OilEmpire blog (2)007
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December 31 - the end of the Gregorian Calendar year
A few items for the blog as the Gregorian calendar year of 2007 comes to a close, a week and a half after the Winter Solstice (in the Northern hemisphere).
Pakistan meltdown
The oilempire.us resource page on Pakistan has been upgraded with links to articles about US intervention in that country, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's proliferation of nuclear weapons technologies, and the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) involvement in 9/11. It is likely that Pakistan will become a bigger crisis than Iraq due to their nuclear arsenal.
The spread of nuclear weapons tcchnology by Pakistan to other countries - including Libya, North Korea and Iran - shows beyond any doubt that there is no such thing as "peaceful nuclear power." Preventing nuclear proliferation would require abandoning the myth of the peaceful atom, and shifting energy generation toward non-toxic renewable sources (especially in sunny south Asia). The wealthy countries of North America and Europe need to help finance and facilitate this transition as a partial apology for imperialism - and it is in everyone's interest, even those who oppose decentralized solar power since they cannot control or sell sunlight.
A non-nuclear, solar powered future would make it very easy to track nuclear weapons proliferation. Future generations are unlikely to be able to babysit the nuclear excrement in perpetuity, so creating more ultrahazardous wastes incompatible with life forms using DNA is a crime against everything (even if it keeps various distractions powered, albeit temporarily). The energy invested into the nuclear fuel cycle would be better spent on hyper efficiency, relocalization of production, voluntary simplicity in the wealthy countries, and transfer of renewable energy technology to the poor countries. This alternative scenario would even benefit the paranoid elites who think that they need absolute control over everything and everyone, since uncontrolled nuclear proliferation is an unfolding nightmare that leads to the worst case "Olduvai Scenario" - the collapse of civilization.
Solar Power by 2050?
Scientific American has published a strange article about solar electricity.
www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan&print=true
Scientific American Magazine - December 16, 2007
A Solar Grand Plan
By 2050 solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions
By Ken Zweibel, James Mason and Vasilis Fthenakis
While it accurately noted the huge potential for solar electricity, it seemed mostly focused on the power grid, without much mention of the difference between electricity and liquid fuels.
It was also promoting an absurdly centralized approach to solar - recommending new power grids and giant solar arrays in the desert, with only a token mention of rooftop solar.
It would not be a surprise if the authors welcomed the military's proposal for space based solar arrays - but who would trust Dick Cheney to control the steering mechanism for the downlink of the power (the electricity would be converted to microwaves for terrestrial reception)?
By "2050," the fossil fuel era will be over, one way or another. Given who advertises in Scientific American, it is unlikely that the magazine wants to stress this much, or suggest that the military budget should be diverted toward our survival.
The writers would benefit from reading this article:
Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere, "The End of Cheap Oil," Scientific American, March 1998
a copy is archived at
www.permatopia.com/doc/ScientificAmerican1998.pdf
December 8
another article about collapse in Zimbabwe
Even if a perfect government replaced the existing dictatorship, how can the damage done be easily repaired after Peak Oil makes reconstruction more difficult? A cautionary tale for the rest of the world:
www.zimbabwesituation.com/dec7a_2007.html#Z5
Steaks and cricket, starvation and poverty: diary of a surreal week in Zimbabwe
The Times
December 6, 2007
The World of Mitt Romney
www.moonofalabama.org/2007/12/the-world-of-mi.html
very funny, but the joke's on us
Buy a house, get one free!
no mention on whether this comes with a guaranteed supply of drinking water, which might become an issue in the middle of the desert in the coming decades
http://housingdoom.com/2007/12/05/las-vegas-two-homes-for-price-of-one/
Get Two Homes For The Price Of One In Las Vegas
A pre-emptive strike against the Iran war
FRIDAY, December 7, 2007
Shields and Brooks Weigh CIA Tapes, U.S. Policy on Iran
CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said his agency had destroyed tapes of terror suspect interrogations, a new report revealed surprising information on Iran's nuclear program and presidential candidate Mitt Romney discussed his Mormon faith in a key speech. Analysts Mark Shields and David Brooks discuss the week in the news.
Brooks, who is quite conservative, states in the interview that he's always been convinced the US is not going to attack Iran. Several pages on OilEmpire.US have linked to predictions that there will not be a US - Iran war. While it is foolish to make certain statements about the future - especially about potentials with so many variables - it seems obvious that key parts of the elites of the empire do not want to attack Iran. The empire prefers to attack countries that cannot fight back (Grenada, Nicaragua, Chile, etc) and the Islamic Republic of Iran has considerable military power that would probably be used to disrupt the oil flows through the Persian/Arabian Gulf. That would have catastrophic impacts for the global economy, and would threaten the energy supplies of Europe and Asia. This would bring the United States into conflict with most of the world. If predictions against a US - Iran war turn out to be wrong, and the US bombs Iranian military and nuclear facilities, there are no ways to predict precisely what sorts of nasty consequences result from that nightmare scenario. This is probably why some of the elites of the empire have been campaigning against a War on Iran, and their influence clearly has more impact than peace groups waving banners.
Any country (or corporation) that constructs a uranium enrichment facility can easily use this technology to make nuclear weapons. It's one of many reasons why a non-nuclear, solar energy future makes more sense for Iran, the United States, and every other part of the planet. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are conjoined twins, inseparable at birth. Nuclear electricity provides the capability to make bombs - even if a particular government (or corporate board of directors) is not interested in military uses, future regimes can easily change policies for covert manufacture of A-bombs. It is reasonable to estimate that there are several countries that have "gone nuclear" which are generally not considered nuclear weapons states (Japan, South Korea, Germany, Taiwan are likely candidates). It would be a surprise if the Iranian government did not want a nuclear deterrent to keep the United States from controlling its substantial oil and gas supplies as the world passes Peak Oil. In George W. Bush's notorious "Axis of Evil" speech, one country that did not have nukes got attacked and dismembered (Iraq) and the country that did have nukes (north Korea) got diplomatic negotiations instead of an invasion. The lesson: any country that has resources the United States wants to control needs a military deterrent, which means nukes.
Who's Next
by Tom Lehrer
from That Was the Year that Was (1965)
One of the big news items of the past year concerned the fact that China, which we call Red China, exploded a nuclear bomb, which we called a device. Then Indonesia announced that it was gonna have one soon, and proliferation became the word of the day. Here's a song about that.
First we got the bomb and that was good,
'Cause we love peace and motherhood.
Then Russia got the bomb, but that's O.K.,
'Cause the balance of power's maintained that way!
Who's next?France got the bomb, but don't you grieve,
'Cause they're on our side (I believe).
China got the bomb, but have no fears;
They can't wipe us out for at least five years!
Who's next?Then Indonesia claimed that they
Were gonna get one any day.
South Africa wants two, that's right:
One for the black and one for the white!
Who's next?Egypt's gonna get one, too,
Just to use on you know who.
So Israel's getting tense,
Wants one in self defense.
"The Lord's our shepherd," says the psalm,
But just in case, we better get a bomb!
Who's next?Luxembourg is next to go
And, who knows, maybe Monaco.
We'll try to stay serene and calm
When Alabama gets the bomb!
Who's next, who's next, who's next?
Who's next?
related OilEmpire pages
- ethnic cleansing and control of the Middle East oil
- Zbigniew Brzezinski's warning against an attack on Iran
- Iran
- November Surprise 2006: the elites want the Democrats to run the empire
- October Surprise 1980 (Bush Senior deal with Iran)
No rush to increase energy efficiency
www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?
Dato=20071130&Kategori=NEWS06&Lopenr=71130065&Ref=AR&Show=0&imw=Y
Leaders agree on 35 m.p.g.
Congressional deal provides Detroit's carmakers money to help meet target
November 30, 2007
By JUSTIN HYDE
FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF
WASHINGTON -- Thirty-two years of deadlock broke Friday when House and Senate leaders agreed to raise the fuel economy of U.S. cars and trucks to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, with the assent of Detroit's automakers.
Note: if Congress was serious about energy efficiency, they would - at a minimum - mandate:
- an immediate increase in fuel efficiency standards, since all of the automakers have designed prototypes that get about 100 miles per gallon
- sharply increased funding for Amtrak and public transit services
- adopting the 1974 mandate for 55 mph (90 kph) speed limits on the interstates, which would reduce energy consumption more than the daily flow through the Alaska Pipeline
Peak Oil slowly impacts airlines
www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2007-12-03-airschedules_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
Airlines cut U.S. schedules despite strong demand
By Barbara De Lollis and Barbara Hansen, USA TODAY 2007-12-03
Responding largely to high fuel costs, the USA's six big network airlines continue to trim their U.S. schedules despite strong travel demand.
The six carriers — American (AMR), United (UAUA), Delta (DAL), Continental (CAL), Northhwest (NWA) and US Airways (LCC)— have scheduled 4.4% fewer seats for January than a year earlier, according to a USA TODAY analysis of flight schedules that includes their regional feeder airlines.
December 3
Greg Palast gives Venezuela a Trillion Barrels of Oil!
Greg Palast is misleading his readers about the global oil situation in several ways. Perhaps the most blatant is the fantasy that Venezuela supposedly has far more oil than Saudi Arabia. While no member of OPEC allows independent verification of their national oil reserves, no serious observer states that Venezuela surpasses the Saudis in the size of their oil fields. What Palast is hinting at is the large tar sands that Venezuela does have, but they are not a trillion plus barrels, and they require nearly as much energy to process as they contain. The fact that oil companies are now starting to process the tar sands (in Canada and Venezuela) is proof that the easy to get, high energy return on energy invested conventional oil is winding down. While Palast is correct to note that oil is at the heart of United States imperialism versus the Chavez government in Venezuela, to pretend it has more oil than Saudi Arabia is embarrassing for Palast's credibility.
FEAR OF CHAVEZ IS FEAR OF DEMOCRACY
by Greg Palast
Monday December 3, 2007
... Why is the Bush crew so bonkers about Hugo? Is it because Venezuela sits on the world’s largest reserve of coconuts?
Like Operation Iraqi Liberation (”OIL”) - it’s all about the crude, dude. And lots of it. The US Department of Energy documents I obtained indicate that the guys holding Bush’s dipstick figure that Venezuela is sitting on 1.36 trillion barrels of crude, five times the reserves of Saudi Arabia. [emphasis added]
An excellent rebuttal of Greg Palast's blindness about ecological limits was written by Richard Heinberg, author of "The Party's Over" and "Powerdown."
energybulletin.net/17914.html
An Open Letter to Greg Palast
by Richard Heinberg
November 18
OPEC dumps the dollar?
The Observer (London) November 18, 2007
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2212899,00.html
Oil leaders' private debate televised by mistake
By Tim Webb in Riyadh
'Kill the cable, kill the cable,' shouted the security guard as he burst through the double doors into the media room at the Intercontinental Hotel in Riyadh, followed by Saudi police. It was too late.
A private meeting of Opec leaders, gathered this weekend in Riyadh for the cartel's third meeting in its 47-year history, had just been broadcast to the world's media for more than half an hour after a technician had mistakenly plugged the TV feed into the wrong socket. The facade of unity that the cartel so carefully cultivates to a world spooked by soaring oil prices was shattered. ....
On Friday night, during what the participants thought were private talks, Venezuela's oil minister Venezuela Rafael Ramirez and his Iranian counterpart Gholamhossein Nozari, argued that pricing - and selling - oil using the crippled dollar was damaging the cartel.
They said Opec should formally express its concern about the weakness of the dollar when the cartel makes its official declaration at the close of the summit today. But the Saudis, the world's largest oil producers and de facto head of Opec, vetoed the proposal. Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, warned that even the mere mention to journalists of the fact that leaders were discussing the weak dollar would cause the US currency to plummet.
Unfortunately his words and those of everyone at the meeting were being broadcast via a live television feed to a group of astonished reporters. 'I couldn't believe it,' said one who was there. 'When I realised they didn't know they were being broadcast live, I frantically started taking notes.'
November 15
Peak Oil psychology
www.energybulletin.net/37091.html
Published on 13 Nov 2007 by Peak Oil Blues. Archived on 14 Nov 2007.
Economic and planetary collapse: Is it a therapeutic issue?
by Kathy McMahon, Psy.D.
November 13
www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38dd00ca-90a6-11dc-a6f2-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
Financial Times
US strike on Iran ‘not being prepared’
By Demetri Sevastopulo, Daniel Dombey and Andrew Ward in Washington
Published: November 12 2007 00:01 | Last updated: November 12 2007 00:01
The Pentagon is not preparing a pre-emptive attack on Iran in spite of an increase in bellicose rhetoric from Washington, according to senior officers.
Admiral William Fallon, head of Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, told the Financial Times that while dealing with Iran was a “challenge”, a strike was not “in the offing”.
Hopefully, this story will prove to be correct.
October 25
13 billion barrels
Today, NPR's "Fresh Air" program focused on oil development in Kazakstan and mentioned how the "Kashagan" oil field was the largest on Earth discovered in a couple decades. While the guest mentioned how it was 13 times larger than the threshold for a supergiant oil field (a billion barrels), there was not any mention of how this new field would be less than six months of global oil consumption or that the decline of supergiant discoveries suggests we are at (or near) Peak Oil.
Exxon-eration is not a shock
www.miamiherald.com/top_stories/story/283492.html
UF police cleared in 'Don't Tase me, Bro' case
University of Florida cops were exonerated in the stunning of a student. The student may face charges.
By ROBERTO SANTIAGO
rsantiago@MiamiHerald.com
Andrew Meyer, the University of Florida student who was Tasered by campus police in September, may have staged the disturbance in an effort to disrupt a political forum at the Gainesville campus, a state police report concludes.
The report from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, released Wednesday by the university, cleared UF police of wrongdoing in subduing Meyer, 21.
Meyer, of Weston, was subdued with a Taser after he resisted arrest during a speech by 2004 Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. John Kerry on Sept. 17.
Meyer, whose cry of ''Don't Tase me bro'!'' made him a cause célèbre on the Internet, declined to comment Wednesday. He has been charged with disrupting a public event and resisting arrest. The state attorney's office has not yet decided whether to prosecute. ....
During the forum, Meyer peppered Kerry with questions and refused repeated requests to leave the microphone after his allotted time was up. He had asked Kerry about impeaching President George Bush, why he didn't challenge the 2004 election results and whether he and Bush were in the secret Skull and Bones society as undergraduates at Yale University. ....
Gwen Kaster, a UF religion major, agreed.
''They should have beat him with some batons while they were at it,'' Kaster said. ....
[note: this "religion major" must be studying the Crusades, not Jesus's advice to turn the other cheek]
Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, who read the FDLE report and saw the footage on youtube.com, said Meyer's arrest and Tasering were a sad statement on how heated political discourse is being discouraged on college campuses.
''Universities are the place for untidy, boisterous, rude, and offensive political debate to take place,'' said Simon, adding that Meyer should have been left alone to make his statements and ask his ''untidy'' questions, especially since Kerry appeared ready to answer them.
Simon also dismissed the findings of the FDLE report.
''When you have one Florida law enforcement agency investigating another Florida law enforcement agency, the conclusions are predictable,'' Simon said.
Solar Powered Star Wars
Does anyone trust Dick Cheney to steer this system? It is hard to believe that this could be democratically controlled or that it would be cheaper than installing decentralized solar panels on everyone's roofs.
Pentagon backs plan to beam solar power from space
16:46 11 October 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Dan Cho, Washington, DC
A futuristic scheme to collect solar energy on satellites and beam it to Earth has gained a large supporter in the US military. A report released yesterday by the National Security Space Office recommends that the US government sponsor projects to demonstrate solar-power-generating satellites and provide financial incentives for further private development of the technology.
Space-based solar power would use kilometre-sized solar panel arrays to gather sunlight in orbit. It would then beam power down to Earth in the form of microwaves or a laser, which would be collected in antennas on the ground and then converted to electricity. Unlike solar panels based on the ground, solar power satellites placed in geostationary orbit above the Earth could operate at night and during cloudy conditions.
October 21
A breathtaking abuse of the Constitution (more than usual)
This article is worth reading for a particularly pungent example of the out of control police state. Media freedoms under assault. Corrupt cops abusing the citizenry. A culture of fear being sown to intimidate. There are no shortage of examples of these abuses in post-Constitutional America, but this article is especially worth reading.
www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-10-18/news/breathtaking-abuse-of-the-constitution/full#comments
Breathtaking Abuse of the Constitution
Joe Arpaio, Andy Thomas and Dennis Wilenchik hit New Times with grand jury subpoenas
By Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin
Published: October 18, 2007
This newspaper and its editorial staff — both current and former — are the targets of unprecedented grand jury subpoenas dated August 24.
The initial grand jury subpoena named New Times Media LLC.; that's us, Michael Lacey (right) and Jim Larkin. We founded Phoenix New Times in 1970 in reaction to the war in Vietnam; our newspaper company has since expanded across America. The two of us live here, our kids go to school here, and we begin every day confronting the issues of journalism here. In nearly 40 years of work, this is our first joint byline. (You see, grand juries have their positive side.)
The most outrageous part of the over-the-top New Times subpoena is this section demanding the identities of our Web site readers, plus their Internet viewing habits. See full text of the subpoena here.
October 18
Beyond the Nobel Prize
The musician Tom Lehrer is rumored to have said he stopped writing satirical songs after Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize, because he supposedly couldn't think of anything funnier than this. In reality, Lehrer stopped performing several years before Kissinger was given the Peace Prize for War (1973), but it is still a good joke. Perhaps it is worth remembering that Mr. Nobel made his fortune through the invention of dynamite, a safe and stable means of handling nitroglycerine -- and Nobel thought that his new explosive would make war so terrible that it would no longer be feasible.
