The Moment of Truth Series #19: The Deeper Perspective
Hello everysoul!
As I mentioned in my December 23, 3009 compilation (The Writing on the Wall Series #64: The Anticlimactic Mouse)... "I received in a dream (from which I woke up with LOTS of bright ideas) a couple days ago the vision of writing up a "Carbon Convention" for the ordinary folks that would be a sort of grass-root response to the sheer inability of our political leaders to rise to the occasion and help shift the world fast enough towards a more sustainable future. At the pace things are going and considering the continuing domination of economic interests over the priorities of our governing class, it seems very unlikely that we will avoid the tipping points that James Hansen (of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) has been referring to. This "Carbon Convention", which will simply be a statement of intent designed to call forth the innate goodwill of all individuals — without ever resorting to any kind of fear-factor nor mentioning any threat hanging over our future, even in any implied manner — will invite everyone to make a personal commitment to both reduce as best as possible our individual environmental footprint (a concept now well established) and promote the inner and outer changes necessary to cocreate a New Eden on Earth within the next 30 years. We have the power within ourselves to do what is best for the highest good of all through simply aligning ourselves with the Will of Life as it expresses Itself in the inner sanctum of our soul-connected heart. The name "Carbon Convention" will probably be used only in reference to the current stalemate of political efforts to address the growing dislocation of our common Web of Life and its ultimate true name will probably be more akin to a "Global Healing Consensus" or something positively framed and sufficiently encompassing to reflect the much deeper nature of the changes underway, which have everything to do with BE-coming Love and manifesting the Universal Will of Creator Source as One with All That Is."
I've finally felt inspired a couple days ago to couch something in writing. As it turned out I felt necessary to change the name of this "Convention" so as to enlarge its scope and make it more universal. So here is what I'm proposing...
The Save the Earth Convention
It starts with us!...
Whereas political leaders of all stripes appear to be unable to do the right thing to stop the destruction of the environment in part because they are unable to overcome the resistance of vested interests...
Whereas there is precious little time left to shift our civilization onto a sustainable path of development and towards a balanced relationship with the Earth's natural environment and her millions of life forms...
Whereas we are each individually responsible to show the example and take the lead towards alleviating the suffering of Nature, reducing our ecological footprint and assisting in the healing of our living planet...
If you wish to make your commitment public, please email your statement to MyContribution@somename.net or go at www.somename.net to post it there. If you need to better understand the global problems confronting us and what your individual contribution can be to support the solutions, consult the many resources provided at www.somename.net/Problems&Solutions.htm.
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I'd appreciate hearing your feedback on this idea and its formulation – and if you have suggestions to improve it or useful resources material to propose, I'd welcome them too of course. Please do so within the next week either in the ERN guestbook at http://users3.smartgb.com/g/g.php?a=s&i=g35-09010-3a or to me directly at globalvisionary@earthrainbownetwork.com. Then I'll start networking the final version (if amended), have it translated in as many languages as possible, and create a website where people who wish to make their commitment public will be able to post it. Material offering many ideas for personal actions will be made available there in addition to the numerous ideas that people will post there. I'll also reach out to various international groups who may be interested in supporting this initiative. Your assistance at this stage will also be most welcomed.
We don't have any time to lose to build on the momentum and interest created by all the attention generated by the recent Copenhagen climate summit. I hope you'll all agree on this.
In the meantime, you have another fact-filled compilation to explore and share below.
PLEASE NOTE that the Special Peace Vigil for the Middle East is now available in 8 languages (Portuguese, German, Castellano/Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Greek, in addition to the English version and that a French version will be added shortly.
P.S. To ensure that these compilations are not blocked, please add globalvisionary@earthrainbownetwork.com to your safe senders list. Your feedback is as always welcomed and may be included in a coming compilation - unless you prefer it is 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.
This compilation is archived at http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2010/MomentTruth19.htm
STATS for this compilation: Over 50,900 words and 284 links provided.
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THE QUOTES
"We are devastating habitat and biodiversity at a terrible rate. We are causing a global climate change that's going to be absolutely devastating to the coral reefs. (...) I do feel a sense of outrage, in the sense that as an artist, its kind of my responsibility to create a warning and remind people. People need to be reminded from every direction. Maybe people want to go see a film for pure entertainment, and not want to think about it and not have to feel guilty – I'm not trying to make people feel guilty. I just want them to internalize a sense of respect and a sense of taking responsibility for the stewardship of the earth... and I think this film can do that by creating an emotional reaction. Its stuff you already know, it's not hard to teach, and its not here to preach. But it does give you an emotional context for the information you already have, and maybe that emotional response breaks through a little bit of the denial responses we've built up - "ohh, I cant make a difference.. It's not my problem. It doesn't affect me. What's a few degrees of temperature rise etc."
"Many of us keep searching for answers and methods that will create change. For thousands of years the teachings have been that the greatest power to heal and to transform is love. Feel love for the Earth, life, and all that is precious to you. Hold gratitude in your heart at all times—the world looks like the beautiful place it is when we are grateful. Start by experiencing love for yourself and all you have been through to get you to this point in life. When you feel ready expand your heart and allow your love to flow out to friends and family and on through to our global community. Remember that you are part of life and that you cannot give love without receiving love. The rest of life will not receive your love if you cannot receive the love yourself. At every moment experience the joy of the moment take every opportunity to laugh—it is still the best medicine. Have fun. Do the things that make your soul sing; do whatever gives you joy and is in keeping with your true self. If something or someone does not fit in with that, move on. Be thankful for the lessons we are taught along our way and take only the lesson and love, not the pain or anger from any challenging situation. Respect all life, particularly your own, treat it as the holy temple it is. Only digest food, both physical and mental that is right for it. Don’t give away your time and energy to the dramas that the media and communication industry feed us. Our bodies react to these as if they are real. We do not want to give away our power and joy to those who wish to control us for financial benefit. Watch your thoughts at all times; they create your action, which creates your world and help create the world of those around you. Your only reality is what is around you. Live in your world and allow your life to create that world. Act at all times with integrity; as the great commandment says: “Do to others as you would have them so to you.” Above all, be at Peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be and whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your soul… It is still a beautiful world. Be Cheerful. Strive to be happy."
- Taken from a A Message to my Children for the new year, posted by Diana Grosser (sdgrosser@bigpond.com) in the ERN guestbook and adapted from the following sources: 1 and 2
"1. We revere and celebrate the Universe as the totality of being, past, present and future. It is self-organizing, ever-evolving and inexhaustibly diverse. Its overwhelming power, beauty and fundamental mystery compel the deepest human reverence and wonder.
2. All matter, energy, and life are an interconnected unity of which we are an inseparable part. We rejoice in our existence and seek to participate ever more deeply in this unity through knowledge, celebration, meditation, empathy, love, ethical action and art.
3. We are an integral part of Nature, which we should cherish, revere and preserve in all its magnificent beauty and diversity. We should strive to live in harmony with Nature locally and globally. We acknowledge the inherent value of all life, human and non-human, and strive to treat all living beings with compassion and respect.
4. All humans are equal centers of awareness of the Universe and nature, and all deserve a life of equal dignity and mutual respect. To this end we support and work towards freedom, democracy, justice, and non-discrimination, and a world community based on peace, sustainable ways of life, full respect for human rights and an end to poverty.
5. There is a single kind of substance, energy/matter, which is vibrant and infinitely creative in all its forms. Body and mind are indivisibly united.
6. We see death as the return to nature of our elements, and the end of our existence as individuals. The forms of "afterlife" available to humans are natural ones, in the natural world. Our actions, our ideas and memories of us live on, according to what we do in our lives. Our genes live on in our families, and our elements are endlessly recycled in nature.
7. We honor reality, and keep our minds open to the evidence of the senses and of science's unending quest for deeper understanding. These are our best means of coming to know the Universe, and on them we base our aesthetic and religious feelings about reality.
8. Every individual has direct access through perception, emotion and meditation to ultimate reality, which is the Universe and Nature. There is no need for mediation by priests, gurus or revealed scriptures.
9. We uphold the separation of religion and state, and the universal human right of freedom of religion. We recognize the freedom of all pantheists to express and celebrate their beliefs, as individuals or in groups, in any non-harmful ritual, symbol or vocabulary that is meaningful to them."
"Never before in my life have I felt more anticipation that I feel now about what 2010 has in store for us… I want to share a strong vision I had today (January 1, 2010) because I feel strongly compelled to do so. Today, I grasped onto a thread of potential. I saw war ending in 2010 and it was not galactic forces or governments that made it happen. It was all of us. It was mankind. It was a massive, coordinated declaration of PEACE and I saw us (the grassroot movement) make it happen! I saw soldiers all over the world simultaneously laying their weapons down en masse and refusing to fight any longer. In one fell swoop, all the war machines were brought to a standstill... crippled with no one left to pull the triggers. I saw all people refusing to give support any longer (by taxes or otherwise) to governments who use the money to wage war or facilitate corruption of all kinds. Corrupt governments were swiftly brought to their knees by the power of the people, paralyzed by a populace who refused to support corruption any longer. I sensed that what mankind needs here and now is a common CAUSE. A mission to which all may participate as equals and one that will galvanize us together in unified intent. I am reminded of how many times I have seen this wonderful human trait rise to the surface (during some of our darkest hours) when we have been struck by disaster somewhere on Earth. I am reminded of the way we can instantly put our differences aside and become the compassionate humans that we really are and were meant to be. We are one in purpose in those moments and we can be now if we so desire."
- Anthony Lukashuk (alukashuk@shaw.ca) - If you support this vision, let him know and visit the site he has created to spread this idea: http://peacealliance2010.ning.com/
"Thanks for all the bits of your own life (your time) that you dedicate to this mission. You are a bright sweet inspiration for those of us who learned through your compilations how to achieve the magical balance required to oppose without hating, and to recognize the precise instant to shift from deep meditation to passionate action. From Buenos Aires, much love and gratitude to you, dear friend."
Christina Iglesias (chrisigle@yahoo.com.ar) - She also recommended this article - Britain must launch GM food revolution, says chief scientist commenting "Monsanto would love this! Let's hope the British people firmly oppose any resolution along this line."
The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.
It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.
We therefore call upon all men and women ...
~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion
~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate
~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures
~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity
~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.
We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.
As we close a decade marked by war, help us usher in a decade focused on compassion.
The names of all affirmers on December 31 will be sent along with the Charter for Compassion to 5 world leaders whose countries are engaged in conflict.
Add your name today. Share the Charter with your networks. Each additional name makes the compassionate voice a more potent force in the world. Let us make the silent majority a challenge to extremism and hatred.
WORLD MARCH OF WOMEN http://www.worldmarchofwomen.org/
In 2009, we – activists of the World March of Women – experienced moments of profound feminist solidarity. We all participated in the process of strengthening our international movement of organised women in our countries and communities, as well assuming a collective responsibility for our sisters in all corners of the world. We have a lot to commemorate!In 2010, the year of our 3rd International Action, we will once more be in the streets with our rhythms and our collective strength, affirming the world that we want.
The World March of Women is an international feminist action movement connecting grass-roots groups and organizations working to eliminate the causes at the root of poverty and violence against women. We struggle against all forms of inequality and discrimination directed at women. Our values and actions are directed at making political, economic and social change. They centre on the globalization of solidarity; equality between women and men, among women themselves and between peoples; the respect and recognition of diversity among women; the multiplicity of our strategies; the appreciation of women's leadership; and the strength of alliances among women and with other progressive social movements.
Sign up to the Happy Planet Charter http://www.happyplanetindex.org/engage/charter.html "The future is not the result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created – created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination."
- John Scharr
In order to create a happy planet, it is important to have some clear goals to work towards. The Happy Planet Charter provides clear targets for all nations, to help achieve sustainable well-being. The logos of organisations which have already signed up to support the charter are shown on the home page. People who sign the charter believe that: - A new narrative of progress is required for the twenty-first century. - It is possible to have a good life without costing the Earth. - Over-consumption in rich countries represents one of the key barriers to sustainable well-being worldwide and that governments should strive to identify economic models that do not rely on constantly growing consumption to achieve stability and prosperity. They call for: Governments to measure people’s well-being and environmental impact in a consistent and regular way, and to develop a framework of national accounts that considers the interaction between the two so as to guide us towards sustainable well-being. Developed nations to set an HPI target of 89 by 2050 – this means reducing per capita footprint to 1.7 gha, increasing mean life satisfaction to eight (on a scale of 0 to 10) and continuing to increase mean life expectancy to reach 87 years.Developed nations and the international community to support developing nations in achieving the same target by 2070. Sign up to support the charter here
The Happy Planet Index 2.0: Why good lives don’t have to cost the Earth http://www.happyplanetindex.org/learn/download-report.html
Read the new report, presenting the results from the second global compilation of the Happy Planet Index. The report presents the results of the second global compilation of the Happy Planet Index, based on improved data for 143 countries around the world – representing 99 per cent of the world’s population. The results shows that globally we are still far from achieving good lives within the Earth’s finite resource limits. But although the evidence shows that we are heading in the wrong direction, the achievements of some countries around the world provide reasons to believe that we can achieve true sustainable well-being.
Why is Costa Rica Smiling? (Dec 15, 2009) http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/climate-action/why-is-costa-rica-smiling
This Central American country tops the Happy Planet Index -- A child growing up in the Costa Rican countryside is surrounded by some of the most beautiful and biodiverse landscapes in the world. The government of this tiny Central American country aims to keep it that way. But preserving this land of tropical rainforests isn’t Costa Rica’s only accomplishment. The government ensures all citizens have access to health care and education, and the country actively promotes peace around the world. So when the New Economics Foundation released its second Happy Planet Index, a ranking of countries based on their environmental impact and the health and happiness of their citizens, the No. 1 spot went to Costa Rica, population 4 million. The United States’ ranking: No. 114. What can our neighbor to the south teach us about happiness, longevity, and environmental sustainability?“Costa Rica enjoys a privileged position as a mid-income country where citizens have sufficient spare time and abundant interpersonal relations,” says Costa Rican economics professor Mariano Rojas. “A mid-income level allows most citizens to satisfy their basic needs. Government intervention in the economy assures that all Costa Ricans have access to education, health, and nutrition services.” Costa Ricans, he added, have not entered the “race for status and conspicuous consumption.” Created in 2008, the Happy Planet Index examines sustainable happiness on a national level, ranking 143 countries according to three measurements: how happy its citizens are, how long they live, and how much of the planet’s resources they each consume. The HPI multiplies years of life expectancy by life satisfaction (as measured by the Gallup Poll and the World Values Survey), to obtain “Happy Life Years,” which are then divided by pressure on ecosystems, as measured by the ecological footprint. (The ecological footprint, in turn, measures how much land and water it takes to provide for each person.) The Happy Planet Index “strips down the economy to what really matters,” says New Economics Foundation researcher Saamah Abdallah. It measures “what goes in, in terms of resource use, and the outcomes that are important, which are happy and healthy lives for us all. In this way, it reminds us that the economy is there for a purpose—and that is to improve our lives.” CLIP
Iran strike could destabilize Middle East - Pentagon (7 January 2010) PEACE WILL PREVAIL IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND ALL AROUND THE WORLD! http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N07197289.htm
WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - A strike on Iran could be "very, very destabilizing" and have unintended consequences for the Middle East, the top U.S. military officer said on Thursday, stressing that diplomacy was crucial. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he believed Tehran was "on a path that has strategic intent to develop nuclear weapons and have been for some time" -- a charge Iran denies. "I think that outcome is potentially a very, very destabilizing outcome ... on the other hand, when asked about striking Iran, specifically, that also has a very, very destabilizing outcome," Mullen told a gathering at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think-tank. Mullen said he worried about "unintended consequences" of either scenario, adding "that part of the world could become much more unstable, which is a dangerous global outcome." Tehran already has been hit with three rounds of U.N. sanctions for refusing to comply with demands that it halt sensitive nuclear activities. The United States and its allies have said it is time for a fourth round of sanctions, but diplomats say Russia and China are resisting. CLIP
Review: Jesse Ventura: 9/11 Conspiracy Theory (Dec. 26, 2009) 4 videos included
SUCH OVERWHELMING DAMNING EVIDENCE AND STILL NO MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND NO ONE FROM THE 'YES WE CAN' OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DARED ADDRESS THIS GIGANTIC SHADOW GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY. YET MORE PROOF THAT THE ENTIRE MEDIA INDUSTRY AND THE US GOVERNMENT ARE TERMINALLY CORRUPTED AND DE FACTO COMPLICIT IN THIS IGNOMINIOUS TREASON http://peswiki.com/index.php/Review:Jesse_Ventura:9/11_Conspiracy_Theory
In his "Conspiracy Theory" series, movie star, professional wrestler, former Navy SEAL and former Minnesota governor, Jesse Ventura and his team take on the attacks of the World Trade Towers on Sept. 11, 2001. They focus in on evidence that the flight recorders were found in the wreckage, though the 911 Commission Report said no black boxes were found. Ground Zero volunteer Mike Balone (sp?) saw them recovered by the FBI about two weeks after the incident, and physically saw one of the boxes himself. Dale Leopard, with 5 decades of airline service involving the recovery of black boxes says up until 911 he knew of NO incidences in which the black boxes were not recovered from an incident. Dave Lindorff, an award-winning investigative journalist, said he spoke to a TSA official who told him "off the record" that they got "all four" of the black boxes from the two planes; and that they are in possession of the FBI. "Officially", the TSA and the FBI say the boxes were not recovered. A witness who heard the playback from the black boxes said ground control knew the hijackers were in the cockpits before the jets took off. The investigation also reviewed the evidence that thermite, used in controlled demolitions, was used in taking down the towers, including the microsphere residue found in the dust – a byproduct of controlled demolition using nanothermite. In particular, they consider Steven E. Jones' theory that the thermite could have been painted onto the support structures by workers who didn't know what they were doing. This was to address the question about how sufficient access could have been gained to these highly secure buildings, including offices for the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in building 7 which fell at speeds indistinguishable from free-fall. A false flag operation carried out by elements within the U.S. government, along with order to the U.S. Military to stand down.
Conspiracy Theory Secret Societies Episode 5 Jesse Ventura - Part 1 of 6 (December 30, 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR24APqFimM
They are thought to be a group of the worlds elite who meet once a year at a luxury hotel and decide how they will run the world. Its believed they plan to thin out the population through disease-and vaccines. Jesse Ventura infiltrates the Bilderberg Group. Watch all Conspiracy Theory Jesse Ventura Episodes Online through http://conspiracytheoryjesseventura.com/
Watch Episode 7 – Apocalypse 2012 Conspiracy Theory Jessie Ventura http://conspiracytheoryjesseventura.com/category/season-1-episode-7-apocalypse-2012/
Premiere On: Wed, January 13, 2010 at 10P It’s believed that the world is heading for disaster in 2012 and the government is preparing to save and protect the elite- while leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves. Jesse Ventura uncovers the evidence, and the Top Secret underground bunkers being built in places ranging from the Nevada desert to the White House, including the largest, now under construction beneath a major metropolitan airport.
RED ALERT: False Flag Attack at Olympics? (4 January 2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sa6_wBgxtw
There are many suspicious things going on that lead us paranoid freaks to question whether there may be an intention to carry out a false flag attack at the Vancouver Olympics in February 2010. Prime Minister Harper has mysteriously prorogued Parliament until after the Olympics, without giving any valid reason. The company in charge of security at the Vancouver airport also happens to be Verint, the same company that was in charge of security for the London Underground at the time of the 7/7 attacks, after which all video cameras were said to not be functioning during the incident.
Breaking With Obama? By Ralph Nader (Dec 31, 2009) http://www.nader.org/index.php?/archives/2163-Breaking-With-Obama.html
Those long-hoping, long-enduring members of the liberal intelligentsia are starting to break away from the least-worst mindset that muted their criticisms of Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign. CLIP
Speaker Pelosi and President Obama admit JAIL is "fair" for not buying insurance - 11-9-09 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPjEqKL8vBg
During a press conference at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, Nancy Pelosi skirted a surprise question, twice. The questions pertained to 5-year jail terms and $250,000 fines for those refusing to buy health insurance under her plan. However, she did say her plan was "fair". Choice??? According to HR 3962, buy insurance or go to jail. Such "choice" is standard under dictatorships, is this tyranny the "change" that voters hoped for? Of course not.
Ron Paul on Alex Jones Tv 1/3: Obama's Hypocrisy & The Continued Loss of Freedoms! PART 2 - PART 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ1iDdMmiTA
"Government is losing credibility with the people and it is a good thing." - Ron Paul
2000 - 2009: The Real Top Ten Stories of the Past Decade http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/01-0
Those stories paint a picture of danger, of a people who have lost control of their government and the corporations that own it. But you'll hear nary a word about such difficult truths from any storyteller in the conventional media. So here, in no particular order, are my Top Ten Stories of the Naughties, the ones that really matter. CLIP - HERE ARE JUST THE HEADLINERS: The Supreme Court hijacking the 2000 presidential election. Bush knew of 9/11 long before it actually happened. Iraq was all premised on lies, yet we're still there. The Global War on Terror. The fact that 2/3 of all economic growth went to top 1%. The Neo-Feudalization of the American economy. The surrender of civil liberties. The failure of "the free market" to sustain prosperity. The collapse of the media. The meaninglessness of elections.
NOTE from Jean: if you saw the fabulous movie Avatar, you will probably see the many parallels that can be made between the N'avis and the Yemenis' situation... Only instead of the "Unobtanium", the precious metal mined on Pandora, Yemen has the unfortunate privilege of being a strategic world oil shipping chokepoint and is reported to hold some of the world’s greatest untapped oil reserves... But of course, that is just part of the whole picture... And you'll see below what this is has to do with the Underwear Bomber.
Who Would Benefit Politically from a Terrorist Incident on American Soil? The Strange Case of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab (January 4, 2010) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16780
Despite some $40 billion dollars spent by the American people on airline security since 2001, allegedly to thwart attacks on the Heimat, the botched attempt by Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day was foiled, not by a bloated counterterrorist bureaucracy, but by the passengers themselves. Talk about validating that old Wobbly slogan: Direct action gets the goods!And yet, the closer one looks at the available evidence surrounding the strange case of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the more sinister alleged "intelligence failures" become. As this story unfolds it is becoming abundantly clear that U.S. security officials had far more information on the would-be lap bomber than we've been told. (...) As the World Socialist Web Site points out: The general outlines of the Northwest bombing attempt and the 9/11 attacks are startlingly similar. One might even say that what is involved is a modus operandi. In both cases, those alleged to have carried out the actions had been the subject of US intelligence investigations and surveillance and had been allowed to enter the country and board flights under conditions that would normally have set off multiple security alarms. Both then and now, the government and the media expect the public to accept that all that was involved was mistakes. But why should anyone assume that the failure to act on the extensive intelligence leading to Abdulmutallab involved merely "innocent" mistakes--and not something far more sinister? (Bill Van Auken, "The Northwest Flight 253 intelligence failure: Negligence or conspiracy?," World Socialist Web Site, December 31, 2009) And so dear readers with are left to ponder the question, cui bono? Who would benefit politically from a major terrorist incident on American soil, ready, willing and able to step into the breach and exploit the catastrophic loss of human life that would follow in its wake? Who indeed.
The Yemen Hidden Agenda: Behind the Al-Qaeda Scenarios, A Strategic Oil Transit Chokepoint (January 5, 2010) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16786
For some months the world has seen a steady escalation of US military involvement in Yemen, a dismally poor land adjacent to Saudi Arabia on its north, the Red Sea on its west, the Gulf of Aden on its south, opening to the Arabian Sea, overlooking another desolate land that has been in the headlines of late, Somalia. The evidence suggests that the Pentagon and US intelligence are moving to militarize a strategic chokepoint for the world’s oil flows, Bab el-Mandab, and using the Somalia piracy incident, together with claims of a new Al Qaeda threat arising from Yemen, to militarize one of the world’s most important oil transport routes. In addition, undeveloped petroleum reserves in the territory between Yemen and Saudi Arabia are reportedly among the world’s largest. (...) The strategic significance of the region between Yemen and Somalia becomes the point of geopolitical interest. It is the site of Bab el-Mandab, one of what the US Government lists as seven strategic world oil shipping chokepoints. The US Government Energy Information Agency states that "closure of the Bab el-Mandab could keep tankers from the Persian Gulf from reaching the Suez Canal/Sumed pipeline complex, diverting them around the southern tip of Africa. The Strait of Bab el-Mandab is a chokepoint between the horn of Africa and the Middle East, and a strategic link between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean." [9]Bab el-Mandab, between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Oil and other exports from the Persian Gulf must pass through Bab el-Mandab before entering the Suez Canal. In 2006, the Energy Department in Washington reported that an estimated 3.3 million barrels a day of oil flowed through this narrow waterway to Europe, the United States, and Asia. Most oil, or some 2.1 million barrels a day, goes north through the Bab el-Mandab to the Suez/Sumed complex into the Mediterranean. An excuse for a US or NATO militarization of the waters around Bab el-Mandab would give Washington another major link in its pursuit of control of the seven most critical oil chokepoints around the world, a major part of any future US strategy aimed at denying oil flows to China, the EU or any region or country that opposes US policy. Given that significant flows of Saudi oil pass through Bab el-Mandab, a US military control there would serve to deter the Saudi Kingdom from becoming serious about transacting future oil sales with China or others no longer in dollars, as was recently reported by UK Independent journalist Robert Fisk.It would also be in a position to threaten China’s oil transport from Port Sudan on the Red Sea just north of Bab el-Mandab, a major lifeline in China’s national energy needs. In addition to its geopolitical position as a major global oil transit chokepoint, Yemen is reported to hold some of the world’s greatest untapped oil reserves. Yemen’s Masila Basin and Shabwa Basin are reported by international oil companies to contain "world class discoveries." France’s Total and several smaller international oil companies are engaged in developing Yemen’s oil production. Some fifteen years ago I was told in a private meeting with a well-informed Washington insider that Yemen contained "enough undeveloped oil to fill the oil demand of the entire world for the next fifty years." Perhaps there is more to Washington’s recent Yemen concern than a rag-tag al Qaeda whose very existence as a global terror organization has been doubted by seasoned Islamic experts.
'Yemen to Let US Set Up Air Base on its Soil' (January 7, 2010) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16835
Yemen's government is to allow the US to set up a military base on its territory, a political analyst says. The US can no longer rely on Yemen's government to fight al-Qaeda because it is losing its legitimacy and becoming weaker, Ali Al-Ahmed, a political analyst, told Press TV on Wednesday.
Yemen, the joke is on you ... (JANUARY 05, 2010) http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/imperium/2010/01/201014122549187202.html
One does not have to be a Yemen expert to tell you that further destabilising Yemen along the lines of Pakistan or Somalia is not sound policy, and that Yemen's proximity to the Gulf and the Horn of Africa does not bode well for regional stability. But that is exactly what will happen if the US/UK "counterterrorism" policy focuses on providing military support to a three-decade-old government that presides over an unstable and decentralised country.By offering more military training, arms, naval patrolling, intelligence sharing and possibly shared offensive operations, the West might help prolong and sustain an autocratic regime that faces secessionist movements in the North and South. Mostly, though, it will aggravate a fragile state of Yemen into a failing state.Even if estimates are exaggerated (Yemen's interior minister in 2002 put the number of guns at 60 million), Yemeni tribes are better armed than any other in the region and will not surrender their weapons quietly to the central government, especially in light of the declared foreign intrusion into their country's affairs. (...) However, none of this helped Saleh secure his regime. Recent clashes in the Northern region of the country with the Houthis led to Saudi military interference on the side of the government and exposed the weakness of the regime. Likewise, Saleh's inability to reduce the unabated political and security tensions in the South, as socio-economic conditions continued to deteriorate in the rest of the country, has all but exposed and amplified the weakness of his regime and its dependency on foreign economic and military aid.However, with half of the population illiterate or living under the poverty line and one third unemployed, any attempt at a military solution could only exacerbate an already untenable situation.Barack Obama, the US president, would be well advised to remember the advice given to his predecessor by General Colin Powell: "If you break it Mr president, you will own it." CLIP
"The Underwear Bomber": Crushing Freedom With Phony Arab Terrorism (January 4, 2010) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16768
Strange as it may seem, a couple of weeks ago as I ruminated on Obama's broken promise to bring the troops home, his attempt to out-warmonger the Bush administration and his plummeting popularity, I thought to myself: "ya know, what that guy (or rather the disgruntled US public) needs is a good old fashioned 'Muslim terror attack'. Preferably one that includes a ranting 'terrorist' message about Afghanistan and 'slaughtering infidels'. That'll soon silence the rabble and get them behind Obama's Afghan surge!" And so it was that, as I sipped my eggnog on Christmas day, I was shockingly unsurprised to read the headlines about an 'underwear bomb' To adequately address the recent airline "terror attack" in Detroit and the airborne terror attacks in Yemen we must delve into the topsy turvey world of the 'war on terror', where black is white, up is down, and shady Middle Eastern-looking men and your knickers share equal rating on the US DHS threat-o-meter. In short, it's no easy task. So first of all, let me say a few words about airports and the old and new airport "security measures".
