Scientists plan $1.5bn laser strong enough ‘to tear the fabric of space

A laser powerful enough to tear apart the fabric of space could be built in Britain.

The major scientific project will follow in the footsteps of the Large Hadron Collider and will answer questions about the universe.

The laser will be capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it will be similar to the light the earth receives from the sun but focused on a speck smaller than a pin prick.

Extreme: A laser powerful enough to tear apart the fabric of space could be built in Britain.

Scientists say it will be so powerful they will be able to boil the very fabric of space and create a vacuum.

A vacuum fizzles with mysterious particles that come in and out of existence but the phenomenon happens so fast that no-one has ever actually been able to prove it.

It is hoped the Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility would allow scientists to prove the particles are real by pulling the vacuum fabric apart.

Scientists even believe it might help them to prove whether other dimensions actually exist.

This latest experiment will follow the footsteps of the Large Hadron Collider and be the next big scientific experiment.

Professor John Collier, a scientific leader for the ELI project and director of the Central Laser Facility at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot, Oxfordshire, said the laser would be the most powerful on earth.

‘At this kind of intensity we start to get into unexplored territory as it is an area of physics that we have never been before,’ he told the Sunday Telegraph.

The ELI ultra-high field laser, which will be completed by the end of the decade, will cost £1bn and the UK is among a number of European countries in the running to house it.

The European Commission has already authorised plans for three more lasers which will become prototypes for the ultra-high field laser.

Scientists hope the laser will also allow them to see how particles inside an atom behave and it is hoped it might be able to explain the mystery of why the universe contains more matter than previously detected by revealing what dark matter really is.

HOW IT WILL WORK

• The ultra-high field laser will be made up of 10 beams – each more powerful than the prototype lasers.
• It will produce 200 petawatts of power – more than 100,000 times the power of the world’s combined electricity production but in less than a trillionth a second.
• The energy needed to power the laser will be stored up beforehand and then used to produce a beams several feet wide which will then be combined and eventually focused down onto a tiny spot.
• The intensity of the beam is so powerful and will produce such extreme conditions, that do not even exist in the center of the sun.

Powerful: The ultra-high field laser will be made up of 10 beams – each more powerful than the prototypes.

Via DailyMail

Genetically engineered mosquitoes pass lethal gene to offspring

• Scientists carry out ‘positive’ trial on Cayman Islands
• New breed of insect could be used to tackle malaria and dengue fever
• But critics say it could lead to public health problems

Breakthrough or danger? A UK-based research team has found a way of genetically modifying the Aedes aegypti mosquito so they pass on a deadly gene to their offspring

Serious concerns have been raised over the release of a new breed of disease-fighting mosquito which has been genetically engineered to kill their own offspring.

There are hopes the project could be used to control agricultural pests and tackle deadly insect-borne illnesses such as dengue fever and malaria.

But the research has raised concerns about the possible side-effects on public health and the environment because, once released, the mosquitos cannot be recalled.

A UK-based scientific team revealed there had been positive signs from the first release into the environment of the mosquitoes, which are engineered to pass a lethal gene onto their offspring, killing them before adulthood.

The study team – which includes experts from Imperial College London and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine – released batches of modified mosquitoes in an area of the Cayman Islands where the dengue virus-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito is common.

The study, published in Nature Biotechnology journal, looked at how successfully the lab-reared, genetically modified insects could mate.

About 19,000 mosquitoes engineered in a lab were released over four weeks in 2009 in a 25-acre area on Grand Cayman island.

Based on data from traps, the genetically engineered males accounted for 16per cent of the overall male population in the test zone, and the lethal gene was found in almost 10 percent of larvae.

Those figures suggest the genetically engineered males were about half as successful in mating as wild ones, a rate sufficient to suppress the population.

Disease fighter?  The new breed of mosquitoes could be used to tackle killer illnesses like dengue fever and malaria which affect the world’s poorest populations

Luke Alphey, chief scientific officer at Oxitec, the firm which devised the technique, told the BBC: ‘We were really surprised how well they did.

‘For this method, you just need to get a reasonable proportion of the females to mate with GM males – you’ll never get the males as competitive as the wild ones, but they don’t have to be, they just have to be reasonably good.’

