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UFO Secrecy and the Death of the American Republic
by Richard M. Dolan
February 21, 2005
A Murder Mystery
Like the Agatha Christie twist in Murder on the Orient Express, there have been many killers of the American Republic.
There is of course the obvious culprit, finally and widely acknowledged these days. This is the Spirit (and reality) of Empire, which has provided a none-too-subtle knife in the back. Since the days of Rome, people have understood the incompatibility of republican institutions with the tools of conquest and empire. By the time of Caesar, for instance, Roman rule stretched throughout the Mediterranean, dominating peoples as diverse as those under American military hegemony today.
Roman Empire circa 44 B.C
The problem back then was that the old Roman Senate, already with five centuries of history behind it, was designed for ruling Romans – in Rome. The Senate managed well enough during Rome’s conquest of Italy in the third century BC, and even during the pivotal Punic Wars with Carthage. But ruling faraway (and valuable) lands like Gaul and Egypt were not so simple. Caesar knew this as well as anyone. Solution: end of the Republic, and the creation of such offices as Dictator for Life. Then, after his assassination, Emperor. Indeed, we may wish to remember that Caesar’s successor, his nephew, the Emperor Augustus, stated that his own absolute rule was only temporary, and that he eventually intended to restore the republic.
Ultimately, republics cannot wear the armour of empire. That is because two central principles of republican philosophy – freedom and self-government – wither under its weight.
Empires mean war. Wars mean the stifling of dissent and constriction of free thought at home. This happens every time. Repeat: every time. It has happened in America today. Freedom of expression is a meaningless concept if everyone thinks the same. It is how dissenters are treated that enables us to measure how free a society is.
Empires also prevent people from governing themselves. That is because wars destroy truth. Without freedom of information from the elected and appointed leaders of our government – that is, without truth – how can ‘the people’ rule? This was a point heavily emphasized by America’s Founding Fathers. "An enlightened citizenry," wrote Jefferson, "is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic." Madison agreed: "The diffusion of knowledge is the only true guardian of liberty." But as Phillip Knightly observed in his classic study of the subject, the first casualty in war is truth. This fact is once again in evidence regarding America’s current fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The so-called War on Terror is simply the latest manifestation of the new order of things, of what we may call the Permanent Warfare State. In such a situation, the old republican virtues of freedom and self-government cannot survive.
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One might argue that Empires don’t have to result in reduction of rights at home. Look at Britain, not a republic of course, but at least a "liberal" monarchy. The British Empire spread around the world, and Brits enjoyed a higher degree of freedom than many other peoples, at least during the Empire’s heyday during the 19th century. That’s true, but the other side of it is that we don’t know how free the British people would have been without Empire. And let us not forget that there was also a great deal of "unfreedom" in Britain, even during glory days of Britannia.
The American Empire
Lest you doubt that America is indeed a bona fide empire that garrisons the world, consider that according to the Pentagon itself, the U.S. military has 860 bases in 41 foreign countries. That’s twenty percent of all the nations on earth.
But this figure is certainly too low. It leaves out bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan. Chalmers Johnson, in The Sorrows of Empire, argues that the true number is probably closer to 1,000 bases in perhaps more than 50 nations. Unlike during the cold war, when it was possible to learn the specifics about American bases in foreign lands, today much of the jurisdictional information is classified, and so we sometimes don’t know matters as elementary as which nation ‘owns’ a particular base in a particular country.
Military bases are a big part of it, but not the whole story. American troops, once again according to the Pentagon, are currently being stationed in 135 nations of the world. This is seventy percent of the world’s nations. Not all these places have large numbers of troops, it’s true. But many do, and the point is, they’re there. Today, we are told this is in order to defend and advance the noble cause of globalization. This is only part of the truth. In reality, empires are taken and defended in order to win great prizes for those few who are powerful enough to make money from them. This was true with Rome, it was true with Britain, it is true with America today. Globalization is a game with winners and losers, and you can be sure that America’s policy makers (as distinct from the American people) intend to be the winners.
Since World War Two, America has pursued a grand imperial strategy to stake out the globe. Today this strategy wears the scantiest of veils, and America’s leaders now talk openly of "full spectrum dominance." That’s bureaucratese for "we’re taking over the world."
Meanwhile, a profound but silent national security revolution has transformed the country. It is silent because there is still no formal acknowledgment of any real change. As long as the external appearances are the same (e.g. President, Congress, Supreme Court, etc.) most people continue to live under the delusion that things are the same, when in fact they are entirely different.
More than three decades ago, Gil Scott-Heron sang The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. He was right. It wasn’t.
Criminal Globalization
But, as I suggested at the beginning of this article, the demands of empire are only part of the problem.
The death of the American Republic is clearly a book-length subject, so I will content myself to mention some of the other culprits more briefly before moving on to my main theme.
There is a creepy interconnection of most of these villains. There is, for instance, the unsettling confluence of the major financial institutions of the world, the major groups of organized crime, and numerous intelligence agencies from around the world, all carving up the globe in the name of privatization. Behind all this is the unsettling evidence that elite powerful interests and families do indeed exercise dominant power behind the scenes of our public institutions, and that this is being done on an international scale.
Does anyone remember, for instance, a delightful news story (which surfaced ever so briefly then died a quick death) from early 2001. This concerned the Chase Bank of New York, a man named Raul Salinas, and one hundred and fourteen million dollars. Raul Salinas was the brother of Carlos Salinas, former President of Mexico. But Raul was much more than simply a less-famous Salinas. At the time of his capture in 2001, he had been wanted for murder (buried bodies had unfortunately been found at his compound) and I’m sure other unpleasant things. He was known to be a drug dealer of apparent significant proportions. Of course, why should this surprise anyone. The thing is, in January 2001, the Chase Bank of New York had to announce that $114 million dollars belonging to Raul Salinas were intercepted while on their way to a Swiss bank account.
The spokesperson for Chase said in effect how good it was that procedures existed to identify and stop such irregular transfers of money. The press, typically, did not follow up. (And just to refresh your memory, you may be familiar with the name of the family that has dominated the Chase Bank since forever. They’re called the Rockefellers.)
But I keep asking myself: was Raul Salinas really that stupid? Didn’t anyone bother to ask why he might have thought he would be able to run $114 million through Chase to begin with? Perhaps he had a reason to think he could succeed? Perhaps he had done so before? Perhaps someone didn’t get paid off sufficiently and ratted out the operation?
