Mysterious Deaths Continue

First, why haven't I been posting? Well, the FBI has been harrassing me, threatening to put my family in jail if I continue to post my incisive commentary. Or, I just haven't had much to say, as there really isn't much left but the countdown to Bush's re-election. You pick which explanation you prefer.

I note with interest the passing of John Mack. If you don't know who he was, then you have not had the pleasure of delving into the fascinating world of alien abductions. Mack was a Harvard Psychiatrist and Pulitzer prize winning biographer of "Lawrence of Arabia," T.E. Lawrence, a conference about whom he was attending in London. The only details of his death are that, as a pedestrian, he was hit by an allegedly drunk driver. No details about whether that driver is even in custody have so far been released.

Mack was the most establishment figure to embrace the alien abduction phenomenon. He not only studied the issue and ran groups for alleged abductees, he maintained the that the phenomenon was real, albeit perhaps in ways that stretch our normal understanding of the term "reality."

If you are unfamiliar with the alien abduction phenomenon, go study it for a few years and you still won't know what's going on. Simply dismissing abductees as loonies is inaccurate to say the least. Thousands of victims have relived painful "memories" and (though this is less confirmatory than before the experiences were so widely explored on really bad TV documentaries) there are many similarities to those accounts.

The phenomenon produced a cottage industry of really bad investigation and really bad psychological techniques. While I don't know the percentage, one must admit that a great number of memories are recovered only after hypnosis, which, itself, is a phenomenon that is little understood and open to abuse. There is also some percentage of abductees who remember the events spontaneously, often using hypnosis only to enlarge upon those memories.

But like much in the UFO world, the bad investigation has so tainted the field that I assume any scientific value this phenomenon once held has been drained out completely. Mack himself moved into exploring the "spiritual dimension" of the phenomenon.

The best example of really bad investigation would be the case of Linda Cortile investigated by Bud Hopkins. You'll have to find his book "Witnessed" to be impressed with the level of his gullibility and what he counts as evidence. That book alone would drive anyone out of publicly endorsing the reality of this phenomenon. (Note to any future alien abduction investigators: anonymous mailings of someone claiming to have witnessed events that corroborate incredible stories do not constitute "witness" statements).

John Mack did no such investigation at all. He simply worked with "abductees" in (once could cynically argue, self-reinforcing)group sessions. From this he wrote at least two books on the subject (the John Mack Institute site does not have a bibliography and I'm short of time at present). I happent to know, through my amazing network of Hollywood sources, that, some years ago, he was pitching his first abduction book for a movie.

Mack could have been a sincere explorer of this odd phenomenon. It is, after all, a real phenomenon. For whatever reason, a large number of people have come forward having had these experiences.

As a Harvard Psychiatrist, I note with some trepidation, he would also could have been "in the loop" so to speak with any government mind-control projects, one explanation I've heard offered for the abduction experience. This piece is not meant to be a critical analysis by any stretch, but it's been pointed out, for example, many "memories" also feature quite human looking men in the background during these abductions who evidently play an important role.

One also notes parallels with the satanic abuse phenomenon. Many of the "experiments" carried out by the "aliens" are seemingly low tech and sexually invasive. In addition, satanic abuse memories are also often recovered under hypnosis and also scant on physical evidence.

Satanic abuse, in turn, (sheesh, wouldn't you hate to live in my head for a week) itself has been explained, by Dave McGowan and others, as not so much a religious movement, but as part of a cruel method of breaking down personalities for mind control purposes. It is quite clear, for example, that the CIA was interested in the ability to induce multiple personalities to create the perfect spy/assassin who, him or herself, would be unaware of activities carried out by the other personality. The most efficient way to induce multiple personalities, of coure, is severe and traumatic abuse with as much mindfuck thrown in as possible.

You'll have to do your own research on these topics. My sketchy presentation here makes me seem a nutjob myself. I vouch for no particular theory, only to point out that there are things going on here that go beyond a bunch of loonies seeking attention. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what it is.

