couched in Y2K link obsession
10.2.99 Selma is vigilant
12.19.99 Patsy arrested 		hysteric echoes
pretty version
Earth crash
 2012 µ¢çïðð¤
  & links
12.20.99   FAA & State Dept chime in at last hour
12.16.99   NYC authorities warn of Y2K fraud artists
  Criminals scrambling to cash in on Y2K bug with variety of scams
"Almost uniformly, belief among right-wing religious extremists is federal govt is an arm of Satan."
Project Megiddo report
"guilt by way congruent ideologies" †
National Security Adviser Samuel Berger said over last few weeks Washington worked with allies to foil millennium attacks planned against U.S. targets around world. "The last weeks of 1999 saw the largest US counter-terrorism operation in history." Berger reportedly told National Press Club last week. "Terrorist cells were disrupted in 8 countries & attacks were almost certainly prevented. … Threat remains real," Berger added. "We'll need to keep meeting this challenge just as we met it last week: with vigilance & refusal to be intimidated." FBI helping Israel identify Christian extremist groups that may have apocalyptic plans during pilgrimages to Israel in coming year, Haaretz reported. FBI cooperating with Israeli security forces to identify Christian cults & briefing top Israeli law enforcement officials on groups identified as potential troublemakers. Internal Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami & US AttyGen J.Reno met 10/26/99 in WashDC to discuss further modes of cooperation on issue. (Israel Consulate- NY)

  … Today's federal law enforcement under the guise of prevention has now informed everyone who they think might be terrorists. This demonization by law enforcement only exacerbates distrust among the citizenry and distrust between the citizenry and law enforcement.

CHICAGO IL   With only two months before Y2K, govt media blitz on propaganda campaign promoting FBI "Project Megiddo" offensive. Claims "fringe" groups doing bad things over "cultish" religious motivations. FBI, of course, wants greater control over general population to protect against it. That way if one or two token freak groups decide to do anything (How could they resist the government-created high profile challenge?), feds can say, "We told you so. Take comfort. We're here to protect you."

Project Megiddo report uses unique & esoteric words & terms for which no explanatory definitions are provided. Foremost among these is term "right-wing," found total of 30 times. Sometimes used alone, other times accompanied in conjunction with "modifiers" such as: extremists, religious extremists, radicals, racists, terrorists, and nuts. … incl statement: "The radical right encompasses a vast number and variety of groups, such as survivalists, militias, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, Christian Identity churches, the AN and skinheads." … In its discussion of Christian Identity, the report states: "There is no single document that expresses this belief system."

One self-proclaimed authority on cults named in report is Margaret Thaler Singer, board member of secular cult watchdog group the American Family Foundation (AFF). Singer was largely discredited through 1980s & early 1990s as result of string of unfavorable court cases in which she had testified as cults and mind-control groups "expert". Previous to this, Singer & group of colleagues drafted paper on "Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control (DIMPAC)." Singer's task force submitted its final report to American Psychological Association's Board in 1987 which rejected her report, stating: "In general, report lacks scientific rigor & evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur."

Israel expressed concern Monday over FBI report warning of risk of violence in Israel by religious cults with approach of the new millennium. "We are aware fringe terrorist groups among millions of pilgrims expected for the 2000 jubilee," said Haim Ramon, minister without portfolio in PM Ehud Barak's office. "We don't want these groups to harm jubilee & our police will do everything to ensure celebrations go ahead trouble-free," Ramon told Israeli radio. FBI report, widely covered in Israeli & US press, warns religious fanatics, racists & other extremists preparing to wage violence in run-up to January 2000, motivated by apocalyptic religious beliefs or by conspiracy theories. Large part of report, entitled the Megiddo project after the Israeli site where according to the New Testament of the Bible the battle of Armageddon will take place, is devoted to Jerusalem. "Israeli sources are extremely concerned that the Temple Mount will be the scene of violent clashes between religious fanatics," Hebrew newspaper Haaretz quoted report as saying.
Fringe millennarian Christian groups believe destruction of the mosques on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest site, & reconstruction of the ancient Jewish temple herald return of messiah & Last Judgment. "Some cultic groups have already penetrated Israel, apparently with goal of preparing for the end of days," report said. Haaretz said FBI feared that violent acts in Jerusalem, holy to the three major monotheistic faiths, could give rise to similar incidents in the rest of the world. Paper reported last week Israeli Public Security Minister Shlomo Ben Ami met with US AttyGen Janet Reno in Washington to seek cooperation between US & Israeli police on Christian groups with "apocalyptic intentions." Israel launched crackdown on radical Christian groups over past month & expelled several dozen people judged to be potential security risks.

10/29/99 IsraelWire   Israel police on Monday raided houses in the Azariya neighborhood of E.Jerusalem & arrested 21 Christians suspected as cult members. Later, addtl 3 arrested in W.Jerusalem. Many Christians believe redemption will come with new millennium, but only after Israeli war of Armageddon. Police concerned extremist cults come to Israel & cause provocations on Temple Mount & other holy sites. Police stated cultists arrested this week are not the same as the "concerned Christian" cult members arrested & deported last year who wanted to commit suicide in Israel. The police received intelligence reports that the recent group of Christian cult members planned provocations. Among those arrested are women & children, who will be deported soon. Police believe many more cult members arrived in Israel & hiding in areas under PLO Authority (PA) jurisdiction. Police gathering intelligence info about groups, & hope for cooperation with PA.

10/26/99 "Suspected Christian doomsday cult members arrested in Jerusalem"
IsraelWire   Raid after midnight 10/25/99 marked 3rd time this year suspected cult members were arrested by police. Police report latest suspects arrested belong to Solomon's Temple & Brother David cults, and live near Mount of Olives in eastern Jerusalem. Police charge cult members here illegally & will be granted 72 hours to appeal the deportation orders. 20 Americans, one Australian & 5 children taken in police vehicles to a prison in Ramle.

10/13/99   "Christians belonging to doomsday cult expelled"
IsraelWire   26 members of Christian doomsday cult prohibited from entering Israel via the Port of Haifa were expelled on Monday. Realizing they would encounter difficulties entering country, group decided to enter on boat from Cyprus, hoping to evade police already on look out for group following intelligence reports. According to Haifa area police, most cult members were Irish   [ Travellers ?! ]   & there were children among group. Police spokesperson acknowledged members of group were denied visas on two previous occasions but would not elaborate. Shipping official on vessel said group, which had been confined to the ferry since it arrived, had $300,000 in cash & 4 cars, but described group as shabbily dressed.   [ sure sounds like Travellers ! ]   Police feared group members planned to commit suicide in Jerusalem to coincide with millennium in line with teachings of extremist cult which believes the millennium will bring end of time calling upon them to take their own lives. 14 Denver-based cult members were deported by Israel earlier in the year.

10/20/99 "FBI: Militias a threat at millennium"   K.Johnson
USA Today   … report titled Project Megiddo in which federal authorities assess threats posed by hate groups & explain significance of biblical references the groups use to discuss Y2K will be centerpiece of FBI seminar this month before Intl Assoc. of Chiefs of Police in Charlotte, NC. Unlike the rest of the meeting, seminar will be closed to public, as sign of how sensitivesubject of militias has become. Tne workshop is titled "millennium, militias, and mayhem: what to expect in the coming Year." … What concerns officials now, however, is possibility extreme militias members might undertake missions of their own, citing example of Buford Furrow, who belonged to white supremacist group &accused of killing mail carrier & shooting 6 people at Jewish community center in L.A. this summer.

