http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082005X.shtml



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

* Deutsches Gericht hat als erstes die schädliche Wirkung per Urteil anerkannt http://www.etzs.de/
* Einladung zu einer Informations- und Diskussionsveranstaltung
* am Samstag, den 24.09.2005 zum Thema:
* Mobilfunktechnik, zu Risiken und Nebenwirkungen in den http://www.tpvs.de

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren aus Politik, Presse (mit der Bitte um Weiterleitung und Bekanntgabe der Veranstaltung), liebe Bürger diese Landes,

ich möchte Sie alle herzlich und persönlich einladen, in den Technologiepark von Villingen-Schwenningen zu kommen, um an der öffentlichen Veranstaltung zum Thema Mobilfunktechnik teilzunehmen.

* Hintergrund der Veranstaltung war die DPA-Meldung vom April gewesen: Handys darf man nicht anfassen. Durch das Berühren des isolierten Gehäuses verlieren Mobiltelefone ihre CE-Zulassung. Ein Experimentiergerät zur Erforschung des Elektrosmog, das die gleiche Skalarwellenstrahlung abgibt wie ein Handy, allerdings mit 60 mal weniger Sendeleistung, war von der Staatsanwaltschaft Konstanz als invasives Medizingerät eingestuft worden. Ziel war die Aberkennung des CE-Zeichens. Nach reiflicher Überlegung hat der Amtsrichter nach 16 Wochen sein Urteil bestätigt.

Wegen der überregionalen Bedeutung dieses Prozesses haben wir ihn komplett im Internet veröffentlicht unter http://www.etzs.de (unter Aktuell und Strafverfahren). Hier können sich Bürger wie Juristen anhand der veröffentlichten Schriftsätze genauestens informieren. In der Konsequenz sind ab sofort der Betrieb von Mobilfunksendern und der Vertrieb von Handys in Frage zu stellen.

* Die DPA-Meldung vom April war im Internet mit den Worten kommentiert worden: Das kommt dabei heraus, wenn Juristen über etwas urteilen, wovon sie nicht die geringste Ahnung haben. Mehr noch ist es ihnen nach dem Grundgesetz gar nicht gestattet, in die Freiheit von Forschung und Lehre mit formaljuristischen Urteilen einzugreifen. Juristen sind schließlich keine Wissenschaftler und können in dem Streit um die biologisch therapeutische Wirksamkeit des Mobilfunk keinen Beitrag leisten.

Wissenschaftler treffen sich üblicherweise auch nicht im Gerichtssaal, sondern in einem Forum z.B. im Technologiepark von Villingen-Schwenningen. Hier soll über die Risiken und Nebenwirkungen der Mobilfunktechnik informiert und diskutiert werden. Es sind alle eingeladen: Journalisten, Mediziner, Vertreter der universitären Gefälligkeitsforschung, freie Forscher und freie Bürger. Hier wird Forschungsbedarf angemahnt und begründet http://www.k-meyl.de

Prof. Dr. Konstantin Meyl lädt am 24.09.2005 um 13:00 Uhr ein zu einer Informations- und Diskussionsveranstaltung zum Thema:

Mobilfunktechnik, zu Risiken und Nebenwirkungen

Veranstaltungsort: Forum im TechnologiePark VS,
http://www.tpvs.de/>www.tpvs.de
D-78048 Villingen-Schwenningen, Am Krebsgraben 15, Tor A

Programmablauf für Samstag, den 24.09.2005
Eintreffen der Teilnehmer ab 12:30 Uhr

13.00 Uhr: Begrüßung der Tagungsteilnehmer durch Herrn Borgmann, Geschäftsführer des Technologieparks

13.15 Uhr: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Konstantin Meyl: Einführung in das Thema Handys darf man nicht anfassen oder vielleicht doch? Über die dubiose Rolle der deutschen Justiz zur Frage der Freiheit der Forschung zum E-Smog (dpa-Meldung vom April).

14.00 Uhr: Pro Mobilfunk (Vortragende sind eingeladen). Mobilfunkbetreiber berichten über den gegenwärtigen Stand und die Planungen für den Ausbau der Netze, über Frequenzbänder, über Sendeleistungen und Grenzwertfragen aus ihrer Sicht.

14.45 Uhr: Contra Mobilfunk (Vortragende sind eingeladen). Mobilfunkkritiker berichten über schädigende Wirkungen des Mobilfunk und erörtern aus ihrer Sicht die Grenzwerte.

15.30 Uhr: Kaffeepause.

16.00 Uhr: Berichte aus der Wissenschaft (Vortragende sind eingeladen). Messmethoden und Messergebnisse werden vorgestellt, die sich kritisch mit athermischer Strahlenbelastung befasst.

17.00 Uhr: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Konstantin Meyl: Zur Grenzwertdiskussion. Zu Fragen der Antennenabstrahlung mit experimentellen Vorführungen und öffentlichen Demonstrationen.

18.00 Uhr: Diskussion bis gegen 19:00 Uhr

8 Euro pro Person Unkostenbeitrag, incl. Pausengetränke,
5 Euro pro Person für Schüler, Studenten und Rentner

Anmeldung erbeten an: prof@k-meyl.de / Fax: +49- (0-) 7732-919911 oder bei TP VS: info@tpvs.de, Tel.: 0-7721-503337 / Fax: 0-7721-503336

http://openpr.de/news/57662-weg-fuer-schadenersatzforderungen-gegen-mobilfunkbetreiber-frei.html

From: CODEPINK <codepink@democracyinaction.org>

August 19, 2005

We continue to be part of the vigil at Crawford, Texas, even as Cindy Sheehan had to leave to be with her mother, who suffered a stroke. We pray for her mother’s recovery and for Cindy’s return. On Thursday, we had a wonderful “mother’s day” at the camp where all day long, women at the vigil and around the country wrote letters to Laura Bush asking her to intercede with her husband on Cindy’s behalf. In just 24 hours after putting out the call, we received over 500 letters to the First Lady from the women of America—one more poignant than the next. We’ll include a sample on our website, and if you’d like to add your own, email it to laurabush@codepinkalert.org.

In the afternoon, we had a women’s circle where woman after woman—many of them military moms—told heart-wrenching stories about how this war has affected them. Women who had been to Iraq as humanitarian workers talked about the devastating impact of the war on Iraqis, especially Iraqi women. Then about 100 of us gathered the letters, lined up along the road, and singing and chanting, marched down the 2-mile road in the blistering heat to the entrance of George Bush’s ranch. There we were stopped by the secret service, who refused to take our letters. But on our insistence—and to our great surprise—a White House staffer appeared, took our baskets of letters, and promised to deliver them to the First Lady!

Today, Friday, we had a lovely interfaith healing circle, and the first meal in our new camp. Instead of being crammed along the side of the road, we now have a lovely one-acre plot smack in front of Bush’s ranch, where the Secret Service is located. It’s quite a miracle that just at the time when our old campsite was becoming untenable due to congestion and safety concerns, a wonderful neighbor of Bush’s appeared to offer his land (actually a cousin of the gun-wielding neighbor from earlier this week). But then again, here in Crawford, miracles happen every day.

We can’t tell you how inspiring it has been to be by Cindy’s side and see this movement blossom. CODEPINK will be here until Cindy gets her meeting with Bush, or leaves at the end of August. Meanwhile, we’re planning for the big march and events in Washington DC on September 23-26. Please mark your calendars and commit to joining Cindy and us in Washington as we continue to show George Bush that the people of this nation—especially the women—demand an end to this bloody war.

With love and optimism, Alicia, Dana, Farida, Gael, Jodie, Medea, Tiffany and Whitney

PS- If you haven't already, please visit http://www.onemillionreasons.org/article.php?list=type&type=69 and give us YOUR reason to end the war. We will deliver them to the White House on September 26th.


Informant: Martin Greenhut



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

http://tinyurl.com/aa5op

In Madrid, and maybe in London, mobiles activated the bombs. France thinks about a system to stop the trafic as soon as an attack is known !!!!


Informant: Avoiding ridicule

An excellent collection of environmental reports
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/900203/

Ice Shelf Disintegration Threatens Environment
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/902023/

Climate scientists fear effects of immense Siberian peatbog meltdown
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/903922/

Icy Greenland turns green
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/913959/

Global Warming: Will You Listen Now, America?
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/913894/

World Running Out of Time for Oil Alternatives
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/913903/

Reclaiming Appalachia: A Mountain Take Over
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/904605/

Monsanto files patent for new invention: the pig
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/903991/

GMOs and Human Health
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/904639/

Letter to José Maurício Bustani
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/910032/

Global Chemical Contamination Threatens Child Development
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/913907/

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 20. August 2005
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/914005/

Cellular Phone Electromagnetic Field Effects on Bioelectric Activity of Human Brain
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/899551/

Cell Phone Radiation May Cause Visual Damage
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/901999/

Vienna doctors group say children shouldn't have phones
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/903250/

References for Olle Johansson et al papers
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/913511/

MOBILE PHONE MASTS: The Awful TRUTH About Their Effects On Your HEALTH
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/912897/

Mobiles aimed at under-8s set for return to high street
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/899565/

Pétition pour faire enlever le Dr Michael REPACHOLI de son poste de Coordinateur Général de l'OMS pour le programme International des Champs Electro Magnétiques
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/898322/

Birds suffer from biological effects of GSM, 3G (UMTS), DECT, WIFI, TETRA
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/900299/

Spanish paper on RF effects on birds
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/904106/

Mast families renew calls for research
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/899703/

The Greens support an opponent with the antenna-relays - Les Verts soutiennent un opposant aux antennes-relais
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/901431/

T-Mobile mast
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/903706/

Loud and mobile: a bad combination
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/912644/

Residents objecting to phone mast
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/912861/

Residents oppose mobile phone mast plan
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/912864/

MASTS ATTACK - NO DEFENCE!
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/912869/

Residents’ fury over secret phone mast
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/912871/

Why parish chairman kept silent
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/912876/

Phone mast campaigners admit defeat
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/912878/

Fight for an idea: The ELECTROMAGNETIC POLLUTION - Combat pour une idée: La pollution électromagnétique
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/905878/

The Canadian SWEEP Initiative
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/913517/

EFNS guidelines on the use of skin biopsy in the diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/912540/

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

The Government is creating a system of "mass public surveillance" capable of tracking every adult in Britain without their consent, MPs say. They warn that people who have never committed a crime can be "electronically monitored" without their knowledge.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9839.htm

In an article in the September issue of Vanity Fair (not yet online), Michael Wolff, in probing the Plame/CIA leak scandal, rips those in the news media -- principally Time magazine and The New York Times -- who knew that Karl Rove was one of the leakers but refused to expose what would have been “one of the biggest stories of the Bush years.”

http://snipurl.com/h1tz


From Information Clearing House

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) is calling for an investigation into the role of former Attorney General John Ashcroft in the outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/18/1331249


From Information Clearing House

Right now, the pro-war propaganda arsenal of the world’s only superpower is drawing a bead on Cindy Sheehan, who now symbolizes the USA’s antiwar grief. She is a moving target, very difficult to hit. But right-wing media sharpshooters are sure to keep trying.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9850.htm



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

George Bush is responsible for killing so many people, but nobody scrutinizes anything he says, especially leading up to the war. Since there is nothing to smear me about with the truth, they have to tell lies.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9848.htm



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

"Will those who support liberation movements in, for example, Kashmir or Chechnya be denied freedom of expression?"

By John Pilger

If those who seek to understand what drives people to commit terrorist acts are vilified as "just one notch less despicable" themselves, we can say goodbye to freedom of speech.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9836.htm

I think this speech applies today. Worth the listen.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

Arrarita

By Richard Hollingham BBC News, Greenland
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4145034.stm

Greenland's ice is melting rapidly. In some places, glacial levels have been falling by 10 metres a year and ultimately contributing to rising sea levels. Travelling to Greenland, Richard Hollingham sees the impact of climate change for himself.

The gleaming white executive jet taxied to a stop on the cracked concrete apron beside a couple of derelict hangars.

Beyond the rusty barbed wire and crude prefabricated buildings surrounding the airport perimeter, cliffs of dark granite rose from the valley to blend with the equally ominous grey of the sky.

No trees, no colour, no signs of life.

The door of the private plane swung down.

Onlookers, had there been any, might have caught a glimpse of the deep leather seats and walnut panelling of the interior.

Perhaps a group of sharp suited executives would emerge looking dynamic and business-like. Or perhaps some sinister men-in-black types, here on covert government business.

The first person to climb down was wearing oversized shorts, stout walking boots and a hat that looked like it had seen rather more of the world than it was perhaps designed for.

Its enormous ice cap, a sea of white stretching seemingly forever, overflows into thousands of glaciers

The next man was dressed in a clashing array of outdoor clothing and sported large tortoise-shell glasses and an unkempt beard.

Each man muttered something about the landscape being bleak.

I would like to be able to tell you that when the BBC descended from the plane we stood apart with our sartorial elegance.

But if you have ever met any BBC types, particularly radio reporters, you would know that would be a lie.

Research

We had landed at Kangerlussuaq, a community whose existence depends solely on the airstrip.

This used to be a bustling US base, servicing America's early warning system.

These days it is somewhat self perpetuating. The airport brings in supplies for the people who live here who mostly work at the airport.

I was tagging along with a group of eminent scientists, funded through the foundation of a billionaire philanthropist, Gary Comer. He has devoted his retirement to the science of global warming.

The researchers all make regular visits to the Arctic to assess the impact of climate change, not, it should be said, always in such comfort.

Retreating glaciers

Greenland is a massive island locked in ice. And from the air there is little evidence that it is melting.

Its enormous ice cap, a sea of white stretching seemingly forever, overflows into thousands of glaciers.

These in turn carve their way through the mountains to the coast.

It is only when you get near to the base of the glaciers that you can see how the landscape is changing.

A few metres above the ice, the rock is totally bare. A scar running horizontally across the valleys.

It is as if the ice has been drained away, like water in a bath, to leave a tide mark. Which is, in effect, what has happened.

The ice has melted and the glaciers have retreated hundreds of metres over the past 150 years.

New vegetation

The weather cleared and with the edge of the glacier, a giant wall of ice behind us, glaciologist Richard Alley led me across the barren rock.

This land was being exposed for the first time in millions of years

As I tripped and stumbled behind him, he bounded through scree and leapt over crevasses.

I have never seen a scientist more in his element as he pointed out deep grooves in the rock where the ice had raked the stone, or the giant boulders lifted by the glacier to balance precariously on top of tiny pebbles.

This land was being exposed for the first time for millions of years. Even a century ago, where I stood would have been solid ice, and I was struck by just how much vegetation there was.

Phillip, the biologist on the trip, was every bit as excited as Richard, identifying the dark brown lichens on the rocks, the grasses and beautiful purple flowers somehow managing to cling to just a few millimetres of soil.

Agricultural return

The Earth's climate has warmed before, albeit naturally.

A ruined church on the banks of a fjord marks the remains of a Viking farming civilisation.

The sun casts shadows through the arched window to the site of the altar, last used in the 1400s before the area was abandoned when it became too cold to support habitation.

Today, the farmers are back.

Sheep once again graze the surrounding hillside and shiny new tractors work the fields near the southern coast.

Greenland is turning green, something the rest of us should be very worried about indeed.

also posted on: http://FromTheWilderness.com


Informant: Scott Munson

Bob Herbert wonders whether reality ever comes knocking on George W. Bush's door. If it did, would the president with the unsettling demeanor of a boy king even bother to answer? Mr. Bush is the commander in chief who launched a savage war in Iraq and now spends his days happily riding his bicycle in Texas.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/081805O.shtml

While the president worries about restoring "balance" to his life, Sidney Blumenthal notes that Americans are worried by stratospheric gas prices and growing fed up with the war in Iraq.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/081805N.shtml

Swanson insists that if Casey Sheehan died for a noble cause, Bush can volunteer the documents that the Resolution of Inquiry will require him to produce. Not only has he not done so, but he has illegally refused to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request from 52 members of Congress asking for similar information.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/081905B.shtml

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0819-32.htm



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

Concern is growing worldwide over the long-term health effects of chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Exposure to POPs is shifting the IQ of the population downward - more developmentally-challenged people and fewer gifted people, according to Lynn Goldman, MD, MPH, Johns Hopkins University pediatrician and epidemiologist.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/081905HA.shtml

The world could run out of time to develop cleaner alternatives to oil and other fossil fuels before depletion drives prices through the roof, a leading Dutch energy researcher said on Thursday.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/081905EA.shtml

Two of the leading contenders to contest the next US presidential election have delivered an urgent warning to the United States on global warming, saying the evidence of climate change has become too stark to ignore. They called on world leaders to recognize "that delayed action will increase the risk of adverse environmental effects and will likely incur a greater cost."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/081905R.shtml

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/inhalt/28/0,4070,2351804-0,00.html
http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/inhalt/28/0,4070,2351804-7,00.html


Nachricht von atlant

In his recent book "Steal This Vote" - a very judicious work, despite its title - Andrew Gumbel, a U.S. correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, provides the best overview I've seen of the 2000 Florida vote. And he documents the simple truth: "Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9861.htm

Newly declassified State Department documents show that planning for the transition in Iraq began in October 2001, according to a "Project History".

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB163/index.htm


From Information Clearing House

Perhaps, we should pull over at a rest area, as the storm gathers on the horizon before us, and we should contemplate the things that are of consequence to us—here and now. And, if we are honest, our sorrow would swell, as the awareness arises within us of how the mindless demands of the corporate state suck the life and soul out those we love.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9867.htm

The rapidly dwindling minority of Americans who continue to search for some rationale for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq have been driven to the brink of breakdown by the success of Sheehan's protest.

http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/index.php?ntid=50925&ntpid=1


From Information Clearing House



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

In emotional private meetings with the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush offers solace—and seeks some of his own.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8941525/site/newsweek/page/2/


From Information Clearing House

http://www.flickr.com/photos/moveon/sets/774501/show/


From Information Clearing House



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

Since President Bush won’t meet with Cindy Sheehan to explain why her son Casey died in Iraq, I thought I would put forward the information I have. Like Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, I was in Baghdad’s Sadr City on April 4, 2004.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9865.htm



Why Casey Sheehan was killed

By Aaron Glantz

DENVER - Despite camping out next to George W Bush's Texas ranch for two weeks, Cindy Sheehan has been unable to get a meeting with the president for an explanation of why her 24-year-old son had to die in action. So, here is some of the story from one who was there.

Like Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, I was in Baghdad's Sadr City on April 4, 2004. I was there as an unembedded journalist (not attached to a military unit). Unlike Casey Sheehan, I came out alive.

I had traveled to Sadr City to cover the Bush administration's attack on the movement of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. It didn't matter that the cleric had millions of followers or that he was the scion of an important political family with a history of standing up to tyranny. (His father was killed by Saddam Hussein's regime for fomenting revolution in 1999. His uncle, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, was killed for leading an insurrection against Saddam's Ba'ath rule in 1980.)

It didn't matter that Sadr's forces were providing food aid to the poor or organizing traffic patrol and garbage duty in an atmosphere with no basic services. The problem for Bush and his Iraq administrator, L Paul Bremer, was that Sadr was against the US occupation. So he had to be dealt with. First his newspaper was closed. (See The Shi'ite voice that will be heard , Asia Times Online, April 8, 2004)Then his top advisor was arrested. Then Bremer announced an unnamed judge was demanding that Sadr be arrested on charges of murder. "He's effectively attempting to establish his authority in place of the legitimate Iraqi government," Bremer told reporters. "We will not tolerate that."

That was the last straw. Until April 4, 2004 Muqtada had urged his followers to protest peacefully against the occupation. But the US assault led him to urge his followers to "terrorize the enemy". In the first 48 hours of fighting, Sadr's followers seized police stations and government buildings across the country, including the governor's office in Basra.

At least 75 Iraqis and 10 US servicemen were killed, among them Army Specialist Casey Sheehan. As an unembedded journalist, I saw only the Iraqi casualties (the US casualties being taken away to military hospitals). My translator Waseem and I weaved through roads closed by US tanks until we arrived at Sadr City's al-Ubaidi Hospital.

There, I interviewed 15-year-old Ali Hussein. He lay in the hospital, a US bullet lodged in his gut. He was barely able to lift his head, but he wanted to say a few words to the Western reporter: "I was standing in my doorway and I was shot," he said. "I don't have anything to say to the Americans. It's just between them and God."

A few miles away at Baghdad's Mustansuriye University, hundreds of students marched through the center of campus. They chanted, "The dead want a brave people so we won't follow the law of Bremer."

"We will act according to the situation that we face," said Wassam Mehdi Hussein, head of the Islamic Union of Iraqi Students, standing by Muqtada's declaration of jihad against the occupation. "We will use any means peaceful and violent."

Another Mustansuriye student, Ali Mohammed, noted the violence started when the US military closed Sadr's newspaper and arrested his top advisor. "We don't want to fight the Americans," he told me. "We are very grateful to them. They are very dear to us because they released us from Saddam. But at the same time we want them to do something for humanity.

"A lot of people are suffering from hunger and sitting at home having no work. These things make the situation bad and then we turn to explosions. We want to respect them and we want them to respect us."

A year on, such respect still isn't forthcoming - even to US citizens like Cindy Sheehan, who deserve to know the truth of why their sons have been killed in Iraq. It isn't for lack of trying that Sheehan isn't getting answers from Bush.

She has stubbornly maintained her vigil outside Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, demanding a meeting with the president. Since no weapons of mass destruction - which Bush used as grounds to go into Iraq - have been found there, she thinks Bush owes her an explanation.

Her protest has become a lightning rod for antiwar sentiment, with more than 1,000 vigils organized across the US this week in support of her demand.

Bush has largely ignored Sheehan's protest.

When asked last week about Sheehan's demand for a meeting, Bush refused to answer directly: "And so, you know, listen, I sympathize with Mrs Sheehan. She feels strongly about her - about her position. And I am - she has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America."

