January 13, 2006

The Dawn of a New Era Series #3: Looking Into The Precipice... And Shifting Direction

Hello everyone!

Judging from what I collected for your review below, 2006 is already shaping up to be a real crossroad year, the moment in history when we will either shift away from war, global environmental catastrophe and the worst Orwellian nightmare you can imagine towards a truly Love-driven, sustainable and peaceful future, or just continue where we are currently headed, which this compilation amply illustrates.

For a starter check this one out...

The Panopticon: A Mass Surveillance Prison For Humanity (January 11 2006)
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2006/110106thepanopticon.htm
Latest trends in Big Brother outstrip Orwell's worst nightmare - The Panopticon is defined as a prison so constructed that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times, without being seen. This is an accurate description of the accelerating movement by western governments to erect giant, powerful, all-pervading mass surveillance, tracking and control grids that will keep all populations firmly under the baleful and watchful gaze of Big Brother. We are still debating the NSA listening to foreign calls from the US when the NSA admitted twenty years ago that they were listening to domestic US calls under the Echelon program. This is de-classified and public but the media acts like they don't know about it. Why is there even a debate about if they are tracking and tracing us when RFID transponders are going in cars nationwide to follow our every movement? This system has already been partly implemented in Britain with barely a whimper of dissent. You can call your cell phone company, ask them where you are and they will tell you down to a few feet. That is a federal operation that's hooked into the NSA right at this moment and about to be hooked into every major police department and squad car. Your name, everything about you, what you're doing, where you're going and the cop can punch in a few keys and use your phone as an audio sensor. Major cities such as Austin, Texas installed gunshot detection microphones. The government assured us that they respect our privacy but the very companies installing them bragged about how they can listen to a kid on the street talking to his friend two hundred yards away. And now, from Rochester New York to Austin Texas to Chicago, the government has announced that they are being used as microphones and they will be used to listen to us. CLIP - THIS IS REALLY A MUST READ - WITH LOTS OF RELATED SUPPORTIVE LINKS...

And then you'll find below significant excerpts from Lester Brown's new book, "Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble", which IMHO is also a MUST READ article.

And then there is the rest of this 86+ page compilation...

Please note that a new Meditation Focus will be coming your way in time for this Sunday's globally synchronized meditation.

Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator


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"Combining social goals and earth restoration components into a Plan B budget means an additional annual expenditure of $161 billion. Such an investment is huge, but it is not a charitable act. It is an investment in the world in which our children will live. “If we fail to build a new economy before decline sets in, it will not be because of a lack of fiscal resources, but rather because of obsolete priorities,” adds Brown. “The world is now spending $975 billion annually for military purposes. The U.S. 2006 military budget of $492 billion, accounting for half of the world total, goes largely to the development and production of new weapon systems. Unfortunately, these weapons are of little help in curbing terrorism, nor can they reverse the deforestation of the earth or stabilize climate. “The military threats to national security today pale beside the trends of environmental destruction and disruption that threaten the economy and thus our early twenty-first century civilization itself. New threats call for new strategies. These threats are environmental degradation, climate change, the persistence of poverty, and the loss of hope.” The U.S. military budget is totally out of sync with these new threats. If the United States were to underwrite the entire $161 billion Plan B budget by shifting resources from the $492 billion spent on the military, it still would be spending more for military purposes than all other NATO members plus Russia and China combined. Of all the resources needed to build an economy that will sustain economic progress, none is more scarce than time. With climate change we may be approaching the point of no return. The temptation is to reset the clock. But we cannot. Nature is the timekeeper. It is decision time. Like earlier civilizations that got into environmental trouble, we can decide to stay with business as usual and watch our global economy decline and eventually collapse. Or we can shift to Plan B, building an economy that will sustain economic progress. “It is hard to find the words to express the gravity of our situation and the momentous nature of the decision we are about to make,” says Brown. “How can we convey the urgency of moving quickly? Will tomorrow be too late? “One way or another, the decision will be made by our generation. Of that there is little doubt. But it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.”

— Lester Brown -- Taken from http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB2/index.htm


"Earlier civilizations that moved onto an economic path that was environmentally unsustainable did so largely in isolation. But in today’s increasingly integrated, interdependent world economy, if we are facing civilizational decline, we are facing it together. The fates of all peoples are intertwined. This interdependence can be managed to our mutual benefit only if we recognize that the term “in the national interest” is in many ways obsolete. The question facing governments is whether they can respond quickly enough to prevent threats from becoming catastrophes. The world has precious little experience in responding to aquifer depletion, rising temperatures, expanding deserts, melting polar ice caps, and a shrinking oil supply. These new trends will fully challenge the capacity of our political institutions and leadership. In times of crisis, societies sometimes have a Nero as a leader and sometimes a Churchill."