10/20/99 "FBI Issues Alerts for Possible Y2K Threats"
ABCNEWS   FBI preparing roughly 16,000 such pamphlets alerting agencies about potential problems posed by the turn of the millennium. There are no specific threats, but we often alert law enforcement agencies about impending dates with significance for potential terrorists, FBI spokesman Bill Carter said Wednesday. … Each year, for instance, FBI reminds state & local law enforcement of April 19 anniversary of 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing & 1993 federal assault on Waco, Texas Branch Davidian sect. Bureau intends to distribute a 40- page research report.

mystical national security myth
The FBI, as of one year later 10/10/00, seems to have pushed the Megiddo threat analysis blunder cum PR power ploy as far into Winston Smith's memory hole as possible. At www.fbi.gov/search.htm with keyword Megiddo, 3 URLs resulted. The last two were dead links. In the search return URL, they looked as follows:

The functional link read as follows so we reproduce its content below in hope of saving it from oblivion. Pass the soma. For several years, the FBI has had a program of reaching out to militias and their members to explain the FBI's role in investigating violations of law and to stress open lines of communication with militia groups. This was done also to ensure the militias that there was no intent to deny anyone their constitutional rights nor was there a targeting of any militia groups who were otherwise engaged in legitimate, protected activity. The FBI realizes that the majority of militia members engage in and support law abiding activities. However, the FBI will investigate illegal activities coming within the purview of its investigative responsibilities. In fact, the FBI is fully cognizant of the fact that some militias have taken positive steps towards ridding themselves of violent extremist elements. It is these violent extremist elements that could be violating laws which could subject them to investigations by the FBI. Often, these extreme members will splinter from more established groups and engage in violence autonomously. These elements are often very small cells or lone actors. The contact with militia members has proven effective, in that the more mainstream militia groups have been helpful in identifying the more extremist elements of the militia who may resort to acts of violence.

"Project Megiddo" is the culmination of an FBI research initiative which analyzed the potential for extremist criminal activity in the U.S. by individuals or domestic groups who attach special significance to the year 2000. In an effort to educate investigators and officials in the law enforcement community about potential violence associated with or motivated by the arrival of the year 2000, the FBI conducted extensive research into the various ideologies and concepts which serve to motivate groups or individuals with violent agendas. Many extremists place significance on the next millennium, and may present challenges to law enforcement authorities. The significance is based primarily upon apocalyptic religious beliefs or political beliefs concerning the New World Order conspiracy theory. The report is intended to provide a clear, measured, and responsible picture of potential extremism motivated by the next millennium, and to increase awareness among law enforcement officials of the unique challenges that may be presented by extremists motivated by millennial agendas.

The study is being distributed to appropriate law enforcement personnel from around the country and provides an overview of various extremist ideologies, specifically those which advocate or call for violent action beginning in the year 2000. Such ideologies motivate violent white supremacists who seek to initiate a race war; apocalyptic cults which anticipate a violent Armageddon; radical elements of private citizen militias who fear that the United Nations will initiate an armed takeover of the United States and subsequently establish a One World Government; and other groups or individuals which promote violent millennial agendas. The report also discusses how extremists interpret biblical and/or other religious scriptures to justify their agendas, and how certain extremist elements point to the so-called Y2K computer crisis as an indicator of imminent social chaos and unrest.
In addition to addressing key millennial concepts and the ideological or religious motivations behind millennial extremism, Project Megiddo outlines a number of issues of which law enforcement officers should be cognizant, including indicators of potential violence, possible preparations for violence, and a general discussion of possible targets of millennial extremists. Law enforcement officials are encouraged to further educate themselves on the various issues discussed in the project.


"In absence of intelligence that more established & organized terrorist groups are planning millennial violence as an organizational strategy, violence is most likely to be perpetrated by radical fringe members of established groups."
  [ police logic at its selfserving finest ]
~ Project Megiddo report
" Old FBI hands are familiar with just such a tactic, known as 'salting' government records. It was a uniquely devious way to smear an enemy. Make up spurious allegations about Mr. X, leak them to a law-enforcement agency, then, when the agency investigates, use its probe as evidence that police are interested in Mr. X's activities. It was practically foolproof, and, given the way the FBI zealously guarded the identity of its informants, almost impossible to detect."
Vendetta American Express & the Smearing of Edmond Safra Bryan Burrough, Harper Collins, NY 1992 p 156, ¶2
FBI Director Louis Freeh said the agency will keep close tabs on Y2K cults because, "We don't have the ability, unfortunately, to guarantee the avoidance of problems."
  [ "I like to watch." Chauncey Gardener ]

Megiddo as blowback from paranoia lobbies. Credited in PM report are Anti-Defamation league (ADL), Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) & Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance (OCRT)

12/99 Militias & Millenarians: Preliminary Typology S.L.v.Gorka, Terrorism Research Ctr   .pdf
more of the same

  empty rebuttal
1/5/00 "ERRI Director Says At Least 2 Terror Attacks Thwarted by U.S. Forces"
Chicago, IL EmergencyNet News   Despite arrests of at least 16 people in several different countries & on Canadian/U.S. border, media pundits & other critics continue to complain threat of Y2K terrorist attacks "vastly overblown" " hoax perpetrated by scare-mongers." Clark Staten, ERRI's Executive Director & Sr. National Security analyst, says bluntly, "I respectfully disagree … ERRI analysts now believe U.S. law enforcement, military, & intelligence officials successfully thwarted at least 2, if not more, terrorist attacks scheduled to coincide with the Year2000 transition."

"Although many details have not been publicly released, due to on-going investigations, we believe men & women of our protective services done an extraordinary job defending America & her interests, throughout the world, during a very trying time," Staten added. "Regardless of successes, this is not a time to let down our guard," Staten continued. "Concerns now are 'bad guys' who found our security preparations too tough, and our alert levels too high, to carry out an attack … now wait for our vigilance to decline with time before murderous acts," Staten concluded.
[ Statement contains lots of claims & congratulations with not one statement of factual substantiation. 'Bad guys' are never named. ]
LOS ANGELES   An Algerian man was convicted today of terrorism for bringing a car loaded with explosives into the U.S. in what the authorities said was a global plan to bomb buildings at the time of millennium celebrations. The man, Ahmed Ressam, 33, was found guilty of 9 federal charges, including an act of terrorism transcending a national boundary. His lawyer Michael Filipovic said: "We're obviously disappointed with the results. There will be an appeal." Sentencing was scheduled June 28 in Seattle. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 130 years in prison. It was Mr. Ressam's second conviction of the day. Earlier, in Paris, a French court convicted and sentenced him for belonging to a network of militants.
Mr. Ressam was arrested 12.14.99 by U.S. Customs inspectors at Port Angeles, Wash., after arriving on a ferry from Canada. Prosecutors said bomb-making materials found in his rental car were intended for attacks on West Coast sites, possibly during millennium celebrations. However, they did not try to prove specific targets. Mr. Ressam's defense called him an unwitting courier and blamed a co-defendant, Abdelmajid Dahoumane, who is in custody in Algeria and will be tried there on charges of participating in terrorist organizations. Members of the jury here deliberated for just over 10 hours during 2 days. When Judge John C. Coughenour of U.S. District Court polled them to ask if this was their individual decision, each one answered, "Yes." "You are one of the nicest and most attentive juries I've had in 20 years," the judge told them. "It makes me proud to be an American." Jurors declined a request to speak to reporters and were taken out the back of the courthouse.

In addition to terrorism, Mr. Ressam was found guilty of placing an explosive in proximity to a ferry terminal, using false identification documents, smuggling, transporting explosives and carrying an explosive during the commission of a felony. The jurors also found that his actions were committed in connection with a crime of violence. In Paris, Mr. Ressam was given a 5 year prison sentence after being tried in absentia. That trial drew a picture of a web of Islamic militants with unclear connections who cross paths around the world. Mr. Ressam was among 2 dozen people who stood trial. Seventeen were handed sentences of between 6 years and 16 months. U.S. officials believe Mr. Ressam was trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan and is linked to Osama bin Laden, reportedly the mastermind of the 1998 bombings of United States embassies in Africa. But prosecutors were barred from bringing Mr. bin Laden's name into the trial for lack of proof.
The prosecution did bring in testimony by Abdel Ghani Meskini, an Algerian who was seized in New York after Mr. Ressam's arrest. Mr. Meskini pleaded guilty to conspiracy last month and agreed to cooperate. Mr. Meskini's testimony pointed to Pakistan as a route to Afghanistan and its training camps, and prosecutors were able to introduce plane tickets showing that Mr. Ressam went to Pakistan in 1998. Mokhtar Haouari, another Algerian, arrested in Canada after Mr. Ressam's arrest, is awaiting trial in New York. Mr. Ressam's federal trial was transferred to Los Angeles because of widespread publicity in Washington State.