For something as big as narcotics trafficking, which by most estimates is the second largest business in the world (not quite as big as the weapons industry), isn’t it obvious that to make the money "legitimate" you have to clean it up, and you can’t exactly use your local mom and pop savings and loan institution. Yes, I think it’s fairly obvious. There is so much money in this. Far, far beyond the wildest dreams of greed – for most of us, that is.
America’s Silent Coups
That’s drugs. That’s another topic for a different day. What’s worse, possibly, are the frightening implications of ‘behind the scenes’ intelligence activities in the two most publicly traumatic events of the last fifty years of American history: the Kennedy assassination and the events of September 11, 2001. Both of these are symptomatic and further cause of the demise of republican government.
Regarding Kennedy, so much time has elapsed, and the nation still cannot get truth from its government. Indeed, mainstream media has been all too happy to go to bat for the men who were behind this. In 2003, during the 40th anniversary of Kennedy’s death, I watched, awestruck, as Peter Jennings of ABC hosted a TV special explaining "why the conspiracy theories are wrong." Such a disingenuous, selective, and often misleading portrayal of facts regarding that case could not have been accidental. I can only assume that the men who killed Kennedy are still in power, and have the ability to dictate what comes out of ABC. Especially so, when you consider that the men behind the killing appear to have included some of the Cuban ex-patriots whose operations Kennedy tried to disband after the Cuban Missile Crisis. And when you consider that 30 miles off the coast of Cuba in 1961 was a small oil operation that appears to have secretly supported the infamous Bay of Pigs operation on behalf of the CIA. The company was called Zapata Oil. It was run by a man named George Herbert Walker Bush.
Sure, perhaps it’s all a big coincidence.
9/11, same thing. I should pause and explain something here. I am from New York City. My dad is a retired New York City police officer. For seven years, after his retirement from the force, he was employed at the World Trade Center as a fire safety director. For five years, in fact, he was posted at the observation deck at the South Tower. For his last two years there, he worked at Building 4, an administration building. He happened to have Tuesdays off; the man he shared his job with – a very nice man whom I had the pleasure of meeting – was killed that day.
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Debunking Conspiracy Theorists
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For two years after the catastrophe, I was honestly too shaken to want to look into the details of the event, even though so many researchers had already begun to do so. I received e-mails from friends and readers, urging me to look into the circumstances surrounding 9/11. "Too busy with my other research, I’ll get to it later," was my typical reply. Frankly, I was hesitant to think there could be much credence given to the possibility of a real U.S. intelligence connection. It was just too big, too sinister, for me to want to think it was something other than what I was told. In this respect, I was just like most people, who don’t want to examine those deep fears.
But the inconsistencies of 9/11 are enormous. Absolutely enormous. In an article of this length, I cannot give a comprehensive analysis of all the problems, although David Ray Griffin has ably pointed out the direction in which research needs to go.
For now, it is at least enough to ask:
(1) Regarding the Pentagon attack, how were bodies from the Boeing 757 identified, while at the same time 60 tons of metal supposedly vaporized?
(2) Also regarding the Pentagon, how could a student pilot make a Boeing 757 jet nosedive toward the ground and then, a la Harry Potter at a quidditch match, pull up at the last moment and zoom along without radar guidance toward his target, literally inches above the ground?
(3) How did that 757 – essentially a hollow tube – pierce six reinforced walls of the Pentagon fortress? No source I have read has convincingly explained how this could have happened. Incidentally, the final hole, of which there is fortunately a photograph, is remarkably well-defined, and about 7 feet in diameter.
(4) Why were at least two independent video cameras of the Pentagon attack confiscated, and why are they still unavailable to the public?
(5) Why did NORAD’s standard defence procedures -- procedures which had worked efficiently for years and years, and which were activated 70 times in the 12 months before 9/11 -- fail on that single morning?
(6) Why did Building 7 of the WTC complex -- a 47 story tall steel frame structure -- collapse as it did at 5:30 p.m. (no significant debris or aircraft hit it); and why did it sure as hell look as though it came down as a controlled demolition?
(7) What exactly did WTC landlord Larry Silverstein mean when he told PBS that he and the Fire Chief agreed at 5 p.m. to "pull" Building 7? "Pull" is construction lingo for controlled demolition. Since you can’t wire a building that quickly, ipso facto it was pre-wired. If Building 7, why not the North and South Towers? And if so, why not admit it?
(8) Along these lines, why would numerous witnesses on the ground in lower Manhattan, including several NYC fire fighters, speak of a series of explosions emanating from the South Tower during its collapse? Such explosions were of a kind that would be consistent with the theory of controlled demolition.
(9) What was the true relationship between Al Qaeda, the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, and the CIA?
(10) Why for an entire year did the President try to prevent a commission from forming to investigate the event?
(11) Why did the committee itself -- appropriately referred to by Michael Ruppert as "mobbed up" friends of the President and National Security Advisor -- egregiously and steadfastly refuse to do a real investigation? (And please do not bother citing that travesty known as the 9/11 Commission Report, which deals forthrightly with none of these questions.)
Oh, there’s more, much more, but hopefully you get the idea. I think about 9/11, and it angers me, but not in the way that most Americans get angered.
Back in 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. He never actually received a majority of the German vote, although his party had received the largest plurality in the most recent parliamentary elections. Thus, in January of 1933, the ancient, revered, and decrepit Paul von Hindenburg, President of Germany, appointed Hitler as Chancellor. A little more than a month later, the German parliament building, known as the Reichstag, was in flames. Arson.
Hermann Göring, director of the national police and number two man in the Nazi Party, immediately proclaimed this to be the work of the Communists. An easily confused and not-very-intelligent man, a foreigner (Dutch) and Communist, who was at the scene and had been goaded into the deed by the Nazis, confessed to everything and was executed. In fact, the best evidence indicates that Göring, Josef Göbbels, and Reinhard Heydrich planned the whole thing. The result was the infamous Enabling Act, which gave Hitler dictatorial and extreme powers – supposedly temporary to meet the current crisis. The crisis happened to last for twelve years.
What I am saying is that 9/11 appears to be America’s version of the Reichstag Fire.
The Silent Watchdog and Invisible Fascism
People who live in their little private Idaho read all this with suchincredulity. "Well, why isn’t any of this in the major media?" "Wouldn’t the press just love such a scoop?"
The answer is no. Of course not. That people can still believe this about their media is something that I continue to marvel at, but – in case, dear reader, you’re still not getting it – it is time to wake up.