(...) Yemen - Yesterday And Today -- Yemen has only existed as an independent country for less than 50 years. During and after the Second World War, Aden was regarded as the key to the defense of British imperial interests in the Middle East, the Gulf and the Indian Ocean. As late as May 1956 a British junior minister, Lord Lloyd, stated that "for the foreseeable future it would not be reasonable or sensible or in the interests of the colony's inhabitants to aspire to any aim beyond that of a considerable degree of internal self-government." Naturally enough, Yenemis were less than enthusiastic about being indefinitely subservient to the British. Historically, Yemen had been split into two governates, North and South Yemen. In 1956, as long as its then ruler Imam Ahmed did not interfere, the British were willing to allow North Yemen relative independence. South Yemen however was to remain fully British, at least economically. In response to an increasingly powerful trade union movement made up of the Arab working class who demanded better wages, living standards and infrastructure, the British attempted to consolidate their control in the South by establishing the Federation of South Arabia in 1959, a ramshackle affair made up of the various emirs, sheiks and sultans who were willing to side with the British against Yemeni nationalist aspirations in exchange for position and wealth. British Petroleum had established an oil refinery in 1954 and the wealth that this resource could and should have provided for the Yemeni people was instead shipped out to further British strategic interests elsewhere in the world, leaving much of Yemen's population impoverished. While the British governing elite have always (and still do) view all (or rather most) non-Western peoples as little more than howling savages, like so many other colonized nations, the Yemeni people had no trouble recognizing the injustice of the situation. Faced with an increasingly militant nationalist movement within both South and North Yemen, the British reacted to the justified grievances of a mobilized civilian population in the only way they know how - subterfuge and force.
(...) In Yemen today, the people that the US, British and Israeli governments claim are "Muslim terrorists", "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula", 'al-Qaeda in Yemen" etc. etc. are in fact local tribesmen and their families who are clamoring for social justice and have been doing so for several decades. They would very probably be easily enticed to put down their arms if they were given economic help and simple concessions such as roads and schools by the government. But that is too much to ask of either the global power brokers or Yemen's puppet government. To give any power to the people is, in the twisted, greed-driven minds of the global elite, the first step on the road to the loss of control, and control over normal human beings and our planet is the lifeblood of our corrupt and psychologically deviant leaders. And so we are led back to the knicker bomber who, we are told, was trained by Muslim terrorists in Yemen. In response to this bogus threat (and indeed before it even appeared) the US military (and it's Saudi Arabian allies), like the British military before them, have been bombing, rocketing and strafing, not 'al-Qaeda in Yemen', but ordinary Yemeni civilians and tribesmen who dared to raise their voices, fists and guns against imperial and domestic injustice.
U.S. - Israeli Complicity in Terror Plots Exposed, FBI, Media Cover-Up Flight 253 Plot (2009/12/31) http://mathaba.net/news/?x=622472
(...) The FBI has changed its story 4 times, first denying the existence of the Indian man arrested at Detroit airport, later claiming he was from another flight, since this news item was first posted by Mathaba. The Haskell's testimony remains unchanged, persistent, and is not going away with this now all over the Internet. Other parts of the story can be guessed at or surmised, for example, that the "Al-Qaida" claims are the work of MOSSAD with its agents in the CIA, and are designed to garner public support for stepped up U.S.-Israeli involvement in the recent war between the Yemeni government and those terrorists, which have consistently been supported by London and covertly by Israel. CLIP
Bombshell Eyewitness Revelations: Confirmed FBI Cover-Up Of Flight 253 Attack (December 29, 2009) http://www.infowars.com/bombshell-eyewitness-revelations-confirmed-fbi-cover-up-of-flight-253-attack/
Detroit attorney Kurt Haskell appeared on the Alex Jones Show today and detailed his experience at the Amsterdam airport and on flight 253. Mr. Haskell provided information not covered by the corporate media.In addition to a detailed retelling of the story he gave the corporate media, Mr. Haskell addressed the unprofessional and lackadaisical behavior of the FBI and airport security after the plane landed at the Detroit Metro airport in Romulus, Michigan. He characterized their behavior as a “complete embarrassment. They actually put us in more jeopardy than we were already in.” CLIP
Obama Indicates Escalating US Military Involvement in Yemen (Jan 2, 2010) http://www.truthout.org/topstories/010210ms1
(...) Obama's statements indicate that the US military involvement in Yemen is on the rise - raising questions about the development of another major front in the "war on terror." The president described a series of recent US-supported military actions in Yemen, undertaken in response to the Christmas Day bombing attempt."Training camps have been struck; leaders eliminated; plots disrupted," Obama said.US military actions in the weeks before the failed Christmas bombing also show a mounting engagement in Yemen. On December 17, the US launched missiles against two suspected al Qaeda sites in that country, according to ABC News. Yemeni officials estimated that the strikes killed up to 120 people, many of whom were civilians. CLIP
US Navy says it is worried about al-Qaeda threats (8th January, 2010) http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=585909
The US Navy has been put on alert after receiving "credible" al-Qaeda threats. Intelligence received by US officials has alluded to al-Qaeda strikes against American warships and commercial vessels in the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and the Persian Gulf. Officials have said the Osama bin Laden terror network has called on followers to gather intelligence about ships and their sailors so that they can be targeted for attacks. The threat was initially made on December 31st in a message posted on an extremist Internet Web site. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has since deemed it necessary to elevate the risk level for all US ships sailing through an area stretching from Somalia to the Persian Gulf. The al-Qaeda message said the group would use any information gathered on US ships to attack aircraft carriers, submarines, and all other naval equipment deployed in the region. CLIP
Northwest Bomb Plot 'Oddities (03 Jan 2010) http://www.legitgov.org/northwest_bomb_plot_oddities.html
In 2008, the ACLU estimated the US 'No Fly List' to have grown to over 1,000,000 names -- heck, even Cat Stevens and the late Senator Ted Kennedy were on it -- and it continues to expand. But, suspected terrorist Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was curiously able to obtain military-grade high explosives --80 grams of PETN (Gee, where'd he get that?) -- managed to escape airport security and detonate his underwear bomb!In April 2009, American authorities reportedly refused an Air France flight from Paris to Mexico entry into US airspace because a left-wing journalist writing a book on the CIA was on board. Hernando Calvo Ospina, who works for Le Monde Diplomatique and has written on revolutionary movements in Cuba and Colombia, figured on the US authorities' 'no-fly list.' Air France said the April 18 flight was forced to divert to the French Caribbean island of Martinique before continuing its journey (telegraph.co.uk).Got it? Write a book critical of the CIA -- you cannot fly. Carry explosives (allegedly from Yemen) on board when the US is trolling for an excuse to invade and occupy Yemen for its oil -- yes you can! The US needs false flags to provide cover for illegal invasions and occupations. The 9/11 terrorist attacks (aka inside job, six ways to Sunday) worked well for the US government; the security-industrial complex made billions and US corporaterrorists were able to negotiate the wholesale theft of Iraq's oil. (...) Abdulmutallab was thwarted by a quote, unquote vacationing movie producer, Jasper Schuringa, who, within seconds, asserted that he not only tackled the suspect and put him in a headlock but also tried 'to search his body for any explosives' (CNN). Unless one was a bona-fide law enforcement professional or a military agent, who on earth would think of searching a man who had just set himself on fire, in a matter of seconds, for more explosives? The goal is Yemeni oil. Hence the reason for the destabilization and the purported need for the US to stop al-Qaeda (literally, 'the database'). The Yemeni national security chief has declared that the country is receiving assistance from the US in the crackdown on what he called 'al-Qaeda operatives' in southern Yemen (Press TV). Translation: US corporaterrorists want Yemen's oil and they want it NOW. CLIP
Strange questions on Northwest terror flight: Was suspect a Manchurian Candidate? (December 31, 2009) http://www.examiner.com/x-6495-US-Intelligence-Examiner~y2009m12d31-Strange-questions-on-Northwest-terror-flight-Was-suspect-a-Manchurian-Candidate
(...) The case becomes even more bizarre when we examine passenger testimony. In the CNN News program mentioned above, passenger Richelle Keepman states, "There was a man that, when we first took off, I noticed about 10 seats ahead of us to the left-hand side. He had a camcorder. I thought maybe this was his first flight and [he] was just excited. And then, when the actual incident occurred, I looked up, and he was the only one standing and filming the entire thing." In another CNN article, she states, "I don't know why he was standing up [when] we were supposed to be seated, and he was filming it." Now if you were about to be blown out of the air by a terrorist, do you think you would stand there and film the whole incident? Numerous reports describe terrified passengers reacting in near panic. And why hasn't this man been found and questioned? There's something fishy here. Could this have all been planned, and possibly even planned to fail? One passenger traveling with his wife, Kurt Haskell, also had some very unusual comments about the incident. Here's a quote from Mr. Haskell on the CNN News program. CLIP
Passengers virtually stripped naked by 3-D airport scanner (June 20, 2008) http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/06/20/bc-virtually-naked-airport-scanner.html
The airport in Kelowna, B.C., will be the first in Canada to test a new type of passenger scanner that creates a three-dimensional image of people's bodies. The new body imager unveiled on Thursday uses high frequency electromagnetic waves known as millimetre waves to create a detailed 3-D image of what a person looks like underneath their clothes. The security guard operating the machine only sees a simplified image on a computer screen that indicates where ceramic weapons and plastic explosives or other suspicious items might be concealed. But in a separate, private room, another officer sees the full detailed black and white image of the person's body. (...) The trial of the $200,000 machine will last until January, after which Transport Canada will decide whether to use the scanner at other Canadian airports. The low-level radio frequency is safer than a cellphone, which use radio frequencies a thousand times stronger, according to McNaugton. CLIP - Check also Full body airport scanners were ordered months ago in Canada
Admitted: Airport Body Scanners Provide Crisp Image Of Your Genitals (January 7, 2010) http://www.prisonplanet.com/admitted-airport-body-scanners-provide-crisp-image-of-your-genitals.html
Apologists’ claim that devices “blurred out” sensitive areas proven fraudulent -- As part of the gargantuan fraud being peddled by the corporate media in service of the government’s agenda to subject everyone to degrading naked body scans in airports, apologists for the devices claimed that people’s genitals would be blurred out to save embarrassment.This has now proven to be a fraudulent con designed to keep people in the dark about the fact that the body scanners DO produce crisp images of your naked body and they DO allow TSA thugs to see intricate details of your genitals.A report from October 2008, when the naked body scanners were first being introduced at Melbourne Airport in Australia, detailed how the X-ray backscatter devices don’t work properly unless the genitals of people going through them are visible.“It will show the private parts of people, but what we’ve decided is that we’re not going to blur those out, because it severely limits the detection capabilities,” said Office of Transport Security manager Cheryl Johnson.“It is possible to see genitals and breasts while they’re going through the machine,” she admitted. In addition, London Guardian journalist Helen Carter writes today that the scanners produce an image which make “genitals eerily visible,” after she attended a trial run at Manchester Airport earlier this week. The aggressive campaign on behalf of governments and the media to sell the public on invasive body scanners has been accompanied by the reassurance that the devices do not show details of genitals, an obvious attempt to counter the fact that the machines do represent a virtual strip search as well as violating laws against child pornography.Images accompanying articles about the scanners, as well as TV news reports, blurred out sensitive areas, creating the impression that this is also what officials in airports saw, misleading the public into thinking that their private parts would not be on public display.Since it’s already been admitted by security officials, as well as personally witnessed recently by newspaper reporters, that the scanners do indeed provide detailed pictures of people’s sexual organs, are Americans going to accept thugs in uniforms staring at their genitals, or are people finally going to say enough is enough and start boycotting the airlines as well as conducting mass protests in resistance to this complete abomination against basic human dignity?
Full-Body Scanners Increase Cancer Risk (January 6, 2010) http://noworldsystem.com/2010/01/06/full-body-scanners-increase-cancer-risk/
There are two types of scanners we will have to endure at the airport; the millimeter-wave scanner and the ‘backscatter’ X-ray scanner. Both emit ‘high-energy’ radiation and are dangerous.Body scanners have revolutionized the practice of medicine and has saved many lives, but we must question the government’s mandate to have people endure high-energy radiation in a non-life-threatening situation. We must protest the use of full-body scanners on children and young adults as they are at greater-risk of developing brain tumors and cancer from these machines. Cancer and tumors especially in the young will likely increase as more body scanners are being installed on a nationwide scale. There is just no “safe” dose of radiation, 50% of America’s cancers are radiation-induced. People with medical implants such as pace-makers should also avoid electromagnetic pulse generating body scanners as they can significantly alter the waveform of the pacemaker pulse. CLIP
How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA - AIRPORT FULL-BODY SCANNERS DESTROY DNA http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24331/
A new model of the way the THz waves interact with DNA explains how the damage is done and why evidence has been so hard to gather. CLIP
Airports face mounting pressure to introduce hi-tech scanners http://www.buergerwelle.de:8080/helma/twoday/bwnews/stories/205/
I think the privacy issues and cost issues are not the most important aspects of the controversy over use of whole body scanners at airports. I think the News media deliberately fail to bring up health issues. Either low level x-rays or RF radiation will be used for scanning to detect substances associated with explosives. Dr. John Gofman, former Professor at University of California at Berkeley and Director of the Biomedical Division when I worked at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the early 1970's has written many papers about overexposure of the public to sometimes unnecessary diagnostic X-rays. (..) Once again, the cognizant government agencies bend to the commercial and economic interests, instead of public health concerns. Now, to try to detect explosives on passengers, the FAA is about to require airline passengers in the US to submit to whole body X-Ray scans - or as a possible alternative, the use of whole body mm wave scans has also been mentioned. If mm waves or other RF radiation scans were employed, other health problems must be considered. A few years ago, a clinical research group at Graz University in Austria demonstrated that at least 2 % of the population at large is electromagnetically hypersensitive to RF radiation (Bioelectromagnetics 24:387-394 (2003)). Thus, we seem to have the same dilemma as was true a few years ago. How can we protect fragile human beings from enormous vested commercial interests? (...) October 2009, Ontario: Polls showed that the majority of people in Ontario where not getting the flu vaccine. So what happens? They give a kid meningitis, he dies, they tell everyone he died from flu complications. A panic ensues and people rush to get vaccinated. Just like: December 2009: Airport screening devices have been created. People don't want them. So what happens? Gee --- this is creative --- some guy --- allegedly --- has a bomb --- in his underwear!! Is he stopped? Despite the fact that he does not have luggage or a passport? No, of course not! The farce has to be played out. So canny passengers stop him before he can do damage, but like the panic in Ontario, people freak out and might even re consider the violations of privacy these devices will create. Do you think people would figure it out? I totally believe this was a set up job. Like the flu nonsense.
Full-body scanners won't make air travel safer: Surveillance expert (January 7, 2009) http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2250625
A Queen's University expert on privacy and surveillance warns that the new full-body scanners that will soon by deployed at the country's major airports will not make air travel safer and will simply subject ordinary Canadians to more -- and more intrusive -- government scrutiny. (...) The new scanners "see" through clothing, allowing the operator a look at naked passengers.They have been called a "shocking" invasion of privacy by civil liberties groups and an ineffective measure by aviation security watchdogs. In countries such a Britain, they have been found to breach child pornography laws if used on minors. Wood says the new scanners would not have detected the explosives carried by the alleged bomber who sparked the new security. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, tried to make a bomb on a Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam using powdered explosives hidden in his underwear. The 44 full-body scanners will be installed in Canada's 11 Class 1 airports at a cost of $250,000 each. Those facilities are the country's major hubs and include Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Ottawa. Wood noted that any effectiveness the machines might have would be greatly diminished as the government announced that they will use them for secondary searches on travellers flagged by security as suspicious, rather than as a universal screening tool for all passengers. People who don't want to go through the machines can opt to be frisked instead, further decreasing their usefulness. CLIP
How The Machine Creates Obedient Zombies (January 6, 2010) http://www.prisonplanet.com/how-the-machine-creates-obedient-zombies.html
In the aftermath of the aborted Christmas Day bombing, the corporate media has been busy hyping the necessity of naked body scanners, and the propaganda is habitually accompanied by a raft of quotes from obedient slaves who are prepared to undergo whatever humiliation it takes to provide them with some imaginary sense of “security,” but a recent Guardian poll suggests that this may be nothing more than a giant public relations hoax to hoodwink the masses into cheerleading for their own enslavement. (...) Indeed, full body scanners would not even have stopped the Christmas Day bomber from boarding Flight 253, according to a British MP who helped design the machines. “I must advise the Prime Minister – and the British public – that the scanners are not a “silver bullet,” said Ben Wallace, who worked on the scanners at defense research organization QinetiQ. “You would be mistaken to think that they would counter the new threat.”“The millimetre wave technology is harmless, quick and can be deployed overtly or covertly. But it cannot detect chemicals or light plastics.” And yet the fact that the scanners are next to useless only leads to calls to increase our humiliation and fealty, by submitting to scanners that see inside our bodies. The controllers routinely roll out this mass hoax in the interests of maintaining a “monkey see, monkey do” hive mentality, where people who would ordinarily be opposed having their naked children perved over by some fat greasy TSA agent in a back room are actually brainwashed into thinking this is normal because the other proles they see jabbering on TV say it is. CLIP
Harassed War Reporter: We Must Stand Up To TSA Thugs (January 6, 2010) http://www.prisonplanet.com/harassed-war-reporter-we-must-stand-up-to-tsa-thugs.html
A war reporter who was detained, interrogated and handcuffed at Seattle airport for refusing to answer personal questions about his income has warned that Americans need to start standing up to TSA thugs because entering the country is now a more stifling experience than some of the worst police states on the planet.“No country has ever treated me so badly,” Michael Yon wrote in a Facebook message. “Not China. Not Vietnam. Not Afghanistan. Definitely not Singapore or India or Nepal or Germany, not Brunei, not Indonesia, or Malaysia, or Kuwait or Qatar or United Arab Emirates. No county has treated me with the disrespect can that can be expected from our border bullies.” (...) Yon said that it was a nonsense that Americans were putting up with this kind of harassment. “We only have to deal with this because we put up with it….it’s incredible what we will allow our government to put us through,” he said, adding that harassment at American airports was even worse than that he had encountered in Israel.“If we don’t stand up to them they will continue to infringe on our rights,” Yon warned.Yon’s experience was similar to that endured by Steve Bierfeldt, a Ron Paul Campaign For Liberty treasurer, who was hounded and harassed by TSA agents for the crime of carrying cash and Ron Paul campaign material. (...) Incidents of TSA agents behaving like secret political police and embarking on petty power trips to harass innocent people have exploded way out of control and it has to stop now. Even overlooking the primary issues of gross violations of rights and privacy, the fact is that a large number of people have simply refused to travel to America anymore because entering the country is like trying to get into the old East Germany. This is killing the tourism industry and costing hundreds of millions of dollars each year.A 2006 investigation by the Discover America Partnership found that tourism to America had sunk due to “a climate of fear and frustration that is turning away foreign business and leisure travelers from visiting the United States and damaging America’s image abroad.”No less than a third of tourists vowed never to return to America after experiencing the treatment of Homeland Security officials at ports of entry. By early 2007, the U.S. had lost around 60 million visitors as a result of the stifling and intrusive security measures implemented since 9/11, which were proven to be completely flawed in light of the underwear bomber incident on Christmas Day. CLIP
Is Anyone Telling Us The Truth? By Paul Craig Roberts (January 8, 2010) http://www.opednews.com/articles/Is-Anyone-Telling-Us-The-T-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-100108-422.html
What are we to make of the failed Underwear Bomber plot, the Toothpaste, Shampoo, and Bottled Water Bomber plot, and the Shoe Bomber plot? These blundering and implausible plots to bring down an airliner seem far removed from al-Qaida's expertise in pulling off 9/11.If we are to believe the U.S. government, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida "mastermind" behind 9/11, outwitted the CIA, the NSA, indeed all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies as well as those of all U.S. allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times on one morning, and Dick Cheney, and with untrained and inexperienced pilots pulled off skilled piloting feats of crashing hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers, and the Pentagon, where a battery of state of the art air defenses somehow failed to function.After such amazing success, al-Qaida would have attracted the best minds in the business, but, instead, it has been reduced to amateur stunts. The Underwear Bomb plot is being played to the hilt on the TV media and especially on Fox "news." After reading recently that The Washington Post allowed a lobbyist to write a news story that preached the lobbyist's interest, I wondered if the manufacturers of full-body scanners were behind the heavy coverage of the Underwear Bomber, if not behind the plot itself. In America, everything is for sale. Integrity is gone with the wind.(...) Among the well-meaning and the gullible in the West, the supposition still exists that government represents the public interest. Political parties keep this myth alive by fighting over which party best represents the public’s interest. In truth, government represents private interests, those of the office holders themselves and those of the lobby groups that finance their political campaigns. The public is in the dark as to the real agendas. The U.S. and its puppet state allies were led to war in the Middle East and Afghanistan entirely on the basis of lies and deception. Iraqi weapons of mass destruction did not exist and were known by the U.S. and British governments not to exist. Forged documents, such as the "yellowcake documents," were leaked to newspapers in order to create news reporting that would bring the public along with the government’s war agenda. Now the same thing is happening in regard to the nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program. Forged documents leaked to The Times (London) that indicated Iran was developing a "nuclear trigger" mechanism have been revealed as forgeries. Who benefits? Clearly, attacking Iran is on the Israeli-U.S. agenda, and someone is creating the "evidence" to support the case, just as the leaked secret “Downing Street Memo” to the British cabinet informed Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government that President Bush had already made the decision to invade Iraq and "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." The willingness of people to believe their rulers and the propaganda ministries that serve the rulers is astonishing. Many Americans believe Iran has a nuclear weapons program despite the unanimous conclusion of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies to the contrary. CLIP
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Gerald Celente on Alex Jones Tv 1/4 "Obamageddon!!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVztXmX3uiA
His recent forecasts involve fascism in the United States, food riots and tax revolts. He describes the emerging crisis as "Obamageddon."
Six million in the US with no income but food stamps (7 January 2010) http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/pers-j07.shtml
Some six million Americans—one in 50 people in the US—are living on no income other than $100 or $200 a month in food stamps, according to an analysis of state data by the New York Times. The number of people who reported that they are unemployed and receive no cash aid—neither welfare, nor unemployment insurance, pension benefits, child support or disability pay—the newspaper reported, has jumped by 50 percent over the last two years, as the recession has taken hold. According to the January 3 article, the number of people reporting no income tripled in Nevada over the past two years, doubled in Florida and New York, and increased nearly 90 percent in Minnesota and Utah. In Wayne County, Michigan—which includes Detroit, where half the population is unemployed or underemployed—one out of every 25 residents reports an income of only food stamps. In Yakima County, Washington, the figure is one out of every 17. The figures reveal the vast scale of human suffering in the US as the new decade begins and puts the lie to talk of an economic “recovery.” The 6 million people in households reporting no income—which includes 1.2 million children—is equivalent to the entire population of Indiana or Massachusetts, or the combined populations of Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston. Such a social catastrophe underscores the indifference of the Obama administration, which has done virtually nothing to provide relief to those who have lost their jobs, homes and livelihoods—even as it spares no expense to shore up the fortunes of the financial elite and fund its ongoing wars. CLIP
Severe unemployment worsens in cities (January 5, 2010) http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/05/news/economy/metro_unemployment/index.htm?source=ft
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The number of U.S. metropolitan areas with jobless rates above 15% increased in November, according to government figures released Tuesday, despite the biggest one-month drop in the national rate in more than three years. The Labor Department said 17 of 372 metropolitan areas surveyed suffered unemployment rates of at least 15% last month, up from 15 metro areas in October. CLIP
Willem Buiter warns of massive dollar collapse (5 Jan 2009) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/4125947/Willem-Buiter-warns-of-massive-dollar-collapse.html
Americans must prepare themselves for a massive collapse in the dollar as investors around the world dump their US assets, a former Bank of England policymaker has warned. -- The long-held assumption that US assets - particularly government bonds - are a safe haven will soon be overturned as investors lose their patience with the world's biggest economy, according to Willem Buiter. Professor Buiter, a former Monetary Policy Committee member who is now at the London School of Economics, said this increasing disenchantment would result in an exodus of foreign cash from the US. The warning comes despite the dollar having strengthened significantly against other major currencies, including sterling and the euro, after hitting historic lows last year. It will reignite fears about the currency's prospects, as well as sparking fears about the sustainability of President-Elect Barack Obama's mooted plans for a Keynesian-style increase in public spending to pull the US out of recession. CLIP
Second Wave Of Mortgage Defaults Part 1 - From 60 Minutes (Dec 29, 2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhEsqLcWHyA
Over a trillion's worth of mortgage defaults are set to explode in 2010 and 2011. Continued in PART 2 - Check also Propping up the credit market - (...) 1. The world runs on credit - and not just credit cards and mortgage loans. Shippers, manufacturers, miners, retailers, farmers...they're all dependent on credit. 2. The credit markets are still in disarray and the structural problems are on an epic scale 3. The only reason the credit markets are functioning is because they're being propped up by non-stop government intervention. CLIP
IMF Economist says 2nd economic collapse coming 1/3 (October 28, 2009) MUST WATCH! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8VG85wI1n4
BILL MOYER talks about the failure of the bailout & corruption in Wall Street and Washington. Part 2 HERE - Part 3 HERE.
Bill Moyers Journal - The Stranglehold of Money on Politics (6 January 2010) http://www.truthout.org/topstories/10610vh2
While Wall Street is back in the black and the push for more regulation seems stalled, Americans are still struggling to keep their homes and jobs. How does Big Finance get away with it, and have lawmakers only patched a system headed for another economic crisis? Mother Jones journalists David Corn and Kevin Drum offer a hard look at the obstacles to real reform that keep Washington's attention on Wall Street and not on the needs of Main Street.
2009: The Year of the Great Vampire Squid (January 7, 2010) http://solari.com/blog/?p=5590
The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.
- Matt Tabbi, “Inside the Great American Bubble Machine”
The Great Vampire Squid - For years, it was hard for many of us to fathom the psychopathic nature of our financial elites, or to expand the meaning of Matt Tabbi’s marvelous description of Goldman Sachs, the great vampire squid. Squid seems a fitting name for the financial cartel that drives what I have traditionally called the Tapeworm.
(...) Bloomberg recently announced that gold was the best performing investment for the decade. They failed to mention that gold’s near 300% rise of the decade could not compare to the exponential multiplication achieved in a much shorter period by the squid’s financing their Presidential candidate into the White House. Electing a Harvard lawyer who inspired the hopes and dreams of those who had been most brutally drained by the housing bubble and drug wars clearly was a stroke of financial genius. While gold had passed the $1,200 per oz. level before the end of the 2009, its performance still did not compare to the $10,000 plus per oz. the squid was realizing on the opium flowing from the fields in Afghanistan. This is not in any way to diminish the importance of the squid’s investment in governmental and private intelligence agencies. However, at times like this, you can’t kill everyone. Although, we admit there were moments in 2009 when it started to look like someone was trying. From the Revolutionary War through 2009, the U.S. government accumulated $12 trillion in debt. And then, in one year, President elect and President Obama restored to office the very people who had engineered the fraud. With the squid’s preferred team in place in the White House, at the US Treasury and at the Department of Defense, President Obama led the gifting and lending of an additional $12 Trillion to the great vampire squid. Let me underscore the enormity of this number again. An amount equivalent to all the debt we had accumulated in 252 years and numerous wars we gave or lent to the squid in one year.And so it was that the banks of Europe were relieved of their fraudulent paper while the Federal Reserve balance sheet ballooned with toxic assets. No doubt in profound gratitude and appreciation for President Obama’s extraordinary political achievement, a grateful Europe bestowed upon him the Nobel Peace Prize. In the meantime, with strong support from the Federal Reserve and U.S Treasury, the great vampire squid was able to engineer extraordinary profits on high-risk speculative investments by an amount sufficient to “pay back” bailout loans, fund dividends to shareholders and pay their leaders huge and hideous year-end bonuses. The Squid to Main Street: “Drop Dead!” Capital it would seem is available only for squid speculation. The real economy is a source of capital for the squid. It is no longer a use of capital. Hence, drain on communities and the failure to reinvest in serious innovation and long term U.S. growth accelerated during 2009. The political reality is that the U.S. government is deeply dependent on the squid to finance growing deficits, engineer global economic warfare and manage markets in the precious metals, oil, commodities and financial markets. So with U.S. unemployment over 10% (says the government) or 20% (says John Williams at www.shadowstats.com, a far more reliable source) and significant unemployment around the globe, the great vampire squid couldn’t care less what the man in the street thinks. As Dick Cheney said about deficits, “they don’t matter.” The Squid Bottom Line - In 2009, the great vampire squid finished engineering the single greatest financial shift in the history of the planet. It took two decades and constituted a financial coup d’état. Even our hero Congresswoman Kaptur said so. The year finished with the field commanders within the squid congratulating themselves and paying themselves richly for a “job well done.” Without a doubt, 2009 was the year of the great vampire squid. CLIP
How Goldman Sachs Made Tens of Billions of Dollars from the Economic Collapse of America (January 4, 2010) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16744
Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs has become perhaps the most prominent symbol for everything that is wrong with the U.S. financial system, but most Americans cannot even begin to explain what they do or how they have made tens of billions of dollars from the economic collapse of America. The truth is that what Goldman Sachs did was fairly simple, and there may not have even been anything "illegal" about it (although they are now being investigated by the SEC among others). The following is how Goldman Sachs made tens of billions of dollars from the economic collapse of America in four easy steps.... CLIP
Too Big to Jail? (January/February 2010 Issue) http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/too-big-jail
MAYBE WALL STREET should open a casino right there on the corner of Broad, because these guys simply cannot lose. After kneecapping the global economy, costing millions their homes and livelihoods, and saddling our grandchildren with massive debt—after all that, they're cashing in their bonuses from 2008. That's right, 2008—when amid the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the $700 billion TARP legislation (a mere 5 percent of a $14 trillion bailout; see "The Real Size of the Bailout"), humiliated banks rolled back executive bonuses. Or so we thought: In fact, those bonuses were simply reconfigured to have a higher proportion of company stock. Those shares weren't worth so much at the time, as the execs made a point of telling Congress, but that meant they could only go up, and by the time they did, the public (suckers!) would have forgotten the whole exercise. It worked out beautifully: The value of JPMorgan Chase's 2008 bonuses has increased 20 percent to $10.5 billion, an average of nearly $6 million for the top 200 execs. Goldman's 2008 bonuses are worth $7.8 billion. And why are bank stocks worth more now? Because of the bailout, of course. Bankers aren't being rewarded for pulling the economy out of the doldrums. Nope, they're simply skimming from the trillions we've shoveled at them. The house always wins. Indeed, 2009 bonuses are expected to be 30 to 40 percent higher than 2008's. And don't forget AIG, which paid the same division that helped cook up collateral debt obligations and credit default swaps "retention bonuses" worth $475 million, in some execs' cases 36 times their base salaries. As anyone who watches Dog Whisperer knows, rewarding bad behavior produces more of the same—so it's no surprise that Wall Street is back to business as usual. Derivatives are still unregulated (thanks, Congress!), exotic sliced-and-diced securities are being resliced and rediced, and the biggest offenders in peddling subprime mortgages? They are raking in millions in federal grants to—wait for it—fix subprime mortgages.And the worst part? These fat-cat recidivists don't even have the decency to fake contrition. The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin says that whenever he asked Wall Street CEOs "Do you have any remorse? Are you sorry? The answer, almost unequivocally, was no." When asked by MoJo's Stephanie Mencimer if he regretted helping to bring down the economy, former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg said flatly, "No. I think we had a very good record." Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs' CEO (his haul between 2006-2008: $157 million) went so far as to tell the Times of London, "We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. It's a virtuous cycle. We have a social purpose." Bankers like him are "doing God's work." This is blasphemy worthy—along with usury—of the 7th circle of hell. CLIP
Complex Issues & Public Outrage (January 8, 2009) NOTE FROM JEAN: I watched it and recommend it! http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2010/01/complex_issues_public_outrage.html
This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with two journalists from the progressive magazine MOTHER JONES about Wall Street’s power over Washington and why the public isn’t demanding more regulation of institutions that contributed to the economic meltdown. Political blogger Kevin Drum argued that laws concerning financial regulation need to be simplified and that the press doesn’t do enough to ensure that Americans are informed about Wall Street’s power. (...) David Corn, MOTHER JONES’ Washington bureau chief, suggested that reforms are necessary but that the details of financial regulation may be simply too complex for the mass public to comprehend or make into an urgent political issue. CLIP Read the full transcript of this in-depth interview or watch it -- Here are a couple comments: "Thank you for yet another great program. The idea that intrigues me is our President Obama choosing to lead, and what better time to begin than with the next address to the Joint Session of Congress. Mr. Korn's lines are excellent but to make them believable he should be flanked by his replacements for Geitner and Summers. And announce that he is withdrawing his support for Mr. Bernanke. People may follow this lead or we may not, but we aren't getting out of this mess with the crew we have. Please, Mr President, lead." - "Great Show! I too shall look into buying Mother Jones tomorrow. Messrs. Korn and Drum discussed with clarity the problems of the banking situation. They also gave the solution: We, the people, should rise up and protest. When shall we march on Washington? Before the State of the Union or after?" - "President Obama needs to rally his grassroots organization Organizing for America to work on real reform of the financial sector. I work with OFA and have been disappointed with some of the President's choices, especially with his appointment of Timothy Geitner and Larry Summers.Kevin Drum's suggestion of rallying citizens for real regulation of the financial sector as part of the State of the Union address would be a way of reigniting passion for change." - I believe total government funding of campaigns would help resolve a lot of the influence of big money and if the Supreme Court rules that business do not have the same legal rights as people, citizens would then have some influence on the congress." NOTE from Jean: That's what we have in Cad
SUPERPOWER (with trailer) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14083
Superpower: Far from a conspiracy film about the dangers of government secrets and regime change, this well-balanced film straddles the philosophical divide and allows viewers to understand the US quest for global dominance through economic and military strategy that is exposed through review of historical events, personal interviews, and analysis of US foreign policy. The heart of Superpower lies in the analysis produced from a re-examination of history through a series of interviews with historians, documentarians, and academians such as Bill Blum, Chalmers Johnson, Michel Chossudovsky, and Noam Chomsky, and others with expertise in this subject such as the Executive Producer of The Unit, Command Sergeant (Ret.) Eric Haney; former Chief Economist for the US Department of Labor, Morgan Reynolds; three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Kathy Kelly; and Lt. Col. (Ret) Karen Kwiatkowski. Examining key moments in America's history elicits a more consistent and plausible set of motives for US foreign policy actions guided by global expansion and military dominance, rather than the hyperbolic calls for democracy and totalitarian regime change that we have become so accustomed to hearing.Should citizens trust that their government will keep them safe, a government that keeps secrets, and lies, in the name of national security? Does the simple act of withholding information lead to a world of eroding civil liberties and corruption? Superpower presents a view of US foreign policy, which lies in stark contrast to that depicted by corporate media, popular pundits, and US heads of state. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the US has emerged as the preeminent superpower of the world. Superpower illustrates how the United States has chosen to leverage that position to pursue a grand strategy which will ensure itself unilateral world domination through absolute economic and military superiority. It shows a consistent pattern of government deception.The United States emerged from World War II with its industrial base still intact and the only nation with the atomic bomb. It was without question the most powerful country on earth. What was done with this unprecedented power, the effects it's had on our Republic and the rest of the world is the story of Superpower.
A Call to the People of the World to Support Iceland Against Financial Blackmail (January 6, 2009) http://www.infowars.com/a-call-to-the-people-of-the-world-to-support-iceland-against-financial-blackmail/
Birgitta Jónsdóttir is the leader of The Movement, a group within the Icelandic Parliament which has emerged from the mass struggle of Icelanders against the financial blackmail brought to bear against their country by the governments in London and The Hague, with the backing of the IMF, in the wake of the insolvency of three large Icelandic banks in the midst of the Lehman Brothers-AIG world financial panic of September-October2008. Birgitta Jonsdottir is a courageous leader in the fight for national sovereignty, independence, dignity, and the economic well-being and future of her country. (...) Let’s also put this debt into perspective: 320.000 people live in Iceland, each and every person on the island, including children and the elderly, the disabled and the poor, would have to pay around $30,000 under the bill. The danger if Icelanders will accept this enormous burden is that the entire welfare system would simply collapse with no money to run it. On January 5th the Icelandic president had the courage, backed up by his nation, to place the interest of the people before that of the banks. Of course there has been an incredible spin by the government controlled media, attacking the nation and the president for this simple and fair demand. The UK and Dutch media were also full of misleading news, saying the nation had demanded not to pay, and that we would become isolated and there were even suggestions that the British navy should flex its muscles against this nation which has no military. As if the terrorist act they imposed on us was not enough during the darkest hour of our crises to bring us further down! The spin is failing because people around the world are finally starting to hear our side of the story, and other suppressed nations have perhaps seen this as a sign that they can also rise up against the corpocracy in our world where those with the money have as a rule always won. Let’s hope the nation will not been coaxed into fear of isolation and let’s hope the people of the world will join in this experiment of letting the interest of the peoples rise above the interests of banks, corporations, and international bullies such as the IMF. We need your support. I will soon issue a comprehensive report on the entire Icesave saga. Love and rage from Iceland - Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Party group chairman for The Movement in the Icelandic Parliament
2010: Giant Gathering Storm Clouds (January 6, 2010) http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/willie/2010/0106.html
(...) Here we are in 2010 and the threats must again be laid out. A prelude was offered in an mid-December article entitled "Full Circle of Govt Debt Default" (CLICK HERE) where a global sovereign debt ruin in vicious circle was displayed the sequence that started in the Untied States and will end in the Untied States. Rather than make specific forecasts of extreme events, a list is presented much like a smorgasbord. The odds are 100:1 in favor at least one extreme event occurring in this current calendar year in my view. The odds are very high in favor of several events taking place this year. The key here is that a great many extremely damaging and highly disruptive events loom like giant gathering storm clouds that meet, complete with lightning displays. More terrestrial types might consider that a great many land mine explosives lie in the wide pathways ahead. At least a few extreme craters will be formed. A few financial edifices will be toppled. Great changes come, especially to the global power structures. This time around, the stakes are bigger, and entire nations will face debt failure and national realignment. The ripple effects will reshape the global financial system.The blind, the deficient, and the compromised fail to fully appreciate and detect the meaning of the Dubai debt default or the Iceland financial failure. They actually believe these busts have been dealt with by the very strength of the capitalist system. These default failures signify a continuation of the credit market crisis that never went away. Instead, accounting fraud was legalized. Instead, bloated bank toxic balance sheets were permitted. Instead, sovereign debt finance by monetary expansion was endorsed, i.e. monetization. Instead, stock equity sales to the nitwits incapable of reading balance sheets was widespread. Instead, broader statistical gimmickry of economic data was installed. Not a single meaningful reform has taken place on US soil, which guarantees the continuation of the credit crisis is assured. No substantial reduction of US home loan balance sheets. No return of US manufacturing. No liquidation of dead US banks. No removal of Goldman Sachs from control of the USDept Treasury. No disclosure of US Federal Reserve disbursements of over $1 trillion. No steps to restore the Glass Steagall Act to create firewalls between the financial sectors. No effort to prosecute for $trillion bond fraud. No initiative to bring to light the deep criminal lace to Fannie Mae and AIG, now protected under USGovt aegis. No attempt to rein in military spending and endless wars. No movement to create a monetary system with a currency other than the current debt denominated $20 bill coupons. Instead, with much greater force, enthusiasm, and recklessness, the financial system hurtled deeper into the Weimar chambers of commerce. Worse, most steps simply apply greater doses of precisely what caused the problems with debt overload and excessive monetary expansion. Worse doubly, most reforms grant even more power to those responsible for the breakdowns and fraud perpetration. The Untied States is being recognized internationally as a rogue nation moving headlong toward communism, run by powerful syndicates, whose most prominent foreign policy is explained by military hardware.
(...) The following events are presented as potential disasters looming, spanning the full spectrum, each with triggers in numerous arenas. These are potential disasters, not presented as forecasts, but rather as a list to beware for nasty highly disruptive eruptions. They are loaded with a geopolitical streak, in keeping with Paradigm Shift that signifies a powerful set of changes in altered power. The one common trait all the following potential events have is that they are systemic game change agents. The globe will be reshaped by each and every event that comes to pass. They are not listed in any order of likelihood, since they are all very much at risk of occurrence, and integrally interconnected to a frightening degree. Each would heap tremendous damage, disruption, and devastation, upon occurrence. One should note that if one or two events occur, then others might occur with domino effect from the chain reaction of chaos and opportunity. CLIP
Oil up as colder weather strikes US, China (January 07, 2010) http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/oil-up-as-colder-weather-strikes-us-china/story-e6frg8zx-1225816759807
OIL traded near a 14-month high in New York yesterday as an industry report showed a decline in US crude stockpiles and cold weather bolstered the outlook for fuel demand in the world's largest energy-consuming nation. Temperatures in the US northeast, which consumes about four-fifths of the country's heating oil, are forecast to remain below normal until January 15, according to the National Weather Service. US crude supplies dropped 2.27 million barrels last week, according to the American Petroleum Institute. "The weather is cold everywhere in the northern hemisphere with Europe getting walloped and China as well," said Anthony Nunan, an assistant general manager for risk management at Mitsubishi in Tokyo. (...) Temperatures in southern China may drop by as much as 6C to 8C as a cold front moves across the country, the China Meteorological Administration said yesterday. Beijing, the capital of the world's second-largest oil user, recorded a temperature of -20C on Tuesday night, the agency said. The eastern half of the US is facing its coldest winter since 1982, AccuWeather said on its website. Arctic air from Canada is spreading south. By Saturday, New York and Boston may have lows of -10C. An Energy Department report due today may show stockpiles of crude oil declined 1 million barrels from 326 million, according to analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. CLIP
Millions across United States brace for more cold (January 8, 2010) http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/winter/2010-01-07-cold-snap-millions_N.htm
By the end of this weekend, 180 million Americans will have shivered through a record-setting bout of arctic cold sweeping from the Great Plains and the Midwest to the Deep South. A week-long cold snap has shut down scores of schools, delayed hundreds of flights, threatened and damaged crops and even knocked iguanas out of trees.Shovels, salt and kerosene heaters flew off store shelves Thursday as armies of snow plows and salt trucks hit the streets."We're preparing for the worst-case scenario," said Jeffrey Putnam of Whitfield County Emergency Services in Dalton, Ga., which is expecting up to an inch of snow. At least 19 deaths have been blamed on the cold and icy roads (...) Sixty percent of the U.S. population will experience temperatures 15 to 30 degrees below average at some point by Sunday night, said Weather Channel meteorologist Jim Wilson. The cold will be a "threat to pipes, property and crops," especially in the South, where record lows are possible each morning through Monday, he said. The South is reeling all the way to South Florida, where the average high temperature this time of year is 76 degrees. Overnight temperatures are expected to be in the 30s there this weekend. CLIP
Severe snow causes chaos in Europe (JANUARY 06, 2010) http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/01/20101694354272675.html
The severe winter weather sweeping across Europe shows no sign of letting up, with freezing conditions continuing across the continent.From Britain to Poland, schools have been closed, flights cancelled and rail services disrupted. The UK has been hit by its longest cold snap for almost 30 years with the army called up in Hampshire, in the south of the country, after about 1,000 vehicles were stranded by snow. The Met Office, the British weather service, said it expected the unusually cold weather to continue for the next two weeks. Homeless deaths - Jonah Hull, Al Jazeera's correspondent in London, said: "Forecasters are saying that if the temperatures continue to drop [in the UK] for much longer we could be seeing the coldest winter in 100 years." The drop in temperatures have been seen across large parts of the north of the continent certainly, not so much in the south. "Poland, Switzerland, Austria, countries in the Alps have suffered serious avalanches, lots of skiers have been lost since New Year and many pensioners, and particularly homeless people, have died since New Year, well over 100 in Poland alone." CLIP
Global Cooling in 2009 (JANUARY 01, 2010) http://www.populartechnology.net/2010/01/global-cooling-in-2009.html
2009 was another year of global cooling, which saw numerous low temperature and high snowfall records smashed. The Dutch canals froze over for the first time in 12 years, record cold came to Al Gore's home town and ironically a blizzard dumped snow on the Copenhagen convention where world leaders met to try and stop global warming. It was so cold that even the BBC was forced to ask, what happened to global warming? As Climategate would reveal, IPCC scientists had been hard at work hiding evidence of global cooling. Yet the observational evidence cannot be ignored. CLIP HUNDREDS OF RELATED ARTICLES!
Britain faces big chill as ocean current slows (May 8, 2005) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article520013.ece
CLIMATE change researchers have detected the first signs of a slowdown in the Gulf Stream — the mighty ocean current that keeps Britain and Europe from freezing.They have found that one of the “engines” driving the Gulf Stream — the sinking of supercooled water in the Greenland Sea — has weakened to less than a quarter of its former strength. The weakening, apparently caused by global warming, could herald big changes in the current over the next few years or decades. Paradoxically, it could lead to Britain and northwestern and Europe undergoing a sharp drop in temperatures. Such a change has long been predicted by scientists but the new research is among the first to show clear experimental evidence of the phenomenon. CLIP
Sea levels rose two feet higher than predicted this summer in U.S. East (September 10, 2009) http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2009/09/gulf-stream-slows-down-and-sea-levels.html
(...) Now a new report has identified the two major factors behind the high sea levels—a weakened Gulf Stream and steady winds from the northeastern Atlantic.The Gulf Stream is a northward-flowing superhighway of ocean water off the U.S. East Coast. Running at full steam, the powerful current pulls water into its "orbit" and away from the East Coast. But this summer, for reasons unknown, "the Gulf Stream slowed down," Edwing said, sending water toward the coasts—and sea levels shooting upward.Adding to the sustained surge, autumn winds from the northeastern Atlantic arrived a few months early, pushing even more water coastward. CLIP
Gulf Stream Slowing Down http://www.earthemergency.org/actionearth/gulf-stream.php
The Gulf Stream, also known as the North Atlantic Conveyor is the warm current flowing North from the tropics to the Arctic. This warm current is responsible for the temperate climate enjoyed by Europe and the US. England without the Gulf Stream would have the same temperatures as Newfoundland (at the same corresponding latitude). The current carries 1 million billion watts of heat (1 petawatt).Understanding the mechanism driving this current is the key. Warm saline water flowing North meets the ice cold freshwater in the Arctic causing a sudden temperature drop. Because saline water is heavier than freshwater it drops deep down below the surface freshwater. The effect of this sudden plunging of now cooled saline water is to create a draw at the surface which ensures a steady flow of warm water northward. This conveying of warm surface waters northward and cool waters deep in the ocean southward is also known the Atlantic Conveyor or thermohaline circulation. The Gulf Stream has been flowing since the end of the last ice age and whole temperate ecosystems have evolved in the Northern hemisphere in response to the warmer climate. As climate changes these ecosystems will vanish.And things are already starting to change. As Global Warming takes effect the Arctic ice melts in increasingly large quantities causing a deluge of cool freshwater flowing South. The result; the warm Gulf Stream waters are now mixing with the freshwater flows much further South causing the warmer waters to no longer reach the higher latitudes.The latest research shows that The Gulf Stream has already reduced in size by 10%. Professor Schlesinger's research (University of Illinois) suggests that there is 50% chance of it completely switching off if worldwide CO2 emission rates continue to rise. This would result in a temperature drop of at least 5°C. If we are able to significantly reduce emissions in line with a maximum 2°C temperature rise this probability would drop to 25%. The North Atlantic Conveyor last slowed in 1300AD. It changed the climate enough to create a "little ice age" which lasted for 550 years. It last stopped 8200 years ago. Northern Europe was left under 0.5 miles of ice for 100 years.
Gulf Stream : the fall of a myth ? http://www.eur-oceans.info/EN/education/malette/eng/fichiers_pdf_anglais/mate/Gulf%20Stream.pdf
(...) The fall of a myth ? The reasons why an ice age is not a realistic forecast - The Gulf Stream and its extension, the North Atlantic current, transport warm waters towards high latitudes. However, recent scientific research has reconsidered the significance of the role played by the Gulf Stream in the transportation of heat from South to North. In the area between 40° and 60° N. winds cause 80% of the heat transfer while only 20 % of the heat is transported by currents (the Gulf Stream and its extensions). Therefore, if the Gulf Stream slowed down it would not have the catastrophic consequences predicted by some. CLIP NOTE from Jean: Nowhere is it mentioned that if less heat is transported from the tropical waters to the North - if the Gulf Stream further slows down or even stops altogether - this will mean higher temperature waters in the tropics and thus more coral bleaching and more hardships for all marine life.
Ocean Threats http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/ocean-threats/
Human activities are threatening the health of the world's oceans. More than 80 percent of marine pollution comes from land-based activities. From coral bleaching to sea level rise, entire marine ecosystems are rapidly changing. Global warming is causing alterations in ocean chemistry and many oceanic processes, and it is threatening many species of marine animals that cannot cope with higher temperatures. Overfishing is a serious problem in many parts of the world. Conservationists advocate creating expansive marine reserves to protect the biodiversity of the oceans. Threats - Global warming is causing sea levels to rise, threatening coastal population centers. Many pesticides and nutrients used in agriculture end up in the coastal waters, resulting in oxygen depletion that kills marine plants and shellfish. Factories and industrial plants discharge sewage and other runoff into the oceans. Oil spills pollute the oceans, though U.S. water-sewage treatment plants discharge twice as much oil each year as tanker spills. Air pollution is responsible for almost one-third of the toxic contaminants and nutrients that enter coastal areas and oceans.Invasive species such as poisonous algae, cholera, and countless plants and animals have entered harbor waters and disrupted the ecological balance.The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that of the 17 major fisheries areas in the world, four are depleted and the other thirteen are either fished to capacity or overfished. Solutions: Establish marine parks to protect biodiversity. Reduce destructive fishing practices such as trawling. Halt the use of military sonar that can harm or kill whales and other marine mammals. Help fishers to maintain their livelihoods by incorporating conservation efforts. Install measures to reduce the amount of fish caught accidentally.
'BAD ACTORS': SEA SHEPHERD, ANIMAL PLANET, 'SEA-LEBRITIES' & ENDOCRINE DISRUPTORS - by Jeff Phillips http://synthaissance.blogspot.com/2010/01/bad-actors-sea-shepherd-animal-planet.html
NOTE FROM JEFF: This is my most recent effort as part of an on-going 'investigative journalism' project to determine what's really going on with the booming 'save the whales' 'reality-media' industry. It's all been smelling a bit "fishy" for some time now; this may shed some light on "non-profit environmentalism for-profit." 'Bad Actor' is a classification for the absolute WORST pesticides, that are acutely toxic, mutagenic, and carcinogenic. It also describes the 'heroes' of the 'save the whales' television blight. It's 'business as usual' with a new twist; and the public continues to be exploited and distracted from far more lethal threats to life as we know it. (...) For a long time now it's looked as if both sides of this highly profitable "equation" are being manipulated by the same "orchestrators" or directors. What a convenient opportunity to capitalize on the apathetic public's hero-worship of "eco-warriors" who are "out there doing something" instead of watching tv...to "save the whales"...by letting the public SEE THEM ON TV! What a fantastic opportunity to take the idea of "reality tv" to new dep... I mean, heights... by pitting the HEROIC "eco-warriors" against the CLEARLY EVIL BARBARIAN Japanese whalers and by constantly elevating the "conflict" to new levels each season. What a great way to distract the "environmentally conscious" viewing public from REAL THREATS to their health like mobile phones, endocrine disrupting chemicals, and the 'war on independent thought." The trick is to keep it all going on, to maintain the 'mind-share' momentum; both sides have to be equally matched in sonic artillery, laser disruptors, boat-spikes and virulent rhetoric. I'm pretty sure that NEXT SEASON both sides are going to have actual phasers, just like in the original Star Trek, plus maybe Rush Limbaugh or Oliver North as official spokes-persons. “If it drains, it gains.” You know, I wouldn't be surprised if William Shatner even made a guest appearance on the Steve Irwin next season! And there WILL BE a "next season." IN NO WAY are the producers of Animal Planet and the Watsonian "sea-lebrity" entourage ABOUT to let this extremely lucrative and highly publicized "conflict" find a harmonious conclusion!!! NO WAY.
(...) Of course, whaling IS a real threat to whales, but not the biggest; other threats are of a different and higher order. “Climate change” IS a real threat to humans, but not the biggest; other threats are of a different and higher order. But mass-media is used to manipulate the public's perception of these issues, to amplify the low-order variable to the exclusion of the high-order variable. The “low-order” culprit, the “make-believe enemy”, is people, ourselves; the “high order”, or “real” culprit is the military-industrial complex, human industrial civilization itself, and the corporations who comprise it...the same corporations who today own and control global media systems.
