MAY LOVE PREVAIL ON EARTH


June 15, 2005

Miscellaneous Subjects #214: Smoking Guns Aplenty!

Hello everyone!

Yep! Another very large compilation (70 pages plus a 30 page special addendum - see important notice below) for your review loaded with all sorts of facts, issues and news. It took me a week to prepare it and you'll probably need a week too to go through it all.

Please note also that a new Meditation Focus will come your way this weekend.

Bonne lecture!

Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator


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STATS for this compilation: Over 27,700 words and 115 links provided

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Important notice from Jean

Because I have on several occasions included in my compilations Kiara Windrider's articles promoting his guru Bhagavan and his deeksha, I believe it is my responsibility now to let everyone know about the recent correspondence I've had with Janneke Monshouwer from the Netherlands who initially sent me a very enthusiastic report about her spiritual experience in India (see "Happiness – a never-to-forget-experience" archived on April 14 at http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2005/LightSeries76.htm - you can also read about her thoughts last January 6, prior to her trip in "Oneness in The Netherlands" archived at http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2005/WritingWall35.htm)

I've been both shocked and dismayed as I discovered through Janneke's letters the true picture about what is now clearly a scheme to grab from gullible believers as much money as possible and in the process create a rather difficult learning experience for all those entrapped into this cult by writings such as those naively - or cunningly (you decide) put together by Kiara. If any subscriber to this list has been lured to fall for this scheme through my networking of Kiara's articles, I sincerely apologize to you for being indirectly responsible for this. To all others who may be tempted by this "deeksha" pseudo enlightenment, I strongly recommend that you read the entire series of emails I exchanged with Janneke archived at http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2005/Janneke.htm (Over 30 pages!) as this should be sufficient warning about the extent of the risks you would then take. You should also consider recommending this to the attention of any friend also tempted by this "venture". As a preview, here is a quote from Janneke's last letter sent to me on June 12:

"Bhagavan is an impostor. For me it took some time but all puzzle pieces come together and now I can say: all this is fake. With all what Kiara writes, maybe at first sight for many people this seems really wonderful. That is the same as with Bhagavan (Kalki), but: HE SPEAKS IN ANOTHER WAY THAN HE ACTS: He says that people should be their own teachers, leaders, independent. But in fact he makes people fully dependent on HIM and let them pay lots of money for this. He declares that HE is the Avatar, God, The Divine specialized to enlighten the mass and the world. He declares that enlightenment is grace and that we need him to give us that grace. This is no enlightenment at all but a mass trance of the very fast growing numbers of devotees of Bhagavan."

In my reply to Janneke's last letter to me, I wrote:

"I must say that I'm extremely disappointed that someone - Kiara - whom I thought to be intelligent and spiritually balanced has allowed himself to be led - and to become an instrument in leading others - into such a dangerous sect whose true goals are the financial enrichment of its 2 leaders and their self-aggrandizement.

I hope this whole thing will be yet another important lesson in learning to not give our spiritual power away to anyone else, no matter how lofty their promises and how sweet their words because it always ends up in disastrous results with repercussions that are bound to last many lifetimes.

For those who were already subscribers to this list in 1999, this story will ring familiar as it is similar, to a much smaller extent, to an experience I had with another self-proclaimed guru whose words first appeared worthy of attention but whose actions, once observed first-hand during a trip I made to Glastonbury in December 1998, turned out to reveal the true face of this fake guru (to learn the whole story about this read The Time of Reckoning at http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Initialetter.htm and also follow there the 2 links that will lead you to lots, LOTS more). We truly live in an era in which false prophets abound and so offer us numerous opportunities to test and learn to rely on our soul-connected sense of discernment."

LAST MINUTE COMMENT: I just received an email from Kiara in which he failed to address the concerns raised by Janneke - see his letter and my reply to him at the bottom of THIS WEBPAGE. I was hoping that all the evidence presented in this series of emails would suffice to begin to shake his blind, unquestioning support for the organization he is involved with, and perhaps enable him to begin to realize that, without throwing the baby with the bath water — because anytime people sincerely dedicate themselves to a deeply felt spiritual pursuit, some good is bound to come out of it anyway — the time had come indeed to recognize that the water is perhaps too filthy now to give a bath to anyone in it. I have always valued his views — that is, until recently — and still believe he is a good person in his heart. I trust that his soul-driven innate goodness will prevail and that, whatever the costs to his current relationship with this Indian cult leader and his followers, he will come clean and do the right thing for his soul and for all those who believe in his soul's higher calling in this lifetime. Since I went through a similar experience several years ago, I'm not about to cast a stone against my brother as he is going through his own time of spiritual trial and will keep him in my thoughts during my moments of spiritual oneness.


Worthy of your Attention

Check out Amazing new UFO Footage taken in Phoenix June 5, 2005
http://www.rense.com/ufo6/ufotheatre.mpg - http://www.rense.com/general65/aamz.htm
Recommended by "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@vitelcom.net> who wrote: "If this is as real as it seems to be it's pretty mind blowing. If you want to save the file to your computer right mouse click on this link then click on "save target as".

AfterDowningStreet Growing Fast http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=170&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
478,348 Signatures and Counting - With a big boost from MoveOn.org, the count of signatures on Congressman Conyers' letter to Bush asking for answers to the Downing Street Minutes is 478,348 and climbing. Clearly we will pass the goal of 500,000 before the Congressman delivers the letter to the White House on Thursday and we all rally in Lafayette Square Park. Sign the letter http://www.johnconyers.com - Thus far 124 organizations and blogs have joined the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition. See top right of this page: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org - We've Broken Into the Corporate Media. Editorials and even news articles are on the rise. And television is starting to yawn and rub its eyes in the sunlight. See links below. Contact television networks: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=5&page=1 CLIP - P.S. Check their Flyers to print at
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/rally.pdf for LOCAL RALLIES PLANNED AROUND COUNTRY in support of HEARINGS ON DOWNING STREET MINUTES SET FOR 1 PM THURSDAY. Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, and other Congress Members will hold a hearing on the Downing Street Minutes and related evidence of efforts to cook the books on pre-war intelligence. The hearings are being held at the Democratic National Committee because the Republicans controlling the House Judiciary Committee refused to permit the ranking Democratic Member to use a room on the Hill. Check also More British Documents Released at http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=205

Downing Street II (June 13, 2005)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061405F.shtml
Yesterday, London's Sunday Times published the text of another SECRET UK EYES ONLY briefing document prepared for senior British officials. This one was dated July 21, 2002, two days before British intelligence chief Richard Dearlove gave Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national security advisers a briefing based on discussions with American counterparts in Washington. (...) When asked about the July 23, 2002, minutes at their press conference last week in Washington, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair did a good job of obfuscating - enough to mislead our corporate press into the all-too-familiar he-said, she-said reporting. What went unnoticed was the fact that in the process, the two leaders unintentionally acknowledged the authenticity of the minutes, which read like a meeting of Mafioso. They may think no one will read the actual minutes. In that, they are dead wrong. And these new British revelations have already strengthened the case against the Bush administration. CLIP

Media Action: Ask C-SPAN to Cover the Downing Street Hearings!
http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=7718871
Take Action! They need to hear from you! Their viewers! The Downing Street Memo/Minutes hearing is at 1:30pm EST in the Wasserman Room at 430 S Capitol St. SE, Washington, D.C. The rally is at 5pm EST in Lafayette Park. C-SPAN should cover these events. We successfully convinced C-SPAN to cover the Conyers Hearing regarding the Ohio Fraud. Let's do this again! Please call them, write them, and ask them to do so: Main Number: (202) 737-3220 Viewer Services: (765) 464-3080 (for programming questions) events@c-span.org

New Bill Could Make Bush President For Life
<http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2005/140605presidentforlife.htm
A House bill has been introduced that would change the 22nd amendment and enable George Bush to remain President for the rest of his political life.The bill would repeal limitations on a President holding office for a maximum of two terms.An even darker scenario, Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected as President in 2008 and shorty after the 22nd amendment is abolished, making the Hitler admirer our permanent Fuhrer.This is the modern day version of the http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/06/319395.shtml
You MUST see the current articles at this site
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

A truckload of nonsense
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9142.htm
The G8 plan to save Africa comes with conditions that make it little more than an extortion racket.

Mosaic, streaming Middle East news
http://www.worldlinktv.org/mosaic/streamsArchive/index.php4
Watch different state newscasts in English from various countries around the Middle East, including contrasting propaganda - Recommended by Mark Graffis mgraffis@vitelcom.net>

The Big Picture Movie
http://www.bigpicturesmallworld.com/BPCodaMovie.html
Recommended by "Chris Gruener" chris.gruener@comcast.net>


CONTENTS

1. The invisible children
2. More than a million children work in mines, "digging for survival."
3. Former Bush Team Member Says WTC Collapse Likely A Controlled Demolition And 'Inside Job'
4. Bush Lied about War? Nope, No News There!
5. Mental Health Screening in Schools Signals the End of Parental Rights
6. The future after oil resources run out is uncertain
7. Animals and us: Forward to the revolution
8. New findings show a slow recovery from extreme global warming episode 55 million years ago
9. Climate: Doubt Is Lifted
10. Offshore Fish Farms - A Solution or a Problem?
11. Three in a Bed
12. We Love Howard Dean
13. Polls, and Reports from Iraq, Reveal Pessimism on War
14. Codex Alimentarius is Almost a Fait Accompli
15. What the ETs say about Contact


See also:

French Journalist Describes Mistreatment by U.S. Forces During Siege of Fallujah (June 8)
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/08/140259
French TV journalist Grégoire Deniau describes his ordeal in U.S. custody in Iraq. He was detained for a day during the siege of Fallujah in April 2004. He says despite showing his passport and French press ID, U.S. soldiers forced him to kneel for hours, gaffer-taped a hood over his face and hurled insults at him, calling him a dog and accused him, as a Frenchmen, of being pro-Arab. Deniau says he was released late at night, in the middle of the desert and was warned by the soldiers that US forces shoot everything that moves.

Dallaire makes impassioned plea to TV to better cover genocide (June 13, 2005)
http://www3.cjad.com/content/cp_article.asp?id=/global_feeds/CanadianPress/EntertainmentNews/e061339A.htm
BANFF, Alta. (CP) - Television broadcasters around the world have a moral responsibility to better cover human disasters such as ethnic slaughter in a way that could mobilize world compassion, says retired general Romeo Dallaire. "You must shock," Dallaire told a hushed crowd of international producers gathered Monday at the Banff World Television Festival. "Don't let the world forget the catastrophes, the failures," said Dallaire, who was unable to get international attention focused on the ethnic genocide in Rwanda in 1994. "Help humanity learn from its lessons and hold itself accountable as it moves into the future." Dallaire headed a tiny United Nations mission in 1994 when he tried in vain to get the world to do something to stop the genocide in Rwanda. Pleas for troops and media attention weren't answered and he was forced to stand by helplessly as 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days in the African nation. "During that 100 days, there was more reporting on Tonya Harding kneecapping her buddy and the fetish all of North America (had) with O.J. Simpson's bloody glove than there was on the (Rwandan) genocide," said the retired lieutenant general, whose struggle with the emotional aftermath was retold in the powerful documentary Shake Hands with the Devil and an award-winning memoir of the same title. (...) While it's not possible to transmit the smells of death and devastation, Dallaire said pictures of nine-year-olds toting AK-47s and stories of children being torn from their families to become soldiers or sex slaves will make a difference. He said it appears the media often choose the easiest and most obvious international stories, noting there was blanket coverage of the Asian tsunami while atrocities in the Sudan were ignored. "There were more people killed, internally displaced and raped in Darfur during that timeframe than all the Asian tsunami and nothing came out," he said. (...) British journalist Sorious Sumara says the Western media too often hide behind numbers of people starving or fleeing a problem instead of focusing on the true problem facing Africa: corruption. "They find that easier than naming and shaming," said Sumara, of Insight News Television. "Why are we having Live Aid? It isn't because Africa is poor, it's because we have corrupt politicians."