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The Doors Of Perception: Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything |
Americans have lived with the Patriot Act for more than three years. A few people have voiced their concerns about the loss of their Fourth Amendment right to privacy. For those who want a refresher, this is the complete amendment, which went into effect in 1791:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The 400-page Patriot Act (HR 3162) completely overturns this amendment, which has been the cornerstone of the American right to privacy for more than 200 years. The Patriot Act was rushed through Congress within weeks of 9/11. It was certainly written before 9/11, waiting in the wings, so to speak. The members of Congress rivalled the wisdom of Homer Simpson who, when once faced with a waiver to sue for damages from the dreaded Mr. Burns and his team of lawyers, stated courageously, "I’m not signing anything until I read it or somebody gives me the gist of it!"
The Patriot Act is bad, very bad. The carefully worded Section 213, for example, provides for the infamous ability to "sneak and peek." It establishes the ability to issue secret warrants for any federal crime – not just terrorism – and indeed to extend the secrecy indefinitely. Police can break in, examine and remove or alter items, and can do this without ever presenting owners with a warrant detailing what they were entitled to do.
The Patriot Act also allows authorities to examine your medical, financial, educational and even library records, whether or not they show any evidence of a crime. Credit reporting firms must also disclose to the FBI any information that agents request in connection with a terrorist investigation, without the need for a court order. In the past, this was only permitted in espionage cases. And just what constitutes terrorism, these days? Your guess is as good as mine.
It gets worse. For now we also live with the Intelligence Reform Act, passed in December 2004, an even more mammoth piece of legislation which continues the assault on the rights of American citizens.
For instance, it enables the President to select top Intelligence positions without Senate confirmation. As writer Mike Whitney put it, this is "an invitation to create his personal security apparatus without congressional interference." It also enables the new Intelligence Director to exempt his office from audits and investigations. It eliminates provisions to ensure that Congress receives timely access to intelligence. It allows the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to screen testimony before the Intelligence Director presents it to the Congress. (Thus, a president – including the current one – can stonewall or selectively present information to Congress). Whistle blower protections were removed from the bill so that federal employees cannot report on their superiors. Amazingly, it also hides the entire intelligence budget from Congressional scrutiny.
Finally, as Whitney points out, the Intelligence Director "shall have authority to direct or undertake electronic surveillance and physical search operations pursuant to FISA if authorized by statute or executive order." Yes, that’s executive order.
The U.S. major media was silent on these issues. Indeed, our major media is a crucial part of the problem. It has become the watchdog that doesn’t bark. I’ve written about this a number of times. Talk about this long enough and you begin to feel as though you’re howling into a vacuum. Which is essentially the case. Just remember the words of long-time publisher of the Washington Post, Katherine Graham in 1988: "there are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." That’s some interesting take on the idea of democratic rule. It is also a statement that our major media have taken to heart.
A Schizophrenic Society
Years ago, I spent some time studying the German language behind the "Iron Curtain" in East Germany. Wonderful experience, wonderful people. It was 1986, and I was 24 years old. Perhaps it’s my nature, perhaps fate, but early on I befriended some of the most prominent dissidents in the country at that time. Thus, while I was studying Deutschsprache at a DDR state-sponsored language program, I was hanging out at night and on weekends with some of the wildest people I’ve ever known. In the process I gained an insight into dissident culture. I met a man who had been beaten in an East German prison for his political views. And I saw the glaring discrepancy between official East German propaganda and the things that people would talk about, often in whispers, with small groups of friends. A schizophrenic society, I thought to myself. Official truth and actual truth.
What I’ve learned since then is that all societies have such a schizophrenia; it simply varies according to the level of repression that exists. There are always official truths, and there are always quiet, real truths. Here in America, in the year 2005, the discrepancy is greater – yes, I say greater – than it was for my friends in East Germany in 1986. And we know what happened to that country within a few years.
Americans have lived on a mental autopilot for long enough. Every day, millions of children mindlessly recite a pledge of allegiance to the flag "and to the republic for which it stands." Do they know what a republic is? Do the adults who teach them know? Do you? The word once had meaning for all Americans, but those days are long gone. Today, we hear nothing about such things as republican institutions, and even less discussion about what structures of real power have actually evolved in the United States, and indeed throughout the world. I am not sure what exactly we should be calling this new government, but it isn’t a republic, nor is it particularly democratic.
One certainly hears a lot these days about "American fascism." Certain commentators like to point out that fascism was a distinct historical development that evolved from the European wreckage after World War One. Some maintain that to call what is happening in America "fascism" is a disservice to those who lived under Hitler, Mussolini, or other dictators.
It’s true that there are major differences here today with certain features of those regimes. For one, the current regime is not as in-your-face about it as, say, Hitler was. There has been no openly acknowledged coup d’etat to which one can refer. But the changes to America have yet been profound. What I believe is that the Jacobin-styled revolutionaries who run America these days have learned an important lesson from the past: that the best revolutions are silent. Manage the media, manage the other major institutions of power, and you can have your way about almost anything. You can change the structure of society at the most profound levels, as long as you keep the old appearances.
I call this silent fascism.
But my main quarry for this paper is not empire, not the covert influence of big money, not globalization, not the co-option of what was once an independent media, nor even fascism per se in America.
There is another disease eating away at America. It is something which receives nearly no attention, even from those people who think and care about such quaint issues as republican virtue and freedom.
That is that matter commonly referred to as UFOs and the cancerous effect of UFO secrecy on the American Republic.
Of Science And Politics
The development of silent fascism in America is of such historical significance, you might ask, "why talk about UFOs?" There is no shortage of culprits, so why bring in the lunatic fringe?
Conversely, there are also UFO researchers who want no part of political analysis interfering with their field of study. This is a scientific issue, they maintain. Introducing political perspectives just muddies the waters. Analyze the evidence, know your facts, and stay objective.
But the UFO topic has important political implications. We cannot afford to ignore them. One of these is the damaging effect UFO secrecy has had on our society. It is an issue that intimately affects public policy, national security, and our very freedom. Indeed, as I will argue, the topic of UFOs and the extreme secrecy concerning them will determine a significant course of our civilization’s future.
Because UFO secrecy hasn’t been the only danger to our recent history, I tried in the first part of this article to provide some perspective, and by discussing some important non-ufological cancers that have eaten away at the American Republic. Such as the events of September 11, 2001.
