‘UFO sighting really took my breath away’

By Carron Taylor

WAS it a bird? Was it a plane? No, it was a shining silver pyramid, according to two colleagues who spotted a UFO in the skies of Putney last week.

Michelle Medhat was sitting at her office desk last Wednesday morning when she glanced out of the window and spotted a glimmering silver object in the sky.

“I thought what the hell is that?’ There were no clouds in the sky at all and 100 per cent visibility.

“The sun was hitting the object and you could see it was turning very slowly.

“I did get a feeling there was something strange about the thing,” she said.

Entranced, Michelle signalled to her colleague Peter Gardiner, 53, to take a look.

He said: “At first I thought it was a big piece of rubbish or a clear tarpaulin sheet.

“But then it glistened and it was shiny. It had a strange pattern of movement. It was a significant size, possibly the size of a roof or even a house.”

The pair watched it for a couple of minutes, rotating in the distance and heading towards Wandsworth Town. Then, as soon as it had appeared it vanished.

Michelle said if it was a piece of rubbish it would have caused severe damage when it came down, because of its size and density.

“I can’t explain it and therefore I’m calling it a UFO. It took my breath away. It did feel weird.

“The more I looked at it I realised there was something not quite right. It wasn’t moving like anything I’ve ever seen before,” she said.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it had not been notified of any sighting of the pyramid.

“The MoD does not have any expertise or role in respect of UFO/flying saucer’ matters or to the question of the existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial lifeforms, about which it remains totally open-minded.”

He said it examined the reports of UFO sightings it received solely to establish whether what was seen might have some defence significance, namely whether there was any evidence the UK’s airspace might have been compromised by hostile or unauthorised air activity.

Michelle and Peter said there has been a lot of activity in the skies over Putney recently.

Michelle said they had seen several Chinook helicopters over the past week and believes something must be happening.

Chinooks are used to transport troops, artillery, supplies and equipment, but also used for operations such as medical evacuation, disaster relief and search and rescue.

When travelling to Putney, our reporter saw what looked to be three Apache helicopters travelling east.

A spokesman for the MoD said the helicopters were probably part of general aviation traffic over London and there was no specific activity or event they were involved in. He added such movements were “not unusual”.

Did you see the flying silver pyramid? Call the newsdesk on 020 8254 5409.

ctaylor@london.newsquest.co.uk

[…]
This is London Local

Chinooks are flying over that part of London regularly. They make a very distinctive sound, and you can tell they are coming when they are miles away.

As for this pyramid account, well, when I saw that logo above whilst trawling around (as one does) I just couldnt resist!

Further information: freedom of movement, and ka-tzetnik, and propiska, Economic and social liberals have a generally negative attitude towards identity cards on the principle that if society already works adequately without them, they should not be imposed by government, on the principle that “the government that governs best, governs least”. Some opponents have pointed out that extensive lobbying for identity cards has been undertaken, in countries without compulsory identity cards, by IT companies who will be likely to reap rich rewards in the event of an identity card scheme being implemented.

Very often, opposition to identity cards is born out of the suspicion that they will be used to track anyone’s movements and private life, possibly endangering one’s privacy; for instance, a person will probably not want others to know he or she is attending meetings with Alcoholics Anonymous. In countries currently using identity cards, there is no mechanism for this. However the proposed British ID card will involve a series of linked databases, to be managed by the private sector. Managing disparate linked systems with a range of institutions and any number of personnel having access to them is a potential security disaster in the making.[1]

Opponents have also argued that some nations require the card to be carried at all times. This is not necessarily impractical, as an ID is no more cumbersome than a credit card. However, opponents point out that a requirement to carry an identity card at all times can lead to arbitrary requests from card controllers (such as the police). Even where there is no legal requirement to carry the card, functionality creep could lead to de facto compulsion to carry.

Some opponents make comparisons with totalitarian governments, which issued identity cards to their populations, and used them oppressively.

• They point out that the issuing of unique biometric identities was taken to its logical conclusion within living memory by the Nazis (see Godwin’s Law), when they tattooed unique concentration-camp detainees numbers on the arms of people taken to be processed by the Final Solution.
• More recently, the apartheid-era government of South Africa used pass books as internal passports to oppress that country’s black population.

[…]

France

France has had a French national identity card since 1940, when it helped the Vichy autorities identify 76,000 for deportation as part of the Holocaust.

In the past, identity cards were compulsory, had to be updated each year in case of change of residence and were valid for 10 years, and its renewal required paying a tax. In addition to the face protograph, it included the family name, first names, date and place of birth, and the national identity number managed by the national INSEE registry, and which is also used as the national service registration number, as the Social Security account number for health and retirement benefits, for the access to the personal judiciary case, for taxes declarations.

