Tuesday 13 October 2009

My Recent Visit To The States Turns Sour

by Trowbridge H. Ford

Towards the end of August, the woman I have been living with in Sweden and Portugal for a generation and I decided to go to the States to help in the rehabitation of her son who had been critically injured in a motorcycle accident in early July in Napa, California, hoping that our help would make the process a bit less stressful. We bought round-trip tickets to San Francisco, stopping on our way there at the New York City area both on our way going, and returning.

Given my most critical writing about Western governments, especially the one in Washington, I was a bit trepidatious about going, especially since I have been warned by people apparently in the know that the authorities are very unhappy about what I have been doing, and my arrival in Newark, N. J. was alerted to its security officials by my having to sign a card about my coming, and where I would be staying - what all American citizens returning to and leaving the States are required to provide. The airlines won't even allow passengers to get on the planes without signing the form first.

When the SAS flight landed in Newark, and passengers had to go through Immigration, I became increasingly concerned as the two parties in front of me were questioned lengthily by the INS official, one couple even being required to undergo further questioning in an office connected to the hall where the immigration process was being conducted.

When my turn came, I was totally surprised by the most superficial, friendly chat I had with the black official. He seemed totally unconcerned about who I might really be, doing nothing more than checking the first page of my passport to make sure that I was the same person seeking entry into the country. He never looked at the temporary and permanent residences I had been granted by Swedish authorities, much less asking me any questions about why I had been living so long out of the States. He was only interested in my first name, Trowbridge, wondering how I had gotten it. I explained that it is my grandmother's maiden name on my mother's side, and my middle name is my mother's family name.

It was a drastic contrast to when I arrived at the same airport right before the 9/11 attacks, and was questioned by another INS official for about five minutes about why I was a resident in Sweden, where I had gone from Stockholm before I arrived in the USA, what I planned to do there, etc. - a questioning that I successfully stopped by refusing to answer any more unwarranted personal questions.

In sum, the whole process was surprisingly friendly and disarming until I finally returned to Sweden just last Wednesday. When I returned to our row house, everything seemed to be in order, thanks particularly to the almost daily care a friend in the neighborhood had provided. It was only the next day that I noticed that a CD player right below this computer that I am now using was missing. There had been no sign of any forced entry into the house, and, of course, I cannot entertain the idea that the friend stole it.

In fact, I am sure that she never thought that anything was missing, and certainly there were many more valuable things to steal which even an ignorant stranger would note upon entering the house - e. g., a brand-new tv in the lounge, valuable painting and lithographs on the walls, an automobile in the garage with a key conveniently in it for a massive theft and getaway, etc. The stolen CD player seems to have been a special, secret message to me to mind my movements after someone had searched the files and e-mails on my computer.

The reason for this seems to have been the result of my series of articles about America's use of space weapons, especially satellite lasers, to cause convenient earthquakes in countries of strategic concern to Washington, especially Iran. The last article had ended with a prediction I made that the most likely target now in this regard was around Qom, the religious center between the country's capital, Tehran, and its nuclear one in Natanz.

My prediction was not based upon any secret information from either Iran or the USA but from the pattern of earthquakes that the National Reconnaissance Office has carried out in not only Iran but also Turkey, Pakistan, and China. Washington has always picked targets which will put the greatest pressure on the leadership of these countries to shape up when it comes to fighting terrorism.

The earthquakes caused in Iran in 1990 and 2003, for example, were to make sure that the mullahs in Tehran were not tempted to meddle in the problems that Saddam Hussein was having with the West - what made sure that Tehran had enough domestic problems of its own to even think about doing something to help out the Iraqi dictator. The 2005 earthquake in Northwest Pakistan was intended to make General Musharraf take more action against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in this area by punishing its population - a strategy which clearly backfired.

When my prediction turned out to be what Washington had in mind as a likely target, the uranium processing plant outside Qom, it decided to check out what I really knew about the one being built ouside the holy city. Of course, I had no real idea of what was in the works. In fact, I had not even read The Nuclear Express by then, the book that American spies Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman wrote about Iran's military ambitions to become a nuclear power. It was while I was in Califormia that I purchased the book, and found its content very revealing about a lot of things, particularly about Iran when they wrote this: "Other uranium-enrichment research, based on laser isotope separation, was undertaken at the Tehran Nuclear Technology Center, without IAEA knowledge. A larger, also secret, laser enrichment facility had been built at Lashkar Ab'ad." (p. 293) They are obviously the source of the secret script that Washington is currently feeding the world about China and the countries it is helping to become nuclear players.

When Washington's secret players, whoever they may be, saw that I had no secret script for my writing, they still decided to let me know that they had been there with the stealing of the CD player, especially after they had gone to such lengths at Newark to assure me that I was of no interest to them.

Well, I can tell them that whatever their interest then, my next article about their obtaining space weapons and their use is bound to arouse it further.