MAY LOVE PREVAIL ON EARTH
November 17, 2004
The Days of Infamy Series #2: The U.S. War Criminals Inc.
Hello everyone
I've included several comments below when necessary.
This is again a quite large compilation as so much is happening, yet it would be hard for me to not circulate all that is below since this is the only way to contribute, through a greater awareness of these things, to positive changes, which is always the case when I network this kind of information.
As usual feel free to share widely ;-)
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com
You are welcomed to network anything from this compilation, but please also include the following:
Free subscription to such compilations by sending a blank email to earthrainbownetwork-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
This compilation is archived at http://GeorgeWalkerBush.net
"America chose a man without morals or vision. An economic incompetent who inherited a $2billion surplus from Clinton, gave it in tax cuts to the rich and turned the US into the world's largest debtor nation. A man who sneers at the rights of other nations. Who has withdrawn from international treaties on the environment and chemical weapons. A man who flattens sovereign states then hands the rebuilding contracts to his own billionaire party backers. A man who promotes trade protectionism and backs an Israeli government which continually flouts UN resolutions. America has chosen a menacingly immature buffoon who likened the pursuit of the 9/11 terrorists to a Wild West, Wanted Dead or Alive man-hunt and, during the Afghanistan war, kept a baseball scorecard in his drawer, notching up hits when news came through of enemy deaths. A RADICAL Christian fanatic who decided the world was made up of the forces of good and evil, who invented a war on terror, and thus as author of it, believed he had the right to set the rules of engagement. Which translates to telling his troops to do what the hell they want to the bad guys. As he has at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and countless towns across Iraq. You have to feel sorry for the millions of Yanks in the big cities like New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco who voted to kick him out. These are the sophisticated side of the electorate who recognise a gibbon when they see one. As for the ones who put him in, across the Bible Belt and the South, outsiders can only feel pity."
- Taken from an editorial in the The Mirror - UK (11-6-4) God Help America - 'The People Have Spoken" at http://www.rense.com/general59/Godhelpamerica.htm - This editorial has been deleted from the Mirror website but it still available in this Google Cache copy
"Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm."
- Colbert
The Unnumbered psalm
Bush is my shepherd; I dwell in want.
He maketh logs to be cut down in national forests.
He leadeth trucks into the still wilderness.
He restoreth my fears.
He leadeth me in the paths of international disgrace for his ego's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of pollution and war, I will find no exit, for thou art in office.
Thy tax cuts for the rich and thy media control, they discomfort me.
Thou preparest an agenda of deception in the presence of thy religion.
Thou anointest my head with foreign oil.
My health insurance runneth out.
Surely megalomania and false patriotism shall follow me all the days of thy term,
And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever.
Forwarded by Jaiia Earthschild
Worthy of Your Attention
'We're Sorry' Site Is A Big Hit (11-16-4)
http://www.rense.com/general59/weresorrysiteisabig.htm
Thousands Of Remorseful Americans Say Sorry To The World For President's Victory - It started the day after the US presidential election with one student posting a picture of himself on the Internet holding up a sign reading: "Sorry world (we tried) - half of America". Within just a few days, the website http://www.sorryeverybody.com, set up by James Zetlen, had 27 million hits, he said. The site features more than 2,200 pictures of contrite Americans holding up placards expressing their sorrow at the victory of George W. Bush. There are 1,000 more pictures waiting to be posted. "It was mind-boggling the amount of emotion the website has triggered," said the 20-year-old neuroscience student at the University of Southern California. Not all the emotional responses have been positive, however. Mr Zetlen's site for rueful Americans has spawned at least eight websites for people who say they are not at all sorry that Mr Bush beat Democratic candidate John Kerry. Mr Zetlen said the reaction from outside the US has been overwhelmingly positive. "The international community is absolutely mortified at what has happened," he said. CLIP
LAST MINUTE ADDITION!!
Meet NAFTA on steroids - New U.S.-Mexico-Canada security plan would virtually eliminate national borders (Nov 15)
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41447
WASHINGTON - North American national borders would be virtually eliminated under plans being considered by senior business and political leaders from Canada, the United States and Mexico for a "NAFTA-plus," continent-wide, customs-free zone with a common approach to trade, energy, immigration, law enforcement and security. (...) Discussions so far indicate that Canada, under the new agreement, would immediately sign on to the U.S. strategic missile defense initiative. Canada would also make its vast lumber resources available to the U.S.and Mexican markets and provide more open access to the northern neighbor's oil, natural gas and hydro-electric power resources. CLIP
This scheme will CERTAINLY not go down smoothly in Canada and may bring about the downfall of the just - barely - re-elected minority Liberal government.
CONTENTS
1. The Horrifying Reality in Baghdad
2. Die, then vote. This is Falluja
3. Iraq aflame over mass killings in Fallujah
4. Status of BlackBoxVoting Investigations
5. Eyewitness account of the funeral of Yasser Arafat
6. The Staggering Cost Of Israel To Americans
7. VANUNU SPEAKS
8. Soft Energy Pathfinder: Who Needs Oil, Anyway?
9. Flu pandemic looms as major global crisis
10. Aerial Gunning to Kill 900 Wolves in Alaska
11. Otter bucks trend as 3,000 species join danger list on dying planet
12. WARL1320 is no longer carrying Meria Heller radio show
See also:
Shooting in Iraq Mosque Angers Muslims (17 November 2004)
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ats-ap_us10nov16,0,1857230.story?coll=ny-leadnationalnews-headlines
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The fatal shooting of a wounded and apparently unarmed man in a Fallujah mosque by a U.S. Marine angered Sunni Muslims in Iraq on Tuesday and raised questions about the protection of insurgents once they are out of action. International legal experts said the Marine may have acted in self-defense because of a danger that a wounded combatant might try to blow up a hidden weapon; a key issue was whether the injured man was a prisoner at the time. The shooting happened Saturday, one day after the Marine, who has not been identified, was wounded in the face and after another man in his unit was killed by the booby-trapped body of an insurgent. However, the incident could cause major political problems for the government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and his U.S. backers at a time when Iraqi authorities are seeking to contain a backlash among Sunnis to the invasion of the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. American and Iraqi authorities tried to prevent rage from spreading among Sunnis, many of whom watched dramatic footage of the shooting that aired throughout the day on Al-Jazeera television, a Qatar-based satellite station. CLIP
NOTE FROM JEAN: It is mind-boggling to me that the mass media are now making a big news of this one incident, however sad and despicable it may be, when the Himalayas of mass slaughter and insane cruelty perpetrated by the US military across Iraq are going almost entirely unreported and un-denounced. This is ten times worst that what the Israelis did in Jenin and is likely to grow exponentially worse unless the world press and world public opinion finally wake up to the utterly ignominious behavior of these monstrous war criminals (put them in the same bag as SS Nazis, Staline and Mao's killers if you'd like to make appropriate comparisons) and energetically call for an end to this and the impeachment/resignation/dethroning of the Bush dynasty and their Israeli accomplices behind all this. This being said, we should also be clear that we must remain vigilant to not fall into the trap of hatred or any other such deep dark emotional state as this is precisely why such horrors are perpetrated, both from the insurgents side who continuously resort to extreme violence against the American invaders and from the poor, brainwashed U.S. youngsters now doing the dirty work of their commander in chief. Reclaiming our collective humanity through calling for a permanent end worldwide to such massacres and an immediate pull-out of all U.S. troops from Iraq, YES! but NO! to violent thoughts and emotions that could only fan the flames of worldwide disconnect with our eternal spiritual roots - which is the TRUE GOAL of the dark forces behind all such atrocities, terrorists bombings and military mayhem included.
End Game Democracy: America Sells its Soul & Loses the World (Nov 11)
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=424
An open letter to the world community: " I say we had better look our nation searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease." - Walt Whitman --- Now we have come the End of the colonial experiment known as the "United States of America." It has ended as the founders had warned it would likely end, with concentration of wealth, corruption, and despotism despoiling its democratic foundations. Unfortunately, it has also ended with madmen and criminals holding an arsenal of planet-scorching weapons, a black-hole of an economy sucking down the world, and a murderous culture bent on revenge.As a child of this colonial republic, a veteran of its military, a keeper of the flame of rebellion, I now see no hope of recovery for a dead horse poisonously floating down stream. America has been infected, subverted, polluted, corrupted, plundered, stolen by corporate raiders and warmongers. Its elections have been hacked, hijacked and sidetracked with partisan smears and lies, failed technology, and corrupted media. It has become mired in manipulations of terror, invasions and occupations of distant lands, and endless bloody warfare. It has been seized by the most hated men in history, with designs on running it into the ground while swindling the last of its treasure.Therefore, I encourage the people of the world to resist this deadly corrupted regime at every turn. Challenge its false preachments of democracy. Boycott its bloody dollars. Invade it with music, media and magic. Shame us the way we deserve to be shamed. Do not allow your executives to support this war machine and its campaigns of extermination. Testify to the true Christian values opposed to murder, torture, theft and arrogance, which is what keeps the Bush regime afloat.To my fellow Americans, I ask you to hold on to your principles, your power, your ideals. Do not sell your soul to the devils of terror and murder, regardless of how patriotically it is packaged. CLIP
Resistance Holds Majority Of Fallujah; “Intifada Growing Too Big To Control (Nov 17, 2004)
http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=100576&list=/home.php
A leader of one of the Resistance organizations in Fallujah confirmed to the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in the city that many of the Resistance organizations in the city have resolved to “disappear from view” in order to wage a war of attrition against the US forces inside and outside the city. The Mujahideen leader described to the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent the tragic situation in the demolished city “which has become unbearable due to the large number of dead Iraqi civilians in the streets whose bodies are being eaten by dogs.” He said that bodies of children shot dead by American snipers yesterday or the day before as they tried to cross the street, were being devoured by the dogs. Neither the families nor the fighters are able to retrieve the remains of their mangled bodies because of the American snipers are still perched atop high buildings. The Commander described whole buildings that were totally burned with everyone inside. (...) The Commander noted the contrast between the determination of the American forces to kill children, women, doctors, nurses, and civilians and the silence of the whole world in the face of such atrocities. No pressure has been brought to bear to save the civilians suspended in the city despite the unparalleled success that the Resistance has had in waging a street war against the invaders. (...) Since early Tuesday morning US military aircraft prowled the skies over the city, strafing and rocketing what they regard as targets in numerous neighborhoods throughout the city. US snipers are deployed on the roofs of many tall buildings that over look the city, and they fire on anything that moves in the streets below. (...) A field Commander for the Mujahideen disclosed to a correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam in Fallujah what he called the “tragedy of the street fighting” in reference to the way that the invading American troops were using Iraqi women and children as human shields. The Commander said that the tragedy began last Tuesday and that before that, he had never seen such things, when the Americans used used women and children to shield their tanks. The Commander commented: “this state is living through a type of savagery that history has never known before.”The field Commander said “we could hear the cries of the children and the women’s calls for help from atop a column of tanks that was driving along ath-Tharthar street last Tuesday. Some of our fighters closed their eyes in pain and wept at the sight.” CLIP
Mujahidin terrorised Fallujah, residents say (Nov 15)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C3-1359782%2C00.html
Mutilated bodies dumped on Fallujah's bombed out streets today painted a harrowing picture of eight months of rebel rule. As US and Iraqi troops mopped up the last vestiges of resistance in the city after a week of bombardment and fighting, residents who stayed on through last week's offensive were emerging and telling harrowing tales of the brutality they endured. Flyposters still litter the walls bearing all manner of decrees from insurgent commanders, to be heeded on pain of death. Amid the rubble of the main shopping street, one decree bearing the insurgents' insignia - two Kalashnikovs propped together - and dated November 1 gives vendors three days to remove nine market stalls from outside the city's library or face execution. The pretext given is that the rebels wanted to convert the building into a headquarters for the "Mujahidin Advisory Council" through which they ran the city. Another poster in the ruins of the souk bears testament to the strict brand of Sunni Islam imposed by the council, fronted by hardline cleric Abdullah Junabi. The decree warns all women that they must cover up from head to toe outdoors, or face execution by the armed militants who controlled the streets.
Message From Fallujah Reports High US, Civilian Casualties (Nov 17) NOT A VERIFIED NEWS!
http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=100573&list=/home.php
(...) The civilian victims account for more than 90 percent of the total casualties, and they have been buried in mass graves. The American losses and the losses of the so-called “national guard” are many times what they declare. For this reason, they do not allow the news media to enter the city. CLIP
The Arrival Of Secret Law In America (Nov 17)
http://www.rense.com/general59/ssec.htm
(...) Thus, in a qualitatively new development in U.S. governance, Americans can now be obligated to comply with legally-binding regulations that are unknown to them, and that indeed they are forbidden to know. This is not some dismal Eastern European allegory. It is part of a continuing transformation of American government that is leaving it less open, less accountable and less susceptible to rational deliberation as a vehicle for change. CLIP More on Secrecy News by the Federation of American Scientists at http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/
Russia Developing New Nuclear Missile
http://www.rense.com/general59/devel.htm
MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia is developing a new form of nuclear missile unlike those held by other countries, news agencies reported. Speaking at a meeting of the Armed Forces' leadership, Putin reportedly said that Russia is researching and successfully testing new nuclear missile systems. (...) News reports have also said Russia is believed to be developing a next-generation heavy nuclear missile that could carry up to 10 nuclear warheads weighing a total of 4.4 tons, compared with the Topol-M's 1.32-ton combat payload. Topol-Ms have been deployed in silos since 1998. The missiles have a range of about 6,000 miles and reportedly can maneuver in ways that are difficult to detect. Earlier this year, a senior Defense Ministry official was quoted as telling news agencies that Russia had developed a weapon that could make the United States' proposed missile-defense system useless. Details were not given, but military analysts said the claimed new weapon could be a hypersonic cruise missile or maneuverable ballistic missile warheads.
