Wiltshire phone mast denied
Starmail - 5. Jan, 23:54
5
Jan
2006
Document on epidemiology of base stations
Starmail - 5. Jan, 23:52
FELONY PLEA OF GOP LOBBYIST SETS D.C. PLAYERS SCRAMBLING
Starmail - 5. Jan, 23:48
Earth to Exxon: Stop trying to drill in the Arctic Refuge!
What would you do with $25 billion? Well, if you were ExxonMobil you'd continue to insist on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, sabotage efforts to slow global warming, and try to weasel out of paying the full amount owed to the fishermen and Native Americans affected by the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, which killed hundreds of thousands of seals, otters, birds, fish and whales. That's what ExxonMobil is doing with its historic $25 billion in profits from 2005.
But we're making a difference. Wildlife supporters from across the country banded together last month to narrowly defeat ExxonMobil's latest attempt to industrialize the Arctic Refuge. This was a huge victory for the polar bears, caribou and other wildlife that call the Refuge home!
If we want to guarantee lasting protection for our wildlife in Alaska and beyond, ExxonMobil must change its ways. That's where you come in. Defenders of Wildlife and other leading conservation groups are calling for a boycott of ExxonMobil - join the boycott today!
Here's why we need you to join the boycott today: purchasing a tank of Exxon gas helps fuel the company's anti-wildlife agenda, funding misleading advertisements and lobbying efforts to industrialize in our special wild places and paying for junk science on global warming that's wrecking crucial habitat. Do you really want to line the pockets of a company that fleeces consumers at the pumps while it still refuses to pay for the devastation it caused to Alaskan wildlife in the 1988 Exxon Valdez spill?
If just 25,000 Care2 members pledge to boycott Exxon, we could have a huge impact. At current astronomical gasoline prices, with Americans spending perhaps $50 to $70 a week on gasoline our boycott would mean at least $1.25 million in lost income each week. That's $65 million a year. That should get their attention!
Since money is the only language ExxonMobil understands, it's time for all Americans to talk to them in that language. Join the boycott of ExxonMobil - sign our petition to ExxonMobil to let them know that you will not purchase their gasoline until they change their polluting ways!
Thank you for helping to protect our wildlife,
Rebecca Young, Care2 and ThePetitionSite team
P.S. In case you need another reason to boycott ExxonMobil: using existing technology to ensure our automobiles get no less than 40 miles per gallon would save four times more oil than will be produced by drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - yet ExxonMobil spends millions every year to lobby for access to the Arctic Refuge. Join the boycott today!
Thank you for signing up to receive Animals & Environment Alerts via ThePetitionSite or Care2 website! Your email address has not been bought from other sources. If you learned something interesting from this newsletter, please forward it to your friends, family and colleagues.
--------
Boycott ExxonMobil Until It Becomes a Responsible Corporate Citizen!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/705437564
But we're making a difference. Wildlife supporters from across the country banded together last month to narrowly defeat ExxonMobil's latest attempt to industrialize the Arctic Refuge. This was a huge victory for the polar bears, caribou and other wildlife that call the Refuge home!
If we want to guarantee lasting protection for our wildlife in Alaska and beyond, ExxonMobil must change its ways. That's where you come in. Defenders of Wildlife and other leading conservation groups are calling for a boycott of ExxonMobil - join the boycott today!
Here's why we need you to join the boycott today: purchasing a tank of Exxon gas helps fuel the company's anti-wildlife agenda, funding misleading advertisements and lobbying efforts to industrialize in our special wild places and paying for junk science on global warming that's wrecking crucial habitat. Do you really want to line the pockets of a company that fleeces consumers at the pumps while it still refuses to pay for the devastation it caused to Alaskan wildlife in the 1988 Exxon Valdez spill?
If just 25,000 Care2 members pledge to boycott Exxon, we could have a huge impact. At current astronomical gasoline prices, with Americans spending perhaps $50 to $70 a week on gasoline our boycott would mean at least $1.25 million in lost income each week. That's $65 million a year. That should get their attention!
Since money is the only language ExxonMobil understands, it's time for all Americans to talk to them in that language. Join the boycott of ExxonMobil - sign our petition to ExxonMobil to let them know that you will not purchase their gasoline until they change their polluting ways!
Thank you for helping to protect our wildlife,
Rebecca Young, Care2 and ThePetitionSite team
P.S. In case you need another reason to boycott ExxonMobil: using existing technology to ensure our automobiles get no less than 40 miles per gallon would save four times more oil than will be produced by drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - yet ExxonMobil spends millions every year to lobby for access to the Arctic Refuge. Join the boycott today!
Thank you for signing up to receive Animals & Environment Alerts via ThePetitionSite or Care2 website! Your email address has not been bought from other sources. If you learned something interesting from this newsletter, please forward it to your friends, family and colleagues.
--------
Boycott ExxonMobil Until It Becomes a Responsible Corporate Citizen!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/705437564
Starmail - 5. Jan, 23:45
Hazardous product warning: DECT phones
http://www.emfacts.com/weblog/index.php?p=355
Comments on DECT phones
From Katharina Gustavs:
Don, Yes, wireless cordless phones using the DECT technology (or here in Canada it usually says 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz on the base station) are the stuff nightmares are made of. I would rate it the single most trouble-causing device in modern homes. This technology was first introduced to Europe, around 1988 I believe. When I took my building biology training in Germany, Leberecht von Klitzing, a medical physicist from the University of Luebeck who observed EEG changes during cell phone radiation exposure (von Klitzing L: Low-frequency pulsed electromagnetic fields influence EEG of man. Physica Medica 1995; 11 (2): 77-80.), was one of the instructors. He told me in a personal conversation that in the beginning of the 1990s he all of sudden had infants brought to him who were perfectly healthy, but their heart beat started going crazy for no obvious reasons. As soon as the DECT cordless phone was removed from the bedroom or neighboring apartment, the infant’s heart beat went back to normal.
RF radiation emitted from DECT cordless phones have a similar pulsed low-frequency (100 Hz) signal like certain cell phone technologies (e.g. 217 Hz) and in the case of DECT phones this type of radiation easily reaches up to 30?. And the worst thing about these phones is that they do radiate 24 hours a day whether you place a phone call or not! Peak power can be up to 250 mW.
Back in 1999 Leberecht von Klitzing already told me that there are much higher frequencies occurring within human brain wave patterns than previously thought. So the ELF signals attached to a lot of wireless communication technologies are not operating in a void space, but living organisms obviously already make use of these frequency bands. Imagine Industry Canada (or the FCC or whatever the name of the agency in a country that is allowed to sell the usage of frequency bands) would have a chart at their office wall, which shows all the frequency bands already utilized by living organisms. And the most essential frequency bands are highlighted and designated as protected frequencies so they cannot be auctioned off anymore for “human consumption”.
Well, if my memory serves me right, he mentioned such numbers like 100 Hz for human brain wave frequencies. He explained that EEG monitoring instrumentation was not capable to actually pick up on the higher frequencies until recently. The first brain waves (alpha and beta) were recorded by Berger back in 1929. By now neuroscience textbooks describe a gamma frequency range, between 20 up to 60 Hz and sometimes up to 100 Hz for humans. Brain wave frequencies for rodents are documented up to 200 Hz. Gamma oscillations in the human brain seem to be related to meaningful object perception, learning and memory. (Memory-matches evoke human gamma-responses: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/5/13 ) And it looks like that certain patterns in the high frequency range (> 20 Hz) during sleep are associated with symptoms of schizophrenia and depression. (High frequency EEG activity during sleep: characteristics in schizophrenia and depression:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15683195&query_hl=12&itool=pubmed_docsum ).
In 1999 the Professional Association of Building Biology Consultants in Germany (Verband Deutscher Baubiologen
http://www.baubiologie.net ) demanded to ban the DECT cordless phone technology. In October 2002, fifty medical doctors from Germany shared their concern about negative health impacts associated with the use of 2.4 GHz cordless as well as mobile phones in the Freiburg Appeal - an initiative of the Interdisciplinary Society of Environmental Medicine (IGUMED). The Freiburg Appeal states that heart disturbances, extreme fluctuations in blood pressure and behavioral disorders among others could be observed in an increasing number of people using such mobile phone devices and demands that current digital phone technologies should be reviewed and adjusted to our biological needs. The English version of the Freiburg Appeal can be found in the News Archives of the Swedish Association for the Electrosensitive
http://www.feb.se/NEWS/news2001-2002.html
After the first results of the REFLEX study came out last summer 2005, the Association of Medical Doctors from Vienna (Austria) (Ärtztekammer aus Wien www.aekwien.at) joined the British Medical Association and issued a warning that children under the age of 16 should not be using cell phones. And in fall 2005, the Medical Doctors from Vienna even went a step further and wrote up “10 Medical Rules for Cell Phone Use” for everybody, not just children. The poster, which was sent out to all members of the association, also recommends against the use of cell phones in waiting rooms.
Here you find the original poster in German
http://www.aekwien.at/media/Plakat_Handy.pdf
Please find my English translation, which was authorized by the Ärtztekammer Wien, attached further below. You are very welcome and even encouraged to distribute it on your e-mail list.
[Don’s note: I cannot attach pdf files on this list so if you want a copy of the poster please email me.]
And while I finally sit down to write to you, I also wanted to apologize for not responding earlier to your e-mail about a year ago, in which you asked me about my opinion on RF radiation and filter technologies. It took me a little while to borrow some Stetzer filters and do some experimentation. I never had luck with those filters on the projects I was consulted on.
First of all, I would like to point out that in building biology, the first line of defense is to eliminate all AC electric and magnetic fields from the sleep environment. The installation of Stetzer filters in the best-case scenario reduces harmonics, but does nothing about the 60 or 50 Hz that can be just as damaging during sleep. So for sleep any external (transmitters) or internal (DECT cordless phones) RF sources including voltages on the home wiring should be eliminated.
Now it sounds like when you shut off the main panel, the hum is still there, which would mean that the external field is quite high and/or building components of the house seem also to go in resonance. It would be interesting to know how well the grounding system performed. The few experiments in a rural setting I did with the Stetzer filters taught me that when the grounding system of the electrical installation has a real good ground connection, the filters did not make such a huge difference, but when the grounding system is poor, the filters may first increase the actual exposure. I would agree with your assumption that certain portions of the energy must be traveling along the neutral conductor or any metal piping, which usually is not shut off in the main panel. If a system is grounded at some metal piping AND a grounding rod or plate, things usually get even worse.
It would be interesting to here how the mitigation efforts in the house at Hobart turned out and whether the installation of Stetzer filters removed the humming, which would surprise me because those filters would be unable to shield against the incoming wireless microwave radiation. I find humming worse in homes with a strong RF source nearby and that have more metal in the building components such as metal roofing, metal mesh for stucco, metal cladding, extra steel reinforcing, etc. To eliminate such humming is often a daunting task.
Once I had a client who had an entire array of cell phone repeaters right across from his windows. He opted for shielding the whole house, which seemed to be cheaper than moving his business, and it felt amazingly quiet inside afterwards. Occupants could sleep again and did not have to be bothered by humming. It was a challenging project because the original home wiring was not shielded and RF shielding and electrical wires, of course, interact.
Thanks again for your invaluable service to keep everybody connected, informed and encouraged.
With best wishes for a healthy and happy New Year, Katharina
Katharina Gustavs Building Biology Consultant
Phone: 250-642-2774 Fax: 250-642-2785 E-mail: gustavs@buildingbiology.ca
HIDDEN-SEE Building Biology Services
5237 Mt. Matheson Rd. Sooke BC V0S 1N0 Canada
http://www.emfacts.com/weblog/index.php?p=356
--------
In addition:
I have also had an experience with DECT. I have Alasdair's COM and acoustic COM, and someone asked me to help her see if the cellular antennas near her house were a possible cause for her suffering inside her home. She felt ill and she was running away from certain rooms in her house but had no explanation why. She asked her husband to sell their house and move somehwhere else because of the antennas that she sees from her window. But the cellular antennas didn't seem to affect her house - there was no radiation on the side of the antennas, but on the other side of the house- all her kitchen was irradiated, the COM was reading the maximum. She turned off the microwave, but it was still reading maximum (6.5 V/m, it could be more but the device shows up to 6.5). It turned out that the reason was a DECT phone in the kitchen - not in use DECT phone. As soon as she removed the DECT phone - her kitchen was not irradiated anymore....now she doesn't want to sell her house anymore....and she also bought Alasdair's COM in order to warn others, she shows them how their cell phones irradiate. At the same time, I was told by people who bought DECT phones that they were told in the store that DECT phones do not emit radiation at all!
.....
"he all of sudden had infants brought to him who were perfectly healthy, but their heart beat started going crazy for no obvious reasons. As soon as the DECT cordless phone was removed from the bedroom or neighboring apartment, the infant’s heart beat went back to normal."
Iris Atzmon
--------
Dear Alasdair: I appreciate this forward from Iris very much!!!
I need to "absorb the information" -- review to see whether "milligauss readings" were also done but right now I don't recall that.
The problem of having any electrical appliances/devices/meters by the head of one's bed is "so critical," it is almost impossible to fathom!!!
At first, I thought the larger electric clock radios were sort of in a category by themselves until I happened to purchase a small electric clock and discovered "identical readings" of 200 milligauss over the motor/mechanism in each case.
I am not familiar with the type of cordless phone referred to in the email; however, again, I am measuring "200 milligauss" on the "power supply" for ALL cordless phones, electronic games -- anything with a little black power supply box.
I located the mom of a 15 yr. old boy the other day who has been diagnosed with Kleine-Levin Syndrome. Their story was on CNN Paula Zahn because of the rarity of this condition that causes one to sleep too much -- sometimes for days!
As we spoke on the phone, the boy's mom removed his electric clock (I had noticed the shining numbers on TV -- nightstand next to head of bed). I "strongly suspect" disruption of his sleep/wake cycle -- circadian rhythm -- plus possibly some other "neurological effects" that are not being diagnosed, that resulted from this "too close exposure" to the clock.
Fortunately, the mom also moved the charging base for the new I-Pod that was a Christmas gift! She reported there was no phone close to head of his bed but now I also will let her know about this new information. I don't think there was a phone in his room.......
She will be addressing this issue this week at the Kleine-Levein Syndrome Foundation Board Meeting. I have sent her information by email and will be sending more by regular mail. She will let me know if she locates other families with similar situations re electrical appliances/devices that are too close to heads of beds. There are only 500 reported cases of KLS in the world.
You know, of course, the stories re my grandsons and guinea pigs and drastic health changes/problems due to sleeping (cage placed by) against "powerwall" in bedrooms.
I have requested "permission to share" information with our Minnesota Health Department regarding an extended family member's relative on other side of family and the occurrence of "a rare tumor" that almost invaded the brain of a young girl. It was "fortuitous" that the girl happend to be moved away from "powerwall" around the same time she began treatment, all the while the parents knew nothing of possible dangers. They are "trying to absorb" the information at this time.........
Most who know about my work also know that Bonnie Boyum (Minnesota) has granted me permission to share information regarding her son's death due to Leukemia. He was 23 years old when he died. She reports that he had an electric clock and small fan on his headboard.......
I need to determine whether or not I can afford your meter but wonder whether you are not finding high milligauss readings on all power supply boxes? Thanks and take care!!! Joanne
Joanne C. Mueller Guinea Pigs R Us
731 - 123rd Avenue N.W. Minneapolis, Minnesota 55448-2127 USA Phone: 763-755-6114 Email: jcmpelican@aol.com
"No ray of sunshine is ever lost, but the green which it awakens into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted for the sower to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith." - Albert Schweitzer
--------
Lloyd Morgan on DECT phones
http://www.emfacts.com/weblog/index.php?p=358
Comments on DECT phones
From Katharina Gustavs:
Don, Yes, wireless cordless phones using the DECT technology (or here in Canada it usually says 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz on the base station) are the stuff nightmares are made of. I would rate it the single most trouble-causing device in modern homes. This technology was first introduced to Europe, around 1988 I believe. When I took my building biology training in Germany, Leberecht von Klitzing, a medical physicist from the University of Luebeck who observed EEG changes during cell phone radiation exposure (von Klitzing L: Low-frequency pulsed electromagnetic fields influence EEG of man. Physica Medica 1995; 11 (2): 77-80.), was one of the instructors. He told me in a personal conversation that in the beginning of the 1990s he all of sudden had infants brought to him who were perfectly healthy, but their heart beat started going crazy for no obvious reasons. As soon as the DECT cordless phone was removed from the bedroom or neighboring apartment, the infant’s heart beat went back to normal.
RF radiation emitted from DECT cordless phones have a similar pulsed low-frequency (100 Hz) signal like certain cell phone technologies (e.g. 217 Hz) and in the case of DECT phones this type of radiation easily reaches up to 30?. And the worst thing about these phones is that they do radiate 24 hours a day whether you place a phone call or not! Peak power can be up to 250 mW.
Back in 1999 Leberecht von Klitzing already told me that there are much higher frequencies occurring within human brain wave patterns than previously thought. So the ELF signals attached to a lot of wireless communication technologies are not operating in a void space, but living organisms obviously already make use of these frequency bands. Imagine Industry Canada (or the FCC or whatever the name of the agency in a country that is allowed to sell the usage of frequency bands) would have a chart at their office wall, which shows all the frequency bands already utilized by living organisms. And the most essential frequency bands are highlighted and designated as protected frequencies so they cannot be auctioned off anymore for “human consumption”.
Well, if my memory serves me right, he mentioned such numbers like 100 Hz for human brain wave frequencies. He explained that EEG monitoring instrumentation was not capable to actually pick up on the higher frequencies until recently. The first brain waves (alpha and beta) were recorded by Berger back in 1929. By now neuroscience textbooks describe a gamma frequency range, between 20 up to 60 Hz and sometimes up to 100 Hz for humans. Brain wave frequencies for rodents are documented up to 200 Hz. Gamma oscillations in the human brain seem to be related to meaningful object perception, learning and memory. (Memory-matches evoke human gamma-responses: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/5/13 ) And it looks like that certain patterns in the high frequency range (> 20 Hz) during sleep are associated with symptoms of schizophrenia and depression. (High frequency EEG activity during sleep: characteristics in schizophrenia and depression:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15683195&query_hl=12&itool=pubmed_docsum ).
In 1999 the Professional Association of Building Biology Consultants in Germany (Verband Deutscher Baubiologen
http://www.baubiologie.net ) demanded to ban the DECT cordless phone technology. In October 2002, fifty medical doctors from Germany shared their concern about negative health impacts associated with the use of 2.4 GHz cordless as well as mobile phones in the Freiburg Appeal - an initiative of the Interdisciplinary Society of Environmental Medicine (IGUMED). The Freiburg Appeal states that heart disturbances, extreme fluctuations in blood pressure and behavioral disorders among others could be observed in an increasing number of people using such mobile phone devices and demands that current digital phone technologies should be reviewed and adjusted to our biological needs. The English version of the Freiburg Appeal can be found in the News Archives of the Swedish Association for the Electrosensitive
http://www.feb.se/NEWS/news2001-2002.html
After the first results of the REFLEX study came out last summer 2005, the Association of Medical Doctors from Vienna (Austria) (Ärtztekammer aus Wien www.aekwien.at) joined the British Medical Association and issued a warning that children under the age of 16 should not be using cell phones. And in fall 2005, the Medical Doctors from Vienna even went a step further and wrote up “10 Medical Rules for Cell Phone Use” for everybody, not just children. The poster, which was sent out to all members of the association, also recommends against the use of cell phones in waiting rooms.
Here you find the original poster in German
http://www.aekwien.at/media/Plakat_Handy.pdf
Please find my English translation, which was authorized by the Ärtztekammer Wien, attached further below. You are very welcome and even encouraged to distribute it on your e-mail list.
[Don’s note: I cannot attach pdf files on this list so if you want a copy of the poster please email me.]
And while I finally sit down to write to you, I also wanted to apologize for not responding earlier to your e-mail about a year ago, in which you asked me about my opinion on RF radiation and filter technologies. It took me a little while to borrow some Stetzer filters and do some experimentation. I never had luck with those filters on the projects I was consulted on.
First of all, I would like to point out that in building biology, the first line of defense is to eliminate all AC electric and magnetic fields from the sleep environment. The installation of Stetzer filters in the best-case scenario reduces harmonics, but does nothing about the 60 or 50 Hz that can be just as damaging during sleep. So for sleep any external (transmitters) or internal (DECT cordless phones) RF sources including voltages on the home wiring should be eliminated.
Now it sounds like when you shut off the main panel, the hum is still there, which would mean that the external field is quite high and/or building components of the house seem also to go in resonance. It would be interesting to know how well the grounding system performed. The few experiments in a rural setting I did with the Stetzer filters taught me that when the grounding system of the electrical installation has a real good ground connection, the filters did not make such a huge difference, but when the grounding system is poor, the filters may first increase the actual exposure. I would agree with your assumption that certain portions of the energy must be traveling along the neutral conductor or any metal piping, which usually is not shut off in the main panel. If a system is grounded at some metal piping AND a grounding rod or plate, things usually get even worse.
It would be interesting to here how the mitigation efforts in the house at Hobart turned out and whether the installation of Stetzer filters removed the humming, which would surprise me because those filters would be unable to shield against the incoming wireless microwave radiation. I find humming worse in homes with a strong RF source nearby and that have more metal in the building components such as metal roofing, metal mesh for stucco, metal cladding, extra steel reinforcing, etc. To eliminate such humming is often a daunting task.
Once I had a client who had an entire array of cell phone repeaters right across from his windows. He opted for shielding the whole house, which seemed to be cheaper than moving his business, and it felt amazingly quiet inside afterwards. Occupants could sleep again and did not have to be bothered by humming. It was a challenging project because the original home wiring was not shielded and RF shielding and electrical wires, of course, interact.
Thanks again for your invaluable service to keep everybody connected, informed and encouraged.
With best wishes for a healthy and happy New Year, Katharina
Katharina Gustavs Building Biology Consultant
Phone: 250-642-2774 Fax: 250-642-2785 E-mail: gustavs@buildingbiology.ca
HIDDEN-SEE Building Biology Services
5237 Mt. Matheson Rd. Sooke BC V0S 1N0 Canada
http://www.emfacts.com/weblog/index.php?p=356
--------
In addition:
I have also had an experience with DECT. I have Alasdair's COM and acoustic COM, and someone asked me to help her see if the cellular antennas near her house were a possible cause for her suffering inside her home. She felt ill and she was running away from certain rooms in her house but had no explanation why. She asked her husband to sell their house and move somehwhere else because of the antennas that she sees from her window. But the cellular antennas didn't seem to affect her house - there was no radiation on the side of the antennas, but on the other side of the house- all her kitchen was irradiated, the COM was reading the maximum. She turned off the microwave, but it was still reading maximum (6.5 V/m, it could be more but the device shows up to 6.5). It turned out that the reason was a DECT phone in the kitchen - not in use DECT phone. As soon as she removed the DECT phone - her kitchen was not irradiated anymore....now she doesn't want to sell her house anymore....and she also bought Alasdair's COM in order to warn others, she shows them how their cell phones irradiate. At the same time, I was told by people who bought DECT phones that they were told in the store that DECT phones do not emit radiation at all!
.....
"he all of sudden had infants brought to him who were perfectly healthy, but their heart beat started going crazy for no obvious reasons. As soon as the DECT cordless phone was removed from the bedroom or neighboring apartment, the infant’s heart beat went back to normal."
Iris Atzmon
--------
Dear Alasdair: I appreciate this forward from Iris very much!!!
I need to "absorb the information" -- review to see whether "milligauss readings" were also done but right now I don't recall that.
The problem of having any electrical appliances/devices/meters by the head of one's bed is "so critical," it is almost impossible to fathom!!!
At first, I thought the larger electric clock radios were sort of in a category by themselves until I happened to purchase a small electric clock and discovered "identical readings" of 200 milligauss over the motor/mechanism in each case.
I am not familiar with the type of cordless phone referred to in the email; however, again, I am measuring "200 milligauss" on the "power supply" for ALL cordless phones, electronic games -- anything with a little black power supply box.
I located the mom of a 15 yr. old boy the other day who has been diagnosed with Kleine-Levin Syndrome. Their story was on CNN Paula Zahn because of the rarity of this condition that causes one to sleep too much -- sometimes for days!
As we spoke on the phone, the boy's mom removed his electric clock (I had noticed the shining numbers on TV -- nightstand next to head of bed). I "strongly suspect" disruption of his sleep/wake cycle -- circadian rhythm -- plus possibly some other "neurological effects" that are not being diagnosed, that resulted from this "too close exposure" to the clock.
Fortunately, the mom also moved the charging base for the new I-Pod that was a Christmas gift! She reported there was no phone close to head of his bed but now I also will let her know about this new information. I don't think there was a phone in his room.......
She will be addressing this issue this week at the Kleine-Levein Syndrome Foundation Board Meeting. I have sent her information by email and will be sending more by regular mail. She will let me know if she locates other families with similar situations re electrical appliances/devices that are too close to heads of beds. There are only 500 reported cases of KLS in the world.
You know, of course, the stories re my grandsons and guinea pigs and drastic health changes/problems due to sleeping (cage placed by) against "powerwall" in bedrooms.
I have requested "permission to share" information with our Minnesota Health Department regarding an extended family member's relative on other side of family and the occurrence of "a rare tumor" that almost invaded the brain of a young girl. It was "fortuitous" that the girl happend to be moved away from "powerwall" around the same time she began treatment, all the while the parents knew nothing of possible dangers. They are "trying to absorb" the information at this time.........
Most who know about my work also know that Bonnie Boyum (Minnesota) has granted me permission to share information regarding her son's death due to Leukemia. He was 23 years old when he died. She reports that he had an electric clock and small fan on his headboard.......
I need to determine whether or not I can afford your meter but wonder whether you are not finding high milligauss readings on all power supply boxes? Thanks and take care!!! Joanne
Joanne C. Mueller Guinea Pigs R Us
731 - 123rd Avenue N.W. Minneapolis, Minnesota 55448-2127 USA Phone: 763-755-6114 Email: jcmpelican@aol.com
"No ray of sunshine is ever lost, but the green which it awakens into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted for the sower to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith." - Albert Schweitzer
--------
Lloyd Morgan on DECT phones
http://www.emfacts.com/weblog/index.php?p=358
Starmail - 5. Jan, 23:42
German soldiers sue over cancer
Starmail - 5. Jan, 23:33
Mobile mast destroyed over cancer fears
Starmail - 5. Jan, 23:30
Phone mast is vandalised
Starmail - 5. Jan, 23:17
Effect of electromagnetic field produced by mobile phones on the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD-1)
Starmail - 5. Jan, 23:15
Tory tycoon in phone mast protest
Starmail - 5. Jan, 23:07
Residents block 'ugly' phone mast
Starmail - 5. Jan, 22:55
Mobile radio changes brain activity
Starmail - 5. Jan, 22:46
Profiteure herkömmlicher Energiestrukturen: Umweltschützer fordern Energiekonzept ohne Öl, Gas, Kohle und Uran
05.01.06
Gerhard Timm, Bundesgeschäftsführer des Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND), sieht im Atomstreit innerhalb der schwarz-roten Koalition den Vorboten kommender Kämpfe um die Energieressourcen. Öl, Gas, Kohle und Uran würden als endliche Energieträger zunehmend knapp, die Ausbeutung ihrer Vorkommen schwieriger und teurer. Es sei absehbar, dass die Profiteure herkömmlicher Energiestrukturen versuchen würden, ihren Einfluss auf die Politik zu erweitern. Teile der Union würden ihren Ton gegenüber dem Koalitionspartner SPD dann vermutlich noch verschärfen. Bundesumweltminister Sigmar Gabriel müsse diese Attacken zurückweisen und sein Gewicht weiter für eine moderne Energiepolitik in die Waagschale werfen.
