting our world.  From the studies conducted in Russia in 2000, many Russian scientists believe that a major failure of the earth’s magnetic field and ozone layer in its entirety could occur too. Even the prestigious National Geographic organization has realized this, and as reported in an article of theirs titled, "Earth's Magnetic Field Is Fading", they have said, "Earth's magnetic field is fading. Today it is about 10 percent weaker than it was when German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss started keeping tabs on it in 1845, scientists say. If the trend continues, the field may collapse altogether and then reverse. Compasses would point south instead of north."   Even today reports have reached us from the Southern Hemisphere Regions of our planet that once again strange fog sightings are once again occurring, and as we can read in this report from New Zealand’s NZPA News Service in their article titled "Fog closes Wellington, Christchurch airports", and which says, "Fog closed Christchurch and Wellington airports yesterday disrupting the plans of thousands of travellers. In a replay of disruptions in February and March, the fog rolled into Wellington airport shortly after 4pm, duty manager Park Erueti said. Conditions had previously been clear and sunny. "It just came in within 10 minutes...I can't even see the other side of the runway." Persistent fog closed the airport for five consecutive days in February. The situation was repeated in March, when fog disrupted flights for six days in a week, interrupting the travel plans of more than 40,000 people." To all atmospheric scientists it is known well that the visible signs of  these large cosmic blasts are these large and mysterious appearances of these large fog banks, and as reported to the International Commission on Atmospheric Electricity (ICAE) by the Polish scientific team of  Marek Kubicki, Stanisaw Michnowski, Stanisaw Warzecha, and as reported in their research paper titled "Long term variations of some atmospheric electricity, aerosol, and extra terrestrial elements at Swider Observatory, Poland", and which says: "The very high correlation between long term variations of atmospheric electricity elements and corresponding changes of cosmic ray and solar activity changes show on of extra terrestrial influences on the lower atmosphere." Today the missiles of both Russia and the United States continue to be fired in the Arctic Regions.  Today the world is still being hit with unknown energy surges of great power.  Today the world’s weather systems remain in chaos.  Whatever the final outcome of these events will be, it is well known that our tomorrows will no longer be like our yesterdays. © April 13, 2005, EU and US all rights reserved.
	Welcome to the World
	David Ray Griffin AUDIO 59 min tape http://www.apfn.org/movies/20041227-Mon1700.mp3
	http://www.livejournal.com/community/the_unexplained/37956.html#cutid1 So tonight I spied on Area 51. Actually, maybe I should explain a little more, before I lead with such a tempting sentence. If you go to CNN’s website tonight, you will see a story about google’s new map search service. Basically, the company has integrated satellite technology into their map-searching site, and now you can get ACTUAL photographs beamed directly from somewhere in space. This section of the page just launched a day or two ago, and already many people are upset because they feel, for some reason, having satellite mapping software on the web that gives basic users the ability to stare at the roof of someone else’s house is an invasions of privacy (Sheesh, what prudes.)
	Anyway, with my interest peaked, I decided to check out the controversial technology. Upon going to http://maps.google.com, I immediately COULD NOT find the link to this so-called satellite mapping. Little did I know, however, that google had cleverly hid it in plain view on the upper right hand side of the page. It had been disguised under the link name “satellite,” which I understand is actually a German word meaning “I want to look into your house now.” By Clicking on the clever “satellite” link, the normal Google U.S. graphic map that usually decorates the main searching page suddenly disappeared, only to be replaced seconds later by a REAL LIFE image of the U.S. For a few minutes I think I sat in awe, and probably drooled a little bit. Then, as boredom was about to set in, I decided to fiddle with the program. I searched for silly things at first: my home town, pizza places, Bush’s integrity…you know, things that you’d think should be easy to find via satellite, but sometimes turn out to be next to impossible to locate. And then I got the bright idea to bring up an image of Las Vegas.
	After a few seconds of searching aimlessly through imaged suburbs on the outskirts of Vegas, the realization finally dawned on me…maybe Area 51 could be located with this thing…At first I didn’t really know how to go about searching. I tried to scroll up the map a bit, hoping to accidentally stumble upon the military’s worst best kept secret, but it was too no avail…who knew Nevada was full of deserts and mountains??? Finally, after probably a minute or aimless wandering, I decided to put my BA in psychology to work, and typed, in the search bar, Rachael Nevada….If I remember correctly, something, at first , DID come up, but in reality, Rachael, Nevada, is actually spelled Rachel, Nevada, so when I tried to repeat my search, I was defaulted to a view of someplace in the middle of the country…who knew there were so many tress in America???
	Eventually I decided to figure out how to spell the darn town correctly, and was rewarded with a nice view of….well more desert and mountains. However, google does something very cool. It lists significant places that one might want to visit in the chosen search area. Since Rachel seems to be one or two buildings and a horse, the only spots it marked on the map were the Little Ale’Inn, and a couple of rent-car-places. Finally, the search was on… Once I had figured out the GENERAL area of the base, I now had to discover which direction Groom Lake was actually located. Not having a single CLUE if Area 51 was east or west of Rachel, I decided to do a general google search for key terms that would HOPEFULLY reveal better geographical details than those stored in my overactive and immature imagination. With my first search term, I brought up Glenn Campbell’s (google him) website, which, after a little bit of reading, revealed to me that one of the mountain peaks overlooking the base (the only one still accessible to the public), is named Tikaboo. Putting, once again, my BA to work, I typed in, Tikaboo Peak (this will ONLY work after you have located Rachel on the sat. map), and was brought JUST a bit closer to the base…
	Well anyway, long story short, after MORE tinkering I finally figured out that if I locate Rachel and zoom out far enough, and then pan just a bit to the left...well...here's the visual: See that big roundish white splotchy thing? Well, my friends, that’s a dried up lake bed…Now let’s take a journey closer to that image… Notice that THIS particular dried up lake bed has a large runway built over it’s left side? Actually, if you look at the lower section of the lake, or pan down a bit more in the REAL sat image, you will see buildings. I have no idea what these buildings are, but I have the horrible feeling that one of them is a Baby Gap. Now take a look at this picture.
	The balloon, which google uses to indicate “cool” sports (in this case the Ale’Inn) is on the left, the lake is toward the middle, and there are weird LITTLE green circles barely visible at the top… Now let’s look at those circles in an extreme close-up, shall we??? I have NO idea what these are, and I’m not sure there are roads connecting these circles to the base (you folks should investigate this too, and let me know), but I get the overwhelming idea that this ISN’T a Tofu farm… Now let’s look at this image… If you decide to find the base for yourself, and look closely at the lake, you will notice there is a road going into the right of the lake, and one coming out of it’s right shore. That road leads over to a khaki colored area, which is visible in this photo. I decided to look at this area just a bit more closely, and here are the results of what I found… Notice all the little “bumps?” I’m not sure if these are silos, hills, bunkers, or what, but many of them have structures either on or around them. Here is an example: Okay, so that’s it for my guided tour. Everyone should go take a look for themselves NOW, before the military and everyone else figures out that EVERYTHING is viewable…As for my opinon on this new feature….COOLEST THING EVER! LOL, so much for homeland security, as you can see that office is SOOOO effective...
	http://www.n24.de/politik/ausland/?n2005042809311800002 28. April 2005 Israel darf bunkerbrechende Bomben kaufen Die US-Regierung hat den Verkauf bis zu 100 bunkerbrechender Bomben an Israel genehmigt. Die 2500 Kilogramm schweren Bomben sollen vor allem tief liegende Bunker zerstören und können von Kampfflugzeugen des Typs F-15 abgeworfen werden. In Washington hieß es, das geplante Geschäft trage zur nationalen Sicherheit der USA bei, indem es die Sicherheit eines befreundeten Staats verbessern helfe. Israel sei eine wichtige Kraft für wirtschaftlichen Fortschritt im Nahen Osten. Das militärische Gleichgewicht in der Region werde damit nicht gestört. Militärexperten zufolge will Israel die Waffen vor allem als Druckmittel im Streit mit Iran einsetzen. Israel wolle in der Lage sein, unterirdische Nuklearwaffenanlagen anzugreifen, hieß es. Ein Verkauf der Bomben an Israel werde in Teheran als Warnung verstanden, dass die USA einen Aufstieg des Irans zur Atommacht nicht zulassen, sagte John Pike von der Organisation Globalsecurity.org mit Sitz im US-Staat Virginia. Das Geschäft bringt der US-Rüstungsindustrie bis zu 30 Millionen Dollar (23,2 Millionen Euro).
