This Empire Shall Not Stand

Empire of the Locusts

March 27 / 28, 2004
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

This essay was originally published as the introduction to Kurt Nimmo's great new book, Another Day in the Empire.

These days I've taken to re-reading Suetonius, the droll muckraker of the Roman Empire. Suetonius was a republican in an age of flagitious autocrats and rampaging militarists. He wrote his masterpiece, the Twelve Caesars, around 100 AD, when Imperial Rome was kicking into overdrive.

Suetonius was employed in the position of librarian, a seditious profession even in antiquity. He was apparently in charge of collating and preserving the imperial correspondence. During breaks from catering to the epistolary whims of Trajan, he rummaged through the imperial vaults for material for his writing. Suetonius unearthed a juicy trove of scandal from the lives of the Julian and Claudian emperors. His scathing biographies of demented Caesars and scheming courtiers chart how the expansion of that ancient empire paralleled the rise of a totalitarian regime at home that plundered the provinces to bankroll the invidious habits of a degenerate ruling elite. Today, his Twelve Caesars reads with an unnerving immediacy. It doesn't feel like history, but a kind of long-distance journalism.

The old stories of corruption and blood lust told by Suetonius strike such a familiar chord because we too find ourselves inmates in an age of empire, an empire careening on a downward and dangerous course. The government is increasingly remote and paternalistic, the people frightened by their own rulers.

The American Empire is in the grip of the idiot prince. But Bush the Younger doesn't have the heart of Claudius. He is a smirking and vindictive man, running on very bitter juices indeed. A sour little man of limited intellect and unbound ambition, primed with the pious rage of a dry drunk. Pretzel Boy.

Bush was whisked into power in an electoral coup, the way cleared by his more capable brother, a cadre of media handlers and pitbull lawyers, and a corrupted Supreme Court. Bush merely watched things break his way like a dazed automaton.

The American people, by and large, mulled around like somnambulants, as the remnants of their Republic dissolved without so much as a murmur. They were mired in a pathology of submission. Even the baleful Gore didn't stand up for himself, as if to say that if he had to win the election by fighting for thousands of disenfranchised black voters in Florida it wasn't worth winning.

This is a dangerous mix in a putative democracy.

The nation is ruled by corporate gangsters and the people who might do something about it are too dulled, overworked and panic-stricken to make a move to defend their rights. It's evidence that an extreme political degeneracy has set in, eating away at the great promise of this wrecked republic. The glory days are gone. Now the nation finds itself enshrouded in a kind of terminal entropy.

Like Caligula or Nero, George W. Bush is hardly competent to rule a global empire. The man proved incapable of being a figurehead for a dreadful baseball team or a minor league oil company, even when backed by his father's brawny political influence. As a micro-tycoon, everything Bush Jr. touched he bankrupted. It didn't take him long to A Midas in reverse. Others paid the bills and cleaned up the messes. Just as they did when he was a cheerleader at Andover and a coke-head at Yale.

Of course, all that was just so much warming up in the bullpen compared to what Bush did to the US economy he and Cheney got their grips on the helm. When Bush entered office, he inherited a budget surplus of $650 billion. Two years, three tax cuts for the hyper-rich and two wars against the poorest of the poor later, he saddled the nation with a deficit of more than $350 billion. That's a trillion dollar swing. Don't worry, others will pay the price.

As governor, Pretzel Boy ran Texas with the same brand of manic frathouse carelessness that marked his misadventures in capitalism. Of course, he diverted the attention from the mutilation of the Lone Star state's infrastructure by executing as many people as possible during his tenure. Bush even chuckled about executing Karla Faye Tucker. What kind of a man jokes about ordering the death of a woman? The precedent here is Tiberius, who ordered the condemned pitched from the cliff near his palace on Capri.


"In Capri, they still show the place at the cliff top where Tiberius used to watch his victims being thrown into the sea after prolonged and exquisite tortures," Suetonius wrote. "A party of marines were stationed below, and when the bodies came hurtling down they whacked at them with oars and boathooks, to make sure that they were completely dead. An ingenious torture of Tiberius's devising was to trick men into drinking huge draughts of wine, and then suddenly to knot a cord tightly around their genitals, which not only cut into the flesh but prevented them from urinating."

During his governorship not much bread trickled down to the new ghettos of Houston or the destitute border barrios, but Pretzel Boy sure doled out a regular dose of bloody circuses. Bush supervised 152 executions as governor of Texas and never once used his power to grant clemency. A fine Christian man.

Even Nero proved a more forgiving despot than Bush. Here's Suetonius on the deranged emperor: "According to my informants, Nero was convinced that nobody could remain chaste or pure in any part of his body, but that most people concealed their secret vices; hence, if anyone confessed to obscene practices, Nero forgave him all his other crimes."

In contrast, Bush, a former drug dilettante and alcoholic, pursues private and consensual conduct with the rabid spite of an uptight bully. He has attacked the right to die with dignity and zealously pursued the prosecution of those who want to alleviate their suffering by smoking a little pot, even when such federal prosecutions trample state laws, which he once deemed as sacrosanct. His Attorney General, John Ashcroft, a psalm-spouting, prosecutorial puritan. He views the Bill of Rights with the same acidic disdain that J. Edgar Hoover once reserved for the Communist Manifesto. John Ashcroft is our Torquemada, has turned America against itself, seeding the country with snitches, snoops and informants. Diversity was once the calling card of this nation, now it can land you a subpoena or a one-way ticket to an internment camp: address unknown.

These things happen every day in the empire of the locusts.

Economists would call Bush a walking externality, leaving ruin in his in wake, as he prances away from one pile-up after another. His pampered psyche, pumping with narcissism and insecurity, would be all too familiar to both Freud and Suetonius. He fits an old and dangerous profile. The princeling reared by a remote and icy father and a overbearing mother, the grotesque Barbara Bush: our Livia Drusilla, the murderous harridan of the Roman Imperium. Bush can seem like a clown, but you laugh at his antics at your own peril. He is no Dan Quayle, an affable imbecile. This thin-skinned president holds grudges, settles scores. You're either with me or against me. Welcome to Bush's bifurcated world. And god help you if you fall on the other side.

Like a white wannabe gansta rapper, Bush doesn't venture far without his posse of suited thugs-the neo-con Praetorians. His flock of handlers circle the White House like vultures in a thermal, intoxicated by the ripe scent of roadkill. Cheney and Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld can scarcely keep track of all the opportunities for plunder and secret enrichment. The scandals of Tea Pot Dome seem like petty larceny next to epic self-dealing and looting of the federal treasury by this gang of putative fiscal conservatives. Cheney's former company, Halliburton, reaps billions in no bid contracts to rebuild Iraq from a war that Cheney, the administration's chief mesmerist, promoted through a shifting skein of lies, threats and deceptions. Looting the dead for private profit.

A similar plunder is going on back in the homeland, where Bush cronies are feasting at the public trough. Take Steven Griles, the number two man at the Department of Interior. He overruled the warnings of his own biologists and awarded oil and gas leases on public lands worth billions to his former clients. The EPA lied to the people of New York by telling them the post-9/11 air was safe to breathe when they knew it was saturated with a foul brew of toxins. By imperial fiat, the filthiest power plants and factories in the nation were given a pass to violate the Clean Air Act, pumping into the air a host of poisons far more lethal than anything in Saddam Hussein's arsenal of weapons. On and on it goes.

Just another day in the empire.

We've entered a new era where corruption is a game of state and the mainstream media tags dutifully along because if they play it right they can make out in the great game, too.

The game is rigged, of course. The house always wins. But the foundation of the house is cracking. Soon it may all come down like Poe's House of Usher.

Our times call out for a new Poe. Someone to put the everyday horrors in a historical context. Someone to write it all up with a kind of savage grace that cuts through the narcotized fog that enshrouds most Americans. Someone to scare the shit out of us.

Kurt Nimmo writes factual polemics from the dusty outback of America. He lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico, hemmed in by the militarized border with Mexico and the looming shadow of the Republic of Texas, which has lately inflicted so much misery on the rest of the planet. You might be surprised to discover that time moves just as quickly in the New Mexican desert as it does in Manhattan.

But perhaps there's a certain clarity to the vantage. After DH Lawrence visited New Mexico, he wrote his great book on the literature of the continent and summed up our character this way: "The American is a killer."

Nimmo, I take it, wouldn't disagree with Lawrence's sanguineous assessment. At home and abroad, the American imprint is a bloodstain. No DNA testing required.

This is more a characterization of the American state, and the corrupt claque that runs the show, than the American people, per se, who, though cluster bombed by propaganda and spin still harbor a rebellious spirit and engrained skepticism of a distant and bloated government.

Nimmo doesn't turn away from the tough calls; he savors them. He exposes what has long been considered the fatal third rail of American politics, the insidious ties between official Washington and Israel, the new South Africawith nukes. Israel operates as a fanatically religious state propped up by US money, as it pursues a policy of apartheid, assassination and daily repression that repulses most of the civilized world outside of America, which seems immunized to any Israeli atrocity.

