Nobody

Irena Sendler - A Great Woman!! (Life In A Jar)

2011-07-28T02:38:00.000-07:00

The Holocaust - the systematic annihilation of six million Jews - is a history of enduring horror and sorrow. The charred skeletons, the diabolic experiments, the death camps, the mass graves, the smoke from the chimneys ... In 1933 nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed by the Nazis. 1.5 million children were murdered. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of handicapped children.

Yet there were acts of courage and human decency during the Holocaust - stories to bear witness to goodness, love and compassion. This is the story of an incredible woman and her amazing gift to mankind. Irena Sendler. An unfamiliar name to most people, but this remarkable woman defied the Nazis and saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto. As a health worker, she sneaked the children out between 1942 and 1943 to safe hiding places and found non-Jewish families to adopt them.

For many years Irena Sendler - white-haired, gentle and courageous - was living a modest existence in her Warsaw apartment. This unsung heroine passed away on Monday May 12th, 2008.

Her achievement went largely unnoticed for many years. Then the story was uncovered by four young students at Uniontown High School, in Kansas, who were the winners of the 2000 Kansas state National History Day competition by writing a play Life in a Jar about the heroic actions of Irena Sendler. The girls - Elizabeth Cambers, Megan Stewart, Sabrina Coons and Janice Underwood - have since gained international recognition, along with their teacher, Norman Conard. The presentation, seen in many venues in the United States and popularized by National Public Radio, C-SPAN and CBS, has brought Irena Sendlers story to a wider public. The students continue their prize-winning dramatic presentation Life in a Jar.

Irena Sendler

Irena Sendler was born in 1910 in Otwock, a town some 15 miles southeast of Warsaw. She was greatly influenced by her father who was one of the first Polish Socialists. As a doctor his patients were mostly poor Jews. In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and the brutality of the Nazis accelerated with murder, violence and terror. At the time, Irena was a Senior Administrator in the Warsaw Social Welfare Department, which operated the canteens in every district of the city. Previously, the canteens provided meals, financial aid, and other services for orphans, the elderly, the poor and the destitute. Now, through Irena, the canteens also provided clothing, medicine and money for the Jews. They were registered under fictitious Christian names, and to prevent inspections, the Jewish families were reported as being afflicted with such highly infectious diseases as typhus and tuberculosis.

But in 1942, the Nazis herded hundreds of thousands of Jews into a 16-block area that came to be known as the Warsaw Ghetto. The Ghetto was sealed and the Jewish families ended up behind its walls, only to await certain death. Irena Sendler was so appalled by the conditions that she joined Zegota, the Council for Aid to Jews, organized by the Polish underground resistance movement, as one of its first recruits and directed the efforts to rescue Jewish children.

The Warsaw Ghetto

To be able to enter the Ghetto legally, Irena managed to be issued a pass from Warsaws Epidemic Control Department and she visited the Ghetto daily, reestablished contacts and brought food, medicines and clothing. But 5,000 people were dying a month from starvation and disease in the Ghetto, and she decided to help the Jewish children to get out. For Irena Sendler, a young mother herself, persuading parents to part with their children was in itself a horrendous task. Finding families willing to shelter the children, and thereby willing to risk their life if the Nazis ever found out, was also not easy.

Irena Sendler, who wore a star armband as a sign of her solidarity to Jews, began smuggling children out in an ambulance. She recruited at least one person from each of the ten centers of the Social Welfare Department. With their help, she issued hundreds of false documents with forged signatures. Irena Sendler successfully smuggled almost 2,500 Jewish children to safety and gave them temporary new identities.

Some children were taken out in gunnysacks or body bags. Some were buried inside loads of goods. A mechanic took a baby out in his toolbox. Some kids were carried out in potato sacks, others were placed in coffins, some entered a church in the Ghetto which had two entrances. One entrance opened into the Ghetto, the other opened into the Aryan side of Warsaw. They entered the church as Jews and exited as Christians. "`Can you guarantee they will live?'" Irena later recalled the distraught parents asking. But she could only guarantee they would die if they stayed. "In my dreams," she said, "I still hear the cries when they left their parents."

Irena Sendler accomplished her incredible deeds with the active assistance of the church. "I sent most of the children to religious establishments," she recalled. "I knew I could count on the Sisters." Irena also had a remarkable record of cooperation when placing the youngsters: "No one ever refused to take a child from me," she said. The children were given false identities and placed in homes, orphanages and convents. Irena Sendler carefully noted, in coded form, the childrens original names and their new identities. She kept the only record of their true identities in jars buried beneath an apple tree in a neighbor's back yard, across the street from German barracks, hoping she could someday dig up the jars, locate the children and inform them of their past.

In all, the jars contained the names of 2,500 children ...

Nazi Genocide

But the Nazis became aware of Irena's activities, and on October 20, 1943 she was arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo, who broke her feet and legs. Pawiak Prison, but no one could break her spirit. Though she was the only one who knew the names and addresses of the families sheltering the Jewish children, she withstood the torture, that crippled her for life, refusing to betray either her associates or any of the Jewish children in hiding. Sentenced to death, Irena was saved at the last minute when Zegota members bribed one of the Gestapo agents to halt the execution. She escaped from prison but for the rest of the war she was pursued by the Nazis.

After the war she dug up the jars and used the notes to track down the 2,500 children she placed with adoptive families and to reunite them with relatives scattered across Europe. But most lost their families during the Holocaust in Nazi death camps. The children had known her only by her code name Jolanta. But years later, after she was honored for her wartime work, her picture appeared in a newspaper. "A man, a painter, telephoned me," said Sendler, "`I remember your face,' he said. `It was you who took me out of the ghetto.' I had many calls like that!"

The Holocaust

Irena Sendler did not think of herself as a hero. She claimed no credit for her actions. "I could have done more," she said. "This regret will follow me to my death." She has been honored by international Jewish organizations - in 1965 she accorded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem organization in Jerusalem and in 1991 she was made an honorary citizen of Israel. Irena Sendler was awarded Poland's highest distinction, the Order of White Eagle, in Warsaw Monday Nov. 10, 2003, and she was announced as the 2003 winner of the Jan Karski award for Valor and Courage. She has officially been designated a national hero in Poland and schools are named in her honor. Annual Irena Sendler days are celebrated throughout Europe and the United States.

In 2007, she was nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. At a special session in Poland's upper house of Parliament, President Lech Kaczynski announced the unanimous resolution to honor Irena Sendler for rescuing "the most defenseless victims of the Nazi ideology: the Jewish children." He referred to her as a "great heroine who can be justly named for the Nobel Peace Prize. She deserves great respect from our whole nation."

During the ceremony Elzbieta Ficowska, who was just six months old when she was saved by Irena Sendler, read out a letter on her behalf: “Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory,” Irena Sendler said in the letter, “Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its spectre still hangs over the world and doesn’t allow us to forget.”

Irena Sendler

This lovely, courageous woman was one of the most dedicated and active workers in aiding Jews during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Her courage enabled not only the survival of 2,500 Jewish children but also of the generations of their descendants.

The Nobel Prize recipient, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, has dedicated his life to ensuring that none of us forget what happened to the Jews. He wrote:

"In those times there was darkness everywhere. In heaven and on earth, all the gates of compassion seemed to have been closed. The killer killed and the Jews died and the outside world adopted an attitude either of complicity or of indifference. Only a few had the courage to care ..."

- Louis Bülow

Link: www.auschwitz.dk/sendler.htm

Final Letter: Facing Death

2011-07-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

Last letter from death row: Facing death

MONDAY, JULY 11, 2011

Yong Vui Kong

Sabahan Yong Vui Kong, 23, is on death row in Singapore
for drug trafficking. Malaysiakini is publishing Yong's final
letters to Yetian, a member of the Save Vui Kong Campaign,
as he faces death.

"Before I begin, I would like to thank everyone for reading
this 12th letter. Time passes so quickly that this will be
my last letter.

I hope that when you finished reading this letter, despite
whatever that is going to happen to me, you will continue
to support 'We Believe in Second Chances' campaign.

For my final letter, I would like to write about how I feel
about facing death.

Firstly, I feel that the existence of the death penalty is not for the sake of retribution,
but rather a way to allow the offender to understand, and fully confront, the mistake
he has committed.

Take me as example, I am actually grateful that I was caught because
it allowed me to understand the true meaning and purpose of life, and it
has allowed me to find strength within myself. I remembered I once
mentioned about the "me" before I was caught - a person who has never
truly lived before.

A few days ago, my lawyer, M Ravi, came to visit me. He told me that
he would send my final appeal to the Singapore's president in a few days.
That will be my last chance.

On the night before the execution is carried out, many death-row inmates
will have no opportunity to say goodbye to their families. For most of them,
they are in no mood to think of anything else other than feeling hurt and
pain before their final sentence.

For most of these death-row inmates, the moment they are brought out of
their cell, they will lose control their emotions and they will start to
break down. No amount of counselling will be able to pacify them because
once they step out of their cell, they know there is no coming back and they
will be gone forever.

But those who feel the most pain are their families. I do not dare to imagine
how they would feel as they wait outside to collect the cold and lifeless body
of their love ones.

If tomorrow is my last night

For me, if tomorrow is my last night, I too will have no choice. But I am ready
to face the fact. After all, I was the one who made a mistake, and I have repented.

Would I be frightened? I really don't know. But I think I may not be
because I am beginning to be familiar with how it feels to face death - don't
forget that in this short 4 years, I have brushed death many times.

Indeed, I have "died" a few times before. In 2007, when I was caught, and
discovering Buddhism has allowed me to be "reborned". In 2009, when I was
sentenced to death, and my lawyer helped me to appeal against my sentence.

I will not request for my last dinner to be anything sumptuous. I think I will
follow my regular routine of waking up in the morning to chant my Buddhist
scripts and meditate, followed by my vegetarian breakfast until night falls, put
on the best clothes which my sister has bought for me, say goodbye to the
rest of the inmates, and finally kowtow to the Goddess to show my appreciation
and thanks.

But I cannot truly express my feelings as I really don't know how I will feel
as I walk towards the noose. I guess no one will really know.

My greatest fortune

I have been through stages where I felt lost, ignorant and was suffering but
because of my practice of Buddhism, it has allowed me to free myself.

I am also grateful that many members of public are willing to forgive me. Being
able to live until today is my greatest fortune.

I think my family has already accepted me for what I did, and also accepted
whatever outcome it may be. They take comfort in the fact that I have turned
over a new leaf, and that I have continued reading and practicing Buddhism.

My ordeal has also improved the relationship among those in my family, especially
my siblings. But I still worry sometimes that my mother will come to know that
I am no longer around.

I would like to thank all of you once again. I will not be able to share my story without
your help. I shall pray for you, and wish you good health and happiness.

Goodbye.

July 10, 2011

YONG VUI KONG, a Sabahan, was sentenced in November 2009 to death for drug trafficking. He was 19.
On April 4, Yong lost his final appeal against a mandatory death sentence. He will be executed soon
unless he is granted clemency by Singapore's president.

Contemplating life in the shadow of death

2011-07-10T04:19:00.000-07:00

Contemplating life in the shadow of death
Apr 28, 11 9:05am

'We hope your message will reach the hearts of those who want punitive measures but do not know what it means.'

Letter from death row: Me and my life

Flabbergasted: We have had mandatory sentencing for drug trafficking in Singapore and Malaysia for decades. It is academic to debate how it has reduced what might otherwise have been a much larger problem with drug abuse or the sorry tales of individuals caught. Instead, very useful study could be made of the individual profile and role in the criminal organisation of those who are caught and hanged.

But I do not see public disclosure that these studies are undertaken in determining policy effectiveness. The true test of whether our drug laws are working is whether they are netting the individuals behind the mules and the real criminal organisations in the background. If they have not, then our deterrent effort is not well-directed, because the real criminals will not be deterred by the demise of their mules.

If we understand this problem, it will not weaken the position of the authorities if judiciary is allowed flexibility in sentencing, instead of mandatory death.

I am only a little less sorry for judges who preside over cases such as this, even if this issue does not trouble them. As a person, as an individual, all is sublimated. The only law is the letter of the law, when that is all the discretionary authority you are allowed. Judges in these cases can immerse themselves in the honourability of duty done, or the detachment of a lack of choice in sentencing.

However you look at it, the compassion and discretion which should complement the writ of law is absent. How many now have accepted atrocities have been committed by Germans and many other nations in the same name, of performing one's duty, or following orders.

Of course, the comparison is not relevant, but the principle is. The judiciary must be allowed some degree of discretion in sentencing, otherwise, without compassion, justice can become separated from law and we might as well install an encyclopaedic legal robot in court.

Baronhawk: Nothing like the taste of death to bring the tales of life to fore the gory jolly hangman's truth that seeks us all by far but to be plucked young way before time. Tis' a cruel injustice brought upon by crueler jest the poverty adled livelihood that plague our youth Whither, whether, whatever though the fact is drugs do hurt.

Petestop: Not that I agree that a person's life is for another human to take. However, I wonder, if it is not for the death sentence, would this youngster's life be turned around? In our country, the mandatory death sentence for drug trafficking is well-publicised, as well as in Singapore. In fact, if you take the plane to Singapore, they will broadcast the announcement about the mandatory death sentence.

Therefore, the continued ignorance or the choice to ignore this is just utter stupidity, and people pay dearly for it with their life. I see at airports like in San Francisco, they have a bin for you to dispose of drugs before you pass immigration and subject to the laws of that country. A lot more education towards preventing people facing this mandatory sentence still needs to be done.

Sshhh: Drug trafficking is worst than a single murder case. It helps to kill millions human being. What will happen if all drug traffickers wrote such letters? Should all of them be pardon for the crime? Then drug dealers will move freely to sell drugs to our kids. This is a lesson for all of us to teach our children not to get involved with crime.

Thuey: Too bad that only when facing the end, one turns to religion in hope for salvation. He should have realised that life is precious not only to oneself, but to everyone. One can see the indirect killings of lives by drug trafficking.

The lives that are sacrificed, from policemen, soldiers, to the normal civilians who give their lives to save others by fighting crimes, protecting the innocent or the weak - they forfeit their lives with no regrets and we hold them in the highest honour and respect. Life is no less precious to them than everyone else.

If the death penalty is not workable solution for criminals, I see it as an insult to the heroes who have given their lives. If one is truly sorry, be brave and face the death like the fallen heroes, for your death will help others to live - by reminding other criminals to change and repent before it is too late. Sacrifice is a virtue too.

We can live: Vui Kong, the candles are burning strongly in Singapore and Malaysia. Even in Malaysia, the death penalty is still in force and we hope your message will reach the hearts of those who want punitive measures but do not know what it means.

Yes, crime does not pay, but punishment hardly reforms as well. There's always going to be drug trafficking in Malaysia and Singapore and there's always people dupe into drug trafficking. Will a statistic like Yong Vui Kong ever make a difference in deterring drug trafficking or will it gain scrutiny from NGOs and the international community?

Only governments will know. The only message here I see is to appease the proponents of capital punishment and politicians who are seen as tough on crime. But are they appeased?

MSGboy: Let's be realistic - there is no way the Singapore president will order clemency as it will set a dangerous precedence for others. Better late than never to realise one's mistakes in life, but such is life that punishment needs to be bestowed on you. Make the most of your remaining time.

Let the world know through your letters your thoughts and that great strength is needed to overcome any trials and tribulations that is thrown to you. Keep your head held high and God be with you.

Bruce: Yong's letter is beautiful and touching. I hope Singapore can give a young man who made a slip a second chance, give him life imprisonment. This person can turn out to be an excellent ambassador to turn youth away from drugs in our hate-filled world. He could be going around preaching love around the world, if allowed to live. I hope he is spared. Twenty-years in prison would be good enough.

One Hand Cover the Sky: It is indeed very sad to read about Vui Kong's predicament. As a born-again Buddhist, he seems to accept that all this is due to his bad karma in this life. He cannot escape from his own karma. I pray that his karma will change for the better and hope for a miracle to happen.

But Vui Kong, whatever the outcome of your appeals, just accept it calmly in your heart. As the Chinese saying goes, "Eighteen years later, you be a good man again."

Anonymous_400d: Vui Kong, don't give up. We all pray for the Singapore president's clemency to be granted to you. Everyone makes mistakes in their lives without exception - some big, some small.

No matter how big the mistake is, I believe no one has the right to take away the life of another except God almighty. Our law does not even allow euthanasia or suicide when the person decides he does not want to live on anymore.

In cases of serious offences like drug trafficking, murder, etc, where the law provides for mandatory death sentence, I suggest instead, they should be sentenced to life imprisonment and given a second chance in life.

Loyal Malaysian: Your letter come across as composed and calm. I supposed that's attitude to take - the matter of clemency is out of your ability to influence. I will pray that the President of Singapore shall grant you clemency - perhaps commute it to life imprisonment.

You have indicated your willingness to stay in prison and continue some dhamma work there. Perhaps that will be option agreeable to the Singapore authorities as it means you will still be paying penance for the mistake you made.

Let Vui Kong live, he deserves a second chance

2011-07-10T04:16:00.000-07:00

Let Vui Kong live, he deserves a second chance
Apr 23, 11 8:40am

'It is sad that young drug mules are the ones hanged, when not even one of those drug lords has ever been caught.'

A letter from death row

Zz2XX: Prison is all about reform and I don't how executing someone will reform anyone. Yong Vui Kong, and before him Van Tuong Nguyen (hanged in 2005), have repented for what they have done.

Sadly Vui Kong will be hanged even though he has reformed. We are now living in 2011 and not 1511, I cannot understand why the death sentence is still being used. Throughout human history has the death sentence solve/reduce any crime?

Vui Kong was a teenager when he committed his offence so he truly deserve to be given a chance to live. Let him spend his life behind bars for what he did.

It is sad that young drug mules are the ones hanged, but not even one of those drug lords who supply them with the drug to traffic has ever been caught and hanged.

DontPlayGod: I know the law says everyone must pay for his crime, but we must also take into account Yong's age and his upbringing, which was an upbringing devoid of parental and societal guidance as he had left home at a young age.

Mr Singapore President, he was young and had no guidance and no love. He should be given another chance as he has truly repented.

Soul: I believe everything happens for a reason. Drug trafficking is wrong and anyone caught deserved to be punished as it destroys lives. But if the person has repent and has chosen an enlightened way of life, what good will it do by condemning him to death? What are we trying to prove here?

If releasing Yong is out of question, hopefully a life sentence of doing community service can be taken into consideration. It will give him the opportunity to guide others who has chosen the wrong path. There are so many people out there who are lost and misguided. I guess that is what is meant to be...

K Raveendran Nair: At the age of 19, Yong definitely knew nothing about the law. While he is facing the death row, his handler is enjoying his life of luxury derived from drug money. He deserve the second chance and people shall rise to say no to death penalty.

Myop101: As much as we want to free this young man who have repented, one must not forget that drug abuse brought death to many people. It is drug mules like Yong Vui Kong that keep the trade going. Unlike Yong who have an avenue to share his story, many drug addicts out there died without having their stories told.

We know he is young and reckless (aren't we all young once) but he will not be the last. The question we should ask ourselves is, when do we let go and treat a person as an adult and be responsible for his actions?

The penalty is harsh but how do the state or the community explain to the parents, siblings, spouses, children, relatives and friends when their loved ones die from drug abuse? It is not a perfect deterrent tool but mandatory death sentence do strike fear in the hearts of many.

I feel really sad when those like Yong has to die for their crimes but there is only so much we can say or do if we look at the other untold stories.

Docs: Sad. Especially when you think that lesser humans have committed hideous crimes, slip through the grasps of the justice system but here we have a person that has the full weight of the justice system placed on him for committing a crime of lesser value.

But then again, life was not meant to be fair. I don't condone the death sentence as my personal belief is that the "no man has the right to take the life of another". For example, if a person murders another person intentionally, he is sentenced to death by the state as punishment for taking one's life.

So who is going to judge the state for taking a life when Yong has not "killed" another?

Loyal Malaysian: The Singapore and Malaysian drug laws are based on the use of power of fear to deter other potential drug pushers. That Yong has lost his final appeal is not a surprise. Let's hope he will be granted clemency.

But it is heart-warming to read the changes in him and how he has internalised the Buddhist teachings he has been exposed to. Yes, we have man-made laws but there are also universal laws that all of us are subject to, whether we believe in them or not.

Ong Guan Sin: I fought back my tears reading this on a Good Friday weekend in Singapore. I imagine Vui Kong himself is not aware that he is in the process of saving more lives by highlighting the very cruelty of death penalty.

We are part of the society which think it is okay to take away life of those who committed to serious crimes, when in this case it vividly highlights that we are killing the vulnerable who are exploited by shadowy masterminds. A death for a death has no place in any modern society. Stop the killing.

Changeagent: Mr Singapore President, please consider the fact that this young man was only 19 when he committed the crime. But by all accounts, he is now wiser and would be very unlikely to re-offend. I am sure the prison wardens would vouch for his changed and reformed character.

Before you say, 'rules are rules', understand that rules are man-made and can always be reversed so long as there is genuine regret and true contrition. As Kuchikoo said, don't play God, lest you be judged yourself.

GO4CHANGE: Death sentence is not cruel when we have put ourselves in the shoes of the victims of the perpetrators. It is just a necessary evil to prevent human evil behaviour. This should serve as a good warning to watch your children from the day they were born until you breathe your last.

Maintain strong ties within the family to keep communication lines open and prevent agony stories like this from happening. May God bless Vui kong for his repented life.

Don'tLeaveName: I am lost of words and have only tears for VK (Vui Kong). To Mr President, please give VK a second chance. He is a role model to other inmates there and he is an asset by guiding other inmates to take the right path. To VK, God is with you all the way. We pray for you.

Geronimo: As adults, we too have many failings in our lives. What's more if you are 19 when you are not wise to the world as yet. At 19, we are subject to peer pressure and when you are caught in a "too old to be young and too young to be old" time space, it puts us in a confused state.

Parents can only do that much bringing up a child, but when that child reaches 19, how much more can the parents control and discipline him? So for this very young man, there was a slip-up in his life, but does it mean he has to pay with his life? It is fine that a law is meant to be followed to the "t", but what about compassion?

If the person is above 21 (adulthood that is), I don't think many people bothered. Perhaps the Singapore government should reconsider that since he was caught with the pending act of destroying lives, why not sentence him to community service for a period of time to re-build the lives of some unfortunates?

Such rehabilitation would be a much better option than the hangman's noose.

Raveen: By embracing forgiveness, you embrace peace, hope, gratitude and joy. Forgiveness doesn't mean that you deny the other person's responsibility for hurting you, and it doesn't minimise or justify the wrong.

You can forgive the person without excusing the act. Forgiveness brings a kind of peace that helps you go on with life. Death penalty only removes forgiveness from our soul.

Mc Farland: I felt so sorry for this young man. I can't help my tears from flowing as I can relate to so many young people who are also misguided these days. Just look at the school gangsterism that is happening around us.

This young man should be given a second chance. He has learnt his lesson well and should do very well to educate other young people. Let's pray for forgiveness all round.

Bhajnik Singh: I do not know what caused this young man to follow the path he had taken but whatever the reason, it is wrong to have done what he did. The law of the land, however harsh, must be respected.

Many offenders repent and search for enlightenment in the confines of their cells. I believe from what I read, he has. To those who have the power to save his life I ask you, "What good will come from his execution as opposed to what good he will do to contribute and rehabilitate the lost souls in your prisons". To forgive is divine.

MyMsia: Dear Mr President, the society at large should share the guilt for what he did. I beg you, Mr President, to show mercy for this child.

Letter 11: Pay It Forward

2011-07-10T04:12:00.000-07:00

Letter from death row: Pay it forward
Yong Vui Kong
Jul 4, 11
10:42am

This morning my brother brought the Buddhist books and amulets that Ely sent from America. I was elated.

Ely is, like me, someone who once had been rebellious. She was confused too and didn't know what her goals in life were, and she almost lost her life because of drugs.

But today Ely is a very positive girl. She said my story changed her outlook on life. She now actively participates in counselling and humanitarian programmes, and hopes to help other lost sheep like herself.

This is a letter she wrote to me, and I was very touched by it:

"You have given me lots of thing in the little time I've known you, but one thing you've given me that I never expected, and not many can do, is Life.

I don't think I ever had one till I heard of you. I only hope I can help get you yours back in return because nothing else is as valuable as your gift to me. I thank you for all that you did.

You have given me guidance and I will use it well and live it through till my very end. You opened my eyes, mind and heart and shown me what living truly is and that life is worth living.

You are my guide and I will pay it forward in your name for eternity. You will not go unheard. Indeed, I would take your place in a heart beat.

Your name is, and will always be, worth something to me. I will not let you down.

Thank you, Vui Kong. I love you.

Sincerely, Ely

I am very grateful and also very happy that my story can change others.

I am glad that I came to know Buddha and my life has changed greatly since then. I never imagined I could change Ely too. And this kind of fated mutual benefit is one of the most precious blessings between people.

From the time I was at Singapore's Queenstown Remand till now, my knowledge has grown. Apart from the opportunities to meditate in my cell, sharing views and feelings with my fellow inmates and wardens are also an important experience for me. We often talk about our views on life and Buddhism.

I often counsel my fellow inmates, the reason we don't have the physical freedom today is due to our choices, decisions, destiny and actions in the past, and now we are facing our self-inflicted fate.

To be happy is a choice

I often tell them to cherish the moment. To be happy is a choice that they can make. Take care of yourself, and also choose to be happy and do good. I also encourage everyone to study Buddhism and study the most difficult philosophies.

Buddha is really wise, he understands and knows all.

If a person's mind and soul does not have something real to rely on, he will have no hope in his present, future and next life, and will not be able to be at peace. Although I am ignorant in many things, I rely on Buddha's teachings and I do not feel that there is any problem that cannot be solved.

Wisdom, compassion, morals and culture do not discriminate between race and age; as long as you study hard, you will get results. If you have a good view and principle in life, after a long time it will develop into your own concept, and with a perfect concept, your future will be very bright.

Lastly, I would like to share with you my favourite Buddhist hymn from 'Three Life Karma'.

"If you would like to know what happened in your past life, then look at what are your sufferings are in this present life.

"If you would like to know what are your fate will be in your future life, then look at what you have done in the present life."

YONG VUI KONG, a Sabahan, was sentenced in November 2009 to death for drug trafficking. He was 19. On April 4, Yong lost his final appeal against a mandatory death sentence. He will be executed in three months unless he is granted clemency by Singapore's president.

Letter 10: Drugs And The Law

2011-07-10T04:11:00.000-07:00

Letter from death row: Drugs and the law
Yong Vui Kong
Jun 23, 11
10:16am

Yetian, you once asked me to write about drugs and the death penalty, but I said that I did not have the right to discuss such an issue because I myself have been sentenced to death because of a drug offence. Also, I had not really thought deeply enough about this issue.

Recently, you have asked me to write on the matter again.

Everyone here in prison has been sentenced to death. Most of them are on death row for drug offences. Some of the inmates are old, but most are young. They have all been through their trials and lost their appeals. Some are hoping for clemency from the Singapore's president, others are just waiting for their "time" to come. They all have their own stories to tell.

My brother, Yun Leong, knows another inmate - his name is Chun Yin. I believe the newspapers have reported his case before. Every Monday (family visit day), Yun Leong sees Chun Yin's father at the prison. Once, outside the prison, Chun Yin's father even asked Yun Leong to sign a petition to save Chun Yin's life.

My lawyer, M Ravi, also mentioned his case to me before. His story is like this: after Chun Ying's parents divorced, Chun Yin stayed with his father and helped him run stalls selling clothes and VCDs in the morning and at night markets in the evening.

He got to know a regular customer. This customer convinced him to go overseas and bring gold bars into Singapore. All the arrangements were made by this customer. But it turned out that hidden in the bag were not gold bars, but drugs. Chun Yin did not know that drugs were hidden in the bag until the police ripped open the lining of the bag.

He told the court everything, including the identity of the customer and his phone numbers. But the judge did not believe him. My lawyer told me that the police had not done their best to trace this other man, and the judge did not think that it was important.

Naive and ignorant kid

I am not a lawyer, but I cannot understand why they didn't look for this man. Often it is because of people like him that we are in such a situation. If this man was found, wouldn't we be able to find out if Chun Yin was telling the truth or not? Chun Yin is currently locked inside here, how can he find the truth himself?

I am beginning to wonder whether there are people who have been wronged. Are all the sentences really fair? If a person has been wronged and hanged, isn't it extremely tragic?

I have mentioned my next door inmate in one of my earlier letters. He was hanged. Before he died, we talked about a lot of things. He never mentioned his case, but I feel that he was a very young, naive and ignorant kid. He could not face the fact that he was going to die.

That morning, he was dragged out of his cell at 3am. His cries of fear made my heart ache. I kept chanting Buddhist verses, hoping that his suffering would end.

After that, I told the prison warden that even though I am guilty, so is the person who was responsible in making the arrangements for me to carry drugs. I wanted to stop him from harming more people, so I told the police who this person was.

I don't know what happened next. I heard from my lawyer that he had been detained, but there was no evidence, so he was not charged.

Guilt is presumed

There is still one more thing that I must talk about. About two months ago, there was another inmate. He was older. His appeal was successful and he was released. I asked my lawyer why; isn't it very difficult to win an appeal?

The lawyer told me that the Court of Appeal's decision was like this: this person brought in many different types of drugs, and one of these was heroin. He told the court that he did not know that one of these drugs was heroin.

The court believed him and said that he really didn't know he was carrying heroin, and so he was released. The lawyer even jokingly told me, if only Chun Yin had said that he knew he was carrying drugs, just not that the drug was heroin, he might have had a chance.

My lawyer also took the opportunity to explain to me the law regarding drug offences, saying that as long as drugs are found on you, guilt is presumed. And if you are carrying more than a certain amount, you will be presumed to be trafficking.

I don't fully understand, but I think this is very important. Many people don't know about this, and when they fall on the wrong side of this law, they are sentenced to death.

I find it very strange learning about these cases. How is it that the court can believe this person but not that person; what is the standard and attitude adopted towards drug cases and the death penalty?

My lawyer has tried to explain it to me, but it is too complicated for me and I don't quite understand so I don't dare to talk about it here.

I suppose what I can say is to encourage all to go and understand the law.

YONG VUI KONG, a Sabahan, was sentenced in November 2009 to death for drug trafficking. He was 19. On April 4, Yong lost his final appeal against a mandatory death sentence. He will be executed in three months unless he is granted clemency by Singapore's president.

Letter 9: Education Is Life

2011-07-10T04:06:00.000-07:00

Letter from death row: Education is life
Jun 18, 11 10:21am

When I was in Primary 2, I had a classmate named Luo Yan. He once said something that is deeply embedded in my memory.

Young though he was, he said to me, “If you want, you should work to be the best, or you will be the worst!”

He said this because I was unable to get along with many classmates, and there were many misunderstandings among us.

At the time I was immature and misunderstood the meaning of his words. I thought he meant that “you should study to be No 1, otherwise you might as well just be the worst”.

I made the mistake of choosing the latter, thinking that since it was impossible for me to be No 1 in class, I might as well give up on my studies. That decision was my biggest mistake.

From Primary 2 until I ended in jail at 19, I never properly thought about how to live my life, and never thought about whether I should study. After coming to prison, I thought about what Luo Yan said. I grew wiser and that was why I started studying Buddhist philosophy.

An American report has pointed out that a large number of death row inmates have very low levels of education. Usually it is those who are lowly-educated who make major mistakes and thus more likely to be sentenced to death.