The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize award to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is - like most political decisions - very bittersweet. Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" has a lot of good science in it but glosses over his own history of helping make the problems of pollution worse. Gore also shies away from the decentralized solutions that would be needed for a serious, civilization wide effort to address a destabilized climate. In other words, the political elites, corporations and the military industrial complex would have to be converted to use these resources to implement relocalized food production, decentralized renewable energy systems and other efforts that distribute power away from stratified hierarchies.
It is likely the Nobel Committee partially chose to give the award to Gore to annoy the Bush regime, similar to their award of the 2002 Peace Prize to Jimmy Carter and the 2005 Peace Prize to the International Atomic Energy Agency (which documented that Saddam Hussein's aborted nuclear weapons program had been effectively stopped before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq).
Jimmy Carter was probably the first Nobel Laureate who openly threatened a nuclear war for oil (the so-called "Carter Doctrine" unveiled in 1980 stated that the United States would use any means to control the Persian Gulf oil fields). The IAEA also is a schizophrenic organization, since it simultaneously promotes the illusion of "peaceful nuclear power" while trying to keep countries from covert development of nuclear weapons - even though any government (or corporation!) with a nuclear fuel cycle can acquire the skills to make a nuclear arsenal. The only way to prevent further nuclear proliferation is to abandon nuclear power reactors in favor of decentralized, non-toxic renewable energy.
The 2004 and 2006 recipients are very different from Gore, Carter and the IAEA. The 2004 recipient was Wangaari Mathaai, founder of the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya. Mathaai suffered great personal risks and violent attacks to challenge the Kenyan dictatorship for many years, and now is a member of parliament. The 2006 recipient was Mohammed Yunis of Bangladesh, founder of the Grameen Bank (a microfinance development effort that makes small loans to the poor to lift them out of extreme poverty, not focused on merely making profits for centralized financial systems. These movements are parts of the social shifts toward a peaceful world that are less directly connected to overt warfare, diplomacy and peace conferences -- but a clean environment that sustains life, democracy and an end to severe poverty are all prerequisites to a world without war.
Two awards that are more grassroots are the Right Livelihood Award and the Goldman Prize.
The Right Livelihood Award has been called "the alternative Nobel Prize." This year's award recipients include a farmer who has stood up to the biotechnology giant Monsanto. There were very few genetically tampered crops in 1993 when Clinton and Gore entered the White House.
"Agricultural biotechnology will find a supporter occupying the White House next year, regardless of which candidate wins the election in November..." Monsanto's electronic newsletter www.monsanto.com Oct. 6, 2000
www.rightlivelihood.org/schmeiser.html
Percy and Louise Schmeiser (Canada)
(2007)
"... for their courage in defending biodiversity and farmers' rights, and challenging the environmental and moral perversity of current interpretations of patent laws".
With their fight against Monsanto's abusive marketing practices, Percy and Louise Schmeiser have given the world a wake-up call about the dangers to farmers and biodiversity everywhere from the growing dominance and market aggression of companies engaged in the genetic engineering of crops.
Career
Percy and Louise Schmeiser were born in 1931 into farming families in Saskatchewan; one of Canada's ten provinces. Percy became a leading farm figure in the area, and with his family he also owned a successful farm equipment dealership. He was a Member of the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly (MLA) from 1967-71 for the Liberal Party of Saskatchewan, whose philosophy was based in conservative values and conservative politics. Percy was also Mayor of his home town of Bruno from 1963-82, where he also served as a town councillor, most recently from 2003-06. Percy also has been appointed to numerous provincial commissions and municipal boards.
Monsanto vs. Schmeiser
In 1998 Percy Schmeiser and his wife received a letter from the US agribusiness giant Monsanto claiming that they had used Monsanto seeds without a license in planting their 1997 crop. However, the Schmeisers had never bought Monsanto seed nor intended to have it on their land. It turned out that some Monsanto 'Round-up Ready' genetically modified canola (rape) seeds had blown over from the Schmeisers' neighbour or from passing trucks. Thus, genes that Monsanto claimed to "own" under Canadian patent law had ended up in the Schmeisers' seeds. Monsanto threatened to sue the Schmeisers for 'infringement of patent', seeking damages totalling $400,000 (CAD), including about $250,000 in legal fees, $105,000 in estimated profits from the Schmeisers' 1998 crop, $13,500 ($15 an acre) for technology usage fees and $25,000 in punitive damages. At the same time, Monsanto offered to withdraw the legal challenge if the Schmeisers signed a contract to buy their seeds from Monsanto in the future and to pay the technology use fee.
But the Schmeisers neither gave in nor did they accept this blackmailing attempt. They contested the case up to the Canadian Supreme Court, whose ruling supported Monsanto in their claim to own the gene. Thus the Schmeisers lost their breeding research, which they had built up for decades, and the varieties that they had painstakingly adapted to their local environment for years through cross-pollination, because they now contained the Monsanto-"owned" gene.
However, the court also concluded that the Schmeisers should not have to pay anything to Monsanto because they had not in any way benefited from having the seeds on their property.
Schmeiser vs. Monsanto
Now, in a new legal case, the Schmeisers are trying to turn the notion of benefit to farmers from Monsanto genes around, claiming that Monsanto-"owned" genes are to be regarded as contamination.
Since the first court case, the Schmeisers shifted their agricultural business from canola to wheat, mustard, peas and oats in order to avoid future problems. But soon they found genetically modified Monsanto canola plants on their land again. They called the company and demanded that they be removed. Monsanto conducted tests and confirmed that these were their Monsanto Roundup Ready plants. Monsanto agreed to remove them if the Schmeisers signed a document with a non-disclosure statement and an assurance that they would never take Monsanto to court. The Schmeisers did not sign this statement and again demanded from Monsanto to take these plants off of their land. When Monsanto did not react, they paid some workers to remove the plants and sent Monsanto the bill of $600. When Monsanto did not pay, the Schmeisers sued them in a provincial court. In May 2007, a mediation attempt failed and the trial date is now set for January 23, 2008.
The destruction of seed markets through "patents on life"
The Schmeiser case was one of the first and most prominent cases involving a company claiming to own patents on life. It revealed how traditional seed economics and treatment is currently giving way to a dependency on only a few big multinational enterprises, such that in the end the whole food production chain could be dominated by a few giant food enterprises, relying on very few genetically engineered crops. This would drastically reduce the genetic diversity of staple crops and the economic autonomy of farmers, especially in developing countries.
Monsanto's treatment of the Schmeisers is their standard practice. According to a 2005 report by the Washington-based Center for Food Safety (CFS), as of 2005, Monsanto, with teams of full-time investigators out in the field, had filed lawsuits for patent violations (often, as with the Schmeisers, because of drifted seed) against 147 farmers and 39 small farming businesses in half the states of the US. Farmers have so far paid $15million (USD) to Monsanto (mean payment about $400,000). The CFS report concludes: "No farmer is safe from the long reach of Monsanto. Farmers have been sued after their field was contaminated by pollen or seed from someone else's genetically engineered crop; when genetically engineered seed from a previous year's crop has sprouted in fields planted with non-genetically engineered varieties the following year; and when they never signed Monsanto's technology agreement but still planted the patented crop seed. In all these cases, because of the way patent law has been applied, farmers are technically liable. It does not seem to matter if the use was unwitting or a contract was never signed."
In Canada there is still no specific law regarding patents on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) so the Schmeiser case was decided under the old patent laws, enacted before GMOs existed. But in its verdict, the Canadian Supreme Court called on the Canadian Parliament to enact a specific law. This process is currently under way and it may be expected that Monsanto will lobby lawmakers vigorously for a legislation that serves the company's interest.
Schmeiser's principles for food and agriculture
Percy Schmeiser is also a member of the International Commission on the Future of Food and was a core member of the drafting of the Manifesto on the Future of Seed which has had an impact worldwide. In his speeches, Schmeiser promotes 12 principles for food and agriculture in an age of biotechnology, which may be summarised thus:
1. All humans have a right to food or to produce it.
2. Natural systems must be protected so that they can produce healthy food.
3. Humans have a right to safe and nutritious food.
4. No rules should prevent countries controlling food imports.
5. Everyone has a right to information about how their food is produced.
6. Regions should have the right to regulate for their own agriculture.
7. Local production and consumption should be encouraged.
8. Regional biodiversity must be protected.
9. Seeds are a 'common property' resource.
10. No life form should be patented and terminator seeds should be globally banned.
11. Freedom to exchange seeds should be protected.
12. Farmers should have the right for their land to be free of genetic contamination.
The Goldman Prize is probably the most prestigious environmental award on planet Earth. One of the recipients of this honor has spend years fighting an environmental disaster that Al Gore promised to block as a Vice Presidential candidate, but refused to stop once in the White House. The main financier behind the WTI toxic waste incinerator - Jackson Stephens of Arkansas - financed Governor Clinton's campaign for President, the Clinton campaign kept some of its money in his bank, and Hillary Clinton worked for Stephens while at the Rose law firm (she reportedly helped incorporate the WTI incinerator and also served on the Board of Directors of LaFarge Cement, an even larger hazardous waste incineration company).
for more background on WTI, see
www.oilempire.us/wti.html
North America 1997
Terri Swearingen
United States
Toxic & Nuclear Contamination
In 1980 Waste Technologies Industries (WTI) began plans to build the nation's largest toxic waste incinerator in the Appalachian town of East Liverpool, Ohio. Completed in 1992 and located on the banks of the Ohio River across from Chester, West Virginia, the incinerator is among the largest in the world. Built in a low-income residential neighborhood, it is located within 1,100 feet of an elementary school and 320 feet from the nearest home.
Terri Swearingen, a registered nurse, became concerned about the carcinogenic heavy metals that the plant would emit. In 1990 she committed herself full time to the fight against WTI and co-founded the Tri-State Environmental Council, a coalition of grassroots citizen groups in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Swearingen uncovered numerous problems with the toxic waste incinerator and immediately began a major community organizing effort. In 1991 she led a group of over 1000 residents in what was for most their first protest march. At that time she and 32 other protesters committed their first act of peaceful civil disobedience which resulted in their arrest.
Since then she has been arrested nearly a dozen times for similar protests. In 1992 her findings prompted Congress to hold its first hearing on ways in which the EPA officials bent rules to help industries they are supposed to regulate. In 1993 the plant began limited operation. Swearingen stepped up her protests, traveling across the nation speaking to communities threatened by similar facilities. Her tour culminated in a demonstration in front of the White House, where Swearingen was arrested. The following day the Clinton administration announced a major revision of the government's rules for overseeing the nation's hazardous waste incinerators, mirroring the steps that Swearingen proposed earlier that year.
An 18 month nationwide moratorium on new incinerators was initiated, while old regulations were overhauled. A new combustion strategy and waste minimization plan was developed to include the creation of more stringent permitting standards and stricter limits for the release of toxic heavy metals and dioxin from toxic waste incinerators.
Swearingen exposed illegalities in the manner in which WTI had obtained permits and pushed the state of Ohio to review their policies and reconsider the validity of WTI's license. She is credited with prompting the governor of Ohio to declare a moratorium on any new incinerators in the state. Swearingen's battle against the incinerator continues. In March of 1997, WTI filed a $34 million lawsuit against Swearingen and 32 other local citizens. That May, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a risk assessment which showed at least 27 possible accident scenarios that could produce harmful or fatal results for the 400 children attending school adjacent to the site. At the same time, they issued their first-ever federal guidelines for the siting of hazardous waste management facilities. Citizens working to stop WTI were credited as being the driving force behind the EPA's action to implement these siting standards.
October 17
Political Incest
In 2004, distant cousins John Kerry and George W. Bush "ran" against each other. Bush, Kerry and Cheney are distant cousins, part of the American aristocracy.
It is unlikely that Dennis Kucinich is directly related to any of these people.
Perhaps one of the criteria for Presidential candidates to be taken seriously by the elites is having the right bloodlines.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071017/ap_on_el_pr/cheney_and_obama_4
Veep's wife says hubby and Obama related
By CHRISTINE SIMMONS, Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 16, 10:29 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Though they may spar across the political aisle, Vice President Dick Cheney is close enough to Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama to call him "cousin." Eighth cousin, that is.
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Lynne Cheney, the vice president's wife, revealed this tantalizing bit of political trivia during a television interview Tuesday.
She said she uncovered the long-ago ties between the two while researching her ancestry for her latest book, "Blue Skies, No Fences," a memoir about growing up in Wyoming.
"This is such an amazing American story that one ancestor ... could be responsible down the family lines for lives that have taken such different and varied paths as Dick's and Barack Obama," Lynne Cheney told MSNBC.
According to her spokeswoman, Sen. Obama, D-Ill., is a descendent of Mareen Duvall. This French Huguenot's son married the granddaughter of a Richard Cheney, who arrived in Maryland in the late 1650's from England, said Ginny Justice, a spokeswoman for Lynne Cheney.
The vice president's full name is Richard B. Cheney.
A spokesman for Obama, who wants to be the first black U.S. president, offered a tongue-in-cheek response. "Every family has a black sheep," said spokesman Bill Burton.
Lynne Cheney did not reference the ancestral ties between her husband and Obama in the book.
October 6
feedback from a reader
Dear comrades,
Dick Cheney is pushing and provoking as hard as he can to get a war with Iran. I am writing you out of concern that it may happen, and that, beyond the obvious reasons for concern, disaster for the future of working people around the world would accompany such an attack, including increased rather than reduced destruction to the planet that sustains us, further elimination of civil liberties, and worse.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3018375.ece
Phillip Giraldi is a former CIA counterterrorism officer.
"Earlier this summer, according to Mr Giraldi, the Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice-President Dick Cheney, tasked Strategic Command to draw up a response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the US. "The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both [tactical nuclear weapons and conventional weapons]," said Mr. Giraldi."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/ellsberg.php?articleid=11674
Daniel Ellsberg is the former military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers (about the Vietnam War) to the press. I think one thing he's implying in this article but not saying is that Cheney wants to attack Iran, but it isn't likely to happen without another 9/11, since most of the Pentagon and CIA (possibly excluding top-level, Cheney-appointed officials) is against it.
'A Coup Has Occurred'
by Daniel Ellsberg"...I think nothing has higher priority than averting an attack on Iran, which I think will be accompanied by a further change in our way of governing here that in effect will convert us into what I would call a police state." "If there's another 9/11 under this regime ... it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth...."
Beyond the obvious reasons, I am concerned that an attack on Iran would help the financial elites to further prevent and postpone a fundamental shift in the consciousness of working people throughout the globe. One reason most of the CIA and Pentagon is against an attack on Iran is that Iran would almost certainly retaliate by, among other things, attacking shipping and facilities in and near the Strait of Hormuz, including Saudi oil facilities. This means that, beyond allowing the further redrawing of Middle-East borders according to oil geology and further weakening of OPEC, an attack on Iran would amount to an engineered economic depression. Since such an attack would almost certainly be a response to another 9/11(as Ellsberg hints and Giraldi states), this would allow the financial elites to blame the high oil prices, economic depression, and other destruction on “terrorists,” and continue to hide the ultimate and true reason: declining global oil production that will only continue to decline, along with increasing oil demand. Whatever our views on 9/11, and although there is abundant disinformation being circulated by a handful of well-funded agents (no-plane claims, cruise missile claim, demolition claims), there is evidence from a number of angles that the Administration had foreknowledge of the attacks, facilitated the entrance of Saudi Al Qaeda members into the country, obstructed attempts by FBI and CIA agents to stop them, and prevented the FAA and the Air Force from responding.
There is nothing to replace oil. A "Triple Crisis" conference just took place in Washington D.C. The three crises are climate change, general resource depletion, and peak oil. The economic and population explosion of the 20th century was a result of oil; without oil, everything has to change. The talk of tar sands, oil shales, and biofuels is just that: talk. None of it makes any economic sense when you do the math. The age of cheap energy (and cheap food) is coming to an end. Two film-makers on this subject were on KLCC recently. One pointed out that many people "turn off" when you try to explain this to them, because they think they should already know this. But you have to see that the people controlling the media are the same financial elites who don't want us to understand what is happening. Economic redistribution, reduced consumption, relocalization and organic farming are the sane and just solutions, but they are not solutions conducive to the continuation of the exploitative economic relationships preferred by the financial elites.
Regardless of our varying views on 9/11, we all know how this Administration exploited that attack to gut the Constitution, dramatically increase the power of the executive branch, and massively increase military spending and military presence in the Middle East, a plan previously laid out by its think-tank, PNAC.
Ellsberg and Giraldi have shown enormous courage in saying what they have said. Ellsberg at least seems to be in fear of saying too much. Their knowledge, on the other hand, is a result of leaks by CIA and Pentagon insiders, who are leaking information merely because they and many of the financial elites they represent do not want war with Iran, possibly simply because they prefer other methods of securing access to the remaining oil and manipulating the consciousness of working people. Clearly the faction of the elite that supports Cheney does want an attack on Iran, but due to the opposition of the other faction in the CIA and Pentagon, I don’t believe Cheney is likely to succeed. The Iranian dictators are too smart to be provoked, which means Cheney would need another 9/11 to launch an attack, and I don’t think that is likely, at least at the moment. But regardless, all of us need to be aware of what Ellsberg and Giraldi have said, to reduce the likelihood of another war.
A final note: I am grateful to a certain local researcher and activist, who has been researching these things diligently for years, for alerting me to the phenomenon of disinformation, and alerting me to the reason these oil wars are beginning now: the lifeblood of the world economy is going to become much more scarce and expensive over the next two decades – the price growth over the past 7 years is just the beginning.