Die ganze Nachricht im Internet:
http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php?Nr=12619
Gerhard Timm, Bundesgeschäftsführer des Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND), sieht im Atomstreit innerhalb der schwarz-roten Koalition den Vorboten kommender Kämpfe um die Energieressourcen. Öl, Gas, Kohle und Uran würden als endliche Energieträger zunehmend knapp, die Ausbeutung ihrer Vorkommen schwieriger und teurer. Es sei absehbar, dass die Profiteure herkömmlicher Energiestrukturen versuchen würden, ihren Einfluss auf die Politik zu erweitern. Teile der Union würden ihren Ton gegenüber dem Koalitionspartner SPD dann vermutlich noch verschärfen. Bundesumweltminister Sigmar Gabriel müsse diese Attacken zurückweisen und sein Gewicht weiter für eine moderne Energiepolitik in die Waagschale werfen.
Die ganze Nachricht im Internet:
http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php?Nr=12619
Starmail - 5. Jan, 22:35
Denounce Torture
Amnesty International USA is committed to doing all it can to make 2006 the year to stop torture and ill-treatment in the “war on terror.” But we need your help to be successful. Make your commitment today by declaring your new year's resolution as taking action to help stop torture and ill-treatment in the “war on terror.” Click here to learn how Amnesty International USA’s Denounce Torture Initiative will help you keep your resolution in 2006!
http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?ID=M7130868310612138222505265
Why Now? As vocal public opposition to torture and ill-treatment grows, so does evidence that the U.S. continues to use torture and ill-treatment. In the past several months, new allegations of torture have emerged from Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan and in secret U.S. detention centers around the world, indicating that we must redouble our anti-torture efforts.
How Can I Help Stop Torture in 2006? Grassroots activism to stop torture and ill-treatment has had a tremendous impact over the past few months. When the Denounce Torture Initiative was launched this past spring, we had two aims. First, to educate a broad spectrum of people living in America about the scope of abuses being committed by the U.S. government in the name of the “war on terror.” Second, to galvanize people to take action to stop the abuses and hold perpetrators throughout the chain of command accountable.
We have been amazed by the response:
* More than 250,000 actions urging the President and Congress to stop the use of torture and ill-treatment.
* Over 200 delegations across America lobbying against torture in the district offices of members of Congress.
* Hundreds of community teach-ins to educate people across the country about the use of torture and ill-treatment by agents of the U.S. government.
* Intense grassroots phone campaigns supporting the Anti-Torture Amendment introduced by Senator McCain.
What's my next step? Click here to make your new year's resolution today.
http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?ID=M7130867310612138222505265
The Denounce Torture Initiative is committed to helping you keep your resolution by giving you tools for effective action against torture in the "war on terror," based on your own level of commitment and the amount of time you have available.
Many thanks for all you have done. We look forward to working with you in 2006 to stop torture and ill-treatment!
Sincerely,
Eric Sears
Project Manager
Denounce Torture Initiative Amnesty International
USA
http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?ID=M7130868310612138222505265
Why Now? As vocal public opposition to torture and ill-treatment grows, so does evidence that the U.S. continues to use torture and ill-treatment. In the past several months, new allegations of torture have emerged from Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan and in secret U.S. detention centers around the world, indicating that we must redouble our anti-torture efforts.
How Can I Help Stop Torture in 2006? Grassroots activism to stop torture and ill-treatment has had a tremendous impact over the past few months. When the Denounce Torture Initiative was launched this past spring, we had two aims. First, to educate a broad spectrum of people living in America about the scope of abuses being committed by the U.S. government in the name of the “war on terror.” Second, to galvanize people to take action to stop the abuses and hold perpetrators throughout the chain of command accountable.
We have been amazed by the response:
* More than 250,000 actions urging the President and Congress to stop the use of torture and ill-treatment.
* Over 200 delegations across America lobbying against torture in the district offices of members of Congress.
* Hundreds of community teach-ins to educate people across the country about the use of torture and ill-treatment by agents of the U.S. government.
* Intense grassroots phone campaigns supporting the Anti-Torture Amendment introduced by Senator McCain.
What's my next step? Click here to make your new year's resolution today.
http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?ID=M7130867310612138222505265
The Denounce Torture Initiative is committed to helping you keep your resolution by giving you tools for effective action against torture in the "war on terror," based on your own level of commitment and the amount of time you have available.
Many thanks for all you have done. We look forward to working with you in 2006 to stop torture and ill-treatment!
Sincerely,
Eric Sears
Project Manager
Denounce Torture Initiative Amnesty International
USA
Starmail - 5. Jan, 22:30
Bald ausgefischt?
In kurzer Zeit wurden Tiefseefischarten fast vollständig durch den Fischfang dezimiert.
http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/21/21712/1.html
http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/21/21712/1.html
Starmail - 5. Jan, 22:10
Hat die CIA Iran die Bauanleitung zu einer Atombombe geliefert?
In einem Buch schildert NYT-Reporter Risen zudem, wie die CIA 2004 ihr Agentennetz im Iran auffliegen ließ und daher ausgerechnet jetzt, wo die Bush-Regierung Iran ins Visier nimmt, keine Informationen mehr hat.
http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/21/21717/1.html
http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/21/21717/1.html
Starmail - 5. Jan, 22:08
Key Democrat Says Spying Violated Law
January 5th, 2006 2:28 am
By Scott Shane / New York Times
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 - The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said on Wednesday that the limited Congressional briefings the Bush administration has provided on a National Security Agency eavesdropping program violated the law.
In a letter to President Bush, the representative, Jane Harman of California, said the briefings did not comply with the National Security Act of 1947. That law requires the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to be "kept fully and currently informed" about the spy agencies' activities.
The briefings on the program under which Americans and other people in the United States are selected for eavesdropping without court warrants were limited to the so-called Gang of Eight. That consists of the Republican and Democratic leaders of each house and of the Intelligence Committees. Because of turnover in those positions, 14 members of Congress attended one or more briefings.
Ms. Harman wrote in her letter that the law allowed briefings to be limited to the eight leaders only in cases of covert action. The National Security Agency program does not qualify as a covert action, which the law says does not include activities whose "primary purpose is to acquire intelligence," she wrote.
Asked about the letter, a spokesman for the National Security Council, Frederick Jones, said, "We believe Congress was briefed appropriately on this matter."
Unlike some Democrats, Ms. Harman has defended the eavesdropping, which focuses on people in the United States who officials believe have possible links to terror suspects overseas. In a statement on Dec. 21, she said she believed that the program was "essential to U.S. national security and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities."
She has also called for a full briefing and open hearings on N.S.A. activities.
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, has said the briefings made clear that Americans would be targets of some of the eavesdropping and that Democrats had offered at least tacit approval.
http://michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5406
Informant: John Calvert
By Scott Shane / New York Times
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 - The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said on Wednesday that the limited Congressional briefings the Bush administration has provided on a National Security Agency eavesdropping program violated the law.
In a letter to President Bush, the representative, Jane Harman of California, said the briefings did not comply with the National Security Act of 1947. That law requires the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to be "kept fully and currently informed" about the spy agencies' activities.
The briefings on the program under which Americans and other people in the United States are selected for eavesdropping without court warrants were limited to the so-called Gang of Eight. That consists of the Republican and Democratic leaders of each house and of the Intelligence Committees. Because of turnover in those positions, 14 members of Congress attended one or more briefings.
Ms. Harman wrote in her letter that the law allowed briefings to be limited to the eight leaders only in cases of covert action. The National Security Agency program does not qualify as a covert action, which the law says does not include activities whose "primary purpose is to acquire intelligence," she wrote.
Asked about the letter, a spokesman for the National Security Council, Frederick Jones, said, "We believe Congress was briefed appropriately on this matter."
Unlike some Democrats, Ms. Harman has defended the eavesdropping, which focuses on people in the United States who officials believe have possible links to terror suspects overseas. In a statement on Dec. 21, she said she believed that the program was "essential to U.S. national security and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities."
She has also called for a full briefing and open hearings on N.S.A. activities.
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, has said the briefings made clear that Americans would be targets of some of the eavesdropping and that Democrats had offered at least tacit approval.
http://michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5406
Informant: John Calvert
Starmail - 5. Jan, 22:06
Cindy Sheehan urges about 750 to help stop the war and impeach Bush
http://starbulletin.com/2006/01/05/news/story02.html
Informant: root
Cindy Sheehan
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Sheehan
Starmail - 5. Jan, 22:04
Bush Reserves Right To Order Torture of Prisoners
This update on a story we have been tracking closely. Last week President Bush officially signed a bill outlawing torture of detainees. While the bill signing received significant press coverage, what Bush did following the signing has not. According to the Boston Globe, Bush quietly issued what is known as a signing statement in which he lays out his interpretation of the new law. In this document Bush declared that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. Legal experts say this means Bush believes he can waive the anti-torture restrictions. New York University Law Professor David Golove criticized Bush's move. He said ''The signing statement is saying 'I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me' "
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/05/1454235
Informant: John Calvert
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/05/1454235
Informant: John Calvert
Starmail - 5. Jan, 22:00
Abramoff-Bush: Ties That Bind?
The Bush-Cheney campaign is returning only a fraction of the contributions it received through Abramoff connections. During 2004, Abramoff was a top fundraiser for the Bush re-election effort, raising more than $100,000 for the campaign. While exact figures on how much he raised aren't known, Abramoff told the New York Times in July 2003 - months before active fundraising even began - that he had already raised $120,000 for Bush and Cheney. "And I haven't even started making phone calls," the lobbyist told the Times.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506Y.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506Y.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 21:58
Toxic exposures including EMR
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:49
Tower Trauma in Nova Scotia Canada
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:48
State Ruling Acknowledges EMF/Cancer Link
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:47
Neurological changes induced by a mobile phone
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:42
Losing Their Minds
More US soldiers than ever are sustaining serious brain injuries in Iraq. But a significant number of them are being misdiagnosed, forced to wait for treatment or even being called liars by the Army.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506N.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506N.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:40
The Death of Freedom
The Quiet Death of Freedom?
John Pilger writes that Bush has carried out the recommendations of a Messianic conspiracy theory called the "Project for a New American Century." Written by his ideological sponsors shortly before he came to power, it foresaw his administration as a military dictatorship behind a democratic facade: "the cavalry on a new American frontier," guided by a blend of paranoia and megalomania.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506L.shtml
--------
The death of freedom
FPF-fwd.: the excellent John Pilger The death of freedom + Gulag links
Fri Jan 6, 2006 03:42
FPF: After all those horrible years NOT ONE of the hundreds of people illegally held in the US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay has been charged, in court or convicted. There's no evidence of 'terrorism' by them: only terror and torture in the PNAC's Gulag*:
http://tinyurl.com/caut7
The criminals at present 'managing' and 'bleeding' The Netherlands - in the same way as the US - officially support this. The Dutch don't.
THE DEATH OF FREEDOM
The rights of ordinary people to speak out against an unjust war and atrocities unleashed in their name are being crushed. Fascism is at the door. Who else will fight it?
by John Pilger
6th Jan, 2006 - On Christmas Eve, I dropped in on Brian Haw, whose hunched, pacing figure was just visible through the freezing fog. For four and a half years, Brian has camped in Parliament Square with a graphic display of photographs that show the terror and suffering imposed on Iraqi children by British policies. The effectiveness of his action was demonstrated last April when the Blair government banned any expression of opposition within a kilometre of parliament. The high court subsequently ruled that, because his presence preceded the ban, Brian was an exception.
Day after day, night after night, season upon season, he remains a beacon, illuminating the great crime of Iraq and the cowardice of the House of Commons. As we talked, two women brought him a Christmas meal and mulled wine. They thanked him, shook his hand and hurried on. He had never seen them before. "That's typical of the public," he said. A man in a pinstriped suit and tie emerged from the fog, carrying a small wreath. "I intend to place this at the Cenotaph and read out the names of the dead in Iraq," he said to Brian, who cautioned him: "You'll spend the night in the cells, mate." We watched him stride off and lay his wreath. His head bowed, he appeared to be whispering. Thirty years ago, I watched dissidents do something similar outside the walls of the Kremlin.
As the night had covered him, he was lucky. On 7 December, Maya Evans, a vegan chef aged 25, was convicted of breaching the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act by reading aloud at the Cenotaph the names of 97 British soldiers killed in Iraq. So serious was her crime that it required 14 policemen in two vans to arrest her. She was fined and given a criminal record for the rest of her life.
FREEDOM IS DYING.
Eighty-year-old John Catt served with the RAF in the Second World War. Last September, he was stopped by police in Brighton for wearing an "offensive" T-shirt which suggested that Bush and Blair be tried for war crimes. He was arrested under the Terrorism Act and handcuffed, with his arms held behind his back. The official record of the arrest says the "purpose" of searching him was "terrorism" and the "grounds for intervention" were "carrying plackard and T-shirt with anti-Blair info" (sic).
HE IS AWAITING TRIAL.
Such cases compare with others that remain secret and beyond any form of justice: those of the foreign nationals held at Belmarsh Prison who have never been charged, let alone put on trial. They are held "on suspicion". Some of the "evidence" against them, whatever it is, the government has now admitted, could have been extracted under torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. They are political prisoners in all but name. They face the prospect of being spirited out of the country and into the arms of a regime which may torture them to death. Their isolated families, including children, are quietly going mad.
AND FOR WHAT?
Between 11 September 2001 and 30 September 2005, 895 people in total were arrested under the Terrorism Act. Only 23 have been convicted of offences covered by the act. As for real terrorists, the identities of two of the 7 July bombers, including the suspected mastermind, were known to MI5, yet nothing was done. And Blair wants to give the security services more power. Having helped to devastate Iraq, he is now killing freedom in his own country.
Consider parallel events in the United States. Last October, an American doctor, loved by his patients, was punished with 22 years in prison for founding a charity, Help the Needy, which helped children in Iraq stricken by an economic and humanitarian blockade imposed by America and Britain. In raising money for infants dying from diarrhoea, Dr Rafil Dhafir broke a siege which, accor-ding to Unicef, had caused the deaths of half a million under the age of five. [FPF: Albright - The price is worth it - CBS - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/dneux ] - John Ashcroft, the then US attorney general, called Dr Dhafir, a Muslim, a "terrorist", a description mocked by even the judge in a politically motivated travesty of a trial.
THE BUSH REGIME'S "RIGHT" TO IMPRISON AN AMERICAN CITIZEN "INDEFINITELY" WITHOUT CHARGING HIM WITH A CRIME
The Dhafir case is not extraordinary. In the same month, three US circuit court judges ruled in favour of the Bush regime's "right" to imprison an American citizen "indefinitely" without charging him with a crime. This was the case of Jose Padilla, a petty criminal who allegedly visited Pakistan before he was arrested at Chicago airport three and a half years ago. He was never charged and no evidence has ever been presented against him. Now mired in legal complexity, the case puts George W Bush above the law and outlaws the Bill of Rights. Indeed, on 14 November, the US Senate in effect voted to ban habeas corpus by passing an amendment that overturned a Supreme Court ruling allowing Guantanamo prisoners access to a federal court. Thus, the touchstone of America's most celebrated freedom was scrapped. Without habeas corpus, a government can simply lock away its opponents and implement a dictatorship.
A related, insidious tyranny is being imposed across the world. For all his troubles in Iraq, Bush has carried out the recommendations of a Messianic conspiracy theory called the "Project for the New American Century". Written by his ideological sponsors shortly before he came to power, it foresaw his administration as a military dictatorship behind a democratic facade: "the cavalry on the new American frontier", guided by a blend of paranoia and megalomania. More than 700 American bases are now placed strategically in compliant countries, notably at gateways to sources of fossil fuels and encircling the Middle East and central Asia. "Pre-emptive" aggression is policy, including the use of nuclear weapons.
The chemical warfare industry has been reinvigorated. Missile treaties have been torn up. Space has been militarised. Global warming has been embraced. The powers of the president have never been greater. The judicial system has been subverted, along with civil liberties. The former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who once prepared the daily White House briefing, told me that the authors of the PNAC and those now occupying positions of executive power used to be known in Washington as "the crazies". He said: "We should now be very worried about fascism."
THE SYSTEMATIC BRUTALITY, THE WIDESPREAD ATROCITIES, THE RUTHLESS SUPPRESSION OF INDEPENDENT THOUGHT
In his epic acceptance of the Nobel Prize in Literature on 7 December, Harold Pinter* spoke of "a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed". He asked why "the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of inde- pendent thought" of Stalinist Russia were well known in the west while US state crimes were merely "superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged".
A silence has reigned. Across the world, the extinction and suffering of countless human beings can be attributed to rampant American power, "But you wouldn't know it," said Pinter. "It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."
To its credit, the Guardian published every word of Pinter's warning. To its shame, though unsurprising, the state television broadcaster ignored it. All that Newsnight flatulence about the arts, all that recycled preening for the cameras at Booker Prize-giving events, yet the BBC could not make room for Britain's greatest living dramatist, so honoured, to tell the truth.
THE SENATE VOTE BANNING FREEDOM NEVER HAPPENED
For the BBC, it simply never happened, just as the killing of half a million children by America's medieval siege of Iraq during the 1990s never happened, just as the Dhafir and Padilla trials and the Senate vote banning freedom never happened. The political prisoners of Belmarsh barely exist; and a big, brave posse of Metropolitan police never swept away Maya Evans as she publicly grieved for British soldiers killed in the cause of nothing except rotten power.
Bereft of irony, but with a snigger, the newsreader Fiona Bruce introduced, as news, a Christmas propaganda film about Bush's dogs. That happened. Now imagine Bruce reading the following: "Here is delayed news, just in. From 1945 to 2005, the United States attempted to overthrow 50 governments, many of them democracies, and to crush 30 popular movements fighting tyrannical regimes. In the process, 25 countries were bombed, causing the loss of several million lives and the despair of millions more." (Thanks to William Blum's Rogue State, published by Common Courage Press.)
The icon of horror of Saddam Hussein's rule is a 1988 film of petrified bodies of people in the Kurdish town of Halabja, killed in a chemical weapons attack. The attack has been referred to a great deal by Bush and Blair and the film shown a great deal by the BBC. At the time, as I know from personal experience, the Foreign Office tried to cover up the crime at Halabja. The Americans tried to blame it on Iran. Today, in an age of images, there are no images of the chemical weapons attack on Fallujah in November 2004. This allowed the Americans to deny it until they were caught out recently by investigators using the internet. For the BBC, American atrocities simply do not happen.
In 1999, while filming in Washington and Iraq, I learned the true scale of bombing in what the Americans and British then called Iraq's "no-fly zones". During the 18 months to 14 January 1999, US aircraft flew 24,000 combat missions over Iraq; almost every mission was bombing or strafing. "We're down to the last outhouse," a US official protested. "There are still some things left [to bomb], but not many." That was seven years ago. In recent months, the air assault on Iraq has multiplied; the effect on the ground cannot be imagined. For the BBC, it has not happened.
The black farce extends to those pseudo-humanitarians in the media and elsewhere, who themselves have never seen the effects of cluster bombs and air-burst shells, yet continue to invoke the crimes of Saddam to justify the nightmare in Iraq and to protect a quisling prime minister - [FPF: like in Holland] - who has sold out his country and made the world more dangerous. Curiously, some of them insist on describing themselves as "liberals" and "left of centre", even "anti-fascists". They want some respectability, I suppose. This is understandable, given that the league table of carnage by Saddam Hussein was overtaken long ago by that of their hero in Downing Street, who will now support an attack on Iran.
This cannot change until we, in the west, look in the mirror and confront the true aims and narcissism of the power applied in our name, its extremes and terrorism. The usual double standard no longer works; there are now millions like Brian Haw, Maya Evans, John Catt and the man in the pinstriped suit, with his wreath. Looking in the mirror means understanding that a violent and undemocratic order is being imposed by those whose actions are little different from the actions of fascists.
The difference used to be distance.
Now they are bringing it home.
John Pilger's new book, Freedom Next Time, will be published in June by Bantam Press
Source: New Statesman
http://www.newstatesman.com/200601090004
FPF: Related links for the whole week end:
* The Nuremberg principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment." - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/byurp
* "People do not forget. They do not forget the death of their fellows, they do not forget torture and mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they do not forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of mighty powers. They not only don't forget: they also strike back." - 2005 Nobel Literature Prize winner Harold Pinter - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/9cyeq
* Who Are the War Criminals? Naming Names. - Behind every war criminal is a criminal idea - by Justin Raimondo - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/duab3
* 'The war in Iraq is illegal' - BBC: video & text-interview of the United Nation's Secretary General Kofi Annan - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v
* PNAC.info - Exposing the Project for the New American Century - Url.: http://www.pnac.info/
* Holland - an American 'Lapdog of War' - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/93c97
* Dutch 'Special Forces' Kill and Destroy for the US - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/6mpw2
* Afghanistan - Torturing and killing for 'Freedom'? - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/4nf2b
* AP - English - - Dutch F-16's at the Bagram base Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/47zvr
* Dutch Air Force web site confirming F-16 arrival in Kabul (in Dutch) - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/4wc52
* MSNBC Poll: Ninety-four percent believes that George Bush and the neocon media mislead the nation to go to war with Iraq - Url.:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8248969/
* TIME/Life poll: The Biggest Threat To Peace - Which country really poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003? TIME asked for readers' views - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/4f34
* WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 /U.S. Newswire/ - According to the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll President Bush's national approval rating has declined to 39 (today 35) percent, the lowest level during his Presidency. And among African-Americans, Bush has only a 2 percent - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/b365o
* GULAG: Russian 1970 Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzjenitsyn described the Soviet prison camp system in his best-selling book 'The Gulag Archipelago'. He has since 2000 been globally declared 'dead' by the people involved, when he published about 'the last taboo on Russia' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/bkoz8
* Reference guide to the Geneva Conventions - Url.:
http://www.genevaconventions.org
* The leaked 'Downing Street Memos' expose the criminal lies by war criminals like Bush, Blair, Berlusconi (It.) Balkenende (NL) - their collaborating media and other malignant ilk - Url.:
http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/
* The infamous US 'Lie Factory' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/8ncal
* Who's financing? - The 'Federal Reserve' and it's usurers is the absolute biggest crime against all humanity ever. - Url.:
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm
* Help all the troops - of whatever nationality - to come back from abroad! - AND WITH ALL THEIR WEAPONS, WHICH WE WERE FORCED TO PAY FOR BY TAXES - [
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm ] - We need them badly at home in many countries to fight with us against our so called 'governments' and their malignant managers - Url.:
http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/
FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.:
http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://forpressfound.blogspot.com/
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/amn3q
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl
-0-
Source:
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=97347;show_parent=1
John Pilger writes that Bush has carried out the recommendations of a Messianic conspiracy theory called the "Project for a New American Century." Written by his ideological sponsors shortly before he came to power, it foresaw his administration as a military dictatorship behind a democratic facade: "the cavalry on a new American frontier," guided by a blend of paranoia and megalomania.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506L.shtml
--------
The death of freedom
FPF-fwd.: the excellent John Pilger The death of freedom + Gulag links
Fri Jan 6, 2006 03:42
FPF: After all those horrible years NOT ONE of the hundreds of people illegally held in the US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay has been charged, in court or convicted. There's no evidence of 'terrorism' by them: only terror and torture in the PNAC's Gulag*:
http://tinyurl.com/caut7
The criminals at present 'managing' and 'bleeding' The Netherlands - in the same way as the US - officially support this. The Dutch don't.
THE DEATH OF FREEDOM
The rights of ordinary people to speak out against an unjust war and atrocities unleashed in their name are being crushed. Fascism is at the door. Who else will fight it?
by John Pilger
6th Jan, 2006 - On Christmas Eve, I dropped in on Brian Haw, whose hunched, pacing figure was just visible through the freezing fog. For four and a half years, Brian has camped in Parliament Square with a graphic display of photographs that show the terror and suffering imposed on Iraqi children by British policies. The effectiveness of his action was demonstrated last April when the Blair government banned any expression of opposition within a kilometre of parliament. The high court subsequently ruled that, because his presence preceded the ban, Brian was an exception.
Day after day, night after night, season upon season, he remains a beacon, illuminating the great crime of Iraq and the cowardice of the House of Commons. As we talked, two women brought him a Christmas meal and mulled wine. They thanked him, shook his hand and hurried on. He had never seen them before. "That's typical of the public," he said. A man in a pinstriped suit and tie emerged from the fog, carrying a small wreath. "I intend to place this at the Cenotaph and read out the names of the dead in Iraq," he said to Brian, who cautioned him: "You'll spend the night in the cells, mate." We watched him stride off and lay his wreath. His head bowed, he appeared to be whispering. Thirty years ago, I watched dissidents do something similar outside the walls of the Kremlin.
As the night had covered him, he was lucky. On 7 December, Maya Evans, a vegan chef aged 25, was convicted of breaching the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act by reading aloud at the Cenotaph the names of 97 British soldiers killed in Iraq. So serious was her crime that it required 14 policemen in two vans to arrest her. She was fined and given a criminal record for the rest of her life.
FREEDOM IS DYING.
Eighty-year-old John Catt served with the RAF in the Second World War. Last September, he was stopped by police in Brighton for wearing an "offensive" T-shirt which suggested that Bush and Blair be tried for war crimes. He was arrested under the Terrorism Act and handcuffed, with his arms held behind his back. The official record of the arrest says the "purpose" of searching him was "terrorism" and the "grounds for intervention" were "carrying plackard and T-shirt with anti-Blair info" (sic).
HE IS AWAITING TRIAL.
Such cases compare with others that remain secret and beyond any form of justice: those of the foreign nationals held at Belmarsh Prison who have never been charged, let alone put on trial. They are held "on suspicion". Some of the "evidence" against them, whatever it is, the government has now admitted, could have been extracted under torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. They are political prisoners in all but name. They face the prospect of being spirited out of the country and into the arms of a regime which may torture them to death. Their isolated families, including children, are quietly going mad.
AND FOR WHAT?
Between 11 September 2001 and 30 September 2005, 895 people in total were arrested under the Terrorism Act. Only 23 have been convicted of offences covered by the act. As for real terrorists, the identities of two of the 7 July bombers, including the suspected mastermind, were known to MI5, yet nothing was done. And Blair wants to give the security services more power. Having helped to devastate Iraq, he is now killing freedom in his own country.
Consider parallel events in the United States. Last October, an American doctor, loved by his patients, was punished with 22 years in prison for founding a charity, Help the Needy, which helped children in Iraq stricken by an economic and humanitarian blockade imposed by America and Britain. In raising money for infants dying from diarrhoea, Dr Rafil Dhafir broke a siege which, accor-ding to Unicef, had caused the deaths of half a million under the age of five. [FPF: Albright - The price is worth it - CBS - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/dneux ] - John Ashcroft, the then US attorney general, called Dr Dhafir, a Muslim, a "terrorist", a description mocked by even the judge in a politically motivated travesty of a trial.
THE BUSH REGIME'S "RIGHT" TO IMPRISON AN AMERICAN CITIZEN "INDEFINITELY" WITHOUT CHARGING HIM WITH A CRIME
The Dhafir case is not extraordinary. In the same month, three US circuit court judges ruled in favour of the Bush regime's "right" to imprison an American citizen "indefinitely" without charging him with a crime. This was the case of Jose Padilla, a petty criminal who allegedly visited Pakistan before he was arrested at Chicago airport three and a half years ago. He was never charged and no evidence has ever been presented against him. Now mired in legal complexity, the case puts George W Bush above the law and outlaws the Bill of Rights. Indeed, on 14 November, the US Senate in effect voted to ban habeas corpus by passing an amendment that overturned a Supreme Court ruling allowing Guantanamo prisoners access to a federal court. Thus, the touchstone of America's most celebrated freedom was scrapped. Without habeas corpus, a government can simply lock away its opponents and implement a dictatorship.
