Tuesday, May 09, 2006

[911TruthAction] Digest Number 1278

There are 22 messages in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

1. Articles4: Bush to American Jewish Committee: US has obligation to e
From: "Dick Eastman" olfriend@nwinfo.net
2. 911 truth dvd's for $1
From: "linelites@mindspring.com" linelites@mindspring.com
3. Fw: Articles 3: again (do we have censorship or what?)
From: "Dick Eastman" olfriend@nwinfo.net
4. Articles 3: Chomsky's "realist" analysis - but it ignores Israel's p
From: "Dick Eastman" olfriend@nwinfo.net
5. Guess what? "Articles3" won't post #'s1,2 and 4 are all you get
From: "Dick Eastman" olfriend@nwinfo.net
6. frosty151
From: "Bugs" brawny@twlakes.net
7. Moussaoui: I Lied on Stand about Being Involved in 9/11
From: "S Miles Lewis" yahoolists@elfis.net
8. Remember: Zacarias Moussaoui: says he lied on the stand -- now insis
From: "Dick Eastman" olfriend@nwinfo.net
9. [Fwd: Military General Appointed Head CIA]
From: "APFN" apfn@apfn.org
10. 23 New Presidential Helicopters 6.1 Billion $ Made In Italy ! ??+ +
From: "ranger116@webtv.net" ranger116@webtv.net
11. 23 New Presidential Helicopters 6.1 Billion $ Made In Italy ! ??+ +
From: "ranger116@webtv.net" ranger116@webtv.net
12. I will be on the radio again tomorrow nite
From: "janet phelan" jcphelan10@yahoo.com
13. Everbody is invited to the new 9-11 discussion forum
From: "jewish_from_brooklyn" jewish_from_brooklyn@yahoo.com
14. The Risk of Wining: What Happens Once the 9/11 Sewer Opens Wide?
From: "Cathy Garger" savorsuccesslady@yahoo.com
15. Goss is suppressing lengthy 9-11 study by CIA's inspector general, a
From: "Dick Eastman" olfriend@nwinfo.net
16. AFL-CIO Now: How Safe Are Your Voting Rights?
From: "Bugs" brawny@twlakes.net
17. : Thank God!
From: "Bugs" brawny@twlakes.net
18. Forum on Amazon page of (C)ommission Report
From: "John Leonard" jpleonard@verizon.net
19. SPECIAL: Ruppert and Pique Oil
From: "President, USA Exile Govt." prez@usa-exile.org
20. Truth
From: "Bugs" brawny@twlakes.net
21. FW: Re: [TheEnlightenedSouls] Will you send this on??
From: "Eva Walker" cowgirl269704@msn.com
22. 9/11 Update - 5/9
From: "reggie501" reggie501@optonline.net

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Message 1
From: "Dick Eastman" olfriend@nwinfo.net
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 10:08am(PDT)
Subject: Articles4: Bush to American Jewish Committee: US has obligation to e

From: Peter Myers

May 8, 2006

(1) Kofi Annan genuflects to American Jewish Committee
(2) Bush to AJC: US has obligation to ensure Israel's security vis-a-vis Iran
(3) to (5) Chomsky's "realist" analysis - but it ignores Israel's perspective
(6) Days of thunder, by Gideon Levy

(1) Kofi Annan genuflects to American Jewish Committee

Date: Sun, 07 May 2006 21:56:25 -0700 From: Jeff Blankfort <jblankfort@earthlink.net>

The Zionists own him, too. Notice that there is not a word about Olmert's very public promise to annex illegally occupied Palestinian land. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sgsm10443.doc.htm

5 May 2006

Secretary-General SG/SM/10443

Department of Public Information . News and Media Division . New York

SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS UNITED NATIONS, AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE BOUND TO GATHER

IN GLOBAL MISSION OF PREVENTING GENOCIDE, PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS

Following are UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's remarks to the American Jewish Committee Centennial Dinner in Washington, D.C., 4 May:

It is a great honour for me to join you tonight.

By the time my Organization was founded, yours had already spent nearly four decades as an advocate for Jewish civil rights, and for human dignity in the broadest sense. The American Jewish Committee was thus one of a small band of non-governmental organizations that were present at the UN's creation. Your renowned representative, Jacob Blaustein, was one of the most influential figures in that conference. And the institute that bears his name continues to play a vital part in the UN's human rights work through the engagement of its director, Felice Gaer.

In recent years especially, the United Nations and the Jewish community have moved closer together.

The United Nations is fully engaged in the struggle against anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination.

Last year, in a long overdue observance, the General Assembly held a special session to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

And this year, on 27 January, we marked the first of what will now be an annual international day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust.

The United Nations is, I hope and believe, what it always should be -­ a place where Jews can feel at home.

It is also an Organization within which, more and more, the State of Israel enjoys the same rights and responsibilities as every other member. My good friend Danny Gillerman is now serving as one of the General Assembly's vice-presidents. And for some years Israel has been participating in one of the Assembly's regional groups -­ the West European and Others Group ­- in New York. I hope the same group will soon find ways to include Israel in its deliberations in Geneva and Vienna, too.

We should all be pleased about these developments, because our world faces immense challenges. We need the Jewish people -­ and especially the American Jewish Committee ­- to make its full contribution, on every item on the global agenda.

Next Tuesday, the General Assembly will elect the first members of the UN's new Human Rights Council. As you know, this Council will replace the old Commission on Human Rights, which in recent times discredited itself by focusing selectively on violations in a few States, while ignoring those in others.

By contrast, the new Council is meant to eliminate double standards, in part by regularly reviewing the human rights record of all countries, starting with its own members. Moreover, those members must uphold the highest principles of human rights, and be elected directly and individually by an absolute majority of the General Assembly. And any members that commit gross and systematic human rights violations can have their membership suspended.

As you know, the United States decided not to present its own candidature this first time. But it has pledged to support and cooperate with the Council with a view to running for a seat in the near future. I trust that the Administration, and also civil society groups like yours, will use their influence to help ensure that other States with a strong and genuine commitment to human rights are elected, and that they give the Council a fresh start, without the baggage that accompanied the Commission.

What we are really celebrating today is the fact that no one asks you to choose between your Jewish identity and your American identity. On the contrary, everyone understands that America is enriched by the distinctive contribution that you can make as Jews. That was not always true in the past. That it is true today is due in part to the tireless work of the AJC, and it is a wonderful example to all other countries where communities of different faith or tradition live side by side. I hope all countries can learn from, and be inspired by, your experience.

Indeed, I hope that within my lifetime, just as in this country, where Jews are accepted without question as full citizens, by all their fellow citizens, so Israel will be accepted without question as a member by the whole family of nations.

We all know what that means: a peaceful Middle East, at the heart of which will be two States, Israel and Palestine, living side by side, within secure borders, in peace and with mutual respect.

I welcome the passion with which Prime Minister Olmert spoke, on the night of Israel's recent general election, about the need to create the conditions in which both peoples will be able to fulfil their dreams of prosperity and peace.

We are all painfully aware that he and President Abbas must overcome enormous obstacles in order to achieve true security for Israelis and statehood for Palestinians. Some of those obstacles seem to have become even more insurmountable in recent weeks and months.

But I refuse to despair. There is still abundant evidence that peace is what the majority of both Israelis and Palestinians want, even if each is reluctant to believe that the other wants it, too. And it is still the case that, while interim measures might bring interim relief, a true and lasting peace can be achieved only through a genuine agreement.

I know that it is easy to speak of this dream, and much harder to turn it into reality. But I pledge that the United Nations, with its partners in the Quartet, will be there to help, working with any who truly seek peace until that goal is achieved.

As we mark this milestone in your history, I hope we will also recognize the deep, productive ties between our organizations. Our common objectives of preventing genocide and protecting human rights bind us together in a global mission. Suffering, wherever it exists, justice, wherever it is needed ­- these are the main claims on our energies. With this thread that connects our organizations, I hope we can weave a strong and lasting fabric of peace.

Congratulations again on a century of action and achievement.

Thank you very much.

* *** *

For information media . not an official record

(2) Bush to AJC: US has obligation to ensure Israel's security vis-a-vis Iran

Date: Fri, 05 May 2006 11:25:22 -0700 From: Jeff Blankfort <jblankfort@earthlink.net>

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1145961282236&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

OAS_sitepage='www.jpost.com/NewsWorld'; OAS_listpos='LeaderBrd'; JPPageName=OAS_sitepage.substring(OAS_sitepage.indexOf('/') + 1);

Bush: US must ensure Israel's security

Haviv Rettig, JPost.com Staff and AP, THE JERUSALEM POST

May. 5, 2006

US President George W. Bush said Thursday at the American Jewish Committee conference in Washington that the United States had a strong and inalienable obligation to ensure the security of Israel, referring to the threats Iran had made against the Jewish state.

Bush repeated his pledge that the United States would not deal with the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority so long as Hamas refuses to disavow terrorism and to acknowledge Israel's right to exist.

The US president also said that he would keep pushing for a strong resolution at the United Nations to curb Iran's nuclear programs. "America will continue to rally the world to face these threats," Bush said.

The audience applauded repeatedly his rhetoric against Hamas, a group the United States considers a terrorist organization.

"As you know, I'm a strong believer of democracy and free elections, but that does not mean that we have to support elected officials who are not committed to peace," Bush said.

"Hamas has made it clear that they do not acknowledge the right of Israel to exist, and I've made it clear that so long as that's their policy, we'll have no contact with the leaders of Hamas," Bush said.

"Democratically elected leaders cannot have one foot in the camp of democracy and one foot in the camp of terror," Bush said, repeating a theme of his administration since Hamas' victory in the Palestinian Authority elections in January. "Hamas must accept the demands of the international community, to recognize Israel, disarm and reject terrorism and stop blocking the path to peace," he added.

Bush was followed at the podium by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the first chancellor to address the American Jewish Committee's annual meeting.

Merkel backed Bush's stances against Hamas and Iran. "Iran must not be permitted possession of creation of a Palestinian state, Merkel said Hamas would have to answer to the Palestinian people for the consequences of its policies.

Bush spoke fondly about Ariel Sharon. "Ariel Sharon is a friend who remains in our thoughts and prayers. He is a man of courage and a man of peace," Bush said. "And so tonight we pray for his recovery and we rededicate ourselves to the cause to which he devoted his life - the peace and the security of Israel."

Earlier in the day, the White House congratulated Israel on the inauguration of its new government, and a Bush spokesman said that the US President expected to work with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his ministers.

The spokesman said that the raod map was the proper way to advance the peace process and stressed that Hamas was not a partner in this endeavor.

The Israeli media voiced concern Thursday night that no Israeli politician would be in attendance at the AJC.

When asked for the AJC's reaction to this fact, Col. (res.) Eran Lerman, head of the American Jewish Committee's Israel/Middle East office told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday night that everyone in attendance "understood completely" the critical importance of the new Israeli government's swearing-in in Jerusalem late that night.

"Shimon Peres was on our schedule, but he couldn't possible miss the ceremony in which he, as speaker of the Knesset, was handing over the reigns to the next speaker," he added.

He said that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sent a recorded video message to play at the conference. Many other world leaders did the same, including Jordan's King Abdullah II and Australian Prime Minister John Howard

(3) Chomsky's "realist" analysis - but it ignores Israel's perspective

Date: Sun, 07 May 2006 23:55:57 -0700 From: Jeff Blankfort <jblankfort@earthlink.net>

Dochoch29@aol.com wrote:

It seems that Jonathan Cutler is saying that the US aggression against Iraq is at the behest of and solely for the benefit of Israel. Queries: 1. Was Iraq a threat to Israel? John Cooley, in his excellent book, An Alliance Against Babylon: The US, Israel and Iraq (Pluto, 2005), explores the history of the Israel-Iraq antagonism and makes a good argument that Israel has long seen it that way. Add to that the statements by Israeli officials urging the US to attack and get rid of Saddam which they thought it would do in 1991.

2. Did Israel think Iraq was a threat to Israel? See above. Most definitelty. Maybe not immediately, but in the near future.

3. Do you think Israeli intelligence was unaware of the real "strength" of Iraq (after 12 years of excruciating sanctions) and its own strength? There was an investigation of why Israel's intelligence which the US relied on was all wrong about Iraq, But that may have been intentional to get the US to do its bidding.

4. Do you think Israel was quivering in its boots over a repeat of the 1991 Scud missiles which, if I recall, resulted in the death of one elderly Israeli from a heart attack? They were worried but Israelis don't quiver in their boots. Remember, they're tough. Bush Sr. wouldn't let them join in in 1991, but they said that if they were attacked this time they were ready respond.

5. Was Israel in any more "danger" in 2003 than it was in 1967? Do you think Israeli govt. and military circles felt it was a "miracle" that they defeated Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 6 days? Israel wasn't in danger in 1967. It was a scam as Matti Peled got Meir Pail to admit in a debate shortly afterward. Peled was in charge of the logistics in 67.

6. Now Egypt and Jordan are tamed, but even if they were not, do you think any combination of Arab countries, with or without Iran, could be a serious menace to Israel, probably even if, for some incomprehensible reason, the US stopped enriching and arming Israel to the teeth? Not at this time but some over there have the long view. 7. Am I missing something, or is there another nuclear power in the "region" of the Middle East than Russia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, India and Israel? The US.

8. Does any of this lead you to think there may be other reasons behind the invasion of Iraq and the possibly impending attack against Iran? It certainly isn't for the oil because an attack on Iran will destabilize the scene beyond immediate repair. Neither Israel nor the US wants Iran to have nukes although it is not unlikely that should the US attack Iran there will be a regime change in Pakistan and not one that either the US or Israel would like. An attack on Iran would be absolutely insane (no exaggeration, believe me) and the only reason that stands out is that both Israel and the lobby want it as the next step in eliminating Israel's enemies with the US acting, as it always has, as the real client state.

Jeff

Larry Hochman

(4) Chomsky's "realist" analysis - but it ignores Israel's perspective

Date: Mon, 8 May 2006 02:35:18 EDT From: Dochoch29@aol.com

It seems that Jonathan Cutler is saying that the US aggression against Iraq is at the behest of and solely for the benefit of Israel.

Queries:

1. Was Iraq a threat to Israel? 2. Did Israel think Iraq was a threat to Israel? 3. Do you think Israeli intelligence was unaware of the real "strength" of Iraq (after 12 years of excruciating sanctions) and its own strength? 4. Do you think Israel was quivvering in its boots over a repeat of the 1991 Scud missiles which, if I recall, resulted in the death of one elderly Israeli from a heart attack? 5. Was Israel in any more "danger" in 2003 than it was in 1967? Do you think Israeli govt. and military circles felt it was a "miracle" that they defeated Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 6 days? 6. Now Egypt and Jordan are tamed, but even if they were not, do you think any combination of Arab countries, with or without Iran, could be a serious menace to Israel, probably even if, for some incomprehensible reason, the US stopped enriching and arming Israel to the teeth? 7. Am I missing something, or is there another nuclear power in the "region" of the Middle East than Russia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, India and Israel? 8. Does any of this lead you to think there may be other reasons behind the invasion of Iraq and the possibly impending attack against Iran?

Larry Hochman

(5) Chomsky's "realist" analysis - but it ignores Israel's perspective

Date: Sun, 7 May 2006 18:45:43 EDT From: Seth17279@aol.com

This is a new slant... Astute Cultler analysis.

Re Peter Myers. But one would expect that Israel does indeed care if only Iraq falls in to civil war. That would only strengthen Iran which is the last thing Israel wants. Thus Israeli push to bomb Iran--based on hopes of destabilization? In the original neo-con plan Iraq was supposed to be a cakewalk preceding attack on Syria and Iran. SF

(6) Days of thunder, by Gideon Levy

Date: Sat, 06 May 2006 18:20:44 -0700 From: Jeff Blankfort <jblankfort@earthlink.net>

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m Last update - 22:53 04/05/2006 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/712609.html

Days of thunder

By Gideon Levy

Boom after boom, shell after shell, thunder after thunder. The windows of the houses shake, the walls that were cracked during the previous shelling are already threatening to collapse from the blast, the children scream in fear or walk around shocked and silent in the shelled house. One shell after another, every few minutes another one. Sometimes there is a vague and distant noise, and sometimes there is a thundering and very nearby BOOM!!!! The skies tremble, the end of the world. Boom after boom, a shell every five minutes. It is impossible to know where the last one landed, much less where the next one will land. Yesterday afternoon a shell landed on the heads of these children and adults, whose home we are now visiting. Boom after boom, even now, terrible fear.

The fear begins at the Erez crossing, the sounds of war. Afterward, when you cross the deserted checkpoint and travel a little to the south, the noise gradually becomes closer. The never-ending noise. At a certain point one begins to get used to it, just as one gets used to a thunderstorm. But these thousands of shells, which are aimed at "open areas," not only sow great and terrible fear in the hearts of tens of thousands of residents, including many children, but they also occasionally hit homes, and then they kill and injure. We don't hear about it much. On Sunday, Israel was totally preoccupied with the festivities of the Final Four basketball championships, but while our American basketball players were aiming at the basket, our artillery was aiming at Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip. On the basketball court in Prague there were victors and losers, but not here, in the sandy alleyways. Here there are only losers.

Does anyone among our excellent artillery forces think about the great fear they are causing to the children upon whose homes they are launching their shells? Have they been shown pictures of the destruction they sowed, whether deliberately or not? No Qassam rocket justifies this terrible, disproportionate bombing, thousands of shells in a densely populated area, on its fields and occasionally on its homes; the echoes of this shelling did not reach Israel and did not interest anyone here. Last week we went to bombarded Beit Lahiya, in the row of houses that was shelled there, two dead and several wounded, this week in bombarded Beit Hanoun, three children wounded and dozens suffering from shock.

Little Meisa walks around barefoot among the ruins of her home, stepping on a carpet of glass splinters. In silence she walks among the ruins, here and there, not knowing what to do with herself. Her gray face expresses shock. Meisa does not say a word, it is impossible to get even a trace of a smile from her. This child is now a victim of shock. Five years old, on Shabbat afternoon, when the shell shook the walls of her house, hit the roof and destroyed it, Meisa was on the top floor of the family's impoverished home. Now she is walking around the house restlessly, hugging to herself a bundle of rags that were her clothes. Meisa does not leave the rags, holds them tightly, so they won't get lost. Abed, her cousin, was on the roof and was wounded. This house is home to 35 people, almost all of whom were at home when the shell landed on the roof. Most of them are small children.

The home of the Abu Ouda family is located at the edge of the town of Beit Hanoun, bordering on the orchards, which the Israel Defense Forces once uprooted as part of its policy of "exposure," and which have now been replanted. House No. 16 on a street with no name, with a lovely view of a rural landscape from the roof: the saplings of the orchards and a row of Washingtonia palm trees at the end. The gray patches in the orchard are the craters of yesterday's shells, the town whose houses can be seen on the horizon in the east is Sderot.

Now the shells are landing in nearby Beit Lahiya, one day for Beit Hanoun and one day for Beit Lahiya. The pool of water was destroyed here about a year ago by the IDF, and it is still in ruins. The roof on which we are standing and looking out over the shelling fields threatens to collapse. Two iron poles that they stuck into it for support, several hours after the shell landed, will not hold up these torn pieces of cement for much longer. The walls of the house are cracked, and some of its ceilings are also threatening to fall. The staircase that leads to the roof, which was hit by the shell, is dangling in thin air. The ascent to the roof involves danger to life and limb, everything is liable to disintegrate at any moment. But here they want us to see all the signs of destruction, they aren't letting us skip a single piece of shrapnel. They want us to see the smashed sun-heated water tanks, the shattered television satellite dishes, and the drops of blood on the roof, the blood of the boy Abed, who is now lying on the first floor of the adjacent house with shrapnel in his leg. He was lucky: The neighbor's son, Ahmed Naim, is now lying in Shifa Hospital with shrapnel in his brain. Abed is 13 and Ahmed is 17. They say that the child Mohammed Abu Ouda was also slightly wounded by shrapnel in his throat. He is five years old.

From the roof you can also see the living conditions of these wretched residents: a sea of improvised asbestos roofs, reinforced by gray bricks, the look of a poverty-stricken neighborhood in Brazil or in Sri Lanka. The apartment of Hatem Abu Ouda is half demolished. A little boy sits in shock on the dusty sofa and stares at what is going on. This is 8-year-old Zakaria, who has also not yet recovered from yesterday's shelling. But even now the bombardment continues, one shell after another. The kitchen was badly damaged, as was the bedroom. "Look a door, look a wall, look a cupboard," say Ismail Abu Ouda, 28, from the second floor. "See a bed, see a sofa," as though we were property tax assessors. The room of Ayman Abu Ouda is scarred as well. He is married with four children, and his wall is about to collapse.

Yihye Abu Ouda, 18, was on the roof when the shell landed. He is a 12th grader, he was preparing for the bagrut matriculation exam in Arabic. At about 11 A.M., the IDF began to shell the orchard opposite them, six shells. Afterward, at about 3:30 P.M., when his cousin, Abed Abu Ouda, went up to roof to fill the black plastic containers with water, and Yihye was immersed in his studies on the roof, the next shell landed. This time it was a direct hit. Yihye lunged toward his cousin, who was bleeding from shrapnel that had penetrated his thigh, and took him downstairs. On the lower floor, there was already great panic. All the members of the family rushed to evacuate themselves to the neighbors' house, maybe there it's safer, they thought. Of course there are no shelters in this neighborhood, no protection and not a single security room; as in all of Gaza, here the shelled residents are left to their fate.

The neighbor Zaki Abu Wahdan says that his grandson has not stopped trembling since yesterday. Their neighbors' car, a Fiat 131, is parked on the street, one of the few cars in the neighborhood, and the windows are shattered from the shrapnel. In the house adjacent to the shelled house, which also belongs to the Abu Ouda family, a one-story hut with a large number of children, the wounded Abed now lies, his mother sits alongside him on the floor. His thigh is bandaged, his voice is weak, he is also still in shock. His mother displays the jeans soaked with his blood. "A 13-year-old boy. What has he done? He went up to fill the container with water." The mother, Intisar, has 15 children. "Why did we receive this punishment?" she asks.