The "Hyper-Rich" surpass the rich!
http://www.derinformant.com/latest_letters_05/20050606_ll.html
In no other country besides the USA is the gap between the rich and poor widening ever faster - What is also astounding is how little protest there is even as the gap grows ever wider. Equally, the chance for upward mobility is decreasing.This survey was taken for the book "Recent Trends in Wealth Ownership". The graphic shows a breakdown of who owns what in the USA - quite fascinating (and disturbing). (The top 1% of the population owns 38.1% of the wealth, the next 4% owns 21.3%, while the bottom 40% of the population owns a tiny 0.2% of the wealth and the remaining 40.4% is owned by the rest of the population)

Rich-poor gap gaining attention (June 14, 2005)
http://abcnews.go.com/International/CSM/story?id=846168
Remarks by Greenspan reflect concern that disparities in wealth may destabilize the economy. The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself. Is that a liberal's talking point? Sure. But it's also a line from the recent public testimony of a champion of the free market: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Losing Our Country (10 June 2005)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061005G.shtml
Baby boomers like me grew up in a relatively equal society. In the 1960's America was a place in which very few people were extremely wealthy, many blue-collar workers earned wages that placed them comfortably in the middle class, and working families could expect steadily rising living standards and a reasonable degree of economic security. But as The Times's series on class in America reminds us, that was another country. The middle-class society I grew up in no longer exists. Working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973. But it rose only 22 percent from 1973 to 2003, and much of that gain was the result of wives' entering the paid labor force or working longer hours, not rising wages. Meanwhile, economic security is a thing of the past: year-to-year fluctuations in the incomes of working families are far larger than they were a generation ago. All it takes is a bit of bad luck in employment or health to plunge a family that seems solidly middle-class into poverty. But the wealthy have done very well indeed. Since 1973 the average income of the top 1 percent of Americans has doubled, and the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled. Why is this happening? (...) Since 1980 in particular, US government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families - and under the current administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless. From tax cuts that favor the rich to bankruptcy "reform" that punishes the unlucky, almost every domestic policy seems intended to accelerate our march back to the robber baron era. It's not a pretty picture - which is why right-wing partisans try so hard to discredit anyone who tries to explain to the public what's going on. CLIP

More Babies, Young Kids Going Hungry in US (June 12, 20045) http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/061305HA.shtml
Increasing numbers of young American children are showing signs of serious malnourishment, fueled by a greater prevalence of hunger in the United States, while, paradoxically, two-thirds of the US population is either overweight or obese. In 2003, 11.2 percent of families in the United States experienced hunger, compared with 10.1 percent in 1999, according to most recent official figures, released on National Hunger Awareness Day held this year on Tuesday, June 7. Some pediatricians worry that cuts in welfare aid proposed in President George W. Bush's 2006 budget will only exacerbate the situation. By contrast Bush plans to keep tax cuts for more affluent sectors of the population, they note. (...) Some children in the United States occasionally look like the malnourished children we see in some parts of Africa, however, welfare programs targeting society's poorest ensures that problem is generally avoided, the pediatricians say. Paradoxically, malnutrition is not always due to lack of food - rather to the quality of the food being consumed. "People often ask me how many children go to bed hungry. The answer is the parents work very hard so they don't go to bed feeling hungry. The parents try to fill the baby up with French fries and soda pop," said Frank. In some areas, green vegetables and fruit are impossible to buy - even in a can, because there may be no supermarket. Moreover, such items are costly. "What happens in America is - what seems bizarre - that some of the recommendations that we give to families to prevent underweight of children are the same as we give to prevent overweight," said Black. "We recommend families not to give their children junk food." In some families, eating junk food will mean one child is obese while the other is underweight, said Black. "The first will eat junk food and nothing else, the second will eat junk food and everything else."

President Urges Congress to Make Patriot Act Permanent (June 10)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061005D.shtml
Says law closed gaps in law enforcement, made the US safer. Columbus, Ohio - President Bush, facing efforts by some in his own party to scale back the post-Sept. 11 USA Patriot Act, said yesterday it has made America safer and should be made permanent. (...) During Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, he made preserving the law a common refrain, but he has rarely spoken of it since. His renewed focus came as Congress has begun working on the act's renewal amid fresh criticisms - from members of both parties - that it undermines basic freedoms. Bush pressured Congress to make the expiring provisions permanent. His administration also is seeking greater powers for the FBI to subpoena records in terrorism investigations without the approval of a judge or grand jury. CLIP

Join us July 2-8, 2005, for a National Week of Action!
http://www.bordc.org/involved/weekofaction.php
As Congress considers reauthorizing or amending portions of the USA PATRIOT Act that sunset on December 31, 2005, it is time for a national call to action to defend the Bill of Rights and restore our lost liberties.In periods of fear and hysteria, all too often our precious liberties have been violated in the name of defending them. From the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Palmer Raids to the internment of Japanese Americans, time and again in the face of real or imagined threats, foreign and domestic, the government has denied the civil liberties of citizen and non-citizens alike.Today, our civil liberties are again at risk and we must take action to defend them. A broad coalition of grassroots groups has begun planning a National Week of Action to demand that the government strictly comply with the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and that Congress and the people of the United States provide strict oversight over all anti-terrorism legislation. (..) The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 11-4 to move forward a bill that would give the FBI "administrative subpoena" power to bypass courts and grand juries and write their own 'snoop orders' CLIP

Bush and Congress's Approval Reach New Lows
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061105F.shtml
Washington - When it comes to public approval, President Bush and Congress are playing "how low can you go." Bush's approval mark is 43 percent, while Congress checks in at 31 percent, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found. Both are the lowest levels yet for the survey, started in December 2003. CLIP

Hemorrhaging Money for Homeland Security (June 14, 2005)
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,360394,00.html
Anti-Terror Absurdity in Americaby Georg Mascolo Fear can be a lucrative business. That, at least, is what American companies selling security gadgets are finding out as the US government continues to spend billions of dollars on a variety of different Homeland Security programs. The only problem? Most of them are useless. (...) To make sure that all this lucrative hemorrhaging of American taxpayers' money doesn't come to an end too soon, the security industry has taken a page from the defense industry and hired specialists who are aptly nicknamed "rainmakers" -- political insiders adept at selling their influence to the highest bidder. Tom Ridge, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, is now lobbying on behalf of container security, while many of his former top officials have set up shop on K Street, Washington's magnificent mile for lobbyists.

GOP chairman walks out during Patriot Act hearing - Complains about detainee debate
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/11/gop_chairman_walks_out_during_patriot_act_hearing/
June 11, 2005 WASHINGTON -- The Republican chairman walked off with the gavel, leaving Democrats shouting into turned-off microphones at a raucous hearing Friday on the Patriot Act. The House Judiciary Committee hearing, with the two sides accusing each other of being irresponsible and undemocratic, came as President Bush was urging Congress to renew those sections of the post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism law set to expire in September. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the panel, abruptly gaveled the meeting to an end and walked out, followed by other Republicans. Sensenbrenner declared that much of the testimony, which veered into debate over the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, was irrelevant. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., protested, raising his voice as his microphone went off, came back on, and went off again. "We are not besmirching the honor of the United States, we are trying to uphold it," he said. Democrats asked for the hearing, the 11th the committee has held on the act since April, saying past hearings had been too slanted toward witnesses who supported the law. The four witnesses were from groups, including Amnesty International USA and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, that have questioned the constitutionality of some aspects of the act, which allows law enforcement greater authority to investigate suspected terrorists. Nadler said Sensenbrenner, one of the authors of the Patriot Act, was "rather rude, cutting everybody off in mid-sentence with an attitude of total hostility." CLIP

Something Rotten in Ohio by Gore Vidal (June 9, 2005)
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0609-21.htm
Outside the oil and gas junta that controls two and a half branches of our government (the half soon to be whole is the judiciary), there was a good deal of envy at the late British election among those Americans who are serious about politics. Little money was spent by the three parties and none for TV advertising. Results were achieved swiftly and cheaply. Best of all, the three party leaders were quizzed sharply and intelligently by ordinary citizens known quaintly as subjects, thanks to the ubiquitous phantom crown so unlike our nuclear-taloned predatory eagle. Although news of foreign countries seldom appears in our tightly censored media (and good news, never), those of us who are addicted to C-SPAN and find it the one truly, if unconsciously, subversive media outlet in these United States are able to observe British politics in full cry. I say "subversive" not only because C-SPAN is apt to take interesting books seriously but also because of its live coverage of the Senate and the House of Representatives, the only look we are ever allowed at the mouthpieces of our masters up close and, at times, most reflective of a government more and more remote from us, unaccountable and repressive. To watch the righteous old prophet Byrd of West Virginia, the sunny hypocrisy of Biden of Delaware—as I write these hallowed names, I summon up their faces, hear their voices, and I am covered with C-SPAN goose bumps.At any rate, wondrous C-SPAN has another string to its bow. While some executive was nodding, C-SPAN started showing us Britain's House of Commons during Question Time. This is the only glimpse that most Americans will ever get of how democracy is supposed to work. CLIP

DIAGNOSIS: PSYCHIC EPIDEMIC by Paul Levy
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/diagnosis.html
(...) The fundamental psychic process that underlies what is playing out in our world today has certain striking similarities to what played out in Germany in the 1930’s. Speaking back then, Jung could just as well be talking about the modern world when he says, “The struggle between light and darkness has broken out everywhere. The rift runs through the whole globe, and the fire that set Germany ablaze is smouldering and glowing wherever we look. The conflagration that broke out in Germany was the outcome of psychic conditions that are universal.” The eternal mythic struggle between light and darkness, whose source is the psyche and whose arena is the world stage, not only underlies what happened in Germany, but is at the bottom of what is being collectively acted out in the world today. What played out with the rise of fascism in Germany was the manifestation of an unrecognized deeper psychic process that, fractal-like, has been endlessly recreating itself in a destructive way all throughout history. If we fail to recognize this underlying, universal, psychic process- be it in Germany in the 1930’s, or current day - the result is a destructive collective psychosis. CLIP

US Opposed Calls at NATO for Probe of Uzbek Killings (June 14)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061405Z.shtml
Officials feared losing air base access. Defense officials from Russia and the United States last week helped block a new demand for an international probe into the Uzbekistan government's shooting of hundreds of protesters last month, according to U.S. and diplomatic officials. British and other European officials had pushed to include language calling for an independent investigation in a communique issued by defense ministers of NATO countries and Russia after a daylong meeting in Brussels on Thursday. But the joint communique merely stated that "issues of security and stability in Central Asia, including Uzbekistan," had been discussed. The outcome obscured an internal U.S. dispute over whether NATO ministers should raise the May 13 shootings in Andijan at the risk of provoking Uzbekistan to cut off U.S. access to a military air base on its territory.

