New evidence shows 'suicide' student was beaten to death

by Mark Townsend and Jamie Doward
THE OBSERVER

Compelling new evidence suggests that a 22-year-old Briton who had become involved with a right-wing political cult in Germany was murdered, contradicting the authorities' verdict of suicide.

Two new reports from leading forensic pathologists suggest that Jeremiah Duggan, a student at the British Institute in Paris, was battered to death with a blunt instrument as he tried desperately to defend himself.

The findings, to be revealed on Tuesday, cast grave doubt on the official verdict that Duggan hurled himself in front of cars on a dual carriageway in Wiesbaden. Forensic specialists found no trace of tyre marks on his body, or anything to suggest that he had been struck by a vehicle. But they did detect classic 'defence wounds' to Duggan's forearms and hands, which usually suggest someone trying to protect himself.

His head injuries are consistent with being beaten and 'exclude any possibility that the injuries to his head occurred because a motor vehicle ran over the body', according to the two studies.

Both reports are unanimous in rejecting the official account that Duggan was struck by two vehicles on the night he died in March 2003. They also found that he had ingested quantities of blood.

The official account by German authorities, based on police reports, says he was hit by a car travelling at 60mph and died instantly. However, the fact Duggan survived long enough to swallow large amounts of blood indicates he took a long time to die, which would not be the case after a high-speed collision.

The expert conclusions are the strongest evidence yet that Duggan was killed rather than committed suicide, and support his family's claims that the true circumstances surrounding his death have been covered up. The findings will be sent this week to the Attorney General as part of a submission of evidence aimed at securing a fresh inquest into the circumstances surrounding the death. Erica, his mother, hopes that a verdict of 'unlawful killing' will apply pressure for a fresh police investigation.

Duggan, from Golders Green, north-west London, had become involved with the Wiesbaden followers of Lyndon LaRouche, an American millionaire with virulent anti-Semitic views. Unaware of the group's leanings, the former Christ's Hospital pupil told followers that he was Jewish. At 4.20am on 27 March, 2003, Duggan rang his mother. His voice was hushed: 'Mum, I am in deep trouble.'

Asked where he was, Duggan began spelling out Wiesbaden. Before he could reach 'b', the line went dead. Hours later, police investigated reports of a body on the B455 outside Wiesbaden. The authorities quickly pronounced Duggan's death as a 'clear case' of suicide. The official version states that Duggan 'ran against' a Peugeot and was subsequently run over by a Golf.

Despite requests by British police, their German counterparts have failed to even reveal records of when they were first alerted that Duggan had been killed in a road traffic accident.

Frances Swain, of lawyers Leigh Day and Co, said: 'It is clear from the new evidence that JD did not die in a road traffic accident. How he did die has yet to be investigated and a fresh inquest is required to get those proper investigations off the ground. This is strong evidence that again questions what has been told to us. A new inquest is essential.'

FIGHT FOR JUSTICE

21 March 2003 Jeremiah Duggan travels to Wiesbaden for what he believes is an anti-war conference. In fact, it was organised by the far-right Schiller Institute, which is inspired by Lyndon LaRouche, a US right-wing conspiracy theorist, and run by his wife. It has a history of anti-Semitism.

27 March At 4.20am, Duggan, who was Jewish, called his mother, saying: 'I'm in deep, deep trouble, I want out.' Later he was found dead on a dual carriageway.

29 March German authorities claim he took his own life by jumping into traffic.

4 November British coroner Dr William Dolman dismissed suicide verdict, saying Duggan died 'in a state of terror'.

24 February 2004 Duggan family meet Foreign Office after German authorities refuse to reopen the case.

November 2005 Duggan's mother persuades German authorities to hand over photos made by investigators.

22 Feb 2006 Family calls for new inquest.

March 2007 Two forensic reports say Duggan was battered to death.

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Oil rises after Iran arrests sailors

by Kevin Morrison
FINANCIAL TIMES

Oil prices rose on Friday after tensions with Iran escalated following the Islamic Republic’s capture of 15 British Navy sailors. The incident comes at an important moment in the stand-off between Iran and the West over its nuclear ambitions.

The US sent a second aircraft carrier recently to the Persian Gulf, and the Iranian navy has started a week of naval exercises there.

