News_&_Current_Events_issue

by URI DOWBENKO

Pat Robertson isn’t the only Christian jihadist stirring up hatred and war mongering for the Bush Cabal. Now Hal Lindsay is calling for the invasion of Iran

Besides false prophet Hal Lindsay wants to blow up your planet. In fact he's been counting on it ever since he wrote "The Late Great Planet Earth," which predicts the demise of Terra. Why? Because his Belief System (BS) tells him so.

Faux Christian Hal Lindsay has been called the "Father of Apocalyptic Christian Zionism." His false prophecies have littered the landscape with failed doom and gloom scenarios for decades. Recently he has written a new pseudo-religious rant called "Iran could ignite catastrophe" on the extremist WorldNetDaily website.

Lindsay wants Iran to be nuked or at least invaded by the Bush Cabal since he believes he won’t get "rapturized" until the end of the world.

Lindsay’s specious reasoning again brings up the boogeyman of a "threat of a nuclear Iran” as well as the idea that "Israel is virtually certain to be Tehran's prime target.

Then he writes about the ultimate evangelical wet dream complete "nukular" annihilation through the Israeli plan for World War III called the "samson Option."

"The 'Samson Option' is an operational plan that can be implemented on very short notice," writes Lindsay. "If Israel sees that it is about to be overrun or faces annihilation by weapons of mass destruction, the 'Samson Option' will immediately kick in. There would be very little left of the Muslim Middle East after that."

And that's the way Lindsay likes it, since his false prophecies would finally get some legs.

Then Lindsay's war and fear mongering really kicks in. "In the meantime, Israel has formed a bold military strike plan to take out Iran's nuclear facilities before they go online if necessary. Israel has no illusions. It knows this would be an extremely dangerous and difficult operation, given the wide dispersal of Iran's nuclear facilities…It would have to be a massive attack to assure that all facilities are destroyed...The stakes could not be higher. The entire Middle East, Russia, much of Asia and the United States could be drawn into a confrontation over this that could explode into nuclear war."

Hal Lindsay has a lot of false prophecies to run through. But with the Bush Cabal planning WWIII in the Middle East, anything is possible.

Then Hal Lindsay's Late Great Apocalyptic Christian Zionism and its deluded followers will finally get "rapturized."

Then they can get reincarnated as Muslims -- and maybe finally learn their lesson...

* URI DOWBENKO is the author of "Bushwhacked: Inside Stories of True Conspiracy" and "Hoodwinked: Watching Movies with Eyes Wide Open." He can be reached at u.dowbenko@lycos.com His website is UriDowbenko.Com For more information on Dowbenko's articles and samples of chapters from his books Bushwhacked & Hoodwinked"

I N S I G H T

Walmart Kills Houston Man for Shoplifting
http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2005/08/42397.php
contributing editor to

- Rodger

[While holding down this man, the agents acted like cops and without any evidence, they justified their actions by claiming the man was "high on something". Naturally, they had NO idea of this. The cops use this line, or something similar, which you the reader or observer can not verify, to justify their conduct. It is wrong. -- Tribble]

Wal-Mart loss prevention workers tackled a man suspected of stealing diapers - a new father with a two month old child - holding him down with a choke hold and knee to the back while he was shirtless on the scalding pavement of a Wal-Mart parking lot in Texas.

The incident was witnessed by dozens of shoppers, including a prominent Texas attorney, Charles Portz:

Charles Portz said he was getting out of his car when he saw a heavy blonde haired man being chased by five people who appeared to be security or store employees. He said he saw them wrestling the man to the ground. "The blacktop was extremely hot," said Portz "He had no shirt on and they wouldn't let him up off the blacktop." He said one of the men had Driver in a chokehold and had his knee in the back of his neck as the men tried to subdue him. "He kept trying to get up and they kept pushing him back down," Portz said.

According to Portz, Driver began to plead with them men. "He's begging, 'Please call an ambulance, let me up, do something, I'm gonna die," said Portz. He said the loss prevention employees called the police more than once, but another bystander called for an ambulance after realizing Driver was in trouble. Portz said he eventually began to plead with the Walmart employees. "I told them, this guy doesn't look like he's breathing," Portz said, "They said, 'He's all right." He says he continued to plead with the men, pointing out that the man's fingernails were turning gray. "They said he's just high on something," adding, "They just kept him pinned down for twenty minutes or more until the ambulance came." He said he believed Driver was dead when the ambulance left with him, but he was not certain.

The store employees could not have known that the witness who was pleading with them to let Driver get up from the hot pavement was a high profile Houston attorney, from the Portz and Portz law firm. He said after the man was handcuffed he continued trying in vain to persuade the Walmart employees to allow him to get up, even pointing out that a second pair of cuffs could be used to attach the ones already on Driver to a nearby truck trailer. "The problem is they kept him down on the blistering concrete with no shirt on," Portz reiterated. He said law enforcement arrived at about the same time as the ambulance.

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I N S I G H T

Failure
contributing editor to

- Dan

If you have made mistakes...there is always another chance for you...you may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down. -- Mary Pickford

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain**

Your Vote Has not Counted for Many Years
http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2005/08/42397.php
contributing editor to

- Jeanne

[Some of you still think your vote counts. For over a decade there have many evidence supported reports revealing that voting in the uSA no longer counts. This LARGE (87Mb) sized video show the manipulation of the voting process in the new world of electronics. You should see this. You need Quicktime for viewing it. -- Tribble

http://www.votergate.tv/movie_links.html

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe

United States Police
contributing editor to

- Rodger

[There is something really wrong with this. -- Tribble]

This seems to have been around since about since 2003

Here is what "Last Trumpet Ministries" had to say about it.

Meanwhile, in America, the people continue to be terror-tested. Reports are out that Al Qaeda terrorists are soon to strike with an attack that would dwarf the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. (13) Such threats give the Gestapo outfit, known as the Department of Homeland Security, a reason to exist in the eyes of the American people. I am currently looking at two different arm patches for federal police, which was illegal under our constitution. One patch says “United States Police”, and the other says “Federal Protective Service Police.” (14) All other law enforcement agencies are subordinate to this federal fist of control. Most people have forgotten the new law that was passed in 1995, known to the 104th Congress as H.R. 666, which allows formerly illegal searches and seizures. (15) We are told that we must trust and obey the giant Department of Homeland Security with its 180,000 employees, and that this is for our own good. This department even has a pamphlet called “Get Ready Now”, which contains instructions on what to do in the event of a terrorist attack. The pamphlet contains the usual information about having a flashlight and some duct tape, but one thing caught my eye instantly. The Department of Homeland Security says, “If you have a car, keep a half tank of gas in it at all times.” (16) This directive reminds me of the order that was given just before the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. All American vehicles and aircraft were ordered to have a half tank of gas. That is why every vehicle and airplane became its own bomb, because a full tank of gas will not explode, but a half tank has maximum explosive power because of the fumes inside. The American people are being continually tested and set up for takeover and control by the powers of antichrist. -- http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org/2003/October2003.html

H U M O R

How to lose 75 pounds
contributing editor to

- Rodger

A man was ordered by his doctor to lose 75 lb. due to very serious health risks. As he wondered how in the heck he would ever do it, he ran across an ad in the newspaper for a GUARANTEED WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM.

"Guaranteed. Yeah right!" he thought to himself. But desperate, he calls them up and subscribes to the 3-day/10 pound weight loss program.

The next day there's a knock at his door, and when he answers, there stands before him a voluptuous, athletic, 19 year old young lady dressed in nothing but a pair of Nike running shoes and a sign round her neck. She introduces herself as a representative of the weight loss company. The sign reads, "If you can catch me, you can have me!" Without a second thought he takes off after her. A few miles later, huffing and puffing, he finally catches her and is too tired to have his way with her. After they are rested and she leaves, he thinks to himself, "I like the way this company does business!" The same girl shows up for the next two days and the same thing happens. The fourth day, he weighs himself and is delighted to find he has lost 10 lb. as promised.

He calls the company and orders their 5-day/20 pound program. The next day there's a knock at the door and there stands the most stunning, beautiful, sexy woman he has ever seen in his life, wearing nothing but Reebok running shoes and a sign around her neck that reads, "If you catch me, you can have me." He's out the door after her like a shot. This girl is in excellent shape and it takes him a very long while to catch her, but when he does, he is cramping and wheezing. For the next four days, the same routine happens and much to his delight, on the fifth day he weighs himself and found he has lost another 20 lb as promised.

He decides to go for broke and calls the company to order the 7-day/50 pound program. "Are you sure?" asks the representative on the phone.

"This is our most rigorous program." "Absolutely," he replies, "I haven't felt this good in years.

"The next day there's a knock at the door and when he opens it he finds a muscular guy standing there wearing nothing but pink running shoes and a sign around his neck that reads,

"If I catch you, you're mine."

a r t i c l e / c o m m e n t a r y

Diesel for Destruction
contributing editor to

- Viv

There has been a nation wide shortage of petrol and diesel in the country ever since the March elections which has now got so bad that it has bought almost everything to a complete standstill. Petrol stations are either completely dry and deserted or they are places where rumours of deliveries are rife and unmoving queues of driverless vehicles snake away into the distance. There may not be fuel for the everyday things like commuter buses and delivery trucks but there is still diesel for destruction. Countrywide the bulldozers continue to growl and roar as they push down walls, flatten homes and reduce lives to rubble in the fourth week of the government's Operation Restore Order.

One day this week I met a man who is in his early eighties and was desperate for just 10 litres of petrol so that he could get his wife to a specialist for medical treatment. The man has worked all his life in Zimbabwe and had prepared well for his old age. He hadn't banked on hyper inflation and economic collapse though and now his entire monthly pension isn't enough to buy even one litre of petrol. The man sat, counting filthy hundred dollar notes into piles, trying to work out just how much money he had and how many notes he would need. It was almost irrelevant that there was no petrol to buy because the fact was that 10 litres of petrol represented a year's worth of pension cheques.

Later that same day I met another elderly man who stood waiting for me near my car and greeted me politely as I arrived. "Can you help me, please. I have nothing to sell and am just an old man." Once a farm worker until the government seized all the farms, the man had then got a job working in a garden in the town. Four months ago the government increased the minimum wage for garden workers by one thousand percent and this elderly man lost his job. He has become just another helpless, hopeless victim in Zimbabwe. I did not ask the man where he was living or if his home had been reduced to a pile of rubble as everywhere there are police, many police, watching and waiting to "restore order". I pressed a note into his hand and felt ashamed that an old man who has lost everything, has been reduced to this.

Lilla von Elling
P.O.Box 38728
Howick
Auckland
Tel: 0064-9-2684640
Fax: 0064-9-2682098
Mob: 021-1342110

CORONADO, Calif. -- President Bush answered growing antiwar protests yesterday with a fresh reason for US troops to continue fighting in Iraq: protection of the country's vast oil fields, which he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists.

The president, standing against a backdrop of the USS Ronald Reagan, the newest aircraft carrier in the Navy's fleet, said terrorists would be denied their goal of making Iraq a base from which to recruit followers, train them, and finance attacks.

''We will defeat the terrorists," Bush said. ''We will build a free Iraq that will fight terrorists instead of giving them aid and sanctuary."

Appearing at Naval Air Station North Island to commemorate the anniversary of the Allies' World War II victory over Japan, Bush compared his resolve to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's in the 1940s and said America's mission in Iraq is to turn it into a democratic ally just as the United States did with Japan after its 1945 surrender. Bush's V-J Day ceremony did not fall on the actual anniversary. Japan announced its surrender on Aug. 15, 1945 -- Aug. 14 in the United States because of the time difference.

''Democratic Presidents Roosevelt and Truman led America to victory in World War II because they laid out a clear plan for success to the American people, America's allies, and America's troops," said Howard Dean, Democratic Party chairman. ''President Bush has failed to put together a plan, so despite the bravery and sacrifice of our troops, we are not making the progress that we should be in Iraq. The troops, our allies, and the American people deserve better leadership from our commander in chief."

The speech was Bush's third in just over a week defending his Iraq policies, as the White House scrambles to counter growing public concern about the war. But the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast drew attention away; the White House announced during the president's remarks that he was cutting his August vacation short to return to Washington, D.C., to oversee the federal effort.

After the speech, Bush hurried back to Texas ahead of schedule to prepare to fly back to the nation's capital today. He was to return to the White House on Friday, after spending more than four weeks operating from his ranch in Crawford.

It has been an especially deadly month there for US troops, with the number of those who have died since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 now nearing 1,900.

The growing death toll has become a regular feature of the slightly larger protests that Bush now encounters everywhere he goes -- a movement boosted by a vigil set up in a field down the road from the president's ranch by a mother grieving the loss of her soldier son in Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan arrived in Crawford only days after Bush did, asking for a meeting so he could explain why her son and others are dying in Iraq. The White House refused, and Sheehan's camp turned into a hub of activity for hundreds of activists around the country demanding that troops be brought home.

This week, the administration also had to defend the proposed constitution produced in Iraq at US urging. Critics fear the impact of its rejection by many Sunnis, and say it fails to protect religious freedom and women's rights.

At the naval base, Bush declared, ''We will not rest until victory is America's and our freedom is secure" from Al Qaeda and its forces in Iraq led by Abu Musab alZarqawi.

''If Zarqawi and [Osama] bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks," Bush said. ''They'd seize oil fields to fund their ambitions. They could recruit more terrorists by claiming a historic victory over the United States and our coalition."

a r t i c l e / c o m m e n t a r y

The State and the Flood
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/flood.html
contributing editor to

- Rodger

[Here are some things to keep in mind

"No one can escape the influence of a prevailing ideology," wrote Ludwig von Mises, and Gulf Coast residents know precisely what it means to be trapped—ostensibly by a flood but actually by statist policies and ideological commitments that put the government in charge of crisis management and public infrastructure. For what we are seeing in New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast region is the most egregious example of government failure in the United States since September 11, 2001.

