World-News

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-forests11feb11,0,1552161.story?track


Informant: Bigraccoon

Three members of Congress have been linked to efforts by lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a former General Services Administration official to secure leases of government property for Abramoff's clients.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021106Z.shtml

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4074/


Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East Paul R. Pillar, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021106Y.shtml

I thought people might feel encouraged by the publication of my letter in Februarys edition of a local Brighton newsletter.

Regards

Gary
Brighton


PHONE MASTS SET TO INCREASE WHILE HEALTH FEARS GROW

Those of you who have heard that a phone mast is planned for the bottom of Davey Drive will be interested to read the following from a fellow resident.

Communities having recently prevented phone masts in Portland Road, New Church Road, The Drive and Fiveways would do well to observe the secrecy and repeated applications employed by Vodafone (Argus December 13) in installing a phone mast on Intergen House in Hove - tactics used by telecom companies nationwide.

On its website Mast Sanity ( http://www.mastsanity.org ) lists eighteen of what it estimates to be thousands of ill health clusters - mostly cancer, epilepsy, strokes and tumours - up to 500 metres radius from phone masts, whilst the proliferation of microwave technology - cell phones, 3G, wireless computers,WLANs, bluetooth, burglar alarms, baby monitors, TETRA etc - runs rampant.

Chairman of the Russian National Committee for defense from nonionizing radiation Professor Yuri Grigoriev, recently attributed the sevenfold increase in the deaths of Russian teenagers since 1993 to mouth, brain and ear cancers almost entirely to cell phone use.

The Freiburger, Nalia, Bamberger, Salford and Californian studies all detail serious adverse health effects from microwave exposure and appeal for new safety legislation to protect people. Dr Salford of Lund University, Sweden, recently stated brain damage from intensive mobile use and domestic DECT phones in homes was "a probability rather than a possibility".

In 2001, the European Parliament Research Group recommended that all EU states ban children under 16 from using cell phones. This is recommended by the UK Department of Health, though not widely publicised despite advice from the Governments ex official adviser Sir William Stewart that under 16s only use cell phones in emergencies.and who described current marketing of cell phones to eight year olds as "grotesque".

The currently unfurling 3G system will require 16 times more masts than the current (GSM) one and be 30 times more powerful. But with telecom companies paying the Government £23 billion for 3G frequencies and their requirement for 80% UK mast coverage by 2007, are either likely to raise the alarm?

On March 10th, Brighton and Hove Council passed a Motion calling on the Government to suspend further mast installations, decommission existing ones in sensitive locations (within 500 metres of hospitals, schools, retirement homes and residential areas) pending further research, and to fully democratise the planning process for all masts - all requested by Sir William Stewart long ago.

That every mast refusal by the Council carries a risk of £17,000 costs being awarded against it by Government planning inspectors could conceivably explain Planning Committee Vice Chair Roy Pennington and Chair Bob Carden always passing mast applications when holding the casting votes, but not their voting against the abovementioned Council Motion.

Nor can it explain Pennington's intention (Argus August 25) to set up a Committee to alleviate peoples fears about phone masts and who has previously accused mast campaigners of "scaremongering" (The Argus, Jan 2005).

To enquire about the planned mast contact sue.paskins@brighton-hove.gov.uk (Sue is on the planning committee)

ENDS

Trotz der "Siegesstrategie" von Bush ist die Zahl der Angriffe im Irak seit Juni 2003 stetig gestiegen.

http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/22/22018/1.html

Sammeln und Verbinden von gigantischen Datenmengen http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/22/22021/1.html

Charlie Anderson, a Navy Hospital Corpsman with the Marine Corps, details his feelings of betrayal by his government for sending him to a war without purpose, his destroyed marriage and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021106X.shtml

Three foreign-owned processing plants will be allowed to continue slaughtering horses for meat, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced, which violates a measure signed last November.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/021006EB.shtml

Bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for stricter regulation of President Bush's secret spying program grew Thursday, as senators briefed by administration officials about the surveillance termed the information inadequate, and called for more investigation of the eavesdropping.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021006T.shtml

Where would the Bush Administration be without terrorism? Like the Cold War before it, the "war on terror" is a conveniently sweeping rationale for all manner of irrational governance, such as the outrageous $2.77 trillion budget the President proposed to Congress on Monday.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11865.htm



Programs Bush Wants to Cut or Kill

A list of the 141 programs that President Bush proposed to eliminate or cut in his 2007 budget
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11866.htm



Bush's Budget Cuts Elderly Nutrition Plan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-5608875,00.html



Man Dies After Insurance Co. Refuses To Cover Treatment

Even as he was dying, for more than a week, his insurance company denied him oral morphine, which had been prescribed to reduce his pain.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/kmbc/3257367


From Information Clearing House



The New Robber Barons

The U.S. Department of Labor claims we have an unemployment rate of 4.9% [1]. According to "the Economist, however, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is over 8%, or 12.6 million Americans [2]. The difference is due to the fact that the U.S. Government doesn,t count people as unemployed after six months without a job [3].

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11861.htm

Bush/Abramoff Photographs

A picture is worth a thousands words. Or: I Never did have my picture taken with that man.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11867.htm



Abramoff says he met Bush "almost a dozen" times:

Jack Abramoff said in correspondence made public on Thursday that President Bush met him "almost a dozen" times, disputing White House claims Bush did not know the former lobbyist at the center of a corruption scandal.

http://tinyurl.com/7bhu6



Reid Aided Abramoff Clients, Records Show

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid portrays convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff's activities as involving only Republicans. But Abramoff's billing records and congressional correspondence tell a different story.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-5607630,00.html


From Information Clearing House

Does President Bush plan to use his Executive authority under his wartime powers to cancel the 2008 election because a change in leadership here might embolden the terrorists?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/president-bush-forever_b_15375.html


From Information Clearing House



Is Bush The Lifetime President?
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2006/110206lifetimepresident.htm

Outraged intelligence professionals say President George W. Bush is "cheapening" and "politicizing" their work with claims the United States foiled a planned terrorist attack against Los Angeles in 2002.

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/blog/2006/02/intel_pros_say_bush_is_lying_a.html


From Information Clearing House

Video

In this compelling docudrama three young British Muslims tell the story of how they came to be in US custody at Guantánamo for over two years, and discuss the Kafkaesque horrors that awaited them there, until finally they were released without charge or apology.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12439.htm



Quiet force behind Bush policies

"Torture memo," spying, Guantanamo can all be traced to Cheney's top aide.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12444.htm



Close Guantanamo now

According to US officials interviewed by The New York Times, plastic tubes are forced down prisoners' throats and they are strapped into special ''restraint chairs" for hours on end. These keep them from intentionally vomiting after a force-feeding. A detainee lawyer told the Times that one of his clients said officials would purposely insert so much food that prisoners would defecate on themselves.

http://tinyurl.com/7qwnv


From Information Clearing House

Even if you include the 9/11 casualties, the number of Americans killed by international terrorists since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting them) is about the same as that killed by lightning - or by accident-causing deer, or by severe allergic reactions to peanuts.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/10/news/edpfaff.php#


From Information Clearing House

By Mike Kress

The neo-cons will use their tool at the UN, Ambassador John Bolton, to help create an international crisis and thereby justify attacks on Iran. Though there’s no evidence to prove that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, Iran’s refusal to halt its lawful nuclear programs will become the pretext for America’s next unnecessary war.

Innocent Iranians, our children, our military, and all the world waits for us to wrest America’s destiny from the hands of the warlords. There is no time to waste. Gradualism is a luxury we cannot afford. The architects of the war against Iran have a head start – but we can prevail if we put our demands for peace into action.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11868.htm

The referral of Iran to the UN Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency is not a step towards resolving the presumed nuclear problem between that country and the ‘international community’. It is a step towards further confrontation, with the deliberate intention by the US-UK axis to provide political cover for its real aim: subjugation of Iran.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11859.htm

Twenty-two members of the House have now signed on as co-sponors of the call by Representative John Conyers, D-Michigan, to establish a select committee of the Congress to investigate whether the Bush administration's actions before and after the invasion of Iraq violated Constitutional requirements, statutes and standards in a manner that would merit impeachment of the president or vice president.