So, this brings us back to John Mack. Killed in London in a freakish way. If they actually have the driver in custody, one can't help but wonder if the driver,him or herself, was a product of some of these little funhouse experiments tasked with taking out someone who knew too much.

Or maybe it was just a sad accident and John Mack was a genuine seeker, looking for a higher reality to explain the unexplainable. Or maybe it was the aliens themselves trying to keep their nefarious project secret for just a little longer.

It's really not that hard...

...noticing patterns in world affairs is not difficult if you are at all aware. I'll admit that my knowledge of Chechnya was limited, but the picture I've been painting the last couple days of the very suspicious school takeover in Russia is becoming much clearer. I am printing now an entire article I got off of Commondreams but was originally printed in the British paper The Guardian. It points out some additional bad guys who are part of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, including Richard Perle and Eliot Abrams. It also outlines some motivations that the West has for, at the very least, using the incident to hurt Putin and weaken Russia's control over the Caucasus. There are even, gasp, suspicions in Russia that the West was behind the whole thing.

Published on Wednesday, September 8, 2004 by the Guardian/UK
The Chechens' American Friends
The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own
by John Laughland


An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view that President Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in North Ossetia. Soundbites and headlines such as "Grief turns to anger", "Harsh words for government", and "Criticism mounting against Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio correspondents in Beslan have been pressed on air to say that the people there blame Moscow as much as the terrorists. There have been numerous editorials encouraging us to understand - to quote the Sunday Times - the "underlying causes" of Chechen terrorism (usually Russian authoritarianism), while the widespread use of the word "rebels" to describe people who shoot children shows a surprising indulgence in the face of extreme brutality.

On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called "mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a specific group in the Russian political spectrum - and by its American supporters. The leading Russian critics of Putin's handling of the Beslan crisis are the pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov - men associated with the extreme neoliberal market reforms which so devastated the Russian economy under the west's beloved Boris Yeltsin - and the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Center. Funded by its New York head office, this influential thinktank - which operates in tandem with the military-political Rand Corporation, for instance in producing policy papers on Russia's role in helping the US restructure the "Greater Middle East" - has been quoted repeatedly in recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities. The centre has also been assiduous over recent months in arguing against Moscow's claims that there is a link between the Chechens and al-Qaida.

These people peddle essentially the same line as that expressed by Chechen leaders themselves, such as Ahmed Zakaev, the London exile who wrote in these pages yesterday. Other prominent figures who use the Chechen rebellion as a stick with which to beat Putin include Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who, like Zakaev, was granted political asylum in this country, although the Russian authorities want him on numerous charges. Moscow has often accused Berezovsky of funding Chechen rebels in the past.

By the same token, the BBC and other media sources are putting it about that Russian TV played down the Beslan crisis, while only western channels reported live, the implication being that Putin's Russia remains a highly controlled police state. But this view of the Russian media is precisely the opposite of the impression I gained while watching both CNN and Russian TV over the past week: the Russian channels had far better information and images from Beslan than their western competitors. This harshness towards Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in the US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically support the "war on terror".

They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Center for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on NATO; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.

The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause by emphasizing the seriousness of human rights violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable "Muslim" causes, Bosnia and Kosovo - implying that only international intervention in the Caucasus can stabilize the situation there. In August, the ACPC welcomed the award of political asylum in the US, and a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government, and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the US administration.

Although the White House issued a condemnation of the Beslan hostage-takers, its official view remains that the Chechen conflict must be solved politically. According to ACPC member Charles Fairbanks of Johns Hopkins University, US pressure will now increase on Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military, solution - in other words to negotiate with terrorists, a policy the US resolutely rejects elsewhere.