I was a rebellious youth who never had a proper education. Because I lacked education and knowledge, I was tricked by others into believing that smuggling drugs would not draw the death penalty, which is why I - in all my ignorance - made mistakes upon mistakes.

Although compared to others I might seem disadvantaged because I never received proper education, but I think that it is never too late to start now.

I do not want to make any more mistakes. Every day I read a lot of books, learning new things like English, and I keep meditating.

One morning I will be executed, but in case I am able to leave this prison alive, the correct outlook on life is what I need to re-start my life. If I can speak English, then I can spread the word about the harm of being involved with drugs to even more people.

How can you not care?

Of course, apart from education in school, guidance from our family is also very important. The future of a child is created by the people at home. If you are too busy at work or too caught up in your life, the chances of your child turning bad is high.

For me, it was because my relatives were all busy and did not have time for me, so I became more and more rebellious.

There is another story that I would like to share.

In ancient India, a death row inmate was suddenly told before his execution that if he could carry a full bowl of water and walk one circle around the palace compound without spilling a single drop, the king would pardon him. The inmate agreed to take up the challenge.

As the news spread, many people gathered around the palace to watch the feat. The path around the palace was uneven, and the inmate had to go up and down many steps. The people shouted, “You'll drop it in three steps! Turn the corner, and the water will spill!”

But the inmate seemed not to hear them, he stared at the bowl of water and walked and walked before returning to his original spot. He had not spilled a single drop.

The crowd was happy, so was the king. He asked the inmate, “How did you manage not to spill a single drop?”

The inmate answered, “I was not carrying water, I was carrying my life!”

I see my education in prison today as a bowl of water. If a person gives up on learning, then he has given up on life. Life is an education, and education is life - these two are closely intertwined. How can you not care?

YONG VUI KONG, a Sabahan, was sentenced in November 2009 to death for drug trafficking. He was 19. On April 4, Yong lost his final appeal against a mandatory death sentence. He will be executed in three months unless he is granted clemency by Singapore's president.

Letter 8: I Like Mondays

2011-07-10T04:04:00.000-07:00

Letter from death row: I like Mondays
Jun 10, 11 10:00am

Here is a story I've heard.

There was a young man who was sentenced to jail. For a long time, his family did not visit him. Whenever he saw the families of other inmates who brought food for their love ones, he felt bitter about his parents.

One day, the prison warden told him that someone had come to see him. When he went to the visitors room, he saw his mother - dirty, shoes broken, and her feet full of blisters. With her was an urn filled with ashes.

You see, this young man came from a poor family. His father was a farmer and their home many thousand miles from the prison. In order to save enough money to come to see him, his father worked very hard - so hard that he died as a result.

His father's last wish was to see his son. His mother eventually decided to walk all the way to the prison. And she brought along his father's ashes.

Here, in my prison, Monday is family visit day for death-row inmates.

My family also lives far away from here - in Sabah. Luckily, I have two brothers who work at a hotel in Singapore. Every Monday, they apply for leave so that they can visit me.

I heard from my brother that over the past few years, he often see another visitor - an old woman. She is slow in gait and her hair almost white. She comes to visit someone in prison, perhaps her son.

And my lawyer also told me of a death-row inmate's father, who wakes up at 3am every Monday to ride his motorbike across the Causeway so that he can see his son at dawn.

Thus, we are lucky death-row inmates.

Our last wish?

In fact, when we were consigned to the death row, what really was our wish? Allow me, as a death-row inmate, to tell you.

Our wish is to have the support from our family. This, I have. During the many days when I spend in prison, I have the company of both my brothers - Yun Leong and Yun Zhong. Because of that, our relationship has improved.

It is very difficult for me to express my feeling on how much I look forward to Mondays. To my family, I am very grateful. I must thus utilise my remaining days fruitfully - study hard and be a good man to repay all their gratitude.

But I know a lot of other death-row inmates do not have anyone to come and visit them, other than their lawyers. Even their lawyers only visit them once in a long period of time, especially those who are not Singaporean.

Maybe their family does not know that they are here - all locked-up and about to die. Maybe their situation is like the story of the young man I mentioned earlier. Maybe even if they are dead, their family will never know. I am greatly saddened by this.

So I am the lucky one. I know that my family has given me a lot of support, and they did not give up on me.

My sisters, relatives and friends went to the streets to get signatures from those whom they do not know to plea to the Singaporean president to grant me clemency. They did not ask that I be released from prison, but simply to spare my life so that I will not be hanged.

My younger sister is only 19 years old. She is often afraid to talk to strangers, yet she summons the courage to do it. My brother, whenever he has his break at work, would stand in Orchard Road to petition passer-bys.

I know that it is hard for them. They are often scolded. There are people who chided them, asking why they should help me. They say my brother should be ashamed of me, and that I deserved to die.

Indeed, because of me, my family has suffered. I really don't know what else to say.

Families tormented

Sometimes I think to myself, the families of the other death-row inmates are also suffering. Would it be because of this, they have given up on them to the point where they disown them. Because I am with them too, I can almost feel their pain and torture.

In the eyes of many, those of us who have been locked up must be an evil not worth mentioning. If a death-row inmate does not have the support of his family, friends and the society - couple with the fact that if he does not have a strong faith - then maybe before he is executed, he is already dead in the heart.

A lot of death-row inmates are resigned to the face that they are going to die. They lost their will to live, and their family who pray for them day and night, does not know what else to do. As a result, they slowly give up on them and treat them as if they already dead even before they are hanged.

Yes, a lot are like that.

Maybe it is my faith in the Goddess of Guan Yin, maybe it is the luck I have gathered from the good deeds I did in my previous life, or maybe like what my father said, my life is "tough", I have the opportunity to discover Buddhist teachings. This makes me strong spiritually.

Also I have a good lawyer, and most importantly, I know that there are those out there who petition for clemency for me. I know that they have forgiven me and they care for me.

Life, I have learned, is precious.

YONG VUI KONG, a Sabahan, was sentenced in November 2009 to death for drug trafficking. He was 19. On April 4, Yong lost his final appeal against a mandatory death sentence. He will be executed in three months unless he is granted clemency by Singapore's president.

Letter 7: I Made Peace With My Dad

2011-07-10T04:01:00.000-07:00

Letter from death row: I made my peace with dad

Yong Vui Kong
Jun 2, 11
9:27am

Sabahan Yong Vui Kong, 21, is on death row in Singapore for drug trafficking. Malaysiakini is publishing Yong's final letters to Yetian, a member of the Save Vui Kong Campaign, in the next few weeks as he faces death.

Entering June, some of us must be looking forward to celebrating Father's Day. Even though everyone maybe hard at work, I hope that all of us will find time to go back and visit our fathers.

In 1993, while I was still very young, my father left my mother. All of us siblings were very angry and upset because my mother was left alone to fend for herself.

We blamed dad for being so cold-hearted in abandoning our family. We harboured hate, resentment and anger in our hearts. But we were young and there was nothing we could do, but feeling bitter about my father's action.

I remember that back then we heaped all blame on my father (left). Only my eldest sister, Yoke Yin, understood, so apart from her, my father was estranged from the rest of his children. But even though we were young, we also knew that these were grown-up matters, and it was not easy for us to judge.

To me, my father's leaving was unfair to my mother, because from then on my mother had to take on the burden of supporting the family alone. She had to take care all of us, and because of that, at a young age, we siblings had to be separated.

I still remember one morning before class, my mother failed to wake me up and I overslept. Because of that, my mother got a beating from my grandfather. I hid in a corner and I was very afraid, but I really wanted to use my body to shield my mother. I cried and vowed to go out to work as soon as possible so I could take my mother away from this harsh place.

I believed that if my father had been around, my mother would not have been beaten. But this was so long ago, and things have changed - studying and learning Buddhist philosophy has enabled me not to be angry with my father and grandfather.

Parents are very important. Everyone needs their parents, who are bound to us by blood.

I don't know how my father sees his marriage with mother. Perhaps he thought that it was a mistake from the beginning, or he just felt that it was a responsibility on his part. But in the eyes of the children, without him we would not have been born into this world.

My dad came to see me

After entering prison, my father (right) came to see me a few times. He looks much older now. He cried often when we met. I know he blames himself. As for me, I have let go of the past resentment. In my heart, I only have gratitude.

I also have a godfather. He is a good friend of my father. He pitied me and took me into his home for about two years. I am also grateful to him. I heard that because of my case, he was very upset and wrote an open letter to plead for leniency on my behalf.

To them, I would like to say “Happy Father's Day”, and please forgive me.

My brother, Yun Leong, came to see me after he went back to our hometown in Sabah, and I kept asking him to tell me how our mother was. My mother must have thought, “Vui Kong is in prison to search for enlightenment.”

I hope that she will always think this. I hope that she will be well for the rest of her days. I remember that I promised myself to give my mother a good life. I have failed. This responsibility must now go to my sisters and brothers.

Yun Leong told me that mother's illness has improved recently - that she did not need to take so much medication and she was always smiling. I was very glad to hear this.

Although I could not see my mother (right in photo) smiling, I am happy to hear this from my brother. Whether my mother will find out about my real situation in the end (that I'm on death row), we will let things take its course.

Yetian, the Singapore's president will make his decision soon. Whether it is good or bad, I hope that everyone will accept it. We must work hard not to let the next young person walk down the path I have taken.

Of course, I hope that the Malaysian government too can help other death row inmates because some of them do not deserve to die.

My family must be very upset as I have let them down. Because of me, they are going through a lot of pain. Yetian, even if you are working hard, remember to at least make a phone call to your family.

YONG VUI KONG, a Sabahan, was sentenced in November 2009 to death for drug trafficking. He was 19. On April 4, Yong lost his final appeal against a mandatory death sentence. He will be executed in three months unless he is granted clemency by Singapore's president.

Letter 6: My Greatest Hope

2011-07-10T03:58:00.000-07:00

Letter from death row - my greatest hope
Yong Vui Kong
May 26, 11
8:23am

Sabahan Yong Vui Kong, 21, is on death row in Singapore for drug trafficking. Malaysiakini is publishing Yong's final letters to Yetian, a member of the Save Vui Kong Campaign, in the next few weeks as he faces death.

Today I would like to talk to everyone about my hopes, and about a friend who is as close to me as my own brother.

Actually, when I first entered prison, 'hope' was something that I thought of often. At that time, my hopes included:

To be able to see my family, friends, godfather and others.

That I will be able to leave prison.

And that I don't have to die.

But now my wish-list has changed.

My greatest hope is to be able to tell everyone that if they have the chance, they should have faith, and to understand and learn - I am a student of the dharmas, learning from the basic philosophies up till a certain level before studying more. I hope to learn to appreciate life and to help others.

Of course, I hope that I can really be ordained as a monk.

I really hope that the drug trade can disappear from the world, because drugs harm many. Perhaps drug dealers are reading my letters, perhaps they think that I am trying to destroy their market, but what I want to say is, even if you can obtain happiness from drugs now, drugs will cause you to lose your senses, and because of drugs you will feel pain and unhappiness, and end up in the same situation as I am in.

Drugs are a type of ever-changing symbol: they symbolise happiness that is short-lived. Drugs are things that hurt people: they ruin lives, families, societies, faiths, etc.

I also want to say that although I am a death row inmate, I hope that society can use me as an example. I want to say that even though the death penalty is an old law, we don't really know if the death penalty can really help to control crime.

If I have the chance to meet everyone even just once, I would also like to tell everyone about the Buddhist philosophy.

This is my hope.

Wei Zhong, my friend

Yetian, in the previous few letters, I never mentioned my friend. Please let me tell you about my 'brother' and his case.

His name is Wei Zhong. The last time we met, it was his birthday celebration, and we never thought that it would be our last meeting.

When I first arrived in Kuala Lumpur, people used to think that we were really brothers because we look alike - and for 15 years we lived together, made new friends, ate and wandered the streets together.

Knowing him is my greatest honour, or perhaps one can say that it's my good fortune earned through many years: just like many people have good friends and brothers, my 'brother' is he, Wei Zhong.

But many people have mistakenly befriended the wrong sort of people, just like how I met the wrong 'friends', leading me to my current situation.

If there are mothers or fathers reading this letter, please tell your children, “Don't be like Yong Vui Kong, don't follow a path that you will regret.”

We need to have the right sense to differentiate between what we should and should not do. In the past, I was confused, with no rules in my life. Now I am very clear about what I should do.

Actually, as I've said before, you are both a stranger and a friend, like many others are strangers and friends to me. I have never seen them nor met them, but everyone is still willing to help me, without complaint, and so I treat everyone as my brothers and sisters.

I will stop here. I am looking forward to next week. I want to tell society more about my story.

YONG VUI KONG, a Sabahan, was sentenced in November 2009 to death for drug trafficking. He was 19. On April 4, Yong lost his final appeal against a mandatory death sentence. He will be executed in three months unless he is granted clemency by Singapore's president.

Letter 5: Seven More Letters To Go

2011-07-10T03:46:00.000-07:00

Fifth letter from death row: Seven more to go
Yong Vui Kong
May 21, 11
9:08am

Sabahan Yong Vui Kong, 21, is on death row in Singapore for drug trafficking. Malaysiakini is publishing Yong's final letters to Yetian, a member of the Save Vui Kong Campaign, in the next few weeks as he faces death.

Yetian, this my fifth letter, so I have seven letters to go before I die. I have seven more chances to put my feelings into words and to thank everyone for taking time from their busy lives to help me.

In this fifth letter, there is a lot that I want to say. When a country becomes a successful country, it is because there are very good leaders, very good laws and very good citizens.

Just like our country, we have leaders who are not so bad and we have laws which apply to everyone. But the most important thing is we have very good citizens. If we don't have such kind-hearted citizens, no one would know about my case.

When a person makes a mistake, he will have to be punished. We need to follow the law. I made a mistake in Singapore, and so they want me to suffer the consequences of the law. I feel that this is justified because they are following the law of a good country.

I have told you before that I was very afraid of being executed. When I heard the judge say that I had to face capital punishment, I was very scared and did not know what to do.

At the time, my lawyer told me that I would have to make an appeal. I was already studying Buddhist philosophy, and I knew that Buddhism says that we cannot lie. I really believed that appealing meant that I would have to lie, and stand up in court to say that I was not guilty. I didn't want to do that because I knew I have done wrong, so I decided to withdraw my appeal.

If we cheat others, we might be able to escape death, but when we die eventually, we will be punished in Hell: Isn't it very painful?

In the end, my elder brother Yun Leong helped me engage a new lawyer. He said that it was very important to appeal my case. I did not really understand so he explained a lot about matters regarding the death penalty and the law, and I let him do as he saw fit.

My lawyer explained to me that I could ask for clemency and commute my death sentence into life imprisonment. This way, I can stay in prison, study Buddhist scriptures and see Yun Leong regularly.

Laws are made by man

I am working hard to learn English and to read my case, because I want to know more about the law in Singapore.

I finally understood one point - that laws are made by man. Since they are made by man, man can also change them. For example, some laws involving the death penalty.

I am reminded of a fellow inmate who was forcibly dragged out for execution, and I am pained, because he was very young. I wonder, did he really have to die?

Yetian, you told me that the home minister and law minister publicly agreed to reconsider the death penalty, but they have not yet taken any action. Maybe because they are busy with other national affairs. But I believe that as high-ranking officials, they will fulfil their commitments.

I wrote many letters, but Yun Leong said only a few people received them. Perhaps many of the letters were stopped by the prison warden or maybe because my case and many other death penalty cases in lawful Singapore are being monitored, so they are very careful with my letters.

But let me honestly tell everyone, my letters contain all my feelings and I hope that everyone can read my letters.

Before I end this letter, I would like to encourage everyone to study religion. After becoming a Buddhist, I understood that lying is a very serious thing, so I will not lie and will openly tell everyone my story.

Even if my case does not look good, in the future there may be many more cases such as mine, so isn't prevention important?

This letter will be published a few days after Wesak Day. Even though the day has come and gone, I wish everyone a happy Wesak Day, and wish everyone health, peace and happiness.

YONG VUI KONG, a Sabahan, was sentenced in November 2009 to death for drug trafficking. He was 19. On April 4, Yong lost his final appeal against a mandatory death sentence. He will be executed in three months unless he is granted clemency by Singapore's president.

Letter 4: A Missed Mother's Day

2011-07-10T03:37:00.000-07:00

Fourth letter from death row - a missed Mother's Day
May 12, 11 9:38am

Yetian, without even noticing it, we have already exchanged four letters. Please let me express my gratitude to you, a kind-hearted stranger, for granting my wish. I may not have much more time to write, but I shall continue writing until my very last moment.

Today, let me share some of my experience in studying Buddhist philosophy.

I feel that every young person needs faith. Only with faith can you save yourself because a good religion, no matter if it's Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism, teaches you what is right and what is wrong. This, to me, is extremely important. When I was a rebel, I didn't have faith, and so I went astray and followed a path from which there is no return.

When I first got into prison, my sister gave me three books on Buddhism. These three books are a great help and are making a great impact on my thinking and my life.

Wisdom, compassion, morals, cultural enlightenment do not differentiate between race or age. If one works hard to learn, one will be able to reap the benefits.

Buddhism teaching has 84,000 dharma. If you wish to understand where I've started, let me tell you I began with the Earth Buddha, the scripture entitled 'Earth Buddha vows'. I started with the most basic scriptures, and I wish to reach a certain level of understanding before adding more. I am learning about being happy with what we have in life, learning about helping others.

I am not sure if you have seen my drawing of the Earth Buddha (right). At that point in time, I dreamt about the Earth Buddha and I was so calm. Since then, I am even more determined to learn Buddhist philosophy.

We can read a lot of books related to Buddhist teaching, but if we lack faith, we will not truly understand.

From that day on, I wake up early every morning to study the philosophy of the Earth Buddha. When I read about filial piety, my heart aches, because I have not been filial to my mother for so many years. I don't know if I still have a chance.

Mother's Day has come and gone

Mother's Day just gone by, right? Did everyone have a good meal with their mothers? My question is the same: "Will I have a chance to go home for a meal?"

I do not have the chance to talk to my mother to calm her mind. My mother is ill, I cannot tell her about my impending punishment. That's why, Yetian, we have to cherish our family and friends.

Yetian, you told me that there was an Internet forum which discussed about me and some said that I wrote all these letters because I was afraid to die and that I wanted to save my life. I know you were angered by it, and so were many who have helped me. Don't be angry because it will cause us more grief.

Even though I am an inmate about to be executed, I wish to say that I am not an inmate who wastes time. I hope to use this time to educate more people. This is my hope, that in this last bit of time that I have left, I can do more meaningful things.

Studying Buddhist teachings allows me to understand about gratitude, and about what courage is. To me, this is the biggest experience I gained.

Do you still remember that in the first letter, I mentioned about my beads? They are made of flour and I have used them for a long time. When I use them I take good care of them because they are fragile, and might break if I squeeze too hard.

When I think about it, if a person is weak, and he takes good care of himself without being influenced by others, then this person can stay strong for a long time.

That's what we have to do in life. We have to be strong.

Before I stop, I would like to say a prayer for everyone, hoping that everyone is healthy, safe and happy.

YONG VUI KONG, a Sabahan, was sentenced in November 2009 to death for drug trafficking. He was 19. On April 4, Yong lost his final appeal against a mandatory death sentence. He will be executed in three months unless he is granted clemency by Singapore's president.

Letter 3: My Changed Heart

2011-07-10T03:12:00.000-07:00

Third letter from death row - my changed heart
May 5, 11 9:53am

Yetian, I would like to tell you a story.

I have been worrying about someone for quite a long time.

This person has a good nature. But when he was growing up he was led astray. He did not respect his parents and followed others to get involved with drugs. He was petty, bad-tempered, proud, vulgar and self-centred. He was very selfish.

But this person has now changed all his bad habits, all his bad acts. He is sincere about changing.

I will use an example to prove how he is determined to change.

A person in the forest saw a big fruit tree, and was tempted to eat the fruit. He did not know that the fruit was poisonous, and was then poisoned. This person greatly regretted eating the poisoned fruit, and in that moment, that regretful heart was his first sincere emotion.

Yetian, if you knew this person had been poisoned, and at the same time, knew how to cure him, would you do so?

This person is now about 20, with no home, no car, no freedom, no family, no kids, no friends, not many clothes, no experience, no education, no correct way of thinking, no chance to leave his country and no love from his parents and siblings. This person does not have anything. But he has a small hope... that his family and society will forgive him, and let him change his life.

I used to be bad, and would always quarrel with people. I had no aim in life and only wanted to earn money to live a good life. I also wanted my mother to live well. I was greedy, and was thus poisoned. I have repented before the Buddha, and I heard that over 100,000 people have signed the petition to forgive me. I am very grateful. My life began when I started learning Buddhist philosophy. Before that I was not really living.

If a person has made a mistake, he must then suffer the consequences under the law. I understand that. So, if he wants to be cured of the poison, he can only repent to the Buddha.

In this prison, every person has been poisoned. If I could, I would like to help cure them all.

Drugs and I

Let me go back to the topic of drugs and I.

For me, drug is something remote, yet it changed my life. I know that when my brother Yun Leong wrote to the Singaporean president to ask for clemency, he mentioned my involvement with drugs.

At that time I was ignorant and I really believed that, "Even if I get caught I won't die." So I delivered these "gifts" into a law-abiding country - Singapore. I only have myself to blame.

Over these two years, thanks to my lawyer who explained to me the law in relation to drugs, I have finally understood how serious this is. I am now studying English so I can better understand the lawyer's submissions, and also the relevant law. I thank the prison department for giving me a dictionary.

There are many young people who are willing to deliver drugs because drugs can earn you a lot of money. They are like how I was; because I could get a lot of money, I agreed to do this.

At the time our minds are ignorant and naive. We did not realise that when you deliver drugs, you will not get money in exchange. Rather, when you get sent to prison, what you get in exchange is a mother's heartache, a family's worry, society's judgement, the punishment from a government, and the world giving up on you.

This situation is the same as what I am in. I am a real life example.

In here, I am deeply repentant. Luckily, it is not too late. Luckily, my mother has seen the new me. Luckily, my family does not have to worry about me anymore.

Everyone is born good. It takes three years to learn to be good, but three days to be bad. Turning over a new leaf is more precious than anything.

All right, I will stop here. In writing these letters, I have grown more confident in teachings, and I hope I can continue to share them. I laugh at myself for thinking that I can indeed be an educator, it must have taken a lot of blessing from others for me to do that.

Thank you. Amitabha.

YONG VUI KONG, a Sabahan, was sentenced in November 2009 to death for drug trafficking. He was 19. On April 4, Yong lost his final appeal against a mandatory death sentence. He will be executed in three months unless he is granted clemency by Singapore's president.

Letter 2: Me & My Life

2011-07-10T03:08:00.000-07:00

Letter from death row: Me and my life
Yong Vui Kong
Apr 27, 11
7:46am

Sabahan Yong Vui Kong, 21, is on death row in Singapore for drug trafficking. Malaysiakini is publishing Yong's final letters to Yetian, a member of the Save Vui Kong Campaign, in the next 11 weeks as he faces death.

Yetian,

Yun Leong brought your letter when he came to visit me on Monday. He told me that the first letter has been published.

Thank you, and thank you to all the kind-hearted strangers who have helped me. Thank you to all those who read my letters. I hope that everyone can read them. This is the only way for me to connect with the outside world.

Yetian, you said that life is very precious.

To me, life is the most important thing in the world. There are many things that mean a lot to me. But even if you have a lot of money, or many material possessions, you still only have one life.

In the past, I did not value or respect my life. It was only later that I realised those who do not respect their own lives, cannot expect others to respect them.

After turning to Buddhism, I realised that I have a responsibility in life.

I watch my fellow inmates losing their lives, one by one, because of they were ignorant, or easily misled. It breaks my heart. Amitabha. I know I'll be just like them. So I would like to use every remaining day of my life to tell people my story.

I want to use the Buddhist philosophy to tell everyone not to make mistakes, not to end up on death row because of drugs. I want to tell them never to take drugs and destroy their lives.

Of course, I hope that I can have more time to meditate, to read more Buddhist books and to absorb more Buddhist philosophy so that I can continue teaching others. But ultimately, this will all depend on fate.

Thinking back to the day Yun Leong came to see me at the detention centre, I was crying like a child. I was so afraid. My hands and legs were trembling as I cried. I had broken down. All my macho bravado had disappeared.

I was very afraid of death. I didn't know what would happen to me after I die.

'I don't blame the Singapore government'

After reading the scriptures, I dreamed of the Earth Bodhisattva. I saw through many things, and learnt not to cling on to life. This life has been given to me by Buddha. He has made all the arrangements for me, and I accept them.

I am very grateful for my life. I am very grateful towards all those who have worked hard to try to save me, and to ask for the Singaporean president to grant me clemency. If I were to give up now, wouldn't I be letting them down?

I really don't want those who have supported me, helped me and encouraged me to be sad.

I don't know why, but I know that my case has caused a lot of quarrels between people. I said before that life is not something to be wasted, but to be cherished. Quarreling is a waste of life.

I don't blame the Singapore government. I don't blame anyone. I believe that every country has its laws. If you make a mistake and get caught, then you deserve to be punished. I also know that Singapore is governed by rule of law. Asking a country to change its law is a very difficult thing.

I don't yearn for anything. All I want is more time.

I am a death row inmate. I have no right to ask for the abolishment of the death penalty. But I still feel that the death penalty is not a workable solution.

I am grateful to those who have been able to forgive me. It is a miracle that I have been able to live this long. I will take good care of myself, study hard and improve myself.

'I don't yearn to leave prison'

You asked me what I would do if I were granted clemency.

I don't yearn to leave prison. In fact, that I think this is an excellent place to meditate. I've already devoted myself to Buddhism, but I hope to find a priest who will ordain me one day and officially accept me as a monk.

While I'm alive, I will work hard to share my experience with everyone. I want to be like the priest who visits me here regularly, and tirelessly share the wisdom of Buddhism with everyone.

I will devote my whole life to help those who other people are unable to reach.

Even if I do not get a second chance, I hope that everyone will always remember to give themselves a second chance. Life will be fuller this way.

Yetian, it's been hard on you. You have to write to me even though you have to work. I am really happy, and hope to keep writing. I will stop here today. Amitabha.

YONG VUI KONG, a Sabahan, was sentenced in November 2009 to death for drug trafficking. He was 19. On April 4, Yong lost his final appeal against a mandatory death sentence. He will be executed in three months unless he is granted clemency by Singapore's president.

Letter 1: A Letter From Death Row

2011-07-10T03:02:00.000-07:00

A letter from death row
Yong Vui Kong
Apr 22, 11
7:14am

Sabahan Yong Vui Kong, 21, is on death row in Singapore for drug trafficking. Malaysiakini is publishing Yong's final letters to Yetian, a member of the Save Vui Kong Campaign, in the next 12 weeks as he faces death.

Dear Yetian,

Thank you for your letter, and thank you for giving me a platform and the strength to tell my story. This is my first letter. I hope to let everyone know what my life is like in prison.

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Yong Vui Kong. In early 2011, I celebrated my 23rd birthday in prison. I wasn't alone during my birthday. Lots of friends on the outside were also celebrating with me.

Why am I in jail? It's because I helped traffic drugs into Singapore. I was caught when I was 19. It's been a few years now. I am a death row inmate, and by right, I should have been dead long ago. But a lot of people have been helping me, and that's why I'm still alive today. If it wasn't for all these people, I think I'd have left this world long ago.

My mother doesn't know I've been sentenced to death. I've told her I'll be going to a far away place to seek enlightenment. I told her not to worry about me. She believed me.

Let me now tell you about my life inside here.

I get up at around 4 every morning. I don't have an alarm clock because I don't need one. I've gotten used to this routine, and it has not changed these past few years. Even the prison wardens know I am an early riser. They see me getting up each morning via the CCTV inside my cell.

After washing up and brushing my teeth, I'll spend time studying the (Buddhist) scriptures until 7am. After that, I'll meditate quietly until 9am. Some people might think I'm just trying to kill time, but in my heart, I believe it's better to make full use of my time than to just let it slip away.

I do not fear death

At 9am, I have breakfast. I don't eat the same things as the rest of the inmates. Even the wardens know this and will only deliver vegetarian meals to me.

Vegetarianism has become a habit for me. The benefits of vegetarianism is something you have to experience yourself. I can tell you it's a good thing, but you might not believe me. I encourage everyone to give vegetarianism a try.

In the past, when I knew I was going to die soon, I couldn't stop crying because I was scared. But the Buddhist priest who visits me every week has taught me not to fear death.

Earlier this year, a friend inside left us. Before he left, I chanted for him. He left peacefully.

Until I die, I'll use my time wisely to counsel people and tell them not to choose drugs.

Over the past few years, my relationship with my older brother, Yun Leong, has improved a great deal. We used to fight over all kinds of things.

But now, our relationship is much improved. If not for his help, you wouldn't be reading this letter now. I am really grateful to him. He visits me every Monday. We chit chat and he listens to me talk about Buddhism.

How many more Mondays will we have?

In the past, my rebelliousness made my brothers very unhappy. Now that I'm a changed person, my brothers feel much better. I think that's the least I can do.

Not enough time to learn everything

Actually, I'm doing very well in prison. The wardens show me a lot of respect. Whenever my brother visits, they would unshackle me and we'd bow to each other. My brother tells me they hold me in high regard. I am humbled to know that.

In my spare time, I study the scriptures. I'm afraid I won't have enough time to learn everything. I don't even think there's enough hours in a day for me to study. A lot of people think that it must be tortuous for me to spend an extended time in prison, but I feel good because I can make full use of the time to learn. I feel very fulfilled.

I like to chant. But because of the strict rules inside prison, I can't use normal meditation beads. That's because they're afraid I'll sharpen the crystal beads and use them to kill myself. My priest is very thoughtful. He used flour to make little beads, strung them up and gave them to me. I use them when I chant.

Suicide? I've never thought of it. Life is to be cherished, not squandered.

Yetian, thank you. I'll stop here today. Amitaba.

YONG VUI KONG, a Sabahan, was sentenced in November 2009 to death for drug trafficking. He was 19. On April 4, Yong lost his final appeal against a mandatory death sentence. He will be executed in three months unless he is granted clemency by Singapore's president.

What women think during orgasms

2010-12-20T01:28:00.000-08:00

What women think during orgasms

Sneaking a peek inside a woman's brain while she is having orgasm is now be possible, thanks to a scan developed by American scientists.

Rutgers University researchers have discovered that sexual arousal numbs the female nervous system to such an extent that she doesn't feel as much pain-only pleasure.

Orgasm affects up to 30 different parts of the brain including those responsible for emotion, touch, joy, satisfaction and memory, found researchers.

The researchers asked eight women to stimulate themselves while lying under a blanket inside a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner, a tunnel-like machine often used to detect brain tumours.

Most women took less than five minutes to reach an orgasm although some took as long as 20.

During that time, the MRI scanner took images of their brain every two seconds to show which parts became active during the orgasm.

The scientists found that two minutes before the orgasm, the brain's reward centres become active, the areas usually activated when eating food and drink.

Immediately before they reached the peak, other areas of the brain became affected such as the sensory cortex, which receives ''touch'' messages from parts of the body and the thalamus, which relays signals to other parts of the body.

Once the orgasm has started other parts of the brain are activated such as those responsible for emotion.

The final part of the brain to be activated is the hypothalamus, the ''control'' part of the brain, which regulates temperature, hunger, thirst and tiredness.

Orgasm affects up to 30 different parts of the brain including those responsible for emotion, touch, joy, satisfaction and memory

At the same time another area responsible for pleasure is activated - the nucleus accumbens - as well as the caudate nucleus, which is responsible for memory.

