MAY LOVE PREVAIL ON EARTH
November 5, 2006
The Perfect Storm Series #8: Is America on the Edge of Tyranny... or Freedom?
Hello everyone!
I got this today from mailto:fredburks@earthlink.net">Fred Burks : "I wanted to share with you a powerful inspiration I received this morning. I was in quite an inspired state and after thinking about the upcoming U.S. elections, the following thoughts came to me: It all comes down to who we really believe is in power. To the extent we believe that the world's leaders (or powerful individuals secretly controlling them) are in power, we are at their mercy. If, however, we know that the real power lies deep within each one of us, then we become powerful co-creators of the world and universe in which we live!"
This morning, while in meditation, it was also clear to me it is is high time that PEOPLE show to those governing them just who is the BOSS. No matter what "they" might attempt to hold on to power, it is an incontrovertible fact in everyone's mind and heart that they have lost whatever shred of legitimacy they could possibly ever have had, and that the US voters will massively trounce them out of power this Tuesday November 7. No gerrymandering will be tolerated. The truth is out and whomever will replace the failed Congress representatives and Senators have better swiftly implement overdue changes with the powerful mandate soon to be given to them to correct the abysmal wrongs of the past 6 years and get rid of the wrongdoers right up to the top.
The entire planet is supporting you, all the Good people in America, those not blinded by greed and self-preservation at the cost of everything else, who are about to reset history back on track for a wonderfully better future and not let those bent on destroying all life on Earth for the sake of their overfilled bottom line bring about tyranny, more wars, and the final descent into hellish oblivion.
The buck stops with US!
They have attempted to pull every strings they can and conjure up all the nightmare scenarios they could to maintain everyone into abject fear and thus rob us all of our rightful sovereign power over our lives.
If we let them have their way, we lose all that is dearest to us. We lose our freedom, we lose our peace of mind, and we lose the sacred, living planet nurturing us all.
The choice has never been clearer. The time has come to empower ourselves to masterfully bring back all the living colors of laughter, innocence, love and compassion in every nook and cranny of this astoundingly beautiful Earth/Gaia. The time has come to BE the radiant souls that we truly ARE. The time has come to Let Love Be the guiding beacon blazing a perfect pathway onward into a blessed future for all sentient beings.
The TIME is NOW!
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com
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THE QUOTES
"Historian Charles Beard was once asked to summarize history as simply as possible. His response was provocative - especially for these dark times.
1. When night is darkest, the stars are brightest.
2. It is always darkest just before dawn.
3. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.
4. The mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind exceeding small.
In the words of my college Bible professor, "The Eternal purpose moves restlessly on."
In faith and hope! "
- Ed Clark edtclark@sbcglobal.net"> in response to Veracity Series #16: Halloween Schizophrenia
"Good Morning Jean, I started reading your introductory remarks in the Veracity Series #16 and quite agree with the mixed feelings one can end up with in viewing current, past affairs and future potentials. Early this morning I woke up remembering a dream I just had and in trying to make sense of it, I think it somehow reflects an aspect of our existence. In the dream, I was at a Christian concert put on by two of my cousins. They were pulling people from the audience to play in skits that put emphasis on their message. In one of the skits, a group of about ten people were drawn together in a group and they had to hang onto each other each hugging the one next to them. The large lump of people had to then start moving around in unison. They looked awkward and cumbersome. Finally one started to fall over and they all had to fall over in order to stay together. I asked myself why it had to be like that and what I received in reply was, that is how we look when we try to act in unison with single intent. Then I asked why it was like that when as individuals we act with such disregard for others. Then I was told that we can still act in unison without holding onto one another, but that required acknowledging that there is one thing that we all have in common and that we all have to hold that one thing in the same regard and act out of the same motive that evokes. The one thing we all have in common is where we come from. It is the creative force, source of all life or in my language God. In recognizing this Source of all life and the wonders of miracles that have evolved from that Source, one has to see a reflection of the great love Source has for all things created and the response that should evoke would be our love in return. We should respond with love. That's simple isn't it? All that is not of Source is not love, but that did not evolve out of Source, it evolved out of us acting individually without recognition of our One-ness to Source. We can be individual as freewill was meant for us to be, but we still have to remember that we are one with Source, all of us are ONE WITH SOURCE. Therefore, we are all one with each other as well. I know this is simplistic to higher thought and I've had loftier perceptions myself that I could describe with long words and great philosophical intent, but so what? We really need to look at the simplicity of this issue to really set it home within us."
- Suzanna Sjogren sjogren@mwt.net"> - Message left on Oct. 31 in the ERN guestbook.
"Jean, I was moved to send this in light of the last Veracity Series #16, there is some positive as well as startling revelations in this current missive from Sheldan Nidle. I have been reading his stuff for years and there is an indication that we are close, very close to the turning of the tide. Anyway here is an excerpt from http://paoweb.com/sn103106.htm -- This wondrous destiny is behind all that is happening on your world. Never lose sight of the fact that a momentous battle between the last dark cabal and the forces of Light is indeed coming to its fated conclusion. Your victory is preordained; it is only the timing that has not yet been revealed to you. In this, we are of one voice when we ask you to focus on the truth of the bigger picture surrounding you. In this message, we gave you a few more glimpses of the extensive, as-yet-hidden activities going on out there because we want you to get a bit of a handle on some of the changes being prepared. It is all too easy to be aware only of the time factor involved and hence become discouraged. Also, the turmoil of this time can pull you in and fill you with illusory anxiety. This is why we stress to you, time and again, to "retune your dial" away from the mayhem out there to the clear inner knowing of your divine destiny. Remember, Together, We are indeed Victorious!
- "Zackoree" zackoree@hills.net">
"Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is people who have made poverty and tolerated poverty, and it is people who will overcome it. Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of fundamental human rights. Everyone everywhere has the right to live with dignity, free from fear and oppression, free from hunger and thirst, and free to express themselves and associate at will. Yet in this new century millions of people remain imprisoned, enslaved and in chains. Massive poverty and inequality are terrible scourges of our times - times in which the world also boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation.While poverty persists, there is no true freedom. Amnesty International is right to stand up against the rights violations that drive and deepen poverty. People living in poverty have the least access to power to shape policies - to shape their future. But they have the right to a voice. They must not be made to sit in silence as"development" happens around them, at their expense. True development is impossible without the participation of those concerned."
- Nelson Mandela -- Taken from "While poverty persists, there is no freedom" at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1939375,00.html
"I told all four that there are going to be some times where we don't agree with each other, but that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH (R-TX), PRESIDENT-ELECT -- CNN.com, December 18, 2000
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0012/18/nd.01.html
“How fragile is democracy in America, if a president can come in with an agenda controlled by a few cultists?”
- Seymour Hersh - Taken from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=5450
"The American gulag is so much more than Guantanamo and so much worse. The combination of U.S. "homeland" prisons, where "one in 140 Americans, or as many people as live in Namibia, or nearly five Luxembourgs" are locked away, the offshore imperial detention facilities, the shadowy CIA black sites, and the ever-shifting outsourced detention facilities operated by other nations adds up to something new in history -- the makings of a veritable American prison planet."
Nick Turse - Taken from American Prison Planet: The Bush Administration as Global Jailor below
"I remember watching Sound of Music when I was a child and feeling my heart race as the Von Trapp family made its escape from Nazified Austria. I could never have imagined that a day would come when those wanting to leave the United States would be forced to "make a run" for the border to evade a myriad of obstacles placed by an American government in the path of those who wished to exercise their fundamental human right to emigrate.That day has not yet arrived. But it will on January 14."
- Taken from Homeland Security Tightens Grip on International Travel (11/04/06) at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15504.htm an article that begins with... "A radical change in international travel rules has been lost in these tumultuous last few months that have seen the demise of habeas corpus, the legalization of torture and the expansion of the President's martial law powers. The Department of Homeland Security proposed new rules back in July that would fundamentally undermine the right of American citizens to travel abroad. Public carriers--airlines, cruise lines, even fishing boats--will be required to submit the names of all passengers to Homeland Security prior to departure and to obtain permission from Homeland Security to board those passengers. These new rules will take effect January 14, 2007." CLIP
"There is a creeping awareness that something ANTI-HUMAN AND POWERFULLY DELETERIOUS TO ALL LIFE ON THE PLANET is going on. Even the World Health Organization in 2003 said that they expect the global cancer rates to increase 50% by the year 2020. The infant mortality, which began to go down when they had a nuclear test ban in 1963, is now rising around the world. This is an indicator of radioactive pollution."
- By Gabriel Cousens, M.D. - Taken from DEPLETED URANIUM - A CRIME AGAINST WISDOM below
"Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true."
- Buddha - Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta
CONTENTS
1. Shifting up our Focus
2. What exactly is Schizophrenia
3. THE WARS WE MAKE
4. How Forgiveness Can Improve Your Life
5. Another way to deal with this troubled world
6. WHAT SAY YOU?
7. When The U.S. Military ATTACKS Americans
8. Documents reveal 'shadow government'
9. Bush admits bombs were planted in WTC
10. Beginning Jan. 14th you just might not be able to go where you want to go
11. Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh slams Bush at McGill address
12. American Prison Planet: The Bush Administration as Global Jailor
13. Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon
14. No more seafood by 2050?
15. DEPLETED URANIUM - A CRIME AGAINST WISDOM
16. Billions
17. 45 Oxymorons
LAST MINUTE ADDITION
Message from Matthew
November 5, 2006
Mother, please pass on to Jean my comments about the material he sent to you concerning known and secret prison facilities around the globe. Thank you.
“In a few short years your world’s peoples will be living in peace, love and harmony, but in this moment it is true that some souls are treating many others in unconscionable ways. At this station there is no hatred for or judgment of those who order or willingly implement torturous interrogation, but we do have emotions even more heightened than yours and we deeply feel sadness and disappointment that these manifestations of darkness still exist. It is logical that since we have repeatedly assured you that the light is stronger than the darkness, you are asking, ‘Then why do they still exist?’
“You may recall that in several of my messages I have spoken about the souls who agreed to serve in seemingly ‘evil’ ways that would, however, lead to the completion of Earth’s karma that is the collective karma of her residents; then those souls would join the light. The opportunity to complete difficult lessons and learn—actually, not learn but remember their Oneness with All That Is—and achieve the balance needed to move into higher densities is why so many souls chose to reincarnate even knowing that the path would be difficult.
“However, those who had agreed to serve in the ‘heavy’ roles became attached to their power and refused to relinquish it to join the light forces as they had agreed. They did this knowingly and willingly because in their arrogance, they felt that they could defeat Earth’s lighted souls through creating one fear-filled situation after another. They know that the energy of fear is incompatible with the energy of light, thus fear is their most effective tool and also the fuel that enables them to keep their power over others. Through this means of fear they have continued in control for several linear years beyond their soul contracts’ provisions. Yet they also know that Earth is ascending steadily into the frequencies where darkness cannot tolerate the light intensity, and as their realization has grown that they cannot reverse her determined course into the higher vibrations, their own fear has grown accordingly until this point when they are operating in pure madness. Without question, their days in power are numbered precisely because the light is exposing their atrocities. Between the frequencies in which Earth now is revolving and the in-pouring of light from your space family, the light is unstoppable, unbeatable.
“What is so important for you to know is that each of you must choose whether to physically journey with your planet homeland. Your trip ticket is not automatic, but the ‘cost’ is within the means of everyone—simply, let the light fill you! It is as easy as recognizing and feeling grateful for the beauty of Earth and the blessings of your life; treating all life forms respectfully; being truthful, kind, generous, compassionate, forgiving, helpful—and fearless!”
Mother, I think that is enough, perhaps even more than enough, for Jean’s request. Please save this for my next message, when I will continue with spiritual awareness and guidance.
For more details on Matthew, visit www.matthewbooks.com
WORTHY OF YOUR ATTENTION
The theft of American elections is a media issue - by Andi Novick, Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media (October 31, 2006) MUST READ!
http://freepress.org/departments/display/16/2006/2205
(...) Not only does the main stream media refuse to investigate and report on the impossible discrepancies between the 'official' count and the exit polls, but they are actively complicit in this fraud. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and the AP own the exit polls and have defied John Conyers' request for the raw data, keeping that data secreted from even qualified independent researchers. We are all trying to take optimism from the lead democrats have in the polls going into the election. Keep in mind that they had these leads in 2002, when the Republicans got themselves total control, and they had even greater promise going into the 2004 elections. If you are still not convinced of the massive fraud that is going on, you can look at my 'cliff notes' version about the theft, which I wrote thinking people might read a few pages as opposed to an entire book (http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/16/2006/1865) (...) It is precisely because the exit polls are so reliable in proving the actual vote that for the first time in a half century, there will be no exit polls this year. The media consortium which owns the exit polls is actively suppressing the evidence we need to maintain our democracy: in this case information about how we've lost the ability to elect or evict our government. Without exit polls, it will be exceedingly difficult to have the evidence establishing the theft. Just like electronic voting, not a trace of evidence should be left to expose the greatest theft of this country's history. How to fight back? Firstly, we need the most massive turnout -- some people think if it's high enough we can overcome the level of the theft. Others think it will at least make it more difficult for the Republicans to explain how they somehow won again, even though Americans have never returned, and never would return, such an unpopular, incompetent and corrupt crew to office. Secondly, we need independent exit polling. Independent exit polls have been used successfully to prevent fraud. (...) Now we have independent exit polls. Steve Freeman has teamed up with Ken Warren of The Warren Poll and created exit polls you can do this year, _instructions for doing your own exit poll_ (http://electionintegrity.org/Do_Your_Own_Exit_Poll.pdf) CLIP
Give Peace a Vote
http://www.givepeaceavote.org/article.php?list=type&type=165
Today more than 70,000 people, including former Senator Max Cleland, Jackson Browne, Cher, Yoko Ono, Kate Hudson, Samuel L. Jackson, Gore Vidal, Susan Sarandon & Willie Nelson have pledged their peace vote! Click here to sign your pledge today!
Video the vote
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaEECHjWptU
MUST SEE! Join them at http://www.videothevote.org
Electronic Vote Machine Security (7 min - April 23, 2006)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3074338748583195498&pr=goog-sl&hl=en
So much for free and fair democratic elections?
Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
REVIEWS on HBO "Hacking Democracy" and much MUCH more including "State-by-State Guidelines for Who Can Observe Elections Processes" - Their Citizens Tool Kit at http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.html is especially recommended!
12 WAYS YOU CAN SAFEGUARD THE VOTE - EXCELLENT AND COMPREHENSIVE!
http://www.yesmagazine.org/newsletters/vote2006.html
Will it happen again? On November 7 we may see voters waiting in long lines, only to find they're not on the voter rolls. We may see election workers struggling with malfunctioning machines. If you're worried that we will wake up November 8 to find that, once again, election procedures in key races are in question, read on. The staff at YES! Magazine has researched the recommendations of voting integrity advocates and offers 12 ways you can protect your own vote-and the fairness of the system. Please forward this checklist to others to help make our election system work. Recommended by "Nadia McLaren" nadia.mclaren@gmail.com">
Other recommended resources
http://www.verifiedvoting.org
http://www.VotersUnite.org
http://www.truthout.org/voters.rights.htm
Best video clip of WTC collapse yet - REALLY AMAZING!!! YOU CAN DISTINCTLY HEAR AND SEE THE DEMOLITION CHARGES SUCCESSIVELY GOING OFF AS THE BUILDING COLLAPSES
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-5860825099435530591&q=9%2F11+-+listen
This footage was shown by the BBC in a programme ‘9/11: The Twin Towers’, broadcast in the UK on 7 September 2006. The sound of the demolition charges used to bring down the WTC South Tower can clearly be heard. The sound has not been enhanced in any way and accords precisely with the eye witness testimony on 9/11, including that of the FDNY fire-fighters. The building had 114 floors, but took only 10 seconds to collapse. Fourteen of the explosions can be heard in a period of 5 seconds, so the blasts cannot have been generated by collapsing floors (the so-called ‘pancake’ effect), or the collapse of the entire building would have required more than 40 seconds. -- Recommended by "Fred Burks" fredburks@earthlink.net"> who wrote: "This is an 18 second video clip of the collapse of one of the WTC towers that is the best I've seen yet suggesting major problems with the official story." THIS CLIP SHOULD BE EVERYWHERE ON PRIME TIME TV!! Trevor Osborne recommends to download and install Google Video Player before downloading the video so you can then view it in full screen. Also, if you click on the six squares on the lower right task bar you can inspect each frame of the video.
Ex-CIA Analyst Ray McGovern Talks About 9/11 (Video - Runtime 7 Minutes) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15505.htm
Camp Casey interview with Ex-CIA Analyst Ray McGovern. He talks about running into ex-Secretary of the Department of Transportation Norman Mineta and confronting him regarding his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. Mineta testified that Cheney was well aware of the location and destination of Flight 77 (or whatever it was) and forced NORAD to stand-down and allowed it to hit the Pentagon. - Be sure to watch till near end when Minetta is speaking to 9-11 Commission.
See Mars as Art (Stunning images) through http://www.nasa.gov/news/highlights/index.html
The War on Weather (WITTY AND VERY ENTERTAINING BRITISH HUMOR)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/noscript.shtml?/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/fromfacttofiction
Recommended by Palden palden.jenkins@btopenworld.com"> who wrote: "If you have 15 minutes, and you're on broadband, listen to this radio play from BBC Radio 4. It's about Britain in 2012, under the Green Labour party, at the opening of the Olympics. It's both sharp-edged and witty."
Libertarian Stan Jones Montana TELLS TRUTH about the plans towards a new world order
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M5GK9Na8KU
European, American, World Union: new world order - Recommended by "Dr.E" orwilly@msn.com">
CNN - Discusses Bilderberg plans for New World Order http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ0VkaMRHYs&mode=related&search=
Very diluted take but at least it was on mainstream media.
---
ALSO RECOMMENDED
British believe Bush is more dangerous than Kim Jong-il
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15485.htm
America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours and allies, according to an international survey of public opinion published today that reveals just how far the country's reputation has fallen among former supporters since the invasion of Iraq.
Evil Is As Evil Does
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15475.htm
Perhaps Americans don't notice, but the rest of the world does see the double standard applied when Saddam Hussein is put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, while US, UK, and Israeli government officials commit far greater crimes by illegally invading countries, targeting civilian populations, and torturing detainees.
