Translations (to English) - Habbakuk or Haunebu ?

By now our readers know that in The Maier-Files – Book 1 – The Initiation flying saucers (haunebus) appear (for those who didn’t: you can buy the comic here). And the “Wunderwaffen” indeed are an essential part of the story, just as they are an essential part of lots of “conspiracy theories” concerning the escape routes of national-socialists after the Second World War. But not only national-socialists were working on so called wonder weapons. The Brits, amongst others, had some strange plans of their own. One of them was worked on in Project Habbakuk.

The idea was one of a certain Geoffrey Pike, who worked for the British Combined Operations Headquarters and was considered a genius by Lord Mountbatten, leader of that organization. Goal was – the U-boat war was still very active – solving the problem of invasions from the sea or Atlantic convoys that couldn’t be covered by airplanes. Steel and aluminum were scarce and needed for other goals. Ice however could be manufactured with about one percent of the energy needed for producing the same amount of steel and so ice became the solution for Pyke. His “bergship” (“berg” is derived from “iceberg”, which is originally derived from the Dutch word “ijsberg”) would consist of a, natural or artificial, ice mass flatted on top and hollowed to serve as an aircraft-carrier.

Mountbatten liked the idea and passed it on to Churchill, who liked it too. At the start of 1942 Pyke brought in a specialist to decide on whether an icefloat big enough and strong enough to endure circumstances in the Atlantic could be build in a reasonable span of time. The specialist said he’d better forget about a natural iceberg, because those have not enough surface above water to build an airstrip on it and tend to roll over rather suddenly. The project would have been dismissed if “pykrete” wasn’t invented by then, a mixture of 86 percent water and 14 percent sawdust much stronger than regular ice, melting much slower and unsinkable.

We spare you the technical details, but it was decided that a scale model would be build in Jasper National Park in Canada. It measured 18 meters by 9 meters, weighed a 1000 tons and was kept frozen by a one horsepower motor. The Canadians were sure they could build the first real “bergship” by 1944 and they had the necessary material to do so. But soon problems emerged that would multiply the costs by five times what was estimated first and the Canadians decided it wouldn’t be practical to build the ship “in the coming season”. Conclusion: no Habbakuk ship would be ready by the end of 1944. And meanwhile Pyke, who the Americans disliked, was taken of the project.

Of the three alternative concepts, Habbakuk I till III, the Habbakuk II came closest to the original model, but the engineers still working on the project couldn’t tell for sure that it would be practical until they would have build a bigger model in Canada. That never happened: the project lost priority by the end of 1943. Lord Mountbatten judged that the steel (which was necessary for the plant where the “pykrete” would be made) could be used better for other things, the Portuguese granted permission to use airfields on the Azores to hunt for U-boats, British airplanes were equipped with long distance fuel tanks, and the number of escorting ships rose sharply. Mountbatten retreating from the project says enough.

So the project went down in silence. A project which, for number of reasons, wouldn’t have been possible without … German help.

Pyke namely was not the real inventor of the “bergship”, that was a German scientist, Dr. Arthur Gerke (von Waldenburg), who had been experimenting with it on Lake Zürich back in 1930, a fact on which an English scientific magazine reported in 1932.

The specialist Pyke brought in to decide on whether it could be done with a natural iceberg (and that would continue working on the project) also had something to do with Germany: Max Perutz. He was born in Vienna (Austria), finished his studies there at the university, but had to run when Hitler took over power in 1938. Perutz namely was, though being baptized as a catholic, from Jewish decent. In the beginning of 1939 he moved from Switzerland to England, but was deported along with other people of German or Austrian nationality on command of Churchill to Newfoundland. Only after a number of months of “internment” he was allowed to return to England.

And then there was the inventor of the “pykrete”: Herman Mark. He was an officer in the Austrian-Hungarian army during the First World War, became a hero on the Italian front, went to work for IG Farben in 1926, was advised by his boss to return to Vienna in the 1930s (he was a son of a, though converted to Christianity, Jew), worked on the university there (where Max Perutz was one of his students), was arrested and locked in a gestapo prison when the Nazis came to power, but could escape to Switzerland with some luck and bravery. And with a swastika flag on the radiator of his car …

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - Election of the best belgian comic

In the context of the “Boekenbeurs” (for non-Flemish: the biggest book event in Flanders) Boek.be organizes this year also an election of the best Belgian comic book. That is: a jury of “comic experts” has come up with a shortlist, five wildcards have been added to it, and now the public can choose from that list.

On the shortlist are these books (unless the titles have been translated in English, we’ll give them in Dutch): “The yellow ‘M’” by Edgar P. Jacobs, “De inwijding” by Comès, “Brüsel” by Benoit Peeters and François Schuiten, “Album 26” by Merho, “De liefhebbers” by Brecht Evens, “The black Smurfs” by Peyo, “Grand Prix” by Marvano, “Het zotte geweld” by Joris Vermassen, “The heirs” by Hermann, “De koningin van Onderland” by Jef Nys, “The Castafiore Emerald” by Hergé, “The Daltons’ escape” by Morris and Goscinny, “De hoed van Geeraard de Duivel” by Marc Sleen, “QRN op Bretzelburg” by Franquin and Greg, “De zwarte madam” by Willy Vandersteen, “The archers” by Rosinski and Van Hamme, “When David lost his voice” by Judith Vanistendael, Peter Verwey and Christel Geelen, “The day of the black sun” by Vance and Van Hamme, “Zoo, deel 3” by Frank and Bonifay, “Zwartkijken” by Franquin (again), “De ‘U’-straal” by Edgar P. Jacobs (again), “Frommeltje en Viola – Integraal” by Hislaire, “Avontuur in San Doremi” by Pom, “Rumberley” by Lambil and Cauvin, and “Chninkel”by Rosinski (again)

Admitted, we don’t know a few of these books, but that’s not one of the reasons why we can’t make a choice from this shortlist. Amongst those reasons there’s the fact that standalone graphic novels are compared to one book in a series, that some artists get a clear advance to others, that the best work of some artists often is not even in the list, and that other – far from unknown – artists with to our opinion great work are not in that list.

Even apart from the fact that we get the impression that in composing the shortlist the jury apparently chose for a more or less balanced mix of “classical” authors and new ones, mass produced series and rather “artistic” productions, new books and old ones, we thus object to choosing, for example, “Brüsel” from the “Obscure cities”-series (the art of Schuiten and Peeters is always of a very high level and we see no reason to prefer “Brüsel” above, for example, “De Archivaris), “The heirs” from the “Jeremiah”-series (not only because Hermanns work gets better and better, but also because, for example “De bloedbruiloft”, one of his one-shots, is not in the list), or “QRN op Bretzelburg”, because apart from Franquin many other artist have done fantastic work on the “Spirou and Fantasio”-series.

We would have liked an election of the best Belgian comic artist better, but we still would have missed people like François Craenhals (De Koene ridder”, “Pom en Teddy”), Paul Cuvelier (“Corentin”, “Epoxy”), Renaud Denauw (“Jessica Blandy”, “Venus H.”), Dupa (“Dommel”), Serge Ernst (“Knipoogje”, “William Hazehart”), Jean-Claude Fournier (“Spirou and Fantasio”), Tome and Janry (again “Spirou and Fantasio”), Jean-Claude Servais (“Bosliefje”), Franz Drappier (“Lester Cockney”, “Lotusbloem”), Philippe Francq (“Largo Winch”), Yves Swolfs (“Durango”, “De prins van de nacht”, “Legende”), Ptiluc (“Pacush Blues”), Philippe Delaby (“Murena”, “De klaagzang der verloren gewesten”), Griffo (“Vlad”), Gazzotti (“Soda”), Bernard Vrancken (“I.R.$.”), Olivier Grenson (“Niklos Koda”), and Sokal (“Canardo”) in the shortlist.

No, there’s too much work and too much people missing in the shortlist to be able to make an honest choice. That’s why we add one possibility: Book 1 of The Maier-Files (to appear very, very soon): “The Initiation”. Who wants a taste of it already can read the free prequel to The Maier-Files here.

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - Studio 100 declares comics dead

This morning at breakfast we took a look at Rekto:verso, a Flemish “magazine for culture & critics”, and read: “I think Jommeke [a very well known comics series in Flanders and the Netherlands, but rarely translated in other languages] is a succeeded cultural product for children. More than fifty million books in Flemish households! Of course the medium, the comic, is now completely outmoded, but children still find it interesting.”