Heightened geopolitical tensions combined with a tightening oil market have sent oil prices to new highs for the year. Crude and petroleum product inventories in the developed world are declining and US petrol demand is increasing at a stronger-than-expected pace ahead of peak summer demand. On the supply side, analysts have trimmed output forecasts from producers outside the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

ICE Brent for May delivery added 67 cents to $63.18 a barrel by the end of London trade on Friday, and is up more than four per cent on the week. The May Brent contract reached its highest level for the year yesterday at $63.47.

May West Texas Intermediate gained 59 cents to $62.28 a barrel in late trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after hitting $62.65; its highest level since December 26. “You have got a series of bullish signals for the oil price, both on the supply and demand side, and on the political side too,” said one hedge fund manager.

Nickel prices had another roller-coaster ride. After rising more than 10 per cent in the previous week, the metal, used for stainless steel production, fell more than 12 per cent from last Friday’s record high of $48,300. The three-month nickel price fell six per cent or $2,700 to $42,450 a tonne.

The slide in the nickel price was prompted by more metal flowing into warehouses registered with the LME. The increase leaves nickel stockpiles at about a day’s worth of consumption.

Copper, which led the charge in the base metal price rally 12 months ago, started to climb on tighter fundamentals. This week, analysts and one of the world’s largest copper producers, BHP Billiton, have forecast a deficit of copper in the second quarter, the peak demand period of the year for base metals.

The red metal rose $20 to $6,720 a tonne yesterday, leaving it about 10 per cent higher on the week. Robin Bhar, metals strategist at UBS, said copper fundamentals meant prices could go a lot higher. “There are a lot more people short (entities that had pre-sold copper) than there were this time last year, when copper started its run up to its record. If we have copper going towards $7,000, you will find a lot more covering, which would trigger further rises,” said Mr Bhar.

Grains markets ended the week on a downward note before an important report next week. The US Department of Agriculture will issue its first crop planting estimates of the season, with the first indication this year as to whether an expected expansion in corn acreage has occurred.

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The Road to Serfdom

by Caroline Glick
REAL CLEAR POLITICS

In Israel, as in the rest of the free world, we are witnessing the death by a thousand cuts of free thought.

Last month, two students at Cambridge University's Clare College became victims of this state of affairs. The students dedicated an edition of their satire magazine to the one-year anniversary of the global Muslim riots which followed the publication of caricatures of Muhammad in the Danish Jyllands Posten newspaper. As the students recalled, those riots led to the deaths of more than a hundred people.

Although the British media refused to republish the caricatures, British Muslims held terrifying protests throughout the country where they called for the destruction of Britain, the US, Denmark and Israel and for the murder of all who refuse to accept the global domination of Islam.

In their magazine, the students published some of the caricatures and mocked the Muslims for their hypocrisy in accusing British society of racial prejudice while calling for its violent destruction.

The Muslim reaction was apparently swift. Fearing for their lives, the students were forced into hiding.

But the Muslims were not alone in their anger. Clare College set up a special disciplinary court to consider action against the students. And the Cambridgeshire police opened a criminal investigation against them in late February.

The persecution of these students provides a case study of the two-pronged offensive being carried out today against Western culture. First there are the jihadists, who call for our destruction. Then there are the leftist intellectuals and public figures who defend radical Islamists and work to silence those who criticize them by criminalizing speech and condemning free thinkers as racists.

The direct consequence of this two-pronged offensive is the repression of free thought.

FOUR YEARS ago, US President George W. Bush called the invasion of Iraq "Operation Iraqi Freedom." The intention was clear. The purpose of the war was not merely to bring down Saddam Hussein's murderous, terror-supporting regime. It was to bring about the defeat of the vile world view that supported the regime and to replace that view with the values of freedom, tolerance and democracy.

Four years on, US forces continue their heroic fight to bring order and security to that violent land. But the purpose of their efforts is no longer clear. The US no longer pushes the Iraqis or the greater Arab world to abandon jihad in favor of freedom.

Earlier this month, columnist Joel Mowbray gave evidence of the Bush administration's abandonment of the war of ideas in a Wall Street Journal expose on the US taxpayer-financed Arabic-language television network Al-Hurra. The US launched Al- Hurra in February 2004 to compete with jihadist television networks like Al Jazeera. Its stated aim was to present a liberal, pro-democracy and pro-human rights voice to the Arab world. Yet, as Mowbray reported, since former CNN producer Larry Register was appointed to lead the network last November, that aim fell by the wayside.

