http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/columnists/jim_kuhnhenn/12853833.htm


Informant: John Calvert

http://www.slate.com/id/2127378/?nav=fo


© Virginia Metze

by DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: October 4, 2005
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 - The White House scrambled on Monday to prevent conservative opposition to the president's choice of the White House counsel Harriet E. Miers as his next Supreme Court nominee.

Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, started calling influential social conservatives to reassure them about the pick even before it was announced. He called James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, over the weekend, and Richard Land, a top public policy official of the Southern Baptist Convention on Monday morning, said several people briefed on the calls. Paul Weyrich, the veteran conservative organizer, said Ed Gillespie, the former Republican Party chairman lobbying for confirmation, called at 7:10 a.m. to tell him the news.

In each call and in a series of teleconferences throughout the day, representatives of the White House promised their conservative supporters that as White House counsel, Ms. Miers had played a central role in picking the many exemplars of conservatism among Mr. Bush's previous nominees. [...] Read it all at http://tinyurl.com/8fyd9


© Virginia Metze

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1544.htm


© Virginia Metze

by M.E. Sprengelmeyer,
Rocky Mountain News
October 1, 2005

WASHINGTON - Saying President Bush "sometimes acts like a king," Sen. Ken Salazar warned Friday that he would oppose Bush's next Supreme Court pick if it's one of two controversial judges or someone else he considers an unqualified ideologue.

During a conference call with reporters, Salazar said he would oppose Janice Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owen, two U.S. circuit court judges the U.S. Senate recently installed on the bench after a blistering confirmation process.

Salazar also called for more advance consultation before the president makes a nomination to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. [...] Read it all at the Rocky Mountain News: http://tinyurl.com/dso6n


© Virginia Metze

Sirotablog
Working for Change web site
September 29, 2005

According to this letter published in Vermont's Rutland Herald,

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050929/NEWS/509290320/1037

the national Republican Party has already started the shady and ethically-questionable practice of push polling in the 2006 U.S. Senate race.

Specifically, Vermonter Tony Gordon reports receiving a call from a out-of-state call center in Nebraska. The caller asked "While it is fine to have a gadfly like [Senate candidate] Bernie Sanders in the House, since Vermont is such a small state, we must have real leadership in the Senate. Do you agree or disagree?" Clearly, as Gordon notes, the question was deliberately phrased to guarantee a desired result and spread misleading information about Congressman Sanders - not to guage actual public opinion. [...] Read the rest at: http://tinyurl.com/cqqdy


© Virginia Metze

BLOG | Posted 09/30/2005 @ 12:14am
John Nichols
The Online Beat

In Washington, where it is exceeding difficult to get the political players or the press corps to pay attention to more than one story at once, no one would suggest that it was "smart politics" to deliver a major address on the day that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay being forced to step aside after being indicted on criminal conspiracy charges.

But sometimes the work of Washington involves more than political games.

Sometimes it involves life and death questions of national policy. And it is particularly frustrating in such moments to see vital statements about the nation's future get lost in the rush to discuss the scandal du jour. To be sure, the well-deserved indictment of DeLay merited the attention it received. But the indictment of President Bush's "stay-the-course" approach with regard to the Iraq War, which was delivered on the same day by U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, should have gotten a lot more attention than it did. [...] Read the rest at: http://tinyurl.com/bxcbs


© Virginia Metze

Randall Robinson Interview

All the suffering in the world arises out of wanting happiness for self.

All the happiness in the world arises out of wanting happiness for others.

--Shantideva


RANDALL ROBINSON SAYS NO MORE IN INTERVIEW WITH THE PROGRESSIVE

PROMINENT AFRICAN AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL MOVES HIS FAMILY OUT OF USA BECAUSE HE IS FED UP

read entire interview at http://progressive.org/mag_intv1005

"... I was really worn down by an American society that is racist, smugly blind to it, and hugely self-satisfied.

I wanted to live in a place where that wasn’t always a distorting weight.

Black people in America have to, for their own protection, develop a defense mechanism, and I just grew terribly tired of it.

When you sustain that kind of affront, and sustain it and sustain it and sustain it, something happens to you.