	Humor
	http://www.welt.de/data/2005/04/19/706647.html Karsais Familie in Drogenhandel verwickelt? Afghanistan ist von Stabilität noch weit entfernt von Aschot Manutscharjan Berlin - Auch nach der friedlich verlaufenen demokratischen Präsidentschaftswahl sind am Hindukusch noch keine stabilen politischen Verhältnisse eingekehrt: "Kabul kann man nicht mit Afghanistan gleichsetzen", sagte ein hochrangiger Offizier aus dem Kabuler Verteidigungsministerium der WELT. "Die im Westen verbreiteten Berichte geben nur unzureichend Auskunft über die wahre Lage bei uns. Bei uns gibt es einen stillen Bürgerkrieg." Präsident Hamid Karsai sei in den Augen der "meisten Afghanen eine amerikanische Marionette", deren Macht nur auf der Präsenz der US-Soldaten im Land beruhe. Im Unterschied zum Statthalter der Sowjets, Babrak Karmal, für dessen Personenschutz immerhin Afghanen verantwortlich waren, überlasse Karsai diese Aufgabe lieber den Amerikanern. "Für uns Afghanen ist es eine Beleidigung, daß unser Präsident sein Leben nicht Angehörigen seines eigenen Volkes anvertraut", moniert der Militär. Die Meldungen von der Existenz einer afghanischen Nationalarmee seien reine Propaganda. "So eine Armee gibt es nicht." Jede Volksgruppe verfüge über eigene Truppen, die nicht von Kabul kontrolliert würden. Außerdem hätten sie "jeweils geheime Waffen- und Munitionslager". Auf wiederholte Nachfrage der Vereinten Nationen hätten die Truppen nur "altes Zeug" abgegeben. Auch zu Karsais Einfluß in seiner eigenen Volksgruppe fällt dem Soldaten nichts Positives ein: "Sie hassen ihn." Denn die beiden großen Gruppierungen innerhalb des Volks der Paschtunen seien fundamentalistisch ausgerichtet und wollten keine westliche "Modernisierung" ihres traditionellen Lebenskodex, des Paschtunwali. Mit Hilfe dieser "Gesetzgebung" hatten zuvor schon die Taliban das Land tyrannisiert. Der afghanische Offizier empört sich darüber, daß Karsai die Verhaftung des aus dem Iran ausgewiesenen Terroristen Gulbuddin Hekmatjar verhindert habe. "Hekmatjar war ein Löwe aus Schnee, als er zurückkehrte. Dennoch wollte Karsai abwarten, um ihn später gegen seine politischen Opponenten in der Nordallianz ausspielen zu können." Seitdem seien drei Jahre vergangen, die Hekmatjar geschickt genutzt habe, um ein neues Widerstandsnetz aus den Resten von Al Qaida, den Taliban und seinen früheren Anhängern aufzubauen. Jetzt müsse Karsai auf "Empfehlung der USA mit ihnen Geheimverhandlungen führen", berichtet der gut informierte Offizier. Der Afghane weiß sicher, daß sich Osama Bin Laden im Ort Suat im pakistanischen Grenzgebiet zu Kaschmir aufgehalten habe. Danach habe sich der Al-Qaida-Chef entlang der pakistanisch-afghanischen Grenze bewegt. Nach Informationen aus Kabuler Geheimdienstkreisen war Bin Laden während der Bombardements der Höhlenfestung von Tora Bora im Herbst 2001 schwer am Rückgrat verletzt worden. Behandelt wurde er in einem pakistanischen Krankenhaus in Zeut bei Karatschi. Die Version, daß der gebürtige Saudi-Araber an einer Nierenkrankheit leide und regelmäßig eine Blutwäsche benötige, teilen afghanische Geheimdienstler nicht. Es gebe dafür keinerlei Beweise. Sein Kollege aus dem Verteidigungsministerium ist davon überzeugt, daß die "ISI" (der militärische Geheimdienst Pakistans) weiß, wo sich der gesuchte Terror-Pate aufhält. Schließlich haben sie die 35 Militärbasen, in denen er jahrelang Terroristen ausbilden konnte, eingerichtet und sowohl die Taliban als auch Al-Qaida logistisch unterstützt. Mehr noch: Die Pakistaner hätten den Terroranschlag gegen Achmed Schah Massud, den militärischen Anführer der Nordallianz, am 9. September 2001 inszeniert. "Sie geben es nicht zu und versuchen nach wie vor, sich vor den Amerikanern wichtig zu machen." So entstehe der Eindruck, ohne Islamabads Willen könne in Afghanistan nichts entschieden werden. Als Dank erhalte Pakistan von der internationalen Gemeinschaft Geld und Unterstützung. Die Amerikaner wiederum, so der Offizier, wollen Bin Laden nicht inhaftieren, weil sie dann keinen legitimen Grund mehr hätten, am Hindukusch zu bleiben. Positiv beurteilt der Offizier die Militärpräsenz der Europäer in seinem Land: "Das Volk akzeptiert sie, weil sie auf unsere Kultur und den Islam Rücksicht nehmen und uns beim Wiederaufbau helfen." Das gelte insbesondere für die Bundeswehr-Soldaten, deren "Hände nicht schmutzig" seien. Während der Kabuler auch "großen Respekt" für die "richtigen amerikanischen Soldaten" hegt, empfindet er für die diversen paramilitärischen Gruppen, die unter der US-Flagge in Afghanistan tätig sind, nur "Abscheu". Darunter seien "Mörder", die in Afghanistan vor Gericht gestellt worden seien. Das Thema Drogenbekämpfung im Zusammenhang mit Präsident Karsai amüsiert den erfahrenen Soldaten. Enge Familienmitglieder des Präsidenten mischten kräftig mit bei diesem Geschäft, außerdem einige seiner Minister und einflußreiche Kommandanten. Schließlich sei es kein Zufall, daß einige Finanzfachleute, die schon unter den Taliban tätig waren, ihre Stellen behalten hätten. "Die stecken seit Jahren unter einer Decke." Artikel erschienen am Di, 19. April 2005
	http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-1573158,00.html The Sunday Times - Scotland April 17, 2005 Secrets of ‘contorted’ freemason initiation to be revealed Kath Gourlay HE is believed to be the inspiration for the hero of Dan Brown’s bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, and is credited with revealing the secrets of Rosslyn Chapel on which the cult book is based. Now Dr Robert Lomas, who like Brown’s protagonist Robert Langdon is an international expert on symbolism and myth, is to publish a no-holds-barred account of the secret initiation ceremony of a freemason. In Turning the Hiram Key, Lomas, of Bradford University, describes his own initiation at the Eaglescliffe Masonic Hall, where he was ordered to strip and put on “rough linen pyjamas” in the ladies lavatory by a man wearing a lambskin apron and holding a sword. He includes details of the “contorted question and answer session”, during which he was asked to twist his body into strange positions while blindfold in a masonic temple, his trousers and sleeves rolled up. At the completion of the ceremony the blind was ripped off and, half-blinded by the intense brightness in the room, he saw 40 white-gloved masons who clapped once to signify the end of his initiation. The master of the lodge, wore an elaborate V-shaped collar of blue and white, the floor was covered in a white shroud, and the five-pointed star was shining on the eastern wall of the room, illuminating a skull and two crossed thigh bones. The book, published by Lewis Masonic, explores the subsequent rituals, myths and symbolism of freemasonry that Lomas claims are connected to spiritual fulfilment. However, his bid to go public has provoked outrage from fellow freemasons, who believe Lomas has betrayed the trust of the ancient organisation, first founded in Scotland in the 15th century. Jim Munro, a Scottish freemason who gives tours of Rosslyn Chapel, said the revelations detracted from the ancient and mystic attraction of the clandestine order. “If anybody can buy it and read it on the bus eating a takeaway, then the essence of something ancient and mystical will die,” he said. “Lomas might have good intentions, but I really object to masonry being used as a tool to sell books.” Another senior Scottish mason, who declined to be named, claimed that the attempt to uncover masonic secrets was “disgraceful”. He said: “The man has trivialised and made a laughing stock of an ancient and dignified tradition.” Bob Cooper, the museum and library curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland in Edinburgh, said Lomas could offer only a personal view of freemasonry. “I appreciate what he is trying to do. He feels freemasonry has been a positive influence in his life and that stimulating interest will benefit the craft,” he added. “But the danger is that in removing the mystique he is doing the opposite.” However Lomas defended the book, which he claimed would set the record straight and would help to recruit new members. “It’s a major source of information about ourselves and our past that will disappear if we don’t get new blood in,” he said. “Previous exposés of freemasonry have been done by outsiders. As an insider, I’m saying this is a good thing. I’m trying to show what I got out of it.” In 1996, Lomas claimed that Rosslyn Chapel was the hiding place for scrolls containing the secret teachings of Jesus Christ. Freemasonry was founded in Scotland by the St Clairs of Roslin and the first minuted meetings were recorded in Edinburgh in 1599. Orders have since spread across the world. Throughout the centuries thousands of famous men have been linked to the order including George Washington, the first president of the United States, Sir Winston Churchill and Mozart.
	http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-1570480,00.html The Sunday Times - Scotland April 17, 2005 Freemasonry rolls up its trousers in public For the first time, a Mason has written openly about the organisation’s obscure rituals and their impact. Dr Robert Lomas explains why he’s lifted the lid on his experiences Freemasonry has always puzzled and attracted me. Its rituals are weird, its history is obscure and its purpose unclear. I had my first experience of it as I stood in the ladies’ toilet of Eaglescliffe Masonic Hall. Next to me a man wearing a white lambskin apron menaced me with a sword. “Get your clothes off . . . and put your watch and rings in that tray.” “Everything?” I asked. “Is this some sort of ritual naked mugging?” “No,” he said, his expression totally serious. “You can keep your underpants on.” As I pulled my trousers down, he produced what looked like rough linen pyjamas. “Put these on,” he ordered. The glow from the single bare light bulb sparkled on his sword as he pointed. I gulped but did as I was told. Not until much later did I begin to understand what was done to me that night; at the time I felt confused and even a little let down. I donned the pyjamas, then the swordsman opened my jacket to expose parts of my body and rolled up my sleeves and trouser legs. I could see no rhyme or reason for his actions, but he continued to fiddle with my flimsy rags until he was satisfied. “Wait here,” he said, closing the door as he went out — as if I were likely to run out into the street and risk frostbite or arrest for indecent exposure. “Why did I get myself into this?” I thought at the time. In the 406 years of Freemasonry’s recorded existence (the earliest minuted masonic meetings took place in Edinburgh in 1599) there have been hundreds of exposés of its ritual secrets. One of the first was a book called Three Distinct Knocks, written by Samuel Pritchard in 1760; one of the latest is Stephen Knight’s The Brotherhood, published in paperback in 1990. All have one thing in common: they quote Masonic ritual in order to expose an evil secret at its centre. After so much bad press, I decided, as a Freemason, to set the record straight in my new book, Turning the Hiram Key. Freemasonry is a highly successful organisation that has been a powerful force in helping to shape our modern scientific and democratic society. Members such as Sir Robert Moray, the founder of the Royal Society, George Washington, the first president of the United States, Sir Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime saviour, Wolfgang Mozart, the composer, and Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, all drew inspiration from its rituals. What accounts for the wide appeal that Freemasonry has had during the past four centuries and still has today? Why does Masonic ritual inspire its practitioners to become creative, balanced individuals? The traditional answer to this question has always been “it’s a secret”. But why is it a secret? Is it because Freemasons have something to hide? I am much more inclined to believe that most Freemasons simply don’t understand why Masonic ritual inspires and encourages them, and they cover up this ignorance by refusing to talk about the spiritual impact of their Masonry. I first entered a Masonic temple blindfolded and my confusion remained for some time. Whatever other mysteries there are in Freemasonry, trying to second-guess the form of words the Lodge wants to hear when its Master asks a question is the most puzzling. At least that’s what I thought, until, in that first initiation, I experienced the oddest postural instruction I’d yet known. I heard the instruction . . . but what did they mean? Could I twist my body into such an odd position? Goodness knows what strange endorphins were released into my brain as I struggled to keep my body still, using only the kinetic feedback of my stretched muscles to judge what was happening. But only when this contorted question and answer session to “make me a Mason” was complete would the blindfold be removed. I waited. I could feel a sense of anticipation building. There was the rustle of movement about the room, as though hidden watchers were readying themselves for some expected event. A voice rang out, in a dramatic crescendo: “Let the boon of light be bestowed.” As the blindfold was ripped from my eyes, a muffled clap sounded from the watchers. The light in the room was so bright that I found it hard to focus. The single clap, performed by about 40 white-gloved men, sounded surreal. I blinked and tried to focus. Before me was the Master of the Lodge, surrounded by a bright halo of light. He was wearing an elaborate V-shaped collar of blue and white. Behind him was some sort of ornate carved wooden chair with a triangular headrest. I was struggling to see any detail in the light. From that day forward, I took great pleasure in attending meetings, but the Order remained largely