David Icke Pied by Antifascists in Vancouver, BC

(This makes more sense in Europe/Canada. There are many german vegetarians and environmentalists, but among germans I know, a lot have suspicions of animal rights (and also of things like folk music, and tiny weird religions that have central leaders) because of the parallels with parts of early nazi culture. It doesn't seem to make sense in the U.S. )
------------------
ecofascism?

http://gridlock.gn.apc.org/ecofasc.htm

The issue of NewAgeFascism has recently been placed under
the spotlight by various concerned parties, the most notable of
these have been Open Eye Magazine (who have done much
valuable work in exposing David Icke - more of this later) and a
new book called "Ecofascism - Lessons from the German
Experience". Whilst not being the greatest work ever published
(it's too simplistic/sparse and certain parts display a
suspiciously unobjective admiration for Murray Bookchin - further
investigation revealed that one of the authors just happens to be
his wife...) it provides an introduction to a serious and previously
neglected issue.

Ecofascism can be loosely defined as the mixing of concepts
such as organic farming, vegetarianism and nature worship with
racism and and nationalism; this mixture is not new - first
appearing in nineteenth century Germany. "New Age" nazism
(currently mainly personified by David Icke) uses some "green"
ideas in conjunction with conspiricist theories and derivations
from various pseudo-occult traditions, most notably Theosophy.

The green movement in this country is large and extremely
diverse, incorporating many different groups and factions
ranging from Direct Activists to FoE/Greenpeace/Green Party to a
variety of New Age/mystical types - a very wide range of ideas,
theories and practices come under the general heading of
"green". There are no set divides betwen the various groupings
and a certain degree of crossover exists.

It would be safe to say that the most important of the above - the
direct action eco-movement, i.e "Earth First!" has to its credit now
probably developed a strong enough commitment to social
justice and genuinely libertarian and anti-authoritarian ideas and
acivities for it not to be susceptible to Ecofascism. Exceptions to
this may be some mystical greens (see below). There are
however a number of other petty authoritarian factions within the
Direct Action movement who don't quite deserve the label of
fascist; these include the "vegan police" and ideological pacifists
both of whose problems are self-explanatory.

It is however within the "New Age" movement that fascism is the
biggest problem. Fascist tendencies have always been present
within it but due to the naivety of many of its adherents these
have gone largely unchallenged/noticed. A prime example of this
is the enduring popularity of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy in
alternative circles in this country as well as in Germany and
America. This ideology mixes bizarre racialist spiritual theory
(which somewhat unsurprisingly concludes that European
whites are at the summit of the heirarchical scale of humanity)
with concepts such as "biodynamic farming", a form of organic
agriculture which "tries to foster a more organic relationship
between cultivator and soil." Many ideas current within mystical
green circles have a very similar conceptual basis to those of
classical Fascism (i.e. the German, Italian and Spanish
models). Examples of this include a desire to return to an
idealised mythical "golden age" - in this case Celtic, the
celebration of "feelings" and emotions (i.e. of collectivity and
unity) over reason and the cultural appropriation of pagan rituals
and symbols.

The problem has become much more acute recently with the
emergence of groups such as Rainbow Ark, and more populist
figures such as David Icke. Icke may be a figure of fun to those
who recall his "turquoise" and "godhead" phases, but his ideas
have recently taken a much more sinister direction; he has
successfully managed to repackage and overtly (notably "Jewish
conspiracy" theories ) into a theory that has proved highly
popular amongst New Agers who consider him a sort of guru. In
his books called "The Robot's Rebellion" and "....and the truth
shall set you free" he attacks electoralism and capitalism - at
first glance a praiseworthy exercise but on the grounds that it is a
global conspiracy involving a Jewish elite and the "All Seeing
Eye" cult !!!! . Unfortunately his followers, the vast majority of
whom are New Agers (Although it should be noted that
members of the nazi group C18 have turned up at his meetings)
don't appear to be able or willing to recognise Icke for what he is
- a fascist. Even when publicly confronted with statements such
as "A Jewish clique worked to create the First World War, the
Rusian Revolution and the Second World War." they have a
disturbing tendency to deny his blatant racism and
anti-semitism.

Certain aspects of the "New Age" are not holistic or benign but
pure poison and should be attacked and discredited at every
available opportunity. This is particularly important as more
people then ever are turning to New Age spirituality and
conspiricism in an escapist search for answers and scapegoats
to explain or forget the misery of their everyday lives.
Unfortunately there aren't any answers to be found in crystal
gazing (crystals which incidentally if shopbought are likely to
have been mined by multinationals such as RTZ who are
engaged in wholesale devastation of the Third World) or infantile
conspiracy theories. The reality of the situation is that we live in
an openly exploitative and oppressive society and until people
recognise that the answer to the riddle of their dead lives lies in
practical struggle people will look to scum like Icke peddling
their shit as a solution.


Ecofascism, Lessons From the German Experience by Janet
Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier is published by AK Press and is
available from them or the usual lefty bookshops.

by Antifa 9:44pm Fri Sep 5 '03 (Modified on 2:54pm Sat Sep 6 '03)


...
Swastikas and healing

What's behind anti-Semites' increasing drive to recruit Canadian New Agers?

by Eli Schuster

NAZIS used to be made of sterner stuff. According to a 1934 interview conducted by German conservative Herman Rauschning, Adolf Hitler said former Marxists made the best Nazis because they saw politics as a violent activity. "The petit bourgeois Social Democrat and the trade union boss will never make a National Socialist," the murderous dictator said, "but the communist always will." Well, so much for the voice of experience. Today, instead of communist revolutionaries, anti-Semites seem to be making a conscious effort to recruit New Agers, believers in alternative medicine, and UFO conspiracy theorists.

The two men most responsible for this unique outreach drive appear to be Eustace Mullins and David Icke. A native of Virginia, Mr. Mullins is the author of Biological Jew, which makes the outlandish claim that a "religious ceremony of drinking the blood of an innocent gentile child is basic to the Jew's entire concept of his existence as a parasite." Mr. Icke, a former sportscaster and former spokesman for the British Green Party, believes the world is secretly ruled by an evil society of Jewish shape-shifting lizard aliens. Both have attempted in recent months to speak at alternative health conferences in Toronto, Montreal and Salmon Arm, B.C., only to be rebuffed after public outcries forced organizers to retract their invitations.


It is thought that Mr. Mullins and Mr. Icke target the alternative health crowd because it is already deeply suspicious of medical authorities, and might easily be persuaded Jews are behind various conspiracies. "Hard core health nuts want to hear Mr. Mullins condemn modern medicine in exactly the same way white supremacists want to hear him condemn Jews--as an evil force that preys on the innocent," National Post writer Donna Laframboise observed in a recent story.


An example of this paranoia would be The Medical Mafia, an influential book in the alternative medicine movement by former Quebec physician Guylaine Lanctot. The work does not mention Jews, but it is conspiracy-minded and is heavily advertised on one of Mr. Icke's Web sites. In an interview conducted through that site, Ms. Lanctot argued that various medical systems "all serve financiers and not the people. That's the basic thing. The bottom line is that the medical systems are controlled by financiers in order to serve financiers. Since you cannot serve people unless they get sick, the whole medical system is designed to make people sicker and sicker."


Other books advertised on the site include such conspiracy tomes as: Racketeering in Medicine: the Suppression of Alternatives, by James P. Carter; and The Holocaust Industry, by Norman Finkelstein, who claims to be the son of Holocaust survivors. An excerpt from The Holocaust Industry reads, "In recent years, the Holocaust Industry has become an outright extortion racket."


A visit to another of Mr. Icke's Web sites can best be described as a journey into the bizarre. He calls former U.S. president George Bush a "serial killer" and a "paedophile," and claims Hitler was a member of the Jewish Rothschild banking family. But he also writes, "We can choose freedom or fall under the control of a global fascist state, a global Nazi Germany."


Asked if Mr. Icke could be considered part of the anti-Semitic movement when he has expressed negative opinions about Hitler, David Birnbaum, the Canadian Jewish Congress' executive director in Quebec replies, "That's a good question. Our sense is that people like David Icke and Eustace Mullins would be laughable if they weren't so insidious." Mr. Birnbaum adds, "They are quite smart at couching their hateful ideas in alternative lifestyles and propositions that make them more palatable." It is true, adds Mr. Birnbaum, that Mr. Icke is no Ernst Zundel (the Canadian publisher of anti-Jewish tracts), but the Jewish Congress spokesman also believes the two men share a great deal in terms of goals and ideas. As well, Mr. Icke is dangerous because he can reach out to New Agers who "might be of good faith."


