MAY UNITY PREVAIL ON EARTH
June 12, 2008
The Moment of Truth Series #13: Tottering on the Edge of Apocalypse
Hello everysoul!
After a 16 day lull in preparing compilations, I spent the whole day and evening working feverishly on completing the following 108 page compilation for you, with some of the most salient, vital information I felt needed to be brought to your attention.
As you will discover there is much to be said about Barack Obama's meteoric rise to the top of the Democratic ticket. Chiefly, I'm much concerned that despite his lofty rhetoric, he might be unable - or unprepared - to deliver the kind of changes people around the world hope he will bring about. The key element here is whether people will get lulled into a sense of false security, believing that he can be counted on to take care of the mighty cleaning up business left after the most despicable presidency in all US history, like some kind of mythical savior, of if they will finally understand that his role is to be the lightning rod and citizen activation spark plug that will ignite a new people-driven and heart-centered revolution that will really change things around, set the world onto a real sustainable, nature-centered path and make sure that never again any soul-destroying and Earth-killing war is launched from the desk of the Oval Office.
There is no doubt in my mind that, if the Cabal-controlled Bush/Cheney sickening team don't manage to trigger the demise of American democracy through orchestrating with Israel a nuclear attack against Iran and openly imposing the military/corporate government already pulling the strings in the darkness of black projects and vile abominations against all life, then Barack Hussein Obama, will be elected the next President of the United States. What I'm not so sure about is whether this will be a good news or a bad news...
Upon the present choices we make and stands we take depends the future of this amazing experiment in free will called Life on Planet Earth...
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com
PLEASE NOTE that a new Meditation Focus will be issued next Saturday... It will be:
Meditation Focus #187: Activating the Power of Envisioning - to be archived at http://www.EarthRainbowNetwork.com/FocusArchives/MeditationFocus187.htm
P.S. Your feedback is as always welcomed and may be included in a coming compilation - unless you prefer it is not. Circulating this compilation (or any part of it) and personally inviting your correspondents to subscribe to this list would also help enlarge the circle of people who have access to this material. Please include the following note and the URL address for the archived copy below along with your forwards, so others may have the opportunity to explore the original copy, if they so choose.
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Live Vote - LET'S GIVE SOME TRACTION TO THE LIAR/STEALER/MASS KILLER IN CHIEF TRIAL!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904
Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment? * 685104 responses
Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial.
89%
No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors."
4.1%
No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching.
4.5%
I don't know.
2%
And as you read this compilation, keep the following bit of information in mind... 2.224 Trillion dollars - This is the combined revenue of the 1,130 CEOs surveyed in the 2008 Global CEO Study as indicated in an IBM ad on the back of the June 9, 2008 Time Magazine... Astounding isn't it? This amounts to an average of nearly $2 billions in revenue for each of these insanely greedy human beings. Or to give you more perspective on this...
The politics of greed (June 3, 2008)
http://www.ianchadwick.com/forum/index.php?autocom=blog&blogid=1&showentry=515
2.224 trillion dollars. That is - according to IBM's recent study - the combined revenue of 1,130 corporate CEOs surveyed in the study. That's more than the GDP of many nations with a much larger population than eleven hundred. It's higher than the 2007 GDP of all but six of the world's nations. Eleven hundred people earned more than what the entire nations of Canada and Brazil combined produced for GDP in 2007. In fact, according to the CIA Factbook, the purchasing power of the entire planet is $65 trillion (2007), which is reduced to $56 trillion based on levelling the exchange rates. The GDP of the entire continent of Africa in 2004 was only $2.087 trillion for a population of 8.721 million. Scary stuff, eh? According to Forbes Magazine: QUOTE "The chief executives of America's 500 biggest companies got a collective 38% pay raise last year, to $7.5 billion. That's an average $15.2 million apiece. Exercised stock options again account for the main component of pay, 48%. The average stock gain was $7.3 million." A $15.2 million dollar RAISE. That's not just their salary. It's the extra they got. Your taxes are going up, your food costs rising, gas prices are skyrocketing, rent, user fees, service charges, insurance, wood - almost everything around you is going up in price. Is it because of supply and demand? Or corporate greed? What kind of price hike do you need to keep pouring cash into the CEOs' trough? You think you can keep low prices when snouts like these are in the trough? Who paid for those salaries? You, the consumer, you the taxpayer. And this list doesn't even include the oil sheiks who control OPEC and suck the money from your pocket with exorbitant oil prices to pay for their next fleet of Rolls Royces. That's a lot of money to pay a small group of people whose contributions to the welfare of the world are generally negligible - and in fact may contribute a lot more harm than good. I'd guess on a percentage basis annually, it's likely lot less that the percentage the average Canadian gives to charity. How much poverty could $2.224 trillion alleviate? How many schools and hospitals could it build and staff? How much research into AIDs or cancer or maleria could it fund? Could it help develop sustainable communities, build industries in developing nations to raise them above the subsistence level? Could it help solve our climate problems? Or is it better lining the pockets of 1,130 people? Corporate greed. It's what's wrong with the world today.
And as there is yet more evidence of a planned nuclear attack against Iran outilined in this compilation, check also this first!
Don't Bomb Iran! (May 14, 2008) MUST WATCH 3 min VIDEO!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXl4vMRocHk
The drumbeat to war with Iran is getting louder. With only a few months left in the Bush Presidency, it's tempting to sit back and wait until November. But belligerent rhetoric and fear mongering about Iran is on the rise. With piles of evidence pointing towards the same sort of fabrication that preceded the Iraq debacle and a thoroughly discredited administration at the helm, kids in the military forced to fight in wars of choice at the behest of powerful corporate interests and economic problems at home, it's time to tell Washington "enough."
Don't Bomb Iran
http://act.truemajorityaction.org/p/7002/iranadvo?campaign_KEY=1528
"Don't let this administration lead America into another conflict in the Middle East. One war is already too much. I urge you to support S. Res. 356, which would require that any military action against Iran be explicitly approved by Congress."
THE QUOTES
"Impeachment is not a political question. Impeachment is a constitutional duty. It is the one power and highest duty the Constitution rests in the Congress to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States when the President, Vice President, and other civil officers of the United States commit treason, bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors. George Bush has deliberately, falsely and systematically mislead the Congress and the American people concerning the most criminal, costly and harmful acts of his administration, leading us to war, tragic loss of human life, the devastation of Iraq, military expenses reaching trillions of dollars, disruption of the economy that will take decades to overcome, a contemptuous assault on the Bill of Rights, an international humanitarian disaster, deliberate antagonism and provocation of nations and people, most once friendly, and an enlarging assault on the earth's environment. On June 5, 2008, a long delayed five year U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence study and 170-page report unanimously found President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top officers had made false charges and systematically presented a more dire picture about Iraq than justified by intelligence provided only to them. The Committee included both Democrats and Republicans. Today President Bush is exerting all his power and influence to repeatedly urge Europe, Israel and others to support an attack on Iran which he intends to commence in the remaining months of the presidency. Iran is larger than Iraq and Afghanistan, has millions of people, richer by a multiple, unimpaired by recent war and will fight fiercely if attacked. He is negotiating a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq placing the U.S. on Iran's border. The next several Presidents of the United States will spend their time in office miserably fighting wars started by Bush, as our economy is consumed in military spending. Impeachment, a Constitutional duty, is the only way to prevent George W. Bush and his cabal from vastly enlarging the disastrous wars he has already inflicted on the world and the American people. The House of Representatives must quickly consider Bills of Impeachment long overdue, and the Senate must prepare to sit in judgment of President Bush, Vice President Cheney other officers who are implicated. In a brilliant and courageous speech on the House floor, Congressman Kucinich continued to show his integrity and stance in defense of our constitution. On Monday night he introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush. Each article was elucidated with stunning evidence of it's validity."
- Message from Ramsey Clark - former US Attorney General - More on this through http://kucinich.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1660&Itemid=1
"Once again Rep. Dennis Kucinich has exposed the Democratic Party as a bunch of neofascist collaborators. Pres. Clinton, a Democrat mind you, was impeached for what? Now for Pres. Bush to escape impeachment is just too much to fathom. Goddess forgive America."
- Tom Cahill -- In a comment taken from Kucinich Introduces Impeachment Articles Against Bush
More on this at the top of the "Also Recommended" section below
"We are the ones to make things right on this planet, with assistance from very powerful friends from the beyond and from abroad, but the buck has got to stop with us. This is our world and we can't let it be messed up complete."
- Guess who?
CONTENTS
1. Is Obama an Enlightened One?
2. Hillary & Obama In Secret Bilderberg Rendezvous
3. World War III - Kissinger’s Final Chantilly Gambit
4. Bush 'plans Iran air strike by August'
5. Fulford - Chinese Secret Society Warns US, EU
6. China: After the Killer Quake
7. Essential Information on Organ Harvesting from Falun Gong Practitioners in China
8. Boycott is the moral response to Olympics in China
9. Follow Up Correspondence with Ariel Ky in China
10. ARE CELL PHONES SAFE?
11. I'm Going To Be A Happy Idiot
12. Declaration for Citizen Contact Councils announced at Earth Transformation Conference
13. Microsoft vs General Motors....
WORTHY OF YOUR ATTENTION
Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world (17 min 44 sec) FASCINATING! MUST WATCH!!!
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/258
Mycologist Paul Stamets studies mycelium and lists 6 ways that this astonishing fungus can help save the world. Cleaning polluted soil, creating new insecticides, treating smallpox and maybe even the flu ... in 18 minutes, he doesn't get all the way through his list, but he has plenty of time to blow your mind.
Mycologist Paul Stamets believes that mushrooms could an intergalactic colonizing species. Well, almost. He believes that fungi, and particularly the mycelium (the vegetative part of mushrooms) contains solutions for some of the Earth's environmental and health-related problems. For instant, fungi produce strong antibiotics; they can be used against flu viruses; mycelium can be used to naturally "clean up" petroleum-saturated soils; revamp pesticides; and generating ethanol (he has patented many of these mushroom-related technologies). Preserving the genome of fungis is absolutely crucial for human health.
Celestial glyph near Barbury Castle
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2008/barbury/barbury2008a.html
The formation is 285ft in diameter, and is in barley. It appeared on the 1st of June 2008. At first glance this design is reminiscent of part of the famous crop circle in 1991 which also appeared close to Barbury Castle. Early indications are that the design has the diatonic musical ratio encoded in its geometry. Diatonic musical ratio is a way of showing the musical scale geometrically. (...) Thought you'd like to know that the recent crop circle at Barbury Castle represents our solar system and the planet positions with emphasis on Earth given by the three connected circles on the outer edge. Using the free orbital calculator at SkyViewCafe.com, I determined the date of this planetary alignment to be August 9, 2014, 1700 GMT. Hope this info is useful to you. Steve Vivaqua - The number pi is encoded in the lengths of arc in the various segments of the ratchet spiral, going outwards, measured in units of 36 degrees: 3.141592654, with the decimal point the small solid circle after the first segment. Check also this other one http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2008/westkennett/westkennett2008.html representing a partial eclipse to occur next August 1. and this one in France...