Apart from the fact that the author of the quote is apparently judging something as a “succeeded cultural product” only because it’s a gigantic commercial success (and fifty million books of a comic series in Flanders is indeed gigantic), he thinks that comics, the “cultural products” that we at The Maier-Files are working on, are out of date. Antiquated, passed on, over, dead.

The author of the quote doesn’t explain why he thinks so, but we did find it somewhat amazing. Not only because personally we have other experiences, but also because the business world itself, of which the author of the quote is part, contradicts that. While Flemish sales of books in general dropped strongly in the second half of 2013, sales of comics in the same period of time arose with 10 percent.

But maybe there were not enough products of the company which the author of the quote represents as CEO in the top twenty of comics sales ? The author namely is Hans Bourlon and he is the big chief of … Studio 100, a company which is almost solely responsible for all TV programs for children in Flanders [it’s best known in the English speaking world for House of Anubis]. TV programs which have spin-offs in the form of, indeed, comics about Kabouter Plop, Piet Piraat, Samson en Gert, and Big en Betsy.

Anyway, what we read further in the same interview, put us at ease: Hans Bourlon seems to be talking nonsense frequently. Amongst other things he namely also said this: “Now we have at Flying Bark, our Australian cartoon studio, a series in the making about a koala, Blinky Bill, but a koala only lives in a number of European zoos and Australia. Compared to that Maya the Bee [which Studio 100 is also working on] has a gigantic advantage: there are bees all over the world, and nowhere with a religious connotation, which is rather exceptional for an animal.”

“Nowhere with a religious connotation”, mister Bourlon ? Already the Minoan goddess Potnia was said to be “the pure mother bee”, her priestesses were called “Melissa” (or “bee”), as were the priestesses of Artemis and Demeter and the oracles of Delphi. According to the San, a people living in the Kalahari desert, a bee was responsible for the birth of the first man, in Egyptian mythology bees were born from the tears of the god Ra, in Hinduism the cord of Kamadeva’s bow is composed of honey bees, and according to the Ugandan Baganda people Nambi disguised as a bee helped the first man Kintu. The ancient Greeks considered Aristaeus to be the god of the bees, the quran has a surah about bees, in the Jewish Midrash the Jewish people is compared to bees, and the fact that bees and the beehive are common symbols in Catholicism is generally known.

We’re not very religious ourselves, but we would dare suggesting to Hans Bourlon – in case he is – to contact Our Lady of the Bees and ask her for guidance …

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - Why we don’t have a problem with conspiracy theories

You will have noticed by now that we at The Maier-Files regularly pay attention to so called “conspiracy theories”. And if you have read the prequel to our series, you will have seen that a conspiracy theory (one ?) plays a major role there (by the way: that’s even more so starting from Book 1, which by now is finished, but not yet published). So you could ask yourself: are these guys crazy ?

The answer to that question is “no”, on the contrary, scientific studies even show that we’re very sane. More sane than the people who take for granted official versions on controversial and disputed “facts”.

The most recent of those scientific studies was published in July 2013 – our apologies for the delay, but we only saw the news on the internet yesterday – by the psychologists Michael J. Wood and Karen M. Douglas of Kent University (UK). It’s entitled “What about Building 7?' A Social Psychological Study of Online Discussion of 9/11 Conspiracy Theories" and compares "conspiracist" and “anti-conspiracist” comments on news websites.

Apart from the fact that the researchers soon came to the conclusion that “conspiracy” comments were more mainstream than others (about 2 to 1), they also saw that people accepting the official story on 9/11 were generally more hostile. A phenomenon which could originate from frustration over the fact that their viewpoints thought to be mainstream were no longer considered as such by a majority.

Moreover, the researchers claim, those who fight the “conspiracy theories” are not just hostile but also fanatically wedded to their own conspiracy theorie, in the present case “one which says 19 Muslims, none of whom could fly commercial airliners with any proficiency, pulled off an amazing surprise attack under the direction of a man on dialysis (Osama bin Laden) who was living in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan”.

So, in other words, the negative stereotype generally attached to the “conspiracy theorists” doesn’t describe them but rather their opponents: a hostile fanatic holding on to his own fringe theory. Furthermore conspiracy believers look at things in a historical context – the bigger picture – more than their opponents.

Finally: “conspiracy theorists” apparently don’t like to be labeled as such. Something which Lance deHaven-Smith, in his last year published book “Conspiracy Theory in America”, explains as such: "The CIA's campaign to popularize the term 'conspiracy theory' and make conspiracy belief a target of ridicule and hostility must be credited, unfortunately, with being one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time".

We at The Maier-Files do not have a problem with the denomination “conspiracy theorists”. We consider it, as do many others, a badge of honor.

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - The Hessdalen lights

Last week we accidentally stumbled upon – that’s how it works at StumbleUpon, isn’t it ? – a picture of the so called Hessdalen lights. An interesting phenomenon in the UFO category (it are, until now, non identified flying objects), be it by the sole fact that “real” scientists don’t just dismiss it as imaginary.

The phenomenon is basically all about strange lights being seen since the 1940s (possibly even earlier) in the Norwegian Hessdalen valley. The activity became that frequent in the first half of the 1980s – lights were seen up to 20 times a week – that finally serious scientific research took off, leading to the installation of the automated research station Hessdalen AMS in 1998 and the start of the EMBLA-program, a cooperation between Ostfold University College and the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.

The lights usually are bright, white or yellow, of unknown origin and standing on or floating above ground level, but that’s about the only thing being certain for now. Because of the overwhelming presence of ore in the valley – the supplies would be much bigger than what was originally in the ground at the nearby Roros, which was the stage for fierce battles at the beginning of WW II – the lights are however often connected to minerals.

That’s also what the newest theory is doing. Scientists now are convinced that the lights are being formed by some natural, underground “battery” created by metallic minerals in reaction with the sulphurous river Hesja flowing through the area. On one side of the river there seem to be rocks containing zinc and iron, at the other side rocks containing copper, and between those two, via the sulphuric water of the river, there would emerge an electrical flow. From that process bubbles of ionized gas would emerge when the sulphurous fumes from the river Hesja react with the humid air of the valley. The fact that geology also forms electromagnetic lines in the valley would account for the orbs moving around (in some cases they just float, in other cases they reach speeds of up to 8 kilometres per second).

The orbs by the way make no sound, seem cool and leave no scorch marks on the ground, but they do on contact kill the soil microbes. Some experts thus judge that the lights are some kind of plasma (that can be cool too and kill soil microbes, but requires high temperatures and much energy to be produced), while others think that they are (despite the fact that they don’t leave scorch marks) some kind of ball lightning, because similar phenomena in China have been seen, though analysis of the Hessdalen lights show that they contain – and that metal is only to be found in Scandinavia – scandium too. Number of scientists meanwhile is convinced that in the solution of the riddle there might be a new manner of storing energy, something which is necessary to contain plasma in the presumed way.

We at The Maier-Files have no problem with that possibility, howeer this “solution” doesn’t explain why the phenomenon is much more active in one period than in another, nor does it provide us with an answer to the fact that in the valley on several occasions large pieces of grass – with weights up to 2000 kilo – were cut out in a perfect rectangular form and moved over several meters without any damage, meanwhile clearing the rocks under it, a phenomenon associated to the lights by the inhabitants of the valley.

Nah, in The Maier-Files we have strange lights appearing too. And, no, we’re not going to explain them right away. Buy Book 1 – The Initiation when it’s published and you’ll get to know something more about it. For now you can of course already read our free prequel.

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - Frau Holle and … The Maier-Files

Though we consider ourselves as not totally unacquainted with Germanic mythology, we happily recognize that other people know more about it. So it was with great interest we read an article on customs associated with autumn and/or harvest by a young man named Nick Krekelbergh in a Dutch language magazine called TeKoS yesterday. And our interest was rewarded: we learned more about Frau Holle (aka Frau Holda).

Okay … but who is this Frau Holle anyway ? Well, we’ve got two options here: tell you all about it and bore those acquainted with Germanic mythology to death or provide you with a summary, meanwhile hoping to make it interesting enough to get you to look up further information and not chasing the already informed away. Since we’re trying to get you to read our free prequel too, we’ll be going for option two.