HOW MOSQUITOES KILL THEIR OWN CHILDREN

• The genetic approach used to create the mosquitoes is a system known as tetracycline-controlled transcriptional activation (tTA).
• The technique is an extension of one successfully used for decades to control or eradicate pests which involves sterilising millions of insects with radiation.
• But the process has not worked with mosquitoes, partly because the radiation also injures them, making it difficult for them to compete with healthy counterparts for mates.
• So Oxitec has now created the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes with a gene that will kill them unless they are given the common antibiotic tetracycline.
• With tetracycline provided in the lab, the mosquitoes can be bred for generations and multiplied.
• Males are then released into the wild, where tetracycline is not available.
• They live long enough to mate but their progeny will die before adulthood.

 

Authorities in the Florida Keys hope to carry out an open-air test on the modified insects as early as December after experiencing the region’s first cases of dengue fever in decades.

Dr Alphey said the technique was safe because only males were released as it was only the females that bite people and spread the disease.

But critics say the process is by no means foolproof.

Alfred Handler, a geneticist at the Agriculture Department in Gainesville, Florida, said the mosquitoes can evolve resistance to the lethal gene while being bred for generations in a lab.

Todd Shelly, an entomologist for the Agriculture Department in Hawaii, also said in a commentary published on Sunday by Nature Biotechnology that 3.5per cent of the insects in a lab test survived to adulthood despite presumably carrying the lethal gene.

Also, the sorting of male and female mosquitoes, which is done by hand, can result in up to 0.5per cent of the released insects being female, the commentary said.

If millions of mosquitoes were released, even that small percentage of females could lead to a temporary increase in disease spread, it was reported by the New York Times.

Oxitec and a molecular biologist, Anthony A. James of the University of California, Irvine, say they have developed a solution — a genetic modification that makes female mosquitoes, but not males, unable to fly.

The grounded females cannot mate or bite people, and separating males from females before release would be easier.

The World Health Organisation expects to release guidance on how GM insects should be deployed in developing countries by the end of the year.

 

Via DailyMail

‘Mind-reading device’ recreates what we see in our heads

 

 

Mind reading could become a reality after scientists unveiled a device which translates what we are seeing in our heads onto a screen.

By monitoring the brain activity of people while they watched Hollywood movie trailers, researchers were able to recreate a moving picture similar to the real footage being played.

While the technology is not yet capable of reading our thoughts, it could eventually lead to ways of translating our dreams and memories onto screen.

If it is refined enough the method could even be used to explore the minds of stroke patients, experts said.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, used MRI scanners to monitor the blood flow in people’s brains as they watched films including Madagascar 2, Pink Panther 2 and Star Trek unfold on a screen.

After analysing how the brain’s visual centre responded to on-screen movements, the scientists created a computer program which could accurately guess what the person was looking at.

When the researchers watched a second set of clips, this time Hollywood film trailers, the programme was able to produce an approximate version of what they were watching.

It did this by scanning a library of random YouTube videos, pulling out the most similar clips to what it guessed the person was watching, and blending them together.

Because the program’s video library contains just 18 million seconds of footage – a relatively small amount – it is highly unlikely that any clip will be very similar to the real footage.

To combat this problem, the program averages together the 100 shots from the video library that it thinks are the best match.

The result is a blurry but continuous video in which the movements of the shapes on screen reflect the action in the genuine Hollywood trailer.

Prof Jack Gallant, one of the study’s authors, said: “We’re trying to reconstruct the movie that was seen by searching through a large library of completely different, random movies.

“This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery. We are opening a window into the movies in our minds.”

The averaging process makes the resulting video blurry, but the researchers said boosting the size of the programme’s video library could improve the quality of the reconstruction.

The study, published in the Current Biology journal, is believed to be the first experiment to successfully interpret brain signals as they respond to moving images.

The current technology can only process film clips that people have already viewed, but the breakthrough could lead to programmes which can reproduce dreams and memories because our natural visual experience is similar to watching a film.

We are still decades from a machine which can read people’s thoughts and intentions, but the technology could eventually be used to read the minds of stroke and coma patients, and to allow cerebral palsy or paralysis sufferers to guide computers with their minds, researchers said.

 

Watch video here

 

Via Telegraph

Flying car cleared for the road

Terrafugia’s Transition roadable aircraft, shown here in an artists’ rendering, has cleared regulatory hurdles that make it street legal.

A flying car is being exempted from regulatory hurdles, meaning future owners of the vehicle will be able to drive it on public streets, the company behind it recently announced.

What this means is that you’ll be able to legally sit in traffic with the rest of the street-legal cars, but have a slight grin as you head home from the general aviation airport where you landed after flying over traffic for the first 20 miles of your commute.

