February 1, 2005

The Empire of Darkness Series #21: The Bushgernaut


Hello everyone

Trying to conjure up is a nutshell-like title the overarching theme covered in any of my compilations is always a tough challenge as the amount of topics and information covered is becoming ever more staggering with each passing week. Not that I relish wading into this never-ending stream of dauntingly exasperating aggravation of our planet and humanity's condition, but as it happens, simply through skimming the material that comes my way as I try to live a normal life like everyone else, I keep discovering stuff that I simply cannot disregard in the hope that somehow it will take care of itself and that our planetary ship will keep on cruising ahead with all of us aboard trying to enjoy as peacefully - and responsibly - as possible a satisfying experience.

We are definitely coming into a karmic crunch-time as an incredible amount of issues clamoring for an overdue collective attention for our assessment and decision on a corrective course are cropping up like a surging tsunami now reaching everyone's lap.

As I was discussing with Mark Elsis who phoned me yesterday to invite me to join him and Meria next February 10 on the air for their excellent Earth News Hour, despite the accruing evidence that we are heading for oblivion, it is always important to remain aware that whatever happens here is ultimately designed to awaken us spiritually, that the universe despite the travails we go through and the tribulations we may experience is ultimately benevolent and that, in the end, the sooner we snap out of all our collective trances to make good on André Malraux's visionary statement when he said that the 21st century will be spiritual or won't be, the sooner we will reach the shores of the new world we have been seeking throughout our incredibly long and tumultuous journey from Oneness to Oneness.

Once again I'm challenging you and putting you all to task by asking that you avail yourself of the information provided below and find within yourself the resolve and soul clarity necessary to not stumble on the pebbles of human misdirected creativity but find within yourself the Power to rise above the self-inflicted shackles of fear and lack of appreciation of your own true valor, and reach for the pinnacle of accomplishment, each in your own sphere of human activity and manifestation, to cocreate this world anew, as called for in the Earth Proclamation many of you vowed to uphold.

Love and Light WILL prevail!

Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator

P.S. I swear to you that I read all the 70+ pages I picked for you below - as I do with every single compilation ;-)

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"George W. Bush, his administration, the Republican controlled congress as well as the Republican Party itself, and most of the churches in America (including evangelical, Southern Baptist, Pentecostal and Roman Catholic), stand indicted—not by men—not by this writer—but by the very Holy Scriptures the religious-right and Mr. Bush profess to uphold. Weighed against the Bible, the Bush actions are not only morally corrupt—they are unchristian and unbiblical to the core. In this essay, the Bush agenda is weighed on the scale of God’s standards and it is found wanting."

- Katherine Yurica -- Taken from "Bloodguilty Churches Why Bush’s Agenda Is Immoral and an Abomination to God" available at http://www.yuricareport.com/Religion/TheBloodGuiltyChurches.html


"Considering how much access to information is at our fingertips and how totally ignorant most of us remain, we must be the most ignorant and deluded population of serfs in world history. In the past few days both Ted Turner and Robert Kennedy Jr specifically compared Bush to Hitler as have various members of the US Congress and millions of Americans on both the left and right done previously, yet Americans remain completely ignorant as to why this is not an analogy but a factual association."

- Robert Lederman -- Taken from "Bush and Auschwitz" below.


"From the military to local governments, from ostensibly civilian federal agencies to obscure counter-intelligence organizations, they're all on the make, creating interagency alliances, setting up new programs, expanding their powers, gearing up operations and/or creating "Big Brother" technologies to more effectively monitor civilians, chill dissent, and bring the war back home. Right now, nothing is closer to the heart of Homeland Security State officials (and to their budgetary plans) than that old standby of dictatorships and oppressive regimes worldwide, surveillance -- by and of the Homeland population. In fact, almost every day, new examples of ever-hopeful surveillance programs pop up."

- Nick Turse -- Taken from Bringing It All Back Home: The Emergence of the Homeland Security State (31 Jan 2005) at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/013105K.shtm


"We lose our freedoms at the altar of fear."

- Kahlil Gibran


"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

- Alexander Solzhenitsyn


"Here's to the crazy ones...

The misfits, the rebels, the trouble makers,
The round pegs in the square holes,
The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules,
and they have no respect for status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or villify them,
But the only thing you can't do is ignore them,
Because they change things,
They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough
to think they can change the world,
are the ones who do..."

