From: The Resistance
Date: May 9, 2006 11:36 AM

Skeleton in the Bush family cupboard



Alec Russell / London Telegraph | May 9 2006

Comment: Once again evidence indicating that Skull and Bones, and offshoot organisations such as the Bohemian Club are not "frat boy clubs", they are elitist organisations intimately linked with the occult.

One of America's great historical controversies intensifed yesterday with the publication of fresh evidence that members of an elite secret society may have dug up the remains of the Indian leader Geronimo and displayed his skull in their headquarters.

Rumours that half a dozen members of the Skull & Bones society at Yale University - including President George W Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush - dug up the grave of the legendary Apache leader during the First World War have exercised historians for years.

"Bonesmen", as senior members of the society are known, and the Bush family have long refused to comment on the claims.

The society, founded in 1832 and famous for its strange rituals centred on symbols of death, has over the years been accused of obtaining the skulls of a range of famous figures, including the former president Martin Van Buren and Che Guevara.

Its members include President Bush and his defeated rival in the last presidential election, Senator John Kerry.

Now contemporary evidence has been unearthed backing the theory that a group of young Bonesmen, based at an artillery school at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, desecrated Geronimo's grave.

The Apache leader had died while in custody at Fort Sill in 1909, 23 years after he finally surrendered to US troops.

In a letter written in 1918, one society member tells another that Geronimo's skull had been exhumed and was being kept in the "Tomb" - the society's headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut.

"The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club... is now safe inside the T- [Tomb] together with his well-worn femurs, bit & saddle horn."

The letter was unearthed in Yale University archives by a historian writing about First World War Yale pilots, and published in the Yale Alumni Magazine.

The letter names only one member of the alleged raiding party, a Charles Haffner, and makes no mention of Prescott Bush, who become a senator and is seen as the founder of the Bush political dynasty.

He was first linked to the saga in 1986, 14 years after his death, when documents from the society's archives were leaked purportedly showing that six Bonesmen - identifiable by their nicknames and including Prescott Bush - unearthed Geronimo's skull.

Some historians insist that the grave was never disturbed and that if there is a skull in the Tomb it is not the Apache leader's.

David Miller, a history professor from Cameron University, Oklahoma, said that until 1920 Geronimo's grave was unmarked. "My assumption is that they did dig up somebody at Fort Sill," he told the Yale Alumni Magazine. "But it probably wasn't Geronimo."

But society members have long believed that they do have Geronimo's skull in their headquarters.

"Many talked about a skull in a glass case by the front door that they call Geronimo," Alexandra Robbins, the author of Secrets of the Tomb, an exposé on the society, told the magazine.

Apache leaders seized on the news yesterday as further evidence that America's elite treated Indian tribes as a subspecies into the 20th century.

"Who in the hell would do such a thing?" asked Raleigh Thomson, a former branch leader who has campaigned to transfer Geronimo's remains to the tribe's Arizona reservation.

He told the Wall St Journal: "I guess it's the way my elders used to explain to me that white people are."


Police Destroy Shrine to Falun Gong Practitioner Who Was Tortured to Death

Shrine in Jilin City set up to honor Falun Gong practitioner tortured to death in police custody

Clearwisdom Net | May 9 2006

Dozens of Chinese police raided a home in Jilin City last month and destroyed a shrine set up to honour a family member who had been tortured to death in police custody.

According to Clearwisdom.net, at about 5 a.m. on April 30, 2006, the police chief from Changyi District, Jilin City led 40 to 50 armed police in 13 vehicles to the Wang family home. The family had set up a temporary shrine in their courtyard in memory of their 30-year-old son,Wang Jiaoguo. Wang and his wife Zhao Qiumei had been arrested in early March for practicing Falun Gong. Five weeks later, Wang was tortured to death at the No. 1 Detention Center in Jilin City.

Before the raid on April 30, the family had been harassed several times by the Jilin City police and the 610 Office. When the raid occurred, the police closed the surrounding street, broke into the courtyard and forcefully tore down the shrine. They took away everything that had been in and around the shrine, except the photos of Wang.

Clearwisdom.net also reported that two plainclothes policemen from Jilin City Police Department had been to Wang's uncle's home the previous night and warned them that they needed to stay away from the shrine. Many of Wang's friends and relatives also received threats and warnings. Most of Wang's family members' cell phones and home phones are being monitored.