In December the network began allowing itself to be used as a platform by arch terrorists like Hizbullah commander Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Last month, when the Israeli Islamic movement began attacking Israel for conducting an archeological dig by the Aksa mosque, Al-Hurra's coverage of the story was more extreme than Al Jazeera's. Palestinian Authority mufti Ikremah Sabri was brought on live and accused Israel of shooting and throwing bombs into the mosque and of denying medical care to those it had supposedly wounded. Al-Hurra has also hosted an al-Qaida terrorist who rejoiced in the September 11 attacks on America.

As is the case in Britain, the Bush administration's decision to largely abandon the ideological battlefield is the result of an uncompromising and unrelenting ideological and political assault against the voices that justify the war against the global jihad generally, and against the hawks in the Bush administration specifically.

Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and John Bolton - and arguably Scooter Libby - were all forced from their positions in the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House after coming under unrelenting attack by the Left which all but accused these men of treason for their vigilant support of the war against Islamic totalitarianism. A central component of the onslaught against them was the repeated claim that their support for Israel is what brought these men to delude America into believing that the global jihad is a threat to US national security.

One of the central players in this concerted attack has been the billionaire George Soros. Soros is an anti-Zionist Jew with a troubling past. Specifically, by his own admission in interviews with 60 Minutes in 1998 and PBS in 1993, Soros collaborated with the Nazis in seizing Jewish property in Budapest in 1944.

Author Serge Trifkovic, who is currently researching a biography of Soros, tells of a Holocaust survivor in Hungary who claims that the reason Soros was allowed to remain free was "the boy's special knowledge of the Jewish community and its attempts to protect its property from confiscation."

Since 2003, Soros has donated more than $100 million to radical left-wing groups and to the political campaigns of far-left anti-war Democratic candidates in the US. His money has made him one of the most influential forces in the Democratic Party.

After Hamas won the Palestinian election last January, Soros turned his guns against Israel. Last October he announced his intention to work with left-wing American Jewish groups such as Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, American Friends of Peace Now and the Israel Policy Forum to form an effectively anti-Israel lobbying group that will compete with the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Soros accuses AIPAC of making common cause with the war hawks and so harming US and Israeli national security.

This week Soros laid out his anti-Israel views in the New York Review of Books. In a longwinded screed entitled, "On Israel, America and AIPAC," Soros presents an incoherent hodgepodge of sloppy logic and contradictory statements. On the one hand, he acknowledges that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza radicalized the Palestinians and brought Hamas to power. On the other hand, he insists that further Israeli withdrawals will cause the Palestinians to moderate. While he acknowledges that Hamas is a terror group, he insists that the US must recognize it and force Israel to recognize it and that AIPAC is responsible for neither recognizing Hamas as a legitimate political force in the region.

Soros claims to want peace for Israel. Yet he demands that the US and Israel embrace the Saudi plan which calls for Israel's effective destruction through a forced Israeli withdrawal from Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria and the Golan Heights and the demographic destruction of the Jewish state through unimpeded immigration of 4-5 million foreign-born Arabs.

In effect, Soros's arguments make clear that protestations aside, the advancement of human rights and peace cannot possibly be his true goals. Rather, what seems to interest him most is the erosion of the US-Israel alliance. A US abandonment of Israel is seen as a necessary component of an overall strategy for causing the US to cease its fight against the global jihad.

In her visit here next week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to pressure the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government to continue diplomatic contacts with the Hamas-Fatah terror government through PA Chairman and Fatah commander Mahmoud Abbas. In light of the administration's weakening stand on Hamas, it is clear that Soros's views have taken hold in ever-widening policy circles in Washington.

In advancing their anti-Israel views, Soros and his allies (most recently, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof), invoke the work of radical leftist Israeli organizations like the Geneva Initiative, B'tselem and Peace Now. Like Soros, these organizations claim to act for the advancement of peace and human rights. And like Soros, these organizations effectively cooperate with pro-jihadist groups in eroding Israel's ability to defend its rights as a Jewish democracy.

The public storm that ensued this week after Jews in Hebron took control of a building they recently purchased in the city was a clear example of this leftist-jihadist collusion.