Depleted Uranium Breakthrough!
http://cuttingedge.org/detail.cfm?ID=1069
Finally, a professionally created, thoroughly documented DVD on the combined effects on our troops of Depleted Uranium, Toxic Vaccinations, and Chemical - Biological Agents. Comes with a FREE CDROM contained several thousand pages of documentation for only $19.99! Now, Gulf War Vets has finally been able to explain to their sick and dying members of Gulf Wars I and II why they and many of their loved ones are so ill! * Beyond Treason DVD: "The Battlefield Disaster Created by Depleted Uranium, Toxic Vaccinations, plus Chemical and Biological Agents" - With FREE CDROM Providing Written Documentation - Brave soldiers are dying by inches from a variety of "unknown illnesses". Some are dying of heart failure, others from organ meltdown, and still others from "mysterious causes". While the Pentagon claims to be totally in the dark, experts now believe that these men are dying in various ways because of a combination of Depleted Uranium, toxic vaccines, chemical and biological agents. As ailing Gulf War Heroes from all 27 coalition countries slowly die of “unknown causes,” they wait for answers from their respective governments… but no satisfying or even credible answers have come forth from the military establishment. Records that span over a decade point to negligence and even culpability on the part of the U.S. Department of Defense and their “disposable army” mentality. The VA has determined that 250,000 troops are now permanently disabled, 15,000 troops are dead and over 425,000 are ill and slowly dying from what the Department of Defense still calls a “mystery disease.” How many more will have to die before action is taken? The FREE CD ROM contains thousands of printed pages of supporting documentation, which can be viewed from most any computer using an internet browser - Hear the testimony of experts and of United States military veterans who demand answers to questions that the Department of Defense will not address. Did you know President Clinton signed Executive Order 13139, allowing the Pentagon to perform any experiment for any reason on any soldier, without his knowledge and/or approval? DVD runs 114 minutes with bonus material. Produced in cooperation with Gulf War Vets. Will be available for shipping June 24 -- Recommended by Nattanya nattanya@telus.net>

Save NPR and PBS
http://www.moveon.org/publicbroadcasting/
The House is threatening to eliminate all public funding for NPR and PBS, starting with "Sesame Street," "Reading Rainbow" and other commercial-free children's shows. Sign our petition to Congress opposing these massive cuts to public broadcasting.

The Voice of the White House (June 12, 2005)
http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1653.htm
Here is an interesting attempt on the part of the Bush worshippers to dish the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution that limits a President to two terms... (...) The Bush people have now set up an entire system to permit instant military crackdowns inside the United States in the event that, to quote from an official order, now in my safe, “provides the vehicle for the reestablishment of domestic order in the event of civil insurrections…” (...) And from a friend in the DoD (upper level bureaucrat who detests Bush and his band of trained snakes) this bit of neonazi fun. It seems that since recruiting has tanked totally, the next step is to recruit school dropouts, dimbulbs, those with “minor” criminal records or 18 year olds who might find themselves inside an institution for the delinquent. (!) The second part of this program is scary, even for one who lives inside the Beltway. A study has been concluded aimed at permitting the DoD to recruit men who are convicted of felonies and currently on parole for same or incarcerated in a Federal or State penitentiary! CLIP

Science on the Fringe (May 30)
http://www.ufodigest.com/fringe.html
ESP, UFOs and reincarnation are treated with respect at the world's most bizarre scientific conference - Roger Nelson's formal credentials are in the respectable field of experimental psychology, but the project he has been working on since 1998 would make plenty of scientists cringe. Nelson heads the Global Consciousness Project, which is based on the theory that emotionally charged world events will cause blips in the output of random-number generators scattered around the globe. He and his colleagues believe they have already documented that effect in the aftermath of Princess Di's death, the 9/11 attacks and, more benignly, in the wave of international optimism that seems to settle over the world each New Year's Day. The simple electronic devices that generate the random numbers, he argues, may be picking up some sort of planetwide field of consciousness. CLIP

Omega-News Collection 12. June 2005
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/757337/


GREEN HOLOCAUST UPDATE

Esprit de Gore (June 9, 2005)
http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2005/06/09/little-gore/index.html?source=weekly
Gore is transforming into fiery climate evangelist Al Gore.Photo: The House Policy Committee.Al Gore, once derided by the right as a stiff, wooden Ozone Man, is now recasting himself as the fiery, headstrong Climate Avenger -- a blunt and passionate spokesperson about what he calls "a collision between our civilization and the earth." He is currently in negotiations to play a starring role in a big-budget, feature-length documentary on climate change.Last Saturday in San Francisco, the self-described "guy who used to be the next president of the United States" delivered an hour-long multimedia presentation on the scientific evidence of global warming to hundreds of guests crammed into a tent for the culmination of the city's five-day-long U.N. World Environment Day celebration. The audience, peppered with celebrities, members of Congress, U.N. officials, and dozens of mayors from around the world, erupted into a standing ovation when Gore wrapped up his quasi-evangelical call to action.Thrusting his fists skyward, he rattled off the seemingly insurmountable challenges civilization has overcome in the past -- slavery, communism, restricted suffrage, segregation, disease, apartheid -- and roared, "So now we are called to use our political institution, our democracy, our free speech, our reasoning capacity, our citizenship, our hearts, and talk with one another, reason with one another, see the reality of this problem, act as Americans, and understand that it's a different issue than any we've ever faced." Then the crescendo: "We have to make our stand!" he thundered. "This is our home! We must keep our eyes on the prize! Help solve this problem!"(...) Perhaps most persuasive was Gore's argument that mandatory caps on planet-warming emissions can give countries a big economic advantage in the 21st-century global marketplace, by driving innovation and boosting demand for hot new technologies related to renewable energy and efficiency. "We cannot even sell our cars in China because we don't meet their emissions standards!" he balked.Google cofounder Sergey Brin, whose company was a World Environment Day cosponsor, reinforced this point later in the evening with a speech asserting that the coming paradigm shift toward clean technologies is an industrial movement that will dwarf even the digital revolution in terms of economic potential and historical meaning. CLIP - I SAY TO U.S. CITIZENS, TIME TO GIVE THE PRESIDENCY TO WHOM IT BELONGS IN THE FIRST PLACE...

Science Academies Urge Greenhouse Gas Cuts
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/060805EB.shtml

Yale poll reveals overwhelming public desire for new energy policy direction (9 June 2005)
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-06/yu-ypr060905.php
New Haven, Conn. - A new Yale University research survey of 1,000 adults nationwide reveals that while Americans are deeply divided on many issues, they overwhelmingly believe that the United States is too dependent on imported oil. The survey shows a vast majority of the public also wants to see government action to develop new "clean" energy sources, including solar and wind power as well as hydrogen cars. 92% of Americans say that they are worried about dependence on foreign oil. 93% of Americans want government to develop new energy technologies and require auto industry to make cars and trucks that get better gas mileage. The results underscore Americans' deep concerns about the country's current energy policies, particularly the nation's dependence on imported oil. Fully 92 percent say this dependence is a serious problem, while 68 percent say it is a "very serious" problem. Across all regions of the country and every demographic group, there is broad support for a new emphasis on finding alternative energy sources. Building more solar power facilities is considered a "good idea" by 90 percent of the public; 87 percent support expanded wind farms; and 86 percent want increased funding for renewable energy research. According to Gus Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, "This poll underscores the fact that Americans want not only energy independence but also to find ways to break the linkage between energy use and environmental harm, from local air pollution to global warming." Results of the poll indicate that 93 percent of Americans say requiring the auto industry to make cars that get better gas mileage is a good idea. Just 6 percent say it is a bad idea. This sentiment varies little by political leaning, with 96 percent of Democrats and Independents and 86 percent of Republicans supporting the call for more fuel-efficient vehicles. These findings come on the heels of Congress' rejection of a proposal to require sport utility vehicles and minivans to become more fuel-efficient and achieve the same gasoline mileage as passenger cars. This poll suggests that Washington is out of touch with the American people - Republicans, Democrats and Independents, young and old, men and women-even S.U.V. drivers-embrace investments in new energy technologies, including better gas mileage in vehicles," said Dan Esty, director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, which commissioned the survey.The survey also revealed broad support for action to improve air and water quality but growing discomfort with "environmentalists." Likewise, the public's confidence in TV news as a source of environmental information has fallen sharply. CLIP

Environment atlas reveals planet wide devastation (June 3, 2005)
http://tinyurl.com/7n7b8
LONDON (Reuters) - The devastating impact of mankind on the planet is dramatically illustrated in pictures published on Saturday showing explosive urban sprawl, major deforestation and the sucking dry of inland seas over less than three decades.Mexico City mushrooms from a modest urban center in 1973 to a massive blot on the landscape in 2000, while Beijing shows a similar surge between 1978 and 2000 in satellite pictures published by the United Nations in a new environmental atlas.Delhi sprawls explosively between 1977 and 1999, while from 1973 to 2000 the tiny desert town of Las Vegas turns into a monster conurbation of one million people -- placing massive strain on scarce water supplies."If there is one message from this atlas it is that we are all part of this. We can all make a difference," U.N. expert Kaveh Zahedi told reporters at the launch of the "One Planet Many People" atlas on the eve of World Environment Day.Page after page of the 300-page book illustrate in before-and-after pictures from space the disfigurement of the face of the planet wrought by human activities. CLI¨

Save our Oceans!
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/755598/
Yesterday I introduced S. 1224, the "National Oceans Preservation Act of 2005," critical legislation to improve the health and governance of our oceans. The beauty and wonder of our oceans should be a cause for celebration -- something that our children and grandchildren should have a chance to enjoy and cherish. Instead, our oceans are facing grave threats from over-fishing, invasive species, and pollution. In fact, two independent commissions have found oceans to be in a state of crisis. My legislation, co-sponsored by Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, meets these challenges head-on by adopting a comprehensive national approach to oceans management that will protect marine wildlife and habitat, strengthen fisheries, and reduce pollution.But I need your help to protect our oceans. Please contact your Senators, urging them to co-sponsor S.1224, the "National Oceans Preservation Act of 2005!"
http://ga4.org/campaign/saveouroceans/b85g57rz55x6ew? (...) - Barbara Boxer

Graft Driving Amazon Deforestation
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/743762/

Illegal Loggers Decimating the Amazon and Inciting Tribal Genocide
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/746901/

Borneo Lowland Forests Face Extinction (June 8, 2005)
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/31152/story.htm
JAKARTA - The lowland tropical rain forests in Indonesian Borneo could disappear in five years due to rampant logging and forest fires, endangering the survival of many exotic species, an international conservation group said on Tuesday. The world's third-largest island has lost forests equivalent to an area one third the size of Switzerland every year, or at a rate of 1.3 million hectares. It is home to more than 210 mammal species, including 44 found only in Borneo. In its report called "Treasure island at risk", the World Wide Fund (WWF) said the loss of forest would drastically affect the island's wildlife, endangering ecological wonders like the pygmy elephant and orang-utan, whose long-term survival is already in doubt. (...) Indonesia, having lost more than 70 percent of its original frontier forest, has launched a crackdown on illegal logging, but many activists complain the authorities have failed to catch the big bosses behind the lucrative trade. CLIP