    Suspect in New Year's Terror Plot Is Arrested in Algeria
    12.7.00   Judith Miller NYTimes
A fugitive charged with plotting terrorist attacks in the U.S. over the New Year's holidays last winter has been quietly arrested in Algeria, Clinton administration officials said yesterday. Officials said that Abdelmajid Dahoumane, a 33-year-old Algerian sought by American & Canadian authorities for almost a year, was arrested in Algeria less than 2 months ago. Last April, the U.S. & Canada offered up to $5 million for information leading to his arrest & conviction. In an indictment issued last January, prosecutors for the U.S. atty's office in Seattle accused Dahoumane of being an accomplice of Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian indicted for plotting a "terrorist act" in the U.S. The plot was foiled on 12.14.99 when border agents in Port Angeles WA arrested Ressam as he tried to cross the Canadian border in a car loaded with explosives & 4 four homemade detonators. According to officials, Dahoumane & Ressam shared a hotel room in Vancouver, Canada, during the month before Ressam's attempt to cross the border and may have made the explosives together. Officials said they believed that several members of the Algerian group had been members of the Armed Islamic Group in Algeria, whose members have killed thousands of their fellow countrymen in that country's civil war.
Officials said that the Algerian police have been questioning Dahoumane not only about his activities with Ressam before the millennial celebrations in Canada & the U.S., but also about his possible links to a terrorist network believed to be headed by Osama binLaden, whom the U.S. has accused of the 1998 bombing of two embassies in Africa in which more than 200 people died or at least his knowledge of the network. American officials suspect that bin Laden's group was involved in assisting Ressam & his alleged conspirators with attempted terrorism in the U.S. and with a separate bombing plot in Jordan. But officials said that information collected so far about binLaden's possible involvement in the American plot was inconclusive.

According to administration officials, Dahoumane has not provided much information either about the millennium bombing plot or whatever ties to Laden's group he may have had. A State Dept spokesman declined to comment today on whether the U.S. had sought Dahoumane's extradition. Law enforcement officials declined today to confirm his legal status. Ressam is scheduled to stand trial in March in Los Angeles. Abdel Ghani Meskini & Mokhtar Haouari, two other alleged accomplices in the case, will be tried in New York later next year on charges of conspiring to support a terrorist group and to conceal support for Ressam. American investigators have been repeatedly frustrated in their efforts to find out what the Algerians intended to blow up in the U.S. and when they planned to act. A year into the investigation, American officials & investigators said, they were still uncertain how many bombs Ressam & his colleagues had been planning to detonate or their exact itinerary in the U.S.
Neither Ressam nor the other Algerians indicted in Seattle or New York have shed light on such critical issues as what if any assistance they received from binLaden's group, which is based in Afghanistan, officials said. Early in the investigation, American & Canadian investigators uncovered what they believed were links between binLaden & the Algerians charged with plotting the terrorist attack in the U.S. Last January, for instance, authorities in Mauritania, at U.S. request, detained Mohambedou Ould Slahi, brother-in-law of one of bin Laden's lieutenants. Officials suspected that Slahi had traveled to Canada to direct Ressam & his Algerian group in Canada in their effort to enter the U.S. to commit terrorism. But Slahi was eventually released & disappeared after the American officials decided that they lacked sufficient evidence to charge him with a crime and to request his extradition.

Officials said they had no specific evidence that binLaden set the American bombing plot in motion. But investigators said they had found several ties between members of the American bombing plot and binLaden's worldwide network. Officials disclosed, for example, that one of the men charged in the American millennium bombing case had a roommate who was associated with an Islamic charity that prosecutors said played a role in the embassy bombings in Africa, with which binLaden has been charged. MidEast & U.S. officials say they believe that one of binLaden's lieutenants, Abu Zubaydah, helped coordinate a terrorist plot that was aimed at Western & Israeli tourists in Jordan late last December. Officials said that they believed that the same lieutenant was also in contact with the Algerian group, some of whose members were charged in the bombing plot aimed at the unspecified targets in the U.S. But it is still not clear whether Zubaydah played an active role in that plot, these officials say.
Last January, a federal grand jury in Seattle charged Dahoumane with crossing a national boundary and conspiring among other things to "destroy or damage structures, conveyances or other real or personal property." Officials said that while both Ressam & Dahoumane entered the U.S. from Canada, they traveled separately.

Millennium terrorist now detailing plot, sources say
5.30.01   Josh Meyer L.A.Times

Ahmed Ressam … Ahmed Ressam, 33, who refused to tell authorities anything for 17 months after his arrest, admitted his terrorism plans in recent weeks, according to sources familiar with the case. … He was convicted 4.6.01 on 9 counts of conspiring to commit an act of international terrorism and related charges. Ressam, an Algerian national, … expected to receive a lighter sentence in exchange for his continuing cooperation in the ongoing investigation of a Montreal-based group of Islamic extremists and that group's alleged ties to suspected terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, sources said. … Sentencing for Ressam is scheduled for June 28, but delays are now expected given Ressam's cooperation. Authorities, including the FBI and federal prosecutors, would not confirm Ressam's admissions or his agreement to cooperate with them. Ressam's chief public defender, Thomas Hillier, said, "I'm not commenting on anything."

… upcoming prosecution in New York of one of his alleged co-conspirators, Mokhtar Haouari, also of Montreal, stands trial June 26 on charges of plotting to help Ressam and two other Algerian nationals "punish America" by blowing up unspecified U.S. targets on or about New Year's Day 2000. Ressam is expected to be the government's key witness against Haouari. Tue., Haouari lawyer Daniel Ollen said authorities have not told him that Ressam will be a witness. Ollen added: "It's one thing being a terrorist. It's another to be a terrorist and a rat." Roland Thau, a New York public defender representing another alleged Ressam co-conspirator, said he was "surprised Ressam hadn't started down that road [to cooperating with authorities] a long time ago." Thau represents Abdelghani Meskini, who testified against Ressam as part of his own plea agreement.

During Ressam's trial in Los Angeles in March, Meskini testified that Haouari told him to travel from New York to Seattle to meet Ressam and provide him with logistical and financial support. Ressam was arrested before the two could meet, so Meskini had limited knowledge of the overall workings of the bomb plot, authorities have said. But Ressam and Haouari are said to be associates, so Ressam's agreement to testify against him "should be devastating to Haouari," Thau said. Ressam is also expected to provide authorities with an important missing piece of the bomb conspiracy puzzle, and the roles played by an alleged co-conspirator who has never been caught, Abdelmajid Dahoumane. Until now, federal investigators had no idea what Ressam was planning when he was arrested Dec. 14, 1999, at a remote ferry landing in Port Angeles, Wash.

