Is another European empire collapsing before our eyes?

By Wayne Madsen on May 21, 2011

Wayne Madsen – Strategic Culture May 15, 2011

The history of Europe is one of successive collapsed empires. Some, such as the Roman, Holy Roman, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires, simply overextended themselves and collapsed due to nationalist uprisings coupled with domestic political and economic inertia. Others, like the German Nazi, Soviet, Italian fascist, Napoleonic French, Spanish, and Portuguese empires collapsed as a result of their military aggression and incessant subterfuge from external forces.

The European Union appears to be suffering from the same symptoms as those experienced by the first category of failed European empires: over-extension, a stagnant and bloated bureaucracy, and economic collapse. As Europe strives to become a more unified and federal union, there has been a backlash from across its member states, with a North-South divide and economic turmoil now threatening to bring down the whole house of cards.

The rise of nationalist political parties in some of the EU’s heretofore staunchest pro-EU member nations and the collapse of some EU national economies due to predatory banking policies and America’s flooding of the global financial system with cheap dollars – a central bankers’ contrivance known as “quantitative easing” — has created fault lines in Europe that not only threaten to bring down the euro and drive the European Central Bank into extinction but prompt some members to leave the EU altogether.

Although there have always been degrees of Euro-skepticism throughout Europe since the coming into force of the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993, which transformed the European Economic Community into the European Union and created the euro, anti-EU feelings now run the full gamut from right to left. Anti-EU fervor has not only increased in the traditionally Euro-skeptic nations of Denmark, the United Kingdom, and France but has gained a strong foothold in the earliest supporters of European integration, including Ireland, the Netherlands, Finland, Greece, and most importantly, Germany…

Denmark originally failed to ratify Maastricht and a referendum on the treaty in France narrowly passed. Denmark, upon ratification, insisted on four exceptions to the treaty. In 1985, Maastricht was preceded by the Schengen Agreement, which dropped border controls between the member nations, including non-EU members Switzerland and Norway. However, the UK and Ireland never agreed to the Schengen Agreement.

With the rise of nationalist and anti-EU political parties in EU member state legislatures and the European Parliament, coupled with the increase in North African illegal immigration to Europe following the popular revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, Schengen is being challenged by nations from Denmark and Finland to France and Italy. The North African political instability was originally triggered by the economic downturn of North African economies caused by Western bank policies that resulted in inflation, food shortages, and high unemployment. Soon, the conniving forces of Western bankers and multinational corporations linked to Western intelligence agencies and the George Soros labyrinth of non-governmental organizations sought to capitalize on the North African political transitions by implementing the shock doctrine policies inherent in vulture capitalism, I.e., in every crisis there is a profit to be made and state-run enterprises to privatize.

One of the original Euro-skeptical EU nations, Denmark, was the first nation to announce it was re-introducing border controls to keep out North African immigrants escaping the civil wars and strife in their home nations. The EU bureaucracy cried foul but Denmark saw support for its move from Italy and France, which also saw an influx of illegal migrants.

Meanwhile, the EU economic bailout packages for Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain, resulted in more prosperous EU nations, such as Germany, Finland, Netherlands, and Sweden, complaining about rescue packages for member states that had been preyed upon by the global bankers, relegating their bonds to below average and “junk” status. Unpopular austerity measures imposed by the EU and International Monetary Fund on Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, resulting in lay-offs of government workers, a rise in retirement age, and reduced pensions and workers’ benefits, resulted in popular disgust with the bankers and bureaucrats of the European Central Bank, EU Commission, and IMF. In Greece, violent demonstrations by workers were harshly put down by paramilitary and police forces.

Unpopular austerity measures brought about by the pro-EU Conservative-Liberal Democratic government of the UK also saw mass student and worker protests in London and other major cities. Anti-EU feelings also swelled within the Conservative Party itself. In the newer EU members in eastern Europe, where membership was originally seen as a welcome change from their former communist systems, anti-EU feelings skyrocketed in Latvia and Hungary, which, along with Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and EU aspirant member Iceland, found themselves as much abused by the IMF and its affiliates as the midtown Manhattan hotel chambermaid who was sexually set upon by IMF chief and ardent European integrationist Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Euro-skepticism, which runs the spectrum from the hard line and right-wing anti-EU British UK Independence Party, French National Front and Austrian Freedom Party to the softer anti-EU British Conservative Party and leftist Danish and Swedish Greens, has steadily morphed into a movement that no longer seeks EU reform but complete EU dissolution or something just short of it. There have been popular calls for the dumping of the euro and a return to the lira in Italy, Deutschemark in Germany, drachma in Greece, franc in France, and peseta in Spain.

There have been reports that Greece may be the first nation to withdraw from the euro zone. Anti-EU and global banking feelings are running high in Greece and Socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou sees little room to maneuver with dictates on Greece’s collapsed economy coming from Frankfurt — the headquarters of the European Central Bank — and Brussels. Germany, the European Central Bank, and IMF fear that a financially independent Greece would simply default on its debts. However, defaulting on debt obligations engineered by the very banks that are now subjecting countries like Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Spain and Portugal to punishing and draconian austerity measures is exactly what workers’, pensioners’, and students’ groups advocate. The newly-invigorated popular movements of the left in the EU see defaulting on the banking vampires and vultures as the first step to renationalizing utilities and other former state-owned enterprises and scrapping the multinational capitalist system of derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, mortgage-backed securities and other financial “alchemy” schemes dreamt up by eyeglass pinch-nosed financial gnomes who relish in rewarding the greediest multinational corporations and banks.

The recent electoral success of the anti-EU True Finns Party has pushed Finland closer to the anti-EU sentiment found in its Nordic partners of Denmark and Norway. Norway never joined the EU and its strong economy has its Nordic partners wishing they, too, had opted to remain out of the bureaucratically top-heavy and financially-draining EU.