- An ad from Apple taken from http://www.apple.com/thinkdifferent/


CONTENTS

1. The Bush-Exxon-Nazi Connection --- Auschwitz Slavery Financed Bush Family Fortune
2. Bush and Auschwitz
3. The Voice of the White House
4. There Is No Tomorrow
5. How to Stop Bush's Agenda
6. Believe the Evidence of Your Eyes
7. Why I Am Obsessed With War
8. Australian View of Inaugural - The Empire of Vulgarity
9. We were humans
10. Indonesian Tsunami Probably Tripped by Exxon-Mobil Works
11. Hollow Election Held on Bloody Day
12. Iraq elections set stage for deeper crisis of US occupation regime
13. Police Hunt Poo Protesters
14. Steven Wright Witticisms


Worthy of Your Attention

Bush Raped - Consequences Coming FAST (Real heavy-hitting 43 pages conspiracy rap up!)
http://www.soulinvitation.com/americabushraped/America

War Pictures
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/legacy.wmv
Recommended by "Meria Heller" MeriaHeller@cox.net> who wrote: "As you are aware, a few heinous pictures helped sway public opinion on the war in Vietnam and led to it's eventual end. The war in Iraq has produced more than enough, even more horrible pictures. A friend put together this slide show of many pictures with audio of the Bush lies that led us here. I am hoping that you can get this out to your listeners to pass on to others that might not realize just how ugly it is in Iraq. We have the momentum thanks to the Internet, and shows like yours, and we must rise up now together - before they try Iran."

Anger over U.S. Forces posting photos of Iraqi war dead on Internet (January 27, 2005)
http://mparent7777.blog-city.com/read/1036870.htm
WARNING!!! EXTREMELY GRAPHIC AND VERY DISTURBING PICTURES

The Power of Nightmares
http://dc.indymedia.org/media/all/display/21750/index.php
The BBC aired a 3-part TV series called "The Power of Nightmares". This is part 3, about the FANTASY of Al Qaeda and a global terrorist threat invented for us by US and UK politicians. This would never be aired in the US. It's 1 hour long. It ends on a vision of a peaceful world, free of nightmares. Recommended by "Kathleen Roberts" weerkhr@pacbell.net> who also mentioned that Pats I and II are available at http://www.albasrah.net/saotiat_mriat/saotiat_mriat.htm

Our Velvet Revolution, speech by Doris 'Granny D' Haddock - now 95 years old! (January 17)
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0117-31.htm
A growing number of Americans are beginning to identify with the pro-democracy activists whose courage opened much of the world to freedom in the final decades of the 20th Century. We remember and honor the poet revolutionary Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia, where Charter 77 rendered the flowers and songs of a velvet revolution more powerful than the guns of oppression. We remember the shipyard hero, Lech Walesa, of Poland. We remember those who stood non-violently in Russia, in Yugoslavia, in Tiananmen Square, in East and West Germany. It was their fearless living that ended the Cold War, not Reagan’s saber rattling. When people stand united with certain courage against oppression, they get their way. That is an axiom in the geometry of world history. To say we are oppressed in America sounds remarkably like the whining of spoiled children. We live such privileged lives compared to many in the world, it is true. We have our cars and our homes or apartments‚ most of us, and our television shows and our clean cities and glittering stores‚ cornucopias--and theaters and a thousand kinds of systems and conveniences and communication devices and all the rest that seem to work and serve us with well-maintained reliability. Living in the midst of such luxury, it is hard to imagine that one might not be free‚ that freedom might be an illusion, a fraud. (...) Look at me: I am still alive, and I am looking at you, and you are alive. This is our world as much as anyone else's. We who are old enough or wise enough to see the edges of life can understand that we have a choice between fear and joy, and between victimization and service. All elections and other indications to the contrary, happy days are here again when we but say they are. We do not turn our hearts away from injustice or suffering, indeed we mend them as best we can with our joyful engagement and our courageous non-cooperation with the forces of fear and death. And no one can take away our joy, for even our suffering for justice and brotherhood is joyful. This is our Velvet Revolution, American style. We resist what we must and what we can, but our victory is not in defense, but in a cultural offensive made irresistible by the power of love and courage, pulling our people together, and our own lives together, over time. We have tried this before in America. Things got in our way: drugs, wars, fears. We became parents. We became distracted. It is now time to get it right.
Recommended by Maireid Sullivan maireid@optusnet.com.au>

LOTS of interesting articles!
http://www.OnlineJournal.com/


SPECIAL GREEN HOLOCAUST UPDATE

NOTE FROM JEAN: At first I though I would prepare another Green Holocaust compilation for you for the sole reason of making sure you all have under your eyes the following first article below - but I won't have time to prepare 3 compilations this week. So here it is in a nutshell in this Update. I cannot stress enough the need to read this first article below from Grist magazine. To me - and I read a LOT of stuff as you know - this is by far the worst, most depressing environmental news that came to my attention in the past several years. Judging from the feeble, reluctant actions taken worldwide to put a stop to runaway global warming, I'd say we have precious little time left to stop our global slide into massive species extinction. The consequences explained in this article of global warming are just mind-boggling. Just wrapping our minds around what it all means for sea life and eventually for all life on Earth once global oxygen depletion - briefly alluded to in this article - kicks in is heart-stopping. WE REALLY DO NEED HELP!!!...