Recount in Ohio a Sure Thing (15 November 2004)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111604W.shtml
Green Party Campaign Raises $150,000 in 4 Days, Shifts Gears to Phase - WASHINGTON -- November 15 -- There will be a recount of the presidential vote in Ohio. On Thursday, David Cobb, the Green Party’s 2004 presidential candidate, announced his intention to seek a recount of the vote in Ohio. Since the required fee for a statewide recount is $113,600, the only question was whether that money could be raised in time to meet the filing deadline. That question has been answered. “Thanks to the thousands of people who have contributed to this effort, we can say with certainty that there will be a recount in Ohio,” said Blair Bobier, Media Director for the Cobb-LaMarche campaign. “The grassroots support for the recount has been astounding. The donations have come in fast and furiously, with the vast majority in the $10-$50 range, allowing us to meet our goal for the first phase of the recount effort in only four days,” said Bobier. Bobier said the campaign is still raising money for the next phase of the recount effort which will be recruiting, training and mobilizing volunteers to monitor the actual recount. CLIP
Ohio Voters Tell of Election Day Troubles at Hearing (14 November 2004)
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1100428444286470.xml
Tales of waiting more than five hours to vote, voter intimidation, under-trained polling-station workers and too few or broken voting machines largely in urban or heavily minority areas were retold Saturday at a public hearing organized by voter-rights groups. For three hours, burdened voters, one after another, offered sworn testimony about Election Day voter suppression and irregularities that they believe are threatening democracy. The hearing, sponsored by the Election Protection Coalition, was to collect testimony of voting troubles that might be used to seek legislative changes to Ohio's election process. CLIP
Dollar's Decline Is Reverberating (14 November 2004)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111504D.shtml
If foreign investors look elsewhere, interest rates could climb and living standards could fall.
Call for nonviolent direct action at Ft. Benning
http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=877
COMPLETE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS FOR NOVEMBER 18-21
http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=822
Deadline looms on continental defence project (Nov 10) ALL CANADIANS SHOULD PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THIS!
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php?story=20041112145038281
Crucial to preserving Canadian sovereignty is maintaining an independent armed forces. The Americans want us to fold our military into theirs but Ottawa knows that Canadians want no part of it. That's why the Liberals might try this "about a year from now when people cool down..." because "command under one commander may create perceptions of sovereignty issues". Unbelievably, Ottawa is willing to pursue this in spite of "difficult questions about the legal liability of Canadian soldiers answering to a U.S. commander and American soldiers operating on Canadian soil." You read that right: "American soldiers operating on Canadian soil." That means that should there be a major terrorist attack that can somehow be tied to Canada, the Americans will have the legal right to occupy our country. (!!!) CLIP
U.S. OKs Commercial Drilling in Alaska Oil Reserve (Nov 12)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=1&u=/nm/20041112/sc_nm/energy_alaska_drilling_dc
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Interior Department on Friday gave final approval to a plan by ConocoPhillips and partner Anadarko Petroleum Corp. to develop five tracts around the oil-rich Alpine field on Alaska's North Slope. The department's Bureau of Land Management authorized the first commercial development of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, allowing the companies to go forward with developing the tracts, which are located in the northeastern corner of the reserve. Production from these fields, which together hold more than 330 million barrels of oil, will start by 2006, according to the BLM. They will supplement production from the Alpine fields, which hold 429 million barrels and have a daily oil output of about 100,000 barrels. Environmentalists have criticized the plan to develop these Alpine satellite fields as a rollback of environmental protections promised during the Clinton administration. The BLM said it modified the original development proposal to offer greater protection to wildlife and sensitive habitats in the reserve. Some of the major changes include relocating portions of the gravel access roads and pipeline routes, moving power lines and raising pipelines an additional 2 feet to 7 feet to help migrating caribou. "It allows for the energy development our country needs, while protecting the land, water and wildlife. It will show that this, and future Arctic development, can and will be done in an environmentally sensitive way," said Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Rebecca Watson. The petroleum reserve, the size of Indiana, was set aside in 1923 for its energy potential, but until recently it has been ignored in favor of the region to the east, around the giant Prudhoe Bay field. The Bush administration believes the new Congress next year will approve oil drilling in the separate Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which may hold up to 16 billion barrels of crude.
The Voice of the White House (November 11, 2004)
http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1187.htm
(...) Not being able to either confirm of deny any of this information, we present it without comment or endorsement. -- Aside from the rapidly fading allegations of voter fraud (some truth in Ohio and Florida where the Rove people were very busy with technicians and lots of money) we have two topics of some interest this week. The first is a real horror story out of Iraq that is being immediately and very severely suppressed by order of the White House via the Pentagon. It seems that US troops entering Fallujah uncovered several so-called ‘slaughter houses’ where the Iraqi Resistance people had been killing various people. Most of this killing was done when American troops began their attack on the city. Most of the rebel leaders had long ago departed, leaving a small but fanatic rear guard in place to do as much damage to the attacking troops as they could. The real shocker is that the Iraqi resistance people are killing captured GIs! And badly mutilating them, hopefully after they are dead. Why are they doing this? Fanaticism? No, their rationale is that since the US has unilaterally withdrawn from the Geneva Convention (by Bush courtesy of the new AG designate Alberto Gonzales) and since US forces are well-known to have tortured and murdered legitimate Iraqi prisoners of war, they are apparently killing any and all US soldiers that fall into their hands. Pictures of the bodies came over today but no one wants to look at them, so terrible are the mutilations. We cannot hide the existence of these bunkers but the word is to be that only Arabs were killed there. Of course Bush does not care because, according to the now-subservient press, he has a “great mandate” from the American people. More likely a heavy vote by fanatical Jesus Freaks coupled with some Diebold diddlings. CLIP
EPA Will Use Poor Kids as Guinea Pigs to Test Toxic Chemicals
http://www.organicconsumers.org/epa-alert.htm
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced plans to launch an outrageous new study in which participating low income families will have their children exposed to toxic pesticides over the course of two years. For taking part in these studies, each family will receive $970, a free video camera, a T-shirt, and a framed certificate of appreciation. The study entitled CHEERS (Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study) will look at how chemicals can be ingested, inhaled or absorbed by children ranging from babies to 3 years old. Please take a moment to follow this link and join tens of thousands of citizens in petitioning the EPA to terminate this study prior to its proposed launch in early 2005. More information, related newspaper headlines and petition at the URL above.
Bush Approves Study Exposing Pesticides to Children from Low Income Families (Nov 16)
http://www.communicationagents.com/emma_holister/2004/11/16/bush_approves_study_exposing_pesticides.htm
(...) In October, the EPA received $2 million to do the study from the American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry front group that includes members such as Dow, Exxon, and Monsanto. . . Critics of the research claim the study's funders guarantee the results will be biased in favor of the chemical industry, at the expense of the health of the impoverished children serving as test subjects."
Childhood leukemia risk doubles near powerlines
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/393058/
Mobile phone risk revealed
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/395066/
Omega-News Collection 9. November 2004
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/395628/
Omega-News Collection 14. November 2004
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/401596/
1.
Date: 17 Nov 2004
From: Rudolf Schneider res@ipsgeneva.com>
Subject: The Horrifying Reality in Baghdad
From: Debra Oliver Organization: Common Ground Mediation Services
From: Sasha Crow
This is a post I received from an Iraqi friend of mine who lives in Scotland.
Sasha From Carole: Phone call to the family in Baghdad tonight.
They cannot go out of their homes as the tanks are shooting at anything that moves Curfews enforced by the US tanks and helicopters Tanks are going by their homes all the time and helicopters and the whole house vibrates. Shootings everywhere and many people and children being killed.
Their neighbours 4-5 of them could not get into the house fast enough and they were all shot and killed by the US soldiers.
The tanks have broken all the drains and sewage systems. A friend drove to get food and on the way back the tanks fired at the car in front of him and blew it up but he managed to get our an ran into a house and was saved..his car had many bullets in it. Ordinary people just run into any house now if they see soldiers or tanks as they are terrified and frightened.
Last few days no water or electricity ......and it is cold in the night. No one going to work as afraid to go out. Huge queues for petrol..many hours to wait.
Yarmouk hospital bombed and the doctor in the family said he watched the whole thing and it was just like an American war movie, with the helicopters and bombs and shooting and lots of smoke and he could not believe his eyes because this was a hospital. Many injured and many shocked.
This young doctor,{ his brother 30 years old died a few months ago and they think it was from the Depleted Uranium poisoning} said that the bullets that the US soldiers are using are so powerful that they have to amputate the limbs as they bullets just shatters the bone. Also they must amputate because any shrapnel in a wound is treated as radioactive from the DU and a wide excision or amputation is the safest.The bullets are not normal bullets and are huge and strong, as the put it.
They never close their windows at all now because of the continuous bombing and danger of glass shards if the bomb is near. Many badly injured from flying glass so most people now keep their windows open and it is cold at night plus all the noise of constant planes and humvies etc.. The noise of bombing etc is driving them mad!
His mother is now have serious panic attacks and screaming when the bombs are very near,and he was asking us what to give her to help as he does not know what to do anymore.[This is the mother of boy who died from DU poisoning.} They sound so exaughsted and really tired and afraid and their voices raised and tense. The US have taken over a hospital in Baghdad for themselves..it used to be for the elite of Saddam.
The major teaching hospital in Baghdad has had no antibiotics for at least one month so if anyone has an infection...So from that you can imagine the rest of Iraq's supplies..no existent. They have friends who live near the Green Zone and it is bombed every day. New Law in Baghdad is ...The US soldiers can do anything they like to protect themselves and the people not allowed to complain.
Many of the US soldiers and mercenaries are killed...the mercenaries bodies are thrown into a lake as they are not US citizens.They are not counted.
They now want to leave Iraq....this is the first time they have said this..they really tried to stay, but, say that they now believe the US is slowly going to do exactly the same to Baghdad as they have done in Fallujah.
Everyone there is saying that the US is going to repeat what they have done in Fallujah in all the towns and cities in Iraq. They know the US agenda is to destroy Iraq.
Carole
---
See also:
Violence Erupts Across Iraq and Aid Agencies Warn of Disaster as U.S. Declares Battle of Fallujah is Over (14 November 2004)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=582727
The United States and Iraq's interim government claimed yesterday that the battle for Fallujah was over, with 1,000 insurgents killed and the rebel stronghold effectively pacified after six days of fighting. But even as the victory was being declared, wide-spread violence erupted throughout the rest of the country, with parts of Mosul passing into the hands of insurgents, forcing the American military to detach and rush part of its Fallujah force to the northern city. There was also street fighting in Baghdad, where mortar rounds were fired at the Green Zone, the heavily barricaded heart of US power in Iraq, and heavy fighting in the town of Yusufiyah, south of the capital. Aid agencies warned of a humanitarian disaster in Fallujah and neighboring areas, with outbreaks of typhoid and other diseases. Eight groups said in a joint letter that there were now 200,000 refugees who have fled the fighting and are without food, water or shelter. People leaving the city described rotting bodies piling up on the streets. "The people inside Fallujah are dying and starving. They need us," said Red Crescent spokeswoman Fardous al-Ubaidi. "The situation is catastrophic. It is our duty as a humanitarian agency to do our job for these people in these circumstances." CLIP
Massive Rebel Counter-Attack Rolls Across Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111704Z.shtml
U.S. Forces Shift Focus to Mosul
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111704X.shtml
Media Witnesses War Crimes in Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111704Y.shtml
Denial of Water to Iraqi Cities (November 16, 2004)
http://www.casi.org.uk/briefing/041110denialofwater.pdf
Water supplies to Tall Afar, Samarra and Fallujah have been cut off during US attacks in the past two months, affecting up to 750,000 civilians. This appears to form part of a deliberate US policy of denying water to the residents of cities under attack. If so, it has been adopted without a public debate, and without consulting Coalition partners. It is a serious breach of international humanitarian law, and is deepening Iraqi opposition to the United States, other coalition members, and the Iraqi government. Evidence for the denial of water CLIP The denial of water to civilians is illegal both under Iraqi and international law. Article 12 of the Transitional Administrative Law, which serves as a constitution during the interim period, states that: 'Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of his person.' International law specifically forbids the denial of water to civilians during conflict. Under article 14 of the second protocol of the Geneva Conventions, 'Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited. It is therefore prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless for that purpose, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population such as food-stuffs, agricultural areas for the production of food-stuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works.' CLIP
These Unseen Wounds Cut Deep (14 Nov)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111504Y.shtml
A mental health crisis is emerging, with one in six returning soldiers afflicted, experts say. (...) A study by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research found that 15.6% of Marines and 17.1% of soldiers surveyed after they returned from Iraq suffered major depression, generalized anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder - a debilitating, sometimes lifelong change in the brain's chemistry that can include flashbacks, sleep disorders, panic attacks, violent outbursts, acute anxiety and emotional numbness. Army and Veterans Administration mental health experts say there is reason to believe the war's ultimate psychological fallout will worsen. The Army survey of 6,200 soldiers and Marines included only troops willing to report their problems. The study did not look at reservists, who tend to suffer a higher rate of psychological injury than career Marines and soldiers. And the soldiers in the study served in the early months of the war, when tours were shorter and before the Iraqi insurgency took shape. CLIP
Attack on Fallujah Can't Be Justified - By Helen Thomas (12 November 2004)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111404F.shtml
Washington - Do Americans of good conscience really believe that we are making the United States more secure by bombing and killing the people of Fallujah? That's the justification President Bush and his hawkish circle have given for their brutal offensive against the Sunni stronghold as they push ahead for the total military occupation of Iraq. Why are we killing Iraqis in their own country? And why are our forces being killed? Of course it was convenient and the better part of valor for the president to wait until after the election to start dropping the 500-pound bombs on Fallujah as well as raking the streets with artillery and aircraft firepower. Bush, who has never been in war, flaunted his commander in chief status during the campaign. But clearly he did not want to put it to the test at Fallujah before Election Day. Had he done so, the president would have had to explain why he took the United States into Iraq and why he was targeting innocent Iraqis. From day one, the U.S. government has been hard-pressed to find legal justification for being in Iraq by force. U.S. military moves were contrary to the U.N. Charter and the laws that came from the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II. Under the U.N. Charter, armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of another state is a violation of international law. Does anyone believe that hand-picked interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, on the CIA payroll for years, is a free soul? Did we really make war against Iraq out of the goodness of our hearts to ensure free elections for Iraqis? The silence of the Democrats is playing into the president's hands. CLIP
2.
