Friends...
Category: Friends

Friends,

I am amazed at how many of you have been sending me messages about the elections, most of them telling me how bad McCain is, and the rest campaigning for Obama as if he was the second coming. I've been trying to figure out why this is. Neither candidate is proposing to end our policy of military aggression, both support the financial bailout / sell-out, neither talks about the Patriot Acts and the destruction of the Constitution, neither has any kind of recovery plan in the manner of an FDR, and neither talks about any substantial issues in their campaigns. Obama's main advisor is Zbigniew Brzezinski, the architect of modern US aggressive imperialism. The Democrats have totally supported Bush at every step, and it was the Democrats, more than the Republicans who pushed through the bailout fiasco. I'm not arguing for McCain or the Republicans, not at all, but I have a very hard time understanding why people think a Democrat President will make any kind of real difference in how the country is run.

I do have a theory, however, about where all this energy comes from, this irrational support for Obama on the one side, or McCain on the other. The game works this way... The Republicans field a President-Vice-President team that liberals will hate, and the Democrats field a team that conservatives will hate. That's the reason for Palin. She has nothing at all to offer other than the fact that she's totally abhorrent to anyone with any kind of liberal sensibilities. Fear and loathing are strong motivators, and I think this explains why people allow themselves to be captured by the pointless electoral circus.

It's a very effective game. It is not necessary that anyone actually like their own candidates, it is only necessary that they fear and hate the other candidate. There is no necessity for either candidate to express any kind of vision or comprehensive program, because people are mainly concerned that their candidate score debating points against the hated opponent. To the extent either candidate has anything positive to say, that is limited to stroking the egos of their supporters, spouting meaningless rhetoric that appeals to their constituency's psychological profile. The sign of a good con man is that he appears to be trustworthy and honest to his mark (constituency). As Walter Cronkite put it, when asked what makes for a good news anchor, "the ability to lie convincingly".

It is important to understand what the actual job description of the Presidency is, post-JFK. It has nothing to do with running the country or making decisions. That is all handled by the Cabinet and other advisors, people who are selected by the ruling elite and are not elected. These advisors are typically on loan from the major corporations, law firms, and financial institutions, and their loyalties remain with their 'real' employer, and with the elite agendas laid down for them. Cheney is a perfect example of this, on loan from Halliburton, and using his position to assign extremely lucrative government contracts to that company – while at the same time pursuing the agendas of the banking elite. Everyone in Washington knows that Cheney has been the real CEO of the 'Bush' regime, up until this recent bailout coup.

Henry Paulson (King Henry I) is an even better example, being part of the elite financial community. His loyalties are entirely with Wall Street, and the bailout bill gives him, as Secretary of the Treasury, essentially dictatorial powers over the US economy. 1913 is the year the banking elite achieved behind-the-scenes control over America, and 2008 is the year they achieved direct control. Paulson's new role is comparable to that of Herr Krupp in the Third Reich, who was made OberFührer of all industry in Germany and the occupied territories. This kind of direct dictatorial control is a clear sign of fascism. If you haven't seen Naomi Wolf's recent videos, I recommend watching them ASAP, while we still have YouTube and the Internet. As she says, we are now in the 1933 Nazi scenario, just prior to the Storm Troopers dissolving by force the democratically elected parliament (Reichstag).

The End of America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW9PulYpjGs
Give me Liberty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI

As for the Presidency, that is actually a PR job, an advertising job. Both as a candidate and as a President, the job description is to make speeches and to present US policy with an appropriate spin. That's one of the reasons we sometimes have actors like Reagan or Schwartzneger for politicians – actors are experts at playing roles, learning lines, and projecting personas on cue. In Bush's case, it is intentional that he talk like a fool, because then people assume his personal idiocy is responsible for disastrous policy. Anything to keep you from looking behind the curtain, to see who's really at the controls. Anything to make you think the next election offers hope.

If Obama wins, he'll put a liberal spin on policy, just as Clinton did. Interventions will be 'humanitarian', and policies will be to 'help the little people'. If McCain wins, he'll put a conservative spin on policy, like a Bush or Reagan would do. Interventions will be a show of 'US strength', and policies will be to 'make America strong'. The underlying policies themselves will be decided for other reasons and by other people. A change of Presidents is like a change of advertising campaigns for a soft drink; the product itself still tastes the same, but it now has a new 'image'.

Elections are one example of a media circus. The OJ Simpson Trial was another example, as was the Monica Lewinsky affair, neither of which was an event of any real significance or interest. There's usually one useless media circus or another underway at any given time, designed to capture the public imagination and attention, while the real business of empire and politics goes on outside the circus tent. Television is our version of the Roman Colosseum.

At this particular time, on the verge of economic collapse and martial law, we cannot afford to be distracted by this or any other circus. Naomi Wolf expresses the urgency of the moment very eloquently. She's the Paul Revere of our day, sounding the alarm (first video), and she also has useful ideas about popular rebellion (second video). The title of her new book is, Give Me Liberty, A Handbook for American Revolutionaries. Among other things, she talks about how we need to begin dialoging with one another in our communities, overcoming left-right divisions.

