There's a cheery thought.

Although it's very long it's a cracking article.

*********

Often, some of the most important news comes from local papers, stories that don't make it up the feeding chain and onto the news wires or major newspapers or nightly network news. It can be news that at first glance wouldn't appear to have a national or international impact. Second glance, and a good memory, can reveal that the impact may well be quite significant.

The other day a reader sent us an article link that he found on another alt.news website: Bad news - we are way past our 'extinct by' date

Since we had run the same story back when it first came out, we thought "yeah! Flashback!" After all, with all the talk about Global Warming, it served to remind readers that human caused CO2 levels are not all there is to what is going on here on the BBM today.

Later in the evening, we had a conversation here at SOTT Central about this article and how it relates to a book that is currently being passed around in the house here: The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization by Richard Firestone, Allen West, Simon Warwick-Smith. This book is about the "Event" that took place about 12,000 years ago that is recorded in myth and legend variously as the Fall of Atlantis and Noah's Flood.

Plato describes a destruction that occurred in a day and a night, and the Bible recounts the story of torrential rains and an immense flood in which most of the life on earth perished. There is also a rich body of Native American literature about a worldwide cataclysm of fires, followed by floods and death raining down from the skies. As many as fifty different cultures around the globe record versions of this story, and physicist Firestone, along with his geologist co-authors, have put together a book, based on hard scientific evidence, describing a cosmic chain of events that they believe culminated in the global catastrophe of 12,000 years ago. They believe that the Event was triggered by a nearby supernova that occurred 41,000 years ago.

Regular readers of SOTT are familiar with my Cassiopaea website and the experiment in superluminal communication that I began in 1992 which finally bore fruit in 1994 on the day that the fragments of Comet Shoemaker Levy began impacting the planet Jupiter. We find it amusingly synchronous that one of the themes of the Cassiopaean information is planetary destruction via a Comet Cluster that cycles through the solar system every 3,600 years as a consequence of the orbit of our Sun's solar Companion, a smaller, dark, Twin Sun. As it happens, Firestone, West and Warwick-Smith also talk about a bombardment of Planet Earth by literally thousands of asteroids, comets, or other debris, though they attribute it to the supernova 28 or 29 thousand years earlier; it took that long for the ejecta from the supernova - along with debris it kicked out of the Oort cloud - to reach Earth.

With the idea that there is a Cometary Bombardment Cycle, we have naturally been alert to the fact that the last few years have brought increasing evidence that this theory may very well be the correct one. This evidence includes the fantastic increase in the number of "moons" attached to Jupiter that have so recently been "discovered", as well as the increase in frequency of comets over the past few years, along with the astonishing increase in meteorites and fireballs entering Earth's atmosphere and falling to earth. In some cases, these events have resulted in damage to human beings and property, and one recent case even resulted in deaths as we will see further on...

http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/articl...

Stan

This is following on from the US and Israeli government's own research into biowarfare and ethinic specific weaponry. Palestine has long been recognised as a testing ground for new weapons technologies. In three parts:

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/...
***

Stan

Nothing we didn't suspect but it's still a disgusting indictment of our so called democratic values.

Stan

*****

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6211...

The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of all household wealth, according to a new study by a United Nations research institute.

The report, from the World Institute for Development Economics Research at the UN University, says that the poorer half of the world's population own barely 1% of global wealth.

There have of course been many studies of worldwide inequality.

But what is new about this report, the authors say, is its coverage.

It deals with all countries in the world - either actual data or estimates based on statistical analysis - and it deals with wealth, where most previous research has looked at income.

What they mean by wealth in this study is what people own, less what they owe - their debts. The assets include land, buildings, animals and financial assets.

Different assets

The analysis shows, as have many other less comprehensive studies, striking divergences in wealth between countries.

Wealth is heavily concentrated in North America, Europe and some countries in the Asia Pacific region, such as Japan and Australia.

These countries account for 90% of household wealth.

The study also finds that inequality is sharper in wealth than in annual income.

And it uncovers some striking differences in the types of assets that dominate in different countries.