October 2
Seymour Hersh is confused
Journalist and official leak conduit Seymour Hersh was on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" program today talking about his latest New Yorker article based on senior military sources warning that Cheney wants to bomb Iran.
Hersh's conclusion was that attacking Iran would likely cause severe escalation of conflict throughout the region, with Iran retaliating in Iraq and Afghanistan (the latter, he speculated, would bring in Pakistan into the war). He also predicted the Iranians would probably "turn on" Hezbollah in Lebanon to attack Israel and possibly around the rest of the world. Iran also would probably go after oil production and shipment in the Persian Gulf, but Hersh didn't discuss that in detail. He did say that this would likely create "twenty years" of severe conflict (or as Cheney once described the Peak Oil Wars -- a "war that will not end in our lifetime.")
The most puzzling aspect of Hersh's interview was his conclusion that he could not understand why the Bush administration was not doing everything it could to avoid this nightmare scenario. The answers are obvious -- they WANT this disaster, since they hope to redraw the boundaries of the oil rich countries and the fallout would allow further repression of civil liberties. It's perhaps the nastiest aspect of what has been called "disaster capitalism" -- the elite recognition of Peak Oil, climate change and other resource depletion (Peak Everything) suggests that the fascist response to these crises is very methodical and deliberate. The "incompetence" theory is not supported by the evidence.
Hersh is one of the many reporters who claims that 9/11 was really a surprise attack (a surprise to the Bush regime leadership), denying the abundant evidence of foreknowledge.
As always, it's worth pointing out that the choice for humanity is whether to use the remaining cheap energy on endless war or permaculture for nine billion people. In the short run, let's hope that the elite faction (as personified by Zbigniew Brzezinski) that doesn't want a US War on Iran is able to prevent the Cheney faction from their "Samson Option."
(Note: "The Samson Option" was a book by Hersh about the Israeli nuclear weapons program, and refers to their reserve strategy to destroy the Middle East in a nuclear war if their leaders think the country is about to be militarily destroyed. The Biblical story of Samson was about a man with superhuman strength who killed himself and his tormentors by pushing out the columns of the temple he was incarcerated in, crushing his enemies and himself at the same time.)
October 1
Support human rights in Burma, Tibet and China:
Boycott 2008 Olympics in China
- China is the main supporter of the Burmese dictatorship
- China is illegally occupying Tibet
- China violates human rights of Chinese people in countless ways
- China is the world's largest sweatshop
- China is evicting Chinese people from neighborhoods in Beijing to make way for Olympics facilities
The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada should also be boycotted:
- massive destruction of the coastal rainforest
- violation of first nations rights
- overdevelopment scams for Vancouver benefit elites, not the whole community
www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2181415,00.html
If you want to support the monks, then call Gary Player to account
Western interests in Burma contribute to the oppression of its people. Let's put pressure on the companies responsible
George Monbiot
Tuesday October 2, 2007
The Guardian
China has become the world's excuse for inaction. If there is anything that a government or a business does not want to do, it invokes the Yellow Peril. Raise the minimum wage to £6 an hour? Not when the Chinese are paid £6 a year. Cap working time at 48 hours a week? The Chinese are working 48 hours a day. Cut greenhouse gas emissions? The Chinese are building a new power station every nanosecond. China has become our looking-glass bogeyman: if you behave well, the bogeyman will get you.
As we saw during George Bush's climate pantomime last week, China the excuse is not the same place as China the country. Bush insists that the United States cannot accept mandatory carbon cuts, because China and India would reject them. But while he stuck to his voluntary approach, China and India called for mandatory cuts. "China" is a projection of the west's worst practices.
I mention this because the western companies still trading with Burma use it as their first and last defence. If we withdraw, they insist, China will fill the gap. It is true that the Chinese government has offered the Burmese generals political protection in return for cheap resources. In January, for example, China vetoed a UN resolution condemning the junta's human rights record. Three days later it was given lucrative gas concessions in the Bay of Bengal. It is also true that the Chinese government has no interest in promoting democracy abroad. But the more the Burmese junta must rely on a single source of investment and protection, the more vulnerable it becomes. China is not intractable. If western governments boycotted the Beijing Olympics, it would precipitate the biggest political crisis in that country since 1989.
The businesses still working in Burma are having to scrape the barrel of excuses. Even Tony Blair, that bundle of corporate interests in human form, said: "We do not believe that trade is appropriate when the regime continues to suppress the basic human rights of its people." Explaining his company's decision to pull out of the country, the CEO of Reebok noted that "it's impossible to conduct business in Burma without supporting this regime. In fact, the junta's core funding derives from foreign investment and trade". As the junta either controls or takes a cut from most of the economy, and as almost half the tax foreign business generates is used to buy arms, any company working in Burma is helping to oppress the people.
The travel firms Asean Explorer and Pettitts, which take British tourists round the country in defiance of Aung San Suu Kyi's pleas, both refused to comment when I rang them, then slammed down the phone. Aquatic, a British company that provides services for gas and oil firms, was more polite, but still refused to talk. The tourism companies Audley Travel and Andrew Brock Travel Ltd promised to phone me back but failed to do so. But aside from invoking the Chinese bogeyman, each of the others I talked to produced a different justification.
The spokeswoman for Orient Express, a travel company that runs a cruiser on the Irrawaddy river and a hotel in Rangoon, told me that "tourism can be a catalyst for change". Given that tourism has continued throughout the junta's rule, I asked how effective that catalyst has been. "There has been very slow progress, but we feel it has helped." The Ultimate Travel Company explained that: "We feel we just like to offer the people who travel with us a choice. If people want to travel, they can. And really I'd prefer not to enter into a debate about it."
Rolls-Royce, which overhauls engines for Myanmar Airways, a company owned by the state, told me that it operates "in line with UK export licences ... As long as we are meeting government requirements, that's what we work to. I'm not getting into a debate on this issue. We're doing this to ensure passenger safety."
William Garvey, the boss of the furniture company that bears his name and that works mostly in Burmese teak, admitted that he buys timber "that comes from Rangoon, through government channels". But if he stopped, "a highly likely consequence is that the rate of felling would increase dramatically ... Whatever you may think about the Burmese government, they are still using a sustainable system for extracting teak." Aren't human rights a component of sustainability? "In the strict sense, no."
The managing director of Britannic Garden Furniture, which makes its benches from Burmese teak and supplies the royal parks and the Tower of London, told me: "I know it's no excuse to say we don't buy it directly ... You try and get teak from other sources. But it's rubbish ... The government has given us no directive not to trade with Burma."
All these companies have felt some pressure already, thanks to the work of The Burma Campaign UK, which includes them on its "dirty list". But I have stumbled across one western firm that most Burma campaigners appear to have missed. It is run by one of the world's most famous sportsmen, the golfer Gary Player. Player has made much of his ethical credentials. Next month he will host the Nelson Mandela Invitational golf tournament, whose purpose is "to make a difference in the lives of children". One of his websites shows a painting of Mr Player bathed in radiant light and surrounded by smiling children. Nelson Mandela stands behind him, lit by the same halo.
Golf, to most of us, looks like a harmless, if mysterious, activity, but in Burma it is a powerful symbol of oppression. Some of the country's courses have been built on land seized from peasant farmers, who were evicted without compensation. Golf is the sport of the generals, who conduct much of their business on the links.
Player's website shows him, in 2002, launching the "grand opening" of the golf course he designed, which turned "a 650-acre rice paddy into The Pride of Myanmar. The golfer's paradise that stands in Myanmar today is said to be living proof that miracles do happen." I asked his company the following questions. Who owned the land on which the course was constructed? How many people were evicted in order to build it? Was forced labour used in its construction? As Player's company is based in Florida, did the design of this course break US sanctions? His media spokesman told me: "The Gary Player Group has decided not to comment on any questions regarding Myanmar-Burma." It seems to me that there is a strong case for asking Nelson Mandela to remove his name from Mr Player's tournament.
If, like me, you have been shaking your head over the crushing of the protests, wondering what on earth you can do, I suggest you get on the phone to these companies, demanding, politely that they cut their ties. I sense that it wouldn't take much more pressure to persuade them to pull out. By itself, this won't bring down the regime. But it will cut its sources of income, and allow us to focus on confronting the reality of Chinese investment, rather than the excuse.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7021567.stm
Last Updated: Monday, 1 October 2007, 10:16 GMT 11:16 UK
Lessons from the Burmese uprising
By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs correspondent BBC News website
Burmese military has managed to hold together
The military crackdown in Burma is a reminder that street demonstrations do not necessarily lead to success for popular uprisings.
The key factor is the destabilisation of the existing regime and if protests cannot bring that about, they become vulnerable to the kind of repression the Burmese authorities have imposed.
So far, the Burmese military has held together. The campaign for democracy in Burma still hopes for rapid success but fears that the project will be more long-term.
In our day, we have perhaps become so used to seeing pro-democracy protestors toppling authoritarian governments that the difficulties involved can be underestimated.
A handbook for overthrowing such governments would have to include the following factors:
- Widespread public protests, bringing in many different social and economic groups
- An opposition leadership with clear ideas around which people can rally
- The ability to use the media in some form to get a message across
- A mechanism for undermining the existing regime - whether by internal coup in the case of a military junta, the emergence of reformers, or the simple exhaustion of an existing government leading to its collapse
- External pressure from key countries able to exert influence.
Experience has shown that a combination of the above is usually necessary for success.
Examples
In Eastern Europe in the 1990s, for example, several factors came into play. There were the protests, the communist governments were exhausted, reformers came to the fore, the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew its support and the local security forces switched sides.
However, in Uzbekistan in 2005, protests in the city of Andijan were swiftly repressed because they did not lead to wider influences being brought to bear.
And in China in 1989, the democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square were eventually dispersed by force because the Chinese government cracked down instead of cracking up.
In Burma, the protesters have been faced with an implacable military government. Maybe elements of the armed forces will rebel and overthrow the old guard. But this has not happened yet.
In the meantime, the regime has blocked off the media, including the new phenomenon of the internet, which proved instrumental in helping to mobilise opinion abroad.
External pressure, in the form of international condemnation and talk of sanctions, has not been strong enough to be decisive.
The China connection
I watched the unfolding events while on a visit to China, and it was interesting to note the approach to events in Burma there.
On satellite television, one could see the concern growing in Europe and the United States. This emphasised the way in which the foreign policies of Western governments are influenced by non-governmental organisations, human rights groups and also celebrities.
On French television, the actress Jane Birkin was interviewed at length about Burma and the next day led a delegation to see President Nicolas Sarkozy.
In China there was none of that. The media almost ignored the crisis in Burma. The first 10 minutes of the nightly news concentrated, as it always does, on the comings and goings of the senior Chinese leadership, which seemed to consist mostly of making speeches.
The government in Beijing is not susceptible to influence on human rights grounds. It has a policy of pursuing its own interests world wide (which require the acquisition of large amounts of natural resources) while keeping out of world crises as far as possible.
There is only one point of pressure on China - the Olympic Games being held in Beijing next year.
The Chinese government is desperate that there should be no boycott. The Olympics are presented as the symbol of China's "peaceful rise", as it is called.
So China has to pay some attention to world opinion. That has led to it calling for restraint in Burma, but not much more.
The prospect in Burma now is for another lengthy campaign for democracy of the kind that has had to be waged since the last major crackdown in 1988.
There will always remain the hope among activists, though, that one of the other decisive factors can suddenly turn things around.
Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET @ bbc.co.uk
September 28
Joint Chiefs Chairman General Pace:
homicidal good, homosexual bad
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070926/D8RTEMK00.html
Pace Repeats View That Gay Sex Immoral
Sep 26, 7:27 PM (ET)
By ANNE FLAHERTY
WASHINGTON (AP) - Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, caused a stir at a Senate hearing Wednesday when he repeated his view that gay sex is immoral and should not be condoned by the military. ....
"We need to be very precise then, about what I said wearing my stars and being very conscious of it," he added. "And that is, very simply, that we should respect those who want to serve the nation but not through the law of the land, condone activity that, in my upbringing, is counter to God's law."
"Thou Shalt Not Kill" (from the Ten Commandments)
Gary Hart warns about a pretext to trigger a War on Iran
Former Senator and Presidential candidate Gary Hart was part of a study group before the 2000 "election" that was apparently the first place where the term "Homeland Security" was used. It is interesting to see part of the foreign policy establishment warning against a Cheney/Bush pretext to attack Iran before January 20, 2009 -- similar to Zbigniew Brzezinski's warning to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 2007. It's also worth noting that Senator Hillary Clinton, the likely replacement for George W. Bush, voted this week to support a strangely worded resolution accusing part of the Iranian military as a "terrorist" organization -- a dangerous escalation that will probably be interpreted as giving the regime more power to attack Iran. (By some definitions, nearly all military forces are "terrorist" in that they use violence in pursuit of political objectives.)
www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/unsolicited-advice-to-the_b_65984.html
Unsolicited Advice to the Government of Iran
Posted September 26, 2007 | 03:22 PM (EST)
Presuming that you are not actually ignorant enough to desire war with the United States, you might be well advised to read the history of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 and the history of the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964.
Having done so, you will surely recognize that Americans are reluctant to go to war unless attacked. Until Pearl Harbor, we were even reluctant to get involved in World War II. For historians of American wars the question is whether we provoke provocations.
Given the unilateral U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, you are obviously thinking the rules have changed. Provocation is no longer required to take America to war. But even in this instance, we were led to believe that the mass murderer of American civilians, Osama bin Laden, was lurking, literally or figuratively, in the vicinity of Baghdad.
Given all this, you would probably be well advised to keep your forces, including clandestine forces, as far away from the Iraqi border as you can. You might even consider bringing in some neighbors to verify that you are not shipping arms next door. Tone down the rhetoric on Zionism. You've established your credentials with those in your world who thrive on that.
If it makes you feel powerful to hurl accusations at the American eagle, have at it. Sticks and stones, etc. But, for the next sixteen months or so, you should not only not take provocative actions, you should not seem to be doing so.
For the vast majority of Americans who seek no wider war, in the Middle East or elsewhere, don't tempt fate. Don't give a certain vice president we know the justification he is seeking to attack your country. That is unless you happen to like having bombs fall on your head.
September 26
The embarrassing Democrats
www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/23/feinstein/index.html
Glenn Greenwald
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 23, 2007 06:21 EST
Dianne Feinstein, symbol of the worthless Beltway Democrat
It really is one of the most extraordinary -- and downright embarrassing -- political facts that more Republicans than Democrats approve of the 2007 Democratic Congress. And why wouldn't they? The Democratic Congress has not restrained the Leader at all, but has done much to support and empower him.
Senate votes to support next phase of War on Iraq: partition to control the oil
I have had a warning at OilEmpire.US for years that an ultimate goal of the War on Iraq is to redraw the boundaries of Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia (among other states) to better control the oil. Many war strategists have been public about this goal, although the media is smart enough not to highlight their comments (but they're not secret). This week, the US Senate took a step closer toward this goal by voting 3 to 1 to support Iraqi partition. Redrawing the boundaries can only happen as a consequence of the shattering of these societies, which has now happened to Iraq.
The "incompetence" theory to explain Bush's Iraq policy is a cover story that distracts from the real motivations. The invasion of Iraq - from the perspective of the Empire - has been a great success. A disaster for the Iraqis - and the US troops - but a success for imperial control of the oil.
Look for the "partition" plan to be implemented by Hillary when (if?) she takes over from W. Good cop, bad cop.
see
http://www.oilempire.us/new-map.html
the Empire's new Middle East map
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/26/AR2007092601506.html
Senate Endorses Plan to Divide Iraq
By Shailagh Murray
The Washington Post
Wednesday 26 September 2007Action shows rare bipartisan consensus.
Showing rare bipartisan consensus over war policy, the Senate overwhelmingly endorsed a political settlement for Iraq that would divide the country into three semi-autonomous regions.
The plan, conceived by Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), was approved 75-23 as a non-binding resolution, with 26 Republican votes. It would not force President Bush to take any action, but it represents a significant milestone in the Iraq debate, carving out common ground in a debate that has grown increasingly polarized and focused on military strategy.
The Biden plan envisions a federal government system for Iraq, consisting of separate regions for Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations. The structure is spelled out in Iraq's constitution, but Biden would initiate local and regional diplomatic efforts to hasten its evolution.
"This has genuine bipartisan support, and I think that's a very hopeful sign," Biden said.
One key Republican supporter was Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), who under strong White House pressure last week abruptly withdrew his support for a proposal to extend home leaves for U.S. troops. Numerous Republicans considered supporting the extension, but they backed off when Warner reversed his stance. The veteran GOP lawmaker called the vote on the Biden plan "the high-water mark" for bipartisan efforts on Iraq this year.
Warner said the vote represented a de facto acknowledgement of the now widely held view that Iraq's long-term problems cannot be solved militarily. "This amendment builds on that foundation," said Warner. "This amendment brings into sharp focus the need for diplomacy."
The resolution collected an unusually diverse group of co-sponsors who disagree sharply on other aspects of the war, in particular how long U.S. combat troops should remain. The list ranges from conservative Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a GOP presidential contender, to liberal Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.).
"We can't walk away from Iraq," said Hutchison. "That would make all the sacrifices that have been made irrelevant. But we do have a potential solution that can save American lives in the future."
Boxer said: "I see here a light at the end of a very, very dark tunnel. A darkness that is impacting our nation. It's impacting the Senate. In a way, we are paralyzed."
The vote also was a political boon for Biden, one of the Democrats' most respected foreign policy voices, yet a long-shot for his party's 2008 presidential nomination. The floor debate, which started last week, provided the struggling candidate with a moment in the spotlight - and Biden made the most of it. He spent hours on the Senate floor, held two news conferences, and placed an op-ed Monday in the State, a newspaper in Columbia, S.C., an early 2008 primary state.