To paraphrase a saying I recall from childhood, Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country. The elections are nothing but a distraction, and that's what they are designed to be. Our attention needs be elsewhere, and below are some more sources worthy of your concerned attention.

rkm
___________

Jim Kirwan, Tomorrow The Coup?
http://rense.com/general83/feddds.htm

Rep. Brad Sherman, on the White House's threat to install Martial Law (short video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFstmclOQG8

"The Warrior Creed", every soldier now carries this, Robert Fisk 3 minute Video
http://www.tewahanui.info/wordpress2/?p=761

Naomi Klein: Wall St. Crisis Should Be for Neoliberalism What Fall of Berlin Wall Was for Communism (video & transcript)
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/6/naomi_klein

From CBS News, we get a very clear and detailed explanation of the financial collapse, and they even characterize the activities of the Wall Street elite as a 'crime'. Thus the mainstream media cultivates a myth of being 'independent', while stopping short of what should have been the conclusion of their documentary: Henry Paulson is one of the chief criminals they were implicitly indicting, and he should be under arrest, not enthroned as US Economic Czar. They also bleeped out a mention of Merrill Lynch, who I suppose must be an important CBS sponsor. Nonetheless, very informative:
Wall Street's Shadow Market (video)
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4502673n

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10:48 PM - 1 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Follow the money...
Category: Games

Follow the Money? God forbid.
Why was the cashing out of billions of dollars just before the 9/11 attacks never investigated?

by Jim Hogue

Had an investigation been done into the crime of failing to file the "currency transaction reports" in August 2001, then we would know who made the cash withdrawals in $100 bills amounting to the $5 billion surge.

It's been over six years since 9/11, but U.S. regulatory entities have been slow to follow through with reports about the complex financial transactions that occurred just prior to and following the attacks. Such research could shed light on such questions as who was behind them—and who benefited—and could help lay to rest the rumors that have been festering.

Warning bells about anomalies in the fiscal sector were sounded in the summer of 2001, but not heeded. Among those who has since raised questions was Bill Bergman. As a financial market analyst for the Federal Reserve, he was assigned in 2003 to review the record of July and August of 2001. He noticed an unusual surge in the currency component of the M1 money supply (cash circulating outside of banks) during that period. The surge totaled over $5 billion above the norm for a two-month increase. The increase in August alone was the third largest single monthly increase since 1947, even after a significantly above-average month in July.

When reviewing the record of July and August of 2001, Bill Bergman noticed a $5 billion surge in the currency component of the M1 money supply—the third largest such increase since 1947. Bergman asked about this anomaly—and was removed from his investigative duties. Surges in the currency component of M1 are often the result of people withdrawing their cash to protect themselves lest some anticipated disaster (such as Y2K) befall the economy. In January of 1991 a surge was recorded (the then second-largest since '47), which could be attributed to "war-time hoarding" before the Iraq I invasion, but could also be attributed to financial maneuverings and liquefying of assets relating to the BCCI enforcement proceedings.

Bergman points out that the August 2001 withdrawals may have been, to a large extent, caused by the Argentinian banking crisis that was occurring at the time. However, he raises the point that no explanation has yet fully answered the important question: Why was the cashing out of billions of dollars just before the 9/11 attacks never investigated? It's possible that the answer to this question is also the answer to the other follow-the-money questions surrounding 9/11; and despite an embarrassing heap of evidence, neither the press, nor Congress, nor any agency with investigative responsibility has done its job on our behalf. On the contrary, their inaction might reasonably be construed as a cover-up.

Bergman "followed the money," including developing a framework for working with money-laundering data and "suspicious activity" reports for monitoring and investigating terrorism. The questions he asked about what happened during the summer of 2001 should have led to investigations, which should have resulted in the prosecution of those with foreknowledge of the attacks.

Those who follow the history of the 9/11 fact-finding movement know that there is a laundry-list of unanswered questions that are just as compelling as those put forth by Bergman. And there is also a laundry-list of whistle-blowers who have been fired and subsequently ignored. So it is not at all surprising that Bergman was removed from his investigative duties, and that his concerns were not publicly addressed.

Bergman's supervisor instructed him follow up on an unanswered question he had raised pertaining to an August 2, 2001 letter from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve to the 12 Reserve Banks. This letter urged scrutiny of suspicious activity reports. Bergman learned of the pervasiveness of the warnings of the 9/11 attacks, and wondered how thoroughly these warnings had permeated the financial system.

In this capacity as Federal Reserve investigative point-man, and with his money-laundering portfolio being guided by his supervisor's directive, he asked the Board why they had issued their August 2, 2001 directive, and whether this related to any heightened intelligence of a terrorist threat. His position was then eliminated, and a crucial investigation was terminated before it could even begin.

Another 9/11 Commission Misrepresentation
Footnote 28 of the Staff Monograph on Terrorist Financing from the official 9/11 Commission Report states that the National Money-laundering Strategy Report for 2001 "didn't mention terrorist financing in any of its 50 pages."

