Meditation Focus #150

Shifting to Enlightened Leadership


Hello!

What follows is the 150th Meditation Focus suggested for the next 3 (THREE) weeks beginning Sunday, April 16, 2006.

SHIFTING TO ENLIGHTENED LEADERSHIP

1. Summary
2. Meditation times
3. More information related to this Meditation Focus

IMPORTANT: Once again, please note that because the Daylight Saving Time has recently ended in North America, Europe and elsewhere, your local time for this 30 minute globally synchronized meditation has also changed accordingly. For instance, it now begins at noon instead of 11:00 hr on the East Coast in North American, and it begins at 18:00 hr in Europe instead of 17:00 hr. If you are unsure of your local time, please go at http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=16&month=04&year=2006&hour=16&min=0&sec=0&p1=0 and find a closeby city listed there.

Please note also that on April 28, we will celebrate the 6th anniversary following the issuance of the first Meditation Focus on April 28, 2000. Including all the various special Meditation Focuses issued so far, this one brings at 177 the total number of Meditation Focuses prepared and networked to nearly 5000 people.

ONCE AGAIN, THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE IN PASSING THIS ON TO OTHERS


Also of relevance...

George The Menace #1: "Messianic" Bush Wants to Go Nucular! (April 14, 2006)
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2006/GeorgeTheMenace1.htm

The Empire of Darkness Series #31: Bush/Cheney: War Criminals! (April 6, 2006)
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2006/EmpireDarkness31.htm

Countdown to Global Love Day on May 1, 2006
http://www.thelovefoundation.com
This day is our collective and global symbol of a new world that is inclusive, accepting, diverse, creative and fully capable of harmonizing with one another and all life.



1) SUMMARY

As the world totters on the edge of yet another military adventure undertaken by the brazenly aggressive American leadership, drunk on the power of their vast arsenal of weapons of mass terror, and as multiple recent scientific studies warn us of the growing probability of catastrophic consequences to global warming and to the wholesale destruction of the vital web of Life sustaining us all, it is becoming starkly clear that the current leadership, chiefly in the United States, but also in numerous other countries around the globe, needs to be changed to more enlightened leaders who will care less of the profit of their campaign contributors and more of the well-being of the billions of human beings and all the other sentient beings inhabiting this living planet.

The sheer madness of these leaders who are willing to resort to nuclear weapons to ensure their dominance and who continue to deny the genocidal consequences of their willingness to use depleted uranium on the battlefields of four recent wars they initiated, the lethality of which has been estimated to be the atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs, compounded with the fact that they have themselves orchestrated the infamous 9-11 attacks, according to the massive evidence collected thus far and as now openly discussed on national U.S. television by celebrities such as actor Charlie Sheen, makes it a supreme duty for all men and women of goodwill to vigorously manifest their desire for the eviction of these fraudulently elected criminals from their seats of power, and for the installment of untainted, incorruptible leaders who will help set the world onto a sustainable path of peaceful, harmonious cooperation for the benefit of all.

Please dedicate your prayers and meditations, as guided by Spirit, in the coming three weeks, and especially in synchronous attunement at the usual time this Sunday and the following two Sundays to contribute in instilling in the hearts of all human beings the courage to confront the dangerous wolves in sheep's clothing who have committed so many atrocities, and to demand their removal from office by legal means and the accession of a new breed of enlightened leaders to the positions of highest responsibilities. Let us all envision a world freed from the dark influence of such devious minds and being quickly regenerated through compassion, generosity and wise stewardship to its former state of lush splendor, for the Highest Good of All.

This whole Meditation Focus has been archived for your convenience at
http://www.aei.ca/~cep/MeditationFocus150.htm



2. MEDITATION TIMES

i) Global Meditation Day: Sunday at 16:00 Universal Time (GMT) or at noon local time. Suggested duration: 30 minutes. Please dedicate the last few minutes of your Sunday meditation to the healing of the Earth as a whole. See the Earth as healthy and vibrant with life, and experience the healing of all relations as we awaken globally to the sacredness of all Life and to our underlying unity with All That Is.

ii) Golden Moment of At-Onement: Daily, at the top of any hour, or whenever it better suits you.