Mother Nature can be cruel, but even at her worst, she is no match for government. It was the glorified public sector, the one we are always told is protecting us, that is responsible for this. And though our public servants and a sycophantic media will do their darn best to present this calamity as an act of nature, it was not and is not. Katrina came and went with far less damage than anyone expected. It was the failure of the public infrastructure and the response to it that brought down civilization.

The levees that failed and caused New Orleans to be flooded, bringing a humanitarian crisis not seen in our country in modern times, were owned and maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers. The original levees surrounding this city below sea level were erected in 1718, and have been variously expanded since.

But who knew that a direct hit by a hurricane would cause them to break? Many people, it turns out. Ivor van Heerden of Louisiana State University, reports Newsday, "has developed flooding models for New Orleans, was among those issuing dire predictions as Katrina approached, warnings that turned out to be grimly accurate. He predicted that floodwaters would overcome the levee system, fill the low-lying areas of the city and then remain trapped there well after the storm passed – creating a giant, stagnant pool contaminated with debris, sewage and other hazardous materials."

Newsday goes on: "Van Heerden and other experts put some of the blame on the Mississippi River levees themselves, because they channel silt directly into the Gulf of Mexico that otherwise would stabilize land along the riverside and slow the sinking of the coastline."

He is hardly some lone nut. National Geographic ran a large article on the topic last year that begins with a war-of-the-worlds scenario that reads precisely like this week's news from New Orleans. It is the Army Corps of Engineers that has been responsible for the dwindling of the coastline that has required the levees to be constantly reinforced with higher walls. But one problem: no one bothered to do this since 1965. That's only the beginning of the problems created by the Corps' levee management, the history of which was documented by Mark Thornton following the last flood in 1999.

Only the public sector can preside over a situation this precarious and display utter and complete inertia. What do these people have to lose? They are not real owners. There are no profits or losses at stake. They do not have to answer to risk-obsessed insurance companies who insist on premiums matching even the most remote contingencies. So long as it seems to work, they are glad to go about their business in the soporific style famous to all public sectors everywhere.

And failure of one structure has highlighted the failures of other structures. The levees could not be repaired in a timely manner because roads and bridges built and maintained by government could not withstand the pressure from the flood. They broke down.

And again, it is critical to keep in mind that none of this was caused by Hurricane Katrina as such. It was the levee break that led to the calamity. As the New York Times points out: "it was not the water from the sky but the water that broke through the city's protective barriers that had changed everything for the worse…. When the levees gave way in some critical spots, streets that were essentially dry in the hours immediately after the hurricane passed were several feet deep in water on Tuesday morning."

Indeed, at 4pm on Monday, August 29, all seemed calm, and reports of possible calamity seemed overwrought. Two hours later the reports began to appear about the levee. A period of some twelve hours lapsed between when the hurricane passed through and when the water came rushing into the city. There is some dispute about precisely when the levees broke. Some say that they were broken long before anyone discovered it, which is another outrage. There was no warning system. There is no question that plenty of time was available between their breakage and the flooding to enable to people to make other arrangements—and perhaps for the levees to be repaired. People were relieved that the rain subsided and the effects of Katrina were far less egregious than anyone expected.

That's when the disaster struck. The municipal government itself relocated to Baton Rouge even as the city pumps failed as well. Meanwhile, the Army Corp of Engineers apparently had no viable plan even to make repairs. They couldn't bring in the massive barges and cranes needed because the bridges were down and broken, or couldn't be opened without electricity. For public relations purposes, they dumped tons of sand into one breach even as another levee was breaking. But even that PR move failed since most helicopters were being used to move people from spot to spot—another classic case of miscalculation. Many bloggers had the sense that the public sector essentially walked away.

But the police and their guns and nightsticks were out in full force, not arresting criminals but pushing around the innocent and giving mostly bad instructions. The 10,000 people who had been corralled into the Superdome were essentially under house arrest from the police who were keeping them there, preventing them even from getting fresh air. A day later the water and food were running out, people were dying, and the sanitary conditions becoming disastrous. Finally someone had the idea of shipping all these people Soviet-like to Houston to live in the Astrodome, as if they are not people with volition but cattle.

After evacuations, the looting began and created a despicable sight of criminal gangs stealing everything in sight as the police looked on (when they weren't joining in). Now, this scene offers its own lessons. Why don't looting and rampant criminality occur every day? The police are always there and so are the hoodlums and the criminals. What was missing that made the looting rampage possible was the bourgeoisie, that had either left by choice or had been kicked out. It is they who keep the peace. And had any stayed around to protect their property, we don't even have to speculate what the police would have done: Arrest them!

Now, in the coming weeks, as it becomes ever more obvious that the real problem was not the hurricane but the failure of the infrastructure to work properly, the political left is going to have a heyday (here too). They will point out that Bush cut spending for the Army Corp of Engineers, that money allocated to reinforcing the levees and fixing the pumps had been cut to pay for other things, that we are reaping what we sow from failing to support the public sector.

The ever-stupid right will come to the defense of Bush and the Iraq War that has completely absorbed this regime's attention, pointing out that Bush is actually a big and compassionate spender who cares about infrastructure, while demanding that people recognize his greatness, along with all the other pieties that have become staples of modern "conservatism."

But this is a superficial critique (and defense) that doesn't get to the root of the problem with public services. NASA spends and spends and still can't seem to make a reliable space shuttle. The public schools absorb many times more—thousands times more—in resources than private schools and still can't perform well. The federal government spends trillions over years to "protect" the country and can't fend off a handful of malcontents with an agenda. So too, Congress can allocate a trillion dollars to fix every levee, fully preventing the last catastrophe, but not the next one.

The problem here is public ownership itself. It has encouraged people to adopt a negligent attitude toward even such obvious risks. Private developers and owners, in contrast, demand to know every possible scenario as a way to protect their property. But public owners have no real stake in the outcome and lack the economic capacity to calibrate resource allocation to risk assessment. In other words, the government manages without responsibility or competence.

Can levees and pumps and disaster management really be privatized? Not only can they be; they must be if we want to avoid ever more apocalypses of this sort. William Buckley used to poke fun at libertarians and their plans for privatizing garbage collection, but this disaster shows that much more than this ought to be in private hands. It is not a trivial issue; our survival may depend on it.

It is critically important that the management of the whole of the nation's infrastructure be turned over to private management and ownership. Only in private hands can there be a possibility of a match between expenditure and performance, between risk and responsibility, between the job that needs to be done and the means to accomplish it.

The list of public sector failures hardly stops there. The outrageous insistence that no one be permitted to "gouge" only creates shortages in critically important goods and services when they are needed the most. It is at times of extreme need that prices most need to be free to change so that consumers and producers can have an idea of what is needed and what is in demand. Absent those signals, people do not know what to conserve and what to produce.

Bush was on national television declaring that the feds would have zero tolerance towards gouging, which is another way of saying zero tolerance toward markets. If New Orleans stands any chance of coming back, it will only be because private enterprise does the rebuilding, one commercial venture at a time. Bush's kind of talk guarantees a future of mire and muck, the remote possibility of prosperity and peace sacrificed on the altar of interventionism.

Moreover, every American ought to be alarmed at the quickness of officials to declare martial law, invade people's rights, deny people the freedom of movement, and otherwise trample on all values that this country is supposed to hold dear. A crisis does not negate the existence of human rights. It is not a license for tyranny. It is not a signal that government may do anything it wants.

This crisis ought to underscore a point made on these pages again and again. Being a government official gives you no special insight into how to best manage a crisis. Indeed the public sector, with all its guns and mandates and arrogance, cannot and will not protect us from life's contingencies. It used to be said that infrastructure was too important to be left to the uncertainties of markets. But if it is certainty that we are after, there is a new certainty that has emerged in American life: in a crisis, the government will make matters worse and worse until it wrecks your life and all that makes it worth living.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail] is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com and author of Speaking of Liberty.

America is over. America is like Wile E. Coyote after he's run out a few paces past the edge of the cliff – he'll take a few more steps in midair before he looks down. Then, when he sees that there's nothing under him, he'll fall. Many Americans suspect that they're running on thin air, but they haven't looked down yet. When they do ...

Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, a pillar of the Establishment with access to economic information beyond our reach, wrote recently: "Circumstances seem to me as dangerous and intractable as any I can remember. ... What really concerns me is that there seems to be so little willingness or capacity to do anything about it" (quoted in The Economist, April 16, p.12). Volcker chooses words carefully: "dangerous and intractable," "willingness or capacity." He's saying: The situation is probably beyond our powers to remedy.

Gas prices can only go up. Oil production is at or near peak capacity. The U.S. must compete for oil with China, the fastest-growing colossus in history. But the U.S. also must borrow $2 billion a day to remain solvent, nearly half of that from China and her neighbors, while they supply most of our manufacturing ("Benson's Economic and Market Trends," quoted in Asia Times Online) – so we have no cards to play with China, even militarily. (You can't war with the bankers who finance your army and the factories that supply your stores.) China now determines oil demand, and the U.S. has no long-term way to influence prices. That means $4 a gallon by next spring, and rising – $5, then $6, probably $10 by 2010 or thereabouts. Their economy can afford it; ours can't. We may hobble along with more or less the same way of life for the next dollar or so of hikes, but at around $4 America changes. Drastically.

The "exburbs" and the rural poor will feel it first and hardest. Exburbians moved to the farthest reaches of suburbia for cheap real estate, willing to drive at least an hour each way to work. Many live marginally now. What happens when their commute becomes prohibitively expensive, just as interest rates and inflation rise, while their property values plummet? Urban real estate will go up, so they won't be able to live near their jobs – and there's nowhere else to go. In addition, thanks to Congress' recent shameless activity, bankruptcy is no longer an option for many. What happens to these people? Exburb refugees. A modern Dust Bowl.

For the rural poor it's even worse. They are the poorest among us, with no assets and few skills; they earn the lowest nonimmigrant wages in America, and they must drive. When gas hits $4, their already below-the-margin life will be unsustainable. They'll have no choice but to be refugees and join in the modern Dust Bowl migration. So, too, will people who live where people were never intended to live in such numbers – places like Phoenix and Vegas, unlivable without air conditioning and water transport (energy prices will rise across the board, regular brownouts, blackouts, and faucet-drips will be "the new normal" everywhere). In the desert cities, real estate will plunge, thousands will be ruined, most will leave – while all over the country folks will have to get used to "hot" and "cold" again.

But where will the new refugees go, and what will they do when they get there? They will migrate to the more livable cities, where rents are already unreasonable and social services are already strained, and where the new refugees will compete with immigrants for the lowest-level housing and jobs. Immigration issues will intensify to hysteria. Native-born Americans will clamor for work that only legal and illegal aliens do now. In a culture as prone to violence as ours, that will probably get ugly.

Meanwhile, suburbs and cities will be in various states of chaos, depending on their infrastructure. As inflation and interest rates rise, and the real estate bubble bursts, millions will see their assets plunge precipitously. In five years, many who are now well-off will live as the marginal live today, while the marginal will sink into poverty. With gas at $4-plus a gallon, real estate values will depend on nearness to working centers and access to transportation. As has already happened in Manhattan, the well-off will head for what are now slums, and the slum-dwellers will go God-knows-where. Places with decent rail service will be prime. Places without rail service will be in deep trouble.

One key to America's future will be: How quickly can we build or rebuild heavy and light rail? And where will we get the money to do it? Railroads are the cheapest transport, the easiest to sustain, and the only solution to a post-automobile America. (For reasons I haven't space to detail, hybrid cars and alternative energy won't cut it, if by "cut it" one means retaining anything like the present standard of living. See James Howard Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" on Rolling Stone's Web site. Also check Mike Ruppert's site www.fromthewilderness.com and the documentary The End of Suburbia.) A massive investment in railroad infrastructure could offer jobs to the unskilled and skilled alike, absorb much of the inevitable population displacement, and create a new social equilibrium 10 or 15 years down the line. Old RR cities like Grand Junction, Colo.; Amarillo, Texas; and Albuquerque, N.M., could become vital centers, offering new lives for the displaced. Railroads are key, but the question is: how to finance them?

There's only one section of our economy that has that kind of money: the military budget. The U.S. now spends more on its military than all other nations combined. A sane transit to a post-automobile America will require a massive shift from military to infrastructure spending. That shift would be supported by our bankers in China and Europe (that is, they would continue to finance our debt) because it's in their interests that we regain economic viability. What's not in their interests is that we remain a military superpower.

Can America face reality? If the government responds to the coming changes by attempting to remain a superpower no matter what, there is no way to underestimate the harm. The numbers speak for themselves. Soon we'll no longer have the resources to remain a military superpower and sustain a livable society that is anything like what we know today. It happened to England; it happened to Russia; it's about to happen to us. England sustained the transformation more or less gracefully; it lost its dominance while retaining its essential character. Russia is still in a period of transformation, but has remained a player thanks to its oil reserves. Europe in general – France, Germany, Italy, and Spain (all world powers in the fairly recent past) – is creating a post-national society, the most experimental form of governance since America's revolution. We have no appreciable oil, and we no longer have a manufacturing base. So what will the United States do? Sanely recognize its declining status and act accordingly, or make one last ignoble stab to retain its position by force?