It's time for America to take a good look at itself, at what's it's become over the last 50 years, a brittle and flailing giant, despised abroad and breeding paranoids at home.

Empires demand conformity and obedience. Under the cloak of undeclared war, Ashcroft and his minions prowl the country taking names, harassing dissidents, jailing citizens for their political and religious beliefs. Few have spoken up, because to speak up is to risk becoming a target. But to stand silent is to become a willing victim of the jackboots.

Nimmo has spoken out. His essays flow in a great American tradition of radical dissent, for this was once a nation of radical dissidents: Sam Adams, Frederick Douglass, Ida Tarbell, Mark Twain, C. Wright Mills, James Baldwin and Gore Vidal.

It takes tremendous courage to write truthfully about the rampages of an Empire, especially from within the belly of the beast. See the life and times of Tom Paine. Even Suetonius paid a price. Hadrian took offense at something the historian wrote about the Empress Sabina, stripped him of his position, burned the offensive text and exiled him to Asia Minor.

Like all great polemics, Another Day in the Empire is a dangerous read precisely because it tells the bitter truth. More dangerous still, because this isn't dusty history or arid political theory, but a vivid and lucid account about what's going down right now. The stakes are as high as they get. You may want to avert your eyes from these pages. Don't. Read Nimmo's book with half as much courage as went into the writing of it. Heed its call. Then spread the word: This empire shall not stand.

Jeffrey St. Clair is co-editor of CounterPunch and author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature.

Source:
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair03272004.html

Kiss The Fourth Amendment Goodbye! The Road To Hell!

If the government can suspend your rights at will, then you never really had rights, only indulgences given by the master to the well-behaved slaves.

by Jon Christian Ryter
March 29, 2004

It’s finally happened.

Thanks to recent judicial decisions by the traditionally conservative 5th Circuit Court and the US Supreme Court, Americans can pretty much kiss the 4th Amendment goodbye.

On the heels of a US Supreme Court decision that now allows police to fully arrest and handcuff American citizens for misdemeanor violations of traffic law that are generally punishable with a ticket and a fine in traffic court. The usually conservative US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled on Friday, March 26, 2004 that police officers can briefly search homes and commercial buildings and use any evidence found in those warrantless searches in the trials of those charged with violating the law--even if police had no suspicion those being detained had violated laws for which they were consequently charged based on the evidence discovered in the warrantless search.

The 5th Circuit's decision sets a groundbreaking legal precedent that frightens legal experts who claim the new ruling establishes a privilege that will quickly be abused by police in every jurisdiction in the nation even though the 5th Circuit's decision actually only affects Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi. Louisiana law enforcement officers claim it was needed to provide safety to officers...

Acting on a Baton Rouge case, the 5th Circuit ruled that police do not need an arrest or search warrant to conduct a swift sweep of private property to ensure their own safety. Further, the court ruled, any evidence discovered during the sweep is admissible in court as long as the search is a cursory inspection of the dwelling or other building rather than a "deep" search--and providing the police entered the building for legitimate law enforcement purposes.. and they had reason to believe that entering that building or dwelling might be dangerous.

What law enforcement situation today is not dangerous? Even minor domestic squabbles can become instantly dangerous.

In October, 2000, a Denham Springs, Louisiana man, Kelly Donald Gould was arrested on federal gun charges after he allegedly threatened to kill two state judges. When sheriff's deputies--without either a search warrant or an arrest warrant--arrived at Gould's home to "question" the man about the alleged threats, they were admitted by another person who was either living in, or visiting, the mobile home. According to the deputies, they were told that Gould was asleep in a back bedroom when, in fact, Gould had slipped out of the dwelling and was hiding in a wooded area behind the mobile home. The sheriff's deputies claim that because of Gould's criminal background and the threats he supposedly leveled against public officials, they believed they were in danger and needed to "secure" the premise by either taking Gould into custody, or by making certain he was not in the dwelling.

On the pretext of looking under beds and in closets for Gould, deputies found three rifles. When Gould was found hiding in the woods, deputies convinced him to sign a permission for search authorization after-the-fact--and then seized his guns and charged him with three counts of unlawful possession of a firearm.. At trial, US District Court Judge James Brady rightly ruled that the guns could not be used as evidence against Gould because they were found illegally.

The 4th Amendment forbids vigilante searches by police officers--regardless of how justified they believe they are and how guilty they know the accused is. Nor does the Constitution provide federal judges with the authority to "waive" those Constitutional protections because police officers feel endangered when they enter the homes or business of suspects.

For the benefit of those who believe the federal magistracy has that authority, they should read Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution. Neither the Supreme Court nor the inferior federal courts were granted the right of judicial review either over State law—nor over the Constitution itself. Furthermore, Article II, Section 4 spells out the remedy when overzealous judges assume for themselves the power of judicial review not granted them by the Constitution.

The 4th Amendment guarantees citizens of the United States "...the right...to be secure in their person, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The US District Court was constitutionally correct in the matter of Kelly Donald Gould. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals was wrong. Interestingly, a three-judge panel for the 5th Circuit upheld Brady's decision. But at least one of those judges suggested to the State of Louisiana that they request a hearing before the full court to "reconsider the legal precedent" upon which the case was based.

In an 11-4 ruling, the 5th Circuit--based, they claimed, on similar standards that had been adopted by four other federal circuit courts of appeals--overturned the three judge panel and ruled that evidence gleaned in warrantless protective sweeps is admissible in court. Again, it is frightening when the federal magistracy starts making legal decisions based on "legal unity" rather than on the clarity of the rule of law as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

In their dissenting opinion, Judges Harold DeMoss, Jr. and Carl E. Stewart wrote: "[We] have no doubt that the deputy sheriffs believed they were acting reasonably and with good intentions, but the old adage warns us that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions." US Attorney David Dugas, who prosecuted the case for the government argued that the Gould case illustrated the difficult situations law enforcement officers face when "...they're expected to make split-second decisions in potentially dangerous situations involving constitutional issues that the courts and legal scholars can spend years debating."

Dugas' solution appears to be to eliminate the constitutional safeguards so that the police won't have legal issues to stumble over when they perform unconstitutional searches.

In the US Supreme Court case, settled on Tuesday, March 23, the justices decided in a 5-4 decision (with liberal David Souter joining the conservatives) that warrantless arrests for misdemeanors that are punishable only by fines, in which the accused is handcuffed and taken into custody, do not violate the Constitution. What makes Atwater v Lago Vista noteworthy is that it sets the stage for how local police in every jurisdiction in America will now interact with the public.

In 1997 Gail Atwater was pulled over by Lago Vista, Texas police officer Bart Turek. Atwater violated a big brother law--driving her car without wearing seat belts. (In fact, as it was later established in court, this was the second time Turek had stopped Atwater for not being "buckled up.") Only, this time, Atwater had her two daughters in the car with her. The daughters were ages 4 and 6 Neither of them were buckled up. In addition to this "serious infraction" of a Texas law designed to protect us from ourselves, Atwater committed two other infractions that angered Barney Fife...er...Officer Bart Simpson...er, Turek. She did not have her driver's license on her--nor did she have proof of insurance in her vehicle. (At issue before the US Supreme Court last week was the case of Larry Dudley Hiibel who was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail by Humbolt County, Nevada Deputy Sheriff Lee Dove on May 22, 2000 because Hiibel--who was doing nothing more than smoking a cigarette as he leaned against his daughter's pickup truck near his home in Winnemucca--refused to produce identification to prove to Dove who he was. Since he was doing nothing wrong, Hiibel believed the deputy had no legal right to ask for his identification.)

Lago Vista police officer Officer Turek decided to make an example of Gail Atwater. Turek handcuffed her in front of her frightened, crying children. Atwater was taken to jail and booked like a common criminal. She was later released on bond. Atwater pleaded guilty to the charge of driving without a seat restraint. The other two charges, driving without a license and driving without insurance, were dropped. Those charges were added solely to justify Turek's poor judgment as a law enforcement officer.

Atwater and her husband sued the city of Lago Vista and Turek, claiming their 4th Amendment rights were violated by the officer. The US District Court found for the city. The 5th Circuit affirmed the lower court's ruling. The majority ruled that police can fully arrest anyone--and place them in restraints--for minor violations of the law that normally generate only a ticket and a fine. Justice David Souter, who generally rules with the liberals, saw nothing wrong with arresting, handcuffing, and taking into custody, a mother who was taking her children to school because she wasn't buckled up--and because she forgot her driver's license.

Sandra Day O'Connor, who generally sides with the conservative, rule of law justices, sided with Ruth Bader Ginsberg, John Paul Stevens, and Stephen Breyer, arguing that the "...recent debate over racial profiling...demonstrates all too clear [that] a minor infraction may often serve as an excuse to stop and harass an individual. After today, the arsenal available to any officer extends to a full arrest and the searches permissible concomitant to that arrest."

