by Ralph Nader

Statement of Ralph Nader, on the nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. by President George W. Bush to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C., September 12, 2005....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Nader0918.htm

by Evelyn J. Pringle

I have come to the conclusion that even if I live to be 100, I will never be able to track down every Bush-connected profiteer involved in this phony war on terror scheme. According to a report released in March 2005 by Transparency International (TI), an international organization that focuses on matters of corruption, Iraq could become "the biggest corruption scandal in history."....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Pringle0918.htm

in the Wake of a Not-So Natural Disaster
by Paul Street

The brilliant and prolific left sociologist C. Wright Mills once said that the core purpose of meaningful analytical work on social and political affairs was to make relevant connections between individual pain and structural inequality. The point of such work, by Mills' reckoning, was to de-atomize personal difficulty and relate it to broader contextualizing forces of class, race, bureaucracy, and unjust power and authority. The dominant authoritarian and neoliberal ideology of our time works in the opposite direction. It tells us to separate the personal from the societal. It expects us to think of ourselves and others as purely autonomous sole actors -- a veritable mass of self-produced Robinson Crusoes (with Crusoe's slave Friday deleted from the formulation), each living on his or her own island of possessive-individualist economic rationality and "personal responsibility."....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Street0918.htm

by Gene C. Gerard

The day after Hurricane Katrina hit, exposing much of the public to the tragic conditions of poverty in America, the Census Bureau quietly released its annual report entitled, “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States.” In some respects, it provided a demonstrable backdrop to the pockets of poverty common to New Orleans and other cities. It also explained why, despite President Bush’s assertion last month that, “Americans have more money in their pockets,” many people aren’t faring as well as they once did. The report indicates that in 2004 there was no increase in average annual household incomes for black, white, or Hispanic families. In fact, this marks the first time since the Census Bureau began keeping records that household incomes failed to increase for five consecutive years. Since President Bush took office, the average annual household family income has declined by $2,572, approximately 4.8 percent....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Gerard0918.htm

by Mike Whitney

Blackwater represents the globalization of repression: a free market progeny that is transforming the people’s army into privately owned militias for multinational corporations. The deployment of these armed units is a clear threat to public safety and personal liberty. The decision to send Blackwater mercenaries to New Orleans was not made haphazardly. A recent Washington Post article indicated that Donald Rumsfeld would use the military more extensively within the US if there were another terrorist attack on American soil. It’s clear now that the use of mercenaries was integral to that plan and that Rumsfeld wants Americans to acclimate to the idea of seeing troops deployed within their cities....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Whitney0918-2.htm

"Bolton's visit raised some eyebrows in Washington," the Post said. "A vocal defender of administration claims in 2003 that Iraq was seeking weapons of mass destruction, he could have had access to a State Department memo, parts of which were classified, that detailed Wilson's trip to Niger to determine whether Iraq was seeking uranium there and identified his wife as a covert CIA operative.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091805Y.shtml

Please forward far and wide

Bill Moyers' "The Secret Government" video segment It aired on PBS in 1987 and is as good as anything on the tape (must see). Moyers is a very respected TV journalist who also worked for Lyndon B. Johnson and has a very professional approach. He interviews many different people involved with the CIA and other government agencies. His documentary gives quite an overview of what has actually happened in the last 50 years regarding the CIA and the cold war (including Iran, Guatamala, Cuba, Viet Nam and Chile). He features such people as Ralph McGeehee and Phil Retinger (both former CIA agents), Rear Admiral Gene La Rocque (Ret. U.S.N.), Theodore Bissell (active in the CIA at the time), Sen. Frank Church and many others. Moyers is so very credible. The full video "The Secret Government" is 90 minutes - this segment is edited by Frank Dorrel to 20 minutes. This video segment totals 20 minutes and must be downloaded in 2 parts: Part 1 - To download 12 minute video clip, (2.9MB) click on http://www.peace.ca/moyers1.wmv Part 2 - To download 10 minute video clip, (2.6MB) click on http://www.peace.ca/moyers2.wmv

Windows Media Player 6.4 or later is required to view video

The book: The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis:
With Excerpts from an Essay on Watergate by Bill D. Moyers, Henry Steele Commager. ISBN: 0932020844. Based on the acclaimed PBS documentary, The Secret Government analyzes the threats to constitutional government posed by an illegitimate network of spies, profiteers, mercenaries, ex-generals and "superpatriots" who have tried, at various times, to take foreign policy into their own hands.

To order the book from Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932020844/ref=ed_oe_p/102-3526130-6563362


Informant: Mofmars3

Don't say they can't. They can - and they did. Despite every calumny, it turns out that the Bush administration can put together an effective, well-coordinated rescue team and get crucial supplies to militarily occupied, devastated New Orleans on demand, in time, and just where they are most needed. Last Thursday, in a spectacular rescue operation, the administration team delivered just such supplies without a hitch to one of the city's neediest visitors, who had been trapped in hell-hole surroundings for almost three weeks by Hurricane Katrina. I'm speaking, of course, of George W. Bush.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091805X.shtml

For those that can't hit the streets for whatever reason in activism...This is the way to go.

Please send your view on this (or any other) matter to let the media know "We The People" are aware of the Cheny and Haliburton connection and appreciate the honesty that is now beginning to surface in main stream media.

Below this message I sent the media is the best website ever for every media, elected official, television news network, newspaper and magazine all over the USA...Just enter your own zip code...Or spend the day sending powerful messages to as many areas as you like...

Subj: MSNBC Date: 9/18/2005 10:39:46 AM Eastern Standard Time From: Mofmars3 To: msnbcinvestigates@msnbc.com, msnbcreports@msnbc.com, MSNBC_BreakingNews_NewsMail@MSNBC.COM CC: info@fox16.com, nytimesreporter@nytimes.com buchananandpress@msnbc.com, chronfeedback@sfchronicle.com, CNN@cnn.com, comments@foxnews.com, contact@altermedia.info, countdown@msnbc.com, dan.abrams@msnbc.com, Dateline@nbc.com, editor@globe.com, editor@nytimes.com, editor.reuters@reuters.com, editor@usatoday.com, feedback@nytimes.com, frontline@pbs.org, gazette.emailsrv@wvgazette.com, general@hbo.com, greg@gregpalast.com, hardball@msnbc.com, headliners@msnbc.com, imc-news@lists.indymedia.org, letters@latimes.com, letters@MSNBC.com, letters@nytimes.com, letters@newsweek.com, Imus@msnbc.com, media@gregpalast.com, moveon-help@list.moveon.org, nachman@msnbc.com, news@globe.com, newswatch@foxnews.com, newshour@pbs.org, news@worldnetdaily.com, newsroom@4bypass.com, news-tips@nytimes.com, Nightly@NBC.com, niteline@abc.com, oliver@gregpalast.com, Press@moveon.org, speakout@foxnews.com, staff@nytimes.com, TheNews@msnbc.com, webnews@washingtonpost.com, World@MSNBC.com, world@washingtonpost.com, Hannity@foxnews.com, Viewerservices@foxnews.com, Comments@foxnews.com, Foxnewsonline@foxnews.com, Afterhours@foxnews.com, Foxreport@foxnews.com, Atlarge@foxnews.com, Bullsandbears@foxnews.com, Colmes@foxnews.com, Cash@foxnews.com, Heartland@foxnews.com, Cavuto@foxnews.com, Ontherecord@foxnews.com, Dayside@foxnews.com, Special@foxnews.com, Forbes@foxnews.com, Studiob@foxnews.com, Friends@foxnews.com, Beltway@foxnews.com, Foxmagazine@foxnews.com, Myword@foxnews.com, Oreilly@foxnews.com, Feedback@foxnews.com, warstories@foxnews.com, FNS@foxnews.com, Newswatch@foxnews.com

The news anchor was awesome...Didn't catch her name...She pointed out that some "politically, well connected and well known companies like Haliburton have been given the Katrina contracts"...

She asks Keith Naughten from Newsweek..."How did this happen?...Is this evidence of political cronyism and is it to be expected?...Is it improper?...and these were her exact words

Answer was..."In reality these are the guys that can hit the ground running" Keith going on to speak of another company that was included in the no bid contracts...A few others had been mentioned

Point being...Thank you to the honest news anchor bringing up the subject of Cheny's corrupt Haliburton...

We The People are paying attention and very grateful for all the truth beginning to finally surface in main stream media.

Thanks to all of you who are really for our people...We salute you

Marsha McClelland
Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio


"We People United Global Movement" We are many political and Patriot Groups joining together, to help take back our country..."United We Will Stand"

Click here: You're local media
http://tinyurl.com/ddsjd


Informant: Mofmars3

Joe Allbaugh was George W. Bush's good ol' boy in Texas. He hired his good friend Mike Brown to run FEMA. Now Brownie's gone and Allbaugh is living large.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091705D.shtml

Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina cut its devastating path, FEMA - the same federal agency that botched the rescue mission - is faltering in its effort to aid hundreds of thousands of storm victims, local officials, evacuees and top federal relief officials say. The federal aid hot line mentioned by President Bush in his address to the nation on Thursday cannot handle the flood of calls, leaving thousands of people unable to get through for help, day after day.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091705C.shtml

American troops have killed 13 journalists in Iraq since the beginning of the war in March 2003, the US military has failed to investigate the killings fully, or implement its own recommendations to improve the safety of the news media, according to a study by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091705B.shtml

http://www.traprockpeace.org/george_galloway_boston.html

George Galloway started his national tour at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall on September 13, 2005.

Listen to and download his speech, see photos at
http://www.traprockpeace.org/george_galloway_audio.html

Order tickets for an upcoming event in Toronto, Madison, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Washington, DC.
http://www.mrgallowaygoestowashington.com

Read the national tour blog at
http://www.traprockpeace.org/george_galloway_tour/ or http://www.isreview.org/gallowaytour.shtml

In Boston, Annie Zirin, an activist from Western Massachusetts, introduced George Galloway and the four speaker who preceded him.

Speaking first was Eriko Nagai, a student with Northeastern Univeristy Campus Antiwar Network chapter. She was followed by Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, Brown University Professor of English Literature William Keach, and Prof. Naseer Aruri of the National Council of Arab Americans.

Here are a few quotes from Galloway's speech:

“We who live in the United States or Britain, only have to answer one question, do we stand with the occupier, or with those who are resisting colonial occupation.”

“The swamp of hatred that our policies have created in the Muslim world nourish the mutation of hatred that believes killing innocent people in New York or London is somehow a blow against those responsible in our countries for those policies. All we have done be invading and occupying Iraq is increase the number of people who hate us and the intensity with which they hate us.”

All U.S. events are sponsored by: The New Press, The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, International Socialist Review, and the National Council of Arab Americans.

Traprock Peace Center co-sponsored the Boston event.

Traprock and the national sponsors wish to thank Jeff Manzelli. He recorded and edited the audio as our web editor was unavailable. His websites are http://www.freemanz.com/ and http://492cafe.org/

We were in a pinch to find an audiographer for that night, and coming to our aid in finding Jeff was Stan Robinson, the radio host with the WZBC News Team, the radio station at Boston College. We also had help with setting up and taking down equipment from two people affiliated with the North Bridge Chapter of The Alliance for Democracy.

See http://www.traprockpeace.org/george_galloway_audio.html for links to sponsoring and participating organizations.

See the National Tour Blog at
http://www.traprockpeace.org/george_galloway_tour/

and learn more about George Galloway and the tour; find links for listening to his Sept. 14 debate with Christopher Hitchens and order tickets at http://www.mrgallowaygoestowashington.com

For those of you who wish to download the mp3 directly (and miss all the great photos and links) here is the mp3 file:

http://www.traprockpeace.org/audio/george_galloway_09-13-05.mp3

(by going to the website instead to get this link, you can right click to download to your hard drive.)

The audio may be used for non-commercial use only. Any other use must receive permission from George Galloway.

For event information: Galloway2005@comcast.net Ph. +1 415 6071924

For Media inquires and bookings: ihoward@thenewpress.com Ph. +1 212 564 4406


Charlie Jenks Website Manager;
Past President Traprock Peace Center
103A Keets Road Deerfield, MA 01342
413-773-7427 (Traprock office)
413-773-5188, ex. 2 (personal messages) Fax 413-773-7507

http://www.traprockpeace.org


From ufpj-news

The argument, like the one below, that claim you can explain the events -- and incidentally build broad coalitions across actual racial lines -- by talking about "class" instead of "race" in regard to New Orleans is classic left-liberal evasion. The fact is that we live in a country where race, like class, is a social (NOT biological) reality that has become inseparably intertwined with class -- from the very beginnings of the country.

Class conflict as race conflict begins with the replacement of various forms of pre-class society by capitalism, which took the form of the struggle between two very different peoples and cultures -- the Indians being defeated by the European settlers and their descendants.

This was magnified with the arrival of the Black slaves, and their development into the laboring class at the bottom rung of the class hierarchy. It is important that Blacks were brought to the United States not simply as a different kind of people but as a specific laboring and exploited class. Labor in the Black skin as Marx called them. The post-reconstruction institution of Jim Crow in the South, and to lesser degrees across the entire country Reinforced the intersection and combination of race and class as social realities.

The civil rights movement, perhaps even more than the civil war, dealt a huge blow to the racist substructure of the society, and it has not fully recovered to this day. But under conditions of economic difficulties and decline and with the weakening of the unions and low level of struggle by Blacks and other oppressed peoples, the racist structures have been adapting to the changed conditions and regaining some strength and momentum.

