MAY LOVE PREVAIL ON EARTH
September 28, 2006
The Empire of Darkness Series #35: Marching Into Nuclear Oblivion
Hello everyone!
I don't want to sound pessimistic here, but from what I gathered for this compilation, its title seems to correctly represent what is looming ahead of us all right now. People Power, if enough people wake up and throw enough sand in the wheels of the US/Israeli military/industrial war machine, could still make the crucial difference. But we are passed the eleventh hour and the midnight doomsday bell is just about to ring...
And there is also the other Way, the spiritual Way, if enough of us rally as one Love-resonant collective mind to catalyze a critical mass of Will for Peace... Even soldiers and generals will rebel against the insane madness of the terminally desperate and frightened lost souls still at the helm of the mightiest military power on Earth, because everything in them will refuse to follow them any longer in their mad dash towards oblivion.
There will be a new Meditation Focus issued for this next Sunday global meditation. Guess what the focus will be...
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
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"9/19: Bush's speech at the UN today sounded like a bomb threat in a velvet glove. The world's governments were told to get behind thinly veiled threats on the entire Middle East, and in particular Iran. This is a president whose diplomacy comes off like a bully on the schoolyard; but what's at stake is not lunch money, but quite literally the fate of millions of people around the world. (...) This is truly a moment in which the future is being shaped one way or another. As Bush's recent series of "war on terrorism" speeches have made clear, this regime has every intention of steamrolling ahead with their endless war for empire, and NO WHERE in the official political structures, including the upcoming midterm election, is anyone even saying they will stop this. The diplomacy being conducted in the halls of the UN is nothing more that than the Bush administration letting the world know its disastrous plans and demanding everyone and every government either sign on or submit. As the very right wing, pro-Bush National Review reported when two of its writers did an interview with Bush recently, "his language suggests that the thesis that the seemingly interminable Iran diplomacy is the necessary run-up to a strike on Iran has something to it. Bush says, 'It is very important for the United States to try all diplomatic means.' That's what we did in Iraq." The question people around the world are asking is when will the American people stand up and stop this, and at present time Bush's voice is speaking louder than the widespread anger and discontent that exists among millions of people in this country. October 5th will be a day to change that – to answer the Bush regime's clear intentions to commit even bigger crimes with massive protests across the country determined to bring all this to a halt. This is what the world demands of us right now."
- Taken from Bush's UN Speech: Bomb Threat in a Velvet Glove
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
- Albert Einstein
"The human experience has been a fear-based series of events and lifetimes. Everyone ends up dying. When we do not know who we are, that is very frightening…and we have all forgotten. Some have called it collective unconsciousness or created amnesia. That’s why the leaders can hold up the mirror of terror and generate the fear they desire. It’s easy—except among those who are starting to remember, a number that is increasing exponentially, by the way.What is it that WE are remembering? As we peer more deeply into out own fear of mortality, images fade in and out of view. These recollected images reveal something beyond the fear, or perhaps even hidden deep within it. They are images of immortality, images indicating that we are more than mere finite beings having a human experience. We are Spirit. However, unless you are able to sense those images in some manner and accept that they are revealing deeper reality, you won’t get it. You’re stuck in the surface layers, which offer little hope. That hope comes in the deeper layers, which everyone who is willing can access. In fact, Life keeps on presenting us with mirrors until we become willing. That’s called Love, believe it or not. Life Loves life! That’s its job. It loves us so much that it never quits; it never gives up on us. We are all Children of Life whose destiny is to rediscover that we are all Masters of Love, too."
— Ron Van Dyke - Taken from LIBERATING LOVE BY SEEING OUR REFLECTION IN THE MIRRORS
"Ultimately, being "right" or "wrong" is irrelevant, a puerile ego game. Living, breathing, thinking, BEING FREE is what everything is all about - free of dogma, ideology, hate, violence, compulsive ego competition and the desire to sabotage the joy of other living beings."
- Antares Antares@magickriver.com>
"Many sensitives and adepts are feeling the ongoing shifts of energy which are exponential in nature like great waves passing through the Earth. These shifts are creating change on every level. We are being told over and over there will be another grand shift yet this one has some real big hitters involved. Universal Beings coming together for this event to assist adding their consciousness to the already ongoing awakening and healing process. The negative grid as we speak is being shattered, the denser energies which allowed the forces of tyranny, the concepts of separation and againstness as well as competition over cooperation are finding it harder and harder to operate. Those who hold onto and operate in alignment with these energies are experiencing physical aliments such as heart attacks and mental disorders as seen in the top levels of almost all institutions. What was hidden is being revealed, the true nature and motive of each individual is surfacing. With the great wave of energy coming in November it just may very well be the end of tyranny, the dismantling and fall of individuals and collectives which are not aligned with the awakening and healing process. I would expect to see some great changes on every level between now and November continuing on until December. We are not getting details of the events yet the same message over and over is BIG EVENT coming in November."
— James Gilliland ecetiwebmaster@yahoo.com> - September 22, 2006 http://www.eceti.org - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eceti/
Recommended by "Barbara Tomczyk" barbarat33@gmail.com> -- See also "UFOs and the Days to Come" at the very end of this compilation.
Worthy of Your Attention
The World can't Wait! Drive Out the Bush regime - Protests planned in over 105 cities http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2418&_event=14
October 5: No Work. No School. Protest in the Streets. Check also http://www.myspace.com/wcwnational
Stephen Wiltshire, the living camera
http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2006/rome-drawing-p1.php
Autistic savant draws perfect Rome
If you have not yet watched anything about the movie America - From Freedom to Fascism, there is a new 14 minutes trailer that neatly summarizes the whole movie. It is absolutely worth your complete attention...
http://www.thelastoutpost.com/site/991/default.aspx
Then check also http://www.thelastoutpost.com/site/811/default.aspxs
Jerusalem Peacemakers
http://www.jerusalempeacemakers.org
This is a web-based project supporting and honouring the efforts of grassroots peace-builders and interfaith workers who stand on the frontline of the reconciliation movement in the Holy Land. They bring a spiritual-humanitarian dimension to the peace process, working to heal separation between two peoples who in reality are so intertwined. Recommended by Suzanne Keehn dskeehn@pacbell.net> - Please, check also below the related item on Ibrahim Issa.
U.S. $8.5 trillion dollars in debt
http://mwhodges.home.att.net/debt_a.htm
All U.S. citizens should look at this debt report - Be sure to check out the second page on foreign debt and how our children and grandchildren will inherit our debts. Recommended by Ariel Ky (gemstonedeva@yahoo.com)
Strange Atmospheric "Waves" in the Caribbean
http://www.wholelook.com/Waves1.htm
CONTENTS
1. Silence in a Time of Torture is Complicity
2. War Signals?
3. Why Bush Will Nuke Iran
4. Bush Administration Plans for a US War vs. Iran
5. The March to War: Iran Preparing for US Air Attacks
6. Imperialism 101 - The US Addiction to War, Mayhem and Madness
7. Bush Fighting Hard Against Impeachment!
8. Rumsfeld’s Guinea Pigs: US Citizens at Risk for Military-Weapons Testing
9. Feedback to Announcing a Day of Mass Resistance
10. Meeting Ibrahim Issa and the Hope Flowers School
11. Feedbacks to Veracity Series #15 & Tax resistance suggestion
12. International Day against Monoculture Tree Plantations
13. UFOs and the Days to Come
See also:
Bush War III: Going to War to Save His Own Ass
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092706B.shtml
Dave Lindorff writes: "Unless the American people and their ostensible representatives in Congress act quickly to make it clear that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force does not apply to an attack on Iran, and that it did not make the president a dictator with the power to make war at will, I'm betting that we'll be at war with Iran before Election Day." MUCH MUCH MORE ON THIS IN THE MAIN ITEMS BELOW!
Torture reaches new depths in Iraq
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15047.htm
Torture in Iraq is reportedly worse now than it was under deposed president Saddam Hussein, the United Nations' chief anti-torture expert said Thursday. Manfred Nowak described a situation where militias, insurgent groups, government forces and others disregard rules on the humane treatment of prisoners."What most people tell you is that the situation as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally out of hand," said Nowak, the global body's special investigator on torture. (...) "You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed," Nowak told reporters at the UN's European headquarters. "It's not just torture by the government. There are much more brutal methods of torture you'll find by private militias."Nowak has yet to make an official visit to Iraq, and said such a mission would not be feasible as long as the security situation was so dangerous. He based his comments on interviews with people during a visit to Amman, Jordan and other sources. "You find these bodies with very heavy and very serious torture marks," he said. "Many of these allegations, I have no doubt that they are credible."
Democrats Wary of Detainee Trials Compromise
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092306Y.shtml
The Senate compromise on detainee trials is "legal mumbo jumbo to obscure the fact that the CIA will continue to be allowed to use torture and will actually be insulated from legal liability for previous acts of torture," says Congressman Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee.
FBI Protests CIA Interrogation Tactics
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091006Y.shtml
Abu Zubaydah, the first Osama bin Laden henchman captured by the United States after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, was bloodied and feverish when a CIA security team delivered him to a secret safe house in Thailand for interrogation in the early spring of 2002. The events that unfolded at the safe house over the next few weeks proved to be fateful for the Bush administration.
Why Retired Military Brass Don't Want Torture (September 24, 2006) http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-kaiser24sep24,1,326876.story
For all 43 retired generals and admirals, it was a combination of moral outrage and deep disgust over President Bush's proposed legislation on interrogating terrorist suspects that propelled them. "None of us feels comfortable speaking out publicly," said retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, who served as the Navy's judge advocate general from 1997 to 2000. "That's not the nature of what military officers do. [But we] care very, very much about the country and the military." The group of retired flag officers first came together in 2005, when a dozen of them signed a letter opposing the nomination of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general for his role in developing Bush's policies on torture in the war on terror. Late last year, they supported Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) ban on cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees in U.S. custody anywhere in the world. The retired officers believe that the negative consequences of the president's anti-terror policies could have been avoided if the administration had followed traditional military practices. No higher-ups were prosecuted for the abuses uncovered at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. What further fuels the officers' outrage is that the policies they believe have undermined the military were mostly formulated by men, like Bush, who have not seen combat. "Cheney made mention in the days after 9/11 that he wanted to operate sort of on the dark side," [Brig. Gen. James] Cullen said. "Here was a guy who never served, and now something terrible had happened, and he wanted to show that he was a tough guy. So he's going to operate outside the rules of law. Bad message."
US Threatened to Bomb Pakistan Back to Stone Age
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092206Z.shtml
Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf said the US threatened to bomb his country back to the Stone Age if he did not assist the administration's war on terrorism. The threat was delivered after the attacks of September 11, 2001, by Richard L. Armitage, then deputy secretary of state, to Musharraf's intelligence director, the Pakistani leader told CBS's "60 Minutes" for Sunday's broadcast.