In less developed nations, land and farm assets are more important, reflecting the greater importance of agriculture in those economies.

In addition, the report says the weighting is the result of "immature" financial institutions, which make it much harder for people to have savings accounts or shares.

In contrast, some citizens of the rich countries have more debt than assets - making them, the report says, among the poorest in the world in terms of household wealth.

However, they are presumably better off in terms of what they consume than many people in developing countries.

Comprehensive

The survey is based on data for the year 2000. The authors say a more recent year would have involved more gaps in the data. As it is, many figures - especially for developing countries - have had to be estimated.

Nonetheless, the authors say it is the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken.

Why does it matter? Because wealth serves as insurance against times when income tends to fall, such as unemployment, sickness or old age.

It is also a source of finance for small businesses, a particularly important point since it is the countries with lower levels of personal wealth which also tend to have weaker financial systems without the funds, ability or inclination to lend to small firms.

The report is not about policy recommendations.

But one of the authors, Professor Anthony Shorrocks, says it does draw attention to the importance of enhancing banking systems in developing countries to help generate the funds for business investment.

*****

The Israeli government is at it again, finding out new ways to seed their hatred and pull us all into the Abyss..

Stan

********
"Israel Ups the Stakes in the Propaganda War"
Stewart Purvis
Monday November 20, 2006
The Guardian

Following its invasion of Lebanon this summer, Israel was said to have largely lost the PR battle to Hizbullah, but armed with a major web offensive, it's fighting back

Amir Gissin runs what he calls '"Israel's Explanation Department". Which is why it is surprising to hear him admit that many Israelis think "the whole problem is that we don't explain ourselves correctly".

Last week, as al-Jazeera launched an Arab view of the world into English-speaking homes worldwide, Gissin was a man under pressure. At the David Bar Ilan conference on the media and Middle East, he faced an audience of Israelis who were unhappy about the way the propaganda battle with Hizbullah was fought and lost during the war in the Lebanon. They wanted to know how it could be done better next time, because most people in Israel seem to think there will be a next time with Hizbullah soon.

Gissin said the words of his English-speaking spokespeople could not compete with the power of the pictures of civilians killed in the Israeli attack on Lebanese towns like Qana. And the Israeli parliament will not spend the money on an Israeli counterpart to al-Jazeera.

[the little issue of the indiscriminate and conscious murder of civillians seems to be irrelevant]

But Gissin was not down-hearted. He declared there to be a "war on the web" in which Israel had a new weapon, a piece of computer software called the "internet megaphone".

"During the war we had the opportunity to do some very nice things with the megaphone community," he revealed at the conference. Among them, he claimed, was a role in getting an admission from Reuters that a photograph of damage to Beirut had been doctored by a Lebanese photographer to increase the amount of smoke in the picture. This was first spotted by American blogger Charles Johnson, who has won an award for "promoting Israel and Zionism".

To check out the power of the megaphone, I logged onto a website called GIYUS (Give Israel Your United Support) last Wednesday afternoon. More than 25,000 registered users of www.giyus.org have downloaded the megaphone software, which enables them to receive alerts asking them to get active online.

It did not take long for an alert to come through. A Foreign Office minister, Kim Howells, had issued a press statement condemning that day's Palestinian rocket attack which killed an elderly Israeli and wounded other civilians. GIYUS wanted site users to "show your appreciation of the UK's response".

One click took me to a pre-prepared email addressed to Dr Howells, and a slot for me to personalise my comment. A test confirmed that the email would arrive at his office, as if I had spotted his comments on a news website, in this case Yahoo, and sent it to him with a supporting message. In the emails, there would be no indication of the involvement of GIYUS, although Howells may have been suspicious that so many people around the world had read the same Yahoo story about him and decided to email him. The Foreign Office confirms that emails were received last Wednesday but will not go into any more detail.

The most popular target of the online activists is the foreign media, especially the BBC, the news organisation which they love to hate. Earlier this year I was a member of the independent panel set up by the BBC governors to review the BBC's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We reported on the high number of emails we had received from abroad, mostly from North America, and the evidence of pressure group involvement. A majority of email correspondents thought that the BBC was anti-Israel, however if the emails that could be identified as coming from abroad were excluded, the opposite was true - more people thought the BBC anti-Palestinian or pro-Israel.

