As a young lad in school, I was required to read William Golding's masterpiece, Lord of the Flies. Whilst superficially simple, Lord of the Flies is in fact a highly complex novel. Golding uses the story of a group of English schoolboys marooned on a deserted tropical island to explore the existence of evil and violence in human nature. Of course, at the time I didn't appreciate just how much society had become like the tribe of lost boys in the novel. I didn't fully grasp the fundamental message of the book: without the unifying themes of society to hold us together, we lose our values, morals, ethics and everything else that separates us from the savagery found in the animal world.

At the time of writing the book, Golding was devastated by the genocide committed by the Germans and, to a lesser extent, the Japanese during the Second World War. He found it difficult to believe that civilized people could be capable of the atrocities committed. Golding tended to believe that mankind was not inherently evil; rather that evil behavior was the result of ignorance and superstition. The apparent behavior of Nazi Germany caused Golding to rethink his ideas and in Lord of the Flies he attempts to explore and understand why people who are supposedly civilized can embrace evil.

Golding, who was a British prep school teacher, observed his students and came to believe that far from being naturally good, humankind was basically evil and that it was only the rule of law and civilization and the threat of punishment that kept people from behaving in an evil manner.

In his resulting novel, Golding allows the boys' barbarity and evil to increase. When Jack and his hunters kill a boar, they leave the pig's head impaled on a stake, arguably as the ultimate symbol of their descent into savagery. The head is soon rotting and covered with flies, hence the title of the book.

Has the head of Nick Berg, held aloft by supposed Al Qaida operatives, become this age's 'Lord of the Flies'?

"The tears began to flow and sobs shook him. He gave himself up to them now for the first time on the island; great, shuddering spasms of grief that seemed to wrench his whole body. His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."

Lord of the Flies

President Bush delivered his latest national address on the evening of May 24 from the respected US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, with what appeared to be a sage gathering of senior military officers, placed to add credibility to a president failing in popularity polls.

There will be much more dissection of what the President said, but very little about what wasn't said.

Keep in mind that one of the major unspoken objectives of the war in Iraq, is internal distraction from what are clear and present dangers within the US, specifically the US economy.

Here are a few items GW 'forgot' to mention:

• Cost of war to end Sep 2004 is $149 billion.

• The originally requested budget was $79 billion on April 16, 2003.

• Ask any CEO what they would do to the person responsible for allowing a budget to be exceeded by 188%.

• There have been 911 coalition fatalities since March 2003 (up to and including May 24, 2004).

• Civilians killed to date: between 9,148 and 11,005, with an immeasurable future death toll owing to depleted uranium poisoning.

• The state of the US economy is by far the worst it's been in decades, and very close to complete failure. Examples below.

US Debts - The Years 2000 To 2003:

US household debt climbed at twice the pace of household incomes from the beginning of 2000 through 2003, according to data from the Federal Reserve. Enticed by low interest rates, Americans took on $US 2.3 TRILLION in brand new mortgage debt during that period. That is an increase in US mortgage debt of a huge 50 percent over those three years. Is there still anybody left wondering why US real estate prices and valuations have gone up correspondingly? US consumer credit - from zero-interest auto loans to the much more expensive debt on credit cards - climbed 33 percent, increasing to $US 2 TRILLION in 2003 from $US 1.5 TRILLION back in 2000. What you see here is the true nature of a credit expansion.

Since 1993/94 (1994 was the year when the Fed doubled its official rates), US M3 has grown 114% from $US 4.2 TRILLION to over $US 9.0 TRILLION. That's roughly 11.4% per year. US consumer debt (mortgages and consumer credit) has grown even more. It is up from $US 4.2 TRILLION at the end of 1993 to over $US 9.4 TRILLION at the end of 2003. That's up 123% or roughly 12.3% per year. US business debt is up only 100%, growing from $US 3.7 TRILLION to $US 7.4 TRILLION in the same period. Please take very great care here, all of the above is just US private economy debts.

None of the above deals with the enormous increases in US federal debts, US state debts (see California), or council or local district debts.

Once again it seems any communication from our fearless leaders is designed to prevent us thinking about the real state of the nation.

See full article and reference links

Possible Israeli Involvement in Iraqi Torture Methods

> Wayne Madsen, Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, notes the "mounting evidence that a shadowy group of former Israeli Defense Force and General Security Service (Shin Bet) Arabic-speaking interrogators were hired by the Pentagon under a classified "carve out" sub-contract to brutally interrogate Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison." Madsen quotes an unnamed "political appointee within the Bush administration" as stating that, "Many of the torture methods were developed by the Israelis over many years of interrogating Arab prisoners on the occupied West Bank and in Israel itself."

Perhaps this is the reason Bush suggested razing the Abu Graib prison, as a way of eliminating any further evidence of brutal torture?

> Full Article

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Announcing the Totally Cool WW3 Toolbar!

In an effort to inject a little light-hearted sanity into this otherwise somber newsletter, I'm very proud of the latest addition to the site: the amazingly cool WW3 Toolbar. It's a nifty little piece of software that allows you to instantly Google search from any web page, and displays the latest posts from WW3 News, so that you're always up-to-date in the steady march towards WW3. And best of all it's totally free, and takes only seconds to install. Try it right now - it's incredibly simple to install, and if you're not delighted by it you can uninstall with two quick mouse-clicks. It's pretty darn amazing, even if I say so myself!

If you've already installed it, you'll also know that June 6, 2004 is 999 days after September 11, 2001. Only time will tell whether this date is significant in the New World Order calendar.  Remember too that the annual Bilderberg conference in Italy finishes on June 6th.