Warming waters threaten seabirds and marine species of all sizes
http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/25/schulman-seabirds/?source=weekly
The problem with cold-water phytoplankton is that they prefer cold water. When climate change makes their home waters too warm for comfort, the tiny plant organisms move north in search of cooler climes. As the minuscule photosynthesizers migrate, all of the little organisms that depend on them for food are out of luck, as are the small fish that depend on those small critters, as are the seabirds and other larger predators that eat the small fish -- well, you get the picture. And scientists say the cause-and-effect story is only getting grimmer. Audrey Schulman investigates the ripple effect that may carry a tidal wave of consequences -- this week on the Grist Magazine website.

Report warns of major climate catastrophe in as few as 10 years
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/01/24/climate.change.ap/
A task force of leading politicians, academics, and business leaders from around the world has quantified global warming's so-called "point of no return." And it's bloody soon! In as little as 10 years, says a report by the task force, the global average temperature could rise 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit from its pre-industrial level. At that point, the authors contend, the tipping point will have been reached and major droughts, sea-level rise, and widespread crop failures are all but certain. So far, global average temperature has risen about 1.4 degrees since 1750, meaning we've still got a couple of degrees before the threshold is reached. To help beat the clock, the report calls on all G8 nations to produce a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025 and double their expenditures on low-carbon energy technologies by 2010. "There is an ecological time bomb ticking away," said British Member of Parliament Stephen Byers, who co-chaired the task force with U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). (Taken from WEEKLY GRIST - 01 Feb 2005 - http://grist.org)

Neglecting Mother Earth (26 January 2005)
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/01/26/neglecting_mother_earth?mode=PF
Local insanity plus global inanity adds up to an embarrassing American moment. (...) At the same time, we receive yet more evidence how we blow smoke in the face of the world with our pollution and refuse to join the other 136 nations and regional economic groups that signed the international Kyoto agreement on global warming. The incivility at home and arrogance abroad makes for one ugly American. On environmental stewardship, it is easy to forget that in the 1970s, the United States led the world in cleaning up air pollution, said Marc Levy, associate director of Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network, one of the authors of the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index. "Europe was way behind us," Levy said over the telephone yesterday. "Our big advance in the '70s was clear targets on air quality, with incentives and punishments, putting catalytic converters in cars and smokestack scrubbers in industrial plants. But we pretty much stopped there. In the past 10 years, Europe has passed us and we're 50 percent below most countries over there on average." Levy said that Europe has vaulted past us with far more strategic efforts to promote rail transportation, reduce coal burning, and recycling solid waste, all of which are stifled in the United States by special-interest lobbying that turns politicians into cowards and wrongfully convinces working-class workers that less pollution means less jobs. CLIP

Measuring Our Ecological Footprint
http://www.gvnr.com/95/5.htm
(...) An Eco-Footprint compares the ecosystem services we use each year, with the biosphere's capacity to re-generate them. These are measured in global acres, the units of biologically productive area needed to produce the resources we consume, and to absorb our waste. It can be applied to governments, organisations and communities to assess their environmental impact. According to the Living Planet Report jointly published in 2004 by GFN and World Wide Fund for Nature, we get an average of 1.8 hectares per person - space that also needs to accommodate non-human species. This is the average budget available for sustainable living - using more implies ecological overload. The report also stated that the world average Eco-Footprint is 2.2 global hectares per person today, that is, 20 per cent more than what is available on the planet. In 2002, Hong Kong's Ecological Footprint was 4.3 global hectares per person or 2.4 times the world average. If the situation remains unchanged, we would need at least 100 times the existing land and sea area we have to support our current lifestyles. CLIP - More details at http://www.footprintnetwork.org/

What is your Ecological Footprint in Acres? It might surprise you!
http://www.myfootprint.org/
(Note from Jean : Mine is 6.5)

Scientist reveals a melting Alaska (Jan 25)
http://www.adn.com/alaska/story/6075300p-5966353c.html
HOT FACTS: Photos show rapidly shrinking glaciers; data suggest harmful effects.

A Warming Climate
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012905G.shtml
For the past four years members of the Bush administration have cast doubt on the scientific community's consensus on climate change. But even if they don't like the science, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of their closest allies in Iraq and elsewhere, has given the administration another, more realpolitik, reason to rejoin the climate change debate: "If America wants the rest of the world to be part of the agenda it has set, it must be part of their agenda, too," the prime minister said this week. Mr. Blair's speech came at an interesting moment, both for the administration's energy and climate change policies and for the administration's diplomatic agenda. In the next few weeks, the House will almost certainly vote once again on last year's energy bill, a mishmash of subsidies and tax breaks that finally proved too expensive even for a Republican Senate to stomach. After a House vote, there may be an attempt to trim the cost of the bill and add measures to make it acceptable to more senators - including the growing number of Republicans who have, sometimes behind the scenes, indicated an interest in climate change legislation. Indeed, any new discussion of energy policy could allow Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) to seek another vote on their climate change bill, which would establish a domestic "cap and trade" system for controlling the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. If domestic politics could prompt the president to look again at the subject, international politics certainly should. Administration officials assert that mending fences with Europe is a primary goal for this year; if so, the relaunching of a climate change policy - almost any climate change policy - would be widely interpreted as a sign of goodwill, as Mr. Blair made clear. Beyond the problematic Kyoto Protocol, there are ways for the United States to join the global discussion, not least by setting limits for domestic carbon emissions. CLIP