The BBC has already had one encounter with GIYUS - an attempt to influence the outcome of an online poll. BBC History magazine noticed an upsurge in voting on whether holocaust denial should be a criminal offence in Britain. But the closing date had already passed and the result had already been published, so the votes were invalid anyway. GIYUS supporters claim success elsewhere in "balancing" an opinion poll on an Arabic website by turning a vote condemning Israel's attack in the Lebanon into an endorsement.

For some of Israel's supporters, a primary aim of their war on the web is an attempt to discredit what they see as hostile foreign media reports, especially those containing iconic visual images.

One particular target has been the respected French TV correspondent, Charles Enderlin, whose Palestinian cameraman filmed 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura being shot and killed, as his father tried to shield him at the start of the second intifada. Enderlin accused Israeli troops of shooting and killing the boy. French supporters of Israel went online to claim the report was a distortion based on faked footage. His network, France 2, responded with legal action and, last month, in the first of four individual cases, a French court found the organiser of a self-styled media watchdog website guilty of libel.

Another online target has been the TV footage of bloodshed on a Gaza beach earlier this year. A Palestinian girl was seen screaming as she saw the bodies of dead family members killed by what Palestinians allege was Israeli shellfire. When I mentioned the impact of these pictures at last week's conference, members of the audience shouted "staged".

One person came up to me afterwards to suggest that the family had somehow died somewhere else and that their bodies had been moved to the beach to be filmed. Where, for instance, was all the blood? I pointed out that I had seen everything that the cameraman had shot and that some pictures were too gruesome to be shown.

It is clear that the government of Israel wants to fight back against the impact of foreign media pictures like these. Amir Gissin talked last week of plans to get Israeli video onto sites like YouTube which he said were viewed by opinion "shapers". And his cousin Dr Ra'anan Gissin, formerly Ariel Sharon's media adviser, has endorsed the idea of having picture power at the country's disposal ready for future conflicts. Referring to Israel's opponents, he put it in his usual direct way: "You need to shoot a picture before you shoot them."

Stewart Purvis is professor of Television Journalism at City University in London. He is a former chief executive and editor-in-chief of ITN.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0...

****

Stan

From:
News Hounds
August 8, 2006
The audience for Fox News' "Dayside" sank to a new low on Tuesday (August 8, 2006) during discussion of the fighting along the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Egged on by substitute host Steve Doocy (or Doocey as the chyron spelled it at one point), the audience literally laughed at the suffering of Lebanese civilians caught between Hezbollah and Israeli bombs.

Doocy was interviewing Tania Mehanna, a senior war correspondent for Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, when he chided Lebanese civilians for not standing up to Hezbollah fighters whom he said are positioning rockets in front of their homes. 'I think I'd be angry as Hezbollah," Doocy said.

Listen to Mehanna's answer and to the audience response.

Later, a man in the audience claimed that Arabs have made up the idea that Israel is bombing Lebanon and that the buildings are not being bombed but are falling down because of "faulty construction".

Chilling.

**************

If anyone wanted proof that we are governed the world over by primary psychopaths and in some of the American news media - here it is. Fox News really is inhabited by a sub-human species.

Original LINK

Stan

Hi all,

A friend of mine has followed up with another flash "movie" after his last success of the Signs of the Times Pentagon Strike. This time we have a hard-hitting and "in a nut-shell" summary of the history of the psychopathic turmoil initiated by those in successive Israeli governments pathocracy: DIS-EASE.

This is particularly fitting while the psychopaths in the Israeli government are busy destroying the Lebanon and its people. Of course this is part of wider strategy to carve up the Middle East and share it between the pathocrats in various countries. Why break the habit of a lifetime - this is what the zionists and the British did in 1947. This time the stakes are very much higher.

Have a look see, this might have the Zionist propagandists foaming at the mouth:

http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/sign...

Stan

Hardly surprising after all the hype...