“Think of it as an airplane that drives, not a car that flies,” Anna Mracek Dietrich, the chief operating officer of Terrafugia, the Woburn, Mass.,-based company that is making the Transition roadable aircraft, told me in an email Thursday.

“Once on the ground, the pilot can fold the wings on his Transition with the push of a button, drive home, and park in their garage.”

The exemptions granted from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration allow the company to use windshields made of lightweight polycarbonate materials rather than heavier traditional laminated automotive safety glass and tires that are not normally allowed on multi-purpose vehicles.

The Transition’s tires are rated for highway speeds and the vehicle’s weight and fit in the same classification as SUVs and light trucks, Dietrich explained, but they weigh only a fraction of other tires in its class. The exemption makes this OK.

Last year, the vehicle was granted a weight exemption that allows it to be classified as a Light Sport Aircraft by the FAA even though it is 110 pounds too heavy for that rating.

The clearing of these regulatory hurdles will allow Terrafugia to begin delivery of the Transition when it is ready for commercial production next year.

 

Via MSNBC

 

Secrets of Giant Cloud Holes Revealed

Mysterious holes in clouds made by aircraft may owe their huge sizes to a little bit of heat, a new study suggests.

For decades people have seen gargantuan holes form in high, thin clouds made of supercooled water—liquid droplets that are chilled below the freezing point but that don’t have any particles around which ice crystals can form.

In the absense of dust, these cloud droplets can turn to ice if the water gets cooled beyond -40 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 degrees Celsius). At such chilly temperatures the water molecules slow down enough to freeze spontaneously.

Researchers previously knew that plane wings, propellers, and turbines could chill supercooled water via rapid expansion of air in their wakes—making things cold enough to force the liquid to become ice. This mechanism is thought to be what creates hole-punch clouds.

As the water freezes, though, the change of state releases energy in the form of what’s called latent heat, and the role of this heat was suspect.

“I didn’t think the latent heat would be so important, but it drives the whole feedback cycle, in some cases for hours after a plane flies through,” said study co-author Gregory Thompson, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

“That’s why the holes can grow to the size of cities under the right conditions.”

Research Flights Affecting Cloud Data?

The researchers theorized that, as latent heat rises, it carries freshly frozen ice—material that would normally float down—back up into the cloud.

There, supercooled water droplets migrate to the ice crystals, feeding a chain reaction of ice formation. Eventually the ice patch becomes too dense and falls out as a flurry of snow.

To see if latent heat does lead to hole-punch clouds, the researchers ran cloud-model simulations with and without the effect.

The first simulation, which incorporated latent heat, showed that the heat suspended ice in the cloud, powered nearby evaporation, pulled surrounding vapor into the zone of crystallization, and created snow. The model ultimately formed holes in clouds that closely matched real images of the phenomenon.

The simulation without the latent-heat effect didn’t replicate what’s been documented in nature.

Thompson emphasized that this finding almost certainly doesn’t change our understanding of the role of aircraft in global climate. Nor do hole-punch clouds cause significant snowfalls around airports, he said: “It’s likely too minor for that.”

However, researchers “spend an awful lot of time flying through clouds to collect data, which we use to build models that mimic natural clouds. We may be altering that data as we measure it,” he said.

“It’s not a big effect, but it’s something to be mindful of in future atmospheric modeling.”

 

Via NatGeo

UFOs Filmed Over London — Or Not

For extraterrestrials notoriously shy about making their presence known to Earthlings, they have been making more and more appearances in home videos over the past six months.

One of the most famous was the UFO that appeared over the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem, on January 28. Discovery News writer Ian O’Neill published one of the first analyses of the video (based in part on my own investigation), demonstrating that it was “almost certainly a hoax.”

A more comprehensive analysis by the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), one of the oldest, largest, and most respected UFO investigation organizations in the world, also later concluded that it was faked.

A few months later, on April 21, another ‘alien’ home video surfaced. This one, allegedly taken in Russia, showed two young men finding an alien body on a rural, snowy farm. It, too, was soon revealed to be a hoax.

Now, right on schedule, comes yet another UFO home video, this one taken in London, England. According to a report in the Daily Mail:

“In the video, the cameraman runs towards the corner of Bolsover Street and Clipstone Street where two other men are already standing, gazing skywards, one of whom is using a mobile phone camera. As the camera is pointed upwards, over the BBC’s Yalding House, three white dots flash across the sky at great speed in a triangle formation, they are very quickly followed by two similar sized white dots. As the camera pans down again, two people on the opposite side of the road can also been seen watching events unfold above them. Then one larger, bright and more slow moving disc-shaped white object appears, circles around briefly and zips off.”