"In women, orgasm produces a very extensive response across the brain and body," UK'sDaily Mail quoted Barry Komisaruk of Rutgers University as saying.

"Some women raised their hands several times each session, often just a few seconds apart.

So the evidence is that women tend to have longer orgasms and can experience several in rapid succession," said Komisaruk.

A woman's orgasm last an average of 10-15 seconds, whilst a man's is thought to last for just six seconds.
Source: ANI

Published Dec 2010

Haunted Schools In Singapore

2010-12-12T20:49:00.000-08:00

Stories from an overactive imagination or based on fact? Here are some legendary tales from schools here that have sent chills down the spines of many students.

Anglo Chinese School

The junior college was rumored to be haunted by a boy who jumped into the gears, in the gear room of the clock tower. Reports of students being possessed were also common.

Boon Lay Secondary School

The school had a pond in the middle of the science block with classes. It was said that if one looked into the pond at night, you will not see your reflection, but an unfamiliar face peering back at you.

CHIJ St Joseph's Convent

There is a toilet cubicle there which is always locked. It is said to be haunted by the ghost of a girl who was raped while waiting for her parents in school, and then hung herself in the toilet.

Clementi Town Secondary School

A headless ghost allegedly haunts the Home Economics and Science Lab, some have even seen its detached head rolling on the floor.

Gan Eng Seng Secondary

Even teachers allegedly are afraid of entering the Art Class on the 4th storey alone. From the classroom, one can allegedly hear a lady's voice singing, coming from the rooftop of the building.

Haig Girls' School

According to some, the school used to be a place to hold prisoners-of-war during World War II. There is an area within the school compound which has more than the usual rate of accidents occurring. Many people would trip and fall when walking along the area. It was also rumoured that if you walk across the school field diagonally at night, you will be greeted by an old woman asking you to buy matchsticks from her.

Hai Sing Catholic School

A statue of the mother mary there was said to be seen with blood dripping from it. In 2001, a rumour circulated that female students camping on the school premises woke up in the middle of the night scratching themselves, seemingly possessed, but returned to normal a few minutes later.

Loyang Secondary School

The girl's toilet on the fourth floor of the old block is said to be haunted, which is why the lights there are on 24 hours. AVA student helpers also claim to have seen a figure of a woman walking backstage in the school hall.

Ngee Ann Polytechnic

Rumour has it a female student died in one of the engineering workshop because her hair got stuck in a machine. Screams can be heard from the workshop at night.

Pei Dao Secondary (now known as Punggol Secondary)

The story is that smacking and hitting noises could be heard at night, coming from the basketball court. The music room was also rumoured to be haunted with the piano playing by itself every night at 12am sharp. The school has since been relocated and renamed to Punggol Secondary School.

Queenstown Secondary School

The famous story from this school is about how a tombstone was found in the field by students.

Tampines Secondary School

The school is said to be haunted by the spirit of a girl who was raped and killed by construction workers at the site when the school was still being built in the 1980s.

Temasek Polytechnic

The corriders from block 18 within the Engineering faculty were allegedly so haunted that guards would not patrol that area.

Rumour has it an Indian worker was accidentally buried alive in one of the pillars, when cement was poured into the construction while he was binding wires within it.

According to another story told by a guard, he saw a student at the lockers as he was patrolling one day. He turned back to the same spot a few minutes later, to find a piece of newspaper on the floor with the student's face he just saw. Turns, out the student was killed by a car at the bus stop a few months back.

Tanjong Katong Secondary

Band members who stayed the night reported being disturbed while they were sleeping.

Yuying Secondary

Teachers and principals have reportedly seen silhouettes of children running around the school compound located in Hougang when they work. It was said that when the school was doing its upgrading work, construction workers witnessed strange occurrences and started to quit one by one.

Singapore Polytechnic
Unlucky #13 or just a coincidence? The institute has blocks named T1, T2, T3…..but no T13.

Unverified rumours say a student committed suicide at one of the toilets in the teaching block, after stabbing a lecturer (the lecturer died too). Screams can be heard at night when part-time students are having classes.

Bedok View Secondary School

The toilet next to the biology lab on the ground floor is allegedly haunted by a long-haired ghost, obsessed with combing her hair in front of the mirror. Rumour has it a few girls have gone into the toilet, only to run out screaming and crying after seeing the apparition.

Pasir Ris Crest Secondary School

A construction worker committed suicide in the school's toilet when it was still being constructed. It was rumoured that the toilet was locked ever since after students complained about seeing a man stabbing himself repeatedly in the stomach.

Know these 10 superfruits

2010-11-23T23:46:00.000-08:00

Wed, Jun 30, 2010
Mind Your Body,
The Straits Times

Know these 10 superfruits

By Priya Suri

Superfruits have sparked a worldwide following, bolstered by claims promoting benefits such as anti-ageing, detoxification, energy enhancement and immunity boosts.

As common fruits such as apples and oranges are less likely to excite consumers, superfruits are more likely to be exotic or relatively new to consumers. These include noni, pomegranate and seabuckthorn.

However, there is no definitive list of superfruits and new fruits are regularly put forward, usually backed by persuasive advertising.

Dietitians and nutritionists tend to reject the term superfruits as there is no scientific criteria that would allow consumers to objectively assess the potential health benefits of fruits in the category.

Ms Anna Jacob, nutritionist and dietitian at NutriVentures, said: 'The term superfruits has been coined to bring attention to a few fruits that are being intensely researched for their nutritional benefits.'

Ms Jacob said that fresh fruits in general are good sources of vitamins, minerals and fibre. Most fruits are also naturally fat-free, cholesterol-free and low in sodium.

But there is something else health-conscious individuals around the world are after: antioxidants.

Antioxidants are molecules that fight free radicals, cell-damaging chemicals that are produced during normal human functions such as digestion and breathing.

However, people must remember that superfruits are not the only good source of antioxidants.

Ms Lim Su Lin, chief dietitian at the National University Hospital, said: 'Many other foods also contain antioxidants such as soya, red wine, tea, nuts, seeds, fish, shellfish, eggs, red meat and garlic.

'I would strongly encourage people to eat a variety of fruits in their diet and not just concentrate on one or two fruits. This is because we can obtain different nutrients from different fruits. Some useful nutrients may not even have been discovered by scientists yet.'

Here is a list of 10 "superfruits".

1. Pomegranate

Also known as: Granada

What it is: Has around 600 seeds that can range from white to deep red

Where it grows: Native to the Mediterranean Middle East

Supposed benefits: Some studies suggest that the juice may contain almost three times the total antioxidants in green tea and red wine.

3. Mangosteen

Also known as: Manggis

What it is: Has sweet-sour white flesh

Where it grows: Primarily in countries with a hot, humid climate such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia

Supposed benefits: Its rind contains xanthones, which are said to neutralise free radicals.

3. Mangosteen

Also known as: Manggis

What it is: Has sweet-sour white flesh

Where it grows: Primarily in countries with a hot, humid climate such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia

Supposed benefits: Its rind contains xanthones, which are said to neutralise free radicals.

4. Goji (pronounced goh-gee)

Also known as: Wolfberry

What it is: Red berries that are usually found dried

Where it grows: China, Mongolia and the Himalayas in Tibet

Supposed benefits: It contains carotenoids that act as antioxidants to protect the retina of the eye.

5. Cranberry

Also known as: Mossberry, fenberry

What it is: Berries, 6 to 18mm in size, turn deep red when ripe.

Where it grows: A major commercial crop in the United States and Canada

Supposed benefits: It is used to prevent or treat urinary tract infections.

6. Noni

Also known as: Cheese fruit, ach, mengkudu

What it is: Oval-shaped and prickly

Where it grows: Native to South-east Asia but now grows in India and the Pacific islands

Supposed benefits: The juice is said to be able to help reduce high blood pressure and relieve arthritic pain as it contains a high level of antioxidants.

7. Avocado

Also known as: Palta, abacate

What it is: Egg shaped, green-brown on the outside and green-yellow on the inside

Where it grows: Long history of being cultivated in Central and South America

Supposed benefits: It contains healthy monounsaturated fat, which has been linked to a reduced risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

8. Seabuckthorn

Also known as: Sandthorn, seaberry

What it is: Soft and juicy orange berries, 6 to 9mm in diameter

Where is grows: Native to Europe and Asia

Supposed benefits: It is said to boost the immune system as it is rich in vitamin C.

9. Blueberry

Also known as: Bleuet

What it is: Indigo berries, 5 to 16mm in diameter

Where it grows: Native to North America but also grown in Australia, New Zealand and South American countries

Supposed benefits: It is said to be an anti-ageing superstar that is loaded with antioxidants to improve vision and brain function.

10. Acai (pronounced as-sa-E)

Also known as: Cabbage palm berry

What it is: A dark-blue berry that is similar in size to a grape

Where it grows: South American rainforests

Supposed benefits: Claims to have twice the antioxidants found in blueberries, as well as omega fatty acids, protein and fibre

This article is an excerpt from a feature first published in Mind Your Body, The Straits Times.

Government debt in 2009 more than 50pc of GDP, says audit

2010-10-26T03:09:00.000-07:00

Government debt in 2009 more than 50pc of GDP, says audit

By Shazwan Mustafa Kamal

October 25, 2010

Najib said the total debt had been reduced but the Auditor-General’s report shows otherwise. — File pic

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 25 — Malaysia’s government debt for 2009 rose to RM362.39 billion or 53.7 per cent of GDP, its highest level in five years, according to the Auditor-General’s report released today.

The Auditor-General said in the report that this was the first time the debt to GDP ratio had breached the 50 per cent mark.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had said in Parliament in June that Malaysia’s total debt had been reduced in 2009 to RM233.92 billion from RM236.18 billion in 2008.

Najib had also said that the debt to GDP ratio for 2009 was only 34.3 per cent, up from 31.9 per cent in 2008.

But today’s Auditor-General’s report said that the government debt had risen largely due to domestic debt.

“The debt ratio to GDP at the end of 2009 is 53.7 per cent, the highest level in five years and over 50 per cent for the very first time,” said the report.

The report stated that from 2005 till 2008, there was a general decline in the ratio between the government’s debt to the GDP.

It was 48.2 per cent in 2005, 42.3 per cent in 2006, 42.8 per cent in 2007 and 41.4 per cent in 2008.

The main reason behind the high debt last year, according to the audit report, was due to an increase in the government’s domestic debt.

“Towards the end of 2009, the unsettled domestic debt and foreign debt amounted to RM362.39 billion, an increase of RM55.96 billion (from 2008’s RM306.44 billion) due to an increase in domestic debt.

“The government’s domestic debt totalling RM348.60 billion is 96.2 per cent of the total debt of the federal government last year,” said the report.

The report also showed a decline in the government’s foreign debt — from RM26.91 billion in 2005 to RM13.77 billion last year — while domestic debt steadily increased from RM201.76 billion in 2005 to RM348.6 billion in 2009.

In his June parliamentary reply, Najib had moved to quell fears raised by a minister that Malaysia would one day go the way of Greece and Iceland and become a bankrupt nation.

In a written response to a question by Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timor) in Parliament, the PM gave an assurance that the government was taking steps to ensure that Malaysia’s debts would be reduced and maintained at a manageable level.

Link:

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/government-debt-in-2009-more-than-50pc-of-gdp-says-audit

The trial of Anwar Ibrahim

2010-10-25T20:53:00.000-07:00

The trial of Anwar Ibrahim

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Thursday, 21 October 2010

The 24-page report on the trial of Datuk Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim in the High Court of Malaysia observed on behalf of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) by MARK TROWELL QC, August 2010.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

You can read the full 24-page report in PDF by downloading it from here:

http://www.malaysia-today.net/files/Mark-Trowell-Report-August-2010-IPU.pdf

Anwar, Pack Up And Leave Batu Sapi

2010-10-25T20:43:00.000-07:00

Anwar, Pack Up And Leave Batu Sapi

Posted by Simon Templar On Monday, October 25, 2010

We rakyat are real suckers.

At least that's what most of our Malaysian politicians seem to think.

The entire Barisan Nasional politicians think that we are idiots who cannot think. (Ok... Truth is I actually know quite a few people out there who can't think. But... Some other time...)

Then we have our not-so-beloved-anymore PKR who thinks that we enjoy watching their year-round circus acts. Yup, definitely not so loved anymore. And I don't think I am an isolated case. We shall leave DAP and PAS out for now as they are not the subject of discussion here. But mind you, they have their own shit-load pile of dung too.

Now what's with the Batu Sapi fight? Isn't PKR the one who first brought DAP and PAS to the table to discuss how to prevent a 3-corner (or more) fight. Isn't the objective of the entire 'opposition' coalition that to fight the single common enemy i.e. BN? So what is PKR now blardie doing in the Batu Sapi fight?

Some of you may say that why can't SAPP not fight and let PKR field their candidate?

Or some of you may say that well SAPP is not part of the coalition, so why should PR even need to talk to them in the first place.

That will be to miss the whole point of the rakyat's fight. The rakyat is not fighting for Anwar (please imprint this in your mind, Anwar). The rakyat is not fighting for PKR or DAP or PAS. You will be dammed if you think that we really love you. What we want is CHANGE. And you political parties are nothing but our tool to get BN out of power. Well that's how things are. You guys are using us to get to power. So don't complain or call us ungrateful.

It doesn't matter to us if SAPP is fighting BN or PKR is fighting BN. As long as someone is there to fight BN, then we'll be on your side. But if you have PKR, SAPP and BN in the fight, what do you want us to do? To choose who we love more between SAPP and PKR? What are you guys trying to do? Eh wankers... The common enemy is BN. Let's keep it that simple.

Now that we have establish that line of thought, PKR or SAPP for Batu Sapi? SAPP la. Look at the name - Sabah Progressive Party. Sabah dei, Sabah... Let the Sabahans fight their fight. This is why East Malaysians do not like West Malaysians. The West Malaysians are always thinking that they are better and more superior than the East Malaysians. What on earth is PKR trying to do fighting the Sabahan fight? You don't see ~~UMNO~~ (Penang based) Gerakan fielding their candidate in Sabah or Sarawak do you?

Seriously, I cannot understand PKR's objective in the Sabah fight. Do you see Ford aggressively selling cars in Japan? No, they do not. They acquire Mazda and let Mazda do the fighting. The profits still ultimately land on their laps.

Anwar, similarly, you do not need to penetrate Sabah via PKR. Neither will the Sabahans accept that. Don't you get it? The East Malaysians do not trust us West Malaysians (seriously, can anyone blame them when we have been ripping them off since 1963?) Let the Sabahans fight their own battle. Let them keep their own state. But while at that, get them to work together with us to form the ultimate central government. I mean, can you imagine PBS recruiting a Wan Kelantan and field him as a candidate in Galas? Ridiculous isn't it. That's exactly what PKR is doing right now at Batu Sapi.

But Yong Teck Lee is not exactly the best of character, shouts PKR. Like any of you politicians are. Who among you has no garbage up your arse? Who among you is as clean as the Pope? Ummm... is the Pope clean? What about the Dalai Lama? Snap, snap... focus.

So, how will letting SAPP run the show benefit PKR? No it does not. Why should PKR be benefiting in any way at all. As long as the rakyat benefits, that is good enough. SAPP may not be a coalition partner. But they are no longer in BN. Anyone who is against BN is on our side. Keep them as an ally. To form the next federal government, we know we are short. SAPP has their advantages in Sabah. The time will come when PR and SAPP can sit down to talk (again) about a larger coalition.

Of course that will be another problem because PKR has their own Sabah leaders who want this and that while SAPP will want to be the Sabah Chief and so on and so forth. At the end of the day, it is about who gets the power and who benefits more. Dear fellow rakyats, no one really cares about us la. If Pakatan really does care they will be giving SAPP the mandate to represent PR in Sabah. Pull PKR and DAP out of Sabah. Let the support for anti-BN be concentrated. Don't split votes. It is hard enough to defeat BN/UMNO with their might and money.

If the 3-corner fight remains, no need to waste time and money campaigning la. 60% bumi votes; say BN takes 30%, PKR (sapu all opposition votes) takes 30% and SAPP none. 38% Chinese votes; say BN takes 19%, SAPP (sapu all opposition votes) takes 19% and PKR none. Final tally: BN 49%, PKR 30% and SAPP 19%. Anwar and Azmin can then go for their celebratory party at Hyatt KK's Shenanigan's for achieving whatever their objective in Batu Sapi is.

That's PKR folks. People like Azmin Ali can never shed their UMNO mentality. PKR is just another UMNO. Ok, a powerless version of UMNO. Everything else is the same. Their leaders have been hungry and poor for a long time waiting for Anwar to propel to the top. Everyone wants to get paid. Money, money, money. That's what PKR is all about. Justice? We should really stop bluffing ourselves.

And it is PKR leaders' lust for money and power that will cause us rakyat never to be able to kick BN out of office. I am not giving up yet on us winning the next GE. But UMNO must be sensing that the timing is now good. PKR of today is not capable of mounting the killer blow. Not with the rakyat doubting PKR. Not with the rakyat shaking their heads looking at PKR's production of Scenario The Movie Part 5 with Azmin Ali taking over from Saiful Apek.

The History of the House of Rothschild

2010-10-24T22:02:00.000-07:00

The History of the House of Rothschild

by Andrew Hitchcock

Notes:

Hitchcock also wrote a history for the bankers: DarylBradfordSmith_Bankers.htm
One of our listeners added images and photos and turned this Rothschild document into a PowerPoint presentation. It is very large; 67 megabytes: RothschildsTimeline.ppt
If you don't have PowerPoint, get a free PowerPoint viewer from Microsoft here.
Hitchcock has this Rothschild history available as a paper book in the UK:
www.theSynagogueOfSatan.com
The book is sold in the USA by Texe Marrs here.
We also have an interview with Hitchcock at this page.

Definition of Zionism:

an organization of Jews whose goal is to create a nation for Jews.

Definition of Judaism:

Jews collectively who practice a religion based on the Torah and the Talmud.

The Rothschilds have been in control of the world for a very long time, their tentacles reaching into many aspects of our daily lives, as is documented in the following timeline. However, before you jump to the timeline, please read this invaluable introduction which will tell you who the Rothschilds are as oppose to who they claim to be.

The Rothschilds claim that they are Jewish, when in fact they are Khazars. They are from a country called Khazaria, which occupied the land locked between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea which is now predominantly occupied by Georgia. The reason the Rothschilds claim to be Jewish is that the Khazars under the instruction of the King, converted to the Jewish faith in 740 A.D., but of course that did not include converting their Asiatic Mongolian genes to the genes of the Jewish people.

You will find that approximately 90% of people in the world today who call themselves Jews are actually Khazars, or as they like to be known, Ashkenazi Jews. These people knowingly lie to the world with their claims that the land of Israel is theirs by birthright, when in actual fact their real homeland is over 800 miles away in Georgia.

So, next time you hear an Israeli Prime Minister bleating about the so-called persecution of the Jews, consider this, every Prime Minister of Israel has been an Ashkenazi Jew. Therefore when all these Prime Ministers have curried favour with the West for their re-establishment of a Jewish homeland, they have knowingly and deliberately lied to you, as they were never from that region, and they well know it, because it is they who call themselves Ashkenazi Jews.

The Book of Revelation, Chapter 2, Verse 9, states the following which would appear to be about these Ashkenazi Jews:

"I know thy works, and tribulation and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan."

The most wealthy bloodline in the world bar none and the leader of the Ashkenazi Jews in the world today is the Rothschild family. As you will see in the timeline, the Rothschilds have obtained this position through lies, manipulation and murder. Their bloodline also extends into the Royal Families of Europe, and the following family names: Astor; Bundy; Collins; duPont; Freeman; Kennedy; Morgan; Oppenheimer; Rockefeller; Sassoon; Schiff; Taft; and Van Duyn.

However, these are not the only bloodlines to worry about. You are probably aware of the centuries old pratice undertaken by many Ashkenazi Jews whereby they would change their name, in order for them to appear part of the dominant race of the country in which they lived, so as they could obtain influential positions in that country, which they would then exploit to serve their real masters elsewhere. There is plenty of evidence to prove the Rothschilds continue that deceptive tradition.

Furthermore the Rothschilds are known to sire many children secretly that they can put into positions of power when required. This started with the very first man who took the name Rothschild, who had a secret sixth son. Finally, remember the world is a diverse place, I could if I wanted change my name to Rothschild, or any of the names listed above, and that would not make me part of this family anymore than converting to Judaism in 740 A.D. will make these Ashkenazis Jewish.

Please, therefore, do not automatically assume someone you see with the name Rothschild or any of the names listed above are part of the Rothschild criminal network. Furthermore and most importantly, the majority of Ashkenazi Jews are innocent and not part of this network. Check the facts out for yourself first, this article is designed to inform people who the enemy is, not single out people of a particular race or people with a particular surname, who may have nothing to do with this Rothschild criminal network.

1743: Mayer Amschel Bauer, an Ashkenazi Jew, is born in Frankfurt, Germany, the son of Moses Amschel Bauer, a money lender and the proprietor of a counting house.

Moses Amschel Bauer places a red sign above the entrance door to his counting house. This sign is a red hexagram (which geometrically and numerically translates into the number 666) which under Rothschild instruction will end up on the Israeli flag some two centuries later.

1753: Gutle Schnaper, an Ashkenazi Jew (future wife of Mayer Amschel Bauer), born to respected merchant, Wolf Salomon Schnaper.

1760: During this decade Mayer Amschel Bauer works for a bank owned by the Oppenheimers' in Hanover, Germany. He is highly successful and becomes a junior partner. Whilst working at the bank he becomes acquainted with General von Estorff.

Following his father's death, Bauer returns to Frankfurt to take over his father's business. Bauer recognises the significance of the red hexagram and changes his name from Bauer to Rothschild, after the red hexagram or sign signifying 666 hanging over the entrance door ("Rot," is German for, "Red," "Schild," is German for, "Sign").

Now Mayer Amschel Rothschild, he discovers that General von Estorff is now attached to the court of Prince William IX of Hesse-Hanau, one of the richest royal houses in Europe, which gained its' wealth by the hiring out of Hessian soldiers to foreign countries for vast profits (a practice that continues today in the form of exporting, "peacekeeping," troops throughout the world).

He therefore makes the General's re-acquaintance on the pretext of selling him valuable coins and trinkets at discounted prices. As he plans, Rothschild is subsequently introduced to Prince William himself who is more than pleased with discounted prices he charges for his rare coins and trinkets, and Rothschild offers him a bonus for any other business the Prince can direct his way.

Rothschild subsequently becomes close associates with Prince William, and ends up doing business with him and members of the court. He soon discovers that loaning money to governments and royalty is more profitable than loaning to individuals, as the loans are bigger and are secured by the nation's taxes.

1769: Mayer Amschel Rothschild is given permission by Prince William to hang a sign on the front of his business premises declaring that he is, "M. A. Rothschild, by appointment court factor to his serene highness, Prince William of Hanau."

1770: Mayer Amschel Rothschild draws up plans for the creation of the Illuminati and entrusts Ashkenazi Jew, Adam Weishaupt, a Crypto-Jew who was outwardly Roman Catholic, with its organization and development. The Illuminati is to be based upon the teachings of the Talmud, which is in turn, the teachings of Rabbinical Jews. It was to be called the Illuminati as this is a Luciferian term which means, keepers of the light.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild marries Gutle Schnaper.

1773: Amschel Mayer Rothschild born, the first of Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s sons. He like all his brothers who follow him, will enter the family business at the age of 12.

1774: Salomon Mayer Rothschild born.

1776: Adam Weishaupt officially completes his organisation of the Illuminati on May 1 of this year. The purpose of the Illuminati is to divide the goyim (all non-Jews) through political, economic, social, and religious means. The opposing sides were to be armed and incidents were to be provided in order for them to: fight amongst themselves; destroy national governments; destroy religious institutions; and eventually destroy each other.

Weishaupt soon infiltrates the Continental Order of Freemasons with this Illuminati doctrine and establishes lodges of the Grand Orient to be their secret headquarters. This was all under the orders and finance of Mayer Amschel Rothschild and the concept has spread and is followed within Masonic Lodges worldwide to the present day.

Weishaupt also recruits 2,000 paid followers including the most intelligent men in the field of arts and letters, education, science, finance,and industry. They were instructed to follow the following methods in order to control people.

1) Use monetary and sex bribery to obtain control of men already in high places, in the various levels of all governments and other fields of endeavour. Once influential persons had fallen for the lies, deceits, and temptations of the Illuminati they were to be held in bondage by application of political and other forms of blackmail, threats of financial ruin, public exposure, and fiscal harm, even death to themselves and loved members of their families.
2) The faculties of colleges and universities were to cultivate students possessing exceptional mental ability belonging to well-bred families with international leanings, and recommend them for special training in internationalism, or rather the notion that only a one-world government can put an end to recurring wars and strife. Such training was to be provided by granting scholarships to those selected by the Illuminati.
3) All influential people trapped into coming under the control of the Illuminati, plus the students who had been specially educated and trained, were to be used as agents and placed behind the scenes of all governments as experts and specialists. This was so they would advise the top executives to adopt policies which would in the long-run serve the secret plans of the Illuminati one-world conspiracy and bring about the destruction of the governments and religions they were elected or appointed to serve.
4) To obtain absolute-control of the press, at that time the only mass-communications media which distributed information to the public, so that all news and information could be slanted in order to make the masses believe that a one-world government is the only solution to our many and varied problems.

1777: Nathan Mayer Rothschild born.

1784: Adam Weishaupt issues his order for the French Revolution to be started by by Maximilien Robespierre in book form. This book was written by one of Weishaupt's associates, Xavier Zwack, and sent by courier from Frankfurt to Paris. However en route there, the courier is struck by lightning, the book detailing this plan discovered by the police, and handed over to the Bavarian authorities.

As a consequence, the Bavarian government orders the police to raid Weishaupt's masonic lodges of the Grand Orient, and the homes of his most influential associates. Clearly, the Bavarian authorities were convinced that the book that was discovered was a very real threat by a private group of influential people, to use wars and revolutions to achieve their political ends.

1785: The Bavarian government outlaw the Illuminati and close all the Bavarian lodges of the Grand Orient.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild moves his family home to a five storey house in Frankfurt which he shares with the Schiff family.

1786: The Bavarian government publish the details of the Illuminati plot in a document entitled, "The Original Writings of The Order and Sect of The Illuminati." They then send this document to all the heads of church and state throughout Europe, but sadly their warning is ignored.

1788: Kalmann (Carl) Mayer Rothschild Born.

1789: Due to the European ignorance of the Bavarian government's warning, the Illuminati's plan for a French Revolution succeeded from this year to 1793. This revolution was a bankers' dream, it established a new constitution and passed laws that forbade the Roman Church from levying tithes (taxes) and also removed its exemption from taxation.

1790: Mayer Amschel Rothschild states,

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws."

1791: The Rothschilds get, "control of a nation's money," through Alexander Hamilton (their agent in George Washington’s cabinet) when they set up a central bank in the USA called the First Bank of the United States. This is established with a 20 year charter.

1792: Jacob (James) Mayer Rothschild born.

1796: Amschel Mayer Rothschild marries Eva Hanau.

1798: John Robison publishes a book entitled, "Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati and Reading Societies." In this book, Professor Robison of the University of Edinburgh, one of the leading intellects of his time, who in 1783 was elected general secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, gave details of the whole Rothschild Illuminati plot.

He advised how he had been a high degree mason in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, and had been invited by Adam Weishaupt to Europe, where he had been given a revised copy of Weishaupt's conspiracy. However, although he pretended to go along with it, Professor Robison did not agree with it and therefore published his aforementioned book. The book included details of the Bavarian government's investigation into the Illuminati and the French Revolution.

That same year on July 19th, David Pappen, President of Harvard University, lectured the graduating class on the influence illuminism was having on American politics and religion.

At the age of 21, Nathan Mayer Rothschild leaves Frankfurt for England, where with a large sum of money given to him by his father, he sets up a banking house in London.

1800: Salomon Mayer Rothschild marries Caroline Stern.

1806: Napolean states that it is his,

"object to remove the house of Hess-Cassel from rulership and to strike it out of the list of powers."

On hearing this, Prince William IX of Hesse-Hanau, flees Germany, goes to Denmark and entrusts his fortune valued at $3,000,000 at that time to Mayer Amschel Rothschild for safekeeping.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild marries Hannah Barent Cohen the daughter of a wealthy London merchant.

1808: Nathan Mayer Rothschild has his first son born Lionel Nathan de Rothschild.

1810: Sir Francis Baring and Abraham Goldsmid die. This leaves Nathan Mayer Rothschild as the remaining major banker in England.

Salomon Mayer Rothschild goes to Vienna, Austria and sets up the bank, M. von Rothschild und Söhne.

1811: The charter for the Rothschilds Bank of the United States runs out and Congress votes against its renewal. Nathan Mayer Rothschild is not amused and he states,

"Either the application for renewal of the charter is granted, or the United States will find itself involved in a most disastrous war."

However the United States stands firm and the Charter is not renewed, which causes Nathan Mayer Rothschild to issue another threat,

"Teach those impudent Americans a lesson. Bring them back to colonial status."

1812: Backed by Rothschild money, and Nathan Mayer Rothschild's orders, the British declare war on the United States. The Rothschilds plan was to cause the United States to build up such a debt in fighting this war that they would have to surrender to the Rothschilds and allow the charter for the Rothschild owned First Bank of the United States to be renewed.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild dies. In his will he lays out specific laws that the House of Rothschild were to follow: all key positions in the family business were only to be held by family members; only male members of the family were allowed to participate in the family business, this included a reported sixth secret bastard son (It is important to note that Mayer Amschel Rothschild also has five daughters, so today the spread of the Rothschild Zionist dynasty without the Rothschild name is far and wide, and Jews believe the mixed offspring of a Jewish mother is solely Jewish); the family was to intermarry with it’s first and second cousins to preserve the family fortune (of the 18 marriages by Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s grandchildren, 16 were between first cousins - a practice known today as inbreeding); no public inventory of his estate was to be published; no legal action was to be taken with regard to the value of the inheritance; the eldest son of the eldest son was to become the head of the family (this condition could only be overturned when the majority of the family agreed otherwise).

This was straightaway the case and Nathan Mayer Rothschild was elected head of the family following his father, Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s death.

Jacob (James) Mayer Rothschild goes to Paris, France to set up the bank, de Rothschild Frères.

Nathaniel de Rothschild, the son in law of Jacob (James) Mayer Rothschild, born.

1814: With regard to the $3,000,000 Prince William IX of Hesse-Hanau had entrusted to Mayer Amschel Rothschild for safekeeping, for an account of what happened next we turn to the Jewish Encyclopaedia, 1905 edition, Volume 10, page 494, which states,

"According to legend this money was hidden away in wine casks, and, escaping the search of Napoleon's soldiers when they entered Frankfurt, was restored intact in the same casks in 1814, when the elector (Prince William IX of Hesse-Hanau) returned to the electorate (Germany). The facts are somewhat less romantic, and more businesslike."

This last line indicates the money was never returned by Rothschild to Prince William IX of Hesse-Hanau. The encyclopaedia goes on to state,

"Nathan Mayer Rothschild invested this $3,000,000 in, gold from the East India Company knowing that it would be needed for Wellington's peninsula campaign."

On the stolen money Nathan made,

"no less than four profits:

i) On the sale of Wellington's paper which he bought at 50 cents on the dollar and collected at par;
ii) on the sale of gold to Wellington;
iii) on its repurchase; and
iv) on forwarding it to Portugal."

