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[henshawe]

G'Day Gen'l

I with ya 'til the end as well. Can't leave now when your getting to the really interesting part

Americus

[Elias Alias]

It will take more than one post to get this next part into the thread. I must just post part of it now, and return later to post the rest.

Northwoods

Out of the Iran-Contra-Mena U.S. Senate hearings came words like “secret government”, “invisible government”, and “shadow government”. When the subject of “continuity of government”came up during Senate proceedings, the Chair consistently and ardently denied, refused to allow, any discussion of the subject. But through the Senate hearings the American public was made aware that certain Secret activities within the US government had been criminal, had been costly in a number of unfortunate ways, had been embarrassing, and were offensive to our American form of representative government. Indictments were issued, which the man behind the Secret government policies, George Herbert Walker Bush, would later undo with Presidential pardons.

A number of landmark revelations suggesting the existence of a secret government with a rogue agenda exist, and the Iran-Contra-Mena hearings are but one. Perhaps the classic example is the Northwoods Document which came into public awareness decades after it had been written. ABC News disclosed something of the nature of the Northwoods Document while reviewing a book by James Bamford.  Below are some excerpts from their article of May 1, 2001, about four months before 911.

Link good as of April, 2006.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=92662

N E W  Y O R K, May 1, 2001 - In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.

The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.

The plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military leaders to depose Castro, who seized power in 1959 to become the first communist leader in the Western Hemisphere — only 90 miles from U.S. shores.

"The whole thing was so bizarre," says Bamford, noting public and international support would be needed for an invasion, but apparently neither the American public, nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S. troops deployed to drive out Castro.

The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee published its own report on right-wing extremism in the military, warning a "considerable danger" in the "education and propaganda activities of military personnel" had been uncovered. The committee even called for an examination of any ties between Lemnitzer and right-wing groups. But Congress didn't get wind of Northwoods, says Bamford.

One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base — an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.

Ironically, the documents came to light, says Bamford, in part because of the 1992 Oliver Stone film JFK, which examined the possibility of a conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy.

As public interest in the assassination swelled after JFK's release, Congress passed a law designed to increase the public's access to government records related to the assassination.

The author says a friend on the board tipped him off to the documents.

Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow, these remained.

"The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after," says Bamford.
Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

~End excerpts from ABC News article of 2001.

What Mr. Bamford was talking about is one of the most amazing documents ever released under the Freedom Of Information Act. In this document high-level Pentagon planners, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff themselves, were brain-storming for “pretexts” which would enlist public support for invading Cuba. While the truth was that Castro's Cuba was a benign (at that time) nation-state which could pose no threat to the United States, that truth itself was clearly not what the USG's war machine wanted.

What was wanted, what was desired, what some people felt was needed and necessary, was a military invasion of Cuba and forced regime change. We may note that this document was drafted before the Cuban-Russian-U.S. missile crisis, so that later development. was not in play when the Northwoods Document was created.

Certain interests wanted to invade Cuba, as we shall see. To do that, and have the support of the American public, they were looking into pretexts. What, then, is a “pretext”?

From my Random House Dictionary, 2nd Edition Unabridged, I read under “pretext”:

“Something that is put forward to conceal a true purpose or object; an ostensible reason; excuse.”

So the Joint Chiefs of Staff were looking for an excuse, a false-flag “ostensible reason” which would “justify” a military invasion by the U.S. of Cuba. These men were grown men, supposedly fit to serve this nation's interests at the Pentagon and as the heads of the various branches of the U.S. military. They were presumed by an unwitting public to be trustworthy, honest, careful in their decision-making policy, sensitive to the will of the people in every important way – and yet they were sitting around planning tables and offices trying to think up lies which they could sell to the American people.

And now, forty-four years afterward, they're caught in criminality which is so bogus as to, were it not so hideously sinister and evil, would appear to be comic. The old black and white movie, Dr. Strangelove comes to mind. But in this case we're dealing with actual history, with realism instead of fiction. Every time I read this document I get fearful, I get angry, and I feel more and more helpless in the face of such monstrosity. We are talking about the U.S. Pentagon here, and the heads of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard. We are talking about the leadership and the highest authorities within the largest, most overly-financed, most widely-spread, most diversely-armed, most highly-technologically developed military force in the history of mankind.

And those gentlemen were busily thinking up ways to convince the American people of the need to invade a foreign, sovereign nation-state which was posing no threat to the American people. They were considering possibilities which would derive from creating acts of terrorism against innocent people and properties, at tax-payer expense, using para-military Intelligence-community operatives such as agents-provocateur and “informants” and contracted criminals of even lower moral standing, such as the infamous Melvin Lattimore and Ali Mohammed, to execute terror acts which would serve as “pretexts” to thereby gain public support for their desired war. I submit that what these Admirals and Generals were up to can in no way be interpreted to possess congruence with their oaths of office and moral commitments to the will of the American people, this Federal government, and our U.S. Constitution.

I think that the creation of the Northwoods Document is blatant treason tinged with an overlaying of outright insanity. Since that statement by self is fairly strong on many levels, let us pause to refresh our memory regarding the content of the document.

~ Begin quoting passages from the Northwoods Document:
13 March 1962

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Subject: Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)

The Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the attached Memorandum for the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, which responds to a request of that office for brief but precise description of pretexts which would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that the proposed memorandum be forwarded as a preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes. It is assumed that there will be similar submissions from other agencies and that these inputs will be used as a basis for developing a time-phased plan. Individual projects can then be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Further, it is assumed that a single agency will be given the primary responsibility for developing military and para-military aspects of the basic plan. It is recommended that this responsibility for both overt and covert military operations be assigned the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

(Signing) For the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
L.L.Lemnitzer, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
1 Enclosure for Chief of Operations, Cuba Project

~End quoted passages from first page of Northwoods Document.

We see that someone put the JCS up to figuring out what sort of events could be engineered, staged and executed, and publicized, to sway public perception regarding Cuba, and whoever did that must have been someone whom the Joint Chiefs of Staff recognized as sitting in a higher office then their own. I think that is fairly obvious. In other words, the authority for the project came from above the JCS level, was accepted by the JCS, and once the project had selected what it considered to be the best examples of possible pretexts they then offered it up the chain of command to the issuing authority in the form of an official Department of Defense document, signed by the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff himself, General Lemnitzer.

As an American and as a Montanan, I have a serious problem with that, and I trust that you do also. It is folly of the most potent type, it is illegal, it is immoral, it is deadly, it is abusive of sacred powers which had been entrusted in the hands of the JCS, and it is laden with unintended consequences which have extenuating repercussions affecting us even today, more than four decades later. And yet not one of these treasoners ever faced any charges for participating in this sordid conspiracy to deceive the American public and its representative government. They were protected by a wall of Secrecy in the name of “National Security”. But let's look more deeply into the document:

~Begin quoting passages from Northwoods Document, page 5 (five).

JUSTIFICATION FOR US MILITARY INTERVENTION IN CUBA (TS)
The Problem
As requested* by Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are to indicate brief but precise description of pretexts which they consider would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.
FACTS BEARING ON THE PROBLEM
It is recognized that any action which becomes pretext for US military intervention in Cuba will lead to a political decision which then would lead to military action.
Cognizance has been taken of a suggested course of action proposed ** by the US Navy relating to generated instances in the Guantanamo area.
For additional facts see Enclosure B.
DISCUSSION
The suggested courses of action appended to Enclosure A are based on the premise that US military intervention will result from a period of heightened US-Cuban tensions which place the United States in the position of suffering justifiable grievances. World opinion, and the United Nations forum should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere.
While the foregoing premise can be utilized at the present time it will continue to hold good as long as there can be reasonble certainty that US military intervention in Cuba would not directly  involve the Soviet Union. There is (end body of page 5, turning to page 6.)
Footnotes to page 5:
*Memorandum for General Craig from Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, subject: “Operation MONGOOSE”, dated 5 March 1962, on file in General Craig's office.
**Memorandum for the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, from Chief of Naval Operations, subject: “Instances to Provoke Military Actions in Cuba (TS)”, dated 8 March 1962, on file in General Craig's office.