CENTCOM Sergeant Details Traitorous Stand Down Orders On 9/11 (September 26 2006)
http://infowars.net/articles/September2006/260906Chavez.htm
Military whistleblower comes forward with key information - Alex Jones was joined on air yesterday by a former Sergeant in the United States Army named Lauro "LJ" Chavez. Chavez was stationed at MacDill AFB where he claims he witnessed unusual preparations for a potential airplane hitting the base on the morning of 9/11 and distinctly heard officers talking about a stand down. This has led him to go public in questioning the NORAD stand down and the demolition of the twin towers. (...) Then we see the other plane come in and hit it and at that point everybody is standing up. The air force had commanders in contact with NORAD. The plane, or whatever, hit the Pentagon and then we were like 'Why aren't they scrambling jets?' We were asking, there was eight or nine people... Colonels and Lieutenant Colonels asking the Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the air force 'why isn't NORAD scrambling jets? and he said 'we received an order to stand down''. And that just perplexed everybody." Mr Chavez did not know the Lieutenant Colonel and so does not know his name, yet if he can be identified, then we have uncovered a direct link to the stand down order. If that man or any others who were present at CENTCOM on 9/11 can be identified and made to testify under oath, then the whole cover operation could be blown. A real independent investigation would have secured this. CLIP P.S. Apparently, Lauro Chavez has been fired by his employer, Domin-8 Enterprise Solutions, just days after his allegations about 9/11 were made public.
Pentagon May Lift Restraints on Guard Deployments
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092406X.shtml
Pentagon may change policy limiting National Guard deployments in order to send more weekend warriors to Iraq after November elections.
A Broken, De-Humanized Military in Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092606A.shtml
Dahr Jamail writes: "While the deranged chicken-hawks who 'lead' the US continue their efforts to wage another unprovoked war of aggression, this time against Iran, what's left of their already overstretched military continues to be bled in Iraq. When the situation is so critical that even the corporate media is forced to report on it, you know it's bad."
White House Admits Iraq Fuels Extremism
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092606B.shtml
Bush has been trying to convince Americans that the war has made America safer, but with the release of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and terrorism, which represents the comprehensive consensus findings of the 16 US intelligence agencies, the White House admits that the war in Iraq has fueled the spread of extremism.
Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092406Z.shtml
The American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism, according to portions of the highly classified National Intelligence Estimate.
House OKs additional $70 billion for occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan
http://snipurl.com/xejw
House lawmakers who remain deeply divided over the course of the war in Iraq have easily approved another $70 billion for the military operations there and in Afghanistan.
Dozens Arrested in Several Demonstrations for Peace Held Near Capitol
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092706Q.shtml
The quiet, sunny atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building was transformed into a chaotic scene yesterday when dozens of war protesters filed into the lobby. A circle of protesters saying prayers and reading the names of the Iraq war dead, civilian and military, were arrested. Thirty-five additional peace demonstrators were arrested yesterday around the US Capitol in related protests. Hundreds of anti-war actions have taken place across the country this week as faith-based and other groups push for a timetable for the United States to leave Iraq.
UN says Gaza crisis 'intolerable' (26 September 2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5382976.stm
Standards of human rights in the Palestinian territories have fallen to intolerable new levels, says a UN expert on the Mid-East conflict. John Dugard said Israel was largely to blame for turning Gaza into "a prison" and "throwing away the key". But he also criticised the US, Canada and Europe for withdrawing funds to the Palestinian Authority, run by Hamas militants who do not recognise Israel. An Israeli official said the statement was unrealistic and over-simplified. Mr Dugard, UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, said three-quarters of Palestinians in Gaza now depended on food aid - a result, he added, of Israeli military raids, blockades and demolitions." I hope that my portrayal... will trouble the consciences of those accustomed to turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the suffering of the Palestinian people," Mr Dugard told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. (...) Palestinian people are punished for having democratically elected a regime unacceptable to Israel, the US and the EU. (...) "What Israel chooses to describe as collateral damage to the civilian population is in fact indiscriminate killing prohibited by international law," he said. Mr Dugard also criticised the embargo on funding to the Palestinian Authority since the victory by Hamas early this year." Israel violates international law as expounded by the Security Council and the International Court of Justice and goes unpunished," he said." But the Palestinian people are punished for having democratically elected a regime unacceptable to Israel, the US and the EU. "In effect, the Palestinian people have been subjected to economic sanctions - the first time an occupied people has been so treated," he said. CLIP
Hi-tech firm boycotts Israel over 'war crimes'
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3308579,00.html
Belgian hi-tech company specializing in development consulting notifies manager of Israeli company seeking cooperation that 'your country has conducted war crimes and is an apartheid regime'
Million bomblets' in S Lebanon (26 September 2006) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5382192.stm
Up to a million cluster bomblets discharged by Israel in its conflict with Hezbollah remain unexploded in southern Lebanon, the UN has said. The UN's mine disposal agency says about 40% of the cluster bombs fired or dropped by Israel failed to detonate - three times the UN's previous estimate. It says the problem could delay the return home of about 200,000 displaced people by up to two years. The devices have killed 14 people in south Lebanon since the August truce. The manager of the UN's mine removal centre in south Lebanon, Chris Clark, said Israel had failed to provide useful information of its cluster bomb strikes, which could help with the clearance operation. Last month, the UN's humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, accused Israel of "completely immoral" use of cluster bombs in the conflict. CLIP
Israel Occupation Forces Steal Millions in Bank Raids Across West Bank
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20060920-061112-4580r
Palestinian security sources said that "millions of dollars, documents, and files were stolen" when Israeli troops raided 24 banks and money exchange shops in several towns, including Ramallah, Nablus, Tulkarem, and Jenin.
Top secret: Banff security meeting attracted U.S., Mexico officials (September 21, 2006)
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2006/09/21/secret-meeting.html
A North American security meeting was secretly held in Banff last week, attracting high-profile officials from the United States, Mexico and Canada.The North American Forum was hosted with the help of the Canada West Foundation and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.Among the attendees at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel affair was Stockwell Day, Canada's minister of public safety. The gathering may not have made headlines, but it is still the talk of Banff. Taxi Driver Chris Foote said he first learned of the meeting when he stopped into a submarine shop for a late night snack last week and heard rumours U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld was in town."Here they are talking in my backyard, no media to tell Canadians, Mexicans and Americans about what's going on. [I am] completely outraged," he said. "This is an assault on democracy." John Larson, a spokesperson for the North American Forum, said reporters were not told about the conference. He won't confirm who attended the meeting nor will he give any concrete details about what was discussed." The participants joined the conference essentially knowing that it would be a private function," said Larson. Mel Hurtig, author and founder of the Council of Canadians, obtained internal documents about the Sept. 12-14 forum revealing that the gathering was called Continental Prosperity in the New Security Environment. Rumsfeld was slated to be a keynote speaker and topics on the agenda included North American energy strategy and security co-operation. "We're talking about such an important thing, we're talking about the integration of Canada into the United States. For them to hold this meeting in secret and to make every effort to avoid anybody learning about it, right away you've got to be hugely concerned," Hurtig said. Hurtig says questions should be raised in the House of Commons about why Canadians are being kept in the dark on meetings attended by officials like Day.
Getting closer to Uncle Sam (September 20, 2006) in the Toronto Star
http://tinyurl.com/s9945
Public kept in dark as business leads talks about North American integration. Away from the spotlight, from Sept. 12 to 14, in Banff Springs, Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day and Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor met with U.S. and Mexican government officials and business leaders to discuss North American integration at the second North American Forum. The guest list included such prominent figures as U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Mexican Secretary of Public Security Eduardo Medina Mora and Canadian Forces chief General Rick Hillier. The event was chaired by former U.S. secretary of state George Schultz, former Alberta premier, Peter Lougheed and former Mexican finance minister Pedro Aspe. Organizers did not alert the media about the event. Our government...refuses to release any information about the content of the discussions or the actors involved. The event was organized by! the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.... The media have paid little attention to this far-reaching agreement, so Canadians are unaware that a dozen working groups are currently "harmonizing" Canadian and U.S. regulations on everything from food to drugs to the environment and even more contentious issues like foreign policy. This process... is about priming North America for better business by weakening the impacts of such perceived obstacles as environmental standards and labour rights. This is why the public has been kept in the dark while the business elite has played a leading role in designing the blueprint for this more integrated North America.
Voice of the White House (September 7, 2006) http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=5127
With the frightening November mid term elections coming upon us, there has been a growing panic in senior, and junior, Republicans, both inside and outside of Congress. A probably loss of the House and a very possible loss of the Senate is stirring up panic. Why? Because there is no doubt that if the Democrats gain control of the House, there will be impeachment articles drawn up with Bush as their target and very probably serious investigations launched by them into certain senior Republicans for, among other matters, massive corruptions and bribery. There have been hinted at ‘October surprises’ which may or may not happen or, if they do, have any success. (...) can tell you that all the circumstantial evidence on pre-knowledge of the 9/11 attack very clearly points to the fact that George W. Bush, his top people, to include, Vice President Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft, top advisor Karl Rove, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and very probably a number of other senior government persons had been well and very timely informed of the attack, when it would happen, where it would happen and how it would happen. That they did and said nothing but awaited the attack for the many political opportunities it would afford the President and the leadership makes all of them willing parties to murder. At law, this is called being an accessory before the fact. CLIP
Voting machines put U.S. democracy at risk (September 20, 2006) http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/19/Dobbs.Sept20/index.html
There is little assurance your vote will count. As we've been reporting almost nightly...for more than a year, electronic voting machines are placing our democracy at risk. These machines time and again have been demonstrated to be extremely vulnerable to tampering and error, and many of them have no voter-verified paper trail. Only 27 states have laws requiring the use of voter-verified paper trails. 15 states [have] no mandated requirements for safeguarding your vote. During the 2004 presidential election, one voting machine...added nearly 3,900 additional votes to Bush's total. Officials caught the machine's error because only 638 voters cast presidential ballots at that precinct, but in a heavily populated district, can we really be sure the votes will be counted correctly? [In] the May primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio...the electronic voting machines' four sources of vote totals -- individual ballots, paper trail summary, election archives and memory cards -- didn't even match up. The report concluded that relying on the current system for Cuyahoga County's more than 1.3 million people should be viewed as "a calculated risk." Are we really willing to risk our democracy? A 2005 Government Accountability Office report on electronic voting confirmed the worst fears of watchdog groups and election officials. "There is evidence that some of these concerns have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes." That is simply unacceptable. Congress and the White House need to immediately take steps to assure the integrity of electronic voting with paper trails that could be audited in any recount. Note: For lots more reliable, verifiable information on the various aspects of the elections cover-up, see http://www.wanttoknow.info/electionsinformation
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Will The Next Election Be Hacked?
http://snipurl.com/wzp1
Fresh disasters at the polls -- and new evidence from an industry insider -- prove that electronic voting machines can't be trusted
What Would Real Election Integrity Mean?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092606F.shtml
"A voting system that cannot assure that every vote is accurately counted is fundamentally broken," write Evan Frisch and Arianna Siegel. "We must recognize this broken system as a far greater threat to our democracy than the threat of undocumented or "criminal" voters, and make its correction our highest priority."
Consumers See "String-Pulling," Believe '06 Election Affecting Gas Prices
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092606G.shtml
Almost half of all Americans believe the November elections have more influence than market forces. For them, the plunge at the pump is about politics, not economics.
