For most people, al-Qaeda and its chief Osama bin Laden are inextricably linked to Afghanistan but it was in Yemen that al-Qaeda's war against the West began.
Praveen Swami, Diplomatic Editor Published: 8:35PM BST 29 Oct 2010
It is bin Laden's ancestral home and in December, 1998, it was where a little-known Islamist group responded to his calls for attacks on US and British targets by kidnapping sixteen tourists. Three British citizens and one Australian were killed when Yemeni forces stormed the kidnappers' safe house, 175 miles south of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa.
Since then al-Qaeda has branched into a global network and built new terror training camps and bases across Asia.
But now it has returned and Yemen is once again emerging as the global jihadist movement's new citadel.
Increasingly plots targeting the west have had a Yemen connection - often involving al-Qaeda operatives inspired and trained by the organisation's key leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was raised in Yemen, educated at US universities, a mentor for three of members of the al-Qaeda hijack squad which carried out the 9/11 attacks.
No hard data exists on just how many terrorists al-Qaeda has at its disposal in Yemen, but most intelligence estimates run to several hundred. Most are Yemeni, but authorities in that country have arrested at least 50 foreign nationals linked to al-Qaeda - among them, British, US, French and Malaysian citizens.
Jonathan Evans, the director-general of the Security Service, said last month that threats to the UK are increasingly emanating from Yemen and Somalia - not just the war-torn lands along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Yemen has been engaged in a bitter battle against these forces, using its air force and artillery to target the al-Qaeda bases. Colonel Mohamed al-Khodr, the head of security in the troubled South Yemen province of Abyan said earlier this month that his country's forces were "engaged in what amounts to guerrilla war". He admitted that "we have not managed to win the battle and are facing difficulties". More than 50 Yemeni security force personnel have been killed by al-Qaeda this year
Yemen's al-Qaeda faction is known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and was yesterday accused by US Homelands Security of involvement in the cargo plane terror alert. It is led by is Nasser Abdul Karim al-Wuhayshi, a former personal assistant to bin Laden. Al-Wuhayshi was arrested by Iranian authorities and extradited to Yemen, but escaped from prison in 2006.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has demonstrated a high degree of ability to hit Yemen were it most hurts - hitting the diplomats, aid workers and tourists who are so essential to the country's cash-strapped economy. Earlier this month, al-Qaeda terrorists targeted the deputy chief of the UK's embassy in Sana'a, Fionna Gibb. In April, an al-Qaeda suicide bomber almost succeeded in assassinating Tim Torlott, Britain's ambassador to Yemen. Last year, the jihadist group targeted a convoy bearing the families of four South Koreans it had killed in an earlier suicide attack.
The group is responsible for the publication of the al-Qaeda magazine which gives advice to would-be militants. The latest edition included a section on how to mow people down with a pickup truck and other tips on how to kill Americans. It indicated that the terrorist network was moving away from terror "spectaculars" towards smaller scale operations.
Yemen's evolution as a jihadist launch-pad dates back to the 1980s, when hundreds of its citizens joined in the jihad against the Soviet Union's forces in Saudi Arabia. Though born to a Syrian mother, and raised in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden's father Mohammad bin Laden hailed from the mountainous Hadramawt-region village of Ribaat Bashen, and the al-Qaeda chief often said he dreamt of one day returning there.
The Afghan jihad veterans played an important role in Yemen's political life after they returned. In 1994, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's president, recruited their services to defeat left-wing separatists in the south; many later received government handouts and rewards. Sheikh Abdulmajid Zindani, a former bin Laden associate, remains among the country's most influential people.
British nationals played a key role in some of al-Qaeda's first attacks in Yemen. In December 1998 and January 1999, British nationals belonging to an organisation calling itself the Supporters of Shariah (Islamic Law) were convicted of attempting to blow up British targets in Yemen. The organisation was led by Mustafa Kamel Mustafa - a man better known by his jihadist nom de guerre, Abu Hamza.
The son of an Egyptian military officer, and a former nightclub bouncer, al Masri discovered radical Islamism while he was a student at Brighton Polytechnic. . He is currently in prison in Belmarsh awaiting the outcome of a US request for his extradition on terrorist charges. .
Paris, France (CNN) -- The French government will not be swayed by a threatening message apparently recorded by Osama Bin Laden, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday.
"It goes without saying that France does not let its politics be dictated by anyone, and certainly not by terrorists," Sarkozy said while attending the European Union summit in Brussels Friday.
Bin Laden warned France to get its troops out of Afghanistan and not to oppress Muslims at home in a tape broadcast by the Al-Jazeera network Wednesday and authenticated by the French Foreign Ministry on Thursday.
"If you want to tyrannize and think that it is your right to ban the free women from wearing the burqa, isn't it our right to expel your occupying forces, your men from our lands by striking them by the neck?" the speaker demands, in reference to recently passed French legislation barring women from covering their faces in public.