Two of Biden's competitors, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), voted with him. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) missed the vote, as did Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a GOP presidential candidate and a leading war supporter.
Biden has made his Iraq plan the centerpiece of his 2008 candidacy, and he will likely herald his Senate success in a Democratic debate tonight in New Hampshire.
September 20
The Tasering of Andrew Meyer: Bush's America in a Nutshell
By Chris Rowthorn
Created Sep 20 2007 - 9:03am
On Monday, September 17, 2007, police at the University of Florida tasered Andrew Meyer [1], a 21-year-old student, for asking Senator John Kerry challenging questions. As Mr. Meyer writhed on the ground in agony, most of his fellow students sat passively in their seats and Senator Kerry, the only man in the building with the power to stop the torture, made no attempt to intervene. This sad incident is much more than just an isolated attempt to squelch one dissenting voice at a small speaking engagement in Florida.Indeed, the tasering of Andrew Meyer is a microcosm of the United States of America in the year 2007.
The four players in the present-day American political drama were all represented at the University of Florida on Monday:
1) Andrew Meyer writhing on the ground in agony represents the Constitution and the freedom of speech and the protection from unlawful arrest that it enshrines.
2) The police holding Mr. Meyer to the ground and inflicting torture with 50,000 volts of electricity represent the fascist forces in America led by George W. Bush and their attempts to kill the Constitution.
3) John Kerry droning impotently on in the background and allowing the torture to occur through his shameful lack of courage and principle represents today's Democratic Party.
4) The majority of the students who sat passively by while one of their own was tortured for speaking out represent the largely apathetic American populace.And, of course, after the fact, the fifth and perhaps most important player in the drama made its inevitable entrance: the press. Major press outlets and even some supposedly left-wing political blogs were united in suggesting that Mr. Meyer actually deserved to be tasered because of his history as a prankster. Thus, the American media has sanctioned the torture of an American citizen who exercised his freedom of speech. In this they stand firmly in the tradition of all fascist states, in which certain undesirables and those who dared to speak out were officially sanctioned as targets of violence.
As Naomi Wolf has rightfully pointed out, the tasering of Andrew Meyer will be remembered as a watershed moment in American history. That much is certain. The only thing that remains to be seen is how we, as Americans, react to it. Will we sit passively by while our Constitution and our Democracy are murdered right before our eyes? Will we demand that our supposed political leaders take meaningful and principled action? Will we allow our press to make excuses for the fascist takeover of our country?
The choice is clear: either we fight fascism right now with all our power, or we will be the next ones on the ground with a policeman's knee on our throats and 50,000 volts of electricity coursing through our bodies.
_______
About author Chris Rowthorn is an American journalist based in Kyoto, Japan. He has written for the Japan Times and Kansai Time Out.
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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/10030&t=
The+Tasering+of+Andrew+Meyer%3A+Bush%27s+America+in+a+Nutshell
[8] http://technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?url=
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/10030
September 5
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2924388.ece
Cut and run: Bush heralds cut in troops as British forces head for exit
By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 04 September 2007
the improvement in the US position in Anbar has nothing to do with the surge and the deployment of 30,000 extra American troops. The change in the military situation in the province is a result of a split in the Sunni guerrilla movement between an al-Qa'ida umbrella organization called the Islamic State of Iraq and the rest of the Sunni guerrillas.
feedback from a reader about ecocide and extinction
you will enjoy this rant
http://eugeneweekly.com/2007/08/30/coverstory.html
Yes, I did. It concisely describes what I more or less knew, what everyone should know. If this was added to the Appalachian coal fiasco, the uranium tailings story from the southwest, the real story of 'tar sands' extraction in Alberta, wouldn't it tell the story of North America's demise? And even in the face of that larger story, would the extractors and the dominators cease extracting and dominating?
I had two highly intelligent Taiwanese teenagers, my students, tell me that 100 years from now there would not be humans on the Earth. They said it with matter-of-fact sadness which did not diminish the intensity of their studies and future plans. Incredulous, I brought up the topic to my next round of students, another pair of intelligent teens. They shrugged and nodded and refused to refute the proposition, as though it were a given.
When I was a teenager, I believed that the world was fucked up but changing. Throughout most of my Life I believed that cooler heads would prevail, that The Movement would ripple through all decision-making organizations, and that changes would occur appropriately. I really thought we were going to solve the problems of 10,000 years in my lifetime.
Now, it's not a matter of, will we the enlightened win against the misguided power contenders of the world. It's a question of whether anything will be left when their chain saws and mega-shovels and bombers and nuke plants are stilled. The massive cleanup required to prepare any section of Earth for real human Life - even assuming the end of the great crimes - would have to be massive and sustained and so well organized. That requires cultural integration, which means there has to be something left of human society by the time the horrors are over. That is presently my focus. Creating and facilitating potentials of human survival in order to heal when it's over. Probably not in my lifetime.
You could say I'm depressed. But thanks for that. It was worth reading and filing for later use.
Blessings!
c.
September 3 - Labor Day
New essay: Fake Debate
A new essay about fake debates is posted at www.oilempire.us/fake-debate.html
August 29
John Edwards says something that makes too much sense
www.wlos.com/template/inews_wire/wires.regional.nc/22b7034c-www.wlos.com.shtml
Edwards: Americans should sacrifice their SUVs
August 29, 2007 07:46 EDT
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told a labor group he would ask Americans to make a big sacrifice: their sport utility vehicles.
The former North Carolina senator told a forum by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, yesterday he thinks Americans are willing to sacrifice.
Edwards says Americans should be asked to drive more fuel efficient vehicles. He says he would ask them to give up SUVs.
Edwards got a standing ovation when he said weapons and equipment used by America's military needs to be made in the United States. He says tanks and ammunition for M16 rifles are being made in other countries.
He says jobs that provide equipment for America's defense need to be made in the United States.
August 27
Understanding the method to the madness
www.countercurrents.org/eriqat130306.htm
The End Of Civilization
By Dave Eriqat
13 March, 2006
Countercurrents.org
I had a mild epiphany the other day: it’s not President Bush who’s living in a fantasy world, it’s most of his critics who are. I’m no apologist for Bush – I neither like nor dislike him. He’s no more significant to me than a fly buzzing around outside my window. So permit me to explain my reasoning.
People look at Bush’s invasion of Iraq and see a miserable failure. But a failure to do what? Democratize Iraq? Eliminate Iraq’s WMD arsenal? Reduce global terrorism? If those were, in fact, the reasons for invading Iraq, then the invasion would have to be classified as a failure. But what if the real reason was to secure Iraq’s oil supplies, perhaps not for immediate use, and perhaps not even for use by the United States? Then the invasion of Iraq would have to be judged a success, a “mission accomplished,” so to speak. ...
... if one knows that he is not going to have to pay back his debts tomorrow, then why not borrow money like crazy today? In fact, if civilization is coming to an end, then why not use all that borrowed money to stock up on guns and vital resources, such as oil? ...
So how would you, the government, prepare for a future world in which commodities are king? By securing today as many of those commodities as possible. Hence, the U.S. government’s binge of military base building throughout the commodity-rich regions of the world. What would you not worry about? Money. The only concern you might have for money is to prevent its premature demise. Hence, the smoke and mirrors used to paint a pretty but false portrait of the economy. Some will argue that the government needs more than just energy, food, and water to survive. True, but by controlling the bulk of the world’s key commodities, everything else can be procured, including human labor and loyalty.
In preparing for the future demise of civilization you would also seek to increase the government’s power as much and as rapidly as possible. Why? To maintain control over those increasingly precious resources, and equally important, to control people – especially your own people – by force, if necessary. Viewed in this light, the government’s aggressive pursuit of power during the last five years makes perfect sense. ....
The one thing that has enabled the human population to grow to the immense dimensions we see today is oil, the resource facing the greatest challenge from depletion. As the oil supply diminishes, in the absence of herculean efforts to use oil more efficiently and fairly, large numbers of human beings will die off. Before then, soaring prices for oil will probably destroy the economies of the countries most dependent on the stuff, if not the entire intricately linked world economy. This is what I mean by the end of civilization. Of course life will go on. But it won’t be anything like what we’ve been accustomed to. Life will be more like that of the Middle Ages, in which a few wealthy lords controlled all the resources and possessed all the power, and the rest of the people – the lucky ones, anyway – were veritable slaves under these lords. In many ways that state of affairs exists today, but it’s unseen by all but the most observant individuals. The future I’m talking about, though, is considerably more spartan than what the worker bees enjoy today.
I believe that what we’re witnessing today is the inception of a titanic and protracted competition for survival: between countries, between civilizations, between governments and their people. Moreover, I believe the Bush administration is the first to recognize this competitive future, which explains its fundamentally different – seemingly feckless – behavior compared to past administrations. Bush’s favored courtiers, which include corporations, are profiting today and will become the new nobility in the coming New Middle Ages. ....
The goal of this essay is not to propose solutions to the many problems facing us, although there are solutions, but to explain the seemingly irrational behavior we see around the world. Viewing the world today in light of the foregoing essay, Bush’s actions are understandable, even though I don’t endorse them: the competitive pursuit of resources, the rolling back of civil liberties, the carefree handling of the economy.
August 26
Cheney video warning against seizing Baghdad
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/2898
Why Dick changed his mind
This is a guest article by David Strahan, author of The Last Oil Shock.
In a widely viewed You Tube clip, taken from a C-Span interview conducted in 1994, Dick Cheney argues persuasively that the United States was right not to topple Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War. He cites the potential disintegration of the country and the risk of American casualties as good reasons for the decision not to take Baghdad. So what was it that changed his mind by the turn of the century? An acute awareness of impending peak oil.
Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?
A: No.
Q: Why not?
A: Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.
Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it -- eastern Iraq -- the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families -- it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?
Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.
***
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I
http://mkane.gnn.tv/blogs/24618/Video_of_Cheney_on_Gulf_War_1_Surprise
Video of Cheney on Gulf War 1 - Surprise?!?
Fri, 17 Aug 2007
by Michael Kane
Is this video of Cheney talking about why the U.S. did not take Baghdad in Gulf War I really a surprise? What interests me about this video is that people seem to believe Cheney changed his mind from 1994. He has not.
Most of the Neocons knew exactly what Cheney said in 1994 was the truth, and the main point he made was that overthrowing Saddam would lead to Balkanization. Mike Ruppert called this at the outset of the war. This was always part of the plan (more on this in a moment).
Sure, the Necons would have loved if the Iraqis welcomed us with open-arms and flowers into their country but they did not believe this was going to be the case (maybe Wolfowitz believed this but I doubt it). The Iraq plan is a multi-decade plan that is 100% about oil. No matter what happens the U.S. will set-up permanent military bases in Iraq and will do everything in their power to get U.S. dominance of the oil.
The main benchmark that the Iraqis must impose before the U.S. backs off (a little) is a guarantee that the oil industry in the country will not be state dominated. Privatization (at least partially) is a requirement, and until that happens we will not leave. Iraq sits on the 2nd largest proven oil reserves on the planet. World oil production is nearing its all time peak (now at 85 million barrels per day, and flat) and once that happens economic growth on a global scale is impossible.
If you don’t know, check out Peak Oil facts here for starters
Whoever controls the last remaining oil reserves on the planet controls economic growth. There was a scene in Syriana where an American oil executive says, “China’s economy is not growing as fast as it can because they don’t have access to all the oil that they need and I’m damn proud of that fact.” The economic End Game (20, 30 years down the line) is China.
Balkanization
Everyone (Cheney included) knew Iraq would be a quagmire, but it was deemed to be worth the trouble for the reason I just stated. Democracy in Iraq means Shia rule, since they have the majority. Shia rule left open a very real possibility of Rapprochement with Iran, and that turned out to be the case. There are many deals in the works between Iraq and Iran now – trade, agricultural, pipelines, oil infrastructure, etc…
The Shia win and the Sunnis lose. But who is it in the region that does not want to see a Shia strong-hold? Saudi Arabia. So it is the Saudis who will/are aid(ing) the Sunnis. This is a delicate and volatile game, and the entire time we still have the Israeli/Palestinian situation at an all time low: Ever more volatile.
The U.S. will not invade Iran
We can’t even if we wanted to, which we don’t. The saber rattling will continue as Bush and Ahmadinejad both need to pander to their constituencies. But signs were clear as hell that there would be no invasion (or even bombings) when Rumsfeld was sacked and Gates was appointed to Secretary of Defense. Gates co-authored a report with Zbigniew Brzezinski on pulling out of Iraq and engaging Iran in negotiations. Brzezinski authored a critical book published in 1997 called THE GRAND CHESSBOARD that laid out the exact plans the Neocons ended up implementing four years later. Now he has turned his back on the Neocons completely, going so far as to say the Neocons might stage a false flag attack in Iranian waters to create the cause for invasion. Brzezinski is a major player amongst the global elite – registered Republican, former national security advisor to Jimmy Carter, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and co-founder (with David Rockafeller) of the Tri-Lateral Commission. Brzezinski is far more powerful than Dick Cheney – so much so he was able to get his man (Gates) to replace Rumsfeld. TO REPEAT – NO INVASION OF IRAN.
Look at what the Democrats are saying:
Edwards would open talks with Iran if elected
Ultimately this will be Hillary Clinton’s position too – and she will be our next president.
The main reason there will be no Iranian invasion is because they supply 4 million barrels of crude to the market everyday, and there is no where on the planet that this 4 million can be replaced if an invasion disrupts the oil market. Europe, Britain and China all get oil from Iran and can’t afford to have that source cut off – that is why Britain won’t back the U.S. on an Iran invasion and our only ally in that escapade is Israel.
That is the geo-strategic game right now and Cheney knows it, and knew it. Just because these guys have to package their rhetoric around the “war on terror” does not mean that is what their true motives are.
August 14
100,000 Iraqis is the low figure ...
Anthony Cordesman of the CIA connected Center for Strategic and International Studies was on the Charlie Rose show on August 13. He gave the establishment view for a change in US policy in Iraq, and admitted that 100,000 Iraqis have been killed. If CSIS admits that 100,000 people have been slaughtered by the Bush administration, the real figure is probably much, much higher. For example, a reputable British study about a year ago estimated that the true casualty count could be around 655,000. There are also perhaps three million refugees - both internally displaced and in exile in nearby Jordan and Syria. Perhaps the worst aspect is that the correct figures are not a concern to the perpetrators (Bush administration and military industrial complex) or the corporate media.
He also admitted that perhaps a third of the country has been severely impoverish by the war, although he did not discuss the issues of Peak Oil, the ratio of Iraqi oil to remaining world reserves, or the premediated nature of the US seizure of Iraqi oil fields (it was not incompetence nor a mistake). Some of his comments appeared to be part of the fall-back campaign to justify partitioning Iraq once Bush is replaced by Hillary. In a morally conscious society, the term "war crime" and Nuremberg tribunals would be discussed -- but a society that would allow such discussions in its main media forums would not destroy distant countries to seize their resources.
Karl Rove leaves the sinking ship of state
In honor of Rove's promise to leave the Federal Government, oilempire.us urges readers to watch the film Bush's Brain, a great documentary about the sleazy rise of Karl Rove.
This website's page about Rove is at www.oilempire.us/karlrove.html and the pages about disinformation (Rove's specialty) have been updated at www.oilempire.us/disinfo.html
August 7
feedback from a pilot
Foreknowledge and complicity is the whole story. The 4 planes did the physical damage. As a pilot I continue to be astonished that NORAD's failure to defend against 4 hijacked aircraft, and the massive intelligence prior to 911, aren't the sole foci. All this other crap makes my head spin. ....
I have never known one single pilot, let alone four, who has gone from primary flight training in a single engine piston driven fixed wing land based aircraft weighing 3000 lbs, to competent, let alone precise, navigation of a twin engine jet liner weighing 300,000 lbs, without ever flying the actual aircraft.
I can tell you absolutely that, had I ever wanted to fly heavy iron into a building, with all my training and experience, it would have taken at least a year of near daily formal, professional, training in certified simulators at certified facilities, and then "check rides" in the real aircraft. How did these guys control the planes? You don't just twist a few knobs and wait for impact. It takes extraordinary skill (or control from outside the aircraft) to pull this off. Even once. ....
The time of scheduling of the "Wargames," however, remains murky, and therefore problematic, at least to me. As to the "auto land" issue, I remain open. As a skilled pilot, I've been unable to explain the accuracy of the collisions with non-professional pilots in charge of navigation. It is far more difficult to direct an aircraft to a predetermined point, in three dimensions, than intuition and two dimensionally thinking might suggest. And, that especially includes navigators who have never actually flown the physical aircraft. Planes controlled by very skilled and experienced pilots who are transitioning from the most sophisticated simulator training remain under the command of instructors in the "right seat" because full on physical reality isn't replicable in the best simulators-- shit happens in reality. A direct hit could happen once, I guess, by sheer blind luck. But, three times? On the same day? And the Pentagon flight path? None of this is likely. So, I still maintain simply that a vastly more thorough NTSB type investigation would help us understand how three "miracle flights" could have been accomplished by three first time captains on the same day-- and without interception by air defense fighters. ....
I think that a straight forward investigation of pre-9.11 intelligence briefings, and a similar investigation of NORAD's failure to defend "North America" lead straight to the simple truth-- permissive foreknowledge. That should be adequate.