The rise of xenophobic anti-immigration right-wing parties in the EU is not the only political development that threatens the EU and its plans for a federal Europe. In the heart of the EU bureaucracy, Brussels, the Flemish Bloc not only seeks independence for Flanders and the dissolution of Belgium but wants Flanders to pull out of the EU. The idea of a non-EU Flanders just a few miles away from the European Commission headquarters is no longer hypothetical. The recent success of the Scottish National Party in the Scottish election may see an independent Scotland entering the EU on its own terms with a more anti-EU England and Wales pulling away from the EU.

Turkey, which has been rejected over and over again by a more nationalistic and anti-Muslim EU, is now enjoying strong economic growth. Many Turks now ask the question: who will benefit more from EU membership for Turkey? A financially-deteriorating EU might be anxious to grab Turkey’s economic wealth to bail out failed economies in Greece, Portugal, and Ireland. Turkey, which is now seeing new emerging markets open for its businesses in the Middle East and central Asia, could find itself constrained by an Israeli-influenced EU that might force Ankara to apply curbs on its economic relations with Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Palestine.

The United States has relied on the EU as a natural complement to the arcane NATO military alliance. The EU-US-NATO alliance, which helped craft virtual EU protectorates masquerading as independent states in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo in the remnants of Yugoslavia, will be keen to maintain the status quo in Europe. However, with the peoples of Europe hitting the streets in protest and the fumes from Molotov cocktails and tear gas heavy in the air of Athens, London, and soon, other capitals, the United States, a declining “paper tiger” empire, will have little influence to stymie the breakup of the EU. Like it or not, the United States will soon see the collapse of an abortive European super-state based in Brussels and the subsequent return of sovereignty to the nations of Europe…

The bee catastrophe

Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe


beesfordevelopment.org

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

The decline of the country’s estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.

The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy.

Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed “Mary Celeste syndrome” due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives.

US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem. “We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies,” said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS’s bee research laboratory.

A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single cause, but pointed the finger at the “irresponsible use” of pesticides that may damage bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases. Bernard Vallat, the OIE’s director-general, warned: “Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster.”

Dave Hackenberg of Hackenberg Apiaries, the Pennsylvania-based commercial beekeeper who first raised the alarm about CCD, said that last year had been the worst yet for bee losses, with 62% of his 2,600 hives dying between May 2009 and April 2010. “It’s getting worse,” he said. “The AIA survey doesn’t give you the full picture because it is only measuring losses through the winter. In the summer the bees are exposed to lots of pesticides. Farmers mix them together and no one has any idea what the effects might be.”

Pettis agreed that losses in some commercial operations are running at 50% or greater. “Continued losses of this magnitude are not economically sustainable for commercial beekeepers,” he said, adding that a solution may be years away. “Look at Aids, they have billions in research dollars and a causative agent and still no cure. Research takes time and beehives are complex organisms.”

In the UK it is still too early to judge how Britain’s estimated 250,000 honeybee colonies have fared during the long winter. Tim Lovett, president of the British Beekeepers’ Association, said: “Anecdotally, it is hugely variable. There are reports of some beekeepers losing almost a third of their hives and others losing none.” Results from a survey of the association’s 15,000 members are expected this month.

John Chapple, chairman of the London Beekeepers’ Association, put losses among his 150 members at between a fifth and a quarter. Eight of his 36 hives across the capital did not survive. “There are still a lot of mysterious disappearances,” he said. “We are no nearer to knowing what is causing them.”
Bee farmers in Scotland have reported losses on the American scale for the past three years. Andrew Scarlett, a Perthshire-based bee farmer and honey packer, lost 80% of his 1,200 hives this winter. But he attributed the massive decline to a virulent bacterial infection that quickly spread because of a lack of bee inspectors, coupled with sustained poor weather that prevented honeybees from building up sufficient pollen and nectar stores.

The government’s National Bee Unit has always denied the existence of CCD in Britain, despite honeybee losses of 20% during the winter of 2008-09 and close to a third the previous year. It attributes the demise to the varroa mite – which is found in almost every UK hive – and rainy summers that stop bees foraging for food.

In a hard-hitting report last year, the National Audit Office suggested that amateur beekeepers who failed to spot diseases in bees were a threat to honeybees’ survival and called for the National Bee Unit to carry out more inspections and train more beekeepers. Last summer MPs on the influential cross-party public accounts committee called on the government to fund more research into what it called the “alarming” decline of honeybees.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has contributed £2.5m towards a £10m fund for research on pollinators. The public accounts committee has called for a significant proportion of this funding to be “ring-fenced” for honeybees. Decisions on which research projects to back are expected this month.

Why Bees Matter

Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase yields.

In the UK alone, honeybee pollination is valued at £200m. Mankind has been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and produce honey, nature’s natural sweetener and antiseptic. Their extinction would mean not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals and rice, and cottonless clothes, but a landscape without orchards, allotments and meadows of wildflowers – and the collapse of the food chain that sustains wild birds and animals.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/02/food-fear-mystery-beehives-collapse


Nearly ninety years ago  visionary and teacher Rudolph Steiner predicted the approach of the current crisis in bee keeping. Steiner gave a series of lectures on bees and ants to the workers at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland in the 1920’s. Among the audience was a professional beekeeper, Mr Müller, who contributed to these lectures in the form of insights and questions. However, he disagreed vehemently and showed no understanding when Steiner explained that the modern method of breeding queens (using the larvae of worker bees, a practice that had already been in use for about fifteen years) would have long-term detrimental effects, so grave that:

“A century later all breeding of bees will cease if only artificially produced bees are used (November 10). . . . It is quite correct that we can’t determine this today; it will have to be delayed until a later time. Let’s talk to each other again in one hundred years, Mr Müller, then we’ll see what kind of opinion you’ll have at that point”.
http://www.beesfordevelopment.org/info/info/enviro/the-need-for-organic-beek.shtml