(...) Testimony of Dr. Roger PaynePresident, Ocean Alliance“I am Roger Payne, co-discoverer that humpback whales sing. I am founder and President of Ocean Alliance, in Lincoln, Massachusetts, an organization dedicated to ocean conservation through research and public education. I direct a 32 year, on-going study of the biology of 1500 known Patagonian right whales—the world’s longest continuous study of a whale species based on known individuals.But I am here today to speak about another Ocean Alliance program called “The Voyage of the Odyssey.” It is aimed at quantifying a serious threat to ocean life from synthetic compounds known collectively as POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants). They include such compounds as DDT, DDE, PCBs, aldrin, endrin, dieldrin, dioxins, furans, etc. Their other name, Endocrine Disrupting Compounds, describes their greatest threat to humans—that some of these compounds are hormone mimics which even at concentrations as low as a few parts per billion can upset fetal development, cause reproductive disorders and malformation of sex organs, compromise immune systems, do neural damage, and, in young children, diminish their ability to concentrate and learn..." BACK TO REALITY II: Life as we know her With the mention of endocrine disrupting compounds we now begin to dove-tail with another large body of “activism awareness” I've been dealing with lately, concerning the use of pesticides around the world and the implications/effects of its persistence and concentration in the biosphere and in our bodies. CLIP
Japanese sailors accused of deliberately ramming anti-whaling vessel Sea Shepherd's ship Ady Gil (January 7, 2010) http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/japanese-sailors-accused-of-deliberately-ramming-anti-whaling-vessel-sea-shepherds-ship-ady-gill/story-e6freuy9-1225816797336
WHALERS and protesters are at war on the high seas, with Japanese sailors last night accused of deliberately ramming an anti-whaling vessel, injuring one crew member.Six crew on board the Sea Shepherd ship the Ady Gil were rescued - one with broken ribs - but the impact virtually destroyed the $1.5 million carbon-fibre stealth boat.Gallery: Japanese sink anti-whaling shipThe bow was almost torn off, leaving a 2.5m hole and the trimaran taking water, making it unseaworthy.Paul Watson, captain of the Sea Shepherd ship the Steve Irwin, told The Daily Telegraph last night that the Ady Gil would be towed to a nearby French research centre while he continued to pursue the Japanese whalers."It's [the Ady Gil] filled with water. It hasn't sunk but it's no longer seaworthy. It won't make it back to Australia but we can't just leave it," Mr Watson said. "This is a war. It's a war to save the whales and it just got a lot uglier." CLIP
Pesticides - Introduction http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/pesticides.introduction.php
Most people are not aware of the thousands of pesticides and their formulations that are in use today, some of them in huge volumes and on huge acreages worldwide. They comprise acaricides, algicides, antifoulants, avicides, bactericides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, molluscicides, nematicides, piscicides, rodenticides, virucides, and the related plant and insect growth regulators; chemosterilants; bird, mammal and insect repellents, insect pheromones and other attractants. Product formulations may contain more than one active ingredient, as well as synergists, “safeners”, and other ingredients formerly known as “inerts”. Our particular concern about pesticides is that they have been designed to disrupt biological systems, causing death to target organisms, such as insects or plants. Some actually work by acting on the endocrine systems of insects. The problem is that the biochemistry of most living things is similar enough that humans, wildlife and plants can also be adversely affected by pesticides. In the past, much of the human and wildlife health-related research on pesticides has dealt with more or less immediate toxicity at relatively high doses, or has been concerned only with the primary mode of action of a single active ingredient in the pesticide product. In recent years, these concerns have broadened to include other possible actions of the ingredients, and testing at exposure levels more relevant to what may be in the environment. CLIP
Endocrine Disruption The Fossil Fuel Connection http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/endocrine.fossilfuel.php
In 1991, an international group of experts stated, with confidence, that “Unless the environmental load of synthetic hormone disruptors is abated and controlled, large scale dysfunction at the population level is possible.”1 They could not perceive that within only ten years, a pandemic of endocrine-driven disorders would begin to emerge and increase rapidly across the northern hemisphere. Today, less than two decades later, hardly a family has not been touched by Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, autism, intelligence and behavioral problems, diabetes, obesity, childhood, pubertal and adult cancers, abnormal genitalia, infertility, Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s Diseases. TEDX’s findings confirm that each of these disorders could in part be the result of prenatal exposure to chemicals called endocrine disruptors. TEDX has also confirmed that the feed stocks for most endocrine disrupting chemicals are derived from the production of coal, oil, and natural gas. It is clear that endocrine disruption, like climate change, is a spin-off of society’s addiction to fossil fuels. Setting aside the effects of endocrine disruptors on infertility, and just considering their influence on intelligence and behavior alone, it is possible that hormone disruption could pose a more imminent threat to humankind than climate change. The urgency of the above conclusions provided the incentive for much of the work described on this website.
Drugs in your drinking water (12/11/2009) http://www.healthiertalk.com/drugs-your-drinking-water-1209
The contamination of our water supply is the biggest public health crisis that no one will talk about – probably because at least some of that poison is put in on purpose. (...) Antibiotics, painkillers, sunscreen, hormones, drugs and so much more are routinely found in U.S. waters. In some parts of our nation, male fish are growing female parts because they're literally swimming in hormones. Most cities don't even bother testing for meds in the drinking water. When they do, they inevitably find them – pharmaceuticals have been found in the drinking water of 51 million U.S. homes. If we tested everywhere, I'm sure we'd find them everywhere. Tests have even shown that American drinking water is contaminated with perchlorate – the chemical used to make rocket fuel. Still feel like drinking eight glasses a day of this stuff?
French move fuels fears for flu vaccine sales - French cancellation highlights European over-supply http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE6040M720100105
France's decision to cancel over half the swine flu vaccines it ordered has increased concerns that manufacturers' revenues from the H1N1 pandemic will be lower than forecast. Experts had initially anticipated that everyone would need two shots of vaccine for immunity against the H1N1 virus, but a single dose of vaccine is now deemed sufficient for adults. That, combined with scepticism about the need for immunisation among the general population, has resulted in reduced demand for vaccines across Europe. The French government said on Monday it aimed to cancel 50 million of the 94 million doses ordered from Sanofi-Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Baxter International because of over-supply. A government spokesman said on Tuesday it had already cancelled 9 million doses from Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines unit of Sanofi-Aventis, and was in talks about cancelling the remaining excess supply from other companies. The decision follows similar moves last month by Germany, Spain and Switzerland to try and cut deliveries, return unwanted stocks to suppliers or sell them on to other countries, due to a low uptake at home. CLIP
France wants to sell millions of surplus flu shots (Jan 3, 201) http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6020XU20100103
PARIS (Reuters) - France is looking to sell millions of surplus vaccines for the H1N1 flu strain after ordering many more shots than it actually needed, officials said on Sunday. (...) Some five million people in France have so far been vaccinated against H1N1, health officials say. The flu virus has killed an estimated 198 people on mainland France, according to data released on December 29, but doctors have said new infections have fallen sharply in recent weeks. MORE RELATED NEWS THROUGH http://www.theflucase.com/ including January 2010 Opens With Barrage Of Media Hype Over Swine Flu Pandemic
Excess H1N1 vaccine could be sold, kept in reserve (JANUARY 1, 2010) http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Excess+H1N1+vaccine+could+sold+kept+reserve/2397560/story.html
Federal officials will be deciding soon what to do with millions of doses of excess H1N1 vaccine while at the same time still trying to convince Canadians to roll up their sleeves.“Early in the new year we'll be making a decision on that. But our priority is to get the vaccine to Canadians,” Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said in a year-end interview with Canwest News Service.Unless significantly more Canadians decide they want the vaccine, the country is poised to have more than 20 million unused doses at the end of this flu season in April.About 45 per cent of the population has been vaccinated since the H1N1 shot became available across the country on Oct. 26.Demand for the vaccine slowed down so much by late December, however, that the provinces asked the manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline to stop sending them shipments. They already had received thousands of doses that weren't needed by local public health units and instead were put in storage.Canada ordered 50.4 million doses from GSK and also bought 200,000 doses from Australia for a total price tag of $402.5 million. It wasn't until after the order was placed that it was determined only one dose would be needed to provide immunity. The federal government is covering 60 per cent of the cost and the provinces and territories the rest.Canada is on the hook to pay for all 50 million doses even if it doesn't want it all. CLIP
EU To Investigate WHO 'False Pandemic' Scandal (5 JANUARY 2010) ANOTHER EYE-OPENER! http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/2697-eu-to-investigate-who-false-pandemic-scandal
The European Union is set to investigate the World Health Organization’s swine flu campaign this month over allegations of improper influence from pharmaceutical companies in declaring the H1N1 “pandemic” and the promotion of “inefficient” and potentially dangerous vaccination strategies. The resolution to launch the emergency inquiry was approved by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and passed through the health committee unanimously. It states in part that “in order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies, and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines.” “The ‘birds-flu’-campaign (2005/06) combined with the 'swine-flu'-campaign seem to have caused a great deal of damage not only to some vaccinated patients and to public health-budgets, but to the credibility and accountability of important international health-agencies,” noted the resolution. “The Council of Europe and its member-states should ask for immediate investigations and consequences on their national levels as well as on the international level. The definition of an alarming pandemic must not be under the influence of drug-sellers.”Leading the charge for the probe is German epidemiologist Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, the chairman of the PACE health committee and a medical doctor specializing in lung disease. “The victims among millions of needlessly vaccinated people must be protected by their states and independent scientific clarification should provide evidence and transparency for national and — if necessary — European courts,” Wodarg said in a statement. Wodarg called the “false pandemic” one of the greatest medical scandals of the last century and said that pharmaceutical companies influenced the whole process and needed to be held accountable. They were willing to "inflict bodily harm in their pursuit of profits," he said. Articles in the European press, starting in Denmark and spreading, have repeatedly called into question the myriad ties between vaccine manufacturers and decision makers in the United Nations' global health body.
(...) National governments should be ashamed of themselves for squandering billions of taxpayer dollars on an untested, unpopular vaccine for a virus that so far has been extremely mild compared to even the seasonal influenza. Governments are currently trying to get rid of the vaccine supplies. Global health authorities must be held accountable, though it’s unfortunate that the charge is being led by the European super-state government instead of national legislatures. The United States should get involved as well — starting with a complete withdrawal from the UN and its subsidiary bodies. Obama’s declaration of a national emergency over swine flu is looking increasingly preposterous. Of course, Congress should also be held accountable for allowing this all to happen in America in the first place, despite the lack of constitutional authority to purchase or promote vaccines. But on the bright side of this whole scandal, citizens may start realizing that government is not a reliable resource for honest and accurate information. The New American has been reporting about these issues for months.
WHO and Big Pharma Officials To Be Summoned to Hearing At Council of Europe's Parliament (07 January 2010) http://www.theflucase.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2494%3Awho-and-big-pharma-officials-to-be-summoned-to-hearing-at-council-of-europes-parliament-&catid=41%3Ahighlighted-news&Itemid=105&lang=en
Is the mass vaccination campaign with the untested and toxic swine flu jab really a gigantic operation orchestrated with the complicity of governments by Big Pharma for profit? This is going to be the issue investigated by the Council of European Parliamentary Assembly at the end of January after a motion was submitted by former SPD MP Wolfgang Wodarg, an epidemiologist and lung specialist. Officials from the WHO as well as representatives from the pharmaceutical industry are set to appear at a hearing scheduled for January 28th, though the official green light for the hearing is not expected to come until Monday, January 25th, the first technical day of the parliamentary session, and attempts to strike these items from the agenda cannot be excluded. (...) Because the members of parliaments who attend the Council of Europe parliament assembly are also directly elected members of their own national parliaments, the Council of Europe can be considered a more democratic body and also to be more representative of the views of Europe’s 800 million citizens than the EU, argues McDonald. MPS attending the Council of Europe sessions, held four times a year, can return to their own countries and initiate investigations or parliamentary inquiries there. A debate at a Council of Europe parliamentary assembly sessions can conclude with either a resolution or a recommendation to European governments to undertake a specific course of action concerning, in this case, the handling of a pandemic. But while the Council of Europe can highlight an issue, it has no binding leislative power to force governments to take action. A Committee of Ministers made up of the foreign ministers of the 47 European countries is part of the Council of Europe. This body can compel governments to respond to assembly resolutions, The hearing initiated by Wodarg is separate from the „urgent debate“ expected to be held as a result of the submission of Christine McCafferty, head of the health and family affairs committee. However, both these events could represent a significant blow to the big pharma lobby. Information that emerges from these hearings and circulates widely among European elected representatives could result in demands for parliamentary inquiries among the parliamentary base that the big pharma and banks do not appear to control to the same extent as they appear to control the higher echelons of government and the EU. In addition, the swine flu vaccine scandal might add to the widespread anger among European citizens over their governments and their handling of the financial crisis, with the banks coming out the winners while public services undergo cuts – and lead to pressure for more transparency among Europe’s governments.
JAPAN TO LAUNCH INVESTIGATION INTO SWINE FLU VACCINE DEATHS - H1N1 vaccine death probe set (Dec. 31, 2009) http://www.theflucase.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2454%3Ajapan-to-launch-investigation-into-swine-flu-vaccine-deaths&catid=41%3Ahighlighted-news&Itemid=105&lang=fr
The health ministry will conduct an epidemiologic investigation into whether H1N1 influenza vaccinations can increase the death risk for people with serious chronic diseases, ministry officials said Wednesday. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare plans to begin the study next spring amid an increasing number of reports of deaths and serious side effects among the people who have received shots of domestically produced vaccines against the virus. The ministry said postvaccination deaths have totaled 104, roughly 80 percent of whom are people aged 70 or older who had chronic diseases or disorders, while nearly 1,900 cases of side effects had been reported from medical institutions.
Thimerosal: A vaccine ingredient’s toxic legacy (30 December 2009) http://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2663:thimerosal-a-vaccine-ingredients-toxic-legacy&catid=5:original&Itemid=24
(...) Although Thimerosal has been removed from most childhood vaccines, it is still present in the flu vaccine, which is given to pregnant women, the elderly, and children. Also, many vaccines given to children in developing countries still contain Thimerosal. Many still believe that Thimerosal is safe and effective and that there is little to no evidence that there is any health problems associated with this substance. According to the FDA website: "Thimerosal has been the subject of several studies and has a long record of safe and effective use preventing bacterial and fungal contamination of vaccines, with no ill effects established other than minor local reactions at the site of injection." The article references eight studies supporting their position. But is there evidence that shows Thimerosal isn't safe? (...) Here are some disturbing excerpts from the MSDS for thimerosal (trade name Merthiolate): "Section 3: Hazards Identification - Potential Chronic Health Effects: The substance may be toxic to kidneys, liver, spleen, bone marrow, central nervous system (CNS). Repeated or prolonged exposure to the substance can produce target organs damage. Repeated exposure to a highly toxic material may produce general deterioration of health by an accumulation in one or many human organs." (...) There are still more studies not included in this article simply because the volume of information would be overwhelming, but the Material Data Safety Sheets and these scientific excerpts speak for themselves - Thimerosal is clearly a dangerous substance.
Meltdown, USA: Nuclear Drive Trumps Safety Risks and High Cost (6 January 2010) http://www.truthout.org/106093Levine
The pro-nuclear Department of Energy is set to offer this month the first of nearly $20 billion in loan guarantees to a nuclear industry that hasn't built a plant since the 1970s or raised any money to do so in years. But although the industry is seeking to cash in on global warming concerns with $100 billion in proposed loan guarantees, environmentalists, scientists and federal investigators are warning that lax oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of the nation's aging 104 nuclear plants has led to near-meltdowns along with other health and safety failings since Three Mile Island - including what some critics say is a flawed federal health study apparently designed to conceal cancer risks near nuclear plants. All that is joined by the dangers and risks posed by at least 30 tons yearly of radioactive, cancer-causing, nuclear waste produced at each 1,000 megawatt plant; projected costs of $12 billion to $25 billion for any new plants (built largely through taxpayer support); and their ongoing vulnerability to terrorist attacks at sites like Indian Point, 35 miles from New York. For instance, a meltdown of the two reactors at Indian Point, dubbed "Chernobyl on the Hudson," could quickly kill nearly 50,000 people with radiation poisoning in a 50-mile radius and cause over 500,000 cancer deaths within six years, according to research by the Union of Concerned Scientists and other experts. "Nothing's changed," said Paul Gunter, director of Reactor Oversight for the Beyond Nuclear reform group, about nuclear plants. "They're still dirty, dangerous and expensive." CLIP
Navy Sonar & Whales http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9gDk29Y_YY
Navy sonar harms whales and dolphins. Check out this video and hear what it sounds like, and see what it does to these marine mammals. Earthjustice is working to get the Navy to use their sonar in places where it won't harm whales and dolphins. For more information, go HERE
Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons' (January 3, 2010)
IMPORTANT BREAKTHROUGH IN THE SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING OF DOLPHINS!! http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6973994.ece
Dolphins have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as “non-human persons”. Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. These have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence. The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year. “Many dolphin brains are larger than our own and second in mass only to the human brain when corrected for body size,” said Lori Marino, a zoologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who has used magnetic resonance imaging scans to map the brains of dolphin species and compare them with those of primates. “The neuroanatomy suggests psychological continuity between humans and dolphins and has profound implications for the ethics of human-dolphin interactions,” she added. (...) “Despite evolving along a different neuroanatomical trajectory to humans, cetacean brains have several features that are correlated with complex intelligence,” Marino said.Marino and Reiss will present their findings at a conference in San Diego, California, next month, concluding that the new evidence about dolphin intelligence makes it morally repugnant to mistreat them.Thomas White, professor of ethics at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, who has written a series of academic studies suggesting dolphins should have rights, will speak at the same conference.“The scientific research . . . suggests that dolphins are ‘non-human persons’ who qualify for moral standing as individuals,” he said.
The First HuffPost Book Club Pick of 2010: Shadow Elite by Janine Wedel
Arianna Huffington -- January 6, 2010
My first HuffPost Book Club selection of 2010 is Janine Wedel's Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market. It's a gripping, disquieting book that exposes and explains why it's been so hard to bring about any real change in our country -- why Washington no longer seems capable of addressing the problems our nation faces. Fingers have been pointed at everything from gerrymandering to partisan polarization to the misuse of the filibuster. But, according to Wedel, the real problem is much deeper -- and more disturbing -- than any of these.
As she writes in Shadow Elite, a new "transnational" class of elites has taken over our country: "The mover and shaker who serves at one and the same time as business consultant, think-tanker, TV pundit, and government adviser glides in and around the organizations that enlist his services. It is not just his time that is divided. His loyalties, too, are often flexible."
Wedel dubs this new class of influencers "flexians," and the closed system they've created for themselves the "flex net." She attributes their power, among other factors, to the "embrace of 'truthiness,' which allows people to play with how they present themselves to the world, regardless of fact or track record."
Wedel cites retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey as one example of this new international super-class -- a member of the shadow elite that serves in government posts, moves to the private sector, goes on TV, and collects a healthy paycheck from companies that benefit when the power broker's advice is taken. McCaffrey was one of the Pentagon-pundits-for-pay exposed by two Pulitzer-winning front-page stories in the New York Times last year. Yet even as I write this, he's on TV giving us his wisdom on how to fight terrorism. Because, as Wedel points out again and again, members of the shadow elite keep morphing into their next incarnation no matter how often their conflicts of interest and their undermining of the public interest are revealed.
Another key flexian, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, is on full display right now in Newsweek's special "Issues 2010" edition, in which he pens a lengthy essay on "Getting the Economy Back on Track," failing, in a very flexian way, to explain or acknowledge -- let alone apologize for -- the key role he played in getting the economy off track in the first place.
Rubin's resume is the personification of the flex net in action, as he seamlessly moved between political positions (Director of the National Economic Council, Treasury Secretary), private positions (as a board member and senior counselor at Citigroup, he received over $126 million in cash and stock), advisory positions (including serving on the President's Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations and the SEC's Market Oversight and Financial Services Advisory Committee), and stints on a World Bank task force on Growth and Development, work as an unofficial economic advisor to President Obama, and his current position as co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.
You can read Rubin's 2,500+ word Newsweek piece here. But I was much more interested in the 28-word bio at the end of it: "Rubin is a former secretary of the Treasury (1995-99). He now serves as co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a fellow of the Harvard Corporation." Given that the piece is about the economic meltdown, it's telling that the bio doesn't include his nearly ten years at Citibank -- during the very time that ended with the bank having to be saved by the American taxpayers.
But that's how the flex net works: you are able to wreak destruction, bank a tidy profit, then go along your merry way, pontificating about how "markets have an inherent and inevitable tendency -- probably rooted in human nature -- to go to excess, both on the upside and the downside." And how many people remember key details in Rubin's career like his vociferous opposition, during the Clinton years, to the regulation of derivatives -- a key factor in the meltdown? Or his lobbying the Treasury during the Bush years to prevent the downgrading of the credit rating of Enron -- a debtor of Citigroup?
Last month, Janine Wedel came to HuffPost's D.C. office to talk about her book. Our team was riveted as she painted a portrait of our political culture not from the perspective of a political scientist but from that of a social anthropologist. As a professor of public policy and social anthropology at George Mason, Wedel spent years studying what happened in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, and sees a similar co-mingling of state power and private power at work here.
Take the health care fight. Though Wedel completed her book before the most recent twists and turns in the legislative process, reading Shadow Elite you get the feeling you are being given a peek at the how-to manual the insurance and drug companies -- and their water-carriers in Congress -- used to ensure that what may well have started out as a push for real reform ended up as an industry windfall.
After all, the final Senate bill (which looks like it will be the base for the final bill sent to Obama), is essentially the same bill that was drawn up months ago in Max Baucus' office by Baucus staffers who used to be health care executives, and by health care lobbyists who used to be Baucus staffers.
The shadow elite clearly knew that the months and months of so-called debate over the issue was nothing more than a charade -- the ultimate outcome never in doubt. The bill was created in the shadows. The public process since then has essentially been like a Hollywood adaptation -- complete with the requisite third act happy ending (or, in the words of our elected officials, a "historic" ending).
"The new breed of players," writes Wedel, "who operate at the nexus of official and private power, cannot only co-opt public policy agendas, crafting policy with their own purposes in mind. They test the time-honored principles of both the canons of accountability of the modern state and the codes of competition of the free market. In so doing, they reorganize relations between bureaucracy and business to their advantage, and challenge the walls erected to separate them. As these walls erode, players are better able to use official power and resources without public oversight."
That's a spot-on description of what happened with health care -- as well as a spot-on description of the totally-lacking-in-transparency bailout of the financial system. Remember how the bailout was supposed to take care of not just Wall Street but Main Street? Well, the former ended up with record profits and bonuses while the latter is looking at double-digit unemployment -- and millions of foreclosures and bankruptcies -- for the rest of the year.
As for the "embrace of truthiness" Wedel writes about, witness this exchange from This Week between Jake Tapper and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. Tapper asked Gibbs about Obama's broken promise to televise health care negotiations on C-SPAN and whether Obama will at least push for transparency for the final reconciliation process. Gibbs' response:
Well, Jake, first of all, let's take a step back and understand that this is a process legislatively that has played out over the course of nine months. There have been a countless number of public hearings. The Senate did a lot of their voting at 1:00 and 2:00 in the morning on C-SPAN. A lot of this debate -- I think what the president promised and pledged was so that you could see who was fighting for their constituents and who was fighting for drug and insurance companies...
Talk about being flexible -- Gibbs is a world-class rhetorical yogi. So all that talk during the campaign about transparency now just comes down to Congressional votes being shown on C-SPAN -- as they've always been?
The worst part is that Gibbs' posturing about being on the side of constituents rather than the drug and insurance industries sounds so normal. Gibbs knows all too well that he's supposed to shake his fist at the insurance companies, just as Larry Summers and Tim Geithner -- who both feature prominently in Shadow Elite -- know they're supposed to talk tough to the banks and vow to end "too-big-to-fail." But, as Wedel writes, they've rigged the system so they can "institutionalize their subversion of it."
And in the same way that our regulatory structure was outmoded and unable to deal with the complex new financial instruments devised by Wall Street, the rhetoric we use today to describe what's happening to our system is not up to the task. According to Wedel, terms like "lobbyist," "interest group," "corruption," and "conflict of interest" no longer suffice.
The new flexians are, as HuffPost's Arthur Delaney dubbed them, "influence launderers." That's why a flexian like Tom Daschle never needed to bother registering as a lobbyist. He could do the same things, selling off the public trust to the highest bidder, and then go around bragging about how he's never sullied himself with actual lobbying.
With our capitalist version of what Wedel describes as the "merging of state and private power that characterized both communism and postcommunism," we're getting to the point where the only difference between senior congressional staffers and the lobbyists and influence launderers whose ranks they'll soon join is the size of their paychecks. They just have to do a few years in Congress before joining their former bosses. It's a kind of grad school: put in a few semesters getting your Masters of Influence and you won't have to worry about paying off those school loans.
So how can we wrest control of our government from the Shadow Elite?
As Wedel says, the first step is to understand. "Merely exposing certain activities is not enough," she writes, "framing them is essential." We need to reframe how we look at and think about and respond to what is being done in our name and with our resources.
Reading -- and talking about -- Shadow Elite is a great first step in that reframing process. And don't miss Janine Wedel's blog post about her book, coming tomorrow. Let's get the conversation going.
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Relates articles:
Obama Promising Televised Healthcare Negotiations (8 times) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpghvx63imc
President Obama Tells the world that Health Care negotiations will be Bipartisan, Transparent and televised on C-Span. AND HE IS NOT HOLDING HIS PROMISE!
C-SPAN Asks to Televise Health Care Negotiations http://biggovernment.com/2010/01/05/c-span-asks-to-televise-health-care-negotiations/
Just before New Year’s, C-SPAN Chairman and CEO Brian Lamb sent a letter to Congressional leadership, requesting permission to televise negotiations around the final health care reform legislation. The letter was addressed to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, GOP Leader Rep. John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. (...) Of course, just days after receiving the offer from C-SPAN, Democrats resumed private negotiations behind close doors...
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand (April 20, 2008) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html
In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure. The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo. To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world. Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found. The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized. Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks. Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley. In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access. A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis. CLIP
One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex (November 29, 2008) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/washington/30general.html
In the spring of 2007 a tiny military contractor with a slender track record went shopping for a precious Beltway commodity. The company, Defense Solutions, sought the services of a retired general with national stature, someone who could open doors at the highest levels of government and help it win a huge prize: the right to supply Iraq with thousands of armored vehicles. Access like this does not come cheap, but it was an opportunity potentially worth billions in sales, and Defense Solutions soon found its man. The company signed Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general and military analyst for NBC News, to a consulting contract starting June 15, 2007.Four days later the general swung into action. He sent a personal note and 15-page briefing packet to David H. Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, strongly recommending Defense Solutions and its offer to supply Iraq with 5,000 armored vehicles from Eastern Europe. “No other proposal is quicker, less costly, or more certain to succeed,” he said. Thus, within days of hiring General McCaffrey, the Defense Solutions sales pitch was in the hands of the American commander with the greatest influence over Iraq’s expanding military. “That’s what I pay him for,” Timothy D. Ringgold, chief executive of Defense Solutions, said in an interview. CLIP
U.S. placed under international police-state (December 26, 2009) http://www.examiner.com/x-3704-Columbia-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m12d26-US-placed-under-international-policestate
In the dead of night on December 17, 2009, President Barack Hussein Obama placed the United States of America under the authority of the international police organization known as INTERPOL, granting the organization full immunity to operate within the United States. What, exactly does this mean? It means that INTERPOL now has the full authority to conduct investigations and other law enforcement activities on U.S. soil, with full immunity from U.S. laws such as the Freedom of Information Act and with complete independence from oversight from the FBI.In short, a global law enforcement entity now has full law-enforcement authority in the U.S. without any check on its power afforded by U.S. law and U.S. law enforcement agencies. (...) Why would INTERPOL be arresting American Citizens on our own soil, without oversight from our own law enforcement agencies? And remember, citizens who are thusly arrested would have no legal authority to demand full documentation from the International Police concerning the charges brought against them. Andy McCarthy at National Review asks these crucial, sobering questions of the secretive Obama order: Why would we elevate an international police force above American law? Why would we immunize an international police force from the limitations that constrain the FBI and other American law-enforcement agencies? Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files which, therefore, will be beyond the ability of Congress, American law-enforcement, the media, and the American people to scrutinize? At least one answer to these questions is very clear. A coup is underway in the United States of America , the goal of which is to establish complete, unquestioned authority over the citizens--a 'fundamental change' to the United States where citizens have no legal recourse against an authoritarian central government. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-amending-executive-order-12425
Why Does Interpol Need Immunity from American Law? (December 23, 2009) http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGY3MTI4YTRjZmYwMGU1ZjZhOGJmNmQ0NmJiZDNmMDY=
You just can't make up how brazen this crowd is. One week ago, President Obama quietly signed an executive order that makes an international police force immune from the restraints of American law.Interpol is the shorthand for the International Criminal Police Organization. It was established in 1923 and operates in about 188 countries. By executive order 12425, issued in 1983, President Reagan recognized Interpol as an international organization and gave it some of the privileges and immunities customarily extended to foreign diplomats. Interpol, however, is also an active law-enforcement agency, so critical privileges and immunities (set forth in Section 2(c) of the International Organizations Immunities Act) were withheld. Specifically, Interpol's property and assets remained subject to search and seizure, and its archived records remained subject to public scrutiny under provisions like the Freedom of Information Act. Being constrained by the Fourth Amendment, FOIA, and other limitations of the Constitution and federal law that protect the liberty and privacy of Americans is what prevents law-enforcement and its controlling government authority from becoming tyrannical. On Wednesday, however, for no apparent reason, President Obama issued an executive order removing the Reagan limitations. That is, Interpol's property and assets are no longer subject to search and confiscation, and its archives are now considered inviolable. This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States. Interpol works closely with international tribunals (such as the International Criminal Court — which the United States has refused to join because of its sovereignty surrendering provisions, though top Obama officials want us in it). It also works closely with foreign courts and law-enforcement authorities (such as those in Europe that are investigating former Bush administration officials for purported war crimes — i.e., for actions taken in America's defense). Why would we elevate an international police force above American law? Why would we immunize an international police force from the limitations that constrain the FBI and other American law-enforcement agencies? Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files which, therefore, will be beyond the ability of Congress, American law-enforcement, the media, and the American people to scrutinize? NOTE from Jean: Could the intended targets be the war criminals in the last US government now still at large?...
2.
OF COURSE, THE SAME SHADOW ELITE CONTROLLING THE BANKING INDUSTRY AND MOST GOVERNMENTS IS ALSO PART OF THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT THAT CONTROLS ALL BLACK OP ACTIVITIES AND THE EXOTIC ET TECHNOLOGIES MENTIONED BELOW
Second whistleblower emerges to confirm reality of time travel
Alfred Lambremont Webre -- December 31, 2009
A second whistle-blower, this one a physicist, has emerged to confirm the existence of U.S. government development of time travel technology and emphasize the importance of the real-world application of such technology for achieving planetary sustainability.
Dr. David Lewis Anderson, director of the Anderson Institute, emerged publicly in a two-hour interview on December 23, 2009 to give an extensive account of his time control research for the U.S. Air Force, which he later continued at his Time Travel Research Institute and other organizations.
Dr. Lewis’ public revelations regarding time travel follow disclosures made in August and November by Andrew D. Basiago in interviews concerning his experiences in time travel experiments undertaken by DARPA’s Project Pegasus in the early 1970s.
A Sept. 15, 2009 report derived from the Web Bot predicted that a “planetary whistleblower” would emerge from the current period of U.S. financial collapse. Clif High, the genius behind the Web Bot, determined that the individual was “very likely” Mr. Basiago, a lawyer from Washington State who is leading a truth campaign to establish that the U.S. defense community achieved teleportation in the late 1960s.
The report also stated that Mr. Basiago’s crusade would spark a movement, as other whistle-blowers shared with the public previously secret information.
Since the September report, those following the Web Bot project by reading the ALTA reports have speculated as to who the next whistleblower to follow Mr. Basiago might be. One candidate is Dr. Anderson.
According to the physicist, he was employed at a young age by the U.S. Air Force conducting advanced research and development at the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert.
During that time, he laid the foundations for what would be known as “time-warp field theory,” an approach that models and describes how to use the natural forces of inertial frame dragging to create contained and controllable fields of closed time-like curves.
At his Time Travel Research Center in Long Island, Dr. Anderson further developed time-warp field theory, as well as a third generation time warp generator.
Dr. Anderson sets out 10 types of time control technologies and methods, along with a feasibility analysis of each method. Among these time control technologies are quantum tunneling, time-warp fields, and wormholes.
Readers can listen to Dr. Anderson’s two-hour interview with Sandra Sabatini by clicking here.
“Andrew D. Basiago discussed his experiences within a secret DARPA program “Project Pegasus” and what he claimed to be the true history of U.S. time travel research and teleportation technology... from the years 1969 to 1972.
“He described being teleported from… Wood Ridge, NJ to Santa Fe, NM via a device derived from Tesla technology. A ‘chasm’ opens up in the fabric of time-space that is wrapped around the “teleportees” as they are repositioned to a new location…
“During this time frame, he said he witnessed an accident in which a boy's feet were sheared off after he was teleported.
“He also talked about how the teleportation technology could be used for time travel, and the development of ‘chronovisors’ which allowed holographic recordings to be made of historically significant events…
“Time travel technology enabled the U.S. to win the Cold War, as the government teleported military secrets into the future, to store for safekeeping, he detailed.
“The technology was also used to brief U.S. Presidents like Clinton, the Bushes, and Obama about their destinies, years before they became President, Basiago claimed.
“He also asserted that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Governor Bill Richardson both served in Project Pegasus, and he invited them to come forward with the truth.”
Readers can listen to the audio archive of the Coast to Coast AM radio program of Mr. Basiago being interviewed by host George Noory by clicking here:
Time control research and time travel
This reporter asked Mr. Basiago whether Dr. Anderson’s time control research validates his time travel experiences with the Tesla-based technology used by Project Pegasus.
He responded by stating that he thinks that it does, in the sense that it provides corroborating evidence that advanced applications in quantum physics can have truly revolutionary effects on the quantum environment, including the propagation of “vortal tunnels” by which people can travel between distant locations in time-space.
“It is not the same technology, but it shows similar effects,” he stated. “In the 21st century, the quantum environment will be shaped to suit human ends, and human beings will be freed from the constraints of time-space that today we take for granted.”
Time travel technology and a positive human future
Both whistleblowers – Andrew D. Basiago and Dr. David L. Anderson – independently emphasize the connection between creating a positive human future and public disclosure of the time travel and time control capabilities that they say the U.S. government has developed but kept secret, thereby depriving the world of the potential life-advantaging benefits of technologies that manipulate the quantum environment.
Mr. Basiago stated that teleportation could be used to move people and goods more efficiently around the globe, without the pollution caused by planes, trains, and automobiles or the negative effects upon land use of airports, railroads, and highways.
Dr. Anderson stated that time control technology will solve the global energy crisis, with diverse applications in both new energy production and medical research. In support of Mr. Basiago’s call for disclosure by the U.S. government of its time travel technologies, Dr. Anderson stated that “these new developments need to be made public.”
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Related articles:
U.S. military is liaising with extraterrestrial life according to independent sources (December 28, 2009) http://www.examiner.com/x-2383-Honolulu-Exopolitics-Examiner~y2009m12d28-US-military-is-liaising-with-extraterrestrial-life-according-to-independent-sources
Independent sources have claimed an on-going set of face-to-face meetings between U.S. military officials and extraterrestrial life. The sources reveal that senior U.S. Navy officers have played a leading role in an inter-services working group responsible for the meetings, and that different extraterrestrial groups are allegedly involved. One source claims that the contact involves extraterrestrial groups known as Reptilians, and a silicon based life form dubbed ‘the Conformers’. Another source claims that the extraterrestrials are called Ebens from the Zeta Reticuli star system, but known colloquially as the Grays. A third source claims that human looking extraterrestrials representing an association of star nations are liaising with military officials. (...) In conclusion, there is very real dissatisfaction in the U.S. military, especially officers from the Navy, over the way in which extraterrestrial affairs has been secretly run and managed by a covert transnational group initially known as “MJ-12. The dissatisfaction can be traced back to an incident involving a Vice-Admiral serving as the head of Intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was denied access to a covert extraterrestrial related project under corporate control. The incident was in June 2008 publicly revealed on Larry King Live by former Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell (see video clip). Since at least 1997, groups of U.S. Navy officers through covert inter-service working groups have been trying to restore military/government oversight over extraterrestrial affairs that has been increasingly privatized in the corporate world. The details of alleged face to face meetings between U.S. military/Navy personnel with extraterrestrial life is not known with great accuracy due to conflicting accounts of representatives of what occurred at such meetings. Nevertheless, given three independent sources reveal such meetings, two of which have been personally confirmed by the author as credible, it can be concluded that extraterrestrial military liaisons are currently underway. Retired officers from the two military services making up the Department of the Navy (US Navy and US Marine Corps) feature prominently in the Obama administration. These include Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence (ret Admiral, USN); James Jones, National Security Advisor (ret. General, USMC); and Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator (ret. General, USMC). Consequently, a U.S. military extraterrestrial liaison program that is being leaked to the public by US Navy officers from a covert inter-services working group will encourage the Obama administration to move forward with a public announcement concerning the reality of extraterrestrial life.
Barack Obama not disclosing extraterrestrial presence is top ET/UFO story of 2009 () (January 3, 2010) http://www.examiner.com/x-2912-Seattle-Exopolitics-Examiner%7Ey2010m1d3-Barack-Obama-not-disclosing-extraterrestrial-presence-is-top-ETUFO-story-of-2009
Barack Obama not disclosing an extraterrestrial presence during 2009 is the top extraterrestrial-related story of 2009. Obama ended 2009 with non-disclosure after numerous reports of ‘imminent disclosure’ of an extraterrestrial presence including prediction of a specific disclosure date, November 27, 2009. Independent sources have reportedly confirmed the U.S. military leaking its meetings in 2009 with Reptilian, Grey, and a silicon-based civilization named the “Conformers” in an effort to move Obama, the military’s commander-in-chief, to disclosure. Along with Barack Obama’s refusal to disclose the reality of extraterrestrial civilizations whose presence his military is publicly leaking, we ranked the top 10 extraterrestrial-related stories of 2009. You can access the results below. The Top 10 ET/UFO stories of 2009The top 10 ET/UFO-related stories of 2009 were chosen for a combination of their short-term public impact and long-term impact on relations between humanity and other intelligent civilizations. Every story involving humanity and other intelligent civilizations is important, particularly at this juncture in our human development, more than six decades into an extraterrestrial truth embargo. (...) Why should we trust the covert diplomacy of U.S. Naval intelligence and other military-intelligence sources with Reptilians, Greys, and Conformers to safeguard human rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? There is no constitutional, transparent mechanism for public, democratic input and for adherence to democratic, universal values in these secret U.S. military-intelligence negotiations with extraterrestrial civilizations that may have an historical record of disregard of human rights.Any official state disclosure by Barack Obama resulting from secret negotiations with Reptilian, Grey, or Conformer civilizations are likely fraught with peril for the future of human rights and civil rights on this planet.Recent human political history has been driven a by a series of False Flag operations in which military-intelligence, and national and international governmental authorities, organizations, and elites have either participated, or have implemented the cover-up, or the ensuing loss of civil and human rights. This trend was started by the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, and supremely accelerated by the False Flag operation by U.S. military intelligence of September 11, 2001, which Barack Obama uses publicly as his justification for expansive war. Is the top ET/UFO story of 2009 – non-disclosure of an extraterrestrial presence of Reptilians, Greys and Conformers – a continuation of such a series of False Flag operations and psyops, carried out with the aid of cooperating Reptilians, Greys, and "Conformers"?
Steven Greer CSETI - Confirms one G8 Country wants Disclosure (January 3, 2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPrzkRC71Uk
Steven Greer states one country wants to work with him / CSETI of the Disclosure Project for disclosure of the UFO subject and the announcement of the Galactic Federation of Light. (short mini clip from the exopolitics 2009)
Disclosure 101 (April 24, 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-elVqdDhox8
A short film outlining the basic information behind the Disclosure Initiative. Featuring the Kings and Queens of Exopolitics, this film cannot be missed!
3.
I COULD NOT FIND ANY INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION ABOUT THESE EXTREMELY WILD X-FILES TYPE CLAIMS. AND I DOUBT ANYONE WILL FIND ANY! EITHER 'SOMEONE' HAS BEEN WATCHING TOO MANY STARGATE EPISODES OR HAS ACCESS TO SOME REALLY STUNNING INFORMATION...
From: Carol Lynn Smith (carol88@shaw.ca)... "Wow! This is some statement!"
There has been heightened activity around Sanaa in Yemen. Militias from NATO, EU, Russia, China, Japan, US, all running around with not much to do. There are hundreds of Warships in the Gulf Of Aden right now.
They are surrounding an open StarGate in the Sea. Seven miles deep within the sea below the Aden Stargate is an awakening sentient consciousness creation with extraordinary capacity to assist in bringing peace to the world.
The Secret Scientists are monitoring these anomalies and they report to Military Leaders there is nothing that can stop them. All Planets in our Solar System and our Sun are showing transformational changes in composition and magnetics. All 'Ancient-and-New Grids' are activating and will shortly demonstrate an unbelievable power by generating a 5D Crystalline and Electromagnetic shield/Firmament around the Planet and a horizontal force field that will make aggressive use of weapons impossible.
With the Blue Moon Activation the Earth Grid has powered up the StarGate with FORCE energy. The energy has been building since December 31st. This second full moon in December was just the Cosmic boost which was needed to surge the Crystalline Earth Grid and Activate the Diamond Tetrahedrons inside Earth and open the StarGate as it had been open in ancient history.
This Grid Activation is controlled by Ashtar from the Galactic Federation. On His Command ALL WEAPONS will Cease Firepower. We will launch the shuttles from our Mother Ships and we will bring the Servicemen and Servicewomen from all countries around the world home to their families.
The escalation you see in Yemen is the final outcry from those who have been in charge of making war a very long time. They can see the MotherShips exiting the StarGate en Masse. They are aware that when the StarGate reaches its peak power that their weapons will no longer work.
At that moment we will HAVE to announce Disclosure to explain why the soldiers are no longer fighting. Today US Secretary of State, Hillary, said Yemen is a threat Regionally and Globally. She left out Cosmically. This Statement is her final. There will be no more warring she can conjure once the StarGate fully opens.
The Soldiers all around the World will be effected in that instant. They will look at their weapons in disgust, not understanding. They will look up at their buddies and at those they are firing at and notice no one's weapon is firing. They will radio their Commanders and it will happen in that instant, all over the World.
The StarGate Aden off Yemen's Coast, IS THE FORCE which will deactivate all guns and weapons around the World. There will be a simultaneous World Peace. The Galactic Federation Ships will then move in to bring the Soldiers back to their Home Land, back to their families. Everyone will see these Ships and Decloakings will be underway.
Envision Peace.
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Related messages and videos:
Ashtar Speaks on StarGates (January 8, 2010) http://www.galacticroundtable.com/profiles/blogs/ashtar-speaks-on-stargates
(...) There are those who are Galactic Humans working in the Pentagon who are double agents. They are running behind the scenes and are in place and waiting for a signal from the KOS and the Galactic Federation. Until that signal is given, they must act as they are continuing the war machine. They must do this in order to hold their position of rank and be in place to make the changes for Peace when the signal is given.President Obama has met with the 1st World and 2nd World Leaders in closed door meetings. This is his part of the preparation for World Peace.They have been informed of their roles. If they do not want to participate in the Master Plan, they have been given their pink slip. They will be removed from their positions and have the corrective action that is right for them, their day in court, and in some cases removal from the Planet. Not only did we have to arrest and remove any and all working with the Annunaki, we also had to remove the Annunaki Ships. They have been all but hindered from using the Star Gates. They have run out of places to hide. We have used teams from all Star Nations in the local Galaxy and you have met one such Team today. This Colony from Arcadia has been stationed at Sirius B and working with the GF Teams doing surveillance and helping the delegation Teams as well as gathering intel to move the Master Plan forward. There has been much going on that has not been reported to you before.When the Star Gates are clear, there will be a mass influx of Ships. There are only certain ones willing to work in Earth's atmosphere with these renegade Ships still here. All the other Member Nations of the IGF will be free to come and go when we give the All Clear.This day is fast approaching. We ask you to be alert, be in joy, and continue to beam love and light as we finish the final steps in the Master Plan. MORE through http://www.galacticroundtable.com
Imagine PEACE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x82icM8CJZ8
This is the Real Time video via Earthcam.com From Imagine Peace Tower, created by YOKO during the 10 Minute Meditation January 5, 2010. I added John's music and I hope its ok. It fit. The Galactics surprised us by joining in and beaming our joint LOVE and Peace to the Universe via Cloud Craft the entire 10 minutes.
Ashtar: Dream Big Dreams http://galacticroundtable.blogspot.com/
The Galactic Federation has been finalizing the details for Worldwide Mass Decloakings. When it happens there will be celebrating on every country on Earth. It is hard to imagine the magnitude of it. There will be televised broadcasts of those who are double agents now, coming out to say We Did This! There will not only be Mother Ships and their Shuttles seen in the sky, but also new technologies not before revealed. We will then pause a few days for Announcements so everyone can get a clear understanding of what has just happened.Have you taken in and thought about what this change will mean in your own life? Be prepared for that now. After you have wiped away the tears of joy, tears of release, then what will you do? Think about the Spiritual Service you came to Earth To Do. CLIP
Aden Stargate: See also Stargate in Gulf of Aden http://www.grt-intel.com/a-b_topics/aden_stargate.htm
Mark on Gulf of Aden “Stargate”... As part of my former training I was aware of this and followed the newer H generations of progress being made. Some of these ideas are indirect references to both past and prospective operations and developments. Let us say that there are ones here now that are truly representatives of what you speak. New portals are being opened in many locations this year. Notice the media blackout on the Gulf of Aden StarGate which has been continuously open and active for some months now and it is having harmonic interactions that will help to activate still more 'anomalies' as this year progresses. (...) In the Gulf of Aden, over 300 Naval vessels from friends and foes alike are circled around a deep seabed-embedded StarGate that has activated out over the waters and has visible metallic rings suspended in the sky and which have fully opened up an interdimensional/multidimensional portal through which--the King of Egypt reported to us this AM--large cigar-shaped ships have been transiting. When they come through a stargate they have to momentarily decloak and become visible. Consider that this is a massive escalation of the events in that area and that all the Negative portals have been closed and sealed. That means that these cigar-shaped ships have to be coming from Positive Galactic Forces. One of the most obvious points of origin is the Agartha Network and I believe that these ships are part of Lord Anton's Silver Fleet from the inner earth higher dimensions. No media has yet spoken of this unprecedented activity that directly changes our 'official' story about life in this universe and within and above our planet. (Jan. 4, 2009.) You might wonder what an area that now has over 300 Naval vessels from most countries, including China and Iran as well as all European and Asian Navies, has to do with [Somali] pirates. That latter issue has received press as a cover to the activities for which all those Naval vessels continue for months to maintain a cordon around the Star Gate in the Gulf of Aden. CLIP
StarshipCapricorn User Forum http://www.starshipcapricorn.org/punb126/upload/viewtopic.php?id=6626
"Interesting. The presence of pirates never struck me as a very convincing excuse for all those naval vessels to gather in that part of the World. Especially as they have only recently shown any interest in them. There was a story a while back that the Russians had discovered a large discoid craft embedded in an undersea cliff face in this area too. Perhaps there is a connection. Certainly something going on out there, but amazing that none of the main stream media have broken ranks and speculated on what it is. Unless they actually believe the "pirates" angle. For heavens sake, the Swiss are even there; that has got to be suspect, hasn't it? Didn't know they had a Navy. Presumably they practice on Lake Geneva....... "
But the "official" story on this Navy force is quite different ...
Combined Task Force 150 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Task_Force_150
Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150) is a multinational coalition naval task force with logistics facilities at Djibouti established to monitor, inspect, board, and stop suspect shipping to pursue the "War on Terrorism" and in the Horn of Africa region (HOA) (includes operations in the North Arabia Sea to support Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and operations in the Indian Ocean) to support Operation Enduring Freedom - Horn of Africa (OEF-HOA). These activities are referred to as Maritime Security Operations (MSO). Countries presently contributing to CTF-150 include Canada, Denmark[1], France, Germany, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Other nations who have participated include Australia, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, and Turkey. The command of the task force rotates among the different participating navies, with commands usually lasting between four and six months. The task force usually comprises 14 or 15 vessels. [2] CTF-150 is coordinated with, and incorporates vessels of, the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, under the Combined Forces Maritime Component Commander/Commander US Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain.
World's Sole Military Superpower's 2 Million-Troop, $1 Trillion Wars
by Rick Rozoff -- December 21, 2009
In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on December 10 the president of the United States appropriated for his country the title of "the world's sole military superpower" and for himself "the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars."
This may well have been the first time that an American - and of course any - head of state in history boasted of his nation being the only uncontested military power on the planet and unquestionably the only time a Nobel Peace Prize recipient identified himself as presiding over not only a war but two wars simultaneously.
As to the appropriateness of laying such claims in the venue and on the occasion he did - accepting the world's preeminent peace award before the Norwegian Nobel Committee - Barack Obama at least had the excuse of being perfectly accurate in his contentions.
He is in fact the commander-in-chief in charge of two major and several smaller wars and his nation is without doubt the first global military power which for decades has operated without constraints on five of six inhabited continents and has troops stationed in all six. United States armed forces personnel and weapons, including nuclear arms, are stationed at as many as 820 installations in scores of nations.
The U.S. has recently assigned thousands of troops to seven new bases in Bulgaria and Romania [1], deployed the first foreign troops to Israel in that nation's history to run an interceptor missile radar facility in the Negev Desert [2], and last week signed a status of forces agreement with Poland for Patriot missiles (to be followed by previously ship-based Aegis Standard Missile-3s interceptors) and U.S. soldiers to be stationed there. The troops will be the first foreign forces based in Poland since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991.
The U.S., whose current military budget is at Cold War, which is to say at the highest of post-World War II, levels, also officially accounts for over 41% of international military spending according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's report on 2008 figures: $607 billion of $1.464 trillion worldwide. On October 28 President Obama signed the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act with a price tag of $680 billion, including $130 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
That figure excludes military spending outside of the Department of Defense. The American government has for several decades been the standard-bearer in outsourcing to private sector contractors in every realm and the Pentagon is certainly no exception to the practice. According to some estimates, American military and military-related allotments in addition to the formal Pentagon budget can bring annual U.S. defense spending as high as $1.16 trillion, almost half of official expenditures for all of the world's 192 nations, including the U.S., last year.
With a census of slightly over 300 million in a world of almost seven billion people, the U.S. accounts for over 40 percent of officially acknowledged worldwide government military spending with a population that is only 4 percent of that of the earth's. A 10-1 disparity.
The U.S. also has the world's second largest standing army, over 1,445,000 men and women under arms according to estimates of earlier this year, second only to China with 2,255,000. China has a population of over 1.325 billion, more than four times that of America, and does not have a vast army of private contractors supplementing its armed forces. And of course unlike the U.S. it has no troops stationed abroad. India, with a population of 1.140 billion, has active duty troop strength smaller than that of the U.S. at 1,415,000.
The U.S. and Britain are possibly alone in the world in deploying reservists to war zones; this last February the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen acknowledged that 600,000 reserves have been called up to serve in the area of responsibility of the U.S. Central Command, in charge of the Afghan and Iraqi wars, since 2001. In addition to its 1,445,000 active duty service members, the Pentagon can and does call upon 1.2 million National Guard and other reserve components. As many as 30% of troops that have served in Afghanistan and Iraq are mobilized reservists. The Army National Guard has activated over 400,000 soldiers since the war in Afghanistan began and in March of 2009 approximately 125,000 National Guard and other reserve personnel were on active duty.
The Defense Department also has over 800,000 civilian employees at home and deployed worldwide. The Pentagon, then, has more than 3.5 million people at its immediate disposal excluding private military contractors.
In the last 48 hours two unprecedented thresholds have been crossed. On the morning of December 19 the U.S. Senate met in a rare Saturday morning session to approve a $636.3 billion military budget for next year. The vote was 88-10, as the earlier vote by the House of Representatives on December 16 was 395-34. In both cases the negative votes were not necessarily an indication of opposition to war spending but part of the labyrinthine American legislative practices of trade-offs, add-ons and deal-making on other, unrelated issues, what in the local vernacular are colorfully described as horse-trading and log-rolling among other choice terms. A no vote in the House or Senate, then, was not automatically a reflection of anti-war or even fiscally conservative sentiments.
The Pentagon appropriation included another $101 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Obama signed the last formal Iraq and Afghanistan War Supplemental Appropriations, worth $106 billion, in July), but did not include the first of several additional requests, what are termed emergency spending measures, for the Afghan war. The first such request is expected early next year, more than $30 billion for the additional 33,000 U.S. troops to be deployed to the war zone, which will increase the number of American forces there to over 100,000.
On the day of the Senate vote Bloomberg News cited the Congressional Research Service, which had tallied the numbers, in revealing that the funds apportioned for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have now pushed the total expenditure for both to over $1 trillion. "That includes $748 billion for spending related to the war in Iraq and $300 billion for Afghanistan, the research service said in a Sept. 28 report."
The new Pentagon spending plan "includes $2.5 billion to buy 10 additional Boeing Co. C-17 transports that weren't requested by the Pentagon. Chicago-based Boeing also would benefit from $1.5 billion for 18 F/A-E/F Super Hornet fighters, nine more than the administration requested."
Funding for military aircraft not even requested by the Defense Department and the White House or for larger numbers of them than were is another curious component of the American body politic. That arms merchants (and not only domestic ones) place their own orders with the American people's alleged representatives - the current Deputy Secretary of Defense, William Lynn, was senior vice president of Government Operations and Strategy for Raytheon Company prior to assuming his new post - is illustrated by the following excerpts from the same report:
"Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended April 6 that the C-17 program be terminated once Boeing delivers the last of 205 C-17s in late 2010. Boeing, the second-largest defense contractor, has said its plant in Long Beach, California, will shut down in 2011 without more orders.
"The budget also includes $465 million for the backup engine of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The engine is built by Fairfield, Connecticut-based General Electric Co. and London-based Rolls Royce Plc. The administration earlier threatened to veto the entire defense bill if it contained any money for the engine." [3]
The Pentagon and its chief Gates may win battles with the Congress and even the White House when they relate to the use of military force abroad, but against the weapons manufacturers and the congressmen whose election campaigns they contribute to the military brass will come off the losers.
In addition to the nearly two-thirds of a trillion dollar annual Pentagon war chest, the ongoing trillion dollar Broader Middle East war is a lucrative boon to the merchants of death and their political hangers-on.
On December 18 a story was posted on several American armed forces websites that U.S. soldiers have been sent to Afghanistan and Iraq 3.3 million times since the invasion of the first country in October of 2001. The report specifies that "more than 2 million men and women have shouldered those deployments, with 793,000 of them deploying more than once."
The break-down according to services is as follows:
More than 1 million troops from the Army.
Over 389,900 from the Air Force.
Over 367,900 from the Navy.
More than 251,800 Marines.
This past October alone 172,800 soldiers, 31,500 airmen, 30,000 sailors and 20,900 Marines were dispatched to the two war zones. [4]
The bulk of the U.S.'s permanent global warfighting force may be deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, but enough troops are left over to man newly acquired bases in Eastern Europe, remain in Middle East nations other than Iraq, be based on and transit through the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, take over seven new military bases in Colombia, run regional operations out of America's first permanent base in Africa - Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, where 2,400 personnel are stationed - and engage in counterinsurgency campaigns in the Philippines, Mali, Uganda, Yemen and Pakistan.
Recently a U.S. armed forces newspaper reported in an article titled "AFRICOM could add Marine Air Ground Task Force" that "A 1,000-strong Marine combat task force capable of rapidly deploying to hot spots could soon be at the disposal of the new U.S. Africa Command."
The feature added that a Marine unit previously attached to the newly launched AFRICOM has "already deployed in support of training missions in Uganda and Mali," whose armies are fighting the Lord's Resistance Army and Tuareg rebels, respectively. [5]
In Yemen, Houthi rebel sources "accused the U.S. air force [on December 15] of joining attacks against them, and killing at least 120 people in a raid in the north of the poor Arab state."
Their information office said "The savage crime committed by the U.S. air force shows the real face of the United States." [6]
According to ABC News "On orders from President Barack Obama, the U.S. military launched cruise missiles early Thursday [December 17] against two suspected al-Qaeda sites in Yemen," [7] to complement mounting missile attacks in Pakistan.
The Houthi rebels are religiously Shi'ia, so any attempt at exploiting an al-Qaeda rationale for bombing their villages is a subterfuge.
At the same time the Commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and NATO Allied Air Component, General Roger Brady, fresh from a tour of inspection of the Caucasus nations of Azerbaijan and Georgia, was at the Adazi Training Base in Latvia to meet with the defense ministers of that nation, Estonia and Lithuania and plan "closer military cooperation in the security sector between the Baltic States and the USA which also included joint exercises in the Baltic region." [9] All five nations mentioned above - Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia and Lithuania - border Russia.
During the same week's summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in Havana, Cuba, the host country's president Raul Castro said of the latest Pentagon buildup in Colombia that "The deployment of [U.S.] military bases in the region is...an act of aggression against Latin America and the Caribbean." [9]
Less than a week later the government of Colombia, the third largest recipient of American military aid in the world, announced it would construct a new military base near its border with Venezuela. "Defense Minister Gabriel Silva said [on December 18] that the base, located on the Guajira peninsula near the city of Nazaret, would have up to 1,000 troops. Two air battalions would also be activated at other border areas....Army Commander General Oscar Gonzalez meanwhile announced [the following day] that six air battalions were being activated, including two on the border with Venezuela." [10]
After allotting over a trillion dollars for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone and packing off more than two million of its citizens to the two nations, the U.S. military establishment and peace prize president have already laid the groundwork for yet more wars. Boeing, Raytheon and General Electric won't be kept waiting.
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Related articles:
Record US aid goes on armaments (January 1, 2010) http://www.theage.com.au/world/record-us-aid-goes-on-armaments-20091231-ll0i.html
JUST before Christmas, US President Barack Obama signed into law one of his country's biggest aid pledges of the year. It was bound not for Africa or any of the many struggling countries on the World Bank's list.It was a 10-year deal for $US2.77 billion ($A3.1 billion) to go to Israel in 2010 and a total of $US30 billion over the next decade, mainly to be spent on US military hardware.Despite the serious financial crisis in the US economy, the US is proceeding with its increased aid package to Israel.Israel is bound by the agreement to use 75 per cent of the aid to buy military devices made in the US — and in a recession, those military factories are critical to many towns.For the first time the US is also providing $US500 million to the Palestinian Authority, including $US100 million to train security forces, under the strict proviso that the authority's leadership recognises Israel.For many years Israel has been the largest recipient of the US foreign-aid budget, followed by Egypt ($US1.75 billion) which also receives most of its assistance in tied military aid. According to work done by the Congressional Research Service, the US spent 17 per cent of the total US aid budget — or $US5.1 billion — on military aid in 2008, of which $US4.7 billion was grants to enable governments to receive equipment from the US. CLIP
'The US Military is Exhausted' (January 4, 2010) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16767
The US army is overstretched and exhausted, says peace campaigner Sarah Lazare The call for over 30,000 more troops to be sent to Afghanistan is a travesty for the people of that country who have already suffered eight brutal years of occupation.It is also a harsh blow to the US soldiers facing imminent deployment.As Barack Obama, the US president, gears up for a further escalation that will bring the total number of troops in Afghanistan to over 100,000, he faces a military force that has been exhausted and overextended by fighting two wars. Many from within the ranks are openly declaring that they have had enough, allying with anti-war veterans and activists in calling for an end to the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with some active duty soldiers publicly refusing to deploy.This growing movement of military refusers is a voice of sanity in a country slipping deeper into unending war.The architects of this war would be well-advised to listen to the concerns of the soldiers and veterans tasked with carrying out their war policies on the ground. CLIP
Poison bullets: Depleted Uranium factor covered-up? Part I (23:28 - January 4, 2010) PART 2 HERE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuJDLcTbOSM
Many American and British soldiers who have returned from Iraq are complaining about Depleted Uranium-related illnesses. They accuse both the Pentagon and the UK Ministry of Defense of covering up the problem.Poison Bullets follows doctors and experts as they voice their opposing views in the DU controversy and travels to the US, Great Britain, Jordan, Iraq and Spain, where we meet many of those who are victims of both DU-related diseases and the indifference of government officials.
Beyond Treason What you don't know about your government could kill you (1hr 28min Run Time) http://vetshelpcenter.com/videos/gulf-war-syndrome/beyond-treason.html
Department of Defense documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act expose the horrific underworld of the disposable army mentality and the government funded experimentation upon US citizens conducted without their knowledge or consent. UNMASKING SECRET MILITARY PROJECTS: * Chemical & Biological Exposures * Radioactive Poisoning * Mind Control Projects* Experimental Vaccines * Gulf War Illness * Depleted Uranium (DU) Is the United States knowingly using a dangerous battlefield weapon banned by the United Nations because of its long-term effects on the local inhabitants and the environment? Explore the illegal worldwide sale and use of one of the deadliest weapons ever invented. Beyond the disclosure of black-ops projects spanning the past 6 decades, Beyond Treason also addresses the complex subject of Gulf War Illness. It includes interviews with experts, both civilian and military, who say that the government is hiding the truth from the public and they can prove it.
(...) America's ship-of-state is sinking, torpedoed by the totally fraudulent and murderous war in Iraq. And a second torpedo is about to strike the foundering vessel. When the full impact of the use of uranium munitions by US forces in Iraq reaches the public, this just might finish off the American Empire. And Democrats as well as Republicans are responsible. With such a major war crime in progress uncovered and with the economy teeter-tottering, what could follow is an economic collapse that could make the Great Depression of the 1930's seem like a mere, temporary "market adjustment."
(...) The tons of uranium waste from US nuclear power plants used in uranium munitions and armor, still being used in Iraq during the occupation today, is the equivalent of almost a half million (400,000) atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, according to Leuren Moret, a scientist and leading whistleblower on uranium munitions. It seems Dr. Stranglove is alive and well spreading his madness in America's ruling class. * Sandstorms are blowing the fine uranium dust all over the Mid East including Israel. If it gets into the jet stream, why couldn't it spread all over the world like after Chernobyl blew up in 1986?
(...) Every American should be forced to see "Beyond Treason" as German civilians were forced, by order of then Gen. Eisenhower, to visit the Nazi death camps immediately after liberation in 1945. Justice would be further served if the Americans responsible for the use of uranium munitions were tried for war crimes in the very same court in Nurenberg, Germany, in which Herman Goring and other Nazi bigwigs were judged. This should include former commanders-in-chief George H. W. Bush and William Clinton. CLIP
Cancer - The Deadly Legacy of the Invasion of Iraq (Jan 6, 2010) http://news.yahoo.com/s/oneworld/20100106/wl_oneworld/world3684721262818690
SAN FRANCISCO (New America Media) - Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer.Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.Here are a few examples. In Falluja, which was heavily bombarded by the US in 2004, as many as 25% of new- born infants have serious abnormalities, including congenital anomalies, brain tumors, and neural tube defects in the spinal cord.The cancer rate in the province of Babil, south of Baghdad has risen from 500 diagnosed cases in 2004 to 9,082 in 2009 according to Al Jazeera English. In Basra there were 1885 diagnosed cases of cancer in 2005. According to Dr. Jawad al Ali, director of the Oncology Center, the number increased to 2,302 in 2006 and 3,071 in 2007. Dr. Ali told Al Jazeera English that about 1,250-1,500 patients visit the Oncology Center every month now. Not everyone is ready to draw a direct correlation between allied bombing of these areas and tumors, and the Pentagon has been skeptical of any attempts to link the two. But Iraqi doctors and some Western scholars say the massive quantities of depleted uranium used in U.S. and British bombs, and the sharp increase in cancer rates are not unconnected. CLIP
5.
QUAGMIRE! AND ACTUALLY TAX-PAYERS-PAID MILITARY PROTECTION OF THE OPIUM FIELDS AND SOURCE OF ILLEGAL FINANCING OF MANY COVERT ELITE PROJECTS
“There isn’t the slightest possibility that the course laid out by Barack Obama in his Dec. 1 speech (at West Point) will halt or even slow the downward spiral toward defeat in Afghanistan,” writes Thomas Johnson in a report published Dec. 10 in Foreign Policy magazine. And for emphasis, he adds the word “None.”
“The U.S. president and his advisors labored for three months and brought forth old wine in bigger bottles,” Johnson wrote, noting, “The speech contained not one single new idea or approach, nor offered any hint of new thinking about a conflict that everyone now agrees the United States is losing.”
Author Johnson is no armchair admiral. He is a professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., a man who has conducted his own on-site investigation in Afghanistan.
Also referring to the President’s West Point address, The Nation magazine editorialized that Obama failed to explain why his goal to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan “requires 100,000 troops at a cost of nearly $100 billion. By the military’s own calculation, there are at most 100 Al Qaeda operatives, mostly low-level, in Afghanistan, the leadership having fled to Pakistan years ago.”
Even as the Afghan war bids to become the longest in U.S. history, “The Nation” adds:
“The undeniable fact is that eight years of US occupation and war have led to a growing insurgency, fueled by anger at one of the world’s most corrupt governments, run mostly by former and not-so-former warlords who were installed by the United States after 9/11. Many of these warlords are deeply involved in the opium trade, among them the brother of Hamid Karzai, the president, who was re-elected only through massive fraud.”
Writing in the Miami Herald of Dec. 20th, Carl Hiaasen says that Johnson believes “Obama knows this war is unwinnable, and that the surge is meant to provide political cover in advance of a full U.S. withdrawal before the 2012 election.”
Hiaasen adds, “Obama wouldn’t be the first U.S. president to let domestic political concerns affect his military moves abroad, but he certainly campaigned as a different kind of leader.”
Does this mean Obama is escalating an unwinnable war for political considerations? Hendrik Hertzberg, writing in the December 14th New Yorker, thinks politics has a lot to do with it. An immediate withdrawal, he writes, would inflict “severe” political and diplomatic damage to Obama and trigger, among other things, “a probable Pentagon revolt.” And the Pentagon has left no doubt about the right course. As General David Petraeus, who commands U.S. Iraq and Afghanistan forces, told The New York Times, “a sustained, substantial commitment” is required.
As the war drags on, the death toll mounts. Writing in the Dec. 21st issue of Foreign Policy, Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard, says by his conservative count, the war has claimed 30,000 lives. And the CIA’s drone warplane sorties authorized by Obama are boosting that toll.
Obama’s strategy is also spreading the war ever deeper into Pakistan. As Dan Pearson and Kathy Kelly report in the December “Catholic Worker,” 3,000,000 people were uprooted by violence in the Swat Valley and neighboring districts and those who returned found “that their homes, crops and other means of survival had been damaged or destroyed.”
They quote Dr. Aasim Saijad of Lahore University of Management Sciences as saying the attacks in Pakistan are only swelling the Taliban’s ranks. “The hundreds of thousands languishing in refugee camps talk of the mortar shells that have destroyed their homes and killed their relatives,” Saijad said.
“They seethe with anger and warn the government that most Taliban fighters hail from the local population. The longer the war continues—and it has only just begun in this region—the better the chances that the Taliban will be able to recruit from the refugees,” he said.
If Afghans are dying by the thousands and Pakistanis have become refugees by the millions to ensure Obama’s political survival, the U.S. has lost any vestige of moral authority. Is it thinkable to ask what if the purpose of the war is not “victory” but to keep the engines of the military-industrial complex humming? If so, it is not only primitive peoples’ who sacrificed the flower of their youth to ensure a good harvest.
Sherwood Ross formerly worked for The Chicago Daily News and other major dailies and as a columnist for wire services. He currently runs a public relations firm for “worthy causes.” You can reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com
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Related articles:
The Final Showdown: Obama Declares War On Pakistan (December 14, 2009)
PURE SPECULATIONS OR ACTUAL POSSIBILITY? http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/obama-declares-war-on-pakistan/
WASHINGTON, DC — Obama’s West Point speech of December 1 represents far more than the obvious brutal escalation in Afghanistan — it is nothing less than a declaration of all-out war by the United States against Pakistan . This is a brand-new war, a much wider war now targeting Pakistan , a country of 160 million people armed with nuclear weapons. In the process, Afghanistan is scheduled to be broken up. This is no longer the Bush Cheney Afghan war we have known in the past. This is something immensely bigger: the attempt to destroy the Pakistani central government in Islamabad and to sink that country into a chaos of civil war, Balkanization, subdivision and general mayhem. The chosen strategy is to massively export the Afghan civil war into Pakistan and beyond, fracturing Pakistan along ethnic lines. It is an oblique war using fourth-generation or guerrilla warfare techniques to assail a country which the United States and its associates in aggression are far too weak to attack directly. In this war, the Taliban are employed as US proxies. This aggression against Pakistan is Obama’s attempt to wage the Great Game against the hub of Central Asia and Eurasia or more generally.
(...) Why would the United States be so obsessed with the breakup of Pakistan ? One reason is that Pakistan is traditionally a strategic ally and economic partner of China , a country which the US and British are determined to oppose and contain on the world stage. Specifically, Pakistan could function as an energy corridor linking the oil fields of Iran and possibly even Iraq with the Chinese market by means of a pipeline that would cross the Himalayas above Kashmir . This is the so-called “Pipelinestan” issue. This would give China a guaranteed land-based oil supply not subject to Anglo-American naval superiority, while also cutting out the 12,000 mile tanker route around the southern rim of Asia . As a recent news report points out: ‘ Beijing has been pressuring Tehran for China ’s participation in the pipeline project and Islamabad , while willing to sign a bilateral agreement with Iran , has also welcomed China’s participation. According to an estimate, such a pipeline would result in Pakistan getting $200 million to $500 million annually in transit fees alone. China and Pakistan are already working on a proposal for laying a trans-Himalayan pipeline to carry Middle Eastern crude oil to western China . Pakistan provides China the shortest possible route to import oil from the Gulf countries. The pipeline, which would run from the southern Pakistan port of Gwadar and follow the Karakoram highway, would be partly financed by Beijing . The Chinese are also building a refinery at Gwadar. Imports using the pipeline would allow Beijing to reduce the portion of its oil shipped through the narrow and unsafe Strait of Malacca , which at present carries up to 80% of its oil imports. Islamabad also plans to extend a railway track to China to connect it to Gwadar. The port is also considered the likely terminus of proposed multibillion-dollar gas pipelines reaching from the South Pars fields in Iran or from Qatar , and from the Daulatabad fields in Turkmenistan for export to world markets. Syed Fazl-e-Haider, ” Pakistan , Iran sign gas pipeline deal,” Asia Times, 27 May 2009 .[9] This is the normal, peaceful economic progress and cooperation which the Anglo-Americans are hell-bent on stopping.Oil and natural gas pipelines from Iran across Pakistan and into China would carry energy resources into the Middle Kingdom, and would also serve as conveyor belts for Chinese economic influence into the Middle East . This would make Anglo-American dominion increasingly tenuous in a part of the world which London and Washington have traditionally sought to control as part of their overall strategy of world domination. CLIP
Protecting Afghan Opium Fields, Bribing Taliban - Obama Allies Want New Tax. Despite the fact that 36 per cent of income tax already goes to national defense (November 20, 2009) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16197
Not content with savaging American taxpayers with two huge new financial burdens during an economic recession, in the form of health care reform and cap and trade, close allies of Barack Obama have proposed a new war surtax that will force Americans to foot the bill for the cost of protecting opium fields in Afghanistan, paying off drug lords, and bribing the Taliban.Warning that the cost of occupying Afghanistan is a threat to the Democrats’ plan to overhaul health care, lawmakers have announced their plan to make Americans pay an additional war tax that will be taken directly from their income, never mind the fact that around 36 per cent of federal taxes already go to paying for national defense. “Regardless of whether one favors the war or not, if it is to be fought, it ought to be paid for,” the lawmakers, all prominent Democratic allies of Obama, said in a joint statement on the "Share The Sacrifice Act of 2010" reports AFP. The move is being led by the appropriately named House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey, Representative John Murtha, who chairs that panel’s defense subcommittee; and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank. The tax would apply to anyone earning as little as $22,600 per year in 2011. The proposal is described as “heavily symbolic” with little chance of passing, but it once again illustrates the hypocrisy of an administration that swept to power on the promise of “change” to the Neo-Con imperial agenda and a resolve to reduce U.S. military involvement overseas. In reality, there are more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan now under Obama that at any time during the Bush administration. At the height of the Bush administration’s 2007 “surge” in Iraq, there were 26,000 US troops in Afghanistan and 160,000 in Iraq, a total of 186,000. According to DoD figures cited by The Washington Post last month, there are now around 189,000 and rising deployed in total. There are now 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, over double the amount deployed there when Bush left office. What precisely would this extra tax be used to pay for? Namely, bribing the Taliban, paying off CIA drug lords, and protecting heroin-producing opium fields. Numerous reports over the past two weeks have confirmed that the U.S. military is paying off the Taliban with bags of gold to prevent them from attacking vehicle convoys, proving that there is no real “war” in Afghanistan, merely a business agreement that allows the occupiers to continue their lucrative control of record opium exports while they finalize construction of dozens of new military bases from which to launch new wars. The Afghan opium trade has exploded since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, following a lull after the Taliban had imposed a crackdown. According to the U.N., the drug trade is now worth $65 billion. Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world’s opium, with the equivalent of at least 3,500 tonnes leaving the country each year. This racket is secured by drug kingpins like the brother of disputed president Hamid Karzai. As a New York Times report revealed last month, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a Mafia-like figure who expanded his influence over the drug trade with the aid of U.S. efforts to eliminate his competitors, is on the CIA payroll. As Professor Michel Chossudovsky has highlighted in a series of essays, the explosion of opium production after the invasion was about the CIA’s drive to restore the lucrative Golden Crescent opium trade that was in place during the time when the Agency were funding the Mujahideen rebels to fight the Soviets, and flood the streets of America and Britain with cheap heroin, destroying lives while making obscene profits. Any war surtax will merely go straight to maintaining the agenda that Obama inherited from Bush, the continued looting of Afghanistan under the pretext of a “war on terror” that, as revelations about bribing the Taliban prove, doesn’t even exist.
Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time By CRAIG MURRAY - former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan (July 21, 2007) NOTHING HAS CHANGED SINCE - IN FACT IT IS WORST! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-469983/Britain-protecting-biggest-heroin-crop-time.html#ixzz0SQkySLWF
(...) In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not? The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen. The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. I would not advocate their methods for doing this, which involved lopping bits, often vital bits, off people. The Taliban were a bunch of mad and deeply unpleasant religious fanatics. But one of the things they were vehemently against was opium.That is an inconvenient truth that our spin has managed to obscure. Nobody has denied the sincerity of the Taliban's crazy religious zeal, and they were as unlikely to sell you heroin as a bottle of Johnnie Walker. They stamped out the opium trade, and impoverished and drove out the drug warlords whose warring and rapacity had ruined what was left of the country after the Soviet war.That is about the only good thing you can say about the Taliban; there are plenty of very bad things to say about them. But their suppression of the opium trade and the drug barons is undeniable fact.Now we are occupying the country, that has changed. According to the United Nations, 2006 was the biggest opium harvest in history, smashing the previous record by 60 per cent. This year will be even bigger. Our economic achievement in Afghanistan goes well beyond the simple production of raw opium. In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It has succeeded in what our international aid efforts urge every developing country to do. Afghanistan has gone into manufacturing and 'value-added' operations.It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops. How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government ? the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect. When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons ? especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance ? to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers. CLIP
Marines Bypass Taliban Opium Fields in Afghanistan (Sept 28, 2009) with pictures! http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/marines-bypass-taliban-opium-fields-afghanistan
Yet the Marines are not destroying the plants. In fact, they are reassuring villagers the pop pies won’t be touched. American commanders say the Marines would only alien ate people and drive them to take up arms if they eliminated the impoverished Afghans’ only source of income. Oh? The Taliban had all but eradicated the opium growers before the US invasion. What did the people have for a source of income then?And if the opium is for the Taliban, why is cheap heroin flooding into the United States? CLIP
Obama and Afghanistan: America’s Drug-Corrupted War (January 1, 2010) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16713
The presidential electoral campaign of Barack Obama in 2008, it was thought, “changed the political debate in a party and a country that desperately needed to take a new direction.”[1] Like most preceding presidential winners dating back at least to John F. Kennedy, what moved voters of all descriptions to back Obama was the hope he offered of significant change. Yet within a year Obama has taken decisive steps, not just to continue America’s engagement in Bush’s Afghan War, but significantly to enlarge it into Pakistan. If this was change of a sort, it was a change that few voters desired. Those of us convinced that a war machine prevails in Washington were not surprised. The situation was similar to the disappointment experienced with Jimmy Carter: Carter was elected in 1976 with a promise to cut the defense budget. Instead, he initiated both an expansion of the defense budget and also an expansion of U.S. influence into the Indian Ocean.
(...) Thus the war machine that co-opted Obama into his escalation of a drug-corrupted war is not just a bureaucratic cabal inside Washington. It is solidly grounded in and supported by a wide coalition of forces in our society. For this reason the war machine will not be dissuaded by sensible advice from within the establishment, such as the recommendation for Afghan counterterrorism from the RAND Corporation :Minimize the use of U.S. military force. In most operations against al Qa'ida, local military forces frequently have more legitimacy to operate and a better understanding of the operating environment than U.S. forces have. This means a light U.S. military footprint or none at all. It will not be dissuaded by the conclusion of a recent study for the Carnegie Endowment that "the presence of foreign troops is the most important element driving the resurgence of the Taliban."[51] To justify its global strategic posture of what it calls “full-spectrum dominance,” the Pentagon badly needs the “war against terror” in Afghanistan, just as a decade ago it needed the counter-productive “war against drugs” in Colombia. Full-spectrum dominance is of course not just an end in itself, it is also lobbied for by far-flung American corporations overseas, especially oil companies like Exxon Mobil with huge investments in Kazakhstan and elsewhere in Central Asia. As Michael Klare noted in his book Resource Wars, a secondary objective of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan was "to consolidate U.S. power in the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea area, and to ensure continued flow of oil."
(...) The global drug traffic itself will continue to benefit from the protracted conflict generated by “full-spectrum dominance” in Afghanistan, and some of the beneficiaries may have been secretly lobbying for it. And I fear that all the client intelligence assets organized about the movement of Afghan heroin through Central Asia and beyond will, without a clear change in policy, continue as before to be protected by the CIA.[59] And America’s superbanks like Citibank – the banks allegedly “too big to fail” – are now since the downturn even more dependant than before on the hundreds of billions of illicit profits which they launder each year.
(...) In short the impasse the U.S. faces in Afghanistan, in its efforts to support an unpopular and corrupt regime, must be understood in the light of its past relations to the drug traffic there – a situation which resembles the past U.S. involvement in Laos even more than in Vietnam. It is this sustained pattern of intervention in support of drug economies, and with the support of drug traffickers, that so depresses observers who had hoped desperately that, in this respect, Obama would bring a change. The question remains: how many Americans, Afghans, and Pakistanis will have to die, before we can begin to end this drug-corrupted, drug-corrupting war?
The 'coalition of the willing' in Iraq becomes an army of one (December 31, 2009) http://www.mcclatchydc.com/255/story/81544.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The British said cheerio back in July, around the same time the Romanians cleared out "Camp Dracula," their compound on a U.S. base in southern Iraq. Tonga and Kazakhstan left ages ago, and no one seems to remember if any Icelandic forces ever made it to Iraq. It doesn't matter now, anyway, because as of Friday, former president George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing" formally ceased to exist, leaving only the U.S. military's 130,000 or so forces to shepherd their Iraqi counterparts through a volatile election season before a full American troop withdrawal that's expected by the end of 2011. U.S. commanders officially disbanded the Multinational Force Iraq, or MNF-I, and introduce the USF-I, or U.S. Force Iraq, at a ceremony Friday in Baghdad. American soldiers and officers said the transition is largely a formality because they've been going it alone since the summer. Iraqis also said the change barely registers. To them, there's never been a question that Americans were in charge for these tumultuous past six years. CLIP
‘Afghan Insurgency Can Sustain Itself Indefinitely’: Top U.S. Intel Officer (January 8, 2010) http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/afghan-insurgency-can-sustain-itself-indefinitely-top-us-intel-officer/
The Taliban not only has the “momentum” after the most successful year in its campaign against the United States and the Kabul government. “The Afghan insurgency can sustain itself indefinitely,” according to a briefing from Major General Michael Flynn, the top U.S. intelligence officer in the country. “The Taliban retains [the] required partnerships to sustain support, fuel legitimacy and bolster capacity.”And if that isn’t enough, Flynn also warns that “time is running out” for the American-led International Security Assistance Force. “Regional instability is rapidly increasing and getting worse,” the report says.Since General Stanley McChrystal took over as top commander in Afghanistan, there have been a series of dark appraisals about the state of the war. In August, McChrystal warned of an “urgent need for a significant change to our strategy and the way that we think and operate.” A report recently obtained by NBC News said Afghanistan’s security forces won’t be ready to fight the Taliban for years — if ever. Earlier this week, Flynn issued a white paper complaining that “eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy.”But Flynn’s December 23rd presentation on the “State of the Insurgency: Trends, Intentions and Objectives” may be the gloomiest public assessment of the war yet. The “loosely organized” Taliban is “growing more cohesive” and “increasingly effective.” The insurgents now have their own “governors” installed in 33 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. And the “strength and ability of [that] shadow governance increasing,” according to the presentation. The Taliban’s “organizational capabilities and operational reach are qualitatively and geographically expanding.”Improvised bomb “events” have nearly tripled since 2007 — 7228 this year, compared to 2718 two years ago. The bombs have grown bigger — the majority are now 25 pounds or more. “80 to 90 percent” of them are made with homemade fertilizer, rather than military ordnance. That makes it much harder to track and block the distribution of the bomb-making material. Add to that steady supply of cash, thanks to the drug trade and the corrupt Kabul government, and a glut of weapons and ammunition,” and it becomes clear why, in Flynn’s words, “the insurgency is confident… looking toward post-ISAF Afghanistan.” CLIP
Warlord calls the shots over Afghanistan military transport (8th January, 2010) http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=586070
An Afghan warlord has told Radio Netherlands that he is receiving money to protect convoys of army vehicles. The warlord, Mathiullah Khan, has confirmed he charges for the transportation of water, food and fuel from Kandahar to the Dutch bases at Camp Holland or Tarin Kowt in the neighbouring province to the north. The warlord usually receives around US$2500 for each truck that passes. The Dutch Ministry of Defence has insisted he is not paid directly by the Dutch, who leave it to local transporters to decide whether they find it necessary to pay for protection. In the past Mathiullah has been named to be a notorious violator of human rights. The Dutch contingent in Afghanistan blocked his appointment as police chief in Uruzgan earlier last year.
James Hansen: Good Riddance, Copenhagen. Time for Better Ideas.
by Madeline Ostrander -- Dec 22, 2009
James Hansen, of Columbia University, heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. This picture was taken on November 30, 2009, when he spoke to a group of about 30 people outside of the National Resources Defense Council building.
NASA climate scientist James Hansen never expected the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen to amount to much. He told the British Guardian newspaper that it would be better if Copenhagen failed. That’s because Hansen is a vocal critic of the economic policies discussed there, and he hopes Copenhagen’s failure gives the public a chance to talk about new options.
Hansen is arguably the world’s best known and most respected climate scientist. Sometimes called the “grandfather of climate change,” he beganmodeling the effects of warming three decades ago and first testified about climate change before Congress in 1988. He was one of the key figures to blow the whistle on the Bush Administration for censoring science and trying to muzzle warnings about the urgency of the climate crisis.
In the past few years, Hansen has expanded his activities outside the laboratory and into the political fray. In June, he was arrested after marching at a rally against mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia.
More recently, he has become a leading opponent of cap-and-trade, a market approach to greenhouse gas regulation that puts a limit on how much carbon can be emitted and then allows polluters to trade permits to emit. Hansen claims the approach ultimately will not produce the kinds of emissions cuts the world needs to avoid catastrophic climate change. It will simply allow “polluters and Wall Street traders to fleece the public out of billions of dollars,” he says. He is especially critical of the large number of offsets available under the current policy proposals, which allow polluters to pay for emissions reductions elsewhere in the world. He points to some offset schemes that have led to fraud, giving credit for pollution reductions that never actually happened.
Hansen is championing an alternative solution called fee-and-dividend, which would impose a fee on any pollution source (mines, ports of entry) and distribute the revenue back to the public. Both fee-and-dividend and cap-and-trade attempt to reduce carbon emissions by raising the price of fossil fuels, but Hansen insists the former is simpler and less vulnerable to speculation and gaming.
Advocates of cap-and-trade have been dismissive of Hansen’s arguments. David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council says Hansen is simply wrong about cap-and-trade, insists the approach has been effective in the European Union, and maintains that the leading bills now before Congress have enough safeguards to avoid market manipulation. Economist Paul Krugman accuses Hansen of naïve thinking: “hard-science guys tend to assume that [economists are] witch doctors with nothing to tell them.”
Hansen has faced off critics before. He is not alone in his critique. Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, says that “carbon-trading represents an unprecedented privatization of the atmosphere, and ... offsets ... threaten to become a resource grab of colonial proportions.” The Indigenous Environmental Network calls cap-and-trade a false solution “that will allow the fossil fuel industry to continue to do what they do—drill, baby, drill.” In November, two longtime U.S. EPA attorneys published a video online calling cap-and-trade “a huge mistake.”
I caught up with Hansen by phone on Monday morning to ask his reaction to Copenhagen and discuss his new book, Storms of My Grandchildren (Bloomsbury, 2009).
Madeline Ostrander: Is the outcome of the talks in Copenhagen better or worse than you imagined?
James Hansen: I think it's a good situation. Now we can step back and look at what is really needed.
The proposals discussed in Copenhagen were like the indulgences of the Middle Ages. The sinners are the developed countries, which are responsible for most of the excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. They want to continue business as usual, by buying off the developing countries.
If developing countries can get a hundred billion dollars a year, that's enormously attractive. But both parties are thumbing their noses at young people and future generations.
The hundred billion dollars a year—the money that Secretary of State Clinton claimed the United States would raise to give to developing countries—is vapor money. There's no mechanism for such financing to actually occur, and no expectation that it will.
The leaders can't just make up these greenwash statements and claim that they're dealing with the problem. They're doing the same thing they did with Kyoto. Before the Kyoto Protocol, global emissions had been increasing one and a half percent per year. After Kyoto, the rate accelerated to three percent per year.
Some countries did set goals to reduce their emissions under Kyoto, but when you look at the details, you see that those goals weren’t realized. For example, Japan had a very strong target under Kyoto, but its emissions actually increased substantially, and it bought off the difference using offsets—investing in China and in rainforests. A few countries in Europe reduced their emissions. But that didn't reduce global emissions, because the industry and the emissions just moved overseas. Products were then sent back to European countries on airplanes, which do not have any tax on their fuel.
Madeline: What kinds of solutions should political leaders be discussing?
Jim: You have to recognize that as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, they're going to be used. To change that situation, you have to place a gradually rising price on carbon emissions.
We have to have a very simple system—put a fee on fossil fuels at their origin at the mine or the port of entry. No exceptions.
If the carbon price rises to $115 per ton of carbon dioxide, considering the amount of oil, gas, and coal used last year in the United States, that would generate $670 billion dollars. That’s between $7,500 and $9,000 dollars per family.
That money needs to be given 100 percent to the public so that they have the resources to adjust their lifestyles—such as to buy more efficient vehicles or insulate their homes. As the carbon price rises, it's going to become less and less sensible, for instance, to import food from halfway around the world. The economics would favor a nearby farm, as opposed to agriculture at a great distance.
You cannot have these boondoggles in which we invest billions and billions of dollars in so-called clean coal and give money to polluters.
Madeline: Did you see any signs of progress in Copenhagen?
Jim: There was one. We did have a clear statement from Al Gore. I've been urging him to say that a carbon price is the best way to get emissions to decrease, better than cap-and-trade with offsets. Gore calls it a carbon tax. I don't call it that. Even John Kerry, the cosponsor of the lead bill in the Senate, made a statement admitting that a carbon fee needs to be considered. So I think there's a chance we can have an honest discussion of fee-and-dividend this coming spring in the United States.
The direction that the United States goes determines the direction that the world goes. If we have a sensible approach approved by Congress, then there's still a very good chance we could solve this climate problem.
Madeline: What do you think the public should do to move the United States toward a solution?
Jim: Public involvement is very important. Otherwise politics as usual tends to continue. When I was on the David Letterman show, he asked me that same question. I said people need to understand the difference between cap-and-trade with offsets and fee-and-dividend. Of course. he cut me off at that point [laughs], because that's not a subject for a comedy show. But the concept is not difficult.
For instance, fee-and-dividend will be beneficial for the economy. When you put that amount of money into the public's hands, it's going to stimulate the economy. It's not a net tax but a redistribution of income from the people who are burning a lot of carbon to those who are not. It will tend to discourage the processes that are the most wasteful of fossil fuels. That story has got to be communicated and understood by the public, and we have to put pressure on our politicians to act on behalf of the public, rather than on behalf of their campaign donors.
There are more than 2,000 fossil fuel lobbyists in Washington, and they have written most of the words for the leading climate bills—the Waxman-Markey House bill and the Boxer-Kerry Senate bill.
But we are beginning to see discussion of alternatives. During the campaign last year, Obama advocated for a 100 percent dividend. There was the Larson bill in the House, which had a small, but steadily increasing price on carbon. Now there's the Cantwell-Collins CLEAR Act, which gets rid of the offsets. It is still not exactly fee-and-dividend, but it gets very close. If there is an open discussion in the Senate and House about alternatives, I think it's possible we could get on a sensible path.
Madeline: You’ve said that climate change isn't just a scientific and political issue, but also a personal and moral issue.
Jim: Yeah, that's exactly the point. We're dealing with a planetary crisis. The climate system is in danger of passing tipping points. If we don’t address it, we leave our children with economic and social chaos within this century. Once that situation is understood, it becomes a question of intergenerational justice. It's analogous to the situation that Abraham Lincoln faced with slavery or Winston Churchill faced with Nazism. It is a moral issue, and you can't take a compromise position. You can’t say, "Oh, we'll do a little bit, but we won't solve the problem."
Madeline: You spend so much of time looking at the data and the scale of the problem. What keeps you hopeful?
Jim: Well, if the problem could be understood, there's no question that the public would support action. Look at the sacrifices the public made in World War II. Climate change is harder, because it's less visible. But many of us had hoped that President Obama would help press the world to make the right decisions. Now in the next several months, climate change needs to come to the fore, and people need to understand the actions that are really required.
Madeline: In your book, you describe how your grandchildren have inspired you to push harder to get action on climate change. How has your family influenced your work?
Jim: My grandchildren were the reason that I couldn't just continue to do the science without saying what the implications were. In 2004, I decided I would give one public talk, which I would prepare very carefully with scientific papers to back it up. But then I found that one talk doesn't really have that much effect. So one thing led to another. Finally, I wrote this book. I bring my grandchildren into the story to explain how difficult it is to preserve a climate that will allow humans to continue to exist. The climate of the last 10,000 years has been very stable, and if we don't get on a different path in the next several years, we're going to guarantee that we not only change the climate but destroy a large fraction of the species on the planet.
Madeline Ostrander interviewed James Hansen for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Madeline is YES! Magazine's senior editor.
YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License
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Related articles:
Bolivia Leader Calls Alternative Climate Meeting (January 5, 2010) http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/05/world/AP-Climate-Bolivia.html
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -- Bolivian President Evo Morales said Tuesday he's inviting activists, scientists and government officials from around the world to an alternative climate conference following the failure of a summit in Copenhagen to produce binding agreements. The leftist leader said the April 20-22 meeting in Cochabamba will include indigenous peoples, social movements, environmentalists and scientists as well as governments ''who want to work with their people.''Morales said the meeting is meant partly to pressure industrialized nations to accept that they have a ''climate debt'' to poor countries and will work toward an international court on environmental crimes. Other topics will include a ''universal proposal for the rights of mother earth'' and the transfer of technology. Last month's 193-nation climate summit in Copenhagen agreed on creation of a fund to help poor nations but it was vague on how the money will be raised. Bolivia was one of five countries to block a consensus on accepting the Copenhagen Accord brokered by President Barack Obama, arguing that the deal was done in secret by a small group of countries. Lacking agreement by all 193 countries, the document was ''noted'' by the conference, giving it less moral and legal weight than if it had been formally adopted. In his speech to the assembly and in a press conference during the summit, Morales railed against capitalism and imperialism, which he said spawned the problem of climate change by ignoring the rights of nature and the rights of indigenous peoples.He denounced industrialized countries for pledging $10 billion a year to help countries meet the challenges of climate change, while spending ''trillions to fight unnecessary wars'' in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Tuesday, Morales called the Copenhagen summit ''a triumph of the people'' because ''the presidents came, proposed and went without hearing, but this time they could not impose their declaration.''
COPing With the Stars: The 13 Biggest Players to Emerge from Copenhagen (Dec 18, 2009) http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect/stars-copenhagen-players.html
Who's making a real difference when it matters most. -- The last two weeks have been the moment the whole world has been waiting for: the gathering of world leaders in Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change Conference held some real hope, at least for awhile, that climate change could finally start being addressed on an international, and cooperative, level. But the conference is just about over, and not a whole lot came of it except stalled meetings and frustrated hands thrown in the air.The rift between developed and developing nations has proven greater than any compromise offered by leaders, and the biggest agreement from the talks might just be to... come to an agreement later.On a brighter side, however, a few major players have emerged from the talks—some expected leaders on climate change, some names you might be surprised to see were even in Denmark for the talks, and other names you may never have heard of. Find out who's leading the way on climate change when the most powerful elected leaders in the world aren't necessarily doing so.In no particular order... CLIP
Climate Action: What Will it Take to Avert Disastrous Climate Change? (Dec 01, 2009) http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/climate-action/climate-action-what-will-it-take-to-avert-disastrous-climate-change
(...) Why haven’t our leaders responded? They have been relying on old, conservative estimates of global warming effects. The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections used baseline scenarios from the 1990s, when scientists and government leaders assumed that by now, popular and political support would have led us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That means politicians and the people they represent have been looking at optimistic projections based on improvements that didn’t happen.In fact, global fossil-fuel and industrial carbon emissions have grown by 3.5 percent a year since 2000, faster than the worst-case scenario predicted by the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are now at their highest levels in the last 15 million years, since before humans walked the earth. Lake Mead shrinks, exposing bleached banks. The Mead-Powell system supplies water to Los Angeles, San Diego, and Las Vegas. U.N. senior official Luc Gnacadja recently told the press that by 2025, 70 percent of the world’s land could be suffering from drought. In the United States, a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists says that in just a couple of decades, average summers in the country’s bread basket, Illinois, could be hotter than the 1988 heat wave that wiped out $40 billion worth of food crops. In the next 12 years, there’s a 50-50 chance that a combination of climate change and overuse will dry up Lakes Mead and Powell, say scientists with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography [8]. Mead and Powell supply 90 percent of Las Vegas’ water, along with irrigation and drinking water for more than 20 million people in Los Angeles and across Nevada and Arizona.The vast majority of scientists agree that if we keep the Earth’s temperature from rising 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels, we have a fighting chance of avoiding the most civilization-shaking impacts of climate change. The G8 leaders agreed to that target at their July meeting. Shoot past this limit, and the planet’s ecosystems may enter a point of no return. We push the Earth into vicious spirals of feedback loops that make things even hotter. Sea ice melts, and the dark, open ocean absorbs more heat. The Amazon rainforest burns and releases even more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Weather patterns like El Niño transform from occasional to annual hurricane-brewing phenomena. Grain crops fail. One to 3 billion people face water shortage. The basic systems that support us, our societies, and life on the planet start breaking apart. We have the wherewithal. We have a choice to make. According to a consensus of hundreds of climate scientists, we can avert crashing the planet only if we make a sharp global U-turn by 2015: Level off emissions worldwide and bring them back down in the next few decades.To do this, we must switch to much more efficient transportation, manufacturing, and buildings, and to solar, wind, tide, and biomass energy. Agriculture must make a rapid switch to organic and ecologically sound practices. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that livestock are responsible for more than half of greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide. We have to stop destroying forests for cattle ranches, palm oil plantations, and paper pulp, so we can preserve their ability to soak up carbon. CLIP
Where we are as a movement by Liz Butler | January 7, 2010 http://www.1sky.org/blog/2010/01/where-we-are-as-a-movement
If you are like many people I know in the climate movement, then December 2009 was a very intense month for you. It certainly was for me. Watching from the U.S. as the international climate talks unfolded in Copenhagen without producing a critical fair, ambitious and binding treaty was hard. Watching the ball drop on New Year’s Eve knowing that we did not have bold and comprehensive climate, energy and green jobs legislation signed into law was sobering as well. As the first week of 2010 is coming to a close, I have had some time to reflect, and I have realized that despite the disappointments described above, 2009 was in fact a huge success on the issue of climate. As a movement, we grew massively in the U.S. and around the globe, organizing more than 5,000 events in 180 countries as part of the October 24 International Day of Climate Action. Diverse constituencies like businesses and veterans are coming together to raise their voices in support of bold action. Every day, thanks to the efforts of people like you, we are increasing our movement’s power. What I know about political change is that takes a long time. In reality it is never one moment, one bill or one treaty that is the solution -- it always is a whole set of things along the way. All of these moments take people from all walks of life fighting to make them happen. So in looking back, I am personally declaring huge wins in 2009 for the climate movement. We greatly expanded our base in 2009 -- and not a moment too soon, because we have a lot to do in 2010. And we need to keep expanding the number of people in the U.S. and around the world working together to solve the climate crisis and create a clean energy economy.In the battle to address climate change, we will have many critical moments ahead, and some of them will be in 2010. The good news is we get to battle together. The people who are committed to addressing climate, energy and green jobs are the most amazing people I have ever met, and their passion -- your passion -- inspires me to redouble my efforts this year to work for bold action. MUCH MORE THROUGH http://www.1sky.org
10 Ways to Change Your Life (Not Just Your Light Bulbs)
by Colin Beavan -- Nov 11, 2009
EAT YOUR VEGETABLES
All you have to do is stop eating beef. Worldwide, beef production contributes more to climate change than the entire transportation sector. The carbon footprint of the average meat eater is about 1.5 tons of CO2 larger than that of a vegetarian. Cutting beef out of your diet will reduce your CO2 emissions by 2,400 pounds annually.
DRINK FROM THE TAP
You can save money and your environment by giving up bottled water. The production of plastic water bottles together with the privatization of our drinking water is an environmental and social catastrophe. Bottled water costs more per gallon than gasoline. The average American consumes 30 gallons of bottled water annually. Giving up one bottle of imported water means using up one less liter of fossil fuel and emitting 1.2 pounds less of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
OBSERVE AN ECO-SABBATH
For one day or afternoon or even one hour a week, don’t buy anything, don’t use any machines, don’t switch on anything electric, don’t cook, don’t answer your phone, and, in general, don’t use any resources. In other words, for this regular period, give yourself and the planet a break. Every hour per week that you live no impact cuts your carbon emissions by 0.6 percent annually. Commit to four hours per week, that’s 2.4 percent; do it for a whole day each week to cut your impact by 14.4 percent a year.
TITHE A FIXED PERCENTAGE OF YOUR INCOME
Tithe a fixed percentage of your income to non-profits of your choice. If an average U.S. family contributes 1 percent ($502.33) of its annual income ($50,233) to an environmental non-profit, they could offset 40.7 tons of carbon dioxide per year. Many of our public health and welfare services are tied to consumer spending which, in turn, depends upon planetary resources. If you want to help, don’t go shopping. Just help.
BUILD A COMMUNITY
Have dinners with friends. Play charades. Sing together. Enjoying each other costs the planet much less than enjoying its resources.
GET THERE UNDER YOUR OWN STEAM
Get around by bike or by foot a certain number of days a month. Not only does this mean using less fossil fuel and creating less greenhouse gases, it means you’ll get exercise and we’ll all breathe fewer fumes. If you can stay off the road just two days a week, you’ll reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 1,590 pounds per year.
COMMIT TO NOT WASTING
Wasting resources costs the planet and your wallet. Let your clothes hang-dry instead of using the dryer. Take half the trips but stay twice as long. Repair instead of rebuy. The list goes on. In the summer, for every degree above 72°F you set your thermostat, you save 120 pounds of CO2 emissions per year, and if you wash your clothes with cold water you can cut your laundry energy use by up to 90 percent
TAKE YOUR PRINCIPLES TO WORK
We must act as though we care about the world at work as much as we do at home. Company CEOs or product designers have the power to make a gigantic difference through their business, and so do the rest of us. In commercial buildings, lighting accounts for more than 40 percent of electrical energy use, a huge cause of greenhouse gas production. Using motion and occupancy sensors can cut this use by 10 percent
DONATE A DAY'S TV TIME TO ECO-SERVICE
Take one day off from TV—the average American watches four and a half hours of TV a day—and try voluntary eco-service instead. Those four and a half hours a day watching TV add up to 825 pounds of carbon dioxide each year.
BELIEVE WITH ALL YOUR HEART THAT HOW YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE MAKES A DIFFERENCE
We are all interconnected. Every step toward living a conscious life provides support to everyone else who is trying to do the same thing—whether you’re aware of it or not. We are the masters of our destinies.
Colin Beavan adapted this piece for Climate Action, the Winter 2010 issue of YES! Magazine. Colin Beavan is founder of the No Impact Project, noimpactproject.org. His book No Impact Man was published in 2009 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Interested...
- Christmas with No Presents - Colin Beavan recounts what the holiday season was like for him and his family when they committed to living with no impact for one year.
- The No Impact Experiment for You: Colin Beavan invites you to try what he did, just for one week, and promises to connect you with others doing the same.
"No Impact Man" - Official Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9Ctt7FGFBo
Author Colin Beavan, in research for his new book, began the No Impact Project in November 2006. A newly self-proclaimed environmentalist who could no longer avoid pointing the finger at himself, Colin leaves behind his liberal complacency for a vow to make as little environmental impact as possible for one year. No more automated transportation, no more electricity, no more non-local food, no more material consumption no problem. That is, until his espresso-guzzling, retail-worshipping wife Michelle and their two year-old daughter are dragged into the fray. Laura Gabbert and Justin Scheins film provides a front row seat into the familial strains and strengthened bonds that result from Colins and Michelles struggle with this radical lifestyle change. MUCH MORE ON THIS THROUGH THIS LINK
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Related resources:
Take control of your environmental footprint http://brighterplanet.com/
On Brighter Planet you’ll measure your carbon footprint, discover simple ways to reduce it, track your progress, and share your experiences. No politics, no arguments. Just real people, real actions — all making a real difference. CHECK THEIR Conservation tips
Your Carbon Footprint: Calculating, Reducing and Offsetting Your Impact http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/carbon-footprint-green-basics.php
In addition to metrics like ecological footprint, each of us (and each of the products and services we use and consume every day) has a carbon footprint; it's a way to measure the relative impact of our actions -- as individuals, as businesses, communities and countries, as we eat, work, travel, play, etc. -- in terms of the contribution made to global climate change. Measured in carbon emissions (usually in pounds, tons or kilograms), it's become an increasingly useful and popular tool to help contextualize global warming in our daily routines and lives. What is a carbon footprint? A carbon footprint is the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases emitted over the full life cycle of a product or service, and everything has one, from the computer you used to find this article to the next meal you eat (and the one after that, and after that, and so on...) to the shoe that will leave a physical footprint on the ground the next time you walk outside. But that's only part of the story.
How to Grow Your Own Food http://www.wikihow.com/Grow-Your-Own-Food
For all of human history, people have managed to feed themselves, either by fishing, hunting, gathering and/or subsistence farming. Now, with large-scale food production, gardening is often only a hobby. But growing one's own food could mean increased security, health, and enjoyment. Since the details of growing your own food depend on your unique locale, here's a general overview to get you started. CLIP - VERY comprehensive! - CHECK ALSO How to Grow Your Own Organic Vegetables for Frugal Sustainability
Resolve to Support a Healthier Food System in 2010 (Jan 6, 2010) http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/support-healthier-food-systems.html
As I have written about before, the simplest way to support a healthy food system is to eat food grown by sustainable farmers or growers. This means buying from them and supporting them to keep them in business.Sustainable farming not only improves an individual’s health, but also the health of our planet and even the economic health of a local community. What exactly is sustainable agriculture? CLIP
Buy Nothing Day http://www.buynothingday.org/
Buy Nothing Day is your special day to unshop, unspend and unwind. Relax and do nothing for the economy and for yourself - at least for a single day.
Why should we buy nothing? http://www.buynothingday.org/faq.html
When it comes right down to it, it's not that we believe a single day without shopping makes a big enough impact in itself. But if we stop and think about it for a day, we might find out that we're more deeply tangled in the dragnet of consumerism than we imagined. This knowledge could be life-changing. If we dissect our spending habits we'll see how we have a significant local effect. But we are part of the big picture as well, and if we take a stand others will as well, and we can see that impact on a global scale. If we buy nothing for just one day, perhaps we'll realize the true value of watching HOW we spend. CLIP
Overcoming Consumerism - Ideas and shared solutions for sustainable & low cost green living http://www.verdant.net/index.htm
Consumerism is a pattern of behavior that helps to destroy our environment, personal financial health, the common good of individuals and human institutions. This site details ways that you can help defeat consumerism, save money, work less and lead a more satisfying and environmentally benign life while helping to restore the economic self-sufficiency of your community. We present resources that can help the reader become a better- educated citizen and grassroots activist starting from any level of commitment and knowledge. (...) We have created sections of resources that allow you to actually DO things to improve society and your own well being, rather than merely talk or think about it, which is of course an essential first step.
Why Alternative Gifts? http://www.alternativegiftregistry.org/why.php
Do you want to plan an event that emphasizes time spent with loved ones and de-emphasizes store-bought gifts? Do you want to give a special gift to someone you love that focuses on the bond you share, rather than something that costs a bundle and may not be what they really want? We all love giving and receiving gifts; it’s important to our culture and good for the spirit. When the gifts we buy don’t match our values, however, they can distract from, rather than deepen, the meaning behind an event, despite the best intentions of those involved. The cost to gift-givers—not to mention the environmental impacts—also adds up quickly.Fortunately, for many brides, grooms, parents-to-be, and other gift recipients, less truly is more. By encouraging non-material, second-hand, homemade, and environmentally friendly gifts, we seek to continue the proud tradition of gift-giving while helping celebrants focus on what matters most: a joyous commemoration with loved ones that honors the important moments in their lives.Creating a registry and choosing a gift, of course, is highly personal. We have offered a number of green suggestions, but celebrants can fill in their own ideas and link to products outside this site to offer the widest and most meaningful gift selection possible. To get started just click here to create a registry, or click here to find your loved one’s registry. CLIP
Green Celebration Tips http://www.alternativegiftregistry.org/tips.php
To help organize the planning required to put on an environmentally-friendly event, we’ve assembled tips and resources that cover different suggestions for going green.
Food & Water Watch http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/about/mission
Food & Water Watch protects our essential resources by transforming the public consciousness about what we eat and drink and by helping people to take action to make a difference.Food & Water Watch is a non-profit organization working with grassroots organizations around the world to create an economically and environmentally viable future. Through research, public and policymaker education, media, and lobbying, we advocate policies that guarantee safe, wholesome food produced in a humane and sustainable manner and public, rather than private, control of water resources including oceans, rivers, and groundwater. THERE IS A VAST WEALTH OF INFORMATION AND IDEAS TO BE FOUND IN THIS SITE http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org
Break the Bottled Water habit http://water.newdream.org/
I pledge to Break the Bottled Water Habit by Thinking Outside the Bottle and using a reusable water bottle instead of buying bottled water. I also pledge to support the efforts of local officials to stop spending public funds on bottled water and prioritize strong public water systems over bottled water profits.
Why you should take this pledge: Everything we consume has a climate impact, but manufacturing and trucking water bottles to homes with clean tap water seems particularly wasteful. The Beverage Marketing Corporation reports that Americans consumed 31.2 billion liters of water in 2006 – nearly 9 liters per month for every man, woman, and child. Manufacturing all those bottles requires 900,000 tons of plastic, the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil, and emit more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide. Trucking around all those heavy bottles emits even more greenhouse gases. Beyond the climate impact there’s the massive waste – 86% of water bottles aren’t recycled -- and water bottling is also, ironically, a very water-intensive endeavor. The Pacific Institute tells us that it takes three liters of water to produce one liter of bottled water!
Alliance for Biking & Walking http://www.peoplepoweredmovement.org/
The Alliance for Biking & Walking, formerly known as Thunderhead Alliance, is the North American coalition of grassroots bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organizations. We unite advocacy leaders to help them become more effective by sharing best practices and innovations. We strengthen organizations through resource sharing and training opportunities. We help advocates create organizations in underserved communities. Alliance organizations are working together to transform communities into great places to bike and walk.
Note from Jean: I've grown weary over time about the occasional strident tone of Alex Jones and tend to agree with some aspects of the following take on him. Because of his generally aggressive tone, he does stir much rage - which can end up maintaining people in the lower end of the vibrational scale - and, indirectly, fosters much fear as Jane Bürgermeister (featured last September 10, 09 in a Project Camelot video) alleges ["designed as part of a programme to spread fear"] which is the elite's preferred means to disempower souls and maintain their now fast-fading dominance. I wouldn't go as far as to say he is formally in cahoot with the so-called "globalists" though. He has been a strong voice in exposing their deeds and plans but discernment and a good level of emotional detachment are certainly required as to most everything that comes from this source – and you have probably noticed that I now rarely include stuff coming from him personally - although I still occasionally include material posted on their Infowars site because of their informational value. This being said, I don't either fully agree with all of Jane's views and feels she may also be on a kind of vendetta against Alex because he refused to have her on his show. Still I feel it is useful to consider this topic and remain ever more aware of the fact that, in the end, it is our own sensibility (or 'shit detector" as some would say) that needs to be heightened and our own intuitive guidance that must be nurtured, deciphered and relied upon instead of ONLY outside source.
Is Alex Jones and Infowars Working For The Globalists?
by Jane Bürgermeister-- January 5, 2010
Alex Jones and Infowars have portrayed themselves as patriots and enemies of a global tyranny to be implemented under any New World Order using the UN, WHO and IMF as vehicles.
However, Infowars recent report on UN plans for gold coins strongly reinforces the notion that the website is actually trying to hide UN plans to move to a global currency - and a New World Order psych op website.
Paul Joseph Watson posted a report yesterday on Infowars saying that the recent announcement by the United Nations that it will begin to mint gold and silver bullion coins bearing the UN logo “is likely to be a hoax, muddying the waters of the very real move towards a global monetary system”.
Watson goes on to claim that the story is spread by FBI operatives, ignoring the fact that Infowars was among the first to put it out.
"UN to produce bullion coins as world currency ," was the headline of a story by Dwight Jones on December 31, 2009 posted on Infowars.
So what is Watson actually complaining about when Infowars was one of the first websites to put out the story of the UN's plans to produce bullion coins?
How come it is suddenly a hoax?
The original Dwight Jones story put out by Infowars was uncritical. It suggested the UN bullion coin was inevitable and even reasonable, that is to say, it served to condition people positively to the idea in a low key way.
However, others – including myself – began to ask questions such as where would the gold or even the license come from for the UN to be able to print silver and gold coins?
These critical reports have now come under fire from Watson and attacked as muddying the water
Watson now says there is no evidence that the UN wants to create a world currency.
“There is nothing on the UNCTAD website to verify the authenticity of the story,” Watson writes.
The fact is, the UN trade body, UNCTAD, basedf in Geneva close to WHO, has been calling for stable global exchange rates -- the back door to a UN global currency --- since March 2009 when the FT Deutschland reported on an UNCTAD study calling for stable exchange rates.
Also, the UNCTAD Trade and Development Report 2009, which can be downloaded from the UNCTAD website, clearly advocates a radical overhaul of the world's financial and monetary system and an agreement among the countries of the world to maintain stable exchange rates along the lines of the European monetary system.
But the European monetary system established in 1979 when some European countries linked their currencies to prevent large fluctuations relative to one another, ultimately led to the creation of the euro with its coins and bank notes, as Wikipedia reports.
ON page 127 of the UNCTAD Trade and Development Report 2009, you can read:
“The Bretton Woods system and the European Monetary System provide precedents for what could be an appropriate solution to determine exchange rates within a multilateral framework. In these systems, the implicit rule was that the exchange rate of the national currencies with the international currency would be determined by the purchasing power of the currency expressed in all other currencies.“
How long the UN currency remain gold or silver before it too is transformed into a paper, fiat currency is another question.
Infowars is not interested in exploring this issue or the way the UN is introducing a global currency through the back door as reported in UNCTAD’s own website contrary to Watson's claims.
Infowars is interested in putting out an uncritical report announcing UN bullion coins as a fait accompli – and if others notice the implications, Infowars attacks them, slurring them as FBI informanats, apparently more eager to defend the UN than the truth.
Why?
This report is just one piece of growing evidence that Jones is working for the NWO and his internet news operation is designed as part of a programme to spread fear.
More and more people are noticing that Alex Jones’s always focuses on a problem – but never on the solution.
Just one example.
Alex Jones gave a commentary at New Year about the need for Americans to live up to the ideal of the freemason Founding Father George Washington over Christmas – but Jones never mentions the efforts of the continental congress to restore the constitution, an effort much broader in scope and more important to rebuilding the USA than Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed Bill, which is given acres of space.
And what about the suggestion of moving money to community banks? No mention hardly of that on Infowars.
In spring 2009, Alex Jones was one of the most prominent scare-mongerers over the swine flu virus in the alternative media along with controlled opposition Bill Deagle and True Ott.
Jones had callers into his show talking of millions of infected people in Mexico. He told everyone he was disappearing to his farm if the pandemic virus ever appeared.
And he only reported on the dangers of the untested swine flu vaccination and the forced vaccination element in pandemic plans after the news had circulated far and wide on the US alternative media network thanks to the work of Dr Rebecca Carley and others like myself.
But we were never given a spot on his show. Our appearance was cancelled on spurious grounds.
Jones never mentioned that I have filed charges against Baxter or that they were being investigated by the police. The impression Jones gives is that the police and army are people’s biggest enemy. This is not true.
Jones call today for people to file petitions and lawsuits against proposals to implement full body scanners at airports looks great. But a closer look reveals that the real story concerning the Delta airplane bombing -- namely the overwhelming evidence elements in the US government conspired to destroy a plane -- has been pushed out for all the reports on Yemen and body scanners.
The latest episode of Jesse Ventura’s Conspiracy Theory on the global plot to murder millions through the vaccine was clearly designed to instill fear while giving as little useful information as possible – let alone any real solutions.
This is also true of Jones’s treatment of Climate Gate and the Copenhagen Treaty.
Christopher Monckton’s video clip posted on Youtube in October on the dangers in the Copenhagen Treaty was widely seen before Alex Jones picked up on the story.
The hacked emails became the major, indeed only item, for weeks on Jones website after the entire internet was buzzing with it.
Copenhagen was widely believed to have been a significant failure for the globalists and banksters’s plan to establish the UN system as a global form of government – but Jones perpetuates the view they scored a major success and are just “playing dead”.
The UN and WHO and IMF have been largely ignored by Jones, though it is becoming increasingly clear they are the key vehicles of control.
Jones also presents himself as a champion of 9/11 truth. But is he?
Alex Jones does not, for example, mention Dr Judy Wood and the evidence that directed energy weapons destroyed the twin towers on September 9/11, evidence submitted in a case that has made its way to the Supreme Court.
But it is not just what Jones leave out that is important - but also what he puts in to his shows.
Alex Jones promotes well known counterintelligence agents such as Dr Rima Laibow, wife of retired Major General Albert Stubblebine, head of a US psych op warfare department.
Even David de Rotschild is allowed air time.
He also gives space to less well known ones such as Nigel Farage of the UKIP, widely believed to be another member of the controlled opposition who gives big speeches in European Parliament while consistently blocking any effective action according to party members.
And what about Ron Paul?
Though a medical doctor, his only criticism of the swine flu vaccine campaign made to Russia Today was that the Big US Government could not deliver the vaccine fast enough.
How come Paul, another freemason, could not find a few words to say about the fact the vaccine was untested and toxic ?
Not that Rense is any better. Rense is to Alex Jones what Obama is to Bush. They are just the two sides of the same NWO coin.
They represent the false mainstream/alternative media paradigm.
They work for the same paymasters.
They are there to collect IP addresses, enable them to be put in data bases and matched with addresses and now too with GP coordinates folllowing the census, etc.
They are there to terrify, paralyze, humiliate and bully.
Just now there was a report on Infowars saying 70% of Americans were in favour of invading Yemen.
Who believes that?
But this so-called on line poll gives the impression a consensus has formed and that the invasion of Yemen is inevitable when no consensus has formed and an invasion is not inevitable.
In 2010, the time has come to move forward with constructive proposals for rebuilding the USA and Europe – and the time has come to remove obstacles to their implementation.
And Alex Jones has become an obstacle with his fear mongering and manipulation of information.
The USA is lucky to have people like Dr Rebecca Carley, Dr Robin Falkow and Dr Mercola, among many others, in the alternative media.
They are critical and informative while being constructive in their approach.
We need fresh news websites, fresh ideas, fresh avenues of communication, real confidence is needed to meet the challenges ahead.
We need a clear visions of what can be accomplished in the coming weeks and months.
Local Currencies: The Key to Economic Recovery (January 7, 2010) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16848
(...) Let’s be frank: without small business and the revitalization of local and regional economies, a real recovery cannot take place, and an unemployment rate that has terrorized the middle class with loss of jobs, incomes, savings, and health care cannot be overcome. What is the answer then? It’s one that Pearlstein and the Washington Post, being in the mainstream of economic commentary, dare not mention: it’s local currency systems that alone can fill the gap left by the collapse of public finance due to debt and the failure of the banking system to function at all levels of the economy and not just for the benefit of the super-rich global capitalists.If the federal government announced that it would begin to accept local currencies in payment of taxes, and state and local governments did the same, we would see an economic miracle that would astound the world.
Communities print their own currency to keep cash flowing http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-04-05-scrip_N.htm
A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money.Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are aiming to help consumers make ends meet and support struggling local businesses.The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency. Workers with dwindling wages are paying for groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts.Ed Collom, a University of Southern Maine sociologist who has studied local currencies, says they encourage people to buy locally. Merchants, hurting because customers have cut back on spending, benefit as consumers spend the local cash. CLIP
Another KEY solution that needs to be more widely known, understood and implemented are the...
Community Land Trusts http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/clts.html
A Community Land Trust (CLT) is a form of common land ownership with a charter based on the principles of sustainable and ecologically-sound stewardship and use. The land in a CLT is held in trust by a democratically-governed non-profit corporation. Through an inheritable and renewable long-term lease, the trust removes land from the speculative market and facilitates multiple uses such as affordable housing, village improvement, commercial space, agriculture, recreation, and open space preservation. Individual leaseholders own the buildings and other improvements on the land created by their labor and investment, but do not own the land itself. Resale agreements on the buildings ensure that the land value of a site is not included in future sales, but rather held in perpetuity on behalf of the regional community.The first community land trust was formed in 1967 in Albany, Georgia by Robert Swann and Slater King, seeking a way to achieve secure access to land for African American farmers. The movement has grown to include over 200 community land trusts throughout the US and is widely understood as the best model for developing permanently affordable homeownership opportunities in regions of escalating land prices. A new National Community Land Trust Association has formed to respond to the growing needs of its member organizations. CLIP
We, international delegates meeting in Cairo during the Gaza Freedom March 2009 in collective response to an initiative from the South African delegation, state:
In view of:
- Israel's ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the illegal occupation and siege of Gaza;
- the illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and settlements;
- the new Wall under construction by Egypt and the US which will tighten even further the siege of Gaza;
- the contempt for Palestinian democracy shown by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and others after the Palestinian elections of 2006;
- the war crimes committed by Israel during the invasion of Gaza one year ago;
- the continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within Israel;
- and the continuing exile of millions of Palestinian refugees;
- all of which oppressive acts are based ultimately on the Zionist ideology which underpins Israel;
- in the knowledge that our own governments have given Israel direct economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allowed it to behave with impunity;
- and mindful of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (2007)
We reaffirm our commitment to:
Palestinian Self-Determination
Ending the Occupation
Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine
The full Right of Return for Palestinian refugees
We therefore reaffirm our commitment to the United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to compel Israel to comply with international law.
To that end, we call for and wish to help initiate a global mass, democratic anti-apartheid movement to work in full consultation with Palestinian civil society to implement the Palestinian call for BDS.
Mindful of the many strong similarities between apartheid Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, we propose:
1. An international speaking tour in the first 6 months of 2010 by Palestinian and South African trade unionists and civil society activists, to be joined by trade unionists and activists committed to this programme within the countries toured, to take mass education on BDS directly to the trade union membership and wider public internationally;
2. Participation in the Israeli Apartheid Week in March 2010;
3. A systematic unified approach to the boycott of Israeli products, involving consumers, workers and their unions in the retail, warehousing, and transportation sectors;
4. Developing the Academic, Cultural and Sports boycott;
5. Campaigns to encourage divestment of trade union and other pension funds from companies directly implicated in the Occupation and/or the Israeli military industries;
6. Legal actions targeting the external recruitment of soldiers to serve in the Israeli military, and the prosecution of Israeli government war criminals; coordination of Citizen's Arrest Bureaux to identify, campaign and seek to prosecute Israeli war criminals; support for the Goldstone Report and the implementation of its recommendations;
7. Campaigns against charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
We appeal to organizations and individuals committed to this declaration to sign it and work with us to make it a reality. Please e-mail us at cairodec@gmail.com to sign on.
George Galloway deported from Egypt (8 January 2010) http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jan/08/george-galloway-deported-from-egypt
George Galloway was today deported from Egypt after plainclothes police officers refused him re-entry into the Gaza Strip and bundled him on to a plane for London. The Respect MP Galloway, declared "persona non grata" by the Egyptian foreign ministry, arrived back in the UK at around 1pm.He had spent the past month travelling from London to deliver 198 truckloads of aid and supplies to Gaza in a challenge to Israel's economic blockade of the territory. The supplies made it through to Rafah, but when Galloway and Ron McKay, his aide, arrived at the crossing from Gaza to Egypt, they were confronted by police officers.On arriving at Heathrow airport, Galloway told the al-Jazeera television channel: "It's always been a badge of honour to be deported by a tinpot dictator, and that's what happened this morning."Having crossed the border from Gaza into Egypt, my friend and I were bundled into a car ... 25 officers, accepting no dissuasion, drove us straight to the airport, basically forced us on to the plane."Galloway has in the past called for the overthrow of the Egyptian prime minister, Hosni Mubarak, accusing him of being complicit in Israel's Gaza offensive, which began at the end of 2008, and calling him a "criminal". He was also vocal in his criticism of Mubarak for the country's initial refusal to allow the convoy through the Rafah crossing on Tuesday, which prompted clashes in which an Egyptian border guard was killed.Zuber Hatia, a member of the convoy, said the Egyptian authorities could have been angered by a speech Galloway made to the Palestinian legislative council yesterday, in which he said Egypt deserved a leader like the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. CLIP
Time is as ever speeding up, and events are also moving on and destined to fulfill your expectations. There is a point that has been reached, when we may have to exercise our options to bring matters to a head. We would rather that changes are seen to be the result of your mass consciousness, which is bringing reality to your visions. Many more people are questioning the old ways that some still cling to, and are promoting ideas that will change them forever. Each of you can add your power by focusing your thoughts on what is for the good of all. Ascension will come to pass regardless of what paths you create, but it will be much more to your liking if you move with it in a harmonious way. Bear in mind that a section of your population still expect apocalyptic changes, and it is where their focus is centered. Be assured therefore that everyone’s contribution to the Light is of great value, and helping create a peaceful passage to the end of this cycle.
Although you have not been aware of much that happens behind the scenes, we know that you have sufficient evidence of moves that are in the right direction. We believe that you are noticing that more people are questioning the authorities and their policies, and will realize that is creating more energy for change. This approach causes a reappraisal of existing practices, and it is opening the eyes of those who have been oblivious as to how they have been used. The power of the dark forces very much relies on their ability to gain blind obedience from their servants. However, it is changing as the level of consciousness is rising and bringing the truth to many more people. You are all part of the means to an end. according to how you project your vision.
We have our role to play and it will not make any difference to us if changes are necessary. The fact remains that Ascension will proceed regardless of how difficult it is made, but we do not anticipate problems. All options have already been considered, and we are totally prepared for any major changes to our plan. For example, if we were authorized to speed up Disclosure, we are primed to carry out a mass landing. By this we do not mean an overwhelming show of our presence, but one where the result would be impossible to ignore or refute. Disclosure would then follow, as it could no longer be kept back from public knowledge. There is clearly a vast difference between the usual sighting of our ships, as against a flyover and landings that would follow. As we often inform you, we monitor your levels of consciousness and we can therefore gauge your likely reaction to our open contact.
Our own focus is upon the leaders of the various countries, and some of the smaller ones are far more receptive to our coming than the larger ones. Power is not something that the politicians or their institutions are prepared to give up. However, with the changes that will come, it will be re-assigned in such a way that there is more sharing and smaller units. Furthermore, you the public will have far more say in what is done in your name. With more spiritually aware souls at the helm, it will become easier to guide you through the final years in a peaceful and happy environment. Our input is course imperative and will ensure a speedy and acceptable conclusion. You and the Earth are to ascend, and our orders are to make sure it occurs exactly as planned.
Considering the vast nature of the changes that are lined up and ready to lift you up, it is wonderful that so many of you can see the necessity for them and how beneficial they will be. It is only fear or lack of faith that prevents more people from awakening to the importance of the times that you are in. Sometimes it is a lack of belief in the existence of the Creator, and because people cannot see the order and creative powers that is behind everything that exists. It you are looking for a God that has a human appearance you will not find one, as at the level God exists all is pure Light. The Universe is God, and all that is within it is part of God, therefore God is within you and you have no need to seek God outside of you. You are a God spark as is every other form of life, whether it is animated or otherwise.
The whole panoply of the Universe invites your attention, and once free of the lower vibrations you will travel wherever you please. Your Cosmic Self will move instantaneously from one location to another by the power of thought. Your evolution will continue under your own direction, but as always higher beings will be pleased to advise you if so required. You will be as a God in your own rights and the master of using your creative powers. Wherever you go you will find that life abounds, and if you desire such an experience it can take you to other Universes or parallel dimensions. Your future is exciting and fulfilling, and there is space without end that you can explore.
You will soon forget time as you now understand it, as you will move into the “Now” with no lines drawn between the past, present and future. Everything just “Is” and continually evolving, and although it may seem unlikely to you now, nothing ever remains inert. You can create and un-create as nothing is ever lost or destroyed, and only subject to change. In your present dimension you can detect changes much more easily, as matter of a lower vibration does not hold its form as well and for as long as it does in the higher dimensions. As you are beginning to realize, life as you will come to understand it will be vastly different and more fulfilling than it is now.
If your are pulled into earthly matters that are not for your best advancement, just imagine what lies ahead and be thankful that the Creator’s Plan for Man is so beautiful and rewarding. What are a few more years in duality against what you have been promised. This period is in fact most important to all souls, offering an opportunity to move out of this cycle for once and for all time. It is the golden chance to leave duality having wiped your karmic slate clean. There is no place like Earth at present, where so much help is available to everyone offering a way out that will fully restore your consciousness.
I am SaLuSa from Sirius and glowing with joy at the signs of Man reaching out to the Light, and finding within the heart the love that knows no limitations. The Golden Age is truly within your reach and deservedly so.
Dear Ones you ask do we ever tire in our work and the answer is “no certainly not” in a physical sense, as we do not have heavy bodies such as you carry. Ours are of a much lighter vibration and require little nourishment, and we can draw upon the energies around us, although we do have what you would call “light refreshments”. These are mainly in a liquid form, as we can maintain our bodies without the heavy foods you are used to having. We do not therefore experience hunger as you do, and replenish ourselves in a pleasurable way. Your bodies demand re-fuelling to keep your energy levels up, which is vital where you need physical strength and stamina. If you listen to your body you will know what is best for it, and this is why for example some have to eat meat whilst for others it is unnecessary. Generally speaking the higher your vibrations the more likely you are to eat less, and it will be the more wholesome foods that are fresh and unadulterated.
In the higher dimensions that are to be your new home, all of the restrictions that you presently experience will cease to exist. Aging will not be an issue at all and you will retain your young looks as in your prime, and it is not necessary to experience death. When you decide to move into a new experience that necessitates a different body, you will consciously leave your body and take a new one. Not through birth as you understand it, but a waking experience into a near adult body or one that is fully developed. In fact if it is necessary you can have two bodies and alternate between them. Life is simple and easy compared to your present one, and you have none of the personal concerns that involve you in the maintenance of your physical body. You will select your hairstyle or clothes by the power of your thought, and know that your body will keep clean and pure because of its high vibration.
Again we come back to those who cling to Earth and fear changes, and we ask if they can at least keep an open mind about them? Regardless as to how it appears on the outside, what is taking place is a magnificent cleansing necessary to allow the new to manifest. What no longer serves you will be removed, and in its place will come the beginnings of the new Earth. Would you seriously prefer to remain in the cycle of duality, when the opportunity to ascend is on offer to everyone? Perhaps only your Higher Self can truly answer that one, as very few souls are fully aware of their life plan. However, what you set your sights upon is where your energy is focused, and that will be your creation. Now more than ever, your power to create is increasing and you need to sure of what it is that you desire.
We are working hard to bring certain events forward, that will have a bearing on how long it will be before Disclosure is declared. The pressure is on the authorities to go ahead without delay, and that day is coming ever closer. Following it the whole process of Ascension will eventually be made known, and it will help those souls who cannot make up their minds as to what to do. For some, no amount of information will make any difference but that indicates that they are not ready to leave the 3rd. dimensional experience. It is in no way indicates a lack of effort, as each soul moves at its own pace. We encourage you all to make your choice to be part of Ascension, and that is a much as we can do. In the final reckoning it is your freewill that will determine how you proceed from thereon.
Let no one influence your thinking, not even ours unless you are certain as to where your future lies. If in doubt about anything you come across that you are not sure about, do not cast it aside but keep it in the background until you are absolutely sure about discarding it. You will find that things will often just drop into place where previously they did not fit in with your understanding. Be flexible and not rigid in your beliefs, and in this way nothing will pass you by that may have been of value to you. Life is continually one of re-assessing your position, and you have a wealth of experience behind you from all previous lives. What else Dear Ones is your measure of what you believe in and feel is for your greatest good.
As each one of you grow more into the Light, so you are helping raise the vibrations upon Earth. With that you are also lifting up every other soul around you, as the mass consciousness grows exponentially. We see it at the level where it is beyond being affected by the dark energies. It will continue to expand and at a future point will reach critical mass, and it will be the means by which upliftment will take place. It is of course ongoing, and the commencement of yet another cycle that will carry you ever higher in the dimensions of Light. Life is infinite and you will soon be free to experience it as you choose. What a wonderfully loving Creator we have that opens all of creation to us.
The Earth has been your permanent home to accommodate you through the cycles of duality, and served you well. Like you Mother Gaia is now gathering herself for the final thrust that will carry her into the higher realms. Together you have traveled a long journey and got to know each other well. It is fitting that you ascend in that way, and that your association still goes on. The Earth already has a reputation for its past beauty, and has been your Garden of Eden. Somewhere deep in your memory are visions of that time, which shall return in their full glory to your great delight and joy. Perfect harmony, and colors of great variety will heighten your happiness, as you rest in a dimension that fulfils your idea of Heaven.
I am SaLuSa from Sirius and will confirm that the Galactic Federation has never been more ready, to move into the final phase of the path to Ascension. You will soon share our vision of the exciting times that are to lift you out of the chaos that still affects you. The dark Ones will still try to invade your peaceful disposition and distract you from the Light. However, you are now much stronger than you ever were, and should be able to easily prevent their attempts to unsettle you. Believe in your power and mental capabilities to protect yourself, and you will be beyond their reach. You are bathed in Love and Light and victory in the fight between the Light and dark is already yours, and you may complete your journey in full confidence.
Thank you SaLuSa
Mike Quinsey
11.
From: Ethan G. (livetrii@yahoo.com)
Date: 4 Jan 2010
Subject: Avatar eco movie - A message & movement to save Planet Earth
Dear Jean,
Thank you for the inspiration & information that you consistently provide. I would very much appreciate you sharing this message of hope, change and action with your readers. It is a New Year and decade ... let's also make it the beginning of a new era to reclaim our world!
In Solidarity,
Ethan G.
---
Dear all earth-based activists for peace & transformational liberation,
If you have not seen the new Avatar film yet, I encourage you to go check it out! It has its weaknesses, but overall it also has a very positive + deep environmental justice message that could help us change the world...
Most inspirationally, Avatar shows indigenous people winning their struggle to liberate & save their sacred homeland from the violent conquest of militaristic greedy humans! If you are interested in how this film could be used in real life to save OUR planet, please keep reading the message below.
Forwarded message
I believe that Avatar is an amazing teachable moment for Earth activism.
But more importantly -- it could be an opportunity for us to organize a groundswell of critically needed support for indigenous environmental movements in the Americas.
Avatar has already grossed over $1 billion ... What if we could raise even 1% of that amount to support grassroots non-profit indigenous environmental causes?
Better yet -- What if we could convince the makers of Avatar -- James Cameron etc. -- to donate a meaningful portion of their box office receipts to indigenous environmental groups?
Please join the group! Our goal is to gain 5,000 members -- THIS WEEK -- who are all committed to raising $5 million for non-profit indigenous environmental and cultural protection groups like the Sacred Land Film Project, Indigenous Environmental Network, Seventh Generation Fund, and Cultural Survival. After that, I believe we will be an unstoppable force to help indigenous peoples save planet Earth!! Let's show all Avatar fans that we can make a real difference to save OUR planet ... and convince the creators of Avatar that they also need to put their money into positive action!!
DESCRIPTION OF THE CAUSE: Avatar is breaking records in its popularity, already earning over $1 billion in box office sales. Avatar has a positive environmental message, but can it do more by coming to the aid of Earth's indigenous eco-saviors?
The Avatar movie is a beautiful, brilliant fictional story about another planet where the native population wins victory to save their homeland from environmental destruction by greedy humans. But here on planet Earth, indigenous peoples are also struggling to save their ancestral lands from destruction by corporate exploitation and invading cultures. They need more help!
Let's encourage James Cameron, 20th Century Fox, and the actors, actresses and filmmakers who created Avatar to continue spreading their positive message of environmental justice. We call upon them to donate a meaningful portion of Avatar's proceeds to grassroots non-profit indigenous environmental groups in the Americas who benefit all humanity with their hard work to protect planet Earth!
We want to support groups such as:
Sacred Land Film Project
Indigenous Environmental Network
Seventh Generation Fund
Cultural Survival
We can do it! Let's start by gaining 5,000 members of this Facebook group who are all committed to raising $5 million for these indigenous leaders. Let's create the unstoppable momentum of a movement that all Avatar fans, and those who worked to create it, will be inspired to support and join!
---
Related video and articles:
Michael Jackson - Earth Song (HQ) (WideScreen) Note from Jean: If you have been touched, moved, changed by the spiritual en environmental message of Avatar, you may want to watch again this powerful video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEy07Dsqb20
Or see also Earth song (with lyrics)
Avatar breaks billion dollar barrier (January 06, 2010) http://tvnz.co.nz/entertainment-news/avatar-breaks-billion-dollar-barrier-3324774
Avatar has become the fastest film ever to make a billion dollars at the box office. The 3-D sci-fi movie - which uses revolutionary CGI technology and cost $US300 million to make - has broken all previous industry records taking the huge sum worldwide in just 17 days.The story of a disabled marine sent to a planet of blue aliens by director James Cameron - whose last film was the epic Titanic - raked in $US350 million in the US alone, and made another $US670 million dollars around the globe.Distribution executive Bert Livingston said: "It's like a freight train - it just keeps on going. Everybody has to see Avatar once."The movie, distributed by 20th Century Fox, is already the fourth-highest grossing film ever made, and only Titanic, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest have taken more.Chad Hartigan, a box office analyst, said: "It was expected to do well but not this well. To have that already in 17 days is ridiculous. It's holding so well from week to week, at this point the sky seems to be the limit." More related news through this LINK
The Most Neo-Con Movie Ever Made (12.23.09) DON'T READ THIS IS YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE YET! http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/23/avatar-neo-con-military-opinions-contributors-ann-marlowe.html?feed=rss_opinions
Avatar's deeply conservative, pro-American message. -- James Cameron's new sci-fi film Avatar is exhilarating fun in the darkest days at the end of a depressing year, but it also says quite a lot, in an inchoate, American way, about the cultural moment. You should see it especially if you are "right of center" or conservative. Forget the sneering reviews--this is the most neo-con movie of 2009, or perhaps ever, because it illustrates, rather than argues, the point we neo-cons made in Iraq: that American blood is not worth more than the blood of others, and that others' freedom is not worth less than American freedom.How universal are the values we Americans cherish? Avatar says they are completely universal--extending to another planet called Pandora. What is the responsibility of an American and how far does it reach? Avatar says, again, across the universe. Are we all brothers and sisters under the skin? Avatar answers yes, in the most concrete way, when protagonist Jake Sully decides to enter his Na'vi body permanently and stay on Pandora rather than returning to Earth. (...) The right-wing attacks on Avatar show a frightening tone-deafness to what most Americans find inspiring, cool or exciting--the same tone-deafness expressed by the tired visuals of the McCain campaign and Web site and the tired dogmas that substitute for a Republican vision. We on the right have lost sight of the fact that politics is as emotional as intellectual. The theater I saw the movie at for the second time was sold out at 10:30 p.m. on a freezing Tuesday night, at $16.50 a pop, because Avatar shows a man standing up for what is right, a quintessential American act, in a context of beauty and wonder. Conservatives need to take the measure of this movie’s appeal, not deny it.
Is AVATAR a virtual extraterrestrial disclosure and exopolitical experience? Will it change Obama? by Alfred Lambremont Webre (January 7, 2010) http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2912-Seattle-Exopolitics-Examiner~y2010m1d7-Is-AVATAR-a-virtual-extraterrestrial-disclosure-and-exopolitical-experience-Will-it-change-Obama AVATAR, the 3-D fusion camera system film by Canadian Oscar winning director and writer James Cameron now nominated for 4 Golden Globe awards, is a virtual experience of extraterrestrial disclosure and the harsh exopolitical reality of Earth’s military-industrial complex and permanent war economy ongoing secret colonization and exploitation of our solar system and beyond. AVATAR is not only a future morality play about the destruction of a spiritually-advanced animist race of extraterrestrials for mining rights, corporate greed and the survival of a denuded Earth in a distant future. It is all of these, and more. AVATAR offers you the viewer a close-to-virtual experience of a case study of what may be occurring right now in our own solar system as the black budget war-mentality of Earth’s expands it dualistic, exploitative and militaristic policies into outer space behind a screen of official secrecy and constitutional rogue. CLIP
12.
Forwarded by "David" (david-parsons@blueyonder.co.uk)
Why I fired my Secretary
Yesterday was my birthday
And I didn't feel very well
Waking up on that morning.
I went downstairs for breakfast
Hoping my wife would be pleasant and say,
'Happy Birthday!',
And possibly have a small present for me.
As it turned out,
She barely said good morning,
Let alone
' Happy Birthday.'
I thought...
Well, that's marriage for you,
But the kids...
They will remember.
My kids came bounding down stairs to breakfast
And didn't say a word.
So when I left for the office,
I felt pretty low
And somewhat despondent.
As I walked into my office,
My secretary Jane said,
'Good Morning Boss,
And by the way
Happy Birthday ! '
It felt a little better
That at least someone had remembered.
I worked until one o'clock ,
When Jane knocked on my door
And said, 'You know,
It's such a beautiful day outside, And it is your Birthday,
What do you say we go out to lunch,
Just you and me.'
I said, 'Thanks, Jane,
that's the greatest thing
I've heard all day.
Let's go !'
We went to lunch.
But we didn't go
Where we normally would go.
She chose instead at a quiet bistro
With a private table.
We had two martinis each
And I enjoyed the meal tremendously.
On the way back to the office,
Jane said, 'You know,
It's such a beautiful day....
We don't need to go straight back to the office,
Do We ?'
I responded,
'I guess not.
What do you have in mind ?'
She said,
'Let's drop by my apartment,
it's just around the corner.'
After arriving at her apartment,
Jane turned to me and said,
' Boss, if you don't mind,
I'm going to step into the bedroom
For just a moment.
I'll be right back.'
'Ok.' I nervously replied.
She went into the bedroom and,
After a couple of minutes,
She came out
Carrying a huge birthday cake ...
Followed
By my wife,
My kids,
And dozens of my friends
And co-workers,
All singing 'Happy Birthday'.
And I just sat there...
On the couch..
Naked.
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