[emphases and links added]
August 6, 2007
62nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima -
the greatest simultaneous slaughter in human history
There's nothing "new" to add about the insanity of threatening nuclear war, decade after decade. Robert Jay Lifton, author of several books on the psychology of nuclear war and genocide, said keeping the memory of Hiroshima alive may keep us alive. In a time when the direct horrors of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have largely faded into history books, the planet still needs global nuclear disarmament and an economic paradigm shift toward sustainability so that war will no longer be profitable nor useful for elites.
The United States is a primary signatory to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, which states that the non-nuclear weapons countries will agree not to acquire atomic arsenals if the nuclear weapons states dismantle their nuclear weapons of mass destruction. So far, the only nuclear state that has disarmed its nukes was South Africa, which made the transition at the end of the apartheid era (so the incoming black majority government wouldn't be nuclear armed). South Africa developed nuclear weapons covertly (with Israeli assistance) and did not admit to possessing them until it was about to disarm them. Official nuclear states that are part of the NPT are the US, Russia, China, Britain and France -- the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (a nuclear club). Other nuclear states that are not part of the NPT treaty include Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea, and there are other countries that probably have material ready for these weapons but have not put in the last screw to complete them so they can claim they do not have WMDs (Japan, possibly a couple western European countries).
If the so-called Great Powers don't want the so-called Third World to develop nuclear weapons, then they need to lead by example and dismantle all nuclear weapons, since genocide and omnicide are war crimes considered crimes against peace by the Nuremberg Tribunal set up to prosecute Nazis. There is no cause that justifies threatening nuclear war and continued maintenance of the nuclear war preparation systems makes it more and more likely that the sins of Hiroshima will be repeated.
One way to reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation to additional countries is to recognize the reality that there is firm barrier between allegedly peaceful nuclear electricity and nuclear weapons. The only way to safely use nuclear energy is to capture sunlight from our solar system's giant nuclear power plant - which has a 93 million mile evacuation zone. Any government - or corporation - that has a nuclear reactor has the potential to be able to make nuclear weapons if they are motivated to do that. All reactors synthesize plutonium, which when chemically separated from the irradiated ("spent") nuclear fuel can be used to make weapons of mass destruction.
Renewable energy is a key part of the transition to a peaceful world beyond war and beyond fossil fuels.
Bush and Mugabe get more spying powers
The "Democratic" Congress has caved into King George and has provided him with legal authority to unleash the incredible powers of the National Security Agency to conduct surreal surveillance on the world's electronic communications. Several civil liberties organizations such as the ACLU, Electronic Freedom Foundation and others have detailed examinations of this latest shredding of the illusion of constitutional government in the United Stats.
At the same time as the Congress provided yet another example of its bottomless ability to rubber stamp the dictates of the military-industrial complex, Robert Mugabe, the dictator for life of Zimbabwe, also provided himself with enhanced "legal" powers to wiretap telephone calls and emails. Here's an article about that archived at "ZimbabweSituation.com" - a website chronicling extreme hyperinflation and other aspects of the collapse of the country of Zimbabe. It is similar to reading about the economic crisis in Germany in 1923 in real time on the internet. One could say that Zimbabwe is becoming a "post carbon" society, although through slow genocide and not voluntary simplicity or permaculture communities.
www.zimbabwesituation.com/aug4_2007.html
Zimbabwe passes law to monitor phones, mail
Reuters
Fri 3 Aug 2007, 14:57 GMT
By Nelson Banya
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has signed into law an act enabling state security agents to monitor phone lines, mail and the Internet, a government notice published on Friday said.
Officials have said the new law is designed to protect national security and prevent crime, but human rights groups fear it will muzzle free speech under a crackdown on dissent.
In the government notice, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Misheck Sibanda said Mugabe had agreed to the Interception of Communications Act, which was approved by both houses of Zimbabwe's parliament in June.
The law gives police and the departments of national security, defence intelligence and revenue powers to order the interception of communications and provides for the creation of a monitoring centre.
Postal, telecommunications and internet service providers will be required to ensure that their "systems are technically capable of supporting lawful interceptions at all times".
Critics have said the law is a government ploy to keep tabs on the opposition at a time when political tensions are mounting and Mugabe is deflecting growing criticism from Western powers.
Zimbabwe is suffering a severe economic crisis, marked by the world's highest inflation rate, 80 percent unemployment and persistent food, fuel and foreign currency shortages.
The southern African country, once viewed as a regional bread basket, cannot feed itself and faces severe shortages of basic consumer goods after a government-ordered price freeze in June that has emptied shop shelves.
Mugabe -- Zimbabwe's ruler since independence from Britain in 1980 -- denies controversial policies such as the seizure of white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks have ruined the economy, and blames Western sanctions for the economic turmoil.
www.zimbabwesituation.com/aug6_2007.html#Z2
New law allows Mugabe to eavesdrop
Financial Times
By Tony Hawkins in Harare
Published: August 5 2007 18:23 | Last updated: August 5 2007 18:23
A new law in Zimbabwe allowing the state to tap private phone conversations and monitor faxes and e-mails is unconstitutional and impracticable, said local lawyers, opposition politicians and internet service providers.
Lawyers said they are confident the government's Interception of Communications Act which became law last week can be challenged successfully in the courts.
The act empowers President Robert Mugabe's government to establish an information centre to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, open mail and intercept faxes and e-mails.
The government said it is justified by the need to combat domestic and international terrorism as well as "economic sabotage". The law merely puts its anti-terrorism legislation in line with international practice, it says.
The act requires ISPs to purchase and install equipment to spy on their clients' communications "when so required". ISPs must also ensure that they have the capacity to monitor communications full-time.
One ISP executive, who did not wish to be named, said: "All the equipment has to be imported, and we do not have foreign currency for that." Most ISPs would have to close if the authorities enforced the legislation, he said.
Media houses believe the government will use the law to curb critical reporting of the country's rapidly worsening social and economic crisis. The authorities are particularly anxious to clamp down on online news services that are read increasingly widely in Zimbabwe, government critics said.
David Coltart, secretary for legal affairs in the Mutambara wing of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said the law was unconstitutional and "an unjustifiable invasion of a person's rights". He said lack of foreign currency meant the government did not have the capacity to implement the legislation.
But Beatrice Mtetwa, president of the Zimbabwe Law Society, said she believed the government had been intercepting communications before the bill became law. "The act simply legalises what they have already been doing," she said.
In a separate development the state-owned Sunday Mail newspaper said on Sunday that Zimbabwe's wheat crop was likely to meet only 20 per cent of national requirements. The production target for 2007 is 338,000 tonnes but output is unlikely to exceed much more than 70,000 tonnes according to industry sources.
Farmers said production had been disrupted by last season's drought which hit the irrigation of the winter wheat crop as well as "constant power cuts" and vandalism of irrigation equipment.
Some farmers had been without power for four days at a time.
Zimbabwe is already desperately short of food, with the United Nations' World Food Programme warning that as many as 4m people - or about 40 per cent of the population - will need food aid in the first half of 2008.
www.zimbabwesituation.com/aug6_2007.html#Z15
Mugabe tightens repression with new snooping law
Zim Online
Monday 06 August 2007
By Justin Muponda
HARARE - President Robert Mugabe has signed a tough law allowing state agencies to pry into private mail and telephones, raising the stakes against opponents in a clear signal that the veteran leader is tightening repression as agitation grows against his rule that is largely blamed for plunging Zimbabwe into economic chaos, analysts said.
The government has defended the Interception of Communications Act saying it was in line with international trends to fight crime and ensure national security.
But analysts said Mugabe, who faces increasing pressure at home and abroad over his controversial economic and political programmes, was targeting local opponents he has labelled puppets who are working with his Western enemies to topple him.
"In essence Mugabe wants to emasculate all opposing views and by eavesdropping into people's mail and telephone conversations he believes he can deal with all democratic forces, but he will fail," said Lovemore Madhuku, the chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) civic group that is fighting for a new, democratic constitution for Zimbabwe.
"That is why our daily struggle is for a people-driven democratic constitution which will not allow anyone to dream up laws like these when faced with growing opposition. But we are not surprised because Mugabe's strategy is to do everything within his power to remain in power," Madhuku said.
The new law provides for the establishment of a centre to monitor and intercept communications and also gives unfettered powers to the chiefs of police, national security, defence intelligence and Zimbabwe Revenue Authority to order the interception of communications.
Postal, telecommunications and internet service providers are now required to ensure that their "systems are technically capable of supporting lawful interceptions at all times."
The ageing 83-year-old Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe for 27 years and plans to seek another five-year presidential mandate next year, which if he completes will see him hold power for more than 33 years.
Critics say Mugabe's politics, especially the seizure of white-owned land from whites to give to landless blacks is at the heart of the economic crisis, while deep-rooted official corruption has helped push the country toward the brink of collapse.
With a world high inflation rate of 4 530 percent last May, a jobless rate above 80 percent and crippling shortages of foreign currency, fuel and food, analysts said Mugabe was afraid of growing disenchantment against his rule.
"This is purely the actions of a dictatorship and a classic case of a police state," John Makumbe, University of Zimbabwe political science lecturer said.
"This government will go to great lengths to make sure it continues to weigh heavily on all the remaining dissenting voices," Makumbe, an arch critic of Mugabe's policies said.
Political analysts said the law would complement a controversial Constitutional amendment last year that allows the State to seize passports of suspected saboteurs or those who denigrate the government while abroad.
The analysts said the Interception of Communications Act was targeting mainly the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leaders, labour groups, human rights groups, non-governmental organisations suspected of working against the government and the private media.
"These are the groups that will be in the firing line," said Makumbe.
But the government denies the law will trample on the freedom of citizens arguing that it was a necessary instrument to fight crime. The government has in the past been accused of selectively applying laws in a bid to hamstring opponents.
"This (signing into law) marks an important chapter in our fight against crime especially technology-based crime. It is the norm globally and all law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear," Chris Mushohwe, the Transport and Communications Minister said yesterday.
Mugabe denies allegations of misrule and says the West has slapped sanctions against Harare as punishment for the land seizures.
The veteran leader also says the sanctions have hurt Zimbabwe's capacity to secure credit lines needed to help farmers but has also acknowledged that some of the beneficiaries of the land seizures have let the country down by failing to produce.
- ZimOnline
July 29
The 9/11 B.S. Movement
Here is a good article on the sheer lunacy of the disinformation campaigns, although marred by a misrepresentation of the book Crossing the Rubicon, falsely claiming it was primarily a book about Peak Oil that supposedly is not related to the 9/11 issue. Expecting a dissertation on the crimes of 9/11 to avoid a discussion of the motives behind complicity that allowed and assisted the attacks would be like a crime story that entirely discussed the mechanics of a murder without mentioning who benefitted and what their motivation was.
http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/2007/07/911-b-s-movement.html
TUESDAY, JULY 03, 2007
The 9/11 B. S. Movement
Blatant Insanity = Intentional DIS-information
We are drowning in DIS-information, that is deliberate gibberish passed off as a "9/11 conspiracy theory," which is intended to associate all of the 9/11 skeptics with "whack job" ideas about that day.
The rational public will then see the "whack job" ideas dutifully printed in the mainstream corporate press, and they will respond with revulsion to the concept of skepticism of the official 9/11 story. It's simple guilt by association psychology.
No one wants to associate with obvious morons. There is indeed method to the madness.As if we haven't suffered enough ad hominem attacks, we now must defend against deliberate campaigns that are on their face: MAD. And they're supposedly coming from us. ....
.... they have fired up the thrusters, and they are on some kind of disinformation rampage over at the dark side think tanks. It has become some kind of contest to pass along the most insane nonsense for the willing dupes out there to slurp up.
Scholars for Truthiness will hold hoax conference
July 28, 2007 at 09:11:23
Mounting Evidence of 9/11 Video Fakery: New proof of media duplicity, Scholars claim
by James Fetzer
www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_james_fe_070726_mounting_evidience_o.htm
New studies of media coverage of the attacks on the Twin Towers have raised serious questions about the integrity of television broadcasts over CNN, CBS and FOX NEWS, according to Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a non-partisan society of students, experts, and scholars. "I used to think that the very idea of faking 'live' broadcasts was at least faintly absurd," observed James Fetzer, the society's founder. "But it turns out that there is a delay between an event's actual occurrence and the broadcasting of footage of that same event, which creates the opportunity for image manipulation."
........
Kevin Barrett, the founder of MUJCA and a member of Scholars, reports he is troubled by these new studies. "I guess I'll have to take this possibility more seriously now," Barrett said. "In the past, I have assumed video fakery was far-fetched and that anyone who endorsed it was probably a crackpot! Now I'm not so sure."
........
Ace Baker mentions a group long convinced of video fakery, including Gerard Holmgren, Rosalee Grable, StillDiggin, Killtown, and others, who have been frustrated their arguments have not been taken seriously. "For that reason, I'm including this subject in a conference on 'The Science and the Politics of 9/11: What's Controversial, What's Not,' which will be held in Madison on August 3-5, 2007 ( 911scholars.org)," Fetzer said. "We are going do our best to get to the bottom of this. Truth about 9/11 is stranger than fiction."
---------------------------
The conference is here -
http://twilightpines.com//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=104&Itemid=70
July 24
a comment on The Oil Drum
www.theoildrum.com/node/2805#more
bmcnett on July 23, 2007 - 1:16am | Permalink | Subthread
Why doesn't everyone of average intelligence understand peak oil? I think I can explain that by channeling Matt Savinar.Understanding peak oil makes people lonely, anxious, and sad. It's such a bummer that most people intuitively grasp that it won't make them happy to understand it, so it just bounces off the mental shield that protects their ego.
These people may be right. If we assume that their lifestyle is as oil-dependent as ours, what do they really gain by dealing with the grief a few years early?
Even if they were to use the time to study farming, survival, and defense skills, it's likely that during our lifetimes, social skills are more likely to guarantee survival. Social skills involve making people feel good by not forcing them to raise their mental shields against you. Telling people about bummers like peak oil is about as antisocial as you can get, without physically hurting people.
It seems like the smartest thing to do is to comprehend peak oil, but not to tell anyone what you know unless there is a good reason?
Unfortunately, getting people to think about the social skills that will be needed for community cooperation after Peak Oil does require understanding about the end of cheap oil -- and this understanding will also be needed to mitigate the obvious threat of scapegoating once it becomes obvious that "the party's over." Finite fossil fuels are not easily blamed on greedy oil companies or on swarthy Arabs -- while there are many players exploiting the situation, duplicitous politics does not mean that the oil supplies are infinite.
July 23
Feedback from readers
I just can't get over your site. You have no idea the number of hours I have spent going through it and I want you to know how much it has helped me not only to understand what happened on 911 but also about how to intelligently go about discussing it instead of suggesting to friends to watch 911 Mysteries or Loose Change. You describe Loose Change as piece of propaganda worthy of K Rove and I couldn't agree more. Who suggested the content to these two guys, and I wonder to what extent they are patsies. Isn't there anyway you can get in touch with Charlie Sheen? You know of course he's considering narrating LC for the cinemas. The cinemas! Can you believe it?
I won't bother you with any more, just know that I am sharing your site address with friends, many of whom think I'm nuts, and one even suggest that I stay in France. That said, your excellent analysis and judgement has helped me enormously and I sincerely thank you for that.
I just wanted to write and tell you how much I appreciate your site. I stumbled across your site just recently and I find it to be a breath of fresh air. Over the weekend I began to get the feeling that there was a very well organized campaign of disinformation taking place and that slick websites (such as www.911myths.com) had been created with the sole intention of discrediting a US govnt connection with 911. And what with the no-planes theories and the no-boeings-struck-the-towers theories I was beginning to sense that there were forces at work within the "truth" movement to actually discredit it. Then I began to search for sites that discussed just this thesis and I landed in oilempire.
I see now that the physical evidence is a trap, not only because there is, in really, no evidence left except video footage and photos, but because it is too easily explainable and quite simply unprovable. When I see WTC 7 fall I see a controlled demolition, but that means nothing. Squibs mean nothing. Where nobody, it seems, is looking is the Stand Down and of course the timeline of warnings leading up to the attacks and the apparent complicity of the govt in allowing the highjackers to operate freely on US soil.
Thanks for your site, it's just wonderful.
note: www.cooperativeresearch.org and www.fromthewilderness.com have the best info on the "failure" of the air defenses on 9/11.
May 16 - a few more thoughts about Falwell
Several obituaries of Rev. Falwell noted that his father was dysfunctional (alcoholic) and was not enthusiastic about religion. Reading them raises the probability that since Jerry Falwell had an unhappy childhood he decided (probably not deliberately) to project that unhappiness on the whole world. This is a topic beyond the ability of this website to describe completely, but it seems obvious that breaking the cycle of psychological abuse and unhappy childhoods will be needed for our social evolution. While people bear responsibility for their adult actions, moving beyond these sorts of dysfunctions requires better understanding of the circumstances.
www.cockburnproject.net/songs&music/piiyh.html
musician Bruce Cockburn:
"This particular song was triggered not so much by the event itself, which was horrible but not that surprising if you’d spent time in the rest of the world, but by the aftermath of it. By the pronouncements of, I can never get them straight whether it was Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell but it hardly matters, sitting there on TV, and I watched this bugger say this, that the destruction of the WTC was really the fault of gays, lesbians, and the people who had abortions. My immediate response was fuck you you pieces of shit get off the TV. Then I got civilized you know, man that made me mad though, anyway, it struck me that that kind of thinking and my thinking in response to that thinking was really, there was almost no difference between that and what Osama bin Laden apparent thinks which is that everybody other than him is really sub-human and doesn’t deserve life. It’s all to easy for us to feel like that. This song is kind of a reflection on that and is addressed to whichever one of those boringly suited evangelists it was. It came out of a meditation. It’s called "Put it in your Heart". I guess it’s kind of addressed to me as well."