The video, one of at least two similar videos, was posted to YouTube last week and soon went viral over the Web, stirring interest and controversy among believers and skeptics alike.

Though evidence may eventually validate the video, a preliminary analysis strongly suggests that this video, like the others, is a hoax. For one thing, it’s not clear who shot the video, or even when; anonymous eyewitnesses are a red flag.

Furthermore, the UFOs (like the one that appeared in the hoaxed Jerusalem video) are very easy to fake with video-editing software, mere spots of light without structure or detail.

Adding fuel for the skeptical grist, it seems that no one else on the busy London street near the British Broadcasting Building saw the many bright glowing objects in the sky. Logic suggests that there would have been thousands of eyewitnesses, yet the cameraman captured an event that apparently no one else saw.

It’s also suspicious that though the video shows others recording the amazing event, no other photos or videos from the same angle have surfaced. Surely one of the other UFO eyewitnesses present (and seen in the video) would have come forward in the past weeks to sell their own photographs or videos to a newspaper or television station — perhaps the BBC would be interested, since it occurred above their building.

Faked UFO videos may be fun for hoaxers (or as viral marketing), but even many people firmly convinced that UFOs are real are getting tired of the hoaxes. After all, how will we know when the real UFO videos surface? No one likes to be fooled, and the best preventative is to examine all the evidence with a sense of history and a skeptical eye.

 

Via Discovery

Bilderberg 2011: Full Official Attendee List

Thanks to the fantastic work of Bilderberg activists, journalists and the Swiss media, we have now been able to obtain the full official list of 2011 Bilderberg attendees. Routinely, some members request that their names be kept off the roster so there will be additional Bilderbergers in attendance.

Belgium

• Coene, Luc, Governor, National Bank of Belgium
• Davignon, Etienne, Minister of State
• Leysen, Thomas, Chairman, Umicore 

China

• Fu, Ying, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs
• Huang, Yiping, Professor of Economics, China Center for Economic Research, Peking University 

Denmark

• Eldrup, Anders, CEO, DONG Energy
• Federspiel, Ulrik, Vice President, Global Affairs, Haldor Topsøe A/S
• Schütze, Peter, Member of the Executive Management, Nordea Bank AB 

Germany

• Ackermann, Josef, Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee, Deutsche Bank
• Enders, Thomas, CEO, Airbus SAS
• Löscher, Peter, President and CEO, Siemens AG
• Nass, Matthias, Chief International Correspondent, Die Zeit
• Steinbrück, Peer, Member of the Bundestag; Former Minister of Finance 

Finland

• Apunen, Matti, Director, Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA
• Johansson, Ole, Chairman, Confederation of the Finnish Industries EK
• Ollila, Jorma, Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell
• Pentikäinen, Mikael, Publisher and Senior Editor-in-Chief, Helsingin Sanomat 

France

• Baverez, Nicolas, Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
• Bazire, Nicolas, Managing Director, Groupe Arnault /LVMH
• Castries, Henri de, Chairman and CEO, AXA
• Lévy, Maurice, Chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe S.A.
• Montbrial, Thierry de, President, French Institute for International Relations
• Roy, Olivier, Professor of Social and Political Theory, European University Institute 

Great Britain

• Agius, Marcus, Chairman, Barclays PLC
• Flint, Douglas J., Group Chairman, HSBC Holdings
• Kerr, John, Member, House of Lords; Deputy Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell
• Lambert, Richard, Independent Non-Executive Director, Ernst & Young
• Mandelson, Peter, Member, House of Lords; Chairman, Global Counsel
• Micklethwait, John, Editor-in-Chief, The Economist
• Osborne, George, Chancellor of the Exchequer
• Stewart, Rory, Member of Parliament
• Taylor, J. Martin, Chairman, Syngenta International AG 

Greece

• David, George A., Chairman, Coca-Cola H.B.C. S.A.
• Hardouvelis, Gikas A., Chief Economist and Head of Research, Eurobank EFG
• Papaconstantinou, George, Minister of Finance
• Tsoukalis, Loukas, President, ELIAMEP Grisons 