The ID Chip You Don't Want in Your Passport (September 15, 2006) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/15/AR2006091500923.html
If you have a passport, now is the time to renew it -- even if it's not set to expire anytime soon. In many countries, including the United States, passports will soon be equipped with RFID chips. And you don't want one of these chips in your passport. RFID stands for "radio-frequency identification." Passports with RFID chips store an electronic copy of the passport information: your name, a digitized picture, etc. And in the future, the chip might store fingerprints or digital visas from various countries. By itself, this is no problem. But RFID chips don't have to be plugged in to a reader to operate. Like the chips used for automatic toll collection on roads or automatic fare collection on subways, these chips operate via proximity. The risk to you is the possibility of surreptitious access: Your passport information might be read without your knowledge or consent by a government trying to track your movements, a criminal trying to steal your identity or someone just curious about your citizenship. Security mechanisms are also vulnerable, and several security researchers have already discovered flaws. One found that he could identify individual chips via unique characteristics of the radio transmissions. Another successfully cloned a chip. The Colorado passport office is already issuing RFID passports, and the State Department expects all U.S. passport offices to be doing so by the end of the year. Many other countries are in the process of changing over. So get a passport before it's too late.
Global Warming Nears "Dangerous" Level
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/092606EA.shtml
Global temperatures are dangerously close to the highest ever estimated to have occurred in the past million years, scientists reported Monday. In a study that analyzed temperatures around the globe, researchers found that Earth has been warming rapidly, nearly 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius) in the last 30 years.
Toxic Waste Headed for a Third World Dump
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/092606EB.shtml
The Panamanian-flagged ship Probo Koala unloaded more than 550 tons of toxic waste at a port in Cote d'Ivoire a month ago. Emissions from that toxic waste have killed seven people and poisoned thousands. Environmental experts estimate that more than 100 million tons of toxic waste is produced worldwide every year, and about 10 percent of this waste is exported.
Mass Tourism and Climate Change Could Lead to Destruction of World's Wonders (September 22, 2006)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0922-01.htm
Gloomy predictions of extreme heat and destruction of some of the world's leading holiday destinations were made yesterday in a report assessing the impact of the dangers of mass tourism and climate change. The Future of World Travel report found that by 2020 the natural features of some of the wonders of the world will be damaged by global warming, while other resorts will become seriously overcrowded. It has predicted that in a little more than a decade global warming will erode Goa's beaches and lead to more hurricanes sweeping across the Everglades, while the increase in tourism would send an army of skiers into the once remote kingdom of Nepal.In particular, the report warned that climate change will heat up many Mediterranean destinations, such as Athens, which it said would regularly swelter in temperatures of more than 40C causing "unbearably" hot and humid nights. Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast in Italy will see more heatwaves, with an increase in dry days and a greater risk of fire. Southern Spain "may become a suitable habitat for malaria-bearing mosquitoes," said the report by Churchill Insurance.The report, written with the help of the Centre for Future Studies think-tank, said the rise in mass tourism could result in popular destinations becoming swamped with visitors. Some of the world's most famous sites were likely to become so damaged by tourism that visits would have to be limited. CLIP
Sea levels are rising faster than predicted, warns Antarctic Survey (Sept 20)
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2698249/
The global sea level rise caused by climate change, severely threatening many of the world's coastal and low-lying areas from Bangladesh to East Anglia, is proceeding faster than UN scientists predicted only five years ago, Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, said yesterday. Climate change is causing sea levels to rise around the world because water expands in volume as it warms, and because land-based ice, such as that contained in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, adds to the volume when it melts and slips into the sea. (...) Last week, two American studies showed that the melting of the winter sea ice in the Arctic had accelerated enormously in the past two years, with a section the size of Turkey disappearing in just 12 months. CLIP
White House Blocked Report Linking Hurricanes to Global Warming
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092706C.shtml
The Bush administration has blocked the release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes.
Earth within whisker of hottest climate in million years: NASA (AFP) (26 September 2006)
http://tinyurl.com/f249h
WASHINGTON - The Earth’s rapid warming has pushed temperatures to their hottest level in nearly 12,000 years and within a hairbreadth of a million years, a study by the US space agency showed on Monday. Global warming, which has added 0.2 degree Celsius (0.36 degree Fahrenheit) per decade over the past 30 years, has caused temperatures to reach and now pass through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period, which lasted almost 12,000 years, according to the study led by James Hansen, a leading climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The study, published in the September 26 of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that Earth was now within about 1.0 C (1.8 F) of the maximum estimated temperature of the past million years. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration researcher said that was the most important finding of the team’s research. ‘That means that further global warming of 1.0 degree Celsius defines a critical level. If warming is kept less than that, effects of global warming may be relatively manageable. During the warmest interglacial periods the Earth was reasonably
Rare Woodpecker Sends a Town Running for Its Chain Saws http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/us/24woodpecker.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
BOILING SPRING LAKES, N.C., Sept. 23 (AP) — Over the past six months, landowners here have been clear-cutting thousands of trees to keep them from becoming homes for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.The chain saws started in February, when the federal Fish and Wildlife Service put Boiling Spring Lakes on notice that rapid development threatened to squeeze out the woodpecker. The agency issued a map marking 15 active woodpecker “clusters,” and announced it was working on a new one that could potentially designate whole neighborhoods of this town in southeastern North Carolina as protected habitat, subject to more-stringent building restrictions. Hoping to beat the mapmakers, landowners swarmed City Hall to apply for lot-clearing permits. Treeless land, after all, would not need to be set aside for woodpeckers. Since February, the city has issued 368 logging permits, a vast majority without accompanying building permits. The results can be seen all over town. Along the roadsides, scattered brown bark is all that is left of pine stands. Mayor Joan Kinney has watched with dismay as waterfront lots across from her home on Big Lake have been stripped down to sandy wasteland. “It’s ruined the beauty of our city,” Ms. Kinney said. To stop the rash of cutting, city commissioners have proposed a one-year moratorium on lot-clearing permits. The red-cockaded woodpecker was once abundant in the vast longleaf pine forests that stretched from New Jersey to Florida, but now numbers as few as 15,000. The bird is unusual among North American woodpeckers because it nests exclusively in living trees. CLIP
USDA SAYS SHUT UP AND EAT YOUR FRANKENRICE
http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_2159.cfm
The USDA has finally reacted to the contamination of the U.S. rice supply by an unapproved, genetically engineered variety of rice created by the Bayer Corporation. Three weeks ago, it was discovered that Bayer's mutant rice, gene-spliced to survive heavy doses of a powerful herbicide called glufosinate, had contaminated U.S. long grain rice stocks. The USDA admitted it had "no idea" how extensive the contamination was. Meanwhile Japan has banned all U.S. rice imports, while the EU is rejecting U.S. imports that test positive for contamination. The rice industry has been in a state of upheaval, with rumors of a massive market recall spreading across the country. This week, the USDA announced its plan of action: instead of recalling this illegal, and potentially unsafe rice, it is working with Bayer to fast-track the approval process. "Illegal, potentially hazardous rice in grain bins, on supermarket shelves, in cereal, beer, baby foods, and all rice products. It should be a no-brainer. Recall this stuff to make sure no one eats it," said Joseph Mendelson, Legal Director of the Center for Food Safety. "Instead, USDA plans to rush through 'market approval' of a genetically engineered rice that Bayer itself decided was unfit for commerce. Why? To free Bayer from liability." The question is what to eat: no spinach, no rice, no meat. This is a global crisis because all GMO foods can contaminate natural species, even organic crops. It is long past time to organize effectively to protect our heritage and the future. Recommended by "Anne Marie Cook" light4us@infionline.net>
Protectorate Union of the Citizens and Initiatives for the Protection against Electrosmog
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/emf-omega-news/message/161
Tons of information related to the cancer-causing excessive exposure of millions of people to electromagnetic pollution (cell phone towers, cell phone use, electric power lines, etc.) For instance, check...
Cell Phones & Children: Hazardous Mix?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_suzanne__060911_cell_phones__26_childr.htm
I don't want to scare the bejeebers out of everyone with children who use cell phones, but there are some irrefutable facts. Until children go through puberty (approximate age 16), they are still forming the thickness of the scull's protective barrier and this raises some alarming concern. Additionally, the brain development continues until approximately 25 years old, so their developing nervous system is likely to be more vulnerable than ours. Between 20-80% of the cell phone's Radio Frequency (RF) waves are absorbed into the user's head, it depends on how close the user is to the antenna. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) measured the Electro Magnetic Field (EMF) waves for various household appliances. EMF is a poison we cannot see or smell, and many neighborhoods are exposed to this danger as cell phone towers emit up to 2.5 miles away. Even at several miles away, the radiation emitted from these towers can cause DNA damage, cancer, suppressed immune function, miscarriage, depression, neurological and issues. (...) In 1993, Motorola hired Dr. George Carlo, a leading epidemiologist. Motorola was determined to prove that cell phones are "safe". After six years of research, Dr. Carlo became alarmed, when his sponsors attempted to alter and suppress his findings. At that point, Dr. Carlo became a whistleblower. He and Martin Schram tell the story in Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age: Dr. Carlo's research showed alarming signs: "that cell phones interfere with pacemakers, that developing skulls of children are penetrated deeply by the energy emitted from a cell phone, that the blood brain barrier which prevents invasion of the brain from toxins can be compromised by the cell phone radiation and, most startling, that radio frequency radiation creates micronuclei in human blood cells, a type of genetic damage known to be a diagnostic marker for cancer." CLIP
Gas Is Down - Go Back to Sleep
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092706Z.shtml
Kelpie Wilson looks at the politics of gas prices, how prices can be manipulated, and whether the recent drop in prices can help the GOP in November.
Will We All Become Electrosensitive?
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/2676298/
(...) Each year an increasing number of people claim to suffer from electrosensitivity, also known as being electrically hypersensitive (EHS). There are also other diseases, such as fibromyalgia and burn-out syndrome, that have symptoms similar to those exhibited by people suffering from electrosensitivity.(...) The extrapolated trend indicates that 50% of the population can be expected to become electrosensitive by the year 2017. CLIP
Omega-News Collection 23. September 2006
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/2710924/
1.
THIS ACTION BELOW HAS OBVIOUSLY FAILED TO PREVENT THE TORTURE-MONGERING REPUBLICAN DOMINATED CONGRESS FROM LEGALIZING TORTURE - SOMETHING ALL MORALLY SANE AMERICANS WILL BE FOREVER ASHAMED OF - BUT IT IS STILL WORTH REVIEWING BECAUSE IT EXPLAIN WELL THE TRULY VILE NATURE OF WHAT HAS BEEN DONE.
House Passes Bush's Interrogation Bill
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092706T.shtml
The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill backed by President George W. Bush setting rules for interrogating and trying foreign terrorism suspects, dismissing warnings from Democrats that courts will reject the plan.
From: http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2942&Itemid=223#form
Silence in a Time of Torture is Complicity
We have now come to a defining moment, where before the world's eyes the U.S. Congress is poised to legalize torture. We reject such a course outright. It does not represent us.
We remember the images from Abu Ghraib prison -- photos of depravity, even death. And what of the images we have never been shown from a world of even more disturbing and more "professional" horrors that have been concealed in secret prisons around the world?