http://tinyurl.com/cyyer



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

Save whales: Send a message to Gorton's CEO asking him to persuade Gortons' parent company, Nissui, to bring the hunting of whales to a permanent end:

https://ctk.greenpeace.org/od-en/ctk-letters/get-info?letter%5fid=1217756


Help us hunt the hunters: Every year, the Japanese whaling fleet takes great pains to conduct their hunt in secrecy. We have our own methods of finding them, but in today's networked world of satellite imagery and instant global information, we'd like to add a new tool to our kit: you. The law of "six degrees of separation" suggests that you, Ocean Defender, know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows precisely where the Japanese fleet is hunting right now. Do you have a friend who works in a field that might have direct knowledge of where the hunters are? Someone making an ocean crossing in the Southern Ocean? A cousin who interprets satellite imagery? A neighbor who monitors marine communications? Ask them if they can help Greenpeace locate the whaling fleet. We've posted information about the ships we're seeking at our hunt-the-hunters page here:

http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/our-oceans/whaling/hunt-the-hunters


Sign up more defenders: In the quest to sign up a million ocean defenders, everybody can help. You can ask your friends and colleagues to become Ocean Defenders by sending them this e-card:

https://ctk.greenpeace.org/od-en/ctk-ecards/1216348?return_url=/od-en/ctk-ecards/

Marketing ploys for kids and cell phones

From Tower Sanity Alliance:
The Sydney Morning Herald, Feb. 11, 2006

Every move they make, mum’s watching

By Louise Williams February 11, 2006

IT’S not quite Big Brother, more like Big Mother.

Avalon lawyer Meredith Kelly doesn’t have a hope of getting to the school on time, but she knows exactly when her eight-year-old son, Michael, walks through the school gate. So too does her husband, Peter, even if he is away in China on business.

Michael’s the first kid on his northern beaches block to have a new child’s mobile phone that doubles as a tracking device. He is the red blip on his parents’ computer screen or their mobile phone displays. If he wanders out of one of three “safe zones” his parents have nominated, his phone texts theirs and tells them something is up and where he is. The system even keeps a record of everywhere he has been for the previous 30 days.

People tracking is no longer just the stuff of covert military operations or spy movies. Putting mobile phones and GPS together is an ideal technological marriage, says an expert in the technology, Associate Professor Andrew Dempster of the University of NSW.

Globally, we’re on the verge of a boom in over-the-counter locator devices, he says of the first child-tracker to hit the Australian market.

In the US, all mobile phones are now required to double as locators for emergency services, he says. Phone companies must be able to pinpoint any individual handset to within 150 metres so the emergency services can respond, even if the caller can’t tell them where he or she is. In Japan, the technology is being tailored to user-pay location services, like mobile phones and cars that can lead you to your destination. But children are also being remotely monitored. Japanese manufacturers began incorporating GPS locators into school bags in 2004, eyeing the growing market of parents anxious about rising crime.

The Australian distributor of the new iKids phone, Mark Gullickson, said most buyers were from Sydney and Melbourne where many families often have both parents working, or a single parent.

The phone costs $300, plus $28 a month, even though it limits children to calling four preset numbers.

“Michael is getting to an age where he can walk home himself, but I feel more comfortable if he’s in contact with me,” said Ms Kelly. Most days he is still picked up from school, but the Kellys also juggle a younger child and demanding jobs. “When my husband is overseas and I’m out with the kids, he can even use the phone to find us,” Mrs Kelly said. While the Kellys are thrilled with the extra assurance the phone offers, they have had a “mixed reaction” at the school gate, including outright disapproval of mobiles for young children.

“There’s nothing as good as responsible adult supervision,” said Sharryn Brownlee, president of the NSW Federation of Parents and Citizens’ Associations. “Technology can lull us into a false sense of security. It’s easy for the phone to be lost, stolen, or even traded.

“But we do have to recognise that mobile phones have transformed our lives and it’s now a vital communication tool for many kids and their parents.”

The executive officer of Kidsafe, Greg Stead, was less enthusiastic: “You simply need to know where primary school-age kids are. They should be under parental or adult supervision. Nothing replaces that. We should treat tracking devices with caution.”

But more and more parents are relying on mobile phones as safety devices. A Nielsen/NetRatings survey last year found 89 per cent of parents felt safer knowing their child had a mobile phone. Half of children have their own mobile, but only 16 per cent of six- to 11-year-olds have a phone, compared with 87 per cent of 15- to 17-year-olds.

An iKids teen phone is planned, but teenagers may be less enthusiastic about being followed on a virtual map by Mum and Dad. And for adults, affordable tracking technology is a looming privacy minefield.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/every-move-they-make-mums-watching/2006/02/10/1139542402618.html

Source: http://www.emfacts.com/weblog/index.php?p=381