The shell was their dessert: It landed just when Intisar was serving lunch. Abed finished eating first, and went upstairs to get the water: "I was looking toward the orchard, Yihye was reading a book and I filled the container with water, and then the shell fell, two or three meters from me." The shrapnel is still in his leg, he will undergo surgery in two weeks. Since yesterday he has not eaten a thing. Will he go up to the roof again? His mother speaks for him: "Of course he'll go up. Who will fill up the water for us? He is the quickest child in the family. I'm ill and can't go up."

Shell after shell, the bombardment continues, boom after boom, even now. They say that they stop the Qassam launchers with their bodies, and deny that there has been firing from their neighborhood. "We fight with them and curse them," says elderly neighbor Abu Wahdan, "You want to destroy us, we tell them. I'm 60 years old, all my life I worked so I could build the house, and in one minute they'll destroy it because of the Qassams?"

The IDF spokesman: "The citizens of the State of Israel have been suffering day after day from indiscriminate terror attacks of rockets launched from the Gaza Strip at Israeli communities. The same was true last Shabbat, April 29, 2006, when a number of Qassam rockets were fired at Israel. The IDF operates to defend the citizens of the State of Israel, and in response carries out firing toward the sources and points of launching, while trying as much as possible to avoid hitting populated areas. Unfortunately, the terror organizations are exploiting the IDF's sensitivity in regard to harming civilians, and deliberately operate near and from populated areas, using the Palestinian population as a 'human shield.'

"The IDF regrets any harm caused to civilians or their property, but it is an unavoidable result of the continuing rocket terrorism. The responsibility for this situation falls on the terror organizations and on the Palestinian Authority, which are doing nothing to stop the launching of the rockets. The possibility that a number of Palestinians were harmed by the firing is under investigation, and has not yet been verified." /hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=712609

--
Peter Myers, 381 Goodwood Rd, Childers 4660, Australia ph +61 7 41262296
http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers Mirror: http://mailstar.net/index.html I use the old Mac OS; being incompatible, it cannot run Windows viruses or transmit them to you. If my mail does not arrive, or yours bounces, please ring me: this helps beat sabotage. To unsubscribe, reply with "unsubscribe" in the subject line; allow 1 day.

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Message 2
From: "linelites@mindspring.com" linelites@mindspring.com
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 10:15am(PDT)
Subject: 911 truth dvd's for $1

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Message 3
From: "Dick Eastman" olfriend@nwinfo.net
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 10:21am(PDT)
Subject: Fw: Articles 3: again (do we have censorship or what?)

----- Original Message -----
From: Dick Eastman
Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 10:01 AM
Subject: Articles 3: Chomsky's "realist" analysis - but it ignores Israel's perspective -=- US passports to get RFID chips

From: "Peter Myers" <myers@cyberone.com.au>

May 7, 2006 2:39 AM

Item 1 presents Chomsky's view of how imperial America sees the Middle East, oriented to the need to safeguard oil supplies. But it ignores Israel's perspective. Does Israel care if Iraq, Iran or Saudi Arabia fall into civil war? Not at all - that just renders these countries powerless. Whether the oil supply is stable is far less important to Israel than destroying enemy regimes.

(1) Chomsky's "realist" analysis - but it ignores Israel's perspective
(2) US passports to get RFID chips

(1) Chomsky's "realist" analysis - but it ignores Israel's perspective

Date: Sat, 6 May 2006 12:29:02 +0100 From: Rowan Berkeley
<rowan.berkeley@googlemail.com>

Beyond Incompetence: Washington's War in Iraq

Jonathan Cutler, ZMag, April 30, 2006
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=10185

{Rowan's comment: Zmag Article by Cutler - long but IMPORTANT - all links
extracted below text}

If there is a central principle animating Noam Chomsky's commentaries on US
foreign policy, it is his affinity for Realpolitik analysis. As Chomsky argues
in a recent interview (1), "Our leaders have rational imperial interests. We
have to assume that they're good-hearted and bumbling. But they're not. They're
perfectly sensible." This methodological axiom presents some serious challenges
for those trying to understand the US war in Iraq. With so much evidence of
bumbling within the Bush White House, it is tempting to join the chorus of
critics, led by the Democrats, who say that incompetence is the defining feature
of US foreign policy. Is it possible to tell the story of the US invasion of
Iraq as "perfectly sensible"?

Chomsky is adamant and he is right to warn against the idea that foreign policy
elites are more fool than knave. "Consider the actual situation, not some dream
situation... If we can enter the real world we can begin to talk about it... We
have to talk about it in the real world and know what the White House is
thinking. They're not willing to live in a dream world."

What, then, is the "actual situation" that led the Bush administration to make
the "perfectly sensible" -- if entirely imperialist -- decision to invade Iraq
and topple the regime of Saddam Hussein? Here, according to Chomsky, is the real
world:

"If [Iraq is] more or less democratic, it'll have a Shiite majority. They will
naturally want to improve their linkages with Iran, Shiite Iran. Most of the
clerics come from Iran... So you get an Iraqi/Iran loose alliance. Furthermore,
right across the border in Saudi Arabia, there's a Shiite population which has
been bitterly oppressed by the U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny. And any moves
toward independence in Iraq are surely going to stimulate them, it's already
happening. That happens to be where most of Saudi Arabian oil is. Okay, so you
can just imagine the ultimate nightmare in Washington..."

Chomsky isn't making this stuff up. One can get quick confirmation of Chomsky's
characterization of this "ultimate nightmare" scenario from the key "realists"
of Republican foreign policy establishment -- folks like Bush Sr., former
National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Secretary of State James
Baker, and Colin Powell. When presented with a Shiite uprising against Saddam
Hussein in 1991, the "realists" opted to leave Saddam in power, rather than let
the nightmare become reality. In a co-authored 1998 memoir, A World Transformed,
Bush Sr. and Scowcroft insist that they acted to preserve "the long-term balance
of power at the head of the Gulf" (p.489). In his 1995 memoir The Politics of
Diplomacy, James Baker recalls that he didn't want to "play into the hands of
the mullahs in Iran, who could export their brand of Islamic fundamentalism with
the help of Iraq's Shiites and quickly transform themselves into the dominant
regional power" (p.437). Colin Powell, in his 1995 memoir My American Journey,
is equally blunt. "Why didn't we finish him off?... In March, the Iraqi Shiites
in the south rose up in arms... But our practical intention was to leave Baghdad
enough power to survive as a threat to an Iran that remained bitterly hostile
toward the United States" (pp.512, 516).

The problem is that fear of this "ultimate nightmare" provided the rationale in
1991 for not invading Iraq, or more precisely, not promoting the political
ascendance of the Iraqi Shiite majority. Chomksy argues that fear of the
nightmare scenario will deter realists from supporting US withdrawal from Iraq.
But did the "realists" get us into Iraq? "Realists" may keep us in Iraq, but did
the "realists" unleash Iraqi Shiite power by terminating Sunni Baathist
political and military rule? "Realists" may, in fact, be sensible -- at least in
a self-serving way -- but Scowcroft (2), Baker (3), and Bush Sr. (4) all
publicly warned George W. Bush about the risks of unleashing the ultimate
nightmare. Kissinger -- who first floated the idea of seizing the Eastern
Province from the Saudis in the mid-1970s, prior to the Iranian revolution --
was explicit in a Washington Post Op-Ed (5). The key to any move to topple
Saddam, he insisted, was the contour of "the political outcome," especially
insofar as Saudi Arabia would be unlikely to cooperate in the formation of a
"Shiite republic" that "would threaten the Dhahran region in Saudi Arabia, and
might give Iran a new base to seek to dominate the gulf region." Chomsky is at a
loss to explain -- in Realpolitik terms -- the 2003 decision by George W. Bush
to invade Iraq and empower the Iraqi Shiite majority.

Gilbert Achcar, like Chomsky, is inclined to stipulate the decisive role of
Realpolitik in US foreign policy. Looking at the case of Iraq, however, Achcar
makes an exception. "In the case of Iraq, and in this case exclusively," writes
Achcar in a 2004 CounterPunch article (6), "the Bush administration has acted on
ideological views so contrary to the 'reality principle' that they could only
lead into this major nightmare of U.S. imperial policy... History will probably
record this venture as one of the most important blunders ever committed by an
administration abroad from the standpoint of U.S. imperial interests."

Chomsky and Achcar both agree that the general aim of the invasion was based on
"realism." As Chomsky says, the US would not have invaded Iraq "if its main
product was lettuce and pickles... If you have three gray cells functioning, you
know... the US invaded Iraq because it has enormous oil resources." Likewise,
Achcar is "fully aware of the very oily factors" involved in US military
intervention. However, Achcar insists that "many of its concrete decisions" --
chiefly the "clumsiness of de-Baathification... [and the] dissolution of the
Iraqi military" -- represented "blunders" and "wild dreams" of "crackpot
idealists" who allow "high-flying moral rhetoric" to help guide foreign policy
"in a way that stands in blatant contradiction to pragmatic needs."

For Achcar, the crucial decisions were not the ones that simply toppled Saddam
Hussein but the ones -- made in May 2003, at the start of the formal US
occupation -- to actively undermine authoritarian Sunni minority rule in Iraq.
"Whatever the reason," says Achcar, "the fact is that Bush Jr. and his
collaborators have acted for a while in conformity with their democratic
proclamations." These decisions unleashed a major "nightmare" because they
"opened the way for the Iraqi people to seize control of their own destinies...
to the benefit of Islamic fundamentalist forces, somewhat on the Iranian
pattern." The "clumsiness" is particularly difficult to explain in the terms of
Realpolitik since regime change -- without Shiite empowerment -- could have been
accomplished "more effectively...had the Bush administration acted from a
craftily Machiavellian perspective and managed to get hold of Iraq through an
arrangement with the Iraqi army and other apparatuses of the Baathist state."

If there is room for rapprochement between Achcar and Chomsky, it is because
Achcar actually agrees that the familiar "realist" crowd never would -- and
never did -- jettison craftily Machiavellian perspectives on foreign policy.
Achcar insists, however, that on the key questions regarding the political
outcome in Iraq -- de-Baathification, military dissolution, and Shiite power --
the "administration was divided." Realists fought against all of these policies
for post-invasion Iraq, favoring something more like a US-backed military coup
that would result in a political outcome akin to Saddamism-without-Saddam and an
"arrangement" with the Baathist state. There was, however, a rival faction
within the Bush administration: the so-called neo-conservatives, vaguely defined
as those who favored a "crusade for bringing democracy" to Iraq.
Neo-conservatives championed comprehensive de-Baathification and dissolution of
the Sunni-led military establishment -- even if it meant empowering Iraqi
Shiites.

Chomsky, however, seems not to have taken note of neo-conservatives or any
factional battles within the Bush administration. In his many interviews on the
war in Iraq, he rarely if ever says anything about neo-conservatives - a
peculiar asymmetry in light of neo-conservative vilification of Chomsky (7). His
analysis posits not only Realpolitik, but a unified actor. One of the great
merits of Achcar's analysis, by contrast, is his attention to the crucial split
between neo-conservatives and realists in Washington.

Machiavelli for Zionists

Do neo-conservatives represent the antithesis of Realpolitik? Are
neo-conservatives bumbling crackpot idealists who unwittingly opened Pandora's
box in Iraq by substituting idealistic dreams of democracy ahead of realist
Machiavellian statecraft? Indeed, Achcar suggests that the neo-conservative
agenda for Iraq represents "a typical case of self-deception." Perhaps.
Financial Times columnist Samuel Brittan, in a typical attack on the
neo-conservatives, published an October 2003 Realpolitik manifesto -- This Is
Not a Time for Boy Scouts (8) -- in which he condemned neo-conservative zeal as
"almost indistinguishable from that of the liberal imperialists" who think
foreign policy should be guided by morality. Another defender of Realpolitik,
John J. Mearsheimer, dismisses neo-conservative theory (9) as "essentially
Wilsonianism with teeth."

Some neo-conservatives welcome that depiction, if not the accompanying
criticism. William Kristol and Lawrence F. Kaplan, two prominent
neo-conservatives, insist that their book, The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny
and America's Mission, "wears its heart on its sleeve" (p.ix). They present a
relentless critique of "a narrow realpolitik that defined America's vital
interests in terms of oil wells, strategic chokepoints and regional stability"
(p.viii). Even as they celebrate "creating democracy in a land that for decades
has known only dictatorship" (p.ix), they make no mention of -- and seem utterly
oblivious to -- the prospect of Iraqi democracy emboldening Shiites in Iraq,
Iran, or Saudi Arabia.

Kristol and Kaplan may be "Boy Scouts," as suggested by Brittan; or maybe they
simply find it convenient to appear good-hearted and bumbling, as Chomsky
warned. Either way, not all neo-conservatives wear their merit badges or their
heart on their sleeve. The neo-conservative movement is hardly monolithic; there
have been many fissures and splits along the way. The crucial point, however, is
that some key neo-conservatives are as committed to cold-hearted Machiavellian
Realpolitik as any so-called "realist." The battle dividing the Bush
administration in Iraq is between two factions of Realpolitik strategists.

Indeed, as Achcar has recently noted (10), "in some neo-con circles" there is
actually support for the same scenario feared most by Chomsky's realists: "some
kind of Shia state controlling the bulk of Iraq's oil" that would align itself
with Iranian Shiites and "unleash" Shiite power in the whole area, "including
the Saudi Kingdom where the main oil producing area is inhabited by a Shia
majority." To assume that evidence of neo-conservative support for
de-Baathification in Iraq represents a simple blunder by naïve and incompetent
Wilsonian idealists is, at best, a misunderstanding -- at worst, a serious
underestimation -- of neo-conservative visions for US foreign policy.

Consider, for example, David Wurmser's book, Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure
to Defeat Saddam Hussein (hereafter, TA). Wurmser published Tyranny's Ally while
serving as a Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a
think tank long identified with neo-conservative foreign policy analysis. After
his time at AEI, Wurmser moved on to service within the Bush administration,
most recently serving as Middle East expert in the office of Vice President
Richard Cheney. Published in 1999, the book is a Machiavellian tour de force --
and a blueprint for US policy in the Middle East. There are striking parallels
between the policies endorsed in Wurmser's book and those enacted by the Bush
administration at the start of the US war in Iraq.

Wurmser directly confronts so-called "realist" fears regarding Shiite power in
Iraq.

"The ensuing chaos of any policy that generates upheaval in Iraq would offer the
oppressed, majority Shi'ites of that country an opportunity to enhance their
power and prestige. Fear that this would in turn enable Iran to extend its
influence through its coreligionists has led Britain and the United States,
along with our Middle Eastern allies, to regard a continued Sunni control of
Iraq as the cornerstone for stability in the Levant. Saudi Arabia in particular
fears that any Shi'ite autonomy or control in Iraq will undermine its own
precarious stability, because an emboldened Shi'ite populace in Iraq could
spread its fervor into Saudi Arabia's predominantly Shi'ite northeastern
provinces. The Saudi government also fears that this upheaval could spread to
predominantly Shi'ite Bahrain, or to other gulf states with large Shi'ite
minorities." (TA, p.73)

Wurmser's book is animated by a persistent focus on "balance of power" realist
politics. "Iran and Iraq... are serious threats to the United States. How can we
vanquish one without helping the other? Similarly, how can we deal either with a
radical, secular, pan-Arabic nationalism or with fundamentalist pan-Islamism
without allowing one to benefit from the other's defeat? (TA, p.72). For Bush
and Scowcroft -- and for the Clinton foreign policy team -- the only plausible
response was a balance of power based on the "dual containment" of Iraq and
Iran. Wurmser, however, proposes a Realpolitik basis for moving US policy from
dual containment toward a "Dual Rollback of Iran and Iraq" (TA, p.72).

Wurmser offers a direct challenge to the underlying factual premise of
balance-of-power policies in the Gulf, even as he embraces the Machiavellian
principles of balance-of-power politics. "U.S. policy makers have long presumed
that the majority Shi'ite population of Iraq would serve as Iran's fifth column
there; but would it?" (TA, p.72). Wurmser thinks not. Instead, he argues that
"Iraqi Shi'ites, if liberated from [Saddam's] tyranny, can be expected to
present a challenge to Iran's influence and revolution" (TA, p.74). More
specifically, Wurmser claims that "Shi'ite Islam is plagued by fissures, none of
which has been carefully examined, let alone exploited, by the opponents of
Iran's Islamic republic" (TA, p.74, emphasis added). The idea of exploiting
fissures is entirely consistent with realist theories of power balancing. ...

The earliest evidence of a split between neo-conservatives and "realists" -- the
decision by Ronald Reagan to sell Saudi Arabia an Airborne Warning and Control
System (AWACS) -- is also the most illuminating for making sense of the
division. The most useful expression of neo-conservative hope for Reagan
administration foreign policy and of subsequent "anguish" comes from a May 1982
New York Times Magazine essay penned by self-proclaimed neo-conservative, Norman
Podhoretz, long-serving editor of Commentary, the official publication of the
American Jewish Committee. After the fall of the Shah in Iran, Podhoretz
explains, neo-conservatives looked forward with great enthusiasm to Reagan's
plan for "shoring up the American position" in the Persian Gulf in order "to
secure the oilfields against either a direct or an indirect Soviet move." This
would be accomplished by stationing "American ground forces somewhere in the
region," perhaps on the Israeli-occupied Sinai peninsula.

Neo-conservative hopes were dashed, however, when "this new idea was dropped"
after "Saudis...voiced their opposition." For fear that the oil-rich "Saudis
might have done something to damage" the US economy, explains Podhoretz, Reagan
fell into the "habit of appeasing Saudi Arabia." Having lost the Shah, the US
would now "supply the Saudis with advanced weaponry, including the Awacs
planes... depending upon them to police the region" on behalf of the US.

Podhoretz argues that the decision to substitute the fallen Iranian regime with
a Saudi surrogate was "bad... on its own terms," that is, for the immediate
strategic interests of the United States. If Iran under the Shah proved to be an
unreliable "pillar of sand" for the US, "what could we expect of Saudi Arabia?"
But the tilt toward Saudi Arabia was "all the more disturbing in its
implications for the American connection with Israel" because "the Saudis
refused to join" a "de facto alliance" that would "unite the moderate Arab
states and Israel."

Podhoretz rejects as false the "general impression" that all neo-conservatives
are Jewish, and in no way claims that all supporters of Israel are
neo-conservatives. Indeed, the vast majority of Jewish voters and not a few
Zionists remain loyal to the Democratic Party. Podhoretz acknowledges, however,
"it is certainly true that all neo-conservatives are strong supporters of
Israel" who "would all agree that at a minimum the United States has a vital
interest in the survival" of Israel as an "outpost" of "the free world." That
is, if forced by Arab-Israeli conflict to choose between a strategic alliance
with the Saudis and one with the Israelis, neo-conservatives support the latter,
rather than the former.

Neo-conservatives lost the battle to prevent the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia,
but that fight serves as an extremely useful proxy for distinguishing between
"neo" conservatives -- who believe that US interests are best served by reliance
on Israel, if only that relationship were not regularly jeopardized by the
American habit of appeasing the Saudis -- and "realist" conservatives -- who
believe that US interests are best served by reliance on Saudi Arabia, if only
that were not jeopardized by the American habit of appeasing the Israelis. ...

Similarly, critics of the US-Israeli alliance portray Israel as a strategic
burden, rather than an asset. Most recently, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
published an article in the London Review of Books (15) entitled, "The Israel
Lobby."

"Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of
its allies in order to advance the interests of [Israel]... One might assume
that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic
interests... [but] the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely
from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby.'"

Each side questions the strategic wisdom of appeasing the other side and
searches for extra-strategic explanations for a strategic disagreement. The
central strategic question, however, is unavoidable for any empire: which proxy
state can most reliably "police" imperial interests?

Right Zionists and Right Arabists tend to agree that recurring battles in the US
over policy toward Iraq and Iran are often "proxies" for larger strategic
questions about the wisdom of the US alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Right Arabists like Caspar Weinberger, in his 1990 memoir, Fighting for Peace
(hereafter, FP) argue that Israel survives, in part, through classic
balance-of-power strategies. In explaining the basis for long-standing ties
between Israel and the Shah of Iran, for example, Weinberger describes "a
natural affinity of all religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East to
unite (when at all they unite) against the vast majority -- the Arab population.
Hence some Jews, Christians, Turks, and Persians have long linkages... Israel
had close ties to Iran under the Shah" (FP, p.365).

Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion allegedly referred to this strategy as
the "Doctrine of the Periphery." Gary Sick, a former Carter administration NSC
staffer and a critic of Right Zionist activities with the US, describes the
"Doctrine" -- which he calls "a touchstone for Israeli foreign policy -- in his
1991 book October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of
Ronald Reagan.

"This doctrine was predicated on the belief that while Israel was destined to be
surrounded permanently by a ring of hostile Arab states, just outside this
hostile ring there were non-Arab states such as Turkey, Ethiopia and Iran that
were themselves frequently at odds with the Arabs and therefore potential allies
of Israel. It was a classic case of the old maxim, 'The enemy of my enemy is my
friend,' raised to the level of international policy" (p.60). ...

The most famous Right Arabist attack on the Iraq war -- celebrated by much of
the Left--remains Richard Clarke's 2004 book, Against All Enemies -- an
"insider" account that ostensibly confirmed the senselessness of the US invasion
of Iraq and highlighted -- in the person of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz (p.30) -- Right Zionist attempts to use 9/11 as a springboard for
promoting their agenda for Iraq. "Instead of addressing [the al Qaeda] with all
the necessary attention it required, we went off on a tangent, off after Iraq,"
Clarke complains (p.286-287). The war in Iraq is a "mistaken and costly" attack
on "an oil-rich Arab country that posed no threat to us" (p.264-266). Beyond the
headline-grabbing charge that the invasion of Iraq was a "tangent" that
sidetracked the war on terror, however, Clarke also offers an entirely different
-- if less publicized -- "insider" analysis of the Realpolitik rationale for
war.

Clarke asserts that al Qaeda inaugurated "a war intended to replace the House of
Saud" (p.282). According to Clarke, it was "concern with the long-term stability
of the House of Saud" (p.265) in light of the challenge from al Qaeda that led
"some in the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney" (p.283) to favor war
with Iraq. "With Saddam gone, they believed, the U.S. could reduce its
dependence on Saudi Arabia, could pull forces out of the Kingdom, and could open
up an alternative source of oil" (p.283). The war on Iraq was, in effect, an
indirect attack on the House of Saud.