U.S. authorities, suspicious of Ressam's nervous behavior, had stopped him as he drove his car off a ferry from Canada. They found about 130 pounds of explosives in the trunk of his rental car, along with four homemade timing devices. They later learned Ressam had reserved a motel room near Seattle's Space Needle, the site of a planned millennium party. At trial, defense lawyers said Ressam was an unwitting courier who either didn't know what was in the trunk of his car or didn't know its significance. Prosecutors said Ressam clearly helped buy & assemble the bomb components. They said the explosives, including a rare military compound, were powerful enough to "easily take down a building." But they conceded that they never knew Ressam's target, suggesting at his trial that he was considering attacking the Space Needle, the Transamerica tower in San Francisco, or possibly a S. California airport.
Tour book of California was found in Ressam's rental car, with his fingerprints on photographs of downtown Los Angeles and the Transamerica tower, prosecutors told the jury. And, Canadian authorities found a map of S. California in Ressam's Montreal apartment after his arrest, with circles around LAX, Long Beach and Ontario airports. Prosecutors said that they didn't know if those were targets. Authorities are also interested in Ressam's alleged links to other terrorists, including his knowledge of Bin Laden-financed military camps, which he attended in 1998

Convicted terrorist Ahmed Ressam has told federal prosecutors that Los Angeles International Airport was to be a target of a millennium attack by Islamic fundamentalists, according to a source familiar with talks between Ressam and federal prosecutors. … It is not clear, however, that the airport was the only target. When arrested, Ressam had enough explosives, bomb-making material and timers in the trunk of his rental car to make four powerful car bombs, according to testimony at his trial. Ressam was arrested Dec. 14, 1999, at the Black Ball Ferry Terminal in Port Angeles as he entered the U.S. from Canada in a rental car … information from Jordan and elsewhere of planned attacks on Americans and Western tourist sites in the Middle East around the start of the millennium. Agents in the U.S. & Canada quickly identified Ressam through his fingerprints and linked him to a suspected terrorist "sleeper," or dormant, cell activated in Montreal. Then-President Clinton ordered the borders tightened and heightened security at airports.

Meantime, Seattle Mayor Paul Schell canceled the city's New Year's Eve celebration. Federal-court papers had stated that Ressam had intended to leave his explosives-laden rental car in a hotel parking lot, keys left in the ignition, in the shadow of the Space Needle, the site of the planned millennium party and the city's most distinctive landmark. Schell was both criticized and praised for the decision. Schell is in Stockholm with the Chamber of Commerce. The mayor's spokesman, Dick Lilly, said he had no comment on the information. "This is the first I've heard of it," Lilly said. Ressam's trial was moved to Los Angeles from Seattle because of publicity and security concerns. After the map was found in Ressam's apartment, prosecutors urged U.S. District Judge John Coughenour to reconsider the change of venue, but he declined.

During the trial, prosecutors introduced evidence that they said hinted that Ressam may have had targets in California. There was the map with circles drawn around the three L.A.-area airports and a French tourism book with Ressam's fingerprint found on a photograph of the pyramid-shape TransAmerica building in San Francisco. Defense attorneys discounted the evidence, and the government acknowledged that the circles around the airports went unnoticed for several months. Defense attorneys suggested that Canadian authorities may have added them and that Ressam was a dupe of other terrorists and had only limited knowledge of what was in the trunk of his car or how it was to be used once he got it across the border.

… Ressam agreed to break his silence and provide information on the plot to federal prosecutors both here and in New York, sources confirmed. Canadian and French authorities also are monitoring the talks. … During the trial, prosecutors linked Ressam to a terrorist cell in Montreal, but a federal judge limited their introduction of evidence that tied him to the organization of Osama bin Laden, a Saudi multimillionaire who is suspected of backing several terrorist attacks against U.S. targets. Ressam attended bin Laden-financed terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in 1998, and several of his former roommates are in custody in France and England in connection with terrorist plots. Indeed, on the same day he was convicted in L.A., Ressam also was convicted in absentia and sentenced to five years in prison in France for his involvement in the terrorist "Roubaix Gang," uspected of bank robberies and bombings in Paris and Belgium.

Evidence seen linking bin Laden & Algerian group
1.27.00   David Johnston, Judith Miller &
  Wm K. Rashbaum   NYTimes

… In recent days, Senegal authorities arrested a man who American investigators believe directed an Algerian group in Canada in its effort to enter the U.S. and carry out a bomb plot late last year. The investigators said the man being held

in Senegal, Mohambedou Ould Slahi, is a brother-in-law of one of Mr. bin Laden's key lieutenants. Officials said that federal prosecutors in Manhattan are preparing formal charges against Mr. Slahi, which could be used as the basis for his extradition. In making the arrest, the Senegalese were acting on a request from the U.S.. But he has not been charged with a crime in either Senegal or the U.S..
… A host of questions remain about the bomb plot, which appears to have been centered in the Canadian cities of Montreal & Vancouver. To date, federal prosecutors have charged four Algerians with taking part, but they remain uncertain what the target was. Still, American officials said this week that the case has turned into the biggest counterterrorism inquiry since the embassy bombings. That earlier case has resulted in criminal charges against 17 people. Officials said that federal agents were en route to Senegal yesterday to question Mr. Slahi. They said the govt in Senegal appeared unwilling to hold him without specific charges and was preparing to expel him, possibly to his homeland, neighboring Mauritania.… Officials said that the emergence of Mr. Slahi as a key suspect reinforces American and Canadian suspicions about the origins of the bomb plot. While several of those charged may once have been members of a militant Algerian Islamic group known as the Armed Islamic Group, the plot was most likely not inspired or ordered by that group, which is not known to have attacked Americans or American targets, officials said.

Mr. Slahi's connections to Mr. bin Laden's group, Al Qaeda, they said, suggest the possibility that Mr. Bin Laden may be at the heart of the plot. Investigators are pressing to find out more about the role of Mr. Slahi, whom one law enforcement official described as "potentially the most significant person" discovered thus far in the case. Little is known about his background, but investigators say he had "constant communications" with a construction company in Khartoum, Sudan, that was owned by Mr. bin Laden. The company, officials said, was used as a front for Al Qaeda. Mr. bin Laden lived in Khartoum from 1991 to 1996. Several officials said that Mr. Slahi is related by marriage to one of Mr. bin Laden's key operatives, known as "the Mauritanian." They would not identify this person, but one official said he had been tied to the African bombings.

More recently, officials said, Mr. Slahi was living in Germany. Last fall, he arrived in Canada. While in Montreal, the officials said, Mr. Slahi worked closely with Mokhtar Haouari, an Algerian man who has been charged with arranging the logistics of the plot. The arrest on Dec. 14 of Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian driving the carload of explosives, prompted others linked to the plot to try to conceal their involvement, prosecutors have said. Officials said that Mr. Slahi fled to a Montreal mosque before leaving the country. Dan Lambert, spokesman for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, confirmed that his agency had been following Mr. Slahi, and took issue with the idea that Canada had lost him. "We were aware that Mr. Slahi was traveling in advance of his departure," he said. "Because the reason for his travel was the heat being placed on him by the Canadian investigation."

American officials said there are several other emerging links between the bomb plot and Mr. bin Laden's group. One involves Hamid Aich, an Algerian who lived for three years in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby, until May 1999. A law enforcement official said that after leaving Canada, Mr. Aich moved to Ireland and was associated with Mercy Intl Relief Agency, an Islamic charity that American prosecutors have linked to the embassy bombings and Mr. bin Laden. The charity's director, prosecutors said in court papers, received calls on his mobile phone from Mr. bin Laden's satellite telephone. An F.B.I. search of the charity's files in the days after the embassy bombings uncovered a receipt dated 7.24.98, 2 weeks before the bombings, that referred to plans to obtain weapons from Somalia. Attempts to reach charity officials for comment were unsuccessful. In his 3 years in Canada, Mr. Aich shared an apartment with Abdel Majid Dahoumane, according to the building's superintendent. Mr. Aich was briefly detained last month in Ireland, and the police there seized his computer and personal papers. He was released before the authorities understood that the material tied him to bomb plot, officials said.
American investigators are also looking into whether Khalil Said al-Deek, a Palestinian who became an American in 1991 and is now being held in Jordan, may also have links to Al Qaeda. Jordanian officials have told their American counterparts they believe that Mr. Deek was a key figure in a plot to blow up tourist sites in Jordan at the new year. Mr. Deek's lawyer, Fred Sayre, of Newport Beach CA, said last night that his client was innocent and had not been in Jordan for about a year before officials there ordered his arrest.

Monday the mayor of Seattle scrubbed the city's planned New Year's Eve celebration below its trademark Space Needle, where an estimated 50,000 people had been expected to gather. "We do not want to take chances with public safety," Mayor Paul Schell said Monday. While federal officials have not advised of any specific threat to the city, "it is safer to be prudent," he said. The City's nerves have been on edge since violent demonstrations struck the N-30/WTO meeting in November, and following the arrest of an Algerian man accused of smuggling bomb making materials into Washington.