As temperatures rise, Antarctic wildlife on the edge of disaster (Dec 18, 2004)
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/12/18/2003215653
Even a small increase in sea temperatures could trigger a chain effect that would rapidly destroy a large percentage of marine life, a British scientist warns. Warmer temperatures in the Antarctic could threaten penguins, whales, seals and a host of smaller creatures, a marine biologist warns in a lecture to be given at Christmas. Lloyd Peck, of the British Antarctic Survey, argues that even a small rise in sea temperatures could have dramatic consequences."Antarctic animals -- in the sea especially -- are very sensitive to climate change and they are the early warning system for the loss of species on the planet. We should be watching for those because climate change is probably going to get rid of them before it gets rid of other species," he says."We know things are changing; it is going to be really unpleasant; we are going to lose things -- we just don't know how much," he said. (...) "If one of the key species in the system goes, then very quickly you'd lose a lot of the system. And that would affect penguins, seals and whales. The fishery areas around the Antarctic would be affected," he said." So the animals that everybody is interested in -- the furry ones with big eyes, the penguins, the whales -- there is potential for them to be affected very quickly by the loss of a few species in the Antarctic food chain," Peck said. The Antarctic continent is still cold. But the Antarctic peninsula, home to the British research bases, has warmed by up to 3 degrees Celsius in the last 50 years. CLIP

As Green as a Neocon (Jan. 25, 2005)
http://slate.msn.com/id/2112608/
Why Iraq hawks are driving Priuses - President Bush has a simple policy about energy: produce more of it. The former oilman has packed his administration with veterans of the oil and coal industries. And for most of the first Bush term, his energy policy and his foreign policy were joined at the hip. Since the Bush administration believed that controlling the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf was critically important to the American economy, the invasion of Iraq seemed to serve both the president's energy goals and his foreign policy ones. But a curious transformation is occurring in Washington, D.C., a split of foreign policy and energy policy: Many of the leading neoconservatives who pushed hard for the Iraq war are going green. James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and staunch backer of the Iraq war, now drives a 58-miles-per-gallon Toyota Prius and has two more hybrid vehicles on order. Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy and another neocon who championed the war, has been speaking regularly in Washington about fuel efficiency and plant-based bio-fuels. The alliance of hawks and environmentalists is new but not entirely surprising. The environmentalists are worried about global warming and air pollution. But Woolsey and Gaffney—both members of the Project for the New American Century, which began advocating military action against Saddam Hussein back in 1998—are going green for geopolitical reasons, not environmental ones. They seek to reduce the flow of American dollars to oil-rich Islamic theocracies, Saudi Arabia in particular. Petrodollars have made Saudi Arabia too rich a source of terrorist funding and Islamic radicals. Last month, Gaffney told a conference in Washington that America has become dependent on oil that is imported from countries that, "by and large, are hostile to us." This fact, he said, makes reducing oil imports "a national security imperative." CLIP

Water Shortages, Global Warming to Hit Grain Supply (27 January 2005)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L27435356.htm
Stockholm - Water shortages and global warming will hit grain production and push up prices in the coming years, leading to unrest in countries unable to afford imports, the head of a leading think-tank said on Thursday. Shortages of water due to rising population, added to the effects of global warming, will hit wheat, rice and maize supply, pushing up prices and leaving poor countries with no means to meet growing demand for food. "Overpumping to supply the growing food needs of today almost guarantees a future reduction of food supply," said Lester Brown, head of the Washington based Earth Policy Institute. CLIP


See also:

An election to anoint an occupation (January 31, 2005) (MORE RELATED NEWS BELOW!)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1402277,00.html?gusrc=rss
Tony Blair and George Bush were quick to characterise yesterday's election as a triumph of democracy over terror. Bush declared it a "resounding success", while Blair asserted that "The force of freedom was felt throughout Iraq". And yet the election fell so completely short of accepted electoral standards that had it been held in, say, Zimbabwe or Syria, Britain and America would have been the first to denounce it. (...) The millions of Iraqis, as well as the UN electoral team and the Iraqi election commission staff, who did participate in the process despite the grave risk, deserve our respect. But it was a risk taken in vain. The election was illegitimate, and cannot resolve the rampant insecurity resulting from the occupation. The only way to stop the destruction of Iraq is to end the occupation and enfranchise the Sunnis, who are leading the resistance because they see the US as systematically excluding them from the role they deserve to play in Iraq. Indeed, this so-called election, with its national rather than provincial voting rolls, was designed to reduce Sunni representation and to anoint US-supported groups who will allow this occupation to continue. A high turnout does not change the fact that this is an illegitimate, occupier's election. Early in the occupation, the Bush administration recognised that a democratic Iraq would not countenance the strategic goals the war was fought for: controlling the oil reserves and establishing military bases to enable the political transformation the neocons envisage for the Middle East. Even as the US proclaimed its mission as introducing democracy to Iraq, they worked to make sure that the processes they put in place would produce leaders they had picked. The US obtained a carefully circumscribed UN involvement in order to provide the chosen leaders a measure of legitimacy. CLIP