Reality of UFO Phenomenon
UFOs are not fun and games, they are not delusions. They are real. The phenomenon has involved real technology, doing real things that are not supposed to be possible. This technology, since at least World War Two, has engaged in a confrontational and provocative manner with U.S. military forces on many occasions. It has involved both air space violations and alarmed responses, and has elicited the concern of some of the highest ranking military and intelligence officers in the country.
We know this because, for a relatively brief period in America’s history (primarily the late 1970s and into some of the 1980s), the Freedom of Information Act enabled researchers to obtain official documents from government agencies which clearly demonstrated this. Not that FOIA is officially dead today, but it has had its ups and downs over the years. As far as obtaining UFO-related information, FOIA’s moment of glory was long ago, in the post-Watergate and post-Vietnam era.
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Flying Saucers and the CIA
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Thus, agencies such as the CIA, DIA, FBI, and pick your alphabet-soup agency, which for years had steadfastly denied having anything to do with UFOs, suddenly released thousands of pages of documentation proving the opposite. It is true that, among these officially released documents, there is no absolute smoking gun – e.g. a memo from the President stating "Okay, what do we do about these pesky aliens, anyhoo?" There are, however, quite a few documents that are one cut below this. That is, documents that describe utterly awesome military encounters with the unexplainable.
Taken individually, such FOIA documents do not prove the existence of UFOs as something "not us." After all, people, even military witnesses, can make mistakes. Radar can be faulty or misinterpreted. But, taken as a whole, the released FOIA documents provide a large body of evidence relating to serious military encounters with UFOs. After you read the first fifty of these, you start to wonder.
Let’s review a couple of these documents.
We have, for instance, a document from Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico from January 31, 1949, directed to the USAF Chief of Staff. There was a flurry of UFO activity going on in New Mexico at this time. The document in question described yet another of these sightings from the previous day, seen by about 30 people. The document states:
Estimate at least 100 total sightings. AEC, AFSWP, 4th Army, local commanders perturbed by implications of phenomena.... All appear to be same object at different points in trajectory. Unless instructed to contrary this office will make all out investigation with view to location of impact point if any.
All those agencies perturbed by implications of phenomena.
Yes, indeed. I would be perturbed, too.
On the same day that the Kirtland document was issued, Strategic Air Command sent a memo to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. It stated that the matter of UFOs was "considered top secret by Intelligence Officers of both the Army and the Air Forces."
A 1950 Confidential Memorandum with the heading, "Flying Disks." This memo is remarkable, and I want to separate each sentence from one paragraph, so that you read it carefully:
Since 30 July objects, round in form, have been sighted over the Hanford AEC Plant.
These objects reportedly were above 15,000 feet in altitude.
Air Force jets attempted interception with negative results.
All units including the anti-aircraft battalion, radar units, Air Force fighter squadrons, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been alerted for further observation.
The Atomic Energy Commission states that the investigation is continuing and complete details will be forwarded later."
Where oh where are the academic historians regarding this memo? Failed intercepts? Anti-aircraft battalions? Good lord. And whatever happened to the AEC investigation and report?
The answer to that last question might be contained in the wording of the 1949 memo sent to Hoover. It stated that the matter of UFOs was "considered top secret." Yet, of the thousands of UFO related documents that obtained release through the Freedom of Information Act, only the smallest handful of (highly censored) documents were actually Top Secret. The rest were typically classified Restricted or Confidential, or at most Secret. Lower levels of secrecy, in other words. So where are the Top Secret documents?
Despite the best efforts of FOIA researchers, the best reports and intelligence remain far removed from the public domain. Despite what some people had hoped back in the day, the FOIA has not turned out to be a magic bullet.
It is also fairly obvious that UFO secrecy involves classifications higher than Top Secret. Higher classifications are themselves classified, so who knows how far they really go. James Bamford in Body of Secrets, a study of the NSA, writes, "like an endless spiral, there are secret classification systems within secret classification systems." What we do know is that Canadian government official Wilbert Smith wrote in 1950 that he had made "discreet enquiries through the Canadian embassy staff in Washington" and learned that the subject of UFOs was "the most highly classified subject in the United States government."
The last of the early memos I want to show you is from Robins Air Force Base in Macon, Georgia, dated July 9, 1951. It describes a ten minute aerial UFO encounter that took place in the early afternoon. The pilot, a first lieutenant, was flying an F-51 on a routine flight from Lawson AFB in Columbus, Georgia. Not far from Augusta, he encountered an object that was "flat on top and bottom and appearing from a front view to have rounded edges and slightly bevelled." At one point the object dived while in front of the pilot’s view. When it did so, it appeared "completely round and spinning in a clockwise direction."
The amount of detail on this report is remarkable. It continues:
From front view as object dived observer noted small spots on the object ...Object did not appear to be aluminium. Only 1 object observed. Solar white. No vapor trails or exhaust or visible system of propulsion. Described as traveling at tremendous speed.
The object eventually "disappeared under his plane."
Not only was this for an extended duration, but the pilot got to within 300 to 400 feet of the object. He estimated its size at about 10 to 15 feet in diameter. This object was moving very fast. According to the report, the pilot thought the object was moving at the speed of a jet. He felt a "disturbance in the air described as a bump when object passed under plane.... Pilot flew in combat in Europe for 12 months 1944-1945. Pilot considered by associates to be highly reliable, of mature judgement and a creditable observer."
There are other documents like this. Taken as a group, they establish that, during this early period at least, there were quite a few events that were recorded and classified by U.S. military and intelligence personnel that they took seriously. It is easy to understand why.
American? Other?
Were these objects of Soviet origin, developed perhaps with the aid of captured German scientists – some of whom were indeed experimenting with disk-shaped platforms? This possibility was investigated, and rejected. Today, years later, there is still no evidence that the Soviets invented "flying saucers" after World War Two.
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Conspiracy |
What about the Americans? They captured their own cache of German scientists, after all. One can speculate on the possibility that some breakthrough was made in the immediate post-World War Two years, in deep secrecy, as a result of purely terrestrial science.
But there are several problems with this theory, as well. First, the documentation that we have indicates serious efforts on anti-gravity commencing in the mid-1950s. If anything started sooner within the United States, we have no documentary evidence. That is not to say it didn’t happen, but there are no documents to show it.
Nor would it seem logical that this was a deep black American program, at least when viewing the confrontational nature of some of these encounters. The 1951 pilot encounter cited above, for instance, or the many intrusions over military bases and research centers, don’t make sense as a secret American project, at least not on the face of it.