Mr. Birnbaum declares his organization believes in free speech, but also says it has tried to prevent Mr. Mullins and Mr. Icke from speaking to alternative-medicine conventions because "free speech comes with limits and responsibilities. You can't incite hate, and these jokers come close to disobeying that rule."


On the other hand, many free-speech advocates contend that if the two men are, indeed, "jokers" and if they do not actually incite hatred, then they should be allowed to vent their spleens for democracy's sake. Moreover, as free-speech advocates Alan Charles Kors and Harvey A. Silverglate write in The Shadow University, it is only through "free and unfettered debate among free individuals" that informed change for the better can emerge.


http://seattle.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=32444&group=webcast

http://seattle.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=32418&group=webcast
DANGEROUS LIAISONS

David Ike, the former' Green Party spokesperson, has attracted a disproportionate amount of media attention. But his activities are merely the tip of an iceberg, which has remained unprobed. Here Searchlight reveals for the first time in Britain, not the unimportant side show that is Icke, but the facts about the man whose magazine Icke promotes, his international connections and the response to his activities in Australia.

A lunatic on the political fringe would not normally attract mainstream media attention. But in May The Guardian devoted four columns to David Icke, a former Green Party spokesperson and self-styled "Son of God", who is currently on a speaking tour around Britain.

Icke's talk is a diatribe against the "illuminati" taken straight out of the notorious anti-semitic forgery. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which he cites as a source for his next book and continues to defend in media interviews even after being challenged over its nature and origin. His all encompassing conspiracy theory makes out that the bomb in Oklahoma City was used to give the FBI and the "New World Order" a tighter grip to destroy freedoms.

The Guardian's piece makes out that he is an interesting curiosity. It mentions that Icke distances himself from Hitler, but does not say that he recently received a partial endorsement from Combat 18 because of his antisemitism. Nevertheless Icke is not a danger because anyone with any sense realises that he is a fringe lunatic with no political influence.

The Guardian article touched on the real dangers when it mentioned that Icke recommends to his followers a magazine called Nexus Based in Australia, it is a sinister mixture of New Age ideas and far-right and antisemitic propaganda and advertisements.

Searchlight's Australian correspondent has revealed that the owner of Nexus, Duncan Roads, has visited Colonel Gaddafi's Libya at least twice and is believed to have sworn an oath of loyalty to that country. In doing so, he has followed the road to Tripoli already taken by a mixture of far-right activists. including the British third positionists Patrick Harrington, Derek Holland and Nick Griffin and Canadian nazis.

Nexus's agent in Britain is Marcus Allen, a small-scale peddler of antisemitic material. A more important supplier of such literature. and one of the few people in Britain from whom those around Icke could have obtained copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is Don Martin.

Born in Australia. Martin runs a far-right and antisemitic publishing business in Sudbury, Suffolk. and maintains his longstanding links with Australian nazis. He came to Britain in 1970, where he founded the British League of Rights as a pseudo-respectable right-wing front, campaigning against the Common Market. Four years later the organisation became the British chapter of the World Anti Communist League. and the veteran racist Dowager Lady Jane Birdwood became its general secretary.

Searchlight originally exposed fascist infiltration of the green movement in Britain many years ago. Our concern was not with the lunatic fringe but with members of nazi and fascist groups who were able to join the Green Party and even sit on the platform at one of the party's annual conferences. The ongoing far-right influence on the green movement, which comes mainly from the area where fascist third positionists and quasi anarchists meet, has resulted in some green publications carrying advertisements for fascist publications. People participating in the recent demonstrations against the export of livestock to Europe have been concerned by the presence of members of fascist organisations.

To divert people from the real problem facing the green movement by focusing attention on David Icke will do neither the green movement nor anti-fascists any good.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


Nexus - a forum for the militias and conspiracy theorists

In America he is known to listeners of hate radio stations as "Mark from Michigan". to the mainstream media as "the grand guru of hate" and to the FBI as Mark Koernke. a militia leader and far-right fanatic who was wanted for questioning about the Oklahoma bombing.

In Australia he is a correspondent for Nexus. a monthly magazine available from most local news agencies.

Nexus is one of the New Age and alternative lifestyle publications that have proliferated in Australia over the past five years. Its cover stories give the impression that it is devoted to alternative medicine and UFOs. But one of the alternative lifestyles that Nexus consistently promotes is rooted in the paranoid conspiracy theories of the US midwest.

Since 1992 the Queensland-based magazine has published numerous articles from American far-right militia activists accusing the US government of plotting to murder "patriots" and hand America over to a socialist "one world government headed by the United Nations.

It also runs advertisements for far-right Australian groups and publications, including the book Fair Dinkum, published by an ultra-right militia group. the Loyal Regiment of Australian Guardians. The Regiment. which is based in Canberra. was the subject of a sixmonth top secret investigation by the Australian Defence Department and the Federal Police.

The handbook describes the Australian government as "unconstitutional and therefore may be considered as operating as a criminal organisation". Rick Flavell. the book's publisher. is currently in hiding from the police. who have a warrant out for his arrest on weapons charges.

Nexus's publisher. Duncan Roads. said that he did "not support any of the views" he published in his magazine. yet confessed that he shared his contributors' belief that America was "corrupt to the core. right from the top".

Roads. who was born in Britain. is a close confidant of Robert Pash, one-time leader of Aryan Nations in Australia and the man who organised a trip to Libya for Patrick Harrington. Nick Griffin and Derek Holland of the British National Front's "political soldier" faction in 1989. Pash. now organiser for the Libyan-Arab Cultural Centre, was a key player in the establishment of the Lyndon LaRouche cult in Australia.

Roads himself has visited Libya at least twice and Nexus regularly carries advertisements for Pash's antisemitic magazine. New Dawn. Even so he is not entirely trusted on the Australian far-right. A document was recently circulated to media outlets claiming that Roads's loyalty was to Libya rather than Australia. adding an obscure reference to an alleged bomb discovery in a British bus terminal where Roads once worked as a clerk.

Alongside Nexus's articles on UFO sightings and ways to grow new teeth are conspiracy theories identical to those propounded by the militia groups at the centre of the FBI's investigations. Many involve supposed black helicopters filled with UN troops and nefarious plots by the Bureau of Alcohol. Tobacco and Firearms.

Apart from Koernke, Nexus's far-right contributors have included Bo Gritz and Linda Thompson. Gritz, a former Green Beret soldier and one-time vice presidential running mate of the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke. attracted worldwide notoriety when he described the Oklahoma bombing as "a Rembrandt - a masterpiece of science and art put together".

Thompson. a leading member of the militia movement was arrested in Indianapolis in July 1994 after using her vehicle to block a bus carrying supporters of President Clinton. When police searched her van they seized two pistols and an assault rifle with 295 rounds of ammunition.

Koernke was the man who was said to have faxed a letter to a Republican congressman immediately before or just after the bombing describing key aspects of the attack.

He is a prominent member of the Michigan Militia and advocates armed defiance of the federal government. Timothy McVeigh, the chief suspect in the bombing, has acted as Koernke's bodyguard. McVeigh is believed to have been inspired by anger at the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas. Last December Koernke told a Militia of Montana rally: "Waco is a call to arms. We don't have a choice. The next time this happens we will be armed to the teeth. We are not going to be reading history, we are going to be making history, and that's exciting."

In a six-page feature article published in the February-March 1994 issue of Nexus, Koernke claimed that presidents Reagan. Bush and Clinton had all plotted to bring about a New World Order under the direction of the UN by disarming "patriots".

Detention centres had reputedly been set up for these patriots: "our processing centre for detainees in the western half of the United States is Oklahoma City". He claimed that police "attacks" on firearm owners were continuing. "Unfortunately, like cockroaches, you can spray and they keep coming back."

Roads said that he toned down and weeded out "heaps of rhetoric" from the Koernke article. But he said: "I felt there's enough truth in some of his allegations to warrant putting this story in. I believe that there's a lot of substantiation in the fact that these government agencies ... are acting against the Constitution."

The August-September 1994 Nexus carried an article headed "Revolution USA?" with the comment: The underground news networks are busy passing around a flyer from the Unorganised Militia of the US ... It would seem a lot of Americans are going to be participating in what is tantamount to a preannounced revolution!"