New Report: Statisticians Refute 'Explanation' of Exit Poll (January 31, 2005)
http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/USCountVotes_Re_Mitofsky-Edison.pdf
Background: After last November's presidential election, there were numerous reports of irregularities. Reported problems included:
- voting machine shortages
- ballots counted and recounted in secret
- lost, discarded, and improperly rejected registration forms and absentee ballots
- touch-screen machines that registered "Bush" when voters pressed "Kerry"
- precincts in which there were more votes recorded than registered voters
- precincts in which the reported participation rate was less than 10%
- high rates of "spoiled" ballots and under-votes in which no choice for president was recorded
- a sworn affidavit by a Florida computer programmer who claims he was hired to develop a
voting program with a "back door" mechanism to undetectably alter vote tallies
These problems arise in the context of election systems where un-auditable voting equipment cannot provide assurance that votes are counted as cast. The crucial question is whether these problems were part of a larger pattern. Were these issues collectively of sufficient magnitude to reverse the outcome of the election, or were they isolated incidents, procedurally disturbing but of little overall consequence? Under such circumstances we must rely on indirect evidence, such as exit polls, to ascertain the overall integrity of the official election results. CLIP

Statisticians Refute 'Explanation' of Exit Poll (1 February 2005)
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0502/S00036.htm
Prominent Statisticians Refute 'Explanation' of 2004 U.S. Exit Poll - Discrepancies in New Edison/Mitofsky Report and Urge Investigation of U.S. Presidential Election Results.President Bush won November's election by 2.5% yet exit polls showed Kerry leading by 3%. Which was correct? "There are statistical indications that a systematic, nationwide shift of 5.5% of the vote may have occurred, and that we'll never get to the bottom of this, unless we gather the data we need for mathematical analysis and open, robust scientific debate.", says Bruce O'Dell, USCountVotes' Vice President. CLIP

New Gaza Violence Strains De Facto Truce (Jan 31, 2005)
http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7490061
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Palestinian militants shelled Jewish settlements on Monday after witnesses accused Israeli troops of killing a girl at a U.N.-run Gaza school, straining a de facto truce that has raised hopes for peace. The incidents punctured the relative calm that has settled over the Gaza Strip over the past two weeks, following new Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's efforts to coax gunmen into a cease-fire ahead of a planned Israeli pullout this summer. Abbas has won plaudits from Israel and the United States, chief patron of a peace "road map," but the White House urged him to disarm Palestinian militants as required by the plan. Abbas seeks to co-opt the armed factions, fearing a crackdown could cast him as an Israeli stooge in the eyes of Palestinian embittered by ongoing bloodshed. Ten-year-old Noran Deeb died in a playground at Rafah refugee camp, but a military spokeswoman said no Israeli forces were involved in any shooting in the area. Hamas and kindred militant group Islamic Jihad launched mortar bombs and makeshift rockets at the Gush Katif settlement bloc after the girl's death, causing no casualties. CLIP

Right to Life by Sgt. Kevin M. Benderman (Jan 25)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7821.htm
(...) Do we want our grandkids to learn the "art" of war? Should we teach them to throw hand grenades and learn how to shoot the center mass of human beings in order to kill them? (...) War should be left behind us in the memories of history. The people of the world should practice it no more. Better results in peace could be realized if we were to reach out to our fellow man with understanding instead of aligning them in our rifle sights. I know that this is a concept that will take time for people to understand, but isn't it time to start trying? CLIP

Be very afraid if Bush takes the war on terror to Iran
http://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/globalnetnews-summary/2005-01/msg00040.html
Iran is a much bigger oil producer than Iraq. The surge in prices might be greater this time - The risk of a US attack on Iran can no longer be dismissed. George Bush has identified the country as the next potential target in his campaign against terrorism and tyranny. A military attack is still unlikely, but the consequences are too serious to ignore. The market impact could surpass that of the Iraq war in 2003. CLIP

Letter to Congress on Increasing U.S. Ground Forces (January 28, 2005)
http://www.newamericancentury.org/defense-20050128.htm
Neo-cons ask Congress for more cannon fodder - PNAC's letter to Frist, Reid, Hastert, and Pelosi, asking them to reinstate the draft...