True? No. The NMLS Report mentions it 17 times. One gets the impression that the commission staff (under Philip Zelikow) was trying to paint the picture that there wasn't a lot of co-operation between those involved in counterterrorism and the banking regulators in 2001. Why do they paint this picture, inasmuch as the contrary is the case? In fact, anti-terrorism was an important element of the National Money Strategy, and it was included and emphasized in its Report annually. It may have been part of the reason why the August 2, 2001 letter urging scrutiny of suspicious activity reports was issued in the first place.

In turn, the billions in currency shipments of July and August 2001 are completely omitted in the 9/11 Commission Report. I make bold to point out that the official story-line is that the attacks were accomplished by "the evil-doers" on a shoe-string budget with little money changing hands. Therefore, according to Zelikow et al., it is pointless to look at large flows of money in an investigation of the attacks. That makes perfect sense—unless you happen to have a brain.

To state the obvious, there are two reasons why Zelikow et al. made the false statement regarding there having been no references to terrorism in the National Money-laundering Strategy Report. One reason could be to justify and encourage more scrutiny (legal or otherwise) of small transactions generally, e.g. via USAPA, and the other could be to establish (read: invent) a reason for missing the evidence pertaining to the attacks. ('Transactions too small. No one could find.') And since the real money trail points to foreknowledge within the financial community at large, and, possibly, the Federal Reserve specifically, the "low-budget terrorism" story-line that the 9/11 Commission had established needed to be protected.

If such a lack of attentiveness to a financial transaction of $5 billion goes unnoticed in August 2001, then a reason had to be established for this lack of attention. And Bergman's attentiveness to the Board of Governor's August 2 letter was the fly in the ointment, as this letter proves that the Board was indeed attentive to suspicious transactions, even very, very large ones. Bergman's question of "Why" is therefore key to yet another avenue of inquiry.

All the News that's Permissible to Print
Note that a few dollars sent to an Islamic charity could warrant arrests, investigations, front-page stories, and, sometimes, torture and many years in jail. That's Propaganda 101: 'Large amounts of money do not fund major acts of terrorism. Small amounts do. Small amounts covered the 9/11 tab, therefore large amounts didn't.' The news coverage, creating high-profile prosecutions for relatively small transactions, reinforces this scenario.

With this in mind, we suggest that the reader follow the story of Mark Siljander (major coverage) on the one hand, and also follow the Times UK reports from Sibel Edmonds (verboten in the US mainstream press) on the other hand. Edmonds told me recently of the major foreign media outlets that had offered to report her story. Not one major outlet did so in the US. R.T. Naylor suggests, in his wonderful book Satanic Purses, that any major terrorist event that involves a lot of money is 'state terrorism,' and this is independently confirmed by Sibel Edmonds' statements as to the enormous sums changing hands at the time of the 9/11 attacks. I suggest that her testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee (Leahy and Grassley) gave the lie to the official financial myth of 9/11. If Bergman had been allowed to continue his investigation, I suggest that he would have uncovered the same thing. Note that the drug money and other illicit transactions described by Edmonds occurred during the same time period, and the amounts in the billions are comparable.

The Law
To members of the constabulary: the operable statutes are 1) The 1970 Bank Secrecy Act that imposed new financial reporting requirements to facilitate the tracing of questionable transactions and 2) the 1986 Money Laundering Control Act that criminalized the act of money-laundering. Also operable, and of particular relevance in a historical context, is the 1917 Trading With the Enemy Act that was relied upon in October of 1942 to seize the assets of "Hitler's Bankers in America," Union Banking, (involving bank vice president Prescott Bush under his father-in-law and bank president, George Walker).

The law is not always followed, and the required "currency transaction reports" are sometimes not filed. The 9/11 Commission Report and the National Money-laundering Strategy Report for 2001 did not identify those who are involved with large cash transactions. Had the paperwork been done in August of 2001, or an investigation done into the crime of failing to file the "currency transaction reports," then we would know who made the cash withdrawals in $100 bills amounting to the $5 billion surge.

Information about what transpired took years to develop after the fact. For example, the Federal Reserve fined United Bank of Switzerland and Riggs Bank in 2004.

Mr. Bergman states that he doesn't want to be a dog barking up the wrong tree, but the authorities, apparently under orders from our top officials, are preventing a standard investigation and the most obvious prosecutorial methodology from going forth.

Congress could step in; a prosecutor could step up. But don't hold your breath.

Jim Hogue, a former teacher, is now an actor who tours his performance of Ethan Allen. He also operates a small farm in Calais, VT. His seminal articles about Sibel Edmonds and CIA Whistleblower "Miss Moneypenny" may be found in this newspaper's archives.
Bill Bergman currently works in Chicago as an equity analyst for a private sector firm. From 1998 to 2004 he was a senior financial market analyst for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, where his areas of expertise included Insolvency Issues in Derivatives Markets, Money Laundering, and Ethics and Payment System Policy. He holds an M.B.A. in Finance and an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago.