O'Connor continued by saying it is not up to the justices to ascertain the officer's motives to determine the "reasonableness" of the traffic stop. "But it is precisely because these motivations are beyond our purview that we must vigilantly ensure that officers' post-stop actions, which are properly within our reach, comport with the 4th Amendment's guarantee of reasonableness."

Unfortunately for the American people, it appears that "reasonableness" is now defined by the USA Patriot Act.

Source:
http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1622

Heads-Up To Ashcroft Proves Threat Was Known Before 9/11

Thanks to Steve, I’ve been searching out articles from the last couple of years that are still “in the news”, here’s a good one.


Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, June 3, 2002
SF Gate

Don't let them fool you, folks: They knew.

They might have been surprised by the ferocity of the attacks, but the highest-ranking members of the George W. Bush administration knew before Sept. 11 that something terrible was going to happen soon.

Bush knew something was going to happen involving airplanes. He just didn't know what or exactly when. His attorney general, John Ashcroft, knew. His national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, knew. They all knew.

And, in spite of its apparent ineptness, the FBI knew, too.

Not only did they all know, but they told us. Obliquely. And we didn't pay attention. Why would we? Then, as now, terrorist threats were a dime a dozen.

Is this my opinion? No, it's published fact.

On July 26, 2001, cbsnews.com reported that John Ashcroft had stopped flying on commercial airlines.

Ashcroft used to fly commercial, just as Janet Reno did.

So why, two months before Sept. 11, did he start taking chartered government planes?

CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart asked the Justice Department.

Because of a "threat assessment" by the FBI, he was told. But "neither the FBI nor the Justice Department ... would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it," CBS News reported.

The FBI did advise Ashcroft to stay off commercial aircraft. The rest of us just had to take our chances.

The FBI obviously knew something was in the wind. Why else would it have Ashcroft use a $1,600-plus per hour G-3 Gulfstream when he could have flown commercial, as he always did before, for a fraction of the cost?

Ashcroft demonstrated an amazing lack of curiosity when asked if he knew anything about the threat. "Frankly, I don't," he told reporters.

So our nation's chief law enforcement officer was told that flying commercial was hazardous to his health, and yet he appeared not to care what the threat was, who made it, how, or why?

Note that it was the FBI that warned Ashcroft before Sept. 11. That's the same FBI now claiming it didn't "connect the dots" before Sept. 11.

Had we in the press been on our toes, we might have realized that if flying commercial posed a threat to John Ashcroft, it also posed a threat to the population at large.

But the CBSNews.com story was largely ignored. CBS ran it once, briefly. A number of CBS affiliates repeated the story, even more briefly. That was it. As near as I can tell, no other major news outlet ran the story of a danger to commercial air travel so severe that our attorney general was told to stay away from it.

When the furor broke recently over who knew what, or when, President Bush chose his words carefully. "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning," he said, "I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people."

Note the phrase, "use airplanes to kill." It suggests he thought the bad guys were going to use airplanes in some other way, perhaps, for example, as a trading chip to win the release of those responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing.

On Sunday talk shows recently, Condoleezza Rice used similar language, indicating Bush had known ahead of time that terrorists were about to attack. She didn't say that, of course, but her careful use of language suggested that Bush knew trouble was brewing but simply didn't know the extent of it.

On July 5, 2001, according to a recent Washington Post article, the White House called together officials from a dozen federal agencies to give them a warning.

"Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon," the officials were told by the government's top counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke.

Clarke considered the threat sufficiently important to direct every counterintelligence office to cancel vacations and get ready for immediate action, the Post reported. Several senators, including Dianne Feinstein, have called for a full-fledged investigation into what the government knew before Sept. 11.

Incredibly, the Bush people are saying they don't want to be bothered by yet another investigation. Asking questions and demanding answers will help the terrorists, they say.

Even more incredibly, the public is buying it.

The public's gullibility knows no bounds. Recently, the families of the people who died on Flight 93 on Sept. 11 were allowed -- finally! -- to hear the final 30 minutes of the cockpit voice recorder on that flight before it crashed in Pennsylvania.

But they weren't allowed to record it or even take notes. Why? Because (they were told) the tape might be used in evidence against Zacharias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker."

Is there even a dollop of logic in that explanation? It's like saying we can't watch video of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center because that video might be used in a trial.

Yet, the public seems to buy such specious "explanations" when uttered by a government official.

We need a full-blown investigation of who knew what before Sept. 11. We need explanations of such things as the FBI warning Ashcroft off commercial jets, while simultaneously ignoring strident warnings from its own agents in Minneapolis, Phoenix and Oklahoma. These things don't add up.

And we should not let the people we'll investigate -- the Bush administration in particular -- dictate the ground rules. Who are they to be telling us what questions we can ask and how we can ask them? They work for us, not us for them.

One final note: The government has responded to the FBI's apparent mistakes before Sept. 11 by expanding that agency's size and power.

If you think that's a good idea, and if you approve of all the extraordinary powers the government is giving itself these days, just remember that the next president with the power to spy on Americans, to listen in on lawyer-client conversations, to arrest and detain without probable cause, and so on, may be named Hillary.

Still think it's a good idea?

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist and iconoclast. His column appears Mondays.
E-mail him at
harleysorensen@yahoo.com

Source:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/06/03/hsorensen.DTL

Two Bills Now Pending To Bring Back The Draft

Enter Bill HR163 and S89 into search for text of bills

http://thomas.loc.gov/

Are you ready to give your children to the monsters?

How Many More Have to Come Forward?

How many people have to come forward before true hearings are started? How many have to come forward before it will be believed? The Bush Administration has lied and exaggerated the threat of Iraq in order to gain support for an invasion.

http://shorl.com/hureponejetra

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DOJ Asked FBI Translator To Change Pre 9-11 Intercepts

BREAKING SPECIAL REPORT FROM 9-11 HEARINGS


Topic: 9-11 Commission Hearing
by Tom Flocco
Washington, DC
March 24, 2004


FBI translator Sibel Edmonds was offered a substantial raise and a full time job to encourage her not to go public that she had been asked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to retranslate and adjust the translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received before September 11, 2001 by the FBI and CIA.

Edmonds, a ten year U.S. citizen who has passed a polygraph examination, speaks fluent Farsi and Turkish and had been working part time with the FBI for six months--commencing in December, 2001.

In a 50 reporter frenzy in front of some 12 news cameras, Edmonds said "Attorney General John Ashcroft told me 'he was invoking State Secret Privilege and National Security' when I told the FBI I wanted to go public with what I had translated from the pre 9-11 intercepts."

"I appeared once on CBS 60 Minutes but I have been silenced by Mr. Ashcroft, the FBI follows me, and I was threatened with jail in 2002 if I went public," Edmonds told tomflocco.com.

When we asked her if it was really true that she had been bribed by the FBI and DOJ, Edmonds said "You can interpret it as that."

This writer personally asked Edmonds where the term "State Secret Privilege" was derived. "The term came from an October 18, 2002 DOJ memo to me from DOJ spokesman Barbara Comstock," said Edmonds.

The former FBI translator said "My translations of the pre 9-11 intercepts included [terrorist] money laundering, detailed and date specific information enough to alert the American people, and other issues dating back to 1999 which I won't go into right now."

Incredibly, Edmonds said "The Senate Judiciary Committee and the 911 Commission have heard me testify for lengthy periods of time time (3 hours) about very specific plots, dates, airplanes used as weapons, and specific individuals and activities."

This explosive information has been kept under wraps by the White House, CIA, FBI, and DOJ since Edmonds' 60 Minutes interview segment.

The former FBI translator told tomflocco.com that "translators before me had ongoing personal relationships with the subjects or targets of the FBI and DOJ pre 9-11 investigations--linked to intercepts and other intelligence--in June - July - August, just prior to the attacks."

"I also became aware of a [terrorist] criminal investigation going on since 1998," said Edmonds.

Patty Casazza, one of the 9-11 "Jersey Girls," said "Sibel Edmonds told me that color coding terrorist threat alerts for the American people is reflective of the intercept translations received." Casazza and Edmonds gave no indication as to whether FBI translators had doctored or adjusted translations [used in the decision-making process] for Homeland Security terrorist threat alerts, for political reasons.

"This whole situation is outrageous and I am going public," said Edmonds, adding "I am currently being advised by counsel. Thank you."

Kristen Breitweiser, 9-11 family member and also one of the nick-named Jersey girls, arranged to have Ms. Edmonds address the gathered media right after Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified.