To anyone of conscience, this is unacceptable. But this is exactly what your government will be making legitimate. With bi-partisan support, the "Military Commissions Act of 2006" will be made law unless people act to stop it.
Sold as a "compromise", this bill is fundamentally worse than what has gone before.
The bill takes what has existed in the shadowy world of clandestine action and now gives it the openly declared mantle of official, legal approval. While the compromise is being sold as complying with the Geneva Conventions, it gives the President huge freedom to, by executive order, define "special methods" of interrogation that HE feels "fit" that Convention. It removes the right of anyone to raise the Geneva Conventions in federal court to challenge government action against them.
The compromise allows the government the power to use confessions and other testimony derived from torture as evidence in criminal proceedings. The compromise officially, and legally, puts Congress on record approving that the president may, at his own discretion, declare anyone an "enemy combatant". This means the president can name anyone anywhere as such and remove them from the reach of family or legal counsel and hold them indefinitely without trial. It ends the Constitutional right of habeas corpus.
All this is now to be done openly, and in our name. All these actions -- and the Bush Regime which has commissioned war crimes -- must be brought to a halt. What is being met with silence in the halls of power must be manifested as a real opposition in the streets. At stake here is what kind of country and what kind of people we choose to be.
Let it not be said that the people did nothing when their government moved to make torture lawful. Let the world know that the people of this country did not acquiesce, but instead stood up and said
"TORTURE DOES NOT REPRESENT US!
THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US!
WE WILL DRIVE IT OUT!"
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Send this message with your comments to comments@whitehouse.gov with a cc: to notorture@worldcantwait.org
CLIP
Send this letter to all your friends and have them send it to their friends. Tell them THIS MUST NOT PASS and that you are pledging to be in the streets on October 5 because The World Can’t Wait. Drive Out the Bush Regime!
In the next week we intend to send over 50 thousand of your responses to President Bush and the Congress. Send a copy of your messages to notorture@worldcantwait.org
Excellent opinion pieces against torture:
Ariel Dorfman in the Washington Post Sunday 9-24-06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201303_pf.html
Molly Ivins in TruthDig.com
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060920_molly_ivins_tortured_debate/
SIGN THE ABOVE STATEMENT at http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2942&Itemid=223#form
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See also:
The United States Of Torture (September 27, 2006)
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/27/the_united_states_of_torture.php
(...) Consequently, the United States now presents itself as what amounts to the globe's largest and most powerful rogue state—a nuclear-armed superpower capable of projecting military force to the furthest corners of the earth, acting utterly without legal or moral constraint whenever the president proclaims it necessary. The idea that striking such a posture on the world stage will serve our long-term interests is daft. American power has, for decades, rested crucially on the sense that the United States can be trusted and relied upon, on the belief that we use our power primarily to defend the community of liberal states and the liberal rules by which they conduct themselves rather than to undermine them.An America prepared to casually toss out the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian diplomacy—along with basic human decency and the rule of law as side helpings—is not a country others are going to want to cooperate with. It will constitute a threat to their interests and values. Nor will it be a country blessed with a lot of accurate intelligence. As Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has pointed out , an intelligence service shot-through with demands that it torture people "degenerates into a playground for sadists," the service itself "an army of butchers" skilled at terrorizing its victims but hardly capable of unraveling complicated investigations.It's a grim future brought to us by grim and deranged men—by people who seem to have developed an unhealthy level of admiration for America's enemies. (They want the country they run to transform itself into a facsimile of its evil adversaries.) It's a future in which it may become increasingly hard for decent citizens of this country to say truthfully that they're proud to be Americans.
Are We Really So Fearful? by Ariel Dorfman (9-24-06)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201303_pf.html
It still haunts me, the first time -- it was in Chile, in October of 1973 -- that I met someone who had been tortured. To save my life, I had sought refuge in the Argentine Embassy some weeks after the coup that had toppled the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, a government for which I had worked. And then, suddenly, one afternoon, there he was. A large-boned man, gaunt and yet strangely flabby, with eyes like a child, eyes that could not stop blinking and a body that could not stop shivering.That is what stays with me -- that he was cold under the balmy afternoon sun of Santiago de Chile, trembling as though he would never be warm again, as though the electric current was still coursing through him. Still possessed, somehow still inhabited by his captors, still imprisoned in that cell in the National Stadium, his hands disobeying the orders from his brain to quell the shuddering, his body unable to forget what had been done to it just as, nearly 33 years later, I, too, cannot banish that devastated life from my memory.It was his image, in fact, that swirled up from the past as I pondered the current political debate in the United States about the practicality of torture. Something in me must have needed to resurrect that victim, force my fellow citizens here to spend a few minutes with the eternal iciness that had settled into that man's heart and flesh, and demand that they take a good hard look at him before anyone dare maintain that, to save lives, it might be necessary to inflict unbearable pain on a fellow human being. Perhaps the optimist in me hoped that this damaged Argentine man could, all these decades later, help shatter the perverse innocence of contemporary Americans, just as he had burst the bubble of ignorance protecting the young Chilean I used to be, someone who back then had encountered torture mainly through books and movies and newspaper reports. (...) Can't the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the "intelligence" that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness?Are we so morally sick, so deaf and dumb and blind, that we do not understand this? Are we so fearful, so in love with our own security and steeped in our own pain, that we are really willing to let people be tortured in the name of America? Have we so lost our bearings that we do not realize that each of us could be that hapless Argentine who sat under the Santiago sun, so possessed by the evil done to him that he could not stop shivering?
Torture (April 2006)
http://kucinich.us/issues/torture.php
How can a President say: "We do not torture" but reserve the right to do so? This type of deception and brutality is losing us essential and necessary friends all over the world. We are also losing our souls in exchange for an imaginary, short-term gain. In fact, some of the "intelligence" obtained by torture that there were WMDs in Iraq demonstrates that people who are being tormented will say anything to make the pain go away. We know of at least 28 prisoners that were killed during interrogation during our recent wars. One was a high-ranking Iraqi officer who, apparently, was not providing enough "actionable intelligence" on WMDs. While God may forgive us for our actions, others nations are not as generous.The reality is that the United States has employed torture and has transported people to certain torture -- and perhaps death. Torture is not an American value, and the President's signing statement reserving the right to torture is a clear violation of international and U.S. law that makes all of us -- and especially our soldiers -- less safe. The dismissal of the Geneva Convention as "quaint" and the legal gymnastics performed by this administration to justify brutalizing another human should shock all of us. The failure of Congress to confront the President over the lawless signing statement is another disturbing chapter in its failure to exercise oversight of an "out of control" administration.For the head of the C.I.A. to testify in front of Congress that "water boarding" is a "professional interrogation technique" is horrifying. In essence, the American people are being told that Thomas de Torquemada and the rest of the Spanish Inquisitors were not torturers when they used the "aselli," the water torment; they were merely professional and forceful questioners. Let us be candid, water boarding is a war crime. And following the administration's legal analysis, the Spanish inquisitors were not guilty of torture because their goal was not to inflict pain, it was merely to save souls. The fact that people would suffer pain was just an unfortunate by-product of saving souls.Nothing is more misleading -- or immoral -- than the use of the "ticking time bomb" scenario. Even if such a scenario existed -- which has yet to be documented -- does it justify wholesale torture and the brutalization of people we suspect could or might do something in the future? As we have learned, framing all threats as "imminent" is a convenient way to anaesthetize people's consciences to agree that the ends do justify the means. The America that people around the world have come to love and admire is being destroyed by degrees by messianic militarists who believe that torture and force are the tools God has given them to use. Clearly, if they simply employ them to merely save lives, why not employ them to save immortal souls? Torture degrades us as a people. History has shown that when torture is employed, interrogators become lazy and brutal, and many, many innocent people die or are destroyed for life. Our humanity is the first death in the process. My reasons for opposing torture are not just the clear moral prohibition, but a more practical reason: What would you do if your child was tortured -- especially if they were innocent, as so many tortured people are? Torture breeds torture and brutality. Torture is a slope no American should step onto.
Torture and civilian deaths reach record levels in Iraq (September 23, 2006)
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=SYM20060923&articleId=3309
The latest UN findings on Iraq provide a devastating picture of torture, escalating civilian deaths and lawlessness that represents a damning indictment of US-led occupation. Three years after the illegal invasion, the violent activities of the US military and its allies in suppressing any opposition have been supplemented by a spiralling sectarian civil war. According to a United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) report released on Wednesday, the civilian death toll throughout the country reached a record of 6,599 for July and August, or more than 100 a day, up from 5,818 for previous two months. The UNAMI figures plot a rise from 710 in January to 1,129 in April and 3,149 in June followed by 3,590 in July and 3,009 in August. The actual toll is likely to be far higher. (...) It is no surprise that shadowy government forces and various militia groups operate networks of secret torture chambers throughout Baghdad. Washington’s handpicked prime minister Awad Allawi set the example in 2004 when, according to eyewitness accounts to the Sydney Morning Herald, he personally shot dead at least six handcuffed prisoners in Baghdad’s Al-Amariyah security centre in front of police and US military personnel. As one of the eyewitnesses declared: “Allawi wanted to send a message to his policemen and soldiers not to be scared if they kill anyone.”Torture and brutal executions are now an everyday occurrence. The UNAMI report stated: “Bodies found at the Medico-Legal Institute often bear signs of severe torture, including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin, broken bones (back, hands and legs), missing eyes, missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills and nails.” Speaking in Geneva on Thursday, Manfred Nowak, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture and cruelty, declared that torture was “totally out of hand” in Iraq. “The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it had been in the times of Saddam Hussein,” he said. “You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed.” (...) The UNAMI report said 35,000 Iraqis were being held in detention at the end of August, a 28 percent increase from the end of June. Of those, 13,571 were being held by US and other foreign forces, which continue to conduct arbitrary, widespread searches and detentions. All the prisoners in US custody are being held indefinitely without charge, in flagrant violation of their basic democratic rights. As of September 9, only 1,445 had been put on trial in Iraqi courts, and 1,252 convicted. CLIP
Bush's 'Dirty War' Amnesty Law
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15104.htm
The United States is following the lead of "dirty war" nations, such as Argentina and Chile, in enacting what amounts to an amnesty law protecting U.S. government operatives, apparently up to and including President George W. Bush, who have committed or are responsible for human rights crimes.
Say No To Torture! - A Must Watch 2 Minute Video
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15106.htm
Torture is immoral, ineffective, and makes a mockery of civilization. The United States Congress is currently trying to write a law that would legalize torture and put those who commit such crimes, and the law that justifies them beyond the reach of any court.
Congress in dark on terror program
http://snipurl.com/x5ye
As lawmakers prepare to debate the CIA's special interrogation program for terrorism suspects, fewer than 10 percent of the members of Congress have been told which interrogation techniques have been used in the past, and none of them know which ones would be permissible under proposed changes to the War Crimes Act.
2.