Fear of Tyranny Sweeping America (October 15, 2006)
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_sherwood_061015_fear_of_tyranny_swee.htm
Fear for an individual's personal security common to a people whose leaders are taking their nation down the road to dictatorship has begun to grip America. (...) There is a growing conviction a vindictive Bush regime will punish anyone who opposes it. This has a chilling impact on free expression. My recollection is fear of President Bush today is infinitely greater than fear of Senator Joe McCarthy back in the Fifties. McCarthy whipped anti-Communist sentiment to paranoid heights but he was only a Senator. He couldn't start a war on his own or reach out and have people arrested under any Patriot Act. Now there is a president wielding virtual dictatorial powers who has deceitfully invaded Iraq, where reportedly 650,000 civilians have been killed, has threatened the use of nuclear weapons, operates secret prisons around the world, and implies his critics are unpatriotic. What's his next step? CLIP
U.S. Plans to Screen All Who Enter, Leave Country (Nov 3, 2006)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/02/AR2006110201810.html
Personal Data Will Be Cross-Checked With Terrorism Watch Lists; Risk Profiles to Be Stored for Years - The federal government disclosed details yesterday of a border-security program to screen all people who enter and leave the United States, create a terrorism risk profile of each individual and retain that information for up to 40 years.The details, released in a notice published yesterday in the Federal Register, open a new window on the government's broad and often controversial data-collection effort directed at American and foreign travelers, which was implemented after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. While long known to scrutinize air travelers, the Department of Homeland Security is seeking to apply new technology to perform similar checks on people who enter or leave the country "by automobile or on foot," the notice said.The department intends to use a program called the Automated Targeting System, originally designed to screen shipping cargo, to store and analyze the data."We have been doing risk assessments of cargo and passengers coming into and out of the U.S.," DHS spokesman Jarrod Agen said. "We have the authority and the ability to do it for passengers coming by land and sea." (...) Civil libertarians expressed concern that risk profiling on such a scale would be intrusive and would not adequately protect citizens' privacy rights, issues similar to those that have surrounded systems profiling air passengers." They are assigning a suspicion level to millions of law-abiding citizens," said David Sobel, senior counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "This is about as Kafkaesque as you can get." (...) In a round-the-clock operation, targeters match names against terrorist watch lists and a host of other data to determine whether a person's background or behavior indicates a terrorist threat, a risk to border security or the potential for illegal activity. They also assess cargo. Each traveler assessed by the center is assigned a numeric score: The higher the score, the higher the risk. A certain number of points send the traveler back for a full interview. The Automated Targeting System relies on government databases that include law enforcement data, shipping manifests, travel itineraries and airline passenger data, such as names, addresses, credit card details and phone numbers. The parent program, Treasury Enforcement Communications System, houses "every possible type of information from a variety of federal, state and local sources," according to a 2001 Federal Register notice. It includes arrest records, physical descriptions and "wanted" notices. The 5.3 billion-record database was accessed 766 million times a day to process 475 million travelers, according to a 2003 Transportation Research Board study. In yesterday's Federal Register notice, Homeland Security said it will keep people's risk profiles for up to 40 years "to cover the potentially active lifespan of individuals associated with terrorism or other criminal activities," and because "the risk assessment for individuals who are deemed low risk will be relevant if their risk profile changes in the future, for example, if terrorist associations are identified." (...) According to yesterday's notice, the program is exempt from certain requirements of the Privacy Act of 1974 that allow, for instance, people to access records to determine "if the system contains a record pertaining to a particular individual" and "for the purpose of contesting the content of the record." THIS IS ASTOUNDING ORWELLIAN STUFF! ANYONE TAGGED AS A POTENTIAL THREAT COULD REMAIN SO FOR AT LEAST 40 YEARS AND WILL HAVE NO WAY TO VERIFY NOR CORRECT WRONG DATA!. MAKE SURE TO ALSO REVIEW "Beginning Jan. 14th you just might not be able to go where you want to go - Now You Need Permission to Exit or Enter the Country?" BELOW AS IT TIES IN WITH THIS.
It's Always Darkest, Right Before ... It Goes Completely Black
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15480.htm
While I harbor little affection for nor feel any affinity with the corrupt establishment of the Democratic Party, I don't believe, as is the case with the present leadership of the Republican party, they're a klavern of insane, death-smitten apocalypticists. However, I do believe that a craven desire for power and privilege has transformed them into morally bankrupt, lickspittle, corporate stooges.
Democrats, on the Offensive, Could Gain Both Houses (November 5, 2006)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/04/AR2006110401177.html
Two days before a bitterly fought midterm election, Democrats have moved into position to recapture the House and have laid siege to the Senate, setting the stage for a dramatic recasting of the power structure in Washington for President Bush's final two years in office, according to a Washington Post analysis of competitive races across the country.In the battle for the House, Democrats appear almost certain to pick up more than the 15 seats needed to regain the majority. Republicans virtually concede 10 seats, and a split of the 30 tossup races would add an additional 15 to the Democratic column. The Senate poses a tougher challenge for Democrats, who need to gain six seats to take control of that chamber. A three-seat gain is almost assured, but they would have to find the other three seats from four states considered to have tossup races -- Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Montana.In governors' races, Democrats are likely to emerge with the majority for the first time in 12 years. Five states are almost certain to switch parties, including the key battlegrounds of New York, Massachusetts and Ohio. Four races are too close to call, but only one of those seats -- in Wisconsin -- is held by a Democrat. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows some narrowing in the Democratic advantage in House races. The survey gives the Democrats a six-percentage-point lead nationally among likely voters asked which party they prefer for Congress. It was 14 points two weeks ago, but this remains a larger advantage than they have had in recent midterm elections. CLIP NOTE from Jean: If the Repugnants are declared the winners in both Congress and Senate, it is going to be darn hard to believe... and could spark a street revolution which might play right into Bush's hands who is itching to declare martial law (see Bush Moves Toward Martial Law at http://www.uruknet.info/?p=27769
The New York Times: The Difference Two Years Made
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110506Y.shtml
A New York Times editorial said: "On Tuesday, when this page runs the list of people it has endorsed for election, we will include no Republican Congressional candidates for the first time in our memory. The Republican majority that has run the House - and for the most part, the Senate - during President Bush's tenure has done a terrible job on the basics."
Why Do So Few People Vote in the US?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110506G.shtml
Government of the people, by the people, will be missing a lot of people Election Day. It's a persistent riddle in a country that thinks of itself as the beacon of democracy. Why do so few vote?
U.S. Seeks Silence on CIA Prisons (November 4, 2006)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/03/AR2006110301793.html
Court Is Asked to Bar Detainees From Talking About Interrogations - The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" (Torture!) that their captors used to get them to talk. The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release -- even to the detainees' own attorneys -- "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage." Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26. COMMENT from Information Clearinghouse: "Kafka-esque doesn't do it justice. This is 'Alice in Wonderland.' "
Count The Votes - The MCA Torture Bill Didn't Pass (11-4-6) NO MEDIA HAS MENTIONED THIS!
http://www.rense.com/general74/pass.htm
Am I missing something or did the Military Commissions Act pass the Senate using fuzzy math? Please explain to me how 65 votes out of 99 Senate votes cast equals two thirds majority? Seems they missed by one vote. (...) At least two-dozen former military leaders penned a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee outlining their objections to the bill (But, who gives a damn what high-ranking military leaders think, right?) They rightly believed the bill would put U.S. military personnel---captured soldiers as prisoners of war--- at risk in current and future military conflicts. Some expressed their concern that the bill would weaken the moral authority of the U.S. in the War on Terror. But NEARLY two thirds of US Senators, lacking in spine and moral authority, and having no grasp of history or the US Constitution (That goddamned piece of paper), decided to vote for 666, otherwise known as the Military Commissions Act. BUT wait once again. They were still a few quislings short. 34 Senators voted No while Olympia Snowe remained a no show. So, it seems as if the Act never passed and whatever goddamned piece of paper GWB signed into law was illegal. CLIP
The Election Farce
http://informationclearinghouse.info/aticle15484.htm
The only reason the Democratic Party is against the fiasco in Iraq is because the U.S. is losing the war. It's all about "bad planning," or "bad timing," or whatever. If Bush and Co. had easily subjugated the nation and controlled the oil fields, the entire U.S. ruling class and their paid politicians would be joyous.
Our Eyes Are Wide Open
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110406G.shtml
"If Diebold designed their ATM machines the way they design their voting machines, none of us would have a dime left in our bank accounts. Such remarkable facts are usually not the result of incompetence, but of design. When the top man at Diebold promised to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush, you are allowed to be a little paranoid," says Doris "Granny D" Haddock.
"Hey America, Stop your Bellyaching and get to Work"
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15487.htm
What can we expect in the midterm elections? The real question is: What should we NOT expect in the elections. We should not expect dramatic change from our present trajectory. Whether Karl Rove engineers another electoral-coup or not, is beside the point. The system has been reshaped to meet the needs and aspirations of the ruling mandarins.
Foreclosure USA
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15483.htm
We the people once owned our democracy. We elected "representatives" to run it for US. Have you noticed? Somewhere along the way we lost our democracy. It was foreclosed by wealthy and power elites that corrupted our "representatives" who literally sold us out. Our homeland was foreclosed right in plain sight.
FBI willing to go undercover in Congress if necessary (Nov 5)
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/15937935.htm
WASHINGTON - The new chief of the FBI's Criminal Division, which is swamped with public corruption cases, says the bureau is ramping up its ability to catch crooked politicians and might run an undercover sting on Congress. Assistant FBI Director James Burrus called the bureau's public corruption program "a sleeping giant that we've awoken," and predicted the nation will see continued emphasis in that area "for many, many, many years to come."So much evidence of wrongdoing is surfacing in the nation's capital that Burrus recently committed to adding a fourth 15- to 20-member public corruption squad to the FBI's Washington field office. CLIP
America's Point of No Return
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110306N.shtml
Robert Parry writes, "In many ways, Election 2006 not only marks the last chance to exact some accountability from those responsible for the disastrous Iraq War and other failures, but it also represents a point of no return for a nation hurtling toward a future of endless warfare abroad and a new-age totalitarianism at home."
Classified Briefing Illustrates Growing Chaos in Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110106Z.shtml
A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.
Neo Culpa (3 November 2006)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110406B.shtml
As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neo-conservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.
Bush Cites Oil As Reason to Stay in Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110506Z.shtml
During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush and his aides sternly dismissed suggestions that the war was all about oil. Now, 3 1/2 years later, as he barnstorms across the country campaigning for Republican candidates in Tuesday's elections, Bush has been citing oil as a reason to stay in Iraq.
Should Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld be removed from his position, whether by resignation or dismissal? * 62874 responses as of Nov 4
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15552318/
Yes, he has lost all credibility and the ability to lead and has failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He must go: 87%
No, he has ably overseen wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while working on overhauling the armed forces. He should stay: 13%
Bush Owes Troops Apology, Not Kerry
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110206J.shtml
"There is no line this president has not crossed - or will not cross - to keep one political party in power," says Keith Olbermann. "He has spread any and every fear among us in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears - some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency."
The Great Divider
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110206K.shtml
The New York Times editors write: "As President Bush throws himself into the final days of a particularly nasty campaign season, he's settled into a familiar pattern of ugly behavior. Since he can't defend the real world created by his policies and his decisions, Mr. Bush is inventing a fantasy world in which to campaign on phony issues against fake enemies."
Military Newspapers Call for Rumsfeld's Resignation
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110406Z.shtml
An editorial scheduled to appear on Monday in Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times, calls for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The papers are sold to American servicemen and women.
Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America's Worst Places to Cast a Ballot (or Try)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15502.htm
Machines that count backward, slice-and-dice districts, felon baiting, phone jamming, and plenty of dirty tricks.
Can This Machine Be Trusted? (November 6, 2006) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1552054,00.html
The U.S.'s new voting systems are only as good as the people who program and use them. In one week, more than 80 million Americans will go to the polls, and a record number of them—90%—will either cast their vote on a computer or have it tabulated that way. There are going to be problems. Some will be machine malfunctions. Some could come from sabotage by poll workers. But in a venture this large, trouble is most likely to come from just plain human error. Four years after Congress passed a law requiring every state to vote by a method more reliable than the punch-card system that paralyzed Florida and the nation in 2000, the 2006 election is shaping up into a contest not just between Democrats and Republicans but also between people who believe in technology and those who fear machines cannot be trusted to count votes in a closely divided democracy. Princeton computer scientist Edward Felten and a ! couple of graduate students this past summer tested the defenses of a voting machine made by Diebold. They were able to quickly infect the device with a standard memory-access card in which they had installed a preprogrammed chip. Other computer scientists have also breached electronic voting machines. Congressman Vernon Ehlers, a Michigan Republican who has been holding hearings this fall, says manufacturers "have produced machines that are very vulnerable, not very reliable and I suspect fairly easy to hack." Concerns about fraud are heightened by the fact that with some electronic voting machines, there is no such thing as a real recount [i.e. paper trail].Note: For a highly important 12-minute video of the court witness testimony of a computer expert who was personally involved in the manipulation of votes, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEzY2tnwExs. For more on this, click here. For a three-minute Fox News clip showing how easy it is to infect a voting machine with a virus which secretly changes the elections results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JESZiLpBLE.
Diebold demands HBO cancel film on voting machines (November 1, 2006)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003335983_webdiebold01.html
Diebold Inc. demanded that cable network HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair. The program, "Hacking Democracy," is scheduled to debut on Nov. 2, five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The film claims Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results. "Hacking Democracy" is "replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting," Diebold Election System President David Byrd said in a letter to HBO President and Chief Executive Officer Chris Albrecht. "We stand by the film," HBO spokesman Jeff Cusson said in an interview. "We have no intention of withdrawing it from our schedule." This is Diebold's second defense of its system since last month. On Sept. 26, Byrd wrote to Jann Wenner, editor and publisher of Rolling Stone, saying a story written by Robert F. Kennedy ! Jr., "Will the Next Election Be Hacked?" was "error- riddled" and that readers "deserve a better researched and reported article." The documentary is based on the work of Bev Harris of Renton, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, which monitors election accuracy. Harris says on the HBO Web site that she found "secret program files" used by Diebold for its electronic voting machines. Harris copied them and distributed the programs to others as a way to show the vulnerability of a system designed to safeguard voting, according to the Web site.Note: For the revealing story in Rolling Stone, click here.
Inside the Shocking HBO Diebold Film
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110206N.shtml
HBO's "Hacking Democracy" (premiering tonight at 9 p.m./ET) tells the story of Bev Harris. Harris set out to investigate the electronic voting systems and stumbled upon shocking revelations about the vulnerability of the software and hardware. Harris went on to form the watchdog group BlackBoxVoting.org.
Test Spits Out Wrong Results At Board Of Elections
http://news.yahoo.com/s/wews/20061103/lo_wews/10234918
During a test using an optical scanner, officials discovered that the machine was providing incorrect election results
As Vote Nears, Parties Prepare for Legal Fights
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110406Y.shtml
Several days from what Republican and Democratic campaign strategists expect to be a close election, the legal machinery of a messy fight is shifting into high gear as both parties begin sending their largest concentrations of lawyers to states with the tightest races like Maryland, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee.
Bush "Has Lost His Mind"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110206P.shtml
President Bush said yesterday that both Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney "are doing fantastic jobs, and I strongly support them." Andrew Sullivan, the conservative writer who was once a key media supporter for the Iraq war, denounced the latest Bush statement on CNN on Wednesday night, stating that the president is so delusional, "This is not an election anymore, it's an intervention."
Rumsfeld's Lethal Denial
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110306A.shtml
Jason Leopold writes: "Five days before the hotly contested midterm elections, Rumsfeld, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and senior members of the administration are crisscrossing the country, using far-right media outlets to send a distorted message to the American people about the reality on the ground in Iraq, where 103 US troops were killed in October - the fourth highest monthly figure since the start of the war more than three years ago."
Iraq War Will Cost More-than-$2-Trillion
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15499.htm
In January, we estimated that the true cost of the Iraq war could reach $2 trillion, a figure that seemed shockingly high. But since that time, the cost of the war - in both blood and money - has risen even faster than our projections anticipated.
Governor on Track to Becoming Biggest Fundraiser in State History (Nov 2)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110506H.shtml
Sacramento - When he ran for governor during the 2003 recall election, Arnold Schwarzenegger described the Capitol as a place where "special interests have a stranglehold. The money comes in, favors go out, the people lose." Even as the governor says he is not returning favors for cash, the money has been flooding in since he rose from Hollywood celebrity to chief executive of the nation's most populous state. An exhaustive review of campaign finance records by the Associated Press reveals that Schwarzenegger is on pace to become the most prolific fundraiser in California history. He has raised $113.4 million in the little more than three years since he launched his campaign to replace Democrat Gray Davis, who often was accused of having a "pay to play" approach to governing that favored his donors. (...) Schwarzenegger has raised his campaign money in large part by mining board rooms and executive suites from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, the AP analysis shows. About 75 percent of his donations have come from contributors who have given him at least $10,000. Most of that money has come from businesses and business executives. (...) Chevron Texaco and Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens are among those who have contributed more than $500,000. Despite the waves of donations from corporations and the wealthy, Schwarzenegger has said repeatedly that no special interest has a stranglehold on him. "I cannot be bought by anyone, and anyone who gives me money buys into that philosophy," he told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board recently.
Killer e-mail sends Blair into panic over cash for honours row (5th November 2006)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=414575
Tony Blair fears arrestTony Blair is in a blind panic over the looming threat of being arrested in the police inquiry into the cash-for-peerages scandal, Cabinet sources have revealed.A senior Minister said a 'black cloud' had descended over Downing Street at the growing realisation that the Prime Minister and his closest allies face the risk of being prosecuted over the affair. CLIP
Israeli snipers continue Gaza assault (05 November 2006)
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1D73C107-FC58-4F2B-8338-CD71AB0933EA.htm
Israeli snipers killed two Palestinians in Gaza on Saturday, one of them a 12-year-old girl, Palestinian sources said.Six others, including at least four fighters, were killed in air strikes and clashes.Israeli soldiers briefly eased their grip on the northern town of Beit Hanoun, but as darkness fell soldiers began house-to-house searches, local residents said.The violence followed one of Gaza's bloodiest days in months, when 19 people were killed as Israel continued an operation it says is aimed at stopping rocket fire by Palestinian fighters.The 12-year-old girl was killed by a single bullet to the head, local hospital workers said.(...) Israeli forces have killed 45 people in the four-day assault, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Beit Hanoun - a resident's account (Nov 4) TRY IMAGINING YOURSELF IN THIS SITUATION...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/6117670.stm
More than 40 Palestinians have died since Wednesday - The town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip has been under siege since early Wednesday. The Israeli army says it is trying to root out Palestinian rocket squads, who fire from Gaza into Israel. Ibrahim al-Za'anin, a 55-year-old Palestinian Authority employee, describes conditions for him and his family in his hometown. (...) We don't know what exactly is going on outside the walls of our home. We follow the news on local radio stations. They broadcast live SOS messages from people trapped in their homes. My youngest daughter will not even go to the toilet on her own, she is so paralysed with fear. The Israeli special forces positioned on the roofs of houses are firing on anything that moves.Conditions are very bad. We haven't had electricity or water since the night of Tuesday into Wednesday. I have a son who is suffering from an allergy that makes breathing difficult. His medicine has run out and I cannot leave my home to get more. There is a full curfew. Today [Saturday] they let women out for two hours to buy food for the first time; but after half an hour, the Israeli soldiers fired into the air and told them to return home immediately. We have had Israeli military incursions in Beit Hanoun before, but this is the worst. TerrorSome members of my extended family have been injured. All are civilians. They were injured either inside their homes or in the courtyard. I know the parents of some of the young people who were killed because they are the same age as me; in their fifties. There is an atmosphere of terror; fear and anxiety for the future. We don't know what will happen to us. We no longer feel safe, even inside our own homes. Until now, the Israeli forces have not allowed the Red Cross to visit the places asking for urgent help. My youngest daughter is 11. She will not even go to the toilet on her own, she is so paralysed with fear. Even when they are at home, children feel constant fear because of the heavy firing and the noise of the aircraft. I think this offensive may last for 10 days. But it will not achieve its aims; the resistance movement remained active through more than 35 years of occupation because of the absence of a political solution to the Palestinian question.