You try to steer a course in American society that’s not self-destructive.

But America is a country that inflicts injury.

It does not like to see anything that comes in response, and accuses one of anger as if it were an unnatural response.

For anyone who is not white in America, the affronts are virtually across the board.

When we lived here, we accommodated ourselves to the most extraordinary things. I just didn’t think that was the way to live. I wanted to be in another place.

I got a chance to be in a society where the barriers between classes— social and economic—are not insuperable, where money is not everything all the time.

Americans have been manipulated into a space by those who profit from the arrangements of that system.

People feel a conscious disease—a dis-ease or an unease— but I don’t think they know what causes it.

We’ve been taught in America that big is best.

That’s why people have to believe that they must live in the greatest country in the world, which is absolutely idiotic."


Informant: Hopedance

Earth Headed for Global Warming Catastrophe
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1040575/

Climate change warning - this time it's personal
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1025814/

Asia-Pacific 'to Face More Disease' as Planet Warms
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1036010/

Melting Planet: Species are Dying Out Faster Than We Have Dared Recognize
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1025194/

Petrocollapse for change of culture
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1036017/

Climate Change and Pollution are Killing Millions
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1039461/

Beam microwave energy from a satellite
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1030215/

AMAZON DRIES OUT AS WORST EVER DROUGHT HITS RAINFOREST
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1027612/

Kimberly-Clark is clear-cutting ancient forests to make Kleenex and toilet paper
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1034805/

November 3rd has been called as an International Day of Action for the Boreal Forest
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1029659/

Roundup Ready Sudden Death, Superweeds, Allergens
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1027621/

GM crops for Africa? No Thanks!
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1030779/

Vote USA 2004
http://omega.twoday.net/topics/Vote+USA+2004/

Iraq War
http://omega.twoday.net/topics/Irak-Krieg/

Is Iran next?
http://omega.twoday.net/topics/Is+Iran+next

Tsunami
http://omega.twoday.net/topics/Tsunami/

RFID
http://omega.twoday.net/topics/RFID/

EMF-Omega-News 8. October 2005
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1041523/

Scientists gave evidence that the exposure to a pulsed 1800 MHz RF at a low level can lead to DNA breaks - Scientifiques ont prouvé que l’exposition à un rayonnement pulsé radio téléphonie de 1800MHz de bas niveau peut provoquer des dommages et des ruptures d’ADN
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1030295/

The cozy relationship between the WHO and the electric utility industry
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1023935/

Testimony of Michael Repacholi
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1031477/

First Evidence Of Brain Abnormalities Found In Pathological Liars
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1031655/

Court victory is a first for cell-phone programmers
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1033412/

EMF RAPID Interagency Committee Report has never been presented to Congress (Update)
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/889329/

A meeting with the UK Solicitor General
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1024336/

THE THREAT OF INFORMATION, ELECTROMAGNETIC, AND PSYCHOTRONIC WARFARE
http://mindcontrol.twoday.net/stories/1025757/

Phone mast protest is spelt out
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1025148/

Joy as phone mast plan sunk
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1025955/

5th installment of the Canadian SWEEP Initiative e-bulletin
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1027557/

6th installment of the Canadian SWEEP Initiative e-bulletin
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1030746/

Victory for campaigners as mobile giant puts 48ft phone mast plan on hold
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1028316/

Residents issue mast warning
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1029646/

Cellular Discontent
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1030476/

GOVERNORS RESIST SCHOOL MAST PLAN
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1032710/

MAST PROTESTERS WIN COUNCILLORS' BACKING
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1034204/

Grandma's fury at mast site bid
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1035661/

Anti-mast demo vows to fight on
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1036412/

CEMETERY PHONE MAST TO BE DELAYED?
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1036422/

Telecoms giant reconsiders mast site
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1036431/

Dad’s mast concerns
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1037037/

PARENTS BATTLE TO TOPPLE MAST PLAN
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1038782/

Mast concerns
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1038796/

Mast plan is thrown out
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1038803/

Mast challenge in site
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1038816/

PHONE GIANTS TAKE OVER
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1038830/