Allegations are even being made in Russia that the west itself is somehow behind the Chechen rebellion, and that the purpose of such support is to weaken Russia, and to drive her out of the Caucasus. The fact that the Chechens are believed to use as a base the Pankisi gorge in neighboring Georgia - a country which aspires to join NATO, has an extremely pro-American government, and where the US already has a significant military presence - only encourages such speculation. Putin himself even seemed to lend credence to the idea in his interview with foreign journalists on Monday.

Proof of any such western involvement would be difficult to obtain, but is it any wonder Russians are asking themselves such questions when the same people in Washington who demand the deployment of overwhelming military force against the US's so-called terrorist enemies also insist that Russia capitulate to hers?

John Laughland is a trustee of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group www.oscewatch.org

Yet More on Russia

I suppose this may not be news to many of you, but this Counterpunch article explains some of the conflict between Russia and Chechnya, as well as pointing out two relevant facts:

A string of deadly apartment bombings in Russia may have been the work of Russian security services, and the movie theatre takeover had Russian security infiltrators involved. Here are the relevant paragraphs:

Putin's own rise to power was closely bound up with similar aggressive campaigns against Chechnia. In August 1999, Yeltsin nominated the largely unknown former security service veteran, Vladimir Putin, as head of the government. Shortly afterwards a series of bomb attacks destroyed blocks of flats in Moscow and other Russian cities, claiming hundreds of victims. Although the perpetrators were never properly identified, there were many indications that the secret service agency FSB was involved. Putin used the bombings as an excuse to once again undertake a full-scale military mobilisation against Chechnia. Appealing to Russian chauvinism and making crude attacks on Chechens he was swept into office as Russia's president on a wave of nationalist hysteria.

According to the story published by Anna Politkovskaia, a journalist of Novaia Gazeta, an agent of the FSB infiltrated the group of Chechen terrorists who took about 800 people hostage in a Moscow theatre in 2002. This agent succeeded in escaping the building and surviving the government rescue assault, as a result of which 129 hostages and the whole group of about 50 Chechen militants were killed. If this report is true, then Putin's government is guilty not only of a cruel and merciless overreaction to the hostage crisis, but also of directly organising one of the greatest armed provocations in recent Russian history.

It is still curious that the Russian government is denying a link between the terrorists and the situation in Chechnya, especially since the only reported demand was for a Russian withdrawal from Chechnya. I may not be understanding Putin's position here. Perhaps he's arguing that another force seeks to provoke the conflict.

U.S. funding Chechen Separatists

Or at least one of them anyway. This article describes how Chechen foreign minister and separatist, Ilyas Akhmadov, was given asylum in the United States. The deal was arranged by the benignly named "American Committee for Peace in Chechnya." On this committee sits such icons of peace as former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former US secretary of state Alexander "I'm in charge now" Hague. By the way, this article is from only one month ago.

Oh, it gets better:

"The committee confirmed that not long ago Akhmadov was appointed to a post at the US non-governmental foundation National Endowment for Democracy and now plans to move to Washington for permanent residence and work."

Yep, he's being paid. And paid by the NED for that matter. Another misnomer with an attitude, the National Endowment for Democracy has been a primary tool of destroying same throughout the world. Here's an an article from the handy site, Third World Traveler. A quote, to whet your appetite:

"Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, was quite candid when he said in 1991: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED."

I will admit that my understanding of NED is that their primary modus operandi was covertly funding political parties and compliant labor unions. However, there is so little oversight with NED it's really not easy to tell what all they might be up to.

Read the whole article on them, but here is another portion of the article:

The Endowment played an important role in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, funding key components of Oliver North's shadowy "Project Democracy" network, which privatized US foreign policy, waged war, ran arms and drugs and engaged in other equally charming activities. At one point in 1987, a White House spokesman stated that those at NED "run Project Democracy". This was an exaggeration; it would have been more correct to say that NED was the public arm of Project Democracy, while North ran the covert end of things. In any event, the statement caused much less of a stir than if-as in an earlier period-it had been revealed that it was the CIA which was behind such an unscrupulous operation.