A Nation Celebrates What It is Told

A Nation Celebrates What It is Told

HIGH CRIMES & LOW COMEDY IN THE AMERICAN IMPERIUM

Chris Floyd

Empire burlesque, May 3, 2011 WASHINGTON, May 5, 2004 – In a dramatic late-night appearance in the White House press room, President George W. Bush announced that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction had been found in a secret stronghold near the Syrian border. "We knew he had them, we knew we would find them. It was just a matter of time," said an exultant Mr. Bush, who has been subjected to constant criticism for more than a year over the failure to find the WMD that sparked the invasion of Iraq in April 2003. Bush said a covert military intelligence team discovered the arsenal in an underground fortress 10 miles west of the city of Anah. The stockpile included artillery shells and long-range missiles loaded with anthrax, nerve gas, VX, sarin and other deadly toxins. The team also found extensive laboratories where fatal poisons were being developed which could be used in smaller-scale terrorist attacks, such as in subways, airports, even city water supplies. "It was like the gates of hell had been opened," Bush said. "These weapons and toxins could have destroyed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, all around the world. Today has been a triumph of good over pure evil, and another ringing testament to America’s greatness." Bush said the weapons and the laboratories have been completely destroyed, to avoid any of the material falling into the wrong hands. "These instruments of evil have been obliterated and scattered to the four winds," the president said. "No trace of them remains. Let this be a lesson to all those who would raise their hands against the peace and security of humankind: they will be wiped from the face of the earth." Administration officials said that pictures of the operation will probably be released in the coming days, after being carefully vetted to avoid disclosure of any vital security information, including the identities of the secret military intelligence team. White House officials said the discovery was the result of painstaking intelligence work. A senior official with direct knowledge of the operation said that "much of the actionable intelligence" had been garnered from the "strenuous interrogation" of Iraqi prisoners being held in Abu Ghraib prison. The discovery comes just days after news reports on alleged prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel at Abu Ghraib – allegations which threatened to become a major scandal, and perhaps an obstacle to Mr. Bush’s chances for re-election in the fall. But today’s news will likely sweep away such concerns, along with the lingering doubts over the existence of Iraq’s WMD, and the resulting discontent with a war that has proven more difficult to end than most people expected. The crowds that spontaneously appeared outside the White House and at Ground Zero in New York to cheer the news seemed to bear out this analysis. "He was right all along, he was right to invade, he was right to treat these prisoners like the animals they are," said Sandra Lucas, a day-care teacher from Baltimore who came to the White House to celebrate. "You gotta do what it takes to get the job done," said Ken Mahafalous, a stockbroker who joined the Ground Zero crowd. "If it takes a war to keep us safe, if it takes a little rough stuff now and then, that’s what you do. I admit I had my doubts – and I didn’t vote for Bush in the first place – but this is real leadership, making the tough calls. My hat’s off to him. USA! USA!" There was wide bipartisan praise for the operation and for Mr. Bush’s "gutsy" call in launching the war and persevering with the occupation despite the doubts and the criticism. The few dissenting voices were swiftly rebuked for "politicizing" a moment of national unity. Sen. Ross Feingold (D-WI) was widely denounced for his skeptical comments after Bush’s announcement. "They destroyed all evidence of the weapons as soon as they found them in a top-secret operation? That doesn’t make sense to me," Feingold said in an interview with NBC’s Tim Russert. "Now no one else can independently confirm what actually happened. We are supposed to take the administration’s word at face value – no questions asked. I’m not saying the weapons weren’t there, but force-feeding a docile public with unconfirmable statements – especially about matters which have been swathed in murk and mystery for years – this is not the way a democracy is supposed to work." Feingold’s remarks drew the ire of prominent commentators such as Parton Digby. "I expect this from a Neanderthal drunk in a bar today, but coming from a US Senator it's enough to make you sick," Digby wrote. "But I think Feingold’s motives are probably fairly prosaic. He’s up for re-election and wants to shore up his antiwar cred among the fringe left. The moonbats are in desperate need of a fresh conspiracy theory and this one has the potential to be a doozy. I mean, why else would anyone ever express the slightest skepticism about our government’s covert actions? You either have to be crazy, or else pushing some partisan agenda. Or maybe both." Although the discovery and destruction of Iraq’s WMD was the aim of the 2003 invasion, President Bush made it clear that the war will go on. "We are not yet safe from those who hate us for our freedoms and our way of life," said Mr. Bush. "We must in fact redouble our efforts to ensure the safety of our children and bring democracy and stability to these volatile swamps of extremism. And we can expect our enemies to strike back even harder in response to our triumph today. But to them, I say: bring it on. For we are America. And America can do whatever we set our mind to."

Kevin MacDonald-Bin Laden’s Assassination: Wake Me When It’s Over

OCCIDENTAL OBSERVER

Bin Laden’s Assassination: Wake Me When It’s Over

Kevin MacDonald on May 3, 2011 —

I must admit to feeling a bit unpatriotic. I just can’t get into the non-stop hoopla on the bin Laden assassination. On Monday, with only a small lead time the LA Times had 8 articles on it, beginning with a monster headline screaming “U.S. KILLS BIN LADEN” in 96-point type that took up around 4 inches in two rows across the entire front page. But they were just warming up. On Tuesday, there were 24 articles, headlined by “OBAMA’S GAMBLE” in 72-point type recounting the decision process of our daringly brilliant president, much loved by the Times. (Now the Times has even more reason to ignore Donald Trump’s  request for Obama’s college grades.)





