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November 22, 2006

Turning Tide of History #20: Shifting From Homo Bellicus to Homo Noeticus

Hello everyone!

Another powerfully informative compilation for your review.

Feel free to share widely

Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com

P.S. Your feedbacks are as always welcomed and may be included in a coming compilation - unless you prefer they are not. Circulating this compilation (or any part of it) and personally inviting your correspondents to subscribe to this list would also help enlarge the circle of people who have access to this material. Please include the following note and the URL address for the archived copy below along with your forwards, so others may have the opportunity to explore the original copy, if they so choose.

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THE QUOTES

"Thank you so much, Jean! I realise only now, coming back after a week in the mountains and running to read you, that I’m addicted to your news… Since I started reading your post several years ago, I slowly stopped reading newspapers and watching TV news, and you became my essential source of connection with the outside world! We all bless you!!!"

- Dana Stockar (dstockar@yahoo.com)


"It's a fact of history that once the hounds of war are unleashed, the incalculable consequences and the costs render nearly all victories on the ground pyrrhic, victories that are hollow in the end. For wars generate wars, not peace. And yet homo bellicus has not learnt any lesson down the ages; he has graduated from the arrow and bow to the nuclear bomb and missile, but this “progress” is only Faustian, causing the death of the spirit. We have to measure one advancement in terms of ethical perceptions, not in terms of arms. It’s not as though each war is, ipso facto, evil, but we must first know the moral compulsions which prompted us to wage what we call “just wars”."

- Darshan Singh Maini - Taken from The scourge of war and war rhetoric - Costs, consequences make every victory hollow


"The missing link in our evolutionary tree certainly indicates a primary intervention in our genetic make-up. If this is the case, then the New Humans may well have been orchestrated in a similar way with genetic upgrades in our DNA. But the present upgrade is so radical that it appears like an evolutionary jump start, hence the name the New Humans.If humanity is experiencing a quantum leap in its evolution, why is it happening now? Star Children believe they are here to ‘guide the awakening of terrestrial consciousness’. (...) Robert Dean believes that we are very closely connected to aliens, both spiritually and physically, and suggests that they are responsible for the Star Child phenomenon. The development of a new humanity called Homo Noeticus is a term coined by John White who studied parapsychology and noetics (the investigation of consciousness). (...) Five-year-old Aiden from Western Australia says ‘I don’t mind going through the walls, and they teach me more on the ships than I learn at school. They come through walls, float not walk, become invisible, but are still around!’ His mother writes, ‘This astounds me. He is very blasé about it and says he will introduce them to me one day! Aiden knows what I am thinking, finishes my sentences for me, and feels pain when I do’ (from Awakening, 2002).Star Children can be aware of extraterrestrial educational programs when information is downloaded on a subconscious or super-conscious level. Jena is an eight-year-old girl in Perth who described this process as ‘knowledge bombs’ in her head, which sometimes hurt. They can have strange dreams where they know they are on-board spacecraft. They are taught to use their higher sense abilities and they know when they have done well at such tests.Whitley Strieber, experiencer and author of The Secret School, also experienced such lessons on spacecraft. This testimony certainly suggests that the New Humans are not only upgraded physically and psychologically, but are also taught to operate on a broader multi-dimensional frequency which helps them access information and knowledge not available to others.

- Taken from The New Humans (much more in this compilation...)


"The violations of human rights in the Palestinian territories are intolerable."

- Louise Arbour, UN high commissioner for human rights



CONTENTS

1. Feedback from the Recorder
2. Call on your senator to oppose the U.S.-India nuclear deal
3. Prison for Anti-Nuke Clowns, US WMDs Protected
4. THE EARTH IS SHRINKING: Advancing Deserts and Rising Seas Squeezing Civilization
5. RUMSFELD, GONZALES, TENET, OTHERS TO BE CHARGED WITH WAR CRIMES
6. Americans To Be Tortured For Refusing To Show ID?
7. CIA analysis finds no Iranian nuclear weapons drive: report
8. The Planet X and the "JESUIT FOOTAGE"
9. THE CASE FOR EXOPOLITICS: USHERING IN A COSMIC DIALOGUE
10. Countdown to an official and open contact with ETs ???
11. Exopolitics and Global Warming: A Cosmic Connection
12. THE NEW HUMANS: 5th Root race, Indigos, China’s Super Psychics & Star Children
13. This lame duck can do lasting damage
14. The end of the Colombian blood letting could begin in Washington
15. A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives
16. Out of gas



WORTHY OF YOUR ATTENTION

Hope by Willie White Feather - Running time 6 min. 30 sec. POWERFULLY EVOCATIVE!
http://eveningrain.com/Hope.html
Plot Summary: Based on the ideas of Native American storyteller, Willy Whitefeather, 'Hope' illustrates the cause and effect of modern life out of balance... Recommended by Dolores (ravenspiritsong@yahoo.com)

URGENT SIGNATURE DRIVE - Over 50,000 people have already signed!
http://www.ceasefirecampaign.org
Ceasefire Campaign have launched an urgent initiative to show American and British leaders that people all over the world are calling for a peaceful solution in Iraq. They're aiming to gather 100,000 signatures, and they'll publish the total in major US and UK newspapers at the end of the week.

Canada the "piecemaker" - Very informative slideshow - CANADA'S HYPOCRISY IS SICKENING!
http://coat.ncf.ca/Slides/3in1/001.htm
THIS IS A MUST SEE AND SHARE FOR ALL CANADIANS! HERE ARE SOME EXCERPTS...
(...) Canadians have been fooled, again and again. Such deceptions are easy in Canada because there is a huge myth towering over us, the myth that Canada is a great force for global peace. Most Canadians don’t have a clue that Canada is one of the world’s top military exporters and spenders, or that we even have a military industrial complex. (...) Canada’s multibillion dollar frigates are already deeply integrated into the U.S. war machine. These warships helped enforce the naval blockade that killed a million and a half Iraqis, mostly children under the age of five. And then there was the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. (...) Canadian frigates with some 1,300 Canadian troops working onboard, fulfilled a very important role in the invasion and occupation of of Iraq. They did this by protecting U.S. warships from attack on their way through the Persian Gulf. Canada's multibillion dollar frigates put U.S. warships safely in place so that they could launch their so-called “shock-and-awe” bombardment of Iraqi cities, killing untold thousands of innocent civilians and paving the way for the illegal occupation. So much for not being involved, eh? (...) Every year, Canada exports billions of dollars worth of high-tech military hardware to the U.S. These photos are from a Press for Conversion! (#53) which documented the fact that 100 Canadian war industries had supplied important parts and services for these three dozen major, weapons-delivery systems used in the Iraq war. (...) The U.S. has used these Canadian cluster bombs in Iraq. One of Bristol’s warheads is a cluster bomb with nine “High Explosive Multipurpose Submunitions.” On its website, the company brags that these cluster bombs have: “a scored interior body wall [that] optimizes fragment size against personnel.” Translation? These cluster bombs are designed to kill as many people as possible. (...) The A-10 Warthog is the main way that this radioactive waste product is disposed of in Iraq and elsewhere. It fires armour-piercing, heavier-than-lead, DU munitions. With its half life of over 2 billion years, DU is responsible for dramatically-increased cancer rates, not only in Iraq, but also in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. It will cause countless miscarriages, diseases and death in these and downwind countries for thousands of years. Canada is the world's top uranium producer and the top uranium supplier to the U.S. Our government pretends that our uranium exports are for “peaceful” purposes only, but they do nothing to stop its use in these munitions. (...) Canada also provides advisors and financial support to Iraq’s Interior Ministry. What's wrong with that?* This Ministry has been caught running torture centres,* Thousands of its officers have been withdrawn for corruption, and* It works with death squads accused of executing a thousand people per month in Baghdad alone this past summer. The RCMP, which isn't exactly known to worry much about the torture of Canadian citizens abroad (ask Maher Arar), should have nothing to do with this notorious Iraqi institution and its faceless commandos. CLIP - MUCH MORE ON THE REAL ROLE OF CANADA IN AFGHANISTAN, AND ALSO ABOUT THE FULL, AND DECEITFUL - PARTICIPATION OF CANADA TO THE LARGEST WEAPON DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM EVER, THE BALLISTIC MISSILE "DEFENSE" SYSTEM - Recommended by Nattanya (nattanya@telus.net)

Waging Peace - By Marianne Williamson
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15645.htm
A bill before Congress would establish a US Department of Peace. This measure would provide practical, nonviolent solutions for the problems of domestic and international conflict. It would apply the institutional heft of the US government to a serious effort not merely at avoiding war or waging war more effectively. It would take America to the next evolutionary step: It would proactively wage peace.

Orgasm for Peace ~ Solstice, Dec 22nd, 2006 ~ Peace Through Global Ecstasy
http://www.globalorgasm.org/demo.html AND http://www.GlobalOrgasm.org
Recommended by Larry Morningstar (mana7@earthlink.net)

Simpsons do Army Recruitment [VIDEO] (November 14, 2006)
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/44292/
The Army: Everything you like. Hat tip to The Largest Minority on this scathing clip of the Simpson's satirizing the recruitment process. Including a recruitment commercial so ridiculous it could only be taking its cues from actual recruitment commercials...

Cartoon of the month: To Impeach or Not To Impeach?
http://www.bendib.com/newones/2006/november/small/11-19-Impeach.jpg

Demoglad
http://www.markfiore.com/animation/glad.swf

FLASHBACK: Bush's 2000 RNC Convention hypocrisy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slmr024JYaA&mode=related&search=

Watch Al Jazeera English Live Broadcast
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15619.htm
Al Jazeera English, the new international news channel from the Qatar-based television network, has begun broadcasting in English from its main studios in Doha.

John Conner Crashes ANOTHER College (UCSD) With 9/11 Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50DyHQZ2llk

Mind, Memory and Archetype, Part I -- by Rupert Sheldrake http://www.satyacenter.com/news-global_visionaries-mind-memory-1
Morphic Fields: The Collective Unconscious - In this essay, I am going to discuss the concept of collective memory as a background for understanding Jung's concept of the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious only makes sense in the context of some notion of collective memory. This then takes us into a very wide-ranging examination of the nature and principle of memory-not just in human beings and not just in the animal kingdom; not even just in the realm of life-but in the universe as a whole. Such an encompassing perspective is part of a very profound paradigm shift that is taking place in science: the shift from the mechanistic to an evolutionary and wholistic world view. (...) Each species has its own fields, and within each organism there are fields within fields. Within each of us is the field of the whole body; fields for arms and legs and fields for kidneys and livers; within are fields for the different tissues inside these organs, and then fields for the cells, and fields for the sub-cellular structures, and fields for the molecules, and so on. There is a whole series of fields within fields. The essence of the hypothesis I am proposing is that these fields, which are already accepted quite widely within biology, have a kind of in-built memory derived from previous forms of a similar kind. The liver field is shaped by the forms of previous livers and the oak tree field by the forms and organization of previous oak trees. Through the fields, by a process called morphic resonance, the influence of like upon like, there is a connection among similar fields. That means that the field's structure has a cumulative memory, based on what has happened to the species in the past. This idea applies not only to living organisms but also to protein molecules, crystals, even to atoms. In the realm of crystals, for example, the theory would say that the form a crystal takes depends on its characteristic morphic field. Morphic field is a broader term which includes the fields of both form and behavior; hereafter, I shall use the word morphic field rather than morphogenetic. CLIP

Earth Activist Training - Planting the Seeds of Change
http://www.earthactivisttraining.org/
Earth Activist Training blends a full permaculture certification course with Earth-based spirituality, practical political effectiveness, and nature awareness. Learn how to transform land, communities, political systems, and yourself. Discover solutions, renew personal energy, and find hope for our world.

Starhawk: Finding and Holding the Vision - 6 week course - January 29 - March 11
http://www.maybelogic.org/courses2.htm
In the ancient, pre-Christian Goddess traditions of Europe and the Middle East, the earth is sacred: a living being that all of us are part of. Witches, shamans, and Pagans draw on the balance of life for knowledge, renewal and healing. But right now, at this crucial moment in time, that balance is threatened by global warming, social and environmental breakdown. Our society is faced with a huge challenge—the necessity for fundamental changes in our way of life. Each of us alive today is here for a purpose. We each have a unique role to play in bringing about that transformation—our own gifts, our own vision. And the earth needs us each to be our most creative, compassionate and powerful self.But how do we find that vision, our purpose for being here, our true work? How do we step up to the challenge, and how can we hold a vision through times of adversity, and find the courage to overcome fears, blocks and challenges? For some of us, it’s hard to see the vision clearly. Others may need support to take new steps and dare new paths. Some of us may already be on the road, but need help to sustain our energy and enthusiasm when obstacles loom and setbacks appear. The greatest gifts are often found after hard climbs on twisted paths.Magic, “the art of changing consciousness at will,” offers us tools. In this six week online course, Starhawk will guide us through a process of discernment and reflection, to find and identify our big vision, and develop the grounded spiritual practice that can be our base as we dare to make it real.Using readings, meditations, directed exercises, journaling and discussion, we’ll find the inner compass that can guide our choices, connect to the allies that can support us, find the courage to face challenges and overcome fears, and the strength to take our vision out into expression and action.When we put our lives toward the service of the sacred, powerful allies and great powers of regeneration and renewal work through us.
More on Starhawk: http://www.maybelogic.org/starhawk2.htm
To Enroll: http://www.maybelogic.org/enroll2.htm
News from Starhawk/winter schedule: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lightenlife/message/27778

THERESA MARIE GANDHI: Activist Poet - What Would MK Gandhi Do?
http://www.tmgandhi.com/
It was truly inspiring to be one among more than 60,000 who participated at the birth of a global movement for economic justice in Seattle, November 1999. While our non-violent civil disobedience in response to the World Trade Organization was dismissed and demonized by the corporate media, the Independent Media heard the many voices calling for change. Various articles posted on Independent Media discussed what to do next, when police can brutalize with impunity and arrest citizens for conspiring to exercise rights to free speech. Such articles inspired the following thoughts to the discussion.“What is today’s Salt March?” That has been my question since June 1983 at the Congress for the Planetary Initiate for the World We Choose. Gandhi’s issue was salt and the British tax on it, a natural resource. Today there is an active global movement by corporations to privatize water. Additionally, the WTO attempts to legalize the globalization of poverty and economic injustice instituting the New Corporate World Order. If these trends are not stopped it puts humanity on a fast track to extinction. CLIP Recommended by "Theresa Marie" (tmarie@whidbey.net) who wrote: "Howdy Jean, I have been on your list serve a couple of years now and really value the compilations that you assemble and send out. I've been an activist for over 30 years and currently live on Whidbey Island. My web page contains articles on timely topics, essays, poetry, comments I've submitted to various governmental plans of action affecting our environment and my HerStory. There is a link to my blog that I posted to 11-19-06 for the first time as an introduction. Normally I don't write about myself and future blogs will be mostly on current events and what folks can do about it. You will find them at http://www.tmgandhi.com and http://www.tmgandhi.blogspot.com

Greening the Desert
http://www.permaculture.org.au/greening.htm

Another Chris Angel video
http://homepage.mac.com/woz/filechute/magicfood.wmv



ALSO RECOMMENDED

Embittered Insiders Turn Against Bush (19 November 2006)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111906Y.shtml
The weekend after the statue of Saddam Hussein fell, Kenneth Adelman and a couple of other promoters of the Iraq war gathered at Vice President Cheney's residence to celebrate. The invasion had been the "cakewalk" Adelman predicted. Cheney and his guests raised their glasses, toasting President Bush and victory. "It was a euphoric moment," Adelman recalled. Forty-three months later, the cakewalk looks more like a death march, and Adelman has broken with the Bush team. He had an angry falling- out with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this fall. He and Cheney are no longer on speaking terms. And he believes that "the president is ultimately responsible" for what Adelman now calls "the debacle that was Iraq." Adelman, a former Reagan administration official and onetime member of the Iraq war brain trust, is only the latest voice from inside the Bush circle to speak out against the president or his policies. Heading into the final chapter of his presidency, fresh from the sting of a midterm election defeat, Bush finds himself with fewer and fewer friends. Some of the strongest supporters of the war have grown disenchanted, former insiders are registering public dissent and Republicans on Capitol Hill blame him for losing Congress. A certain weary crankiness sets in with any administration after six years. By this point in Bill Clinton's tenure, bitter Democrats were competing to denounce his behavior with an intern even as they were trying to fight off his impeachment. Ronald Reagan was deep in the throes of the Iran-contra scandal. But Bush's strained relations with erstwhile friends and allies take on an extra edge of bitterness amid the dashed hopes of the Iraq venture. "There are a lot of lives that are lost," Adelman said in an interview last week. "A country's at stake. A region's at stake. This is a gigantic situation... This didn't have to be managed this bad. It's just awful." The sense of Bush abandonment accelerated during the final weeks of the campaign with the publication of a former aide's book accusing the White House of moral hypocrisy and with Vanity Fair quoting Adelman, Richard N. Perle and other neoconservatives assailing White House leadership of the war. Since the Nov. 7 elections, Republicans have pinned their woes on the president. CLIP

Bush: Immigrants May Be Held Indefinitely
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111406Z.shtml
Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, the Bush administration said Monday, opening a new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees.

Grand Theft Pentagon
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111706F.shtml
A.K. Gupta writes: "It just goes to show how pathetic the media are that anyone believed even for a moment that Bush and the Republicans were interested in bipartisanship. Bush's push to keep John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN indicates how determined the White House is to continue the pursuit of its ideological agenda. While the mainstream media has picked up on this, few if any have noticed how the Bush administration is trying to trap the incoming Democratic majority with its absurd funding request for the war on terror."

Military may ask $127 Billions for wars
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-11-16-iraq-costs_x.htm
The Bush administration is preparing its largest spending request yet for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a proposal that could make the conflict the most expensive since World War II.

United States Rides Weapons Bonanza Wave
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15677.htm
War, instability, and high oil prices have created a perfect storm of profit for the world's weapons manufacturers. This year, military analysts predict the biggest arms bonanza since 1993... which is saying something because in the aftermath of the first Gulf War the global industry reaped the benefits of a $42 billion arms race. As the world's largest producer and exporter, the United States is riding the wave. For fiscal year 2006, which ended on September 31, the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency churned out notices for $21 billion in arms sales offers . In most cases, that agency is required to notify Congress of all potential major arms deals worth more than $14 million. In one typical day—September 28—the DSCA issued notification on $5.5 billion in agreements. South Korea would get $1.5 billion in Patriot missile equipment and other hardware, Turkey was offered a $2.9 billion package including 30 F-16 fighter planes, while Jordan and Chile were also offered weapons packages. CLIP

At least 700 Iraqis die in 8 days of unrelenting violence (Nov 19, 2006)
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4346829.html
The numbers are staggering: In the past eight days, 714 Iraqis have fallen victim to the country's sectarian bloodbath. They've been beheaded, tortured and blown up while looking for work. They've been shot, kidnapped and felled by mortars. The number of killings in the past eight days is more than all but a few U.S. states see in a year. Iraq's death toll has reached at least 1,319 already in November, well above the 1,216 who died in all of October, which was the deadliest month in Iraq since The Associated Press began tracking the figure in April 2005. At least 111 people were killed nationwide on Sunday, following a week of appallingly high daily death tolls: 134, 90, 119, 106, 49, 52 and 53. The actual totals are likely considerably higher because many deaths are not reported. Victims in those cases are quickly buried according to Muslim custom and never reach morgues or hospitals to be counted. CLIP

Rep. Dennis Kucinich: Cut Off Iraq War Funding
http://www.truthdig.com/interview/item/20061116_kucinich_cut_off_funding/
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) explains why cutting off funding for the Iraq war is the only way to truly protect American troops.

Documents Show More Pentagon Spying on Peace Activists
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112106Z.shtml
Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the ACLU in New York, said the new documents suggested that the military's efforts to glean intelligence on protesters went beyond what was previously known. If intelligence officials "are going to be doing investigations or monitoring in a place where people gather to worship or to study, they should have a pretty clear indication that a crime has occurred," Mr. Wizner added.

Did the CIA kill Bobby Kennedy?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15692.htm
In 1968, Robert Kennedy seemed likely to follow his brother, John, into the White House. Then, on June 6, he was assassinated - apparently by a lone gunman. But Shane O'Sullivan says he has evidence implicating three CIA agents in the murder.

Hard US lessons, harder landings (Nov 21, 2006) http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HK21Dj02.html
(...) The debt, income and savings situation of the American middle - if we take the three middle quintiles of the income distribution to be the middle class - is horrifying. Many of these people are in the difficult situation of simply waiting to discover themselves and be discovered as former members of the middle class in terms of material quality of life. 2006 will be a year where America's aggregate savings rate is negative. Households are simply not saving anything. Real average weekly earnings of production and non-supervisory workers - over 75% of all us payrolls - have been stagnant since the mid 1970s. If we use 2005 dollars and the CPI-U (consumer price index for urban consumers), average weekly earnings decreased by about $1 per week over the 30-year interval 1975-2005. The folks have thus stopped saving and have taken on massive amounts of housing and consumer debt. A look through the Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States, or Z1, released in September 19, is a traumatic experience. It reveals the contours of America's debt disaster in stark statistics that grow worse with each passing quarter. In 1999, total outstanding household debt was $6.4 trillion. As of the end of the second quarter of 2006 total outstanding household debt was $12.3 trillion. Household debt has increased by almost as much since 1999 as the sum total of all debt accumulated by all households across the preceding 220-year history of the US. In 1999, household mortgage debt stood at $4.4 trillion. At the close of the second quarter of 2006 it had more than doubled to $9.33trillion. In 1999, consumer credit outstanding was measured at $1.6 trillion. Today, this stands at approximately $2.4 trillion dollars, signaling a 50% increase in less than seven years. This is usually soft peddled and talked down by comparison to skyrocketing housing values. Household assets held as real estate increased by $9 trillion from 2000-2006. This might be called the mother of all modern bubbles. Yet household net worth struggled up by a mere $1.2 trillion. Net worth badly lags housing values because of waves of cashing out. When these waves crash ashore it will be with massive destructive force.

