[prez_usa_exile] A Day in the Life: 9/7/6
prez_usa_exile
Free Americans Reaching Out to Amerika's
Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free
Via <pr...@usa-exile.org>
September 7, 2006
NOTE: What's happening here--though not generally recognized yet--is
we're losing our ability to grow food outdoors. To demonstrate this
we need merely to extrapolate from annual quantifications of food lost
to Extreme Weather Events during the past two decades. Thus it's
unfortunate that there's so little research on the eco-friendliest
(especially water-austere) ways of growing food indoors. -- kl, pp
From: "paul illich" <paul_...@hotmail.com>
Date: September 6, 2006 4:37:19 PM EST
To: bluegre...@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [bluegreenearth] fwd: **The hungry planet - worst crisis for
30 years **
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1325467.ece
The Hungry
Planet:
As Stocks Run Out and Harvests Fail, the World Faces Its Worst
Crisis for 30 Years
By Geoffrey Lean
Published: 03 September 2006
Food supplies are shrinking alarmingly around the globe, plunging
the world into its greatest crisis for more than 30 years. New
figures show that this year's harvest will fail to produce enough to
feed everyone on Earth, for the sixth time in the past seven years.
Humanity has so far managed by eating its way through stockpiles
built up in better times - but these have now fallen below the
danger level.
Food prices have already started to rise as a result, and threaten
to soar out of reach of many of the 4.2 billion people who live in
the world's most vulnerable countries. And the new "green" drive to
get cars to run on biofuels threatens to make food even scarcer and
more expensive.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the US
Department of Agriculture (USDA), which produce the world's two main
forecasts of the global crop production, both estimate that this
year's grain harvest will fall for the second successive year.
The FAO is still compiling its latest crop forecast - due to be
published next month - but told The Independent on Sunday late last
week that it looked like barely exceeding 2 billion tons, down from
2.38 billion last year, and 2.68 billion in 2004, although the
world's appetite has continued to grow as its population rises.
The USDA estimates it will be even lower - 1.984 billion tons. This
would mean that it would fall 58 million tons short of what the
world's people are expected to consume this year: 10 years ago, by
contrast, farmers grew 64 million tons more than was consumed. The
world's food stocks have shrunk from enough to feed the world for
116 days in 1999 to a predicted 57 days at the end of this season,
well below the official safety level. Prices have already risen by
up to 20 per cent this year.
The gathering crisis has been largely unnoticed because, for once,
the harvests have failed in rich countries such as the United States
and Australia, which normally export food, rather than in the
world's hungriest ones. So it has not immediately resulted in mass
starvation in Africa or Asia.
Instead, it will have a delayed effect as poor people become
increasingly unable to afford expensive food and find that there is
not enough in store to help them when their own crops fail.
The lack of world attention contrasts with the last great food
crisis, in the mid-1970s. Then Henry Kissinger - at the height of
his powers as Richard Nixon's Secretary of State - called a World
Food Conference, in which governments solemnly resolved that never
again would they allow humanity to run short of sustenance. The
conference, in Rome, resolved to eradicate hunger by the mid-1980s.
Kissinger himself pledged that "within a decade, no child should go
hungry to bed".
Yet, a generation later, more than 800 million people worldwide are
still constantly hungry. Every day, some 16,000 young children die,
at least partly because they do not get enough food. And the new
food crisis threatens to be even worse than the last one. In the
seven years running up to the Rome conference grain production fell
below consumption only three times, compared to six now.
It was at the conference that I first met Lester Brown, who has,
ever since, been the principal prophet of the coming scarcity,
repeatedly warning of the new crisis which is now upon us.
Brown - who now heads the Earth Policy Institute, a respected
Washington-based think tank - gleaned his first insights into the
world's predicament as a tomato tycoon when he was a teenager. Back
in the early 1950s, when he was just 14, he and his brother bought
an old tractor for $200 (#105), rented a couple of fields near their
home in southern New Jersey and started growing the vegetables after
school.
Soon the brothers were among the top 1 per cent of tomato growers in
the United States. They easily qualified for the Ten-Ton Tomato
Club - "the Phi Beta Kappa of tomato growers" - which is open to
those who harvested that amount per acre.
Then Campbell's Soups, trying to lower costs, threw money into
research to increase yields. Within a few years, the club had to
change its name to the Twenty-Ton Tomato Club. But the pace of
improvement could not be sustained. Despite decades of more research
growth of yields slowed dramatically; by the mid- 1990s the best
growers were getting about 30 tons of tomatoes per acre.