THIS MUST BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY! PREPARATIONS FOR A US ATTACK ON IRAN ARE APPARENTLY WELL UNDER WAY AND DESPITE THE US' OWN MILITARY BRASS MISGIVINGS AND RESISTANCE TO THIS BLATANT AND CRIMINALLY INSANE AGGRESSION THUS SET IN MOTION, THE BUSH CABAL, DESPERATE FOR SOME MAJOR CRISIS TO STOP THEIR CONTINUING SLIDE IN THE POLLS AND THE INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCES - UNLESS MASS FRAUD IS PERPETRATED AGAIN TO STEAL THE NOVEMBER 7 MID-TERM ELECTIONS - MUST BE OPPOSED EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. THE WORLD CANNOT PASSIVELY WAIT FOR ARMAGEDDON TO BE LAUNCHED. CORPORATE GREED, POLITICAL CORRUPTION AND THE SHEER BUSH FAMILY MADNESS MUST BE STOPPED IN THEIR TRACK BY A MASSIVE POPULAR JUGGERNAUT OF PROTESTS AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. AGAIN, AS EINSTEIN STATED: "The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."...
From: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061009/lindorff
War Signals?
Dave Lindorff - September 21, 2006
This article was updated Sept. 27 to clarify the timing of the shift in deployment of the US Naval strike force. While the Eisenhower was nearing a scheduled deployment following nuclear refueling, its departure from Norfolk was recently moved forward so that it can reach the Iran region before November.
As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible US military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.
As Time writes in its cover story, "What Would War Look Like?," evidence of the forward deployment of minesweepers and word that the chief of naval operations had asked for a reworking of old plans for mining Iranian harbors "suggest that a much discussed--but until now largely theoretical--prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran."
According to Lieut. Mike Kafka, a spokesman at the headquarters of the Second Fleet, based in Norfolk, Virginia, the Eisenhower Strike Group, bristling with Tomahawk cruise missiles, has received orders to depart the United States in a little over a week. Other official sources in the public affairs office of the Navy Department at the Pentagon confirm that this powerful armada is scheduled to arrive off the coast of Iran on or around October 21.
The Eisenhower had been in port at the Naval Station Norfolk for several years for refurbishing and refueling of its nuclear reactor; it had not been scheduled to depart for a new duty station until at least a month later, and possibly not till next spring. Family members, before the orders, had moved into the area and had until then expected to be with their sailor-spouses and parents in Virginia for some time yet. First word of the early dispatch of the "Ike Strike" group to the Persian Gulf region came from several angry officers on the ships involved, who contacted antiwar critics like retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner and complained that they were being sent to attack Iran without any order from the Congress.
"This is very serious," said Ray McGovern, a former CIA threat-assessment analyst who got early word of the Navy officers' complaints about the sudden deployment orders. (McGovern, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the CIA, resigned in 2002 in protest over what he said were Bush Administration pressures to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq. He and other intelligence agency critics have formed a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.)
Colonel Gardiner, who has taught military strategy at the National War College, says that the carrier deployment and a scheduled Persian Gulf arrival date of October 21 is "very important evidence" of war planning. He says, "I know that some naval forces have already received 'prepare to deploy orders' [PTDOs], which have set the date for being ready to go as October 1. Given that it would take about from October 2 to October 21 to get those forces to the Gulf region, that looks about like the date" of any possible military action against Iran. (A PTDO means that all crews should be at their stations, and ships and planes should be ready to go, by a certain date--in this case, reportedly, October 1.) Gardiner notes, "You cannot issue a PTDO and then stay ready for very long. It's a very significant order, and it's not done as a training exercise." This point was also made in the Time article.
So what is the White House planning?
On Monday President Bush addressed the UN General Assembly at its opening session, and while studiously avoiding even physically meeting Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was also addressing the body, he offered a two-pronged message. Bush told the "people of Iran" that "we're working toward a diplomatic solution to this crisis" and that he looked forward "to the day when you can live in freedom." But he also warned that Iran's leaders were using the nation's resources "to fund terrorism and fuel extremism and pursue nuclear weapons." Given the President's assertion that the nation is fighting a "global war on terror" and that he is Commander in Chief of that "war," his prominent linking of the Iran regime with terror has to be seen as a deliberate effort to claim his right to carry the fight there. Bush has repeatedly insisted that the 2001 Congressional Authorization for the Use of Force that preceded the invasion of Afghanistan was also an authorization for an unending "war on terror."
Even as Bush was making not-so-veiled threats at the UN, his former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, a sharp critic of any unilateral US attack on Iran, was in Norfolk, not far from the Eisenhower, advocating further diplomatic efforts to deal with Iran's nuclear program--itself tantalizing evidence of the policy struggle over whether to go to war, and that those favoring an attack may be winning that struggle.
"I think the plan's been picked: bomb the nuclear sites in Iran," says Gardiner. "It's a terrible idea, it's against US law and it's against international law, but I think they've decided to do it." Gardiner says that while the United States has the capability to hit those sites with its cruise missiles, "the Iranians have many more options than we do: They can activate Hezbollah; they can organize riots all over the Islamic world, including Pakistan, which could bring down the Musharraf government, putting nuclear weapons into terrorist hands; they can encourage the Shia militias in Iraq to attack US troops; they can blow up oil pipelines and shut the Persian Gulf." Most of the major oil-producing states in the Middle East have substantial Shiite populations, which has long been a concern of their own Sunni leaders and of Washington policy-makers, given the sometimes close connection of Shiite populations to Iran's religious rulers.
Of course, Gardiner agrees, recent ship movements and other signs of military preparedness could be simply a bluff designed to show toughness in the bargaining with Iran over its nuclear program. But with the Iranian coast reportedly armed to the teeth with Chinese Silkworm antiship missiles, and possibly even more sophisticated Russian antiship weapons, against which the Navy has little reliable defenses, it seems unlikely the Navy would risk high-value assets like aircraft carriers or cruisers with such a tactic. Nor has bluffing been a Bush MO to date.
Commentators and analysts across the political spectrum are focusing on Bush's talk about dialogue, with many claiming that he is climbing down from confrontation. On the right, David Frum, writing on September 20 in his National Review blog, argues that the lack of any attempt to win a UN resolution supporting military action, and rumors of "hushed back doors" being opened in Washington, lead him to expect a diplomatic deal, not a unilateral attack. Writing in the center, Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler saw in Bush's UN speech evidence that "war is no longer a viable option" in Iran. Even on the left, where confidence in the Bush Administration's judgment is abysmally low, commentators like Noam Chomsky and Nation contributor Robert Dreyfuss are skeptical that an attack is being planned. Chomsky has long argued that Washington's leaders aren't crazy, and would not take such a step--though more recently, he has seemed less sanguine about Administration sanity and has suggested that leaks about war plans may be an effort by military leaders--who are almost universally opposed to widening the Mideast war--to arouse opposition to such a move by Bush and war advocates like Cheney. Dreyfuss, meanwhile, in an article for the online journal TomPaine.com, focuses on the talk of diplomacy in Bush's Monday UN speech, not on his threats, and concludes that it means "the realists have won" and that there will be no Iran attack.
But all these war skeptics may be whistling past the graveyard. After all, it must be recalled that Bush also talked about seeking diplomatic solutions the whole time he was dead-set on invading Iraq, and the current situation is increasingly looking like a cheap Hollywood sequel. The United States, according to Gardiner and others, already reportedly has special forces operating in Iran, and now major ship movements are looking ominous.
Representative Maurice Hinchey, a leading Democratic critic of the Iraq War, informed about the Navy PTDOs and about the orders for the full Eisenhower Strike Group to head out to sea, said, "For some time there has been speculation that there could be an attack on Iran prior to November 7, in order to exacerbate the culture of fear that the Administration has cultivated now for over five or six years. But if they attack Iran it will be a very bad mistake, for the Middle East and for the US. It would only make worse the antagonism and fear people feel towards our country. I hope this Administration is not so foolish and irresponsible." He adds, "Military people are deeply concerned about the overtaxing of the military already."
Calls for comment from the White House on Iran war plans and on the order for the Eisenhower Strike Group to deploy were referred to the National Security Council press office, which declined to return this reporter's phone calls.
McGovern, who had first told a group of anti-Iraq War activists Sunday on the National Mall in Washington, DC, during an ongoing action called "Camp Democracy," about his being alerted to the strike group deployment, warned, "We have about seven weeks to try and stop this next war from happening."
One solid indication that the dispatch of the Eisenhower is part of a force buildup would be if the carrier Enterprise--currently in the Arabian Sea, where it has been launching bombing runs against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and which is at the end of its normal six-month sea tour--is kept on station instead of sent back to the United States. Arguing against simple rotation of tours is the fact that the Eisenhower's refurbishing and its dispatch were rushed forward by at least a month. A report from the Enterprise on the Navy's official website referred to its ongoing role in the Afghanistan fighting, and gave no indication of plans to head back to port. The Navy itself has no comment on the ship's future orders.
Jim Webb, Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan Administration and currently a Democratic candidate for Senate in Virginia, expressed some caution about reports of the carrier deployment, saying, "Remember, carrier groups regularly rotate in and out of that region." But he added, "I do not believe that there should be any elective military action taken against Iran without a separate authorization vote by the Congress. In my view, the 2002 authorization which was used for the invasion of Iraq should not extend to Iran."
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See also:
The October Surprise
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092506Z.shtml
Gary Hart: "It should come as no surprise if the Bush administration undertakes a preemptive war against Iran sometime before the November election. Were these more normal times, this would be a stunning possibility, quickly dismissed by thoughtful people as dangerous, unprovoked, and out of keeping with our national character. But we do not live in normal times."
Iran Threatens 'Lightning' Response To Attacks (September 22, 2006)
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/09/203114e7-0724-4a4d-b186-3ca951ec51a6.html
Iran has warned its armed forces would strike back "like lightning" against any attack on the country and will destroy "the enemy." Iranian Vice President Parviz Davudi was speaking at an army parade to mark the anniversary of the outbreak of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in 1980. Davoodi also said that nuclear weapons have no place in Iran's defense doctrine and that Iran's Supreme Leader has declared them illegal. In comments also made on September 22, the commander in chief of Iran's army, Ataollah Salehi, said Iran does not need "unconventional weapons" to defeat any "foreign enemy." Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful but the West suspects Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons. The United States is pressing for sanctions after Iran ignored an August 31 UN Security Council deadline to suspend uranium enrichment. U.S. President George W. Bush has said all options are on the table to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Russia Selling Iran Missiles to Protect Bushehr Nuclear Reactor:
http://mosnews.com/news/2006/09/25/missiles.shtml
Russia, pledging to complete the Bushehr reactor, has offered to sell a range of surface-to-air missile systems to protect Iran's nuclear facilities, the Middle East Newsline reports.