"This message only confirms the reality of the terrorist threat against which the French authorities have taken and continue to take appropriate measures," the ministry said in a statement Thursday.
Sarkozy wins Pension Reform - saves French economy
PARIS (Dow Jones)--Anti-government industrial action and protests continued to diminish Friday after President Nicolas Sarkozy's contentious pension reform was voted into law.
"We have the satisfaction of having accomplished our duty" on pension reform, Dominique Paille, a spokesman for Sarkozy's conservative UMP party told French television.
The pension reform cleared parliamentary hurdles Wednesday but will be delayed a week or two as the opposition Socialist party, as expected, appeals to the country's constitutional court which for its part is expected to dismiss the appeal.
Sarkozy has "by and large won the pensions battle," Douglas Webber, a political science professor at the Fontainebleau-based international business school INSEAD said. "Despite a few concessions, he's got pretty much what he wanted, keeping his political majority intact and united at the same time," Webber added.
Publicly, Sarkozy was modest. "There is only one winner in this affair and that's the social security system and the French people," Sarkozy told reporters on Friday. "French people's pensions will be funded," he added.
After a union-led national day of protest and strikes Thursday fizzled out, striking refinery workers were heading back to work Friday and a crippling strike at the key Fos-Lavera oil port came to an end. .
Our young and inexperienced president has continued to dominate the television entertainment, talk, comedy and sports shows since he took office where he is in control of the agenda and can get an occasional laugh. In fact, no other president in history has come close to the number of appearances Obama has made on Oprah, the View, Jon Stewart, Letterman, Leno an on and on.
At the same time our kind of telegenic president, who now allows comedians to call him "Dude", has only held two real news conferences the past year. Even George Bush made himself available to the news media far, far more than Obama. Why are the Obama people so dedicated to protecting him from news questions while making it seem as if he is always available?
I suppose if my domestic legislative accomplishments could not be understood, like health care, financial reform and the stimulus, and my foreign accomplishments did not exist, like failures to stop Iran, North Korea, Israel, Afghanistan, Russia or China from doing things we don't like I might not want to face the music either.
As the economy stumbles along, unemployment remains far higher than we were promised when we gave Obama his trillion dollar stimulus, health care costs continue to spiral up, wars get worse and relations keep deteriorating, it is probably better that Obama be kept far away from the news media on the comedy and entertainment shows.
Heaven forbid if the news media, what used to be the watchdogs of the public, ever got to know the truth about what Obama is doing. .
As President Obama continues his Don Quixote type wanderings searching for a place where he is welcome to campaign, his henchmen like former President Bill Clinton are out trying to play Godfather on his behalf and get the Black candidate for Senate in Florida to withdraw so the White Independent candidate can win.
Obama may be trying to shore up his base and get the Black community to once again blindly follow his lead to the polls and vote Democratic but his behind the scene efforts to cherry pick those Democrats he wants to win continues through surrogates like Clinton. It is a pattern we have seen before as Clinton also tried to get the Democrat who won the Pennsylvania Senate primary to withdraw because he ran against Obama's handpicked choice.
In Florida Black Democrat Kendrick Meek condemned the tactics of Obama, Clinton and Charlie Christ, the Obama favorite, for attempting to dictate what choice the voters had in the election. In Pennsylvania the people voted against the President.
But come Tuesday the Black voters may think twice about the president they elected and how he has spent much of his first two years ignoring the Black politicians while assuming the Black voters will continue to blindly do as they are told.
The same political strategy was used by Obama on the Hispanic community in which he promised them an immigration reform bill then failed to even introduce the bill. Yet he still expects them to blindly support him, his candidates and his agenda whatever that might be.
To what degree the Blacks and Hispanics will allow themselves to be taken for granted remains to be seen but voter enthusiasm from these key Democratic constituencies is way down and for good reason, they are tired of being used. So far only Obama's Wall Street financiers have benefitted from the Obama agenda. .
After watching the evolution of the Tea Party over the past two years I often wonder if the Main street and Lame Street media who cover the Tea Party have listened to a word said by Tea Party participants. Since we know they condemned the Tea Party back in the beginning as dangerous radical fringe, and we know some in the media like Nora O'Donnell of NBC have been bitterly jealous or hateful of Tea Party leaders like Sarah Palin. Just yesterday O'Donnell said she was sick of hearing how Palin is "attractive and appealing".
So our first exposure to the Tea Party was the health care town hall fiascos of the Democrats when Nancy Pelosi said her congressmen were physically threatened by these radicals and her pit bull Steny Hoyer organized his own mercenaries to control the tea people, his being the SEIU thugs who claimed to put Obama in office.
Obama, Pelosi, Reid and all the liberal Democrats quickly joined the media trashing of the Tea Party people and apparently they thought the Tea people would just go away. Then along came the election to fill Teddy Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat and the radical Tea Party helped propel a Republican unknown named Scott Brown to a stunning capture of the Kennedy seat.