Unless, of course, you speculate that a rogue human group obtained radically advanced technology; a group beyond the control of official militaries and governments. I can’t prove this, but is it possible? Of course.
That, frankly, seems to be the conservative interpretation, and it’s not exactly conservative. Then there is the more radical interpretation, which is that this technology wasn’t human in origin at all.
Either way, this was clearly a serious matter to serious people. H. Marshall Chadwell, for instance, who was the CIA’s Deputy Director of Scientific Intelligence. By 1952, when UFO sightings were getting rather out of hand, and not just the public but military personnel were encountering these things with incredible frequency, we can imagine the concern that was generated at high levels. Only a handful of documents and statements have come down to us from that period: some books, a few reports and memos.
One of them, however speaks volumes. It’s a brief document, prepared by Chadwell for his boss, CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith. It was dated December 2, 1952. Chadwell was careful. He didn’t come out and say, “boss we’re being invaded.” Here is the relevant paragraph:
At this time, the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention....Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and travelling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defence installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles.
Not natural phenomena, not known types of vehicles, and not (apparently) U.S. manufactured. It didn’t appear to be Soviet. So what does that leave you with? No matter what the answer, this was clearly a matter of grave concern to the decision-makers of U.S. defence and intelligence policy.
With that in mind, we can assume that the public statements, repeated over and over (flying saucers exist only in the imagination, nothing to them, all hoaxes or misidentifications, etc.) were intentional acts of deception. You can defend this lying if you choose. Maybe the government was trying to prevent mass panic, or hide their knowledge of this from the Soviets.
But before you draw that conclusion, let us continue. And while we continue, I suggest you try to retain the image in your mind of an enormous reality that has continuously been denied by America’s responsible leaders. Like a big sleeping bear in the corner of your dining room that no one is allowed to acknowledge. Just sit quietly and eat your dinner.
Technology and Bodies
FOIA documents, important though they are, are not the whole story. Unfortunately, researchers in this field have the odds stacked against them. We’ve obtained some documents to review, it is true. But in reality, this is clearly a sprinkling – the spray of the ocean. The ocean itself remains roped off.
So we must be resourceful. We must be journalists as well as historians. We seek out people who have something to say on this matter. We judge their credentials. We check their facts. We continue trying to piece this story together. The process is not infallible, we all know this. But it is necessary, and we must rely on our best judgement and sense of caution throughout.And thus we come to the strong reason to believe that UFOs are more than just objects flying around in the sky, but are in fact retrieved technology that is being stored and studied, and perhaps duplicated, at secret bases. We also come to the likelihood that there are bodies – alien bodies – that have been studied by human scientists.
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UFOs: Reality or Myth?
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We come to this amazing conclusion because more than fifty years of history point inexorably toward it. There is Roswell, of course. Because the Roswell case has been so rich, so full of witness testimony, so portentous for its implications, debunking it has been a priority since the case arose. Roswell will not go away, despite ABC’s recent best effort to do so. But, frankly, Roswell is not of critical importance to establish the likelihood of UFO crash retrievals by the U.S. military. UFOs were recovered many times by U.S. military personnel. Kingman, Arizona in 1953, Las Vegas in 1962, and Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in 1965 are only among some of the better known cases in which U.S. military teams recovered what appear to have been genuine UFOs. There appear to be others.
Once again, a remarkable statement by Canadian government official and scientist, Wilbert Smith, sheds light on this matter. Not long before his death in the early 1960s, Smith said that during the great UFO wave of 1952, the U.S. military had shot off a piece of a flying saucer near Washington, D.C. He said that the U.S. Air Force had loaned him a small piece for "a very short time." He showed it to his friend, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral H. B. Knowles. When asked if he returned the piece to the Air Force, he replied, "Not the Air Force. Much higher than that." Was it the CIA? Smith chuckled and said, "I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I don’t care to go beyond that point. I can say to you that it went into the hands of a highly classified group. You will have to solve that problem, their identity, for yourselves."
Claims and statements have been around for years regarding the storage of alien bodies at secure facilities, most notably Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. During the late 1970s, UFO researcher and World War Two veteran Leonard Stringfield began to look closely into what he began calling "the crash retrieval syndrome." People contacted him anonymously, he followed leads and uncovered other individuals. By the early 1980s, he had spoken to twenty first-hand military informants who had either worked on a UFO crash retrieval or seen alien bodies in storage, another thirty or so who were intermediaries.
By all accounts, Stringfield was a gentleman and a careful researcher. He honoured his promise to protect the identities of the people who came to him, and never jumped to conclusions about what they told him. He also considered the possibility that he was being "played." Still, Stringfield ultimately believed that the sources were too disparate and did not appear to be coordinated. They appeared to be genuine, and the information legitimate. Collectively, they told a story of several crash retrievals of alien vehicles by U.S. military personnel, as well as the housing of bodies and study of technology at deeply classified levels.
Stringfield’s research into this matter preceded the resurgence of the Roswell case. Indeed, we can trace rumours of crashed discs and alien bodies within the military to at least as early as 1949. There is an FBI document from March 22, 1950, addressed to J. Edgar Hoover, that is so suggestive, one wonders if researchers even know what to do with it. But the document – another gift from FOIA – appears to be authentic. It states:
An investigator for the air forces stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centres, approximately fifty feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of very fine texture ...
Many UFO researchers who stay in this field long enough develop their own contacts with the classified world. I have, and I have only been publicly involved in this field for five years. For some of the people who have confided in me, I have not been able to confirm their identities fully; for others there is no question that they are who they say they are. A few of these people are quite prominent. They have told me the same thing Stringfield’s contacts told him: there are deep black programs to study alien technology and bodies.
But there is one person, very prominent indeed, who has been talking about this publicly for some years. He is Dr. Edgar Mitchell, of Apollo 14 fame, and the sixth man to walk on the moon. On several occasions, Mitchell has spoken in public about his knowledge of such programs – knowledge that came to him, he said, through more than one elite-level connection. The manner in which the mainstream media has handled his statements would be an embarrassment, if one didn’t sense an ulterior motive behind such treatment, namely to defuse his statements as much as possible.
The secrecy on this matter is unbelievable. It appears to be part and parcel of an apparatus that is absolutely mammoth, and which does not exist officially. Dr. Richard Sauder has documented the existence of an enormous system of underground bases and even tunnels that stretches throughout the United States. Some of his research has uncovered a massive "shadow" government, so important and powerful that it appears to have authority over the "real" government. It would seem to me a logical guess that this system is related at least in part to the study of such bodies and technology.
Along these lines, I have a friend who is a military attaché living in Washington, D.C. Some time ago, this person told me of some quiet discussions he has had with his own colleagues. One friend of his was a senior Congressional Aid with significant budgetary review responsibilities. After a long period of number crunching, this Aid came to the conclusion that there existed an enormous black arm of the U.S. government. That is, a substantial, powerful, expensive, and secret executive branch of the U.S. government. This individual believed it was connected to UFOs. I was unable to get further information about this person.
What It Looks Like
Even this is only a partial picture, but the story looks clear enough. Cutting with Occam’s razor, the simplest explanation as I see it is something like this.
During and immediately after World War Two, U.S. military personnel began encountering exotic, unconventional, and extraordinary craft. It quickly became apparent to the best and brightest minds that these did not originate with the Soviets, nor with the Americans. They almost certainly concluded the "true UFOs" did not originate from our civilization. Hardly willing to share this information with others, secrecy became the rule.
At some point very early on, alien technology and bodies were recovered. It would be of paramount importance to determine several things as quickly as possible: the intentions of these "others," how to exploit their technology, and how to keep information away from undesirable groups, which would be just about everybody.
The reason for secrecy would be much more than preventing mass panic or some other form of public protection. That sounds noble, and it may have been a factor early on in determining policy. But secrecy grows its own tentacles, and develops its reasons for self-preservation. I think that by the 1950s at the latest, the office of the Presidency lost control over UFO secrecy.
Imagine being one of the members charged with managing the UFO problem. You have to keep it so secret, you almost have to hide it from yourself. Layer upon layer of deception follows, false cover story upon false cover story. We can assume that the technology itself would have been amazingly advanced, perhaps hopelessly so compared with what we had circa 1950. But perhaps, after a number of years, one clever scientist hit upon an idea based on one aspect of the recovered technology. Not only an incalculable technology advantage, but a nice ground floor investment opportunity.
Over the years, much of the UFO information would have gone to private channels. This has been happening with all aspects of the military, why not UFOs? It’s especially useful in maintaining secrecy. Unlike a federal office, contractors such as Lockheed, Wackenhut, Kodak, General Motors, or any number of lesser known corporations, are not subject to Freedom of Information Act laws. A senior military or intelligence executive could hand off any number of sensitive papers to a trusted colleague in the private sector, knowing full well that the "working group" would maintain access to all material anyway.
The value of this technology is, potentially and certainly in reality, immense. I spoke to one man, not anonymous but a real person with real black-world credentials, who said to me, "you know what they’re guarding out at Area 51? They’re guarding money! An enormous amount of money!" Money, he said, in the form of immensely valuable alien technology.
Something else seems to have occurred along the way. According to a former head of Lockheed Skunkworks, the late Ben Rich, direct control over the UFO problem was removed from the U.S. Presidency around 1969. Since that time it has been controlled by private, international, channels. This is impossible to confirm at the present time. But it would be consistent with the ascendancy of international corporations and elites over most other aspects of global power.
What it looks like is that UFO secrecy has led to the establishment of a secret network which controls access to ET technology. While the network is international, it uses the substantial resources of the U.S. black budget and other secret military groups as a primary tool, to engineer exotic technologies that enable it to maintain scientific, military, and economic superiority. Yes, that’s what it looks like.
We need to re-examine the major events of our history and try to understand them in light of this. UFO reality makes our actual history vastly different from what we are taught in the standard books. With the existence of a secret and extremely powerful group controlling this subject and all that concerns it, a massive disinformation network has become necessary. Who knows how far the disinformation has gone? This is in itself a critical part of the reason UFO secrecy has helped to kill off the American Republic. Such levels of deception go beyond mere secrecy and make it necessary to toss out the old system in all but name.
Recall my references in the first part of this article to important non-ufological threats to human freedom. For what is now apparent is that UFO secrecy has changed our system of government so much over the years, that various "corrections" have had to take place so that the externals can to some extent conform with the profound changes at the deeper levels. This has resulted in what I am currently calling silent fascism. Silent because the official powers are not acknowledging it as such, but it is there all the same. One wonders what the next "correction" could bring.
A Matter of Practical Interest
There is another, less appreciated, dimension to UFO secrecy. These objects, we know, have demonstrated amazing manoeuvring capabilities. Some of them, at least, can accelerate instantly in all directions, turn on a dime, stop and hover motionlessly, and remain silent the whole while.
Our military aircraft have been unable to compete. In 1975, UFOs that could hover like silent helicopters and move like silent jets were unmolested by U.S. aircraft. In a well-known incident over Belgium in 1990, a triangular UFO thoroughly outclassed F-16 interceptors. During the summer of 2002, just outside Washington, D.C., a UFO easily outpaced and outmanoeuvred pursuing F-16s.
A common question that arises is, what kind of propulsion system do these objects use. But I wonder, what makes them go?
This question is more than academic. There are legitimate reasons to expect that we are about to experience a petroleum crisis of epic proportions, much sooner than we expect. Once a fringe belief, there are now many oil analysts who believe this.
The problem is basic supply and demand. The supply is finite; the demand shows no signs of limit. In fact, global oil demand is now increasing at the fantastic rate of 4 percent annually, which translates into a doubling rate of every 17 years. I don’t care what your supply is, you cannot double demand of anything indefinitely, and certainly not at the rate the petroleum demand is moving.
Recall the ancient Chinese story about the peasant who performed a good deed for the Emperor. "I will grant you any wish you ask," said the grateful Emperor. The peasant took a chess board and said, "I don’t ask for much. Simply place a grain of rice on the first square, then double the amount for each successive square on the board, and I will be content." "Silly peasant," thought the Emperor. "I would have given him something of value." For much of the board, the amount of rice was small enough. By the last few squares, however, the Emperor went broke. By the final square, the amount of rice would have exceeded all the rice in the world.
Experts argue about when the petroleum crisis will hit, but it is the height of folly to pretend it won’t arrive. Whether it will be 50 years, 20 years, or 5 years, our civilization needs to find a way to replace petroleum. UFO technology very likely holds part of the answer, maybe all of the answer.
Some people agree with this assessment, and believe that the "powers that be" are simply holding out on us until the oil truly runs out, just to maximize their profit. Then it’s free energy time – although we assume someone will find a way to make money from it.