1815: The five Rothschild brothers work to supply gold to both Wellington's army (through Nathan in England) and Napoleon's army (through Jacob in France), and begin their policy of funding both sides in wars. The Rothschilds love wars because they are massive generators of risk free debt.

This is because they are guaranteed by the government of a country, and therefore the efforts of the population of that country, and it doesn't matter if that country loses the war because the loans are given on the guarantee that the victor will honour the debts of the vanquished.

Whilst the Rothschilds are funding both sides in this war, they use the banks they have spread out across Europe to give them the opportunity to set up an unrivalled postal service network of secret routes and fast couriers. The post these couriers carried was to be opened up by these couriers and their details given to the Rothschilds so they always were one step ahead of current events.

Furthermore, these Rothschild couriers were the only merchants allowed to pass through the English and French blockades. It was these couriers who also kept Nathan Mayer Rothschild up to date with how the war was going so he could use that intelligence to buy and sell from his position on the stock exchange in accordance with that intelligence.

One of Rothschild's couriers was a man named Rothworth. When the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo was won by the British, Rothworth took off for the Channel and was able to deliver this news to Nathan Mayer Rothschild, a full 24 hours before Wellington's own courier.

At that time British bonds were called consuls and they were traded on the floor of the stock exchange. Nathan Mayer Rothschild instructed all his workers on the floor to start selling consuls. The made all the other traders believe that the British had lost the war so they started selling frantically.

Therefore the consuls plummeted in value which was when Nathan Mayer Rothschild discreetly instructed his workers to purchase all the consuls they could lay their hands on.

When news came through that the British had actually won the war, the consuls went up to a level even higher than before the war ended leaving Nathan Mayer Rothschild with a return of approximately 20 to 1 on his investment.

This gave the Rothschild family complete control of the British economy, now the financial centre of the world following Napolean's defeat, and forced England to set up a new Bank of England, which Nathan Mayer Rothschild controlled.

Interestingly 100 years later the New York Times would run a story stating that Nathan Mayer Rothschild's grandson had attempted to secure a court order to suppress publication of a book which had this insider trading story in it. The Rothschild family claimed the story was untrue and libellous, but the court denied the Rothschilds request and ordered the family to pay all court costs.

Back to 1815, this is the year Nathan Mayer Rothschild makes his famous statement,

"I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply."

He would go onto brag that in the 17 years he had been in England he had increased the £20,000 stake given to him by his father, 2500 times to £50 million.

The Rothschilds also use their control of the Bank of England to replace the method of shipping gold from country to country and instead used their five banks spread across Europe to set up a system of paper debits and credits, the banking system of today.

By the end of this century, a period of time that was known as the, "Age of the Rothschilds," it is estimated that the Rothschild family controlled half the wealth of the world.

However something that did not go well for the Rothschilds this year was the Congress of Vienna, which started in September, 1814 and concluded in June of this year. The reason for this Congress of Vienna, was for the Rothschilds to create a form of world government, to give them complete political control over much of the civilized world.

Many of the European governments were in debt to the Rothschilds, so they figured they could use that as a bargaining tool. However the Tsar Alexander I of Russia, who had not succumbed to a Rothschild central bank, would not go along with the plan, so the Rothschild world government plan failed.

Enraged by this, Nathan Mayer Rothschild swore that some day he or his descendants would destroy the Tsar Alexander I's entire family and descendants. Unfortunately he was true to his word and 102 years later Rothschild funded Bolsheviks would act upon that promise.

Interestingly, world government fanatic and Ashkenazi Jew, Henry Kissinger, did his doctoral dissertation on the Congress of Vienna.

1816: The American Congress passes a bill permitting yet another Rothschild dominated central bank, which gives the Rothschilds control of the American money supply again. This is called the Second Bank of the United States and is given a twenty year charter. The British war against the America therefore ends with the deaths of thousands of British and American soldiers, but the Rothschilds get their bank.

1818: Following the French securing massive loans in 1817 in order to help rebuild after their disastrous defeat at Waterloo, Rothschild agents bought vast amounts of French government bonds causing their value to increase.

On November 5th they dumped the lot on the open market causing their value to plummet and France to go into a financial panic. The Rothschilds then stepped in to take control of the French money supply. This was the same year the Rothschilds were able to loan £5,000,000 to the Prussian government.

1821: Kalmann (Carl) Mayer Rothschild was sent to Naples, Italy. He would end up doing a lot of business with the Vatican and Pope Gregory XVI subsequently conferred upon him the Order of St. George.

Also, whenever the Pope received Kalmann, he would give him his hand rather than the customary toe to kiss, which showed the extent of Kalmann's power over the Vatican.

1822: The emperor of Austria made the five Rothschild brothers Barons. Nathan Mayer Rothschild chose not to take up the title.

1823: The Rothschilds take over the financial operations of the Catholic Church, worldwide.

1827: Sir Walter Scott publishes his nine volume set, The life of Napolean and in volume two he states that the French Revolution was planned by the Illuminati (Adam Weishaupt) and was financed by the money changers of Europe (The Rothschilds).

1832: President Andrew Jackson (the 7th President of the United States from 1829 to 1837), runs the campaign for his second term in office under the slogan, "Jackson And No Bank!" This is in reference to his plan to take the control of the American money system to benefit the American people, not for the profiteering of the Rothschilds.

1833: President Andrew Jackson starts removing the government's deposits from the Rothschild controlled, Second Bank of the United States and instead deposits them into banks directed by democratic bankers.

This causes the Rothschilds to panic and so they do what they do best, contract the money supply causing a depression. President Jackson knows what they are up to and later states,

"You are a den of thieves vipers, and I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out."

1834: The Italian revolutionary leader, Guiseppe Mazzini, is selected by the Illuminati to direct their revolutionary program throughout the world and would serve in that capacity until he died in 1872.

1835: On January 30, an assassin tries to shoot President Jackson, but miraculously both of the assassin's pistols misfired. President Jackson would later claim that he knew the Rothschilds were responsible for that attempted assassination. He is not the only one, the assassin, Richard Lawrence, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity, later bragged that powerful people in Europe had hired him and promised to protect him if he were caught.

The Rothschilds acquire the rights in the Almadén quicksilver mines in Spain. This was at the time the biggest concession in the world and as quicksilver was a vital component in the refining of gold or silver this gave the Rothschilds a virtual world monopoly.

1836: Following his years of fighting against the Rothschilds and their central bank in America, President Andrew Jackson finally succeeds in throwing the Rothschilds central bank out of America, when the bank's charter is not renewed. It would not be until 1913 that the Rothschilds would be able to set up their third central bank in America, the Federal Reserve, and to ensure no mistakes are made, this time they will put one of their own bloodline, Jacob Schiff, in charge of the project.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild dies and the control of his bank, N. M. Rothschild & Sons is passed on to his younger brother, James Mayer Rothschild.

1837: The Rothschilds send one of their own, August Belmont, an Ashkenazi Jew, to America to salvage their banking interests defeated by President Andrew Jackson.

1840: The Rothschilds become the Bank of England’s bullion brokers. They set up agencies in California and Australia.

1841: President John Tyler (the 10th President of the United States From 1841 to 1845) vetoed the act to renew the charter for the Bank of the United States. He goes on to receive hundreds of letters threatening him with assassination.

1844: Salomon Mayer Rothschild purchases the United Coal Mines of Vítkovice and Austro-Hungarian Blast Furnace Company that would go on to be one of the top ten global industrial concerns.

Benjamin Disraeli, an Ashkenazi Jew (who would go on to become British Prime Minister twice - the only admitted Ashkenazi Jew to do so) publishes Coningsby, in which he characterises Nathan Mayer Rothschild as,

"the Lord and Master of the money markets of the world, and of course virtually Lord and Master of everything else. He literally held the revenues of Southern Italy in pawn, and Monarchs and Ministers of all countries courted his advice and were guided by his suggestions."

1845: The Great American Patriot, Andrew Jackson (7th President of the United States) dies.

Before his death he is asked what he regarded his as greatest achievement. He replies without hesitation,

"I Killed The Bank,"

This is in reference to the fact he banished the Rothschilds Second Bank of the United States in 1836.

Jacob (James) Mayer Rothschild (who by now had married his niece, Betty, Salomon Mayer Rothschild's daughter), now known as Baron James de Rothschild, wins the contract to build the first major railway line across the country.

This was called the Chemin De Fer Du Nord and ran initially from Paris to Valenciennes and then joined with the Austrian rail network built by his brother (and wife's father - all sounds a bit sordid doesn't it) Salomon Mayer Rothschild.

1847: Lionel De Rothschild now married to the daughter of his uncle, Kalmann (Carl) Mayer Rothschild, is elected to the parliamentary seat for the City of London.

A requirement for entering parliament was to take an oath in the true faith of a Christian. Lionel De Rothschild refused to do this as he was Jewish and his seat in parliament remained empty for 11 years until new oaths were allowed. He must have been an invaluable representative for his constituency, bearing in mind he could never vote on any bill as he never entered parliament! I wonder how he managed to keep his parliamentary seat for 11 years?

1848: Karl Marx, an Ashkenazi Jew, publishes, "The Communist Manifesto." Interestingly at the same time as he is working on this, Karl Ritter of Frankfurt University was writing the antithesis which would form the basis for Freidrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's, "Nietzscheanism." This Nietzecheanism was later developed into Fascism and then into Nazism and was used to forment the first and second world wars.

Marx, Ritter, and Nietzsche were all funded and under the instruction of the Rothschilds. The idea was that those who direct the overall conspiracy could use the differences in those two so-called ideologies to enable them to divide larger and larger factions of the human race into opposing camps so that they could be armed and then brainwashed into fighting and destroying each other, and particularly, to destroy all political and religious institutions. The same plan put forward by Weishaupt in 1776.

Eva Hanau, Amschel Mayer Rothschild’s wife dies.

1849: Gutle Schnaper, Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s wife dies. Before her death she would nonchalantly state,

"If my sons did not want wars, there would be none."

1850: Construction begins this decade on the manor houses of Mentmore in England and Ferrières in France, more Rothschilds Manors will follow throughout the world, all of them filled with works of art.

Jacob (James) Rothschild in France is said to be worth 600 million francs, which at the time was 150 million francs more than all the other bankers in France put together.

1852: N.M. Rothschild & Sons begins refining gold and silver for the Royal Mint and the Bank of England and other international customers.

1853: Nathaniel de Rothschild, the son in law of Jacob (James) Mayer Rothschild, purchases Château Brane Mouton, the Bordeaux vineyard of Mouton, and renames it Château Mouton Rothschild.

1854: Caroline Stern, Salomon Mayer Rothschild’s wife, dies.

1855: Amschel Mayer Rothschild dies.

Salomon Mayer Rothschild dies.

Kalmann (Carl) Mayer Rothschild dies.

1858: Lionel De Rothschild finally takes his seat in parliament when the requirement to take an oath in the true faith of a Christian is broadened to include other oaths. He becomes the first Jewish member of the British parliament.

1861: President Abraham Lincoln (16th President of the United States from 1860 till his assassination in 1865) approaches the big banks in New York to try to obtain loans to support the ongoing American civil war. As these large banks were heavily under the influence of the Rothschilds, they offer him a deal they know he cannot accept, 24% to 36% interest on all monies loaned.

Lincoln is very angry about this high level of interest and so he prints his own debt free money and informs the public that this is now legal tender for both public and private debts.

1862: By April $449,338,902 worth of Lincoln’s debt free money has been printed and distributed. He states of this,

“We gave the people of this republic the greatest blessing they ever had, their own paper money to pay their own debts.”

That same year The Times of London publishes a story containing the following statement,

"If that mischievous financial policy, which had its origin in the North American Republic, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce.

It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe."

1863: President Abraham Lincoln discovers the Tsar of Russia, Alexander II (1855 – 1881), was having problems with the Rothschilds as well as he was refusing their continual attempts to set up a central bank in Russia. The Tsar then gives President Lincoln some unexpected help.

The Tsar issued orders that if either England or France actively intervened in the American Civil War, and help the South, Russia would consider such action a declaration of war, and take the side of President Lincoln. To show that he wasn't messing about, he sent part of his Pacific Fleet to port in San Francisco and another part to New York.

The Rothschild banking house in Naples, Italy, C. M. de Rothschild e figli, closes following the unification of Italy. The Rothschilds use one of their own in America, John D. Rockefeller, to form an oil business called Standard Oil which eventually takes over all of its competition.

1864: Rothschild, August Belmont, who by now is the Democratic Party's National Chairman, supports General George McClellan as the Democratic nominee to run against President Abraham Lincoln in this year's election. Much to the anger of Belmont, President Lincoln wins the election.

1865: In a statement to Congress, President Abraham Lincoln states,

"I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me, and the financial institutions in the rear. Of the two, the one in my rear is my greatest foe."

Later that year, on April 14, President Lincoln is assassinated, less than two months before the end of the American Civil War.

Following a brief training period in the Rothschilds London Bank, Jacob Schiff, a Rothschild, born in their house in Frankfurt, arrives in America at the age of 18, with instructions and the finance necessary to buy into a banking house there. The purpose of this was to carry out the following tasks.

1. Gain control of America's money system through the establishment of a central bank.
2. Find desirable men, who for a price, would be willing to serve as stooges for the Illuminati and promote them into high places in the federal government, the Congress, Supreme Court, and all the federal agencies.
3. Create minority group strife throughout the nations, particularly targeting the whites and blacks.
4. Create a movement to destroy religion in the United States, with Christianity as the main target.

Nathaniel de Rothschild becomes Member of Parliament for Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.

1868: Jacob (James) Mayer Rothschild dies, shortly after purchasing Château Lafite, one of the four great premier grand cru estates of France. He is the last of Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s sons to die.

1870: Nathaniel de Rothschild dies.

1871: An American General named, Albert Pike, who had been enticed into the Illuminati by Guissepe Mazzini, completes his military blueprint for three world wars and various revolutions throughout the world, culminating into moving this great conspiracy into its final stage.

The first world war is to be fought for the purpose of destroying the Tsar in Russia,as promised by Nathan Mayer Rothschild in 1815. The Tsar is to be replaced with communism which is to be used to attack religions, predominantly Christianity. The differences between the British and German empires are to be used to forment this war.

The second world war is to be used to forment the controversy between facism and political zionism with the slaughter of Jews in Germany a lynchpin in bringing hatred against the German people. This is designed to destroy fascism (which the Rothschilds created) and increase the power of political zionism. This war is also designed to increase the power of communism to the level that it equalled that of united Christendom.

The third world war is to be played out by stirring up hatred of the Muslim world for the purposes of playing the Islamic world and the political zionists off against one another. Whilst this is going on, the remaining nations would be forced to fight themselves into a state of mental, physical, spiritual and economic exhaustion.

On August 15th of this year, Albert Pike writes a letter (now catalogued in the British Museum) to Guiseppe Mazzini in which he states the following,

"We shall unleash the nihilists and the atheists and we shall provoke a great social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to all nations the effect of absolute atheism; the origins of savagery and of most bloody turmoil.

Then everywhere, the people will be forced to defend themselves against the world minority of the world revolutionaries and will exterminate those destroyers of civilization and the multitudes disillusioned with Christianity whose spirits will be from that moment without direction and leadership and anxious for an ideal, but without knowledge where to send its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer brought finally out into public view.
A manifestation which will result from a general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and Atheism; both conquered and exterminated at the same time."

Pike, who having been elected as Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry's Southern Jurisdiction in 1859, was the most powerful Freemason in America. He would retain that post for 32 years until his death in 1891. He also published a book on the subject in 1872 entitled, "Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry," in which he candidly states the following,

"LUCIFER, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darknesss! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual or selfish Souls? Doubt it not!"

1872: Prior to Guiseppe Mazzini's death this year, he makes another revolutionary leader named Adrian Lemmy his successor. Lemmy will be subsequently succeeded by Lenin and Trotsky, then by Stalin. The revolutionary activities of all these men are financed by the Rothschilds.

1873: The loss making Rio Tinto copper mines in Spain, are purchased by a group of foreign financiers including the Rothschilds. These mines represented Europe’s largest source of copper.

1875: On January 1 of this year Jacob Schiff, now Solomon Loeb's son-in-law after marrying his daughter, Teresa, takes control of the banking house, Kuhn, Loeb & Co. He goes on to finance John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, Edward R. Harriman's Railroad Empire, and Andrew Carnegie's Steel Empire. This is all with Rothschild money.

He then identifies the other largest bankers in America at that time. They are, J.P. Morgan who controls Wall Street, and the Drexels and the Biddles of Philadelphia. All the other financiers, big and little, danced to the music of those three houses. Schiff then gets the European Rothschilds to set up European branches of these three large banks on the understanding that Schiff, and therefore Rothschild, is to be the boss of banking in New York and therefore America.

N M Rothschild & Sons undertake a share issue to raise capital for the first channel tunnel project to link France to England, with half of its capital coming from the Rothschild owned Compagnie du Chemin de Fer du Nord.

This year Lionel De Rothschild also loans Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli the finance for the British government to purchase the shares in the Suez Canal, from Khedive Said of Egypt. This was done as the Rothschilds needed this access route to be held by a government they controlled, so they could use that government's military to protect their huge business interests in the Middle East.

1876: Otto von Bismarck states,

"The division of the United States into two federations of equal force was decided long before the civil war by the high financial power of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the United States, if they remained in one block and as one nation, would attain economical and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world.

The voice of the Rothschilds predominated. They foresaw the tremendous booty if they could substitute two feeble democracies, indebted to the financiers, to the vigorous Republic, confident and self-providing.
Therefore they started their emissaries in order to exploit the question of slavery and thus dig an abyss between the two parts of the Republic."

1879: Lionel de Rothschild dies.

1880: Rothschild agents begin formenting a series of pogroms predominantly in Russia, but also in Poland, Bulgaria and Romania. These pogroms resulted in the slaughter of thousands of innocent Jews, causing approximately 2 million to flee, mainly to New York, but also to Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Los Angeles.

The reason these pogroms were initiated, was to create a large Jewish base in America, who when they arrived, would be educated to register as Democrat voters. Some twenty years later, this would result in in a massive Democratic power base in the United States and be used to elect Rothschild front men such as Woodrow Wilson, to the Presidency, to carry out the bidding of the Rothschilds.

1881: President James A. Garfield (The 20th President of the United States who lasted only 100 Days) states two weeks before he is assassinated,

“Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”

Edmond James de Rothschild has a son Maurice de Rothschild.

1883: After 6,000 feet of tunnel in the channel tunnel project being excavated, the British government halt the project citing the fact that it would be a threat to Britain’s security.

1885: Nathaniel Rothschild, son of Lionel De Rothschild, becomes the first Jewish peer and is takes the title of Lord Rothschild.

1886: The French Rothschild bank, de Rothschild Frères obtains substantial amounts of Russia's oil fields and forms the Caspian and Black Sea Petroleum Company, which quickly becomes the world's second largest oil producer.

1887: Opium trafficker in China, Edward Albert Sassoon, marries Aline Caroline de Rothschild, the grand-daughter of Jacob (James) Mayer Rothschild. Aline Caroline's father, Gustave, together with his brother, Alphonse, took over the Rothschild's french arm following their father Jacob's death.

The Rothschilds finance the amalgamation of the Kimberley diamond mines in South Africa. They subsequently become the biggest shareholders of this company, De Beers, and mine precious stones in Africa and India.

1888: Noémie Halphen, future wife of Maurice de Rothschild born.

1891: The British Labour Leader makes the following statement on the subject of the Rothschilds,

"This blood-sucking crew has been the cause of untold mischief and misery in Europe during the present century, and has piled up its prodigious wealth chiefly through fomenting wars between States which ought never to have quarrelled.
Whenever there is trouble in Europe, wherever rumours of war circulate and men’s minds are distraught with fear of change and calamity you may be sure that a hook-nosed Rothschild is at his games somewhere near the region of the disturbance."

Comments like this worry the Rothschilds and towards the end of the 1800’s they purchase Reuters news agency so they can have some control of the media.

1895: Edmond James de Rothschild the youngest son of Jacob (James) Mayer Rothschild visits Palestine and subsequently supplies the funds to found the first Jewish colonies there, this is to further their long term objective of creating a Rothschild owned country.

1897: The Rothschilds found the Zionist Congress to promote Zionism (a political movement with the sole aim of moving all Jews into a singularly Jewish nation state) and arrange its first meeting in Munich. However due to extreme opposition from local Jews, who are quite happy where they are, this meeting has to be moved to Basle, Switzerland and takes place on 29 August. The meeting is chaired by Ashkenazi Jew, Theodor Herzl, who would state in his diaries,

"It is essential that the sufferings of Jews….become worse….this will assist in realization of our plans….I have an excellent idea….I shall induce anti-Semites to liquidate Jewish wealth….The anti-Semites will assist us thereby in that they will strengthen the persecution and oppression of Jews. The anti-Semites shall be our best friends."

Herzl is subsequently elected President of the Zionist Organisation which adopts the, "Rothschild Red Hexagram or Sign," as the Zionist flag which 51 years later will end up as the flag of Israel.

Edward Henry Harriman becomes a director of the Union Pacific Railroad and goes on to take control of the Southern Pacific Railroad. This is all financed by the Rothschilds.

1898: Ferdinand de Rothschild dies.

1901: The Jews from the colonies set up in Palestine by Edmond James de Rothschild, send a delegation to him which tell him,

"If you wish to save the Yishuv (The Jewish settlement) first take your hands from it, and…for once permit the colonists to have the possibility of correcting for themselves what needs correcting."

Edmond James de Rothschild is very angry about this and states,

"I created the Yishuv, I alone. Therefore no men, neither colonists nor organisations have the right to interfere in my plans."

The Rothschild banking house in Frankfurt, Germany, M. A. von Rothschild und Söhne, closes as there is no male Rothschild heir to take it on.

1902: Philippe de Rothschild born.

1905: A group of Rothschild backed Zionist Jews led by Georgi Apollonovich Gapon attempt to overthrow the Tsar in Russia in a Communist Coup. They fail and are forced to flee Russia only to be given refuge in Germany.

The Jewish Encyclopaedia (Vol. 2, p.497) states,

"It is a somewhat curious sequel to the attempt to set up a Catholic competitor to the Rothschilds that at the present time the latter are the guardians of the papal treasure."

1906: The Rothschilds claim that due to growing instability in the region and increasing competition from Rockefeller (the Rockefeller family are Rothschild descendants through a female bloodline) owned Standard Oil, this is why they sell their Caspian and Black Sea Petroleum Company to Royal Dutch and Shell. This is another example of the Rothschilds trying to hide their true wealth.

1907: Rothschild, Jacob Schiff, the head of Kuhn, Loeb and Co., in a speech to the New York Chamber of Commerce, warns that,

"Unless we have a Central Bank with adequate control of credit resources, this country is going to undergo the most severe and far reaching money panic in its history."

Suddenly America finds itself in the middle of another typical run of the mill Rothschild engineered financial crisis, which ruins as usual ruins the lives of millions of innocent people throughout America and makes billions for the Rothschilds.

1909: Jacob Schiff founds the National Advancement for the Association of the Coloured People (NAACP). This was done to incite black people into roiting, looting and other forms of disorder, in order to cause a rift between the black and white communities. Jewish historian, Howard Sachar, states the following in his book, "A History of the Jews in America,"

"In 1914, Professor Emeritus Joel Spingarn of Columbia University became chairman of the NAACP and recruited for its board such Jewish leaders as Jacob Schiff, Jacob Billikopf, and Rabbi Stephen Wise."

Other Ashkenazi Jew co-founders included Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald and Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch. It was not until 1920 that the NAACP appointed its first black president, James Weldon Johnson.

Maurice de Rothschild marries Ashkenazi Jew, Noémie Halphen.

1911: Werner Sombart, in his book, "The Jews and Modern Capitalism," stated that from 1820 on, it was the,

"Age of the Rothschild," and concluded that there was, "Only one power in Europe, and that is Rothschild."

1912: In the December issue of, "Truth," magazine, George R. Conroy states of banker Jacob Schiff,

"Mr Schiff is head of the great private banking house of Kuhn, Loeb, and co, which represents the Rothschilds interests on this side of the Atlantic.
He has been described as financial strategist and has been for years the financial minister of the great impersonal power known as Standard Oil.

He was hand in glove with the Harrimans, the Goulds, and the Rockefellers in all their railroad enterprises and has become the dominant power in the railroad and financial power of America."

1913: On March 4, Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th President of the United States. Shortly after he is inaugurated, he is visited in the White House by Ashkenazi Jew, Samuel Untermyer, of law firm, Guggenheim, Untermyer, and Marshall, who tries to blackmail him for the sum of $40,000 in relation to an affair Wilson had whilst he was a professor at Princeton University, with a fellow professor's wife.

President Wilson does not have the money, so Untermyer volunteers to pay the $40,000 out of his own pocket to the woman Wilson had had the affair with, on the condition that Wilson promise to appoint to the first vacancy on the United States Supreme Court a nominee to be recommended to President Wilson by Untermyer. Wilson agrees to this.

Jacob Schiff sets up the Anti Defamation League (ADL) in the United States. This organisation is formed to slander anyone who questions or challenges the Rothschild global conspiracy as, "anti-semitic."

Strangely enough, the same year that they do this they also set up their last and current central bank in America, the Federal Reserve. Congressman Charles Lindbergh stated following the passing of the Federal Reserve Act on December 23,

"The Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this Bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized.......The greatest crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill."

It is important to note that the Federal Reserve is a private company, it is neither Federal nor does it have any Reserve. It is conservatively estimated that profits exceed $150 billion per year and the Federal Reserve has never once in its history published accounts.

1914: The start of World War I. In this war, the German Rothschilds loan money to the Germans, the British Rothschilds loan money to the British, and the French Rothschilds loan money to the French.

Futhermore, the Rothschilds have control of the three European news agencies, Wolff (est. 1849) in Germany, Reuters (est. 1851) in England, and Havas (est. 1835) in France.

The Rothschilds use Wolff to manipulate the German people into a fervour for war. From around this time, the Rothschilds are rarely reported in the media, because they own the media.

1916: On June 4, Ashkenazi Jew, Louis Dembitz Brandeis is appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by President Wilson as per his agreed blackmail payment to Samuel Untermyer some three years earlier. Justice Brandeis is also the elected leader of the Executive Committee for Zionist Affairs, a position he has held since 1914.

The middle of World War II. Germany were winning the war as they were being financed by the Rothschilds to a greater extent than France, Italy and England, because Rothschilds, did not want to support the Tsar in Russia, and of course Russia was on the same side as France, Italy and England.

Then a significant event occurred. Germany, although they were winning the war and not one foreign soldier had set foot on their soil, offered armistice to Britain with no requirement of reparations. The Rothschilds were anxious to make sure this didn't happen as they were expecting to make far more money off this war, so they played another card they had up their sleeve.

Whilst the British were considering Germany's offer, Rothschild agent Louis Brandeis sends a Zionist delegation from America to Britain to promise to bring America into the war on the side of the British, provided the British agree to give the land of Palestine to the Rothschilds.

The Rothschilds wanted Palestine for the following reason. They had great business interests in the far east and desired their own state in that area along with their own military which they could use as an aggressor to any state that threatened those interests.

The British subsequently agree to the deal for Palestine and the Zionists in London contact their counterparts in America and inform them of this fact. Suddenly all the major newspapers in America that up to that point had been pro-German turned on Germany running propaganda pieces such as: German soldiers were killing Red Cross Nurses; German soldiers were cutting off babies hands, etc, in order to manipulate the American public against the Germans.

This same year, President Woodrow Wilson, ran a re-election campaign under the slogan, "Re-Elect The Man Who Will Keep Your Sons Out Of The War."

On December 12, Germany and her allies offer peace terms to end the war.

1917: As a result of Germany's offer of peace the Rothschild war machine goes into overdrive in America, spreading propaganda which leads to President Wilson under the instructions of American Zionist leader and Supreme Court Justice, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, reneging on his promise to the electorate and taking America into the first world war on April 6.

As per the Rothschild Zionist promise to the British, to take America into the war, they decide they want something in writing from the British to prove that they will uphold their side of the bargain. The British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour therefore drafts a letter which is commonly known as the, "Balfour Declaration," which is reprinted below.

Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour

The Rothschilds order the execution by the Bolsheviks they control, of Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family in Russia, even though the Tsar had already abdicated on March 2. This is both to get control of the country and an act of revenge for Tsar Alexander I blocking their world government plan in 1815 at the Congress Of Vienna, and Tsar Alexander II siding with President Abraham Lincoln in 1864.

It is extremely important for them to slaughter the entire family including women and children in order to make good on the promise to do so made by Nathan Mayer Rothschild in 1815. It is designed to show the world what happens if you ever attempt to cross the Rothschilds.

U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway informs Congress that J. P. Morgan is a Rothschild front and has taken control of the American media industry. He states,

"In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press...
...They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers...An agreement was reached. The policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month, an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers."

1919: In January, Ashkenazi Jews, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, are killed as they attempt to lead another Rothschild funded Communist coup, this time in Berlin, Germany.

The Versailles peace conference is held to decide reparations that the Germans need to pay to the victors following the end of the first world war. A delegation of 117 Zionists headed up by Ashkenazi Jew, Bernard Baruch, bring up the subject of the promise of Palestine for them. At this point the Germans realised why America had turned on them and under whose influence, the Rothschilds.

The Germans, naturally, felt they had been betrayed by the Zionists. This is because, at the time the Rothschilds made their deal with Britain for Palestine, in exchange for bringing America into the war, Germany was the most friendly country in the world towards the Jews, indeed the German Emancipation Edict of 1822 guaranteed Jews in Germany all civil rights enjoyed by Germans.

Also, Germany was the only country in Europe which did not place restrictions on Jews, even giving them refuge when they had to flee from Russia after their first attempted Communist coup failed there in 1905.

Nevertheless, the Rothschilds had held up their side of the bargain to spill the blood of millions of innocents and as a result, Palestine is confirmed as a Jewish homeland, and whilst its handover to the Rothschilds takes place it is to remain under the control of Britain as the Rothschilds control Britain. At that time less than one percent of the population of Palestine was Jewish. Interestingly, the host of the Versailles peace conference is its boss, Baron Edmond de Rothschild.

The Versailles peace conference is also used as an attempt by the Rothschilds to set up a world government under the pretext of ending all wars (which they create). This was called the, "League of Nations." Fortunately not enough countries accepted it and so it soon died.

On March 29th The Times of London reports on the Bolsheviks in Russia,

"One of the curious features of the Bolshevist movement is the high percentage of non Russian elements among its leaders. Of the twenty or thirty commissaries, or leaders, who provide the central machinery of the Bolshevist movement, not less than 75% were Jews."

It is reported that the Rothschilds were angry with the Russians because they were not prepared to allow them to form a central bank within their nation. They therefore gathered groups of Jewish spies and sent them into Russia to drum up a revolution for the benefit of the common man, which was actually a takeover of Russia by a Rothschild controlled satanic elite.

These Jewish spies were, in age old deceptive Ashkenazi tradition, given Russian names, for example Trotsky was a member of the first group and his original name was Bronstein. These groups were sent to areas throughout Russia to incite riots and rebellion.

The Jewish Post International Edition, week ending January 24th 1991, confirms Vladimir Lenin was Jewish. Lenin is also on record as having stated,

“The establishment of a central bank is 90% of communizing a nation.”

These Jewish, Rothschild funded Bolsheviks would go on in the course of history to slaughter 60 million Christians and Non-Jews in Soviet controlled territory. Indeed the author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his work, “Gulag Archipelago, Vol 2,” affirms that Zionist Jews created and administered the organized Soviet concentration camp system in which these tens of millions of Christians and Non-Jews died.