From that point on the Tea party treatment in the media changed, though not necessarily for the better. For the next year the media looked for every nut case, oddball sign and strange utterance from anyone even remotely connected to the Tea party in an effort to prove these were not ordinary citizens but were escaped mental patients.
But the scorn and disbelief by the media and politicians paled compared to the actions by the political parties as both joined in a holy war against the Tea party as both began to realize their old boy political network was threatened by these outsiders.
You see, the Tea party advocated a conservative platform aimed solely at the top issues of every citizen in America. Well, at least all the citizens except Obama and the Democrats who only seemed able to talk about health care, financial reform, and some stimulus that would keep unemployment under 8%. As the unemployment shot up to 9.7% it was obvious Obama and the Democrats had filed to see the light.
The Tea Party people wanted less government, a balanced budget and a reduced national deficit. Quite the radical agenda. There were no social issues. It didn't matter if you were Republican, Democrat or Independent, all were welcome to the Tea party movement.
It was about this time Sarah Palin and others took a very big chance and embraced the Tea Party movement and the grassroots candidates being fostered by the Tea party. The good old boys who controlled the GOP party had to be having fits and may even turned on Sarah to punish her for helping the enemy, outsiders that could not be controlled.
By the time the early primaries of this year came around the Tea party was knocking off Republican favorites and someone in the GOP machine woke up and realized if they embraced the Tea party primary winners, the Republican advantage in the off year election could be turned into a landslide.
Despite continuing efforts by a media appalled by the fact normal Tea party people thought they should be elected, and in spite of the media and Obama/Pelosi efforts to discredit and laugh off the Tea party, the outside radicals caught the attention of Main Street America and suddenly became a powerful political force Independent of the two old political parties.
Main Street Independents were first to embrace the ideals of the Tea party followed by disgruntled members of both the Democrat and Republican parties who were disgusted with the direction of both mainstream parties. Late last spring when the number of registered Independents in America surged past the registered Democrats and Republicans for the first time in over 100 years it struck a note of terror in even the old professional politicians.
Of course the media were the last to stop trashing the Tea party as the Lame Street media have never been known to catch on to popular opinion that conflicts with their own prejudices. Over 100 viable Tea party candidates got nominated to major offices and hundreds more are viable candidates for state legislatures and other local offices yet still the media focuses all attention on the political mistakes of a handful of Tea party candidates while ignoring the many legitimate candidates.
Just today the liberal mouth pieces of MSNBC were blaming the Republicans for letting "inferior" Tea party candidates run and win in primary elections when the GOP could have won the general election with traditional GOP candidates.
They still don't get it. The Tea party is not and never has been a Republican creation. Right now it is the only party in America that stands on it's principles. The Tea party would rather lose an election trying to get an outsider elected than back a candidate who will change positions to get elected. Such integrity no longer seems to exist with professional politicians or parties.
The Tea party winners will swell the GOP landslide because the GOP is opposed to the Obama agenda, pure and simple. It is the Obama agenda that has totally ignored the needs of the people. After the election, if the Tea party winners embrace campaign and campaign finance reform and force through, in order to stop special interests and the selling of America, long overdue changes, both political parties and the media will lose control of the national agenda and America will be returned to the People where it belongs.
By the way, the professional politicians might have pocketed more than TWO BILLION DOLLARS in campaign contributions, but the Main Street Lame Street media has pocketed over THREE BILLION DOLLARS in media buys from the same politicians and special interests. So just who do we think is owned by the billions in spending? .
Note to French Readers - What You May Not Know About Your History
During my 7 years researching my history book, Saviors of the 20th Century, Hitler & Stalin, The War of Annihilation between the Nazis and Communists, I was somewhat surprised to learn of the role of France in the development and spread of Communism and the rise of Jewish dominance in the communist movement prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917.
From the time of the French Revolution until the Russian Revolution, France was the place where the German, English and other radical Communists met to plan and execute the rise of the Communist party into one of the most powerful and blood thirsty political movements on earth.
It was action by Communist sympathizers in France that seeded the international revolutionary socialist and then Communist movements that brought about the overthrow of several European nations before achieving success in overthrowing the Czar in Russia and forming the Soviet Union.
More important, it was a pamphlet whose origins are reputed to be French called The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion that seemed to expose a worldwide revolution undertaken by Jews. This document fell into the hands of Czar Nicholas II and led to intensifying the Russian revolution, a battle between the Czarist regime and Jewish revolutionaries.
The same document fell into the hands of a young Adolph Hitler and was responsible for the war of annihilation between the Nazis and Jewish Bolshevik Communists controlling the Soviet Union 20 years later.
In a way it was this documented that played a role in bringing about both Communism and Nazism, and with it brought about the deaths of 220 million people at the hands of the leaders of the two political movements.