Bush Solution to Global Warming: Bomb Iran by Dave Lindorff (September 24, 2006 )
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_dave_lin_060924_bush_solution_to_glo.htm
(...) Having just written a piece exposing evidence of the Bush administration's plans for war against Iran, let me suggest here why this might not be such a bad idea. (...) By some accounts, if the U.S. pops off a bunch of missiles at Iran, and ignites another major war in the Middle East, the result will be the effective shutdown not just of Iran, the world's second biggest producer of oil, but probably also of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, by far the largest oil producer in the world. This is because, as many military strategists have pointed out, Iran's responwse vwill be to incite the Shites who live in countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to go after American interests-and there is no bigger American interest than oil. Wells and pipelines are infinitely easier to destroy than to protect.Some analysts are projecting that oil prices could shoot past $150/barrel to as high as $200/barrel if an American-Iranian War breaks out in the Gulf. That might even be conservative thinking.At such prices, Americans would surely start car-pooling, and might even take up bicycling (which would also solve the nation's obesity epidemic). SUVs, trucks and vans would quickly end up in scrapyards, or mouldering in back yards. Air conditioners would vanish and home insulation would become a hot item, along with long underwear, sweaters and wool socks.An added benefit of war with Iran is that it would so drain the U.S. treasury that either the dollar would collapse, taking the U.S. economy along with it, as the government was forced to crank up interest rates, or else taxes would be raised to such a level as to crush consumer spending, with the same end result. Either way, the U.S. economy would end up in the tank-further reducing energy demand.I certainly have no desire to see anyone killed, American or Iranian, and consider that any attack on Iran by the U.S, besides being stupid, would be a war crime-a so-called "Crime Against Peace" under the Nuremburg Charter. That said, while Bush should be impeached, dragged before the Senate, removed from office and then indicted for war crimes if he launches yet another unprovoked war of aggression, at least we'll have the satisfaction of seeing a significant slowdown in global warming. Maybe then, with that brief respite, and with Bush and the Republican Congress mercifully out of the way, we can start figuring out how to live at peace, not just with one another, but with the earth itself.
Israel Won't Allow Iran To Produce Nuclear Weapons (09-26-06)
http://snipurl.com/xek7
JERUSALEM (AP)--Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in comments published Tuesday that Israel wouldn't allow Iran, which it considers its top enemy, to produce nuclear weapons. "Israel can't accept the possibility of Iranians having nuclear weapons and we will act together with the international forces, starting with the Americans, in order to prevent it," Olmert told The Jerusalem Post daily in an interview. Olmert said he thought U.S. President George W. Bush was "absolutely determined" to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Israel, he added, won't accept a situation in which Iran possesses such arms. "I don't think Israel can be reconciled (to this)," Olmert said. "I don't intend to. This is a danger that is just one thing that we can't afford." Israel's concerns about Iran's nuclear capabilities have been compounded by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated calls to have Israel "wiped off the map." CLIP
Warships head to Iran: What are you going to do?
http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2944&Itemid=220
Ellsberg became a hero to the people when he released the Pentagon Papers in 1971. These papers exposed the deceit and lies the US government, during the administration of Lyndon Johnson, to expand and extend the war in Southeast Asia during the 1960's.Ellsberg spoke at the September 7th World Can’t Wait meeting in San Francisco. He spoke of the massive demonstrations that took place in the fall of 1969 across the US, and said of the demonstrators "What they didn’t know was that in fact they were stopping nuclear war. The president (at that time, Nixon) had made threats of nuclear war secretly several times starting in May and in August and September, saying that he was prepared to use nuclear weapons on Vietnam. They said that to the Russians and the North Vietnamese directly in Paris. And with 2 million people in the streets, he had to conclude that an ultimatum which was dated for November 1- … Historical analogy here: the fact is that when people did march in October and November 1969 - without even realizing that a crisis was imminent, they just saw the war was going on - they in fact stopped a massive escalation of the war. Which did take part sequentially – Laos, Cambodia, Haiphong--over the years, but the nuclear part, no."Now, we know that an attack on Iran is being planned and mobilized by the Bush regime. Read the latest articles in The Nation and Time Magazine for further exposure of this. And we know that Bush and several of his spokesmen have openly said that "all options are on the table". This, as everyone knows, means everything up to and including the use of nuclear weapons – "portable holocausts", to cite Ellsberg again. The consequences of this are horrific beyond description.The Democrats are aiding and abetting the Bush drive for war with Iran. They are assisting in providing justifications for it. Nothing less than a massive public repudiation of the entire Bush agenda and program can have any impact on stopping this. The question is: what are you going to do?
Media Tall Tales for the Next War
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092506I.shtml
Norman Solomon writes, "When the USA's biggest news weekly devotes five pages to scoping out a US air war against Iran, as Time did ... it's yet another sign that the wheels of our nation's war-spin machine are turning faster toward yet another unprovoked attack on another country."
3.
From: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15118.htm
Why Bush Will Nuke Iran
By Paul Craig Roberts
09/26/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The neoconservative Bush administration will attack Iran with tactical nuclear weapons, because it is the only way the neocons believe they can rescue their goal of US (and Israeli) hegemony in the Middle East.
The US has lost the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Generals in both war theaters are stating their need for more troops. But there are no troops to send.
Bush has tried to pawn Afghanistan off on NATO, but Europe does not see any point in sacrificing its blood and money for the sake of American hegemony. The NATO troops in Afghanistan are experiencing substantial casualties from a revived Taliban, and European governments are not enthralled over providing cannon fodder for US hegemony.
The “coalition of the willing” has evaporated. Indeed, it never existed. Bush’s “coalition” was assembled with bribes, threats, and intimidation. Pervez Musharraf, the American puppet ruler of Pakistan, let the cat out of the bag when he told CBS “60 Minutes” on September 24, 2006, that Pakistan had no choice about joining the “coalition.” Brute coercion was applied. Musharraf said Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage told the Pakistani intelligence director that “you are with us” or “be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age.” Armitage is trying to deny his threat, but Dawn Wire Service, reporting from Islamabad on September 16, 2001, on the pressure Bush was putting on Musharraf to facilitate the US attack on Afghanistan, states: “’Pakistan has the option to live in the 21st century or the Stone Age’ is roughly how US officials are putting their case.”
That Musharraf would volunteer this information on American television is a good indication that Bush has lost the war. Musharraf can no longer withstand the anger he has created against himself by helping the US slaughter his fellow Muslims in Bush’s attempt to exercise US hegemony over the Muslim world. Bush cannot protect Musharraf from the wrath of Pakistanis, and so Musharraf has explained himself as having cooperated with Bush in order to prevent the US destruction of Pakistan: “One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that’s what I did.” Nevertheless, he said, he refused Bush’s “ludicrous” demand that he arrest Pakistanis who publicly demonstrated against the US: “If somebody’s expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views.”
Bush’s defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel’s defeat by Hezbollah in Lebanon have shown that the military firepower of the US and Israeli armies, though effective against massed Arab armies, cannot defeat guerillas and insurgencies. The US has battled in Iraq longer than it fought against Nazi Germany, and the situation in Iraq is out of control. The Taliban have regained half of Afghanistan. The King of Saudi Arabia has told Bush that the ground is shaking under his feet as unrest over the American/Israeli violence against Muslims builds to dangerous levels. Our Egyptian puppet sits atop 100 million Muslims who do not think that Egypt should be a lackey of US hegemony. The King of Jordan understands that Israeli policy is to drive every Palestinian into Jordan.
Bush is incapable of recognizing his mistake. He can only escalate. Plans have long been made to attack Iran. The problem is that Iran can respond in effective ways to a conventional attack. Moreover, an American attack on another Muslim country could result in turmoil and rebellion throughout the Middle East. This is why the neocons have changed US war doctrine to permit a nuclear strike on Iran.
Neocons believe that a nuclear attack on Iran would have intimidating force throughout the Middle East and beyond. Iran would not dare retaliate, neocons believe, against US ships, US troops in Iraq, or use their missiles against oil facilities in the Middle East.
Neocons have also concluded that a US nuclear strike on Iran would show the entire Muslim world that it is useless to resist America’s will. Neocons say that even the most fanatical terrorists would realize the hopelessness of resisting US hegemony. The vast multitude of Muslims would realize that they have no recourse but to accept their fate.
Revised US war doctrine concludes that tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons cause relatively little “collateral damage” or civilian deaths, while achieving a powerful intimidating effect on the enemy. The “fear factor” disheartens the enemy and shortens the conflict.
University of California Professor Jorge Hirsch, an authority on nuclear doctrine, believes that an American nuclear attack on Iran will destroy the Non-Proliferation Treaty and send countries in pellmell pursuit of nuclear weapons. We will see powerful nuclear alliances, such as Russia/China, form against us. Japan could be so traumatized by an American nuclear attack on Iran that it would mean the end of Japan’s sycophantic relationship to the US.
There can be little doubt that the aggressive US use of nukes in pursuit of hegemony would make America a pariah country, despised and distrusted by every other country. Neocons believe that diplomacy is feeble and useless, but that the unapologetic use of force brings forth cooperation in order to avoid destruction.
Neoconservatives say that America is the new Rome, only more powerful than Rome. Neoconservatives genuinely believe that no one can withstand the might of the United States and that America can rule by force alone.
Hirsch believes that the US military’s opposition to the use of nuclear weapons against Iran has been overcome by the civilian neocon authorities in the Bush administration. Desperate to retrieve their drive toward hegemony from defeat in Iraq, the neocons are betting on the immense attraction to the American public of force plus success. It is possible that Bush will be blocked by Europe, Russia and China, but there is no visible American opposition to Bush legitimizing the use of nuclear weapons in behest of US hegemony.
It is astounding that such dangerous fanatics have control of the US government and have no organized opposition in American politics.
NUMEROUS Comments (195 as of September 28) including...
I fully agree with Mr. Roberts conclusions. It is no longer a matter of if, but a matter of when we attack Iran. Oh, there will be some manufactured pretext like a Gulf of Tonkin incident which was used to escalate the Vietnam War. Or a "terrorist attack" which we will blame on Iran just like we initially blamed Iraq for 9/11. When Iran retaliates, like they have every right to do, they will be attacked. As far as the nuclear scenario; we'll likely use low grade nuclear weapons to "save American lives in Iraq" or claim that the nuclear fallout is a result of our "precision missiles" destroying the Iranian nuclear bomb making factories. I can hear Fox News already spinning the above and at least 60% - 70% of the ignorant American people believing, even applauding it. But in the end, wars have unintended consequences and the consequences of this attack will plague us as long as this republic, or what's left of it, endures.
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The myth of a special and unique role for the U.S. among all the countries of the world has driven American foreign policy since the beginning. It was there in manifest destiny justifying the depraved butchering of native Americans; it has been behind one coup after the other over the last century, most recently the attempt to overthrow Chavez in Venezuela.
The only good thing I can say about the present horrific events is that this grandiose myth is getting a sword through its heart. We can only hope that with its death will come the death of neoconservatism, faith-based approaches to government intervention, new respect for the Bill of Rights, new restrictions on corporate control of governmental policy, and the death of Zionism. Of course, none of that is going to happen any time soon. People don't give up their fear-based delusions that easily. But what will happen is a growing check on U.S. and Israeli power, as this author points out. What he doesn't mention is the likely radicalization of Pakistan and its ability to give nukes to terrorists if we bomb Iran. The policies of the neocons and the Israelis are creating exactly what they feared. Perhaps that's their real game; only if we generate real threats to our security can our war on terror and transparent whines of victimization and antisemitism continue to have any credibility with voters.
