World-News

by Anatol Lieven
December 28, 2006
by the International Herald Tribune (Paris)

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/28/opinion/edlieven.php?page=2

Every political, social and economic system ever created has sooner or later encountered a challenge that its very nature has made it incapable of meeting. The Confucian ruling system of imperial China, which lasted for more than 2,000 years, has some claim still to be the most successful in history, but because it was founded on values of stability and continuity, rather than dynamism and inventiveness, it eventually proved unable to survive in the face of Western imperial capitalism.

For market economies, and the Western model of democracy with which they have been associated, the existential challenge for the foreseeable future will be global warming. Other threats like terrorism may well be damaging, but no other conceivable threat or combination of threats can possibly destroy our entire system. As the recent British official commission chaired by Sir Nicholas Stern correctly stated, climate change "is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen."

The question now facing us is whether global capitalism and Western democracy can follow the Stern report's recommendations, and make the limited economic adjustments necessary to keep global warming within bounds that will allow us to preserve our system in a recognizable form; or whether our system is so dependent on unlimited consumption that it is by its nature incapable of demanding even small sacrifices from its present elites and populations.

If the latter proves the case, and the world suffers radically destructive climate change, then we must recognize that everything that the West now stands for will be rejected by future generations. The entire democratic capitalist system will be seen to have failed utterly as a model for humanity and as a custodian of essential human interests.

Even the relatively conservative predictions offered by the Stern report, of a drop in annual global gross domestic product of up to 20 percent by the end of this century, imply a crisis on the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s; and as we know, the effects of that depression were not restricted to economics. In much of Europe, as well as Latin America and Japan, democracies collapsed and were replaced by authoritarian regimes.

As the report makes clear, however, if we continue with "business as usual" when it comes to the emission of greenhouse gases, then we will not have to wait till the end of the century to see disastrous consequences. Long before then, a combination of floods, droughts and famine will have destroyed states in many poorer parts of the earth — as has already occurred in recent decades in Somalia.

If the conservative estimates of the Stern report are correct, then already by 2050 the effects of climate change may be such as to wreck the societies of Pakistan and Bangladesh; and if these states collapse, how can India and other countries possibly insulate themselves?

At that point, not only will today's obsessive concern with terrorism appear insignificant, but all the democratizing efforts of Western states, and of private individuals and bodies like George Soros and his Open Society Institute, will be rendered completely meaningless. So, of course, will every effort directed today toward the reduction of poverty and disease.

And this is only to examine the likely medium-term consequences of climate change. For the further future, the report predicts that if we continue with business as usual, then the rise in average global temperature could well top 5 degrees Celsius. To judge by what we know of the history of the world's climate, this would almost certainly lead to the melting of the polar ice caps, and a rise in sea levels of up to 25 meters.

As pointed out by Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth," this would mean the end of many of the world's greatest cities. The resulting human migration could be on such a scale as to bring modern civilization to an end.

If this comes to pass, what will our descendants make of a political and media culture that devotes little attention to this threat when compared with sports, consumer goods, leisure and a threat from terrorism that is puny by comparison? Will they remember us as great paragons of human progress and freedom? They are more likely to spit on our graves.

Underlying Western free-market democracy, and its American form in particular, is the belief that this system is of permanent value to mankind: a "New Order of the Ages," as the motto on the U.S. Great Seal has it. It is not supposed to serve only the short- term and selfish interests of existing Western populations. If our system is indeed no more than that, then it will pass from history even more utterly than Confucian China — and will deserve to do so.

© Copyright 2006 The International Herald Tribune


Informant: binstock



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=An+Inconvenient+Truth

The key U.S. manufacturing sector is expected to be hit hard next year, heightening fears a recession is now much more likely than many economists had expected.

http://tinyurl.com/v5g6a


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=recession

United Arab Emirates (UAE) Central Bank Governor Sultan Bin Nasser al-Suwaidi announced today that the UAE will switch 8% of its foreign-exchange reserves from U.S. dollars into euros before September. Now China, Russia, Italy Switzerland, Sweden, Qatar, New Zealand and UAE are all diversifying away from the dollar.

http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=27586


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=dollars+into+euros

They confirmed my eyewitness's account - that a well-known CIA Gulfstream plane, the N379P, had made several landings at the airport in 2003.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6212843.stm


From Information Clearing House

The Bush administration and Congress are warning that a proposed $16 billion deal between a Chinese company and Iran could trigger economic penalties under an American law aimed at starving Iran of funding for "terrorism and nuclear weapons".

http://www.nysun.com/article/45816


From Information Clearing House

Shooting the messenger is a war crime

More than 120 reporters and other media workers have been killed in Iraq since the invasion. In August 2003, Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana was filming outside Abu Ghraib prison when a machine-gun bullet tore through his chest. The Pentagon said the soldiers had "engaged a cameraman."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/297417_amy28.html


From Information Clearing House

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Shooting the Messenger
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5650/


Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Amy+Goodman

More than 108,000 Iraqis have left their homes and registered as refugees in the last month, a senior official has said.

http://tinyurl.com/yyzl8j


From Information Clearing House

By Bill Quigley

Why Is HUD Using Tens of Millions of Katrina Money to Bulldoze 4534 Public Housing Apartments in New Orleans When It Costs Less to Repair and Open Them Up?

http://tinyurl.com/y2nvya

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New Orleans: HUD Policies Limiting Housing for Poor

Bill Quigley writes: "Gloria Williams and her twin sister, Bobbie Jennings, are both 60 years old. They are two of the more than 4,000 families who lived in public housing in New Orleans before Katrina struck. The families are still locked out of their homes. Their residences are two of 4,534 apartments that the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has announced plans to demolish."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122906D.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Katrina
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Orleans
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bill+Quigley

Timothy Garton Ash writes: "In the coming year, we should not abandon all idealism along with the dangerous illusions of the Bush era."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122806F.shtml

Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney - Ford's White House chief of staff - and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122806B.shtml

"Everything we have endured these last six years - the death, the horror, the fear, the anger - was born that afternoon in Washington, DC," writes William Rivers Pitt. "We have already suffered myriad consequences because of it - the shame of Abu Ghraib; the lingering fear of blue skies and airplanes; the ebb tide of freedom as rights become privileges too easily withheld, the bottomless sorrow stitched into nearly three thousand folded American flags while taps played to the wind - and it is a bleak certainty that further suffering born on that day lies in wait."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122806A.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=William+Rivers+Pitt

Giant Ice Shelf Breaks Free from Canadian Arctic
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1229-02.htm

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Canada's North changing. Global warming suspected cause of huge breakup on Ellesmere Island

MARGARET MUNRO

CanWest News Service
Thursday, December 28, 2006

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=e4c99314-a71a-4418-a246-eea457e8b873&k=82636

An ancient ice shelf has cracked off northern Ellesmere Island, creating an enormous 66-square-kilometre ice island and leaving a trail of icy blocks in its wake.

"It really is incredible," said Warwick Vincent of Universite Laval, one of the few people to have laid eyes on the scene. "It's like a cruise missile has come down and hit the ice shelf."

The breakup was so powerful, earthquake monitors 250 kilometres away picked up the tremors as the 3,000- to 4,500-year-old shelf tore away from its fjord on Ellesmere.

It broke up 16 months ago, but no one was present to see it. The scientists say they are only now making public details after piecing together what occurred using seismic monitors and Canadian and U.S. satellites.

They say the ice shelf collapse, suspected to have been caused by global warming, is the biggest in Canada in 30 years and is indicative of the transformation under way on Ellesmere, Canada's most northern land mass.

"We are seeing incredible changes," said Vincent, whose group is studying the island's disappearing ice shelves and their unique ecosystems. "People talk of endangered animals - well, these are endangered landscape features and we're losing them."

The Ayles ice shelf was one of six ice shelves left in Canada, remnants of a vast icy fringe that used to cover the top end of Ellesmere.

Scientists consider the Canadian shelves, located about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole, sentinels that reflect the accelerating change in the Arctic.

In 2002, one of Vincent's graduate students, Derek Mueller, discovered that Ellesmere's Ward Hunt ice shelf had cracked in half. The researchers have also seen the sudden collapse of ice dams and the draining of
30-kilometre-long lakes into the sea.

The shelves are 90 per cent smaller than they were when Arctic explorer Robert Peary crossed them in 1906. And the Ayles ice shelf can be erased from Canada's maps.

"It no longer exists," Vincent said.

Laurie Weir, of the federal Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, was poring over images from the RADARSAT satellite when she noticed the shelf had broken away. She passed the information on to Luke Copland, head of the new global ice lab at the

University of Ottawa, who led the effort to determine what had happened.

It turned out it took less than one hour for the ice shelf to calve off in the early afternoon of Aug. 13, 2005, Copland said. Low frequency "rumbling" and tremors were picked up on earthquake monitors, and Canadian and U.S. satellites captured images of the shelf cracking and breaking away.

"If you were standing right on the edge of the shelf, there'd have been this huge 15-kilometre crack as far as you could see in both directions," Copland said.

"And then the ice drifted off."

Within an hour, the giant ice island was one kilometre offshore. It travelled west about 50 kilometres during the next few weeks and then moved east before freezing into sea ice about 15 kilometres offshore.

Copland has reconstructed what happened with Weir and Mueller, who is now at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

"We have a really good sequence of the ice shelf breaking up and then floating away," Copland said.

Vincent flew out from his base camp on northern Ellesmere by helicopter this year to have a first-hand look at the scene of the collapse.

"There was a huge amount of rubble associated with this breakup," Vincent said, explaining how the fjord is now full of ice blocks, "and then this vast ice shelf floating offshore."

The ice island is about 37 metres thick and measures roughly 15 kilometres by five kilometres. That's the size of a small city, or larger than 11,000 football fields. The island is now stuck in winter ice, but the researchers say it is only a matter of time before it is freed and floats away. They say the ice island could become a potential hazard to navigation and oil and gas extraction if it sails south toward the Beaufort Sea.

But for now, it is a monument to change.

"This is the biggest event since the '80s in terms of ice shelf loss," Copland said. He said two key factors appear to have triggered the breakup - the exceptionally warm temperatures on Ellesmere in summer last year,

3 degrees Celsius above normal, and unusually brisk winds that blew the summer pack ice offshore, exposing the Ayles shelf to waves and open water. Normally, the prevailing winds blow summer pack ice up against Ellesmere's ice shelves, where it acts as a buffer, protecting them from the sea.

The scientists say they can't prove human-induced climate change caused the Ayles shelf to break off, but they suspect global warming might be responsible.

"We can say it is consistent with the larger body of evidence indicating the climate is warming and predictions that the greatest effects are likely to take place at high latitudes," Vincent said. He noted that the Ayles disintegration is the most recent of several abrupt changes on Ellesmere.

"Suddenly, lakes that existed aren't there any more, ice dams collapse, ice shelves break up," Vincent said.

"These are big changes."

Researchers say there are many more changes in store. Last week, a Canada-U.S. team predicted that the Arctic Ocean could be devoid of summer ice as early as 2040 and possibly sooner.

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006


Informant: binstock

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ANCIENT ICE SHELF SNAPS AND BREAKS FREE FROM THE CANADIAN ARCTIC

By Steve Lillebuen
Canadian Press
December 28, 2006

http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/cp_n122847A.xml.html

A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada's Arctic, leaving a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.

The mass of ice broke clear from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole. Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, travelled to the newly formed ice island and couldn't believe what he saw. "It was extraordinary," Vincent said Thursday, adding that in 10 years of working in the region he has never seen such a dramatic loss of sea ice.

"This is a piece of Canadian geography that no longer exists."

The collapse was so powerful that earthquake monitors 250 kilometres away picked up tremors from it.

Scientists say it is the largest event of its kind in 30 years and point their fingers at climate change as a major contributing factor.

"We think this incident is consistent with global climate change," Vincent said, adding that the remaining ice shelves are 90 per cent smaller than when they were first discovered in 1906.

"We aren't able to connect all of the dots, but unusually warm temperatures definitely played a major role."

The ice shelf actually broke up 16 months ago, but no one witnessed the dramatic event.

Laurie Weir, who monitors ice conditions for the Canadian Ice Service, was poring over satellite images when she noticed that the shelf had split and separated.

Weir notified Luke Copland, head of the new global ice lab at the University of Ottawa, who initiated an effort to find out what happened.

Using U.S. and Canadian satellite images, as well as data from seismic monitors, Copland discovered that the ice shelf collapsed in the early afternoon of Aug. 13, 2005.