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/inter2008/france/metz/metz2008.html
Amazing performance by a dog
http://www.flixxy.com/canine-freestyle-dancing-dog.htm
Pure Driving: The Revolutionary Compressed Air Vehicle
http://zeropollutionmotors.us/
If you can, imagine a vehicle that runs on air, achieves over 100 gas-equivalent mpg and over 90 mph, has zero to low C02 emissions, seats six, has plenty of space for luggage, cuts no safety corners, and costs no more than an average economy to mid-size vehicle. This is the expected performance of the revolutionary compressed air vehicle that Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) is introducing to North America. The vehicle is powered by the Compressed Air Engine (CAE) developed by Motor Development International (MDI), a 15-year old company based in Nice, France, and headed by inventor and Formula One race car engineer, Guy Negre. ZPM is the exclusive representative for MDI in the United States. CLIP
Air-Powered Car Coming to U.S. in 2009 to 2010 at Sub-$18,000, Could Hit 1000-Mile Range
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4251491.html?series=19
John F. Kennedy's son died in a plane crash... Right before George Bush Jr. was elevated to the status of a *serious* presidential candidate. This is worth taking a look at. Interestingly, the Air Force and FAA behaved very strangely the day his plane disappeared... à la 9/11... Worth watching in its entirety. http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/182.html
9/11 : RARE NEW COLLAPSE FOOTAGE . MUST SEE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GINcwsjCAw
Explosions and other anomalies can be seen in this video - evidence of a controlled demolition.
Financial Times Covers 9/11 Truth - The Truth is Out There & What Happened to Building 7? (June 7 2008) http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/Infowar/28073
(...) There is some evidence that the truthers are swaying the rest of us. A New York Times/CBS News poll in 2006 revealed that only 16 per cent of Americans polled believed the Bush administration was telling the truth about 9/11. More than half thought it was “hiding something”. This is not the same as believing the government actually launched the attacks, but a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll the same year found that more than a third of those questioned suspected that federal officials assisted in the attacks or took no action to stop them so that the US could go to war. The truthers certainly believe that they are on a roll. CLIP Recommended by Fred Burks (fredburks@gmail.com) who wrote: "the Financial Times just came out with an amazingly balanced article on the 9/11 movement."
Chemtrails - If you have ever doubted, You won't after this (21 May 2008) STUNNING FOOTAGE!
http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=4x8-2TAHXfU
2005 Crop Circle Reveals 2012 Prophecy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKYEJ7GmdeE
http://www.lucypringle.co.uk/photos/2005/uk2005cl.shtml
Weirdest animals and creatures in the world
http://mocii.com/2007/12/24/weirdest-animals-and-creatures-in-the.html
Real Life Sea Monsters - 24 Bizarre Creatures of the Deep
http://www.who-sucks.com/animals/real-life-sea-monsters-24-bizarre-creatures-of-the-deep
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU - THE WEIRDEST, MOST DENSELY CREATIVE THINGS I'VE EVER SEEN!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGaqLT-gO4
The new short film by Blu: an ambiguous animation painted on public walls.Made in Buenos Aires and in Baden. More on this extraordinary artist through http://www.blublu.org/
HAARP Technology
http://tinyurl.com/6pex4j
Very clear explanations as to the extreme dangers posed by these dimwit apprentice sorcerers!!
HAARP: Nature Modification Weapon - More hair-raising potentially disastrous consequences!
http://tinyurl.com/5tux8s
Supposed Weather modification, communication disruption and mind control Weapon. Extended Star Wars Defense Initiative (SDI)weapon of the US military.HAARP has the ability of modifying the World's electro-magnetic field.
HAARP: The NWO's Ultimate Weapon
http://tinyurl.com/6m3jb7
HAARP is a Space-Based Weapon of Mass Destruction and must be banned by Treaty!
http://peaceinspace.blogs.com/peaceinspaceorg/2008/05/haarp-is-a-spac.html
VANCOUVER, B.C. - HAARP is an exotic weapons system that is part of the weaponization of space, using "scalar wave interferometry" - a technology first discovered by scientist Nicola Tesla in the early 1900's. Two or more longitudinal, ultra-low frequency waves are “aimed” at an intersecting point, at which time they interact in a very unique way, “tapping” into the limitless plenum of energy surrounding the planet, and weaponizing this scalar energy. HAARP Weather & Tectonic Warfare attacks by the evidence most probably caused the Myanmar Cyclone (May 3, 2008) and the China Earthquake (May 12, 2008).
FULFORD VS. HAARP (May 28, 2008)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InV0cVH6KZc
"Journalist & Best-selling author Benjamin Fulford reports from Tokyo on a mysterious plasma weapon seen prior to the Niigata earthquake in July, 2007 and red, white and blue lights seen prior to the recent earthquake in China. Both quakes targeted nuclear facilities... coincidence?" More related Fulford videos: http://tinyurl.com/3g4rd5 - THIS SOUNDS FARFETCHED TO YOU? CHECK THE FOLLOWING ONE BELOW...
Secret OSS plans to trigger earthquakes & Tsunamis in Japan/Declassified documents
http://www.vialls.com/cia/oss_earthquakes.html
Back in 1945 the OSS (forerunner of the present-day CIA) planned to bring the "unbridled brutality of Japanese troops" under control by use of artificially triggered earthquakes. "If we could could get (an atom) bomb within a mile of a point on a fault line (trench) destined to break within 90 years we might set it off ..." Since this secret paper was written, the modern-day CIA has had sixty years to get its nuclear numbers right - just in time for the shattering war crime against South and South-East Asia which murdered more than 300,000 people on December 26, 2004.
Leuren Moret: HAARP - as a space-based weapon of mass destruction - and Environmental War - PART I
http://exopolitics.blogs.com/exopolitics_radio/2008/05/coopradioorg-le.html
A conversation with Independent Scientist Leuren Moret on HAARP - as a space-based weapon of mass destruction - and Environmental War. This is a substantive, scientific discussion of the empirical evidence for the following events as HAARP-induced acts of Environmental/Scalar Warfare
More on HAARP through http://www.mediarare.com/haarp.html and http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/HAARP.htm
Turning Point of the Sacred Circle - 2008~2012 GoldRing (9 min 54 sec)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_n1ObJNXhY
The acceleration has reach a turning point of energy where each spirit has the opportunity to move quickly with the wave of energy that is guiding them on their path. --- Really powerful montage mixing celestial glyphs (crop circles) with geometric video imagery set on an inspiring music. Click on the small square to get it full screen, focus on the center, don't let your mental interfere and let your soul soar!...
And then watch (full screen)...
Wayshowers Raise Awakening Consciousness and Shine Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=017hg5Xnl40
And then, if you want to see more, go at
http://goldring.wetpaint.com/page/1-TheGame (and once at the bottom click on "Next Video" to access the other ones) ... although you may want to check first what is at http://goldring.wetpaint.com/page/New+to+this+site%3F to better understand the whole fascinating concept of this game of enlightenment and abundance called the Gold Ring and created by a group of about 35 people headed by someone names Rysa
Ambush! How the Secret Service Set Up JFK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QAWiIRgx0g
9/11's a Lie - Video to the song 'Stayin' Alive'
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6PqXw6mS2KA
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/333.html
Rumsfeld: "Why Not another 911"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9002
When DeLong complained about a "lack of sympathetic ears" in Congress, and a lack of interest among the general American public, Rumsfeld responded, "What's to be done? The correction for that, I suppose, is another attack."
9/11 Connection to DC Madam Murder
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2008/050508_conspiracy_connection.htm
(...) The connection to 9/11 is tantalizing and provides a key motive for why numerous power brokers would have wanted Palfrey to be shut up for good before she had the opportunity to release information in court that her call girls picked up about 9/11 pointing to foreknowledge and government complicity in the attacks.
Petition for Canadian 9/11 Investigation to Be Read into Canadian Parliament JUNE 10th
http://www.marchonottawa2008.org/index.php?option=com_docman&Itemid=31
A few months ago various 9/11 Truth activists across Canada got together to compose a Parliamentary Petition demanding an investigation into 9/11. The first 500 signatures were submitted last week, verified, and accepted. This petition will be read into Parliament on Tuesday June the 10th, at approx 10 am EST, by East Vancouver member of Parliament Libby Davies. To date, the United States of America has yet to convict a single person in a court of law for the crimes of September 11th. Both official US reports, The 9/11 Commission Report and the NIST Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster created more questions than answers, and cannot be credited as final accounts. Thus, in absence of our whitepaper or any other credible report, Canada must now take it upon itself to investigate the crimes of September 11th, not only for the sake of those in Canada who lost their loved ones, but also to justify our war efforts in Afghanistan, or to bring a cause for an immediate withdrawal. (...) Although this petition has already been submitted, we still wish to collect as many signatures as we can to show our true numbers. These yet to be collected signatures will then be added to our current tally, and a total will be read outside of Parliament on September 11th 2008 in support of bringing our demands to fruition. This rally on Parliament Hill, will succeed a March on Ottawa, that will start in Montreal QC, 5 day's earlier This March on Ottawa will be the first nationally organized 9/11 Truth event here in Canada and we are anticipating on having thousands of marchers and participants rally with us in Ottawa: www.marchonottawa2008.org
CELL PHONE (FBI can listen to you when phone is turned off!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G1fNjK9SXg
European Alliance of Initiatives for Applied Anthroposophy Campaign
http://www.eliant.eu/new/lang/en/
1 million signatures needed for the ELIANT Campaign - I hereby state my support for the ELIANT alliance and its charter to secure legal safeguards for anthroposophic medicine, biodynamic (Demeter) foods, Waldorf education and other initiatives for applied anthroposophy.
Codex Global Control of our Food by Governments and the Transnationals
http://tinyurl.com/3ssrb7
(...) Are you prepared to hand over your right to wholesome, natural food to faceless governments and corporations? Are you content that more and more food is subject to patents? Are you willing to lose the ability to manage your own health using nutrients? Are you prepared to accept irradiation and genetic manipulation of your food, as well as pesticide-contaminated food? Will you allow continued dilution of organic food standards so they suit the mass-market agri-business operators? CLIP
Trailer: HBO's Recount (2000 Coup d'etat in FL)
http://www.hbo.com/films/recount/
"The 2000 election was a coup d'etat, a systemic corruption of our voting system, devised by Karl Rove."