As the following excerpt from my book, Saviors of the 20th Century Hitler & Stalin, Chapter 7 describes, it was often the unnoticed and unexpected events that changed the course of history.
Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion
It was rumored throughout western nations that in the fall of 1897 Jewish leaders from around the world met and adopted “The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion,” an inflammatory document outlining a plot by the Jews to undermine society, overthrow governments, and destroy Christianity.
The story of this publication is fascinating and none told it better than Konrad Heiden, an acquaintance of Hitler and the self-proclaimed leader of an anti-Hitler and anti-Nazi group in Munich, Germany in the early 1920s. In his book, “Der Fuehrer,” 1944, the following excerpts indicated the history of the Protocols according to Heiden.
One day in the summer of 1917 a student was reading in his room in Moscow. A stranger entered, laid a book on the table, and silently vanished. The cover of the book bore in Russian the words from the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew: “He is near, he is hard by the door.”
The student sensed the masterful irony of higher powers in this strange happening. They had sent him a silent message. He opened the book, and the voice of a demon spoke to him.
It was a message concerning the Antichrist, who would come at the end of days. The Antichrist is no mythical being, no monkish medieval fantasy. It is the portrait of a type of man who comes to the fore when an epoch is dying. He is a man with a white skin, in everyday clothes, dangerously contemporary, and a mighty demagogue. He will talk with the masses, and at his word the masses will rise up and turn a culture to ashes, a culture which has deserved no better, since it has borne the Antichrist in its own image and for its own destruction.
“We” - the demon always says “We” - shall create unrest, struggle, and hate in the whole of Europe and thence in other continents. We shall at all times be in a position to call forth new disturbances at will, or to restore the old order...
Unremittingly we shall poison the relations between the peoples and states of all countries...
We are the chosen, we are the true men…
Outwardly, however, in our “official” utterances, we shall adopt an opposite procedure and always do our best to appear honorable and co-operative. A statesman’s words do not have to agree with his acts…
If any state dares to resist us; if its neighbors make common cause with it against us, we shall unleash a world war.
By all these methods we shall so wear down the nations that they will be forced to offer us world domination...
He turns back the pages and discovers that all this accursed wisdom, all these diabolical plans, were hatched out by a group of old Jews. Who met together in a back room in Basel, Switzerland, in the year 1897? The demon aiming to devour the world is a Jewish club…
And thus The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, since became so famous, fell into the hands of Alfred Rosenberg.
A mysterious occurrence. Rosenberg himself has often told how the unknown suddenly stepped into the room, laid down the book, and silently departed. To Rosenberg it was a sign from heaven. Both the place and the hour were significant. Moscow, 1917. Far to the west, the German-Russian phase of the First World War was drawing to an end in crumbling trenches; in the streets of the capital, the Russian Revolution was ebbing and flowing. Alfred Rosenberg, the son of a shoemaker, born in Reval (Tallinn) on the Baltic, was then twenty-four years old; he was of German descent but as an Esthonian, he was a subject of the Russian Tsar. He had been raised in the German and Russian languages; he had first studied engineering and architecture at Riga, also on the Baltic; then, when the German army occupied Riga, he had fled. Now he was studying in Moscow.
The globe was afire. The Tsar’s empire was crumbling. Perhaps there would never again be peace. Perhaps this book would tell him why. The demon, who had incited the nations against each other, had spoken…
The demon of world domination has spoken. He has proclaimed the great secret: the world can be dominated. Bowed with weariness, the peoples demand subjection. And those who resist will be tamed by terrible blows and sufferings. Modern society is charged with a magical current which in all men creates the same thoughts. The masses expect great things of their rulers. And for that reason, great things are easy.
This is the true sense of the secret writings, which we today know as The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion. Everything else in them develops from the basic idea that world domination is possible in our time; with sovereign contempt it is shown with what relative ease it can be achieved…
Its content is how to establish dictatorship with the help - and abuse - of democratic methods…
Furthermore, democracy, in the international field actually offers a dictator, who has firmly entrenched himself in one country, the possibility of world domination. This is the true content of the famous Protocols...
Three generations ago a brilliant thinker wrote this secret formula for the achievement of world domination. We know little concerning his life. He was a French lawyer named Maurice Joly. He was, at the time he wrote his little book, a conservative, ligitimist and monarchist. He had no thought of writing a secret document; on the contrary, he had in mind a satire against Napoleon III, then emperor of the French. Whether he ever perceived that he was leaving behind him the prophecies of a great seer; whether he ever guessed that his book embraced a political doctrine of world-shaking force, we do not know.
The work was published in Brussels in 1864, by A Mertens et Fils, as an illegal propaganda pamphlet; it was written in French and bore the title: Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu, ou la politique de Machiavel au XIX siecle, par un Contemporian. (Dialaogue in hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, of the politics of Machiavelli in the nineteenth century by a contemporary.)