These class conflicts, along with the much slower development of the class struggle between sellers of labor power and employers (which could only really come to the fore after the destruction of slavery), were the material underpinnings and social reality that enabled the rulers to invent the white race -- which was founded here, not carried over from Europe, where the concept had been almost nonexistent until they came here. (When did people come to regard Spaniards, Italians, and Norwegians as all equally "white"?)

The intertwining has gone down to the present, and part of unifying the working class is a full recognition and advances toward a political resolution of these social class-racial realities. This can only be accomplished with the initiative and leadership of those in the lower rungs of this stratification.

We live in a society where class and race intertwine so deeply that "nigger" is historically a CLASS term, while "poor" has now become a euphemism for Black (unless other adjectives are supplied like "poor whites"). And then there was the evil -- and basically Black -- underclass against whom the war against crime was waged and the destruction of the welfare system was carried out.

There was never a country in which the counterposition of class to race was so utterly, completely useless and misleading.

My "favorite" reactionary use of the "class, not race" gambit were proposals for "color blind" "class" affirmative action for poor working people only -- meaning that the working class families that fought their way into the middle classes through the civil rights movement and affirmative action would be fair game. At the same time, it denies all Blacks, including the poor and other working people, the right to be protected against institutionalized discrimination as Blacks. Instead they would have to compete for protection with deserving whites.

Reed makes the point about the middle class layers of Blacks managing to escape with their lives -- but of course they were victims of the class/racial treatment of the population as a whole. He also points out that the Black Democratic machines have acted much the same as the whites in dealing with poverty and basic social issues, including race-class, for that is their job in the capitalist structure and in their Democratic Party. But does Reed seriously think that politicians elected on a "class" basis from the current trade union leadership would cut a better figure than the Black politicians did.

And, anyway, it is the NAACP that is talking about organizing the shelter. It is the Black Commentator that attempts to make a deeper analysis of the events that confronts their inescapably combined race-class character. It is Black workers who attempted to lead groups out of the city, or participated in group collecting of necessities in the "looting" of the stores that may never reopen.

That is where the fight is beginning. That's why I think that so far, the debate over the need to forge a independent anti-establishment Black political movement is tending to rise to the fore much more rapidly than discussion of a labor party, although hopefully we wills see more of that too. It is also true that the Black community clearly has a sharper understanding of the race-class character of what is taking place than "middle-class" working Americans.

It is also very important to stress -- Reed's point on the Black Democratic mayors is useful here -- that the political crisis represented is a bipartisan one, not just a Bush crisis. The crisis we are beginning to experience has been a course followed by the ruling class and both its parties since 1973.

Dodging the centrality of the race/national issues in the name of supposedly color-blind class consciousness is a complete waste of time and effort. The road to unity is confronting this, not ducking it. Which is the key and indispensable kernel of truth in Malcolm X's statement when he announced his break from the Nation of Ialam and formation of a new organization that before there can be working class unity, there must be some Black community. That is as true or more true than ever today.

Fred Feldman

The Nation comment | posted September 15, 2005 (October 3, 2005 issue) Class-ifying the Hurricane Adolph Reed Jr.


UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE | 212-868-5545


From ufpj-news

http://answer.pephost.org/site/News2?abbr=ANS_&page=NewsArticle&id=6793


Informant: Carlos Rovira

From ufpj-news

The planners of Operation Iraqi Freedom forgot another thing on the road to Baghdad: how veterans would affect their ability to get new boots on the ground.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091805Z.shtml

Far from celebrating free expression, the Pentagon’s September 11 Freedom Walk was expression free

By Christopher Hayes
September 13, 2005

IN THESE TIMES

When the Pentagon announced it would be staging a march on September 11, 2005, to commemorate the victims of 9/11 and show support for the troops, it was hard not to expect the worst: Triumph of the Will on the Potomac.

But after three of the dullest hours of my life, I’m happy to report those fears proved unfounded. Maybe it was the fact that the nation’s attention remains focused on the disaster in the Gulf, or that the President’s approval ratings have themselves sunk below sea level, or maybe it was just that Sunday also happened to be the first day of the NFL season, but of the 15,000 people who’d registered online for the 1.7 mile walk from the Pentagon to the Mall, only about a third showed up. Stacks of t-shirts and plastic dog tags, which were distributed to every marcher, sat unused on the registration tables. At the post-march concert, organizers had set up a Jumbotron 50 yards from the stage to broadcast the image of country music star Clint Black (author of the pro-war hit song, “Iraq and Roll”) to the throngs who couldn’t get close enough to the action. But there were no throngs-just a few thousand folks in identical white t-shirts sitting on the grass and clapping politely.

[...] Read the rest at http://tinyurl.com/dyb2r


© Virginia Metze

Posted 12:52 pm
September 16, 2005

The president's speech last night from Jackson Square had a beautiful backdrop, with the St. Louis Cathedral — well-lit to match Bush's shirt — on one side, and an Andrew Jackson statue on the other.

At first blush, the White House's attempts at stagecraft seemed to acknowledge the political realities .

Sensitive to fueling further criticism, the White House said it paid for the electricity and lights used for the speech, limiting the local inconvenience. But Bush emerged onto the square without an audience, speaking directly into the camera from a lectern placed so the [Andrew] Jackson statue would be in the picture.

I was just glad to see New Orleans had the power back on. As it turns out, according to NBC's Brian Williams , there's a funny story behind that… [...] Read the story at http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/5281.html


© Virginia Metze

Or...Getting Off The Picket Fence

By Ted Twietmeyer
9-16-5
rense.com

[...]

It wasn't a question of FEMA competency, but reaches far beyond that to using disasters for social engineering. The social engineering effort was notched up another level in the past, on that terrible day in 2001. Martial law was declared four days later when the nine month old dictator signed a "State of Emergency" executive order. He kept the martial law section secret to prevent crashing the economy. How many other presidents do we know of that have asked for, and received, every single thing they demanded without concessions? That's a clear sign of martial law and fear by Congress. The treasonous patriot acts and it's associated expansion are just one of many other signs of martial law. New Orleans is a martial law microcosm, nestled inside a bigger martial law country. The government is painfully forced to tolerate pro-American articles such as this one, since active censoring would let the proverbial cat out of the bag. [...] Read the rest at http://rense.com/general67/picket.htm


© Virginia Metze

Arianna Huffington
Posted September 16, 2005 at 7:17 p.m. EDT
The Huffington Post

Reacting to all the pricey promises the president made in his big Katrina speech, a senior House Republican official told the New York Times , "We are not sure he knows what he is getting into."

If that's true, Bush must have the worst memory since Guy Pearce in "Memento" because he's definitely been down this road before.

The coming attractions for the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast play like a shot-by-shot remake of the mother of all disaster features, the reconstruction of Iraq.

Let's start with the rhetoric. "We will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes," the president pledged on Thursday. "We will do whatever it takes... we will stay there until the job is done," the president said of Iraq in November 2003. It wouldn't be a "Terminator" movie without "I'll be back," and it wouldn't be a massive mega-billion dollar Bush initiative without a vow to stay the course. [...] Read the rest at The Huffington Post, http://tinyurl.com/8p92a See also Karl Rove's Big Easy at http://tinyurl.com/7gd7r


© Virginia Metze

Instead of embracing good jobs for the recently displaced, President Bush’s first major act in the Gulf Coast recovery effort was to suspend a law that requires federal contractors to pay workers a decent wage.

Please take a moment to demand that this recovery effort put people first – and reject efforts to exploit this tragedy to line the pockets of corporate elites. Please, write your member of Congress and insist that decent family wages and employing the victims of Katrina be the bedrock of the Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts. To send a message, go to
http://action.ourfuture.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=27805


© Virginia Metze

Sunspots Rise to 59 form 51, Flux Down to 104 from 112, Ophelia Dissolving

[ECB, Black Canyon City Arizona, September 18, 2005, 04:48:00 UTC] Sunspots rose slightly today but Flux, and solar activity continued to decline today from their high levels of the past few days. Even the the Fluxgate Monitor now confirms the improving conditions. It currently displays very few disturbances in the solar wind and magnetosphere of the Earth. This continuing drop signals the end of the Sunspot Peak for the Mercury | Jupiter Planetary Alignment. The alignment is due about the time of the Fall Equinox on September 22 and the Sunspot Peak, as is often the case, preceded the alignment by about 7-10 days.

Sunspot Counts are likely to drop again tomorrow but they may on average stay in the 30's and 40's until the middle of October when the alignment of Earth and Mars reaches its finale.

On a world basis, existing storm systems and fronts will continue to weaken during the next few days. More probable than not, Ophelia will now quickly dissolve in the Atlantic over the weekend.

This is probably true for at least the next 72 hours.

There are two Hurricanes currently active in the East Pacific but they seem destined to dissolve out at sea before encountering the Pacific Coast of Mexico

Forecast For The Next 40 Days

Phillippe - A Tropical Stormfront with winds up to 50 mph, forecasted by National Hurricane Cener to become a Hurricane

Rita - The next in line, not yet predicted for major storm status

October 15 - November 4: STRONGER POSSIBILITY FOR MULTIPLE OCCURRENCE OF STORMS EVEN MORE DANGEROUS THAN KATRINA.

These predictions are based on predictable surges in solar activity combined with the Global Warming Trend. Danger "Windows" are defined from generalizations made with three years of observation.


Best Wishes,

Michael Wells Mandeville,
The Hills of Arizona USA
at mwman@earthlink.net

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10312.htm


Informant: friends2b

This is Local London

AN MP has called for a change in the planning laws as they affect mobile phone masts.

David Evennett, who represents Bexleyheath and Crayford, is a long-time opponent of masts in residential areas.

He would like phone companies to face the same planning procedures for their masts as any other planning application.

Currently, only masts taller than 15m are subject to the full planning procedure.

Smaller ones have to have prior approval which gives planning committees the chance to comment, but only within narrow criteria such as siting and appearance and it can refuse to give approval.

Mr Evennett said: "Masts in residential areas are a blot on the landscape, an eyesore, nappropriate and out of character.

"There are also the health issues to consider.

"The law must be changed and I will endeavour to support a law change in Parliament."

9:50am Saturday 17th September 2005

Norwich Evening News

17 September 2005 12:32

Mobile phone mast campaigners in Norwich and Norfolk could be offered the chance to discover the effects of radiation from base stations through a new test.

Families who believe they are suffering ill-effects from phone mast emissions will be able to ask for a blood test to find out the effect of radiation.

LaboTech, the German laboratory, which has pioneered the process, will for the first time accept samples from British patients for analysis.

Ingrid Dickenson, director of scientific studies for national phone mast charity Mast Sanity, is responsible for the initiative.

“It seemed quite wrong to me that people in this country were being denied the chance to have this test,” she said.

“Although they will have to pay, we hope in time it will be included as one of the routine tests available on the NHS.”

The blood samples will be taken by the London based Biolab Medical Unit at a cost of £25 and sent to Germany for analysis.

This will cost a further £125 but is still cheaper than routine blood tests carried out privately.

Patients will then be given an individual programme of supplements, certified by the German Department of Health.

It is hoped that these supplements will be available from a British pharmacy at a future date.

Norwich North MP Dr Ian Gibson, a prominent campaigner against phone masts, said: “I think it's great. Anything that gives us evidence has to be welcomed.

“The struggle goes on and anything is worth doing - this kind of sampling has to be welcomed.”

Dr Gibson, who has been a long-time supporter of the Evening News's campaign against the installation of mobile phone masts near homes and schools until it is proved they are safe, urged city people to put themselves forward.

David Shailer, of Montcalm Road, Thorpe Hamlet, who successfully fought against an application for yet another antenna on the Mousehold water tower, said he would be interested in taking part.

“That sounds very good,” he said. “I think it's positive, and it might calm down a lot of the uncertainty.”

But while he admitted he was interested in taking part in the study, the cost would be the stumbling block.

“I'm in favour of it,” he said. “But when you say £25 and £125 your talking about £150 by the time you've finished.

“I would say that the companies who operate the masts near residents should be forthcoming in paying for the tests or the Government should pay for the tests for people who live near masts.”

Graham Barker, of Lloyd Road, Taverham, lives near to a controversial replacement Vodafone mast on Fakenham Road, said: “It's interesting, some people might welcome it, but I would want to know more about it.

“It's something some people might view as commercial exploitation but others might see that there's something in it.”

Mr Barker said it is something he would have to know a lot more about before he was prepared to commit himself too.

“I wouldn't rush in head first,” he said. “I would want to learn much more about the background.”

Pressure group Mast Sanity said the blood test was just the beginning in a campaign to make the public aware that mobile phone technology and health is a worldwide issue and that other countries are already taking steps to protect the public.

If you are interested in finding out more about the tests contact Biolab medical unit, 9 Weymouth Street, London, W1W 6DB; or call 02076365959; log onto http://www.biolab.uk , or e-mail info@biolab.co.uk .

Are you fighting plans to site a phone mast in your neighbourhood? Call Peter Walsh at the Evening News on (01603) 772443 or email peter.walsh@archant.co.uk

BY MELISSA BECK
Derbyshire Evening Telegraph

09:30 - 17 September 2005

People power has ensured a third set of plans to install a mobile phone mast in Shelton Lock have been withdrawn.