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There is certainly plenty of evidence of intent to use "bunker busting" nuclear weapons against Iran in several deeply researched articles by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker. Roberts can perhaps be faulted for presuming to gauge the rationale behind such an insane decision. I for one fully expect the madmen who invaded Iraq, set up torture gulags around the world, and conspired with Israel to obliterate Lebanon, to do exactly what Roberts predicts.
CLIP
4.
From: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KUC20060923&articleId=3310
Bush Administration Plans for a US War vs. Iran
by Dennis Kucinich
September 23, 2006
Urgent Letter from Dennis Kucinich about Bush Administration Plans for a US War vs. Iran
Dear Friends,
The Bush Administration is preparing for war against Iran, using an almost identical drumbeat of weapons of mass destruction, imminent threat, alleged links to Al Queda, and even linking Iran with a future 911.
In the past few months reports have been published in Newsweek, ABC News and GQ Magazine that indicate the US is recruiting members of paramilitary groups to destabilize Iran through violence. The New Yorker magazine and the Guardian have written that US has already deployed military inside Iran. The latest issue of Time writes of plans for a naval blockade of Iran at the Port of Hormuz, through which 40% of the world’s oil supply passes. Other news reports have claimed that an air strike, using a variety of bombs including bunker busters to be dropped on over 1,000 targets, including nuclear facilities. This could obviously result in a great long term humanitarian and environmental disaster.
Earlier this year, I demanded congressional hearings on Iran and was able to secure the promise of a classified briefing from the Department of Defense, the State Department and the CIA. When the briefing was held, the Department of Defense and the State Department refused to show and are continuing to block any congressional inquiry into plans to attack Iran.
Just this past week, the International Atomic Energy Agency called “erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated” statements relating to Iran’s nuclear program which came from a staff report of the House Intelligence committee. Other intelligence officials have claimed over a dozen distortions in the report which, among other things, said Iran is producing weapons grade uranium. The Washington Post wrote: “The IAEA called that ‘incorrect’ noting that weapons grade uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5% under IAEA monitoring.”
I have demanded that the Government Oversight subcommittee on National Security and International Relations, of which I am the ranking Democrat, hold hearings to determine how in the world the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, viewed the report without correcting the obvious inaccuracies before it was published. Once again a case for war is being built on lies.
You will recall that four and a half years ago I warned this nation about the deception behind the build up to war against Iraq. Everything I said then turned out to be 100% right. I led 125 Democrats in opposing the Iraq war resolution in March of 2003. The very same people who brought us Iraq in 2003 are getting ready to bring us a war against Iran.
With your help, I will lead the way to challenge the Bush Administration’s march to war against Iran. Please support my campaign for re-election with a generous donation to help continue my work in the Congress. The plan to attack Iran, on its face, threatens the safety of every US soldier serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the countless Iranian lives at risk and the threat to world peace and environmental catastrophes.
With your support, I intend to continue to insist upon:
(1) Direct negotiations with Iran.
(2) The US must guarantee Iran and the world community that it will not attack Iran.
(3) Iran must open once again to international inspections of its nuclear program.
(4) Iran must agree not to build nuclear weapons.
Many of you joined me three years ago as I ran for President to challenge the deliberate lies about WMDs, Iraq and 911, Iraq and Al Queda and the Niger “yellowcake” claims which put us onto the path of an unnecessary, illegal, costly war in Iraq. The Iraq war has caused greater instability and violence in the world community. In the meantime, our government has used the oxymoronic war on terror to trample our Constitution, rip up the Bill of Rights and rule by fear.
Please join with me as we continue our efforts for the end of fear and the beginning of hope, for international dialogue, for cooperation and for peace.
Thank you,
Dennis
5.
From: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=N20060921&articleId=3299
The March to War: Iran Preparing for US Air Attacks
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
September 21, 2006
Iran is bracing itself for an expected American-led air campaign. The latter is in the advanced stages of military planning.
If there were to be war between the United States and Iran, the aerial campaign would unleash fierce combat. It would be fully interactive on multiple fronts. It would be a difficult battle involving active movement in the air from both sides.
If war were to occur, the estimates of casualties envisaged by American and British war planners would be high.
The expected wave of aerial attacks would resemble the tactics of the Israeli air-war against Lebanon and would follow the same template, but on a larger scale of execution.
The U.S. government and the Pentagon had an active role in graphing, both militarily and politically, the template of confrontation in Lebanon. The Israeli siege against Lebanon is in many regards a dress rehearsal for a planned attack on Iran.1
A war against Iran is one that could also include military operations against Syria. Multiple theatres would engulf many of the neighbors of Iran and Syria, including Iraq and Israel/Palestine.
It must also be noted that an attack on Iran would be of a scale which would dwarf the events in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Levant. A full blown war on Iran would not only swallow up and incorporate these other conflicts. It would engulf the entire Middle East and Central Asian region into an extensive confrontation.
An American-led air campaign against Iran, if it were to be implemented, would be both similar and contrasting in its outline and intensity when compared to earlier Anglo-American sponsored confrontations.
The war would start with intense bombardment and attacks on Iran's infrastructure, but would be different in its scope of operations and intensity.
The characteristics of such a conflict would also be unpredictable because of Iran's capabilities to respond. And in all likelihood, Iran would launch its own potent attacks and extend the theatre of war by attacking U.S. and American-led troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf.
The United States must also take into account the fact that Iran unlike Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon would be an opponent with the capability to resist the US sponsored attacks on the ground, but also on the sea and in the air.
Unlike the former opponents faced by the United States and its partners, Iran would be able to target the military launch pads used by the United States. Iran would also be able to attack the U.S. supply and logistical hubs in the Persian Gulf. American ships carrying supplies, troops, and warplanes would be vulnerable to Iranian counter-attacks by way of Iranian missiles, warplanes, and naval forces. It is no mere coincidence that Iran has been demonstrating its military capabilities during the “Blow of Zolfaqar” war games conducted in late August .2
Iranian Preparations for an American-led Air Campaign
The United States has continually threatened to attack Iran. These threats are made under the pretext of halting the development of nuclear weapons in Iran. The development of nuclear weapons by Iran is something the IAEA and its inspectors have refuted as untrue3, but the United States insists on continuing the charade as grounds for a military endgame with Iran.
The threat of an American-led attack against Iran with the heavy involvement of Israel and Britain, amongst others, has primed Iran to prepare itself for the anticipated moment. Over the years, this has led Iran to stride for self-sufficiency in producing its own advanced military hardware and the development of asymmetrical tactics to combat the United States.
Iranian defense planners have stated publicly that they have learned from the cases of neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq. They are acutely aware of the U.S. military’s heavy reliance on aerial strikes.
August 2006 saw the start of the virtually unprecedented events of the Blow of Zolfaqar war games throughout Iran and its border provinces.4 These were similar to those conducted in April 2006.
CLIP - read the rest at http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=N20060921&articleId=3299
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See also:
The Dangers of Nuclear War (2006-08-01)
http://202.157.177.234/helencaldicott.wmv
Authoritative analysis of the devastating impacts of a nuclear attack on Iran - by Helen Caldicott. -- Truly horrendous fall-out consequences especially if the US and/or Israel cross the Armageddon threshold and use nuclear or even thermonuclear bombs against Iran... with deadly consequences -- millions of tons of radioactive rock pulverized and the fall out quickly reaching Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, with millions of dead in Iran and ever-lasting radiation sickness for tens of millions of people, and soon the entire Northern hemisphere would also be contaminated. She also exposed what she described as "the most serious crisis the Earth has ever faced, right now," because of the US plans to attack Iran, most possibly with nuclear weapons, which could open the Pandora box of other countries resorting to nuclear weapons as well.
6.
From: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15051.htm
Imperialism 101 - The US Addiction to War, Mayhem and Madness
- Part II - Part I at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14995.htm
By Stephen Lendman
Part I of this article explained that the US was always a warrior, imperial nation, building it in steps and addicted to its madness. First we took it from its original inhabitants; then we expanded it beyond our borders by seizing the half of Mexico we wanted; later we established colonies abroad; and now, our method of choice is to rule the world through compliant leaders in client states everywhere serving our interests. We began doing it gradually following WW II when we emerged as the only dominant nation left standing, unchallengeable as the world's only economic, political and military superpower. Even before the war ended, we planned to take full advantage of that indomitable status once it did. We pursued it throughout the "cold war" and in the 1990s when it was over. Then came 9/11, the gloves came off in the Bush administration, and top officials in it ended any pretense of what our real aims are. The rest, as they say, is history, and the nations we target in our quest for world dominance and our own people at home pay a dreadful price. Below is a case study of our imperial madness in Iraq documenting how painful that price is.
A Case Study In Imperial Mayhem and Madness and Its Disasterous Consequences - First the Victims
If the US had a slogan or motto on how best to fight wars it might be "all's surely fair in war as well as love." The only rules we observe are the ones we make up as we go along. With that code of conduct and with total disregard for the rule of domestic or international law, designated targets can only expect their earth scorched followed by a living hell delivered in the name of democracy and liberation. Iraq, like Southeast Asia in the sixties and seventies and Nicaragua and El Salvador in the eighties, is a classic example with Afghanistan being more of the same. The people on our receiving end of our gunsights know democracy American-style is none at all.
For anyone paying attention to events unfolding in Iraq from the few credible sources available (meaning unembedded journalists, reports from our disillusioned military and leaks including high level ones), there's little doubt the situation on the ground is disastrous and getting worse - for us as well as the Iraqis. From these reports on the ground, we continue learning more of what the Pentagon and administration try to suppress, always with the full cooperation of the corporate-run media. But the truth can't be hidden, the lies are unravelling, and the charade of progress is being seen as a shamless myth.
For 26 million Iraqis, liberation American-style is none whatever. For them it's an endless living hell nightmare since the US first attacked and invaded in January, 1991. At that time we deliberately and illegally destroyed essential infrastructure like power generating stations and clean water facilities vital to the health, welfare and safety of the people. We also wontonly slaughtered many thousands of defenseless civilians and Iraqi military who had given up the fight they wanted no part of in the first place. The likely toll was at least 100,000 killed in just a few weeks of brutal one-sided combat mostly inflicted from the air against a target country we knew was defenseless. Our initial cost was modest for an operation involving 580,000 military personal - 146 killed (including by friendly fire) and 467 wounded. A far greater cost to US forces would show up later that's discussed below.
What followed Operation Desert Storm was a dozen years of continued air-assault bombings along with oppressive and unjustifiable economic sanctions. Combined they destroyed all the institutions of a modern civil society which Iraq was prior to 1991. They left in their wake an epic humanitarian disaster by every measure imaginable including median Iraqi income creating mass poverty. Because of the country's oil wealth, Iraq was once the most advanced and developed country in the Middle East with a per capita income of $2,313 in 1979. By 2003, that income had declined to $255 per capita and in 2004 it had fallen further to about $144. It's easy to understand why based on a study by the college of economics at Baghdad University that estimated the unemployment rate to be about 70%. Even the so-called "oil for food" program did little to relieve the crisis prior to the current invasion and war. It wasn't intended to as the US plan was to inflict the greatest possible hardships on the people hoping it would encourage them to rise up and topple Saddam. In fact, it had the opposite effect despite the severity of the toll. Instead of blaming Saddam, Iraqis relied on him for whatever relief they could get. It wasn't much or nearly enough because the US allowed him little to give.