Number of dead in occupied Gaza reaching historic levels
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/15924320.htm
Malki Shahwan silently picks at the peach tissue she's using to dab at the tears in the corners of her opaque eyes, eyes that her family says have gone blind from grief.
Listen to Major General Stern
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110506D.shtml
"A bloodbath is taking place in Beit Hanun, the Israel Defense Forces runs rampant and kills at least 37 people in four days - and Israeli public opinion yawns with indifference. A brigade commander tells his soldiers, who killed 12 people in one day: 'You've won 12:0,' and the soldiers grin broadly. This is the moral nadir we have reached, following a long slide down a slippery slope: Human life has become cheap," writes Gideon Levy.
Are Israelis gearing up to bomb Iran? (November 3, 2006)
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=2&subID=1061
The appointment of Israel’s new deputy PM raises fears of a new catastrophe, says robert foxThe Middle East is abuzz with ugly rumours. One of them is so dire - and comes from sources in so many capital cities - that it has to be taken seriously.The suggestion is that the Israeli government has served notice on the White House that it must take pre-emptive action against Iran's sites of nuclear weapons development - or Israel will go it alone and do the job itself. Israel has apparently given Bush a deadline of six months. The pressure on the Americans - if it is true - comes with the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman, one of the hardest of all hard-liners, as Israel's new Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Strategic Affairs, under the new coalition with his party, Yisrael Beytenu.One reason why the rumour is being taken seriously is that it coincides with another strong rumour - that the Iranian regime of Mahmud Ahmadinejad has ordered Iran's nuclear programme to be accelerated. According to sources, the enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade material is galloping ahead, and Iran could have its own deployable nuclear warheads within four years. Given Ahmadinejad's wild rhetoric about wiping Israel off the map (though the translation of these remarks is now acknowledged to be somewhat fuzzy), Israel's hawks argue there is no time to lose. Former Prime Minister, and Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, for whom Lieberman once worked as chief of staff, has argued strenuously for a pre-emptive strike on Iran. (...) Strategic analysts have noticed anti-Iran noises coming from the beleaguered White House, too. "It's the same sort of language we heard in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq," one Washington insider told me. A London correspondent favoured by the Bush-Blair circle said, "It's clear that Bush will not dream of leaving office under the suspicion that he allowed Iran to get nuclear weapons on his watch. He will act, and will feel uninhibited after the mid-term elections." Not only would a pre-emptive strike on Iran miss more than it hit - it would invite immediate and devastating retaliation. CLIP
Bush gives green light for Israeli attack on Iran
http://tinyurl.com/yec5vh
Bush "would understand" Israeli strike on Iran - President Bush reportedly said he would "understand" a preemptive Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear sites.
Kissinger meets with Jewish leaders on Iranian threat to Israel :
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/783573.html
Kissinger had accepted an invitation from the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute to be one of a group of leaders tasked with setting strategic goals for improving the situation of the Jewish people. Last week's discussion centered on the Iranian threat to Israel.
Iran Says Missile Tests Send 'Strong Signal' To U.S.
http://tinyurl.com/wvrk2
A senior commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Ali Fadavi, told state radio that the tests should send a strong message to the United States to cease military maneuvers in the area.
Rice Says Iran Understands Consequences of Its Missile Threat :
http://tinyurl.com/wh85z
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, while Iran was trying to show it is ``tough'' by test- firing a ballistic missile able to hit Israel, any use of the weapon would invite consequences understood by Iranian leaders. (WHICH MEANS NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION)
The Case for Engagement - By Scott Ritter
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15507.htm
I recently returned from a trip to Iran, where over the course of a week I made the journey from the northern suburbs of Tehran to the gates of the Natanz enrichment facility, and in doing so had my eyes opened. The Iran that I witnessed was far removed from the one caricatured in the US media. I left with the frustrating realization that, as had been the case with Iraq, America was stumbling toward a conflict, blinded by the prejudice and fear born of our collective ignorance.
Russian Foreign Minister: Says EU Draft On Iran Goes Too Far
http://tinyurl.com/y986rt
Sergei Lavrov says a European draft resolution to impose UN sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program went far beyond what had been agreed.
U.S. speeds attack plans for North Korea
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15497.htm
The Pentagon has stepped up planning for attacks against North Korea's nuclear program and is bolstering nuclear forces in Asia, said defense officials familiar with the highly secret process.
Six Arab states join rush to go nuclear
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2436948,00.html
Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, UAE and Saudi Arabia seek atom technology
The Dollar's Full-System Meltdown By Mike Whitney (10/30/06)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15440.htm
The U.S. Dollar is kaput. Confidence in the currency is eroding by the day.A report in The Sydney Morning Herald stated, "Australia's Treasurer Peter Costello has called on East Asia's central bankers to telegraph‚ their intentions to diversify out of American investments and ensure an orderly adjustment. Central banks in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong have channeled immense foreign reserves into American government bonds, helping to prop up the US dollar and hold down interest rates,‚ said Costello, but the strategy has changed." Indeed, the strategy has changed. The world has come to its senses and is moving away from the green slip of paper that is currently mired in $8.3 trillion of debt.The central banks now want to reduce their USD reserves while trying to do as little damage to their own economies as possible. That'll be difficult. If a sell-off ensues, it will start a stampede for the exits.There's little hope of an "orderly adjustment" as Costello opines; that's just false optimism. When the greenback begins listing; things will turn helter-skelter quickly. (...) According to the Wall Street Journal the Chinese Central-bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan stated unequivocally that "We think we've got enough." The Chinese presently have nearly $1 trillion in USD and US Treasuries. "Enough"? The United States runs a $200 billion per year trade deficit with China. If they've "got enough" we're dead-ducks. After all, it doesn't take a sell-off to kill the dollar, just unwillingness on the part of the main players to stop purchasing at the same rate. Of course, everyone in Washington already knew that doomsday was approaching. That's the way the system was designed from the very beginning. It's all part of the madcap scheme to "starve the beast" and transfer the nation's wealth to a handful of western plutocrats. CLIP
Unanswered questions at Dulles Airport (6 June 2006)
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001065.html
(...) According to the 17 May 2006 Time story: SPOT... has been tested over the last three years at several airports in the Northeast, including Boston's Logan Airport.... SPOT is based on observing passenger behavior .... Here's how it works: Select TSA employees will be trained to identify suspicious individuals who raise red flags by exhibiting unusual or anxious behavior, which can be as simple as changes in mannerisms.... Those who are identified as suspicious will be examined more thoroughly; for some, the agency will bring in local police to conduct face-to-face interviews and perhaps run the person's name against national criminal databases.... If such inquiries turn up other issues [such as?] countries with terrorist connections, police officers can pursue the questioning.When anyone who ask questions is suspected of being a terrorist, and subject to detention, interrogation, and search, we've got a problem. (...) It's actually even worse: the TSA has crafted its procedures so that the demand for identification credentials is made neither by the TSA itself nor the airline, but by a third party whose identity and authority are entirely unverifiable to the traveller, and who is accountable to the traveller neither through government legislative and regulatory procedures nor through enforcement of contractual rights (since they have no contractual relationship to the traveller). To give an added frisson of resemblance to countries with corrupt or dysfunctional police and governments, the people in uniform demanding people's credentials are lying about being government employees. The real government employees watching them don't care. And if, like me, you so much as ask a few polite questions about what is going on, you are detained, threatened with arrest, searched, investigated, your papers copied by the government for your permanent (I can only presume) dossier, and the unaccountable third party (and, in the case of an RFID passport, anyone else within range with a reader in their luggage) left with the unregulated legal "right" to use and sell any data obtained from its government-coerced scrutiny of your credentials.
Big Brother Britain 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article1948209.ece
'We are waking up to a surveillance society all around us'
Google 'will be able to keep tabs on us all'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/humanrights/story/0,,1938474,00.html
The internet will hold so much digital data in five years that it will be possible to find out what an individual was doing at a specific time and place, an expert said yesterday.
Tracked In America: Stories from the History of U.S. Government Surveillance
http://www.trackedinamerica.org/
This documentary Web site explores more than two centuries of surveillance in America. Included are two hours of audio interviews, 300 photographs and 25 personal stories beginning in 1917.
Nuclear Lab Breach Could Be 'Devastating' - Data Found In Drug Raid Contains Weapons-Design Secrets (Nov 3) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/03/national/main2151021.shtml
The recent security breach at Los Alamos National Laboratory was very serious, with sensitive materials being taken out of the facility — possibly including information on how to deactivate locks on nuclear weapons, officials tell CBS News. Officials say there is no evidence the information taken from Los Alamos was sold or transferred to anybody else, but there is no way to be sure right now. As CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson was the first to report, secret documents apparently taken from the lab were found during a drug raid at a Los Alamos-area home last month. The FBI was called in to investigate. Multiple sources now tell CBS News that the material includes sensitive weapons-design data. (...) "None of the documents in question were classified Top Secret," read a statement released by the lab. "None of the materials included any of the most sensitive nuclear weapons information." But one federal official recently briefed on the issue says "It's devastating." If a nuclear weapon were stolen, the information "would tell the terrorists everything they need to do to get a weapon to fire." Sources say she also had something called Sigma-15 clearance allowing her to access to documents explaining how to deactivate locks on a nuclear weapon. The woman believed to have taken the information — Jessica Quintana, 22, who owned the trailer — worked in three classified vault rooms across Los Alamos (...) She also had top secret "Q-clearance" with access to all the U.S. underground nuclear test data. Quintana has not been arrested or charged. Her attorney says she took the material home to work and then forgot about it. For example, if a terrorist steals an American nuclear weapon, he could not detonate it due to the special access controls. This woman is authorized to read the reports that tell how to get around those safety controls. CLIP
You're Kidding Me, Right?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110306R.shtml
Will Pitt, stunned by the revelation that the Bush administration put nuclear weapons details on a web site, puts it in context for us: "Translation: On the three-year anniversary of the catastrophic decision to invade and occupy Iraq, Congressional Republicans, terrified that their comprehensive failures would come back to haunt them in the November midterms, cajoled the White House into publishing incredibly sensitive information in a rhetorically empty attempt to cover their backsides."
Chocolate's Horror Show
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/103106LB.shtml
"Hershey's Kisses. Nestle's Crunch bars. M&Ms. It's not that I don't like their taste," writes Andrea Buffa. "No, the problem is that it is no exaggeration to say that forced child labor went into the making of much of these chocolates. Illegal child labor is a major problem on the West African cocoa farms from which companies like Hershey, Nestle and M&M Mars buy their cocoa beans."
Drastic Action on Climate Change Is Needed Now
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/103106EA.shtml
A new report ... demonstrate[s] what many of us suspected: that it would cost much less to prevent runaway climate change than to seek to live with it. Useful as this finding is, I hope it doesn't mean that the debate will now concentrate on money. The principal costs of climate change will be measured in lives, not pounds. As Stern reminded us yesterday, there would be a moral imperative to seek to prevent mass death even if the economic case did not stack up.
Greenhouse gases hit record high (3 November 2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6114250.stm
Rising levels of greenhouse gases are blamed for climate change - The steady rise in atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change shows no signs of abating, a UN agency has announced.The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide rose by about half a percent in 2005, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said. It said levels were likely to keep rising unless emissions of CO2, methane and nitrogen oxides were slashed. The announcement comes on the eve of UN climate negotiations in Nairobi.(...) The WMO said concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) were measured at 379.1 parts per million (ppm), up 0.53% from 377.1 ppm in 2004.Concentrations of nitrous oxide (N2O) reached 319.2 ppm in 2005, an annual increase of 0.2%.Levels of methane, another greenhouse gas, remained stable, it said. The trend of growing emissions from industry, transport and power generation is set to continue despite international agreements on regulating them, the UN agency warned. "To really make CO2 level off we will need more drastic measures than are in the Kyoto Protocol today," Geir Braathen explained. "Every human being on this globe should think about how much CO2 he or she emits and try to do something about that." CLIP
Meet The First Car Powered By Air (October 28, 2006)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/28/tech/main2135518.shtml
At their factory in southern France, father-and-son team Guy and Cyril Negre insist air power is no joke. Plain old air compressed in the tank, they say, cheap and non-polluting. Sound too good to be true? Says Cyril, "It's a real car. The other thing is it's a very zero emission car. You won't pollute, there won't be emission. You have a very economical car." A car, says the Negres, that will cost just $2 for every 120 miles. The Negres have a long love affair with cars. Guy designed a Formula One race car engine. Cyril worked at Bugati. The technology for their car, they say, is relatively simple and safe. "When you compress the air...inside of the tank, this is like compressing a spring, and then the tank gives you back the energy of the air when it expands," says Cyril. Compressed air in a carbon-fiber tank, something like scuba divers use, drives the pistons and turns the crankshaft. There! is no combustion and no gasoline. That's why there's no pollution. You fill it up at an air compressor. It may sound far-fetched, but at his labs on the campus of UCLA, professor Su-Chin Chow is also exploring the power of air. The Negres say after years of delays...they have solved their technical problems. Another year, they say, and they'll be ready for large scale production, with a top speed of 55 miles-an-hour.
Senators to Exxon: Stop the Denial (October 27, 2006)
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2612021
ExxonMobil should stop funding groups that have spread the idea that global warming is a myth and that try to influence policymakers to adopt that view, two senators said today in a letter to the oil company. In their letter to ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, Sens. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., appealed to Exxon's sense of corporate responsibility, asking the company to "come clean about its past denial activities." The two senators called on ExxonMobil to "end any further financial assistance" to groups "whose public advocacy has contributed to the small but unfortunately effective climate change denial myth." An upcoming study from the Union of Concerned Scientists reported that ExxonMobil funded 29 climate change denial groups in 2004 alone. Since 1990, the report said, the company has spent more than $19 million funding groups that promote their views through publications and Web sites that are not peer reviewed by the scientific community. More from http://www.WantToKnow.info/061103newsarticles
Giant ship delivers Christmas to UK (November 4, 2006)
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/11/04/uk.ship.ap/index.html
LONDON, England (AP) -- Groaning with gifts and larger than any sleigh, the world's biggest container ship docked in Britain on Saturday on a maiden international voyage to deliver thousands of tons of Christmas presents, decorations and food across the globe. The MS Emma Maersk -- which weighs 170,000 tons (190,400 U.S. tons) -- set sail from Gothenburg, Sweden, in September, collecting and delivering festive supplies in Yantian, China, Hong Kong and Tanjung Pelepas, Malaysia. Operated by a crew of 13, the vessel is the largest at sea -- a quarter-mile (half-kilometer) long, 200 feet (60 meters) high and powered by the biggest diesel engine ever built.Among goods packed into 11,000 containers are 2 million Christmas decorations, 12,800 MP3 players, 33,00 cocktail shakers, 150 tons (168 U.S. tons) of New Zealand lamb, thousands of frozen chickens and 138,000 tins of cat food, the vessel's owner, Danish shipping company Maersk Line said in a statement.Around 45,000 tons (50,400 U.S. tons) of goods were due to be unloaded Saturday at Felixstowe port, in southern England, before the ship sails to mainland Europe to deliver 8,000 containers of cargo. The journey is the ship's first voyage from China to Europe, specifically planned to deliver Christmas stocks to shopkeepers -- including a haul of electronic dinosaurs, radio-controlled cars, pinball machines and computers. Maersk Line said the ship was capable of traveling about 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) every year -- the equivalent of seven and a half trips around the world. The majority of supplies onboard have been produced in China, which last year exported 16 billion pounds (US$30.5 billion; euro24 billion) worth of goods to Britain, said Caroline Lucas, a European Parliament legislator with Britain's environmentalist Green Party. That should make Britons think twice, Lucas said. "People should see the ship as a little microcosm of all the major problems with world trade." "The thousands of tons of goods being delivered are items which once would have been produced in Britain and Europe, but which are now made in China -- where exploitation of the labor market means we cannot compete on price," Lucas told The Associated Press. The ship's two-month voyage also highlighted concerns about the environmental impact of transporting goods and food long distances, she said.
Hundreds of protesters demand PM act on Kyoto (November 4, 2006)
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/11/04/kyoto-protest.html
Hundreds of protesters gathered in cities across the country on Saturday to demand the Conservative government support the Kyoto Protocol and fight global warming.In Ottawa, about 200 protesters rushed the Parliament buildings to demonstrate their anger over Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Clean Air Act, which they said sends the signal to the world that Canada has given up on its battle against greenhouse gases. Dale Marshall of the Suzuki Foundation says Canada is the only Kyoto signatory that will not even try to meet it's targets.(CBC)The recently introduced legislation plans to reduce airborne pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions, but critics said it ignores Kyoto and Canada's commitments to the world."Canada is totally isolated on this," Dale Marshall of the David Suzuki Foundation told the CBC on Saturday. "It's the only Kyoto party that has said it's not even going to try to meet its targets, so it's basically putting itself in the same camp as Australia and the U.S. in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol." The protests, which were also held in Montreal and Toronto, come on the same day as Harper reportedly cancelled a planned meeting later this month in Finland with EU leaders, who were sure to criticize him for abandoning goals of the Kyoto accord. "We committed to it, we signed on to it, and I'd like to think our word is good for something," Ontario New Democrat MP Paul Dewar said Saturday. The international treaty requires Canada to reduce its Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions to six per cent below 1990 levels, but Canada is nowhere near meeting the target. The prime minister doesn't deny the planet is getting warmer, but his party disagrees with environmentalists on how to fight the warming trend. "We're not going to stop until Harper gets his head out of the tar sands and stops denying the reality of climate change," one protester told the crowd of about 200 demonstrators outside Toronto's city hall. The debate over Kyoto is heating up this weekend in advance of an international Kyoto conference that begins Monday in Nairobi.