Source:
http://tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=50

~~~~~~~~~~~

Video of Cheney 'We're Better Off' Speech with Split-Screen of Bombs Going Off

This is one for the 'you thought you had seen it all' category. This is from the Daily Show but it's real footage of Fox News covering a Cheney speech where he is (as usual) telling his tall stories about how safe we are and how much better things are in Iraq.

Well, well .. FOX had a 'breaking news' story in the middle of the speech and decided to run with a split screen of both the Cheney speech and the breaking news video .. of a huge bombing in Iraq.

It's almost surreal to listen to Cheney blather on about how well things are going while watching the carnage going on from the pictures on the other side of the monitor.

Of course John Stewart gives maximum mileage in poking fun at the irony, but the real video is still an incredible display of how Dick Cheney will say whatever he thinks will work for political gain (and personal wealth) in spite of what the real facts are.

Dick Cheney is almost like Baghdad Bob.. 'we are winning, there are no bombs, things are going fantastically' .. meanwhile the video is showing the complete opposite.

You have to see this one to believe it, one can only wonder how the FOX News staff and crew felt when seeing such a literal display that they are supporting a liar.

Check this direct link to the video.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?R168252D7

Why is the US Media Always 6 Months to a Year Behind on Bush Stories?

With all the fuss about the Clarke 60 Minutes interview, I have been searching back through a lot of articles, many of them are almost two years old (some will be posted today, time permitting). And started thinking how this seems to happen all the time. The media never follows up on Bush until something happens and they are *forced* to finally report on it.

A few examples off the top of my head ...

* Valerie Plame - took months to report on this in any substantive way, and they are still dragging their feet
(consider there is a grand jury investigation)

* Bush State of the Union Lies - Everyone on the internet knew by the next day that he had told many whoppers, but it took six months and then sometime around July the media suddenly realized 'holy cow' what he said was not true.

* The Bush Security Briefing in August 2001 - If memory serves, it was sometime the middle of the next year (May 2002?) before the media reported on this.

* The Bush AWOL story - This is the granddaddy of them all, by the time the media did any serious reporting on this, most of us on the internet went scurrying around to find all our stories and research from 3 or 4 years before.

That’s just for starters, there are many more. This is not to say that the bloggers and websites on the internet are necessarily better reporters (which at this point could be the case) but they report the news as it happens and there is nothing held back .. i.e. your news on the internet is not filtered.

These examples point more to display that the US media refuses to cover anything that is seriously damaging to Bush until (or IF) they are literally forced to report it.

And in many cases when they finally DO report on one of these bombshells, its only for a few news cycles and most of them quickly go down the memory hole and then its .. 'back to the Kobe Bryant trial'.

The Lesson to be Learned


Support bloggers and independent websites! The internet sites are gaining a lot of momentum, bloggers in particular are becoming more and more of a force in news-gathering and the sharing of information.

Almost all of these websites and bloggers depend on reader contributions. If you prefer to see 'current' hard-hitting news, instead of 'historical' reporting from stories 6 months to a year ago ...

Please consider making a donation to a few of your favorite websites and bloggers.

And remember, no amount is too small, in most cases just $5 or $10 a month is enough to help cover things like web-hosting, bandwidth, and computer upgrades needed to bring you the best reporting you will find anywhere in the US.

Trust me, compared to the $15-20 a month for your local paper, it will be the best money you ever spent.

Demand that Condi Rice come clean

Fri, 26 Mar 2004
By Peter Schurman

Suddenly, a lot of doubt surrounds National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's assertions about 9/11. Many of her statements have recently been contradicted by other key officials and by news reports.

Americans have a right to know the truth about what the White House did to prevent 9/11. Yet Rice is refusing to testify in public before the bipartisan commission investigating the attacks.

Please call the White House now, and demand that Rice testify in public:

The White House
202-456-1112

Then, please call your Senators and Representative, and ask them also to demand that Condoleezza Rice and other top administration officials testify in public before the 9/11 commission.

Please let us know you're calling, at:
http://www.moveon.org/callmade.html

The Center for American Progress has compiled an excellent list of Rice's contradicted claims.

Here are some excerpts:

* RICE CLAIM: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 5/16/02

*FACT: On August 6, 2001, the President personally "received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane." In July 2001, the Administration was also told that terrorists had explored using airplanes as missiles. [Source: NBC, 9/10/02; LA Times, 9/27/01]

* RICE CLAIM: In May 2002, Rice held a press conference to defend the Administration from new revelations that the President had been explicitly warned about an al Qaeda threat to airlines in August 2001. She "suggested that Bush had requested the briefing because of his keen concern about elevated terrorist threat levels that summer." [Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04]

*FACT:According to the CIA, the briefing "was not requested by President Bush." As commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed, "the CIA informed the panel that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA." [Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04]

* RICE CLAIM: "In June and July when the threat spikes were so high…we were at battle stations." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04

*FACT:: "Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's 'Strategic Plan' from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism 'the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area.'" Meanwhile, the Bush Administration decided to terminate "a highly classified program to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States." [Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04; Newsweek, 3/21/04]

* RICE CLAIM: "The fact of the matter is [that] the administration focused on this before 9/11." NationalSecurity Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04

*FACT:President Bush and Vice President Cheney's counterterrorism task force, which was created in May, never convened one single meeting. The President himself admitted that "I didn't feel the sense of urgency" about terrorism before 9/11. [Source: Washington Post, 1/20/02; Bob Woodward's "Bush at War"]

* RICE CLAIM: "Our [pre-9/11 NSPD] plan called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04

*FACT: 9/11 Commissioner Gorelick: "There is nothing in the NSPD that came out that we could find that had an invasion plan, a military plan." Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage: "Right." Gorelick: "Is it true, as Dr. Rice said, 'Our plan called for military options to attack Al Qaida and Taliban leadership'?" Armitage: "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11." [Source: 9/11 Commission testimony, 3/24/04]

You can sign up for the Center for American Progress' email newsletter, the Progress Report, at:

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=3750

Please call now and demand that Condi Rice come clean, in public.

Thank you.

The MoveOn.org team
Friday, March 26th, 2004

This is a message from:
http://www.moveon.org/front/

Global housing market 'teetering near collapse'

March 2004
By STEVE HAYS
London

The global housing boom that has propped up the world economy in the face of falling share markets in the past few years is teetering on the edge of a crash, The Economist has concluded.

Pam Woodall, economics editor of the British weekly, said it had conducted global housing surveys and sector research over the past year.

"House prices look seriously overvalued in Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Britain and the US and will fall by at least 20 per cent in many economies over the next four years," Woodall told a conference organised by Investment Property Databank.

The trigger for a crash could be a relatively modest increase in interest rates as total levels of household debt were at record highs fuelled by borrowing and housing equity withdrawal on the back of historically low rates.

Woodall said it was a fallacy to assume rate rises on the scale of the late 1980s would be required to hit house prices as the major indicator for the residential market - the ratio of house prices to average income - was at record highs in the US, Australia and Britain.

The US had had the biggest rise in house prices in its history since the mid-1990s, and a sharp fall in the market in the largest global economy would tip the world into recession.

"The US has very little fiscal or monetary ammunition left to support its economy if house prices collapse," said Woodall. "If the US falls it would be the first global property bust in history."

She said property was the biggest business in the world, accounting for 15 per cent of global gross domestic product, with assets of US$50 trillion ($76.5 trillion) compared with US$30 trillion in shares.

So swings in house prices had a much bigger impact on economies than fluctuations in stock markets.

The ratio of house prices to rents was also at record highs in the Anglo-Saxon economies as rents had risen much more slowly than prices and in some cases were falling.

The situation in the rental sector also gave the lie to a common assumption that a fixed supply of land and a rising population meant prices would always rise, she said.

"If this is true wouldn't you expects rents to rise as well?" Woodall said.

Source:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?S1BB129C7

US business group slams Bush 'deception' over Iraq war

Mon Mar 22,10:18 PM

NEW YORK (AFP) - A US business group that monitors federal spending took out a full-page advert in The New York Times, likening President George W. Bush (news - web sites) to a corrupt chief executive officer who has forfeited public trust.

Timed to coincide with the weekend anniversary of the US-led war against Iraq (news - web sites), the advertisement -- paid for by Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities -- said Bush's case for invasion "was built entirely out of falsehoods."

Highlighting the cost of the war in terms of hundreds of US casualties and tens of billions of dollars, the ad said the "state-sponsored deception" underpinning the conflict dwarfed the damage caused by the series of corporate scandals that recently rocked Wall Street.

"It's past time for finger pointing," it said.

"It's time for someone in this government to step forward and take personal responsibility for the deadly deceptions used to mislead this great nation into war.