"These ice shelves can break up really quickly, perhaps more quickly than we thought they could do in the past," he said.

"Within an hour we could see this entire ice chunk just disconnect and float away."

Within days, the floating ice shelf had drifted a few kilometres offshore. It travelled west for 50 kilometres until it finally froze into the sea ice in the early winter.

Derek Mueller, a polar researcher with Vincent's team, saw that Ellesmere's Ward Hunt Ice Shelf had cracked in half in 2002. He also saw that sea ice, which creates a buffer zone around ice shelves, was approaching lower and lower levels.

"These ice shelves get weaker and weaker as the temperature rises," he said.

"And the summer of 2005 had a combination of high temperatures and strong winds that probably blew the sea ice away, making this ice shelf much more vulnerable."

The Ayles Ice Shelf, roughly 66 square kilometres in area, was one of six major ice shelves remaining in Canada's Arctic.

They are packed with ancient ice that dates back over 3000 years, and scientists like Vincent treat their loss as a sign that the global climate is crossing an unprecedented threshold.

"We're seeing the tragic loss of unique features of the Canadian landscape," he said.

"There are microscopic organisms and entire ecosystems associated with this ice, so we're losing a part of Canada's natural richness."

Meanwhile, the spring thaw may bring another concern as the warming temperatures could release the ice shelf from its Arctic grip.

Prevailing winds could then send the ice island southwards, deep into the Beaufort Sea.

"Over the next few years this ice island could drift into populated shipping routes," Weir said.

"There's significant oil and gas development in this region as well, so we'll have to keep monitoring its location over the next few years."


Informant: NHNE

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Ten Simple Things You Can Do to Go Green

Laurie David, who produced Al Gore's documentary about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," says saving the planet isn't about everyone doing everything: "It's about everyone doing something."

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/122806EB.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=An+Inconvenient+Truth

Die vielen Tests von Trägerraketen für Atomwaffen in diesem Jahr, die von acht Ländern durchgeführt wurden, weisen auf zunehmende Instabilität hin.

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24317/1.html

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24321/1.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Heroin

This is so sad!

Deadline is 1/2/07, and only 370 signatures!

Please sign for these mother pigs,who are enduring unimaginable suffering,and forward and crosspost. Please!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/733171486?z00m=9399082

Dozens of banks have stopped or scaled back their businesses with Iran and other "rogue states" after informal pressure from the US government aimed at sidestepping the need for international sanctions.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122806O.shtml

In his chronicle of life as an inmate at Guantanamo Bay, Afghan writer Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost describes his three years of humiliating detention for alleged ties to al-Qaeda. Now, he has lost his liberty again - this time believed jailed by the Pakistani intelligence service for the book's fierce criticism of the agency's role in the US-led war on terrorist groups.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122806M.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Gitmo
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Guantanamo
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=detention

Ashley Severance writes about her experiences spearheading a medical relief project in Orlando. Due to her efforts and the assistance of No More Victims, a three-year-old, war-injured Iraqi child was spared a life of permanent blindness.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122806L.shtml

Jack Blatherwick writes: "Better we teach our children no answers - only questions and suspicions, courage and insight to detect official ideology. They will need wisdom beyond ours to rebuild our trusted position of leadership in a peaceful world - to restore environmental health to a wounded planet - and to redefine concepts like patriotism, democracy, and morality. They will need an extraordinary education, not short answers. Testing and retesting is no substitute for investment in education."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122806K.shtml

Judith Bell writes: "Doubled and tripled up in cramped studios. Scrunched into uninsulated garages disingenuously dubbed 'family apartments.' Sneaking a few hours of sleep between shifts cleaning hotel rooms and slinging fast food. The realities of poverty in America are far from our minds as we primp for our neighbors' New Year's party or watch our kids play with their new Nintendo Wiis. The sobering truth just doesn't carve a place in polite conversations over celebratory champagne. But as a new report by the Brookings Institution shows, poverty is now increasingly a major problem on the brightly lit lanes of our nation's suburbs, not just in the urban areas. For the first time ever, there are now more people living in poverty in America's suburbs than in her cities."

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/122706LA.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=poverty

"When you think about the growth of human population over the last century or so, it is all too easy to imagine it merely as an increase in the number of humans," writes the New York Times. "But as we multiply, so do all the things associated with us, including our livestock. With pigs and poultry, they form a critical part of our enormous biological footprint upon this planet."

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/122706ED.shtml

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The New Scientist
December 12, 2006

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn10786-cows-pigs-and-sheep-environments-greatest-threats.html

Cows, pigs and sheep: Environment's greatest threats?

By Catherine Brahic

Cows, pigs, sheep and poultry have been awarded the dubious honour of being among the world's greatest environmental threats, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The report, entitled Livestock's long shadow, says the livestock industry is degrading land, contributing to the greenhouse effect, polluting water resources, and destroying biodiversity. In summary, the sector is "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems at every scale".

The authors say the demand for meat is expected to more than double by 2050 and therefore the environmental impact of production must be halved in order to avoid worsening the harmful impacts of the industry.

Perhaps the report's most striking finding is that the livestock sector accounts for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions - more than transport, which emits 13.5%.

Entire cycle

The FAO's estimate of livestock emissions surpasses previous ones because this time researchers looked at the entire production cycle. This includes emissions generated by fertiliser and feed production, deforestation to open up pastures, manure management, and emissions from the livestock themselves and from transporting them and their feed.

Livestock require a lot of land, occupying 26% of Earth's ice-free land. Their pastures account for 70% of deforested areas in the Amazon, and their feed occupies one-third of global cropland.

Not only does deforestation increase greenhouse gas emissions by releasing carbon previously stored in trees, it is also a major driver in the loss of biodiversity. The report goes so far as to say that the livestock sector, which accounts for about 20% of terrestrial animal biomass, "may be a leading player in the reduction of biodiversity".

Livelihoods in livestock

Encouraging the global population to become vegans is not a viable solution, however. For starters, says the lead author of the FAO report, Henning Steinfeld, it is quite simply not an option for many of the one billion people whose livelihoods rely on livestock production.

Moreover, vegetable production is not devoid of environmental problems either. And recent studies have shown that global fish stocks are not sustainable at current levels of exploitation.

Steinfeld says the crux of the livestock problem is the sheer bulk of land the sector occupies: "We need to discourage indiscriminate deforestation for pasture, a large part of which takes place because of land speculation."

Convenient occupation

In the Amazon, where governments struggle to enforce legal systems, settlers occupy swathes of "no-man's land" and wait 15 years, after which time practice, though not law, dictates that they own the land. Using the land for pasture is simply a convenient tool to occupy the land, explains Steinfeld.

Ultimately, the authors argue, environmental services such as sustainably managed land and clean water, need to be given a price. "Most frequently, natural resources are free or underpriced, which leads to overexploitation and pollution," write the authors, concluding that "a top priority is to achieve prices and fees that reflect the full economic and environmental costs".

Steinfeld says negotiations of the next step of the Kyoto Protocol might be a good opportunity to do this.



Want to do something for the environment?
by Do not eat pigs.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/12/11/18336785.php

[Do not eat dead pigs (bacon, ham, pork chops). Below is a piece from another list about Smithfield pigs. Read it! Jean]

The current, December 14, edition of Rolling Stone magazine includes a lengthy piece, by contributor Jeff Tietz, about Smithfield pork producers. It covers the conditions the animals are kept in, and the environmental impact. The article is headed, "BossHog" and sub-headed, "America's top pork producer churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history. Welcome to the dark side of the other white meat." (pg 89.)

The lead photo is of a huge pile of pig carcasses, with the caption, "Pork producers generate millions of tons of hog waste each year including millions of dead pigs."

The article opens: "Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pig processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year."

It tells us that hogs produce three times more excrement than humans do, and that "The best estimates put Smithfield total waste discharge at 26 million tons a year." We read, "So prodigious is its fecal waste, however, that if the company treated its effluvia as big-city governments do -- even if it came close to the same standard -- it would lose money."

It explains that the "pig shit" is so toxic because of the concentrated conditions the pigs are kept in:

"Smithfield's pigs live by the hundreds or thousands in warehouselike barns, in rows of wall-to-wall pens. Sows are artificially inseminated and fed and delivered of their piglets in cages so small they cannot turn around. Forty full grown 250-pound male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment. They trample each other to death. There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth. The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into a catchment pit under the pens....

"The temperature inside hog houses is often hotter than ninety degrees. The air, saturated almost to the point of precipitation with gases from shit and chemicals, can be lethal to the pigs. Enormous exhaust fans run
24 hours a day... If they break down for any length of time, pigs start dying....

"Taken together, the immobility, poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs' immune systems. They become susceptible to infection..."

So they are infused with antibiotics and doused with insecticides.

We read about the huge excrement holding pens, called lagoons, which often overflow: "Major floods have transferred entire counties into pig shit bayous."

The lagoons are so toxic, workers have been overcome by them and fallen in and drowned in pig shit.

The article tells us that according to the EPA, Smithfield dumps more toxic waste into the nation's water each year than all but three other industrial facilities in America. But, "The industry has long made generous campaign contributions to politicians responsible for regulating hog farms." We read, "In 1998 corporate hog farms in North Carolina spent $1 million to help defeat state legislators who wanted to clean up open-pit lagoons."

Tietz writes, "Studies have shown that lagoons emit hundreds of different volatile gases into the atmosphere, including ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. A single lagoon releases many millions of bacteria into the air per day, some resistant to human antibiotics."

With an environmentalist, he flies in a small plane over the Smithfield area, and watches as "several farmers spray their hog shit straight up into the air as a fine mist." He writes, "It looks like a public fountain. Lofted and atomized the shit is blown clear of the company's property. People who breathe the shit-infused air suffer from bronchitis, asthma, heart palpitations, headaches, diarrhea, nosebleeds and brain damage."

He writes that the ascending stench can nauseate pilots at 3,000 feet, and He goes into some detail about the suffering of people whose homes are down-wind of the farms. He visits a lagoon to take a good whiff, and writes that even as he thinks about the smell he fights an urge to vomit.

We read some specifics of Smithfield's environmental impact in North Carolina. In a span of four years its lagoons have spilled: "2 million gallons of shit into Cape Fear River, 1.5 million gallons into its Persimmon branch, one million gallons into the Trent River, and
200,000 gallons into Turkey Creek."

The waste kills plants and animals outright and also consumes available oxygen and suffocates fish. We read about various disastrous spills. For example: "The biggest spill in the history of corporate hog farming happened in 1995. The dike of a 120,000 square foot lagoon owned by a Smithfield competitor ruptured, releasing 25.8 million gallons of effluvium into the headwaters of the New River in North Carolina. It was the biggest environmental spill in United States history, more than twice as big as the Exxon Valdez oil spill six years earlier. The sludge was so toxic, it burned your skin if you touched it, and so dense it took almost two months to make its way sixteen miles downstream to the ocean. From the headwaters to the sea, every creature living in the river was killed. Fish died by the millions."

He describes dead fish covering the riverbanks, and the article includes a shocking photo of that phenomenon.

Please share this with everyone you know!


Informant: Scott Munson



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=CO2

The standoff here between farmers and environmentalists was familiar in the modern West. With salmon and wildlife dwindling in the Skagit River Delta, some environmentalists had argued since the 1980s that local farms should be turned back into wetlands. Farmers here feared that preachy outsiders would strip them of their land and heritage. This year, though, the standoff ended - at least for three longtime farmers in this fertile valley, who began collaborating with their former enemies to preserve wildlife and their livelihoods.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/122706EC.shtml

Two of the nation's largest timber companies, Weyerhaeuser and Plum Creek Timber, have polished their public images for years by participating in a program that certifies that their logging is environmentally friendly. But in separate challenges this month from the far corners of the United States, environmental groups in Washington state and in Maine are accusing Weyerhaeuser Corporation and Plum Creek Timber of using the forest industry's green-labeling program as a cover while they log in ways that harm endangered spotted owls in Washington and violate forestry laws in Maine.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/122706EB.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Weyerhaeuser

"The tragedy unfolding in Somalia has the potential to destroy thousands of innocent lives and livelihoods," remarks Michael McClennen. "At the same time, it holds within it the seeds of international peace. We must urgently decide which side of the conflict to support, and our decision may well have immense repercussions for international relations in the 21st century."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122706R.shtml



UN Envoy Calls Somalia Situation Grim

The conflict between Somalia's transitional government and Islamic militants has escalated dangerously, as Islamist leaders threaten a "holy war" against advancing government troops and allied Ethiopian forces, a UN special envoy told the Security Council on Tuesday.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122706S.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Somalia

http://tinyurl.com/tfxg8



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Stop+Funding+War
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Start+Investigations
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach

The American Spectator
by Jeremy Lott

12/27/06

Bush's half-hearted attempts to control spending have been laughable. The financial hit of September 11 temporarily reversed government surpluses but increases in both defense and domestic spending brought back dreaded structural deficits. Americans hate deficits and the president could have appealed to this revulsion to get Congress to spend less. By vetoing a few bills, he would have told Congress he was serious about spending -- and told the American people he was willing to stand up to big spenders, regardless of party. Instead, Bush tried to talk Congress into spending what he considered the 'just right' amount, and then signed every huge spending bill that crossed his desk...