These times below correspond to 16:00 Universal Time/GMT - as of April 16, 2006:

Honolulu 6:00 AM -- Anchorage * 8:00 AM -- Los Angeles * 9:00 AM -- Mexico City, San Salvador & Denver * 10:00 AM -- Houston * & Chicago * 11:00 AM -- Santo Domingo, La Paz, Caracas, New York *, Toronto *. Montreal *, Asuncion & Santiago 12:00 AM -- Halifax *, Rio de Janeiro & Montevideo 1:00 PM -- Reykjavik & Casablanca 4 PM -- Lagos, Algiers, London *, Dublin * & Lisbon * 5:00 PM -- Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Geneva *, Rome *, Berlin *, Paris * & Madrid * 6:00 PM -- Ankara *, Athens *, Helsinki * & Istanbul * & Nairobi 7:00 PM -- Baghdad *, Moscow * 8:00 PM -- Tehran * 8:30 PM -- Islamabad 9:00 PM -- Calcutta & New Delhi 9:30 PM -- Dhaka 10:00 PM -- Rangoon 10:30 PM -- Hanoi, Bangkok & Jakarta 11:00 PM -- Hong Kong, Perth, Beijing & Kuala Lumpur +12:00 PM -- Seoul & Tokyo +1:00 AM -- Brisbane, Canberra & Melbourne +2:00 AM -- Wellington +4:00 AM

You may also check at http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=16&month=04&year=2006&hour=16&min=0&sec=0&p1=0 to find your corresponding local time if a nearby city is not listed above.



3. MORE INFORMATION RELATED TO THIS MEDITATION FOCUS

This complement of information may help you to better understand the various aspects pertaining to the summary description of the subject of this Meditation Focus. It is recommended to view this information from a positive perspective, and not allow the details to tinge the positive vision we wish to hold in meditation. Since what we focus on grows, the more positive our mind-set, the more successful we will be in manifesting a vision of peace and healing. This complementary information is provided so that a greater knowledge of what needs healing and peace-nurturing vibrations may assist us to have an in-depth understanding of what is at stake and thus achieve a greater collective effectiveness.


CONTENTS

1. A Defiant Sheen Challenges Official 9/11 Fable on National TV
2. Drumbeat of war is drowning out wiser counsels
3. Baghdad Morgue Overflowing
4. Daily Heads roll at Veterans Administration - Mushrooming depleted uranium (DU) scandal blamed
5. Stark warning over climate change


See also:

Bush Administration Planning Possible Major Air Attack By Amy Goodman - Democracy Now! Rush Transcript of this radio interview with Seymour Hersh (12 April 2006)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041406O.shtml
This is not wild speculation. It's simply a fact that the planning has gone beyond the contingency stage, and it's gone into what they call the operational stage, sort of an increment higher. And it's very serious planning, of course. And it's all being directed at the wish of the President of the United States. (...) What's amazing, Amy, about this is this, and what always surprises me about my country is, here we have a president that doesn't talk to people he disagrees with. And anybody who's been around little boys, big boys, knows that when they get out of control, you grab them. If you're a nursery school teacher, you grab the little four-year-olds by the scruff of the neck, and you pull them together, and you say, 'You two guys, shake hands and make up, and go play in the sandbox.' Bush doesn't talk to people he's mad at. He doesn't talk to the North Koreans. He didn't talk to the insurgency. When the history is done, there were incredible efforts by the insurgency leaders in the summer of 2003. I'm talking about the Iraqi insurgency, the former Sunni generals and Sunni and Baathist leaders who were happy to see Saddam go, but did not want America there. They wanted to talk to us. Bush wouldn't. Whether it got to Bush, I don't know, it got in to four stars. Nobody wanted to talk to them. He doesn't talk to the president of Syria; in fact, specifically rejects overtures from al-Asad to us. And he doesn't talk to the Iranians. There's been no bilateral communication at all. Iran has come hat-in-hand to us. A former National Security Council adviser who worked in the White House, Flynt Leverett, an ex-C.I.A. analyst who's now working at Brookings, wrote a piece a month or so ago, maybe six weeks ago, in the New York Times, describing specific offers by the Iranians to come and 'let's deal.' Let's deal on all issues. I'm even told they were willing to talk about recognizing Israel. And the White House doesn't talk. And it's not that he doesn't talk, it's that nobody pressures him to talk. There's no pressure from the media, no pressure from Congress. Here's a president who won't talk to people he's walking us into a confrontation with. CLIP