unknown to me. I had learned how to memorise and recite large chunks of ritual. I exposed various parts of my body to the curious gaze of the Brethren. At each step of this journey, I had been told: “Just do this next bit and all will become clear to you.” But until I decided to research it for myself, it never did. In my book I set out to achieve three things: first, to explain what had happened, how I felt and how I changed as I was initiated; second, to analyse how ritual, symbols and myth combined to create the uplifting spiritual experiences; and third, to consult the oldest document in Scottish Masonic history and see if its symbols told the same story. And they did. The Kirkwall Scroll in Orkney is a great cloth, 18ft 6in long and 5ft 6in wide. It was once put on the floor of the Lodge, so that a Masonic candidate could walk through the symbols as he carried out the rituals. The centre section has been radiocarbon-dated to about AD1490. This is a significant period of history, soon after the time when Freemasonry was first established in Scotland by the St Clairs of Roslin. At the heart of Freemasonry’s influence is the power of symbolism, and its role in feeding our emotional appetites. The enormous success of Dan Brown’s thriller, The Da Vinci Code, shows how he has latched onto a deep spiritual hunger and so managed to attract millions of readers worldwide. Brown sets the climax of his story in Rosslyn Chapel in Mid-Lothian, celebrating two symbols that are part of that building. He calls them the blade and the chalice. But the same symbols are known to Freemasons as the square and the compasses. And they combine to form the oldest sacred symbol in the world, a diamon shape that archaeologists call a lozenge. It is a symbol found in Africa, in the most ancient art drawn by human hand and in the stones of Skara Brae in Orkney. When I was commissioned to write Turning the Hiram Key, my publishers pointed out that many clues regarding the identity of the man who inspired Brown’s character, Robert Langdon, lead to me — not least the fact that Langdon is, like me, an internationally known expert on spiritual symbolism and myth based in a university with a world-ranking business school. Langdon, however, seems to lead a more exciting life than I do. If I had to solve murders as well as teach, research and write, I’d never have any spare time. Brown, who is rumoured to be a Freemason, is certainly aware of the power of myth and symbol. Having noted its current appeal, is that why he is using Freemasonry as the inspiration for his next book, The Solomon Key? He knows that some myths and symbols are popular because they appeal instinctively. My own research suggests that humans are programmed by evolution to be attracted and soothed by particular symbols and stories. Freemasonry uses this secret knowledge to work its spiritual magic. So why have I decided to break with 400 years of Masonic obtuseness? I have been fortunate in my publishers, Lewis Masonic, who have been enthusiastic supporters, lending my book a kind of semi-official status, despite the opposition of some within the Grand Lodge of England. It is my belief that Freemasonry is an ancient science that can drive human ambition and achievement. It can offer great insights into the mystery of the inner self — whether you call it soul, spirit or state of consciousness — that do not conflict with modern science. It is a heritage of ancient spiritual teaching held in trust by us to pass on to our sons and daughters. I want others to feel as I did when I experienced the high point of Masonic ritual. I could see a bright, five-pointed star shining on the eastern wall of the blacked-out Lodge. I gazed, fascinated, at the star, which seemed to hover above the Master’s chair and which, in the surrounding darkness, cast a bright narrow beam of light towards the west. As I looked back at the white shroud covering the Lodge floor, the ray from the rising star illuminated a skull placed above a pair of crossed thigh bones. In the faint light of the star, they looked real. The Master let me gaze for a long moment before speaking. “Let those symbols of morbidity, which the rising of the Morning Star has illuminated for you, help you to reflect on your ineluctable fate and direct your thoughts towards the most valuable of all studies, the knowledge of yourself.” Dr Robert Lomas is a lecturer in technological management at Bradford University. Turning the Hiram Key is published by Lewis Masonic
	http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/de/news/article/1113948000.php Neue Umsturzpläne für den Kaukasus Transportkorridor BERLIN/KIEW/BAKU (Eigener Bericht) - Berliner think tanks debattieren über die ,,Zukunft des postsowjetischen Raums" und mögliche neue Umstürze in weiteren GUS-Staaten. Wie es bei der Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) heißt, berühren bereits die jüngsten Machtwechsel in der Ukraine und in Kirgistan wichtige Teile des russischen Bündnissystems (u.a. den ,,Einheitlichen Wirtschaftsraum" und die ,,Shanghai Cooperation Organisation") und könnten es schwer beschädigen. Auf einer Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP) hieß es, selbst der GUS-Zusammenschluss sei praktisch bereits ,,tot". Während die neue ukrainische Regierung sich anschickt, eine deutschen Planungen zuträgliche Bündnisalternative zur GUS ohne Russland aufzubauen (GUUAM), erreichen die Umsturzdrohungen a la Kiew inzwischen Moskau. Bündnisse beschädigt Wie die Berliner SWP schreibt, hat bereits der von der Bundesregierung forcierte Machtwechsel in der Ukraine1) ,,eine von Rußland besonders geförderte Regionalstruktur", den ,,Einheitlichen Wirtschaftsraum" (Russland, Belarus, Kasachstan, Ukraine), ,,in Frage gestellt". Ein außenpolitischer Kurswechsel der neuen Regierung Kirgistans würde darüber hinaus weitere Teile des russischen Bündnissystems beschädigen: Die ,,Schanghai Cooperation Organisation" (Russland, Volksrepublik China, Kasachstan, Usbekistan, Tadschikistan, Kirgistan), die ,,Collective Security Treaty Organization" (Russland, Belarus, Kasachstan, Tadschikistan, Armenien, Kirgistan) sowie die ,,Euro-Asian Economic Community" (Russland, Belarus, Kasachstan, Tadschikistan, Kirgistan). Die SWP beobachtet in Russland ,,ein Gefühl der Desillusionierung, was die Einschätzung der eigenen Führungsrolle im GUS-Raum betrifft".2) Asien-Georgien-Ukraine-Europa Die GUS sei praktisch bereits ,,tot", erklärte kürzlich eine georgische Parlamentsabgeordnete auf einer Tagung der DGAP, die ,,die Zukunft des post-sowjetischen Raums und die Haltung des 'Westens"' behandelte.3) Tbilissi, das sich eng an Deutschland und die EU bindet4), treibt gemeinsam mit Kiew den Ausbau des GUUAM-Bündnisses (Ukraine, Moldawien, Georgien, Aserbaidschan, Usbekistan) voran. GUUAM, das mehrere GUS-Staaten vereinigt und Russland ausschließt, hält am kommenden Freitag in der moldawischen Hauptstadt Chisinau sein nächstes Gipfeltreffen ab. Das Bündnis sei ,,effektiver" als die GUS, erklärt der ukrainische Staatspräsident Wiktor Juschtschenko: ,,Die geopolitische Lage der Ukraine und Georgiens drängt uns dazu, über sehr wichtige transkontinentale Projekte Asien-Georgien-Ukraine-Europa zu entscheiden."5) Zwei Milliarden Juschtschenko zufolge gehören zu den genannten Projekten bevorzugt ,,Lieferungen kaspischer Energieträger über die Ukraine nach Europa". Der Transport soll insbesondere über die Pipeline Odessa-Brody abgewickelt werden, die der ehemalige ukrainische Staatspräsident Leonid Kutschma für den Transport russischen Erdöls ,,umgedreht" hatte. Wie der ukrainische Botschafter in Baku mitteilt, will die Bundesregierung für Reparaturen an der Pipeline einen Zwei-Milliarden-Kredit zur Verfügung stellen und damit die erneute Ausrichtung auf die Weiterleitung kaspischer Rohstoffe nach Westen sicherstellen.6) Der Präsident Aserbaidschans hielt sich kürzlich in Warszawa auf, um die Energieplanungen zu konkretisieren. Georgien setzt sich zusätzlich dafür ein, Teile der bislang über russisches Territorium exportierten kasachischen Energieträger über die Pipeline Baku-Tbilissi-Ceyhan nach Westen zu transportieren. Damit verlöre Moskau die Kontrolle über weitere Rohstoffe seines unmittelbaren zentralasiatischen Nachbarstaats an ein britisch-US-amerikanisch dominiertes Pipeline-Betreiberkonsortium. Anschluss Der deutschen Planungen entsprechende ,,Transportkorridor"7) über den Kaukasus nach Zentralasien wird inzwischen bis zum Indischen Ozean weitergetrieben. Mehrere Regierungsmitglieder Aserbaidschans hielten sich in der vergangenen Woche in der pakistanischen Hauptstadt Islamabad auf und leiteten dort eine enge Kooperation der beiden Staaten ein, die sich insbesondere auf die Wirtschaft und auf das Militär erstrecken soll. Wie der aserbaidschanische Außenminister mitteilt, habe Pakistan ,,seine Absicht bekannt gegeben (...), sich dem Transportkorridor Europa-Kaukasus-Asien anzuschließen".8) Neue Umsturzdrohungen Unterdessen geraten weitere Regierungen aus dem Bereich des ,,Transportkorridors" unter den Druck neuer Umsturzbewegungen. In Kasachstan, wo Ende 2005 oder Anfang 2006 Präsidentschaftswahlen anstehen, haben bereits im vergangenen Dezember Oppositionspolitiker zu ,,Aktionen des zivilen Ungehorsams" aufgerufen. In Armenien forderte vor wenigen Tagen ein früherer Premierminister eine ,,Revolution". In Baku haben Studierende Ende März die Gründung einer ,,Orangenen Bewegung Aserbaidschans" angekündigt. Selbst Russland wird inzwischen offen von außengesteuerten Unruhen bedroht. Eine neue ,,Jugendbewegung" namens ,,Oborona", die über enge Verbindungen nach Georgien und in die Ukraine verfügen soll, mobilisiert für den Sturz der Regierung und gerät in unmittelbaren Konflikt mit einer an den Kreml angebundenen Jugendorganisation. Antwort Beobachter registrieren aufmerksam, dass russische, kasachische, kirgisische und tadschikische Truppen Anfang April gemeinsame Militärübungen abgehalten haben. Die Manöver fanden in Tadschikistan im Rahmen der ,,Collective Security Treaty Organization" (CSTO) statt. Sie konzentrierten sich auf die ,,Schnellen Zentralasien-Eingreiftruppen" der CSTO (Collective Rapid Deployment Forces in Central Asia) und sollten nach Aussage des tadschikischen Verteidigungsministers deutlich machen, dass das Verteidigungsbündnis sich ,,auf eine angemessene Antwort auf Herausforderungen und Bedrohungen für die Stabilität in Zentralasien" vorbereitet. 1) s. dazu Sozialdemokratische Drohungen und ,,Befreiung der Ukraine" 2) Regimewechsel in Kirgistan und Umsturzängste im GUS-Raum; SWP-Aktuell 15, April 2005 3) ,,Zum Barbecue auf Bushs Ranch": Ost-West-Beziehungen unterschiedlich betrachtet; www.dgap.org 4) s. dazu Bitte um Eingliederung 5) Ukraine und Georgien rücken eng zusammen; DW-Radio Russisch, 26.03.2005 6) Azerbaijani President in Poland on State Visit; RFE/RL Newsline 01.04.2005 7) s. dazu Großeuropa und Die Neue Seidenstraße 8) In Aserbaidschan gibt es keine Bedingungen für Revolutionen; RIA Nowosti 13.04.2005 s. auch SPD-Außenpolitiker fordert ,,Anbindung der kaukasischen Staaten an Europa" und Trabanten sowie Eurasien Quellen: Georgian President visits Kazakhstan; RFE/RL Newsline 01.04.2005 Military Exercises begin in Tajikistan; RFE/RL Newsline 04.04.2005 Another Youth Movement emerges?; RFE/RL Newsline 04.04.2005 Azerbaijani Authorities seek to counter Burgeoning Opposition Youth Movements; RFE/RL Caucasus Report 08.04.2005 Thomas Immanuel Steinberg: Versuchter Durchbruch; junge Welt 12.04.2005 Former Armenian Premier calls for Revolution; RFE/RL Newsline 18.04.2005 Pro-Kremlin Youth Movement wants to form New Elite, stop ,,Orange Revolution" in Russia; RFE/RL Newsline 18.04.2005
	http://saar-echo.de/news.php?news_ID=20015 Saar-Echo-Leitartikel Yukos und die Mainstream-Medien Desinformationspolitik korrespondiert mit Desinformationsjournalismus / Die vorsorgliche Kapitulation vor den Interessen der Nachrichtendienste    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Von FRANK KRÜGER Während die Mainstream-Medien – in Amerika wie in Deutschland – über den (vorläufig verlorenen) amerikanischen Ölkrieg um Yukos und gegen Russland mit selektiver Wahrnehmung berichtet haben und die Verwicklung der USA und einiger ihrer engsten Verbündeten in die kriminellen Aktivitäten von Chorodkovsky & Konsorten ausblendeten, damit ganz im Sinne amerikanischer Desinformationspolitik ein verfälschtes Bild der politischen Realität abbildeten – kurz, den Leser zu verdummen suchten – war das SAAR-ECHO mit seiner Serie „Von Clearstream bis Yukos“ bemüht, auch die Puzzleteile dieses globalen Politik- und Wirtschaftskrimis in seine Berichterstattung und Analysen einfließen zu lassen, die anderenorts entweder in die Redaktionspapierkörbe gewandert sind oder mittels vorauseilendem Gehorsam unterschlagen wurden – weil nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf. So entstand ein anderes, wenn auch beängstigendes Bild der amerikanischen Supermacht, jedenfalls kein Bild, wie es gewöhnlich von Journalisten gezeichnet wird, die sich intellektuell oder real wie im letzten Irak-Krieg von den USA lieber „einbetten“ lassen. Sobald Geheimdienste Politik vorbereiten oder machen und in Affären, Skandale oder kriminelle Aktivitäten verwickelt sind, halten sich manche Journalisten lieber bedeckt. Es könnte den Job kosten oder andere Unannehmlichkeiten nach sich ziehen. Das erleben wir gerade in den USA, wie das Nachrichtenmagazin „Der Spiegel“ aus scheinbar sicherer Distanz zum Land des Geschehens von Hamburg aus über die Vereinigten Staaten in seiner aktuellen Ausgabe berichtet, während das Magazin über ähnliche brisante Ereignisse vor der eigenen Haustür gelegentlich lieber schweigt – so beim Fall Yukos und die Verwicklung des BND in die Affäre. Investigativer Journalismus scheint nicht jedermanns Sache zu