A related, insidious tyranny is being imposed across the world. For all his troubles in Iraq, Bush has carried out the recommendations of a Messianic conspiracy theory called the "Project for the New American Century". Written by his ideological sponsors shortly before he came to power, it foresaw his administration as a military dictatorship behind a democratic facade: "the cavalry on the new American frontier", guided by a blend of paranoia and megalomania. More than 700 American bases are now placed strategically in compliant countries, notably at gateways to sources of fossil fuels and encircling the Middle East and central Asia. "Pre-emptive" aggression is policy, including the use of nuclear weapons.
The chemical warfare industry has been reinvigorated. Missile treaties have been torn up. Space has been militarised. Global warming has been embraced. The powers of the president have never been greater. The judicial system has been subverted, along with civil liberties. The former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who once prepared the daily White House briefing, told me that the authors of the PNAC and those now occupying positions of executive power used to be known in Washington as "the crazies". He said: "We should now be very worried about fascism."
THE SYSTEMATIC BRUTALITY, THE WIDESPREAD ATROCITIES, THE RUTHLESS SUPPRESSION OF INDEPENDENT THOUGHT
In his epic acceptance of the Nobel Prize in Literature on 7 December, Harold Pinter* spoke of "a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed". He asked why "the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of inde- pendent thought" of Stalinist Russia were well known in the west while US state crimes were merely "superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged".
A silence has reigned. Across the world, the extinction and suffering of countless human beings can be attributed to rampant American power, "But you wouldn't know it," said Pinter. "It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."
To its credit, the Guardian published every word of Pinter's warning. To its shame, though unsurprising, the state television broadcaster ignored it. All that Newsnight flatulence about the arts, all that recycled preening for the cameras at Booker Prize-giving events, yet the BBC could not make room for Britain's greatest living dramatist, so honoured, to tell the truth.
THE SENATE VOTE BANNING FREEDOM NEVER HAPPENED
For the BBC, it simply never happened, just as the killing of half a million children by America's medieval siege of Iraq during the 1990s never happened, just as the Dhafir and Padilla trials and the Senate vote banning freedom never happened. The political prisoners of Belmarsh barely exist; and a big, brave posse of Metropolitan police never swept away Maya Evans as she publicly grieved for British soldiers killed in the cause of nothing except rotten power.
Bereft of irony, but with a snigger, the newsreader Fiona Bruce introduced, as news, a Christmas propaganda film about Bush's dogs. That happened. Now imagine Bruce reading the following: "Here is delayed news, just in. From 1945 to 2005, the United States attempted to overthrow 50 governments, many of them democracies, and to crush 30 popular movements fighting tyrannical regimes. In the process, 25 countries were bombed, causing the loss of several million lives and the despair of millions more." (Thanks to William Blum's Rogue State, published by Common Courage Press.)
The icon of horror of Saddam Hussein's rule is a 1988 film of petrified bodies of people in the Kurdish town of Halabja, killed in a chemical weapons attack. The attack has been referred to a great deal by Bush and Blair and the film shown a great deal by the BBC. At the time, as I know from personal experience, the Foreign Office tried to cover up the crime at Halabja. The Americans tried to blame it on Iran. Today, in an age of images, there are no images of the chemical weapons attack on Fallujah in November 2004. This allowed the Americans to deny it until they were caught out recently by investigators using the internet. For the BBC, American atrocities simply do not happen.
In 1999, while filming in Washington and Iraq, I learned the true scale of bombing in what the Americans and British then called Iraq's "no-fly zones". During the 18 months to 14 January 1999, US aircraft flew 24,000 combat missions over Iraq; almost every mission was bombing or strafing. "We're down to the last outhouse," a US official protested. "There are still some things left [to bomb], but not many." That was seven years ago. In recent months, the air assault on Iraq has multiplied; the effect on the ground cannot be imagined. For the BBC, it has not happened.
The black farce extends to those pseudo-humanitarians in the media and elsewhere, who themselves have never seen the effects of cluster bombs and air-burst shells, yet continue to invoke the crimes of Saddam to justify the nightmare in Iraq and to protect a quisling prime minister - [FPF: like in Holland] - who has sold out his country and made the world more dangerous. Curiously, some of them insist on describing themselves as "liberals" and "left of centre", even "anti-fascists". They want some respectability, I suppose. This is understandable, given that the league table of carnage by Saddam Hussein was overtaken long ago by that of their hero in Downing Street, who will now support an attack on Iran.
This cannot change until we, in the west, look in the mirror and confront the true aims and narcissism of the power applied in our name, its extremes and terrorism. The usual double standard no longer works; there are now millions like Brian Haw, Maya Evans, John Catt and the man in the pinstriped suit, with his wreath. Looking in the mirror means understanding that a violent and undemocratic order is being imposed by those whose actions are little different from the actions of fascists.
The difference used to be distance.
Now they are bringing it home.
John Pilger's new book, Freedom Next Time, will be published in June by Bantam Press
Source: New Statesman
http://www.newstatesman.com/200601090004
FPF: Related links for the whole week end:
* The Nuremberg principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment." - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/byurp
* "People do not forget. They do not forget the death of their fellows, they do not forget torture and mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they do not forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of mighty powers. They not only don't forget: they also strike back." - 2005 Nobel Literature Prize winner Harold Pinter - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/9cyeq
* Who Are the War Criminals? Naming Names. - Behind every war criminal is a criminal idea - by Justin Raimondo - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/duab3
* 'The war in Iraq is illegal' - BBC: video & text-interview of the United Nation's Secretary General Kofi Annan - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v
* PNAC.info - Exposing the Project for the New American Century - Url.: http://www.pnac.info/
* Holland - an American 'Lapdog of War' - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/93c97
* Dutch 'Special Forces' Kill and Destroy for the US - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/6mpw2
* Afghanistan - Torturing and killing for 'Freedom'? - Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/4nf2b
* AP - English - - Dutch F-16's at the Bagram base Url.:
http://tinyurl.com/47zvr
* Dutch Air Force web site confirming F-16 arrival in Kabul (in Dutch) - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/4wc52
* MSNBC Poll: Ninety-four percent believes that George Bush and the neocon media mislead the nation to go to war with Iraq - Url.:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8248969/
* TIME/Life poll: The Biggest Threat To Peace - Which country really poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003? TIME asked for readers' views - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/4f34
* WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 /U.S. Newswire/ - According to the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll President Bush's national approval rating has declined to 39 (today 35) percent, the lowest level during his Presidency. And among African-Americans, Bush has only a 2 percent - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/b365o
* GULAG: Russian 1970 Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzjenitsyn described the Soviet prison camp system in his best-selling book 'The Gulag Archipelago'. He has since 2000 been globally declared 'dead' by the people involved, when he published about 'the last taboo on Russia' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/bkoz8
* Reference guide to the Geneva Conventions - Url.:
http://www.genevaconventions.org
* The leaked 'Downing Street Memos' expose the criminal lies by war criminals like Bush, Blair, Berlusconi (It.) Balkenende (NL) - their collaborating media and other malignant ilk - Url.:
http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/
* The infamous US 'Lie Factory' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/8ncal
* Who's financing? - The 'Federal Reserve' and it's usurers is the absolute biggest crime against all humanity ever. - Url.:
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm
* Help all the troops - of whatever nationality - to come back from abroad! - AND WITH ALL THEIR WEAPONS, WHICH WE WERE FORCED TO PAY FOR BY TAXES - [
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm ] - We need them badly at home in many countries to fight with us against our so called 'governments' and their malignant managers - Url.:
http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/
FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.:
http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://forpressfound.blogspot.com/
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/amn3q
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl
-0-
Source:
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=97347;show_parent=1
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:39
Bush Ignoring Senate on Appointments
Since the Senate held a pro forma session Tuesday and then adjourned, the White House contends the second session of the 109th Congress has begun and Bush's recess appointments are valid until the following session concludes at the end of 2007.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506K.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506K.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:38
NSA Destroyed Evidence of Domestic Spying
The National Security Agency, the top-secret spy shop that has been secretly eavesdropping on Americans under a plan authorized by President Bush four years ago, destroyed the names of thousands of Americans and US companies it collected on its own volition following 9/11, because the agency feared it would be taken to task by lawmakers for conducting unlawful surveillance on United States citizens without authorization from a court.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506I.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506I.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:37
The Last Stand of the American Republic
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=369&Itemid=1
Informant: Hopedance
Informant: Hopedance
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:35
College Not Combat, Troops Out Now!
Join Cindy Sheehan, Camilo Mejia, Kathy Kelly, and students who've fought repression and won at Berkeley, SFSU, CCNY, HCC, GMU, Kent State, Hampton, and Madison, in supporting...
NATIONAL WEEK OF CAMPUS ACTION Week of March 13-17 Students Say NO to War in Iraq! College Not Combat, Troops Out Now!
On March 13-17*, students will hold events at high schools and colleges around the country demanding an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq and money for young people's education, not military recruitment. This week of action leads into the global days of protest on March 18-19, where students will join many others in marking the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and demanding to bring the troops home now!
(*Spring break alternative: Schools on spring break during March 13-17 will hold events the week of March 20)
Student week of action coordinated by the Campus Antiwar Network
http://www.campusantiwar.net RecruitersOut@yahoo.com [Full endorsement list below]
WHY YOUTH & STUDENTS NEED TO STAND UP:
The illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq has taken the lives of over 2,000 American soldiers and more than 100,000 Iraqis. It has destroyed the lives of countless more. This war affects young people everywhere, at home and abroad. Iraqis are faced with the brutality of occupation, under threat of bombs, guns, and torture. In the United States, we see our educational prospects diminished and recruitment to the military held up as our only viable future.
Now is the time for young people to stand up. And we are joined by a growing majority that sees the lies, the torture, the chemical weapons, and the corruption and arrogance of our politicians and says NO MORE.
There is a student movement bringing this message to campuses around the country: kicking military recruiters off of a dozen schools, defending free speech in the face of repressive administrators and government spying, bringing grassroots relief to New Orleans and the truth about the occupation to our schools. On the third anniversary of the war in March 2006, this movement's voice will be heard!
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Email RecruitersOut@yahoo.com to: - Endorse this day of action - If you're a student: let us know about an action being planned at your school, or ask us to put you in touch with other students near you - If you're an activist off-campus: Help organize massive protests on March 18-19. We will put you in touch with the anti-war student groups nearest you to facilitate grassroots coordination.
COLLEGE NOT COMBAT! TROOPS OUT NOW! Campus Antiwar Network http://www.campusantiwar.net
ENDORSED BY:
Organizations: AfterDowningStreet, Bay Area United Against War, Bloomington Peace Action Coalition, Goldstar Families for Peace, International Socialist Organization, Progressive Democrats of America, San Juan Peace Network, Stop the War Coalition (UK); Texans for Peace, Traprock Peace Center
Individuals: (*all affiliations for identification only)
ANTHONY ARNOVE, author, “Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal,” co-editor with Howard Zinn, “Voices of a People’s History of the US”;
CAMILO MEJIA, war resister who spent six months in military prison for refusing to return to Iraq;
CHARLES JENKS, Chair of Advisory Board, Traprock Peace Center;
CHARLES PETERSON, Holyoke Community College assaulted by security for peaceful protest;
CINDY SHEEHAN, co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace and mother of Casey Sheehan, who died in Iraq;
DAHR JAMAIL, independent journalist ; DANIEL LEWKOWICZ, National Youth Organizer, Hip Hop Caucus, and President, Community Roots at UMD;
DAVID ROVICS, progressive songwriter and musician;
DAVID SWANSON, co-founder, AfterDowningStreet.org;
DENNIS KYNE, Gulf War veteran and activist;
DIRK ADRIAENSENS, coordinator of SOS Iraq and member of the Executive committee of the Brussells Tribunal;
FRANCES CROWE, founder of Northampton Draft Information Center in 1968 and co-founder of Traprock Peace Center and Western Mass AFSC;
HOWARD ZINN, Professor Emeritus, Boston University;
JUDY LINEHAN, activist - Military Families Speakout;
JUSTINO RODRIGUEZ, HADAS THIER, and NICK BERGREEN of the “City 4, ” arrested and banned from campus for peaceful protest;
KATHY KELLY, Co-coordinator, Voices for Creative Nonviolence;
MAX WATTS, writer and activist (Australia);
MICHAEL HOFFMAN of the “SFSU 3,” who faced campus repression for peaceful protest;
NATYLIE BALDWIN, Mt. Diablo Peace & Justice Center:
NORMAN SOLOMON, author, “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning us to Death”;
PAOLA PISI, editor Uruknet;
PAUL PRYSE, Madison student threatened with expulsion for peaceful protest;
RANDY KEHLER, co-founder, Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign; co-founder Traprock Peace Center; Imprisoned Vietnam-era Draft Resister;
SNEHAL SHINGAVI, RACHEL ODES and MICHAEL SMITH (the Berkeley 3);
STAN GOFF, Master Sergeant Retired, US Army;
SUNNY MILLER, Executive Director, Traprock Peace Center;
TARIQ KHAN, George Mason University student and Air Force vet assaulted and arrested for peaceful protest;
TIM CARPENTER, Director of PDA;
TODD CHRETIEN, Green Party Candidate for U.S. Senate, California;
WARD REILLY, SE National Contact - Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Baton Rouge
Charles Jenks
Chair of Advisory Board and Web Manager Traprock Peace Center
103A Keets Road Deerfield, MA 01342
413-773-7427 fax 413-773-7507
http://www.traprockpeace.org
From ufpj-news
NATIONAL WEEK OF CAMPUS ACTION Week of March 13-17 Students Say NO to War in Iraq! College Not Combat, Troops Out Now!
On March 13-17*, students will hold events at high schools and colleges around the country demanding an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq and money for young people's education, not military recruitment. This week of action leads into the global days of protest on March 18-19, where students will join many others in marking the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and demanding to bring the troops home now!
(*Spring break alternative: Schools on spring break during March 13-17 will hold events the week of March 20)
Student week of action coordinated by the Campus Antiwar Network
http://www.campusantiwar.net RecruitersOut@yahoo.com [Full endorsement list below]
WHY YOUTH & STUDENTS NEED TO STAND UP:
The illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq has taken the lives of over 2,000 American soldiers and more than 100,000 Iraqis. It has destroyed the lives of countless more. This war affects young people everywhere, at home and abroad. Iraqis are faced with the brutality of occupation, under threat of bombs, guns, and torture. In the United States, we see our educational prospects diminished and recruitment to the military held up as our only viable future.
Now is the time for young people to stand up. And we are joined by a growing majority that sees the lies, the torture, the chemical weapons, and the corruption and arrogance of our politicians and says NO MORE.
There is a student movement bringing this message to campuses around the country: kicking military recruiters off of a dozen schools, defending free speech in the face of repressive administrators and government spying, bringing grassroots relief to New Orleans and the truth about the occupation to our schools. On the third anniversary of the war in March 2006, this movement's voice will be heard!
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Email RecruitersOut@yahoo.com to: - Endorse this day of action - If you're a student: let us know about an action being planned at your school, or ask us to put you in touch with other students near you - If you're an activist off-campus: Help organize massive protests on March 18-19. We will put you in touch with the anti-war student groups nearest you to facilitate grassroots coordination.
COLLEGE NOT COMBAT! TROOPS OUT NOW! Campus Antiwar Network http://www.campusantiwar.net
ENDORSED BY:
Organizations: AfterDowningStreet, Bay Area United Against War, Bloomington Peace Action Coalition, Goldstar Families for Peace, International Socialist Organization, Progressive Democrats of America, San Juan Peace Network, Stop the War Coalition (UK); Texans for Peace, Traprock Peace Center
Individuals: (*all affiliations for identification only)
ANTHONY ARNOVE, author, “Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal,” co-editor with Howard Zinn, “Voices of a People’s History of the US”;
CAMILO MEJIA, war resister who spent six months in military prison for refusing to return to Iraq;
CHARLES JENKS, Chair of Advisory Board, Traprock Peace Center;
CHARLES PETERSON, Holyoke Community College assaulted by security for peaceful protest;
CINDY SHEEHAN, co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace and mother of Casey Sheehan, who died in Iraq;
DAHR JAMAIL, independent journalist ; DANIEL LEWKOWICZ, National Youth Organizer, Hip Hop Caucus, and President, Community Roots at UMD;
DAVID ROVICS, progressive songwriter and musician;
DAVID SWANSON, co-founder, AfterDowningStreet.org;
DENNIS KYNE, Gulf War veteran and activist;
DIRK ADRIAENSENS, coordinator of SOS Iraq and member of the Executive committee of the Brussells Tribunal;
FRANCES CROWE, founder of Northampton Draft Information Center in 1968 and co-founder of Traprock Peace Center and Western Mass AFSC;
HOWARD ZINN, Professor Emeritus, Boston University;
JUDY LINEHAN, activist - Military Families Speakout;
JUSTINO RODRIGUEZ, HADAS THIER, and NICK BERGREEN of the “City 4, ” arrested and banned from campus for peaceful protest;
KATHY KELLY, Co-coordinator, Voices for Creative Nonviolence;
MAX WATTS, writer and activist (Australia);
MICHAEL HOFFMAN of the “SFSU 3,” who faced campus repression for peaceful protest;
NATYLIE BALDWIN, Mt. Diablo Peace & Justice Center:
NORMAN SOLOMON, author, “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning us to Death”;
PAOLA PISI, editor Uruknet;
PAUL PRYSE, Madison student threatened with expulsion for peaceful protest;
RANDY KEHLER, co-founder, Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign; co-founder Traprock Peace Center; Imprisoned Vietnam-era Draft Resister;
SNEHAL SHINGAVI, RACHEL ODES and MICHAEL SMITH (the Berkeley 3);
STAN GOFF, Master Sergeant Retired, US Army;
SUNNY MILLER, Executive Director, Traprock Peace Center;
TARIQ KHAN, George Mason University student and Air Force vet assaulted and arrested for peaceful protest;
TIM CARPENTER, Director of PDA;
TODD CHRETIEN, Green Party Candidate for U.S. Senate, California;
WARD REILLY, SE National Contact - Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Baton Rouge
Charles Jenks
Chair of Advisory Board and Web Manager Traprock Peace Center
103A Keets Road Deerfield, MA 01342
413-773-7427 fax 413-773-7507
http://www.traprockpeace.org
From ufpj-news
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:33
How does the mobile radio influence biological systems?
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:28
Mobile radio: will the illness costs explode soon?
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:27
Bobbies to be 'guinea pigs' testing cancer fear radios
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:25
Cronies At The FEC
by James Sample, TomPaine.com
Congress just helped Bush sneak through appointees who will further weaken oversight of federal elections in America.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060105/cronies_at_the_fec.php
Congress just helped Bush sneak through appointees who will further weaken oversight of federal elections in America.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060105/cronies_at_the_fec.php
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:24
The NSA eavesdropping revelation is a threat to the separation of powers
J. Edgar Hoover With Supercomputers
by Ray McGovern, TomPaine.com
The NSA eavesdropping revelation is more than just an diminishment of civil liberties. It's a threat to the separation of powers.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060105/j_edgar_hoover_with_supercomputers.php
by Ray McGovern, TomPaine.com
The NSA eavesdropping revelation is more than just an diminishment of civil liberties. It's a threat to the separation of powers.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060105/j_edgar_hoover_with_supercomputers.php
Starmail - 5. Jan, 19:22
Is your laptop ruining your sex life?
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:33
Is driving while dialing worth it?
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:33
Mass demonstration with more than 100.000 participants prevents High-voltage power lines
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:31
T-Mobile issues mobile mast warning
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:29
Occupational EMF library hazard reported in Japan
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:27
Orange ordered to cover phone tower risks
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:26
POLICE RADIOS GAVE US BREAST CANCER
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:25
Industry Member Becomes Cell Tower Activist
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:22
Non-thermal effects are based also upon resonance
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:21
Cellular telephones and effects on the brain
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:16
They don't tell him anything
The Free Press
by Molly Ivins
01/03/06
My theory is that they don't tell him anything, that's why the president keeps sounding like he doesn't know what he's talking about. There he was at Brooke Army Medical Center over the weekend, once again getting it wrong: 'I can say that if somebody from al-Qaida's calling you, we'd like to know why. In the meantime, this program is conscious of people's civil liberties, as am I. This is a limited program ... I repeat, limited. And it's limited to calls from outside the United States, to calls within the United States.' So then the White House had to go back and explain that, well, no, actually, the National Security Agency's domestic spying program is not limited to calls from outside the United States, or to calls from people known or even suspected of being with al-Qaida. Turns out thousands of Americans and resident foreigners have been or are being monitored and recorded by the NSA...
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2006/1290
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
by Molly Ivins
01/03/06
My theory is that they don't tell him anything, that's why the president keeps sounding like he doesn't know what he's talking about. There he was at Brooke Army Medical Center over the weekend, once again getting it wrong: 'I can say that if somebody from al-Qaida's calling you, we'd like to know why. In the meantime, this program is conscious of people's civil liberties, as am I. This is a limited program ... I repeat, limited. And it's limited to calls from outside the United States, to calls within the United States.' So then the White House had to go back and explain that, well, no, actually, the National Security Agency's domestic spying program is not limited to calls from outside the United States, or to calls from people known or even suspected of being with al-Qaida. Turns out thousands of Americans and resident foreigners have been or are being monitored and recorded by the NSA...
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2006/1290
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:11
The spy plan's spoiler
Los Angeles Times
by staff
01/04/06
James B. Comey can hardly be considered soft on terrorism. As deputy attorney general, he has been one of the Bush administration's chief prosecutors of the war on terror, pursuing accused bombers and terrorists from Riyadh to Chicago. So his refusal to approve the administration's warrantless wiretaps of Americans cannot simply be dismissed as the rantings of an Al Qaeda apologist. ... Last, and most important, the NSA's surveillance program is an affront to the American system of checks and balances -- and Americans' right to privacy as guaranteed by the 4th Amendment. The president fails to grasp this point. Asked Sunday what he'd say to Americans worried about violations of their privacy, Bush responded with a breathtaking non sequitur. 'If somebody from Al Qaeda is calling you,' he said, 'we'd like to know why.' So, no doubt, would James Comey. But at least he understands that, even in a time of war, the government is not free to simply tap your phone to find out who's calling you and why...
http://tinyurl.com/ajfad
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
by staff
01/04/06
James B. Comey can hardly be considered soft on terrorism. As deputy attorney general, he has been one of the Bush administration's chief prosecutors of the war on terror, pursuing accused bombers and terrorists from Riyadh to Chicago. So his refusal to approve the administration's warrantless wiretaps of Americans cannot simply be dismissed as the rantings of an Al Qaeda apologist. ... Last, and most important, the NSA's surveillance program is an affront to the American system of checks and balances -- and Americans' right to privacy as guaranteed by the 4th Amendment. The president fails to grasp this point. Asked Sunday what he'd say to Americans worried about violations of their privacy, Bush responded with a breathtaking non sequitur. 'If somebody from Al Qaeda is calling you,' he said, 'we'd like to know why.' So, no doubt, would James Comey. But at least he understands that, even in a time of war, the government is not free to simply tap your phone to find out who's calling you and why...
http://tinyurl.com/ajfad
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:09
Sun Tzu and the art of spying
AlterNet
by Noah Leavitt
01/05/06
Last week, White House spokeperson Trent Duffy provided the Bush administration's rationale for its extralegal program to spy on United States citizens. Duffy quipped: 'The fact is that Al Quaida's play book is not printed on Page 1, and when America's is, it has serious ramifications. You don't need to be Sun Tzu to understand that.' Duffy was referencing the 'big idea' of Sun Tzu's seminal work, 'The Art of War,' which could be stated as 'the ideal strategy is to win without fighting -- to defeat the enemy before combat becomes necessary.' It was an odd but telling comment, and worth exploring for the critical insights it provides about Bush's views on spying and executive branch power...
http://www.alternet.org/rights/30394/
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
by Noah Leavitt
01/05/06
Last week, White House spokeperson Trent Duffy provided the Bush administration's rationale for its extralegal program to spy on United States citizens. Duffy quipped: 'The fact is that Al Quaida's play book is not printed on Page 1, and when America's is, it has serious ramifications. You don't need to be Sun Tzu to understand that.' Duffy was referencing the 'big idea' of Sun Tzu's seminal work, 'The Art of War,' which could be stated as 'the ideal strategy is to win without fighting -- to defeat the enemy before combat becomes necessary.' It was an odd but telling comment, and worth exploring for the critical insights it provides about Bush's views on spying and executive branch power...
http://www.alternet.org/rights/30394/
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:07
Bush's war on professionals
Salon
by Sidney Blumenthal
01/05/06
[T]here is a consistency between his absence of fervor in discovering who was behind the outing of Plame and his furor over the reporting of warrantless NSA domestic spying. In the Plame case, the administration officials who spun her name to conservative columnist Robert Novak and others intended to punish and intimidate former ambassador Joseph Wilson for having revealed that a central element of the administration case for the Iraq war was bogus. In the NSA case, Bush is also attempting to crush whistle-blowers. Bush's war on professionals has been fought in nearly every department and agency of the government, from intelligence to Interior, from the Justice Department to the Drug Enforcement Administration, in order to suppress contrary analysis on issues from weapons of mass destruction to global warming, from voting rights to the morning-after pill. Without whistle-blowers on the inside, there are no press reports on the outside...
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/01/05/spying/
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
by Sidney Blumenthal
01/05/06
[T]here is a consistency between his absence of fervor in discovering who was behind the outing of Plame and his furor over the reporting of warrantless NSA domestic spying. In the Plame case, the administration officials who spun her name to conservative columnist Robert Novak and others intended to punish and intimidate former ambassador Joseph Wilson for having revealed that a central element of the administration case for the Iraq war was bogus. In the NSA case, Bush is also attempting to crush whistle-blowers. Bush's war on professionals has been fought in nearly every department and agency of the government, from intelligence to Interior, from the Justice Department to the Drug Enforcement Administration, in order to suppress contrary analysis on issues from weapons of mass destruction to global warming, from voting rights to the morning-after pill. Without whistle-blowers on the inside, there are no press reports on the outside...
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/01/05/spying/
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:04
All the talk of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq is just that: talk
Troop reduction legerdemain
AntiWar.Com
by Charles Pena
01/05/06
Ultimately, all the talk of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq is just that: talk designed to create the illusion that the administration is serious about ending the occupation to appease restless voters. And the reason for all the talk should be abundantly clear: the looming 2006 midterm elections that threaten to unseat Republican control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill once said that 'all politics is local,' and President Bush understands that local politics means here in the United States, not in Iraq. But just because he is talking the talk does not mean he will walk the walk...
http://www.antiwar.com/pena/?articleid=8344
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
AntiWar.Com
by Charles Pena
01/05/06
Ultimately, all the talk of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq is just that: talk designed to create the illusion that the administration is serious about ending the occupation to appease restless voters. And the reason for all the talk should be abundantly clear: the looming 2006 midterm elections that threaten to unseat Republican control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill once said that 'all politics is local,' and President Bush understands that local politics means here in the United States, not in Iraq. But just because he is talking the talk does not mean he will walk the walk...
http://www.antiwar.com/pena/?articleid=8344
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 5. Jan, 18:01
The Bush administration's continuing insistence that it is above the law
Taking a leak
Kn@ppster
by Thomas L. Knapp
01/04/06
The disclosure of the program's existence and its criminal nature did not damage the national security; it only damaged the president's reputation. It did not endanger the United States; it only endangered the president's ability to continue committing crimes with impunity. If there's any parallel between the Plame case and this one, that parallel is to be found in the Bush administration's continuing insistence that it is above the law. To their everlasting shame, Malkin and friends' political raison d'etre seems to have become defending that insistence at all costs...
http://knappster.blogspot.com/2006/01/taking-leak.html
Kn@ppster
by Thomas L. Knapp
01/04/06
The disclosure of the program's existence and its criminal nature did not damage the national security; it only damaged the president's reputation. It did not endanger the United States; it only endangered the president's ability to continue committing crimes with impunity. If there's any parallel between the Plame case and this one, that parallel is to be found in the Bush administration's continuing insistence that it is above the law. To their everlasting shame, Malkin and friends' political raison d'etre seems to have become defending that insistence at all costs...
http://knappster.blogspot.com/2006/01/taking-leak.html
Starmail - 5. Jan, 17:58
The unrestrained presidency
Mother Jones
by Tom Engelhardt
01/04/06
As 2006 begins, we seem to be at a not-completely-unfamiliar crossroads in the long history of the American imperial presidency. It grew up, shedding presidential constraints, in the post-World War II years as part of the rise of the national security state and the military-industrial complex. It reached its constraint-less apogee with Richard Nixon's presidency and what became known as the Watergate scandal -- an event marked by Nixon's attempt to create his own private national security apparatus which he directed to secretly commit various high crimes and misdemeanors for him. It was as close as we came -- until now -- to a presidential coup d'etat that might functionally have abrogated the Constitution...
http://tinyurl.com/cdv47
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
by Tom Engelhardt
01/04/06
As 2006 begins, we seem to be at a not-completely-unfamiliar crossroads in the long history of the American imperial presidency. It grew up, shedding presidential constraints, in the post-World War II years as part of the rise of the national security state and the military-industrial complex. It reached its constraint-less apogee with Richard Nixon's presidency and what became known as the Watergate scandal -- an event marked by Nixon's attempt to create his own private national security apparatus which he directed to secretly commit various high crimes and misdemeanors for him. It was as close as we came -- until now -- to a presidential coup d'etat that might functionally have abrogated the Constitution...
http://tinyurl.com/cdv47
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 5. Jan, 17:56
Groups go to court over wiretap rule for Internet calls
Foster's Online
01/04/06
A new federal regulation making it easier for law enforcement to tap Internet phone calls is being challenged in court. Privacy and technology groups asked the federal appeals court in Washington on Tuesday to overturn a Federal Communications Commission rule that expands wiretapping laws to cover Internet calls -- or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Law enforcement agencies already can obtain a subpoena for the contents of VoIP calls from Internet access providers. But the FBI and others want the ability to capture the technology live and they want systems designed so it would be easy to do that. 'The whole process of innovation on the Internet would be seriously damaged,' said John Morris, staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology...
http://tinyurl.com/a8sh4
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
01/04/06
A new federal regulation making it easier for law enforcement to tap Internet phone calls is being challenged in court. Privacy and technology groups asked the federal appeals court in Washington on Tuesday to overturn a Federal Communications Commission rule that expands wiretapping laws to cover Internet calls -- or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Law enforcement agencies already can obtain a subpoena for the contents of VoIP calls from Internet access providers. But the FBI and others want the ability to capture the technology live and they want systems designed so it would be easy to do that. 'The whole process of innovation on the Internet would be seriously damaged,' said John Morris, staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology...
http://tinyurl.com/a8sh4
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 5. Jan, 17:52
Supreme Court: US can "launder" Padilla kidnapping with charges
Indianapolis Star
01/04/06
The Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to let the military transfer accused 'enemy combatant' Jose Padilla to Miami to face criminal charges in at least a temporary victory for the Bush administration. The justices overruled a lower court, which had attempted to block the transfer as part of a rebuke to the White House. The high court said it would decide later whether to consider the inmate's argument that President Bush overstepped his authority by ordering Padilla's indefinite detention in 2002...
http://tinyurl.com/djt24
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
01/04/06
The Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to let the military transfer accused 'enemy combatant' Jose Padilla to Miami to face criminal charges in at least a temporary victory for the Bush administration. The justices overruled a lower court, which had attempted to block the transfer as part of a rebuke to the White House. The high court said it would decide later whether to consider the inmate's argument that President Bush overstepped his authority by ordering Padilla's indefinite detention in 2002...
http://tinyurl.com/djt24
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 5. Jan, 17:49
FISA court seeks answers on Bush spy plot
Washington Post
01/05/06
The members of a secret federal court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases are scheduled to receive a classified briefing Monday from top Justice Department and intelligence officials about a controversial warrantless-eavesdropping program, according to sources familiar with the arrangements. Several judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said they want to hear directly from administration officials why President Bush believed he had the authority to order, without the court's permission, wiretapping of some phone calls and e-mails after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ... The court is made up of 11 judges who, on a rotating basis, hear government applications for surveillance warrants. But only the presiding judge, currently Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, was notified of the government eavesdropping program. One judge, James Robertson, who also serves on the federal bench in Washington, resigned his seat on the surveillance court in protest shortly after the wiretapping was revealed by the New York Times in mid-December...
http://tinyurl.com/bppx6
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
01/05/06
The members of a secret federal court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases are scheduled to receive a classified briefing Monday from top Justice Department and intelligence officials about a controversial warrantless-eavesdropping program, according to sources familiar with the arrangements. Several judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said they want to hear directly from administration officials why President Bush believed he had the authority to order, without the court's permission, wiretapping of some phone calls and e-mails after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ... The court is made up of 11 judges who, on a rotating basis, hear government applications for surveillance warrants. But only the presiding judge, currently Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, was notified of the government eavesdropping program. One judge, James Robertson, who also serves on the federal bench in Washington, resigned his seat on the surveillance court in protest shortly after the wiretapping was revealed by the New York Times in mid-December...
http://tinyurl.com/bppx6
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 5. Jan, 17:47
Return to Organic Cotton & Avoid the Bt-Cotton Trap
Starmail - 5. Jan, 16:37
The largest scandal to hit the capital in decades
Incoming
William Rivers Pitt writes: All of official Washington is at this moment waiting with bated breath for the avalanche. Jack Abramoff, the disgraced super-lobbyist, has made a plea agreement in the massive prosecution against him and his cronies. Every talking head who has spoken on the subject has stated bluntly that the fallout from this plea deal will almost certainly result in the largest scandal to hit the capital in decades.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506Z.shtml
William Rivers Pitt writes: All of official Washington is at this moment waiting with bated breath for the avalanche. Jack Abramoff, the disgraced super-lobbyist, has made a plea agreement in the massive prosecution against him and his cronies. Every talking head who has spoken on the subject has stated bluntly that the fallout from this plea deal will almost certainly result in the largest scandal to hit the capital in decades.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506Z.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 16:13
The heat is on - Object of the week: the microwave oven
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:59
EMF effects from cellular phones transmission towers
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:49
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - Is prolonged exposure to environmental level powerline frequency electromagnetic fields a co-factor to consider in treatment?
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:48
Electromagnetic Field Sensitivity
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:41
Legal threat to police radio network
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:38
Don't Hold the Phone: Various Testimonies
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:33
EFFECTS OF VERY LOW INTENSITY RFR
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:24
Mobile masts fear after two friends die
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:23
I have recently complained to my works department about my Nokia mobile phone
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:21
Antenna assembly was placed on the roof top Portland, Oregon
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:20
Inoperable malignant brain tumor
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:19
History of health problems related to Cellular telephone use
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:17
We Are Being Roasted Alive By Phone Mast
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:15
Letter from Dr George Carlo to the Chairman and CEO of AT&T
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:14
Emergency radios can jam patients' lifelines
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:09
Soldier's health damage due to radar radiation recognized as injury at work
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:07
EMF Hypersensitivity - Tower Trauma In Canada
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:05
Alex would like people to know his story
Starmail - 5. Jan, 15:00
Testimonial of Dalana MCaren
Starmail - 5. Jan, 14:49
Research into possible health effects, Sweden
Starmail - 5. Jan, 14:48
Mobile phones and health: a UK perspective
Starmail - 5. Jan, 14:42
Intensity of electric and magnetic fields from power lines
Starmail - 5. Jan, 14:40
New guide for planners and mobile phone operators, and the code of best practice encouraging greater consultation between mobile phone operators, local authorities and local communities
Starmail - 5. Jan, 14:34
Microwave exposure from cellular phone base stations
Starmail - 5. Jan, 14:28
THE MELATONIN HYPOTHESIS - AN INTRODUCTION
Starmail - 5. Jan, 14:26
Army's secret 'people zapper' plans
Starmail - 5. Jan, 14:22
Die Kombilohn-Debatte verschleiert nur das Scheitern von Hartz IV
"Alle paar Monate eine neue Idee"
Dass Kombilöhne kaum Arbeitsplätze schaffen, ist längst nachgewiesen, sagt Thomas Münch, Professor im Fachbereich Sozialarbeit an der FH Düsseldorf. Die Kombilohn-Debatte verschleiere nur das Scheitern von Hartz IV. Interview Dirk Eckert in der taz NRW vom 4.1.2006
http://www.taz.de/pt/2006/01/04/a0022.nf/text
Aus: LabourNet, 5. Januar 2006
Dass Kombilöhne kaum Arbeitsplätze schaffen, ist längst nachgewiesen, sagt Thomas Münch, Professor im Fachbereich Sozialarbeit an der FH Düsseldorf. Die Kombilohn-Debatte verschleiere nur das Scheitern von Hartz IV. Interview Dirk Eckert in der taz NRW vom 4.1.2006
http://www.taz.de/pt/2006/01/04/a0022.nf/text
Aus: LabourNet, 5. Januar 2006
Starmail - 5. Jan, 14:19
Die Gesellschaft des Ich - Die Wiederkehr des ordinären Kapitalismus - Die Globalisierung der Ungleichheit
Langfassung der Artikelserie von Winfried Wolf, zuerst erschienen in der jungen Welt im Dezember 2005. Inhalt: Die Globalisierung der Ungleichheit; Der kapitalistischen Krisenzyklus – Entzaubertes BRD-„Wirtschaftswunder“; Die politische Ökonomie von Reich und Arm; Krise des Profits – Antwort des Kapitals; Die Gesellschaft des Ich, Ich, Ich. Insgesamt 32 Seiten als (156kB pdf)
http://www.labournet.de/diskussion/wipo/allg/wwolf.pdf
Aus: LabourNet, 5. Januar 2006
http://www.labournet.de/diskussion/wipo/allg/wwolf.pdf
Aus: LabourNet, 5. Januar 2006
Starmail - 5. Jan, 14:17
Noch mehr europaweiter Protest - Stoppt den Bolkestein-Hammer!
„Die EU-Richtlinie für Dienstleistungen in Europa muss verhindert werden – wir brauchen soziale, ökologische Regeln und demokratische Kontrolle. Wir rufen auf zur Beteiligung an der europäischen Demonstration am 11. Februar 06 in Strasbourg. Wir unterstützen die Kundgebungen in Berlin und anderen Hauptstädten und die Aktionen am 14.2. in Strasbourg und anderswo…“ Aufruf vom attac-Bundesbüro vom 04.12.2006
http://www.labournet.de/diskussion/eu/sopo/bolke_attac110206.pdf
DGB und ATTAC lösen Erstaunen aus
„Wünsche der regionalen Initiativen deutschlandweit übergangen. Das Erwerbslosen Forum Deutschland ist über die 2 Demonstrationsaufrufe gegen die EU Dienstleistungsrichtliniedes DGB und ATTAC in Berlin und Straßburg erstaunt. Ähnlich äußerte sich auch das Aktionsbündnis Sozialproteste, ein Zusammenschluss vieler regionaler sozialer Initiativen in der Bundesrepublik. Der DGB mobilisiert zum Dienstag, 14. Februar nach Straßburg und ATTAC plant, zum 11.02.2006 eine Beteiligung an der Großdemonstration gegen die Bolkesteinrichtlinie in Straßburg, ruft aber für den gleichen Tag zu Aktionen in Berlin auf. Damit setzt sich ATTAC über regionale Strukturen und Wünsche der Initiativen und Netzwerke in Berlin hinweg, die bisher eine Beteiligung an der Großdemonstration am 11.02.2006 in Straßburg geplant haben. In diesen Zusammenhang weist der Berliner Politikwissenschaftler Peter Grottian darauf hin, dass entgegen seiner gestrigen Terminbekanntgabe zur Großdemo in Straßburg, er nicht Samstag den 14. Januar 2006 gemeint hatte, sondern Samstag den 11. Februar 2006… Presseerklärung von Martin Behrsing („Erwerbslosen Forum Deutschland“, Bonn) vom 02.01.06 (pdf)
http://www.erwerbslosenforum.de/presse/02_01_06.pdf
Aus: LabourNet, 5. Januar 2006
http://www.labournet.de/diskussion/eu/sopo/bolke_attac110206.pdf
DGB und ATTAC lösen Erstaunen aus
„Wünsche der regionalen Initiativen deutschlandweit übergangen. Das Erwerbslosen Forum Deutschland ist über die 2 Demonstrationsaufrufe gegen die EU Dienstleistungsrichtliniedes DGB und ATTAC in Berlin und Straßburg erstaunt. Ähnlich äußerte sich auch das Aktionsbündnis Sozialproteste, ein Zusammenschluss vieler regionaler sozialer Initiativen in der Bundesrepublik. Der DGB mobilisiert zum Dienstag, 14. Februar nach Straßburg und ATTAC plant, zum 11.02.2006 eine Beteiligung an der Großdemonstration gegen die Bolkesteinrichtlinie in Straßburg, ruft aber für den gleichen Tag zu Aktionen in Berlin auf. Damit setzt sich ATTAC über regionale Strukturen und Wünsche der Initiativen und Netzwerke in Berlin hinweg, die bisher eine Beteiligung an der Großdemonstration am 11.02.2006 in Straßburg geplant haben. In diesen Zusammenhang weist der Berliner Politikwissenschaftler Peter Grottian darauf hin, dass entgegen seiner gestrigen Terminbekanntgabe zur Großdemo in Straßburg, er nicht Samstag den 14. Januar 2006 gemeint hatte, sondern Samstag den 11. Februar 2006… Presseerklärung von Martin Behrsing („Erwerbslosen Forum Deutschland“, Bonn) vom 02.01.06 (pdf)
http://www.erwerbslosenforum.de/presse/02_01_06.pdf
Aus: LabourNet, 5. Januar 2006
Starmail - 5. Jan, 14:02
Attention Deficit Disorder By Wireless Waves.COM
Starmail - 5. Jan, 13:59
Planned School Moved Away From Power Lines
Starmail - 5. Jan, 13:56
ELF-EMF Damage Mice Ovarian Follicles
Starmail - 5. Jan, 13:55
Using RF "non-thermal" effects for "non-lethal"weapons
Starmail - 5. Jan, 13:49
History of lymphocytosis, neutropenia, hypersegmented neutrophils, eosinophilia, asthma and osteomyelitis, all of which resolved after reduction of EMF/EMR exposure
Starmail - 5. Jan, 13:48
Protestors ready for mast fight
Published: 5th January 2006
OBJECTORS to a mobile phone mast proposed for Manchester Old Road have pulled together once again as the plans go to appeal.
Planning permission to build a T-Mobile mast on ground in front of the West Croft Industrial Estate was refused by the Middleton Township Planning Sub-Committee back in September, on the grounds that such an erection could have an adverse effect on the local area.
But T-Mobile appealed against the decision and the deadline for residents to once again raise their objections, this time to the Planning Inspectorate in Bristol, was last Monday.
At the original meeting a representative from T-Mobile said that the proposed mast would fit in with local street furniture, standing in between existing streetlamps of a similar height, and that the company had also rejected other proposed sites as they were closer to residential areas.
They also pointed out that erecting this mast near an existing one that already stands just 30m from the proposed site would not encourage further masts to be built, but instead decrease the likelihood as phone companies could come together and use each other’s technology.
But they were opposed by an entourage of approximately 15 objectors who helped to convince the committee that such a mast was not wanted in Rhodes – and the residents have risen once again.
Councillor Peter Williams, just one of the objectors, has many reservations about the proposed mast – not least that the siting of a new control box at its base could ‘provide cover for unsavoury characters’ of the type that frequent Rhodes Lodges.
He wrote to the inspectorate: "The reason for my strong objections to the application are that one phone mast already exists near the application site and there was no evidence that the company had tried to liaise with the owners of the original mast to see if there could be co-location as is recommended practice.
"The addition of a further mast in the area will set a principle for further masts to be sited there and it is unacceptable to the residents that they bear the brunt of mobile phone technology for the Rhodes area.
"A further mast at this site, so close to the other mast, would represent an unacceptable increase in street clutter by the side of the road at the entrance to Rhodes village."
First published by the Middleton Guardian
http://www.middletonguardian.co.uk/news/s/207/207830_protestors_ready_for_mast_fight.html
OBJECTORS to a mobile phone mast proposed for Manchester Old Road have pulled together once again as the plans go to appeal.
Planning permission to build a T-Mobile mast on ground in front of the West Croft Industrial Estate was refused by the Middleton Township Planning Sub-Committee back in September, on the grounds that such an erection could have an adverse effect on the local area.
But T-Mobile appealed against the decision and the deadline for residents to once again raise their objections, this time to the Planning Inspectorate in Bristol, was last Monday.
At the original meeting a representative from T-Mobile said that the proposed mast would fit in with local street furniture, standing in between existing streetlamps of a similar height, and that the company had also rejected other proposed sites as they were closer to residential areas.
They also pointed out that erecting this mast near an existing one that already stands just 30m from the proposed site would not encourage further masts to be built, but instead decrease the likelihood as phone companies could come together and use each other’s technology.
But they were opposed by an entourage of approximately 15 objectors who helped to convince the committee that such a mast was not wanted in Rhodes – and the residents have risen once again.
Councillor Peter Williams, just one of the objectors, has many reservations about the proposed mast – not least that the siting of a new control box at its base could ‘provide cover for unsavoury characters’ of the type that frequent Rhodes Lodges.
He wrote to the inspectorate: "The reason for my strong objections to the application are that one phone mast already exists near the application site and there was no evidence that the company had tried to liaise with the owners of the original mast to see if there could be co-location as is recommended practice.
"The addition of a further mast in the area will set a principle for further masts to be sited there and it is unacceptable to the residents that they bear the brunt of mobile phone technology for the Rhodes area.
"A further mast at this site, so close to the other mast, would represent an unacceptable increase in street clutter by the side of the road at the entrance to Rhodes village."
First published by the Middleton Guardian
http://www.middletonguardian.co.uk/news/s/207/207830_protestors_ready_for_mast_fight.html
Starmail - 5. Jan, 13:39
Dishes put up on mast say residents
Jan 5 2006
Weekly News
A GROUP of Farnworth residents are determined to kick up a stink after claiming contractors installed three dishes on a mobile phone mast while nobody was looking.
The residents, whose houses back on to Moon Meadow, claim the work went ahead without prior notice.
They say they were told the mast could not be expanded once it was built in 2001 and are angry the Government is allowing the mobile phone companies to bypass the normal planning procedures and fear the three new dishes, bringing the total to four, on a 70ft-plus monopole is just the start.
Don Lyons, of Derby Road, said: 'We're upset and angry that the companies have the authority to add dishes without consulting anyone. It's not morally right.
'The jury's still out on whether these things are safe and there are a lot of families with children here.
http://tinyurl.com/8nla5
Weekly News
A GROUP of Farnworth residents are determined to kick up a stink after claiming contractors installed three dishes on a mobile phone mast while nobody was looking.
The residents, whose houses back on to Moon Meadow, claim the work went ahead without prior notice.
They say they were told the mast could not be expanded once it was built in 2001 and are angry the Government is allowing the mobile phone companies to bypass the normal planning procedures and fear the three new dishes, bringing the total to four, on a 70ft-plus monopole is just the start.
Don Lyons, of Derby Road, said: 'We're upset and angry that the companies have the authority to add dishes without consulting anyone. It's not morally right.
'The jury's still out on whether these things are safe and there are a lot of families with children here.
http://tinyurl.com/8nla5
Starmail - 5. Jan, 13:36
Bad Chemistry
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06win/chem1.asp
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06win/chem2.asp
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06win/chem3.asp
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06win/chem4.asp
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06win/chem5.asp
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06win/chem6.asp
Informant: NHNE
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06win/chem2.asp
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06win/chem3.asp
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06win/chem4.asp
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06win/chem5.asp
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06win/chem6.asp
Informant: NHNE
Starmail - 5. Jan, 13:30
Cancer Cell Study Revives Cell Phone Safety Fears
Starmail - 5. Jan, 11:23
State-sponsored medical terrorism
Texas authorities arrest parents, kidnap their teenage daughter, and force her through chemotherapy against her will.
http://www.newstarget.com/016387.html
Informant: NHNE
http://www.newstarget.com/016387.html
Informant: NHNE
Starmail - 5. Jan, 11:19
THE UNSEEN HAND WILL DECIDE WHO GETS ELECTED
Starmail - 5. Jan, 11:17
U.S. Supreme Court Nominee Alito Seen as Ally by Businesses
Business will support Alito:
Corporate America should find some cheer in Alito's strictly conservative judicial philosophy.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/31/news/economy/alito_nomination/
U.S. Supreme Court Nominee Alito Seen as Ally by Businesses:
U.S. business groups, already cheered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.'s appointment, anticipate getting another ally in Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito Jr.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=IPD4YP076GHT
From Information Clearing House
Corporate America should find some cheer in Alito's strictly conservative judicial philosophy.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/31/news/economy/alito_nomination/
U.S. Supreme Court Nominee Alito Seen as Ally by Businesses:
U.S. business groups, already cheered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.'s appointment, anticipate getting another ally in Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito Jr.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=IPD4YP076GHT
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 11:13
Roberts, Alito regarded as allies to business on high court
One represented corporate interests as a private attorney; the other often sided with employers in lawsuits filed by workers.
http://tinyurl.com/8ubwz
From Information Clearing House
http://tinyurl.com/8ubwz
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 11:11
Many around the world, including some Americans, have written off the possibility that the United States is capable of acting with morality and sanity
Our history books tell us that George Washington was the father of the abomination America has become. Many around the world, including some Americans, have written off the possibility that the United States is capable of acting with morality and sanity. Yet hope remains on the horizon for our country.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11454.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11454.htm
Starmail - 5. Jan, 11:10
Lobbying Plan Was Central to GOP's Political Strategy
The corruption investigation surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff shows the significant political risk that Republican leaders took when they adopted what had once seemed a brilliant strategy for dominating Washington: turning the K Street lobbying corridor into a cog of the GOP political machine.
http://tinyurl.com/c2a83
From Information Clearing House
http://tinyurl.com/c2a83
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 11:08
Foundation's Funds Diverted From Mission
Records Detail Spending By GOP Lobbyist Abramoff: Tax and spending records of the Capital Athletic Foundation obtained by The Washington Post show that less than 1 percent of its revenue has been spent on sports-related programs for youths.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11455.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11455.htm
Starmail - 5. Jan, 11:07
Abramoff Money Halted Sweat Shop Legislation
East Bay Congressman George Miller just couldn't understand why his legislation to end sex and textile sweat shops in the Northern Mariana Islands -- a U.S. protectorate in the Pacific -- was being blocked in the House of Representatives. Now, he has his answer.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/5839523/detail.html
From Information Clearing House
http://www.ktvu.com/news/5839523/detail.html
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 11:06
Thousands of Americans and resident foreigners have been or are being monitored and recorded by the NSA
They don't tell him anything
Turns out thousands of Americans and resident foreigners have been or are being monitored and recorded by the NSA. It's more like information-mining, which is what, you may recall, the administration said it would not do. But now Bush has to investigate The New York Times because Bush has been breaking the law, you see?
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2006/1290
From Information Clearing House
Turns out thousands of Americans and resident foreigners have been or are being monitored and recorded by the NSA. It's more like information-mining, which is what, you may recall, the administration said it would not do. But now Bush has to investigate The New York Times because Bush has been breaking the law, you see?
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2006/1290
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 11:03
The Bush administration downplays its illegal wiretapping
Something to Hide:
As the Bush administration downplays its illegal wiretapping, the New York Times' chiefs keep quiet about their role in the scandal.
http://www.alternet.org/story/30352/
From Information Clearing House
As the Bush administration downplays its illegal wiretapping, the New York Times' chiefs keep quiet about their role in the scandal.
http://www.alternet.org/story/30352/
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 11:00
Justice to Try to Toss Gitmo Challenges
The Justice Department will seek dismissal of lawsuits from more than 300 Guantanamo Bay detainees fighting the legality of their confinement, using a new law that the Bush administration says sharply limits existing challenges. Advocates for detainees quickly registered their opposition Tuesday.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11453.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11453.htm
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:58
It is 'showtime' for Syria
The current international pressure on Syria is "entirely deserved" and it is now "showtime" for its president, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4579442.stm
From Information Clearing House
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4579442.stm
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:56
US presses Syria on al-Hariri inquiry
John Bolton said, "Syria's record to date has been one of obstructing the investigation, of tampering with the evidence and not making witnesses available in a timely fashion."
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F651DB94-EC80-4628-B1BD-814F241754EE.htm
From Information Clearing House
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F651DB94-EC80-4628-B1BD-814F241754EE.htm
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:55
Iran Elbows Afghanistan From Pipeline Project With Turkmenistan
The US will be dismayed as its oil and gas company UNOCAL's efforts to pass gas pipeline from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan had been delayed because India and Pakistan have opted to sign an accord with Iran, analysts say.
http://tinyurl.com/apu2x
From Information Clearing House
http://tinyurl.com/apu2x
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:53
Time to Talk to Tehran
Does President Bush intend a preventive war, early this year, to effect the nuclear castration of Iran? Or are we rattling sabers?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11450.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11450.htm
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:52
War pimp alert: Secret services say Iran is trying to assemble a nuclear missile
The Iranian government has been successfully scouring Europe for the sophisticated equipment needed to develop a nuclear bomb, according to the latest western intelligence assessment of the country's weapons programmes.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11449.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11449.htm
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:50
Iran to brief U.N. on atomic research plan
Iran says its atomic work aims solely to generate electricity and years of IAEA inquiries have found nothing to clearly disprove this.
http://tinyurl.com/dnzjq
From Information Clearing House
http://tinyurl.com/dnzjq
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:48
US threatens action if Iran resumes N-fuel works
"Our view is that if Iran takes an further enrichment-related steps, the international community will have to consider additional measures to constrain Iran's nuclear ambitions," McCormack told reporters.
http://tinyurl.com/e4ffj
From Information Clearing House
http://tinyurl.com/e4ffj
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:46
Billion Dollar Bunker
U.S. plans Baghdad embassy more secure than Pentagon.
http://tinyurl.com/96785
From Information Clearing House
http://tinyurl.com/96785
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:44
Draft Iraq Indictment
The 2003 U.S. invasion and its ongoing occupation of Iraq are illegal, immoral and unjust, aimed at furthering U.S. imperialist aims in the Middle East and the world, not liberating the Iraqi people, but rather subjecting them to new, more brutal and direct forms of foreign domination and turning Iraq into a platform for further aggression and imperial maneuvers.
http://www.bushcommission.org/iraq.htm
From Information Clearing House
http://www.bushcommission.org/iraq.htm
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:41
Scott Ritter: Elections in 2005, Civil War in 2006?
When Paul Bremer signed into law his dictate that banned the Ba'ath Party, he forgot the age-old notion that the enemy has a vote. In this case the enemy was the two-million plus members of the Ba'ath party who were suddenly disenfranchised from any legitimate role in determining the future of Iraq.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/themix/30299
From Information Clearing House
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/themix/30299
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:39
The country’s on the verge of a civil war
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, V Corps commander since 2003
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=34094
From Information Clearing House
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=34094
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:37
U.S. Bombs Kill Women and Children
Enrages Iraqi Officials: United States warplanes killed nine members of an Iraqi family, including women and young children, during a bombing strike Monday night that obliterated a home near the northern industrial city of Bayji, Iraqi officials said today.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11448.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11448.htm
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:35
'Radical' Bush 'signing statement' rejects torture ban
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:23
Emergency Preparedness Against The "Universal Adversary" Orwellian "Scenarios"
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:21
Oil Boom a Bust for Us, Villagers Say in Court
A photo exhibit at San Francisco City Hall documents the devastating effects of more than three decades of oil extraction in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest. 30,000 plaintiffs have joined in a class-action lawsuit that alleges Chevron Corp. failed to clean up billions of gallons of toxic waste dumped in pristine rainforest in Ecuador.