Reporter Whose Scoops Give the Bush Administration Sleepless Nights (14 April 2006)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1753799,00.html
"I feel like I did in the Vietnam days - I hate to pay taxes just so they can go and bomb more people." A generation ago aspiring journalists looked up to the Watergate team of Woodward and Bernstein as their idols. But times have changed. One half of the Washington Post duo, Carl Bernstein, has moved into academia, while Bob Woodward has grown rich and part of the Washington establishment. His books on the Bush administration have leant heavily on interviews granted by the president and his top aides. Far from shaking the administration, they were advertised as recommended reading by the Bush re-election campaign. The only investigative journalist from that era who is still giving the administration sleepless nights is Seymour Hersh, whose scoops in the New Yorker have become a centrepiece in the debate over the US "global war on terror". This week's extraordinary report alleging that George Bush had not only made up his mind to topple the Iranian government, but was also toying with the idea of doing it with a tactical nuclear weapon, was a telling example of his influence. If any other journalist had produced the story, it would almost certainly have been laughed off. Because Hersh wrote it, it was front-page news around the world, notwithstanding Mr Bush's insistence it was all "wild speculation". The White House stopped short of denying the story, saying only that the Pentagon was conducting "normal military contingency planning". The problem for the president is that the man known in Washington as Sy has become an institution with more credibility than the administrations that come and go in this fickle city. CLIP

Britain took part in mock Iran invasion (April 15, 2006)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1754307,00.html
Pentagon planned for Tehran conflict with war game involving UK troops 15 Apr 2006 British officers took part in a US war game aimed at preparing for a possible invasion of Iran, despite repeated claims by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, that a military strike against Iran is inconceivable. The war game, codenamed Hotspur 2004, took place at the US base of Fort Belvoir in Virginia in July 2004. Hotspur took place at a time of accelerated US planning after the fall of Baghdad for a possible conflict with Iran. (...) The disclosure of Britain's participation came in the week in which the Iranian crisis intensified, with a US report that the White House was contemplating a tactical nuclear strike and Tehran defying the United Nations security council. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who sparked outrage in the US, Europe and Israel last year by calling for Israel to be wiped off the face of the Earth, created more alarm yesterday. He told a conference in Tehran in support of the Palestinians: "Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation. The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

Q&A: Iran's nuclear programme (April 13, 2006)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1753223,00.html
As Iran announces it can now manufacture enriched uranium, Simon Jeffery looks at the international fallout of the country's nuclear aspirations

All Guardian articles on Iran
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/0,,889981,00.html

Calculating the Risk of War in Iran
http://tinyurl.com/8yg5t
In the past weeks media reports have speculated that Washington is ‘thinking the unthinkable,’ namely, an aggressive, pre-emptive nuclear bombardment of Iran, by either the United States or Israel, to destroy or render useless the deep underground Iranian nuclear facilities.

Quarter of Species Gone by 2050, Study Predicts (11 April 2006 )
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/041206EA.shtml
"Global warming will result in catastrophic species loss," scientist says.



1.

From: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2006/150406defiantsheen.htm

A Defiant Sheen Challenges Official 9/11 Fable on National TV

Dares Millions of Viewers to "Do [their] own research"

April 15 2006

Actor Charlie Sheen made history when he first questioned the official story of 9/11, calling it the "biggest conspiracy theory of them all." Sheen's comments sent shockwaves across the alternative media and have been one of the biggest stories on the internet for weeks. The story also garnered prime time coverage by major news outlets including CNN, FOX News, and hundreds of newspapers worldwide.