African apocalypse: The continent burning into a desert (Oct 29, 2006)
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=62802
Nowhere is the effect of global warming more dangerous than in Somalia, where the worst drought in 40 years is affecting the lives of 1.8 million people. (...) The report bears out their fears with hard facts. "Africa is steadily warming," it concludes. "It is becoming clear that in many places dangerous climate change is already taking place." The six warmest years ever recorded in Africa have all been since 1987, it says, and in many parts of the continent temperatures are expected to rise twice as fast as in the world as a whole. The result will be to drive its climate ever more towards extremes. Traditionally arid areas such as the north-east and south of the continent, and the Sahel on the fringes of the Sahara in west Africa, are becoming drier - with increased droughts - while rainy areas, such as equatorial Africa, are getting wetter, with more floods. Even worse, perhaps, the weather is becoming increasingly unpredictable, with confusing changes in the seasons, making it harder and harder for poor farmers to know when to invest their scarce time and resources into planting, tending and harvesting their crops.The report predicts that "climate change will reduce crop yields by 10 per cent over the whole of Africa", a catastrophic development in a hungry continent which, even now, is struggling to increase its harvests enough to feed its rapidly growing population. But even this figure, as an average, disguises much greater, more local disasters. Tanzania, for example, expects its maize harvests to fall by a third, and its millet yield to go down by three-quarters. Meanwhile the sorghum crop, another staple, is expected to drop by as much as four-fifths in Sudan. In all, according to other predictions, 40 per cent of Africa's countries will suffer "major losses" in cereal production. Yet four out of every five of its people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods - and the number of the desperately poor has almost doubled, to more than 500 million, in the past 25 years.Water is becoming scarcer as drought increases - and the rain that falls comes in ever heavier storms, running straight of the land rather than filtering down to replenish supplies. The United Nations Environment Programme's (Unep) flagship report, "The Global Environmental Outlook", says that there is only one-third as much water for each African as there was in the 1970s. Two out of three people in its rural areas, and a quarter of its urban population, do not have access to safe drinking water. Climate change and population growth will make this far worse. The Unep report adds: "Fourteen countries in Africa are subject to water stress or water scarcity, and a further 11 will join them in the next 25 years."
Climate Change to Spark Economic Depression (October 29, 2006)
http://www.climateark.org/blog/2006/10/climate_change_to_spark_econom.asp
Given overwhelming and robust evidence, the scientific debate on global warming is now closed and it is time for action which will require going beyond science to policy and advocacy formulation. A major new report by chief British government and former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern finds that the benefits of determined worldwide steps to tackle climate change far outweigh the costs, and that failure to make these investments will lead to "economic upheaval on the scale of the 1930s Depression", costing "more than both world wars" while rendering "swathes of the planet uninhabitable" and turning "200 million people into refugees". This is not alarmist doomsdayism - it is the best policy predictions based upon the current science. There are many ways to know climate change, science being important but just one of them. The report is the best policy document to date regarding likely apocalyptic social and economic outcomes of doing nothing to address the global ecological crises of which climate change is part and paramount."The chance to keep greenhouse gases at a level which scientists say should avoid the worst effects of climate change 'is already almost out of reach... the benefits of strong, early action considerably outweigh the costs'." The report estimates stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will cost about one per cent of annual global output by 2050. But if the world does nothing, it could cut global consumption per person by between five and 20 per cent. He suggested rich nations take responsibility for emissions cuts of 60-80 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050. Further, a global carbon price was needed, affixing a clear cost to pollution, and this could be created through tax [EI's carbon tax plan], trading or regulation. And with only perhaps a decade to act with force, it is imperative that a Kyoto successor agreement is negotiated as early as next year.
Greenhouse gains sunk by frequent flyers (Nov 4)
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/greenhouse-gains-sunk-by-frequent-flyers/2006/11/03/1162340050256.html
(...) In 1970, 32 million people used British airports. In 2004, the figure was 216 million; by 2030 it is projected to be 470 million.Britain not only hosts more flights than any other European country, but a fifth of all international flights pass through the country. With 70,000 employees, Heathrow is the world's busiest airport. CLIP
A Global Catastrophe of Our Own Making (Oct 31)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1031-04.htm
Average global temperatures have increased by less than 1C since the Industrial Revolution, but they are projected to increase by up to 5C over the coming century if carbon dioxide levels continue to rise without restraint. With each 1C rise in average global temperatures, the Stern Review portrays progressively more serious scenarios.The five degrees of disaster
1C: Smaller mountain glaciers disappear in Andes, threatening water supply of 50 million people. More than 300,000 people extra die from increase in climate-related diseases in tropical regions. Permafrost melting damages roads and buildings in Canada and Russia. One in ten species threatened with extinction, 80 per cent of coral suffers regular bleaching.
2C: Water scarcity increases in southern Africa and the Mediterranean. Significant decline in food production in Africa, where malaria affects up to 60 million more people. Up to 10 million extra people affected by coastal flooding each year. Arctic species, such the polar bear, face extinction along with 15-40 per cent of world’s remaining wildlife. Gulf Stream begins to weaken and Greenland ice sheet begins to melt irreversibly.
3C: Serious droughts in southern Europe occur once every ten years. Between 1 and 4 billion people suffer water shortages and a similar number suffer from floods. Many millions of people at risk of malnutrition, as agricultural yields at higher latitudes reach peak output. More than 100 million people are affected by the risk of coastal flooding. Mass extinction of animals and plants accelerates.
4C: Sub-Saharan Africa and the southern Mediterranean suffer between 30 and 50 per cent decrease in availability of water. Agricultural yields decline by 15-35 per cent in Africa. Crops fail in entire regions. Up to 80 million extra people are exposed to malaria. Loss of around half of the Arctic tundra. Many nature reserves collapse. Giant West Antarctic Ice Sheet begins to melt irreversibly, threatening catastrophic increases in global sea levels.
5C: Possible disappearance of the large glaciers of the Himalayas, affecting the water supply of 25 per cent of population of China and hundreds of millions more in India. Ocean acidity increases with threat of total collapse in the global fisheries industry. Sea levels rise inexorably, inundating vast regions of Asia and about half of the world’s major cities, including London, New York and Tokyo. CLIP
Landmark report reveals apocalyptic cost of global warming http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1934381,00.html
£3.68 trillion: the price of failing to act on climate change
Evidence grows of waning ocean current (October 28, 2006)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/evidence-grows-of-waning-ocean-current/2006/10/27/1161749315591.html
Scientists have uncovered more evidence of a dramatic weakening in the vast ocean current that gives Western Europe its relatively balmy climate by dragging warm water northwards from the tropics. The slowdown of the North Atlantic Drift, which climate modellers have predicted will follow global warming, has been confirmed by the most detailed study yet of ocean flow in the Atlantic. Most alarmingly, the data reveals part of the current, usually 60 times more powerful than the Amazon River, came to a temporary halt during November 2004. The nightmare scenario of a shutdown in the meridional ocean current that drives the Gulf Stream was dramatically portrayed in disaster film The Day After Tomorrow. That scenario had Europe and North America plunged into a new ice age virtually overnight. Although no scientist thinks the switch-off could happen that fast, they do agree that even a weakening over a few decades would have profound consequences. The Gulf Stream originates in the Gulf of Mexico, flows up the US east coast, then crosses the Atlantic, where it splits in two, with one branch crossing to West Africa. The other branch, the North Atlantic Drift, extends towards Europe. The warm water it brings to Western Europe's shores raises the temperature by as much as 10 degrees in some places and without it the continent would be much colder and drier. Researchers are unsure what to make of the 10-day hiatus in the current in 2004. "We'd never seen anything like that before and we don't understand it. We didn't know it could happen," said Harry Bryden, of Britain's National Oceanography Centre, who presented the findings to a conference in Birmingham on rapid climate change. Is it the first sign that the current is stuttering to a halt? "I want to know more before I say that," Professor Bryden said. Lloyd Keigwin, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US, said the 2004 shutdown was "the most abrupt change in the whole [climate] record". "Suppose it lasted 30 or 60 days, when do you ring up the prime minister and say let's start stockpiling fuel? … How can we rule out a longer one next year?" he said. Professor Bryden's group stunned climate researchers last year with data suggesting that the flow rate of the Atlantic circulation had dropped by about 6 million tonnes of water a second from 1957 to 1998. If the current remained that weak, he predicted, it would lead to a one-degree drop in temperature in Britain in the next decade. A complete shutdown would lead to a four- to six-degree cooling over 20 years.
Conversations on Chemtrails - The truth about what is happening in America
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5585
(...) For information about on-going research on chemtrails, go to http://www.carnicom.com - This spraying started in 1996 and is now reported from many different countries around the world. They seem to hit the heavily populated areas the hardest. My wife is sensitive to the barium salt spray these aircraft leave behind, so we live in a lightly populated area of the Oregon coast. We only get the drift from trails laid down over the ocean. Weather pictures from space are sometimes very revealing as to chemtrail patterns and activity. They seem to spray in advance of rain clouds, which results is little or no rain falling. We are now in the worst draught on record. (...) A scientist here in Denver has been able to analyze particles from the chemtrails. He discovered they are dried red blood cells (RBC’s) with virus material inside the RBC’s. When the RBC’s connect with mucous membranes - in the nose, mouth, throat or lungs - the viruses activate and cause illnesses. (...) What makes you think there are human pilots aboard those "planes". What makes you think they are a plane? I know they are high up. I heard one with a prop engine sound and then the plane dissapeared along with the prop sound and the chemtrail it laid at exactly the same time on a perfectly clear blue sky! If NATO cant run this many sorties, and they appear simultaneously 24 hours a day over every land mass and ocean equally, then, well you get my point. Why has no one ever seen them land? Why is there no ID? Why are they the same the world around? Chemtrails have blood serum to transport nanobacteria for genetic modification and disease dispersal. They have barium and aluminum for 3d xray and communication blocking from outside the planet. Barium and aluminum are also the atmospheric 3D conductors for HAARP and the GWEN system. Get a grip, the future is changing, and fast. (...) I live in the Cleveland Akron area and have seen these silent aircraft completly cover the sky with clouds of some sort in the space of an afternoon. They fly in a straight line leaving a stream behind them and at first I thought, Gosh, the Gov’t is spending an awful lot of money these days on fuel for these "fighter" planes. That’s what every one thought. Until the aircraft starting going back and forth in the sky. It lookes like weaving. Then the aircraft disappeared and the trails left behind spread and spread until the sky was covered. People began having breathing problems and asthma attacks are on the rise. I have asthma myself and when the sky is covered with that molten lead, dirty grey color I have to get treatments. The sky has been covered here for 2 days and I lost my voice altogether. Speaking is painful and I can taste a metallic edge on my food. Does anyone get that horrible taste? It’s not overwhelming, just a hint of it. CLIP
Toxic Sky? Chemtrails in the news... (4 min. 16 sec)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBAmskD4DJc&mode=related&search=
The Sun Wont Come Out Tomorrow (3 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL35Mu_uHho&mode=related&search=
Twenty-five countries to urge Iceland to respect whaling ban (Oct 31)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061031/sc_afp/francewhalingiceland_061031190915
PARIS (AFP) - Twenty-five countries are to call on Iceland to reverse a decision to resume commercial whaling in defiance of an international ban, the French foreign ministry said. All intend to "manifest their opposition to the resumption of commercial whaling and ask the Icelandic authorities to reconsider their policy in this field," the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. Their request will be sent via diplomatic channels to the Icelandic foreign and fisheries ministries.Iceland said last week it would issue licenses to hunt nine fin whales and 30 minke whales in a year, becoming only the second nation after Norway to defy outright an international moratorium that took effect in 1986. The decision drew protests from environmental groups such as Greenpeace and from several countries, including Australia and New Zealand, as well as the European Union.The other countries backing the initiative are Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Chile, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Monaco, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the United States.
Grey Whales Missing from North Pacific Feeding Grounds
http://www.earthwatch.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=dsJSK6PFJnH&b=692025&ct=3215083
Maynard, MA, 20 October 2006 - Finding one thirty-ton animal in the vast North Pacific may be as hard as finding a needle in a haystack. But when the entire estimated population of 17,000 grey whales is hard to find, it is cause for concern. Researchers reported very few sightings in the grey whales' traditional summer feeding grounds last season. Earthwatch teams are invited to join Dr. William Megill (University of Bath) as he explores the impact on these whales at the southern end of their migration, in Baja California, Mexico. (...) The fact that they have abandoned their traditional summer feeding grounds indicates to scientists that the whales may need to range further to find sufficient food. "Presumably they found other feeding areas, but they will have had to look hard. This suggests they may be quite lean this winter, particularly as this is now the second summer they've had to deal with this problem," said Megill. "We know that the Bering Sea has taken a beating over the last ten years, and that productivity has plummeted there, forcing the whales into new habitat. A new blow to the productivity in these marginal habitats could hurt badly." CLIP
US Pesticide Stockpile Under Scrutiny at World Ozone Meeting in India
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/110306EC.shtml
President Bush's administration is seeking world permission to produce thousands of tons of a pesticide that an international treaty banned nearly two years ago. Methyl bromide has been used for decades by farmers to help grow plump, sweet strawberries, robust peppers and other crops, but it also depletes the Earth's protective ozone layer.
U.S. OK'd for ozone-destroying pesticide (Nov 3) BUSH & Co: THE "PLANET KILLERS"!
http://tinyurl.com/y2e9rr
The Bush administration on Friday won international approval for U.S. farmers to use thousands of tons of a potent ozone-destroying pesticide without having to dip substantially into large stockpiles that were recently revealed.ADVERTISEMENTThe pesticide, methyl bromide, was banned under an international treaty nearly two years ago except for uses deemed critical. U.S. officials have secured exemptions to the ban so that growers can use it to kill soil pests for tomatoes, strawberries and other crops in agricultural states like California and Florida. At a meeting Friday in New Delhi, treaty partners approved use of just over 5,900 tons for those needs in 2008, said Michael Williams, spokesman for the Montreal Protocol, which works to phase out substances that deplete the ozone layer. U.S. stockpiles far exceed that amount, but the nations said Americans can meet the need by manufacturing more than 5,000 tons of new methyl bromide. The stockpiles could then be drawn down to meet the rest of the agreed-on use. The allotment is a reduction from the administration's request for nearly 7,100 tons, and continues the downward trend in annual methyl bromide production and use. The decision came over the objections of European nations and despite the recommendation of the treaty's own technical committee. That panel had urged a more substantial cut in the U.S. request on grounds that other countries have proved that alternative chemicals and methods can successfully replace methyl bromide.European delegates voiced concern about the U.S. stockpiles, measured by the administration at nearly 11,000 tons at the end of last year. (...) "It's extremely disappointing that now that the U.S. has finally confirmed its enormous stockpile, it continues to fight tooth and nail to get special treatment in the world to use a gas that will cause increased skin cancer and a host of other environmental effects," said Sascha Von Bismarck of the Environmental Investigation Agency. The ozone layer protects life on earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Scientists reported recently that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is the largest on record. The Bush administration contends that the stockpiles existed before the 2005 ban and thus are not subject to a treaty rule allowing new production only if existing, available stockpiles cannot cover the need. CLIP
The 'Hum' could it be from microwave phone masts?
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/the_hum_could_be_from_microwave_phone_masts.htm
Is it the imaginings of hypochondriacs? The result of ear damage? Or is a mysterious humming noise reported by people in countries including Britain, the US and Australia caused by outside factors? Two New Zealand academics have found themselves at the centre of debate over 'the hum', a phenomenon where individuals claim to hear rumbling sounds at certain locations. Generally the ''sounds'' are inaudible to most other people, except a few others, apparently with a similar sensitivity. CLIP More on this through http://tinyurl.com/sfogt
World Social Forum meeting in Africa 20-25 January 2007, Nairobi, Kenya
The World Social Forum International Council in its meeting held in Parma, Italy, from 10-12 October 2006 have advanced in the preparation for the next edition of World Social Forum, be held in Nairobi, 20-25 January 2007. The World Social Forum is an innovative process, which continues to expand and deepen itself through world, regional, national, local and thematic events as well as struggles, campaigns and actions that reaffirm commitment for another world that is possible, necessary and urgent. For more information, see http://oneworldafrica.org/sasf/eventsdetails.php?event_id=00000012
Omega-News Collection 4. November 2006
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/2890905/
1.
From: "Aunty Rainbow" lousshadow@supanet.com">
Subject: Shifting up our Focus
Date: 31 Oct 2006
Dear Rainbow Brother
Having received the compilation and read your comments I felt compelled to write to you.
There are many of us on and off world who are fighting for the planet. We came here to do just that. Please do not despair at what you are seeing and hearing. Everything WILL be alright. I have seen where we are going, so have you. Please keep that image in your mind. But also remember that it is time for humanity to change their minds. The more dire the story, the more you worry about it, the more your thoughts go out and find all the other thoughts that match yours, the more you increase the potential for these things to happen in the Earth's energy field.
At the moment the collective conscious is in turmoil, this I know is due mainly to the upcoming elections, the worry, and fear that things will go in a non positive way is very disturbing. I am feeling it more and more each day. An ever growing feeling of nervousness, it makes me fidgety, and it is difficult to keep a clear mind, and a focus of love and peace. I consciously have to breath and relax and then send calming thoughts back out.
Now there is information about Iran which will cause more anxiety.
What I am trying to say is that if humanity was to strike these thoughts from their minds and start to think that these things no longer exist, and that power is in the hands of the good hearted, then we will create things differently and stop giving these negative things the power of potential that they need to go forward.
It means changing your mind and the way that you think.
If everyone was to think more light onto the planet then there would be no more potential for dark deeds. Much information is LEAKED just so that it can cause people to worry and create the potential for these things in Earth's energy field.
We need to change the way we sometimes think, and help those around us do the same. Maybe when you put out the compilations, you could ask people to read it and then think these things gone, unable to happen, think these weapons of mass destruction as gone, no more, vanished, unable to explode.
THIS IS HUMANITY'S FREE WILL CHOICE. We don't want these things, but the more we think about them and worry about them the more we create them.
We need to raise our consciousness to a higher level and see the bigger picture, not just the global picture but the universal picture, the multiversal picture.
Things are proceeding as they must, while we still think in such a small way. Things will only get worse as the light on and in the earth increases. The darkness is in our face so that we cannot deny it's existence, but we are perpetuating it. Very few people are still able to manipulate the masses, they see the bigger picture. BUT they are still following a blueprint that has been torn up. We won! We are running the show now. SO WHY are we still not embracing that fact? Why are we still not using our power?
Why are we still creating this mess? Surely we do not still need anyone to tell us what to do??
Don't you want your freedom???? THEN TAKE IT! Think positively, always see the upside in all things, even when things seem dire there is always an upside, a positive resolution. All we have to do is think it. It is that simple. When does worrying about a thing ever make it better?