— Lester Brown -- Taken from Rescuing a Planet Under Stress (more excerpts in item #1) - read more about his latest book "Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble" at http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB2/index.htm or the whole book itself at http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB2/Contents.htm


"During meditation, and in conversations with our friends who are healers, clairvoyants and lightworkers around the world, we sense a rising energy level, a renewal of faith in the future, and a growing desire for community. That rising energy is directing us to forge alliances and to participate in community action to bring about positive change in our homes, our neighborhoods, our countries, and the world at large. During this time of intense earth changes, at the crossroads between the Industrial Era of Cheap Oil and the Post-Carbon Solar Age, we find ourselves as spiritual beings confronted with a deep inner need to re-connect with our own hearts, and to live a life in harmony with our heart’s desire. This drive for authentic inner experience of the Divine in our daily life takes many forms. Many of us, over the last few years, have sought spiritual guidance, spiritual teachers, and spiritual community in response to this inner need. Many of us have focused more than ever before on our spiritual practice, on connecting with inner spiritual guidance, and have begun to allow ourselves to surrender our mental maps of the world, our egoistic goals and personality desires, letting the Universe guide us toward our spiritual goals. This has required many sacrifices on the part of spiritual seekers and aspirants, and has fostered an attitude of “going with the flow”, accepting the opportunities offered by our life circumstances as the framework for our activities in the world. We have struggled through a “long dark night of the soul” during this formative period, over the last few years, learning to differentiate between the various levels of spiritual experience, learning to discriminate between the varying levels of authenticity on offer via various spiritual paths and practices and teachers, and learning to trust our own inner spiritual guidance more and more completely as our contact with the many varieties of spiritual experience grows, widens and deepens."

— Curtis Lang curtis@satyacenter.com> - taken from his January newsletter available through subscription at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/globalnews


"Just a little word to echo your intro, about bad news - let us remember that even though some or most of this info is really disturbing, more and more of us are becoming sufficiently aware of what is really happening - and the secret to keeping our Peace is to KNOW deep within our souls that it all shall come to pass. All these leaders that act as if they will live for ever - will not - and in 2006, a year 8 in numerology, many will return to the nothingness they have created during their sacred opportunities and hopefully all people on Earth will again remember that indeed it ALL COMES TO PASS for such is the very nature of life on Earth. Good news is that the Earth herself will stay and that is what we should be celebrating with Her every move this year - for yes - she will continue to move and cry and vomit and re-adjust herself as much as necessary. Let us encourage and cheer Her on, for this too will come to pass and then Her and those of us who truly love Her and will stay, we will recreate Heaven on Earth again. More than ever it is important for us to keep this vision alive in our meditations."

— Lou Bognons bognons@intekom.co.za> sent on 7 Jan 2006 as a feedback to The Empire of Darkness Series #29: The United Police States


"This government is not only more criminal and corrupt than we imagine - it is more criminal and illicit than we can imagine. Bush and company make the Mafia look like boy scouts. The collection of thugs and criminals now running the country are the greatest and most dangerous organized crime syndicate in the world. And they possess the greatest arsenal of weapons, many of them nuclear, that the world has ever seen. They have an unparalleled propensity for violence. They are not who you think they are; and they are not doing what you think they are doing."

— Charles Sullivan - Taken from "Peak Oil And The End Of Empire" and rcommended by "Kathleen Roberts" weerkhr@pacbell.net> who wrote: "Truer Words Never Spoken".


Worthy of Your Attention

This Modern World: The shocking allegations http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=20135

A huge 911, Police State resource page
http://www.supportthetruth.com
Recommended by Kathleen Roberts weerkhr@pacbell.net>

Citizen's Counter Coup
http://3c.911truth.org/
If you are one of millions of people who: * suspect the official story of 9/11* are concerned about US foreign and domestic policy emanating out of our government's exploitation of the attacks * feel that 9/11 is the foundational issue of our time * and have wondered what action you can take, this is exactly where you need to be! CLIP The dawn of 2006 offers concerned Americans an unprecedented opportunity to finally awaken the nation to the official criminality behind 9/11 and the subsequent cover-ups. Given the ongoing corruption and spying scandals on top of the previous war lies, stolen elections, Katrina debacle, looting of the national treasury, etc., the general public has never been more prepared to face the
massive evidence of government complicity. As anyone working to educate the public about 9/11 knows, there are millions of people out there who are viscerally aware of 9/11 treachery, but still can't bring themselves to openly speak out or publicly demonstrate in protest. They could, however, be moved to less public but effective action if there were a simple and time-efficient mechanism available. 911truth.org has just launched a web-based platform to fulfill this role. CLIP

Outside the Box - LOTS OF REVEALING MATERIAL!
http://www.alexansary.blogspot.com/

Bush White House Served with Indictments!
http://www.bushcommission.org/
International Commission of Inquiry On Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration - On January 20, 21, and 22, an unprecedented line-up of witnesses will present their evidence before the International Commission on Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration. These hearing are an instrumentality of world humanity, arising from the historical, moral and political responsibility of people of conscience to sit in judgment of what is being done in their name.

Join Women's Global Call For Peace!
http://www.womensaynotowar.org
This is an opportunity to unite and shine our Light internationally to end the illegal war in Iraq. Sign the call now! It will be delivered to the White House on March 8, 2006. Please celebrate International Women's Day on this date by visiting the following page for action/event ideas: http://www.codepinkalert.org//index.php
Recommended by "Doreen Agostino" isisconsulting@rogers.com>

Big Picture TV: A motherload of online video lectures
http://big-picture.tv/index.php?id=62&cat=&a=150
Big Picture TV looks at the situation in the world today in a broader, more positive context. Problems such as climate change, pollution and nuclear arms proliferation are all too familiar. They are also only half the story. The bigger picture is about solutions - recognising that the crisis we face brings with it unparalleled opportunities to rethink, innovate and progress. Our video clips allow you to hear directly from some of today's leading problem solvers and innovators. It is thanks to their insight and dedication (and to the efforts of many progressive thinkers like them) that a better, more sustainable world is already happening. So turn on,tune in and be part of the Big Picture... Recommended by Mark Graffis mgraffis@gmail.com>