Clarke is not persuaded. "The risk that the United States runs is of creating a
self-fulfilling prophecy" that will undermine the House of Saud "without a plan
or any influence about what would happen next... The future and stability of
Saudi Arabia is of paramount importance to the United States; our policy cannot
just be one of reducing our dependence upon it" (p.283). Just for good measure,
Clarke criticizes "firing of the army and de-Baathification" in Iraq (p.272).
The Right Arabist critique, in a nutshell. ...

The Left would do well to remember that there are at least two imperialist camps
in Washington -- one Right Arabist and one Right Zionist. Both are "sensible,"
within the framework of imperialist statecraft. Neither deserves our embrace.
Will Sistani -- like the Shah before him -- collaborate with Israel and police
US interests in the Middle East? Or will the Baathists and Saudis patrol the
region for the US? These are urgent questions for US imperialism. Not so for the
anti-imperialist Left. Our demand is simple: Bring the troops home. Now.

Notes

(1) http://www.alternet.org/story/30487/ (2)
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002133 (3)
http://middleeastinfo.org/article1342.html (4)
http://www.tufts.edu/communications/stories/030303BushQandA.htm (5)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A34680-2002Jan12
(6) http://www.counterpunch.org/achcar05052004.html (7)
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1020 (8)
http://www.samuelbrittan.co.uk/text168_p.html (9)
http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-americanpower/morgenthau_2522.jsp (10)
http://www.stateofnature.org/gilbertAchcar.html (11)
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-20010514.htm (12)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/509udwne.asp
(13)
http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2003/03/19&ID=Ar00602
(14)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/509udwne.asp
(15) http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html (16)
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2004/12/07/jan_30_hopeless_day_55.php (17)
http://robertdreyfuss.com/blog/2006/03/usbaath_talks_bring_back_the_b.html (18)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0805076522/ref=sib_dp_bod_bc/002-2703913-5128812?%5F

[Jonathan Cutler teaches sociology at Wesleyan University. For more Iraq
analysis and commentary, go to his blog, www.profcutler.com ]

(2) US passports to get RFID chips

Date: Sat, 6 May 2006 09:37:51 +0500 From: "Eric Walberg" <eric@albatros.uz>

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/3129

Radio ID Technology Spreads; Privacy Activists Dig In

by Catherine Komp

*A correction was appended to this news article after initial publication.

May 5 ? As radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology continues to spread
through the marketplace, privacy and consumer advocates are continuing their
campaign for regulation of this controversial tracking technology. Now they are
joined by lawmakers pushing legislation to curb RFID use by government agencies.

Critics are primarily concerned that the tiny transmitters inserted into
products could infringe on privacy by monitoring consumer habits, or that the
tracking devices will become common in state ID cards, driver's licenses and
passports.

The most recent battle over RFID use played out this week in New Hampshire,
where Senators yesterday considered a bill to prohibit state participation in
the Real ID Act, a federal bill to standardize government-issued identification
across states. Though the bill received the green light in the house, senators
did not approve it, instead voting 14-9 to establish a commission to report on
the pros and cons of Real ID.

Privacy concerns stood among the main reasons prompting public interest groups
to reject Real ID, especially surrounding the potential for future RFID
requirements for state IDs.

RFID technology consists of a tiny chip and an antenna that can transmit unique
information, like a string of numbers. The information can be picked up by a
scanner several inches to hundreds of feet away, depending on the transmitter.
So far, RFID chips are most commonly used to track inventory. But the federal
government also uses the technology to remotely scan some immigrants' visas, and
RFID-fitted badges have been issued to students in a few districts, enabling
them to be scanned as they enter and leave school property.

Joel Winters, with the New Hampshire chapter of Consumers Against Supermarket
Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), said even though RFID is not yet
mandated for state IDs by the Real ID Act, federal government support of the
technology leads him to believe that could someday change.

"Just because they decide to go with one format now doesn't mean that they won't
change their minds down the road," Winters told The NewStandard.

Currently, the US State Department is moving forward with plans to outfit all US
passports with RFID tags by fall 2006, even though 98.5 percent of the 2,335
public comments on the proposal opposed the plan when it was announced in 2005.

"We don't believe the State Department made any kind of a rational case for
putting RFID tags into passports," said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney with the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, a public-interest organization focused on
privacy and related rights in the technology sphere. "They were remarkably vague
from Day One about why this was important, and it seems at best to be a concern
about convenience, which we think is a really crappy idea to sacrifice privacy
and security for that kind of convenience."

Privacy advocates, including Tien, are concerned that RFID tags will permit
anyone with the appropriate technology to scan a crowd and surreptitiously
gather information without a person's knowledge or consent. For instance if RFID
transmitters were buried in clothing, a scanner could determine a person's
buying habits. If the transmitters are attached to drivers' licenses,
authorities, or possibly others, could determine who is in the crowd.

The RFID industry has aggressively pushed its technology on the federal
government, winning hefty contracts from the Department of Defense and US
Government Printing Office. The Pentagon recently doubled its
multi-million-dollar contract with Savi Technology, a California-based company
that has provided RFID products to the military for a decade.

------ A L S O Who Will Regulate RFID?: "We see the RFID industry just like
every industry: all over the government hoping to sell their goods and services
too them," Tien said. -----

RFID watchdogs are also concerned about new commercial-sector uses of the
technology. Companies are beginning to transfer use of the tiny microchip
devices onto individual products on store shelves.

In one of the first known initiatives that attaches the tracking device onto
clothing, Levi Strauss & Company is working with one of its yet-to-be-named US
retailers to test RFID "hang tags" on men's jeans. Levi's spokesperson Jeffrey
Beckman told TNS the tags will help retailers keep better stock of inventory on
store shelves and eliminate the need for hand-counting clothing items. The
external two-by-four-inch paper tag, explained Beckman, clearly identifies in
bold letters that it contains an RFID chip.

According to Beckman, the device reads: "This tag includes an RFID chip that
functions like an intelligent bar code. We are testing RFID in an effort to
serve you better by improving the availability of the products you want. Please
discard this tag if it is not removed at point of purchase."

But Liz McIntyre, co-author of Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government
Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID, does not believe companies will stop at
such benign uses. "Now, this sounds very innocuous; you think, 'Well, gosh, this
[tag] can come right off,' but this is the opening volley," McIntyre said.

In a patent filed in 2002, discovered by McIntyre and co-author Katherine
Albrecht, titled "Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged
items," inventors working for IBM lay out plans for identifying shoppers'
previous purchase records as they walk through the door and monitoring "the
movement of the person through the store or other areas." The application
describes hats, watches, belts, shoes, scarves, purses, wallets, clothing,
briefcases and jewelry as items that could carry RFID chips.

Another company to announce "item-level" RFID tagging is Hewlett-Packard (HP),
which has been heavily involved in developing the technology and is one of
retail giant Wal-Mart's top RFID suppliers. In 2005, HP announced an "RFID
acceleration initiative" to increase the number of RFID-tagged "consumer
technology products" from "three to more than 40." While the company previously
limited RFID tagging to product packaging, now it is beginning to place the
devices directly into printers produced at plants in Memphis, Tennessee;
Chester, Virginia; and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Calling the tags the "DNA" of the printer, Didier Chenneveau, vice president of
operations for Hewlett-Packard, announced at an industry conference last
February that they want to expand item-level chipping to all printers sold in
the US. The company is also moving away from the "RFID" label, since the term
has taken on an increasingly pejorative connotation. HP is instead calling them
"electronic product code," or EPC.

While McIntyre says companies have a legitimate reason to use RFID to make
inventory control more effective in their warehouses, she does not believe
corporate rhetoric suggesting it will provide additional benefits to consumers.

"In fact," she said, "we think it's going to add an additional burden if
[customers] have to end up monitoring whether stores are using the technology
and actually disable the technology to make sure. that they aren't tracked."

Aside from New Hampshire, some states are considering laws that provide more
oversight of RFID use. Last week, lawmakers in Wisconsin approved a bill that
prohibits anyone from being implanted with an RFID chip. The governor is
expected to sign the measure. Rep. Marlin Schneider, sponsor of the bill, told
the Associated Press that "companies can or will be ordering their employees to
have chips implanted. We want to stop that before it begins."

Chips have been voluntarily inserted into employees at CityWatcher.com, a
Cincinnati-based company that sells surveillance equipment. Other people have
voluntarily had the tiny rice-sized chips implanted under their skin for storage
of medical information.

Bills in other states, however, have met resistance, and watchdogs say industry
pressure is to blame. In California, a bill that would place a three-year
moratorium on RFID chips in state IDs that passed the senate has been stuck in
an assembly committee since last year.

Similarly, the New Hampshire house passed a comprehensive bill regulating use of
RFID last January. However a senate amendment stripped away regulatory powers,
paring the bill down until it merely created a study committee.

Bills restricting use of RFID or requiring labeling and notification of RFID use
have also failed in South Dakota, New Mexico, Montana, Nevada and Missouri.
McIntyre believes that the RFID industry is not only succeeding in killing
legislation regulating their products but also in overloading consumers to "make
them think it's a done deal."

"It's not a done deal; readers are not yet ubiquitous in the environment as
planned," McIntyre said. "They're talking about putting [RFID readers] in
doorways and under floor tiles. and unless we speak up, that could happen in a
few years. [But] it's not a lost cause," she added. "It's just a matter of
consumers voting with their pocketbooks and speaking up and saying, 'No, I'm
just not going to be tracked.'"

--------- CORRECTION Major Change:

In the original version of the sentence that now reads, "Last week, lawmakers in
Wisconsin approved a bill that prohibits requiring a person be implanted with an
RFID chip," said that the law prohibits anyone from being implanted with an RFID
chip. This error was introduced by the editors.

--
Peter Myers, 381 Goodwood Rd, Childers 4660, Australia ph +61 7 41262296
http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers Mirror: http://mailstar.net/index.html I
use the old Mac OS; being incompatible, it cannot run Windows viruses or
transmit them to you. If my mail does not arrive, or yours bounces, please ring
me: this helps beat sabotage. To unsubscribe, reply with "unsubscribe" in the
subject line; allow 1 day.

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 4
From: "Dick Eastman" olfriend@nwinfo.net
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 10:24am(PDT)
Subject: Articles 3: Chomsky's "realist" analysis - but it ignores Israel's p

From: "Peter Myers" <myers@cyberone.com.au>

May 7, 2006 2:39 AM

Item 1 presents Chomsky's view of how imperial America sees the Middle East, oriented to the need to safeguard oil supplies. But it ignores Israel's perspective. Does Israel care if Iraq, Iran or Saudi Arabia fall into civil war? Not at all - that just renders these countries powerless. Whether the oil supply is stable is far less important to Israel than destroying enemy regimes.

(1) Chomsky's "realist" analysis - but it ignores Israel's perspective
(2) US passports to get RFID chips

(1) Chomsky's "realist" analysis - but it ignores Israel's perspective

Date: Sat, 6 May 2006 12:29:02 +0100 From: Rowan Berkeley
<rowan.berkeley@googlemail.com>

Beyond Incompetence: Washington's War in Iraq

Jonathan Cutler, ZMag, April 30, 2006
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=10185

{Rowan's comment: Zmag Article by Cutler - long but IMPORTANT - all links
extracted below text}

If there is a central principle animating Noam Chomsky's commentaries on US
foreign policy, it is his affinity for Realpolitik analysis. As Chomsky argues
in a recent interview (1), "Our leaders have rational imperial interests. We
have to assume that they're good-hearted and bumbling. But they're not. They're
perfectly sensible." This methodological axiom presents some serious challenges
for those trying to understand the US war in Iraq. With so much evidence of
bumbling within the Bush White House, it is tempting to join the chorus of
critics, led by the Democrats, who say that incompetence is the defining feature
of US foreign policy. Is it possible to tell the story of the US invasion of
Iraq as "perfectly sensible"?

Chomsky is adamant and he is right to warn against the idea that foreign policy
elites are more fool than knave. "Consider the actual situation, not some dream
situation... If we can enter the real world we can begin to talk about it... We
have to talk about it in the real world and know what the White House is
thinking. They're not willing to live in a dream world."

What, then, is the "actual situation" that led the Bush administration to make
the "perfectly sensible" -- if entirely imperialist -- decision to invade Iraq
and topple the regime of Saddam Hussein? Here, according to Chomsky, is the real
world:

"If [Iraq is] more or less democratic, it'll have a Shiite majority. They will
naturally want to improve their linkages with Iran, Shiite Iran. Most of the
clerics come from Iran... So you get an Iraqi/Iran loose alliance. Furthermore,
right across the border in Saudi Arabia, there's a Shiite population which has
been bitterly oppressed by the U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny. And any moves
toward independence in Iraq are surely going to stimulate them, it's already
happening. That happens to be where most of Saudi Arabian oil is. Okay, so you
can just imagine the ultimate nightmare in Washington..."

Chomsky isn't making this stuff up. One can get quick confirmation of Chomsky's
characterization of this "ultimate nightmare" scenario from the key "realists"
of Republican foreign policy establishment -- folks like Bush Sr., former
National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Secretary of State James
Baker, and Colin Powell. When presented with a Shiite uprising against Saddam
Hussein in 1991, the "realists" opted to leave Saddam in power, rather than let
the nightmare become reality. In a co-authored 1998 memoir, A World Transformed,
Bush Sr. and Scowcroft insist that they acted to preserve "the long-term balance
of power at the head of the Gulf" (p.489). In his 1995 memoir The Politics of
Diplomacy, James Baker recalls that he didn't want to "play into the hands of
the mullahs in Iran, who could export their brand of Islamic fundamentalism with
the help of Iraq's Shiites and quickly transform themselves into the dominant
regional power" (p.437). Colin Powell, in his 1995 memoir My American Journey,
is equally blunt. "Why didn't we finish him off?... In March, the Iraqi Shiites
in the south rose up in arms... But our practical intention was to leave Baghdad
enough power to survive as a threat to an Iran that remained bitterly hostile
toward the United States" (pp.512, 516).

The problem is that fear of this "ultimate nightmare" provided the rationale in
1991 for not invading Iraq, or more precisely, not promoting the political
ascendance of the Iraqi Shiite majority. Chomksy argues that fear of the
nightmare scenario will deter realists from supporting US withdrawal from Iraq.
But did the "realists" get us into Iraq? "Realists" may keep us in Iraq, but did
the "realists" unleash Iraqi Shiite power by terminating Sunni Baathist
political and military rule? "Realists" may, in fact, be sensible -- at least in
a self-serving way -- but Scowcroft (2), Baker (3), and Bush Sr. (4) all
publicly warned George W. Bush about the risks of unleashing the ultimate
nightmare. Kissinger -- who first floated the idea of seizing the Eastern
Province from the Saudis in the mid-1970s, prior to the Iranian revolution --
was explicit in a Washington Post Op-Ed (5). The key to any move to topple
Saddam, he insisted, was the contour of "the political outcome," especially
insofar as Saudi Arabia would be unlikely to cooperate in the formation of a
"Shiite republic" that "would threaten the Dhahran region in Saudi Arabia, and
might give Iran a new base to seek to dominate the gulf region." Chomsky is at a
loss to explain -- in Realpolitik terms -- the 2003 decision by George W. Bush
to invade Iraq and empower the Iraqi Shiite majority.

Gilbert Achcar, like Chomsky, is inclined to stipulate the decisive role of
Realpolitik in US foreign policy. Looking at the case of Iraq, however, Achcar
makes an exception. "In the case of Iraq, and in this case exclusively," writes
Achcar in a 2004 CounterPunch article (6), "the Bush administration has acted on
ideological views so contrary to the 'reality principle' that they could only
lead into this major nightmare of U.S. imperial policy... History will probably
record this venture as one of the most important blunders ever committed by an
administration abroad from the standpoint of U.S. imperial interests."

Chomsky and Achcar both agree that the general aim of the invasion was based on
"realism." As Chomsky says, the US would not have invaded Iraq "if its main
product was lettuce and pickles... If you have three gray cells functioning, you
know... the US invaded Iraq because it has enormous oil resources." Likewise,
Achcar is "fully aware of the very oily factors" involved in US military
intervention. However, Achcar insists that "many of its concrete decisions" --
chiefly the "clumsiness of de-Baathification... [and the] dissolution of the
Iraqi military" -- represented "blunders" and "wild dreams" of "crackpot
idealists" who allow "high-flying moral rhetoric" to help guide foreign policy
"in a way that stands in blatant contradiction to pragmatic needs."

For Achcar, the crucial decisions were not the ones that simply toppled Saddam
Hussein but the ones -- made in May 2003, at the start of the formal US
occupation -- to actively undermine authoritarian Sunni minority rule in Iraq.
"Whatever the reason," says Achcar, "the fact is that Bush Jr. and his
collaborators have acted for a while in conformity with their democratic
proclamations." These decisions unleashed a major "nightmare" because they
"opened the way for the Iraqi people to seize control of their own destinies...
to the benefit of Islamic fundamentalist forces, somewhat on the Iranian
pattern." The "clumsiness" is particularly difficult to explain in the terms of
Realpolitik since regime change -- without Shiite empowerment -- could have been
accomplished "more effectively...had the Bush administration acted from a
craftily Machiavellian perspective and managed to get hold of Iraq through an
arrangement with the Iraqi army and other apparatuses of the Baathist state."

If there is room for rapprochement between Achcar and Chomsky, it is because
Achcar actually agrees that the familiar "realist" crowd never would -- and
never did -- jettison craftily Machiavellian perspectives on foreign policy.
Achcar insists, however, that on the key questions regarding the political
outcome in Iraq -- de-Baathification, military dissolution, and Shiite power --
the "administration was divided." Realists fought against all of these policies
for post-invasion Iraq, favoring something more like a US-backed military coup
that would result in a political outcome akin to Saddamism-without-Saddam and an
"arrangement" with the Baathist state. There was, however, a rival faction
within the Bush administration: the so-called neo-conservatives, vaguely defined
as those who favored a "crusade for bringing democracy" to Iraq.
Neo-conservatives championed comprehensive de-Baathification and dissolution of
the Sunni-led military establishment -- even if it meant empowering Iraqi
Shiites.

Chomsky, however, seems not to have taken note of neo-conservatives or any
factional battles within the Bush administration. In his many interviews on the
war in Iraq, he rarely if ever says anything about neo-conservatives - a
peculiar asymmetry in light of neo-conservative vilification of Chomsky (7). His
analysis posits not only Realpolitik, but a unified actor. One of the great
merits of Achcar's analysis, by contrast, is his attention to the crucial split
between neo-conservatives and realists in Washington.

Machiavelli for Zionists

Do neo-conservatives represent the antithesis of Realpolitik? Are
neo-conservatives bumbling crackpot idealists who unwittingly opened Pandora's
box in Iraq by substituting idealistic dreams of democracy ahead of realist
Machiavellian statecraft? Indeed, Achcar suggests that the neo-conservative
agenda for Iraq represents "a typical case of self-deception." Perhaps.
Financial Times columnist Samuel Brittan, in a typical attack on the
neo-conservatives, published an October 2003 Realpolitik manifesto -- This Is
Not a Time for Boy Scouts (8) -- in which he condemned neo-conservative zeal as
"almost indistinguishable from that of the liberal imperialists" who think
foreign policy should be guided by morality. Another defender of Realpolitik,
John J. Mearsheimer, dismisses neo-conservative theory (9) as "essentially
Wilsonianism with teeth."

Some neo-conservatives welcome that depiction, if not the accompanying
criticism. William Kristol and Lawrence F. Kaplan, two prominent
neo-conservatives, insist that their book, The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny
and America's Mission, "wears its heart on its sleeve" (p.ix). They present a
relentless critique of "a narrow realpolitik that defined America's vital
interests in terms of oil wells, strategic chokepoints and regional stability"
(p.viii). Even as they celebrate "creating democracy in a land that for decades
has known only dictatorship" (p.ix), they make no mention of -- and seem utterly
oblivious to -- the prospect of Iraqi democracy emboldening Shiites in Iraq,
Iran, or Saudi Arabia.

Kristol and Kaplan may be "Boy Scouts," as suggested by Brittan; or maybe they
simply find it convenient to appear good-hearted and bumbling, as Chomsky
warned. Either way, not all neo-conservatives wear their merit badges or their
heart on their sleeve. The neo-conservative movement is hardly monolithic; there
have been many fissures and splits along the way. The crucial point, however, is
that some key neo-conservatives are as committed to cold-hearted Machiavellian
Realpolitik as any so-called "realist." The battle dividing the Bush
administration in Iraq is between two factions of Realpolitik strategists.

Indeed, as Achcar has recently noted (10), "in some neo-con circles" there is
actually support for the same scenario feared most by Chomsky's realists: "some
kind of Shia state controlling the bulk of Iraq's oil" that would align itself
with Iranian Shiites and "unleash" Shiite power in the whole area, "including
the Saudi Kingdom where the main oil producing area is inhabited by a Shia
majority." To assume that evidence of neo-conservative support for
de-Baathification in Iraq represents a simple blunder by naïve and incompetent
Wilsonian idealists is, at best, a misunderstanding -- at worst, a serious
underestimation -- of neo-conservative visions for US foreign policy.

Consider, for example, David Wurmser's book, Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure
to Defeat Saddam Hussein (hereafter, TA). Wurmser published Tyranny's Ally while
serving as a Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a
think tank long identified with neo-conservative foreign policy analysis. After
his time at AEI, Wurmser moved on to service within the Bush administration,
most recently serving as Middle East expert in the office of Vice President
Richard Cheney. Published in 1999, the book is a Machiavellian tour de force --
and a blueprint for US policy in the Middle East. There are striking parallels
between the policies endorsed in Wurmser's book and those enacted by the Bush
administration at the start of the US war in Iraq.

Wurmser directly confronts so-called "realist" fears regarding Shiite power in
Iraq.