Roads said: "What tickled me was that you had someone announcing an armed revolution situation in America. I was very fascinated to see what was going to happen."

The article called for militia units to assemble in Washington, DC, and "arrest congressmen who have failed to uphold their oaths of office, who then will be tried for Treason by Citizens' Courts". Militia members were advised to wear identifying insignia and be armed. "If you are armed and wear a military insignia identifying you as a member of a military unit, if captured, you must be treated

as a Prisoner of War, not as a criminal arrestee, by law." The document was signed by Linda Thompson, as acting adjutant general of the Unorganised Militia of the US.

According to US media reports, Timothy McVeigh is now claiming the same rights as a prisoner of war and refused to give any information to the police other than his name, rank and army serial number.

A year ago Thompson was quoted in Nexus accusing the US government of genocide at Waco. She claimed: "we have three confirmed reported citings sic of trainloads of UN tanks going into Portland, Oregon, over the past few weeks, and troop movements of unmarked military vehicles across the nation".

Nexus also sells Thompson's video documentary on the siege, Waco - the Big Lie. Roads said that the video "has done more to mobilise anger against the Government and more to inflame paranoid conspiracy theories against the US Government. The Waco video has done more to outrage Americans into forming into these militia groups.

Roads has also published articles supporting Lyndon LaRouche, the convicted US con man and extremist, including long excerpts from his book Dope In'.., and has serialised an antisemitic and racist book War Cycles, Peace Cycles. Its author, Richard Kelly Hoskins, a long-time far-right activist, argued elsewhere in the book that it was justifiable to kill "interracial" couples and claimed that Jewish people are usurers.

Nexus's global news section carries regular excerpts from the racist and antisemitic US newspaper The Spotlight, published by Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby. David Irving's book Churchill's War was fawningly praised in the July 1993 issue, which described Irving as "Britain's top historian". The following edition praised Irving's Hitler's War as giving "a very different picture of Hitler and World War II as that of the Hollywood movies".

With more than 90 pages and sporting a glossy full-colour cover, Nexus is dominated by advertising for alternative health cures. minor religious groupings, anti UFO abduction kits and mind-altering techniques. It has also had advertising supplements from Time-Life Books and Community Aid Abroad. The March 1994 issue carried an advertisement for the notorious antisemitic work The Protocols of he Learned Elders of Zion.

Roads has said that he intends to publish a story on the Oklahoma bombing "giving research and data" allegedly unreported in the mainstream media.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


'Appropriate action' call in Victoria State Parliament

Mr Thomson (Pascoe Vale) - I direct to the attention of the Minister for Police and Emergency Services the need for appropriate action concerning paramilitary, right-wing and extremist groups operating in Victoria and other parts of Australia and the need for the vigorous enforcement of Victoria's gun laws and the laws on explosives if evidence that these groups are engaging in illegal activities is found.

All members of the house are aware of the tragedy in Oklahoma City, where more than 150 men, women and children died. I direct the minister's attention to an article by David Greason in last Wednesday's Herald Sun which drew attention to the operation of similar groups in New South Wales, Queensland and possibly Victoria. Mr Greason refers to some 300 or 400 paramilitary right-wing extremists operating in Australia and to three of their publications - Lock Stock and Barrel, Nexus, and The Strategy - which involve the advocacy of extreme action, including the setting up of a resistance movement to overthrow an Australian government, forging banknotes, holding enemy industrialists and businessmen to ransom and the establishment of an assassination group to eliminate traitors or top enemies. These publications bemoan the extinction of the white race and promote anti-semitic booklets. They encourage violent action against states, government and the community generally.

Given that evidence and the sorts of things we have seen in America with the unholy alliance between the Branch Davidians and the far-right paramilitary outfits, it is important that the minister take appropriate action to ensure that Victorians are safe from this sort of extremism. We need rigorous enforcement of Victoria's appropriate gun laws and action on issues such as explosives. We seem to be dealing with people who are no longer content with the sort of letter writing favoured by the League of Rights, which was formerly the country's most prominent right-wing outfit. The new paramilitary right-wing groups seem to be potentially more dangerous again, and I believe it requires action on the part of the minister.

by Will Offley

February 29, 2000

On the face of it, few people would credit a retired soccer player who rants about a world takeover by blood-drinking lizards from outer space as being much of a threat to democracy. And as a general rule, they would probably be right.

David Icke, however, is an exception to that rule.

Icke, 48, is a native of Leicester, England. For five years he played professionally for the Coventry City and Hereford United soccer teams until forced to retire by arthritis. He subsequently went on to become a sports announcer for BBC-TV. For three years from 1988 to 1991 he was national spokesperson for the British Green Party, until he began a political evolution that was to begin with his expulsion from the Greens and wind up with his current involvement with anti-Semitism, neofascism, and lizards from Mars.1

At first this evolution seemed relatively harmless. Icke began to flirt seriously with New Age theories, and then began to act on them. He dressed in turquoise, and began to call himself the "son of godhead". But by the time his book "The Robot's Rebellion" was printed in 1994, his trajectory had begun to take quite a different course. In 1996, the British magazine "Left Green Perspectives" wrote that this book "indicated a convergence of New Age thinking with Nazi philosophy. Casting aside his pat concerns about the environment, Icke enthusiastically embraced the classic Nazi conspiracy theory, alleging that the world is controlled by a secret cadre of "The Elite." He openly endorsed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Tsarist anti-Semitic forgery that informed Hitler's notion of a global Jewish conspiracy."

The following year Icke brought out another book, "...and the truth shall set you free." This one, however, was self-published, as its content was so objectionable that his publisher refused to have it printed. And small wonder. The book repeated Icke's previous claims that the Protocols were true, and went on to state: "I strongly believe that a small Jewish clique which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people worked with non-Jews to create the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Second World War....They then dominated the Versailles Peace Conference and created the circumstances which made the Second World War inevitable. They financed Hitler to power in 1933 and made the funds available for his rearmament." 2

In this book, Icke went even further. He began to flirt explicitly with Holocaust denial, saying "why do we play a part in suppressing alternative information to the official line of the Second World War? How is it right that while this fierce suppression goes on, free copies of the Spielberg film, Schindler's List, are given to schools to indoctrinate children with the unchallenged version of events. And why do we, who say we oppose tyranny and demand freedom of speech, allow people to go to prison and be vilified, and magazines to be closed down on the spot, for suggesting another version of history." 3 He also denounced the Nuremberg Trials as "a farce" and "a calculated exercise in revenge and manipulation" 4

Icke's politics today are a mishmash of most of the dominant themes of contemporary neofascism, mixed in with a smattering of topics culled from the U.S. militia movement. He has written diatribes on the Illuminati, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission as examples of secret plots to take over the world. He opposes gun control as a plot by this Elite, which has deliberately orchestrated numerous mass shootings to whip up opposition to guns. 5 He has repeatedly posted anti-abortion literature and articles on his web site. 6 He rails against conspiracies to implant microchips in everyone's bodies, coded with the Satanic number "666". 7 He even accuses the U.S. government of carrying out the Oklahoma City bombing and murdering 168 men, women and children. 8

For a decade Icke has exhibited signs of serious mental instability. In his web site autobiography he reveals that as early as 1990 he became aware of "a presence around me, like there was always someone in the room when there was not. It got to the point where I sat on the side of the bed in a hotel room in London in early 1990 and said to whoever or whatever: "If you are there will you please contact me because you are driving me up the wall." A year later, on holiday in Peru, Icke describes hearing voices: "as I looked at the mound, a voice in my head began to say: "Come to me, come to me, come to me.... Suddenly I felt my feet pulled to the ground again like a magnet, the same as in the newspaper shop, but this time far more powerful. My arms then shot above my head, with no decision by me for them to do so.... A flow of powerful energy began to go into the top of my head like a drill, and I could feel the flow going the other way up from the ground through my feet. It was then I heard the third voice in my head, something that has never happened since. It said very clearly: "It will be over when you feel the rain"." 9

Over the last year Icke's writings have become so paranoid and so extreme that many are probably inclined to dismiss him as posing any sort of threat, or requiring a response. Icke is now arguing in all seriousness that the Illuminati plot to take over the world is actually being carried out by a race of extraterrestrial reptiles in human form. They are described, literally, as being child-sacrificing, blood-drinking Satan-worshippers capable of changing their shape, whose ranks include George Bush, Bill and Hilary Clinton, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mum, Bob Hope and Kris Kristofferson, among others. 10

David Icke is not alone. He is a small industry in a large and lucrative market of often well-to do New Age boomers. He has several web sites, an e-magazine, his own publishing house, and at least 9 books and 4 videotapes to his credit. He is constantly on the road, touring North America, Europe, Australia, South Africa, the Pyramids, and elsewhere. In the last five years he has spoken in Vancouver as many times, and across Canada he can turn out substantial audiences. His organizers claim he had 1,000 people out to hear him at his last gig in Vancouver, and he hopes to fill the Vogue Theatre on March 19. It's a large milieu that can afford the hefty prices Icke charges - up to $67 to attend a lecture, forty to fifty dollars for videotapes - and that generates a sizeable income for Icke and his message of conspiracism, fear and hate.