NED also mounted a multi-level campaign to fight the leftist insurgency in the Philippines in the mid-1980s, funding a host of private organizations, including unions and the media. This was a replica of a typical CIA operation of pre-NED days.
And between 1990 and 1992, the Endowment donated a quarter-million dollars of taxpayers' money to the Cuban-American National Fund, the ultra-fanatic anti-Castro Miami group. The CANF, in turn, financed Luis Posada Carriles, one of the most prolific and pitiless terrorists of modern times, who was involved in the blowing up of a Cuban airplane in 1976, which killed 73 people. In 1997, he was involved in a series of bomb explosions in Havana hotels.

So, a summary for those of you keeping score at home. One month before the Russian 9/11, Brzezinski and Haig and the NED brought a Chechen separatist to the United States. Now, I really want to be careful, because I have, myself, been involved in working with separatists, or at least armed opposition groups. The EZLN in Mexico, for example. And I've known lots of people working with Central American resistance movements for years. So no blanket condemnation from me for working with independence movements. I would also venture to say, from my limited knowledge, that I support independence for Chechnya. This conflict has been going on for a long time...long before there even was a Soviet Union.

You'll also recall my statement below that one Russian General was complaining that the whole school takeover affair was run from "outside forces" based in the U.K. While I was worried that he was venturing into vague, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, I didn't know at the time that England also just gave asylum to a Chechen separatist, Akhmed Zakayev.

Now, if you search on Akhamadov, you'll find some very reasonable statements about getting the U.N. to help facilitate an interim government in Chechnya and so on. So, just because Russia calls these men terrorists, doesn't mean they are. I think of the U.S. characterization of the ANC in South Africa as terrorist for so many years. IN addition, his characterizations of Russia's brutal tactics in Chechnya sounds plausible.

So is the Chechen movement a legitimate movement, or has it been coopted by people who would like to kill little children? Well, see below where I have this link wherein one of the captured militants says that the order for the attack came straight from separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, the very man who appointed Akhamadov as foreign minister.

This, too, of course, proves nothing, as this whole affair could simply be a Russian concoction to discredit the Chechen movement. Still, we can see that, as always, there are wheels within wheels within wheels.

As it stands now, either the attack was a way to discredit a legitimate movement, or a legitimate movement has been coopted and manipulated by "outside forces" such as the U.S. or even Russia itself. It wouldn't be the first time a government sponsored terrorism against its own people to serve political need. I refer you to "Operation Northwoods" for details on how such operations might work. (There are better sources of info on this, but I like that this is from the radical leftwing ABC news.)

More on Russia

Well, lots of people are noticing that things don't make much sense in this case. This article claims that it was a notorious "warlord" ordering the action. The terrorists argued among themselves about their actions (though, when you are told you are taking over a school, what, exactly do you think you are going to be doing?). Finally, one of the head guys blew too of the women up who were stirring up a mutiny. They had explosive belts on, apparently as suicide bombers, but the things were detonated by remote.

This makes one wonder how many other "suicide bombers" might be victim of such a thing. If someone straps explosives on you and has a remote control, it's pretty hard to say no, even if you know your ultimate fate, you'd try to buy some time.

I don't know the accuracy of the new reports, though the reports of the hostage takers arguing among themselves comes from survivors.

The story also makes clear that the hostage takers were not told any ultimate purpose except that they must "start a war." This makes some sense, as this is exactly what they've done. Why the Chechens, or at least the separatist leader and "warlord" who allegedly ordered the actions, want such total war is unknown. Even though Iraq shows they can make a stand, it's not a war they can win in any real way.

One Russian general, meanwhile, is saying the orders from this came from the UK. I can't really tell, but I think he may be blaming it on generic "Jews" and I've seen no supporting evidence. While we know Israel's Mossad, as well as any number of countries' intelligence organizations are capable of nasty things, such nasty things can also be done specifically to stir up hatred against Jews. The real benefactors of this horrible action are those who peddle war for political or profit reasons. I certainly know who those people are in the U.S., but I'm not as familiar with Russia. I don't know who their "Halliburtons" and "Carlyle Groups" might be. Or it could be countries' interested in getting Russia more on board with the "war on terror". After all, Russia has ties to Iran.