The latest application to install an 11.7m mast in Chellaston Road came in December after residents and Derby City Council planners quashed two previous proposals.

But next Wednesday, residents attending an Area Panel 2 meeting, which consists of the council wards of Alvaston, Boulton, Chellaston and Sinfin, will be told that T-Mobile has withdrawn the plans again.

The first proposal was made by T-Mobile in October 2003 to install an 11m mast on a grass verge outside the Shelton Lock Fish Bar, at the junction of Chellaston Road and Weston Park Avenue.

About 400 residents signed a petition and, in March 2004, the plans were withdrawn.

The company then submitted new plans for a mast in front of the Esso garage in Chellaston Road - about 200 metres from the original site.

Another petition was submitted to the council and the proposal was rejected by planners in June 2004 after they said it would obstruct the pavement and the visibility of drivers.

A formal application does not have to be submitted to the council for masts under 15 metres, but planners can reject proposals if the site is inappropriate, obstructs the pavement or the visibility of drivers.

The latest plans for a site on Chellaston Road, which have now been withdrawn, would have been near the filling station and would have included an equipment cabin in Acorn Close. Residents again set up a petition collecting more than 250 signatures.

Phil Day, of Chellaston Road, said: "At the moment it seems the residents are winning the battle against T-Mobile. But we don't know what alternative locations the company is considering. We don't want to push it into other people's back gardens."

Andreas Symeou, of Shelton Lock Fish Bar, is delighted with the company's decision.

He said: "It shows that if the community gets together then sometimes you can beat the big companies."

Philip Ingall, of St Peter's Road, Chellaston, is a member of the Mast Action Committee, a group protesting against planned mast sites in the area.

He said: "T-mobile worked with residents in a constructive and positive way to find a more suitable area for the mast. It's just a shame other mobile phone companies don't do the same thing."

A T-Mobile spokesman said he was unable to confirm other possible locations for the mast. He said: "All we can say at the moment is that we are in consultation with the council and residents and we are reviewing the options available to us."

At a council cabinet meeting on Wednesday, councillors unanimously voted to confront the Government over the proliferation of mobile phone masts in Derby after Chellaston councillors, Paul Willitts and Ron LIversedge, claimed that parts of the city were "almost under siege" by phone masts.

Sep 18 2005 ic Wales

Campaign for independent study into health risks of masts

Louise Day, South Wales Echo

Pressure is mounting for independent checks to be carried out on the possible health risks of mobile telephone masts before they are built near people's homes.

The Vale of Glamorgan council is leading the way in a campaign to ensure that residents' concerns about the health risks that the mast could pose are given more weight.

And a battle to prevent the expansion of a mast in Barry is set to come to a head in the next few weeks.

The Vale council has written to local MPs, AMs and Carwyn Jones, the assembly's minister for environment, planning and the countryside calling for more research to be carried out into the possible health dangers of mobile telephone masts.

It follows an independent radio frequency test on the health risks from a mast in The Heathers, Barry, which residents have been campaigning against.

The test, paid for by the mobile phone company, showed the radiation from the mast fell within Government health guidelines.

Omega see "Base Stations, operating within strict national and international Guidelines, do not present a Health Risk?" under:
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/771911/

But residents are still concerned and will oppose the planning application which has already been made to the Vale council.

Residents leader Angie Homer said: 'We believe there is a potential health problem. We suffer nausea and headaches and there have bee three cases of cancer.'

Resident Chris Murphy said: 'Despite this test, we are deeply concerned about the health implications involved in having it there. We agree there should be more research into the possible health risks posed by these masts.'

The companies maintain there is no evidence for such risk.

A spokesman for Orange said the Government encouraged mobile phone companies to share masts where ever possible in order to reduce the overall number of masts.

'We are aware there is opposition to mobile phone masts, but the reality is that the local community want to use mobile phones and without masts the phones won't work,' he said.

Nukleareinsatzdoktrin der USA vor der Verabschiedung - Einsatzoptionen von Atomwaffen beliebig erweitert - Perfide Politik der "Zweideutigkeit" - Parteien im BT-Wahlkampf müssen Position beziehen.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/fp/archiv/Akt-News/6869.php

Der Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND), die Anti-Atom-Initiative X-tausendmal quer und das Online-Bürgernetzwerk Campact haben die Kampagne ".ausgestrahlt" gegen die Renaissance der Atomenergie unter einer möglichen unionsgeführten Bundesregierung und für einen wirklichen Atomausstieg gestartet.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/fp/archiv/Akt-News/6884.php

Umweltschützer: Erneuerbare Energien statt Kirchhof Die Streichliste für Subventionen des Heidelberger Professors Paul Kirchhof, der unter Angela Merkel Finanzminister werden soll, ist zwar nicht publiziert, aber doch deutlich erkennbar auf Grund seiner Bücher und Äußerungen. Die Deutsche Umwelthilfe kommt zum Schluss: "Der Staat verabschiedet sich unter einem Finanzminister Kirchhof aus der Umweltpolitik." Stimmt diese These?

http://www.sonnenseite.com/fp/archiv/Akt-News/6892.php

Eine erste Frage in der Politik lautet: Was will man? Darauf folgt dann gleich: Was kann man? "Ist es möglich, dass wir in frühkapitalistische Zeiten zurückfallen", klagte Norbert Blüm auf der jüngsten Tagung der CDU-Sozialausschüsse und meinte das wohl nicht nur rhetorisch. Ist es schließlich auch möglich, dass wir nach der Wahl in vor-ökologische Zeiten zurückfallen?

http://www.sonnenseite.com/fp/archiv/Art-Umweltpolitik/6606.php

Eine bessere Welt durch die UNO? Der größte Skandal unserer Zeit ist, dass auf dieser reichen Erde alle fünf Sekunden ein Kind verhungern muss. Jetzt beim Weltgipfel der UNO sollte überprüft werden, ob die Ziele erreicht werden können. Das Ergebnis ist - wie absehbar - enttäuschend. Die "Süddeutsche Zeitung" schreibt zu Recht von der "Welt der Egoisten" und gibt vor allem den USA die Schuld am Scheitern. Kofi Anan nannte es "eine Schande", dass die USA atomar nicht abrüsten, sondern aufrüsten wollen, anstatt ihren lächerlich geringen Anteil an der Entwicklungshilfe zu erhöhen.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/fp/archiv/Art-eineWelt/6893.php

"It's Not That the Government Isn't Responding, They are Obstructing the Response".

http://www.counterpunch.org/archer09162005.html


From Information Clearing House

In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered to stop by a federal official because he wasn't registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10314.htm

What brings the leading voice of the “liberal” media together with the ultra-right president? Both defend the interests of the narrow layer of wealthy families at the top of American society.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/times-s17.shtml


From Information Clearing House

Audio

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9274.htm

While the world has been falling all over itself to remember the victims of 9–11 and digging deep in its pockets to aid the wealthiest nation on the planet recovering from a natural disaster, a ferocious man-made onslaught on a town in northeast Iraq is being virtually ignored.

http://snipurl.com/hrbh



From Information Clearing House

Robert Skidelsky

President Bush’s new security doctrine stretches US self-defence to cover defence against not just actual, but potential threats. A nuclear weapons programme (or even a civil nuclear energy programme) can be seen as a threat. So can a dictatorship. When the two are combined you have a case for preventive war.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10136.htm

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/3407/


Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news

sent by The Freedom Archives - Sep 15, 2005 http://freedomarchives.org/

Statement by Saladin Muhammad of Black Workers for Justice

The magnitude of the destruction and human suffering caused by Hurricane Katrina to the people and communities of the Gulf Coast Region, while not the results of an act of "terror", is directly a result of a profit driven system of capitalist exploitation reinforced by the national oppression of African American people in the US South, a region where the majority of Black people live and where the conditions of oppression, poverty and underdevelopment are most concentrated.

As anti imperialists and activists engage in work to build support for the Gulf Coast survivors, we must have an analysis and political context for properly understanding the reasons for this crisis and the contradictions surrounding its aftermath. The response to this human tragedy must be more than a humanitarian response in order to deal with the magnitude and complexity of issues, international political ramifications, the legal aspects, and the various levels of local, regional, national and international coalition and network building and mobilizing that must take place to build a powerful movement for social justice.

There is much talk about how to define the main social impact of Katrina: Whether it is mainly a major disaster for Black people or for working class and poor people in general. This attempt to separate race from class when dealing with issues where those workers affected are majority African American is no accident. It seeks to divide the character and content of the working class responses.

Thus, it is important to define the race and class character of the crisis and to call on the larger working class to unite with it's most oppressed section-the African American working class who is also the predominant basis of an oppressed nation and nationality historically denied real democratic rights and subjugated by US imperialism.

The government's failure to correct this impending danger known far in advance, that led to the continuously unfolding massive human tragedy, helps all to see the racist nature of the US capitalist system and how the system of African American national oppression is in violation of human rights and guilty of crimes against humanity.

African American National Oppression

African American national oppression was/is definitely a major factor contributing to the magnitude of the disaster caused by Katrina. National oppression takes on more factors than race. It includes among other factors where people live and work-social and political territories and institution, and has a working class character represented by the most exploited strata of the US working class. Thus African American national oppression is at the deepest point of the intersection of race, class and gender oppression and exploitation of the US working class.

As more than 90 percent of Black people throughout the US are workers, African American national oppression places its primary emphasis on the exploitation and oppression of Black workers and their communities. More than two-thirds of New Orleans' inhabitants were African American. In the Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood that was one of the hardest hit, more than 98% were Black.

The slow US federal and state government responses to natural disasters like Hurricanes Katrina and Floyd in North Carolina in September 1999, that greatly impacted predominately African American working class communities, make clear that the value of Black and working class life is subordinate to capitalist property and profits.

The racist economic, social and political policies and practices of the US government and capitalist system shape society's attitudes about the reasons for the historical oppression of African Americans. It seeks to isolate, criminalize and scapegoat African Americans as social pariahs holding back the progress of society.

The characterization of the Black working class in this way is a part of the continuous ideological shaping of white supremacy that gives white workers a sense of being part of another working class, different from that of the Black working class. This often leads many white workers to act against their class interests, discouraging them from uniting with the Black working class in struggling to seek common, equal and socially transformative resolutions to their class issues.

The media's different descriptions of acts of desperation and survival by Blacks and whites in obtaining food and supplies following Katrina-"looting" and "finders" is an example. The police and National Guard were ordered to stop looking for survivors and to stop "lawlessness." Bush's statements about getting tough on "looters" along with Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, when she said, "These troops are battle-tested - have M-16s that are locked and loaded - know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will", made clear that New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were becoming areas of military occupation.

The refusal by thousands of mainly Black people to leave their homes was initially described by the media as the main problem related to the slow evacuation efforts-blaming the victims. Nothing initially mentioned about the low wages, level of poverty and high rates of unemployment preventing people from leaving.

After it took almost a week for the government evacuation effort to begin, leaving people to fend for themselves without electricity, food and water, it became shamefully clear and unavoidable for the media to hide, that the government had made no provisions for a major evacuation. The acts of heroism by the people themselves in rescuing their neighbors, although not emphasized by the media, could be seen throughout it's coverage.

The so-called "looting" and "lawlessness" must be addressed and placed in proper context. When it became clear that there was no emergency evacuation plan in place-people waiting up to a week before any major evacuation effort began, people were forced to take desperate actions for survival, both until they got "rescued" and for their uncertain future as refugees with no resources and sources of income. TV's, appliances, etc, become a form of capital and a means for trade during a crisis.

Some survivors were forced to "steal" cars to get their families out of the areas. Should this be considered a crime? NO! Also, when people are oppressed, neglected and left to die, they often engage in spontaneous acts of rebellion striking out against those who control wealth and power.

This is why the term "racism" without the context of national oppression and imperialism is grossly inadequate in describing the scope and depth of the impact of the US oppression of African American people. It often fails to point out the impact that African American national oppression has on influencing the standard of living and social conditions of the general working class regardless of race especially in areas where Black workers make of a majority or large minority of the population.

US Imperialism on the Domestic Front

Not only did the US federal and state government place the working class of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in impending danger, including failing to develop a planned emergency response to the crises, it has also refused the aid of other countries like Cuba and Venezuela who have offered to send hundreds of doctors, tons of medical supplies and fuel to help the people in the Gulf Coast Region.

US imperialism has thus decided that it has the sole right to decide if the majority African American and working class people and communities in the Gulf Coast Region have the human and political right to survive or not. This is clearly an international human rights question where the demand for self-determination must be applied as part of the resolution.

Though food, water and transportation trickled in, the government made sure the oil industry was taken care of fast. Over 10 major refineries were knocked out of commission in the Gulf region, but many of them were back operating within the week. Bush released federal oil reserves, but oil companies jack up gas prices to a criminal level. Environmental safeguards were loosened for gasoline producers to allow more pollution. All this while the four largest oil companies had profits of nearly $100 billion in the last 18 months. Why isn't this labeled as corporate "lawlessness?"

The African American working class majority of New Orleans and parts of the Gulf Coast have been "evacuated" to other cities several hundred and in some cases thousands of miles away from their communities. Many feel that their communities will never be restored and that they won't be returned home.

They have good reason to feel this way, as some majority African American communities have already begun to experience gentrification-moving Black and poor people out of the inner cities and replacing them with more affluent and predominantly middle and upper class whites.