Your freedom is in your thoughts, become a free thinker.
Love and rainbows to you Rainbow warrior
Aunty Rainbow
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TO WHICH I REPLIED ( in part)
Thank you for sharing this vital perspective with me. At first when I read your comment, I felt uncomfortable with some aspects of it and thus I was not inclined to network it even though some elements are indeed useful reminders. This perspective that we simply need to ignore what's wrong and focus on what we want for the future has been featured, as expressed by various people, on a number of occasions in my past compilations and while it does have obvious merits, I still believe it is not enough in and of itself.
It is essential to think positively and hold in our minds and hearts a positive outcome to current crisis, yet ignoring the pain humanity and our planet are enduring is like wishing away a pain our body is experiencing, if one has a broken leg for instance, and naively hoping the source of the problem will vanish and our body will take care of itself without us being involved beyond holding positive feelings about its healing. We have freewill and can indeed ignore the pain signals we receive but we will inevitably reap the consequences of such a choice. If we use our free will to BOTH attend to the source of the pain, facing calmly whatever needs to be corrected and taking proper, wise action based on our accrued experience of past similar situations, but ALSO channeling healing energies to assist the body in its healing process and opening wide the inner gates of our divine soul to its nearly miraculous abilities usually laying dormant in us by NOT opposing contradictory thoughts of fear, doubt and anxiety that would only stem the flow of healing taking place, then I believe we will have proven our increased mastery over the trials and tribulations of life on this physical plane.
Likewise, unless humanity diligently attends to the cause of global warming and of the utter devastation of war and of the toxic and radioactive environment that will be the everlasting legacy of the diabolic weapons now used on the battlefields, we and countless generations to come - if any can still be born at all passed a certain point in the near future - will reap the consequences of our inactions and wishful thinking. I thought necessary to balance out and complement your compelling and important suggestions.
2.
Date: 31 Oct 2006
From: foxyone@telus.net
Subject: What exactly is Schizophrenia...
Hello, Jean. I very much enjoy and respect what you do.
One small point, though - might I correct you on your apparent misunderstanding of what schizophrenia is. The word was coined hundreds of years ago before the disorder was fully known about. Schizophrenia is not split personality. Split personality falls under Multiple Personality Disorder and is the result of the brain "walling off" sections. Schizophrenia is a sensory input disorder. Most people, for example, when in a conversation can filter out other conversations around them. Schizophrenics cannot, in varying degrees. Since our brains interpret everything in terms of our five senses, these unfiltered inputs are interpreted as weird visuals, voices and so on.
Thank you.
FL
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TO WHICH I REPLIED
Thank you for explaining this to me. I was not aware of this misconception about the exact meaning of "schizophrenia" - I should have checked my dictionary which says "A mental illness marked by a breakdown in the relation between thoughts, feelings and actions, frequently accompanied by delusions, and retreat from social life." - but since I believe many other people do understand like me that it somehow refers to a split personality, they have probably understood that I meant to convey that I was of both minds regarding the global situation: one usually hopeful and optimistic; one sometimes discouraged and pessimistic.
Nevertheless, the correct meaning is also relevant in the sense that loosing contact with reality, because of the overwhelming number of bad news, is also a relevant metaphor for what could happen if one allows such news to take a toll on one's basically positive outlook on life and our future, which is a key ingredient if one is to feel empowered and motivated to express through one's own example and courageous, positive, constructive actions, stemming from that inner sense of strength and connection with All That Is, elements of solutions to the global crisis we all contributed to create and urgently need to address.
3.
From: "Stan Penner" stanp@mts.net">
Subject: THE WARS WE MAKE Re: Veracity Series #16: Halloween Schizophrenia
Date: 31 Oct 2006
It is said that "the pen is mightier than the sword" and, somehow, even with all the fighting, killing, suffering, abuse, and dying going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, too, I still believe that. It is my hope and prayer that the poem, below, can be of at least some help in bringing healing to a world that has seen, and is seeing, far too much war.
The poem was written by Nicholas Peters just after the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Peters, who lived for some years at Grande Pointe, Manitoba, Canada, had emigrated from Russia in 1925 as a boy of 10 and had seen firsthand the horrors of revolution and war in his native country. He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942 and trained as a flying officer. He died on the night of March 7-8, 1945 after his aircraft was hit by enemy fire. The poem is from a collection of Peters' work entitled Another Morn.
The Peters family has given permission to have the poem published.
---
THE WARS WE MAKE
I gaze into the world with sorrowing eyes
And see the wide-abounding fruits of hate.
We fight, we say, for peace, and find
The wars we make
To be a spring of hate and source of future wars.
Is there no peace for man?
No hope that this accursed flow
Of blood may cease?
Is this our destiny: to kill and maim
For peace?
Or is this 'peace' we strive to gain
A thin unholy masquerade
Which, when our pride, our greed, our gain is
touched too far,
Is shed, and stands uncovered what we are?
Show me your light, O God
That I may fight for peace with peace
And not with war;
To prove my love with love,
And hate no more!
- Nicholas Peters
---
Some twelve years ago, my wife and I stood beside Peters' grave in an Allied war cemetery in Germany, with a huge sword on a cross backdrop, and grieved for him and the countless others buried there "row on row" in those graveyards of Europe. Quietly they lie now, sometimes friend and foe close together with so much of life still waiting to be lived.
Most of the last verse of Peters' poem is inscribed on his tombstone with "me" and "I" changed to "US" and "WE".
SHOW US YOUR LIGHT, O GOD,
THAT WE MAY FIGHT
FOR PEACE WITH PEACE
AND NOT WITH WAR.
I say to one and all the world over, "Let's listen to this soldier's prayer."
Yours sincerely,
Stan Penner
4.
From: "Aannsha Jones" aannsha@healingtruth.com.au">
Subject: How Forgiveness Can Improve Your Life
Date: 31 Oct 2006
Hi Jean
I've recently begun writing again as my local newspaper has asked me to write a short article each month. Writing to a limit of 340 words has been a challenge for me but is good discipline to distill the essence of what could quite easily be a 2000+ word monologue!
The latest article was on forgiveness. Looking at it, it seems to me to be a good reminder for old and new souls (myself included) and thought I'd pass it on to you in case you think it might be of any use to your broader readership.
Think globally/universally, act locally/personally seems a great way to assist the great evolutionary flow of things. Forgiveness is one aspect to walking free of our past, become unencumbered in our present and flow gracefully into our highest, most happiest and abundant future. If we each do our part, it'll all fall in place. (Well, secretly, I feel its all falling into place nicely anyway, but if we each play our own unique role in the Grand Play, we'll feel that much more satisfied when we watch the re-run on the big cosmic screen in the sky!!!)
Continue doing wonderful things Jean, thanks for your time and effort.
Kind regards
Aannsha (Jones)
PO Box 155
Glasshouse Mountains Qld 4518 Australia
Healing Truth Website at: http://www.healingtruth.com.au
---
How Forgiveness Can Improve Your Life
The words “for” + “give” originated before 900AD from the Old English. “For”- is a prefix meaning “away” and “Give” means to present voluntarily, without expecting compensation. To forgive means to grant pardon without harbouring resentment or expecting compensation.
You might be thinking, “So how can forgiveness work for me?”
Forgiveness is not about anyone else. It’s about you. Your health. Your joy. Your abundance.
I’ve said before that we’re creators – formed like our Creator. There’s lots of information around to substantiate this. As Mike Dooley says: “Thoughts become things.” We create what we think about – consciously and subconsciously. This is a universal law which, like gravity, constantly operates.
So firstly, if you haven’t truly forgiven someone, you’re still attached to them energetically and even if they aren’t in your life, someone else will present you with a similar situation that resonates with your feelings.
Secondly, emotions are energy in motion. If you hold on to resentment, it could build up in your body and make you sick, (because the First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed). Healing/joyful energy can’t fill the space where resentment is sitting.
Forgiveness isn’t just saying, “Oh, I forgive him – but I’ll never forget what he did to me.” And it isn’t gushing sweetly with a forced smile, “Of course I forgive her,” while ignoring resentful feelings, because ‘nice people don’t feel terrible things like that’. Nor is it graciously forgiving someone and then feeling superior because you’re better than them, because they’re the bad guy.
True forgiveness occurs when you realise that your life will improve dramatically when you cut all bitter attachments because these vibrate at a lower energy and will continue to bring hurtful experiences to you.
Let your past go. If it’s difficult start with, “Thank you for the willingness to forgive ______”. Repeat this till you feel a change. Then give thanks for all you love and would love.
And that my friend, is how forgiveness will improve your life.
5.
ANOTHER INTERESTING PERSPECTIVE...
From: David Fiske david.fiske@sympatico.ca">
Subject: Another way to deal with this troubled world
Date: 31 Oct 2006
Dear Jean,
Just glanced through your recent compilation. In this troubled world I don't know if this is of interest to you.
I have spent a lot of time bemoaning all that I think is wrong or misguided. One can spiral down doing that. I have spent much time looking forward to an expected cull brought on by human foolishness.
However although I still embrace catastrophe as a means for change I have started to believe in a new paradigm. This is that there are 12 time lines of parallel realities i.e 12 futures for those here on earth now. This is more than just a wheat and a chaff division. Compatible energies will have a similar future. These 12 time lines seem destined to hive off soon. I take great comfort in the thought that I will soon no longer be sharing my world with incompatible energies. Therefore I get a warm feeling in my heart for my future and that leaves little room for bitching. There is SO much that is just not right for me here on earth now I could spend all day swearing. It seems better to think happily of the splitting away of those 12 time lines. Goodbye can be such a cheerful word sometimes don't you think?
By the way some of these ideas came from www.operationterra.com. I am on a forum there, for which one pays monthly.
The site has made me realize that someone can be highly intelligent, informed, intuitive and yet quite possibly be a little mad. However I mostly find the eccentric charming and my life has been greatly enriched by the odd.
What I also like about the 12 futures is that it is not a heaven/hell judgement. You just go where you are most suited and that seems a good solution. Moreover as energies for change flood our earth as they currently do, they provide stimulus for the hiving off. They boost what one focuses on or where one's heart is. As one's life is what one attends to, so also will be one's future.
Is all this true? I don't know; life is so mysterious. Do I believe it? Perhaps and it helps me get through my day.
I just don't recognize the world so many people seem to be living in as my world. If that is to be above the fray then I guess that is where I am. Any way I have enough of my own fray to deal with.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi taught me...
1) I could do nothing more fundamental to change the world than changing my awareness and taught me how to do that.
2) Knowledge is structured in consciousness.
If I look at the facts the world provides this is hard to prove. But if I look at my personal world it seems valid for apart from some slips and blips I see a world of love.
This morning I put some more of my large garden to bed. A frog hopped towards its winter bed under a big pile of mulch, from where it will emerge in the Spring to eat slugs. I greeted it with affection as a companero. Chickadees start their own sunflowers in the garden and in Fall eat the seeds. As they flit amongst the 8 foot tall plants I call to them ‘hello sweetheart’. My well tended soil gives me wonderful vegetables and fruit. How can I not see love in all that balance and ripeness.
So it depends on what you want to see.
I was taught that when something of beauty is seen to love it for the earth as we know it is passing away. It is apparently vanishing in turmoil. That is one view; but that is the splitting off of the time lines. The world that some people inhabit is just not mine at all so why worry about them. They have their future and I have mine. As I think of my future in a world of love I get a delicious feeling in my heart.
We have choices. We can yap angrily as life passes by or we can grab in by the handful and love it. I think Maharishi has done the latter. He has taken two huge handfuls of life. And once he took my hands for a while and that has made all the difference.
Love,
David
http://www.esotericarts.org
6.
Date: 31 Oct 2006
From: SpiritNet@webtv.net
Subject: WHAT SAY YOU?
Aloha from Triaka!
You may know that bankers and other money interests who control and manipulate the major political powers in the world are planning a "North American Union" of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, much on the order of the European Union. Asian and other economic unions are to follow with a final goal of a single World Economic Union.
Logically, the end result is a One World Government of, by, and for a self-serving few. This oligarchical top-down "New World Order" would include an elected lawmaking body which can be controlled and manipulated by the same money interests in the same manner that Congress and similar bodies are influenced around the world.
Be aware that unawakened Democrats joined with Republicans in setting the stage for a U.S. "Martial Law Police State" which could enforce this subversion of American Constitutional Ideals. And more unaware Americans could be inducted into wars to advance this emerging World Dictatorship!
But WAIT. In sharp contrast to the economic and political control and manipulation by a small element that rejects everybody else's Natural Right of "Sovereign Freewill", there is a peaceful ALTERNATIVE that, with our unified Thoughts, Words, and Actions, can co-create a different bottom-up reality!
So, I wish to convey these firm personal beliefs...
"The world is entering the Golden Age of Light and Life! Old systems are dying and new systems are being created."
A new "authentic" constitution is one that (1) derives from Natures Reality of Human Freewill, (2) is voluntarily agreed to by cooperating Human Beings everywhere, (3) contains precise language protecting both Individual and Collective Natural Rights as well as the Natural Environment, and (4) provides for the settlement of differences...
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/uniteddiversity
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/worldcooperative
http://www.globalvisions.org/cl/swn
7.
Forwarded by "Stephanie Sutton" ssutton@flantech.com"> on Nov 1
From: The Peace Team theteam@peaceteam.net">
Sent: October 31, 2006
Subject: When The U.S. Military ATTACKS Americans
WILL THIS ELECTION BRING A BRIGHTER DAY OR THE END OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
SUPPORT THE PEACE TEAM CANDIDATES NOW: http://www.peaceteam.net
If there were ever a more urgent reason to replace each and every member of Congress virtually without exception, one need only look at the breathtaking new martial law powers granted to the Bush administration this month. It has always been a sacred tenet of our Democracy that the U.S. military should not be deployed AGAINST American citizens. But literally in the dead of night and almost without comment, an amendment to the Insurrection Act was slipped into the just passed Defense Authorization bill stating, and get this:
"the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when . . . the President determines that domestic violence has occurred"
So let's just say for example that the electronic election results in 8 days are so far out of line with pre-election and exit polling data so as to defy credulity. And let's just say that people organized massive peaceful protests of the theft of their elections. And let's just say that the Bush administration provoked "police" riots, or even had their own provocateurs commit violent acts so as to justify a military crackdown. Voila . . . now you have American soldiers shooting at otherwise peaceful political protesters. And you thought Kent State was a party!
And if you don't think that could ever happen, then why the hell have they pushed for such changes, which are now the law of the land?
The whole concept of the president as an unaccountable determiner, or "decider", insulated from any kind of oversight by Congress or the Courts has been the hallmark of the Cheney/Bush executive coup, which just keeps steamrollering along while our presumptive protectors in Congress are asleep at the switch, or cowering in their cloakrooms.
Shame on each and every member of Congress who allowed this to happen with hardly as much as peep or a whimper. Shame on them for their lack of diligence and lack of oversight. Shame, shame, shame on Democrats as well as Republicans. Are there any, any at all worth keeping, who will actually fight for the people and their rights? The list of keepers must now be short indeed.
But there are some candidates who ARE fighting to be the people's voice. There are candidates who were calling for our troops in Iraq to start coming home, and standing strong on that call, BEFORE the general public began to realize the scale of the Iraq disaster, doomed as it was from the start by its illegal and immoral underpinnings.
And what we are asking you to do, in this last 7 days before the upcoming election, is to donate anything you can, if you have not done so already, to help the brave candidates on the Peace Team to get their Lie/Die TV spots on the air, so the people know that there is at least somebody out there taking a stand on principle.
SUPPORT THE PEACE TEAM CANDIDATES NOW: http://www.peaceteam.net
So far you have contributed over $60,000 in just the last couple weeks to this valiant effort. It may not be the millions of dollars that other candidates may throw around, but it has made a real difference. Because of you, the courageous Peace Team candidates are getting a hearing they would have otherwise had. A number are definitely within striking distance if only we do everything we can to support them.
But most of all we thank you for your own courage in continuing to speak out, which will be all the more important regardless of who wins particular elections in this round. We must always keep the heat on the members of Congress we may be stuck with for the time being, until we can replace them with somebody better.
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours.
To be added to the list go to http://www.peaceteam.net/in.htm
8.
From: "Dr.E" orwilly@msn.com">
Subject: Documents reveal 'shadow government'
Date: 1 Nov 2006
From: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52576
THE NEW WORLD DISORDER
Documents reveal 'shadow government'
Freedom of Information request puts 1,000 new pages online
Posted: October 24, 2006
About 1,000 documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America show the White House is engaging in collaborative relations with Mexico and Canada outside the U.S. Constitution, says WND columnist and author Jerome Corsi.
"The documents give clear evidence that the Bush administration has created a 'shadow government,'" Corsi said.
The documents can be viewed here, on a special website set up by the Minuteman Project.
Bureaucrats from agencies throughout the Bush administration are meeting regularly with their counterpart bureaucrats in the Canadian and Mexican governments to engage in a broad rewriting of U.S. administrative law and regulations into a new trilateral North American configuration, Corsi contends.
"We have hundreds of pages of e-mails from U.S. executive branch administrators who are copying the e-mail to somewhere between 25 to 100 people, a third of whom are in the U.S. bureaucracy, a third of whom are in the Mexican bureaucracy and a third of whom are in the Canadian bureaucracy," said Corsi.
"They are sharing their laws and regulations so we can 'harmonize' and 'integrate' our laws into a North American structure, not a USA structure."
Corsi claims the process is well along the way.
"This is totally outside the U.S. Constitution, virtually an executive branch coup d'etat," he said. "SPP is creating new trilateral memoranda of understanding and mutual agreements which should be submitted to Senate for two-thirds votes as international treaties."
Corsi said the documentation he received is missing key pieces.
"We received very few actual agreements, though many are referenced," he said. "Many of the work plans described lack the work products which the groups say they produced."
Related offers:
For a comprehensive look at the U.S. government's plan to integrate the U.S., Mexico and Canada into a North American super-state – guided by the powerful but secretive Council on Foreign Relations – read "ALIEN NATION: SECRETS OF THE INVASION," a special edition of WND's acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine.
CLIP
9.
From: "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@gmail.com">
Subject: Bush admits bombs were planted in WTC
Date: 2 Nov 2006
PRESIDENT BUSH ADMITS BOMBS WERE IN WORLD TRADE TOWERS
At a White House press conference on September 15, 2006, President Bush spoke of explosives in the WTC. He failed to explain how Al Quada was able to wire the three towers in advance of 911, however. Does anyone really believe that Al Quada wired and systematically demolished the three towers? And if they did where was the security company that had the responsibility for keeping the buildings secure? Please listen to Mr. Bush and then read the comment at whatreallyhappened.com:
Audio clip of Mr. Bush:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/bushadmitsbombs.mp3
COMMENT FROM WHAT REALLY HAPPENED:
"There you have it. President Bush had admitted what the eyewitnesses reported on 9-11; that there were bombs inside the World Trade Towers.