The only article that caught my eye was “Bin Laden’s sea burial fuels conspiracy theories.” Odd indeed that they would bury him at sea so quickly, but the article assures us that it “was necessary because arrangements couldn’t be made with any country to bury Bin Laden within 24 hours, as dictated by Muslim practice, administration officials said. But a senior military officer said the U.S. also wanted to avoid creating a shrine somewhere on land that would attract his followers.”
Ah yes. If there’s one central pillar of American foreign policy since 1948, it’s the principle of never offending the Muslims. And that principle far outweighs keeping the body around for a while so that there could be an independent investigation.
But the reason I don’t have much enthusiasm for the whole thing is that the patriotic emotions that this event seems to be eliciting are completely beside the point. They don’t come close to dealing with the real problems we face. For awhile, at least, the anger of a huge number of Whites, which is at least implicitly about their ongoing dispossession, will be buried by a “We’re Number 1″ mentality.
These emotions only give fuel to the War Party. Today’s Times included an op-ed by War Party stalwart Max Boot (“Bin Laden: The Day of Reckoning“) that blames the deaths of “tens of thousands” in Iraq on Al Qaeda. This is a resurrection of the lie that Saddam Hussein, the secular leader of Iraq, was allied with Al Qaeda and bin Laden. As usual, the media will be silent about bin Laden being motivated at least partly by the support that the US gives to Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinians (see, e.g., James Bamford’s A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies.) And Americans are still dying in Afghanistan.
So count me out of the current celebration.

IMPORTANT-The strange case of solar flares and radioactive elements

Stanford Report, 

The strange case of solar flares and radioactive elements

When researchers found an unusual linkage between solar flares and the inner life of radioactive elements on Earth, it touched off a scientific detective investigation that could end up protecting the lives of space-walking astronauts and maybe rewriting some of the assumptions of physics.

  L.A. Cicero Peter Sturrock, professor emeritus of applied physics

BY DAN STOBER

It's a mystery that presented itself unexpectedly: The radioactive decay of some elements sitting quietly in laboratories on Earth seemed to be influenced by activities inside the sun, 93 million miles away.
Is this possible?
Researchers from Stanford and Purdue University believe it is. But their explanation of how it happens opens the door to yet another mystery.
There is even an outside chance that this unexpected effect is brought about by a previously unknown particle emitted by the sun. "That would be truly remarkable," said Peter Sturrock, Stanford professor emeritus of applied physics and an expert on the inner workings of the sun.
The story begins, in a sense, in classrooms around the world, where students are taught that the rate of decay of a specific radioactive material is a constant. This concept is relied upon, for example, when anthropologists use carbon-14 to date ancient artifacts and when doctors determine the proper dose of radioactivity to treat a cancer patient.
Random numbers
But that assumption was challenged in an unexpected way by a group of researchers from Purdue University who at the time were more interested in random numbers than nuclear decay. (Scientists use long strings of random numbers for a variety of calculations, but they are difficult to produce, since the process used to produce the numbers has an influence on the outcome.)
Ephraim Fischbach, a physics professor at Purdue, was looking into the rate of radioactive decay of several isotopes as a possible source of random numbers generated without any human input. (A lump of radioactive cesium-137, for example, may decay at a steady rate overall, but individual atoms within the lump will decay in an unpredictable, random pattern. Thus the timing of the random ticks of a Geiger counter placed near the cesium might be used to generate random numbers.)
As the researchers pored through published data on specific isotopes, they found disagreement in the measured decay rates – odd for supposed physical constants.
Checking data collected at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island and the Federal Physical and Technical Institute in Germany, they came across something even more surprising: long-term observation of the decay rate of silicon-32 and radium-226 seemed to show a small seasonal variation. The decay rate was ever so slightly faster in winter than in summer.
Was this fluctuation real, or was it merely a glitch in the equipment used to measure the decay, induced by the change of seasons, with the accompanying changes in temperature and humidity?
"Everyone thought it must be due to experimental mistakes, because we're all brought up to believe that decay rates are constant," Sturrock said.
The sun speaks
On Dec 13, 2006, the sun itself provided a crucial clue, when a solar flare sent a stream of particles and radiation toward Earth. Purdue nuclear engineer Jere Jenkins, while measuring the decay rate of manganese-54, a short-lived isotope used in medical diagnostics, noticed that the rate dropped slightly during the flare, a decrease that started about a day and a half before the flare.
If this apparent relationship between flares and decay rates proves true, it could lead to a method of predicting solar flares prior to their occurrence, which could help prevent damage to satellites and electric grids, as well as save the lives of astronauts in space.
The decay-rate aberrations that Jenkins noticed occurred during the middle of the night in Indiana – meaning that something produced by the sun had traveled all the way through the Earth to reach Jenkins' detectors. What could the flare send forth that could have such an effect?
Jenkins and Fischbach guessed that the culprits in this bit of decay-rate mischief were probably solar neutrinos, the almost weightless particles famous for flying at almost the speed of light through the physical world – humans, rocks, oceans or planets – with virtually no interaction with anything.
Then, in a series of papers published in Astroparticle Physics, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research and Space Science Reviews, Jenkins, Fischbach and their colleagues showed that the observed variations in decay rates were highly unlikely to have come from environmental influences on the detection systems.
Reason for suspicion
Their findings strengthened the argument that the strange swings in decay rates were caused by neutrinos from the sun. The swings seemed to be in synch with the Earth's elliptical orbit, with the decay rates oscillating as the Earth came closer to the sun (where it would be exposed to more neutrinos) and then moving away.
So there was good reason to suspect the sun, but could it be proved?
Enter Peter Sturrock, Stanford professor emeritus of applied physics and an expert on the inner workings of the sun. While on a visit to the National Solar Observatory in Arizona, Sturrock was handed copies of the scientific journal articles written by the Purdue researchers.
Sturrock knew from long experience that the intensity of the barrage of neutrinos the sun continuously sends racing toward Earth varies on a regular basis as the sun itself revolves and shows a different face, like a slower version of the revolving light on a police car. His advice to Purdue: Look for evidence that the changes in radioactive decay on Earth vary with the rotation of the sun. "That's what I suggested. And that's what we have done."
A surprise 
Going back to take another look at the decay data from the Brookhaven lab, the researchers found a recurring pattern of 33 days. It was a bit of a surprise, given that most solar observations show a pattern of about 28 days – the rotation rate of the surface of the sun.
The explanation? The core of the sun – where nuclear reactions produce neutrinos – apparently spins more slowly than the surface we see. "It may seem counter-intuitive, but it looks as if the core rotates more slowly than the rest of the sun," Sturrock said.
All of the evidence points toward a conclusion that the sun is "communicating" with radioactive isotopes on Earth, said Fischbach.
But there's one rather large question left unanswered. No one knows how neutrinos could interact with radioactive materials to change their rate of decay.
"It doesn't make sense according to conventional ideas," Fischbach said. Jenkins whimsically added, "What we're suggesting is that something that doesn't really interact with anything is changing something that can't be changed."
"It's an effect that no one yet understands," agreed Sturrock. "Theorists are starting to say, 'What's going on?' But that's what the evidence points to. It's a challenge for the physicists and a challenge for the solar people too."
If the mystery particle is not a neutrino, "It would have to be something we don't know about, an unknown particle that is also emitted by the sun and has this effect, and that would be even more remarkable," Sturrock said.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html