To organize all this, Icke has developed an international network of people who work with him and for him. They book the dates, churn out the posters and press releases, do the advance work, pick him up at the airport, get him to the hotel, introduce him, and get him back to his flight on time. They also show clearly why David Icke is a dangerous man, because they underscore his politics in an unmistakable way.

Icke is undeniably a flake, and a world-class flake, but his danger comes from his alliances as well as his politics. And it's the far right who handle this man, who package and promote and present his message across Canada and around the world.

Take Joseph Duggan. Duggan is the proprietor of Strong Eagles Productions, the company organizing Icke's current Vancouver speaking engagement. Duggan makes his living in part from organizing B.C. speaking engagements for a string of conspiracy theorists and famous personalities of the extreme right like Glen Kealey, Cathy O'Brien, Len Horowitz and others. 11 Duggan also used to be the health editor of Shared Vision until last year, which has itself advertised tours by Icke and hosted speeches by him as well. Interspersed with monthly columns on health foods and natural healing, Duggan's writings in Shared Vision also promoted the far right anti-government activist Murray Gauvreau 12, Colorado militia supporter Suzanne Harris 13, and the notorious Glen Kealey. 14

In March 1997, Duggan's column referred extensively to the book "War Cycles, Peace Cycles" by American writer Richard K. Hoskins. 15 Hoskins has been denounced as "a virulent anti-Semite who is a leading ideologue of the Christian Identity movement" by no less a source than Conrad Black's National Post. When Aryan Nations member Buford Furrow was arrested in Los Angeles last August after shooting and wounding five people at a Jewish community centre and murdering a Filipino postal worker, police found a copy of "War Cycles, Peace Cycles" in his car. 16

Icke's books and videos are also distributed by an organization in Salmon Arm, B.C. called The Preferred Network. The Preferred Network's web site advertises at least four of Icke's books and the same number of videotapes, as well as an extensive selection of U.S. and Canadian conspiracy materials covering the traditional themes particular to the far right: the government coverup of the Oklahoma City bombing, "The 10 Secrets Revenue Canada Doesn't Want You To Know", "Humanity's Extraterrestrial Origins", the AIDS coverup, the Ebola coverup, the Lockerbie coverup, the PanAm 800 coverup, "Satanism And The CIA", and Kari Simpson's expose of the gay agenda in B.C. schools. 17

David Lethbridge, director of the Salmon Arm Coalition Against Racism, has described the organizer of The Preferred Network in the following way: "a well-attended demonstration opposing the Multilateral Agreement on Investment was held [in the spring of 1998] in Salmon Arm, B.C.... Working the fringes was Wes Mann, organizer of the Preferred Network. Mann was handing out flyers for conspiracy advocates David Icke, Ted Gunderson and Cathy O'Brien. Whenever he could, Mann would strike up a conversation with one of the demonstrators, then write down their name and phone number. I knew who Mann was. His Preferred Network catalog carries several dozen books and tapes promoting the usual New Age fare: cancer cures, spiritualist prophecies, UFO tales and so on. But much of the catalog consists of materials promoting right-wing militias and right-wing conspiracy theories, and books by notorious fascists and antisemites such as Eustace Mullins. I went over to Mann, who did not recognize me, and began to question him. Within minutes he was telling me that the MAI was the work of a conspiracy organized by the mysterious "Black Nobility" and the "International Bankers". The anti-Jewish code words were obvious. Soon Mann was telling me that the antisemitic forgery The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion was authentic, that the Nazi Holocaust had never occurred, that the contemporary Jews were not Jews at all but descendants of the Turkish Khazars, and that the fascist Eustace Mullins was "a brilliant researcher"." 18

In Ottawa, Icke's key organizer is Tom J. Kennedy. Kennedy was responsible for much of the organizational detail of Icke's October 1999 speaking tour in Ottawa, Toronto, and Windsor, Ontario, also acting as his gofer and driver. 19 But Kennedy's activities do not stop there. He is an active supporter of Canada's DeTax movement, a far right current that imitates the tax-resistance strategies of the Freemen and other Christian Patriot groups in the U.S. 20 Kennedy's web site also promotes Glen Kealey's conspiracist workshops, and other similar endeavours. 21 And his politics become even clearer when one reads the materials Kennedy has posted on the internet over his own name. On January 18, 1999, he posted an article attacking usury [a favourite code word among the far right for the international Jewish Bankers Conspiracy]. 22 He had originally found this article on a British web site, and liked it so much he reposted it to his own list. The British group that had written the article, Final Conflict, is one of Britain's hard-core neo-nazi groups, whose web site carries articles entitled "Did Six Million Really Die" and slogans reading "Long Live Death." 23 Four months later, on May 6, 1999 Kennedy posted an article on secret societies he had picked up from the Hoffman Wire. 24 The Hoffman Wire is a far-right Holocaust denial organization based in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, not far from the headquarters of Aryan Nations. 25

Kennedy's web site now carries an article "Fear NOT - The Ultimate Label "Anti-Semitic", which clarifies his endorsement of Icke's politics: "I have always been motivated to find out the real reasons why particular researchers and historians get targeted with the ultimate label "Anti-Semitic" and other lesser labels such as "Neo-Nazi" and "Racist" Needless to say, I was motivated to follow the information in search of reasons why David Icke was being so labelled during his Ontario `99 tour.... Perhaps the unfair labelling of researchers as "Anti-Semites" has a hidden agenda to keep people from seeking the "truth?" Or could this whole "Anti-Semitic" labelling be another "divide and conquer" deflection to keep us busy while the real 10,000 year agenda of the Freemasons and Bilderbergers is being completed? Just wondering??" 26 In probability, the labelling of Tom Kennedy as anti-Semitic might have more to do with his stated support for Holocaust denier David Irving ("a meticulous historical researcher" 27), or with his pal Ernst Zundel, who told Kennedy in the early 1980's "Tom, you are writing about the usurious money system which reaps the Financial Elite multiple millions annually. What you are writing about is even more sacred than "the holocaust", so be very careful for your well-being!!" 28

David Icke's associations with the extreme right are not confined to Canada, nor are they only a recent phenomenon. One of the most ominous instances of this was documented in an article in the London Evening Standard concerning Icke's 1995 speaking tour of Britain to promote his newest book, The Robot's Rebellion. Journalist Mark Honigsbaum reported that "what worries the Jewish community most is that Icke's veiled anti-Semitic references are now attracting the attention of more sinister British forces, in particular Combat 18, the neo-Nazi group which recruits among football's violent hooligan fringe. The Jewish Chronicle has reported how Combat 18 has taken to publicizing Icke's current tour in its internal journal, Putsch. Citing Icke's recent lecture in Glastonbury, Putsch claimed that Icke "spoke of "the sheep" and how the Zionist-operated government, sorry, "Illuminati", uses them for its own ends." The Combat 18 report continued: "He began to talk about the big conspiracy by a group of bankers, media moguls, etc. - always being clever enough not to mention what all these had in common"." 29

Combat 18 is fascist. The numbers do not stand for "eighteen" but for "one - eight", the first and eighth letters of the alphabet. A and H, as in Adolph Hitler. C18 was for much of the 90's the most important and the most violent organization in the British neo-Nazi movement, with a number of murders to its credit. 30 C18 has now fallen on hard times. Its main leader, Charlie Sargent, is serving a life term for the first degree murder of one of his own followers, and the group itself promptly split in two over a bitter struggle over finances; but none of this prevented it from carrying out two bombings in black and Bangladeshi neighbourhoods in London last summer, or of being suspected in the bombing of a gay pub that killed two and sent 60 people to hospital. 31 Such are David Icke's friends and associates.