International Organizations

• Almunia, Joaquín, Vice President, European Commission
• Daele, Frans van, Chief of Staff to the President of the European Council
• Kroes, Neelie, Vice President, European Commission; Commissioner for Digital Agenda
• Lamy, Pascal, Director General, World Trade Organization
• Rompuy, Herman van, President, European Council
• Sheeran, Josette, Executive Director, United Nations World Food Programme
• Solana Madariaga, Javier, President, ESADEgeo Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics
• Trichet, Jean-Claude, President, European Central Bank
• Zoellick, Robert B., President, The World Bank Group

 Ireland

• Gallagher, Paul, Senior Counsel; Former Attorney General
• McDowell, Michael, Senior Counsel, Law Library; Former Deputy Prime Minister
• Sutherland, Peter D., Chairman, Goldman Sachs International 

Italy

• Bernabè, Franco, CEO, Telecom Italia SpA
• Elkann, John, Chairman, Fiat S.p.A.
• Monti, Mario, President, Univers Commerciale Luigi Bocconi
• Scaroni, Paolo, CEO, Eni S.p.A.
• Tremonti, Giulio, Minister of Economy and Finance 

Canada

• Carney, Mark J., Governor, Bank of Canada
• Clark, Edmund, President and CEO, TD Bank Financial Group
• McKenna, Frank, Deputy Chair, TD Bank Financial Group
• Orbinksi, James, Professor of Medicine and Political Science, University of Toronto
• Prichard, J. Robert S., Chair, Torys LLP
• Reisman, Heather, Chair and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc. Center, Brookings Institution 

Netherlands

• Bolland, Marc J., Chief Executive, Marks and Spencer Group plc
• Chavannes, Marc E., Political Columnist, NRC Handelsblad; Professor of Journalism
• Halberstadt, Victor, Professor of Economics, Leiden University; Former Honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg Meetings
• H.M. the Queen of the Netherlands
• Rosenthal, Uri, Minister of Foreign Affairs
• Winter, Jaap W., Partner, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek

 Norway

• Myklebust, Egil, Former Chairman of the Board of Directors SAS, sk Hydro ASA
• H.R.H. Crown Prince Haakon of Norway
• Ottersen, Ole Petter, Rector, University of Oslo
• Solberg, Erna, Leader of the Conservative Party 

Austria

• Bronner, Oscar, CEO and Publisher, Standard Medien AG
• Faymann, Werner, Federal Chancellor
• Rothensteiner, Walter, Chairman of the Board, Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich AG
• Scholten, Rudolf, Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG 

Portugal

• Balsemão, Francisco Pinto, Chairman and CEO, IMPRESA, S.G.P.S.; Former Prime Minister
• Ferreira Alves, Clara, CEO, Claref LDA; writer
• Nogueira Leite, António, Member of the Board, José de Mello Investimentos, SGPS, SA 

Sweden

Mordashov, Alexey A., CEO, Severstal

Schweden

• Bildt, Carl, Minister of Foreign Affairs
• Björling, Ewa, Minister for Trade
• Wallenberg, Jacob, Chairman, Investor AB 

Switzerland

• Brabeck-Letmathe, Peter, Chairman, Nestlé S.A.
• Groth, Hans, Senior Director, Healthcare Policy & Market Access, Oncology Business Unit, Pfizer Europe
• Janom Steiner, Barbara, Head of the Department of Justice, Security and Health, Canton
• Kudelski, André, Chairman and CEO, Kudelski Group SA
• Leuthard, Doris, Federal Councillor
• Schmid, Martin, President, Government of the Canton Grisons
• Schweiger, Rolf, Ständerat
• Soiron, Rolf, Chairman of the Board, Holcim Ltd., Lonza Ltd.
• Vasella, Daniel L., Chairman, Novartis AG
• Witmer, Jürg, Chairman, Givaudan SA and Clariant AG 

Spain

• Cebrián, Juan Luis, CEO, PRISA
• Cospedal, María Dolores de, Secretary General, Partido Popular
• León Gross, Bernardino, Secretary General of the Spanish Presidency
• Nin Génova, Juan María, President and CEO, La Caixa
• H.M. Queen Sofia of Spain

Turkey

• Ciliv, Süreyya, CEO, Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S.
• Gülek Domac, Tayyibe, Former Minister of State
• Koç, Mustafa V., Chairman, Koç Holding A.S.
• Pekin, Sefika, Founding Partner, Pekin & Bayar Law Firm 