In demanding that the IDF move immediately to eject the Jews from the building they had bought, Peace Now and B'tselem ignored human rights and openly advocated the abrogation of the human rights of Israeli Jews to purchase and hold property. In so doing, they lent their support to the racist jihadist view that Jews must be barred from stepping foot in so-called Arab areas.

B'tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that whether the Jews purchased the building or not was immaterial. In her words, "Our opposition in principle is that these settlements should be evacuated anyway and that there shouldn't be these pockets in Hebron."

She added that "other than watching and making sure that [the sale] was done in a legal way, the IDF has the obligation to make sure that settlers don't take over more areas."

In so arguing, Michaeli gave effective Jewish Israeli support to even more outrageous statements by Israeli Arab parliamentarians. As she claimed that the IDF's job is to fight Jews, Arab MKs Ibrahim Sarsour and Muhammad Barakei participated in the PA's "Jerusalem First" conference in Ramallah. Sarsour called for "Muslims and Arabs" to "liberate Jerusalem."

Sarsour declared, "Just as the Muslims once liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders, so must we today believe that we can liberate Jerusalem. It is not an impossible dream."

Barakei accused Israel of trying to "empty Jerusalem of its Palestinian inhabitants." Calling Jerusalem a "national issue, not just a religious issue," he called on Palestinians to act immediately to "reclaim the city."

As for Hebron, on Tuesday MK Taleb a-Sanaa called for an international boycott of Israel in response to the Jewish purchase and takeover of the building.

The Arab MKs spoke against the backdrop of Israel's first Arab cabinet minister Ghaleb Majadle's refusal to sing the national anthem and the publication of a University of Haifa poll showing that 76 percent of Israeli Arabs believe that Zionism is a form of racism and that 28% of Israeli Arabs deny the Holocaust.

Needless to say, no criminal investigations into possible treason charges have been opened against the Arab politicians.

A CLEAR line connects the Cambridge students, the Americans in Iraq, and the situation in Israel. The leftist-Islamist front is eroding the free world's sense of justice. Rather than assert our liberal, democratic values and defend our freedoms, fearing leftist condemnation, politicians and opinion shapers have permitted themselves to become shackled to ideologies that negate everything for which the free world stands.
Israel, which stands on the front lines of freedom, is duty-bound to stem the tide. But our ignoble leaders have preferred to stop thinking and silently surrender.

This is how a civilization collapses.

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Was There Death Before Adam?

http://www.tungate.com/Death_Before_Adam.htm

In this essay, Elder Jones shows how death before Adam makes sense from a scriptural sense. He is not necessarily saying that evolution of man is true or untrue.

Steven E. Jones, BYU Professor

Many LDS students face a dilemma: animal fossils and other evidence seems to show that death occurred hundreds of thousands of years ago. Yet the Book of Mormon and other scriptures speak of the fall of Adam as introducing death into the world. The apparent contradiction troubles many. Nor is the timing of death's entry into the world a minor point, for it strikes at the central doctrine of Christ's atonement, as Elder McConkie succinctly stated the issue:

"Now if Adam did not fall and bring death into the world, there would be no need for the atoning sacrifice of Christ. If there were no atonement to ransom fallen beings and creatures from the effects of the fall, there would be no resurrection, no immortality, no salvation, no eternal life; and if all these things should vanish away, we could discard God himself, and our faith would be vain." [B.R. McKonkie, Mormon Doctrine, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966, p. 254.]

"Death began, as far as this earth is concerned, after and as a result of the fall of Adam. There was no death for man or for any form of life until after Adam transgressed. (2 Nephi 2:22; Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 1, pp. 107-120)." [Ibid., p. 185; see also Alma 42:9 and Moses 6:48]

Now, another scholar and defender of the faith states:

"On the other hand, to limit and insist upon the whole of life and death to this side of Adam's advent to the earth, some six or eight thousand years ago, as proposed by some, is to fly in the face of the facts so indisputably brought to light by the researcher of science in modern times, and this as set forth by men of the highest type in the intellectual and moral world.... To pay attention to and give reasonable credence to their research and findings is to link the church of God with the highest increase of human thought and effort." [B.H. Roberts, "The Truth, the Way, the Life."]

Are these views really contradictory as they seem to be? Can we reconcile the scientific evidence of ancient life and death with scriptural proclamations about Adam's fall and the atonement? Or must we choose between them?