Vision Keepers
http://www.n2012.com/n2012/vision_keepers/
You are invited to participate in the Vision Keepers global meditation group -- an extraordinarily cohesive and powerful group of workers on the subjective (meditative) plane, whose purpose is to assist in transformation of the planet through the invocation of universal light and its evocation upon those areas of underlying planetary and cosmic principles that can anchor the New Era based on the particular types of energies available during the Full and New moon periods. The meditations are updated approximately every two weeks in order to accommodate ourselves to these respective energies. The meditation takes place for 5 minutes daily. It is not necessary to synchronize an exact hour as our participants are located around the world, creating an ongoing wave of light during a 24 hour period. The current meditation can be found below. (...) We come together in group intent, raising our attention as high in the head as possible, allowing energy - in the form of light directly from the Sun - to flow through the body and through this worldwide group working together. We visualize this light flowing toward - and permeating our planet as it hangs in space -- giving rise to a translucent, shimmering globe, transforming from white to silver to radiant gold. We hold this vision for 2 minutes then, focusing this light from between the eyebrows, we visualize humanity, now aware of the existence of the soul, focusing attention on contact with the soul, with the resultant transformation to 'correct human relations' -- the quality of relationships intended to realize heaven on earth. We hold this vision for three minutes, then sounding aloud OOOOOOOOMMMMMMM - Recommended by "Maggie Erotokritou" surya@spidernet.com.cy>

The Holographic Universe
http://www.crystalinks.com/holographic.html
In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science. Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations. University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram. CLIP - Recommended by EdElkin@aol.com

Mass Mind Control Through Network Television - Are Your Thoughts Your Own? (12-29-5) http://www.rense.com/general69/mass.htm
Why do countless American people go along with the War on Iraq? Why do so many people call for a police state control grid? A major component to a full understanding of why this kind of governmental and corporate corruption is to discover the modern science of mind control and social engineering. It's baffling to merely glance at the stacks of documentation that this world government isn't being constructed for the greater good of humanity. Although there are a growing number of people waking up the reality of our growing transparent soft cage, there seems to be just enough citizens who are choosing to remain asleep. Worse yet, there are even those who were at least partially awake at one time but found it necessary to return to the slumber of dreamland. This is no accident; this is a carefully crafted design. The drive to dumb down the populations of planet earth is a classic art that existed before the United States did. One component to understanding and deciphering the systems of control is to become a student of the magicians of influence and propaganda. In order to defeat our enemies (or dictators), its imperative that we understand how they think and what they believe in. - Also recommended by EdElkin@aol.com

Go to the site below--click on it--write your name in the box that comes up and then click OK
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~geoffo/humour/flattery.html
Recommended by "Isis Rich" atachaka@springsips.com> YOU NEED THIS!


CONTENTS

1. Rescuing a Planet Under Stress
2. China, India Seen Setting Stage for Environment-Friendly World
3. The Great Conversion
4. January 4 Message from Matthew
5. New Year's Message - Hathors /Tom Kenyon
6. What We Don't Know Can Hurt Us
7. Francis Boyle offers expert's analysis of Iraq war as "Pure Evil"
8. A bill of indictment was delivered to the White House on Jan. 10
9. Author James Moore ("Bush's Brain" Author) on "No Watch Fly List" for past year
10. Telling it like it isn't - By Robert Fisk
11. McKinney Remarks at GA Black Chamber of Commerce
12. Happier News Year for 2006
13. Tell the Bush administration to keep our national forests wild
14. WHO BENEFITS FROM GM CROPS?
15. Hopeful Offering
16. Essay on compassion
17. PRESENT-DAY RENAISSANCE


See also:

Norman Solomon: Axis of Fanatics
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010606Y.shtml
Iran. Israel. The United States. Each country has the very real potential to move in a better direction - away from lethal righteousness. As tensions mount and pressures intensify, the White House might end up acceding to an Israeli air attack on Iran. Or the Bush administration may prefer to launch its own air strike against Iran.

William Rivers Pitt | Attack on Iran: A Looming Folly
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010906I.shtml
William Rivers Pitt writes that the wires have been humming since before the New Year with reports that the Bush administration is planning an attack on Iran. "The Bush administration is preparing its NATO allies for a possible military strike against suspected nuclear sites in Iran in the New Year, according to German media reports, reinforcing similar earlier suggestions in the Turkish media," reported UPI on December 30th. An examination of the ramifications of such an attack is desperately in order.

Outcry as Iran Resumes Its Nuclear Project
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010906G.shtml
Tehran moved a step closer to economic and diplomatic sanctions today as Iranian scientists returned to their labs to resume forbidden research into nuclear power.

US Warning after Iran Breaks Seals at Nuclear Plant
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011106L.shtml
The White House said that unless Iran stepped back quickly, the issue would be referred to the UN Security Council with the possibility of sanctions or other kinds of punishment by the international community.

How Many Iraqis Have Died Since The US Invasion In 2003? 30,000? No. 100,000? No. (1-10-6)
http://www.rense.com/general69/howmany.htm
President Bush's off-hand summation last month of the number of Iraqis who have so far died as a result of our invasion and occupation as "30,000, more or less" was quite certainly an under-estimate. The true number is probably hitting around 180,000 by now, with a possibility, as we shall see, that it has reached as high as half a million. But even Bush's number was too much for his handlers to allow. Almost as soon as he finished speaking, they hastened to downplay the presidential figure as "unofficial", plucked by the commander in chief from "public estimates". Such calculations have been discouraged ever since the oafish General Tommy Franks infamously announced at the time of the invasion: "We don't do body counts". In December 2004, an effort by the Iraqi Ministry of Health to quantify ongoing mortality on the basis of emergency room admissions was halted by direct order of the occupying power. CLIP

A Formula for Slaughter
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011106K.shtml
Michael Schwartz writes that one reason that there was so little outrage over a Johns Hopkins report about 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths as a result of the Iraq war during its first 14 months was that the researchers did not explain how the occupation had managed to kill so many people so quickly - about 1,000 each week in the first 14 months of the war.