6:04 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Responding...
Category: Games

Responding to the collapse
Richard K. Moore
rkm@quaylargo.com

Momentous events continue apace. Since my last article, EU governments proclaimed cockily that the financial crisis was an Anglo-American problem, and then the next day we find out that European banks are more highly leveraged than US banks! Ireland's own bailout is the most radical of all, 400 billion Euro to underwrite its leading banks. When there isn't enough money to run our schools or health service, tax receipts are below expectations, and the dole queues are growing, where in the world is that 400 billion supposed to come from? How can the Irish treasury afford to assume liability for all that dubious debt? What happened to all those EU rules about debt limitations?

All over the world governments are scrambling to patch up a crumbling system, to somehow keep the building from tumbling down. They're breaking all their own rules in these desperate attempts to avert the inevitable. They all complain about the collapsing bubble, but they don't acknowledge that if it weren't for that bubble, the global financial system would have collapsed long ago.

The bubble was invented by Alan Greenspan, then head of the Federal Reserve, as a means reviving a dying corpse. He pumped a new wonder drug into the corpse's veins, derivative instruments. As if injected with a cocktail of cocaine and adrenalin, the financial system arose from its deathbed, got up and partied. And how it's hit the wall, big time, for the last time. The bubble isn't just the housing market, it's all the phony derivatives, trillions of dollars traded daily with no relationship to the real world economy. The housing bubble was the straw on the camel's overloaded back. It was all a Ponzi scheme from the beginning, and everyone was more than happy to get a piece of it.

So what are we left with? The financial system is as dead as it was before the wonder drug, and now everyone is up to their ears in debt as well. What we are seeing is an example of 'managed collapse'. If the system is collapsing anyway, then those who run it – the usual suspects in the world of finance – have no intention of letting that happen haphazardly. Like the owner of a condemned building, they arrange for an orderly demolition. Only in this case, the tenants don't get to leave the building before it comes down. As far as economics goes – and that pretty much determines what happens to you and your family – we're all trapped in the Twin Towers, with smoke billowing around us, and the charges about to be set off. We've already heard the first few explosions, as structural pillars failed in Wall Street, London, Frankfurt, et al.

The purpose of the Ponzi project was not to save the financial system, rather it was to ensure that the banking elite would end up owning all the pieces when the building finally fell down. If Ireland owes 400 billion to the banks, and the Irish economy collapses, then in essence Ireland goes into receivership, with the banks managing the liquidation of the assets (that's your house, his farm or business, and her new car). That's what's happening in America, with their bailout bill, which essentially turns control over the US economy to Henry Paulson (see photo). He's Secretary of the Treasury at the moment, but before that he was at Goldman Sachs, and was one of the architects of the Ponzi scheme. First he sets the incendiaries, then he manages the insurance pay outs, Larry Silverstein style. The whole game is rather transparent really; you've got to be as blind as a TV journalist to miss it.

This is the era of managed collapses. 9/11 was about managing the collapse of American hegemony, enabling last-ditch resource-grabbing adventures abroad, and enabling civil chaos at home to be managed via marital law and arbitrary detention. Artificially high (via managed speculation) fuel and food prices are a way of managing the collapse of the resource base upon which capitalism feeds. Economic genocide – Irish famine style, but on a global scale – is aimed at reducing the number of 'useless feeders' (Kissinger's phrase), so their land and resources can be used for other, more profitable, purposes. A way of killing off the Redskins without fielding a cavalry.

In fact it is industrial civilization, coupled with the capitalist growth paradigm, that is the real bubble, a bubble that always had to burst. It is civilization itself that is collapsing, at least that monetized, exploitive, mechanized civilization that we've come to know over the past two centuries. It deserves to collapse; it is destroying the Earth. But it is not in our interest that the collapse be managed in the way it is being managed. In Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, we can see sensible approaches to adjusting to global changes, led by those who are in political power, members of a very rare breed – top political leaders who are genuinely 'with the people', and who have both courage and vision. Unfortunately that breed is extinct in our part of the world.

In the the US and the EU it's the banking elites that pull the strings of power, with governments embedded in a financial web they have little control over, or at least that's how they behave. The governments behave that way, unwilling to use the Constitutional power at their disposal, because the politicians who run the governments are caught in another web – a web of corruption that they have little control over. Their professional skills have little to do with courage or vision, and everything to do with how to walk the tightrope of the insider web, how to spin cover stories to the public, and how to collect their bonus points when they 'do good' for their patrons. The same financial spiders weave the big webs and the little webs. Society is the patient and the financial system is the disease. The aim of the predator banking elite is to preserve the disease at the expense of the patient. In that way they are like the pharmaceutical industry.

In my previous article, I suggested that a sensible path for Ireland, as a nation, would be disengagement from the machine, the financial web that is strangling everyone everywhere. In the face of a sinking Titanic, I'm recommending that we take refuge on a life raft, little Ireland on its own, a life raft that happens to be provisioned with a renewable and adequate supply of food and water. It's a desperate recommendation to be sure, which is why I've tried to outline the scope and nature of the impending collapse. The life raft would be on rough seas, but better off than being pulled under by the debt-suction of the 'unsinkable' global economy.