I think there is a way to reconcile the fossil evidence with the scriptural evidence regarding pre-Adamic life and death. But before examining this idea let us first consider three models which evidently fail.

One faulty model is that of so-called "scientific creationism," which posits that all living things were created ex nihilo approximately six thousand years ago. As B.H. Roberts correctly observed, this notion flies in the face of established scientific evidence for living things on the earth millions of years ago. Furthermore, the notion was emphatically rejected by Joseph Smith, the LDS prophet:

"You ask the learned doctors why they say the world was made out of nothing; and they will answer, 'Doesn't the Bible say He created the world?' And they infer, from the word create, that it must have been made out of nothing. Now, the word create came from the word baurau which does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. "Hence, we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos ... The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning, and can have no end." [Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 350- 352.]

The statement about "pure principles of element" being capable of reorganization but neither destruction nor creation, presages the modern notion of conservation of mass-energy, which became accepted in physics some years after Joseph Smith's 1844 statement above. Clearly, his statement is a point of departure from our Christian friends who espouse "creationism", or creation from nothing about 6,000 years ago. We don't believe it.

A second hypothesis was advanced by B.H. Roberts, who posited that all life prior to Adam was destroyed from the earth, and that Adam and other living things were then transported from another world. The geologic record does show cataclysmic destruction of the dinosaurs, for example, but this did not destroy all life, and in any case took place millions of years before Adam. In short, the geologic record does not support B.H. Roberts' theory.

A third hypothesis suggests that the earth was organized from pieces of other, older planets, so that the fossils derive from them. This interesting picture breaks down when we consider the empirical evidence for geologic times on our earth, including cooling from a molten state and subsequent continental drifts. Strata of fossils and coal fields also argue for an earth bearing life (and death) many millions of years ago. [See William L. Stokes, "Joseph Smith and the Creation," for further criticism of this notion.]

Now let us examine what science and the scriptures each mean by "death". For science, death implies a cessation of regeneration and chemical activity of a physical organism. Although some may wish to challenge the scientific methods of dating fossils, coal deposits, and so on, to me it is clear that this kind of death occurred many millions of years ago. There is no need to deny or ignore the fossil evidence.

But death in the scriptures has a different meaning than used generally in science, meaning a separation of the spirit from the body rather than a cessation of chemical impulses. [Matthew 27:50; Alma 11:42.] Science has nothing to say about the pre- mortal existence of spirits and their placement into physical bodies, since this discussion goes beyond what can be seen. And religion affirms that this is the way things should be during earth-life: we must walk by faith. For those of us who accept the scriptural truth that each person's spirit is a child of God, and that a major reason for coming to earth is to obtain a body, then the idea that death is a temporary separation of spirit from body is understandable and consistent. "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy" is one of the beautiful scriptures translated by the prophet, Joseph Smith. [2 Nephi 2:25]

Consistent with this definition of death, LDS scriptures define the soul as the combination of spirit and body: "the spirit and the body are the soul of man." [Doctrine and Covenants 88:15.]

Now we are ready to think about the Adam as the first "soul" or the first "man" on earth: "And the Gods formed man from the dust of the ground, and took his spirit (that is, the man's spirit), and put it into him; and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." (Abraham 5:7) "And I, the Lord God, formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul, the first flesh upon the earth, the first man also; nevertheless, all things were before created." (Moses 3:7)

We see that a body had been prepared -- we are not told in any detail how this was done -- and that Adam's spirit was placed into this body which had been prepared, so that Adam was in the scriptural sense the first soul or man on the earth.

But what does the scripture mean, "nevertheless, all things were before created"? [Moses 3:7] It sounds contradictory. What I am now suggesting, is that the bodies for man and other living things were indeed created or organized from the dust of the earth over eons of time before Adam, but that independent spirits were not placed into the bodies until Adam. Thus, Adam was in fact the first living soul on the earth, and his transgression brought death into the world, that is, a separation of spirit from body. [Moses 6:48] Christ's atonement was then needed to overcome the effects of the fall, so that the body could be restored to the spirit, "and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fullness of joy; and when separated, man cannot receive a fullness of joy." [D&C 93: 33-34.]