Half a century ago James Baldwin wrote: "Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses." Americans believe they're "No. 1," destined to lead the world. That is the America that's over. If we insist on that illusion, then this world is in for tough times. We will neither hold on to what we have nor create what we might have, but we will wreak untold harm (if we don't destroy the species altogether). Or we can face and embrace reality. And that reality is: There is no such thing as "No. 1" ... there is no such thing as an ideal destined country that is better than any other ... there is only us, doing the best we can, trying to live free and sanely, within limits that are about to become only too clear. Our glory days are done. What's next?

Remember, we're not talking about the far future. We're talking about the next decade.

No country gets two centuries anymore. The 21st will be China's century. That's what $4-plus a gallon means, and nothing can stop it. So: How will we change? But the question "How will we change?" is really the question "How will I change?" Because history isn't a spectator sport. It's you and me. Everything depends on whether we side with reality or illusion. Face reality, and we have a chance. Cling to illusion, and we are lost. The America we've known is over – very soon. The America we can create is up to us.

Michael Ventura will join Robert Bly, Joseph Chilton Pearce, Coleman Barks, and John Densmore, among others, at Bly's 31st annual Conference on the Great Mother and the New Father, May 28-June 5, in Wisconsin. For info e-mail greatmother@yelllowmoon.com

a r t i c l e / c o m m e n t a r y

The Lies To Hike The Price Of Oil
http://www.rense.com/general67/PRICE.HTM
contributing editor to

- Rodger and Jeanne

A more appropriate title for this piece would have been "Orchestrating Financial Collapse".

Admittedly the hardest part of observing the unfolding of a prearranged history is connecting the dots. More to the point, to be able to see how all things are connected and work in concert to achieve a desired goal.

So I'd like to throw some things out that the public at large doesn't know and never would. What I am about to tell is common knowledge in oil circles but the worker ants at the bottom of the pyramid never question what they see. I was an eye witness to what I am going to relate and there are a good many others who could come forward if only they will.

In 2000, I worked in the Gulf of Mexico for two different OSV companies that provided support services to the "oil patch". The two companies did very different work for the oil companies so I got to get an eye full.

The first thing that I'd like to expose is the fact that nearly all of the new wells in the gulf are immediately capped off and forgotten about. I saw well after well brought in only to see them capped off and left. Oil or natural gas it didn't matter. I asked a couple of petroleum engineers what exactly was going on and I was told by both (they worked for different companies) that there was no intention of bringing that oil to market until the "price was right".

That wasn't the only bogus thing that was happening. Seismic technology had developed to the point that they could not only tell the companies where the oil was but how much oil was there. All they had to do was go out and stick a straw in and suck it out. They didn't. Once again, the oil prices weren't right. When they are ready and want it they know right where to go get it.

Another lie I'd like to lay to rest is the one about all of the "terrible damage" done to the oil platforms and rigs in the gulf during hurricanes. This is how they justify the price spikes that occur because of lost production. If anyone cared to see this for themselves they could travel the entire Gulf of Mexico in search of destroyed oil rigs and they won't find any- not one. There is a damed good reason that this is so and that reason is that they are built so well that a hurricane can't touch them.

Think about it . If you're going to build something in an area where you are guaranteed to see 150-180 mph winds, storm swells up to 60-80 feet and it will happen year after year, how would you build them? Out of chicken wire and duct tape? Hell no and they don't. The platforms are designed to offer almost no wind resistance and the majority of platforms are at least 120 feet above the water level. They are built so well that several of them have suffered direct hits by watercraft of all sizes with little harm. They were damaged but they were far from destroyed.

The reason that I know how well they are constructed is because for awhile I worked with a company that salvaged derelict oil rigs. When the wells ran dry and the oil companies didn't need them any more the company that I worked for would buy them, take them apart, haul them back to land, refurbish and then resell them. It is an incredible process to take these things apart because they are constructed so
well.

I've worked on the boats that hauled explosives to the job sites to speed the disassembly process.

Another lie regards the "burp" in the supply line. Oil companies are as stingy as any on earth and one of the ways that they cut costs is to eliminate the number of people that they need on a rig to keep it running. Most active wells are totally automated and require almost no human intervention. The oil companies have guys that travel from rig to rig via helicopter to check on things periodically but most never see
a human on them unless something goes wrong or some maintenance is needed.

During a hurricane about the only rigs that need to be evacuated are the drill rigs that have workers on them. The active wells and pumping stations are controlled by remote control from the shore and if it weren't for the evacuation of land based personnel from areas where there is danger from the hurricanes these things could continue to pump right through the worst hurricane.

So, regarding a burp in the supply chain there shouldn't be one and that is because most of the oil from the Gulf of Mexico goes to the refinerys at Port Arthur or other points in Texas and the tankers from the middle east go to Galveston to offload.

When oil moves across the Atlantic during hurricane season the tanker traffic may have to kill some time to let a storm get ahead of them but once it does they haul ass right behind it. Anyone who has seen how fast an oil tanker can move in open water will tell you that they don't dawdle around. Most of them can move around 30-40 knots and for a ship that size that baby is moving on. The only reason they would have to
kill any more time would be if a hurricane suddenly changed course and was headed for Galveston. So far this year that hasn't happened. So why the "break" in supply?

Everything that we hear about oil from the oil companies is a big fat lie. Have we hit "peak oil" as a good many insist that we have? I'll make a wager with anyone who would care to take the bet. I bet that when oil hits $100 a barrel (I have a hunch that's the target price) there will be no shortage. Any takers?

One of the most astounding things to watch when the elite swing into action is what I call conservation of movement. If you had three events that you wanted to set into motion you could apply the necessary pressure separately to all three to get them moving. Or you could do what these guys do and wait patiently until you see the right opportunity to apply the pressure in only one spot that will move the other two with the momentum from the first. The difference is whether something is pushed or pulled along. It"s as graceful as a ballet to watch in motion. No wasted motion, no wasted energy, it would almost be a thing of beauty if it weren't for the rotten purposes behind it all.

So for all of the kiddies that are waiting for their draft notices I would say don't bother, I don't think that there will be a draft. They won't need one. Since the all volunteer military came into being recruitment has always had an inverse relationship to the economy. The better the economy the harder it is to get recruits. We're facing a winter season in North America that may see heating costs equal to a family's house payment. If our weather is being controlled expect it to be a bad one. With $100 dollar a barrel oil on the horizon and the ensuing loss of jobs because of energy costs the military will be one of the only places a young man or woman will be able to eat on a regular basis and keep a roof over their heads.

The beltway fascists have said all along that there would be no draft because they wouldn't need one. Don't you have to wonder how they knew this (what is it you say- just a coincidence nothing to worry about)? God does work in mysterious ways. The neocons need cannon fodder for their war machine and lo and behold mysterious market forces drop it on their doorstep.

For another coincidence take a look at Social Security here in the US.Amazing how the price of oil began a sudden rise when it became apparent that the American people weren't going to allow their retirement money to be "privatized". When the carrot didn't work the stick wasn't far behind.

a r t i c l e / c o m m e n t a r y

Did the Government Cause Hurricane Katrina?
http://www.radarmatrix.com/
contributing editor to

- Rodger and Jeanne

[If they don't have the ability to modify the weather, why do they need this bill passed? -- Rodger]

109th Congress
S. 517: A bill to establish a Weather Modification Operations and Research Board, and for other purposes
Introduced: Mar 3, 2005
Sponsor: Sen. Kay Hutchison [R-TX]
Status: Introduced (By Sen. Kay Hutchison [R-TX])
Last Action: Mar 3, 2005: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. (text of measure as introduced: CR S2025-2026)

1        Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
2 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
3   SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
4        This Act may be cited as the ``Weather Modification
5 Research and Technology Transfer Authorization Act of
6 2005''.
7   SEC. 2. PURPOSE.
8        It is the purpose of this Act to develop and implement
9 a comprehensive and coordinated national weather modi-
10 fication policy and a national cooperative Federal and
                                   2

1 State program of weather modification research and devel-
2 opment.
3    SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.
4         In this Act:
5                  (1) BOARD.--The term ``Board'' means the
6         Weather Modification Advisory and Research Board.
7                  (2) EXECUTIVE   DIRECTOR.--The   term ``Execu-
8         tive Director'' means the Executive Director of the
9         Weather Modification Advisory and Research Board.
10                 (3) RESEARCH    AND DEVELOPMENT.--The    term
11        ``research and development'' means theoretical anal-
12        ysis, exploration, experimentation, and the extension
13        of investigative findings and theories of scientific or
14        technical nature into practical application for experi-
15        mental and demonstration purposes, including the
16        experimental production and testing of models, de-
17        vices, equipment, materials, and processes.
18                 (4)   WEATHER MODIFICATION.--The term
19        ``weather modification'' means changing or control-
20        ling, or attempting to change or control, by artificial
21        methods the natural development of atmospheric
22        cloud forms or precipitation forms which occur in
23        the troposphere.

       S 517 IS
                                  3
1    SEC. 4. WEATHER MODIFICATION ADVISORY AND RE-
2    SEARCH BOARD ESTABLISHED.
3        (a) IN GENERAL.--There is established in the De-
4 partment of Commerce the Weather Modification Advisory
5 and Research Board.
6        (b) MEMBERSHIP.--
7                 (1) IN   GENERAL.--The   Board shall consist of
8        11 members appointed by the Secretary of Com-
9        merce, of whom--
10                     (A) at least 1 shall be a representative of
11                the American Meteorological Society;
12                     (B) at least 1 shall be a representative of
13                the American Society of Civil Engineers;
14                     (C) at least 1 shall be a representative of
15                the National Academy of Sciences;
16                     (D) at least 1 shall be a representative of
17                the National Center for Atmospheric Research
18                of the National Science Foundation;
19                     (E) at least 2 shall be representatives of
20                the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin-
21                istration of the Department of Commerce;
22                     (F) at least 1 shall be a representative of
23                institutions of higher education or research in-
24                stitutes; and

      S 517 IS
                                  4
1                    (G) at least 1 shall be a representative of
2                a State that is currently supporting operational
3                weather modification projects.
4                (2) TENURE.--A member of the Board serves
5       at the pleasure of the Secretary of Commerce.
6                (3) VACANCIES.--Any vacancy on the Board
7       shall be filled in the same manner as the original ap-
8       pointment.
9       (b) ADVISORY COMMITTEES.--The Board may estab-
10 lish advisory committees to advise the Board and to make
11 recommendations to the Board concerning legislation, poli-
12 cies, administration, research, and other matters.
13       (c) INITIAL MEETING.--Not later than 30 days after
14 the date on which all members of the Board have been
15 appointed, the Board shall hold its first meeting.
16       (d) MEETINGS.--The Board shall meet at the call of
17 the Chair.
18       (e) QUORUM.--A majority of the members of the
19 Board shall constitute a quorum, but a lesser number of
20 members may hold hearings.
21       (f) CHAIR AND VICE CHAIR.--The Board shall select
22 a Chair and Vice Chair from among its members.
23   SEC. 5. DUTIES OF THE BOARD.
24       (a) PROMOTION OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOP
25   MENT.--In      order to assist in expanding the theoretical

      S 517 IS
                                  5
1 and practical knowledge of weather modification, the
2 Board shall promote and fund research and development,
3 studies, and investigations with respect to--
4                (1) improved forecast and decision-making tech-
5       nologies for weather modification operations, includ-
6       ing tailored computer workstations and software and
7       new observation systems with remote sensors; and
8                (2) assessments and evaluations of the efficacy
9       of weather modification, both purposeful (including
10       cloud-seeding operations) and inadvertent (including
11       downwind effects and anthropogenic effects).
12       (b) FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE.--Unless the use of the
13 money is restricted or subject to any limitations provided
14 by law, the Board shall use amounts in the Weather Modi-
15 fication Research and Development Fund--
16                (1) to pay its expenses in the administration of
17       this Act, and
18                (2) to provide for research and development
19       with respect to weather modifications by grants to,
20       or contracts or cooperative arrangements, with pub-
21       lic or private agencies.
22       (c) REPORT.--The Board shall submit to the Sec-
23 retary biennially a report on its findings and research re-
24 sults.

      S 517 IS
                               6
1   SEC. 6. POWERS OF THE BOARD.

3 The Board may make any studies or investigations, obtain
4 any information, and hold any hearings necessary or prop-
5 er to administer or enforce this Act or any rules or orders
6 issued under this Act.
7       (b) PERSONNEL.--The Board may employ, as pro-
8 vided for in appropriations Acts, an Executive Director
9 and other support staff necessary to perform duties and
10 functions under this Act.
11       (c) COOPERATION WITH OTHER AGENCIES.--The
12 Board may cooperate with public or private agencies to
13 promote the purposes of this Act.
14       (d) COOPERATIVE AGREEMENTS.--The Board may
15 enter into cooperative agreements with the head of any
16 department or agency of the United States, an appropriate
17 official of any State or political subdivision of a State, or
18 an appropriate official of any private or public agency or
19 organization for conducting weather modification activities
20 or cloud-seeding operations.
21       (e) CONDUCT AND CONTRACTS FOR RESEARCH AND
22 DEVELOPMENT.--The Executive Director, with the ap-
23 proval of the Board, may conduct and may contract for
24 research and development activities relating to the pur-
25 poses of this section.

      S 517 IS
                               7
1   SEC. 7. COOPERATION WITH THE WEATHER MODIFICATION

3       The heads of the departments and agencies of the
4 United States and the heads of any other public or private
5 agencies and institutions that receive research funds from
6 the United States shall, to the extent possible, give full
7 support and cooperation to the Board and to initiate inde-
8 pendent research and development programs that address
9 weather modifications.
10   SEC. 8. FUNDING.
11       (a) IN GENERAL.--There is established within the
12 Treasury of the United States the Weather Modification
13 Research and Development Fund, which shall consist of
14 amounts appropriated pursuant to subsection (b) or re-
15 ceived by the Board under subsection (c).
16       (b) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.--There is
17 authorized to be appropriated to the Board for the pur-
18 poses of carrying out the provisions of this Act
19 $10,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2005 through 2014.
20 Any sums appropriated under this subsection shall remain
21 available, without fiscal year limitation, until expended.
22       (c) GIFTS.--The Board may accept, use, and dispose
23 of gifts or donations of services or property.
24   SEC. 9. EFFECTIVE DATE.
25       This Act shall take effect on October 1, 2005.

GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT (by premium subscription only), 09.01.2005
By George Friedman

The American political system was founded in Philadelphia, but the American nation was built on the vast farmlands that stretch from the Alleghenies to the Rockies. That farmland produced the wealth that funded American industrialization: It permitted the formation of a class of small landholders who, amazingly, could produce more than they could consume. They could sell their excess crops in the east and in Europe and save that money, which eventually became the founding capital of American industry.

But it was not the extraordinary land nor the farmers and ranchers who alone set the process in motion. Rather, it was geography -- the extraordinary system of rivers that flowed through the Midwest and allowed them to ship their surplus to the rest of the world. All of the rivers flowed into one -- the Mississippi -- and the Mississippi flowed to the ports in and around one city: New Orleans. It was in New Orleans that the barges from upstream were unloaded and their cargos stored, sold and reloaded on ocean-going vessels. Until last Sunday, New Orleans was, in many ways, the pivot of the American economy.

For that reason, the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 was a key moment in American history. Even though the battle occurred after the War of 1812 was over, had the British taken New Orleans, we suspect they wouldn't have given it back. Without New Orleans, the entire Louisiana Purchase would have been valueless to the United States. Or, to state it more precisely, the British would control the region because, at the end of the day, the value of the Purchase was the land and the rivers - which all converged on the Mississippi and the ultimate port of New Orleans. The hero of the battle was Andrew Jackson, and when he became president, his obsession with Texas had much to do with keeping the Mexicans away from New Orleans.

During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be? The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic, then the foundations of the economy would be shattered. The industrial minerals needed in the factories wouldn't come in, and the agricultural wealth wouldn't flow out. Alternative routes really weren't available. The Germans knew it too: A U-boat campaign occurred near the mouth of the Mississippi during World War II. Both the Germans and Stratfor have stood with Andy Jackson: New Orleans was the prize.

Last Sunday, nature took out New Orleans almost as surely as a nuclear strike. Hurricane Katrina's geopolitical effect was not, in many ways, distinguishable from a mushroom cloud. The key exit from North America was closed. The petrochemical industry, which has become an added value to the region since Jackson's days, was at risk. The navigability of the Mississippi south of New Orleans was a question mark. New Orleans as a city and as a port complex had ceased to exist, and it was not clear that it could recover.

The Ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans, which run north and south of the city, are as important today as at any point during the history of the republic. On its own merit, POSL is the largest port in the United States by tonnage and the fifth-largest in the world. It exports more than 52 million tons a year, of which more than half are agricultural products -- corn, soybeans and so on. A large proportion of U.S. agriculture flows out of the port. Almost as much cargo, nearly 17 million tons, comes in through the port -- including not only crude oil, but chemicals and fertilizers, coal, concrete and so on.

A simple way to think about the New Orleans port complex is that it is where the bulk commodities of agriculture go out to the world and the bulk commodities of industrialism come in. The commodity chain of the global food industry starts here, as does that of American industrialism. If these facilities are gone, more than the price of goods shifts: The very physical structure of the global economy would have to be reshaped. Consider the impact to the U.S. auto industry if steel doesn't come up the river, or the effect on global food supplies if U.S. corn and soybeans don't get to the markets.

The problem is that there are no good shipping alternatives. River transport is cheap, and most of the commodities we are discussing have low value-to-weight ratios. The U.S. transport system was built on the assumption that these commodities would travel to and from New Orleans by barge, where they would be loaded on ships or offloaded. Apart from port capacity elsewhere in the United States, there aren't enough trucks or rail cars to handle the long-distance hauling of these enormous quantities -- assuming for the moment that the economics could be managed, which they can't be.

The focus in the media has been on the oil industry in Louisiana and Mississippi. This is not a trivial question, but in a certain sense, it is dwarfed by the shipping issue. First, Louisiana is the source of about 15 percent of U.S.-produced petroleum, much of it from the Gulf. The local refineries are critical to American infrastructure. Were all of these facilities to be lost, the effect on the price of oil worldwide would be extraordinarily painful. If the river itself became unnavigable or if the ports are no longer functioning, however, the impact to the wider economy would be significantly more severe. In a sense, there is more flexibility in oil than in the physical transport of these other commodities.

There is clearly good news as information comes in. By all accounts, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, which services supertankers in the Gulf, is intact. Port Fourchon, which is the center of extraction operations in the Gulf, has sustained damage but is recoverable. The status of the oil platforms is unclear and it is not known what the underwater systems look like, but on the surface, the damage - though not trivial -- is manageable.

The news on the river is also far better than would have been expected on Sunday. The river has not changed its course. No major levees containing the river have burst. The Mississippi apparently has not silted up to such an extent that massive dredging would be required to render it navigable. Even the port facilities, although apparently damaged in many places and destroyed in few, are still there. The river, as transport corridor, has not been lost.

What has been lost is the city of New Orleans and many of the residential suburban areas around it. The population has fled, leaving behind a relatively small number of people in desperate straits. Some are dead, others are dying, and the magnitude of the situation dwarfs the resources required to ameliorate their condition. But it is not the population that is trapped in New Orleans that is of geopolitical significance: It is the population that has left and has nowhere to return to.

The oil fields, pipelines and ports required a skilled workforce in order to operate. That workforce requires homes. They require stores to buy food and other supplies. Hospitals and doctors. Schools for their children. In other words, in order to operate the facilities critical to the United States, you need a workforce to do it -- and that workforce is gone. Unlike in other disasters, that workforce cannot return to the region because they have no place to live. New Orleans is gone, and the metropolitan area surrounding New Orleans is either gone or so badly damaged that it will not be inhabitable for a long time.

It is possible to jury-rig around this problem for a short time. But the fact is that those who have left the area have gone to live with relatives and friends. Those who had the ability to leave also had networks of relationships and resources to manage their exile. But those resources are not infinite -- and as it becomes apparent that these people will not be returning to New Orleans any time soon, they will be enrolling their children in new schools, finding new jobs, finding new accommodations. If they have any insurance money coming, they will collect it. If they have none, then -- whatever emotional connections they may have to their home -- their economic connection to it has been severed. In a very short time, these people will be making decisions that will start to reshape population and workforce patterns in the region.

A city is a complex and ongoing process - one that requires physical infrastructure to support the people who live in it and people to operate that physical infrastructure. We don't simply mean power plants or sewage treatment facilities, although they are critical. Someone has to be able to sell a bottle of milk or a new shirt. Someone has to be able to repair a car or do surgery. And the people who do those things, along with the infrastructure that supports them, are gone -- and they are not coming back anytime soon.

It is in this sense, then, that it seems almost as if a nuclear weapon went off in New Orleans. The people mostly have fled rather than died, but they are gone. Not all of the facilities are destroyed, but most are. It appears to us that New Orleans and its environs have passed the point of recoverability. The area can recover, to be sure, but only with the commitment of massive resources from outside -- and those resources would always be at risk to another Katrina.

The displacement of population is the crisis that New Orleans faces. It is also a national crisis, because the largest port in the United States cannot function without a city around it. The physical and business processes of a port cannot occur in a ghost town, and right now, that is what New Orleans is. It is not about the facilities, and it is not about the oil. It is about the loss of a city's population and the paralysis of the largest port in the United States.

Let's go back to the beginning. The United States historically has depended on the Mississippi and its tributaries for transport. Barges navigate the river. Ships go on the ocean. The barges must offload to the ships and vice versa. There must be a facility to empower this exchange. It is also the facility where goods are stored in transit. Without this port, the river can't be used. Protecting that port has been, from the time of the Louisiana Purchase, a fundamental national security issue for the United States.

Katrina has taken out the port -- not by destroying the facilities, but by rendering the area uninhabited and potentially uninhabitable. That means that even if the Mississippi remains navigable, the absence of a port near the mouth of the river makes the Mississippi enormously less useful than it was. For these reasons, the United States has lost not only its biggest port complex, but also the utility of its river transport system -- the foundation of the entire American transport system. There are some substitutes, but none with sufficient capacity to solve the problem.

It follows from this that the port will have to be revived and, one would assume, the city as well. The ports around New Orleans are located as far north as they can be and still be accessed by ocean-going vessels. The need for ships to be able to pass each other in the waterways, which narrow to the north, adds to the problem. Besides, the Highway 190 bridge in Baton Rouge blocks the river going north. New Orleans is where it is for a reason: The United States needs a city right there.

New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure. It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist. With that as a given, a city will return there because the alternatives are too devastating. The harvest is coming, and that means that the port will have to be opened soon. As in Iraq, premiums will be paid to people prepared to endure the hardships of working in New Orleans. But in the end, the city will return because it has to.

Geopolitics is the stuff of permanent geographical realities and the way they interact with political life. Geopolitics created New Orleans. Geopolitics caused American presidents to obsess over its safety. And geopolitics will force the city's resurrection, even if it is in the worst imaginable place.
-END-

a r t i c l e / c o m m e n t a r y

Picking up the Pieces: Practical Guide for Surviving Economic Crashes, Internal Unrest and Military Suppression
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index713.htm
contributing editor to

- Viv

["the most basic rule of survival, LEAVE before it gets worse" -- Tribble]

By: Sorcha Faal

In the span of less than 3 months: Gasoline prices will rise 500%. The prices of both food and shelter rise over 300%. Unemployment levels reach over 30% and are still climbing. The savings of millions evaporate overnight due to currency devaluation and bank failures. Unrest will begin in the larger cities first, then spreading out into the countryside. Strong and repressive laws are newly enacted as Police and Military forces spread throughout the country to counter all signs of growing rebellion.

If you are an American reading these words you must understand two things: 1.) This is what is soon to happen to you, and 2.) The description written above applies equally to the United States of 2005, The United States of 1929, The former Soviet Union of 1989, The German Republic of 1924, The Cuba of 1960, Argentina of 1986, Iran of 1979 and the Czarist Russian Empire of 1917, to just name a few.

From each of these historical examples further lessons have been learned on how not only to survive, but on how to remain as free as possible and keep your family clothed, housed, fed and alive.

While in the midst of these cataclysmic human events is not the best time to learn the lessons provided in this book, but rather beforehand.

Gathered from historical archives, and hundreds of personal accounts, this book will provide you with all of the information you need (and from those who have lived through, and survived these same events) to survive what you are about to face in your lives. It will give you this information, KNOWLEDGE, when you need it most, NOW.

This book begins with the most basic rule of survival, LEAVE before it gets worse. Prior knowledge about events soon to occur have saved millions over the past Century allowing them to flee the most dangerous areas ahead of time, and when they still could.

What countries are available to Americans now to immigrate to should they choose to flee? What are the ramifications in becoming an International refugee? How can ones property and wealth be converted into allowing them leave their countries of origin? These are important questions, this book provides those answers.

Not everyone that can leave will leave; history has taught this lesson well….especially to the almost complete annihilation of all the Jewish peoples in Europe during World War II.

To those who are trapped and not able to leave how then can they survive these events? By utilizing the practical knowledge and information passed down to them by those who have gone through these things before.

This massive book (over 400 pages) contains perhaps the largest archive of survival information for those facing the imminent dangers of collapsing economies and currencies and the subsequent dictatorial or revolutionary regimes that inevitably follow.

How do you function in an underground economy? How do you bribe officials and why do you need to know this? What are the advantages in having multiple sets of identification papers for yourself and your family members BEFORE the onset of events you know are coming?

What are the advantages and disadvantages in grouping with other people? What are the ethical, moral and legal implications for protecting those wanted by the State, and if necessary having to kill to protect them, yourself or your children?

These are only the beginning of the hardest questions you will ever have to ask of yourself and your family. These are also questions that have already been asked and answered by those who have faced what you are facing now.

You have a rare choice before you now: 1.) To acquire this Knowledge now, or 2.) Keep living your lives in denial of the overwhelming evidence staring right at you, and telling you it is almost passed the time you should be prepared.

Do not believe foolishly either that your governments will allow much longer this book, or those by other groups seeking to assist Americans, to be available much longer into the future.

[More interesting read by Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Russian Subscribers,]
US Military Destroys Bomb Directed Against Chicago as Top Pentagon Doctor Killed In Helicopter Shoot-Down and US Secret Service Member Killed as United States Coup Continues

Numerous troubling reports from Russian Intelligence Analysts suggest that the Coup attempt currently underway in the United States is spiraling out of control and may soon break into open, and public, hostilities vying for control over the American Government. Particularly troubling is one report detailing an American Air Force F-16 attack upon a bomb laden truck bound for the American City of Chicago but destroyed before it could reach its intended target and as we can read an American ‘sanitized’ version of this as reported by the Associated Press News Service in their article titled "Truck ‘vaporized’ when cargo explodes" and which says; ...
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index798.htm

a r t i c l e / c o m m e n t a r y

Is God Removing His Hand of Protection from America?
http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin255.htm
contributing editor to

- Alan

Amidst the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is a question hardly anyone wants to ask (including Christian leaders), "Is God removing His hand of protection from America?" It is, perhaps, the greatest question that must be answered. For many reasons, I believe the answer is yes.

From the inception of our great country, Americans have constantly acknowledged the overriding providence of Almighty God. For example, during the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin said, "I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"

In his inaugural speech given April 30, 1789, George Washington said, "It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes."