"Of course, Bush pins the blame for the bombs on Al Qaeda, which is sort of accurate when you consider that most of Al Qaeda is a creation of US and Israeli intelligence.
"But in trying to explain away the eyewitness reports of bombs, Bush has dug himself into a deeper logic hole. How did these "Al Qaeda" bombers manage to spend at least a week (according to witnesses who heard and saw them) working inside the buildings under the noses of Bush's cousin and brother, who were in charge of security for the World Trade Center? Security at the towers was tight following the 1993 attempted bombing. You could not simply walk into an elevator unless you could document employment or a meeting. Yet as one can tell from the tell-tale marks left by the cutter charges, these preparations took a great deal of time and materials to carry out.
"Why did these "Al Qaeda" bombers go to the extra effort to drop all three buildings straight down instead of toppling them sideways, maximizing the damage?
"If Al Qaeda succeeded in bombing the buildings, why bother with the airplanes? Why bother hiding the bombing itself, if it was truly the work of terrorists out to make a statement?
"In admitting the bombs, Bush has opened up the inquiry to include the very great amount of incriminating evidence found near the airplanes linking the attacks to Arab nations, versus the total absence of any such evidence near the bombs. This contrast is ONLY explained if the evidence left with the airplanes was planted, to frame someone.
"Why did it take 5 years for the government to admit what was obvious to everyone right from the start; that explosives were used to bring down the buildings, unless the original plan was not to admit to the bombs in the first place?
"Dubya, in his pathetic attempt to pin the blame for the now-admitted bombs on Al Qaeda, has created far more logical problems then he has solved. "
The truth has a nasty habit of slipping our when least expected. No wonder more and more Americans now realize that the official 911 story is bogus.
10.
From: "Stephanie Sutton" ssutton@phisciences.com">
Subject: Beginning Jan. 14th you just might not be able to go where you want to go
Date: 2 Nov 2006
Now You Need Permission to Exit or Enter the Country?
Today's comment is by Mark Nestmann, our Wealth Preservation & Tax Consultant and President of The Nestmann Group.
Dear A-Letter Reader:
Forget no-fly lists. If Uncle Sam gets its way, beginning on Jan. 14, 2007, we'll all be on no-fly lists, unless the government gives us permission to leave-or re-enter-the United States.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (HSA) has proposed that all airlines, cruise lines-even fishing boats-be required to obtain clearance for each passenger they propose taking into or out of the United States.
It doesn't matter if you have a U.S. passport-a travel document that now, absent a court order to the contrary, gives you a virtually unqualified right to enter or leave the United States, any time you want. When the DHS system comes into effect next January, if the agency says no to a clearance request, or doesn't answer the request at all, you won't be permitted to enter-or leave-the United States.
Consider what might happen if you're a U.S. passport holder on assignment in a country like Saudi Arabia. Your visa is about to expire, so you board your flight back to the United States. But wait! You can't get on, because you don't have permission from the HSA. Saudi immigration officials are on hand to escort you to a squalid detention center, where you and others who are now effectively stateless persons are detained, potentially indefinitely, until their immigration status is sorted out.
Why might the HSA deny you permission to leave-or enter-the United States? No one knows, because the entire clearance procedure would be an administrative determination made secretly, with no right of appeal. Naturally, the decision would be made without a warrant, without probable cause and without even any particular degree of suspicion. Basically, if the HSA decides it doesn't like you, you're a prisoner-either outside, or inside, the United States, whether or not you hold a U.S. passport.
The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized there is a constitutional right to travel internationally. Indeed, it has declared that the right to travel is "a virtually unconditional personal right." The United States has also signed treaties guaranteeing freedom of travel. So if these regulations do go into effect, you can expect a lengthy court battle, both nationally and internationally.
Think this can't happen? Think again... it's ALREADY happening. Earlier this year, HSA forbade airlines from transporting an 18-year-old native-born U.S. citizen, back to the United States. The prohibition lasted nearly six months until it was finally lifted a few weeks ago.
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are two countries in recent history that didn't allow their citizens to travel abroad without permission. If these regulations go into effect, you can add the United States to this list.
For more information on this proposed regulation, see http://hasbrouck.org/IDP/IDP-APIS-comments.pdf
11.
Forwarded by "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@gmail.com"> on November 5
“How fragile is democracy in America, if a president can come in with an agenda controlled by a few cultists?”
From: http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=5450
“There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq”
Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh slams Bush at McGill address
By Martin Lukacs
The McGill Daily - October 31, 2006
Speaking to launch McGill’s interdisciplinary media studies program last Wednesday, Hersh said he had seen video footage of atrocities in Iraq.
Jennifer Bartoli / The McGill Daily
“The bad news,” investigative reporter Seymour Hersh told a Montreal audience last Wednesday, “is that there are 816 days left in the reign of King George II of America.”
The good news? “When we wake up tomorrow morning, there will be one less day.”
Hersh, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine, has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. government for nearly 40 years. Since his 1969 exposé of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, which is widely believed to have helped turn American public opinion against the Vietnam War, he has broken news about the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia, covert C.I.A. attempts to overthrow Chilean president Salvador Allende, and, more recently, the first details about American soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
During his hour-and-a-half lecture – part of the launch of an interdisciplinary media and communications studies program called Media@McGill – Hersh described video footage depicting U.S. atrocities in Iraq, which he had viewed, but not yet published a story about.
He described one video in which American soldiers massacre a group of people playing soccer.
“Three U.S. armed vehicles, eight soldiers in each, are driving through a village, passing candy out to kids,” he began. “Suddenly the first vehicle explodes, and there are soldiers screaming. Sixteen soldiers come out of the other vehicles, and they do what they’re told to do, which is look for running people.”
“Never mind that the bomb was detonated by remote control,” Hersh continued. “[The soldiers] open up fire; [the] cameras show it was a soccer game.”
“About ten minutes later, [the soldiers] begin dragging bodies together, and they drop weapons there. It was reported as 20 or 30 insurgents killed that day,” he said.
If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said.
“In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation,” he said. “It isn’t happening now, but I will tell you – there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq.”
Hersh came out hard against President Bush for his involvement in the Middle East.
“In Washington, you can’t expect any rationality. I don’t know if he’s in Iraq because God told him to, because his father didn’t do it, or because it’s the next step in his 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program,” he said.
Hersh hinted that the responsibility for the invasion of Iraq lies with eight or nine members of the administration who have a “neo-conservative agenda” and dictate the U.S.’s post-September 11 foreign policy.
“You have a collapsed Congress, you have a collapsed press. The military is going to do what the President wants,” Hersh said. “How fragile is democracy in America, if a president can come in with an agenda controlled by a few cultists?”
Throughout his talk Hersh remained pessimistic, predicting that the U.S. will initiate an attack against Iran, and that the situation in Iraq will deteriorate further.
“There’s no reason to see a change in policy about Iraq. [Bush] thinks that, in twenty years, he’s going to be recognized for the leader he was – the analogy he uses is Churchill,” Hersh said. “If you read the public statements of the leadership, they’re so confident and so calm…. It’s pretty scary.”
12.
From: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=135352
Tomgram: Nick Turse on the Bush Planetary Lock Up
The evil nature of our enemies has, it turns out, certain advantages -- at least when secret imprisonment and torture are at stake. The Bush administration has proved adamantly unwilling to talk to, or deal with, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, except when it came to parking terror suspects we wanted tortured on his lot. In fact, the Syrians proved so handy and so eager to be good allies in the shadow world of global incarceration that U.S. officials turned over at least 7 of their prisoners to Syrian ministrations, according to a recent piece in the British Guardian.
There was nothing unique about administration reliance on the Syrians for this. From Uzbekistan to Egypt, autocratic regimes willing to torture have been destinations for CIA secret prisoner "rendering" operations. Following kidnappings or captures elsewhere on Earth, the Agency has sent planes hopscotching -- sometimes thousands of miles -- across the globe to our jailors of choice. Though the aircraft used were posh indeed, such assignments proved so rigorous for CIA handlers that they evidently regularly repaired to five-star hotels in Italy, on the Spanish island of Majorca, and possibly elsewhere for a little of the recuperative good life. In places like the Marriott Son Antem, a golfing resort in the Majorcan city of Palma, they could "journey to deep inner peace" (as the hotel spa advertised) at American taxpayer expense, even while on "extraordinary rendition" trips.
In fact, when it comes to what Nick Turse calls the Bush administration's "prison planet," little bits of news about further horrors seep out almost daily. Just in the last week, for instance, thanks to the Israeli paper Haaretz, we learned for the first time that at least some CIA rendition flights stopped at Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv on their way to and from Cyprus, Jordan, Morocco, and other spots east and west, north and south -- and that the first case "of the United States handing Israel a world jihadi suspect" in a rendition operation has been confirmed.
At the same time, if you happened to be checking the South African press, you might have noticed a report that, a year ago, 10 unidentified men in several "luxury vehicles" -- luxury being a good sign that the CIA is probably involved -- pulled up in front of a home in the medium-sized town of Estcourt, ransacked it at gunpoint, shooed away the police, and then hooded and dragged off two Muslim men, one of whom was later released (thanks to the intercession of a South African lawyer). The other, Rashid Khalid, a Pakistani national, is suspected of being somewhere in the system of American secret global detention centers, but his fate remains a mystery twelve months later.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, the International Red Cross, it was reported, had "its first opportunity in more than 20 months" to see hundreds of former Abu Ghraib prisoners now rehoused in a state-of-the-art multimillion dollar prison, Camp Cropper, that the Bush administration has built, almost without notice, near Baghdad International Airport. Finally (but not exhaustively), back in our growing homeland security state, "in a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law." The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, according to Frank Morales, "allows the President to declare a ‘public emergency' and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to ‘suppress public disorder.'"
And that's just a modest grab bag of recent Bush administration global incarceration news, another humdrum week on what's increasingly coming to look like an American prison planet. These bits and pieces of information seeping out are undoubtedly merely suggestive of what we don't yet know. Now, let Nick Turse, in his usual vivid, well researched fashion, make a little sense of all this for you.
Tom
---
NOTE: A great number of links are included in this article below. Please go at http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=135352 to access them.
American Prison Planet: The Bush Administration as Global Jailor
By Nick Turse
Today, the United States presides over a burgeoning empire -- not only the "empire of bases" first described by Chalmers Johnson, but a far-flung new network of maximum security penitentiaries, detention centers, jail cells, cages, and razor wire-topped pens. From supermax-type isolation prisons in 40 of the 50 states to shadowy ghost jails at remote sites across the globe, this new network of detention facilities is quite unlike the gulags, concentration-camps, or prison nations of the past.
Even with a couple million prisoners under its control, the U.S. prison network lacks the infrastructure or manpower of the Soviet gulag or the orderly planning of the Nazi concentration-camp system. However, where it bests both, and breaks new incarceration ground, is in its planet-ranging scope, with sites scattered the world over -- from Europe to Asia, the Middle East to the Caribbean. Unlike colonial prison systems of the past, the new U.S. prison network seems to have floated almost free of surrounding colonies. Right now, it has only four major centers -- the "homeland," Afghanistan, Iraq, and a postage-stamp-sized parcel of Cuba. As such, it already hovers at the edge of its own imperial existence, bringing to mind the unprecedented possibility of a prison planet. In a remarkably few years, the Bush administration has been able to construct a global detention system, already of near epic proportions, both on the fly and on the cheap.
Sizing Up a Prison Planet
Soon after the attacks of September 11th, 2001, the U.S. began the process of creating what has been termed "an offshore archipelago of injustice." In addition to using "the Charleston Navy Brig" and locking up "one prisoner of war in Miami, Florida," according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Bush administration detained people from around the world in sweeps, imprisoned them without charges and kept them incommunicado at U.S. detention facilities at a CIA prison outside Kabul, Afghanistan (code-named the "Salt Pit"), at Bagram military airbase in Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba, among other sites.
Since it was set up in 2002, the detainment complex at Guantanamo Bay has been the public face of the Bush administration's semi-secret foreign prison network -- a collection of camps, cells, and cages that today holds 437 prisoners. But "Gitmo" has always been the tiny showpiece, the jewel in a very dark crown, for a much larger, less visible foreign network of military detention facilities, CIA "black" sites, and outsourced foreign prisons. It is a prison camp that rightly attracts opprobrium, but it also serves to focus attention away from shadowy ghost jails, borrowed third-nation facilities, much larger prisons holding thousands in Iraq, and a full-scale network of detention centers and prisons in Afghanistan.
We may never know how many secret prisons exist (or, for a time, existed) in the shape-shifting American mini-gulag, but according to the Washington Post, some locations for these black sites include itinerant CIA detention centers "on ships at sea," a site in Thailand, and another on "Britain's Diego Garcia island in the Indian Ocean." Uzbekistan has been reported as one possible location, Algeria another. Denials were issued about ghost jails being located in Russia and Bulgaria. The British Guardian named "a US airbase in the Gulf state of Qatar" as another suspected site. And while proposed prisons on "virtually unvisited islands in Lake Kariba in Zambia" were evidently nixed, various black sites located in "several democracies in Eastern Europe" apparently did come into being.
ABC News reported that the "CIA established secret prisons in Romania and Poland in 2002-2003" before shutting them down in early 2006 and moving the disappeared prisoners on to "a facility in North Africa." Following this report, Tomdispatch contacted Major General Timothy Ghormley, then the commander of the Combined Task Force Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) for U. S. Central Command, to inquire about the prisoner transfer. Ghormley stated: "There are no other U.S. bases in the Horn of Africa besides Camp Lemonier [in Djibouti]." He went on to assert, "There are no prisons under CJTF-HOA's command, and Camp Lemonier does not do prisoner transfers." When asked about CIA operations at the camp, he said he was barred from talking about "any security operations worldwide" and could not speak for the CIA. It is, however, worth noting that Amnesty International reported earlier this year on a Yemeni man who was "disappeared" and "flown on a small US plane to a site probably in Djibouti, where he was questioned by officials who told him they were from the FBI."
While these illegal sites, mainly run by the CIA, were intermittently identified in the U.S. or foreign press, it was only this September that President George W. Bush finally acknowledged the existence of the CIA's secret prisons. Still, it's unknown how many CIA black sites are still active and how many clandestine military prisons are still in operation.
What little we do know, however, indicates that the "archipelago of injustice" has grown to world-spanning proportions. For example, in an investigative article in the British Guardian in March 2005, Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark reported that a network of over 20 U.S. prisons was believed to exist in Afghanistan, including "an official US detention centre in Kandahar, where the tough regime has been nicknamed ‘Camp Slappy' by former prisoners." Just recently, Trevor Paglen and A.C. Thompson, authors of Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, confirmed this, reporting that "the U.S. military has erected some 20 detention centers [in Afghanistan]… which all operate in near total secrecy. These are facilities that the U.N., the Afghan government, journalists, and human rights groups can't get into."
We know as well that suspects, swept up around the world, have been outsourced to the prisons and torture chambers of third countries in "extraordinary rendition" operations. The number of prisons operated by other countries is shadowy, but certainly geographically wide-ranging. Foreign facilities available for Bush administration use evidently have included the al-Tamara interrogation center, located in "a forest five miles outside [Morocco's] capital, Rabat"; sites in Jordan including "prisons in the capital, Amman, and in desert locations in the east of the country"; facilities in Saudi Arabia; "a series of jails in Damascus," Syria; "the interrogation centre in the general intelligence directorate in Lazoughli and in Mulhaq al-Mazra prison" in Egypt; "facilities in Baku, Azerbaijan"; and "unidentified locations in Thailand," among others.
The treatment given in 2002 to Canadian Maher Arar, recently the recipient of the Letelier-Moffitt International Human Rights Award, offers a glimpse into the American prison planet in action in its early stages of formation. Arar has described how he was detained and then held incommunicado -- shackled and chained -- in a terminal in New York's JFK Airport before being transported to Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center. At that Federal prison, Arar recalls an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agent telling him, "The INS is not the body or the agency that signed the Geneva Convention… against torture."
"For me," said Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, "what that really meant is we will send you to torture and we don't care." He was, in fact, soon flown to Jordan, where he was beaten, and then driven to Syria. There, he was locked in a filthy, dark cell "about three feet wide, six feet deep and about seven feet high" where he was kept in isolation for 10 months and 10 days when not being physically assaulted. Despite being tortured into a false confession, Arar was found to have no links to terrorism and was never charged with crimes of any sort by the United States, Canada, Jordan, or Syria. Instead, he was sent back to Canada without so much as an apology or explanation by the Bush administration. His is the archetypal tale of the American prison planet that has been under construction these last years -- a torture tour of the globe's most dismal hell holes. How many others have suffered variations of this treatment remains unknown. The few useful figures we do have, such as the European parliament's April 2006 findings of over 1,000 secret CIA flights over European Union territory alone since 2001, suggest a large number of "extraordinary renditions" have been carried out.
When President Bush finally came (somewhat) clean about the CIA's illegal prisons (even turning them, along with his torture policies, into a proud election issue), a senior State Department official also asserted that there were "no detainees" still in them. Within days, however, newspapers began to point to evidence that people presumed to have been disappeared by the U.S. were still unaccounted for. In mid-October, a specific case hit the press when it was disclosed that "a Syrian with Spanish citizenship, was captured in Pakistan in October 2005 and is held in a prison operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency."
Operation Iraqi Freedom?
The war in Iraq boosted the profile of the American prison planet immeasurably, especially after the Abu Ghraib prison revelations burst into public view in the spring of 2004. At that time, approximately 20,000 Iraqis were imprisoned by U.S. forces, including -- a report that year disclosed -- more than 100 children as young as 10 years of age.
Over two years later, there are still many thousands of Iraqis held by U.S. forces in that country -- including about 3,550 in a brand new "$60-million state-of-the-art detention center" at Camp Cropper near Baghdad's airport and another almost 9,500 in somewhat more primitive prison conditions at Camp Bucca in the south and Fort Suse in the Kurdish north.
Meanwhile, the number of prisoners and detainees held by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government and allied militias and death squads is murky at best, but probably sizeable. Secret prisons -- where the grimmest kinds of torture are performed, often with power drills -- are reputed to be scattered around Baghdad, the capital. In November 2005, then-Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari admitted receiving word on conditions in just one of these. According to the BBC, "173 detainees had been held [in an Interior Ministry building], that they appeared malnourished, and may have been 'subjected to some kind of torture.'" The next month, the Washington Post reported the discovery of a "second Interior Ministry detention center where cases of prisoner abuse have been confirmed by U.S. and Iraqi officials."