"The ensuing chaos of any policy that generates upheaval in Iraq would offer the
oppressed, majority Shi'ites of that country an opportunity to enhance their
power and prestige. Fear that this would in turn enable Iran to extend its
influence through its coreligionists has led Britain and the United States,
along with our Middle Eastern allies, to regard a continued Sunni control of
Iraq as the cornerstone for stability in the Levant. Saudi Arabia in particular
fears that any Shi'ite autonomy or control in Iraq will undermine its own
precarious stability, because an emboldened Shi'ite populace in Iraq could
spread its fervor into Saudi Arabia's predominantly Shi'ite northeastern
provinces. The Saudi government also fears that this upheaval could spread to
predominantly Shi'ite Bahrain, or to other gulf states with large Shi'ite
minorities." (TA, p.73)

Wurmser's book is animated by a persistent focus on "balance of power" realist
politics. "Iran and Iraq... are serious threats to the United States. How can we
vanquish one without helping the other? Similarly, how can we deal either with a
radical, secular, pan-Arabic nationalism or with fundamentalist pan-Islamism
without allowing one to benefit from the other's defeat? (TA, p.72). For Bush
and Scowcroft -- and for the Clinton foreign policy team -- the only plausible
response was a balance of power based on the "dual containment" of Iraq and
Iran. Wurmser, however, proposes a Realpolitik basis for moving US policy from
dual containment toward a "Dual Rollback of Iran and Iraq" (TA, p.72).

Wurmser offers a direct challenge to the underlying factual premise of
balance-of-power policies in the Gulf, even as he embraces the Machiavellian
principles of balance-of-power politics. "U.S. policy makers have long presumed
that the majority Shi'ite population of Iraq would serve as Iran's fifth column
there; but would it?" (TA, p.72). Wurmser thinks not. Instead, he argues that
"Iraqi Shi'ites, if liberated from [Saddam's] tyranny, can be expected to
present a challenge to Iran's influence and revolution" (TA, p.74). More
specifically, Wurmser claims that "Shi'ite Islam is plagued by fissures, none of
which has been carefully examined, let alone exploited, by the opponents of
Iran's Islamic republic" (TA, p.74, emphasis added). The idea of exploiting
fissures is entirely consistent with realist theories of power balancing. ...

The earliest evidence of a split between neo-conservatives and "realists" -- the
decision by Ronald Reagan to sell Saudi Arabia an Airborne Warning and Control
System (AWACS) -- is also the most illuminating for making sense of the
division. The most useful expression of neo-conservative hope for Reagan
administration foreign policy and of subsequent "anguish" comes from a May 1982
New York Times Magazine essay penned by self-proclaimed neo-conservative, Norman
Podhoretz, long-serving editor of Commentary, the official publication of the
American Jewish Committee. After the fall of the Shah in Iran, Podhoretz
explains, neo-conservatives looked forward with great enthusiasm to Reagan's
plan for "shoring up the American position" in the Persian Gulf in order "to
secure the oilfields against either a direct or an indirect Soviet move." This
would be accomplished by stationing "American ground forces somewhere in the
region," perhaps on the Israeli-occupied Sinai peninsula.

Neo-conservative hopes were dashed, however, when "this new idea was dropped"
after "Saudis...voiced their opposition." For fear that the oil-rich "Saudis
might have done something to damage" the US economy, explains Podhoretz, Reagan
fell into the "habit of appeasing Saudi Arabia." Having lost the Shah, the US
would now "supply the Saudis with advanced weaponry, including the Awacs
planes... depending upon them to police the region" on behalf of the US.

Podhoretz argues that the decision to substitute the fallen Iranian regime with
a Saudi surrogate was "bad... on its own terms," that is, for the immediate
strategic interests of the United States. If Iran under the Shah proved to be an
unreliable "pillar of sand" for the US, "what could we expect of Saudi Arabia?"
But the tilt toward Saudi Arabia was "all the more disturbing in its
implications for the American connection with Israel" because "the Saudis
refused to join" a "de facto alliance" that would "unite the moderate Arab
states and Israel."

Podhoretz rejects as false the "general impression" that all neo-conservatives
are Jewish, and in no way claims that all supporters of Israel are
neo-conservatives. Indeed, the vast majority of Jewish voters and not a few
Zionists remain loyal to the Democratic Party. Podhoretz acknowledges, however,
"it is certainly true that all neo-conservatives are strong supporters of
Israel" who "would all agree that at a minimum the United States has a vital
interest in the survival" of Israel as an "outpost" of "the free world." That
is, if forced by Arab-Israeli conflict to choose between a strategic alliance
with the Saudis and one with the Israelis, neo-conservatives support the latter,
rather than the former.

Neo-conservatives lost the battle to prevent the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia,
but that fight serves as an extremely useful proxy for distinguishing between
"neo" conservatives -- who believe that US interests are best served by reliance
on Israel, if only that relationship were not regularly jeopardized by the
American habit of appeasing the Saudis -- and "realist" conservatives -- who
believe that US interests are best served by reliance on Saudi Arabia, if only
that were not jeopardized by the American habit of appeasing the Israelis. ...

Similarly, critics of the US-Israeli alliance portray Israel as a strategic
burden, rather than an asset. Most recently, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
published an article in the London Review of Books (15) entitled, "The Israel
Lobby."

"Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of
its allies in order to advance the interests of [Israel]... One might assume
that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic
interests... [but] the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely
from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby.'"

Each side questions the strategic wisdom of appeasing the other side and
searches for extra-strategic explanations for a strategic disagreement. The
central strategic question, however, is unavoidable for any empire: which proxy
state can most reliably "police" imperial interests?

Right Zionists and Right Arabists tend to agree that recurring battles in the US
over policy toward Iraq and Iran are often "proxies" for larger strategic
questions about the wisdom of the US alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Right Arabists like Caspar Weinberger, in his 1990 memoir, Fighting for Peace
(hereafter, FP) argue that Israel survives, in part, through classic
balance-of-power strategies. In explaining the basis for long-standing ties
between Israel and the Shah of Iran, for example, Weinberger describes "a
natural affinity of all religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East to
unite (when at all they unite) against the vast majority -- the Arab population.
Hence some Jews, Christians, Turks, and Persians have long linkages... Israel
had close ties to Iran under the Shah" (FP, p.365).

Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion allegedly referred to this strategy as
the "Doctrine of the Periphery." Gary Sick, a former Carter administration NSC
staffer and a critic of Right Zionist activities with the US, describes the
"Doctrine" -- which he calls "a touchstone for Israeli foreign policy -- in his
1991 book October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of
Ronald Reagan.

"This doctrine was predicated on the belief that while Israel was destined to be
surrounded permanently by a ring of hostile Arab states, just outside this
hostile ring there were non-Arab states such as Turkey, Ethiopia and Iran that
were themselves frequently at odds with the Arabs and therefore potential allies
of Israel. It was a classic case of the old maxim, 'The enemy of my enemy is my
friend,' raised to the level of international policy" (p.60). ...

The most famous Right Arabist attack on the Iraq war -- celebrated by much of
the Left--remains Richard Clarke's 2004 book, Against All Enemies -- an
"insider" account that ostensibly confirmed the senselessness of the US invasion
of Iraq and highlighted -- in the person of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz (p.30) -- Right Zionist attempts to use 9/11 as a springboard for
promoting their agenda for Iraq. "Instead of addressing [the al Qaeda] with all
the necessary attention it required, we went off on a tangent, off after Iraq,"
Clarke complains (p.286-287). The war in Iraq is a "mistaken and costly" attack
on "an oil-rich Arab country that posed no threat to us" (p.264-266). Beyond the
headline-grabbing charge that the invasion of Iraq was a "tangent" that
sidetracked the war on terror, however, Clarke also offers an entirely different
-- if less publicized -- "insider" analysis of the Realpolitik rationale for
war.

Clarke asserts that al Qaeda inaugurated "a war intended to replace the House of
Saud" (p.282). According to Clarke, it was "concern with the long-term stability
of the House of Saud" (p.265) in light of the challenge from al Qaeda that led
"some in the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney" (p.283) to favor war
with Iraq. "With Saddam gone, they believed, the U.S. could reduce its
dependence on Saudi Arabia, could pull forces out of the Kingdom, and could open
up an alternative source of oil" (p.283). The war on Iraq was, in effect, an
indirect attack on the House of Saud.

Clarke is not persuaded. "The risk that the United States runs is of creating a
self-fulfilling prophecy" that will undermine the House of Saud "without a plan
or any influence about what would happen next... The future and stability of
Saudi Arabia is of paramount importance to the United States; our policy cannot
just be one of reducing our dependence upon it" (p.283). Just for good measure,
Clarke criticizes "firing of the army and de-Baathification" in Iraq (p.272).
The Right Arabist critique, in a nutshell. ...

The Left would do well to remember that there are at least two imperialist camps
in Washington -- one Right Arabist and one Right Zionist. Both are "sensible,"
within the framework of imperialist statecraft. Neither deserves our embrace.
Will Sistani -- like the Shah before him -- collaborate with Israel and police
US interests in the Middle East? Or will the Baathists and Saudis patrol the
region for the US? These are urgent questions for US imperialism. Not so for the
anti-imperialist Left. Our demand is simple: Bring the troops home. Now.

Notes

(1) http://www.alternet.org/story/30487/ (2)
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002133 (3)
http://middleeastinfo.org/article1342.html (4)
http://www.tufts.edu/communications/stories/030303BushQandA.htm (5)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A34680-2002Jan12
(6) http://www.counterpunch.org/achcar05052004.html (7)
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1020 (8)
http://www.samuelbrittan.co.uk/text168_p.html (9)
http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-americanpower/morgenthau_2522.jsp (10)
http://www.stateofnature.org/gilbertAchcar.html (11)
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-20010514.htm (12)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/509udwne.asp
(13)
http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2003/03/19&ID=Ar00602
(14)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/509udwne.asp
(15) http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html (16)
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2004/12/07/jan_30_hopeless_day_55.php (17)
http://robertdreyfuss.com/blog/2006/03/usbaath_talks_bring_back_the_b.html (18)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0805076522/ref=sib_dp_bod_bc/002-2703913-5128812?%5F

[Jonathan Cutler teaches sociology at Wesleyan University. For more Iraq
analysis and commentary, go to his blog, www.profcutler.com ]

(2) US passports to get RFID chips

Date: Sat, 6 May 2006 09:37:51 +0500 From: "Eric Walberg" <eric@albatros.uz>

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/3129

Radio ID Technology Spreads; Privacy Activists Dig In

by Catherine Komp

*A correction was appended to this news article after initial publication.

May 5 ? As radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology continues to spread
through the marketplace, privacy and consumer advocates are continuing their
campaign for regulation of this controversial tracking technology. Now they are
joined by lawmakers pushing legislation to curb RFID use by government agencies.

Critics are primarily concerned that the tiny transmitters inserted into
products could infringe on privacy by monitoring consumer habits, or that the
tracking devices will become common in state ID cards, driver's licenses and
passports.

The most recent battle over RFID use played out this week in New Hampshire,
where Senators yesterday considered a bill to prohibit state participation in
the Real ID Act, a federal bill to standardize government-issued identification
across states. Though the bill received the green light in the house, senators
did not approve it, instead voting 14-9 to establish a commission to report on
the pros and cons of Real ID.

Privacy concerns stood among the main reasons prompting public interest groups
to reject Real ID, especially surrounding the potential for future RFID
requirements for state IDs.

RFID technology consists of a tiny chip and an antenna that can transmit unique
information, like a string of numbers. The information can be picked up by a
scanner several inches to hundreds of feet away, depending on the transmitter.
So far, RFID chips are most commonly used to track inventory. But the federal
government also uses the technology to remotely scan some immigrants' visas, and
RFID-fitted badges have been issued to students in a few districts, enabling
them to be scanned as they enter and leave school property.

Joel Winters, with the New Hampshire chapter of Consumers Against Supermarket
Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), said even though RFID is not yet
mandated for state IDs by the Real ID Act, federal government support of the
technology leads him to believe that could someday change.

"Just because they decide to go with one format now doesn't mean that they won't
change their minds down the road," Winters told The NewStandard.

Currently, the US State Department is moving forward with plans to outfit all US
passports with RFID tags by fall 2006, even though 98.5 percent of the 2,335
public comments on the proposal opposed the plan when it was announced in 2005.

"We don't believe the State Department made any kind of a rational case for
putting RFID tags into passports," said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney with the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, a public-interest organization focused on
privacy and related rights in the technology sphere. "They were remarkably vague
from Day One about why this was important, and it seems at best to be a concern
about convenience, which we think is a really crappy idea to sacrifice privacy
and security for that kind of convenience."

Privacy advocates, including Tien, are concerned that RFID tags will permit
anyone with the appropriate technology to scan a crowd and surreptitiously
gather information without a person's knowledge or consent. For instance if RFID
transmitters were buried in clothing, a scanner could determine a person's
buying habits. If the transmitters are attached to drivers' licenses,
authorities, or possibly others, could determine who is in the crowd.

The RFID industry has aggressively pushed its technology on the federal
government, winning hefty contracts from the Department of Defense and US
Government Printing Office. The Pentagon recently doubled its
multi-million-dollar contract with Savi Technology, a California-based company
that has provided RFID products to the military for a decade.

------ A L S O Who Will Regulate RFID?: "We see the RFID industry just like
every industry: all over the government hoping to sell their goods and services
too them," Tien said. -----

RFID watchdogs are also concerned about new commercial-sector uses of the
technology. Companies are beginning to transfer use of the tiny microchip
devices onto individual products on store shelves.

In one of the first known initiatives that attaches the tracking device onto
clothing, Levi Strauss & Company is working with one of its yet-to-be-named US
retailers to test RFID "hang tags" on men's jeans. Levi's spokesperson Jeffrey
Beckman told TNS the tags will help retailers keep better stock of inventory on
store shelves and eliminate the need for hand-counting clothing items. The
external two-by-four-inch paper tag, explained Beckman, clearly identifies in
bold letters that it contains an RFID chip.

According to Beckman, the device reads: "This tag includes an RFID chip that
functions like an intelligent bar code. We are testing RFID in an effort to
serve you better by improving the availability of the products you want. Please
discard this tag if it is not removed at point of purchase."

But Liz McIntyre, co-author of Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government
Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID, does not believe companies will stop at
such benign uses. "Now, this sounds very innocuous; you think, 'Well, gosh, this
[tag] can come right off,' but this is the opening volley," McIntyre said.

In a patent filed in 2002, discovered by McIntyre and co-author Katherine
Albrecht, titled "Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged
items," inventors working for IBM lay out plans for identifying shoppers'
previous purchase records as they walk through the door and monitoring "the
movement of the person through the store or other areas." The application
describes hats, watches, belts, shoes, scarves, purses, wallets, clothing,
briefcases and jewelry as items that could carry RFID chips.

Another company to announce "item-level" RFID tagging is Hewlett-Packard (HP),
which has been heavily involved in developing the technology and is one of
retail giant Wal-Mart's top RFID suppliers. In 2005, HP announced an "RFID
acceleration initiative" to increase the number of RFID-tagged "consumer
technology products" from "three to more than 40." While the company previously
limited RFID tagging to product packaging, now it is beginning to place the
devices directly into printers produced at plants in Memphis, Tennessee;
Chester, Virginia; and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Calling the tags the "DNA" of the printer, Didier Chenneveau, vice president of
operations for Hewlett-Packard, announced at an industry conference last
February that they want to expand item-level chipping to all printers sold in
the US. The company is also moving away from the "RFID" label, since the term
has taken on an increasingly pejorative connotation. HP is instead calling them
"electronic product code," or EPC.

While McIntyre says companies have a legitimate reason to use RFID to make
inventory control more effective in their warehouses, she does not believe
corporate rhetoric suggesting it will provide additional benefits to consumers.

"In fact," she said, "we think it's going to add an additional burden if
[customers] have to end up monitoring whether stores are using the technology
and actually disable the technology to make sure. that they aren't tracked."

Aside from New Hampshire, some states are considering laws that provide more
oversight of RFID use. Last week, lawmakers in Wisconsin approved a bill that
prohibits anyone from being implanted with an RFID chip. The governor is
expected to sign the measure. Rep. Marlin Schneider, sponsor of the bill, told
the Associated Press that "companies can or will be ordering their employees to
have chips implanted. We want to stop that before it begins."

Chips have been voluntarily inserted into employees at CityWatcher.com, a
Cincinnati-based company that sells surveillance equipment. Other people have
voluntarily had the tiny rice-sized chips implanted under their skin for storage
of medical information.

Bills in other states, however, have met resistance, and watchdogs say industry
pressure is to blame. In California, a bill that would place a three-year
moratorium on RFID chips in state IDs that passed the senate has been stuck in
an assembly committee since last year.

Similarly, the New Hampshire house passed a comprehensive bill regulating use of
RFID last January. However a senate amendment stripped away regulatory powers,
paring the bill down until it merely created a study committee.

Bills restricting use of RFID or requiring labeling and notification of RFID use
have also failed in South Dakota, New Mexico, Montana, Nevada and Missouri.
McIntyre believes that the RFID industry is not only succeeding in killing
legislation regulating their products but also in overloading consumers to "make
them think it's a done deal."

"It's not a done deal; readers are not yet ubiquitous in the environment as
planned," McIntyre said. "They're talking about putting [RFID readers] in
doorways and under floor tiles. and unless we speak up, that could happen in a
few years. [But] it's not a lost cause," she added. "It's just a matter of
consumers voting with their pocketbooks and speaking up and saying, 'No, I'm
just not going to be tracked.'"

--------- CORRECTION Major Change:

In the original version of the sentence that now reads, "Last week, lawmakers in
Wisconsin approved a bill that prohibits requiring a person be implanted with an
RFID chip," said that the law prohibits anyone from being implanted with an RFID
chip. This error was introduced by the editors.

--
Peter Myers, 381 Goodwood Rd, Childers 4660, Australia ph +61 7 41262296
http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers Mirror: http://mailstar.net/index.html I
use the old Mac OS; being incompatible, it cannot run Windows viruses or
transmit them to you. If my mail does not arrive, or yours bounces, please ring
me: this helps beat sabotage. To unsubscribe, reply with "unsubscribe" in the
subject line; allow 1 day.

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 5
From: "Dick Eastman" olfriend@nwinfo.net
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 10:30am(PDT)
Subject: Guess what? "Articles3" won't post #'s1,2 and 4 are all you get

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 6
From: "Bugs" brawny@twlakes.net
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 0:13pm(PDT)
Subject: frosty151

Frosty Wooldridge -- What is it Going to Take?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Additional Titles

Other
Wooldridge
Articles:

In Violation of Their Oath of Office

Our Country Coming Undone

Chilling Costs of Illegal Alien Migration

More
Wooldridge
Articles

WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE?

By Frosty Wooldridge
May 8, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

On 9/11, 19 illegal aliens bombed the World Trade Center into rubble and America into an ongoing nightmare. That single act by illegal aliens caused the deaths of 3,000 civilians. Further, it caused the deaths of 2,500 US soldiers and 15,000 wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan-from the US response. It caused the deaths in excess of 50,000 Iraqi citizens.

Two years ago, Theo Van Gogh, the great grandson of the famed Dutch painter, Vincent Van Gogh, suffered knife wounds to his throat by a Muslim immigrant who didn't like Van Gogh's right to free speech. A Dutch teacher I traveled with last summer in Europe predicted that Holland would suffer civil violence within five years. She said, "We'll have civil war and it'll be our immigrants against us!"

In Sweden, Muslim immigrants rape Swedish women because those women "ask for it" by not totally covering their bodies. Sweden suffers the greatest cultural dilemma its nation has experienced in hundreds of years.

Last December, in Paris, France, legal Muslim immigrants firebombed 10,000 cars in a violent melee that terrified French citizens during four solid weeks before authorities regained control. Today, French citizens fear traveling into immigrant enclaves in France. It stands as a country at odds with itself.

The same thing happened in Sydney, Australia where 5,000 people rioted against immigrants who would not and did not respect Australian laws. Immigrants demanded that Sharia Law become a part of Australia to satisfy Muslim immigrants. Thankfully, they mandated, "If you don't like parliamentary law, you may choose to move to another country with Sharia Law."

In England, Muslim immigrants demanded that swimming pools be changed from co-ed to distinct times for women and men-to satisfy Muslims' need to separate the sexes. The ethnic and religious tension in the United Kingdom makes it about as 'united' as a scorpion and a caterpillar in a box.

In the past month, Mexican ILLEGAL aliens marched in the streets of major cities demanding their right to occupy the United States via an unarmed invasion. They commandeered America's streets in a show of ongoing lawlessness that would make Billy the Kid proud!

What do all these events share in common? Immigration by incompatible Third World cultures into First World countries! What causes it? Third World countries' birth rates explode past their carrying capacity, which drives desperate people toward viable nations. Additionally, those countries suffer dictators and tyrants, i.e., men like Mexico's Vicente Fox. Those countries suffer the power of the Catholic Church and religion of Islam stuck in the 1st century where they espouse unlimited and unending birth rates. Results: poverty, illiteracy, diseases, crime, corruption and unending human misery.

Thirty years ago, Jean Raspail, a French novelist, wrote a book, "Camp of the Saints" showing an armada leaving India with tens of thousands of wretched immigrants whose own land was so horrible, they couldn't better it, so they sought another country for their salvation. At one point, one of the reporters asked the captain what he thought.

He replied, "You don't know my people-the squalor, superstitions, the fatalistic sloth that they've wallowed in for generations. You don't know what you're in for if that fleet of brutes ever lands in your lap. Everything will change in this country of yours. They will swallow you up."

France has been swallowed. In an effort to save itself, in July of last year, it closed its borders to further immigration. Last year, Holland started tracking down illegal immigrants and sent them back. Further, Holland mandated that no immigrant could come to Holland unless he or she spoke fluent Dutch. Additionally, they curtailed the flood to a trickle. Norway's latest candidate for national office promotes closing the borders of that country. Sweden is not far behind.

What do those countries share in common? Their quest for peaceful diversity and multiculturalism died a violent death via the guillotine of reality. The facts speak for themselves: you can't mix Dark Ages religions and cultures with First World societies. It doesn't work. It becomes violent. It creates poverty. Citizens of host countries suffer the ethnic tension, racial stress and cultural angst. You can't take in too many immigrants, whether legal or illegal because they can't be assimilated. It doesn't work. It deteriorates from the 'myth of ideals' to the lowest common denominator of hostility.

So, what's happening to the United States? Exactly the same thing that happened to Norway, Sweden, Holland, United Kingdom, France and Australia!