'Da Vinci Code' Misses the Mark for Critics

By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer
Tue May 16, 6:52 PM ET

CANNES, France - "The Da Vinci Code" drew lukewarm praise, shrugs of indifference, some jeering laughter and a few derisive jabs Tuesday from arguably the world's toughest movie crowd: critics at the Cannes Film Festival.

The year's most anticipated movie, "The Da Vinci Code" was a generally faithful adaptation of Dan Brown's monster best seller, spinning a murder thriller that stems from a cover-up of secrets about Christianity's roots.

While readers worldwide devoured the novel, reaction from Cannes critics ranged from mild endorsement of its potboiler suspense to groans of ridicule over its heavy melodrama.

"It's a movie about whether the greatest story ever told is true or not, and it's not the greatest movie ever screened, is it?" said Baz Bamigboye, a film columnist for London's Daily Mail. "As a thriller, well," he continued, shrugging.

"Maybe the next day I'll forget about it," said Igor Soukmanov of Unistar Radio in Belarus. "But today for two hours it was good entertainment. ... As a Hollywood movie, it's a very nice picture."

Critics got their first look at "The Da Vinci Code" a day before its world premiere at Cannes on Wednesday, when it also debuts at theaters in France and some other countries. The film opens worldwide over the following two days, including the United States on Friday.

Directed by Ron Howard, the movie stars Tom Hanks and
Audrey Tautou as strangers hurled together on a frantic quest for the Holy Grail after a series of murders is committed.

The filmmakers add some twists and variations here and there, but the general thrust of the novel remains intact, including its theory that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child, which has prompted denouncements from many Christians.

The Cannes audience clearly grew restless as the movie dragged on to two and a half hours and spun a long sequence of anticlimactic revelations.

"I kept thinking of the Energizer Bunny, because it kept going and going and going, and not in a good way," said James Rocchi, a film critic for CBS 5 television in San Francisco and the online outlet Cinematical. "Ron Howard makes handsome films. He doesn't make bad ones, but he doesn't make great ones."

One especially melodramatic line uttered by Hanks drew prolonged laughter and some catcalls, and the audience continued to titter for much of the film's remainder.

Some people walked out during the movie's closing minutes, though there were fewer departures than many Cannes movies provoke among harsh critics. When the credits rolled, there were a few whistles and hisses, and there was none of the scattered applause even bad movies sometimes receive at Cannes.

Critics singled out co-star Ian McKellen, playing a wry Grail enthusiast who joins the search, as the movie's highlight, injecting hearty humor and delivering the most nuanced performance. Paul Bettany added a seething mix of tragic pathos and destructive zealousness as a monk assassin who carries out the slayings.

Bamigboye said all the actors were solid, but enthusiastically added, "I've got to tell you, Ian McKellen steals it. He slices all the crap away."

Gutsy stuff from the one woman peace dynamo. Now here's someone who leads by example:

Cindy Sheehan's New Book:Dear President

Cindy Sheehan's interviews, essays, and speeches get better with each passing month, as her pain continues, her passion and insight grow, and the war that killed her son goes on – as the president who killed her son goes on being president. Cindy's latest book, "Dear President Bush," is the best of the three books by or about Cindy Sheehan that I've read.

"Not One More Mother's Child" was Cindy's first collection of essays. It's a longer book, including her writings from November 2004 to September 2005, along with some beautiful photographs and forwards by John Conyers, Thom Hartmann, and Jodie Evans. "The Vigil: 26 Days in Crawford, Texas" is a collection of newspaper reports on Camp Casey from the Lone Star Iconoclast, with a forward by Sheehan. These are both excellent books. One contains much of Cindy's brilliant and moving voice. The other comes close to setting the scene of what it was like to be in that place in Crawford last summer surrounded by so much emotion and so much hope.

Cindy's new book contains material from September 2005 through January 2006, plus a note from the editor, an introduction by Howard Zinn, and an excellent forward by Hart Viges, a veteran of the war on Iraq and a conscientious objector.

"I don't know," Viges writes, "how many innocents I killed with my mortar rounds. I have my imagination to pick at my brain for that one. But I clearly remember the call-out over the radio saying, 'Green light on all taxi cabs. The enemy is using them for transportation.'