-- transcribed from the 29 June 2002, Kate Wolf Festival concert.
www.madcowprod.com/issue41.html
9/11: The Evangelical Christian Connection
VENICE, FL—April 8
by Daniel Hopsicker
world exclusive
www.commondreams.org/views06/0926-25.htm
Published on Tuesday, September 26, 2006 by the Chicago Sun-Times
Dilemma of Horns: Stop Calling People, or Nations, the Devil
by Jesse Jackson
Rev. Jerry Falwell, noted evangelical republican leader, speaking to several hundred pastors and religious activists at the Values Voter Summit Conference, said evangelicals would favor the devil over Hillary Clinton. "I hope Hillary is the candidate because nothing would energize my constituency like Hillary Clinton. If Lucifer [the devil] ran, he wouldn't."
May 15 - the "moral majority" was neither
For Immediate Release: May 15, 2007
Statement From American Atheists Concerning the Death of Rev. Jerry Falwell
ELLEN JOHNSON, President of American Atheists issued the following statement this afternoon regarding the death of televangelist Jerry Falwell.
“While we recognize and respect the grief of friends and relatives, it must be acknowledged in the wake of Rev. Falwell’s death that he and the organizations he founded, especially the so-called Moral Majority, were serious threats to our Constitution and, specifically, the separation of church and state.”
“Jerry Falwell was instrumental in galvanizing millions of American evangelicals into an intolerant, sectarian and authoritarian political movement. Gays, women, secularists, civil-libertarians and other groups who did not fit in to his plan to construct ‘One Nation Under God’ were stigmatized and attacked. Civil liberties were in jeopardy. Falwell and other religious right leaders advanced their political agenda in the name of Christianity, while demonizing their opponents.”
“Perhaps the most ignominious moment in Falwell’s career was his appearance with Rev. Pat Robertson on a television program which blamed the terrorist attacks of September 11 not on Islamic fundamentalist fanatics, but on a wide swath of the American people -- women (because of their support for abortion), gay and lesbian Americans, and individuals and organizations like American Atheists which labor for the separation of church and state.”
“We cannot and must not lionize Rev. Jerry Falwell because he is now dead. We expect that some politicians beholden to the religious right, who perhaps owe their political careers in part to Falwell, will praise him for his religiosity or avuncular style. The truth is, however, that the Rev. Jerry Falwell was a dangerous man who opposed and worked against many of the key values underpinning our secular American democracy.”
– Ellen Johnson, President
AMERICAN ATHEISTS
American Atheists is a nationwide movement which defends the civil rights of nonbelievers, works for the separation of church and state, and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.
========================
"When Fascism Comes To America It Will Be Wrapped In The Flag And Carrying A Cross"
-- Sinclair Lewis
anagrams:
MORAL MAJORITY
TRIM AMORAL JOY
MARRY, JAIL MOOT
May 13 - if you have a cynical perspective ...
www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-attack10may10,1,2436652.story?ctrack=3&cset=true
Bush orders contingency plans for attack on U.S.
From the Washington Post
May 10, 2007WASHINGTON — President Bush issued a formal national security directive Wednesday ordering agencies to prepare contingency plans for a surprise, "decapitating" attack on the federal government, and assigned responsibility for coordinating such plans to the White House.
Is this just worded strangely? Or a hint of the final act of the regime? Perhaps Cheney has been placed in charge of this program just as he was placed in charge of war game training exercises in the months before 9/11 (as documented in Crossing the Rubicon).
May 12 - three good article quotes
http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2007/05/disinformation-season-is-officially.html
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Disinformation season is officially open on the JFK and RFK assassinations
by Lisa Pease
As I predicted, the disinformation campaign about the RFK assassination is kicking into high gear. How did I know this would happen? Because the 40th anniversary of the case is right around the corner. June 5 of this year marks the 39th anniversary. The same thing is happening in the JFK case, as next year will mark the 45th anniversary of that tragic event as well. In other words, the disinformation needs to be put in place THIS year so that specials can repeat and amplify it NEXT year. That's how it works. But of course, you already understand that. That's why you read this blog.
I believe the CIA was the primary force behind the assassination of both Kennedy brothers. I believe they killed Bobby for two reasons: 1) he was even more progressive and peacemongering than his brother by that time, and 2) Bobby was quietly pursuing the trail of his brother's killers (and he too strongly suspected the CIA's hand. More on that in a later post.) ....
Disinformation season is open. Mud is being mixed into the water to make the truth that much harder to find. It will take strong, educated, and courageous minds to resist the propaganda intensive and to stand up for what we know to be true. As most people learned in high school, the desire to be popular often outweighs the desire to be truthful. But the only path worth traveling, on all kinds of material and spiritual levels, is the one that comes from choosing the latter over the former.
Jenna Orkin, World Trade Center Environmental Organization
http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/2007/05/epa-whistleblower-alleges-more-fraud.html
9/11 research is a rabbit-hole of Byzantine complexity full of snares and delusions and peopled with false friends, lunatics, earnest lost souls and a few heroes. It's not necessary to understand all the nuances of science and bureaucracy that allowed the government to get away with mass murder, blame it on swarthy foreigners (of whom many are eager accomplices) and use the incident as (in the words of the Cheney, Jeb Bush et al cabal, the Project for a New American Century) "a new Pearl Harbor." At this critical juncture in human history, it's only necessary to understand why they did it. The motive was Peak Oil, a disaster which will affect everyone on the planet, about which all must enlighten themselves and for which all must prepare.
www.opednews.com:80/articles/opedne_michael__070510_election_fraud_meets.htm
May 10, 2007 at 10:47:01
Election Fraud Meets 911
by Michael Green
The sane evidence-based 911 activists know that we have been infiltrated and sabotaged by the USG intelligence community that manages as part of its handiwork to fund and promote the genuine loons and fools who are naturally drawn to such repugnant ideas as that the major acts of domestic terror are of government/military/intelligence origins, and who have bizarre if not nutty theories of how these events are staged, and are thus easily discredited. The natural mix of loons is then seasoned with moles. We have thus been blessed by support from such champions of truth as Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D., the former Chief Economist for the Department of Labor under Bush 43, whose official position is that 911 is an "inside job" as evidenced by his deranged assertion that no plane hit either the Pentagon or either of the Twin Towers, the damage to which were caused respectively by a missile and internal explosives. There is also a growingly popular "Patriots Question 911" http://patriotsquestion911.com/ full of high ranking former military officials who claim to doubt the official story based on their patently false claim that no Boeing hit the Pentagon. Since the Boeing crash, wreckage and carnage were witnessed by Pentagon personnel, basing objections to the official 911 story on the claim that no Boeing hit the Pentagon is calculated to antagonize all the innocent military against the 911 movement as nutcakes. We are similarly inundated with "scientists" who expose 911 as an inside job basing their bizarre claims that the Towers were destroyed by space-based energy beams, or destroyed by small nuclear bombs. The sane branch of the 911 movement is also blessed by comrades-in-arms who with one hand denounce 911 as an inside job and with the other deny the Holocaust. With friends like this, who needs (more!) enemies?
May 9 -- The Greatest Prize (is not olive oil)
There has been some media focus recently on claims that Iraq may have more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. Generally accepted estimates that are widely used state that Iraq has about 100 billion barrels and Saudi Arabia about 250 billion barrels. The new claims suggest that since there hasn't been exploration in Iraq since before the 1980 start of the Iran-Iraq war (instigated by Saddam Hussein with the United States egging him on) there could be a lot more oil than previously acknowledged.
Like nearly all stories about the size of oil reserves, this one is impossible to verify. It is possible than quiet teams of US geologists have been exploring Iraq while the world's focus has been on the imposed conflict shattering Iraqi society. But peer review of any claims of the size of reserves does not exist in most of the world, and even if Iraq had three times as much oil as commonly thought that would merely change the slope of the downward trend after Peak Oil.
In the 1980s, a quota contest among OPEC countries led to nearly all of them vastly increasing their "proven reserves," since the size of reserves determined how much oil each member of the cartel was allowed to extract (on a daily basis). The global economy and government budgets are not powered by size of a reserve (a measure of potential energy), but the flow rate through pipeline, tanker ships, refineries and other distribution systems. As far as is publicly known, there was not a massive geological exploration in the Persian Gulf area that led to these countries all suddenly finding huge new supplies of petroleum -- the peak of those discoveries were in the 1940s and 1950s, although some were known in the early 1900s. In other words, it is likely the "reserve increases" of the 1980s were illusions concocted for political and economic reasons, not based on scientific explorations, and the supergiant fields of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other OPEC nations are in decline from over a half century of constant extraction.
Peak Energy blog has an interesting commentary that is worth reading:
http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2005/08/greatest-prize-of-all.html
The Greatest Prize Of All ?
If the high end estimates are correct, then it means Iraq has the largest remaining reserves of oil - and these reserves (due to Iraq's isolation in the 1990's and due to insurgent activities in recent years) are being depleted at a much slower rate (albeit one that is hard to get a firm grip on) than those of Saudi Arabia. ...
If we assign an average value of US$100 a barrel to this oil, you could say that this treasure is worth around $30 trillion dollars - which makes the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent by the US occupying the country a little more understandable. And of course, as we follow the path down Hubbert's Peak the strategic value of this oil is immense.
Even if the low estimates of Iraqi oil reserves are correct, that would still be $10 trillion dollars at $100 per barrel. However, if the reserves have been exaggerated, then the remaining supplies will increase in value even faster, and their control will become even more strategic in the years to come. This is why Hillary Clinton is unlikely to relinguish control over Iraq when she is installed as President -- although for tactical reasons the Democrats would prefer an Iraqi puppet who can be marketed as independent even while the empire calls the shots on the key issue (oil). And the Democrats are likely to play the role of "good cop" once Bush and Cheney are out of the White House, promoting the partition of Iraq "to protect the Iraqi people from civil war," which of course has been the plan all along. The empire is not interested in controlling all of the Middle East, just the parts that have the oil along with their strategic allies (Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.).
An article this week on Tom Dispatch - also archived at TruthOut - is a good summary of some of the Iraqi oil issues, but it (as usual) fails to connect the dots between Cheney's knowledge of Peak Oil (before the Florida vote fraud) with the evidence that 9/11 was allowed to happen in order to grab the oil ... this is the proverbial "missing link" that most critics of the Bush regime are unwilling to look at, even if many of them privately think there is some truth to this argument.
www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050707D.shtml
The Struggle Over Iraqi Oil: Eyes Eternally on the Prize
By Michael Schwartz
TomDispatch.com
Sunday 06 May 2007
Jenna Orkin of the World Trade Center Environmental Organization and moderator of the Mike Ruppert / From the Wilderness blog, has a great article on May 8 about the environmental disaster of 9/11 and how it could be an opportunity to avert a much worse crisis scenario of Peak Oil. While the reality of Peak Oil is inescapable, there are many ways that our civilization could cope with the end of cheap oil, some of them relatively harmonious, and some of them scary beyond imagination.
9/11 research is a rabbit-hole of Byzantine complexity full of snares and delusions and peopled with false friends, lunatics, earnest lost souls and a few heroes. It's not necessary to understand all the nuances of science and bureaucracy that allowed the government to get away with mass murder, blame it on swarthy foreigners (of whom many are eager accomplices) and use the incident as (in the words of the Cheney, Jeb Bush et al cabal, the Project for a New American Century) "a new Pearl Harbor." At this critical juncture in human history, it's only necessary to understand why they did it. The motive was Peak Oil, a disaster which will affect everyone on the planet, about which all must enlighten themselves and for which all must prepare. ....
There is no magic bullet that will allow business to continue as usual. What is needed is an overhaul of the way money works, a system which currently requires infinite growth in a world whose resources are painfully finite. A steady-state economy that does not depend on interest or globalization but on locally grown food is the only way out.
The general public now realizes that it was disastrously naive to trust the government and the mainstream press after 9/11. They realize it was naive to trust them in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Perhaps this history has been repeated often and tragically enough that it does not need to play out again in the peak oil disaster but instead will be redeemed.
-- Jenna Orkin, World Trade Center Environmental Organization
http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/2007/05/epa-whistleblower-alleges-more-fraud.html
May 7
spiritual angst and lies:
May
The Farce Be With You
www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/03/news/SOU-Padilla-Terror-Charges.php?page=1
Many potential Padilla jurors unsure of 9/11 attacks blame
The Associated Press
Published: May 3, 2007
MIAMI: A significant number of potential jurors in the terrorism case against alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla say they are not sure who is responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, many because they do not trust the news media or U.S. government pronouncements.
An excellent commentary on this bizarre crack in the official view of carefully constructed reality -- even by those who do their best to ignore the "news" and are largely uninformed of the details of daily events -- is at
This post has some excellent comments from visitors.
sparkylab Says:
But give me a choice of staring into the abyss or being mentally asleep down at the mall…..the abyss it is.
Many people have articulated more eloquently than I, but I really do not fear the hardships that are coming - I fear the reaction to them by the rest of the population.slomo Says:
I wax and wane in paranoia, but basically I share with you the view that our world is far more controlled and manipulated than is commonly recognized, and that a handful of probably competing but powerful interests are calling all the shots.
However, the ultimate problem is spiritual: given that our awareness and acknowledgment of “intelligences” that are larger than our individual human selves has been severely and intentionally restricted, our collective focus has become concentrated on a gross form of materialism that only serves systems of domination. If we ever wish to escape collectively, we need to move beyond the will to dominate. And there is no individual escape: we are all saved or all damned.
To the extent that religiosity is borne of hysteria and in service to power, I agree with you. But not all spirituality is so.
Rigorous Intuition is blogging again -- one of the first posts includes this insight:
http://rigint.blogspot.com/2007/05/we-have-ourselves-situation.html
Thursday, May 03, 2007
We have ourselves a situation
... The occasional slaughter and ineffectual response of authorities presents portraits of order breaking itself down, and creates the impression We're on our own. Such episodes provoke the purchase and the secreting of firearms by citizens, and not their removal by the state, however scary Dennis Kucinich may seem. So perhaps, as in New Orleans, the point is not a crackdown, but a crack-up.
Why? America is an unsustainable venture, but its ruling class means to survive well beyond the exhaustion of its public wealth, oil and water. This may now depend upon how well it induces and exploits the misery of its people, even as it extricates itself from the expectations of its alleviation.
As always, the key question facing the future of humanity is how the elites - and the other six plus billion - deal with the end of growth as we pass the Peak Oil and Peak Everything Else.
River Bend Blog - written by an anonymous woman in Baghdad - reports that she and her family are finally fleeing Iraq for an unknown future (but hopefully a safer one). It is a particularly painful read, but an important one for those who are willing to understand the human tragedy created in the desire to destroy Iraq so that the Oil Empire can better control the petroleum. For those who have read stories of the Nazi Holocaust or other, similar, extreme events and thought it a purely historical curiosity, the stories of the nearly four million refugees (and perhaps a million deaths) from the destruction of Iraq make past stories of genocide seem like today's news.
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Great Wall of Segregation...
… Which is the wall the current Iraqi government is building (with the support and guidance of the Americans). It's a wall that is intended to separate and isolate what is now considered the largest 'Sunni' area in Baghdad- let no one say the Americans are not building anything. According to plans the Iraqi puppets and Americans cooked up, it will 'protect' A'adhamiya, a residential/mercantile area that the current Iraqi government and their death squads couldn't empty of Sunnis.
The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, "Oh look- we're just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here- it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!" And yet, it will also be difficult to get out.
The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn't enough, apparently- Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It's time for America to physically divide and conquer- like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of "Shia areas" and Shia out of "Sunni areas". ....Which memories are dispensable? We, like many Iraqis, are not the classic refugees- the ones with only the clothes on their backs and no choice. We are choosing to leave because the other option is simply a continuation of what has been one long nightmare- stay and wait and try to survive.
On the one hand, I know that leaving the country and starting a new life somewhere else- as yet unknown- is such a huge thing that it should dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is that it’s the trivial that seems to occupy our lives. We discuss whether to take photo albums or leave them behind. Can I bring along a stuffed animal I've had since the age of four? Is there room for E.'s guitar? What clothes do we take? Summer clothes? The winter clothes too? What about my books? What about the CDs, the baby pictures?
The problem is that we don't even know if we'll ever see this stuff again. We don't know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends… And to what?
It's difficult to decide which is more frightening - car bombs and militias, or having to leave everything you know and love, to some unspecified place for a future where nothing is certain.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18505030/site/newsweek
The Elephant in the Room
George W. Bush has the lowest presidential approval rating in a generation, and the leading Dems beat every major ’08 Republican. Coincidence?By Marcus Mabry
Newsweek
May 5, 2007 - It’s hard to say which is worse news for Republicans: that George W. Bush now has the worst approval rating of an American president in a generation, or that he seems to be dragging every ’08 Republican presidential candidate down with him. But According to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, the public’s approval of Bush has sunk to 28 percent, an all-time low for this president in our poll, and a point lower than Gallup recorded for his father at Bush Sr.’s nadir. The last president to be this unpopular was Jimmy Carter who also scored a 28 percent approval in 1979. This remarkably low rating seems to be casting a dark shadow over the GOP’s chances for victory in ’08. The NEWSWEEK Poll finds each of the leading Democratic contenders beating the Republican frontrunners in head-to-head matchups.
This unpopularity makes it even more bizarre that the Democrats are ignoring the grassroots pressure - and Constitutional obligation - to impeach Bush and Cheney for their crimes of state.