"And that someone must be George W. Bush."

Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities was formed in 1996 on concerns that federal government spending priorities were undermining national security.

The group's 500 members include the present or former CEOs of Bell Industries, Eastman Kodak and Goldman Sachs, as well as CNN founder Ted Turner.

Source:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040323/photos_wl_afp/040323031850_nvlexfqs_photo0

Enemies of the States

If you're against Bush, you're against America.

By William Saletan
Posted Thursday, March 18, 2004, at 3:18 PM PT


If you oppose George Bush's policies, or if you're supported by anybody who opposes George Bush's policies, you're anti-American.

That was the message of the 1988 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, who suggested that his opponent from Massachusetts was against the Pledge of Allegiance. Now it's his son's campaign message, too.

Facts don't matter when you run on this theme. In June 1988, George H.W. Bush said of Michael Dukakis, "I'll never understand, when it came to his desk, why he vetoed a bill that called for the Pledge of Allegiance to be said in the schools of Massachusetts. I'll never understand it. We are one nation under God. Our kids should say the Pledge of Allegiance."

The bill Dukakis vetoed didn't "call for" the pledge to be said. It imposed criminal penalties on teachers who failed to start the day by leading students in the pledge. The Massachusetts Supreme Court told Dukakis it was unconstitutional. But never mind. According to Bush, Dukakis was against saying the pledge and being one nation under God.

History repeats itself. Last week, George W. Bush aired a TV ad in which the following charges appeared on the screen for nine seconds: "John Kerry's Plan: Weaken Fight Against Terrorists"; "John Kerry's Plan: Delay Defending America."

What was Bush's evidence for the first charge? His campaign cited four Kerry quotes. In the first, Kerry called for "replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time." In the second, Kerry called for "provisions to guarantee that there is not this blind spot in the American justice system that there is today under the Patriot Act." In the third, Kerry said, "I voted for the USA Patriot Act in the Senate right after 9/11 to advance our security at home, but I am concerned that Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department is abusing the powers conferred on it by that act." In the fourth, Kerry said, "We are a nation of laws and liberties, not of a knock in the night."

Among those four statements, I count zero in favor of weakening the fight against terrorists and two in favor of protecting American security. But never mind. According to Bush, "Kerry's Plan" is "Weaken Fight Against Terrorists."

What was Bush's evidence for the second charge? His campaign cited eight quotes, of which four expressed a position. In the first, Kerry said Bush should "take the time, for a period of time, to continue to build [support]" for using force against Iraq. In the second, Kerry said he would have "exhausted the available remedies with the French and the Russians." In the third, Kerry speculated that if Bush had built up U.S. troops around Iraq more gradually, "It might have allowed you to use the United Nations process to really build consent." In the fourth, Kerry said, "You have to try to build the multilateral effort, even if it fails."

Among those four statements, I count four in favor of delaying the use of force in Iraq, zero against ultimately using force in Iraq, zero in favor of making the use of force contingent on U.N. approval, and zero in favor of delaying the defense of America. We now know that contrary to what Bush told us, Iraq had no WMD programs capable of threatening America. But never mind. According to Bush, "Kerry's Plan" is "Delay Defending America."

On Wednesday, Dick Cheney, who was defense secretary under George H.W. Bush and is now vice president under George W. Bush, denounced Kerry for saying at a March 8 fund-raiser, "I've met more leaders who can't go out and say it all publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy,' things like that." Kerry's comment was stupid and off-message. Cheney's was not. In a scripted, 150-word rebuttal, Cheney used the phrase "foreigners" or "foreign leaders"—which he knew Kerry had never used—five times. Cheney mocked the "unnamed foreigners he's [Kerry] been spending time with" and demanded, "We have a right to know what he is saying to foreign leaders that makes them so supportive of his candidacy."

You get the message. Kerry's been spending time with the wrong sort of people. What's good for them must be bad for you. This is the message segregationists delivered to white voters 50 years ago about white politicians who met with blacks. "Foreigners" were the subjects of a different message: McCarthyism. Cheney's speech combines the two: What is Kerry saying to our enemies that makes them so supportive of his candidacy?

"Of the many nations that have joined our coalition [in Iraq]—allies and friends of the United States—Sen. Kerry speaks with open contempt," Cheney went on. What was Cheney's evidence for this charge? "Sen. Kerry calls these countries, quote, 'window dressing,' " said the vice president. "Italy, which recently lost 19 citizens, killed by terrorists in Najaf—was Italy's contribution just window dressing?" Cheney concluded that Kerry "speaks as if only those who openly oppose America's objectives have a chance of earning his respect."

There you go. Kerry points out what everyone knows: The Iraq war was an American operation dressed up as a "coalition of the willing," in which Britain was the only other country to play a major role. Cheney calls this "contempt" for "friends of the United States." Nineteen Italians get killed in a war that Bush and Cheney started against the will of most Italians, but it's Kerry, not Bush, who has shown contempt for Italy and other "friends of the United States." Better yet, the foreign leaders with whom Kerry has consorted don't just oppose Bush's policy in Iraq; they "oppose America's objectives." If Jacques Chirac imagines that what he opposed in Iraq was Bush's method of achieving objectives shared by France, he fails to understand that Bush's policies, by definition, are America's objectives.

Just like it says here in our Constitution, Jacques: L'etat c'est moi.

William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.

Source:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2097369/

Pentagon Whistleblower - US Tried To Plant WMDs, Failed

Daily Times Monitor
3-21-4


According to a stunning report posted by a retired Navy Lt Commander and 28-year veteran of the Defense Department (DoD), the Bush administration's assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plan to "plant" WMDs inside the country. Nelda Rogers, the Pentagon whistleblower, claims the plan failed when the secret mission was mistakenly taken out by "friendly fire", the Environmentalists Against War report.

Nelda Rogers is a 28-year veteran debriefer for the DoD. She has become so concerned for her safety that she decided to tell the story about this latest CIA-military fiasco in Iraq. According to Al Martin Raw.com, "Ms Rogers is number two in the chain of command within this DoD special intelligence office. This is a ten-person debriefing unit within the central debriefing office for the Department of Defense."

The information that is being leaked out is information "obtained while she was in Germany heading up the debriefing of returning service personnel, involved in intelligence work in Iraq for the DoD and/or the CIA. "According to Ms Rogers, there was a covert military operation that took place both preceding and during the hostilities in Iraq," reports Al Martin Raw.com, an online subscriber-based news/analysis service which provides "Political, Economic and Financial Intelligence".

Al Martin is a retired Lt Commander (US Navy), the author of a memoir called "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider," and is considered one of America's foremost experts on corporate and government fraud. Ms Rogers reports that former military personnel manned this particular covert operation team and "the unit was paid through the Department of Agriculture in order to hide it, which is also very commonplace".

According to Al Martin Raw.com, "the Agriculture Department has often been used as a paymaster on behalf of the CIA, DIA, NSA and others". According to the Al Martin Raw.com story, another aspect of Ms Rogers' report concerns a covert operation, which was to locate the assets of Saddam Hussein and his family, including cash, gold bullion, jewelry and assorted valuable antiquities. The problem became evident when "the operation in Iraq involved 100 people, all of whom apparently are now dead, having succumbed to so- called 'friendly fire'. The scope of this operation included the penetration of the Central Bank of Iraq, other large commercial banks in Baghdad, the Iraqi National Museum and certain presidential palaces where monies and bullion were secreted."

"They identified about $2 billion in cash, another $150 million in Euros, in physical banknotes, and about another $100 million in sundry foreign currencies ranging from Yen to British Pounds," reports Al Martin.

"These people died, mostly in the same place in Baghdad, supposedly from a stray cruise missile or a combination of missiles and bombs that went astray," Martin continues. "There were supposedly 76 who died there and the other 24 died through a variety of 'friendly fire', 'mistaken identity' and some of them-their whereabouts are simply unknown." Ms Rogers' story sounds like an updated 21st-century version of Treasure Island meets Ali Baba and the Bush Cabal Thieves, writes Martin.

"This was a contingent of CIA/ DoD operatives, but it was really the CIA that bungled it," Ms Rogers said. "They were relying on the CIA's ability to organize an effort to seize these assets and to be able to extract these assets because the CIA claimed it had resources on the ground within the Iraqi army and the Iraqi government who had been paid. That turned out to be completely bogus. As usual."

"CIA people were supposed to be handling it," Martin continues. "They had a special 'black' aircraft to fly it out. But none of that happened because the regular US Army showed up, stumbled onto it and everyone involved had to scramble. These new Iraqi "asset seizures" go directly to the New US Ruling Junta. The US Viceroy in Iraq Paul Bremer is reportedly drinking Saddam's $2000 a bottle Napoleon-era brandy, smoking his expensive Davidoff cigars and he has even furnished his office with Saddam's Napoleon-era furniture.

Source:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/?page=story_12-8-2003_pg1_9

Thousands Worldwide Demand Troops Pull Out of Iraq

By Grant McCool
Reuters
Saturday 20 March 2004

NEW YORK - Thousands of antiwar protesters poured into streets around the globe on Saturday's anniversary of the Iraq war to demand the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops.

From Sydney to Tokyo, Madrid, London, New York and San Francisco, protesters condemned U.S. policy in Iraq and said they did not believe Iraqis are better off or the world safer because of the war.