The pain of a weak US dollar (Nov 16, 2006)
http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HK16Dj02.html
The United States' massive trade deficit exerts pressure on the US dollar as currency is shoveled abroad in return for goods and services. As the US economy is slowing down and possibly sliding into recession, the rate at which the trade deficit grows may also be slowing; in September, this deficit was "only" US$64.3 billion - still near record territory but not as bad as economists had predicted. Does this mean the worst for the dollar is over? After all, it now costs over 50% more to pay for a 100 euro hotel room than six years ago, assuming the hotel has not raised its price. Can it get worse? Since you probably cannot afford to go to Europe on vacation anymore, it may not matter to you. But even if you do not travel abroad, it does matter to you as your purchasing power erodes; among others, the cost of imports and commodities, including the price you pay at the gasoline pump, is likely to go up. The trade deficit is a component of the broader current-account deficit, which also includes investment income. The current-account deficit is the shortfall that needs to be covered by foreign investors for the dollar not to fall. Last year, foreigners needed to purchase $805 billion in dollar-denominated assets just to keep the dollar from falling. That's more than $2 billion every single day. As the US economy is slowing down, what matters is whether other factors propping up the dollar slow down even faster. The most apparent one is whether foreigners will be as inclined to invest in a slowing US economy. CLIP

Banks warned of 'end to the good times'
http://money.guardian.co.uk/saving/banks/story/0,,1948961,00.html
The City regulator issued a warning to the high street banks yesterday that the "clouds were already darkening" and urged them to prepare for the impact of rising unemployment and the knock-on effect on bad debts.

Some Americans Lack Food, but USDA Won't Call Them Hungry
http://tinyurl.com/y3fwnu
The U.S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low food security."

US Vote: Trouble for Harper (Nov 13, 2006) http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20061113172019310
For millions of Americans and Canadians, it was a huge sense of relief to see the most corrupt, amoral and incompetent Congress, possibly in American history, go down to defeat. Those days, we can hope, are over, as the political agenda is now in the hands of a Democratic Congress. For a few weeks, at least, we can enjoy that relief and not dwell on the fact that things may not get a whole lot better. Given the general state of American duh-mocracy (poisoned by money, gerrymandered seats, defective voting machines and dirty tricks), we have to keep our expectations in check. A lot of the new Democrats look a lot like Republicans. We can focus on the fact that for the first time, a woman — and one with smarts and heart — will be the Speaker of the House, and that for the first time, both a socialist, Bernie Saunders, and a Muslim were elected. These are not small things. And Americans — despite being shamelessly lied to by the Republicans and abandoned by their media — came through in the end. They said enough is enough. Bless them. (...) Government is back in the U.S., after six years of rule by those who were, like Harper, contemptuous of government. The Democrats will be pushing for an increase in the minimum wage, progressive changes to their prescription drug plan, less draconian immigration laws, improvements to their disastrous health care system and a more multilateral approach to the world. And the inheritance tax will stay in place. If it were any other country, it wouldn't matter. But Canadians are preoccupied with what happens in the Empire next door and what they see will make Harper and his politics look out of synch with the world. Polls released immediately following the U.S. elections show Canadians increasingly preoccupied with the very issues that hurt Harper's government. CLIP

KHIAM SOUTHERN LEBANON: A BOMB’S ANATOMY (Israel Nuked Lebanon!) (9 November 2006)
http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchieste/09112006_bomba_ing.asp
The special report was triggered by the radioactivity measurements reported on a crater probably created by an Israeli Bunker Buster bomb in the village of Khiam, in southern Lebanon. (...) What kind of weapon is this? What weapon leaves traces of radiation and produces such lethal and circumscribed consequences? Researcher Dai Williams believes this is a new class of weapons using enriched uranium, not through fission processes but through new physical processes kept secret for at least 20 years. CLIP

IDF admits targeting civilian areas in Lebanon with cluster bombs
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/789876.html
For the first time Monday, the IDF admitted targeting populated areas with cluster munitions.

Budget-saving, American-made cluster bombs left vicious legacy in Lebanon
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15695.htm
During the second Lebanon war, Israel made use of American-made cluster bombs that left behind thousands of unexploded bomblets, even though Israel Military Industries produces cluster bombs that leave nearly no unexploded munitions.

Israel lobby wants Pentagon purged of anti-zionists
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/pentagon__infiltrated_.html
A leading voice of the pro-Israel lobby is pushing for an old-style “witchhunt”—under the guise of “homeland security”—to identify (and expel) individuals in the U.S. government and our military who are suspected of being hostile to Israel. The call for a witch-hunt is based on the outlandish thesis that “Islamo-fascists” and Muslim “jihadist” operatives and, perhaps more particularly, their “sympathizers”—however loosely defined—have infested America’s defense, national security and federal law enforcement community. (...) But in the fevered minds of JINSA and hard-line Zionist elements, the real concern is that there are growing numbers of people high up in the FBI and the CIA and in the military who are getting “fed up” with Zionist power in America. Top military leaders openly dismissed the need for war against Iraq and Iran, both wars of which have been long-time policy plans of the Zionist lobby. And all of this, in the view of the JINSA sphere, constitutes effective collaboration with and sympathy for the dreaded “jihadists.” CLIP

Bush gives go-ahead for 'Bush Center' in Israel
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/788582.html
U.S. President George Bush was informed on Tuesday of an initiative to establish a center under his name in Israel, as a sign of gratitude for his support for the country and its security.

Israel Orders Murder of Elected Hamas Politicians
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15673.htm
According to Israeli security sources, a decision to assassinate leading Hamas politicians was taken by Olmert and his defence minister, Amir Peretz. Early yesterday Israeli missiles struck Hamas targets in Gaza, including a charity run by the group.

Palestinians block Israeli air raid
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/24F212B0-A683-47EE-B791-E187EECD8842.htm
The Israeli military abandoned a planned air strike on the home of a Palestinian fighter in Gaza after hundreds of Palestinians formed a human shield around the building.

UN asks Israel to vacate Gaza: US opposes, EU backs resolution
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15672.htm
The UN General Assembly on Friday voted overwhelmingly to condemn Israel for "indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force" in its military offensive in Gaza which, according to the Palestinian ambassador, threatens to "destroy the entire people."

World must take decisive step to stop Israel
http://tinyurl.com/yx5kkq
Ahmed bin Abdullah described the Israeli massacre at Beit Hanoun and the continued Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people, as war crimes and crimes against humanity adding these crimes would be a mark of disgrace on the face of the world community if it did not take a decisive step.

Summer Rains and Saad (11/20/06)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15690.htm
Gaza - Autumn 2006 --- The thin and limpid crescent lies on its back in a clear sky. If it does not reappear tomorrow then Ramadan will end. A 'drone' can be heard above the amplified recitations of the Quran, but it cannot be seen. On the third floor of the battered and very busy Shifa hospital here in Gaza city lies a 9 yr old boy in his fourth month of recovery. Saad is a sad and frightened boy. He has lost all the muscle from the front of his left thigh. The shape of his femur can be seen in its entirety beneath the skilful skin grafting. There is just a twitch of motion in the foot. Most parts of his young body are scarred. There are many of punctate type, including on his face. There is a colostomy which will probably be permanent because his bowels were badly damaged. The tracheostomy has healed, and the pleural fistula is well on that way.Following the capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit and the shooting dead of two of his comrades by a Palestinian guerrilla unit on the 25th of June, 'Operation Summer Rains' was set in place by the occupier headed by Mr Olmert. This was on top of the medieval siege which started at the end of March and in which Israel was joined by the twenty-five nations of the EU, the US, Canada and Japan. This was the reward for scrupulous elections and a Hamas majority of 72 seats in a legislature of 135. There are no ends to the ingenuity of collective punishment. In November 2005, the 1.4 million population had been terrified by sonic booms at roof top level. British Aerospace should be rightly proud of the head-up cockpit display in those F16s which so enhanced the aeronautical skills of the IAF as they smashed sleep and windows in Gaza prison. Anyway, post-Shalit there was an explosion of state assassination from the air. In early July, Saad was in the street when hell was loosed from a drone. Two people were killed immediately and two others died shortly after admission because their injuries were so severe. So Saad is a living remnant of electronic and explosive wizardry. The surgeons of El Shifa have many high resolution photographs of the surviving and the dead. These are not correlated with the target sites and neither are there names or numbers of the victims. However, in those post-Shalit weeks they saw over 250 deaths including 57 children. In such conditions of chaos, grief and horror, record keeping is relegated. CLIP

Gaza's Reality - Would you be able to live like this? ABSOLUTELY HEART-WRENCHING!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15693.htm
"We live in constant fear" Video Runtime 5 minutes

UN slams Israel rights violation
http://tinyurl.com/y55oy4
The UN high commissioner for human rights has criticised rights violations in the Palestinian territories as she visited the site of a deadly botched Israeli shelling in the Gaza Strip. Louise Arbour said during her brief visit to Gaza on Monday: "The violations of human rights in the Palestinian territories are intolerable. "I think it's clear that civilians are tremendously exposed." Arbour said that her visit was to express UN condolences and show concern for civilians in Beit Hanoun where some 80 people were killed in this month's Israeli offensive. Arbour was speaking not far from the Nasser mosque, one of the oldest mosques in Gaza whose lone minaret is all that remains after the offensive, before heading into talks with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, at his Gaza City seafront office.She emphasised that she would stress to both Israeli and Palestinian authorities the need to protect civilians. More than 60 Palestinians were killed during a six-day Israeli operation in Beit Hanoun. Nineteen others, mostly women and children, died in an Israeli shelling on November 8. Arbour's visit comes less than a week after the UN Human Rights Council voted last Wednesday to send an urgent fact-finding mission to Beit Hanoun to examine the impact of Israel's attack on the Palestinian homes.Thirty-two countries, mainly from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, voted for the resolution introduced by Arab and Islamic nations at the 47-member Council, which was subsequently denounced by Washington as "imbalanced".

Gideon Levy : After the rain of death (Nov 16) - MASS MURDERS BY ISRAEL - YET AGAIN!
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/788997.html
This is Islam al-Atamna. A girl of 14. She is sitting in her black mourning clothes. Eight close relatives - including her mother, grandparents, uncles and aunts - were all killed before her eyes, one after the other. They were killed in the street after they awoke at home in horror at the sound of the first shell that exploded and then fled outdoors, where the next shells caught them. About 11 fell on a residential neighborhood, one shell a minute, a rain of death, pursuing them in their flight. Fatherless for some time already, the girl is left alone in the world with her two little sisters and her 3-year-old brother Abdullah, whose legs were severed and who is hospitalized in the Al-Hilal Hospital in Gaza. What should we say to Islam? What can we say to Islam? That the chip in the radar system is to blame? That the electronic component is responsible? Perhaps that the Palestinians are to blame? Since the accident the girl has not fallen asleep for even a moment, which one can see in her frozen face. Islam is now a girl in shock, whose entire world was destroyed last Wednesday morning, with a total of 22 relatives dead and dozens wounded. Islam's town is upside down. The roads are full of open pits, crushed electricity poles, smashed cars, torn houses and a sewage system whose effluents flow quietly in the streets. After the six-day war waged by the Israel Defense Forces against Beit Hanun during Operation Autumn Clouds - when soldiers also took over Islam's house, imprisoning on the first floor the 104 people who lived in the eight apartments in the building, all relatives - people here expected to wake up last week to a new dawn, a dawn without soldiers. The day before, IDF had left Beit Hanun after "completing its mission" - nobody knows exactly what that mission was - and the residents awoke to freedom. But just then the volley of shells landed. Between 6:30 and 7 A.M., on the row of houses in the street that ends in a recently planted orchard, a gift from the Japanese government. Now the survivors are sitting in the street of death, all of whose fatalities are members of one family, the Al-Atamna family. There has never before been such killing, of 22 members of one family, not even under direct Israeli occupation. In the hospitals in Gaza, Egypt and Israel the wounded, about 40 in number, are moaning, many of them with amputated limbs and head injuries, quite a number of them children. The dead also include children, and mainly women: The mass poster that was printed presents the portraits of the men and the children who were killed, whereas the pictures of the women are replaced by paintings of red roses, as is the custom. CLIP

Hezbollah Threatens Protests to Topple Lebanese Government
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112006D.shtml
In a deepening crisis that has paralyzed Lebanese politics, the leader of Hezbollah urged his well-organized followers to prepare for mass protests aimed at toppling the US-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

Lebanese Christian Leader Killed
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112106M.shtml
Prominent anti-Syrian Christian politician Pierre Gemayel was assassinated in a suburb of Beirut on Tuesday. The shooting will certainly heighten the political tension in Lebanon, where the leading Muslim Shiite party, Hezbollah, has threatened to topple the government if it does not get a bigger say in Cabinet decision-making.

CIA Admits to Memo From Bush on Interrogation Techniques
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111506Z.shtml
After years of denials, the CIA has formally acknowledged the existence of two classified documents governing aggressive interrogation and detention policies for terrorism suspects, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. But CIA lawyers say the documents - memos from President Bush and the Justice Department - are still so sensitive that no portion can be released to the public.

Iraq Is a "Disaster" Admits Blair
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111806A.shtml
Blair's most frank admission yet over the war in Iraq came during an interview on the new Al Jazeera English television channel with Sir David Frost. Tony Blair admitted that British intervention in Iraq has been a disaster last night - sending shockwaves through Westminster.

Time for Another Body Count in Iraq (19 November 2006) http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112006K.shtml
(...) Last month there was very little discussion of the study published in the Lancet, a highly respected British medical journal, which estimated that 650,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 as a result of the war. The Lancet study too was dismissed as an "October surprise," and it disappeared from the news within days of its publication. But now that the election is over, can we finally discuss it? I was shocked myself when I saw the figure of 650,000. It seemed huge, much larger than I had imagined possible. It is approximately four times the Iraqi Health Ministry's recent estimate, and twice the figure of 300,000 that is often given as an estimate of the number of people killed by Saddam Hussein during his 23 years of brutal rule. (...) The minimum value in their confidence interval was 392,979, and their maximum value was 942,636, which means that although 650,000 is their most likely estimate, the true number could be substantially lower or higher. Even so, the low end of this range is nearly 400,000, while the high end is nearly a million. (...) Only when you go out and knock on the doors of families, actively looking for deaths, do you begin to get close to the right number. This method is now tried and tested. It has been the basis for mortality estimates in war zones such as Darfur and the Congo. Interestingly, when we report figures from these countries politicians do not challenge them. They frown, nod their heads and agree that the situation is grave and intolerable. The international community must act, they say. When it comes to Iraq the story is different. Expect the current government to mobilise all its efforts to undermine the work done by this American and Iraqi team. Expect the government to criticise the Lancet for being too political. Expect the government to do all it can to dismiss this story and wash its hands of its responsibility to take these latest findings seriously. CLIP

"An American Killing Field" - 6 Minute Video
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15653.htm
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, speaks of the reality of life in Iraq under U.S. occupation.

The Salvador Option: The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek

Death Squads Exposed: The reality of U.S. occupation Of Iraq
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15615.htm
This shocking film investigates the links between the death squads and high-ranking Shia politicians. It reveals how the Shia militia that these politicians control have systematically infiltrated and taken over police units and even entire government ministries. It investigates how these units are closely linked to the death squads, indeed they often are the death squads. And the killers act with impunity -- there's little investigation into their activities.

New Survey: Iraqis Want a Speedy U.S. Exit -- and Back Attacks on Our Forces
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15697.htm
A new poll in Iraq makes it more stark than ever: the Iraqi people want the U.S. to exit their country. And most Iraqis now approve of attacks on U.S. forces, even though 94% express disapproval of al-Qaeda.

Afghan violence 'likely to rise'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6153194.stm
A top American defence official has warned that the level of violence in Afghanistan will go on rising.

CIA: Taliban, al Qaeda resurge in Afghanistan
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-11/16/content_5340271.htm
Al Qaeda's influence and numbers are rapidly growing in Afghanistan, with fighters operating from new havens and mimicking techniques learned on the Iraqi battlefield for use against U.S. and allied troops, U.S. intelligence officials said.

US Airstrikes Climb Sharply in Afghanistan
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111706K.shtml
The Air Force has conducted more than 2,000 airstrikes in Afghanistan over the past six months, a sharp increase in bombing that reflects the growing demand for American air cover since NATO has assumed a larger ground combat role, Air Force officials said.

Why We Fight - A Must Watch Film By Eugene Jarecki
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8494.htm
What are the forces that shape and propel American militarism? This award-winning film provides an inside look at the anatomy of the American war machine.

Swedish human rights worker viciously attacked by Jewish extremists in Hebron
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/11/18/hebron-day-06/
Hebron, November 18 - A 19-year old Swedish human rights worker had her cheekbone broken by a Jewish extremist in Hebron today. Earlier the same day at least five Palestinians, including a 3-year-old child, were injured by the settler-supporting extremists, who rampaged through Tel Rumeida hurling stones and bottles at local residents. Palestinian schoolchildren on their way home were also attacked. The Israeli army, which was intensively deployed in the area, did not intervene to stop the attacks. Tove Johansson from Stockholm walked through the Tel Rumeida checkpoint with a small group of human rights workers (HRWs) to accompany Palestinian schoolchildren to their homes. They were confronted by about 100 Jewish extremists in small groups. They started chanting in Hebrew “We killed Jesus, we’ll kill you too!” — a refrain the settlers had been repeating to internationals in Tel Rumeida all day. After about thirty seconds of waiting, a small group of very aggressive male Jewish extremists surrounded the international volunteers and began spitting at them, so much so that the internationals described it as “like rain.” Then men from the back of the crowd began jumping up and spitting, while others from the back and side of the crowd kicked the volunteers. The soldiers, who were standing at the checkpoint just a few feet behind the HRWs, looked on as they were being attacked.One settler then hit Tove on the left side of her face with an empty bottle, breaking it on her face and leaving her with a broken cheekbone. She immediately fell to the ground and the group of Jewish extremists who were watching began to clap, cheer, and chant. The soldiers, who had only watched until this point, then came forward and motioned at the settlers, in a manner which the internationals described as “ok… that’s enough guys.” (...) The incident was the latest attack by extremist Jews in Hebron. The small group of Khannist settlers in Tel Rumeida regularly attack and harass Palestinians in the area. The violence sometimes spills over to the international human rights workers who accompany Palestinians in an attempt to protect them from settler attack. The settlers in Tel Rumeida encourage Jewish tourists to come to support them, as a way of making up for their small numbers. Today, hundreds had come from tours in Israel for a special event many from overseas: France, England and the United States.

Israel stole private land for settlements
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061121/ts_nm/mideast_settlements_dc
Almost 40 percent of land held by illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians.

Rep. Rangel Will Seek to Reinstate Draft
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15681.htm
Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 if the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has his way.

Top House Democrats to bar military draft plan
http://tinyurl.com/y53w2t
A reinstatement of the military draft, being pushed by a senior Democrat, will not be slated for consideration in the House of Representatives, the chamber's newly elected top leaders said on Monday.

Criminalizing Compassion in the War on Terror: Muslim Charities and the Case of Dr. Rafil A. Dhafir
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112006F.shtml
In May 2005, David Cole, professor of law at Georgetown University, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary about the constitutional implications of a series of "anti-terrorism" laws rushed through Congress after 9/11. Cole said [emphasis mine]: The statutes described above prohibit virtually all associational support to selected political organizations, while granting executive branch officials effectively unreviewable discretion to target disfavored groups. These laws make it a crime to write an op-ed, provide legal advice, volunteer one's time, or distribute a magazine of any "designated" group, even if there is no connection whatsoever between the individual's support and any illegal activity of the proscribed group. Under these statutes, an American citizen who sends a treatise on nonviolence to the Kurdistan Workers' Party to encourage it to forgo violence for peace can be sent to prison for 15 years. This is so even if he proves that he intended the treatise to be used only for peaceful ends, and that it was in fact used solely for that purpose. Such a moral innocent can be said to be "guilty" by association. If you think this is an exaggeration and couldn't happen, think again. This is precisely the situation in which Dr. Rafil A. Dhafir found himself. The T-Word - According to United Nations statistics, every month throughout the 1990s almost 6,000 children under the age of five in Iraq were dying from lack of food and access to simple medicines. Three senior U.N. officials resigned because of what they considered a "genocidal" policy against Iraq. The United States led the effort to place restrictive sanctions on Iraq, and when Madeleine Albright, then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was asked in a CBS interview if the deaths of half a million children was a price worth paying to punish Saddam Hussein, she infamously replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it." When the deaths of children over the age of five and adults are added, the number killed as a direct result of the sanctions rises to between 1.5 and 2 million dead civilians. In response to the humanitarian catastrophe created by these brutal sanctions, Dhafir, a man of Iraqi descent and Muslim faith, and an American citizen for almost 30 years, started the charity Help the Needy (HTN). Dr. Dhafir is a pillar of the Muslim community in Central New York. He was a founding member of the local mosque, and he served as the imam at Syracuse University until it hired a full-time imam. He paid a substantial amount of the running costs of the mosque and provided free medical consultation to those at the mosque without health insurance. His medical practice was in Rome, New York, an underserved area in which he was the sole oncologist. In his practice he provided free health care to people without insurance, and he paid for their expensive chemotherapy medicine out of his own pocket. For 13 years, Dhafir worked tirelessly to help publicize the plight of the Iraqi people and to raise funds to help them. According to the government, Dhafir donated $1.25 million of his own money over the years. As an oncologist, he was also concerned about the effects of depleted uranium on the Iraqi population, which was experiencing skyrocketing cancer rates. For the crime of breaking the U.S. and U.K.-sponsored U.N. sanctions on Iraq and sending humanitarian aid to sick and starving civilians, Dhafir was held without bail for 31 months and then sentenced to 22 years in prison. By implication, his were terrorist acts.(...) She notes that, as happened in Dhafir's case, conspiracy laws and money laundering laws used "creatively" with the PATRIOT Act and IEEPA can be used to construct a vast distorted picture. Dhafir's case sets a legal precedent and means that others who provide humanitarian and medical assistance to those in need could, like Dhafir, end up being put away for the rest of their lives. (...) The ever-present threat of a "terrorist designation" by the Treasury Department functions based on the principle of "guilty until proven innocent." The use of secret evidence, hearsay, erroneous translations, guilt by association and press reports in recent court cases further erodes the ability of charities to rely on basic assumptions regarding their constitutional rights, especially when the courts ultimately favor the government when "national security" is allegedly at stake. Overzealous surveillance tactics of the intelligence community such as wiretapping, infiltrating organizations by bribing employees to work as spies (thereby disrupting normal and lawful humanitarian activities), and engaging in other forms of harassment - when added to the above bleak picture - will not only chill, but will freeze completely American Muslim charitable giving overseas. Perhaps this is the goal of the U.S. government. However, no one should be fooled into thinking that America or the American people will be much safer as a result. History Watches - Writing during the McCarthy era, Judge Irving R. Kaufman warned, "Once we embark on shortcuts by creating a category of 'obviously guilty' whose rights are denied, we run the risk that the circle of the unprotected will grow." We appear once again to have entered a dark time in which the civil liberties of a select group of people are being denied. The message being sent to Muslims across the country is that pillars of their community can be knocked down without any call for equal justice from the non-Muslim community. It is incumbent upon each of us to defend civil liberties for all, not least because "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
http://www.citylights.com/CLpub4th.html#4758
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is Howard Zinn’s major new collection of essays on American history, class, immigration, justice, and ordinary citizens who have made a difference.