Washington also said, "No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States."

Thomas Jefferson said, "God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."

However, it seems that most Americans, including Christians and pastors, no longer believe God judges people that rebel against Him. Yet, if the Bible teaches anything, it teaches that both individuals and nations are accountable to God.

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 should have been a wake up call for America. They weren't. We have continued our sinful ways as a people and as a government. Washington, D.C., is intoxicated with power, the American people are intoxicated with pleasure, and churches and pastors are intoxicated with prosperity. What is worse, virtually no one is calling America to repentance.

As a result, America has sown to the wind and is now beginning to reap the whirlwind! Look no further than New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast to see an example of what a whirlwind can do. I, too, tremble for my country!

Chuck Baldwin is Founder-Pastor of Crossroads Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida. In 1985 the church was recognized by President Ronald Reagan for its unusual growth and influence.

Dr. Baldwin is the host of a lively, hard-hitting syndicated radio talk show on the Genesis Communications Network called, "Chuck Baldwin Live" This is a daily, one hour long call-in show in which Dr. Baldwin addresses current event topics from a conservative Christian point of view. Pastor Baldwin writes weekly articles on the internet http://www.ChuckBaldwinLive.com and newspapers.

To learn more about his radio talk show please visit his web site at: www.chuckbaldwinlive.com. When responding, please include your name, city and state.

E-mail: chuck@chuckbaldwinlive.com

a r t i c l e / c o m m e n t a r y

America's Mayors: You've Been Warned
http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd124.htm
http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd123.htm
contributing editor to

- Alan

By: Devvy, September 6, 2005, http://www.devvy.com/

Never have I watched such a mess unfold. Never have I seen such stupidity by city fathers. Every mayor of NO and every governor of the gulf states have known for decades that a Katrina strength would eventually hit. Every single mayor from NO to Mobile, along with every single person who lives along that coast - they all know that they live right where hurricanes come ashore. It's a decision they have made - a risky decision. Within twenty four hours, mayors in three states, Governor Blanco and a million people began screaming for help from FEMA and the federal government. FEMA is an evil, evil organization and I will never have anything to do with them. Besides, it's not your responsibility to rebuild my house should I have chosen to build it within a mile of the water in Gulfport or any other city along the gulf coast. It's called personal responsibility.

The response to Katrina by the insidious Department of Homeland Security headed up by another inept public servant, Michael Chertoff, has been nothing short of gross incompetence. Forget Homeland Security, it's a waste of time and money and must be abolished because America doesn't need it. While all the bickering and finger pointing was going on, the violence, starvation and conditions in NO escalated along with the deaths. News anchors interviewed the ravaged areas of Gulfport and Biloxi with shell shocked residents crying for water and help from FEMA and the feds. FEMA is not a search and rescue operation. They are there to arrive after the fact, help people assess damage and apply for low cost loans to rebuild homes. Then people started screaming for the military. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a shortage of National Guard because a large number of them are deployed in that unconstitutional quagmire called "nation building" over in Iraq. The politicians stumbled all over themselves on that issue, but people saw through it and were enraged. Finally, people were beginning to see part of the bigger picture.

While I have my problems with some of the programming on FOX, CNN and MSNBC, in the case of Katrina, all I can say is thank you to all the reporters and news anchors for their tireless help for the victims of Katrina. I sincerely believe that if these cable networks had not been on the ground from the git-go reporting the horrors unfolding in three states, more people would have died and chaos would still be going on whole scale. Because of their relentless coverage and exposure of the horror going on in NO, by Thursday morning, September 1st, in came our military (all branches) in full force; National Guard coming home from Iraq were diverted to the storm ravaged areas. It was impressive, they got the job done and are still on the job. Truly, all these reporters and big name anchors for the cable networks have really done a terrific job under the worst of circumstances.

To say there was a breakdown in communications from hour one after Katrina hit is a gross understatement. On Friday, September 2nd, the Mayor of NO, who was clearly out of his league before Katrina even hit, blew a gasket on CNN that night when he screamed that the federal response was too little, too late: "Now get off your a--- and let's do something and fix the biggest g-d crisis in the history of this country." Mayor Nagin was in panic mode as soon as Katrina hit and he has remained clueless ever since.

Beginning on Thursday, September 1st, the military began evacuating the Superdome and convention center. People who have lost everything have now been forcibly sent to Houston, Lubbock, some to Arizona and even as far away as Massachusetts! For the love of God, talk about uprooting and destroying people's families and shoving them into cities and towns where they have absolutely no family. This is what happens when there is no plan in place. Many have questioned why the people herded into the middle of the flooded area weren't removed by the military right away to dry ground using available resources? For the love of God, there are nearby military bases and air national guard locations where tent cities could have been set up right away, get people taken care of and go from there.

I know for a fact that many who had boats and other floating devices were there the day after the levee breaks who wanted to help move people out of the flooded area onto dry ground, but were barred from entering the city! Many of these rescuers are ex military, yet they were treated with contempt and turned away. My husband spent 27 years in the Army - all 27 years in the Corps of Engineers. He has been simply astonished at the chaos due to lack of planning, the stupidity in not beginning an immediate evacuation to outlying areas; he also said the destruction should not come as a surprise because of those levees.

Officials at all levels of government have known for years that New Orleans was basically a sitting duck just waiting for "the big one" to hit. They were warned repeatedly. Congress after Congress for more than three decades has continued to cut the budget for the Corps of Engineers to build up those levees. That is a fact. The budget cuts year after year by Congress with the approval of each sitting president. It was just a matter of time and now the results of not taking mother nature seriously are almost beyond comprehension. The long term consequences are going to be horrendous. That's just New Orleans. How about all those parishes and major towns, Biloxi and Gulfport - gone, destroyed, no longer there? The ravages of Katrina are far, far worse than the people who live in hurricane country could ever imagine, even in their worst nightmares. However, they all knew it could happen during any hurricane season, yet many chose to build homes, businesses and big casinos right on the water anyway.

I have been to NO several times and it was a beautiful city. There is a great deal of talk about rebuilding NO, but I hope to God the city fathers and the residents re-think that whole proposition. NO can get hit again next week by another cat four hurricane or next year when the first one of the season hits. Are you really going to rebuild just as the city was before and set up an entire population for the same end results? The same applies to Gulfport, Biloxi and all the parishes in between. Should you rebuild houses, businesses and huge casinos within one mile of the water of the Gulf of Mexico and hope you don't get hit again by anything other than a pesky tropical storm?

There is no money in the U.S. Treasury, so Congress just borrowed another $10.5 billion (first installment) for Katrina; the amount will probably go close to $100 billion dollars of borrowed debt. Does it make any sense to rebuild right in the path of the same kind of monster that can hit at the beginning of the hurricane season next year or two times next season? I know we're talking about people's homes, their lives and my heart has been heavy watching Katrina and it's destruction. I've seen all the interviews of victims on the tube and watched the nightmare probably more than most because I work at home. These are decisions that the folks in those areas need to consider in the weeks and months ahead. Yes, my husband and I donated for relief efforts with another decent one to United Animal Nations, a fine, fine operation that rescues and reunites pets with their owners in disaster areas. It's not about being uncaring or stingy, it's about common sense for the future.

Mayors of every city and town in America have been warned: you had better get your act together and prepare your populations for an event as crippling as Katrina because many of you live on borrowed time.

New Orleans' population was estimated at 1.2 million. In the end, we may see more than 10,000 fatalities and thousands of dead cats, dogs, birds and other little animals floating in the water. How about Los Angeles? A whopping 14 million people live in that basin which sits on earth quake faults. I have been to LA many, many times and every time I'm there, I pray the 9.0 or 10.1 quake doesn't hit. Those who live in hurricane belts have days of warning, earthquakes give none until the second they hit.

How about the San Francisco Bay Area with 8 million people packed in as densely as LA? I used to live in the Bay Area and have been through a number of earthquakes, it's pretty scary. Remember the large one that hit in 1989? The damage in human life and infrastructure was horrific, but the "big one" is coming and when it hits - unless those mayors all around the Bay Area get together and plan - the destruction will be beyond words.

Just imagine trying to evacuate LA tomorrow if a 9.5 earthquake hit? I guarantee you, the aftermath of that would make Katrina look mild. There are earth quake faults all over this country. There have been dam breaks, i.e. the St. Francis Dam, nicknamed "Mullholland Dam," which broke in 1928 in LA killing more than 500 people. That was about 13.5 million inhabitants ago. What would happen if the Hoover Dam went for whatever reason, terror or natural? Can't happen? Check this site. Let's not forget the Northridge quake of 1989 in the LA area. Let me repeat myself: Tragedy happens in a heart beat and it can happen anywhere, anytime.

Is your city or town ready for disaster? I submit to you that America is as unprepared as was New Orleans when Katrina hit. Those folks who live in the area between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama would have fared much, much better had they had the organized militia step right in the minute the rain stopped from Katrina. The Kidd household is prepared for the worst. Having lived in Colorado where you wake up one morning with six feet of snow on your front porch and the city virtually shut down by a blizzard, one learns the value of being prepared. We keep food and bottled water to last at least two weeks. It's a drag, but I keep the process up even though I live in a huge, upscale planned development in Sacramento, California. Even though we are prepared, I can tell you, probably less than one in 25,000 in this area is prepared for anything but withdrawals if the local McDonald's closes down.

I hope everyone will contact their mayor and ask them what are the contingency plans for any kind of mass disaster and then demand that the states revitalize their militia. I urge you to become part of the process in reinstituting constitutional government with the organized militia. Dr. Vieira goes into it in great detail here. Americans need to get on the same sheet of music, i.e. United we stand. However, that isn't going to happen until people are fully educated about government. Recently, a column appeared on the militia and I asked Dr. Vieira to comment on it as he is the foremost expert on constitutional militia in this country besides the central bank. Edwin's comment about that column is as follows:

"Thanks, Devvy. I have seen this. Unfortunately, these people have not done their historical homework. For example, there is NO example in pre-constitutional Colonial or State laws where the Militia was subordinate or reported to or worked through sheriffs. The office of "sheriff" is NOT a constitutional office. The word does not even appear in the Constitution,. NO sheriff is above the laws of the State in which he holds office. And as far as I can tell, the office of sheriff can be abolished in any State with no constitutional consequence. This is why sometimes I almost despair of accomplishing anything in this country. These people's hearts are in the right place...but they operate on the principle that they can simply make up the law to fit some romantic, historical notions that suit their fancy. Another example: the suggestion that the Militia could be used "worldwide". Where is that authority in the Constitution? Then, "the Militia's General Staff would report to Congress." Does not the Constitution make the president the commander in chief of the militia? Unless these people intend a comprehensive amendment of the Constitution (which I doubt) these suggestions are worse than hopeless."

I cannot stress strongly enough to every American how important it is to get the organized militia back up and running in all 50 states. Dr. Edwin Vieira is spear heading this crucial and vital effort. We can all see what happens when people depend on big government to save their bacon. We can all see that our best hope for survival in any disaster is we the people and the organized militia is an absolute integral part of the plan. No way would I allow myself to be herded into some sports facility, then routed on a bus hundreds of miles away from my home area and transferred again to a state a thousand miles away from where I called home. What madness! Had the organized militias been in place in New Orleans and in every parish and town along the gulf coast, I guarantee you, we would have not seen the horror that has unfolded. Our fellow countrymen and women who live along the gulf coast would not have gone without food or water for almost a week. Do you want to be forced to leave your home area and bussed around the country and dropped a thousand miles from family? Think about it and please act now. Just take a look at the Mayor of New Orleans. If the results of Katrina in NO is Nagin's definition of planning ahead and being prepared, God help us all.

Please read Edwin's columns on the constitutional militia, contact him and then go after your mayors to get with the program - before tragedy strikes your hometown.

Devvy Kidd authored the booklets, Why A Bankrupt America and Blind Loyalty, which sold close to 2,000,000 copies. Devvy appears on radio shows all over the country, ran for Congress and is a highly sought after public speaker. Get a free copy of Why A Bankrupt America from El Dorado Gold. Devvy is a contributing writer for www.NewsWithViews.com.

[This is one of many possible articles and reports that have been published and certainly will not be the last. There are a lot of reports of disconcerting aspects of reactions to the hurricane and relief efforts. You might dismiss any of them as disgruntled victims, agents or helpers, but the evidence seems clear that 4 years of preparedness (since 09/11/2001), with ALL the money spent on allegedly making this country more secure and safe, which is presumed to include disaster preparedness (response), has failed to help the people. You might say, that this is a "natural" disaster and not a "terrorist" attack, but the response of aid should be the same regardless of the cause of the devastation. Moreover, consider how force of arms (guns) was used to control the people in the Gulf region. There is something GROSSLY wrong. Do you think you have been deceived? -- Tribble]

[This, along with reports that FEMA was in the area 4 days prior to the hurricane, indicate that the fiasco last week was either due to gross negligence and mismanagement or was handled the way it was on purpose. What do you think? -- Rodger]

NEW YORK Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, told the Times-Picayune Sunday afternoon that officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, including FEMA Director Mike Brown and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, listened in on electronic briefings given by his staff in advance of Hurricane Katrina slamming Louisiana and Mississippi--and were advised of the storm’s potential deadly effects.

"Mayfield said the strength of the storm and the potential disaster it could bring were made clear during both the briefings and in formal advisories, which warned of a storm surge capable of overtopping levees in New Orleans and winds strong enough to blow out windows of high-rise buildings," the paper reported. "He said the briefings included information on expected wind speed, storm surge, rainfall and the potential for tornados to accompany the storm as it came ashore.

"We were briefing them way before landfall," Mayfield said. "It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped."

Chertoff told reporters Saturday that government officials had not expected the damaging combination of a powerful hurricane levee breaches that flooded New Orleans.

Brown, Mayfield said, is a dedicated public servant. “The question is why he couldn’t shake loose the resources that were needed,’’ he said.

In the days before Katrina hit, Mayfield said, his staff also briefed FEMA, which under the Department of Homeland Security, at FEMA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., its Region 6 office in Dallas and the Region 4 office in Atlanta about the potential effects of the storm. He said all of those briefings were logged in the hurricane center’s records.

[But, Bush is a "born again Christian who seeks God's face". Maybe God told him to let those people in New Orleans die and focus on killing men, women and children in the middle east. I'm just trying to give the benefit of the doubt. -- Rodger]

The man in the Oval Office is fond of condemning “killers.” But his administration continues to kill with impunity.

“They can go into Iraq and do this and do that,” Martha Madden, former secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, said on Sept. 1, “but they can’t drop some food on Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now? It’s just mind-boggling.”

The policies are matters of priorities. And the priorities of the Bush White House are clear. For killing in Iraq, they spare no expense. For protecting and sustaining life, the cupboards go bare.

Media outlets have popularized some tactical critiques of U.S.
military operations in Iraq. But the administration is competent enough to keep the military-industrial complex humming. It’s good at generating huge profits for “defense” contractors, oil companies and the like. First things first, and first things last.

Why shore up levees when the precious money it would take can be better used for war in Iraq? Why allow National Guard units to remain home when they can be useful, killing and being killed, in a faraway war based on lies?

And when catastrophe hits people close to home, why should the president respond with urgency or adequacy if their lives don’t figure as truly important in his political calculus?

Of course he doesn’t pull the triggers, drop the bombs or oversee the torture himself. And he avoids the dying that he has facilitated in the wake of the hurricane. White-collar criminals -- in this case, white-collar war criminals -- rarely get close to their dirtiest work.

Every minute has counted in the wake of the hurricane. While dawdling and compounding the massive tragedy, Bush wants to shift responsibility. We should stop and think about why he noisily rattled a big tin cup midway through the week.

While the death toll rises in New Orleans and criticisms of his inaction grow more outraged across the country, the man wants us to think about making a charitable contribution, not taking political action. But George Bush and Dick Cheney must not be let off the hook.

There is something egregiously obscene about the people in charge of the U.S. government telling citizens to donate money for a hurricane relief effort while the administration, from the president on down, has viciously abdicated its most basic responsibilities.

For the activities it views as really important, like the war on Iraq, the Bush White House hardly requires private contributions while siphoning off vast quantities of taxpayer funds. But when the task is to save lives instead of destroying them, kids are supposed to bust open their piggy banks.

“True compassion,” Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” He accused the federal government of demonstrating “hostility to the poor” -- appropriating “military funds with alacrity and generosity” but providing “poverty funds with miserliness.” Four decades later, de facto hostility to the poor remains government policy, and its results include widespread deaths in New Orleans that could have been prevented.

Respect must be paid, and justice must be created. The dead cannot be brought back; the suffering of recent days can’t be undone. But it’s up to us to create maximum pressure for a truly adequate rescue effort -- and to organize effectively while demanding political accountability. That means depriving Bush, Cheney and their congressional allies of the power they ruthlessly enjoy. And that means ending their impunity, so that truth has consequences.
___________________________

Norman Solomon is the author of the new book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For information, go
to: www.WarMadeEasy.com

a r t i c l e / c o m m e n t a r y

Impeach Bush Now, Before More Die
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09032005.html
contributing editor to

- Rodger

He's an evil, wicked man who's willing to sacrifice even your children if need be. If you haven't figured out what he is yet, you probably never will. Wake up America!

Our word for today is "minion". Can you say "minion of the beast" boys and girls. I knew you could. -- Rodger]

The raison d'etre of the Bush administration is war in the Middle East in order to protect America from terrorism and to insure America's oil supply. On both counts the Bush administration has failed catastrophically.

Bush's single-minded focus on the "war against terrorism" has compounded a natural disaster and turned it into the greatest calamity in American history. The US has lost its largest and most strategic port, thousands of lives, and 80% of one of America's most historic cities is under water.

If terrorists had achieved this result, it would rank as the greatest terrorist success in history.

Prior to 911, the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA) in order to protect the strategic port, the refineries, and the large population.

However, after 2003 the flow of funds to SELA were diverted to the war in Iraq. During 2004 and 2005 the New Orleans Times-Picayune published nine articles citing New Orleans' loss of hurricane protection to the war in Iraq.

Every expert and newspapers as distant as Texas saw the New Orleans catastrophe coming. But President Bush and his insane government preferred war in Iraq to protecting Americans at home.

Bush's war left the Corps of Engineers only 20% of the funding to protect New Orleans from flooding from Lake Pontchartrain. On June 18, 2004, the Corps' project manager, Al Naomi, told the Times-Picayune: "the levees are sinking. If we don't get the money to raise them, we can't stay ahead of the settlement."

Despite the dire warnings delivered by the 2004 hurricane season, the Bush administration made deep budget cuts for flood control and hurricane funding for New Orleans. The US Senate, alarmed at the Bush administration's insanity, was planning to restore the funding for 2006. But now it is too late. Many multiples of the funding that would have saved the city now have to be spent to rescue it.

Not content with leaving New Orleans unprotected, it took the Bush administration five days to get the remnants of the National Guard not serving in Iraq, along with desperately needed food and water, to devastated New Orleans. This is the slowest emergency response by the US government in modern times. By the time the Bush administration could organize any resources for New Orleans, many more people had died and the city was in total chaos.

Despite the most dismal performance on record, Bush's Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff, said on Thursday that the Bush administration has done a "magnificent job."

It is a major deal, one that will affect Americans far beyond New Orleans. According to reports, 25% of our oil and gasoline comes through the New Orleans port and refineries, all out of commission. Needed goods cannot be imported, and exports will plummet, worsening an already disastrous deficit in the balance of trade.

The increased cost of gasoline will soak up consumers' disposable incomes, with dire effects on consumer spending. US economic growth will be siphoned off into higher energy costs. American lives far from New Orleans will be adversely affected.

The destruction of New Orleans is the responsibility of the most incompetent government in American history and perhaps in all history. Americans are rapidly learning that they were deceived by the superpower hubris. The powerful US military cannot successfully occupy Baghdad or control the road to the airport--and this against an insurgency based in only 20% of the Iraqi population. Bush's pointless war has left Washington so pressed for money that the federal government abandoned New Orleans to catastrophe.

The Bush administration is damned by its gross incompetence. Bush has squandered the lives and health of thousands of people. He has run through hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars. He has lost America's reputation and its allies. With barbaric torture and destruction of our civil liberty, he has stripped America of its inherent goodness and morality. And now Bush has lost America's largest port and 25 percent of its oil supply. Why? Because Bush started a gratuitous war egged on by a claque of crazy neoconservatives who have sacrificed America's interests to their insane agenda.

The neoconservatives have brought these disasters to all Americans, Democrat and Republican alike. Now they must he held accountable. Bush and his neoconservatives are guilty of criminal negligence and must be prosecuted.

What will it take for Americans to reestablish accountability in their government? Bush has got away with lies and an illegal war of aggression, with outing CIA agents, with war crimes against Iraqi civilians, with the horrors of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture centers, and now with the destruction of New Orleans.

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

a r t i c l e / c o m m e n t a r y

American Herods & The Fallacy of A Free Press
http://www.rense.com/general67/herod.htm
contributing editor to

- Rodger

Many writers and essayists on the Internet--that last bastion of a truly free press--have thoughtfully and passionately compared George W Bush to imperial leaders throughout history. Everyone from Richard Nixon to Adolf Hitler to Nicolo Machiavelli.

"This is a dangerous analogy," wrote Byron Williams in The Moral Cynicism of George Bush. "Tragedy, popularity, and bad intelligence combined to allow this president to consolidate his amoral agenda of power, selling it to the American people with overtly pious language."

Rather sympathetic, wouldn't you say? By contrast many essayists, like myself, wonder if something far more sinister hasn't been developing, for a much longer time, here in America. Ever since Eisenhower realized who wielded the REAL power behind the seats of power and spoke out, belatedly, in his farewell speech.

The recent essay "Informant Names JFK Jrs Assassins?" would have struck me as only another wacky Internet conspiracy theory if someone hadn't revealed the exact same thing to me several months earlier. Indeed my informant, a former intelligence insider, became the inspiration for the central character my recent novel, the sinister protagonist, Jimmy Jeremiah. Assassination by aviation, was how the real-life Jeremiah explained it to me, removing troublesome but charismatic leaders who become problematic to the status quo.

If we Americans realize that those in power are never hindered by any feelings of conscience or guilt, if we realize that our rulers freely act in their own self interest, (unless forced to do so by popular outcry), that they conduct policy as insatiable predators would, we begin to see them with a new clarity. If we realize profits and personal agendas, not ethics, forever influence foreign and domestic policies, then we may finally see how everything seems to make sense in a senseless world.

Thus the controlled demolition of a potential rival's plane--whether John F. Kennedy Jr. or Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone--makes perfect sense. Thus the controlled demolitions of sensitive buildings (Oklahoma City, World Trade Center, Building 7), or the controlled demolition of a country like Iraq, or the controlled demolition of the American media, not to mention the controlled elections in 2000 and 2004, all make perfect sense and have always made perfect sense.

Which makes the US media accomplices to an ongoing series of great crimes, stretching over fifty years. As Richard Salent, Former President of CBS News once admitted, "Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have." Clearly controlled, wouldn't you say?

But this sort of cold-blooded criminality speaks less of Prince Machiavelli or the Borgias than the Biblical Herod family. The three generations of the Bush family parallel the uncanny rise to power of the Biblical Herods. Just as the Herods conducted ruthless policy--secret assassinations and public executions, religious plots, terrorism, manipulation of the economic system while seeming to embrace the religious leaders of their day--so too have our own American Herods.

And all of these crimes have been aided and abbetted by the American mainstream media for well over fifty years! Indeed, when has anyone heard or read anything about Patrick "Bulldog" Fitzgerald, in the American media? US Attorney Fitzgerald, pursuing corruption in high places, very likely will become the next "accidental" death, planned by the American Herods. The details of his death, and the predictable press reports, are all being worked out behind the scenes as I write this.

When we realize that the Biblical Herods wielded limited but absolute power backed by imperial Rome, we realize that the Bushes, Clintons, Johnsons and Nixons wield limited power within a framework of power brokers. Otherwise what stake do our American Herods have in the Middle East? Certainly not for the benefit of the average US citizen.

Likewise our "free press," never seems to ask the pertinent question of any crime: Who benefits? Who benefits when a Paul Wellstone or well-respected critic dies "accidentally?" Who benefits when a 47 story building falls mysteriously? And who benefits when a country is invaded? Who profits? Aside from cementing power within the ruling junta--our American Herods, whether Democratic or Republican--the select group of power brokers continue to reap obscene profits. Katrina being no exception; witness the spike in petroleum prices.

Ironic indeed that far more blame has been leveled by the complicit US media, against the US government, for slow response to a predicted natural disaster, than to the predicted un-natural debacle in Iraq. Thirty months later still no outrage from the embedded US media to a phony war draining the American treasury and the volunteer armed forces. Ironic that far more outrage is directed against armed looters in New Orleans than to well-connected cronies of our American Herods who receive billions for looting the US citizen in no-bid contracts.

The Biblical Herods, like their American predecessors, once wielded incredible power. Until one day they were swept away, swept away more completely than Katrina swept away Biloxi. And today the Herods are remembered as diabolical scoundrels, relegated to the dust bin of history.

Amateur historian and Rense essayist, Douglas Herman is the author of the recent novel, Guns of Dallas

And all of these crimes have been aided and abbetted by the American mainstream media for well over fifty years! Indeed, when has anyone heard or read anything about http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6711
Patrick "Bulldog" Fitzgerald, in the American media?

12. No news shows mentioned that bodies are all over the place and many were being eaten by alligators.

13. Looters were being arrested and handcuffed to be taken to - where?
=== Rendition-land

14. My thought: If it is true that there are internment camps all over the US (800 supposedly) which are completely supplied, manned and ready for action. If this is true, then why aren't they being used?

Because this is a lie...fear propaganda to keep the Internet distracted from true events..... These reports come out every few months. === Because this is the setup for their use on the next, upgraded synthetic attack. Everything in its time. You're skipping ahead. Look how people were begging to go to the Superdome gulag.

18. AND WHAT IS GOING ON ELSEWHERE, IN THIS COUNTRY AND GOVT. THAT IS KEEPING US CITIZENS DISTRACTED? === Rove et al. are still subject to indictment in Plame affair.

20. The idiot's main thoughts are about reconstruction with barely any mention of the people. === Of course.

September 1, 2005: The disaster in New Orleans was not unforeseen. In spite of his too-little too-late bleatings, Bush personally scrapped a multi-million dollar program to strengthen the dikes around that flooded mass of tragedy but took the money for his criminal war in Iraq.

We now see a genuine phenomenon with dozens of American television reporters, on the ground and on the scene in New Orleans and southern Mississippi, turning against both the Administration and the governments of both Louisiana and Mississippi for their utter failure to relieve the terrible suffering of hundreds of thousands of trapped, starving and sick citizens.

I would like to add something to the bubbling pot that might cast a light on the disgusting official breakdown of rescue and support. This afternoon, I was having lunch at the Cosmos Club out on Massachusetts Avenue. A good friend is a member of the posh club (that once was the elegant town home of Sumner Welles), and while at lunch, I was privy to a very vocal conversation at one of the big round center tables in the club dining room.