USA

• Alexander, Keith B., Commander, USCYBERCOM; Director, National Security Agency
• Altman, Roger C., Chairman, Evercore Partners Inc.
• Bezos, Jeff, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com
• Collins, Timothy C., CEO, Ripplewood Holdings, LLC
• Feldstein, Martin S., George F. Baker Professor of Economics, Harvard University
• Hoffman, Reid, Co-founder and Executive Chairman, LinkedIn
• Hughes, Chris R., Co-founder, Facebook
• Jacobs, Kenneth M., Chairman & CEO, Lazard
• Johnson, James A., Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC
• Jordan, Jr., Vernon E., Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC
• Keane, John M., Senior Partner, SCP Partners; General, US Army, Retired
• Kissinger, Henry A., Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.
• Kleinfeld, Klaus, Chairman and CEO, Alcoa
• Kravis, Henry R., Co-Chairman and co-CEO, Kohlberg Kravis, Roberts & Co.
• Kravis, Marie-Josée, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc.
• Li, Cheng, Senior Fellow and Director of Research, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution
• Mundie, Craig J., Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft Corporation
• Orszag, Peter R., Vice Chairman, Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.
• Perle, Richard N., Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
• Rockefeller, David, Former Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank
• Rose, Charlie, Executive Editor and Anchor, Charlie Rose
• Rubin, Robert E., Co-Chairman, Council on Foreign Relations; Former Secretary of the Treasury
• Schmidt, Eric, Executive Chairman, Google Inc.
• Steinberg, James B., Deputy Secretary of State
• Thiel, Peter A., President, Clarium Capital Management, LLC
• Varney, Christine A., Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust
• Vaupel, James W., Founding Director, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
• Warsh, Kevin, Former Governor, Federal Reserve Board
• Wolfensohn, James D., Chairman, Wolfensohn & Company, LLC

 

This is interesting nonetheless. I’m not one to follow Bilderberg coverage but given the  article I posted earlier, ‘Bilderberg mystery: Why do people believe in cabals?‘, I thought I would post this in-case anyone is interested in seeing who will be attending the event.

 

Via Infowars

Bilderberg mystery: Why do people believe in cabals?

Ordinary people can only guess at the goings-on at the meetings of the secretive Bilderberg Group, which is bringing together the world’s financial and political elite this week. Conspiracy theories abound as to what is discussed and who is there. Why, asks Tom de Castella?

The belief in secret cabals running the world is a hardy perennial. And on Thursday perhaps the most controversial clandestine organisation of our times – the Bilderberg Group – is meeting behind closed doors.

In the manner of a James Bond plot, up to 150 leading politicians and business people are to gather in a ski resort in Switzerland for four days of discussion about the future of the world.

Previous attendees of the group, which meets once a year in a five-star hotel, are said to have included Bill Clinton, Prince Charles and Peter Mandelson, as well as dozens of company CEOs.

First meeting in 1954, the aim was to shore up US-European relations and prevent another world war. Now under the group’s leadership of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and one-time EU vice president, Viscount Davignon, the aim is purportedly to allow Western elites to share ideas.

But conspiracy theorists have accused it of everything from deliberately engineering the credit crunch to planning to kill 80% of the world population. Longtime opponent and US radio host Alex Jones, heckled one meeting through a megaphone: “We know you are ruthless. We know you are evil. We respect your dark power.”

Part of the reason for alarm is the group’s secretive working methods. Names of attendees are not usually released before the conference, meetings are closed to the public and the media, and no press releases are issued.

The gnashing of teeth over Bilderberg is ridiculous, says Times columnist David Aaronovitch. “It’s really an occasional supper club for the rich and powerful,” he argues.

Denis Healey, co-founder of the group, told the journalist Jon Ronson in his book Them that people overlook the practical benefits of informal networking. “Bilderberg is the most useful international group I ever attended,” he told him. “The confidentiality enabled people to speak honestly without fear of repercussions.”

So why do groups like this cause so much alarm? Aaronovitch, who wrote the 2009 book Voodoo Histories, says plots to install a new world order have traditionally been a conspiracy fantasy. “They tend to believe that everything true, local and national is under threat from cosmopolitan, international forces often linked to financial capitalism and therefore, also often, to Jewish interests.”

Secret cabals extend beyond the Bilderberg Group. The Illuminati, which derives from a 16th Century Bavarian secret society, is alleged to be an all powerful secret society, including US presidents, that has controlled major world events. The Freemasons – famous for their peculiar handshakes – is a secret fraternity society that has become more open in recent years after extensive criticism.