Journalists estimated that at least a million people streamed through Rome, in probably the biggest single protest.

In London, two anti-war protesters evaded security to climb the landmark Big Ben clock tower at the Houses of Parliament, unfurling a banner reading "Time for Truth."

About 25,000 demonstrators streamed through central London, many carrying "Wanted" posters bearing the faces of Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his main war ally.

In most places, the demonstrators numbered tens of thousands, compared with hundreds of thousands who marched in big cities in Feb. 15, 2003, to try and prevent the conflict.

In New York, scene of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked plane strikes by Islamic militants, tens of thousands voiced opposition to President Bush, who is running for reelection in November.

"Hey Hey, Ho Ho, George Bush has got to go," marchers chanted at a Manhattan rally organized by the United For Peace and Justice coalition of left-leaning groups.

SEPTEMBER 11

"The thing they all object to is Bush," said demonstrator, Reeves Hamilton, 30. "It doesn't make sense to bomb countries that have nothing to do with Sept. 11."

He said he supported troops going into Afghanistan to fight al Qaeda militants responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, but not the invasion of Iraq, which Bush ordered to rid the country of its purported weapons of mass destruction.

At a campaign rally in Florida, Bush touted Iraq as an "essential victory" in the war on terror he declared after the Sept. 11 attacks, and hit back at criticism of his decision to invade without more international support.

"I'm all for united action, and so are our 34 coalition partners in Iraq right now," he said. "Yet America must never outsource America's national security decisions to the leaders of other countries."

Bush said the mission in Iraq "will make us all safer."

A year later, Saddam Hussein has been overthrown and captured, but no weapons stockpiles have been found.

Concern over the war has been most evident in Spain, where thousands demonstrated a week after voting out the conservative government that sent troops to Iraq. Many Spaniards blamed Madrid's support for the war for the March 11 train bombs, blamed on Islamic militants, which killed 202 people.

Spanish Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq. He has called the war a "disaster" and a "fiasco."

The peaceful protests began in Asia and moved to Europe and the Americas.

PROGRESS IN IRAQ

In Iraq many said their lives had improved since Saddam was toppled, but others said guerrilla attacks and lawlessness left them fearful. Guerrillas killed a U.S. Marine near the town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, on Saturday, raising to 393 the number of U.S. troops in Iraq in the past year.

About 2,000 rallied in Fayetteville, North Carolina, near Fort Bragg, one of the largest U.S. military bases. Several hundred counter-demonstrators stood along the march route.

"The appearance that we get in the media focuses on one or two people killed, when we are opening schools and people are giving us flowers," said Capt. Todd McDonald, 35, who said he broke both his legs in a parachute accident in Iraq.

An antiwar protester, Kristen Munro-Leighton, 25, said, "Bush misled the country and the world about the weapons of mass destruction. I think he played up on the fears of 9/11 by linking up 9/11 and Iraq."

Some 3,000 people turned out in Sydney, chanting "end the occupation, troops out" and carrying an effigy of Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch war supporter.

About 10,000 protesters marched in Athens, Greece, and an estimated 120,000 took part in protests across Japan.

Yasuko Nagasawa, 41, said she feared the presence of Japan's Self-Defense Forces in Iraq could make her country a target. "The troops must come home," she said.

Sources:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=VZQTVXPJJ4DBGCRBAEKSFFA?type=topNews&storyID=4612065§ion=news

LOSING ALL TRUST IN DIEBOLD

This is incredible !

And we're supposed to go along with this crap and use a machine our state officials have promised would re-elect that "JACKASS" GWB! NO WAY!

Copy this and send it to your local news and elected officials and ask them to explain how Diebold would make our election process better.



Note to any computing device manufacturer still not paying attention:

Sooner or later someone will mess with your machine.
When that happens what do you want your product to do?

a. Fail gracefully
b. Blow up a la mission impossible
c. Let college students play music

Apparently it's not bad enough that Diebold's voting machines have been dragged through the press lately.

Next stop Diebold ATM machines.

Should a purpose build machine really be running an general purpose operating system??

This email from Carnegie Mellon via Dave Farber's IP list:

From: Carla Geisser <@andrew.cmu.edu>

Subject: For your amusement: Broken ATM

A Diebold ATM in Baker hall just crashed, and dropped to a Windows XP desktop.

Several intrepid students started Windows Media player, and it was playing a variety of music with a nice visualizer.

So much for security...

Photos:
http://www.coed.org/photodb/folder.tcl?folder_id=3334

Movies (with audio):
http://yogi.pdl.cmu.edu/~cgeisser/photos/

Letter to a Young Activist During Troubled Times

Do not lose heart.

We were made for these times.

I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world right now... Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is - we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement...

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able crafts in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind... Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

We have been in training for a dark time such as this, since the day we assented to come to Earth. For many decades, worldwide, souls just like us have been felled and left for dead in so many ways over and over brought down by naiveté, by lack of love, by being ambushed and assaulted by various cultural and personal shocks in the extreme. We have a history of being gutted, and yet remember this especially - we have also, of necessity, perfected the knack of resurrection. Over and over again we have been the living proof that that which has been exiled, lost, or foundered can be restored to life again.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency too to fall into being weakened by perseverating on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails. We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?...

Understand the paradox: If you study the physics of a waterspout, you will see that the outer vortex whirls far more quickly than the inner one. To calm the storm means to quiet the outer layer, to cause it to swirl much less, to more evenly match the velocity of the inner core - till whatever has been lifted into such a vicious funnel falls back to Earth, lays down, is peaceable again. One of the most important steps you can take to help calm the storm is to not allow yourself to be taken in a flurry of overwrought emotion or desperation thereby accidentally contributing to the swale and the swirl.

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It ! is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take "everyone on Earth" to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these -- to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both, are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do. There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it; I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate. The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours: They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here.

In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

This comes with much love and prayer that you remember who you came from, and why you came to this beautiful, needful Earth.

by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D
http://www.twinoakscenter.com/perspec/perspectives_cpestes.htm

Columbus Peace March and Rally

Saturday, March 20th 2004 12:00 pm

March and Rally to End the Occupations of Iraq and Palestine.

Support our troops - bring them home!

Let all your friends know, bring your parents, neighbors, & kids !

Join us at the First AME Zion Church on the corner of Bryden and 18th at noon and then march to the state house for a 1:00 PM rally. Back-up site for weather emergency will be at the Trinity Episcopal Church at Broad and Third.

Contact:
John Wallace
jwallace0365@wowway.com
(614) 252-9255

Sponsored By:
Central Ohio Peace Network; Central Ohioans for Peace; Campus Greens (OSU); Progressive Peace Coalition; Committee for Justice in Palestine (OSU); Student International Forum (OSU); Columbus Campaign for Arms Control; Community Organizing Center; Women in Black (Columbus)

http://www.cpanews.org

10.000 Civilians Killed in Iraq in a Year

By Le Nouvel Observateur FR
Thursday 18 March 2004

In a report made public a few days before the first anniversary of the United States' start of the war in Iraq, Amnesty International denounces the "flagrant human rights violations" there.

More than 10.000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the American invasion of Iraq a year ago, asserts Amnesty International, which denounces the "flagrant violations" of human rights in the country in a report released March 18. These figures corroborate the figure given by Iraq Body Count, a site which captures and collates data from numerous sources and which exceeded the threshold of 10,000 civilians killed on February 8.

"One year after the beginning of the war in Iraq, the promise of an improvement in human rights for Iraqis is far from being realized," asserts the human rights defense organization in its report.

According to Amnesty, it is estimated that "over 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in a year as a result of the military intervention in Iraq and the occupation which has followed. "One year after the war began, Iraqi civilians are still being killed every day," emphasizes the report, according to which, "a great number of them seem to have died either because of excessive use of force by American troops or were killed in controversial circumstances."

Death in Detention

Amnesty recalls that it was "asked on several occasions to produce an independent and impartial inquiry into the civilians killed by coalition forces.

At the same time, the report emphasizes, "Iraqi civilians confront the danger represented by attacks apparently conducted by armed groups, which have "killed hundreds of civilians," according to the communiqué.

The report adds that "thousands of people have been detained (by coalition forces), often under difficult conditions, many have been tortured, and some have died in detention."

Amnesty indicates that the Provisional Authority of the United States-led coalition "acknowledges detaining 8,500 people, but an Iraqi human rights organization estimates the number of prisoners at 15,000."

Source:
http://tinyurl.com/3dm7y

What Are We Trying To Achieve?

by Zbignew Zingh
www.dissidentvoice.org
March 15, 2004


Progressives and leftists and liberals and environmentalists and populists and socialists all around the world can thank George W. Bush. We were all asleep and now we are awake. We were scattered and now we have connected. We were divided, but he, the Great Uniter, has started to unite us.