Page 6:
[There is] ...as yet no bilateral mutual support agreement binding the USSR to the defense of Cuba, Cuba has not yet become a member of the Warsaw Pact, nor have the Soviets established Soviet bases in Cuba in the pattern of US bases in Western Europe. Therefore, since time appears to be an important factor in resolution of the Cuba problem, all projects are suggested within the time frame of the next few months.
CONCLUSION
The suggested courses of action appended to Enclosure A satisfactorily respond to the statement of the problem. However, these suggestions should be forwarded as a preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes, and together with similar inputs from other agencies, provide a basis for development of a single, integrated, time-phased plan to focus all efforts on the objective of justification for US military intervention in Cuba.
RECOMMENDATIONS
It is recommended that:
Enclosure A together with its attachments should be forwarded to the Secretary of Defense for approval and transmittal to the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project.
This paper NOT be forwarded to commanders of unified or specified commands.
This paper NOT be forwarded to US officers assigned to NATO activities.
This paper NOT be forwarded to the Chairman, US Delegation, United Nations Military Staff Committee.

~End quoted passages from page 6, Northwoods Document.

I'll be back shortly with the remainder of this installment.

Salute!
Elias

[Roy J. Tellason]

Junker, that is probably the nicest gift you've ever given me. What an absolutely smashing find, Dear Chap! Wow.

Truly an amazing resource. I can see already that my weekend will include some hours of downloading those books,

Hehe...

You ain't the only one!  :-)

and I'm amazed that this collection is online for free reading. Dang! Better than finding gold! I've been wanting that book by Lindberg for some time now, and here it is for free. Most happy discovery. Thanks, Bro!

Salute!
Elias

I've been having a grand old time downloading whole books when I can find 'em.  More for the pile!

[Elias Alias]

Northwoods Document Part Two

Before going further into the document, let us note in passing that twice thus far in this document it has been stated that “other agencies” were working on similar ideas for pretexts. These other agencies would be reporting to someone also, alongside this report from the Pentagon's chiefs. On page 8 we read the following refinement:

“...It is assumed that there will be similar submissions from other agencies and that these inputs will be used as a basis for developing a time-phased plan...

This plan, incorporating projects selected from the attached suggestions, or from other sources, should be developed to focus all efforts on a specific ultimate objective which would provide adequate justification for US military intervention. Such a plan would enable a logical build-up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and irresponsibility on a large scale, directed at other countries as well as the United States. The plan would also properly integrate and time phase the courses of action to be pursued. The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.” (page

We may now be certain that other agencies, including some offices in the U.S. State Department, were working on this plan contemporaneously, and that the objective of the plan revolved around creating public perception. I find this to be amazing. Here we have government agencies and the Joint Chiefs of Staff literally planning a mass-consciousness program, in total secrecy non the less,  which would be, if approved by the Administration, implemented, inserted via media and press, into the public mentality. The conspiracy theorist's favorite words for this sort of thing are: “mind control”. This document clearly reveals that our government was at that time in the hands of men who would deliberately exercise mind-control methodologies in pursuit of a desired illegal operation which would be cloaked by a foggy veil of concocted pretexts.

But it gets worse.

Let's look at some of the bright ideas our fearless military leadership imagined. On page 10 we read:

“Since it would seem desirable to use legitimate provocation as the basis for US military intervention in Cuba  a cover and deception plan, to include requisite preliminary actions such as has been developed in response to Task 33 c, could be executed as an initial effort to provoke Cuban reactions. Harassment plus deceptive actions to convince the Cubans of imminent invasion would be emphasized. Our military posture throughout execution of the plan will allow a rapid change from exercise to intervention if Cuban response justifies.”

Here they are considering holding military war-game exercises nearby, which could transform easily and quickly into military intervention against Cuba, if they were successful in their attempts to provoke Cuba with their covert ops. I note the use of the words “cover” and “deception”. Are you believing this? It causes one to wonder what other Pentagon documents have been successfully hidden from we the people. But continuing on with contents of page 10 and beyond, we get into the details:

~Begin quoting of passages from document, beginning on page 10 and going forward:

A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.
Incidents to establish a credible attack (not in chronological order):
Start rumors (many). Use clandestine radio.
Land friendly Cubans in uniform “over-the-fence” to stage attack on base. [EA note: the Marine base]
Capture Cuban (friendly) saboteurs inside the base.
Start riots near the base main gate (friendly Cubans).

[Continuing on  page 11:]

Blow up ammunition inside base; start fires.
Burn aircraft on air base (sabotage).
Lob mortar shells from outside of base into base. Some damage to installations.
Capture assault teams approaching from the sea or vicinity of Guantanamo City.
Capture militia group which storms the base.
Sabotage ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock-victims (may be in lieu of 10).

United States would respond by executing offensive operations to secure water and power supplies, destroying artillery and mortar emplacements which threaten the base.
Commence large scale United States military operations.

A “Remember the Maine” incident could be arranged in several forms:
We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.
We could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere in the Cuban waters. We could arrange to cause such incident in the vicinity of Havana or Santiago as a spectacular result of Cuban attack from the air or sea, or both. The presence of Cuban planes or ships merely investigating the intent of the vessel could be fairly compelling evidence that the ship was taken under attack. The nearness to Havana or Santiago would add credibility especially to those people that might have heard the blast or have seen the fire. The US could follow up with an air/sea rescue operation covered by US fighters to “evacuate” remaining members of the non-existent crew. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.

We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.  [emphasis by EA. Yes, they actually said this. I just put it in bold.]

~ Begin page 12, but skipping first part of that page:

Use of MIG type aircraft by US pilots could provide additional provocation. Harassment of civil air, attacks on surface shipping and destruction of US military drone aircraft by MIG type planes would be useful as complementary actions.

~Begin page 13:

Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft should appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the government of Cuba. Concurrently, genuine defections of Cuban civil and military air and surface craft should be encouraged....

It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela.... The passengers [EA note: passengers as here referenced are not “real”, but instead are aliased stand-ins for press and media objectives.] could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight.

An aircraft at Eglin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary [EA: that would have been CAT: Civil Air Transport. Keep in mind that in 1962 these birds already knew the magic of duplicating a commercial airliner with a covert copy, including paint job and duplicated numbers. We will refer back to this later.] organization in the Miami area.  At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone.

[EA: again, keep these two details in mind for later referencing – fake passenger lists and the ability to convert an aircraft into a “drone”, which is a pilotless, crewless ground-controlled flight, were suggested parts of the Northwoods plan. This was, again we note, back in 1962. It, as do other portions of this document, establishes a “precedent” which permits us to ask certain questions today.]

Page 14
It is possible to create an incident which will make it appear that Communist Cuban MIGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack....

Last page
The need for positive action in the event that current covert efforts to foster an internal Cuban rebellion are unsuccessful was indicated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 7 March 1962, as follows:
“_ _ _ determination that a credible internal revolt is impossible of attainment during the next 9-10 months will require a decision by the United States to develop a Cuban “provocation” as justification for positive US military action.”

It is understood that the Department of State also is preparing suggested courses of action to develop justification for US military intervention in Cuba.

~End excerpts from Northwoods Document.

I would simply note that the Northwoods Document is a reality. It was created and became a part of America's military history. It was not, at least not directly, acted upon, but it was most certainly written as a result of orders within (and from above) the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was signed by the JCS, was presented to Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara as a viable approach to deceiving the American public for purposes about which the American public was deliberately denied knowledge, and was concealed from the American people for nearly forty years.

This document stands as an undebatable insight into official military thinking processes and presumptions which have flourished behind closed doors since, but not limited in time to,  the creation of the National Security State in 1947.

I continue to be limited by other time-constraints. I have alluded to the Bohemian Grove phenomenon and I have also hinted that shortly we shall wish to summarize the information contained within the first several pages of this thread.  What I think I'd like to do is go ahead with the Bohemian Grove material, and then focus on a discussion which would take into account the subtle and not-so-subtle meanings now visible when we look at this thread's content in relation to its several sub-topics. I hope to be back later this evening to post on Bohemian Grove.

Salute!
Elias

[RagnarDanneskjold]

off the subject

for the past week I have been experiencing a strange anomoly on my work laptop. If I am using my work pc and connecting to the interenet through the company's proxy server, when I try to read this thread my pc just clocks. If I am using the same laptop at home, connected to the internet directly, no problem. But, if I then connect to work through VPN and try to read this thread through the proxy, clocking. I have to actually shut down the browser window and reopen. However, I am at work right now, and I was able to pull this up through the "10 Most recent posts" at the bottom of the home page. I went so far as deleting cookies and temp files and increasing temp space from 20 meg to 200 meg with no difference. So, I tried last night to PM you, Elias, and I just clocked on the page for your ID. After shutting down the browser window I tried many other people's ID pages and got to them with no prolem. I think I have also tried a couple other threads you had posted in. This is too weird.