Meanwhile, I've seen a couple of stills of video, but not the video itself because I have no interest in a CNN superpass or whatever the hell it is, of scenes inside the building. Children packed densely, clearly suffering, with explosives overhead.

If you can get people to do such horrible acts, mind control or no, (and even basic training is a type of mind control, specifically designed to reduce inhibitions against killing) you have a terrible, evil and powerful weapon.

Here's another very brief article from a source I know nothing about, a communication company called RosBusiness Company. Article says police may have been complicit in the attack, which would explain the missing 13 attackers! Here's the whole article.

"RBC, 05.09.2004, Moscow 12:30:23.1, could have had accomplices among police officers, said Valery Andreyev, head of the North Ossetian Department of the Federal Security Service. He said initial investigation of the attackers' route suggested a conspiracy involving the police. At the same time, he did not rule out that the police officers might have been forced to help the terrorists."

Russian 9/11

There could only be one logical outcome to the carnage in Russia. No one, not even an evil terrorist, could imagine that holding children hostage, not allowing them food or water and threatening to kill them, much less going through with the act, could provoke any other outcome than the one voiced by Vladimir Putin:

Russians must mobilise for a “brutal, all-out war'."

I suppose it's possible that this is the reaction the Chechens sought. Sure, they SAY they want the Russians out of Chechnya, but maybe provoking all out war could...could what?

This is the Russian 9/11, and it has as many unanswered questions. Here are a few.

This meticulously planned action, requiring military precision, (not to mention military fatigues, military vehicles and military weapons) was missing one thing: demands.

The only reference I've seen is to generic demands for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. And it is unclear to me if this was an actual demand, or simply what the press assumed these folks wanted. In any event, this is a demand which could not conceivably be fulfilled in the small amount of time it takes for small children to die from dehydration. You have heard by now, I assume, that the hostage takers did not allow the children water to drink, much less food. Either the demands have been kept secret or no serious demands were made.

Secondly, according to this article and others, there were so many weapons and explosives on the school grounds, they could not possibly have been brought in during the assault, but had to have been planted earlier. The theory is that the terrorists disguised themselves as workmen and planted explosives all over the school and stashed weapons.

" Another official said the militants has (sic) posed as builders in July, and snuck in bombs, mines, rocket launchers and other weapons, disguised as construction material."

Somehow the real construction workers didn't notice enough weapons to supply a small army, even though they'd been there for over a month.

Here is the main question I have. The place is wired with explosives. No realistic demands were issued. Therefore, it was their intention to kill all inside. So where is the need for an assault? Why not just set off the explosives?

I suppose it doesn't hurt the Russian case that they now allegedly have bodies of several "Arab terrorists" among the dead. Better than an indestructible passport, I suppose. It also doesn't hurt that, according to the hostages, the kidnappers spoke in a Chechen accent. This would be a slam dunk case. No need for any pesky commissions to look into this one.

Then we have this from CNN. The man who was captured under as-yet unrevealed circumstances pleaded:

"Of course I pitied the children, I swear to Allah. I have children myself. I didn't shoot. I swear to Allah," he said. "I don't want to die. I swear to Allah, I want to live."

Now suppose, just for a moment, that this man was actually one of the hostage takers. Their plan was to plant explosives on the grounds and strap explosives onto themselves, round up hundreds of children...and he was thinking no children would be killed? Does this even SOUND like the words of a terrorist so heartless he could shoot children in cold blood? I realize that we certainly don't have reason to believe someone who would have done such a thing (if indeed he was even involved), but this is clearly not the rhetoric I'd expect.