sein, obwohl hierzulande vorläufig noch nicht überall amerikanische Verhältnisse herrschen. In den USA, so das Magazin, zwingen Staatsanwälte neuerdings Journalisten, ihre Quellen und Informanten zu verraten. Wer nicht kooperiert, wird zum Kriminellen erklärt und muss mit Haftstrafen rechnen. Trotzdem kommt die Wahrheit gelegentlich ans Licht, leider viel zu selten durch investigativen Journalismus, sondern durch Zufälle oder wenn es eine veränderte politische Großwetterlage plötzlich doch geraten erscheinen lässt, das bislang Ignorierte, Verheimlichte oder Unterschlagene publik werden zu lassen, weil es nunmehr in das neue politische Konzept der Mächtigen passt, wie es sich im Fall des Yukos-Skandals nach der amerikanischen Niederlage im Ölkrieg um den russischen Energiegiganten gerade abzeichnet. Plötzlich kommt es im Zusammenhang mit Yukos auch in Spanien zu Razzien, weil der kriminelle Hintergrund und die Verwicklung der USA in die Affäre nicht mehr lange unter dem Deckel gehalten werden können, da Russlands Präsident Putin keine Anzeichen erkennen lässt, Chodorkovsky & Konsorten stillschweigend davonkommen zu lassen. Noch bis vor wenigen Tagen hat der gesamte Westen in einer von den USA gesteuerten konzertierten Aktion entrüstet aufgeheult, weil es in Russland zu Razzien gegen Yukos, zu Festnahmen und schließlich zu Prozessen gegen einige Räuberkapitalisten gekommen war. Präsident Putin wurde dafür heftig kritisiert, so als herrsche in Russland noch eine stalinistische Diktatur ohne ein demokratisches Rechts- und Justizsystem. Ausgerechnet die ehemalige Bundesjustizministerin der FDP, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, setzte sich im Europa-Parlament an die Spitze der Yukos-Lobbyisten und stellte die Unparteilichkeit und Objektivität der russischen Behörden in Frage, die „in überzogener Weise und unter Missachtung fundamentaler Rechte“ gehandelt hätten, als sie Chodorkovsky & Konsorten festnahmen, anklagten und vor Gericht stellten. Hat sie sich deshalb so weit aus dem Fenster gelehnt, weil ihr Parteifreund Otto Graf Lambsdorff Mitglied im Beirat des Yukos-Hauptaktionärs Menatep-Holding ist, die ihren Sitz in das britische Offshore- und Steuerparadies Gibraltar verlegt hat – nicht weit von Marbella entfernt, wo die spanische Polizei gerade Razzien gegen Geldwäscher aus dem Yukos-Konzern durchgeführt hat –, um sich den russischen Steuerbehörden zu entziehen? Scheibchenweise wird nun der Umfang des Schadens bekannt, den Chodorkovsky & Konsorten mit ihren Betrügereien angerichtet haben. Die russische Nachrichtenagentur Nowosti berichtete gestern unter Bezugnahme auf die Moskauer Wirtschaftszeitung Wedomosti, wie und in welchem Umfang die Räuberkapitalisten ihr ehemaliges Unternehmen Juganskneftegas ausgeplündert haben: Indem sie russisches Erdöl zu niedrigen Preisen ins Ausland verkauften, sei für Juganskneftegas ein Schaden von sage und schreibe sechs Milliarden Dollar entstanden. Hinter dieser Meldung verbirgt sich, was das SAAR-ECHO zuletzt in der gestern veröffentlichten Folge XI seiner Yukos-Hintergrundserie bereits berichtet hatte: Chodorkovsky & Konsorten haben ihr ehemaliges Unternehmen schlichtweg ausgeplündert, ihre Mitarbeiter, Kleinaktionäre und den russischen Fiskus betrogen. Sie verkauften das russische Öl zu Dumpingpreise an sich selbst, nämlich an Offshore-Firmen, die sie zuvor in Steuerparadiesen gegründet hatten, um es dann wieder zu marktgerechten Preisen weiter zu verkaufen und den Profit steuerfrei in die eigene Tasche stecken zu können. Der neue Eigentümer von Juganskneftegas, das Staatsunternehmen Rosneft, verklagt Yukos deshalb jetzt auf Schadensersatz von insgesamt 11 Milliarden Dollar. Diese Summe errechnet sich aus dem „entgangenem Gewinn“ in Höhe von 6 Milliarden Dollar und einer Kompensation für Steuern in Höhe von 5,1 Milliarden Dollar, die Juganskneftegas für die Jahre 1999 bis 2003 an den Fiskus nachträglich abführen musste. Im Klartext: Chodorkovsky & Konsorten sowie ihre Komplizen im westlichen Ausland haben allein mit der ehemaligen Yukos-Tochter 11 Milliarden Dollar schlichtweg ergaunert. Offensichtlich können die russischen Justizbehörden diesen gigantischen Betrug inzwischen weitgehend beweisen. Jetzt wird es eng, nicht nur für Chodorkovsky & Konsorten, sondern auch für ihre Komplizen aus dem Westen – für Banken und Politiker, die diese unglaublichen Betrügereien möglicherweise angeschoben, zumindest jahrelang gefördert, gedeckt und davon profitiert haben. Ohne sie wäre diese Plünderung der russischen Rohstoff-Ressourcen nicht möglich gewesen. Damit erklärt sich der Gesinnungswandel der US-Regierung, Razzien nunmehr auch im Westen, wie gerade in Spanien, zuzulassen und auf einmal stillschweigend zu unterstützen. Es sind Razzien auch in eigener Sache, nicht nur um justitiable Beweismittel zu sichern, sondern ebenso, um sie notfalls verschwinden zu lassen, damit die Verwicklung der USA wie des gesamten Westens in diesen Skandal besser verschleiert werden kann.
	http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/031905Mowat-1/031905mowat-1.html ONLINE JOURNAL™ www.onlinejournal.com Special Report The new Gladio in action? Ukrainian postmodern coup completes testing of new template By Jonathan Mowat Online Journal Contributing Writer "Gene Sharp started out the seminar by saying 'Strategic nonviolent struggle is all about political power.' And I thought, ‘Boy is this guy speaking my language,' that is what armed struggle is about." —Col. Robert Helvey WASHINGTON, March 19, 2005—The U.S. government and allied forces' year-end installation of Victor Yushchenko as president of Ukraine have completed the field-testing of the "Postmodern Coup." Employing and fine-tuning the same sophisticated techniques used in Serbia in 2000 and Georgia in 2003 (and unsuccessfully in Belarus in 2001), it is widely expected that the United States will attempt to apply the same methods throughout the former Soviet Union. "We have to confront those forces that are committed to reproduce a Georgian or Ukrainian scenario," Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev stated on December 26, the day of the coup, "we'll not allow the import of Rose [Georgian] and Orange [Ukrainian] revolutions in our country." One day later, the Kazakh government launched a criminal case against the Soros Foundation for tax evasion, one of the coups' financiers. And last spring, Uzbek President Islam Karimov accused Soros of overseeing the revolution in Georgia, and condemning his efforts to "fool and brainwash" young intelligentsia in his own country, banned the group. The same networks are also increasingly active in South America, Africa, and Asia. Top targets include Venezuela, Mozambique, and Iran, among others. The method employed is usefully described by The Guardian's Ian Traynor in a November 26, 2004, article entitled "US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev," during the first phase of the coup. With their websites and stickers, their pranks and slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime, the democracy guerrillas of the Ukrainian Pora youth movement have already notched up a famous victory—whatever the outcome of the dangerous stand-off in Kiev. [T]he campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes. Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box. Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze. Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko. The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience - is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections Much of the coup apparatus is the same that was used in the overthrow of President Fernando Marcos of the Philippines in 1986, the Tiananmen Square destabilization in 1989, and Vaclav Havel's "Velvet revolution" in Czechoslavakia in 1989. As in these early operations, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and its primary arms, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI), played a central role. The NED was established by the Reagan Administration in 1983, to do overtly what the CIA had done covertly, in the words of one its legislative drafters, Allen Weinstein. The Cold War propaganda and operations center, Freedom House, now chaired by former CIA director James Woolsey, has also been involved, as were billionaire George Soros' foundations, whose donations always dovetail those of the NED. What is new about the template bears on the use of the Internet (in particular chat rooms, instant messaging, and blogs) and cell phones (including text-messaging), to rapidly steer angry and suggestible "Generation X" youth into and out of mass demonstrations and the like—a capability that only emerged in the mid-1990s. "With the crushing ubiquity of cell phones, satellite phones, PCs, modems and the Internet," Laura Rosen emphasized in Salon Magazine on February 3, 2001,"the information age is shifting the advantage from authoritarian leaders to civic groups." She might have mentioned the video games that helped create the deranged mindset of these "civic groups." The repeatedly emphasized role played by so-called "Discoshaman" and his girlfriend "Tulipgirl," in assisting the "Orange Revolution" through their aptly named blog, "Le Sabot Post-Modern," is indicative of the technical and sociological components involved. A Civilian Revolution in Military Affairs The emphasis on the use of new communication technologies to rapidly deploy small groups, suggests what we are seeing is civilian application of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "Revolution in Military Affairs" doctrine, which depends on highly mobile small group deployments "enabled" by "real time" intelligence and communications. Squads of soldiers taking over city blocks with the aid of "intelligence helmet" video screens that give them an instantaneous overview of their environment, constitute the military side. Bands of youth converging on targeted intersections in constant dialogue on cell phones constitute the doctrine's civilian application. This parallel should not be surprising since the US military and National Security Agency subsidized the development of the Internet, cellular phones, and software platforms. From their inception, these technologies were studied and experimented with in order to find the optimal use in a new kind of warfare. The “revolution” in warfare that such new instruments permit has been pushed to the extreme by several specialists in psychological warfare. Although these military utopians have been working in high places (for example the RAND Corporation) for a very long time, to a large extent they only took over some of the most important command structures of the US military apparatus with the victory of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon of Donald Rumsfeld. The new techniques of warfare include the use of both lethal (violent) and nonlethal (nonviolent) tactics. Both ways are conducted using the same philosophy, infrastructure, and modus operandi. It is what is known as Cyberwar. For example, the tactic of swarming is a fundamental element in both violent and nonviolent forms of warfare. This new philosophy of war, which is supposed to replicate the strategy of Genghis Khan as enhanced by modern technologies, is intended to aid both military and non-military assaults against targeted states through what are, in effect, "high tech" hordes. In that sense there is no difference, from the standpoint of the plotters, between Iraq or Ukraine, if only that many think the Ukraine-like coup is more effective and easier. Indicative of the common objective are the comments of the theoreticians of the post modern coup, for example, Dr. Peter Ackerman, the author of "Strategic Nonviolent Conflict" (Praeger 1994). Writing in the "National Catholic Reporter" on April 26, 2002, Dr. Ackerman offered the following corrective to Bush's Axis of Evil speech targeting Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, which he otherwise approved: "It is not true that the only way to 'take out' such regimes is through U.S. military action." Speaking at the "Secretary's Open Forum" at the State Department on June 29, 2004, in a speech entitled, "Between Hard and Soft Power:The Rise of Civilian-Based Struggle and Democratic Change," Ackerman elaborated on the concept involved. He proposed that youth movements, such as those used to bring down Serbia, could bring down Iran and North Korea, and could have been used to bring down Iraq—thereby accomplishing all of Bush's objectives without relying on military means. And he reported that he has been working with the top US weapons designer, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, on developing new communications technologies that could be used in other youth movement insurgencies. "There is no question that these technologies are democratizing," he stressed, in reference to their potential use in bringing down China, "they enable decentralized activity. They create, if you will, a digital concept of the right of assembly." Dr. Ackerman is the founding chairman of International Center on Nonviolent Conflicts of Washington, DC, of which former US Air Force officer Jack DuVall is president. Together with former CIA director James Woolsey, DuVall also directs the Arlington Institute of Washington, DC, which was created by former Chief of Naval Operations advisor John L. Peterson in 1989 " to help redefine the concept of national security in much larger, comprehensive terms" it reports, through introducing "social value shifts into the traditional national defense equation." "Swarming Adolescents" and "Rebellious Hysteria" As in the case of the new communication technologies, the potential effectiveness of angry youth in postmodern coups has long been under study. As far back as 1967, Dr. Fred Emery, then