Siting of Orange Telecommunication Mast, Avon Ring Road, Bromley Heath.
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1039688/

Terrible technology: White boards fill the classroom with pulsing microwaves
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1040526/

Battle renewed over phone mast
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1040533/

Danes have gone scared of liability over health damage claims of UMTS3G masts
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1039695/

Israël Mécontentement Cellulaire: Le Rapport de Jérusalem
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1031758/

Exploiting Open Functionality in SMSCapable Cellular Networks
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1034697/

Text Hackers Could Jam Cellphones
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/technology/05phone.html

Beam microwave energy from a satellite
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1030215/

Welcome to the website of ARA - Association Romande pour la non-prolifération d'Antennes de téléphonie mobile
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1031443/

Téléphones portables: des risques sous-évalués
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1027632/

Lettre ouverte des Médecins Allemands
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1033656/

Mesures officielles de Contrôle du rayonnement des antennes relais de la macro-station de téléphonie mobile d’Orange à CREST
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1037657/

News from Mast Sanity
http://tinyurl.com/aotw3

Congressional auditors concluded last week that the Education Department engaged in illegal "covert propaganda" by hiring Armstrong Williams to endorse the No Child Left Behind Act without requiring him to disclose he was paid.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/100705M.shtml

Amanda Griscom Little interviews Richard Cizik, a pro-Bush but eco-conscious evangelical who's launching a crusade against global warming.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/100705G.shtml

Democrats accused President George W. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress of an "information blackout" to keep the public in the dark about recent military and political setbacks in Iraq.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/100705F.shtml

The White House moved to contain a continuing revolt among conservatives on Thursday over President George W. Bush's selection of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, with some conservatives saying that Miers could withdraw.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/100705D.shtml

Lawmakers from both parties sharply questioned nearly every aspect of the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina yesterday, focusing their discontent on suspect contracts and eliciting a pledge that hundreds of millions of dollars in deals awarded with no competition would soon be put up for bid.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/100705C.shtml

Five weeks after the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, about half a million people are still without permanent housing, the acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/100705B.shtml

The ranking Democrats on three House committees called Thursday for an outside investigator to determine why a prosecutor in Guam was demoted in 2002 after opening a criminal investigation of Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist now at the center of a federal corruption investigation.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/100705A.shtml

Dang Thuy Tram was only 27 when she died fighting US troops at a field hospital in Quang Ngai province during the Vietnam war. Now, four decades later, her diary has become a publishing sensation both in America and in her homeland.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article317801.ece


From Information Clearing House

David Safavian, former chief of White House procurement policy, was indicted yesterday on five counts of lying about his dealings with former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and impeding a Senate investigation of him.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002542758_ndig06.html


From Information Clearing House

by David Lawder

Leaders of a Senate committee including its Republican head bluntly accused the Bush administration on Thursday of sabotaging a bill to provide Medicaid health assistance for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

http://tinyurl.com/8hgqb


From Information Clearing House

Lord Steyn and Lord Lloyd of Berwick said the plans were "intolerable" and "a little like internment", and probably unlawful.

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2054812005


From Information Clearing House

In statement, secretary of state says ElBaradei deserves Nobel.
http://tinyurl.com/cd957


From Information Clearing House

Huge change in Iraq:

For the first time I believe we have lost. For the first time as a military professional I think we have no way of winning this. We are willing to destroy the basic structures of the country to deny the enemy their use.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/6/231049/886


From Information Clearing House

In Pictures: http://tinyurl.com/due3z


From Information Clearing House

http://aliberaldose.blogspot.com/2005/10/what-200-billion-dollars-4-billion.html


From Information Clearing House

The paper by the Congressional Research Service underscores how the price tag has been gradually rising for the war in Iraq. A year ago, the Pentagon was calculating its average monthly costs in that conflict at below $5 billion — an amount the research service says has now grown close to $6 billion.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10551.htm

President told Palestinians God also talked to him about Middle East peace

By Ewen MacAskill

George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10554.htm

by Sheila Samples

The miserly response to Katrina should serve as a wake-up call to those Americans who can still think. Fascism is on the march and, when this administration threw down the gauntlet in New Orleans, it declared open war on this nation's poorer citizens.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10550.htm

THE UNSPOKEN DIMENSIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN
(MIT Press, 2003; 226pp)

by Shierry Weber Nicholsen

I picked this book up because it was one of the few that dealt with the psychological issues relating to our current environmental dilemma. What also attracted me was the fact that it takes a depth psychological approach to the topic and doesn’t shy away from extremely complex issues relating to the human soul and psyche.