But is it all just a surface phenomena? Is there substance to the movement that Mr. Bush has re-energized? Does it have stamina? Will we stay connected and united?

Can the Movement survive either Mr. Bush’s election or his demise?

We can speculate about the first apocalyptic scenario. We can prepare for the second. To prepare ourselves, we need to address some questions about ourselves. We need to study and to learn.

First, let us recognize that we truly were somnambulant. We sleepwalked for decades. We have sleepwalked since the end of the Vietnam War.

Why?

In essence, we were too easily co-opted. We in the West and North were seduced because we were easily seducible. You in the East and South were rendered invisible, most often by your own “leaders” who, too, were co-opted and seduced.

In the West and the North, the Middle Class stopped caring when their sons stopped dying. As the living appeared to get better, our Middle Class vision became more myopic. We really had not learned anything from Vietnam. We simply felt pain and we wanted to stop the pain. But we learned nothing. We became dopey. We became better trained and less thoughtful. We became domesticated animals. The yoke and collar was slowly put around our necks, and we licked the hands that put it on us. They trained us to be good, passive beasts of burden. They put the bit in our mouths. We took it gratefully.

So now let us resolve to learn something, for the good of the United States, for the good of the World, for the good of posterity. Let us live unyoked and unleashed.

Suppose that Mr. Bush is not elected. We will undoubtedly rejoice; but will we then return to our slumber? Does the world’s richest, most powerful, most wasteful, most aggressive and most dangerous country act benevolently when the Democrats are in power, rather than the Republicans? We cannot answer that question intelligently unless we have studied and learned a lot from history. The more we know, the more troubled is our answer. Is it all just a difference of degree, window dressing; a question of style? Does the one cause as much pain as the other, the Democrat who feels your pain while he inflicts it, and the Republican who enjoys inflicting pain? They both think it is good for you; they both know your pain is good for them.

Is it the same question and a similar history and a similar answer if you ask about entities other than the United States, like imperial Rome, expansionist Germany, colonial France, colonial England, the Ottoman empire, Xerxes’ Persia, Czarist Russia, the 15th Century Nahuatl-Aztec empire, imperial Japan, conquistador Spain? Would the question and the history and the answers be the same if it were today’s lesser powers who, in a different world, had had the opportunity to be the aggressors and the imperialists? Would a united, industrialized medieval Africa have lorded it over a less sophisticated pre-industrial Europe that was mired in feudalism? Would a nuclear, computerized Islamic world have pillaged the resources of a primitive western hemisphere locked into fundamentalist, atavist Tenth Century Christianity?

Let us ask ourselves: What precisely are we trying to achieve? Regime change? If it is only regime change, then how do we deal with the fact that this regime came to be in the first place? Will you replace The Regime but not remedy the conditions that allowed it to arise in the first place? Who put the yoke and collar around your neck? Who fastened the leash? Did you willingly let yourself be harnessed? Do we, throughout history, volunteer ourselves to become beasts of burden in return for comfort, stability and security. Is this just the way people are?

Let us ask ourselves: Is it really Mr. Bush who irks you? His smirk irritates, his shallowness offends, but is that all there is to it? Were he poised, intelligent and good looking, would we forgive him his transgressions? Are his policies categorically bad, or are they merely bad because they are simply more monumentally bad than the lesser bad policies of his predecessors?

So we must ask ourselves again: What precisely are we trying to achieve?

As we set ourselves apart, we need to recognize what we do not want to be a part of. Make a list. Talk with your friends. It is important to know what you do not want for yourself or your country as you endeavor to remove Mr. Bush from office. It is equally important to know what you do want for yourself and your future, lest you risk falling into deep sleep again.

For if Mr. Bush is not elected next November, and you have not truly understood how he came to be in the first place, and you do not truly understand what you want, and you party and celebrate the Bush demise and then, hung over, you go back to your deep, deep slumber, this next time, do you think you might never ever wake up again?

So we ask ourselves again. And again. What precisely are we trying to achieve?

It is helpful to answer this question by looking carefully at them you would oppose.

It is okay to ridicule them. Making fun of someone diminishes his authority. Making fun of someone gives you some sense of power over him. When you laugh at someone, you make yourself braver and you psychologically shrink them who oppose you. So ridicule them. But do not ever take them lightly. We must take the measure of our adversary. The emperor may be a fool, but the powers behind the throne are not. They know you well. We had better know them well, too.

The power behind Mr. Bush’s regime is not stupid. It has its dogma. It has a theory that underlies its agenda. It, they, are idealists, in their quirky way. Their ideals, however, are very harsh. They believe in the economic and political theories they advocate. They truly think, they have persuaded themselves, that the world is better off if they are better off.

The power behind Mr. Bush’s regime is starkly realistic. They blow us off and our brand of idealism. They regard us as naive. They think realistically, materialistically. They scoff at our appeals to the potential and the goodness in humankind. They think realistically, practically, materialistically. They lie and deceive because, dogmatically, they believe it is necessary for the Leaders to lie to Us and to deceive Us, for otherwise we would not do what, in their opinion, is in Our Best Interests. You may not lie or deceive, however, for those are prerogatives reserved to the elite.

Let us not be deceived by their association with religious fundamentalism. Religion, for the power brokers, is a tool. It serves them well so long as it serves them well. It is certainly not, however, their goal to live a fundamentally religious life themselves. So long as your religion preaches docility and submission and subordinates the here-and-now to the hereafter, then they encourage you in the practice of your religion. But their ‘religion’ is not docile nor submissive and its sole focus is the here-and-now.

Know also that the power behind the Bush Administration knows us from the inside out. In every society, in every nation, in every tribe and culture, they can find the Quisling class that they can co-opt to do their work for them. It was the same in Vichy France as it is in Occupied Iraq as it was in Indonesia as in Columbia as in the United States.

Avarice and temptation can and does cause people to eat their own children. They will say it is for their own good.

The powers behind Mr. Bush know this and exploit this. They think realistically, practically, materialistically. They are very goal-oriented. They are very purposeful.

Their goals have not gone awry because things seem to be deteriorating. Their objective is precisely that our lives and values should deteriorate.

If we feel that our lives have become less secure, that is what they intend. If we feel that our lives are more precarious, that is what they intend. If we have begun to feel hemmed in and limited, that is what they intend. They truly believe that, in the long run, our lack of security, our increased sense of fear and precariousness will make us less likely to rebel, less likely to resist, more malleable, more dog-like, more trainable. They want us to be edgy because they truly believe that if we live life on the edge we will be more innovative, more competitive, more productive. They believe this is good for us and for them.

They truly believe that they know what is best for themselves and everyone else, and they intend to accomplish it whether we want it or not. It is, after all, in our best interests, they believe. They are somewhat like fascists, somewhat like Bolsheviks – elitist, secretive, distrustful of starry-eyed idealism, intent on seizing and holding power, intent on creating an informed, directorate of the elite, ostensibly for the well-being of the many.

Know, too, that the power behind Mr. Bush wields an immense power and it will absolutely not shrink from using that power to retain that power. We must expect and steel ourselves for the inevitable. We must anticipate that those who have power now will exert themselves mightily to retain it. Anticipate the mail glove across the face. Expect continued misrepresentation and distortion of the truth. Prepare for the dirty tricks that they certainly will employ before November. Anticipate the damage that can be wrought with computerized, instantaneous, traceless voting. Expect further immiseration because that leads to social divisions. A divided society serves their purposes, as does an uneasy, fearful society. Divided, fearful, uneasy peoples crave order and stability. That is when we begin to think the yoke and collar are good things.

We must think outside ourselves. We are basically honest, polite and powerless, and so we employ tactics of honesty, politeness and powerlessness. We think peaceful demonstrations and petitions and admonitions will carry the day. They think you are naive. We must think outside ourselves. They are basically not honest, not polite and not peaceful. They sneer at Ghandi and they heed Machiavelli. Unlike us, they have Power and mean to retain it. Their tactics in opposing us will not be, and historically have not been honest, polite or peaceful. They know what they are fighting for. They are fighting for their lives and their wealth and their progenies’ well-being. They are fighting to preserve their lordship over us.

So prepare now for the inevitable. The corporate media will never, ever accurately report our numbers or our message. Osama bin Laden may be rolled out and defrosted from the morgue where he may have lain on ice for many months waiting for the last pages in 1984 when, at the end of Hate Week, the teleprompters whip us all into a frenzied lynch mob. Prepare for it like the possibility of another patriotism-boosting 9-11. Prepare for the pre-election ‘confessions’ of Saddam Hussein to everything we know is not true but which we know the public will accept as ladled. Prepare for the complicity of the United Nations which will happily bail out Mr. Bush with blue-helmeted Gurka-smurfs from poor, third-world countries, just in time for The Mission To Be Accomplished. Let us steel ourselves for an avalanche of Good News and Robust Statistics about the Economy and The Stock Market that will reach a crescendo in October even as our local economy becomes more precarious. Prepare for an avalanche of ‘confessions’ and uncovered documents and manipulated images and ‘evidence’. Be cynical and prepare for it.

But how to prepare?