Later, the laws were changed so that any official and certified document (even if expired and possibly unusable abroad) with a photograph and a name, issued by a public administration (or enterprise, such as railroad transportation cards, or student cards issued) can be used to prove one’s identity (such as the European driver’s licence, a passport, …). Also, controls of identy by the law enforcement forces (police, gendarmerie) can now accept copies of these documents, provided that the original is presented within two weeks. Any of these documents must be treated equally to proove one’s identity when accepting payments by checks, issuing a new credit (however credit cardsare now much more common and do not require such additional proof, as all French credit cards issued by banks include a processor requiring a four-digit code, the magnetic tape being almost never used).

The current identity cards are now issued free of charge, and non-compulsory. Legislation has been published for a proposed compulsory biometric card system, which has been widely criticised, including by the “National commission for computing and liberties” (Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés, CNIL), the national authority and regulator on computing systems and databases. Identity cards issued since 2004 now includes biometric information (a digitized fingerprint record, a numerically scanned photograph and a scanned signature) and various anti-fraud systems embedded within the plastic-covered card.

The next generation of the French green card, named “Carte Vitale”, for the Social Security benefit (which already includes a chip and a magnetic tape with currently very few information) will include a numeric photograph and other personal medical information in addition to identity elements. It may then become a substitute for the National identity card.

[…]

United States

Main article: Identity documents in the United States

There is no true national identity card in the United States of America, in the sense that there is no federal agency with nationwide jurisdiction that directly issues such cards to all American citizens. All legislative attempts to create one have failed due to tenacious opposition from libertarian and conservative politicians, who regard the national identity card as the mark of a totalitarian society. Driver’s licenses issued by the various states (along with special cards issued to non-drivers) are often used in lieu of a national identification card and are often required for boarding airline flights or entering office buildings. Recent (2005) federal legislation that tightened requirements for issuance of driver’s licenses has been seen by both supporters and critics as bringing the United States much closer to a de facto national identity card system.

[…]

Hong Kong

See also Hong Kong Permanent Identity Cards

Hong Kong has a long history of identity document, from paper document to recently smart card. It has not yet aroused much controversy from its first issue.

Compulsory identity document was first issued in 1949, the year the establishment of People’s Republic of China. The issue of identity documents was to halt large influx of refugees and control the border from mainland China to then-British colony Hong Kong. The exercise was completed in 1951. Although the registration was compulsory, it was not required to bring the document in public area.

The identity document was replaced by a typed identity card with fingerprint, photograph and stamp from 1960. Another replacement was taken in 1973 and new card was with photograph but no fingerprint. Stamp colour was to identify permanent residents from non-permanent.

From 24th October, 1980, it is compulsory to take the identity card in public area and produce it to a policeman when asked. This law was to halt waves of illegal immigrant to the city.

In 1983, the issue of identity card was digitalised to reduce forgery and from 2003 a smartcard embedded identity card replaced the old digital cards.

The issues of card is in general giving more desire effects than harms. It helps to reduce the crime rates in the region and provide fast access to mainland China and Macau.

[…]

Others

According to Privacy International, as of 1996, around 100 countries had compulsory identity cards. They also stated that “virtually no common law country has a card”.

For the people of Western Sahara, pre-1975 Spanish cards are the main proof that they were Saharaui citizens as opposed to recent Moroccan colonists. They would be thus allowed to vote in an eventual self-determination referendum.

Some Basque nationalist organizations are issuing para-official identity cards (Euskal Nortasun Agiria) as a means to reject the nationality notions implied by Spanish and French compulsory documents. Then, they try to use the ENA instead of the official document.

[…]

Countries with compulsory identity cards

Note: the term “compulsory” may have different meanings and implications in different countries. Often, a ticket can be given for being found without one’s identification document, or in some cases a person may even be detained until the identity is ascertained. In practice, random controls are rare, except in police states.