Do I posit that plants and animals lived and "died" on the earth before Adam? In the scientific sense of death, yes, but without separate spirits so that death did *not* occur in the scriptural sense. I invite you to re-read the accounts of creation from Genesis, Moses, and Abraham (and listen to the temple account) as I have done, and determine for yourself whether this notion does serves to clarify these accounts and to harmonize the scriptures with the testimony of the rocks, which after all have the same Author.

Now, an apparent weakness in this hypothesis from the LDS point of view is that spirits may be needed to animate any life forms. But notice the language used in describing the creation before Adam:

"And the earth was without form, and void; and I caused darkness to come up upon the face of the deep; and my Spirit moved upon the face of the water; for I am God." [Moses 2:2; compare Genesis 1:2] "And the Gods said: Let us prepare the waters to bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that have life..." "And the Gods prepared the waters that they might bring forth great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters were to bring forth abundantly after their kind; and every winged fowl after their kind And the Gods saw that they would be obeyed, and that their plan was good. And the Gods said: We will bless them, and cause them to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas or great water; and cause the fowl to multiply in the earth." [Abr. 4:20-22]

These scriptures indicate that the Gods, through that Spirit which moved upon the waters, caused the beasts to be fruitful and multiply, etc., before Adam. Simultaneously, spirits were formed in a pre-mortal existence for all living creatures. These processes took six periods of unspecified length to accomplish. When bodies were prepared after their kind, that is, matching the spirits prepared separately in another realm, then these individual spirits were placed into the bodies, beginning with Adam.

There is a distinct and emphasized change with Adam, for "in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency" [Moses 7:32]. I suggest that at the time of Adam, independent spirits were for the first time placed in the bodies that had been formed; man now had his agency and no longer was there a need for God to "order" or "cause" growth of the creatures. Before that, the life and progress of living things was guided by God, evidently through the Spirit [Moses 2:2].

Note also that the scriptural language indicates that the waters and the earth were prepared "to bring forth" the creatures. This may provide some insight into the mechanism by which the Gods brought forth living things. I see nothing here out of harmony with scientific observations based on fossil evidences.

Now I hasten to say that I am not here trying to harmonize the scriptures with notions of the theory of organic evolution or of natural selection proposed by Darwin. In fact, many scientists including B.H. Roberts found problems in this theory. It seems pointless to try to reconcile scripture to a scientific theory which is itself in a state of flux as more data comes to light.

On the other hand, there are observations of fossils that show unequivocally that plants and animals lived well over 20,000 years ago, that is, before the time of Adam. If there was a progression of life on earth toward greater complexity, as the fossils show, I have no problem accepting the testimony of the scriptures cited above that this progress was ordered and caused by God. Moreover, this picture seems consistent with our scientific understanding of the laws of nature, that is, an intelligence can cause systems to go "uphill", improving from lower forms of life to much more complex forms, without violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics. LDS scientist Henry Eyring puts it this way:

"I might say in this regard that in my mind the theory of evolution has to include a notion that the dice have been loaded from the beginning in favor of more complex life forms. That is, without intelligent design of the natural laws in such a way as to favor evolution from lower forms to higher forms, I don't think the theory holds water." [Henry Eyring, "Reflections of a Scientist."]

I have re-read the statements of the First Presidency (J.F. Smith, J.R. Winder and A.H. Lund) regarding "The Origin of Man" and do find that the hypothesis here advanced in no way contradicts that definitive doctrinal statement. Their central point was "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, basing its belief on divine revelation, ancient and modern, proclaims man to be the direct and lineal offspring of Deity. ... By His almighty power [God] organized the earth, and all that it contains, from spirit and element, which exist co-eternally with Himself."

The details of the physical creation are not given in scripture. Indeed, why should they be? The Lord gave us the testimony of the rocks and bids us read. [Moses 6:63, D&C 88:77-80]

The Lord said that "all things are created and made to bear record of me... things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me." [Moses 6:63] If this is true, do not the fossils in the earth also testify of their Creator? I find it so.

To me, the fossils speak of a God who caused the earth to bring forth bodies for us over millions of years. This seems like a very long time to us now; but God views time differently. [Psalms 90:4] No doubt this same "natural-law" pattern was also used for other worlds like earth. Meanwhile, our spirits lived in a separate sphere for eons of time with our Heavenly Parents. Finally, when all was ready, independent spirits of all living things were placed in those bodies to undergo an earth experience, beginning with Adam. This view gives an appreciation for the preparation of our bodies and their great importance in God's eternal plan for our progression and happiness. We do in fact find a sudden appearance of high intellectual skills such as mathematics (way beyond simple counting) about 6000 years ago, but we are not shown the hand of God in such a way that we are overwhelmed. After all, we are here to be tested. We must walk by faith.

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Bush, al-Qaeda and Saddam

by Lucy Komisar

From A Game as Old as Empire
Summary highlights from Chapter 4: "The BCCI Game: Banking on America, Banking on Jihad"

BCCI: How the Reagan-Bush-CIA team used an offshore bank to run guns, finance Islamic jihadists, and launder money.

BCCI enriched the entourage of the Bushes and other Washington influentials. Its biggest shareholders were Saudi and United Arab Emirates sheiks. The money it stole—somewhere between $9.5 billion and $15 billion—made its 20-year heist the biggest bank fraud in history. Most of it was never recovered. The George H.W. Bush administration, in power when the mega-fraud was discovered, went after the bank half-heartedly and only after indictments by New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. It never touched the Persian Gulf money-men who ran the BCCI criminal enterprise. The Bush family and its allies used and then protected the world’s most criminal bank.

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was founded in 1972 by a Pakistani banker, Agha Hasan Abedi, with the support of Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, the ruler of the oil-rich state of Abu Dhabi and head of the United Arab Emirates.

The CIA used Islamabad and other BCCI branches in Pakistan to funnel some of the $2 billion that Washington sent to Osama bin Laden’s Mujaheddin to help fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. It moved the cash the Pakistani military and government officials skimmed from U.S. aid to the Mujaheddin. It also moved money as required by the Saudi intelligence services.

The CIA money passed from the U.S. to the al-Taqwa Bank in Nassau to Barbados to Karachi to BCCI in Islamabad. Al-Taqwa—the name means “fear of God”—was not a real bank with bricks and mortar and depositors and services. It was a shell bank set up to finance the jihad.

The BCCI operation gave Osama bin Laden an education in offshore black finance that he would put to use when he organized the jihad against America. And the CIA was well aware of its student’s capabilities. After 9/11, U.S. agents headed straight for al-Taqwa’s operations in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Nassau and shut them down. Swiss police questioned al-Taqwa’s president, Youssef Mustafa Nada, who was part of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist organization, and they searched his home in Campione d’Italia, an Italian tax haven on Lake Lugano.

One day in 2002 I took the ferry from Lugano, on the Swiss side, to Campione. Nada, a man who appeared to be in his 60s, met me at the dock and drove me up the winding road to his hilltop mansion, where luxurious living rooms decorated with ornate carvings and inlaid furniture reminded me of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. An intelligence source had sent me the confidential Nassau shareholder list of the al-Taqwa Bank that listed members of the bin Laden family. I confronted Nada with the list, and he acknowledged immediately that it was genuine. “The sisters of Binladen? The FBI knows it, Treasury knows it. They wrote and brought the photo of the list.”

BCCI also helped Saddam Hussein, again with the complicity of his Washington friends. The bank funneled millions of dollars to the Atlanta branch of the Italian government–owned Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, which was Baghdad’s American banker, so that from 1985 to 1989 it could make $4 billion in secret loans to Iraq to help it buy arms.

Congressman Henry Gonzalez held a hearing on BNL in 1992 during which he quoted from a confidential CIA document that said the agency had long been aware that the bank's headquarters was involved in the American branch's Iraqi loans.

Kickbacks from 15 percent commissions on BNL-sponsored loans were channeled into bank accounts held for Iraqi leaders via BCCI offices in the Caymans as well as in offshore Luxembourg and Switzerland. BNL was a client of Kissinger Associates, and Henry Kissinger was on the bank’s international advisory board, along with Brent Scowcroft, who would become George Bush Sr.’s national security advisor. That connection makes Bush administration indignation at the Iraq’s “oil for food” payoffs rather disingenuous. Bush and his friends of course knew that Saddam was making payoffs on their watch: their favorite criminal bank was moving the money! And in another pre-9/11 incident of blowback, the weapons bought by Saddam with BNL funds were used during the Gulf War against Americans and their allies.