Following his brave step into the spotlight over his 9/11 questions and the ensuing backlash of attacks and hit pieces, Sheen issued an email statement to the media demanding that he be challenged on the facts instead of junior high name-calling. Not one single mainstream media outlet has had the nerve to take Sheen up on his challenge.

Only a few days after Sheen's story broke in the mainstream press, sources within FOX News and CNN told Alex Jones off-the-record that there was a concerted effort from their companies' management to "kill" the Sheen story and to end any favorable coverage of the 9/11 Truth Movement. Producers were given this dictate despite the record high ratings and positive audience feedback that was received from coverage of the Sheen 9/11 story.

On Friday, April 14th on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live talk show, Sheen once again brought forward his questions about the official story to tens of millions of Americans. When asked by host Jimmy Kimmel about the statements he made on The Alex Jones radio show, Sheen succinctly remarked, "I just had questions, I had a lot of questions."

He went further, decrying the media's treatment of his statements, noting that "[the mainstream media] didn't really take a look at any of the stuff I was asking them to look at, any of the evidence or any of the stuff that generated those questions..." instead they spun it into the story of whether or not he was "qualified" to question the government.

"I felt the only real validation that I needed was being a tax paying citizen that loves my country," Sheen expressed to a powerful round of applause from the studio audience. Sheen continued, "What happed to the time in this country when we were entitled, when we had a constitutional and a God-given right to be curious about things that didn't make sense."

When asked by Kimmel what had brought him to pose his questions about the official story, Sheen replied, "I've done a lot of research," then referred to the growing number of high-profile individuals who have already bravely stepped forward to ask questions about 9/11, stating "...its not just me, its the people that have come before me - the experts and the engineers, the physicists and the scientists and the scholars, that raised a lot of these things and I took a look at their research and said yeah, it doesn't add up, a lot of it doesn't add up, hence these questions."

Before Kimmel moved the discussion to another topic, Sheen was careful to remind the audience, "There are two areas: Building 7 and the five frames from the Pentagon. Don't listen to me, do your own research."

Following the broadcast of the Jimmy Kimmel Live show, Alex Jones spoke with Sheen about his views concerning the interview. Sheen made the following statement:

"This is a landmark moment in the 9/11 Truth Movement. We have fired a flaming arrow into the heart of the myopic propaganda posing as the irrefutable official story. Come one, come all, the floodgates have opened! Reveal your patriotism."

In response Alex Jones stated, "In my 12 years of broadcast, I have broken hundreds of stories that have gained national attention, but none have captured the imagination of the people like Charlie Sheen's statements on 9/11. Universally people recognize that his courageous stand has smashed the floodgates and the tide has now turned. The 9/11 Truth Movement saw its birth over four and a half years ago and it witnessed an unprecedented infusion when Charlie Sheen spoke out. "

"The bottom line is that people resonate with Charlie Sheen's courage. The average man or woman understands that Sheen is taking a risk by saying aloud what they have only thought about in secret: 9/11 was an inside job and the foundational event for the police state growing in America and the pretext for the ongoing wars for global empire."



2.

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1754896,00.html

Drumbeat of war is drowning out wiser counsels

Hugh Barnes - April 16, 2006

The neo-con regimes in Washington and Tehran are on collision course after last week's announcement by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that his country has 'joined the nuclear club'.

Being able to enrich uranium to a low level of 3.5 per cent is a significant breakthrough for the Islamic Republic, but it still leaves the mullahs a long way from the 93 per cent-plus needed to make a bomb. In the United States, however, the doom-sayers and war-mongers - who often overlap - reacted with a hardening of rhetoric. The fundamentalists on both sides are in danger of talking themselves into a war.

The rising drumbeat of warrior journalism has almost created the illusion that a US military attack on Iran is inevitable. Writing in the New Yorker last week, Seymour Hersh even quoted a former Pentagon official as saying that defence chiefs have considered targeting Iran with nuclear weapons to destroy underground research sites. Few believe the US would be reckless enough to use such weapons. Not only would it produce large amounts of radiation, killing thousands of civilians, but after Iraq the political implications of launching a nuclear attack on a Muslim country are unthinkable.