Frau Holle is best known as protector of agriculture and women’s crafts, though Jacob Grimm (one of the Brothers, indeed, but also a philologist and mythologist) connected her with the Germanic goddess Hludana or Holda. Other connections are those to Hlóðyn, mother of the Old Norse Thor, Nerthus, another Germanic goddess who like Frau Holle rides a wagon, and Frigg, Odin’s wife and highest goddess of the Aesir (who in turn may be the same as Freyja, highest goddess of the Vanir). Known alternate names for her are Frau Guaden (or Wodan, also known as Odin) and Frau Frekke (see the resemblance with Frigg and Freyja), while she is also claimed to be mistress of the Wild Hunt (those familiar with the origins of Sinterklaas, from which is derived Santa Claus, will know that Odin seated on his horse Sleipnir is more frequently claimed to be so).

So much for Frau Holle’s name. But what did she do again ? Well, she was the protector of women’s crafts, in particular spinning (weaving), an activity strongly connected to magic and the other world (remember the Cathars), just like Frigg. Spinning and Christmas Eve or Twelfth Night are still associated in parts of Germany where festivals for Holda are observed. Frau Holle was also closely associated with the wilderness, wild animals, remote places and the weather. Holda shaking her feather pillows made it snow, fog was smoke from her fire, thunder was heard when she reeled her flax. Holle is said to be the protector of children, whose souls enter the world through a sacred pool she owns, but she also haunts lakes and fountains and is seen as a White Lady bathing in the water and disappearing, just like Nerthus. And we already told she is one of the supposed leaders of the Wild Hunt.

What we didn’t know, and learned from Krekelbergh’s article, is that in some parts of Germany Frau Holle was considered to be the Corn Mother (Grain Mother). When mowing the villagers would let some stalks stand, sometimes decorate them with flowers and call for Frau Holle (also Fru Gaue or Fru Gode) or just leave the stalks for her. From the corn mother to Holle’s last occupation is just a small step: though the Corn Mother was a positive appearance in pagan religion, catholic church gradually demonized her and Frau Holle became a witch. In old church documents she was identified with the goddess Diana, but starting at the beginning of the eleventh century she was even designated as matron of witches.

Though there’s much more to tell about the subject we’d like to finish this story. Frau Holle, a goddess claimed to be matron of witches and maybe being another denomination for Hludana or Holda, the Germanic goddess of death (also known as Hel), is namely … one of the main characters in The Maier-Files. She has a small part in the free prequel, but starts playing a major role in Book 1 – The Inauguration (to appear this month). Actually, in that book she’s mowing the enemies down.

Now, why would we name that character Frau Holle ? Well, because there’s a lot more to The Maier-Files than meets the eye at first glance. As we said before: it’s a story about secret services and covert wars, but it’s also about UFOs and … witches. Want to know more ? Read the prequel and buy Book 1. When will that be published ? Subscribe to our free newsletter, receive the prequel in high definition, and we’ll keep you posted.

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - Blake & Mortimer and the Jenseitsflugmaschine

This morning for some reason – this strange memory of ours, isn’t it ? – we returned a number of years back in time. Not literally, we’re not that good, but in a manner of speaking: we namely saw pictures of a Blake and Mortimer-book. That book in which Mortimer travels through time … What was it again … Oh yeah, The time trap.

You remember that book ? Blake barely plays a part in it, but Mortimer is nicely tricked in professor Miloch’s play. Miloch, the brain behind the meteor shower in S.O.S. Meteors: Mortimer in Paris, has a nice little inheritance for Mortimer: a “time machine”. Sadly a sabotaged one, which almost kills Mortimer, but it is working.

Hmm, okay, not really original in the world of comics, of course, and that wasn’t the case either in 162 when the book was published. But we were thinking of exactly this “time machine” when, this morning, we read a piece about the so called Jenseitsflugmaschine (no good translation for this German word, but some call it “Interdimensional machine”)?

Only one picture of this Jenseitsflugmaschine (above) is known and that machine doesn’t look a lot like the one Miloch made (here), but apparently they both do exactly the same: make it possible for the pilot to travel through time …

December 1919: Karl Haushofer, head of the Thule Gesellschaft (Thule Society), has invited a handful of highly esteemed occultists to a cabin in the Alps near Berchtesgaden and introduces them to two beautiful women. One seems rather shy, is only 18 years old and is called Sigrun. The other one goes by the name of Maria Orsitsch and has, according to Haushofer, received a message from an extraterrestrial civilization. Both are, what is called, mediums.

Orsitsch has – using a technique called automatic writing - written the received message in two languages, being, again according to Haushofer, a secret Templar code and Sumerian. Haushofer has translated the texts already: they appear to contain the necessary instructions to build an anti-gravity engine. Viktor Schauberger, back then already a controversial scientist, had looked at the instructions and confirmed they had potential.

We’ll not digress on explanations on the origin of the instructions – Aldebaran -, but we will dwell on the fact that Orsitch and/or Haushofer claimed also that the machine had the possibility to alter time.

Knowing that Aldebaran is 65 light years away from us and the Jenseitsflugmaschine according to the instructions had to be used to transport “worthy” people over there, that claim fits the bill. And realizing that the Thule Gesellschaft was far from happy with the world created by the Industrial Revolution and would have done anything to finish that, that claim is exactly what made the story interesting for the group.

Just imagine them being able to return to a time in which “the Gods still walked the Earth”. We don’t have a clue when that was, but to which time does Mortimer initially return with professor Miloch’s Jenseitsflugmaschine – called a diachronator in the book ? Exactly, to a time passed by 150.000.000 years ago. He doesn’t meet Gods there, but has a close encounter with a number of dinosaurs that walked the Earth back then. The men and women gathered that evening at Haushofer’s cabin sure would have been astonished …

However, flying saucers play a certain role in Book 1 of The Maier-Files, but there’s nog Jenseitsflugmaschine there. Neither is in the free prequel on our website by the way, but it is worth reading it.

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - TR-3B and the Belgian UFO-wave

Strange how little things can remind us of things that happened a very long time ago. For example the two sentences Dorn read this morning in the book “Dark Star” by Henry Stevens (very interesting, by the way, though a little too technical):

“If this were the technology the Reagan Administration had received, it would account, temporally, for the appearance of flying triangles in Belgium only a couple years after ‘payment’ had taken place. Likewise, beyond Belgium this new shape seemed to be the predominant UFO shape from that time to the present.

We told you already that we’re not “believers” concerning UFOs and were in view of the time period (ending of the 1980s – beginning of the 1990s) and the triangular shape of the objects immediately thinking of the Lockheed Martin F-117 Nighthawk. That first stealth-bomber was produced from 1982 till 1992 and was gradually retired and stored to be, if need be, used again when the American Senate judges that necessary, from 2008 on (The first Northrop B-2 Spirit, another stealth plane that was more or less triangular, was only delivered at Whiteman AFB Missouri in 1993 and didn’t get operational before 1997.).

So Dorn dived into the internet sources, but suddenly also remembered what he had seen on an April night in 1990: an F-117 Nighthawk hovering silently above the plains around Diksmuide (West-Flanders, Belgium). And that … proved impossible.

Dorn remembered it this way: “I used to be a long distance walker, just like my father, and somewhere in April on a Friday night we started a 100 kilometer walk in the Koekelare (near Diksmuide) region. I don’t remember what was the exact hour, but at a certain moment we, my father and I, noticed, to the left of us, above the Diksmuide plains, a rather big triangular shape with yellow white lights in the corners and a red light in the middle of those. We were joking that it was a UFO since the thing was hovering and making absolutely no noise, but concluded it had to be a ‘stealth’ ) – we heard about those before -, even when it literally disappeared in a blink”.

For over 24 years Dorn didn’t think about the incident anymore. When however he started looking for the properties of the F-117, he discovered that hovering is none of them (the F-117 became unstable at low speeds), neither is disappearing from that state in just a second, left alone doing that without any noise (hovering nor flying). There’s more: googling for the words “F-117” and “Belgium” immediately resulted in … a story about a Belgian UFO-wave.

That UFO-wave started in November 1989 and ended in April 1990, the sighted UFOs commonly are called “black triangle”, but in circles of conspiracy theorists it’s named TR-3B. We know little about technology, so we won’t waste your time on explaining things we don’t understand ourselves, but “experts” claim that it’s part of an American secret project, a product of the so called Aurora-project.