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/010406EA.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/010406EA.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:08
Abramoff Enters New Guilty Plea in Florida
A day after he pleaded guilty to three felony counts in Washington, Jack Abramoff, a once prominent Republican lobbyist, pleaded guilty today to two felony charges of conspiracy and fraud in a case stemming from his purchase of a casino boat line in 2000.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406Q.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406Q.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:06
Make sure that the power and water where YOU live remain under the control of local community-based public utilities
Wow - it's all going down rather fast, huh? Those of you that don't have a copy of the End of Suburbia may want to watch it. It's a documentary and is very sobering. (thanks C&J for sending me one!)
Anna
Begin forwarded message:
From: Greg
Date: January 4, 2006 7:05:06 AM HST
This excerpt below parallels the issue of privatizing resources/water/seeds that Anna, Juliette, and others have brought up. Under the new Republican "energy" bill, the public utility power company concept has been killed--replaced by the consolidation of utilities in mega corporations privately owned by the super rich. What this means down the road is that when peak oil and natural gas shortages hit electrical generation and heating, rather than everyone "sharing the pain," the mega corps will simply shut off power and heat to the marginal markets. This could mean many small communities stuck in the dark and cold for periods of time. Word to the wise: make sure that the power and water where YOU live remain under the control of local community-based public utilities. Better yet, secure your own water and power supplies.
Stupid rhetorical question: why is it that "deregulation," touted as bringing competition, efficiency, consumer choice, and lower prices always creates exactly the opposite? Hmmm....
Greg
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/010306_end_grid_summary.shtml
"January 4, 2006 0800 PST (FTW) – With the eagerness and drive of a baseball player on steroids, the largest financial powerhouses in the nation have been gobbling up publicly owned utilities since George W. Bush signed the new energy bill last fall. It is not just that ownership of these life-essential services is being concentrated in a few rich and unregulated hands — it is the identities of the owners that should make worry about what's coming. If the writing on this wall got any clearer, you'd need to buy a box of popcorn and sit down for the horror show.
Best get a blanket and some long johns first.
Since the passage of America's most recent energy bill on August 8th, many public utilities have been acquired by some of the wealthiest people on the planet. With the loss of public regulation that came with the repeal of the Public Utility Company Holding Act as part of that measure, these "cash cows," to which tens of millions of people make monthly payments, are being converted into liquid giants that can be used to acquire other utility companies, or to trade ever-diminishing energy resources for profit. There is no rationing by government yet, only the rationing of the "free markets." That's only until the wheels come off and Peak Oil and Gas trigger uprisings and "civil unrest" (I absolutely detest that term – the word is "riot," and it is not solved by a quick second or third mortgage). Only then will government step in, and then only to try and prop up the façade of a sustainable paradigm of infinite growth.
Instead of maintaining the grid for as long as possible, these amalgamating giants will now accelerate its demise. What is about to happen is the living embodiment of a statement made by a Dutch economist at a Paris Peak Oil conference in the spring of 2003: "It may not be profitable to slow decline."
No more will utilities invest ratepayers' money in extra capacity for the 20-year drought, the 50-year heat wave or the 100-year cold snap. Instead, every ounce of extra capacity will be sold off, under-maintained, or discontinued to maximize cash on hand for the next buyout or LBO. Ratepayer money will be used for the benefit of shareholders, not ratepayers. When it comes time to decide whether to make a handsome profit or keep people warm, there won't even be a debate. These privately owned giants will be able to arbitrage energy to the highest bidder. They will be able to buy other, smaller entities just as the major oil companies have been doing for decades, adding the smaller companies' reserves and net profits onto their price/earnings (P/E) ratios."
(snip)
Anna
Begin forwarded message:
From: Greg
Date: January 4, 2006 7:05:06 AM HST
This excerpt below parallels the issue of privatizing resources/water/seeds that Anna, Juliette, and others have brought up. Under the new Republican "energy" bill, the public utility power company concept has been killed--replaced by the consolidation of utilities in mega corporations privately owned by the super rich. What this means down the road is that when peak oil and natural gas shortages hit electrical generation and heating, rather than everyone "sharing the pain," the mega corps will simply shut off power and heat to the marginal markets. This could mean many small communities stuck in the dark and cold for periods of time. Word to the wise: make sure that the power and water where YOU live remain under the control of local community-based public utilities. Better yet, secure your own water and power supplies.
Stupid rhetorical question: why is it that "deregulation," touted as bringing competition, efficiency, consumer choice, and lower prices always creates exactly the opposite? Hmmm....
Greg
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/010306_end_grid_summary.shtml
"January 4, 2006 0800 PST (FTW) – With the eagerness and drive of a baseball player on steroids, the largest financial powerhouses in the nation have been gobbling up publicly owned utilities since George W. Bush signed the new energy bill last fall. It is not just that ownership of these life-essential services is being concentrated in a few rich and unregulated hands — it is the identities of the owners that should make worry about what's coming. If the writing on this wall got any clearer, you'd need to buy a box of popcorn and sit down for the horror show.
Best get a blanket and some long johns first.
Since the passage of America's most recent energy bill on August 8th, many public utilities have been acquired by some of the wealthiest people on the planet. With the loss of public regulation that came with the repeal of the Public Utility Company Holding Act as part of that measure, these "cash cows," to which tens of millions of people make monthly payments, are being converted into liquid giants that can be used to acquire other utility companies, or to trade ever-diminishing energy resources for profit. There is no rationing by government yet, only the rationing of the "free markets." That's only until the wheels come off and Peak Oil and Gas trigger uprisings and "civil unrest" (I absolutely detest that term – the word is "riot," and it is not solved by a quick second or third mortgage). Only then will government step in, and then only to try and prop up the façade of a sustainable paradigm of infinite growth.
Instead of maintaining the grid for as long as possible, these amalgamating giants will now accelerate its demise. What is about to happen is the living embodiment of a statement made by a Dutch economist at a Paris Peak Oil conference in the spring of 2003: "It may not be profitable to slow decline."
No more will utilities invest ratepayers' money in extra capacity for the 20-year drought, the 50-year heat wave or the 100-year cold snap. Instead, every ounce of extra capacity will be sold off, under-maintained, or discontinued to maximize cash on hand for the next buyout or LBO. Ratepayer money will be used for the benefit of shareholders, not ratepayers. When it comes time to decide whether to make a handsome profit or keep people warm, there won't even be a debate. These privately owned giants will be able to arbitrage energy to the highest bidder. They will be able to buy other, smaller entities just as the major oil companies have been doing for decades, adding the smaller companies' reserves and net profits onto their price/earnings (P/E) ratios."
(snip)
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:05
The cellular companies will have to pay compensation even without a proven health harm
Just look at this, from Iris in Israel.
It looks as if things are finally on the right road.
Best regards.
Agnes.
Summary from Haaretz News
by Eran Gabai and Maariv
National Newspaper 3.1.06
The cellular companies will have to pay compensation even without a proven health harm
The cellular companies will have to pay compensation of 100% to the local authorities, according to the decision of the national authority for planning and construction from today, and the decision will enter to validity immediately.
The committee stressed that since local authorities do not share the profits of the cellular industry, there is no reason why they should pay/ be responsible to pay to citizens who sue for property value reduction.
A strong hit for the cellular companies. The national authority for planning and construction decided today that the compensation document (commitment of the cellular companies to pay) will serve as a condition to every permission of cellular antennas. Lawsuits of hundreds of millions shekels were filed until today. The authority will present its decision to the government.
A journey of pressures is expected from the cellular companies.
The subject of compensation was the central issue which was discussed with regard to the antennas law, which passed in the parliament. According to the new law the cellular companies must pay compensation to the local authorities for future lawsuits for property value reduction, and there is a need to set the distance of antennas from sensitive places.
It looks as if things are finally on the right road.
Best regards.
Agnes.
Summary from Haaretz News
by Eran Gabai and Maariv
National Newspaper 3.1.06
The cellular companies will have to pay compensation even without a proven health harm
The cellular companies will have to pay compensation of 100% to the local authorities, according to the decision of the national authority for planning and construction from today, and the decision will enter to validity immediately.
The committee stressed that since local authorities do not share the profits of the cellular industry, there is no reason why they should pay/ be responsible to pay to citizens who sue for property value reduction.
A strong hit for the cellular companies. The national authority for planning and construction decided today that the compensation document (commitment of the cellular companies to pay) will serve as a condition to every permission of cellular antennas. Lawsuits of hundreds of millions shekels were filed until today. The authority will present its decision to the government.
A journey of pressures is expected from the cellular companies.
The subject of compensation was the central issue which was discussed with regard to the antennas law, which passed in the parliament. According to the new law the cellular companies must pay compensation to the local authorities for future lawsuits for property value reduction, and there is a need to set the distance of antennas from sensitive places.
Starmail - 5. Jan, 10:00
A Nuclear Katrina in the Making
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:46
Bush's Ownership Society Suits Jack's Entrepreneurial Style
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:44
Pundits Disguising Their Own Iraq Failures
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:43
Will the Environmentalists Find Their Voice?
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:40
US Warplane Used to Target Iraqi Family Home
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:39
The Man Who Bought Off Washington
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:38
Bush Issues 'Signings Statement' to Bypass Torture Ban
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:37
Files Say NSA Initiated Growth of Spying Operation
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:36
Nixon Junior
John Dean on Bush's wiretapping.
http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/dean/20051230.html
Informant: Lew Rockwell
http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/dean/20051230.html
Informant: Lew Rockwell
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:34
The Omni-Incompetent State
The feds can't even do a giveaway program anymore. Article by Jacob Sullum.
http://www.reason.com/sullum/010406.shtml
Informant: Lew Rockwell
http://www.reason.com/sullum/010406.shtml
Informant: Lew Rockwell
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:32
George Bush Might Call Me a Defeatist
Am I a 'Defeatist'?
Jim Glaser on the Bush analysis.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/glaser/glaser48.html
Jim Glaser on the Bush analysis.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/glaser/glaser48.html
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:30
Lobbyist Jack Abramoff sows panic through Washington
Terror in DC
John Dickerson on who's going down (to start) with Jack Abramoff.
http://www.slate.com/id/2133666/nav/tap1/
Informant: Lew Rockwell
John Dickerson on who's going down (to start) with Jack Abramoff.
http://www.slate.com/id/2133666/nav/tap1/
Informant: Lew Rockwell
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:29
On the cult of presidential power
Deified Caesar
Tom Engelhardt on the cult of presidential power.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/engelhardt/engelhardt149.html
Tom Engelhardt on the cult of presidential power.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/engelhardt/engelhardt149.html
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:26
The Federal Annihilator
Michael S. Rozeff on how the government wiped out $1 trillion in wealth.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff57.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff57.html
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:24
Think Twice Before You Place That Call
http://www.nmia.com/~bobpace/mw.htm
Chris Anderson would like all visitors to deposit their cellular phones in the cement mixer by his front door
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1364460/
Chris Anderson would like all visitors to deposit their cellular phones in the cement mixer by his front door
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1364460/
Starmail - 5. Jan, 09:06
Chris Anderson would like all visitors to deposit their cellular phones in the cement mixer by his front door
Dear Olle: I found this information interesting. A site I have not seen before and I also am not familiar with Chris Anderson's work. I am doing more checking to try and determine whose sit this is since the webpage does not identify....... Take care - Joanne
Joanne C. Mueller
Guinea Pigs R Us
731 - 123rd Avenue N.W. Minneapolis, Minnesota 55448-2127
USA
Phone: 763-755-6114
Email: jcmpelican@aol.com
"No ray of sunshine is ever lost, but the green which it awakens into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted for the sower to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith." - Albert Schweitzer
Cell phone plea by Chris Anderson, EMR-mitigation specialist.....
From: JCMPelican@aol.com
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:21:33 EST
Contributed by: admin
Though intended for renovations, Chris Anderson would like all visitors to deposit their cellular phones in the cement mixer by his front door. This sounds excessive until you step into Anderson's orchard, where the pegged needle of a shrieking electromagnetic radiation (EMR) meter placed beside a connected cellphone still shows significant exposure 100 feet away. Much to the chagrin of this certified EMR-mitigation specialist, every day some 300 million cell phone users are "reaching out and touching someone you love. Yourself, and anyone else within range of the microwaves emitted by your cell phone."
http://alternativecomplementarymedicine.com/article.php/CellPhoneGraveDangers
--------
Think Twice Before You Place That Call
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1364478/
Joanne C. Mueller
Guinea Pigs R Us
731 - 123rd Avenue N.W. Minneapolis, Minnesota 55448-2127
USA
Phone: 763-755-6114
Email: jcmpelican@aol.com
"No ray of sunshine is ever lost, but the green which it awakens into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted for the sower to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith." - Albert Schweitzer
Cell phone plea by Chris Anderson, EMR-mitigation specialist.....
From: JCMPelican@aol.com
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:21:33 EST
Contributed by: admin
Though intended for renovations, Chris Anderson would like all visitors to deposit their cellular phones in the cement mixer by his front door. This sounds excessive until you step into Anderson's orchard, where the pegged needle of a shrieking electromagnetic radiation (EMR) meter placed beside a connected cellphone still shows significant exposure 100 feet away. Much to the chagrin of this certified EMR-mitigation specialist, every day some 300 million cell phone users are "reaching out and touching someone you love. Yourself, and anyone else within range of the microwaves emitted by your cell phone."
http://alternativecomplementarymedicine.com/article.php/CellPhoneGraveDangers
--------
Think Twice Before You Place That Call
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1364478/
Starmail - 5. Jan, 08:54
If America left Iraq
Starmail - 5. Jan, 08:50
Electing a Congress to Impeach Bush and Cheney
(excerpt)
ImpeachPAC | Electing a Congress to Impeach Bush and Cheney
http://www.impeachpac.org/
A U.S. Congressman a couple years ago said, The Founding Fathers did not put the 2nd Amendment in the Constitution to guarantee Americans the Right to hunt for food, But the Right to hunt Elected Officials who try to take our rights away.
The Bush Administration They Hate Our FREEDOM !
"All Laws Which Are Repugnant to The Constitution Are Null And Void"
Marbury Vs. Madison 5 US 137, 174, 176
http://www.restoringamerica.org/documents/marburyVmadison_text.html
Give us Liberty or Give us Death --------- - Bring it On ! Let's Roll !
"We Don't Give Up Our Rights ! -- That's What Makes Us AMERICANS!"
Hear The TRUTH for a Change !
87+ Air America Radio Stations Listed Here:
http://www.airamericaradio.com/
& From the Hosts & Call in Listeners all over the USA, Listen to - The Power Hour with Joyce Riley & Dave VonKleist Times & Freqs --> : http://www.thepowerhour.com/
Alex Jones on Short Wave at: http://www.infowars.com/
Politically correct speech is just government censorship.
Prejudicial speech is just free speech about what a lifetime of experiences has taught you. "tlb 2001"
More on Politically Correct Speech:
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/0708.html
From The US Declaration of Independence:
http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
-- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, It is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, Laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
The Government that Governs Least Governs Best !!
The Keyboard Is Mightier Than The Sword ©1999 tlb
Thomas Lee Buyea
Florida News Service
Miami, Fla.
USA
Informant: ranger116
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Downing+Street+Memo
ImpeachPAC | Electing a Congress to Impeach Bush and Cheney
http://www.impeachpac.org/
A U.S. Congressman a couple years ago said, The Founding Fathers did not put the 2nd Amendment in the Constitution to guarantee Americans the Right to hunt for food, But the Right to hunt Elected Officials who try to take our rights away.
The Bush Administration They Hate Our FREEDOM !
"All Laws Which Are Repugnant to The Constitution Are Null And Void"
Marbury Vs. Madison 5 US 137, 174, 176
http://www.restoringamerica.org/documents/marburyVmadison_text.html
Give us Liberty or Give us Death --------- - Bring it On ! Let's Roll !
"We Don't Give Up Our Rights ! -- That's What Makes Us AMERICANS!"
Hear The TRUTH for a Change !
87+ Air America Radio Stations Listed Here:
http://www.airamericaradio.com/
& From the Hosts & Call in Listeners all over the USA, Listen to - The Power Hour with Joyce Riley & Dave VonKleist Times & Freqs --> : http://www.thepowerhour.com/
Alex Jones on Short Wave at: http://www.infowars.com/
Politically correct speech is just government censorship.
Prejudicial speech is just free speech about what a lifetime of experiences has taught you. "tlb 2001"
More on Politically Correct Speech:
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/0708.html
From The US Declaration of Independence:
http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
-- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, It is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, Laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
The Government that Governs Least Governs Best !!
The Keyboard Is Mightier Than The Sword ©1999 tlb
Thomas Lee Buyea
Florida News Service
Miami, Fla.
USA
Informant: ranger116
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Downing+Street+Memo
Starmail - 5. Jan, 08:45
Mexico Furious over Proposed American Wall
Across the border, the proposed anti-immigration law - the most repressive in decades - is causing an uproar. It may have domestic repercussions on the GOP also.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406H.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406H.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 00:07
Iran's Future: Watch the Streets
For months Iranian activists and even moderate clerics have been concerned about the radical tendencies of Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But there is another development in Iran - this one positive and with great potential - that the world should not miss: civic defiance against Ahmadinejad's authoritarianism is increasing.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406G.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406G.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 00:06
CIA 'Ignored Iraqi Weapons Evidence'
The Bush administration is facing new charges over its handling of pre-war intelligence, with a book alleging that the CIA ignored a mass of evidence gleaned from Iraqi weapons scientists, months before the 2003 invasion, that Saddam Hussein had abandoned his WMD programs.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406F.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406F.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 00:04
IMF Occupies Iraq, Riots Follow
Bad enough that the US military is occupying Iraq. Now the IMF is occupying the country. And as Iraqis watch their standard of living plummet - thanks to the IMF - they are going to be even more irate at the United States, which they know controls the IMF, writes Matthew Rothschild.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406E.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406E.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 00:03
The Unrestrained President
Tom Engelhardt considers the nature of the cult of imperial presidential power that we now face.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406C.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406C.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 00:02
Lobbyist to Reveal All in Congress Bribes Scandal
A well-connected Republican lobbyist agreed yesterday to give evidence against top politicians whom he allegedly bribed, in what analysts predict may prove to be the biggest congressional scandal in American history.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406B.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406B.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 00:01
Bush Prepares to Bypass New Torture Ban
When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406A.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406A.shtml
Starmail - 5. Jan, 00:00
4
Jan
2006
Homeowners paid to hide phone masts
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:57
Shell to reveal hidden phone masts
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:56
Allan Rock Announces National Antenna Tower Policy Review
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:53
Human Sensitivities To Electrical & Electromagnetic Fields
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:51
Mechanism for action of electromagnetic fields on cells
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:43
Implantable chip, on sale now
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:39
Italian, German researchers link RF to disease
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:38
Clearer picture of radiation effects
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:37
Electromagnetic Pollution-Literature
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:34
Hand-Scanning Technology Growing Exponentially
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:33
Phosphorylation of Hsp27 - The Molecular Mechanism for Mobile Phone Radiation-Induced Increase in Blood-Brain Barrier Permeability
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:30
Cancer cell study revives cellphone safety fears
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:28
Police Radio's 'V' Officers health
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:27
Congress on Edge As Abramoff Agrees to Testify About Widespread Corruption on Capitol Hill
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:25
Government's secret Celldar project will allow surveillance of anyone, at any time and anywhere
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/grn/omega51.htm
--------
CELLDAR utilises the radar frequencies associated with the mobile telephone transmissions
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/4582242/
--------
CELLDAR utilises the radar frequencies associated with the mobile telephone transmissions
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/4582242/
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:22
Reference literature to the theme: are electrical appliances dangerous to your health?
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:19
Are electrical appliances dangerous to your health?
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:17
Reference List for Some Reported Biological Effects from Radiofrequency Radiation (RFR)
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:15
The EMF - mercury connection
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:13
Microwave and Radiofrequency Radiation Exposure: A growing environmental health crisis?
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:04
Health Effects of EMF Exposure and Mercury poisoning
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:03
Studies Relevant to Wireless Communications and Data
Starmail - 4. Jan, 23:00
Cellular Phone Radiofrequency Alters Gene Expression
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:58
Hydro lines increase cancer risk
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:56
Super-secret microwave weapons may be used in Iraq
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:54
Microwawe weapons serviceable against Iraq
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:52
DNA And The Microwave Effect
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:51
Mobile phones in cars can increase cancer risk
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:50
New research commissioned by mep demonstrates real dangers from mobile phone masts
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:40
Dr. Raúl Montenegro introduces the work of FUNAM
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:38
DGB warnt vor "Industriefeudalismus" und ausrastenden Arbeitnehmern
"Zerstörerisches Management": DGB warnt vor "Industriefeudalismus" und ausrastenden Arbeitnehmern (04.01.06)
Der Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB) kann sich eine Radikalisierung bei Arbeitnehmern und innerhalb der Gewerkschaften vorstellen. "Zerstörerisches Management, durch das Betriebe geschlossen werden, obwohl sie profitabel sind, werden die Menschen auf Dauer nicht hinnehmen", sagte DGB-Vorstandsmitglied Dietmar Hexel der "Financial Times Deutschland". "Was da passiert, kann dazu führen, dass sich die Menschen radikalisieren, wenn es bei dieser Politik bleibt", so Hexel. Dies könne auch Einfluss auf die Gewerkschaftsarbeit haben.
Die ganze Nachricht im Internet:
http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php?Nr=12611
Der Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB) kann sich eine Radikalisierung bei Arbeitnehmern und innerhalb der Gewerkschaften vorstellen. "Zerstörerisches Management, durch das Betriebe geschlossen werden, obwohl sie profitabel sind, werden die Menschen auf Dauer nicht hinnehmen", sagte DGB-Vorstandsmitglied Dietmar Hexel der "Financial Times Deutschland". "Was da passiert, kann dazu führen, dass sich die Menschen radikalisieren, wenn es bei dieser Politik bleibt", so Hexel. Dies könne auch Einfluss auf die Gewerkschaftsarbeit haben.
Die ganze Nachricht im Internet:
http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php?Nr=12611
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:22
Experte sieht schwere Sicherheitsprobleme bei elektronischer Patientenakte
Privatsphäre: Experte sieht schwere Sicherheitsprobleme bei elektronischer Patientenakte (04.01.06)
Das aktuelle Konzept der elektronischen Patientenakte gefährdet nach Ansicht von Sicherheitsexperten die Privatsphäre der Versicherten in Deutschland. Die elektronische Patientenakte soll alle den Krankheits- und Behandlungsverlauf eines Patienten betreffenden Daten speichern. Krankenkassen oder Lebensversicherer könnten die Daten benutzen, um Gesundheitsrisiken aus der Versicherung auszuschließen, so das Ergebnis von Untersuchungen des TT-Sicherheitsberaters Thomas Maus. Banken könnten Kreditausfallrisiken entsprechend der Lebenserwartung der Kreditnehmer berechnen und Arbeitgeber die Einstellung von Mitarbeitern von erblichen Veranlagungen für Krankheiten abhängig machen. Die Free Software Foundation forderte angesichts der Mängel, das Konzept der elektronischen Patientenakte komplett neu zu entwerfen.
Die ganze Nachricht im Internet:
http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php?Nr=12615
Das aktuelle Konzept der elektronischen Patientenakte gefährdet nach Ansicht von Sicherheitsexperten die Privatsphäre der Versicherten in Deutschland. Die elektronische Patientenakte soll alle den Krankheits- und Behandlungsverlauf eines Patienten betreffenden Daten speichern. Krankenkassen oder Lebensversicherer könnten die Daten benutzen, um Gesundheitsrisiken aus der Versicherung auszuschließen, so das Ergebnis von Untersuchungen des TT-Sicherheitsberaters Thomas Maus. Banken könnten Kreditausfallrisiken entsprechend der Lebenserwartung der Kreditnehmer berechnen und Arbeitgeber die Einstellung von Mitarbeitern von erblichen Veranlagungen für Krankheiten abhängig machen. Die Free Software Foundation forderte angesichts der Mängel, das Konzept der elektronischen Patientenakte komplett neu zu entwerfen.
Die ganze Nachricht im Internet:
http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php?Nr=12615
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:18
Global warming can trigger extreme ocean, climate changes
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:16
Hague Regulations v Bush
-----Original Message-----
From: aalsmin-l-bounces@lists.ubalt.edu
On Behalf Of Boyle, Francis
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 1:31 PM
Subject: [AALSMIN-L] Hague Regulations v Bush Jr. Notice in Guantanamo Detainee Cases
Article 23(h) of the 1907 Hague Regulations on Land Warfare, to which the USA is a contracting party, provides: "In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden...(h) To declare abolished, suspended or inadmissible in a court of law the rights and actions of the nationals of the hostile party." In addition, the Nuremberg Tribunal ruled that the Hague Regulations were customary international law as of the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. This would constitute a serious war crime.
fab.
Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820
USA
217-333-7954 (voice)
217-244-1478 (fax) fboyle@law.uiuc.edu
(personal comments only)
-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Gittings
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 2:09 PM
To: ASIL Forum
Subject: Govt Notice in Guantanamo Detainee Cases
Today the government filed the following notice in all of the Guantanmo deatainee cases pending in the USDC for D.C.:
NOTICE OF SUPPLEMENTAL AUTHORITY
Respondents hereby give notice of the recent enactment of legislation that, among other things, amends 28 U.S.C. � 2241 to remove court jurisdiction to hear or consider applications for writs of habeas corpus and other actions brought in this Court by or on behalf of aliens detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. See Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2006, Pub. L. No. ___, � 1005 (2005) (signed by President Bush on Dec. 30, 2005) (copy of relevant excerpts attached). No sooner than the week of January 9, 2006, respondents anticipate filing in each of 1 the above-captioned cases a motion to dismiss or for other appropriate relief based on the new legislation. Prior to or shortly after filing of such motion, respondents will consult with petitioners� counsel in an effort to agree upon a briefing schedule that can be proposed to the Court.
Dated: January 3, 2006
---
The original pdf and exhibit are available on the PEGC web site in this folder (along with show cause orders issued by Judge Walton in his assigned cases):
http://www.justicescholars.org/pegc/McCain-Graham/
From: aalsmin-l-bounces@lists.ubalt.edu
On Behalf Of Boyle, Francis
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 1:31 PM
Subject: [AALSMIN-L] Hague Regulations v Bush Jr. Notice in Guantanamo Detainee Cases
Article 23(h) of the 1907 Hague Regulations on Land Warfare, to which the USA is a contracting party, provides: "In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden...(h) To declare abolished, suspended or inadmissible in a court of law the rights and actions of the nationals of the hostile party." In addition, the Nuremberg Tribunal ruled that the Hague Regulations were customary international law as of the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. This would constitute a serious war crime.
fab.
Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820
USA
217-333-7954 (voice)
217-244-1478 (fax) fboyle@law.uiuc.edu
(personal comments only)
-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Gittings
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 2:09 PM
To: ASIL Forum
Subject: Govt Notice in Guantanamo Detainee Cases
Today the government filed the following notice in all of the Guantanmo deatainee cases pending in the USDC for D.C.:
NOTICE OF SUPPLEMENTAL AUTHORITY
Respondents hereby give notice of the recent enactment of legislation that, among other things, amends 28 U.S.C. � 2241 to remove court jurisdiction to hear or consider applications for writs of habeas corpus and other actions brought in this Court by or on behalf of aliens detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. See Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2006, Pub. L. No. ___, � 1005 (2005) (signed by President Bush on Dec. 30, 2005) (copy of relevant excerpts attached). No sooner than the week of January 9, 2006, respondents anticipate filing in each of 1 the above-captioned cases a motion to dismiss or for other appropriate relief based on the new legislation. Prior to or shortly after filing of such motion, respondents will consult with petitioners� counsel in an effort to agree upon a briefing schedule that can be proposed to the Court.
Dated: January 3, 2006
---
The original pdf and exhibit are available on the PEGC web site in this folder (along with show cause orders issued by Judge Walton in his assigned cases):
http://www.justicescholars.org/pegc/McCain-Graham/
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:14
Abramoff Was Central to GOP's Political Strategy
The corruption investigation surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff shows the significant political risk that Republican leaders took when they adopted what had once seemed a brilliant strategy for dominating Washington: turning the K Street lobbying corridor into a cog of the GOP political machine.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406Y.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406Y.shtml
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:08
The new American authoritarianism
Starmail - 4. Jan, 22:06
Jack Abramoff's 'Cesspool of Corruption'
Top Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff is set to sing, and his long list of former buddies in Congress and the Bush administration are quaking in anticipation of possible indictments stemming from the consummate Beltway hustler's crass reign as the king of K Street.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406O.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406O.shtml
Starmail - 4. Jan, 19:40
Secret Surveillance May Have Occurred before Authorization
Even before the White House formally authorized a secret program to spy on US citizens without obtaining warrants, such eavesdropping was occurring and some of the information was being shared with the FBI, declassified correspondence and interviews with congressional and intelligence officials indicate.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406L.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406L.shtml
Starmail - 4. Jan, 19:39
CIA Gave Iran Bomb Plans
Book Says
In a clumsy effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, the CIA in 2004 intentionally handed Tehran some top-secret bomb designs laced with a hidden flaw that US officials hoped would doom any weapon made from them, according to a new book about the US intelligence agency.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406K.shtml
In a clumsy effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, the CIA in 2004 intentionally handed Tehran some top-secret bomb designs laced with a hidden flaw that US officials hoped would doom any weapon made from them, according to a new book about the US intelligence agency.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406K.shtml
Starmail - 4. Jan, 19:38
The $4 Billion Industry That Is America's Guilty Secret
Lobbying is Washington's grubby secret. Some say lobbying is part of the democratic process. Others claim it is legalized bribery, even corruption. But love it or loathe it, it is the way Washington works.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406J.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406J.shtml
Starmail - 4. Jan, 19:37
Bush to Give Away Abramoff Donations
Abramoff raised at least $100,000 for President Bush's 2004 re-election effort, earning the honorary title "pioneer" from the campaign.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406I.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406I.shtml
Starmail - 4. Jan, 19:36
Induction of DNA strand breaks by intermittent exposure to extremely-low-frequency electromagnetic fields in human diploid fibroblasts
Starmail - 4. Jan, 19:35
Government Tracking Cell Phones Without Court Order
Starmail - 4. Jan, 19:21
PATRICK HENRY TODAY: "GIVE ME SECURITY, ANYTHING BUT DEATH"
Starmail - 4. Jan, 19:19
Alito And The "F" Word
by Paul Rogat Loeb, TomPaine.com
Democrats and moderate Republicans should challenge Bush's nominee at every turn.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060104/alito_and_the_f_word.php
Democrats and moderate Republicans should challenge Bush's nominee at every turn.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060104/alito_and_the_f_word.php
Starmail - 4. Jan, 19:17
To Russia, Love Tom DeLay
by Russ Baker, TomPaine.com
Jack Abramoff's plea is just the beginning. DeLay's dealings with Russia should be one of the biggest stories of the year.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060104/to_russia_love_tom_delay.php
Jack Abramoff's plea is just the beginning. DeLay's dealings with Russia should be one of the biggest stories of the year.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060104/to_russia_love_tom_delay.php
Starmail - 4. Jan, 19:16
Bush wiretaps are self-inflicted legal wound
Portsmouth Herald
by staff
01/03/06
From a distance, it might appear that revelations that the Bush administration allegedly broke the law when it signed off on wiretaps without authorized warrants is just another case of inside-baseball politics, Washington style. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. And no matter how apologists for President Bush's desire to play the role of the all-knowing and unquestioned monarch when it suits him -- to protect, we are told, the American people from another 9/11 terrorist attack -- what is at stake is nothing less than the rule of law. It may be a few months before we know whether a full-blown constitutional crisis will occur...
http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/01032006/editoria/80958.htm
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
by staff
01/03/06
From a distance, it might appear that revelations that the Bush administration allegedly broke the law when it signed off on wiretaps without authorized warrants is just another case of inside-baseball politics, Washington style. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. And no matter how apologists for President Bush's desire to play the role of the all-knowing and unquestioned monarch when it suits him -- to protect, we are told, the American people from another 9/11 terrorist attack -- what is at stake is nothing less than the rule of law. It may be a few months before we know whether a full-blown constitutional crisis will occur...
http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/01032006/editoria/80958.htm
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Jan, 19:06
Presidential snooping damages the nation
Time
by Bob Barr
01/03/06
Back in the 1930s, when confronted with clear evidence he had violated the law, Georgia's then agriculture commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Eugene Talmadge popped his bright red suspenders and dared those accusing him of corruption to do something about it, declaring, 'Sure, I stole, but I stole for you.' He was elected Governor in 1932. Accused of breaking the law in the current debate over electronic spying, President George W. Bush has, in his own way, dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of our Constitution, I hope they will...
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1145243,00.html
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
by Bob Barr
01/03/06
Back in the 1930s, when confronted with clear evidence he had violated the law, Georgia's then agriculture commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Eugene Talmadge popped his bright red suspenders and dared those accusing him of corruption to do something about it, declaring, 'Sure, I stole, but I stole for you.' He was elected Governor in 1932. Accused of breaking the law in the current debate over electronic spying, President George W. Bush has, in his own way, dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of our Constitution, I hope they will...
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1145243,00.html
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Jan, 19:04
Democratic conviction
The American Prospect
by Matthew Yglesias
01/03/06
It was the year of the dogs that didn't bark. A newly dominant Republican Party was supposed to use its position to simultaneously transform American public policy and render the Democrats a permanently irrelevant minority party, isolated in a few coastal enclaves. It didn't happen. And, in fact, it started to unravel almost right away. The Bush administration went for broke with its plan to end Social Security as we know it and instead move to a system of individual stock ownership. The pretty version of how this was supposed to play into the Republican quest for a perpetual majority was that privatization would create a larger 'investor class' of stockowners, people who, in virtue of their shares, identified with corporate managers rather than workers or consumers, and therefore supported conservative economic policies. More prosaically, privatization was simply the latest iteration of GOP money-in, money-out machine politics...
http://www.prospect.org/web/view-web.ww?id=10793
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
by Matthew Yglesias
01/03/06
It was the year of the dogs that didn't bark. A newly dominant Republican Party was supposed to use its position to simultaneously transform American public policy and render the Democrats a permanently irrelevant minority party, isolated in a few coastal enclaves. It didn't happen. And, in fact, it started to unravel almost right away. The Bush administration went for broke with its plan to end Social Security as we know it and instead move to a system of individual stock ownership. The pretty version of how this was supposed to play into the Republican quest for a perpetual majority was that privatization would create a larger 'investor class' of stockowners, people who, in virtue of their shares, identified with corporate managers rather than workers or consumers, and therefore supported conservative economic policies. More prosaically, privatization was simply the latest iteration of GOP money-in, money-out machine politics...
http://www.prospect.org/web/view-web.ww?id=10793
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Jan, 19:01
Miller's moment
AlterNet
by Garance Franke-Ruta
01/03/06
George Miller is the most important Democratic tactician you've never heard of. In the past year, there has been precisely one lengthy profile of him inside Washington, and none in any of the major national papers. And yet, in an environment where Democrats have been almost wholly stymied by the Republicans' iron grip on power, Miller has repeatedly come up with innovative ways to defend progressive interests. 'They have so corrupted the rules of the House of Representatives that you essentially have to engage in guerilla activity to try … to get a vote on a matter,' says Miller, who has become expert in the range of alternatives available during this time of one-party rule. 'We've just tried to be as creative as we possibly could be'...
http://www.alternet.org/story/30349/
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
by Garance Franke-Ruta
01/03/06
George Miller is the most important Democratic tactician you've never heard of. In the past year, there has been precisely one lengthy profile of him inside Washington, and none in any of the major national papers. And yet, in an environment where Democrats have been almost wholly stymied by the Republicans' iron grip on power, Miller has repeatedly come up with innovative ways to defend progressive interests. 'They have so corrupted the rules of the House of Representatives that you essentially have to engage in guerilla activity to try … to get a vote on a matter,' says Miller, who has become expert in the range of alternatives available during this time of one-party rule. 'We've just tried to be as creative as we possibly could be'...
http://www.alternet.org/story/30349/
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Jan, 18:59
Abramoff won't go down alone
Salon
by Michael Scherer
01/04/06
His head bowed and his pinstripes faded, the former dean of Republican lobbyists, Jack Abramoff, arrived Tuesday at the chambers of federal Judge Ellen Huvelle to confess his sins. Under detailed questioning from the court, he took the blame for a career spent stealing from his Native American clients, hiding from tax collectors and corrupting members of Congress and their staffs. It was a tortured performance played out in hushed tones. By the time Abramoff rose to beg forgiveness from the Almighty, his voice was barely audible from the gallery. 'Words will not be able to even express my sorrow,' Abramoff muttered. 'All my remaining days I will feel tremendous sadness and regret.' With that, Abramoff turned states' evidence... [subscription or ad view required]
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/01/04/abramoff_plea/
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
by Michael Scherer
01/04/06
His head bowed and his pinstripes faded, the former dean of Republican lobbyists, Jack Abramoff, arrived Tuesday at the chambers of federal Judge Ellen Huvelle to confess his sins. Under detailed questioning from the court, he took the blame for a career spent stealing from his Native American clients, hiding from tax collectors and corrupting members of Congress and their staffs. It was a tortured performance played out in hushed tones. By the time Abramoff rose to beg forgiveness from the Almighty, his voice was barely audible from the gallery. 'Words will not be able to even express my sorrow,' Abramoff muttered. 'All my remaining days I will feel tremendous sadness and regret.' With that, Abramoff turned states' evidence... [subscription or ad view required]
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/01/04/abramoff_plea/
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Jan, 18:55
Running on empty
Cato Institute
by Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren
01/04/06
The rise in fuel prices that followed Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has prompted many members of Congress to call for new and expanded federal reserves of crude oil, diesel fuel, home heating oil, jet fuel and propane. Proponents of stockpiling claim that if the government were to hoard those commodities when prices were low, it could unleash them on the market when supplies are tight, thus dampening price increases and stabilizing the market. But the experience in this country with the strategic petroleum reserve strongly suggests that such government-managed stockpiles are a waste of taxpayers' money. Rather than increasing the stockpile, the reserve should be emptied and closed...
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5351
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
by Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren
01/04/06
The rise in fuel prices that followed Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has prompted many members of Congress to call for new and expanded federal reserves of crude oil, diesel fuel, home heating oil, jet fuel and propane. Proponents of stockpiling claim that if the government were to hoard those commodities when prices were low, it could unleash them on the market when supplies are tight, thus dampening price increases and stabilizing the market. But the experience in this country with the strategic petroleum reserve strongly suggests that such government-managed stockpiles are a waste of taxpayers' money. Rather than increasing the stockpile, the reserve should be emptied and closed...
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5351
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Jan, 18:53
Telling the future(s)
Kn@ppster
by Thomas L. Knapp
01/03/06
Why do I think the Busheviks want to tangle with Iran so badly? It's simple: Having irretrievably lost two wars in four years (and not doing so well on the general 'war on terror,' either), the only chance the War Party has to climb back up to a reasonably respectable place in history is to turn what they've falsely advertised as a 'generational war for survival' and 'World War IV' into the real thing. ... if the Busheviks can ignite a bona fide world war, there's some chance that 60 years from now Afghanistan and Iraq will be related to 9/11 as Wake Island and Bataan were to Pearl Harbor -- early, hopeless, necessary defeats instead of stupid, pointless defeats...
http://knappster.blogspot.com/2006/01/telling-futures.html
by Thomas L. Knapp
01/03/06
Why do I think the Busheviks want to tangle with Iran so badly? It's simple: Having irretrievably lost two wars in four years (and not doing so well on the general 'war on terror,' either), the only chance the War Party has to climb back up to a reasonably respectable place in history is to turn what they've falsely advertised as a 'generational war for survival' and 'World War IV' into the real thing. ... if the Busheviks can ignite a bona fide world war, there's some chance that 60 years from now Afghanistan and Iraq will be related to 9/11 as Wake Island and Bataan were to Pearl Harbor -- early, hopeless, necessary defeats instead of stupid, pointless defeats...
http://knappster.blogspot.com/2006/01/telling-futures.html
Starmail - 4. Jan, 18:51
"Good news" from Iraq
AntiWar.Com
by Justin Raimondo
01/04/06
In the tradition of Richard Perle, Halliburton, and the 'military-industrial complex' Dwight David Eisenhower presciently warned us against, Rubin and his fellow neocons have combined their ideological and financial interests into one seamless agenda -- and when their shenanigans are exposed, they are cited in the 'mainstream' media saying it's no big deal. Yeah, right: millions in government subsidies for the War Party, plus affirmative action for neocons. That's Rubin's idea of creating 'an even playing field.' The 'information warfare' campaign being carried out by the Lincoln Group and other sub rosa government contractors is not primarily directed at the Iraqis: the real target audience is Americans.... the generation of 'good news' is key to ensuring that the neocons' government-subsidized gravy train keeps on keeping on...
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8343
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
by Justin Raimondo
01/04/06
In the tradition of Richard Perle, Halliburton, and the 'military-industrial complex' Dwight David Eisenhower presciently warned us against, Rubin and his fellow neocons have combined their ideological and financial interests into one seamless agenda -- and when their shenanigans are exposed, they are cited in the 'mainstream' media saying it's no big deal. Yeah, right: millions in government subsidies for the War Party, plus affirmative action for neocons. That's Rubin's idea of creating 'an even playing field.' The 'information warfare' campaign being carried out by the Lincoln Group and other sub rosa government contractors is not primarily directed at the Iraqis: the real target audience is Americans.... the generation of 'good news' is key to ensuring that the neocons' government-subsidized gravy train keeps on keeping on...
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8343
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Jan, 18:50
New documents may influence Patriot Act debate
GovExec.Com
01/03/06
When Congress reconvenes this month, one of the first chores facing lawmakers will be reauthorizing the expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, and newly disclosed documents could become a factor in the debate. ... President Bush signed the short-term extension into law Friday, so lawmakers now have about a month to negotiate their differences over the civil-liberties protections in the Patriot Act. Those opposing the current long-term reauthorization bill could have more rhetorical ammunition by the end of the month, as documents from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit trickle out of FBI offices. The Electronic Privacy Information Center early last year filed a FOIA request but received few documents until a federal district judge in November ordered the FBI to produce 1,500 pages of documents every 15 days until the requests are fulfilled. EPIC is scheduled to receive the latest batch of documents Wednesday...
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=33086&dcn=todaysnews
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
01/03/06
When Congress reconvenes this month, one of the first chores facing lawmakers will be reauthorizing the expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, and newly disclosed documents could become a factor in the debate. ... President Bush signed the short-term extension into law Friday, so lawmakers now have about a month to negotiate their differences over the civil-liberties protections in the Patriot Act. Those opposing the current long-term reauthorization bill could have more rhetorical ammunition by the end of the month, as documents from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit trickle out of FBI offices. The Electronic Privacy Information Center early last year filed a FOIA request but received few documents until a federal district judge in November ordered the FBI to produce 1,500 pages of documents every 15 days until the requests are fulfilled. EPIC is scheduled to receive the latest batch of documents Wednesday...
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=33086&dcn=todaysnews
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Jan, 18:48
Officials: Error tipped Iran to CIA agents
CNN
01/03/06
Several U.S. agents in Iran were rounded up after the CIA mistakenly revealed clues to their identities to a covert source who turned out to be a double agent, according to a book that hit shelves Tuesday. In 'State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,' author James Risen of The New York Times called the mistake an 'espionage disaster.' But while confirming the mistake, knowledgeable current and former officials told CNN that the allegations that agents were lost as a result are not true...
http://tinyurl.com/e3h8p
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
01/03/06
Several U.S. agents in Iran were rounded up after the CIA mistakenly revealed clues to their identities to a covert source who turned out to be a double agent, according to a book that hit shelves Tuesday. In 'State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,' author James Risen of The New York Times called the mistake an 'espionage disaster.' But while confirming the mistake, knowledgeable current and former officials told CNN that the allegations that agents were lost as a result are not true...
http://tinyurl.com/e3h8p
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Jan, 18:45
Reporter defends release of NSA spy program
MSNBC
01/03/06
New York Times reporter James Risen first broke the story two weeks ago that the National Security Agency began spying on domestic communications soon after 9/11. In a new book out Tuesday, 'State of War,' he says it was a lot bigger than that. Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell sat down with Risen to talk about the NSA, and the run-up to the war in Iraq. Following is a complete transcript of the interview...
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10697484/
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
01/03/06
New York Times reporter James Risen first broke the story two weeks ago that the National Security Agency began spying on domestic communications soon after 9/11. In a new book out Tuesday, 'State of War,' he says it was a lot bigger than that. Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell sat down with Risen to talk about the NSA, and the run-up to the war in Iraq. Following is a complete transcript of the interview...
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10697484/
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Jan, 18:42
Intelligence panel had clue about spying
Indianapolis Star
01/03/06
Congressional intelligence committees had at least a hint in October 2001 that the National Security Agency was expanding its surveillance activities after the 9/11 attacks, according to a letter released Tuesday by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The California Democrat had raised questions to Gen. Michael Hayden, then the NSA director, about the legal authority to conduct the eavesdropping work...
http://tinyurl.com/83t8j
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
01/03/06
Congressional intelligence committees had at least a hint in October 2001 that the National Security Agency was expanding its surveillance activities after the 9/11 attacks, according to a letter released Tuesday by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The California Democrat had raised questions to Gen. Michael Hayden, then the NSA director, about the legal authority to conduct the eavesdropping work...
http://tinyurl.com/83t8j
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Jan, 18:40
Bush pushes for Patriot Act renewal
USA Today
01/04/06
President Bush fired the first shot in the renewed battle over the USA Patriot Act, hosting on Tuesday a group of federal prosecutors who said the soon-to-expire law helped solve major crimes. ... Bush-appointed U.S. attorneys from 14 states and the District of Columbia said the law has helped them crack cases involving terrorist finances, weapons exchanged for drugs, and child abductions. Senate Democrats who blocked renewal late last year, such as Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said they support the law but want to make sure civil liberties are protected. Four Republican senators joined Democrats in blocking renewal of the law: Larry Craig of Idaho, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska...
http://tinyurl.com/a246d
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
01/04/06
President Bush fired the first shot in the renewed battle over the USA Patriot Act, hosting on Tuesday a group of federal prosecutors who said the soon-to-expire law helped solve major crimes. ... Bush-appointed U.S. attorneys from 14 states and the District of Columbia said the law has helped them crack cases involving terrorist finances, weapons exchanged for drugs, and child abductions. Senate Democrats who blocked renewal late last year, such as Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said they support the law but want to make sure civil liberties are protected. Four Republican senators joined Democrats in blocking renewal of the law: Larry Craig of Idaho, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska...
http://tinyurl.com/a246d
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Jan, 18:38
Groups start final push ahead of Alito hearing
Fox News
01/04/06
With the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito less than a week away, his critics are making every effort to whip up opposition to Alito's joining the court. But ever since the defeat of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork a little more than 18 years ago, conservative activists have vowed not to let such critics go unanswered. ... Progress for America is spending about $500,000 on a television ad that quotes the writings of legal analyst Stuart Taylor, a columnist for The National Journal [in support of Alito] .... Meanwhile, a coalition of groups opposed to the nomination are preparing their campaign. Ralph Neas, head of People for the American Way, a liberal-leaning group, compares the coming battle to the 1987 fight over Judge Robert Bork...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180500,00.html
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
01/04/06
With the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito less than a week away, his critics are making every effort to whip up opposition to Alito's joining the court. But ever since the defeat of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork a little more than 18 years ago, conservative activists have vowed not to let such critics go unanswered. ... Progress for America is spending about $500,000 on a television ad that quotes the writings of legal analyst Stuart Taylor, a columnist for The National Journal [in support of Alito] .... Meanwhile, a coalition of groups opposed to the nomination are preparing their campaign. Ralph Neas, head of People for the American Way, a liberal-leaning group, compares the coming battle to the 1987 fight over Judge Robert Bork...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180500,00.html
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Jan, 18:37
Anomalous Worldwide Tectonic Event
Starmail - 4. Jan, 18:31
Deutscher Mieterbund fürchtet den gläsernen Mieter
03 Januar 2006 - 16:13
Vorsicht: Fernablesung erfasster Heizkosten kommt/Rechtsprobleme
Deutschlands größtes Wärmemessdienst-Unternehmen, die Techem AG, kündigt an, Heizkosten künftig auch per Mobilfunk erfassen zu wollen. In der Liegenschaft einer Wohnungsgenossenschaft sollen die Verbrauchsdaten aus 29 Wohnungen per Mobilfunknetz an eine Rechenzentrale des Unternehmens übermittelt werden. „Hier“, so der Dienstleister wörtlich, „werden die Daten nicht nur für die jährliche Heizkostenabrechnung genutzt.“
Der Deutsche Mieterbund (DMB) sieht in der so beschriebenen Fernablesung große datenschutzrechtliche Probleme. Es bestehe die Gefahr, dass Vermieter in der Privatsphäre ihrer Mieter schnüffelten, dass das Heizverhalten der Mieter erforscht werden könne und dass diese Kenntnisse in Rechtsstreitigkeiten, zum Beispiel über Feuchtigkeitsschäden, gegen die Mieter eingesetzt würden.
Mieterbund-Direktor Dr. Franz-Georg Rips: „Wenn erklärt wird, dass die Erfassung von taggenauen Verbrauchswerten nur Sinn macht, wenn die erfassten Daten effektiv genutzt werden, oder die Fernablesung als richtig interessant bewertet wird, wenn sie für ein unterjähriges Verbrauchsmanagement benutzt wird, wenn auf Basis der so erhobenen Daten Vielverbraucher unter den Mietern angesprochen und beraten werden sollen, dann schrillen bei mir alle Alarmglocken. Das ist der ‚gläserne Mieter’. Gegen derartige Auswüchse werden wir uns wehren.
Wenn als weiterer Vorteil der Fernablesung darauf hingewiesen wird, dass der Vermieter die Vorauszahlungen für Betriebskosten anpassen könne, wenn sich deutliche Veränderungen in der Heizkostenabrechnung abzeichneten, so ist das rechtlich schlichtweg falsch. Anpassungen an die Vorauszahlungen“, so Dr. Franz-Georg Rips, „kann der Vermieter nur verlangen, wenn sich aufgrund der Vorlage der Jahresabrechnung ein Anpassungsbedarf ergibt. Das ist ausdrücklich so im Gesetz geregelt.“
Quelle: Mitteilung des Deutsche Mieterbundes (DMB) v. 03.01.06
http://www.ebelteam.de/wmview.php?ArtID=4182
Nachricht von der BI Bad Dürkheim
Vorsicht: Fernablesung erfasster Heizkosten kommt/Rechtsprobleme
Deutschlands größtes Wärmemessdienst-Unternehmen, die Techem AG, kündigt an, Heizkosten künftig auch per Mobilfunk erfassen zu wollen. In der Liegenschaft einer Wohnungsgenossenschaft sollen die Verbrauchsdaten aus 29 Wohnungen per Mobilfunknetz an eine Rechenzentrale des Unternehmens übermittelt werden. „Hier“, so der Dienstleister wörtlich, „werden die Daten nicht nur für die jährliche Heizkostenabrechnung genutzt.“
Der Deutsche Mieterbund (DMB) sieht in der so beschriebenen Fernablesung große datenschutzrechtliche Probleme. Es bestehe die Gefahr, dass Vermieter in der Privatsphäre ihrer Mieter schnüffelten, dass das Heizverhalten der Mieter erforscht werden könne und dass diese Kenntnisse in Rechtsstreitigkeiten, zum Beispiel über Feuchtigkeitsschäden, gegen die Mieter eingesetzt würden.
Mieterbund-Direktor Dr. Franz-Georg Rips: „Wenn erklärt wird, dass die Erfassung von taggenauen Verbrauchswerten nur Sinn macht, wenn die erfassten Daten effektiv genutzt werden, oder die Fernablesung als richtig interessant bewertet wird, wenn sie für ein unterjähriges Verbrauchsmanagement benutzt wird, wenn auf Basis der so erhobenen Daten Vielverbraucher unter den Mietern angesprochen und beraten werden sollen, dann schrillen bei mir alle Alarmglocken. Das ist der ‚gläserne Mieter’. Gegen derartige Auswüchse werden wir uns wehren.
Wenn als weiterer Vorteil der Fernablesung darauf hingewiesen wird, dass der Vermieter die Vorauszahlungen für Betriebskosten anpassen könne, wenn sich deutliche Veränderungen in der Heizkostenabrechnung abzeichneten, so ist das rechtlich schlichtweg falsch. Anpassungen an die Vorauszahlungen“, so Dr. Franz-Georg Rips, „kann der Vermieter nur verlangen, wenn sich aufgrund der Vorlage der Jahresabrechnung ein Anpassungsbedarf ergibt. Das ist ausdrücklich so im Gesetz geregelt.“
Quelle: Mitteilung des Deutsche Mieterbundes (DMB) v. 03.01.06
http://www.ebelteam.de/wmview.php?ArtID=4182
Nachricht von der BI Bad Dürkheim
Starmail - 4. Jan, 16:48
ISP Reply to Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Starmail - 4. Jan, 16:41
Wo man noch 15 Jahre ohne Biometriepässe auskommt
Starmail - 4. Jan, 16:38
What a way to start a new year: 9 UK city centres are to get blanketed with wireless broadband
Starmail - 4. Jan, 16:34
060104 - R - Mobilfunk - Newsletter
Starmail - 4. Jan, 16:30
060103 - R - Mobilfunk - Newsletter
Starmail - 4. Jan, 16:28
060102 - R - Mobilfunk - Newsletter
Starmail - 4. Jan, 16:26
051230 - R - Mobilfunk - Newsletter
Starmail - 4. Jan, 16:23
Next-up News 03 Jan 2006
Omega News semaine 23-31/12/2005
http://www.next-up.org/pdf/omega/31_12_2005_omega_news_next_up.pdf
http://www.next-up.org/pdf/omega/31_12_2005_omega_news_next_up.pdf
Starmail - 4. Jan, 13:17
USA Supreme Court Clears Cell Phone Cancer Suits for Trial
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/usa_supreme_court_clears_cell_phone_cancer_suits_for_trial.htm
Source:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/cell_phone_cancer_suits.html
--------
Court victory is a first for cell-phone programmers
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1033412/
Source:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/cell_phone_cancer_suits.html
--------
Court victory is a first for cell-phone programmers
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1033412/
Starmail - 4. Jan, 12:59
Your say on mobile phones
By NEWS.com.au readers
04jan06
MOBILE phones are raising stress levels at home and at work, research has shown.
Their use is blurring the boundaries between work and home, causing professional worries to spill over into personal time, a study has found.