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10798


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=deficit+spending

Asia Times
by M K Bhadrakumar

12/27/06

Over the past year, it has become clear that the US will not be able to become the single dominant power in Central Asia and thereby control oil and gas and their transportation routes. Russia and China have together put up dikes delimiting US influence, though they are far from being a tight couple. The death of Turkmenistan's president Saparmurat Niyazov, however, could dramatically shift the center of gravity of the Great Game...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HL23Ag01.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

--------

Our Next Big Mess

By Ted Rall

Chances are that you heard more about Rosie O'Donnell's flame war with Donald Trump than the passing of Sapamurat "Turkmenbashi" Niyazov. As seems to occur with increasing frequency, America's media ignored the most important story of the year.

http://tinyurl.com/y6uhnn



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Niyazov
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Turkmenistan

http://tinyurl.com/ybwtfc


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

CNN

12/27/06

Sen. Joseph Biden, the incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he has invited Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify during three weeks of hearings in January about the Iraq war. Biden, a Delaware Democrat, told reporters Tuesday that the proponents of different plans for Iraq will be invited to the hearings that are to begin on January 9. He also will call former secretaries of state, academics, Iraq Study Group members and other witnesses from outside the administration as the committee examines various approaches to the war...

http://tinyurl.com/ulnqw


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Joseph+Biden
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Condoleezza+Rice

The number of suicides in war-ravaged Iraq is increasing due to psychological stress caused by relentless violence, medical experts said. "We see more cases of suicide each month and all evidence shows that the main reason for the suicides has been the stress and pressure caused by the continuing violence," said Dr. Muhammad Hamza, a specialist in suicide medical investigation at the Ministry of Health. Hamza said that he found that 70 percent of suicide victims chose to poison themselves using rat and cockroach poison. Others either shot or hanged themselves. "Some of them leave letters to their parents and the most common excuse given for their act is that they can no longer bear the violence," Hamza said.

http://electroniciraq.net/news/2766.shtml

http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?list=type&type=186

Join CODEPINK and many others in a national march on Washington, D.C., on Saturday, January 27
http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?list=type&type=182

Will this proposed planning application, now at consultation stage, cause uproar in Bognor Regis or will it simmer and die? We shall see as it progresses.

A TETRA mast was removed from the centre of Bognor in May 2004 and in excess of 200 people gradually recovered until two more TETRA masts were put up in neighbouring areas. One at Felpham secretly and a temporary one at Church Norton.

See attachment of two letters in the Bognor Observer today
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/why_we_must_fight_plan_for_new_tetra_mast.htm


Sandi



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bognor+Regis

LA TIMES - President Bush quietly appointed television sitcom producer Warren Bell to the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting this week, overriding opposition from public broadcasting advocates who fear the outspoken conservative will politicize the post. Bell's nomination had been stalled since September because of concerns about his qualifications among several members of the Senate Commerce Committee, which must approve nominees to the board of the CPB, the private nonprofit that distributes federal funds to public television and radio stations.

But Bush was able to circumvent the need for Senate approval by naming Bell to the board as a recess appointee. His term will last about a year, unless a permanent nominee for the seat is confirmed before then.

. .

As a contributor to the online edition of the National Review, Bell has made no secret of his political views, writing in one piece that he is "thoroughly conservative in ways that strike horror into the hearts of my Hollywood colleagues."

His comments alarmed some public broadcasting advocates, who worry he would plunge the system back into the kind of rancorous debate that erupted last year when Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, then chairman of the CPB board, sought to promote more conservatives in the system. Tomlinson resigned last fall after an internal investigation concluded his actions broke federal law.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-et-bell22dec22,1,1016415.story?coll=la-headlines-politics


Informant: bigraccoon

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/tech/0,1518,456792,00.html

Überwachung: Gruseln beim Chaos Congress
http://www.wienerzeitung.at/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=3930&Alias=wzo&cob=263271



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Chaos+Computer+Club

Bees and GM-crops: Is this the lethal combination?

Wild Bees Reject Genetically Engineered Crop--Potential Major Impact on Pollination

* Ecological Society of America, Dec 23, 2006

http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_3665.cfm

From Ecological Society of America Referring to a Sept. 2004 peer-reviewed article

Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada

Abstract. The ecological impacts of agriculture are of concern, especially with genetically modified and other intensive, modern cropping systems, yet little is known about effects on wild bee populations and subsequent implications for pollination. Pollination deficit (the difference between potential and actual pollination) and bee abundance were measured in organic, conventional, and herbicide-resistant, genetically modified (GM) canola fields (Brassica napus and B. rapa) in northern Alberta, Canada, in the summer of 2002.

Bee abundance data were collected using pan traps and standardized sweep netting, and pollination deficit was assessed by comparing the number of seeds per fruit from open-pollinated and supplementally pollinated flowers. There was no pollination deficit in organic fields, a moderate pollination deficit in conventional fields, and the greatest pollination deficit in GM fields. Bee abundance was greatest in organic fields, followed by conventional fields, and lowest in GM fields. Overall, there was a strong, positive relationship between bee abundance at sampling locations and reduced pollination deficits. Seed set in B. napus increased with greater bee abundance. Because B. rapa is an obligate outcrossing species, the lack of pollination deficit in the organic (B. rapa) fields likely was due to the high bee abundance rather than a lower dependence of B. rapa on pollinators than B. napus canola. Our study illustrates the importance of wild bees to agricultural production and suggests that some agroecosystems may better sustain wild bee abundance, resulting in greater seed production.

Further research on why some cropping systems, such as genetically modified, herbicide-resistant canola, have low wild bee abundance would be useful for management of agroecosystems to promote sustainability of food production. Key words: agriculture; bees; Brassica rapa; Brassica napus; canola; conventional; genetically modified; organic; pollination; sustainable development.

Manuscript received 3 September 2003; revised 3 September 2004; accepted 8 September 2004. Corresponding Editor: C. R. Linder © Copyright by Ecological Society of America 2005


Informant: binstock

--------

Are GM Crops Killing Bees?

A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/032307EA.shtml
http://p211.ezboard.com/Are-GM-Crops-Killing-Bees/fchemtrailschemtrails.showMessage?topicID=8570.topic

--------

Bees and GM-crops: Is this the lethal combination?
Olle Johanssonn wrote:

Dear All,

Yet another important theory: http://p211.ezboard.com/Are-GM-Crops-Killing-Bees/fchemtrailschemtrails.showMessage?topicID=8570.topic

Best regards

Olle Johansson, assoc. prof.
The Experimental Dermatology Unit
Department of Neuroscience
Karolinska Institute
171 77 Stockholm
Sweden


Dear Olle, Dear All,

Thanks for your message & attachments. Well, sure there is a lot of explanations on those articles. They just forgot to say that maybe the fault is because the sky is blue (well, less with all those airplanes...) or the water is liquid... Sorry, just joking ! More seriously, if we consider the Koblenz study and the one in the attached file untitled: Cell death induced by GSM 900-MHz and DCS 1800-MHz mobile telephony radiation? by Dimitris J. Panagopoulos & col. [ http://omega.twoday.net/stories/2939979/ ]we should reach the same conclusion. That means that we all die soon, from the bottom to the top of the chain. Ostrich (which could be the symbol of all our politicians) will die in blindness. But how humans will support his own disappearance ? Take care !

Best Regards

Philippe Hug
Chairman of ARA CP 17
CH 1454 L'Auberson
Switzerland
http://www.alerte.ch



Dear Philippe,

"But how humans will support his own disappearance ?" That is exactly the question I have been asking myself for the last 30 years!

Best regards
Olle Johansson, assoc. prof.
The Experimental Dermatology Unit
Department of Neuroscience
Karolinska Institute
171 77 Stockholm
Sweden



Hi All,

Der Spiegel International Article - Are GM crops killing bees - is attached.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,473166,00.html

Best regards,
Margaret



Hi Margaret, Hi All !

It's seems that the Koblenz study is unknown, so I sent it to you in attached file.

http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/etude_koblenz.pdf

This study shows that a simple DECT phone under a beehive has a catastrophic result! We all have to rouse every people about that! Regarding the article in the Spiegel, I conclude that all around the world, people are not looking in the right direction, because they are looking either for chemical causes or GM cause. If GM is largely spread in USA, it is not the case in Germany (0,06 %), nor in Switzerland and France where the bees problematic is the same. And chemical are less employed. We just have to stop EMF. Quick! One year more and it will be too late! If people don't care about their own health, maybe they will about bees and consequently the humanity! I suggest we all have to think about a letter we have to write and send to our mutual Government, with a copy to the media! Mayday, mayday, mayday! Please do some!

Best Regards.
Philippe Hug



Re: Der Spiegel International Article - Are GM crops killing bees

Dear Don, Dear All !

Unfortunately, I haven't an English version of the study and I only have a pdf version of it. Nevertheless, I can give you this abstract:

2 beehives were not exposed and 2 beehives were exposed with a DECT phone. They catch 25 bees in all beehives and released them 800 meters away. On the non exposed beehives, 16 & 17 bees came back after respectively 28 & 32 minutes. On the exposed ones, only 6 came back after 38 minutes and the other beehive were totally deserted ! An other fact is that on the exposed beehives, there were 21 % less of cells construction in the frames of the beehive after 9 days. Unfortunately, there is no explanation. Just FACTS ! Do we really have to wait to get the formal evidence? In Science, nothing is never proved. That the accumulation of studies and evidences who could reach something plausible or possible. But do we really have the time to wait for a confirmation of the Science which can take several years before acting, if the humanity disappear before the results ???

Be the way, if somebody understand German (I do not), he can visit this website: http://www.mikrowellensmog.info/bienen.html
[English machine translation under: http://tinyurl.com/26w4ow ]

Keeping bees seems not possible at 2000 uW/m2, it means 0,87 V/m.

We all know that bees are one of the best kind of bio-indicator. If they disappear, the humanity will follow in the 4 or 5 years. Isn't it wonderful? WE HAVE TO ACT NOW! ANYBODY OWNING A MOBILE PHONE HAS TO CANCEL IT ! NOW ! Again, I repeat: Mayday, mayday, mayday... Please do some !

Philippe Hug
Chairman of ARA Switzerland
http://www.alerte.ch



RE: Der Spiegel International Article - Are GM crops killing bees

We already have the Koblenz study and Dr. Warnke promised to give me the phone numbers of the researchers. I have to speak to them asap. I am in total agreement with Philippe Hug. The bees need to be our priority. I have seen this coming for quite some years now and everyone laughed at me when I voiced my fears regarding the bees and the birds. It now seems that my nightmare is coming true. Let's not be mislead by reports of other possible causes. I am alerting UK government ministers and defra. We all must do our best to alert the media and our government representatives, otherwise Einstein's prediction will come true and mankind will only have four years left after the demise of the honey bee.

Ingrid



Re: Der Spiegel International Article - Are GM crops killing bees

Dear Philippe, Don and All: Philippe makes the point re "the facts" surrounding close exposure to DECT phone in the same way I have been emphasizing for years (and Olle has been trying to obtain funding for....) -- that we must inform the public of dangers of EMF exposures that are close to one's body before common sense can be applied to the more distant exposures!!!

We should be asking for what reason did the American Cancer Society send me a copy of the "USA Today" article back in 1993 when I made a query as to whether they had any information on EMF's. The file number on this item clearly indicates the American Cancer Society considered EMF's due to electrical appliances close to beds as "radiation."

I am preparing another email re the bees and EMF exposures........ 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 (3-28-07)

All truth goes through three stages: first it is ridiculed:
then it is violently opposed: finally it is accepted as self evident. - Schopenhauer



RE: bees

Dear all,...this is my rough/quick content of the Koblenz study translated.