The police who arrested Wang and his wife were from Nanjing police station, led by Tan Xinquang.


Newspaper Circulation Declines 2.6 Percent

SETH SUTEL / AP | May 9 2006

Newspaper circulation fell 2.6 percent in the six-month period ending in March, according to data released Monday, as more people turned to the Internet and other media outlets for news and information.

The decline in average paid weekday circulation was about the same as the previous six-month reporting cycle for the period ending last September, according to the Newspaper Association of America, a trade group.

Average paid circulation at Sunday newspapers fell 3.1 percent versus the same period a year ago, also a comparable decline with the last time circulation tallies were reported, the NAA said.

The figures were based on NAA's analysis of circulation figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, a separate group which reports figures on individual newspapers but not industrywide data.

Despite the declines in paid copies, the NAA also reported Monday that newspaper-run Web sites had an 8 percent increase in viewers in the first quarter. The data from Nielsen/NetRatings found that newspaper Web sites averaged 56 million users in the period, or 37 percent of all online users in the period, the NAA said.

According to Audit Bureau data, Gannett Co.'s USA Today remained the top-selling newspaper with 2,272,815 copies, up 0.09 percent from the same period a year ago; while The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Co., was second with 2,049,786, down 1 percent.

Several top newspapers reported significant declines in the period, including Tribune Co.'s Los Angeles Times, down 5.4 percent at 851,832; The Washington Post, down 3.7 percent at 724,242; the New York Daily News, also down 3.7 percent at 708,477. News Corp.'s New York Post slipped 0.7 percent to 673,379.

The largest slump at a major daily came at the San Francisco Chronicle, where average paid weekday circulation fell 15.6 percent to 398,246 as the newspaper continued to cut back on less desirable circulation such as copies paid for by advertisers and then distributed for free.

Patricia Hoyt, a spokeswoman for the Chronicle, said the cutbacks began at the beginning of last year and involved copies that "advertisers didn't value, were quite costly and essentially had no impact on our readership."

The Chronicle, which is owned by Hearst Corp., reported a similar decline in paid circulation for the previous six-month reporting period that ended last September.

Several other large newspapers also reported declines, including The Boston Globe, down 8.5 percent to 397,288, and The Atlanta Journal- Constitution, down 6.7 percent to 365,011. The Globe is owned by The New York Times Co. and the Journal-Constitution by Cox Enterprises Inc.

Besides USA Today, a handful of other major newspapers reported modest circulation gains in the period: The New York Times, up 0.5 percent at 1,142,464; Tribune Co.'s Chicago Tribune, up 0.9 percent at 579,079; and The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., up 0.9 percent at 398,329. The Star-Ledger is owned by Advance Publications Inc.


'Terrorist' shoot-em-ups aren't propaganda

Nick Farrell / The Inquirer | May 9 2006

LAST WEEK, we reported how the US government officials were a little concerned that terrorists were building mods for shoot-em-ups to recruit young terrorists.

See Shoot em ups hijacked by Islamic militants .

One title sending ripples of outrage through the defense establishment was a video based on Battlefield 2 and was cited as proof that the mods came from Islamic militants.

Alas, the video was made by a Battlefield 2 fan who goes by the name SonicJihad, who turned out to be easily found by a simple web search.

While Mr Jihad apparently took his handle from a popular beat combo artist who released a little ditty called 'Bush Killa' about the current president's dad he is not in the least bit terrorist-like.

So it looks like the US government's fear that games could be used as propaganda might be a bit of projection.

The US Army does use games like Team America as recruiting tools, and naturally assumed the bad guys would be doing the same thing.
More on Arstechnica, here.



Latin leader keen on ID chips

STEVE GOLDSTEIN / Knight Ridder | May 9 2006

COLOMBIAN President Alvaro Uribe may have been thinking aloud to a pair of US senators who say he proposed implanting microchips in seasonal workers to help the US control illegal immigration.

Uribe's alleged comments, as US politicians debated the biggest overhaul of immigration policies in decades, dismayed many Colombians when news of them appeared in the country's leading newspaper.
"It would be a blatant violation of human rights," Bogota lawyer Jorge Pinilla says.