director of the Tavistock Institute, and an expert on the "hypnotic effects" of television, specified that the then new phenomenon of "swarming adolescents" found at rock concerts could be effectively used to bring down the nation-state by the end of the 1990s. This was particularly the case, as Dr. Emery reported in "The next thirty years: concepts, methods and anticipations,'' in the group's "Human Relations," because the phenomena was associated with "rebellious hysteria." The British military created the Tavistock Institute as its psychological warfare arm following World War I; it has been the forerunner of such strategic planning ever since. Dr. Emery's concept saw immediate application in NATO's use of "swarming adolescents" in toppling French President Charles De Gaulle in 1967. In November 1989, Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, under the aegis of that university's "Program for Social Innovations in Global Management," began a series of conferences to review progress towards that strategic objective, which was reported on in "Human Relations" in 1991. There, Dr. Howard Perlmutter, a professor of "Social Architecture'' at the Wharton School, and a follower of Dr. Emery, stressed that "rock video in Katmandu," was an appropriate image of how states with traditional cultures could be destabilized, thereby creating the possibility of a "global civilization." There are two requirements for such a transformation, he added, "building internationally committed networks of international and locally committed organizations,'' and "creating global events" through "the transformation of a local event into one having virtually instantaneous international implications through mass-media." (Perlmutter on the origin of the concept of globalization: see quote.) This brings us to the final ingredient of these new coups—the deployment of polling agencies' "exit polls" broadcast on international television to give the false (or sometimes accurate) impression of massive vote-fraud by the ruling party, to put targeted states on the defensive. Polling operations in the recent coups have been overseen by such outfits as Penn, Schoen and Berland, top advisors to Microsoft and Bill Clinton. Praising their role in subverting Serbia, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (and later Chairman of NDI) , in an October 2000 letter to the firm quoted on its website, stated: "Your work with the National Democratic Institute and the Yugoslav opposition contributed directly and decisively to the recent breakthrough for democracy in that country . . . This may be one of the first instances where polling has played such an important role in setting and securing foreign policy objectives." Penn, Schoen, together with the OSCE, also ran the widely televised "exit poll" operations in the Ukrainian elections. In the aftermath of such youth deployments and media operations, more traditional elements come to the fore. That is, the forceful, if covert, intervention by international institutions and governments threatening the targeted regime, and using well placed operatives within the targeted regime's military and intelligence services to ensure no countermeasures can be effectively deployed. Without these traditional elements, of course, no postmodern coup could ever work. Or, as Jack DuVall put it in Jesse Walker's "Carnival and conspiracy in Ukraine," in Reason Online, November 30, 2004, "You can't simply parachute Karl Rove into a country and manufacture a revolution." Gladio and James Bond Get a Youth Group The creation and deployment of coups of any kind requires agents on the ground. The main handler of these coups on the "street side" has been the Albert Einstein Institution, which was formed in 1983 as an offshot of Harvard University under the impetus of Dr. Gene Sharp, and which specializes in "nonviolence as a form of warfare." Dr. Sharp had been the executive secretary of A.J. Muste, the famous U.S. Trotskyite labor organizer and peacenik. The group is funded by Soros and the NED. Albert Einstein's president is Col. Robert Helvey, a former US Army officer with 30 years of experience in Southeast Asia. He has served as the case officer for youth groups active in the Balkans and Eastern Europe since at least 1999. Col. Helvey reports, in a January 29, 2001, interview with film producer Steve York in Belgrade, that he first got involved in "strategic nonviolence" upon seeing the failure of military approaches to toppling dictators—especially in Myanmar, where he had been stationed as military attaché—and seeing the potential of Sharp's alternative approach. According to B. Raman, the former director of India's foreign intelligence agency, RAW, in a December 2001 paper published by his institute entitled, "The USA's National Endowment For Democracy (NED): An Update," Helvey "was an officer of the Defence Intelligence Agency of the Pentagon, who had served in Vietnam and, subsequently, as the US Defence Attache in Yangon, Myanmar (1983 to 85), during which he clandestinely organised the Myanmarese students to work behind Aung San Suu Kyi and in collaboration with Bo Mya's Karen insurgent group. . . . He also trained in Hong Kong the student leaders from Beijing in mass demonstration techniques which they were to subsequently use in the Tiananmen Square incident of June 1989" and "is now believed to be acting as an adviser to the Falun Gong, the religious sect of China, in similar civil disobedience techniques." Col. Helvey nominally retired from the army in 1991, but had been working with Albert Einstein and Soros long before then. Reflecting Albert Einstein's patronage, one of its first books was Dr. Sharp's "Making Europe Unconquerable: The Potential of Civilian-Based Deterrence and Defense," published in 1985 with a forward by George Kennan, the famous "Mr. X" 1940's architect of the Cold War who was also a founder of the CIA's Operations division. There, Sharp reports that "civilian-based defense" could counter the Soviet threat through its ability "to deter and defeat attacks by making a society ungovernable by would be oppressors" and "by maintaining a capacity for orderly self-rule even in the face of extreme threats and actual aggression." He illustrates its feasibility by discussing the examples of the Algerian independence in 1961 and the Czechoslovakian resistance to Soviet invasion in 1968-9. In his forward, Kennan praises Sharp for showing the "possibilities of deterrence and resistance by civilians" as a "partial alternative to the traditional, purely military concepts of national defense." The book was promptly translated into German, Norwegian, Italian, Danish, and other NATO country languages. See the link to the Italian translation of the book (Verso un'Europa Inconquistabile. 190 pp. 1989 Introduction by Gianfranco Pasquino) that sports a series of fashionable sociologists and “politologists” prefacing the book and calling for a civil resistance to a possible Soviet invasion of Italy. Such formulations suggest that Albert Einstein activities were, ironically, coherent (or, possibly updating) the infamous NATO's "Gladio" stay-behind network, whose purpose was to combat possible Soviet occupation through a panoply of military and nonmilitary means. The investigations into Gladio, and those following the 1978 assassination of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, also shed some light (immediately switched off) on a professional apparatus of destabilization that had been invisible for several decades to the public. It is noteworthy that the former deputy chief of intelligence for the US Army in Europe, Major General Edward Atkeson, first "suggested the name 'civilian based defense' to Sharp," John M. Mecartney, Coordinator of the Nonviolent Action for National Defense Institute, reports in his group's CBD News and Opinion of March 1991. By 1985, Gen. Atkeson, then retired from the US Army, was giving seminars at Harvard entitled "Civilian-based Defense and the Art of War. The Albert Einstein Institution reports, in its "1994-99 Report on Activities," that Gen. Atkeson also served on Einstein's advisory board in those years. Following his posting as the head of US Army intelligence in Europe, and possibly concurrently with his position at the Albert Einstein Institution, the Washingtonbased Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reports that Gen. Atkeson, who also advised CSIS on "international security." served as "national intelligence officer for general purpose forces on the staff of the director of Central Intelligence." A 1990 variant of Sharp's book, "Civilian-Based Defense: A Post-Military Weapons System," the Albert Einstein Institution reports, "was used in 1991 and 1992 by the new independent governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in planning their defense against Soviet efforts to regain control." As we shall see below, with such backing, Col. Helvey and his colleagues have created a series of youth movements including Otpor! in Serbia, Kmara! in Georgia, Pora! in Ukraine, and the like, which are already virally replicating other sects throughout the former Soviet Union, achieving in civilian form what had not been possible militarily in the 1980s. The groups are also spreading to Africa and South America. And Dope Too? Col. Helvey's long experience in Myanmar in training insurgent ethnic minorities in a region that is the center of world opium production raises another question of great bearing on "post modern coups." That is: what is the role of narcotic mafias in facilitating "regime change?" Law enforcement agencies from many nations, including the United States, have long reported that the Balkans is the major narcotics pipeline into Western Europe. Ukraine is said to be a top conduit, as is Georgia. Kyrghyzstan, now at the top of the hit list, is another opium conduit. And George Soros "the Daddy Warbucks of drug legalization," has been the top "private" funder of all the Eastern European and Central Asian insurgent groups, as well as those in Myamar. The spread of such mafias, is, of course, one of the most efficient ways of infiltrating and corrupting government agencies of targeted states. Col. Helvey is not the only operator with such a background. The head of the OSCE's vote monitoring operation in Ukraine, for example, Geert-Hinrich Ahrens, was German Ambassador to Colombia in the late 1990s, when German secret agent Werner Mauss was arrested for working closely with the narcoterrorist ELN, whose bombings are financed by the cocaine trade. Ahrens was also on the scene in Albania and Macedonia, when the narcotics smuggling Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was created with US and German patronage. And Michael Kozak, the US ambassador whose 2001 effort to overthrow Belarus' Lukachenko failed, had been a top handler of the cocaine-smuggling Contras. The Serbian Virus The networks and methods used in the Serbian through Ukraine sequence were first publicly revealed in a Washington Post article on Dec. 11, 2000, by Michael Dobbs, entitled. “U.S. Advice Guided Milosevic Opposition: Political Consultants Helped Yugoslav Opposition Topple Authoritarian Leader." He reports that: U.S.-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti- Milosevic drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of opposition activists and helping to organize a vitally important parallel vote count. U.S. taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milosevic graffiti on walls across Serbia, and 2.5 million stickers with the slogan "He's Finished," which became the revolution's catchphrase. Some Americans involved in the anti-Milosevic effort said they were aware of CIA activity at the fringes of the campaign, but had trouble finding out what the agency was up to. Whatever it was, they concluded it was not particularly effective. The lead role was taken by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government's foreign assistance agency, which channeled the funds through commercial contractors and nonprofit groups such as NDI and its Republican counterpart, the International Republican Institute (IRI). While NDI worked closely with Serbian opposition parties, IRI focused its attention on Otpor, which served as the revolution's ideological and organizational backbone. In March, IRI paid for two dozen Otpor leaders to attend a seminar on nonviolent resistance at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest, a few hundreds yards along the Danube from the NDI-favored Marriott. During the seminar, the Serbian students received training in such matters as how to organize a strike, how to communicate with symbols, how to overcome fear and how to undermine the authority of a dictatorial regime. The principal lecturer was retired U.S. Army Col. Robert Helvey, who has made a study of nonviolent resistance methods around the world, including those used in modern-day Burma and the civil rights struggle in the American South. Helvey, who served two tours in Vietnam, introduced the Otpor activists to the ideas of American theoretician Gene Sharp, whom he describes as "the Clausewitz of the nonviolence movement," referring to the renowned Prussian military strategist. Peter Ackerman, the above-mentioned coup expert, analyzed and popularized the methods involved in a 2001 PBS documentary-series and book, "A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict," together with retired US Airforce officer Jack DuVall. Focusing on youth organizing, they report: After the NATO bombing, which had helped the regime suppress opposition, Otpor's organizing took hold with a quiet vengeance. It was built in some places around clubhouses where young people could go and hang out, exercise, and party on the weekends, or more often it was run out of