One man was giving an overview of the situation to a group of his friends. The speaker was an undersecretary of an important department, well -liked by Bush and often in the White House to consult. The others ranged from an academic economist whose writings can be seen in a right wing paper and a number of Washington-based businessmen, all of whom are active and heavy contributors to the Bush White House.

The loud one had obviously had a few drinks at the bar and this is probably why he was not more discreet. The gist of his comments was horrible to contemplate and it sounded like a top Nazi discussing Jews.

It is well known here that the Bush family and many of the top advisers at the White House are racists but instead of detesting Jews, in this case, they all detest blacks. Their rationale, aside from their view of racial superiority, is that blacks are all "welfare queens, unwed mothers and drug dealers." It was the very firmly stated view of the host that it was better for everyone that New Orleans was under water for the time being.

In that way, we were told (and I was not the only person in the dining room who heard all this), this served to "chase out the niggers" and permit Bush-supporting businessmen from buying up the soon-to-be condemned sodden houses for five cents on the dollar from friendly insurance companies (which one of them was a CEO of) and put up an enlarged and very profitable combination of industrial park and office building section. The money for this would, naturally, come from government grants which a terrified Congress (Mid Term elections are coming) had just voted for and the contracts to demolish the wrecked low-income slums would go, as a no-bid contract, to another stellar Bush supporter.

As for the refugees, our table of proto-fascists all commented on the fact that most of them were on welfare and probably all voted Democratic so they could all be shipped to California or Chicago at the public expense and allowed to occupy less valuable public housing there.

This conversation went on in a similar vein for some time and it was difficult for both myself and my host to refrain from making nasty comments or, for that matter, to enjoy our meal. These people are greedy and purely evil and I am positive from the overall conversations that Bush is conversant with this attitude and has no intentions of interfering with it.

He had an unparalleled opportunity to revive his sagging opinion polls and make an appearance in New Orleans, naturally with an army of sycophants and eager media, and be seen (in a safe placeprobably in Baton Rougebecause the desperate black citizens of New Orleans have taken to shooting at people and Bush is scared to death of violence) holding a small and photogenic black child whilst comforting its mother. Instead, Bush, typically, opted to sail overhead in his luxury Air Force One and having seen the inundated city below, retired to his small but elegant dining room for a nice lunch with some of his top aides.

I should also note here that Bush now has added the Mayor of New Orleans and a half a dozen irate and very articulate news reporters to his hate list because they have dared to criticize him to a very large audience.

Maybe this time, the Democrats will organize and nail him and his friends to a wall somewhere and then open the flood gates and watch them drown like the rats that they are."

21. Was this a "training exercise" on a large scale? === Test for something on a larger scale yet.

22. Why haven't companies like Coca-Cola, etc. offered free water? === Budweiser has.

24. Interesting that all military leave had been cancelled BEFORE this horror occurred, isn't it? === An Iran war was the skinny for that reason.

25. Something to think about... the TimeTraveller, John Titor, said civil war began in the US in 2005. Also, I have heard that this summer was being referred to as "The Summer of Blood"...Why? === Be that as it may, that's what the globies want...the timeline may be a bit premature. This week may have been a tripping point for it, but I just don't see it going down literally that soon.

Since you mention Titor, I'll throw in web bots that say a beginning point in early Dec. extends its impact through mid-06...so that doesn't sound like an acute rather chronic event. On the downside, someone who pegged, generically, New Oreans says something matching it lies in wait for later in Sept.

26. Where is Cheney? === Probably, just like during 911, sitting in front of a control panel under a bunker somewhere...rather than anything being told.

Regards, M.L. W, DC

R e s p o n s e

re: Did the Government Cause Hurricane Katrina?
http://www.rense.com/general67/herod.htm
contributing editor to

- Rodger

[Here are some responses to the article "Did the Government Cause Hurricane Katrina?" -- Tribble]

REPLY: Did you even read the email and notice the REAL legislative bill that congress passed?
Ask yourself, why make a law for something UNLESS you can do it?
They passed the law. Do they think/believe/know they can control the weather?
More importantly, what do they know that you do not know?
Check the web for HAARP with the word "weather".
I am not the one being ridiculous, congress passed the bill. Why?
-- Tribble

FROM: Valtaree, September 04, 2005
It doesn't take effect until October, so how can it have affect any recent weather changes?

REPLY: I do protest spending $10M/year on this project, no matter how ineffective or effective they believe it to become.

The bill may may not be effective till October, BUT if they believe they have such technology, do you think they are waiting till the bill takes effect to begin practicing, or have they been practicing for years or decades already?

D O N O T drink the Kool-Aid*

Can Hurricanes Be Used As Weapons of Mass Destruction?
http://www.rense.com/general67/wmds.htm
http://www.radarmatrix.com/
contributing editor to

- Rodger

If Not, Why Did The UN Outlaw Such Practices?
By Michael Shore (Israel), 9-5-5

What the masses of human beings all over the world have not been told is that it is possible to control and manipulate weather with a technology called 'scalar energy'. These energy weapons have other major capabilities that are even more dangerous than atomic weapons. Scalar Weapons could literally destroy the world and it is of the utmost urgency that human beings all over the world must be told of the existence of this devastating technology.

If none of this is true, where is there a law on the books of the United Nations, which prohibits one Nation from using environmental and weather manipulation weapons and technology against another Nation?

Nikola Tesla, one of the most incredible inventors of all time, developed this 'scalar technology' in the early 1900's. He created one device, about this size of a pack of cigarettes, which nearly brought down a New York highrise before he reportedly smashed it with a hammer to stop the vibrational
energy which was beginning to shatter the building.

In fact, many major technologies currently being used today were invented by Tesla including alternating current, light bulbs, robotics etc. etc. Tesla also invented an advanced technology to provide Free Energy to the entire planet, anywhere, and mainly for this reason the "powers that be" eliminated Tesla's name from history books.

It's not difficult to understand how 'they' wouldn't permit Free Energy to power the planet. Can you imagine a world, where OIL, HYDRO ELECTRIC ENERGY AND NUCLEAR ENERGY would be obsolete and no longer necessary as a major energy source?

Tesla wanted to give his free energy technology to the world, and for this reason all his funding was cut off by JP Morgan, Westinghouse and others, and he was never permitted to be recognized for his monumental achievements. The New World Order prefers that no one know that Tesla ever existed, so they can withhold this incredible technology from the People.

After Tesla died, the U.S.and Russia raced to confiscate all of Tesla's papers. Within his writings and drawings was the secret of energy technology...unlimited power which could clearly be used to dominate the world if it wound up in the wrong hands.

This amazing technology can also be used to heal people from many diseases, simply and for pennies. (So can such energy theoretically be used to induce disease in masses of people.) The current ultra-billion dollar medical-pharmaceutical industry would not be thrilled about Tesla's technology being used to replace their primitive but fantastically-profitable industries. So, human beings are forced to continue to suffer from diseases that can be easily and successfully treated using Tesla's technology. Sounds too good to be true? It's not.

Scalar technology can also be used in an EVIL WAY and has the potential to cause huge amounts of damage by using weather as a Weapon of Mass Destruction. This technology exists now. {see links below}. In fact, some government officials have tried in vain to get a law on the books that says that Scalar Weapons cannot be used by any Nation to manipulate weather to be used as a "weapon" Unfortunately, the US, Russia and Japan - and possibly other nations - have been pursuing the use of
advanced energy technology to control the weather.

Can this energy weapon be used to 'steer' hurricanes? Someone should seriously check it out. The US Air Force official policy is to completely control the weather by 2025. And the evidence points
to substantial progress already having been made.

The United Nations has a law on their books prohibiting this environmental warfare technology from being used against humanity, which is further proof this technology really exists. Read this link: http://cuttingedge.org/news/n1196a.html#guided

The possibility of weather manipulation is so hard for most people to believe, so they may say "show me some proof of the possibility that there is a means to control the weather". Here is one potential U.S. site in Gakona, Alaska that could possibly do that. They would never admit this, but it is interesting that the following is one of the FAQ that they post on their web site. They say one could take a tour of the site, but who is even interested to go to some remote area of Alaska and take such a tour? Who even knows that such a place exists???

The craziest thing is that it would only cost several millions of dollars to build such a site that could manipulate weather. The pictures are fields of electromagnetic antennas. They were expected to have 33 ACRES OF ANTENNAS when complete. That's a large amount of antennas. Wonder what they're REALLY doing there? There are probably other sites around the globe too.

{Just having such a question points to the possibility that this technology and what they're doing could affect the weather!}

"The HAARP facility will not affect the weather. Transmitted energy in the frequency ranges that will be used by HAARP is subject to negligible absorption in either the troposphere or the stratosphere - the two levels of the atmosphere that produce the earth's weather. Electromagnetic interactions only occur in the near-vacuum of the rarefied region above about 70 km known as the ionosphere."

"The ionosphere is created and continuously replenished as the sun's radiation interacts with the highest levels of the Earth's atmosphere. The downward coupling from the ionosphere to the stratosphere/troposphere is extremely weak, and no association between natural ionospheric variability and surface weather and climate has been found, even at the extraordinarily high levels of ionospheric turbulence that the sun can produce during a geomagnetic storm. If the ionospheric storms caused by the sun itself don't affect the surface weather, there is no chance that HAARP can do so either."

Did they really answer the question and say NO, HAARP could NEVER be used to manipulate weather and that anyone saying this is completely wrong? Everyone knows we can trust the government to tell the truth, right? Yeah, sure we can.

The stepped-up evacuation came as workers struggled find and count the corpses decaying in the 90-degree heat. Even when cadaver dogs pick up a scent, workers frequently cannot get at the bodies without heavy equipment. The mayor has estimated New Orleans' death toll could reach 10,000.

The enormity of the disaster became ever-clearer: State Rep. Nita Hutter said 30 people died at a flooded-out nursing home in Chalmette, just outside New Orleans. She said the staff left the elderly residents behind in their beds. And more than 100 people died at a dockside warehouse, waiting for rescuers to ferry them to safety, said Rep. Charlie Melancon, whose congressional district includes the area.

Meanwhile, firefighters battled blazes around New Orleans — an emerging threat in a city where the water pressure is too low to fight fires and where many people are using candles because of the lack of electricity. At the same time, workers returning to the city to restart essential services came under sniper fire.

More than 100 law officers using armored personnel carriers converged on a housing project and captured a suspect who had been firing on telephone workers, authorities said.

"These cell teams are getting fire on almost a daily basis, so we needed to get in here and clean this thing up," police Capt. Jeff Winn. "We're putting a lot of people on the street right now, and I think that we are bringing it under control. Eight days ago this was a mess. Every day is getting a little bit better."

The mayor's everyone-out directive — which superseded an earlier, milder order to evacuate made before Hurricane Katrina crashed ashore Aug. 29 — came after rescuers scouring New Orleans found hundreds of people ignoring warnings to get out.

Several residents said they heard Nagin's latest order on portable radios and were reluctantly complying.

Dolores Devron and her husband, Forcell, finally agreed to go. Dolores Devron said she was relieved the couple were allowed to take their dog with them but angry they were ordered out.

"There are dead babies tied to poles and they're dragging us out and leaving the dead babies. That ain't right!" she screamed, waving her arms as she was directed onto a troop carrier truck.

Picola Brown, 47, hobbled slowly down the street on her crutches. She said she had not been able to leave because a truck ran over her left foot shortly before the storm struck, breaking a toe.

"The mayor said everybody's got to go. I got ready. I just don't want them knocking on my door," she said.

"Where do you want to go?" asked a soldier from the 82nd Airborne Division. She answered, "Wherever it's comfortable."

Patricia Kelly, 41, sat under a tattered, dirty green-and-white-striped patio umbrella in front of an abandoned barber and beauty shop in the devastated Ninth Ward. Her home was flooded; she was not able to get back in, but did not want to leave the neighborhood.

"I'm going to stay as long as the Lord says so," Kelly said. "If they come with a court order, then we'll leave. I hope it doesn't get to the point where we're forced out."

Sgt. Joseph Boarman of the 82nd Airborne, standing on a corner, said he understood the reluctance to leave: "It's their home. You know how hard it is to leave home, no matter what condition it's in."

In Washington, President Bush and Congress pledged on Tuesday to open separate investigations into the federal response to Katrina and New Orleans' broken levees. "Governments at all levels failed," said Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., repeated her call for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be made autonomous from the Department of Homeland Security and for an independent commission to investigate the federal response to the disaster.

"The people that I met in Houston — they want answers and they want to know what went wrong and they want to know what they are going to be able to count on in the future," she said on NBC's "Today" show Wednesday, two days after visiting refugees at the Astrodome. "I don't think the government can investigate itself."

The pumping-out of the city began after the Army Corps of Engineers used hundreds of sandbags and rocks over the Labor Day weekend to close a 200-foot gap in the 17th Street Canal levee that burst in the aftermath of the storm and swamped 80 percent of this below sea-level city.

Although toxic floodwaters receded inch by inch, only five of New Orleans' normal contingent of 148 drainage pumps were operating Tuesday, the Corps said.

How long it takes to drain the city could depend on the condition of the pumps — especially whether they were submerged and damaged, the Corps said. Also, the water is full of debris, and while there are screens on the pumps, it may be necessary to stop and clean them from time to time.

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT

Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury on New Orleans: "Americans Are Being Brainwashed"
http://prisonplanet.com/Pages/Sept05/060905brainwashed.htm
contributing editor to

- Rodger

Mentality is "like that of the brown shirts that followed Hitler"
Steve Watson/Alex Jones | September 6 2005

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Regan administration.