OK. Back to the Conspiracy Theory thread, which was already in progress.

I don't remember who said it, but I think I posted it somewhere, "It's only a theory until you have some facts to back it up."

[Elias Alias]

Bohemian Grove

I have typed in below the following, which is from The Bohemian Grove And Other Retreats: A Study In Ruling Class Cohesiveness, authored and copyrighted by G. William Domhoff in 1974. (See note below)

~

Picture yourself comfortably seated in a beautiful open-air dining hall in the midst of twenty-seven hundred acres of giant California redwoods. It is early evening and the clear July air is still pleasantly warm. Dusk has descended, you have finished a sumptuous dinner, and you are sitting quietly with your drink and your cigar, listening to nostalgic welcoming speeches and enjoying the gentle light and the eerie shadows that are cast by the two-stemmed gaslights flickering softly at each of the several hundred outdoor banquet tables.

You are part of an assemblage that has been meeting in this redwood grove sixty-five miles north of San Francisco for nearly a hundred years. It is not just any assemblage, for you are a captain of industry, a well-known television star, a banker, a famous artist, or maybe a member of the President's Cabinet. You are one of fifteen hundred men gathered together from all over the country for the annual encampment of the rich and the famous at the Bohemian Grove. And you are about to take part in a strange ceremony that has marked every Bohemian Grove gathering since 1880. You are about to be initiated into the encampment by the Cremation of Care.

Out of the shadows on one of the hillsides near the dining circle there comes the low, sad sounds of a funeral dirge. As you turn your head in its direction you faintly see the outlines of men dressed in pointed red hoods and red flowing robes. Some of the men are playing the funereal music; others are carrying long torches whose flames are a spectacular sight against the darkened forest.

As the procession approaches the dining circle, the dim figures become more distinct, and attention fixes on several men not previously noticed who are carrying a large wooden box. Upon closer inspection the box turns out to be an open coffin, and in that coffin is a body, a human body- real enough to be lifelike at a glance, but only an imitation, made of black muslin wrapped around a wooden skeleton. This is the body of Care, symbolizing the concerns and woes that important men supposedly must bear in their daily lives. It is Dull Care that is to be cremated this first Saturday night of the two-week encampment of the Bohemian Grove.

The cortege now trails slowly past the dining area, and the men in the dining circle fall into line behind the hooded priests and pallbearers, following the body of Care toward its ultimate destination. The entire parade (all white, mostly elderly) makes its way along a road leading to a picturesque little lake that is yet another of the sylvan sights the Bohemian Grove has to offer.

It takes the communicants about five minutes to make their march to this new setting. Once at the lake the priests and the body of Care go off to the right, in the direction of a very large altar which faces the lake. The followers, talking quietly and remarking on the once-again-perfect Grove weather, move to the left so they canobserve the ceremony from a green meadow on the other side of the lake. They will be about fifty to a hundred yards from the altar, which looms skyward thirty to forty feet and reveals itself to be in the form of a huge Owl, whose cement shell is mottled with primeval green mosses.

While the spectators seat themselves across the lake, the priests and their entourage continue for another two or three hundred yards beyond the altar to a boat landing. There the bier is carefully transferred onto the Ferry of Care, which will carry the body to the altar later in the ceremony. The ferry loaded, the torches are extinguished and the music ends. The attention of the spectators on the other side of the lake slowly drifts back to the Owl shrine; it is illuminated by a gentle flame from the Lamp of Fellowship which sits at its base.

People who have seen the ceremony before nudge you to keep your eye on the large redwood next to the Owl. Moments later an offstage chorus of “woodland voices” begins to sing. Then a spotlight illuminates the tree you've been watching, and there emerges from it a hamadryad, a “tree spirit”, whose life, according to Greek mythology, is intimately bound up with the tree in which it lives. The hamadryad begins to sing, telling the supplicants that beauty and strength and peace are theirs as long as the trees of the Grove are there. It sings of the “temple-aisles of the wood” that are made for “your delight”, and implores the Bohemians to “burn away the sorrows of yesterday” and to “cast your grief to the fires and be strong with the holy trees and the spirit of the Grove”. (Author Domhoff note1: Charles K. Field, The Cremation of Care (1946, 1953), for these and following quotes. A copy of this small pamphlet can be found in the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.)

With the end of this uplifting song, the hamadryad returns to its tree, the chorus silences, and the light on the tree fades out. Only natural illumination from the moon and stars remains, and it is time for the high priest and his many assistants to enter the large area in front of the Owl. “The Owl is in his leafy temple”, intones the high priest. “Let all within the Grove be reverent before him.” He beseeches the spectators to be inspired and awed by their surroundings, noting that this is Bohemia's shrine. Then he invokes the motto of the club, “Weaving spiders, come not here!” -- which is a line from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is supposed to warn members not to discuss business and worldly concerns, but only the arts, literature, and other pleasures, within the portals of Bohemia.

The priest next walks down three large steps to the edge of the lake. There he makes a flowery speech about the ripple of waters, the song of birds, the forest floor, and evening's cool kiss. Again he calls on the members to forsake their usual concerns. “Shake off your sorrows with the City's dust and scatter to the winds the cares of life.” A second and third priest then recall to memory deceased friends who loved the Bohemian Grove, and the high priest makes yet another effusive speech, the gist of it being that “Great Nature” is a “refuge for the weary heart” and a “balm for breasts that have been bruised”.

A brief song is sung by the chorus and suddenly the high priest proclaims: “Our funeral pyre awaits the corpse of Care!” A horn is sounded at the boat landing. Anon, the Ferry of Care, with its beautifully ornamented frontispiece, begins its brief passage to the foot of the shrine. Its trip is accompanied by the music of a barcarole – a barcarole being the song of Venetian gondoliers as they pole you through the canals of Venice. As one listens to the barcarole, it becomes even clearer that many little extra touches have been added by the Bohemians who have lovingly developed this ritual over its ninety-four-year history.

The bier arrives at the steps of the altar. The high priest inveighs against Dull Care, the archenemy of Beauty. He shouts, “Bring fire”, and the torchbearers (eighteen strong) enter. Then the acolytes quickly seize the coffin, lift it high above their heads, and carry it triumphantly to the pyre in front of the mighty Owl. It seems that Care is about to be consumed by flames.

But not yet. Suddenly there is a great clap of thunder and a rush of wind. Peals of loud, ugly laughter come rining down from a hill above the lake. A dead tree is illuminated in the middle of the hillside, and Care himself bellows forth with a thundering blast:

“Fools! Fools! Fools! When will ye learn that me ye cannot slay? Year after year ye burn me in this Grove, lifting your puny shouts of triumph to the stars. But when again ye turn your feet toward the marketplace, am I not waiting for you, as of old? Fools! Fools! To dream ye conquer Care!”

The high priest is taken aback by this impressive outburst, but not completely humbled. He replies that it is not all a dream, that he and his friends know they will have to face Care when their holiday is over. They are happy that the good fellowship created by the Bohemian Grove is able to banish Care even for a short time. So the high priest tells Care, “We shall burn thee once again this night and in the flames that eat thine effigy we'll read the sign: Midsummer sets us free.”

Dull Care, however, is having none of this. He tells the high priest in no uncertain terms that priestly fires are not going to do him in. “I spit upon your fire”, he roars, and with that there is a great explosion and all the torches are immediately extinguished. The only light remaining comes from the small flame in the Lamp of Fellowship.

Things are clearly at an impasse. Care may win out after all. Ther is only one thing to do: turn to the great Owl, the totem animal of Bohemia, chosen as the group's symbol primarily for its mortal wisdom – and only secondarily for its discreet silence and its nightly prowling. The high priest falls to his knees and lifts his arms toward the shrine. “O thou, great symbol of all mortal wisdom”, he cries, “Owl of Bohemia, we do beseech thee, grant us thy counsel!”

The inspirational music of the “Fire Finale” now begins and an aura of light glows about the Owl's head. The Owl is going to rise to the occasion! After a pause, the sagacious bird finally speaks. No fire, he tells the assembled faithful, can drive out Care if that fire comes from the mundane world, where it is fed by the hates of men. There is only one fire that can overcome the great enemy Care, and that, of course, is the flame which burns in the Lamp of Fellowship on the Altar of Bohemia. “Hail, Fellowship”, he concludes, “and thou, Dull Care, begone!”