12.29.99   "Suspects Rounded-Up Prior to Millennium Challenge"
Unspecified number of arrests & "preventive detentions" have taken place in several Middle Eastern & other countries, according to govt officials. Round-up of "usual suspects" is believed to be an effort to interdict & interrupt potential Millennium-related terrorist attacks. Officials from an undisclosed Mid-Eastern country said that it is likely that unless questioning of the suspects produces incriminating evidence that it is likely to that they will be released early next year. Counter-terrorist analysts say that the move is not unusual in some parts of the world and that detention for questioning is permitted under existing laws of a number of nations.
Rand Corp. terrorist analyst Bruce Hoffman in Wash.DC, told ABC News "similar roundup occurred during World Cup soccer games in France 1½ yr ago … calculated to have disruptive effect & throw people off." ERRI national security analysts said detentions signal to intended terrorists US is "pulling out all the stops" to prevent any potential trouble during the coming holiday weekend.

NWO associations

Lost world found inside Israeli cave
Previously unknown species lurk in cavern that was sealed off for ages 6.1.06 & Reuters

Jerusalem   Israeli scientists have discovered an ancient ecosystem containing 8 previously unknown species in a lake inside a cave, where they were completely sheltered from the outside world for millions of years. The newly discovered crustaceans and invertebrates were found last month in a cave near the city of Ramle in central Israel, team leader Amos Frumkin announced Thursday.
“This is a very unique ecosystem that is completely isolated from the surface,” said Hebrew University geography dept cave researcher Frumkin in Jerusalem.
The cave, located 328 ft (100m) below ground in a limestone quarry, includes tunnels that extend about a mile and a half (2.5 km). Inside, a large underground lake holds the previously unknown species, some similar to scorpions & shrimp.

Smithsonian Institution research fellow Allen G. Collins in Wash.D.C. said the find “underscores how little we know about life on our planet and how important it is to keep looking. I imagine this is a unique situation, to have a cave system with both marine & freshwater systems, and it is quite interesting in an underground situation,” he said. “The scorpionlike creatures as well as the shrimplike creatures that were found are unique.”
The animals had been completely sheltered from the outside world by a thick layer of chalk that was impenetrable to water or exterior nutrients, Frumkin said.

Aside from one scorpionlike creature, all other species discovered were found alive. None were more than 2" (5 cm) long.
Frumkin said similar caves have been discovered in Romania & Mexico, but none has been as isolated. Unlike most animals, which depend on the photosynthesis food chain, the newly discovered species live off a completely independent and self-sustaining ecosystem.

Frumkin’s research asst Israel Naaman made the initial discovery. He had been conducting a survey of caves when he came across a small hole that just kept growing.
“I thought it was just a small hole and I couldn’t believe what I had found; surprise after surprise,” he said.
When one of the volunteer staff crouched down to measure the temperature of the warm, sulfuric water, he suddenly jumped up and yelled “there is something moving here.”
Naaman acknowledged the species were likely endangered from oxygen exposure during the discovery process but said he was confident in the scientific importance of the find. He said he believes further exploration will reveal additional new life forms.

Israeli researchers shared findings with intl experts for further review & classification and hope to publish their conclusions soon. The limestone cave is believed to be the second-largest in Israel. In order to explore it, researchers had to climb ropes and crawl through most of it. Due to its scientific significance and the fact that it is located inside an active quarry, the cave is now closed to visitors.

'End times' religious groups want åªpocalypse soon   'End times' religious groups want apocalypse sooner than later, and they're relying on high tech & red heifers to hasten its arrival
6.22.06   Louis Sahagun L.A. Times

For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it. Their endgame is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah. ï

For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon. With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus' message.
Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within 2 decades.

In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. As mayor of Tehran in 2004, he spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, according to a recent report by nonpartisan think tank American Foreign Policy Center.
To the majority of Shiites, the Mahdi was the last of the prophet Muhammad's true heirs, his 12 righteous descendants chosen by God to lead the faithful. Ahmadinejad hopes to welcome the Mahdi to Tehran within 2 years.

Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam's holiest shrines. Artisans have re-created priestly robes of white linen, gem-studded breastplates, silver trumpets and solid-gold menorahs to be used in the Holy Temple along with two 6½-ton marble cornerstones for the building's foundation.
Mississippi revivalist preacher & cattle rancher Clyde Lott is trying to raise a unique herd of red heifers to satisfy an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers: the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer for purification rituals needed to pave the way for the messiah. So far, only one of his cows has been verified by rabbis as worthy, meaning they failed to turn up even three white or black hairs on the animal's body.

Linking these efforts is a belief that modern technologies and global communications have made it possible to induce completion of God's plan within this generation. Though there are myriad interpretations of how it will play out, the basic Christian apocalyptic countdown as described by the Book of Revelation in the New Testament is as follows:

    Jews return to Israel after 2,000 years, the Holy Temple is rebuilt, billions of people perish during 7 years of natural disasters and plagues, the antichrist arises and rules the world, the battle of Armageddon erupts in the vicinity of Israel, Jesus returns to defeat Satan's armies and preside over Judgment Day.
Generations of Christians have hoped for the Second Coming of Jesus, said UCLA historian Eugen Weber, author of the 1999 book "Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages."
"And it's always been an ultimately bloody hope, a slaughterhouse hope," he added with a sigh. "What we have now in this global age is a vaster and bloodier-than-ever Wagnerian version. But, then, we are a very imaginative race."
Apocalyptic movements are nothing new; even Christopher Columbus hoped to assist in the Great Commission by evangelizing New World inhabitants. Some religious scholars saw apocalyptic fever rise as the year 2000 approached, and they expected it to subside after the millennium arrived without a hitch.
It didn't. According to various polls, an estimated 40% of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is already underway. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years.

"Jesus Christ commissioned his disciples to go to the ends of the Earth and tell everyone how they could achieve eternal life," said Global Pastors Network's "Billion Souls Initiative" president James Davis, one of an estimated 2,000 initiatives worldwide designed to boost the Christian population.
"As we advance around the world," Davis said, "we'll be shortening the time needed to fulfill that Great Commission. Then, the Bible says, the end will come."

An opposing vision, invoked by Ahmadinejad in an address before the United Nations last year, suggests that the Imam Mahdi, a 9th century figure, will soon emerge from a well to conquer the world and convert everyone to Islam.
"O mighty Lord," he said, "I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace."
At the appropriate time, according to Shiite tradition, the Mahdi will reappear and, along with Jesus, lead Muslims in a struggle to rid the world of corruption and establish justice.

For Christians, the future of Israel is the key to any end-times scenario, and various groups are reaching out to Jews, or proselytizing among them, to advance the Second Coming.
A growing number of fundamentalist Christians in mostly Southern states are adopting Jewish religious practices to align themselves with prophecies saying that Gentiles will stand as one with Jews when the end is near.
Evangelist John C. Hagee of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio has helped 12,000 Russian Jews move to Israel, and donated several million dollars to Israeli hospitals and orphanages.
"We are the generation that will probably see the rapture of the church," Hagee said, referring to a moment in advance of Jesus' return when the world's true believers will be airlifted into heaven.

"In Christian theology, the first thing that happens when Christ returns to Earth is the judgment of nations," said Hagee, who wears a Jewish prayer shawl when he ministers. "It will have one criterion: How did you treat the Jewish people? Anyone who understands that will want to be on the right side of that question. Those who are anti-Semitic will go to eternal damnation."
Hagee plans to lead a contingent of high-profile evangelists to Washington on 7.18.06 to make their concerns about Israel's security known to congressional leaders. More than 1,200 evangelists are expected for the gathering.