Then we have the missing militants. Evidently, 13 of them managed to escape what I would assume was a rather heavily encircled building. Here's one account:

"At least 13 militants are suspected to have fled the school after the standoff was put to an end when a roof fell in the building where hundreds of hostages were held. They have managed to escape south of the town, while the rest of twenty-some terrorist is reportedly trying to mix with the adult hostages and thus escape capture." article

Then I heard all 26 (down from a number in the thirties) were killed. Then CNN tells us one militant was captured, but evidently not the missing 13. This report says all but two of the militants were killed in the building. Actually, every report has a different story.

I can understand some confusion, but either 13 militants escaped and were pursued throughout the neighboring village, or they didn't. Either those militants were later captured or got away. However, it is unlikely that they RETURNED TO THE SCHOOL, which is the only explanation I'm left with. That, or the security forces were accidentally pursuing freed hostages running for their lives. Seems like that would have sorted itself out rather quickly, however.

There is definitely something wrong with this horrifying story. With preplanted explosives, soulless killers able to shoot kids point blank, no real exit strategy and differing accounts of a higher number of perpetrators with some escaping, this all has an eerie similarity to Columbine. There too, initial reports said there were far too many explosives in the building to have been brought in by the gunmen. There, too, initial reports had the number of gunmen much higher. There, too, were reports of some "getting away" (though in that case, getting away appeared to be under police custody.) And there too, were young people so mentally disturbed, that such horrendous violence was as easy as playing DOOM.

I don't know what to make of this. I haven't seen the comparisons yet, even on the more conspiratorial sites, but they will come, probably from people who know much more about Columbine than I do. Just in time, too, comes Dave McGowan's book with the theory that some of our more famous serial killers were "programmed" to commit such crimes which actually had deeper political motives. You can check his book out here. I haven't gotten it yet, but the timing is certainly right.

I guess a quick word about programmed killers is in order. I can't, and neither can Dave, prove that governments can and do program people to commit such crimes. But what is undeniable is that they, or at least the CIA, were interested in such possibilities. One technique might involve inducing what used to be called "multiple personality disorder" and what is now called Dissociative Identity Disorder. This disorder is almost always precipitated by severe abuse. One "personality" might have no knowledge of what another is up to. You see why spy guys might like such creations. The paper trail that they were at least interested in such ideas is pretty solid, and that alone is saying something pretty evil.

Personally, that these guys might have been programmed to commit such acts is satisfying to me at the moment, because it is the MOST OPTIMISTIC SCENARIO I CAN COME UP WITH. Yep, little Manchurian candidates running around is the BEST CASE scenario.

It might also explain the very perplexing words of our lone militant gunman. Or at least the lone gunman captured. Not the words of a martyr seeking his virgins in heaven (I use the stereotype here intentionally). Not the strength of will one would expect from someone able to strap on explosions and tell children to drink their own urine if their thirsty. If I'm right, this guy won't live long.

God we live in awful times.

Magic Kidnappers

Just as with the hostage situation in Saudi Arabia some months ago, a large number (13 according to this report of the Russian hostage takers managed to escape. This, simply speaking, is not possible. They have the building under surveillance from all angles and the hostages are kids and teachers, most of whom are not likely to be mistaken for hostages as they emerge.

I'm hard pressed to question their storming of the building, only because the operation was fairly succesful and, evidently, the hostage takers weren't even allowing food to be sent in. However, the escape of the 13 (that may disappear from the news, but that's what the story says right now) begs the question of whether this thing was staged in the first place. In addition, the kidnappers had said they would blow up the building if it was stormed, and they plainly did not do that.

I also note that yesterday's All Things Considered, when they were not busy considering how much we need to bomb an Iranian nuclear power plant (see also: Geneva Conventions...you can't bomb those) said there were ethnic Chechens (natch) and ethnic English among the kidnappers. There was no word as to when Bush would begin bombing England, but his fight against terrorism will not be deterred, even if he has to bomb Buckingham Palace itself!