Because we are bigger, the violence spreads wider so it's less perceptible. However, 630,000 convicted illegal alien felons in U.S. prisons tell the real story. Over 1.5 million illegal alien students in U.S. schools creating horrific language and overcrowding nightmares spell out the growing crisis. An added 16,000 cases of tuberculosis and 7,000 cases of leprosy--along with tens of thousands of cases of hepatitis "A" imported into America in four years slams us with reality. Hospitals crammed with sick and poor illegals and their babies-cause bankruptcies and loss of care for American citizens. The list grows by the day as our country stumbles toward violent confrontation.

What one factor characterizes the European violence? Legal immigrants provoked riots. America suffers 20 million illegal alien migrants. Their violence collectively grows more powerful by the day as 10,000 invade our borders daily according to Time Magazine.

What is it going to take for President Bush and Congress to wake up? They know the violence is coming as surely as they knew Katrina approached New Orleans. They know our streets stand ripe for horrific violence from ILLEGAL aliens that have overstepped the rule of law in America. They know the American people will react at some point.

Remember Watts? One incident sent Los Angeles into a conflagration never experienced before. Why did it happen? Because the leaders ignored it, pretended it wasn't a problem, hoped it would go away and remained aloof. Mark Twain called it, "The shabbiest of all lies.silent assertion.occurs when the press and leaders ignore or suppress events of a growing crisis within our society." What happened to slavery and states' rights? The emotional result became our Civil War.

Mr. Bush, Cheney, McCain, Condi Rice, Specter, Hagle, Frist, Kennedy, Pelosi, Kyle, Hatch, Canon and the rest of you yahoos can't be that stupid! Or, are you? You 'let' 9/11 happen because you wouldn't enforce our immigration laws. You and Clinton made it so easy to thwart our immigration laws that 19 men danced into the United States and took lessons on how to fly jet liners but didn't need to learn how to land them. You 'let' Katrina happen because you ignored the warning signs.

It is mildly pathetic that a sitting president with an approval rating of 33 percent "stays his course" while 67 percent of Americans say he is failing at his job. You would think anyone with common sense would change course. You would think that a sitting president with a functioning brain and at least a three digit I.Q., in our Republican form of government, would begin serving the American people instead of serving illegal aliens, ".who do the jobs that Americans won't do."

I'm going to tell you, Mr. Bush, right here and now. You are guilty of neglect of the U.S. Constitution. You stand in violation of your sacred oath of office. That alone deserves impeachment. The rest of you in Congress stand guilty of ignoring an "Immigration Katrina" that won't hit 'just' New Orleans, but slams into every sector of the United States. You stand guilty as sin for the destruction of millions of lives and collateral damage that wreaks havoc on our society.

I promise each of you incompetent and outright traitors this: the American people rise against you. We organize to defend our communities, states and nation against this invasion. We won't back down and we won't give up. Here's a sample of what we're doing in every hamlet, town, city and state:

"Hello Frosty, My name is Michael Armstrong and I am an Oregon Minuteman, and also a member of a local group "Citizen Caucus" fighting the illegal immigration crisis. I have a request regarding the 21st Century Paul Revere Ride. The largest group opposing illegal immigration is located in Salem, Oregon "Oregonians for Immigration Reform." We see the ride will come through Salem, Oregon Wednesday, June 9th. Jim Ludwick asked me to see if we can coordinate with you to hold a joint rally on the capitol steps of Salem when you come through Salem. If this is possible you could help us keep the pressure on our local politicians, during this election year. Please let me know if this is something you think is possible, if it is I will coordinate the event with OFIR. Michael and Elaine."

Fellow Americans, Paul Revere along with men and women patriots gave birth to this country. Please, each of you and all immigration groups call ride coordinator Howard Wooldridge and organize your rally on the steps of your city as the Paul Revere Riders ride through. As we ride into your state, we'll pass out information on "HOW" to stop this invasion. We'll give you the tools to become the "counter critical mass" of Americans who won't back down. We expect not hundreds of motorcycle Paul Revere Riders, but thousands to ride with us in every state. Our soldiers didn't die for open borders. They didn't die for the bogus new world order or one world government. They didn't die for corrupt politicians. They died for the U.S. Constitution and a government that served, "We the people.."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The T-shirts for the Paul Revere Ride exceeded our expectations. The front reads, "STOP ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: ASK ME HOW" "STOP" is in RED. The back of the shirt reads, "STOP ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION" with the ride logo, shown below is big and attractive with www.numbersusa.com below the logo. The shirt will stop people in their tracks and create more discussion than you can imagine and lead them to action. Price is rock bottom at $15.00 including shipping and handling. Become a part of the "21st Century Paul Revere" motorcycle ride across America coast to coast next summer with Frosty as he and his band of riders carry this message from the Golden Gate Bridge to the steps of the nation's capitol in Washington, DC. Inquire at his email address for full details on how you can participate: frostyw@juno.com We need four motorcycle riders. You will be provided meals and transport to origin and from destination. Retired RVs drivers will be provided meals and 50 cents per mile. Start date is May 29, 2006.

Send donations and checks for the T-shirt to: 21st Century Paul Revere Ride at POB 207, Louisville, CO 80027. State your size. www.21stCenturyPaulRevereRide.us

Route of the 21st Century Paul Revere Ride

Schedule with arrival dates.

Motorcycle Route:
All dates are close estimates:

Denver, Colorado - Monday, May 29 (holiday)
Cheyenne, Wyoming - Monday, May 29 (holiday)
Billings, Montana - Tuesday, May 30
Helena, Montana - Wednesday, June 1
Pocatello, Idaho - Thursday, June 2 PM
Salt Lake City, Utah - Saturday, June 3 Noon
Twin Falls, Idaho - Sunday, June 4 Noon
Boise, Idaho - Monday, June 5 AM
Seattle, Washington - Tuesday, June 8 AM
Olympia, Washington - Tuesday, June 8 PM
Salem, Oregon - Wednesday, June 9
Sacramento, California - Monday, June 12 PM
Carson City, Nevada - Tuesday, June 13 AM to LA via PCH (101)
Los Angeles, California - Saturday, June 17 AM
San Diego, California - Sunday, June 18 AM
Phoenix, Arizona - Tuesday, June 20 AM
Santa Fe, New Mexico - Thursday, June 22 AM
Austin, Texas - Sunday, Sunday, June 25 AM
Crawford, Texas - Sunday, June 25 Noon
Dallas, Texas - Sunday, June 25 PM
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma - Tuesday, June 27 PM
Jefferson City, Missouri - Thursday, June 29 AM
Topeka, Kansas - Friday, June 30 AM
Lincoln, Nebraska - Friday, June 30 PM
Des Moines, Iowa - Saturday, July 1 PM
Pierre, South Dakota - Monday, July 3 PM (most have this day off)
Bismarck, North Dakota - Tuesday, July 4 AM (holiday)
St. Paul, Minnesota - Wednesday, July 5 PM
Madison, Wisconsin - Friday, July 7 PM
Chicago, Illinois - Saturday, July 8 Noon
Springfield, Illinois - Sunday, July 9 PM
Lansing, Michigan - Thursday, July 13 AM
Indianapolis, Indiana - Friday, July 14 AM
Frankfort, Kentucky - Friday, July 14 PM
Nashville, Tennessee - Sunday, July 16 AM
Little Rock, Arkansas - Tuesday, July 18 PM
Baton Rouge, Louisiana - Wednesday, July 19 PM
Jackson, Mississippi - Thursday, July 20 PM
Montgomery, Alabama - Friday, July 21 PM
Tallahassee, Florida - Saturday, July 22 PM
Atlanta, Georgia - Tuesday, July 25 AM
Columbia, South Carolina - Wednesday, July 26 AM
Charlotte, North Carolina - Thursday, July 27 AM
Raleigh, North Carolina - Friday, July 28 AM
Charleston, West Virginia - Saturday, July 29 PM
Columbus, Ohio - Monday, July 31 AM
Albany, New York - Thursday, August 3 AM
Montpelier, Vermont - Friday, August 4 AM
Augusta, Maine - Saturday, August 5 AM
Concord, New Hampshire - Monday, August 7 AM
Boston, Massachusetts - August 7 PM
Providence, Rhode Island - August 8 AM
Hartford, CT - NOON
Trenton, New Jersey - August 9 AM
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - August 9 PM
Dover, Delaware - August 10 AM
Annapolis, Maryland - August 10 PM
Richmond, Virginia - August 11 AM
Washington, DC - Saturday, August 12 NOON

© 2006 Frosty Wooldridge - All Rights Reserved

Frosty's new book "Immigration's Unarmed Invasion"

Sign Up For Free E-Mail Alerts

E-Mails are used strictly for NWVs alerts, not for sale

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frosty Wooldridge possesses a unique view of the world, cultures and families in that he has bicycled around the globe 100,000 miles, on six continents in the past 26 years.

He has written hundreds of articles (regularly) for 17 national and 2 international magazines. He has had hundreds of editorials published in top national newspapers including the Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post, Albany Herald and Christian Science Monitor.

His first book, "HANDBOOK FOR TOURING BICYCLISTS" by Falcon Press is available nationwide. His second book "STRIKE THREE! TAKE YOUR BASE" by the Brookfield Reader published in January 2002. His bicycle books include "BICYCLING AROUND THE WORLD."

His latest book. 'IMMIGRATION'S UNARMED INVASION-DEADLY CONSEQUENCES.'

Frosty Wooldridge has guest lectured at Cornell University, teaching creative writing workshops, magazine writing at Michigan State University, and has presented environmental science lectures at the University of Colorado, University of Denver and Regis University. He also lectures on "Religion and Ethics" at Front Range College in Colorado.

Website: www.FrostyWooldridge.com

E:Mail: frostyw@juno.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Home

The same thing happened in Sydney, Australia where 5,000 people rioted against immigrants who would not and did not respect Australian laws. Immigrants demanded that Sharia Law become a part of Australia to satisfy Muslim immigrants.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.5.5/333 - Release Date: 5/5/2006

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 7
From: "S Miles Lewis" yahoolists@elfis.net
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 1:10pm(PDT)
Subject: Moussaoui: I Lied on Stand about Being Involved in 9/11

Moussaoui Asks to Withdraw Guilty Plea
May 08 3:54 PM US/Eastern

WASHINGTON - Zacarias Moussaoui has said he lied on the stand about
being involved in Sept. 11, and he has asked to withdraw his guilty
plea.

The statement appears in a motion filed in federal court in Alexandria
by his attorneys.

Moussaoui last week was sentenced to life in prison, after a jury
rejected the government's appeal to sentence him to death.

<http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/05/08/D8HFQ4903.html>

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 8
From: "Dick Eastman" olfriend@nwinfo.net
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 1:49pm(PDT)
Subject: Remember: Zacarias Moussaoui: says he lied on the stand -- now insis

Moussaoui Asks to Withdraw Guilty Plea
May 08 3:54 PM US/Eastern

WASHINGTON - Zacarias Moussaoui has said he lied on the stand about
being involved in Sept. 11, and he has asked to withdraw his guilty
plea.

The statement appears in a motion filed in federal court in Alexandria
by his attorneys.

Moussaoui last week was sentenced to life in prison, after a jury
rejected the government's appeal to sentence him to death.

<http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/05/08/D8HFQ4903.html>

==========

What convinced me that 9-11 was a false-flag non-Arab inside-job.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 9
From: "APFN" apfn@apfn.org
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 2:16pm(PDT)
Subject: [Fwd: Military General Appointed Head CIA]

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.5.2/329 - Release Date: 5/2/2006

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 10
From: "ranger116@webtv.net" ranger116@webtv.net
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 3:29pm(PDT)
Subject: 23 New Presidential Helicopters 6.1 Billion $ Made In Italy ! ??+ +

23 New Presidential Helicopters 6.1 Billion $ Made In Italy ! ??+ + +

````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Bush down to 31% approval ! (;^))
Latest media poll

USATODAY.com
Address:http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/05/bushs_approval__1.html

``````````````````````````````````````````````````````
How 911 Really Happened
Address:http://www.rense.com/general71/d333m.htm

`````````````````````````````````````````````````````
The President's New 6.1 "B"illion Dollar Helicopter !!

(But what is money when You can Print it and You are the King ?)
(Brings new meaning to the name Helicopter Bernicky of the Fed Reserve)

A new fleet of "23" helicopters with three 3,000 horse power engines
each and of Course Not Built in The U.S. but in Italy (Augusta aircraft
is in Italy)

Address:http://www.livescience.com/technology/060507_marine_one.html

Agusta
Address:http://www.agusta.com/
(well at least some Italians will have jobs)

``````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Hawaii Legislature Takes Steps to End War
_http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00088.htm_
(http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00088.htm) Sunday, 9 April 2006,
10:49 pm

Article: David Swanson
Hawaii Legislature Takes Steps to End War
By _David Swanson_

(http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00088.htm#a)

The Hawaii State Senate has passed a resolution "CALLING UPON THE
GOVERNOR OF

  HAWAII TO TAKE STEPS TO WITHDRAW THE HAWAII ARMY AND AIR NATIONAL
GUARD TROOPS FROM IRAQ.
" The resolution is a thing of beauty, has been mailed to the Governor
and the President, and can be read at

_http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/sessioncurrent/bills/SR128_.pdf_
(http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/sessioncurrent/bills/SR128_.pdf) Both
houses of Hawaii's legislature are set to vote on a resolution
"REQUESTING THE ADJUTANT GENERAL OF THE HAWAII NATIONAL GUARD TO
PROVIDE MEMBERS AND VETERANS OF THE ARMED FORCES HEALTH SCREENING FOR
DEPLETED URANIUM EXPOSURE AND TO REPORT ON THE SCOPE AND ADEQUACY OF
DEPLETED URANIUM STORAGE AND DISPOSAL IN HAWAII."

This resolution, too, seems like a good model for other states.
  Here's the text:

_http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/sessioncurrent/bills/SCR40_.pdf_
(http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/sessioncurrent/bills/SCR40_.pdf)
Citizens of Hawaii who have promoted these steps include Karin Gill
and Marsha Joyner of CODE PINK, Ann Wright who retired from the
diplomatic service in protest the day the war began, Irradiated
Veterans, and Life of the Land.
__________________________________

The words and video of Pink's song about Bush
Address:http://www.am940southflorida.com/pages/pinkpresident.html

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 11
From: "ranger116@webtv.net" ranger116@webtv.net
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 3:33pm(PDT)
Subject: 23 New Presidential Helicopters 6.1 Billion $ Made In Italy ! ??+ +

23 New Presidential Helicopters 6.1 Billion $ Made In Italy ! ??+ + +

````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Bush down to 31% approval ! (;^))
Latest media poll

USATODAY.com
Address:http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/05/bushs_approval__1.html

``````````````````````````````````````````````````````
How 911 Really Happened
Address:http://www.rense.com/general71/d333m.htm

`````````````````````````````````````````````````````
The President's New 6.1 "B"illion Dollar Helicopter !!

(But what is money when You can Print it and You are the King ?)
(Brings new meaning to the name Helicopter Bernicky of the Fed Reserve)

A new fleet of "23" helicopters with three 3,000 horse power engines
each and of Course Not Built in The U.S. but in Italy (Augusta aircraft
is in Italy)

Address:http://www.livescience.com/technology/060507_marine_one.html

Agusta
Address:http://www.agusta.com/
(well at least some Italians will have jobs)

``````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Hawaii Legislature Takes Steps to End War
_http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00088.htm_
(http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00088.htm) Sunday, 9 April 2006,
10:49 pm

Article: David Swanson
Hawaii Legislature Takes Steps to End War
By _David Swanson_

(http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00088.htm#a)

The Hawaii State Senate has passed a resolution "CALLING UPON THE
GOVERNOR OF

  HAWAII TO TAKE STEPS TO WITHDRAW THE HAWAII ARMY AND AIR NATIONAL
GUARD TROOPS FROM IRAQ.
" The resolution is a thing of beauty, has been mailed to the Governor
and the President, and can be read at

_http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/sessioncurrent/bills/SR128_.pdf_
(http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/sessioncurrent/bills/SR128_.pdf) Both
houses of Hawaii's legislature are set to vote on a resolution
"REQUESTING THE ADJUTANT GENERAL OF THE HAWAII NATIONAL GUARD TO
PROVIDE MEMBERS AND VETERANS OF THE ARMED FORCES HEALTH SCREENING FOR
DEPLETED URANIUM EXPOSURE AND TO REPORT ON THE SCOPE AND ADEQUACY OF
DEPLETED URANIUM STORAGE AND DISPOSAL IN HAWAII."

This resolution, too, seems like a good model for other states.
  Here's the text:

_http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/sessioncurrent/bills/SCR40_.pdf_
(http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/sessioncurrent/bills/SCR40_.pdf)
Citizens of Hawaii who have promoted these steps include Karin Gill
and Marsha Joyner of CODE PINK, Ann Wright who retired from the
diplomatic service in protest the day the war began, Irradiated
Veterans, and Life of the Land.
__________________________________

The words and video of Pink's song about Bush
Address:http://www.am940southflorida.com/pages/pinkpresident.html

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 12
From: "janet phelan" jcphelan10@yahoo.com
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 3:50pm(PDT)
Subject: I will be on the radio again tomorrow nite

I will be interviewed on preparednessnow.com, between 6-7 p.m. PST, tomorrow, Tuesday, May 9th.

We will be discussing Bush's plans to de-populate our beloved, free country.

Janet C. Phelan


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Yahoo! Mail goes everywhere you do. Get it on your phone.
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Message 13
From: "jewish_from_brooklyn" jewish_from_brooklyn@yahoo.com
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 5:58pm(PDT)
Subject: Everbody is invited to the new 9-11 discussion forum

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/911_free_discussion/

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Message 14
From: "Cathy Garger" savorsuccesslady@yahoo.com
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 6:57pm(PDT)
Subject: The Risk of Wining: What Happens Once the 9/11 Sewer Opens Wide?

reprehensor
Apr 11 2006, 06:44 PM
http://www.nomoregames.net/index.php?page=...risk_of_winning

The Risk of Winning: What Happens Once the 9/11 Sewer Opens Wide?

Morgan Reynolds - April 9th, 2006

I have begun receiving a handful of emails and questions from callers to radio interview shows that worry about our forthcoming victory in the 9/11 information war! What will happen once the 9/11 traitors are exposed, goes the lament, and an outraged public demands a pound of flesh from each conspirator? Scary huh?

First, will we have this delicious problem to deal with? Yes, we are going to win and so we will face this “problem” for a variety of sturdy reasons. The most important is that the establishment’s preposterous conspiracy theory of 9/11—ONYA (Osama and Nineteen Young Arabs)—lies in total ruins, completely and thoroughly shredded by hundreds of websites on the Internet and a handful of books like David Ray Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor and Webster G. Tarpley’s 9/11 Synthetic Terror. The perpetrators, filled with hubris and contempt for the American people, seriously underestimated what a few hundred Internet researchers could do. The public flight from ONYA has been accelerated by exposure of the government’s lies on Iraq, its failed invasion and the consequent unpopularity of the Bush-Cheney regime. The public relations outfall has not been contained and has spilled over to eat away at the lies of 9/11. Charlie Sheen’s brave testimony has put us on a new level of public
awareness.

Second, what really is the worry? Isn’t this what we are working for, the prospect of justice obtained by exposure of the truth, the prospect of stopping the killers in their tracks? Yes, it is. Anyone fretting over the triumph of truth should ask this question: what do you do with a family dog that kills a family member? The dog was acquired to protect the family and instead it kills someone it was supposed to protect. The services of such a dog would no longer be required, to put it as gently as possible. That’s the situation we have with the DoD, NSA, CIA, FBI and a murderous array of government agencies, including the 9/11 Commission. The 9/11 Commission members and staff director Philip D. Zelikow are accessories after the fact, a felony crime. Selected elements of many organizations lied and murdered thousands of innocent Americans. Every member of the military swears an oath to defend and protect the Constitution, against enemies “both foreign and domestic.”
Pretending that nothing happened after the family pet murdered a family member would be madness, intolerable, a “head-in-the-sand” absurdity, not to mention a constant menace for everybody in the dog’s ambit. That’s our predicament today: the overt and covert types hired to protect us turned and killed family members and remain on the loose and in power. They must be taken down. Or this too hard to understand?

http://forums.therandirhodesshow.com/lofiversion/index.php/t84341.html


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Message 15
From: "Dick Eastman" olfriend@nwinfo.net
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 7:13pm(PDT)
Subject: Goss is suppressing lengthy 9-11 study by CIA's inspector general, a

So far, half a dozen of the nation's top spymasters have been forced out abruptly -- a strange way to handle things at a time when Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are still seeking to attack the U.S. Ironically, this all comes as Goss is suppressing a lengthy study, prepared for Congress by the CIA's inspector general, that, according to an intelligence official who has read it, names individuals in the government responsible for failures that paved the way for the 9/11 attacks.

The Peter Principle and the neo-con coup
Administration gets dirtier as Bush cleans house

Robert Scheer, 11.16.04

The bloodletting has begun.

I'm not referring to the latest attempt to re-conquer Iraq, but rather the wholesale political revenge campaign being waged by the hard-liners in the Bush administration against anybody and everybody inside the government who challenged the way the second Persian Gulf war in a decade was marketed and run.

Out: Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose political epitaph should now read, "You break it, you own it" for his prescient but unwanted warning to the president on the danger of imperial overreach in Iraq.

Out: Top CIA officials who dared challenge, behind the scenes, the White House's unprecedented exploitation of raw intelligence data in order to sell a war to a Congress and a public hungry for revenge after 9/11.

Out: Veteran CIA counterterrorism expert and Osama bin Laden hunter Michael Scheuer, better known as the best-selling author "Anonymous," whose balanced and devastating critiques of the Iraq war, the CIA and the way President Bush is handling the war on terror have been a welcome counterpoint to the "it's true if we say it's true" idiocy of the White House PR machine.

Meanwhile, incompetence begat by ideological blindness has been rewarded. The neoconservatives who created the ongoing Iraq mess have more than survived the failure of their impossibly rosy scenarios for a peaceful and democratic Iraq under U.S. rule. In fact, despite calls for their resignations -- from the former head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Anthony Zinni, among others -- the neo-con gang is thriving. They have not been held responsible for the "16 words" about yellowcake, the rise and fall of Ahmad Chalabi, the Abu Ghraib scandal, the post-invasion looting of Iraq's munitions stores or the disastrous elimination of the Iraqi armed forces.