Meanwhile, Associated Press reported that Bush was to spend two hours on Wednesday with families of soldiers killed in Iraq, but the meeting wasn't to include Cindy Sheehan. Bush said Tuesday he understood her anguish, but he also challenged her, saying the California woman's demands for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq was not embraced by many military families and represented a view contrary to the national interest, AP reported.

IPS reporter Aaron Glantz is author of the book How America Lost Iraq (Tarcher/Penguin).

(Inter Press Service)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GH25Ak04.html


Informant: sash



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

Exclusive Interview with Cindy Sheehan After Mother's Stroke: "I Want to Get Back As Soon As Possible".



BBC Newsnight: Interview With Cindy Sheehan.

Only available online for next 14 hours.
http://snipurl.com/h2vq

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9875.htm



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

Tony Blair could be forced to give evidence under oath after families of 17 soldiers killed in Iraq began a legal bid yesterday to secure an independent inquiry into the lawfulness of the 2003 conflict.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9857.htm

A government minister has openly lambasted U.S. occupation of the country, blaming it for the upsurge in violence and rampant corruption.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9855.htm

By Robert Higgs

The United States began its occupation of Germany and Japan sixty years ago, yet large U.S. military bases remain in those countries today. Does anyone really believe the Americans will walk away from their mega-bases in Iraq just because the Iraqis want the Yankees to go home?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9869.htm

Sponsors of this action include. Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin, Franklin W. Stahl, Peter Phillips Ph.D., Scott Kerlin Ph.D.…and hundreds more.

In honoring our Founding principles, I must proclaim that to exploit the fears and prejudices of the common people to maintain the flow of profits from conflict—to perpetuate a state of war for personal gain—is treasonous to our creed.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9868.htm

Some Americans, mostly the ones uninformed about past and present U.S.A. government corruption, may find it hard to believe that our government would intentionally cause harm and death to Americans who have not been found guilty of any crime. But our government has done that so much already. For example, from what I have learned about vaccinations those have toxic ingredients intentionally put into them that have caused harm and death to Americans - adults and children both. While most of the people that have become harmed or dead from the wars in the Middle East are citizens of those countries, many American soldiers are becoming harmed and dead too. The depleted uranium that has been put into the weapons is causing cancer for both Middle Eastern people and American soldiers plus causing birth defects of children born to people exposed to depleted uranium. These are just a few examples of our government's willingness to intentionally cause harm and death to Americans too.

All that our government has done wrong since the 9 - 11 terrorists' attacks convinces me, that unless the National I.D. card is stopped from being put into effect, our government will use it to control dissidents, even to put dissidents that don't cave in to the government's demands into the F.E.M.A. facilities with barbed wire fences that are essentially concentration camps. I believe that innocent Americans would be put to death in such places. The National I.D. card could be used as an easy method to keep track of and round up dissidents or anybody the government thinks shouldn't be alive.

Now is the time to start spreading the word far and wide to educate Americans about the dangers of the National I.D. card. and the F.E.M.A. concentration camps. You can do this via the Internet, but there are lots of Americans that aren't on the Internet that need to hear this message too. You can spread this message at any public places. For example, about a week ago when I was at a grocery store I gave the message about these dangers to numerous people. Here is essentially what I said, "Have you heard about what our government is planning to do about our driver's licenses? They are going to replace it with a National I.D. card. That card has a chip device in it that can be activated so that our government can track us from the satellites up above. That would make it easy for our government to put us in the concentration camps that have been found in the U.S.A. We need to complain to get the National I.D. card stopped. We need to warn other people about this too." That's easy enough to remember and to tell people. Please tell as many people as possible.

Another strategy is to contact preachers to ask them to take action to stop the National I.D. card. A few weeks ago I decided to write to a televangelist that I have seen on television a number of times. The letter I e-mailed to him is below. There are other televangelists that I haven't written to. Will you find out who they are and write to them about the National I.D. card? If you have a preacher, why not talk to him about the dangers of the National I.D. card and ask him to contact Federal and State government officials to discourage it from being put into effect? I believe that it is the first version of the "Mark of the Beast". Thank you for any help with these proposed strategies.

Sincerely, Deborah Reid http://www.angelfire.com/stars4/wisdomforcourts http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wisepeople


Dear Dr. Jack Van Impe,

Since our government officials decided to require Americans to have their driver's licenses replaced in 2008 by the new National I.D. card, I have been very concerned about that. I have read e-mail newsletters and done other reading about the new National I.D. card. I have read that there is a device inside the new National I.D. card called RFID that can be activated to enable our government officials as well as the government officials in Canada and Mexico to track us Americans from the satellites up above. I find it unacceptable for people that are not criminals to be tracked.

Of course, we Americans have been told that the reason for the new National I.D. card is to discourage illegal aliens from coming into the U.S.A. That won't discourage illegal aliens. Illegal aliens are determined to come into the U.S.A. They risk death to come into this country. However, the new National I.D. card is very controlling of Americans. It comes across as slavery to me. It has the potential to enable tracking of people from sateliites as pets and livestock are now tracked from satellites. Pets and livestock could also be referred to as beasts. I know the animals are being tracked from having a microchip inside of them. An individual wouldn't need a microchip to be treated like a beast. It occurs to me that the new National I.D. card is the first version of the Mark of the Beast. I know some people think it won't be the Mark of the Beast until there is a microchip implanted under the skin of people. But the microchip could be the second version of the Mark of the Beast. There is much to fear from government officials having the ability to track us. The very worst could happen to us.

Some people on the Internet have said the new National I.D. card is our number for being put into concentration camps. I have read on the Internet that some Americans have come across facilities that are fenced in with barbed wire fence in such a way that they are convinced the facilities are intended to be used as concentration camps. I have also read on the Internet that some Americans have come across large shipments of guillotines coming into the U.S.A. from China. The guillotines were accidentally discovered when a shipping crate was dropped or when an accident happened a truck driver was asked to open the back of a truck. With the facilities that could be used for concentration camps and the many guillotines that is cause for concern the the very worst could happen to Americans. There have been mass murders of many people in history by their government officials. I don't want that to happen here in the U.S.A.

Dr. Van Impe, I have learned from the Internet that there are people called New World Order that think the Earth has too many people. They think that there isn't enough food, water, and fuel to support all of the people here. I've read that is the reason they want to depopulate the Earth by about 90%. I have read they would depopulate the U.S.A. by 50%. The people on the Internet who call themselves Patriots think they would be the ones to be put into the concentration camps and murdered. However, it occurs to me that anybody could be such victims. Christians could be such victims. Even due to aging people could be such victims. If what I have read about the New World Order people is true, they must not be smart. It is possible for the Earth to support all of the people here. As to fuel there could be more energy efficiency methods put into use as well as alternative energies that have been suppressed that should be allowed to be developed and put into wide spread use. As to food more people should be allowed access to land to grow food. There could also be more efficiency of food by more people reducing their meat consumption. Growing meat requires a tremendous amount of grain and fresh water. The amount of grain used to produce a small amount of meat would feed many more people than could be fed by the meat. By more people reducing meat consumption that would also result in more fresh water for drinking and cooking purposes. I'm not saying that everyone would have to become vegetarians. However, a reduction perhaps by 50% could really make a difference in food and fresh water efficiency.

Perhaps the New World Order people aren't smart enough to think up such wise solutions. If what the Internet writers say about the New World Order people's plan to depopulate the Earth is true, that will be terrible evil on their part. If true, it may be that the New World Order people have other reasons than population control as a motivator for such predicted mass murders. Perhaps it's a cultural issue, a competition between cultures. From what I have observed there are people doing the most evil deeds in all cultures, including the Western culture. It appears that the people doing the most evil deeds to people of the Western culture are people of the Western culture themselves resulting in more victimization, suffering, injuries, disabilities,and deaths to their own people than are being caused by people of other cultures. However, the government offiicials, although they have been lobbied about the rampant crime and other evils in the U.S.A, don't acknowledge the seriousness of that and don't make wise reforms reality. For many years I've been a citizen activist trying to get something done about terrible crimes and the court system corruption that allows and even promotes terrible crimes. The corruption is strongly entrenched, but I keep trying to get the message out to enough people to bring about a transformation of the U.S.A. from it's dangerous, corrupt, crime rampant reality to a truly civilized safe reality. I looked around in your website. I noticed your question of the week is related to a terrible crime that I include in my writings.

Dr. Van Impe, I would like to ask if you could include education to the public about the new National I.D. card as to the details as I've described in paragraphs above. Also could you include information about the facilities that look like concentration camps and the guillotines found in the U.S.A.? Would it be possible for you to find out who the New World Order people are and try to talk some sense into them? Feel free to educate them that it is possible to solve the problems without mass murders. Thank you for any help with these matters.

Sincerely, Deborah Reid http://www.angelfire.com/stars4/wisdomforcourts

Quote: "I've learned that you can never have too many smart people in your life." Source: Live and Learn and Pass It On by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

http://tinyurl.com/9e5gu



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

by Nicholas von Hoffman

My friend Elizabeth told me the other day that she had received a phone call from the United States Marines. They weren’t interested in her but in her son, Garrett, who is a recent high-school graduate currently absorbed in taking the exam for his journeyman’s plumber license. She said that she told the Marines not to phone again and advised the caller that the Marines were “not going to use my son as a target.” She and her son are not alone in such opinions. This year, the Army will fail to make its recruiting goals even though it’s dangling ever more goodies -- like college tuition and chunks of cash—in front of the teenagers it hopes to enlist. Now there’s talk of accepting spry persons over 40 years of age to risk life and limb pro gloria dei and, I guess, patriae too. One of the Army’s problems is that it gets harder to find gullible galoots who believe the promises. Bitter veterans abound with angry stories about care withheld or the quality of the care offered men and women once they leave the services. Nor does it help that potential enlistees are shy of signing up because they fear they may never get out once they are in. The government has broken its word too often. So sing the National Anthem twice at the ball game and put another “I SUPPORT OUR TROOPS” sticker on one or even all of the family cars. Hey, it ain’t my war, ain’t my kid....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Hoffman0819.htm

by Ahmed Amr

Once again, Karl Rove has let the dogs out. A vicious campaign to maul Citizen Sheehan is in play. Instead of answering her questions -- the right wing media hacks are focusing on her motives, her mental health, her ideology and her family. These are standard and classic Rovian tactics used to smear administration critics. The predictable pundits at FOX have taken the lead by portraying Sheehan as a treasonous “crackpot” who is exploiting the death of her son to gain fame and fortune and advance the extremist political agenda of leftist “anti-American” groups. Hate radio stations across the nations are assailing Cindy’s integrity and questioning her patriotism. The objective of this smear campaign is to draw fire away from Bush. Instead of focusing on the argument between Sheehan and the president -- we now have a contest between Sheehan’s supporters and her detractors. What started out as a search for the truth is being reduced to an ideological spat between the left and the right. The success of the White House plan of attack is by no means certain. Unlike the small band of neo-cons that infest the administration, most Americans are not glued to any ideology. They tend to navigate the political landscape using nothing more than their common sense. Millions of honorable conservatives want answers to Cindy’s questions. As for the phantom “extreme left” in America -- it only exists in the imagination of the extreme right, which unfortunately has a very real constituency....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Amr0819.htm



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=89563;show_parent=1



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=89562;show_parent=1



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=89560;show_parent=1



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=89522;show_parent=1



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=89520;show_parent=1



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=89510;show_parent=1



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

The deepening division among the powers that be over the Iraq war is beginning to make itself felt among those in the legislative arena. The national legislature of the US gave Bush and company a virtual blank check for invading Afghanistan and Iraq, but the wars are coming unstuck as the numbers of dead US soldiers escalates. Discussion and debate over US policy on Iraq are more and more necessary.

The more debate there is, the more legitimate it becomes to mobilize to raise the alternative to the conquest and occupation of Iraq, which is withdrawal from that country.

In a way some of the deepest and most significant voices in the anti-war struggle now come from those like Walter Jones, that conservative legislator who made his national reputation by calling for "French Fries" to be re-dubbed "Freedom Fries" because of French opposition to Washington and its course in Iraq.

Today's edition of Pacifica Radio's DEMOCRACY NOW provides a glimpse of the wide range of anti-war sentiment which is growing daily even within the world of the military as well as among the Gold Star families.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/19/1441247

Parallelling the discussion given on Democracy NOW, Mumia Abu-Jamal, reporting live from Pennsylvania's Death Row, provides an additional perspective on Cindy Sheehan's act of democratic rebellion. It's but four minutes long yet it provides the keys to reaching out and mobilizing a broad new layer into action against the war for the first time:

http://www.prisonradio.org/audio/mumia/2005maj/Aug05/8-16-05TheMammB.mp3

Discussion, debate and disagreement on US foreign policy toward Iraq can only be good for the Cuban Revolution as it also helps open up possible avenues for debate over US policy toward the island, also in overdue need of change.

All out for a vigorous and united protest September 24th.

Let's all join with Cindy Sheehan who's pointing the way to reach out to a new and broader public than ever.

Walter Lippmann, CubaNews http://www.walterlippmann


More US Legislators for Withdrawal from Iraq

Washington, Aug 19 (Prensa Latina) Some 50 US congressmen will co-sponsor a resolution urging US President George W. Bush to announce a schedule for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Republican representative Walter Jones announced.

I think people have understood what we have been doing, said the legislator, who presented the draft last June together with another three colleagues from the House.

The proposal urges Bush to start evacuating US troops from October 1, 2006.

Besides Jones, other initial sponsors are Texas Republican Ron Paul, and Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Neil Abercrombie, from Ohio and Hawai, respectively.

The deputy said there are five conservatives among supporters of the new initiative.

There has been an increasing wave of criticism over Bush's handling of conflict in Iraq, where more than 1,860 US troops have been killed.

At least 54 percent of the US people think the US aggression of Iraq was a mistake, according to results of Gallup survey conducted just a few days ago.

mh/rma/rob

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-hayden16aug16,1,7418541.story An exit strategy for Iraq now By Tom Hayden TOM HAYDEN is a former state senator and the author of "Street Wars" (Dimensions, 2004).

August 16, 2005

PRESIDENT BUSH HAS so far fended off Cindy Sheehan, a grieving mother demanding to know the "noble purpose" of her son's death in Iraq. However, Bush has been forced to address the existence of the antiwar constituency for perhaps the first time, if only to distort and discredit its message of "troops out now." It is the right moment for the peace movement to turn its slogan into a strategy.

The rallying cry of "out now" expresses the belief that the Iraq war is not worth another minute in lost lives, lost honor, lost taxes, lost allies. But its very simplicity makes the demand easy to ignore or dismiss.

Meanwhile, the administration focuses on the appearance of progress in Iraq (thus its desperate interest in an Iraqi constitution, any constitution). It may well order a token withdrawal of troops to pacify peace sentiment through the 2006 congressional elections. Then, as with Vietnam in 1969, the war is likely to continue.

Those who have been proved right in opposing this war deserve a hearing alongside the military and national security "experts" who have dominated commentary since the March 2003 invasion. It is time to explain "out now" and for peace advocates to propose exit strategies of their own. Otherwise, both political parties will be stuck with the mind-set that an exit is possible only after "stability," meaning a military victory years from now (if ever).

Peace movement advocates have lobbied successfully for members of Congress to hold Capitol Hill forums in mid-September to explore exit strategies. Here is a starting point that is being discussed in peace circles. It is based on deciding now to get out of Iraq and outlining how to do it. The basis of the plan is a shift from a military model to a conflict-resolution model, then to a peace process that ends in a negotiated political settlement alongside a U.S. withdrawal. The main themes are these:

First, as confidence-building measures, Washington should declare that it has no interest in permanent military bases or the control of Iraqi oil. It must immediately announce goals for ending the occupation and bringing all our troops home - in months, not years, beginning with an initial gesture by the end of this year.

Second, the U.S. should request that the United Nations, or a body blessed by the U.N., monitor the process of military disengagement and de-escalation, and take the lead in organizing a peaceful reconstruction effort.

Third, the president should appoint a peace envoy, independent of the occupation authorities, to begin an entirely different mission in Iraq. The envoy should encourage and cooperate in peace talks with Iraqi groups opposed to the occupation, including insurgents, to explore a political settlement.

Already 82 members of the Iraqi National Assembly have signed a public letter calling for "the departure of the occupation." A former minister in the Iraqi interim government, Aiham Alsammarae, is talking with 11 insurgent groups about a transition to politics. Even the militant Shiites led by Muqtada Sadr have shown interest in the political process by collecting a million signatures for American withdrawal. Surveys earlier this year showed that 69% of Iraqi Shiites and more than 75% of Sunnis favored a near-term U.S. withdrawal.

Neither the Bush administration nor the news media have shown interest in these voices, perhaps because they undercut the argument that we are fighting to save Iraqis from each other. By most accounts, the U.S. military presence has attracted and enlarged the hard-core jihadist forces. The course we are on also contributes to incipient civil war because of subsidies and training for Shiite and Kurdish forces against the estranged Sunnis. It was not enough to invite a handful of Sunnis into the constitutional talks.

Any settlement proposal must guarantee a troop withdrawal and new efforts at reconstruction. A successful peace process will guarantee representation for the Iraqi opposition in a final governing arrangement. It will encourage power-sharing arrangements in economic and energy development as well as governance. The handing over of the Iraqi economy to private and mostly U.S. interests will by definition end with the occupation.

These are plausible steps toward conflict resolution. Perhaps Cindy Sheehan's moral stance will awaken courage among politicians who openly or privately deplore the fabricated origins of the war but cannot bring themselves to be honest about the war itself.

NOTE FROM WALTER: Tom Hayden discussed his proposal on Democracy NOW this week also: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/16/1326257


Informant: Walter Lippmann

By Barry Grey
18 August 2005

It is both fascinating and instructive to observe the manner in which the American media seeks to handle the phenomenon of Cindy Sheehan, the 48-year-old woman from Vacaville, California, who has become a focus of anti-war sentiment in the US.

Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in April 2004 while serving in Iraq, set up camp on August 6 down the road from Bush’s ranch outside of Crawford, Texas, and vowed not to leave until the president took time out from his five-week vacation to meet with her and explain, in her words, “Why you killed my son.”

Sheehan quite openly and articulately presents her action as a catalyst for developing a nationwide movement to demand the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq.

She describes the war as illegal and makes no bones about calling Bush and his fellow war-makers, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, etc., liars.

To her credit, she has pulled back the curtain of deceit crafted by the media to conceal the miserable moral and intellectual stature of the president, describing his behavior at a meeting last year with her and other family members of fallen soldiers as insulting and insensitive. He acted, she says, as though “he were at a party.”

Sheehan has been joined at her encampment by other family members of soldiers killed in Iraq, and has won the sympathy of many millions of Americans who are opposed to the ongoing slaughter in Iraq.

Earlier this week, a veteran who owns an acre of land near Bush’s ranch invited Sheehan and her supporters to move their tents and cars onto his property, after right-wing Bush supporters in the area threatened the protesters.

One fired a shot in the air and another drove his truck over hundreds of small wooden crosses bearing the names of dead soldiers that the group had set up on the side of the road leading to Bush’s ranch.

Other residents had lobbied the county authorities to force the anti-war encampment to move miles away.

“I just think people should have a right to protest,” said Fred Mattlage, an Army veteran. “And I’m against the war. I don’t think it’s a war we need to be in.”

Sheehan’s simple but bold protest obviously took both the Bush administration and the media by surprise.

The instinctive and immediate reaction of the establishment press and TV networks to such an event could only be negative, if not downright hostile.

This goes not only for the far-right gutter press, such as the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, but also for so-called “liberal” newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

After all, they all have promoted the endless lies given out to justify the war and continue to support the occupation of Iraq.

Under conditions of a worsening military and political situation for the US on the ground in Iraq, and an unbroken string of opinion polls registering rising popular opposition to the war and plummeting support for Bush, Sheehan’s initiative was a most unwelcome and disturbing development.

The fallback position for the American media when such things occur is simply to ignore them.

More often than not, events that contradict the pro-war agenda of the corporate-controlled media never appear on the network evening news reports, or, if they do, they are noted and then discretely dropped.

As for the press, let us recall that the New York Times, whose official motto is “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” did not see fit to report prominently the world-wide anti-war protests that occurred on February 15, 2003— the largest international anti-war demonstrations ever held.

The Sheehan case, however, made the usual silent treatment an unsustainable option.

In the first place, she ensconced herself within a few miles of the entire White House press corps, which had made the trek to rural Texas to cover the presidential beat.

She set up camp along the dirt road leading to the Bush compound, where the reporters, cameramen, etc., could not help but see her.

More importantly, she presented a political difficulty.

Given the media’s ceaseless and cynical efforts to identify the legitimacy of the war with support for “our men and women in uniform” and whip up patriotic and pro-war sentiment by invoking those who made “the ultimate sacrifice” and the families they left behind— implying that those who opposed the war were betraying their countrymen on the field of battle— the networks and newspapers were obliged to tread carefully.

The task—at least for the mainstream and “liberal” media— was to treat Sheehan with a show of respect, while blunting her indictment of the war and the Bush administration and ultimately finding a way to discredit her anti-war views.

To the extent that the media has treated Sheehan sympathetically, it has focused on her personal tragedy and downplayed her strong political views.

It has largely ignored the fact that she characterizes the war as a criminal enterprise and supports Bush’s impeachment.

At the same time, a well-established division of labor is operating to discredit Sheehan.

The openly right-wing media swamp—Murdoch’s Fox News and New York Post, the dregs of the Internet, such as the Drudge Report, and the legion of fascist-minded radio and TV talk show hosts— serve up the dirt, and the “respectable” media organs spread their gossip and smears, in the form of “allegations” and “questions.”

Thus Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly wrote Tuesday in an online column, “It’s obvious Cindy Sheehan has become a political player, whose primary concern is embarrassing the president. She is no longer just a protester.”

The New York Post editorialized the same day under the headline “Cindy Sheehan’s Agenda”: “Like any other American, she is entitled to a personal agenda. Sadly, the one she’s developed is ugly.