International Institute For Global Leadership
http://www.global-leadership.com/
IIGL is a tuition-free, internet-based education program which provides a curriculum in consciousness designed to prepare students to become personally empowered, consciously aware, high-integrity and heart-centered leaders in their communities and the world. The study program is open to participants of any age and from anywhere in the world. Recommended by Nahla Rifai (nahla.rifai@gmail.com) who wrote: "We currently have over 100 students from 32 countries. Last year our students read more than 500 books related to personal empowerment, consciousness and planetary transformation, and then wrote assessments on the ways these books have transformed their thinking and their lives. Would you join me as a contributor to this project? Your support is a concrete, life-affirming way to promote planetary transformation at a grassroots level."
Swan Lake - Wonderful Performance!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOqxSaW05p4
100 acrobats and dancers of the "Great Chinese State Circus" can be exciting show in a circus as art.
SuperWave Theory 2012 Earth Changes 1, 2 and 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIMYlKzYTig
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONKgTAmtWqY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KaeoHFSyKM
ISP's confirm '2012: The Year The Internet Ends'
http://ipower.ning.com/netneutrality2
Bell Canada and TELUS (formerly owned by Verizon) employees officially confirm that by 2012 ISP's all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit. These 'other' sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet. Dylan Pattyn *, who is currently writing an article for Time Magazine on the issue, has official confirmation from sources within Bell Canada and is interviewing a marketing representative from TELUS who confirms the story and states that TELUS has already started blocking all websites that aren't in the subscription package for mobile Internet access. They could not confirm whether it would happen in 2012 because both stated it may actually happen sooner (as early as 2010). Interviews with these sources, more confirmation from other sources and more in-depth information on the issue is set to be published in Time Magazine soon. What can we do?The reason why we're releasing this information is because we believe we can stop it. CLIP
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Kucinich Introduces Impeachment Articles Against Bush
http://www.truthout.org/article/kucinich-introduces-impeachment-articles-against-bush
Christopher Kuttruff of Truthout reports, "Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush late on Monday during a speech on the House floor." Kucinich, a former contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, pointed to "high crimes and misdemeanors" committed by the Bush administration, including misrepresenting intelligence in the lead-up to the war, violating domestic and international laws against torture, illegally spying on American citizens, obstructing justice and governmental oversight, and dozens of other violations. The impeachment resolution came four days after a June 5 Senate Select Intelligence Committee report that vigorously challenged statements made by the Bush administration regarding military intelligence in the runup to the invasion of Iraq. Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee John D. Rockefeller said in a press release, "Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence." "It is my belief that the Bush Administration was fixated on Iraq, and used the 9/11 attacks by al Qa'ida as justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein" Rockefeller noted. CLIP
Read the whole impeachment resolution at http://www.democrats.com/files/amomentoftruth.pdf and note this email from Kucinich: "Under circumstances that can best be described as "suspicious," the www.kucinich.us website was crippled early this morning a few hours after Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 extensively documented Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush."
Petition : Support Rep. Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment
http://www.democrats.com/35-articles-of-impeachment?source=realamerican4kucinich%40yahoo.com
THE HOUSE VOTE ON IMPEACHMENT! (6/11/08)
I'm pleased to see that the U. S. House of Representatives just voted at 3:08 EDT (12:08 PDT) today on House Resolution 1258, calling for the impeachment of President Bush. Roll Call 401 indicated Ayes, 251 (including Kucinich and 226 other Democratic plus 24 Republican); Noes, 166 (all Republican). The result of the vote is that H. Res. 1258 has been sent to the Judiciary Committe, where it will likely languish indefinitely. However, contacting Representatives to request support of the resolution may make a difference!
If you would like to help Kucinich, please contact members of the House Judiciary Committee and demand a hearing on the articles of impeachment - Committee Email: http://judiciary.house.gov/contact.aspx
- Committee Phone: 202-225-3951
http://rawstory.com/news08/2008/06/11/kucinich-judiciary-committee-must-begin-review-of-impeachment-articles/
(...) "It is now imperative that the Judiciary Committee begin a review of the 35 articles," said Kucinich. "I will be providing supporting documentation to the committee so that it can proceed in an orderly manner. "The weight of evidence contained in the Articles makes it clear that President Bush violated the Constitution and the US Code as well as international law," said the Ohio lawmaker, whose efforts to impeach Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been largely ignored by the mainstream media. CLIP
ALMOST MEDIA BLACKOUT OF KUCINICH ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT FOR G.W. BUSH (10 June 2008)
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=125907
The Truth "Gagged" and Treason Hidden (June 10, 2008)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/the-truth-gagged-and-trea_b_106421.html
My God, we have lost our country completely. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) stood ALONE on the House floor last night for nearly five hours reading 35 Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush. Yet this has not been mentioned once on the US news (with the exception on MSNBC's Countdown). Why do you suppose that is? CLIP
Michael Moore and the Impeachment of George W. Bush (Jun 11, 2008)
http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_272620998.shtml
There are those that still want President George W. Bush impeached despite the fact that he will be out of office next January. Filmmaker Michael Moore is one of those cheering on the thirty-five articles of impeachment introduced against President Bush by Democratic congressman Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio. (...) A report from the Washington Post notes that a parliamentary maneuver that will probably force a vote on Tuesday. U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler is hawking his new book so he is looking for publicity and he signed on to Articles of Impeachment for President Bush on Monday. He called it "a sworn duty" of Congress to act against the president.Kucinich insisted on reading the resolution into the Congressional Record, a process that took nearly five hours. The wild-eyed left wing types like Moore cheered, yet mainstream Democrats yawned. According to the Post, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) "suggested yesterday that engaging in a lengthy debate over impeaching Bush in the waning days of his administration is not a productive use of the House's time."
Bush impeachment to be shelved: Hoyer (June 10, 2008)
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/06/bush_impeachment_to_be_shelved.html
The Democratic House leadership is preparing to stick the articles of impeachment raised by Rep. Dennis Kucinich Monday night against President Bush on the same shelf that they stuck a similar effort the Ohio Democrat filed last year against Vice President Dick Cheney. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters today that the 35-count indictment of Bush, which took Kucinich more than four hours to read on the House floor, would be forwarded to the House Judiciary Committee. The Democratic leadership has opposed impeachment as an unhelpful distraction; the Judiciary Committee is unlikely to pursue further action.Kucinich, using arguments similar to those he employed last year against Cheney, says Bush misled Congress and the American people into war with tales of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.House leaders were caught off-guard last year when Republicans voted to take up the Cheney impeachment in order to force a debate that could have proved awkward for Democrats. They avoided that debate by sending it to the Judiciary Committee. Hoyer said today that Kucinich had "an absolute right" to raise the issue. But he questioned whether it made sense to spend time on it during what he called "the waning months" of the Bush administration. Hoyer said the administration has one of the worst records of any administration in his lifetime, or maybe ever. He said Congress has conducted wide-ranging oversight since Democrats took over last year.
USA Military Officers Challenge Official Account of September 11 (22 May 2008)
http://www.daily.pk:80/world/americas/99-americas/3865-usa-military-officers-challenge-official-account-of-september-11.html
Twenty-five former U.S. military officers have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and called for a new investigation. They include former commander of U.S. Army Intelligence, Major General Albert Stubblebine, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Col. Ronald D. Ray, two former staff members of the Director of the National Security Agency; Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, and Major John M. Newman, PhD, and many others. They are among the rapidly growing number of military and intelligence service veterans, scientists, engineers, and architects challenging the government's story. The officers‚ statements appear below, listed alphabetically. Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD "A lot of these pieces of information, taken together, prove that the official story, the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 is a bunch of hogwash. It's impossible," said Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret). With doctoral degrees in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering, Col. Bowman served as Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. "There's a second group of facts having to do with the cover up," continued Col. Bowman. "Taken together these things prove that high levels of our government don't want us to know what happened and who's responsible. Who gained from 9/11? Who covered up crucial information about 9/11? And who put out the patently false stories about 9/11 in the first place? When you take those three things together, I think the case is pretty clear that it's highly placed individuals in the administration with all roads passing through Dick Cheney."
Bush Claims More Powers than King George III (May 29, 2008)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9119
The Bush administration has arrogated powers to itself that the British people even refused to grant King George III at the time of the Revolutionary War, an eminent political scientist says. (...) “In these last eight years,” Adler said, “we have seen presidential powers soar beyond the confines of the Constitution. We have understood that his presidency bears no resemblance to the Office created by the Framers… This is the time for us to demand a return to the constitutional presidency. If we don’t, we will have only ourselves to blame as we go marching into the next war as we witness even greater claims of presidential power.”
Bush & McCain: Can you tell the difference?
http://www.bush-mccainchallenge.com/?rc=hit2&id=12587-592947-qDH04y
I just took The Bush-McCain Challenge—a fun online quiz to see if you can tell the difference between George W. Bush and John McCain. Check it out, and see if you can do any better than I did!
War Spending Furthers al-Qaeda Goal of Undermining US Economy
http://www.truthout.org/article/war-spending-furthers-al-qaeda-goal-undermining-us-economy
For the Billings Gazette, Robert Weiner and John Larmett write, "As the Congress takes up the latest Bush administration 'supplemental' appropriation of another $160 billion for the war in Iraq, the impact of the war on families has been enormous. Montana now has the highest number per capita of killed or wounded in the country - 26.09 per 100,000 population - and a total of 250 deaths or injuries as of May 10. In fact, the Congress should consider whether the funding - almost a trillion dollars to date - helps al-Qaida more than us."
Iraq - What Happened To The $23 Billion? The Greatest Heist In History - Must Watch BBC - Video
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20071.htm
There are contracts for caterers, tanker drivers, security guards and even interrogators, many of them through companies with links to the White House. Now more than 70 whistleblower cases threaten to reveal the scandals behind billions of dollars worth of waste, theft and corruption during the Iraq war. The US justice department has imposed gagging orders which prevent the real scale of the problem emerging. But Panorama's Jane Corbin has spoken to some of those involved - with astonishing stories to tell of who got rich and who got burned. She hears allegations of mismanagement, fraud and waste; tales of contractors chosen for their US government connections without a competitive bidding process; contractors inflating their costs and double counting to increase their profits and billions supposed to be used to rebuild the Iraqi military allegedly ending up in the pockets of some Iraqi government officials. Even the contract to oversee the expenditure went to a company with no relevant qualification in accounting. "They are the quintessential war profiteers," said a witness to one of the most notorious companies involved. "They made money out of chaos."