• Argentina: Documento Nacional de Identidad. Issued at birth. Updated at 8 and 16 years old. Small booklet, dark green cardboard cover. The first page states the name, date and place of birth, along with a picture and right thumb print. It’s a hand written form, and the newer models have a adhesive laminate for the first page. Next pages issue address changes, wish to donate organs, military service, and vote log. Half of the pages have the DNI (a unique number), perforated through the first half of the book. Prior to DNI was the Libreta Civica (“Civic booklet”), for women, and the Libreta de Enrolamiento (“Enrollment Booklet”), for men. A few years ago there was a big scandal with the electronic DNIs that were going to be manufactured by Siemens, and it was decided that no private corporation could control the issuing of national identity. The federal police also have an identity that is valid sometimes instead of the DNI, which many people prefer to carry because after the loss of DNI there is a long process (caused only by bureaucratic reasons) in which the person is limited in some situations which require the DNI. Random controls cannot be made without a judge’s order, except in situations such as military border checkpoints.
• Belgium: State Registry (in Dutch, French and German) (first issued at age 12, compulsory at 15)
• Brazil: Carteira de Identidade. Compulsory to be issued and carried since the age of 18. It’s usually issued by each state’s Public Safety Secretary, or sometimes by the Armed Forces. There is a national standard, but each state can include minor differences. The front has a picture, right thumb print and signature. The verse has the unique number (RG, registro geral), expedition date, name of the person, name of the parents, place and date of birth, and other info. It’s green and plastified, officially 102 × 68 mm[3], but the lamination tends to make it slightly larger than the ISO 7810 ID-2 standard of 105 × 74 mm, resulting in a tight fit in most wallets. Only recently the driver’s licence received the same legal status of an identity card in Brazil. There are also a few other documents, such as cards issued by the national councils of some professions, which are considered equivalent to the national identity card for most purposes.
• Chile: (Carnet de identidad; First issued at age 2 or 3, compulsory at 18)
• China(mainland):(First issued at school age, compulsory at 16)
• China(Hong Kong SAR) : Immigration Department (Children are required to obtain their first identity card at age 11, and must change to an adult identity card at age 18)
• Estonia: id.ee (in Estonian), [4] (in English)
• Germany: Personalausweis (in German) It is compulsory at age 16 to possess either a “Personalausweis” or a passport, but not to carry it. While police officers and some other officials have a right to demand to see one of those documents, the law does not state that you are obliged to submit the document at that very moment, but that you have to be able to submit it at all (bring it to the police station/municipal office the next day, or know where it is and can show it to the police at your home, etc.) You may only be fined if you do not possess an identity card or passport at all, if your document is expired or if you EXPLICITLY REFUSE to show ID to the police.
• Indonesia: Kartu Tanda Penduduk (KTP)
• Israel: Teudat Zehut (first issued at age 16, compulsory at 18)
• Italy: Carta d’Identità
• Hungary: [5] (in Hungarian) It is compulsory to possess and carry either an ID card or a passport from the age of 14. A driving license can be also used for identification from the age of 17.
• Madagascar: Kara-panondrom-pirenen’ny teratany malagasy (Carte nationale d’identité de citoyen malagasy). Possession is compulsory for Malagasy citizens from age 18 (by decree 78-277, 1978-10-03).
• Malaysia: MyKad. Issued at age 12 and updated at 18.
• Netherlands: Ministry of Justice and Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations While it is not compulsory to possess an identity card, every person over 14 years of age must always carry, and be able to submit, identification (i.e., an identity card, passport, driver’s licence or aliens’ document).
• Poland: Dowód osobisty (compulsory at 18) The relative law is roughly similar to German one.
• Portugal: Bilhete de Identidade (compulsory at 10, can be issued before if needed)
• Romania: Carte de identitate (compulsory at 14)
• Singapore: National Registration Identity Card. It is compulsory for all citizens and permanent residents to apply for the card from age 15 onwards, and to re-register their cards for a replacement at age 30. It is not compulsory for bearers to hold the card at all times, nor are they compelled by law to show their cards to police officers conducting regular screening while on patrol, for instance. Failure to show any form of identification, however, may allow the police to detain suspicious individuals until relevant identification may be produced subsequently either in person or by proxy. The NRIC is also a required document for some government procedures, commercial transactions such as the opening of a bank account, or to gain entry to premises by surrendering or exchanging for an entry pass. Failure to produce the card may result in denied access to these premises or attainment of goods and services. Immigration & Checkpoints Authority
• Slovenia: Osebna izkaznica compulsory at 18, can be issued to citizens under 18 on request by their parent or legal guardian.
• Spain: Documento Nacional de Identidad (DNI) compulsory at 14, can be issued before if necessary (to travel to other European countries, for example). It is to be replaced by Electronic DNI.

Also Croatia, Egypt, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal and Thailand.

Countries with non-compulsory identity cards or no identity cards

Austria, Canada (“Certificate of Canadian Citizenship”), Finland, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland have non-compulsory identity cards.

• Sweden has recently started issuing national identity cards, but they are by no means compulsory. Most Swedes have not even seen one. Commonly people use their driving licences as ID, or a ID issued by banks or the post. Some big companies and authoritys also issue ID cards to their employees which are usually accepted inside Sweden as identification.

Denmark, Norway, the United States, the Republic of Ireland and Iceland have no official national identity cards.

Note: As noted above, certain countries do not have national ID cards, but have other official documents that play the same role in practice (e.g. driver’s license for the United States). While a country may not make it de jure compulsory to own or carry an identity document, it may be de facto strongly recommended to do so in order to facilitate certain procedures.

[…]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID_Card

One to watch:

http://www.infowarsmedia.com/video/shows/030106_camps_free_30min_bb.mov

Alex Jones right on target, and ‘on fire’.

A link from this broadcast:

News Analysis/Commentary, Peter Dale Scott,
New America Media, Feb 21, 2006

Editor’s Note: A recently announced contract for a Halliburton subsidiary to build immigrant detention facilities is part of a longer-term Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of “all removable aliens” and “potential terrorists.” Scott is author of “Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). He is completing a book on “The Road to 9/11.” Visit his Web site at http://www.peterdalescott.net.

The Halliburton subsidiary KBR (formerly Brown and Root) announced on Jan. 24 that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps. Two weeks later, on Feb. 6, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced that the Fiscal Year 2007 federal budget would allocate over $400 million to add 6,700 additional detention beds (an increase of 32 percent over 2006). This $400 million allocation is more than a four-fold increase over the FY 2006 budget, which provided only $90 million for the same purpose.