"25 years ago, I called a meeting of evangelists to discuss such an effort, and the conversation didn't last an hour," he said. "This time, I called and they all came and stayed. And when the meeting was over, they all agreed to speak up for Israel."
Underlining the sense of urgency is a belief that the end-times clock started ticking 5.15.48 when the United Nations formally recognized Israel.
"I'll never forget that night," Hagee said. "I was 8 years old at the time and in the kitchen with my father listening to the news about Israel's rebirth on the radio. He said, 'Son, this is the most important day in the 20th century.' "

Hagee's message is carried on 160 television stations and 50 radio stations and can be seen in Africa, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and most Third World nations. By contrast, former Univ. of Colorado football coach and co-founder of the evangelical Promise Keepers movement for men Bill McCartney, which became huge in the 1990s, has had a devil of a time getting his own apocalyptic campaign off the ground.
It's called The Road to Jerusalem, and its mission is to convert Jews to Christianity, while there is still time.
"Our whole purpose is to hasten the end times," he said. "The Bible says Jews will be brought to jealousy when they see Christians and Jewish believers together as one; they'll want to be a part of that. That's going to signal Jesus' return."
Jews and others who don't accept Jesus, he added matter-of-factly, "are toast."

McCartney, who only a decade ago sermonized to stadium-size crowds of Promise Keepers, said finding people to back his sputtering cause has been "like plowing cement."
Given end-times scenarios saying that non-believers will die before Jesus returns, and that the antichrist will rule from Jerusalem's rebuilt Holy Temple, Jews have mixed feelings about the outpouring of support Israel has been getting from evangelical organizations.
"I truly believe John Hagee is at once a daring, beautiful person, and quite dangerous," said National Jewish Center for Learning & Leadership vp Orthodox Rabbi Brad Hirschfield in New York. "I sincerely recognize him as a hero for bringing planeloads of people to Israel at a time when people there were getting blown up by the busloads," Hirschfield said. "But he also believes that the only path to the father is through Jesus. That leaves me out."

Meanwhile, in what has become a spectacular annual routine, Jews, hoping to rebuild the Holy Temple destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, attempt to haul the 6 half ton cornerstones by truck up to the Temple Mount, the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock shrine. Each year, they are turned back by police.
Among those turned away is Jerusalem's Temple Institute spokesman Gershon Solomon. When the temple is built, he said, "Islam is over."
"I'm grateful for all the wonderful Christian angels wanting to help us," Solomon added, acknowledging the political support from "Christians who are now Israel's best lobbyists in the U.S."
When asked to comment on the fate of non-Christians upon the Second Coming of Jesus, he said, "That's a very embarrassing question. What can I tell you? That's a very terrible Christian idea. What kind of religion is it that expects another religion will be destroyed?"

Some Christians, such as Roman Catholics and some Protestant denominations, believe in the Second Coming but don't try to advance it. It's important to be ready for the Second Coming, they say, though its timetable cannot be manipulated. Hirschfield said he prays every day for the coming of the Jewish messiah, but he too believes that God can't be hurried.
"For me," he said, "the messiah is like the mechanical bunny at a racetrack: It always stays a little ahead of the runners but keeps the pace toward a redeemed world. Trouble is, there are many people who want to bring a messiah who looks just like them. For me, that kind of messianism is spiritual narcissism."

But some Christian leaders say they aren't playing God; they're just carrying out his will. National Assn. of Evangelicals pres. Ted Haggard says the commitment to fulfilling the Great Commission has naturally intensified along with the technological advances God provided to carry out his plans.
In Mississippi, Lott believes that he is doing God's work, and that is why he wants to raise a few head of red heifers for Jewish high priests. Citing Scripture, Lott and others say a pure red heifer must be sacrificed and burned and its ashes used in purification rituals to allow Jews to rebuild the temple.
But Lott's plans have been sidetracked.

Facing a maze of red tape and testing involved in shipping animals overseas, and rumors of threats from Arabs and Jews alike who say the cows would only bring more trouble to the Middle East, he has given up on plans to fly planeloads of cows to Israel. For now.
In the meantime, some local ranchers have expressed an interest in raising their own red heifers for Israel, and fears of hoof-and-mouth disease and blue tongue forced Lott to relocate his only verified red heifer, a female born in 1993, to Nebraska. Cloning is out of the question, he said, because the technique "is not approved by the rabbinical council of Israel." Artificial insemination has so far failed to produce another heifer certified by rabbis.

"Something deep in my heart says God wants me to be a blessing to Israel," Lott said in a telephone interview. "But it's complicated. We're just not ready to send any red heifers over there. If there's a sovereign God with his hand in the affairs of men, it'll happen, and it'll be a pivotal event," he said. "That time is soon. Very soon."

    neo-gnostics

  Tipler, et al

  " … future state of the universe where "life" (in any form) exists and develops forever, without getting locked into a loop"   ¹ ² ³

  " … maximum level of complexity-consciousness, considered the aim towards which consciousness evolves. Rather than divinity being found 'in the heavens' he held that evolution was a process converging toward a "final unity", identical with the Eschaton and with God … planet is in a transformative process, metamorphosing from the biosphere into the noosphere."   ²   Ñoopolitik

In July 1939, soon after Isherwood's arrival in America, the writer Gerald Heard introduced him to Swami Prabhavananda.   £§Ð ¹ ² ª
1960   Leary returns to Harvard, secures a supply of psilocybin from Sandoz, & starts the Harvard Project; He also contacted Huxley and his group: Gerald Heard (Huxley's friend from England's Bloomsbury group), Humphrey Osmond (English psychiatrist in Canada), Al Hubbard … What is it that you can leave behind and what is it that you have to pass on? … So all these things were happening in Jewish renewal and my friend Schlomo Carlebach built the house of Love and Prayer in San Francisco and a group in Berkeley gathered around me when they did the Aquarian minyan of Berkeley. Aquarian was, you know, the Age of Aquarius had dawned and paradigm shift was happening and we got very excited about all these things.

In the meantime, I was also studying more about body. I was getting rolfed and Feldenchrist and all those kinds of things so that introspection and paying attention to body became more important. As this was happening, I started to notice some shifts &changes in my own being.

The resilience that I had before wasn't there. The body started to give different messages than I'd gotten before.
Along with that came also an awareness of kind of sadness that I couldn't be as powerfully active and as resilient as I was before and all kinds of things, shifts and changes were happening in my body to which I had to start paying more attention. It was getting very clear that body maintenance and maintenance of the right frame of mind was important. Still I hadn't connected it yet with aging.

I need to give credit to someone who I met in my many journeys of learning from people. His name was Gerald F. Heard, a friend and a mentor of Aldous Huxley.
He lived in Los Angeles in Topanga. And he had written a book, The Five Ages of Man.

It's a book that not many people had read it and yet it was a blue print of growth and human evolution in which he mapped what was happening to humankind on the level of philogony against the experience of the individual person on the level of onthogony.
So Gerald Heard, a Scotchman and had a nice brogue and beautiful face and eyes. He would talk about how people are in preconscious places and this was how we evolved from that preconscious place. He compared this to childhood, to infancy. We haven't got words yet and the question of getting born, what does it feel like to get born. The ordeal of birth is the first ordeal one has to go through.

And then he had a place in which people got to feel to be heroic and ah dragon slayers and this kind of stuff. And that fits very much and to the place where we are in adolescence.
And then he describes the person who became the very strongly disciplined person of medieval times and ah that kind of person is one who wants to overcome the crisis of ah adolescence and become now the adult.
And then comes that person who has become in full ego, in full consciousness and to whom everything in the world sort of gets addressed at this point. And that too is something that we could see in the Renaissance.

And then we have modern man and modern man with all the connections. And so you find it both in history and that's how we created commerce and all that and at the same time you find a person in his business years.
Then comes another transition and that transition is the one that makes it sort of difficult for many people because it brings on what Gerald Heard called involutional melancholia  [ positivist existentialism, occidental Buddhism ]   I can't help but it's not that I want it to, death is coming closer and this is another ordeal that has to be overcome.