Despite this record, Icke enjoys a surprising degree of support from unexpected quarters. Connie Fogal, married to the long-time leftie alderman Harry Rankin, has had her organization, the Defence of Canadian Liberty Association, set up a literature table at one of Icke's appearances. Paul Hellyer's Canada Action Party also had a table at Icke's last Vancouver speech. Icke is listed as a contributor to the supposedly left-wing tabloid The Radical, published in Quesnel and distributed widely throughout B.C. And Icke's tours have been advertised in local New Age publications like Shared Vision and Common Ground.

The fact is that some of what Icke says has a resonance in these quarters. He's against world conspiracies, free trade, the MAI, the WTO and corporate globalism. Many of his far right supporters are active in other areas as well: cannabis legalization, alternative health, anti-corporate activism, even support for native sovereignty struggles like Gustavsen Lake. It's long overdue for the left, the environmental movement, feminists, anti-WTO activists, lesbians and gays, and yes, even New Agers, to start looking more closely at Icke and his friends. The advocates of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism will seldom if ever reveal their real agenda. They prefer to work in the shadows, using coded language, building patiently for a new and improved Reich. The threat they pose is no less real simply because it doesn't register on the radar screen. Yet.

All we need to do is look at Austria to see why these politics have to be confronted, isolated and defeated, and the price we will all pay if they are not.

David Icke may not have many followers, here, (though I suspect he actually does) but Alex Jones followers are clearly here. They even post regularly here on indymedia.

Jones may not be as severe a whack job as Icke, but he appeals to the same sort of impulses and tendencies, using just enough truth to lend his insane conspiracy theories credibility to feeble-minded xenophobes and homophobes in order to demonize (and ultimately setup for attack and persecution) leftists, who are his real target -- as is the case with all fascists. It's easier to rally the troops for "culture war" by appealing to the most base prejudices and superstitions in society and snaring leftists in the net as "collatoral damage", rather than trying to win people directly to an elitist, autocratic program and making leftists the direct target.

Why mention Alex Jones instead of Nader. Nader clearly represents the "acceptable" face of third positionism. Remember his presdential campaign when he shared a platform with arch-xenophobe Pat Buchanan? Whether dealing with free trade or immigration the greens and the extreme right share more in common than many people care to admit. Ditto with the extreme left and the extreme right. In may cases its hard to keep the two apart.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/09/08/oregon/index.html

Black copters over Oregon
President Bush visits rural Oregon to tout his forest plan. Suddenly, huge fires burn. Now a small town is consumed by conspiracy theories.

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By Bill Donahue

Sept. 8, 2003 | SISTERS, Ore. -- The helicopters were indeed black, and when they came thwocking through the clear blue skies above Redmond, Ore., on the afternoon of Aug. 19, Don Berry happened to be having a slow day selling campers and fifth wheels at Courtesy RV. "We just stood there in the lot, my friend Chuck and me, watching," he says before launching into a bit of detail that government sources will not confirm. "They were Chinook military helicopters -- huge things with round noses. There were three of them, and they were moving in tight formation, lollygagging over the woods, zigzagging near [the town of] Sisters and out toward Black Butte," some 25 miles to the northwest.

The copters were in Central Oregon, officials from the U.S. Forest Service would later note, to do reconnaissance in advance of an Aug. 21 visit to the dry, wooded region by President George W. Bush. "They were doing routine surveillance," according to Ron Pugh, a Forest Service special agent. The president planned to speak in Camp Sherman, a little town near Black Butte, and to call, controversially, for the "thinning" of 20 million acres of fire-prone public forests.

Don Berry is detached from the fray over Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative, but as the choppers flew near Sisters that day, he gazed skyward for much of their 90-minute flight. "They came right over the top of us," he remembers, "and we watched them land, and then I looked up at the mountains, where they'd flown."

"Chuck," Berry said at that point, "I hope what I'm seeing out there is a cloud."

It was not a cloud. That afternoon, Forest Service lookouts detected high columns of smoke rising from what would soon be called the Bear Butte and Booth fires. The fires were initially about 14 miles apart. They were first noted within two hours of one another -- at 1:30 p.m. and 3:23 p.m., respectively -- and they quickly became sprawling infernos. Still burning, they have now merged and have eaten across nearly 90,000 acres of remote forest dominated by lodgepole pine and Douglas fir.

The "B & B" fires were first noticed 11 days after Central Oregon's most recent lightning storm, and they are now doing battle with 2,200 soot-smeared firefighters, most of whom are camping out on the rodeo grounds near Sisters. The fires have cost taxpayers over $20 million in firefighting fees; forced hundreds of homeowners to temporarily evacuate; closed roads; and thrashed Central Oregon's tourist economy. As yet, though, no one knows how the fires started; no one can say whether the helicopters had anything to do with the flames.

Which means that speculation is spreading like, well, wildfire. On the virtuous, leftmost edge of Oregon's political universe, out where the arugula is organic and the coffee shade-grown, a theory is taking root. Bush's cronies set the fires, supposedly, so as to create the perfect backdrop for the president's speech. It's obvious. Just look at the photo ops he got out of the fires -- at the way many Oregon TV stations appointed their stories on Bush's visit with blazing footage from the B & B fires. When Bush addressed 600 invitation-only Republicans at a resort called Sunriver on Aug. 21 (he was smoked out of Camp Sherman), he didn't even need to allude to the B & B Complex. His pyro henchmen had already ensured that that the videotape did all the talking. The trees gotta go, the pictures were saying, or every forest will burn just like this one.

The W-plays-with-matches theory emerges at a pivotal moment. Bush is now trying to rally support for a congressional bill that would give his year-old Healthy Forest Initiative some teeth. House Bill 1904 -- passed by the House and soon to get a Senate hearing -- would suspend environmental and judicial review of most fire-prone timber sales and would enable loggers to harvest some old growth trees that are not now federally protected. Environmentalists worry that the bill's passage would give the president a ticket to make good on his stated hope of doubling logging in Western forests. They say they're loath to let him market his plan by setting a couple of fires. As is common among liberals and leftists, there is much fuel for their anger -- the 2000 Florida election, the erosion of civil liberties, the Iraq war. Here, environmental issues are especially important. They already hate Bush for weakening the Endangered Species Act and for derailing what they saw as a hopeful trend. Under Clinton, the Forest Service was getting greener. Now the agency is taking direction from a former timber lobbyist -- Mark Rey, the undersecretary of agriculture.

Portland's daily newspaper, the Oregonian, and Oregon Public Broadcasting have given serious coverage to the argument that Bush allies may have set the fire. But larger environmental groups such as the Oregon Natural Resources Council have shied away from it, perhaps for fear of appearing paranoid, and so the conspiracy theory may never get a full hearing outside of a few funky cafes.

Randy Wight doubts the helicopters had anything to do with the flames. Wight is a captain for the Deschutes County, Ore., Sheriff's Office and the coordinator of the Central Oregon Arson Task Force, which is now single-handedly investigating the B & B fires -- and planning to release a report on their cause next week. "I don't have any indication that it was political arson," Wight told me. "The only people discussing that is the media." Wight went on to say that the fires could have been started by a lightning strike whose fire smoldered for days, held in check for a time by the rain that came with the thunder. "Humans could have ignited the fires accidentally," he added. "We really just don't know what started them, and at this point we're not foreclosing any possibility."

The task force is a 15-year-old group comprised, in part, of reps from the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Oregon State Police and five local fire departments. Environmentalist Joe Keating is dubious of the group's claims to neutrality. "The fox is guarding the chicken coop," says Keating, the issues coordinator for the 500-member Oregon Wildlife Federation. (He is also a part-time issues coordinator for the Sierra Club.)

Keating notes that, if the fires are deemed to be human-caused, investigators will then take direction from the agency whose land is burning -- in this case, the Forest Service. And, he argues, "the Forest Service has a vested interest in saying it wasn't arson. Their boss, Mark Rey, likes Bush; he likes the Healthy Forest Initiative."

Keating has made a solo, and as-yet unheeded, call on the FBI and the Oregon governor's office to launch their own investigations of the B & B fires. "I smell a rat," he says. "These fires were the perfect backdrop for Bush to talk about his forest plan."