King George (Jan 05, 2006)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/01/05/engelhardt/index_np.html
It is slowly becoming clear that the Bush administration's real goal is not winning the right to torture, or to spy on Americans, or to lock people up without recourse. It is absolute power.
- As 2006 begins, we seem to be at a not completely unfamiliar crossroads in the long history of the American imperial presidency. It grew up, shedding presidential constraints, in the post-World War II years as part of the rise of the national security state and the military-industrial complex. It reached its constraintless apogee with Richard Nixon's presidency and what became known as the Watergate scandal -- an event marked by Nixon's attempt to create his own private national security apparatus, which he directed to secretly commit various high crimes and misdemeanors for him. It was as close as we came -- until now -- to a presidential coup d'état that might functionally have abrogated the Constitution. In those years, the potential dangers of an unfettered presidency (so apparent to the nation's Founding Fathers) became obvious to a great many Americans. As now, a failed war helped drag the president's plans down and, in the case of Nixon, ended in personal disgrace and resignation, as well as in a brief resurgence of congressional oversight activity. All this mitigated, and modestly deflected, the growth trajectory of the imperial presidency -- for a time. The "cabal," as Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, has called Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and various of their neocon-ish pals, stewed over this for years, along with a group of lawyers who were prepared, once the moment came, to give a sheen of legality to any presidential act. The group of them used the post-9/11 moment to launch a wholesale campaign to recapture the "lost" powers of the imperial presidency, attempting not, as in the case of Nixon, to create an alternate national security apparatus but to purge and capture the existing one for their private purposes. Under George Bush, Dick Cheney and their assorted advisors, acolytes and zealots, a virtual cult of unconstrained presidential power has been constructed, centered around the figure of Bush himself. (...) In his news conference defending his NSA program, the president took umbrage when a reporter asked:"I wonder if you can tell us today, sir, what, if any, limits you believe there are or should be on the powers of a president during a war, at wartime? And if the global war on terror is going to last for decades, as has been forecast, does that mean that we're going to see, therefore, a more or less permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the executive in American society?""To say 'unchecked power,'" responded an irritated Bush, "basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the president, which I strongly reject."How the nation handles this crossroads presidential moment will tell us much about whether or not "some kind of dictatorial position" for our imperial, imperious and impervious president will be in the American grain for a long, long time to come.

Bush's Con Job
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011106N.shtml
Paul Craig Roberts writes that President George W. Bush has destroyed America's economy along with America's reputation as a truthful, compassionate, peace-loving nation that values civil liberties and human rights. Now, Americans need to ask themselves if the White House is in competent hands, when a $70 billion war becomes a $2 trillion war.

Bush Quietly Undercuts Laws With Bill-Signing Statement (Jan 08, 2006)
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/13578051.htm
WASHINGTON - President Bush agreed with great fanfare last month to accept a ban on torture, but he later quietly reserved the right to ignore it, even as he signed it into law. Acting from the seclusion of his Texas ranch at the start of New Year's weekend, Bush said he would interpret the new law in keeping with his expansive view of presidential power. He did it by issuing a bill-signing statement -- a little-noticed device that has become a favorite tool of presidential power in the Bush White House.In fact, Bush has used signing statements to reject, revise or put his spin on more than 500 legislative provisions. Experts say he has been far more aggressive than any previous president in using the statements to claim sweeping executive power -- and not just on national security issues.``It's nothing short of breathtaking,'' said Phillip Cooper, a professor of public administration at Portland State University. ``In every case, the White House has interpreted presidential authority as broadly as possible, interpreted legislative authority as narrowly as possible and pre-empted the judiciary.'' Signing statements don't have the force of law, but they can influence judicial interpretations of a statute. They also send a powerful signal to executive branch agencies on how the White House wants them to implement new federal laws.I n some cases, Bush bluntly informs Congress that he has no intention of carrying out provisions that he considers an unconstitutional encroachment on his authority. CLIP

Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children (01/09)
http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=504353
John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles. This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel. What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat. It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush’s legal policies in the 'war on terror’ than John Yoo." This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo’s theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world. CLIP

Bush Authorized Domestic Spying before 9/11
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306Z.shtml
James Risen, author of the book "State of War," and credited with first breaking the story about the NSA's domestic surveillance operations, said President Bush personally authorized a change in the agency's long-standing policies shortly after he was sworn in in 2001. "The president personally and directly authorized new operations, like the NSA's domestic surveillance program."

Impeachment Calls Grow Louder
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306F.shtml
Matthew Rothschild: I'm telling you, my friends, there's something going on at the grassroots that the mainstream media isn't getting. And that's this urgent desire by millions of Americans to defenestrate Bush from power and reclaim our democracy.

Feingold Won't Rule Out Bush Impeachment
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010906Z.shtml
If President George Bush broke laws when ordering wiretaps and secret spying on US citizens, a key Senate Democrat said he would not rule out calling for his impeachment. "I think there is an orderly and dignified way to find out what happened," said Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. "And, if there was a legal violation there needs to be accountability ... you can't put the cart before the horse, but I would not rule out any form of accountability." That would include impeachment, Feingold told reporters.