WWF Says Japan Scientific Whaling is a Sham (June 14, 2005)
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/31216/story.htm
NORWAY: OSLO - Japan should stop harpooning whales for scientific research, the WWF environmental group said on Monday in a report denouncing the slaughter as a cover-up for commercial sales of the mammals' meat. Japan should instead collect whale skin samples for genetic analysis using non-lethal darts, the WWF said in a 44-page report about Japan's whaling programmes. "It is extraordinary that Japan, one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world, continues to kill an estimated 650 whales a year using 1940s science," said Susan Lieberman, director of the WWF's global species programme. "We call on Japan to live up to its reputation as a technologically and scientifically advanced nation, and put an end to 'scientific whaling'," she said in a statement. Whaling nations -- mainly Japan, Norway and Iceland -- are allowed to kill whales for scientific purposes under rules of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) even though the IWC imposed a moratorium on all commercial hunts in 1986. Yet meat from whales caught for research often ends up in restaurants or shops after the scientists have done their work, leading many opponents to see the catches as a sham to circumvent the IWC moratorium. CLIP

Say "NO" to Japan's outrageous plan to hunt humpback whales
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/755252/
Famous for serenading the seas with their haunting melodies, the humpback whale has been protected since 1966, when it was on the brink of extinction from commercial whaling. But now a new threat has emerged, as media reports indicate that Japan is now seeking to resume commercial whaling of humpbacks, defying international agreements under the notorious "scientific research" loophole. Using a loophole that allows whales to be killed for scientific study, more than 25,000 whales have been killed since a worldwide ban on commercial whaling was passed by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1986. Yet it's unnecessary to kill whales in order to study them, since non-lethal alternatives already exist. At the International Whaling Commission meeting beginning July 20th, the world will vote on Japan's outrageous proposal to hunt humpback whales. Several countries remain undecided and are very sensitive to external opinion. With a little pressure, they can be swayed to protect the whales and stop Japan from slaughtering them. That's why it's critical we tell the Swiss, Danish, Chinese and South Korean Ambassadors in our countries to oppose Japan's plan to kill endangered humpback whales - before it's too late. Sign the petition: http://www.care2.com/go/z/24786

India "Boom" an Environmental Disaster, Author Says (June 10, 2005)
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/31196/story.htm
NEW DELHI - India's economic boom is causing unsustainable environmental damage and is blinding people to the misery of hundreds of millions of poor, prize-winning author and activist Arundhati Roy said. "Even if you know what is going on, you can't help thinking India is this cool place now, Bollywood is 'in' and all of us have mobile phones," Roy told Reuters in an interview. "But it is almost as if the light is shining so brightly that you do not notice the darkness," she said. "There is no understanding whatsoever of what price is being paid by the rivers and mountains and irrigation and ground water, there is no questioning of that because we are on a roll." "India shining" was the campaign motto of the Bharatiya Janata Party which lost last year's election, unable to capitalise on the fast-growing economy and failing to convince the rural poor that economic reforms were benefitting them.Roy won the 1997 Booker prize for her first novel "The God of Small Things". Since then, she has become a leading environmental activist and opponent of big dams, which have displaced millions.She said India's environment faced a major crisis, caused by industrial pollution, by big dams, and in particular by unsustainable use of ground water to irrigate thirsty cash crops such as soyabeans, peanuts and sugarcane. "When the only logic is the market, when there is no respect for ecosystems, for the amount of water available... then we are in for a lot of trouble," she said. "You have to have a system where people have access to some amount of water to grow whatever is sustainable for them to survive." Falling water tables in states such as Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra have forced millions of farmers to the brink of ruin. Buried under unpayable loans, thousands have committed suicide. Roy said the poor were being sold a dream of consumerism which was impossible to deliver economically or environmentally. "The idea of turning one billion people into consumers is terrifying," she said. "Are you going to starve to death dreaming of a mobile phone or you going to have control of the resources that are available to you and have been for generations, but have been taken away so that someone else can have a mobile phone?" CLIP

Saving Species, Saving Ourselves (June 14)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061405X.shtml
Kelpie Wilson interviews Brock Evans. Brock Evans is the executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition, an alliance of more than 400 groups that stand behind the Endangered Species Act. Evans is a veteran of many environmental battles - from inside the DC beltway to the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest. He has also just fought and won perhaps his greatest battle ever, a fight with cancer. (...) The purpose of the ESA has always been to SAVE species from EXTINCTION first. An imperiled plant or animal can't even get on the List until it is almost extinct! Recovery from that near-death point takes a long time, as it does for humans too. Over 3,000 scientists have reviewed the status of nearly every endangered species and have concluded that, for the overwhelming number of them, recovery could not possibly be achieved for at least, on average, 30-50 years. (...) So for me, saving species in trouble is a profoundly moral matter: we must NOT let extinction happen to any of the wondrous life forms that share this nation and this planet with us. That's what the Endangered Species Act says too, very powerfully. (...) Most importantly, we demonstrated that loving the earth and trying to save its wild places and species is not just the cause of one special group. All Americans love this beautiful land, and it is the duty of all of us to try to protect it as best we can. Q: So many people have worked so hard to save these beautiful creatures: salmon, woodpeckers, giant trees and tiny wildflowers. What is the one action that people can take today to save the Endangered Species Act and make it more effective? A: If I had to name one specific action to take NOW, I would say: write your Congressperson and write both of your Senators too! Tell them that you do not want them to vote to weaken IN ANY WAY the Endangered Species Act. Communicate with them now, and regularly! If you know them, speak to them! I say all this because those politicians who would like to see the ESA weakened believe that somehow the last elections provided some sort of "Mandate" to weaken all of the environmental laws and rules - and especially the ESA. Tell them it ain't so and that you won't stand for it!!




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Note from Jean: I first received this email on June 8:

From: Theresa Miyashiro teelavoie@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: The invisible children

Hello jean, my name is Rabbitt Miyashiro. I'm writing to you now because I've just watched one of the most moving documentaries. I don't know if you've heard of the invisible children of Uganda, but it's very important to get the word out about them. please check out this website & do what you can to help spread the word. I too will do my part to help these amazing beings to be free of fear soon. Feel free to e-mail me back if you want to at rabbittskarma@hotmail.com>
http://www.invisiblechildren.com

LOVE & LIGHT

Rabbitt

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... So I checked http://www.invisiblechildren.com - very well designed flash website - just read the “History” part (scroll the flash picture to your left until you see it appear and click on it) to understand the background of this very sad story. And then I googled “Invisible Children of Uganda” and amongst the many related articles and websites picked this one below


From: http://www.saddleback.edu/AP/LR/invisible.htm

A FAR CRY
Young, idealistic filmmakers want to bring plight of `Invisible Children' of Uganda to world's attention
San Diego Union-Tribune, The (CA)
January 31, 2005
Author: Mark Sauer; STAFF WRITER

Jacob, an African boy, looks into the camera and lets go with great, chest-heaving sobs. He cries until both he and the viewer hurt. Then he cries some more.

Surely at some point the camera will look away. But it never does.

When night falls, Jacob runs and hides with thousands of other youngsters in basements and back alleys of towns in Northern Uganda. They flee a rebel army composed largely of children like them who were beaten and brainwashed into fighting in a pointless, 18-year civil war the world has largely ignored.

Jacob cries for his brother who was slaughtered by the rebels. The boy expresses his grief in plain English. He hopes, Jacob says, to rejoin his brother someday in heaven.

It is one of many gripping scenes from "Invisible Children," a documentary whose plaintive appeal is surprising effective.

The core truth of this deceptively crude film, its harsh beauty, flows from the blissful innocence, unyielding idealism and self-acknowledged naivete of its makers.

They are three white kids who grew up safe and comfortable in San Diego's suburbs. They firmly believe their documentary, still a work in progress, could be powerful enough to change the world.

"The children of Northern Uganda are being killed and brutalized, and the fascinating thing to us is that no one is telling this story," said Jason Russell, the guiding force behind "Invisible Children."

"This tragedy gets no international attention at all. We are going to change that."

Between now and March, Russell and fellow filmmakers Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole are out to raise awareness and money at screenings locally and across the country to support a return trip to Uganda.

They've formed a nonprofit organization, set up a Web site (www.invisiblechildren.com) and hope to raise $700,000 and take 20 young filmmakers back with them to expand their movie, which they plan to be ready for release in theaters by 2006.

Jason Russell, 26, graduated from El Cajon's Valhalla High and the film school at the University of Southern California. Russell, whose parents Sheryl and Paul Russell founded the Christian Youth Theater, said he was transformed during a church-group trip to Kenya in 2000.

"My American bubble popped," he explained. "I suddenly realized we are the privileged percentage of the world. And I knew I had to go back to Africa, because there are so many important, untold stories there."

When he got out of film school in 2002, Russell said, he asked every one of his friends to accompany him to Africa, to capture on film the suffering there and expose it to the world.

Two of them bit: Bailey, 22, a Poway High grad and fellow film student at USC; and Poole, 21, who went to Helix High and now attends UCSD.

They bought a camera on eBay, did some research, got their shots and headed for Africa in March 2003, on the day the United States invaded Iraq. They had no sponsorship, few contacts and no plan other than to find a story and film it.

Using savings, money scraped up from a few friends and their parents' credit cards, they wandered from Sudan to Kenya at first. They got sick (scabies and malaria) and became exhausted in 130-degree heat. Russell admits they had no idea what they were doing.

"For the boys, it was like, `OK, we're here, we want to start filming -- where are the guns and fighting?' " said Sheryl Russell, Jason's mom. "We were getting worried. "Then one day, Jason called and said, `Can we stay two more weeks? We've found our story.'"

The trio had made their way to Uganda ("I didn't even know Uganda existed," said Bobby Bailey), and stumbled upon the terrified children of the north.

Beginning in 1986, children as young as 5, many of them orphaned by the AIDS epidemic, had been abducted by the rebel group Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), according to the United Nations.

These children have been turned into fighters, porters and sex slaves, the UN says. Those who resisted were brutalized (stories of ears or noses sliced off are not uncommon), or killed.

Russell and his mates discovered them rushing at night toward urban hiding places. They followed, befriended them and began recording their stories.

They later interviewed government officials, learned about the mysterious origins of the war and the rebel groups fighting it and became determined to expose the tragedy to the world.

The result is "Invisible Children," and the early version of the film appears to be having the desired effect.

"You cannot watch this film and not have your heart broken," said Rheanna Davis, a recent high-school graduate who saw "Invisible Children" at a UCSD screening. "We're ignorant in this country about what's happening in Africa."

Russell, Bailey and Poole have traveled to Washington, D.C., and several states, making phone calls, knocking on doors and showing "Invisible Children" to anyone willing to see it.

In December, they screened their film for congressional staffers on Capitol Hill and for an assistant of Jimmy Kolker, the U.S. ambassador to Uganda.

The trio has also screened the film for staff at USAID, the government agency providing US economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide, and for students and civic groups in Canada; New York; Washington, D.C.; Texas; Connecticut; Minnesota; Florida; and California.

In San Diego, high school students who've seen the film have ponied up thousands for the cause.

One North County teenager, Emily Manassero, was so moved she took $3,000 from the sale of her horse, which she was going to use to buy a used car, and donated it to their nonprofit organization, Russell said.