His anonymity did not avail the author. The police of the French emperor discovered him, he was sent to prison for fifteen months. His book was published in a second edition, then it was forgotten, and today scarcely any copies of it can be found.
This brings us to world domination. It is the secret necessity inherent in the mechanism of our existence; it lives in our minds as a secret goal; it stands in the sea of the future as a magnetic mountain, inexorably attracting the ship of modern society…
Is this the truth? Who has spoken? Perhaps it is only a half-truth, but even in its halfness it is of enormous import, which is not seen by most men…
History is the most skeptical of all sciences; it knows no absolute truths…
Joly’s magnificent portrait of modern tyranny underwent a strange fate. After thirty years of oblivion, its great day came. It was discovered by a group of Russian conspirators. Not, to be sure, by the Russian revolutionaries of that day, the Nihilists, Social Democrats, or Social Revolutionaries; but by a few crafty agents of the counter-revolution, members of the Ochrana, the tsar’s secret police. They wanted to frighten the tsar and drive him to bloodshed. To this end they persuaded him that the Jews of the whole world had devised a secret conspiracy to achieve world domination, first over Russia, then over the whole world.
Claims of this sort were not new; they lay to a certain extent in the air. In the nineteenth century the Jews had nearly everywhere - though not in Russia - achieved civil equality and thus taken their place in modern society. Some had amassed great wealth, a few - for example, the house of Rothschild - had even attained real influence, and inspired venomous anti-Semitism…
In 1868, Hermann Godsche, a German signing himself Sir John Retcliffe the Younger, wrote a novel entitled Biarritz. In it twelve rabbis from all corners of the earth meet in the Jewish cemetery in Prague. There they set up a cry of Satanic glee, for through accursed gold, through its mighty bankers, Judah has conquered the world, brought kings and the princes to the Church; Judah is wallowing in vice and glory. The rabbis represent the twelve tribes of Israel and speak Chaldaean…
Godsche’s text was childish and none too convincing. But suppose you take these rabbis conspiring in their cemetery and give them the worldly wisdom, the contempt for humanity, the seductive power of Joly’s tyrant…
That is what happened. The group of Russian conspirators dug up Joly’s forgotten book; they were also familiar with the horror story about the Jewish cemetery in Prague; they knew by the newspapers that in 1897 the Jewish Zionist Movement had very publicly been founded at a congress in Basel; finally, they knew only too well the golden awe emanating from the ancient fame of the Rothschilds. The ingredients of a magnificent conspiracy lay at hand, requiring only to be mixed.
The Orchrana, the tsarist secret police, furnished the means and the brain. Fiurst General Oryevsky, one of its heads, had a pamphlet prepared, based on the rabbis’ conspiracy in Godsche’s story. The novelty was that the pamphlet was written in the form of protocols; this gave it a much more serious look…
This was the work of General Ratchkovsky, the leader of the French division of the Ochrana…
Their plan was more than a simple palace conspiracy. It was the first great attempt at a mighty national counter-revolution against the democratic and socialist revolution of the nineteenth century. The plan was to fuse the passion of the people and the cold power of the state into a mighty, counter-revolutionary force that would shake society to its foundations…
Through this conspiracy, Russia became the spiritual mother country of modern fascism, as it later became the world center of Communism.
The name of the movement was “The Black Hundreds,” which meant simply; the black guard. The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion became the program of this movement; with it they were born and with it they grew. Even the primitive version, based on Godsche’s nocturnal conspiracy of rabbis, had a terrible effect. It was circulated widely, and in 1903 gave the signal for the Kishenev pogram, in which several thousand Jews were massacred…
A first version had been prepared toward the end of the nineties by Golovinski and Manuilov, two journalists in the service of Ratchkovsky…
In 1904-05, the pamphlet was refurbished as an attack on Prince Svatopulk-Mirski, minister of the interior, and Count Witte, the finance minister, who were too liberal for the Ochrana…
This is the origin of the supposed textbook of Jewish world domination. Today the forgery is incontrovertibly proved, yet something infinitely significant has remained: a textbook of world domination pure and simple…
The spirit of the Protocols, therefore, contains historical truth, though all the facts put forth in them are forgeries. Hence its influence on such varied times and peoples. When they were published, their deeper, genuine content beneath the varnish of falsification found a receptive mood in many sections of the Russian people - a mood of decadence and despair. The Russian literature of the period from Tolstoi to Sologub bears witness to this mood…
Sergei Nilus…Nilus was a religious writer…
He had written a book, under the influence of Soloviev, on the theme of the Jewish Antichrist. Its title: “Small signs betoken great events. The Antichrist is near at hand.”