With that, Care is on his way out. The light dies from the dead tree. The high priest leaps to his feet and bounds up the steps, snatches a burned-out torch from one of the bearers, and relights it from the flame of the Lamp of Fellowship. Just as quickoy he ignites the funeral pyre and triumphantly hurls the torch into the blaze.

The orchestral music is the background intensifies as the flames leap higher and higher. The chorus sings loudly about Dull Care, archenemy of Beauty, calling on the winds to make merry with his dust. “Hail, Fellowship”, they sing, echoing the Owl. “Begone, Dull Care! Midsummer sets us free!” The wailing voice of Care gives its last gasps, the music gets even louder, and fireworks light the sky and fill the Grove with the reverberations of great explosions. The band, appropriately enough, strikes up “Ther'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”. Care has been banished, but only with a cast of 250 elders, priests, torchbearers, shore patrols, fire tenders, production managers, and woodland voices.

As this climax approaches, some fifty minutes after the march began, the quiet onlookers on the other side of the lake begin to come alive. After all, it is a night for rejoicing. The men begin to shout, to sing, to hug each other, and dance around. They have been freed by their priests and their Owl for some good old-fashioned hell raising. They couldn't be happier if they were back in college and their fraternity had won an intramural football championship.

Now the ceremony is over. The revelers, initiated into the carefree attitude of the Bohemian Grove, break up into small groups as they return to the camps that crowd next to each other in the central area of the Grove. It will be a night of story-telling and drinking for the men of Bohemia as they sit about their campfires or wander from camp to camp, renewing old friendships and making new ones. They will be far away from their responsibilities as the decision makers and opinion molders of corporate America.

~End excerpt from The Bohemian Grove And Other Retreats: A Study In Ruling-Class Cohesiveness by G. William Domhoff.

What Mr. Domhoff left out of his very accurate description of the Cremation of Care ceremony at Bohemian Grove is the fact that the corpse of Care is actually placed upon the pyre and burned as a sacrifice to the Great Owl of Babylon, which the Bohemian's call “Molech” or “Moloch”. This ritual traces back to ancient Babylon. It is a human-sacrifice ritual. The “effigy” of Care is in the form of a human body, and is intended to symbolize a human body. The point which is paramount in my opinion is that this ceremony/ritual, in burning "Care", is actually about escaping the bounds of the individiual's conscience. Consience is where Care comes from, isn't that so? Without a conscience, what's to care about? With a conscience, any world leader might balk at giving the order to bomb a Federal building. I hope the significance of this sinks into every reader's mind with an unforgettable gravity.

There shall be forthcoming from me, here, more on Bohemian Grove and the historic sources of their merriments. The Internet has quite a bit already online. But the truest source of education regarding the Cremation of Care is given us by Alex Jones, who, with two British journalists, bravely snuck into Bohemian Grove in the year 2000 and filmed this entire ceremony with a hidden camera – and got out to share it with the world. The above description by Domhoff is fairly right on the money, but to see this event on film is the best way to grasp the magnitude of the production. Unfortunately, Jones has mixed into the presentation some disquieting “Christian-type” perspectives, judgments, and comments which, imo, detract from the message to some small degree, and which viewers shall have to overlook in order to realize the significance of what transpires in this death-cult ritual. But Jones did capture this entire ceremony on film, and has spread it all over the world. I suggest that it is well worth the time and money to see this.

http://www.infowars.com/bg1.html

For a listing of sample lakeside talks given at Bohemian Grove:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/bohemian_grove_lakeside_talks_2003.html


Okay, enough for now. I'm gonna let this little tidbit settle into the thread here for a little while, before going back over the whole thread from the beginning and making our way back to this point and seeking to tie in all together the various things which this thread now contains. Somehow, I'm wanting to tie together the Bank of International Settlements, the Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes, Bohemian Grove, and the rest of it, and to show as clearly as possible the inter-connectedness of these things.

At that point, we'll launch into yet even more bizarre and more tightly-guarded secrets of the power elite. After we do that, and in conjunction with some other little side-trips I'd like to invite each reader here to take with me, we'll then be ready to look into four major “terrorist events” on U.S. soil: The 1993 WTC bombing; the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; the events of 911; and the Anthrax Letters which hit us right after 911. Those four events can be demonstrated to be “operations” funded by, organized by, and executed by “elements within seats and offices of the U.S. Federal government”. But because those “terrorist events” included massive disinformation operations and psy-op programs and propaganda ops, and also because those “terrorist events” were tied directly into the CIA's passion for controlling the world's illegal drug industry, and because those “terrorist events” are also tied to Wall Street money-laundering operations, and also because those “terrorist events” are connected with and related to U.S. Foreign Policy as regards U.S. Military presence in Eurasia's “energy ownership crisis” – because of all that, the only way to present my conspiracy theory is to first provide some historic background, some supplemental information which is absolutely necessary for any accurate perception of this conspiracy.

Meanwhile, let us remember that Alan Greenspan spent his last twenty years as the head of the Federal Reserve as a member at Bohemian Grove.

It is okay to talk about the fact that many U.S. Presidents have been members in Bohemian Grove, have sat lakeside with the crowds there while the Cremation of Care was performed each July. I will soon enough give you an amazing listing of corporate, governmental, economic, communications, industrial, names of members who have willingly participated in this madness. Your comments are invited.

Salute!
Elias

Note: The Bohemian Grove And Other Retreats: A Study In Ruling Class Cohesiveness
by G. William Domhoff; Harper Colophon Books, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London; copyright 1974 G. William Domhoff; Standard Book Number: 06-090395-3.

[Roy J. Tellason]

They will be about fifty to a hundred yards from the altar, which looms skyward thirty to forty feet and reveals itself to be in the form of a huge Owl, whose cement shell is mottled with primeval green mosses.

That would be a "spotted owl",  then?

(Sorry,  I just couldn't resist...   :-)

[Elias Alias]

They will be about fifty to a hundred yards from the altar, which looms skyward thirty to forty feet and reveals itself to be in the form of a huge Owl, whose cement shell is mottled with primeval green mosses.

That would be a "spotted owl",  then?

(Sorry,  I just couldn't resist...   :-)

Heh! Yeah, Roy, I'm sure it's a Spotted Owl. And I'm also sure it's not yet on the Endangered Species" list.

Salute!
Elias

[Bill St. Clair]

off the subject

for the past week I have been experiencing a strange anomoly on my work laptop...

My guess is that this is due to Elias' avatar, which is at http://www.thementalmilitia.org/images/TMM1.gif , at a currently unregistered domain. The proxy server is probably having a problem with it. Try turning off images in your browser.

I looked for the image at archive.org and Google and Yahoo, but couldn't find it.

Elias, do you have a copy of that image somewhere? If so, please upload it to the "Forum Profile Information" section of your profile page, or send it to me and ask me to do it. If you no longer have the image, please pick another one or remove your avatar.

[RagnarDanneskjold]

...
My guess is that this is due to Elias' avatar,
...

Bah Dah Boom
Bah Dah Bing

[F42]

The whores of Babylon and Globalist meeting

new secret sect/elite group???... I hadnt heard of yet...

Speakers & Dignitaries at Datamatix Past Events
Members of the ruling family, planners, policy-makers, diplomats, regional representatives of international development, business and information technology organizations have attended our events as displayed below. Our events are well received throughout. Here is a list of business and government leaders who have taken part in Datamatix events.

The general profile of participating delegates at Datamatix events
Personalities from other parts of the world
Personalities from the Middle East
Associates from the private sector
Associates from the government sector



The general profile of participating delegates at Datamatix events:

Managing Directors
CEO's
Department Directors
IT Managers
Chairmen
Presidents
Directors
Finance and Account Managers
Senior Women Professionals from Government
Business Development Managers
Asset and Fund Managers
International Investors
Banking Professionals
Consultants
Engineers
Entrepreneurs
Research Directors
Corporate Executives
Designers
Architects
Logistic providers
Media Professionals
Economists
Project Managers
University Professors
and many more...