Forwarded by "Paul Prior" webmaster@globalcircle.net>
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1350305,00.html
Die, then vote. This is Falluja
Iraqi elections were postponed to save Bush. That led to today's carnage
Naomi Klein
November 13, 2004
The Guardian
The hip-hop mogul P Diddy announced at the weekend that his "Vote or Die" campaign will live on. The voter registration drive during the US presidential elections was, he said, merely "phase one, step one for us to get people engaged". Fantastic. I have a suggestion for phase two: P Diddy, Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio and the rest of the self-described "coalition of the willing" should take their chartered jet and fly to Falluja, where their efforts are desperately needed. But first they are going to need to flip the slogan from "Vote or Die!" to "Die, then Vote!"
Because that is what is happening there. Escape routes have been sealed off, homes are being demolished, and an emergency health clinic has been razed - all in the name of preparing the city for January elections. In a letter to United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, the US-appointed Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi explained that the all-out attack was required "to safeguard lives, elections and democracy in Iraq."
With all the millions spent on "democracy-building" and "civil society" in Iraq, it has come to this: if you can survive attack by the world's only superpower, you get to cast a ballot. Fallujans are going to vote, goddammit, even if they all have to die first.
And make no mistake: it is Fallujans who are under the gun. "The enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He lives in Falluja," marine Lt Col Gareth Brandl told the BBC. Well, at least he admitted that some of the fighters actually live in Falluja, unlike Donald Rumsfeld, who would have us believe that they are all from Syria and Jordan. And since US army vehicles are blaring recordings forbidding all men between the ages of 15 and 50 from leaving the city, it would suggest that there are at least a few Iraqis among what CNN now obediently describes as the "anti-Iraqi forces".
Elections in Iraq were never going to be peaceful, but they did not need to be an all-out war on voters either. Mr Allawi's Rocket the Vote campaign is the direct result of a disastrous decision made one year ago. On November 11 2003, Paul Bremer, then chief US envoy to Iraq, flew to Washington to meet George Bush. The two men were concerned that if they kept their promise to hold elections in Iraq within the coming months, the country would fall into the hands of insufficiently pro-American forces.
That would defeat the purpose of the invasion, and it would threaten President Bush's re-election chances. At that meeting, a revised plan was hatched: elections would be delayed for more than a year, and in the meantime, Iraq's first "sovereign" government would be hand-picked by Washington. The plan would allow Mr Bush to claim progress on the campaign trail, while keeping Iraq safely under US control.
In the US, Mr Bush's claim that "freedom is on the march" served its purpose, but in Iraq, the plan led directly to the carnage we see today.
Mr Bush likes to paint the forces opposed to the US presence in Iraq as enemies of democracy. In fact, much of the uprising can be traced directly to decisions made in Washington to stifle, repress, delay, manipulate and otherwise thwart the democratic aspirations of the Iraqi people.
Yes, democracy has genuine opponents in Iraq, but before George Bush and Paul Bremer decided to break their central promise to hand over power to an elected Iraqi government, these forces were isolated and contained. That changed when Mr Bremer returned to Baghdad and tried to convince Iraqis that they weren't yet ready for democracy.
Mr Bremer argued that the country was too insecure to hold elections, and besides, there were no voter rolls. Few were convinced. In January 2004, 100,000 Iraqis peacefully took to the streets of Baghdad, and 30,000 more did so in Basra. Their chant was "Yes, yes elections. No, no selections." At the time, many argued that Iraq was safe enough to have elections and pointed out that the lists from the Saddam-era oil-for-food programme could serve as voter rolls. But Mr Bremer wouldn't budge and the UN - scandalously and fatefully - backed him up.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Hussain al-Shahristani, chairman of the standing committee of the Iraqi National Academy of Science (who was imprisoned under Saddam Hussein for 10 years), accurately predicted what would happen next. "Elections will be held in Iraq, sooner or later," he wrote. "The sooner they are held, and a truly democratic Iraq is established, the fewer Iraqi and American lives will be lost."
Ten months and thousands of lost Iraqi and American lives later, elections are scheduled to take place with part of the country in the grip of yet another invasion and much of the rest of it under martial law. As for the voter rolls, the Allawi government is planning to use the oil-for-food lists, just as was suggested and dismissed a year ago.
So it turns out that all of the excuses were lies: if elections can be held now, they most certainly could have been held a year ago, when the country was vastly calmer. But that would have denied Washington the chance to install a puppet regime in Iraq, and possibly would have prevented George Bush from winning a second term.
Is it any wonder that Iraqis are sceptical of the version of democracy being delivered to them by US troops, or that elections have come to be seen not as tools of liberation but as weapons of war?
First, Iraq's promised elections were sacrificed in the interest of George Bush's re-election hopes; next, the siege of Falluja itself was crassly shackled to these same interests. The fighter planes didn't even wait an hour after George Bush finished his acceptance speech to begin the air attack on Falluja. The city was bombed at least six times through the next day and night. With voting safely over in the US, Falluja could be destroyed in the name of its own upcoming elections.
In another demonstration of their commitment to freedom, the first goal of the US soldiers in Falluja was to ambush the city's main hospital. Why? Apparently because it was the source of the "rumours" about high civilian casualties the last time US troops laid siege to Falluja, sparking outrage in Iraq and across the Arab world. "It's a centre of propaganda," an unnamed senior American officer told the New York Times. Without doctors to count the dead, the outrage would presumably be muted - except that, of course, the attacks on hospitals have sparked their own outrage, further jeopardising the legitimacy of the upcoming elections.
According to the New York Times, the Falluja general hospital was easy to capture, since the doctors and patients put up no resistance. There was, however, one injury: "An Iraqi soldier who accidentally discharged his Kalashnikov rifle, injuring his lower leg."
I think that means he shot himself in the foot. He's not the only one.
---
Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows
http://www.nologo.org
---
See also:
Flattening Falluja by Kurt Nimmo (Nov 15)
http://www.progressivetrail.org/articles/041116Nimmo.shtml?mail=16
Forget the “coverage” of Fallujah brought to you by Fox News, CNN, NPR, et al. Instead, consider the candid words of Colonel Michael Regner, chief of operations of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force: “Very few [Iraqi resistance fighters] have given up,” he told AFP. “They are fighting to the death and they’re making it difficult on marines and soldiers.” (...) As if to emphasize the total lack of reality deluding “our troops” as they decimate Fallujah in Sherman’s Burn mode, Colonel Regner told “a story of four Marines who were discussing, as bullets sprayed around them, what Hollywood actor would play the lead in a movie they envisioned, ‘The Battle for Fallujah.’ Just then a ‘bunker-buster’ bomb struck an enemy hideout beside the Marines and they rushed inside to gun down the survivors,” probably fancying themselves as Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan. Of course, Hanks’ character didn’t engage in war crimes like “our troops” in Fallujah, as Linda Heard notes. “We would never know how US soldiers are breaching the Geneva Conventions but for a renegade video aired by Australian ABC television. In it, a Marine shouts: ‘I’ve just injured one. He’s between two buildings.’ One of his colleagues walks over to a tiny alleyway separating two houses, climbs up onto a metal drum, and fires his weapon in cold blood. ‘He’s done,’ he announces flippantly.” Heard continues: “In a further breach of the Geneva Conventions, US troops prevented a Red Crescent convoy of emergency aid from reaching the main Fallujah hospital, where wounded residents have been forbidden from entering.” In another incident, a “Marine shot and killed a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner in a mosque,” the Associated Press reports. “The shooting Saturday was videotaped by pool correspondent Kevin Sites of NBC television, who said three other previously wounded prisoners in the mosque apparently also had been shot again by the Marines inside the mosque.” CLIP
U.S. Death Toll Rises in Fallujah (Nov 15)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200411/s1243396.htm
Phantom Fury in Fallujah
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111804Z.shtml
Wounded U.S. Troops Describe Massive Insurgent Firepower in Fallujah (Nov 15)
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20041115-0634-germany-iraq-wounded.html
(...) "It's house-to-house fighting," he said. "Rooftop-to-rooftop." About 70 wounded soldiers have been arriving daily at the military hospital in Germany since the week-old offensive in Fallujah began – about twice the normal number of casualties from Iraq. The troops said the insurgents appeared well-organized and heavily armed. CLIP
3.
From: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/iraq-n13.shtml
Iraq aflame over mass killings in Fallujah
By James Cogan
13 November 2004
The collective punishment of the people of Fallujah by the Bush administration has entered its sixth day.
What is taking place is not so much a battle as a homicidal rampage by the US military against every Iraqi male trapped inside the city. Since the assault began on Sunday, Fallujah men aged between 15 and 55 have been prevented from leaving. As American bombs and shells rained down, they were left little choice but to fight for their lives against the advancing US troops.
An Iraqi journalist in Fallujah told Associated Press: “The Americans are shooting anything that moves.”
The US forces have carried out a massive and indiscriminate bombardment from the air, making no attempt to avoid casualties among the estimated 100,000 civilians still in Fallujah. The city, a Los Angeles Times reporter wrote, is “a tableau of destroyed buildings, burned-out cars, battered mosques and piles of rubble”.
While US armour and infantry waited several blocks back, the air power was used to pound office complexes, mosques, schools and homes being used by Iraqi fighters to try and hold off the attackers. The concentration of US aircraft in the skies over Fallujah has been christened the “wedding cake” by American officers, as it consisted of multiple layers, from low altitude helicopter gunships, to AC-130 gunships, to jet bombers, to high altitude unmanned spy planes.
“Our air superiority is incredible,” a marine sergeant told Associated Press. “All we can do now is clear through the city and look for survivors. Air power is our best friend.”
Iraqi fighters, armed with little more than AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers, have fought a heroic defence against the overwhelming American firepower. To dislodge just one Iraqi sniper holding up US marines on Wednesday, an embedded New York Times journalist reported that a three-storey complex was hit with two 500-pound bombs, 35 155mm artillery shells, 10 120mm shells from Abram tanks and some 30,000 rounds from machine guns and small arms. The building, the journalist noted, was left a “smoking ruin”.
According to American military spokesmen, US troops have captured more than 80 percent of Fallujah, with heavy fighting still taking place in the southern suburbs and flaring again in the city’s north. The US military claims to have killed at least 600 Iraqis. At least 22 American troops have been killed and several hundred wounded.
Every building in the captured areas of the city is being searched by US or interim government Iraqi troops. From the footage coming out of Fallujah, the method of “searching” by the American troops is to hurl grenades and pour machine gun fire into houses before entering. Every male found alive is being dragged away, bound and hooded, to detention centres.
There is every reason to believe that the number of Iraqi dead in Fallujah—when the toll is finally able to be counted—will be in the thousands. Hundreds of fighters and civilians are likely buried beneath collapsed buildings. Embedded journalists have noted the stench of decomposing bodies that hangs over the city. A crime of immense proportions has been perpetrated and it will be neither forgotten nor forgiven.
There have been virtually no medical personnel to treat Iraqis injured by the relentless American onslaught. A number of Iraqi doctors and nurses were killed on Monday in a US airstrike on one of the few functioning clinics in the city. A second clinic was destroyed later in the week.
Abbas Ali, a doctor in the city, told Al Jazeerah on Friday: “I’m one of the few medical cadres that survived last Monday from the massacre. We are in a very tragic situation. Hundreds of dead bodies are spread in the streets. Even the injured are still there. We cannot transfer them. We cannot do anything to save them.
“We call on all organisations and the whole world to help us. The US forces have told us through loudspeakers to get out and raise white flags. But all the city’s areas are under fierce bombing. We don’t know what to do. Stay in our place, which is under bombardment, or get out and get shot?”
The Iraqi Red Crescent Society has been denied entry into the city. Fardous al-Ubaidi, a spokeswoman for the organisation, told Associated Press: “There is no water, no food, no medicine, no electricity and no fuel and when we asked for permission, we were only allowed to approach the Fallujah outskirts but had no access to Fallujah itself.” Thousands of elderly, women and children who have escaped since the assault began remain in refugee camps on the city’s fringes, without access to clean water or sanitation.
George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday hailed the atrocity in Fallujah as showing the determination of the US and Britain to “help Iraqis achieve their liberty and to defend the security of the world”.