Blair Must Be Impeached over Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011006O.shtml
Michael Rose writes: "No one can undo the decision to go to war. But the impeachment of Mr Blair is now something I believe must happen if we are to rekindle interest in the democratic process."

FROM 2006 BRITAIN WILL BE THE FIRST COUNTRY WHERE EVERY JOURNEY BY EVERY CAR WILL BE MONITORED. (22 December 2005) VERY BIG BROTHER INDEED!!!
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/transport/article334686.ece
Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years. Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years. The network will incorporate thousands of existing CCTV cameras which are being converted to read number plates automatically night and day to provide 24/7 coverage of all motorways and main roads, as well as towns, cities, ports and petrol-station forecourts. By next March a central database installed alongside the Police National Computer in Hendon, north London, will store the details of 35 million number-plate "reads" per day. These will include time, date and precise location, with camera sites monitored by global positioning satellites. Already there are plans to extend the database by increasing the storage period to five years and by linking thousands of additional cameras so that details of up to 100 million number plates can be fed each day into the central databank. Senior police officers have described the surveillance network as possibly the biggest advance in the technology of crime detection and prevention since the introduction of DNA fingerprinting. But others concerned about civil liberties will be worried that the movements of millions of law-abiding people will soon be routinely recorded and kept on a central computer database for years. CLIP

Meanwhile, Back in Britain...The Global War on Civil Liberties (December 19, 2005)
http://www.counterpunch.com/marqusee12192005.html
Two pieces of legislation currently wending their way through Britain's Parliament illustrate how the war on terror is being used to dismantle the very freedoms it's supposed to secure. Both criminalise the expression of ideas and neither is likely to deal effectively with the problem it purports to address. They are opportunistic gambits, characteristic of a government whose moralistic bombast is in inverse proportion to the morality of its behaviour. In the wake of the July 7th London bombings, the Labour government introduced yet another anti-terror bill (its third in five years). Even in its amended form, the bill contains an insidious clause creating a new offence of "encouragement of terrorism which will outlaw any statement that "glorifies terrorism. Speeches, books, films, DVDs, CDs, websites, "images as well as words, will all be subject to the new ban, which will apply to the "glorification of either specific terrorrist acts or "acts of terrorism in general, "whether in the past, in the future or generally, and whether or not the "glorification was intentional or inadvertent. Those who publish or disseminate offensive statements are as liable as those who make them. Given the government's murky definition of terrorism (the use or threat of violence "for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause, whether in the UK or abroad), the range of statements that could theoretically fall foul of the new law is alarming. Verbal support for the Iraqi resistance or for the Palestinian intifada. Any laudatory account of the Zionist bombing campaign against the British in the 1940s or of Nelson Mandela's courtroom defence of his right to use violence against the apartheid regime in the 1960s. A poster of Malcolm X with his slogan "by any means necessary. A Che Guevara tee-shirt. Celebrations of Bhagat Singh [Indian national hero hanged as a "terrorist" by the British], whose hundredth birth anniversary falls in 2007. A film, song or work of fiction that offers a sympathetic portrait of a suicide bomber. CLIP

Video (FOX): Israel Spying On Us? Had Pre-knowledge of 911?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7545.htm

Drug Cartels, Managed Violence and the Russian 9/11, Part 1 (1/11/2006)
MOST REVEALING! A MUST READ!
http://www.satyacenter.com/drugs-9-11
Drug trafficking from Afghanistan is the main source of support for international terrorism today. Did an international drug cartel affiliated with a Saudi billionaire, Russian banks, and US and Russian intelligence services conspire in the Moscow bombings of 1999? (...) Tajik authorities have claimed repeatedly that neither the US nor NATO exerts any pressure on the drug warlords inside Afghanistan. "There's absolutely no threat to the labs inside Afghanistan," said Avaz Yuldashov of the Tajikistan Drug Control Agency. "Our intelligence shows there are 400 labs making heroin there, and 80 of them are situated right along our border ... Drug trafficking from Afghanistan is the main source of support for international terrorism now," Yuldashov pointed out last year.[1]In the last three decades, three important facts have emerged about the international drug traffic. The first is that it is both huge and growing. Narcotics are estimated to be worth between $500 billion and $1 trillion a year, an amount, according to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in remarks to a United Nations General Assembly session in June 2003, that is greater than the global oil and gas industry, and twice as large as the overall automobile industry.[2] The second is that it is both worldwide and above all "highly integrated."[3] At global drug summits such as the one in Armenia in 1993, representatives of the Sicilian Mafia, the Brighton Beach Organizatsiya, and Colombian drug lords, have worked out a common modus operandi, with the laundering of dirty money entrusted chiefly to the lawless Russian banks.[4] The third important fact, undeniable since the 1980 U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, is that governments with global pretensions will avail themselves, in pursuit of their own political ends, of the resources, both financial and political, of the drug traffic. It was striking in the 1980s that the CIA, in its choice of Afghan mujahedin leaders to back against the Soviet Union, passed over those with indigenous support in favor of those, notably Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who dominated the heroin trade. The result was to enhance Hekmatyar's power until he became a leading heroin trafficker, not just in Afghanistan but in the world.[5] (...) Thanks to extensive research in Russia, we now have initial evidence of a second and even more significant proposition: There exists on the global level a drug meta-group, able to manipulate the resources of the drug traffic for its own political and business ends, without being at risk for actual trafficking. These ends include the creation of designed violence to serve the purposes of cabals in political power – most conspicuously in the case of the Yeltsin "family" in the Kremlin, but allegedly, according to Russian sources, also for those currently in power in the United States. CLIP Recommended by Curtis Lang curtis@satyacenter.com> whose EXTENSIVE WEBSITE AT http://www.satyacenter.com IS REALLY WORTH A GOOD LONG LOOK...