This second edition was sponsored by the Ochrana and published in 1905 in the Imperial stateprinting shop in Tsarskoye Selo. Its appendix includes The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion. This was the first publication of the Protocols in their present form, and it was claimed by Nilus that these Protocols were the minutes of speeches and debates which were made at the founding congress of the Zionist Movement in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897.
This much was true, that in 1897 in Basel the Jewish Nationalist Movement of the Zionists was born. The goal of this group, to put it simply, was to lead the Jews back again to Palestine; to state it more exactly, to create for those Jews who were leading an intolerable life of oppression, especially in Russia, a ‘legally assured homestead’ in Palestine…
This was the purpose of the Basel congress. But, if we believe Nilus, its true, secret aim was just the opposite; that is, the foundation of an uncontested world domination by the Jews. He claimed that the public congress was a mere blind for a number of far more secret sessions. In those secret sessions the Zionist leaders set forth their plan for Jewish world conquest…
These speeches were taken down in shorthand and entered in the minutes. A courier of the congress was supposed to bring the terrible papers from Basel to the German city of Frankfurt am Main, to be preserved in the secret archives of the Rising Sun Lodge of Freemasons…
But there is one point to which he always adheres: that he himself had received the papers from a certain Suchotin, marshal of nobility in the district of Chernigov, who had received them from Ratchkovsky…
In 1917, during the World War and after the tsar’s downfall, Nilus published the last edition of his book, with the Protocols in the appendix. This time it was: ‘He is near, he is hard by the door.’ It is this edition which was placed on Alfred Rosenberg’s table…
Rosenberg believed in the secret session of Basel, at least he did then. For this we cannot be too hard on a lad of twenty-four. For beneath the heavy coating of a clumsily exaggerated forgery, the Protocols contain a genuine element which might well carry a strong, mysterious appeal to the modern intellectual…
With the book in his bag, he fled at the beginning of 1918 to his native city of Reval, later called Tallinn. German troops took the city. Rosenberg remembered that he was a German. He volunteered for the German army, to fight against the Bolsheviki who for some months had been in the saddle in Petersburg and Moscow. The German commandant distrusted the German Russian and rejected him…
The Bolsheviki, in a desperate life-and-death struggle, always in power but always on the brink of catastrophe, struck down their enemies by ruthless, barbaric terror. They acted in accordance with the recommendations of the Protocols of Zion. Were they not themselves the Wise Men of Zion? Hadn’t they Jewish leaders?
For at the end of 1918, Rosenberg was forced to leave Reval with the remnants of the withdrawing, disbanding German army. The Bolsheviki pressed after them, occupied Reval, took Riga, approached the German border…
In a swarm of Russian fugitives, officers, intellectuals, barons and princes, Rosenberg reached Berlin, then Munich. At the same time other refugees reached Constantinople, London, Paris; Russians, Germans, but also Englishmen, Frenchmen, even American, members of those Allied expeditionary armies who, after the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution, had occupied, for a time, Russian territory in Siberia, in the North, in the Crimea…
A pity that General Ratchkovsky never lived to see the day. The shadow of Russia fell over Europe. From the Kremlin, Lenin exhorted the world to revolution, holding aloft the Communist Manifesto. Rosenberg comes, a humble fugitive, with the textbook of world domination in his battered suitcase.”
Upon reaching Munich those driven from the Russian territories by the Communists found a way of finding each other. They formed groups, often in secret, to plan conspiracies and raise arms to fight the Communists.
Rosenberg joined such a group, along with a young man named Rudolf Hess and an elderly writer named Dietrich Eckart. They shared the Protocols. The name of their secret group was called the Thule Society. Through them a German translation of the Protocols was issued with the distribution success extraordinary. Edition after edition followed. Soon it was released in England, France, Poland and even America.
The Thule Society finally decided to act, and decided to kill Kurt Eisner, the leader of the Bavarian Revolution. Unlike Lenin, whose Judaism could be traced only as far as his grandmother, Eisner really was a Jew. But while the Thuilists and many other groups made plans to recapture Bavaria from the socialists, a young Jewish officer the Thuilists had rejected from membership because he was Jewish beat them to the act.
Count Anton Arco-Valley, insulted by his rejection by the Thulists and determined to shame them, shot Eisner in the midst of his guards on an open street. It was the very day Eisner was going to resign. In the chaos that followed the Communists seized power from the socialists and Eisner became a martyred hero.
Remnants of the Bavarian army recaptured Munich; they were part of a group called the National Socialist Workers Party, dedicated to hunting down the Jewish Bolsheviks. Rosenberg was invited to speak to their group and along with the Thule members Eckart, Hess and Feder became a part of this rapidly growing political movement.
In time a young soldier assigned to keep watch on potentially subversive groups would speak to the new organization, and then become a member. His name was Adolf Hitler and the Protocols became an essential source of his attitudes toward the Soviets (the Antichrist), and the Jews (the Wise Men).