We don’t know anything about that project either, but we do know that the sightings between November 1989 and April 1990 were more than standard. On November 29 already amongst the people who saw the UFOs were three police teams and everybody saw exactly the same: a large object, flying on low altitude, silent, triangular, with lights underneath. In the night of 30/31 March 1990 the UFOs were even seen on the radar and subsequently chased by two Belgian Air Force F-16s. The Glons Control Reporting Center around 23:00 received reports of a bizarre constellation of lights and asked the Waver gendarmerie (some kind of military police) to go out and confirm the reports. At 23:30 it actually did and Glons CRC got the UFOs on its radar. Air Traffic Control centre in Semmerzake (East-Flanders) confirmed the radar sighting, after which Glons CRC shortly before midnight ordered two F-16s to scramble from Beauvechain Air Base.

Over the next hour the two F-16s attempted nine interceptions of the targets and managed to obtain a radar lock on the targets on three occasions, but each time the UFOs changed positions so fast that the lock was broken. During the first radar lock the target accelerated from 240 km/h to over 1770 km/h while changing altitude from 2700 m to 1500 m, then up to 3350 m before descending to almost ground level, the first descent taking less than 2 seconds. Similar maneuvers were repeated during the next radar locks. The F-16 pilots were never able to make visual contact with the targets, there was never a sonic boom, and the sighted changes in speed would apparently have killed human pilots.

Back then nobody had a cell phone, left alone a smartphone and cameras fit for night recording were not wide spread either. The one picture taken in April 1990 proved to be a hoax. This was exactly what all the sightings were, said the professional sceptics later on: mass hysteria caused by what the media wrote, probably helicopters making “no sound” because the witnesses couldn’t hear it while there car engine was running or because of strong winds.

Well, Pat regrettably has never seen a UFO, but Dorn has. At his parents, where he lived back then, only one weekly, local paper arrived and that had never published anything about UFO sightings, he and his father were not in a car when they saw the UFO (they were walking) and that night on the plains there was almost no wind at all. That Dorn was no victim of mass hysteria is moreover proven by the fact that he realized only today that he saw a UFO then …

By the way: that was the only UFO Dorn ever saw. If you want to see more of them, you can do that in Book 1 of The Maier-Files. If you don’t want to wait for that, you can already read the free prequel. No UFOs in that, but it is an exiting story.

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - Are the Rockefellers REALLY going philantropic ?

Whoever knows anything about the Rockefeller family history will without any doubt, and without having to think about it, answer the question above with a “no”. There namely is a difference between naïve and crazy: the Rockefellers are neither, and we surely ain’t crazy. But let us explain what we’re talking about.

The Rockefeller family, more specifically the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, announced yesterday that it turns its back to the oil sector and chooses for “renewable” energy. A bombshell at the eve of the climate conference in New York, knowing that the family has made its fortune thanks to the oil industry, and news that will certainly affect the financial world.

But what will happen concretely ? Well, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced that it would pull back 50 billion dollars of investments in the oil industry and invest the same amount in so called “renewable” energy, thus joining the Global Divest-Invest initiative which arose a few years back at American universities.

Undoubtedly good news for the environmentalists, but it doesn’t answer the question whether the Rockefellers really do this for philanthropic reasons. Honestly: the fact that American pension funds, religious groups and big universities have doubled their pledges in Global Divest-Invest since the start of this year proves that either there’s big money there or the stakeholders, members and sponsors of the pension funds, religious groups and big university see no problem in throwing their money away. We put our money on the first possibility.

We dare adding that the Rockefeller statements on their conversion to “renewable” energy sound rather ambiguous: “We are quite convinced that if he [John D. Rockefeller, father of the Rockefeller empire] were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy”. We learn from that, in apparent contradiction to the media, especially that the Rockefellers see their decision as one that would be made by an astute businessman. And an astute businessman just goes where the money is.

“Where the money is”, that is these days, or at least in the very near future, no longer in the oil industry, but in the sector of “renewable” energy. To us that’s the reason why the Rockefellers turned “philanthropic” now and not, for example, twenty years ago when the pollution by the oil industry was already more than accurately proven and everybody had come to the conclusion that the oil reserves were not endless. As Ellen Dorsey wrote in The Huffington Post in January divesting from fossil fuels need not adversely affect portfolio risk or performance. Analyses made by, amongst others, Impax, Aperio Group, and Boston Common Asset Management, show not only there’s essentially zero risk in being out of the top 200 fossil fuel companies, but also that to the contrary staying in fossil fuels may present the greater risk, given the existence of the Carbon Bubble and the valuation of fossil energy stock based on stranded fuel reserves.

That the Rockefellers are aware of this problem, is by the way also proven by the fact that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund was one of the sponsors of research on … the Carbon Bubble. So we think that the Rockefellers just go where the money is and that more giants from the oil industry will take the same decision soon. Just like some of the characters in the free prequel to The Maier-Files would ...

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - “Our publicity budget consists of blood, sweat and tears“

This weekend an interview - our first ! - with the authors of The Maier-Files was published on the website of Stripelmagazine. Since the interview is published in Dutch we translated it into English for our readers. Here it is:

Striking new initiative: The Maier-Files, first comic book of the debuting duo Pat & Dorn. They have a go at it without a publisher but with a complete website, provided with a webshop, a crowdfunding possibility and an option to read the prequel to the series for free. By the way, you can understand “debuting” literally.

Pat: “I come from the multimedia world and always worked there behind the screens. So I’m completely new to the world of comics.”

Dorn: “I met Pat for the first time some twenty years ago in a pub in Schaarbeek (Brussels). When I recently gained lots of spare time, he came along with a project on which he had been brooding for some years and got to the “active” phase in the first months of this year: The Maier-Files. Would you like cooperating on that ? Yes, indeed. That I have been collecting comic books for half my life and so have some reference material was a nice little extra.”

Pat: “I have been brooding on the project for a few years indeed, but the theme of the key story and the start of it – which you can read in the prequel – literally come from my childhood years. My grandfather was a great storyteller and we had lots of mysterious stuff in the attic. At least, that’s what I thought as a kid. And with each of those objects came a story. On some autumn day he dug up a box with a picture of a passing V1, a few one million Deutsche Mark notes, rationing coupons, his forced labor papers from Germany … Tangible pieces of history making his stories more lively and his world really graphic. In that way he created an early multimedia history, a history of which you became part yourself. And that is exactly what we want to do: a bigger, contentual, interactive whole. And an attic like that, a warehouse packed with mysterious objects, is also where our story starts.”

What’s the comic series about ?

Pat: “The best way to get an impression is actually to read the free prequel on the website. It provides an image of where we’re going, be it however that the first full book goes back to events seventy years before what happens in the prequel. I’d call it a magical-realistic story, a story of seemingly impossible friendships against a background of worldly schemes, secret societies and their agreements, conspiracies and hidden agendas in the past century.”

Dorn: “The story is very close to reality in many aspects and tries to bestow us a look behind the screens of known facts. ‘Trust no one’ is a good baseline for The Maier-Files, though the friendships Pat is talking about are what keeps our main characters going. They are put to the test, but we hope they’ll survive the intriguing.”

You’re approaching the project in a rather big manner, not only concerning the content but also the form, with your own website and a Dutch and English version.

Pat: “Well, ‘big’ is only a matter of perspective, isn’t it ? We actually couldn’t approach the project in a smaller way given the economic reality. We sincerely hope to get The Maier-Files launched without a settled published. The whole project depends on the two of us, our publicity budget is as good as non existant.”

Dorn: “Honestly spoken, it consists of blood, sweat and tears (laughing). But up till now it has been one of the most educational experiences of my life. Incredible what one learns when one does everything on his own.”

Pat: “And the choice for an edition in two languages is merely due to the fact that the English-speaking market is a lot bigger than the Dutch-speaking market. If we don’t just want to have fun with The Maier-Files, but keep on doing that for a while, we have to take that in account. We’re both working on this more than fulltime, so we can only hope the response on our first books will be enough to make it possible to go on.”

You’re self-publishing the comic. How are things going ?