He feels that involutional melancholia is happening to humankind now too. That the fact that we, and he wrote this in 1950 with a vision of what's happening really to us at this time, that all the progress and all that hasn't helped us to be happier. It hasn't created the abundance that it promised, you know. And so you see this on the global scene and for the individual it's this way.

And he argues that at this point there is one way to overcome that and that's to make a leap. And the new transformed person is whom he calls the leptoid, you know, the one who's made that jump, that paradigm shift.

As I reflected in those years when I felt, by this time I was getting to be 55, 56 and feeling less of the energy, (instead) feeling more of the demands that the body made, I searched inside of myself; Gerald Heard wrote about that. It has something to do with aging.

[ Heard spoke of species immortality as 'survival' ]

~
Kenneth E. Boulding ªuth. ¹ ² ³ £ Ç   père "ecodynamics"
= evolutionary rather than equilibrium economics aka "Samuelson's dynamics";   "Anyone who believes
exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world
is either a madman or an economist".   +n

His vocal pacifism during WWII cost him his job with the League of Nations in 1944.

… "believed that, in absence of committed effort to the right kind of social science research & understanding, human species might well be doomed to extinction".

    … "evolution … is a process of development of structures of increasing complexity & improbability.

    The evolutionary process always operates through mutation & selection,   and has involved some distinction between the genotype which mutates and the phenotype which is selected. The process by which the genotype constructs the phenotype may be described as "organization".

    Economic development manifests itself largely in the production of commodities, i.e. goods & services.
    It originates, however, in ideas, plans, and attitudes in the human mind. These are the genotypes in economic development.
    This whole process indeed can be described as a process in the growth of knowledge.

    What the economist calls "capital" is nothing more than human knowledge imposed on the material world.
    Knowledge & growth of knowledge, therefore, is the essential key to economic development.
    Investment, financial systems and economic organizations & institutions are in a sense only the machinery by which a knowledge process is created & expressed.”

    …
  1. "labor (is) an intermediate surrogate for more fundamental factors, like know-how, materials and energy, …
  2. capital is a surrogate for know-how, and
  3. land is surrogate for material resources;
traditional factors of production, land, labor and capital, are easily rearticulated as know-how, energy and materials".

"His 'post-civilized' society is not the stationary state of John Stuart Mill or Herman Daly, but it does have a stable population. In his youth, Boulding took position now referred to as neo-Malthusian.

    'the indication seems to be' that the (per capita) income level at which the western world would only reproduce itself is one 'that the actual standard of life can never reach'. (1939, 107)
30 years later, still prior to Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb (1969) and the limits-to-growth literature (e.g., Meadows, 1971), Boulding argued it
    "is hard to avoid considerable pessimism" (1965) about the prospects of development especially in countries with high birth rates, which could undermine the great potential of a post-civilized society.
His major contribution to this problem is probably the argument (1964) for tradable birth-right permits … based squarely on neoclassical concern for efficiency."   Ð
… different time scales in biological evolution and what Boulding calls social or societal evolution.
With advent of human capacity for developing complex images (1950), social evolution proceeded orders of magnitude faster than biological evolution. Ex. Changes in the size of the human brain have occurred orders of magnitude more slowly that the social & economic changes of in the last ten millennia.

Yet slower than biological evolution is the time scale of astronomical change. Precision by which the field of celestial mechanics is able to describe the movements of bodies of the solar system is due to the incredibly slow time scale of astronomical, evolutionary change.
Boulding's longstanding concern was that equilibrium analysis, market dynamics, and growth theory as practiced in conventional economics is based on the mathematics of difference & differential equations found in celestial mechanics. ¹ ²

Hawking: 'We must leave Earth or die'
12.1.06   BBC

Mankind will need to evacuate Earth and live in space to ensure the survival of humanity, prof. Stephen Hawking has warned. The theoretical physicist said Star Trek-style rockets would be used to colonise suitable planets orbiting other stars. Prof Hawking said he wants to journey into space himself and has asked Sir Richard Branson for help.
He told the BBC that scientists may be within 20 years of reaching his prediction in A Brief History of Time that mankind would one day "know the mind of God" by understanding all the laws which govern the universe. He said this knowledge may be vital to the human race's continued existence.
"The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet," he said. "Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. "But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe. "There isn't anywhere like the Earth in the solar system, so we would have to go to another star."

Prof Hawking said matter/antimatter annihilation, similar to time warps, would enable huge distances to be covered quickly.
He added: "My next goal is to go into space. Maybe Richard Branson will help me."
The tycoon is planning a space tourism venture. Prof Hawking has been awarded Britain's highest scientific award, the Royal Society's Copley Medal, previously granted to Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday and Captain James Cook.

"The trouble is that people are only as clever as they were during the Paleolithic, perfectly good brain for mating and whacking animals and running away from tigers.
But memes are getting more and more clever. Amid war, they evolve as fast as weapons or generals. In a way, they are both.

Think about the way a meme works.
Basically, it's a set of ideas with a compulsion attached that ties into the deep structures, all those places where the brain and the mind overlap.
The way they work is they attach to existing beliefs. It's easier to attach to an existing meme, but, by now, everyone has at least some small memes. As the number of different memes goes down because they combine with each other and take each other over, it gets easier and easier for one meme to sweep the whole system.

War between memes has raged since some bright guy figured out how to write a program that could analyze any operating system it talked to, figure out how to penetrate, and get in and take over artificial intelligences.
Whoever it was, they probably never realized that to a program like that, a mind is just one more operating system on a slow running, massively parallel processor. Probably they only meant, as a loyal cybertaoist in the chaos of religious violence sweeping Earth, to make all the banks, autopilots, navigation software and medical robots go cybertao.

Whether intentional or not, they nearly conquered the world for cybertao before EcuCatholic memes turned up to fight back, quickly joined by Sunni and Shi'ite memes and the mad dog guerilla memes called Freecybers. Now the whole first generation of cybertao, Ecucatholicism, RPs, Newcommies, Freecybers, Slammers, and every meme that had begun the battle is long extinct except for copies in museums.

Mercenaries work for the memes but don’t talk to them. They do what they're told to do and are paid.
Three quarters of the world's population running one or another meme aren't exactly not themselves, but they aren't exactly themselves either, like after religious conversion.

The most common memes remaining now are ones to make you attack the person you're with. If you don't catch it in time, your best friend could kill you.

The War of the Memes is winding down. Nobody new is joining the armies. Memes are merging and consuming one another. Someday there will be one meme and no soldiers.
So the armies are shrinking and there are just a few kinds of memes left. In a pretty short time, there will be just one and it won't need armies; it'll need cops. And the cops will have one job, make sure everyone has the master meme.

This war is about to end; once it does, there will be no place left to hide, whether on the winning side or the losing one. The sole triumphant meme º won't allow any uninfected mind exist after the war is over.

To escape, you want to get to where radio delay is significant, off planet.
A meme needs to interact with what it is infecting quickly enough so that the person or artificial intelligence under attack accept responses for an instant or two without question.
More than a few light-seconds away, the target has too much time to think between responses for the meme to get a grip and quarantine measures can be applied to block receipt of a whole copy of a meme."

Kaleidoscope Century, John Barnes auth.   1995
Every where in the wide realm of observation we find 3 distinct regions:
•   the region of facts,
•   the region of laws, and
•   the region of standards of value.

These 3 regions are separate only in our thoughts, not in reality.   ¢

To comprehend the real position we are forced to the conviction that the world of facts is the field in which, and that laws are the means by which, those higher standards of moral and aesthetic value are being realized.

Such a union can again only become intelligible through the idea of a personal Deity, who in the creation and preservation of a world has voluntarily chosen certain forms and laws, through the natural operation of which the ends of His work are gained.

A problem of a purely formal character thus presents itself,
viz. this to try to bring unity and harmony into the scattered thoughts of our general culture,
to trace them to their primary assumptions and follow them into their ultimate consequences,

to connect them all together,
to remodel, curtail or amplify them, so as to remove their apparent contradictions,
and to combine them in the unity of an harmonious view of things,

and especially to investigate those conceptions which form the initial assumptions of the several sciences,
and to fix the limits of their applicability.
This is the formal definition of philosophy.