There is of course no chance that any such project of national liberation would ever be undertaken by any foreseeable Irish government. It would be unthinkable for any of the dominant political parties or their leaders. If there is to be any kind of sensible response to the collapse, it will need to somehow emerge from civil society, from the Irish people themselves. In this transitional period, while the machine continues to function more or less as normal, it may seem surrealistic to imagine any kind of grassroots mobilization. But better to explore the escape routes now, than waiting until the building collapses around us.

Ireland is blessed with a number of unique advantages, as regards the nature of its civil society and its cultural traditions, and as regards the balance between its resources and its population. The island is physically capable of supporting a prosperous and sustainable local economy for its people, although prosperity needs to be measured in terms of real human needs, not in terms of our current gadgets and consumerist addictions. The relatively small population density, the largely rural infrastructure, and the prevalence of relatively small-scale agricultural operations, are all distinct advantages, if we are required to fall back on our own resources for our survival.

These favorable physical / economic conditions are a prerequisite for national self-sufficiency to be achieved, but they aren't enough by themselves to get us through to the other side, particularly when the government isn't aligned with the project. Only a coherent grassroots mobilization, a fraternal economic 'rising' if you will, can succeed in creating new exchange channels that operate outside of the official money economy, and enable productive economic activity to carry on in the shadow of the collapsing global system. And this is where the special character of Irish civil society, and its cultural traditions, come into play.

Irish society is interwoven with all kinds of formal and informal networks, everything from family ties, to GAA connections, to the countless 'Associations' with autonomous local chapters, and those are just a few examples. These networks, and the relatively small population of Ireland, make us one of the most 'in touch with one another' cultures in Europe. The potential is there, when the common need is felt, for social cohesion to emerge and for mutual-aid networks to be activated.
___

References

I've been collecting informative reports and analyses of the latest financial (and other) developments on my newslog blog:
http://groups.google.com/group/newslog/topics

The DVD, How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, is very timely and worth watching. We hear people tell their stories, of how they got through the "Special Period", and emerged with a transformed social infrastructure and a sustainable agricultural regime. An inspiring success story of an island life raft, cast adrift a few miles from hostile shores. The DVD is available here:
http://www.powerofcommunity.org/

___



___________________________
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8:53 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The New Inquisition
Category: Games

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10144

http://www.theage.com.au/national/rat-had-key-role-in-terror-enquiry-20080916-4hx8.html?page=-1

6:16 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Nukes and Knaves
Category: Games

We lie and bluster about our nukes - and then wag our fingers at Iran

By failing to disarm and breaking the rules when it suits, nuclear states are driving proliferation as much as Ahmadinejad

George Monbiot
The Guardian, Tuesday July 29 2008

What is the Iranian government up to? For once the imperial coalition, overstretched in Iraq and unpopular at home, is proposing jaw, not war. The UN security council's offer was a good one: if Iran suspended its uranium enrichment programme, it would be entitled to legally guaranteed supplies of fuel for nuclear power, assistance in building a light water reactor, foreign aid, technology transfer and the beginning of the end of economic sanctions. The US seems prepared, for the first time since the revolution, to open a diplomatic office in Tehran. But in Geneva, 10 days ago, the Iranians filibustered until the negotiations ended. On Saturday President Ahmadinejad announced that Iran has now doubled the number of centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium. A fourth round of sanctions looks inevitable.

The unequivocal statements Barack Obama and Gordon Brown made in Israel last week about Iran's nuclear weapons programme cannot yet be justified. Nor can the unequivocal statements by some anti-war campaigners that Iran does not intend to build the bomb. Why would a country with such reserves of natural gas and so great a potential for solar power suffer sanctions and the threat of bombing to make fuel it could buy from other states, if it accepted the UN's terms?

Those who maintain that Iran's purposes are peaceful clutch at the National Intelligence Estimate published by the US government in November. While it judged that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, it saw the country's civilian uranium programme as a means of developing "technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so". The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency notes that no fissile material has been diverted from Iran's stocks, but raises grave questions about some of the documents it has found, which suggest research into bomb-making (Iran says the papers are forgeries). Those of us who oppose an attack on Iran are under no obligation to accept Ahmadinejad's claims of peaceful intent.

Nor do we have to accept the fictions of our own representatives. The security council's offer to Iran claimed that resolving this enrichment issue would help to bring about a "Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction". But like every other such document, it made no mention of the principal owner of weapons in the region: Israel. According to a leaked briefing by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Israel possesses between 60 and 80 nuclear bombs. But none of the countries demanding that Iran scraps the weapons it doesn't yet possess are demanding that Israel destroys the weapons it does possess.

This subject is the great political taboo. Neither Brown nor Obama mentioned it last week. The US intelligence agencies provide a biannual report to Congress on the weapons of mass destruction developed by foreign states, which covers Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and others, but not Israel. During a parliamentary debate in March the British defence minister Bob Ainsworth was asked whether he thought that Israel's nuclear weapons are "a destabilising factor" in the Middle East. "My understanding," he replied, "is that Israel does not acknowledge that it has nuclear weapons." Does Mr Ainsworth really buy this nonsense? If so, can we have a new minister? If Iran builds a bomb, it will do so for one reason: that there is already a nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, by which it feels threatened.