The central question the book addresses is "How can the public mind relegate matters of the environment, which is the ground of our whole lives, to the periphery of concern, as though they were the private interest of a group called "environmentalists"?

Nicholsen quotes psychoanalyst Harold Searles, who in 1972 said "Even beyond the threat of nuclear warfare…the ecological crisis is the greatest threat mankind collectively has ever faced… My hypothesis is that man (sic) is hampered in his meeting of this environmental crisis by a severe and pervasive apathy which is based largely upon feelings and attitudes of which he is unconscious." She says this statement is "the basis of what I have tried to do in this book: to explore the psychological reasons for what appears as willful stupidity."

And this collective apathy is the central problem we face right now. Why are we destroying and colluding in the destruction by others of our own habitat and the habitat of millions of our fellow creatures on this damaged planet? If we can’t answer this question, we are doomed. And who better to answer it than those who supposedly understand deep human psychology?

The most relevant chapter for me is Chapter 5, A Severe and Pervasive Apathy: Trauma, Destructiveness, and the End of the World. Here Nicholson connects the traumas of the last 50 years, including the cumulative psychological effects of large-scale social catastrophes like atomic bomb detonations, the Holocaust, the ongoing nuclear threat, environmental degradation etc. with personal experiences of severe trauma and abuse to address our seemingly inexplicable behavior.

"The intertwining of guilt and victimization, the feeling of being somehow tainted by death, the sense of something fundamental to ongoing life having been ruined, the feeling of being isolated and silenced, the wish to shut off the emotional pain on the one hand and the urgency to reintegrate and make meaning on the other": all these dimensions she believes are at the root of why most people persist in this "willful stupidity".

Nicholson believes that Robert Jay Lifton"s ideas about the "apocalyptic" self and the "measured" self can help us understand the split in the modern psyche. "The measured self is the everyday familiar self, concerned with the individual"s life in ordinary time. The apocalyptic self is…concerned with the threat to life…It is both terrified and terrifying." We need both selves, she says. "We need the ordinary self to remember that life in its simple living is of value, and we need the apocalyptic self for its awareness of potential catastrophe."

The psychological concept of trauma is at the center of Nicholson’s explanation for our bizarre behavior. "Trauma destroys the individual"s sense of a safe world in which to live," she says. "Trauma touches levels from the family to the community to the society to humankind to the natural world to the divine. Evil enters into every trauma, for what is betrayed is ultimately our trust in goodness, or the capacity of goodness to withstand evil, the strength of life as such… In environmental degradation we experience the betrayal of the sense that life will continue, a betrayal of our confidence in the strength of the containing natural world that is the mother…and life support of us all…this combination of extreme dependency and extreme vulnerability…makes the betrayal in trauma so catastrophic."

From this extreme global trauma comes psychic numbness and even shocking behavior.

I believe this book should be on the shelves of everyone serious about ecotherapy either on the individual or societal level. It"s impossible to summarize all its ideas in this short space, but let me add a few more quotes…

"At some level of awareness, the sense, however illusory, of the security and "ordinariness" provided by confidence in the continuity of life has vanished."

"We are apathetic about this severe external problem. We go on living in such a way that the problem becomes worse, and we do not put it at the forefront of our consciousness and our concern. This response is highly irrational in terms of our welfare and survival. Such an irrational response signals an internal problem: something is interfering with our ability to deal with an important threat."

"Long-term obstruction of grief and failure to communalize grief can imprison a person in endless swinging between rage and emotional deadness as a permanent way of being in the world."