U.S. Economy: The Worst is Yet to Come - By Mark Weisbrot
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20023.htm
We are facing the prospect of millions losing their homes, their jobs, their retirement savings, their health insurance, and their livelihoods.
Home price drop means $4 trillion in lost capital
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSN1147167220080611?rpc=401&
U.S. housing decline, sparked last year by subprime mortgage debt defaults, will likely last another two years as a wider group of consumers, including prime borrowers, feel the pinch from a tightening of credit.
Trailer: War, Inc. (19 May 2008)
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/85726/
John Cusack's new film, War, Inc., is set in a fictionalized Iraq. It's a funny film. It might have been tough to watch if it weren't, given the level of destruction that five years of occupation have wrought on the real country. Cusack, along with co-writers Mark Leyner and Jeremy Pikser, offer up a dystopian vision of the future of privatized warfare set in "Turaqistan," a presumably oil-rich country that, if it really existed, would surely be somewhere that most Americans couldn't find on a map. The film's humor rests on very real and demonstrably disastrous trends in neoconservative foreign policy of recent years -- a lethal war of choice and profit, the dismantling of states and plundering of their resources, a profound cultural insensitivity, lack of accountability and reckless disregard for easily-predicted consequences -- which are then pushed to the absurd.
Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/revealed-secret-plan-to-keep-iraq-under-us-control-840512.html
Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors 05 Jun 2008 A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November. The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
US Seeking 58 Bases in Iraq, Shiite Lawmakers Say
http://www.truthout.org/article/us-seeking-58-bases-iraq-shiite-lawmakers-say
IRAQ: Death Toll 'Above Highest Estimates' (June 2, 2008)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42618
The real number of the dead is far higher than even the highest declared in death tolls, many Iraqis say. A study by doctors from the Johns Hopkins School of Health in conjunction with Iraqi doctors from al-Mustanceriya University in Baghdad, published in the British medical journal The Lancet in October 2006, estimated the number of excess deaths as a result of the occupation at above 655,000. Just Foreign Policy, an independent organisation "dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy" offered an updated total of 1,213,716 at the time of this writing. On Sep. 14, 2007, Opinion Research Business (ORB), an independent polling agency located in London, produced a figure of 1,220,580 deaths as a result of the invasion. These estimates are above any official figures from Iraq, but they do consider the reported official figures. CLIP
Why Australia is leaving Iraq
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0603/p04s01-wome.html
Prime Minister Rudd criticized the US justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq as 550 Australian troops packed up to leave.
Afghan war to drag on for 10 years: Australian military chief
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?201404
The war in Afghanistan is likely to last at least another decade and 10,000 more foreign troops are needed there now, Australian military and political leaders said Wednesday.
A Tattered Afghanistan Reflects on Past Six Years
http://www.truthout.org/article/fear-disillusion-and-despair-notes-from-a-divided-land-peace-slips-away
The Guardian UK: "Six years after the fall of the Taliban, Nato claims the war is being won. But as Peter Beaumont discovered in his journey across the country, the West is in danger of losing the peace as millions suffer the fallout from social and economic collapse. Afghanistan's problems spring from 'lies and promises that were not kept. There is no security. Everything is in disorder. And the poor are no better off than they were before. They have to take out loans that they cannot return.'"
"Enough Is Enough, It's Time to Get Out": Veterans
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/03/9378/
Dozens of veterans from the U.S. occupation of Iraq converged in this west coast city over the weekend to share stories of atrocities being committed daily in Iraq, in a continuation of the "Winter Soldier" hearings held in Silver Spring, Maryland in March.
111 Nations, But Not US, Adopt Cluster Bomb Treaty
http://www.truthout.org/article/111-nations-but-not-us-adopt-cluster-bomb-treaty
Shawn Pogatchnik, for The Associated Press, reports from Dublin, Ireland: "Chief negotiators of a landmark treaty banning cluster bombs predicted Friday that the United States will never again use the weapons, a critical component of American air and artillery power. The treaty formally adopted Friday by 111 nations, including many of America's major NATO partners, would outlaw all current designs of cluster munitions and require destruction of stockpiles within eight years. It also opens the possibility that European allies could order US bases located in their countries to remove cluster bombs from their stocks."
Immigration Agency to Reveal Some Death Data (5 June 2008)
http://www.truthout.org/article/deaths-us-immigration-detention-facilities
DHS bureau will report the number of people who die awaiting deportation. (...) The articles, based on thousands of pages of internal documents, found that 83 detainees had died since ICE was created five years ago and that many more sick and mentally ill people have been denied the treatment to which they are entitled. The Post found medical staff shortages, treatment delays, sloppy record-keeping, poor administrative practices and cover-ups by employees aware of the poor care. CLIP
Prisons for Profit
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051308U.shtml
"Corporations are running many US prisons, but are they putting profits before prisoners? America passed a grim milestone this year: One in every one hundred Americans is now behind bars. This week, NOW on PBS investigates the government's trend to outsource prisons and prisoners to the private sector and examines the controversy it's causing."
US Planning Big New Prison in Afghanistan
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051708B.shtml
Eric Schmitt and Tim Golden of The New York Times report: "The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come."
Human Rights Group Charges: US Continues “Renditions” and Operates a Floating Gulag (3 June 2008)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jun2008/pris-j03.shtml
In a new report, the human rights organization Reprieve (UK) alleges that the US government has continued its program of “rendition” and secret imprisonment — despite a claim by George W. Bush in 2006 that the illegal practices had been stopped — and also that it holds an unknown number of “ghost” detainees aboard US navy vessels. The report has not been issued, but Reprieve made a press release available Monday and the Guardian in Britain carried a story the same day providing some of the study’s details.According to the Guardian, the rights group “claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition [handing prisoners over to regimes likely to torture them] since 2006.” (...) In its press release, Reprieve cites the comment of its director, Clive Stafford Smith: “By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them.” As for the detainees held on US ships, Reprieve alleges in its statement that as many as 17 ships have been employed as “floating prisons” since 2001, and that the “prisoners have been interrogated under torturous conditions before being rendered to other, often undisclosed locations.” CLIP
US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships (June 2, 2008) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/02/usa.humanrights/
The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees. CLIP
An ominous warning that the rapid rise in oil prices has only just begun (11 June 2008)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/an-ominous-warning-that-the-rapid-rise-in-oil-prices-has-only-just-begun-844217.html
The chief executive of the world's largest energy company has issued the most dire warning yet about the soaring the price of oil, predicting that it will hit $250 per barrel "in the foreseeable future". The forecast from Alexey Miller, the head of the Kremlin-owned gas giant Gazprom, would herald the arrival of £2-per-litre petrol and send shockwaves through the economy. His comments were the most stark to be expressed by an industry executive and come just days after the oil price registered its largest-ever single-day spike, hitting $139.12 per barrel last week amid fears that the world's faltering supply will be unable to keep up with demand.Mr Miller's prediction is well beyond even the most heady market forecasts, the most extreme of which fall between $150 and $200 per barrel, and was explained only by vague references to demand from the developing world. It nonetheless stoked an already febrile atmosphere of growing public anger across Europe over a soaring fuel cost that is wreaking havoc at nearly every level of the economy. The British Government was urging motorists yesterday not to panic-buy petrol in anticipation of a strike on Friday by lorry drivers who deliver petrol to forecourts for Royal Dutch Shell, assuring motorists that contingency plans would ensure sufficient supplies.In Spain, the regional government of Catalonia enacted an emergency action plan to bring in fresh food and fuel supplies after nearly half of its forecourts ran dry and supermarkets shelves were left bare. The situation was the result of the second day of an "indefinite" nationwide strike staged by lorry drivers in Spain seeking their government's help to contain the effects of expensive petrol. Scattered protests by drivers and fisherman in France and Portugal also continued yesterday. CLIP
Oil Crisis Rage Spreads
http://www.truthout.org/article/oil-crisis-rage-spreads
According to Agence France-Presse, "British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned Wednesday that the world faced an era-defining oil 'shock' that required urgent action, as European leaders argued how best to contain protests over soaring fuel prices."
Oil prices: George Soros warns that speculators could trigger stock market crash
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jun/03/commodities
He believes that the doubling in the price over the last year is partly due to investment institutions, such as pension funds, who are pumping money into indexes that track the cost of crude.
Fuel suppliers demand airlines pay cash in advance
http://tinyurl.com/6amc24
Airlines are being forced to pay cash in advance for jet fuel as the major oil companies tighten the screws on an industry that is being crushed by an extraordinary surge in the price of crude oil.
The Peak Oil Crisis: The Half-Life For Air Travel (01 May 2008)
http://www.fcnp.com/national_commentary/the_peak_oil_crisis_the_half-life_for_air_travel_20080501.html
In recent weeks, airlines around the world have been reporting substantial losses, declaring bankruptcy or completely shutting down. So far the losses have been mostly of small airlines, but many of the large ones have started to thrash around for merger partners. At $3.71 a gallon, jet fuel is now the single largest expense an airline faces. In 2000, the airlines fuel bill was $14 billion. It is now pushing $60 billion and climbing. Southwest, the most profitable carrier, recently announced that this year’s fuel bill will be $500 million more than last year and equal to 2007 profits. During the first quarter of 2008 American airlines lost $328 million; Delta lost $274 million; United lost $537 million; Continental $80 million; Northwest $191 million; and US Airways $236 million. Only Southwest Airlines, which did a better job of hedging its fuel than the others, made a profit. It is clear we are going to see major changes in air travel shortly. For some time now, airlines have been eliminating frills, raising prices, filling the planes and effecting whatever other economies come to mind. After the summer flying season ends next September, many airlines are planning to retire 5-10 percent of their least efficient aircraft, thereby reducing their flight schedules by a similar amount. Knowledgeable observers are expressing doubts these moves will be enough. People are starting to talk about $200 oil which implies that airline fuel costs will double again. CLIP
The Great Oil Swindle - How much did the Fed really know? By Mike Whitney
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20011.htm
The great oil crunch is another fabricated crisis; another "smoke and mirrors" fiasco; another Enron-type shell-game engineered by banksters and hedge fund managers. Once again, the bloody footprints can be traced right back to the front door of the Federal Reserve.