BBC reopens Kelly case with new film (November 12, 2006)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2450132,00.html
THE BBC is risking a new confrontation with Downing Street by launching an investigation into the death of David Kelly, the scientist at the centre of the storm over the “sexed up” dossier on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. It is reopening the case less than three years after its management virtually imploded with the resignations of Greg Dyke, the director general, and Gavyn Davies, its chairman, in the wake of Lord Hutton’s report into the affair. The corporation is filming a programme about the alleged suspicious circumstances surrounding Kelly’s death in an Oxfordshire wood. It has told officials who carried out a post-mortem and toxicology tests on Kelly’s body that it “wants to quash conspiracy theories” about the death. But it has interviewed independent doctors who point to unexplained discrepancies in the results of Kelly’s post-mortem. They suggest that neither the wound to his left wrist nor the drugs found in his body was sufficient to kill him. The BBC has also spoken to legal experts who say the Hutton inquiry was a poor substitute for an inquest and that a coroner should now be asked to record a verdict on how Kelly died. CLIP

Foreign Sales by U.S. Arms Makers Doubled in a Yearn (November 11, 2006)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/business/11military.html?ref=business
Sales of military weapons by United States contractors to foreign governments doubled in the last year, as countries like Pakistan, Australia and Greece stepped up purchases of armaments and the United States government loosened policies to allow more American weapons to be sold on the world market. A total of $21 billion in arms sales agreements were signed from September 2005 to September 2006, compared with $10.6 billion in the previous year, according to new data compiled by the Pentagon. Foreign military sales agreements have typically ranged from $10 billion to $13 billion a year since 2001. A number of factors are behind the surge in sales. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has used arms sales as a way to reward allies and cement international relationships. Middle Eastern countries, flush with oil revenues, have become big buyers. Countries like India, Pakistan and Indonesia that were once barred from buying American weapons have had those bans lifted, and some have placed big orders. For military contractors, the sales have provided a welcome source of new revenue at a time when the Pentagon has indicated that the era of record military budgets is ending. CLIP

How AIDS and Starvation Condemn Zimbabwe's Women to Early Grave
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/111706WA.shtml
Zimbabwe has found itself at the nexus of an AIDS pandemic, a food crisis and an economic meltdown that is killing an estimated 3,500 people every week. That figure is more than those dying in Iraq, Darfur or Lebanon. In war-torn Afghanistan, where women's plight has received global attention, life expectancy is still above 40, while in Zimbabwe it is 34.

Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Elections Hacked (November 17, 2006)
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_rob_kall_061117_clear_evidence_2006_.htm
Results Skewed Nationwide In Favor of Republicans by 4 percent, 3 million votes - A major undercount of Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in U.S. House and Senate races across the country is indicated by an analysis of national exit polling data, by the Election Defense Alliance (EDA), a national election integrity organization.These findings have led EDA to issue an urgent call for further investigation into the 2006 election results and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic election equipment."We see evidence of pervasive fraud, but apparently calibrated to political conditions existing before recent developments shifted the political landscape," said attorney Jonathan Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance, "so 'the fix' turned out not to be sufficient for the actual circumstances." Explained Simon, "When you set out to rig an election, you want to do just enough to win. The greater the shift from expectations, (from exit polling, pre-election polling, demographics) the greater the risk of exposure--of provoking investigation. What was plenty to win on October 1 fell short on November 7."The findings raise urgent questions about the electoral machinery and vote counting systems used in the United States," according to Sally Castleman, National Chair of EDA. "This is a nothing less than a national indictment of the vote counting process in the United States!" "The numbers tell us there absolutely was hacking going on, just not enough to overcome the size of the actual turnout. The tide turned so much in the last few weeks before the eleciton. It looks for all the world that they'd already figured out the percentage they needed to rig, when the programming of the vote rigging software was distributed weeks before the election, and it wasn't enough," Castleman commented. CLIP

Truths Exposed
http://www.revsophia.com/exposed.htm
Critical info and sound advises by Rev. Sophia on the following topics: - Air Fresheners - Chlorine - Lymphatic - Alzheimer's - Cold/Flu - Salt - Antiperspirant Colon- Health - Teflon - Bras - Fluoride - Water. Here is a sample: Fluoride...
Be sure that you’re not brushing your teeth with fluoride (Check your toothpaste). Fluoride is rat poison. It does not prevent cavities! In addition fluoride is in our tap water, so I distill my water. Distilling water actually kills every thing even the important minerals. So I use the prill beads, (you can great about prill beads on G.L.N. I have provided a link) and sunlight to put the light force back in the water. Using sunlight to put the light-force back in; take a glass bottle, and it must be glass, place it in the sunlight for about seven hours. I have copied this from a newsletter, please open your minds, and brace your self! The new piece is titled "National Fluoride Database Launched by USDA," located at http://www.rense.com/general60/nationalflouridedatabase.htm
She writes: “Now, with Americans thoroughly riddled with fluoride due to a sixty-year-old medical experiment that never produced its promised results - now, with most of the entire nation currently suffering from gastrointestinal complaints, mood and sleep disturbances, bizarre aches and pains, elevated blood pressure, bone density problems, cancers, heart problems, liver problems, kidney problems, dental problems, thyroid problems and obesity, attention is finally being paid to the cumulative effects of fluoridating the water supply." You know, this is much more than some abstruse health story. The fluoride issue, which reverberates throughout the food chain, is really about blunting the process of evolution, about dulling the minds of billions of people and depriving them of their rightful hopes of having brilliant, evolved minds, and leading a new world into a bright and hopeful future. This was all sacrificed for a plan by evil rich men to dispose of a nuclear waste product and turn a vicious but hefty profit in their devil's bargain. Maybe the United States did not win World War II. Maybe, with the deployment of fluoride and radioactive substances into our air and food chain, the losers of that war made a last-ditch attempt at an evil last laugh with two doomsday substances that guarantee a future of slavery and sickness rather than the bright hope of a just and happy society. There are steps that I take to minimize the effects of poisons in the water. I use a carbon, shower filter, the skin is our largest organ, and it’s critical to know that when someone takes a hot steamy shower with tap water, they are inviting many health challenges. It’s not only the fluoride; another thing in our tap water is chlorine. We absorb far more chlorine in a shower than we do from chlorinated drinking water. Chlorine in the shower bonds to the protein in your hair and skin, destroying the natural ecological balance, and making your skin flaky and itchy.

UN climate pact unlikely under Bush, analysts say (November 19, 2006)
http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2006/11/19/un_climate_pact_unlikely_under_bush_analysts_say/
Reuters | NAIROBI -- UN climate talks last week kept a plan for fighting global warming on track for expansion beyond 2012, but breakthroughs appeared unlikely before President Bush steps down, specialists said yesterday. "Everyone is waiting for the United States," said Paal Prestrud, head of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. The United States is the biggest source of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, and Bush's decision to reject caps under the UN's Kyoto Protocol discourages involvement by big- polluting outsiders such as China and India. After two weeks of talks, about 70 environment ministers in Nairobi agreed on Friday to a 2008 review of Kyoto as a possible prelude to deeper emission cuts by rich nations beyond 2012 and steps by developing countries to brake emissions. Bush is scheduled to leave office in 2009. They also agreed to modest plans to help Africa adapt to the feared effects of climate change such as drought, storms, disease, and rising seas. Ministers agreed to promote green technologies, such as wind or solar power, in the poorest continent. Many, however, said work on extending Kyoto was too sluggish. Investors in such facilities as coal-burning power plants need years to plan. Kyoto obliges 35 rich nations to cut emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012." Global emissions will have to be halved by mid-century if we are to have a chance of keeping climate change within tolerable limits," said the European commissioner, Stavros Dimas. Bush pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, saying caps would cost jobs and the plan wrongly omitted targets for poor countries. "The president is very committed to the policy and strategy which he has set forth," said Paula Dobriansky, an undersecretary of state.

Ought of Africa: A report from the U.N. climate conference (18 Nov 2006)
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/18/204940/05
(...) No continent is as vulnerable to climate disruption as Africa, and none harbors more poverty. That's why it's been a big deal to African nations that the 12th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change was held for the first time in sub-Saharan Africa. Many African nations sent large delegations. African luminaries like Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan shed light on the plight of Africans in the face of global climate change. Environmental groups presented papers on threats to the continent. In the end, though, the conference generated the usual flood of words and paper, and a near-drought of immediate action on dealing with climate change. Denmark and France, along with many international observers, led the way in outlining what this meeting needed to accomplish: the establishment of firm plans to continue past 2012 (when the Kyoto Protocol expires), to reduce emissions in much more significant amounts in years after that, and to ensure that the ongoing process is seamless with current procedures. Financial underwriting and investments which will reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars may be undercut if there is a gap after 2012, not to mention the loss of what little momentum there is on actually solving the huge climate issue. Considering how slowly the negotiation process moves, observers urged strong commitment at this meeting so that a plan could be officially agreed to over the next two conferences.Late on Friday, the final day, the conference agreed to a 2008 review of the Kyoto Protocol, to allow for its strengthening and continuation. But the 39 nations that are the heaviest polluters within Kyoto could not agree how to set deeper cuts; they will continue talking about it next year, and they promised there would be no gap in commitments after 2012. (Notably missing from this are the U.S. and Australia, which did not ratify the Protocol, and China, which was considered a developing country at the time the Protocol was set up and has no set reduction targets.)Several environmental groups here, displeased at this lack of action, did note that for the first time the conference acknowledged in writing reports by the U.N.'s scientific body that emissions must be reduced by half to start bringing global warming under control. The Kyoto rules now require only average reductions of 5 percent below 1990 levels from the developed countries. CLIP
Many more related articles through http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=ca&q=UN+climate+Nairobi&btnG=Search+News

Nobel Laureates Back Case Pushing Bush to Act on Global Warming
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/112006EA.shtml
Environmentalists concerned about global warming want the US Supreme Court to turn up the heat on President George Bush. The justices, taking their first plunge into the debate over emissions that scientists blame for increasing the Earth's temperature, will hear arguments November 29 in a case brought by conservation groups and 12 states. Their goal is to force Bush's Environmental Protection Agency to regulate so-called greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks.

Action Alert: U.S. Supreme Court Must Rule for Carbon Regulation (November 21, 2006)
http://www.climateark.org/alerts/send.asp?id=supreme_court_climate
With a decade to avert global warming catastrophe, let the U.S. Supreme Court know carbon dioxide is clearly by both science and law a pollutant, causing climate change mayhem, and as such must be regulated - even if it means given lack of political leadership "legislating from the bench." Will this institution decide the fate of the Earth? In one of the most important environmental cases ever to come before the U.S. Supreme Court, climate change and the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions will be ruled upon by the nation's highest court for the first time. In essence, the case will put the evidence for climate change "on trial" to determine whether the available data are enough to say that CO2 emissions pose a threat to the public's wellbeing. CLIP

INTERVIEW - World has under decade to act on climate crisis (21 Nov 2006)
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=L21794788&WTmodLoc=World-R5-Alertnet-3
LONDON (Reuters) - The world has less than a decade to take decisive action in the battle to beat global warming or risk irreversible change that will tip the planet towards catastrophe, a leading U.S. climate scientist said on Tuesday.And the United States, the world' biggest polluter but major climate laggard, has a vital role to play in leading that fight, James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Reuters on a visit to London. "The biggest problem is that the United States is not taking an active leadership role -- quite the reverse," he said. "We have to be on a fundamentally different path within a decade," said the man who earlier this year caused an outcry when he revealed that scientific warnings on the climate crisis were being rewritten by White House officials. He said reliance on -- and growing use of -- fossil fuels like coal both in the United States and in boom economy China had to be stopped and reversed to avoid the planet's climate tipping into catastrophe with floods, droughts and famines. CLIP

Slow Talks Could Leave Climate Deal in "Tatters"
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/112006EB.shtml
A new global agreement to tackle climate change may be scuppered by cumbersome international bodies and a lack of political will, David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, fears.

Could smog protect against global warming? (Nov 16, 2006) http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003433914_webwarming16.html
NAIROBI, Kenya — If the sun warms the Earth too dangerously, the time may come to draw the shade.The ''shade'' would be a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere to help cool the planet. This over-the-top idea comes from prominent scientists, among them a Nobel laureate. The reaction here at the U.N. conference on climate change is a mix of caution, curiosity and some resignation to such ''massive and drastic'' operations, as the chief U.N. climatologist describes them. The Nobel Prize-winning scientist who first made the proposal is himself ''not enthusiastic about it.''''It was meant to startle the policy makers,'' said Paul J. Crutzen, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. ''If they don't take action much more strongly than they have in the past, then in the end we have to do experiments like this.'' Serious people are taking Crutzen's idea seriously. This weekend, NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., hosts a closed-door, high-level workshop on the global haze proposal and other ''geoengineering'' ideas for fending off climate change. In Nairobi, meanwhile, hundreds of delegates were wrapping up a two-week conference expected to only slowly advance efforts to rein in greenhouse gases blamed for much of the 1-degree rise in global temperatures in the past century. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol requires modest emission cutbacks by industrial countries — but not the United States, the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, because it rejected the deal. Talks on what to do after Kyoto expires in 2012 are all but bogged down. CLIP

Global warming already killing species, analysis says (November 21, 2006)
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/11/21/climate.species.ap/
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Animal and plant species have begun dying off or changing sooner than predicted because of global warming, a review of hundreds of research studies contends.These fast-moving adaptations come as a surprise even to biologists and ecologists because they are occurring so rapidly.At least 70 species of frogs, mostly mountain-dwellers that had nowhere to go to escape the creeping heat, have gone extinct because of climate change, the analysis says. It also reports that between 100 and 200 other cold-dependent animal species, such as penguins and polar bears are in deep trouble. "We are finally seeing species going extinct," said University of Texas biologist Camille Parmesan, author of the study. "Now we've got the evidence. It's here. It's real. This is not just biologists' intuition. It's what's happening." Her review of 866 scientific studies is summed up in the journal Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics.Parmesan reports seeing trends of animal populations moving northward if they can, of species adapting slightly because of climate change, of plants blooming earlier, and of an increase in pests and parasites. Parmesan and others have been predicting such changes for years, but even she was surprised to find evidence that it's already happening; she figured it would be another decade away. Just five years ago biologists, though not complacent, figured the harmful biological effects of global warming were much farther down the road, said Douglas Futuyma, professor of ecology and evolution at the State University of New York in Stony Brook."I feel as though we are staring crisis in the face," Futuyma said. "It's not just down the road somewhere. It is just hurtling toward us. Anyone who is 10 years old right now is going to be facing a very different and frightening world by the time that they are 50 or 60." CLIP

Climate: A Matter for Economists
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112106H.shtml
Stephane Foucart argues that economists' attention to global warming can only have a salutary impact on discussions of the issue, as economic calculations make the dislocations associated with global warming tangible and real to those politicians who seem to have so much difficulty imagining their scope.

Global Carbon Emissions Soaring 'Out of Control' (November 10, 2006)
http://www.climateark.org/blog/2006/11/global_carbon_emissions_soarin.asp
The journal Nature reports "Global carbon emissions are now growing by 3.2% a year... That's four times higher than the average annual growth of 0.8% from 1990-99... We are not on any of the stabilization paths." [more | more2] We are well beyond Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections of the emissions levels needed to prevent damaging climate change. International negotiations are lagging. China currently contributes some 16% to global emissions, but accounts for 40% of the growth in world emissions. What in the hell is going on here? Clearly humanity as a whole must start acting soon -- it's urgent. It's beyond urgent. It is life threatening. The greatest test of humanity ever. Without immediately placing all intellectual, financial and societal resources at the disposal of those studying climate change science, developing sufficient policy responses, and those advocating for the necessary social change; the Earth is going to burn. All countries must in earnest participate in negotiations to set mandatory carbon emission caps for each nation based upon many factors including each country's wealth, past emissions, and potential to grow uncontrollably. We need to start yesterday, and the U.S. and Australia must end their criminal defense of fossil fuels.

Global warming may wipe out most birds
http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2006/1787976.htm?enviro
Nearly three quarters of all bird species in northeast Australia and more than a third in Europe could become extinct unless efforts to stop global warming are stepped up, a report says.

Scientists: Climate Change Fueling Fires (Nov 14, 2006)
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/111406EB.shtml
San Diego - Global warming could stoke ferocious wildfires that will be more difficult and costly to fight and might drastically alter the environment in parts of the world, some scientists warn. Approximately 1,000 scientists and forestry officials who gathered in San Diego for an international wildfire meeting that began Monday urged policymakers to consider the effects of global warming when managing wildfires. The wildfire season that just ended in the US was the most severe - and expensive - on record with more than 89,000 fires scorching 9.5 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The US Forest Service spent $1.5 billion fighting those fires - about $100 million over budget. Wildfire season typically peaks in late summer and early fall. Climate change is already being blamed for a longer fire season and some even predict the possibility of a year-round fire season. "We may need to go to a more permanent work force to manage fires," said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. Future fires, the scientists warned, could drastically alter the land and convert vegetation from one type to another. That, in turn, could put native animals and plants at risk of extinction. Increased wildfires also could adversely affect the planet. Wildfires emit tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to planet-warming greenhouse gases.CLIP

Call for Deep-Sea Trawling Ban
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2942335/
Scientists have called for a worldwide ban on deep-sea trawling following a major UN-backed report on the damage it is causing to vulnerable deep-sea corals.

Violence continues in Darfur : BBC Video Report
http://tinyurl.com/wvauy
Militia violence in Darfur, a region where more than 200,000 people have died in years of conflict, is still occurring.

Omega-News Collection 18. November 2006
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/2950634/




1.

I BELIEVE THE RECORDER'S PERSONAL STORY OF HOW SHE WAS PREPARED FOR THIS MISSION AND HOW IT MANIFESTED IS AN IMPORTANT ONE TO SHARE WITH EVERYONE (with her permission). IF YOU HAVE NOT YET EXPLORED THESE AMAZING TEACHINGS, YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THEM FROM http://www.christsway.co.za/

From: "christsway" (christsway@mweb.co.za)
Subject: RE e.mail from Craig Cumming in Big Scoop Series #15
Date: 14 Nov 2006

Dear Jean

Thank you so much for printing Craig Cumming's e.mail regarding 'A Course in Miracles' and CHRIST'S LETTERS. I am truly delighted to have CHRIST'S LETTERS mentioned with the 'Course in Miracles' as I know it is a publication having enormous standing in the minds of spiritual seekers.

I thought you might be interested in what I wrote to Craig:

Dear Craig

Thank you so much for the wonderful pieces you have contributed to Jean Hudon's instructive Bulletins, giving people the inside story of political self-serving strategies but also strongly encouraging people to pursue a spiritual means to combat the wrongdoing, - and also to read CHRIST'S LETTERS for spiritual re-birth and growth.

I am also most grateful that you linked CHRIST'S LETTERS with A Course in Miracles. I believe they do belong together. Because several people have written to ask me my opinion of them, I am printing below what I have written in reply:

“No one could have written the Course in Miracles from their own limited consciousness. The writer could only have been inspired and strengthened spiritually to do so, by the Highest Source of Truth. But, it should be remembered, that every mind which is filled with spiritual direction and power, is humanly different from another. The inspirational perceptions and insight come through a mind with its own history of belief and experience and these colour what is received intuitively.”

In my own case, before any instruction took place, I was led through experiences which de-programmed my mind of all vestiges of religious belief. Then I was enlightened. Then I was made to live that enlightenment for six years in utter faith and trust, proving what I had learnt spiritually. Then Christ came and spoke to me for an hour and led me through Cosmic Consciousness followed by spiritual work and healing. He led me through the sciences of the material world. Then there was a long period of darkness during which my ego was broken up - then there was a long period of healing and putting me back together according to Christ's teachings. I saw him twice. Was healed of different physical illness instantaneously three times. Finally, in 1999, Christ began to dictate to me by internal Voice. I was in no doubt whatever. And there were other signs at various times, confirming the event. I was 81-2 years old, and sometimes needed some strong morale boosting which Christ always gave me.'

I am so very happy to be associated with the Course in Miracles since I know the books have brought hope and new insight and joy to so many, many people seeking Truth in its most uplifting form.

This has been a long, long journey for me in almost total seclusion and anonymity, loved by a few friends who believed in CHRIST'S LETTERS implicitly - having seen the changes in myself as I lived CHRIST'S WAY.

Who I am, what my name is, is of no consequence whatever, only that, out of total anonymity, due to the spiritual insight of a few people, CHRIST'S LETTERS are at last reaching people who can appreciate them, more widely.

When I launched the website in December 2001, almost five years ago, I took the acorn as my emblem - I saw it growing into the great oak tree offering shelter from storms and a place to build a new spiritual home in a new spiritual climate. I am now seeing this vision coming into being.

I am being assisted by wonderful people like yourself who have been instrumental in bringing CHRIST'S LETTERS to public attention where they will be well received and adopted as a code of daily living.

I am so grateful, Craig, and I know you have done this because you have the insight to see what the LETTERS can do for the world, and have been inspired by the AUTHOR of the LETTERS to do so.

With all love - and may you experience every JOY in the LIGHT

Recorder

---

Were you able to join in the Conference Calls? Valerie tried to get through but was not successful. As for me, I have had physical difficulties, but think that I am, at last, receiving helpful treatment for a heart condition, result of the scoliosis - and have also felt the Power and seen the Light and am feeling rejuvenated. I have a vision of me visiting America and it feels so real.

Your compilations - Bulletins - are wonderful - I am enjoying them. Thank you so much for your hard work.

With love and friendship

Recorder




2.

Forwarded by "Stephanie Sutton" (ssutton@phisciences.com) on November 17

Call on your senator to oppose the U.S.-India nuclear deal

Incredibly enough, the Bush Administration is trying to secure Senate approval as early as this week for a nuke deal that will reward India’s nuclear ambitions, and encourage an arms race in Asia.

Even though stopping the spread of nuclear weapons is a critical priority for all governments and every sane person in the world, the deal with India would allow them to build up to 50 nuclear weapons every year - even though India has repeatedly refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

A vote in the lame duck Senate could happen as early as this week. Click here for a toll free number and information to call you senators TODAY, and tell them to stop this madness! (And if you don't see this email until Wednesday, we still urge you to make the calls to your senators - the recent election has put almost everything in flux and we can't be 100% sure when this vote is coming up.)

The nuclear deal with India is yet one more aspect of the Bush Administration’s wildly incoherent policies on nuclear weapons proliferation: we invade Iraq over phantom nuclear weapons, threaten Iran with military attacks for processing uranium, wink at Israel’s nuclear arsenal, give barely a slap on the wrist to Pakistan's veritable nuclear Wal-Mart, and now reward India for building nuclear weapons and refusing to sign nuclear treaties.

Not only has India refused to sign the NPT, it has conducted nuclear tests and refuses to reduce or cap its nuclear arsenal in any way. It is one of the few countries that has used "peaceful" nuclear technology to create nuclear bombs, precisely what we must prevent from happening. Approving this agreement would be one of the hugest mistakes this lame duck Senate could make - but with enough opposition in the Senate - which ultimately means opposition from you, the American public - we can still stop it.

Click here to call your senators and stop the India nuke deal.

It’s also critically important that the India nuke deal will provide sweeping exceptions to long-standing U.S. laws that prohibit trade in nuclear technology with countries building nuclear weapons. The deal will encourage nuclear weapons production at precisely the time when the global framework to prevent the spread of such weapons is under grave assault.

You have done fantastic work leading up to last week’s election, and soon we will have a new Congress to work with. But we cannot let up our efforts while we wait for that new Congress, and if we are going to contain the spread of nuclear weapons I urge everyone of you to call your senators today and tell them in no uncertain terms - stop the India nuke deal! And then let your friends know, and ask them to call as well!

Sincerely,

Kevin M. Martin
Executive Director
Peace Action Education Fund

p.s. - Please help stop this lame duck deal that threatens to upset all global norms against nuclear weapons proliferation - call your senators today and tell them - no nuke deal for India!

Visit also http://www.Peace-Action.org for more details.

---

Related article:

Pakistan Tests Nuclear-Capable Missile
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111706L.shtml
Pakistan said it successfully test-fired a new version of its nuclear-capable medium-range missile Thursday, a show of power a day after peace talks with India that were criticized by domestic hard-liners.

Official Says US May Mull Pre-Emptive Iran Strike
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111606G.shtml
The United States or other countries will one day be forced to consider pre-emptive action if Iran and North Korea continue to seek nuclear weapons, a senior US government official said on Tuesday.

Bush Assures Israel Iran Seen As Threat
http://tinyurl.com/vvrpm
Visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will return to his country with reassurances from the Bush administration that it is not backing down from its view that Iran and its nuclear program are a world threat.

Iran announces intent to move away from U.S. dollar
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52977
Iran may have signed a virtual "death warrant" by openly declaring a governmental decision to move away from the dollar in the country's foreign-exchange transactions, says WND columnist Jerome Corsi

Ex-Iranian president warns U-S against invading
http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=5697223
It would be "dangerous" for the U-S to think it can do in Iran what it's done in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Russia implementing arms contract with Iran - official
http://tinyurl.com/ssnn2
Russia is going ahead with a contract to deliver sophisticated air defence systems to Iran, a Russian defence ministry official said, despite appeals from Washington to reconsider

What Ted Koppel Found In Iran - 5 Minute Video
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15647.htm




3.

POWERFUL EXAMPLE BY 3 COURAGEOUS HUMAN BEINGS DEEPLY COMMITTED TO PEACE...

From: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111706C.shtml

Prison for Anti-Nuke Clowns, US WMDs Protected

By Bill Quigley

t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

17 November 2006

Three men protesting the presence of weapons of mass destruction in North Dakota were sentenced to federal prison terms of over three years and ordered to pay $17,000 in restitution by a federal judge in Bismarck. The three dressed as clowns and went to the Echo-9 launch site of the intercontinental Minuteman III nuclear missile in rural North Dakota in June 2006. They broke the lock off the fence and put up peace banners and posters. One said: "Swords into plowshares - Spears into pruning hooks." They poured some of their own blood on the site, hammered on the nuclear launching facility and waited to be arrested.

The Minuteman III missile has over 20 times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and can reach a target within 6000 miles in 35 minutes. The men called their action the "Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares."

Dressed in faded, black-striped prison uniforms and blue cloth slippers, they appeared before the federal court for sentencing. Father Carl Kabat, 73, a Catholic priest from St. Louis with a life-long history of resistance to nuclear weapons, was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Greg Boetje-Obed, 52, a former Navy officer living with his family in the Catholic Worker community in Duluth Minnesota, was given a 12 month and one day prison sentence. Michael Walli, 58, also with the Loaves and Fishes Catholic Workers in Duluth, received 8 months. All were ordered to pay $17,000 restitution.

During their trial, the men openly admitted to trying to disarm the nuclear weapon. They pointed out to the jury that each one of these missiles was a devastating weapon of mass destruction, a killing machine precisely designed to murder hundreds of thousands. Testimony by experts about the illegality of these weapons of mass destruction under international law, and their effects, were excluded by the court and never heard by the jury.

The 40-ton Minuteman III site they damaged lies deep in rural North Dakota, at a site called Echo-9 about 100 miles north of Bismarck. Coiled beneath the surface of a bland concrete bunker, it is clearly visible from the gravel road. In fact, the otherwise pastoral countryside of farms and silos is full of nuclear weapon silos. One nuclear weapon launching site lies just across the road from a big farmhouse, another just down the road from a camp for teens. There are 150 other such nuclear launching facilities in North Dakota alone.

At the sentencing, Father Carl Kabat, who has already spent 16 years in prison for peace protests, spoke simply and directly to the court and prosecutor. "I believe that you, brother judge and brother prosecutor, know that the Minuteman III at E-9 is insane, immoral and illegal, but your actions protected that insanity, that immorality and that illegality. Brother judge, you could have possibly been a Rosa Parks, but your actions said 'no.' We all can openly and publicly condemn North Korea for nuclear bombs. We can openly and publicly condemn Iraq for nuclear weapons and go to war with them. We can openly and publicly condemn Iran for nuclear buildup, but we do not publicly condemn the United States for the same?"

Father Kabat then challenged all of us, "What is the use of postmarking our mail with exhortations to 'Pray for Peace,' and then spending billions of dollars on atomic-armed submarines, thermonuclear weapons and ballistic missiles?"

Michael Walli reaffirmed his continuing conviction of the illegality and immorality of these weapons. He pointed out that Irish courts allowed juries to hear about international law. Recently, after learning that US jets were stopping at Shannon Airport to refuel on their way to bomb Iraq, the Pitstop Plowshares went onto the runway, poured their blood on it and started to take up the tarmac to prevent additional flights. After two mistrials, these peace protestors were acquitted on all counts earlier this year by an Irish jury who heard an expert on international law and other witnesses explain the illegality of the US actions. To conclude his sentencing statement, the Peace Prayer of St. Francis was read into the record.

Greg Boetje-Obed appealed to the judge to consider the testimony of the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki about the horrific effects of a tiny nuclear weapon on their communities, testimony the court would not allow the jury to hear. He asked the judge to re-consider expert testimony from Professor Francis Boyle about the criminality of nuclear weapons under international law and the UN resolutions calling for nuclear disarmament, evidence also kept from the jury.

The judge challenged Greg Boertje-Obed's decision to take actions that risked a year in prison instead of staying home with his family. "Why would one leave a wife and daughter at home to engage in juvenile acts of vandalism to protest nuclear weapons? I would think your commitment to your family should far outweigh your calling to such actions." Greg's wife, Michelle Naar Obed, was in the courtroom during this exchange. After the sentencing was over, Michelle shook her head and said, "If Greg had left us his for a year and risked his life to go to war to kill people, no one would question him - they would call him a hero! But, because he risked time in jail to act out his convictions for peace, people question his commitment to his family. That is a tragedy."

What does it say about our society that personal sacrifices to go to war, to kill people in war, are praised, while personal sacrifices for peace are condemned? What does it say that intentional destruction of cities and communities and families and individuals are considered totally legal, while actions trying to dismantle weapons of mass destruction send people to prison? Until those interested in peace are willing to make the same sacrifices as those interested in war, peace will not prevail. These three men have proven they are willing to pay the price for peace. Their courage and sacrifice challenge us all.

While these men serve their time in prison, one hundred fifty weapons of mass destruction sit peacefully free and protected in the fields of North Dakota. The law protects these weapons and finds those who try to protect the world from their holocaust criminals. If the weapons are ever used, the people of North Dakota will not need the news to tell them. The thunderous, fiery launch of these weapons will signal the failure of justice and the end of life as we know it.

For more information about the men, contact the Loaves and Fishes Community in Duluth at 218.728.0629, or Nukewatch at 715.472.4185. Copies of some pleadings in the case, pictures, updates and addresses for the men are posted on the Jonah House web site http://www.jonahhouse.org

---

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University, New Orleans. He helped the defendants in their trial. He can be reached at Quigley@loyno.edu




4.

From: http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2006/Update61.htm

THE EARTH IS SHRINKING: Advancing Deserts and Rising Seas Squeezing Civilization

Lester R. Brown - November 15, 2006

Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas. Measured by the land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking. Mounting population densities, once generated solely by the addition of over 70 million people per year, are now also fueled by the relentless advance of deserts and the rise in sea level.

The newly established trends of expanding deserts and rising seas are both of human origin. The former is primarily the result of overstocking grasslands and overplowing land. Rising seas result from temperature increases set in motion by carbon released from the burning of fossil fuels.

The heavy losses of territory to advancing deserts in China and Nigeria, the most populous countries in Asia and Africa respectively, illustrate the trends for scores of other countries. China is not only losing productive land to deserts, but it is doing so at an accelerating rate. From 1950 to 1975 China lost an average of 600 square miles of land (1,560 square kilometers) to desert each year. By 2000, nearly 1,400 square miles were going to desert annually.

A U.S. Embassy report entitled “Desert Mergers and Acquisitions” describes satellite images that show two deserts in north-central China expanding and merging to form a single, larger desert overlapping Inner Mongolia and Gansu provinces. To the west in Xinjiang Province, two even larger deserts--the Taklimakan and Kumtag--are also heading for a merger. Further east, the Gobi Desert has marched to within 150 miles (241 kilometers) of Beijing, alarming China’s leaders. Chinese scientists report that over the last half-century, some 24,000 villages in northern and western China were abandoned or partly depopulated as they were overrun by drifting sand.

All the countries in central Asia--Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan--are losing land to desertification. Kazakhstan, site of the vast Soviet Virgin Lands Project, has abandoned nearly half of its cropland since 1980.

In Afghanistan, a country with a Canadian-sized population of 31 million, the Registan Desert is migrating westward, encroaching on agricultural areas. A U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) team reports that “up to 100 villages have been submerged by windblown dust and sand.” In the country’s northwest, sand dunes are moving onto agricultural land, their path cleared by the loss of stabilizing vegetation from firewood gathering and overgrazing. The UNEP team observed sand dunes nearly 50 feet (15 meters) high blocking roads, forcing residents to establish new routes.

Iran, which has 70 million people and 80 million goats and sheep, the latter the source of wool for its fabled rug-making industry, is also losing its battle with the desert. Mohammad Jarian, who heads Iran’s Anti-Desertification Organization, reported in 2002 that sand storms had buried 124 villages in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, forcing their abandonment. Drifting sands had covered grazing areas, starving livestock and depriving villagers of their livelihood.

Africa, too, is plagued with expanding deserts. In the north, the Sahara Desert is pushing the populations of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria northward toward the Mediterranean. In a desperate effort to halt the advancing Sahara, Algeria is geographically restructuring its agriculture, replacing grain in the south with orchards and vineyards.

On the southern edge of the Sahara, in the vast east-to-west swath of semiarid Africa between the Sahara Desert and the forested regions to the south lies the Sahel--a semiarid region where herding and farming overlap. In countries from Senegal and Mauritania in the west to Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia in the east, the demands of growing human and livestock numbers are converting land into desert. (See data at www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2006/Update61_data.htm.)

Nigeria, slightly larger than Texas, is losing 1,355 square miles of rangeland and cropland to desertification each year. While Nigeria’s human population was growing from 33 million in 1950 to 134 million in 2006, a fourfold expansion, its livestock population grew from 6 million to 66 million, an 11-fold increase. With the food needs of its people forcing the plowing of marginal land and the forage needs of livestock exceeding the carrying capacity of its grasslands, the country is slowly turning to desert. Nigeria’s fast-growing population is being squeezed into an ever-smaller area.

In Latin America, deserts are expanding in both Brazil and Mexico. In Mexico, with a large share of arid and semiarid land, the degradation of cropland now forces some 700,000 Mexicans off the land each year in search of jobs in nearby cities or in the United States. In scores of countries, the growth in human and livestock numbers that drives desertification is continuing unabated.

While deserts are now displacing millions of people, rising seas promise to displace far greater numbers in the future given the concentration of the world’s population in low-lying coastal cities and rice-growing river deltas. During the twentieth century, sea level rose by 6 inches (15 centimeters). In its 2001 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected that during this century seas would rise by 4 to 35 inches. Since 2001, record-high temperatures have accelerated ice melting making it likely that the future rise in sea level will be even greater.

The earth’s rising temperature is raising sea level both through thermal expansion of the oceans and the melting of glaciers and ice sheets. Scientists are particularly concerned by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which has accelerated sharply in recent years. If this ice sheet, a mile thick in some places, were to melt entirely it would raise sea level by 23 feet, or 7 meters.

Even a one-meter rise would inundate vast areas of low-lying coastal land, including many of the rice-growing river deltas and floodplains of India, Thailand, Viet Nam, Indonesia, and China. A World Bank map shows a one-meter rise in sea level inundating half of Bangladesh’s riceland. Some 30 million Bangladeshis would be forced to migrate, either internally or to other countries.

Hundreds of cities, including some of the world’s largest, would be at least partly inundated by a one-meter rise in sea level, including London, Alexandria, and Bangkok. More than a third of Shanghai, a city of 15 million people, would be under water. A one-meter rise combined with a 50-year storm surge would leave large portions of Lower Manhattan and the National Mall in Washington, D.C., flooded with seawater.

If the Greenland ice sheet should melt, the resulting 23-foot rise in sea level would force the abandonment of thousands of coastal cities and communities. Hundreds of millions of coastal residents would be forced to migrate inland or to other countries, spawning conflicts over land and living space. Together, rising seas and desertification will present the world with an unprecedented flow of environmental refugees--and the potential for civil strife.

During this century we must deal with the effects of the trends--rapid population growth, advancing deserts, and rising seas--that we set in motion during the last century. Growth in the human population of over 70 million per year is accompanied by a simultaneous growth of livestock populations of more than 35 million per year. The rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide that are destabilizing the earth’s climate are driven by the burning of fossil fuels. Our choice is a simple one: reverse these trends or risk being overwhelmed by them.

---

Lester R. Brown is President of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.

Data and additional resources at http://www.earthpolicy.org

For more in-depth information see Chapters 4-6 in Plan B 2.0, at http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB2/Contents.htm




5.

From: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1557842,00.html

TIME MAGAZINE: RUMSFELD, GONZALES, TENET, OTHERS TO BE CHARGED WITH WAR CRIMES IN GERMANY OVER ABU GHRAIB AND GITMO

ADAM ZAGORIN, TIME - Just days after his resignation, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. . .

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that one of the witnesses who will testify on their behalf is former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq. Karpinski who the lawyers say will be in Germany next week to publicly address her accusations in the case has issued a written statement to accompany the legal filing, which says, in part: "It was clear the knowledge and responsibility [for what happened at Abu Ghraib] goes all the way to the top of the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld." . . .

Germany was chosen for the court filing because German law provides "universal jurisdiction" allowing for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world. Indeed, a similar, but narrower, legal action was brought in Germany in 2004, which also sought the prosecution of Rumsfeld. The case provoked an angry response from Pentagon, and Rumsfeld himself was reportedly upset. Rumsfeld's spokesman at the time, Lawrence DiRita, called the case a "a big, big problem." U.S. officials made clear the case could adversely impact U.S.-Germany relations, and Rumsfeld indicated he would not attend a major security conference in Munich, where he was scheduled to be the keynote speaker, unless Germany disposed of the case. The day before the conference, a German prosecutor announced he would not pursue the matter, saying there was no indication that U.S. authorities and courts would not deal with allegations in the complaint.

In bringing the new case, however, the plaintiffs argue that circumstances have changed in two important ways. Rumsfeld's resignation, they say, means that the former Defense Secretary will lose the legal immunity usually accorded high government officials. Moreover, the plaintiffs argue that the German prosecutor's reasoning for rejecting the previous case that U.S. authorities were dealing with the issue has been proven wrong.

---

Related articles:

War Crimes Suit Filed Against Rumsfeld in Germany (11/14/06)
http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3453&Itemid=220
An international grouping of lawyers has filed a 220-page lawsuit, calling on German prosecutors to investigate Donald Rumsfeld for sanctioning torture. The complaint asks Germany's federal prosecutor Monika Harms to open an investigation and criminal prosecution that will examine the responsibility of high ranking US officials in the authorization of war crimes in the context of the so-called "War on Terror." The suit is being brought on behalf of 11 detainees from Abu Ghraib and 1 detainee from Guantanamo Bay. The detainees, under the control of the US military, suffered electric shock, severe beatings, sleep and food deprivation, and sexual abuse. German law allows the pursuit of war crimes cases regardless of where in the world they occur. Torture Suit Star Witness, Former. Abu Ghraib Head Janis Karpinski Points to Signed Rumsfeld Memo Listing Harsh Interrogation Techniques read or listen - The Center for Constitutional Rights: Please join our effort! The letter appears below, first in German and then in English. The German Prosecutor has discretion to decide whether to initiate an investigation. It is critical that he hear from you so he knows that people around the world support this effort.

You can lend popular weight to this case by registering your support at http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/GermanCase2006/germancase.asp
Your voice is needed to charge Rumsfeld with War Crimes! The German Prosecutor has discretion to decide whether to initiate an investigation. It is critical that you write to her so she knows that people around the world support this effort. Please urge the German Prosecutor to open an investigation into this case. Please step up to the plate and do the right thing, and pass this on to your e-mail lists.

View a slide show of Columbian artist Fernando Botero's new series of paintings of the torture endured by Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. A lawsuit on behalf of 12 former detainees against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes committed at Abu Ghraib was turned in to a German prosecutor on Tuesday. http://www.slate.com/id/2153674/

Rumsfeld OK'd Dog Scares, Strips
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/23/iraq/main625525.shtml
Newly-released documents on U.S. policy of torturing prisoners show that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized guards to strip detainees and threaten them with dogs.

Ex-prisoner tells of torture at Guantanamo
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20757477-23109,00.html
A GERMAN, who was held for four years in the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, has alleged systematic torture in the hands of the US military, from beatings to being chained to a ceiling for days.




6.

Recommended by Phyllis Montague (phyllism5@juno.com) who wrote: “Important wake up call...” GO AT THE URL BELOW TO WATCH THE 2 VIDEOS AND PONDER THEIR SIGNIFICANCE...

From: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2006/161106torturedid.htm

Americans To Be Tortured For Refusing To Show ID?

Student shocked, tortured for defending constitutional rights

Paul Joseph Watson

November 16, 2006

A horror video that wouldn't look out of place in Maoist China or Nazi Germany shows a student being repeatedly shot with a stun gun by UCLA police for the crime of not showing his ID. As similar cases begin to pile up how long will it be before Americans are routinely tortured for noncompliance and refusing to have their 4th amendment violated?

"A cell phone captured video of a 23-year-old student being administered multiple Taser shocks by UCLA police on Tuesday. The UCLA student was hit with the Taser shocks multiple times while he was in the Powell Library Computer Lab. According to the paper, (Mostafa) Tabatabainejad did not show ID to community service officers who were conducting a random check," reports NBC.

Watch the video above and witness as the cops bark at Tabatabainejad to get to his feet as simultaneously shock him over and over until he begins crying and screaming for them to stop.

Police are given extensive training on the use of stun guns and in most cases that training involves taking a taser shot and feeling the effects. Depending on each individual's physiology, it takes at least a minute to be able to even stand after a single Taser shot. Over a hundred deaths have occurred in America as a result of taser shocks and Taser's own manual discourages repeated shocks, yet the history of their use tells us that police simply administer repeated shocks until "compliance is gained." This is a euphemism for torture.

The video and the eyewitness reports describe multiple taser shots as Tabatabainejad begs and pleads while at one point screaming, "Here's your Patriot Act, here's your f---ing abuse of power."

The officers repeatedly order Tabatabainejad to stand even as they administer further shocks - sending 50,000 volts of current that override the nervous system and temporarily paralyze muscles shooting through his system again and again. He can't stand and the cops know it, they just get off on the maniacal ego power trip of torture and this is why Tabatabainejad is hit again and again despite his screaming and the protests of the onlookers.

Similar cases abound in the so-called land of the free, including the video above in which a housewife, Abbey Newman, is assaulted and arrested for simply refusing to tell the gestapo her name at an unconstitutional checkpoint. Another case in which an Alex Jones listener, Ferrell Montgomery, was tasered and had a dog set on him again underscores the brutal and sadistic nature of the police. Like Tabatabainejad, Montgomery was repeatedly told to put his hands behind his head and stand up while he was electric shocked and a dog savaged him for not complying.

In November 2005, Deborah Davis was reading a book on a Denver bus when a guard of a nearby federal building got on board and demanded everyone show their ID. Davis refused, leading the guard to "call on federal cops, who then dragged Davis off a public bus, handcuffed her, shoved her into the back seat of a police car and drove off to a police station within the Federal Center."

How long before Americans are tortured with taser weapons on the streets for refusing to show identification on a routine basis?

How long before we are forced to wear shock collars like some bizarre science fiction movie, where our masters can discipline us on a whim for not obeying orders?

It may be a lot sooner than we think.

Every indication suggests that there are moves afoot to implement these measures on every major street corner and transport system. A year ago we were told that Federal air marshals were to expand their work beyond airplanes, launching counter-terror surveillance at train stations and other mass transit facilities. So called "Visible Intermodal Protection and Response" teams — or VIPER teams, may soon be permanently deployed to check ID's under the banner of counter-terrorism.

We need to set a precedent now whereby police who use taser stun guns and any other kind of unreasonable force as implements of torture, simply if an individual refuses to have their 4th amendment right illegally violated, are instantly fired, sued and can never work in any sector of government, policing or security again.

Watch this space for further updates on the Tabatabainejad case.

ACTION: Call UCLA and demand an investigation into this incident. BE POLITE. 310-825-4321

---

Related article:

Community responds to Taser use in Powell (Nov. 16, 2006) http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=38960
An incident late Tuesday night in which a UCLA student was stunned at least four times with a Taser has left the UCLA community questioning whether the university police officers' use of force was an appropriate response to the situation. Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a UCLA student, was repeatedly stunned with a Taser and then taken into custody when he did not exit the CLICC Lab in Powell Library in a timely manner. Community Service Officers had asked Tabatabainejad to leave after he failed to produce his BruinCard during a random check at around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday. (...) An incident late Tuesday night in which a UCLA student was stunned at least four times with a Taser has left the UCLA community questioning whether the university police officers' use of force was an appropriate response to the situation. Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a UCLA student, was repeatedly stunned with a Taser and then taken into custody when he did not exit the CLICC Lab in Powell Library in a timely manner. Community Service Officers had asked Tabatabainejad to leave after he failed to produce his BruinCard during a random check at around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday. A Taser delivers volts of low-amperage energy to the body, causing a disruption of the body's electrical energy pulses and locking the muscles, according to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's an electrical shock. ... It causes pain," Young said, adding that the drive stun would not likely demobilize a person or cause residual pain after the shock was administered. Young also said a Taser is less forceful than a baton, for example. But according to a study published in the Lancet Medical Journal in 2001, a charge of three to five seconds can result in immobilization for five to 15 minutes, which would mean that Tabatabainejad could have been physically unable to stand when the officers demanded that he do so. "It is a real mistake to treat a Taser as some benign thing that painlessly brings people under control," said Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney at the ACLU of Southern California. "The Taser can be incredibly violent and result in death," Eliasberg said. According to an ACLU report, 148 people in the United States and Canada have died as a result of the use of Tasers since 1999. During the altercation between Tabatabainejad and the officers, bystanders can be heard in the video repeatedly asking the officers to stop and requesting their names and identification numbers. The video showed one officer responding to a student by threatening that the student would "get Tased too." At this point, the officer was still holding a Taser. Such a threat of the use of force by a law enforcement officer in response to a request for a badge number is an "illegal assault," Eliasberg said. "It is absolutely illegal to threaten anyone who asks for a badge - "that's assault," he said. Tabatabainejad was released from custody after being given a citation for obstruction/delay of a peace officer in the performance of duty. Neither Tabatabainejad nor his family were giving interviews Wednesday. (...) The incident, which Zaragoza described as an example of "police brutality," left many students disturbed. "I realize when looking at these kind of arrest tapes that they don't always show the full picture. ... But that six minutes that we can watch just seems like it's a ridiculous amount of force for someone being escorted because they forgot their BruinCard," said Ali Ghandour, a fourth-year anthropology student. "It certainly makes you wonder if something as small as forgetting your BruinCard can eventually lead to getting Tased several times in front of the library," he added. CLIP

Former Guantanamo Prisoner Reveals Extent of Torture
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111606E.shtml
Murat Kurnaz, the German-born Turk known as the Bremen Taliban, has spoken publicly about the alleged torture he suffered at the hands of the US military in Guantanamo Bay.

House Passes "Terrorism" Act Against Animal Activists
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111606F.shtml
Monday afternoon, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that reclassifies unlawful animal-rights tactics as terrorism under certain conditions, even if they are non-violent.

This Is Why The Iraqis Hate Us (November 17, 2006)
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/november2006/171106hateus.htm
Another beating snuff video shames coalition of the killing, You Tube censors it - British troops punch, beat and kick pleading Iraqi children as a sadistic comrade films the brutal scenes of torture, laughing, screaming, growling and frothing like a serial killer filming a snuff movie. This is why the Iraqis hate us. Iraqi children throw rocks as they flee from running British troops, are grabbed, brought inside a gate and beaten half to death. Watch the video below. The censorship spies at You Tube rejected it 2 minutes after upload so I re-named it "Fluffy Happy Poodles In Heaven," to try and bypass their keyword filters and it was still rejected. I even renamed the actual 'wmv' filename but it was still blocked for "terms of use violation." I finally managed to get it posted on Google Video. If it disappears again, here's the Windows Media link on our server. (Go at http://prisonplanet.com/articles/november2006/171106hateus.htm if you want to see this disturbing video) (...) Most of these individuals were brought up on a steady diet of first person shoot-em-ups, and they have overlaid the mental perception that the video games taught them on how to treat death. Distanced and emotionless, the troops see random slaughter and torture as a stress reliever, a means of letting off some steam - and it's all sanctioned from the very top. The assumption that Iraq is now liberated and that its people have suffered for the glorious opportunity of seeing democracy and freedom flourish throughout their country is the last thread the Neo-Cons are hanging onto as claims of weapons of mass destruction and Al-Qaeda ties evaporated long ago. Yet to claim Iraq is liberated is the most absurd of any of the justifications for going to war or "staying the course." Every cornerstone of what one would consider to be basic rights in a free society, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, right to fair judicial process, right to be secure from unlawful searches and seizures in one's home, have been abolished in Iraq. The occupation makes the regime of Saddam Hussein look like post-revolution America. I guess the Iraqi children should feel lucky in that they got their retaliation in first by throwing rocks, many are simply arrested, hooded and taken to the torture camp for refusing to show ID at checkpoints. It's good to see that the authorities are not hypocrites and that the same kind of law enforcement techniques are practiced here at home, as Mostafa Tabatabainejad can attest to, the student was tortured for refusing to show his ID to UCLA police in a campus library. The fun will continue when the same kind of barbarous fiends who get orgasmic pleasure from watching children being tortured come back home and become our police.

A terrible legacy of hatred and death - By Robert Fisk (Nov. 18)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15669.htm
This is the hell we have bequeathed to the Arab peoples of Iraq.

Lawyer in the Hell of Guantanamo
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112006H.shtml
Famed human-rights attorney Clive Stafford Smith tells Le Monde reporter Annick Cojean: "My wife has instructions to call my own lawyer if I don't send any news for two days. Guantanamo is one of the places on the planet where I feel least secure."

Missing Presumed Tortured (20 November 2006)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112006O.shtml
More than 7,000 prisoners have been captured in America's war on terror. Just 700 ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Between extraordinary rendition to foreign jails and disappearance into the CIA's "black sites", what happened to the rest? (...) But why is it so sensitive to confirm what happened to these prisoners, to detail how many were transferred where and when? Why should a country receiving prisoners be so embarrassed? And why - when countries such as Egypt have come clean and said "yes, we received 70 to 80 prisoners rendered by the United States" - will the United States itself not confirm what it did? Despite admitting, in general, that the CIA carries out renditions, the US has yet to own up to a single specific case of transferring a prisoner to foreign custody. The explanation for the secrecy is one that most of the CIA officers involved in rendition will quite freely admit - a transfer to places such as Egypt or Uzbekistan (a country known for boiling prisoners alive) will inevitably involve torture. And knowingly sending a prisoner to face torture is, under both US and international law, an illegal act. Revealing the fate of the missing prisoners may be just too politically embarrassing. (...) The cases of al-Libi and Zammar, who according to fellow prisoners in Syria was brutally tortured, illustrate the corrosive effect of the policy of disappearance. While the secrecy may protect the US from legal jeopardy and from political embarrassment, it also makes the threat of torture self-fulfilling. If you send a prisoner to Damascus, Tripoli or Tashkent, how can you hope to protect that prisoner - to ensure a fair trial or see that he stays alive - if you keep that rendition quiet? Secrecy protects the torturer; and it denies those innocent, those wrongly accused of crimes of terrorism and caught up in these renditions, any chance of justice. Last month, Bush signed into law his new Military Commissions Act, which provides for the trial at Guantanamo of top al-Qaeda leaders. The act grants fewer rights to defendants than the Nazis got at Nuremberg. And yet, in this strange world, the rights now granted to men such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who devised the 9/11 attack and who will now be brought to trial, still rank far higher than the rights of the small fry, those much less significant players behind bars in foreign jails. In this new justice, the big terrorists are granted privileges, and the other missing prisoners, subtracted from the public record, are disappeared off the face of the earth. That's the mathematics of torture. 14 European countries admit allowing the CIA to run secret prisons or carry out renditions on their territory - 7,000+ prisoners have been captured in America's war on terror - 450 prisoners are thought to be held at Guantanamo - 10 prisoners at Guantanamo have been convicted - 40 countries have citizens held in Guantanamo.




7.

From: http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/061119034024.d010tlyg.html

Also from http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111906Z.shtml

CIA analysis finds no Iranian nuclear weapons drive: report

19/11/2006

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A classified draft CIA assessment has found no firm evidence of a secret drive by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, as alleged by the White House, a top US investigative reporter has said.

Seymour Hersh, writing in an article for the November 27 issue of the magazine The New Yorker released in advance, reported on whether the administration of Republican President George W. Bush was more, or less, inclined to attack Iran after Democrats won control of Congress last week.

A month before the November 7 legislative elections, Hersh wrote, Vice President Dick Cheney attended a national-security discussion that touched on the impact of Democratic victory in both chambers on Iran policy.

"If the Democrats won on November 7th, the vice president said, that victory would not stop the administration from pursuing a military option with Iran," Hersh wrote, citing a source familiar with the discussion.

Cheney said the White House would circumvent any legislative restrictions "and thus stop Congress from getting in its way," he said.

The Democratic victory unleashed a surge of calls for the Bush administration to begin direct talks with Iran.

But the administration's planning of a military option was made "far more complicated" in recent months by a highly classified draft assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency "challenging the White House's assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb," he wrote.

"The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency," Hersh wrote, adding the CIA had declined to comment on that story.

A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the CIA analysis and said the White House had been hostile to it, he wrote.

Cheney and his aides had discounted the assessment, the official said.

"They're not looking for a smoking gun," the official was quoted as saying, referring to specific intelligence about Iranian nuclear planning.

"They're looking for the degree of comfort level they think they need to accomplish the mission."

The United States and other major powers believe Iran's uranium enrichment program is ultimately aimed at producing fissile material for nuclear weapons.

Iran insists it will use the enriched uranium only to fuel nuclear power stations, something it is permitted to do as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The major powers have been debating a draft United Nations resolution drawn up by Britain, France and Germany that would impose limited sanctions on Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile sectors for Tehran's failure to comply with an earlier UN resolution on halting enrichment.

On Wednesday, Israel's outgoing US ambassador Danny Ayalon said in an interview that Bush would not hesitate to use force against Iran to halt its nuclear program if other options failed.

"US President George W. Bush will not hesitate to use force against Iran in order to halt its nuclear program," Ayalon told the Maariv daily.

Israel, widely considered the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power, views Iran as its arch-foe, pointing to repeated calls by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

---

Related articles:

The Next Act - By Seymour M. Hersh (20 November 2006)
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/061127fa_fact
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111906H.shtml
Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more? (...) The White House's concern was not that the Democrats would cut off funds for the war in Iraq but that future legislation would prohibit it from financing operations targeted at overthrowing or destabilizing the Iranian government, to keep it from getting the bomb. "They're afraid that Congress is going to vote a binding resolution to stop a hit on Iran, à la Nicaragua in the Contra war," a former senior intelligence official told me. (...) A retired four-star general who worked closely with the first Bush Administration told me that the Gates nomination means that Scowcroft, Baker, the elder Bush, and his son "are saying that winning the election in 2008 is more important than the individual. The issue for them is how to preserve the Republican agenda. The Old Guard wants to isolate Cheney and give their girl, Condoleezza Rice" - the Secretary of State - "a chance to perform." The combination of Scowcroft, Baker, and the senior Bush working together is, the general added, "tough enough to take on Cheney. One guy can't do it." Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State in Bush's first term, told me that he believed the Democratic election victory, followed by Rumsfeld's dismissal, meant that the Administration "has backed off," in terms of the pace of its planning for a military campaign against Iran. Gates and other decision-makers would now have more time to push for a diplomatic solution in Iran and deal with other, arguably more immediate issues. "Iraq is as bad as it looks, and Afghanistan is worse than it looks," Armitage said. "A year ago, the Taliban were fighting us in units of eight to twelve, and now they're sometimes in company-size, and even larger." Bombing Iran and expecting the Iranian public "to rise up" and overthrow the government, as some in the White House believe, Armitage added, "is a fool's errand." "Iraq is the disaster we have to get rid of, and Iran is the disaster we have to avoid," Joseph Cirincione, the vice-president for national security at the liberal Center for American Progress, said. "Gates will be in favor of talking to Iran and listening to the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the neoconservatives are still there" - in the White House - "and still believe that chaos would be a small price for getting rid of the threat. The danger is that Gates could be the new Colin Powell - the one who opposes the policy but ends up briefing the Congress and publicly supporting it." Other sources close to the Bush family said that the machinations behind Rumsfeld's resignation and the Gates nomination were complex, and the seeming triumph of the Old Guard may be illusory. (...) Another critical issue for Gates will be the Pentagon's expanding effort to conduct clandestine and covert intelligence missions overseas. Such activity has traditionally been the C.I.A.'s responsibility, but, as the result of a systematic push by Rumsfeld, military covert actions have been substantially increased. In the past six months, Israel and the United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran, I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership, as "part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran." (The Pentagon has established covert relationships with Kurdish, Azeri, and Baluchi tribesmen, and has encouraged their efforts to undermine the regime's authority in northern and southeastern Iran.) The government consultant said that Israel is giving the Kurdish group "equipment and training." The group has also been given "a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the U.S." (An Israeli government spokesman denied that Israel was involved.) Such activities, if they are considered military rather than intelligence operations, do not require congressional briefings. CLIP

White House Brushes Off CIA Report on Iran
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112006S.shtml
The White House dismissed a classified CIA draft assessment that found no conclusive evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Bush: "I Would Understand If Israel Chose to Attack Iran"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112006B.shtml
When President George Bush and President Jacques Chirac met several weeks ago, Bush told his French counterpart that the possibility that Israel would carry out a strike against Iran's nuclear installations should not be ruled out, and that if such an attack were to take place, he would understand it.




8.

From: http://www.ufodigest.com/news/1106/jesuitfootage.html

The Planet X and the "JESUIT FOOTAGE"

Classified "SECRETUM OMEGA". First Indirect Confirmations

by Luca Scantamburlo

November 9, 2006

After the release of the controversial 'MJ-12' files and of the 'Guardian' files, by an anonymous individual, and perhaps for the first time in history, one member of the ufological community, an Italian freelance writer and investigator, was able to check the credentials of the alleged anonymous insider, an individual that was still working for the intelligence community and had not been fired or retired. This mystery man was responsible for the release of the above classified material. He was an insider of a presumed Vatican intelligence structure and his actions were supported by his colleagues. But first of all, let me tell you something about that freelancer: Cristoforo Barbato.

Born in Naples in 1972, is an Italian independent UFO researcher; in the last 7 years he worked and written for several UFO magazines and frontier studies published in Italy: Notiziario UFO and Dossier Alieni for example. For many years Barbato was also a member of the C.U.N. (Centro Ufologico Nazionale), the main Italian ufological association. Moreover he has collaborated to the realization of two Italian encyclopedias on the UFOs subject, entitled UFO Dossier X, published by the Fabbri Edizioni and Stargate - Enigmi dal Cosmo, by Curcio Editore. Barbato has also participated as speaker at some national conventions on the UFOs, where he has had the possibility to meet different important UFOs researchers, both Italians and international: among them Col. Philip Corso, U.S. Army retired officer.

For some years Barbato was editor in charge in Rome for some Italian magazines, as Stargate, Extra Terrestrial and Stargate Magazine. During that period he wrote on the magazine "Stargate" many reports about Fatima Apparitions and the famous "Third Secret". After the publication of those reports, precisely in the year 2000, he received several e-mails from a person who qualified himself as a Vatican insider. From those e-mails rose up the story of a presumed Vatican Intelligence Agency, whose code would be S.I.V.: "Servizio Informazioni del Vaticano", which in Italian means "Vatican Information Services". In short the Vatican Secret Services. Barbato, at the beginning, was very skeptical and did not rely on him. After one year of such an epistolary contacts (in the meantime the insider revealed himself as a S.I.V. membership, belonging to the Jesuit Order and working by the Holy See), the Italian freelance demanded a meeting with him, as a necessary condition to carry on the contacts. In spite of the risks the Vatican insider accepted, and I suppose he was aware it was necessary considering his baffling revelations. Two meetings took place in a public space in Rome in 2001. After that at least his identity was clear: he was not a mythomaniac; he was really a Jesuit working by the Holy See. Of course the Italian freelance has been protecting his source, avoiding to spread his name; and very soon Barbato realized that he knew much more than what he had told him by e-mail.
Photo used with the kind permission of Cristoforo Barbato - www.secretum-omega.com.

Closeup of object to the right of Planet X. Object has been enlarged with noise added. Photo used with the kind permission of Cristoforo Barbato - www.secretum-omega.com.
Moreover in 2001 the Vatican insider sent to Cristoforo Barbato by post a videotape (shown for the first time during a meeting that took place in Pescara, in Italy, on 30 April 2005), containing a footage of 2 minutes regarding observations of a planetoid in the deep space (the presumed Tenth Planet, "the Planet X"), while it was approaching to the Solar System. The video, which shows an introduction of writings of classification on it, had been carried out by a secret space probe named "Siloe". The Vatican deep throat told Barbato the space probe was equipped with a sophisticated infrared camera and an electromagnetic impulses propulsion, and was assembled in Area 51(Nevada), and then orbited by an aircraft of the type "Aurora", a secret hypersonic aircraft; the space probe Siloe, always according the Barbato's contact, sent the images of the planetoid in October 1995 (after it came back to the border of Solar System to have more power of signal), to a secret radio telescope hidden in an unused oil-refining plant in Alaska, totally managed by some Jesuits belonging to the S.I.V. The radio telescope, he added, was built in 1990 to observe anomalous celestial bodies on approaching the Solar System.

Closeup of triangle object traveling over unknown planet. Photo used with the kind permission of Cristoforo Barbato - www.secretum-omega.com.
After his conference in Pescara (Italy), Barbato spread a press release which, according to the Jesuit's information, would confirm also the story of a secret meeting of First Contact happened during the strange absence of President Eisenhower in a February evening of 1954, while the President was on holiday in Palm Springs, in California, absence officially motivated with a sudden visit by a dentist for an emergency dental treatment. As a matter of fact on Saturday night of February 20, 1954, Eisenhower's Press Secretary announced that Eisenhower had lost a tooth cap while eating fried chicken and had to be rushed to a local dentist (source: Michael Salla, PhD, http://www.exopolitics.org/Study-Paper-8.htm). Here is a passage from Barbato's press release: "[…] the meeting with an Alien delegation at Muroc Air Field Base in February 1954 in the presence of president Dwight Eisenhower and James Francis McIntyre, bishop of Los Angeles. After that incredible event McIntyre flew to Rome to refer everything to Pope Pius XII who decided to found the S.I.V with the aim to gather every possible bit of information about Aliens and how they interacted with the American Government. From then bishop McIntyre and Detroit Archbishop Edward Mooney became the main information co-coordinators between the USA and the Vatican State. Incredibly, later on there should have been some direct personal meetings between S.I.V. members and a Nordic-looking race of Aliens coming from the Pleiades. These Aliens presumably warned humans against another alien race met by the Americans in the California Desert . These meetings between S.I.V and Aliens took place mainly in the USA territory but also - twice - in the Vatican State , precisely in Vatican Gardens at the Papal Academy of Sciences in presence of Pope Pius XII. My Jesuit contact also confirmed to me the reality of the George Adamsky-John XXIII meeting and talked about some very interesting details about it. He also called "Secretum Omega" the highest secrecy level in S.I.V, equivalent to the NATO Cosmic Top Secret."

I interviewed Barbato for the Italian bimonthly magazine UFO Notiziario (UFO news), nr.62, April-May 2006, in which the magazine published some frames of the video and a very interesting presumed image (provided almost for sure by the Jesuit to Barbato), regarding the phantom "Aurora" (so far denied by U.S. officials) an American large secret hypersonic aircraft capable of a Mach 6 performance. In the presumed picture, taken by a classified STS mission in 2002, you can see a full-body shape aircraft (a black triangle) coming out from the earthly atmosphere to go into the Space. Other detailed information have been revealed on Barbato's website (www.secretum-omega.com), where last September the Italian freelance published on-line the interview to his contact, the Jesuit, taken place in 2001 in Rome. The Jesuit member of the S.I.V. told Barbato that on occasion of the secret meeting at Muroc Air Field Base, in 1954, military cameramen filmed the outstanding event "with three movie cameras (16 millimeters), detached in different places, loaded with colour film and working by spring engines; this last rather unconformable resolution, because it compelled every cameraman to change reel every 3 minutes, it was necessary since in the presence of the Aliens and of their spacecrafts, the electrical engines of the biggest movie cameras did not work. They filmed 7 rollers of 30 meters, a total of 20 minutes shot." Among the Jesuit's revelations, two of them are astonishing: about the planetoid visible in the videotape, the Vatican insider told the Italian freelance that it is the Planet X (the Sumerian Nibiru); about the "Guardian Files", he confessed him are a "dramatic truth", apart from the frames of the presumed E.B.E.

The Barbato' s researches shocked me and roused me to investigate as journalist the "Secretum Omega" enigma. Since 2005 up to now, on some magazines, websites and essays, I found out several circumstantial evidences that seem to prove the existence of the S.I.V. and the "Secretum Omega", their highest clearance. Barbato, before than me, found the most important and explicit of them on an historical essay, a book written by Mark Aarons and John Loftus, entitled "Ratlines" (see chapter 1). Anyway, above all because of the mass-media silence, I decided to baptize the Barbato's video with the name of "Jesuit Footage", to draw upon it the public attention. And finally I found an indirect remarkable confirmation of Barbato's testimony: Dr. Steven M. Greer (M.D.), in his recent book "Hidden Truth - Forbidden Knowledge", revealed in the chapter nr. 16 (passages of it have been published by Nexus New Times magazine, on the survey "Twilight Zone", nr 64, October-November 2006) that, during a meeting with some rebel insiders taken place in December 1994 in Phoenix by Wrigley Mansion, one of them confessed him that determinate Jesuits control technology on UFOs information and contacts with Aliens. So I am convinced that the disturbing inquiries carried out by Barbato deserve our maxim attention, especially to understand how much truth there is about the next Planet X's arrival.

---

Related articles:

CIRCLES OF POWER behind UFO SECRECY by Steven M. Greer, MD (Oct.-Nov. 2006) http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/CirclesOfPower.html
(...) Inside the shadow government - Those who shouldn't be in control but are comprise an illegal, rogue, break-off group that is transnational and whose members are not only ruthless and murderous but operate completely without any legal authority. When you're dealing with something as fundamentally important as this, involving technologies as powerful as those described, you begin to realise the risks to the world of allowing this masquerade to go on, unchecked, decade after decade after decade.In 1994, an FOB (a friend of Bill Clinton) came to my home after I had briefed the CIA director. He was a very easygoing, affable guy. He said, "You know, everyone agrees with what you're recommending, but there's a consensus that if the President does what you've suggested to him and to the CIA director—that they exert executive power to get inside this operation and disclose it—the President will end up like Jack Kennedy." I thought he was joking, and, to be honest with you, I laughed out loud. I truly thought, "Oh, come on." But no, he was deadly serious. And he made it very clear that he was serious.So it went from crisis to crisis as I came to realise that the government of the United States—and of every other nation—was really hostage to an illegal, rogue group that had technologies that could do circles around a B-2 Stealth bomber and could, at will, terminate a presidency or terminate any other person who got in its way. This was made very clear to me by people who were in the inner circle of the greatest corridors of power on Earth. Obviously, this weighed on me very heavily. I would say the period between 1992 and 1998...those six years were extremely traumatic for me. I would keep my chin up and publicly keep moving forward, but on a deep personal level it was devastating. I never lost faith in what we should do, but it was made very clear to me that the task was enormous, that the hour was late and that the stakes could not be greater. You have to understand the compartmented nature of these interlocking interests that are keeping all this secret. They are mainly in the corporate, institutional, financial and technology sectors. The government of "We, the People" is the least important component of it, and this includes the military, the CIA, the NSA, the NRO, Army intelligence, Air Force intelligence—all of that is window dressing for an operation that's quite outside it. The real action is a hybrid group that is quasi-governmental but mostly privatised and utterly transnational—and completely illegal. (...) But this shadowy contact was essentially, again, inviting me into the inner leading circle of the cabal. While I had no intention of being controlled by them, I have no problem sharing perspective and knowledge with them.He also said that there were many top people that he worked with in the media and that his group worked with Bono and U2, the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd and various other groups. And they were receiving what I was writing. And I just said, "Well, I appreciate that." He said, "They love what you are saying and doing…"Later that winter, I went to Europe and met with some very good friends of Prince Charles and Prince Philip. One of Prince Charles's best friends is very supportive of the work we are doing. She wanted to receive some of the materials that I had put together for the CIA director and the President, so she could share them with Prince Charles and others. CLIP




9.

From: "ICIS-Institute for Cooperation in Space" (peace@peaceinspace.org)
Date: 20 Nov 2006
Subject: THE CASE FOR EXOPOLITICS: USHERING IN A COSMIC DIALOGUE

EDITOR'S NOTE: According to a well-placed observer, Come Carpentier de Gourdon's presentation (below) at the Rhodos World Public Forum was well received, including some present and former officials from various governments asking for more information on Exopolitics and the Extraterrestrial issue. No one raised any doubts about the information. We are also informed that The Russian Government is closely associated with the convening and organisation of the event through the Glory of Russia Foundation. The Conference co-Chairman is Vladimir Yakunin who is seen as one of President Putin's "heirs apparent". Mr. Putin has announced he may retire as Russian President in 2008.

From: http://comecarpentier.com/world_public_forum.htm

THE CASE FOR EXOPOLITICS: USHERING IN A COSMIC DIALOGUE

By Come Carpentier de Gourdon

EXOPOLITICS, insofar as it concerns the issue of mankind’s contacts with intelligent non-human lifeforms originating outside our planet, has an already long history. Since Antiquity, human beings have pondered this existential question: “are we alone in the universe?” and have sought to answer it according to their experience, intuition or imagination, with fear, hope, humour or incredulity.

CLIP - Read the missing part at http://comecarpentier.com/world_public_forum.htm

In 1998 and 1999 two seminars were held “by invitation only” in the USA for experts to discuss confidentially and freely the possible consequences of confirmed and proved contacts between human beings and Extraterrestrial intelligent creature. The 26 participants included one 3-star general from the US army, several university professors and high-level business executives as well as some professional and eminent futurogists. The American expert Michael Lindemann is to provide a report on those meetings at a conference to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA in November 2006 under the auspices of the Majestic Documents study group (http://www.majesticdocuments.com) headed by Ryan Wood.

On May 9th, 2006, a Press conference was held in Toronto Canada, by Dr. Steven Greer, director of the Disclosure Project (USA) (http://www.disclosureproject.org)
and the Hon. Paul Hellyer, former Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Canada (http://www.exopolitics.com):

“(its) goal…[was] to present witness testimony by Brigadier Generals, Naval Photo experts, military officers, ICBM launch commanders, an FAA Crash Site Sr. Inspector, NORAD Air Traffic Controllers and pilots that confirms authentic, first hand encounters with intelligently controlled unidentified aerial craft of non-Earth origin”.

“Each witness has stated that they are willing to testify, under oath, before Congress or Parliament as to the truth of their testimony”

[The] Press was also able to view copies of original government documents and National Security memoranda that confirm a coordinated involvement with and a high level of interest in global UFO activity by military and national security agencies.

Abundant evidence and witness testimony also exists that establishes the existence of related covert projects that have developed advance energy and propulsion technologies that could free mankind from its dependency on oil, gas, coal and nuclear power.

Paul Hellyer (who was also the Minister of Defence in the cabinet of PM Lester Pearson) in some of his public interventions on the subject has been quite outspoken about his concern regarding the ongoing weaponisation of space led by the US Pentagon. He has described the future as “a choice between Star Dreams and Star Wars” and has accused the American Space Command of actively preparing to attack the alien visitors with satellite-borne electromagnetic particle beam and laser weapons. There are various independent confirmations for the existence of one or more secret US military space stations and space planes already deployed in orbit in the pursuit of “full spectrum” dominance of the planetary stratosphere and surface.

Like other far-sighted and informed leaders, Paul Hellyer has emphasized the urgent need to seek instead cooperative relations with Extraterrestrials. He writes: “…Canada should accept the long-standing invitation of (US) Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio to launch a conference to seek approval of an international treaty to ban weapons in space. That would be a positive Canadian contribution…” (Paul Hellyer, in Globe and Mail, May 15h 2003, http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0515-10.htm).

Indeed the US Government at least is moving in the opposite direction, according to a revealing article written by Giuseppe Ansera fore the PINR Network (Power and Interest News Network, http://www.pinr.com) In May 2005, the US Air Force formally asked President George W. Bush to issue a presidential directive allowing the deployment of defensive and offensive weapons into orbit. That directive is to replace decree PDD-NSC-49 issued by the Clinton Administration which effectively put a moratorium on the militarisation of space. In April 2005 the USA launched the XSS-11 orbital micro-satellite, specifically designed to disturb and destroy the military and civilian states belonging to other states. Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 confirms its intention to weaponise space, thus launching a new arms race with even higher stakes than the previous ones.

The Pentagon is actively studying many other options, such as deploying “mirror” satellites redirecting laser beams shot from the earth’s surface against any orbital object or planetary target or satellites to send super-powerful (high frequency and amplitude) radio waves to be used as weapons. Another kind of weapon is called “rods from God” and consists of orbiting platforms capable of launching satellite-guided tungsten-rods onto hostile targets at a speed of 11,000 kms per hours, enabling to penetrate hardened missile silos or deep-buried underground installations. The US envisages deploying the “rods from God” system by 2016. They can also be used against orbiting objects and some foreign experts believe that the US Command intends to use them against alien visiting spacecraft.

The book MAJIC EYES ONLY (2005) , by Ryan S. Wood is one of many that make “a solid case for the existence of deeply classified government research on many of the retrieved vehicles as well as of recovered extraterrestrial biological entities” in the words of Paul M. Rybski, PH.D., Chair Dept. of Physics and Director, Whitewater Observatory, University of WI, Whitewater, USA.

Wood presents 74 UFO crashes from 1897 to the present, supported by compelling evidence in the form of official documents, eyewitnesses and in some cases physical evidence.

The modern UFO era however begins, if only for the sake of convenience, with World War II. Many sightings reported by German and Allied pilots and military personnel: “KRAUT FIREBALLS”, “FOO FIGHTERS”

In 1941, President F.D. Roosevelt set up IPU: Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (IPU), possibly following UFO crash reported at Cape Girardeau (Missouri) that year.

On February 25th , 1942 there was the famous case of the UFO that cruised for hours over Los Angeles and was the target of a futile barrage of US anti-aircraft artillery. The report on that widely reported incident which was witnessed by a large part of the city’s population was sent by General George Marshall to President F.D. Roosevelt. Photographs appeared on the front-page of the local newspapers in the following days.

CLIP - Read the missing part at http://comecarpentier.com/world_public_forum.htm

Other “back-engineering projects” according to NSC’s (National Security Council and at one time the special assistant to General Trudeau, head of the Pentagon’s “Foreign Technology Desk) Colonel Philip Corso and others included special materials (ceramics, alloys, bio-textiles), lasers, fiber-optics, solid state electronics, compact discs, supercomputers, biotronic and bio-computer devices, magneto-aero and hydro-dynamics, magneto-gravitation, particle beam weapons, Electromagnetic Pulse engines, stealth technology, night-vision technology, cold fusion, neutronic reactors etc…
The XXth century Scientific Revolution has been largely seeded, it appears, by outer space “visitors”. The “reverse engineering” was conducted in part under the supervision of the US Armed forces, Intelligence Agencies and later through DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Agency) and other Defense-related organizations and civilian “fronts” such as the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), headed by Richard Dolan, which often sub-contracted or “farmed out” specific segments of the research to private companies on the familiar “need-to-know” basis.

In November 1963, President JF Kennedy dictated a Memo addressed to the CIA, directing it to cooperate with the USSR to “explain in a credible way the impact of knowns and unknowns” in air and space exploration. He wanted cooperation between NASA and the Soviet Science Academy, a prospect to which many of the “conservative”military and industrial leaders of the USA were bitterly opposed since they regarded UFO-related “black” research projects as essential in the arms race in order to gain superiority in the cold war. Whether JFK’s policies on the matter were a factor behind the apparently very high level decision to assassinate him remains an open question.

There is now a large number of declassified or leaked but verified official reports from various Air Forces, Navies, armies and international military structures such NATO, NORAD et al. about encounters, incidents, chases, dogfights and confrontations with “alien” spacecraft exhibiting properties far superior to any available in the conventional arsenals of earthly powers. For example, there are detailed records about the “Maelstrom missile shutdown” (one among several cases) when in 1967, visiting UFOs deactivated a number of Montana-based ICBM missiles in their underground silos. A surprisingly high number of military officers of several countries, including 3-star generals, air marshals and admirals, not to mention astronauts in the Apollo program (Russell Schweikart, Brian O’Leary, Buzz Aldrin, Scott Carpenter among others) have admitted publicly to having seen or been shown evidence of UFOs that, in their best judgment, could not have been of human, terrestrial origin. CNN recorded that President Clinton’s former chief of staff John Podesta asked the Pentagon at a news conference in October of 2002 to lift the UFO cover up (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/10/22/ufo.records/index.html).

The late eminent Harvard professor of psychiatry and Pulitzer prize winner Dr.John E. Mack also became known for his extensive and far-reaching investigations into various aspects of the UFO—EBE (Extra-terrestrial Biological Entities) reality and its implications.

Any attempt to explain UFOs as being man-made, earth-built craft requires us to assume that there are human groups so technologically advanced and powerful that the underlying theory is far more difficult to believe than the simple admission that we are being visited by creatures from other worlds or “dimensions” within an open inter-connected universe where life thrives. So far, most of us (especially our political, religious and scientific leaders) have been in the situation of aborigines isolated in a small island in the Pacific, unable to accept that there may be other lands beyond the horizon inhabited by other races of men, much more powerful than they are.

We can only mention in passing here that three types of well known, abundantly documented and scientifically investigated, significant, long-standing phenomena are directly or indirectly related to UFOS:

-Cattle mutilations

-Crop Circles

-Subcutaneous Implants, “tagging” and abductions of human beings.

International official policy on the UFO/EBE (Extra-terrestrial Biological Entity) issue appears to have been closely coordinated between the leading military powers, through NATO (reportedly within P.I.40, 54/12) and bilateral contacts between the USA and the USSR to prevent uncontrolled disclosures and leaks. As noted earlier occasional leaks have however been permitted (perhaps because they were not always avoidable) and even encouraged, with “plausible deniability” built in.

Science fiction, served by the Hollywood film industry has provided a bridge to the general public, to spread awareness, test reactions and manipulate information by passing some factual data as fantasy to entertain the masses.

Some States have nonetheless retained a degree of autonomy and transparency about UFOS and have conducted their own investigations for decades, showing how seriously they take this subject. The Brazilian armed forces for instance have shown, at least at time, a welcome open minded, objective approach, openly accepting the “possibility” that the Earth is being visited by extra-terrestrial travelers who seem to be, at least in certain cases, far more intellectually and technologically advanced than we are. The People’s Republic of China seems to have followed a rather open and objective investigative policy too in recent years but the British Defence forces have also in certain instances (as in the famous landings at Randlesham) baldly acknowledged that they were confronted with an Extra-terrestrial reality.

Canadian Lawyer Alfred Lambremont Webre has launched the Exopolitics Initiative from Vancouver, in consultation with various agencies of the Canadian Government, through the Institute for Cooperation in Space (ICIS, http://www.peaceinspace.com) and on the basis of UN General Assembly Decision 33/426, 1978 which says: “The GA invites interested Member States to take appropriate steps to coordinate on a national level scientific research and investigation into extraterrestrial life, including unidentified flying objects and to inform the Secretary-General…”

Webre believes that mankind’s preparation for open contacts with Extraterrestrials must rest on four pillars: disclosure of the ET presence, a ten year period of public education, the adoption of a permanent ban on space weapons and the initiation of citizen diplomacy with alien civilizations. He promotes a global signature campaign in support of a petition to the UNO to ban weapons and warfare in space and for an international space preservation treaty to be drafted at a global conference. It is noteworthy that the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China are amongst the nations that support such a treaty meant to stop the accelerating arms race in space.

A.L. Webre was asked by US President Jimmy Carter in 1978 to start a project to establish communication with the Alien visitors from the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). The President was overruled by the Pentagon which forced cancellation of the Project and compelled Carter to renege on his pledge to make UFO official evidence and research available to the public.

The Exopolitics Project is based on data derived from the scientific remote viewing research carried out by Dr. Harold Puthoff and Dr. Russell Targ, at SRI. Their work uses the existence an alleged super-neural connection of human beings to the alien visitors that has been an object of investigation for decades.

It takes also account of the research undertaken under the “Star Kids” project conducted by Dr. Richard Boylan and other behaviourial and social scientists.

The information supplied through this source is that there is what may be described as “a loosely organized spiritual government of our Milky Way galaxy”. Some of those higher lifeforms seem to have played a role, possibly a determinant role in our own biological and psychic evolution as human beings in the remote past according to various, independently convergent reports.

Earth is under observation, some say under some sort of quarantine, while mankind operates its transition towards full contact with and admission into the interplanetary Cosmic Community. Contacts with mankind are so far relatively infrequent and surreptitious. They are made difficult by the obvious and immense superiority of the “visitors” with regard to humans which limits our ability to understand their motivations and their methods. The fact, for example, that they manipulate the space-time continuum through their propulsion technology results in their ability to switch dimensions, seemingly cross over into parallel universes and thus escape to a large degree the effects of some fundamental laws of nature as they apply to us. Hence the conventional, materialistic perspective inherited mostly from nineteenth century science does not make it easy to admit the evidence of the EBE’s presence.

However there is a growing risk of human and planetary self-destruction by war or ecological exhaustion.

The choice is now between collective suicide and a leap to the next stage of mental and biological evolution.

The Exopolitics Initiative advocates a decade of contact through public diplomacy with the Extra-terrestrial intelligent beings who are active on and around the earth since several decades at least and who seem to harbour no hostile or predatory designs. On the contrary some of them at least exhibit real concern for our survival as a species and for the ecological health of the planet. Lt. Colonel Wendelle Stevens (USAF, Rtd.) is one expert who has analysed data collected over sixty years leading to the conclusion that the Extraterrestrials who visit us have peaceful intentions.

The Dialogue between Civilisations will have to include, sooner or later, those beings and cultures that are not human, in the “homo sapiens” category but which clearly have a presence on our planet and a stake in the future of terrestrial and human life. This issue must be brought into the mainstream. It can no longer remain confined to fringe groups of “spiritualists”, “New Agers” or dedicated “UFOlogists”. Neither can it be left to the care of secretive and shadowy military organizations that are primarily devoted to expanding the power of the states they serve and thereby their own influence and resources. In his farewell message to the nation, President Eisenhower warned of the danger posed by the uncontrolled ambition and greed of the US (and transnational) “military industrial complex”.




10.

Recommended by "Stephanie Sutton" (ssutton@flantech.com)

From: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Exopolitics_Institute_News/message/44

Countdown to an official and open contact with ETs ???

Aloha all, I just received the following message to the world UFO community from A.J. Guevard who is the editor of Brazil's UFO Magazine. In it he announces the prediction of a Brazilian spiritual teacher and contactee, Jan Val Eliam, that extraterrestrial contact will occur some time between November 16, 2006 and April 30, 2007. What got my attention was the manner in which he described extraterrestrials showing up and ending the Cosmic Watergate:

"It will involve many huge spacecrafts that will be seen by everybody all over the world. The sighting will last only a couple of hours and the ETs will not perform any direct contact with the governments, but only with selected people here and there”. Freitas also claims that the UFOs will be seen and largely registered by media, in such a way that the sighting will be undeniable by any means. “They will go away after a few hours but will be back after some months, and repeat it over and over, until we are prepared for their landing”.

The above contact scenario matches in my opinion the optimal way for extraterrestrials to end the prolonged UFO/ET coverup by minimizing societal disruption and potential governmental opposition. Guevard maintains a neutral position on Eliam's prediction and describes the great controversy it has generated in Brazil. Guevard is one of Brazil's most competent UFO researchers so his neutrality suggests that one should not simply dismiss Eliam's prediction. While there have been many predictions of extraterrestrials showing up in mass landings, we should pay special attention to the method described by Eliam's prediction which is pretty close to how it will eventually occur. This prediction is something to definitely keep in mind over the months ahead.

Aloha,

Michael Salla, PhD
http://www.exopolitics.org

---

Countdown to an official and open contact with ETs ???

Dear colleagues of the World UFO Community:

Jan Val Ellam, a Brazilian prominent author as lecturer about Ufology and Spirituality, says that several ET races are coming to Earth for an official and open contact with the human race. The meeting should take place anytime from November 16, 2006 to April 30, 2007. Today is the first day of the predicted event and the many members of the Brazilian UFO Community are in countdown waiting for the alleged arrival. Jan Val Ellam is the literary pseudonym of the executive Rogerio de Almeida Freitas, from Rio Grande do Norte, one of the states of the Brazilian Northeast region. With 15 books published and over 200 lectures per year, he is regarded one of the most serious and reliable sources in the vast segment of Spirituality in Brazil. Freitas is also a recognized businessman and represents several European tourism companies in the country. He started in Ufology under his 20s as a prolific field investigator who used to cooperated with Irene Granchi, Brazil’s UFO pioneer, and American writer BobPratt.

CLIP

Note: Below is the introduction of the interview given by Jan Val Ellam to the Brazilian UFO Magazine and his three first answers to our questions. The whole interview has 32 questions and is 13 pages long. Links are available in the news found at the magazine's website at http://www.ufo.com.br

Jan Val Ellam: The date for the official contact is set and it will be for the next few months

CLIP

Radical changes on Earth

This interpretation of the facts is a mistake, says Ellam. Since Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with any religion. A study of pre-Bible times shows us that the UFO phenomenon already existed in our planet with great comprehensiveness much before Jesus had come to Earth. And he came as one of our own species, though from other room of the Fathers house, to show that we were wrong in almost everything we were doing. Ellam is not afraid of attracting the rage of orthodox and doctrinaire spiritualists who see Jesus in an almost religious manner. He calls him an Authority from the Skies and believes he came to Earth with special powers and a well-defined and clear message that could not be understood to anyone, not in that time neither today. Jesus has never asked us to raise religions to him or to the Creator, but only to respect and to love one another, concepts that are an absolutely normal living condition in his world of origin and also in the places he visited, and that only on Earth seem to be senseless.

Jan Val Ellam is a daring man and yet reasonable and known for the seriousness with which he treats all ufological and spiritualist themes without any appeal to sensationalism. Now, he gets totally out of the prudent stance from the previous weeks by surprising everyone with his serious statements concerning facts that are to come to the planet. I never wanted to show up. I work to spread the information I receive because I find them important to many people. Now, what Ive been receiving since last March is so heavy and incisive that I need to reveal to any who wants to listen. In his most recent lectures, Ellam has crossed a barrier untouchable even to the most daring prophets in order to convey facts he says to have made known through his channels. Andthese are really shocking. Ellam states that he was informed that the moment for an official and formal contact with our extraterrestrial visitors is not only near, but has its date set to happen within the next months, between November 2006 and April 2007.

Yes, Jan Val Ellam states his cosmic inspirers the same that guided him to write his rich contented texts informed him that a global and undeniable presentation is to finally happen and has its date set. Itll be something for nobody to question. Not the media, nor scientists or governments. There will be no way to question. And after that they will come many other times, always to fill the skies with their gigantic vehicles not to land but to interact with us until the right time comes.

The interview (only 3 Q&A out of 32)

Brazilian UFO Magazine Many others made similar statements before concerning an official and ultimate contact with ETs, but none of them was so emphatic. Nobody established such a near date for the contact fearing it could not happen. Why are you doing exactly the opposite?

Jan Val Ellam This is actually one of the issues in my personal drama. If I were spreading a warning from my cosmic friends saying that something would happen in a distant future, that would be great for my mind since my personal responsibility would be softened. However, all thats been happening with me since 1986 promoted by these spiritual beings and entities who work together no matter how orthodox ufologists and spiritualists think has the power to make me realize that the moment so long announced may finally come into place in the present days. More than this: they asked me something they never did before. They asked me to convey the announcement of an official and ultimate contact with extraterrestrial beings by means of the fulfillment of the promise made by Jesus when he was among us, the promise of returning to Earth in his natural condition of an authority from the skies. This will be the first official contact that earthly beings would have with beings from other worlds in the present days.His return would happen a little later in a time between the second half of November 2006 until April 2007.

Brazilian UFO Magazine If this really comes to happen that will be a moment of great commotion for the humankind indeed. What do you think such fact would cause to the planetary population?

Jan Val Ellam This fact is to mark the first moment of the so long awaited reintegration of our planet to the cosmic interchange. This would be the end of the isolation experienced by us for so long since we live on Earth under some kind of cosmic quarantine. After all, we are the unwanted companions in this part of the Galaxy, since we commit all sorts of crimes against the dignity of life. After this first visit which would be objective, clear, unquestionable, filmed and reported, yet very brief, maybe lasting for a few hours or even less others will happen in order to make terrestrials even more used to resuming their communion with humankinds of other planets. That should be followed by future contacts with many other extraterrestrials species, all of them linked to what I call cosmic brotherhood ideals.

CLIP - Read the rest at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Exopolitics_Institute_News/message/44

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Related material:

Follow Up to this article above
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/exopolitics/message/375
(...) Personally, I am also neutral. I learned from my 30 years of experience in the UFO field that such claims never really com true. They never had, at least. And I don't know why would this one be any different. However, I keep a open mind about it and I would definitely love that the interviewee Freitas / Ellam prediction of a mass sighting all over the planet come true. Who in this field wouldn't? However, it is not what motivated me to publish the interview, of course, but the content of it, the reputation of the interviewee Freitas / Ellam and the fact that, being a interview, his claims are his responsabilities. CLIP




11.

From: http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/exopolitics.html

Exopolitics and Global Warming: A Cosmic Connection

by Victor Viggiani, B.A. M.Ed.

Many of us have an innate understanding of the concept of Global Warming. Few however are familiar with the term Exopolitics. Fewer again have an appreciation that there is a cosmic connection between these two ideas.

Global Warming - A Brief Overview

Global Warming is an occurrence that many feel is a series of natural events in the progression of changes in Earth's meteorological, atmospheric and environmental conditions. Many scientists say these conditions have occurred and will occur as a matter of course, regardless of the presence of man's influence.

The Ice Age for example occurred more than one million years ago, long before any human influences altered the environment. Through periods of cooling and warming the Ice Age persisted. In Canada and throughout North America the last remnants of the ice sheet that covered North America melted between 20,000 and 6000 years ago. Today mountain glaciers linger as the last leftovers of the Ice Age.

Yet today the planet is faced with environmental degradation that threatens not only the environment but the survival of every species of plant and animal that lives.

We are not only seeing changes in weather and the environment; we are witnessing alterations to the DNA structure of living creatures, their immune and reproductive systems. Is this too a natural occurrence or has mankind injected a variable never before encountered in environmental history?

Artificial toxins like DDT, PCBs or HCB (a chlorinated pesticide used as a fungicide, and also found in chlorinated solvents such as perchloroethylene used in dry cleaning) to name but a few, have produced alterations in human cells ranging from decreased cell-mediated immunity (a decrease in ability to fight infections and tumors), to increased sensitivity (allergy) and autoimmunity.

The injection of carbon dioxide, a major by-product in the use of fossil fuels, into the atmosphere has increased 31% since the pre-industrial age (1750). Most of the carbon dioxide increase occurred after 1945. Methane has increase by 150% over the same period. These increases alter the ozone layer's capacity to protect the Earth's surface from UV rays and also increase the acidity in the ocean. There may also be future changes that science is not yet able to detect or predict.

To make matters even more complex new phenomenon are appearing in the lexicon of global environmental change.

A new term has been coined to describe an alarming potential correlation with Greenhouse Gasses and Global Warming - the notion of Global Dimming. This phenomenon appears to mask the effect of Global Warming due to the Earth getting cooler through Global Dimming.

The cumulative effect of these man-made circumstances has produced an ecosystem straining at the hinges. The possibilities of change, i.e. a reversal in the direction of environmental chaos, are remote.

International governments, scientist and the general public possess no clear consensus about a co-ordinated global course of action to arrest the alterations we see before our eyes. The predictions that polar bears will be extinct in 25 years or that skin cancer rates will increase dramatically, appear to have little effect on the collective will of elected officials to act or the general public to perceive imminent danger.

Like a deer, frozen in its tracks by the lights of an on-coming car, we remain inert.

Can a change of global consciousness of this magnitude be achieved within a generation in order to save the planet from irreversible catastrophe or are we a species destined to demise at our own hand?

This type of systemic cultural change has little to do with industry, government initiatives or international conventions; it has however everything to do with a change in global consciousness that reflects an apology to the planet by the most dangerous creature on the face of the Earth - Man. This species and this species alone must rectify the situation. Yet many fear it is too late.

Enter Exopolitics

What is Exopolitics? Simply stated Exopolitics is a new and emerging field of study that examines the implications of possible contact between humans and extraterrestrial civilizations. Exopolitics also attempts to provide a political framework in which human beings and extraterrestrials could interact. Exopolitics also seeks to examine the disclosure process that governments may be required to use to inform citizens of the authentic nature of an extraterrestrial presence.

There is a sharper edge to this concept.

Extraterrestrial activity is normally symbolized by the unusual phenomenon known as unidentified flying objects. UFOs have been an unacknowledged reality for decades if not centuries.

Exopolitics provides a broad based connection between the notion that we are being visited by extraterrestrials and, how human culture, politics, religion, the environment, energy sources and technological paradigms will be dramatically altered by contact with off-world civilizations.

Sightings reports by pilots, air traffic controllers, citizens, police officers and other credible individuals of UFOs are on the increase globally.

Science, government, mainstream media and institutional edifices have yet to acknowledge these sightings as a manifest reality. Despite this, polls say the general public by and large accepts the notion we are not alone in the universe. The debate about whether of not UFOs represent a benevolent or other type of incursion into our realm is by no means over.

Off-world civilizations that have long since over come the type of planetary pandemonium that afflicts every fabric of the human tapestry have made themselves known in a strange and obscure manner. Why they choose to do this in this way is beyond our capacity to comprehend at this point, for they possess their agenda. Make no mistake about it we are not alone.

Questions arise from this peculiar set of possibilities which acknowledge off-world civilizations; questions to which there are very few answers.

Why are we being exposed to this phenomenon of the strangest kind? Why might exposure to this phenomenon be significant and, might it provide a solution to planetary ruin?

If beings who pilot the craft are in fact from distant planets - millions of light years away - what energy sources are they using to travel the immense distances?

If the craft are in fact real as indicated by military and civilian pilots and air traffic controller reports, and government documents - why are they here?

How have these civilizations managed to survive their own environmental chaos and avoid the extinction that stares us in the face today?

Enter Global Warming

It must be assumed that any civilization that has mastered interstellar voyages has somehow mastered light speed travel or a form of interstellar or inter-dimensional travel we as yet do not comprehend. These civilizations must have developed technologies that utilize arcane energy sources that our scientists and physics cannot explain. Could contact with off-world civilizations be the answer?

The National Geographic reports indicate that there is little doubt that the planet is warming. Over the last century the average temperature has climbed about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 of a degree Celsius) around the world.

The multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report recently concluded that in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia, average temperatures have increased as much as 4 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 4 degrees Celsius) in the past 50 years. The rise is nearly twice the global average.
 

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that global temperatures will rise an additional 3 to10 degrees Fahrenheit (1.6 to 5.5 degrees). Rising temperatures have a dramatic impact on Arctic Ice which serves as a kind of "air conditioner" at the top of the world. Since 1978 Arctic sea ice area has shrunk by some 9 percent per decade, and thinned as well.

As many believe, these conditions may well be a natural effluence of global environmental change. But can the billions of tons of carbon dioxide dispensed each year from fossil fuel technologies be totally removed from the equation?

Re-Enter Exopolitics

If the use of fossil fuels were to stop today and be replaced by energy sources obtained from a developing contact and relationship with off-world civilizations, would the planet enter a new era of environmental design?

The Exopolitical Disclosure Movement provides a unique forum of enquiry that may address and possibly answer the multiplicity of questions presented here. The only missing piece of the puzzle is the cultural and political will to examine the extraterrestrial phenomenon with the vigour the media examines issues such as child and spousal abuse, political patronage, corporate fraud and who the Canadian Idol is this month. With a concentrated and continuous effort the media will transform the issue of "Are UFOs Real" into a Cosmic-Watergate.

What is our next step? Can we afford to relegate the ET/UFO phenomenon to simple myth or the allegory of science fiction? Are we ready to alter our consciousness to accept realities from a different realm - a subtle yet powerful realm - one that holds our future place in the universe in the balance?

To whom can we turn for help? The terrestrial political and anthropological will to do it ourselves appears destined to failure and thus, demise by our own hand.

Like the deer frozen in place by lights on the road, mankind must perhaps re-affix its gaze on the strange lights in the sky.

CLIP




12.

Recommended by "Adi Gaia" (adigaia@moose-mail.com)

From: http://www.gardinersworld.com/content/view/146/54/

THE NEW HUMANS: 5th Root race, Indigos, China’s Super Psychics & Star Children

A human upgrade program orchestrated by extraterrestrial contact; the evidence and implications.

by Mary Rodwell - 26 October 2006
Principal of the Australian Close Encounter Resource Network, ACERN

‘A new race of human beings has emerged. Whilst superficially they are undistinguishable however, they are the part of the next wave of the bringers of light, to assist humanity with the awakening of terrestrial consciousness. Human beings are awakening to their innate connection to the Universe. This is the primary role for all the NEW CHILDREN, coming to planet earth’ — Tracey Taylor, experiencer (2000)

INTRODUCTION

A seven-year old boy called Boriska from the Volgograd region began to tell his family of his life on Mars, its inhabitants and civilisation. He said he knew of Earth and Lemuria in very specific detail. He possessed profound knowledge and a high intellect (Pravda, Sept 2004, Russia).

Boriska displayed signs of extraordinary behaviour. At two weeks of age he was able to raise his head, spoke his first word at four months and as a one-year-old, Boriska could read the large print of a newspaper.

With precision and clarity, he recounted his knowledge of Mars, planetary systems and their inhabitants. He spoke about the gifted kids which he referred to as ‘indigos’ and of their essential role in assisting humanity during the anticipated Earth Changes.


Is humanity changing as a species?

The new kids on the block: A global phenomenon.

Renowned prophet and healer Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) not only spoke of a new humanity and referred to it as the 5th Root race but he also predicted that it would appear in the years 1998 to 2010.

Metaphysicians and other gurus also share the belief and the anticipation of this recent emergence of the new type of human they call Indigos. They are also referred to as Children of the New Millennium, Crystal Children, Children of Light, Golden Children, to mention a few.

The ufology community is conducting research into the extraterrestrial phenomenon experienced by children. Their explorations thus far have produced such terms as the New Humans or, more commonly, Star Children.

The profiles of the Indigo children share the same attributes or are strikingly similar. They are highly intelligent, creative, psychic, telepathic and posses healing and clairvoyant abilities.

The Indigo children also share an inherent capacity to articulately express knowledge and awareness of deep spiritual concepts, historical, anthropological and scientific data, far beyond the capacity of even the most learned scholars, regardless of their age, level of cognitive development, education and numerous other pertinent factors.

This confronting evidence has even captured the attention and interest of the Chinese government who are researching children who possess ‘exceptional human functioning’ (EHF), more commonly referred to as ‘China’s Super Psychics’.

Unfortunately, this research also suggests that these children are so different that they are often misunderstood and described as suffering from ADD (attention deficit disorder).

In this article we will explore the extraordinary qualities and states of consciousness demonstrated by the Indigo children and the inference of the emerging New Humans.

Despite the plethora of information and supporting evidence, this phenomenon still manages to defy our logic and challenges our beliefs and yet it is scientifically supported.

Everything seems to suggest that humanity is on the verge of an evolutionary quantum leap. If we accept this premise, is it not plausible that the phenomenon related to extraterrestrial experience is equally valid and could offer a reasonable explanation for these developments?

Metaphysicians who speak about the emerging New Humans have professional, psychological and medical science backgrounds. Doreen Virtue, (The Crystal Children) has a PhD, and an MA and BA degree in Counselling Psychology. The publication The Indigo Children (1999) by Lee Carroll and Jan Tober took information from psychologists and therapists. The research in China is sponsored by the government and suggests that the phenomenon is taken seriously. Ufology researchers, too, have credible science, medical and psychological backgrounds.

If we are changing as a species, ufology offers a reasonable explanation. Scientific, biological and anthropological anomalies certainly suggest some form of intervention in the evolution of Homo sapiens. The missing link in our evolutionary tree certainly indicates a primary intervention in our genetic make-up. If this is the case, then the New Humans may well have been orchestrated in a similar way with genetic upgrades in our DNA. But the present upgrade is so radical that it appears like an evolutionary jump start, hence the name the New Humans.

If humanity is experiencing a quantum leap in its evolution, why is it happening now? Star Children believe they are here to ‘guide the awakening of terrestrial consciousness’ (Tracey Taylor). But how will this be achieved?

New scientific research could provide us with some of those answers and may qualify what the Star Children seem to understand, such as their role in the awakening of human consciousness. It may also explain why our connections to extraterrestrials could be far more intimate than we have previously suspected, as well as why they are currently so interested in us.

Extraterrestrial contact and genetic manipulation?

UFOs and their appearance in our airspace have been systematically ridiculed as pure nonsense by governments for years. This has been an effective strategy, despite the evidence that one in ten people see such craft. Ridicule and disinformation has meant that most people will hesitate to speak of what they have seen, let alone admit they had any interactions with such craft. Evidence in the form of photographs, hours of video footage and credible testimony from airline pilots and military personnel seems to mean nothing. Even the radar sightings which confirm this reality are hidden from public view.

A medical practitioner, Dr Stephen Greer, supports a disclosure program and owns videotape of hundreds of hours of testimony from high ranking military personal. They all confirm that UFOs are real and that there is a systemic and deliberate cover up by government agencies. Retired American Army and NATO Command Sergeant-Major Robert Dean in the 1960s and 70s guarded COSMIC-classified files which showed that government agencies were fully aware that extraterrestrials and UFOs regularly penetrated our airspace.

Compelling as this is, the evidence of such craft in our skies is really a very small part of this phenomenon. Surely we have to ask who is controlling these craft and why are they here? Robert Dean believes that we are very closely connected to aliens, both spiritually and physically, and suggests that they are responsible for the Star Child phenomenon. The development of a new humanity called Homo Noeticus is a term coined by John White who studied parapsychology and noetics (the investigation of consciousness). Many well-known researchers such as English author and UFO investigator Jenny Randles agree. She wrote about this in Star Children: The True Story of Alien Offspring Among Us.

It has been shown that contact experience is an inter-generational one and that such children appear to be more intelligent, exhibit extraordinary psychic and intuitive abilities and have knowledge that they have not consciously learnt. Ufology research shows that consistent genetic lines play an important factor in this phenomenon.

Podiatry surgeon, Dr Roger Leir, is renowned in ufology for his pioneering surgery removing alleged alien implants and his autobiographical book The Aliens and the Scalpel. Dr Leir included the phenomenon of Star Children in his research. He writes that ‘I believe that any mother that looks at her recently born child, in comparison with children born twenty years ago, will testify that there is a tremendous difference. Some look upon the differences in the New Humans and say they have to do with better prenatal care etc. In my opinion this supposition is nonsense AND IN LIGHT OF MY MORE RECENT STUDIES AND EXPOSURE TO THE ABDUCTION PHENOMENON, I HAVE COME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT THE RAPID ADVANCEMENT OF OUR HUMAN SPECIES IS DUE TO ALIEN INTERVENTION IN OUR BODIES AND MINDS’.

Dr Leir has based his statement not only on research into alien implants but from his observations of children. Comparing today’s statistics on the developmental stages in young children to forty years ago (when such records and studies began) he discovered that the level of higher psychological functioning in some cases was increased by as much as much as 80%. The question is, how could this happen? Dr Leir: ‘I suggest that the answer involves alien manipulation of human genetics’ (The Aliens and the Scalpel, p.192).

Recent genetic research could qualify this starling revelation. There are unexplainable anomalies in our genetic history and in 2003 it was discovered that 223 genes do not have the required predecessors on our geonomic evolutionary tree. These extra genes are completely missing in the invertebrate phrase. Therefore scientists can only explain their presence as recent in evolutionary time scale, and comment that this was not through gradual evolution, vertically on the tree of life, but horizontally as a ‘side ways insertion of genetic material’. Significantly these 223 genes are two-thirds the difference between the chimpanzee and Homo sapiens and include important psychological and psychiatric functions. How did humanity acquire such enigmatic genes? Dr Leir and other researchers believe the answer may well be extraterrestrial genetic intervention!

Dr Richard Boylan, an American behavioural scientist, anthropologist and clinical hypnotherapist, has studied Star Children phenomenon and their connection to close encounter experience. He offers a precise profile of the New Humans and our intimate connection to extraterrestrials, or Star Visitors as he calls them. Dr Boylan is secretary of ACCET (the Academy of Clinical Close Encounter Therapists) in the USA, a professional body that encourages medical and psychological professions to be involved in this phenomenon. Boylan is convinced that Star Children are a reality and has created an organisation to support and educate families with these children. As president of the Star Kids Project (SKP) he organises workshops for Star Kids to help them and their parents cope with their extra psychic and intuitive abilities. He explains that the Star Child maybe defined as a child of both human and extraterrestrial origin. The ET contribution to the child’s make-up may come from genetic engineering, from biomedical technology and from telepathic consciousness linking. Star Kids are psychically and metaphysically changed as a result of their own contacts with the ‘visitors’ or ETs modifying their parent’s reproductive DNA.’ He also believes that there is a link to what we now label Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), a syndrome which almost magically appeared about 15-20 years ago when more of these children began to be recognised.

Dr Boylan and Doreen Virtue believe that these children are often misdiagnosed with syndromes as questionable as ADD. One reason Dr Boylan suggests is that ‘these kids are just crushingly bored with the slow, pedestrian way they are being educated’ and that is why they often misbehave. Doreen Virtue suggests that Indigo and Crystal children can be also diagnosed as autistic or having Asperger’s syndrome. More research is warranted to explore such possibilities.

There are numerous accounts where the contactee or experiencer recalls details of their genetic material being harvested. Dr John Mack, former Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School wrote about the subject of genetic material being taken in his book Abduction. I have covered this important fact in my book Awakening, in the chapter on missing pregnancies. Many of my clients, both male and female, recall experiences when this procedure occurred. Some women also believe that their genetic material has been taken and altered in some way prior to their pregnancy. They say they knew the child was different or special because of this. What I found astonishing was that many of these children seemed to have an awareness that they were different. A letter to ACERN states:

‘Yes I have always believed I was from elsewhere, and, like I said, I used to speak and write in a strange language in private. Sometimes, even in front of my mum, I used to cry because I felt so different. I would tell her not to touch me, as it was dangerous, and I am not yours. I am one of them. When the greys used to leave, I would get upset and believe they had left me behind, which made me angry and upset. I have memories of planets with golden buildings’ — James Basil (UK).

What are these differences, apart from higher physical and psychological functioning? Generally they are enhanced psychic and intuitive abilities, with an awareness of universal knowledge and even their true genetic origins. ‘I am not yours’ implies that some Star Children are aware they are connected in some way to the extraterrestrial beings who visit them.

Star Child qualities (see Star Child questionnaire at www.acern.com.au)

Highly intelligent.
Often very creative.
Developmentally advanced in reading walking, talking, etc.
Psychic/intuitive abilities.
Multi-dimensionally awareness; they perceive a broader range of reality.
Telepathic abilities.
They sense and feel energies from people or other living things (aura reading).
Telekinesis, etc. Moving objects with their mind energy and thought.
Awareness of scientific, historical, anthropological and spiritual knowledge not consciously learnt. Sometimes called ‘knowledge bombs’.
Awareness of past lives.
Extremely empathic to all creatures, not just humans but animals and plants.
They can communicate with the unseen world, spirits and angels.
Multi-dimensional healing abilities.
Manifest unusual artwork, languages and scripts.
They experience dreams where they are being taught how to use their high sense abilities on space craft.
Dual consciousness; feeling part human and part extraterrestrial.
Have a sense of mission or higher purpose.