"One of our snipers called back on the radio saying 'Excuse me, but did I hear that order correctly? Green light on all taxi cabs?'

"'Roger that, soldier. You'd better start buckling up.'"

Viges was so disturbed by what he did that he refused to continue. But he found a way to go on with his life, working for peace. He found that way through the strength created at Camp Casey

The first and best section of Cindy's new book is a lengthy interview she did with Greg Ruggiero last September, in which Cindy speaks brilliantly off the cuff, which is what she is probably best at. What rings through her remarks is not just the telling of her personal story (there's relatively little of that here), but the way in which her historical and political analysis is inflamed by her personal experience.

Amazingly – if you know and love Cindy – it takes 32 pages before she first curses. She does so when asked "What did you want to say to President Bush when you were camped outside his place in Crawford, Texas?"

Her reply begins: "Well, of course the first thing I wanted to ask was: 'What noble cause did Casey die for? Was it freedom and democracy?' Bullshit. He died for oil. He died to make Bush's friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East…." She concludes by calling for impeachment.

When Cindy said that last September, it had an air of radicalism about it. Many people still liked to talk about the war as a mistake or a miscalculation and to assume that in some sense the war had really been started for democracy, even thought that rationale had been produced after the original selling points of WMD and ties to 9-11 had failed and the war was well underway. (Imagine, though, if military recruits had to sign papers promising to defend the United States or to attack other countries if killing no more than a few hundred thousand people might possibly result in a democracy. What size would the US Army be?)

But Cindy didn't just renounce the latest lie or say her son had died for lies, she pointed to what had really motivated Bush, Cheney, their associates, and the Project for a New American Century. She even went so far as to say the word oil, which has always been the most obvious Big Truth and therefore has elicited the fiercest condemnation in defense of the Big Lie.

Eight months later, Cindy's remarks don't sound very radical. They sound pretty much in line with those of the 65 percent of Americans who disapprove of Bush's performance.

The two essays that Cindy has included on the failures of Democrats and, in particular, Hillary Clinton have become only more relevant. Clinton this week announced a fundraiser for herself being hosted by Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, and praised George W. Bush to the media. A majority of Democrats have now voted for sanctions that mark the first step toward launching a war on Iran. Some of them should read this book. Maybe you should send your Congress Member a copy.

My favorite article, though, is Cindy's letter to Bush's Mama, Barbara Bush, in which she writes: "On March 18, 2003, a little over a year before my dear, sweet Casey was killed by your son's policies, you appeared on Good Morning America and said the following: 'Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?'

"Now I have something to tell you, Barbara. I didn't want to hear about deaths or body bags either. On April 4, 2004, three Army officers came to my house to tell me that Casey had been killed in Iraq. I fell on the floor screaming and begging the cruel Angel of Death to take me too. But the Angel of Death that took my son is your son."

Every day there are new mothers, Iraqi and American, facing that angel of death. And yet "journalists" and the Republican National Committee's talking points tell us that impeachment proceedings would be traumatic. I guess it all depends on your definition of "trauma."

Buy Cindy's new book at http://www.gsfp.org/

More from Jadczk's Blog:

http://laura-knight-jadczyk.blogspot.com/

Lately, it sure looks like the whole Alternative News and 911 Truth movement is being subjected to the Ponerization process (being twisted to become an agent for Evil), so perhaps now would be a good time to take a look at how that process develops. First, a little background.

There is a current discussion on our Forum that was begun by a certain Dimitris following the publication of an editorial about Jeff Rense. Dimitris declared, quite self-righteously, that publishing such an editorial identified us clearly as "agents of cointelpro." Here is the article that we published that aroused the ire of Dimitris:

by Anders

I have been looking at Rense's website for the last two years and gathered from Laura's research, that he most likely, whether consciously or not, is an asset of Cointelpro. The website gives the image of having no limits on what they will put up and yet there are some glaring omissions.

One of these omissions is in regards to birdflu. The site is like a birdflu central with daily updates on birdflu occurring all over the planet. There has NOT BEEN one article in respect to the likelihood that Birdflu is a HOAX.