“Cindy Sheehan is a fully-fledged member of the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party. She rails about how terrorism could be ended if only Israel would ‘get out’ of Palestine— and compares Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to ‘Hitler and Stalin.’...

“Her activities are being coordinated by Democratic political strategists—which helps explain why her statements parrot Democratic talking points, such as how ‘the Downing Street Memo proves’ that ‘Bush lied to the American people.’...

“[H]er vigil has degenerated into high-profile political theater—if, indeed, that wasn’t the point in the first place.”

What is the charge here? Cindy Sheehan is not simply the mother of a solider killed in Iraq.

She is a woman with definite political views, for which she fights. And those views—opposition to the war, opposition to Bush, opposition to the subversion of democratic rights by war conspirators who lied to the people— are extremist and illegitimate.

The claim that Sheehan is acting as a stalking horse for the Democratic Party is at once hysterical and far-fetched.

She is no doubt working with various groups linked to the Democratic Party, such as MoveOn.org, True Majority, Democracy for America and United for Peace and Justice, but her actions have cut across the consensus policy of the Democratic Party leadership, which is to fully support the imperialist project in Iraq and criticize Bush for failing to prosecute the war with sufficient ruthlessness and competence. For the most part, leading Democrats are calling for more troops in Iraq, and not one prominent figure in that party supports the withdrawal of US troops.

The New York Post’s reference to Sheehan’s sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians is by no means a casual one. It has now become a standard tactic of the media to implicitly or explicitly portray those who oppose the Iraq war as anti-Semites.

Last June, for example, the Washington Post published a derisory column on a hearing held by Michigan Congressman John Conyers on the Downing Street Memos, in which the author, Dana Milbank, cited the presence of critics of Israel to suggest that the entire proceedings were infected with anti-Semitism.

The notorious gossip monger and political provocateur Matt Drudge has reported on his Internet site that Cindy Sheehan had said her son died to defend Israel.

Such smears are repackaged, with a somewhat more objective tone, by the “moderate” TV networks and “liberal” press.

The Washington Post, for example, has taken to publishing reports on Sheehan that balance news of her growing support with echoes of the right-wing complaint that she has a political agenda and is working with various political and anti-war groups.

On Tuesday, CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed Sheehan and confronted her with her alleged statement on Israel. She denied ever having made it.

What the media fears in Cindy Sheehan is the broad and deep-going anger and potentially explosive social opposition that she represents.

Her firm and courageous stand, notwithstanding the limitations of her political outlook, suggests that a new quality is coming onto the scene— one that threatens to break the grip of political reaction and open the way for the entry of new forces, from among the working masses, into political life.

That is a nightmare for the American ruling elite that must be prevented.

The media operation on Cindy Sheehan is only now moving into high gear.

Stay tuned for more efforts to manipulate, insinuate and slander.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/shee-a18.shtml See

Also: Growing support for Cindy Sheehan protest against Iraq war [16 August 2005]

Protest at Bush’s ranch gathers momentum—mother of fallen soldier continues to demand meeting with president [13 August 2005]

Mother of fallen soldier camps outside Bush ranch: “Why did you kill my son?” [11 August 2005]

The Washington Post and the Downing Street memo [22 June 2005]


Informant: Friends



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

PAUL KRUGMAN DOES IT AGAIN A CALL TO ACTION -- MOVING FORWARD TO 2006

By Congressman John Conyers August 19, 2005

http://www.conyersblog.us/archives/00000211.htm

Today's New York Times has an excellent column by Paul Krugman (see below). The topic: Republican electoral dirty tricks. It is well worth reading the entire piece. It also provides me an opportunity to reflect on the debate that has broken out among progressives about the 2004 election irregularities and how we move forward.

I think I can predict the initial reaction of many of you who have been closely following the Ohio 2004 Presidential election investigations. You will be disappointed that Mr. Krugman stops short of saying the election fraud and irregularities in the 2004 election cost Senator Kerry the White House. While it is no secret what conclusion I have drawn about that question, I do not share this disappointment.

I know that many of my fellow progressives think the official margin of victory for Bush in Ohio, well over 100,000 votes, is too large a margin to be entirely reversed by proof of fraud or malfeasance. For them to believe that to be the case, they need to see some reasonable quantification of the actual voters who were disenfranchised and, in turn, the actual votes that were lost. After all, unlike the Republicans who still think Saddam Hussein possessed WMD when we invaded Iraq and believe we are winning the war, who think that tax cuts for the wealthy will grow the economy and reduce the deficit, who think a grieving mother and an Ambassador's wife are "fair game," and who think that the way to fix Social Security is to destroy it, we progressives are a ³reality based community.²

The problem with answering my fellow progressives' challenge for numbers is that so much of what happened in Ohio centered on unquantifiable events that makes counting the number of disenfranchised voters impossible. How can we determine exactly how many Kerry voters turned around and went home facing hopelessly long lines at the polls? Or how many voters were never registered, and were turned away on election day, because of bizarre and conflicting Ken Blackwell edits about the weight of voter registration forms? Or how many votes were lost because of machine defects or manipulation?

What I can say is what the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff said best in the Conyers report: "We have found numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio presidential election, which resulted in a significant disenfranchisement of voters. Cumulatively, these irregularities, which affected hundreds of thousand of votes and voters in Ohio, raise grave doubts regarding whether it can be said the Ohio electors selected on December 13, 2004, were chosen in a manner that conforms to Ohio law, let alone federal requirements and constitutional standards."* Is there an exact number? No. Was it potentially a net loss of more than 100,000 Democratic votes? I think so. I continue to investigate what happened in Ohio and in the rest of the nation in the 2004 election and maybe someday the evidence will be sufficiently irrefutable to convince every fair-minded person of the extent and effect of electoral wrongdoing in 2004.

In the meantime, my fellow progressives and I, agreeing with each other on so many things, could go back and forth arguing with one another -- not about whether the GOP played dirty -- but about whether there was ENOUGH fraud to shift the outcome of the election. I see this happen over and over between progressives, sometimes in a civil tone and sometimes not.^ In doing so, however, we would be losing sight of the fact that we actually disagree about very little. Krugman¹s column brings that home.

"There was at least as much electoral malfeasance in 2004 as there was in 2000, even if it didn't change the outcome. And the next election may be worse." Indeed, I think we all agree that, when it comes to electoral dirty tricks, Republican partisans continue to outdo themselves election after election. The things Ken Blackwell did in Ohio were so blatant and, in many instances, so overt and public, that he made Katherine Harris seem shy and retiring by comparison.

Then, he talks about the near blackout about the 2004 election irregularities by the mainstream media: "But few Americans have heard these facts. Perhaps journalists have felt that it would be divisive to cast doubt on the Bush administration's legitimacy. If so, their tender concern for the nation's feelings has gone for naught: Cindy Sheehan's supporters are camped in Crawford, and America is more bitterly divided than ever." How true. But for the progressive voices on the radio, like the Stephanie Miller or Randi Rhodes newscasts, the Internet, and columnists like Willliam Raspberry, many would have no idea what went wrong in Ohio. I think we all agree that the mainstream media is not getting the truth out. (I recently heard Stephanie Miller say something self-deprecating to the effect that, if I had heard her show, I would not call it a "newscast." When you only hear about important news on shows like hers and Randi's, what else do you call it? That said, I agree that hers is a very unusual newscast.)

And then he gets to the heart of the matter: "We aren't going to rerun the last three elections. But what about the future?"

"Our current political leaders would suffer greatly if either house of Congress changed hands in 2006, or if the presidency changed hands in 2008. The lids would come off all the simmering scandals, from the selling of the Iraq war to profiteering by politically connected companies. The Republicans will be strongly tempted to make sure that they win those elections by any means necessary. And everything we've seen suggests that they will give in to that temptation."

Republicans find themselves with plunging poll numbers and an uncertain electoral landscape in 2006. Failure for them in their drive to keep control of the House of Representatives, and one party rule in Washington, means that, if reelected, I will become Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Henry Waxman will become Chairman of the Government Reform Committee, Louise Slaughter will become Chair of the Rules Committee, Charlie Rangel will Chair the Ways and Means Committee, and Nancy Pelosi will be the first woman to be Speaker of the House. That means accountability for this Administration with a stiff dose of the truth.

Make no mistake about it. Desperate times will lead to desperate tactics and partisans supporting Republican candidates will pull out every dirty trick in the book to stop us from bringing checks and balances back to the federal government. What do we do about it?

First, we must be vigilant and we must use every legal means at our disposal to stop the pre and post election manipulations. Second, we must push for legislation at the state and federal level to reform our elections, including providing a voter verified paper ballot.

More immediately, however, we must work harder to take back the House and to do so by a large enough margin so that the malfeasance and fraud makes no difference. I want you to start today (the election is just a little more than 14 months away) because they are. Start organizing in your neighborhood and precinct. Join your local democratic party if you haven't already. Talk to your relatives and friends about how much is at stake in 2006. Support progressive and alternative media that help get our message out by spreading the word about your favorite progressive talk radio hosts and stations, and the blogs you read. Support the candidates of your choice by signing up to be a volunteer for their campaigns, for the DCCC, or by making a financial contribution. Write letters to the editor about the lack of accountability in our government for the bad decisions made by this Congress and this Administration.

In sum, I have a small request: do everything you did for the 2006 election that you did last year in a close Presidential election marred by malfeasance and fraud, and then do more. It is never too soon to start.

..........

*Those irregularities included: "The misallocation of voting machines led to unprecedented long lines that disenfranchised scores, if not hundreds of thousands, of predominantly minority and Democratic voters"..."Mr. Blackwell¹s decision to restrict provisional ballots resulted in the disenfranchisement of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of voters, again predominantly minority and Democratic voters"..."Mr. Blackwell¹s widely reviled decision to reject voter registration applications based on paper weight may have resulted in thousands of new voters not being registered in time for the 2004 election"..."The Ohio Republican Party¹s decision to engage in preelection ³caging² tactics, selectively targeting 35,000 predominantly minority voters for intimidation had a negative impact on voter turnout"..."The Ohio Republican Party¹s decision to utilize thousands of partisan challengers concentrated in minority and Democratic areas likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of legal voters, who were not only intimidated, but became discouraged by the long lines"..."We learned of improper purging and other registration errors by election officials that likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters statewide...The Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition projects that in Cuyahoga County alone over 10,000 Ohio citizens lost their right to vote as a result of official registration errors."..."There were 93,000 spoiled ballots where no vote was cast for president, the vast majority of which have yet to be inspected"...."There were numerous, significant unexplained irregularities in other counties throughout the state, [including] in Mahoning county [where] at least 25 electronic machines transferred an unknown number of Kerry votes to the Bush column" and "in Miami county, voter turnout was an improbable and highly suspect 98.55 percent, and after 100 percent of the precincts were reported, an additional 19,000 extra votes were recorded for President Bush."

On some blogs, my staff advises me that the critique of allegations of irregularities has been so angry and accusatory, and allegations of irregularities so wild and unsubstantiated, that I could be banned for posting this entry -- the topic itself is forbidden.

-----------

WHAT THEY DID LAST FALL By Paul Krugman New York Times August 19, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/19/opinion/19krugman.html

By running for the U.S. Senate, Katherine Harris, Florida's former secretary of state, has stirred up some ugly memories. And that's a good thing, because those memories remain relevant. There was at least as much electoral malfeasance in 2004 as there was in 2000, even if it didn't change the outcome. And the next election may be worse.

In his recent book "Steal This Vote" - a very judicious work, despite its title - Andrew Gumbel, a U.S. correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, provides the best overview I've seen of the 2000 Florida vote. And he documents the simple truth: "Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election."

Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore. This was true despite a host of efforts by state and local officials to suppress likely Gore votes, most notably Ms. Harris's "felon purge," which disenfranchised large numbers of valid voters.

But few Americans have heard these facts. Perhaps journalists have felt that it would be divisive to cast doubt on the Bush administration's legitimacy. If so, their tender concern for the nation's feelings has gone for naught: Cindy Sheehan's supporters are camped in Crawford, and America is more bitterly divided than ever.

Meanwhile, the whitewash of what happened in Florida in 2000 showed that election-tampering carries no penalty, and political operatives have acted accordingly. For example, in 2002 the Republican Party in New Hampshire hired a company to jam Democratic and union phone banks on Election Day.

And what about 2004?

Mr. Gumbel throws cold water on those who take the discrepancy between the exit polls and the final result as evidence of a stolen election. (I told you it's a judicious book.) He also seems, on first reading, to play down what happened in Ohio. But the theme of his book is that America has a long, bipartisan history of dirty elections.

He told me that he wasn't brushing off the serious problems in Ohio, but that "this is what American democracy typically looks like, especially in a presidential election in a battleground state that is controlled substantially by one party."

So what does U.S. democracy look like? There have been two Democratic reports on Ohio in 2004, one commissioned by Representative John Conyers Jr., the other by the Democratic National Committee.

The D.N.C. report is very cautious: "The purpose of this investigation," it declares, "was not to challenge or question the results of the election in any way." It says there is no evidence that votes were transferred away from John Kerry - but it does suggest that many potential Kerry votes were suppressed. Although the Conyers report is less cautious, it stops far short of claiming that the wrong candidate got Ohio's electoral votes.

But both reports show that votes were suppressed by long lines at polling places - lines caused by inadequate numbers of voting machines - and that these lines occurred disproportionately in areas likely to vote Democratic. Both reports also point to problems involving voters who were improperly forced to cast provisional votes, many of which were discarded.

The Conyers report goes further, highlighting the blatant partisanship of election officials. In particular, the behavior of Ohio's secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell - who supervised the election while serving as co-chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio - makes Ms. Harris's actions in 2000 seem mild by comparison.

And then there are the election night stories. Warren County locked down its administration building and barred public observers from the vote-counting, citing an F.B.I. warning of a terrorist threat. But the F.B.I. later denied issuing any such warning. Miami County reported that voter turnout was an improbable 98.55 percent of registered voters. And so on.

We aren't going to rerun the last three elections. But what about the future?

Our current political leaders would suffer greatly if either house of Congress changed hands in 2006, or if the presidency changed hands in 2008. The lids would come off all the simmering scandals, from the selling of the Iraq war to profiteering by politically connected companies. The Republicans will be strongly tempted to make sure that they win those elections by any means necessary. And everything we've seen suggests that they will give in to that temptation.


Informant: NHNE

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/shetterly4.html



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rogers/rogers165.html



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

http://www.lewrockwell.com/hornberger/hornberger54.html
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=89582;show_parent=1



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

It's over. For the United States to win the Iraq war requires three things: defeating the Iraqi resistance; establishing a stable government in Iraq that is friendly to the US; maintaining the support of the American people. None of these three seem any longer possible.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/756/op8.htm


From Information Clearing House

“What one generation perceives as repression, the next accepts as a necessary part of a complex daily life.”

By Brian Bogart

A single policy decision made in secluded chambers of the White House shortly after World War II explains why our financial and intellectual creativity focuses on lethal technologies, why 51% of our taxes go to defense and less than 5% to education, why there are 6000 military bases in the United States and 1000 US bases overseas, why comprehensive agendas support warfighting and weak agendas address human services and the environment, and why our top industry since 1950 remains the manufacture and sale of weapons.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9831.htm

By Jason Miller

Our dark cabal of Neocon leaders, several of whom have held positions of great power under Reagan, Bush I, and now Bush II, are perpetuating unrestrained expansion of the American Empire while utilizing Orwellian propaganda to convince its subjects that they are still living in the "land of the free".

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9849.htm

While debating conservative pundit David Horowitz on Ron Reagan's MSNBC show the other night, I was struck by the desperation with which supporters of the war have turned their fury on Cindy Sheehan, the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq who has been trying to get an audience with President Bush.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/081805Q.shtml



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

Francis A. Boyle Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (voice)
217-244-1478 (fax) fboyle@law.uiuc.edu
(personal comments only)


-----Original Message----- From: Institute for Public Accuracy [mailto:dcinstitute@igc.org] Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2005 1:55 PM To: Institute for Public Accuracy Subject: Scrutinizing Roberts -- Interviews Available

Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
___________________________________________________

PM Thursday, August 18, 2005

Interviews Available

Law Professors Scrutinize Roberts
* Quid Pro Quo? * Guantánamo Ruling * Federalist Society

DAVID LUBAN, (301) 864-0020, (202) 662-9806, cell: (301) 335-5506, luband@law.georgetown.edu, http://www.slate.com/id/2124603/?nav=tap3 The Washington Post reports today that "Judge John G. Roberts Jr. was interviewing for a possible Supreme Court nomination with top Bush administration officials at the same time he was presiding over a terrorism case of significant importance to President Bush." [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/16/AR20050816
01561.html ]. Professor of law at Georgetown University, Luban co-authored the recent article "Improper Advances: Talking Dream Jobs With the Judge Out of Court" in which he wrote: "Four days before President Bush nominated John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court on July 19, an appeals court panel of three judges, including Judge Roberts, handed the Bush administration a big victory in a hotly contested challenge to the president's military commissions. The challenge was brought by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Guantánamo detainee. President Bush was a defendant in the case because he had personally, in writing, found 'reason to believe' that Hamdan was a terrorist subject to military tribunals. The appeals court upheld the rules the president had authorized for these military commissions, and it rejected Hamdan's human rights claims -- including claims for protection under the Geneva Conventions."

MICHAEL RATNER, (845) 657-2135, mratner@igc.org, http://www.humanrightsnow.org, http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/18/1331253 President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Ratner is co-author of the book "Guantánamo: What the World Should Know." He said today: "The news that potential Supreme Court nominee John Roberts was interviewed for the court seat by Attorney General Gonzales, Vice President Cheney and others while he was deciding a case that went to the heart of the legality of the administration's so-called 'war on terror' should finish off his nomination. The central issue of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld was the application of the Geneva Convention to alleged terrorist detainees. The policy was crafted by the very people who were interviewing Roberts for his new job. He would have every reason to make sure his decision did not disagree with the administration: and it did not. The legal standard set forth in the U.S. law is that a judge should remove himself if his 'impartiality might reasonably be questioned.' No doubt about that -- Roberts should have recused himself once the interviews commenced. His failure to do so should prevent his gaining a high court seat. But it may even raise more serious questions. Was Roberts being offered a bribe for his vote? People may recall that during the Daniel Ellsberg 'Pentagon Papers' trial, Nixon and his aides offered the judge the top FBI position. It was considered as a bribe by many and an impeachable offense. Is there really any difference in the two cases?"

FRANCIS BOYLE, (217) 333-7954, fboyle@law.uiuc.edu, http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/hijakjustice.html Professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Boyle said today: "In his answers to the Senate Judiciary Committee, John Roberts stated that he had 'no recollection' of his membership in the Federalist Society and being on its Steering Committee for Washington, D.C. Nevertheless, a high-level official in the Federalist Society has confirmed Roberts' membership, and it has also been confirmed that all Federalist Society members pay dues. In other words, Roberts lied to Congress, which is a crime in its own right. For that reason alone, Roberts is disqualified to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. ... The Senate Judiciary Committee must grill Roberts on all the positions and activities of the Federalist Society and its prominent members before rejecting him, thus exposing before a national audience the pernicious and insidious role that the Federalist Society has played in the American legal profession for the past two decades."

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/0aa355b1c98400e3011b81116989e64a.htmU

10 Aug 2005 17:30:21 GMT

(New York, August 10, 2005) -- Counter-terrorism measures presented by Prime Minister Tony Blair last week, coupled with this week's proposal for special anti-terrorism courts, are deeply worrying, said Human Rights Watch. Some of the measures under discussion appear to be in outright breach of the U.K.'s human rights obligations and others are so ill-defined and overbroad that they risk criminalizing valid forms of dissent and undermining freedom of religion, said the group. The proposed measures include the deportation of foreigners deemed "extremist" to places where they might be at risk of torture; a new offence criminalizing speech that amounts to "indirect incitement," including speech that justifies or glorifies terrorism; extended time periods for pre-trial detention without charge; and the closure of places of worship used to "foment extremism." A proposal is also under consideration to establish special anti-terrorism courts with some proceedings held in secret, court-appointed advocates to represent a suspect, and no access to evidence by the suspect.

"The U.K. government must protect the public from acts of terrorism," said Holly Cartner, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division. "But the government assumes that the public and the courts will readily accept measures that could implicate the U.K. in torture, arbitrary detention, unfair trials, and stripping people of their right to voice dissenting opinions and practice their religion. The authorities are grasping at straws, instead of setting a rational and effective course that provides security and protects rights at the same time."

Deporting a person to risk of torture violates U.K. and international law. The prohibition is absolute and permits no exceptions, even on national security grounds. The government has said it will seek "diplomatic assurances" from governments in countries where torture is practiced to effect such transfers. In a June 23 letter to Prime Minister Blair, Human Rights Watch warned that experience has shown that diplomatic assurances from regimes where torture is routine do not provide an effective safeguard against such abuse. Blair has said that, "should legal obstacles arise," he will seek to amend the U.K. Human Rights Act to accommodate such transfers. The former home secretary David Blunkett has publicly warned judges "in the strongest terms" that the government would not tolerate any judicial attempt to overturn the new anti-terrorist measures outlined last week.

"A human rights act amended to permit complicity in torture makes a mockery of the very notion of rights protection," said Cartner. "The threat of terrorism does not give senior politicians carte blanche to substitute their views for the rule of law. It would appear that the government has forgotten the very values it says it is fighting for."

The proposed measures also call for the criminalization of some forms of speech, including "justifying or glorifying terrorism" and the expression of "extreme views that are in conflict with the U.K.'s culture of tolerance," whether uttered or penned in the U.K. or abroad. The government has proposed that persons within the U.K. would be subject to deportation for such a speech offense and those seeking access to the country would be excluded from entry if their speech was deemed to pose a threat to national security, public order, or the U.K.'s relations with a third country. Such vague definitions of prohibited speech raise serious concerns that the measure is overbroad and could criminalize valid dissent. Moreover, the absence of a geographical limit would make it extremely difficult to draw a link between offending speech and any violence suspected of having resulted from it outside the U.K.