The reality is that Fallujah is being destroyed precisely because the resistance fighters in the city had demanded liberty—from the US occupation of Iraq. The city’s council refused to recognise the legitimacy of the US-installed puppet interim government headed by CIA asset Iyad Allawi, and had upheld the moral and political right of Iraqis to conduct an armed struggle against the American invasion.
The US military has not been able to produce any credible evidence supporting the months of propaganda—which was consistently denied by Fallujah’s leaders—that hundreds of foreign terrorists, led by Jordanian extremist Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, were holding the city “hostage”. The people who have fought and died in Fallujah have been overwhelmingly Iraqis defending their homes.
On Thursday, US troops claimed to have found the body of Abdullah Janabi, the elderly and courageous Sunni cleric who has acted as one of the main spokesmen for the people of Fallujah and their defiance of the US invasion of their country. In August, Janabi declared in an interview: “Honest resistance is a legitimate right against the occupation all over the world... During Saddam’s time I was tortured and prevented from preaching. If you say the truth you will become an outlaw and wanted. Saddam was unjust and the Americans are also unjust...” The corpse was so badly disfigured that a positive identification could not be made.
Over the next two months, the US military has been ordered to slaughter or drive underground all opposition to the occupation and to Allawi’s regime, and to ensure that the only participants in sham elections planned for late January are pro-US parties and groups. Attacks are being prepared against 21 cities and towns where resistance is widespread.
The assault on Fallujah, however, has inflamed the Sunni regions of central and northern Iraq and is presenting the US occupation with the most serious military challenge since it began. Fighting or increased attacks on occupation troops are being reported in Ramadi, Samarra, Tikrit, Kirkuk, Baquaba and Baghdad, where a US helicopter was shot down overnight.
In the biggest blow to the occupation, the centre of Mosul, with a population approaching three million, has been taken over in the last several days by hundreds of Iraqi resistance fighters. US air strikes are now being carried out against the city, and hundreds of extra troops rushed to the area. A resistance leader, Saif al-Deen al-Baghdadi, declared in an interview: “We chose the path of armed jihad and say clearly that ridding Iraq of the occupation will not be done by ballots. Iyad Allawi’s government ... represents the fundamentalist right-wing of the White House and not the Iraqi people.”
American troops arrested leading Sunni cleric Mahdi al-Sumaydai in Baghdad yesterday after he made a call for Iraqis to rise up against the occupation. US forces also raided the home of Harith al-Dhari, the head of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, which is calling for a boycott of the elections over the atrocities being committed in Fallujah.
The main Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has remained silent throughout the bloodbath in Fallujah, is coming under pressure to condemn it. Before his arrest, al-Sumaydai stated: “We reproach Sistani for not officially taking a position on the offensive and we call on him to do so.”
Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is also under pressure to issue a call for his supporters to resume fighting against the occupation. Sumaydai’s statement reminded Shiites that the Sunni groups had spoken out in solidarity with Sadr’s Mahdi Army fighters during the US assaults on the cities of Karbala and Najaf.
The US mass killings in Fallujah will prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. They have served only to broaden the resistance of the Iraqi people and deepen the revulsion and opposition internationally to the criminal war on Iraq.
---
See Also:
US assault leaves Fallujah in ruins and unknown numbers dead [11 November 2004]
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/iraq-n11.shtml
4.
Forwarded by "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@vitelcom.net>
Status of BlackBoxVoting Investigations
From: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
WHAT IS A FRAUD AUDIT?
BlackBoxVoting.Org
November 13, 2004
A fraud audit is not the same as a recount. It does not presume innocence. It does not make the assumption that if there is an anomaly with a benign explanation, it's okay to stop investigating. Any embezzler (or vote manipulator) worth his salt will build in an explanation that makes it sound like it could be an honest mistake, or a "glitch." Any investigator worth his salt knows you have to look deeper.
Forensic auditing begins with indicators, like oddball statistics, mismatched records, or secretive, obstructive behavior. The next step is to obtain diagnostic documents. Later steps may include pulling all the ballots for hand recounts.
Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting, has interfaced with law enforcement, including the FBI, state attorneys-general, the IRS, local police, and banking authorities, in several previous investigations during her work as an investigative writer. Her methods for isolating fraud have resulted in convictions or settlements from embezzlers and financial fraudsters. Black Box Voting is the first publicly funded, independent consumer protection group to investigate this election using forensic auditing methods.
Irresponsible media
You may have seen recent stories in the media (ABC News, Salon.com), and at other voting integrity Web sites like VerifiedVoting.org, telling you there is no reason to believe suspicions of fraud in the 2004 election. In fact, no member of the media nor any organization has done any real forensic auditing to determine whether there was or was not fraud. Trust in our electoral process is critical to our democracy. We need the right kind of investigation into anomalies, using appropriate methods.
"Feel-good" statements, dismissive of real concerns into voting integrity, are not responsible. The truth is what it is. We might see something very uncomfortable unfold during these investigations. Or, maybe not. It's still too early to tell, but the evidence is mounting.
Snoopy 50-year-old women
Think of this like an assets investigation in a bad divorce: One party may have things to hide, the other party (we, the voters) wants to find out the truth. If you are looking for hidden assets owned by your ex, you don't call in a computer scientist from a university. You enlist the help of private investigators, accountants, lawyers, and your plain old common sense. In fact, snoopy 50-year-old women have proved invaluable in investigating voting machines.
This is not a computer problem. It is not something a reporter who spends four hours researching a story can pronounce judgment on. We have been surprised to see prominent scientists announcing "results" before the data is in. We don't know what happened on Nov. 2. We will find out.
Here's what Black Box Voting is doing to investigate appropriately:
We are doing forensic analysis of the available evidence. We are targeting specific locations based on criteria indicative of fraud.
Why we can't disclose our documents yet
Initially, we hoped to have everything public all the time. This resulted in butt-covering behavior on the part public officials, which hampered our investigations. Therefore, we adjusted our methods to keep critical investigations under wraps. That's just the way it has to be right now.
Isn't it too late?
We are dealing with well financed people who are trying to run out the clock. They probably will succeed in that. However, we probably will succeed in proving fraud. What we have going for us is this:
- Public outrage: We read your letters and hear your anguish on the phone. Do not let go of those emotions. Your job is to focus those emotions into stubborn, relentless, nonstop pressure to make sure that there will be consequences for any and all electoral fraud.
- Law enforcement. There are still plenty of honest cops. Also, in our experience, different law enforcement agencies don't always get along, and where one fails us, another may not.
- We have the courts. (Somewhat.) Not all judges are unfriendly. They vote too. We can follow the example of tobacco industry lawsuits, launching many lawsuits, then sharing discovery and strategy until at last, we prevail.
- We have the media (barely). Network TV has not yet been able to get its brain around the story of electoral betrayal in a 2-minute news byte. For the time being, you must be your own "network TV." Don't count on TV to spread the word. Instead count on America's spirit of self reliance. We will prevail. Be the media.
- We have the Internet. Use it to share information at every level -- instant messaging, e-mailing, listservs, blogs, forums, Web sites, announcements, online media, online documents, film and video clips, audio clips, and any way that you can imagine to use it effectively. The Internet allows us to respond without boundaries, quickly, in unpredictable ways.
- We have truth.
------------
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting has launched a fraud audit into Florida. Three investigators (Bev Harris, Andy Stephenson, and Kathleen Wynne) are in Florida right now. We will initiate hand counts on selected counties that have not fully complied with our Nov. 2 Freedom of Information request by Monday (Diebold counties) or Tuesday (other counties).
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: We have reports that both David Cobb (Green Party) and Michael Badnarik (Libertarian Party) will be filing for official recounts in Ohio. Black Box Voting is also launching a fraud audit in Ohio. Gotta be replaced: Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Please invoke the following name change on Blackwell immediately, as he is 2004's Katherine Harris. He should now be referred to at all times as "Katherine Blackwell." Please retain this moniker for any future runs for governor. How to be your own media. Spread the word. Latest Katherine Blackwell outrage: Failure to properly account for provisional ballots, and refusing to allow citizens to see the pollbooks.
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is implementing fraud diagnostics on the state of New Mexico. Information we recently received is indicative of widespread vote manipulation. We are not going to publicize the specifics here.
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is requesting legal assistance for a specific county in Georgia. Indications of corrupt voting processes, with possible criminal actions by local officials.
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is launching a fraud investigation on Pima County Arizona.
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is launching a fraud investigation on the state of Nevada. Pro bono legal help certified to practice in Nevada, needed immediately. Multiple irregularities. Need people to take affidavits from election workers, statewide.
BREAKING -- FRIDAY NOV 12 2004: Ralph Nader to audit Diebold machines in New Hampshire. According to Nader, the current situation with voting machines warrants investigation. Several elements make voting machines "probative" for investigation, according to Nader, a consumer affairs lawyer: proprietary ownership, secret code, vested interests, a high-value reward, and lack of any real consequences, or likelihood of getting caught, for vote manipulation. "We are told that shenanigans are just politics," said Nader at a press conference on Nov. 10. "Well, it's not politics. It's taking away people's votes."
SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: Freedom of Information requests at http://www.blackboxvoting.org have unearthed two Ciber certification reports indicating that security and tamperability was NOT TESTED and that several state elections directors, a secretary of state, and computer consultant Dr. Britain Williams signed off on the report anyway, certifying it.
Go at http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ for more.
See also:
The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy - by Steven F. Freeman, PhD (Nov 10)
http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/The_unexplained_exit_poll_discrepancy_v00k.pdf
(...) Summary and Implications - My purpose in this paper, however, has not been to allege election theft, let alone explain it. Rather, I have tried to demonstrate that exit poll data is fundamentally sound, that the deviations between exit poll predictions and vote tallies in the three critical battleground states could not have occurred strictly by chance or random error, and that no solid explanations have yet been provided to explain the discrepancy. In short, I have tried to justify the discrepancy as a legitimate issue that warrants public attention. The unexplained discrepancy leaves us with two broad categories of explanations: the polls were flawed or the count is off. The most important investigations concern verification of the tallies and allegations of fraud on one side; and examination of the exit poll's methodology and findings on the other. Some useful statistical analyses would compare the "shift" in battleground states vs. non-battleground states, and in states, counties and precincts where safeguards are strong vs. those where they are suspect. Obviously, if the polling consortium would release their data, that would allow us to do more definitive analyses. Given that neither the pollsters nor their media clients have provided solid explanations to the public, suspicion of fraud, or among the less accusatory, "mistabulation," is running rampant and unchecked. That so many people suspect misplay undermines not only the legitimacy of the President, but faith in the foundations of the democracy. Systematic fraud or mistabulation is a premature conclusion, but the election's unexplained exit poll discrepancies make it an unavoidable hypothesis, one that is the responsibility of the media, academia, polling agencies, and the public to investigate.
More related comments at http://www.waypath.com/topic/election_exitpolls.html
Stolen Election Library With Hundreds Of Links
http://StolenElection.net
I Smell a Rat (12 November 2004) WIDELY CIRCULATED!
http://www.zogby.com/Soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=10414
I smell a rat. It has that distinctive and all-too-familiar odor of the species Republicanus floridius. We got a nasty bite from this pest four years ago and never quite recovered. Symptoms of a long-term infection are becoming distressingly apparent. The first sign of the rat was on election night. The jubilation of early exit polling had given way to rising anxiety as states fell one by one to the Red Tide. It was getting late in the smoky cellar of a Prague sports bar where a crowd of expats had gathered. We had been hoping to go home to bed early, confident of victory. Those hopes had evaporated in a flurry of early precinct reports from Florida and Ohio. By 3 AM, conversation had died and we were grimly sipping beers and watching as those two key states seemed to be slipping further and further to crimson. Suddenly, a friend who had left two hours earlier rushed in and handed us a printout. "Zogby's calling it for Kerry." He smacked the sheet decisively. "Definitely. He's got both Florida and Ohio in the Kerry column. Kerry only needs one." Satisfied, we went to bed, confident we would wake with the world a better place. Victory was at hand. The morning told a different story, of course. No Florida victory for Kerry - Bush had a decisive margin of nearly 400,000 votes. Ohio was not even close enough for Kerry to demand that all the votes be counted. The pollsters had been dead wrong, Bush had four more years and a powerful mandate. Onward Christian soldiers - next stop, Tehran. CLIP
Glibs reach their recount dough count by Keith Olbermann (November 14, 2004)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/
SECURE UNDISCLOSED LOCATION- A presidential vote recount in Ohio seems inevitable today with the announcement from Green Party candidate David Cobb that he and the Libertarians' Michael Badnarik have raised $150,000 in donations to meet filing fees and expenses.That fund-raising goal was set last Thursday; on Cobb's website the two parties now say they're going to try to raise an additional $100,000 for"training, mobilizing, and per diem expenses" for those "thousands" who'll be involved in the statewide effort. They're also calling for volunteers from Ohio, and elsewhere, to be the Green/Lib observers in the county-by-county process, or house out-of-state volunteers. I swear: I'm on vacation. Golly, I've never been the subject of a conspiracy theory before. Yet, there it is, flying around the Internet under the byline of a Peter Coyote: that when I attempted to break the "lock-down" of coverage of the voting irregularities story in the media during Friday night's edition of Countdown, I was fired, and left the studio in the middle of the program.Um, no, actually. I'm on vacation- it's been scheduled since August; I'll be blogging in the interim. CLIP
INSIDE THE ELECTION FRAUD BATTLE
http://www.moderateindependent.com/v2i21election.htm
Think Kerry Is Not Involved In This Fight? Think Again.