If I am wrong somewhere, please correct me.

Thanks,
Hans Karow.


Content of Koblenz study:

It's a pilot study and they found differences between the radiated and non-radiated bee hives with regards of (filled)honeycombs’ weight, and time of bee’s return flights to the hive, both cases have been illustrated in the figures.

Re honeycomb weight: a difference of 21.1 % less with the radiated bee hives.

Re: return to the bee hive: numbers of returning non-radiated bees are definitely higher compared to radiated bees;

Return flight-time of radiated bees is definitely longer than compared to non-radiated bees.

That's roughly what the study says.

At the end of that paper they suggest variation/recommendations for future studies.



Re: Der Spiegel International Article - Are GM crops killing bees
http://www.omega-news.info/are_gm_crops_killing_bees.htm

Inverter....EMF problems in mountainous forests of Arizona.....
http://www.omega-news.info/emf_problems_in_mountainous_forests_of_arizona.htm

Bees...re heat, stress, etc.
http://www.omega-news.info/bees_re_heat_stress.htm



Re: bees

NATIONAL GRID -
Electric and magnetic fields ---
6.4 Bees

6.4.1 It is clear that the electric fields created by transmission lines do affect the health and mortality of honey bees inside wooden hives(9). The most likely explanation for this is that the bees receive small, but frequent, shocks from the currents induced in the hives. If a hive is placed near transmission lines, this adverse effect can be mitigated by screening the hive. No-one who made a sub-mission to the Inquiry suggested that he or she wished to keep hives on or near to a transmission line easement and the adverse effect of the lines on bees in hives does not appear to create any practical problems.

http://www.emfs.info/sci_chapter6.asp


Informant: Joanne C. Mueller

--------

Re: Bees and GM-crops: Is this the lethal combination?

Hi All

In relation to http://p211.ezboard.com/Are-GM-Crops-Killing-Bees/fchemtrailschemtrails.showMessage?topicID=8570.topic

All these theories reminds me of the poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant" by American poet John Godfrey Saxe.

We all are taking a blind stab at what we think is the bee killer based on our particular experiences or interest. Perhaps "all of the above" is the right answer but I think the microwave factor should be right up there with the other main contenders. There is some good research that could be done here but as Professor Kaatz said in the first article. "Those who have the money are not interested in this sort of research, and those who are interested don't have the money."

Sound familiar?

Anyone know if a new wireless system was rolled out in the US around November last year?

Don Maisch



Excellent comment, dear Don, so very true! Particular the part by Professor Kaatz: "Those who have the money are not interested in this sort of research, and those who are interested don't have the money."

Best regards
Olle Johansson, assoc. prof.
The Experimental Dermatology Unit
Department of Neuroscience
Karolinska Institute
171 77 Stockholm
Sweden



With regard to the bees issue, two points to add:

* Our work suggests that the informations carrying radio waves would disrupt intercellular communication in the bees and cause them to become spatially disoriented. Thus, no way home to the hive and certain death.

* Regarding Don's question about any new rollout in the U.S., we do know that for the past two years, there has been a very rapid increase in the density of satellite radio repeaters installed throughout North America. It seems to be under the FCC's radar screen -- I suppose that is no surprise. Although not the same frequencies as mobile phones, there are wave patterns within that technolgoy that are in the range that would trigger adverese cell membrane reactions.

Dr. George L. Carlo
Science and Public Policy Institute
1101 Pennsylvania Ave. NW -- 7th Floor Washington, D.C. 20004 http://www.sppionline.org
202-756-7744



Re: Bees and GM-crops: Is this the lethal combination?

Very interesting, dear Robert! Will this moving be followed in the future by humans seeking similar shelter...?

Olle Johansson, assoc. prof.
The Experimental Dermatology Unit
Department of Neuroscience
Karolinska Institute
171 77 Stockholm
Sweden

--------

Are genetically modified crops a cause of disappearing bees?
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5980/


Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news

--------

HONEY BEE POPULATION DROPS SHARPLY, AND MORE FROM CRS

A "sharp decline" in the U.S. population of honey bees is examined in a new report from the Congressional Research Service.

"This phenomenon first became apparent among commercial migratory beekeepers along the East Coast during the last few months of 2006, and has since been reported nationwide," the CRS report said.

Various potential causes have been postulated, including parasites, pathogens, chemical contaminants, poor nutrition, and "stress."

The declining bee population is the subject of a hearing today before the House Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture.

See "Recent Honey Bee Colony Declines," Congressional Research Service, March 26, 2007:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33938.pdf

--------

And where are the bees?
http://tinyurl.com/2cbgm5


Informant: Alfonso Balmori

--------

Bee disease also a threat to U.S. crops
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/nation/17005544.htm

Apiarists buzzing about soaring rate of honeybee deaths
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070402.BEES02/TPStory/Environment

What's happening to the bees?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0404/p13s01-sten.html


Informant: binstock

--------

Bees dying and vanishing in many countries
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/bees_dying_and_vanishing_in_many_countries.htm

Bees: news reports
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/bees_news_reports.htm

Bees and GM-crops: Is this the lethal combination?
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/bees_and_gm_crops_is_this_the_lethal_combination.htm

--------

A little more info on what may be making the bees disappear...High Fructose Corn Syrup!

WHAT'S HAPPENING TO OUR BEES?
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary
http://www.jimhightower.com/sites/jimhightower.civicactions.net/files/13_15_thnc.mp3

Bees are dying. Dying all across America. Lots and lots of bees.

Starting in Florida last fall, the great bee die-off has spread to 24 states. Whole colonies are dying. In Western states, commercial beekeepers report up to a 60 percent loss of their bees, with losses 70 percent in Texas and on the East Coast. It's unprecedented.

Who cares? Well, few people realize that many of America’s food crops – from almonds to watermelon – rely heavily on commercial honeybees for pollination. No bees, no fruit. One study finds that these bees pollinate every third bite of food that we consume.

Another little known fact is that bee pollination is increasingly a highly concentrated industry. Rather than a dispersed system of local hives, a few commercial operators now haul tens of billions of bees from coast to coast, trucking their hives in 18-wheelers.

"Colony Collapse Disorder," as it's now called, could be the result of this industrialized model of pollination. First, the bees themselves have been bred into single-purpose super-pollinators, rather than bees with multiple functions (make honey, feed the queen, maintain the hives, and extend the species). The industrial bees have lost the diversity and natural traits of wild bees.

Second, constant trucking puts stress on the bees, suppressing their immune systems and making them vulnerable to viruses, mites, and diseases. Also as part of their forced migration, the bees are fed a limited diet of high fructose corn syrup – about as healthy as humans trying to live on Cokes. Other research is indicting certain pesticides and genetically altered organisms that have been artificially spliced into many field crops.

This is Jim Hightower saying... Once again, we have the heavy hand of mankind messing with Mother Nature in ways that come back to mess with us – big time. It's not just bees these food industrialists are messing with – it's our food supply.

"Honeybees, Gone With the Wind, Leave Crops and Keeprs in Peril," New York Times, February 27, 2007

"What's Happening to the Bees?" Truthout.org, April 5, 2007


Informant: Bob Banner



http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=bees
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bees
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bees+GM

For growing numbers of international business travelers, visa and customs regulations are making trips to the U.S. a thing of the past.

http://tinyurl.com/ylvy3b


From Information Clearing House

The dollar had its biggest drop this month against the yen on speculation waning consumer confidence in the U.S. will increase the likelihood for a cut in interest rates by the Federal Reserve in the first quarter.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=an4JRF0g4CK8&refer=europe



U.S. Recession Ahead, Researcher Forecasts

The United States will slide into a "systemic recession" influenced by high consumer debt and low incomes in 2007, a leading trends researcher predicted.
http://tinyurl.com/ycpa7d



Homeowners' losses are others' gains

Profits from defaulted loans are soaring as lawyers, listing agents, property managers, investors and auctioneers get a piece of the pie.

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_4900525


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=dollar+decline

The United States produces about one-fourth of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, yet we're the only major nation that officially denies there's a problem. This is the year for all of us -- government, business, individuals -- to aggressively attack global warming.

http://tinyurl.com/yknu4m


From Information Clearing House

I heard one reviewer describe the film as an attempt to “take on” the CIA, yet I came away on the one hand in awe of its psychological depiction of Edward Wilson, but also aware of the film’s paucity of information regarding the agency’s sordid machinations before, during, and after the Cold War.

http://tinyurl.com/yzclxg



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=patriotism

US support for Ethiopia's incursion into Somalia highlights another failure by Washington to use diplomacy rather than military might in dealing with Islamist threats to its moderate allies, analysts say.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061227/pl_afp/somaliaunrestethiopia


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Somalia

War pimp alert: U.S. says evidence links Iran military to plots in Iraq

The U.S. military said it had credible evidence linking Iranians and their Iraqi associates, detained here in raids last week, to criminal activities, including attacks against U.S. forces.

http://tinyurl.com/yctl5x



The gathering Gulf storm

One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the renewed US campaign about the Iran nuclear issue camouflages a struggle for the domination of the Gulf and the Middle East region that set the tempo of the Cold War in the last century and will significantly determine the contours of the world order struggling to be born.

http://tinyurl.com/yadjyo



Iran summons UK ambassador over Blair remarks

Iran summoned Britain's ambassador in Tehran to its foreign ministry to hear its "strong objections" to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's claim that the Islamic republic poses a threat to the region.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061226/wl_mideast_afp/iranpoliticsbritain


From Information Clearing House

MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1650822,00.html



The real menace

The public, seeing through the tissue of Bush administration lies told to justify an invasion that never had anything to do with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 or weapons of mass destruction, now has begun a national questioning: Why are we still in Iraq?

http://tinyurl.com/ydpryy


From Information Clearing House

Electronic Iraq is covering the global response to the Saddam Hussein hanging. Visit eIraq to hear from human rights organizations, journalists, Iraqi bloggers and more.

A full index of our coverage of Saddam Hussein's hanging, including frequently updated news headlines, can be found here:

http://electroniciraq.net/news/2771.shtml

Don't miss John Collins' analysis of the mainstream media's handling of the Saddam Hussein hanging. "Reading and watching the kind of mainstream coverage provided by CNN and the New York Times during the last 48 hours," Collins writes, "one could be forgiven for believing that the relationship between Saddam and the U.S. had always been one of enmity and violence. Yet as Juan Cole and others have tirelessly pointed out, the U.S. government began 'enabling' Saddam as early as 1959 when the CIA enlisted his help in undermining the government of Abdul Karim Qasim."

http://electroniciraq.net/news/2779.shtml

Our coverage of the global response to the Hussein hanging continues today with a piece by Hasan Abu Nimah, former Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations.