Many reports and scientific papers warned that unbridled development along the coast had done away with millions of acres of wetlands that buffered coastal communities from storms. Thus, this disaster and the racist and capitalist circumstances surrounding its occurrence and aftermath, raises the issue of "ethnic cleansing."

The media in some of the cities receiving the "evacuees", are describing them as "the worst of New Orleans' now-notorious lawlessness: looters, carjackers and rapists." This sounds like the racist labels placed on working class and poor immigrants and refugees from throughout Latin America and the Caribbean who have been forced to leave their countries and come to the US for economic and political reasons.

Many African Americans in particular will experience problems related to the loss of identification documents in the Flood and fall into a similar status as undocumented and immigrant workers that come from Latin America and the Caribbean. Their residential and citizenship status will be challenged in most cases, when it comes time to get disaster relief subsistence. The racist nature of US capitalism often makes this reality of being a refugee and undocumented worker within one's "own" country a unique reality for African Americans and other oppressed nationalities, especially during times of natural and social crises.

We should expect the US to use this disaster to increase restrictions on forced economic immigration. It is therefore important that African Americans and Latinos united in challenging the refusal of survivor's assistance on the basis of the lack of documentation or citizenship status. It is important to point out that countries in Latin America have offered aid to all without regard of citizenship status and nationality-even though the US seeks to overthrow their governments.

Forging this unity is an important part of a larger and more difficult and absolutely essential process of building international solidarity and working class unity against US imperialism. This is why it's so important for Black workers and their organizations to play a leading role in shaping the class as well as national character of the struggle for justice around this disaster.

The future of New Orleans in particular in terms of the reconstruction of the historical communities, but at a higher quality of social conditions and standard of living will be decided by the US corporate class, the white power structure, unless there is an organized and combined African American and working class struggle led by the African American working class majority in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Such a struggle must take the popular form of a combined struggle for African American self-determination and workers power, and must have an international component.

Katrina Disaster Exposes Impact of Unjust US War and Occupation against Iraq

The Katrina disaster exposes how US imperialist war in Iraq and throughout the Middle East, including billions in support for Israel's occupation of Palestine is directly connected to the human tragedy in the Gulf Coast Region.

Vital resources that had been allocated by the Bush administration to fix the substandard levees in New Orleans and the erosion of marshlands along the coast that caused the Region to experience such enormous flooding and massive loss of lives were cut and shifted to the war budget.

Both Republican and Democratic administrations have consciously refused to adequately maintain or strengthen the levees that protect New Orleans. Hurricane and flood control has received the steepest federal funding reductions in New Orleans history-down 44.2% since 2001. The emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told The Times-Picayune in June 2004: "It appears that the money has been moved in the President's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that is the price we pay." Requests for an additional $250 million for Army Corps of Engineers levee work in the delta went unmet.

There were over 15,000 National Guard from the Gulf Coast Region in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting unjust wars. Their equipment, including generators, water purification systems and other needed life support and disaster preparedness supplies were overseas as well. Precious hours and days were lost as the bureaucratic machinery slowly moved equipment from other parts of the country that could have helped save lives of thousands who are expected to die.

As was the case during every war engaged in by this country, African Americans and working people were sent to fight, kill and die to bring about so-called "freedom" while they and their communities are denied freedom from hunger, imminent dangers, racial violence, gender oppression and state repression.

As was also the case during the Vietnam and Korean wars, the US tried to conceal the racist treatment of African Americans on the home front. In both of these wars, the racist treatment of African Americans in the US led to rebellions in the military and drew many former veterans into the civil rights and African American liberation movement when they returned home.

It is important that this connection be raised and exposed to help African Americans better understand the more immediate relationship to the wars abroad and the national and working class oppression of African Americans in the US. This will not only serve to strengthen the current US anti war movement, it will strengthen the US and international anti imperialist movement.

Lessons From North Carolina's Hurricane Floyd

The coalitions and movement that develops to aid the survivors of this disaster must understand the magnitude and how it differs from other disasters throughout the US history. When one analyzes the conditions and responses to Hurricane Floyd label the "Flood of the Century" that impacted 30 counties in Eastern North Carolina in September 1999, we see at least one major difference that defines how people's aid must be organized.

With Floyd, the evacuation of thousands of survivors to far away distant cities and states did not occur. People were moved and went on their own to neighboring towns and communities, thus making it easier to build a survivor's organization and movement in the area made up of representatives of the various towns and communities that were impacted.

There was a decision to define people as survivors and not "victims" as one way of helping to empower them and to discourage a "victim's consciousness" which made many feel they had no right to challenge the abuses of FEMA and the state. The children were teased at schools that their close and food were "hand outs" from charity. Many begin to deny they were survivors of the hurricane.

There were also strong religious pronouncements in the Black communities about the reasons for the disaster-that God was unpleased with African Americans "social decay", falling away from the church, that God was punishing America for its sins. All of this had some affect of taking people's focus off of the neglect and failures of the system to protect the safety, lives and communities of African American working class majorities.

There was the need to establish a survivor's slogan-Social Justice, Not Charity-to promote that aid is a human right the actions of the people themselves in surviving the disaster was an expression of courage, heroism and dignity. This is why it's so important that this movement have a strong cultural component.

The largest camp housing Floyd survivors was set up on a toxic waste dump which had not been inspected ahead of time and was located behind a women's prison. Survivor's felt they had no right to complain and also feared that if they did, they would be put out of the FEMA camp with no place else to go.

The Survivor's organization was not a "support" or emergency "relief" organization per say; even though it participated in "relief" activities-worked in food and clothing distribution centers set up by community forces and supporters.

A survivor's committees were organized in 15 sites throughout Eastern, NC and a survivor's summit was organized to bring survivor communities together to hammer out a survivor's manifesto of demands to serve as their program for recovery and reconstruction.

The state of NC had established a Floyd Relief fund that had several hundred million dollars of federal money and private "donations." The survivor's organization demanded that the fund address key needs and ensure that the cut off period did not leave survivors to fall through the cracks.

The Survivor's organization and support coalitions in the areas organized reconstruction brigades of people who came in from other cities to help repair and rebuild damaged homes. Progressive lawyers and legal clinics were set up to deal with the massive insurance fraud, and real estate speculators who were trying to get people to sell their homes for little or nothing to get desperately needed money. Volunteer doctors and medical people set up screening and emergency support clinics that wrote subscriptions for medicine, and college students and educators set up schools and day care in the camp areas. A people's transportation service was set up to take people to work, to look for work and to shop for clothes and other items. There were discussions about setting up survivor worker run businesses to help create employment-such as paint crews, home repair and survivor taxi service, but they never materialized.

The postal workers union local led by a member of Black Workers For Justice that was part of the Survivor's support organization brought mail transfer forms and workers to assist survivors in getting their mail rerouted. The scope of this work was based on he level of participants that were drawn into this social justice work. This is a main reason why it's very important to build a broad network tying together activists groups with allies.

It is very important to draw the trade unions into this movement, the Gulf Coast wide coalition and national support network. They should be encouraged to contribute directly to the a survivor's and people driven support coalition in the region, not to the red cross or government agencies. The identity of the working class efforts will not be projected by the contributions made to these agencies.

It is important that workers see that trade unions have a broader concern and commitment to the needs of the working class and not just their immediate members. The employers will certainly ask the workers where the unions were during the disaster when they try to organize.

They can play an important role in supporting those evacuated to their cities, especially outside of the South. The unions can help in adopting families and shelters in their areas. They must also play a leading role in helping to combat the racist attempts by the media, white supremacists, religious right and others to alienate those evacuated to their cities by educating their members and getting them actively involved in support efforts.

Distribution centers were designated by FEMA and state crises agencies. The Black Workers For Justice set up a distribution center at its Workers Center in Rocky Mount, NC, but had to struggle to demand it be recognized as an official center so that it could receive food and supplies from distribution warehouses that were set up in the areas by FEMA.

Most of the FEMA designated distribution centers were the big white area churches, some Black churches, YMCA's and OIC's. The white paternalistic and missionary character of a major portion of the establishment designated "formal" relief efforts was overwhelming.

Disaster Relief Efforts Must be Carried Out as a Political Struggle Yes, it's important that organizing be done around the humanitarian aspects of this crisis and recovery. It must not try and substitute for the obligation that the US government has to fully address the problems. A "full" recovery requires some political and economic changes and pressure by a mass movement.

We learned that during times of disasters, the state and federal government declarations of a "state of emergency", allows local governmental powers to be suspended or place under the direct demand of the state government. During Floyd, survivors particularly from the Town of Princeville, the oldest historically Black town in North Carolina and some say in the US, were organized to demand that their city council convene itself, even though the town had been destroyed.

This was a struggle for self-determination within the context of the struggle for reconstruction. The Princeville city council held weekly open meeting where activists organized transportation to take survivors by cars and church buses to have input into the decisions and town government struggle for reconstruction.

The movement in the Gulf Coast Region has major concerns that require the organization, politics and leadership of the African American liberation as a central component to help unite a broad, multi-national, multi-racial and international campaign for social justice and reconstruction.

The dispersed masses from the region has to be organized and reconnected by a representative body that acts as a kind of provisional government to deal with questions regarding the future of their communities, the blatant neglect of the US government in placing them in imminent danger, the failure of the government to have a planned and speedy evacuation, the denial of the government to allow aid from other countries and the use of the police and National Guard as military occupation forces, among other concerns.

Some of the demands that must be included in this movement include:

* The right to return of the people of the Gulf Coast Region,

* Open up area military bases for no cost temporary housing to begin moving survivors back into the region,

* Extended unemployment and emergency financial relief based on a living wage until people are returned to their homes and jobs,

* A People's referendum on all decisions affecting the politic and residential issues of the Gulf Coast survivors,

* Establish a public workers program funded by the federal government and the big corporation to rebuild New Orleans and the affected Gulf Coast Region,

* Employ the survivors at a living wage as required by the David Bacon Act to work on clean up and reconstruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, with the right to organize unions,

* That major contracts fro clean up and reconstruction of New Orleans Black and working class communities be allocated to Black contractors,

* That the US immediately allow other countries to provide aid to the survivors,

* That the United Nations conduct an investigation into the circumstances surround the Katrina disaster to determine if the US is guilty of human rights violations,

* That everyone suffering property damaged and destruction, dislocated, death and illness, including emotional and psychological, receive reparations from the US government as victims of a racist act of placing people and communities in imminent dander because they are Black and poor.

* Issue a massive bankruptcy executive order for Gulf Coast survivors forging all debt of property lost or destroyed by the disaster,

* Cut the US military budget and reallocate finances to deal with state and local programs to address social and environmental needs which threaten the lives, safety, health and communities of African American and other working class populations.

* End the wars and occupation in the Middle East, bring the US troops home now,

* The immediate impeachment of George Bush for his role in the US government in placing people's lives in imminent danger and thereby committing crimes against humanity.

The political movement must be organized nationally. The progressive organizations of every political tendency and humanitarian expression should be able to support this movement. However, it is very important and political necessary to give it its proper anti imperialist character, that it be led by a national Black united front, in terms of shaping and putting forward its main political demands and representing it at the national and international levels.

We must be careful while insuring the presence, politics and leadership of the African American working class and liberation movement forces, not to narrow the scope and content of the struggle around to try and fit a particular ideological perspective. A mass movement must be built that the African American liberation movement must work inside of and influence in a more conscious anti imperialist direction.

There will be multiple responses from progressive forces representing various classes, ideological, political and religious tendencies and social movements. Many will be small groups seeking foundation grants to help in the effort. Progressives in these groups must be careful not to allow competition for funding to create tensions among themselves. Differences among the progressive and genuinely humanitarian forces and the methods of struggle around these differences should be mainly non-antagonist. This requires close relations to be built between revolutionary political forces active within this effort.

As opposed to abstract and sectarian polemics and arguments at mass meetings, there must be an effort to isolate and out organize opportunist elements who see using this disaster to win favor and reposition themselves within the Democratic and Republican Parties or with sections of the corporate class by promoting their image as being savors.

This means discouraging efforts to create sole dependence on cult of the personality savior's or liberal and paternalist dominated groups however well meaning, to solve the problems for the people or to speak on their behalf. This is also why it's so important to have Black working class leadership at the national and local levels of the anti war and Millions More Movements.

We must work to make this tragedy and the struggle for Gulf Coast justice a major projection of the anti war movement and demonstrations, not only in the US but internationally. Survivors must speak at anti war demonstrations and activities in other countries.

Likewise, the major African American and working class mobilizations like the upcoming Millions More Movement must project this disaster and struggle for justice as a major demand for the African American liberation movement. The US Congressional Black Caucus must help to make this struggle a congressional centerpiece for measuring the treatment of African American majority and working class communities, including immigrant workers.

The main strategic anti imperialist political tasks of the Gulf Coast struggle for justice, should be to isolate and indict US imperialism and to gain concrete international support and ongoing recognition for the plight of the African American people to bring mass and international pressure on the US to win justice for the Gulf Coast survivors, and to force US imperialism to retreat in its war on the Middle East. The African American liberation movement and anti imperialist forces must take up the main tasks to carry out this strategy.

September 5, 2005


UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE | 212-868-5545


Informant: Fred Feldman

From ufpj-news

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?items=2355&printmode=true


Informant: Fred Feldman

From ufpj-news

Nach einer weltweiten Umfrage sagen zwei Drittel der Menschen, dass ihr Land nicht nach dem Willen der Menschen regiert wird. Hoch im Ansehen stehen Intellektuelle und religiöse Führer.

http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/20/20959/1.html

Global warming 'past the point of no return'
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/980979/

Study Links Hurricanes to Global Warming
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/983892/

After Katrina, the climate just gets worse and worse
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/971007/

Simpler living in tougher times
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/981239/

Why this is our last chance to save the planet
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/966511/

Old World Order
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/981556/

Retreating glaciers, melting permafrost threaten Arctic lifestyle
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/976351/

Exploring Katrina with Sustainable Approaches
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/971034/

Hurricane Katrina and Climate Justice
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/971057/

After Katrina - The Environmental Perspective
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/977342/

It's Official: Hurricanes Are Getting Stronger
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/980919/

Water crisis looms as Himalayan glaciers melt
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/969394/

Retreating Glaciers Worrying Greenlanders
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/971248/

Polluted paradise
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/976544/

Save Tennessee's Mountains
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/969169/

Spending on environment yields big returns
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/978232/

Fuel protests 'will bring Britain to a standstill'
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/971044/

From Icon to Dinner Plate - Don't Let Horses Become a Meal
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/976492/

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 17. September 2005
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/984258/

Petition delivered to the World Health Organization (WHO) to remove Dr. Mike Repacholi immediately from his position as General Coordinator “International Electromagnetic Fields Project”
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/975607/

DO RADIOFREQUENCY ENERGY FIELDS CAUSE CANCER?
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/968226/

Electrical fields can make you sick
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/966487/

Phones CAN make you ill
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/969678/

Microwaves from GSM Mobile Telephones Affect 53BP1 and gamma-H2AX Foci in Human Lymphocytes from Hypersensitive and Healthy Persons
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/965058/

Many people report symptoms of electromagnetic radiation sickness, WHO
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/972757/

Blood Test
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/969188/

EU Court Rules Most Mobile Phone "Mast Taxes" Are Legal
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/965196/

News in Microwave News
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/981527/

Residents in mast battle
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/967603/

WILL HOUSE PRICES FALL BY £10,000?
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/967612/

PLANS TO INSTALL MASTS REJECTED
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/967616/

1st JUDGEMENT of the Class Action in Summary Procedure ASL versus Orange France plc
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/971670/

Derivation of Exposure Limits for RF/MW in China
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/982650/

Councillor: I don't need mobile
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/972777/

Phone mast fight begins again
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/972784/

Mobile phone giants hit back at council
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/972808/

CALLS FOR REFUSAL
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/972826/

Mast pole-axed by people power
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/974437/

Couple face £400,000 legal bill after losing phone mast battle
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/974449/

'£200 seems like pay-off'
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/974463/

Residents hit out at mast plan
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/976142/

WHY ON EARTH would anyone be placed on statins any more?
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/976527/

ORANGE TELECOMMUNICATIONS MAST, ROMFORD
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/980359/

Councillors vote to reject mast
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/980926/

PROTESTERS JOIN FORCES
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/980931/

RESIDENTS OPPOSED TO PHONE MASTS
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/980945/

We mast prevent this
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/980960/

A UNITED STANCE ON MASTS
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/980966/

BALOONEY PROTEST OVER MAST PLAN
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/983632/

Phone mast revival
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/983697/

Row over plan for a mast site
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/983727/

Phone mast plan withdrawn
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/983730/

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

Omega-News Collection 17. September 2005
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/984261/

September 15th marked the end of marbled murrellet nesting season, which means the beginning of old growth redwood logging season, so we need as many people to come and help out as possible. We didn't have a huge rally this year, yet many people will be gathering at EarthDance, so the tribes will be gathering nonetheless! September 17th will also be the 7-year anniversary of the death of David "Gypsy" Chain, an Earth First! activist killed when an enraged Maxxam Corp./Pacific Lumber Co. logger began intentionally falling trees towards a group of NCEF! activists. So maybe light a candle, burn some cedar and sage, and send some prayers up for the forest and all of us (including yourselves) who work to save them and protect the Earth. North Coast Earth First! continues to grow and evolve, as does each and every one of us. Tree-sits continue in the Fern Gully tree-village in the Freshwater Creek watershed, here in Humboldt County, California. Fern Gully is one of the last old growth redwood groves left on Earth, and just so happens to stand right above an elementary school in the small rural community of Freshwater. Maxxam/Pacific Lumber logging has been suspended in Freshwater, thanks to the Water Quality Control Board, yet Fern Gully still remains unprotected. Should the children who will go to that school for the next 100 years have to look at a clearcut, or should they have the unique privelege of looking up to see one of the world's wonders for years to come? Feel free to contact Schwarzenegger's office and give them an earful about why they should save Fern Gully, for the children, the watershed, and out of general principle. Here's the info...

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger State Capitol Building Sacramento, CA 95814 Phone: 916-445-2841 Fax: 916-445-4633

To send an Electronic Mail please visit: http://www.govmail.ca.gov

Many activists are still dealing with harassment from the S.L.A.P.P. suits being brought against them by Maxxam/PL, while Charles Hurwitz received a ruling for $72 million for allegedly being harassed by a vast conspiracy between the government and environmentalists. Can you believe this world? Thankfully, the FDIC has appealed the ruling, and the $72 million won't go to Hurwitz quite yet, and hopefully never will. Activists are being sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars for allegedly costing the company so much money to deal with us. Maxxam/PL fails to mention the debt they have accrued with the people of Humboldt County, for years of sedimentation, landslides, assault & battery, increased flooding, and other blatant criminal activity they have been engaged in for the past 20 years.

I've been out of town for a bit, so haven't had a chance to work on our website, http://www.northcoastearthfirst.org, very much lately. We could definitely use help with web design and maintenance, if anyone is interested. It has some good information and links, yet I acknowledge that it's a bit lackluster...all apologies...

A Sun Dance was held in mid-August, along the Avenue of the Giants. The focus of the prayer was for the old growth redwoods and the people working to protect them. It was a beautiful ceremony, and will continue for the next three years. You are all invited to attend, and we hope that many of you will come to join in this sacred ceremony for the Earth and her people.

As many of you know, the Pepper Spray plaintiffs had a victory in court, after a court battle that has lasted approximately eight years. Details of the case and the steps that are still being taken to ban the use of pepper spray as a torture device on non-violent activists are available at http://www.nopepperspray.org .

Thanks for being on our update e-mail list! The global resistance to corporate control and exploitation in ongoing, and more people are waking up every day. It's an exciting time to be alive, and feels right to be part of an international movement towards protecting the Earth...Earth First! Ok, on to the support section...don't even like to go there, yet it's a vital part of maintaining our front-line resistance...

To make a secure donation via PayPal, please go to the following link (I've done away with those pesky HTML buttons in e-mails)...
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=shunka_2004%40yahoo%2ecom&item_name=North%20Coast%20Earth%20First%21&no_shipping=1&cn=Notes%20go%20here%2e%2e%2e&tax=0&currency_code=USD

Also, be sure to use shunka_2004@yahoo.com for the e-mail to send donations to.

You can send donations via snail mail to...

North Coast Earth First! P.O. Box 28 Arcata, CA 95518 (NOT Bayside, CA)

You can also make a tax-deductible donation to our media office and collective, at the following link:

https://www.treesfoundation.org/cgi-priv/Donations.pl

Just scroll down to "North Coast Earth First! (NCEF!)", and click on "Continue>"

You can also reach our media office at...

NCEF! Media
920 Samoa Blvd., Suite #221 Arcata, CA 95521
(707) 822-1513


With Love, Light, and Re-evolution, Shunka Wakan North Coast Earth First!

Be sure to check out http://www.northcoastearthfirst.org


Informant: Hummingbird Lou

"There's a 9/11 waiting to happen in the oceans if we let it," retired Adm. James Watkins, chairman of the US Commission on Ocean Policy, warned two years ago. With Hurricane Katrina, we let it happen, David Helvarg remarks. A huge natural disaster was hugely magnified by greed, folly and a refusal to respond to a situation long recognized as critical.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091605F.shtml

Readers and commentators from abroad are watching images of chaos and despair in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and are wondering how a country so mighty could have fallen so far.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091605E.shtml

Stirling Newberry: America has awakened and found itself in a new day, which we must now seize. The people have spoken plainly on this one point above all: we must end this terrible war, entered without evidence, pursued without profit, and prolonged without purpose.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091605A.shtml

The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9314188/#050916


From Information Clearing House

Now it begins: America's biggest relief and recovery program since the New Deal. And the omens aren't good.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10310.htm

As President Bush spoke from New Orleans last night, few of the thousands of residents of that evacuated city, lying on rows and rows of cots in the sprawling River Center shelter here, paid him much attention.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/347016p-296039c.html


From Information Clearing House

President George W. Bush's advisers said on Friday billions of dollars needed to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast will be borrowed and will raise the deficit but Bush still wants to extend tax cuts.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N16153943.htm


From Information Clearing House

Bush's America is gone with the wind. It lasted just short of four years, from Sept. 11, 2001, to Aug. 29, 2005. The devastation of New Orleans was the watery equivalent of a dirty bomb.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10306.htm

As insecurity mounts from Najaf to New Orleans, more weapons and high-tech military equipment are flowing into some of the globe's most vulnerable and war-torn regions.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10301.htm

We had a war because there are powerful interests in our country that are geared toward making money from war. How? Let us count the ways.

http://counterpunch.org/foley09152005.html


From Information Clearing House

What we are watching today, I believe, is a culmination of 10-15 years of mounting barbarism of the American culture the world over, crowned by the achievements of science and technology as a major weapon of mass destruction.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10304.htm

http://www.mehr-demokratie.de/demokratie-ranking.html

--------

JEDE STIMME ZÄHLT?!
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/983638/

Ergebnisse Wahlprüfsteine für Bundestagskandidat/inn/en
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/973799/

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0916-10.htm

Clarion Ledger Exposes Bush Administration Efforts to Shift Katrina Blame to Environmentalists

http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0916-04.htm

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287026/site/newsweek/


Informant: NHNE

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=91468;show_parent=1

Impeachment Movement Responds to Bush's Speech
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?disc=149495;article=91472;title=APFN



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

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/771266064

This message was sent by Care2 Connect member: Philip Clarke

Virus Poses Risk of Massive Casualties Around the World

Sep. 16, 2005 - It could kill a billion people worldwide, make ghost towns out of parts of major cities, and there is not enough medicine to fight it. It is called the avian flu.

This week, the U.S. government agreed to stockpile $100 million worth of a still-experimental vaccine, while at the United Nations Summit in New York, both the head of the U.N. World Health Organization and President Bush warned of the virus' deadly potential.

"We must also remain on the offensive against new threats to public health, such as the Avian influenza," Bush said in his speech to world leaders. "If left unchallenged, the virus could become the first pandemic of the 21st century."

According to Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Bush's call to remain on the offensive has come too late.

"If we had a significant worldwide epidemic of this particular avian flu, the H5N1 virus, and it hit the United States and the world, because it would be everywhere at once, I think we would see outcomes that would be virtually impossible to imagine," he warns.

Already, officials in London are quietly looking for extra morgue space to house the victims of the H5N1 virus, a never-before-seen strain of flu. Scientists say this virus could pose a far greater threat than smallpox, AIDS or anthrax.

"Right now in human beings, it kills 55 percent of the people it infects," says Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow on global health policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. "That makes it the most lethal flu we know of that has ever been on planet Earth affecting human beings."

No Natural Immunity

The Council on Foreign Relations devoted its most recent issue of the prestigious journal, Foreign Affairs, to what it called the coming global epidemic, a pandemic.

"Each year different flus come, but your immune system says, 'Ah, I've seen that guy before. No problem. Crank out some antibodies, and I might not feel great for a couple of days, but I'll recover,'" Garrett says. "Now what's scaring us is that this constellation of H number 5 and N number 1, to our knowledge, has never in history been in our species. So absolutely nobody watching this has any natural immunity to this form of flu."

Like most flu viruses, this form started in wild birds -- such as geese, ducks and swans -- in Asia.

"They die of a pneumonia, just like people," says William Karesh, the lead veterinarian for the Wildlife Conservation Society. "When you open them up, you do a post-mortem exam. Their lungs are just full of fluid and full of blood."

Karesh has been tracking this flu strain for the last several years as it has gained strength, spreading from wild birds to chickens to humans.

"We start at a market somewhere in Guangdong Province in China," explains Karesh. "And it's packed with cages, and you'll have chickens, and you'll have ducks. You might have some other animals -- cats, dogs, turtles, snakes -- and they're all stacked in cages, and they're all spreading their germs to each other."

In response, Asian governments have killed millions of chickens in futile attempts to stop the flu's spread to humans.

"The tipping point, the place where it becomes something of an immediate concern, is where that virus changes, we call it mutates, to something that is able to go from human to human," says Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness.

Echoes of the 'Spanish Flu' Epidemic

Scientists in Asia and around the world are now working around the clock as they wait for that tipping point.

"Unlike the normal human flu, where the virus is predominantly in the upper respiratory tract so you get a runny nose, sore throat, the H5N1 virus seems to go directly deep into the lungs so it goes down into the lung tissue and causes severe pneumonia," says Dr. Malik Peiris, the scientist who first discovered the so-called SARS virus, which killed 700 people and drew worldwide attention.

To date, there have been 57 confirmed human deaths, and another suspected one last week in Indonesia. Scientists say the humans have only been infected by birds. However, they add, every infected person represents one step closer to the tipping point.

"Once that virus is capable of not needing the birds to infect humans, then we have the beginnings of what can turn out to be this worldwide epidemic problem that the experts call 'pandemics,'" Redlener says.

That is exactly what happened in 1918 when the global epidemic called the Spanish flu struck.

"The Spanish flu was killing people in two or three days once they got sick," said Bill Karesh of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

"In 1918, my now-quite-elderly uncle was a young boy, living in Baltimore, Maryland," says Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations. "And the flu came through, and his family insisted that he could not go outside for any reason until the whole epidemic was over. He spent afternoons looking out the window and counting the hearses going up and down the neighborhood and trying to guess which of his schoolmates had died."

Disaster Would Require Massive Quarantines

Unlike the avian flu, the Spanish flu spread long before the international air travel routes of today. At that time, there were no nonstop flights from flu ground zero to the United States. But not anymore.

Karesh believes the avian flu could travel from China to Japan to New York to San Francisco within the first week.

"It's on people's hands. You shake hands. You touch a doorknob that somebody recently touched," Garrett says, referring to how the flu is spread.

Redlener, who is stationed at Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, has been working with New York City officials to get ready for the deadly epidemic.

"The city would look like a science fiction movie," according to him. "It's extremely possible we'd have to quarantine hospitals. We'd have to quarantine sections of the city."

"I could imagine that you could look at Grand Central Station and not see much of anybody wandering around at all," Garrett agrees. "People would be afraid to take the subways, because who wants to be in an enclosed air space with a whole lot of strangers, never knowing which ones are carrying the flu?"

As for the hospitals, there would be scenes like the ones this past month in the stadiums of New Orleans and Houston after Hurricane Katrina.

"There wouldn't be equipment and personnel to staff them adequately that you could really call them a hospital," Garrett predicts. "You might more or less call them warehouses for the ailing."

And, as happened in New Orleans, there would be no place for the dead.

"If you look at the expected number of deaths that could occur in cities across the United States, we are wholly unprepared to process those bodies in a dignified and respectful way," asserts Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. "We will run out of caskets literally within days."

The prospects have become so bleak that in planning meetings held in New York City, veteran emergency responders have walked away.

"They just don't know how we're going to get through," says Osterholm of those responders. "If we have a repeat of the 1918 life experience, I can't imagine anything to be closer to a living hell than that experience of 12 to 24 months of pandemic influenza."

If the flu does strike, victims at first would not know if it is the kind of easily treated flu that comes every year or the killer flu, known as H5N1.

The man in charge of making sure Americans are prepared in the event of a killer flu epidemic is the secretary of Health and Human Services.

"We would do all we could to quarantine," says Secretary Michael Leavitt. "It's not a happy thought. It's something that keeps the president of the United States awake. It keeps me awake."

The preparedness plan calls for Leavitt to run operations out of a crisis room in Washington.

When pressed as to how ready the country actually is, Leavitt replied, "Not as prepared as we need to be. We're better prepared than we were yesterday; we'll be better prepared tomorrow than we are today."

The draft report of the federal government's emergency plan, obtained and examined by ABC News' "Primetime," predicts as many as 200,000 Americans will die within a few months. This is considered a conservative estimate.

"The first thing is everybody in America's going to say, 'Where's the vaccine?' And they're going to find out that it's really darned hard to make a vaccine. It takes a really long time," said Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In fact, the draft report says it will not be until six months after the first outbreak that any vaccine will be available, and then only in a limited supply.

"I imagine that not a lot of poor people will get vaccinated," Garrett says. "If you think about New Orleans, this is a similar situation."

'Inadequate' Stockpile of Medicine

While there is no vaccine to stop the flu, there is one medicine to treat it. Called Tamiflu, it is made by the Roche pharmaceutical company in Switzerland. Roche has been selling Tamiflu for years.

Only recently, however, did scientists learn of its potential to work against the killer flu, H5N1. That has since created a huge demand and a critical shortage.

"All of the wealthiest countries in the world are trying to purchase stockpiles of Tamiflu," says Garrett. "Our current stockpile is around 2.5 million courses of treatment."

According to Leavitt, that is a long way from the country's ideal stockpile. "Our objective is to have 20 million doses of Tamiflu or enough for 20 million people," he says.

He later admitted that only 2 million are currently on hand, but asserted that no other country is in a better position.

Officials in Australia, however, have 3.5 million courses of treatment, and in Great Britain, officials say they have ordered enough to cover a quarter of their population.

"I think at the moment, with 2.5 million doses, you are pretty vulnerable," warns professor John Oxford of the Royal London Hospital.

"The lack of advanced planning up until the moment in the United States, in the sense of not having a huge stockpile I think your citizens deserve, has surprised me and has dismayed me," he admits.

Faced with worldwide demand, the Roche company, which produces Tamiflu, has organized a first-come, first-served waiting list. The United States is nowhere near the top.

"The way we are approaching the discussions with governments is that we are operating on a first-come, first-serve basis," says Dr. David Reddy, head of the pandemic task force at Roche.

"Do we wish we had ordered it sooner and more of it? I suspect one could say yes," admits Leavitt. "Are we moving rapidly to assure that we have it? The answer is also yes."

When asked why the United States did not place its orders for Tamiflu sooner, Leavitt replied, "I can't answer that. I don't know the answer to that."

Even leading Republicans in Congress say the Bush administration has not handled the planning for a possible flu epidemic well.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., says the current Tamiflu stockpile of 2 million could spell disaster.

"That's totally inadequate. Totally inadequate today," says Frist, who is also a physician. "The Tamiflu is what people would go after. It's what you're going to ask for, I'm going to ask for, immediately."

Leavitt says deciding who gets the 2.5 million doses of Tamiflu currently on hand in the United States is part of the federal government's response plan. However, he also admits that thought has motivated the government to move rapidly in securing more doses of the medicine.

"It isn't going to happen tomorrow, but if it happened the day after that, we would not be in as good as a position as we will be in six months," he says.

However, in the end, even the country's top health officials concede that a killer flu epidemic this winter would make the scenes of Katrina pale in comparison.

"You know, I was down in New Orleans in that crowded airport now a couple weeks ago," Frist says. "And this could be not just equal to that, but many multiple times that. Hundreds of people laid out, all dying, because there was no therapy. And a lot of people don't realize for this avian flu virus, there will be very little effective therapy available early on."

ABC News' Rhonda Schwartz, Michael Bicks, Samantha Chapman, Maddy Sauer, Simon Surowicz, Jill Rackmill, Steve Baker, Monica DelaRosa and Jennifer Needleman contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/Investigation/story?id=1130392&page=1


Informant: beefree

* EXCLUSIVE! * A DIEBOLD INSIDER SPEAKS! DIEB-THROAT : 'Diebold System One of Greatest Threats Democracy Has Ever Known' Identifies U.S. Homeland Security 'Cyber Alert' Prior to '04 Election Warning Votes Can be 'Modified Remotely' via 'Undocumented Backdoor' in Central Tabulator Software!

[] In exclusive stunning admissions to http://www.BradBlog.com
The BRAD BLOG some 11 months after the 2004 Presidential Election, a "Diebold Insider" is now finally speaking out for the first time about the alarming security flaws within Diebold, Inc's electronic voting systems, software and machinery. The source is acknowledging that the company's "upper management" -- as well as "top government officials" -- were keenly aware of the "undocumented backdoor" in Diebold's main "GEM Central Tabulator" software well prior to the 2004 election. A branch of the Federal Government even posted a security warning on the Internet.

Pointing to
http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB04-252.html#diebold a little-noticed "Cyber Security Alert" issued by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the source inside Diebold -- who "for the time being" is requesting anonymity due to a continuing sensitive relationship with the company -- is charging that Diebold's technicians, including at least one of its lead programmers, knew about the security flaw and that the company instructed them to keep quiet about it.

"Diebold threatened violators with immediate dismissal," the insider, who we'll call DIEB-THROAT, explained recently to http://www.BradBlog.com The BRAD BLOG via email. "In 2005, after one newly hired member of Diebold's technical staff pointed out the security flaw, he was criticized and isolated."

In phone interviews, DIEB-THROAT confirmed that the matters were well known within the company, but that a "culture of fear" had been developed to assure that employees, including technicians, vendors and programmers kept those issues to themselves.

The "Cyber Security Alert" from US-CERT was issued in late August of 2004 and is still available online via the http://www.us-cert.gov US-CERT website. The alert warns that "A vulnerability exists due to an undocumented backdoor account, which could [sic: allow] a local or remote authenticated malicious user [sic: to] modify votes."

The alert, assessed to be of "MEDIUM" risk on the US-CERT security bulletin, goes on to add that there is "No workaround or patch available at time of publishing."

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB04-252.html#diebold/ []


"Diebold's upper management was aware of access to the voter file defect before the 2004 election - but did nothing to correct it," the source explained.

A "MEDIUM" risk vulnerability cyber alert is described on the US-CERT site as: "one that will allow an intruder immediate access to a system with less than privileged access. Such vulnerability will allow the intruder the opportunity to continue the attempt to gain privileged access. An example of medium-risk vulnerability is a server configuration error that allows an intruder to capture the password file."

DIEB-THROAT claims that, though the Federal Government knew about this documented flaw, originally discovered and reported by
http://www.BlackBoxVoting.org in August of 2004, they did nothing about it.

"I believe that top Government officials had an understanding with top Diebold officials to look the other way," the source explained, "because Diebold was their ace in the hole."

But even DIEB-THROAT -- who says "we were brainwashed" by the company to believe such concerns about security were nonsense -- was surprised to learn that an arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was well aware of this flaw, and concerned enough about it to issue a public alert prior to the election last year.

"I was aware of the Diebold security flaw and had heard about the Homeland Security Cyber Alert Threat Assessment website, so I went there and 'bingo,' there it was in black and white," the source wrote. "It blew me away because it showed that DHS, headed by a Cabinet level George Bush loyalist, was very aware of the 'threat' of someone changing votes in the Diebold Central Tabulator. The question is, why wasn't something done about it before the election?"

The CEO of North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold, Inc., Walden O'Dell has been oft-quoted for his
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm 2003 Republican fund-raiser promise to help "Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." O'Dell himself was a high-level http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00000909.htm contributor to the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign as well as many other Republican causes.

"A very serious problem...one malicious person can change the outcome of any Diebold election"

The voting company insider, who has also served as a spokesperson for the company in various capacities over recent years, admits that the "real danger" of this security vulnerability could have easily been exploited by a malicious user or an insider through remote access.

"I have seen these systems connected to phone lines dozens of times with users gaining remote access," said DIEB-THROAT. "What I think we have here is a very serious problem. Remote access using phone lines eliminates any need for a conspiracy of hundreds to alter the outcome of an election. Diebold has held onto this theory [publicly] for years, but Diebold has lied and has put national elections at risk. Remote access using this backdoor means that one malicious person can change the outcome of any Diebold election."

The ability to connect to the system remotely by phone lines and the apparent lack of interest by Diebold to correct the serious security issue in a timely manner -- or at all -- would seem to be at odds with at least one of their Press Releases touting their voting hardware and software.

In an October 31, 2003 Press Release as part of a publicity blitz to "sell" the new voting machines to the voters in the state of Maryland, Diebold Election Systems President Thomas W. Swidarski is quoted as follows in a section titled "Security Is Key":

Diebold has fine-tuned its computerized system so that it meets stringent security requirements. “We have independent verification that the Diebold voting system provides an unprecedented level of election security. This is crucial to maintaining the integrity of the entire voting process,” Swidarski added.

Attempts by http://www.BradBlog.com The BRAD BLOG to get comment from Swidarski were passed to one of the Vice-Presidents at Diebold who has not returned our voice mail message.

We did, however, hear back from Diebold Spokesperson David Bear of the PR firm Public Strategies. He was referred to us by several different Diebold offices as "the man to discuss voting machine issues with."

Bear claimed to have never heard of the Cyber Alert issued by US-CERT and when told of it, refused to acknowledge it as anything more than "an unverified allegation."

"One of the greatest threats our democracy has ever known"

Our source expressed emphatically that future democratic elections in the United States are at stake and feels that the problem will not be corrected until Congressional action forces the company to do so.

"In my opinion Diebold's election system is one of the greatest threats our democracy has ever known, and the only way this will be exposed is with a Congressional investigation with subpoenas of not just Diebold officials but Diebold technicians."

If our experience in discussing the matter with Bear, the man Diebold referred us to for all matters concerning voting machines, is any indication, then DIEB-THROAT may be correct. Even a Cyber Alert Bulletin issued by an official arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security more than a year ago was not enough to phase Diebold. At least not enough to even inform their public spokesperson about the matter, apparently.

"I don't know anything about it," Bear claimed when we asked about the Cyber Alert, and he refused to acknowledge there were anysecurity concerns about Diebold's Voting Machines or its GEMS Central Tabulator software.

Over and over, by rote, he repeated in response to our questions: "The GEMS software has been used in hundreds of elections and there's never been a security issue."

Bear says that "Diebold machines have never lost a single vote," but beyond that could not speak to the vulnerability issue since, he said, "I don't know what vulnerability they're referencing."

We sent http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB04-252.html#diebold the link to the US-CERT Cyber Alert to Bear, but have not yet heard back from about it. He did, however, send us a copy of the well-worn http://www.vote.caltech.edu/media/documents/vtp_wp21.pdf
Caltech/Massachusetts Institute of Technology report [PDF] analyzing the 2004 Presidential Election which, Bear pointed out in his Email, "concludes that the most improvement [in vote-counting and integrity over 2000] occurred when counties/states changed to touch screen systems."

DIEB-THROAT was taken aback, but not wholly surprised, when we shared the comments from Bear denying knowledge of the "backdoor" security vulnerability in the GEMS software and his contention that there was nothing more than "allegations."

The vulnerability, and the ability to "manipulate votes" occurs because the GEMS software uses the public Microsoft Access database software to store vote totals in a separate data file. And, as DIEB-THROAT explained, Access is "full of holes. There are so many ways to get into it."

Because GEMS uses the Access database, "you can enter and manipulate the file without even entering into GEMS," our source said in response ot Bear's denials.

"GEMS sits on top of this database and it pretty much feeds information down to the database from GEMS. It's almost like you're on the first floor of your house and all of your operating equipment is in the basement so that anything that happens on the first floor ends up downstairs. Well, downstairs has a wide open door to it. So we're dumping all the votes downstairs and that's wide open to the rest of the computer system."

"A culture of fear"

In trying to understand why the U.S. Homeland Security Department's Cyber Alert didn't force Diebold to make fixes, patches or corrections quickly available for their software prior to -- or even since -- the '04 election, DIEB-THROAT repeated over and over that Diebold was simply "not concerned about security".

"They don't have security solutions. They don't want them...They leave security policy issues up to the states. They've known about this for some time. They don't really care," the source said, comparing the security flaw to "leaving the front door at Fort Knox open." It's just "blatant sloppiness and they don't care."

The versions of the GEMS Central Tabulation software listed on the US-CERT site are 1.17.7 and 1.18 and DIEB-THROAT says the same versions of the same software are still in use by States around the country and haven't had any fixes or patches applied to correct the problem.

Diebold spokesman, Bear, was unable to confirm whether or not Diebold had updated its GEMS software in any way since the US-CERT Cyber Alert was released telling us only that "There's different versions of the software for different needs" and that he didn't know if patches, fixes or corrections were ever released by the company.

"There's always an evolution," Bear said. "Before any software can be used it's federally qualified and then certified by the states...Where different versions are running, I just don't know."

"They're still at that same version number," DIEB-THROAT said. "A lot of our customers still have it and there's not been any patch....They really don't care about this sort of thing. They really don't. People may find it hard to believe...in other words [the company says] 'we'll give you a machine to vote on and the rest is up to you."

"This is a very profit motivated company," the source continued, "they don't care what happens after the sale. Once they have the contract they've got the customer tied up pretty good."

Initially DIEB-THROAT claims to have been "brainwashed" by the pervasive "company line" at Diebold, that all of the talk about security concerns and the possibility that someone could hack the vote was the talk of "conspiracy theorists". Apparently that was -- and is still is -- "the company line." But after one of Diebold's head technicians who works out of their McKinney, Texas facility confirmed the gaping security hole in the software to our source, it was understood that these concerns were for real.

"Up until his confirmation, I had heard it through the grapevine, as rumors and such, but he confirmed it for me. The lead technician who worked on the software, who has a Phd in mathematics and so forth, was saying that 'this problem exists!'"

So why hasn't that technician, or anyone else from within the company spoken out until now?

"This is a culture of fear. Really. Only because we were good friends did [the head technician] confide in me that these were problems that needed to be fixed," DIEB-THROAT said.

"They all knew..."

In regards to possible remote access to the GEMS Central Tabulator by modem via phone lines, a way that hackers could easily and simply change the vote total information in the Access database, Diebold's official spokesman seemed to be similarly in denial even today.

When we asked Bear whether or not the Central Tabulator is still accessible via modem in their machines, he first denied that it's even possible, telling us "the Central Tabulator isn't accessable via modem."

When we pressed about whether or not there are still modem capabilities in the machines and software they sell, Bear admitted, "There is a modem capability, but it's up to a jurisdiction whether they wish to use it or not...I don't know of any jurisdiction that does that."

"Oh, boy. Such lies," DIEB-THROAT said in response. "There are several jurisdications that use [the modem capabilities] in the machines...Probably one of the most robust users of modems is Prince Georges County in Maryland. They've used it in every election. I believe they started in 2000. And Baltimore County used them in the November election in 2004. Fulton County and Dekalb County in Georgia may have used them in 2004 as well."

While we were unable to hear back in response to messages left with Election Officials at several of those offices prior to the publication of this article, a review of "Lessons Learned" after the November 2004 Election conducted by the Maryland state Board of Elections obtained by http://www.BradBlog.com The BRAD BLOG, confirms that modems were used to access the GEMS Central Tabulator to send in information from precincts on Election Night.

We are still reviewing the complete document, but amongst the findings in the report is that "the GEMS system froze several times during heavy modem transmitting periods requiring the system to be rebooted, which generated delays and prohibited BOE from receiving polling places' transmissions."

As well, the report concludes, "Modem lines testing in polling place still problematic; need better coordination with school system."

It also says that "7% of voting units deployed failed on Election Day" and that an additional 5% "were suspect based on the number of votes captured." http://www.BradBlog.com The BRAD BLOG hopes to have a follow-up article in the coming days which looks in more detail at the full Maryland state Board of Elections report and the alarming rate of failure for Diebold Touch-Screen voting machines.

http://www.BradBlog.com []

When we asked our source if they had any evidence to show that the security flaw described by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security was actually exploited in the 2004 election, DIEB-THROAT told us only: "I wouldn't say I have evidence that it was exploited....only that it was known. To the feds, to state officials and to Diebold. They all knew. In spite of the gap they moved forward as normal...As if it didn't exist."

To help support more reporting along these lines, please consider a
https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=TheBradBlog@cville.com&item_name=Help+Support+The+BRAD+BLOG&item_number=123456
DONATION TO THE BRAD BLOG. This is how I make my living these days -- or try to -- so your generous support means the world and makes it possible for me to continue. Thanks! - BF

Blogged by TheBradBlog@cville.com Brad on 9/15/2005 @ 11:05am PT.


Informant: Michael Mandeville

Despite elite blathering, says Charley Reese.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese224.html

by the staff of the Chester-le-Street Advertiser
advertiser.editorial@nne.co.uk

AN application for permission to erect a mobile phone mast on a north Durham housing estate has been withdrawn.

Operator O2 UK applied to Chester-le-Street District Council for approval to erect a 15-metre antenna in Pelaw Crescent, Chester-le-Street.

The application sparked outrage from residents, who said it was too near a grassed area where children play. They also said they were not convinced by reports that the masts were not harmful to people's health.

Planning officers from Chester-le-Street council prepared a report for the planning committee advising it to refuse permission.

The report said: "The height of the proposed installation, relevant to other buildings and street furniture in the area, is considered to represent a form of development inappropriate for the proposed location, which would be harmful to the character and visual amenity of the area.

"It is considered that the applicants have failed to recognise or address the concerns of local residents and parents of children attending nearby schools in relation to the public perception of harm relating to the siting of this telecommunication equipment in a residential area, close to a nursery and two schools.

"The proposal is unacceptable in that this would, because of its height and siting, represent an unacceptable visually intrusive form of development in this area."

After informing O2 of its intentions, the council received a letter from its planning agents, Turner and Partners, formally withdrawing the application. Richard Winn, of Turner and Partners, said: "We had to withdraw it because it was recommended for refusal and it is our policy to withdraw rather than have it refused.

"We also had to withdraw it because we thought the land belonged to County Highways and served a notice on them.

"We have subsequently found out it isn't, so if the planning application had been approved it would have been invalid. If it was refused, we would not have been able to appeal."

An O2 spokesman said the firm was not aware the application had been withdrawn and was awaiting confirmation from its agents.

Last month, O2 announced it was appealing against the council's decision to refuse permission to install a 12-metre signal transmitter on land south of Carlingford Road, on the Garden Farm Estate.

Burnley News 16.09.05

A DOGGED pressure group has lashed out at council plans to allow a mobile phone mast to be built on the Prairie playing fields.
Mobile phone giant O2 has been given permission to build the mast near allotments on council-owned land.

Despite a flurry of objections from annoyed residents, council leader Coun. Stuart Caddy says, as the mast is not on public land, it has the allowed the construction to take place further away from homes.
As with all mobile phone masts in the borough, it has been confirmed that emissions for the mast will be below internationally agreed levels.

Omega see "Base Stations, operating within strict national and international Guidelines, do not present a Health Risk" under:
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/771911/

However, Together Against Masts chairman Mr Dennis Cannon believes this makes little difference and residents could still be at risk from "harmful radiation". He said: "It could be that certain pieces of council land offer a potentially safer location, but the question of safer should be considered, rather than to say 'safe'.
"However, in practice, it is not necessarily the ones living the closest who are in the most danger.

"It has long been understood, and more recently confirmed in tests, that cancer clusters occur around the areas where the beams of greatest intensity strike the ground."

O2 will pay for the trees to be used to screen the mast from sight and Coun. Caddy also revealed plans to encourage mobile networks to share the masts.

In a bid to cut down on the number of new masts needed in the future, existing masts could instead be extended.

Again, Mr Cannon says he has a lot of reservations over the idea. He added: "Clearly with more than one operator there will be more than three beams of greatest intensity and so other areas will have concentrated microwave radiation.

"I understand the idea of not having a new set of people who will object to a new mast, but what about the people living close to an existing mast and who have already gone through the trauma of the original application and now find themselves with even more concentrated microwaves beaming on to their homes?

"Is it fair that they have to have even more radiation imposed upon them? Who would like to live close to a multi-powered mast?"

16 September 2005

Romford Recorder

16 September 2005

Parents who opposed a mobile phone mast being built near their children's school may soon face fighting to stop TWO masts being built.

Mobile phone company O2 wants to erect a 12.5 metre (41ft) mast and associated equipment cabinets and ancillary development on Airfield Way near its junction with Dowding Close.

This is close to the site in South End Road where T Mobile wanted to erect its mast last year and which the Parents' Association of St Albans RC Primary School in Heron Flight Avenue fought off last year.

T Mobile has now told the school it intends to make a second application to put a mast on the site even though its first application was turned down last year.

Now, the members of the Parents' Association have formed battle plans to fight off the latest planning application and have launched a petition and sending out protest letters for residents to sign and send to Havering Council.

PA committee member Simon Wiehe said: "We came back from the school holidays to find that O2 had written to the school with plans to site a mast in Airfield Way.

Underhand

"We are far from happy about this because we feel it has been underhand, by writing to the school during the holidays.

"We have only been left with a couple of weeks to make our objections known.

"Our concerns centre around the health risks of having a mast so near to the school, but Havering Council has told us we cannot object on these grounds as there is no proven link between these masts and health problems.

Omega there is a proven link between the masts and health problems. See under:
http://omega.twoday.net/topics/Wissenschaft+zu+Mobilfunk/
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Cancer+Cluster
http://www.buergerwelle.de/body_science.html

So instead we are objecting on the grounds of the location because it is planned for Green Belt land.

"Our main concerns are about the health risks though.

"In the Times newspaper last week it reported that a new report coming out states that excessive radiation can cause nausea, sleep disorders and lack of concentration in children."

The Parents' Association has also enlisted the support of Hornchurch MP James Brokenshire who is urging residents to send in their objections to the plans.

He said: "It is vital they exercise this right to ensure these latest proposals get rejected.

"I will continue to lobby for these applications to be rejected as they spoil the local environment and stand out like a sore thumb."

James Stevenson, community relations manager for O2, said: "We looked at the whole area and spoke to the council's planning people who were fairly sympathetic to us. That's why I'm surprised to hear that there are objections to it. I am very willing to meet with the residents to hear their concerns and speak to them about the health and safety issues as that seems to be their biggest fear."

Anyone wishing to object to the proposal should write to Havering Council before the closing date of Wednesday, September 28.

Send Help

Michael Moore

TRUE New Orleans - NO Gov. Aid Report

From: Michael Moore

From: mike@michaelmoore.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com

[ NOTE: To those who have donated money to The Starlight Foundation for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, we want you to know that the money we have received thus far has been sent to the following relief organizations through Michael Moore. PHB ]

***Please send and re-send this message -(around and around) - let's make the WASH. D.C. Sep. 24th MESSAGE FROM THE MASSES 'event' BIGGER than the MASSIVE UKRAINE demonstration)

We can do it! Bless your heart. We are One....

Michael Moore Writes

Friends,

Last week I closed my New York production office and sent my staff down to New Orleans to set up our own relief effort. I asked all of you to help me by sending food, materials and cash to the emergency relief center we helped set up on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain with the Veterans for Peace. We did this when the government was doing nothing and the Red Cross was still trying to get it together. Every day, every minute was critical. People were dying, poor people, black people, left like so much trash in the street. I wanted to find a way to get aid in there immediately.

I hooked up with the Vietnam veterans and Iraqi war vets (Veterans for Peace) who were organizing a guerilla, grass-roots relief effort. They were the same group that had set up Cindy Sheehan's camp in Crawford and now they had moved Camp Casey to Louisiana.

I have good news and horrible news to report. First, your response to my appeal letter was overwhelming. Within a few days, a half-million dollars was sent in through my website to fund our relief effort. This money was immediately used to buy generators, food, water, a mobile medical van, tents, satellite phones, etc.