As of today, the neo-cons on Zinni's list of losers -- Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz; the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby; National Security Council staffer Elliott Abrams; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- are all still employed even as Bush's new director of central intelligence, Porter J. Goss, is eviscerating the CIA's leadership.

This is the culmination of a three-year campaign by the president's men to scapegoat the CIA for the fact that 9/11 occurred on Bush's watch.

So far, half a dozen of the nation's top spymasters have been forced out abruptly -- a strange way to handle things at a time when Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are still seeking to attack the U.S. Ironically, this all comes as Goss is suppressing a lengthy study, prepared for Congress by the CIA's inspector general, that, according to an intelligence official who has read it, names individuals in the government responsible for failures that paved the way for the 9/11 attacks.

Thus Bush, with Goss as his hatchet man, is having it both ways: He can be seen to be cleaning house at the CIA -- when he is simply punishing independent voices -- while denying Congress access to an independent audit of actual intelligence failures.

We should remember that as flawed as its performance was under former Director George J. Tenet, the CIA at least sometimes tried to be a counterweight to the fraudulent claims of Rumsfeld's and Dick Cheney's neoconservative staffs All of the nation's traditional intelligence centers were bypassed by a rogue operation based in Feith's Office of Special Plans. Feith was given broad access to raw intelligence streams -- the better to cherry-pick factoids and fabrications that found their way into even the president's crucial prewar State of the Union address.

Now, by successfully discarding those who won't buy into the administration's ideological fantasies of remaking the world in our image, the neoconservatives have consolidated control of the United States' vast military power.

With the ravaging of the CIA and the ousting of Powell -- instead of the more-deserving Rumsfeld -- the coup of the neoconservatives is complete. They have achieved a remarkable political victory by failing upward.

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=18096

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Message 16
From: "Bugs" brawny@twlakes.net
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 7:24pm(PDT)
Subject: AFL-CIO Now: How Safe Are Your Voting Rights?

AFL-CIO Now, 5/8/06From: Working Families e-Activist Network
Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 12:01 PM
Subject: AFL-CIO Now: How Safe Are Your Voting Rights?



May 8, 2006

Here are some of the latest headlines from AFL-CIO Now, the daily news blog that's all about working people and unions. Be sure to check the blog every day for new stories.


Voting Rights Act: After 40 Years, Still Fighting for a Fundamental Right
Voting discrimination still exists and renewing Voting Rights Act a must.
Read the full story....

Minimum Wage Headed for Missouri Ballot
Missouri activists show 'em-200,000 sign ballot petition.
Read the full story....

Peabody Shareholders Back Reform-Again. Will Peabody Listen This Time?
Union activists win election reform vote at world's biggest coal company.
Read the full story....

Home Care Workers Win a Voice at Work with AFSCME and More
More than 2,000 workers join AFSCME and other unions.
Read the full story....

Sago Families to Coal Group: Don't Blame Lightning
Paid-for company report blames lightning for deadly blast; families don't buy it.
Read the full story....

Social Security Report-The Sky Is Not Falling
Don't believe the spin about Social Security.
Read the full story....

Energy Department Workers: Target of Another Bush Attack on Retirement Security
Bush pension plan ban "encourages companies to dump pensions," says Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.).
Read the full story....

Growing U.S. Trade Deficit with China Fuels Nation's $2.5 Billion Daily Fix
Trade gap costs 400,000 jobs, threatens economy.
Read the full story....

Lots to Say on Workers Memorial Day and May 1 Day of Action
Readers write in from Philly to Los Angeles.
Read the full story....

State and Local Labor Leaders Call for 'Unity on the Ground'
Now's no time to divide union movement.
Read the full story....

'Awesome' Union Campaign Lifts Ohio Write-In Candidate to Huge Win
Voters do the "write" thing.
Read the full story....

AFL-CIO President Sweeney on The Huffington Post: Don't Repeat Bracero Program
All workers deserve America's workplace and civil rights.
Read the full story....

Celebrate Cover the Uninsured Week: Stop a Bill That Cuts Benefits
The Enzi bill eliminates key health care coverage requirements.
Read the full story....

Religious Leaders Say Organizing at Peabody Is a Moral Issue
Faith leaders tell company execs-workers' rights a matter of faith.
Read the full story....

Sheet Metal Workers Union Builds Organizing Momentum in Arizona
In Arizona, it's not the heat, it's a fight for HVAC workers' rights.
Read the full story....

Read more important news of the day on the issues working families care about on AFL-CIO Now.


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Message 17
From: "Bugs" brawny@twlakes.net
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 9:01pm(PDT)
Subject: : Thank God!

I am flying mine upside down now,This country is in distress,read why at and pass to all on your lists.
www.usflag.org.
bugs
----- Original Message -----
From: chantemato
To: v911t@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 10:48 PM
Subject: [v911t] Re: Thank God!

--- In v911t@yahoogroups.com, "truthandjusticeguide"
<truthandjusticeguide@...> wrote:
>
> I can't tell you how happy I was to see the American Flag upside
down!!!!!!! I've been on the 9/11 truth campain since November of
2001 and I've always thought that flying the flag upside down would
be an excellent way to start waking people up. Now, with Veterans for
9/11 Truth, there is proper backing for it.
Bless all who struggle for truth and justice,
> Mike
>

Hi all,

I know someone who was stationed at and working the night shift at
NORAD the morning of September 11, 2001. I talked to that person the
evening of 9/11 and was told that the NORAD personnel were ordered to
stand down prior to 05:30. No one could leave or enter the premises
for the shift change at 06:00. The personnel changed shifts hours
after the buildings collapsed. NO specialized personnel were called
in that morning. I told hundreds of people that my friend at NORAD
thought that 9/11 was an inside job, some believed me and some didn't.

And then the Patriot Act... The Patriot Act was written at a think
tank in the Eastern US in 1998. Yes folks, that document was ready in
its entirety long before 2001, just waiting for the "opportune
moment" to be made into law. A document like the Patriot Act does NOT
get written in three days! Sheesh, I sometimes wonder if the Senate
and House chambers have subliminal messages piped in over the
speakers everyday. Anyway, it makes me wonder how many members of
Congress knew that the Patriot Act already existed long before
September of 2001.

Thank you to all who are working so hard to bring out the truth about
the events of 9/11. Keep those flags flying upside down, and the
Truth Shall Set You Free!
JD

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Message 18
From: "John Leonard" jpleonard@verizon.net
Date: Mon May 8, 2006 9:42pm(PDT)
Subject: Forum on Amazon page of (C)ommission Report

the United 93 flick has popped the 911 (C)omission report from its
usual Amazon sales ranking down around 4000 up to around 800, highest
I've seen it this the year.
Amazon has a new feature now: Customer discussions. There was no
discussion on the page for the omission report,
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393326713 , so I just posted the
message below. If you pass that way some time, check in.
John
========
Why doesn't it mention the fall of Bldg. WTC 7 at all?

You could buy "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions"
- but do you really need to? One little picture named wtc7.gif, you
can easily find it on the web, makes it perfectly clear that WTC 7
was blown up in a controlled demolition. That one picture is worth
way more than the couple hundred thousand lying words in this
flagrant government cover-up.
If WTC 7 wasn't an inside job, then why did the report cover it up?
Because they have not even the shadow of an explanation for the WTC7
implosion.
So why would they take such a risk? In my opinion, the 4th plane was
supposed to hit building 7, but the remote control failed.
Silverstein, owner of WTC 7 and brand new leaseholder of the WTC,
wanted to demolish all 3 buildings under cover of 9/11, and he was
too greedy to let WTC7 go. So it was pulled down at 5:30 p.m. on
9/11, before darkness would make the explosive flashes of the
demolition charges too easily visible.
And so we have the biggest smoking gun on the most outrageous false
flag terror act in history. Without WTC7, it wouldn't be quite so
obvious that the Twin Towers were controlled demolitions too.
This report, like the new United 93 flick, is a litany of lies, a
cunning fictionalization of that outrage. There were no Arabs on the
passenger lists, nor on the airport security videos, nor in the DNA
retrieved from the wreckage. Because they were framed to create a war
pretext, like the Gulf of Tonkin, the Mexican War, the USS Maine, the
Mukden incident, ad nauseam. It was all an inside job.
Forget this drivel, unless you want to be even more brainwashed. Get
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA and find out what really happened instead.
If we dissidents are wrong, you have nothing to lose by listening to
us. But if we are right, you risk losing all your freedoms by
ignoring the menace within.

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Message 19
From: "President, USA Exile Govt." prez@usa-exile.org
Date: Tue May 9, 2006 4:07am(PDT)
Subject: SPECIAL: Ruppert and Pique Oil


GOVERNMENT OF THE USA IN EXILE
Free Americans
Reaching Out to Amerika's Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free
        
Via <prez@usa-exile.org>

May 9, 2006

Dear Friends and Colleagues,
This pitch from Mike Ruppert deserves scrutiny.
Each of my tits for each of his tats will occur in red. And
I'll precede them with a triple hyphen--or we might say a
dash-and-a-half.

Yours for all species,

Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te,

Ponderosa Pine

Transition Prez

------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------

THE PARADIGM IS THE ENEMY:
The State of the Peak Oil Movement at the Cusp of
Collapse

A Speech by Michael C. Ruppert for the Local Solutions to
the Energy Dilemma Conference

April 27-29, New
York City, at Cooper Union

  [This is the most important speech of my life.
If you read anything I’ve written this year, read this – MCR]

April 28, 2006 1630 PST – (FTW) – NEW YORK - As a matter of necessity,
in the course of a turbulent and often very difficult life, I have
developed a pretty warped sense of humor. As most police officers,
nurses, ER doctors, paramedics, and military combat veterans know, the
best time to find humor is when things are at their worst. Sometimes
the humor that emerges from these situations is strange, to say the
least. And yet sometimes it remains the most memorable humor of a
lifetime—humor that can actually sustain you in tough times. Humor is
energy.

Too often Peak Oil activism reminds me of a statement that I found a
long time ago in a book of famous quotations. In the section containing
the last recorded words of famous people I found a quote that has
stayed with me ever since.

--- What "Peak Oil activism", Mike? I notice only people getting
together periodically to congratulate each other on rhetoric whose
impacts mainly provides excuses for Big Oil to get away with higher and
higher and higher prices.

The quote was simply, “We’ve got them now.”

The person who wrote those last “recorded” words on a dispatch to his
commanding officer, General George Crook, was George Armstrong Custer.

During the course of this conference I have heard precious little
attention paid to events in the world around us indicating that Peak
Oil is about to have its global “coming out party” and what that might
mean. In almost every nook, cranny and corner of the planet, stress
points are beginning to fracture. For the past five years I have
argued, emphasized, and repeated endlessly that perhaps the biggest
mistake of all time was made on September 11th 2001, when the only real
global operational plan to deal with Peak Oil was put into effect. On
September 11th we began a war, now infamously known as “the war which
will not end in our lifetimes,” to decide who will control the last
remaining oil and gas reserves on the planet.

--- The war to control planetary oil/gas began many many years
before 9/11/01.

In Crossing the Rubicon I wrote, “Events in the five-year period that
began on September 11th, 2001 will determine the course of human
history for several centuries to come.” We are just months away from
the end of that five-year period. What has been accomplished?

--- 9/11/01 was a biggie, yes--but within a couple decades it'll
be dwarfed by the effects of atmospheric pollution.

The painful answer is: not enough.

Where are we in the real world and how do we judge our current
activities in light of real-world events? To sum it up in the words of
one of the most senior members of the Peak Oil movement I know, Jay
Hanson, “I see my worst fears unfolding right in front of my face.” Jay
wrote those words just about a week ago.

--- What "Peak Oil movement", Mike? All I see are people
getting together periodically to congratulate each other on having
found a hustle that's totally safe from the secret police because it
plays directly into the hands of Big Oil. If we use the term
"movement" for this, then what term should we use for movements?
Calling this a movement is like calling a molehill a mountain. Not
that I've got anything against our brother/sister moles.

Jay started the first Peak Oil website in the 1980s, almost even before
there was a web. We should listen to Jay, and I could not agree more
with his assessment; my worst fears are unfolding right in front of my
face.

--- You shouldn't be even slightly surprised by this, Mike. Your
worst fears would be unfolding right in front of your face regardless
of how much oil remains and even if there had been no 9/11/01. None of
this is new. For example, back in early '70 in a piece called "Ecology
and the Police State Revisited" I said: "It seems the Nixon regime is
no longer even trying to achieve majority support for its policies--but
rather has decided to try to retain power by meeting every single
demand of the small rich white industrial minority. . . If the 1972
presidential elections are cancelled, it won't necessarily be because
the people had lost interest in them. It's more likely that the regime
will invent some sort of stream and then inform the people that
elections are 'postponed so you good folks out there won't have to
change horses in the middle of it.' By that time Centralist regimes at
all levels--city, county, state and national--will be in such deep
trouble they'll be investing much more time/money/energy in Reichstag
Fire tricks. We'll see the electronic police state in full-speed
four-color action: college-trained agents infiltrating media to root
out 'anarchists'; fake news, fake history, fake books."

Perhaps the greatest flaw in the Peak Oil movement’s current operating
paradigm is that, a part of the movement at least, instead of building
lifeboats in the face of an immediate disaster, is delusionally focused
on trying to build alternative-powered luxury liners that operate just
like the paradigm we as a species need to be abandoning. Not only is
this a futile effort, it may well be responsible for killing or
destroying the lives of people who at least partially understand Peak
Oil and who are trying to find the best courses of immediate action for
themselves and their families.

Some parts of this movement however—and tonight I intend to honor two
men who are leading the way—have seen the writing on the wall and are
independently taking appropriate courses of action that demonstrate
both the kind of incisive thinking and leadership that will be needed
in very short order.

--- I sure hope you'll honor two more men--Brian O'Leary and Adam
Trombly--"who are leading the way" because with adequate support they
can show us energy modes efficient enough to render meaningless the
amount of oil remaining.

Before I tell you about these men I think it’s a good idea to stop for
a minute and take an inventory of the world in which we live
today—right now.

THE STATE OF THE WORLD’S ENERGY

I have observed that almost every Peak Oil conference, whether this
one, or the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, or ASPO-USA, makes
only the most superficial attempt to evaluate geopolitical and economic
conditions. These conditions, more than the rate at which supplies are
depleted, will determine how Peak Oil and collapse manifest in our
lives.

•      The Times of London on April 8th ran a story that should have
pre-empted every other major story that day. Headlined “World ‘cannot
meet oil demand’”. The story’s first sentence read, “The world lacks
the means to produce enough oil to meet rising projections for demand
for fuel, according to Cristophe de Margerie, head of exploration for
Total.” Later the story quoted Margerie as saying, “’Numbers like 120
million barrels per day will never be reached, never’ he said.”

--- If we get behind the best sequels to oil--instead of
suppressing them!--it doesn't make any difference whether the world can
or "cannot meet oil demand".

•      In the last year we have seen the collapse of Kuwait ’s
super-giant field Burgan; accelerated decline in the world’s
second-largest field, Mexico ’s Cantarell; and an overall global
decline rate approaching 8%. We have seen Saudi Arabia fail to increase
production while at the same time finding it more difficult to hide
deteriorating reservoir conditions in all of its mature fields,
including Ghawar. As of tonight, more than 30 of the world’s largest
producing nations have entered steep decline.

--- So what? Less oil means less atmospheric pollution. The
latter has engendered at a species level a psychology of scarcity which
underlies everything you lament. Atmospheric pollution--including DU
particles--is right in front of your face, Mike, and it should be your
worst fear. Isn't this why you moved from LA to Ashland?

•      Discoveries continue to fall off a cliff. Over the last four
years the world has been consuming 6 barrels of oil for every new one
found. Publicity stunts, such as the recent attempt to reclassify
Venezuelan tar as oil – even when applauded by dilettantes like Gregg
Palast – are having no impact on markets, prices or public policy. I
think we can safely say at this point that we will soon see an end to
the influence of charlatans and schemers like Daniel Yergin of
Cambridge Energy. (Now there’s at least one bright note.) At this
point, the Peak Oil movement should avoid expending needless energy on
any arguments about whether Peak Oil is real or not. That precious
energy is needed elsewhere. We have won that debate.

--- It doesn't make any difference "whether Peak Oil is real or
not", for the sequels can be swiftly applied.

•      Soaring commodity prices for everything from copper, to uranium,
to cement and steel are not only hampering needed infrastructure
investment, they are also making it almost impossible to build new
drilling rigs, especially deep water rigs. Commodity scarcities are the
result of overpopulation, hoarding, over consumption and nothing else.
Drilling rigs themselves are in extremely short supply around the world
and I believe we should also stay away from any debates about whether
new oil supply will even make a difference. It will not and we need
only continue to breathe in and out to see this position vindicated
also.

•      The US government continues an unwinnable war in Iraq while
building massive permanent bases and the largest embassy compound ever
built. Not only does the US have no intention of leaving Iraq , it has
committed—whether under Republican or Democratic leadership—to staying
forever—whatever that means. The Empire’s position is clear, not as a
result of what it says, but as a result of what it has done. America ’s
primary plan to deal with Peak Oil is to fight or intimidate for energy
supplies wherever it deems necessary. That, of course, has forced the
rest of the world—with a few notable exceptions like Norway and Brazil
—to dance to the same sheet music. As a result, I would estimate that
of every ten units of energy (or money) expended preparing for Peak Oil
today, nine are spent preparing for war while only one is spent
building lifeboats and teaching people how to survive. This is sheer
insanity.

•      The US government is playing a bluff hand over an attack against
Iran , which in spite of being both unlikely and risking a global
nuclear holocaust, has resulted in massive increases in military
spending all around the planet. A global arms race is now using up
energy and commodities that should be used rebuilding railroads,
enhancing mass transportation, and building renewable infrastructure to
soften the coming blows.

•      In the face of this, the entire world, and especially China ,
Russia , India , Germany and Japan are pouring hundreds of billions of
dollars of investment into Iran . This is one of many sure signs that
the American Empire’s weaknesses are becoming visible. There is blood
in the water and blood in the water usually leads to a fight. The
world, at least as far as its pocketbook is concerned, is betting on
Iran .

•       Russia is selling Iran lots of Tor M1 anti-aircraft missile
systems and cruise missile and high-speed torpedo technologies. China
also is flooding Iran with advanced military systems.

•      The US has stepped up deliveries of weapons systems and military
advisors to oil-producing regions around the world. This has been
matched by similar deliveries to the same regions by Russia , China ,
Pakistan , Saudi Arabia , Venezuela , France , Britain , India and many
other countries. A best-selling novel in China , The Battle in
Protecting Key Oil Routes, has the Chinese navy destroying a US carrier
battle group. The popular book documents a bloody contest over control
of the Straits of Malacca, that narrow channel through which most of
China ’s, Japan ’s, and Korea ’s energy passes.

•       China ’s Hu Jintao, clearly one of the world’s only major
leaders with both plans and choices, is making direct calls on Saudi
Arabia and Nigeria as George W. Bush haplessly points to hydrogen fuel
cell cars as a solution. Don’t worry about how many American people
will buy into such Bush nonsense. Worry about how many world leaders
are watching these same clips and asking, “Is that the best he can do?
America is in deep shit.”

•      In Nigeria—the US’s fifth largest oil supplier and the world’s
eighth—groups of well-organized and supplied rebels are using high-tech
email, bombs, bullets and kidnapping to terrorize major oil companies.
Production is threatened on a daily basis. In a world where there is no
place else to go to replace even 50,000 barrels a day—out of the 84
million needed—the totally corrupt regime of Olusegun Obasanjo is
besieged by rebel and dissident groups on many fronts. I have no doubt
that several of these groups are being financed, trained, led and
supplied through covert arms of the US, Chinese, Russian, British,
Saudi, Pakistani and/or Indian governments.

•      In nearby Chad—which is the source-country for the Chad-Cameroon
pipeline delivering 160,000 barrels a day into the global mouth—as he
attempts to ward off an aggressively hungry World Bank, President
Idriss Deby is literally holding oil hostage. Knowing full well that to
shut down the pipeline would cause an estimated $10 jump in the price
of oil, he is literally telling the west, “Come any closer and I’ll
shoot the oil.”

•      At the same time, Chad is beset by rebel insurgents from
neighboring Sudan , which is China ’s fifth-largest oil supplier. Both
the US and China are hip-deep in covert operations in Sudan.

•      On April 18, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with one of
Africa’s most brutal dictators, Teodoro Nguema of Equatorial Guinea
—Africa’s third-largest oil exporter, calling him a good friend of the
US . With institutional memories as short as they are, few remember
that Sir Mark Thatcher, son of Britain ’s Margaret Thatcher, was nabbed
last year in the middle of a coup intended to oust Nguema.

•      All of Africa, especially West Africa—exactly as I predicted in
2003, in Crossing the Rubicon and in last year’s lecture series which
became our newest DVD Denial Stops Here—is exploding with armed
insurrections from the Western Sahara region to Angola . It is West
Africa where I believe we will see proxy wars likely intensifying this
year, which could trigger a global nuclear exchange in very short
order.

•      But murder, far more callous, is about to be perpetrated by the
Democratic Party as it enters the 2006 midterm campaigns with what is
surely—barring a miracle—going to be one of its major planks in 2008:
“Don’t worry,” they will promise, “the Democrats will restore cheap
gasoline for all and find a no-pain answer to all of our energy woes.
High prices are the fault of greedy oil companies and price gougers,
not a lack of supply.” I can promise you now, Hillary Clinton, that if
the Democratic Party adopts this approach it will find in me an enemy
that will make FTW’s editorial posture towards the Bush administration
over the last five years look like abject friendship.

--- I don't like the Democrats either, Mike, but "high prices are
the fault of greedy oil companies and price gougers" regardless of the
size of the supply. Obviously, Big Oil should atone for decades of
obscenely huge profits and start making their shit available at bargain
prices so we can add a hefty eco-tax to get funds for transformational
energy paths. Why do you kiss the asses of Big Oil in this manner,
Mike? Why did you not say in this speech exactly how much money Big
Oil is "making" these days? Are you afraid of them? Are they slipping
you money under the table? Did they provide money for the conference
at which you delivered this speech--perhaps through a front group like
Fortune Mag?

•      American mainstream media has become absolutely and certifiably
schizophrenic on the issue of Peak Oil. Within the space of an hour,
one can watch segments acknowledging Peak Oil and Gas and the insoluble
problems they bring, and segments assuring us that there is no problem
at all if we just fix a few little things.

•      On April 11th The Financial Times reported that Russian
production is falling and expected to decrease—rather than
increase—rapidly over the next four years.

•      On April 21, Russia ’s giant, Gazprom—for the second time in
less than a year—threatened to shut off Europe’s only major source of
natural gas. Just a month previously, a desperate and hobbled Britain
surrendered its energy sovereignty to the European Union in the hopes
of getting better energy prices at the end of Russia ’s long natural
gas supply line.

•      On April 24th, just a few days ago, during his state visit to
Saudi Arabia , Chinese President Hu Jintao signed a series of accords
in which China , in exchange for a larger portion of Saudi oil exports,
agreed to transfer high-tech weapons and other technologies to the
Saudi monarchy in exchange.

•      At the same moment that George W. Bush has announced that he
will stop refilling the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an
ill-conceived attempt to lower pump prices—a completely shortsighted
and self-serving gesture—China is in negotiations with Saudi Arabia to
begin filling a new one.

•      Climate Change and hurricanes not only continue apace but have
accelerated. Now that we are just weeks away from a new hurricane
season, fully 23% of Gulf of Mexico production remains shut-in after
last year’s hurricanes. Recently the Department of Energy acknowledged
that most of that would never be rebuilt due to high investment costs
at mature and post-mature reservoirs. Aside from the fact that it’s not
cost effective, this is also because of rig shortages. This is what FTW
warned you about almost a year ago. When and if we ever have a chance
to look back we will historically mark Katrina and Rita as the singular
moment in time when a true US economic and military resurgence became
impossible; the moment when the Empire began it’s collapse. In other
words, that was the moment when the Empire passed from decline to
terminal status.

•      On April 4th, Dow Jones’ MarketWatch reported that $6 to $7
gasoline might be coming this summer. Is there anyone in this room
tonight who does not believe that $6-$7 gasoline would be an
unmistakable sign of collapse?

•      And let me add an observation here. I think a good part of this
unseasonable spike in American oil prices is both caused by the switch
out from MTBE to ethanol and a classic political strategy which is to
create a bad problem and then appear to solve it so that people will
accept an otherwise unacceptable solution. This is an election year.
The elections are not for seven months. I for one do NOT think we will
see $6 or $7 gasoline this summer. I think gas prices may reach $4 or
even $5 for a short period, after which the Bush administration (say
sometime between July and September) will again tap the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve and his oil industry base will—they hope—be able to
find a few million barrels to temporarily drive prices down, give
Republicans a desperately-needed electoral boost, and feed another dose
of valium to the increasingly worn out American consumer.

•      But to assume that the current high prices are solely caused by
the MTBE/Ethanol switchover is to miss the fact that Britain is now
experiencing it’s highest-ever gasoline prices averaging more than $8
per gallon or that Japan—according to the news agency Chugoku—has now
reached it’s highest-ever price for diesel fuel at almost $4.00 per
gallon. These countries do not have MTBE rules to be concerned with.
Peak Oil is here.

There is an enormous risk lurking in all this. I mean a potentially
deadly risk.

As the effects of Peak Oil intensify there is less and less wiggle room
on the planet for any miscalculation. Worse, there is less and less
room to recover from or adjust to any “surprises” that might come
along.

SURPRISES

What are some of these possible surprises?

•      Just one more major hurricane

•      A major earthquake in any oil producing region or pipeline
corridor from Russia ’s far east, to Iran , to Alberta

•      Any one of a dozen possible side effects from global warming,
whether from melting tundra that might sink pipelines, to rising sea
levels that might endanger offshore production

•      Civil unrest in any oil-producing region that gets out of
control and damages more infrastructure than can be quickly repaired

•      A decision by Venezuela ’s Hugo Chavez to redirect just 10 or
15% of his US exports to other customers

•      A successful attack on Saudi Arabia ’s Abqaiq terminal

•      Political unrest in our second-largest oil supplier, Mexico

•      Major unrest in the Caspian basin – another region where covert
operations are now probably the second- or third-largest GDP component
for several nations.

As I speak tonight, India is moving to supply MiG 29s to Tajikistan at
the same time that Kyrgyzstan is threatening to revoke permission for
US bases. This is a building vacuum that China , India , Russia and
Pakistan (all nuclear powers) are eager to fill. Add Iran to the list
of nations seeking increased influence in the Caspian Basin.

Another one of many reasons why the US cannot and will not attack Iran
is that—unreported by the major media—the US military has undertaken
quiet but significant military build ups in both West Africa and in the
Caspian. US military personnel have been dispatched to Nigeria and NATO
and the US Navy have begun moving into to the Gulf of Guinea. This is
pulling ever tighter on the already over-stretched rubber band holding
the US military together as it experiences a continuing, unmitigated
and unprecedented defeat in Iraq .

There are many more possible precipitating events that could push the
first dominoes in the chain of collapse. Any one of them could trigger
a massive and sudden descent into chaos that would catch all of us by
surprise. My position is that we cannot afford to be unprepared for
surprises. And it’s probably an event we haven’t thought of that will
ultimately do it. These are only a few possibilities.

--- I agree "that we cannot afford to be unprepared for
surprises", Mike--yet you're totally unprepared (because so
culturebound) for the free-energy surprises which physicists like Adam
Trombly and Brian O'Leary can present to you. How I wish you'd majored
in physics instead of international relations!

THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN AND WORLD ECONOMIES

•      General Motors, as it stands on the brink of bankruptcy, has
announced that it lost $106 billion last year.

•      Ford and Daimler Chrysler are teetering not far behind GM as
Toyota is poised to become the largest auto maker in the world, bigger
in terms of sales than America ’s Big Three combined.

•      As US News told us last December 19th, 800,000 jobs were going
to be cut last winter. The final numbers aren’t in yet, but it looks
like that happened.

•      According to an MS-NBC story dated April 24, “The Housing Bubble
Has Popped” as inventories swell, sales decline, prices soften, lenders
are raising rates and the first signs of panic start to appear. For
those who have followed the housing bubble closely, you know that this
is a global housing bubble and that these trends have become apparent
from the UK, to Australia, to Japan. Along with falling house prices
and a drying up of credit, over-stretched consumers now face very
difficult choices as they are forced to decide between driving, eating,
paying their bills, or having a place to live. This particular collapse
is just beginning and the world economy must follow its lead.

•      New stories are reporting that some Americans are pawning
precious objects for gas money.

•      Consumer debt continues to skyrocket as the US trade deficit
continues to explode.

•      Bankruptcies are at an all-time high.

•      As Reuters told us on April 22, the Finance Ministers of the G7
nations have just announced after their recent meeting in Washington
that the dollar is going into decline.

•      On April 24th, Qatar announced that it will begin diversifying
out of dollars and into Euros.

•      On April 4th, according to Reuters, the Vice Chair of the
Chinese parliament urged that China reduce its holdings of US debt.

•      On February 22, the director of Norway ’s stock exchange
recommended that Norway drop out of the London Petroleum Exchange
(priced in dollars) and open an oil trading bourse priced in Euros.

•      On January 12, Britain ’s Independent announced that Norway had
begun preparations for a global environmental and economic collapse.
The story reported that “ Norway has revealed a plan to build a
‘doomsday vault’ hewn out of an Arctic mountain to store two million
crop seeds in the event of a global disaster. The store is designed to
hold all the seeds representing the world's crops and is being built to
safeguard future food supplies in the event of widespread environmental
collapse.

•      In a sign of pending inflation, the Federal Reserve last month
stopped telling us what the M3 money supply was in a surefire
indication that inflation is on the way. This came conveniently after
further inflationary indicators were hidden by removing the cost of
gasoline and food from the Consumer Price Index.

•      On March 28, Al Jazeera warned that Asia must be prepared for an
imminent dollar collapse.

•      On March 26, India moved to relax all currency controls for the
Rupee. This suggests that India knows a dollar crash is coming and
hopes that the Rupee will enjoy the bounce.

•       China has made another adjustment re-evaluating the Yuan,
accelerating the dollar’s decline.

•      The Asian Development Bank has announced plans to develop a
regional currency index as a preliminary step in the creation of a
Euro-like currency for Asia.

•      The dollar has lost six cents against the Euro in the last six
weeks.

•      Gold, which I have and still devotedly endorse as a safe haven
for either rich or poor, has broken through to highs not seen in 18
years. I had not expected gold to break $600 an ounce until at least
this fall. It happened weeks ago. Notwithstanding the predictable price
corrections that we will see, as a failed and broken system of gold
price suppression loses control, I think the path is now fairly clear
to $800 gold within two years or less.  When Peak Oil becomes
aggressive, within the next five years, I think $1,000 gold is a
certainty. As always, I encourage FTW subscribers and anyone who will
pay attention to continue to invest in gold. To be precise, I encourage
them to invest in physical, tangible, gold bullion or bullion coins
like the Maple Leaf or Krugerand that can be kept close to home and
hearth. Small gold purchases can be made for as little as a few hundred
dollars. All of the struggling FTW subscribers who have made even tiny
purchases have benefited by seeing even their meager investments double
in four years and increase by 50% in value in just the last 18 months.

--- Hey, man, why not give me an ounce of gold in return for the
$500 I gave you a few years ago? Okay? I promise I'll pass it to
someone poorer than myself. Do you plan to eat gold when the going
gets tough?

•      Morgan Stanley’s Stephen Roach – who last year warned of an
economic Armageddon is now warning, “I continue to believe that the
American consumer is the weak link in the global daisy chain. The
combination of rising long-term interest rates and higher oil prices
puts an unmistakable squeeze on discretionary income – the last thing
overly indebted, savings-short US consumers need…”

So why then has the Dow recently reached six-year highs? It’s simple,
and I know that my good friend and colleague, Catherine Austin Fitts
will agree, that the DOW Jones Industrial Average has absolutely
nothing to do with measuring the quality of American life. I am
reminded of one of the most important quotes I have ever obtained for a
story, that of Dutch economist Martin Van Mourik who told the Paris
ASPO Conference in 2003, “It may not be profitable to slow decline.”

Indeed ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the point where every
increase in the Dow will mean that life has actually gotten worse for
Americans and riskier for the world as a whole. I described the endgame
of this irony in one of my favorite essays of all time Globalcorp. As
M. King Hubbert wrote, and as Catherine Austin Fitts teaches, and as I
have said for so long, “Until you change the way money works, you
change nothing.”

--- Why merely "change the way money works", when in fact we can
drop out of it altogether and evolve to hours as a way of quantifying
labor?

It is a shame that much of the Peak Oil movement that understands this
problem is foolishly trying to change the way money works systemically,
instead of trying to change it in the only way that time and
circumstance now permit—individually, locally and regionally. The first
and primary requirement for that to occur is for people to disengage
from the global paradigm.

TWO LEADERS POINTING THE WAY

During my eight-month hiatus from public speaking, I have watched the
Peak Oil movement morph from its general status as a “lunatic fringe”
group to acceptance and even recognition and honor as an “influential
special interest group.” (That’s what they call groups like us on
Capitol Hill and in the mainstream press). Many members of congress,
business leaders, and even the major media listen to us now. To the
organizers of this conference and to all of us who have labored on the
Peak Oil field for years—like Jay Hanson, Richard Duncan, Walter
Youngquist, Ken Deffeyes and Colin Campbell, for decades—there is some
relief in seeing growing public (and even governmental) acknowledgment
of Peak Oil. Of course, most of us have known that all we had to do was
keep breathing in and out for a while and we would be vindicated on the
issue.

--- I'm surprised you're surprised that the Peak Oil so-called
movement has become an "influential special interest group". What did
you expect from a gesture which plays directly into the hands of Big
Oil? Eh?

But now what?

--- Dr. Steven Greer has the best answer to this: "The Disclosure
Project [www.disclosureproject.com], an NGO based in the United States,
has identified several hundred military, intelligence and corporate
witnesses to illegal and extra-constitutional projects that have
suppressed information and prevented public access to technologies
which could provide a definitive replacement for oil, coal, nuclear
power and other conventional energy sources. These technologies have
been both acquired and developed by military and industrial interests
in the US, UK and other countries that have repeatedly lied to or
withheld this information from legally constituted authorities and the
public. This information has the potential to completely transform the
current state of the world in the areas of technology, energy
production, propulsion, the environment and geopolitical issues related
to oil and energy supplies. In short, a sustainable, non-polluting and
affluent civilisation could be created by the wise application of these
technologies, and many of the most pressing crises facing the world
community could have been avoided if it had not been for the deliberate
suppression of such technological knowledge. While “national security
concerns” have been invoked as reasons for such secrecy, in reality the
policy is driven by the resolve to maintain the current “status quo”
based on the pre-eminence of oil and fossil fuels and related special
interests." --- What Dr. Greer is saying here in answer to your
question is that now we should all force the "military and industrial
interests in the US, UK and other countries" to tell us all they know
about these "definitive replacements" so that we no longer have to
accept "the current state of the world." Unfortunately, you merely
wallow in "the current state of the world", Mike. Or possibly you're
some sort of weirdo masochist who prefers "the pre-eminence of oil and
fossil fuels and related special interests" to "a sustainable,
non-polluting and affluent civilisation". Otherwise, please explain
why you so theatrically lament the passing of petroleum from our
poisoned homeplanet scene.

Before I continue, let me stop and acknowledge that the backbone of
this section of my speech tonight was derived from a series of original
From The Wilderness articles published almost a year ago. Our then
Science Editor, Dale Allen Pfeiffer, brought to my attention a
brilliant Russian writer named Dmitry Orlov who—having experienced the
collapse of the Soviet Empire—thought that there might be some lessons
to learn if rational minds compared what looked to be the
ever-more-certain coming collapse of the American Empire. After
listening to Dale and corresponding with Dmitry—who presented here
yesterday with my good friend, and a great Peak Oil leader, Matt
Savinar—I instantly commissioned a three-part series for FTW titled
Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century.

--- It's probably somewhat more helpful to study what Argentinians
did a few years ago during their financial hard times.

That series is probably the single most eloquent and cogent piece of
writing FTW has published in its eight-plus years. And if you are
familiar with FTW writers like Stan Goff, Jamey Hecht, Carolyn Baker,
and Michael Kane you know that’s a heck of a compliment. You can still
read Dmitry’s stories on our site and if you have not, I beg that you
do.

So let me acknowledge right now, that our next important lesson tonight
was first articulated by Dmitry—Dmitry, if you’re here, please stand
up. I’m going to quote Dmitry quite a bit as I add my own observations
and updates about the biggest challenges lying in front of us and how
we might deal with them.

At the start of his series, Dmitry observed that when he started
looking for stories connecting economic collapse to Peak Oil in October
2004 there were 16,300 such documents listed on search engines. Less
than a year later, by April 2005 there were 4,220,000. He pointed out
correctly that the reason why such stories had not been discussed in
the media was attributable to only one cause: denial.

Denial.

--- Yeah, like your Denial when it comes to giving folks a chance
to learn about the best sequels to oil. Why do you keep them in the
dark, Mike? In order to retain maximum attention on yourself rather
than turning the megaphone over to the most lucid scientists? By the
way, I use "megaphone" in the Kierkegaardian sense: a ship is breaking
up in a vicious storm and the cabin boy somehow has the only megaphone
and thus controls the situation despite his breathtaking ignorance.

Let’s take a look at just a few of the most important quotes from
Dmitry’s essays. You really need to read the entire set. And even
though these quotes are clipped from disparate sections, when strung
together they speak for themselves admirably and paint a deeply-moving
picture.

•      “Instead, there is much discussion of policy: what ‘we’ should
do. The ‘we’ in question is presumably some embodiment of the great
American Can-Do Spirit: a brilliantly organized consortium of
government agencies, leading universities, research centers, and major
corporations, all working together toward the goal of providing
plentiful, clean, environmentally safe energy, to fuel another century
of economic expansion. Welcome to the sideshow at the end of the
universe!”

•      “The next circle of denial revolves around what must inevitably
come to pass if the Goddess of Technology were to fail us: a series of
wars over ever-more scarce resources. Paul Roberts, who is very well
informed on the subject of peak oil, has this to say: ‘what desperate
states have always done when resources turn scarce… [is] fight for
them.’ Let us not argue that this has never happened, but did it ever
amount to anything more than a futile gesture of desperation? Wars take
resources, and, when resources are already scarce, fighting wars over
resources becomes a lethal exercise in futility. Those with more
resources would be expected to win. I am not arguing that wars over
resources will not occur. I am suggesting that they will be futile, and
that victory in these conflicts will be barely distinguishable from
defeat. I would also like to suggest that these conflicts would be
self-limiting: modern warfare uses up prodigious amounts of energy, and
if the conflicts are over oil and gas installations, then those
installations will get blown up, as has happened repeatedly in Iraq .
This will result in less energy being available and, consequently, less
warfare.”

•      “While the United States used to have far more goodwill around
the world than the Soviet Union, the ‘evil empire’ gap has narrowed
since the Soviet Union disappeared from the scene. Now, in many
countries around the world, including Western countries like Sweden ,
the United States ranks as a bigger threat to peace than Iran or North
Korea . In the hated-empire race, the United States is now beginning to
look like the champion. Nobody likes a loser, but especially if the
loser is a failed superpower. Nobody had any pity for the poor defunct
Soviet Union; and nobody will have any pity for poor defunct America
either.”

•      “The United States is now facing a current account deficit that
cannot be sustained, a falling currency, and an energy crisis, all at
once. It is now the world's largest debtor nation, and most people do
not see how it can avoid defaulting on its debt. According to a lot of
analysts, it is technically bankrupt, and is being propped up by
foreign reserve banks, which hold a lot of dollar-denominated assets,
and, for the time being, want to protect the value of their reserves.
This game can only go on for so long. Thus, while the Soviet Union
deserves honorable mention for going bankrupt first, the gold in this
category (pun intended) will undoubtedly go to the United States , for
the largest default ever.”

•      “Both countries replaced family farms with unsustainable,
ecologically disastrous industrial agribusiness, addicted to fossil
fuels. The American ones work better, as long as energy is cheap, and,
after that, probably not at all.”

•      I’ll have to paraphrase Dmitry on race and violence. But in that
section he noted that not only was race not an important stress line in
the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were also virtually no firearms
in private hands. His advice for minorities in America was to find
either an ethnically homogeneous community “while the rest would be
well-advised to look for the few communities where inter-ethnic
relations have been cemented through integrated living and
intermarriage, and where the strange and fragile entity that is
multi-ethnic society might have a chance of holding together.”

--- There's absolutely nothing strange about "multi-ethnic
society." What's strange are racism and sectarianism. People have to
be systematically conditioned to them.

•      “Another key difference between the US and the USSR : in the
Soviet Union, nobody owned their place of residence. What this meant is
that the economy could collapse without causing homelessness: just
about everyone went on living in the same place as before. There were
no evictions or foreclosures. Everyone stayed put, and this prevented
society from disintegrating.”

•      “One more difference: the place where they stayed put was
generally accessible by public transportation, which continued to run
during the worst of times. Most of the Soviet-era developments were
centrally planned, and central planners do not like sprawl: it is too
difficult and expensive to service. Few people owned cars, and even
fewer depended on cars for getting around. Even the worst gasoline
shortages resulted in only minor inconveniences for most people…”

•      “Most people in the U.S. cannot survive very long without an
income. This may sound curious to some people—how can anyone, anywhere
survive without an income? Well, in post-collapse Russia, if you didn't
pay rent or utilities—because no-one else was paying them either—and if
you grew or gathered a bit of your own food, and you had some friends
and relatives to help you out, then an income was not a prerequisite
for survival. Most people got by, somehow.”

•      “A collapsing economy is especially hard on those who are
accustomed to prompt, courteous service. In the Soviet Union, most
official service was rude and slow, and involved standing in long
lines. Many of the products that were in short supply could not be
obtained even in this manner, and required something called blat:
special, unofficial access or favor. The exchange of personal favors
was far more important to the actual functioning of the economy than
the exchange of money. To Russians, blat is almost a sacred thing: a
vital part of culture that holds society together. It is also the only
part of the economy that is collapse-proof, and, as such, a valuable
cultural adaptation.”

•      And finally, Dmitry wrote, “In all, I expect drugs and alcohol
to become one of the largest short-term post-collapse entrepreneurial
opportunities in the United States , along with asset stripping, and
security.”

--- What does Dmitry mean by "drugs", Mike? I sure hope he
doesn't mean LSD or mescaline or psilocybin because these will be
valuable tools (along with various yogas) when folks finally recognize
the need for a "transfer of prime human attention from objects to
states of mind". It's important that the making and distributing of
them not fall into the hands of scoundrelous profit-seeking
entrepreneurs (e.g., the CIA).

As Dmitry wrote in his series, the collapse of Empires, as with Rome,
has in the past sometimes taken centuries. In the case of the Mayans it
happened in a much shorter period. But Dmitry was quick to observe that
the first stages of collapse are often the most dislocative, painful,
and demanding because that’s when the first psychological and physical
shocks hit hardest. And I would argue—along with the likes of Joseph
Tainter—that the collapse of modern, highly-complex empires is both
accelerated and far more aggravated than what happened 1600 years ago
in Rome.

The Soviet Empire collapsed and disappeared in less than four years and
the devastation for the Russian people was both profound and deadly. I
have been to Russia and I will never forget a little piece of Russian
humor left over from the siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in the
Second World War. I told my Russian hosts that I wanted to get a little
outside of the cosmopolitan center of Moscow and see some “real Russia
”.

The first thing they said was, “If you go into a restaurant, don’t
order chicken.”

I hesitated and then asked, “Why?”

“Because”, they said, “ever since the Germans laid siege to Leningrad,
chicken is what we have called it when we had to eat our comrades to
stay alive and in the fight. In some parts of Russia one is still never
sure.”

Do we dare assume that Americans are special and somehow exempt from
all the vicissitudes that have befallen every other collapse of empire
in history?

For those of you who chided me last year for predicting an American
economic collapse this last winter, which some argue—in spite of this
evidence—failed to materialize, let me point out that—and we will talk
about it tonight—there are strong signs that collapse has already
begun. I never said the collapse would be over last winter, I only said
that it would begin. That collapse will most certainly be here—in
emerging bloom and for all to see—this summer. No one will remain
unaffected by it. Whenever it ends, it is not going to end prettily.

When one is preoccupied with survival, anything beyond survival becomes
an imponderable luxury. And to mistakenly label a luxury a necessity
makes it impossible to survive. The Peak Oil movement needs to ask
itself now: what are its necessities and what are its luxuries? There
is precious little room for error now. These decisions will be hard but
they must be made.

If some Latin scholar had predicted the day that the barbarians would
sack, loot, and occupy Rome and missed it by only four months, he or
she today would be regarded as a prophet. I am content tonight, to just
be the same asshole many of you have come to know and love—or hate—over
the years. I’m just doing my job as I see it needs to be done. That is
all I have ever done.

POST CARBON

And now we come to the second man I would like to honor tonight, Julian
Darley of Global Public Media and the Post Carbon Institute.

Put simply, the Post Carbon Institute’s mission is to save lives. Put a
little more succinctly, the Post Carbon Institute’s mission is to work
with local groups around North America and the world to facilitate
their construction of their own lifeboats, specifically tailored to the
strengths and weaknesses faced by each unique locale that presents
itself for help.

To facilitate this, the Post Carbon Institute has adopted a unique
approach. Rather than dictate top-down policies or provide
cookie-cutter solutions which may or may not prove helpful as collapse
accelerates, the Institute facilitates relocalization by insisting that
each Post-Carbon “outpost,” as it calls them, operate autonomously
while receiving only guidance, support, and updated information and
news from the Institute itself. Each outpost then has only one mission,
to focus on immediate improvements to its community such as, but
certainly not limited to: local farming, car sharing, local currencies
and event organization. As Julian puts it, “the stakes are the survival
of this project we call civilization.”

Since beginning its work in the second half of 2003, the Post Carbon
Institute has fostered the creation of more than 90 local groups all
over the US and Canada, as well as in the UK, Australia, Sweden and
even Yemen. It has grown explosively as small, aware groups of citizens
have seen the wisdom of Julian’s approach which begins with one of the
first rules in any survival situation: Let the people on the ground
make the decisions according to their own judgment, in their own place.

Instead of 90 Post Carbon groups around the world there should be
9,000. These are the kinds of numbers we need to see if we are to
really make a difference in helping to decide who eats and stays warm,
who lives and who dies.

If you have not yet visited the Post Carbon web site, you must.

--- Okay, I just returned from Julian's site. It's
disappointing--though well-intentioned, of course. For example, he
says "the development of Post Carbon Institute came out of concern for
the environmental, social, political and economic ramifications of
global over-reliance on cheap energy" when in fact if we follow the
suggestions of the most lucid scientists (who are risking their lives
for us) there'll be so much cheap energy it won't make any difference
how reliant we are on it. His trip seems culture-bound to me. He
hasn't yet liberated himself from the straitjacket of Newtonian
physics. (Neither has your hero Heinberg.) Thus he keeps referring to
"an energy constrained world." We have to live in an
energy-constrained world only if we don't understand what's available
as replacements for oil.

If this conference has motivated you to start preparing for the
challenges that lie ahead, you need to begin by accepting the head
start that the Post Carbon Institute has given you. Richard
Heinberg—another great hero of this movement—has said, “The Post Carbon
Institute is clearly the first medic on the scene—the first organized
response to Peak Oil.”

--- One reason Heinberg's no hero is because thus far he's
totally complicit with BushJunta/FourthReich efforts to prevent us from
learning about energy modes which would make oil unnecessary long
before there's a shortage of it. His silence about this aids and abets
their secrecy. He feeds us only the more conventional modes of
alternate energy. Another reason he's no hero is he's still willing to
publish his books on the precious flesh of our vanishing brother/sister
trees rather than switching to hemp or kenaf or agriculture residue.
In fact, this is true of all your favorite colleagues, Mike. All of
them still publish their books on the precious flesh of our vanishing
brother/sister trees. Authwhores! Back in '70 I refused to allow
Herder & Herder to publish my Earth Read-Out news service in book form
(though they were sure urging me to) because they were unwilling or
unable to tell me how many brother/sister trees would be screamingly
sacrificed to the first printing. Yeah!

About a year and a half ago, seeing what was coming, I looked around
and saw a crying need for someone to take the lead on this challenge.
Before that, my expertise and that of From the Wilderness had been
geopolitical and economic analysis. I had precious little experience or
training on issues of sustainability, agriculture, water, alternative
construction, and all the other things we need to learn.

--- I've been paying attention to "sustainability, agriculture,
water, alternative construction" since '69, Mike. In '69-'70 my Earth
Read-Out news service, which appeared as a column in a couple dozen
newspapers, introduced these issues to thousands of people. Similarly,
the sorts of stuff Julian's now dealing with were introduced to the US
public in '70 by Judy Berg, Peter Berg, Judith Lampe and me; our label
wasn't Post Carbon but rather Bioregionalism. Have you noticed that in
crude societies like the US it's brash newcomers like yourself who get
all the attention while originators like us are obscure? It's worth
thinking about. While all the cameras are focused on the brash
newcomer, the originator gets to slip quietly into the crowd, then can
emerge later to originate the next number. By a factor of two or three
I've founded or co-founded more movements or sub-movements than anyone
else in homeplanet history.

Nevertheless I was willing to take FTW and my writings in that
direction even though I knew that there had to be others far more
capable than I was. I am happy to report to you tonight that I and FTW
no longer need to go in that direction. An expert—and I know Julian
will protest that label—has arrived and this has made a huge difference
for us. It is now vastly more effective for me and FTW to say that on
the key issues of relocalization, downsizing and sustainability, we
encourage everyone to look to the Post Carbon Institute for guidance
and leadership. Julian has invented that wheel for us. We only need a
few more and we can make a wagon to take us down survival’s path.

--- Julian's notions of relocalization and downsizing may be quite
good--but for sure his approach to sustainability is too conventional.
For guidance and leadership in this critically important category we
should look not to him but to Brian O'Leary, Adam Trombly and a few
other exemplary scientists.
Brian soon will open an Institute for Peace and Sustainability. Here
are excerpts from a recent email from him: "I have posted and written
my critiques about the hydrogen economy in Re-Inheriting the Earth and
on www.newenergymovement.org and www.brianoleary.com . . . Basically,
fuel cells are much too expensive to be practical. . . And hydrogen
combustion suffers from the requirement that it takes more energy to
produce than you get out of it. Hydrogen is therefore useful only as
an energy carrier and not an energy source. This is basic physics
which has been so hacked up by those with exclusive access to the
media. There are so many more promising technologies on the horizon,
if only they be debated and developed as true options for the future. .
. Big biz and Bush would love to transition to a nuke-biofuel-hydrogen
fuel cell economy... there's big bucks in this, but not practical for
widespread use. . . I think I mentioned that BBC approached me to give
an interview about new energy (vacuum, zero-point, cold fusion,
advanced hydrogen, sonoluminescence, etc.). I accepted. A day or two
before the interview, they cancelled it and announced that they would
cover only nuclear "hot" fusion, the ongoing multibilliondollar Tokomak
boondoggle. Clearly the executive producer said "no" to our interview,
and not the first time that's happened to me. I chastised them--but
with no access, what good did it do?" --- So hey, Mike, what about
arranging for Brian to have a media niche so folks have a chance to
learn what he suggests? Yes, press relations for him would be a superb
use of your time and also Julian's/Catherine's/Heinberg's time. Brian
is a former astronaut, Cornell astronomy prof and Princeton physics
prof--so he shouldn't be hard to so-called sell. He's also a founder
of the New Energy Movement. By the way, doesn't sonoluminescence sound
trippy?

As a result, I and FTW are free to return to what we do best:
geopolitical and macro-economic analysis. Since our recent move to
Ashland, Oregon, we have hired three new staff. We have increased our
production of original stories by more than 50% and we plan on doubling
our output within the next four months. In this way FTW can work as a
strategic partner with the Post Carbon Institute and all of the other
great groups that have come here to New York to provide what no one
else can: an early warning system and the kind of analysis that will
identify hot spots, key issues, trends, and pending crises far enough
ahead so that each locality can prioritize its own efforts according to
its own needs in light of a rapidly changing global map.

This is the way in which those who see Peak Oil for what it is can
plan, prepare, and respond as needs dictate. This is the way in which
true leadership, whether it be visionary and analytical as is the case
with Dimity Orlov, or organizational and educational as with Julian
Darley, can make a difference. This is the living embodiment of
Catherine Austin Fitts’ maxim that “No one is as smart as all of us.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to present to you my good friend, a
man who I respect and admire, Mr. Julian Darley.

CONCLUSION

A well-known Peak Oil activist has already moved into a post-oil
paradigm. He has no car. He has no cell phone. He travels only by train
to avoid leaving a large energy footprint. Yet at the same time he
tries to organize conferences around the country, leaving people who
depend on quick responses and decision making to operate at levels not
seen since the 1940s or 50s.

Does anyone here believe that Dick Cheney or Hillary Clinton or Fed
Chairman Ben Bernanke or any of the world’s business leaders are making
such self-sabotaging choices now? They may have to, someday. But for
now they are taking every possible advantage, using whatever energy is
needed, to prepare and position themselves to stay ahead of what are
now certain coming events.

I hate to say it, but perhaps we should take a lesson from our enemies
here.

Let us not forget that in order to get to the Post-carbon world that is
inevitable we must first survive the collapse and the die off that is
inevitable. The challenges of the transition period will be completely
different from the challenges of living in a world without cheap
energy.

--- Hey, man, why not tell folks about all the cheap energy
readily available instead of scaring them this way? The die-off is
inevitable only in the sense of self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is the almost complete failure of the Peak Oil movement in the
United States—and around the world—to grasp, ponder or even acknowledge
these transitions that are pointing to a needed evolution in our
approach to education, research, networking, and organizing.
Psychologically it is always easier to plan along the lines of a single
challenge rather than to try to prepare for chaos on a fluid,
multi-dimensional field where serious challenges may be completely
different from one day to the next. But the easiest path is not always
the best choice.

The maxim that I live by is that what we need today, right now, is not
a plan, but options. Plans do not bend well. They tend to break. And
with breaks in plans come break downs in function. The only plan that I
live by today—the only plan that I recommend to our subscribers—is to
increase one’s options as much as possible and to selectively choose
those options based upon what is happening in the world now and what
those developments might mean for the future.

--- "What is happening in the world now" is the suppression of
cheap energy options and what those options "might mean for the
future".

I would submit to you tonight that perhaps a more important question
that needs to be answered first is: “How do we get from a civilization
where collapse and dislocation is just beginning to a place where we
can prepare to transition away from oil and gas when the time is
appropriate”?

John Lennon once wrote that “Life is what happens to you while you were
busy making other plans.” This movement needs to reflect on that.

A dear friend of mine, Dr. Faiz Khan, once said that a paradigm is what
you think about something before you think about it.

If the global economic paradigm that we live under dictates infinite
growth, then we must disengage individually and by community from that
paradigm.

If the activist paradigm that we live under says that we must slow down
the process of reform and planning to make room for all and offend no
one, no matter how much they may slow down or confuse the process, then
we must disengage from that paradigm. This is no longer about
protracted—and almost always ineffective—social change. This is about
survival. I refuse to die, and I refuse to encourage anyone else to
risk death or to slow down for or argue with people who are either
incapable of understanding, too lazy to do the necessary homework, or
too tightly wedded to old ideas.

Are these old ideas and cherished values and principles now luxuries or
necessities? We will each make our own decisions, and in a world that
will give us near instantaneous feedback. We will suffer or prosper, we
will stop or continue, we will live and die accordingly.

Buddhist philosophy teaches us that life is suffering. It is amazing
how much joy and liberation can be achieved from that viewpoint. It has
to do with lowering expectations so that little pieces of joy and cause
for celebration are more accessible to our hearts and minds.

--- Not much "joy and liberation can be achieved from that
viewpoint", Mike. We must first overcome the cravings which cause the
suffering. In your case this mainly means overcoming your craving for
fame, your craving to extend knowledge of your individual name
(including even your middle initial) into every nook and cranny, every
kook and granny. What's needed most of all is to go beyond all
viewpoints and into a daily yogic practice. This way, we can be elated
almost all the time. Trust me on this one, baby: I've been a Buddhist
yogin for more than 36 years now and have taught a mantric yoga in
Bolivia, Ecuador, England, India, Indonesia, Japan, Nepal, Thailand and
the US.

Judeo-Christianity, as practiced in America, tends to make us all
believe that if we are spiritually and morally correct, we will be
rewarded with abundance. As Dmitry Orlov observed, Christianity in
other parts of the world teaches that the path to salvation and
redemption lies through suffering and denial. Which is it then?

If the spiritual or religious paradigm that you live under influences
your thinking in either direction, then that paradigm is your enemy and
my enemy. What is it that you think about before you think? Find it,
identify it, and discard anything that is not a survival necessity.

--- It doesn't make any difference what we think about before we
think, Mike. What we need to do is gradually increase our neural
stamina via a daily yogic practice so that when our worst fears unfold
right in front of our faces, we can handle them without being
distracted even slightly from our goals.

The only thing that the universe is offering the human species now is
the opportunity to change—to evolve…or to perish.

--- This is so anthropocentric that it's a bit puerile, Mike.
What "the universe is offering the human species now" is exactly the
same as at any other point on the circle of time--"past" or "future".

Perhaps there is a new understanding of God awaiting those who survive.
I have long held the personal belief that religion is for people who
are afraid of going to Hell and that true spirituality is for those who
have already been there.

--- One needn't experience so-called Hell in order to obtain "true
spirituality," Mike. Where do you get these beliefs? Do lots of cops
think this way?

What I do know, because I have faced many survival challenges in my
life, is that the less baggage one takes into any survival situation,
the more likely one is to survive.

--- Indeed. Back in '69 Gary Snyder suggested an effective
survival lifestyle would be nomadic hunting-and-gathering on the
periphery of the US Great Basin because your life would depend on what
you know about your locale and no one could steal what's inside your
head.

Perhaps this philosophy is best summed up by one of my favorite quotes
of all time. In his classic science fiction novel Dune, Frank Herbert
wrote:

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind killer.

Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

When the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

--- It is a monumental irony that you conclude with this Herbert
quote, Mike, because the net impact of almost everything you've said is
to raise fear-levels higher and higher--when in fact you could have
reconfidenced folks by giving them a taste of what's available as
sequels to oil.

========================================================================
================================================
 
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 20
From: "Bugs" brawny@twlakes.net
Date: Tue May 9, 2006 5:54am(PDT)
Subject: Truth

Another Possible Bump to the Debt Ceiling

By Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray
Tuesday, May 9, 2006; Page A21

A $2.7 trillion budget plan pending before the House would raise the federal debt ceiling to nearly $10 trillion, less than two months after Congress last raised the federal government's borrowing limit.

The provision -- buried on page 121 of the 151-page budget blueprint -- serves as a backdrop to congressional action this week. House leaders hope to try once again to pass a budget plan for fiscal 2007, a month after a revolt by House Republican moderates and Appropriations Committee members forced leaders to pull the plan.

Politics Trivia
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, nominated to head the CIA, is a fan of which NFL football team?

Redskins
Steelers
Raiders
Giants


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Leaders also hope to pass a package of tax-cut extensions that would cost the Treasury $70 billion over the next five years. They would then turn Thursday to a $513 billion defense policy bill that would block President Bush's request to raise health-care fees and co-payments for service members and their families.

In recent days, Congress has received some good news on the budget front. A surge of tax revenues this spring, sparked by economic growth, prompted the Congressional Budget Office last Thursday to revise its 2006 deficit forecast from around $370 billion to as low as $300 billion.

But the federal debt keeps climbing because of continued deficit spending and the government's insatiable borrowing from the Social Security trust fund.

With passage of the budget, the House will have raised the federal borrowing limit by an additional $653 billion, to $9.62 trillion. It would be the fifth debt-ceiling increase in recent years, after boosts of $450 billion in 2002, a record $984 billion in 2003, $800 billion in 2004 and $653 billion in March. When Bush took office, the statutory borrowing limit stood at $5.95 trillion.

Democrats will harp on those statistics not only in the budget debate but also when the House takes up tax legislation expected to finally emerge from House-Senate negotiations today. The legislation would extend for two years the deep cuts to tax rates on dividends and capital gains that Congress approved in 2003. It would also slow for one year the expansion of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax system designed to hit the affluent but increasingly pinching the middle class.

Although the debate will be rancorous, the tax measure is expected to pass by a comfortable margin. The budget vote will be closer. House leaders had to pull the budget plan from the floor in April, after moderate Republicans balked at planned cuts to health and education programs and appropriators objected to limits on home district pet projects -- known as earmarks -- and a provision that would limit emergency spending for natural disasters to about $4.3 billion a year.

Appropriators have come on board, Appropriations Committee spokesman John Scofield said. GOP leaders and committee chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) tried to win moderate support last week by cutting $4 billion from the president's defense spending request and adding that money to labor, health and education programs. But some moderates are still holding out.

"I expect they do not have the votes right now," said Rep. Michael N. Castle (R-Del.), a leader of the balking moderates. "Could they get the votes by the end of the week? I'd give it a 50-50 chance."

GOP Health-Care Redux

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's "health week" in the Senate, but don't expect any big policy cures.

Republicans are seeking to pass legislation that would restrict malpractice awards and encourage insurance pools among small businesses. The three bills are GOP perennials that in the past have met with staunch opposition by Democrats and interest groups.

Given the high stakes of the midterm election year, the prospects this week don't look any brighter. Two of the bills, both aimed at limiting medical malpractice jury awards, stalled in the Senate last night after failing to gain enough votes to overcome Democratic-led procedural hurdles.

The first measure, sponsored by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), would allow up to $750,000 for non-economic damages and unlimited economic damages. A patient could recover up to $250,000 from a health-care provider and up to two health-care institutions each for a total of $750,000.

The bill also would guarantee timely resolution of claims by mandating that health-care lawsuits are filed within three years of the date of injury, establish standards for expert witnesses and limit attorneys' fees.

The second measure would target lawsuits against obstetric and gynecological providers and was sponsored by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), whose wife won $175,000 in damages in a malpractice case against a chiropractor.

Democrats mocked the bills as a gimmick designed to rally conservative voters and appease doctors and insurance companies. "This is not a serious attempt," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

The third bill up this week, offered by Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), would allow business and trade associations to band their members together and offer group health coverage on a national or regional basis. Opponents warn that it would set the "barest of bare bones standards for benefits," as one Democratic press release put it, undercutting requirements to cover cancer screening, well-baby care, immunization, access to specialists and other services.

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----- Original Message -----
From: Alfons
To: v911t@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, May 09, 2006 5:17 AM
Subject: [v911t] Veterans for 911 Truth meeting at Paltalk

Veterans for 911 Truth meeting at Paltalk:
The room will be called Veterans for 911 Truth - It will be in the
Adult - Social Issues and Politics - Government and Politics - if you
add me to your pal list (alfonslof_1) private message me and I can
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can't make it don't worry, we will have them once a week. Get Paltalk
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Message 21
From: "Eva Walker" cowgirl269704@msn.com
Date: Tue May 9, 2006 6:53am(PDT)
Subject: FW: Re: [TheEnlightenedSouls] Will you send this on??

I'm forwarding this also for the Canadian soldiers.Lots of LOVE,HEALING
and LIGHT.
From: "Sharon Wheeler" <frodoskid@btopenworld.com> Reply-To:
TheEnlightenedSouls@yahoogroups.com To:
<TheEnlightenedSouls@yahoogroups.com> Subject: Re: [TheEnlightenedSouls]
Will you send this on?? Date: Tue, 9 May 2006 12:41:50 +0100 (GMT
Standard Time)
Please could you also add the British forces that are in these terrible
places as well. A close friend of mines son is in Afghanistan at the
moment and has just been told his leave has been canceled and has to
stay there longer. We are all praying here for him and all the other
service men and women around the world and their families .
Love and Light
-------Original Message-------
From: Deb
Date: 05/09/06 00:37:43
To: truckershaven ; TheEnlightenedSouls ; Rev. Randy L Cook ; Pastor
Shavor ; funwithrecipesandfriends
Subject: [TheEnlightenedSouls] Will you send this on??
Prayer Request I understand the weather in Iraq is very difficult to
bear right now. Our troops need our prayers for strength, endurance and
safety. I am sorry but I am not breaking this one. Send this on after a
short prayer; please don't break it: "Lord, hold our troops in your
loving hands. Protect them as they protect us. Bless them and their
families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need.
I ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen." When you
receive this, please stop for a moment and say a prayer for our troops
around the world. There's nothing attached; just send this to all in
your address book. Do not let it stop with you, please - of all the
gifts
you could give a US Soldier, Sailor, Airman, or Marine deployed in
harm's way, prayer is the very best!!! Thank you.
Terry's Creation 2005
tut: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EKD_Tutorials/?yguid=178515273
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Message 22
From: "reggie501" reggie501@optonline.net
Date: Tue May 9, 2006 7:44am(PDT)
Subject: 9/11 Update - 5/9

9/11 News : http://www.tvnewslies.org/news/#911

· Moussaoui Withdraws Guilty Plea - Convicted Sept. 11 conspirator
Zacarias Moussaoui says he lied on the witness stand about being
involved in the plot and wants to withdraw his guilty plea because he
now believes he can get a fair trial.

· How 911 Really Happened - Some time after the Project for the New
American Century (PNAC) composed their manifesto, referring to a "New
Pearl Harbor" attack on America, an ultra-secret group of powerful
government insiders outlined a series of plans that would attempt to
fulfill every facet of their agenda.

· Reynolds: "Come Out of the White House with Your Hands Up!" -
Reynolds indicted Richard Cheney, George W. Bush, former Joint Chiefs
Chairman Richard Meyers, confessed WTC demolisher and
insurance-fraudster Larry Silverstein, and others for mass murder,
conspiracy, and other charges including high treason.

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