That, says Brown, is what has been happening to the world's harvests
as a whole. Between 1950 and 1990 grain yields more than doubled,
but they have grown much more slowly since. Production rose from
around 630 million tons to 1.78 billion tons, but has only edged up
in the past 15 years, to around 2 billion tons.
"The near-tripling of the harvest by the world's farmers was a
remarkable performance," says Brown. "In a single generation they
increased grain production by twice as much as had been achieved
during the preceding 11,000 years, since agriculture began. But now
the world has suffered a dramatic loss of momentum."
Apart from increasing yields, there has always been one other way of
boosting production - putting more land under the plough. But this,
too, has been running into the buffers. As population grows and
farmland is used for building roads and cities - and becomes
exhausted by overuse - the amount available for each person on Earth
has fallen by more than half.
There are more than five people on Earth today for every two living
in the middle of the last century. Yet enough is produced worldwide
to feed everyone well, if it is evenly distributed.
It is not just that people in rich countries eat too much, and those
in poor ones eat too little. Enormous quantities of the world's
increasingly scarce grain now goes to feed cows - and, indirectly,
cars.
The cows are longstanding targets of Brown's, who founded the
prestigious Worldwatch Institute immediately after the 1974
conference, partly to draw attention to the precariousness of food
supplies. As people become better-off, they eat more meat, the
animals that are slaughtered often being fed on grain. It takes 14kg
of grain to produce 2kg of beef, and 8kg of grain for 2kg of pork.
More than a third of the world's harvest goes to fatten animals in
this way.
Cars are a new concern, the worry arising from the present drive to
produce green fuels to fight global warming. A "corn rush" has
erupted in the United States, using the crop to produce the biofuel,
ethanol - strongly supported by subsidies from the Bush
administration to divert criticism of its failure to ratify the
Kyoto Protocol.
Just a single fill of ethanol for a four-wheel drive SUV, says
Brown, uses enough grain to feed one person for an entire year. This
year the amount of US corn going to make the fuel will equal what it
sells abroad; traditionally its exports have helped feed 100 -
mostly poor - countries.
>From next year, the amount used to run American cars will exceed
exports, and soon it is likely to reduce what is available to help
feed poor people overseas. The number of ethanol plants built or
planned in the corn-belt state of Iowa will use virtually all the
state's crop.
This will not only cut food supplies, but drive up the process of
grain, making hungry people compete with the owners of gas-guzzlers.
Already spending 70 per cent of their meagre incomes on food, they
simply cannot afford to do so.
Brown expects the food crisis to get much worse as more and more
land becomes exhausted, soil erodes, water becomes scarcer, and
global warming cuts harvests.
Making cars more fuel-efficient, and eating less meat would help but
the only long-term solution is to enable poor countries - and
especially their poorest people - to grow more food. And the best
way to do that, studies show, is to encourage small farmers to grow
crops in environmentally friendly ways. Research at Essex University
shows that this can double yields.
But the world needs a new sense of urgency. "We are living very
close to the edge," says Brown. "History judges leaders by whether
they respond to great issues. For our generation, the issue may well
be food security."
==========================================================================================================
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 10:16:04 +0300 From: "Erooth Mohamed"
<eku...@gmail.com>
Iran Says
U.S., Israel Ordered September 11 Attacks
Wed. 06 Sep 2006
Iran Focus
http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8512
Tehran, Iran, Sep. 06 ? The Supreme Commander of Iran's Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps accused the Bush Administration and the
Israeli security service Mossad of ordering the September 11, 2001
attacks in New York and Washington, DC.
"The events of September 11 were ordered by U.S. [officials] and Mossad
so that they could carry out their strategy of pre-emption and
warmongering and unipolarisation in order to dominate the Middle East",
Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi told military commanders on Tuesday.
His comments were reported by the state-run news agency ISNA.
General Safavi said that Iran was the leading force of the "Islamic
world". "The geographic heart of the Islamic world is in Mecca and
Medina. But, the political heart of the Islamic world is in the Islamic
Republic of Iran and the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] is the
flag-bearer of the front of Islamic awakening and the fronts of the
awakening of third world nations", he said.
He said that Washington had been defeated in its strategy of "attacking
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon" and creating a new order in the Middle
East.
"The U.S.'s neo-conservative strategy was to dominate the vast energy
resources of the Persian Gulf in order to be able to control Europe,
China, and India and drive the world to a unipolar state. Therefore, it
planned to change undesirable regimes such as those of Iraq, Sudan,
Syria, and Afghanistan".