Jesus Healed Using Cannabis? (January 6, 2003)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,869273,00.html
Jesus was almost certainly a cannabis user and an early proponent of the medicinal properties of the drug, according to a study of scriptural texts published this month. The study suggests that Jesus and his disciples used the drug to carry out miraculous healings. The anointing oil used by Jesus and his disciples contained an ingredient called kaneh-bosem which has since been identified as cannabis extract, according to an article by Chris Bennett in the drugs magazine, High Times, entitled Was Jesus a Stoner? The incense used by Jesus in ceremonies also contained a cannabis extract, suggests Mr Bennett, who quotes scholars to back his claims. CLIP

Eavesdropping: High Tech, Low Legality
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010706F.shtml
Ray McGovern reviews the latest White House-orchestrated performance, conveying that with the help of highly questionable legal advice and the suborning of senior generals to disregard their solemn oath to defend the Constitution, the administration is edging this country ever closer to being a police state.

Jason Leopold: Fitzgerald Maintains Focus on Rove
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011006Z.shtml
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is said to have spent the past month preparing evidence he will present to a grand jury alleging that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove knowingly made false statements to FBI and Justice Department investigators and lied under oath while he was being questioned about his role in the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity more than two years ago, according to sources knowledgeable about the probe.

The Real Jack Abramoff Story
http://cherylsealreports.com/endtoendevil.html
(...) Abramoff the White Supremacist: JA was one of the driving forces in shoving the GOP further to the right, and in a direction that can only be described as a "neo-confederate" mind set. In the 1980s, Abramoff had close relationships with South Africa's aparthied government, even taking funding for an anti-Communist movie project from the fascist South African army. In addition, Abramoff treated native Americans with cold contempt - ripping them off as cynically as any "Indian hater" of the 19th century. Not only did Abramoff steal tens of millions from six different tribes while he purported to be helping them lobby for casinos, he actually took money from one Texas tribe as a pro-casino lobbyist while sucking up millions more from another tribe in LA that was lobbying against the TX tribe's efforts. Seems like the only thing JA DIDN'T try was install smallpox-infected slots (as a 21st century version of blankets) on reservations. In addition, Abramoff ran sweatshops in the Marianas Islands, in which native workers were outrageously exploited. Activist writer Geoff Parrish described this nightmare: "Conditions in the Marianas' sweatshops are horrific. Women are lured from China, Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and other Asian countries--often with the promise of living and working in the United States. Once they reached Saipan, the main island in the Northern Marianas chain, workers found themselves toiling eight hours a day for $3 an hour, then being forced to "donate" an additional four hours each day (reducing the gross pay to $2 an hour). In off hours the workers were not allowed to leave a crowded housing compound patrolled by armed guards. The Women were forced to live 20 per room, eat poor-quality food, and were charged by the company for housing and food through further reductions in their pay. Women were not allowed to date or marry, and pregnant women were forced to have abortions. Those who broke the rules were beaten." Guess who insured that Abramoff's slave labor camps would be exempt from any regulation? G.W. Bush . Oh, yes – his aid bought and paid for by Abramoff. Of course, Bush is allowing the same slave labor system to prevail in Iraq and Afghanistan now, too. CLIP

Fund-Raising: Take It to the (West) Bank
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7615249/site/newsweek/
Money meant for the inner city went to fight the intifada. What donors to Jack Abramoff's charity didn't know. The pitch worked especially well among a group of Indian tribes who, having opened up lucrative gaming casinos, had hired Abramoff to protect their interests in Washington. In 2002 alone, records show, three Indian tribes donated nearly $1.1 million to the Capital Athletic Foundation. But now, NEWSWEEK has learned, investigators probing Abramoff's finances have found some of the money meant for inner-city kids went instead to fight the Palestinian intifada. More than $140,000 of foundation funds were actually sent to the Israeli West Bank where they were used by a Jewish settler to mobilize against the Palestinian uprising. Among the expenditures: purchases of camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a thermal imager and other material described in foundation records as "security" equipment. CLIP

David Swanson | A Peace Movement Demanding the Rule of Law
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010706G.shtml
David Swanson analyzes the rampant 'Out of Iraq' protest that are occurring today with key dissidents being members of congress, local elected officials, and national leaders of the peace movement.

Army Magazine Prints Criticism Of U.S. In Iraq (Jan 11, 2006)
http://news.tbo.com/news/nationworld/MGBY73U5BIE.html
FORT - LEAVENWORTH, Kan. - A senior British officer has written a scathing critique of the U.S. Army and its performance in Iraq, accusing it of cultural ignorance, moralistic self-righteousness, unproductive micromanagement and unwarranted optimism there.His publisher: the U.S. Army.In an article published this week in the Army magazine Military Review, British Brig. Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was deputy commander of a program to train the Iraqi military, said American officers in Iraq displayed such "cultural insensitivity" that it "arguably amounted to institutional racism" and may have spurred the growth of the insurgency. The Army has been slow to adapt its tactics, he argues, and its approach during the early stages of the occupation "exacerbated the task it now faces by alienating significant sections of the population."The decision by the Army magazine to publish the essay, which already has provoked an intense reaction among American officers, is part of a broader self-examination occurring in many parts of the Army as it approaches the end of its third year of fighting in Iraq. CLIP

Amnesty Releases New Gitmo Torture Testimony
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011106Z.shtml
Marking the fourth anniversary of the first transfers of detainees to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, January 11, 2006, Amnesty International released new testimonies alleging the use of torture and ill treatment against prisoners in the US detention center and additional details on several detainee cases.