Some kind of attack is possible, but it is neither imminent nor inevitable. In the meantime, the US administration should reflect on the words of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who warned that any military strike on Iran would spark a 'dangerous explosive blaze' in the Middle East.

US military action would have two aims: first, to damage Iran's nuclear-related sites and, second, to send a message that America is willing to take pre-emptive action not only to prevent WMD proliferation but also to stop Iran supporting terrorism.

This strategy could well backfire - and not simply because the UN will almost certainly decline to give it political or moral legitimacy. Even with conventional weapons, any attack on the reactor at Bushehr would be catastrophic.

Iran might respond to 'unjustified' US aggression in a number of other ways that would harm regional peace and security. It could, for example, seek to prevent the supply of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, but most worrying of all, Ahmadinejad could further destabilise the south of Iraq by inciting Shia militias against coalition troops and the Sunni insurgency. The likely outcome would be civil war.

Moreover, even a successful US military campaign would set back Iran's research programme only by five years or so. In the meantime, the logical step for Iran would be to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and expel UN inspectors altogether.

Some neo-cons in the US believe that a military air assault would cause the people of Iran to rise up against their leaders. In fact, every analysis suggests that a threat of military action would only rally Iranians behind their undemocratic government.

The strategic thinking of the regime has been quite simple: the US invaded Iraq because Iraq did not have nuclear weapons; the US has not invaded North Korea because North Korea has nuclear weapons.

Instead of launching a premature military adventure, the US could simply acknowledge that Iran has security concerns - Pakistan, India and Israel all are nuclear-armed. As a first step, President Bush should endorse the idea of creating a regional security organisation in the Middle East, which would include Iran. It is likely that a more secure Iran would create better conditions for a pro-Western, peaceful, democratic movement inside the country. And then the neo-cons in Washington might even see their dream of regime change in Tehran become a reality.

· Hugh Barnes is the director of the Foreign Policy Centre's democracy and conflict programme.



3.

From: http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000382.php#more

Also from: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041506B.shtml

Baghdad Morgue Overflowing Daily

By Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed

Inter Press Service

14 April 2006

Baghdad - As sectarian killings continue to rise in Iraq, the central morgue in Baghdad is unable to keep up with the daily influx of bodies.

The morgue is receiving a minimum of 60 bodies a day and sometimes more than 100, a morgue employee told IPS on condition of anonymity.

"The average is probably over 85," said the employee on the morning of April 12, as scores of family members waited outside the building to see if their loved ones were among the dead.

The family of a man named Ashraf who had been taken away by the Iraqi police Feb. 16 anxiously searched through digital photographs inside the morgue. He then found what he was looking for.

"His two sons were killed when Ashraf was taken," said his uncle, 50-year-old Aziz. "Ashraf was a bricklayer who was simply trying to do his job, and now we see what has become of him in our new democracy."

Aziz found that the body of Ashraf was brought to the morgue Feb. 18 by the Iraqi police two days after he was abducted. The photographs of the body showed gunshot wounds in the head and bludgeon marks across the face. Both arms were apparently broken, and so many holes had been drilled into his chest that it appeared shredded..

A report Oct. 29, 2004 in the British medical journal The Lancet had said that "by conservative assumptions, we think about 100,000 excess deaths or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq."

In an update, Les Roberts, lead author of the report said Feb. 8 this year that there may have been 300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths since the invasion.

Such findings seem in line with information IPS obtained at the Baghdad morgue.

Morgue official said bodies unclaimed after 15 days are transferred to the cemetery administration to be catalogued, and then taken for burial at a cemetery in Najaf. As he spoke, three Iraqi police pick-up trucks loaded with about 10 bodies each arrived at the morgue.

At the cemetery administration, an official told IPS: "From February 1 to March 31, we've logged and buried 2,576 bodies from Baghdad."

Requests by IPS to meet with administration officials at the Baghdad morgue were turned down for "security reasons."

Several surveys have pointed to large numbers of civilian deaths as a result of the U.S.-led occupation.