The IRGC general said that the Lebanese militia Hezbollah had defeated
Israel during their recent war. "After many years, the political and
military image and hollow might of the Zionist regime was broken and
the real power of Hezbollah fighters was proven. Thus, Hezbollah
defeated Israel".
He described Washington and Tel Aviv as two "inter-continental threats"
against Tehran. "The U.S. must be livid at Iran because of its
disgraceful defeats in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. Regarding
[Iran's] nuclear dossier, it might try to create circumstances so that
slowly but surely economic and political pressure is applied against
Iran by the [United Nations] Security Council".
He accused Washington of plotting a "cultural" attack on Tehran by
setting up new radio and television stations broadcasting into Iran,
supporting dissident groups, and stepping up intelligence operations.
"Therefore, the armed forces must be completely prepared in order to
combat any forms of foreign and domestic threats", he said.
He charged that Britain and the U.S. were stirring ethnic and religious
divisions in Iran, in particular in the provinces close to the
country's frontiers.
The IRGC's primary task is to export the Islamic revolution to
Jerusalem via Baghdad.
Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is one of many officials who
stem from the IRGC.
-- Peter Myers, 381 Goodwood Rd, Childers 4660, Australia ph +61 7
41262296 http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers Mirror:
http://mailstar.net/index.html I use the old Mac OS; being
incompatible, it cannot run Windows viruses or transmit them to you. If
your emails to me bounce, write to me at peter...@mailstar.net. To
unsubscribe, reply with "unsubscribe" in the subject line; allow 1 day.
==========================================================================================================
U.S. Losing Control Fast
By Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily
September 6, 2006
Inter Press Service
RAMADI, Sep 5 (IPS) - The U.S. military has lost control over the
volatile al-Anbar province, Iraqi police and residents say.
The area to the west of Baghdad includes Fallujah, Ramadi and other
towns that have seen the worst of military occupation, and the
strongest resistance.
Despite massive military operations which destroyed most of Fallujah
and much of cities like Haditha and al-Qa'im in Ramadi, real control
of the city now seems to be in the hands of local resistance.
In losing control of this province, the U.S. would have lost control
over much of Iraq.
"We are talking about nearly a third of the area of Iraq," Ahmed
Salman, a historian from Fallujah told IPS. "Al-Anbar borders Jordan,
Syria and Saudi Arabia, and the resistance there will never stop as
long as there are American soldiers on the ground."
Salman said the U.S. military is working against itself. "Their
actions ruin their goal because they use these huge, violent military
operations which kill so many civilians, and make it impossible to
calm down the people of al-Anbar."
The resistance seems in control of the province now. "No government
official can do anything without contacting the resistance first,"
government official in Ramadi Abu Ghalib told IPS.
"Even the governor used to take their approval for everything. When he
stopped doing so, they issued a death sentence against him, and now he
cannot move without American protection."
Recent weeks have brought countless attacks on U.S. troops in Haditha,
Ramadi, Fallujah and on the Baghdad-Amman highway. Several armoured
vehicles have been destroyed, and dozens of U.S. soldiers killed in
the al-Anbar province, according to both Iraqi witnesses and the U.S.
Department of Defence.
Long stretches of the 550km Baghdad-Amman highway which crosses
al-Anbar are now controlled by resistance groups. Other parts are
targeted by highway looters.
"If we import any supplies for the U.S. Army or Iraqi government, the
fighters will take it from us and sell it in the local market," trader
Hayder al-Mussawi said. "And if we import for the local market, the
robbers will take it."
Eyewitnesses in Ramadi say many of the attacks are taking place within
their city. They say that the U.S. military recently asked citizens in
al-Anbar to stop targeting them, and promised to withdraw to their
bases in Haditha and Habaniyah (near Fallujah) soon, leaving the
cities for Iraqi security forces to patrol.
"I do not think that is possible," retired Iraqi police
Brigadier-General Kahtan al-Dulaimi from Ramadi told IPS. "I believe
no local unit could stand the severe resistance of al-Anbar, and it
will be the last province to be handed over to Iraqi security forces."
According to the group Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, 964 coalition
soldiers have been killed in al-Anbar, more than in any other Iraqi
province.. Baghdad is second, with 665 coalition deaths.
Residents of Ramadi told IPS that the U.S. military has knocked down
several buildings near the government centre in the city, the capital
of the province.