The charter of Hamas – the Islamist party governing Gaza – asserts that the Freemasons are in league with the Jews and those unlikely bully boys – the Rotary Club – to undermine Palestine.

John Hamill, spokesman for freemasonry’s governing body in England and Wales says the organisation is aware of Hamas’s allegation.

“There’s no truth in it, freemasonry is apolitical. It probably arises because one of our ceremonies is about the story of King Solomon’s Temple. For some reason Islamic governments translate that into Zionism.”

In fact, many conspiracy theories surrounding cabals hint at an anti-Semitic worldview. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a forged document, probably created by agents of Tsarist Russia, which appeared to show a Jewish plot to take over the world.

Despite being proved to be a fraud, the idea has been kept alive by anti-Semites and has spawned later versions. One of those, the Zionist Occupational Government, argues that countries have puppet governments but that the real power is held by Jewish interests.

More recently, former sports journalist David Icke has proclaimed that the world is governed by alien, reptilian shape shifters. In other words, giant lizards.

There is obviously no right-wing monopoly on conspiracy theories. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Hilary Clinton blamed a “vast right-wing conspiracy” for her husband’s predicament. And more recently, some on the left have argued that the 9/11 attacks were organised by President Bush’s inner circle in order to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

The politics of cabals has always been pretty muddled, says James McConnachie, co-author of the Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories. These groups allow protesters to project their own fears onto them.

In the US, the most extreme fear over Bilderberg is of a hidden cabal run by the European Union and threatening American freedoms. In Europe, the view is often of a free market elite trying to push through a right-wing agenda.

“Conspiracy theories are quite blind to conventional notions of left and right,” says McConnachie. “The left is organising an international government. Meanwhile, global capitalism on the right may be doing the same thing by different means.”

For Aaronovitch what often triggers widespread cabal theories are moments of great upheaval.

“It happens a lot when times are changing significantly. Whether, oddly, they are changing for better as well as for the worse. Why did McCarthyism happen at the time when US economy was growing faster than at any time in history?”

Society was in flux, the economy expanding rapidly and millions of servicemen were coming back from the war.

It’s not just the about social context. Some people are more susceptible than others to believing in wacky cabals, says Prof Chris French, of Goldsmith College’s psychology department. “It’s people who tend to be alienated by the mainstream, who feel powerless. They have a need to have a sense of control.”

Not only do they not trust the government, they tend not to trust their neighbours either. And in the need for control, there may be links to the roots of religious belief, he says.

The conspiracy theorists may get overexcited but they have a point, says Prof Andrew Kakabadse, co-author of new book Bilderberg People.

Secret talks

• Bilderberg is named after the Dutch hotel where the first meeting took place in 1954
• The initial focus was the state of the trans-Atlantic alliance and the problems facing Europe and the US
• British Labour politician Denis Healey was a founding member
• An invitation list is compiled each year by a steering committee
• About 120 people from North America and Europe are invited. About one-third are from government and politics, and two-thirds from finance, industry, labour, education and communications
• Meetings often feature future political leaders shortly before they become household names. Bill Clinton went in 1991 while still governor of Arkansas, Tony Blair was there two years later while an opposition MP

The group has genuine power that far outranks the World Economic Forum, which meets in Davos, he argues. And with no transparency, it is easy to see why people are worried about its influence.

“It’s much smarter than conspiracy,” says Prof Kakabadse. “This is moulding the way people think so that it seems like there’s no alternative to what is happening.”

The agenda the group has is to bring together the political elites on both right and left, let them mix in relaxed, luxurious surroundings with business leaders, and let the ideas fizz.

It may seem like a glorified dinner party but that is to miss the point. “When you’ve been to enough dinner parties you see a theme emerging,” he says. The theme at Bilderberg is to bolster a consensus around free market Western capitalism and its interests around the globe, he says.

“Is this all leading to the start of the ruling the world idea? In one sense yes. There’s a very strong move to have a One World government in the mould of free market Western capitalism.”

Degree of nefariousness

Conventional critiques of alienated people seeking order in a chaotic world may well be true. But there’s more to it than that, McConnachie argues.

“The other explanation is more dangerous. That they are precisely right – they just over-egg the way they articulate it.”

The Bilderberg Group matches up to how a global conspiracy would work – a secretive body attempting to shape the direction of the world, he suggests.