Iraqiyun, a humanitarian group affiliated with the political party of interim president Ghazi al-Yawir reported Jul. 12 last year that there had been 128,000 violent deaths since the invasion. The group said it had only counted deaths confirmed by relatives, and that it had omitted the large numbers of people who simply disappeared without trace..

Another group, the People's Kifah, involved hundreds of academics and volunteers in a survey conducted in coordination with "grave-diggers across Iraq." The group said it also "obtained information from hospitals and spoke to thousands of witnesses who saw incidents in which Iraqi civilians were killed by U.S. fire."

The project was abandoned after one of the researchers was captured by Kurdish militiamen and handed over to U.S. forces. He was never seen again. But in less than two months' work, the group documented about 37,000 violent civilian deaths up to October 2003.

The Baghdad central morgue alone accounts for roughly 30,000 bodies annually. That is besides the large number of bodies taken to morgues in cities such as Basra, Mosul, Ramadi, Kirkuk, Irbil, Najaf and Karbala.

---

See also:

Learning to Count: The Dead in Iraq (April 13, 2006)
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/newscommentary/000381.php
"I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis." - George W. Bush, December 12, 2005, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Does it count?How many Iraqis have died as the result of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of their country remains an unresolved question in the anti-war movement. It is a question the pro-war camp avoids. Yet what more important question is there?The above quote made by the "compassionate conservative" shows a disturbing trend in the corporate media and amongst the spokespersons of the current powers that be, to camouflage the true cost of the illegal occupation of Iraq - the cost in blood paid by Iraqis. It is a trend that ensures that the enormity of the atrocity goes unnoticed. Mr. Bush has cited a figure which is obviously taken from the popular anti-war web site Iraq Body Count (IBC), which proudly refers to its work on its home page as "The worldwide update of reported civilian deaths in the Iraq war and occupation." This project estimates a minimum and maximum death count, which as of April 12 had the minimum number of Iraqi dead at 34,030 and the maximum at 38,164. We shall provide a brief description of their biased and flawed methodology after looking at the true level of casualties in Iraq. We begin with a more accurate number provided by the British medical journal The Lancet on October 29, 2004. The published results of their survey "Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey" stated, "Making conservative assumptions, we think about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths." The report also added that "Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," and that "Eighty-four percent of the deaths were reported to be caused by the actions of Coalition forces." CLIP

Do Iraqi Civilian Casualties Matter? (February 8, 2006)
http://www.alternet.org/story/31508/
The often-disputed total number of casualties are significant because they may add up to violations of the Geneva Convention. (...) Most disturbing and certain about the results, is that over 80 percent of violent deaths were caused by U.S. forces and that most of the people they killed were women and children. None of the deaths we recorded involved intentional wrongdoing on the part of individual soldiers, instead being mostly from artillery and aerial weaponry. When I presented these results to about thirty Pentagon employees last fall, one came up to me afterwards and said, "We have dropped about 50,000 bombs, mostly on insurgents hiding behind civilians. What the [expletive] did you think was going to happen?" Our survey team's 100,000 death estimate for the first 18 months after the U.S. led-invasion equates to about 101 coalition-attributed violent deaths per day. (...) The casualty count is significant for many reasons. There are, of course, moral considerations. Is the way we wage war now indiscriminate with regard to non-combatants? Is the rhetoric about "precision" in our airborne weaponry masking a darker reality of unnecessary carnage on the ground? Avoidable killing of non-combatants is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, regardless of the actions of the insurgency. And the possibility that the Coalition forces could be responsible for as many as 200,000 Iraqi civilian deaths or more would likely alter the political mood in the United States with respect to the legitimacy of "Operation Iraqi Freedom." (...) In this country, we make such a big deal about our war dead -- as if one lost is more important than thousands of Iraqi's innocent men, women, and children who have done nothing to our country. A life in Iraq is just as important than a life in America. I say this with strong conviction, and I find it very misleading to hide the very fact that we have killed, with the same "they are not that important" attitude as Saddam, and if you compare them to the fallen leader, they will call you unAmerican. The use of the words "collateral damage" to describe the Iraqi dead generates a cold blooded remorseless attitude in this administration to the huge lost of innocent life. Who is the real monsters?