In an apparent move to secure their offices, U.S. Army and Marine
engineers have started to level a half-kilometre stretch of low-rise
buildings opposite the centre. Abandoned buildings in this area have
been used repeatedly to launch attacks on the government complex.
"They are trying to create a separation area between the offices of
the puppet government and the buildings the resistance are using to
attack them," a Ramadi resident said. "But now the Americans are
making us all angry because they are destroying our city."
U.S. troops have acknowledged their own difficulties in doing this.
"We're used to taking down walls, doors and windows, but eight city
blocks is something new to us," Marine 1st Lt. Ben Klay, 24, said in
the U.S. Department of Defence newspaper Stars and Stripes.
In nearby Fallujah, residents are reporting daily clashes between
Iraqi-U.S. security forces and the resistance.
"The local police force which used to be out of the conflict are now
being attacked," said a resident who gave his name as Abu Mohammed.
"Hundreds of local policemen have quit the force after seeing that
they are considered a legitimate target by fighters.."
The U.S. forces seem to have no clear policy in the face of the
sustained resistance.
"The U.S. Army seems so confused in handling the security situation in
Anbar," said historian Salman. "Attacks are conducted from al-Qa'im on
the Syrian border to Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad, all the way through
Haditha, Hit, Ramadi and Fallujah on a daily basis."
He added: "A contributing factor to the instability of the province is
the endless misery of the civilians who live with no services, no
infrastructure, random shootings and so many wrongful detentions."
According to the new Pentagon quarterly report on Measuring Security
and Stability in Iraq, Iraqi casualties rose 51 percent in recent
months. The report says Sunni-based insurgency is "potent and viable."
The report says that in a period since the establishment of the new
Iraqi government, between May 20 and Aug. 11 this year, the average
number of weekly attacks rose to nearly 800, almost double the number
of the attacks in early 2004.
Casualties among Iraqi civilians and security forces averaged nearly
120 a day during the period, up from 80 a day reported in the previous
quarterly report. Two years ago they were averaging roughly 30 a day.
On Aug. 31 the Pentagon announced that it is increasing the number of
U.S. troops in Iraq to 140,000, which is 13,000 more than the number
five weeks ago.
At least 65 U.S. soldiers were killed in August, with 36 of the deaths
reported in al-Anbar. That brought the total number killed to at least
2,642
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole
responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Centre for Research on Globalization.
To become a Member of Global Research
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at
www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original Global
Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, on
community internet sites, as long as the text & title are not
modified. The source must be acknowledged and an active URL hyperlink
address to the original CRG article must be indicated. The author's
copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global Research
articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites,
contact: crge...@yahoo.com
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which
has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We
are making such material available to our readers under the provisions
of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of
political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you
wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use"
you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: crge...@yahoo.com
) Copyright Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service, 2006
The url address of this article is:
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=JAM20060906&articleId=3167
=======================================================================================================================
The War Is Lost
By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
September 6, 2006
LewRockwell.com
The Pentagon's latest quarterly "progress" report to Congress on Iraq
is a grim tale of a lost war. The Pentagon told Congress what Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld, and propaganda organs such as Fox "News" never tell
the American public, namely:
1. The Sunni-based insurgency remains "potent and viable" despite
spiraling Sunni-Shiite violence and beefed up US forces.
2. Since the last report three months ago, Iraqi casualties from
"sectarian clashes" the Pentagon's euphemism for civil war have
soared by more than 50 percent.
3. From May when the new Iraqi government was established until
August, the average number of weekly attacks increased sharply to 800.
4. Since the previous report, Iraqi daily casualties have jumped by
50% from 80 per day to 120 per day. Currently, Iraqis are dying at the
rate of 43,800 per year from violence.
The Iraqi government cowers behind the fortified walls of the "Green
Zone." On August 31, the Kurds in the north took down the Iraqi flag
and replaced it with the Kurdish one. Most of Iraq is ruled by Shiite
and Sunni militias. Conflict between them has forced 160,000 Iraqis to
flee their homes.
Who is going to tell Bush that the war is lost?
Is Rumsfeld going to tell him?
Is Cheney going to tell him?
How can they tell him after all the bravado and false reports?
This is a delusional administration. Confronted with three major polls
showing that two-thirds of Americans oppose the Iraq war, Bush
declared that he is staying the course, demonstrating yet again his
disdain for common sense and the will of the American people.