Pat: “We have a printer, all technical issues are resolved and at this moment we’re reviewing the ‘draft’ of the first book. So, we want to and will publish Book 1 in October. And yes, we think there’s room on the comics market. We don’t intend to publish just another comic …”

Dorn: “Precisely. You have to tell a story which is worth reading, different from the others. And I think The Maier-Files is exactly that. It’s a fascinating story packed with colorful characters, exciting though little known history and discoveries … No, I’m sure there’s enough place on the market for a comic like this one.”

Pat: “Furthermore we want to do more than publish this comic series. You could compare the comic to the stories my grandfather told, but there’s also the objects in the box on the attic. We want to create a full experience for our readers. With the technical possibilities of today that can be done. We want to create a world of which the readers can be part too.”

Dorn: “Remember he said we were not actually approaching the project in a big manner ? (laughing) First of all we want to offer a good comic series, maybe immediately adding some possibilities for the readers who want to go deeper in our world, and then, when reactions turn out to be positive and with sales showing so, take the following steps. But that will be after we’ve published Book 1.”

Pat: “Exactly. Book 1, working title The Inauguration, will be decisive for the future of The Maier-Files.”

Your enthusiasm certainly is no problem, gentlemen. Good luck !

(Translated by Björn Roose)

Translations (to English) - Obama (USA) – Assad (Syria) – From friends to foes and back

We probably don’t have to introduce Syria anymore. Since the start of the “civil war” over there almost everybody in the world knows the country at least by hearsay. But we do want to return for a second to the start of that “civil war”, somewhere in March 2011. At that time political islamists, Salafists and other radical Sunnis joined forces to throw over president Bashar al-Assad. Just another variation to the “Arabic Spring”-theme, with the small difference that the “free West” interfered very soon and openly allied with the “rebels”, though everybody could clearly see that these “rebels” were a motley crew and in general shared the ideology which was also popular amongst Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other “friends” of that “free West”.

Still, that “free West” got frightened when an important part of the “rebels” seemed to follow another agenda than throwing over the government of Assad. ISIS (ISIL), nowadays IS, namely was, as was the case with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, mostly interested in setting up a religious dictatorship, not in installing a democracy. After Assad unequivocally won the Syrian presidential elections on June 3 of this year, ISIS started the serious work: settling its own Islamic state on the territory of especially Syria and Iraq. An idea which can’t have come as a surprise for those who, directly or indirectly, provided these “rebels” with money or weapons (in first instance the “free West”), since ISIS was already established in 2003 as a union of al-Qaeda linked organizations aiming “to protect Sunni Iraqis and to defend Islam”. It was only in 2011 that the organization expanded its field of activity to Syria and changed its name from “Islamic State in Iraq” to “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (or “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant”).

That the “rebels” of ISIS (in June renamed to IS, Islamic State) only entered Iraq once they had become big in Syria is thus complete nonsense. ISIS arose in Iraq, more specifically in the Iraq occupied by the troops of the Stabilization Force Iraq under control of the United States. So when Obama or his State Secretary John Kerry now tell us that they will attack Syria to get IS with the excuse that “we are going to do what they [the Syrian government] haven’t done”, that is a blatant lie, unless they mean: attacking the (umpteenth) enemy which we have created and armed ourselves.

But there’s more: the US government really is looking for a “legitimate” reason to enter Syria (see this again) and Syria has put forward that that would mean a violation of international rule of law and the UN manifest (which prohibits a violation of the territorial integrity of a UN member state without that country’s permission or without the permission of the UN Security Council, which won’t be obtained since Russia isn’t in agreement with it and Russia has veto power in that UN Security Council), but meanwhile Assad and Obama seem to be cooperating behind the screens.

Behind the screens, indeed, and via a third party (full article here). That third party would obtain intelligence information from the Americans on the movements of IS convoys, meetings, armories and so on and pass that information to the Syrian government, which can use it to attack IS in Syria. The third party remains unknown, but possible candidates are Iraqi intelligence services, Russian or German intermediates or a common headquarters put up in the Kurdish-Iraqi city Erbil. Other sources claim the information is indeed passed to the Syrian government by the Iraqi government and that there was a meeting yesterday between Faleh al-Fayad, the Iraqi national security adviser, and Assad.

That the legitimate governments in Iraq and Syria would be talking to each other would be no more than logic: with IS they clearly have a common enemy which is better handled concerted.

That the US government meanwhile denies talking to the Syrian government on whatever level is explained quite simply by on the one hand the fact that it’s psychologically difficult to claim that the one depicted as the enemy yesterday is now a friend and on the other hand the fact that the IS “rebels” probably are partly sponsored by Saudi Arabia and Qatar (that first country still an ally of the US, that second since 2003 – after moving out of Saudi Arabia – harboring a US military base).

That US troops could enter Syria without meeting real opposition from Syrian government forces is no more than logic – IS is at the Iraqi side of Syria, a side not controlled by the Syrian government – and would actually help the Syrian government in fighting the “rebels”. Those “rebels” would then be attacked from two sides, which would be a pleasant change for the government in Damascus.

Some claim that an invasion by US troops could be ment to capture Damascus between the “rebels” gathered near the Israeli border and the “rebels” and US troops coming from Iraq. We however deem that unlikely since the people coming up with that theory seem to think also that Israel would openly engage itself in the war and forget that the US government will not get international support for effectuating itself a regime change in Damascus.

And then of course there’s the Syrian government: it sees no objection in the possibility that its inland enemies would no longer be supported by the US (though for instance John McCain is still pleading for that), but it tries to make the unofficial cooperation between the US government and the Syrian government official in order not to get shot in the back afterward.

Interesting games being played in Syria … Almost as interesting as the games being played between the rival groups in the free prequel to The Maier-Files :-)

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - Rosetta’s first discovery on comet 67P: a flying saucer

Yesterday we told you that we’re not “believers” concerning “chemtrails”. Well, we’re not believers concerning flying saucers either. Especially when the personnel of these saucers exists of nothing but little green men who, after hundreds of abductions of earthlings, still don’t know enough about our kind and thus keep on putting anal and other probes in the guinea pigs they beam up for that cause.

But … of course there are unidentified flying (and other) objects, better known as UFOs. It seems to us that the thing that was accidentally photographed by spacecraft Rosetta while making a picture of comet 67P, or 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko (named after the people who discovered the comet) belongs in that category.

Yeah … but UFOs are photographed almost every day, no ? Indeed, but rarely by a spacecraft. Okay, but maybe – which is actually not rare – it’s just some photo editing by amateurs of the UFO genre ? No, it isn’t, and that is what makes this picture interesting. This picture namely can be found on the website of the European Space Agency ESA and this organization, the European counterpart of NASA, also claims it: copyright ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM, description “four image NAVCAM mosaic of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, using images taken on 10 September when Rosetta was 27.8 km from the comet”. Identification number of the picture: 322247.

You can look at the picture here. But it gets more interesting – though the anomaly is visible already – when we open up a bigger version and use our magnifying-glass by clicking right on the picture. The UFO is in the “upper” half of the comet, in the valley on the right side of the top. If you scroll the image in that direction, you can’t possibly miss it: a white circular object seemingly floating through that valley.

Okay, okay, but isn’t that Philae, the lander Rosetta brought in ? No, because Philae is not circular and it hasn’t been launched yet.

Hmm, but what is it then ? Honestly ? We don’t have a clue. We didn’t exactly buy it when movies and pictures started circulating about “unknown objects” above and buildings on the comet – the fact that the origin of those videos and pics remains unclear or at least “strange” is reason enough for that -, but that’s different with this picture. Not just because of the authenticity of the picture, but also because what’s on it is quite clear.

That the object doesn’t really belong in the landscape is explained by The Huffington Post by the fact that the rock next to it shows other characteristics despite both being in the same sunlight: “The rock”, according to The Huffington Post, “appears as a darker more rugged shape while the metallic disc appears to reflect the sunlight back into the camera lens of the Rosetta spacecraft”. But why the idea that it is flying ? Well, look at the picture again: the shadow of the object is not attached to the object, contrary of course to what is the case for all non flying objects. The upper side of the shadow is exactly the same shape as the upper side of the object, the lower side being mingled with the shadow of a rock it’s flying over. You can see that clearly in this video.

Enough for us anyway to call the object a UFO … And, oh yeah, no UFO's in our free prequel.

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - The Bielefeld Conspiracy

Whoever is occupied with the theme “conspiracies” from time to time – like we at The Maier-files – will hit the so called Bielefeld Verschwörung or Bielefeld conspiracy sooner or later.