dining rooms and bedrooms in activists' homes. These were "boys and girls 18 and 19 years old" who had lived "in absolute poverty compared to other teenagers around the world," according to Stanko Lazendic, an Otpor activist in Novi Sad. "Otpor offered these kids a place to gather, a place where they could express their creative ideas." In a word, it showed them how to empower themselves. Otpor's leaders knew that they "couldn't use force on someone who . . . had three times more force and weapons than we did," in the words of Lazendic. "We knew what had happened in. Tiananmen, where the army plowed over students with tanks." So violence wouldn't work—and besides, it was the trademark of Milosevic, and Otpor had to stand for something different. Serbia "was a country in which violence was used too many times in daily politics," noted Srdja Popovic, a 27 year-old who called himself Otpor's "ideological commissar." The young activists had to use nonviolent methods "to show how superior, how advanced, how civilized" they were. This relatively sophisticated knowledge of how to develop nonviolent power was not intuitive. Miljenko Dereta, the director of a private group in Belgrade called Civic Initiatives, got funding from Freedom House in the U.S. to print and distribute 5,000 copies of Gene Sharp's book, “From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation.” Otpor got hold of Sharp's main three-volume work, “The Politics of Nonviolent Action,” freely adapting sections of it into a Serbian-language notebook they dubbed the "Otpor User Manual." Consciously using this "ideology of nonviolent, individual resistance," in Popovic's words, activists also received direct training from Col. Robert Helvey, a colleague of Sharp, at the Budapest Hilton in March 2000. Helvey emphasized how to break the people's habits of subservience to authority, and also how to subvert: the regime's "pillars of support," including the police and armed forces. Crucially, he warned them against "contaminants to a nonviolent struggle," especially violent action, which would deter ordinary people from joining the movement: and alienate the international community, from which material and financial assistance could be drawn. As Popovic put it: "Stay nonviolent and you will get the support of the third party." That support, largely denied to the Serbian opposition before, now began to flow. Otpor and other dissident groups received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, affiliated with the U.S. government, and Otpor leaders sat down with Daniel Serwer, the program director for the Balkans at the U.S. Institute for Peace, whose story of having been tear-gassed during an anti- Vietnam War demonstration gave him special credibility in their eyes. The International Republican Institute, also financed by the U.S. government, channeled funding to the opposition and met with Otpor leaders several times. The U.S. Agency for International Development, the wellspring for most of this financing, was also the source of money that went for materials like tshirts and stickers. No Lack of Opportunities for Employment In the aftermath of the Serbian revolution, the National Endowment for Democracy, Albert Einstein Institution, and related outfits helped establish several Otpor-modeled youth groups in Eastern Europe, notably Zubr in Belarus in January 2001; Kmara in Georgia, in April 2003; and Pora in Ukraine in June 2004. Efforts to overthrow Belarus President Alexsander Luschenko failed in 2001, while the US overthrow of Georgian President Eduard Schevardnadze was successfully accomplished in 2003, using Kmara as part of its operation. Commenting on that expansion, Albert Einstein staffer Chris Miller, in his report on a 2001 trip to Serbia found on the group's website, reports: Since the ousting of Milosevic, several members of Otpor have met with members of the Belarusian group Zubr (Bison). In following developments in Belarus since early this year, It is clear that Zubr was developed or at least conceptualized, using Otpor as a model. Also, [Albert Einstein's report] From Dictatorship to Democracy is available in English on the Zubr website at www.zubr-belarus.com. Of course, success will not be achieved in Belarus or anywhere else, simply by mimicking the actions taken in Serbia. However the successful Serbian nonviolent struggle was highly influenced and aided by the availability of knowledge and information on strategic nonviolent struggle and both successful and unsuccessful past cases, which is transferable. Otpor focused on building their human resources, especially among youth. An Otpor training manual to "train future trainers" was developed, which contained excerpts from The Politics of Nonviolent Action, provided to Otpor by Robert Helvey during his workshop in Budapest for Serbs in early 2000. It may be applicable for other countries. And with funding provided by Freedom House and the US government, Otpor established the Center for Nonviolent Resistance, in Budapest, to train these groups. Describing the deployment of this youth movement, Ian Trainor, in the above cited Guardian November 2004 article, reports: In the centre of Belgrade, there is a dingy office staffed by computer-literate youngsters who call themselves the Centre for Non-violent Resistance. If you want to know how to beat a regime that controls the mass media, the judges, the courts, the security apparatus and the voting stations, the young Belgrade activists are for hire. They emerged from the anti-Milosevic student movement, Otpor, meaning resistance. The catchy, single-word branding is important. In Georgia last year, the parallel student movement was Khmara. In Belarus, it was Zubr. In Ukraine, it is Pora, meaning high time. Stickers, spray paint and websites are the young activists' weapons. Irony and street comedy mocking the regime have been hugely successful in puncturing public fear and enraging the powerful. Last year, before becoming president in Georgia, the US-educated Mr Saakashvili travelled from Tbilisi to Belgrade to be coached in the techniques of mass defiance. In Belarus, the US embassy organised the dispatch of young opposition leaders to the Baltic, where they met up with Serbs travelling from Belgrade. In Serbia's case, given the hostile environment in Belgrade, the Americans organised the overthrow from neighbouring Hungary—Budapest and Szeged. In recent weeks, several Serbs travelled to the Ukraine. Indeed, one of the leaders from Belgrade, Aleksandar Maric, was turned away at the border. The Democratic party's National Democratic Institute, the Republican party's International Republican Institute, the US State Department and USAID are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros's Open Society Institute. An Associated Press article by Dusan Stojanovic, on November 2, 2004, entitled "Serbia's export: Peaceful Revolution," elaborates: "We knew there would be work for us after Milosevic," said Danijela Nenadic, a program coordinator of the Belgrade-based Center for Nonviolent Resistance. The nongovernmental group emerged from Otpor, the pro-democracy movement that helped sweep Milosevic from power by organizing massive and colorful protests that drew crowds who never previously had the courage to oppose the former Yugoslav president. In Ukraine and Belarus, tens of thousands of people have been staging daily protests—carbon copies of the anti-Milosevic rallies—with "training" provided by the Serbian group. The group says it has "well-trained" followers in Ukraine and Belarus. In Georgia, Ukraine and Belarus, anti-government activists "saw what we did in Serbia and they contacted us for professional training," group member Sinisa Sikman said. Last year, Otpor's clenched fist was flying high on white flags again—this time in Georgia, when protesters stormed the parliament in an action that led to the toppling of Shevardnadze. Last month, Ukrainian border authorities denied entry to Alexandar Maric, a member of Otpor and an adviser with the U.S.-based democracy watchdog Freedom House. A Ukrainian student group called Pora was following the strategies of Otpor. James Woolsey's Freedom House "expressed concern" over Maric's deportation, in an October 14, 2004, press release which reported that he was traveling to Ukraine as part of "an initiative run by Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute to promote civic participation and oversight during the 2004 presidential and 2006 parliamentary elections in Ukraine." In a related statement, it added that it hoped the deportation was not a sign of the Ukrainian government's "unwillingness to allow the free flow of information and learning across borders that is an integral and accepted part of programs to encourage democratic progress in diverse societies around the world." Timeline: • Otpor! founded in Belgrade, Serbia in October 1998. Postmodern Coup overthrows Slobodan Milosevic on October 5, 2000. Subsequently forms Center for Nonviolent Resistance to spead !!! revolutions. • Clinton Administration's Community of Democracies launched in Warsaw, Poland, in June 2000. • Zubr! founded in Minsk, Belarus, on January 14, 2001. Election-Coup efforts fail in September 9, 2001. • Mjaft! founded in Tirana, Albania, on March 15, 2003. • Kmara! founded in Tblisi, Georgia in April 2003. "Rose revolution" overthrows President Eduard Shevardnadze on November 23, 2003. • Pora! founded in Kiev, Ukraine in June 2004. "Orange revolution" installs Victor Yushchenko into power on December 26, 2004. • Kmara! overthrows Abashidze of Ajaria (western Georgian secessionist province) May 5, 2004 Who is Col. Bob Helvey? Who is Col. Bob Helvey, who personally, and through his Albert Einstein Institution, played such a key role in the Serbian and Ukrainian coups? According to his own account, Helvey first got involved in "strategic nonviolence" upon seeing the failures of military approaches to toppling dictators, especially in Myanmar (also known as Burma). In a January 29, 2001, interview with Steve York in Belgrade, Helvey stated: My career has been that of a professional soldier. And one of my last assignments was to be the defense attaché in Rangoon [Myanmar]. And I really had an opportunity—two years living in Rangoon and getting around the country—to really see first hand what happens when a people are oppressed to the point that they're absolutely terrorized. And, you know, there was no future for people and there was a struggle for democracy going on, but it was an armed struggle on the periphery of the country and in the border regions. And it was very clear that that armed struggle was never going to succeed. So, when I got back [to the US], I kept Burma in the back of my mind. Here were a people that really wanted democracy, really wanted political reform, but the only option they had was armed struggle. And that was really a nonstarter, so there was really a sense of helplessness. Back in the US, he reports, he was selected as senior fellow at the Harvard Center for International Affairs—while still an active duty officer, where he attended a meeting on a "Program for Nonviolent Sanctions." Dr. Gene Sharp happened to be there. And he started out the seminar by saying, "Strategic nonviolent struggle is all about political power. How to seize political power and how to deny it to others." And I thought, "Boy, this guy's talking my language." And, you know, that's what armed struggle is about. So I got interested in this approach because I saw immediately that there may be an opportunity here for the Burmese. And how did he get involved in Serbia? I had done some work along the Thai-Burmese border with the International Republican Institute. So when they were looking for someone to present information on strategic nonviolent struggle to a Serb group, they called me. The Albert Einstein Institution repeatedly emphasizes Col. Helvey's role in training the Myanmar opposition, and a substantial amount of the group's web page stresses the group's involvement there. Reflecting this preoccupation, Albert Einstein's writings have repeatedly been translated not only into Burmen, but also into Karen, Chin, Mon, Jingphaw and several other ethnic minority languages and dialects in that country. The Albert Einstein Institute does not emphasize, however, that even the US State Department and Drug Enforcement Agency identify the ethnic minority opposition to the Myanmar government as comprising the world's largest producers of opium and heroin. The DEA's 2002 "Drug Intelligence Brief: Burma: Country Brief," for example, states: Armed ethnic minority groups who have been in conflict with the GOB [Government of Burma, aka Myanmar ed] for decades control cultivation, production, and trafficking in Burma. . . . The drug trafficking groups operating within Burma are mostly insurgent factions that have been warring with the GOB and among themselves for many years. Special note should be made here of Bo Mya and his Karen group, which Col. Helvey has advised for years. Bo Mya, now retired, has admitted to have held meetings with Burmese drug king pin Khun Sa, that Khun Sa said were held in an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate opium and heroin routes of Myanmar and Thailand. (Bo Mya has denied Myanmar government allegations of his involvement in the narcotics trade.) According to Khun Sa's statements—later made famous by the US military "Missing in Action" investigator "Bo" Gritz—his opium trafficking was done under the coordination of Richard Armitage, currently US Undersecretary of State. (See references here, here and here) While Col. Helvey's precise relations with former CIA deputy director Theodore Shackley, who had been widely accused of overseeing this narcotics trafficking, remain unknown, such reports do lend