"Many truths which the world deserved to know have perished forever with that savage execution," writes Abu Nimah. "Yet, even if Saddam's trial had been impeccably handled, the fundamental principle of justice is equality before the law. Such "justice" has no chance of winning over the masses in this region when they observe that punishment is so swift and brutal when the accused is an Arab, Muslim head of state, while other accused former leaders, like Slobodan Milosevic, receive elaborate trials in The Hague."

http://electroniciraq.net/news/2790.shtml

And Thalif Deen reports: "The swirling controversy over the execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is threatening to trigger a backlash at the United Nations. Italy, which has condemned the death penalty as "barbaric", is trying to bring the issue before a sharply divided world body by calling for a "universal moratorium" on capital punishment. If Italy -- which became a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 1 and will hold office during 2007-2008 -- decides to take the initiative, a resolution on the proposed moratorium could go before the 192-member General Assembly."

http://electroniciraq.net/news/newsanalysis.shtml

--------

Saddam Hussein's Baath party threatens to retaliate if their leader is executed

Saddam Hussein's Baath Party threatened Wednesday to retaliate if the ousted Iraqi leader is executed, warning in an Internet posting it would target U.S. interests anywhere.

http://tinyurl.com/yng42m



Reverse Decision to Execute Saddam

The Iraqi government should not implement the death sentence against Saddam Hussein, which was imposed after a deeply flawed trial for crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said today.

http://tinyurl.com/yhp3wm



Saddam's Death To Be Videotaped

The date of the deposed dictator's execution will not be made public, to avoid possible unrest from Saddam's supporters, but everything from the signing of the final orders by the judge, to the hanging itself will be recorded.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/28/iraq/main2304318.shtml



Hussein is “a prisoner of war”, says chief lawyer

Saddam Hussein's chief lawyer implored world leaders on Thursday to prevent the United States from handing over the ousted leader to Iraqi authorities for execution, saying he should enjoy protection from his enemies as a “prisoner of war.”

http://tinyurl.com/y33n9t



Saddam's Hanging Verdict Is Illegal And Unjust

Are we now going to compound our illegal preemptive attack and occupation of Iraq, where we set up and implemented a U.S. controlled coalition government, where we stage managed a flawed election and judicial system and where we now have condoned the hanging of this sovereign country's leader after a mock U.S. managed monkey trial ?

http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2006/12/28.html



The trials of occupation

Executing Saddam will not bring peace to Iraq. That can only come when US forces leave

By Burhan al-Chalabi

The US and its allies should apologise to the Iraqi people for the suffering the war has caused. It should offer compensation based on criteria used in Kuwait after the first Gulf war. Under the auspices of the UN, it must end the occupation and hand over power to a sovereign Iraqi government mandated to respect human rights.

http://tinyurl.com/y5unfq



The Black Bull died today

By Mirza Yawar Baig

Are we, the people of the world saying that it is the right of America or anyone with the power to do so, to take by force what they want from whoever they want? Are we, the people of the world, saying that it is the right of the rapist to rape? Are we, the people of the world, saying that it is the right of the bandit or the highway robber to hold you up and take from you what he wishes by force? Because in my opinion, by remaining silent, that is exactly what we will be saying. You decide what you want to do. I have already made my decision..

http://tinyurl.com/ygfsau



And the Empire Mourned…

By Jason Miller

In the wake of the United States’ recent facilitation of Saddam Hussein’s hanging, we in the self-proclaimed “bastion of human rights” are in the midst of six days of mourning for a man would have swung from the gallows long ago had he been judged by the same standards as Saddam.

http://tinyurl.com/yfmdnq



Video Shows Saddam at the gallows

Dec. 30 - Iraqi state television and Al Arabiya television have shown footage of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein being led to the gallows and a noose being placed around his neck.

http://tinyurl.com/y55uha



Video - Saddam's body displayed on TV

Dec. 30 - Biladi, a Shi'ite-run channel in Iraq has showed Saddam Hussein's body lying with his neck twisted and with what appeared to be blood or a bruise on his left cheek.

http://tinyurl.com/y3s56p



3 Minute Video: Ramsey Clark reacts to the execution of Saddam Hussein

"A tragic assault on truth and justice"
http://tinyurl.com/y369yg



Juan Cole: Saddam: The death of a dictator

Through the bumbling of the U.S.-backed regime, justice becomes revenge, and a despot becomes a martyr.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/12/30/saddam/print.html



Saddam: The questions that will live on

"It takes remarkable obedience to authority to believe that the US would have 'liberated' Iraq - or taken revenge - if its main exports were lettuce and pickles, and the major petroleum resources were in the South Pacific."

http://tinyurl.com/y5rqmj



Arab haj pilgrims outraged at Saddam execution

The death could harden hatred for Shi'ite Muslims in Saudi Arabia, a bastion of Sunni Islam whose Islamic orthodoxy -- known as Wahhabism -- regards Shi'ites as virtual heretics.

http://tinyurl.com/vyma4



Hanging Saddam ‘barbaric’ says top EU official

Hanging former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was 'barbaric' and may turn him into a martyr, the European Union's aid and development Commissioner said.

http://tinyurl.com/tntwj



Arabiya says Saddam half-brother, ex-judge executed

Arabic satellite channel Arabiya said Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former judge Awad al-Bander were also executed by hanging on Saturday.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L3077992.htm



Libya declares national mourning for Saddam

LIBYA declared three days of national mourning today after the execution of Iraqi ex-president Saddam Hussein who had been a "prisoner of war," official media said.

http://tinyurl.com/y3jya2



Tariq Ali: Saddam at the End of a Rope
http://www.counterpunch.org/tariq12302006.html



He takes his secrets to the grave: our complicity dies with him

By Robert Fisk

How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal.

http://tinyurl.com/yzvpg9



Unofficial Video Of Saddam Hanging

Officials taunted Saddam on the gallows

After he falls through the trap, abruptly cut off in his recitation of the Muslim profession of faith, someone in the room cries "The tyrant has fallen!" and the film shows the 69-year-old former strongman swinging on the rope, his eyes open and his neck twisted at a 90-degree angle to his right.

3 Minute Video

WARNING

Some viewers may find the video disturbing. It should only be watched by a mature audience.

http://tinyurl.com/ylka4c



Hold these grotesque executioners to account

By Iain Macwhirter

The execution of Saddam may have brought "closure" to the White House, but it left a bitter taste in the mouths of the rest of us. He was executed under the auspices of an Anglo-American occupation that has brought little but death and destruction to Iraq.

http://tinyurl.com/yesr5p



Selective Justice And The Execution Of Saddam Hussein

By Gregory Elich

It is impossible to avoid concluding that the trial of Saddam Hussein was little more than a case of selective justice, meant to provide post-justification for an invasion that was itself a grave violation of international law.

http://tinyurl.com/yj9nzu



The Executioner's Face is Always Well Hidden

By Jerry Ghinelli

http://tinyurl.com/yzs44d



How Washington and London helped to create the monster they went to war to destroy

The dealings between the US and Saddam's Iraq over the quarter of a century before 2003 are a story of deceit, miscalculation and strategic blunders by both sides. And they began, as they would end, in the shadow of a common enemy: Iran.

http://tinyurl.com/yf33th



Pledging revenge, hundreds flock to Saddam's tomb

In an outpouring of grief and anger from Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs at the Shi'ite-led government that rushed through the execution, mourners knelt and prayed by the tomb in Awja over which the Iraqi flag had been draped.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L31887490.htm



'He is already history'

In this remarkable dispatch, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, one of the few journalists who can still move freely about Baghdad, watches the execution with Sunni insurgents

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1980557,00.html



Death of One Tyrant a Coverup of Crime by Another

Once again the barbarians have succeeded in professing human dignity while ignoring human life's sanctity. My thoughts are filled with disgust as the so called civilized world revels in the hanging of Saddam Hussein yesterday.

http://tinyurl.com/ydpbzw



Victor's justice

The deliberate taking of a human life is a crime. It cannot be right, therefore, to punish a crime by committing another. Ultimately, nothing can resist the force of that argument and eventually the death penalty will be outlawed all over the world. But not, yet, in Iraq, or in most southern states of the US.

http://tinyurl.com/ymk4c9



In Search of a Criminal

Donald Rumsfeld's Name Tops the List of Accused of War Crimes
http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=1166522799501



A Lynching...
http://tinyurl.com/y5b8l6



The Barbaric Lynching of Saddam Hussein
http://tinyurl.com/y8ecnq



Conveniently Forgotten

By Tariq Ali

It was symbolic that 2006 ended with a colonial hanging - most of it shown on state television in occupied Iraq. It has been that sort of year in the Arab world. The trial was so blatantly rigged that even Human Rights Watch had to condemn it as a travesty.

http://tinyurl.com/y284zj



The Conscience Of The Conqueror

The western anti war movement - the left boot of imperialism?

By Kola Odetola

The silence of the western antiwar movement on the lynching of Saddam Hussein is deafening and is increasingly beginning to prove what a lot of discerning people have suspected all along – that the mainstream anti-war movement (including large parts of its left wing) in the west is the well concealed left boot of western imperialism, the conscience of the conqueror.

http://tinyurl.com/u9xcy



Former Saddam judge says execution violates Iraqi law

The first chief judge who presided over Saddam Hussein's trial for crimes against humanity has said that the late dictator's execution by the Iraqi government was illegal.

http://tinyurl.com/w9bdj



Saddam's illegal execution is part of US war plan

When will the people stand trial who have used cluster bombs and white phosphorous against the Iraqi people; those who are guilty of the siege of Fallujah and Najjaf that bombed and starved these cities' population to death; those who are responsible for the anarchy and chaos the Iraqi people had to endure after the "liberation"?

http://tinyurl.com/tkqpg



Saddam tended birds and plants in jail, nurse says

Master Sergeant Robert Ellis was under orders to prevent the former Iraqi dictator from dying in US custody.

http://tinyurl.com/y5fjzq



Did the U.S. Help Saddam Acquire Biological Weapons

It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons. But it happened. [Congressional Record: September 20, 2002 (Senate) ]

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html



'Illegal' Execution Enrages Arabs

Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily

Saddam Hussein was hanged on what is held to be a day of mercy and feasting in the Islamic world. It is usually celebrated with the slaughter of a lamb, which represents the innocent blood of Ishmael, who was sacrificed by his father, the prophet Abraham, to honour God.

http://tinyurl.com/tehea



Angry Muslims slam Iraq, US for Saddam death

Muslims in their thousands, both inside and outside war-torn Iraq, have lashed out at the country's Shiite leaders as well as the United States for executing Saddam Hussein during one of Islam's holiest periods.

http://tinyurl.com/y6pz2w



Saddam Hussein Hanged for the Wrong Reason

It was not the Iraqi government but its American masters that chose to execute Saddam Hussein in a great rush as soon as the first sentence was confirmed, thus canceling all the other trials on far graver charges that awaited him. The current Iraqi government had nothing to hide if those trials went ahead; the United States government did.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=90555



Short video explains the CIA's role in Saddams rise to power
http://www.ericblumrich.com/thanks.html



Saddam: From monster to martyr?

How Bush and Blair's choices have led to disaster in Iraq, culminating in a chaotic execution that is fuelling civil war.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2124262.ece



Reports Saddam executed by militia

An Iraqi official says the hanging was supposed to be carried out by hangmen employed by the Interior Ministry, but that militias infiltrated the executioners' team.

http://home.nzcity.co.nz/news/default.aspx?id=69125



Moqtada al-Sadr may have been present at the execution of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein

"I saw al-Sadr wearing the black hoods inside the room – the eyewitness said – and there was also Abdulaziz al-Hakim [leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq – SCIRI]. They were among the six men wearing hoods that one can see in the images aired by the TV".

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m29511&s1=h1



Guards did not even allow Saddam to sleep

Baghdad: In the middle of the night, hours after Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki signed the death warrant on Friday evening, Saddam Hussain was moved from US custody at Camp Cropper, near Baghdad airport, and handed to the Iraqi authorities.

http://tinyurl.com/v49go



Hussein: terrorist or terrorized?

SOMEONE has to say it: The hanging of Saddam Hussein was an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of President Bush's claim it was "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy."

http://tinyurl.com/y23jfc



Hanging will haunt Bush

I am taken aback by the reaction in India to Saddam Hussein's hanging. The anger cuts across religious and political divides.

http://www.thestar.com/article/167592



Saddam key in early CIA plot

While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.

http://www.upi.com/archive/view.php?archive=1&StoryID=20030410-070214-6557r



The whole bloody thing was obscene

By Robert Fisk

The lynching of Saddam Hussein - for that is what we are talking about - will turn out to be one of the determining moments in the whole shameful crusade upon which the West embarked in March of 2003.

http://tinyurl.com/yb27cj



Crimes Against Humanity From Ford to Saddam

If we do not limit our analysis of Ford to his role as a U.S. "statesman," and instead examine his behavior through an internationalist lens similar to that employed to judge Saddam Hussein and concerned with crimes against humanity, we find that Ford, too, was responsible for mass murder-in East Timor.

http://www.counterpunch.org/nevins01062007.html



The Unmentionable Hypocrisy: Hussein Hanged, Bush and Blair Remain in Power

By Sean M. Madden

Saddam Hussein was hanged a week ago, today, for executing 148 people. Yet, even by conservative estimates, George W. Bush and Tony Blair are responsible for hundreds, or thousands, of times more deaths due to their war of aggression — the supreme international crime — in Iraq.

http://tinyurl.com/y2k2cf



A drop into the abyss

Saddam jailed me but his hanging was a crime. Iraq's misery is now far worse than under his rule.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1982309,00.html



New leader with the $10m bounty

The 64-year-old fighter, stricken with leukaemia, who befriended Saddam as a young man, supposedly cried and read the Holy Koran when he heard that his comrade had been executed early Saturday morning, a senior Baath official said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2530419,00.html



Body of Saddam in the Morgue

Video

Warning - This video should only be viewed by a mature audience.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16116.htm



Fresh Saddam pictures 'released'

The new video reportedly shows the former Iraqi dictator with a gaping neck wound.