Another student, Emily Sernaker of Patrick Henry High in San Carlos, raised $1,100 selling T-shirts, African crafts and baked goods at school and at a screening of the movie at her nearby church.

"It's (average) people who do the caring," Russell said. "Politicians and the media see unending war, famine and inhumanity in Africa and become jaded and numb to it."

Russell's ultimate goal is "to raise enough money to build a refuge for the children of Northern Uganda so they may grow up in peace."

He and his partners envision an oasis sprouting from the blood-stained earth, a place with homes and schools, a clinic, vegetable gardens, shops and small businesses.

The estimated cost for this utopian enterprise: $20 million. That's a lot of bake sales, the filmmakers acknowledge. "How do you raise 20 million dollars?" Russell said. "You start by raising $20."

Not surprisingly, the filmmakers are desperately prospecting for new revenue lodes, including corporate sponsorships. At their screenings, they offer African folk art, copies of their DVD and T-shirts in exchange for donations. And they urge viewers to consider sponsoring "Invisible Children" parties in their homes, where the film will be shown and donations solicited.

One of the more promising ideas, Russell said, is for donors to "adopt" an orphan from Northern Uganda.

In a high-tech version of Foster Parents Plan, the venerable aid program to children worldwide, the filmmakers plan to offer a short DVD introducing individual Ugandan children to Americans interested in sponsoring them.

The vignettes will be made by the 20 young filmmakers they're taking along with them on the March trip, Russell said.

"Our idea with this grass-roots campaign is to supersede governments," Poole said. "We want to go around bureaucrats and corruption and get help directly to those who need it."

One of the most frustrating things about the Ugandan civil war is trying to get at the root cause of the violence to find ways to end it.

Scarce reports about the war appearing recently in international publications say that its origins are as vague as the rebels' reasons for continuing the fight.

"The more we tried to understand this war, the more complicated it became," Poole, Bailey and Russell note in their film.

But the three agreed that one thing is certain: "We cannot wait," Russell said, "to get back to Uganda."

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AND THEN TO READ A MORE RECENT ARTICLE AND PICKED THIS ONE...

From: http://www.three-sixty-one-degrees.com/international/050501uganda.htm

"Invisible Children" Exposes Child Soldiers in Uganda

By Laura Beranek

April, 28 2005

In Northern Uganda, children are forced to kill.

At an age when children shouldn't have a care in the world, children are going to sleep at night fearing their life. One orphan at the Nyaka School in East Africa bravely recounts the traumatic fear that wells up because of the rebel forces in Uganda.

The dead bodies were still bleeding. They had cut off their lips, ears and mouth. One rebel picked something that looked like meat on his army knife and told my dad if he does not join them, all of us would be chopped to death in front of our mother and him. Dad agreed he would join (the rebels). They raped my sister in front of us and took our dad.

From the ages of five to twelve, children in Uganda are most likely to be abducted and seized by rebel forces to serve as child soldiers. At this young age, children are big enough to carry a gun—and are small enough to sneak into homes and steal other children for the rebels to mold into ruthless soldiers.  

“They are forced to join the army and are threatened. They are forced to kill so their hands are dirty and are later told if they ever ran away, they would be prosecuted and killed anyway,” said Twesigye Kaguri, manager of the Nyaka School, an orphanage in Uganda, in an e-mail interview. “So they (the children) end up staying with rebels in fear and despair,”

For a child to continually live in fear of being enslaved against his or her will is a grotesque crime against humanity that the world cannot ignore. This harsh reality was captured on film by three college graduates who took on the dangerous task of educating the world about the child soldiers in Uganda. These graduates brought this humanitarian crisis to the attention of the international community by creating a documentary called, “Invisible Children.”

“Invisible Children” documents the nineteen year political conflict between the rebel group, "the Lord's Resistance Army" (LRA) and the Government of Uganda (GOU). In 1987, Joseph Kony formed the LRA in an attempt to overthrow the government of Uganda in the hopes of protecting the people of the North against the government in the South.

While the humanitarian crisis of Uganda has hardly registered in the global press, the filmmakers of “Invisible Children” are determined to get the world to pay attention to these plaguing issues. Through screening parties on college campuses, college students have become aware of the conflict in Uganda. Atticus Westerfeld, of the Indiana University Union Board, has recently brought “Invisible Children” to campus for students to watch. He says, “We, as college students, need to understand what's going on in the world. These issues go unlooked in the mass media—we don't see these events happening on CNN or MSNBC.”  

After seeing “Invisible Children,” many college students all over the nation have shown the DVD at screening parties and have tracked it on the Invisible Children website www.invisiblechildren.com . Students have also started fundraisers to collect money for the cause.

Jeff Weathers and his band, who are students at Baylor University, played in a fundraiser event to benefit “Invisible Children.” Weathers says, “ It's good to support raising money to finish the film—we have all around general support to encourage these guys to go back and make a second trip over there.” “Invisible Children” has started a trend that is spreading through college campuses like wildfire. “It's this generation that is waking up to this stuff,” says Weathers.

“Initially this army was seen as a good thing because they were supporting the local northern population. But, over time the LRA became corrupt. They moved from a unified goal of protesting for greater things to oppressing,” said Matthew Carotenuto, PhD student of African history at Indiana University.

The GOU and the LRA have been fighting for a long time and have both committed crimes against humanity. Carotenuto says, “The government is guilty as well— atrocities were committed on both sides. This isn't a one sided thing.” But, one of the biggest crimes is that Kony began to support the LRA in a dreadful way—by the use of a child army. He creates his army with the violent abduction of children, which are then used as soldiers, sex slaves and laborers.

Because of these abductions, families are forced to move to displacement camps. This means, in a primarily agricultural society, people are unable to farm. Illness and hunger become rampant; health services are not present and international food assistance is insufficient. The problem is so extensive that a United Nations report concluded that 1.3 million people have been forced from their homes because of fear of the LRA.   

Making matters worse is that the LRA attacks displacement camps in order to abduct children—basically providing no safe outlet for children to sleep at night. An estimated 50,000 children are then forced to walk to the next town to seek safety. They must sleep away from their homes at night because if they don't, the rebels will abduct them in their sleep. These children are called “night commuters.” Unfortunately, the vast distance takes a toll on many children. Those who are trying to escape and seek refuge from these abductions are more prone to illness, hunger and exploitation, according to World Vision.  

World Vision concludes that over 20,000 children have been abducted by the LRA. UNICEF's Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland says on the World Vision website, “Northern Uganda must be one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.”

Right now, the filmmakers are in Uganda shooting more film to strengthen the documentary. The end goal of the filmmakers is not only awareness but to build a safe community in Uganda called “The House of Hope.” In hopes to partner with World Vision, they want to create a place in which war-torn Ugandan children can receive adequate health care, education and a peaceful night's sleep.

American College students are trying to help the Ugandan children get that peaceful night's sleep by spreading the word about the atrocity committed in that country. As the documentary plays at various campuses, the problem can be taken to the next level of influence—to the government.

“We need to let our government know that we are aware of the crisis in Uganda. We need to write our senators and congressman to let them know that we care how America responds to it,” said Weathers.

And just because students in America cannot relate to this crisis, it doesn't mean they can ignore it. American students can sleep at night without the fear of being abducted, raped or used in a child army. Children in Uganda didn't do anything to deserve this pain except were born in Africa—they are no different than any child in America.

“Tell your friends, educate each other and learn how to care and appreciate life. Because what students in America take for granted is a matter of life and death in many parts of the world,” said Kaguri.

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You may also go watch a “Multimedia Presentation” at http://www.three-sixty-one-degrees.com/international/050501uganda.htm and find out more through http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=invisible+children+of+Uganda&meta= and if you decided to donate something to support these 3 brave film-makers, go at their site at http://www.invisiblechildren.com




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From: http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_21641.shtml

More than a million children work in mines, "digging for survival."

By: UN International Labour Organization

Jun 9, 2005

To mark World Day against Child Labour on Sunday, the United Nations labour agency is spotlighting the problems of over a million children around the world who help to support their families by working as miners, often for small unregulated enterprises in dangerous conditions.

"Because the money they earn is crucial to ensuring that they and their families survive, many are unable to attend school at all. These children are digging for survival," the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) says.

"Underground, they endure stifling heat and darkness, set explosives for underground blasts, and crawl or swim through dangerous, unstable tunnels. Above ground, they dive into rivers in search of minerals, or may dig sand, rock and dirt and spend hours pounding rocks into gravel using heavy, oversized tools made for adults," it adds.

ILO says its International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) is working to ensure that no child has to toil in a quarry or mine.

"Pilot projects undertaken by ILO/IPEC in Mongolia, Tanzania, Niger and the Andean countries of South America have shown that the best way to assist child miners is to work with the children's own communities," ILO adds.

ILO says it has helped mining and quarrying communities to organize cooperatives and improve productivity by acquiring the machinery that reduces or eliminates the need for children to risk their lives. Such communities have also obtained legal protections and developed health clinics, schools and sanitation systems.

Over a four-year period, the remote gold mining community of Santa Filomena, Peru, went from employing to 200,000 child miners to declaring itself "child labour-free," it says, adding that ILO helped the community develop new income-generating projects for adults.

Meanwhile, however, more children are entering the mining and quarrying sector all over the world every day. While community projects can help child miners in direct and practical ways, only worldwide awareness of the problem can mobilize the international effort needed to end the practice for good, it says.

In the Philippines, nearly 18,000 children between 5 and 17 years old work in mines and quarries. In Nepal, about 32,000 children work in stone quarries, it says.

"In Niger alone, a staggering 250,000 children are employed in both small-scale mines and quarries, accounting for roughly half the total number of persons doing such work in the entire country," ILO says.




3.

ONE MORE COMPELLING SMOKING GUN AND THE ENTIRE MEDIA AROUND THE WORLD STILL REMAIN UTTERLY SILENT ON THIS... PERHAPS EVERYONE ON THIS LIST SHOULD PRINT A COPY OF THIS BELOW AND MAIL IT OUT TO YOUR LOCAL NEWSPAPERS AND OTHER MEDIA AND RECOMMEND THEM TO TRY USING GOOGLE TO SEARCH THE WEB FOR THE DOZENS OF EXTENSIVE WEBSITES DOCUMENTING THIS IN-YOUR-FACE BLATANT CRIMINAL PLOY BY THE BUSH MAFIA TO PLUNGE THE WORLD INTO A FAKE AND YET VERY LUCRATIVE (FOR THEMSELVES, THINK CARLYLE GROUP AND ALL THE CORPORATE WEAPON-MAKER AND OTHER ASSORTED CORPORATE RASCALS LIKE HALLIBURTON) - BUT IMMENSELY DEADLY - PHONY WAR AGAINST MAKE-BELIEVE TERRORISTS...

Forwarded by "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@vitelcom.net>

From: http://www.arcticbeacon.citymaker.com/articles/article/1518131/27302.htm

Former Bush Team Member Says WTC Collapse Likely A Controlled Demolition And 'Inside Job'

Highly recognized former chief economist in Labor Department now doubts official 9/11 story, claiming suspicious facts and evidence cover-up indicate government foul play and possible criminal implications.

June 12, 2005

By Greg Szymanski

A former chief economist in the Labor Department during President Bush's first term now believes the official story about the collapse of the WTC is 'bogus,' saying it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7.

"If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling," said Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D, a former member of the Bush team who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX.