How To Stay Out of the Military: A Primer On Draft Resistance
http://www.nodraftnoway.org/about.shtml

Unconnected Dots (January 25, 2005)
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21080/
The global reach of Bush's inauguration speech was lost on a media with a fragmented view the world; for a holistic analysis you'll have to click off that TV, use your local paper to wrap the fish, and head for the internet."'It's a finesse to give power to Rumsfeld - giving him the right to act swiftly, decisively, and lethally,' the first Pentagon adviser told me.'It's a global free-fire zone.'" - Seymour Hersh, The Coming Wars, the New Yorker magazine George Bush's all-foreign-policy inaugural address offered a globe-enveloping neocon version of a Pax Americana world. CLIP

Rhetoric and Reality Clash in Inaugural Address
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2005/0501inaug2.html
The inspiring rhetoric of President George W. Bush's second inaugural address was perhaps the most sweeping testament to the American commitment to defend freedom and liberty worldwide since President John F. Kennedy's famous inaugural speech 44 years earlier.Unfortunately, this ignores the fact that the United States has long been the primary military, diplomatic, and economic supporter of the world's most repressive regimes the world, a pattern that has only been strengthened under the Bush administration. A look at the six family dictatorships of the Persian Gulf region propped up by American arms and advisers underscores the irony that the nation founded in one of the first republican revolutions against monarchial rule is now the primary supporter of the world's few remaining absolute monarchies.President Bush promised that "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors." If that is actually the case, President Bush must immediately make it clear to all governments that oppress their own people: unless and until you respect human rights, including the right to choose your own government, the United States will immediately cease all economic and security assistance, withdraw American advisors to your police and military, block all transfers of American armaments and other implements of repression, and encourage other countries to do the same. Unfortunately, there are currently no signs that President Bush is prepared to do this or that either party in Congress is willing to pressure him to do so.Unless or until that time comes, President Bush's noble words at his inauguration can only be seen as self-serving hypocrisy of the worst kind. CLIP

Walking Wounded (January 31, 2005)
http://amconmag.com/2005_01_31/article1.html
Old soldiers don't fade away - The observant will have noticed that we hear little from the troops in Iraq and see almost nothing of the wounded. Why, one might wonder, does not CNN put an enlisted Marine before a camera and, for 15 minutes without editing, let him say what he thinks? Is he not an adult and a citizen? Is he not engaged in important events on our behalf? Sound political reasons exist. Soldiers are a risk PR-wise, the wounded a liability. No one can tell what they might say, and conspicuous dismemberment is bad for recruiting. An enlisted man in front of a camera is dangerous. He could wreck the governmental spin apparatus in five minutes. It is better to keep soldiers discreetly out of sight. So we do not see much of the casualties, ours or theirs. Yet they are there, somewhere, with missing legs, blind, becoming accustomed to groping at things in their new darkness, learning to use the wheelchairs that will be theirs for 50 years. Some face worse fates than others. Quadriplegics will be warehoused in VA hospitals where nurses will turn them at intervals, like hamburgers, to prevent bedsores. Friends and relatives will soon forget them. Suicide will be a frequent thought. The less damaged will get around. CLIP

BUSH WANTS $9 MILLION AN HOUR FOR WAR
http://www.rightiswrong.com/leftout.php
When you hear that Bush is asking for $80 billion in additional money to prosecute the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq it is too much to comprehend in real terms. But when you realize the money he is talking about is $9 million an hour, 24 hours a day for 365 days, you can grasp the depths of the madness. I live in New York City. There was a subway fire that damaged a switching station knocking out an entire line that serves hundreds of thousands of people. It was estimated that it would take 3-5 years to get it back to full service. In this city home care attendants, who serve elderly and homebound people, are not paid a living wage. Politicians say that there is just not enough money to raise their wages. The majority of the people in this country realize that the war in Iraq is an enormous mistake. Thousands of Americans have been maimed and killed, that alone should be too high a price to pay for an immoral and illegal war. But when you factor in that it has already cost $280 billion, it staggers the mind and deadens the spirit. Most Americans are struggling just to make it from paycheck to paycheck. The cost of a college education is off the charts. More and more Americans are going without health insurance because they can't afford. It is a reality that seniors are choosing between life saving medication and food. But where are our elected officials. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have distinguished themselves in serving the needs of the vast majority of Americans. What a travesty! Millions of Americans work for less than $9 an hour, while George W. Bush and his cronies on both sides of the aisle will vote for you to support this insanity to the tune of $9 million an hour. Stop The War! End The Occupation! Bring The Troops Home!

CIA's 'Ghost Prisoners' Spark Rights Concerns (28 January 2005)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012905A.shtml
The official wall of silence surrounding the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) so-called 'ghost prisoners' who are being held at secret locations has sparked legal concerns among human rights groups that denounce the practice as abusive.