Bielefeld is a city in the northeastern part of the German state North Rhine-Westphalia, more specifically in the Regierungsbezirk Detmold, where the hotel of our friend Rolf Dietrich is located (see the prequel to The Maier-Files, read it for free here: http://www.maier-files.com/prequel.php). Bielefeld has over 328.000 inhabitants and is thus the biggest city of the region East Westphalia-Lippe – of which the city is also the scientific and cultural centre – and one of the twenty biggest cities of Germany.

At least, that is what offical sources will tell you. Reality however is that the city … doesn’t exist. Last week (see this blog: http://maier-files.com/blog.php?p=10) we had to pass by the A2-exit Bielefeld and really: nothing to see there but prairies. So it’s not really amazing that at the end of the trailer for the movie made about the Bielefeld conspiracy someone says: “Sehen wir uns nicht in dieser Welt, dann sehen wir uns in Bielefeld” (If we don’t see each other in this world, we’ll see each other in Bielefeld).

No, seriously, Bielefeld does exist. And the whole conspiracy was invented by a few students in 1993 (and made known by a certain Achim Held, an ICT guy, who launched it on the internet in 1994). Goal was, as is said, to demonstrate the unfalsifiability of conspiracy theories and their inevitable circular argument. Big words for the assertion that you can’t prove that conspiracy theories are wrong, be it just because those who believe them will say that those who don’t are part of the conspiracy. Sounds nice and recognizable: think of Jerry Fletcher in the movie “Conspiracy theory” – a role played brilliantly by Mel Gibson – who’s convinced that almost the entire world is involved in some conspiracy or another.

Now this Jerry Fletcher is no more than a caricature. Maybe somewhere in the world there is a “conspiracy theorist” vaguely resembling this caricature, but the number of politicians taking bribes or putting aside their principles in exchange for power, politicians resembling their caricature, is undoubtably much bigger. By which we are saying: putting everybody involved with certain matters aside as a lunatic because some lunatics are involved with certain matters is al too easy.

If you spend, on the contrary, some time on, for example, fora like the one of Godlike Productions, you’ll soon come to the conclusion that “conspiracy theorists” in general bare absolutely no resemblance to Jerry Fletcher and those who do are at least ridiculed by the others. One of the reasons to do that is being or not being able to answer the question “Why ?”. Could a supermarket chain put strychnine in your steak ? Of course, but why would the supermarket chain bother ? Could you be abducted and have a chip planted in your brain ? Probably, but why would anybody do that ?

The fact that nobody in the case of the so called Bielefeld conspiracy could produce a canny answer to that question is the very reason why this “conspiracy” has been seen as a good joke from the beginning and not a possible reality. Honestly: if – as later admissions to the story said – the CIA, the Mossad or aliens would like to hide something in Bielefeld, they wouldn’t attract the attention of the world by denying the city even exists.

Conclusion: the theory on the Bielefeld conspiracy is, in clear opposition to what the creators of it would have intended, very falsifiable (exactly like the existence of the city itself: it suffices to, from the apparently really existing part of Germany, drive there to conclude it’s not a Potemkin village). And no “conspiracy theorist” will rebuke us as part of the conspiracy because we dare say so.

But maybe the thing about “unfalsifiability” and “circular argument” was not the real reason for bringing up the Bielefeld Verschwörung ? No, indeed, there are better reasons possible. And sarcastic people as well as “conspiracy theorists” are familiar with it: ridiculing somebody or something (remember what we wrote above about the caricature Jerry Fletcher). You met some friends and drank a beer ? Are you sure you weren’t abducted by a flying saucer ? A fire in the kitchen ? Sure your mother didn’t pass away again ? Hitler didn’t die in that bunker in berlin ? Right, and this year he had his 125th birthday somewhere in South-America … That kind of things. Let’s be honest: it’s far easier to ridicule someone than to prove he’s wrong.

Conclusion: how to make clear to the world that those who think of conspiracy theories are lunatics ? By coming up with absolutely crazy conspiracy theories and mingling them softly with the other theories. That’s something you can observe on conspiracy websites too an usually those messages are recognized by serious people as what they are: trolling. Only for outsiders, people who are not seriously in these things, the difference between trolling and seriousness is not clear, which is why the serious stuff is seen as nonsense too.

For real “conspirators” – and we’ll discuss what we see as such another time – the internet is a blessing: everybody and nobody is taken serious, every opinion is worth as much as another one or nothing.

For “conspiracy theorists” it really doesn’t matter that much: they are in the essence spirits with a tendency to science. They don’t settle with what the media, governments or opinion makers are telling them, they are looking for connections, for underlying truths, for that which maybe hidden by the big scenery put on stage by whom it may concern. They are very critical minds and so they can’t stop looking even if half the world is mocking them.

Enough filosofy ? Then read the free prequel to The Maier-Files: http://www.maier-files.com/prequel.php.

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - War in Ukraine – And the winner is … China ?

Strange how the ideas that turn up in your head arise at the same moment in the heads of other people. We awoke this morning with the idea that China could be taking advantage of the war in Ukraine and look, several others wrote about that same thing today. So, we try to compel the situation.

It’s clear that Russia at this moment has every interest in reinforcing its economic ties with China. That Russia can do that makes clear also that the country has an advantage over “the West”: the losses generated by the mutual boycott can be compensated by the gains from better relations with other countries. That’s a possibility “the west”, as far as we know, doesn’t have.

One of the recent, and very striking, examples of these compensations is the 2500 mile pipeline connecting the Yakutia gas fields with the Chines border. Negotions over that pipeline were successfully finished in May, Putin opened “the biggest construction project in the world” in Eastern Siberia yesterday. The gas contract associated with the pipeline is worth 400 billion dollars over 30 years. Not entirely without risks for Russia because China could try to put pressure on the prices, but at the other hand there’s the fact that China really needs that gas.

Meanwhile the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) holds 20 percent in a project planned on the Yamal peninsula by Russia’s Novatek Group and Total France, while it also works with Rosneft on oil deposits in Eastern Siberia and got an offer from Putin this week to gain a stake in the huyge Vankor oil field.

So Russia succeeds in replacing the money not coming from the West anymore by money newly coming from the East, China succeeds in diversifying its energy supplies. Both win.

But there’s more. China and Russia agreed today to settle a bigger part of their bilateral trade in their own currencies and to enhance the cooperation between their banks. Goal: to diminish dependence on the currency of a third country, read: the dollar. Second goal: keeping entrance to the financial market open for Russian companies despite the sanctions of the European Union and the United States. Third goal: bringing closer the ambition of China to make the yuan the global reserve currency one day and curb the risks of the investments in US government debt.

And then there’s this: China has military and economic interest in keeping open the “land road” over Russia. Because for the “maritime road” China has to take into account the US navy, while the “land road” that connects China, Kazakhstan and Russia guarantees a safe passage for Chinese export to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. While Russia has interest in exporting energy and other products via that same “land road” to China. Li Hui, the Chinese ambassador in Moscow, keeps on repeating that “China and Russia are together like lips and teeth”.

But that’s not all of it. Ukraine and Russia namely have become competitors instead of being each other’s supplier and buyer, especially concerning … military equipment. Both are thus looking for new buyers and both are looking towards China. So China finds itself in a buyer’s market, which allows the country to get military technology and expertise easier and cheaper. At the other hand Chinese suppliers could be a cheap alternative for production of certain military gear in Russia (where that gear used to be bought in Ukraine), what could be an advantage for Russia too. Finally, to the advantage of both Russia and China, there’s the fact that third countries under international pressure could resolve to buy weapons – be it or be it not made in Russia – in China.

The growing connectedness between China and Russia is – though there’s not an official alliance yet – starting to influence third countries already. Mongolia, for example, caught between these two powers, has been courted by Russia and China for weeks and is repositioning its foreign policy more and more towards its two neighbors. Mansour Moazzemi, Iranian deputy minister for Oil communicated yesterday that his country will be working closer together with Russia and China to bypass the sanctions against Iran. Interesting for Russia because Iran is buyer of military equipment, interesting for China because Iran is its third biggest supplier of crude oil. And what about the joint military exercise against an imaginary “separatist organization” that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, together with Russia and China organized at the end of August ?