Both the contract and the budget allocation are in partial fulfillment of an ambitious 10-year Homeland Security strategic plan, code-named ENDGAME, authorized in 2003. According to a 49-page Homeland Security document on the plan, ENDGAME expands “a mission first articulated in the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.” Its goal is the capability to “remove all removable aliens,” including “illegal economic migrants, aliens who have committed criminal acts, asylum-seekers (required to be retained by law) or potential terrorists.” […]

http://news.pacificnews.org/

A BBQ misleader says:

Media are becoming democratised, and a global conversation is emerging.

Note how the word ‘democracy’ is used in this context; as a force for good, shifting power from the center to the masses.

This is of course, totally wrong.

Media are becoming Anarchized. Democracy is second tier to very epitome of centralized power, the dictatorship; what is happening on the web is that anyone can do whatever they like, without any group consensus or control. That is Anarchy, not Democracy, and it’s a good thing.

There is no ‘global conversation’ this is just new labour doubletalk.

The democratisation of media is also, fundamentally, about the people we once called mere consumers. Their role is evolving from a passive one to something much more interactive, but they are blessed (or cursed, depending on one’s viewpoint) with an unprecedented variety of voices and services.

How can a thing that brings you every possible point of view be a bad thing? If you are a paternalist with access to BBQ as a platform it is a VERY bad thing, because your voice is diminished, and your words ridiculed as everyone can see that the emperor has no clothes, just as I am doing right now. Note how he says that consumers ‘role’ is evolving from passive to interactive, and not active. Interactive means consuming BBQI. It means consuming full stop. Blogging, using Google News..its all about being active. Interactive means passive. And of course, that is what these patricians want; passive consumption in another arena.

The democratisation of media creation, distribution and access does not necessarily foretell that traditional media are dinosaurs of a new variety. If we are fortunate, we’ll end up with a more diverse media ecosystem in which many forms – including the traditional organisations – can thrive.

Why would be fortunate for us? It would be fortunate for YOU because you will keep your artificially created position. It would be bad for everyone else, because we would be compelled to continue consumption of the lies spread by BBQ, as this country is turned into a mini Soviet Union, and embarks on another insane war.

For my part, the most exciting aspect of this change is in the emerging conversation.

‘For your part’ means, “please adopt my catchphrase”. No Sale.

Ill leave it to you to read the rest of it; it is contradictory to say the least. Each example he gives in a list of the “…most important tools in today’s evolving media sphere.” – blogs, wikis, podcasts, web mashups – are all things in which people are being active and not passive. People are being active by creating these resources and they are being active by turning away from BBQ as their sole source of information. Note also how he calls this the ‘evolving media sphere’ making a connection with what he is involved with ‘the media’ and what he is being superceeded by, the blogosphere, the web and software developers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4789852.stm 

THE NEW TERRORISTS – ARE YOU ONE? DOWNLOAD MUSIC? BLOCK TRAFFIC? WRITE A BAD CHECK?

Posted By: Rayelan
Date: Sunday, 15 January 2006, 6:12 p.m.

The reclassification of terrorism is spreading across this country. A bill just BARELY defeated in Oregon would have made you a terrorist if you download music, block traffic or write a bad check. Want to know what the punishment would have been? Read on…

This Madness Is Spreading Nationwide!!

Excerpts from a recent interview of
Dr Walter Belford
by PT Shamrock

DWB – For instance Senate bill 742 in Oregon, which was narrowly defeated by just three votes, would have classified terrorism as a plethora of completely unrelated actions.

Downloading music, blocking traffic, writing a bad cheque or any form of protest, none of which has anything to do with terrorism. All these ‘offences’would be punishable by life in prison unless you agreed to attend a “forest labour camp” for 25 years of enforced labour.

I understand that a made over version of Senate bill 742 will be reintroduced in late 2006 with another name and with some minor adjustments and will probably pass the second time around. Then it will naturally, spread nationwide.

Not even Communist China or Stalinist North Korea put people in labour camps for writing a bad cheque, but this was nearly implemented in the ‘land of the free’. Debtor’s prisons were supposed to have been banned more than 150 years ago! Explain to me what does writing a cheque with insufficient funds have to do with fighting terrorism? Nothing I tell you, absolutely nothing!

Understand and know that this was an actual bill and there are similar ones around the nation that are also being drawn up by your so-called representatives in government.

DWB – If you think Oregon is bad, try Wisconsin! Wisconsin is crazy about control. It takes fingerprints when a police officer pulls you over for a broken taillight. And blood specimens if they suspect you are intoxicated or on drugs. Wisconsin has the honour of sponsoring the Super National ID legislation which will also be a Pan American Union Card, i.e. an international ID as the US merges with Canada and Mexico.

PTS – What else is Wisconsin infamous for?

DWB – A man was sent to prison for five years for “paper terrorism.” He sent too many papers in a complaint he had with the government.