Whether the document was true or not the response this amazing document achieved wherever it was published served the purpose of inciting people against the Jews. If it indeed was a hoax it was one of the more elaborate and comprehensive hoaxes in history.
That it was mysteriously received by Rosenberg in Russia, and delivered by him to Hitler personally is quite coincidential, or is it? The entire text of the mysterious Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion appears in the appendix of this book.
Following are a series of weather charts and satellite photos of the freak storm rambling through the upper Midwest spawning snow, blizzard conditions, winds, 20 foot waves on Lake Michigan, tornadoes, and who knows what else in this year of very strange weather conditions.
This comes on the same day that NBC Universal, who bought The Weather Channel that has been keeping us informed of the weather around the country and world live since 1982 announced they will discontinue some live broadcasts and replace them with more reality programs like you see dominating the network TV channnels.
Leave it to NBC, who has gutted network news coverage leaving NBC News almost a joke because the traditional news doesn't make enough money. Since GE, owner of NBC, has sold the network along with The Weather Channel, MSNBC and CNBC to Comcast Cable, we can probably expect to get reruns in the future instead of reality or live broadcasts.
America's newspaper, television and radio have all sold out to the Almighty dollar so there is no room left in America for real news, real journalism or real weather. Our knowledge of current events has been reduced to 30 second sound bites leaving us the most ill-informed generation in the last century.
Of course as little sense as some of the charts make does raise questions about how well the weather is now being reported. After billions of dollars in equipment, satellites and computers you would think we could have much better information already.
Then again, my brother says the government is deliberating withholding weather information because there are weather anamolies going on the Defense Department does not want us to know about. I'm working on a story about one, the electromagnetic waves that can bombard earth fom the sun. I already tried to warn you about EMP (electromagnetic pulses) man made with HAARP and other weapons systems.
Maybe there is a reason they don't want us to know about the weather.
Only 7 major college teams remain unbeaten and in the driver's seat for the national championship but if the powerhouses like Auburn and other major conference teams lose it will open the floodgates to a host of once beaten premier teams to challenge for the title.
Just behind the first tier of unbeaten teams stand Alabama, Ohio State, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Arizona, Stanford, LSU and Florida State. Finishing unbeaten will not be easy as 1. Auburn still faces Alabama, 2. Oregon faces USC, Arizona and always dangerous Oregon State, 3. Boise State has a battle brewing with Nevada, 4. TCU still must face unbeaten Utah, 5. Michigan State faces Iowa, 6.Missouri faces Nebraska and 8. Utah faces TCU.
The top games this weekend have Michigan State against Iowa and Missouri against Nebraska. For the first time in three weeks the number one may remain the same as Auburn faces Mississippi with a 3-4 record.
One week before the elections the polls politicians don't want you to see are showing startling results as the campaign draws to a close. These are not the polls of individual races but the ones measuring the sentiment of likely voters. Gallup shows that likely enthusiastic voters leaning Democrat are at 37% while likely voters leaning Republican are at 63%, the highest Republican figure ever recorded in the history of the polls. That means a 26% lead in enthusiasm for those leaning Republican with just one week to go.
More ominous for the Democrats, this is after the President, Vice President and First Lady Michelle Obama have been crisscrossing the nation seeking to generate enthusiasm and raising millions of campaign dollars. Clearly this election has become a referendum on the Obama agenda and the Obama campaign strategy.
The last year there was a Republican landslide was 1994 when the GOP took control of both the House and Senate and the GOP enthusiasm advantage was only 9% compared to 26% this year. With the discontent of Independents over Obama and his Democrats rising consistently, Independents favor the GOP over Democrats by over 14%.
A Gallup poll released Friday found that only 23 percent of Independent voters agree that “most members of Congress deserve reelection.” The similar figure for Republican voters is 21 percent, according to Gallup, while 59 percent of Democrats say most US representatives should be returned to office. The combined results of all three groups means only 33 percent of voters overall think incumbents deserve to win. That’s the lowest such percentage prior to a midterm election that Gallup has found in the past 16 years.
At the same time if Republicans win overwhelmingly they sill have a lot of work to do to convince the public they will do what is best for the nation as just 43% of the people believe either party can lead effectively. The GOP will have two years to prove they can best meet the public needs.
With both political parties staking early claims to success in the midterm elections and the spin machines in high gear pending the reality of the November 2 balloting, perhaps we should look at how America will survive one of the most contentious campaigns in recent memory.
Let's face it, between the two parties practically every aspect of American society has been demonized by one party or the other. It matters not whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, somewhere someone has probably trashed you and what you stand for this year.
TV ads already tell us both the Democrats and Republicans are bad for America. The Democrats are socialists or selfish if they back Obama while Republicans are Neanderthals or racists f they oppose him. Conservatives and liberals are both anti-American. There are the pacifists and war mongers, the tree huggers and drill baby drill brigades, '60's revolutionaries and Reaganities, Muslim haters and Jewish lovers, radical Christians and atheists, and the list goes on and on.