You had better hope that such blind trust turns out to be accurate. I’m less confident that a benevolent elite will bail my ass out at the eleventh hour. For all I know, they may have decided that there are too many of us on this planet, anyway. "Time to clean house. I’ve got my bunker. How about you?"
Freedom and Self-Governance
For a democratically-based political system to function, there must be a reasonable amount of congruence between what people believe and what is actually the case. You elect a member of congress with the idea that he or she will represent your interests within the nation’s primary instrument of political power: the Congress. Except that Congress has been made irrelevant by other centres of power, or been taken over by them.
You get your news from television or your newspaper with the idea that the journalist on the other end is a kind of watchdog, looking out for the public interest. Except that the journalist is working for a corporation which is itself antithetical to the public interest.
Unseen structures of power have evolved over the previous generations, advancing sometimes slowly, sometimes with a dramatic suddenness. But most people lack the conceptual means by which to understand what is happening.
As I have suggested, I believe that a significant part of that power structure involves the possession and exploitation of UFO-related technology. And I certainly believe that the secrecy has gone on for so long that it has become integral to keeping the whole system together.
Once you start lying, how can you un-do the lie? Today, UFO secrecy has been with the U.S. – and by extension the world – for about sixty years. That’s nearly as long as the Soviet Union existed on the basis of its own labyrinthine web of lies.
The comparison is apt. I still recall holding in my hands a commemorative oversized Soviet book celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The book was published in 1937, during the depths of Stalin’s rule. There was a colorized version of a famous photograph showing Lenin at a podium speaking to a crowd, and I noticed that Leon Trotsky – Stalin’s great political enemy – had been airbrushed out of the picture. That’s simply how the Soviet system worked. The government lied constantly, and everyone knew it, and everyone in the country pretended that the government didn’t lie.
Constant lying in the Soviet Union meant that the official powers had to systematically think about how to organize and manipulate public information to keep people in line. I remember trying to read through The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, an impossibly organized mess of propaganda and fact so that you couldn’t learn anything about anything that truly mattered. That’s just how it was.
Looking back, we can see how it would have been impossible for such a society to continue indefinitely, ruled as it was on the basis of a series of lies. When Gorbachev took power in 1985, he wanted to reform that society. His catchphrases were glasnost and perestroika: openness and restructuring. I was a young student of Soviet history at that time, and remember the excitement well. I also recall the scepticism of some of my professors who continued to believe for some time that this was yet another communist plot.
No matter. Within six years, there was no more Soviet Union. What happened? Well, one thing that happened, a big thing, was that the process of reform spiralled out of control. You make a big change here, and the next guy wants change over there. It becomes hard to put on the brakes. You start with openness, for example, and you open the books on Stalin’s gulag. You open the books on the particulars of the Bolshevik coup. Or the reconquest of the Ukraine in the 1920s, or the capture of the Baltic States in 1940, and on and on. Before long, entire subject peoples want to bolt, and many openly question the legitimacy of the Party’s rule. Then it is over.
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Disclosure Scenarios
It’s no different today in America, and the UFO secret is at the core. Imagine if the President of the United States were to decide to end UFO secrecy. How would he do it?
I can see him now. President George W. Bush steps up to the podium. Beloved Vice President Dick Cheney stands behind him. Trusted lieutenants Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice are there, too. The cameras of all the world’s media are upon him.
"Good evening," he begins. "Through a series of meetings with certain senior scientific and defence officials, it has come to my attention that the UFO phenomenon apparently is real, and is of extraterrestrial origin."
Silence.
Hokey dokey, that’s really all I have to say for now. We’ll provide updates as we get ‘em. I’m going on vacation for a while. Goodnight everyone.
Well, maybe not. Disclosure is a Pandora’s box with a panoply of taboo topics just waiting to spring out. It is, as one friend of mine calls it, "a sloppy tar-baby," a threatening, friendly, frightening, and inseparable bundle of unavoidable eventualities.
So I can imagine a few questions, even from a media as compliant as the American. "Mr. President," one correspondent might say, "what are the intentions of these aliens?" Or, "Mr. President, what does this say about the claims of alien abduction? Are they real, after all?" Or how about, "Mr. President, what about claims of underground alien bases? Or claims of secret possession of alien technology?"
These questions might not arise immediately. But they would arise eventually. Once you open that lid, it will be very difficult to control the outcome. The answers would not be pretty.
For this reason, I doubt that disclosure will come from
After all, what exactly are the secret keepers protecting? Let’s see. Power, wealth, control, their plans for the future, access to information, underground bases already built, the status quo.
But there must be more. How about communication with aliens? Worm hole technology? Access to our genetic code? Or any number of technologies that we have not even begun to discuss openly in our society. Remember the statement of an Area 51 insider to aerospace journalist James Goodall – this was back in the 1980s – "we have things in the
Can you imagine the front page of the New York Times following a true disclosure of all this? "MASSIVE COVERUP EXPOSED." The biggest journalistic fiasco in history would finally be acknowledged, wholesale resignations would sweep the intelligence community, a political third party would do a clean sweep of
People would realize that a massive power structure has existed for generations, and has siphoned away trillions of dollars. They would learn that it has played a dominant, though unacknowledged, role in shaping their lives.
Think about NASA and the space shuttle program. There are no shortage of quiet discussions about the antiquated nature of NASA’s shuttle technology. Astronauts have died because better technology was denied to them. And that is merely the tip of the iceberg, for this issue goes far beyond NASA.
No, people wouldn’t be pleased or especially understanding. Heads would roll.
The American system of government, as it has come to exist, and by extension American society, and by extension our current global civilization, is not compatible with true UFO disclosure. Disclosure would rip it all away.
You might argue that this would be a good reason to maintain the secrecy. On the other hand, I would argue it’s the best reason for disclosure.
As bad as things look today, I retain hope for a post-disclosure world. I retain a faith – yes, I guess it’s faith – in the value of truth over all things. A statement by my favorite writer, Leo Tolstoy, hangs before me every day: "the one thing necessary, in life as in art, is to tell the truth." I cannot believe that a society based on a foundational lie can be better than one based on a foundational truth.