The main proof of the objective value of the view we may gain lies in the degree in which it succeeds in assigning to every element of culture its due position,
or in which it is able to appreciate and combine different and apparently opposite tendencies and interests,

in the sort of justice with which it weighs our manifold desires & aspirations, balancing them in due proportions, refusing to sacrifice to a one-sided principle any truth or conviction which experience has proven to be useful & necessary.

This idea involves the further conception of Leibniz, that of a pre-established harmony, by which the Creator has taken care to arrange the life of each monad, so that it agree with that of all others. This conception, according to Lotze, is neither necessary nor thoroughly intelligible.
In attempting to make this conception quite clear and thinkable, we are forced to represent the connexion of things as a universal substance, the essence of which we conceive as a system of laws which underlies everything and in its own self connects everything, but is imperceptible, and known to us merely through the impressions it produces on us, which we call things.

The universal substance, which we may call the absolute, is at this stage of our investigations not endowed with the attributes of a personal Deity,
and it will remain to be seen by further analysis in how far we are able, without contradiction, to identify it with the object of religious veneration, in how far that which to metaphysics is merely a postulate can be gradually brought nearer to us and become a living power.

Rudolf Hermann Lotze   ©
“Environmental degradation is an iatrogenic disease induced by physicians (pro-growth advocates) who attempt to treat the sickness with unlimited wants by prescribing unlimited production. We do not cure a treatment-induced disease by increasing the treatment dosage".
Herman Daly
Seeking extra planet before 2050, inquire within
World Wildlife Fund report says humans are consuming more resources than Earth can replenish   Malthus
10.24.06   B.Blakemore ABC News     also Guardian UK

The natural health of planet Earth has declined by about 30 percent since 1970, according to new calculations from the World Wildlife Fund. It's an impossible and dangerous trend, the fund's experts say.
Impossible because at current rates, humanity is using up the planet's resources so fast that by 2050, when the human population will have grown by an additional half to 9 billion, we will need two Earths to meet the demand.
Dangerous because even the most essential resources, clean water, productive land, timber and fiber products, will be increasingly scarce, fought over by the more desperate nations, and hoarded by the more fortunate if habits haven't changed.

"People are turning resources into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into resources," fund vp Richard Mott, said to ABC News. "Since the early 1980s, we've been drawing down natural capital faster than it can replenish itself," Mott said. "It now takes nature about one year and three months to replace what we use in a year."
In fact, says the fund's latest biennial "Living Planet Report," many large populations of natural food sources, including many commercial fish stocks and major swaths of the world's lumber and arable land, could simply disappear from the "irreversible damage" current usage would inflict on Earth's life systems.

In only 33 years, from 1970 to 2003, populations of 1,300 different species from fish to mammals, surveyed worldwide by the fund, had dropped by a third, with the extinction rates accelerating everywhere.
"The consequences are predictable and dire," said WWF Intl dir. general James Leape. "We are in serious ecological overshoot."
In 2003, the fund's experts say, people used 25 percent more resources than Earth could replenish.
"And we're using five times too much fossil fuel, which has thrown the whole Earth dangerously out of balance through global warming," said Princeton atmospheric scientist Michael Oppenheimer in response to the WWF report.

The fund's report says the single fastest growing cause of strain on Earth's resources is the rising average planetary temperature created by the burning of fossil fuels, which releases heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
"We have to cut greenhouse gases by 80 percent, starting now, to bring Earth's system back into balance," Oppenheimer said.
"And we have to rebalance the system," Oppenheimer said, "because if we don't, the climate will grow so hot, so fast that not only the ecosystems but civilization just won't be able to cope, even within this century."
Oppenheimer points to serious effects of global warming already being felt, rising sea levels that are eating away at the world's many shoreline developments, and gathering drought in many countries incl U.S, and extensive flooding and worsening storms in other areas.

The fund's Mott said, "Ours is the only global study that regularly plots the effects on the world's wild ecological systems against the decline of world's natural resources," which, of course, humans also use.
Mott says in effect that all the species taken together, world's overall ecosystem, are like the proverbial "canary in the coal mine."
Coal miners in the 1800s carried live, caged canaries into tunnels because the fragile birds collapsed at even the slightest whiff of underground gases, which, in slightly larger doses, were deadly to humans. The fund's Leape says that it's not too late to avoid massive natural catastrophe if cultures everywhere learn to lower personal consumption, keep improving the recycling of resources making them genuinely "sustainable," reclaim degraded land, and restore natural ecosystems.

Which nations are most guilty of having the largest "ecological footprint" per person? Leading the pack is the United Arab Emirates with the United States running a close second. They are followed by Finland, Canada and Kuwait, the report says. China, with a birthrate about half that of the United States, places 69th.
That means that each person in the United Arab Emirates and the United States takes in effect about 30 acres of productive land and seas to provide natural resources and reabsorb their waste. The global average is less than 5 acres.
Unlike the United States, China already assesses the "green impact" in its annual GDP reports, and has emissions standards in some cases far higher than those in U.S. That means many U.S.-made vehicles cannot be sold in China.

The worst mistake in history of the human race   exegesis   1987   Jared Diamond Discover   qZe

Diamond argues that, contrary to popular belief, agriculture was not an unalloyed blessing. He concentrates on the effects of agriculture on health & longevity.

The same fundamental theme with a fictional setting constitutes The Story of B by Daniel Quinn, a "Socratic dialogue promulgataing animist solutions to global problems" primarily deriving from totalitarian centralized agriculture.

Like Diamond, Quinn posits that dominant cultures out of which "civilization" developed achieved their worldwide preeminence by adopting a way of life built on not accommodating their lives to the land, but instead adapting the land to their lifestyles;   [ homo faber ]
a distinction between "Leavers" & "Takers", the difference between
•   cultures whose lifestyle is adapted to the sustainable use of their local regions, and
•   cultures who constantly outgrow the capacity of their regions and need to become omnivorous & expansive.

Philosophical & religious implications of this distinction define Leavers as animists who see the gods all around them in the places they inhabit, and are satisfied with adapting themselves to what the gods provide.

Takers are "salvationists" (e.g. Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Jews) who see the world as a site of struggle (against noxious weeds, poverty, war for domination of land and resources) and need a God or something else to save them from the problems they in fact create for themselves by their lifestyles.

In Pallas, L. Neil Smith illustrates through contrasting societies on & in a self sustaining asteroid how it also enables hierarchal religion, taxation, and the modern state, all 3 of which Smith sees as institutions to be cast aside as soon as possible.

~
  per Wiki
… main international issues of our time are legacies of processes that began during the early-modern period, in which civilizations that had experienced an extensive amount of "human development" began to intrude upon simpler civilizations around the world.

Diamond's quest is to explain why such advanced colonial civilizations developed only in Eurasia, and to do so in ways that do not appeal to ethnocentric myths, but do away with them.
He claims that ecological factors account for the development of civilizations and technologies.

He posits, for instance, that agricultural development and complexity are a function of climate. Ultimately, the explanation does not center on humanity itself, but rather the resources at human disposal relative to geography, climate, and the availability of food and shelter.

He cites 5 factors that often contributed to a collapse, but shows how the one factor that all had in common was mismanagement of natural resources.

Jared Diamond, author Guns, Germs, and Steel 3.97
"A great fear, when it is ill-managed, is the parent of superstition, but a discrete and well-guided fear produces religion."
English prelate Bishop Jeremy Taylor   1613-1667,
author Rule & exercises of holy living   "in which are described the means & instruments of obtaining every virtue and the remedies against every vice, and considerations serving to the resisting all temptations
intensive student of Jakob Böhme's works, Novalis;   meme: Liebesreligion, religion of love
"Love is the final goal of world history - the One of the universe".
"We are on a mission: we are called upon to educate the earth".

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