Personalities from other parts of the World:

Hon. Mary Robinson, Former President, Republic of Ireland
Hon. Al Gore, Former Us Vice President, USA
Hon. Gerhard Schroeder, Former Chancellor, Germany
Hon. Jose Maria Aznar Lopez, Former Prime Minister, Spain
Dato Sri Anwar Ibrahim, Former Deputy Prime Minister, Malaysia
Governor John H. Sununu, White House Chief of Staff, Former Governor of New Hampshire
Governor Howard Dean, 2004 Democratic Presidential Nominee, Former Governor of Vermont
Mr. Neil Bush, CEO Of Ignite! And Brother of Us President George Bush, USA
Mr. Sandy Berger, Former National Security Advisor to Us President Bill Clinton, USA
Dr. Robert Gates, Former Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), USA
Dr. Oscar Arias Sanchez, Nobel Laureate and Former President of Costa Rica, Costa Rica
Mr. Lawrence J. Ellison, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Oracle Corporation, USA
Hon. Joschka Fischer, Former Minister for Foreign Affairs, Germany
Dr. Sultana Parvanta, Dir. of Planning, Ministry of Urban Development & Housing, Afghanistan
Ms. Tipper Gore, Public Advocate and Author and Key Advisor to President Bill Clinton, USA
Mr. Gene Amdahl, Former Director, IBM and founder of Amdahl Corporation
Hon. Winston S. Churchill, Author, Journalist, Parliamentarian
Mr. Gil Medina, Former Commerce Secretary, New Jersey
Dr. Simon Moore, E-Government advisor to UK Government, UK
Dr. Akram Yosri, Professor of Information Systems at New York University’s, USA
Dr. Deisi Kusztra, President, WORLD FAMILY ORG, Brazil
Ms. Mervat Tallawy Under Secretary-General of the UN, Executive Secretary, UN - ESCWA
Mr. Ruben Gonzalez, Three-Time Olympian & peak-performance expert, Rubem Associates, USA
Mr. Joe clabby, President, Clabby Analytics - USA
Dr. Abdul Waheed Khan, Asst. Director General, UNESCO
Mr. Joseph Sommerville, Principal, Peak Communication Performance
Mr. Jorge Sebastiao, CISSP, BS7799 LAEP, ISP President and CEO ESGulf - Bahrain
Dr. Bruce Sams, President, OPTIMA BIT Munich - Germany
Mr. Abdulilah Dewachi, Regional Advisor ICT, United Nations - ESCWA - Lebanon
Mr. Mansour Farah, WSIS Team Leader, (ICTD) UN-ESCWA - Lebanon
Mr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg, Minister Plenipotentiary, GCC Council - KSA
Behnam Tabrizi, Professor (Consulting), Stanford University, US
Dr. S. Irfan Ahmad, Director Yahoo! Sales Rep Office , for the M.E, South & Central, Asia
Mr. Mark Carden, VP, Sales-Eu, M.E, Africa, Dynix-Partner with Arabian Advanced Systems
Mr. Ahmed Farahat, Director, (ICTD) United Nations, ESCWA
Dr. Nabil Ali Abdel-Aziz, Expert in Information Strategies, Director, Multi Language System Corp.
Ms. Ginger Luttrell, President LTC, Luttrell Training and Consulting, Inc.
Mr. Ahmed Saber, CEO, ACE Technologies Inc. - Egypt
Mr. Thomas Reda, Infrastructure Solutions Specialist, Microsoft
Mr. Andrew Childs, Digital Tape Storage Specialist, STME Limited - UK
Mr. Mustafa Farhan, Infrastructure Solutions Specialist, Microsoft
Mr. Praveen Kankariya, President & CEO, Impetus Technologies Inc. - USA
Mr. Tarek Niazi, Executive Director, SmartSquare
Mr. Ihab Foudeh, Infrastructure Solutions Specialist, Microsoft
Mr. Neek Alyani, Director, Tehran Business Institute - Finland
Mr. Karim Bentebbal, User Experience Consultant, KSA
Mr. Andrew Calthorpe, Senior Corporate Vice President, STME - UK
Mr. Jalal N Bibi, Associate Business Partner, Accenture Middle East


Personalities from the Middle East:

H.H. Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of Civil Aviation UAE.
H.H. Sheikh Maktoum Bin Mohammed Bin Rashed Al Maktoum, Chairman Dubai Technology, Electronic, Commerce And Media Free Zone
H.E. Matar Al Tayer, Minister of Labor, UAE.
H.E. Khalfan Bin Kharbash, Minister for Finance & Industry, UAE.
H.E. Fawaz Al Alamy Deputy Minister Technical Affairs, Saudi Arabia.
H.E. Adel Khalifa, Former UNDP Resident Coordinator And Un Regional Representative
H.E. Mohd Nakhira Al Dhahary, Minister Of Justice, UAE
H.H. Sheikh Hasher Bin Maktoum, Director General Of Dubai Information Dept
H.H. Sheikh Al Sabah, Kuwait
H.H. Sheikh Al Khalifa, Bahrain
Prince Mohammed Bin Saud, Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia
H.H. Sheikh Khalid Bin Zayed Bin Saqar Al Nahyan, Chairman Of Bin Zayed Group
Dr. Mohammed Al Kamali, Consultant To The Justice Minister, UAE
Dr. Rima Kh. Hunaidi, Assistant Sec. General and Dir. of Regional Bureau of Arab States, UNDP
H.H. Sheikh Fahd Salem Al Ali Al Subah, From The National Guard Of Kuwait
H.H. Shaikh Nawaf Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, Under Secretary, MEWA, Bahrain
Mr. Salem Al Shair, Director E-Services, Dubai E-Government
H.H. Sheikh Fahd Bin Mohammed Bin Jabor Al Thani, Chairman, Doha Bank
Dr. Khaled Al Khasraji, Under Secretary, UAE Ministry of Labour.
Mr. Mohammed Al Abbar, Dg, Dubai Economic Department
Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi, Gm, Tejari.Com
H.E. Mr. Nadir Hadj-Hammou, Undp-Uae Resident Coordinator and Un Representative.
Sheikha Hassa Al Abdulah Al Sabbah
Ms. Amat Al Alim Al Soswa Ambassador - Embassy Of Yemen Hague – Netherlands
Sheikha Hessa Al Khalifa - Undp – United Nations Development Program – Bahrain
Dr. Ghalia Bint Mohammed Bin Hamad Al Thani Hamad Hospital – Doha – Qatar
Ms. Lujaina Darwish Al Za'abi Member Of The Majlis Ashura Council, Oman
Ms. Lubna Olayan Chief Executive Officer, Olayan Financing Company, Saudi Arabia
Ms. Katia Adib Tayar President & Ceo Arabcom
Mr Ibrahim Belselah, General Coordinator, Dubai 2003 - UAE
Haj Saeed Ahmad Lootah, Founder – Chairman, Dubai Islamic Bank
Mr. Saleh Saeed Lootah, Member of the Board of Directors Dubai Islamic Bank
Mr. Abdullah Mohammad Saleh, Managing Director, National Bank Of Dubai
Mr. Abdul Jaleel Y. Darwish, Exe. Director & CEO, HSBC
Mr. Hussain Mohd Al MeezA, M.D , Dubai Islamic Insurance & Reinsurance Co.(Aman)
Mr. Salah Mohd Ameen, Director, Emirates Bank International (Al Tomooh)
Mr. Sulaiman Hamed Al MazRoui, Exe. Member In Higher Committee, Emirates Bank(Al Tomooh)
Mr. Yousef Ahmed Khoory, Manager, Emirates Bank International (Al Tomooh)
Mr. Khalid Abdulla Al Bassam,Deputy Governor, Bahrain Monetary Agency
Mr. Fahad Abdullah Al Rajhi, Deputy General Manager, Al Rajehi
Sheikh Abdulla Salim Bahamdan, Chairman & Managing Director, The National Commercial Bank
Mr. Abdulhadi Ali Shayis, General Manager, The National Commercial Bank
Mr. Abdulrahman Adass, Head Of Corporate Sector, The National Commercial Bank
Mr. Alaa Al Jabri, Head Of International Div., The National Commercial Bank
Dr. Said Al Shaikh, Chief Economist, The National Commercial Bank
Dr. Nahed Taher, Senior Economist, The National Commercial Bank
Mr. Talal Al Naseri, General Manager, Office Of The Chairman & MD, National Commercial Bank
Mr. Mohamad Al Attar, Director, Intl. Center for Biosaline Agriculture-Islamic Development Bank
Mr. Rohit Malhotra, Country Service Head, Vice President Citibank, Citibank Dubai
Dr. Ali Bin Obood, Ministry of State for Cabinet Affairs
Ms. Raja Al Gurg, President, Dubai Businesswomen's Coucil


Here are a list of some government and private sector organizations who have associated with us in the last year.