DWB continues – In Rhode Island, governors proposed a bill that would have outlawed criticism of the government, defining it as anarchy under World War One era rhetoric.

In the UK there is a very active advert campaign presently that encourages anyone to report “any suspicious” behavior from their neighbors, etc. to the authorities. What “suspicious” means is left entirely up to the person who would report someone. So if you had a neighbor that was angry with you for any real or imagined reason, you’d be reported and your name will remain on numerous government databases forever! Your name will never be deleted from those government databases.

…

Couldn’t find the “real” article and don’t really have time to find all the dates/actual instances of all the mentioned things in this article, but it really is quite ridiculous… I wonder if one day not paying a parking meter will land me in a forced labour camp (because, after all, parking fees are all about private property, which is the most important thing of all…).

>>> “Documents From the US Espionage Den” is a legendary series of Iranian books containing classified US documents that were found in the American Embassy in Tehran when it was taken over by revolutionaries. These books are very hard to come by in the US, and until now there has been no concerted effort to post them. The National Security Archive is integrating individual documents into their electronic reading books on various topics, but we’re interested in posting the whole set, volume by volume. As a first step, we’re offering a smattering of the documents via the files above. We beseech anyone with access to the books – either the bound volumes or scanned versions of the English-language portions – to please get in touch.

Steven Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy (part of the Federation of American Scientists) gave an excellent introduction to these publications in 1997:

Many people will recall that when Iranian revolutionaries seized the U.S. embassy in Teheran in 1979, they acquired a large cache of classified U.S. government documents, some of which had been shredded and painstakingly reassembled, which they proceeded to publish. What no one seems to have noticed, however, is that they never stopped publishing!

By 1995, an amazing 77 volumes of “Documents from the U.S. Espionage Den” (Asnad-i lanih-‘i Jasusi) had been collected and published by the “Muslim Students Following the Line of the Imam” (Center for the Publication of the U.S. Espionage Den’s Documents, P.O. Box 15815-3489, Teheran, Islamic Republic of Iran, tel. 824005). Each volume contains original documents along with Farsi translations and, for no extra charge, an inflammatory introductory essay. [Read the full article here]

In a frequently referenced 1987 article on the subject, Edward Jay Epstein wrote:

…Iranian students seized an entire archive of CIA and State Department documents, which represented one of the most extensive losses of secret data in the history of any modern intelligence service. Even though many of these documents were shredded into thin strips before the Embassy, and CIA base, was surrendered, the Iranians managed to piece them back together. They were then published in 1982 in 54 volumes under the title “Documents From the U.S. Espionage Den”, and are sold in the United States for $246.50. As the Teheran Embassy evidently served as a regional base for the CIA, The scope of this captures intelligence goes well beyond intelligence reports on Iran alone. They cover the Soviet Union, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. There are also secret analysis of arcane subjects ranging from the effectiveness of Israeli intelligence to Soviet oil production. [Read the full article here]

It turns out that in keeping with the times, the majority of the “Espionage Den” volumes have been scanned and are available on CDs sold in Iran. A Memory Hole reader had an Iranian friend buy the two-volume set, which he kindly gave to us. The major down side is that while the CDs contain 68 volumes of “Espionage Den” in Farsi (totalling over 10,000 pages), they contain only two PDF files of the original English-language documents (totalling a meager 400 pages). Adding to the frustration, the English material is presented in completely random order. Each page is usually from a completely different document than the page before and after it. We’re posting them as they appear on the CD (although broken down into five files instead of two, since the original files were so huge). If some enterprising reader wants to create an index, we’ll happily post it here.

Most of these documents are labeled “Confidential” or “Secret” and remain classified to this day.

Acrobat/PDF files

Part One (88 pages | 7.7 meg)

Part Two (88 pages | 7.8 meg)

Part Three (84 pages | 8.6 meg)

Part Four (70 pages | 7 meg)

Part Five (70 pages | 6 meg)

[…]

http://www.thememoryhole.org/espionage_den/

I remember watching a documentary about the amazing students who put together the millions of shredds of documents left behind when the ameicans were routed. They sat on the floor, carefully sifting through the strips of paper. As it says above, the completed reconstructions were published in books. Now you can understand a little bit more why Iranians call america The Great Satan. If you had read of the dastardly deeds done to them and their country, you would be as full of disdain as they are.

I have always wanted a copy of the documents they managed to reconstruct; its a pity that todays rock lusting ‘give us hamburgers’ Iranian students don’t have the zeal and common sense that their predecessors did – can you imagine the job they could be doing with the internet to show the world just what the hell is being done to them yet again?

Check it out:

http://www.thememoryhole.org/espionage_den/photos.htm

Golf ball dishes, Radios (and presumably crypto tools), Teletypes, periodic antennae – they really hit the motherlode!

UPDATE 2013

The venerable Memory Hole has been offline for years. Luckily, we made a copy of these fascinating documents, assembled them into a single 400 page PDF and stored them on Scribd where you can download them into your e-reader for perusal at your leisure. At the time of this update, they have been downloaded or read over eleven and a half thousand times.