4.

From: http://www.sfbayview.com/012605/headsroll012605.shtml

Heads roll at Veterans Administration - Mushrooming depleted uranium (DU) scandal blamed

by Bob Nichols - Project Censored Award Winner

Considering the tons of depleted uranium used by the U.S., the Iraq war can truly be called a nuclear war.

Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter charged Monday that the reason Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stepped down earlier this month was the growing scandal surrounding the use of uranium munitions in the Iraq War.

Writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, stated, “The real reason for Mr. Principi’s departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military.”

Bernklau continued, “This malady (from uranium munitions), that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed.”

He added, “Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of ‘Disabled Vets’ means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!” The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam.

“The VA Secretary (Principi) was aware of this fact as far back as 2000,” wrote Bernklau. “He, and the Bush administration have been hiding these facts, but now, thanks to Moret’s report, (it) ... is far too big to hide or to cover up!”

“Terry Jamison, Public Affairs Specialist, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of Veterans Affairs, at the VA Central Office, recently reported that ‘Gulf Era Veterans’ now on medical disability, since 1991, number 518,739 Veterans,” said Berklau.

“The long-term effects have revealed that DU (uranium oxide) is a virtual death sentence,” stated Berklau. “Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist, who retired from the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, and was also involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in the soldiers (from the 2003 Iraq War) as ‘spectacular … and a matter of concern!’”

When asked if the main purpose of using DU was for “destroying things and killing people,” Fulk was more specific: “I would say it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people!”

---

See also:

Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets
http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml
A death sentence here and abroad - (...) A Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800 tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. The U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. Four nuclear wars indeed, and 10 times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from atmospheric testing! No wonder our soldiers, their families and the people of the Middle East, Yugoslavia and Central Asia are sick. But as Henry Kissinger said after Vietnam when our soldiers came home ill from Agent Orange, “Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used for foreign policy.” Unfortunately, more and more of those soldiers are men and women with brown skin. And unfortunately, the DU radioactive dust will be carried around the world and deposited in our environments just as the “smog of war” from the 1991 Gulf War was found in deposits in South America, the Himalayas and Hawaii. In June 2003, the World Health Organization announced in a press release that global cancer rates will increase 50 percent by 2020. What else do they know that they aren’t telling us? I know that depleted uranium is a death sentence … for all of us. We will all die in silent ways.

American Free Press four-part series on DU by Christopher Bollyn.
Part I: "Depleted Uranium: U.S. Commits War Crime Against Iraq, Humanity,"
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/depleted_uranium.html

Part II: "Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD: MD Says Depleted Uranium Definitively
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/cancer_epidemic_.html

Part III: "DU Syndrome Stricken Vets Denied Care:
Pentagon Hides DU Dangers to Deny Medical Care to Vets",
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/du_syndrome.html

Part IV: "Pentagon Brass Suppresses Truth About Toxic
Weapons: Poisonous Uranium Munitions Threaten World",
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/pentagon_brass.html

August 2004 World Affairs Journal. Leuren Moret:
"Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,"
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm

August 2004 Coastal Post Online. Carol Sterrit: "Marin
Depleted Uranium Resolution Heats Up - GI's Will Come Home To A Slow Death,"
http://www.coastalpost.com/04/08/01.htm

World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference, Hamburg, Germany, October 16-19, 2004:
http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/speakers.htm

International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan. Written opinion of Judge Niloufer Baghwat:
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Afghanistan-Criminal-Tribunal10mar04.htm

"Discounted Casualties: The Human Cost of Nuclear War" by Akira Tashiro, foreword by Leuren Moret,
http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/index_e.html



5.

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4888946.stm

Stark warning over climate change

April 14, 2006

The Earth is likely to experience a temperature rise of at least 3C, the UK government's chief scientist says.

Professor Sir David King warned this would happen because world governments were failing to agree on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.