We asked NEWS.com.au readers whether they felt tied to their mobile and if they considered them a necessary evil. Below is a selection of the best responses we received.
http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,17727435%255E421,00.html
04jan06
MOBILE phones are raising stress levels at home and at work, research has shown.
Their use is blurring the boundaries between work and home, causing professional worries to spill over into personal time, a study has found.
We asked NEWS.com.au readers whether they felt tied to their mobile and if they considered them a necessary evil. Below is a selection of the best responses we received.
http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,17727435%255E421,00.html
Starmail - 4. Jan, 12:52
A pill they won't swallow: Med students REFUSE drug corp. gifts
Thanks for sending on those very relevant revelations about the US psychiatric disaster. David Oaks of mindfreedom-news had also alerted me to them. Dreadful what is going on in psychiatric circles in the US and elsewhere. The info in the enclosed attachment sounds a little bit uplifting but then these poor students may ruin their career advancements by taking such an ethical stance. Tomorrow's ed. of the IRISH TIMES will carry an article by their regular science columnist, Professor William Reville on "the dilemmas we face when science and ethics collide. If it is any good and if I can get to an Ir. Times online edition will send it along to you for posting. Imelda
NEWS: Med students REFUSE drug corp. gifts, go PharmFree!
From: mindfreedom-news@intenex.net
Sat, 31 Dec 2005 13:38:24 -0800 An:
Here's an inspiring news article about medical students **REFUSING** to take drug company gifts for ethical reasons!
28 Dec. 2005 _The Christian Science Monitor_
Religion & Ethics
Backstory: A pill they won't swallow
By G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Correspondent of _The Christian Science Monitor_
BOSTON - Dutifully wearing collared shirts, ties, and the short white coats meant to keep all medical students humble, Chen Kenyon and Dustin Petersen don't look like rebels. They look scrubbed and eager to learn from any doctor in a long white coat.
But in the pockets of their shorter garments lurk symbols of a movement aiming to topple one of medicine's most entrenched traditions. Their pens read "PharmFree," which means they don't take personal gifts of any size from the pharmaceutical industry. And that is touching off a quiet ethics war reverberating through the halls of academia and hospitals across the country.
Messrs. Kenyon and Petersen are among a growing band of stethoscope-wearing students who believe the medical profession needs more detachment from big pharmaceutical firms.
Consequently, they're turning down everything from free catered meals to notepads, provoking debates among fellow students and quizzical looks from doctors.
"People will often ask, 'why didn't you take the pen? Or, why didn't you eat the lunch?'," says Kenyon, a Boston University medical student who packs a sandwich, apple, and granola bar almost every day so he won't have to eat meals sponsored by drugmakers.
"It gives you the green light to talk about it when somebody asks," adds Petersen, who swears his home-cooked pot roast and clam chowder leftovers taste better than the catered meals he refuses each week.
Behind the modest rebellion is the belief that taking gifts from drug companies creates a conflict of interest for doctors. The argument: To accept handouts is to feel indebted, and doctors indebted to drug firms may not be prescribing medicines based solely on what's best for their patients. The 60,000-member American Medical Student Association (AMSA) urges students and doctors alike to just say "no" to all personal gifts from drugmakers.
Doctors on the whole seem far less worried about the practice. The American Medical Association condones gift-taking from pharmaceutical representatives as long as no single gift is worth much more than $100. And drug companies seem to be finding plenty of takers: spending on marketing to physicians jumped from $12.1 billion in 1999 to $22 billion in 2003 ($16 billion of which was in free samples), according to data from Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
***
Against this backdrop, students are still convinced their cause is worth fighting, even if it means giving up a hot meal every day. "I don't think patients can trust us anymore," says Kristin Rising, a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco. "By accepting gifts, we're taking in biases that are going to affect patient care."
Others feel the same way. For the first time this year, between 500 and 1,000 students at 150 medical schools are canvassing 40,000 physicians nationwide. Their aim is to steer them to independent sources of information about drugs.
This "counter-detailing initiative" takes AMSA's three-year-old PharmFree project out of medical schools and into the trenches of the profession, where students hope to pique the consciences of future colleagues.
Other phases of the movement have been more brazen. Last year, for instance, a brigade of students marched on Pfizer offices in New York and dumped thousands of logo- emblazoned pens, given to the students by the company as gifts and intended as advertisements in their hands, back on the firm's doorstep.
Activist students insist their beef is more with the medical profession, which, they say, has come to feel it's entitled to the giveaways, than it is with the drugmakers. Even PhRMA distances itself somewhat from the practice, saying its member firms honor AMA guidelines to keep gift-giving at modest levels. "Any physician can decline a gift at any time," says Dr. Paul T. Antony, PhRMA's chief medical officer.
Challenging medicine's status quo, however subtly, often comes at personal cost. Example: Last year in Philadelphia, Kenyon wanted to make a good first impression with his new supervisor on a medicine rotation. But after the firm handshake, things deteriorated as the attending physician suggested they grab lunch - at a seminar sponsored by a drug company.
"I told him, 'I don't eat pharmaceutical lunches,' " Kenyon recalls. "He was sort of, like, 'Oh.' And stopped it there. In some way, it doesn't really matter to me, but he is the person evaluating me in the end."
***
Kenyon's predicament illustrates the heart of this struggle: Those making the moral case against gift-taking hold junior status in a hierarchical and tradition-bound profession.
"While I think we're right, people don't always want to hear what we have to say," says Ms. Rising. "I'm not in a position to say, 'you, my supervisor, are wrong' " to accept giveaways.
With no real standing to make their case to higher-ups, students rely instead on the shock power that comes with saying "no thanks" when offered coveted freebies. Fellow students, they say, respond with a mixture of surprise, curiosity, ridicule - and lots of discussion.
Take the case of Chris McCoy. A 2004 graduate of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, Mr. McCoy had earned a reputation as a stickler for ethics by complaining when fellow students proposed to get drug companies to sponsor the medical school's social events. After the proposal was defeated, students kept eating meals provided by drug firms, but discussion about the ethics of doing so lingered like garlic.
"They'd say, 'What would Chris think if he saw us eating the drug lunch?' " McCoy recalls.
Where tensions arise, activists say, is when a student sets a higher ethical standard than a supervisor. No words need be spoken for a supervisor in a buffet line to feel a bit snubbed when a student settles for a granola bar instead of "tainted" pharmaceutical food.
"In a lot of cases, people feel like you're pulling the moral high ground," Kenyon says.
Students who dream of higher ethical standards for medicine expect to pay higher personal prices as time goes by. As medical residents, they'll be among peers who feel they've "earned" drug-industry perks, says Bob Goodman, founder of "No Free Lunch," a physician group that urges colleagues to stop taking gifts from drugmakers.
What's more, residents with low salaries and high debt levels are famous for relying on drugmakers to keep them fed during long shifts. Residents say "once you see the reality of the way medicine is, you won't be so idealistic," says Yavar Moghimi, a George Washington University medical student. "I worry about that. [But] family members always congratulate me and tell me how important they think this is."
Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1228/p20s01-lire.html
- end -
NEWS: Med students REFUSE drug corp. gifts, go PharmFree!
From: mindfreedom-news@intenex.net
Sat, 31 Dec 2005 13:38:24 -0800 An:
Here's an inspiring news article about medical students **REFUSING** to take drug company gifts for ethical reasons!
28 Dec. 2005 _The Christian Science Monitor_
Religion & Ethics
Backstory: A pill they won't swallow
By G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Correspondent of _The Christian Science Monitor_
BOSTON - Dutifully wearing collared shirts, ties, and the short white coats meant to keep all medical students humble, Chen Kenyon and Dustin Petersen don't look like rebels. They look scrubbed and eager to learn from any doctor in a long white coat.
But in the pockets of their shorter garments lurk symbols of a movement aiming to topple one of medicine's most entrenched traditions. Their pens read "PharmFree," which means they don't take personal gifts of any size from the pharmaceutical industry. And that is touching off a quiet ethics war reverberating through the halls of academia and hospitals across the country.
Messrs. Kenyon and Petersen are among a growing band of stethoscope-wearing students who believe the medical profession needs more detachment from big pharmaceutical firms.
Consequently, they're turning down everything from free catered meals to notepads, provoking debates among fellow students and quizzical looks from doctors.
"People will often ask, 'why didn't you take the pen? Or, why didn't you eat the lunch?'," says Kenyon, a Boston University medical student who packs a sandwich, apple, and granola bar almost every day so he won't have to eat meals sponsored by drugmakers.
"It gives you the green light to talk about it when somebody asks," adds Petersen, who swears his home-cooked pot roast and clam chowder leftovers taste better than the catered meals he refuses each week.
Behind the modest rebellion is the belief that taking gifts from drug companies creates a conflict of interest for doctors. The argument: To accept handouts is to feel indebted, and doctors indebted to drug firms may not be prescribing medicines based solely on what's best for their patients. The 60,000-member American Medical Student Association (AMSA) urges students and doctors alike to just say "no" to all personal gifts from drugmakers.
Doctors on the whole seem far less worried about the practice. The American Medical Association condones gift-taking from pharmaceutical representatives as long as no single gift is worth much more than $100. And drug companies seem to be finding plenty of takers: spending on marketing to physicians jumped from $12.1 billion in 1999 to $22 billion in 2003 ($16 billion of which was in free samples), according to data from Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
***
Against this backdrop, students are still convinced their cause is worth fighting, even if it means giving up a hot meal every day. "I don't think patients can trust us anymore," says Kristin Rising, a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco. "By accepting gifts, we're taking in biases that are going to affect patient care."
Others feel the same way. For the first time this year, between 500 and 1,000 students at 150 medical schools are canvassing 40,000 physicians nationwide. Their aim is to steer them to independent sources of information about drugs.
This "counter-detailing initiative" takes AMSA's three-year-old PharmFree project out of medical schools and into the trenches of the profession, where students hope to pique the consciences of future colleagues.
Other phases of the movement have been more brazen. Last year, for instance, a brigade of students marched on Pfizer offices in New York and dumped thousands of logo- emblazoned pens, given to the students by the company as gifts and intended as advertisements in their hands, back on the firm's doorstep.
Activist students insist their beef is more with the medical profession, which, they say, has come to feel it's entitled to the giveaways, than it is with the drugmakers. Even PhRMA distances itself somewhat from the practice, saying its member firms honor AMA guidelines to keep gift-giving at modest levels. "Any physician can decline a gift at any time," says Dr. Paul T. Antony, PhRMA's chief medical officer.
Challenging medicine's status quo, however subtly, often comes at personal cost. Example: Last year in Philadelphia, Kenyon wanted to make a good first impression with his new supervisor on a medicine rotation. But after the firm handshake, things deteriorated as the attending physician suggested they grab lunch - at a seminar sponsored by a drug company.
"I told him, 'I don't eat pharmaceutical lunches,' " Kenyon recalls. "He was sort of, like, 'Oh.' And stopped it there. In some way, it doesn't really matter to me, but he is the person evaluating me in the end."
***
Kenyon's predicament illustrates the heart of this struggle: Those making the moral case against gift-taking hold junior status in a hierarchical and tradition-bound profession.
"While I think we're right, people don't always want to hear what we have to say," says Ms. Rising. "I'm not in a position to say, 'you, my supervisor, are wrong' " to accept giveaways.
With no real standing to make their case to higher-ups, students rely instead on the shock power that comes with saying "no thanks" when offered coveted freebies. Fellow students, they say, respond with a mixture of surprise, curiosity, ridicule - and lots of discussion.
Take the case of Chris McCoy. A 2004 graduate of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, Mr. McCoy had earned a reputation as a stickler for ethics by complaining when fellow students proposed to get drug companies to sponsor the medical school's social events. After the proposal was defeated, students kept eating meals provided by drug firms, but discussion about the ethics of doing so lingered like garlic.
"They'd say, 'What would Chris think if he saw us eating the drug lunch?' " McCoy recalls.
Where tensions arise, activists say, is when a student sets a higher ethical standard than a supervisor. No words need be spoken for a supervisor in a buffet line to feel a bit snubbed when a student settles for a granola bar instead of "tainted" pharmaceutical food.
"In a lot of cases, people feel like you're pulling the moral high ground," Kenyon says.
Students who dream of higher ethical standards for medicine expect to pay higher personal prices as time goes by. As medical residents, they'll be among peers who feel they've "earned" drug-industry perks, says Bob Goodman, founder of "No Free Lunch," a physician group that urges colleagues to stop taking gifts from drugmakers.
What's more, residents with low salaries and high debt levels are famous for relying on drugmakers to keep them fed during long shifts. Residents say "once you see the reality of the way medicine is, you won't be so idealistic," says Yavar Moghimi, a George Washington University medical student. "I worry about that. [But] family members always congratulate me and tell me how important they think this is."
Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1228/p20s01-lire.html
- end -
Starmail - 4. Jan, 12:47
USA Supreme Court Clears Cell Phone Cancer Suits for Trial
Starmail - 4. Jan, 12:35
USA Supreme Court Clears Cell Phone Cancer Suits for Trial
Starmail - 4. Jan, 12:35
Are you prepared for the fall of the sparrow' in 2006?
Starmail - 4. Jan, 11:16
Abramoff Pleads Guilty, Will Cooperate
Embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal charges of conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud, agreeing to cooperate in an influence-peddling investigation that threatens powerful members of Congress.
http://tinyurl.com/77g32
From Information Clearing House
http://tinyurl.com/77g32
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 4. Jan, 11:13
At a crossroads, looking away from America
Last year witnessed a decisive turn in Latin America. A growing number of countries in the region now seem determined to pursue their interests, regardless of what the United States desires.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11447.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11447.htm
Starmail - 4. Jan, 11:12
Gas Pains
Russia is being universally condemned by the Bush Regime and European leaders for the heinous crime of….practicing hard-nosed market capitalism. And for – horror of horrors! – mixing business and politics. Whoever heard of such a thing? Oh, those Scythian savages!
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=385&Itemid=1
From Information Clearing House
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=385&Itemid=1
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 4. Jan, 11:11
Washington's outrage over Nour's sentence rings hollow
In light of recent revelations concerning the US government's human rights abuses, the statement smacks of the pot calling the kettle black.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_382.shtml
From Information Clearing House
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_382.shtml
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 4. Jan, 11:10
Syria: a concerted offensive
All eyes are on Syria as it stands accused of being behind the murder of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Even before the UN commission of inquiry was completed, the US was planning - with France - a concerted offensive against the Syrian regime. But destabilising President Bashar al-Assad could lead to regional chaos, given the fragility of Lebanon and near civil war in Iraq.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11443.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11443.htm
Starmail - 4. Jan, 11:08
Hillary Clinton, AIPAC and Iran
Starmail - 4. Jan, 11:07
A Tale of Two Quagmires
The Bush administration has succeeded in making the United States one of the most feared and hated countries in the world. The talent of these guys is unbelievable. They have even succeeded at alienating Canada. I mean, that takes genius, literally.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11446.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11446.htm
Starmail - 4. Jan, 11:05
The Guerilla War on Iraqi Oil
As America continues to tighten its grip on the world’s dwindling hydrocarbon resources, we can expect that the successes of the Iraqi resistance will offer a model to the other disparate groups who have no chance of beating the United States in open battle, but hope to bring the empire to its knees by making the costs of war too great to sustain.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11441.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11441.htm
Starmail - 4. Jan, 11:04
Chalabi likely to succeed in new Iraq government, despite controversy
The former exile who helped spur the U.S.-led invasion by feeding false intelligence to Washington about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and who returned to Iraq after Saddam's fall to craft himself into a political leader, still has more cards to play.
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13535019.htm
From Information Clearing House
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13535019.htm
From Information Clearing House
Starmail - 4. Jan, 11:03
Domestic Spying Program Is Sign the U.S. is Decaying Into a “Police State”
Democracy Now!
Former NSA intelligence agent Russell Tice condemns reports that the Agency has been engaged in eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without court warrants. Tice has volunteered to testify before Congress about illegal black ops programs at the NSA. Tice said, “The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11442.htm
Former NSA intelligence agent Russell Tice condemns reports that the Agency has been engaged in eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without court warrants. Tice has volunteered to testify before Congress about illegal black ops programs at the NSA. Tice said, “The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11442.htm
Starmail - 4. Jan, 11:00
Florida Wal-Mart Workers Use Collective Action to Enforce Rights
In central Florida, Wal-Mart workers are fighting, and sometimes winning, campaigns using collective action to solve both shop floor and larger industry-wide problems.
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/010306LA.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/010306LA.shtml
Starmail - 4. Jan, 10:57
The End of Plenty
One question naturally arises when you hear that 67 million more people are on the way: do we have enough to go around? Last year raised worries about "peak oil," the notion that the glass of crude may be half empty.... Now get ready for peak water, and even peak food.
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/010306EA.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/010306EA.shtml
Starmail - 4. Jan, 10:55
Bush's Long War with the Truth
Robert Parry writes that George W. Bush's dysfunctional relationship with the truth seems to be shaped by two complementary factors - a personal compulsion to say whatever makes him look good at that moment and a permissive environment that rarely holds him accountable for his lies.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010306Q.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010306Q.shtml
Starmail - 4. Jan, 10:53
Impact of radio frequency electromagnetic radiation on DNA integrity in the male germline
Aitken RJ, Bennetts LE, Sawyer D, Wiklendt AM, King BV.
ARC Centre of Excellence in Biotechnology and Development, Discipline of Biological Sciences, and Hunter Medical Research Institute, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. jaitken@mail.newcastle.edu.au
Concern has arisen over human exposures to radio frequency electromagnetic radiation (RFEMR), including a recent report indicating that regular mobile phone use can negatively impact upon human semen quality. These effects would be particularly serious if the biological effects of RFEMR included the induction of DNA damage in male germ cells. In this study, mice were exposed to 900 MHz RFEMR at a specific absorption rate of approximately 90 mW/kg inside a waveguide for 7 days at 12 h per day. Following exposure, DNA damage to caudal epididymal spermatozoa was assessed by quantitative PCR (QPCR) as well as alkaline and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. The treated mice were overtly normal and all assessment criteria, including sperm number, morphology and vitality were not significantly affected. Gel electrophoresis revealed no gross evidence of increased single- or double-DNA strand breakage in spermatozoa taken from treated animals. However, a detailed analysis of DNA integrity using QPCR revealed statistically significant damage to both the mitochondrial genome (p < 0.05) and the nuclear beta-globin locus (p < 0.01). This study suggests that while RFEMR does not have a dramatic impact on male germ cell development, a significant genotoxic effect on epididymal spermatozoa is evident and deserves further investigation.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15910543&dopt=Abstract
Informant:
Agnes
http://www.mast-victims.org
ARC Centre of Excellence in Biotechnology and Development, Discipline of Biological Sciences, and Hunter Medical Research Institute, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. jaitken@mail.newcastle.edu.au
Concern has arisen over human exposures to radio frequency electromagnetic radiation (RFEMR), including a recent report indicating that regular mobile phone use can negatively impact upon human semen quality. These effects would be particularly serious if the biological effects of RFEMR included the induction of DNA damage in male germ cells. In this study, mice were exposed to 900 MHz RFEMR at a specific absorption rate of approximately 90 mW/kg inside a waveguide for 7 days at 12 h per day. Following exposure, DNA damage to caudal epididymal spermatozoa was assessed by quantitative PCR (QPCR) as well as alkaline and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. The treated mice were overtly normal and all assessment criteria, including sperm number, morphology and vitality were not significantly affected. Gel electrophoresis revealed no gross evidence of increased single- or double-DNA strand breakage in spermatozoa taken from treated animals. However, a detailed analysis of DNA integrity using QPCR revealed statistically significant damage to both the mitochondrial genome (p < 0.05) and the nuclear beta-globin locus (p < 0.01). This study suggests that while RFEMR does not have a dramatic impact on male germ cell development, a significant genotoxic effect on epididymal spermatozoa is evident and deserves further investigation.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15910543&dopt=Abstract
Informant:
Agnes
http://www.mast-victims.org
Starmail - 4. Jan, 10:44
The Political Folly Awards of 2005
Starmail - 4. Jan, 10:41
This Won't Be the American Century
Starmail - 4. Jan, 10:39
US Air Raid Kills Iraqi Family
Starmail - 4. Jan, 10:38
Bush Pulls the Plug on Iraq Reconstruction
Starmail - 4. Jan, 10:36
America's nuclear ticking bomb
Starmail - 4. Jan, 10:30
Cameras at Major British Airport Snap Your Picture
Starmail - 4. Jan, 10:27
Plans for nuclear strike on Iran
(excerpt)
-----Original Message-----
From: Leuren Moret
leurenmoret@yahoo.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2006 06:26 PM
Subject: Plans for nuclear strike on Iran
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
January 2, 2006 -- Intelligence indications and warnings abound as Bush administration finalizes military attack on Iran.
Intelligence and military sources in the United States and abroad are reporting on various factors that indicate a U.S. military hit on Iranian nuclear and military installations, that may involve tactical nuclear weapons, is in the final stages of preparation. Likely targets for saturation bombing are the Bushehr nuclear power plant (where Russian and other foreign national technicians are present), a uranium mining site in Saghand near the city of Yazd, the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, a heavy water plant and radioisotope facility in Arak, the Ardekan Nuclear Fuel Unit, the Uranium Conversion Facility and Nuclear Technology Center in Isfahan, the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, the Tehran Molybdenum, Iodine and Xenon Radioisotope Production Facility, the Tehran Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Laboratories, the Kalaye Electric Company in the Tehran suburbs, a reportedly dismantled uranium enrichment plant in Lashkar Abad, and the Radioactive Waste Storage Units in Karaj and Anarak.
Primary target: Bushehr nuclear reactor and hundreds of Russian technicians
Other first targets would be Shahab-I, II, and III missile launch sites, air bases (including the large Mehrabad air base/international airport near Tehran), naval installations on the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea, command, control, communications and intelligence facilities. Secondary targets would include civilian airports, radio and TV installations, telecommunications centers, government buildings, conventional power plants, highways and bridges, and rail lines. Oil installations and commercial port facilities would likely be relatively untouched by U.S. forces in order to preserve them for U.S. oil and business interests.
There has been a rapid increase in training and readiness at a number of U.S. military installations involved with the planned primarily aerial attack. These include a Pentagon order to Fort Rucker, Alabama, to be prepared to handle an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 trainees, including civilian contractors, who will be deployed for Iranian combat operations. Rucker is home to the US Army's aviation training command, including the helicopter training school.
In addition, there has been an increase in readiness at nearby Hurlburt Field in Florida, the home of the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command. The U.S. attack on Iran will primarily involve aviation (Navy, Air Force, Navy-Marine Corps) and special operations assets.
There has also been a noticeable increase in activity at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California, a primary live fire training activity located in a desert and mountainous environment similar to target areas in Iran.
From European intelligence agencies comes word that the United States has told its NATO allies to be prepared for a military strike on Iranian nuclear development and military installations.
On November 17, 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin spent seven hours in secret discussions with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the the opening ceremonies in Samsun, Turkey for the Russian-Turkish underwater Blue Stream natural gas pipeline, festivities also attended by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
According to sources knowledgeable about the meeting, Erdogan promised Putin, who has become a close friend, that Turkey would not support the use of its bases by the United States in a military attack on Iran. That brought a series of high level visits to Turkey by Bush administration officials, including CIA chief Porter Goss, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Although Erdogan listened to Goss's and Rice's pleas for Turkish logistical, political, and intelligence help for an attack on Iran and Turkish Army Chief Yasar Buyukanit heard much the same from Pentagon officials during his recent trip to Washington, the word is that Putin now has enough clout in Ankara to scuttle any use of Turkey by the U.S. for an attack on Iran. [Mueller delivered Ankara intelligence "proof" of Iranian backing for Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas in Turkey. Intelligence agencies and business intelligence units around the world are now discounting any intelligence coming from the Bush administration as neocon propaganda invented by think tanks and discredited intelligence agencies in Washington, Tel Aviv-Herzliya, and Jerusalem].
A U.S. Attack on Iran: The Perfect Storm for wider nuclear conflict
U.S. political and military officials have also approached Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, Oman, and Azerbaijan seeking their support for a U.S. attack on Iran. Ina replay of the phony pre-war intelligence on Iraq, Washington is trying to convince various countries that a link exists between Iran and "Al Qaeda."
Polish intelligence sources report that Poland's Defense Minister Radek Sikorski assured Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of Poland's support for any U.S. strike against Iran. Sikorski is a former American Enterprise Institute colleague of such neo-cons as Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and Lynne Cheney, the so-called "Second Lady" of the United States. Sikorski and Polish Foreign Minister Stefan Meller assured Rumsfeld and Rice, respectively, that Poland would stand by the United States during the split in NATO that will occur as a result of the American strike. Polish intelligence sources, who are unhappy with the arrangement of the new right-wing government in Warsaw with the Bush administration, leaked the information about the recent U.S. demarche to NATO in Brussels about preparation for the attack.
Similar intelligence "leaks" about the U.S. attack plans were also leaked to the German magazine Der Spiegel.
European intelligence sources also report that the recent decision by Putin and Russia's state-owned Gazprom natural gas company to cut supplied of natural gas to Ukraine was a clear warning by Putin to nations like Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Moldova, France, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Bosnia, Serbia, and Germany that it would do the same if they support the U.S. attack on Iran. Gazprom natural gas is supplied, via pipelines in Ukraine, from Russia and Turkmenistan to countries in Eastern and Western Europe. The Bush administration charged Russia with using gas supplies as a "political tool."
Putin has additional leverage on Western Europe since former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder accepted an appointment to the board of a joint Russian-German North European Gas Pipeline Consortium that is controlled by Gazprom. The pipeline will bring Russian gas to Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands, and Britain, giving Putin additional leverage over Washington in Europe.
Southeast Asian intelligence sources report that Burma's (Myanmar's) recent abrupt decision to move its capital from Rangoon (Yangon) to remote Pyinmana, 200 miles to the north, is a result of Chinese intelligence warnings to its Burmese allies about the effects of radiation resulting from a U.S. conventional or tactical nuclear attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. There is concern that a series of attacks on Iranian nuclear installations will create a Chernobyl-like radioactive cloud that would be caught up in monsoon weather in the Indian Ocean.
Rangoon (Yangon) capital moved 200 miles north over fears of monsoon season Iran nuclear fallout?
Low-lying Rangoon lies in the path of monsoon rains that would continue to carry radioactive fallout from Iran over South and Southeast Asia between May and October. Coastal Indian Ocean cities like Rangoon, Dhaka, Calcutta, Mumbai, Chennai, and Colombo would be affected by the radioactive fallout more than higher elevation cities since humidity intensifies the effects of the fallout. Thousands of government workers were given only two days' notice to pack up and leave Rangoon for the higher (and dryer) mountainous Pyinmana.
In neighboring West Bengal, the leftist government and its national leftist allies around the country are planning massive demonstrations during Bush's upcoming trip to India. They are protesting the war in Iraq as well as the threats against Iran.
Reports from Yemen indicate that western oil companies are concerned about U.S. intentions in Iran since the southern Arabian country catches the edge of the monsoon rains that could contain radioactive fallout from an attack, endangering their workers in the country.
The Bush administration aborted last minute plans to attack Iranian nuclear and political installations prior to the 2004 presidential election. On October 9, Rumsfeld met with defense minister colleagues on the now decommissioned USS John F. Kennedy in the Persian Gulf to seek support for the attack. That meeting has been confirmed by the Danish Defense Minister who was in attendance, however, the topic of the meeting was not discussed. According to U.S. naval personnel on board the Kennedy, a special "war room" was set up to coordinate the attack. Britain, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, and Japan did not attend the meeting because of their opposition to the attack plans.