ANOTHER omission is in regard to drastic climate changes, METEORS, the many recent meteor sightings and the many recent discoveries of impact crater from meteors around the world. The signs website has an excellent supplement on Meteors found here: http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/site_map_...

The last omission that I will mention here is in regard to the Signs website and the pentagon Strike video, which considering the fact that 500+million people have seen it, SHOULD feature on Rense's lefthand column as a permanent feature and a permanent link to the Producers thereof, namely SOTT.

One can look at this from the point of view of what is of paramount importance for the PTB, and what they don’t want the populace to see. If indeed it is true, that rense is an arm of COINTELPRO, then the important things are the things omitted from the site, some of which I mentioned above. It follows, that NOTHING that appears on Rense is important at all. It is only for keeping the population distracted!

Facts are: 1) the US is spending as if there is no tomorrow and as though they will never ever have to pay the money back.

2) The speed with which the US is implementing a world clamp down and a control on the populace is without parallel in modern history.

3) There is hardly an attempt at disguising their fascist march for world domination as though they know, that they will not be held accountable ever.

4) There is a lack of exposure of the lies of the US from OTHER NATIONS, who have intelligence services with satellite surveillance and who surely knows what is going on.

5) The US is using Depleted Uranium in the Middle East and other places indiscriminantly, as though the consequences of radiation of vast areas (including Europe and the US) is of no concern.

Talking to a friend about this, the question that was brought up was why don't they want the populace to ponder the possibility of cataclysmic earthchanges in the very near future, if they are happy to entertain the notion of perpetual war or economic megabust or whatever else is on Rense.

One answer that we came up with is this:

[...]

Read the rest here:

http://laura-knight-jadczyk.blogspot.com/

*****

Stan

Looks like the Above Top Secret website doesn't like to hear the truth about it's cointelpro status.

I've long suspected this trashy site was a hoover operation but now there seems to be little doubt. Signs of the Times seems to be under attack from some fairly unscrupulous people.

Found this on Laura Knight-Jadczyk's blog:

Some of you may have noticed that signs of the times was down for awhile today. This was due to the actions of the website abovetopsecret.com. As I have speculated, they were given the task to run cointelpro on Joe Quinn's article:

Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn't Impact the Pentagon on 9/11 - and Neither Did a Boeing 757

which was an analysis of the "catherder" article on abovetopsecret which essentially was support for the Bush Neocons conspiracy theory about the events of September 11.

As anyone who is familiar with copyright law knows, this is perfectly legal under standard copyright law.

However, abovetopsecret.com, like Bush and the Neocons, make up their own laws. As I have chronicled on this blog, their urgent demands that we remove this article because it was a violation of their "creative commons" copyright was absurd and simply evidence of their position as an active cointelpro/psy-ops propagator on the internet. It isn't copyrights they are concerned about, it is google bombing and running psy-ops. And now, they have proven it.

Here is the letter we received from our server people after being notified by about a hundred people via email that the signs of the times site was down:

From: "James" **** To: Arkadiusz Jadczyk

Subject: FW: Notice of Copyright Infringement

Date sent: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:55:32 -0500

Date forwarded: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:38:12 -0600

Hi, we received the following complaint from your site. Please investigate this and let us know.

James

From: Jaeschke, Jr., Wayne [mailto:WJaeschke@****.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2006 2:35 PM
To: dmca@velcom.com
Cc: mark@abovetopsecret.com, skepticoverlord@abovetopsecret.com

Subject: Notice of Copyright Infringement

Sirs:

Our firm represents AboveTopSecret.com LLP ("ATS"). ATS is the owner of numerous copyrighted articles being displayed in an infringing manner on a website hosted by your company. That website is http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/.

The infringing articles appear at:
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/Abov... ("the 757 article")

And
http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/signs/... ("the FEMA article")

The original articles appear on the Abovetopsecret.com website at:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thre...

And
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thre...

The republication of each of these articles is governed by the Creative Commons 2.5 Deed ("the CC Deed").