Linda Buzzell (contributor to HopeDance and fellow at the For The Future group in Santa Barbara, http://www.forthefuture.org )

DNA-Schäden durch Mobilfunkstrahlung mehrfach und international nachgewiesen

Der Motorola-Insider Robert C. Kane, mehr als 30 Jahre in der Telekommunikationsindustrie tätig, Forscher und Produktedesign-Ingenieur, hat in einem Buch eindrucksvoll und äusserst fundiert die Gesundheitsrisiken des analogen und digitalen Mobilfunks und ähnlicher Funktechnologie geschildert. Alle Aussagen sind konsequent durch Quellenangaben zu entsprechenden Studien - auch der Industrie - belegt. Robert C. Kane war direkt an der Entwicklung von Mobiltelefonen, mobilen Radios und Mikrowellenkommunikations-Systemen beteiligt und auch in der Forschung zu biologischen Effekten tätig. Er selbst erkrankte an einem Gehirntumor und ist nun eine der Schlüsselfiguren in den derzeit laufenden Milliardenprozessen gegen amerikanische Hersteller von Mobiltelefonen und Mobilfunkbetreiber. In dem Buch beschreibt und erläutert er Hunderte von Studien über die gesundheitlichen Folgen von Mikrowellen- und Mobilfunkstrahlung, von den 50er Jahren bis Mitte der 90er Jahre, alarmierend durch ihre Ergebnisse, namentlich DNA-Schäden, Chromosomenschäden, Gewebeschäden, Grauer Star, Tumorbildung, Gedächtnisverlust, Abnahme der motorischen Fähigkeiten u.a.

Im Kapitel 3, „Biologische Effekte durch Funkfrequenz-Strahlung“ nennt er eine Fülle von Studien aus aller Welt, die DNA-Schäden durch Mobilfunk- und Mikrowellenstrahlung mehrfach eindeutig nachgewiesen haben, wodurch sich das Krebsrisiko der exponierten Personen eindeutig, statistisch signifikant, sehr deutlich erhöhe, insbesondere für Gehirntumor. Die Studien seien mehrfach reproduziert worden, nicht nur von einem Wissenschaftler, sondern von vielen verschiedenen unabhängigen Wissenschaftlern aus aller Welt. Kane nennt hierzu jeweils Quellenangaben.

Weiter unter:
http://www.buergerwelle.de/d/doc/aktuell/faxhotline.htm

Studien, die die Schädlichkeit hochfrequenter elektromagnetischer Felder belegen
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/227426/

61.4% der Schweizer Hausärzte bejahen die Schädlichkeit elektromagnetischer Felder
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/983178/

Biologische Schädlichkeit von Mobilfunkstrahlung erneut bewiesen
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/biologische_schaedlichkeit_von_mobilfunkstrahlung_bewiesen.pdf

Quasseln bis zum bitteren Ende
http://www.zeitenschrift.com/magazin/2901-mobilfunk.ihtml

Die schädlichen Auswirkung der HF-Strahlung auf den Organismus sind den einschlägigen Insider-Technikern nicht erst seit über 10 Jahren bekannt
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/853537/

Mobilfunk und Gesundheit
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/303598/

Wissenschaft und Mobilfunk
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/293807/

Mobilfunkkritische Wissenschaftler werden unter Druck gesetzt
http://www.bbu-online.de/AG%20Innenraumschadstoffe%20und%20Gesundheit/Schulen/Mobilfunk/Wissenschaftler.htm


http://omega.twoday.net/topics/Victims/
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+C.+Kane

Later this month, Congress is set to decide, after almost 30 years of contentious debate, whether to allow oil exploration to proceed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If this passes, oil rigs in the refuge will decrease the already-dwindling herd of caribou by drilling in their calving ground. It will also herald the slow death of the Gwich'in Indian tribe's 13,000-year-old subsistence culture, the last of its kind in North America.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/100705EB.shtml

President Bush's job approval is mired at the lowest level of his presidency, and public feelings about the nation's direction have sunk to new depths in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/100705S.shtml

Nobel Peace Prize: IAEA Rewarded for Failure: Critics
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1007-07.htm

Greenpeace reaction to Nobel Peace Prize award to Mohamed ElBaradei
http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/1007-02.htm

http://infowars.com/articles/terror/ny_subway_alert_distraction_from_indictments.htm


Informant: V

MWM: This is where some of the blank check military appropriations are being spent...

http://www.excal.on.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=903&Itemid=2

Is the US poised for intervention?