Operation Ajax (1953) (officially TP-AJAX) was an Anglo–American covert operation to overthrow the elected government ([1][2][3][4]) of Iran and Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and restore the exiled Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to the throne as a dictator.

Rationale for the intervention included Mossadegh’s socialist rhetoric and his nationalization, without compensation, of the oil industry which was previously operated by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (which later changed its name to The British Petroleum Company) under contracts disputed by the nationalists as unfair. A particular point of contention was the refusal of the Anglo-Iranian Oil company to allow an audit of the accounts to determine whether the Iranian government received the royalties it was due. Intransigence on the part of the Anglo-Iranian Oil company led the nationalist government to escalate its demands, requiring an equal share in the oil revenues. The final crisis was precipitated when the Anglo-Iranian oil company ceased operations rather than accepting the nationalists’ demands.

The newly state-owned oil companies saw a dramatic drop in productivity and, consequently, exports; this resulted in the Abadan Crisis, a situation that was further aggravated by its export markets being closed. Even so royalties to the Iranian government were significantly higher than before nationalization. Without its own distribution network it was denied access to markets by an international blockade intended to coerce Mossadegh into reprivatization. In addition, the appropriation of the companies resulted in Western allegations that Mossadegh was a Communist and suspicions that Iran was in danger of falling under the influences of the neighboring Soviet Union. But Mossadegh refused to back down under international pressure.

For the U.S., an important factor to consider was Iran’s border with the Soviet Union. A pro-American Iran under the Shah would give the U.S. a double strategic advantage in the ensuing Cold War, as a NATO alliance was already in effect with the government of Turkey, also bordering the USSR.

In planning the operation, the CIA organized a guerrilla force in case the communist Tudeh Party seized power as a result of the chaos created by Operation Ajax. According to formerly “Top Secret” documents released by the National Security Archive, Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith reported that the CIA had reached an agreement with Qashqai tribal leaders in southern Iran to establish a clandestine safe haven from which U.S.-funded guerrillas and intelligence agents could operate.

Operation Ajax was the first time the Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated a plot to overthrow a democratically-elected government. The success of this operation, and its relatively low cost, encouraged the CIA to successfully carry out a similar operation in Guatemala a year later.

Widespread dissatisfaction with the oppressive regime of the reinstalled Shah led to the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and the occupation of the U.S. embassy. The role that the U.S. embassy had played in the 1953 coup led the revolutionary guards to suspect that it might be used to play a similar role in suppressing the revolution.

The leader of Operation Ajax was Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., a senior CIA agent, and grandson of the former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt. While formal leadership was vested in Kim Roosevelt the project was designed and executed by Donald Wilber, a career contract CIA agent and acclaimed author of books on Iran, Afghanistan and Ceylon.

As a condition of restoring the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company the U.S. was able to dictate that the AIOC’s oil monopoly should lapse. Five major U.S. oil companies, plus Royal Dutch Shell and French Compagnie Française des Pétroles were given licences to operate in the country alongside AIOC.

[…]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax

WOW.

FURTHERMORE:

BBC Involvement in Operation Ajax

A BBC Radio 4 documentary in 2005 claimed that it had evidence that a radio newsreader inserted the word “exactly” into a midnight timecheck one summer night in 1953, a code word to the shah of Iran that Britain supported his plans for a coup. The shah had selected the word, the documentary said, and the BBC broadcast the word at the request of the government. Officially, the BBC has never acknowledged the code word plot. The BBC spokesman declined to comment on a possible connection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#Claimed_Involvement_in_Operation_Ajax

An 82-year-old Women’s Institute stalwart has been asked to remove her hat in a pub – because staff claimed it was a security risk. […]  “I mulled it over and then thought ‘How ridiculous!‘ “.

[…]
Pub licensee Tony Love said it was pub policy to always ask people to remove their hats. …”Mrs Wilbraham does not understand that the world is changing.”

…

Wrong. Mrs Wilbraham obviously understands the changes better than Mr Love. She immediately and correctly identified the changes as ‘ridiculous!’. Mr Love thinks being filmed while in a pub is a normal way for society to progress. He is blind and stupid.

…

I also wanted to point out this as a fantastic read. The Chinese have had enough of being hit by rocks tossed by their friends in the glass house. Every single page is fabulous.

Iran ‘poses major US challenge’

Iran may pose a greater challenge than any other nation to the US, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said.

<Sian Phillips>Here it comes…</Sian Phillips>

She said Iran was determined to develop nuclear weapons,

So what.

was the “central banker for terrorism” in the Middle East

Nonsense.

and was a block to democracy.

It’s a nasty job, but someone’s got to do it.

Her comments to a Congressional hearing in Washington came as Iran vowed to resist international pressure over its nuclear programme.

Iran insists it has the right to civilian nuclear technology.

There are only two ways of raising Money : Debt and Equity. Right? Wrong.
There are only two forms of tenure: Freehold and Leasehold, Right? Wrong.