On page 79 of this book he even names the administrators of this the greatest killing machine in the history of the world. They are Aron Solts, Yakov Rappoport, Lazar Kogan, Matvei Berman, Genrikh Yagoda, and Naftaly Frenkel. All six are Zionist Jews. In 1970 Solzhenitsyn would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for literature.

N. M. Rothschild & Sons’ are given a permanent role to fix the world’s daily gold price. This takes place in the City of London offices, daily at 1100 hours, in the same room until 2004.

1920: Winston Churchill (whose mother, Jenny (Jacobson) Jerome, was Jewish – meaning he is Jewish under Ashkenazi law as he was born of a Jewish mother) writes in an article in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, dated February 8th,

"From the days of Illuminati leader Weishaupt, to those of Karl Marx, to those of Trotsky, this worldwide conspiracy has been steadily growing.
And now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America, have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and become the undisputed masters of that enormous empire."

1921: Under the orders of Jacob Schiff the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is founded by Ashkenazi Jews, Bernard Baruch and Colonel Edward Mandell House. Schiff gave his orders prior to his death in 1920, as he knew an organisation in America needed to be set up to select politicians to carry on the Rothschild conspiracy,and the formation of the CFR was actually agreed in a meeting on May 30, 1919 at the Hotel Majestic in Paris, France.

The CFR membership at the start was approximately 1000 people in the United States. This membership included the heads of virtually every industrial empire in America, all the American based international bankers, and the heads of all their tax free foundations. In essence all those people who would provide the capital required for anyone who wished to run for Congress, the Senate or the Presidency.

The first job of the CFR was to gain control of the press. This task was given to John D. Rockefeller who set up a number of national news magazines such as Life, and Time. He financed Samuel Newhouse to buy up and establish a chain of newspapers all across the country, and Eugene Meyer also who would go on to buy up many publications such as the Washington Post, Newsweek, ant The Weekly Magazine.

The CFR also needed to gate control of radio, television and the motion picture industry. This task was split amongst the international bankers from, Kuhn Loeb, Goldman Sachs, the Warburgs, and the Lehmanns.

1925: This year's Jewish Encyclopaedia, states of the existence of Ashkenazi Jews (who represent approximately 90% of so-called world Jewry), with the startling admission that the so called enemy of the Jews, Esau (also known as Edom, see Genesis 36:1), now actually represents the Jewish race, when on page 42 of Volume V it is stated,

"Edom is in modern Jewry."

So what they're basically saying is that these Ashkenazi Jews, who represent 90% of the so-called Jewish population, are actually gentiles or goyim themselves.

1926: N. M. Rothschild & Sons refinance the Underground Electric Railways Company of London Ltd which has a controlling interest in the entire London Underground transport system.

Maurice de Rothschild has a son, Edmond de Rothschild.

1929: The Rothschilds crash the United States economy by contracting the money supply.

1930: The first Rothschild world bank, the, "Bank for International Settlements (BIS)," is established in Basle, Switzerland. The same place as where 33 years earlier the first ever World Zionist Congress was held.

1933: On January 30, Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany. He drives Jews, many of which were Communist out of Governmental positions within Germany. As a result of this, in July, the Jews hold a World Conference in Amsterdam during which they demand that Hitler re-instate every Jew back to his former position.

Hitler refuses and as a result of this, Samuel Untermyer, the Ashkenazi Jew who blackmailed President Wilson,and is now the head of the American delegation and the president of the whole conference, returns to the United States, and makes a speech on radio which was transcribed in the From the New York Times, Monday, August 7, 1933. In the speech he made the following statements,

"...the Jews are the aristocrats of the world...Our campaign is...the economic boycott against all German goods, shipping and services...What we are proposing...is to prosecute a purely defensive economic boycott that will undermine the Hitler regime and bring the German people to their senses by destroying their export trade on which their very existence depends...
...Each of you, Jew and Gentile alike...must refuse to deal with any merchant or shopkeeper who sells any German-made goods or who patronizes German ships or shipping."

As two thirds of Germany's food supply had to be imported, and could only be imported with the proceeds of what they exported, if Germany could not export, two thirds of Germany's population would starve, as there would be not enough food for more than one third of the population.

As a result of this boycott, Jews throughout America, would protest outside and damage any stores in which they found any products with, "Made in Germany," printed on them, causing stores to have to dump these products or risk bankruptcy.

Once the effects of this boycott began to be felt in Germany, the Germans, who had demonstrated no violence towards the Jews up to this point, simply began boycotting Jewish stores in the same way the Jews had done to stores selling German products in America.

Rothschild financed IBM, supply machines to the Nazis which produce punch cards to help organize and manage the initial identification and social expulsion of Jews, the confiscation of their property and their extermination.

On November 16, President Roosevelt recognizes the Zionist regime of Stalin in Russia without consultation with Congress even as 8,000 Ukrainians march in protest in New York.

Also this year, President Roosevelt, born of a Jewish mother, therefore satisfying Ashkenazi rules of being Jewish, orders the all-seeing eye to be placed upon all new dollar bills along with the motto, "Novus Ordo Seclorum." This is latin for, "A New Order of the Ages."

1934: Swiss banking secrecy laws are reformed and it becomes an offence resulting in imprisonment for any bank employee to violate bank secrecy. This is all in preparation for the Rothschild engineered Second World War in which as usual they will fund both sides.

Edmond de Rothschild dies.

1936: With regard to the increase in anti-semitism in Germany, Samuel Landman (at the time, secretary to the World Zionist Organisation), in his 1936 book, Great Britain, The Jews, and Palestine states the following of the United States entry into World War 1,

"The fact that it was Jewish help that brought USA into the War on the side of the Allies has rankled ever since in German – especially Nazi – minds, and has contributed in no small measure to the prominence which anti-Semitism occupies in the Nazi programme."

1938: On 7th November, a Jew, Herschel Grynszpan, assassinated Ernst vom Rath, a minor official at the German Embassy in Paris. As a result of this German hostility towards Jews in Germany started to turn violent.

The Rothschilds Austrian banking house in Vienna, S. M. von Rothschild und Söhne, closes following the Nazi occupation of Austria.

1939: I.G. Farben the leading producer of chemicals in the world and largest German producer of steel dramatically increases its production. This increased production is almost exclusively used to arm Germany for the Second World War. This company was controlled by the Rothschilds and would go on to use Jews and other disaffected peoples as slave labour in the concentration camps. I.G. Farben also created the lethal Zyklon B gas that was used to exterminate the Jews.

On 1 September, the Second world war starts when Germany invades Poland. This was because the German leadership were a Christian leadership, who understood that Soviet Russia was led by Rothschild funded Communists, and they feared that as the Soviet Union grew in strength, these Jewish Communists would invade and wipe all the Christians off the map.

1940: Hansjurgen Koehler in his book, "Inside The Gestapo," states the following, of Maria Anna Schicklgruber, Adolf Hitler's grandmother,

"A little servant girl…….came to Vienna and became a domestic servant…….at the Rothschild mansion…….and Hitler’s unknown grandfather must be probably looked for in this magnificent house."

This is backed up by Walter Langer in his book, "The Mind Of Hitler," in which he states,

"Adolf’s father, Alois Hitler, was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber…….Maria Anna Schicklgruber was living in Vienna at the time she conceived. At that time she was employed as a servant in the home of Baron Rothschild. As soon as the family discovered her pregnancy she was sent back home…….where Alois was born."

On the surface, it would appear Hitler was unlikely to be a Rothschild, but then again, when you discover the benefits that the Rothschilds got out of this war, both financially and politically, a Rothschild connection does not appear as outlandish as it may initially seem.

1941: President Roosevelt takes America into the second world war by refusing to sell Japan any more steel scrap or oil. Japan was in the midst of a war against China and without that scrap steel and oil, Japan would be unable to continue that war. Japan was totally dependent upon the United States for both steel scrap and oil. Roosevelt knew this action would provoke the Japanese to attack America, which they subsequently did at Pearl Harbor.

1942: Prescott Bush, father of future American Presidents’ George Herbert Walker and George W, has his company seized under the, “Trading With The Enemy,” Act. He was funding Hitler from America, whilst American soldiers were being killed by German soldiers.

Jews are also being slaughtered by these same soldiers. Interestingly the ADL never criticizes any of the Bushes for this.

1943: February 18th, Zionist, Izaak Greenbaum, head of the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee, in a speech to the Zionist Executive Council states,

“If I am asked, could you give from the UJA (United Jewish Appeal) monies to rescue Jews, I say, no and I say again no!”

He would go onto state,

“One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Poland!”

This is not a surprise, the whole idea of Zionist support for the slaughter of innocent Jews was to scare the survivors into believing that their only place of safety was Israel. How else do you think the Zionists could ensure Jews leave the beautiful European cities in which they live, in order to settle in a desert!

1944: On 6 November Lord Moyne, British Minister Resident in the Middle East was assassinated in Cairo by two members of the Jewish terrorist group, the Stern Gang, led by future Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Shamir. He is also responsible for an assassination attempt against Harold MacMichael, the High Commissioner of the British Mandate of Palestine, this same year.

Interestingly he also masterminds another successful assassination this year against the United Nations representative in the Middle East, Count Folke Bernadotte who, although he had secured the release of 21,000 prisoners from German camps during World War II, was seen by Yitzak Shamir and his terrorist collaborators as an anti-Zionist.

In Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, two further Rothschild world banks are created. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank.

1945: The end of the Second World War. It is reported that I.G. Farben plants were specifically not targeted in the bombing raids on Germany. Interestingly at the end of the war, they were found to have only sustained 15% damage.

The tribunals held at the end of the Second World War, to investigate Nazi War Crimes, censored any materials recording Western assistance to Hitler.

The Rothschilds take a giant step towards their goal of world domination when the second, "League of Nations," called the, "United Nations," was approved this year.

1946: On July 22 the future Prime Minister of Israel, Ashkenazi Jew, David Ben-Gurion, orders another future Prime Minister of Israel, Ashkenazi Jew, Menachem Begin, to carry out a terrorist attack on the King David Hotel in Palestine, to try and drive out the British. As a result of this 91 people were killed, most of them civilians: 28 British, 41 Arabs, 17 Jews, and 5 others. Around 45 people are injured.

Menachem Begin went on to proudly proclaimed himself as, "the father of modern terrorism." Just to put the gravity of the attack on the King David Hotel into perspective, it was at the time the biggest death toll as a result of single terrorist action ever and was only surpassed over forty years later by the Bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie.

1947: The British who prior to World War 2 declared that there would be no more immigration of Jews to Palestine in order to protect the Palestinians from their acts of terror against both them and British soldiers, transfer control of Palestine to the United Nations. The United Nations resolve to have Palestine partitioned into two states, one zionist and one arab, with Jerusalem to remain as an international zone to be enjoyed by all religious faiths.

This transfer was scheduled to take place on May 15, 1948. The United Nations had no right to give Arab property to anyone, as indeed even thought the Jews owned 6% of Palestine at that time, resolution 181 granted the Jews 57% of the land leaving the Arabs who at that time had 94% with only 43%.

Information collected by the ADL in its spy operations on US citizens is used by the House Select Committee on Unamerican Activities. Subcommittee Chair Clare Hoffman dismisses the ADL’s reports on suspected communists as "hearsay."

1948: In the Spring of this year, the Rothschilds bribe President Harry S. Truman (33rd President of the United States 1945 – 1953) to recognise Israel (Rothschild owned Zionist not Jewish territory) as a sovereign state with $2,000,000 which they give to him on his campaign train.

They then declare Israel to be a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine and within half an hour President Truman declared the United States to be the first foreign nation to recognise it.

The Flag of Israel is unveiled. Despite tremendous opposition the emblem on the flag is a blue coloured version of the Rothschild, "Red Hexagram or Sign."

This angers many Jews who realise this Hexagram was used in the ancient mystery religions as the symbol of, "Moloch," (described as a demon of unwilling sacrifice and is also interestingly the name of the stone owl the elite worship at Bohemian Grove), and, "Astaroth," (described as the Lord Treasurer of Hell).

The Hexagram was also used to represent Saturn, which has been identified as the esoteric name for, "Satan." This indicates that anyone killed in the name of Israel is actually a sacrifice to Satan. These dissenting Jews believe the, "Menorah," the oldest Jewish symbol should be used and pointed out that the Hexagram is not even a Jewish symbol, but of course as the Rothschild Zionists use it that is what ends up on the Rothschild, I mean Zionist, I mean Israeli flag.

In the early hours of April 19, 132 Jewish terrorists from the Irgun gang, led by future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and the Stern gang, led by future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, brutally massacre 200 men, women and children as they are sleeping peacefully in the Arab village of Deir Yassin.

Following the United Nations transfer of Palestine to an independent Jewish state and an independent Arab state on May 15, the Israelis launched a military assault on the Arabs with blaring loudspeakers on their trucks informing the Arabs that if they did not flee immediately, they would be slaughtered.

800,000 Arabs with the recent memory of the Deir Yassin massacre at the forefront of their minds, fled in panic. They asked for help from nighbouring Arab states, but those states did not get involved as they were no match for the Israelis whose up to date military hardware had been supplied by the Jewish Stalinist regime in Russia. Following this assault, the Jews now controlled 78% of the former Palestine as oppose to the 57% that had been given to them illegally by the United Nations.

The Palestinians, many of them Christians, were never paid compensation for their homes, property and businesses stolen from them during this illegal Jewish assault, and these people ended up in slum refugee cities of tents. Futhermore at least half of the Palestinians in their hurry to flee, left their birth certificates behind. The State of Israel then passed a law that only those who could prove citizenship were allowed to return to Israel, thus meaning these 400,000 Palestinians could not return and lost all their property they had left there.

Ashkenazi Jew, David Ben-Gurion, one of the father founders of Israel and its first Prime Minister, candidly describes Zionist aims in his diary (21 May 1948) as follows,

“The Achilles heel of the Arab coalition is the Lebanon. Muslim supremacy in this country is artificial and can easily be overthrown. A Christian State ought to be set up there, with its southern frontier on the river Litani.
We would sign a treaty of alliance with this State. Thus when we have broken the strength of the Arab Legion and bombed Amman, we could wipe out Trans-Jordan, after that Syria would fall. And if Egypt still dared to make war on us, we would bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo.

We should thus end the war and would have but paid to Egypt, Assyria and Chaldea on behalf of our ancestors.”

1949: On October 1, Mao Tse Tsung declares the founding of the People's Republic Of China in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. He is funded by Rothschild created Communism in Russia and also the following Rothschild agents: Solomon Adler, a former United States Treasury official who was a Soviet Spy; Israel Epstein, the son of a Jewish Bolshevik imprisoned by the Tsar in Russia for trying to forment a revolution there; and Frank Coe, a leading official of the Rothschild owned IMF.

1950: Israel passes their law of return, guaranteeing every Jew worldwide the right to dwell in the state of Israel, however the Palestinians even though they had lived there for 1300 years, were denied that right.

John Davitt, former chief of the Justice Department's internal security section notes that the Israeli intelligence service is the second most active in the United States after the Soviets and of course both Israel and the Soviet Union are run by an Ashkenazi Jewish leadership.

1951: On 1 April the Israeli Secret Intelligence Agency the Mossad, which will go on to terrorize the world, is formed. The motto of the Mossad is probably the most disgusting secret service motto in the world, it is,

"By Way Of Deception,
Thou Shalt Do War."

1953: N. M. Rothschild & Sons found the British Newfoundland Corporation Limited to develop 60,000 square miles of land in Newfoundland, Canada, which comprised a power station to harness the power of the Hamilton (later renamed Churchill) Falls. At the time this was the largest construction project ever to be undertaken by a private company.

1954: "The Lavon Affair." Israeli agents recruit Egyptian citizens of Jewish descent to bomb Western targets in Egypt, and plant evidence to frame Arabs, in an apparent attempt to upset American/Egyptian relations. Israeli defense minister, Ashkenazi Jew, Pinhas Lavon is eventually removed from office, though many think real responsibility lay with David Ben-Gurion.

A hidden microphone planted by the Israelis is discovered in the Office of the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv.

1955: Edmond de Rothschild founds Compagnie Financiere, Paris.

1956: Telephone taps are found connected to two telephones in the residence of the US military attaché in Tel Aviv.

1957: James de Rothschild dies and it is reported (by the Rothschild owned media) that he bequeaths a large sum of money to the state of Israel to pay for the construction of their parliament building, the Knesset. He states that the Knesset should be,

"a symbol, in the eyes of all men, of the permanence of the State of Israel."

On page 219 of his book, "Tales of the British Aristocracy," L.G. Pine, the Editor of Burke’s Peerage, states that the Jews,

"have made themselves so closely connected with the British peerage that the two classes are unlikely to suffer loss which is not mutual. So closely linked are the Jews and the lords that a blow against the Jews in this country would not be possible without injuring the aristocracy also."

Maurice de Rothschild dies in Paris.

1962: de Rothschild Frères establishes Imétal as an umbrella company for all their mineral mining interests.

Frederic Morton publishes his book, The Rothschilds, in which he states,

"Though they control scores of industrial, commercial, mining and tourist corporations, not one bears the name Rothschild. Being private partnerships, the family houses never need to, and never do, publish a single public balance sheet, or any other report of their financial condition."

This attitude reveals the true aim of the Rothschilds, to eliminate all competition and create their own worldwide monopoly.

1963: On June 4th President John F. Kennedy (the 35th President of the United States 1961 – 1963) signs Executive Order 11110 which returned to the U.S. government the power to issue currency, without going through the Rosthchilds owned Federal Reserve.

Less than 6 months later on November 22nd , president Kennedy is assassinated by the Rothschilds for the same reason as they assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, he wanted to print American money for the American people, as oppose to for the benefit of a money grabbing war mongering foreign elite.

This Executive Order 11110, is rescinded by President Lyndon Baines Johnson (the 36th President of the United States 1963 to 1969) on Air Force One from Dallas to Washington, the same day as President Kennedy was assassinated.

Another, and probably the primary, reason for Kennedy's assassination is however, the fact that he made it quite clear to Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, that under no circumstances would he agree to Israel becoming a nuclear state. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz on February 5, 1999, in a review of, Avner Cohen's book, "Israel and the Bomb," states the following,

"The murder of American President John F. Kennedy brought to an abrupt end the massive pressure being applied by the U.S. administration on the government of Israel to discontinue the nuclear program...The book implied that, had Kennedy remained alive, it is doubtful whether Israel would today have a nuclear option."

Edmond de Rothschild establishes La Compagnie Financière Edmond de Rothschild (LCF), in Switzerland as a venture capital house. This later develops into an investment bank and asset management company with many affiliates. He also marries his wife Nadine and they have a son, Benjamin de Rothschild.

1965: Israel illegally obtains enriched uranium from NUMEC (Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation).

1967: The treatment of the Palestinians by the Zionist Jews, finally ignites enough anger in the Arab world for Egypt, Jordan and Syria to mobilise on Israel's borders. All of these three countries are suddenly attacked by Israel and as a result the Sinai which included Gaza was stolen from Egypt, and the West Bank and the Jordan River stolen from Jordan.

As a result of this, on June 8, the Israelis launch an attack on the USS Liberty with Israeli aircraft and motor torpedo boats, in an effort to blame it on Egypt, to bring America into the war on their side, and of course follow to the letter, their Mossad motto,

"By Way Of Deception,
Thou Shalt Do War."

As a result of their attack, 34 American servicemen were killed and 174 wounded. Israel lies as usual, claiming it mistook this warship that was flying a large United States flag, for an ancient out-of-service Egyptian horse carrier El Quseir, that was 180 feet shorter. They also claim the ship was in the war zone, when it was actually in international waters, far from any fighting. The Israeli's attack on this warship lasts for 75 minutes during which time they shoot up one of the United States flags, resulting in the sailors desperately raising another one.

In the aftermath of this attack, the American sailors who survived are warned by the United States military not to discuss the matter with anyone due to, "national security." This story gets no prominence in the Rothschild controlled mainstream media and as usual Israel is in no way even rebuked for their crimes by their subservient country of America.

The following day, June 9th, Israel illegally occupies the Golan Heights which it seizes from Syria. This area goes on to provide Israel with one third of its fresh water.

Israeli General Matityahu Peled, is quoted in Ha'aretz (19 March 1972) with the following statement,

"The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war." Another sickening and deceptive statement but again at least he's consistent with the Mossad motto, "By Way Of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War."

de Rothschild Frères is renamed Banque Rothschild.

1968: Noémie Halphen, wife of Maurice de Rothschild dies.

1970: While working for Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Ashkenazi Jew, Richard Perle is caught by the FBI giving classified information to Israel. Nothing is done.

British Prime Minister Edward Heath makes Lord Victor Rothschild the head of his policy unit. Whilst he is in that role Britain enters the European Community.

1973: In his book, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, Gary Allen states,

"One major reason for the historical blackout on the role of the international bankers in political history is the Rothschilds were Jewish…
….The Jewish members of the conspiracy have used an organisation called The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as an instrument to try and convince everyone that any mention of the Rothschilds and their allies is an attack on all Jews.
In this way they have stifled almost all honest scholarship on international bankers and made the subject taboo within universities.
Any individual or book exploring this subject is immediately attacked by hundreds of ADL communities all over the country. The ADL has never let the truth or logic interfere with its highly professional smear jobs…
….Actually, nobody has a right to be more angry at the Rothschild clique than their fellow Jews…
….The Rothschild empire helped finance Adolf Hitler."”

George J. Laurer an employee of the Rothschilds controlled IBM, invents the UPC (Universal Product Code) barcode which will eventually be placed upon every item traded worldwide and bear the number, 666. The Book of Revelation, Chapter 13, Verse 17 through 18, states the following in relation to this number,

"And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six."

The whole Satanic aims of the Rothschilds are now in full view of the world, everything bought or sold carries the mark of the beast, 666.

N. M. Rothschild & Sons British Newfoundland Corporation, Churchill Falls project in Newfoundland, Canada, is completed.

N. M. Rothschild & Sons also create a new asset management part of the company which traded worldwide. This eventually became, Rothschild Private Management Limited.

Edmond de Rothschild, a great-grandson of Jacob (James) Mayer Rothschild, bought the cru bourgeois estate of Château Clarke in Bordeaux.

1976: Ashkenazi Jew, Harold Rosenthal, aide to Ashkenazi Jew, Senator Jacob Javits, states,

"Most Jews do not like to admit it, but our god is Lucifer."

1978: Ashkenazi Jew, Stephen Bryen, then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, is overheard in a Washington D.C. hotel offering confidential documents to top Israeli military officials.

Bryen obtains a lawyer, Nathan Lewin, and the case heads for the grand jury, but is mysteriously dropped. Bryen later goes to work for Richard Perle.

1979: The Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979 was underwritten by United States aid which pledged $3 billion annually to Israel from the United States taxpayer (not even a drop in the ocean when you consider the amount they make off the Federal Reserve).

Shin Bet (the Israeli internal security agency) tries to penetrate the US Consulate General in Jerusalem through a “Honey Trap”, using a clerical employee who was having an affair with a Jerusalem girl.

Baron and Baroness Phillipi de Rothschild in a joint venture with Robert Mondavi, begin the construction of a pyramid in Napa Valley, California, where the leader/founder of the Church Of Satan, Ashkenazi Jew, Anton LaVey, was based. This is known as Opus 1 (which means, the first work), and the front for this temple is that it is a winery.

1980: The global phenomenon of privatisation starts. The Rothschilds are behind this from the very beginning in order to seize control of all publicly owned assets worldwide.

1981: Banque Rothschild is nationalised by the French government. The new bank is called, Compagnie Européenne de Banque. The Rothschilds subsequently set up a successor to this French bank, Rothschild & Cie Banque (RCB), which goes on to become a leading French investment house.

1982: From September 16 to 18, future Prime Minister of Israel and then Defence Minister, Ashkenazi Jew, Ariel Sharon, orchestrates Israel's invasion of Lebanon, which provided ariel lighting in order to facilitate the killing of between 1000 and 2000 men, women and children in the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

1985: Eustace Mullins publishes, "Who Owns The TV Networks," in which he reveals the Rothschilds have control of all three major U.S. Networks, which are: NBC; CBS; and ABC.

The New York Times reports the FBI is aware of at least a dozen incidents in which American officials transferred classified information to the Israelis, quoting (former Assistant Director of the F.B.I.) Raymond Wannal. The Justice Department does not prosecute.

Richard Smyth, the owner of MILCO, is indicted on charges of smuggling nuclear timing devices to Israel.

N. M. Rothschild & Sons advise the British government on the privatisation of British Gas. They subsequently advise the British government on virtually all of their other privatisations of state owned assets including: British Steel; British Coal; all the British regional electricity boards; and all the British regional water boards.

A British MP heavily involved in these privatisations is future Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont, a former Rothschild banker.

1986: Mordechai Vanunu a technician at Dimona, Israel's nuclear installation, from 1976 to 1985, discovers that the plant was secretly producing nuclear weapons.

His conscience made him speak out and in 1986 he provided the London Sunday Times with the facts and photos they used to tell the world about Israel's nuclear weapons programme.

His evidence showed that Israel had stockpiled up to 200 nuclear warheads, with no debate or authorisation from it own citizens. On 30th September 1986, Vanunu was lured from London to Rome. There he was kidnapped, drugged and shipped to Israel.

After a secret trial he was sentenced to 18 years for, "treason," and, "espionage," (something Israel are very familiar with) though he had received no payment and had communicated with no foreign power.

He goes on to be held in complete isolation for 11 years, only allowed occasional visits from his family, lawyer and a priest, conducted through a metal screen. Although he completes his sentence, the Israeli government continues to hold him against his will.

1987: Edmond de Rothschild creates the World Conservation Bank which is designed to transfer debts from third world countries to this bank and in return those countries would give land to this bank. This is designed so the Rothschilds can gain control of the third world which represents 30% of the land surface of the Earth.

On April 24 the Wall Street Journal reveals the, "Role of Israel in Iran-Contra Scandal Won't be Explored in Detail by Panels."

1988: The ADL initiate a nationwide competition for law students to draft anti-hate legislation for minority groups. That competition is won by a man named, Joseph Ribakoff, whose thesis proposes that not only must hate motivated violence be banned, but also any words which stimulate: supiscion; friction; hate; and possible violence, these must also be criminalised.

This ADL prize-winning paper suggests that not only should state-agencies monitor and restrict free speech in general, but they should also censor all films that criticize identifiable groups. Furthermore, even if the person making the statement can justify it, for example Christians criticizing homosexuality because the bible expressly forbids it, Ribakoff asserts that the truth is to be no defence in court.

The only proof a court will need in order to secure a conviction of hate speech is that something has been said, and a minority group or member of such group has felt emotionally damaged as a result of such criticism. Therefore, under these proposals which the ADL will have forced into law all over the world less than 15 years later, Jesus Christ would have been arrested as a hate criminal.

This law is designed to protect the Rothschild conspiracy from being revealed in that if you criticize the Rothschilds criminal cabal, you will be targeted as anti-semitic, and thus risk imprisonment.

Philippe de Rothschild dies.

1989: Many of the satellite states in Eastern Europe, through the influence of Glasnost, become more open in their demands of freedom from Communist governance in their Republics.

Many revolutions happen in 1989, most of them involving the overthrow of their respective Communist governments and the replacement of them with Republics.

Thus, the hold the Communists had over Eastern Europe (the Iron Curtain) becomes very weak. Eventually, as a result of Perestroika and Glasnost, Communism collapses, not only in the Soviet Union but also in Eastern Europe.

In Russia, Boris Yeltsin (whose wife is the daughter of Joseph Stalin’s marriage to Rosa Kaganovich) and the Republican government takes steps to end the power of the Communist party by suspending and banning the party and seizing all their property.

This symbolised the fall of Communism in Russia, and resulted in the start of a mass exodus of 700,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union to Israel.

In the Israeli Journal, Hotam (24 November 1989), there is a report of a speech that then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, Ashkenazi Jew, Binyamin Netanyahu, gave to students at Bar Ilan University in which he states,

"Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."

The London and Paris Rothschilds announce the launch of a new subsidiary, Rothschild GmbH, in Frankfurt, Germany.

1991: Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, on January 16 of this year the United States and Britain began an aerial bombing campaign of targets within Iraq. On 24 February the ground campaign commenced which was to last 100 hours until on February 28 when a horrendous war crime occurred.

This crime was the slaughter of 150,000 Iraqi troops with fuel air bombs. These Iraqis were fleeing on a crowded highway from Kuwait to Basra. President George Herbert Walker Bush ordered United States military aircraft and ground units to kill these surrendering troops, they were then bulldozed into mass unmarked graves in the desert, some still alive.

President Bush then ordered a cessation of hostilities. What was the significance of this slaughter and President Bush declaring the war over on this day? Well it was the day the, "Day of Purim," fell on this year. This the day the Jews celebrate their victory over Ancient Babylon, now based within the borders of Iraq and a day when the Jews are encouraged to get bloody revenge against their perceived enemies.

At the Bilderberg Conference on June 6 to 9 of this year, in Baden-Baden, Germany, David Rockefeller (a Rothschild) made the following statement,

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world, if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years.
But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The super-national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practised in past centuries."

1992: In March, former Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Paul A. Volker became Chairman of the European banking firm, J. Rothschild, Wolfensohn and Co.

Stephen Bryen, caught offering confidential documents to Israel in 1978, is serving on board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs while continuing as a paid consultant, with security clearance, on exports of sensitive US technology.

“The Samson Option,” by Seymour M. Hersh reports,

“Illicitly obtained intelligence was flying so voluminously from LAKAM (a secret Israeli intelligence unit, a Hebrew acronym for Scientific Liaison Bureau) into Israeli intelligence that a special code name, JUMBO, was added to the security markings already on the documents. There were strict orders, Ari Ben-Menashe recalled, “Anything marked JUMBO was not supposed to be discussed with your American counterparts.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that Israeli agents apparently tried to steal Recon Optical Inc's top-secret airborne spy-camera system.

On September 16th Britain’s pound collapses when currency speculators led by Rothschild agent, Ashkenazi Jew, George Soros, borrow pounds and sell them for Deutsche Marks, in the expectation of being able to repay the loan in devalued currency and to pocket the difference.

This results in the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont, announcing a rise in interest rates of 5% in one day and as a result drives Britain into a recession which lasts many years as large numbers of businesses fail and the housing market crashes.

This is right on cue for the Rothschilds, after they had privatised Britain’s state owned assets during the 1980’s, driven the share price up, and then collapsed the markets so they could buy them up for pennies on the pound, a carbon copy of what Nathan Mayer Rothschild did to the British economy 180 years before, in 1812.

It cannot be overstated that the Chancellor of the Exchequer at that time, Norman Lamont, prior to becoming a MP, was a Merchant Banker with N. M. Rothschild and Sons, who he joined after reading Economics at Cambridge.

1993: Norman Lamont leaves the British government to return to N. M. Rothschild and Sons as a director, after his mission to collapse the British economy to profit the Rothschilds is accomplished.

Former Congressman, Paul Findley publishes his seminal book, Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts About the U.S. Israeli Relationship.

In this book he lists the 65 United Nations Member Resolutions against Israel from the period 1955 to 1992, and the 30 United States vetoes on Israel’s behalf which if not made would have seen Israel have 95 resolutions against them at this point.

No matter, even with Israel’s puppet the United States helping them terrorise others, the 65 Resolutions passed against Israel are more than all the Resolutions passed against all other countries combined.