Well, we don’t know if the winner of the war in Ukraine will be called China, but we do have the impression that the action there led by the United States is bringing the block of potential adversaries closer together …

Talking about adversaries: Dieter and Lena have more of them then they actually would like. Read more about it in the free prequel to The Maier-Files.

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - Did “the West” lift the sanctions against Iran ?

September 22, 1980: Iraq attacks Iran after a long history of border conflicts, motivated by fears that the Iranian Revolution of 1979 (in which the shah was put aside and the radical islamic regime of ayatollah Khomeini took over) would inspire de Shiite majority in Iraq to try the same. Iraqi troups managed, thanks to the revolutionary chaos in Iran, to make some progress into Iranian territory, but had lost almost all of it by June 1982. In the next six years it would be mostly Iran on the offensive.

August 20, 1988: when the cease fire finally came it took several weeks for all Iranian troops to withdraw from Iraqi territory and resettle behind the borders of 1975.

September 5, 2014: ayatollah Khamenei gives his blessing to cooperation with the United States to fight IS(IS) in the north of Iraq. Iranian supreme commander of the Quds, Qasem Soleimani, gets authorization to coordinate military operations with the US, Iraqi and Kurdish troops. Reason ? Iran says to see Sunni IS as a serious threat. But maybe more is going on.

Iran has been troubled with foreign “intervention”, especially from the US, in Iraq. And Iran has had boots on the ground for months in Iraq. No hypocrisy there. The US know that: last month US air strikes on IS troops around Amerli supported an attacking coalition of Iran backed Shia militias and Kurdish troops (who worked with the Iranian troops back in the Iraq-Iran War already). Even the defense of Baghdad against an attack by IS troops was coordinated by Quds supreme commander Soleimani at the head of Iraqi Shia militias.

And there’s more: Iran and the US maybe working together on air strikes for months. Indeed: the SU-25 jets Putin allegedly sent to Iraq at the beginning of July to help the US bomb IS troops according to some experts were of … Iranian origin.

So, if Iran has boots on the ground in Iraq since that long, why would ayatollah Khamenei make the cooperation with the United States official now ? Well, we’re thinking … nuclear weapons.

The sanctions of, amongst others, the United States against Iran because this last country has the ambition to have its own nuclear program – with as a “pleasant” byproduct atomic bombs – do still pertain. Iran does really dislike that, but it has the possibility to intervene in Iraq. It is thus not really strange that Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian minister of Foreign Affairs, said in August that Iran was willing to adhere to the international coalition against IS when … those sanctions would be lifted.

We don’t expect to hear that on the record before November – international talks on the subject should be finished by then -, but we do believe that Iran does have permission to continue its nuclear program already.

A nice reward knowing that Iran, which – as said – does have boots on the ground in Iran and isn’t secretive about that, thanks to the cooperation with the US could gain practical control over its neighbor …

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - Ukraine: a war by request of Monsanto?

The mainstream media, both in the Anglo-Saxon countries as in Western Europe, are continuously building on the fairytale about “Adolf Putin”. Putin says to José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, that Russia can take Kiev in two weeks if it wants to? David Cameron, British prime minister, warns that “the mistakes made in 1938 must not be made again”. No “appeasement”, repeats Angela Merkel, the German Bundeskanzler, because Putin would “aim for Latvia and Estonia” after taking Ukraine and he is still “not to be trusted”.

Meanwhile official Ukrainian troops are more and more in trouble and the rebels that were on the losing side a month ago, especially after being accused – an accusation still not proven – by half the world of taking down flight MH17, are now winning. According to an anonymous high ranked NATO-general the situation is so bad that the Ukrainian government has already lost the war and better takes care of “getting the troops out of the Russian grip alive”. Why? Because of the new front in the south, near harbor city Mariupol, which makes an overland link between the Krim and Russia possible, by which Ukraine would lose all control over its eastern border. On top of that professor Alexander Mattelaer, of the Free University of Brussels, claims that nobody actually thinks they can “defend” Ukraine.

That of the 1 million Ukrainians who have fled their houses because of the violence more than 800.000 have moved to Russia, while the “aggressor” according to Western media comes from that direction, is apparently not enough to change the image of that “aggressor”. That NATO puts every effort into making Ukraine a member state, while Putin has said in May that he sees exactly that as the major threat to Russian safety, doesn’t bring our media to more reasonable news coverage either. And even the fact that the same NATO speaks about the so called Readiness Action Plan (RAP) which would make it possible to deploy 4000 troops in Eastern Europe within 48 hours, while the United States government barely hides its happiness over the expected growth of the alliance and the possibility that new “threats” on the borders would make the “defense” budgets grow again, doesn’t make our political journalists any smarter.

Knowing how little the mainstream media normally cares about the facts behind the press releases, we don’t have to expect that they will pay any attention to the growing buzz in the underground of the internet that Monsanto has very high stakes in this Ukrainian war. That is nevertheless a fact.

Let’s return to the 21st of November for a while. That day demonstrators started their “Revolution of Dignity” on the Independence Square in Kiev, a revolution also called “Euromaidan” referring to their goal of integrating Ukraine into the European Union. We don’t doubt for even a second that the biggest part of the demonstrators were there as idealists and that a big part of the following fights would be fought by those and other idealists. Only … did they know what they were doing ? And were they not, as happens all to often with “spontaneous” revolutions, misused by non-idealistic people in power ? That’s what we want to talk about today.

Direct cause for the protests was the fact that then sitting president Yanukovych refused to sign the association agreement between his country and the European Union. Protesters demanded more European integration, the resignation of the president and advanced elections, while Yanukovych, therein backed by about fifty percent of the population (according to different polls), chose for further cooperation with Russia. The essence of the choice being this: signing the association agreement with the European Union in exchange for a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of 17 billion dollar or accepting an aid package from Russia worth about 15 billion dollar in combination with a discount on Russian gas. The reason why Ukraine could count on the “kindness” of the European Union and the US on one side and Russia on the other side ? Moving the borders of the influence areas. The US have been working on that for ages, for instance via their engagement in Georgia (the country not the US-state); Russia – that has not forgotten how big it was when the Soviet Union still existed and has gotten more than tired of the humiliations since mafia-like Jeltsin, who kneeled for the West, was exchanged for Putin – doesn’t feel like standing by doing nothing anymore. What started as financial bidding thus degenerated into a civil war. Aggressor in the financial bidding was the coalition European Union-US, Ukraine was till then sitting firmly in the influence area of Russia.

But why did Ukraine absolutely have to leave Russia’s influence area ? From the amounts that were offered to “save” the country one could easily conclude that it is not exactly the richest country in the region and thus that the expected revenues – still the most important motivation in the international game – can’t be much. Wright ?

Well, that is where Monsanto enters. It is known that the International Monetary Fund is nót a big benefactor, isn’t it ? The IMF only “saves” countries when it expects a big return on investment. Once in a while that goes wrong, but when big industrial players like Monsanto use their persuasive power, the IMF is always willing to give it a try. And Monsanto did have enough reasons to convince the IMF: the future of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on the Eurasian continent.

That future namely doesn’t look very bright. Not only in the green movements in Western Europe – movements that lobby with the European Parliament too – but also in a number of countries there is not much enthusiasm about gm-crops. Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Austria, Poland and France have legislation against the growing of Monsanto-corn MON 810 and BASF-potato Amflora already. Much against the will of not only Monsanto, BASF, DuPont and similar groups, but also of the European Commission (the non-elected European government, so to speak). Knowing that Russia is going the anti-GMO way too (the country promised last year to admit the growing of GMOs as part as its entrance to the World Trade Organisation, but has since then moved the decision to the long term), with prime minister Dimitri Medvedev saying still in April of this year that “if the Americans like to eat such products, let them eat them. We don’t need to do that; we have enough space and opportunities to produce organic food”, the GMO-industry is looking for a possibility to break into the continent. A possibility which could become reality in, indeed, Ukraine.

Ukraine, that has been known for long as the “grain basket of Europe”, is just ideal for the growing of grain and corn, but the former Ukrainian government put a ban on the use of GMOs in agriculture. Maybe that could, in exchange for 17 billion dollars of “help”, be changed ? That is what was tried in article 404 – nicely hidden between hundreds of others, sometimes much less important, articles – of the association agreement Yanukovych was supposed to sign: both parties would be obliged to cooperate on the extended use of biotechnologies. Read: Ukraine would be forced to open its borders to genetically modified crops and GMOs.