My Nightmare of Torture and Assault, by Briton Held in Guantanamo (30 January 2005)
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=606033
One of the four Britons freed from Guantanamo Bay last week has alleged being tortured, nearly suffocated and repeatedly assaulted in American detention, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. In the first detailed account to emerge since their release, Moazzam Begg, 35, from Birmingham, has accused his US captors of threatening his family, killing fellow detainees, and interrogating him more than 250 times. His 25-page testimony was written in solitary confinement at Guantanamo Bay last year for an American tribunal hearing. It details, for the first time, why he visited Islamist training camps in Afghanistan, and describes the night in 2002 when he was captured in Pakistan by US agents. Mr Begg claims that while he was held by the Americans at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan in 2002, he was "dragged into an isolation room, my hands shackled from behind to my ankles, and a suffocating hood placed over my head. I was struck about the head several times, then left in that manner on the floor for several hours, only to be interrogated again." CLIP

Federal Judge: 'Enemy combatant' process unconstitutional (Jan 31)
http://infowars.net/Pages/Jan05/300105_EnemyCombatant.html
A federal judge ruled Monday that the procedure used to determine whether prisoners are "enemy combatants" -- which in some cases may have used confessions obtained by torture -- is unconstitutional.

U.S. Captors' 'Systematic Torture'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1399409,00.html

ACLU Calls On Gonzales to Appoint Special Counsel on Torture Abuses (30 January 2005)
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=17376&c=206
Full criminal investigation of civilian officials must be free of political pressure. WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union today called upon senators to insist - prior to voting on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general - that he commit to immediately appoint an outside special counsel to investigate and prosecute any criminal acts by civilians in the torture or abuse of detainees by the U.S. Government. "In America, no one is above the law, even those at the highest level of government," said Christopher Anders, an ACLU legislative counsel. "Senators should demand now that Gonzales show the American people that he is beholden not to the political sways of the White House, but to the interests of truth and justice, by committing to the immediate appointment of an outside special counsel to investigate any and all criminal conduct by civilians in the use of torture and abuse against prisoners." At his confirmation hearing, Gonzales failed to adequately answer inquiries from both sides of the aisle about the Bush Administration's policies on the torture and abuse of prisoners and detainees. CLIP

Bringing It All Back Home: The Emergence of the Homeland Security State (31 Jan 2005)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/013105K.shtm
Part I: The Military Half - If you're reading this on the Internet, the FBI may be spying on you at this very moment. Under provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the Department of Justice has been collecting e-mail and IP (a computer's unique numeric identifier) addresses, without a warrant, using trap-and-trace surveillance devices ("pen-traps"). Now, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Justice's principle investigative arm, may be monitoring the web-surfing habits of Internet users -- also without a search warrant -- that is, spying on you with no probable cause whatsoever. In the wake of September 11, 2001, with the announcement of a potentially never-ending "war on terror" and in the name of "national security," the Bush administration embarked on a global campaign that left in its wake two war-ravaged states (with up to one hundred thousand civilian dead in just one of them); an offshore "archipelago of injustice" replete with "ghost jails" and a seemingly endless series of cases of torture, abuse, and the cold-blooded murder of prisoners. That was abroad. In the U.S.A., too, things have changed as America became "the Homeland" and an already powerful and bloated national security state developed a civilian corollary fed by fear-mongering, partisan politics, and an insatiable desire for governmental power, turf, and budget. A host of disturbing and mutually-reinforcing patterns have emerged in the resulting new Homeland Security State -- among them: a virtually unopposed increase in the intrusion of military, intelligence, and "security" agencies into the civilian sector of American society; federal abridgment of basic rights; denials of civil liberties on flimsy or previously illegal premises; warrant-less sneak-and-peak searches; the wholesale undermining of privacy safeguards (including government access to library circulation records, bank records, and records of internet activity); the greater empowerment of secret intelligence courts (like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court) that threaten civil liberties; and heavy-handed federal and local law enforcement tactics designed to chill, squelch, or silence dissent. While it's true that most Americans have yet to feel the brunt of such policies, select groups, including Muslims, Arab immigrants, Arab-Americans, and anti-war protesters, have served as test subjects for a potential Homeland Security juggernaut that, if not stopped, will only expand. CLIP - Check also the introductory comment ("frightening stuff") at http://www.tomdispatch.com/indexprint.mhtml?pid=2152 and then read Part II at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/013105K.shtml#1

America: The New Heart of Darkness by John Kaminski
http://www.warfolly.vzz.net/newheartofdarkness.html
Our creature comforts have made silent cowards of us all. (...) The right to a fair trial is no longer guaranteed. You can be put in jail or executed for reasons that can be kept secret. And still, on the crumbling streets of America, most people go about their business as if nothing has happened. Sensible people, who in the deepening darkness of their own secret hearts must realize something has definitely happened, that something definitely will happen. Sensible people, suddenly afraid to speak what they really believe for fear their neighbors will overhear and tell someone with a gun and a uniform, or worse, an employer with an important contract who wants no employees who don't agree with the way things are. And then, they think, paralyzed by fear, who will feed the kids? Scared silence follows. Who would have thought that democracy would come to mean tyranny? OK, Orwell. And many other now unpopular voices, never heard in our manacled media. Who would have thought, when all was said and done, that America would turn out to be the chief threat to the survival of all life on this planet? But as the announcer always reminds us, this is why we play the game. You never know how it will turn out. CLIP