We prepare ourselves by learning history and economics. Deep history. Ancient and pre-modern and modern history. History reported by non-traditional sources. History from sources abroad. We prepare ourselves by figuring out precisely what we are trying to achieve. Mr. Bush and his handlers know what they are trying to achieve. It is their strength. To be equally strong and prepared we must know, what are we trying to achieve?

Assume, for the moment, that what we want to achieve is fundamental change. Then we must make the effort to identify what it is that we fundamentally want to change, and why. We must distill those fundamental changes to their most basic components. We must seek to identify those fundamental changes that will have the most attraction to others we associate with. We seek a theoretical skeleton that we can flesh out. Our ideas will gain strength if there is sound thinking behind it. We must read, study, test our ideas for fundamental soundness.

There is no ready answer, no messiah, no simple solution. It is tough work.

There are those who advocate that the present system is good enough, that it only needs a “tweak” or two, a pruned bush, a little cleaning up. Chances are that you think more is needed. Chances are there are many of us who think there are fundamental changes needed for the good of humanity and the good of the world.

We do not necessarily need to identify the fixes at this precise moment in time. There are competing ideas and philosophies. They will evolve and others will appear. It is crucial, however, that we understand that fundamental changes need to take hold. For if we believe that only tweaks, a simple regime change, is all we need, then we will, indeed, go back to sleepwalking, perhaps forever.

If we accept the fact that we must fundamentally change what has gotten us into this mess, then we must also accept the diminishment of many national myths, the evaporation of many cultural self-delusions, the tumbling of many fragile social pillars.

We must accept, those of us who believe in fundamental change, that the process of that change will be damn scary, because when you take down a ramshackle structure before you build a new one, there is a period of time when you live without shelter, without a roof over your head. If you build the new structure better than the old one, however, then you will eventually live better. Maybe in generations to come. Maybe only in many, many generations to come.

For now, we need our theoretical foundations. We have to develop them and plan them. Later, we can build on those foundations.

What should we do while we try to develop our theoretical foundation?

We should not demand investigations or blue-ribbon panels to look into any scandal. As Lord Hutton and Tony Blair have proved in Great Britain, he who appoints the Investigator will inevitably be whitewashed by him. No investigations initiated by the Republicans or the Democrats can ever ferret out the truth.

Blue ribbon investigations are not designed to find truth; they are designed to obscure it. Such investigations serve only to pacify. They do not serve to answer questions.

Few are the official investigations that have ever gotten to the bottom of anything, except by accident. We must not even ask for them. It is typically those who seek to cleanse themselves of guilt who most readily accede to the official blue-ribbon investigation. And beware the complicity of those who advocate that an official inquiry is the best way to get to the truth.

We can march and protest. We can write letters.

Letters are good for they demonstrate that we are still conscious. But our letters will be ignored. Marching and protesting feels good. It creates solidarity. It builds unity. It exercises our rights like we exercise at the gym. But it is an internally strengthening exercise only.

We cannot expect that our march or protest will be given more than the shortest shrift in the corporate media that our neighbors all watch. We cannot march and then race home to watch the protest on television. We are guaranteed to be disappointed every time. They will never cover the story correctly. And if there is violence fomented by Them, know that the story will be that WE instigated the violence. We will not ever win the coverage game and we should never expect to win it. Moreover, however good it feels and however strong it makes us as a group, marching and shouting and protesting and letter-writing, unless they entail enough participants to literally shut down the local economy, or threaten to inflict economic pain, rarely advance the cause in and of themselves. It is not, therefore, the act of letter-writing or demonstrating that has an effect; rather, it is the economic implications of our letter-writing and demonstrating if we are not heeded.

We should realize that the greatest tool of the powerless majority is economic. We have no inherent economic power. Rather, our power is the potential, and ultimately the act of withholding services and economic participation. We can choose for whom we work, if we work, and what we do for whom we work. We can choose whether, and when, and where to spend the small change we have. As many, the small change and the small acts add up and agglomerate. Martin Luther King preached economic withdrawal in his last speech before he was murdered. It is a powerful tool of the economically weak Many. We can march and protest and write letters, but we must also be prepared to withhold services and our nickels and dimes from participating in the bigger economy. The economic sting, and the potential for it, together with our remonstrances, can level the playing field for the powerless. The trick is learning how to wield that economic power.

One more lesson we must learn. We of the opposition, we the visionaries and the proponents of something Better, must never give in to depression or despair. The world may be a grim place, but we cannot ever be grim ourselves. Grim and bear it. Grinningly.

We have to have fun and enjoy ourselves as we do battle. It is the Doing itself which is satisfying. It is the Doing itself which gives us back our sense of identity and our humanity. We want others to see us and emulate us. No one wants to emulate someone who is always depressed. We cannot be Puritans nor Zealots, nor Mullahs nor Saints. Take the battle seriously, but fight it in a spirit of joy and pleasure.

There is also great satisfaction in reconnecting once fractured communities. Remember that those you oppose want you to live in fractured neighborhoods. They want you to be isolated t.v. viewers whose intersection with others is the discussion of what you watched others do on the television last night. Be not viewers, be doers.

Doing things, especially doing things together, is exhilarating. Exhilaration makes the work easier. It also makes it more enjoyable, and that which is enjoyable will attract others to it, thus making the work even more enjoyable.

This, at a minimum, is what we are trying to achieve. Now, let us set out to do it.

Zbignew Zingh can be reached at Zbig@ersarts.com. This Article is CopyLeft, and free to distribute, reprint, repost, sing at a recital, spray paint, scribble in a toilet stall, etc. to your heart’s content, with proper author citation. Find out more about Copyleft and read other great articles at www.ersarts.com.

Source:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Zingh0315.htm

Make Global Warming an Issue

By Walter Cronkite
The Philadelphia Enquirer
Monday 15 March 2004

The contempt of the Bush administration for environmentalists and their concerns is well known by now. While evidence of man- made environmental damage mounts, the Bush team resists its implications like a defeated army whose rear guard fights off its pursuers as it retreats. That has been especially true of its handling of the most serious of all environmental issues - global warming.

First, the administration claimed that global warming was the work of liberal hysterics and had been discounted by "more sober scientists." Then, it admitted that it was happening but said there was no proof humans caused it, or could fix it.

Retreat No. 3 was the White House discovery that, yes, indeed, some of the warming was due to human activity, and we should take steps, say, to reduce emissions, but those steps should be voluntary on the part of industry.

There are two scientific theories that have been gaining credence in recent years that challenge the sanity of that kind of resistance to fact - and make no mistake about it, global warming is a fact.

Both theories begin with a phenomenon that is taking place right now. Scientists are beginning to understand climate as a complex interactive system that is affected by everything from the emission of greenhouse gases, to deforestation, to the condition of Arctic and Antarctic glaciers.

It is a system with a feedback mechanism. For example, higher temperatures lead to the melting of sea ice, which exposes more water to the sun. The water absorbs more solar energy, which accelerates global warming, and so on. Scientists fear that such feedbacks might produce a self-sustaining and accelerating warming that is beyond human control.

The second theory goes by the name of Abrupt Climate Change. It suggests that catastrophic results of global warming might not occur gradually, as most have expected, but quite suddenly - within a few years. This theory also starts with the melting of glaciers and sea ice, but involves the dilution of seawater's salinity - or salt content - that results. That salt content is a key element in an ocean current that takes heat from the tropics northward and cold water southward and in the process moderates temperatures in the Eastern United States and much of Europe.

The collapse of this so-called conveyor could, in the worst case, produce a new ice age. The best case would give us severe winters, increasingly violent storms, flooding, drought and high winds around the globe, disrupting food production and energy supplies and raising sea levels high enough to flood coastal cities and make them unlivable.

These are not predictions but real possibilities - far more possible today than scientists had previously believed. And while the politicos in the White House continue to stick their heads in the sand, some at the Pentagon have taken on the task of studying the national- security implications of Abrupt Climate Change.

What they came up with was a world whose "carrying capacity" - the number of people the globe can sustain - is being progressively lowered, a world where war becomes the rule, not the exception, and where wars are no longer fought for ideological, religious, or geopolitical reasons - but for resources and survival. This unclassified Pentagon study, completed last fall, has been released to several news organizations and was highlighted in the Feb. 9 edition of Fortune magazine.

One thing we have to keep in mind: While these might only be worst-case scenarios, many of the conditions and processes scientists think might trigger them already are present or under way. Global warming is at least as important as gay marriage or the cost of Social Security. And if it is not seriously debated in the general election, it will measure the irresponsibility of the entire political class. This is an issue that cannot, and must not, be ignored any longer.

Walter Cronkite (mail@cronkitecolumn.com)

Source:
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/8187862.htm