Associates from the Private Sector:

Microsoft Middle East
Intel Middle East
HP-Hewlett Packard Middle East
IBM Middle East, Egypt And Pakistan (MEEP)
Cisco Systems
Shell Markets (Middle East) Limited
Acer Computer Middle East Limited
Computer Associates Middle East W.L.L
Shell Exploration & Production International (EPM-BR)
Fujitsu Siemens Computers FZ-LIC ITXC Corp.
Ducont.Com
Veritas Software Cooperation Middle East & North Africa
Qatar Airways
Mastercard International
National Bank Of Dubai - Main Office
Datafort E-Hosting Centre
American Express
Citibank
Al Naboodah Group Of Companies
Merrill Lynch International & Co.
Arabian Advanced Systems-Naseej
TCS Express World Wide
V.C.U - Qatar (Virginia Commonwealth University)
Grand Stores
The Khaleej Times
CPI Publishing
Saudi Gazette
Saudi Ports Authority
Saudi Computer Society
Saudi Aramco
Oman Air
Kuwait Investment Co.
Kuwait Airways
Kuwait Oil Company (K.S.C.)
Qatar Petroleum - QP
Sun Microsystems M.E.
ZADCO - ZAKUM Development Co
Thuraya Satellite Telecommunication Co
And click here to see more…

Associates from the government sector:

ESCWA
UNDP Middle East
Arab League
GCC Council
UAE Ministry Of Labour
Naturalization & Residency Admn – Dubai
UAE Ministry Of Justice
Emirates Post
Etisalat
Dubai Port Authority
Dubai Chamber Of Commerce And Industry
Dubai Civil Aviation
Saudi Ministry Of Education & Technical Affairs
Tejari.Com
Dubai Internet City
Dubai Media City
Oman Chamber Of Commerce & Industry
Saudi Telecom
Zayed University
Dubai Technology, Electronic, Commerce And Media Free Zone
Emirates Bank International
Dubai Post
Knowledge Village
Ministry Of Commerce Saudi
Omantel
Dubai Quality Group
Ministry Of Defense
Ministry Of Information
Ministry Of Interior
Ministry Of Finance
Ministry Of Health
Ministry Of Higher Education
Ministry Of Labour & Social Affairs
Ministry Of Petroleum & Mineral Resources
Ministry Of Post, Telegraph & Telephone (MPTT)
And click here to see more…

http://www.datamatixgroup.com/confer...antprofile.asp

[Elias Alias]

Good find, F42. Hadn't even heard of this project. One of the nice rewards for achievement at CIA is the open door to regional/global financial activities, as we see from your listing that Robert Gates plays with these people. The listing of names is very interesting. And the recent flak over the Ports Deal by UAE must have had repercussions in this group's game. (See link at bottom of this post.) I'd give ten cents to know which of the names on your list have already had cocktails in Crawford, Texas, ya think?

Clicking around their site I see they are planning a Summit for CEOs this coming November. Here are the topics they anticipate:

08:30 AM      

Arrival, Delegate Registration

Continental Breakfast, Business Networking, Photo Session and Meeting with the media
09:00 AM     

Welcome Message

Opening Keynote:

Do CEOs have an in-depth view on the evolving Middle East Banking and Finance Industry?

Fast and Effective Bank Transformation - Lessons from Leading Global Banking and Finance CEOs.
09:15 AM     

Global Keynote Speech:

The World Finance Institution Perception on the Way Middle East Banking, Finance and CEOs work and Think”

    * What are the suggestions?
    * Can American Dollar Survive the Onslaught of Euro? Or is it a temporary phenomenon?
    * American view points Vs. European view points
    * Middle East Banking & Finance CEOs: Listen observe and decide

09:45 AM     

Regional Keynote Speech:

The Power of Saudi Arabian Banking and Finance Industry under the King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Leadership

    * How bank’s CEO should build future plans for a piece of action in The Kingdom Of the Saudi Arabia - largest GCC, Middle East and Pan Arab Economy
    * What are the top 10 suggested strategies for the regions banking CEO?

10:30 AM     

With 3 New Government Leadership Transitions in the GCC region, do the Banking and Finance CEOs know about the new priorities and vision for the banking and finance industry?

    * How CEOs should shape the future under the new Government Leadership?
    * As a young regional government leadership takes over, does our banking industry have enough young CEOs to take over the banking leadership?

How CEOs should shape the future of Middle East banking as it actively seeks to join World Trade Organizations (WTO) and sign Free Trade Agreements (FTA)?

    * Reinventing Mindsets & Execution Plans of Today’s banking and Finance Leading CEOs
    * Challenges banks are likely to face due to the FTAs & WTO
    * Regional Issues
    * Global issues

11:00 AM     Coffee, Business Networking, Photo Session and meeting with the media
11:30 AM     

CEO Strategies for Smooth and Successful Organizational Transition while Meeting International Banking Standards

    * The Competition, where does the banking and finance CEOs stand?
    * Are CEOs ready for the transformation to take their business to the next level?
    * How CEOs should identify new and profitable business opportunities?
    * Planning to overcome rising resource costs and inflationary economic trends
    * Impact of regions stock markets on the Banking and Financial Organizations
    * Role of the Banking CEOs in the unhealthy trends in the regional stock markets
    * Why the banks CEO encourage easy lending and credit facilities to stock business rather then focusing and supporting the real economy?

12:15 PM     

Customer Care Strategies for the Banking CEOs & CIOs for Winning over New and Retaining Existing Customers

    * Learn what CEOs / CIOs should do to achieve a successful customer care culture.
    * Have Middle East Banks Violated the Golden Rules of Customer Attraction?
    * Is your bank just on the bank street and nowhere else?
    * Rediscovering the power of the “Branch” – Attracting Customers, Strategic Impact of Retail Branches

12:45 PM     Coffee, Business Networking, Photo Session and Meeting with the Media
01:00 PM     

Future of Islamic Banking and Finance in the new global political arena not in the Global financial arena Where will be those CEO’s who are not educated about the Islamic Banking and Finance?

    * Why conventional banks regard Islamic banks as a threat?
    * Can Islamic banking and Finance Support New Age Economic Needs of a Nation, Organization or an Individual?
    * Can Islamic banking and finance support globalization and today’s international trade requirements?
    * Why conventional banks are suddenly offering Islamic Banking Products and Services?
    * Can this stop the growth of Islamic banking and finance institutions?
    * How Islamic finance companies should differentiate and carve out a niche in the wider, extremely competitive financial services industry?
    * What are major challenges faced by Islamic banks in expanding internationally while remaining true to Islamic principles?
    * How Islamic finance companies should differentiate and carve out a niche in the wider, extremely competitive financial services industry?
    * Human Resources Requirements to run an Islamic Banking, Finance and Insurance

End first day list of Summit activities.
~

All this reminds me of previously-exposed shennigans from that region. They called it: BCCI.  Below is a piece from Senate hearings on BCCI. This starts off sorta slowly, but builds interest sharply several sections  into the material, and is well worth the read.

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm

Scroll down, if one wishes to skip the India/Pakistani history, to this subtitle:

Abedi and Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi is the largest and wealthiest member of the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich federation of sheikhdoms with a combined population of under 1.5 million, bordering on Saudi Arabia and Oman, with one of the world's highest standards of living as a result of oil wealth. Like all of the Gulf sheikdoms, Abu Dhabi is unusual among modern states in that its ruler, and the ruling family, owns all the land and natural resources of the country in fee simple absolute, with no distinctions being made among the wealth of the ruler, his family, and the nation itself. As lawyers for Abu Dhabi have described it:

By tradition and historical background of the Trucial States, the ruler of an Emirate owns all of the land of his State. However, he allots land to his subjects individually for their use. Similarly, all the natural resources of the States are also regarded as the personal property of the ruler and his heirs who enjoy complete authority to utilize them as they consdier fit.(15)

As early as 1967 Abedi's high net worth customers included the ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and his family. The illiterate Sheikh, a formerly impoverished desert Bedouin, was the recently installed head of a newly wealthy oil state who owed his power to a British coup against his brother in 1966. The brother had been deposed for having been unwilling to spend Abu Dhabi oil revenues for any purpose, including easing conditions for members of the British foreign service posted there.