Bush tells CBC he's 'unfamiliar' with Voting Rights Act (January 27, 2005)
http://www.chicagodefender.com/page/local.cfm?ArticleID=381
President George W. Bush met with the Congressional Black Caucus Wednesday for the first time as a group in nearly four years, but what CBC members said stood out the most was the president's declaration that he was "unfamiliar" with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant pieces of legislation passed in the history of the United States.At the conclusion of yesterday's 40-minute meeting, Bush - who attended along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - was asked by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-2nd) whether he would support the re-authorization of a portion of the Voting Rights Act that must be approved every 25 years (It will come up for consideration next year). (...) According to the description on the Department of Justice's website, the Voting Rights Act is "generally considered the most successful piece of civil rights legislation ever adopted by the United States Congress."The bill guaranteed that African Americans and any other group would not be denied the right to vote, and put in place provisions to ensure that voting rights would not be trampled on by local and state officials. CLIP

SA Employees Union Presents Evidence Bush Used Trust Fund Dollars to Promote Social Security Privatization (January 28, 2005)
http://afge.org/Index.cfm?Page=PressReleases&PressReleaseID=411
The lies of Social Security exposed by a whistleblower. Employees have been instructed to hype negative projections for Social Security and to promote privatizing Social Security.

Researchers Who Rushed Into Print a Study of Iraqi Civilian Deaths Now Wonder Why It Was Ignored (27 January 2005)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012905K.shtml
When more than 200,000 people died in a tsunami caused by an Asian earthquake in December, the immediate reaction in the United States was an outpouring of grief and philanthropy, prompted by extensive coverage in the news media. Two months earlier, the reaction in the United States to news of another large-scale human tragedy was much quieter. In late October, a study was published in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, concluding that about 100,000 civilians had been killed in Iraq since it was invaded by a United States-led coalition in March 2003. On the eve of a contentious presidential election - fought in part over U.S. policy on Iraq - many American newspapers and television news programs ignored the study or buried reports about it far from the top headlines. CLIP

Order 81 (21/01/05)
http://www.theecologist.co.uk/archive_article.html?article=487&category=86
Under the guise of helping get Iraq back on its feet, the US is setting out to totally re-engineer the country's traditional farming systems into a US-style corporate agribusiness. They've even created a new law - Order 81 - to make sure it happens. (...) So the Iraqi farmer may have been wowed with the promise of a bumper yield at the end of this year. But unlike before he can‚t save his seed for the next. A 10,000-year old tradition has been replaced at a stroke with a contract for hire. Iraqi farmers have been made vassals to American corporations. That they were baking bread for 9,500 years before America existed has no weight when it comes to deciding who owns Iraq's wheat. Yet for every farmer that stops growing his unique strain of saved seed the world loses another variety, one that might have been useful in times of disease or drought. In short, what America has done is not restructure Iraq's agriculture, but dismantle it. The people whose forefathers first mastered the domestication of wheat will now have to pay for the privilege of growing it for someone else. And with that the world's oldest farming heritage will become just another subsidiary link in the vast American supply chain.

Women told, 'Work in brothel, or else' (January 30, 2005)
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42615
German law forces out-of-work females to take sex jobs or lose unemployment - A provision in the German welfare system is forcing out-of-work women to chose between taking jobs in the sex industry or losing their unemployment benefits. Once one of the most generous systems in Europe, Germany's unemployment program has been reformed to require those out of work to take jobs for which they are qualified, or lose benefits. In the case of women, females below the age of 55 who have been out of work for a year or more must take any available job offered. The full legalization of prostitution two years ago – with brothel owners now paying taxes and employee health insurance – has created an awkward situation at German job centers where employers can access the official government database of those seeking work, reports the London Telegraph. (...) "Now that prostitution is no longer considered by the law to be immoral, there is really nothing but the goodwill of the job centers to stop them from pushing women into jobs they don't want to do." Last year, the German federal government announced that it would be fining employers that failed to hire trainees – a measure to be applied to brothels as well as other employers. Brothels failing to hire one apprentice for every 15 employees will be fined for failing to promote the sex industry. Germany legalized prostitution in 2002 in the belief it would slow down the trafficking in women and reduce the role of organized crime in the profession. Instead, government is expanding the sex industry by guaranteeing a steady stream of new recruits, some willing and some not.

Scientists serious about 'electricity sickness' claims (24/01/2005)
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/485504/
Scientists and health advisers are taking the claims of people who say electricity makes them ill seriously for the first time. The National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) is carrying out a review of existing scientific studies into "electromagnetic hypersensitivity" (EHS). CLIP

Omega-News Collection 29. January 2005
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/494574/