"As it stands, this speech offense casts an unacceptably broad net," said Cartner. "There must be a link between words that incite and acts of violence for speech to be criminal. The government risks choking free expression."

The proposal to establish special anti-terrorism courts raises serious concerns about the erosion of fundamental fair trial standards, including access to counsel and evidence, and arbitrary detention. Security-cleared "special advocates" could hear evidence against the accused in closed hearings, but would not be able to reveal any of that evidence to the accused or to his or her chosen counsel. A single judge would decide whether and how long a person could be held in preventive detention without charge or trial based on the evidence.

"The U.K. government has already been brought to book for its indefinite detention regime," said Cartner. "Secret hearings, based on secret evidence, with little access to effective counsel harken back to the Belmarsh debacle. Hasn't the British government learned a lesson?"

Other proposals that implicate fundamental human rights protections include a new power to order the closure of a place of worship used as a "centre for fomenting extremism" and the exclusion of certain Muslim clerics outside the U.K. who are deemed "not suitable to preach" and who will be excluded from the U.K. in the future. These proposals implicate the freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs in worship, practice, or teaching. The U.K. government can only impose limits on such rights in very narrow circumstances prescribed by international law. Collective punishment is not only illegal, but also particularly divisive in the current climate. The government should take into consideration the profoundly negative impact that such measures could have on the affected communities.

"The punishment of an entire community is not the answer. If there is evidence that a person has committed a crime, specific charges should be brought against him or her," said Cartner. "The closure of mosques or other houses of worship could be perceived as labeling an entire community as somehow involved in terrorism. This is hardly the way to inspire confidence in certain communities, the Muslim community in particular."

A consultation paper on the deportation and exclusion measures is currently open for public review and comment. Draft proposals reflecting all the measures are scheduled to be presented to parliament in September.


Informant: Charles Bremer

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/081805A.shtml


Informant: Friends

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=HAS20050809&articleId=822


Informant: Charles Bremer

Please contact the Italian consulate if you have any information regarding this missing kidnapped person. He was abducted by US CIA agents from Italy, as described below.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/09/opinion/main768057.shtml

Italy Revolts Against Rendition

"There's no way you do something like this unilaterally in a friendly country without coordinating. It's always coordinated." anonymous former U.S. intelligence official

(The American Prospect) This column was written by Laura Rozen. It's no secret that some of the more dubious intelligence cited by the Bush administration to justify its invasion of Iraq ran through Italy. The most infamous case is that of the forged "uranium from Niger" memos that ultimately became a key basis for the administration's mistaken claims that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. A 1998 Italian newspaper report on a purported meeting between an emissary of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden circulated into U.S. intelligence as a key shred of evidence of prewar cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaeda, since discredited by the September 11 commission.

Italy, of course, was by no means the only U.S. ally to provide dubious Iraq intelligence to Washington. But as two of the more conservative governments in the strained transatlantic alliance, the Bush and Berlusconi administrations have tended to see things eye to eye, at least more so than Washington and some of its more war-skeptical European allies. Italy contributed troops to the U.S.-led alliance invading Iraq, despite the overwhelming unpopularity of that war among the Italian population.

But that unpopularity may finally put the two countries' intelligence relationship at risk. Italy's close cooperation with some of the more controversial practices in the U.S. war on terrorism may be becoming politically untenable for Silvio Berlusconi, facing re-election next year, as a delayed result of the CIA abduction of an Egyptian cleric from Milan two years ago. If the outrage surrounding the case continues, the Italian administration could be forced to distance itself from the United States -- or be forced from office.

On February 17, 2003, a month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq got under way, Hussan Mustafa Omar Nasr, an Egyptian cleric better known as Abu Omar, disappeared from Milan. News reports say that the United States suspected Omar of being a European leader of the Iraq-based terrorist group Ansar al-Islam. Since June 2005, a Milan prosecutor has indicted 19 alleged CIA employees (most identified by their cover names) for allegedly snatching Omar from outside a Milan mosque and bundling him off to Egypt. Since his alleged abduction, Omar has been heard from only once, telling his wife that he had been kidnapped by Italian- and English-speaking agents, flown to Egypt, imprisoned, and badly tortured. Omar is believed to still be in custody in Egypt.

For two years, Italy's counterterrorism police unit, Digos, has been simmering about the snatch job carried out under its nose. It had been closely surveilling Omar for months when Washington "disappeared" him, as part of Italy's own domestic counterterrorism efforts. The CIA's extraordinary rendition of Omar blew Digos' investigation and led it to demand the Milan prosecutor's investigation of the Omar rendition from Italy's sovereign territory.

This creates a problem for the Berlusconi government, which is already reeling from U.S. solders' killing of an Italian military-intelligence agent, Nicola Calipari, in Iraq last March (see Jason Vest's story "Checkpoints and Balances") and the wider unpopularity of Italian participation in the Iraq War. Berlusconi administration leaders are claiming that the CIA kept them in the dark about the Omar operation.

But former U.S. intelligence officials say the details of the operation, the history of U.S. intelligence operations in Italy and NATO countries, and the timing of the raid as the United States was trying to woo European support in advance of its invasion of Iraq all indicate that the snatch would have been reported to certain Italian authorities in advance.

"There's no way you do something like this unilaterally in a friendly country without coordinating," says a former U.S. intelligence official who asked not to be named. "It's always coordinated."

"The Italians were one of the few countries in Europe standing by us on Iraq," Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, told the Prospect. "There is no way in the world that agency management would have authorized unilateral operation in Italy on the eve of the invasion of Iraq by ourselves." Scheuer indicated that he did not know about the Abu Omar operation in particular, but was speaking from his years of experience overseeing similar cases before his resignation last November.

"We don't do, for the most part, unilateral operations in NATO countries," Scheuer continued. "I wish we would but our management -- and the White House -- values and worries so much about European opinion that we were never allowed to take unilateral operations in Europe."

Importantly, Scheuer adds that the Bush administration halted a plan to kill an al-Qaeda figure operating in northern Iraq before the war -- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, now believed to be a leader of the insurgency -- because of European opposition. "In the same time frame as this operation was supposed to occur, we had precise locational data for Zarqawi in northern Iraq nearly every day for a year before the invasion," Scheuer said. "They could have killed him, using missiles or aircrafts, had the [National Security Council] approved it. But at the time they were sweet-talking all the Europeans, especially the French and the Germans, into joining us in Iraq. They tried to kill Zarqawi as soon as the war started, but at that time, he was gone."

Scheuer's similar observations to the Italian daily La Repubblica, coupled with a Washington Post story reporting that "the CIA 'told a tiny number of people' [in Italy] about the action," have had a polarizing effect in Italy. The case has become a sort of Rorschach test for Italians' opinions about U.S.-Italian cooperation in the war on terrorism, dismay over the Iraq War, and concern about Italian government secrecy. "I think a majority of people believe that, somehow, at the technical level, the Italians were indeed informed," says Roberto Monetti, an analyst at the Aspen Institute Italia. "There's a sense that the issue was dealt with at the technical level between the [intelligence] services, but didn't reach the top level of the Italian government. In a way this allows the government to say it never lied."

Nicolo Pollari, the chief of Italy's military-intelligence service, Sismi, claimed to a parliamentary committee that he wasn't informed of the operation. Italian newspaper reports have hinted that Pollari may even be replaced over the scandal. "We can't prove that they want to change Pollari. Right now, it's just a rumor," says Gianni Cipriani, an expert on Italian intelligence and chief of Rome's Center of International Strategic Studies. "Right now, the Italian government has other problems -- election problems."

While Berlusconi's election problems might weigh against Pollari and collaboration with the United States, his terrorism problem is keeping changes at bay. Just two weeks after the Italian press was reporting the blown covers of the CIA operatives involved in the Omar snatch, the July 7 bombings in London put Italy on high alert for terrorism. Two days after those bombings, Italian police arrested 142 people, issuing expulsion orders for 53 of them, and deployed 2,000 carabinieri across the country to counter the threat. A thwarted second wave of bombings led straight to Rome. On July 29, Italian counterterrorism police nabbed one of the second set of London bombers, after he arrived at his brother's flat in Rome by train, and have been questioning him. "After the London bombing[s], people [are] worried about terror[ism]," says Corriere della Sera reporter Guido Olimpio, who helped break the story of the Milan prosecutor's indictments of the CIA agents. "At this moment, the government needs every single intelligence agent to control the situation to counter terror[ism]."

Heightened terrorism fears in Rome have pushed the Omar rendition case out of the Italian headlines for now, but it remains a sleeper issue for the upcoming elections. Did the Italian government tacitly cooperate with a U.S. policy that in effect condones torture? And depending on what the Italian electorate comes to believe, U.S. policy-makers may face their own dilemma: At what point do allies become more important than the intelligence information gleaned from the practice of extraordinary rendition?


Informant: Charles Bremer

Greg Moses, peacefile

August 18, 2005

http://www.peacefile.org/wordpress/?p=232

Two months ago while exhausted from a Summer Soulstice peace festival, and while looking with dismay into a long hot summer of war, Louisiana attorney Buddy Spell, his spouse Annie, and their guest of honor Cindy Sheehan decided they needed to do something, but not something too high energy. So they browsed through the train schedule and designated an Amtrak Crescent as their Peace Train. Come September they'd board the train in New Orleans and put out word to folks along the way to hop on for a ride to the big peace march in Washington D.C. That would be enough to keep their peace hopes on track. Of course, that was then.

"We had about 60 people signed up before Cindy went to Crawford," says Buddy, "but that has tripled." With a pre-boarding rally in Covington, Louisiana the night before Cindy and friends depart, the little town of Covington may soon be feeling like next month's Crawford. And when the train hits Union Station, Buddy says ‘old fart' activists will be greeted by the Campus Action Network, and wherever they go for the weekend, they will be marching 500 strong. And that's how you go in just a couple of months from a little ol' z-net zap to a global headliner by way of the little ditch that could.

Of course internet aficionados of the Crawford Peace House will know Buddy best as the daddy of Smudge kitty, who got semi-famous when somebody wrote about the little critter pouncing among the Rosemary branches last week. But Buddy's not bitter about that at all. "No, I've just been practicing law for the past 20 years, working my ass off. And Smudge kitty, all she does is show up! Now somebody wants to sell pictures of her on EBay to raise money for Gold Star Families. And a New York publishing attorney is working on a children's book." As you can tell, when it comes to Smudge, Buddy is just as proud as he wants to be.

As organizers of the Louisiana Action Network, Buddy and Annie have been acting as their own lawyers and law enforcement liaisons for years. They are driving back to Crawford Wednesday night because the McClennan County Sheriff's Department wants them there. There is a big move coming up, and believe it or not, the movement did not peak out last weekend as expected, so the complexities of keeping all things smoothly flowing are growing by the hour. Buddy and Annie made a good deal of headway with the local cops last week, so they need to get back to work.

As Buddy talks about organizing peacekeepers for last week's events, I tell him that no peacekeepers were apparent to me when I was there. "When this is all over with," he assures me. "I'll tell you how that works. And I won't mind giving up all my secrets when this is over, because this ain't never going to happen again. It's a perfect storm." In language and tone, Buddy is slipping into his courthouse drawl, the kind of talking that gets things done among jurors and judges across the South.

Buddy started out his law practice in 1989, representing clients like Halliburton, Brown and Root. In 1993 he switched to criminal law and finds that he likes his new clients better. For one thing, they are human clients, not corporate. For another thing, he gets to represent some innocent clients these days, whereas with corporate clients, "that was never a possibility!"
1996 he became law partners with his spouse Annie, otherwise known as mommy to Smudge. And they have been keeping the faith in the peace movement with no idea that the dog days this year would prove to be so cool.

"In two days Cindy did through pure moxie what a lot of us in the peace movement haven't been able to do in two years," says Buddy. "It's going to galvanize the movement. Lots of old problems have been forgotten." There is no more talk, for example, that the ANSWER coalition and United for Peace and Justice will hold separate rallies and then stage feeder marches. Thanks to Cindy's action in Crawford, the seemingly impossible knots within the movement have disappeared, "and everyone is focusing on the central issue: the dead and those who might die."

No one as active as Buddy and Annie has much time to take in the news coverage, but Buddy did catch the Hardball interview, and he thinks Cindy held up well. "She did an excellent job," he says. "And so did her sister."

Something about the land and weather at Camp Casey strips away all your poses. What's left is something like raw core. After two weeks of heat and activity, Cindy's image is not only suitless, it's anti-suit. We can look at Cindy the way we look at ourselves in the mirror before and after the styles have been applied. No way for the networks to outdo that. To watch a television reporter carrying the obligatory blazer in that heat is to watch a metaphor for all the silly posing that the deadly messages of war have wrapped themselves in for the past few years.

"We show up to Crawford exhausted to begin with (because of the travel) and then the weather really does wear you down. Yet Cindy holds up well. I'm 48 years old, too, and the days I spent at Camp Casey beat the hell out of me. I was glad to go home and get some bed rest." Yet he's rushing back into action with high energy this week, because the pilgrims just keep coming.


Note: Peace Train info at http://www.newdemocracyrising.com


Informant: Steven L. Robinson

From ufpj-news



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

From: rad-green-request@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2005 7:28 PM Subject: Rad-Green Digest, Vol 23, Issue 22

Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 14:16:29 -0400 From: "David Mcreynolds" Subject: Cindy Sheehan's Critics Get Desperate & Ugly
(John Nichols, The Nation)

Cindy Sheehan's Tragic Critics

John Nichols The Nation, August 17, 2005
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=13737

While debating conservative pundit David Horowitz on Ron Reagan's MSNBC show the other night, I was struck by the desperation with which supporters of the war have turned their fury on Cindy Sheehan, the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq who has been trying to get an audience with President Bush.

Horowitz, the former left-wing zealot who is now a right-wing zealot, described the woman who has camped out near Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch as "hateful," accused her of dishonoring the memory of her son and promised that if Sheehan and other anti-war activists succeed in bringing an end to the occupation of Iraq then "rivers of blood" will flow in the streets of America.

It was a remarkable performance, so much so that even Horowitz admitted that he was "emotional" about the subject.

Of course, Horowitz is wrong, on every point.

But it is difficult to get angry with him, or even to take his ranting seriously.

When Reagan asked me if I wanted to "dignify" Horowitz's comments with a response, I declined, except to express a measure of sympathy for Horowitz and other true believers who have become so frenzied in their need to defend the Iraq imbroglio that they feel they must attack a grieving mother who wants to make sure that no more parents will have to bury their sons and daughters as a result of the Bush administration's arrogance.

The rapidly dwindling minority of Americans who continue to search for some rationale for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq has been driven to the brink of breakdown by the success of Sheehan's protest.

Go to the website of William F. Buckley's National Review magazine and you will find Sheehan described in headlines as "nutty," dismissed by columnists as "the mouthpiece... of howling-at-the-moon, bile-spewing Bush haters" and accused of "sucking up intellectual air" that, presumably, would be better utilized by Condoleezza Rice explaining once more that it would be wrong to read too much into the August
6, 2001, briefing document that declared: "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S."

Human Events, the conservative weekly newspaper, dismisses Sheehan as a "professional griever" who "can claim to be in perpetual mourning for her fallen son" -- as if there is some time limit on maternal sorrow over the death of a child.

Fox News Channel spinner-in-chief Bill O'Reilly accuses Sheehan of being "in bed with the radical left," including -- horrors! -- "9-11 families" that are still seeking answers about whether, in the first months of 2001, the Bush administration was more focused on finding excuses to attack Iraq than on protecting Americans from terrorism.

And Rush Limbaugh was on the radio the other day ranting about how, "(Sheehan's) story is nothing more than forged documents.

There's nothing about it that's real..."
(Just to clarify for Limbaugh listeners: Cindy Sheehan's 24-year-old son Casey really did die in Iraq, and his mother really would like to talk with President Bush about all those claims regarding WMDs and al-Qaida ties that the administration used to peddle the "case" for war.)

The pro-war pundits who continue to defend the occupation of Iraq are freaked out by the fact that a grieving mother is calling into question their claim that the only way to "support the troops" is by keeping them in the frontlines of George W. Bush's failed experiment.

Bush backers are horrified that Sheehan's sincere and patriotic anti-war voice has captured the nation's attention.

What the pro-war crowd does not understand is that Cindy Sheehan is not inspiring opposition to the occupation.

She is merely putting a face on the mainstream sentiments of a country that has stopped believing the president's promises with regard to Iraq.

According to the latest Newsweek poll,
61 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's handing of the war, while just 26 percent support the president's argument that large numbers of U.S. military personnel should remain in Iraq for as long as it takes to achieve the administration's goals there.

The supporters of this war have run out of convincing lies and effective emotional appeals.

Now, they are reduced to attacking the grieving mothers of dead soldiers.

Samuel Johnson suggested that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

But, with their attacks on Cindy Sheehan, the apologists for George Bush's infamy have found a new and darker refuge.


Informant: Friends



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

http://www.omega-news.info/no_paper_trail_left_behind.htm

by Dennis Loo, Ph.D. Cal Poly Pomona
ddloo@csupomona.edu

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." (Through the Looking Glass)

In order to believe that George Bush won the November 2, 2004 presidential election, you must also believe all of the following extremely improbable or outright impossible things.(1)

1) A big turnout and a highly energized and motivated electorate favored the GOP instead of the Democrats for the first time in history.(2)

2) Even though first-time voters, lapsed voters (those who didn’t vote in 2000), and undecideds went for John Kerry by big margins, and Bush lost people who voted for him in the cliffhanger 2000 election, Bush still received a 3.5 million vote surplus nationally.(3)

3) The fact that Bush far exceeded the 85% of registered Florida Republicans’ votes that he got in 2000, receiving in 2004 more than
100% of the registered Republican votes in 47 out of 67 Florida counties, 200% of registered Republicans in 15 counties, and over 300% of registered Republicans in 4 counties, merely shows Floridians’ enthusiasm for Bush. He managed to do this despite the fact that his share of the crossover votes by registered Democrats in Florida did not increase over 2000 and he lost ground among registered Independents, dropping 15 points.(4)

4) Florida’s reporting of more presidential votes (7.59 million) than actual number of people who voted (7.35 million), a surplus of 237,522 votes, does not indicate fraud.

5) The fact that Bush got more votes than registered voters, and the fact that by stark contrast participation rates in many Democratic strongholds in Ohio and Florida fell to as low as 8%, do not indicate a rigged election.(5)

6) Bush won re-election despite approval ratings below 50% - the first time in history this has happened. Truman has been cited as having also done this, but Truman’s polling numbers were trailing so much behind his challenger, Thomas Dewey, pollsters stopped surveying two months before the 1948 elections, thus missing the late surge of support for Truman. Unlike Truman, Bush’s support was clearly eroding on the eve of the election.(6)

7) Harris' last-minute polling indicating a Kerry victory was wrong
(even though Harris was exactly on the mark in their 2000 election final poll).(7)

8) The “challenger rule” - an incumbent’s final results won’t be better than his final polling - was wrong;(8)

9) On election day the early-day voters picked up by early exit polls
(showing Kerry with a wide lead) were heavily Democratic instead of the traditional pattern of early voters being mainly Republican.

10) The fact that Bush “won” Ohio by 51-48%, but this was not matched by the court-supervised hand count of the 147,400 absentee and provisional ballots in which Kerry received 54.46% of the vote doesn’t cast any suspicion upon the official tally.(9)

11) Florida computer programmer Clinton Curtis (a life-long registered Republican) must be lying when he said in a sworn affidavit that his employers at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) and Tom Feeney (general counsel and lobbyist for YEI, GOP state legislator and Jeb Bush’s 1994 running mate for Florida Lt. Governor) asked him in 2000 to create a computer program to undetectably alter vote totals. Curtis, under the initial impression that he was creating this software in order to forestall possible fraud, handed over the program to his employer Mrs. Li Woan Yang, and was told: “You don’t understand, in order to get the contract we have to hide the manipulation in the source code. This program is needed to control the vote in south Florida.” (Boldface in original).(10)

12) Diebold CEO Walden O’Dell’s declaration in a August 14, 2003 letter to GOP fundraisers that he was "committed to helping Ohio to deliver its electoral votes to the president next year" and the fact that Diebold is one of the three major suppliers of the electronic voting machines in Ohio and nationally, didn’t result in any fraud by Diebold.

13) There was no fraud in Cuyahoga County, Ohio where the number of recorded votes was more than 93,000 larger than the number of registered voters and where they admitted counting the votes in secret before bringing them out in public to count. [See appendix – attached herein]

14) CNN reported at 9 p.m. EST on election evening that Kerry was leading by 3 points in the national exit polls based on well over
13,000 respondents. Several hours later at 1:36 a.m. CNN reported that the exit polls, now based on a few hundred more - 13,531 respondents - were showing Bush leading by 2 points, a 5-point swing. In other words, a swing of 5 percentage points from a tiny increase in the number of respondents somehow occurred despite it being mathematically impossible.(11)

15) Exit polls in the November 2004 Ukrainian presidential elections, paid for in part by the Bush administration, were right, but exit polls in the U.S., where exit polling was invented, were very wrong.(12)

16) The National Election Pool’s exit polls (13) were so far off that since their inception twenty years ago, they have never been this wrong, more wrong than statistical probability indicates is possible.

17) In every single instance where exit polls were wrong the discrepancy favored Bush, even though statistical probability tells us that any survey errors should show up in both directions. Half a century of polling and centuries of mathematics must be wrong.

18) It must be merely a stunning coincidence that exit polls were wrong only in precincts where there was no paper ballot to check against the electronic totals and right everywhere there was a paper trail.

The Emperor (and the Electoral Process) Have No Clothes

The preceding list recounts only some of the irregularities in the 2004 election since it ignores the scores of instances of voter disenfranchisement that assumed many different forms (e.g., banning black voters in Florida who had either been convicted of a felony previously or who were “inadvertently” placed on the felons list by mistake, while not banning convicted Latino felons(14); providing extraordinarily few voting machines in predominately Democratic precincts in Ohio; disallowing Ohio voters, for the first time, from voting in any precinct when they were unable to find their assigned precincts to vote in; and so on). A plethora of reasons clearly exists to conclude that widespread and historic levels of fraud were committed in this election.