http://www.channel4.com/news/content/news-storypage.jsp?id=7782428



Saddam aides hanged
swissinfo [Switzerland]

01/15/07

Two of Saddam Hussein’s aides were hanged before dawn on Monday, the Iraqi government said. But despite its efforts to avoid the uproar that marred the execution of the former president two weeks ago, news that the noose ripped the head from Saddam’s cancer-stricken half-brother as he plunged from the gallows appalled international critics of the process and fuelled fury among Saddam’s fellow Sunni Arabs. … The hangings took place at 3 a.m. (midnight British time) at the same former secret police base where Saddam was hanged on December 30, an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said. Officials tried to impose a media blackout for some hours but word leaked out...

http://tinyurl.com/y67ubt


From Information Clearing House

--------

An Imperfect Trial

Le Monde evaluates the trial and pending execution of Saddam Hussein.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122806G.shtml



The Rush to Hang Saddam Hussein

The New York Times writes: "Toppling Saddam Hussein did not automatically create a new and better Iraq. Executing him won't either."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122906K.shtml



Saddam Hussein Executed at US Base in Baghdad

Hussein was hung around 6 a.m. local time (10 p.m. Friday EST) in the American-controlled Green Zone in central Baghdad. Hussein was executed before a small group of observers.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122906Z.shtml



A Dictator Created Then Destroyed by America

Robert Fisk revisits the circumstances that resulted in Saddam Hussein's rise to power, and asks, "Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123006Z.shtml



An Execution Will Not Quell Iraq Violence

The Independent UK writes: "Saddam Hussein awaited his imminent end last night, sentenced to hang for crimes against humanity. His last hours were punctuated by the necessary rituals: the signature on the death warrant from Iraq's Prime Minister; the leave-taking from his closest relatives; the handover of his last will and testament, the release of a valedictory letter to Iraqis, and, at the last, his transfer from US into Iraqi custody, so that his own people could do the deed. That the US and British invasion of Iraq would entail the death of Saddam Hussein had a grim inevitability."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123006B.shtml



On the Gallows, Curses for US and "Traitors"

The final hour of Iraq's former ruler began about 5 a.m., when American troops escorted him from Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport, to Camp Justice, another American base at the heart of the city. Two American helicopters flew 14 witnesses from the Green Zone to the execution site - a former headquarters of the Istikhbarat, the deposed government's much feared military intelligence outfit, now inside the American base.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106Z.shtml



History of Bushes and Hussein Is Hard to Ignore

The history of animosity between the Bushes and Hussein is hard to ignore. The relationship actually began as one of pragmatic friendship in the 1980s, when Hussein was at war with the main US enemy in the region, Iran, and George H.W. Bush was vice president in an administration that offered him help. A 1992 New Yorker article suggested that Bush, through Arab intermediaries, advised Hussein to intensify the bombing of Iran. Hussein soon became too much to handle.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106Y.shtml



Hussein the Rabbit

"My cell phone has been buzzing with regularity all day, alerting me to the arrival of text messages from my conservative friends. 'Saddam is dead woohoo' reads the latest one, and that pretty much describes all the others. Somehow, a lot of people are finding meaning or gratification in the fact that Hussein met his fate at the end of a rope Saturday morning. I just can't get there," says William Rivers Pitt.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106A.shtml



Bush Silences a Dangerous Witness

"Like a blue-blood version of a Mob family with global reach, the Bushes have eliminated one more key witness to the important historical events that led the US military into a bloody stalemate in Iraq and pushed the Middle East to the brink of calamity," writes Robert Parry. "The hanging of Saddam Hussein was supposed to be - as the New York Times observed - the 'triumphal bookend' to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. But now with nearly 3,000 American soldiers killed and the Iraqi death toll exceeding 600,000 by some estimates, Bush may be forced to savor the image of Hussein dangling at the end of a rope a little more privately."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106D.shtml



Timing of Saddam Execution Risks Arab Backlash: Analysts

Images of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein being led to the gallows on one of Islam's most important feast days risk further alienating public opinion in an Arab world already bristling at perceived Western insensitivity, analysts have warned. Even the West's leading Middle East allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, publicly spoke out against the choice of the first day of the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice to put Saddam to death.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/123106F.shtml



Puppet Kills Puppet

Truthout Executive Director Marc Ash examines the hypocrisy that led the US to prop up Saddam Hussein in the early 1980s, writing that "as long as Saddam obediently protected and facilitated the economic and territorial interests of the American (and European) colonialists who backed him, his ruthlessness was their profit, and clearly tolerable."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010107Y.shtml



Sunni Grief, Anger Flow at Funeral

A video of Saddam Hussein's execution, which appears to have been recorded with a cellphone, showed onlookers taunting Hussein with chants of "Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!" - a reference to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr, whose Al Mahdi militia is accused of hunting down Sunni Arabs and killing them. As the trapdoor snapped open beneath Hussein, some in attendance cheered, "The tyrant has fallen!" The shocking spectacle appeared to deepen the deadly sectarian divide between Sunnis and the Shiite majority that now leads Iraq's government.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010207P.shtml



Saddam Video Inquiry Promised

Hundreds of Sunni Arabs gathered to show their anger and grief for Saddam Hussein on Tuesday as the Iraqi government promised an investigation into illicitly filmed footage of Shiite officials taunting him on the gallows.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010207C.shtml



An Unbelievable Gift

Laurent Joffrin wonders why the US and Iraqi governments gave Saddam the unbelievable gift of martyrdom ...

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010207G.shtml



Saddam Hussein's Execution Is a Mistake

France's interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy - a sort of combined attorney general and head of the Department of Homeland Security and Intelligence - and a clear favorite to win the ruling UMP center-right party's nomination as presidential candidate in the 2007 elections, comments on the Saddam Hussein execution.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010407G.shtml



Egyptian President Mubarak Slams Hussein Execution
Saddam Hussein was made into "a martyr" by the manner of his execution, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, warned today, saying he had urged Washington not to hang him during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010507F.shtml



Images of Hanging Make Hussein a Martyr to Many

In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration and awe. At the heart of the sudden reversal of opinion was the symbolism of the hasty execution, now framed as an act of sectarian vengeance shrouded in political theater and overseen by the American occupation.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010607Y.shtml



The Timely Death of Gerald Ford

"The very strange and very long Gerald Ford funeral marathon was about many things, but Gerald Ford wasn't always paramount among them," says Frank Rich. "Forty percent of today's American population was not alive during the Ford presidency. Despite the lachrymose logorrhea of television anchors and the somber musical fanfares, the country was less likely to be found in deep mourning than in deep football. It's a safe bet that the Ford funeral attracted far fewer viewers than the most consequential death video of the New Year's weekend, the lynching of Saddam Hussein. But those two deaths were inextricably related."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010707E.shtml

--------

The execution of Saddam Hussein
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/sh-d30_prn.shtml


Informant: SIUHIN

--------

The misguided execution of Saddam Hussein
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20061230/58144555.html


Informant: Henry D.

--------

Hanging Saddam
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16011.htm


Informant: Jennifer Van Bergen



Saddam execution insulted 'the entire Muslim community'
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5492/



Comment on Saddam's execution
SADDAM AND THE CELLPHONES
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5490/

Sunni protests 'building' in aftermath of Saddam's
humiliating death
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5505/

EXECUTING SADDAM, PROTECTING THE RACKETS
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/5506/


Informant: jensenmk



Saddam's illegal execution is part of US war plan
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BEL20070101&articleId=4275


Informant: Dave


From: ufpj-news

--------

‘I Saw Fear, He Was Afraid’
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16401644/site/newsweek/


Informant: rafeswhiterose

--------

Iraq's Shallow Justice
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1229-24.htm

Saddam Execution Set to Destabilize Iraq Further
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1229-04.htm

Enraged Sunnis Protest Saddam Spectacle
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0102-53.htm

Saddam's Demise, Like His Rule, Was a Travesty of Justice
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0102-53.htm

A Monster of Our Creation
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0103-60.htm

The Fatal Hazing of a Dictator
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0103-55.htm

US-Ordered Rush Job
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0103-56.htm

Blair Fails to Condemn Hanging as Bush Ducks the Question
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0104-03.htm

A Question of Justice
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0104-30.htm

Hanging 'Makes Martyr of Saddam'
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0105-04.htm

--------

With the hasty exekution Husseins one covers much
http://tinyurl.com/yhhvq8

--------

Bush calls for Saddam execution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3326311.stm

--------

Who's Guilty? The Fatal Handshake in Baghdad
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2895642/

--------

Hang Times: A Whitewash of White House Complicity
http://www.lewrockwell.com/floyd/floyd51.html

US Buries Truth
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis62.html

CYA for the USA: The Coverup of Complicity Continues
http://www.lewrockwell.com/floyd/floyd52.html

--------

Execution 'should not have happened on our holy day'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2116901.ece

--------

Ein zweites Video zeigt die ganze Hinrichtung Saddams

"See how Saddam Hussein was executed. He is peeing in his pants."
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24344/1.html



Saddams Exekution und das Video

Die inszenierte Exekution oder: Wollen wir Wirklichkeit oder eine gesäuberte Simulation?

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24352/1.html



Victor's revenge at last
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24348/1.html

-------

Saddam: The death of a dictator
Salon
by Juan Cole

12/30/06

The body of Saddam, as it swung from the gallows at 6 a.m. Saturday Baghdad time, cast an ominous shadow over Iraq. The execution provoked intense questions about whether his trial was fair and about what the fallout will be. One thing is certain: The trial and execution of Saddam were about revenge, not justice. Instead of promoting national reconciliation, this act of revenge helped Saddam portray himself one last time as a symbol of Sunni Arab resistance, and became one more incitement to sectarian warfare...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/12/30/saddam/



"Gruesome" ... "Barbaric" ... "Politicized" ... "Farcical"

The Nation
by John Nichols

12/31/06

While much of U.S. media coverage of Saddam Hussein's execution has strained to echo the Bush administration's suggestion that 'justice' was done, the international reaction to the hurried hanging of the former dictator has recognized what one of the world's top experts on the Middle East refers to as the 'gruesome, occasionally farcical' nature of the process that led to the execution. 'It's tawdry,' Rosemary Hollis, the director of research at Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London, said of the execution. 'It's not going to achieve anything because of the way the trial was conducted and the way the occupation was conducted. Life in Iraq has become so precarious that many people are saying it was safer under Saddam Hussein -- it makes the whole thing look like a poke in the eye as opposed to closure or some kind of contribution to the future of Iraq...

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15



Appetite for destruction

CounterPunch
by John Stanton

01/02/07

The two images from the Vietnam War and the photos and video of the hanging of Hussein capture in vivid detail the end results of strategies and tactics designed and executed by incompetent American leaders. Failure is everywhere in the stills and video. Failure to manage risk, failure to anticipate, failure to understand, failure to have compassion for human life, failure to accept change, failure to realize that perception is often not reality. Title, rank or advanced degree have never been a barrier to poor decision making or the maniacal drive for power to ensure a lasting place in world history. On what basis can one make such an outrageous claim?

http://www.counterpunch.org/stanton01022007.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

--------

Saddam Hussein was lynched by one of the sectarian death squads that rule Iraq

Saddam's Death Squad Hanging
http://ga3.org/ct/n720pgF1bRkt/

--------

Saddam Execution: More Staged Propaganda
http://infowars.net/articles/january2007/040107Saddam_execution.htm

--------

Saddam Hussein's Execution and the Iraq War
http://www.socialistappeal.org/content/view/299/86/


Informant: Cort Greene

--------

SADDAM LAWYERS CLAIM HIS BODY WAS ABUSED
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3349346,00.html

Behind The Scenes Of Saddam Hussein's Execution
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/middleeast/07ticktock.html


Informant: NHNE

--------

http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Saddam+Hussein
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=executed

The British occupation army's assault on its own police force in Basra confirms Iraq as a far greater disaster than Suez.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329671150-103677,00.html


From Information Clearing House

By Stephen Lendman

The US ranks 41st in infant mortality, and the World Health Organization (WHO) ranks the country 37th in the world in "overall health performance" and 54th in the fairness of health care despite spending at a current level overall of around $2 trillion a year or about double the amount per capita of the OECD countries that deliver superior health care overall to their citizens as a national priority.

http://tinyurl.com/ymlgua



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=neocon

By BILL KAUFMANN

U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins' revelation Maher Arar is still considered a threat to his nation and is barred from entering it should be seen in the context of the Bush administration's rap sheet on abduction, torture, rendition, false imprisonment and kangaroo justice.

http://tinyurl.com/yefk99



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Maher+Arar
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=torture
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=rendition

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/helenthomas/10577133/detail.html


Informant: ranger116



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Helen+Thomas

http://www.lewrockwell.com/hornberger/hornberger113.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/hornberger
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jacob+Hornberger

http://www.goldseiten.de/content/diverses/artikel.php?storyid=3552


Nachricht von Ulrich Weiner

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposes to begin trophy hunting of mountain lions in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge in western Arizona.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, cooperating with the Arizona Department of Game and Fish, proposes to permit the killing of one cougar per year on the Refuge or elsewhere in the region where cougar hunting is already permitted. Only five cougars are known to live on the Refuge—including a mother and two kittens. The agencies acknowledge that if the breeding female is killed her kittens might die also. Please tell the Service to back off from this reckless course and not allow this inaugural mountain lion hunt on the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge.