Keating, 60, is a former Army lieutenant and investment banker who lives near me in Portland, riding his bicycle everywhere, a fisherman's hat askew on his sparse horseshoe of white hair. Over the years, he has helped launched Oregon's Pacific Green Party and also headed up a "Yellow Bikes" program, which saw him scattering unlocked, donated old bicycles around Portland, so that pedestrians could hop on, gratis, and ride. He is a socially nimble fellow who has at times slipped into a gray suit and tie to lobby in Washington, D.C. But in his pursuit of fire justice, he has enlisted some rather fringy and colorful scouts to search for hard evidence. One of them is named Russ Taylor; I called him too.

"I'm backing up a logging road at the moment," Taylor said over his crackling cell. "I'm following up on a credible lead from a woman here in Detroit, and --"

"Detroit?" I asked. Detroit is a small Oregon town over 20 miles northwest of where the B & B fires started.

"This woman," Taylor continued, undeterred, "used to work for the Forest Service. She was the secretary for this guy who was a real 7-foot timber beast -- they called him Chainsaw Dave -- and her son, he was out in the woods here and he saw a young man in his 20s. This is way out in the middle of Bumfuck, Egypt, and the young man was wearing a blue, lined fleece jacket. Now, I've been around pilots and that's what they wear." Taylor alleged that the pilot was a Bush operative, and that he touched down to set fires.

"But what difference does a fire in Detroit make?" I asked.

"You make it look like there's a pattern," Taylor explained. "You set a fire here, you set a fire there, and then everybody just says, 'Oh, it's just a dry day. The woods are burning all over the place.'

When I remained unconvinced, Taylor continued emphatically: "Look, we can't give you a smoking gun on a silver platter. I'm sorry, but if you're a real investigative reporter, you'll need to do some digging around. You'll need to go out to Sisters yourself."

He was right, of course. I packed and got in the car.

The drive east from Portland, over Mount Hood to Sisters, 160 miles away, is essentially a journey from green, fecund lushness into a tinder box. You ride up through the rain shadow of the Cascades, and then, soon after you begin rolling down the east flank of Hood, the grass by the roadside becomes tawny and wispy. The smell of sage is pungent, and the woods are piled with the downed trunks of spindly, brittle dead trees. Here and there you see stands of completely charred forests: naked black trees straight and limbless as telephone poles.

Like much of the American West, Oregon has felt the ill effects of Smokey Bear and his 50-plus year campaign to tame nature and its inevitable wildfires. Though the Forest Service now manages "controlled burns," many long-suppressed blazes are erupting with a coiled vengeance. Hundreds of thousands of forested acres have burned in Oregon over the past five years. House Bill 1904, co-sponsored by Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., is a direct response to what he calls "catastrophic wildfires." It's also a sort of litmus test in ever-evolving Central Oregon.

The region, which encompasses Bend, population 52,000, and six or eight much smaller burghs scattered across the western fringe of Oregon's expansive high desert, is emblematic of the new American West, where, mountain bikers, vegans and tourists commingle with rock-ribbed loggers and ranchers. It's a region where the ham and eggs breakfast has been supplanted, in large part, by fresh bagels and cappuccino. The residents get along, mostly; they tend to refrain from frothing on political matters. But a plain fact is that the old stalwarts generally regard HB 1904 as a cool breeze of common sense. The newcomers and their allies tend to see the bill as a manifesto for butchery. They're hoping to find a cigarette lighter with a "W" on it.

Hoping against hope, maybe. Forest arson is a damnably difficult crime to trace. There are no witnesses, typically, and the evidence burns. Ron Pugh, who also serves as an investigator for Central Oregon's Arson Task Force, estimates that his group catches fire starters "less than 5 percent of the time," and he notes that the Booth fire may prove uncommonly tough. The wind has shifted over the ignition point two or three times and the evidence, if such exists, has been quite thoroughly cooked and recooked.

Once I pulled into Sisters, population 1,080, and became acclimated to the smoky haze hanging in the cloudless sky there, I had little choice but to begin my digging at the local organic bakery/cafe, a place called Angeline's. I bought a gluten-free muffin and then wandered back to the green grass of the patio and spoke with the members of a Sisters band called the Blue D'Arts, who were setting up to play an evening of acoustic folk.

"You'd think it wouldn't be possible," said the D'Arts' lanky guitarist Dennis McGregor, "that Bush would start a fire just to be expedient. Would he really that be that deceptive, that cruel? Yeah, that's how he does everything -- the election, for instance."

An hour or so later, McGregor was inciting the crowd. "Was it a brush fire or a Bush fire?" he crowed from the stage. "Who started the fire?"

"Bush!" The response was unanimous, and rather spirited. Angeline's has a beer and wine license. By dusk, in fact, there were about 50 people sipping away in the cool evening air. I wandered among them. Several folks spoke of seeing three Marine One helicopters flying over the now-burnt areas early on the afternoon of Aug. 19. "They were flying so low, it was scary," bartender Karly Lusby told me.

Up the street at a bar called Bronco Billy's, a somewhat schnookered source, speaking on the promise that he would remain anonymous, told me that a Forest Service lookout spoke of the copters over his radio -- and then heard his boss say, "You didn't see that." The story echoed something I'd read in an e-mail Russ Taylor forwarded to me -- an anonymous note about a "guy ... working in the woods" who suddenly found his cell phone inoperable, the signal scrambled, as the copters flew overhead.

I wanted something a little more solid, so I went back to Angeline's and spoke to co-owner Henry Rhett, who, I'd been told, had the skinny on some timing devices supposedly found near the spot where the Booth fire began. "I feel sheepish even mentioning it," he told me, "because what I heard was like fifth-hand."

I decided, at this juncture, that I needed a drink. I ordered a Mirror Pond ale and then, luckily, found someone who could elucidate the rumors swirling around me. Bonnie Malone, 56, is a chiropractor/social activist who is arguably the dean of Sisters' liberal community. (The Chamber of Commerce named her "Citizen of the Year" for 2002.) "People here are scared of what's going to happen if House Bill 1904 passes," she said. "Timber companies have stolen from the woods near here before."

Malone noted that many Sisters residents still remember Layton and Bartlett, a Bend logging firm whose principals were, in 1990, found guilty of illegally cutting 1,800 trees -- federally protected old-growth -- about 10 miles south of Sisters. James W. Layton and Frederick W. Bartlett each drew 18 months in federal prison.

Now the loggers are "after our old-growth again," Malone said. "It's hard not to be skeptical of a forest plan that bypasses environmental review. Why do we have to cut these trees down so fast, without even considering the facts? Didn't we just rush into the Iraq war like that?"

Malone wore a denim jacket and peace symbol earrings, and as she leaned toward me and spoke, her manner was quiet, concerned. She took pains to convince me that Sisters was not split asunder by forest politics. "Most of my friends are Republicans," she said, and then she pointed me toward the most ardent among them.

John Zapel, 39, was reading a book on the aerospace industry when I met him the next day in the vinyl-upholstered booth of a Sisters restaurant called the Gallery. "I'm a nerd," he told me. "I'm the guy who carried a briefcase in high school." Pale-complected with sandy blond hair and glasses, Zapel ran a logging company until last year, when he sold his equipment and became, reluctantly, a logger for hire and a part-time lecturer on topics like "fuel load reduction" in dry forests.

"It was those guys who never take showers that drove me out of the business," he said. "Earth Liberation Front types. For 10 years, I got vandalized constantly. The last time they did $420,000 worth of damage to my harvester. They burnt it to a crisp and then they wrote all over the cab: 'Stop Killing Trees.'" Zapel showed me some pictures of the ruined machinery. "The lunatic fringe does exist," he said, "and that's the first place I'd look now. It's a good bet that these fires were set by ELF or some goofy thing like that. Consider their track record -- the apartment building they burned in San Diego, that ski lift at Vail."

I couldn't fathom why enviros would burn trees.

"The president's coming and they believe in disruption of process. They're saboteurs." Zapel stabbed a fork at his french fries. His right hand was missing two fingers, thanks to an ax. "Eugene is just two hours away," he reminded me, "and that's the premier bastion of the whole anarchist movement."

Eventually, Zapel and I stepped outside, onto the sidewalk. The smoky haze was still there, and the sight made him angry. "The most disgusting thing to me is that this didn't need to happen," he said. "We could've gone in there and thinned. We could've reduced the fuels on those forests. But now they're gone, and for the next 40 years we're staring at a Holocaust. That's sad for everybody." Back in Portland, I talked one last time with Joe Keating, of the Oregon Wildlife Federation, and his scout Russ Taylor. We met for morning coffee, and Taylor, a 50-something freelance photographer, showed up at the cafe wearing a white straw Stetson. In his arms, he bore an aerial photograph he'd taken of a forest ravaged by clear-cuts. "The pilot who flew me that day died a very mysterious death soon after the photo was taken," he said. "His plane crashed just after takeoff, and there were no mechanical problems."

"Russ," Keating implored in soothing tones, "Russ."

"Yeah, I'm one of those conspiracy theorists," Taylor continued, "and this goes real deep for me. It goes back to when a logging truck ran over my dog when I was 4. It goes back to when I was 8 and a bunch of redneck kids stole the hunting knife my father gave me as he was dying."

Keating had both elbows on the table now, and he was cradling his bald head in his hands, his brow wrinkled as he looked down at a newspaper. Here was a man trying to do something very old-school and American (it was Thomas Jefferson, remember, who championed "unremitting vigilance"), and yet he was finding himself mixed up with what he gently called "loose cannons and wing nuts." What on earth enabled him to soldier on?

Optimism and chipper resolve. "We want to get to the bottom of this quickly," he said, "before the trees are all gone, and I'll tell you, if that report comes out and it says the fires were not arson, then I'll scream and yell. Then I'll bring in the Sierra Club and all the other big groups and we'll say, 'This is exactly why we called for an independent investigation.' If they say it is arson, then I ask questions: 'Are you considering political arson? What is your time frame?' If the smell increases, I increase."

Keating grinned. "These fires are my favorite thing to talk about right now," he said, "but I gotta go." He tapped his newspaper, rolled now, against the table one time and then he stood up, a sturdy old guy in a T-shirt with a picture of an artichoke on it, and he strolled away down the street toward his office. His campaign to "shine the light of truth" on the planet's most powerful political figure was still on.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Bill Donahue is a writer based in Portland, Ore.

Letter to the Norwich Evening News letters section:

Dear Sirs,

What we fight we inevitably become and so it is with the "Anti-Nazi" League and their blatantly Nazi behaviour.

I remember talking to a police officer who used to police the marches in London of the pathetic National Front and the, equally pathetic, "Anti-Nazi" League. He said he was stunned to see that, in terms of behaviour and attitude, he could not tell the difference between the two. I know exactly what he means.

Now we have the latest example of this in the "campaign" of outright lies and innuendo that led to my talk at a Norwich bookshop being cancelled. The reason for the cancellation was not because I am "anti-Semitic", but simply because the staff at the store made the decision that they could not cope with the threat of an ongoing protest by these anti-nazi Nazis and continue to do their daily work efficiently.

I wonder if anyone in Norwich has considered the simple implications of all this? That their city, which most would consider to be free, can so easily be controlled by the mindless mob. They only have to threaten, let alone act. It is the fascist mentality that seeks to impose its will on everyone else and that is what the "Anti Nazi" League has done to the people of Norwich.

It has dictated to the entire population what it will and will not be allowed to hear in this case and yet there has been not a squeak of protest from this newspaper or anyone else, aside from those who have read my books and know that what is being claimed about me is staggering nonsense.

When that deeply evil Nazi regime was coming to power in Germany (supported by Wall Street and the City of London) they broke up and prevented public meetings of those who were warning the German people of the real agenda of Hitler and his fascists. The very same mentality is displayed today by the "Anti-Nazi" League.

Ironically, I am warning in my books and talks that after the war the fascists simply swapped their swastikas and jackboots for business suits and briefcases and that this same force controls the world today at the top of politics, banking, and transnational business.

But what do I get for such a detailed and sourced expose in three substantial books, one of which was funded by a Jewish friend? I am prevented from speaking because of threatened protests from the "Anti-Nazi" League for being "anti-Semitic". If it were not so tragic for our basic freedoms it would be hilarious.

When such protests have been mounted at some of my events around the world, friends, some of them Jewish or married into Jewish families, have asked the protestors why they were there. The conversation always takes the same course:

"Why are you protesting against David Icke?"

"Because he's an anti-Semitic fascist".

"Have you ever read his books?"

"No."

"Have you ever heard him speak?"

"No."

"Are you going to come in and listen now then?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because he's a fascist."

Such a mentality is so devoid of logic and reason that any sensible dialog is impossible. Yet this same concrete mindset is capable, with the minimum of effort, of stopping me speaking in public. Can there be a more profound confirmation that our freedoms are an illusion? And, people of Norwich, when my freedom of speech is denied by such fascism, so, by implication, is yours.

At the same time, the Norwich Evening News felt it was fair and reasonable to report the comments of the "Anti Nazi" League while making no effort worth the name to contact me for a reply. And, more than that, the reporter quoted me as calling for the teaching of the holocaust to be given less prominence in schools.

Oh really? When I asked this newspaper when or where I ever made that statement I was informed that the reporter had made a "mistake" and was, in fact, quoting someone else and not me. How comforting to know that the people of Norwich are being so well informed every evening.

When similar protests were mounted in Brighton I appeared on a radio station with a member of the "Anti-Nazi" League. He said that the protests would only stop when I condemned the Nazi regime and their treatment of Jews. As I have done so many times in my books, and believe that passionately, I had no problem saying what he asked for. What happened? The protests continued and the event was cancelled. Never let the facts spoil a good protest.

So let me make it clear yet again. The global conspiracy I am exposing is NOT, repeat NOT, a Jewish plot. The treatment of Jews, gypsies, and communists, etc, in the Nazi concentration camps was a scar on the face of humanity, as was the genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia, and so many other mass atrocities.

Could I possibly be clearer where I stand? But will it make any difference to the clones at rent-a-mob, sorry the "Anti-Nazi" League? No. Not a jot.

Yours faithfully,
David Icke

I note that Icke here does not even bother to address at all his use of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion - he just implies that he has jewish friends and friends who married jewish people. He doesn't address criticisms of his ideas about lizards colonizing earth from Mars.
The germans have done a lot more thinking about this sort of thing than anyone else this century, and they mostly have concluded that small nazi-like groups are dangerous and should be addressed immediately without waiting for them to gain power and momentum. That is why they restrict some of the activities of the Church of scientology and so forth.

David Icke is a complete fruitloop.He beloves that the world is controlled be reptalian aliens.I think his ideas are ripped off from a T.V. show in the eighties called "V".It stared Robert Ungland of Freddy Curger fame.

Yes, Loki, I think you're right about Icke. What I think is really funny is that the pro-Zionist Jewish faction expends so much energy denouncing this guy. I actually know a couple of people who buy into his theories, and they all belong to a weird new-age cult. Although they oppose Zionism, they are totally anti-racist. They actually believe that white children deserve to suffer physical and mental abuse for being born white (I guess that's a pretty typical POV these days, though).

If Icke and his followers are fighting the Zionists, that's fine by me. Let them beat each other to smithereens, so that normal people can turn their attention to more pressing matters, such as the impending energy crisis. Maybe, just to keep things even, we should send Icke some cash to keep him going.

What's the deal with this guy? I've heard multiple times that people who link or are linked to his site get tons of hits. What draws so many people to him? Do that many people believe the stuff he says? I haven't read any of this things, but everything I read that talks about him makes him out to be insane.

it lets them off the hook. If we are ruled by space reptiles, resistance is futile. To submit is prudence, not cowardice. But if people face the truth about who really rules us, they must either take action, or face the truth about themselves, that they are cowards.

Face the truth, you are all living in a computer simulation.

According to most of you learned people, individuals who do not succumb to the prevailing mind-set of the masses must believe in conspiracies.
There are no conspiracies, everything is out in the open. How do you think any of these people come up with their ideas?

If Christ were to walk amongst you and teach, you would also ridicule him.

first off - he said we are ´all´ the sons of god - we are all amazing - not just him. It absurd for him to be called racist or anything close to it. For anyone who has read his work would know.