It most certainly was not Osama bin Laden.

Who Was Osama bin Laden?

May 4, 2011
Karen Friedemann – May 3, 2011

Whoever the poor soul was, whom the US assassination team “buried at sea,” it most certainly was not Osama bin Laden. Still, now would not be a bad time to lay to rest our questions about the Grandfather of Islamic Internationalism. The FBI admits that they have no evidence that bin Laden had anything to do with the 9/11 attack. There is also no clear evidence that he was involved in earlier bombings in East Africa. He left Sudan because the US threatened to bomb if they did not expel him. Why were the Powers-That-Be so afraid of bin Laden? The US was afraid that he might unite more people around the world with his humanitarian projects and ability to internationalize causes by addressing “the Ummah.” This was an entirely new approach to fundraising at that time. Osama was owner of a construction company. He rebuilt war torn and underdeveloped countries. He was in Sudan at his own expense, building infrastructure for the poor and oppressed, with government permission.

It is important to understand this great historical figure and his jihad mission. Osama bin Laden was a close associate and student of respected Palestinian theologian, Abdullah Azzam, who coined the term “al-Qaeda.” Azzam’s work elaborated upon the ideas of Sayed Qutb, the Egyptian founder of modern Arab-Islamic political religious thought. Qutb is comparable to John Locke in Western political development. Both Azzam and Qutb were serious men of exceptional integrity and honor. Qutb predicted that the struggle between Islam and materialism would define the modern world. He embraced martyrdom in 1966 in rejection of Arab socialist politics. Drawing upon Qutb’s ideas, Azzam preached mutual responsibility for each other among all Muslims worldwide. Azzam successfully organized an international volunteer effort to defend Afghanistan from the Soviet Union throughout the 1980s under the banner of Islam and with the US as an ally. He was killed in 1989.

The 1980s and 90s were a magical time for Muslims. Invigorated by this new philosophical international unity of Islamic causes, and with America’s blessing, an international financial system of Islamic charity was created. All of us who were alive at that time remember how we cried for the Afghanis and opened our wallets, we cried for the Palestinians and opened our wallets. We cried for the Bosnians and opened our wallets. Some of our husbands even left us to become martyrs. The nationalist boundaries between Muslims were erased. Foreign Muslims and Black American Muslims were educating each other about politics and history. On an international scale, Muslims were competing with Jews over the international financial system and the outcome of world events. A true pan-Islamic internationalism was created. We were the kings and queens of the world, to quote the Titanic.

A new, multicultural Islamic culture was born in America. When Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, he left behind the hope of multicultural, international Muslim unity. As long as American Blacks remained isolated, they would still think like oppressed people. But when they went to Mecca and prayed side by side with a world community, they came in contact with all of human civilization. During the 1970s, Islam took a stronghold in America. Halal meat shops were opened, Islamic schools were created. As more foreign students came to America for education they mingled with each other and with the locals. African Americans adopted the Arabian style niqab and the Pakistani shalwar kameez. Pakistanis adopted the Arab style hijab and jilbab, while others adopted the Euro-Turk skirt with blazer look. Because Islam was such a fun social unifier in college, young people brought their enthusiasm to their cousins back home, who then started to cover more and pray more. We all wanted to make huge personal sacrifices to save the world.

To a large extent it was America’s support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan that created the spiritual fire behind the Islamic Renaissance of the 1980s. In the Battle of Jaji in May 1987, Osama’s Muhajideen army of only 50 members resisted 200 Soviet and Soviet-backed Afghan troops for one week, taking 12 losses. Under the watch of the Arab media, the Mujahideen protected their complex system of tunnels and caves near the Pakistani border, named al-Masada, from Soviet capture. Osama bin Laden became an internationally respected war hero, while the Afghan freedom fighters became revered in America as “the bravest men in the world,” according to former CIA agent and author, Eric Margolis. Every Muslim in the world, it seemed, wished they too could die for the sake of Allah. Every girl wished she could marry Osama bin Laden, even if he was already quite busy.

In 2001, the US used napalm and oxygen-sucking bombs to “smoke out” Osama’s “Lion’s Nest” of tunnels. They even sprayed acid from the sky to disfigure the faces of the martyrs afterward.

Hundreds of pilgrims visit Kandahar’s Arab cemetery daily, believing that the graves of those massacred in the 2001 US bombing of Afghanistan possess miraculous healing powers.

2001 was not the end of the Muslims, but it was the end of a glorious era, where martyrs competed with one another for bravery and ordinary people competed with each other with charity. We were going to defeat evil in this world today, we thought. Now we know this is only the beginning of the struggle.
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=25623
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‘Bin Ladan was killed years ago’

Press TV – May 2, 2011

A 2007 Benazir Bhutto interview in which she says the al-Qaeda leader was ‘murdered’ years ago contributes to the uncertainty surrounding US claims about Osama bin Laden’s death.