Lindsey Williams - The Energy Non-Crisis - Part 1 of 8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbakN7SLdbk
Oil Exporters Are Unable To Keep Up With Demand (May 29, 2008)
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121200725158327151.html
The world's top oil producers are proving unable to put more barrels on thirsty world markets despite sky-high prices, a shift that defies traditional market logic and looks set to continue.Fresh data from the U.S. Department of Energy show the amount of petroleum products shipped by the world's top oil exporters fell 2.5% last year, despite a 57% increase in prices, a trend that appears to be holding true this year as well. There are several reasons behind the net-export decline. Soaring profits from high-price crude have fueled a boom in oil demand in Saudi Arabia and across the Middle East, leaving less oil for export. At the same time, aging fields and sluggish investments have caused exports to drop significantly in Mexico, Norway and, most recently, Russia. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries also cut production early last year and didn't move to boost supplies again until last fall. In all, according to the Energy Department figures, net exports by the world's top 15 suppliers, which account for 45% of all production, fell by nearly a million barrels to 38.7 million barrels a day last year. The drop would have been steeper if not for heightened output in less-developed countries such as Angola and Libya, whose economies have yet to become big energy consumers.For all the attention paid to China's increasing energy thirst, rising energy demand in the Middle East may pose the greater challenge. Last year, the region's six largest petroleum exporters -- Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Kuwait, Iraq and Qatar -- curbed their output by 544,000 barrels a day. At the same time, their domestic demand increased by 318,000 barrels a day, leading to a loss in net exports of 862,000 barrels a day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Demand in the Middle East is a major factor right now, said Adam Robinson, an oil analyst at Lehman Brothers in New York. Mr. Robinson predicts the region will constitute more than 40% of increased demand next year. Saudi Arabia in particular has become a major energy consumer as the country pushes to put its oil riches to greater use. The kingdom is in the middle of a major investment campaign to become a world player in petrochemicals, aluminum and fertilizers, all of which will require huge amounts of oil and natural gas.Since 2004, Saudi oil consumption has increased nearly 23%, to 2.3 million barrels a day last year. Jeffrey Brown, a Dallas-based petroleum geologist who studies net export numbers, said that at its current growth rate, Saudi Arabia could be consuming 4.6 million barrels a day by 2020. CLIP
Mechanics, police say gas theft changing with times
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080527/ap_on_bi_ge/punctured_gas_tanks
Dale Fortin is getting a new kind of customer at his Detroit auto repair shop, customers who have not just been in a fender-bender or had a windshield smashed by a rock.The soaring price of crude oil has turned gas tanks into a cache of valuable booty, and Fortin has replaced several tanks punctured or drilled by thieves thirsting for the nearly $4-a-gallon fuel inside.'That's the new fad,' said the co-owner of Dearborn Auto Tech in Detroit. 'I'd never seen it before gas got up this high.'While gas station drive-offs and siphoning are far more common methods of stealing gas, reports of tank and line puncturing are starting to trickle into police departments and repair shops across the country. Some veteran mechanics and law enforcement officers say it's an unwelcome return of a crime they first saw during the Middle East oil embargo of the early 1970s. (...) The cost of replacing a metal tank on passenger vehicles is between $300 and $400, and the plastic tank common on newer vehicles would be at least $500. CLIP
Nanowire "Paper Towel" Designed to Clean Up Oil Spills (30 May 2008)
http://tinyurl.com/6ndezq
A mat of nanowires with the touch and feel of paper could be an important new tool in the cleanup of oil and other organic pollutants, scientists announced today. MIT researchers and colleagues say they have created a membrane that can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil, and can be recycled many times for future use. The oil itself can also be recovered.Some 200,000 tons of oil have already been spilled at sea since the start of the decade. "What we found is that we can make 'paper' from an interwoven mesh of nanowires that is able to selectively absorb hydrophobic liquids - oil-like liquids - from water," said Francesco Stellacci, an associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and leader of the work. CLIP
How to Resurrect a Dying Dollar: A Reboot Manifesto
http://www.heartcom.org/reboot.htm
It's not rocket science folks. The economy is in shambles for a simple reason. It is no accident that the Bush Administration has piled on more public debt than all predecessors combined; globalist empire mania at it's worst. The paper money printing presses have been running 24/7 to create more money, diluting the value. Since 2003, the dollar has lost more than one-third of its value compared to other major world currencies. But the price of oil and food has not risen in Europe. The value of the Euro has risen as the dollar plummets at an accelerated rate. It's far worse then we are told with official policy now suppressing key economic data like the real casualty numbers for Gulf War Veterans.The dollar is dying by plan and intent. The privately owned FED has an agenda. Bring the U.S. down and China up, and where they meet is a New World Order with the banksters in control. That may sound simplistic if not "crazy" but it follows a pattern since the FED hijacked the Constitution and began to privatize all our social institutions with a fraction of the action on "easy money" (debt) for the banksters. What is certifiably insane is how the fiscal responsibility demanded for every household in America is denied by our own government. CLIP
Over 60% of People Do Not Trust the Government
http://tinyurl.com/6kkzbd
A poll conducted by the World Public Opinion (WPO) has found that over 60% of the population of Great Britain and the United States do not trust their governments. The poll showed that 67% of Brits have low levels of trust in the Labour Government while 60% of Americans feel the same way about the Bush Administration.
Overpaid Bosses
http://www.truthout.org/article/overpaid-bosses
Le Monde's editorialist asks, "Is it tolerable that company executives should receive as much salary in a week as an employee does during his whole working life?"
A blatant and absolute fraud! What Is The Cause Of The Word-Wide Rise In Oil And Food Prices?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20058.htm
What is in store for the billions of poor people around the world who live on $1 a day? What is in store for the relatively rich populations of America and Europe when fuel prices have greater and greater impact on already rising food prices, driven up by these same speculators? Give it another month and when the prophesy of $150 a barrel sinks into the collective consciousness of all the truckers, fishermen, farmers who use fuel and pesticides and fertilizers, not to mention the ordinary motorist trying to get to work, expect the proverbial 'doodoo' to hit the revolving air machine. There have been many articles alluding to the fact that America is already bankrupt, having spent billions on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the burgeoning U.S. Department of Homeland Security, all in hock to China, Japan and Asian countries. The dollar is steadily tanking and today the New York Times sent me a news alert, which said, 'The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 400 points, driven by economic concerns and by oil prices that soared to near $140 a barrel." In 2008, for example, it took $21.57 to buy what $1 bought in 1913. (...) Do you see the similarities to the 1920's Great Depression? Almost all the factors are in place now that were contributing to the situation then, except that now, the situation is global. (...) It would seem that millions of people worldwide will die of starvation in the next few years as the world economy collapses. Now the real question is, is just the result of bad money management and greed or is it planned? And if so what is the objective?(...) And when you think about it in the round, so to speak, these people will be responsible for the deaths of starving millions because of the high food and oil prices, brought about by their casino gambling and deliberate talking up stocks into a bubble in order to make a quick profit, before the little investor gets left holding the dead baby.It is time. It is time to put a stop to this fraud, this blatant manipulation of the money supply and abolish the Federal Reserve. Once America 'comes to its senses' the other Central banks will quake in fear that it will happen to them. When the starving striking fishermen and truckers really get to know who is causing all this, then the 'global economic fraud' will end. CLIP
Zimbabwe ruled by 'military junta' (June 10, 2008)
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/623A12E3-FC69-4D17-ADE1-0C2A0B638137.htm
Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's opposition leader, has said that the country is being run by a military junta ahead of the run-off presidential election later this month. He told a news conference in the capital Harare on Tuesday that he would contest the vote against Robert Mugabe, the president, despite reports of a rising level of violence."This country is effectively now run by a military junta," he said. "As a people we have been exposed to state-sponsored brutality."Tsvangirai said that 66 supporters of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had been killed since the first round of voting on March 29.He also said that 3000 people have been hospitalised and another 200 are missing."Despite the conditions on the ground, the MDC is focused on the run-off and has developed counter-strategies of campaigning," he said."I have been encouraged by people's desire to finish what we have started." CLIP
Fears of new civil war as Sudanese town razed (27 May 2008)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/fears-of-new-civil-war-as-sudanese-town-razed-834597.html
Abyei, in the heart of Sudan, was a town of more than 30,000 people. It had a school and a hospital, a marketplace and a bar.It doesn't exist any more. Almost everything has been burnt to the ground. What remains is devastation. (...) A peace deal signed in 2005 brought an end to Sudan's 20-year civil war – a conflict between the Khartoum government and rebels in the south, which claimed the lives of two million people. Regional analysts now fear that the razing of Abyei by – according to witnesses – forces allied to Sudan's President, Omar al-Bashir, will cause the peace agreement to unravel. Analysts warn of a new civil war across Sudan that would destroy chances of peace in Darfur and suck in many of Sudan's nine neighbours to the conflict.Abyei had been one of the most contested regions in the war, an area which both sides claimed as their own. In the past two years, the majority of Abyei's population had returned. They lived under the protection of the United Nations. More than 300 troops are based here, with tanks, guns, and a mandate to monitor the peace deal between north and south. But President Bashir's ruling party, with more than one eye on the large oil reserves in the region around Abyei, has refused to accept the decision of an independent commission giving the area's residents the option of joining the south. The UN's top official in Sudan, Ashraf Qazi, warned of an escalation of violence in other disputed regions across central Sudan. "This could easily spread to other areas and threaten the peace deal," he said. CLIP
Burma: Thousands of Children Orphaned by Cyclone Nargis
http://www.truthout.org/article/burma-thousands-children-orphaned-cyclone-nargis
Moe Yu May writes for InterPressService in Rangoon, Burma: "Ko Ko Aung remembers the moment when he thought he had lost his older brother, Wai Yan Soe, to the powerful waters that tore through their house on the night Cyclone Nargis struck, one month ago ... Today, Ko Ko Aung and his elder brother are among 30 children orphaned by the cyclone that have found refuge in a Rangoon monastery."
Famine-hit Ethiopia ups army budget (June 11, 2008)
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/09572FAB-885F-49CB-9504-4B7BBB7B86E7.htm
The Ethiopian government has announced plans to increase its military budget by $50m to $400m, just one week after it appealed for international help to tackle its worst famine in 25 years. The announcement came after the US and Britain on Tuesday pledged a combined $90m in famine relief to the African country. Sufian Ahmed, Ethiopia's finance minister, said "we can only sustain economic development when there is stability in our region". "We believe that this amount is proportional." The draft budget is expected to be approved later this month. The move to increase military spending came a week after Ethiopia appealed for international help as it faces its worst famine since more than a million people starved to death in 1984 and 1985. Amid drought conditions and soaring global food prices, the UN estimates four million people are now at risk of starvation. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) plans to send about 95,000 tonnes of food to the Horn of Africa nation next month. Ethiopia will also receive an additional $10m in medical supplies, water services and other non-food aid, USAID said in a statement. Ethiopia is involved in a border row with Eritrea that has remained unresolved despite the signing of a peace deal that ended their two-year war in 2000. CLIP
UN: Apathy worsening food crisis
http://tinyurl.com/6qskrp
Billions of dollars are being wasted on feeding obese people in the West while millions starve around the world, Jacques Diouf, the United Nations food agency chief, has told world leaders at a summit on food security in Rome.