Others of you began shipping supplies to our encampment. People in communities all over the country started organizing truck caravans to us in Louisiana. Twenty-two trucks from southern California alone have already arrived. A semi-truck from Chicago delivered ten tons of food. A group of friends in New Jersey got two 24 foot trucks, got their community to load them up with goods, and arrived in Covington tonight. Fifteen iMacs are inbound from California. One man gave us his pick-up truck and another donated truck is en route from Houston.

Your response to my appeal has been nothing short of miraculous. And it has saved many, many lives.

A number of you decided to just get in your cars and drive to our camp to volunteer to help. We now have had 150 volunteers here doing the work that needs to be done. Last night they unloaded twenty tons of food from a tractor trailer in under two hours. Each day more volunteers arrive. Everyone is sleeping on the ground or in tents. It is a remarkable sight. Thank you, all of you, for responding. I will never forget this outpouring of generosity to those forgotten by our own government.

My staff and the vets spend their 18-hour days delivering food and water throughout the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. What they have seen is appalling. I have asked them to post their daily diaries on my website
http://www.michaelmoore.com along with accompanying photos and video so you can learn what is really going on. What the media is showing you is NOT the whole story. It is much, much worse and there is still little being done to bring help to those who need it.

Our group has visited many outlying towns and villages in Mississippi and Louisiana, places the Red Cross and FEMA haven't visited in over a week. Often our volunteers are the first relief any of these people have seen. They have no food, water or electricity. People die every day. There are no TV cameras recording this. They have started to report the spin and PR put out by the White House, the happy news that often isn't true ("Everyone gets 2,000 dollars!").

The truth is that there are dead bodies everywhere and no one is picking them up. My crew reports that in most areas there is no FEMA presence, and very little Red Cross. It's been over two weeks since the hurricane and there is simply not much being done. At this point, would you call this situation incompetence or a purposeful refusal to get real help down there?

That's why we decided not to wait. And we are so grateful to all of you who have joined us. The Veterans for Peace and my staff aren't leaving (and that's why we are hoping those of you who can't get to Covington will make it to the Veterans for Peace co-sponsored anti-war demonstration in DC on September 24:
http://www.unitedforpeace.org

If you want to help, here's what we need in Covington right now:

Cleaning Supplies (glass cleaner, bleach, disinfectant, etc.) Aspirin and other basic over the counter drugs. Bottled Water Canned Goods Hygiene Supplies Baby Supplies - Baby Food Formula, diapers #4, #5, Wipes, Pedialyte Sterile Gloves Batteries - All kinds, from AA to watch and hearing aid batteries. Volunteers with trucks and cars Self contained kitchens with generators, utensils, workers

Consider sending supplies in reusable containers. List the contents on the outside of the package so the folks in the warehouse can easily sort the items.

Clothes are not needed. If you go, keep in mind that you MUST be self-sufficient. Bring a tent and a sleeping bag. People are driving to Covington from across the country and often have extra room in their cars for you or for an extra box of supplies. For more information, go to the Veterans for Peace message board: http://www.vfproadtrips.org/katrina/

Send supplies via UPS to: Veterans for Peace Omni Storage
74145 Hwy. 25 Covington LA

Thanks again for funding and supporting our relief efforts. It has been a bright spot in this otherwise shameful month.

Yours,

Michael Moore
mike@michaelmoore.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com


Informant: Michael Mandeville

Frau Dr. Merkel ist es christlich, wenn Sie tatenlos zusehen, wie durch die Mobilfunksenderstrahlung mit millionenfach überhöhten Grenzwerten unzählige Menschen erkranken?

Sehr geehrte Frau Dr. Merkel,

Sie sind Kanzlerkandidatin und Vorsitzende einer Partei die sich christlich nennt. Jesus Christus hat Menschen geheilt!!

Ist es christlich, wenn auch Sie tatenlos zusehen, wie durch die Mobilfunksenderstrahlung mit millionenfach überhöhten Grenzwerten unzählige Menschen erkranken http://www.aerzte-warnen-vor-mobilfunk.de ,
http://www.gigaherz.ch und viele z.B. durch Krebs und Leukämie (vor allem Kinder) auch sterben? Wäre es nicht wirklich christlicher, die Grenzwerte auf eine noch erträgliche Höhe zu senken, nämlich so niedrig, dass Menschen im Umfeld von Mobilfunksendern mit maximal 10 µW/m² bestrahlt werden?

Warum haben Sie - als zuständige Ministerin in der Regierung Kohl - den überhöhten Grenzwerten zugestimmt, obwohl Ihnen bekannt sein musste (Studium der Physik in der DDR), dass in russischen Studien die Gesundheitsgefahren durch die Mobilfunkstrahlung beschrieben wurden und diese Erkenntnisse zu wesentlich niedrigeren Grenzwerten in der UDSSR geführt haben??

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Bürgerinitiative Icking zum Schutz vor Strahlenbelastung
G. Pischeltsrieder

--------

Betreff: Schreiben an Frau Dr. Angela Merkel vom 22.08.2005

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

am 23.08.2005 hatte ich Ihnen Kenntnis von meinem Brief an Frau Dr. Merkel gegeben:

http://www.omega-news.info/a.t._merkel_22_08_05.rtf

Wie erwartet, hat sie nicht geantwortet!

Nachfolgendes Schreiben ging heute an sie raus.

M.f.G.
Alfred Tittmann


Via online direkt an

CDU online Mail Adresse c/o Frau Dr. Angela Merkel
17-09-05

05.50 Uhr


JEDE STIMME ZÄHLT?!


Sehr geehrte Frau Dr. Merkel,

dass Sie mein Schreiben vom 22.08.2005 unbeantwortet stehen lassen, steht sehr im Widerspruch zu Ihren nachfolgenden Äußerungen:

“....Viele von Ihnen machen sich in diesen Wochen Sorgen um die Zukunft des Landes, der eigenen Familie, der persönlichen Lebenssituation. Diese Sorgen nehme ich ernst.

Wie soll dies geschehen, wenn Sie einen gut gemeinten Dialog verweigern?

...Warum spreche ich so viel über unsere wirtschaftliche Lage? Weil es den Menschen in Deutschland nur auf Grundlage einer gesunden Wirtschaft gut gehen kann. Weil wir unseren Wohlstand, soziale Sicherheit und die Möglichkeit, den Schwachen und Bedürftigen helfen zu können, erwirtschaften müssen.

Richtig, aber doch nicht auf der Basis des „Entweder Oder“, sondern des „Sowohl als Auch“, d.h. Vorfahrt für Arbeit ja, aber mit Berücksichtigung der Ökologie!

....Aber ich weiß auch, dass Ihr Vertrauen in unsere Fähigkeit, die Wende zum Besseren einzuleiten, noch weiter wachsen muss.“

Richtig, aber wie soll dies bei ignorantem Verhalten geschehen?

In meinem Schreiben ging es um Fragen einer gesunden und menschenwürdigen Zukunft - Menschen dürfen nicht um jeden Preis dem Diktat der Ökonomie unterworfen werden.

Deswegen : Vorfahrt für Arbeit JA, aber nicht um den Preis der menschlichen Lebensqualität!

Schade, dass Sie meine Fragen nicht beantwortet haben. Ihre persönliche Glaubwürdig- und Verlässlichkeit bezüglich Ihrer Versprechungen sind damit leider infrage gestellt.


Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Alfred Tittmann
Kettelerstrasse 3
63486 Bruchköbel

17.09.2005/AT

--------

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

im Nachgang zu meiner heutigen Info bezüglich einer weiteren Erinnerung meinerseits, wegen Nichtbeantwortung meines Briefes vom 22.08.2005 an Frau Dr. Merkel, gebe ich Ihnen hiermit auch Kenntnis von dem soeben via Post eingegangenem Antwortschreiben von Frau Dr. Merkel an mich.

http://www.omega-news.info/merkel_a.t._15_09_05.pdf

M.f.G.
Alfred Tittmann

--------

Die Parteien im Demokratie-Test: Sieger Linkspartei und Grüne - CDU/CSU auf letztem Platz

http://omega.twoday.net/stories/983978/

By Richard Wright
IOW Country Press

17.09.05

THE balloon has gone up over 3G's plans for a mobile phone mast close to a listed building.

City trader Tom Milligan has twice shown Seaview villagers what to expect by tethering a helium balloon floating more than 25 metres up to represent the height of the lattice tower, its transmitters and receiving dish.

The application by the phone giant for the Fairy Hill site, 62 metres from the Grade II listed Fairy Hill House, was submitted a week after it applied for a wooden mast on land at Barnsley Farm on the outskirts of Ryde belonging to former Island high sheriff and brewery boss Anthony Goddard.

The company said it needed permission for both and they are not alternatives.

Mr Milligan, who lives next door to Fairy Hill House, told Monday's meeting of Nettlestone and Seaview Parish Council: "It is no more than 10ft away from my land and will be visible from many, many parts of the village and beyond.

"I first used party balloons to show how big the mast will be and then a bigger balloon on Tuesday last week. "If people want to see just how tall this structure will be, I am planning to repeat the exercise between lunchtime and evening next Tuesday, weather permitting."

The land on which 3G wants to build the mast is owned by Seaview resident Mary Gedling.

Fairy Hill House resident Capt John Hounsfield emphasised how close the mast would be to the listed late-Georgian mansion, built in 1780. He said further health and safety information was emerging about the effects of radiation from phone masts following the neutral stance of the Stewart Report into its effects. "It appears parts of the Stewart Report are being overriden by the Health Protection Agency but that information is so fresh that it needs further study," he said.

Cllr Sarah Doran called for the IW Council to formulate a comprehensive policy. "The Island should have a policy to control mobile phone masts. We are told they only have a range of 2km so very soon, the Island will look like a porcupine on heat," she said.

Parish council planning committee chairman Cllr Peter Tuson said the IW Council had a masts moratorium on its own land but no policy for controlling installations elsewhere. He said the mast planned for Fairy Hill would be an eyesore next to the listed building and that planned for Bullen was close to Bullen Mead Nursery, where in 2001 a mast was refused because of the unacceptable impact it would have on the countryside.

The parish council objected to both masts because of the significant impact they would have on their areas.

16 September 2005

Splenda is about to invade schools, thanks to a joint agreement between McNeil Nutritionals, which manufactures the artificial sweetener, and PTO Today, a firm that offers marketing and fund-raising help to parent groups serving kindergarten, elementary and middle-school kids.

The campaign will encourage parents and kids to use Splenda in preparing low-sugar treats for future bake sales. Some "perks" of the campaign include:

* Providing recipes for school bake sales

* Offering tips on how to incorporate fitness into a healthy eating plan

* Distributing a free bake sale kit, "Sweet Success: The Better Bake Sale Kit" for school parent groups

* Sponsoring an "Ultimate Bake Sale" contest

McNeil Nutritionals claims this "updated model" of bake sales would address concerns about nutrition and calories by providing a lower-sugar option.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050823/nytu016.html?.v=18
Yahoo Finance August 23, 2005

Dr. Mercola's Comment:

If you've been keeping up with Splenda news through my Web site, you know the great sales job McNeil Nutritionals has done to make the sweetener seem natural, healthy and more palatable to the public, lately
http://www.mercola.com/2005/jul/28/splenda_cavity.htm with the help of the FDA.

In fact, Splenda is anything but natural and healthy, and it is "made from sugar" only in the same way that gasoline is "made from plants." Splenda has been linked to a number of
http://www.mercola.com/2005/jan/8/splenda.htm toxic side effects, including shrunken thymus glands (up to 40 percent shrinkage), enlarged liver and kidneys, reduced growth rate, aborted pregnancy and diarrhea.

These bake sales are just one more marketing move,
http://www.mercola.com/2005/apr/2/splenda_propaganda.htm among many, that takes advantage of the fact that the average consumer hasn't a clue about the side effects of Splenda. If you still believe -- just because the FDA approved it -- that Splenda is at all safe for you, I urge you to review
http://www.mercola.com/2000/dec/3/sucralose_testimonials.htm my extensive testimonials page, chock full of heartbreaking stories about the toxic effects this artificial sweetener may inflict.

An interesting side note is that if you are reading this you are not in England, as we have to restrict this content from England. Tate and Lyle, the manufacturer of Splenda, has threatened legal action if we tell the truth about Splenda in the UK. Unfortunately, England has archaic libel laws that allow companies to sue media for items that are guaranteed as freedom of speech in the United States.

Related Articles:

http://www.mercola.com/2005/feb/16/splenda_marketing.htm
Splenda Marketing Accused of False Advertising, Misleading Public

http://www.mercola.com/2005/feb/2/splenda_marketing.htm
Controversy Surrounding Splenda's Deceptive Marketing Campaign

http://www.mercola.com/2003/aug/23/splenda.htm
Splenda is Not a Healthy Sweetener

More information on aspartame and Splenda on
http://www.wnho.net - click on aspartame, and
http://www.dorway.com


Source: via namaste publishing: From: Dr. Betty Martini, D. Hum Sent: Friday, September 16, 2005 8:24 PM Subject: Splenda Working its Way into your Child's School Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 14:55:12 -0400


From ECOTERRA Intl.

http://www.alternet.org/story/25418/


From ECOTERRA Intl.

http://www.motherearth.org/USboycott/cies_en.php


From InfoNature.Org