The Zionists Crime Syndicate is Looting America by Ponzi Scheme
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Iraq/message/12323
The whole world is discovering gradually how the Zionists Crime Syndicate is looting America and transferring the booty to Israel. Trillions had been looted from US in the past fifty years making Israel the richest nation on earth. CLIP Recommended by "Kathleen Roberts" weerkhr@pacbell.net>

Rosenberg gives Bayer papers to U.S. Holocaust Museum (Jan 5, 2006) http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/01/330892.html
A 13-year effort by a Pittsburgh man, and a committee that worked with him, to show Bayer AG's culpability in the Holocaust produced a collection of minutes, notes, transcripts, videotapes and photos that scholars everywhere may now study. Bayer AG is a German corporation whose American operations are based in Pittsburgh. CLIP Also recommended by "Kathleen Roberts" weerkhr@pacbell.net> along with this: "Bayer-IG Farben was half owned by Rockefeller's Standard Oil (aka Mobil-Exxon). It was also intimately tied to Wall Street investment firms and US banks like Chase and to the Dulles brothers ( Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and first CIA Director Allen Dulles) who were Bayer IG Farben's lawyers and top stock holders right through the end of WWII. These direct connections between the industrial arm of the Nazis and the CIA, Wall Street, US Banks and top US political figures continues today as strongly as ever via the US pharmaceutical industry and so-called think tanks like The Manhattan Institute (MI) - founded by CIA director William Casey and funded by Chase Bank and the US pharmaceutical industry. MI is the self-described source of all of GW Bush and Rudy Giuliani's "ideas" and it coined the term "compassionate conservatism." The Bush administration (Bush's grandfather Prescott was one of Hitler's biggesat fundraisers in the US) is the axis of evil at the center of which is the oil-pharmaceutical-munitions industry. You can find many detailed articles and sourced quotes about these connections at http://bluecollarpolitics.com/lederman/ -RL"

US Government Admits Lyme Disease Is A Bioweapon (1-7-6)
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/11/328067.html
The existence of the Lyme disease epidemic is officially covered up in the UK, its myriad presentations routinely misdiagnosed as everything from "M.E." to MS to hypochondria. This is the first admission by a US government body that the cause is an incapacitating biowar agent: SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- The $10.6 million Margaret Batts Tobin Laboratory Building will provide a 22,000-square-foot facility to study such diseases as anthrax, tularemia, cholera, lyme disease, desert valley fever and other parasitic and fungal diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified these diseases as potential bioterrorism agents.". http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10039154/ So, for the first time, a US government body admits that Lyme disease is a biological warfare agent. This is the reason that hundreds of thousands of men, women and children around the world have been left to rot with wrong diagnoses, or have had their Lyme disease acknowledged but been told that it is an "easily-treated" disease, given 3 weeks' antibiotics, then told to shove off when their symptoms carried on after that. In Britain the existence of the epidemic is denied completely, and virtually no effort made to warn or educate the public about the dangers of ticks, which carry the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi. The Borrelia genus has been a subject of biowar experimentation at least as far back as WW2, when the infamous Japanese Unit 731, which tortured and experimented on live prisoners, studied it. The reality is, Lyme disease is for many a chronic, horrendous, incapacitating disease producing crippling fatigue, constant pain, loss of memory, possible paralysis, psychosis, blindness and even death. CLIP

Create an e-annoyance, go to jail (January 9, 2006)
http://news.com.com/Create+an+e-annoyance,+go+to%20+jail/2010-1028_3-6022491.html?part=rss&tag=602249%201&subj=news
Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime. It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity. In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess. This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison. "The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic," says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else." CLIP

CANADA: Liberals would seek international ban on weaponization of space (January 11, 06) http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=70d6dae5-0353-400f-b4f3-34f634c3ae60&k=12858
Grits would seek international ban on weaponization of space: leaked platform - MONTREAL (CP) - Canada would seek an international deal to permanently ban weapons in space under a re-elected Liberal government, according to a leaked copy of the party's platform.The pledge is aimed at rallying the nation's more moderate voters behind the Liberals in a late-campaign drive to reverse the governing party's sagging electoral prospects. Paul Martin will take that stand against weapons in space when he unveils his party platform as early as Wednesday and will paint the pledge as the latest in a long line of Liberal-led peace initiatives. The idea will almost certainly meet with hostility from the U.S. government, coming on the heels of Canada's refusal to sign on to the American missile-defence project. As much as that missile snub irritated the White House, public opinion polls conducted earlier this year suggested it was a crowd-pleaser in Canada. The weapons pledge is one of the few headline-grabbing announcements left for a Liberal party seeking to strike a chord with voters before the Jan. 23 election. "Liberals are firmly opposed to the weaponization of space and recognize that the best time to prevent an arms race in space is before one begins," says the leaked version of the platform. The 85-page document was posted on the website for the conservative Western Standard magazine and confirms unpublished rumours of an impending Liberal space-weapons announcement. The proposal is modelled on the 1999 international mine ban treaty, for which then-foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. While the Liberal minister did not win the award, he was applauded for an effort that now includes 146 countries and helped clear more than 130 million square metres of land mines around the world. The United States, China, India and Russia did not sign on to that treaty and it's entirely possible that the world military powers will also take a dim view of the space-weapons pledge. CLIP - JUST RECEIVED!... Wešve made an important breakthrough in the election. As you may have seen in the news this week, the Liberals released their election platform and they pledged to pursue international negotiations to ban all weapons from space. This is the most significant new announcement in their platform, and our Election Rapid Response Team issued a news release welcoming the pledge.