Indeed, any one of the above highly improbables and utterly impossibles should have led to a thorough investigation into the results. Taken as a whole, this list points overwhelmingly to fraud. The jarring strangeness of the results and the ubiquity of complaints from voters (e.g., those who voted for Kerry and then saw to their shock the machine record their votes as being for Bush), require some kind of explanation, or the legitimacy of elections and of the presidency would be imperiled.

The explanations from public officials and major media came in three forms. First, exit polls, not the official tallies, were labeled spectacularly wrong. Second, the so-called “moral values” voters expressed in the now ubiquitous “red state/blue state” formula, were offered as the underlying reason for Bush’s triumph. And third, people who brought forth any of the evidence of fraud were dismissed as “spreadsheet-wielding conspiracy theorists” while mainstream media censored the vast majority of the evidence of fraud so that most Americans to this day have never heard a fraction of what was amiss. I will discuss each of these three responses, followed by a discussion of the role of electronic voting machines in the 2002 elections that presaged the 2004 election irregularities, and then wrap up with a discussion of these events’ significance taken as a whole.

Killing the Messenger: the Exit Polls

Exit polls are the gold standard of vote count validity internationally. Since exit polls ask people as they emerge from the polling station whom they just voted for, they are not projections as are polls taken in the months, weeks or days before an election. They are not subject to faulty memory, voter capriciousness (voters voting differently than they indicated to a pollster previously), or erroneous projections about who will actually turn up to vote. Pollsters know who turned up to vote because the voters are standing there in front of the exit pollsters. Because of these characteristics, exit polls are exceptionally accurate. They are so accurate that in Germany, for example, they are used to decide elections, with the paper ballots being counted in the days afterwards as a backup check against the exit polls(15). Exit polls are used, for this reason, as markers of fraud.(16)

Significant, inexplicable discrepancies between exit polls and official tallies only started showing up in the U.S. in 2000 and only in Florida
(and notably, nowhere else). The discrepancy was not the exit polls’ fault, however, but in the official tallies themselves. Although the mainstream media fell on their swords about their election’s evening projections calling Florida for Gore in 2000, their projections were right. In analyses conducted by the National Opinion Research Center in Florida after the U.S. Supreme Court aborted the vote recount, Gore emerged the winner over Bush, no matter what criteria for counting votes was applied(17). The fact that this is not widely known constitutes itself a major untold story.

Exit polling’s validity is further affirmed by GOP pollster Dick Morris. Immediately after the 2004 election he wrote:

Exit polls are almost never wrong. They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state…

To screw up one exit poll is unheard of. To miss six of them is incredible. It boggles the imagination how pollsters could be that incompetent and invites speculation that more than honest error was at play here.(18)

Confounded and suspicious of the results, Morris resorted to advancing the bizarre theory that there must have been a conspiracy among the networks to suppress the Bush vote in the west by issuing exit poll results that were so far off from the final tallies.

A number of different statisticians have examined the 2004 election results. University of Pennsylvania statistician Steve Freeman, Ph.D., most notably, analyzed the exit polls of the swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida and concluded that the odds of the exit polls being as far off as they were are 250 million to one(19). Exit polls in Florida had Kerry leading by 1.7 points and by 2.4 points in Ohio. These exit poll figures were altered at 1:30 a.m. November 3, 2004 on CNN to conform to the “official” tally. In the end, Kerry lost Florida by 5% and Ohio by 2.5%. This is a net shift of 6.7 points in Florida and 4.9 points in Ohio in Bush’s favor, well beyond the margin of error. By exit poll standards, this net shift was unbelievable.

A team at the University of California at Berkeley, headed by sociology professor Michael Hout, found a highly suspicious pattern in which Bush received 260,000 more votes in those Florida precincts that used electronic voting machines than past voting patterns would indicate compared to those precincts that used optical scan read votes where past voting patterns held.(20)

The Edison-Mitofsky polling group that conducted the National Exit Poll (NEP) issued a 77-page report on January 19, 2005 to account for why their exit polls were so unexpectedly far off.(21) Edison-Mitofsky rule out sampling error as the problem and indicate that systemic bias was responsible. They concluded that their exit polls were wrong because Kerry voters must have been more willing to talk to their poll workers than Bush voters and because their poll workers were too young and inexperienced. Edison-Mitofsky offer no evidence indicating that their conclusion about more chatty Kerry voters actually occurred, merely that such a scenario would explain the discrepancy. In fact, as nine statisticians(22) who conducted an evaluation of the Edison-Mitofsky data and analysis point out, Bush voters appeared to be slightly more willing to talk to exit pollsters than Kerry voters. This would make the exit polls’ discrepancy with the official tallies even more pronounced. In addition, the Edison-Mitofsky explanation fails to explain why exit polls were only exceptionally wrong in the swing states.

Red State, Red Herring: the “Moral Values” Voters

A plausible explanation still needs to be offered for the startling
2004 election outcome – how did Bush, caught in a lie about why we went to war with Iraq, racked by prison abuse and torture scandals at Abu Graib and Guantanamo, bogged down in Iraq, failing to catch Osama Bin Laden, badly embarrassed during the debates, caught sleeping prior to 9/11, and so on, manage to win a resounding victory? Enter here the “moral values” rationale. As Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times wrote in a November 4, 2004 article entitled “Moral Values Cited as a Defining Issue of the Election:”

Even in a time of war and economic hardship, Americans said they were motivated to vote for President Bush on Tuesday by moral values as much as anything else, according to a survey of voters as they left their polling places. In the survey, a striking portrait of one influential group emerged - that of a traditional, church-going electorate that leans conservative on social issues and strongly backed Mr. Bush….

In the same issue, another article by Todd S. Purdum entitled “Electoral Affirmation of Shared Values Provides Bush a Majority” cited 1/5 (more precisely, 22%) of the voters as mentioning “moral values” as their chief concern. This was echoed throughout major media.(23) The only person in the mainstream media to challenge this was New York Times columnist Frank Rich, on November 28, 2004 in an opinion piece entitled “The Great Indecency Hoax:”

The mainstream press, itself in love with the "moral values" story line and traumatized by the visual exaggerations of the red-blue map, is too cowed to challenge the likes of the American Family Association. So are politicians of both parties. It took a British publication, The Economist, to point out that the percentage of American voters citing moral and ethical values as their prime concern is actually down from 2000 (35 percent) and 1996 (40 percent).(24)

As Rich correctly points out, no American media outlet repeated this statistic. Instead, the widely mentioned and oft-repeated “moral values” vote took on the status of an urban – or in this instance, suburban/rural - legend.

Shocked by the election results, many people took out their anger at the perceived mendacity of Bush voters, especially those in the so-called “red states.” This fury, while understandable given Bush’s record, badly misses the point. Voters did not heist this election. As others have pointed out eloquently, many of the people who really did vote for Bush did so primarily because they were misled through systematic disinformation campaigns.(25)

“Spreadsheet wielding conspiracy theorists”

In November 2004 major U.S. media gave headline news treatment to the Ukrainian Presidential election fraud, explicitly citing the exit polls as definitive evidence of fraud. At the very same time major U.S. media dismissed anyone who pointed out this same evidence of likely fraud in the U.S. elections as “conspiracy theory” crazies. A November 11, 2004 Washington Post article, for example, described people raising the question of fraud as “mortally wounded party loyalists and … spreadsheet-wielding conspiracy theorists.”(26) Tom Zeller, Jr. handled it similarly, writing in the November 12, 2004 issue of the New York Times (“Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried”): “[T]he email messages and Web postings had all the twitchy cloak-and-dagger thrust of a Hollywood blockbuster. ‘Evidence mounts that the vote may have been hacked,’ trumpeted a headline on the Web site CommonDreams.org. ‘Fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines,’ declared BlackBoxVoting.org.”(27)

Neither of these articles bothered to address even a fraction of the evidence of irregularities. They did, however, both dismiss the 93,000 excess votes in Cuyahoga County, Ohio as merely an error in how the votes were reported, the Washington Post article offering the strange explanation that in “even-numbered years” the county posts vote totals from other districts outside the county in the Cuyahoga totals. The Washington Post passed off the exit polls discrepancy as “not being based on statistics” since the exit polls “are not publicly distributed.” Both of these statements were untrue. The New York Times article for its part failed to even mention exit polls. Both articles explained away the glaring and unbelievable totals for Bush in hugely Democratic districts as due to the “Dixiecrat” vote. This would be plausible except for two things: first, Bush did not win over any more crossover votes in 2004 than he did in 2000, and second, these votes far in excess of Republican registered voters numbers occurred primarily in non-rural areas. In just one example of this, Baker County, Florida, out of 12,887 registered voters, of whom 69.3% were Democrats and 24.3% Republicans, Bush received 7,738 votes while Kerry only received 2,180.(28) As Robert Parry of Consortiumnews.org points out:


Rather than a rural surge of support, Bush actually earned more than seven out of 10 new votes in the 20 largest counties in Florida. Many of these counties are either Democratic strongholds – such as Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach – or they are swing counties, such as Orange, Hillsborough, and Duval.

Many of these large counties saw substantially more newly registered Democrats than Republicans. For example, in Orange County, a swing county home to Orlando, Democrats registered twice as many new voters than Republicans in the years since 2000. In Palm Beach and Broward combined, Democrats registered 111,000 new voters compared with fewer than 20,000 new Republicans.(29)


The only person in major media to treat these complaints seriously and at any length was Keith Olbermann at MSNBC who ran two stories on it, citing Cuyahoga County’s surplus 93,000 votes over the registered voter count, and the peculiar victories for Bush in Florida counties that were overwhelmingly Democratic scattered across the state.(30) For his trouble, media conservatives attacked him for being a “voice of paranoia” and spreading “idiotic conspiracy theories.”(31)

The Oh-So Loyal Opposition: the Democratic Party

An obvious question here is: why haven’t the Democrats been more vigorous in their objections to this fraud? The fact that they haven’t objected more (with a few notable individual exceptions) has been taken by some as definitive evidence that no fraud must have happened because the Democrats have the most to gain from objecting. In part the answer to this puzzle is that the Democrats don’t fully understand what has hit them. The Kerry campaign’s reaction to the Swift Boat Veterans attack ads that damaged them so much are a good illustration of this. The right-wing media hammered away at Kerry through their by now very heavy presence over talk radio, the Internet, Fox News, and other outlets. The mainstream media such as ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and major newspapers and magazines, still adhering to the standards of “objective” journalism, which the right-wing media consider “quaint,”(32) legitimated these false allegations about Kerry by presenting “the two sides” as if one side made up entirely of lies and half-truths could be considered a legitimate “side.” The Kerry campaign concluded that these ads were all lies and wouldn’t have any effect, thus they took too long to respond to them. By the time they did, the damage had been done. In a CBS/NY Times poll taken September 12-16, 2004, 33% said they thought that the Swift Boast Veterans’ charges against Kerry were “mostly true.”(33) A remarkable feat given that Kerry volunteered and was multi-decorated for heroism while Bush used his father’s connections to dodge real service.

The Democrats’ meek acceptance of other races’ extremely peculiar outcomes prior to the 2004 elections illustrates this point further. As a result of the 2000 Florida debacle, Congress passed the “Help America Vote” Act in October 2002. While this act introduced a number of reasonable reforms, it also resulted in the widespread introduction of paperless electronic voting machines. This meant that there was no way to determine if the votes recorded by these computers were accurate and tamper-free. Efforts subsequently by a few Democratic Congresspeople, led by Michigan Rep. John Conyers, to rectify this and ensure a paper ballot, have been blocked by the GOP majority.

The following is a partial list of 2002 discrepancies that can be understood as dress rehearsals for the stolen presidential election of
2004:

On Nov. 3, 2002, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll showed Democratic Sen. Max Cleland with a 49-to-44 point lead over Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss. The next day, Chambliss, despite trailing by 5 points, ended up winning by a margin of 53 to 46 percent. This was, in other words, an unbelievable 12-point turn around over the course of one day!

In the Georgia governor's race Republican Sonny Perdue upset incumbent Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes by a margin of 52 to 45 percent. This was especially strange given that the October 16-17, 2002 Mason Dixon Poll (Mason Dixon Polling and Research, Inc. of Washington, D.C.) had shown Democratic Governor Barnes ahead 48 to 39 percent, with a margin of error of ± 4 points. The final tally was, in other words, a jaw dropping 16-point turn-around! What the Cleland “defeat” by Saxby and the Barnes “defeat” by Perdue both have in common is that nearly all the Georgia votes were recorded on computerized voting machines, which produce no paper trail.

In Minnesota, after Democrat Sen. Paul Wellstone's plane crash death,(34) ex-vice-president Walter Mondale took Wellstone’s place and was leading Republican Norm Coleman in the days before the election by 47 to 39 percent. Despite the fact that he was trailing just days before the race by 8 points, Coleman beat Mondale by 50 to 47 percent. This was an 11-point turn around! The Minnesota race was also conducted on electronic voting machines with no paper trail.(35)

Welcome to a world where statistical probability and normal arithmetic no longer apply!(36) The Democrats, rather than vigorously pursuing these patently obvious signs of election fraud in 2004, have nearly all decided that being gracious losers is better than being winners,(37) probably because – and this may be the most important reason for the Democrat’s relative silence - a full-scale uncovering of the fraud runs the risk of mobilizing and unleashing popular forces that the Democrats find just as threatening as the GOP does.

The delicious irony for the GOP is that the Help America Vote Act, precipitated by their theft of the Florida 2000 presidential vote, made GOP theft of elections as in the preceding examples easy and unverifiable except through recourse to indirect analysis such as pre-election polls and exit polls.(38) This is the political equivalent of having your cake and eating it too. Or, more precisely: stealing elections, running the country, and aggressively, arrogantly and falsely claiming that “the people” support it.

Flavor Flav of the rap group Public Enemy used to wear a big clock around his neck in order to remind us all that we’d better understand what time it is. Or, as Bob Dylan once said: “Let us not speak falsely now, the hour’s getting late.” To all of those who said before the 2004 elections that this was the most important election in our lifetimes; to all of those who plunged into that election hoping and believing that we could throw the villains out via the electoral booth; to all of those who held their noses and voted for Democrats thinking that at least they were slightly better than the theocratic fascists running this country now, this must be said: VOTING REALLY DOESN’T MATTER. If we weren’t convinced of that before these last elections, then now is the time to wake up to that fact. Even beyond the fraudulent elections of 2000 and 2004, public policies are not now, nor have they ever been, settled through elections.

The Role of Mass Movements and Alternative Media

What can be done? The Eugene McCarthy campaign of 1968 and the George McGovern campaign in 1972 didn’t end the war in Vietnam. The Vietnamese people and the anti-war movement ended the war. Civil rights weren’t secured because JFK and LBJ suddenly woke up to racial discrimination. The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement galvanized public opinion and rocked this country to its foundations. Men didn’t suddenly wake up and realize that they were male chauvinist pigs - women formed the Women’s Movement, organized, marched, rallied, and demanded nothing less than equality, shaking this country to the core. The Bush administration is bogged down and sinking deeper in Iraq not mainly because the top figures of the Bush administration consist of liars, blind (and incompetent) ideologues, international outlaws and propagators of torture as an official policy, but because the Iraqi people have risen up against imperialist invasion. Prior to the war, the international anti-Iraq war movement brought out millions of people into the streets, the largest demonstrations in history, denying the U.S. imperialists the UN’s sanction and leading to Turkey denying US requests to use their land as a staging area. These are major, world-historic feats.

The 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections fraud underscores the critical importance of building a mass movement, a movement of resistance that doesn’t tie itself to the electoral road and electoral parties. In addition, as Robert Parry has eloquently argued, a counterforce to the right-wing media empire must be built by the left and by progressive-minded people. As it stands today, the right can get away with nearly anything because they have talking heads on TV, radio, the Internet and other outlets who set the tone and the political agenda, with mainstream media focusing on sex and sensationalism and taking their political cues to a large extent from the right.(39)

Like a bridge broken by an earthquake, the electoral road can only lead to plunging us into the sea – which is precisely what happened in the
2004 election.

FOOTNOTES:

(1) Several of the items in this list feature Ohio and Florida because going into the election it was universally understood that the outcome hinged on these swing states.

'TruthIsAll' on the DemocraticUnderground.com offered a list that is similar in format to my highly improbables and utterly impossibles list of the 2004 election results and I have drawn directly from their list for items #7 and 8.
(http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x22581), retrieved June 4, 2005.

(2) High turnout favors Democrats and more liberal-left candidates because the groups who participate the least and most sporadically in voting are from lower socio-economic groups who generally eschew more conservative candidates.

(3) Seventeen percent of election 2004 voters did not vote in 2000. This includes both first-time and lapsed voters. Kerry defeated Bush in this group 54 percent to 45 percent. (Katharine Q. Seelye, "Moral Values Cited as a Defining Issue of the Election," The New York Times, November 4, 2004). This data contradicts the widely held belief that Bush owes his victory to mobilizing conservative evangelicals and getting out the Republican base.

(4) Gore carried the 2000 Florida Independent vote by only 47 to 46 percent whereas Kerry carried them by a 57 percent to 41 percent margin. In 2000 Bush received 13% of the registered Democratic voters votes and in 2004 he got the virtually statistically identical 14% of their votes. Sam Parry, "Bush's 'Incredible' Vote Tallies," Consortiumnews.com, November 9, 2004.

See also Colin Shea's analysis: "In one county, where 88% of voters are registered Democrats, Bush got nearly two-thirds of the vote--three times more than predicted by my model. In 21 counties, more than 50% of Democrats would have to have defected to Bush to account for the county result; in four counties at least 70% would have been required. These results are absurdly unlikely." http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.asp?id=321

(5) "[C]ertified reports from pro-Kerry Cleveland, in Cuyahoga County, [showed] Š precincts with turnouts of as few as 22.31 percent (precinct 6B), 21.43 percent (13O), 20.07 percent (13F), 14.59 percent (13D), and 7.85 percent (6C) of the registered voters. Thousands of people in these precincts lined up for many hours in the rain in order, it would appear, not to vote.

"Meanwhile, in pro-Bush Perry County, the voting records certified by Secretary of State Blackwell included two precincts with reported turnouts of 124.4 and 124.0 percent of the registered voters, while in pro-Bush Miami County, there were precincts whose certified turnouts, if not physically impossible, were only slightly less improbable. These and other instances of implausibly high turnouts in precincts won by Bush, and implausibly low turnouts in precincts won by Kerry, are strongly suggestive of widespread tampering with the vote-tabulation processes." Michael Keefe, "The Strange Death of American Democracy: Endgame in Ohio," http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE501A.html , retrieved May 31, 2005.

(6) "Bush's job approval has slipped to 48% among national adults and is thus below the symbolically important 50% point." "Questions and Answers With the Editor in Chief, Frank Newport, Editor in Chief, The Gallup Poll, November 2, 2004, http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/?ci=13948&pg=1, retrieved on May 27, 2005.

As Newport further notes, referring to the final Oct. 29-31, 2004 CNN/USA Today /Gallup poll, "Among all national adults, 49% now choose Kerry as the candidate best able to handle Iraq, while 47% choose Bush. This marks a significant pickup on this measure for Kerry, who was down nine points to Bush last week. In fact, Kerry has lost out to Bush on this measure in every poll conducted since the Democratic convention."

"Bush's margin over Kerry as the candidate best able to handle terrorism is now seven points. 51% of Americans choose Bush and 44% choose Kerry. This again marks a significant change. Last week, Bush had an 18-point margin over Kerry, and the 7-point advantage is the lowest yet for Bush." In other words, momentum was on Kerry's side, with Bush losing 9 points of support on Iraq and 11 points on handling terrorism over the course of one week! This was hardly a sign of someone about to win by 3.5 million votes.

(7) http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=515 , dated November 2, 2004, retrieved on June 1, 2005: " Both surveys suggest that Kerry has been making some gains over the course of the past few days (see Harris Polls #83 http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=512 , and #78 http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=507 ). If this trend is real, then Kerry may actually do better than these numbers suggest. In the past, presidential challengers tend to do better against an incumbent President among the undecided voters during the last three days of the elections, and that appears to be the case here. The reason: undecided voters are more often voters who dislike the President but do not know the challenger well enough to make a decision. When they decide, they frequently split 2:1 to 4:1 for the challenger." For Harris' last minute poll results before the 2000 election, see http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=130 , dated November 6, 2000 in which they call the election between Bush and Gore too close to call and predict that the result will depend upon the turnout.

(8) As Gallup explains, challengers tend to get the votes of those saying they are undecided on the eve of an election: "[B]ased on an analysis of previous presidential and other elections there is a high probability that the challenger (in an incumbent race) will receive a higher percentage of the popular vote than he did in the last pre-election poll, while there is a high probability that the incumbent will maintain his share of the vote without any increase. This has been dubbed the 'challenger rule.' There are various explanations for why this may occur, including the theory that any voter who maintains that he or she is undecided about voting for a well-known incumbent this late in the game is probably leaning toward voting for the challenger." "Questions and Answers With the Editor in Chief, Frank Newport, Editor in Chief, The Gallup Poll, November 2, 2004, http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/?ci=13948&pg=1, retrieved on May 27,
2005. See also footnote 7 herein.

(9) Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman, "Ohio's Official Non-Recount Ends amidst New Evidence of Fraud, Theft and Judicial Contempt Mirrored in New Mexico, The Columbus Free Press
31 December 31, 2004, at http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1057 , retrieved June 6, 2005.