Partisanship and polarization were accepted strategies while reason and compromise were condemned. Heaven forbid if you were a spokesperson of any significance for a cause like Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid, not to mention Barack Obama, because you were the target of scorn, rumor and innuendo at a scale not often witnessed in America.
The news media and the politicians were guilty of baiting the opposition, freely distorting facts, spreading untruths and character assassination, all plastered in our faces by blank checks from corporations, unions, billionaires and a bevy of special interests intent on having a bunch of politicians in their back pocket.
Yet come November 3 America will awaken to a new day and a bunch of new leaders just like it will awaken every day from now until Judgment Day. No doubt there will be some deep wounds left by the hatred and bitterness of the rhetoric and the lack of good judgment by politicians of both parties who were all too willing to forfeit fair play and common decency for their own egos and political survival.
Still, we are a nation that survived politics for 234 years because we placed our faith in the wisdom and genius of our Founding Fathers, not the politicians of expediency of today. By adhering to the incredible blueprint for success left as a legacy from our Founders, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the people of America have always survived the politicians.
Politicians come and go but the principles of our foundation never change. Our people are guaranteed life, liberty, equal opportunity, freedom and the pursuit of happiness no matter what the politicians in Washington do to try and take it away. Long ago the people understood that the conservative or liberal views of our politicians swing like a pendulum throughout our history when the people decide it is time for it to swing, not when the politicians declare they know what is best for us.
Our Founding Fathers created this great political show in our nation's capitol and then added an elaborate government framework with three distinct branches of government and checks and balances in order to protect the people from wasting all our lives being preoccupied with politics. There are 546 people in Washington doing the people's business at the beck and call of the people. That includes a president and vice president, 100 Senators and 435 house members, all elected, and 9 Supreme Court Justices appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
That's it. It takes 2 million civilian employees and 2 more million military to do the work of the 546 people but then it does keep a lot of people employed, out of Main Street and out of our hair throughout the year. In the end the 4 million people running our federal government equal just over 1% of our population so at least we have saved about 99% of the people from taking themselves too seriously.
Outside of Washington we know that a hard work ethic, common sense, a good sense of humor and a good bit of humility are the keys to our economy, education, competitiveness, sense of fair play, creative energy, compassion and place in the world, not the boasting or saber rattling of our politicians. And certainly not the pre-occupation of the media with the sins of the politicians.
It is the politicians who have the most to learn from the election. They must learn to shut up, stop whining and get on with the people's business or they will be thrown out of office. Right now they have lost sight of their role. We don't send Messiahs to Washington to lead us to salvation, we have our own churches and Gods to take care of that. We send people to Washington and the moment they lose sight of that relationship to us, is the moment their usefulness to America has ended.
This year the politicians are a sorry lot with a huge ego and an even bigger appetite for money. Greed is not an asset for our elected representatives. Come November 3, those lucky enough to survive and get elected have two years to demonstrate they have got the message. They better clean up their act, all of them, work together, and fix the mess they have got us into before we take things into our own hands. .
(Reuters) - Families mourned on Sunday the victims of one of Mexico's worst shootings, weeping over the open coffins of teenagers as young as 14 as Ciudad Juarez residents expressed outrage at surging violence.
Crowding around the bodies in white and gray coffins, parents and friends sobbed as they bid farewell to the 14 people killed at a family birthday party on Friday night in the Mexican city that is the epicenter of the country's drug war.
"This can't be happening. Today it's them who are killed, and tomorrow who will be next?" said a sister of one of the victims, who gave only her first name, Miriam.
In Tijuana across the border from San Diego, California, suspected drug gang hitmen shot dead 13 people at a drug rehab clinic on Sunday, a member of the local police force said.
And in the northern state of Coahuila, two women and a teenage boy died on Sunday after being caught in crossfire during a shootout between unidentified gunmen, police and soldiers, state prosecutors said.
The shooting in Juarez on Friday was the second massacre at a party this month in the city across from El Paso, Texas. Ciudad Juarez has become one of the world's most violent cities since drug cartels launched a turf war there in early 2008. Almost 7,000 people have been killed in the city since then. .
Last Friday Morning Joe broadcast live from Tuscaloosa, Alabama as Joe Scarborough was receiving an award from the University. The broadcast was from the Rama Bama Cafe and for the most liberal network on TV it is a little odd and hypocritical that as you watched the show I could find no Blacks in the crowd of Cafe patrons but mostly Blacks in the kitchen preparing food.
How can that be politically correct for MSNBC? Just another example of the dual standards for the liberal media versus the Tea Party, Sarah Palin or anyone else on their hit list. They would have been condemned for not showing Black patrons. Let Mika show you the crowd for the record in the video until MSNBC jams the broadcast. .