The combination of war and economic sanctions likely caused the death of at least one million by even conservative estimates including 500,000 children. Other estimates put the number as high as 1.5 million in total by the end of the nineties. When Denis Halliday resigned in 1998 as UN head of Iraqi humanitarian relief he said he did so because he "had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over one million individuals, children and adults." He went on to say 5,000 Iraqi children were dying needlessly every month.
Conditions got far worse following the US illegal aggression beginning in March, 2003. The daily toll of death and destruction from the ongoing endless conflict is unknown precisely, but even honest conservative estimates are appalling and shocking despite efforts by the Pentagon to suppress them. The British Lancet reported in October, 2004 by their "conservative assumptions" an Iraqi toll of about 100,000 "excess deaths" post March, 2003. They then updated their earlier estimate in February, 2006 to a likely 300,000 that seven months later is considerably higher. Other assessments suggest an even greater number, up to 500,000 according to one estimate a few months ago. Whatever the true number, the US inflicted disaster on Iraq and its people is one of epic proportions in all respects.
It's destroyed a once prosperous nation and left in its wake today a surreal lawless armed camp wasteland with few or no essential services like electricity, clean water, medical care, fuel or most everything else needed for sustenance and survival. It shows up in Baghdad's morgue that can't cope with the number of corpses it gets daily while those still living can't get desperately needed care at hospitals unable to provide it. It's also there in the US-run torture-prisons where anyone can be brutalized in a kind of a ritual foreplay for no reason at all. Thing's aren't improving. They get steadily worse as the occupation grinds on and death squads room at will including the US "Salvador option" ones modeled after the types used in the Reagan era against the leftist guerrilla resistance in El Salvador in the 1980s that murdered many thousands. This is what life in most of Iraq is now like, and it clearly warrants the label genocide. It also makes all US officials at the highest levels responsible for it guilty of egregious war crimes and crimes against humanity. Will they ever be held to account for what they've done? Never, as long as the US occupier lives by the rules of victor's justice that insures none at all for the victims.
A notable sign of US-style justice happened at the end of July when the Pentagon awarded the Distinguished Service Medal (DDSM) to retiring General Geoffrey Miller who supervised the infamous US torture-prisons at Guantanamo and later Abu Ghraib. The DDSM was established by Richard Nixon's 1970 Executive Order so the Secretary of Defense could award it to officers of the US Armed Forces "whose exceptional performance of duty and contributions to national security or defense have been at the highest levels." Clearly generals or other officers in charge of torture now qualify for the award.
The Toll of Mayhem and Madness On Our Own Military Forces On the Ground and Reporters
No one should ever believe anything from government sources, especially our own. We practically invented and defined the art of disseminating lies and practicing deceit. We're at it daily, particularly in how and what we report on the war in Iraq. The military holds update briefings at its media nerve center for the war - CentCom. It's a worthless exercise there and whenever else US officials report on the war. Anyone expecting to get a true picture of conditions on the ground won't ever because the most important information known is censored or suppressed. In times of war, the first casualty is truth, and the corporate-run media is always willing to oblige to keep it that way.
The Pentagon is also ready to use its muscle to censor, shut down, or destroy any news source in the country that may reveal what it wants suppressed. It repeatedly harasses and assaults Al-Jazeera closing it down and in 2003 attacked its Baghdad offices by air killing one of its correspondents and injuring another. Previously in Afghanistan in November, 2001, Al-Jazeera's Kabul offices were destroyed by a US missile in a deliberate attempt to stop unfavorable news reports from coming out. Another time a US tank with no provocation fired point blank at the Palestine Hotel in the capitol where most non-embedded international journalists are based killing reporters from Reuters and the Spanish network Telecino. These are just a few examples of the deadly effects of US efforts to silence honest news reporting from the country. The International Press Institute (IPI) keeps a journalist death watch count and reports that including all of 2003 76 journalists have been killed in Iraq by all assailants making this country by far the most dangerous venue in the world for members of the fourth estate. That number has now been updated by other sources that report since March, 2003 to the present 107 journalists and other media workers have been killed in this most dangerous of all places for them to work.
In spite of the danger and toll its taken, much of what Washington and the corporate-run media conceal is being reported from unembedded journalists and a growing number of unofficial accounts emerging or leaking out. They show what conditions are really like on the ground and the effect the conflict has had on US ground forces in the country. They're being increasingly stressed and terrified out of their minds, most are physically and/or psychologically traumatized or ill, many quite seriously from the deadly effects of depleted uranium (DU) poisoning and other toxins that have already disabled as many as 350,000 or more Gulf war veterans according to what can be pieced together from the little information the Veterans Administration (VA) reports (they don't explain from what or make a serious effort to find out). The psychological toll is also growing from witnessing or obeying orders to participate in the daily barbaric slaughter of Iraqi civilians including women, children, the elderly and infirm. The result is the rate of suicides is believed to be rising to alarming levels as is the number of desertions the Pentagon reports to be about 40,000 since 2000 from all branches of the military, half of them from the Army. Over 5,500 of them are Iraq related (the Pentagon keeps this very quiet) with many dozens more joining their ranks each month. In addition, many others are refusing to return to Iraq for another tour of duty after serving there one or more times. Those who do it unannounced are being quietly discharged in most cases, while the ones going public to denounce the war saying they won't serve in it any longer face courts martial, dishonorable discharge and possible prison terms.
Little of the above information has been reported, but most disturbing of all is the true unreported daily death and injury toll of US military personnel that's far higher than the official numbers. Department of Defense (DOD) reports are now being quietly circulated indicating over 12,000 dead, not the current announced total approaching 2,700. That figure includes thousands of previously unreported deaths of US military personnel who died en route to German or other hospitals or after arriving there. There's also evidence from Military Air Transport Service (MATS) manifests that show many more bodies shipped to Dover Air Force Base than are officially reported when there are any reports at all.
The true number of serious injuries has also been grossly understated. It could be twice as high as the official numbers based on reports from the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany alone that has treated over 25,000 wounded military patients even as the DOD only officially acknowledges around 15,000 in total and then quietly at first increased the number to about 19,000. These injuries, rarely discussed, include loss of limbs, brain damage and other debilitations that will scar those affected by them for the rest of their lives if after treatment and recovery they even survive. And there's never any mention of the later physical and/or psychological pain and suffering veterans endure or how many of them had or likely will have their lives shortened as a result of the time they spent in combat theaters "serving their country."
In addition to the stress of trauma, possible death or serious injury US forces face, they must also cope with the problems of daily life on the ground making their lives difficult or too often unbearable. Many of their Forward Operations Bases don't get enough daily drinking water and other necessities such as proper food to eat regularly. It makes an intolerable situation even worse. For many there's also a lack of basic amenities like clean clothes, a daily shower and a comfortable bed to sleep in. In addition, the equipment on the ground is being consumed and not replaced including weapons, vehicles, ordinance, body armor and most everything else. Despite the multi-billions spent on this imperial adventure, too little of it is going to "the boots on the ground," because too much of it is budgeted for corporate friends of the administration feasting on huge no-bid contracts. The situation isn't improving. In fact, it's steadily deteriorating despite official denials.
By the time our forces are finally withdrawn from Iraq, as one day they will, the human disaster will be almost incomprehensible. From just a short one-time deployment during the 1991 Gulf war, hundreds of thousands of our forces sent there are now on some form of disability either from the deadly effects of DU poisoning, the stew of other toxins they were exposed to, the physical injuries they received or the permanent psychological scars they may take to the grave. But the worst is yet to come. Beginning with the Afghanistan war in late 2001 and the Iraq war from March, 2003, over 1.3 million of our military forces have served one or more tours of duty for extended periods in what are beyond question the most dangerous and toxic environments on earth. The best estimates (because the VA won't say) are that between 30 - 70% of Gulf war vets so far are now on some kind of disability. If only that same range is applied to the 1.3 million of our military now serving or having served in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, between 400,000 and 900,000 of them may end up on disability or die from exposure to the DU munitions used in these wars which we've learned are vastly more toxic than the ones used in the Gulf war. And if they manage to avoid DU poisoning, they may succumb to the effects from the many other toxic pollutants they had to live with or become scarred or maimed for life from the violent environments they had to serve in or the acts they had to commit fulfilling their duty there.
In simple terms, it's likely we can expect an eventual overall catastrophic human disaster and one being covered up because of its enormity. US high officials and Pentagon brass that planned this holocaust to both sides likely knew the human cost to our forces alone would be high but decided anyway the innocent mostly young people we sent to fight were expendable and could be written off to be replaced by new and fresh equally innocent recruits - as long as their dirty secret never gets out. The lives lost or ruined on both sides are dismissed as "collateral damage" or just a "price that has to be paid." It's a human price and one that's paid to enrich well-connected big corporations that love wars because they're so profitable.
CLIP - Read the rest at http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15051.htm
Note from Jean: I managed to read this horror story up to this point - which is about one third of the whole article - but had to stop there in utter complete disgust. Not that I had learned lots of new things, but the stark reminder of all these appalling crimes put together, things that, to remain a sane human being, one usually simply pushes back far in the back of one’s mind, is becoming too much to bear. I would love to be able to leave you with an empowering, encouraging note, but all that comes to mind is to pray for all the souls who have been brutally assaulted by the soulless cruelty of the desperately lost souls responsible for these ignominious crimes. A time of reckoning will soon come when all will see what has been done, and what needs to happen to heal the wounded hearts, atone for all that madness, and forever ban greed, war and violence from the face of the Earth, to leave only compassion, peace and love to reign in every land and every heart.
7.
Forwarded by "P. Dalton" pdalton@uneedspeed.net> opn Sept 24
From: http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_julie_wa_060922_bush_fighting_hard_a.htm
Bush Fighting Hard Against Impeachment!
by Julie Washington
September 22, 2006
Democrats, Independents, and all Americans who care deeply about this county, must work hard against this Administration like our lives depend on it. Bush Is!
Does one really believe that President Bush is campaigning/making all those public speeches on tortue, terrorism, etc., solely to help Republican candidates for the upcoming November elections? No. He is running, fighting hard not to be Impeached, not to have Investigations into his illegal wire tapping, Halliburton's mishandling of funds, and the lies and misconceptions which got us into this war/occupation in Iraq.
So too, must we American people, fight hard to defeat this insult and injustice on our Country like our lives depended on it, BECAUSE it does. Our lives, our neighbor's lives, the soldiers' lives, our children and the lives of those innocent people in Iraq.
Although Iraq voted for a government, it is a Dummy government, in name only. Whenever the Iraqi people need anything from their government, they go to the U.S. Occupying Forces there, not their democratic elected government, because they have no power; they control nothing. Not the oil, not the water, not the electricity. In fact, the Iraqi people only have the use of water and electricity about half of the day. And, where are the hospitals and schools they promised to build? However they are Building U.S. Bases (4) and the soldiers are protecting the oil in Iraq but not the Iraqi people to ensure their health, wealth and welfare. Haliburton, Cheney and Bush control the oil and make all the profits and manipulate