Details of Uribe's conversation with US politicians last month were revealed by Senator Arlen Specter, of Pennsylvania, in a report he read into the congressional record last week.

He and Senator Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, met Uribe, the US's staunchest ally in Latin America, last month in Colombia.
During the informal meeting, Specter expressed concerns about seasonal workers who move to the US to work temporarily on farms and then don't return to their country when their visa has elapsed.

"President Uribe said he would consider having Colombian workers have microchips implanted in their bodies before they are permitted to enter the US for seasonal work," Specter told Congress on April 25.

"I doubted that implanting microchips would be effective since the immigrant workers might be able to remove them."

Uribe refused to say whether he proposed microchip implants, acknowledging only that he encouraged the senators to replace "draconian" immigration laws with a temporary work program that treats Colombian workers humanely, such as one the country already shares with Spain and Canada.

"If the US with all its technology, computers and chips, doesn't have the means to know who enters or leaves the country, where are we," he says.

The offices of Specter and Sessions did not return calls seeking comment on their meeting with Uribe.

Using microchips the size of a grain of rice to track the movement of cattle is nothing new.

Florida company VeriChip is marketing implants in humans to government and corporations as a way of controlling access to secure areas and to keep tabs on sex offenders and other felons.

Never before has anyone proposed using body chips for immigrants.

The idea, bound to get under the skin of privacy advocates, is dismissed even by supporters of stricter immigration control.


Lockheed Martin To Acquire RFID Firm

Industry Week | May 9 2006

On May 4,Lockheed Martin announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Savi Technolongy, Inc., a provider of RFID solutions.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Savi provides RFID solutions that include tags, readers and enterprise software. Savi, which has a long-standing contract with the Department of Defense, received a large increase from $207.9 million to $424.5 million in its RFID II contract with DoD in February.

"Savi's talented team of employees has successfully developed a complete line of active RFID solutions. The acquisition of this innovative company is consistent with our strategy of making investments that significantly enhance the capabilities we can offer our customers," said Bob Stevens, Lockheed Martin's CEO.


'Iran can also be wiped off the map'

Nathan Guttman / Jerusalem Post | May 9 2006

Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Monday that "the president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map."

"Teheran is making a mockery of the international community's efforts to solve the crisis surrounding Iran's nuclear program," Peres told Reuters, adding that "Iran presents a danger to the entire world, not just to us."

Peres's vehement expressions came the same day that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote to US President George W. Bush proposing "new solutions" to their differences in the first letter from an Iranian leader to an American president in 27 years, Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said Monday.

In the letter, Ahmadinejad proposes "new solutions for getting out of international problems and current fragile situation of the world," Elham said.

Peres did not say who should act against Iran if it continues with its nuclear program, but implied military action should be led by the United States, pointing to the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Israeli officials have indicated that Israel would join any international operation against Iran.

Peres urged China and Russia to join Western efforts to impose sanctions on Iran. The two countries have been reluctant to back such proposals in the UN Security Council. If all world powers are united against Iran, military action can be avoided, Peres said.

"We can prevent all of this threat, without weapons, if there will be unity," Peres said, adding that the Security Council had to act on the matter. "If the crucial moment comes and they are incapable of taking [action] or making a policy...then they endanger their existence as an important world body," he said.

Ahmadinejad's letter may also contain ideas on how to resolve the conflict over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Yet neither Teheran nor Washington provided any information regarding the content of the letter or the proposals it contains.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said Monday that the Iranian president's letter to Bush could create a "new diplomatic opening," but also warned that the letter did not reflect a softening in Iran's position.

Larijani refused to give details of the letter's content, but said, "Perhaps it could lead to a new diplomatic opening. It needs to be given some time."

"There is a need to wait before disclosing the content of the letter, let it make its diplomatic way," Larijani said in an interview with Turkey's NTV television.

Larijani added, however, that the "tone of the letter is not something like softening."

He also warned against any US attack against Iran.

"If they have a little bit of a brain, they would not commit such a mistake," he said. "Iran is not Iraq. Iraq was a weak country, it did not have a legitimate government. Iran is a powerful country."