After installing Sheikh Zayed, British officialdom had failed to pay attention to his desire to be taken seriously as an important world political leader. By contrast, Abedi viewed Sheikh Zayed to be a potentially important resource. By one account, the relationship began when Abedi made the decision to fly to Abu Dhabi in 1966 to solicit the right of the United Bank to take deposits from the thousands of Pakistani workers assisting in its modernization. Travelling with one assistant and bringing an oriental rug as a gesture of goodwill, Abedi secured Sheikh Zayed's permission for the United Bank to open a branch in Abu Dhabi.(16) By a second account, Abedi beat out the Habib Bank for taking care of arrangements for Sheikh Zayed's first bustard hunting and falconry vacation in Pakistan, personally waiting patiently outside the Pakistani government guest house while the Sheikh napped, and securing the right to handle the Sheikh's logistics when he awoke.(17)

By 1967, what had begun with Abedi handling the Sheikh's falconry and bustard-hunting trips in Pakistan, and the finances of Pakistani workers in Abu Dhabi, wound up with Abedi running the Sheikh's financial life. As far as Pakistani bankers observing the relationship were concerned, Abedi coordinated everything for Sheikh Zayed, from the building of the Sheikh's palaces in Pakistan, the furnishing of his villas in Morocco and Spain, his medical appointments, to the digging of wells for his homes in the desert.(18) As BCCI officer Abdur Sakhia put it,

Digging a well or two was a minor cost of doing business. Abedi's philosophy was to appeal to every sector. If you were religious people he would help you pray.(19)

From the point of view of BCCI, Sheikh Zayed and his family were ill-equipped to handle the demands of the modern world, and in the early days, dependent on Abedi and Abedi's bank for their every need. Even in the late 1970's, Sheikh Zayed, whose personal tastes were quite simple, would on trips abroad routinely write checks for $100,000 or $200,000 at a time for members of his retinue to spend as they liked, written on the back of a matchbook or a piece of toilet paper. This practice continued until BCCI officers provided the Sheikh with a gold checkbook and insisted that drafts be written on it.(20) As Akbar Bilgrami described his experiences with Zayed:

He would pray or listen to the news. He had a court jester-type person who made him laugh and told him poetry. He was a simple man, simple but shrewd. On a trip to spain which lasted two weeks, his retinue spent $20 million, but he only spend $400 on himself the entire trip for two dogs whose price he negotiated down from $1,000.

He was a simple man who did not spend a lot of money on himself. It is part of Arab culture. The Sheikh is a sort of farther figure. It is hard for him to say no to people, especially because he knows that everybody knows that he has the money. He would carry about a briefcase filled with expensive watches, Cartiers, Rolexes.(21)

Among BCCI officers it was believed that the United Arab Emirates itself owed its creation to Abedi, who came up with the idea as a means of reducing instability among the gulf emirates and increasing the stature of Sheikh Zayed.(22) As Sakhia recalled:

Abedi created the UAE. He planted the idea of the UAE as a federation to Sheikh Zayed. These people had no standing anywhere in the world. They were smugglers and tribesmen. When Sheik Zayed would come for months in Pakistan, not even a policeman would give him any attention. Yet two months after meeting Abedi, Sheikh Zayed finally gets a state visit to Islamabad and meets the President of Pakistan which then became the first country to give him any status. The first embassy of UAE was opened in Pakistan and the second in London, and both were staffed by Abedi's appointments.(23)

In time, Sheikh Zayed would unburden himself to Abedi, and tell Abedi that he felt ignored by westerners, a sentiment he later repeated to Bert Lance, as Lance recalled to Senate investigators, and in testimony on October 24, 1991.

I remember a long conversation I had with Sheikh Zayed at his palace outside of Islamabad. There were three of us there: Bert Lance, Abedi, and Sheikh Zayed. The Sheikh was unhappy that the US hadn't paid any attention to him. The US Ambassador hadn't focused on him. . . He was being reated in a manner that really wasn't befitting the strategic importance or the fiscal importance of the UAE. [Zayed was] concerned about the discrimination as it related to the UAE vis-a-vis other Arab countries . . . receiving more attention and more concern than the UAE was.(24)

It is absolutely clear from BCCI documents that Abedi's relationship with the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi and the Al Nahayan family was the foundation of the establishment of the bank without which BCCI never could have come into existence. Throughout the first critical decade of BCCI's eighteen year existence, as much as 50% of BCCI's overall assets were from Abu Dhabi and the Al Nayhan family, who were earning about $750 million a year in oil revenues in the early 1970's, an amount that rose to nearly $10 billion a year by the end of the decade. Until the formation of a separate affiliate, the Bank of Credit and Commerce Emirates (BCCE), BCCI functioned as the official bank for the Gulf emirates, and handled a substantial portion of Abu Dhabi's oil revenues. And yet from the beginning, there was an oddity about this central relationship: at no time while Abedi was in charge of BCCI did Abu Dhabi hold more than a small share of BCCI's recorded shares. Abu Dhabi appears not to have capitalized BCCI, but instead to have insisted on guaranteed rates of return for the use of its money.

As Akbar Bilgrami, who handled Sheikh Zayed's personal finances in the late 1970's at BCCI, has described it, BCCI provided Zayed with great benefits for what appeared at the time to be very little risk. Zayed deposited substantial funds, amounting to billions of dollars, in BCCI, receiving a guaranteed rate of return on these deposits -- sometimes as high as 1.5 percent over LIBOR, a standard European funds rate. In return for a relationship that was costing him little and indeed, making him profits, Sheikh Zayed received the prestige and benefits of having people all over the world believe it was his bank, without his own funds being at risk.(25) Thus, rather than being a major investor in fact in BCCI, in the early years, Abu Dhabi only agreed to place extremely large sums of money as deposits at the bank, which BCCI used in lieu of capital.

An eyewitness to BCCI's creation described Abedi's elation after Sheikh Zayed agreed to back his new bank in a scene that took place in late 1972, in the late evening, in the living room of a Pakistani banker in Abu Dhabi. Abedi addressed the Pakistanis present in the following terms:

It is truly the grace of God that the prayers of all the U.B.L. [United Bank of Pakistan] employees who had to flee Bangladesh and who had been kept on the U.B.L. payroll by us, have been provided a source of livelihood by God. The Sheikhs have been kind enough to give me their trust and support the new bank that we are creating for these employees.(26)

Abedi used the expression "rizq," or "providence" to describe the deal he had consummated with Sheikh Zayed. But there would have been a number of compelling reasons for Sheikh Zayed to respond to Abedi's offer. Sheikh Zayed was financially unsophisticated and in need of assistance from someone he could trust to handle his finances in a manner that would meet his personal, cultural and political needs. These included the need for secrecy as to the location and size of his wealth, given the political instability within the region; the need to adhere to Islamic law, through structuring transactions so that they could be profitable and safe without the payment of interest in violation of that law. There was, moreover, no one within Abu Dhabi who the Sheikh could trust to provide the adequate secrecy. Indeed, apart from Abedi, Sheikh Zayed may well have known no one inside or outside Abu Dhabi with the apparent sophistication to handle finances of the magnitude that were being generated by the petrodollars. In any case, Abedi had already been attending to all of the Sheikh's personal needs in Pakistan for five years, thereby demonstrating his ability to make the relationship worry-free for the Sheikh.

Abol Helmy, an Iranian BCCI officer, described the relationship as a logical outgrowth of the post-colonial period in the Third World:

The British ruled India, Pakistan, and the Arab countries. Traditionally, the Indians and then the Pakistanis because of the Moslem thread that linked them became the civil servants for the British working in the Gulf. It was a continuation of the policies of the Empire.(27)

As a result of the Abedi-Zayed agreement, Abedi now had essentially unlimited resources to create BCCI. He could now act simultaneously as manager of billions of Sheikh Zayed's personal wealth, as banker to the United Arab Emirates of which Sheikh Zayed was chief of state, and as chairman of a new bank that had guaranteed assets of hundreds of millions of dollars from its inception.(28) Moreover, Sheikh Zayed was accustomed to the use of nominees, as nominee purchases were frequently employed whenever he wished to buy anything to avoid the price increasing if the Sheikh's name had been mentioned as part of the negotiations.(29)

One consequence of this arrangement, however, was that Abedi's success was overly dependent on his relationship with Abu Dhabi and its assets. He was managing the Sheikh's resources, he had use of them, and if he did not meet the Sheikh's needs, he could lose everything. Recognizing this dependence, Abedi made it a practice to insure that BCCI would provide whatever the Sheikh required, whenever the Sheikh or his family wanted it. As BCCI records demonstrate, payments, often characterized as loans, were made to members of the Abu Dhabi royal family on an as-needed basis by BCCI, without any regard as to whether these same resources were also being committed elsewhere. With Abedi relying on the Sheikh's resources to finance his rapid expansion, BCCI's finances quickly became so intermingled with the finances of Abu Dhabi that it was difficult even for BCCI insiders to determine where one left off and the other began.