By June of this year, it was reported that the Iraqi Interior Ministry was still holding 1,797 prisoners; the Defense Ministry a smaller undisclosed number; and the Justice Ministry, at least 7,426.
Lockdown, USA
The offshore archipelago of injustice garners the headlines, but it's the homeland prison network that locks up far more people and provides at least one possible model for what the foreign network could morph into given the time and funds to expand and harden into a permanent supermax system. Comprised of federal and state prisons, territorial prisons, local jails, "facilities operated by or exclusively for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement," military prisons, "jails in Indian country," and juvenile detention facilities, the homeland prison system is a truly massive apparatus.
Just as the global network has expanded in the years since 9/11, so has incarceration in the U.S. In fact, it has climbed steadily in recent years. Today, the U.S. stands preeminent among all nations in treating people like caged animals. According to statistics provided to the BBC by the International Centre for Prison Studies, 724 people per 100,000 are imprisoned in the U.S., overwhelmingly trumping even increasingly authoritarian Russia, the world's second-ranked prison power, who's rate of caging humans is only 581 per 100,000.
All told, the U.S. now has 2,135,901 prisoners in domestic detention facilities, alone -- several hundred thousand more than are imprisoned in both China and India, the world's two most populous countries, combined. Of these people, 192,198 are imprisoned in federal facilities -- though just 5.3% of them for the violent crimes of most people's nightmares: homicide, aggravated assault, kidnapping, and sex offenses. Instead, most -- 53.6 % -- are locked up on (often small-time) drug charges.
Of the federal prison population, the government classifies about 0.1 % (100 people) as having committed "national security" offenses. There's no category in the U.S. system for political prisoners, which doesn't mean they don't exist. According to a 2002 Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal article by J. Soffiyah Elijah, there were, prior to September 11, 2001, "nearly 100 political prisoners and prisoners of war incarcerated in the United States" -- many of them the surviving victims of Vietnam-era government campaigns against activists.
There is also another group of political prisoners of indeterminate number not listed on the rolls -- war resisters. Just recently Iraq War veteran turned resister Kevin Benderman was released from a military prison where he had been held for over a year for refusing to redeploy to Iraq due to his conscientious objection to the war. While Army Lieutenant Ehren Watada is currently facing an eight-year prison sentence, if convicted, for similar opposition to Iraq. One website lists 27 war resisters "presently in legal jeopardy, or currently incarcerated" who have gone public with their stories.
Additionally, in the immediate wake of 9/11, the government conducted sweeps of Muslim immigrants (and Muslim-Americans) reminiscent of the detentions of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II, "locking up large numbers of Middle Eastern men, using whatever legal tools they can." There was never any full accounting of these mass roundups, codenamed PENTTBOM, or what happened to all the people who were rousted from beds or yanked out of places of work by federal agents. What little is known suggests that "762 of the 1,200 PENTTBOM arrestees were charged with immigration violations at the behest of the FBI because agents thought they might be associated with terrorism... [but] almost every one was either deported or released within a few months." Only a small percentage of the 1,200 are thought to have even been processed through the federal criminal justice system.
This summer the Washington Post announced that, after 5 years of captivity, Benamar Benatta, "believed to be the last remaining domestic detainee from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was released." In mid-October, however, word surfaced that Ali Partovi, also caught in the dragnet, was still being held captive although he "is not charged with a crime, not suspected of a crime, [and] not considered a danger to society."
Preemptive Incarceration
From time to time, certain people in the U.S. also find themselves tossed into special kinds of detention facilities. For example, during the 2004 Republican National Convention (RNC) in New York City, protesters (and also bystanders) swept up in indiscriminate mass arrests or illegal acts of preemptive incarceration were temporarily locked up in "Marine and Aviation Pier 57," a filthy facility of razor-wire topped chain-link cages that was soon dubbed "Guantanamo on the Hudson." While being imprisoned in New York City's own Gitmo didn't begin to compare to being tossed in the real McCoy or any other secret offshore site, there was one striking similarity. U.S. intelligence officials estimated that 70-90% of prisoners detained in Iraq "had been arrested by mistake." That was also 2004. The next year, it was revealed that, of the large majority of RNC arrest cases that had run their course, 91% of the arrests were dismissed or ended in acquittals.
On the American prison planet, not only has the principle of habeas corpus been formally abolished and torture proudly added to the mix, but that crucial tenet of the legal system, the presumption of innocence, has been cast aside. Whether at home or abroad, the solution for U.S. security forces is a simple one, identify the likely suspects, conduct sweeps, and preemptively lock them up.
Concentration Camp, USA?
According to recent statements by the Department Homeland Security 's Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, some time in the future undocumented economic migrants may be imprisoned on "old cruise ships." Other illegals may even find themselves in a KBR concentration camp.
Earlier this year, news broke that Halliburton subsidiary, KBR -- the firm infamous for building prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay and for scandals stemming from work in the Iraq war zone -- received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to build detention centers, according to the New York Times, "for an unexpected influx of immigrants" or "new programs that require additional detention space." For anyone who remembers the First World War-era proposal by four state governors to imprison members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) for the duration of the conflict, or the 1939 Hobbs ("Concentration Camp") Bill that sought the detention of aliens, or the forcible relocation and imprisonment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II, or the 1950 McCarran Act's provisions for setting up concentration camps for subversives, or the Vietnam-era plans to round up and jail radicals in the event of a national emergency and conduct mass detentions in the face of possible urban insurrections, the announcement may have seemed less than startling. But thought of in the context of prison-planet planning, it nonetheless strikes an ominous note indeed.
One Vietnam-era radical, former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg, grasped the implications immediately. "Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters," he said. "They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo."
Fear of a Prison Planet
In 2005, Irene Khan, Amnesty International's general secretary, described Guantanamo Bay as "the gulag of our time." But the American gulag is so much more than Guantanamo and so much worse. The combination of U.S. "homeland" prisons, where "one in 140 Americans, or as many people as live in Namibia, or nearly five Luxembourgs" are locked away, the offshore imperial detention facilities, the shadowy CIA black sites, and the ever-shifting outsourced detention facilities operated by other nations adds up to something new in history -- the makings of a veritable American prison planet.
Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. He has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Nation, the Village Voice, and regularly for Tomdispatch. Articles from his recent Los Angeles Times series, "The War Crimes Files" can be found here.
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High-flying lifestyle of the CIA's rendition men (Oct 26, 2006)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329610782-110878,00.html
In January 2004 a crew of CIA agents checked into the five-star Marriott Son Antem golfing resort in Palma for a well-deserved rest. The agents had just flown from Rabat in Morocco to Afghanistan and back to Algeria - a gruelling 8,000-mile journey - and were looking forward to luxuriating in the hotel's spa where, as the brochure put it, they could "journey to deep inner peace".But as the crew were basking in comfort at US taxpayers' expense there was little peace for their cargo. In the hold on that day was Benyam Mohammed, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee alleged to be one of the world's most dedicated jihadists. In Morocco, Mohammed would later allege, he had been doused in hot liquids, subjected to incessant loud noise and had his penis slashed with a scalpel.The details of Mohammed's treatment emerges in Ghost Plane, a new book by investigative journalist Stephen Grey describing the CIA's clandestine system of international terrorist transfers known as extraordinary rendition. (...) Another example of the indiscretions and contradictions in the US administration's rendition programme emerges in its willingness to lavish money on entertaining the Syrians.In December 2002, Syrian president Bashar Assad and his wife paid an official visit to London. They were guests of honour at the City of London.But back in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on that same day in December 2002, seven prisoners were languishing in jail, sent there by the US despite President George Bush's view that Syria was part of an "axis of evil" with a legacy of "torture, oppression, misery, and ruin". There is clear evidence the seven rendered there by the US were brutally tortured.One, Maher Arar, abducted with the help of Canada, was freed after more than nine months when he signed a false confession that he had trained at a camp in Afghanistan.For Mr Arar, the contrast between his treatment and the Syrian president's is likely to be a bitter pill to swallow.
Last stop: Tel Aviv (Nov 1, 06)
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=%22CIA+rendition+flights&itemNo=781528
(...) Jabur was arrested by Pakistani security services after someone informed on him. According to his statement, the security services held him for 15 days, severely torturing him. His interrogators burned him with cigarettes and tied his genitals to the wall with a rope. After two weeks of interrogation, Jabur and others were transferred to the Americans. "The Pakistanis brought us to the airport, to an American plane, which took us to a place whose name I don't know," Jabur said in the statement. "Before we got on the plane they gave us an injection and a pill, so during the trip I was not awake. Then they took us to a place whose name I don't know, where I stayed for two years in an isolated jail. "The room, or the underground dungeon, where I was alone, was one meter by one meter. In the cell, my left hand was cuffed to a chain attached to the wall no more than 15 centimeters from the dungeon floor, so I could not stand or straighten my back. I would defecate in a basin in the room, and I was naked for a long time. During that time - that is, two years - I did not see sunlight." Torture subcontractors Jabur said later in the statement, "During that same period, music was playing 24 hours a day and the soldiers would beat us nonstop." This description indicates Jabur was apparently held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, where the United States holds Al-Qaida operatives. Jabur's story comes in the wake of other accounts reported in the international media over the last few years, which are under investigation by human rights organizations and the European Parliament. The detention is based on the Bush administration's "renditions policy." Under this policy, whose legality is in question, intelligence services friendly to the United States arrest terror suspects based on their own information or that of the CIA. The suspects are interrogated and often tortured by foreign intelligence services that do not uphold human rights strictly. The press refers to such detention centers as "ghost prisons" because no one will confirm their existence. Some suspects are transferred to Europe, and jails have allegedly been established in Poland, Romania and Bosnia. However, most of the ghost facilities are believed to be in undemocratic countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Jordan. About two years ago, Haaretz reported that such an interrogation facility existed in Amman, and that the United States was transferring international terror suspects there. The Jordanian intelligence service functions as the United States' most important subcontractor in the war on global terror. There is an interrogation facility at intelligence headquarters in Amman, and that is where the suspects undergo difficult interrogations and torture. American investigators are known to monitor the interrogations from behind two-way mirrors or receive reports about their results. Americans are not present in the interrogation room itself, and thus have not violated American law. The suspects are flown to the detention and interrogation facilities in planes the CIA charters from American concerns, mostly front companies. The international media and European aviation authorities have uncovered details about these flights, including the identity numbers of the planes, their make and model, the companies from which they were leased and their destinations. Hundreds of such flights have landed at airports around the world since 2002. CLIP
13.
IMPORTANT REMINDER OF NEWS THAT NEVER MADE MAINSTREAM MEDIA HEADLINES...
From: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7077
Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon
02 March 2005
Exclusive from New Scientist
David Hambling
The US military is funding development of a weapon that delivers a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims unharmed. But pain researchers are furious that work aimed at controlling pain has been used to develop a weapon. And they fear that the technology will be used for torture.
"I am deeply concerned about the ethical aspects of this research," says Andrew Rice, a consultant in pain medicine at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, UK. "Even if the use of temporary severe pain can be justified as a restraining measure, which I do not believe it can, the long-term physical and psychological effects are unknown."
The research came to light in documents unearthed by the Sunshine Project, an organisation based in Texas and in Hamburg, Germany, that exposes biological weapons research. The papers were released under the US's Freedom of Information Act.
One document, a research contract between the Office of Naval Research and the University of Florida in Gainesville, US, is entitled "Sensory consequences of electromagnetic pulses emitted by laser induced plasmas".
It concerns so-called Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs), which fire a laser pulse that generates a burst of expanding plasma when it hits something solid, like a person (New Scientist print edition, 12 October 2002). The weapon, destined for use in 2007, could literally knock rioters off their feet.
Pain trigger
According to a 2003 review of non-lethal weapons by the US Naval Studies Board, which advises the navy and marine corps, PEPs produced "pain and temporary paralysis" in tests on animals. This appears to be the result of an electromagnetic pulse produced by the expanding plasma which triggers impulses in nerve cells.
The new study, which runs until July and will be carried out with researchers at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, aims to optimise this effect. The idea is to work out how to generate a pulse which triggers pain neurons without damaging tissue.
The contract, heavily censored before release, asks researchers to look for "optimal pulse parameters to evoke peak nociceptor activation" - in other words, cause the maximum pain possible. Studies on cells grown in the lab will identify how much pain can be inflicted on someone before causing injury or death.
Long-term risk
New Scientist contacted two researchers working on the project. Martin Richardson, a laser expert at the University of Central Florida, US, refused to comment. Brian Cooper, an expert in dental pain at the University of Florida, distanced himself from the work, saying "I don't have anything interesting to convey. I was just providing some background for the group." His name appears on a public list of the university's research projects next to the $500,000-plus grant.
John Wood of University College London, UK, an expert in how the brain perceives pain, says the researchers involved in the project should face censure. "It could be used for torture," he says, "the [researchers] must be aware of this."
Amanda Williams, a clinical psychologist at University College London, fears that victims risk long-term harm. "Persistent pain can result from a range of supposedly non-destructive stimuli which nevertheless change the functioning of the nervous system," she says. She is concerned that studies of cultured cells will fall short of demonstrating a safe level for a plasma burst. "They cannot tell us about the pain and psychological consequences of such a painful experience."
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Top US biologists oppose biodefence boom - 01 March 2005
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7074
Efforts to defend the US against bioterrorists - by throwing money at research - are backfiring, says a 750-strong group of top scientistsThe US has poured billions of dollars into biodefence research since its anthrax attacks in 2001. More than half of the US scientists studying bacterial diseases have this week written to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) - their main funding agency - charging that the largess has created "a crisis for microbiological research". CLIP
Pentagon reveals rejected chemical weapons - 15 January 2005
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524823.800
THE Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops, newly declassified documents reveal.Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an "aphrodisiac" chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale, the proposal says.Other ideas included chemical weapons that attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats to troop positions, making them uninhabitable. Another was to develop a chemical that caused "severe and lasting halitosis", making it easy to identify guerrillas trying to blend in with civilians. There was also the idea of making troops' skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight.The proposals, from the US Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, date from 1994. The lab sought Pentagon funding for research into what it called "harassing, annoying and 'bad guy'-identifying chemicals". The plans have been posted online by the Sunshine Project, an organisation that exposes research into chemical and biological weapons.Spokesman Edward Hammond says it was not known if the proposed $7.5 million, six-year research plan was ever pursued.
Sweeping stun guns to target crowds - 16 June 2004
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6014
Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe.At present, commercial stun guns target one person at a time, and work only at close quarters. The new breed of non-lethal weapons can be used on many people at once and operate over far greater distances.But human rights groups are appalled by the fact that no independent safety tests have been carried out, and by their potential for indiscriminate use. (...) HSV Technologies of San Diego, California is also working on stun and vehicle-stopping shock weapons with ranges of over 100 metres. And another company, Ionatron of Tuscon, Arizona, is due to supply a prototype wireless vehicle-mounted weapon to the US Department of Defense by the end of 2004.But the advent of wireless stun weapons has horrified human rights groups. Robin Coupland of the Red Cross says they risk becoming a new instrument of torture. And Brian Wood of Amnesty International says the long-range stun guns could "inflict pain and other suffering on innocent bystanders".And there are safety concerns. Of the 30,000 times US police officers have fired Tasers, in 40 instances people stunned by them later died. The deaths have been attributed to factors such as overdoses of drugs and alcohol, or fighting with officers, rather than the electric shock. CLIP
14.
From: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10433-no-more-seafood-by-2050.html
No more seafood by 2050?
2 November 2006
NewScientist.com news service - Fred Pearce
There may be no more commercial fish stocks left in the sea by 2050, according to a new study cataloguing the global collapse of marine ecosystems.
It blames not just over-fishing, but also mankind’s wider attack on the health of ocean ecosystems, for instance from pollution. “Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the ocean species together, as working eco-systems, then this century is the last century of wild food,” says Steve Palumbi at Stanford University in California, US, who carried out the four-year investigation with colleagues.
The study is the biggest and most all-embracing effort yet to understand the productivity of the oceans and predict their future. Uniquely, it combines historical data on fish catches, some of it going back a thousand years, with analysis of marine ecosystems and experiments to bring marine life back to protected areas.
The authors, from five countries, reviewed hundreds of individual studies covering every scale from whole oceans to marine plots of a few square metres. They say the same pattern emerges at every scale. Rich ecosystems with many species can survive over-fishing and other threats well – but once biodiversity is lost, the entire system, including fish stocks, goes into exponential decline.
Accelerating pace
A healthy ecosystem keeps fish healthy and well fed, and maintains fish nurseries such as coral reefs and seagrasses. But there are fewer such healthy systems each year. Since 1950, 29% of commercial fish species have suffered collapse (defined as a loss of 90% or more).
And the pace is accelerating. The study extrapolates that the last currently commercial fish species will be lost in 2048.
But the report also points out that the vulnerability of fish stocks to collapse depends on overall biological diversity. Areas of ocean with low biodiversity have suffered collapses to 34% of commercial fish stocks, compared to 24% in those areas with high biodiversity.
Many fisheries scientists have been sceptical of the idea that damage to a few non-fish species could be a threat to major fish stocks. But this study demonstrates, for the first time, that commercial and ecological health go together in the ocean. “Every species matters.”
Health and wealth
Ecologists are heralding the findings as a breakthrough not just for the study of the oceans, but also more widely for gauging the value of natural ecosystems to the health and wealth of the planet. “This analysis provides the best documentation I have ever seen regarding biodiversity’s value,” says Peter Kareiva at the Nature Conservancy in the US.
The good news is that fish stocks can recover if ecosystems are protected and biodiversity revives. Boris Worm, a marine conservationist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, who led the study, says that inside the 44 protected areas studied, “species came back more quickly than people anticipated – in three or five or 10 years. And where this has been done we see immediate economic benefits.”
A typical marine conservation project can increase biodiversity by more than one-fifth and raise fish catches four-fold, the study showed. Even so, less than 1% of the global ocean is effectively protected right now.
"Marine biodiversity provides lots of services to the planet besides fisheries – such as preventing algal blooms, processing waste and maintaining the ability of the oceans to absorb our carbon dioxide emissions," says team member Nicola Beaumont at Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK. “To help minimise climate change we need a resilient and healthy marine ecosystem,” she adds.
“Biodiversity conservation and long-term economic development must be viewed as inter-dependent,” the researchers conclude. Or, as Worm puts it: “The oceans define our planet, and their fate may to a large extent determine our fate.”
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Japan agrees to cut its tuna fishing quotas - 20 October 2006
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19225743.100
(...) Overall, the summit nations agreed to a 20 per cent cut in the bluefin harvest, down to 11,530 tonnes from the 14,000 taken this year. Japan and Australia account for 80 per cent of the total catch.Bluefin tuna are also declining in the Mediterranean, where France exceeded its 6192-tonne quota in 2005 by 3000 tonnes. The issue will be debated in November by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.