Reynolds, now a professor emeritus at Texas A&M University, also believes it's 'next to impossible' that 19 Arab Terrorists alone outfoxed the mighty U.S. military, adding the scientific conclusions about the WTC collapse may hold the key to the entire mysterious plot behind 9/11.

"It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause(s) of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7," said Reynolds this week from his offices at Texas A&M. "If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings.

"More importantly, momentous political and social consequences would follow if impartial observers concluded that professionals imploded the WTC. Meanwhile, the job of scientists, engineers and impartial researchers everywhere is to get the scientific and engineering analysis of 9/11 right."

However, Reynolds said "getting it right in today's security state' remains challenging because he claims explosives and structural experts have been intimidated in their analyses of the collapses of 9/11.

From the beginning, the Bush administration claimed that burning jet fuel caused the collapse of the towers. Although many independent investigators have disagreed, they have been hard pressed to disprove the government theory since most of the evidence was removed by FEMA prior to independent investigation.

Critics claim the Bush administration has tried to cover-up the evidence and the recent 9/11 Commission has failed to address the major evidence contradicting the official version of 9/11.

Some facts demonstrating the flaws in the government jet fuel theory include:

-- Photos showing people walking around in the hole in the North Tower where 10,000 gallons of jet fuel supposedly was burning..

-- When the South Tower was hit, most of the North Tower's flames had already vanished, burning for only 16 minutes, making it relatively easy to contain and control without a total collapse.

-- The fire did not grow over time, probably because it quickly ran out of fuel and was suffocating, indicating without added explosive devices the fires could have been easily controlled.

-- FDNY fire fighters still remain under a tight government gag order to not discuss the explosions they heard, felt and saw. FAA personnel are also under a similar 9/11 gag order.

-- Even the flawed 9/11 Commission Report acknowledges that "none of the [fire] chiefs present believed that a total collapse of either tower was possible."


-- Fire had never before caused steel-frame buildings to collapse except for the three buildings on 9/11, nor has fire collapsed any steel high rise since 9/11.

-- The fires, especially in the South Tower and WTC-7, were relatively small.

-- WTC-7 was unharmed by an airplane and had only minor fires on the seventh and twelfth floors of this 47-story steel building yet it collapsed in less than 10 seconds.

-- WTC-5 and WTC-6 had raging fires but did not collapse despite much thinner steel beams.

-- In a PBS documentary, Larry Silverstein, the WTC leaseholder, told the fire department commander on 9/11 about WTC-7 that. "may be the smartest thing to do is pull it," slang for demolish it.

-- It's difficult if not impossible for hydrocarbon fires like those fed by jet fuel (kerosene) to raise the temperature of steel close to melting.

Despite the numerous holes in the government story, the Bush administration has brushed aside or basically ignored any and all critics. Mainstream experts, speaking for the administration, offer a theory essentially arguing that an airplane impact weakened each structure and an intense fire thermally weakened structural components, causing buckling failures while allowing the upper floors to pancake onto the floors below.

One who supports the official account is Thomas Eager, professor of materials engineering and engineering systems at MIT. He argues that the collapse occurred by the extreme heat from the fires, causing the loss of loading-bearing capacity on the structural frame.

Eagar points out the steel in the towers could have collapsed only if heated to the point where it "lost 80 percent of its strength," or around 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit. Critics claim his theory is flawed since the fires did not appear to be intense and widespread enough to reach such high temperatures.

Other experts supporting the official story claim the impact of the airplanes, not the heat, weakened the entire structural system of the towers, but critics contend the beams on floors 94-98 did not appear severely weakened, much less the entire structural system.

Further complicating the matter, hard evidence to fully substantiate either theory since evidence is lacking due to FEMA's quick removal of the structural steel before it could be analyzed. Even though the criminal code requires that crime scene evidence be kept for forensic analysis, FEMA had it destroyed or shipped overseas before a serious investigation could take place.

And even more doubt is cast over why FEMA acted so swiftly since coincidentally officials had arrived the day before the 9/11 attacks at New York's Pier 29 to conduct a war game exercise, named "Tripod II."

Besides FEMA's quick removal of the debris, authorities considered the steel quite valuable as New York City officials had every debris truck tracked on GPS and even fired one truck driver who took an unauthorized lunch break.

In a detailed analysis just released supporting the controlled demolition theory, Reynolds presents a compelling case.


"First, no steel-framed skyscraper, even engulfed in flames hour after hour, had ever collapsed before. Suddenly, three stunning collapses occur within a few city blocks on the same day, two allegedly hit by aircraft, the third not," said Reynolds. "These extraordinary collapses after short-duration minor fires made it all the more important to preserve the evidence, mostly steel girders, to study what had happened.

"On fire intensity, consider this benchmark: A 1991 FEMA report on Philadelphia's Meridian Plaza fire said that the fire was so energetic that 'beams and girders sagged and twisted, but despite this extraordinary exposure, the columns continued to support their loads without obvious damage.' Such an intense fire with consequent sagging and twisting steel beams bears no resemblance to what we observed at the WTC."


After considering both sides of the 9/11 debate and after thoroughly sifting through all the available material, Reynolds concludes the government story regarding all four plane crashes on 9/11 remains highly suspect.

"In fact, the government has failed to produce significant wreckage from any of the four alleged airliners that fateful day. The familiar photo of the Flight 93 crash site in Pennsylvania shows no fuselage, engine or anything recognizable as a plane, just a smoking hole in the ground," said Reynolds. "Photographers reportedly were not allowed near the hole. Neither the FBI nor the National Transportation Safety Board have investigated or produced any report on the alleged airliner crashes."

For more informative articles, go to http://www.arcticbeacon.com/

Greg Szymanski patriott2424@aol.com>

---

See also:

TV show depicts 9/11 as Bush plot
http://washingtontimes.com/world/20050608-095942-4588r.htm
A fictional crime drama based on the premise that the Bush administration ordered the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington aired this week on German state television, prompting the Green Party chairman to call for an investigation. (...) The U.S. Embassy in Berlin was not impressed with the latest episode, which seemed to use haunting Arabic music to portray Arabs and Muslims as innocent victims of American aggression. "Any claim or suggestion that the United States government was behind the 9/11 disaster is absolutely absurd and not worthy of further comment," said Robert A. Wood, spokesman for the embassy. A German diplomat in Washington said no one in Germany took the plot seriously because it was "pure fiction." "It was so out of line with what people really think," the diplomat said, adding that the episode does not deserve further comment. [Hmmmm...!]




4.

From: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/060905E.shtml

Bush Lied about War? Nope, No News There!

By Eric Boehlert

09 June 2005

Why did it take more than a month for the US press to report on the serious revelations in the Downing Street memo?

Halfway through Sunday's "Meet the Press," host Tim Russert, interviewing Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, asked about a secret, top-level British government memorandum. Consisting of minutes from a July 23, 2002, meeting attended by Prime Minister Tony Blair and his closest advisors, the memo revealed their impression that the Bush administration, eight months before the start of the Iraq war in 2003, had already decided to invade and that Washington seemed more concerned with justifying a war than preventing one.

The memo was leaked this year to the Times of London, which printed it on May 1. The story, coming on the eve of Blair's reelection, generated extensive press coverage in Britain. In setting up his question to Mehlman on Sunday, Russert said, "Let me turn to the now famous Downing Street memo" (emphasis added).

Famous? It would be famous in America if the D.C. press corps functioned the way it's supposed to. Russert's June 5 reference, five weeks after the story broke, represented the first time NBC News had even mentioned the document or the controversy surrounding it. In fact, Russert's query was the first time any of the network news divisions addressed the issue seriously. In an age of instant communications, the American mainstream media has taken an exceedingly long time -- as if news of the memo had traveled by vessel across the Atlantic Ocean -- to report on the leaked document. Nor has it considered its grave implications -- namely, that President Bush lied to the American people and Congress during the run-up to the war with Iraq when he insisted over and over again that war was his administration's last option.

And yet, as Russert's weeks-late inquiry illustrates, the Downing Street memo story has also refused to simply fade away. Championed by progressive activists, media advocates, nearly 100 Democratic members of Congress, liberal radio hosts and bloggers, ombudsmen, a handful of columnists and an army of newspaper readers -- who have flooded editors with letters demanding that the story be reported -- the British memo continues to enjoy a peculiar afterlife. A small band of protesters, led by a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, even held a sidewalk vigil outside a Tampa, Fla., television station over the weekend, demanding that it "Air the truth!" about the memo.

At Tuesday's joint White House press briefing, Bush and Blair were finally asked about the memo in public, an event that the press dutifully chronicled. But the two leaders, not accepting follow-up questions, simply denied the accuracy of the memo's contents, while circumventing the central question of why Blair's most senior intelligence officer believed the White House had already decided on war in the summer of 2002. (Bush finished his response to the memo question with his well-worn catchphrase, "The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.")

The fact that it took five weeks for more than a handful of Washington reporters to focus on the memo highlights a striking disconnect between some news consumers and mainstream news producers. The memo story epitomizes a mainstream press corps that is genuinely afraid to ask tough questions and write tough stories about the Bush administration. Worse, in the case of the Downing Street memo, it simply refuses to report on the existence of a plainly newsworthy document.

"This is where all the work conservatives and the administration have done in terms of bullying the press, making it less willing to write confrontational pieces -- this is where it's paid off," says David Brock, CEO of Media Matters for America, a liberal media advocacy group. "It's a glaring example of omission."

"I think it exacerbates the sense among some [of our] listeners that NPR is not taking on the Bush administration," notes Jeffrey Dvorkin, ombudsman for National Public Radio, who continues to receive listener complaints about the missing memo story. As of Tuesday, NPR had aired just two references to the Downing Street memo, and both occurred in passing conversation, without giving listeners the full context or the details of the memo. Asked about the network's slim coverage, Dvorkin says, "I was surprised. It's a bigger story than we've given it. It deserves more attention."

Slowly, the Downing Street memo is getting that attention. "Stories are starting to trickle in now only because so many ordinary people are raising hell about it," says David Swanson, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, which launched on May 26. This week, thanks to constant exposure on the Air America radio network, the site is receiving 1.7 million hits a day, according to Swanson. "My colleagues are doing more radio shows than we can fit in during a day."

CLIP - Read the rest at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/060905E.shtml

---

See also:

Downing Street Memo' Gets Fresh Attention (08 June 2005)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20050608/pl_usatoday/downingstreetmemogetsfreshattention
A simmering controversy over whether American media have ignored a secret British memo about how President Bush built his case for war with Iraq bubbled over into the White House on Tuesday. At a late afternoon news conference, Reuters correspondent Steve Holland asked Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair about a memo that's been widely written about and discussed in Europe but less so in the USA. It was the most attention paid by the media in the USA so far to the "Downing Street memo," first reported on May 1 by The Sunday Times of London. The memo is said by some of the president's sharpest critics, such as Democratic Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, to be strong evidence that Bush decided to go to war and then looked for evidence to support his decision. The Sunday Times said the memo is the minutes of a meeting that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had with some of his top intelligence and foreign policy aides on July 23, 2002, at 10 Downing Street, the prime minister's official residence. The story said the memo indicates that Blair was told by the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service that in 2002, the Bush administration was selectively choosing evidence that supported its case for going to war and ignoring anything to the contrary. The war began in March 2003. "Intelligence and facts were being fixed" by the Bush administration "around" a policy that saw military action "as inevitable," the newspaper quoted from the memo. CLIP

FULL TEXT OF BRITISH BRIEFING PAPERS REVEALED: More Evidence Intel Was Fixed http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=1078
(...) The full British Briefing Papers have been attached below. When reading them, keep in mind that these Papers were written approximately a full year before the invasion of Iraq. The Papers present a shockingly accurate forecast of what has transpired in the years since, and suggest the Bush administration chose to ignore the advice of our key ally when it came to dealing with Iraq.