The 757 article may be republished in accordance with the terms and conditions specified here: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/cc.p...

The FEMA article may be republished in accordance with the terms and conditions specified here: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/cc.p...

Pursuant to the CC Deed, these articles, each of which is owned by ATS and is the subject of a registration in the United States Copyright Office 1) may not be published on sites/pages with commercial advertisements; 2) may not be used to make "derivative works"; and 3) must provide proper attribution to the author and a link to the original article.

In each instance of content owned by ATS appearing on the "signs-of-the-times.org" website, all three of these conditions of the terms of use is violated. The owners/operators of ATS have attempted to contact the operator of signs-of-the-times.org and have this situation corrected by either removing the articles or republishing them in a manner that complies with the CC Deed. The operators of the Signs-of-the-times.org websites, Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Arkadiusz Jadczyk, have failed to comply.

We must therefore request that Velcom.com, as hosts for the Signs-of-the-times.org website, remove these pages from publication.

Moreover, this letter constitutes notice to the operators of Velcom.com that ATS believes that have a right to enforce their copyright under Canadian and U.S. law and reserves the right to take further action in the U.S., Canada, or both without further notice.

As well, this letter is also to serve notice on Velcom.com that the owners of ATS have rescinded all rights to the operators of signs-of-the-times.org under the CC Deed, in view of their continued non-compliance with the terms and conditions of use of original, copyright content appears on the abovetopsecret.com website.

Please contact me at **** if you have any questions with regard to this matter. Otherwise, we look forward to the prompt and amicable resolution of this matter.

Regards,

Wayne Jaeschke

Wayne C. Jaeschke, Jr. Morrison & Foerster LLP
********************
McLean, VA 22102
phone: ****
fax: ****
wjaeschke@****.com

=========================================

To ensure compliance with requirements imposed by the IRS, Morrison & Foerster LLP informs you that, if any advice concerning one or more U.S. Federal tax issues is contained in this communication (including any attachments), such advice is not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of (i) avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code or (ii) promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any transaction or matter addressed herein.

For information about this legend, go to http://www.mofo.com/Circular230.html

This message contains information which may be confidential and privileged. Unless you are the addressee (or authorized to receive for the addressee), you may not use, copy or disclose to anyone the message or any information contained in the message. If you have received the message in error, please advise the sender by reply e-mail @mofo.com, and delete the message.
----------------------------

Now folks, come on, how many websites that were just started by an ordinary guy who took on a couple of "ordinary" partners, and is just a hobby and sharing on the internet, are able to afford a copyright attorney in McLean Virginia???

This action also is highly suggestive of the idea that the Pentagon Issue is a LOT more sensitive than anyone has thus far suspected! Do take note of THAT!

I hope that everyone who reads this will spread this information far and wide because these people are EVIL Bush supporters, Cyber Nazi Brown Shirts.

See the blog posts:
Is the Above Top Secret Forum COINTELPRO?
COINTELPRO Updates: Above Top Secret Forum -- this post is most pertinent to the current Simon Grey issue.
Abovetopsecret.com COINTELPRO Update
AboveTopSecret.com COINTELPRO Update 2
More Inside Scoops on Abovetopsecret.com!
The Spider and The Fly: SkepticOverlord and COINTELPRO
Abovetopsecret: Ethics and Google Bombs

See also forum threads on abovetopsecret.com and project SERPO:
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/foru...
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/foru...

Our research team is out there digging up info. This is back already:

Did a search on their lawyer, Wayne Jaeschke. Here is the official bio from his law firm's site (www.mofo.com!):

Mr. Jaeschke is a patent attorney in Morrison & Foerster LLP's Intellectual Property group. Wayne has been admitted to practice before the USPTO since 1994 and has substantial experience preparing and prosecuting patent applications in many fields, including: computer software, surface and polymer, electromechanical and optical devices, and pharmaceuticals. Wayne has also successfully handled internet domain name litigation and dispute resolution; copyright infringement litigation, inter partes reexamination, novelty, infringement and validity opinions for all technical disciplines; patent licensing, collaborative research agreements with major U.S. universities, and related intellectual property matters.