If Bush and his neoconservative cabal were judged by their
performance they would be ridden out of town on a rail. If a court of
law judged their actions, they would walk the plank.
Everything this moronic regime promised about a "cakewalk" war and the
ease of pacifying Iraq and turning it into an American puppet
democracy has turned to ashes in President Bush's mouth.
Having lost the Iraq war, the neoconservatives are determined to
initiate war with Iran.
National security expert John Prados says, "The pattern of
manipulation and misuse of intelligence that served the Bush
administration in the drive to start a war with Iraq is being repeated
today for its neighbor Iran."
It is now established beyond a reasonable doubt that the neocons
intentionally cooked up false intelligence in order to justify the
invasion of Iraq, an invasion that has resulted in tens of thousands
of Iraqi and American casualties, both dead and maimed.
Aggressive wars are themselves war crimes. To intentionally create a
false basis for an aggressive war is an act of high treason.
Alarmed by the neoconservative drive to start a war with Iran before
the US can extricate itself from the Iraq catastrophe, the CIA firmly
declared that any Iranian nuclear weapon is a decade away. This
undermines the neoconservatives' urgency to attack Iran now.
Neoconservative fanatics tried to discredit the CIA with a recent
report by the House Intelligence Committee Republican staff written by
neoconservative Frederick Fleitz, a protigi of neocon heavyweight John
Bolton, a person active in concocting the false case for war against
Iraq. Fleitz alleges that the CIA is a know-nothing agency that lacks
the ability to assess Iran's ability to make nuclear weapons.
Neocons also dismiss the findings of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, which issued a report on August 31 reaffirming that there is
no tangible proof that Iran's nuclear energy program has a military
aspect.
The neoconservatives plan to plunge America into war with Iran before
they can be held accountable for the lost war in Iraq.
This neoconservative conspiracy against the United States and Iran
must be stopped. Neocons must be removed from the government that they
have betrayed and held accountable for their crimes.
Before America can preach democracy to the world, we must first
rescue American democracy from the Bush regime and re-establish
government accountability to the people.
Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is Chairman of the Institute for Political
Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a
former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former
contributing editor for National Review, and was Assistant Secretary
of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is the co-author of
The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole
responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Centre for Research on Globalization.
To become a Member of Global Research
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at
www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original Global
Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, on
community internet sites, as long as the text & title are not
modified. The source must be acknowledged and an active URL hyperlink
address to the original CRG article must be indicated. The author's
copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global Research
articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites,
contact: crge...@yahoo.com
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which
has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We
are making such material available to our readers under the provisions
of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of
political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you
wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use"
you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: crge...@yahoo.com
) Copyright Paul Craig Roberts, LewRockwell.com, 2006
The url address of this article is:
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ROB20060906&articleId=3165
========================================================================================================================
From: Joe Stokes <joes...@sbcglobal.net>
Date: September 6, 2006 5:08:05 PM EST
To: Joe <joes...@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [911TruthAction] Le Monde Diplomatique-5-year anniversary
issue about September 11.
Reply-To: 911Trut...@yahoogroups.com
Le Monde Diplomatique, Scandinavian edition, has now published
a 5-year anniversary issue about September 11.
The issue contains:
- an article on Webster Tarpley's MIHOP-theory
- a duel of facts between Dr. Steven E. Jones and Dr. James Quintiere
- a lengthy interview with Daniele Ganser on the topic of false-flag
terrorism and 9/11
- and many other articles.
Click on links below, and you will find all the articles .