Written by Benjamin Dangl - Contributor
Wednesday, 05 October 2005

Fears mount as US opens new military installation in Paraguay

Controversy is raging in Paraguay, where the US military is conducting secretive operations. Five hundred US troops arrived in the country on Jul. 1, 2005 with planes, weapons and ammunition. Eyewitness reports prove that an airbase exists in Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay, which is 200 kilometres from its border with Bolivia and may be utilized by the US military. Officials in Paraguay claim the military operations are routine humanitarian efforts and deny that any plans are underway for a US base. Yet human rights groups in the area are deeply worried. White House officials are using rhetoric about terrorist threats in the tri-border region (where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet) in order to build their case for military operations, which are in many ways reminiscent of the build up to the invasion of Iraq.

The tri-border area is home to the Guarani Aquifer, one of the world's largest reserves of water. Near the Estigarribia airbase are Bolivia's natural gas reserves, the second largest in Latin America. Political analysts believe US operations in Paraguay are part of a preventative war to control these natural resources and suppress social uprisings in Bolivia.

Argentinian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel commented on the situation in Paraguay and warned, "Once the United States arrives, it takes a long time to leave. And that really frightens me."

The Estigarribia airbase was constructed in the 1980s for US technicians hired by the Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner, and is capable of housing 16,000 troops. A journalist writing for the Argentinian newspaper, Clarin, recently visited the base and reported it to be in perfect condition, capable of handling large military planes. It's oversized for the Paraguayan air force, which only has a handful of small aircrafts. The base has an enormous radar system, huge hangars and an air traffic control tower. The airstrip itself is larger than the one at the international airport in Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital. Near the base is a military camp which has recently grown in size.

"Estigarribia is ideal because it is operable throughout the year ... I am sure that the US presence will increase," said Paraguayan defense analyst Horacio Galeano Perrone.

Denials and immunity

"The national government has not reached any agreement with the United States for the establishment of a US military base in Paraguay," states a communiqué signed by Paraguayan foreign minister Leila Rachid. The US Embassy in Paraguay has also released statements officially denying plans to set up a military base in the country. The Pentagon used this same language when describing its actions in Manta, Ecuador, now the home of an $80 million US military base. First, they said the facility was an archaic "dirt strip", which would be used for weather monitoring and would not permanently house US personnel. Days later, the Pentagon stated that Manta was to serve as a major military base tasked with a variety of security-related missions.

Paraguayan political analyst and historian Milda Rivarola said that, "In practice, there has already been a [US] base operating in Paraguay for over 50 years." The US armed forces have had an ongoing presence in the country, she said. "In the past, they needed congressional authorization every six months, but now they have been granted permission to be here for a year and a half."

On May 26, 2005 the Paraguayan Senate granted the US troops total immunity from national and international criminal court jurisdiction until Dec. 2006. The legislation is automatically extendable. Since Dec. 2004, the US has been pressuring Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Paraguay into signing a deal which would grant immunity to US military. The Bush administration threatened to deny the countries up to $24.5 million in economic and military aid if they refused to sign the immunity deal. Paraguay was the only country to accept the offer.

Coup warning in Bolivia

The proximity of the Estigarribia base to Bolivian natural gas reserves, and the fact that the military operations coincide with a presidential election in Bolivia, has also been a cause for concern. The election is scheduled to take place on Dec. 4, 2005. Bolivian Workers Union leader Jaime Solares and Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) legislator Antonio Peredo, have warned of US plans for a military coup to frustrate the elections. Solares said the US Embassy backs right wing ex-president Jorge Quiroga in his bid for office, and will go as far as necessary to prevent any other candidate's victory.

The most recent national poll showed left wing MAS congressman Evo Morales was barely one point behind Quiroga in the race. Solares said there were calls in Jun. 2005 for a military coup during the massive protests that toppled president Carlos Mesa. Recent US military operations in neighboring Paraguay would facilitate such an intervention.