Dennis Kucinich's resolution to impeach Cheney now has three times as many sponsors -- it had one when it was introduced (Kucinich) and two more Representatives have joined in the past week. Rep. Murtha (D-PA) is not a co-sponsor but he mentioned the word impeachment when talking about various means that Congress has to pressure Bush about the war (a not so subtle hint).
http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/2007/04/french-knew-al-qaeda-planned-hijacking.html
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Rice Farmer said...
In the debate on why the US is following its present course of action
in the Middle East, there is a faction which claims that it's all for
Israel and has nothing to do with oil. What I've noticed is, that faction
has surprisingly little knowledge of energy issues. They explain away
high gas prices as mere gouging by oil companies, but apparently have
no real knowledge of energy realities. We must give credit where credit
is due: Although the neocons are evil, it's clear that they are far
more energy-savvy than their critics.
April 27
Bill Moyers's show "Buying the War" aired this week on PBS (the Petroleum Broadcasting System). It was a good effort to document that the Bush / Cheney administration lied to trick the country to support the War on Iraq. However, the 90 minute show did not once mention the word OIL. Obviously, Moyers and PBS don't think that oil had anything to do with the MOTIVE to attack Iraq and have no idea why the war is underway.
Perhaps Mr. Moyers will run a show in the twilight of his television career to expose the motivations of his boss (Lyndon Johnson) in appointing the Warren Commission to cover up the coup d'etat against President Kennedy. Even MoveOn's film "Uncovered" a few years ago managed to use the word once during its documentary supposedly exposing the full truth behind the Iraq War.
Connecting the Dots between Peak Oil and Iraq remains strictly forbidden in the media.
www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/transcript1.html
BILL MOYERS: BUYING THE WAR, 2007.04.25
Transcript:
APRIL 25, 2007: "Buying the War"
The Hillary Clinton page has been updated with a 1993 article from the Detroit Metro Times about the LaFarge cement company. Hillary was on the board of LaFarge when it switched from burning natural gas to burning hazardous wastes in the mid-1980s.
www.regressiveantidote.net/Articles/Schadenfreude_Is_My_Middle_Name.html
"Schadenfreude is my Middle Name" - another excellent essay from "Regressive
Antidote"
April 26 - 21st anniversary of Chernobyl disaster
from the Book of Revelations (King James version)
And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
"Chernobyl" means "wormwood"
It is a good time to reflect on the insanity of proposals to revive nuclear power under the guise of "solving climate change." Nuclear power requires enormous fossil fuel inputs to mine, refine, enrich, and transport the uranium fuel. (The uranium enrichment facilities in Paducah, Kentucky and Portsmouth, Ohio consume tremendous amounts of coal generated electricity.) The construction of nuclear reactors uses surreal amounts of non-renewable energy and other non-renewable resources. Storing the irradiated fuel rods essentially forever will probably take more energy than the reactors will "generate" during their lifetimes, if civilization lasts long enough to babysit the wastes until they slowly become harmless.
March 9
good comment by James Howard Kunstler (as usual)
http://kunstler.com/mags_diary20.html
February 19, 2007
The Big Chill
One of the farmers who organized the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture's annual meeting put it nicely: "The ethanol craze means that we're going to burn up the Midwest's last six inches of topsoil in our gas-tanks.
For the moment, I blame the Democrats (and I am a registered Democrat). One shouldn't expect rational thinking from the current generation of Republicans. The sheer fact that so many of them have sold their allegiance to the Born Again dominionist fold, where magical thinking rules, means that they are incapable of evaluating the energy predicament -- in fact, if they are sincere in their apocalyptic dogma, then many of them would probably welcome a global struggle over oil, with all the military mischief it would entail in the vicinity of the Holy Land.
No, I blame the Democrats. The Democrats are supposed to represent the reality-based faction of the general public. They should be able to do the math without getting sidetracked by Jesus-haunted visions of WalMart running on biodiesel. They should be willing to tell the public the hard truth before it's absolutely too late to make some collective decisions that would lessen the hardship in the circumstances we face -- like allocating some federal funds to passenger rail, or reforming codes, incentives, and subsidies that favor suburban sprawl, or replacing the FICA taxes with a gasoline tax (as proposed by oil man Jeffrey Brown of Dallas), or by aggressively promoting local agriculture.
Most of the university professors in the USA are liberals or progressives or Democrats, or at least not Republicans trafficking in magic. University professors in the so-called "hard sciences," especially, have to lead reality-based lives which encompass such ideas as cause and effect and conclusions derived from facts. They ought to know that we are not going to run the interstate highways on any combination of "alternative" fuels. Why are they not challenging the politicians who would pander to the public's delusions?
How about the policy wonks in the progressive foundations? Why is Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute still trying to sell the snake oil of a "hyper-car," when its chief effect is to reinforce the mistaken idea that we can continue to be a car-dependent society?
March 5
Tikkun, a liberal Jewish magazine, accidentally promotes Holocaust Deniers
by publishing David Ray Griffin's mix of truth and lies about 9/11
permanent link: www.oilempire.us/griffin.html
sent to Tikkun magazine:
To the editor:
Tikkun's publication of David Ray Griffin's article about 9/11 -- www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0703/frontpage/empire911 -- is both courageous and detrimental. It is courageous because there is a lot of good evidence for Cheney/Bush complicity. Close US allies, including France, Germany, Israel, Jordan, Russia and others provided specific warnings that 9/11 was imminent. At least five FBI investigations were undermined just before the attacks. During 9/11, numerous war game exercises seem to have confused the air defenses or moved fighter planes too far away to intercept the hijacked planes. And the National Reconnaissance Office (which operates spy satellites) was conducting a "plane into building" exercise at the same time as actual events. In short, 9/11 was allowed to happen and probably was provided technical assistance to make sure that it happened -- since the "new Pearl Harbor" was needed to provide the excuse to seize the Middle East oil fields as we pass the global peak of petroleum production. That is what the "Cheney energy plan" is really about.
However, David Griffin's article is in desperate need of a fact checker, since not all claims of complicity are true. The most important disinformation is the false claim that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, a piece of outrageous nonsense first concocted by Donald Rumsfeld in a October 12, 2001 interview in Parade magazine. Every claim for this hoax has been debunked for years, even by many 9/11 truth activists. www.oilempire.us/pentagon-truth.html has a list of some of them, and it is intellectually dishonest for Griffin to pretend that this fact checking has not happened. Hundreds of people saw the plane crash and the plane parts afterwards. No one saw a missile. The width of the damage to the Pentagon was the width of the plane. Perhaps he could travel on Interstate 395 and Washington Boulevard (which pass near the Pentagon) the next time he is in Washington, D.C. and he might understand how lots of commuters saw Flight 77 crash into the nearly empty, recently reinforced and strengthened sector of the Pentagon. Why it was not intercepted (even after the second tower was hit) and how it was steered into the nearly empty part of the Pentagon are the real issues.
Griffin's article even promotes offensive attacks on the 9/11 family members by claiming that the phone calls from the doomed passengers were somehow all faked. While it's true that voice morphing software does exist, the complexity that would be required to stage this for dozens of randomly selected passengers shows the value of Occam's Razor. The source for this alleged claim is a Canadian who supposedly couldn't get a good cell phone signal from a plane somewhere in Canada -- as if that had any relevance to the final moments of the planes as they neared their targets. Additionally, many if not most of the calls were made on Airphones, which even the most extreme disinformation promoters on 9/11 don't deny actually function quite well in planes.
Worse, Griffin's article relied on several neo-Nazi Holocaust denial
propagandists as alleged reliable sources -- which is especially outrageous
to insert into a publication like Tikkun. The American Free Press, which
Griffin considers credible, is a white supremacist publication that also
publishes "The Barnes Review," the largest Holocaust denial
publication in the country. (Barnes Review sells lots of titles claiming
the Holocaust did not happen and praised Hitler as worthy of the Nobel
Peace Prize!). Eric Hufschmid, also cited as a credible source, proudly
boasts on his website that he doesn't believe the Holocaust happened,
either. Rense.com, also given publicity in Griffin's footnotes, promotes
the cause of Holocaust denial along with kooky stories of the paranormal
that are entertaining to some but not appropriate for a serious examination
of government malfeasance.
www.oilempire.us/holocaust-denial.html
and www.oilempire.us/afp.html provide details.
However, the most damning problem of relying on neo-Nazis for "facts" is not the fact that they are racists lying about the Holocaust -- but they are also lying about the topic of 9/11 complicity. Yes, there's solid evidence for foreknowledge and paralysis of the air defenses via the wargames -- but the no plane claims are as fake as the racist canards about Auschwitz supposedly not being a death camp (a claim found at the websites of Hufschmid, American Free Press and Rense.com).
Nearly three years ago, oilempire.us co-sponsored the second public presentation that David Griffin made on 9/11 complicity issues. It is very disappointing to see him embrace Holocaust deniers and other liars promoting "no planes." Meanwhile, the media attack on the 9/11 truth movement focuses only on the "no plane" hoaxes and demolition theories -- not the well documented evidence of suppressed warnings and military wargames on 9/11 simulating actual events. It would be nice to see Mr. Griffin learn from these mistakes, since promoting a mix of real and false claims makes it difficult for most people to differentiate the good from the bad.
Skeptical Tikkun readers who want to read about the best evidence for 9/11 complicity while steering clear of the disinformation should start with the Complete 9/11 Timeline published by the Center for Cooperative Research at www.cooperativeresearch.org It doesn't have the most fanciful claims, but it does have solid evidence documented by mainstream media sources and official testimony.
from David Ray Griffin's article at
www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0703/frontpage/empire911
[24] A photograph taken by Terry Schmidt can be seen on page 63 of Eric Hufschmid’s Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack (Goleta, Calif.: Endpoint Software, 2002). According to Schmidt, this photo was taken between 3:09 and 3:16 PM, hence only a little over 2 hours before Building 7 collapsed. It shows that on the north side of the building, fires were visible only on floors 7 and 12. Therefore, if there were more fires on the south side, as some witnesses have claimed, they were not big enough to be seen from the north side.
[25] Quoted in Christopher Bollyn, “New Seismic Data Refutes Official Explanation,” American Free Press, Updated April 12, 2004. For several more examples, see the subsection labeled “Molten Steel” in my chapter, “The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account Cannot Be True,” in Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11, or the discussion of molten metal in Chap. 3 of Debunking 9/11 Debunking.
[56] See Ted Twietmeyer, “Judicial Watch Caught Pulling a 180 on Pentagon Footage,” Rense.com, May 21, 2006
[69] See Michel Chossudovsky, “More Holes in the Official Story: The 9/11 Cell Phone Calls,” Aug. 10, 2004) and A. K. Dewdney, “The Cellphone and Airfone Calls from Flight UA93,” Physics 911. However, the technology of “voice morphing,” through which the calls could have been faked, was sufficiently developed at the time, as explained in a 1999 article by William Arkin (“When Seeing and Hearing Isn’t Believing,” Washington Post, Feb. 1, 1999). I discuss this issue at considerable length in Debunking 9/11 Debunking.
March 3
Weird
News
An irrational population is easily controlled - the reason education is underfunded.
Man Tries to Cash $50K Check From God
Mar 1, 6:14 AM (ET)
HOBART, Ind. (AP) - Kevin Russell found out it's not easy trying to cash a check from God. The 21-year-old man was arrested Monday after he tried to cash a check for $50,000 at the Chase Bank in Hobart that was signed "King Savior, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Servant," Hobart police Detective Jeff White said.
Russell was charged with one count attempted check fraud and one count intimidation, both felonies, and one count resisting law enforcement, a misdemeanor. He could face prison time.
Police were called to the bank after Russell tried to cash the check, which was written on an invalid Bank One check with no imprint, White said. Russell had several other checks with him that were signed the same way but made out in different dollar amounts, including one for $100,000.
Russell struggled with police as they tried to detain him, White said, and then threatened police as they transported him to the Hobart Police Department.
"I've heard about God giving out eternal life, but this is the first time I've heard of him giving out cash," White said.
No court date has been set for Russell. He was being held Wednesday at the Lake County Jail on a $1,000 bond.
February 19
finally - a new 9/11 truth website that is truthful
TruthMove.org is a new 9/11 "truth" website that is the best effort in many moons. TruthMove covers the best evidence and steers clear of the "no plane" hoax(es). Even better, it puts the 9/11 issues in a broader context of empire, ecological crisis, political breakdown (vote fraud) and even has insights on psychology that are at the root of the problems.
www.truthmove.org/911voices/
nice slideshow introduction to key concerns and credible skeptics of the official storywww.truthmove.org/content/9-11-truth/
introduction to 9/11 pageswww.truthmove.org/content/disinformation/
Disinformation - Infiltration, Misinformation, Disruption
No one is likely to be perfect on these sorts of controversial issues (including this website!), but truthmove is making sincere efforts and deserves positive publicity.
Another 9/11 truth website has published an interesting chart showing the latest trends in 9/11 disinformation -- see it at http://crisisinamerica.org/media/disinformation.htm
A year after 9/11, it was easy to recommend to interested people that they "should look on the internet" for the truth (some of it) about the attacks. Now, the hyper proliferation of disinformation websites (and sloppy efforts that are sincere but do not check facts) suggest that people should NOT look on the internet for the truth, at least not on most of the sites screaming "truth."
Perhaps Stephen Colbert could extend his "truthiness" satires to much of what has happened to the alleged "truth" movement.
There is no precise way to determine the accuracy and fact checking abilities and sincerity of writers of websites (or books and movies). It can be hard to know the motivations of people that one knows well - and guessing the intentions of people you do not know based on an article they wrote can be difficult if not impossible. Perhaps the best method to screen out the nonsense is to see if an author or activist on 9/11 "truth" admits that yes, Flight 77 really did hit the Pentagon. The false claim that the plane crash was faked has unfortunately snared a lot of sincere people (it was a very well crafted hoax that probably required foreknowledge of the attack - to seize the video surveillance data). But the sincere people who still believe this one are still wrong, even if their intentions are pure -- and the media is shrewd enough to focus on their false claims, not the evidence that withstands straw men attacks.
February 12, 2007
Olduvai Theory updated
Richard Duncan's "Olduvai Theory" postulated that modern industrial civilization cannot outlast the energy resources it consumes, and consequently the aftermath of Peak Oil and other "peak resources" crisis will inevitably lead to complete collapse. The original version of "Olduvai" is
The Peak of World Oil Production and the Road to the Olduvai Gorge,
Richard C. Duncan, Ph.D.
www.energycrisis.org/duncan/olduvai2000.htm
An updated version of "Olduvai" has just been posted. A copy is at
www.warsocialism.com/duncan_tscq_07.pdf
The Olduvai Theory: Terminal Decline Imminent
Richard C. Duncan, PhD
If there is a way to keep the ecological and resource crises from devolving into "Olduvai," converting the global war machines toward serious efforts for genuine sustainability would be an important prerequisite, although this would have been much easier decades ago.
February 8, 2007
Dancing Israelis story revived by Counterpunch & Democracy Now!
Counterpunch magazine, which has been hostile to any questioning of the 9/11 official story, dedicated their entire current issue (VOL. 14, NO. 3/4) to the "Dancing Israelis" 9/11 side show.
Most 9/11 skeptics are probably very aware that several Israeli agents were arrested in New Jersey, directly across from the WTC when 9/11 happened. They were laughing and cheering each other about the catastrophe, and filming the events. Nearby people were so offended by their behavior that the police were called and the Israelis were arrested. They were deported to Israel soon after, and there has not been much media followup to this story.
Counterpunch editor Alexander Cockburn, the article's author (Christopher Ketcham), and another author about this were interviewed today on Democracy Now!
www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/08/1610254
Thursday, February 8th, 2007
Cheering Movers and Art Student Spies: Was Israel Tracking the Hijackers Before the 9/11 Attacks?A new article in the newsletter Counterpunch examines unresolved questions over whether Israeli agents were tracking the 9/11 hijackers before September 11th. ABC’s 20/20, The Forward, and Salon.com have all covered the story. But where’s the follow up? We speak to the author of the article, Christopher Ketcham; Counterpunch editor Alexander Cockburn, and Marc Perelman, the Forward reporter who did one of the first reports on the story in 2002.
The article is interesting (it's in the print version of Counterpunch, not on their website, apparently). However, it is not anything new to most students of the 9/11 coverups. It does raise several questions that remain unaswered.
Why is Counterpunch suddenly rehashing the "Israeli foreknowledge" angle to 9/11 after they have virulently attacked any questioning of 9/11? This is an interesting aspect of the case, but it's not the central issue (hint: the Israelis don't run NORAD).
Counterpunch has received a lot of criticism for their attacks on 9/11 skeptics - and for their recent focus on the misleading "physical evidence" quagmire while ignoring the core issues of how it was allowed to happen and the wargames and other technical assistance to enable it.
Democracy Now! has encountered similar criticism for their support for the official story, their false debate between Hearst Corporation (Popular Mechanics) and the Loose Change film (which uses fake evidence to promote a real conclusion), and their probable reward for the fake debate from Hearst (which is now syndicating DN's new newspaper column).
Perhaps Counterpunch and Democracy Now! feel stung by the gatekeeper charges, and republishing the "Dancing Israelis" story is a step toward doing more investigation of 9/11. The article does give Counterpunch more "street credibility" since they now have focused on 9/11 truth without any snide attacks on the questioners. The fact that the story is largely old news makes it a safe thing to refocus on.
A reader writes to suggest a different explanation:
This will mainly ramp up the anti-semites and their legions of websites with "told you so" and create a more difficult terrain to separate them out from simply the real role of Israel. This essentially gives them something real to wave at everyone to continue their charade of relevance.
It seems likely that the "Dancing Israelis" filming 9/11 had intended to be arrested in order to draw attention to themselves. Covert operatives who are trying to stay covert generally do not attract the notice of passers-by.