“The only difference is the degree of nefariousness,” he says. “They tend to see this cabal as outright evil. When things are more nuanced than that.”

For all the tales of lizards running the world, we all owe a debt to conspiracy theorists, McConnachie argues.

“Occasionally you have to give credit to conspiracy theorists who raise issues that the mainstream press has ignored. It’s only recently that the media has picked up on the Bilderbergers. Would the media be running stories if there weren’t these wild allegations flying around?”

But Aaronovitch disagrees. Believing in cabals leads to certain groups being victimised and obstructs a rational view of the world.

“To have a strong belief in the Bilderberg Group means believing in a fantasy,” he says. “It suggests that there are people – like God – acting as a higher power. And it replaces the intolerable thought that there’s nothing at work at all, that the world is chaotic. It may be a form of therapy but it has people believing in an anti-scientific message.”

Via BBC

Australian Government Loses All Its UFO Files

 

Two months ago, an Australian newspaper submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to its government seeking files pertaining to UFO sightings across the country.

Government officials have just come back empty handed. The UFO files, they said, seem to have gone missing.

“The files could not be located and Headquarters Air Command formally advised that this file is deemed lost,” the Australia Department of Defense’s FOI assistant director, Natalie Carpenter, told the Sydney Morning Herald, the newspaper that made the request.

Two months spent (presumably) thumbing through drawers turned up only one UFO-related file, Carpenter said, called “Report on UFOs/Strange Occurrences and Phenomena in Woomera.” It documents a series of sightings in and around a military weapons testing range in the Australian outback.

All other files had been lost or destroyed.

According to the Herald, Australia’s military stopped taking UFO sighting reports in late 2000. For the past decade, members of the public have reported incidents to the police instead, and those recent reports are presumably still extant.

This isn’t the first time in recent history that a government body has misplaced UFO files. Earlier this year, Britain’s Ministry of Defense released thousands of reports related to UFO sightings in Britain over the past few decades. All files from 1980 to 1982, however, were missing. The omission raised some suspicion among conspiracy theorists.

 

 

Via SPACE

Secret space station on Mars ?

We have all heard of little green men from Mars.

But now an American ‘armchair astronaut’ claims to have discovered a mysterious structure on the surface of the red planet – by looking on Google earth.

David Martines, whose YouTube video of the ‘station’ has racked up over 200,000 hits so far, claims to have randomly uncovered the picture while scanning the surface of the planet one day.

Uncovered: David Martines believes he has found a structure on the surface of Mars – by looking at Google Mars.

The white dot in the centre of the screen has set the blogosphere alight with rumors of a secret base.

Describing the ‘structure’ as a living quarters with red and blue stripes on it, to the untrained eye it looks nothing more than a white splodge on an otherwise unblemished red landscape.

He even lists the co-ordinates 49’19.73″N 29 33’06.53″W so others can go see the anomaly for themselves.

In a pre recorded ‘fly by’ video of the object, Mr Martines describes what he thinks the station might be.

He said: ‘This is a video of something I discovered on Google Mars quite by accident.

‘I call it Bio-station Alpha, because I’m just assuming that something lives in it or has lived in it.

NASA and Google have both yet to respond to the ‘finding’, circled here.

‘It’s very unusual in that it’s quite large, it’s over 700 feet long and 150 feet wide, it looks like it’s a cylinder or made up of cylinders.

The infamous ‘Face on Mars’ image from 1976 caused a huge stir when it was released.

‘It could be a power station or it could be a biological containment or it could be a glorified garage – hope it’s not a weapon.

‘Whoever put it up there had a purpose I’m sure. I couldn’t imagine what the purpose was. I couldn’t imagine why anybody would want to live on Mars.

‘It could be a way station for weary space travellers. It could also belong to NASA, I don’t know that they would admit that.

‘I don’t know if they could pull off such a project without all the people seeing all the material going up there. I sort of doubt NASA has anything to do with this.

‘I don’t know if NASA even knows about this.’

The ‘discovery’ is similar to that of the infamous ‘face on Mars’

Uncovered by the Viking 1 probe in 1976, a quirk of geography threw shadows over a small hill on the Cydonia region of Mars, making the inanimate rock look like a carved face.

The picture was heralded as proof of an alien civilisation by some but was dismissed as a mere trick of the light by scientists at NASA.

MailOnline has tried to contact both NASA and Goggle for a response to the image, but neither has replied.

Via DailyMail