He told the BBC that nations had to act now to tackle the warming expected to happen over the next 100 years.

And he said even if a global agreement could be reached on limiting emissions, climate change was inevitable.

The UK government and the EU want to try to stabilise the climate at an increase of no more than 2C, but the US refuses to cut emissions and those of India and China are rising quickly.

A recent report called Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, produced by the Hadley Centre, one of the top world centres for projecting future climate, modelled the likely effects of a 3C rise.

It warned the situation could wreck half the world's wildlife reserves, destroy major forest systems, and put 400 million more people at risk of hunger.

Professor King told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme: "We don't have to succumb to a state of despondency where we say that there is nothing we can do so let's just carry on living as per usual.

"It is very important to understand that we can manage the risks to our population.

"What we are talking about here is something that will play through over decades - we are talking 100 years or so.

"We need to begin that process of investment." He said it would be a major challenge for developing countries, in particular.

The Hadley forecasts hinge on stabilising the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) at a level of 550 parts per million in the atmosphere. Professor King said this was the figure Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted world leaders to agree on.

He admitted politicians were taking a big risk to push CO2 levels as high as 550ppm. This figure is almost double the pre-industrial level of two centuries ago.

But he said the UK government believed 550ppm was the lowest figure achievable worldwide as developing countries continued to increase their emissions, and the US refused to cut its CO2.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has criticised Professor King for accepting global temperatures could rise above 2C.

And Friends of the Earth director, Tony Juniper, said: "It is technologically possible to significantly reduce our emissions and deliver 2C - Professor King should be pressing for government polices to deliver on this rather than accepting the current lack of political will and talking of three degrees as an inevitability."

So far, the US, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has been unwilling to debate a CO2 threshold.

President Bush's chief climate adviser, James Connaughton, said he did not believe anyone could forecast a safe level and cutting greenhouse gas emissions could harm the world economy.

---

See also:

FIELD OF NIGHTMARES: A CONVERSATION WITH CLIMATE JOURNALIST ELIZABETH KOLBERT (April 10, 2006)
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/1816429/
Over the past year, a perfect storm of scientific studies, dire weather events, and media coverage lifted global warming onto the mainstream national agenda. No writing had more impact than a series of closely observed pieces in The New Yorker by journalist Elizabeth Kolbert, which have now been collected and expanded into a book: Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. (Read a review of the book: http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2006/03/09/hayes/index.html ) While most writing on climate change has relied on dry data and statistics, Kolbert's is vivid, technicolor reportage. She went on expeditions with some of the world's top climate scientists to Greenland, Iceland, and Alaska to witness the ongoing devastation firsthand. And she ventured to Washington, D.C. -- one place that's not changing quickly. Though her writing is never hectoring or overtly ideological, what she found left her deeply alarmed. The book ends with these chilling words: "It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing." CLIP

Climate Change: A GLOBAL TITANIC
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/1820719/

DIVERSITY OF SPECIES FACES 'CATASTROPHE' FROM CLIMATE CHANGE (April 11, 2006)
http://www.climateark.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=55069
Tens of thousands of animals and plants could become extinct within the coming decades as a direct result of global warming. This is the main conclusion of a study into how climate change will affect the diversity of species in the most precious wildlife havens of the world. Scientists believe that if atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide double from pre-industrial times - which is expected by the end of the century - then biodiversity will be devastated. "It isn't just polar bears and penguins that we must worry about anymore," said Lee Hannah of Conservation International, which is based in Washington. "The hotspots studied in this research paper are essentially refugee camps for many of our planet's most unique plant and animals species," Dr Hannah said. "If those areas are no longer habitable due to global warming then we will ... be destroying the last sanctuaries many of these species have left," he said. CLIP

CLIMATE CHANGE SHATTERING MARINE FOOD CHAIN (April 10, 2006) http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32843
BROOKLIN, Canada - Vast swaths of coral reefs in the Caribbean sea and South Pacific Ocean are dying, while the recently-discovered cold-water corals in northern waters will not survive the century -- all due to climate change. The loss of reefs will have a catastrophic impact on all marine life.



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