Out of the primeval Capital swamp there is emerging a new animal – the “Capital Partnership” – based upon a curious hybrid of a commercial company and a partnership, known as a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP). The LLP is already beginning to make its mark in the commercial world – examples include a recent initiative by the AIM listed company Numerica and a new property portfolio investment scheme by the well known businessman Tom Hunter – but has implications for financing enterprises of all types, in particular those in the field of public investment.

During the early 1990s, professional partnerships such as Arthur Andersen became concerned that their individual partners’ acceptance of liability for their firm’s actions put them individually at risk of bankruptcy. Long before Enron, the City persuaded Jersey’s Parliament to draw up an Act creating the LLP -and the British Government, fearing an exodus of professional partnerships to Jersey, passed the Limited Liability Partnership Act in April 2001. For the first time anywhere in the world, it became possible to form a corporate body -an entity with a legal existence independent of its individual members – which had both collective limited liability and the mutual, co-operative characteristics of partnerships.

There are now over 7,000 LLPs around the country. In part, the growth is because they’re so easy to create: two designated members must complete an application downloaded from the Companies House website, and pay £95. There is no Memorandum of Incorporation, no Articles of Association and no Shareholder Agreement. In fact there isn’t even any requirement for any written agreement at all – although only the most trusting dispense with them – since simple “default” provisions based upon partnership law apply.

The LLP has two key attributes: firstly it is an “Open” Corporate body (NOT legally a partnership as one would expect from the name) in which any stakeholder, whether or not they are Investors may become Members, thereby aligning their interestswith other members. Secondly, the LLP makes it possible for those who invest Money in an enterprise or in Capital assets such as Land to be members of a “Capital Partnership” alongside the users of the Capital or Capital Asset thereby replacing the usual adversarial contracts between those who finance an enterprise or asset and those who utilise it.

In essence, all these stakeholders are brought inside the partnership, so their interests are aligned; it’s quite a change from traditional structures, which pit stakeholders in competition against each other. The LLP delivers an ideal combination of the collective and the individual; it’s flexible and easy to establish while its partnership characteristics are robust enough to make it attractive to the private sector. […]

Open Capital

“Sharia law by the back door”, they will call it, it sounds interesting to me.

[…]

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/~lcushing/Fist.html 

courtesy of Magnetbox

Now, the draft is coming back for the Iran attack; what do you think will be the hand signal of the Eloi generation?

Our taxes fund the collection of public data – yet we pay again to access it. Make the data freely available to stimulate innovation, argue Charles Arthur and Michael Cross

Thursday March 9, 2006 The Guardian
Imagine you had bought this newspaper for a friend. Imagine you asked them to tell you what’s in the TV listings – and they demanded cash before they would tell you. Outrageous? Certainly. Yet that is what a number of government agencies are doing with the data that we, as taxpayers, pay to have collected on our behalf. You have to pay to get a useful version of that data. Think of Ordnance Survey’s (OS) mapping data: useful to any business that wanted to provide a service in the UK, yet out of reach of startup companies without deep pockets.

[…]

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1726229,00.html

If you want to beat Google at their own game, you let Ordnance Survey free all of its data for British companies, and let them get on with it…but this is a subset of the principle; when you pay for something, it must belong to you, or be accounted for to you or both. HMG does none of this, and treats you like its slave. You have no rights to the fruits of your labor and no avenue of redress.

That is not right.

And of course, this goes across everything, not the least of which is the spending of your money on the war machine.

Did you know that simple text lists detailing every school in the UK are held by the government, but you cannot have access to them because private sector companies rent these lists and the government is forbidden from competing with them?

This means that even though you have payed for the government to compile and store these lists, they are not allowed to supply you with copies; you have to go to a list dealer and pay £8000 to RENT the list of all schools in the UK.

I’m not making this up.

As the originator of the “Iran Oil Bourse” I hope you can spare me some space to comment in relation to Ms. Berg’s recent articles.

The original concept five or so years ago was not of an “Iran Oil Bourse” but of a “Middle East Energy Exchange” providing a new Gulf benchmark price which would not be manipulated by investment banks and oil traders – as is the case with the North Sea “Brent” crude oil complex and has been for at least 10 years.

It makes no sense at all – and never has – for crude oil coming out of the Gulf and going to the Far East to be priced against a North Sea benchmark – but Brent has always been used since it is the “least worst” solution.

From personal experience – including very high level conversations – I think that there is no prospect whatever that Iran would unilaterally attempt to create a crude oil benchmark contract whatever currency it may be priced in. A domestic market in products, petrochemicals, and so on, is another matter.

The current global market in oil is owned, controlled, and operated by intermediaries for their own benefit and is fast deteriorating – as I warned it would five years ago – into an “ICE-bound” (ICE = Intercontinental Exchange, currently completing an audacious but brilliant strategy by applying the coup de grace to NYMEX) global monopoly extracting ever increasing profits at the expense of producers and consumers. Barclays Capital recently estimated that intermediary profits from commodity markets (of which energy is a huge component) will double to $26bn in the next three years.