These five animals constitute a significant portion -- perhaps a majority -- of the widely scattered mountain lions living throughout western Arizona.

Cougars in this region have adapted to extreme heat and aridity. These hardy survivors probably maintain home ranges several times greater in size than cougars elsewhere in order to find enough prey. With so few cougars in the desert and no reliable population count, until now the various national wildlife refuges in Arizona have not allowed hunting of these lofty predators.

Cougars in western Arizona are threatened by loss of habitat, government predator control, permitted hunting, poaching, and vehicular collisions. Cougars in this desert are also increasingly cut off from genetic interchange with cougars in the mountains of central and eastern Arizona and the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. To the extent they survive and reproduce, they may also serve as part of a cougar corridor between these widely separated mountain ranges.

Tell me more
http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/desert_puma/explanation

Take Action on this Issue
http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/desert_puma

Ike Was Right

Robert Scheer writes: "It’s not primarily about the oil; it’s much more about the military-industrial complex, the label employed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower 45 years ago when he warned of the dangers of 'a permanent arms industry of vast proportions.'"

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122706F.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=military-industrial+complex
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+Scheer

David Swanson writes: "Unbeknownst to many Americans, there is overwhelming consensus among scientists that we are very close to reaching a point of no turning back on global warming, which is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. We are approaching a point at which all of the following will become unavoidable: massive desertification, rising sea level, explosive growth of insect populations, widespread habitat destruction, mass extinctions, mass migrations (including of humans), the disappearance of sea life, and in all likelihood wars over drinking water that will make the wars over oil look civilized."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122706D.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Swanson

Robert Parry writes: "The American Right achieved its political dominance in Washington over the past quarter century with the help of more than $3 billion spent by Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon on a daily propaganda organ, the Washington Times, according to a 21-year veteran of the newspaper."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122706A.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=GOP
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Sun+Myung+Moon
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+Parry

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24252/1.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=neokonservativ

Nach dem vertraulichen Bericht des UN-Klimarats würden die Temperaturen sogar noch ein Jahrhundert ansteigen, wenn der Ausstoß der Treibhausgase eingestellt würde.

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24315/1.html

Irak: Für die USA ist Muktada as-Sadr der neue alte Sündenbock.
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24314/1.html

Tiefe Kluft zwischen Politikern und Bürgern

Beim Thema soziale Gerechtigkeit gehen die Ansichten von Wählern und Gewählten nach einer Studie der Bertelsmann-Stiftung weit auseinander.

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24316/1.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bertelsmann

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/16720

BY RON HUTCHESON,
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- Public opinion experts say Americans are sending President George W. Bush a clear message as he considers his options in Iraq: Bring the troops home.

Now, he'll have to decide whether to heed their advice. Presidents often struggle to reconcile their personal views with the will of the people, and the stakes are particularly high in wartime.

The public doesn't always get its way. The Vietnam War dragged on for five years after public support for it collapsed in 1968.

"Public opinion is not a referendum. It has no legal power," said John Mueller, a professor at Ohio State University who specializes in wartime public opinion. But it does affect a lame-duck president's ability to get his way, and as his public support wanes, so does his influence, across the board.

Lyndon Johnson was so hobbled by the Vietnam War that he declined to run for re-election. Harry Truman's approval rating plummeted to 23% during the Korean War -- a record low that still stands. He chose not to seek re-election as well.

Bush's overall job-approval rating hovers in the mid-30s, but support for his handling of Iraq has plummeted to the low to mid-20s, with disapproval around 70%, according to three national polls in mid-December.

Even without Iraq, Bush faces a tough final two years in office. Democrats will take control of Congress next month, and even congressional Republicans have been increasingly willing to distance themselves from the politically unpopular president.

War is a question of worth

Iraq looms over everything. Opinion experts say the striking thing about the war is how quickly it lost public support.

It took about 20,000 dead U.S. troops to convince most Americans that the Vietnam War was a mistake. It took just 1,500 in Iraq. The death toll is on track to top 3,000 next month.

Most experts say they think public attitudes toward war are driven by a relatively straightforward cost-benefit analysis: Are the costs of the war, in blood and treasure, worth the benefit of victory?

For most Americans, the equation was a no-brainer in World War II, even though more than 400,000 U.S. military personnel lost their lives out of 16 million who served. Cold War fears about the spread of communism helped maintain support for the wars in Korea and Vietnam, even as the death tolls mounted.

Polls indicate that the stakes in Iraq are less clear. One of the top concerns before the 2003 invasion, weapons of mass destruction, lost its punch when no such weapons were found. At that point, Bush shifted the emphasis to creating a democracy as a bulwark against terrorism.

"Given the right benefits -- protecting our own children, within our borders -- Americans would support all kinds of dramatic costs. The key is, at this moment, they just simply do not see the rationale," said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll. "The public just doesn't see the benefit."

Looking for a timetable

To be sure, opposition to the war isn't unanimous, and many war critics share Bush's concerns about the consequences of a withdrawal. Though the vast majority of Democrats and independents have turned against the war, Republicans tend to support it. Bush and his aides also take solace in the fact that most Americans oppose immediate withdrawal.

But polling experts say the overall sentiment is clear. A majority of Americans think the war was a mistake, don't think it will make America safer and don't think the United States will win. Large majorities want to see the troops come home by early 2008.

"It's clear now that the public is looking for a timetable for withdrawal. If the administration doesn't like that, my advice would be, you have to somehow convince Americans of the benefits of continuing there," Newport said. "I think there's wisdom in the collective views of the public. A wise leader pays attention to it."

Jeffrey Kimball, a professor emeritus of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, said most presidents would take the hint, especially after voters registered their displeasure in the midterm elections. The Democratic victories were widely viewed as a repudiation of Bush's Iraq policy, although the president contends that the results were a call for bipartisan cooperation.

"The signals, to any rational leader, are there to see," said Kimball, the author of three books on the Vietnam War. "Normally people respond to that. I think he could salvage his presidency to a degree if he could admit some mistakes and then work to get out in a graceful way."

And if Bush ignores public sentiment?

"The only thing that could cut the war off is Congress cutting off the funds or impeachment," Mueller said. "They would have to impeach both" Vice President Dick "Cheney and Bush."

Neither option seems likely. However, the Democratic Congress could try to attach policy strings to war-funding bills that push toward withdrawal, and it could increase pressure for withdrawal by using congressional hearings to grill administration officials and highlight problems in Iraq.


From ufpj-news



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bring+the+troops+home
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=cutting+off+the+funds
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Swanson

By Keighley News reporter

Bradley residents look set for their third fight against siting a mobile phone mast in the village.

T-Mobile has submitted plans to Craven District Council to erect a 15ft mast at Sirebank Farm, Jackson's Lane.

The move comes after 600 residents breathed a sigh of relief when Orange's two attempts at siting at mast at Quarry Field were rejected.

Bradley Parish Council brought forward its December meeting to consult on plans and agreed to object as it felt there was insufficient time to review the plans because of Christmas.

The principle of a phone mast was not ruled out, but councillors were concerned about the effect on the landscape and health worries.

© Copyright 2001-2006 Newsquest Media Group

http://www.thisisbradford.co.uk/news/tibnews/display.var.1092102.0.residents_ready_for_third_mast.php

Army Reservist James E. Dean had already served 18 months in Afghanistan when he was notified three weeks ago that he would be deployed to Iraq later this month. The prospect of returning to war sent Dean into a spiral of depression and on Christmas, Dean barricaded himself inside his father's home with several weapons, threatening to kill himself. After a 14-hour standoff with authorities, Dean was killed yesterday by a police officer after he aimed a gun at another officer.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122706L.shtml



Asked to Serve Again, a Soldier Goes Down Fighting

The sniper fired. It was a clean shot, if there is such a thing. And down for good fell another US soldier. His name was Sergeant James Dean. Only Dean was killed at the front door of his childhood home, the day after Christmas and three weeks before his redeployment, shot by a sniper representing the government for whom he had already risked his life in Afghanistan.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060307G.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=redress

President Bush is bracing for what could be an onslaught of investigations by the new Democratic-led Congress by hiring lawyers to fill key White House posts and preparing to play defense on countless document requests and possible subpoenas.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122706K.shtml

"Goode is the congressman who wrote his constituents: 'If American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Quran in his personal private ceremony.' Immigration? What has a single Muslim congressman got to do with immigration? Easy. If you've learned anything from Messrs. Bush and Cheney over the past six years, it's that conflating wildly unrelated issues can get people so spooked that it works," writes William Fisher.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122706J.shtml

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The Troubling Worldview of the 'Rapture-Ready' Christian
http://www.lewrockwell.com/barnwell/barnwell71.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Virgil+Goode
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=William+Fisher

* By Vincent Morello

* December 27, 2006

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20978108-29277,00.html

FISH species on the Great Barrier Reef are starving to death because climate change is killing off their food source, an environmental study has found.

Rising sea temperatures have bleached more than 30 per cent of the world's coral reefs, a five-year study by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) has found.

As a result, smaller fish which would normally feed on live coral are dying off, which could throw the fish food chain out of balance, and consequently hinder local fishing and tourism operations.

The coral damage is predicted to double by 2030 if sea temperatures continue their warming patterns, CoECRS senior researcher Morgan Pratchett said.

The starving fish fail to breed and fail to migrate to thriving reefs.

"Fish can be very territorial and it may be hard for refugee fish, which have lost their reef, to relocate elsewhere because the locals will try to keep them out," Dr Pratchett said.

CoECRS was set up in 2005 in Townsville, Queensland, to study coral reefs over a five-year period.

It is a partnership between three Queensland universities and two marine research organisations. Dr Pratchett and his colleagues spent five years charting the collapse of coral-feeding butterfly fish on the reef following severe bleaching between 2000 and 2002.

Bleaching causes the corals to shed their natural bacteria and die.

"Ours and other studies indicate that when coral bleaching occurs, affecting up to 10 per cent of the reef, it affects the abundance of nearly two-thirds of the fish species on that reef.

"As the damage rises to 20 per cent and above, there is a marked decline in the richness of fish species on the reef and the losses can last for years."

But coral-feeding fish will return if the corals recover, Dr Pratchett said.


Informant: binstock

Boston Globe
by H.D.S. Greenway

12/26/06

When George W. Bush first announced his Cabinet in 2001, many old Washington hands thought it was as good a national security team as had ever been assembled. And so it seemed. These were experienced people from previous administrations when Republicans had reason to claim they were more effective guardians of the nation's security than the Democrats. I had hoped the son would follow the same path as his father, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. How hollow that hope seems now. Vice President Dick Cheney, whom Scowcroft says he can hardly recognize anymore, has turned out not only to be the most powerful vice president in history, but also one of the most destructive. ... Cheney's manipulation of intelligence before the Iraq war is now legend...

http://tinyurl.com/y4l3pe


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Cheney

http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=10227


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

You call that a secret?
http://www.reason.com/news/show/117499.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

MSNBC

12/26/06

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has signed orders that will send the 82nd Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade to Kuwait shortly after the new year, senior defense officials said Tuesday. The decision to send the unit was first reported earlier this month. The soldiers, who are based at Fort Bragg, N.C., are expected to be deployed to Iraq early next year, and the move could be part of a short-term surge of troops to the battlefront to quell the ongoing violence...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16361118/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=surge

http://www.stimmen-der-tiere-ev.de/SASA/eng/index.php

Please also forward and cross-post for companion animals.

Thanks.

Pam.