On Monday, US President Barack Obama announced that the al-Qaeda leader was killed by US forces after he was found hiding in a compound in Pakistan.

This is while in an interview following a failed assassination attempt on Pakistan’s former premier in October 2007, Bhutto says bin Laden has already been killed.

In the interview, she identifies the man who killed the notorious al-Qaeda leader as one Omar Sheikh , excerpts of which was sent to Press TV’s UReport.

In response to a question whether any of the assassins had links with the government, Bhutto said, “Yes but one of them is a very key figure in security, he is a former military officer … and had dealings with Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered Osama Bin Laden.”

Bhutto was assassinated on December 27, 2007 in a bomb attack as she was leaving an election rally in Rawalpindi when a gunman shot her in the neck and set off a bomb.

The announcement of bin Laden’s death comes almost ten years after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Meanwhile, a US official says bin Laden’s body has been buried at sea, alleging that his hasty burial was in accordance with Islamic law, which requires burial within 24 hours of death.

This is while burial at sea is not an Islamic practice and Islam does not determine a timeframe for burial.

Taliban announce beginning of spring offensive

Taliban announce beginning of spring offensive

Associated Press

April 30, 2011 KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban announced the beginning of their spring military offensive against the U.S.-led coalition Saturday, a day after a new Pentagon report claimed that the militants' fighting spirit was low after sustaining heavy losses on the battlefield. In a two-page statement, the Taliban said that beginning Sunday they would launch attacks on military bases, convoys and Afghan officials, including members of the government's peace council, who are working to reconcile with top insurgent leaders. "The war in our country will not come to an end unless and until the foreign invading forces pull out of Afghanistan," said the announcement released by the leadership council of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which is what the Taliban calls itself. Senior officers with the U.S.-led coalition said on Friday that the Taliban — aided by the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network — have plans to conduct a brief series of high-profile attacks, such as suicide bombings, across the country in a display of power as fighting gears up with the warmer weather. The senior officers spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss recent intelligence that lead to the assessment. Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the coalition, said the Taliban planned to use the spate of violence as a "propaganda ploy" to try to demonstrate their relevance and create the perception of momentum despite recent setbacks. NATO claims the insurgents have suffered a number of setbacks in recent months, losing weapons caches, being pushed out of their traditional strongholds, and suffering the loss of thousands of insurgent fighters and field commanders. In Brussels, a NATO official said international forces had already tightened security due to the threat. They anticipated increased use of assassinations, spectacular attacks, and claims of infiltration, said the official who could not be named in line with standing regulations. The Pentagon report said the insurgents' momentum had been "broadly arrested" and their morale had begun to erode. Hundreds of insurgent leaders have been killed or captured and since last July, 700 former Taliban have officially reintegrated into Afghan society and another 2,000 insurgents are in various stages of the process, the report said. But recent weeks have seen a number of bold attacks suggesting that the insurgent group is still well-organized and has friends helping them out from inside government offices and bases. Since mid-April, insurgents have launched deadly attacks from inside the main military airport in Kabul, the Afghan Defense Ministry, the police headquarters for Kandahar city in the south and an Afghan-U.S. base in the east. And earlier this week, The Taliban tunneled into the Kandahar city jail and spirited out more than 480 inmates — most of them insurgents. The Taliban said insurgents will target "foreign invading forces, members of their spy networks and other spies, high-ranking officials of the Kabul puppet administration ... and heads of foreign and local companies working for the enemy and contractors." The Taliban ordered its fighters to pay "strict attention" to protecting civilians during the spring offensive. A recent U.N. report said about three-quarters of the estimated 2,777 civilians killed in Afghanistan last year died at the hands of insurgents, not international forces. The Afghan intelligence agency said that the government has also been tightening its security in anticipation of more attacks. "We have taken significant steps to prevent terrorist attacks from the enemy," said Latifullah Mashal, a spokesman for the agency. However, he said that suicide bombers continue to be a threat because they often approach on foot and can more easily slip past military and government defenses. Also on Saturday, the coalition released initial findings of the April 27 attack at the Kabul airport where a veteran Afghan military pilot opened fire, killing eight U.S. troops and an American civilian contractor who had been training the nascent Afghan air force. The shooting was the deadliest attack by a member of the Afghan security forces, or an insurgent impersonating them, on coalition troops or Afghan soldiers or policemen. Seven of the eight U.S. airmen killed were commissioned officers. The gunman was severely wounded by gunfire and was bleeding heavily when he left the room where most, but not all, of the trainers were killed, according to a senior NATO official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is not complete. The gunman was found dead in another part of the building, he said. The attack occurred at an Afghan facility, the air force headquarters, so the usual coalition weapons procedures would not have been in place and the trainers would have had their weapons — with magazines in place — in their possession, the official said. The trainers would not have had to load their guns to defend themselves, he said. All the NATO trainers killed were armed at the time of the attack, he said. According to the initial findings, the gunman appeared to be carrying two handguns. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, but the coalition said it has uncovered no evidence to suggest that the insurgency was behind it. "At this point in the investigation, it appears that the gunman was acting alone," the coalition said. "Beyond that, no Taliban connection with the gunman has been discovered. However, the investigation is still ongoing and we have not conclusively ruled out that possibility." Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi declined comment Saturday, saying the joint investigation by the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan and the Afghan government was still under way. In a statement issued late Friday, the U.S. Defense Department identified those killed as: —Lt. Col. Frank D. Bryant Jr., 37, of Knoxville, Tennessee. —Maj. Philip D. Ambard, 44, of Edmonds, Washington. —Maj. Jeffrey O. Ausborn, 41, of Gadsden, Alabama. —Maj. David L. Brodeur, 34, of Auburn, Massachusetts. —Maj. Raymond G. Estelle II, 40, of New Haven, Connecticut. —Capt. Nathan J. Nylander, 35, of Hockley, Texas. —Capt. Charles A. Ransom, 31, of Midlothian, Virginia. —Master Sgt. Tara R. Brown, 33, of Deltona, Florida. The civilian contractor was James McLaughlin Jr., 55, of Santa Rosa, California. McLaughlin was a helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft pilot who spent 32 years in the Army before retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 2007. In recent years, he trained Afghan helicopter pilots as an employee of L-3 MPRI, a consulting company based in Alexandria, Virginia. Meanwhile, a roadside bomb killed two Afghan police officers Saturday in southern Uruzgan province, said provincial spokesman Ahmad Milad Mudassir. Further details were not immediately available. Associated Press writers Amir Shah in Kabul and Slobodan Lekic in Brussels contributed to this report