World Leaders Struggle to Agree to Food Crisis Plan
http://www.truthout.org/article/world-leaders-struggle-agree-food-crisis-plan
Agence France-Presse reports, "World leaders battled Wednesday to agree on how to tackle the global food crisis, making multi-billion dollar aid pledges but struggling to agree notably on biofuels, sources said."
The Rich Get Hungrier
http://www.truthout.org/article/the-rich-get-hungrier
Amartya Sen writes for The New York Times, "The recent rise in food prices has largely been caused by temporary problems like drought in Australia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Though the need for huge rescue operations is urgent, the present acute crisis will eventually end. But underlying it is a basic problem that will only intensify unless we recognize it and try to remedy it."
World Bank unveils $1.2bn food plan (MAY 30, 2008) MERELY SPARE CHANGE FOR THE FILTHY RICHEST PEOPLE ON EARTH...
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C9341A2D-FB20-4C35-A884-62D9E3EF03D1.htm
The World Bank has announced a $1.2bn programme to respond to the current global food crisis. The "fast track facility" will include $200m in grants to those most at risk from malnutrition or starvation in poor nations, the organisation said on Thursday.The bank says it aims to increase support for agriculture and food to $6bn, up from $4bn in 2008. Rising prices of vital foodstuffs such as wheat and rice have led to violent protests in dozens of countries across the world in recent months.In videoThe World Bank's Ngozi Okonjo Iweala on Al JazeeraRobert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, said in a statement: "These initiatives will help address the immediate danger of hunger and malnutrition for the two billion people struggling to survive in the face of rising food prices." Zoellick also urged governments of developed nations not to impose export restrictions or tariffs on food that could be funnelled to relief agencies or countries facing severe food shortages. He said such taxes and bans were "exacerbating the problem". Critics say the World Bank's free trade and free market policies have hindered the ability of poor countries to protect their food supplies and prevent higher prices. They have also meant that subsidised US goods can flood markets. CLIP
Cuba's Urban Agrarians Flourish
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/04/world/main4154650.shtml
Seventy percent of the vegetables and herbs grown in Cuba are organic and can be found in urban gardens. "Buy local. Eat seasonal. Eat organic." All now commonplace admonitions in the United States. But while none of these slogans are household words in Cuba, 70 percent of the vegetables and herbs grown on the island today are organic and the urban gardens where they are raised are usually within walking distance of those who will consume them. So in one blow Cuba reduced the use of fossil fuels in the production and transportation of food. And they began doing this nearly 20 years ago. The island nation's move to organic and sustainable farming did not arise from its environmental consciousness, although there was an element of that also. The main reason was the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, Cuba's only source of petroleum and main trading partner at that time. CLIP
Organic vs. GMO: Cracking the Produce Codes
http://community.livejournal.com/naturalliving/4372446.html
Have you ever looked at two bins of apples, one labeled 'organic,' and the other 'conventional,' and wondered if the apples might not be the same? I have. And since discovering a little secret of the produce industry, I've found that you really have to be a detective in the aisles these days.The secret is the price look-up (PLU) codes. They're an international numbering standard that identifies each type of produce, so that computerized cash registers can ring up the cost of fruits and vegetables automatically. They're also a powerhouse of information for savvy shoppers. The code indicates whether the item is a conventional, organic or genetically modified (GM) crop. The codes are based on four-digit numbers for conventional produce, to which an extra digit is added to indicate organic or GM status. If the number is five digits beginning with a 9, then the item is organic. If the item is five digits beginning in 8, then it is a genetically modified crop. For example, the PLU code for bananas is 4011. If the PLU sticker on the banana bunch reads 94011, then they are organic bananas. If the PLU sticker reads 84011, then the bananas are a genetically modified variety. There are PLU code stickers on virtually every piece of fruit, banded around every head of lettuce or bunch of spinach, and stamped onto the bag of every bag of organic salad greens. But that doesn't prevent certain confused grocers from mislabeling them. I've discovered conventional Fuji apples (4129) in the 'organic Fuji apples' (94129) bin many times. It's strange that I've never found organic apples in the conventional bin. In any case, knowing the codes will ensure that you get what you intended to get every time you shop.
Teen Finds How to Decompose Plastic Bags (May 22, 2008)
http://news.therecord.com/article/354044#=rss
WCI student isolates microbe that lunches on plastic bags - Getting ordinary plastic bags to rot away like banana peels would be an environmental dream come true.After all, we produce 500 billion a year worldwide and they take up to 1,000 years to decompose. They take up space in landfills, litter our streets and parks, pollute the oceans and kill the animals that eat them. Now a Waterloo teenager has found a way to make plastic bags degrade faster -- in three months, he figures. Daniel Burd's project won the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa. He came back with a long list of awards, including a $10,000 prize, a $20,000 scholarship, and recognition that he has found a practical way to help the environment. CLIP
Navy Held Firing Tests Near Dolphin Stranding
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=48742
LONDON - The Royal Navy carried out live-firing exercises off Cornwall just hours before 25 dolphins died by stranding themselves in a nearby river, the Ministry of Defence said on Wednesday. As initial autopsies suggested the dolphins might have been scared or disorientated, MoD officials said training exercises with a submarine and survey ship using sonar had also been held in Falmouth Bay. MoD officials said the exercises were "highly unlikely" to have been the cause of the deaths, Britain's biggest mass stranding for nearly 30 years. Campaigners called for an urgent inquiry into any possible connection.The dolphins died after swimming up the Percuil River near Falmouth on Monday morning despite marine experts, wildlife volunteers and vets battling all day to save them. While seven were saved and led back out to sea, one rescuer described the scene as a "sea of carnage". A Royal Navy spokesman told Reuters on Tuesday there had been no training or official activity in the area since last Thursday.But on Wednesday, the MoD issued a statement confirming there were "routine" live firing exercises 60 nautical miles from Falmouth on Friday.Marine experts said this was considered close in terms of possible effects on dolphins. Officials also said a survey vessel had been using "short-range side-scan sonar" for sea-bed mapping trials at the time of the incident. CLIP
US plan to protect right whale from shipping blocked by Cheney (2 May 2008)
http://tinyurl.com/5yd6k3
Efforts to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale from being killed by ships are being blocked by Vice President Dick Cheney according to leaked documents.A behind the scenes struggle is raging between the White House and US government scientists who want to force ships to slow down near the calving grounds of the almost extinct right whale. The right whale controversy is the latest example of the Bush Administration sidestepping the advice of its on scientists which are aimed at protecting endangered species or threats to the environment. On Monday, a judge had to order the administration to release its much-delayed decision aimed at protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. Only 350 of the whales remain in Atlantic waters off America's eastern seaboard and they are considered one of the most endangered species on Earth. Government scientists warn that the loss of just one more pregnant female is enough to doom the species, which was almost hunted to extinction in the 19th century. Every year around three right whales are either injured or killed in collisions with ocean-going vessels like containerized cargo ships even though they are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Right whales frequently wash up on shore bearing deep scars from being struck by ships propellers. To reduce ship strikes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) decided that ships should restrict their speed to 10 knots or less near whale feeding and calving grounds during parts of the year. But Mr Cheney's office, which tends to operate in secrecy, sent letters repeatedly questioning whether the rule was needed according to leaked documents. Flatly contradicting the scientific research Mr Cheney's staff argued, "that we have no evidence that lowering the speeds of 'large ships' will actually make a difference."A critique of the scientists analysis by the administration led to a strongly worded reply in which they said: "The basic facts remain that there is a direct relationship" between a vessel's speed and the likelihood of death or serious injury to the whale, and "at vessel speeds at or below 10 knots, the probability of death/serious injury is greatly reduced." CLIP
US Consumers Rank Last in World Survey of Green Habits
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/050708EA.shtml
"Americans rank last in a new National Geographic-sponsored survey released Wednesday that compares environmental consumption habits in 14 countries."
Apocalypse in the Oceans (May 30, 2008)
http://www.alternet.org/environment/86789
With 150 dead zones in our oceans, some the size of Ireland, author Taras Grescoe argues that there's been a massive die out of sea life. (...) With the cod gone, stocks of lobsters and other low-in-the-food-chain species exploded." By wiping out predator species, the fishing industry screws up ecosystems. As sea creatures high on the food chain disappear, their populations more than decimated in the last half-century, a lobster boom "may just be a tiny blip on a slippery slope to oceans filled with jellyfish, bacteria, and slime."Meanwhile, overfishing has created some 150 "dead zones" -- oxygen-free patches of ocean that can sustain no life -- around the world: Some of these patches, Grescoe tells us forebodingly, "are now as large as Ireland." In search of seafloor-dwelling species such as the trendy monkfish -- long ignored, then popularized singlehandedly by Julia Child in 1979 -- bottom-trawls weighing more than 26,000 pounds each rake and flatten wildlife-rich undersea peaks, leaving a paved-looking flatness in their wake. Oh, and a large percentage of coral reefs worldwide are dying or already dead. Oh, and those bluefin tuna and halibut steaks you like? Say it with me: Mercury. Those jumbo fried shrimp battened on pesticides and antibiotics in bacteria-riddled Chinese farms, their decomposing flesh treated with borax? How's your health insurance? (...) And we learn about "finning," the practice of slicing off just-caught sharks' pectoral and dorsal fins -- destined for soup -- with hot metal blades. "Kicked back into the ocean, alive and bleeding," it can take the sharks days to die. Nearly forty million are killed this way annually. Seventeen countries, including the US and Canada, now ban finning, but China and the EU are among the world's remaining avid finners; Grescoe identifies Spain as the most avid of all. Although shark hunting is technically forbidden in Galapagos National Park, a vast marine reserve, some 300,000 sharks are caught there every year. CLIP
Oxygen-Poor Ocean Zones Are Growing
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/050208EB.shtml
Kenneth R. Weiss, The Los Angeles Times, says: "Oxygen-starved waters are expanding in the Pacific and Atlantic as ocean temperatures increase with global warming, threatening fisheries and other marine life, a study published today concludes."