Monsanto, obviously very self-assured, announced in May 2013 that it would invest 140 million dollar in a corn seed plant in Ukraine. Of course, said spokesman Vitally Fechuk, “we will be working with conventional seeds only”. By the 5th of November 2013 that had changed. On that day Volodymr Klymenko, spokesman of the Ukrainian Grain Association, announced on a press conference that his organization, together with five other big agricultural organizations, had demanded to change the law on biosecurity so “creating, testing, transportation and use of GMOs” would become possible. “Coincidentally” this demand was also one of the conditions in the association agreement with the European Union/the IMF.

At the beginning of December last year, after the start of the “spontaneous” revolution, Monsanto Ukraine launched its program for “social development” of the country, named “Grain Basket of the Future”, with the promise to the rural population that thus they could “start feeling that they can improve their situation themselves as opposed to waiting for a handout”.

A few days later, on December 13, Monsanto, through Jesus Madrazo, announced at the US-Ukraine Conference in Washington that the company saw “the importance of creating a favorable environment [in Ukraine] that encourages innovation and fosters the continued development of agriculture”. A favorable environment which could obviously be created by opening the Ukrainian borders to GMOs, but also by lifting the ban on selling agricultural land to the private sector. As Morgan Williams, CEO of the US-Ukraine Business Council, told to the International Business Times in March: “The major item would center around getting the government out of business”. The agribusiness companies on the Executive Committee of the Business Council – Monsanto, John Deere, DuPont, Cargill and others – would undoubtedly agree to that.

As would probably the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center. That was founded on the 2nd of March 2014 – the day after Donetsk declared itself independent from Ukraine and the same day Luhansk did the same – with its headquarters in Hotel Ukraina in Kiev. Core message of the press agency is that the interim government of Ukraine is legitimately elected by the parliament including the party of the disposed Yanukovych and that the country is victim to the military aggression of neighboring Russia. More important is the fact that this “independent” agency is financed by, amongst others, George Soros, the Ukrainian interim government and Weber Shandwick, one of the biggest publicity agencies in the world that was also responsible for Obama’s “Affordable Care Act” campaign. The press agency was labeled on April 15 of this year as a “voluntary operation” by Olga Radchenko of PBN Hill + Knowlton Strategies, a corporation of which the CEO, Myron Wasvlyk, happens to be on the board of the US-Ukraine Business Council, and the managing director for Ukraine, Oksana Monastyrska, coincidentally leads the firms work for … Monsanto.

Now, do we, closing this article, dare to say that Monsanto requested the war in Ukraine ? No. But the mere fact that Ukraine with its new “western” government would open its borders to GMOs and agricultural land could be sold to private corporations like Monsanto, while it would become harder for the countries of the European Union to put an import ban on genetically modified crops if those crops were grown in a country that is (at least) associated with the European Union, makes it very clear that for Monsanto and its allies there is a lot at stake in getting Ukraine out of the Russian influence aria, if need be manu militari.

Oh yeah, before we forget: read the free prequel to our comic The Maier-Files here.

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - Location Bilderberg conference 2015 known already: minaret-municipality Telfs

You didn’t read it in a Belgian or Dutch newspaper and – honestly – even in the English speaking world the news is only on the “conspiracy sites”: the Bilderberg conference of 2015 will be held in Austria, more specifically in Tyrol.

Yet the guys of Alles Schall und Rauch brought the news already on the 14th of August, half a month ago: the Interalpen-Hotel in Telfs, where the conference was also held in 1988, would be the stage for this meeting of the, elected or not, leaders of the world.

“Would be”, we write, because despite of the fact that the Tiroler Landespolizei (the police of Tyrol) has confirmed to the APA press agency that it “knows about it”, it is rather suspicious that the location of the gathering is known this soon. Normally this information is given at most a few months before the conference, which makes it possible that the leak is organized and that there’s a chance the meeting eventually takes place elsewhere.

On the exact date of the conference – of which the participants are obliged to secrecy, automatically giving cause to (wild) speculations on what is discussed there – less clarity exists. Though the conspirators usually get together in the beginning of June, the hotel appears to be fully booked for the first two weekends of that month (4th to 7th and 11th to 14th). That will without any doubt contribute to the possible disorganization of the protest movements, which can only be in the advantage of the Bilderberg group.

Anyway, we’re curious about what is going to happen in Telfs next year, since it would not be the first time that Telfs gets to be the center point of a battle. The municipality is namely known in Austria as the “Minarett-Gemeinde” (minaret municipality) since in 2006 the Eyüp-Sultan-mosque, the second mosque in Austria, was completed with a 50 feet high “prayer tower” (originally planned to reach a height of a 100 feet). This minaret, apparently the only one in Austria, led to a “straightforward clash of civilizations” including death threats to the local mayor. We suspect Telfs is not really waiting for new troubles …

Neither are we at The Maier-Files waiting for the Bilderberg meeting of 2015 to present you a comic about the secret ops and covert wars of the past and nowadays. Get your free prequel now !

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - Did Google Images get hacked by Energetic Bear (Crouching Yeti) or Dragonfly?

Oddly the news about the trouble with Google Images that seemed to be all over the internet did not reach Belgian newspapers. Rather bizarre since those newspapers do tend to report on less interesting things like Sophie Ferrara, a woman living in Maryland (USA), being the oldest Facebook-user or a rapper in Kansas City (Missouri, USA) doing his thing on the music of Mozart’s Turkish March.

However, Google Images did produce some weird results yesterday, though it did not produce them everywhere nor for everybody: images of some car crash appeared to people searching Google Images for, for example, puppies. We said “some car crash” because our knowledge of Ukranian or Russian is not good enough to know if the car crash did or did not occur in Russia, as is commonly accepted. The original image however does seem to come from a Ukranian newssite (Karpatnews), which posted an article on the crash in 2012. People who read Ukranian or Russian better than we do are invited to let us know if the article speaks about a Russian accident or a Ukranian one. And while they are at it: tell us if names are being mentioned in the article.

Now, the problem has been resolved yesterday – though some people claim to still experience problems, which might be due to not clearing their browser cache or not removing their DNS cache -, but was Google Images hacked or not ?

Well … Google doesn’t comment on that. A spokesperson said it was an “internal issue”, no more no less. But we, for some reason, haven’t forgotten about the Russian group of hackers known as Energetic Bear or Dragonfly. This group has been active since at least 2011 and is, according to people at Symantec, working a standard week, operating from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. in an eastern European time zone, which seems – even apart from their apparent resources, size and organization – to suggest government involvement. Knowing that Google has been victim of other hackers before, remember Operation Aurora of the Elderwood Project at the end of 2009, we for sure wouldn’t be surprised if the “Russian car accident”-incident proves to be the work of hackers in the end …

More on secret ops, covert wars and breakaway civilizations in The Maier-Files. Free prequel available on our website.

Björn Roose

Translations (to English) - Press release The Maier-Files

The Maier-Files brought to surface

They had been at rest for decades, but some lovebirds, Dieter and Lena, brought them to surface: the Maier-diaries. Their curiosity did not kill the cat, but unwillingly awoke some mad dogs. At least that’s what our hero Rolf Dietrich – or is it Rolf Naumann ? – has to say about the men who take an unhealthy interest in these diaries.

But who is this Rolf Dietrich ? What is he up to ? And who is Gudrun ? Where does Lena’s grandfather fit in ? Is this really all about some weird diaries ? Are the vague tests Otto Maier apparently performed at some secret nazi-base in the Harz Mountains the actual reason for a number of secret service guys to set up an armed attack in broad daylight ?

These questions and the possible answers to them are only the first pages of The Maier-Files. In the years to come Pat & Dorn will take you along the winding paths of covert wars, secret ops and very clear and present danger through a decades long and little known history. A history in which Nazis and their counterparts still fight a war officially ended in 1945. A history in which it’s not always clear who’s on whose side. An unfinished history, going on today, and – to our knowledge – not ending in the near future. A history of missing gold, esoteric activities, breakaway civilizations, and governments and officials getting fooled just like anybody else.

Too much for you ? Don’t panic. We’re taking it slowly and Rolf is there to guide us. Just duck the bullets and let our hero do the talking. And remember: trust no one.

Björn Roose