Not that Israel care too much about the views of the United Nations when you consider that less than two weeks after Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty (an attack designed to sink the Liberty and blame it on Egypt prompting the USA into a war with Egypt on behalf of Israeli Lies, remember the Mossad motto, “By Way Of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War”), the Israeli Foreign Minister, Aba Eban, stated of the United Nations,

"If the General Assembly were to vote by 121 votes to 1 in favor of, "Israel," returning to the armistice lines (pre June 1967 borders), "Israel," would refuse to comply with the decision," New York Times – 19 June 1967.

The ADL is caught operating a massive spying operation on critics of Israel, Arab-Americans, the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, Oakland Educational Association, NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council, the Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco Police.

Data collected was sent to Israel and in some cases to South Africa. Pressure from Jewish organizations forces the city to drop the criminal case, but the ADL settles a civil lawsuit for an undisclosed sum of cash.

1995: Former atomic energy scientist, Dr Kitty Little claims the Rothschilds now control 80% of the world’s uranium supplies giving them a monopoly over nuclear power.

The Defense Investigative Service circulates a memo warning US military contractors that,

"Israel aggressively collects (US) military and industrial technology."

The report stated that Israel obtains information using,

"ethnic targeting, financial aggrandizement, and identification and exploitation of individual frailties," of US citizens.

1996: A General Accounting Office report, "Defense Industrial Security: Weaknesses in US Security Arrangements With Foreign-Owned Defense Contractors," found that according to intelligence sources, "Country A," (identified by intelligence sources as Israel, Washington Times, 22 February 1996),

"conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally."
A pdf file of the report is here:
www.gao.gov/archive/1996/ns96064.pdf
An unformated text version is here:
http://fas.org/man/gao/gao9664.htm

The Jerusalem Post (30 August 1996) quoted the report,

"“Classified military information and sensitive military technologies are high-priority targets for the intelligence agencies of this country."

The report described, "An espionage operation run by the intelligence organization responsible for collecting scientific and technologic information for (Israel) paid a US government employee to obtain US classified military intelligence documents."

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (Shawn L. Twing, April 1996) noted that this was,

"a reference to the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard, a civilian US naval intelligence analyst who provided Israel's LAKAM espionage agency an estimated 800,000 pages of classified US intelligence information."
www.washington-report.org/backissues/0496/9604014.htm

The GAO report also noted that, "Several citizens of (Israel) were caught in the United States stealing sensitive technology used in manufacturing artillery gun tubes."

An Office of Naval Intelligence document, "Worldwide Challenges to Naval Strike Warfare" reported that,

"US technology has been acquired (by China) through Israel in the form of the Lavi fighter and possibly SAM (surface-to-air) missile technology."

Jane's Defense Weekly (28 February 1996) noted that, "until now, the intelligence community has not openly confirmed the transfer of US technology (via Israel) to China." The report noted that this, "represents a dramatic step forward for Chinese military aviation." (Flight International, 13 March 1996).

Amschel Rothschild, 41, is strangled with the heavy cord of his own towel robe in his hotel room in Paris. French Prime Minister orders the French Police to close their investigation, and, Rupert Murdoch, born of a Jewish mother and so a Jew by Ashkenazi standards, instructs his editors and news managers around the world to report it as a heart attack, if they need to report it at all.

On 12 May United Nations Ambassador and Ashkenazi Jew, Madeleine Albright, when appearing on 60 Minutes, was asked the following by correspondent Lesley Stahl, in reference to the years of United States led economic sanctions against Iraq,

"We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"

To which Ambassador Albright replied,

"I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it."

Her comments cause no public outcry. In fact, the holocaust of half a million Iraqi children is positively admired by the United States government when you consider less than 8 months later, President Clinton appointed Albright as secretary of state. Whilst appearing before the Senate Committee, who were considering her appointment, Albright is literally chomping at the bit for the blood of more Iraqi children and she states,

"We will insist on maintaining tough UN sanctions against Iraq unless and until that regime complies with relevant Security Council resolutions."

1997: An Army mechanical engineer, Ashkenazi Jew, David A. Tenenbaum, "inadvertently," gives classified military information on missile systems and armored vehicles to Israeli officials (New York Times, 20 February 1997).

The Washington Post reports US intelligence has intercepted a conversation in which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher had written to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

One of the Israelis, identified only as, “Dov,” had commented that they may get the letter from, “Mega,” the code name for Israel’s top agent inside the United States.

US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, complains privately to the Israeli government about heavy-handed surveillance by Israeli intelligence agents.

Israeli agents place a tap on Ashkenazi Jew and daughter of a Rabbi, Monica Lewinsky’s, phone at the Watergate and record phone sex sessions between her and President Bill Clinton. The Ken Starr report confirms that Clinton warned Lewinsky their conversations were being taped and ended the affair. Interestingly, at the same time, the FBI’s hunt for, "Mega," is called off.

On 29 October Edmond de Rothschild dies in Geneva. Interestingly on the exact same day Anton Szandor LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan also dies, who in his book, "Satan Speaks," he states in relation to The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion,

"The first time I read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, my instinctive reaction was, So what's wrong with THAT? Isn't that the way any master plan should work? Doesn't the public deserve - nay, demand - such despotism?"

Kofi Annan becomes Secretary General to the United Nations. He is married to Nane Lagergren, a Rothschild, who he wed in 1984.

1998: The European Central Bank is set up in Frankfurt, the city from which the Rothschilds originate.

2000: George W. Bush is elected (so they tell me) President of the United States. Bush and his family claim to be descendants of the House of Plantagenet which is descended from the Royal House of Judah.

2001: On September 11th the attack on the World Trade Center is orchestrated by Israel with the complicity of Britain and America, under the orders of the Rothschilds as a pretext for removing the liberty of people worldwide in exchange for security, just as happened with the Reichstag fire in Germany where the citizens were lied to in order to give up liberty for security.

They also will use the attacks to gain control of the few nations in the world who don’t allow Rothschild central banks and so less than one month after these attacks, US forces attack Afghanistan, one of only 7 nations in the world who don’t have a Rothschild controlled central bank.

Less than a week before the 9-11 attack on 5 September, the so-called lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and several other hijackers made a still-unexplained visit onboard one of Pro Israeli lobbyist, Ashkenazi Jew, Jack Abramoff’s casino boats.

No investigation is undertook as to what they were doing there. It is discovered that US drug agents’ communications have been penetrated. Suspicion falls on two companies, AMDOCS and Comverse Infosys, both owned by Israelis. AMDOCS generates billing data for most US phone companies and is able to provide detailed logs of who is talking to whom.

Comverse Infosys builds the tapping equipment used by law enforcement to eavesdrop on all American telephone calls, but suspicion forms that Comverse Infosys, which gets half of its research and development budget from the Israeli government, has built a back door into the system that is being exploited by Israeli intelligence and that the information gleaned on US drug interdiction efforts is finding its way to drug smugglers.

The investigation by the FBI leads to the exposure of the largest foreign spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, operated by Israel. Half of the suspected spies have been arrested when 9-11 happens.

On 9-11, 5 Israelis are arrested for dancing and cheering while the World Trade Towers collapse. Supposedly employed by Urban Moving Systems, the Israelis are caught with multiple passports and a lot of cash.

Two of them are later revealed to be Mossad. As witness reports track the activity of the Israelis, it emerges that they were seen at Liberty Park at the time of the first impact, suggesting a foreknowledge of what was to come. The Israelis are interrogated, and then eventually sent back to Israel.

The owner of the moving company used as a cover by the Mossad agents abandons his business and flees to Israel. The United States Government then classifies all of the evidence related to the Israeli agents and their connections to 9-11.

All of this is reported to the public via a four part story on Fox News by Carl Cameron. Pressure from Jewish groups, primarily AIPAC, forces Fox News to remove the story from their website. Two hours prior to the 9-11 attacks, Odigo, an Israeli company with offices just a few blocks from the World Trade Towers, receives an advance warning via the internet.

The manager of the New York Office provides the FBI with the IP address of the sender of the message, but the FBI does not follow this up. The FBI is investigating 5 Israeli moving companies as possible fronts for Israeli intelligence.

It is revealed that prior to the attack millions of dollars of put options on both American Airlines and United Airlines, were traded. The FBI have promised to followed the purchasers up, but have never revealed their findings. That is because this would lead directly to Israel, the state behind the 911 attacks.

Following the World Trade Center attack, anonymous letters containing anthrax are sent to various politicians and media executives. Like the 9-11 attack this is immediately blamed on Al-Qaeda , until it is discovered that the anthrax contained within those letters is a specific type of weaponized anthrax made by a United States military laboratory.

The FBI then discover that the main suspect for these anthrax letters is a Ashkenazi Jew, Dr. Philip Zack, who had been reprimanded several times by his employers due to offensive remarks he made about Arabs. Dr. Philip Zack, was caught on camera entering the storage area where he worked at Fort Detrick which is where the Anthrax was kept. At this point, both the FBI and the mainstream media stopped making any public comments on the case.

Jewish Defence League Chairman since 1985, Ashkenazi Jew, Irv Rubin is jailed for allegedly plotting to bomb a mosque and the offices of a Arab-American congressman. He dies shortly after slitting his throat in a suicide attempt, before he can be brought to trial.

One week prior to the WTC attack, the Zim Shipping Company moves out of its offices in the WTC, breaking its lease and costing the company $50,000. No reason has ever been given, but Zim Shipping Company is half owned by the State of Israel (The Rothschilds).

On October 3, Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, makes the following statement to Ashkenazi Jew, Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.

"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that....I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it."

2002: Webster's Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged), re-printed in 2002, provides a new definition of Anti Semitism which has not been updated since 1956. It reads,

"Anti-Semitism: (1) hostility toward Jews as a religious or racial minority group, often accompanied by social, political or economic discrimination (2) opposition to Zionism (3) sympathy for the opponents of Israel."

It was definition (2) and (3) that were added in the 2002 edition, just before the USA decide to invade Iraq under orders from the State of Rothschild, I mean Israel. Also this year, the Prime Minister of Israel, war criminal, Ariel Sharon, orders the massacre in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Best get that definition updated to protect these criminals.

The DEA issues a report that Israeli spies, posing as art students, have been trying to penetrate US Government offices. Police near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in southern Washington State stop a suspicious truck and detain two Israelis, one of whom is illegally in the United States. The two men were driving at high speed in a Ryder rental truck, which they claimed had been used to, "deliver furniture."

The next day, police discovered traces of TNT and RDX military-grade plastic explosives inside the passenger cabin and on the steering wheel of the vehicle. The FBI then announces that the tests that showed explosives were, "false positived," by cigarette smoke, a claim test experts say is ridiculous.

Based on an alibi provided by a woman, the case is closed and the Israelis are handed over to INS to be sent back to Israel. One week later, the woman who provided the alibi vanishes.

2003: The United States invade Iraq on 19 March, which this year is the holy, "Day of Purim," in the Jewish calendar. This, "Day of Purim," is a day the Jews celebrate their victory over Ancient Babylon, now based within the borders of Iraq, how interesting.

What is also significant is that the previous U.S. led invasion of Iraq ended on the Day of Purim ten years earlier with the slaughter of 150,000 fleeing Iraqis under the current President's father, George Herbert Walker Bush. Purim is also the time when the Jews are encouraged to get bloody revenge against their perceived enemies.

Ancient Babylon, I mean Iraq, is now one of six nations left in the world who don’t have a Rothschild controlled central bank. This war is mainly about stealing Iraq’s water supply for Israel and is being fought with the blood of the American military which the State of Rothschild, I mean Israel control.

Israel has always struggled for water, it had to steal the Golan Heights from Syria which provided Israel with one third of its fresh water 36 years before, yet still in Israel water extraction has surpassed replacement by 2.5 billion metres in the last 25 years.

This means the water is far more precious to them than the oil reserves which are the second largest reserves of oil on the planet.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed states in a speech,

"Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

The Police Chief of Cloudcroft stops a truck speeding through a school zone. The drivers turn out to be Israelis with expired passports. Claiming to be movers, the truck contains junk furniture and several boxes.

The Israelis are handed over to immigration. The contents of the boxers are not revealed to the public.

Israel deploys assassination squads into other countries, including the United States. The US Government does not protest.

2004: Two years into an investigation of AIPAC’s (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee – the largest political lobbying group in the USA with over 65,000 members whose only purpose is to use the USA for the purposes of Israel) possible role as a spy front for Israel, Ashkenazi Jew, Larry Franklin, a mid-level Pentagon Analyst is observed by the FBI giving classified information to two officials of AIPAC suspected of being Israeli spies.

AIPAC hires lawyer Nathan Lewin to handle their legal defense, the same lawyer who defended suspected Israeli spy Stephen Bryen in 1978. Larry Franklin worked in the Pentagon Office of Special Plans, run by Richard Perle, at the time Perle (who was caught giving classified information to Israel back in 1970) was insisting that Iraq was crawling with weapons of mass destruction requiring the United States to invade and conquer Iraq.

There were no WMDs, of course, and Perle has dumped the blame for the, "bad intelligence," on George Tenet. But what is known is that the Pentagon Office of Special Plans was coordinating with a similar group in Israel, in Ariel Sharon’s office.

With two suspected Israeli spies (at least) inside the office from which the lies that launched the war in Iraq originated, it appears that the people of the United States are the victims of a deadly hoax, a hoax that started a war using the blood and money of American citizens for the purposes of Israeli oppression.

The leaking of the investigation of AIPAC to the media on August 28th, 2004 gave advance warning to other spies working with Franklin. The damage to the FBI’s investigation was completed when United States Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered the FBI to stop all arrests in the case.

Like the Stephen Bryen case and the hunt for, "Mega," this latest spy scandal seems destined by officials who have their own secret allegiances to protect, barring a massive public outcry.

Police near the Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Tennessee stop a truck after a three mile chase, during which the driver throws a bottle containing a strange liquid from the cab. The drivers turn out to be Israelis using fake identifications. The FBI refuses to investigate and the Israelis are released.

Two Israelis try to enter Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, home to eight Trident submarines. The truck tests positive for explosives.

The National Director of the ADL, Abraham H. Foxman, publishes a book entitled, "Never Again? The Threat Of The New Anti-Semitism," in which he states that the New Testament's "lie," that the ancient Pharisees were responsible for the death of Christ, has been responsible for anti-semitism throughout the millennia and thus the New Testament of the bible is, "hate speech," and should be censored or banned.

2005: On January 20, President Bush makes the following statement as part of his second inaugural address, "When our Founders declared a new order of the ages." This is not true. The founders did not declare a, "new order of the ages," President Roosevelt did when in 1933, he put it's latin translation, "Novus Ordo Seclorum," on the dollar bill.

On 7 July the London Underground Network is bombed. Israel’s Finance Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu is in London on the morning of the attacks in order to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the underground station where one of the blasts occurred, but stayed in his hotel room instead after he had been informed by Israeli intelligence officials attacks were expected.

There are now only 5 nations on the world left without a Rothschild controlled central bank: Iran; North Korea; Sudan; Cuba; and Libya.

Physics Professor, Stephen E. Jones of Brigham Young University publishes a paper in which he proves the World Trade Center buildings could have only been brought down in the manner they were by explosives. He receives no coverage in the mainstream media for his scientific and provable claims.

2006: The Edmond De Rothschild Banque, a subsidiary of Europe's Edmond De Rothschild family bank group in France, becomes the first foreign family bank that has obtained approval of the China Banking Regulatory Commission and entered China's financial market.

The ADL ruthlessly leans on governments throughout the world to pass hate crimes legislation, as they are scared that the criminal cabal that is Israel and the Rothschilds is being exposed more and more on a daily basis, predominantly on the internet. Their job is to protect this criminal network and what better way to do it than by passing laws in which anyone who exposes a Jewish criminal becomes a criminal.

David Irving is sentenced to three years in jail in Austria, for denying the holocaust. It is important to note that the only historical event you can be arrested for questioning is the holocaust. This is because this has been the Rothschilds greatest weapon in brainwashing YOU, THE STUPID GOY! is that the Jews are so poor and persecuted when in actual fact they control the vast majority of international finance and international corporations throughout the world.

Resources

Here is a link to 6 pages of autographs from the 1929 Zionist congress with some very interesting names on it.
Main page: www.historyforsale.com

Sources

Holy Bible - King James Version

Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati and Reading Societies - John Robison - 1798

The Life of Napolean - Sir Walter Scott - 1827

Coningsby - Benjamin Disraeli - 1844

The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Martin Malia - 1848

Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry - Albert Pike - 1872

The Rothschilds, Financial Rulers Of Nations - John Reeves - 1887

The Jews and Modern Capitalism - Werner Sombart - 1911

Great Britain, The Jews, and Palestine - Samuel Landman - 1936

Pawns In The Game - William Guy Carr - 1937

Inside The Gestapo - Hansjurgen Koehler - 1940

Barriers Down - Kent Cooper - 1942

The Mind Of Adolf Hitler - Walter Langer - 1943

The Empire Of The City - E. C. Knuth - 1946

The Jewish State - Theodor Herzl - 1946

The Curious History of the Six-Pointed Star - G. Scholem - 1949

Secrets Of The Federal Reserve - Eustace Mullins - 1952

Tales Of The British Aristocracy - L. G. Pine - 1957

Red Fog Over America - William Guy Carr - 1958

A Jewish Defector Warns America (Spoken Word Recording) - Benjamin H. Freedman - 1961

The Rothschilds - Frederic Morton - 1962

The Illuminati and the Council on Foreign Relations (Spoken Word Recording) - Myron Fagan - 1967

Ben-Gurion: The Armed Prophet - Michael Bar-Zohar - 1967

The Hidden Tyranny - Benjamin Freedman - 1971

None Dare Call It Conspiracy - Gary Allen - 1972

The Gulag Archipelago, Vol. 2, Parts 3 and 4 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - First English translation published 1975.

Wall Street And The Rise Of Hitler - Anthony C. Sutton - 1976

The Rosenthal Document - Walter White, Jr. - 1978

Two Rothschilds And The Land Of Israel - Simon Schama - 1978

The Six Pointed Star - Dr O. J. Graham - 1984

The Last Days In America - Bob Fraley - 1984

Who Owns The TV Networks - Eustace Mullins - 1985

The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy - Seymour M. Hersh - 1991

A History of the Jews in America - Howard M. Sachar - 1992

Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts About the U.S. Israeli Relationship - Paul Findley - 1993

Descent Into Slavery - Des Griffin - 1994

Bloodlines Of The Illuminati - Fritz Springmeier - 1995

Jewish History, Jewish Religion - Israel Shahak - 1994

Satan Speaks - Anton Szandor LaVey - 1998

The Elite Serial Killers of Lincoln, JFK, RFK & MLK - Robert Gaylon Ross - 2001

Never Again? The Threat Of The New Anti-Semitism - Abraham H. Foxman - 2004

The Elite Don’t Dare Let Us Tell The People - Robert Gaylon Ross - 2004

Codex Magica - Texe Marrs - 2005

Taib’s Secret Bomoh – Exclusive!

2010-10-24T21:54:00.000-07:00

Taib’s Secret Bomoh – Exclusive!

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010

Sarawak Report can reveal that the aging Chief Minister of Sarawak, Abdul Taib Mahmud, relies on a personal witchdoctor, or so-called Bomoh, to make all key personal and government decisions!

The extraordinary state of affairs, which has remained a carefully guarded secret among his entourage for many years, has now been explained in detail by insiders.

“He will always consult the Bomoh before he makes an important decision, like which minister to hire or fire, or which investments to make”, one senior politician has confided.

Black magic!

Another member of the inner circle, linked closely to the family, also described how one particular Bomoh (see right) had a ‘Rasputin-like’ hold over the superstitious Chief Minister for many years. This Bomoh died two years ago, shortly after the death of Taib’s wife Laila, and the 73 year old leader is said to be frantically searching for a new supernatural advisor, who he can trust to take him through the up-coming election period.

“He hired an interim Bomoh” one source explained, “but he clearly was not satisfied, as he has been going around Indonesia looking for a more powerful magician and he has just engaged a new one!”.

Bomoh’s are practitioners of ‘black magic’ and are widely condemned for exploiting simple people, who do not have access to modern science and education. Taib Mahmud’s dependence on such guidance can only be judged as unhealthy and malign.

Taib consults ‘demons’ to fight his enemies

Not so effective? Taib's new Bomohs were publicly at work praying loudly in favour of Tufail Mahmud during a court case this year.

The devotion to such a primitive cult also seriously undermines the Chief Minister’s claims to be a progressive force in Sarawak. Perhaps even more damaging is the impact on his carefully cultivated reputation as a devout Muslim. The Muslim faith strictly bans any consultation of these pre-Islamic practitioners of magic and dark arts, who are considered to be bad and dangerous. The majority Christian population of Sarawak will be equally dismayed for similar reasons.

The tradition of Bomohs derives from ancient witchdoctor cults based in the Indian sub-continent and these individuals claim to gain their ‘supernatural powers’ through doing business with ‘fallen angels’ or ‘djins’ (demons). The Islamic faith recognises the existence of such evil spirits, however it forbids attempting to make contact with them.

Indeed, Muslim teachers warn that to seek favours from Djins is to bargain with evil forces and that eventually these forces will extract a terrible price. Moreover, people who do consult such spirits are considered to be engaging them to do unacceptable harm to others and to be attempting to effectively ‘cheat in life’. Taib is believed to have sought to mobilise these forces against his political enemies and the insiders believe he is now using them in his current battle against the Malaysian PM, Najib Razak (who would dearly like the tarnished kleptocrat to step down before the next election).

Dependent on soothsaying

'Ustaz' - real identity Abdul Rahman Hazrat from Pakistan

The dismayed insiders have told Sarawak Report that they would be inclined to laugh at an old man’s obsession if the implications were not so alarming, given his position. The Bomoh who held Taib enthralled for over 30 years was always known in inner circles as ’Ustaz’ (meaning teacher). He would frequently accompany the Chief Minister, who, to conceal his real role, would refer to him publicly as ‘My Uncle’ .

Ustaz liked to boast that his black magic ‘talent’ was given from God. He claimed to be able to foresee the future, heal the sick and, crucially, make the right political and economic decisions.

“An advisor or family member might query some decision” said one of our sources, “but if Taib replied that the Bomoh had ruled on it, then they knew there could be no further argument”.

The death of Ustaz and the loss of this advice over political and economic decisions is said to have put immense pressure on the Chief Minister as he enters his 30th year in power still determined to fight another election.

Rise of a part-time shop-keeper

Ustaz, whose real name was Abdul Rahman Hazrat, never spoke fluent Malay. He arrived from Pakistan in the 1960s and according to our sources was selling rings, spectacles and Islamic items in the town of Sibu at the time that Datuk Stephen Kalong Ningkan was the first Chief Minister. Hazrat claimed to be the disciple of a 130 year old teacher, who is allegedly still residing in his home country, Pakistan.

Taib, then 28 and State Minister for Natural Resources in Nignkan’s cabinet, was apparently introduced to to the stall-holder by the late Datuk Awang Hipni, a Melanau State Minister from Matu-Daro. It was after the ambitious young minister was sacked after failing to get along with Nignkan, that he is said to have first turned to the bomoh for advice.

Key advice

Bottles of Djinn - in this black magic 'exorcism' Bomoh's were reported to have captured evil spirits and imprisoned them in jars. The Chief Minister would appear to be a believer.

Ustaz later confided that he told Taib not to confront Ningkan directly but to lobby for a ministerial post at Federal level and from there to plot the downfall of Ningkan. This he did and soon Taib was appointed by Tunku Abdul Rahman as a Deputy Minister in the Federal Cabinet.

People in the know describe how it was with the advice of Ustaz that Taib used this position to topple Ningkan and eventually to succeed him. The strategy was to first place Penghulu Tawi Sli as a puppet CM, who then passed the position to Taib’s uncle. According to Ustaz, Tun Rahman, a Melanau by race (just 4% of the population) could not succeed Ningkan directly for fear of a revolt from the Dayak community (about 50%).

The plan succeeded, according to people who have talked with Ustaz. Tun Rahman was appointed Chief Minister in 1968 and passed the post to his nephew Taib in 1981, 29 years ago. From then onwards Taib relied heavily on the Bomoh and kept him as his personal advisor.

Member of the Taib household

Grace and Favour Residence - The Bomoh's home in Sibu

Proud of being ‘personal advisor’ to the Chief Minister, Ustaz whispered to his friends in Sibu that Taib made arrangements for him to enjoy a comfortable life. To hide the relationship he continued to base the soothsayer in Sibu, where the Chief Minister’s younger brother Tufail was tasked with taking care of his needs.

The guru was bought a bungalow on Bandong Road and enjoyed an allowance of over RM 10,000 a month, courtesy of a timber company, whose main shareholder is Tufail. He was also supplied with a car and a driver, free services and a shop house at Cross Road where he was able to sell Islamic religious items.

Insiders say that if anything further was needed it was Tufail’s job to sort it out. Tufail, unlike some of Taib’s other brothers, apparently shares the Chief Minister’s interest in Black Magic.

However, whenever Taib had to decide anything of importance he would summon Ustaz to Kuching. The guru would usually make use of the Government-funded private jet, which Taib keeps for his own use and even had a special bedroom put aside for him in the ground floor of Taib’s home in Demak Jaya, right next to the Chief Minister’s office.

The Bomoh was transported in the Government Cessna jet reserved for the Chief Minister - described by his nephew Yakub (son of brother Tufail) as the fastest business jet currently flying.

The Bomoh would often stay at Demak Jaya for nights at a time, say those in the know, and when he was being consulted he would always rise early in the morning (often 3am) and start a laborious ceremony of prayer and meditation as he sought the guidance of the Djins (evil, dead spirits). Unnervingly, Ustaz was frequently considered by those around the Chief Minister to be able to provide very astute guidance.

“He was able to provide an intelligent and objective perspective of events and situations”, explains the political insider, “but I don’t call it supernatural, I call it much-needed common sense!”

Meanwhile, the Bomoh also offered the support of his magical powers around others of Taib’s inner circle. He would intercede in cases of illness to ‘discover from the spirits’ whether the sick person’s ‘time had come’. If this was the case he would under-take to ‘buy a little more time’ from the devils, so they could enjoy some more life. Unsurprisingly, family members were always grateful for this intercession at a time of need.

“He was always kind” says one beneficiary, “I don’t think it was a negative, evil influence. He just used his magic to help people”.

Bomoh used magic to help BN!

Azimat - On Taib's instructions these 'magic charms' have to be carried by all BN candidates to make voters 'warm' to them!

However, the Bomoh, with the encouragement of Taib, was not above using his magic in elections as well. All BN candidates in Sarawak were handed special amulets or ‘azimats’, designed to be carried in their pockets on the election stomp. The azimats were supposed to have the magical effect of making people who met the BN politicians warm to them and support them. However, it can be noted that Taib has never failed to take the insurance of also offering large amounts of cash to prospective voters as well.

Similar azimats were also handed to family and insiders for other occasions, such as to help pass examinations and achieve wealth and success. For those who believe in such old superstitions, such favours could be construed as attempting to gain an unfair advantage to Taib and his supporters, which was clearly Taib’s own intention.

Falling out

However, this relationship which was so close for many years did not end happily. Sarawak Report has received further fascinating inside information detailing how Taib fell out with his advisor in recent years, culminating in the old man’s return to Pakistan shortly before his death as a broken man.

The fact that insiders have been breaking ranks to inform Sarawak Report of such negative issues is being regarded by many as a sign that the Chief Minister’s grip on his party is failing. Others of a more superstitious bent may consider that he has lost his magic touch!

Link:
http://www.sarawakreport.org/2010/10/taibs-secret-bomoh-exclusive/

What the 30% means on the ground

2010-10-24T21:39:00.001-07:00

What the 30% means on the ground

LETTERS/SURAT

Monday, 25 October 2010

UMNO says that they do not steal from the Chinese to give to the Malays. This may actually be true. What seems to happen is that UMNO steals from the Chinese in a rather sneaky and hidden manner and gives to their cronies.

by batsman

It is one thing to debate the 30% on an airy fairy intellectual level – is it really 30% or has it gone over 30% and reached 45% already, etc.?

This has little meaning for people on the ground. All they know is that they do not really receive any perceived benefits from any such 30% or 45%. Of course, UMNO’s job is to convince them through fiery speeches that they do and to keep repeating it ad nauseum until they are convinced because science says that people will believe you if you keep repeating something often enough.

Actually this is not something new. Goebbels the Nazi propaganda minister knew it by heart. So we are really nearly 100 years a bit late. But following Nazi style, UMNO can repeat its messages of “protecting” Malays ad nauseum while they suppress anybody trying to discuss the 30%.

It is better if people start to analyze for themselves what the 30% means on the ground – where it affects them with some immediacy. Let me try and give it a go for a start.

For the hapless Chinese, the reality is that they have to pour their pathetic lives and souls into making a living by trying to make their businesses successful (without any help from UMNO). After they have achieved this through much sacrifices and the business is successful and making good money and when it is time to grow the business - that is when the daylight robbery takes place. I guess there is no use practicing daylight robbery on a failing business.

To grow their businesses, they probably need licenses e.g. franchising licenses or listing on the stock market or even buying bigger premises such as government controlled industrial land, they start to meet the 30% rule.

This means that they need to find a Bumiputra partner fast. The Orang Asli seem to be neglected in this respect, but it is questionable whether any licenses will be granted with Orang Asli holding 30%.

If the money is good enough and the Chinaman desperate enough, he may just give away the 30% to an UMNO crony.

Here the variety and variation in Bumiputra partners become quite large. It ranges from outright theft, to theft of just shares but foregoing profits, to theft by buying shares at a substantial discount, to buying shares at market price but becoming a sleeping partner. Of course buying shares at the market price and becoming a productive partner is not considered theft anymore but a successful partnership.

The first 2 seem to be the more common modes – outright theft through voluntary gift of shares and profits because there is no choice if the Chinaman wants a license, but the other mode of theft is even more clever. The UMNO crony receives a “voluntary gift” of shares, but placates the Chinaman by saying “Let me pay for these shares through the profits made by the business that are due to my shares” .

I know these stories too well because I get them in my ears ad nauseum from whining Chinamen and because they are repeated so often, I sort of believe them by now.

Well, these are the stories on the ground, but being a non-practitioner, I have no choice but to take them to the intellectual level. I ask myself what the end effect of all these daylight robberies is.

Obviously the Chinaman will become discouraged eventually. He will no longer invest his whole life’ s work, savings and borrowings from his friend Ah Long into his businesses and maybe even mortgage his family as well. This has consequences for the economy of the country. The cash cow’s milk will dry up.

Worse still, the Chinaman’s drive and maybe even his traditional skills in business will be lost because he does not practice his skill ad nauseum anymore. So the country suffers somewhat by losing a competitive advantage.

UMNO already realizes all of this, but they cannot give it up as the proceeds are so good. It is this 30% that UMNO delegates are protecting during UMNO assemblies.

Of course as regards foreigners, UMNO cannot be so bold as to practice outright daylight robbery, so it is that in places like Iskandar, the 30% rule is waived. Of course this makes the Chinaman even more miserable – now he is treated even worse than the foreigner (including Singaporeans) in his own country. (I am sure some Chinaman is even now thinking of becoming a Singaporean and coming back to Iskandar to make money without the burden of the 30% - actually making the best of both worlds).

Worse still, UMNO says that Arabs, Turks, Pakistanis, Africans, Thais and what not are also Malays. This makes the Chinaman feels very lonely, as if he is not wanted in a country where his ancestors settled and called home centuries ago. He is alone with his non-Muslim Indian friend in a sea of Malays who eye his 30% greedily.