Trouble in paradise: Warming a greater danger to tropical species (22.05.2008)
http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=80&news:oid=n10070&template=news_detail.html&flash=true
Polar bears fighting for survival in the face of a rapid decline of polar ice have made the Arctic a poster child for the negative effects of climate change. But new research shows that species living in the tropics likely face the greatest peril in a warmer world. (...) "Many tropical species can only tolerate a narrow range of temperatures because the climate they experience is pretty constant throughout the year," said Curtis Deutsch, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Our calculations show that they will be harmed by rising temperatures more than would species in cold climates. "Unfortunately, the tropics also hold the large majority of species on the planet," he said. CLIP
China tries to curb addiction to plastic bags (June 1, 2008) http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080601/sc_afp/chinaenvironmentpollution
BEIJING (AFP) - China joined a small group of nations Sunday in restricting the use of plastic bags, but there are doubts the rule would be effective in a country that consumes one trillion of them a year. Supermarkets and other shops began charging for plastic bags as a government crackdown on the environmentally damaging items creaked into action. The production, sale and use of ultra-thin plastic shopping bags was also banned in an attempt to rid the country of the "white pollution" that clogs its waterways, farms and fields.Only a few other countries, ranging from Ireland to Bangladesh, have already taken similar measures.But environmental organisations questioned whether the ban on free plastic shopping bags could be effectively implemented in the entire country. CLIP
Global Warming Africanizing Spain
http://www.truthout.org/article/global-warming-africanizing-spain
Elisabeth Rosenthal, of The New York Times: "Southern Spain has long been plagued by cyclical drought, but the current crisis, scientists say, probably reflects a more permanent climate change brought on by global warming. And it is a harbinger of a new kind of conflict."
World CO2 Levels At Record High, Scientists Warn (May 12, 2008)
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/12/8897/
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high, according to new figures that renew fears that climate change could begin to slide out of control. Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.The figures, published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on its website, also confirm that carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than expected. The annual mean growth rate for 2007 was 2.14ppm - the fourth year in the past six to see an annual rise greater than 2ppm. From 1970 to 2000, the concentration rose by about 1.5ppm each year, but since 2000 the annual rise has leapt to an average 2.1ppm. CLIP
The Defining Moment for Climate Change (May 11, 2008)
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174930
Already climate change -- in the form of a changing pattern of global rainfall -- seems to be affecting the planet in significant ways. Take the massive, almost decade-long drought in Australia's wheat-growing heartland, which has been a significant factor in sending flour prices, and so bread prices, soaring globally, leading to desperation and food riots across the planet. (...) Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year -- two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast.And suddenly, the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas, accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. Apparently, we've managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth.And don't forget: China is building more power plants; India is pioneering the $2,500 car, and Americans are converting to TVs the size of windshields which suck juice ever faster.Here's the thing. Hansen didn't just say that, if we didn't act, there was trouble coming; or, if we didn't yet know what was best for us, we'd certainly be better off below 350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. His phrase was: "…if we wish to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed." A planet with billions of people living near those oh-so-floodable coastlines. A planet with ever more vulnerable forests. CLIP
Climate Destruction Will Produce Millions of "Envirogees" (27 May 2008)
http://www.truthout.org/article/climate-destruction-will-produce-millions-envirogees
The rise of environmental disasters from climate change and destruction of ecosystems will create a surge of refugees across the planet. Chew on this word, jargon lovers. Envirogee. It carries more 21st century buzz than its semi-official designation climate refugee, which is a displaced individual who has been forced to migrate because of environmental devastation. Maybe the buzzword will catch on faster and shed some much-needed light on what will become a serious problem, probably by the end of this or the next decade. That light is crucial, because so far envirogees haven't been fully recognized by those who certify the civil liberties of Earth's various populations, whether that is the United Nations or local and national governments whose people are increasingly on the move for a whole new set of devastating reasons. CLIP
An epidemic of extinctions: Decimation of life on earth (16 May 2008)
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/an-epidemic-of-extinctions-decimation-of-life-on-earth-829325.html
Species are dying out at a rate not seen since the demise of the dinosaurs, according to a report published today – and human behaviour is to blame. Emily Dugan counts the cost -- The world's species are declining at a rate "unprecedented since the extinction of the dinosaurs", a census of the animal kingdom has revealed. The Living Planet Index out today shows the devastating impact of humanity as biodiversity has plummeted by almost a third in the 35 years to 2005.The report, produced by WWF, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Global Footprint Network, says land species have declined by 25 per cent, marine life by 28 per cent, and freshwater species by 29 per cent.Jonathan Loh, editor of the report, said that such a sharp fall was "completely unprecedented in terms of human history". "You'd have to go back to the extinction of the dinosaurs to see a decline as rapid as this," he added. "In terms of human lifespan we may be seeing things change relatively slowly, but in terms of the world's history this is very rapid."And "rapid" is putting it mildly. Scientists say the current extinction rate is now up to 10,000 times faster than what has historically been recorded as normal.As nations meet for the Convention on Biological Diversity in Bonn, these alarming figures will cast a shadow over government pledges to make a "significant" reduction in biodiversity loss by 2010. In fact, the report's authors say that global inaction has already made such a goal totally unattainable. CLIP
How the world's oceans are running out of fish (May 11 2008)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/11/fishing.food
The future of our seas has never been more precarious. Ninety years of industrial-scale overfishing has brought us to the brink of an ecological catastrophe and deprived millions of their livelihoods. As scientific guidelines are ignored and catches become ever bigger, Alex Renton tells why the international community has failed to act. CLIP
Unilever Threatens Côte d'Ivoire's Primary Rainforests, Showing Promises of "Sustainable" Palm Oil Meaningless
http://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=ivory_coast_oil_palm
Leading global consumer products company poised to destroy Ivory Coast's rainforests as both investor and customer, just after its commitment to rainforest protection and certified oil palm was much heralded by some -- One of Côte d'Ivoire's most important primary rainforests is to be cleared by global consumer product company Unilever and others, despite Unilever's recent promises to buy only "sustainable" palm oil from lands not cleared of rainforests for their production. Tanoé Swamps Forest in Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) is one of the last remaining old growth forests in the country and the last refuge for three highly endangered primates -- the Miss Waldron Colobus, the Geoffroy's colobus and the Diana roloway -- as well as home to many endangered plant species. Despite international protests, palm oil company PALM-CI has just begun destroying this 6,000 hectare forest to convert it to oil palm plantations. Unilever is one of the main companies behind PALM-CI and the destruction of the Tanoé Swamps Forest. After sending the first protest email to Unilever, you will be forwarded to a second protest email asking the government of Côte d'Ivoire to ensure that the forest and the communities that depend on it are fully protected.
Fungi Could Help Clean Up DU (7 May 2008)
http://tinyurl.com/6on82h
Humble fungi found in most back gardens could help clean up battlefields contaminated with depleted uranium. At present, sites can be partial decontaminated by physically collecting and disposing of fragments from shells. However, radioactive particles and dust from explosions remain in the soil, preventing full reclamation. Now, a research team in Scotland has established that common fungi can grow on and chemically lock away the offending uranium. As their hyphal filaments sprawled across fragments of depleted uranium, the tubules gradually became coated in a yellowy mineral. This, it turned out, locked the uranium into a chemical form inaccessible to biological organisms, and unlikely to dissolve into surface waters. At twice the density of lead, depleted uranium is added to weapons to give them extra force to penetrate targets. But the complete fallout from exploding missiles is impossible to collect physically. This means that hazardous radioactive uranium-235 in the material, which can cause kidney toxicity and has been linked with nerve damage and lung cancer, can persist in the environment for decades. CLIP
Tim Lott: My LSD trip down memory lane (4 May 2008)
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/tim-lott-my-lsd-trip-down-memory-lane-820706.html
Acid hasn't been fashionable since the Sixties and Seventies. Today, there are few politicians who wouldn't benefit from a tab -- Dr Albert Hofmann, who died last week, was the inventor of LSD. But he was not merely a chemist. He was a revolutionary. Hofmann changed the way a whole generation looked at the world. This is the sort of statement that is customarily made about thinkers and scientists of the stature of, say, Marx or Einstein. But it is more directly and vividly true of Hofmann than any of these otherwise much more formidable intellectual titans. Freud theorised about the existence of the unconscious, but LSD made it an experiential reality, as tangible as touching stone or seeing light. Hofmann’s discovery is still widely misunderstood. But those who have known its glory - and its agony - will also know that no one really comes back from the altered state of consciousness that LSD induces quite the same person that they were before. Like no other experience imaginable, it rips to pieces your understanding of what it is to be alive. When you return from the unimaginable shore to which LSD takes you, putting those pieces back together can be a lifelong task. It can make you mad. But it can also make you understand that your life is not what you thought it was - that it is bigger, richer and, above all, stranger. This epiphany-in-a-pill is an idea that makes us deeply uncomfortable for a raft of reasons - the lack of spiritual or moral effort involved in attaining the experience, the impossibility of explaining its effects to non-users, and the moral panic over its distribution and use in the 1960s and 1970s. Nowadays, LSD has been quietly consigned to the medicine cabinet of history. It is no longer fashionable, nor widely available, nor especially potent. It has lost ground to gentler drugs such as MDMA or more violent narcotics such a crack, crystal meth and heroin. But it is in a different category from all these mind-altering substances, and ill deserves its lumping into the category of “recreational drugs: bad/harmful/dangerous”. This isn’t to say it isn’t bad, harmful or dangerous. LSD can certainly be all those things. But LSD - like its natural counterparts mescaline or peyote - is not quite in the same category as any other mind-altering narcotic. It is potentially, I think, the only truly creative drug - that is, a drug which enables the mind to shake off the shackles of habit and conditioning and arrive at the heart of - for want of a better word - the human soul. And it is the only “recreational” drug that has a real element of intellectual and cultural respectability, with thinkers and writers such as Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg all affirming its uses, while the remarkable phenomenon we call “the Sixties” would not have happened at all without this psychoactive shamanic medicine. CLIP
Mercury Fillings Shattered! FDA, ADA Conspiracy to Poison Children with Toxic Mercury Fillings Exposed in Groundbreaking Lawsuit (June 05, 2008)
http://www.naturalnews.com/023367.html
The FDA has, for decades, ridiculously insisted that mercury fillings pose no health threat whatsoever to children. While dismissing hundreds of studies showing a clear link between mercury amalgam fillings ("silver fillings") and disastrous neurological effects in the human body, the FDA denied the truth about mercury and effectively protected the mercury filling racket that has brought so much harm to so many people. For over a hundred years, a cabal of "mercury mongers" made up of the American Dental Association, mercury filling manufacturers and indignant dentists have reaped windfall profits by implanting toxic fillings into the mouths of children, all while insisting that mercury -- one of the most toxic heavy metals known to modern science -- posed no health threat whatsoever.Today, that reign of toxicity is about to end. Thanks to the tireless, multi-year efforts of people like Charles Brown, National Counsel for Consumers for Dental Choice (http://www.ToxicTeeth.org), the FDA has now been forced to acknowledge a fact so fundamental that, by any measure of honest science, it should have adopted the position decades ago. What position is that? Simply that mercury is toxic to humans. CLIP
10 airports install body scanners
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080606/a_bodyscan06.art.htm
(...) The scanners bounce harmless "millimeter waves" off passengers who are selected to stand inside a portal with arms raised after clearing the metal detector. A TSA screener in a nearby room views the black-and-white image and looks for objects on a screen that are shaded differently from the body. Finding a suspicious object, a screener radios a colleague at the checkpoint to search the passenger. The TSA says it protects privacy by blurring passengers' faces and deleting images right after viewing. Yet the images are detailed, clearly showing a person's gender. "You can actually see the sweat on someone's back," Schear said.The scanners aim to strengthen airport security by spotting plastic and ceramic weapons and explosives that evade metal detectors and are the biggest threat to aviation. Government audits have found that screeners miss a large number of weapons, bombs and bomb parts such as wires and timers that agents sneak through checkpoints. (...) Passengers can decline to go through a scanner, but they will face a pat-down.Schear, the Baltimore security director, said only 4% of passengers decline.In Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where scanners have been tested since last year as an alternative to pat-downs, 90% of passengers choose to be scanned, the TSA says. "Most passengers don't think it's any big deal," Schear said. "They think it's a piece of security they're willing to do."