The White House announced late Monday afternoon that the letter of Iranian president Mahmuod Ahmadinejad has arrived. Spokesman Fredrick Jones said that the National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley would be the one in charge of examining the Iranian letter.

It is the first time that an Iranian president has written to his US counterpart since 1979, when the two countries broke relations after Iranian militants stormed the US Embassy and held the occupants hostage for more than a year.

The US sees the letter as no more than an attempt to influence world opinion on the eve of a United Nations Security Council new resolution regarding Iran. John Negroponte, the head of the US intelligence, said Monday that "certainly one of the hypotheses you'd have to examine is whether and in what way the timing of the dispatch of that letter is connected with trying in some manner to influence the debate before the Security Council."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will discuss the Iranian nuclear project this week with foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, known as the P5+Germany group.

The US is trying to form a broad coalition which will support a new UN resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN charter that would include the threat of sanctions against Iran if it does not comply with international demands regarding its nuclear project. China and Russia still oppose such a resolution and wish to maintain a non-sanction approach to Iran.


Flying robot attack "unstoppable": experts

AFP | May 9 2006

It may sound like science fiction, but the prospect that suicide bombers and hijackers could be made redundant by flying robots is a real one, according to experts.

The technology for remote-controlled light aircraft is now highly advanced, widely available -- and, experts say, virtually unstoppable.
Models with a wingspan of five metres (16 feet), capable of carrying up to 50 kilograms (110 pounds), remain undetectable by radar.

And thanks to satellite positioning systems, they can now be programmed to hit targets some distance away with just a few metres (yards) short of pinpoint accuracy.

Security services the world over have been considering the problem for several years, but no one has yet come up with a solution.

"We are observing an increasing threat from such things as remote-controlled aircraft used as small flying bombs against soft targets," the head of the Canadian secret services, Michel Gauthier, said at a conference in Calgary recently.

According to Gauthier, "ultra-light aircraft, powered hang gliders or powered paragliders have also been purchased by terrorist groups to circumvent ground-based countermeasures."

On May 1 the US website Defensetech published an article by military technology specialist David Hambling, entitled "Terrorists' unmanned air force".

"While billions have been spent on ballistic missile defense, little attention has been given to the more imminent threat posed by unmanned air vehicles in the hands of terrorists or rogue states," writes Hambling.

Armed militant groups have already tried to use unmanned aircraft, according to a number of studies by institutions including the Center for Nonproliferation studies in Monterey, California, and the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies in Moscow.

In August 2002, for example, the Colombian military reported finding nine small remote-controlled planes at a base it had taken from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

On April 11, 2005 the Lebanese Shiite militia group, Hezbollah, flew a pilotless drone over Israeli territory, on what it called a "surveillance" mission. The Israeli military confirmed this and responded by flying warplanes over southern Lebanon.

Remote-control planes are not hard to get hold of, according to Jean-Christian Delessert, who runs a specialist model airplane shop near Geneva.

"Putting together a large-scale model is not difficult -- all you need is a few materials and a decent electronics technician," says Delessert.

In his view, "if terrorists get hold of that, it will be impossible to do anything about it. We did some tests with a friend who works at a military radar base: they never detected us... if the radar picks anything up, it thinks it is a flock of birds and automatically wipes it."

Japanese company Yamaha, meanwhile, has produced 95-kilogram (209-pound) robot helicopter that is 3.6 metres (11.8 feet) long and has a 256 cc engine.

It flies close to the ground at about 20 kilometres per hour (12 miles per hour), nothing but an incredible stroke of luck could stop it if it suddenly appeared in the sky above the White House -- and it is already on the market.

Bruce Simpson, an engineer from New Zealand, managed to produce an even more dangerous contraption in his own garage: a mini-cruise missile. He made it out of readily available materials at a cost of less than 5,000 dollars (4,000 euros).

According to Simpson's website (www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile), the New Zealand authorities forced him to shut down the project -- though only once he had already finished making the missile -- under pressure from the United States.

Eugene Miasnikov of the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies in Moscow said these kinds of threats must be taken more seriously.
"To many people UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) may seem too exotic, demanding substantial efforts and cost compared with the methods terrorists frequently use," he said. "But science and technology is developing so fast that we often fail to recognise how much the world has changed."