The Bush administration played a key role in the 2002 coup against president Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the 2004 ousting of Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide.

The Tri-Border terror theory

In March, William Pope, the US State Department's principal deputy coordinator of counterterrorism, said that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed is believed to have visited the tri-border area for several weeks in 1995. Defense officials say that Hezbollah and Hamas, radical Islamic groups from the Middle East, "get a lot of funding" from this tri-border area, and that further unrest in the region could leave a political "black hole" that would erode other democratic efforts.

Military analysts from Uruguay and Bolivia maintain that the threat of terrorism is often used by the US as an excuse for military intervention and the monopolization of natural resources. In the case of Paraguay, the US may be preparing to secure the Guarani water reserves and Bolivia's natural gas.

In spite of frequent attempts to link terror networks to the tri-border area, there is little proof of the connection. However, this did not prevent the US from "liberating" Iraq in 2003. As secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld argued during the debate over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, "Simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist."

Paraguayan and US officials contend that much of the recent military collaborations are based on health and humanitarian work. However, State Department reports do not mention any funding for health works in Paraguay. They do mention that funding for the Counterterrorism Fellowship Program (CTFP) in the country doubled for 2005. The report explained, "Bilateral relations between the US and Paraguay are strong, with Paraguay providing excellent cooperation in the fight against terrorism ... CTFP provided funds for Paraguayans to attend courses on the dynamics of international terrorism, and the importance and application of intelligence in combating terrorism."

Col. Hugo Mendoza of the Paraguayan army said he's thankful the US military is helping Paraguay meet security threats through the joint exercises. "We're learning new things and working with new equipment and the latest technology which we would not be able to afford otherwise."

Journalist and human rights activist Alfredo Boccia Paz said, "These missions are always disguised as humanitarian aid ... what Paraguay does not and cannot control is the total number of agents that enter the country."

Meanwhile, neighboring countries have not warmly received the news of the military activity. The Chilean Communist Party demanded that Paraguayan president Nicanor Duarte "reconsider and cancel" recent military deals with the US as they are "extremely serious for Latin America."

In Paraguay, human rights and activist organizations have mobilized against the military activity. When Donald Rumsfeld visited the country in August, protesters greeted his entourage with chants such as, "Rumsfeld, you fascist, you are the terrorist!" as a military band welcomed him by playing the "Star Spangled Banner".


Best Wishes,
Michael Wells Mandeville,
The Hills of Arizona USA

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=93075;show_parent=1

Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=93077;show_parent=1



http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Downing+Street+Memo

http://www.sobran.com/columns/2005/050920.shtml


Informant: Lew Rockwell

http://www.usip.org/aboutus/index.html


Informant: NHNE

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,16376,1585288,00.html

* Breaking America's Grip On The Net*

After troubled negotiations in Geneva, the US may be forced to relinquish control of the internet to a coalition of governments

*Kieren McCarthy Thursday October 6, 2005
**The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk*

You would expect an announcement that would forever change the face of the internet to be a grand affair - a big stage, spotlights, media scrums and a charismatic frontman working the crowd.

But unless you knew where he was sitting, all you got was David Hendon's slightly apprehensive voice through a beige plastic earbox.

The words were calm, measured and unexciting, but their implications will be felt for generations to come.

Hendon is the Department for Trade and Industry's director of business relations and was in Geneva representing the UK government and European Union at the third and final preparatory meeting for next month's World Summit on the Information Society.

He had just announced a political coup over the running of the internet.

Old allies in world politics, representatives from the UK and US sat just feet away from each other, but all looked straight ahead as Hendon explained the EU had decided to end the US government's unilateral control of the internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium.

The issue of who should control the net had proved an extremely divisive issue, and for 11 days the world's governments traded blows.

For the vast majority of people who use the internet, the only real concern is getting on it.

But with the internet now essential to countries' basic infrastructure - Brazil relies on it for 90% of its tax collection - the question of who has control has become critical.

And the unwelcome answer for many is that it is the US government.

In the early days, an enlightened Department of Commerce (DoC) pushed and funded expansion of the internet.

And when it became global, it created a private company, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) to run it.