But we make the rules and we break them. The non-proliferation treaty (NPT) obliges the five official nuclear states, of which the UK is one, to work towards "general and complete disarmament". On Friday, the Guardian published the notes for a speech made last year by a senior civil servant, which suggested that the decision to replace the UK's nuclear missiles had already been made, in secret and without parliamentary scrutiny. Since then defence ministers have told the Commons on five occasions that the decision has not yet been made. They appear to have misled the House.

At the Geneva conference on disarmament in February, one delegate pointed out that the "chances of eliminating nuclear weapons will be enhanced immeasurably" if non-nuclear states can see "planning, commitment and action toward multilateral nuclear disarmament by nuclear weapon states" like the UK. If the nuclear states "are failing to fulfil their disarmament obligations", other nations would use this as an excuse for maintaining their weapons. Who was this firebrand? Des Browne, the secretary of state for defence. A man of the same name is failing to fulfil our disarmament obligations.

Browne claims that Britain must maintain its arsenal because of proliferation elsewhere, just as those proliferating elsewhere say that they must develop their arsenals because the official nuclear nations aren't disarming. With the exception of France, none of the other European states feels the need to deploy nukes. But the UK keeps preparing for the last war. Of course, no one is refusing to disarm; it's just that the task keeps getting pushed into the indefinite future. Opponents of British nuclear weapons maintain that a new generation of warheads would survive until 2055.

The permanent members of the UN security council draw a distinction between their "responsible" ownership of nuclear weapons and that of the aspirant powers. But over the past six years, the UK, US, France and Russia have all announced that they are prepared to use their nukes pre-emptively against a presumed threat, even from states that do not possess nuclear weapons. In some ways the current nuclear stand-off is more dangerous than the tetchy detente of the cold war.

The danger has been heightened by the US government's current offensive. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, is demanding that other countries accept her plans to destroy the last remaining incentive for states to abide by the NPT. The treaty grants countries which conform to it materials for nuclear power on favourable terms. It's a flawed incentive - as the spread of civil nuclear programmes makes the proliferation of military material more likely - but an incentive nonetheless. Now Rice insists that India should have special access to US nuclear materials despite the fact that it has not signed the NPT and has illegally developed nuclear weapons.

If she is successful, this effort - and the concomitant US demand that India is recognised as an official nuclear power - will blow the NPT to kingdom come. The treaty which survived the cold war, and which remains the most important of the wilting guarantees against global annihilation, is being nuked for the sake of a few billion dollars of export orders.

Here's where it gets really depressing. The Bush administration's proposal has been supported by both John McCain and Barack Obama. The contrast between Obama's position on India and his statements on Iran could not be greater, or more destructive of the inflated hopes now vested in him.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's insistence that Iran enriches its own fissile material, and the guessing game he is playing with Israel, the atomic energy agency and the UN security council is irresponsible and staggeringly dangerous. But if I were in his position I might be tempted to do the same.

www.monbiot.com

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

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Crime Does Pay
Category: Friends

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And 50 years ago smoking was good for you...
Category: Games

Playing Russian roulette with your brain

July 24, 2008 - 11:49AM

The head of a prominent cancer research institute has issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff: limit mobile phone use because of the possible risk of cancer.

He even warns against using mobile phones in public places like a bus because it exposes others to the phone's electromagnetic fields.

The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is contrary to numerous studies that don't find a link between increased tumors and mobile phone use, and a public lack of worry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Herberman is basing his alarm on early, unpublished data. He says it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now - especially when it comes to children.

"Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn't wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later," Herberman said.

Herberman's advice is sure to raise concern among many mobile phone users and especially parents.

In the memo he sent to about 3000 faculty and staff on Wednesday, he says children should use cell phones only for emergencies because their brains are still developing.

Adults should keep the phone away from the head and use the speakerphone or a wireless headset, he says. He even warns against using mobile phones in public places like a bus because it exposes others to the phone's electromagnetic fields.

The issue that concerns some scientists - though nowhere near a consensus - is electromagnetic radiation, especially its possible effects on children. It is not a major topic in conferences of brain specialists.

A 2008 University of Utah analysis looked at nine studies - including some Herberman cites - with thousands of brain tumor patients and concludes "we found no overall increased risk of brain tumors among cellular phone users. The potential elevated risk of brain tumors after long-term cellular phone use awaits confirmation by future studies."

Studies last year in France and Norway concluded the same thing.

"If there is a risk from these products - and at this point we do not know that there is - it is probably very small," the Food and Drug Administration says on an agency Web site.

Still, Herberman cites a "growing body of literature linking long-term mbile phone use to possible adverse health effects including cancer."

"Although the evidence is still controversial, I am convinced that there are sufficient data to warrant issuing an advisory to share some precautionary advice .. phone use," he wrote in his memo.