Intelligence and military officials around the world are also bracing for the results of a U.S. attack on Iran. This includes the distinct possibility of a major Shia retaliatory attack in Iraq, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Afghanistan against U.S. military, diplomatic, and economic targets in the region. Radioactive fallout from a conventional or tactical nuclear attack on Iran will result in major problems with Pakistan, India, China, Russia, Japan, and other downwind countries in Asia and the Pacific Rim, possibly including the fall of the Pervez Musharraf government in Pakistan and replacement by a radical Islamist regime having possession of nuclear weapons. That would provoke a military response from nuclear power India.
In a counter-attack, Iran would immediately launch its Shahab I and II missiles at the U.S. Green Zone in Baghdad, the Al Udeid airbase in Qatar, the US Navy base in Bahrain, Camp Doha base in Kuwait, Al Seeb airbase in Oman, Baghdad International Airport, the U.S. base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Iran would also launch its long-range Shahab III missiles on the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheba, Eilat, and the Israeli nuclear complex at Dimona. Iranian missiles would also be launched at US naval ships in the Persian Gulf and oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
The virtual end of NATO as a viable defense organization may also result from an attack that will drive a final wedge between Washington and Europe. And China may elect to respond financially and militarily against the United States since Iran is China's second largest source of imported Middle East oil after Saudi Arabia and plans to use an Iranian terminal for the export of natural gas from Turkmenistan. [China now imports 60 percent of its oil needs, and Iran represents 17 percent of those imports].
Russia recently participated in, through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a three-way military exercise (code named "Indira 2005") between Russia, China, and India to prepare for any new U.S. power projections in Asia, including an attack on Iran, a prospective SCO member. Last August, Russia and China held their first-ever joint land-sea-air military exercises.
Iran also held a large military exercise in early December in Bandar Abbas on the Gulf. An Iranian C-130 carrying Iranian journalists from Mehrabad airport to Bandar to cover the exercise crashed into a Tehran apartment building on December 6, killing at least 116 people, including 68 journalists.
Within the U.S. military and across the globe, there is heightened tension about the intentions of the neocon Bush administration.
From CAMPAIGN FOR COOPERATION IN SPACE
-----Original Message-----
From: Leuren Moret
leurenmoret@yahoo.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2006 06:26 PM
Subject: Plans for nuclear strike on Iran
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
January 2, 2006 -- Intelligence indications and warnings abound as Bush administration finalizes military attack on Iran.
Intelligence and military sources in the United States and abroad are reporting on various factors that indicate a U.S. military hit on Iranian nuclear and military installations, that may involve tactical nuclear weapons, is in the final stages of preparation. Likely targets for saturation bombing are the Bushehr nuclear power plant (where Russian and other foreign national technicians are present), a uranium mining site in Saghand near the city of Yazd, the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, a heavy water plant and radioisotope facility in Arak, the Ardekan Nuclear Fuel Unit, the Uranium Conversion Facility and Nuclear Technology Center in Isfahan, the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, the Tehran Molybdenum, Iodine and Xenon Radioisotope Production Facility, the Tehran Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Laboratories, the Kalaye Electric Company in the Tehran suburbs, a reportedly dismantled uranium enrichment plant in Lashkar Abad, and the Radioactive Waste Storage Units in Karaj and Anarak.
Primary target: Bushehr nuclear reactor and hundreds of Russian technicians
Other first targets would be Shahab-I, II, and III missile launch sites, air bases (including the large Mehrabad air base/international airport near Tehran), naval installations on the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea, command, control, communications and intelligence facilities. Secondary targets would include civilian airports, radio and TV installations, telecommunications centers, government buildings, conventional power plants, highways and bridges, and rail lines. Oil installations and commercial port facilities would likely be relatively untouched by U.S. forces in order to preserve them for U.S. oil and business interests.
There has been a rapid increase in training and readiness at a number of U.S. military installations involved with the planned primarily aerial attack. These include a Pentagon order to Fort Rucker, Alabama, to be prepared to handle an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 trainees, including civilian contractors, who will be deployed for Iranian combat operations. Rucker is home to the US Army's aviation training command, including the helicopter training school.
In addition, there has been an increase in readiness at nearby Hurlburt Field in Florida, the home of the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command. The U.S. attack on Iran will primarily involve aviation (Navy, Air Force, Navy-Marine Corps) and special operations assets.
There has also been a noticeable increase in activity at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California, a primary live fire training activity located in a desert and mountainous environment similar to target areas in Iran.
From European intelligence agencies comes word that the United States has told its NATO allies to be prepared for a military strike on Iranian nuclear development and military installations.
On November 17, 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin spent seven hours in secret discussions with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the the opening ceremonies in Samsun, Turkey for the Russian-Turkish underwater Blue Stream natural gas pipeline, festivities also attended by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
According to sources knowledgeable about the meeting, Erdogan promised Putin, who has become a close friend, that Turkey would not support the use of its bases by the United States in a military attack on Iran. That brought a series of high level visits to Turkey by Bush administration officials, including CIA chief Porter Goss, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Although Erdogan listened to Goss's and Rice's pleas for Turkish logistical, political, and intelligence help for an attack on Iran and Turkish Army Chief Yasar Buyukanit heard much the same from Pentagon officials during his recent trip to Washington, the word is that Putin now has enough clout in Ankara to scuttle any use of Turkey by the U.S. for an attack on Iran. [Mueller delivered Ankara intelligence "proof" of Iranian backing for Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas in Turkey. Intelligence agencies and business intelligence units around the world are now discounting any intelligence coming from the Bush administration as neocon propaganda invented by think tanks and discredited intelligence agencies in Washington, Tel Aviv-Herzliya, and Jerusalem].
A U.S. Attack on Iran: The Perfect Storm for wider nuclear conflict
U.S. political and military officials have also approached Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, Oman, and Azerbaijan seeking their support for a U.S. attack on Iran. Ina replay of the phony pre-war intelligence on Iraq, Washington is trying to convince various countries that a link exists between Iran and "Al Qaeda."
Polish intelligence sources report that Poland's Defense Minister Radek Sikorski assured Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of Poland's support for any U.S. strike against Iran. Sikorski is a former American Enterprise Institute colleague of such neo-cons as Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and Lynne Cheney, the so-called "Second Lady" of the United States. Sikorski and Polish Foreign Minister Stefan Meller assured Rumsfeld and Rice, respectively, that Poland would stand by the United States during the split in NATO that will occur as a result of the American strike. Polish intelligence sources, who are unhappy with the arrangement of the new right-wing government in Warsaw with the Bush administration, leaked the information about the recent U.S. demarche to NATO in Brussels about preparation for the attack.
Similar intelligence "leaks" about the U.S. attack plans were also leaked to the German magazine Der Spiegel.
European intelligence sources also report that the recent decision by Putin and Russia's state-owned Gazprom natural gas company to cut supplied of natural gas to Ukraine was a clear warning by Putin to nations like Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Moldova, France, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Bosnia, Serbia, and Germany that it would do the same if they support the U.S. attack on Iran. Gazprom natural gas is supplied, via pipelines in Ukraine, from Russia and Turkmenistan to countries in Eastern and Western Europe. The Bush administration charged Russia with using gas supplies as a "political tool."
Putin has additional leverage on Western Europe since former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder accepted an appointment to the board of a joint Russian-German North European Gas Pipeline Consortium that is controlled by Gazprom. The pipeline will bring Russian gas to Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands, and Britain, giving Putin additional leverage over Washington in Europe.
Southeast Asian intelligence sources report that Burma's (Myanmar's) recent abrupt decision to move its capital from Rangoon (Yangon) to remote Pyinmana, 200 miles to the north, is a result of Chinese intelligence warnings to its Burmese allies about the effects of radiation resulting from a U.S. conventional or tactical nuclear attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. There is concern that a series of attacks on Iranian nuclear installations will create a Chernobyl-like radioactive cloud that would be caught up in monsoon weather in the Indian Ocean.
Rangoon (Yangon) capital moved 200 miles north over fears of monsoon season Iran nuclear fallout?
Low-lying Rangoon lies in the path of monsoon rains that would continue to carry radioactive fallout from Iran over South and Southeast Asia between May and October. Coastal Indian Ocean cities like Rangoon, Dhaka, Calcutta, Mumbai, Chennai, and Colombo would be affected by the radioactive fallout more than higher elevation cities since humidity intensifies the effects of the fallout. Thousands of government workers were given only two days' notice to pack up and leave Rangoon for the higher (and dryer) mountainous Pyinmana.
In neighboring West Bengal, the leftist government and its national leftist allies around the country are planning massive demonstrations during Bush's upcoming trip to India. They are protesting the war in Iraq as well as the threats against Iran.
Reports from Yemen indicate that western oil companies are concerned about U.S. intentions in Iran since the southern Arabian country catches the edge of the monsoon rains that could contain radioactive fallout from an attack, endangering their workers in the country.
The Bush administration aborted last minute plans to attack Iranian nuclear and political installations prior to the 2004 presidential election. On October 9, Rumsfeld met with defense minister colleagues on the now decommissioned USS John F. Kennedy in the Persian Gulf to seek support for the attack. That meeting has been confirmed by the Danish Defense Minister who was in attendance, however, the topic of the meeting was not discussed. According to U.S. naval personnel on board the Kennedy, a special "war room" was set up to coordinate the attack. Britain, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, and Japan did not attend the meeting because of their opposition to the attack plans.
Intelligence and military officials around the world are also bracing for the results of a U.S. attack on Iran. This includes the distinct possibility of a major Shia retaliatory attack in Iraq, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Afghanistan against U.S. military, diplomatic, and economic targets in the region. Radioactive fallout from a conventional or tactical nuclear attack on Iran will result in major problems with Pakistan, India, China, Russia, Japan, and other downwind countries in Asia and the Pacific Rim, possibly including the fall of the Pervez Musharraf government in Pakistan and replacement by a radical Islamist regime having possession of nuclear weapons. That would provoke a military response from nuclear power India.
In a counter-attack, Iran would immediately launch its Shahab I and II missiles at the U.S. Green Zone in Baghdad, the Al Udeid airbase in Qatar, the US Navy base in Bahrain, Camp Doha base in Kuwait, Al Seeb airbase in Oman, Baghdad International Airport, the U.S. base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Iran would also launch its long-range Shahab III missiles on the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheba, Eilat, and the Israeli nuclear complex at Dimona. Iranian missiles would also be launched at US naval ships in the Persian Gulf and oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
The virtual end of NATO as a viable defense organization may also result from an attack that will drive a final wedge between Washington and Europe. And China may elect to respond financially and militarily against the United States since Iran is China's second largest source of imported Middle East oil after Saudi Arabia and plans to use an Iranian terminal for the export of natural gas from Turkmenistan. [China now imports 60 percent of its oil needs, and Iran represents 17 percent of those imports].
Russia recently participated in, through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a three-way military exercise (code named "Indira 2005") between Russia, China, and India to prepare for any new U.S. power projections in Asia, including an attack on Iran, a prospective SCO member. Last August, Russia and China held their first-ever joint land-sea-air military exercises.
Iran also held a large military exercise in early December in Bandar Abbas on the Gulf. An Iranian C-130 carrying Iranian journalists from Mehrabad airport to Bandar to cover the exercise crashed into a Tehran apartment building on December 6, killing at least 116 people, including 68 journalists.
Within the U.S. military and across the globe, there is heightened tension about the intentions of the neocon Bush administration.
From CAMPAIGN FOR COOPERATION IN SPACE
Starmail - 4. Jan, 10:25
Abramoff Scandal: The Ticking Time-Bomb
Starmail - 4. Jan, 10:20
Presidents, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law
Excerpt from
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=97220;show_parent=1
Jon Roland
Jan 3, 2006 01:17
-------- Original Message --------
Presidents, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law
Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 20:39:56 -0600
From: Jon Roland
jon.roland@constitution.org
Constitution Society
7793 Burnet Road #37,
Austin, TX 78757
512/374-9585
http://www.constitution.org
The following is an actual transcript of an interview with the president:
INTERVIEWER: So what in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations … where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.
PRESIDENT: Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.
INTERVIEWER: By definition.
PRESIDENT: Exactly. Exactly. If the president, for example, approves something because of the national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president's decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise they're in an impossible position.
INTERVIEWER: So, that in other words, really you were saying in that answer, really, between the burglary and murder, again, there's no subtle way to say that there was murder of a dissenter in this country because I don't know any evidence to that effect at all. But, the point is: just the dividing line, is that in fact, the dividing line is the president's judgment?
PRESIDENT: Yes, and the dividing line and, just so that one does not get the impression, that a president can run amok in this country and get away with it, we have to have in mind that a president has to come up before the electorate. We also have to have in mind, that a president has to get appropriations from the Congress. We have to have in mind, for example, that as far as the CIA's covert operations are concerned, as far as the FBI's covert operations are concerned, through the years, they have been disclosed on a very, very limited basis to trusted members of Congress. I don't know whether it can be done today or not.
INTERVIEWER: Pulling some of our discussions together, as it were; speaking of the Presidency … you stated, quote, "It's quite obvious that there are certain inherently government activities, which, if undertaken by the sovereign in protection of the interests of the nation's security are lawful, but which if undertaken by private persons, are not." What, at root, did you have in mind there?
PRESIDENT: Well, what I, at root I had in mind I think was perhaps much better stated by Lincoln during the War between the States. Lincoln said, and I think I can remember the quote almost exactly, he said, "Actions which otherwise would be unconstitutional, could become lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the Constitution and the Nation."
Now that's the kind of action I'm referring to. Of course in Lincoln's case it was the survival of the Union in wartime, it's the defense of the nation and, who knows, perhaps the survival of the nation.
INTERVIEWER: But there was no comparison was there, between the situation you faced and the situation Lincoln faced, for instance?
PRESIDENT: This nation was torn apart in an ideological way by the war in Vietnam, as much as the Civil War tore apart the nation when Lincoln was president. Now it's true that we didn't have the North and the South—
INTERVIEWER: But when you said … you know, "If the president orders it, that makes it legal", as it were: Is the president in that sense—is there anything in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights that suggests the president is that far of a sovereign, that far above the law?
PRESIDENT: No, there isn't. There's nothing specific that the Constitution contemplates in that respect. I haven't read every word, every jot and every tittle, but I do know this: That it has been, however, argued that as far as a president is concerned, that in war time, a president does have certain extraordinary powers which would make acts that would otherwise be unlawful, lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the nation and the Constitution, which is essential for the rights we're all talking about.
Those with long memories have probably already figured out that the interviewer was David Frost and the (former) president was Richard Nixon.
Nixon was forced from office, though, not because of his view of the breadth of the president’s constitutional powers but because the nation became convinced that he was using those powers (whether or not they were constitutional) in bad faith for craven purposes. In the current situation, though, it appears (from all external clues, at least) that the president is using his power (whether or not in accordance with the constitution) in good faith, in the sense that he appears to believe that the actions he is taking will benefit the security of the nation. I am curious whether list members think that this apparent good faithNote will make a difference in adjudication of the president’s actions, and whether it should make a difference.
NBC
________________________________________
Neil B. Cohen
Jeffrey D. Forchelli
Professor of Law
Brooklyn Law School
250 Joralemon Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
Telephone: (718) 780-7940 Fax: (718) 780-0375
Note from forwarder: Not discussed here is the position of those who follow the orders of the president. If the presdient lacks authority, and the actions are illegal, then so are their actions, and it is not a defence that they were "just following orders", even if the president is not impeached for it. Of course, they might expect protection from a presidential pardon, or from the statute that forbids prosecutions in federal court by private parties, leaving only presidential appointees to prosecute them. But in principle, they are subject to prosecution, especially if the president, to avoid blame of himself, decides to throw some of his underlings overboard as a ritual sacrifice.
-- Jon
==========================================
Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Released: Friday, December 23, 2005
1984 Justice Department memo Alito wrote expressing the view that the Attorney General should be immune from suit over illegal wiretaps [PDF text]. The memo was written in connection with a Reagan-era case involving wiretaps ordered by former Attorney General John Mitchell during an investigation into a suspected plot to kidnap National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.
THIS CASE REF'S FISA AND WIRETAPES ETC... (IMPORTANT)
http://www.apfn.org/pdf/memoAlito-1984.pdf
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=97220;show_parent=1
Jon Roland
Jan 3, 2006 01:17
-------- Original Message --------
Presidents, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law
Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 20:39:56 -0600
From: Jon Roland
jon.roland@constitution.org
Constitution Society
7793 Burnet Road #37,
Austin, TX 78757
512/374-9585
http://www.constitution.org
The following is an actual transcript of an interview with the president:
INTERVIEWER: So what in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations … where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.
PRESIDENT: Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.
INTERVIEWER: By definition.
PRESIDENT: Exactly. Exactly. If the president, for example, approves something because of the national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president's decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise they're in an impossible position.
INTERVIEWER: So, that in other words, really you were saying in that answer, really, between the burglary and murder, again, there's no subtle way to say that there was murder of a dissenter in this country because I don't know any evidence to that effect at all. But, the point is: just the dividing line, is that in fact, the dividing line is the president's judgment?
PRESIDENT: Yes, and the dividing line and, just so that one does not get the impression, that a president can run amok in this country and get away with it, we have to have in mind that a president has to come up before the electorate. We also have to have in mind, that a president has to get appropriations from the Congress. We have to have in mind, for example, that as far as the CIA's covert operations are concerned, as far as the FBI's covert operations are concerned, through the years, they have been disclosed on a very, very limited basis to trusted members of Congress. I don't know whether it can be done today or not.
INTERVIEWER: Pulling some of our discussions together, as it were; speaking of the Presidency … you stated, quote, "It's quite obvious that there are certain inherently government activities, which, if undertaken by the sovereign in protection of the interests of the nation's security are lawful, but which if undertaken by private persons, are not." What, at root, did you have in mind there?
PRESIDENT: Well, what I, at root I had in mind I think was perhaps much better stated by Lincoln during the War between the States. Lincoln said, and I think I can remember the quote almost exactly, he said, "Actions which otherwise would be unconstitutional, could become lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the Constitution and the Nation."
Now that's the kind of action I'm referring to. Of course in Lincoln's case it was the survival of the Union in wartime, it's the defense of the nation and, who knows, perhaps the survival of the nation.
INTERVIEWER: But there was no comparison was there, between the situation you faced and the situation Lincoln faced, for instance?
PRESIDENT: This nation was torn apart in an ideological way by the war in Vietnam, as much as the Civil War tore apart the nation when Lincoln was president. Now it's true that we didn't have the North and the South—
INTERVIEWER: But when you said … you know, "If the president orders it, that makes it legal", as it were: Is the president in that sense—is there anything in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights that suggests the president is that far of a sovereign, that far above the law?
PRESIDENT: No, there isn't. There's nothing specific that the Constitution contemplates in that respect. I haven't read every word, every jot and every tittle, but I do know this: That it has been, however, argued that as far as a president is concerned, that in war time, a president does have certain extraordinary powers which would make acts that would otherwise be unlawful, lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the nation and the Constitution, which is essential for the rights we're all talking about.
Those with long memories have probably already figured out that the interviewer was David Frost and the (former) president was Richard Nixon.
Nixon was forced from office, though, not because of his view of the breadth of the president’s constitutional powers but because the nation became convinced that he was using those powers (whether or not they were constitutional) in bad faith for craven purposes. In the current situation, though, it appears (from all external clues, at least) that the president is using his power (whether or not in accordance with the constitution) in good faith, in the sense that he appears to believe that the actions he is taking will benefit the security of the nation. I am curious whether list members think that this apparent good faithNote will make a difference in adjudication of the president’s actions, and whether it should make a difference.
NBC
________________________________________
Neil B. Cohen
Jeffrey D. Forchelli
Professor of Law
Brooklyn Law School
250 Joralemon Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
Telephone: (718) 780-7940 Fax: (718) 780-0375
Note from forwarder: Not discussed here is the position of those who follow the orders of the president. If the presdient lacks authority, and the actions are illegal, then so are their actions, and it is not a defence that they were "just following orders", even if the president is not impeached for it. Of course, they might expect protection from a presidential pardon, or from the statute that forbids prosecutions in federal court by private parties, leaving only presidential appointees to prosecute them. But in principle, they are subject to prosecution, especially if the president, to avoid blame of himself, decides to throw some of his underlings overboard as a ritual sacrifice.
-- Jon
==========================================
Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Released: Friday, December 23, 2005
1984 Justice Department memo Alito wrote expressing the view that the Attorney General should be immune from suit over illegal wiretaps [PDF text]. The memo was written in connection with a Reagan-era case involving wiretaps ordered by former Attorney General John Mitchell during an investigation into a suspected plot to kidnap National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.
THIS CASE REF'S FISA AND WIRETAPES ETC... (IMPORTANT)
http://www.apfn.org/pdf/memoAlito-1984.pdf
Starmail - 4. Jan, 09:51
Will the US Attack Iran?
Leon Hadar fears the answer is yes.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/hadar/hadar39.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/hadar/hadar39.html
Starmail - 4. Jan, 09:48
Eric Margolis on 2006
A Year of Living Dangerously
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis10.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis10.html
Starmail - 4. Jan, 09:47
On the unstoppable decline of the empire
Hegemonic Hubris
Gabriel Kolko on the unstoppable decline of the empire.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/kolko2.html
Gabriel Kolko on the unstoppable decline of the empire.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/kolko2.html
Starmail - 4. Jan, 09:45
Out of Iraq Events Planned in Over 70 Cities
Local organizations have planned over 70 Out of Iraq events around the country on or about January 7th. (See list at bottom.) Most of the events are town hall forums, and several will feature members of Congress, including Bobby Scott, Diane Watson, Jim McDermott, Adam Smith, Bob Filner, Martin Sabo, Jim Moran, and John Murtha. Several other events will feature congressional staff, congressional and senatorial candidates, local elected officials, and leaders of the peace movement, including Gold Star Families for Peace founder Cindy Sheehan, and After Downing Street Co-Founder John Bonifaz.
While all of these events will focus on ending the war, many of them will also address Congressman John Conyers' new resolutions to censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and to create a select committee to investigate and make recommendations on impeachment.
To sign up for an event near you, go to:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/event
National Call-In Day on Accountability January 9th
Tens of thousands of members of Progressive Democrats of America and other organizational members of the After Downing Street Coalition will phone Members of Congress in their district offices on January 9, urging them to cosponsor three bills: H.Res.635 to create a select committee to investigate and to make recommendations on grounds for impeachment, H.Res.636 to censure Bush, and H.Res.637 to censure Cheney. More about these bills:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/5768
Congress Members' phone numbers:
http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/dbq/officials/?lvl=C
International Commission Taking "Indictments" to White House January 9th
On January 9, the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity By the Bush Administration will serve indictments on the White House for its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its actions and policies on torture and illegal detention, its promotion of abstinence-only in the midst of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, its fueling of global warming, and its response to Hurricane Katrina. This is in preparation for its January 20-22 hearings at Riverside Church and Columbia Law School in New York City (where the Administration will be invited to present a defense). For more details, see:
http://www.bushcommission.org
ImpeachPAC Forms Citizens Impeachment Commission
On Monday, ImpeachPAC announced the formation of a Citizens Impeachment Commission to make 2006 the "Year of Impeachment."
Members of the commission include distinguished national activists, business leaders, elected officials, former government officials, historians and legal scholars, and talk show hosts, editors, bloggers, pundits, and authors.
http://www.impeachpac.org/citizens
Get "Enraged & Engaged" to Stop Alito
The National Organization for Women needs your help to keep abortion safe & legal. There is work to be done, both in Washington, DC and throughout the country. As a part of Freedom Winter 2006, NOW and Feminist Majority Foundation are working together to bring grassroots activists to DC between January 3 and January 20. We're also encouraging activists to organize in their communities.
http://www.now.org/defeatalito
Demand Strict Inspection of Diebold Software
It has been proven that Diebold electronic voting machines use code that is prohibited by federal law, but that hasn't stopped them from selling their machines and states from using them!
Please let Federal Election Commissioners know that citizens want the FEC to uphold the law and insist Diebold comply. You can use this one link to send an email to all commissioners. Please let them know that we are paying attention!
http://www.congressweb.com/cweb4/index.cfm?orgcode=VTUSA&hotissue=4
FORWARD THIS INFORMATION
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Downing+Street+Memo
While all of these events will focus on ending the war, many of them will also address Congressman John Conyers' new resolutions to censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and to create a select committee to investigate and make recommendations on impeachment.
To sign up for an event near you, go to:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/event
National Call-In Day on Accountability January 9th
Tens of thousands of members of Progressive Democrats of America and other organizational members of the After Downing Street Coalition will phone Members of Congress in their district offices on January 9, urging them to cosponsor three bills: H.Res.635 to create a select committee to investigate and to make recommendations on grounds for impeachment, H.Res.636 to censure Bush, and H.Res.637 to censure Cheney. More about these bills:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/5768
Congress Members' phone numbers:
http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/dbq/officials/?lvl=C
International Commission Taking "Indictments" to White House January 9th
On January 9, the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity By the Bush Administration will serve indictments on the White House for its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its actions and policies on torture and illegal detention, its promotion of abstinence-only in the midst of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, its fueling of global warming, and its response to Hurricane Katrina. This is in preparation for its January 20-22 hearings at Riverside Church and Columbia Law School in New York City (where the Administration will be invited to present a defense). For more details, see:
http://www.bushcommission.org
ImpeachPAC Forms Citizens Impeachment Commission
On Monday, ImpeachPAC announced the formation of a Citizens Impeachment Commission to make 2006 the "Year of Impeachment."
Members of the commission include distinguished national activists, business leaders, elected officials, former government officials, historians and legal scholars, and talk show hosts, editors, bloggers, pundits, and authors.
http://www.impeachpac.org/citizens
Get "Enraged & Engaged" to Stop Alito
The National Organization for Women needs your help to keep abortion safe & legal. There is work to be done, both in Washington, DC and throughout the country. As a part of Freedom Winter 2006, NOW and Feminist Majority Foundation are working together to bring grassroots activists to DC between January 3 and January 20. We're also encouraging activists to organize in their communities.
http://www.now.org/defeatalito
Demand Strict Inspection of Diebold Software
It has been proven that Diebold electronic voting machines use code that is prohibited by federal law, but that hasn't stopped them from selling their machines and states from using them!
Please let Federal Election Commissioners know that citizens want the FEC to uphold the law and insist Diebold comply. You can use this one link to send an email to all commissioners. Please let them know that we are paying attention!
http://www.congressweb.com/cweb4/index.cfm?orgcode=VTUSA&hotissue=4
FORWARD THIS INFORMATION
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Downing+Street+Memo
Starmail - 4. Jan, 09:43
Corporate Crime: Execs Taking Fall while Corporations Go Free
With help from the US Justice Department and state prosecutors, corporations are getting away with serious crimes by using their executives as cannon fodder, according to a new report, which questions whether this new legal strategy is hindering or enabling corporate malfeasance.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010306G.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010306G.shtml
Starmail - 4. Jan, 00:03
Extraordinary Circumstances Indeed
Remember the "nuclear option" compromise? When the group of 14 Senators reached their agreement last May, they said they'd support a filibuster only under "extraordinary circumstances," presumably if Bush nominated Attila the Hun. Paul Rogat Loeb suggests these circumstances apply not only to Samuel Alito's track record but also to his nomination's entire political context.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010306F.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010306F.shtml
Starmail - 4. Jan, 00:02
Briton Offers Documents on Torture
A former British ambassador has published government documents he says prove that Britain knowingly received intelligence extracted under torture from prisoners in Uzbekistan.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010306E.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010306E.shtml
Starmail - 4. Jan, 00:01
A Life, Wasted
Paul E. Schroeder, who lost his son in Iraq, concludes that we should stop this war before more heroes are killed. "Though it hurts, I believe that his death - and that of the other Americans who have died in Iraq - was a waste. They were wasted in a belief that democracy would grow simply by removing a dictator - a careless misunderstanding of what democracy requires."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010306C.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010306C.shtml
Starmail - 4. Jan, 00:00