Memogate Hearings Scheduled for June 16
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061005X.shtml

SHOULD THERE BE AN INVESTIGATION OF THE DOWNING STREET MEMO?
http://www.usalone.com/warlies.htm
Go vote to answer this question...

The Lie of the Century
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/lieofthecentury.html
There is nothing new in a government lying to their people to start a war. Indeed because most people prefer living in peace to bloody and horrific death in war, any government that desires to initiate a war usually lies to their people to create the illusion that support for the war is the only possible choice they can make. (...) It is inescapable historical reality that leaders of nations will lie to their people to trick them into wars they otherwise would have refused. It is not "conspiracy theory" to suggest that leaders of nations lie to trick their people into wars. It is undeniable fact. This brings us to the present case. Did the government of the United States lie to the American people, more to the point, did President Bush and his Neocon associates lie to Congress, to initiate a war of conquest in Iraq? This question has been given currency by a memo leaked from inside the British Government which clearly indicates a decision to go to war followed by the "fixing" of information around that policy. This is, as they say, a smoking gun. (...) Right now, we have the criminals at hand. and, while other leaders in history have lied to start wars, for the first time in history, the lie stands exposed while the war started with the lies still rages on, to the death and detriment of our young men and women in uniform. We cannot in good moral conscience ignore this lie, this crime, lest we encourage future leaders to continue to lie to use to send our kids off to pointless wars. Lying to start a war is more than an impeachable offence; it the highest possible crime a government can commit against their own people. Lying to start a war is not only missapropriation of the nation's military and the nation's money under false pretenses, but it is outright murder committed on a massive scale. Lying to start a war is a betrayal of the trust each and every person who serves in the military places in their civilian leadership. By lying to start a war, the Bsuh administration has told the military fatalities and their families that they have no right to know why they were sent to their deaths. It's none of their business. Our nation is founded on the principle of rule with the consent of the governed. Because We The People do not consent to be lied to, a government that lies rules without the consent of the governed, and ruling without the consent of the governed is slavery. (...) The Bush administration and their friends in the media want this story to go away. More than want it to go away, they are in a panic, and will do everything they can to stop it. They will use every dirty trick, every paid shill, every presstitute that they can. (...) A government that lies to the people cannot be the legal government of this land. Make sure that they understand that YOU understand that the Constitution does not allow the government to lie to the people. Calling themselves the government does not make it so if they act unconstitutionally and illegally. The Constitution is the original "Contract with America" and a government that lies stands in clear breach of that contract.




5.

THIS IS JUST SO OUTRAGEOUSLY DISGUSTING! CORPORATE ORWELLIANISM TO THE TILT! ONE MORE PROOF THAT THE REAL CUCKOOS NEST IS SMACK IN THE WHITE HOUSE! COULD YOU IMAGINE LOSING CUSTODY OF YOUR CHILD BECAUSE YOU REFUSE TO LET GOVERNMENT/CORPORATE PHARMA-GOONS MEDICATE YOUR CHILD NON-STOP WITH LETHAL DRUGS? NON CONTENT WITH SOON DRAFTING TEENAGERS TO SEND THEM INTO THE IRAQI MEAT-GRINDER, THEY ARE ALSO ABOUT TO CHEMICALLY LOBOTOMIZE THEM FOR BIG PROFITS FOR THE BUSH'S FAT CAT CRONIES...

Forwarded by "Rebeca Davis" rdavis21@satx.rr.com> on June 13

From: http://www.sierratimes.com/05/05/16/24_209_102_203_25370.htm

Mental Health Screening in Schools Signals the End of Parental Rights

In the 2005-2006 school year, all parents will receive written notice of new policies from your children's schools. Many schools will ask you to sign permission slips, allowing school counselors or "advocates" to have conversations with your children. You will be told how your local schools are now involved in vision and dental screenings, learning disabilities and speech impediment screenings, and other acts of kindness, but watch for the small print or the extra little blurb, which states that your children will also be evaluated for emotional wellness. Watch for wording like "happiness indicators" or "family participation."

The fact is that our president has mandated that every American child, age 3 through 18, is federally ordered to be evaluated for mental health issues and to receive "enforced" treatment. Welcome to President Bush's New Freedom Initiative and New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. Welcome to life-long profiling and drug addictions, New Freedom-style.

52 million students and six million adults working in schools, according to this commission, will be tested and should flush out at least 6 million people, or shall we say new customers, who will then be mandated to receive "treatment." What treatment does our president's commission have in mind? The newest drugs in the pharmaceutical pipelines, of course. The commission recommends "specific medications for specific conditions."

One of the state-of-the-art treatments, and most expensive, is an implanted capsule - yes, that's right, implanted. The capsule delivers medication into a child's body without the child having to swallow a pill or the need for parental permission for dispensation.

The New Freedom Commission named the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) a model treatment plan. Medical algorithms are a flowchart-style treatment indicator. If you have A symptom and B symptom, take C medication. TMAP began with the University of Texas, big pharma, and the mental health and corrections system in Texas. The American Psychiatric Association concurs that TMAP is brilliant.

However, the New Freedom Initiative and Commission is a political-big pharma marriage. Many companies who supported TMAP were also major contributors to Bush's re-election funds. For example, Eli Lilly manufactures olanzapine - one of the drugs recommended in the New Freedom plan, and furthermore, George Herbert Walker Bush was once a member of Lilly's board of directors. Our current President Bush appointed Lilly's chief executive officer, Sidney Taurel, as a member of the Homeland Security Council. Eighty-two percent of Lilly's .6 million in political contributions in 2000 went to Bush and the Republican Party. Do tell.

Texas Algorithm grossed over 4 billion dollars in 2003 and olanzapine is Eli Lilly's top selling drug. A 2003 New York Times article by Gardiner Harris claims that 70 percent of olanzapine sales are paid for by government agencies, such as Medicare and Medicaid. And lo and behold, guess who is now able to bill Medicaid for health services? Public schools, of course, as they are now under the big pharma-political profits/pay-back umbrella once they adopt screening policies. Public schools can now be paid to screen and drug your kids.

Now, if you ever wonder, ever again, if public-private partnerships care about people, then you need a brain transplant. Your children are now the legislated guinea pigs and lab rats for the pharmaceutical companies who bought and paid for our president's campaign. Favors are now returned to those companies in the form of enforced, juvenile customers, their health, and their future drug addictions.

But wait, there is more. The New Freedom Commission also calls for enforced treatment. That means that parents have no rights to refuse the treatment recommenced by TMAP and other drug dispensing corporate-bureaucratic apparatuses. And as the mental health bureaucracy is also involved in this financial game of insidious cruelty, parents and families are also to be investigated via the result of their children's screenings in schools. In other words, schools are now the across-the board, or shall I say nation, diagnostic tool for big pharma and child control.

And there's more. The U.N. Agenda 21 has also called for total intrusion into schools and children lives. No more religion, no more individuality, no more real education, no more real grades, no more real teaching, no more teacher respect for parents, and no more truth from teachers or principals. This sounds very familiar and very political to me. And I've said it before, and I will say it again: if you are of a religious ilk and you refuse to allow your children to be abused by our "educational" system, the stage is being set for you to lose physical custody of your children. I suggest that you read this: Rethinking Orphanages for the 21st Century by Richard McKenzie, ed

Still got your kids in public schools? Shame on you, and may God bless your poor children and forgive you.

---

See also:

Possible military draft should make us worry (June 10, 2005)
http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/view/letters/1693005.shtml
We all know that politicians lie. It seems to be their stock in trade and is for the most part overlooked. Take weapons of mass destruction, for instance. President Bush and his "neocons" used this lie to massacre Iraqis and take the lives of nearly 1,500 American soldiers. What political hit did they take for this? They were appointed for four more years.That takes us to the issue of a new military draft. Based on past performance, we should be very scared that it is just over the horizon. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld all proclaim, "There is no need for it." But as Dr. Ron Paul, an eight-term Republican congressman says, "You don't listen to what they say; you watch what they do." For example, the Pentagon and the Selective Service have plans for drafting health-care professionals ages 20-44. (And for the first time in our history, this would include women.) They also have plans for a "special skills" draft, which would include linguists, computer experts or engineers. To put it in the most basic terms, a draft is slavery or worse. We outlawed forcing men and women to work the cotton fields but we force draftees to kill or be killed. What really scares me about a draft would be that the Bush administration and its neocon ideologues would then have the soldiers needed to invade and conquer Syria and Iran. They would invent more lies, and the result would be many more deaths. These deaths would assuredly include our loved ones.Visit or call Sen. Susan Collins or Sen. Olympia Snowe today. Tell them our children are not a pawns to be used in the quest for global domination. Get scared about the current state of affairs in our government. I am. Richard B. Clement Gardinerrandrclement@yahoo.com>

Army Recruiting Numbers Down for Fourth Month in a Row
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061105D.shtml

Military draft back on US agenda (June 13, 2005)
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15597042-38198,00.html
THE United States would "have to face" a painful dilemma on restoring the military draft as rising casualties saw the number of volunteers dry up, a senator warned today.Joseph Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made the prediction after new data released by the Pentagon showed the US Army failing to meet its recruitment targets for four straight months. "We're going to have to face that question," he said on NBC's Meet the Press TV show when asked if it was realistic to expect restoration of the draft."The truth of the matter is, it is going to become a subject, if, in fact, there's a 40 per cent shortfall in recruitment. It's just a reality," he said. CLIP

US death toll in Iraq now stands at 1,700 http://independent-bangladesh.com/news/jun/14/14062005ap.htm
June 13: The military announced the killing of four more US soldiers over the weekend, pushing the American death toll past 1,700 - more than double what it was a year ago. Since last June 13 - when 825 members of the US military had died in Iraq - the insurgency that took shape with the fall of Saddam Hussein has increased its toll on American forces and Iraqi soldiers and civilians alike. (...) That insurgency has also killed at least 12,000 Iraqi civilians - most of them Shiites - in the past 18 months, Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr has said. The Shiite-led government has nonetheless pressed for disarmament talks with insurgents responsible for the relentless violence that has assumed ominous sectarian overtones.A crackdown by Iraqi security forces in Baghdad and US offensives in western Iraq has only temporarily blunted the carnage in which at least 940 people have died since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his government six weeks ago. CLIP

Army Lowers Standards, Raises Perks (June 14) http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061405C.shtml
Washington - The U.S. Army probably will come up well short of the 80,000 new recruits it needs during fiscal 2005, despite adding a thousand more recruiters, boosting enlistment cash bonuses to a record $20,000, spending $200 million on upbeat television ads and beginning to lower its standards. (...) Army recruiters have failed to meet their targets for four-straight months, beginning in February, and have just four months before their fiscal year ends Sept. 30 to sign up almost half of their annual goal. Many recruiters privately question whether they can succeed. The recruiting shortfalls for the Army Reserve and National Guard - which have been called to active duty at a pace unseen since World War II and now make up more than 40 percent of American forces in Iraq - are as bad as or worse than those for the active Army. If the shortfalls continue, the government could be forced eventually to consider abandoning the nation's 32-year experiment with the all-volunteer military, which came into being as the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam and ended an unpopular draft. The shortfall in recruits also is making it harder for the Army to raise its total strength from 480,000 to 510,000 soldiers so it can man the new modular brigades that are at the heart of the plans for a lighter, more flexible force. (...) "The bottom line, in my view, is we are going to need some sort of national service, a draft, to get the people we need," the official said. "I don't see what else we can do." (...) If this trend continues into next year, or if another war erupts in some other hot spot, the country may find itself forced to return to the draft. When America stopped drafting young men in 1973, it didn't abolish the vast Selective Service machinery that scooped up 15 million young men to fight in World War II and more than 20,000 a month to fight in Vietnam. It's all still in place, and American men still are required to register with Selective Service on their 18th birthdays or soon after. Failing to do so is a felony, and those who don't register can't obtain federal student loans or, in many states, even driver's licenses. It would take an act of Congress to crank up the whole thing, starting with local draft boards, which are still manned by unpaid volunteer appointees prepared to choose who in their neighborhoods will receive the letters that begin: "Greetings! Your friends and neighbors have selected you... . " CLIP




6.