(10) Curtis states in his affidavit that he met in the fall of 2000 with the principals of Yang Enterprises, Inc., - Li Woan Yang., Mike Cohen, and Tom Feeney (chief counsel and lobbyist for YEI). Feeney became Florida's House Speaker a month after meeting with Curtis. Curtis says that he initially thought he was being asked to make such a program in order to prevent voter fraud. Upon creating the program and presenting it to Yang, he discovered that they were interested in committing fraud, not preventing it. Curtis goes on to say: "She stated that she would hand in what I had produced to Feeney and left the room with the software." As the police would say, what we have here is motive and opportunity - and an abundance of evidence of criminal fraud in the Florida vote, together with Feeney's intimate connection to Jeb Bush. Curtis, on the other hand, as a life-long registered Republican - as of these events at least - has no discernible motive to come forward with these allegations, and only shows courage for the risk to himself by doing so. For his full affidavit, see http://fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com/2004/12/affidavit-of-vote- fraud-software.html#110243131597922449 , retrieved June 1, 2005.

(11) Michael Keefer, "Footprints of Electoral Fraud: The November 2 Exit Poll Scam," http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE411A.html, retrieved May 31, 2005.

(12) In the Ukraine, as a result of the exit polls' variance from the official tally, they had a revote. In the U.S., despite the exit polls varying widely from the official tally, we had an inauguration!

(13) The NEP was a consortium of news organizations that contracted Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International to conduct the national and state exit polls. Warren Mitofsky created exit polling.

(14) While blacks went to Kerry by 90 to 10, Latino voters were much more likely to vote for Bush.

(15) I owe this example to Steven Freeman, "The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy," November 10, 2004, election04.ssrc.org/research/ 11_10, unexplained_ exit- poll.pdf.

(16) "So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries. When I worked on Vicente Fox's campaign in Mexico, for example, I was so fearful that the governing PRI would steal the election that I had the campaign commission two U.S. firms to conduct exit polls to be released immediately after the polls closed to foreclose the possibility of finagling with the returns. When the [exit] polls announced a seven-point Fox victory, mobs thronged the streets in a joyous celebration within minutes that made fraud in the actual counting impossible." GOP consultant and pollster Dick Morris, "Those Exit Polls Were Sabotage," http://www.thehill.com/morris/110404.aspx , dated November 4, 2004, retrieved June 4, 2005.

(17) "Gore Won Florida," http://archive.democrats.com/display.cfm?id=181, retrieved May 28, 2005.

(18) Dick Morris, "Those Exit Polls Were Sabotage," http://www.thehill.com/morris/110404.aspx , dated November 4, 2004, retrieved June 4, 2005.

(19) Steven Freeman, "The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy," November 10, 2004, election04.ssrc.org/research/ 11_10, unexplained_ exit- poll.pdf.

(20) Ian Hoffman, "Berkeley: President Comes Up Short," The Tri-Valley Herald , November 19, 2004. The Berkeley report itself is at http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ , retrieved June 7, 2005.

(21) Evaluation of the Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (MEP), January 19, 2005, http://www.exit-poll.net/faq.html, retrieved April 2, 2005.

MSNBC publicized this report (inaccurately) under the headline "Exit Polls Prove That Bush Won." (Steve Freeman and Josh Mitteldorf, "A Corrupted Election: Despite what you may have heard, the exit polls were right," February 15, 2005, In These Times , http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1970/ , retrieved April 4, 2005.

(22) Warren Mitteldorf, Ph.D., Temple University Statistics Department; Kathy Dopp, MS in mathematics, USCountVotes President; Steven Freeman, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania; Brian Joiner, Ph.D. Professor of Statistics and Director of Statistical Consulting (ret.), University of Pennsylvania; Frank Stenger, Ph.D., Professor of Numerical Analysis, University of Utah; Richard Sheehan, Ph.D. Professor of Finance, University of Notre Dame; Paul Velleman, Ph.D. Assoc. Professor, Dept. of Statistical Sciences, Cornell University; Victoria Lovegren, Ph.D., Lecturer, Dept. of Mathematics, Case Western University; Campbell B. Read, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Statistical Science, Southern Methodist University. http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/USCountVotes Re Mitofsky-Edison.pdf.

(23) An alternative theory which was advanced by a few was that fears about terrorism and the ongoing war in Iraq made many reluctant to kick out a sitting president. This theory has the benefit, at least, of having some evidence. However, while it explained why so many ignored the fact that WMD was never found in Iraq, the given rationale for launching war on a country that had not attacked us, and a host of other scandals such as torture and murder at Abu Graib, and why Bush did manage to receive a lot of votes, it didn't explain why he won by a
3.5 million margin

(24) The Economist, The triumph of the religious right, November 11, 2004 http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=33755
43, retrieved April 5, 2005.

(25) See, for example, ex-conservative David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., "How Washington Poisoned the News, Vanity Fair , May 2005.

(26) Manuel Roig-Franzia and Dan Keating, "Latest Conspiracy Theory -- Kerry Won -- Hits the Ether, " Washington Post, November 11, 2004, A-02, reprinted at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41106-2004Nov10.html, retrieved June 7, 2005

(27) Available in its entirety at http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ VoteFraudTheoriesNixed.html , retrieved June 6, 2005.

(28) Greg Guma, "Election 2004: Lingering Suspicions," United Press International, November 15, 2004, http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20041112-010916-6128r, retrieved June 7, 2005.

(29) Robert Parry, "Washington Post's Sloppy Analysis," consortiumnews.com, November 12, 2004 at http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/111204.html , retrieved June 7, 2005.

(30) "Liberty County - Bristol, Florida and environs - where it's 88 percent Democrats, 8 percent Republicans) but produced landslides for President Bush. On Countdown, we cited the five biggest surprises (Liberty ended Bush: 1,927; Kerry: 1,070), but did not mention the other 24." at http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111004B.shtml#1, retrieved June 7, 2005. See also David Swanson , "Media Whites Out Vote Fraud," January 3, 2005: http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010405Y.shtml for a good summary of this media white out.

(31) Media Matters for America, "Conservatives rail against MSNBC's Olbermann for reporting election irregularities," http://mediamatters.org/items/2004111600006 , retrieved June 7, 2005.

(32) The Fairness Doctrine governed broadcasters from 1949 to 1987. It required broadcasters, as a condition for having their FCC license, to provide balanced views on controversial questions. The elimination of the Fairness Doctrine was successfully lobbied for by well-heeled conservative groups during the Reagan administration and paved the way for the creation of a right wing media empire that operates free of any need to provide opposing viewpoints to their own.

(33) LexisNexis Academic database, Accession No. 1605983, Question No. 276, number of respondents 1,287, national telephone poll of adults.

(34) Wellstone voted against the authorization to go to war on Iraq requested by the second Bush administration.

(35) I owe this summary to "The Theft of Your Vote Is Just a Chip Away," Thom Hartmann, AlterNet. Posted July 30, 2003, retrieved February 8, 2005: http://www.alternet.org/story/16474 .

Chuck Hagel's story is worth mentioning here as well. As former conservative radio talk show host and current Senator from Nebraska Chuck Hagel (who is seriously considering a run for the White House) demonstrated back in 1996, being the head of the company that supplies the voting machines used by about 80% of the voters in Nebraska does not hurt you when you want to be the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska. The fact that Hagel pulled off the biggest upset in the country in the 1996 elections by defeating an incumbent Democratic governor, that he did so through winning every demographic group, including mainly black areas that had never voted Republican before, might have nothing to do with the paperless trail generated by the electronic voting machines his company provides, installs, programs and largely runs. But then again, maybe it does have something to do with his stunning and totally unexpected victories
(Thom Hartmann, "If You Want to Win An Election, Just Control the Voting Machines," January 31, 2003, http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm , retrieved April 10, 2005).

(36) This is in keeping with Lewis Carroll's Red Queen's logic. The Bush White House sees itself as part of the "faith-based community," consciously rejecting empirical reality and inconvenient facts, considering these to be the province of what it calls the "reality-based community." As New York Times journalist Ron Suskind chillingly recounts: "In the summer of 2002 I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''' (Ron Suskind, "Without a Doubt," the New York Times Magazine , October 17, 2004.)

(37) By contrast, the GOP has decided that being "sore winners," as John Powers so aptly puts it in his book Sore Winners (and the Rest of Us) in George Bush's America , beats the hell out of being gracious losers.

(38) Republican National Committee Chair Ed Gillespie, in remarks to the National Press Club on November 4, 2004, took the next logical step, calling for the elimination of exit polls on the grounds that the 2000, 2002 and 2004 exit polls showed the Republican candidates losing. See http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/04/11/ana04027.html , retrieved June 11, 2005.

(39) Robert Parry, "Solving the Media Puzzle," May 15, 2005, http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/051305.html , retrieved June 7, 2005.

http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/voter_fraud.html


Informant: Scott Munson

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=89485;show_parent=1



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=89474;show_parent=1



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=89450;show_parent=1



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

http://www.sobran.com/columns/2005/050719.shtml


Informant: Lew Rockwell

Letter from Congressman Conyers:

August 17, 2005

Honorable John Kerry
511 C Street, NE Washington, DC 20002

Honorable John Edwards
401 W. Trade Street Suite 219 Charlotte, NC 28202-1619

Dear Senators Kerry and Edwards:

I would like to express my deepest appreciation for your role in intervening to protect the rights of the candidates seeking the 2004 election recount in Ohio and I applaud you for your great efforts to stand behind the voting public, urging them not to lose faith in our election system.

As you are aware, this has been the second consecutive presidential election where numerous issues were raised concerning irregularities and improprieties within the system. Specifically, we learned of the massive disenfranchisement of fellow voters, as well as numerous incidents of voter intimidation and the purposeful dissemination of misleading information to the voting public, with the intent to interfere with the system. In addition, we learned of numerous irregularities in the way the recount in Ohio was conducted. I therefore commend your willingness to intervene in the recount case as it proceeds in the federal district court in Ohio and to join the candidates and voters in their struggle to fix a seemingly broken system. It is only by investigating these voting irregularities in each past election that we are able to ascertain the problems and pursue a better election process in each succeeding election.

It is for these reasons that I am deeply concerned to learn of the possibility, however remote, that you may be considering withdrawing from the 2004 election recount case in Ohio. As you know, it is absolutely imperative that we have elections that count every vote of every eligible voter, and if there is any issue that is central to a strong democracy, it is ensuring that all eligible voters are able to participate in our elections without encumbrance or interference from others. There is no question that your continued participation in this case will help ensure that we restore trust in our election system.

As you continue your participation in this important case and we continue our investigation of the voting irregularities during the 2004 presidential election, we hope to be able to maintain an open dialogue. As you know, the objective of the recount itself was never to overturn the election, but to win back the confidence of the electorate in the accuracy of voting methods and the fairness of voting procedures. The objective remains the same for the pending case in federal court challenging the unconstitutional manner in which the Ohio recount was conducted. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact my office at (202) 225-6504.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.


Informant: NHNE

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by Green Democrats Correspondent (activ-l) - Aug 18, 2005

This just came off the Crawford Peace House yahoo group. I don't know anything else, but what is in this message.

source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crawfordpeacehouse

Nationwide STUDENT STRIKE!! Sept. 26

START SPREADING THE WORD!!!!!

Backed by Noam Chomsky and more than 100 other professors so far...a call has been put out by a fabulous guy in OR for a student strike on Sept. 26 - a damn fine birthday present to me, I might add! And nicely coordinated with the D.C. action so students can have more leeway to go to DC that weekend.

The brainchild of this effort puts this in line with Cindy's efforts, but seeks to begin to transfer the focus "from Texas to the nation's
300-plus Pentagon-dependent universities." (see bottom--and I'm sure he isn't trying to "transfer the focus" away from the military families so much as start to give all these new people coming 'out' into the movement a target to focus their loss and anger on, besides Bush)


September 26, 2005

President George W. Bush, The White House Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Department of Defense, The Pentagon President Nils Hasselmo, Association of American Universities Governor Ted Kulongoski, State of Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer, University of Oregon

Dear Public Servants,

As University of Oregon's first graduate student in the field of Peace Studies, it is my responsibility to explore the role of the military in society and those conditions that most promote peace and human welfare. In so doing, I have come to understand the nature of America's war industry, and how that industry has flourished in the wake of the Cold War. I have come to find that more than 300 of our universities are developing weapons for the Department of Defense, and that these schools are increasingly reliant on the industry of war to sustain their education programs. Indeed, the Association of American Universities appears to be little more than a lobby for such funding.

As a person of good conscience, I have learned too much about the business of war to remain silent about its overwhelming encroachment in our schools, communities, and global life systems. In promoting this encroachment, I do not believe that you serve in the interest of prosperity and security for the common people. By your consistent actions, in fact, it is abundantly clear that you believe America's top priority is profit from the business of war, not the general welfare of its people.

When America was born a people-first country, the concept of freedom spread rapidly throughout the world without military force. The vision of our Founders was to advance the notion of people living in peace using the freedom that nature provides upon birth. You may feel at peace with yourselves, but I believe you are acting as businessmen instead of servants. And in honoring our Founding principles, I must proclaim that to exploit the fears and prejudices of the common people to maintain the flow of profits from conflict-to perpetuate a state of war for personal gain-is treasonous to our creed.

You say this is a peace-loving nation when you know it is not; America is by far history's greatest peddler of arms, and your business is making war everyone else's business. The people, under this set of priorities, are an expendable resource, and on behalf of those who founded this country and those whose lives stand in peril today-thus, on behalf of all Americans-I reject the notion of our servants serving only themselves and war profiteers.

Therefore, I feel compelled to strike in peaceful but vociferous opposition to your priorities until our national policies reflect our priorities and serve the rights and needs of the common people.

I am a dedicated scholar and University of Oregon alumnus. But I refuse to study inside the classroom of any school that sells itself to the war industry, and I will stand outside and speak my heart as strongly as possible to highlight the obvious hypocrisy that you promote. For I fear that if I do not, America and other countries are very likely to suffer and fall as a result of your cold determination to saturate with weapons a world that stands on the verge of resource depletion.

Developing weapons at our institutions of enlightenment contradicts the inherent purpose of learning. How will we ever learn peace while making war in our schools?

I hereby submit to you this petition for peaceful priorities.

Dutifully, Brian D. Bogart bbogart@darkwing.uoregon.edu Multicultural Studies Certificate, US-Japan Relations, Lewis and Clark College, Portland 1995 International Studies Certificate, Waseda University, Tokyo 1996 B.A. Japanese History, University of Oregon 1997 M.A. Candidate, Peace Studies, University of Oregon

Sponsors of this action include:

Noam Chomsky Institute Professor Emeritus of Linguistics Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Franklin W. Stahl Professor Emeritus of Biology University of Oregon

Peter Phillips Ph.D. Sociology Department/Project Censored Sonoma State University

(names removed for space)



http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9831.htm

Strike A Match for Cindy Sheehan

America Programmed for War: Cause and Solution

"What one generation perceives as repression, the next accepts as a necessary part of a complex daily life."

By Brian Bogart

A single policy decision made in secluded chambers of the White House shortly after World War II explains why our financial and intellectual creativity focuses on lethal technologies, why 51% of our taxes go to defense and less than 5% to education, why there are 6000 military bases in the United States and 1000 US bases overseas, why comprehensive agendas support war fighting and weak agendas address human services and the environment, and why our top industry since 1950 remains the manufacture and sale of weapons.


Informant: Scott Munson



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

What began as one mother's vigil on a country road in Texas two weeks ago has grown into a nationwide protest, putting a grieving human face to the miseries of war and growing misgivings about President Bush's strategies in Iraq.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/081905L.shtml



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore. Paul Krugman notes this was true despite a host of efforts by state and local officials to suppress likely Gore votes, most notably Ms. Harris's "felon purge," which disenfranchised large numbers of valid voters.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/081905K.shtml

A measure designed to create jobs is instead rewarding the companies that are most adept at stashing overseas profits in tax havens, allowing them to bring money home at a severely discounted tax rate.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/081905I.shtml

Die Verhandlungen über die Verfassung kommen nicht voran, die Gewalt schwillt an und al-Qaida setzt neben Anschlägen zunehmend auf Propaganda.

http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/20/20766/1.html

We have finally put into motion our expose of the health risks involved with masts. We have got a certain amount of buy-in from the press here at the moment, plus with our own equivalent of prontaprint we are producing and distributing our "The Awful Truth" leaflet around the area. Thanks to Andy from TETRAwatch for his input and others in Mast sanity for their help. The full text is below, but without our dramatic cover. For that, and a PDF version of the text below, go to http://www.nomasts.org.uk .

Please use it as much as you can to inform people and the press and media around your area. Remember a key point - Masts are NOT safe, and the (independent) scientific proof does exist. The evidence is becoming irrefutable. Remember that Government and Industry Scientists are biased with huge financial gains dependent upon safe results - they are not to be trusted.

Best Wishes,

GRAM
http://www.nomasts.org.uk


Introduction to Summary of INDEPENDENT Research

Below is a summary of Independent Research into Mobile Telephone Masts that we have put together from various independent sources, with references, which you will find very informative.

Like many people, we never realised the full extent of the health issues around Mobile Telephone Masts, nor the official wall of silence that exists, until circumstances led us to spend a large amount of time and effort looking into the whole issue. We were shocked, and we expect you will be too.

It is only by assessing independent, good quality information that you or we can make up our own minds about the Mobile Telephone Mast issue. This document hopes to give you a summary.

Please read it.


To introduce this and to aid your understanding:

Government and Telecommunication Companies quote the ‘ICNIRP Guidelines’ as assurances of safety for any mast/s saying, 'The mast has an ICNIRP [safety] Certificate' or, 'The mast's emissions fall well below the ICNIRP Guidelines', etc.

However, the ICNIRP Guidelines ONLY cover the Thermal (i.e. heating) effects of Mobile Telephone Mast emissions. Hence all that an ICNIRP certificate means is that the mast won’t cook you!

When the guidelines were made in 1998 it was generally thought that the only effects of the Mobile Telephone Mast emissions would be thermal, hence the ICNIRP Guidelines as they currently stand.

However, it is now widely accepted that NON-Thermal effects do occur but, vitally and to our minds, negligently, these guidelines have NOT been updated to include NON-Thermal effects.

The Thermal (heating) effects are accepted to be negligible - however, NON-Thermal effects are now known to affect the make-up of our bodies and how our bodies work, posing real risks to our health and to our lives.

This summary details some of the NON-Thermal effects.

From studying independent research it is clear that, although the ICNIRP Guidelines are always quoted to assure the public of the safety of a Mobile Telephone Mast, these assurances are completely FALSE since the ICNIRP Guidelines DO NOT PROTECT US against the NON-Thermal effects, which are being negligently and completely ignored.

Many people believe that the reason that the ICNIRP Guidelines have not been updated with guidelines for NON-Thermal effects is because there is still no “dose-response equation” for no risk (or acceptable risk). Dr. Neil Cherry [13] said, the safe level for microwaves is nil . Additionally, the ICNIRP Guidelines ignore long-term low-level exposure to microwaves.

What are the Non-Thermal Effects detailed in the research?

Here are some examples:

- DNA damage potentially leading to cancers such as Breast cancer and Testicular cancer,

- Signal pulsing, similar to rapidly flashing lights, causing or worsening Epilepsy,

- Reduction in Melatonin levels - and increase in nitric oxide (NO) levels - resulting in: reduced cancer fighting cells in our bodies, sleeping disorders, increased cholesterol levels leading to greater risk of atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease, increased blood pressure giving greater risk of blood clots and strokes. Also increasing chances of serious disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s,

- Tinnitus and Hearing problems, Headaches, Reduced drug effectiveness.

These effects are increasingly being found to occur in reality within the population at large who are exposed to Mobile Telephone Mast radiation. Many German and European doctors (equivalent to our GPs) are so concerned that they have signed up to the “Freiburger Appeal” to demand that health concerns over Mobile Telephone Masts are taken seriously. Other similar appeals exist across Europe [6] . The Doctors note many symptoms increasingly seen by them in the vicinity of Mobile Telephone Masts.

They are:-

* Learning, concentration, and behavioural disorders (e.g. attention deficit disorder, ADD)

* Extreme fluctuations in blood pressure, ever harder to influence with medications

* Heart rhythm disorders

* Heart attacks and strokes among an increasingly younger population

* Brain-degenerative diseases (e.g. Alzheimer‘s) and Epilepsy [14]

* Cancerous afflictions: leukemia, brain tumors

* Headaches, migraines

* Chronic exhaustion

* Inner agitation

* Sleeplessness, daytime sleepiness

* Tinnitus

* Susceptibility to infection

* Nervous and connective tissue pains, for which the usual causes do not explain even the most conspicuous symptoms

Additionally we have found multiple examples of the following to add to the above list:-

* Pineal dysfunction which may contribute to the onset of depression or may exacerbate existing depressive disorders, possibly leading to suicide.

* Miscarriages

Government and the Telecommunication Industry would prefer you to read and hear about their scientists’ ‘research’ - but with their huge financial gains reliant on ‘safe results’ can you blame anyone for being sceptical about how trustworthy their research actually is?

Please read our summary of INDEPENDENT scientific research that, we believe, the government and the industry are trying to suppress. This research is carried out by independent scientists whose careers are often put at risk because they dare to question the safety of these Mobile Telephone Masts and oppose the government view by saying that these masts may well cause much harm to people.

‘ The reality of such a risk to public health is not yet officially recognised, however, and those who dare to depart from the ‘official’ line, by warning of potential dangers to human health posed by non-thermal influences of the radiation used in mobile telephony, are subject to immediate criticism and derision – particularly by those with a vested interest in maintaining the growth of mobile telephony. A good example of this is the ferocious attack by the committee of COST281 on my report for the EU Parliament (commissioned by STOA).’- Dr G J Hyland, in his December 2003 Paper, “The inadequacy of the ICNIRP Guidelines governing human exposure to the microwave emissions of GSM/TETRA Base-stations.” [11]

Current INDEPENDENT Scientific Research That Proves Mobile Phone Masts Are NOT Safe

All of the Examples Below are Non-Thermal Effects from Mobile Telephone Mast emissions that are not covered by the UK Government / ICNIRP Guidelines. (See Point 7 below).