WE DO NOT CONCEDE COALITION
http://www.donotconcede.com/
Kerry to unconcede? There may be hope for us yet (Nov 10)
http://www.moderateindependent.com/v2i21election.htm
Think Kerry Is Not Involved In This Fight? Think Again. Also: Fallujah = Operation Distract From Fixed Election.
Nader Calls For US Poll Recounts In Key States
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=96351&Sn=WORL&IssueID=27237
Help America Recount
http://helpamericarecount.org
Will Vote Recount Settle Doubts?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111804Y.shtml
Your Help Needed For Ohio Recount (Green and Libertarian Parties)
http://web.greens.org/c/cobb/supporters.cgi?function=donate
Alliance For Democracy Launches Ohio Honest Elections Campaign
http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/html/eng/2138-AA.shtml
Comment from Marg left on 2004-11-16 in the ERN guestbook
http://two.guestbook.de/gb.cgi?gid=456912&prot=ccbcsw
Thank you, Jean, for your wonderful service to humanity; we all appreciate you and need you! There is something amazing I'd like you to comment on: In all this "election insanity" did anyone else notice the strange phenomenon of the vote "percentage" in Washington, D.C.? It was a "blue state", and Kerry got 90% of the vote, Bush just 9%. I have seen no one, anywhere, discuss the implications this glaring difference holds. Just think of it. Why? Perhaps D.C. was the one state where the vote was not, could not be, screwed up? It was the one state where the "true count" was made, and probably shows the overall vote that Kerry "really got" in the U.S. election of 2004. I find it amazing, and would like to communicate with anyone who would like to comment. If possible, could you include this in a near future earth rainbow network report? Thank you and God bless all of you out there, Marg in Montana montanagardenangel@yahoo.com>
5.
From: "Gush Shalom " otherisr@actcom.co.il>
Date: 14 Nov 200
Subject: Eyewitness account of the funeral of Yasser Arafat
GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 www.gush-shalom.org/
1] Rejoice not...
2] The vitality of the source eyewitness report from the funeral
3] Missing Arafat Avnery interviewed by Ari Shavit
4] Gush ad in Ha'aretz
---
1] Rejoice not...
Uri Avnery 13.11.04
http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article330.html
"Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth, Lest the Lord see it, and it displease him." This biblical injunction (Proverbs 24:17) is one of the most profound Jewish moral tenets.
In this connection, Israel is very far from being a "Jewish State", as it likes to define itself. The disgusting filth poured out over Yasser Arafat during the last few days in practically all the Israeli media makes one ashamed to be an Israeli.
The demonization of the Palestinian national leader, which has been the center-piece of Israeli propaganda for decades, continues even after his death. It seems that 37 years as occupiers have bestialized our society and left it bereft even of common decency. Ministers and fishmongers, TV icons and university professors, "leftists" and outright fascists tried to outdo each other in utter vulgarity.
Never was the huge gap in the perceptions of the two peoples more striking than on the day of Arafat's funeral. While Israeli commentators and "experts on Arab affairs" - almost all of them veterans of the various intelligence agencies - described the late leader as a veritable monster, the epitome of cruelty, viciousness and corruption - a hundred thousand grief-stricken mourners in Ramallah exploded in a burst of emotions that nearly threw the funeral into pandemonium. If the Israeli army had not surrounded and isolated all Palestinian towns that day, more than a million people would have been there.
Gush Shalom, the only Israeli organization that openly mourned alongside the Palestinian people, decided to send a delegation to the funeral. All of us activists, women and men, wore on our breast a big sticker displaying the Israeli and Palestinian flags. The sheer pressure of the multitude split us up among the crowd. Throughout the hours of the funeral, we felt completely safe, even when thousands of shots were fired around us into the air to express grief and bereavement. We encountered hundreds of expressions of gratitude and friendship from Palestinians of all ages and stations in life.
I was in the middle of the melee when the helicopter bearing the coffin arrived from Cairo. Standing beside the grave among the Palestinian ministers, religious dignitaries and diplomats, I was vividly aware of the intense emotions of the huge crowd around us when the helicopter touched down. I remembered the scene of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser's funeral in 1970, when the masses surged forward and literally captured the body of their beloved leader from the soldiers, and felt that this was going to happen here at any moment. And it did.
No Arab leader - and very few world leaders - evoke such profound love and admiration among their people as this man, whom Israelis consider a veritable monster in human form. The Palestinians trusted him, relied on him, let him make all the big decisions that demanded courage, derived from him the strength to defy the intolerable conditions under a brutal occupation. Now, suddenly, incredibly, they found themselves alone, like orphaned waifs, in a world changed by the death of a man who left a huge gap behind him.
What will happen now? Arafat has brought his people from the edge of oblivion to the threshold of independence. But the battle for liberation is still far from over. The new leadership will have to face all the problems that confronted Arafat, without the towering authority of Arafat.
Abu Mazen, Abu-Ala and their colleagues are upright, decent people. I have known them for years, mostly from meetings with Arafat. But they have no deep roots in their people. It may be years before a strong leadership emerges.
At the moment, the Palestinians are united in their resolve to show the world that they can overcome this crisis in a civilized and responsible manner. This could have been a chance for Israel (and the United States, of course) to open a new chapter in relations with the Palestinian people.
What could have been done? Well, there should have been a show of goodwill with such gestures as the mass release of Palestinian prisoners, including the much respected Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who has been sentenced to serve five consecutive life sentences. Sieges should have been lifted and army operations at least reduced. Peace negotiations should have been announced for the near future.
The first test was, of course, the funeral itself. Arafat should have been buried in Jerusalem, according to his wishes. His interment in Ramallah will only strengthen the resolve of the Palestinians to fight until they are able to re-bury him there. The Minister of Justice, Tommy Lapid, an extreme rightist posing as a liberal, reached new heights of vulgarity when he declared that "Jewish Kings, not Arab terrorists, are buried in Jerusalem". Well, Menachem Begin, a terrorist who became a "king" and was buried in Jerusalem, could have served as a precedent.
But the most important thing is to enable the Palestinians to hold elections within 60 days of the death of the President, as their constitution demands. Actually, my last conversation with Arafat, a few weeks ago (when, by the way, he looked quite healthy) concerned elections. We agreed that they are impracticable while the Israeli army routinely assassinates potential candidates and makes movement between towns and villages almost impossible. How will candidates - if they remain alive - canvass their voters? How will they distribute material, hold meetings and debate policies, with tanks in the background and helicopter gunships hovering overhead?
This situation must be changed at once. All troops must be withdrawn at least from the areas under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority (so-called Areas A and B, according to the Oslo agreements), freedom of movement restored, the assassination campaign stopped and, most importantly, international observers invited .
Will this happen? Probably not. Ariel Sharon has absolutely no interest in sitting opposite a democratically elected leadership enjoying international legitimacy and respect, perhaps even weakening his control over President Bush and obstructing his plan for the annexation of most of the West Bank . He will do everything to prevent elections, and, of course, blame the Palestinians. As always, it is advisable to ignore what Sharon says - and pay close attention
---
2] The vitality of the source - eyewitness report from the funeral
http://www.geocities.com/keller_adam/gu_no_linebreaks.html
Going to Ramallah through the Bitunya Checkpoint gives the clear feeling of entering a prison. We had to go by foot through a complicated system of high walls, barriers and security checks. At least this day we were not refused entry altogether, as we had become used to in the past years.
The soldiers looked at us with a kind of grudging respect as we lined up to sign the legal waiver. ("Knowing the dangers I declare that from my own free will I take all risks upon myself, and give up any claims whatsoever towards the state of Israel, the Ministry of Defence and their employees and soldiers in connection with any bodily damage or death, caused by my presence in the closed area.") Activist Edith Ohri took the soldiers by surprise by adding "except if I am shot at by the Israeli army" in a handwritten reservation.
We were through but without means of transport - the Gush Shalom bus from Tel-Aviv and the bus with Jerusalem activists had to be left behind at the military parking lot. But a phonecall to our Palestinian contacts soon brought a convoy of vans, bearing posters of Arafat and the inscription "official delegation" taking us and a group of Arab dignitaries from the Galilee to Ramallah's city center. Nearly every passing car sported an Arafat poster, and the small children at the street corners were selling them: Arafat smiling, Arafat saluting, Arafat and the Jerusalem mosques, Arafat with president Chirac and the crossed flags of Palestine and France...
On the radio, we heard reports from Cairo, where diplomats and world leaders were paying hommage to Arafat in a rather sterile ceremony. At the gates of the Muqata - a place well-known to us from our visits to the beleaguered Arafat - there had already gathered a considerable crowd, though it was still hours before the helicopter could be expected. Our identity as Israelis was manifest from the round two-flag stickers we all wore, and which were very much sought after by the Palestinian youths; we were prepared for that and distributed quite a lot.
We were treated as VIPs, and the Palestinian police made valiant efforts to let us in, through the narrowly opened gate, while keeping the rest of the crowd out. The youths around us would have none of that, and that the fact that so many of them wore our stickers made it difficult for the police to distinguish. The crowding became unbearable; some of us had gotten in, others decided to give up the privilege and stay outside. The youngsters however were relentless. Some started climbing over the gate itself, others made risky acrobatic feats of clambering via the half- ruined buildings (reminders of Israeli bulldozers). It became a wild melee between police on the one side and the ever increasing number of Palestinian youngsters trying to get in. Outnumbered and not using other means than their bare hands the police were eventually unable to prevent the gate from being forced open.
"With our blood and souls we'll redeem you Abu Ammar!" chanted the crowd pouring in. Palestinian national flags were waved in enormous profusion, among them a French and a Canadian flag of international volunteers and the banner of an Italian trade-union. Women in traditional clothes, who were there too, were seen crying. Forward we marched through past the multi-storey Arafat banners covering all buildings. The grave had been dug at the far end of an open space within the compound - all buildings which had been there having been razed to the ground by the IDF in 2002. Now this space, the size of several stadiums, was filled to the absolute limit. People were clinging to the tops of trees, and every building all around was covered with swarms of onlookers. Suddenly, fingers were pointing into the blue sky, where some had already discerned approaching black dots: "He is coming! He is coming!" It was a surrealistic moment, the helicopters bringing Arafat's coffin down from heaven. "Yasser, Yasser", came the cry from tens of thousands of throats. A lot of shooting in the air, and the smell of cordite. Though not fond of this ritual, we realized its meaning after two years in which the Israeli army adopted the habit of shooting to death any Palestinian seen with a gun.
The people who saw it on live broadcast saw it better than we: the crowds surging to the opening helicopter doors, straining to touch the coffin. But the emotional spontaneity did not become chaos, and some time later a car with the coffin and green-uniform exultant police sitting on top passed near where we stood.
Indeed, some of the planned ceremony did not take place, but we have witnessed something much more meaningful: the vitality of the source upon which Arafat's leadership drew, the love of an oppressed people for the symbol of their struggle to be free. Without grassroots struggle there would never have been the Palestinian Authority, and the people now in charge know that for a new mandate, that is where they have to turn.
Adam Keller & Beate Zilversmidt
photos http://www.gush-shalom.org/actions/action12-11-2004.html
---
3] Missing Arafat, Avnery interviewed by Ari Shavit
Uri Avnery is unshaken in his belief that Yasser Arafat was a giant, and a partner for Israel - its only opportunity, in fact, which Israel missed. The angry young men in Jenin don't care about Abu Ala or Abu Mazen. In effect, Sharon and Bush have left the field to bin Laden. [Opening caption by Ha'aretz].
Read the full text in http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/500556.html
---
4] Gush ad in Ha'aretz
Hebrew on the website http://www.gush-shalom.org
Gush Shalom shares the mourning
Of the Palestinian people
Upon the passing away of
Yasser Arafat Father of the Oslo agreement
Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Partner in the peace that was missed
[published as ad in Ha'aretz, Nov. 12]
6.
I HAVE NEVER LEARNED SO MUCH ABOUT THE TRUE HISTORY OF ISRAEL AND ITS PERVADING INFLUENCE IN AMERICA AS IN THIS FOLLOWING ARTICLE. AND I'M SURE IT ONLY SCRATCHES THE SURFACE OF THE TERRIBLE MISDEEDS AND MACHINATIONS CAUSED BY THIS TORMENTED NATION. THE 9-11 ATTACKS AND THE IRAQI QUAGMIRE ARE ALSO LIKELY TO BE CONNECTED TO THE ALL POWERFUL INFLUENCE OF THE JEWISH LOBBY UPON U.S. POLICIES. THE WHOLE TRUTH NEEDS TO BE WIDELY EXPOSED, AND THE TABOO AGAINST REVEALING IT MUST BE OVERCOME.
Forwarded by "Paul Prior" webmaster@globalcircle.net>
From: http://www.marwenmedia.com/articles_images/CostofIsrael.html
The Staggering Cost Of Israel To Americans
By Richard Curtiss
11-15-4
By now many Americans are aware that Israel, with a population of only 5.8 million people, is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, and that Israel's aid plus U.S. aid to Egypt's 65 million people for keeping the peace with Israel has, for many years, consumed more than half of the U.S. bi-lateral foreign aid budget world-wide.
What few Americans understand however, is the steep price they pay in many other fields for the U.S.-Israeli relationship, which in turn is a product of the influence of Israel's powerful U.S. lobby on American domestic politics and has nothing to do with U.S. strategic interests, U.S. national interests, or even with traditional American support for self-determination, human rights, and fair play overseas.
Besides its financial cost, unwavering U.S. support for Israel, whether it's right or wrong, exacts a huge price in American prestige and credibility overseas. Further, Israel's powerful U.S. lobby has been a major factor in delaying campaign finance reform, and also in the removal from American political life of some of our most distinguished public servants, members of Congress and even presidents.