Forwarded by "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@gmail.com>

From: http://www.californiaaggie.com/article/?id=9533

June 08, 2005

PART 3 OF 3

The future after oil resources run out is uncertain

By DAN MCMENAMIN / Aggie Science Writer

Posted 06/08/2005

Editor’s Note: In this final installment in its series on the issue of peak oil, The California Aggie discusses what the future may hold for a world in which oil has become drastically more expensive and rare.

A lot can change in a decade. Ten years ago, the idea of peak oil was almost unimaginable. Life was good for Americans, who enjoyed a growing economy and gasoline at just over one dollar per gallon.

But gas prices have more than doubled since then, bringing the theory of peak oil into the mainstream. If the theory is true, production of the world’s oil supply will soon reach its limit and then steadily decline, leading to rising gas prices and weakening economies worldwide.

Gas depends on oil, which cost around $28 per barrel in June 2003, but has nearly doubled to $54 just two years later. This number is especially worrisome to Americans, who use 25 percent of the world’s daily supply of oil despite making up less than 5 percent of the global population.

People are already starting to panic. Last month, two Sacramento brothers were arrested after being caught siphoning gas from various vehicles. The reason, one of them told police, was that they simply could not afford gasoline anymore.

Stories like this prompt the question: as fuel prices continue to increase, will people fight over the dwindling supplies or will they work together to find a solution to this oncoming problem?

As of right now, unfortunately, there is no clear answer.

“I wish we would develop long-range contingency plans, but there doesn’t seem to be any on the horizon,” said Eldridge Moores, a professor emeritus of geology at UCD. “The Great Depression is the only event that really compares to what’s coming on, of course, unless we get our act together.” ***

There are currently over 200 million cars in America and upwards of 700 million worldwide.

These statistics not only count the passenger vehicles that people drive to work every day, but also the trucks that transport most of our consumer goods around the country, such as medicine and food. In fact, a recent CIA study estimated that food travels an average of 1,400 miles before it is purchased.

So if the price of oil continues to rise as it has in the past few years, it is easy to say that we can just switch to another source of energy. But the reality is that our society depends heavily on fossil fuels, and it would take years or possibly decades to change the infrastructure of our society to another form of energy.

With this in mind, there are a couple of ideas that could extend the fossil fuel age and buy some time for the inevitable change down the road.

The first possibility — a tax on gasoline — has worked in Europe to cut oil consumption. A gallon of gas in the United Kingdom costs the equivalent of over $6, with taxes making up almost 80 percent of that total.

The revenue from gas taxes in Europe has gone toward improving aspects of society like healthcare and public transportation, as well as pressuring businesses to create more fuel-efficient cars.

“I’ve been to Europe four times in the past year,” Moores said. “They see America as an oblivious consumer of world resources, and I have to tell them I don’t agree with what’s going on.”

The disparity between the two societies could be seen in a commercial made by President Bush’s supporters during the 2004 presidential campaign, which alleged that John Kerry had “wacky ideas, like taxing gasoline more so people drive less.”

Unfortunately, the commercial was off the mark since, like Bush, Kerry had a vested interest in keeping the price of oil down. One of the reasons for this is that oil companies, which contribute campaign funds to Republicans and Democrats alike, have the most to lose if people consume less of their product or try to find a substitute.

“There’s a conflict of interest there,” said Hossein Farzin, a professor of the economics of natural resources. “The lobby of fossil fuel producers in the U.S. is so strong that they would fight any change to alternatives.”

Nevertheless, many scientists, including some at UCD, are searching for other options that could help ease Americans off their reliance on fossil fuels.

Mechanical and aeronautical engineering professor Andrew Frank is working on a type of car called a plug-in hybrid, which he says uses only about 10 percent of the gas that the average car uses.

“The idea is that you plug it in overnight and can drive 60 miles on electricity and then it becomes a regular hybrid,” Frank said. “You plug it in because when you use electricity it’s less then a quarter of the cost of when you use gas.”

Car dealerships in America have seen lots of interest in hybrids like the Toyota Prius which, in some areas, has put buyers on waiting lists for months.

One problem, though, is that electricity is dependent on natural gas, which is expected to peak a couple of decades after oil does. That means that if 200 million hybrids were plugging in and using electricity, it would only cause another fossil fuel supply to decline more quickly.

Renewable energies, like wind and solar power, could help offset an oil shortage in the short term. C.P. van Dam, another UCD mechanical engineering professor, designs wind turbine blades to be lighter and more efficient.

“I’d be the first one to admit that wind energy by itself isn’t going to solve the energy problem,” van Dam said. “But it can help quite a bit to make us less dependent on fossil fuels.”

Just like it would have been hard for people in 1995 to predict the current circumstances we are in, it is difficult to predict what will happen ten or twenty years down the road.

Nevertheless, many peak oil theorists think they know what will happen when the peak arrives. UCD communication professor John Theobald, who has been studying peak oil in depth, says most of these people believe in either the idea of disruption or deindustrialization.

“Those that believe that the energy crisis will lead to deindustrialization believe there will be no substitutes [to oil] that make high industrialized life possible,” Theobald said. “And those that believe in disruption tend to see a very wrenching economic period during the transition to a post-fossil fuel world.”

Either way, Theobald says peak oil theorists’ common consensus is that “the efficient will be rewarded and the inefficient will be punished.”

He says efficiency will likely take the form of more fuel-efficient cars, more public transportation and more self-sufficient communities with a local water supply and locally grown food.

One of these forward-thinking people who are trying to provide a vision of a future without oil is Matt Savinar, who graduated from UCD in 2000. Savinar runs the website http://www.Lifeaftertheoilcrash.net, which provides a detailed explanation of the peak oil theory and its possible consequences in the future.

The site begins by saying “Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon.”

The future that Savinar’s website envisions is not a particularly optimistic one. Some of the links he provides detail the end of suburbia and the collapse of the global economic system, among other grim prospects of a time when oil will be increasingly rare.

Ultimately, the goal of peak-oil experts like Savinar is to inform people of the facts of oil that will affect our future. They stress that civilization will certainly not end, but it will “as we know it,” and we will have to adapt to the severe changes that are likely to take place once we reach the peak.

DAN MCMENAMIN can be reached at science@californiaaggie.com

---

See also:

PART 1: Peak-oil concept stresses urgency of dwindling oil supply (05/25/2005)
http://www.californiaaggie.com/article/?id=9369

PART 2: Peak Oil History 101: Causes of the situation (06/01/2005)
http://www.californiaaggie.com/article/?id=9422

Revealed: how oil giant influenced Bush (June 8)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1501646,00.html
White House sought advice from Exxon on Kyoto stance - President's George Bush's decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by the Guardian. The documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month's G8 meeting, reinforce widely-held suspicions of how close the company is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy. CLIP

Opec output concerns drive crude oil past $54 (June 14 2005)
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/b7171422-dc70-11d9-819f-00000e2511c8.html
Crude oil prices climbed back above $54 yesterday as high temperatures in the US added to fears Opec would be unable to boost output to meet growing demand.Demand for natural gas, which is used for electricity production, climbed as the very hot temperatures in the US, with record highs for June in some mid-Atlantic states, pushed electricity demand through higher use of air conditioning."People are still getting concerned [producers and refiners] are unable to keep pace with demand for [oil] products in the US," a trader at Man Financial said.These fears were fanned by Ali al-Naimi, Saudi Arabia's oil minister, who said yesterday: "What is driving the price is not supply - it's the lack of refining capacity worldwide." CLIP




7.

From: "Lotus" lilweed@esatclear.ie>
Subject: Animals and us: Forward to the revolution
Date: 9 Jun 2005

The June 4-10 edition of The New Scientist (on stands now) has an extraordinary 12 page spread, including eight separate articles under the heading "Animals and Us." The lead article, headed "Forward to the animal revolution" sets the tone for the spread. It goes through the various uses of animals, and how human society has been dependent on them. Then it asks:

"Why all the fuss? What's wrong with the way we interact with animals at the moment? Nothing, if you don't accept that animals have their own feelings and emotions, or accept it but still don't care. But if you do care, then you will realize that the moral relationship we have with animals is deeply troubled. It becomes impossible to maintain moral blindness to the way we treat them."

You'll find that lead article on line at: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18625025.700

I call the spread extraordinary as the line-up of articles is one you might expect in an animal protection magazine, not a mainstream scientific publication. Perhaps most notable is one by Professor Gary Francione headed "You Hypocrites!" and sub-headed, "By granting that animals have minds similar to ours, it looks as if we are evolving in our moral relationships with other species. Don't be fooled." He argues that whether or not other animals have human-like minds is not relevant to our exploitation of them, and ends his essay with the Jeremy Bentham quote, "The question is not, can they reason, nor can they talk, but can they suffer." (Pg 51.)

There is an interview with Jane Goodall, headed "Close Encounters" (Pg 46) which you can read on line at http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg18625025.900

The other articles are:
-- "It's a dog's life" by Ian Duncan, about testing animal sentience and preferences (Pg 45)
-- "Suspicious minds" by Frans de Waal, which discusses what he calls "anthrodenial," which is "blindness to the human-like characteristics of other animals and to our own animal-like characteristics. (Pg 48)
-- "Me and my pet" by Lucy Middleton, about the intimate relationships people have with their companion animals. (Pg 49)
-- "Practical passions" by Alison George, on Temple Grandin's work to reform slaughterhouses (Pg 50) AND
-- "Of Burns and bats," by philosopher Simon Blackburn, sub-headed "What if we can never understand the inner world of other animals? Where does that leave our relationship with them?" (pg 53.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the spread and recommend picking up the magazine. And please send an appreciative letter to the editor. The New Scientist takes letters at letters@newscientist.com and advises, "Include your address and telephone numbers, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters."

Yours and the animals',

Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com

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8.

From: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-06/uoc--nfs060305.php

New findings show a slow recovery from extreme global warming episode 55 million years ago

9 June 2005

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Most of the excess carbon dioxide pouring into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels will ultima