1. Genetic Damage in Blood Cells and Other Cells

Drs Ray Tice and Graham Hook found human blood cell changes following exposure to four different types of cell phone signals. Genetic damage was seen in the form of micronuclei present in blood cells exposed to mobile phone radiation. [1] Also seen with Dr.Lai and Singh [2]

A recent 4-year EU-backed study by twelve partners in seven countries, EU Reflex, repeatedly showed irrefutable evidence of mobile phone emissions, at levels within ICNIRP, and hence UK, guidelines, causing double-strand DNA breaks of the sort that lead to cancer. [3]

Many environmental factors, including sunlight, cause DNA strands to break. However, it is the amount and type of DNA breaks that occur that may or may not lead to cell mutations and therefore cancer. It is possible for the cell to make mistakes when repairing single-strand breaks, but the likelihood of serious mistakes (mutations) increases substantially with double-strand breaks - the type seen from exposure to mobile phone radiation.

Where this type of DNA damage occurs in the blood cancers such as Breast cancer and Testicular cancer can result.

It has been reported that, in Paris, Orange dismantled a Mobile Telephone Mast that it had placed on a school's roof after 8 school children contracted cancer. This surely is quite damning - indicating that the industry/company knows that these Mobile Telephone Masts DO or MAY WELL cause ill health - why else would they dismantle their mast from the school?

2. Electrical Hypersensitivity (EHS), Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Sleep Disorders etc.

The most commonly reported adverse effect of Mobile Telephone Mast radiation, is EHS. The symptoms are wide ranging, including headaches and nausea, dizziness, recurrent nosebleeds, skin irritations and rashes, sleep disorders, hearing problems, high blood pressure, fatigue, irritability and depression. Some people with epilepsy report increased incidence of seizures, people with chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple sclerosis report increased debilitation, as do those with or developing fibromyalgia. Further down the time line, reports of localised clusters of thyroid problems, motor neurone disease and cancers require full and proper investigation. Where such studies have been made, especially with regard to cancer, the correlation with Mobile Telephone Mast emissions is strong enough now to warrant more formal verification.

The common cause of the above effects is the increase in the production of nitric oxide – triggered by Mobile Telephone Mast Radiation. [15] and [16]

Nitric oxide is a dilator of blood vessels and a regulator of dream sleep. It also affects the blood-brain barrier and prevents the body's normal formation of melatonin from serotonin. Several studies have noted the reduction in Melatonin levels when the body is subjected to Mobile Telephone Mast radiation [4].

A knock-on effect is the overproduction of peroxynitrite, which is toxic at a cellular level. This leads directly to Motor Neuron Disease (MND) and Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS).

Such is the broad role of nitric oxide in the body, that disturbance of its production creates an avalanche of negative effects. Many “modern” trends in disorders from Multiple Sclerosis to Autism and ADHD, Alzheimer’s to Motor Neuron Disease may stem directly from the over-production of nitric oxide. That Mobile Telephone Mast radiation has been shown to alter the production of nitic oxide in living beings is therefore a significant and serious factor in the evaluation of current and growing environmental levels. It is the long-term low level exposure that is predicted as creating cumulative effects and long-latency illness.

3. Weakening of the Blood-Brain Barrier

Many laboratory studies, such as [5], have looked at the effect of pulsed microwave radiation on animals, revealing a wide range of biological changes to tissue structure or function such as the opening of the Blood Brain Barrier, allowing the protein albumen, amongst other substances, to enter the brain, and raising questions about, for example, Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimer’s, which are linked to proteins being found in the brain. Similarly, the weakening of the Blood Brain Barrier allows toxins in the bloodstream to pass into brain cells, leading to headaches and nausea (as commonly observed around Mobile Telephone Masts) - and, potentially, large-scale brain damage in the longer term.

4. Increased Incidence of Epilepsy

When noting the reports of an increased number of seizures in some epileptic children when exposed to the emissions of Mobile Telephone Mast radiation, it should be remembered that exposure to a light (such as that from a stroboscope) flashing at a rate somewhere between 15-20 times per second (Hz) can provoke seizures in the 5% minority of epileptics who suffer from photosensitive epilepsy.

Visible light and microwaves are both different kinds of electromagnetic radiation, and the microwave radiation used in GSM mobile phone telephony similarly ‘flashes’ (pulses) – in the case of TETRA at 17.6Hz, which is within the 15-20 times per second (Hz) range [9] and is a rate that the brain is able to recognise. Also, unlike visible light, pulsed microwaves are not reliant on the eye and optic nerve to access the brain, since they can penetrate the skull directly, leading to epilepsy risk from Mobile Telephone Mast radiation.

A familiar piece of misinformation quoted by mobile phone operators is that the emissions of a Mobile Telephone Mast are comparable to that of only a 60W light bulb, and thus equally harmless. Quite apart from the fact that the light from a 60W light bulb can be harmful to a person with photo-sensitive epilepsy, if it is flashed at an appropriate rate, the comparison is solely based on intensities and neglects three important points:-

1. The fact that more than one carrier signal is usually transmitted from the mast. Thus, the figure of 60W must be multiplied by the number of carriers that are actually transmitted in any particular case; in order to minimise inter-carrier interference, however, this number is restricted typically to 4 at the most, so the total output wattage can be a high as 240W.

2. Beams from the mast, however, are not emitted uniformly in all directions (as happens with light from a light-bulb), but are instead concentrated in specific directions, the degree of directional focusing being quantified through the so-called ‘gain’ (G) of the antenna, even omni-directional types, typical values of which, in the case of GSM, range from about 40 to 60. If we use an optimistic figure of 30 the so-called ‘effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP), given by the multiplying Power by Gain – is 1800W, which is further increased to 7.2kW if 4 carriers are transmitted – a value that is 120 times higher than the 60W quoted! The maximum EIRP value permitted by law is 1500W per carrier, whilst the maximum number of carrier signals is 16 (at 1800MHz) and 10 (at 900MHz); in practice, however, the number of carriers is usually restricted to 4 at the most, for the reason mentioned above.

3. The comparison neglects the all important frequency dimension, in particular the difference in the frequency that characterises the visible light from the light bulb from that which defines the radiation to be (invisible) microwave radiation. For whilst the output from such a bulb is, during the day, completely negligible in comparison with visible light of natural origin – i.e. that from the Sun – this is not so in the case of the microwave radiation emitted by a Mobile Telephone Mast day and night, which, several hundred of metres away, is typically 100 million million (1013) times higher than the microwave radiation that is emitted by the Sun at the same frequency. Accordingly, the emissions of Mobile Telephone Masts have caused an enormous (and relatively sudden) alteration in the natural environment (at this frequency) from that in which life on Earth has, over a very much longer time, evolved. The impact of this altered environment on biology is further enhanced by the high coherence of the mobile phone radiation. [11]

5. Naila: 10-year Study of Residents near Mobile Telephone Mast Proves Cancer Link

Following a call by Wolfram König, President of the Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz (Federal Agency for Radiation Protection), to all doctors of medicine to actively collaborate in the assessment of the risk posed by Mobile Telephone Mast radiation, the aim of this study was to examine whether people living close to Mobile Telephone Masts were exposed to an increased risk of becoming ill with malignant tumors (i.e. cancer). [12]

The basis of the data used for the survey were PC files of the case histories of patients between the years 1994 and 2004. While adhering to data protection, the personal data of almost 1,000 patients was evaluated for this study, which was completed without any external financial support. It is intended to continue the project in the form of a register.

The result of the study shows that the proportion of newly diagnosed cancer cases was significantly higher among those patients who had lived for the past ten years at a distance of up to 400 metres from the Mobile Telephone Mast, which has been in operation since 1993, compared to those patients living further away, and that the patients fell ill on average 8 years earlier .

In the years 1999-2004, i.e. after five years’ operation of the transmitter installation, the relative risk of getting cancer had trebled for the residents of the area in the proximity of the installation compared to the inhabitants of Naila outside the area.

(N.B. Naila is a town halfway between Berlin and Munich, near the German border with the Czech Republic)

Previously, Santini and Santini (2001) and Santini et al (2002) [7] surveyed people living up to 300m from Mobile Telephone Masts. There was a statistical match between distance from Mobile Telephone Masts and health problems: tiredness up to 300m; headache, sleep disruption, ‘discomfort’ up to 200m; depression, memory loss, dizziness, visual disturbances up to 100m. Women were more susceptible than men.

6. International Medical Appeals: Freiburger, IDEA, Lichtenfelser, Hofer, Bamberger, and Helsinki

In the Freiburger Appeal [6], initially 50 doctors in Germany reported reduced therapeutic efficiency of prescribed drugs correlated with the use of pulsed microwaves, such as those from Mobile Telephone Masts. Some 40,000 signatories have now supported the appeal, including 1,200 doctors. Alongside the Freiburger Appeal there are now similar appeals from Lichtenfelser, Hofer, Bamberger and Helsinki.

In the Irish Republic, the IDEA group of Doctors has its own reports relating to Mobile Telephone Masts [10] which confirm the findings of the Freiburger Appeal doctors.

7. Inadequacy of the ICNIRP Guidelines

The Government tell us “If a proposed mobile phone base station meets the ICNIRP guidelines for public exposure it should not be necessary for a local planning authority, in processing an application for planning permission or prior approval, to consider further the health aspects and concerns about them”.

However, the view of Dr. Hyland from Warwick University is that these regulations are completely inadequate:

“… It must thus be concluded that GSM/TETRA telecommunication technology, as currently regulated by the ICNIRP safety guidelines, is less than safe, and constitutes a risk to public health because these guidelines afford absolutely no protection against non-thermal biological influences exerted by the kind of radiation emitted by the associated Base-stations.“ [11]

Dr. Hyland [11] has carried out a lot of research on Mobile Telephone Mast emissions. Relevant research shows how the current ICNIRP Guidelines, as adopted in the UK, are woefully inadequate since they only protect against thermal effects and, vitally, not against NON-Thermal effects, which are far more relevant.

Since it is accepted that, at the levels given off by the Mobile Telephone Masts, thermal effects on people are negligible, ICNIRP Guidelines are therefore not protecting people at all .

The government as well as the telecommunication industry and other interested parties appear to be deliberately ignoring the NON-Thermal effects of the radiation from Mobile Telephone Masts, claiming that there is no research to say that Mobile Telephone Masts are not safe. This is quite untrue. There is plenty of evidence from independent scientists that warn us of grave dangers to our health from the radiation from Mobile Telephone Masts.

It must also be noted that other countries have adopted much stricter guidelines than Britain has, and there are moves in some European cities for much, much lower limits on Mobile Telephone Mast emissions of microwave radiation.

8. Conclusion

“ On the basis of many inter-consistent reports of adverse health effects in the vicinity of GSM Base-stations [Mobile Telephone Masts], it must be concluded that such installations pose a real risk to the health of people resident nearby. It is to be stressed that this conclusion is not purely personal, but is one that is shared by many eminent scientists of international standing and medical doctors worldwide.” [11]

And, a warning about government and industry ignoring these health issues, and the conflict of interest between research and revenue earning:

“… . The reality of such a risk to public health is not yet officially recognised, however, and those who dare to depart from the ‘official’ line, by warning of potential dangers to human health posed by non-thermal influences of the radiation used in mobile telephony, are subject to immediate criticism and derision – particularly by those with a vested interest in maintaining the growth of mobile telephony.” [11]

Other Sources of Information:-

GRAM website - http://www.nomasts.org.uk

Mast Sanity – http://www.mastsanity.org

Mast Action UK – http://www.mastaction.co.uk

Powerwatch – http://www.powerwatch.org

Radiation Research – http://www.radiationresearch.org

TETRAwatch – http://www.tetrawatch.net


References

[1] Bioelectromagnetics (23, pp 113-126) Microwave News Jan/Feb 2002


[2] Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 112, Number 6, May 2004 Magnetic-Field-Induced DNA Strand Breaks in Brain Cells of the Rat by Henry Lai and Narendra P. Singh http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2004/6355/abstract.html also
http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/march05/wakeupcall01.html

[3] EU Reflex Project (REFLEX: Risk Evaluation of Potential Environmental Hazards from Low Energy Electromagnetic Field Exposure Using Sensitive in vitro Methods) http://www.verum-foundation.de/cgi-bin/content.cgi?id=euprojekte01

[4] “Melatonin metabolite excretion among cellular telephone users” by Burch JB, Reif JS, Noonan CW, Ichinose T, et al. In Int Journal Radiat Biol 2002;78:1029-1036

“ Effects of the 1900 MHz electromagnetic field emitted from cellular phone on nocturnal melatonin secretion” by Jarupat S, Kawabata A, Tokura H, Borkiewicz A. in Journal Physiol Anthropol 2003; 22:61-63.

[5] “Nerve Cell Damage in Mammalian Brain after Exposure to Microwaves from GSM Mobile Phones” by Leif G. Salford, Arne E. Brun, Jacob L. Eberhardt, Lars Malmgren, Bertil R.R. Persson. Environmental Health Perspectives, January 2003 (Journal of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)

[6] Freiburger Appeal :
http://www.emrnetwork.org/news/IGUMED_english.pdf

Lichtenfelser Appeal:
http://www.elektrosmognews.de/news/20050703_LichtenfelserAppell.pdf

Bamberger Appeal:
http://www.milieuziektes.nl/Rapporten/Appell_AerzteBamberg230704.pdf

Hofer Appeal:
http://www.elektrosmognews.de/news/20050605_hofer_appell.html

Helsinki Appeal:
http://www.elektrosmognews.de/news//20050226_helsinki_erstunterzeichner.html

Letter from Bamberg to Edmund Stoiber:
http://www.tetrawatch.net/links/links.php?id=stoiberlet

[7] Santini 2002 Parliamentary Office for Evaluation of scientific and technological alternatives

[8] Journal of BioElectromagnetics (23:488495) by researchers in Chemical Engineering and Molecular Physics.

[9] “Effects of mobile phone emissions on human brain activity and sleep variables” by Hamblin D.L. & Wood A.W. in Int. J. Radiat. Biol. 2002; 78(8): 659-669.

[10] IDEA (Irish Doctors Environmental Association):
http://www.ideaireland.org/emr2005dailreport.htm

[11] “The inadequacy of the ICNIRP Guidelines governing human exposure to the microwave emissions of GSM/TETRA Base-stations.” By Dr. G J Hyland

http://www.radiationresearch.org/Dr_Hyland_Dec03A.pdf

[12] “The Influence of Being Physically Near to a Cell Phone
Transmission Mast on the Incidence of Cancer” By Horst Eger, Klaus Uwe Hagen, Birgitt Lucas, Peter Vogel, Helmut Voit (all medical doctors). Published in Umwelt·Medizin·Gesellschaft 17,4 2004, as: ‘Einfluss der räumlichen Nähe von Mobilfunksendeanlagen auf die Krebsinzidenz’

[13] Dr Neil Cherry - http://www.neilcherry.com/

[14] Electromagnetic Radiation and Epilepsy by Andy Davidson, Tetrawatch http://www.tetrawatch.net/papers/emr_epilepsy.pdf

[15] Pall ML, Satterlee JD. Elevated nitric oxide/peroxynitrite mechanism for the common etiology of multiple chemical sensitivity, chronic fatigue syndrome and posttraumatic stress disorder. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 2001;933:323-329, and Pall ML. Common etiology of posttraumatic stress disorder, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity via elevated nitric oxide/peroxynitrite, Medical Hypotheses, 2001;57:139-145.

[16] Mobil- und Kommunikationsfunk in Kooperation mit falscher Lebensweise - Wie unsere Gesundheit durch stimulierte NO-Radikale (Stickstoffmonoxid) in Gefahr gerät http://tinyurl.com/akftw

http://www.tetrawatch.net/papers/gram_truth.pdf



Omega see also:
http://omega.twoday.net/topics/Wissenschaft+zu+Mobilfunk/
http://www.buergerwelle.de/body_science.html
http://www.buergerwelle.de/english_start.html

Arbeitsamt und Arbeitszwang > alltägliche Schikanen

Fordern und Fördern: Arbeitsagentur löst Zollfahndung aus. Delikt: Nachbarschaftshilfe

Das Ausmaß an „fürsorglicher Belagerung“ erreicht mancherorts obskure und für Betroffene unerträglich drangsalierende Züge. So bleibt es nicht aus, dass sich Erwerbslose in ihrer Not zunehmend telefonisch an die BAG-SHI Geschäftsstelle wenden. So wie im nachfolgend dokumentierten Fall. Artikel von senger auf der Kampagnenseite „Vorsicht! Arbeitslosengeld II vom
29.07.2005.

http://www.alg-2.info/info_argumente/wahnsinn/siegerland



Aus: LabourNet, 19. August 2005

Viele Betroffene stehen dem (Zwangs-)Mittel der „Eingliederungsvereinbarung“ ohnmächtig gegenüber. Vor allem (Massen-)Veranstaltungen mit bereits vorgefertigten Vereinbarungen sind gängige und rechtswidrige Praxis. Aber was ist zu tun? Einen neuen Weg hat jetzt Walter Michael Wengorz vom ver.di-Bezirkserwerbslosenausschuß Sachsen/Anhalt bestritten. Er verteilte seinerseits auf einer solchen Veranstaltung ein Flugblatt, in dem er seine Gründe für die Ablehnung einer solchen Eingliederungsvereinbarung öffentlich darlegt. Wir dokumentieren das verteilte Flugblatt vom 12.08.2005 und danken dem Kollegen für die Idee und seinen Mut diese auch umzusetzen! (pdf)

http://www.labournet.de/diskussion/arbeit/realpolitik/hilfe/wengorz.pdf


Aus: LabourNet, 19. August 2005

„Geht es nach der Bundesregierung, so sollen mit Hartz IV rd. 20 % aller Langzeiterwerbslosen in so genannten 1-€-Jobs arbeiten. Dabei handelt es sich um Arbeitsgelegenheiten mit Mehraufwandsentschädigung von eben einem Euro pro Stunde zusätzlich zum neuen Arbeitslosengeld II (Alg II). Es entsteht kein Arbeitsverhältnis, kein Anspruch auf Übernahme, dafür aber Verpflichtungen. Diese Arbeitsgelegenheiten nach § 16, Abs. 3 des neuen Zweiten Sozialgesetzbuches SGB II sollen im öffentlichen Interesse liegen und zusätzlich zu bestehenden Tätigkeiten eingerichtet werden. Bei Weigerung droht zunächst die Kürzung der Regelleistung von 345 Euro um 30 % für drei Monate und bei wiederholter Ablehnung um 60%. Jugendlichen unter 25 wird für diese Zeit das Alg II komplett gestrichen. Die aktuell eingeführten Gesetzesänderungen sehen Pflichtarbeiten für über 800.000 Erwerbslose vor. Allein Hamburg plant 10.000 1-€-Jobs, Berlin 35.000. ..“ Presseinformation des ver.di - Erwerbslosenausschuss im Bezirk Mittelhessen, dokumentiert bei tacheles-sozialhilfe e.V. vom 14.08.2005.
http://www.tacheles-sozialhilfe.de/aktuelles/2005/Presse_Verdi.html


Aus: LabourNet, 19. August 2005

Die Prozession des Heiligen Prekarius startet am Freitag, 18 Uhr, am Rudolfplatz. Die "bewegte Andacht" wird laut Veranstaltern "verschiedene Orte aktueller Ungerechtigkeiten aufsuchen" und so das "urchristliche Motiv des sozialen Aufruhrs aufgreifen". Gerüchten zufolge soll der von seinen Anhängern als heilig verehrte Prekarius an diesem Abend auch offiziell von der katholischen Kirche heilig gesprochen werden

Zur Einstimmung empfehlen wir heute

Das Stoßgebet (pdf) http://www.cjb.cc/members/prekarius/downloads/gebet.pdf


Aus dem Text „…Heiliger Prekarius - erhöre uns!

Wir sind die Prekarisierten in dieser globalisierten Welt.

Wir sind die Überflüssigen und Verzweifelten, die Gestressten und Rechtlosen.

Heiliger Prekarius – erhöre uns!

Unsere Verträge laufen bald aus – doch welchen Job bekommen wir danach?

Unser Leben ist ein ständiger Konsumzwang – doch wie sollen wir das bezahlen?

Unsere Wohnungen werden immer teurer – doch wo sollen wir zukünftig leben?

Unsere Bildung wird ständig rationalisiert – doch wie können wir noch ungestört lernen?

Unsere Gesundheitskosten explodieren – doch wer pflegt uns im Krankheitsfall?...“

Die Liedertexte http://www.cjb.cc/members/prekarius/downloads.htm



Prozession zu Ehren des St. Prekarius in Köln

Bericht mit Bildern von Prekarius-Pilger vom 21.08.2005 bei indymedia http://de.indymedia.org/2005/08/125839.shtml

Video: St. Prekarius auf dem Weltjugendtag

„Prozession zu Ehren des Heiligen Prekarius, des Schutzherrn der Armen und Entrechteten, am Freitag, 19.08.2005, während des Weltjugendtages in Köln.

Seine Anhänger greifen die Arbeitsbedingungen beim Lebensmittelkonzern Lidl an…“ Videos von trojan tv in verschiedenen Auflösungen bei indymedia

http://de.indymedia.org/2005/08/125832.shtml


Aus: LabourNet, 19. August 2005 und 22. August 2005

by Ray McGovern, TomPaine.com

Cindy Sheehan's example should inspire Americans everywhere who are opposed to the Iraq war to act.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050819/cant_make_it_to_crawford.php



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

by Jeffrey D. Sachs, TomPaine.com

The actions of the richest countries -- despite grand G8 promises -- have only intensified the hunger crisis in Africa.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050819/alive_today_desperate_tomorrow.php

Duck soup
Moscow Times
by Chris Floyd

08/19/05

Now is the summer of discontent for President George W. Bush, a man beset on every side -- by a failing war and falling popularity, by scandal, suspicion and rising hostility, even in the red-state heartlands. With each passing day of his long vacation in the Texas wastes, his presidency is shrinking palpably before our eyes, his wildly inflated public image shrivelling like a punctured balloon. The fountainhead of his trouble, of course, is the murderous quagmire he has created in Iraq. Some say he has no exit strategy, no way to escape the corrosive effects of this gargantuan disaster, which is draining his support and destroying the aura of the all-conquering 'war leader' that he used to impose his radical right-wing agenda on the country. The tide has turned against him at last, some say; he's a lame duck crashing to the ground. But those writing Bush's political obituary have 'misunderestimated' him once again. For it's becoming increasingly clear that Bush does have an exit strategy from Iraq -- and it runs through Iran...

http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/08/19/120.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

TruthOut
by Marjorie Cohn

08/18/05

Cindy Sheehan is still in Crawford, Texas, waiting for Bush to answer her question: What noble cause did my son die for? Her protest started as a small gathering 13 days ago. It has mushroomed into a demonstration of hundreds in Crawford and tens of thousands more at 1,627 solidarity vigils throughout the country. Why didn't Bush simply invite Cindy in for tea when she arrived in Crawford? In a brief, personal meeting with Cindy, Bush could have defused a situation that has become a profound embarrassment for him, and could derail his political agenda. Bush didn't talk with Cindy because he can't answer her question. There is no answer to Cindy's question. There is no noble cause that Cindy's son died fighting for. And Bush knows it...