Article on why terror is not a serious threat against humanity
(continues on the link which leads to article on Tarpley):
www.diplo.no/pdf.php?showPDF=pdf/0609/01.pdf
A 5-year timeline of the war against terror:
www.diplo.no/pdf.php?showPDF=pdf/0609/02.pdf
An article which asks the question if United 93 was shot down:
www.diplo.no/pdf.php?showPDF=pdf/0609/03.pdf
A duel of facts between Professor Steven E. Jones and Dr. James Quintiere:
www.diplo.no/pdf.php?showPDF=pdf/0609/08.pdf
An article about the MIHOP Theory of Webster Griffin Tarpley:
www.diplo.no/pdf.php?showPDF=pdf/0609/09.pdf
Interview with Dr. Daniele Ganser on the topic of false flag terrorism
and September 11, 2001
Norwegian version:
www.diplo.no/pdf.php?showPDF=pdf/0609/20.pdf
Official translation in English:
http://www.diplo.no/artikkel.php?artID=1028
=========================================================================================================================================
NOTE: If the US "Democratic" Party had been even slightly to
moderately honest about what really happened 9/11/01, it would have
been politically impossible for Disney/ABC to have made this film,
which the party now complains about. The people controlling the
party have known that 9/11 was an Inside Job, yet they've chosen to
prevent the general citizenry from learning it. Now they get their
just desserts. It is supremely ironic that the obedient little party
director complains that the film doesn't provide "an honest look" at
9/11 when in fact--as though part of a sardonic parody of a two-party
system--neither has the party itself for nearly five years now. It's
important to note that this infamous party has suppressed the truth of
not only 9/11 but also that of the stolen '00 and '04 elections, the
effects of depleted uranium emissions, the GOP pedophile culture and
even the truth of the murder its own Sen. Paul Wellstone and his wife
and his daughter and three of his staff and two plane crew. -- kl, pp
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/executive-director-of-democratic-party.html
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Executive Director of Democratic Party slams Disney/ABC for
"slanderous" fictional TV show about 9/11
by John in DC - 9/06/2006 09:56:00 PM
This just in from the Democratic National Committee. I have not seen
this kind of bitch-slapping coming out of the Democratic Party since
the onset of the Bush administration six years ago. This is vicious.
Well deserved, to be sure. But absolutely vicious.
Particularly stunning is a paragraph buried in the middle of the open
letter that can only be read as a direct threat against Disney/ABC's
access to the airwaves:
ABC is trying to use the airwaves -- airwaves owned by you and me, and
loaned to broadcasters as a public trust -- to slander Democrats and
sell a slanderous, irresponsible fraud to the American people, and
they're shamefully doing it just weeks away from Election Day.
If Disney/ABC doesn't fully appreciate the enemy it is creating in the
Democratic party, then heads need to roll at that firm because if I
were a shareholder, I'd be considering a suit in a jiffy.
Does a major national broadcast network want to stain itself by
presenting an irresponsible, slanderous, fraudulent, "docu-drama" to
the American public?
Not if you and I have the last word -- but either way, we're about to
find out.
The ABC television network -- a cog in the Walt Disney empire --
unleashed a promotional blitz in the last week for a new "docudrama"
called "The Path to 9/11". ABC has thrown its corporate might behind
the two-night production, and bills it as a public service: a TV
event, to quote the ABC tagline, "based on the 9/11 Commission Report".
That's false. "The Path to 9/11" is actually a bald-faced attempt to
slander Democrats and revise history right before Americans vote in a
major election.
The miniseries, which was put together by right-wing conservative
writers, relies on the old GOP playbook of using terrorism to scare
Americans. "The Path to 9/11" mocks the truth and dishonors the memory
of 9/11 victims to serve a cheap, callous political agenda. It
irresponsibly misrepresents the facts and completely distorts the truth.
ABC/Disney executives need to hear from the public and understand that
their abuse of the public trust comes with a cost. Tell Walt Disney
CEO Robert Iger to keep this right-wing propaganda off the air --
we'll deliver your message:
http://www.democrats.org/pathto911
This story is breaking quickly. The bias of the "docudrama" only
became known when ABC began circulating previews recently. Less than
two weeks ago, 9/11 Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste confronted a
lead writer of "The Path to 9/11" after watching the first half of the
miniseries at a screening, but most of what we know amounts to bits
and pieces because ABC chose to screen the miniseries to conservative
bloggers and right-wing media outlets exclusively. Almost none of the
Democrats portrayed in the film have even been asked for their thoughts.
But we still know enough, thanks to news accounts and crack research,
to fact check "The Path to 9/11" as a biased, irresponsible mess.
Here's what you need to know:
Richard Clarke -- the counterterrorism czar for the Clinton
administration, now himself a consultant to ABC News -- describes a
key scene in "The Path to 9/11" as "180 degrees from what happened."
In the scene, a CIA field agent places a phone call to get the go
ahead to kill Osama Bin Laden, then in his sights, only to have a
senior Clinton administration official refuse and hang up the phone.
Sandy Berger, President Clinton's National Security Advisor, called
the same scene "a total fabrication. It did not happen." And Roger
Cressey, a top Bush and Clinton counterterrorism official, said it was
"something straight out of Disney and fantasyland. It's factually
wrong. And that's shameful."
Another scene revives the old right-wing myth that press reporting
made it impossible to track Osama bin Laden, accusing the Washington
Post of blowing the secret that American intelligence tracked his
satellite phone calls. In reality, responsibility for that blunder --
contrary to "The Path to 9/11" -- rests with none other than the
arch-conservative Washington Times.