When the
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When the annals of the The first teaches us how seamless the transformation from democracy to military dictatorship appears - when it is gradual and, ostensibly, reactive (responding to external shocks and events). The second illustrates the risks inherent in relying on mercenaries and insurgents as tools of foreign and military policy. Arnold Toynbee, the distinguished historian correctly observed that the last days of empires are characterized by grandiose construction schemes, faraway conquests and a materialistic spree of conspicuous consumption. Is the The notion sounds preposterous. Hale, affluent, mighty, victorious and assured - the But first, The disintegration of empires is rarely the outcome of merely one or more external shocks. For these to have their deleterious effects, the edifice must be already rotten, the pillars crumbling, the consensus gone, the ethos disputed and adversity rampant. As internal tensions mount and the centrifugal outweighs the centripetal - democracy is surreptitiously and incrementally eroded and replaced by an authoritarian form of government. In his tome, "The Future of Freedom", Fareed Zakaria bemoans the existence of "illiberal democracy" - with all the trappings of one but without its constitutional substance and philosophical foundations. The Herodotus (Histories, Book III) would have concurred:
The columnist Chris Deliso notes in Antiwar.com that "since September 11th especially, the country has suffered draconian restrictions on civil liberties and the rapid erosion of judicial and governmental transparency. At the same time, the increasing expenditure of taxpayer dollars has been conducted at variance with traditional ideals of free market competition and avoidance of embedded government cronyism. Now, with the invasion of Deliso ascribes these worrisome trends to "three toxic substances. The first is relentless paranoia of the outside world. According to this, all kinds of civilian restrictions and pre-emptive foreign wars become justified for the sake of 'national security'. Second is the all-pervasive cronyism between government oligarchs and corporations, which retard the practice of a free market economy. Finally, there is a belief in the ineluctable nature of 'progress', i.e., a teleological narrative that describes As others have noted, The Founding Fathers looked to From 287 BC, The Roman takeover of As Roman commanders and procurators meddled in the internal affairs of these territories. Opposition - in But, as Cato the Elder forewarned, foreign possessions and the absence of any martial threat corrupted A whole class of businessmen - the equites, later known as the equesterian order (the equivalent of today's "oligarchs") - lucratively transacted with the administration. When erstwhile state functions - such as tax collection - were privatized, they moved in and benefited mightily. The equites manipulated the commodities markets, lent money at usurious rates, and colluded with Senators and office holders. Sallust, the Roman historian, blamed the civil wars that followed on this wealth disparity. Cato the Elder attributed them to moral decadence. Some are comparing the relentlessly increasing weight of the Pentagon since 1941 to the rise to prominence of the military in republican Thus, when the tribune Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (133 BC) embarked on a land reform, he was opposed by the entrenched interests of the nobility (the optimi). Undeterred, through a series of piecemeal, utterly legal steps, Tiberius Gracchus sought to transform himself into a despot and neutralize the carefully constructed system of checks and balances that sustained republican These upheavals gave rise to the populares - self-appointed populist spokesmen for the disenfranchised "common man" in the Senate. They were vehemently confronted by the nobility-backed Senators, the optimates. To add instability to earthquake, Roman generals began recruiting property-less volunteers to serve as mercenaries in essentially private armies. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, an impoverished aristocrat turned army commander, actually attacked To secure popular support, Roman politicians doled out tax cuts, free entertainment, and free food. Ambitious Romans - such as Julius Caesar - spent most of their time electioneering and raising campaign finance, often in the form of 'loans" to be repaid with lucrative contracts and sinecures once the sponsored candidate attained office. Long-established, prominent families - political dynasties - increased their hold on power from one generation to the next. Partisanship was rampant. Even Cicero - a much-admired orator and lawyer - failed to unite the Senators and equites against assorted fanatics and demagogues. The Senate kept repeatedly and deliberately undermining the interests of both the soldiery and the equites, This clash of vested interests and ulterior motives gave rise to Gaius Julius Caesar, a driven and talented populist. Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the river that separated Life in And now, to The modus operandi of the United States involves ad-hoc alliances with indigenous warlords, drug czars, terrorists, guerrilleros, freedom fighters, and armed opposition groups aimed at ousting unfriendly incumbent regimes, imposing political settlements or military solutions, countering other foreign influences, attaining commercial goals, or securing long-term presence and say in local affairs. Both Saddam Hussein in The Kosovo Liberation Army, an American anti-Milosevic pet, provoked, to great European consternation, a civil war in Normally the outcomes of expedience, the Ugly American's alliances and allegiances shift kaleidoscopically. This capricious inconsistency casts in grave doubt At its peak, the The Ottomans invaded Not unlike the Moslem Afghani warriors of 1989, the Ottomans, too, turned on their benefactors and brought on the demise of The Ottomans were named after Osman I, the Oguz (Turkmen) tribal leader, the off spring of a noble Kayi family. They were ghazis (Islamic Turkish warriors). Fleeing from the Mongols of Genghis Khan, they invaded They spread inexorably throughout the fertile Osman's was not the strongest principality. Its neighbour to the east, the Germiyan principality, was much stronger and more sophisticated culturally. Osman, therefore, drove west, towards the Gradually, it lost its erstwhile allies. The Ilhanid dynasty in When Orhan, a successor of Osman, secured a territorial continuum and access to the The people of Aydin were mercenaries at the service of competing factions in Faced with the loss of the historic heart of their empire, the Byzantines accepted a Faustian deal. They made peace with the Moslem Turks and recruited them as allies and mercenaries against the Christian enemies of Christian Byzantium - the Serbs, the Italians, and the Bulgarians. Orhan became the principal ally of the young and dynamic Byzantine politician (later emperor) John VI Cantacuzenus, thus gaining entry, for the first time, into Christian Europe. Andronicus III died in 1341and another civil war broke out in The Serb king Dusan wavered between support and rejection for Cantacuzenus, who was crowned as Emperor John VI in In the meantime, Orhan was introduced to Ottoman raiding parties between Gallipoli and In 1354, Ottoman mercenaries occupied and fortified the earthquake shattered Gallipoli. The Ottomans crossed permanently into The Ottomans ignored them and proceeded with their expansionary preparations. They raided the Balkan as far as It was the emperor John V Palaeologus who forced Cantacuzenus to abdicate and to retire to a monastery. John V appealed to the Pope, and through him, to the Western world, for help against the Turks. But the Popes were more concerned with the three centuries old schism between the Roman Church and the Church in The Ottomans embarked on three centuries of unhindered conquests, arrested only at the gates of Cut off from its grain supplies and tax base, proud Murad, the Ottoman ruler, incorporated large parts of Christian south-eastern and central In 1449 the sultan Mehmed II prepared to assault On The Encyclopedia Britannica (2002 edition) sums it up thus:
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