The Food and Drug Administration is aiming to cut back its research infrastructure at a time when critics say monitoring and regulation are more crucial than ever.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/122606HB.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Food+and+Drug+Administration

The last time chronic flooding forced this tiny Alaska village to relocate, sled dogs pulled the old church to its new home three miles away, far from the raging Ninglick River. That was in 1950 and life was simpler in Newtok, mostly a collection of traditional sod dwellings. Modern structures gradually took over the new site as the river again crept to the edge of the Yupik Eskimo community. Persistent erosion has eaten an average of 70 feet of bank a year, and now melting permafrost is subsiding, further subjecting the village to severe flooding from intensifying storms. So once again, Newtok must move, leaving residents and officials grappling with an unprecedented crisis that looms over scores of native villages along Alaska's increasingly battered western coast.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/122606EC.shtml

California's landmark law to drastically cut greenhouse gases could boost the state's economy or make it even more expensive to live in California. It may do both. The Global Warming Solutions Act, which drew international attention when it became law in September, is vague on details about how the state must cut emissions that cause the planet to warm - most notably carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Still, the act portends unprecedented change in the ways Californians live and work, probably affecting the power that we use, the cars we buy and how our food is grown.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/122606EA.shtml

Bob Herbert writes: "Spike Lee, who has made a stunning six-hour documentary about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, was telling me the other day about his first visit to the city's Lower Ninth Ward, which was annihilated by the flood that followed the storm. After more than a year his voice was still filled with a sense of horrified wonder. 'To see it with your own eyes,' he said, 'and you're doing a 360-degree turn, and you see nothing but devastation.... I wasn't born until 1957 but I automatically thought about Hiroshima or Nagasaki or Berlin after the war.'"

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122606S.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Orleans
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Katrina
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bob+Herbert

Defense auditors said that deal cost taxpayers millions more than necessary, and they have referred the matter for possible criminal investigation.

http://tinyurl.com/ykemvc


From Information Clearing House

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2099971.ece


From Information Clearing House

Over the past year, the Bush administration has persuaded bankers across Europe and Asia to choke off some Iranian and North Korean access to the world financial system, using the taint of terrorism and corruption as leverage.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20061226-0805-financialsanctions.html


From Information Clearing House

What matters is the opinion of Iraqis. If there is remaining doubt, the question of withdrawal should be submitted to a referendum, conducted under international supervision to minimize coercion by the occupying forces and their Iraqi clients.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/opinion/?id=18938


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Iraq+Study+Group
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Noam+Chomsky

Soldier tried to report abuses but was rebuffed.
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A41687


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=atrocities
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Ricky+Clousing

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2518729,00.html



U.S. Military graduates calls War in Iraq illegal and criminal

America stands shamed in the eyes of the world thanks to the Bush administration’s crime spree. And, as a partial result, the Democrats scored a resounding triumph in an election where only 40.4% of eligible Americans cast ballots. 40.4%! So much for urgency.

http://tinyurl.com/ynyddh


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=ware+crimes

A fugitive former Iraqi minister, with dual U.S. citizenship, flew to Jordan in an American plane after escaping from a Baghdad jail earlier this month, Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf Bakheet said on Tuesday.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=L26386901


From Information Clearing House

Incoming congressional leaders have publicly stated their support for increasing troop levels, and Democrats have no intention of pursuing any serious withdrawal plan in Congress. They will not withhold war funding. The war will plod on, and Democrats will call for more of the same.

http://tinyurl.com/yaxxur



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=withdrawal
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=war+funding
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Ron+Paul

Basra City Council has withdrawn co-operation from UK forces in southern Iraq after the police's serious crimes unit was disbanded by troops. More than 1,000 troops blew up a police station run by the unit, which has been blamed for robberies and death squads.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6209249.stm


From Information Clearing House

By Noam Chomsky

There was a meeting on the weekend of December 9-10 in Cochabamba in Bolivia of major South American leaders. It was a very important meeting. One index of its importance is that it was unreported, virtually unreported apart from the wire services.

http://tinyurl.com/ycakg9



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Noam+Chomsky

By Salim Lone

Undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With full U.S. backing and military training, at least 15,000 Ethiopian troops have entered Somalia in an illegal war of aggression against the Union of Islamic Courts, which controls almost the entire south of the country.

http://tinyurl.com/yjkb89



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Somalia
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Salim+Lone

http://tinyurl.com/ymnfat



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Mike+Whitney

By Jorge Hirsch

While Russia may prefer for its own reasons that Iran not enrich uranium, it fully recognizes that Iran's pursuit is legal under international law. Furthermore, as Western news media constantly emphasize, Russia and China have extensive commercial ties with Iran, hence it is not in their interest to antagonize Iran. Their support of UNSC1737 doesn't seem to make sense.

http://tinyurl.com/yjjlmz



Iran backed dangerously into a corner
http://tinyurl.com/ykyumq



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jorge+Hirsch

By Juan Cole

Myth number one is that the United States "can still win" in Iraq. Of course, the truth of this statement, frequently still made by William Kristol and other Neoconservatives, depends on what "winning" means. But if it means the establishment of a stable, pro-American, anti-Iranian government with an effective and even-handed army and police force in the near or even medium term, then the assertion is frankly ridiculous.

http://tinyurl.com/ydkn83



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Project+for+the+New+American+Century
http://tinyurl.com/ye3f7s
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=neocons
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Juan+Cole

BY W. PATRICK LANG and RAY MCGOVERN

Robert Gates' report to the White House on his discussions in Iraq this past week is likely to provide the missing ingredient for the troop ''surge'' into Iraq favored by the ''decider'' team of Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush.

http://tinyurl.com/yzg62p



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=surge
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=decider
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=RAY+MCGOVERN

http://tinyurl.com/yjfqof



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=election
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=vote

http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID6211106_REF1_NAV_BAB,00.html

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Grundrechte > Kommunikationsfreiheit und Datenschutz > Vorratsspeicherung

Einhellige Ablehnung der Koalitionspläne zur Vorratsspeicherung von Telekommunikationsdaten

„27 Verbände lehnen in einer heute veröffentlichten Gemeinsamen Erklärung einen Gesetzentwurf von Bundesjustizministerin Brigitte Zypries ab, dem zufolge künftig Daten über jede Nutzung von Telefon, Handy, E-Mail und Internet auf Vorrat gesammelt werden sollen (sog. "Vorratsdatenspeicherung"), damit sie Polizei und Staatsanwaltschaften zur Verfügung stehen. Die Verbände bezeichnen es als "inakzeptabel", dass ohne jeden Verdacht einer Straftat sensible Informationen über die sozialen Beziehungen, die Bewegungen und die individuelle Lebenssituation von über 80 Millionen Bundesbürgerinnen und Bundesbürgern gesammelt werden sollen…“ Pressemitteilung vom Montag, den 22.01.2007, darin auch die Gemeinsame Erklärung vom 22.01.2007 im Wortlaut: http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=80&Itemid=55


Aus: LabourNet, 23. Januar 2007

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27 gegen Datenzwangsverhaltung, AT-Land schläft
http://quintessenz.at/d/000100003792

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Verfassungsbeschwerde geplant Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung meldet 10.000. Teilnehmer

Der Protest gegen die geplante sechsmonatige Speicherung von Kommunikationsdaten wird immer breiter. Der Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung meldete am Dienstag den 10 000. Teilnehmer an der von ihm vorbereiteten Verfassungsbeschwerde gegen das Vorhaben der Bundesregierung. Jurist und Arbeitskreis-Mitglied Patrick Breyer betonte, es sei ein "offensichtlich unverhältnismäßiger Eingriff" in die Grundrechte der Bürger, das Kommunikations- und Bewegungsverhalten der gesamten Bevölkerung zu protokollieren, um die Aufklärungsquote "um mikroskopische 0,0006 Prozent steigern zu können".

http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php?H=N&Nr=15285

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Vorratsdatenspeicherung = Abschaffung des Informantenschutzes.

Vorratsdatenspeicherung heißt: Die Regierung plant die totale Protokollierung aller elektronischen Kommunikationsdaten von jedem Bewohner dieses Landes. Für Journalisten bedeutet das die faktische Abschaffung des Informantenschutzes.

Dagegen protestiert das netzwerk recherche. Am 22.01. wurde zusammen mit 26 weiteren Buergerrechtsorganisationen die "Gemeinsame Erklärung zum Gesetzentwurf über die Vorratsdatenspeicherung" unterzeichnet. Im Wortlaut:

Gemeinsame Erklärung zum Gesetzentwurf über die Vorratsdatenspeicherung

Der Gesetzentwurf zur Neuregelung der Telekommunikationsüberwachung sieht vor, Telekommunikationsunternehmen ab Herbst 2007 zu verpflichten, Daten über die Kommunikation ihrer Kunden auf Vorrat zu speichern. Zur verbesserten Strafverfolgung soll nachvollziehbar werden, wer mit wem in den letzten sechs Monaten per Telefon, Handy oder E-Mail in Verbindung gestanden hat. Bei Handy-Telefonaten und SMS soll auch der jeweilige Standort des Benutzers festgehalten werden. Bis spätestens 2009 soll zudem die Nutzung des Internet nachvollziehbar werden.

Eine derart weitreichende Registrierung des Verhaltens der Menschen in Deutschland halten wir für inakzeptabel. Ohne jeden Verdacht einer Straftat sollen sensible Informationen über die sozialen Beziehungen (einschließlich Geschäftsbeziehungen), die Bewegungen und die individuelle Lebenssituation (z.B. Kontakte mit Ärzten, Rechtsanwälten, Psychologen, Beratungsstellen) von über 80 Millionen Bundesbürgerinnen und Bundesbürgern gesammelt werden. Damit höhlt eine Vorratsdatenspeicherung Anwalts-, Arzt-, Seelsorge-, Beratungs- und andere Berufsgeheimnisse aus und begünstigt Wirtschaftsspionage. Sie untergräbt den Schutz journalistischer Quellen und beschädigt damit die Pressefreiheit im Kern. Die enormen Kosten einer Vorratsdatenspeicherung sind von den Telekommunikationsunternehmen zu tragen. Dies wird Preiserhöhungen nach sich ziehen, zur Einstellung von Angeboten führen und mittelbar auch die Verbraucher belasten.

Untersuchungen zeigen, dass bereits die gegenwärtig verfügbaren Kommunikationsdaten ganz regelmäßig zur effektiven Aufklärung von Straftaten ausreichen. Es ist nicht nachgewiesen, dass eine Vorratsdatenspeicherung besser vor Kriminalität schützen würde. Dagegen würde sie Millionen von Euro kosten, die Privatsphäre Unschuldiger gefährden, vertrauliche Kommunikation beeinträchtigen und den Weg in eine immer weiter reichende Massenansammlung von Informationen über die gesamte Bevölkerung ebnen.

Rechtsexperten erwarten, dass das Bundesverfassungsgericht eine Pflicht zur verdachtslosen Vorratsspeicherung von Kommunikationsdaten für verfassungswidrig erklären wird. Außerdem wird erwartet, dass die EG-Richtlinie zur Vorratsdatenspeicherung vor dem Europäische Gerichtshof keinen Bestand haben wird. Die Richtlinie verstößt gegen die im Europarecht verankerten Grundrechte und ist in vertragsverletzender Weise zustande gekommen. Irland hat bereits Klage gegen die Richtlinie erhoben. Der Ausgang dieser Klage sollte zumindest abgewartet werden.

Als Vertreter der Bürgerinnen und Buerger, der Medien, der freien Berufe und der Wirtschaft lehnen wir das Vorhaben einer Vorratsdatenspeicherung geschlossen ab. Wir appellieren an die Politik, sich grundsätzlich von dem Vorhaben der umfassenden und verdachtsunabhängigen Speicherung von Daten zu distanzieren.

Weitere Informationen: http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=80&Itemid=55

Mitmachen: Sammelklage gegen Vorratsdatenspeicherung http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=51&Itemid=70

Offene Briefe gegen die Vorratsdatenspeicherung
Überzeugen Sie die Bundestagsabgeordneten
http://briefe.gegen.daten.speicherung.eu/ .

Schäubles Daten-Exhibitionismus gefährdet die Sicherheit der Europäer Pressemitteilung von Netzwerk Neue Medien e.V. (NNM), STOP1984 und FoeBuD vom 12.02.2007 http://www.daten-speicherung.de/?p=143 .


Aus: Newsletter Netzwerk Recherche, #40, 16.02.2007



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