But the DoC retained overall control, and in June stated what many had always feared: that it would retain indefinite control of the internet's foundation - its "root servers", which act as the basic directory for the whole internet.

A number of countries represented in Geneva, including Brazil, China, Cuba, Iran and several African states, insisted the US give up control, but it refused. The meeting "was going nowhere", Hendon says, and so the EU took a bold step and proposed two stark changes: a new forum that would decide public policy, and a "cooperation model" comprising governments that would be in overall charge.

Much to the distress of the US, the idea proved popular. Its representative hit back, stating that it "can't in any way allow any changes" that went against the "historic role" of the US in controlling the top level of the internet.

But the refusal to budge only strengthened opposition, and now the world's governments are expected to agree a deal to award themselves ultimate control. It will be officially raised at a UN summit of world leaders next month and, faced with international consensus, there is little the US government can do but acquiesce.

But will this move mean, as the US ambassador David Gross argued, that "even on technical details, the industry will have to follow government-set policies, UN-set policies"?

No, according to Nitin Desai, the UN's special adviser on internet governance. "There is clearly an acceptance here that governments are not concerned with the technical and operational management of the internet. Standards are set by the users."

Hendon is also adamant: "The really important point is that the EU doesn't want to see this change as bringing new government control over the internet. Governments will only be involved where they need to be and only on issues setting the top-level framework."
* Human rights*

But expert and author of Ruling the Root, Milton Mueller, is not so sure. An overseeing council "could interfere with standards. What would stop it saying 'when you're making this standard for data transfer you have to include some kind of surveillance for law enforcement'?"

Then there is human rights. China has attracted criticism for filtering content from the net within its borders. Tunisia - host of the World Summit - has also come under attack for silencing online voices. Mueller doesn't see a governmental overseeing council having any impact: "What human rights groups want is for someone to be able to bring some kind of enforceable claim to stop them violating people's rights. But how's that going to happen? I can't see that a council is going to be able to improve the human rights situation."

And what about business? Will a governmental body running the internet add unnecessary bureaucracy or will it bring clarity and a coherent system? Mueller is unsure: "The idea of the council is so vague. It's not clear to me that governments know what to do about anything at this stage apart from get in the way of things that other people do."

There are still dozens of unanswered questions but all the answers are pointing the same way: international governments deciding the internet's future. The internet will never be the same again.


Informant: friends2b

HLV INFO 156/AT

8-10-2005

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

nachfolgend gebe ich Ihnen Kenntnis von dem Vorhaben des Main-Kinzig-Kreises evtl. zukünftig in hiesigen Schulen WLAN via Laptops einzuführen. In diesem Zusammenhang erschien auch mein heutiger Leserbrief:

http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/fortschritt_aber_ohne_risiken.pdf

Der Schuldezernent, Landrat sowie die Schulleitung als auch andere Institutionen erhalten in den nächsten Tagen ein detailliertes Schreiben vom HLV, über welches Sie ebenfalls unterrichtet werden.

Siehe "WLAN in Schulen" unter:
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1053669/

Im Interesse unserer Kinder bitte ich um weite Verbreitung, insbesondere auch an Lehrer, Schulleitungen etc.

Ein unnötiges Funksystem in Schulen gegen Empfehlung von vielen Experten einführen zu wollen, erfordert entsprechenden kritischen Widerstand, zumal sich die Schwächeren, nämlich unsere Kinder und Enkelkinder, dagegen noch nicht wehren können.


M.f.G.
Alfred Tittmann
c/o HESSISCHER LANDESVERBAND MOBILFUNKSENDERFREIE WOHNGEBIETE e.V.

http://openPR.de/in/63384

--------

Mit dem Laptop in den Unterricht
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1054537/

Gesundheitsgefahren durch kabellose Laptops
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/191214/
http://tinyurl.com/88sg2

"Mobiles Lernen"
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/360833/

WLAN Funknetz als Strahlenschleuder?
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/293874/

Schule und Mobilfunk
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/403986/

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/100605Chin/100605chin.html


Informant: friends2b

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/100605Pitz/100605pitz.html


Informant: friends2b