If Counterpunch and Democracy Now! really want to focus on credible evidence on 9/11, they could examine the NORAD war games and the NRO / CIA plane-into-building exercise, among other topics. Focusing solely on Israeli foreknowledge misses the story.
A side note: perhaps the most credible article on Israeli involvement in 9/11 comes from Wayne Madsen - "Waking Up From Our Global Nightmare."
9/11 Press for Truth to be aired on LINK TV
Special: Truth, Lies and the Press - Part 1
www.linktv.org/programming/programDescription.php4?code=truth1
9/11: Press for Truth
On Satellite DIRECTV
Link TV is available on Channel 375 on DIRECTV satellite TV service. Call
800-531-5000 for subscription and installation assistance in your area.
Dish Network
Link TV is available on Channel 9410 on DISH® Network satellite TV
service. Call 800-333-3474 for subscription and installation assistance
in your area.
Length: 02:00
Type of program: Documentary
Saturday, Feb 10th 05:00 pm
Saturday, Feb 10th 11:00 pm
Sunday, Feb 11th 05:00 am
Sunday, Feb 11th 11:00 am
Friday, Feb 16th 08:00 pm
Saturday, Feb 17th 02:00 am
Saturday, Feb 17th 08:00 am
Saturday, Feb 17th 02:00 pm
Thursday, Feb 22nd 05:00 pm
Saturday, Mar 10th 11:00 pm
Part 1 of this Link TV special hosted by Robert Scheer features 9/11 Press for Truth, a powerful documentary about a small group of grieving families who waged a tenacious battle against those who sought to bury the truth about 9/11. Six of them for the first time the powerful story of how they took on the greatest powers in Washington — and won! — compelling an investigation, only to subsequently watch the 9/11 Commission fail in answering most of their questions.
Adapting Paul Thompson’s Complete 9/11 Timeline (published by HarperCollins as "The Terror Timeline"), the filmmakers collaborated with documentary veterans Globalvision ("WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception," "Beyond JFK") to stitch together rare overlooked news clips, buried stories, and government press conferences, revealing a pattern of official lies, deception and spin. As a result, a very different picture of 9/11 emerges, one that raises new and more pressing questions.
LEARN MORE:
To view the trailer or purchase the DVD, visit 9/11
Press for Truth homepage.
Also see Link TV's Special: Truth,
Lies and the Press - Part 2.
On Cable Link TV is now available on cable in the following areas:
Greater Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland San Francisco
eaTV - Channel 27 on weekends (midnight on Friday until Monday at 7 a.m.)
Northern California*
KRCB - Digital Cable Channel 22, Monday through Friday from 1 a.m. to
5 a.m.
* Available in Marin, Napa, San Francisco, Oakland and Contra Costa county.
If you are a cable television station and would like to carry Link TV, please download this form and follow instructions therein.
February 4, 2007
Alternet
finally runs a decent article about 9/11
alternet.org/story/45726/
9/11: The Case Isn't Closed
By Sander Hicks, AlterNet. Posted February 2, 2007.
Sander Hicks presents some of the basic information about how 9/11 was allowed to happen. It is interesting that Alternet finally agreed to run a story like this considering their hostility and censorship of these issues for years. (Don Hazen of Alternet told this author in October 2006 at Bioneers that they had a policy against covering Mike Ruppert's revelations on 9/11.) This article is good, but it does not discuss the war games.
Sander Hicks' book The Big Wedding is a quick read and is recommended for everyone interested in 9/11 truth. Its main focus is on some of the whistleblowers. It also is the only 9/11 "truth" book in print that interviews an eyewitness to the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
February 2, 2007
Groundhog Day
observed by mega tornados in Florida
In yet another example of the fact that Nature, or God, or Goddess, or the Universe, has a nasty sense of humor, Groundhog Day was observed in Florida (an epicenter for the Bush crime family) with deadly tornados that wrecked communities not far from Disney's ersatz theme park.
Coincidentally, the International Panel on Climate Change published their latest update on predictions for the unraveling of the life support mechanisms of the biosphere, although their prose was much more bland than this.
January 31, 2007
Biden's
Presidential campaign promotes partition
Senator Biden (D-Delaware) announced he is joining the crowded field of candidates for Emperor. While few are likely to be interested in his campaign, one part of his platform is a dangerous meme likely to spread and become the "alternative" view of what to do about Iraq. Biden's advocacy for breaking Iraq into three entities is probably the Bush regime's goal from the start of the conflict, since smaller enclaves would make the oil easier to control. See the neo-con's new Middle East map for details.
Nearly everyone in the Middle East is aware that the existing national borders were delineated by Europeans after World War I, not by Arabs. These boundaries keep most of the oil wealth separated from most of the Arabs -- and the neo-liberal / neo-conservative campaign to create new lines on the map (with the excuse of escalating conflict in Iraq) would amplify this theft in the minds of many, if not most of the people in the Middle East. This development would confirm predictions that "civil war" would be stoked through deliberate strategies (not incompetence) in order to achieve this long term goal. In short, the neo-con battle plan is to dominate the oil rich regions through endless war -- but this risky strategy is likely to lead to nuclear war and definitely will waste the resources needed to mitigate Climate Change and Peak Oil.
It is extremely unlikely that Biden's campaign will result in much public support but it risks elevating the "partition" concept to a serious national discussion. This false solution would make the situation much worse, but that tragedy would be seen as "mission accomplished" in some elite circles.
www.observer.com/20070205/20070205_Jason_Horowitz_pageone_newsstory1-2.html
Biden Unbound: Lays Into Clinton, Obama, Edwards
Loquacious Senator, Democratic Candidate on Hillary: ‘Four of 10
Is the Max You Can Get?’ Edwards ‘Doesn’t Know What
He’s Talking About’
By Jason Horowitz
.... By contrast with what Mr. Biden describes alternately as his opponents’ caution and their detachment from reality, the Senator from Delaware has for months been pushing a comprehensive plan to split Iraq into autonomous Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish ethnic regions that is controversial, to say the least.
Under the plan, local policing and laws will be the responsibility of regional authorities. Most of the American troops would be withdrawn, with small numbers remaining to help with anti-terrorism operations. The ensuing chaos from ethnic migrations within Iraq would be contained with the help of political pressure created by a conference of Iraq’s neighbors.
But the idea of an American endorsement of Iraqi federation along those lines has drawn criticism from just about every ideological corner of the foreign-policy establishment. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, another potential 2008 candidate who played a major role in negotiating the peace talks that ended the war in Bosnia, said in a recent interview that the Biden plan would have people in mixed cities like Baghdad “fleeing for their lives.” Richard Perle, one of the chief architects of the war in Iraq, who resigned from his advisory position at the Pentagon in 2003 after a conflict-of-interest scandal, called the idea “harebrained.” And perhaps most notably, the original author of the partition plan, former Council on Foreign Relations president Leslie Gelb, has suggested that spiraling chaos on the ground in Iraq may have already rendered it unworkable.
Mr. Biden counters their criticism by insisting that Iraq has already fractured along ethnic lines, and that the only pragmatic approach at this point is to police the process in a way that could prevent a wider civil war and, eventually, lead to a sort of stability.
“You have to give them breathing room,” he said.
The Iraq he envisions has three ethnically homogenous enclaves, with a central government responsible for securing the country’s international borders and distributing oil revenues.
He’d put the Shiite majority in the south, limiting their geographic control but keeping them from being drawn into a wider Sunni-Shiite conflict.
He’d move the Sunni majority into the oil-poor Anbar province in the West, but they would be guaranteed a cut of oil revenues worth billions of dollars. Mr. Biden’s hope is that the oil money and relative calm would drain the loyal Baathist insurgency of support while simultaneously making the province less amenable to Al Qaeda provocateurs.
“The argument that you make with Sunni tribal leaders is, ‘You are not going to get back to the point where you run the show,’” said Mr. Biden. They will have to be made to understand that “you get a much bigger piece of the pie by giving up a little of the pie.”
He’d keep the Kurds up in the north, where they already enjoy a measure of de facto autonomy, but would seek guarantees that they would not take it upon themselves to purge Sunni residents from the mixed city of Kirkuk, or to lay exclusive claim to the enormous oil resources in that region, or to secede from Iraq by forming an independent Kurdistan.
Mr. Biden said he has made the argument to Kurdish leaders over the course of his seven trips to Iraq as follows: “You will be eaten alive by the Turks and the Iranians, they will attack you, there will be an all-out war.”
The clear implication is that the United States, not for the first time, would be unable to protect them. “I don’t see how we could,” he said.
Mr. Biden disagrees with foreign leaders like Britain’s Tony Blair and Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, who say that the key to fixing Iraq’s problems is solving the dispute between Israel and Palestinians.
“They are wrong, because I think it is a veiled way to do what the Europeans and the Arabists have always wanted to do, which is back Israel into a corner,” he said. “They still blame Israel.”
Mr. Biden says that support for his Iraq plan is growing. The influential New York Senator Chuck Schumer has declared at various times that he supports the plan—albeit in an uncharacteristically quiet manner—as has Michael O’Hanlon, a prominent Iraq policy expert at the Brookings Institution.
But their support, for Mr. Biden, is almost an afterthought. If one thing is clear about him, it is that he doesn’t mind being alone.
“They may be politically right, and I may be politically wrong,” he said. “But I believe I am substantively right, and their substantive approaches are not very deep and will not get us where I want to go.”
Rome on the Potomac: another currency devaluation signals decline of empire
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070122/us_nm/usa_pennies_shortage_dc
Coin shortage could turn pennies to nickels
By Kevin Plumberg Mon Jan 22, 4:39 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Talk about pennies from heaven.
A potential shortage of coins in the United States could mean all those pennies in your piggy bank could be worth five times their current value soon, says an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
Sharply rising prices of metals such as copper and nickel have meant the face value of pennies and nickels are worth less than the material that they are made of, increasing the risk that speculators could melt the coins and sell them for a profit.
Such a risk spurred the U.S. Mint last month to issue regulations limiting melting and exporting of the coins.
But Francois Velde, senior economist at the Chicago Fed, argued in a recent research note that prohibitions by the Mint would unlikely deter serious speculators who already have piled up the coinage.
The best solution, Velde said, would be to "rebase" the penny by making it worth five cents rather than one cent. Doing so would increase the amount of five-cent coins in circulation and do away with the almost worthless one cent coin.
"History shows that when coins are worth melting, they disappear," Velde wrote.
"Rebasing the penny would ... debase the five-cent piece and put it safely away from its melting point," he added.
Raw material prices in general have skyrocketed in the last five years, sending copper prices to record highs of $4.16 a pound in May. Copper pennies number 154 to a pound. Prices have since come down from that peak but could still trek higher, Velde said.
Since 1982, the Mint began making copper-coated zinc pennies to prevent metals speculators from taking advantage of lofty base metal prices. Though the penny is losing its importance -- it is worth only four seconds of the average American's work time, assuming a 40-hour workweek -- the Mint is making more and more pennies.
Velde said that since 1982 the Mint has produced 910 pennies for every American. Last year there were 8.23 billion pennies in circulation, according to the Mint.
"These factors suggest that, sooner or later, the penny will join the farthing (one-quarter of a penny) and the hapenny (one-half of a penny) in coin museums," he said.
Counterproductive Empire
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/senior_intel_of.html
Senior Intel Officials Warn U.S. Has Lost Its Global Reach in Spy Network
January 24, 2007 3:13 PM
Kirit Radia Reports:
The United States' spy network has lost its "global reach," its ability to monitor, gather and analyze developments around the world, according to two top officials from Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Their testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday revealed that the current policy of focusing on a few hot-button issues leaves the U.S. intelligence network unprepared to monitor other areas that might emerge as crises on the horizon.
In her testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mary Margaret Graham, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Collection, said that the U.S. intelligence apparatus does not enjoy the same "global reach" as it had in the past.
Paranoia
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/three_thousand_.html
Three Thousand Square Miles of Airspace Off Limits While President Speaks
January 23, 2007 3:42 PM
Dennis Powell Reports:
General aviation (GA) is banned from the skies within 40 nautical miles of Washington, D.C., Tuesday night.
The federal government has declared Pres. Bush's State of the Union address a national security event, and that has triggered a temporary flight restriction closing all 3,000 square miles of the Washington, D.C., Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) to GA flights between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 23.
January 29, 2007
British government
wants to irradiate everyone
Some stories are so absurd that they are beyond parody -- this story about British plans to randomly irradiate people on the street shows how far the insanity has gone. While stories about full body x-rays at airports (or on random pedestrians) focus on the titilating aspects of virtual strip searches, media articles on this abuse fail to mention that forcing people to be x-rayed without medical benefits risks large scale imposition of involuntary cancer. Having one's private parts photographed by Homeland Security voyeurs is less obnoxious than getting cancer because of this outrageous surveillance program.
The Nuremberg Protocols explicitly state that people have the right to refuse to participate in human experimentation.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/29/nxray129.xml
Airport-style x-ray cameras which see through clothes, could be installed on street lampposts in a bid to combat terrorism, it was claimed last night.
The measure was suggested in a memo sent last week to one of Tony Blair’s working groups at the Cabinet Office, the Sun newspaper reported. The move comes amid growing concern about Britain’s “surveillance society”.
The Home Office memo, to the Prime Minister’s working group on security, crime and justice, reportedly said: “Street furniture could routinely house detection systems that would indicate the likely presence of a gun, for example.’”
www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007040610,00.html
You are undie surveillance
By GEORGE PASCOE-WATSON
Political Editor
January 29, 2007OFFICIALS are bracing themselves for a storm of public outrage over their controversial X-ray cameras scheme.
As part of the most shocking extension of Big Brother powers ever planned here, lenses in lampposts would snap “naked” pictures of passers-by to trap terror suspects. ....
Air passengers are now chosen at random for full X-ray examinations — and must agree to it.
Technology could also be used to halt theft, with fingerprint scanners fitted to many items.
Elsewhere, tagged offenders could be sent electronic pulses to remind them not to re-offend.
Cops would also get the power to build a database of everyone in the land. Three-dimensional CCTV pictures would be coupled with records of people’s mobile phones and even their travel cards to get details of their movements and habits.
Facial recognition systems to help track individuals’ movements are also being considered.
the most honest comment of the week
http://rigint.blogspot.com/2007/01/we-are-family.html#comments
Anonymous said...
About a year and a half after the current Iraq mess started, there were lots of articles appearing in the Bay Area(CA) papers about Iraqi kids with missing limbs and burnt up faces getting plastic surgery from the goodness of the American People. Forget about the hundreds of thousands that don't get their limbs replaced and the custom plastic faces. As long as we took care of these few, everything else was alright.
That's what I love about America... we live & revel in the uniqueness of the individual story. We'll pick out the one feel good story so we don't have to face any of the other stories. It only matters that one guy wins the lottery and not that hundres of thousands gamble needlessly and lose.
There is though a certain honesty with animals like Lions. They know instinctively that one baby zebra doesn't mean a hill of beans in the endless flow of zebras across time. They don't send baby zebras for reconstructive surgery...they just eat them.
My feeling is that it's in the living in obvious lies that builds the psychosis of America. Maybe if the guys running the show all came out and said, "Hey Citizens, we all want to live comfortable lives of mass consumption so we're going to kill lots of foreign people and live fat, lazy life styles with the creature comforts made from their oil reserves." Maybe if I saw everyone voting for this openly, I could go along with it. As it is we all do this anyway by doing nothing when we know it's happening now.
I just work it out by bloggin about it. It helps me fight my creeping psychosis.
January 2, 2007
National Day of Mourning for the last member of the Warren
Commission
It is interesting that one of the main themes in the media about the Ford Presidency is the pardon of Richard Nixon. "President" George W. Bush mentioned it in his eulogy today at the National Cathedral -- presumably, because he wants (and needs) his own pardon for the outrageous war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, New York and elsewhere.
None of the mass media coverage dares to mention the Ford Administration's complicity in the Indonesian invasion and genocide in East Timor, the new war started by his administration in Angola (described in John Stockwell's memoire In Search of Enemies), and the appointment of George H. W. Bush to the CIA. The Agency under Bush escalated its involvement in in Operation Condor (South American dictatorships unified effort to persecute dissenters), was complicit in the bombing of a Cubana airlines plane (perpetrated by CIA assets waging secret war on Cuba) and the killing of Orlando Letelier (a senior official of the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, toppled in 1973) and his assistant Ronnie Moffitt in a terrorist bombing in Washington, D.C. (September 21, 1976). These and many other crimes continued during the brief Presidency of Gerald Ford, but these facts are inconvenient for the national media to mention in their memoires of the Dear Leader.
The author Lisa Pease has written an excellent counter-narrative to the hoopla surrounding the State Funeral of un-elected President Gerald Ford:
http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2007/01/real-history-of-gerald-ford-watergate.html
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
The Real History of Gerald Ford, Watergate, and the CIA
Gerald Ford is dead. And for the last week, we’ve heard how he “healed” the nation in the wake of the Watergate crisis. Seriously, if I hear him called “healer” one more time I think I’ll scream, because Gerald Ford put a stake in the heart of America not once, but twice. He was a thief who stole our Real History from us at a time when it couldn’t possibly have been more important.
and some other commentaries:
January 2, 2007 -- Another gem from the Bush Crime Family's "X Files."
December 27, 2006 -- As the nation eulogizes President Gerald R. Ford, who died last night in California, no one should lose sight of the fact that it was Ford who helped launch the careers of the two ugliest faces in the George W. Bush administration. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
November 11, 2006
www.crimemagazine.com/06/ford-jfk,1111-06.htm
Gerald Ford's Role
in the JFK Assassination Cover-up