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- Egypt is on guard against "pyramidiots" preaching
millennium conspiracy theories on the Internet, with officials warning
zero tolerance if they descend on the Giza Pyramids expecting Satan to
appear as 2000 dawns.
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- At least two spiritual tour operators are advertising
millennium trips to the pyramids, billing guest speakers such as David
Icke, the former British television sportscaster-turned-prophet of doom.
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- Icke and others are warning that ex-US president George
Bush will summon oppressive evil forces at a black mass in a dank stone
burial chamber deep inside the great Cheops pyramid at midnight on December
31.
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- According to his website, Bush and the British royal
family are key members of the world "Illuminati elite" of human-reptile
hybrids whose rituals are designed to tap into fourth dimensional energy
forces and deprive ordinary human mortals of their consciousness.
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- But the Egyptian government's custodian of the Giza pyramids,
Zahi Hawass, said he has no time for the "pyramidiots" and warned
they would be "dismissed" if they cause any trouble at the end
of the millennium.
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- "All this is hallucination. We'll never permit anyone
to insult the pyramids," Hawass said. "They're sacred and divine
and I'm going to keep them sacred and divine."
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- The whole Giza plateau, including all three pyramids
and the Sphinx, will be closed "for security" reasons for about
36 hours, from the evening of December 30, 1999 until after dawn on January
1, 2000, he said.
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- Police presence will be stepped up both at the pyramids
and in the nearby desert where 50,000 party-goers will be channelled into
an all-night, end-of-year spectacle starring multimedia artist Jean-Michel
Jarre.
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- Although Egyptian security forces are mainly concerned
about threats from Islamic militants, they will also be keeping a watchful
eye out for fringe groups around the Giza trio.
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- But Hawass' plans to restrict access look set only to
stoke the fires of pre-millennial hysteria as conspiracy theorists like
US new age author Texe Marrs allege that the custodian is in on the plot
with the black priests.
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- Not even the clean-cut Frenchman's electronic opera remains
untainted after the Egyptian press started weaving its own strands in the
tangled web of millenarian occult hype last month.
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- The notorious bi-weekly newspaper Al-Shaab, whose editor-in-chief
was imprisoned in August for libelling a government minister, has accused
Jarre of conspiring to impose "Zionist Freemasonry" on Egyptian
civilisation.
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- Party-goers attending Jarre's multimedia show will watch
giant images of the Pharaonic Eye of Horus projected on the sides of the
Giza pyramids and a light-emitting golden pyramid will be lowered by helicopter
onto Cheops.
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- Al-Shaab, along with numerous doomsday Internet sites,
was quick to identify the images with what they call the "Masonic
symbolism" depicted on the US one-dollar bill which shows an eye glowing
from the capstone of a pyramid.
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- Hawass defended topping Giza's largest pyramid, saying
it was designed to replicate the practices of the ancient Egyptians who
he says crowned their pyramids with a golden capstone to celebrate their
completion.
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- "If the Masons want to take our symbols, what can
we do?" he asked.
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- Texe Marrs, a retired US Air Force officer, meanwhile
suggests on his website that Jarre's concert, which will be staged in the
desert around half a mile (about a kilometre) away from the pyramids themselves,
is a diversion for the Illuminati rituals of "consummate evil."
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- "The grotesque ceremony, these men believe, will
culminate in a visit by their glowing Masonic god of light and magic, Lucifer
himself, at exactly the stroke of midnight, December 31, 1999," he
writes.
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- And if you're wondering what the pyramids have to do
with the Christian calendar, the prophets of doom are always ready with
an answer.
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- Icke, for example, who plans to be at the pyramids with
a Zulu shaman on December 31, says the Gregorian calendar was "created"
by the Illuminati so New Year 2000 would coincide with a peak of mind-bending
solar energy.
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- Others, such as Arizona Wilder, who claims to be a former
human sacrificer for the Illuminati, would argue that Christianity is an
extension of ancient Egyptian mythology and that the year 2000 will usher
in the "Age of Horus."
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