IRAQ NEWS-Saturday, April 30, 2011

Saturday, April 30, 2011: 1 US Soldier, 22 Iraqis Killed; 27 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis

April 30, 2011

At least 22 Iraqis were killed and 27 more were wounded in a bombing and several targeted assassinations. Also, a U.S. soldier was killed during operations yesterday, making April the deadliest month for American troops November 2009. Meanwhile, parliament approved $400 million to compensate Americans used as human shields during the 1990-91 Gulf War.

In Mosul, a suicide bomber killed eight people and wounded 20 others at an entry checkpoint to a market.

A judge and two relatives were killed and two more relatives were wounded during a bomb attack in Taji. Earlier the gunmen killed the judge’s bodyguard at a nearby home.

Gunmen in Qadiriya attacked the home of an industry ministry official where they killed him and his daughter. The neighbors killed one attacker before the others fled. Two neighbors were wounded.

In Baghdad, gunmen killed a colonel and wounded his wife, and perhaps also wounded his children, as they were driving on a highway; the colonel’s car then injured two policemen when it crashed into a checkpoint. Uniformed men killed a Sahwa member and three relatives in Kadhimiya; one gunman also died.

No casualties were reported after a Katyusha rocket fell on a U.S. base near Diwaniya.

Demonstrators in Kut demanded better services.

IMPORTANT-USA/JEWRY RELATIONS-Panic From The Houses Of Congress And Aipac

Panic From The Houses Of Congress And Aipac?