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/081805I.shtml


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

Common Dreams
by Stephen Laffoley

08/18/05

Because Ms. Sheehan's simple question has such moral clarity, moral authority, and moral certainty, these attacks only draw more attention to Ms. Sheehan's moral character and moral righteousness. And not surprisingly, not one of her attackers wants to provide an answer to Ms. Sheehan's question. Not one wants to address the truth. Because the truth is this: Ms. Sheehan's son died for no morally defensible reason. Ms. Sheehan's question -- and the yawning, silent absence of an answer from the president -- reminds us, so clearly, that those who support this war have failed morally. And with that moral failure comes guilt. And humiliation. And dishonor...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0818-20.htm



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

AlterNet
by Kelly Hearn

08/19/05

The Active Denial System is a Pentagon-funded, $51 million crowd control device that rides atop a Humvee, looks like a TV dish, and shoots energy waves 1/64 of an inch deep into human skin. It dispenses brief but intolerable bursts of pain, sending bad guys fleeing but supposedly leaving no lasting damage. (During a Pentagon press briefing in 2001, this reporter felt a zap from an ADS prototype on his fingertip and can attest to the brief but fleeting sensation that a hot light bulb was pressing against the skin). ADS works outside the range of small arms fire. ... For most Americans, zapping Iraqi insurgents in Baghdad with a potentially unsafe weapon is one thing; cooking political protestors in Boston or Biloxi will surely be another. Against this backdrop, observers say, Hammond's files become particularly important. 'Right now the press really isn't on this,' says Hammond. 'But that will change when the first videos are released showing this thing being used on people'...

http://www.alternet.org/story/24044/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

LewRockwell.Com
by Kevin B. Zeese

08/19/05

Summer, especially August, has not been good to the U.S. commander in chief. While on a 35-day vacation in Crawford he has been unable to find time to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Casey -- a soldier killed in Iraq. His refusal to meet with Ms. Sheehan diminishes him -- showing weakness and insecurity on his part. Is he unable to defend his Iraq occupation policy to her? Is he unable to hear the perspective of a mother who lost her child to his war? Public opinion is turning dramatically against the President, casualties are rising rapidly, and President Bush is facing divisions in his own administration. Republican members of Congress are meeting behind closed doors to discuss how to get out of Iraq and anti-war Democrats, while still a minority in their party, are becoming more outspoken and more organized. In Iraq, polling shows that a majority of Iraqis want the U.S. to leave and one third of Iraq's National Assembly has called for the U.S. to depart...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/zeese/zeese12.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

Common Dreams
by Ira Chernus

08/18/05

It was an astonishing turnout. Last night, in my small middle-American city, more than 150 people stood on street corners supporting Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mom who is waiting outside the president's ranch to ask him, 'Why did you kill my son?' Of course, demonstrations like this don't have much effect unless they are reported in the mainstream media. Cindy Sheehan is making the media pay attention. ... The bad news is that, no matter how much the public wants our troops out of Iraq, they will probably stay there until the foreign policy elite decides its time for this folly to end. The good news is that the foreign policy elite is beginning to recognize that the U.S. effort to control Iraq really is folly. The clearest evidence is that they let Cindy Sheehan become front-page news...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0818-26.htm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

AntiWar.Com
by Justin Raimondo

08/19/05

The neocon radio screamers and the Fox News bleach blondes are always carrying on about how it's 'the Left' and 'the leftists' who are driving rising antiwar sentiment across the country, but if you look at the polls, it just isn't true. Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and a Democrat running in a heavily Republican district, almost beat the GOP candidate in a special congressional election in Ohio, winning 48 percent of the vote, against the 52 percent won by Rob Portman, the Republican incumbent in 2004. The Republicans are running scared on the war issue, and GOPers are defecting from the ranks of the War Party in droves .... Wartime often transforms party labels, rendering traditional political categories of 'left' and 'right,' 'liberal' and 'conservative' similarly meaningless. We seem to be at the beginning of some such transformative phase. Amid all the debate, the name-calling, and the obfuscating fog of charges and counter-charges, what is clear to ordinary folks -- Republicans as well as Democrats and independents -- is that there are two wings of the War Party, represented by the leadership of both 'major' parties...

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7009


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

http://tinyurl.com/7eve8


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Yahoo! News

08/18/05

The grieving woman who started an anti-war demonstration near President Bush's ranch nearly two weeks ago left the camp Thursday after learning her mother had had a stroke, but she told supporters the protest would go on. Cindy Sheehan told reporters she had just received the phone call and was leaving immediately to be with her 74-year-old mother at a Los Angeles hospital. 'I'll be back as soon as possible if it's possible,' she said. After hugging some of her supporters, Sheehan and her sister, Deedee Miller, got in a van and left for the Waco airport about 20 miles away. ... The camp has grown to more than 100 people, including many relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq. After Sheehan left, dozens of the demonstrators gathered under a canopy to pray for her mother. Sheehan, of Vacaville, Calif., had vowed to remain at the camp until Bush met with her or until his monthlong vacation ended. ... Michelle Mulkey, a spokeswoman for Sheehan, said Sheehan hoped to be back in Texas within 24 to 48 hours. Mulkey said Sheehan's mother, Shirley Miller, was in a hospital emergency room and Sheehan didn't yet know how serious her condition was...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050818/ap_on_re_us/peace_mom


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



Cindy, leaving the Camp...her mother has had a stroke
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=89479;show_parent=1

Cindy Sheehan is en route to an airport to go to Los Angeles
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=89484;show_parent=1




Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan

Leipziger Volkszeitung vom Donnerstag, 18. August 2005

Taucha. "Ich finde, dass die Kandidaten immer nur Sprachrohr der Partei sind. Sie bleiben an deren eingefahrene Marschrichtung gebunden. So gibt es keine neuen Lösungen, um aus dem Tief herauszukommen", sagt Stefan Spaarmann. Deshalb versucht es der Tauchaer auf eigene Faust: Er tritt als Einzelkämpfer-Kandidat für die Bundestagswahl an.

Die nötigen Unterstützungsunterschriften, um vom Kreiswahlbüro zugelassen zu werden, hat er bereits zusammen. "200 brauchte ich, bei 220 habe ich aufgehört zu zählen", sagt der 67-jährige Rentner. "Viele brachten mir die Unterschriften persönlich."

In der Parthestadt kennt man ihn. Der geschiedene Physiker und Ökonom lebt hier mit seiner Tochter. Er ist in Leipzig geboren, Vater von zwei Kindern und hat im Kombinat Böhlen gearbeitet. In Taucha, wo er seit 1997 lebt, machte er sich beispielsweise gegen Mobilfunkantennen stark ("Die Strahlung ist schädlich") oder gegen geplante Nachtflüge über die Stadt ("Tausende Menschen können deswegen nicht schlafen"). Er ist Mitglied der Ökologisch-Demokratischen-Partei (ÖDP), die aus Bayern kommt. Warum tritt er nicht für sie an? "Die ÖDP macht bei der Bundestagswahl nicht mit, sonst wäre ich für sie ins Rennen gegangen. Denen fehlen aber die nötigen Gelder."

Bei Spaarmann ist das nicht anders. Plakate, bedruckte Schirme oder Leinwände kann er sich nicht leisten. Er setzt auf ein paar Sponsoren, die Buschtrommel und seine lokale Bekanntheit. "Anders geht es nicht. Ich kann ja nicht jeden Tag mit meinem Suzuki rumfahren." Das Internet nutzt er jedoch. Auf http://www.kandidatenwatch.de stellt er sich vor.

Trotz seines Sinns für ökologische Themen steht für ihn derzeit die soziale Frage im Vordergrund. "Besonders die Umstände im Osten müssen verbessert werden. Soziale Marktwirtschaft ist für mich die Basis. Aber sie muss gerecht sein. Das Grungesetz ist ausgezeichnet - es muss aber durchgesetzt werden", sagt Spaarmann. Und wie will er Gerechtigkeit realisieren? "Es gibt viele Ansätze in meinem Programm. Grundsätzlich aber gilt: Ich maße mir nicht an zu sagen, dass ich für alles eine Lösung weiß. Es ist aber erstaunlich, wie viele kluge Gedanken die Bürger haben. Man muss ihnen nur zuhören und mit ihnen reden."

Peter Krutsch

http://www.lvz-online.de/lvz-heute/5910.html


Nachricht von der BI Bad Dürkheim

http://www.sz-online.de/nachrichten/artikel.asp?id=928422


Nachricht von der BI Bad Dürkheim

The Military Buildup Economy 2000-2004

By Bob Reuschlein

http://www.realeconomy.com ,
earlwal@chorus.net ,
608-848-5248

Conclusion: We have lost about 10% of our manufacturing jobs, 2.7 million according to Moveon.org (recent campaign commercial). The Moveon.org ad says that 1.0 million of that job loss is due to outsourcing (trade). The 1 million jobs lost to trade and 1.7 million jobs lost to the military buildup equals the 2.7 million manufacturing jobs lost since 2000. So of the 10% manufacturing jobs lost, 6% is due to the military buildup and 4% is due to outsourcing under trade treaties.

Then: In 2000 we had about a $10 trillion US economy with a $280 billion military budget. The manufacturing economy was about $3 trillion, 30% of that economy, and 20% of the jobs. We had about 140 million jobs and about 28 million manufacturing jobs.

Now: The military buildup from $280 billion to $460 billion is an increase of $180 billion. That $180 billion transfer to the military represents 6% of the $3 trillion manufacturing economy of year 2000. A loss of 6% of our 28 million manufacturing jobs is 1.7 million jobs.

Why: Manufacturing is very intensive in key resources like scientists, engineers, and capital just like military spending. Manufacturing requires a physical and technical labor force, just as soldiers, sailors, and airmen have very technical or physical labor. Military buildups hurt our economy in direct proportion to the size of the military buildup. They deplete these key resources and take them out of our total pool otherwise available to compete economically with foreign manufacturing. Military spending is the opposite of manufacturing in that it consumes and wastes resources, producing no net product out of the military “factory”, unlike other manufacturing that produces products we all need and use. In peacetime, military is a service like insurance, not a product. In wartime, military destroys, it does not create like manufacturing, construction, or farming.

Empires: All empires eventually collapse under the weight of high levels of military spending. While at the top, empires are very attractive to peoples around them, and this helps temporarily overcome the weight of the military spending.

Brains and talent drain from around the world to the center of the empire. Many of our doctors, engineers, and businessmen are foreign born. US universities train the world. The booming nineties occurred in the US because of cutting military spending’s share of our economy in half from the eighties, and because first generation immigrants in the US rose from 7% of our population in 1990 to 11% of our population in 2000. World talent sustained the US.

Wisconsin: Wisconsin’s military tax vs. spending gap has grown from $4.2 billion in 2000 to $7.5 billion in 2004. The loss of $3.3 billion additional each year from the Wisconsin economy is greater than the $2.9 billion in farm milk sales in this state. Of the 80,000 manufacturing jobs lost here, 31,000 were from the military buildup and 49,000 were from trade (61% in new survey).

From Website home page: The higher a nation's military spending the lower its manufacturing productivity, a main ingredient in economic growth. This is why Germany, Japan, and Italy caught up with The United States and passed Great Britain during the Cold War. In the nineties, cutting the military in half restored more economic forces to the normal economy in the United States than in any other leading industrial nation. America became the LEADING NATION in the world due to a century and a half of low military spending, and all great powers arise this way. Then they militarize as the U.S. did in World War II and eventually collapse under the military burden.


UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE | 212-868-5545


From ufpj-news

By Juan-Carlos Rodriguez

Washington August 19, 2005 Page Tools

The complaints are familiar and frequent: People on mobile phones talk too loud, they use them at inappropriate times, and they just don't seem to care if they are bothering anyone.

The horror stories are famous too. Mobile phones at funerals. Mobile phones at weddings. Mobile phones in class. And of course, mobile phones in restaurants.

US President George Bush has a well-known low mobile phone tolerance. He gives a withering evil eye to those whose mobile phones ring during his public appearances.

According to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, nearly two-thirds of Americans use a mobile phone, which means getting out of reception range is about the only way to avoid those irritating habits.

Etiquette expert Judith Martin, also known as Miss Manners in her newspaper column, has a simple explanation for Americans' fascination with these flashing, buzzing and chiming gadgets.

"It's like children getting new toys," she said. "But the excitement is over. People should be over it." Advertisement Advertisement

Another etiquette expert, Marjabelle Young Stewart, said mobile phones appeal to our inner rock star. "I think that it's making a lot of people feel cool if they drive around with this microphone," she said.

Traditionally quiet places such as film theatres, opera houses, orchestra halls and live theatre venues are now compelled to remind patrons to turn off their mobile phones or other devices before a performance.

Washington's Metrorail system has put up signs discouraging inconsiderate talkers. "Yes, we're all very interested in what you're having for dinner tonight," reads one sign, accompanied by a picture of a wide-mouthed Metro rider yelling into a mobile phone. The second line says, "Please keep your phone conversations to yourself."

This is all too much for Miss Manners. "I look forward to going to any public event and not getting an etiquette lecture," Martin said.

Some churches in Mexico have gone beyond lectures and taken the James Bond-as-disciplinarian route to combat sacrilegious mobile phone use. The churches have installed short-range mobile phone signal jammers to thwart members of their flock who lack mobile phone self-control during mass.

The jammers have caught on in Japan, India and France, but their use is illegal in the United States.

While some are clamouring for mobile phone restraint, mobile phone companies are lobbying the Federal Aviation Administration to permit the phones on commercial airline flights. But in a poll by the Association of Flight Attendants and the National Consumers League, 63 per cent of respondents wanted to keep existing restrictions in place.

Martin compared the evolution of the mobile phone to that of the answering machine. She said when people first got the answering machines, "they were misusing them, doing their comedy routines and otherwise boring their friends." After a few years, the novelty wore off and an answering machine protocol set in, she said.

But new tricks and features for mobile phones just keep on coming, so the novelty never seems to wear off. Cameras, games, ring tones, email capabilities - mobiles can have all of these things and more.

For every cultural niche, there is a mobile phone feature. Perhaps most likely to raise eyebrows on the bus or in the movie theatre is the "moan tone." Instead of a catchy ditty or an electronic symphony, mobile phone rings can now be programmed with a recording of a porn actor making sexual noises.

Both Martin and Stewart said people needed to pay attention to commonsense etiquette rules to govern their behaviour with mobile phones and other electronic devices.

Stewart had some advice for anyone who feels a technophile has forgotten their manners. She recommended tapping the offender on the shoulder and asking them to please lower their voice or take their gadget outside.

"You can't always be polite," she said.

AP


Amanda Wesley

A lot of a scientist's work is about standardization, controls, "check-ups", etc. Such work is very time-consuming, very accurate and detailed, but is rarely published.

However, right now we have actually been able to publish a very important paper, dealing with the standardization of skin biopsies for investigations of nerve damage/nerve alterations:

Lauria G, Cornblath DR, Johansson O, McArthur JC, Mellgren SI, Nolano M, Rosenberg N, Sommer C, "EFNS guidelines on the use of skin biopsy in the diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy", Europ J Neurol 2005; 12: 1-12

This paper is of extra importance to me, since it's content directly can be applied to future analyses of skin biopsies from electrohypersensitive persons (and similar groups). Preliminary findings have, namely, shown a marked reduction in nerve fiber number in facial skin taken from persons being harmed in front of computer screens. In this context, I have often received comments about the precious need for such standardization regarding skin biopsies from electrohypersensitive persons.

[If you want to have a reprint, please, send me an A4/C4-envelope with your name and address on.]

Best regards Yours Olle J.

(Olle Johansson, assoc. prof. The Experimental Dermatology Unit Department of Neuroscience Karolinska Institute
171 77 Stockholm Sweden)

I don't think this lady will listen to me, as her relatives scorned the possibility that emissions could have caused or exacerbated any of her and her husband's symptoms e.g. degenerative illness (possibly Alzheimers) which has put the husband in a home; and her asthma (recent), heart problems (existing problem) and ulcerated bleeding throat.

I know most of the other people (who live near the Orange mast) nearly all had ulcerated mouths and throats and extreme thirst; bloodshot eyes; headaches and insomnia etc. so I wasn't surprised that she had this symptom. In common with others who have first complained of symptoms she says she is fine. I think they are either in denial or afraid to admit illness.

Gill
(excerpt)



Gill.

Like most people we have had contact to, and who complained of symptoms suddenly they were fine.

I think it is the danger of being intimidated and humiliated that scares them off.

I know we got the whole treatment, by planning officers, council, mobile company, press etc.

and you know a lot of people get scared off by that,

If they did not, but behaved like we do, the mobile companies and council would be in big trouble.

They know this, so they control weak people this way, and as they can do that they can.

Shoo the rest of us off as psychosomatic.


Best regards.

Agnes

http://www.mast-victims.org


From Mast Sanity

Cindy Sheehan Is
(excerpt)

[At its regular meeting on Aug. 18, UFPPC adopted this statement, which concludes: "We stand with Cindy Sheehan." --Mark]

UNITED FOR PEACE OF PIERCE COUNTY
"We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy." http://www.ufppc.org


UFPPC Statement

CINDY SHEEHAN IS

United for Peace of Pierce County (WA) August 18, 2005

http://www.tacomapjh.org/CindySheehanIs.htm (temporary UFPPC web site)

Cindy Sheehan is bringing us closer to that ideal and demonstrating its power to change
Cindy Sheehan is absolutely right
Cindy Sheehan is grandstanding
Cindy Sheehan is surrounded by cameramen and reporters Cindy Sheehan is a hero too
Cindy Sheehan is my hero
Cindy Sheehan is merely a symbol of the Iraq debacle
Cindy Sheehan is fighting for my son
Cindy Sheehan is a brave hero
CINDY SHEEHAN IS CORRECT AND RIGHT
Cindy Sheehan is the spark that lights the flame
Cindy Sheehan is an American, just as we all are, and this country was founded on questioning authority
Cindy Sheehan is an American hero, brave enough to quietly speak up against the roar of the insane white noise
Cindy Sheehan is the modern day Joan of Arc and she is confronting an ominous and soulless military machine
Cindy Sheehan is doing what our spineless and cowardly Congress failed to do in session
Cindy Sheehan is asking these questions for ALL mothers
Cindy Sheehan is an American patriotic, first class
Cindy Sheehan is right
Cindy Sheehan is asking Bush to meet with her and other members of Gold Star Families for Peace
Cindy Sheehan is a threat to the GOP
Cindy Sheehan is the mother of a fallen Iraq war soldier and the co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace
Cindy Sheehan is seeking an answer many grieving, questioning parents seek
Cindy Sheehan is just the latest in a LONG list of AMERICANS speaking truth to power
Cindy Sheehan is The Voice
Cindy Sheehan is calling for Bush
Cindy Sheehan is a real American hero
Cindy Sheehan is going to be arrested tomorrow
Cindy Sheehan is a glory hound
Cindy Sheehan is incredible
Cindy Sheehan is Rosa Parks
Cindy Sheehan is asking life and death questions that we all need answers to
Cindy Sheehan is asking Bush to tell the truth about a single Iraq war death
Cindy Sheehan is no longer a grieving mother — she is an anti-war protester
Cindy Sheehan is leading a protest near the president's ranch
Cindy Sheehan is daring to do what no Member of the United States Congress has dared to do
Cindy Sheehan is standing in the dusty road to the Fisher King's Little Chapel in the Prairie Ranch, in the hot sun
Cindy Sheehan is really the child in the fairy tale who declared that the emperor had no clothes
Cindy Sheehan is as far from my kind of people as you can get
Cindy Sheehan is proving to us again that America still functions as a democracy
Cindy Sheehan is going through more than most of us can imagine Cindy Sheehan is continuing to do a tremendous service for the cause of peace
Cindy Sheehan is to be commended for having the guts and backbone to reject the media?s sanitizing effort
Cindy Sheehan is a moral lightning rod
Cindy Sheehan is probably the last person in America that will be arrested
Cindy Sheehan is not only demanding an immediate withdrawal of American troops
Cindy Sheehan is even more unhinged than I thought
Cindy Sheehan is bursting Bush's attempt to ignore America's war dead
Cindy Sheehan is the person to carry this message to the American people
Cindy Sheehan is not in a large crowd in Washington DC
Cindy Sheehan is asking life and death questions that we all need answers to
Cindy Sheehan is camped at Crawford
Cindy Sheehan is not a college student, but she is doing what college students used to do
Cindy Sheehan is speaking truth to power outside the ranch gates of the ultimate Fortunate Son
Cindy Sheehan is a one-woman antiwar movement
CINDY SHEEHAN IS NOT ALONE — Google: 93,500 results for "Cindy Sheehan is" (Aug. 18, 2005 @ 1:43 p.m. PDT)

WE STAND WITH CINDY SHEEHAN.

UNITED FOR PEACE OF PIERCE COUNTY
"We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy." http://www.ufppc.org

UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE | 212-868-5545



Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan