For all those with Orange problems, here is a slogan from an advice line caller for you to use.

Sandi

Hi again Sandi,

Further Good news. Orange have voluntary withdrawn their planning proposal under the guidance of the planning officer. This means they won't be appealling the refusal as it was never turned dwon.

They are to re-apply to a site recommended by the planning Dept. This is some 1.5miles away on an industrial estate where there is already another mast.

I have spoken to Orange and they are at pains to point out that this is all part of the consultation process and not due to the residents protest!

Yea, whatever.

Thanks again for all your help.

Fell free to use the slogan we adopted- "If the future is Orange than the future is Black!"

As his poll figures continue on a downward spiral, Tom Engelhardt says

Bush has found it necessary to put extra effort into "catapulting the propaganda." Though he struck a new note or two in each speech, these were exceedingly familiar, crush-the-terrorists, stay-the-course, path-to-victory speeches.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082905N.shtml

Mr. Bush's approval ratings have sunk to 36 per cent - the lowest level of his presidency. As the number of US troops killed in Iraq has risen to 1,900, domestic opposition to the war is on the rise.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082905K.shtml

A high-level contracting official who has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon's decision to give Halliburton a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in Iraq was removed from her job by the Army Corps of Engineers, effective Saturday.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082905J.shtml

The death brings to 66 the number of journalists and their aides killed in Iraq since the start of the invasion in 2003, said Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based news media rights group. That surpasses the 63 journalists killed over 20 years of conflict in Vietnam, the group said.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082905I.shtml

Die Morddrohung richtet sich gegen all jene, die an der Handymasten-Steuer "in irgendeiner Form beteiligt sind oder daran mitgewirkt haben".

St. Pölten/Wiener Neustadt - Klaus Schneeberger, Klubobmann der Volkspartei im NÖ Landtag, sieht sich mit einer Morddrohung konfrontiert, die im Zusammenhang mit der vor wenigen Wochen beschlossenen Handymasten-Steuer steht. Das Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz und Terrorismusbekämpfung (LVT) hat am Montag einen diesbezüglichen Bericht in der Lokalausgabe "Wiener Neustädter Zeitung" der Niederösterreichischen Nachrichten (NÖN) bestätigt.

Morddrohung gegen VPNÖ-Klubchef

LVT-Leiter Rudolf Slamanig sagte auf Anfrage, dass es eine "schriftliche Morddrohung" gegen Schneeberger gebe. Das Schreiben sei vergangene Woche eingegangen. Das LVT habe "entsprechende Maßnahmen" veranlasst, die "weiter aufrecht" seien. Slamanig bestätigte auch, dass die Drohung im Zusammenhang mit der Handymasten-Steuer zu sehen sei.

"Ja, es stimmt, die Polizei ist verstärkt in meinem Umfeld tätig", wurde Schneeberger am Montag in der "Wiener Neustädter Zeitung" der NÖN zitiert. "Es ist richtig, dass es eine schriftliche Drohung im Zusammenhang mit der Masten-Steuer gibt", ließ der Klubchef in einer der APA übermittelten Stellungnahme ausrichten. "Die Sicherheitsdirektion wurde eingeschaltet. Mehr ist dazu nicht zu sagen - außer: Wir lassen uns nicht einschüchtern und gehen unseren Weg weiter."

Die Morddrohung soll laut NÖN an die Privatadresse des VP-Klubchefs in Wiener Neustadt gerichtet worden sein. Sie betreffe auch die Familie des Politikers und all jene, die an der Handymasten-Steuer "in irgendeiner Form beteiligt sind oder daran mitgewirkt haben", so die Zeitung.

Artikel vom 29.08.2005 |apa |hp

© kurier.at bzw. KURIER - Wien, 2005

http://www.kurier.at/chronik/1093849.php

by Frank O'Donnell, TomPaine.com

Republican governors who see the White House siding with Big Auto as gas prices rise are taking matters into their own hands.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050829/greenhouse_rebellion.php

The Bath Chronicle interview someone on a topical subject each week and did Mast Sanity this week. With thanks to Andy for helping me this is the result. It has been edited down twice from the original 2200 words I submitted - I cut out 600 words and they did a further edit but I think they have done a good edit and left in most of the salient points.

SIan


MY SAFETY FEARS OVER PHONE MAST SITES

11:00 - 29 August 2005

This week's Question and Answer is with Sian Meredith, Bath campaigner for anti-mobile phone pressure group Mast Sanity

1. Why is Mast Sanity opposed to mobile phone masts and mobile phones? Mast Sanity is opposed to the siting of phone masts close to homes, schools, hospitals, old people's homes and other sensitive locations. The system emits pulsed microwave radiation and there is a long and substantial research history indicating that chronic exposure to low-level microwave radiation leads to cumulative damage. Some people appear to be more vulnerable than others, and the best precautionary advice is to limit exposure as far as possible. Siting masts in residential areas presents no choice to people, and is indiscriminate.

Mast Sanity is against the use of mobile phones by children. Sir William Stewart, chairman of the Health Protection Agency, advised in his updated report that children of eight and under shouldn't use mobiles and those under-16 should only use them in emergencies.

2. The vast majority of people now own and use mobile phones and they have become a key part of the communications network. Do not masts now have to be accepted as a necessary consequence?

Mast Sanity is calling for development of a safe alternative system. The present system is biologically and environmentally incompatible and until the Government is forced to recognise the ill health the present system is causing, Mast Sanity is demanding that masts be located away from residential areas, schools and hospitals.

3. Despite an ongoing debate about the potential risks posed by mobile phone masts, so long as recognised health and safety regulations are adhered to, concerns about health are not a valid reason in planning law to oppose permission for them to be set up. If the health and safety guidance is right, why shouldn't masts be put near people's homes?

This country has adopted the ICNIRP (International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection) guidelines on emissions which are the second highest in the world. Only the USA allows higher emissions. Most other countries set much lower emission levels and wouldn't tolerate the levels this country permits. ICNIRP guidelines deal only with thermal heating effects from the radiation, and not with the biological effects that occur and so do not protect us. Interference with medical and electrical equipment is also occurring and this is of great concern especially to people with cochlear implants, pacemakers, metal joints and implants, and other medical devices. Health fears and perceptions are a material planning consideration, as is interference with electrical and medical equipment.

4. The big mobile phone operators grouped together and produced a voluntary code called the Ten Commitments to involve communities in decisions about masts being sited near them. Does it work?

No. Mast Sanity receives about 200 calls a month to its advice line plus many email inquiries, so we are very aware of what is happening at the grassroots level nationally. The operators are ignoring the codes and riding roughshod over the planning system. Residents are not being consulted despite one of the commitments being that communities will be involved in the siting of phone masts.

5. Why single out mobile phone operators and their masts for criticism? What about television and radio transmitters and equipment, military installations, power lines, electricity sub-stations and other common sources of electromagnetic radiation?

Mast Sanity campaigns for the sensible siting of mobile phone and TETRA masts. TETRA is the system the police use to communicate with. Mast Sanity is also concerned about digital cordless phones (DECT) and wireless computers because they also operate on pulsed microwave radiation and cause the same ill health effects. Other campaign groups such as Powerwatch raise awareness to the health issues around powerlines and TV and radio transmitters.

6. What led to you personally taking up the cause?

I have never had a mobile phone because I have doubts about the safety of this technology. So when Hutchinson (3G) wanted to erect a mast 15 metres from my house I was horrified because they were imposing something on us which emits radiation 24 hours a day. Having read a huge amount of research on the effects, I think there is a serious public health problem.

7. What needs to be done to reassure you and other campaigners that the health and safety questions about mobile phones and masts have been properly addressed? Is there evidence which would satisfy you they are safe?

No study has ever proven that mobile phones are safe, despite the claims made by the operators. There is a huge amount of worldwide evidence to prove that the system on which they operate makes some people ill.

Eminent scientists around the world are coming out with more and more evidence. Add that to the huge amount of evidence of cancer clusters and ill health emerging around phone and TETRA masts and you have a serious problem. The scale of the problem is of the magnitude of illnesses caused by smoking and asbestos.

8. What are the health problems which you believe are associated with mobile phone masts? What problems do you think can be caused by mobile phone handsets?

Health effects noted by some doctors in Germany, Finland, Austria, Ireland and the UK include headaches, migraines, exhaustion, agitation, sleeplessness, tinnitus, nose bleeds, susceptibility to infection, nervous and connective tissue pains. learning, concentration, and behavioural disorders, extreme fluctuations in blood pressure, heart rhythm disorders, heart attacks and strokes, thyroid disorders, brain-degenerative diseases, motor neurone disease and epilepsy and cancers, leukaemia and brain tumours.

Mobile phones are particularly statistically related to brain tumours, notably acoustic neuroma, as well as to glaucoma and cataracts, and an alarming new trend is the rise in unusual eye cancers, and mouth cancers among children. Mobile phones have also been connected with loss of fertility from wearing phones in pockets or at the waist.

9. Who should be responsible for taking action to make sure masts are safe and the proper planning and health and safety processes are followed when companies want to put them up?

All masts should go through the full planning process. Much more stringent emission level guidelines should be implemented.

The police should use Tetrapol instead of TETRA because Tetrapol is a safer system requiring fewer masts used in Europe and by the military in Baghdad (via satellite). This is all the responsibility of the Government which received billions in revenue from the 3G licence auction, and receives billions in taxes from the industry.

Department of Health leaflets on mobile phones and health should be given out with every mobile phone sale, but they are not.

Above all, the Government has always insisted on multiple infrastructures so we have five mobile phone operators, plus O2 Airwave (TETRA). All five of our 3G networks require masts every 1.5km to 5km, a much smaller range than the older GSM. Not least, this creates a substantial energy demand at a time of energy crisis and climate change. Even when masts are not in demand they emit microwaves, and with a prospective additional 130,000 masts to the 45,000 plus already in place, to serve the new 3G networks, the environment is being filled many times over, just so that every user has a choice of five networks to connect to for the same services.

10. Do you think that the dispute between people opposed to and people who support mobile phones and mobile phone masts will ever be settled? How?

Most people don't want to live by a mast but will use a mobile. Every time anyone uses a mobile phone to send a text or make a call, someone living by a mast gets a dose of radiation.

Masts and mobiles cause the same ill health effects. There are also issues like the accumulation of emissions inside train carriages so when several people are on their phones at the same time other people are getting exposed to a lot of radiation.

People who are electro-sensitive will be unable to travel on public transport or go to some cities because of the emission levels. Mobiles are becoming a social problem.

Phones are used for pornography and internet gambling and this craze of happy slapping, whereby gangs attack other children and film the attack on phones and then email the pictures among friends, or even place them on internet sites. Phone-bullying and theft of phones is widespread, and is a serious and growing problem that isn't being dealt with.

http://tinyurl.com/aduv6

by Susan Van Haitsma

Every village has its cemetery, its collection of spirit inhabitants who invoke memories of village history and remind the living that death and remembrance of the dead are essential to the natural order of things in human society. But cemeteries usually are found on the edges of town, away from the goings-on of daily life. The memorials of carefully arranged and named crosses, stars of David and crescents comprising "Arlington South" in Camps Casey I and II are not relegated to the edges, but instead form the heart of the community that has sprung up near Crawford, Texas this month. Memorial crosses hug the three original tents of Camp Casey I and line the road leading to the camp. The field of crosses at Camp Casey II adjoins the large community tent and is the first thing visitors encounter as they approach from the road. In a reversal of the natural order of things, the dead represented by these memorials are society's youngest adults. The doctrine of pre-emptive war forces members of a society to do the unthinkable: to sacrifice the lives of their young to protect their own....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Haitsma0829.htm



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

by Kim Petersen

Most progressives would probably agree that in many contexts "blind, unquestioning faith" in a president or other person is "foolish and obsequious." In this respect, Ken Sanders was right on in his recent article "Love Your Country? Demand Impeachment." Sanders considered such faith to be "contrary to the fundamental principles of this country, as set forth in the Constitution." Sanders instead advocated patriotism, which he defined as demanding "truth and honesty." To be brutally honest, "this country" that Sanders loves is an occupied, ethnically cleansed, annexed, conquered, or illegitimately purchased landmass referred to by the colonialists as the United States of America. A landmass birthed so inauspiciously might give pause to professions of love by many self-designated liberals or progressives. The landmass of the United States of America is a betrayal of the rights of first settlement and represents the theft and occupation of the territory from its Original Peoples. So, historically, it is difficult to grasp "the promise" of what such a landmass "stands for"; certainly, it is a demonstration that military might can translate to territorial expansion through genocide....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Petersen0829.htm

by Mike Whitney

George Bush… "One dead American for every day in office". President Bush's latest milestone in the war on terror has been predictably ignored in the mainstream media. Bush, who is now in the fifth year of his presidency, has served 1,727 days in office. With the death toll in Iraq currently at 1,873 servicemen, Bush can now boast that at least one American has died for every day he's been in office, a sobering tribute to a man who wants to be remembered as "a war president." Every day, another Casey Sheehan or some other faceless patriot dies in Bush's war of choice. The tragedy of the war cannot be fully grasped simply by listing the number of American casualties on Bush's watch, but it's a good place to start....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Whitney0829.htm

by Patricia Goldsmith

We seem to be on the cusp of achieving a truly independent media -- independent from facts, independent from reality, and now, finally, entirely independent from the views of the overwhelming majority of the American people....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Goldsmith0829.htm

Despite repeated denials by Number 10 that the war made Britain a target for terrorists, a letter from Michael Jay, the Foreign Office permanent under-secretary, to the cabinet secretary, Sir Andrew Turnbull, makes the connection clear.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082805A.shtml

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=AMR20050828&articleId=875


Informant: sash



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

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=8600


Informant: Steven L. Robinson

From ufpj-news

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index810.htm


Informant: V

Across Africa, prices at the pump are ballooning at an alarming rate, pushing millions of people on the world's poorest continent deeper into poverty and adding to the threat to the continent's forests, the source of much of its firewood.

Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 15:36:26 -0600 From: Lance Olsen
Subject: CMCR: Guess -- Who Will Die First?

The world is in the early stages of two grand -- and intimately linked -- trends.

We have come to the end of cheap oil, and to the end of the habitable climate of the past 10,000 years.

The end of cheap oil or the end of the prevailing climate would have plausibly staggering impact, even if it were acting alone.

Together, they already pack a powerful punch, even at these early stages of change. Together, they will be posing plausibly gargantuan challenges even for the well-off.

Of earth's 6,000 million people, some 4,000 million will likely take the hardest hits, and not at some distant point in the future.

Lance Olsen


Reuters August 26, 2005

Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

By David Mageria

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Africans are struggling to cope with stubbornly high global oil prices which are forcing many to walk long distances to work or schools, go hungry as food prices skyrocket, and depend on candles to light their homes.

Crude oil prices surged to a record $68 a barrel this week on supply concerns, raising fears of further fuel hikes in Africa where burdened families were already reeling from rises.

"If they are increased again, I will be left with no food to feed my orphans because (food) prices will go up because of transport costs," said Mai Wisiki, a grandmother with four orphans in Malawi's Chiradzulu district.

Across Africa, prices at the pump are ballooning at an alarming rate, pushing millions of people on the world's poorest continent deeper into poverty and adding to the threat to the continent's forests, the source of much of its firewood.

Many rural homes in Africa do not have electricity and depend on kerosene to light their small lamps and cooking stoves in the evenings. But the price of kerosene is becoming unaffordable for many.

"Nowadays I cannot afford to buy kerosene for my children to study, I can only afford to buy candles," said Margaret Njuki, a single mother of three and a tea farmer in central Kenya.

The need for an affordable alternative source of power is also putting pressure on forests.

"Every day things are going from bad to worse. Because of the increase in the price of cooking gas, I have reverted to using firewood and charcoal," said Melanie Ndoh, a civil servant and housewife in Cameroon, where the government last week raised prices for fuel products by 8 CFA francs per litre.

With transport cost rising daily, many motorists have been forced to change their lifestyles and are now trekking to their work places. Others have opted to ride bicyles while small traders hire handcarts to save on transport costs.

"I have a car that I have now parked. I cannot afford fuel because I have other needs such as paying school fees for my children, rent and food," said John Shiundu, a shopkeeper outside Nairobi's city centre.

Students have not been spared.

"I have to walk for eight km to school and another eight km back home just to save some money," said Lewis Nyirenda, a college student in the Zambian capital Lusaka.

"GARGANTUAN OIL PRICE"

Although Africa's powerhouse South Africa has said it expects strong economic growth despite high oil prices, many on the continent say the rises pose a threat to economic goals due to soaring inflation and weakened local currencies.

"The recent gargantuan oil price increases could be disastrous for African economies," Augustin Fosu, the director of economics and social policy division at the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa told Reuters.

"Although a handful of countries that are oil-producing should benefit, the vast majority of African countries are non-oil producing and their economies will be significantly hurt by these negative supply shocks."

He said global growth is likely to be reduced which will cut export demand for African goods. Many African countries could also be forced to reallocate funds in their budgets away from crucial development projects to meet with a high oil budget.

High oil prices are also raising social tensions and some governments are grappling with protests.

In the west African country of Guinea, the government increased oil prices in May to 3,800 Guinean francs from 2,500 francs prompting a group of armed youths to attack several lorries carrying rice, the country's staple food, to deter the government from further hikes.

Some African governments like Ethiopia, Mauritius and tiny Seychelles are yet to raise petrol prices, but not for too long.

In Mauritius, the government's Automatic Price Mechanism committe is scheduled to review petrol prices in October. Analysts say prices will go only one way -- up.

"If the price of petrol is adjusted as it should, the first effect will be a further deterioration of the trade deficit", said Mahmood Cheeroo, the director of the Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Article found at : http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=8378

Original article:
http://za.today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-08-26T090109Z_01_ALL632366_RTRIDST_0_OZATP-AFRICA-OIL-20050826.XML

Peace! *STRIDER*

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/3345/


Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news

http://www.bite-back.org/objection/index.php

Citizens' Objection: BITE BACK -- WTO HANDS OFF OUR FOOD!

To: The World Trade Organisation From: Concerned People around the World

We, wishing to protect our right to decide what we eat and grow, have serious and legitimate concerns about the risks of genetically modified foods and crops (GMOs) for consumers, farmers, wildlife and environments around the world.

By mounting this World Trade Organisation (WTO) dispute the US and others are trying to force genetically modified food into the European Union and other parts of the world. They seek to prevent countries from choosing for themselves whether to permit genetically modified food and farming. They also seek to undermine our right to know and choose what we eat and farm.

If successful, this will further the interests of a small number of companies which have a financial stake in this technology at the expense of our interests as citizens around the world.

With this objection we strongly advocate that

1 it's our own right and not up to the WTO to decide what we eat and what crops we farm;

2 governments around the world have the right to develop laws to protect their environment and the well being of their citizens from the risks of genetically modified food and farming, including the right to impose a ban on such products or strict labelling requirements;

3 it is appropriate for such laws to be based on the Precautionary Principle which requires that where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage then despite lack of scientific certainty it is better to act now to be safe than wait to be sorry;

4 decisions concerning regulation of international trade in GMOs should be made in accordance with the UN Biosafety Protocol and not by the World Trade Organisation.

Therefore, the WTO must

1 not deny people the right to know and choose what they eat and farm;

2 not undermine the right of the European Union and others to take appropriate steps to protect their citizens and the environment from GMO food and farming;

3 dismiss the complaints of the United States of America, Argentina and Canada.

(sign-on at web link) http://www.bite-back.org/objection/index.php


Informant: Andy Robinson

From: rad-green-request@lists.econ.utah.edu To: rad-green@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 11:00 AM Subject: Rad-Green Digest, Vol 23, Issue 34

From: NYC WRL nycwrl@worldnet.att.net Date: 8/24/2005 1:32:59 PM Subject: Call To Action: Shut Down The War Machine This September!

SHUT DOWN THE WAR MACHINE THIS SEPTEMBER

On September 23-26, 2005, Washington, DC will host an historic demonstration of people power that includes nonviolent direct action designed to shut down the corporate war machine.

Be a part of our struggle - in Washington or in your part of the country!

Join us in nonviolent actions at the Pentagon and at DC area recruiting stations or organize concurrent actions in your town:

we are planning nonviolent demonstrations and civil resistance at recruiting centers across the country on September 26th with the centerpiece action being a peaceful occupation of the Pentagon.

These actions will include civil disobedience scenarios with a risk of arrest as well as low risk scenarios focused on education and outreach.

We urge people of all colors, cultures, faiths and walks of life to come to Washington and be a part of the change we all long for - or organize local actions and allow us to be a part of your event by publicizing it as part of a nationwide effort to end the corporate wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring the troops home.

Help us shut down the war machine on Monday, September 26th, 2005!

We will be gathering at various locations in the metro DC area and then processing to recruiting centers and to the Pentagon - carrying signs, banners and coffins.

On arrival we will blockade entrances, leaflet and engage passersby in dialogue - all to help impart our message that our young people must not become the next victims of U.S. militarism.

The Pentagon and its marketing arm - the military recruiters - will still be here after Bush leaves the White House and two unfinished wars behind him.

The cancer of U.S. militarism cannot be removed by simply cutting off the figurehead.

The enduring curse of U.S. war making must be confronted wherever it manifests itself in our communities - and at the Pentagon.

It is up to us to demand change.

Join with us as:

We demand the troops be brought home NOW.

We demand reparations for the Iraqi and Afghani peoples so they might begin to rebuild their shattered countries.

We demand money now being wasted on the military be diverted into education and healthcare.

The DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) and the Direct Action Tendency are working alongside the September Action Collective, United for Peace and Justice, the Socialist Party and many others in responding to the Iraq Pledge of Resistance's call for Nonviolent Resistance to the wars of empire now raging in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Join us!

** Make plans to attend September Action's Second Regional Consulta ***

Where: New York City Address: A.J. Muste Institute (Conference Room), 339 Lafayette Street NY, NY 10012
When: September 3rd from 3 to 7pm Info: http://www.septemberaction.org nyc@septemberaction.org

For more information about the mobilization or to inform us about actions you are organizing please:

- write to info@septemberaction.org - visit http://www.septemberaction.org - call 347.524.5631


Informant: Friends

http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/32392.htm


Informant: Friends



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

Block the Bank! Fight the Fund! Reclaim Our Communities! Confront Economic Violence and Corporate Capitalism during the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings September 23-25, 2005 :: Washington DC :: Call for DIRECT ACTION

September 23rd to 25th 2005, the weekend of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's annual meetings, holds great importance for millions around the world. This year, the Mobilization for Global Justice, a Washington DC-based activist group, will join our allies in the global South, Europe, and the U.S. as well as with those in the anti-war community to demand an end to the international system that uses economic and military might to extract resources and serve corporate interests. We envision a world with true development, democracy, and security, and where economic policy serves the interests of the people. We call for creative direct actions on the weekend of September 23rd to 25th - all the action you can muster to shake the pillars of empire to their rotten and festering core - and work towards another possible world.

As the U.S. spends millions of public dollars a day on the deadly occupation of Iraq, the World Bank and IMF are promoting a violence less sensational and far more insidious. Using the mechanism of international debt, the World Bank and the IMF are waging a global war on the poor. Through the privatization of basic services, the prying open of developing countries' economies, and the capping of spending on healthcare, education, and employment even as military spending balloons, the institutions ensure that any resources in the global South - from water to oil, minerals to labor, bananas to money - are transferred to the benefit of transnational corporations and elites rather than to local communities.

The extraction of Southern resources facilitated by the World Bank and IMF leads to an escalation of economic violence and the destruction of real democracy and development. Forced relocation, hunger, increased poverty, environmental destruction, and disease are all direct products of World Bank and IMF policies. Rampant privatization means that communities the world over are seeing control over local resources wrested from them and delivered to unaccountable multinational corporations. For women forced to work long hours for sweatshop wages, for children orphaned by the AIDS pandemic, for families forced to skip meals, for girls who cannot afford to attend school, for communities uprooted by dams, mines, and pipelines, this is not real development, it is violence. For the people of the global South whose lives are disrupted, worsened, jeopardized, and often ended, this is not true security; it is not true democracy.

These policies extend even into the U.S.: as residents of Washington DC, we are the reluctant hosts of the World Bank, the IMF, and other institutions of empire. With our only public hospital closed, a deteriorating public school system, and a private baseball stadium being built with public funds, we see that the same policies of private gain at public expense imposed on borrowing countries by the World Bank and IMF are also at work in Washington. The World Bank and IMF make billions a year in profits, use services provided by the city, and sit on valuable property downtown, yet they pay no property taxes or corporate revenue taxes. This is an injustice in a city with a majority low-income population and is a cruel hypocrisy on the part of the institutions, which state "poverty reduction" and "economic development" as part of their goals.

September 23rd to 25th the movements for global justice will defy the corrupt global system which concentrates economic and military power in a few countries and whose agents run riot across the globe, extracting essential resources, exacerbating climate change, and impoverishing the majority of humanity. The model of development promoted by the World Bank and IMF is emulated at all levels - from national governments to city councils - supporting corporate power and placing profit before people, waging economic and military war and promoting social and environmental destruction, in its hunger for the world's resources.

Join us and the millions around the world dedicated to a world where development, security, and democracy are no longer tools of rhetoric employed by the World Bank, the IMF, and the U.S. government but are realities in the lives of all. Come to Washington DC September 23-25th for a weekend of spirited action to shake the pillars of empire!

The Mobilization for Global Justice is a Washington DC-based activist group. We are committed to organizing effective, strategic, and creative direct actions during the World Bank and IMF fall meetings.

Please email us at mgj@riseup.net, or call us at 202-898-5953 for updates on the weekend and information on how to get involved. Our website is currently down, so to get information on the action go to www.septemberaction.org. This website has information about all the weekend's activities, including MGJ's. Once our website is up and running, you'll be able to find us at http.//www.globalizethis.org


Informant: Catherine Benedict

http://alaskagyrl.blogspot.com/

*Please forward far and wide"


Informant: Friends



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

Source: CounterPunch
Author: Ramzy Baroud

08/26/05

What makes Sheehan's story utterly powerful is that it comes from a member of society that has been merely qualified as 'ordinary', meaning a person of no bearing on the outcome of things, be it political or otherwise. But she is a woman, a mother and that too is a powerful message of revolutionary proportions. Women have erroneously been regarded as minor players in shaping what social scientists coined the 'public sphere'...

Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/baroud08262005.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



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

Source: Binghamton News Journal
Author: David Rossie

08/26/05

Nowhere is that more apparent today than in the case of Cindy Sheehan, whose peaceful siege of Prairie Chapel -- a reverse siege of the Alamo, with the good guys on the outside this time, and the bad guys on the inside -- has polarized the nation, or at least a part of it. Who would have thought when Sheehan set up a roadside camp a few weeks ago, hoping to arrange a face-to-face meeting with the squire of Prairie Chapel, that her presence would have such a powerful polarizing effect?

Link: http://tinyurl.com/dwgq3


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



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

Source: Miami Herald
Author: Leonard Pitts Jr.

08/26/05

Cindy Sheehan will get her wish to meet with President Bush the day winged donkeys perform an air show in the skies above the South Lawn. In other words, never. In part this is because the president is famously intolerant of criticism and notoriously fumble-tongued when working without a script, so his handlers would rather chew glass than send him out to confront an angry protester who knows exactly what she believes and why. It is also because no president can afford to be seen as having been bullied into doing something. So Sheehan's vigil near the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch is likely to continue until the end of Bush's extended vacation without reaching resolution. Unless you count embarrassing a president who badly needed embarrassing. In which case, Sheehan's demand for a meeting has already been a smashing success...

Link: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12481085.htm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



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

Source: Institute for Justice
Author: Chip Mellor

08/05

Without realizing it, liberals and conservatives are working from opposite ends of the political spectrum, under opposing rationales, to reach the same end: expanded government power. As a result of the political push and pull between those advocating judicial activism and those favoring judicial restraint, two fundamental American rights -- the right to earn an honest living and the right to own private property -- have been stripped of vital constitutional protection, leaving entrepreneurs and small property owners especially vulnerable to backroom deals and majoritarian whims...

Link: http://www.ij.org/publications/liberty/2005/14_3_05_f.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Competitive Enterprise Institute
Author: Richard Morrison

08/26/05

A new article in the recent edition of British scientific journal The Lancet (August 27, 2005) threatens to undermine the battle against malaria around the world. Authors suggest public health officials should rethink the use of DDT for malaria control -- discouraging use of the most vital tool in an effort to save millions of lives. The Lancet authors concluded that there is 'evidence now indicating that DDT might have adverse effects on human health,' and that it would be 'prudent' to rethink DDT use to better assess risks and benefits. Yet the truly prudent approach would be to ignore this dangerous advice...

Link: http://www.cei.org/gencon/003,04792.cfm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: LewRockwell.Com
Author: Michael S. Rozeff

08/27/05

We live under false premises, the false premises of power. The State has been put over as a fraud. We are promised one thing. We get quite another. The journey to self-government (anarchism) will be long and tough. We won't arrive unless and until we clearly understand what the goal implies and why the goal is a good goal. Changes in human nature, in the ways we think, feel, and act, are not a necessary condition for us to create better social and political lives. Changes in understanding are...

Link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff17.html



Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Independent [UK]
Author: Andrew Gumbel

08/29/05

There could have been no starker symbol of the political divisions vexing George Bush's America this weekend than the railroad track running right through the heart of Crawford, home to the president's summer holiday ranch in the scorched plains of central Texas. On one side of the tracks was the Crawford Peace House, base camp for the activists who have poured in to support Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved mother of one of America's Iraqi war dead .... On the other side, along Crawford's main drag, were clusters of an entirely different breed of protester -- ardent Bush supporters .... In the end, both sides had to feel disappointed by the turnout for the final weekend of summer madness -' no more than a few thousand people all told. The counter-demonstration failed spectacularly in its aim of outnumbering the anti-war activists by three or four to one, as chartered buses turned up half-empty, and cars adorned with 'You don't speak for me, Cindy' bumper stickers created a traffic jam stretching only one block rather than the miles the organisers had hoped for...

Link: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article308766.ece



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

Source: Salon
Author: Cintra Wilson

08/29/05

July 11, the Day the Press Corps Attacked, was just the kickoff. I spent the next two weeks in the James S. Brady Briefing Room at the White House, witnessing the molten Rove-a-thon. By the end I felt like I'd spent a couple of weeks on one of those indoor thrill rides where seats are bolted to a moving floor while a film is shown, creating a vague sensation of G-force when nothing actually goes anywhere. Still, the mini-revolt offered hope that despite its previously persistent vegetative state, the press might not be entirely dead yet. For the first time since 9/11, the reporters got nakedly hostile and went for the throat. Pandora's box opened -- just a hairline crack, but enough bats flew out to suggest that it might not close all the way again... [subscription or ad view required]

Link: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/08/27/briefing/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: The Libertarian Enterprise
Author: L. Neil Smith

08/28/05

Link: http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle334-20050828-02.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Free Market News Network
Author: Thomas L. Knapp

08/26/05

When it comes to policy decisions in a representative democracy, the job of politicians -- at least in theory -- is to weigh costs and benefits and then act to minimize the former and maximize the latter. Of course, politicians do tend to evaluate the risks and benefits according to criteria other than the strictly representative. Which do you think carries more weight: How a policy might cost or benefit you, or how a policy might cost or benefit the politician? We can safely assume that the latter concern does play in the politician's decisions -- for even if he's a really, really good guy who really, really cares about you, he's also a really, really good guy who really, really cares about his other constituents, and who really, really cares about getting re-elected...

Link: http://www.freemarketnews.com/pview/5837/2428/html/index.php

Source: AntiWar.Com
Author: Justin Raimondo

08/29/05

Yes, it sure is 'painful' to see what the War Party has wrought in Iraq -- especially for the families of the fallen, both American and Iraqi. For Cindy Sheehan and her Iraqi equivalents, who grieve and ask 'why' and get no answer either from Bush or from Berman and his brigade of babbling armchair generals, the pain just keeps on keeping on. Not that the neocons care one whit about the human tragedy caused by their folly: as the Stalinists used to say, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and that's a small price to pay when you take into account the glorious utopia we're building. Isn't it? As Americans begin to understand that this is really the question posed by George W. Bush's foreign policy -- a strategic doctrine fully supported, at least in principle, by his Democratic opponents -- their answer is becoming clearer by the day: No, no, a thousand times no...

Link: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7114


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Guardian [UK]

08/27/05

A sign on the highway welcoming visitors to Crawford declares the population to be 705, but today the figure is likely to be at least four times that. Thousands of pro- and anti-war activists are making their way to this little corner of Texas for the culmination of protests that began when George Bush arrived for his five-week 'working vacation' at the beginning of August. Leading the anti-war rally will be Cindy Sheehan, 48, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, whose vigil outside Mr Bush's ranch has given the US peace movement in America a new focus and forced the president on to the defensive. Ranged against her are various conservative activists and military families, including the 'You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy!' tour, which began in Mrs Sheehan's home town of Vacaville in California and is due to arrive in Crawford at midday today. The pro-war demonstrators will hold a rally in the little town, not far from Fort Qualls, which was set up in memory of Louis Qualls -- a marine killed in Iraq last year but whose father, Gary, is a staunch Bush supporter. Between them they are determined to drag the spotlight away from Mrs Sheehan, and today's two rallies promise a showdown...

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1557489,00.html



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

Source: Yahoo! News

08/24/05

The Homeland SecurityDepartment is making another push to get personal data on airline passengers in an effort to keep terrorists off flights. The lobbying effort comes months after the House and Senate, concerned about invading privacy, gave preliminary approval to a measure that would ban the department from tapping into credit reports, court files, shopping histories and other personal information for one year. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wants Congress to scrap the pending ban so the government can make passenger information 'more complete and accurate' when it compares names with those of suspected terrorists, according to department spokesman Russ Knocke...

Link: http://tinyurl.com/dgc5s


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

More journalists killed in Iraq than Vietnam

Source: CNN

08/28/05

More journalists have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003 than during the 20 years of conflict in Vietnam, media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Sunday. Since U.S. forces and its allies launched their campaign in Iraq on March 20, 2003, 66 journalists and their assistants have been killed, RSF said."

Link: http://tinyurl.com/ddz4a


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

--------

They Kill Journalists, Don’t They?
http://tinyurl.com/6b57w


From Information Clearing House

Source: Houston Chronicle

08/28/05

Lawmakers are drafting proposals that would cut billions of dollars from the growth of Medicaid, slice into student loans just as colleges start back up, pare back food stamps and trim farm price supports in the midst of a Midwestern drought. The raft of bills, due out of 16 committees in the House and Senate by Sept. 16, will hand the Republican Party its toughest test of fiscal austerity in nearly a decade." [editor's note: Isn't it interesting how both major parties participate in the scam of pretending that a reduction in growth is a "cut?" The Democrats whip their base into a frenzy over non-existent cuts; the Republicans go to their base with reductions in growth and pretend that they've reduced spending. Someone wake me up when Congress passes a budget that's actually smaller than the previous year's. I bet I can double Rip Van Winkle's record for continuous napping - TLK]

Link: http://tinyurl.com/decsn


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Tampa Tribune

08/28/05

The Rev. Al Sharpton joined hundreds of war protesters outside President Bush's ranch for an interfaith service Sunday, saying he felt compelled to meet Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother who started the rally three weeks earlier. Sheehan had arrived in Bush's hometown on Aug. 6 and refused to leave until she could question the president about the war that has killed more than 1,870 U.S. service members, including her 24-year-old son, Casey...

Link: http://tinyurl.com/dzvok


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



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

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/3342/


Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0828-25.htm



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

Mr Bush has never really forgiven secretary general Kofi Annan and other senior UN figures for their failure to support his invasion of Iraq. Although no one disputes that the UN is in need of reform, the American notion of reform looks more like a settling of scores than an attempt to improve its workings.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1557477,00.html


From Information Clearing House

US regime in headlong flight forward towards war with Iran.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10010.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10001.htm



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

President George W. Bush, assailed by sagging poll numbers and criticism from anti-war protesters camped outside his ranch, called on Saturday for Americans to show resolve and brace for additional sacrifice in Iraq.

http://snipurl.com/h9gj


From Information Clearing House

Most people only see car bombs and explosions and American soldiers running frantically to contain “the situation” on a muted television screen, I see it in real life. I actually hear the booms and bangs of insurgent bombs, and the crackling of machine gun fire, and the hysterical shouting of frightened Iraqi civilians.

http://ftssoldier.blogspot.com/2005/08/finding-closure.html


From Information Clearing House

West's well-tried formula for provoking Islamic revolutions.
http://comment.independent.co.uk/letters/article308189.ece


From Information Clearing House

By Christine Rose

She explained to me how she and her husband voted for Bush. She said they were conservative and watched Fox News regularly; however, something touched her in seeing and hearing everyday people from around the world talk about her beloved country as a bully; a hypocrite. Something touched her when faced with the sobering charge of War Crimes and the images of torture at the hands of Americans under orders from the US Government. Something touched her that day that made her think about what she thought she knew.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10008.htm

Highlighting concerns of civil rights groups, a lawsuit challenging the FBI's use of the USA Patriot Act filed by a member of the American Library Association is largely under wraps, the US public forbidden to know its details.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082705Z.shtml

Jules Siegel Reviews Norman Solomon's New Book

Jules Siegel takes a look Norman Solomon's new book, "War Made Easy." Siegel writes: "Norman Solomon demolishes the myth of an independent American press zealously guarding sacred values of free expression."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082705E.shtml

The New York Times comments on state of corporate lobbying in Washington: "There are now so many legions of lobbyists working the rich federal turf that sponsors can hire a different firm to lobby each key member of the major Congressional committees."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082705D.shtml

John Dean writes: "From the moment I heard Robertson's remark, on the radio, I thought of the federal criminal statutes prohibiting such threats. Do they apply? For me, the answer is yes."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082705C.shtml

Although John Bolton failed to win congressional approval, Mr. Bush's recess appointee to the UN has launched headlong into a confrontation with the member states that threatens to alienate even America's staunchest ally, Great Britain.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082705A.shtml

MWM: Here are a good set of summary arguements for destroying the myth of infinite progress under "freetrade" globalism. Roberts provides a more technocratic way of defining "the giant sucking sound".

Paul Craig Roberts: 'Hegemony lost: The American economy is destroying itself' Date: Friday, August 26 @ 08:04:02 EDT Topic: Economic Policy

By Paul Craig Roberts, CounterPunch

The historian who chronicles America's decline will lay the blame on free market ideology.

I say this as a believer in the market. My books and scholarly articles demonstrate the superiority of market systems over government allocative schemes. The problem arises when market economics ceases to be thoughtful and becomes ideological or a dogma.

A good example of the latter is a recent Heritage Foundation study that argues that global outsourcing is the best way to equip the US military with the best technology at least expense. The study brushes away concerns with the erosion of the American manufacturing, science, and engineering knowledge base by asserting that such concerns imply protectionism and that protectionism means the death of innovation.

Protectionism can be problematical for innovation, and the study is correct to point this out. Where the study fails is in ignoring that innovation does not take place in a vacuum. Innovation requires a material base and depends on a strong manufacturing, science and engineering foundation backed by R&D programs.

In an interview with Manufacturing & Technology News (August 8), the study's project leader, Jack Spencer, sees protectionism as the only threat to American innovation, which he otherwise takes for granted:

"Our belief is that subjected to the free market, the United States is still going to produce most things because our comparative advantages are innovation and new technology. If liberated from protectionism, we can compete and that is where we will always emerge as winners."

This belief is simply untrue. As this belief is the basis for the study, the study has done nothing but confirm a preordained belief.

The US has no God-given comparative advantage in innovation and new technology. We were leaders in these fields, because we were leaders in manufacturing.

We were leaders in manufacturing, because Europe and Japan destroyed themselves in wars, and the rest of the world destroyed themselves in various forms of socialism and cronyism.

America's hegemony in manufacturing, science and engineering was the product of historical circumstances. Moreover, it occurred despite American protectionism.

The historical circumstances have changed. The US gave away its scientific and engineering education and its agriculture. It did this partly for idealistic reasons and partly as cold war strategy.

Once socialism collapsed in Asia, US corporations began outsourcing abroad the manufacture of products for US markets. Success with offshore manufacturing has led to offshore outsourcing of research and development and now innovation itself.

As a recent report from the National Research Council recognizes, "product development and technical support follow manufacturing." One consequence for America is the loss of many manufacturing capabilities and "the increasing availability abroad of unique technologies not found in the United States."

This development is taking a huge toll on America's human resources in manufacturing skills, engineering and science. The first American victims were blue collar workers. Millions of them lost their jobs and experienced sharp declines in the quality of their lives. But as research, engineering, design, and innovation followed manufacturing abroad, now it is white collar workers in information technology and university graduates in engineering and physics who are being displaced.

American university enrollments in science and engineering are declining because there are no jobs for graduates. It is pointless to invest money, sweat and toil in an education that has no payoff. Markets do work. Markets are working to shrink the demand for, and supply of, American engineers and scientists.

The next impact is going to be on project manager jobs, practically the sole remaining source of career related employment for many engineers and technical people. Project management jobs require people experienced with the technology of the job. The loss of technical and engineering jobs empties the pipeline of people who have the experience to assume management positions. Far from being able to innovate, the US will even lack the human resources to manage technical and scientific projects.

Many uninformed people believe the problem is that America doesn't produce enough scientists and engineers. Manufacturing & Technology News reports that "a group of 15 US business organizations has launched a national campaign aimed at doubling within 10 years the number of bachelor's degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics."

What is the point of this when there is a huge supply of unemployed engineers and technical people who have been displaced by offshore outsourcing and by H-1b and L-1 work visas for foreigners? I know an American software engineer in his thirties whose job was outsourced. After searching fruitlessly for a job for four years, he took a job in Thailand writing software programs for $850 per month.

The anecdotal stories are legion. Yesterday, a friend reported to me that the service technician who repaired his garage door opener said his company was flooded with resumes from college graduates and engineers who cannot find work and are willing to take jobs installing garage doors.

US executives, with an eye to quarterly earnings and their bonuses, continue to spend considerable resources lobbying for increases in work visas that enable them to replace their American engineers, scientists, and technical people with lower cost foreigners. These executives lie through their teeth when they assert the lack of qualified Americans for the jobs. The fact of the matter is, the executives force their American employees to train their foreign replacements and then fire their American workers.

In a word, American capitalism is destroying itself by dismantling the ladders of upward mobility that have made large income inequalities acceptable. By rewarding themselves for destroying American jobs and manufacturing, engineering and scientific capabilities, US executives are sowing a whirlwind. American political stability will not survive the turning of an American university degree into a worthless sheet of paper. Libertarians and free market ideologues who rejoice in freedom should open their eyes to freedom's destruction.

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

Reprinted from CounterPunch: http://counterpunch.org/roberts08252005.html


Informant: Michael Mandeville

IT HAS BEEN CALCULATED THAT IF EVERYONE IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA DID NOT PURCHASE A DROP OF GASOLINE FOR ONE DAY AND ALL AT THE SAME TIME, THE OIL COMPANIES WOULD CHOKE ON THEIR STOCKPILES.

AT THE SAME TIME IT WOULD HIT THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY WITH A NET LOSS OF OVER 4.6 BILLION DOLLARS WHICH AFFECTS THE BOTTOM LINES OF THE OIL COMPANIES.

THEREFORE SEPTEMBER 1st HAS BEEN FORMALLY DECLARED "STICK IT UP THEIR BEHIND " DAY AND THE PEOPLE OF THESE TWO NATIONS SHOULD NOT BUY A SINGLE DROP OF GASOLINE THAT DAY.

THE ONLY WAY THIS CAN BE DONE IS IF YOU FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN AND AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN TO GET THE WORD OUT.

WAITING ON THE GOVERNMENT TO STEP IN AND CONTROL THE PRICES IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REDUCTION AND CONTROL IN PRICES THAT THE ARAB NATIONS PROMISED TWO WEEKS AGO?

REMEMBER ONE THING, NOT ONLY IS THE PRICE OF GASOLINE GOING UP BUT AT THE SAME TIME AIRLINES ARE FORCED TO RAISE THEIR PRICES, TRUCKING COMPANIES ARE FORCED TO RAISE THEIR PRICES WHICH EFFECTS PRICES ON EVERYTHING THAT IS SHIPPED. THINGS LIKE FOOD, CLOTHING, BUILDING MATERIALS, MEDICAL SUPPLIES ETC. WHO PAYS IN THE END? WE DO!

WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. IF THEY DON'T GET THE MESSAGE AFTER ONE DAY, WE WILL DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN.

SO DO YOUR PART AND SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW. MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND MAKE SEPTEMBER 1ST A DAY THAT THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA SAY "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH".


Informant: Be Kind Whenever Possible

Disagreement over America's bid to derail UN reform

Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor

Saturday August 27, 2005

The Guardian

Britain will join an international alliance to confront George Bush and salvage as much as possible of an ambitious plan to reshape the United Nations and tackle world poverty next week.

The head-to-head in New York on Monday comes after the revelation that the US administration is proposing wholesale changes to crucial parts of the biggest overhaul of the UN since it was founded more than 50 years ago.

A draft of that plan had included a review of progress on the UN's millennium development goals - poverty eradication targets set in 2000 for completion by 2015 - and the introduction of reforms aimed at repairing the damage done to the UN's reputation by Iraq, Rwanda and the Balkans.

But it was revealed this week that Mr Bush's new ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, was seeking 750 changes to the 36-page draft plan to be presented to a special summit in New York on September 14 to 16. Mr Bolton's amendments, if successful, would leave the plan in tatters.

The Foreign Office confirmed yesterday that Britain was standing behind the original plan, putting it at odds with Mr Bush.

The concern in British and other international circles is that the American objections, if adopted, would severely undermine the UN summit, the biggest-ever gathering of world leaders.

At least 175 world leaders have accepted an invitation to attend. The UN said yesterday that Mr Bush had confirmed that he would be there.

A wide range of organisations, from aid groups to the anti-arms lobby, voiced dismay about Mr Bolton's objections yesterday and expressed concern that the summit may end in failure.

The Make Poverty History campaign said there was a danger that the millennium development goals, the original reason for holding the summit, would be reduced to a footnote.

A source close to the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan said it was too early to declare the UN plan dead. "Bolton wants to knock down the plan and start from scratch," the source said. "He will find that his opinions are not shared by most of the rest of the world."

The president of the UN general assembly, Jean Ping from the Gambia, has been working on the draft, covering issues of poverty, climate change, genocide, small arms, the creation of a permanent UN peacekeeping capability and reform of the UN management structure, for the past year.

A Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday that the UK and the European Union, of which Britain holds the presidency, "are broadly content with the summit draft. It reflects the ambitious agenda thrown up by Kofi Annan".

The spokesman said it was "important that we do not row back from previous high-level summits", such as the G8 meeting at Gleneagles in July and the UN millennium summit in 2000.

He stressed that a lot of negotiation on the draft still lay ahead. "There is a long way to go before leaders meet in September."

As well as divisions about the agenda, the summit is in danger of being overshadowed by the publication of an internal UN report into the running of the organisation's oil-for-food programme in Iraq from 1996 to 2003, which was beset by scandal and corruption, by Paul Volcker.

UN officials are worried that Mr Volcker's final report, tentatively scheduled for September 6, could severely damage Mr Annan's reputation and raise questions over whether he could continue as secretary-general.

Mr Bolton's comments provoked a negative reaction from many agencies involved in development work.

Martin Kirk, the public affairs adviser of Save the Children, said this year had promised so much for the world's poor, but, "instead of a breakthrough we are now looking at a possible retreat from the millennium development goals by the UN".

Nicola Reindorp, the head of Oxfam International's New York office, said: "We are less than three weeks away from the UN world summit and the next two weeks are crucial in determining the outcome ... If the US and other governments substantially weaken the outcome document, the summit will result in failure."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1557553,00.html

Phil Geiger UBRON


Informant: Martin Greenhut

by Mark Drolette

From Tom Baldwin of Times Online in his August 12, 2005, story on Cindy Sheehan: “In the local [Texas] paper, the McGregor Mirror, there is an open letter to ‘the woman complaining about her son’s death in Iraq’ from Ann Lehman, a Crawford resident. “‘You dishonour the President, yourself and God when you deny your son the freedom in death that he had in life to choose. He knew the risk when he joined the military, just as President Bush knows the risk for his life every day!’ she said.” Well, now. Lehman sounds an awful lot like one of those folks who I fancy like to consider themselves “real Americans”; you know, those plain-talkin’ sumguns and gun-ettes who take pride in telling it like it is, consistently expressing sentiments amazingly similar to those aired by other salt-of-the-earth patriots like, for example, would-be war heroes Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly (who absolutely would have been war heroes had they only served in the military, gone to war, and then done something heroic). Lemming-like, check it, Lehman-like views are currently being voiced by other real Americans, too, who, though the cost of their “Support Our Troops” bumper stickers may fall just a crosshair shy of the price Sheehan has paid, still sure as shootin’ know a war when they hear about one on Fox, by jingo....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Drolette0824-2.htm

by Mark Drolette

Polls show a majority of Americans have had it with George W. Bush and the war. While I’m usually wary of such reports (especially since in the last two American presidential “elections”, exit polls, which for decades were unfailingly accurate, have been so strangely incorrect), I nonetheless think these numbers reflect some truth. If so, there has (finally) been some consciousness-raisin’ goin’ on in our beleaguered, buggered nation, which means, in turn, that as people horrifyingly begin seeing the blood on their hands, America’s collective stress level will continually elevate ever higher....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Drolette0824.htm

by Ted Glick

There is no cause, no issue, no crisis more significant and more immediate than the crisis of global warming. There is a very real prospect that, absent a deep and broad clean energy revolution, we will see within our lifetimes a massive disruption of human society throughout the world -- above and beyond the widespread structural injustice and poverty that already exists -- via floods, major storms, rising sea levels, large-scale refugee movements, droughts, deforestation and a major decline in food production. More and more people in the United States are coming to realize this. Why, then, are the many different actions being taken in the U.S. about this crisis, important as they are, so minimal when compared to the urgency?

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Glick0824.htm

by Ken Sanders

It was Theodore Roosevelt, twenty-sixth President of the United States and a Republican, who famously said in 1918, "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Put differently, and in modern context, blind, unquestioning faith in President Bush is not only foolish and obsequious, but it is also contrary to the fundamental principles of this country, as set forth in the Constitution. Indeed, those who would merely sit by, without protest or question, while our President sends our armed forces off to kill and die in a nation which did not and could not do us any harm, are more than simply slavish sycophants. Those who refuse to acknowledge, much less criticize, the wrongs committed by this President in the name of the United States, while simultaneously denigrating those who do dare protest, betray this country and the promise it stands for. In short, they are positively un-American. They are traitors....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Sanders0824.htm



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

by Sheila Samples

Now, it would not be unreasonable for the president of the United States to come out and answer one question from a grief-stricken mother whose child was sacrificed in what Bush so giddily proclaims a "noble" cause. But that's not how this president does things. No one calls the shots for Bush; he does not make mistakes, and he says the great thing about being president is that he doesn't owe anybody an explanation. About anything. Especially about his war, a noble cause which has settled gloriously around his shoulders like a Cicerian ruff. Bush steadfastly refuses to hear the voice of "the people" or to even acknowledge they have a voice at all. The only call Bush hears comes directly from God -- not from the street rabble comprising the cannon fodder required for his legacy, nor from their keening mothers who are beginning to buzz around his head like pesky mosquitoes at a Texas all day singing and dinner on the grounds. Parents shouldn't have to bury their children. Ever. It disrupts the "natural order" of things. Unfortunately, most of the world is in agreement that nobody is better at disrupting order than George W. Bush. Thanks to his callousness and cruelty, the "one-question" meeting with Sheehan that Bush could have resolved in less than an hour while racking up some badly needed positive PR evolved instead into a movement that is gaining both attention and velocity. It is assuming a life of its own, and is sweeping non-stop across the nation. Cindy Sheehan is emboldening Americans awakening to a nightmare of murder, genocide, torture, abuse, assassination, rendition -- lies piled upon grisly lies -- to break through the yellow ribbons encircling the patriotic detention camp their nation has become....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Samples0824.htm



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

by Mike Whitney

Pat Robertson doesn’t have a monopoly on ignorance, he’s just heavily invested in it. Like his ideological twin in the White House, Robertson’s tongue simply outpaces his wit and gets him in trouble from time to time. It’s no big deal. When did it become a crime to be an old man in the grip of senility? Actually we should be grateful to the prattling preacher for summarizing American foreign policy so succinctly. “I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination,” Robertson sheepishly admitted, “but, if he really thinks we are trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.” Who could argue with that logic? Certainly, no one in the White House where such policies are part of a long tradition.....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Whitney0824-2.htm

by Bill Berkowitz

With the president's poll numbers dropping and anti-Iraq war sentiment rising, the Heritage Foundation is sponsoring an event built around the premise that the anti-war movement is anti-American....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Berkowitz0827.htm

by Ahmed Amr

Thirty years from now, we will get a full account of the White House strategy for dealing with Cindy Sheehan. In the meantime, we are obliged to depend on available fragments of information and our past experience with Karl Rove’s smear machine. So far, we know that the president has altered his vacation plans to cope with a sudden and unexpected outbreak of anti-war fever. As he interrupts his five-week summer siesta to resell the Iraq war, a full-scale smear campaign has been set in motion to discredit the lady from Vacaville. The Rove squads are out in force to change the subject and cast doubt on whether Cindy has the qualifications to argue with the president on the merits of this war of choice. Artful Texan dodgers have been commissioned to paint a canvas portraying a compassionate commander in chief who feels Cindy’s pain but disagrees with her position and her policy recommendations. The desired effect is to convince the public that Sheehan is a distraught uninformed mother of a fallen soldier who needs compassion -- not answers. If things go according to plan, Cindy will be perceived as a weak and vulnerable woman who is being victimized and manipulated by the sinister forces on the extreme left -- a fringe movement that apparently includes every other American. On the other half of Rove’s canvas, the spinmeisters will project a resolute president who wants to ‘stay the course’ and ‘complete the mission’ to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice to “fight the terrorists over there before we are forced to fight them over here.” Bush will throw in a couple of obligatory references to 9/11 insinuating that the invasion of Iraq was a legitimate part of the ‘war on terror’ -- and wrap it up with a bit of fiction about spreading democracy in the Middle East....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Amr0827.htm



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

Since everything in our bodies has electrical charges, including the chemical or hormone reactions, would help explain why it can affect us.

Here's a little piece I found the other day from:

Secret Report On Cell Phone Dangers And Tetra
http://www.rense.com/general60/tetra.htm

We being water based animals act like aerials to these waves. As the waves go into our bodies an electric current is generated inside our bodies which is how aerials work; waves come in and electricity is generated. The electricity generated in our bodies like all electric currents goes to ground through our bodies and like all electric currents it takes the path of least resistance. Unfortunately the path of least resistance through our bodies, although only representing 10% of our pathways, carries 90% of our traffic rather like the M1 motorway. The traffic in our bodies, namely hormones, antibodies, neurotransmitters know where they are going because they also carry an electric charge. The hormones, antibodies and neurotransmitters know where to "get off" because there is a corresponding opposite charge at the site of delivery rather like the positive and negative ends of a battery. The problem is if you have an electric current passing through the body it can change this charge, either on the hormones, antibodies or neurotransmitters or the site of delivery.

I can't say entirely for certain on that Dr. Mercola page was it? about what he says on the progesterone getting overloaded in your fat cells. I rather wonder if he is confusing the synthetic progestins with the botanical progesterones. If you use too much, it doesn't take long to figure out, because you get feeling lethargic or sluggish, alhtough not in an ill way. Just lay off it for 2-3 days and the excess is excreted. Been using it for many years, as it is necessary to keep cancer away from me, although it looks like it may be catching up with me now. The synthetic "progesterone" -progestin on the other hand can also cause cancer, liver damage etc.

If I can find the bit about the progesterone and static shocks I'll post it. I know it works from doing it myself and others I've spoken with. Other than the occasional before mentioned symptoms of using too much, I've not in over a decade come across a single person, or read of a single incident of harm from the botanical variety.

~Snoshoe



http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Barry+Trower

Dr Grahame Blackwell, an independent consultant on mast health issues, says mobile phone masts pose a serious risk to our health.

Cambridge Evening News 26.08 05

"I am a serious opponent of phone masts on health grounds. There have been six research studies into the potential ill health effects of masts. Every one of those studies has produced evidence of ill health effects.

"Radiation from masts reduces the production of melatonin.

"The significance of that is that melatonin regulates sleep patterns and also scavenges away pre-cancerous cells.

"If melatonin production is reduced the consequences are a disruption of sleep patterns and increased incidents of cancer.

"People living around phone masts are experiencing exactly those symptoms.

"Radiation also weakens the blood-brain barrier. Toxins from the blood system can get into brain cells. In the short term, this causes headaches, dizziness and disorientation. In the long-term, we would expect to see an increase in degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinsons and Motor Neurone Disease (MND).

"MND is a classic example. We are beginning to see clusters of MND around masts.

"All of those effects happen at levels of radiation that our Government says are safe. There is a big problem here."Dr Grahame Blackwell, an independent consultant on mast health issues, says mobile phone masts pose a serious risk to our health.


From Mast Sanity

Kirkintilloc Today

PHONE company T-Mobile has done a u-turn after residents unanimously rejected plans to install a mast in their street. People in Moodiesburn reacted furiously when they heard that the company was seeking permission to erect a phone mast at the corner of Penzance Way and Stoneyetts Road. However, after discussions with North Lanarkshire Council and representations from MP Tom Clarke and councillor Joe Shaw, the company has withdrawn its application. One relieved resident in Penzance Way said: "This result is a perfect example of how a community can force these large companies to rethink their plans. "Not one person in the area was happy with the proposal and we all voiced our disapproval. "No-one is completely sure about the health issues surrounding these masts, or whether they are responsible for causing ill health among those who live near them. "For once it seems like the voice of the local people has been heard. A spokesperson for T-Mobile said: "Following lengthy discussions, and taking into account the views of the local residents, we feel the proposed site is not the ideal location for a mobile phone mast. "We have withdrawn our application and will be looking for an alternative site."

27 August 2005

The cambridge Evening news 26.08 .05

Inigo Wilson, a spokesman on health and safety for phone giant Orange, says there is no strong evidence masts are harmful.

"The most important point to make is every single phone call made on a mobile phone is relayed via a mast.

"Unless the mast is close to the person making the call they don't work. There isn't a halfway house or an alternative means of making mobile phones work, that is how a phone call is connected to the network and people have to understand that if they want mobile phones then they have to have these masts.

"There is no convincing evidence phone masts cause any harm to human health - that is the consensus among scientists. People have written books and done academic studies on this subject.

"This story has a lot in common with a number of modern health issues. It is a subject that affects so many people and the media tends to flag up research into it before that research has been finished and reached any concrete conclusions. But they don't go back later and look at the actual results of the research.

"This is a relatively unfamiliar type of technology. I imagine public concerns will abate when this technology has been around for a while and people have found it is not dangerous."

--------

Very telling that Orange does not say, "there is no evidence that masts harm health". It seems like a veiled admission that there is evidence against masts - BUT in their limited opinion "no strong evidence" - interesting turn of phrase - very "spin".

In the Orange mast fight here in Otterton, over a period of at least 4 years, I have sent Orange shed loads of evidence including the Wolfe report and I will be writing again sending the Naila Report when I get time later this week. Obviously, I have never had a sensible response to my letters or any communication that shows they have read any of the information sent them. Orange are still "parroting" what they said 5 years ago which shows just how -out-of-date and out-of-touch they are!

Regards

Jane

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff08272005.html


Informant: Steven L. Robinson

From ufpj-news

Arianna Huffington
08.26.2005
The Huffington Post

So the verdict seems to be in: John Bolton’s charm offensive is proving every bit as effective at the U.N. as it was with the Senate, which President Bush had to bypass to install him as ambassador.

As the London Independent put it: Any hopes that John Bolton, the new US ambassador to the United Nations, would have been chastened by the way he was elevated to his position have been dashed by the emergence of a leaked document detailing his negotiating demands for next month's UN summit.

No wonder that the leaked 38-page document gutting so many proposed reforms has been causing great turmoil at the State Department. As Steve Clemons asked: Condi -- When does the "supervision" promised to Senators Voinovich, Hagel, and Chafee begin?

Virtually every change made in the reform document seemed designed to undermine important goals. [...] Read the rest at: http://tinyurl.com/bymcc


© Virginia Metze

by Mark Green
The Huffington Post
08.26.2005

We owe Pat Robertson and Ann Coulter a big thank you. These two American mullahs of the far (f)right are helping to expose how The Bush Team is in the extreme and we who question this war – most prominently Cindy Sheehan – are in the mainstream.

By now Ann Coulter should have reached a tipping point where serious journalists would stop treating her antics and comments seriously. [...] Read the rest at The Huffington Post: http://tinyurl.com/9ycgk


© Virginia Metze

By: Jack Dalton 8-26-05
Jack's Straight-Speak web site

No longer should there be any doubt as to the direction the Bush/Cheney cabal is leading this nation, or the methodologies they are employing to push their neo-con (actually neo-liberal) agenda upon us the unwilling to mindlessly follow and who stand in opposition to what they are doing. Coercion, intimidation, character assassination, extortion—all of the methodologies of a good upstanding crime family.

While preaching about spreading “freedom and democracy” they have turned our own on its head. There are people within the Bush/Cheney cabal who have articulated the need for a limited dictatorship to preserve our “freedoms” and to make us “safe and secure” from all those dirty “terrorists.” That was stated recently by none other than Michael Ledeen as well as Charles Krauthammer both of whom subscribe to the prevailing Leo Strauss ideology: only the “elite” can rule and that to maintain their power over people they must at times lie their a... off. [...] I wonder what my grandmother would have said about that? Sometimes I wonder if about a third or more of the population believes that a lie is the same as the truth ... "it made the point, didn't it?" Read the rest of his article at http://tinyurl.com/9lw3p


© Virginia Metze

Current 40% approval is lowest of administration to date
http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/default.aspx?ci=18148

Results of AP-Ipsos poll on attitudes about Iraq
Associated Press
August 26, 2005

The Associated Press-Ipsos poll on public attitudes about the war in Iraq is based on telephone interviews with 1,001 adults from all states except Alaska and Hawaii. The interviews were conducted Aug. 22-24 by Ipsos, an international polling firm.

Results were weighted to represent the population by demographic factors such as age, sex, region, race and income. [...] Check out the results that Bush won't want to see at the Star Tribune: http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/5580679.html


© Virginia Metze

Iran-Contra Among Topics of Reagan-Era Papers

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 25, 2005; Page A03

After the release of about 60,000 documents detailing the work of Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr., Democratic senators are setting their sights on what was not in the huge cache of papers: more than 2,100 memos and letters that have been withheld by government archivists working in concert with the Bush White House.

The subjects of the Reagan-era documents have been released, but their contents for now have been withheld. Those topics are, Democrats say, at a minimum intriguing: Roberts commenting on presidential pardons, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and aspects of what would become known as the Iran-contra scandal. One of the still-secret memos is from the young White House lawyer to then-Reagan aide Patrick J. Buchanan in March 1986. The topic: aid to Nicaraguans fighting the leftist Sandinista government. [...] Read the rest at the Washington Post: http://tinyurl.com/7ujao It is also reprinted on TruthOut web site: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082505Z.shtml


© Virginia Metze

David Frum's Diary, National Review

I've added a new selection of reader mail below. Just to give some feeling for the overall tide of NRO reader opinion: Since my post on the president's VFW address went up early Tuesday morning, I've been flooded with almost 200 emails - all but five of them sharing my concerns.

I know well how beleaguered a White House can feel in tough times. I know that they look to their friends in places like NRO for support, not criticism - and I know that the people who bear the responsibility must contend with a wide range of difficulties often unimagined by those who do not bear the responsibility.

But all that acknowledged: This war and this war president are in real political trouble - and the administration is responding with deadly dangerous passivity. It's not the administration's critics who are delivering this warning. It's the administration's strongest supporters. Don't believe me. Believe the emails below. [...] Read it at: http://tinyurl.com/98oqn

Scroll down a bit to get to the Lost Opportunity column. Very well done. I read that this man was a speech writer for Bush! Maybe more of the "old time Republicans" will stand straight.


© Virginia Metze

Indonesien ist mit einem Marktanteil von 23 Prozent neben Brasilien das wichtigste Herkunftsland für Direktimporte von Tropenhölzern nach Deutschland. Zusätzlich gelangen größere Mengen indonesischen Holzes über Transitländer wie China, Malaysia oder Italien auf den deutschen Markt. Dabei kommen drei Viertel der in den indonesischen Export gehenden Hölzer und Holzprodukte aus illegalen Quellen. Dies ist das Ergebnis der heute vom WWF vorgestellten Studie "Heiße Ware Tropenholz".

http://www.sonnenseite.com/fp/archiv/Akt-News/6764.php

Britische und russische Forscher sind sich sicher: die gesamte subarktische Region Westsibiriens taut. Wo früher Eis war, bilden sich neue Seen.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/fp/archiv/Akt-News/6795.php

Die Flutkatastrophe in Süddeutschland entspricht genau den Szenarien des Klimawandels, die Wissenschaftler voraussagen. Greenpeace sieht darin einen weiteren Beleg dafür, dass der Klimawandel schon begonnen hat. Hitzewellen in Südeuropa und sintflutartige, tagelange Regenfälle im Alpenraum sind die Wetterextreme, die bei steigendem Ausstoß von Kohlendioxid drohen.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/fp/archiv/Akt-News/6794.php

Der Flugverkehr als klimaschädlichster Massenverkehrsträger weist hohe Wachstumsraten auf und ist, was die internationalen Flüge angeht, von jeglicher Emissionsbeschränkung entbunden. Für wirksame Maßnahmen auf europäischer Ebene erhält die EU-Kommission nun Rückendeckung aus der Zivilgesellschaft.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/fp/archiv/Akt-News/6796.php

Der deutschen Wirtschaft geht es so gut wie seit Jahren nicht mehr (!), titelt das weltweit bedeutendste Wirtschaftsblatt Economist – trotz oder gerade wegen der großen Schritte auf dem Weg zu einer Energiewende? Warum lassen wir uns einreden, dass in Deutschland weitere tiefe Einschnitte in das soziale Netz und die ökologische Sicherheit erfolgen müssen? Wieso setzen wir uns nicht mehrheitlich dafür ein, dass der Weg ausgewogener sozialer und ökologischer Reformen weiter gehen kann? Gastkommentar von Fabio Longo.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/fp/archiv/Art-Zukunft/6785.php