Finally, the Israel-U.S. relationship has cost a significant number of American lives. The incidents in which hundreds of U.S. service personnel, diplomats, and civilians have been killed in the Middle East have been reported in the media. But the media seldom revisits these events, and scrupulously avoids analyzing why they occurred or compiling the cumulative toll of American deaths resulting from our Israel-centered Middle East policies.
Each of these four categories of the costs of Israel to the American people merits a talk of its own. What follows, therefore, is just an overview of such losses.
First is the financial cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers. Between 1949 and 1998, the U.S. gave to Israel, with a self-declared population of 5.8 million people, more foreign aid than it gave to all of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, all of the countries of Latin America, and all of the countries of the Caribbean combined - with a total population of 1,054,000,000 people.
In the 1997 fiscal year, for example, Israel received $3 billion from the foreign aid budget, at least $525 million from other U.S. budgets, and $2 billion in federal loan guarantees. So the 1997 total of U.S. grants and loan guarantees to Israel was $5.5 billion. That's $15,068,493 per day, 365 days a year.
If you add its foreign aid grants and loans, plus the approximate totals of grants to Israel from other parts of the U.S. federal budget, Israel has received since 1949 a grand total of $84.8 billion, excluding the $10 billion in U.S. government loan guarantees it has drawn to date.
And if you calculate what the U.S. has had to pay in interest to borrow this money to give to Israel, the cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers rises to $134.8 billion, not adjusted for inflation.
Put another way, the nearly $14,630 every one of 5.8 million Israelis had received from the U.S. government by October 31, 1997, cost American taxpayers $23,241 per Israeli. That's $116,205 for every Israeli family of five.
None of these figures include the private donations by Americans to Israeli charities, which initially constituted about one quarter of Israel's budget, and today approach $1 billion annually. In addition to the negative effect of these donations on the U.S. balance of payments, the donors also deduct them from their U.S. income taxes, creating another large drain on the U.S. treasury.
Nor do the figures above include any of the indirect financial costs of Israel to the United States, which cannot be tallied. One example is the cost to U.S. manufacturers of the Arab boycott, surely in the billions of dollars by now. Another example is the cost to U.S. consumers of the price of petroleum, which surged to such heights that it set off a world-wide recession during the Arab oil boycott imposed in reaction to U.S. support of Israel in the 1973 war.
Other examples are a portion of the costs of maintaining large U.S. Sixth Fleet naval forces in the Mediterranean, primarily to protect Israel, and military air units at the Aviano base in Italy, not to mention the staggering costs of frequent deployments to the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf area of land and air forces from the United States and naval units from the Seventh Fleet, which normally operates in the Pacific Ocean.
Many years ago the late Undersecretary of State George Ball estimated the true financial cost of Israel to the United States at $11 billion a year. Since then direct U.S. foreign aid to Israel has nearly doubled, and simply adjusting that original figure into 1998 dollars would send it considerably higher today.
Next comes the cost of Israel to the international prestige and credibility of the United States. Americans seem constantly astounded at our foreign policy failures in the Middle East. This stems from a profound ignorance of the background of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, which in turn results from a reluctance by the mainstream U.S. media to present these facts objectively.
Toward the end of the 19th century when political Zionism was created in Europe, Jews were a tiny fraction of the population of the Holy Land, much of which was heavily cultivated and thickly populated, and certainly not a desert waiting to be reclaimed by outsiders.
Even in 1947, after half a century of Zionist immigration and an influx of Jewish refugees from Hitler, Jews still constituted only one third of the population of the British Mandate of Palestine. Only seven percent of the land was Jewish-owned. Yet when the United Nations partitioned Palestine in that year, the Jewish state-to-be received 53 percent and the Arab state-to-be received only 47 percent of the land. Jerusalem was to remain separate under international supervision, a "corpus seperatum" in the words of the United Nations.
One of the myths that many Americans still believe is that the initial war between the Arabs and Israelis broke out on May 15, 1948 when the British withdrew and military units from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Syria entered Palestine, allegedly because the Arabs had rejected a partition plan that the Israelis accepted.
In fact, the fighting began almost six months earlier, immediately after the partition plan was announced. By the time the Arab armies intervened in May, some 400,000 Palestinians already had fled or been driven from their homes. To the Arab nations the military forces they sent to Palestine were on a rescue mission to halt the dispossession of Palestinians from the areas the U.N. had awarded to both the Jewish and the Palestinian Arab state. In fact history has revealed that the Jordanian forces had orders not to venture into areas the U.N. had awarded to Israel.
Although the newly created Israeli government didn't formally reject the partition plan, in practice it never accepted the plan. To this day, half a century later, Israel still refuses to define its borders.
In fact, when the fighting of 1947 and 1948 ended, the State of Israel occupied half of Jerusalem and 78 percent of the former mandate of Palestine. About 750,000 Muslim and Christian Palestinians had been driven from towns, villages and homes to which the Israeli forces never allowed them to return.
The four wars that followed, three of them started by Israel in 1956, 1967, and 1982, and one of them started by Egypt and Syria to recover their occupied lands in 1973, have been over the portions of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt which the Israelis occupied militarily in those wars, the other half of Jerusalem, and the 22 percent of Palestine - comprising the West Bank and Gaza - which is all that remains for the Palestinians.
It is the unwillingness of successive U.S. governments to acknowledge these historical facts, and adjust U.S. Middle East policies to right these wrongs, that has resulted in such a devastating loss of international credibility. Americans, who once were identified with the modern schools, universities and hospitals they had established throughout the Middle East starting more than 150 years ago, now are identified with U.S. misuse of its veto in the United Nations to condone Israeli violations of the human rights of the Palestinians living in the lands Israel has seized by force. The Israeli occupation violates the preface to the United Nations Charter banning the acquisition of territory by war. What the Israeli government has been doing in the occupied territories also violates the Fourth Geneva convention, which forbids the transfer of populations to or from such areas.
Governments of Middle Eastern countries which once looked to the United States as their protectors from European colonialism, now find it very difficult to justify maintaining cordial relations with the United States at all. Friendly Arab governments are jeopardized by their U.S. alliances, and the fall of one, the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq, was directly attributable to its premature withdrawal of its armed forces from Palestine during the 1948 fighting, and its subsequent membership in a military alliance with the U.S. and Britain.
Even our European and Asian allies have joined in deploring the perpetual American tilt toward Israel. In a recent vote on a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling upon Israel to curb further encroachments on Palestinian lands by Jewish settlers, only the United States and Micronesia voted with Israel. Of the 185 U.N. member nations, all of the others, without exception, voted against Israel or abstained.
Yet Americans seem oblivious to such examples of how their Israel-centered Middle East policies are isolating the United States in the world.
Next is the cost of Israel to the American domestic political system. In December 1997, Fortune magazine asked professional lobbyists to select the most powerful special interest group in the United States. They chose the American Association of Retired Persons, which lobbies on behalf of all Americans over 60.
In second place, however, was the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel's official Washington, D.C. lobby, with a $15 million budget - the sources of which AIPAC refuses to disclose - and 150 employees. AIPAC, in turn, can draw upon the resources of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a roof group set up to coordinate the efforts on behalf of Israel of some 52 national Jewish organizations.
Among those organizations are groups such as B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League (ADL), with a $45 million budget, and Hadassah, the Zionist women's group, which spends more than AIPAC and sends thousands of Americans every year to Israel on Israeli government-supervised visits.
Both AIPAC and the ADL maintain secret "opposition research" departments which compile files on politicians, journalists, academics and organizations, and circulate this information through local Jewish community councils to pro-Israel groups and activists in order to damage the reputations of those who dare to speak out and thus have been blackballed as "enemies of Israel." In the case of ADL, police raids on the organization's Los Angeles and San Francisco offices established that much of the information they had compiled was erroneous, and thus slanderous, and some also was illegally obtained.
In the case of AIPAC, this is not the organization's most controversial activity. In the 1970s members of AIPAC's national board of directors set out to form deceptively named local political action committees (PACs) which could coordinate their efforts in supporting candidates in federal elections. To date, at least 126 pro-Israel PACs have been registered, and no fewer than 50 PACs, like AIPAC, can give a candidate who is facing a tough opponent and who has voted according to AIPAC recommendations up to half a million dollars. That's enough money to buy all the television time needed to get elected in most parts of the country.
What is totally unique about AIPAC's network of political action committees is that they all have deceptive names. Who could possibly know that the Delaware Valley PAC in Philadelphia, San Franciscans for Good Government in California, Cactus PAC in Arizona, Chili PAC in New Mexico, Beaver PAC in Wisconsin and even Ice PAC in New York are really pro-Israel PACs. So just as no other special interest can put so much hard money into any candidate's election campaign as can the Israel lobby, no other special interest has gone to such elaborate lengths to hide its tracks.
Some of America's wisest and most distinguished public servants have been kept from higher office by the blackballing of the Israel lobby. One such leader was George Ball, who served the Kennedy administration as Under Secretary of State and the Johnson administration as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Given his unmatched brilliance in forecasting international developments, there is no doubt that he would have become secretary of state had he not publicly expressed the skepticism about the U.S. relationship with Israel which most Americans involved in foreign affairs privately feel.
In membership meetings which journalists are not allowed to attend, AIPAC presidents have boasted that the organization was responsible for the defeats of two of history's most distinguished chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - Democrat J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Republican Charles Percy of Illinois. The list of other senators and House members for whose election defeats AIPAC takes credit is too long to recount.
There is good evidence also that had it not been for complex maneuvers by the Israel lobby, including encouragement of third party candidates and unrelenting partisanship by pro-Israeli syndicated columnists and other media figures, Democratic President Jimmy Carter probably would have been reelected in 1980, and Republican President George Bush almost certainly would have been reelected in 1992.
The cost to our political system of losing national figures who refused to allow U.S. domestic political interests to dictate U.S. foreign policy has been enormous. So long as AIPAC and other powerful lobbies continue to thwart meaningful efforts on behalf of campaign finance reform, Americans will continue unknowingly paying such costs. Finally, there is the cost of Israel in American lives. References to the attack by Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats on the USS Liberty in which 34 Americans were killed and 171 wounded on the fourth day of the Six-Day War of June 1967 often are met by disbelief. Very few Americans seem to have heard of the attack on the ship operated by the U.S. Navy for the National Security Agency to monitor Israel and Arab military communications during the fighting.
The Israeli government claimed it was a case of mistaken identity. The members of the crew and other naval officers who were stationed in the Mediterranean and in Washington at the time state that it was a deliberate attempt to sink the ship and blame Egyptian forces for the disaster. It is the only such event in U.S. Naval history the cause of which has never been formally investigated either by Congress or by the Navy itself.
Major losses of American lives at the hands of Arab forces opposing Israel are better known. These include the loss of 141 U.S. service personnel in the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1984. They also include the loss of xx U.S. diplomats and xxx local employees of the U.S. government in two bombings of the American Embassy in Beirut. Other such events include the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, the taking of U.S. hostages in Beirut of whom three were killed, the deaths of Americans in a series of Middle East related skyjackings, the deaths of 19 U.S. service personnel in the bombing of the Al Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and the 1997 assassination of four U.S. accountants working for an American company in Karachi.
All of these incidents, and many more in which Americans have died, resulted directly from one-sided U.S. support for Israel in its refusal to participate in the land-for-peace settlement with the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbors envisioned in U.N. Security Council Resolution 242. The U.S. has given lip service to that resolution since November, 1967. But in practice the U.S. has done nothing to force Israel to comply, even though the resolution has been accepted by the members of the League of Arab States. That U.S. hypocrisy fuels rage and frustration throughout the Middle East and South Asia which will continue to take a toll of American lives until Israel finally gives back the lands it occupied in 1967, or the U.S. stops subsidizing Israeli intransigence.
Claims that there are positive aspects of the U.S.-Israeli relationship seldom stand up to scrutiny. During the Reagan administration it was labeled for the first time a "strategic relationship" conferring benefits on the U.S. as well as on Israel. The idea that Israel - smaller in both area and population than Hong Kong - can offer the United States benefits sufficient to offset the hostility that relationship arouses among 250 million Arabs living in a 4,000-mile strategic swath of territory stretching from Morocco to Oman is ludicrous. It becomes even more ludicrous when one realizes that the relationship also has alienated another 750 million Muslims who, together with the Arabs, control more than 60 percent of the world's proven oil and gas reserves.
Apologists for Israel also describe the U.S.-Israeli cooperation in weapons development. The fact is that the one or two successful joint weapons programs have been largely U.S. financed, while for their part the Israelis have repeatedly sold to rogue nations U.S. weapons turned over at no cost to Israel.
It is a sad but proven fact that the Israeli government also has obtained secret U.S. military technology which Israel has sold to other countries. For example, after the U.S. sent Patriot missile defense batteries on an emergency basis to help defend Israel during the Gulf War, the Israelis seem to have sold the Patriot missile technology to China, according to the U.S. State Department's inspector general. As a result, the U.S. has been forced to develop a whole new generation of missile technology able to penetrate the defenses China has developed as a result of the Israeli treachery.
Perhaps the most hypocritical rationalization offered by friends of Israel is that U.S. special treatment is justified because Israel is "the Middle East's only working democracy" and that Israel and the U.S. have many basic institutions in common. In fact, Israeli democracy does not work for non-Jews. In contrast to the United States, where by law all citizens have equal rights regardless of religion or ethnic origin, Muslim and Christian citizens of Israel do not have equal rights with regards to military service, the extensive social benefits available to veterans of Israeli military service, or even in terms of Israeli tax rates imposed on Arab citizens and Israeli government expenditures in Arab communities within Israel.