The former National Security Council head of counterterrorism says
that President Clinton "approved every request made of him by the CIA
and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and
al-Qaeda," and the 9/11 report says the CIA had full authority from
President Clinton to strike Bin Laden. Yet chief "Path to 9/11"
scriptwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh, a friend of Rush Limbaugh, says the
miniseries shows how President Clinton had "frequent opportunities in
the '90s to stop Bin Laden in his tracks -- but lacked the will to do so."
ABC asked only the Republican co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, Tom
Kean, Sr., to advise the makers of "The Path to 9/11". The producers
optioned two books, one written by a Bush administration political
appointee, as the basis of the screenplay -- yet bill the miniseries
as "based on the 9/11 Commission Report."
This is a picture of bias -- a conservative attempt to rewrite the
history of September 11 to blame Democrats, just in time for the election.
Tell Walt Disney president Robert Iger that you hold his company
responsible -- and that this community demands that ABC tell the truth:
http://www.democrats.org/pathto911
ABC is trying to use the airwaves -- airwaves owned by you and me, and
loaned to broadcasters as a public trust -- to slander Democrats and
sell a slanderous, irresponsible fraud to the American people, and
they're shamefully doing it just weeks away from Election Day.
The Walt Disney Corporation could have given Americans an honest look
at September 11. Instead, the company abandoned its duty to the truth
-- and embraced the fiction known as "The Path to 9/11."
But ABC isn't the only company pushing this gross revision of history.
ABC has enlisted the reputable education and children's entertainment
company Scholastic, Inc. to send 100,000 letters to high school
teachers, urging them to show students "The Path to 9/11". Scholastic
has also created a discussion guide for teachers to use to encourage
students and their families to watch this irresponsible fraud and then
discuss it in school. The discussion guide does not in any way point
out the concerns and criticisms that have been raised about the
validity and accuracy of the film.
We've got to stop this now.
ABC/Disney must face an accountability moment. You can ratchet up the
pressure on ABC by sending your own letter to Walt Disney CEO Robert
Iger -- tell him to keep this propaganda off their air.
http://www.democrats.org/pathto911
We'll keep you up to date as this story evolves.
Thank you,
Tom
Tom McMahon
Executive Director
Democratic National Committee
========================================================================================================================
Don't be fooled by this reform:
the IMF is still the rich world's viceroy
By George Monbiot
September 7, 2006
The Guardian [U.K.] - 2006-09-05
Don't be fooled by this reform: the IMF is still the rich world's viceroy
What will be passed off as a democratisation is in fact a way of
ensuring the poor global majority continue to have no say
The glacier has begun to creak. In the world's most powerful
dictatorship we detect the merest hint of a thaw. I am not talking
about China or Uzbekistan, Burma or North Korea. This state runs no
torture chambers or labour camps. No one is executed, though plenty
starve to death as a result of its policies. The unhurried perestroika
is taking place in Washington, in the offices of the International
Monetary Fund.
Like most concessions made by dictatorial regimes, the reforms seem
designed not to catalyse further change, but to prevent it. By
slightly increasing the shares (and therefore the voting powers) of
China, South Korea, Mexico and Turkey, the regime hopes to buy off the
most powerful rebel warlords, while keeping the mob at bay. It has
even thrown a few coppers from the balcony, for the great unwashed to
scuffle over. But no one - except the leaders of the rich nations and
the leader writers of just about every newspaper in the rich world -
could regard this as an adequate response to its problems.
The fund is a body with 184 members. It is run by seven of them - the
US, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, Canada and Italy. These happen to
be the seven countries that (with Russia) promised to save the world
at the G8 meeting in 2005. The junta sustains its control by insisting
that each dollar buys a vote. The bigger a country's financial quota,
the more say it has over the running of the IMF. This means that it is
run by the countries that are least affected by its policies.
A major decision requires 85% of the vote, which ensures that the US,
with 17%, has a veto over the fund's substantial business. The UK,
Germany, France and Japan have 22% between them, and each has a
permanent seat on the board. By a weird arrangement permitting rich
nations to speak on behalf of the poor, Canada and Italy have
effective control over a further 8%. The other European countries are
also remarkably powerful: Belgium, for example, has a direct
entitlement to 2.1% of the vote and indirect control over 5.1% - more
than twice the allocation of India or Brazil. Europe, Japan, Canada
and the US wield a total of 63%. The 80 poorest countries, by
contrast, have 10% between them.