End teaser from US Senate report on BCCI.
~

Salute!
Elias

[Docliberty]

General, you might find this interesting.

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0%2C1249%2C635198488%2C00.html

[Not a TMM member]

Hmm
I just spent about 15 minutes writing a reply to the post on that article and it said I submitted it already and now it seems to have vanished.
Great!
I'll sum up.
Sulfur would not make the Tmite hotter necessarily but Tmite is a bitch to light unless you have an agent.
Office furniture and jet fuel alone wouldn't touch off the aluminum mixture but it would light the sulfur and that in turn excites the Tmite.
Hard to get it into the building without notice though.  But it would have caused the kind of structural failure we saw.

[RagnarDanneskjold]

Hmm
I just spent about 15 minutes writing a reply to the post on that article and it said I submitted it already and now it seems to have vanished.
Great!
I'll sum up.
Sulfur would not make the Tmite hotter necessarily but Tmite is a bitch to light unless you have an agent.
Office furniture and jet fuel alone wouldn't touch off the aluminum mixture but it would light the sulfur and that in turn excites the Tmite.
Hard to get it into the building without notice though.  But it would have caused the kind of structural failure we saw.

A couple comments / thoughts. Not to take this thread too far afoot, I guess that might require a trip to "Hijack this Thread." 

First. Thermite would account for the fact that some who were on the scene heard no explosions.

b. Hey, DocLiberty, that sent me off on a quest which took me to the Wayback Machine. I remembered an article by Tom Spooner in Doing Freedom and went off to peruse it and it I had to travel back in time to find it.

Thoroughly Thermite

Tom Spooner

Thermite is such interesting stuff. It has myriad uses -- in armor piercing incendiary ammunition, to weld railroad track and building grounding systems, as a thermal decoy for heatseeking missiles... I've met one person who even uses the stuff to start his campfires; that sounds like overkill to me, but I can't deny its effectiveness. Basically, for any job that calls for intense, precisely targeted heat, thermite is the stuff.

So what is this remarkable material? It's quite simple: Powdered iron oxide (black) and powdered aluminum. Mix them in equal amounts -- by volume or weight, it doesn't particularly matter, unless you happen to be striving for peak efficiency. Thermite is forgiving stuff, and will work fairly well no matter how mixed.

Obtaining the iron oxide isn't too difficult. One technique involves stuffing steel wool into a pipe and igniting it; you'll need a forced air draft to keep it going. Take a look at that piece of disinformation, the Army Improvised Munitions Handbook; the steel wool trick seems to be one of the workable gimmicks. (Apply anything from that book with extreme caution -- some of what it says is so far wrong that you will kill yourself if you actually try certain procedures.)

Aluminum can be a little harder to come by. It can be had at good paint stores, but you probably don't want to charge it up on your credit card; not if you're reading this anyway. It can also be mail ordered from many chemical and laboratory supply houses. If you go that route, be prepared to burn, no pun intended (oh, okay... Yes, it was intended), that mail drop; don't use that address again. And yes, you can order iron oxide the same way.

If you're short of FRNs, or know someone else who is, filing down aluminum plates and bar stock is an option. Tedious, but it can be done.

So, you have your iron oxide, you have the aluminum powder. You've mixed together equal proportions. Now what?

Now you fire it off.

Easier said than done. If you got ahead of me, you may have noticed that you can't set the stuff afire with a simple match. Thermite does burn hot; but it also takes a good bit of heat to get it going. Powdered magnesium works. (You're familiar with those emergency firestarter blocks? And someone has been seen at readiness expos selling pound jars of magnesium powder; snap it up if you see any.) So does magnesium ribbon, of course. But the ribbon has its own ignition difficulties. The best trick I've seen to date is simple sparklers. Yes, those chemical dipped wires which the older kids detest in favor of more spectacular pyrotechnics.

Their loss. Sparklers will consistently ignite thermite. And while you can light a sparkler with a match, it's a little easier to light a length of cannon fuse, which will in turn fire off the sparkler, which then acts as a fuse for the incendiary mix. (Why do I have cannon fuse? As Earl said in Tremors, "My cannon.") For manual operation, tape a piece of fuse to a sparkler, and put a match to it. For unattended, or timed operation, fire the fuse with a model rocket motor igniter. The "solar" (or whatever they're called these days) can be activated with two AA batteries. Such an electrically operated system can easily incorporate a clock as a timer.

You have your thermite, you can set it off. Now what to do with it...

A soda can full of thermite, set on the hood of a police car (or other statist thugmobile) will do nasty things to the engine.

A similar charge placed on a building transformer or electrical switch box ought to black out the building in question.

Thermite is also a quick, if unsubtle, way of dealing with locks (when bolt cutters just won't do) or locked doors. Even some fire-rated safety boxes shudder at the thought of thermite. Lost your keys?

Someone suggested a small charge of thermite on a hard disk drive as a way of ensuring that there won't be enough magnetic platter left to read old, erased data from. I see possibilities there -- an electrically activated charge, with a relay on the computer bus. If the password isn't typed in on schedule, the thermite ends all your privacy concerns.

Thermite can be delivered in many ways. The simplest is a flammable container to hold the loose powder (or tightly packed powder; the more the merrier sometimes). If you wish to direct the molten mass to a specific target (i.e., down onto switch gear or an engine block), consider a terra cotta flower pot with a drain hole in the bottom. The pot will never be the same afterwards, but neither will what you wanted to torch..

If you want to destroy incriminating evidence (Doesn't it suck that being free is a crime these days? Okay, end of short rant.), you might want to dig a small hole to contain your papers, paper shotgun, tools, et cetera, and mix in some thermite with the goodies. Fire it off, and the feds won't be recovering anything very useful.

If API ammo is your thing, sorry. I don't know how that ignites. If anyone is interested, I'll see what I can come up with. In theory, at least. I'm not sure I want to play around with an improvised API munition in my guns. Especially not with my finger on the trigger.

There is a company that sells specialty ammunition - shotshells with flechettes, ball and chains, compressed powdered lead slugs, lots of tracers, and a hollow 12 gauge slug meant to be filled with pistol powder and capped with a shotshell primer. So equipped, it supposedly can blow large holes in car doors. But you might try filling one with thermite, topping the cavity off with the powdered material from a sparkler, and then capping it with the primer. This company seems to change its name on a nearly daily basis -- they were Blammo Ammo when I first encountered them. And not too long ago, they had a website at http://www.funammo.com. These "blockbuster" slugs can also occasionally be found at gun stores.

I've also heard a thermite paste suggested. I've tried the trick using petroleum jelly, but it looks like the vaporizing petroleum carries off too much heat for the thermite to catch. If anyone has ideas along these lines, I'm open to suggestions.

Another possibility is an incendiary block. I first read of such a thing made of a 50:50 mix of plaster of paris and powdered aluminum. Supposedly a block cast of this can burn at several thousand degrees, and might be useful for controlled burns. Like buildings. If this works, I haven't managed it. I have had no luck in igniting such a block, even using thermite as an igniter. Until someone shows me otherwise, I'll consider this one just another example of Internet BS.

But back to the point. An incendiary block that does work is also thermite based. I use a mix of thermite and plaster of paris. There should only be enough plaster to make the mass hold together; a ratio of 4 to 1, thermite to plaster, is the minimum. Any more plaster than that and the stuff doesn't want to ignite. The sparkler igniter can be conveniently molded into the block. If electrically detonated, a creative (destructive?) individual might cast the entire works within the block.

Moldable thermite opens up other possibilities: Rings or "horseshoes" to be hung on doorknobs and locks. Incendiary statuary, and other innocuous-seeming devices. Sectioned blocks to be placed on tower guylines, to bring down said tower. The imagination boggles. Or mine does. I leave additional musings to your imagination.

(c) 2000