Further, Israeli citizenship is not available to the Muslim and Christian Palestinians driven from their homes in Israel in 1948, nor to their descendants. But a Jew, born anywhere in the world, can have Israeli citizenship for the asking.
Perhaps most shocking is the little-known fact that by now 90 percent of the land in Israel proper is held under restrictive covenants barring non-Jews, even those with Israeli citizenship, from owning the land or from earning a living on it. Unfortunately, the land held under such covenants is increasing, not decreasing. It would be difficult, therefore, to find two countries more profoundly different in their approaches to basic questions of citizenship and civil and human rights as are the United States and Israel.
7.
From: NCEpanacea@aol.com
Date: 14 Nov 2004
Subject: VANUNU SPEAKS
From: http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/vanunu.html
VANUNU SPEAKS
Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower Risks Jail to Talk Exclusively to AFP
By Christopher Bollyn, American Free Press
Mordechai Vanunu, Israel's most famous dissident free after 18 years in prison, is ready to defy the severe restrictions imposed upon him by the Israeli military and tell the western media everything he knows about the Middle East's largest secret arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. However, because the hidden stockpiles belong to Israel, no American news outlet is interested in discussing this, except American Free Press.
"I have sacrificed my freedom and risked my life in order to expose the danger of nuclear weapons, which threaten this whole region," Vanunu said in an exclusive interview with American Free Press on July 28.
Vanunu spent 18 years in an Israeli prison -- 11 and a half of them in solitary confinement -- for providing evidence of Israel's nuclear arsenal to a British newspaper in 1986. "I acted on behalf of all citizens and all of humanity," said Vanunu.
In October 1986, Vanunu, a nuclear technician who had worked at the Dimona Nuclear Power Plant in the Negev Desert for 10 years, traveled to London and gave photographic evidence to The Sunday Times that Israel was secretly developing nuclear weapons. Two months earlier he had converted to Christianity while traveling in Australia.
After having learned about the secret production of plutonium for nuclear weapons at Dimona, in 1985 Vanunu believed it was his responsibility to inform the citizens of the world that an arsenal of nuclear weapons was being created in Israel.
Vanunu provided evidence and described how Israel had built an arsenal of over 200 nuclear bombs and neutron bombs. Before The Times's story was even published, however, Vanunu had been lured to Rome and kidnapped by Israeli secret service agents. A secret trial followed, and Vanunu was locked in a tiny, windowless cell for more than a decade.
When Vanunu was released from an Israeli prison on April 21, the Israeli military authorities imposed severe restrictions on his freedom. He is banned from leaving the country, confined to an assigned residence and denied the right to be in contact with journalists or foreigners.
The human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) protested the restrictions imposed on Vanunu saying on April 19: "Vanunu must not be subject to arbitrary restrictions and violations of his fundamental rights on the basis of pretexts or suspicions about what he may do in the future."
The restrictions on Vanunu's movement, speech and association violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Israel has ratified and is obliged to uphold, according to AI.
While Israeli officials contend the restrictions are to prevent Vanunu from divulging information about Israel's nuclear arsenal, AI sees it differently:
"Israel's determination to curtail Vanunu's freedom and contact with the outside world seem to be intended to prevent him from revealing details of his abduction by Israeli secret service agents 18 years ago in Rome in what was clearly an unlawful act," AI said.
According to Jonathan Cook of The Guardian in Britain, Vanunu's brother, Meir, who lives with him at St. George's, says there is another motive for the restrictions and confinement of Israel's most famous dissident: Vanunu's release brings attention to Israel's nuclear arsenal at precisely the moment when the justification for attacking Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- his possession of weapons of mass destruction -- is shown to have been hollow.
"If Vanunu were free to talk, he might remind the world that the greatest threat to Middle East peace comes not from Baghdad but from Tel Aviv," Cook wrote. "That is a message neither America nor Britain wants to hear right now."
The same controlled U.S. media networks that sent embedded reporters into combat in Iraq and published false reports about that nation's alleged weapons of mass destruction, are seemingly afraid to go to St. George's Cathedral in East Jerusalem and interview Vanunu, Israel's most famous dissident and peace activist, for fear of crossing a line drawn by the Israeli military.
American Free Press, however, and the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al Hayat have interviewed Vanunu recently from St. George's, where he has sought asylum in the Anglican church compound a short distance from the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem.
BEHIND THE JFK ASSASSINATION
Comments made by Vanunu during an interview with Al Hayat's weekly magazine Al Wassat, published on July 25, made headlines around the world but were completely ignored in the United States, where they could have caused immense political damage to Israel. As The Jerusalem Post's article headline read, "Vanunu: Israel behind JFK assassination."
Russia's Pravda article of July 27 began: "Israel may be implicated in the biggest crime of the past century, which took place in Dallas in 1963."
Iran's Tehran Times, writing from Jerusalem, said: "In a startling accusation, nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has alleged that Jerusalem was behind the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who was exerting pressure on the then Israeli head of state to shed light on the Dimona nuclear plant."
Similar articles appeared in newspapers around the world, but in the United States this explosive news was only reported by wire services and in Jewish newspapers.
Vanunu's comments that there are "near-certain indications" that Israel was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy support the thesis of Michael Collins Piper, presented in his book Final Judgment, that Israeli agents played a key role in the murder.
AFP asked Vanunu to explain his comments about Israeli involvement in the murder of President Kennedy.
"My view is that Kennedy was assassinated because of his strong opposition to [Israeli prime minister] Ben Gurion," Vanunu said.
At the time, Ben Gurion was working to create a nuclear arsenal for Israel.
The group that was involved with Ben Gurion in developing and protecting Israel's nuclear arsenal "was behind the assassination of Kennedy," Vanunu said.
As Piper documents in Final Judgment, Kennedy's resistance to Israel becoming a nuclear-armed state led to increasing hostility between the two leaders until Ben Gurion resigned in June 1963. Kennedy had realized that the Israelis were producing illegal nuclear weapons from the nuclear reactor given to Israel in 1959 under the "Atoms for Peace" program.
In the Al Wassat interview, Vanunu said: "Israel possesses between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons, including a neutron bomb and hydrogen bombs, which are tenfold in their effect. If an atomic bomb can kill 100,000 people then the hydrogen bomb can kill a million.
"We do not know which irresponsible Israeli prime minister will take office and decide to use nuclear weapons in the struggle against neighboring Arab countries," The Jerusalem Post reported Vanunu having said. "What has already been exposed about the weapons Israel is holding [is that they] can destroy the region and kill millions."
A 'SECOND CHERNOBYL'
Vanunu also warned of the environmental dangers of nuclear leaks at Israel's antiquated nuclear facility at Dimona. An earthquake or nuclear accident at Dimona could result in the "leaking of nuclear radiation, threatening millions of people in neighboring countries," Vanunu said.
Jordan, in particular, was mentioned as being in danger of nuclear contamination. "Dimona's chimneys do not operate unless the winds blow in the direction of Jordan," Vanunu said.
A Jordanian government spokesman, Asma Khader, responded promptly to Vanunu's claim, saying, "The kingdom is free of radiation."
Vanunu also criticized the recent visit to Israel of Mohamed El Baradei, head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"I am very disappointed by Mr. El Baradei because I expected him to go and inspect the Dimona reactor," Vanunu said. "The job of Mr. Baradei is to go and see if what I said . . . if it's true."
Vanunu stressed to AFP his strong desire to speak with the media despite the restrictions, and provide them with information and his views on the need for peace --and a nuclear-free Middle East.
Asked if the U.S. media was interested in meeting him, Vanunu said "not one" American or British newspaper or television network had visited him at St. George's since his release from prison.
"Why are they in silence?" Vanunu asked AFP about the U.S. media. "Why is the press not coming to see me? The media should bring my case to the people and the politicians. This case must be heard."
Linda Rothstein, editor of the Chicago-based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, however, showed little interest in Vanunu's story, saying that Vanunu has his supporters and that the Bulletin is not an advocacy group.
Likewise, Kay Seok of Human Rights Watch said that there was nothing they could do. "Nobody at HRW is working on Israel right now," she said.
WANTS OUT OF ISRAEL
Vanunu desperately wants to leave Israel, where he is viewed as a traitor, and seek political asylum in the United States. Nick and Mary Eoloff of St. Paul, Minnesota, have formally adopted Vanunu and are ready to provide him sanctuary.
Mrs. Eoloff told AFP that Vanunu's life is in danger in Israel.
"I want to go abroad and start my life as a free man," Vanunu said after Israel's high court upheld the military's restrictions on his movement and freedom. "If Israel is a democracy, it should allow me to do it."
Asked if he had been tortured during his 18 years in prison, Vanunu said, "Of course."
He said he had been subjected to "mental and psychological torture" that was "cruel and barbaric."
Because he had converted to Christianity he had received worse treatment than Jewish prisoners, he said. Vanunu said he had been treated like a Palestinian and that his captors had tried to "destroy" him.
"I am a symbol of the will of freedom," he said. "You cannot break the human spirit."
Asked about his supporters in the United States, Vanunu said: "I need their support to get me out. Americans should raise their voices with their congressmen and ask them in a loud voice to visit me and bring attention to my case.
"My country is not Israel," Vanunu said. "I want to be free and to leave Israel."
"Israel does not respect my basic human rights," Vanunu said. "I am denied the freedom of movement and freedom of speech-like all Palestinians. I want peace and freedom from all nuclear weapons in the Middle East."
8.
Forwarded by "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@vitelcom.net>
From: http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=384
Environmental News Network
Soft Energy Pathfinder: Who Needs Oil, Anyway?
November 15, 2004 - By Terence Chea, Associated Press
Amory Lovins drives a hybrid that gets 64 miles per gallon and lives in a solar-powered house that is so energy-efficient he's able to grow bananas in an indoor jungle high in the Colorado Rockies.
Yet the 54-year-old renewable energy evangelist, who emerged as one of the most influential energy thinkers three decades ago during the last oil crisis, is no anti-establishment foe of the free market.
The United States can end its dependence on foreign oil and make money along the way, he argued at a recent environmental conference in San Rafael, Calif. with the salesman-like flair of a Fortune 500 chief preaching to a hall of shareholders.
Crude prices have hit record highs this year as haggard U.S. soldiers daily meet death in the country with the world's second-largest oil reserves, casualties in an expensive war Lovins would argue it's folly to fight if -- as some Bush administration critics charge -- it's really all about fossil fuel.
"The United States can get completely off oil and revitalize its economy led by business for profit," says Lovins, who runs the Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colo. "Saving and substituting for oil costs less than buying oil. Getting completely off oil makes sense and makes money."
A new book by Lovins and his think-tank colleagues, "Winning the Oil Endgame," offers a technology-driven blueprint to wean the country off petroleum within a few decades: first, double the fuel efficiency of cars, trucks and airplanes; then replace gasoline with alternative fuels such as ethanol and hydrogen.
The transition to a post-petroleum future will generate jobs, create new industries, reduce greenhouse gases and improve national security, he says.
For now, automakers and energy firms need to adopt new business strategies, and lawmakers need to craft policies that promote this oil-free future. By Lovins' estimates, it will require an investment of $180 billion over ten years.
That's less than the U.S. involvement in Iraq will end up costing, and Lovins says it will save $70 billion a year by 2025.
"Right now, the world supply-demand balance for oil is so terribly tight that any little thing just throws the market into a tizzy," Lovins said in a recent interview. "We're not going to drill our way out of this one."
Many experts agree that the country's oil dependency is unsustainable and encourages economic volatility, global warming and geopolitical instability. Automakers are already developing more fuel-efficient vehicles that run on hybrid-electric engines, clean diesel, biofuels and hydrogen fuel cells.
But Lovins says the auto industry won't move fast enough without the guiding hand of federal authorities. To fuel a quicker transition to alternative fuels, Lovins says the government should spend more on research into fuel efficient technology, advanced materials and alternative fuels.
To pay for such programs, Lovins proposes fees on gas-guzzling vehicles and the opposite -- rebates -- for fuel-efficient vehicles. In addition, low-income Americans would be assisted financially to buy or lease efficient vehicles.
Lovins' message doesn't sit well with the auto industry.
It's consumers, not think tanks, who determine whether more energy-efficient technologies will succeed commercially, said Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.
"Consumers are in the driver's seat," she said. "Many consumers don't want to sacrifice performance, passenger room, cargo space, safety and even towing ability for greater fuel efficiency."
Other obstacles also block the road to an oil-free future -- hydrogen- and biofuel-powered vehicles are years away from becoming mainstream.
Lovins acknowledges the challenges, but is convinced that good sense -- along with environmental sustainability -- are on his side.
He's certainly never been content to follow convention. Born in Washington, D.C., he studied physics at Harvard and Oxford universities, but dropped out of both to pursue his interest in energy policy.
"I realized that energy was at the root of many security, development and environment problems," says Lovins, who gained national attention in 1976 with his Foreign Affairs essay, "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken."
While most analysts were focused on how to secure more oil -- what he calls the "hard energy path" -- Lovins argued for the "soft energy path" of boosting fuel efficiency and developing alternative fuels.
Lovins has since authored more than two dozen books, founded the Rocky Mountain Institute in 1982 and advised governments and industries worldwide.
While other environmentalists argue about political approaches, Lovins crunches the numbers needed to win over business executives and policy-makers in Washington.
His plan in brief:
Oil consumption can be reduced by half by doubling fuel efficiency, mainly through ultralight vehicles with advanced materials such as carbon fiber that improve both safety and performance.
"We no longer have to choose between making cars light and safe," he says.
Meanwhile, the nation must transition to alternative fuels. Ethanol from corn is now sold in some Midwestern states but hasn't proven economical elsewhere. Lovins advocates making ethanol from plant waste, such as corn stalks, switchgrass and poplar trees.
Another alternative is hydrogen, often touted as the fuel of the future. Hydrogen fuel cells generate electricity through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen without harmful emissions. Lovins wants to boost the efficiency of natural gas and use the saved energy to produce the hydrogen.
If his ideas were widely adopted, Lovins calculates that the country could stop importing oil by 2040 and run without oil by 2050.
Long before then, fuel efficient cars and alternative fuels could become new growth industries for urban and rural America.
"We're in that period where one idea is dying and another is struggling to be born," Lovins says.
9.
From: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6470897/
Flu pandemic looms as major global crisis
World Health Organization urges more efforts to develop vaccines
Nov. 12, 2004
GENEVA - The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday urged governments to provide funds to drug makers developing vaccines against a feared influenza pandemic, which could kill millions of people.
Representatives of 11 drug companies, governments and vaccine licensing agencies ended a two-day meeting amid fears Asia’s lethal bird flu virus endemic could mutate and infect humans.
Klaus Stohr, head of the WHO’s global influenza program, said companies were reluctant to invest some 11 million euros ($14.15 million) to develop a vaccine that may never be used.
“There is a need to raise the profile of pandemic preparedness as a matter of national security planning,” Stohr told a news conference.
Funding was the “most important barrier” to making vaccines against a pandemic that could strike a third of the world population with a fatality rate of about 1 percent, he said.
“It looks as if the companies will not come up with this money -- somebody else has to step in,” Stohr said.
Japanese officials said they were considering backing four Japanese drug makers in developing a vaccine for clinical testing in the country, he said.
TIMELINE - A history of worldwide Influenza
The origins of influenza are unknown, but the malady is never absent for more than a few decades. The worst pandemic occurred in the late 19th century, when more than 20 million people were killed.
400 B.C.:
Hippocrates records an outbreak of a cough, followed by pneumonia and other symptoms, at Perinthus in northern Greece (now part of Turkey). Several possible identifications have been suggested, including influenza, whooping cough and diphtheria.
212 B.C.:
The historian Livy describes an infectious disease, perhaps influenza, which strikes the Roman army.
1781-'82:
Considered among the greatest manifestations of disease in history, this pandemic afflicts two-thirds of the people of Rome and three-quarters of the population of Britain. Influenza also spreads widely in North America, the West Indies and Spanish America.
1789:
A widespread epidemic hits New England, New York and Nova Scotia in the fall. Most deaths appear to come from secondary pneumonia.
1829-'32, 1836-'37:
An epidemic begins in Asia late in 1829. From there it spreads to Indonesia by January 1831. The disease also breaks out in Russia in the winter of 1830-'31 and spreads westward. By November it reaches the United States.
1889-'90:
Named the Russian flu, this worldwide influenza epidemic, the most devastating to that time, begins in Central Asia in the summer of 1889, spreads north into Russia, east to China and west to Europe. It eventually strikes North America, parts of Africa and major Pacific Rim countries. By conservative estimates, 250,000 die in Europe, and the world death total is two to three times that.
1917-'19:
The Spanish flu, the most lethal influenza pandemic ever, kills more than 20 million people. More people die as a result of this flu than die during World War I. Its spread is facilitated by troop movements in the closing months of the war. Mortality rates are unusually high for flu, especially among young, otherwise healthy adults.
1957-'58:
The Asian flu starts in southwest China in February 1957, possibly having originated in 1956 in Vladivostok, Russia, then spreads throughout the Pacific. Globally it affects 10 percent to 35 percent of the population, but overall mortality is much lower than in the 1918 epidemic, about 0.25 percent.
1968-'69:
Hong Kong flu claims 700,000 lives worldwide, 34,000 in the United States.
1976:
The Swine flu, isolated in New Jersey in a young army recruit, instills fear of a new pandemic and leads to a massive influenza-immunization program. The vaccinations lead to Guillain-Barre syndrome, an ascending paralysis, in 100,000 people and kills 5 percent of those afflicted.
CLIP
Few doses available
Only two drug makers -- Aventis-Pasteur of France and British manufacturer Chiron Corp have been working on potential pandemic vaccines with funds from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Both are producing clinical batches of a vaccine and testing is expected to begin on humans and animals early next year.
In the event of a pandemic, vaccines, antiviral agents and antibiotics to treat secondary infections will be in short supply and unequally distributed, said the WHO.
The greatest influenza pandemic occurred in 1918-1919, causing an estimated 40 to 50 million deaths, more than were killed in World War one which preceded the outbreak.
“Pandemic influenza will be the largest public health infectious disease emergency we ever face in most countries and certainly globally,” said Arlene King, a director at the Canadian Public Health Agency.
The U.S.-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have projected that a pandemic today would result in between 2 million and 7.4 million deaths globally.
Luc Hessel, an executive director for Aventis Pasteur, said: “There is a lot of commitment and effort by the industry to face the current challenge. But he said, “production capacity cannot be doubled overnight.”
More info on this at http://omega.twoday.net/stories/401382/
10.
From: "Avillion" avillion@avillion.org>
Subject: Aerial Gunning to Kill 900 Wolves in Alaska
Date: 16 Nov 2004
Greetings!
You probably think I am mad that I keep sending out pleas to help various animals and so forth. I guess we all choose our battles and my heart goes out to those who are not able to defend themselves nor speak for themselves.
This kind of killing is not even “culling” – because there is no discrimination as to who is shot – or, if indeed, the target has been killed. How many will lie there wounded, bleeding and starving to death etc. . Just gun them all down at random like a bunch of vermin!
What a sophisticated act of a civilized people? I have called the Governor’s office before and again today and no doubt, I will call again to receive an update.
We will never be civilized until our actions reflect caring of heart.. (True caring of heart not to be confused with emotions that come and go …)
As such,one must assume that at this stage the Alaskan Snow and Ice has frozen feeling of their heart!A wolf howls and grieves for months for a lost member of the pack.!Do these people think the animals have no feeling? I guess so – a reflection of the general norm of self serving humanity.
At this point I can but only wish for their howls to awaken in humanity a conscience of heart- open their heart … and listen to it!
Would you please help to bring about a change in mentality?!?
Help the wolves and call upon the Angel of their species to assist them. Thank you and thank you for putting up with me – if you have read this far.
Please read further to find out how you can help.
Peace & Joy
Ingrid
---
From: Defenders of Wildlife donors@defenders.org>
Sent: November 16, 2004
Subject: Aerial Gunning to Kill 900 Wolves
The anti-conservation Board of Game has just voted to allow up to 900 wolves to be killed by the barbaric practice of aerial gunning. This is six times as many as were killed last winter. Easy targets against fallen snow, wolves can be gunned down from airplanes or chased to exhaustion, then shot at point blank range.
We're counting on your support to help stop the aerial killing of wolves in Alaska. Please take two actions now:
First, call Governor Murkowski's office at (907) 465-3500 to express your outrage.
Then, make a tax-deductible emergency contribution to our Campaign to Save Alaska's Wolves. We need to raise $25,000 in the next 72 hours. Your donation will be used to raise media awareness, mobilize grassroots pressure and take legal action to stop the savage killing.
Time is of the essence. So, please don't delay. Call Governor Murkowski's office and make an
Together we can stop the carnage.
Thanks for caring,
Steven DelVecchio
V.P. for Membership
P.S. If you prefer, you can mail your check to: Alaska Wolf Campaign, Defenders of Wildlife, 1130 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036. Thank you.
To subscribe, go to http://den.defenders.org/
11.
Recommended by Meria Heller meriaheller@cox.net>
From: http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1324532004
Otter bucks trend as 3,000 species join danger list on dying planet
JAMES REYNOLDS ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT
November 17, 2004
MORE than 15,500 plant and animal species across the world are now threatened with extinction, an increase of 3,000-plus since last year, according to one of the world’s leading conservation organisations.
Almost half the species of freshwater turtles are threatened, as are one in three amphibian species, one in eight bird species and one in four mammal species, the new "Red List of Threatened Species" reveals. The list is published by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), more commonly known as the World Conservation Union.
From the most impressive predators, such as sharks, to miniscule frogs, the list shows that the world’s biodiversity is shrinking at an unprecedented rate.
Among the latest list’s observations are the extinction of the Hawaiian crow, which now only exists in captivity, the move from near-threatened to critically-endangered of the Balearic shearwater and the giant Hispaniolan galliwasp lizard, and the outright extinction of the St Helena olive. Almost all species of tortoises and freshwater turtles in east and South-east Asia are in serious decline, and even though only 373 out of a total of around 1,100 species of sharks, skates and rays have been assessed, 18 per cent are already listed as threatened.
On a more positive note, there have been some improvements, such as a rise in population of the European otter, which is native to Scotland. It has been downgraded from the near threatened category to vulnerable, as has the corncrake.
The Red List states: "There are indications of [otter] population recovery in western Europe and viable populations occur in the former USSR.
"However, there is still a lack of information from large parts of the range, past declines (and even local extinctions) and the sensitivity of the species to sudden changes in threats means conservation efforts are still necessary to help further recovery and prevent the species slipping back into the threatened categories."
David Brackett, chairman of the IUCN’s species survival commission, said: "Governments are starting to realise the value of biodiversity and the critical role it plays in their peoples’ well-being. Species provide food, medicine, fuel and building materials. They help filter water, decompose waste, generate soil and pollinate crops. Recognition of this is growing, but governments need to mobilise far more resources and the private sector also needs to play a central role by actively promoting and pursuing the sustainable use of the world’s natural resources."
A possible reason for this year’s dramatic rise in species listed as at risk of dying out is that, since the release of the 2003 list, more than 15,633 new species have been assessed and 3,579 species reassessed. There are now 7,266 threatened animal species and 8,323 threatened plant and lichen species.
A total of 784 plant and animal species are now recorded as extinct with a further 60 known only in cultivation or captivity.
Craig Hilton Taylor, the IUCN’s Red List programme officer, said: "Although 15,589 species are known to be threatened with extinction, this greatly underestimates the true number, as only a fraction of known species have been assessed. There is still much to be discovered about key species-rich habitats, such as tropical forests, marine or freshwater systems or particular groups such as invertebrates, plants and fungi, which make up the majority of biodiversity."
Human activity is the primary reason for most species’ declines. Habitat destruction and degradation are the leading threats but other pressures include over-exploitation for food, pets and medicine, introduced species pushing out natives, pollution and disease. Climate change is also increasingly recognised as a major negative influence.
Achim Steiner, the director general of the IUCN, said: "We can continue to assess and bemoan the loss of the world’s biodiversity, or we can act. We must refocus and rethink the way in which society must respond to this global threat. While most threats to biodiversity are human driven, human actions alone can prevent many species from becoming extinct. There are many examples of species coming back from the brink, including the southern white rhino and black-footed ferret, and thousands of dedicated people around the world are doing their utmost to reverse the extinction rate.
"But this cannot continue to be the task of the environmental community alone. Governments and businesses must commit to these activities."
Created in 1948, the IUCN is a partnership of 77 states, 114 government agencies, more than 800 non-governmental organisations and 10,000 experts from 181 countries. It is the world’s largest environmental knowledge network and has helped 75 countries prepare and implement conservation and biodiversity strategies.
Halting the growing extinction crisis is at the top of the agenda for the 1,000-plus organisations attending the World Conservation Congress, which begins in Bangkok today.
There are nine categories in the Red List system: extinct, extinct in the wild, critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, near threatened, least concern, data deficient and not evaluated. In addition to the Red List, the IUCN has also published its Global Species Assessment, which it does every four years.
The 2004 assessment shows that threatened species are often concentrated in densely populated areas, particularly in much of Asia and parts of Africa. A major conservation challenge is therefore to reconcile the demands of large numbers of people with the protection of the biodiversity on which many livelihoods depend.
Most threatened birds, mammals and amphibians live on the tropical continents - Central and South America, Africa south of the Sahara, and tropical South Asia and South-east Asia. These regions contain the tropical broadleaf forests that are believed to harbour most of the earth’s living terrestrial and freshwater species.
12.
From: "Meria Heller" meriaheller@cox.net>
Subject: WARL1320 is no longer carrying my show
Date: 17 Nov 2004
Hi All,
I heard from Jack , some listeners, and the station that WARL1320 is no longer carrying my show or any shows considered "conspiratorial". (Power Hour, Alex Jones, etc).
They will now turn into one more yadda yadda senseless station. This is the Nazi movement that is happening in our country. Yet, maniacs like Rush Limbaugh and the like will continue spewing their hatred.
This makes it more important than ever to support the media (my show and online community) that serves you and stop listening, supporting the media that blocks the truth from America.
As I say all the time, the media is complicit for much blood on their hands, and the death of our democracy (what's left of it).
If you feel impulsed, feel free to write them and let them know your thoughts. fan.hate.mail@realityradio1320.com
They are now going to be non-reality radio.
One more step towards fascism.
Thank Goddess I've never wavered in my choice to stay on the net. This is the place to be for as long as we are "allowed". Freedom? What a joke. Independence is a wonderful thing.
Much love for your continued unswervering support, you are each truly wonderful!
Meria
"THE MERIA HELLER SHOW "- 5th yr On The Net- #1 on Net!