Marine census will monitor health of the oceans - 05 July 2006
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19125585.700
If you have ever looked out to sea and wished you could see the full miscellany of life swimming in its depths, you are not alone. Marine scientists have long wished for a clear picture of the movements and lifestyle of ocean species.Now researchers are planning a global project to tag numerous important marine species. The Ocean Tracking Network will cover 14 ocean regions, including most of the Atlantic and Pacific. The project should provide insights into how climate change is affecting marine ecosystems and migration, and help conservation efforts. It will also assist in the management of fisheries, by showing when they should be closed to preserve endangered stocks, for example. CLIP
EU fish win stay of extinction - 27 May 2006
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19025532.900
Europe's dwindling fish stocks have won a reprieve - but only just. A late-night bargaining session on 22 May in Luxembourg ended with European Union fisheries ministers deadlocked over a demand to reverse a 2002 ban on subsidies for more powerful engines in fishing boats. Lifting the ban would have increased catching capacity, which scientists consider central to Europe's disastrous overfishing.The demand came from Mediterranean countries, Poland and Estonia. They want money for new engines in boats under 12 metres long, which account for 80 per cent of Europe's fleet. After opposition from the UK and Germany, the ministers put off until October a decision on how to spend their 4 billion fishing subsidies budget. Conservation groups such as WWF claim lax enforcement already means new engines are typically 2.5 times more powerful than the legal limit.Meanwhile Europe's eels remain in jeopardy. Fisheries scientists say eel fishing must stop completely, as stocks are so badly depleted by overfishing and PCB pollution that the entire species faces extinction (New Scientist, 11 March, p 6). The EU fisheries commissioner, Malta's Joe Borg, had proposed to ban eel fishing for 15 days in every month, but Europêche, the fishing industry lobby in Brussels, says he has promised that even this will be delayed for a year when the ministers meet next month.
You can help change Canada's "No" to a "Yes!" ALL CANADIAN SUBSCRIBERS SHOULD SIGN IT!
There's still time to change Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn's mind and convince him to support a United Nations moratorium on the destructive bottom trawl fishery in International waters. The vote will take place at the United Nations General Assembly meeting from November 17-22 2006. Even though Minister Hearn has said Canada won't support the moratorium, momentum is building within the international community to back the UN resolution to put the brakes on this highly destructive fishing practice. The U.S., Australia, Norway, Pacific Island Countries, Brazil, South Africa, Germany, New Zealand, and many other nations support the moratorium. Canada is currently aligned with Spain in opposing a moratorium. Tell Minister Hearn you want him to please stand up, do the right thing and cast a vote in favour of the moratorium. Sign this online petition that supports a temporary moratorium on bottom trawling in international waters until effective conservation and management measures to protect biodiversity and ensure the sustainability of fisheries in these waters can be developed, implemented and enforced by the global community.Read about the David Suzuki Foundation's new vision for Canada: Sustainability within a generation
15.
NOTE from Jean: This is a critical issue that I’ve repeatedly brought to your attention in past compilations. Here a new, excellent and frightening article on global DU contamination and its horrible consequences. A MUST read!
Recommended by Susan Boland stboland@comcast.net"> who also recommended to use the "Natural Cellular Defense" with zeolite to counter the cancer-causing effects of depleted uranium.
From: http://www.treeoflife.nu/ducrimesagainstwisdom.html
DEPLETED URANIUM - A CRIME AGAINST WISDOM
By Gabriel Cousens, M.D.
The Issue of Depleted Uranium (DU) is extraordinarily important. Though it represents a clear threat to the health of all humanity, and all life forms on planet Earth, it also represents a clear debasement and loss of any moral or ethical standards by the U.S. and by the rest of the world in allowing DU to be used in warfare. Scientists, medical professionals, war veterans, active duty personnel, international lawyers and the global human community are calling for an awareness of this crisis and simply to stop the use of Depleted Uranium, in order to preserve life on the planet.
It is a crisis that is clearly greater than even cancer or HIV/AIDS. It is contributing to an awesome increase in all types of cancers, birth defects, and disease in people and plant and wildlife all over the world.
According to Geophysisist Leuren Moret, the equivalent of atomic bombs released by the use of DU in Iraq in 2003 is 400,000 Hiroshima bombs. We need to be clear that these DU particles have a half-life of 4.5 billion years. In other words, its effects will not blow away in a few years.
DU does not mean it is not radioactive. Depleted Uranium is 60% as radioactive as pure U-238 and it is 99.3% pure U-238, .7% U-235.
Upon impact, there is a tremendous amount of heat – up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit – which creates ceramic Depleted Uranium Oxide particles (DUO) which are small enough to be inhaled into the lungs, and light enough to travel in the upper levels of our atmosphere.
This is a global issue. The DU has been given to a variety of national armies, and it needs to be addressed on an international level. It is not about right or wrong in a limited sense. It is not even a political question. It is a question of common sense. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We can have a future of nonviolence, or a future of nonexistence.” Depleted Uranium, as we will see in a moment, is a future that can take us into nonexistence.
In 1991, an estimated 375 tons of Depleted Uranium were dumped on Iraq, and approximately 2200 tons were dumped in the war in 2003. According to geiger counter readings in four different sites, the radiation levels were between one and two thousand times higher than normal background radiation. Millions of Iraqis have been affected. Of the 697,000 American troops that were there in 1991, about half of them have since reported serious medical problems and significant increases in birth defects in their newborn children. For perspective, in Vietnam, about 10% of veterans reported problems, and in WWII about 3% reported, and now we are looking at 50%. About 1/3rd of the Iraq vets – 230,000 people – are on Veterans Administration (VA) Disability. That is a huge increase over previous wars.
What we are looking at is something beyond the imagination. DU has been blamed on the health level for the effects of the Gulf War Syndrome, including chronic muscle and joint pain, fatigue, and memory loss among at least 200,000 soldiers. Cancer in Iraq, according to a UN Subcommission, seems to have increased between 7 and 10 times, and deformities, or congenital defects between 4 and 6 times expected levels of the norm. A United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority report said up to 500,000 people would die before the end of the century due to radioactive debris left behind in the desert. The use of Depleted Uranium has lead to birth defects in the children of our veterans, and it is believed to be a cause of anophtalmos, meaning babies born without eyes. The usual rate for this is one in fifty million births. In Baghdad, they had eight cases in just two years.
A study of 251 Gulf War Veterans from Mississippi conducted by the Veterans Administration showed that 67% of veterans had children with severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems, and fused fingers. This is very significant data. Their babies were born after the war – they were deemed to have severe defects. The newborns had missing: brains, arms, eyes, organs. . . they had blood diseases. The Gulf War Veterans came back with DU in their clothing, bodies, and semen. These were people who had “normal” babies before they went over there – now they are running 67% birth defects. The DU is in their semen, and when they have intercourse they are infecting their mates, as well.
There is a tremendous amount of research throughout the world. It took us 30 years to prove that lung cancers were related to smoking, we seem to have the same kind of denial going on with the use of DU. The Army is in a difficult place because DU is an incredible weapon – it is a superior weapon for destroying an enemy’s tanks and society. DU is the most devastating weapon we have. Unfortunately, it is another form of nuclear warfare. According to Dr. Caldell from Australia, Leuren Moret, a Geoscientist who works almost around the clock educating citizens about this issue, has one of the best bio-physics and humanitarian understanding of the issue. She is talking about the genetic future of humanity, which is at risk from the use of DU. She points out that vast regions around the world, as well as in our atmosphere are contaminated with DU. She makes the point that within four days, DU is already in the United States, carried by the winds and dust storms from the Sahara Desert, coming across in the hurricanes, dropping more intensively in Florida, Texas, and the East Coast of the US, but impacts the entire planet. Moret is an expert in atmospheric dust. These dust storms are millions of square miles and transport millions of tons of sand dust around the world.
There is a creeping awareness that something ANTI-HUMAN AND POWERFULLY DELETERIOUS TO ALL LIFE ON THE PLANET is going on. Even the World Health Organization in 2003 said that they expect the global cancer rates to increase 50% by the year 2020. The infant mortality, which began to go down when they had a nuclear test ban in 1963, is now rising around the world. This is an indicator of radioactive pollution.
Our Veterans are particularly affected by Depleted Uranium. The use of DU in Iraq is not a isolated issue. The UN used it in the Balkans; it is a problem in Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well. These are the kinds of things that the reports are bringing back, though much of this information has been suppressed. If you were in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, you might be coming home with rectal cancer from sitting on DU ammunition boxes. The young women are reporting problems with endometriosis, which is the lining of the uterus not functioning right; 18-19 year olds are coming back from the Middle East with uterine cancer. . . the problem is that they are not being diagnosed, so this information is not showing up in the official military records. There is a group of 20 soldiers that fought from Kuwait to Baghdad in 2003 all fighting on the ground - eight of them now have malignancies – a very high figure for people in their 20s and 30s. The mental state is also affected. DU Oxides, created at high temperatures, are insoluble and 100 times smaller than a white blood cell. The soldiers breathe in these particles through the nose into the olfactory and these particles go to the brain, affecting cognitive and other levels of brain function. There is significant supporting research on this, but for our purposes here we are trying to keep this simple, but there is a particular physiology that is being affected. It damages the mood control mechanism in the brain. Source: http://www.antiwarart.co.uk
The effect on the brain was studied by the World Health Organization (WHO), and they published a survey in the Journal of the American Medical Association (AMA) which was very interesting. They could see the variation on the effect of mental functioning. In Japan it was 8.8 percent; in Nigeria, 4.7 percent; Ukraine (where they had Chernobyl) 20.4 percent; Spain 9.2 percent; Italy 8.2 percent; France (where there is 75 percent reliance on nuclear power) 18.4 percent; Mexico 12.2%; the United States 26.2 percent – the highest. We have to remember that we have done a lot of nuclear testing in the U.S. and we are paying the price.
We are looking at a threat to the whole world population, that includes all living systems: the plants, the animals, the bacteria. . . everything is being affected. It is in the air, the water, and the soil. It comes across not only in hurricanes, but in what we call the stratosphere—such as where the spacecraft go. DU has been found on the surface of spacecraft. So it’s a little bit different than the upper atmosphere. We can call it the lower-orbital space. It is coming across very high up and then comes down in the rains.
In the U.S., water and milk have 15 times the amount of DU that vegetables do. Animals concentrate the DU in their cells at 30 times the level of their environment. It is imperative that we consider whether we want to consume flesh food in the light of this reality.
Depleted Uranium is used by a variety of countries – about 17 at this point. These countries are CURRENTLY using/stockpiling DU weaponry: U.S., Great Britain, France, Russia, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Korea, Bahrain, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Turkey, and Kuwait. So it is not a small thing. Helen Caldicott has said, “Never in my wildest dreams did I think that the U.S. would be donating nuclear shells to poison it own soldiers and surrounding several civilian populations with radioactivity.”
In 1996 the UN passed a resolution specifically about DU, that DU weapons are Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). They are illegal under all international laws and treaties, and the European Parliament in 2001 passed a resolution against DU, and that resolution was actually the result of the use of DU by NATO in Bosnia. NATO and peace personnel had much higher rates of leukemia as a result.
At this moment, the countries of Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan are radiologically/radioactively uninhabitable due to the military application of these nuclear weapons. The amount of birth defects in Iraq has distinctly increased, based on data from a variety of studies by Iraqi physicians. What we are dealing with is a high level denial, even though we are getting very powerful data, particularly from Iraq. In Bassora, after Gulf War I, there was maybe one baby a week born with birth defects, now it is 10-12 a day. There have been International Conferences where they have reported their data, such as the World Uranium Weapons Conference at the University of Hamburg, Germany in October, 2003. After Gulf War I, the frequency of cancer cases increased five-fold, with lung, leukemia, breast, skin, lymphoma, and liver cancer cases being the biggest. Solid tumors were more frequent. Before the War the prevalence of cancer diseases in decreasing order was:
• Lung
• Lymphoma
• Larynx
• Leukemia
• Breast
After Gulf War I by 1998 the order became:
• Lung
• Lymphoma
• Breast
• Larynx
• Skin
• Leukemia
But there was a sharp increase in most types of cancers. Lung was a five-fold increase and now we are looking at possibly a six-fold increase in the U.S. this year (2006). Lymphoma is four-fold, breast was six-fold, larynx was four-fold, and skin was an eleven-fold increase in cancer. Among the less common cancers the incidence was sharper: uterine cancer ten-fold; colon six-fold; hypernephroma (kidney) seven-fold; malignant myeloma (bone cancer), sixteen-fold; liver, eleven-fold; ovary, sixteen-fold; perinatal tumor twenty times greater. These are horrendous statistics.
The results clearly show a change in the pattern of different types of cancer as well as the increasing cancer rates. What we need to also understand is that these rates come on very specifically, such as four years later you have an increase in leukemia which is typical of what you would see with radiation exposure. You have an increase in still births, congenital abnormalities, and infertility. The still births increased 190%. Congenital abnormalities 520%; infertility 570%. The same kind of results are being reported in Bosnia.
If we look further, basically a planetary problem, we start to look at some other studies that are going on. In Iraq, looking at some of the epidemiologies of the Iraq doctors, what we are seeing is basically an incredible ten-fold average increase in all cancers, including:
• Lymphatic
• Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
• Hodgkin’s
In Italy, the Italian/Kosovo Study showed that although the normal risk for leukemia is 1.5 deaths per 100,000, that according to the Royal Society the Italian/Portuguese Peacekeepers had up to 42 leukemia deaths per 100,000 – a significant increase from 1.5. This is what got people so upset in Europe over the use of Depleted Uranium, and why the European community has voted against the use of DU weaponry.
In 1997-98 the Balkan medias reported a dramatic increase of leukemia and other cancer development within the population of Srpska as well as an increase in malformations.
So again, not just Iraq, but in the Balkans we are having this kind of thing. Cows in this region showed reduced and bloody milk production, and in other cows their production stopped completely. In several cases, calves had malformations – born without skin, missing claws and tongues – similar levels of defects to what we are seeing in the human population all over the world.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports that DU has an effect on the shape of chromosomes in terms of increase of [sister-chromated exchange].
People from all over the world have expressed concern. The Gulf War Syndrome is a result of a kind of political non-thinking as Henry Kissenger put it succinctly: “Military men are just dumb. Stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” Kissenger’s position is one of total moral bankruptcy.
This is what we are facing. The Gulf War Syndrome includes chronic fatigue, headache, rashes, joint pain, muscle pain nerve damage, neurological damage, kidney damage, cardiovascular disease, thyroid disease, multiple cancers, autoimmune deficiencies, fevers and night sweats, fluid build-up, sleep disturbances, abnormal births and birth defects, menstrual problems, reduced IQ, confusion, memory loss, blood in stools, Epstein-Barr Syndrome, genetic alternations, sinus diseases, loss of smell, unusual hair loss, chemical sensitivities, asthma, and vision problems – just to name a small portion.
This is very, very serious, and we need to look deeply and investigate: why are people doing it, and is this even legal, using the perspective of International Law and the international legal community.
The biggest concern when we look at the Depleted uranium issue – and the use of atomic energy in general is that this affects every single living thing on the planet. The genome for the entire planet for all humanity - potentially for all time - is being affected by DU. We are still arguing about whether or not nuclear radioactivity causes a problem. There was a study done in the U.S. that if you are within 100 miles of a nuclear plant - and we have 110 nuclear plants in the US (the most of any country in the world) – they found, according to the Center for Disease Control on Breast Cancer Deaths between 1985 and 1989, that anyone within 100 miles of a nuclear plants is where two-thirds of all breast cancer deaths occurred in the U.S. DU is adding insult to that injury.
Other high-radiation places that we should be concerned about are Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; the Idaho Nuclear Engineering Lab in Idaho; and Hanford in Washington State, where Plutonium is used. Some people feel they have contaminated the entire Columbia River Watershed – almost the entire state of Washington.
So the immediate effects of this exposure is a metallic taste in the mouth. Our soldiers are experiencing: muscle aches, loss of energy, incontinence, destruction of the neuromuscular system. As the Uranium decays it turns into other radioactive isotopes. Teeth start to fall apart because the Uranium competes with calcium. It is an extraordinary problem and they say there is no treatment, but I think there is. And for certain there is prevention. Stop using DU. Let us look at the problem a little bit more, and take a look at what needs to happen.
CLIP - Read the rest at http://www.treeoflife.nu/ducrimesagainstwisdom.html
16.
Recommended by "Birgitta Storjohann" b.storjohann@videotron.ca">
Billions
The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion" in a casual
manner, think about whether you want the "politicians" spending your tax money.
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.
A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.
While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at New Orleans. It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.
Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking the Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number, what does it mean? How do you spread it around?
A. Well, if you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, child), you each get $516,528.
B. Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787.
C. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012
Can you believe it? - Washington, D.C . HELLO!!! ... Are all your calculators broken??
---
Name our Taxes...
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax),
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax),
Liquor Tax,
Luxury Tax,
Marriage License Tax,
Medicare Tax,
Property Tax,
Real Estate Tax,
Service charge taxes,
Social Security Tax,
Road Usage Tax (Truckers),
Sales Taxes,
Recreational Vehicle Tax,
School Tax,
State Income Tax,
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA),
Telephone Federal Excise Tax,
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax,
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax,
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax,
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax,
Telephone State and Local Tax,
Telephone Usage Charge Tax,
Utility Tax,
Vehicle License Registration Tax,
Vehicle Sales Tax,
Watercraft Registration Tax,
Well Permit Tax,
Workers Compensation Tax.
COMMENTS: Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago!
And there was prosperity, absolutely no national debt, the largest middle class in the world and Mom could stay home to raise the kids.
Now you tell me -- what happened?????
Better -- How did it happen??????
Best -- When are we going to fix it???????
17.
Forwarded by "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@gmail.com">
45 Oxymorons
45. Act naturally
44. Found missing
43. Resident alien
42. Advanced BASIC
41. Genuine imitation
40. Airline food
39. Good grief
38. Same difference
37. Almost exactly
36. Government organization
35. Sanitary landfill
34. Alone together
33. Legally drunk
32. Silent scream
31. Living dead
30. Small crowd
29. Business ethics
28. Soft rock
27. Butt Head
26. Military Intelligence
25. Software documentation
24. New classic
23. Sweet sorrow
22. Childproof
21. "Now, then ..."
20. Synthetic natural gas
19. Passive aggression
18. Taped live
17. Clearly misunderstood
16. Peace force
15. Extinct Life
14. Temporary tax increase
13. Computer jock
12. Plastic glasses
11. Terribly pleased
10. Computer security
9. Political science
8. Tight slacks
7. Definite maybe
6. Pretty ugly
5. Twelve-ounce pound cake
4. Diet ice cream
3. Working vacation
2. Exact estimate
1. Microsoft Works
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