GETTING A LIFT FROM AZERBAIJAN

Giving them anti-missile radar is a great idea - look at what they've done with Viagra. Henry_Allen
Azerbaijan amenable to anti-missile radar
MOSCOW (AP) — Officials in Azerbaijan, a nation with a huge oil reserves and a record that has been criticized by human rights advocates, on Friday welcomed Moscow's call to use a Russian-leased radar installation in their country as the cornerstone of a proposed U.S. anti-missile system.

Elmar Mammadyarov, Azerbaijan's foreign minister, said in the capital of Baku that the proposal "can only bring more stability into the region because it can lead to more predictable actions in the region."

Novruz Mamedov, head of the Azerbaijani presidential administration's international relations department, told Russia's Rossiya TV that "such cooperation can have a very strong and positive impact on the situation in the world as a whole.

"If such countries as Russia and the U.S. cooperate, they will have common interests and it will prevent tensions," he said.

For weeks, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the U.S. plan to build a missile interceptor base in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic, saying the system was aimed at Russia's strategic arsenal.

Then on Thursday, Putin caught President Bush off guard by urging that the Soviet-era radar installation at Gabala, in northeast Azerbaijan, be used instead as part of a joint U.S.-Russian missile shield. On Friday, he suggested the missile intercepter base could be in Turkey or at sea.

A Russian military expert said the Gabala installation was built to track U.S. bombers and submarine-launched missiles from the Indian Ocean.

The Bush administration has said it seeks to counter future missile threats to Europe from Iran, which Washington fears is developing nuclear weapons.

Azerbaijan, a former Soviet nation of 8.5 million about the size of Maine, is on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, flanked by Russia to the north and Iran to the south. It is one of the countries in Central and South Asia that the U.S. has turned to since the Sept. 11 attacks, despite their mixed records on human rights and democracy.

The government in Baku has contributed 150 soldiers to the war in Iraq and 20 to coalition military forces in Afghanistan.

According to a Council of Europe report last year, Baku has served as a refueling stop for CIA aircraft shuttling terror suspects to secret prisons.

The country has rich oil and natural gas deposits — Baku was one of the first oil boomtowns in the 19th century. But according to government statistics, nearly one-fifth of the population lives in poverty.

Azerbaijani authorities have been criticized by rights groups and the U.S. government for their hostility to independent and opposition journalists.

Human Rights Watch says that over the past year or so, authorities have prosecuted and imprisoned seven journalists, mostly on charges of criminal libel and "insult." Journalists are also attacked and threatened with violence, the group said.

The State Department's human rights report for 2006 said the Azerbaijani government engages in the arbitrary arrest and detention of political opponents.

The country is also the site of one of the "frozen conflicts" left over from the post-Soviet era. Azerbaijan and Armenia are at odds over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that is inside Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenian forces since a 1994 cease-fire ended a six-year war.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Maury Island UFOs, 1947

The book (Thomas, Kenn: "Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy" GA: IllumiNet, 1999)was from my former publisher at IllumiNet Press, who died under mysterious circumstances. The first major editor to have a field investigator on hand was my late coworker Ray Palmer. While Roswell is the case of this period most discuss, Maury Island contains everything from crashed saucers, men in black, silencings, dead investigators -- all the UFO mythos of subsequent years san abduction. That it took place at the Summer Solstice, the "dog star" days is worth of comment as well. Henry_Allen

The Maury Island incident is said to be an early modern UFO encounter incident, which allegedly took place shortly after the sighting of the original flying saucers by Kenneth Arnold. It is also one of the earliest reported instances of an alleged encounter with so-called "Men in black". Opinions remain divided as to the case on whether it was genuine or a hoax.


The incident took place shortly after June 21, 1947. On that date, seaman Harold Dahl, out scavenging for drifting logs, claimed to have seen six UFOs near Maury Island (which is now a peninsula of Vashon Island, in Puget Sound, near Tacoma, Washington, United States). Dahl, his son, and their dog were on the boat. Dahl claimed to have taken a number of photographs of the UFOs, and reported that one UFO shed some type of hot slag on to his boat. The slag, he said, struck and killed his dog and injured his son.

The next morning, Dahl reported, a man arrived at his home and invited him to breakfast at a nearby diner. Dahl accepted the invitation. He described the man as imposing at over six feet tall and muscular, and wearing a black suit. The man drove a new 1947 Buick, and Dahl assumed he was a military or government representative.

While the two men ate, Dahl claimed the man told him details of the UFO sighting, though Dahl had not related his account publicly. The man also gave Dahl a nonspecific warning which Dahl took as a threat that his family might be harmed if he related details of the sighting.

Some confusion and debate over Dahl's statements have occurred. Dahl would later claim the UFO sighting was a hoax, but has also claimed the sighting was accurate, but he had claimed it was a hoax to avoid bringing harm to his family.

Investigation

In spite of the threat Dahl had reported the incident to his immediate superior, Fred Crisman, who had long claimed to have experience with unusual phenomena (and who was later linked to the John F. Kennedy assassination)[1]. Crisman gathered more of the slag, then called in the press, who in turn called in Kenneth Arnold to investigate the incident.

Albert K. Bender seized on Dahl's story, and printed it in his newsletter. In 1953, Bender claimed three men in black visited him, and warned him to stop his UFO research.

Arnold, realizing the story was beyond his capacity to investigate, called in the United States Army Air Corps, which dispatched two investigators. The investigators were largely unimpressed with Crisman and with his evidence, but agreed to take some of the slag with them for further inquiry.[1] The plane carrying the two investigators and the UFO evidence crashed shortly after leaving Tacoma, killing both men.[2] In April 2007 it was reported that the crash site had been found and some material recovered. [3] [4]

Capt. Edward Ruppelt, chief of Project Blue Book in the early 1950s, wrote that he was convinced that the entire sighting story was a hoax.

Hoax Claims

To some in the UFO community, the Maury Island Incident is still highly controversial, dismissed by many as a complete fabrication by the wildly imaginative and conspiracy-obsessed Crisman, while others think it may be among the most important encounters in modern times.[citation needed] Others speculate that the incident, although clearly a hoax, was employed by the US government to draw public attention away from claims hazardous waste from a breeder reactor located in Hanford was being secretly and unlawfully dumped on Maury Island.

References

1. ^ Randles, J: "MIB: Investigating the Truth Behind the Men In Black Phenomenon", page 33. Piatkus, 1997
2. ^ Randles, J: "MIB: Investigating the Truth Behind the Men In Black Phenomenon", page 33. Piatkus, 1997
3. ^ B-25 wreckage found after 60 years, listed as carrying a UFO
4. ^ Wreckage from secret 1947 mission found

* Ruppelt, Edward J: "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects" Doubleday, 1956.
* Thomas, Kenn: "Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy" GA: IllumiNet, 1999
* Mcnerthney, Casey (April 23, 2007). Is strange rock from UFO or just a piece of poppycock?.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved on 2007-05-05.