Further, the taxes he pays are going to feed Arab Malays, Pakistani Malays, Turkish Malays, Thai Malays, African Malays, etc. and provide scholarships for the children of these Melayu Baru.

With the heightened sexual drives of some people, we may yet see some Mongolian Malays. Unfortunately the first one started off rather badly.

The Chinaman now starts to fear that there will be no money left for mending the roads and clearing the rubbish or even keeping reliable electricity supply, providing clean water as well as keeping the hospitals as places of curing the sick rather than killing the healthy.

And this sea is getting bigger with each wave of Indonesian and Pakistani migration while his own friends and extended family flee in dribs and drabs to places like Australia and Canada. Small wonder that he thinks of emigrating too or maybe “voluntarily” converting to Islam.

Of course, the more stupid and perverse of UMNO members (aka Perkasa) seem to say this is what they really want, but the more clever and sophisticated try to delay this departure by starting a Talent Corporation because at least for the time being, they know the country cannot afford a big outflow of capital as well as human resources without suffering some disruption.

I suspect this is also what the more sophisticated UMNO members want – to be undisputed Tuan without any messy whining Chinaman to worry about as their own propaganda of Ketuanan Melayu if repeated often enough will even influence their own minds.

Unfortunately for them, I also do not think PAS will accept an undisputed UMNO Tuan and neither will the millions of Malays who are getting fed up of UMNO arrogance, corruption and abuse of power. heeheehee.

The strangest divorce reasons you'll ever hear

2010-10-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

Fri, 22 Oct 2010
Diva

The strangest divorce reasons you'll ever hear

We all heard of the divorce that happened because the husband fell in love with the domestic helper. Here are some other reasons that partners have come up with to leave their other halves, which we aren't so sure about.

1. A woman wanted to leave her husband because he was eating too much. She claimed that he was committing a crime by satisfying his ravenous hunger, and she did not want to be his accomplice.

2. A man wanted to ditch his wife as he claimed he was allergic to her sweat. Subsequent tests showed his claims to be unfounded.

3. A man in Saudi Arabia wanted to leave his wife immediately after their wedding ceremony, because his newly-minted brother-in-law had taken a photograph of the couple together. The reason for his objection was not clear.

4. A couple in Taiwan were granted a divorce because the wife refused to consummate their marriage even one year after marraige. She slept fully dressed on their wedding night, and brushed her husband away when he tried to sleep with her.

5. A German woman left her husband because she could not tolerate his cleaning habits. The couple who were married for 15 years broke up, as the wife had enough of her husband's penchant for tidying.

The real cause of heart disease

2010-10-23T02:29:00.000-07:00

Fri, Oct 22, 2010
The Star/Asia News Network

The real cause of heart disease

By Dr C.S. Foo

IN the history of mankind, wars have been waged throughout the centuries.

Behind every conflict, there is always an initiator that provokes revolt or annihilation, and sets the stage for battle.

There will also be the collaborators who fan the fires of discord, and the rebels who fight for the cause.

Certainly, there has never been a battle without collateral damage.

In the chronicles of war within the body, cholesterol is the unwitting rebel.

In its attempt to patch up the wounds of arterial damage, it itself is drawn into a web of deceit, which - with the help of other collaborators - sets ablaze the fires of inflammation within artery walls.

As this waxy agent becomes involved in the complex formation of atherosclerosis (the forerunner of heart disease), the good work cholesterol does in maintaining cell membrane integrity, keeping hormones in balance, and sustaining cellular functions goes unnoticed.

Instead of being the good guy, cholesterol has gained notoriety as the bad guy of heart disease.

In order to keep our body functioning, the network of waterways known as the arteries need to be kept open and clear to deliver nutrients, oxygen, hormones and other essential substances to the organs.

If blood supply is cut off, organs will perish - and so will the body's owner.

One such organ is the heart, but what happens here can occur elsewhere as well.

In my previous article (Cholesterol: Friend or Foe?), I discussed the role of cholesterol in the development of heart disease.

I noted that it is not just the overall cholesterol levels that are important, but more crucially, the levels of LDL-cholesterol.

We now know that as LDL-cholesterol becomes oxidised, it literally "sticks" under the inner lining of arterial walls, forming a fatty sludge that sets off inflammation.

Specialised white blood cells, like an efficient army, try to clean up the mess.

But in the process, they cause much collateral damage, with the scars of battle showing up as fibrosis and hardening of the artery walls, thus, paving the way for high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.

The real culprit

To reduce the casualties of war, the real instigators of unrest should be unmasked and neutralised. In this case, it is the troublemaker called homocysteine.

This amino acid has been identified as a key initiator of atherosclerosis, and has been proposed as the mastermind behind heart disease and stroke.

Eggs, meat and dairy products are rich sources of homocysteine, which is an intermediate product of protein metabolism.

A high-protein diet can result in excessive levels of homocysteine. (Photo: The Star)

The body further breaks it down to a form (cysteine) that can be utilised, through certain enzymes with the help of vitamins B6, B12 and folic acid.

Excessive levels of homocysteine (as a result of a high protein diet, deficient vitamins or a genetic enzyme defect) can irritate the inner lining of artery walls, thereby preparing these sites for plaque formation.

It appears that homocysteine is not the direct cause of heart disease, but it orchestrates the chain of events behind the scene, like a puppet master.

And the fall guy is, undoubtedly, our misunderstood friend (or foe) cholesterol.

In his book The Homocysteine Revolution, Harvard University pathologist Dr Kilmer S. McCully reveals his research on children with genetically high homocysteine levels in the late 1960s.

Upon performing autopsies on these children after their deaths, he found that they had advanced atherosclerosis.

After much intensive study and research of past cases, he made the provocative suggestion that homocysteine may have been the cause of damage to arteries and triggered the atherosclerosis.

This did not go down well in the medical community as much research was focused on anti-cholesterol treatment.

Going against the grain cost him his job and research grant, and his research was largely forgotten.

However, over the last 20 years, there has been a resurgence of interest in his work as other scientists looked at the link between homocysteine and cardiovascular diseases.

Harvard professor Dr Meir Stamfer studied data collected on 15,000 participants in the Physician's Health Study (reported in the Journal Of The American Medical Association, 1992), which supported the association of mildly elevated homocysteine levels and heart disease.

Subsequently, many studies have confirmed homocysteine as a predictive marker of heart disease, stroke and peripheral artery disease.

At present, there are a few ongoing large, randomised trials in the United States and Canada, studying the impact of lowering homocysteine levels on the incidences of heart attack and stroke.

However, despite having such a prime suspect for the role of instigator, the verdict is not certain. Some say it is guilty; others think it deserves a "fair" trial.

In the meantime, its clandestine operation of provoking heart disease goes on.

Damage control

As the development of atherosclerosis involves homocysteine, the oxidation of "bad" (LDL-cholesterol) and subsequent arterial inflammation, there is much research that can be done from a nutritional point of view.

How else can one interrupt the cycle of oxidation and inflammation?

Antioxidants are known to quench the ravages of free radicals.

Fruity prowess: The seed of red grapes are said to prevent the oxidation of LDL-cholesterol. (Photo: The Star)

Vitamin E, in particular, has been likened to a bodyguard travelling in the same vehicle carrying cholesterol from the liver to the tissues; thus, offering protection to the LDL-cholesterol from being oxidised.

Much has been written about the protective benefits of red wine as it contains certain antioxidants.

OPC (oligomeric proanthocyanidins) belongs to a class of nutrients called flavanoids, which is extracted from the seeds of red grapes.

This grape seed extract is said to benefit the heart by preventing the oxidation of LDL-cholesterol.

A word of caution though; swallowing a bowl of seeds is not in the best interest of the bowels, as seeds cannot be digested.

The role of omega-3 fish oil in preventing heart disease is well documented. Taking high-quality fish oil can reduce the chances of a heart attack by at least 20%.

Omega-3 is an essential fatty acid that has anti-clotting and anti-inflammatory effects - working like a fireman dousing the flames of inflammation.

Niacin (vitamin B3) has been shown to increase HDL-cholesterol. High doses can, however, cause troublesome flushing symptoms.

Recent research has suggested that low levels of sunshine (vitamin D) has been linked to a higher risk of heart disease, and most people are deficient in this area.

Oats contain many nutritious and healthy ingredients. Among the various types of oats, a logical choice is rolled oats, which does not need prolonged cooking.

In fact, soaking it for 10 minutes offers a slightly chewy meal, but if left overnight in the refrigerator, it turns into tasty porridge.

A wave of interest swept across the world when the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved food claims that oats reduce heart risks.

This grain can reduce LDL-cholesterol through beta-glucan (soluble fibre found in oat bran) and avenenthramide, which has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory functions.

If, despite sound nutritional and healthy lifestyle measures, your cholesterol - in particular, the LDL-cholesterol - remains elevated, then lowering it by pharmaceutical means to a target level is a therapeutic goal.

The main message here is not to abandon anti-cholesterol treatment if prescribed by your doctor, but to adopt preventive actions at the same time.

A group of drugs that effectively lower cholesterol is popularly called the statins.

In high doses, apart from potentially raising liver enzymes, side effects like muscle weakness can occur.

The statin blocks the enzyme that produces cholesterol, but also blocks the synthesis of coenzyme Q10.

Understanding the cause of heart disease carries the hope that we can avoid or postpone that massive bang in the chest!

The big question is: When do we start to take action? Before or after we get the disease?

Even the less informed would agree that practising a healthy lifestyle should start early.

Sadly, many are oblivious to the "war within our bodies" and need a wake-up call to take heed. Indeed, some unfortunate people will never get a second chance!

Dr C.S. Foo is a medical practitioner.

Setting the Record Straight

2010-10-23T01:36:00.000-07:00

Setting the Record Straight

Friday, 22 October 2010
By John Doe

There is no mention of "Hak Melayu" in the Malaysian Constitution.

There is no mention of "Hak Melayu" in Malaysian Law.

"Hak Melayu" is simply a myth.

Not only is "Hak Melayu" a myth, Prof Dr Timothy Barnhard explains in his book "Contesting Malayness" that even the Melayu concept is simply a Myth.

A synopsis can be downloaded HERE

So Jibby resorts to another Myth, the alleged "Social Contract". Let's never forget that this document simply does NOT exist !! It is made up. There is no documentation of this Mythological Document. Hence, it becomes extremely difficult to argue what is written in this particular Contract. However, if we look up the Social Contract in Wiki (Click Here) One will immediately find an interesting sentence, faithfully reproduced below:

"... to be an agreement that "Malay entitlement to political and administrative authority should be accepted unchallenged, at least for the time being, in return for non-interference in Chinese control of the economy..."

If the above statement is true, then UMNO has not kept up with its' end of the bargain. They have simply not been kind to the Chinese. Because the Chinese have not been explicitly given control of the Economic Pie. The Chinese had to work for it instead. The Chinese were/ are still not eligible for anything special or unique in Malaysia, other than Bak Kut Teh. Hence, for UMNO to pound their chests about Ketuanan, UMNO needs to hand over all economic control to the Chinese, as per according to the Mythological "Social Contract" from pre-Merdeka Days. Mind you, that it also explicitly lists "non interference in Chinese-control of the Economy".

However, the greedy UMNO mongrels have decided correctly today, that Malaysian Chinese are really lame ducks, that UMNO can today have their cake and eat it at the same time. Meaning, that it wants BOTH Ketuanan, as well as complete control of the Economy. Malaysian Chinese have been of course, stupid enough to comply.

Today, the Chinese have Kehambaan, and have lost control of the Economy. They have allowed themselves to be called children of Prostitutes and Beggars, and not even whimpered while being screwed over.

In fact, even the Orang Asli's have been lobotomized, and are no longer called "Bumiputras", even though their ancestors arrived in Malaya more than 60,000 years ago.

The Baba's and Nyonyas, have also ceased to be Bumiputras (since 1963), even though their ancestors were in Malaya since Parameswara jumped off his sampan from Mojopohit.

In fact, the next Indonesian who jumps off his boat next week, will be given Bumiputra Status. People like Khir Toyo are but one example.

In short, it is simply the Malays who have been given the short end of the stick.

Firstly, the average Malay lives far below the standards of their UMNO leaders. Cheap rickety wooden houses as compared to the Palace of Khir Toyol.

Next. The question of leadership. For the record, Malaysia never had a Malay Prime Minister. I don't need to reestablish the list. Needless to say, that the latest Sulawesi-Boy with a peculiar taste for Mongolian BBQ's is now making open threats (as he did before) to bathe his Keris in Chinese Blood.

He said it before, and he is saying it again, albeit "..crushed bodies and so on..." Perhaps he is referring to another May 13th, where UMNO will import the Bangsa Minang from Pariaman to rekindle the flames? They were indeed brought in, and to anyone who cares enough to make a trip there, you will be greeted by the most racist pigs you will have ever encountered. Yes. Pariaman is crawling with them.

And, according to Wiki (click HERE)

"... Both Malaysia and Singapore have attributed the September riots to Indonesian provocateurs..." They simply did not mention Pariaman explicitly. Once again, it is mentioned here (click HERE)

"...Malaysia Deputy Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak blamed ethnic Indonesian and Communist provocateurs...."

However, Lee Kwan Yew specifically mention the following sentence:

"...On the other hand, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and several foreign observers attributed the riots as the result of agitation by Syed Jaafar Albar and other elements of the ultra-nationalist faction in United Malays National Organization(UMNO). According to the Australian Deputy High Commissioner, W. B. Pritchett:

"...there can be no doubt that UMNO was solely responsible for the riots. Its members ran the communal campaign or allowed it to happen."[2 ]

Read the above sentence again, and again, and again. Read it to your children, and your children's children !!

"... UMNO was solely responsible for the riots..."

And UMNO did it by importing Minang Trouble-makers from Pariaman to start the May 13th incident. UMNO has done it before, and UMNO is now openly saying that they will do it again.

This Unholy Regime has to end !!

The bloodshed has to stop.

Human shields by PAS or not, UMNO must be brought down at all costs !!

If you have relatives, who are feeding from the hand of UMNO/ MCA/ MIC/ Gerakan, etc. Please print a copy of this for them.

Look them in the eye, and say this,

"The time has come for Malaysia to start over".

This time, UMNO will carry out its bloodbath.

And you are but a sideshow, if you do nothing about it.

Why the future doesn't need us.

2010-09-13T05:11:00.001-07:00

Why the future doesn't need us.

Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.

By Bill Joy

From the moment I became involved in the creation of new technologies, their ethical dimensions have concerned me, but it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and many other amazing things.

Ray and I were both speakers at George Gilder's Telecosm conference, and I encountered him by chance in the bar of the hotel after both our sessions were over. I was sitting with John Searle, a Berkeley philosopher who studies consciousness. While we were talking, Ray approached and a conversation began, the subject of which haunts me to this day.

I had missed Ray's talk and the subsequent panel that Ray and John had been on, and they now picked right up where they'd left off, with Ray saying that the rate of improvement of technology was going to accelerate and that we were going to become robots or fuse with robots or something like that, and John countering that this couldn't happen, because the robots couldn't be conscious.

While I had heard such talk before, I had always felt sentient robots were in the realm of science fiction. But now, from someone I respected, I was hearing a strong argument that they were a near-term possibility. I was taken aback, especially given Ray's proven ability to imagine and create the future. I already knew that new technologies like genetic engineering and nanotechnology were giving us the power to remake the world, but a realistic and imminent scenario for intelligent robots surprised me.

It's easy to get jaded about such breakthroughs. We hear in the news almost every day of some kind of technological or scientific advance. Yet this was no ordinary prediction. In the hotel bar, Ray gave me a partial preprint of his then-forthcoming bookThe Age of Spiritual Machines, which outlined a utopia he foresaw - one in which humans gained near immortality by becoming one with robotic technology. On reading it, my sense of unease only intensified; I felt sure he had to be understating the dangers, understating the probability of a bad outcome along this path.

I found myself most troubled by a passage detailing adystopian scenario:

THE NEW LUDDITE CHALLENGE

First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.

If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite - just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.1

In the book, you don't discover until you turn the page that the author of this passage is Theodore Kaczynski - the Unabomber. I am no apologist for Kaczynski. His bombs killed three people during a 17-year terror campaign and wounded many others. One of his bombs gravely injured my friend David Gelernter, one of the most brilliant and visionary computer scientists of our time. Like many of my colleagues, I felt that I could easily have been the Unabomber's next target.

Kaczynski's actions were murderous and, in my view, criminally insane. He is clearly a Luddite, but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument; as difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in the reasoning in this single passage. I felt compelled to confront it.

Kaczynski's dystopian vision describes unintended consequences, a well-known problem with the design and use of technology, and one that is clearly related to Murphy's law - "Anything that can go wrong, will." (Actually, this is Finagle's law, which in itself shows that Finagle was right.) Our overuse of antibiotics has led to what may be the biggest such problem so far: the emergence of antibiotic-resistant and much more dangerous bacteria. Similar things happened when attempts to eliminate malarial mosquitoes using DDT caused them to acquire DDT resistance; malarial parasites likewise acquired multi-drug-resistant genes.2

The cause of many such surprises seems clear: The systems involved are complex, involving interaction among and feedback between many parts. Any changes to such a system will cascade in ways that are difficult to predict; this is especially true when human actions are involved.

I started showing friends the Kaczynski quote fromThe Age of Spiritual Machines; I would hand them Kurzweil's book, let them read the quote, and then watch their reaction as they discovered who had written it. At around the same time, I found Hans Moravec's bookRobot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. Moravec is one of the leaders in robotics research, and was a founder of the world's largest robotics research program, at Carnegie Mellon University.Robot gave me more material to try out on my friends - material surprisingly supportive of Kaczynski's argument. For example:

The Short Run (Early 2000s)

Biological species almost never survive encounters with superior competitors. Ten million years ago, South and North America were separated by a sunken Panama isthmus. South America, like Australia today, was populated by marsupial mammals, including pouched equivalents of rats, deers, and tigers. When the isthmus connecting North and South America rose, it took only a few thousand years for the northern placental species, with slightly more effective metabolisms and reproductive and nervous systems, to displace and eliminate almost all the southern marsupials.

In a completely free marketplace, superior robots would surely affect humans as North American placentals affected South American marsupials (and as humans have affected countless species). Robotic industries would compete vigorously among themselves for matter, energy, and space, incidentally driving their price beyond human reach. Unable to afford the necessities of life, biological humans would be squeezed out of existence.

There is probably some breathing room, because we do not live in a completely free marketplace. Government coerces nonmarket behavior, especially by collecting taxes. Judiciously applied, governmental coercion could support human populations in high style on the fruits of robot labor, perhaps for a long while.

A textbook dystopia - and Moravec is just getting wound up. He goes on to discuss how our main job in the 21st century will be "ensuring continued cooperation from the robot industries" by passing laws decreeing that they be "nice,"3 and to describe how seriously dangerous a human can be "once transformed into an unbounded superintelligent robot." Moravec's view is that the robots will eventually succeed us - that humans clearly face extinction.

I decided it was time to talk to my friend Danny Hillis. Danny became famous as the cofounder of Thinking Machines Corporation, which built a very powerful parallel supercomputer. Despite my current job title of Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems, I am more a computer architect than a scientist, and I respect Danny's knowledge of the information and physical sciences more than that of any other single person I know. Danny is also a highly regarded futurist who thinks long-term - four years ago he started the Long Now Foundation, which is building a clock designed to last 10,000 years, in an attempt to draw attention to the pitifully short attention span of our society. (See "Test of Time,"Wired 8.03, page 78.)

So I flew to Los Angeles for the express purpose of having dinner with Danny and his wife, Pati. I went through my now-familiar routine, trotting out the ideas and passages that I found so disturbing. Danny's answer - directed specifically at Kurzweil's scenario of humans merging with robots - came swiftly, and quite surprised me. He said, simply, that the changes would come gradually, and that we would get used to them.

But I guess I wasn't totally surprised. I had seen a quote from Danny in Kurzweil's book in which he said, "I'm as fond of my body as anyone, but if I can be 200 with a body of silicon, I'll take it." It seemed that he was at peace with this process and its attendant risks, while I was not.

While talking and thinking about Kurzweil, Kaczynski, and Moravec, I suddenly remembered a novel I had read almost 20 years ago -The White Plague, by Frank Herbert - in which a molecular biologist is driven insane by the senseless murder of his family. To seek revenge he constructs and disseminates a new and highly contagious plague that kills widely but selectively. (We're lucky Kaczynski was a mathematician, not a molecular biologist.) I was also reminded of the Borg ofStar Trek, a hive of partly biological, partly robotic creatures with a strong destructive streak. Borg-like disasters are a staple of science fiction, so why hadn't I been more concerned about such robotic dystopias earlier? Why weren't other people more concerned about these nightmarish scenarios?

Part of the answer certainly lies in our attitude toward the new - in our bias toward instant familiarity and unquestioning acceptance. Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology - pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once - but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control.

Much of my work over the past 25 years has been on computer networking, where the sending and receiving of messages creates the opportunity for out-of-control replication. But while replication in a computer or a computer network can be a nuisance, at worst it disables a machine or takes down a network or network service. Uncontrolled self-replication in these newer technologies runs a much greater risk: a risk of substantial damage in the physical world.

Each of these technologies also offers untold promise: The vision of near immortality that Kurzweil sees in his robot dreams drives us forward; genetic engineering may soon provide treatments, if not outright cures, for most diseases; and nanotechnology and nanomedicine can address yet more ills. Together they could significantly extend our average life span and improve the quality of our lives. Yet, with each of these technologies, a sequence of small, individually sensible advances leads to an accumulation of great power and, concomitantly, great danger.

What was different in the 20th century? Certainly, the technologies underlying the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) - were powerful, and the weapons an enormous threat. But building nuclear weapons required, at least for a time, access to both rare - indeed, effectively unavailable - raw materials and highly protected information; biological and chemical weapons programs also tended to require large-scale activities.

The 21st-century technologies - genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) - are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable the use of them.

Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely amplified by the power of self-replication.

I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.

Nothing about the way I got involved with computers suggested to me that I was going to be facing these kinds of issues.

My life has been driven by a deep need to ask questions and find answers. When I was 3, I was already reading, so my father took me to the elementary school, where I sat on the principal's lap and read him a story. I started school early, later skipped a grade, and escaped into books - I was incredibly motivated to learn. I asked lots of questions, often driving adults to distraction.

As a teenager I was very interested in science and technology. I wanted to be a ham radio operator but didn't have the money to buy the equipment. Ham radio was the Internet of its time: very addictive, and quite solitary. Money issues aside, my mother put her foot down - I was not to be a ham; I was antisocial enough already.

I may not have had many close friends, but I was awash in ideas. By high school, I had discovered the great science fiction writers. I remember especially Heinlein'sHave Spacesuit Will Travel and Asimov's I, Robot, with its Three Laws of Robotics. I was enchanted by the descriptions of space travel, and wanted to have a telescope to look at the stars; since I had no money to buy or make one, I checked books on telescope-making out of the library and read about making them instead. I soared in my imagination.

Thursday nights my parents went bowling, and we kids stayed home alone. It was the night of Gene Roddenberry's original Star Trek, and the program made a big impression on me. I came to accept its notion that humans had a future in space, Western-style, with big heroes and adventures. Roddenberry's vision of the centuries to come was one with strong moral values, embodied in codes like the Prime Directive: to not interfere in the development of less technologically advanced civilizations. This had an incredible appeal to me; ethical humans, not robots, dominated this future, and I took Roddenberry's dream as part of my own.

I excelled in mathematics in high school, and when I went to the University of Michigan as an undergraduate engineering student I took the advanced curriculum of the mathematics majors. Solving math problems was an exciting challenge, but when I discovered computers I found something much more interesting: a machine into which you could put a program that attempted to solve a problem, after which the machine quickly checked the solution. The computer had a clear notion of correct and incorrect, true and false. Were my ideas correct? The machine could tell me. This was very seductive.

I was lucky enough to get a job programming early supercomputers and discovered the amazing power of large machines to numerically simulate advanced designs. When I went to graduate school at UC Berkeley in the mid-1970s, I started staying up late, often all night, inventing new worlds inside the machines. Solving problems. Writing the code that argued so strongly to be written.

InThe Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone's biographical novel of Michelangelo, Stone described vividly how Michelangelo released the statues from the stone, "breaking the marble spell," carving from the images in his mind.4 In my most ecstatic moments, the software in the computer emerged in the same way. Once I had imagined it in my mind I felt that it was already there in the machine, waiting to be released. Staying up all night seemed a small price to pay to free it - to give the ideas concrete form.

After a few years at Berkeley I started to send out some of the software I had written - an instructional Pascal system, Unix utilities, and a text editor called vi (which is still, to my surprise, widely used more than 20 years later) - to others who had similar small PDP-11 and VAX minicomputers. These adventures in software eventually turned into the Berkeley version of the Unix operating system, which became a personal "success disaster" - so many people wanted it that I never finished my PhD. Instead I got a job working for Darpa putting Berkeley Unix on the Internet and fixing it to be reliable and to run large research applications well. This was all great fun and very rewarding. And, frankly, I saw no robots here, or anywhere near.

Still, by the early 1980s, I was drowning. The Unix releases were very successful, and my little project of one soon had money and some staff, but the problem at Berkeley was always office space rather than money - there wasn't room for the help the project needed, so when the other founders of Sun Microsystems showed up I jumped at the chance to join them. At Sun, the long hours continued into the early days of workstations and personal computers, and I have enjoyed participating in the creation of advanced microprocessor technologies and Internet technologies such as Java and Jini.

From all this, I trust it is clear that I am not a Luddite. I have always, rather, had a strong belief in the value of the scientific search for truth and in the ability of great engineering to bring material progress. The Industrial Revolution has immeasurably improved everyone's life over the last couple hundred years, and I always expected my career to involve the building of worthwhile solutions to real problems, one problem at a time.

I have not been disappointed. My work has had more impact than I had ever hoped for and has been more widely used than I could have reasonably expected. I have spent the last 20 years still trying to figure out how to make computers as reliable as I want them to be (they are not nearly there yet) and how to make them simple to use (a goal that has met with even less relative success). Despite some progress, the problems that remain seem even more daunting.

But while I was aware of the moral dilemmas surrounding technology's consequences in fields like weapons research, I did not expect that I would confront such issues in my own field, or at least not so soon.

Perhaps it is always hard to see the bigger impact while you are in the vortex of a change. Failing to understand the consequences of our inventions while we are in the rapture of discovery and innovation seems to be a common fault of scientists and technologists; we have long been driven by the overarching desire to know that is the nature of science's quest, not stopping to notice that the progress to newer and more powerful technologies can take on a life of its own.

I have long realized that the big advances in information technology come not from the work of computer scientists, computer architects, or electrical engineers, but from that of physical scientists. The physicists Stephen Wolfram and Brosl Hasslacher introduced me, in the early 1980s, to chaos theory and nonlinear systems. In the 1990s, I learned about complex systems from conversations with Danny Hillis, the biologist Stuart Kauffman, the Nobel-laureate physicist Murray Gell-Mann, and others. Most recently, Hasslacher and the electrical engineer and device physicist Mark Reed have been giving me insight into the incredible possibilities of molecular electronics.

In my own work, as codesigner of three microprocessor architectures - SPARC, picoJava, and MAJC - and as the designer of several implementations thereof, I've been afforded a deep and firsthand acquaintance with Moore's law. For decades, Moore's law has correctly predicted the exponential rate of improvement of semiconductor technology. Until last year I believed that the rate of advances predicted by Moore's law might continue only until roughly 2010, when some physical limits would begin to be reached. It was not obvious to me that a new technology would arrive in time to keep performance advancing smoothly.

But because of the recent rapid and radical progress in molecular electronics - where individual atoms and molecules replace lithographically drawn transistors - and related nanoscale technologies, we should be able to meet or exceed the Moore's law rate of progress for another 30 years. By 2030, we are likely to be able to build machines, in quantity, a million times as powerful as the personal computers of today - sufficient to implement the dreams of Kurzweil and Moravec.

As this enormous computing power is combined with the manipulative advances of the physical sciences and the new, deep understandings in genetics, enormous transformative power is being unleashed. These combinations open up the opportunity to completely redesign the world, for better or worse: The replicating and evolving processes that have been confined to the natural world are about to become realms of human endeavor.

In designing software and microprocessors, I have never had the feeling that I was designing an intelligent machine. The software and hardware is so fragile and the capabilities of the machine to "think" so clearly absent that, even as a possibility, this has always seemed very far in the future.

But now, with the prospect of human-level computing power in about 30 years, a new idea suggests itself: that I may be working to create tools which will enable the construction of the technology that may replace our species. How do I feel about this? Very uncomfortable. Having struggled my entire career to build reliable software systems, it seems to me more than likely that this future will not work out as well as some people may imagine. My personal experience suggests we tend to overestimate our design abilities.

Given the incredible power of these new technologies, shouldn't we be asking how we can best coexist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn't we proceed with great caution?

The dream of robotics is, first, that intelligent machines can do our work for us, allowing us lives of leisure, restoring us to Eden. Yet in his history of such ideas,Darwin Among the Machines, George Dyson warns: "In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines." As we have seen, Moravec agrees, believing we may well not survive the encounter with the superior robot species.

How soon could such an intelligent robot be built? The coming advances in computing power seem to make it possible by 2030. And once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species - to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself.

A second dream of robotics is that we will gradually replace ourselves with our robotic technology, achieving near immortality by downloading our consciousnesses; it is this process that Danny Hillis thinks we will gradually get used to and that Ray Kurzweil elegantly details inThe Age of Spiritual Machines. (We are beginning to see intimations of this in the implantation of computer devices into the human body, as illustrated on thecover ofWired 8.02.)

But if we are downloaded into our technology, what are the chances that we will thereafter be ourselves or even human? It seems to me far more likely that a robotic existence would not be like a human one in any sense that we understand, that the robots would in no sense be our children, that on this path our humanity may well be lost.

Genetic engineering promises to revolutionize agriculture by increasing crop yields while reducing the use of pesticides; to create tens of thousands of novel species of bacteria, plants, viruses, and animals; to replace reproduction, or supplement it, with cloning; to create cures for many diseases, increasing our life span and our quality of life; and much, much more. We now know with certainty that these profound changes in the biological sciences are imminent and will challenge all our notions of what life is.

Technologies such as human cloning have in particular raised our awareness of the profound ethical and moral issues we face. If, for example, we were to reengineer ourselves into several separate and unequal species using the power of genetic engineering, then we would threaten the notion of equality that is the very cornerstone of our democracy.

Given the incredible power of genetic engineering, it's no surprise that there are significant safety issues in its use. My friend Amory Lovins recently cowrote, along with Hunter Lovins, an editorial that provides an ecological view of some of these dangers. Among their concerns: that "the new botany aligns the development of plants with their economic, not evolutionary, success." (See "A Tale of Two Botanies," page 247.) Amory's long career has been focused on energy and resource efficiency by taking a whole-system view of human-made systems; such a whole-system view often finds simple, smart solutions to otherwise seemingly difficult problems, and is usefully applied here as well.

After reading the Lovins' editorial, I saw an op-ed by Gregg Easterbrook inThe New York Times (November 19, 1999) about genetically engineered crops, under the headline: "Food for the Future: Someday, rice will have built-in vitamin A. Unless the Luddites win."

Are Amory and Hunter Lovins Luddites? Certainly not. I believe we all would agree that golden rice, with its built-in vitamin A, is probably a good thing, if developed with proper care and respect for the likely dangers in moving genes across species boundaries.