California Solar Initiative Expected to Pass
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=41455
Los Angeles, California - What could well be the most significant U.S. solar news for all of 2006 is likely to happen this week in California as state regulators are expected to pass the largest solar energy policy package ever seen in this country. The PUC policy is a top down approach and will be passed independently of the legislature -- a major reason why it is expected to pass. Once passed into law this Thursday, industry experts predict the CSI will secure a stable solar market in California for the next 11 years that will lower the overall price of photovoltaics. CLIP

MILLION SOLAR ROOFS UPDATE
http://www.votesolar.org/
Victory! Almost. On December 13, the California Public Utilities Commission released a draft decision to create the “California Solar Initiative”, a 10-year, $3.2 billion solar incentive program to develop 3,000 megawatts of solar across the state. The Commission is expected to vote on a final decision on January 12, 2006. Solar Nirvana, here we come.

It's better to green your diet than your car New Scientist, 17 December 2005
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg18825304.800.html
THINKING of helping the planet by buying an eco-friendly car? You could do more by going vegan, say Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin of the University of Chicago. They compared the amount of fossil fuel needed to cultivate and process various foods, including running agricultural machinery, providing food for livestock and irrigating crops. They also factored in emissions of methane and nitrous oxide produced by cows, sheep and manure treatment. The typical US diet, about 28 per cent of which comes from animal sources, generates the equivalent of nearly 1.5 tonnes more carbon dioxide per person per year than a vegan diet with the same number of calories, say the researchers, who presented their results at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco last week. By comparison, the difference in annual emissions between driving a typical saloon car and a hybrid car, which runs off a rechargeable battery and gasoline, is just over 1 tonne. If you don't want to go vegan, choosing less-processed animal products and poultry instead of red meat can help reduce the greenhouse load. CLIP

Whales: In Deep Trouble (9 January 2005)
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/010906EA.shtml
With international stocks plummeting, the publication of photographs showing Japanese fishermen slaughtering minke whale provoked outrage in the West. But, says Philip Hoare, before we rush to condemn other cultures, we should consider our own role in jeopardising these fragile species. Last week's photographs of a Japanese whaling ship fighting off Greenpeace activists trying to save a dying minke whale would distress anyone, but I found them particularly gruelling, having spent the past five summers whale-watching off Cape Cod. Here, in the nutrient-rich waters over Stellwagen Bank, I've seen white-sided dolphins, finbacks and humpbacks. Minkes are there, too. At 30ft long, they are the smallest rorquals, but we do not know how they breed, or how long they live. Yet these are the animals which Japan, Norway and Iceland kill in their thousands each year. Indeed, Norway has just increased its quota from 796 in 2005 to 1,052 this year. The Japanese call minkes "cockroaches of the sea", serve their sperm as a delicacy, and their meat as burgers to fast-food addicts. Since the 1986 international moratorium on whaling, Japan has taken, under the guise of "scientific research", 7,900 minkes, 243 Bryde's whales, 140 sei whales and 38 sperm whales. And despite the use of grenade-tipped harpoons, there is no humane way to kill an animal this big: when an ailing right whale was stranded on a Cape Town beach recently, the police were advised by scientists to attach explosives to the animal's head and blow it up. CLIP

Worldwide trade in wild caviar is banned (03 January 2006 )
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8528
The worldwide trade in wild caviar was banned on Tuesday after nine major caviar-producing countries failed to convince the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) that their stocks of wild sturgeon are sustainable. The ban on trade, which is worth $100 million (£58 million) per year, is enforceable with heavy trade sanctions against any nation that decides to ignore it, says David Morgan, head of scientific support at CITES, based in Geneva, Switzerland. The ban does not affect caviar produced from farmed sturgeon, though this is far less prized. CLIP

Empty Skies: World's Birds at Risk (7 December 2005)
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2005/Update50.htm
Even before canaries were brought into coal mines to alert miners to the presence of poisonous gas, birds were giving us early warning calls signaling the earth’s deteriorating environmental health. Worldwide, some 1,212 of 9,775 bird species—one out of every eight—are threatened with extinction. CLIP

Climate change drives widespread amphibian extinctions (11 Jan 2006) http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-01/nsf-ccd011106.php
Warmer temperatures enhance growth conditions of fatal fungus - Results of a new study provide the first clear proof that global warming is causing outbreaks of an infectious disease that is wiping out entire frog populations and driving many species to extinction.Published in the Jan. 12 issue of the journal Nature, the study reveals how the warming may alter the dynamics of a skin fungus that is fatal to amphibians. The climate-driven fungal disease, the author's say, has hundreds of species around the world teetering on the brink of extinction or has already pushed them into the abyss."Disease is the bullet that's killing the frogs," said J. Alan Pounds, the study's lead scientist affiliated with the Tropical Science Center's Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica. "But climate change is pulling the trigger. Global warming is wreaking havoc on amphibians, and soon will cause staggering losses of biodiversity," he said. CLIP

Polar Bears Face New Toxic Threat: Flame Retardants
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/010906EB.shtml
Already imperiled by melting ice and a brew of toxic chemicals, polar bears throughout the Arctic, particularly in remote dens near the North Pole, face an additional threat as flame retardants originating largely in the United States are building up in their bodies.

Volcanoes At Both Poles Erupting Now (1-11-6)
http://www.rense.com/general69/erupt.htm