Not content with aiding Saddam Hussein, the Reaganites decided to arm Iran as well. A Pakistani arms dealer, Arif Durrani, said that during the Reagan and Bush administrations the CIA used BCCI to finance shipments of Hawk missiles to Iran to promote stalemate in the Iran–Iraq War. BCCI’s largest borrower was the Gulf Group, the family company of Mustapha Gokal, financial advisor to radical Islamist Ayatollah Khomeini. BCCI gave the Gulf Group unsecured loans of $800 million—more than two-thirds its total capital—and the Gokal company provided Iran with war material, food and drugs.

BCCI’s major investors were powerful sheiks and families in the Middle East. Abu Dhabi Sheik Zayed and his family paid no more than $500,000, but they were the owners of record of almost one-quarter of the bank’s shares. A large part of the investment was risk-free—with guaranteed rates of return and buy-back arrangements. Sheik Kamal Adham, brother-in-law of the late Saudi King Faisal, head of Saudi intelligence from 1963 to 1979, and the CIA’s liaison in the area, became one of BCCI’s largest shareholders. George Bush Sr. knew Adham from his time running the CIA in 1975. Another investor was Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, who succeeded Adham as Saudi intelligence chief.

The family of Khalid Salem bin Mahfouz, owner of the National Commercial Bank, the largest bank in Saudi Arabia, banker to King Fahd and other members of the ruling family, bought 20 to 30 percent of the stock for nearly $1 billion. Khalid was put on the board of directors. The family got $176 million in loans from BCCI.

The Arabs’ interest in the bank was more than financial. A classified CIA memo on BCCI in the mid-80s said that “its principal shareholders are among the power elite of the Middle East, including the rulers of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, and several influential Saudi Arabians. They are less interested in profitability than in promoting the Muslim cause.”

The Bushes’ links to the bank passed through Texas businessman James R. Bath to bin Mahfouz. Bath invested money in the United States on behalf of bin Mahfouz and with a third partner, Ghaith Pharaon (a Saudi Harvard MBA), shared ownership of Houston’s Main Bank. In 1976, when Bush was the head of the CIA, the agency sold some of the planes of Air America, a secret “proprietary” it used during the Vietnam War, to Skyway, a company owned by Bath and bin Mahfouz. Bath then helped finance George W. Bush’s oil company, Arbusto Energy Inc., in 1979 and 1980.

When Harken Energy Corp., which had absorbed Arbusto (by then merged with Spectrum 7 Energy), got into financial trouble in 1987, Stephens helped it secure $25 million financing from the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS). As part of that deal, a place on the board, was given to Harken shareholder Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, whose chief banker was BCCI shareholder bin Mahfouz.

Then in 1988, George Bush Sr. was elected president. Harken benefited by getting some new investors, including Salem bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s father, and Khalid Bin Mahfouz. Osama bin Laden himself was busy elsewhere at the time—organizing al-Qaeda.

As a result of Morgenthau’s investigation, in July 1992 a New York grand jury indicted Khalid bin Mahfouz and an aide for defrauding BCCI and its depositors of as much as $300 million, using depositors’ money to buy his bank shares. The U.S. Federal Reserve alleged that he breached banking regulations. But bin Mahfouz could not be touched by American criminal law in Saudi Arabia, and Morgenthau dropped the charges in 1993 after bin Mahfouz agreed to settle for $225 million. He and the National Commercial Bank also made a $253 million deal with BCCI’s creditors to resolve their claims. Kamal Adham, the former Saudi intelligence chief, agreed to pay a $105 million fine. The fines in the end topped $1.5 billion, a fraction of the amount that had disappeared, and nobody went to jail. The Justice Department didn’t go after Bush family friend and money source bin Mahfouz at all.

What happen to the billions of dollars sucked out of BCCI and never repaid to depositors? International banks’ complicity in the offshore secrecy system has effectively covered up the money trail. But in the years after the collapse of BCCI, Khalid bin Mahfouz was still flush with cash, and the former financier of George W. Bush became a financier of Osama bin Laden. In 1992, bin Mahfouz had established the Muwafaq (“blessed relief”) Foundation in the offshore Channel Islands, providing it with as much as $30 million. The U.S. Treasury Department called it “an Al-Qaeda front that receives funding from wealthy Saudi businessmen.”

His $21 billion National Commercial Bank was the world’s largest private bank. NCB was affiliated with Inter-Maritime Management SA, a subsidiary o