Awareness of the dangers inherent in genetic engineering is beginning to grow, as reflected in the Lovins' editorial. The general public is aware of, and uneasy about, genetically modified foods, and seems to be rejecting the notion that such foods should be permitted to be unlabeled.

But genetic engineering technology is already very far along. As the Lovins note, the USDA has already approved about 50 genetically engineered crops for unlimited release; more than half of the world's soybeans and a third of its corn now contain genes spliced in from other forms of life.

While there are many important issues here, my own major concern with genetic engineering is narrower: that it gives the power - whether militarily, accidentally, or in a deliberate terrorist act - to create a White Plague.

The many wonders of nanotechnology were first imagined by the Nobel-laureate physicist Richard Feynman in a speech he gave in 1959, subsequently published under the title "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." The book that made a big impression on me, in the mid-'80s, was Eric Drexler'sEngines of Creation, in which he described beautifully how manipulation of matter at the atomic level could create a utopian future of abundance, where just about everything could be made cheaply, and almost any imaginable disease or physical problem could be solved using nanotechnology and artificial intelligences.

A subsequent book,Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution, which Drexler cowrote, imagines some of the changes that might take place in a world where we had molecular-level "assemblers." Assemblers could make possible incredibly low-cost solar power, cures for cancer and the common cold by augmentation of the human immune system, essentially complete cleanup of the environment, incredibly inexpensive pocket supercomputers - in fact, any product would be manufacturable by assemblers at a cost no greater than that of wood - spaceflight more accessible than transoceanic travel today, and restoration of extinct species.

I remember feeling good about nanotechnology after readingEngines of Creation. As a technologist, it gave me a sense of calm - that is, nanotechnology showed us that incredible progress was possible, and indeed perhaps inevitable. If nanotechnology was our future, then I didn't feel pressed to solve so many problems in the present. I would get to Drexler's utopian future in due time; I might as well enjoy life more in the here and now. It didn't make sense, given his vision, to stay up all night, all the time.

Drexler's vision also led to a lot of good fun. I would occasionally get to describe the wonders of nanotechnology to others who had not heard of it. After teasing them with all the things Drexler described I would give a homework assignment of my own: "Use nanotechnology to create a vampire; for extra credit create an antidote."

With these wonders came clear dangers, of which I was acutely aware. As I said at a nanotechnology conference in 1989, "We can't simply do our science and not worry about these ethical issues."5 But my subsequent conversations with physicists convinced me that nanotechnology might not even work - or, at least, it wouldn't work anytime soon. Shortly thereafter I moved to Colorado, to a skunk works I had set up, and the focus of my work shifted to software for the Internet, specifically on ideas that became Java and Jini.

Then, last summer, Brosl Hasslacher told me that nanoscale molecular electronics was now practical. This wasnew news, at least to me, and I think to many people - and it radically changed my opinion about nanotechnology. It sent me back toEngines of Creation. Rereading Drexler's work after more than 10 years, I was dismayed to realize how little I had remembered of its lengthy section called "Dangers and Hopes," including a discussion of how nanotechnologies can become "engines of destruction." Indeed, in my rereading of this cautionary material today, I am struck by how naive some of Drexler's safeguard proposals seem, and how much greater I judge the dangers to be now than even he seemed to then. (Having anticipated and described many technical and political problems with nanotechnology, Drexler started the Foresight Institute in the late 1980s "to help prepare society for anticipated advanced technologies" - most important, nanotechnology.)

The enabling breakthrough to assemblers seems quite likely within the next 20 years. Molecular electronics - the new subfield of nanotechnology where individual molecules are circuit elements - should mature quickly and become enormously lucrative within this decade, causing a large incremental investment in all nanotechnologies.

Unfortunately, as with nuclear technology, it is far easier to create destructive uses for nanotechnology than constructive ones. Nanotechnology has clear military and terrorist uses, and you need not be suicidal to release a massively destructive nanotechnological device - such devices can be built to be selectively destructive, affecting, for example, only a certain geographical area or a group of people who are genetically distinct.

An immediate consequence of the Faustian bargain in obtaining the great power of nanotechnology is that we run a grave risk - the risk that we might destroy the biosphere on which all life depends.

As Drexler explained:

"Plants" with "leaves" no more efficient than today's solar cells could out-compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough omnivorous "bacteria" could out-compete real bacteria: They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop - at least if we make no preparation. We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies.

Among the cognoscenti of nanotechnology, this threat has become known as the "gray goo problem." Though masses of uncontrolled replicators need not be gray or gooey, the term "gray goo" emphasizes that replicators able to obliterate life might be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass. They might be superior in an evolutionary sense, but this need not make them valuable.

The gray goo threat makes one thing perfectly clear: We cannot afford certain kinds of accidents with replicating assemblers.

Gray goo would surely be a depressing ending to our human adventure on Earth, far worse than mere fire or ice, and one that could stem from a simple laboratory accident.6 Oops.

It is most of all the power of destructive self-replication in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) that should give us pause. Self-replication is the modus operandi of genetic engineering, which uses the machinery of the cell to replicate its designs, and the prime danger underlying gray goo in nanotechnology. Stories of run-amok robots like the Borg, replicating or mutating to escape from the ethical constraints imposed on them by their creators, are well established in our science fiction books and movies. It is even possible that self-replication may be more fundamental than we thought, and hence harder - or even impossible - to control. A recent article by Stuart Kauffman inNature titled "Self-Replication: Even Peptides Do It" discusses the discovery that a 32-amino-acid peptide can "autocatalyse its own synthesis." We don't know how widespread this ability is, but Kauffman notes that it may hint at "a route to self-reproducing molecular systems on a basis far wider than Watson-Crick base-pairing."7

In truth, we have had in hand for years clear warnings of the dangers inherent in widespread knowledge of GNR technologies - of the possibility of knowledge alone enabling mass destruction. But these warnings haven't been widely publicized; the public discussions have been clearly inadequate. There is no profit in publicizing the dangers.

The nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) technologies used in 20th-century weapons of mass destruction were and are largely military, developed in government laboratories. In sharp contrast, the 21st-century GNR technologies have clear commercial uses and are being developed almost exclusively by corporate enterprises. In this age of triumphant commercialism, technology - with science as its handmaiden - is delivering a series of almost magical inventions that are the most phenomenally lucrative ever seen. We are aggressively pursuing the promises of these new technologies within the now-unchallenged system of global capitalism and its manifold financial incentives and competitive pressures.

This is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species, by its own voluntary actions, has become a danger to itself - as well as to vast numbers of others.

It might be a familiar progression, transpiring on many worlds - a planet, newly formed, placidly revolves around its star; life slowly forms; a kaleidoscopic procession of creatures evolves; intelligence emerges which, at least up to a point, confers enormous survival value; and then technology is invented. It dawns on them that there are such things as laws of Nature, that these laws can be revealed by experiment, and that knowledge of these laws can be made both to save and to take lives, both on unprecedented scales. Science, they recognize, grants immense powers. In a flash, they create world-altering contrivances. Some planetary civilizations see their way through, place limits on what may and what must not be done, and safely pass through the time of perils. Others, not so lucky or so prudent, perish.

That is Carl Sagan, writing in 1994, inPale Blue Dot, a book describing his vision of the human future in space. I am only now realizing how deep his insight was, and how sorely I miss, and will miss, his voice. For all its eloquence, Sagan's contribution was not least that of simple common sense - an attribute that, along with humility, many of the leading advocates of the 21st-century technologies seem to lack.

I remember from my childhood that my grandmother was strongly against the overuse of antibiotics. She had worked since before the first World War as a nurse and had a commonsense attitude that taking antibiotics, unless they were absolutely necessary, was bad for you.

It is not that she was an enemy of progress. She saw much progress in an almost 70-year nursing career; my grandfather, a diabetic, benefited greatly from the improved treatments that became available in his lifetime. But she, like many levelheaded people, would probably think it greatly arrogant for us, now, to be designing a robotic "replacement species," when we obviously have so much trouble making relatively simple things work, and so much trouble managing - or even understanding - ourselves.

I realize now that she had an awareness of the nature of the order of life, and of the necessity of living with and respecting that order. With this respect comes a necessary humility that we, with our early-21st-century chutzpah, lack at our peril. The commonsense view, grounded in this respect, is often right, in advance of the scientific evidence. The clear fragility and inefficiencies of the human-made systems we have built should give us all pause; the fragility of the systems I have worked on certainly humbles me.

We should have learned a lesson from the making of the first atomic bomb and the resulting arms race. We didn't do well then, and the parallels to our current situation are troubling.

The effort to build the first atomic bomb was led by the brilliant physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was not naturally interested in politics but became painfully aware of what he perceived as the grave threat to Western civilization from the Third Reich, a threat surely grave because of the possibility that Hitler might obtain nuclear weapons. Energized by this concern, he brought his strong intellect, passion for physics, and charismatic leadership skills to Los Alamos and led a rapid and successful effort by an incredible collection of great minds to quickly invent the bomb.

What is striking is how this effort continued so naturally after the initial impetus was removed. In a meeting shortly after V-E Day with some physicists who felt that perhaps the effort should stop, Oppenheimer argued to continue. His stated reason seems a bit strange: not because of the fear of large casualties from an invasion of Japan, but because the United Nations, which was soon to be formed, should have foreknowledge of atomic weapons. A more likely reason the project continued is the momentum that had built up - the first atomic test, Trinity, was nearly at hand.

We know that in preparing this first atomic test the physicists proceeded despite a large number of possible dangers. They were initially worried, based on a calculation by Edward Teller, that an atomic explosion might set fire to the atmosphere. A revised calculation reduced the danger of destroying the world to a three-in-a-million chance. (Teller says he was later able to dismiss the prospect of atmospheric ignition entirely.) Oppenheimer, though, was sufficiently concerned about the result of Trinity that he arranged for a possible evacuation of the southwest part of the state of New Mexico. And, of course, there was the clear danger of starting a nuclear arms race.

Within a month of that first, successful test, two atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some scientists had suggested that the bomb simply be demonstrated, rather than dropped on Japanese cities - saying that this would greatly improve the chances for arms control after the war - but to no avail. With the tragedy of Pearl Harbor still fresh in Americans' minds, it would have been very difficult for President Truman to order a demonstration of the weapons rather than use them as he did - the desire to quickly end the war and save the lives that would have been lost in any invasion of Japan was very strong. Yet the overriding truth was probably very simple: As the physicist Freeman Dyson later said, "The reason that it was dropped was just that nobody had the courage or the foresight to say no."

It's important to realize how shocked the physicists were in the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945. They describe a series of waves of emotion: first, a sense of fulfillment that the bomb worked, then horror at all the people that had been killed, and then a convincing feeling that on no account should another bomb be dropped. Yet of course another bomb was dropped, on Nagasaki, only three days after the bombing of Hiroshima.

In November 1945, three months after the atomic bombings, Oppenheimer stood firmly behind the scientific attitude, saying, "It is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that the knowledge of the world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of intrinsic value to humanity, and that you are using it to help in the spread of knowledge and are willing to take the consequences."

Oppenheimer went on to work, with others, on the Acheson-Lilienthal report, which, as Richard Rhodes says in his recent bookVisions of Technology, "found a way to prevent a clandestine nuclear arms race without resorting to armed world government"; their suggestion was a form of relinquishment of nuclear weapons work by nation-states to an international agency.

This proposal led to the Baruch Plan, which was submitted to the United Nations in June 1946 but never adopted (perhaps because, as Rhodes suggests, Bernard Baruch had "insisted on burdening the plan with conventional sanctions," thereby inevitably dooming it, even though it would "almost certainly have been rejected by Stalinist Russia anyway"). Other efforts to promote sensible steps toward internationalizing nuclear power to prevent an arms race ran afoul either of US politics and internal distrust, or distrust by the Soviets. The opportunity to avoid the arms race was lost, and very quickly.

Two years later, in 1948, Oppenheimer seemed to have reached another stage in his thinking, saying, "In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge they cannot lose."

In 1949, the Soviets exploded an atom bomb. By 1955, both the US and the Soviet Union had tested hydrogen bombs suitable for delivery by aircraft. And so the nuclear arms race began.

Nearly 20 years ago, in the documentaryThe Day After Trinity, Freeman Dyson summarized the scientific attitudes that brought us to the nuclear precipice:

"I have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it's there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles - this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds."8

Now, as then, we are creators of new technologies and stars of the imagined future, driven - this time by great financial rewards and global competition - despite the clear dangers, hardly evaluating what it may be like to try to live in a world that is the realistic outcome of what we are creating and imagining.

In 1947,The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists began putting a Doomsday Clock on its cover. For more than 50 years, it has shown an estimate of the relative nuclear danger we have faced, reflecting the changing international conditions. The hands on the clock have moved 15 times and today, standing at nine minutes to midnight, reflect continuing and real danger from nuclear weapons. The recent addition of India and Pakistan to the list of nuclear powers has increased the threat of failure of the nonproliferation goal, and this danger was reflected by moving the hands closer to midnight in 1998.

In our time, how much danger do we face, not just from nuclear weapons, but from all of these technologies? How high are the extinction risks?

The philosopher John Leslie has studied this question and concluded that the risk of human extinction is at least 30 percent,9 while Ray Kurzweil believes we have "a better than even chance of making it through," with the caveat that he has "always been accused of being an optimist." Not only are these estimates not encouraging, but they do not include the probability of many horrid outcomes that lie short of extinction.

Faced with such assessments, some serious people are already suggesting that we simply move beyond Earth as quickly as possible. We would colonize the galaxy using von Neumann probes, which hop from star system to star system, replicating as they go. This step will almost certainly be necessary 5 billion years from now (or sooner if our solar system is disastrously impacted by the impending collision of our galaxy with the Andromeda galaxy within the next 3 billion years), but if we take Kurzweil and Moravec at their word it might be necessary by the middle of this century.

What are the moral implications here? If we must move beyond Earth this quickly in order for the species to survive, who accepts the responsibility for the fate of those (most of us, after all) who are left behind? And even if we scatter to the stars, isn't it likely that we may take our problems with us or find, later, that they have followed us? The fate of our species on Earth and our fate in the galaxy seem inextricably linked.

Another idea is to erect a series of shields to defend against each of the dangerous technologies. The Strategic Defense Initiative, proposed by the Reagan administration, was an attempt to design such a shield against the threat of a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. But as Arthur C. Clarke, who was privy to discussions about the project, observed: "Though it might be possible, at vast expense, to construct local defense systems that would 'only' let through a few percent of ballistic missiles, the much touted idea of a national umbrella was nonsense. Luis Alvarez, perhaps the greatest experimental physicist of this century, remarked to me that the advocates of such schemes were 'very bright guys with no common sense.'"

Clarke continued: "Looking into my often cloudy crystal ball, I suspect that a total defense might indeed be possible in a century or so. But the technology involved would produce, as a by-product, weapons so terrible that no one would bother with anything as primitive as ballistic missiles." 10

InEngines of Creation, Eric Drexler proposed that we build an active nanotechnological shield - a form of immune system for the biosphere - to defend against dangerous replicators of all kinds that might escape from laboratories or otherwise be maliciously created. But the shield he proposed would itself be extremely dangerous - nothing could prevent it from developing autoimmune problems and attacking the biosphere itself. 11

Similar difficulties apply to the construction of shields against robotics and genetic engineering. These technologies are too powerful to be shielded against in the time frame of interest; even if it were possible to implement defensive shields, the side effects of their development would be at least as dangerous as the technologies we are trying to protect against.

These possibilities are all thus either undesirable or unachievable or both. The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.

Yes, I know, knowledge is good, as is the search for new truths. We have been seeking knowledge since ancient times. Aristotle opened his Metaphysics with the simple statement: "All men by nature desire to know." We have, as a bedrock value in our society, long agreed on the value of open access to information, and recognize the problems that arise with attempts to restrict access to and development of knowledge. In recent times, we have come to revere scientific knowledge.

But despite the strong historical precedents, if open access to and unlimited development of knowledge henceforth puts us all in clear danger of extinction, then common sense demands that we reexamine even these basic, long-held beliefs.

It was Nietzsche who warned us, at the end of the 19th century, not only that God is dead but that "faith in science, which after all exists undeniably, cannot owe its origin to a calculus of utility; it must have originated in spite of the fact that the disutility and dangerousness of the 'will to truth,' of 'truth at any price' is proved to it constantly." It is this further danger that we now fully face - the consequences of our truth-seeking. The truth that science seeks can certainly be considered a dangerous substitute for God if it is likely to lead to our extinction.

If we could agree, as a species, what we wanted, where we were headed, and why, then we would make our future much less dangerous - then we might understand what we can and should relinquish. Otherwise, we can easily imagine an arms race developing over GNR technologies, as it did with the NBC technologies in the 20th century. This is perhaps the greatest risk, for once such a race begins, it's very hard to end it. This time - unlike during the Manhattan Project - we aren't in a war, facing an implacable enemy that is threatening our civilization; we are driven, instead, by our habits, our desires, our economic system, and our competitive need to know.

I believe that we all wish our course could be determined by our collective values, ethics, and morals. If we had gained more collective wisdom over the past few thousand years, then a dialogue to this end would be more practical, and the incredible powers we are about to unleash would not be nearly so troubling.

One would think we might be driven to such a dialogue by our instinct for self-preservation. Individuals clearly have this desire, yet as a species our behavior seems to be not in our favor. In dealing with the nuclear threat, we often spoke dishonestly to ourselves and to each other, thereby greatly increasing the risks. Whether this was politically motivated, or because we chose not to think ahead, or because when faced with such grave threats we acted irrationally out of fear, I do not know, but it does not bode well.

The new Pandora's boxes of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics are almost open, yet we seem hardly to have noticed. Ideas can't be put back in a box; unlike uranium or plutonium, they don't need to be mined and refined, and they can be freely copied. Once they are out, they are out. Churchill remarked, in a famous left-handed compliment, that the American people and their leaders "invariably do the right thing, after they have examined every other alternative." In this case, however, we must act more presciently, as to do the right thing only at last may be to lose the chance to do it at all.

As Thoreau said, "We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us"; and this is what we must fight, in our time. The question is, indeed, Which is to be master? Will we survive our technologies?

We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes. Have we already gone too far down the path to alter course? I don't believe so, but we aren't trying yet, and the last chance to assert control - the fail-safe point - is rapidly approaching. We have our first pet robots, as well as commercially available genetic engineering techniques, and our nanoscale techniques are advancing rapidly. While the development of these technologies proceeds through a number of steps, it isn't necessarily the case - as happened in the Manhattan Project and the Trinity test - that the last step in proving a technology is large and hard. The breakthrough to wild self-replication in robotics, genetic engineering, or nanotechnology could come suddenly, reprising the surprise we felt when we learned of the cloning of a mammal.

And yet I believe we do have a strong and solid basis for hope. Our attempts to deal with weapons of mass destruction in the last century provide a shining example of relinquishment for us to consider: the unilateral US abandonment, without preconditions, of the development of biological weapons. This relinquishment stemmed from the realization that while it would take an enormous effort to create these terrible weapons, they could from then on easily be duplicated and fall into the hands of rogue nations or terrorist groups.

The clear conclusion was that we would create additional threats to ourselves by pursuing these weapons, and that we would be more secure if we did not pursue them. We have embodied our relinquishment of biological and chemical weapons in the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).12

As for the continuing sizable threat from nuclear weapons, which we have lived with now for more than 50 years, the US Senate's recent rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty makes it clear relinquishing nuclear weapons will not be politically easy. But we have a unique opportunity, with the end of the Cold War, to avert a multipolar arms race. Building on the BWC and CWC relinquishments, successful abolition of nuclear weapons could help us build toward a habit of relinquishing dangerous technologies. (Actually, by getting rid of all but 100 nuclear weapons worldwide - roughly the total destructive power of World War II and a considerably easier task - we could eliminate this extinction threat. 13)

Verifying relinquishment will be a difficult problem, but not an unsolvable one. We are fortunate to have already done a lot of relevant work in the context of the BWC and other treaties. Our major task will be to apply this to technologies that are naturally much more commercial than military. The substantial need here is for transparency, as difficulty of verification is directly proportional to the difficulty of distinguishing relinquished from legitimate activities.

I frankly believe that the situation in 1945 was simpler than the one we now face: The nuclear technologies were reasonably separable into commercial and military uses, and monitoring was aided by the nature of atomic tests and the ease with which radioactivity could be measured. Research on military applications could be performed at national laboratories such as Los Alamos, with the results kept secret as long as possible.

The GNR technologies do not divide clearly into commercial and military uses; given their potential in the market, it's hard to imagine pursuing them only in national laboratories. With their widespread commercial pursuit, enforcing relinquishment will require a verification regime similar to that for biological weapons, but on an unprecedented scale. This, inevitably, will raise tensions between our individual privacy and desire for proprietary information, and the need for verification to protect us all. We will undoubtedly encounter strong resistance to this loss of privacy and freedom of action.

Verifying the relinquishment of certain GNR technologies will have to occur in cyberspace as well as at physical facilities. The critical issue will be to make the necessary transparency acceptable in a world of proprietary information, presumably by providing new forms of protection for intellectual property.

Verifying compliance will also require that scientists and engineers adopt a strong code of ethical conduct, resembling the Hippocratic oath, and that they have the courage to whistleblow as necessary, even at high personal cost. This would answer the call - 50 years after Hiroshima - by the Nobel laureate Hans Bethe, one of the most senior of the surviving members of the Manhattan Project, that all scientists "cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving, and manufacturing nuclear weapons and other weapons of potential mass destruction."14 In the 21st century, this requires vigilance and personal responsibility by those who would work on both NBC and GNR technologies to avoid implementing weapons of mass destruction and knowledge-enabled mass destruction.

Thoreau also said that we will be "rich in proportion to the number of things which we can afford to let alone." We each seek to be happy, but it would seem worthwhile to question whether we need to take such a high risk of total destruction to gain yet more knowledge and yet more things; common sense says that there is a limit to our material needs - and that certain knowledge is too dangerous and is best forgone.

Neither should we pursue near immortality without considering the costs, without considering the commensurate increase in the risk of extinction. Immortality, while perhaps the original, is certainly not the only possible utopian dream.

I recently had the good fortune to meet the distinguished author and scholar Jacques Attali, whose bookLignes d'horizons (Millennium, in the English translation) helped inspire the Java and Jini approach to the coming age of pervasive computing, as previously described in this magazine. In his new bookFraternités, Attali describes how our dreams of utopia have changed over time:

"At the dawn of societies, men saw their passage on Earth as nothing more than a labyrinth of pain, at the end of which stood a door leading, via their death, to the company of gods and toEternity. With the Hebrews and then the Greeks, some men dared free themselves from theological demands and dream of an ideal City whereLiberty would flourish. Others, noting the evolution of the market society, understood that the liberty of some would entail the alienation of others, and they soughtEquality."

Jacques helped me understand how these three different utopian goals exist in tension in our society today. He goes on to describe a fourth utopia,Fraternity, whose foundation is altruism. Fraternity alone associates individual happiness with the happiness of others, affording the promise of self-sustainment.

This crystallized for me my problem with Kurzweil's dream. A technological approach to Eternity - near immortality through robotics - may not be the most desirable utopia, and its pursuit brings clear dangers. Maybe we should rethink our utopian choices.

Where can we look for a new ethical basis to set our course? I have found the ideas in the book Ethics for the New Millennium, by the Dalai Lama, to be very helpful. As is perhaps well known but little heeded, the Dalai Lama argues that the most important thing is for us to conduct our lives with love and compassion for others, and that our societies need to develop a stronger notion of universal responsibility and of our interdependency; he proposes a standard of positive ethical conduct for individuals and societies that seems consonant with Attali's Fraternity utopia.

The Dalai Lama further argues that we must understand what it is that makes people happy, and acknowledge the strong evidence that neither material progress nor the pursuit of the power of knowledge is the key - that there are limits to what science and the scientific pursuit alone can do.

Our Western notion of happiness seems to come from the Greeks, who defined it as "the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope." 15

Clearly, we need to find meaningful challenges and sufficient scope in our lives if we are to be happy in whatever is to come. But I believe we must find alternative outlets for our creative forces, beyond the culture of perpetual economic growth; this growth has largely been a blessing for several hundred years, but it has not brought us unalloyed happiness, and we must now choose between the pursuit of unrestricted and undirected growth through science and technology and the clear accompanying dangers.

It is now more than a year since my first encounter with Ray Kurzweil and John Searle. I see around me cause for hope in the voices for caution and relinquishment and in those people I have discovered who are as concerned as I am about our current predicament. I feel, too, a deepened sense of personal responsibility - not for the work I have already done, but for the work that I might yet do, at the confluence of the sciences.

But many other people who know about the dangers still seem strangely silent. When pressed, they trot out the "this is nothing new" riposte - as if awareness of what could happen is response enough. They tell me, There are universities filled with bioethicists who study this stuff all day long. They say, All this has been written about before, and by experts. They complain, Your worries and your arguments are already old hat.

I don't know where these people hide their fear. As an architect of complex systems I enter this arena as a generalist. But should this diminish my concerns? I am aware of how much has been written about, talked about, and lectured about so authoritatively. But does this mean it has reached people? Does this mean we can discount the dangers before us?

Knowing is not a rationale for not acting. Can we doubt that knowledge has become a weapon we wield against ourselves?

The experiences of the atomic scientists clearly show the need to take personal responsibility, the danger that things will move too fast, and the way in which a process can take on a life of its own. We can, as they did, create insurmountable problems in almost no time flat. We must do more thinking up front if we are not to be similarly surprised and shocked by the consequences of our inventions.

My continuing professional work is on improving the reliability of software. Software is a tool, and as a toolbuilder I must struggle with the uses to which the tools I make are put. I have always believed that making software more reliable, given its many uses, will make the world a safer and better place; if I were to come to believe the opposite, then I would be morally obligated to stop this work. I can now imagine such a day may come.

This all leaves me not angry but at least a bit melancholic. Henceforth, for me, progress will be somewhat bittersweet.

Do you remember the beautiful penultimate scene in Manhattan where Woody Allen is lying on his couch and talking into a tape recorder? He is writing a short story about people who are creating unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves, because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe.

He leads himself to the question, "Why is life worth living?" and to consider what makes it worthwhile for him: Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, Louis Armstrong's recording of "Potato Head Blues," Swedish movies, Flaubert's Sentimental Education, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, the apples and pears by Cézanne, the crabs at Sam Wo's, and, finally, the showstopper: his love Tracy's face.

Each of us has our precious things, and as we care for them we locate the essence of our humanity. In the end, it is because of our great capacity for caring that I remain optimistic we will confront the dangerous issues now before us.

My immediate hope is to participate in a much larger discussion of the issues raised here, with people from many different backgrounds, in settings not predisposed to fear or favor technology for its own sake.

As a start, I have twice raised many of these issues at events sponsored by the Aspen Institute and have separately proposed that the American Academy of Arts and Sciences take them up as an extension of its work with the Pugwash Conferences. (These have been held since 1957 to discuss arms control, especially of nuclear weapons, and to formulate workable policies.)

It's unfortunate that the Pugwash meetings started only well after the nuclear genie was out of the bottle - roughly 15 years too late. We are also getting a belated start on seriously addressing the issues around 21st-century technologies - the prevention of knowledge-enabled mass destruction - and further delay seems unacceptable.

So I'm still searching; there are many more things to learn. Whether we are to succeed or fail, to survive or fall victim to these technologies, is not yet decided. I'm up late again - it's almost 6 am. I'm trying to imagine some better answers, to break the spell and free them from the stone.

1 The passage Kurzweil quotes is from Kaczynski's Unabomber Manifesto, which was published jointly, under duress, byThe New York Times and The Washington Post to attempt to bring his campaign of terror to an end. I agree with David Gelernter, who said about their decision:

"It was a tough call for the newspapers. To say yes would be giving in to terrorism, and for all they knew he was lying anyway. On the other hand, to say yes might stop the killing. There was also a chance that someone would read the tract and get a hunch about the author; and that is exactly what happened. The suspect's brother read it, and it rang a bell.

"I would have told them not to publish. I'm glad they didn't ask me. I guess."

(Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber. Free Press, 1997: 120.)

2 Garrett, Laurie.The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. Penguin, 1994: 47-52, 414, 419, 452.

3 Isaac Asimov described what became the most famous view of ethical rules for robot behavior in his bookI, Robot in 1950, in his Three Laws of Robotics: 1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

4 Michelangelo wrote a sonnet that begins:

Non ha l' ottimo artista alcun concetto
Ch' un marmo solo in sè non circonscriva
Col suo soverchio; e solo a quello arriva
La man che ubbidisce all' intelleto.

Stone translates this as:

The best of artists hath no thought to show
which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
doth not include; to break the marble spell
is all the hand that serves the brain can do.

Stone describes the process: "He was not working from his drawings or clay models; they had all been put away. He was carving from the images in his mind. His eyes and hands knew where every line, curve, mass must emerge, and at what depth in the heart of the stone to create the low relief."

(The Agony and the Ecstasy. Doubleday, 1961: 6, 144.)

5 First Foresight Conference on Nanotechnology in October 1989, a talk titled "The Future of Computation." Published in Crandall, B. C. and James Lewis, editors.Nanotechnology: Research and Perspectives. MIT Press, 1992: 269. See alsowww.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT01/Nano1.html.

6 In his 1963 novelCat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut imagined a gray-goo-like accident where a form of ice called ice-nine, which becomes solid at a much higher temperature, freezes the oceans.

7 Kauffman, Stuart. "Self-replication: Even Peptides Do It." Nature, 382, August 8, 1996: 496. Seewww.santafe.edu/sfi/People/kauffman/sak-peptides.html.

8 Else, Jon.The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and The Atomic Bomb (available at www.pyramiddirect.com).

9 This estimate is in Leslie's bookThe End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction, where he notes that the probability of extinction is substantially higher if we accept Brandon Carter's Doomsday Argument, which is, briefly, that "we ought to have some reluctance to believe that we are very exceptionally early, for instance in the earliest 0.001 percent, among all humans who will ever have lived. This would be some reason for thinking that humankind will not survive for many more centuries, let alone colonize the galaxy. Carter's doomsday argument doesn't generate any risk estimates just by itself. It is an argument forrevising the estimates which we generate when we consider various possible dangers." (Routledge, 1996: 1, 3, 145.)

10 Clarke, Arthur C. "Presidents, Experts, and Asteroids."Science, June 5, 1998. Reprinted as "Science and Society" inGreetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! Collected Essays, 1934-1998. St. Martin's Press, 1999: 526.

11 And, as David Forrest suggests in his paper "Regulating Nanotechnology Development," available atwww.foresight.org/NanoRev/Forrest1989.html, "If we used strict liability as an alternative to regulation it would be impossible for any developer to internalize the cost of the risk (destruction of the biosphere), so theoretically the activity of developing nanotechnology should never be undertaken." Forrest's analysis leaves us with only government regulation to protect us - not a comforting thought.

12 Meselson, Matthew. "The Problem of Biological Weapons." Presentation to the 1,818th Stated Meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, January 13, 1999. (minerva.amacad.org/archive/bulletin4.htm)

13 Doty, Paul. "The Forgotten Menace: Nuclear Weapons Stockpiles Still Represent the Biggest Threat to Civilization."Nature, 402, December 9, 1999: 583.

14 See also Hans Bethe's 1997 letter to President Clinton, at www.fas.org/bethecr.htm.

15 Hamilton, Edith.The Greek Way. W. W. Norton & Co., 1942: 35.

Bill Joy, cofounder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, was cochair of the presidential commission on the future of IT research, and is coauthor ofThe Java Language Specification. His work on theJini pervasive computing technology was featured inWired 6.08.