From a letter (USA): ‘I started walking at 8 months, talking in sentences by 10 months, and how to read at 2 years; no one taught me. I had friends who walked through walls, became invisible, and we spoke telepathically. I desperately wanted to go home.’

David from Perth, Western Australia (now in his late twenties) said about his childhood psychic and telepathic abilities: ‘I would have telepathic conversations with my sister until she told me to stop being lazy and start talking.’

Some of the older Star Children are able to explain their abilities and ET connections more precisely. Ann Andrews, author of Abducted, wrote about her family’s extraterrestrial contacts. They live in England and have had lifelong interactions with ETs. Jason, her youngest son, exhibits many of these higher senses, regularly astral travels and even heals individuals in this dream state.

Jason told his mother how the Star Child profile fitted him. Jason, like many other Star Children, complains about the bulkiness of his human body, saying how limited it is. He was tight lipped about his experiences for a long time because he said it was hard to trust anyone because you never know who they are working for. He was very serious when he asked Ann if I thought it was very strange that after hundreds of years of slow progress we had suddenly come on in leaps and bounds in just fifty years. According to Jason, ‘they’ (including himself) gave us the relevant knowledge. They showed us how to split the atom and harness nuclear power so that we might finally meet them as equals. However, he says angrily that we have turned all this knowledge into power over others less fortunate than ourselves, for example with atomic weapons. But when asked about genetic engineering, Jason said ‘it is the ETs who choose the parents’. The children are genetically altered before they are born. ‘They are given extraterrestrial DNA.’

Again it appears that many of the children know about their mixed human and ET gene pool. This was demonstrated to me quite graphically when a confused young mother told me about her ten-year-old son. She said that whilst out walking with him one day, her son very casually told her the actual percentage of ET genes in every person they passed!

The extraterrestrial education program, telepathic communication and more.

Five-year-old Aiden from Western Australia says ‘I don’t mind going through the walls, and they teach me more on the ships than I learn at school. They come through walls, float not walk, become invisible, but are still around!’ His mother writes, ‘This astounds me. He is very blasé about it and says he will introduce them to me one day! Aiden knows what I am thinking, finishes my sentences for me, and feels pain when I do’ (from Awakening, 2002).

Star Children can be aware of extraterrestrial educational programs when information is downloaded on a subconscious or super-conscious level. Jena is an eight-year-old girl in Perth who described this process as ‘knowledge bombs’ in her head, which sometimes hurt. They can have strange dreams where they know they are on-board spacecraft. They are taught to use their higher sense abilities and they know when they have done well at such tests.

Whitley Strieber, experiencer and author of The Secret School, also experienced such lessons on spacecraft. This testimony certainly suggests that the New Humans are not only upgraded physically and psychologically, but are also taught to operate on a broader multi-dimensional frequency which helps them access information and knowledge not available to others.

Tracey Taylor, who intuitively draws complex artwork and symbols related to her ET experiences, wrote ‘As for my own contact experiences, I have become very compassionate towards ET beings, there is much that humans can learn and benefit by interacting with them. Initially I didn’t know what was going on or why, but there has always been an equal exchange. I helped them to achieve their genetic goals and, in return, developed my healing and psychic abilities, plus my understanding of life on earth.’

‘Star children are born with greater wisdom and awareness, and are also gifted creatively. They have a great feeling of being connected to nature and all that exists. They are the bringers of the new, the bringers of light, they are here to guide the awakening of terrestrial consciousness.’ So, if the new humanity is already here, whatever we choose to call them, how is this awakening of terrestrial consciousness orchestrated? The answer may well be contained in the creative expressions and data connected to contact experience.

CLIP - Read the rest at http://www.gardinersworld.com/content/view/146/54/




13.

From: "NRDC, Frances Beinecke" (biogemsdefenders@savebiogems.org)
Date: 20 Nov 2006
Subject: This lame duck can do lasting damage

The environment may have won on Election Day but this polluter-friendly Congress is not gone yet. And they can do a lifetime of damage to America's environment in the next six weeks.

The upcoming lame duck session is their last best chance to enact key pieces of President Bush's "drill, log and burn" agenda.

We must be fully prepared for the allies of Big Oil and other industries to load up their final budget bill with everything from drilling in the Arctic Refuge to logging in America's wild forests.

NRDC needs your immediate support to stop any eleventh-hour assault on our environment during the critical post-election period.

Please make a donation today that will enable us to spring into action and mobilize massive opposition at the first sign of legislative attacks: http://www.savebiogems.org/yearend/1106b

Here are just a few of America's last wild places that could be on their hit list over the next important weeks:

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Allies of Big Oil have been signaling since summer that a lame-duck session would be their last chance to open our greatest wildlife sanctuary to oil drilling.

The Western Arctic Reserve: Powerful members of Congress want to overturn a court ruling that blocks drilling in world-class wildlife habitats, so that the Bush administration can turn this wildlife treasure into another sprawling industrial zone of pipelines, rigs and waste sites.

Wild Forest Heritage: Senators are scheming to override a court decision and launch an invasion of chain saws into wild forests from the Sierra Nevada to the Appalachians.

Other dangerous measures would allow logging in the Giant Sequoia National Monument . . . threaten endangered species of wildlife . . . and weaken clean air and clean water rules.

The final weeks of this Congress could prove devastating for our natural heritage unless NRDC can respond swiftly and decisively to any and all attacks.

Please help ensure that we are fully prepared by sending an emergency donation today: http://www.savebiogems.org/yearend/1106b

Your gift will enable NRDC to stay on high alert -- allowing us to mobilize nearly one million online activists, dozens of experts and our lightning-fast media operation.

Please help ensure that NRDC can remain vigilant in defense of America's environment right up until the day the new Congress takes office.

Sincerely,

Frances Beinecke
President Natural Resources Defense Council




14.

From: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15686.htm

The end of the Colombian blood letting could begin in Washington

An Open Letter to the People and Government of the US - (And a Reply to the FARC)

By James Petras

11/20/06 "Information Clearing House" -- - On a November 9, 2006, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples Army, (FARC-EP) sent an “Open Letter to the People of the United States”. It was specifically addressed to several Hollywood producers and actors (Michael Moore, Denzel Washington and Oliver Stone) as well as three leftist academics (James Petras, Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis) and a progressive politician (Jessie Jackson). The purpose of the open letter was to solicit our support in facilitating an agreement between the US and Colombian governments and the FARC-EP on exchanging 600 imprisoned guerrillas (including 2 on trial in the US) for 60 rebel-held prisoners including 3 US counter-insurgency experts. FARC-EP:

Terrorist Band or Resistance Movement?

Contrary to the US government position characterizing the FARC-EP as a ‘terrorist organization’, it is the longest standing, largest peasant-based guerrilla movement in the world today. Founded in 1964 by two dozen peasant activists, as a means for defending autonomous rural communities from the violent depredations of the Colombian military and paramilitary, the FARC-EP has grown into a highly organized 20,000 member guerrilla army with several hundred thousand local militia and supporters, highly influential in over 40% of the country. Up until September 11, 2001, the FARC-EP was recognized as a legitimate resistance movement by most of the countries of the European Union, Latin America and for several years was in peace negotiations with the Colombian government headed by President Andrés Pastrana. Prior to 9/11 FARC leaders met with European heads of state to exchange ideas on the peace process. Numerous prominent business leaders from Wall Street, City of London and Bogotá and notables like Queen Noor of Jordan met with FARC leaders in the demilitarized zone during the aborted peace negotiations (1999-2002).

Under heavy pressure from the White House, particularly its leading spokespersons, the right-wing extremists like the notorious Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and, John Bolton, the Pastrana regime abruptly broke off negotiations and in less than 24 hours sent the Colombian Army into the demilitarized area, in an attempt to capture the FARC leaders engaged in negotiations. The ‘surprise’ attack failed but did set the stage for the escalation of the conflict.

US Role in Conflict

Beginning with President Clinton in 2000 and continuing with Bush, the US has poured over $4 Billion dollars in military aid to the Colombian regime in order to destroy the guerrilla army and its suspected social base among peasants, urban trade unions and professionals (especially teachers, lawyers, human rights activists and intellectuals). Washington vigorously pushes a military solution by subverting any peace negotiations, through a substantial number of military advisers, contracted mercenaries, Drug Enforcement operatives, CIA agents, Special Forces commandos and a host of other undercover personnel. Between the early 1980’s to the late 1990’s, Washington maintained the fiction that its military programs were part of an anti-narcotic campaign, though it failed to explain why it concentrated most of its efforts in FARC-influenced regions and not in the vast coca-growing areas controlled by the Colombian military and paramilitary forces. With the launching of Plan Colombia in 2000, Washington explicitly underlined the counter-insurgency nature of its military aid and presence. Profoundly disturbed by President Pastana’s acceptance of peace negotiations and the advances of the social and guerrilla movements, Washington backed a rightwing politician with a history of ties to Colombia’s death squads for President, Álvaro Uribe. His electoral victory inaugurated one of the bloodiest extermination campaigns in the violent history of Colombia.

US military officials and their Colombian counterparts funded a 31,000 strong death squad force which ravaged the country, killing thousands of peasants in regions where the FARC was influential. Hundreds of trade unionists were assassinated by hired killers (sicarios) in broad daylight in the towns and cities occupied by the military. Human rights workers, journalists and academics who dared to report on the impunity of the military involved in village massacres were kidnapped, tortured and killed; not infrequently they were decapitated or disemboweled to sow even greater terror. Over 2 million peasants were forced off their land into squalid urban slums, their lands seized by prominent paramilitary chiefs or large landowners. The ‘class cleansing’ of the countryside was right out of the counter-insurgency manuals of the Pentagon, instructing the Colombian military to destroy the ‘social infrastructure’ of the guerrilla movements – especially the FARC which had longstanding and extensive family, community and social ties with the peasants.

President Uribe embodied the classical authoritarian South American ruler: At the throat of the poor and on his knees before his Washington patron. His perpetual large-scale offensive campaigns decimated the countryside but failed to weaken the guerrillas or even capture any of the FARC general command. After six years of massive and costly extermination campaigns, top US and most Colombian military officials conceded that a military victory over the FARC was highly improbable. The best that could ensue, military strategists argued, was a severe weakening of the FARC, forcing them to negotiate a ‘peace agreement’ favorable to the regime. Peace Negotiations:

A Brief History

During the Presidency of Belisario Betancourt (in the mid 1980’s), the FARC agreed to a cease-fire and many joined the electoral process. Thousands of guerrillas, their sympathizers and many independent leftists formed a political party, the Patriotic Union (Unión Patriótica) and ran candidates at all levels of government. In less than 5 years, 5000 activists, candidates and elected officials were murdered by the military and their death squads, including two presidential candidates, several congresspeople, scores of mayors, hundreds of city councilors and local party leaders. The survivors rejoined the guerrillas, fled into exile or went underground. Contrary to claims by the government, Colombia was not a ‘democracy’ in the usual sense, but a ‘death squad democracy’ in which the most elementary conditions for electoral campaigning and political norms were absent. Less than two decades later, when the FARC had extended its influence within 40 miles from the capital Bogotá, the government of Andrés Pastrana agreed to another round of ‘peace negotiations’ in an extensive demilitarized region under FARC influence.

While the negotiations proceeded, hundreds of ‘visitors’ from all sectors of Colombian society as well as foreign political and business notables participated in public forums. Open debates organized by the FARC covered fundamental social, economic and political issues. For the first time in recent memory, issues of land reform, public investment in job creation programs, foreign investment and public ownership, economic alternatives to coca farming, education and health were debated without fear of death squad reprisals. The image of the FARC as a ‘militarist narco-guerrilla force’ was challenged; many former hostile observers from Europe, Latin America and North America, while not necessarily agreeing with some of the FARC’s proposed reforms, nevertheless came away with the impression that they could be negotiated with and agreements could be reached to end the civil war.

The radicalization of the Bush regime following September 11, 2001 served as a pretext to force a break in the peace negotiations. Subsequently with the election of Álvaro Uribe, the FARC was included in the list of ‘terrorist’ organizations. The European Union, which had publicly met and consulted with the same FARC leaders, followed the US lead. Soon afterward, FARC negotiators and international representatives were arrested in Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela and Ecuador. The latter two countries handed FARC representatives over to the notoriously brutal Colombian political police (DAS). Under cover of Washington’s ‘War on Terrorism’, President Uribe proceeded to severely repress trade union general strikes and massive rural protests by the major agricultural organizations against his signing of a ‘free trade’ agreement with the US.

In the midst of government-sponsored carnage, the FARC pursued a strategy of tactical withdrawal to its jungle and mountain strongholds and issued offers for mutual prisoner release as a ‘confidence building’ step toward future peace negotiations.

The FARC held over 60 Colombian politicians and military officers prisoner, including a former presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt and three US self-described ‘military contractors’ engaged in an intelligence collecting mission. The Colombian government holds over 600 guerrillas. The US currently holds 2 FARC members. The FARC proposed a meeting to arrange a prisoner exchange in a demilitarized zone. The families of the FARC prisoners were naturally unanimously in favor of the proposal as were most civil society organizations, humanitarian, church and human rights groups. The US has opposed any prisoner exchange and Uribe echoed his master, at least during his first term of office. Their slogan was that through military action they would liberate the prisoners. No prisoners have been ‘liberated’ in the past five years. On the contrary in a recent failed military incursion, 10 prisoners were killed, including an ex-minister of defense, a governor and 8 military officers. Under enormous pressure from Colombian civil society, the European Union and most Latin American governments, President Uribe declared, on his re-election, that he would be willing to enter negotiations for an exchange. Within a month, however, he reneged using as a pretext a bomb set off in a military installation, which he attributed to the FARC despite its denials. Experts suspect this was a covert operation by Colombia’s secret service to undermine any move toward a prisoner exchange.

CLIP - Read the missing part at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15686.htm

The ‘political show trial’ of Simon Trinidad is a striking example of the threats to constitutional freedoms, which we and the citizens of the world face before the unbridled power of the American President to overrule all the rights of sovereign states and their citizens, international law and constitutional freedoms.

Equally important is the current reality of ‘extraterritorial, lawless seizures, abductions and kangaroo proceedings at the service of bloody imperial policies and client rulers whose actions have devastated Colombian society. More than 2.5 million Colombian peasants and urban slum dwellers have been displaced by the savage counter-insurgency program called ‘Plan Colombia; the number of displaced persons is second only to Afghanistan. The counterinsurgency programs, variously called ‘Plan Colombia’, ‘Plan Patriótica’ and ‘Democratic Security’ are financed and directed by the United States and promoted by its client President Álvaro Uribe. The US AFL-CIO documents over 4,000 trade unionists assassinated between 1986-2002; the Colombian government has only investigated 376 of which only 5 cases led to a conviction of the killer. According to Colombian human rights groups, between 2003-2006 Uribe’s military and paramilitary allies have murdered nearly a thousand more trade unionists. Over the past 5 years, 30,000 peasants, rural teachers, and peasant and indigenous leaders have been killed with impunity. State repression (‘Democratic Security’) has been directed at weakening trade union resistance to the US-Colombian Free Trade Agreement, not at countering guerrilla armies. With over 68% of the Colombian people living under the poverty line of $2 dollars a day, and land seizures by paramilitary leaders, cattle barons and military officers concentrating land ownership to an unprecedented level, it is no wonder that the guerrilla resistance is recruiting and successfully countering Government-sponsored military campaigns, each bearing a triumphalist title and all ending in abysmal failure. Without fundamental political and social reforms and lacking an economic model that integrates the millions displaced, terrorized and excluded, there is no military strategist or strategy, no matter how well funded and directed by Washington which will end the civil conflict.

The first step toward a resolution of this half-century conflict is the recognition that Colombia is in the midst of a civil war, not a ‘war on terror’. The second is to release the protagonists of the peace process, Simon Trinidad and his comrade ‘Sonia’ as a concrete move toward a humanitarian prisoner exchange and confidence building measure opening the way to full-scale peace negotiations.

Paradoxically, the end of the Colombian blood letting could begin in Washington, in a Federal Courtroom, or possibly in the US Congress with the recognition that the US is an armed party in Colombia’s civil war, that their combatants are prisoners of war and that their ultimate release depends on recognizing the limits of US military power (and that of its Colombian client) and that a diplomatic, negotiated agreement is the only realistic option.

I look forward to joining with such artists and intellectuals as Denzel Washington, Oliver Stone, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis, named in the FARC appeal in a common effort to pressure the US government to agree to exchanging imprisoned guerrillas (both here and in Colombia) for rebel-held prisoners, including the three American combatants.

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest book is "The Power of Israel in the United States" http://www.amazon.com/Power-Israel-United-States/dp/0932863515/sr=8-1/qid=1164157937/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6623687-2204715?ie=UTF8&s=books (Clarity Press, 2006). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu.

---

Related book review and article:

The Power of Israel in the United States (Paperback) by James Petras
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Israel-United-States/dp/0932863515/sr=8-1/qid=1164157937/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6623687-2204715?ie=UTF8&s=books
Petras sets the table in his introduction for what's to come in the later chapters. He notes what author JJ Goldberg reported in his book Jewish Power: Inside the Jewish Establishment. Goldberg wrote in the early 1990s that 45% of the Democrat Party's fundraising and 25% of that for the Republicans came from Jewish-funded Political Action Committees (PACS). Petras then updates the numbers using the ones Richard Cohen published in the Washington Post showing them now at 60% and 35% respectively, and that this funding relates to a single core issue -- unconditional US support for Israel's agenda including those parts of it human rights activists and observers of conscience judge most egregious and illegal. Petras stresses that no other single US lobby including Big Pharma, Big Oil, agribusiness, or any other one has this kind of dominant influence over the political process here. He refers to "Zioncon" ideologues and policymakers whose main goal is to make the Middle East into a "US-Israeli Co-Prosperity Sphere" under the fraudulent cover of promoting democracy in the region - but doing it through the barrel of a gun. Petras explains the root of the Lobby's power lies in the high proportion of Jewish families who are among the wealthiest and most influential ones in the country. He cites Forbes magazine that reported 25-30% of the wealthiest families here are Jewish despite the small percentage of Jews in the population overall. They include billionaires with enormous influence, and along with all others comprising the Jewish Lobby, have created a "tyranny of Israel over the US" with consequences grave enough to threaten world peace and stability, the global economy, and the very future of democracy in this country. Petras ends his book with one final impassioned call to arms: "Let's move ahead and de-colonize our country, our minds and politics as a first step in reconstituting a democratic republic, free of entangling colonial and neo-imperial alliances." * Wise thoughts from a wise and courageous man. We can't ignore them lest we pay the supreme price of the loss of our freedom (and maybe our lives) because we didn't know it was being taken from us until it was too late to act to save it.

Dismay Grows Over US Torture School
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061127/school_of_the_americas
Recent reports of the Bush Administration's decision to increase training and aid for the militaries of Latin America so as to reverse the region's leftward swing have only sharpened criticism at home and abroad.




15.

Forwarded by Michael Wong (mlwong@jps.net)

From: "maillist@michaelmoore.com"

A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives

November 14th, 2006

To My Conservative Brothers and Sisters,

I know you are dismayed and disheartened at the results of last week's election. You're worried that the country is heading toward a very bad place you don't want it to go. Your 12-year Republican Revolution has ended with so much yet to do, so many promises left unfulfilled. You are in a funk, and I understand.

Well, cheer up, my friends! Do not despair. I have good news for you. I, and the millions of others who are now in charge with our Democratic Congress, have a pledge we would like to make to you, a list of promises that we offer you because we value you as our fellow Americans. You deserve to know what we plan to do with our newfound power -- and, to be specific, what we will do to you and for you.

Thus, here is our Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives:

Dear Conservatives and Republicans,

I, and my fellow signatories, hereby make these promises to you:

1. We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs. We will never, ever, call you "unpatriotic" simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

2. We will let you marry whomever you want, even when some of us consider your behavior to be "different" or "immoral." Who you marry is none of our business. Love and be in love -- it's a wonderful gift.

3. We will not spend your grandchildren's money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It's your checkbook, too, and we will balance it for you.

4. When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home, too. They deserve to live. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on either a mistake or a lie.

5. When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you, too, will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that affect you and your loved ones, we'll make sure those advances are available to you and your family, too.

6. Even though you have opposed environmental regulation, when we clean up our air and water, we, the Democratic majority, will let you, too, breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water.

7. Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.

8. We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.

9. We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren't much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, pick up another sport. We will make our streets and schools as free as we can from these weapons and we will protect your children just as we would protect ours.

10. When we raise the minimum wage, we will pay you -- and your employees -- that new wage, too. When women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage, too.

11. We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don't put those beliefs into practice. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs ("Blessed are the poor," "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Love your enemies," "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," and "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn't just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism -- starting with the fanaticism here at home, thus setting a good example for the rest of the world.

12. We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and who are bought and paid for by the rich. We will go after any elected leader who puts him or herself ahead of the people. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side FIRST. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

I promise all of the above to you because this is your country, too. You are every bit as American as we are. We are all in this together. We sink or swim as one. Thank you for your years of service to this country and for giving us the opportunity to see if we can make things a bit better for our 300 million fellow Americans -- and for the rest of the world.

Signed,

Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
(Click here to sign the pledge)
http://www.michaelmoore.com/




16.

From: "Mark Graffis" (mgraffis@gmail.com)
Subject: Out of gas
Date: 20 Nov 2006

A little girl asked her Mom, "Mom, may I take the dog for a walk around the block?"

Mom replies, "No, because she is in heat." What's that mean?" asked the child.

Go ask your father. I think he's in the garage."

The little girl goes to the garage and says, "Dad, may I take Belle for a walk around the block? I asked Mom, but she said the dog is in heat, and to come to you."

Dad said, "Bring Belle over here." He took a rag, soaked it with gasoline, and scrubbed the dog's backside with it to disguise the scent, and said "OK, you can go now, but keep Belle on the leash and only go one time round the block."

The little girl left and returned a few minutes later with no dog on the leash. Surprised, Dad asked, "Where's Belle?"

YOU'RE GONNA LOVE THIS!!!!!!!!!

The little girl said, "She ran out of gas about halfway down the block, so another dog is pushing her home."




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