By Franklin Lamb

May 1, 2011 Beirut : On April 13, 2011, more than a dozen Israel "First, last and always" US congressional leaders from both houses of Congress held an urgent conference call organized by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Their purpose was to discuss how best to promote Israel during next month’s US visit by Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and more importantly how to confront the rapidly changing Middle East political landscape. One consensus was that no one saw it coming and that it was dangerous for Israel. Among those participating were former Jewish Chairman of powerful committees including Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who headed the Banking Committee; Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ex-chairman of the Commerce and Energy committee; Howard Berman (D-Calif.), ex-chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee; and Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), ex-chairwoman of the foreign operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee as well as Eric Cantor, House Majority leader, the highest ranking Jewish member of Congress in history. What AIPAC operatives reportedly told the conference attendees was that Netanyahu is once again furious with President Obama and outraged by what he sees as a vacillating US Government attitude towards Israeli needs. They were told that the Israeli PM sees real political danger for Israel in the shifting US public opinion in favor of the young sophisticated attractive Arab and Muslims increasingly seen on satellite channels from the region who remind the American public of their own ideals. Netanyahu, the conferees were told, wants Congress to flex its muscle with the White House and deliver a strong message to President Obama that his political future is tied to Israel’s. Hence the current "America needs Israel more than ever stupid!" campaign wafting from the Israel lobby across the talk radio airwaves. In addition, as more Israeli officials are indicted for various domestic crimes, and some harbor fears of arrest for international ones, 68% of the American Jewish community, according to one by poll commissioned last month by Forward, believe the US Israel lobby is increasingly fossilized with the likes of ADL (Anti-Defamation League) director Abe Foxman’s vindictive infighting among several of the largest Jewish lobby organizations which continue to lose memberships, especially among the young. Congressman Eric Cantor lamented that "Israel is badly losing the US College campuses", despite heavy financial investments the past few years to curb American students growing support for Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, all dreaded symbols of the growing opposition to the 19th Century Zionist colonial enterprise. Support for Palestine is skyrocketing he claimed. "Until Palestine is freed from Zionist occupation no Arab or Muslim is truly free of Western hegemony," according to one assistant editor of Harvard University’s student newspaper, the Crimson. Admitting that the Mossad did not foresee even the Tunisian or Egyptian uprisings, some AIPAC staffers, of whom there are more than 100, admit to not knowing how to react to the topics they were presented with for discussion, some of which included: · The Egyptian public emphatic insistence that the 1978 Camp David Accords be scrapped and that the Rafah crossing be opened. The latter has just been announced and the former is expected to be achieved before the end of the year. · The change of regimes and the dramatic rise in publicly expressed anti-Israel sentiment and insistence that Israel close its embassy and Egypt withdraw its recognition of the Zionist state. · The apparent rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas which has been increasingly demanded by the Palestinians under occupation and in the Diaspora. · The fact that the new regime in Cairo is seeking to upgrade its ties with Gaza's Hamas rulers as well as Iran. · With respect to possible PA-Hamas rapprochement, U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor is trying to reassure Israel before Netanyahu’s visit by announcing this week that "The United States supports Palestinian reconciliation on terms which promote the cause of peace, but to play a constructive role in achieving peace, any Palestinian government must renounce violence, abide by past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist." AIPAC frequently knocks heads with the Israeli embassy in Washington for control of visiting Israeli PMs' and important government’s schedules will control what Netanyahu says and does. AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr recently told a group of visiting Jewish student activists from California that "sometimes there is confusion in this town over just where the Israeli Embassy is located but let me assure you it’s no more than 300 yards from the Capitol Dome on North Capitol Street, NW." AIPAC, not the Israeli Embassy will write the final draft of Netanyahu’s speeches including the themes he will emphasize. According to a Congressional source with AIPAC connections, Netanyahu’s visit will focus on the following: · Bashing Iran to please the White House. However, this mantra will have to compete with the democratic revolutions that are sweeping the Arab world and which are terrifying not just Netanyahu, but also AIPAC and their hirelings in congress. · Warning against the dangers to "the peace process" of any PA-Hamas unity government. · Warnings about the threats to Israel from Egypt and popular calls for scrapping of the 1978 Camp David Accords, ending the Egyptian subsidy and supply of 40% of Israel’s natural gas, calls for closing the Israeli Embassy, the dangers of permanently opening the Rafah border crossing "that will allow Hamas to in the words of, an Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity to the Washington Post that Gaza's Hamas rulers had already built up a "dangerous military machine" in northern Sinai which could be further strengthened by opening the border. · The tried and tested bromide that "Israel has no peace partner to negotiate with will be used but this too has lost its bite given that the Palestine Papers has shown that the PA for five years habitually caved into Israel demands and are widely viewed as collaborators with Israel in preserving the status quo-- so what more could be expected from them? The truth is that Mahmoud Abbas and Salem Fayyad are Netanyahu, Liberman’s and Barak’s favorite "peace partners." Netanyahu will hint at and AIPAC will drill in the idea that the Obama administration has been too hard on Israel. While Netanyahu announced this week that "I will have the opportunity to air the main parts of Israel’s diplomatic and defense policies during my visit in the United States", informed sources report that his main goal and timing of his visit is to undermind a rumored initiative that President Obama’s team has been working on Netanyahu, according to AIPAC, also plans to attack the UN’s plan to admit Palestine and its offices are preparing a media blitz in an attempt to undermine the U.N. recognition of Palestine by arguing that such a General Assembly action would not in reality mean Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank and East Jerusalem because of the fact that Israel currently controls those territories. AIPAC is arguing that such United Nations recognition of Palestine would only reiterate the principle, previously articulated by the U.N which denies the legitimacy of Israel's claim to territories acquired by force in the war of June 1967. In reality, and as AIPAC well knows, UN recognition of Palestine would have a devastating effect on Israel’s legitimacy and would fuel an international campaign to force every colonist out of the West Bank. Given the feelings of virtually all people in the Middle East and North Africa toward Israel this could dramatically undermine the apartheid state. AIPAC and Israel’s agents in Congress also ignore the fact that the U.N. is the only the international body that admitted Israel as a member state in May 1949, although the resolution noted a connection between Israel's recognition and the implementation of resolution 181 of November 1947, which called for partition of what had been British Mandate Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. The reason that intense angst and even fear stalks the Houses of Congress and AIPAC is that Netanyahu will remind his hosts in the coming days that Israel has always called "home" is that some US officials are starting to express treasonous thoughts long kept to themselves. One seemingly shocking statement was made to a visiting Oregon delegation during a recent visit to Congressional offices by a Member of Congress never known for being publicly critical of Israel. As reported via email: "He said recent events suggest that while ( the revolts spreading, across the Middle East) are not the immediate end of the State of Israel, he believes they are harbingers and signal the 'beginning of the end of the State of Israel as we have known it. And that will be good for America and humanity." "What seems to have particularly upset him was his own mentioning to the group was a recent report about a conference of Rabbis in Israel who are demanding the expulsion of non-Jews, especially Palestinians, from occupied Palestine in order to maintain the "ethnical and religious purity of the peoples of Israel. He quoted Dov Lior, the rabbi of Kiryat Araba, an illegal settlement near Hebron, who according to media reports told a conference organized to discuss how to get non-Jews in mandatory Palestine to leave the country for the sake of Jewish immigrants who had no roots in Palestine: "Today there is a lot of land in Saudi Arabia and in Libya, too. There is a lot of land in other places. Send them there." As scholar Khalid Amayreh reminds us, it was Lior, who in 1994 praised arch-terrorist Baruch Goldstein for massacring 29 Arab worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in downtown Hebron, said peace in the Holy Land was out of the question because the Arabs wouldn't allow Jews to usurp the land. Meanwhile, a large coalition of pro peace and pro-Palestinian organizations, under the umbrella of http://www.moveoveraipac.org/ is preparing a new and different American reception for the Israeli Prime Minister.

Israel prevents Abbas' envoy from entering Gaza 3 days before signing of Palestinian reconciliation agreement

Israel prevents Abbas' envoy from entering Gaza 3 days before signing of Palestinian reconciliation agreement

Saleh Naami

May 1, 2011 His political advisor confirms Abbas is to go to Gaza before month's end, but Israel puts a wrench, blocking Fatah’s envoy from crossing into Gaza three days before the reconciliation agreement is to be signed in Egypt Abbas's personal envoy for national reconciliation has been prevented from entering Gaza strip from Ramallah Sunday morning through the Erez crossing. This is, in fact, a second for Mohamed Abou Tir, Abbas's envoy. As an alternative, Abou Tir is considering entering through the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian Gaza border. Abou Tir's visit was expected to precede the signing of the national reconciliation agreement to be signed in Egypt on Wednesday 4 May to put the Palestinian house in order. Meanwhile, Palestinian presidential political advisor, Nemr Hamad, confirmed Abbas's intention to go on with his planned visit to the Strip before the end of this month. Abbas is expected to discuss all problems related to the formation of the new Palestinian government during his visit, as well as means to protect and resolve any blocks that might emerge for the agreement, Palestinian news agency, Qudsnet stated. Interestingly, Saeb Erekat, a member of the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation declared that the PLO is undergoing contacts with world powers to ensure international support and legalities needed for the new government to be formed as the agreement states. On the other hand, in an interview with Voice of Palestine, Erekat reiterated the US approval of the agreement between the two rival Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, "our contacts with the Americans are going smoothly and we have to prove to the whole world that the national reconciliation deal is a focal point for the Palestinian cause. It is too early to talks of fears or scepticism."