"Infinite love is the only truth - everything else is illusion" - icke

he said turquoise was the color of the universe - it came out years later that he was right.

main site:
http://davidicke.com/icke/index1a.html for starters.

interview with him about 911, the world after:
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/icke.html

6 hour free video of a speech he gave back in 99:
http://www.ufon.org/html/david_icke_video.html

has a few interviews on the page - a new one came up recently from july. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
http://www.newsforthesoul.com/intro-icke/main2.htm

interview with credo mutwa - african zulu shaman / historian
http://www.metatech.org/credo_mutwa.html

check http://www.rense.com for numerous archived interviews. also u could find tons by typing his name into search engines


Personally, as a very brief summary of what i think of his work, i think he´s got it - sometimes i think he may take his ideas a bit far, but nontheless on. I take his overall message very seriously, and so I write this. I´ve follwed his various books etc for a few years now and you can truly see an evolution within his thinking. I know he went through a period that seemed to be more focused on the neg aspects of what has been happening, as more of a unified consciousness experiencing our world that we created. It seemed to be a part of his growing spiritually that he had to go through.

I saw him speak once last year for 8 hours. I had been following his stuff for a bit so i figured i should see first hand what he was about. I wanted to get a ´feel´ for him as a person. (There seems to be quite a bit of negative reading out there directed towards him, and to be honest I had some thoughts of my own about the way he was approaching some of the material - i try to buy into fear based info - knowledge is one thing, but fear is another)

That was a sort of turning point within my view of the the scenario layed out in front of us. I walked out of that room so full of energy and ready to take on anything. It honestly was amazing. Since then i´ve been fairly interested in what he has to say.

The best way to expose a lie is to prove it is in fact a lie.To all those who think David Icke is a "fruitloop"..I ask you to prove him to be one..You may say, "this is waste of my time."And that is fine by me I guess.All it takes is a little digging outside the "mainstream" walls to realize this man might be on to something.His book is an expression of how he views this world.And I admit that his results are very interesting , to me atleast.He concludes that the only sollution to our problems is love..How can this cause such a stir?Love Bush,Love Jews,Love Allah,Love Space Reptiles if you believe in them..it doesn't matter.All those who make an effort to mock Mr.Icke.You only prove his point..but atleast you made the effort.

"Love Bush,Love Jews,Love Allah,Love Space Reptiles if you believe in them..it doesn't matter"


Wake up, take that healing crystal out of your ass, and smell the shit.

"I will love everyone. I will love the police as they kick the shit out of me on the street." -- Frank Zappa

Why so negative?correct me if I'm wrong, but your comment seemed a little negative??No?That is what I have trouble understanding..Can you brief me on what you mean with the hole "healing crystal out of my ass " thing?Although maybe I'll leave it up there..cause I feel great so why change it. Also, could you let me know what the shit smells like ??Maybe I'm missing something here?

Cheers

IT'S ALL A "JEWISH PLOT"?
NO WAY.
By David Icke

"I hear some people say that the global conspiracy is simply a Jewish plot against the world. I say those people are profoundly wrong in this view. The mass of the Jewish people are pawns in the global game, just like the mass of the Islamic people, those of Asia and China, the so-called "West", and every other region of this planet.

What we need to understand - and urgently - is that the Illuminati place their operatives in positions of power over all countries, cultures, and faiths and these heirachies manipulate them to a common end. It is on the leadership of these peoples that we need to focus and not condemn an entire population for the actions and attitudes of the few at the top, who are placed there to work to a common end.

It's not "the Jews" anymore than it's "the Americans" or "the British" or "the Muslims". It's the network that manipulates and divides and rules all peoples and just as Jewish people were grotesquely exploited by the Illuminati in Nazi Germany, so they will be again in the current stage of the global agenda.

We need to seek common cause between all exploited and manipulated peoples, of whatever faith or genetic origin. All shall be free or none shall be free. It is time to wake up and grow up - fast.

- David Icke

The problem with this type of thinking is that it places the blame for the problems of society on a small number of bad individuals at the top. These people are indeed bad, but blaming everything on their conspiracies (and this group does indeed meet and plan things in little rooms), is that you could remove this set of bad people, and we would quickly have the same situation again.

What is the illuminati - does that exist? in any case, it's not important, because what we have now is exactly what you'd expect under this system. Just like people could have predicted that communism would pretty much fail (although china and cuba are chugging along) because central planning would make wrong decisions for what to make, and people wouldn't like being told by the gov't what their job is, and they would have no incentive to work - these are institutional flaws in the idea of communism. Capitalism is similarly institutionally flawed because there will always be an incentive to cut corners in terms of dodging environmental costs or treating workers acceptably (see all the people working for slave wages around the world). Capitalism has a built in tendency to move towards monopolies where a very small number of people control everything, and thus would have the power to influence the government to change regulations in ways that will further increase their power. So if you remove one group of conspiratorial controllers of monopolistic companies, a group of others are waiting in the wings.

In response to the last posted message.Are you saying that if we were to remove the elite people in power, their void would be filled with another corrupt group?Where is your hope?I understand that the world is in a shitty state.All of the more reason to change the current state, all the more reason to have hope(or faith), and our belief that this is possible is of greatest importance.I believe that lack of faith has got us into this mess.We must believe that there is good on this earth, and it is worth fighting for.The state of our world is a reflection of our conflict within.The battle field is in our hearts. Sounds corny, but its true..Remember that there are other forces at work than just evil..Faith and action will bring upon changes we cannot at this time believe possible. But first we must believe

peace and love is a barrel of kittens.
.... no no no, wait. according to peace & love guru David Icke, it is about giant lizards colonizing the earth from mars, and how 'the jews' are a bad group conspiring against everyone else.

To the last posting....Seems as though we have another person who is ready to condem David Icke but is lacking the info. David talking about a "Jewish plot " is getting old and repetitive. Please have the courage to read his book front to back! ...I feel most "anit icke" fans have not done this. In fact they must not have. Maybe you have read a couple articles on his website??I had doubts about David Icke once so I went to see him live actually. My doubt were cast aside. People of all races were there..Including some Jewish. The energy was high, like the natural high you get from live music.This man spoke with passion for almost 9 hours.It was remarkable. You left that place wanting to be a better person.Not once did I hear David lay blame on anyone for the problems of the world .What he and countless others are trying to say is that battles lies within. Maybe so many condem him due to fear of judging themselves. David stands for truth,love,integrity, and courage. But I'm sure you may find a way to label and discredit me. Thats ok. You just prove your own insecurity.

"I may not like what you say, but I will die for you to have the right to say it."

Peace

You think *this* is getting old and repetitive??

Try getting onto one of th zionist threads . . . . its an infinite loop of insanity. This is nothing. The zionists will say almost anything over and over to try to rewrite history, no matter how absurd it is.

I agree, we should send Icke some money to keep the zionists busy a little while longer.

To the last posting.

I don't think you understood the "Jewish plot getting old." I think the person was trying to prove that the connection between David Icke and Anit-semitism is getting old..and these postings deal with the alleged connection of the two subjects..

they came riding in on these shitstained clouds and we hit'em with the cloudbusters.

The Anti-Racist Action group are the most racists becuase they are obsessed with race. Most people don't care about race just the ones who cannot embrace their own inner racists thought and ideas. david icke is not a racists he does not even talk about it. Just ARA does ALL the time.

Its good to see David Icke getting all this attention. It means one thing: HE'S ON TO SOMETHING. Its always easy to attack what we are afraid and ignorant of. I have read a few of David's books and seen some of his videos. In my humble opinion he is a great man. He is a lover of all people, including Jews of course, since they are just people like the rest of us. To lable him anti-semitic is simply ludicrous. Like me, he may be anti-zionist, but certainly not anti-semetic. I'm not into his reptile thing, but I think he has that in there just so he gets left alone, but the message he has (that there really is a globalist cabal intent on creating a one world govt and enslavement of the masses and destruction of democracy) gets out to those who can read between the lines. David Icke, you rock! Keep it up!

Unfortunately with the toxic combination of too much media and not enough personal interest to even bother reading original source material, misunderstanding arises. If those that bothered commenting would actually take the time to read the text they are commenting on, their conclusions would not only be different but might also be accurate. To accuse Icke of anti-semitism is like accusing Ghandi of being a pervert. Icke makes it clear in every single book that he is opposed to hate and negativity in any form. Ironically, for those who have read his books and followed his growth, he has moved from a tangible, finger-pointing conspiracy theorist into a leader of loving at all costs. There are clearly some things about Icke that could lead a skeptic to believe that he has actually become part of this conspiracy. The solution for all of this is not to be found in pie-throwing, but in pure pursuit of the truth and the honest examination of all possibilities.