Moreover, this market is now awash with hedge fund money, and despite Ms. Berg’s confidence in NYMEX and IPE/LCH, I believe that these centralized institutions face little-appreciated systemic risks as “single points of failure” in the face of the unregulated, opaque, and massive off-exchange, or “OTC,” market in energy and energy derivatives.

The difference between the LTCM near-meltdown in the financial markets and an energy market crisis this winter or next is that the Fed can’t print oil to bail out the system.

In relation to clearing, Ms. Berg is unfamiliar with the concept of a “Clearing Union” because no partnership-based “enterprise model” (i.e., legal and financial structure) enabling one has ever existed. Naturally, market users would have to back up a mutual guarantee in some way, whether through margin, collateral, or otherwise.

It’s just that there isn’t the “central counterparty” Ms. Berg is used to.

In a nutshell, I believe that the future lies in the creation of a neutral global oil trading network and “Energy Clearing Union” owned by ALL market constituencies: and this concept is beginning to get across. Certainly the Norwegians were interested in it: “Norwegian Bourse Director wants oil bourse priced in euros” – a development which followed a paper I submitted at the request of their consul-general in Edinburgh.

~ Chris Cook, formerly a Director of the International Petroleum Exchange and now a member of the Wimpole Consortium tasked with creating an energy exchange for Iran

Antiwar.com letters page with reply

It’s official: the era of resource wars is upon us. In a major London address, British Defense Secretary John Reid warned that global climate change and dwindling natural resources are combining to increase the likelihood of violent conflict over land, water and energy. Climate change, he indicated, “will make scarce resources, clean water, viable agricultural land even scarcer”—and this will “make the emergence of violent conflict more rather than less likely.”

Although not unprecedented, Reid’s prediction of an upsurge in resource conflict is significant both because of his senior rank and the vehemence of his remarks. “The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur,” he declared. “We should see this as a warning sign.”

Resource conflicts of this type are most likely to arise in the developing world, Reid indicated, but the more advanced and affluent countries are not likely to be spared the damaging and destabilizing effects of global climate change. With sea levels rising, water and energy becoming increasingly scarce and prime agricultural lands turning into deserts, internecine warfare over access to vital resources will become a global phenomenon.

Reid’s speech, delivered at the prestigious Chatham House in London (Britain’s equivalent of the Council on Foreign Relations), is but the most recent expression of a growing trend in strategic circles to view environmental and resource effects—rather than political orientation and ideology—as the most potent source of armed conflict in the decades to come. With the world population rising, global consumption rates soaring, energy supplies rapidly disappearing and climate change eradicating valuable farmland, the stage is being set for persistent and worldwide struggles over vital resources. Religious and political strife will not disappear in this scenario, but rather will be channeled into contests over valuable sources of water, food and energy.

Prior to Reid’s address, the most significant expression of this outlook was a report prepared for the U.S. Department of Defense by a California-based consulting firm in October 2003. Entitled “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security,” the report warned that global climate change is more likely to result in sudden, cataclysmic environmental events than a gradual (and therefore manageable) rise in average temperatures. Such events could include a substantial increase in global sea levels, intense storms and hurricanes and continent-wide “dust bowl” effects. This would trigger pitched battles between the survivors of these effects for access to food, water, habitable land and energy supplies.

“Violence and disruption stemming from the stresses created by abrupt changes in the climate pose a different type of threat to national security than we are accustomed to today,” the 2003 report noted. “Military confrontation may be triggered by a desperate need for natural resources such as energy, food and water rather than by conflicts over ideology, religion or national honor.”

Until now, this mode of analysis has failed to command the attention of top American and British policymakers. For the most part, they insist that ideological and religious differences—notably, the clash between values of tolerance and democracy on one hand and extremist forms of Islam on the other—remain the main drivers of international conflict. But Reid’s speech at Chatham House suggests that a major shift in strategic thinking may be under way. Environmental perils may soon dominate the world security agenda.

This shift is due in part to the growing weight of evidence pointing to a significant human role in altering the planet’s basic climate systems. Recent studies showing the rapid shrinkage of the polar ice caps, the accelerated melting of North American glaciers, the increased frequency of severe hurricanes and a number of other such effects all suggest that dramatic and potentially harmful changes to the global climate have begun to occur. More importantly, they conclude that human behavior—most importantly, the burning of fossil fuels in factories, power plants, and motor vehicles—is the most likely cause of these changes. This assessment may not have yet penetrated the White House and other bastions of head-in-the-sand thinking, but it is clearly gaining ground among scientists and thoughtful analysts around the world. […]

http://www.energybulletin.net/13605.html 

Shoppers can pay by fingerprint

Not only is the whole idea of this horrific, but the fact that the article mentions nothing of the multitude of possible downsides to this just baffles me. This isn’t journalism, this is just reprinting press releases.

This is a nice greasemonkey script to add mirrors to digg links. I found another one to remove adverts from digg but since I use adblock I didn’t even know digg had ads (although I thought the large white space under the header was a bit screwy).