Prior to joining Morrison & Foerster, Mr. Jaeschke worked for Allied- Signal's water treatment polymer group where he assisted clients in the areas of papermaking, mining, oil refining, and municipal water treatment. After Allied Signal, Mr. Jaeschke worked for Betz' Laboratories paper chemicals group where he was a process specialist in the field of wet-end paper chemistry, recycled fiber usage and overall papermaking performance enhancement through the use of specialty chemical technology.

Mr. Jaeschke holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, received the degree of Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the American University's Washington College of Law and is registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

His law firm, Morrison & Foerster (hence the mofo) has this about the firm. Sounds like a high-powered and expensive one:

Morrison & Foerster maintains one of the largest intellectual property practices in the world, with more than 300 lawyers providing a full range of services, including counseling, prosecution, litigation, ­­­dispute resolution and licensing transactions in patent, trademark, and copyright matters.

The firm's practice has been consistently ranked by independent observers as one of the top intellectual property practices in the country. In 2003, the firm was short-listed for the USA Intellectual Property Law Firm of the Year Award by Chambers & Partners in London. In Managing IP's latest rankings of the top law firms in this field, Morrison & Foerster was one of only a small number of full-service firms (as opposed to IP boutiques) included in the Top 25 based on volume of U.S. contentious and non-contentious matters.

Morrison & Foerster's IP practice serves clients in a wide range of industries, including biotechnology, medical devices and healthcare; electronics, software, telecommunications, Internet and semiconductors; chemistry, chemical engineering and materials science; and media and entertainment. The firm's attorneys, including partners Tom Ciotti, Kate Murashige and Gladys Monroy, have played a significant role in the creation and protection of many of the landmark patent portfolios in the information technology and life science industries.

And this, regarding the complaint:

"... derivative works"; and 3) must provide proper attribution to the author and a link to the original article."

Frozen fish is not technically a derivative work. A derivative use of the original would be if you made a movie using the article as a script, or if you translated the original article into another language. Although this is somewhat of a gray area: http://www.chillingeffects.org/derivative/

"In short, a derivative work is a whole work based on one or more other whole works"

Criticism is protected under copyright law: http://www.chillingeffects.org/fanfic/no...

"The most significant factor in this analysis is the fourth, effect on the market. If a copier's use supplants demand for the original work, then it will be very difficult for him or her to claim fair use. On the other hand, if the use does not compete with the original, for example because it is a parody, criticism, or news report, it is more likely to be permitted as "fair use.""

So, it appears that ATS is claiming that Frozen Fish will supplant demand for the original article.

To decide whether a use is "fair use" or not, courts consider:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit education purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and,

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. 17 U.S.C. 107(1-4)

Number one in the above list is why ATS has been harping on the links to book sales.

Joe Quinn, author of the critique of the abovetopsecret.com article, has sent the following:

The "derivative work" claim is BS, pure and simple. I did not "alter, transform, or build upon" the ATS piece, so it is not a derivative work. Commercial use would be if they were some charge for people to access the work - there is none. The use of the ATS piece was criticism, therefore it was not competing with the original work.

Notice that in the lawyer's email, he does not make reference to any law, Why? Because there is no legal infringement. Of course, all of this is academic since the server folks are not in the business of defending their clients, they will bow down to the mighty dollar, or the threat of having to spend some, every time. So psychopathic manipulative tactics win the day, as usual. I think a lawyer joke is in order.

The devil visited a lawyer's office and made him an offer. "I can arrange some things for you, " the devil said. "I'll increase your income five-fold. Your partners will love you; your clients will respect you; you'll have four months of vacation each year and live to be a hundred. All I require in return is that your wife's soul, your children's souls, and their children's souls rot in hell for eternity."
The lawyer thought for a moment.
"What's the catch?" he asked.

The best we can do is use this episode to further expose the abovetopsecret.com crowd for what they are: the Internet equivalent of the national Enquirer: disinfo, psy-ops and just plain trash.

**************

Talk about opening up a can 'a worms...

Stan

[Edited to include relevant links, delete broken links, and for clarity. Kat]