These quotas no longer even reflect real financial contributions to
the running of the IMF: it now obtains much of its capital from loan
repayments by its vassal states. But the G7 nations still behave as if
it belongs to them. They decide who runs it (the managing director is
always a European and his deputy always an American) and how the money
is spent. You begin to wonder why the developing countries bother to
turn up.
In principle, this power is supposed to be balanced by something
called the "basic vote" - 250 shares (entitling them to $25m worth of
votes) are allocated to every member. But while the value of the rich
countries' quotas has risen since the IMF was founded in 1944, the
value of the basic votes has not. It has fallen from 11.3% of the
total allocation to 2.1%. The leaked paper passed to me by an
excellent organisation called the Bretton Woods Project (everything we
know about the IMF has to be leaked) shows that the fund intends to
democratise itself by "at least doubling" the basic vote. That sorts
it all out, then - the 80 poorest countries will be able to claim,
between them, another 0.9%. Even this pathetic concession was granted
only after the African members took a political risk by publicly
opposing the fund's proposals. Doubtless the US government is
currently reviewing their trading status.
All this is compounded by an internal political process that looks as
if it was contrived in North Korea, not Washington. There are no
formal votes, just a "consensus process" controlled by the Dear
Leaders of the G7. The decisions taken by each member state cannot be
revealed to the public. Nor can the transcripts of the board's
meetings and the "working papers" on which it bases its internal
reforms. Even reports by the IMF's ombudsman - the "independent
evaluation office" - are censored by the management, and their
conclusions are changed to shift the blame for the fund's failures to
its client states. Needless to say, the IMF insists that the states it
lends to must commit themselves to "good governance" and
"transparency" if they are to receive its money.
None of this would matter so much if it had stuck to its original
mandate of stabilising the international monetary system. But after
the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1971 the IMF more or
less lost its mission to maintain exchange rates, and began to look
for a new role. As a paper by the law professor Daniel Bradlow shows,
when it amended its articles of asso-ciation in 1978 they were so
loosely drafted as to grant the IMF permission to interfere in almost
any aspect of a country's governance. It lost its influence over the
economic policies of the G7 and became instead the rich world's
viceroy, controlling the poorer nations at its behest. It began to
micro-manage their economies without reference to the people or even
their governments. Since then, no rich country has required its
services, and few poor countries have been able to shake it off.
This casts an interesting light on the decision - to be endorsed at
the IMF's meeting in Singapore next week - to enhance the quota for
the four middle-income countries. After the fund "helped" the
struggling economies of east and south-east Asia in 1997, by laying
waste to them on behalf of US hedge funds and investment companies,
the nations of that region decided that they would never allow
themselves to fall prey to it again.
They began indemnifying themselves against the fund's tender loving
care by building up their own reserves of capital. Now, just as China
and South Korea have ensured that they will never again require the
IMF's services, they have been granted more power to decide how it
operates. In other words, they are deemed fit to govern when - like
the G7 - they can exercise power without reaping the consequences. The
smaller your stake in the outcome, the greater your vote.
None of this seems to cause any difficulties to the gatekeepers of
mainstream opinion. On Saturday a leading article in the Washington
Post observed that "to be legitimate, multilateral institutions must
reflect the global distribution of power as it is now, not as it was
when these institutions were set up more than half a century ago".
What a fascinating definition that is, and how wrong we must have been
to imagine that legitimacy requires democracy. Hurrah for corporatism
- it didn't die with Mussolini after all.
I am among those who believe that the IMF is, and always will be, the
wrong body - inherently flawed and constitutionally unjust. But if its
leaders and supporters are to persuade us that it might, one day, have
a legitimate role in running the world's financial systems, they will
have to do a hell of a lot better than this.
George Monbiot's book Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning is
published this month
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole
responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Centre for Research on Globalization.
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) Copyright George Monbiot, The Guardian [U.K.], 2006
The url address of this article is:
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======================================================================================================================
From: "Jacob G. Stansbury, Jr." <dam...@cox.net>
Date: September 6, 2006 10:07:22 AM EST
Subject: Colloidal Silver - Why Is The FDA Working To Keep This Vital
Life-Saving Knowledge A Secret From You?
Colloidal Silver - Why Is the FDA Working to
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If you trust the government and health care industry to vaccinate you
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http://www.rense.com/CS/cs1.htm
Jake
======================================================================================================================
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