credence to claims that narcotics syndicates have played a pivotal role in the recent coups in the Balkans, and now Ukraine, which comprise an important route for Southeast Asian heroin entering Western Europe. Myanmar Operations In its "Report on Activities, 1993-1999," the Albert Einstein Institution laid great stress on the importance of Helvey's operations to subvert the Myanmar regime as a centerpiece of their activities. In fact, the first paragraph of the introduction of the report reads: Colonel Kyaw Thein was clearly unhappy with our workshop on nonviolent struggle held along the Thai-Burma border. At a September 1996 press briefing in Rangoon, the spokesman for the military dictatorship charged that “aliens and mercenaries” were trying to “disrupt the peace and tranquility” in Burma—as if widespread torture, forced labor, and other human rights atrocities constitute “tranquility.” The military official was incensed by an ever increasing global phenomenon: direct transnational assistance and cooperation between nongovernmental organizations and pro-democracy groups around the world, in this case of course, in Burma. The Albert Einstein Institution’s groundbreaking outreach on strategic nonviolent struggle is but one example of this growing trend that moves beyond traditional humanitarian and human rights efforts. . . . The impetus for our intensive workshops on nonviolent struggle for Burmese groups came in November 1991, when Robert Helvey, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former U.S. military attaché in Burma, requested that we assist in reviewing lesson plans for an introductory course in nonviolent struggle. Mr. Helvey designed the course for Burmese opposition groups in part by relying on Gene Sharp’s The Politics of Nonviolent Action. The May 1992 course, conducted inside Burma at the opposition headquarters at Manerplaw, was extremely well received. In fact, when leading Burmese opposition groups formed the umbrella organization National Council of the Union of Burma in August 1992, they also established a “Political Defiance Committee” to educate activists and to organize strategic nonviolent struggle inside Burma (“political defiance” is the term adopted in Burma to connote nonviolent struggle). Senior pro-democracy leaders requested additional workshops from Robert Helvey and the Albert Einstein Institution. A Fall 1992 article in "Nonviolent Sanctions" by Gene Sharp, entitled "Exploring Nonviolent Struggle in Thailand and Burma," and found on Albert Einstein's website, describes their role in Myanmar, and in particular Col. Helvey's role: Gene Sharp traveled to Thailand and Burma in the fall, October 20–November 8, 1992, in response to two invitations. The American Friends of Democracy in Burma (headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia) asked him to help evaluate a course on "Political Defiance" that had been taught in Mannerplaw by Robert Helvey for the Democratic Alliance of Burma. “After two days rest and orientation in Bangkok, I traveled to Mannerplaw, a base camp for the Burmese democratic opposition located along the Thai-Burma border. . . . During my four days in Mannerplaw I participated in a variety of meetings and discussions about nonviolent struggle (or political defiance as it is more often called there). These included meetings with top political officials, military officers, and leaders of the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, the National League for Democracy, the Karen Youth Organization Leadership Seminar, the Democratic Alliance of Burma, and the Political Defiance Committee.” Robert Helvey, a retired U.S. Army colonel and an expert on Burma, began offering a course on political defiance to groups in Mannerplaw last spring. The aim of this intensive course is to give participants a basic understanding of the technique of nonviolent struggle. At the end of the course, students are expected to understand the insights into political power on which political defiance is based, and also to have developed an understanding of the technique’s multiple methods, its dynamics of conflict against a repressive regime, the mechanisms of change, and the principles of strategy in nonviolent struggle. Peace Magazine, in its April June 2003 issue, contains further details on Helvey's career, in a laudatory article entitled "Robert Helvey's Expert Political Defiance." From 1983 until 1985 Helvey was a US military attaché at the American Embassy in Rangoon, where he was dismayed by the futility of armed resistance to the brutal dictatorship of Burma. An armed struggle had continued without success for over two decades. After retiring from the army in 1991, Helvey gave a speech in Washington, using Sharp's insights and adding his own. A member of the audience later offered to pay his way to Burma to spread his message. With this funding, from 1992 to 1998, he made 15 trips to the Thai-Burmese border to meet with more than 500 members of the National Council Union of Burma, a pro-democracy umbrella group. On eight occasions, Helvey taught a six-week course, seeking to build confidence, identify the dictatorship's major weaknesses, and form pressure groups. Many of those attending Helvey's course had been officers in armed resistance groups for many years and were skeptical about nonviolence. For example, Auun Nang Oo, who is now a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Nonviolence, was astonished that a career soldier could hold such views. Another unbeliever was General Bo Mya, the leader of the Karens, the biggest national minority. At first he would just grumble and grunt that he "wasn't interested in doing the work of cowards." To change such attitudes, Helvey coined the more militant-sounding phrase, "political defiance," which won Bo over and caused him to ask Helvey to train more Karen leaders. The Myamar government has also commented on Col. Helvey's career. For example, at a June 27, 1997 press conference entitled "How some Western powers have been aiding and abetting terrorism committed by certain organizations operating under the guise of democracy and human rights by giving them assistance in both cash and kind." There, Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt, at the time Secretary-1 of the State Law and Order Restoration Council of Myanmar, said of Helvey: He was assigned to Myanmar as Defense Attache (Army) at the U.S. embassy in Myanmar from 1982 to 1984 with the rank of full colonel. On conclusion of his assignment in Myanmar he went home, retired immediately from the US Army and returned to the Myanmar-Thai border. He is military advisor to the KNU, KNPP and the Democratic Party for New Society, personally giving military training and manipulating the armed groups in various ways right up till now. The Myamar government newspaper, New Light of Myanmar, on February 4, 1995, also reported on Helvey's involvement with insurgent groups then working with opium kingpin Khun Sa. As the second strategy of the NCUB [National Coalition Union of Burma], it formed the Political Defiance Committee with the objective to use all sorts of subversive acts so that the people will have wrong impressions of the Government and lose their respect on it and so disturbances and upheavals will break out in the country. Thus, they made contacts with underground elements within the country and distributed agitative pamphlets, set off bombs in townships to disturb peace and tranquility and cause disturbances and resorted to other disruptive acts. Those who gave training in political defiance (PD) activities were a former retired US Defence Attache Robert Helvey and one Gene Sharp. It was seen that during the three-year period of extending invitation for peace, the KNU were bent on undermining the interest of the people. KNU Bo Mya sent KNU Lt-Col Law Wadi, demolition expert Lt-Col Saw Isaac, to drug warlord Khun Sa at Homein Camp and had discussions from 10 to 12 April 1994 on cooperation between KNU and MTA, assisting in making land mines and arms and ammunition and other economic cooperation. The Coup Plotters The Albert Einstein Institution The Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) has played the key role in recent years in training and deploying youth movements to help prepare the conditions for coups through fostering the impression that the targeted regimes are deeply unpopular, and through destabilizing those regimes through their demonstrations and the like. The group, which is funded by the Soros foundations and the US government, is led by former DIA officer Col. Robert Helvey, and Harvard University's Dr. Gene Sharp. According to the Albert Einstein Institution’s report, Dr Gene Sharp (curriculum vitae and Biographical Profile) "founded the Albert Einstein Institution in 1983 to promote research, policy studies, and education on the strategic uses of nonviolent struggle in face of dictatorship, war, genocide, and oppression." Dr. Sharp has held research appointments in Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs for nearly 30 years. His writings, which on the strategic use of nonviolence in overturning states, have been translated into 27 languages. Through funding provided by the Soros foundations, and through the National Endowment of Democracy and other US government conduits, Sharp and his associates have regularly traveled to targeted regions to facilitate revolutions, since the group's creation. According to Sharp, "If the issue is to bring down a dictatorship, then it is not good enough to say, 'we want freedom.' It's necessary to develop a strategy, or a super-plan, to weaken a dictatorship and that can only be done by identifying its sources of power. These [sources of power] include: authority, human resources skills, knowledge, tangible factors, economic and material resources and sanctions like police and troops." For this reason, Sharp reports, he has written numerous books on nonviolent struggle to help oppressed peoples develop a "superplan." These works, of which the major one is "The Politics of Nonviolent Action," have been translated into 27 languages. Among these languages are Russian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Estonian, Macedonian, Arabic, Tamil, Burmese, Karen (and several other Burmese minority languages), Thai, Chinese, Korean, as well as French, Dutch, Spanish, German, Italian, and other European languages still spoken in former colonies. While Sharp is the main theoretician of the group (and officially its senior scholar), its more practical work is overseen by its president, Colonel Robert Helvey, who began working with the center even before officially retiring from the US Army in 1991. A 30-year veteran of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Helvey had practical experience in subversive operations throughout Southeast Asia prior to his work with the institution. According to numerous reports, Helvey was the case officer for the US-sponsored coup in Serbia, was deeply involved in similar operations in Georgia, and according to at least on report, was on the ground in the recent coup in Ukraine. (Ukrainian translation of From Dictatorship to Democracy by Sharp has just been announced by The Albert Einstein Institution) According to the Albert Einstein Institution’s report for the years 2000 to 2004, its mission is to "advance the worldwide study and strategic use of nonviolent action in conflict." Numerous individuals and organizations interested in the potential of nonviolent struggle contact the Albert Einstein Institution. In recent years, requests for information or advice have come from people involved in conflicts in Albania, Kosovo, Moldova, Serbia, Slovakia, Cyprus, the Republic of Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Lebanon, the Occupied Territories, Vietnam, China, Tibet, West Papua, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Aceh (Indonesia), Kashmir, Haiti, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Cuba, Mexico, Angola, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Togo, Kenya and Zimbabwe. AEI’s translation program has been instrumental in expanding our global reach. In the last four years alone, the Albert Einstein Institution’s publications have appeared in Serbian, Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Tibetan, and several ethnic Burmese languages. Additional translations are currently underway in Chinese and Kurdish. In his letter from the president, Col. Helvey reports: Strategic nonviolent struggle must be recognized as a subject that can be understood and applied by all who seek to throw off the yoke of governmental oppression. . . . The assumption that there is no realistic alternative to violence in extreme situations is contradicted by various cases of important nonviolent struggles in several countries in recent decades. These include Norway, Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, the Philippines, the Soviet Union, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Serbia, El Salvador, Guatemala, India, and others. Many earlier cases of improvised nonviolent struggle occurred and are also relevant. Usually the importance of these history-making nonviolent struggles has been trivialized or ignored. Although there have also been some failures in nonviolent struggle, such as in China and Burma, the fact that these cases could have been waged at all, and that numerous nonviolent struggles have succeeded, is highly important. International Center on Nonviolent Conflicts The International Center on Nonviolent Conflicts has been heavily involved in the new Postmodern Coups, especially through its top figures, Dr. Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall. According to its website, the center "develops and encourages the use of civilian-based, nonmilitary strategies to establish and defend democracy and human rights worldwide." It "provides assistance in the training and deployment of field advisors, to deepen the conceptual knowledge and practical skills of applying nonviolent strategies in conflicts throughout the world where progress toward democracy and human rights is possible." The most significant nonviolent conflicts in the world today, which may lead to "regime changes," it reports, are occurring in Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Chinese Tibet, Belarus, Ukraine [now nearing completion], Palestine, Iran, and Cuba. Dr. Peter Ackerman is the founding chairman of the center. He is currently the chairman of the Board of Overseers of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, an important US intelligence recruitment center, and is on the Executive Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Dr Ackerman was also a founding director of the Albert Einstein Institution. Dr. Ackerman was the executive producer of the PBS-TV documentary, “Bringing Down a Dictator,” on the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, which has since been translated into Arabic, Farsi, French, Mandarin, Russian, and Spanish. He was also the series editor and principal content advisor behind the PBS-TV series, “A Force More Powerful,” which documents the use of nonviolence in regime changes. It has been translated into Arabic, Farsi, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish. Ackerman is the co-author of two books on nonviolent resistance: A Force More Powerful (Palgrave/St. Martin’s Press 2001), which is a companion book to the television series, and Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century (Praeger 1994). He regularly lectures on the use of the nonviolence in toppling targets states, including at the State Department. Former Air Force officer Jack DuVall, is the president of the center, and was one of its founders. Like Dr. Ackerman, DuVall gives frequent lectures nationally and internationally on the strategic use of nonviolence. The center's vice chairman, Berel Rodal, is the former director-general of the Policy Secretariat of the Canadian Department of National Defence. The Arlington Institute The Arlington Institute (TAI), is an apparent strategist in the use of postmodern coups. It was founded in 1989 by John L. Petersen, in order, in his own words, " to help redefine the concept of national security in much larger, comprehensive terms by introducing the rapidly evolving global trends of population growth, environmental degradation, and science and technology explosion, and social value shifts into the traditional national defense equation." Among its board members are Jack DuVall, the former Air Force officer who is director of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict in Washington, DC and James Woolsey, the former Clinton administration CIA director and neocon spokesman who is currently the chairman of Freedom House. The need for an organization like the Arlington Institute, its website reports, "evolved from the bipartisan, eighteen-month long National Security Group project that Petersen co-founded and jointly led in Washington, DC, in 1986-7. That ad-hoc group of national security experts was brought together to explore and map the security environment that the successful candidate would have to operate within after the 1988 presidential campaign. Petersen also wrote the final report for the group, ‘The Diffusion of Power: An Era of Realignment,’ which became a strategy document used at the highest levels of the Department of Defense.” "In the early part of the 90s," it adds, "Petersen was engaged in a number of projects for the Department of Defense which functioned to build a systematic understanding of the major approaches that were then being used to study and anticipate futures. One notable project for the Office of the Secretary of Defense involved traveling throughout the world visiting the foremost practitioners of futures research to assess each methodology and attempt to develop a new, synthetic approach that drew from the best of the then current processes." Petersen became an advisor to a number of senior defense officials during this time, serving in various personal support roles to the undersecretary of the Navy and the chief of Naval Operations, among others. Midway through the 1990s, it adds, "Petersen became convinced that humanity was living in an extraordinary time of change that would necessarily result in a major global shift within the following two decades. TAI committed itself to playing a significant role in facilitating a global transition to a new world that operates in a fundamentally different way from the past." Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates Penn, Schoen and Berland (PSB) has played a pioneering role in the use of polling operations, especially "exit polls," in facilitating coups. Its primary mission is to shape the perception that the group installed into power in a targeted country has broad popular support. The group began work in Serbia during the period that its principle, Mark Penn, was President Clinton's top political advisor. PSB was founded in 1975, with offices in Washington, DC, Denver, and New York. It reports it has conducted research in over 65 countries for Fortune 500 companies and major political campaigns. "PSB is perhaps best known for our work as long-term strategic advisors to Bill Gates and Microsoft," it reports, while in the political world, "the firm is best known for being the long-time strategic advisors to President Bill Clinton and to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, among others." The firm reports that it has conducted "a wide variety of government research projects, including recent work for the U.S. State Department in troubled countries overseas." Its business clients have included Siemens, American Express, Eli Lilly, Fleet, Boston Financial, Texaco, BP, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, ING Group, DeBeers, and KMG, among others. The groups touts its role in Serbia. In an article, entitled "Defeating dictators at the ballot box: Lessons on how to develop successful electoral strategy in an authoritarian society," posted on their website, coauthors Penn and Schoen report: International strategists, political and media consultants—such as ourselves have played critical roles behind the scenes of the elections in Serbia and Zimbabwe, helping the opposition parties craft strategies, messages and organize a credible and effective campaign that has enabled them to weaken the dictator, his political party, and eventually throw him out of power.. The introduction of cutting edge political and communications techniques is as well as the advise of the best Western political consultants and image makers, is as potent a weapon as the planes, bombs, and intelligence technology used in such conflicts as the Persian Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, and, most recently Afghanistan. The firm's role in subverting Serbia was first detailed in a December 11, 2000, Washington Post article by Michael Dobbs, US Advice Guided Milosevic Opposition. In a softly lit conference room, American pollster Doug Schoen flashed the results of an in-depth opinion poll of 840 Serbian voters onto an overhead projection screen, sketching a strategy for toppling Europe's last remaining communist-era ruler. His message, delivered to leaders of Serbia's traditionally fractious opposition, was simple and powerful. Slobodan Milosevic—survivor of four lost wars, two major street uprisings, 78 days of NATO bombing and a decade of international sanctions—was "completely vulnerable" to a wellorganized electoral challenge. The key, the poll results showed, was opposition unity. Held in a luxury hotel in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, in October 1999, the closed-door briefing by Schoen, a Democrat, turned out to be a seminal event, pointing the way to the electoral revolution that brought down Milosevic a year later. It also marked the start of an extraordinary U.S. effort to unseat a foreign head of state, not through covert action of the kind the CIA once employed in such places as Iran and Guatemala, but by modern election campaign techniques. Milosevic's strongest political card was the disarray and ineffectiveness of his opponents. The opposition consisted of nearly two dozen political parties, some of whose leaders were barely on speaking terms with one another. It was against this background that 20 opposition leaders accepted an invitation from the Washington-based National Democratic Institute (NDI) in October 1999 to a seminar at the Marriott Hotel in Budapest, overlooking the Danube River. The key item on the agenda: an opinion poll commissioned by the U.S. polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates. The poll reported that Milosevic had a 70 percent unfavorable rating among Serbian voters. But it also showed that the big names in the opposition—men such as Zoran Djindjic and Vuk Draskovic—were burdened with negative poll ratings almost as high as Milosevic's. Among the candidates best placed to challenge Milosevic, the poll suggested, was a moderate Serbian nationalist named Vojislav Kostunica, who had a favorable rating of 49 percent and an unfavorable rating of only 29 percent. Schoen, who had provided polling advice to former Yugoslav prime minister Milan Panic during his unsuccessful 1992 campaign to depose Milosevic, drew several conclusions from these and other findings of the poll. . . . Most important, only a united opposition had a chance of deposing Milosevic. "If you take one word from this conference," Schoen told the delegates, "I urge it to be unity." Mark Penn has been president of the firm since its founding in 1975. He served as President Clinton's pollster and political adviser for the 1996 re-election campaign and throughout the second term of the administration, including during the period he oversaw the Serbian election campaign which toppled President Milosevic. His influence over the Clinton administration was such that the Washington Post called him perhaps "the most powerful man in Washington you've never heard of". According to the firm's website, Penn helped elect 15 overseas Presidents in the Far East, Latin America, and Europe. Doug Schoen is the firm's founding partner and a principal strategist. According to the firm, Schoen has, for the last 20 years "created winning messages and provided strategic advice to numerous political clients in the United States and to heads of state in countries around the world, including Greece, Turkey, Israel, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Bermuda and Yugoslavia." Additionally, he was "President William Jefferson Clinton's research and strategic consultant during the 1996 reelection, and has been widely credited with creating and effectively communicating the message that turned around the president's political fortunes between 1994 and 1996." Alan Fleischmann, who runs the firm's Washington offices, is described as a "specialist in strategic and crisis communications who has served in domestic and overseas senior management posts in the private and public sectors, specializing in finance, public and foreign policy, marketing, communications, negotiation, mediation, and strategy. Prior to joining the firm, Fleischmann been staff director of the Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere of the United States Congress, and a senior advisor to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Fleischmann has also been a legislative aide to the late German Chancellor Willy Brandt in the German Bundestag. 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	http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/58850 Gläserne Bus- und Bahnfahrer T-Systems hat für öffentliche Verkehrsunternehmen ein elektronisches Ticketing-System entwickelt, das bundesweit die herkömmlichen Fahrscheine ersetzen könnte. Fahrgäste sollen dazu künftig Kundenkarten mit RFID-Chips erhalten, die eine eindeutige Identifizierung erlauben. Lesegeräte in den Fahrzeugen erfassen diese Daten beim Ein- und Aussteigen -- automatisch und kontaktlos. Das System ermittelt so die zurückgelegte Strecke und den Fahrpreis unter Berücksichtung von Weiterfahrten beim Umsteigen. Der Fahrgast muss die Karte dabei nicht aus der Tasche nehmen. Anzeige Ziel ist eine einheitliche Erfassung und bargeldlose Abrechung der Fahrtkosten. Der Fahrgast bekommt lediglich eine Rechnung von dem Verkehrsbetrieb, der ihm seine Karte ausgehändigt hat. Anhand der gesammelten Datensätze rechnen die Verkehrsbetriebe dann untereinander ab. Als Vorteil für die Unternehmen nennt T-Systems auch die Fälschungsssicherheit der Online-Tickets. T-Systems engagiert sich bei dem vom Bund geförderten Projekt VDV-Kernapplikation, das einen bundesweiten Standard für Ticketing-, Fahrpreiserfassungs- und Abrechnungssysteme zum Ziel hat. Ihm gehören mehr als 150 Verkehrsverbünde und -unternehmen an, darunter auch die Deutsche Bahn. Es bleibt allerdings abzuwarten, ob die Fahrgäste bereit sind, dem Verband Deutscher Verkehrsunternehmen (VDV) ihre Bewegungsprofile anzuvertrauen. Immerhin trügen sie eine kontaklos auslesbare Chipkarte mit sich herum, anhand derer sie womöglich auch außerhalb von Bus und Bahn unbemerkt erfasst werden könnten. (ad/c't)
	http://www.rbi-aktuell.de/cms/front_content.php?client=1&lang=1&idcat=17&idart=450 Immer mehr Firmenrechner überwacht "Aber in den USA wird mit großem Aufwand an der Entwicklung von Cyberwaffen geforscht. Eine spezielle Hacker-Einheit kümmert sich bereits jetzt ausschließlich um den Krieg im Netz."
	Alliierte Verluste im aktuelle Irak-Feldzug
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