Taser Loses 1st Product-Liability Suit; Jury Awards $6 Million
http://tinyurl.com/3fexoc
Taser International Inc., the largest stun-gun maker, lost a $6.2 million jury verdict over the death of a California man who died after police shot him multiple times with the weapon. The defeat is the first for Taser in a product- liability claim.A San Jose, California, jury yesterday said Taser had failed to warn police in Salinas, California, that prolonged exposure to electric shock from the device could cause a risk of cardiac arrest. The jury awarded $1 million in compensatory damages and $5.2 million in punitive damages to the estate of Robert Heston, 40, and his parents. The jury cleared the police officers of any liability.Taser previously won two trials, one over claims by a police officer injured in a training accident and the other involving a death in custody. Taser has settled at least 10 cases involving injuries to police officers during training, company lawyer Doug Klint told Bloomberg News last year. Taser said it will appeal the verdict. CLIP
Cordless phones at least as dangerous as mobile phones
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/cordlessPhonesBrainTumours.php
Cancer researchers in Sweden found strong links between malignant brain tumours and using cordless phones, which are comparable to those for using mobile phones [1, 2].The cancer research team led by Lennart Hardell at the University of Orebro showed that people who have used mobile phones or cordless phones for more than 2 000 h are all at greatly increased risks of getting malignant brain tumours. The odds of getting malignant brain tumours compared with those who have never used these phones - expressed as odds ratio, OR – was 5.9 times for analogue mobile phones (older type of mobile phones), 3.7 tines for digital mobile phones and 2.3 times for cordless phones. (OR of 1 indicates no increased risk compared to non-users; OR1 indicates decreased risk; and OR">1 indicates increased risk.) CLIP
Japan urges limiting kids' cell phones (May 27)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080527/ap_on_bi_ge/japan_no_cell_phones
TOKYO - Japanese youngsters are getting so addicted to Internet-linking cell phones that the government is starting a program warning parents and schools to limit their use among children. The government is worried about how elementary and junior high school students are getting sucked into cyberspace crimes, spending long hours exchanging mobile e-mail and suffering other negative effects of cell phone overuse, Masaharu Kuba, a government official overseeing the initiative, said Tuesday."Japanese parents are giving cell phones to their children without giving it enough thought," he said. "In Japan, cell phones have become an expensive toy." CLIP
The Cell Phone Poisoning Of America http://groups.google.com/group/mobilfunk_newsletter/browse_thread/thread/2d3b9d9c0a07f2b9
Cell Phone-Brain Tumor Link
http://www.rense.com/general82/DrKhuranaReport.pdf
EMF-Omega-News 17. May 2008
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/4931781/
Omega-News Collection 17. May 2008
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/4931784/
EMF-Omega-News 31. May 2008
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/4962144/
Omega-News Collection 31. May 2008
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/4962148/
EMF-Omega-News 7. June 2008
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/4977246
Omega-News Collection 7. June 2008
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/4977248/
1.
From: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/06/notes060608.DTL
Is Obama an Enlightened One?
Spiritual wise ones say: This sure ain't no ordinary politician. You buying it?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
June 6, 2008
I find I'm having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and miserable, deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped persons of all shapes and stripes and I'm having it in particular with those who seem confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the same thing: What the hell's the big deal about Obama?
I, of course, have an answer. Sort of.
Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former '60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain't gonna like this one little bit.
Ready? It goes likes this:
Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.
This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.
To them I say all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the draw, the ethereal and thing that keeps drawing millions of people in from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?
No, it's not merely youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.
Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.
Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.
The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually empty stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King, to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.
Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me. But you gotta wonder, why has, say, the JFK legacy lasted so long, is so vital to our national identity? Yes, the assassination canonized his legend. The Kennedy family is our version of royalty. But there's something more. Those attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK wasn't assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It's because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.
Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.
Let me be completely clear: I'm not arguing some sort of utopian revolution, a big global group hug with Obama as some sort of happy hippie camp counselor. I'm not saying the man's going to swoop in like a superhero messiah and stop all wars and make the flowers grow and birds sing and solve world hunger and bring puppies to schoolchildren.
Please. I'm also certainly not saying he's perfect, that his presidency will be free of compromise, or slimy insiders, or great heaps of politics-as-usual. While Obama's certainly an entire universe away from George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn't hard to stand far above and beyond the worst president in American history.
But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to me, in a way, it's not even about Obama, per se. There's a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that's been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically draw to him. It's exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.
Don't buy any of it? Think that's all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Agey bulls-- and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you're talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes? I understand. I get it. I often believe it myself.
Not this time.
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Thoughts about this column? E-mail Mark: mmorford@sfgate.com
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/a/
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HERE IS AN INTERESTING COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE FROM LONG-TIME ERN SUBSCRIBER DAN STAFFORD
Date: 08 Jun 2008
From: Daniel Stafford (aqmstaffo@mailbag.com)
Subject: Re: Is Obama an Enlightened One?
Interesting take, Jean.
I'm thinking maybe this is right. I come by that in a 'roundabout way.
First, as horrible as Bush has been, he's exposed the rottenness of the government-corporate marriage bed to the core, the energy industry's dark side, the war on the global middle class, all of it. You couldn't dream up a bigger flashlight than the murderous idiot-clown we've had in office for 7.5 years. As an old American saying goes, if Bush had a brain, he'd be dangerous - because he'd be able to bury all his excrement instead of shoving it at people's noses in a bumbling, arrogant way.
It's like astrology, one perceived negative aspect sets the stage for the healing aspect to follow.
Jagged, bitter pill that George Bush has been, what would be on America's mind now if he hadn't hollowed out the economy, civil rights, science, infrastructure, etc? What would be the awareness of global warming if it weren't for sustained high gas prices? Bush has managed quite well to keep most Iraqi oil OFF the market, along with his father & Bill Clinton, for what, fifteen years or more? He's made it quite clear what completely un-fettered corporations will do, in a very in-your-face way. He's blown the lid off the falsehood of completely un-regulated markets. He has made it obvious that not even the USA can be the world's police man, nor can they afford a true global empire. Not to mention exposing the hate-spewing of false Christians claiming to be God's messenger boys. Mix government and religion? Didn't ol' GW use that trick to very ill effect?
So, the stage has been set. If the human race is to survive to move out and populate the local regions of this universe, we need a healer and leader who can give us a better way of being. If the universe were teaching it's children how to drive, a good scare might make them more cautious and aware, and therefore safer.
Obama has all the potential. Of substance we have yet to see.
Regards,
Dan
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Related articles:
Obama seeks to soothe pro-Israel lobby
http://news.bbc.co..uk/2/hi/americas/7437060.stm
(...)"Let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally, Israel. Do not be confused." (...)"I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything."
It's a Mitzvah
http://tinyurl.com/66luf6
Barack Obama promised $30 billion in military assistance for Israel. He declared that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force has "rightly been labeled a terrorist organization." He used terms such as "false prophets of extremism" and "corrupt" while discussing Palestinians. And he promised that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."
2.
ALL OF THE ABOVE SOUNDS WONDERFUL BUT SADLY IT LOOKS LIKE THIS IS JUST ANOTHER SMOKE SCREEN
PUPPETS of WAR McCain Obama Hillary MUST WATCH!! (10 minutes) Deconstruct the whole war-propaganda!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8rZxa5cnVk
Forwarded by Nattanya (nattanya@telus.net)
From: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2008/060608_hillary_obama.htm
Hillary & Obama In Secret Bilderberg Rendezvous
Campaign spokespeople refuse to disclose location of meeting, but reports admit Democratic candidates convened at "an event in Northern Virginia"
Paul Joseph Watson
June 6, 2008
According to news reports, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton went out of their way to hold their long-awaited private meeting in a very specific location - not at Hillary's mansion in Washington - but in Northern Virginia, which also just happens to be the scene of the 2008 Bilderberg meeting.
Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs told the media that Obama and Clinton held a private meeting last night but he refused to disclose where it taken place, except that it was not at Clinton's home in Washington, as had been widely reported. Hillary campaign managers also refused to disclose the location of the rendezvous.
"Reporters traveling with Obama sensed something might be happening between the pair when they arrived at Dulles International Airport after an event in Northern Virginia and Obama was not aboard the airplane," reports the Associated Press.
Dulles just happens to be walking distance from the Westfields Marriott hotel in Chantilly where Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller and the rest of the Bilderberg globalists are convening.
"Asked at the time about the Illinois senator's whereabouts, Gibbs smiled and declined to comment," the reports adds.
What is the only political "event" taking place in Northern Virginia at the moment? The Bilderberg Group meeting of course. Rather than taking the easier option of meeting at Clinton's Washington mansion, Obama and Hillary went out of their way to grace the Bilderberg elitists with their presence.
The neo-liberal website Wonkette, which had previously ridiculed "conspiracy theorists" for ascribing power to Bilderberg, seemed to take a somewhat different tone when it made the connection between Obama and Hillary's meeting and the Bilderberg Group.
"Guess who had a very private talky-talk in (maybe) romantic Northern Virginia tonight, probably at the Bilderberg Group meeting in Chantilly? Your Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton!," states the blog. "They really met and talked, in private, Thursday night. And really, it sounds like they did this at that creepy Bilderberg Group meeting, which is happening now, and which is so secret that nobody will admit they’re going, even though everybody who is anybody goes to Bilderberg."
To have the potential future President and Vice-President of America attend a conference that debunkers ha