A driving force behind the memo was Devra Lee Davis, the director of the university's centre for environmental oncology.

"The question is do you want to play Russian roulette with your brain," she said in an interview that she did from her mobile phone. "I don't know that cell phones are dangerous. But I don't know that they are safe."

Of concern are the still unknown effects of more than a decade of cell phone use, with some studies raising alarms, said Davis, a former health adviser in the Clinton Administration.

She said 20 different groups have endorsed the advice the Pittsburgh cancer institute gave, and authorities in England, France and India have cautioned children's use of mobile phones.

Herberman and Davis point to a massive ongoing research project known as Interphone, involving scientists in 13 nations, mostly in Europe. Results already published in peer-reviewed journals from this project aren't so alarming, but Herberman is citing work not yet published.

The published research focuses on more than 5000 cases of brain tumors. The National Academy of Sciences in the U.S., which isn't participating in the Interphone project, reported in January that the brain tumor research had "selection bias." That means it relied on people with cancer to remember how often they used cell phones. It is not considered the most accurate research approach.

The largest published study, which appeared in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 2006, tracked 420,000 Danish mobile phone users, including thousands that had used the phones for more than 10 years. It found no increased risk of cancer among those using mobile phones.

A French study based on Interphone research and published in 2007 concluded that regular mobile phone users had "no significant increased risk" for three major types of brain tumors. It did note, however, that there was "the possibility of an increased risk among the heaviest users" for one type of brain tumor, but that needs to be verified in future research.

Earlier research also has found no connection.

Joshua E. Muscat of Penn State University, who has studied cancer and mobile phones in other research projects partly funded by the mobile phone industry, said there are at least a dozen studies that have found no cancer-cell phone link. He said a Swedish study cited by Herberman as support for his warning was biased and flawed.

"We certainly don't know of any mechanism by which radiofrequency exposure would cause a cancerous effect in cells. We just don't know this might possibly occur," Muscat said.

Mobile phones emit radiofrequency energy, a type of radiation that is a form of electromagnetic radiation, according to the US National Cancer Institute. Though studies are being done to see if there is a link between it and tumors of the brain and central nervous system, there is no definitive link between the two, the institute says on its website.

"By all means, if a person feels compelled that they should take precautions in reducing the amount of electromagnetic radio waves through their bodies, by all means they should do so," said Dan Catena, a spokesman for the American Cancer Society. "But at the same time, we have to remember there's no conclusive evidence that links cell phones to cancer, whether it's brain tumors or other forms of cancer."

Joe Farren, a spokesman for the CTIA-The Wireless Association, a trade group for the wireless industry, said the group believes there is a risk of misinforming the public if science isn't used as the ultimate guide on the issue.

"When you look at the overwhelming majority of studies that have been peer reviewed and published in scientific journals around the world, you'll find no relationship between wireless usage and adverse health affects," Farren said.

Frank Barnes, who chaired a recent National Research Council report looking into what studies are needed to assess the health effects of wireless communications, said Wednesday that "the jury is out" on how hazardous long-term mobile phone use might be.

Speaking from his mobile phone, the professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder said he takes no special precautions with his own mobile phone. And he offered no clear advice to people worried about the matter.

It's up to each individual to decide what if anything to do. If people use a mobile phone instead of having a land line, "that may very well be reasonable for them," he said.

AP

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Have A Read...
Category: Automotive

New York, NY — "What is your favorite book of all time?" The Bible? Gone With The Wind? Harris Interactive found these two books to be ranked numbers 1 and 2 as America's favorite books through a recent survey conducted over the Internet. When The Disinformation Company heard about this, whose publishing program caters towards the more alternative and controversial, they took the question straight to their readers with a blog on the popular social networking site MySpace.

"The response was overwhelming," says Disinformation's managing editor, Ralph Bernardo, who maintains a company MySpace page of over 114,000 "friends." The blog turned into an unexpected response survey to the Harris poll, receiving over 1,000 comments, and was the subject of Editor-in-Chief Sara Nelson's recent editorial in the trade publication of record for the book business, Publishers Weekly.

In "Read My Lists" (Publishers Weekly, 7/14/2008) Nelson found it interesting that Disinformation readers "favored backlist over books du jour" and "was skeptical and a little horrified … that such recent books-of-the moment as Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons made the Harris poll.

Here are the results and analysis of The Disinformation Company's "Favorite Books" MySpace Survey from Disinformation Managing Editor Ralph Bernardo. The overall top ten from their MySpace audience, surveyed from 1,074 responses, was:


1. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

2. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

3. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson

4. The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy), J. R. R. Tolkien

5. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

6. Slaughterhouse Five , Kurt Vonnegut

7. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger

8. Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

9. The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson

10. Ishmael, Daniel Quinn


"Orwell's 1984 is the clear favorite among Disinformation readers, with over 1 in 10 of survey respondents including it in their top ten, and twice as popular as their next favorite, Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," reports Ralph Bernardo. "But from there on in, it was a horserace for the remaining spots in the overall top ten."

The Disinformation top ten list is not without some shared favorites from the Harris poll, The Lord of The Rings was a very close 4th place for Disinformation readers (3rd on Harris), and Catcher in the Rye came in at 7th place (10th on Harris).

Countercultural landmarks, like Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, are favorite books among Disinformation readers, with numerous books by Thompson and Vonnegut cited as favorites among respondents. Other authors favored by Disinformation readers that didn't make the top ten with one book, whose favorite works were spread across five or more titles, included Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Albert Camus, Philip K. Dick, Jack Kerouac, and Chuck Palahniuk.

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Money is the root of all political evil.
Category: Games

Money is the root of all political evil
Kenneth Davidson
July 10, 2008
Two decisions on advertising have had a toxic impact on good governance.

POLITICIANS are bastards. But they are not necessarily born that way. I still believe that even the most cynical politician enters the game with at least a smidgen of idealism. But they are as much shaped by society as shaping it.

Reporter Royce Millar, who has been covering the details of Melbourne planning processes for a long time, gave Age readers an insight into how much the Victorian Labor Government is worth to the big end of town.

A good example is the sale for $80 million of 27 hectares of land, which housed 300 intellectually disabled residents in the Kew Cottages, for a medium-to-high-rise housing development. The money would be used to socially integrate the inmates into the suburbs and build additional new accommodation for those on the acute waiting list. Bollocks. The most cost-effective way of extending quality accommodation for the intellectually disabled would have been on site, a sensible proposition when there are 3000 intellectually disabled people on an urgent waiting list for this type of housing.

Furthermore, the site is unsuitable for housing redevelopment. Princes Street, which runs past it, is already gridlocked in the morning as cars attempt to get onto the Eastern Freeway and into the city via Hoddle Street. The problem is compounded by EastLink, which will pour another 20,000 cars onto the Eastern Freeway in the morning peak. This intensification of the problem of CBD congestion will be used as further justification for the north-west tunnel.

This is classic planning Melbourne style — one slice at a time. If there is any life left in politics in Victoria, Premier John Brumby will rue responding yesterday to Millar's article by stating: "There are corporations who want to donate to political parties … that's a good thing, that's a sign of a healthy democracy."

For arrogant stupidity this must rank with Transport Minister Lynne Kosky's 2007 statement: "Do I want to run a train system? I don't think so."

If Brumby were sincerely interested in a healthy democracy, he would begin by publishing information about the decision-making of his Government so voters could make up their own minds whether they are better off funding schools, hospitals, roads and other infrastructure as public-private partnerships rather than out of borrowings or consolidated revenue. If sincere, he would undertake proper environmental impact statements and public benefit cost analysis of major projects such as channel deepening or the Wonthaggi desal plant, and he would explain why the Government has refused to conduct an independent inquiry into the decision to persist with franchising public transport.

This is a bipolar Government. It makes decisions on water, brown-coal electricity generation and freeways while ignoring how these decisions relate to the global water, climate warming and "peak oil" crises. Money politics is the root of this bipolarity. It encourages secrecy, excluding the bigger picture. It undermines public ownership of decisions even when they are defensible, fuels cynicism about politicians and political processes and encourages public apathy, a characteristic of public life more readily identified in dictatorial regimes without the superficial trappings of democracy.

But let's be fair to our politicians. The huge sums paid by corporations to political parties detailed by Millar are not pocketed personally by the politicians. They are used by political parties to fight elections. Most of the money ends up as profits for the owners of the electronic media.

The cost of a 30-second TV spot covering Melbourne in peak viewing time is about $10,000 and the same spot covering the whole of Victoria will cost about $15,000 dollars. Commercial TV stations run on ratings. Politicians spouting politics, as distinct from behaving badly in restaurants, are a ratings turn-off. The average coverage of most elections on commercial stations during the height of an election campaign is a couple of minutes each day.

For most voters, who get their primary information about the world from the electronic media, their main impression of the campaign will come from these ads. Advertising is about persuasion, not information.

To their credit, a majority of the 1991 federal parliament passed legislation banning political advertising during elections on the electronic media. The legislation was challenged by the commercial broadcasters. A majority of the High Court found in favour of the broadcasters on the grounds that they found the legislation violated an implied constitutional freedom of political communication.

Who could possibly believe that election advertising was vital to free speech except the High Court and the media moguls concerned they might lose (then) about $30 million every three years from state and federal elections?

This High Court majority also found in 2005 that the government could spend $40 million on taxpayer-paid advertising of the most partisan nature (WorkChoices) without specific parliamentary authorisation or even the legislation being presented to parliament. These two decisions have had a toxic impact on good governance of Australia because of the power they put into the hands of ordinary politicians such as John Brumby, who will do whatever sharp practice the courts will allow to stay in power.

Kenneth Davidson is a senior columnist. Email: kdavidson@theage.com.au


http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/money-is-the-root-of-all-political-evil-20080709-3cji.html?page=-1

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George Carlin R.I.P
Category: Friends

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Carlin

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2008/06/george_carlin_a_comic_with_a_z.html

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