Roberts followed up his commentary Impeach Bush Now, Before More Die with an interview on The Alex Jones show on Monday 5th September 2005. The former Assistant Secretary had noted of the New Orleans disaster "If terrorists had achieved this result, it would rank as the greatest terrorist success in history." and went on to spell out how the disaster was left to happen. He succeeded these comments on Monday by laying out the facts again and asserting that the Federal government has been criminally negligent and should be held up to accountability.

Click here to listen to the full interview

Mr Roberts believed that such comments would bring him much criticism from so called Patriots (the flag waving kind), yet he was surprised at the amount of people who agreed and even informed him that it was far worse then what he'd gone on record with.

Roberts reviewed the way in which the federal government had slashed funding for flood prevention schemes and pumped everything into the war in Iraq and the war on Terror. He also went on to admit that the military was turning on the people, treating them as subjects, overturning the Posse Comitatus Act.

Roberts agreed that FEMA has deliberately withheld aid, and cut emergency communication lines, and automatically made the crisis look worse in order to empower the image of a police state emerging to "save the day". He even insinuated that the shoot to kill policy was part of the overall operation in order get an awful precedence set to aid the military industrial complex takeover of America.

"The power of the Federal Government is now greater than at any time, it'll never go back and the Posse Comitatus Act has been eroding ever since it was passed in 1878..." Roberts asserted.

Roberts further commented "There is no excuse for this, we have never had in our history the federal government take a week to respond to a disaster...this is the first time ever that the help was not mobilized in advance. The proper procedure is that everything is mobilized and ready to go"

Mr Roberts commented that the American people are being "brainwashed" and no longer believe what the founding fathers said over and over, that your worst enemy is always your own government and never confuse Patriotism with support for the government. He asserted that the mentality is "like that of the brown shirts that followed Hitler" and that the government is deadly dangerous, "you can't let the military take over policing".

On the question of where this is all leading and what the government is gearing up for, Mr Roberts suggested that "It does look like there is a push coming from inside the bowels of the police authorities and it seems to be independent of whoever the President is or who or whatever party is in office. It just gets worse and it's hard to say that it's Bush doing it, he may not even know what's going on... it's enough for us to say that New Orleans demonstrated massive federal incompetence, if it were laid on private people would be tantamount to criminal negligence... some kind of accountability has to be exercised"

The private corporations own and run everything and are turning America into a third world police state, when questioned as to how we can stop this Mr Roberts stated:

"The longer it goes on it will be harder and harder to stop...It depends on how much resistance or what kind of resistance they meet, but I think one thing we can do is demand accountability for this failure, do not buy the Karl Rove lie that this was a failure of State and Local Government"

Roberts urged listeners to look at the Patriot Act, which suspends Habeas Corpus, where they can now suspend you indefinitely, a massive erosion of civil liberties. He was quick to point out though that we should not assign the government omnipotence, we can make people aware of the situation and try to explain illogical actions that have no reasonable explanation.

Roberts read out an email from an emergency management official who said that the feds are involved in everything they do, everything has to be approved by the feds. FEMA sets the table, Mr Roberts suggested, every major agency in New Orleans has been federalized, the State and Local officials have no authority.

"They might screw up occasionally but why is it that NOTHING that was supposed to be done was done?" Roberts questioned.

"The whole problem is...failure, massive unacceptable failure, criminal negligence... it has caused the US it's largest and most strategic international Port through which 25% of all our oil and gas comes... look at the price of gasoline, this is a tremendous impact... I don't see how a recession can be avoided... We have lost our most influential port through what appears to be INTENTIONAL incompetence, it's very hard to understand"

Roberts went on to stress that this event is WORSE than 9/11 because it was announced days ahead of the event and contingency plans were intentionally ignored. The officials on the scene have said there was a complete stand down of the government and intentional incompetence. Furthermore they did nothing ON PURPOSE in order to provoke the resulting chaos and anarchy so they could say "look how out of control everything is - we have to have limits on freedom and troops on the streets."

I N S I G H T

An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
http://tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1026
contributing editor to

- Jeanne

[Do you get the feeling, or idea, there has been a measure of testing being done during and after Katrina? As previously said, something was/is wrong. FEMA was turning back sheriffs from other states, turning away fuel, food and water. Armed agents restricting movement. -- Tribble]

It took four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it also took me four long days to figure out what was going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists—myself included—did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency—indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.

" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows a SWAT team with rifles and armored vests riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to speed away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Superdome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?

A SWAT team drives past flood victims waiting at the
Convention Center in New Orleans yesterday. (AP)

My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage one night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"—the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels—gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of those who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then told me that early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails—so they just let many of them loose. [Update: I have been searching for news reports on this last story, but I have not been able to confirm it. Instead, I have found numerous reports about the collapse of the corrupt and incompetent New Orleans Police Department; see here and here.]

There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit—but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals—and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep—on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. In a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters—not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. And they don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly complaining that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them and then shooting at those who come to rescue them—this is not just a description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of the 40-year history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.

The welfare state—and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages—is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005
Robert Tracinski is the editor and publisher of TIADaily.com and The Intellectual Activist magazine.

WASHINGTON - Sales of over-the-counter cold remedies used to make methamphetamine would be restricted under a measure approved by the Senate on Friday.

The bill would require stores to sell Sudafed, Nyquil and other medicines only from behind the pharmacy counter.

Those medicines contain the ingredient pseudoephedrine, which can be extracted to manufacture the highly addictive drug that has wreaked havoc in communities across the country.

"It will very substantially reduce the number of local labs that are out there because it throttles the ability of the cooks to get the pseudoephedrine that they need to make the methamphetamine," said Sen. Jim Talent (news, bio, voting record), R-Mo., who co-sponsored the bill with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif.

Consumers would have to show a photo ID, sign a log, and be limited to 7.5 grams — or about 250 30-milligram pills — in a 30-day period. Computer tracking would prevent customers from exceeding the limit at other stores, according to the bipartisan bill.

The Senate voted by unanimous consent to add the anti-meth measure to the massive Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill, which is expected to pass the Senate next week.

The same appropriations bill has already passed the House but without the anti-meth measure attached. Talent said he is hopeful the anti-meth measure will be included in the final version of the legislation that emerges from a conference committee.

Retailers initially were reluctant to sign onto the bill, but as states across the country began passing their own laws restricting cold medicines, stores rallied to support a national approach. Many stores, including Target and Walgreen Co., have already voluntarily agreed to sell the products behind the pharmacy counter.

"This bill will put thousands of meth labs out of business across the country," Feinstein said.

The White House has not taken a public position on the Senate bill, a sore point with some lawmakers who have criticized Bush administration statements that marijuana still poses a larger drug problem.

Asked whether the administration has changed its stance, Talent said: "I'm not holding my breath waiting for anything. We're going ahead with what we think we need to do on our end of Pennsylvania Avenue."

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT

New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms as Water Recedes
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2005/080905confiscatingfirearms.htm
contributing editor to

- Rodger

[There are a LOT of stories, both pro and con, because of hurricane Katrina, relating to preparation for disasters and the treatment of people.is trimming the quantity of stories to report. Most of them are becoming a variation on a theme. There will be many a people who will compile a collection of reports for review, in fact, some already have published some. Even with reducing the amount of published coverage the will produce, some stories require sharing. -- Tribble]

[It's obvious from this report and others that some people were not flooded in the intentional destruction of New Orleans. Some want to stay and protect their property. But the REAL owners of your property will have no part of that. You will willfully obey you masters or they will force you to willfully obey them, unless, of course, you are rich, then you can hire the police (security guards) to protect your property and that is perfectly acceptable. Makes you proud to be in Amerika doesn't it! Now let's all breath a sign of relief. Thank God we're getting those foolish self sufficient Americans out of there. For their own good of course. -- Rodger]

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 8 - Waters were receding across this flood-beaten city today as police officers began confiscating weapons, including legally registered firearms, from civilians in preparation for a mass forced evacuation of the residents still living here.

No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said.

But that order apparently does not apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property. The guards, employees of private security companies like Blackwater, openly carry M-16's and other assault rifles. Mr. Compass said that he was aware of the private guards, but that the police had no plans to make them give up their weapons.

Nearly two weeks after the floods began, New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers. While armed looters roamed unchecked last week, the city is now calm. No arrests were made on Wednesday night or this morning, and the police received only 10 calls for service, a police spokesman said.

The city's slow recovery is continuing on other fronts as well, local officials said at a news conference. Pumping stations are now operating across much of the city, and many taps and fire hydrants have water pressure. Tests have shown no evidence of cholera or other dangerous diseases in flooded areas, though health officials have said the waters contain unsafe levels of E. coli bacteria and lead.

But there were still signs of confusion and uncertainty over government plans. FEMA's director, Michael D. Brown, had said his agency would begin issuing debit cards, worth at least $2,000 each, to allow hurricane victims to buy supplies for immediate needs. More than 319,000 people have already applied for federal disaster relief, and many evacuees began lining up at the Astrodome, in Houston, early today in hope of getting cards.

"The concept is to get them some cash in hand," Mr. Brown had said, "which allows them, empowers them, to make their own decisions about what they need to have to restart their lives."

But this afternoon, FEMA announced that it no longer planned to issue the cards. An agency spokesman, David G. Passey, said that he did not know why the program was scrapped but that now "we believe that our normal methods of delivery - checks and electronic funds transfer - will suffice."

In Washington, the House an Senate overwhelmingly approved $51.8 billion for relief efforts, the second disbursement since the storm devastated the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. The funds include $50 billion for FEMA, $1.4 billion for the Department of Defense and an additional $400 million for the Army Corps of Engineers. The request follows a $10.5 billion package that President Bush signed on Friday and that is intended to address the immediate needs of survivors.

Hundreds of miles to the east, Ophelia, a tropical storm off the Florida coast, was upgraded to hurricane status this afternoon after its winds reached speeds of 75 miles per hour. Forecasters have predicted that Ophelia will turn east into the Atlantic Ocean during the next few days, although its path remains unclear.

With pumps running and the weather here remaining hot and dry, water has receded across much of New Orleans. Formerly flooded streets are now passable, although covered with leaves, tree branches and mud.

A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, Dan Hitchings, said 37 of the city's 174 permanent pumps were working this afternoon, removing about 11,000 cubic feet of flood water per second. The city's 174 pumps have the capacity to remove about 81,000 cubic feet of water each second when they are all operational.

While Mr. Hitchings would not try to quantify how much the water level in the city had dropped, he did say that "it's going down."

The Army Corps of Engineers continues to try to plug two levee breaks, Mr. Hitchings said, on London Avenue, and at the end of the Harbor Navigation Canal.

Many neighborhoods in the northern half of New Orleans remain under 10 feet of water, and Mr. Compass said today that the city's plans for a forced evacuation remained in effect because of the danger of disease and fires.

Mr. Compass said he could not disclose when New Orleans residents might be forced to leave en masse, but other police officers and law enforcement officials said the city planned to start as early as tonight.

The city's Police Department and federal law enforcement officers from agencies like the United States Marshals Service will lead the evacuation, Mr. Compass said. Officers will search houses in both dry and flooded neighborhoods, and no one will be allowed to stay, he said.

Many of the residents still in the city said they did not understand why the city remained intent on forcing them out.

"I know the risks," said Renee de Pontchieux, as she sat on a stool outside Kajun's Pub in the working-class Bywater neighborhood east of downtown. "We used to think we lived in America - now we're not so sure. Why should we allow this government to chase us out and allow people from outside to rebuild our homes? We want to rebuild our homes."

But Ms. De Pontchieux said she was resigned to being evacuated if the police insisted. "It would be foolish" to fight, she said.

This afternoon, President Bush announced a series of measures intended to make it easier for evacuees to receive state and federal assistance, like Medicaid and food stamps, to make the aid as "simple as possible to collect."

"There will be many difficult days ahead, especially as we recover those who did not survive the storm," he said, adding that he was declaring Sept. 16, next Friday, a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance.

Vice President Dick Cheney, accompanied by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, surveyed damaged neighborhoods in the Gulf Coast region today, and pledged that the federal government would help rebuild the devastated area.

Mr. Cheney visited Gulfport, Miss., and New Orleans, where flood waters are growing increasingly fetid and thousands of people are still insisting on staying, despite the evacuation order.

"The president asked me to come down to take a look at things, and to begin to focus on the longer term, in terms of making certain obviously that we're getting the search-and-rescue missions done and all those other immediate things," Mr. Cheney said after touring a neighborhood in Gulfport. "The progress we're making is significant."

Mr. Cheney's visit follows a visit earlier this week by President Bush, his second since the storm hit, following much criticism last week that the administration and federal agencies had been slow in responding to the disaster.

An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 people remain inside New Orleans more than a week after Hurricane Katrina hit, many in neighborhoods that are on high ground near the Mississippi River.

In the first indication of how many deaths Louisiana alone might expect, a spokesman for the State Department of Health and Hospitals, Robert Johannessen, said on Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had ordered 25,000 body bags. The official death toll remains under 100.

In Washington, House and Senate leaders announced a joint investigation into the government's response to the crisis. "Americans deserve answers," said a statement by the two top-ranking Republicans, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader. "We must do all we can to learn from this tragedy, improve the system and protect all of our citizens."

Democratic leaders, however, said they would not participate, citing a preference for an independent inquiry.

The government continued its efforts to help evacuees. At the Astrodome in Houston, where an estimated 15,000 New Orleans evacuees found shelter over the weekend, the number had dwindled to only about 3,000 on Wednesday as people were rapidly placed in apartments, volunteers' homes and hotels that had been promised reimbursement by FEMA.

With the overall death toll highly uncertain, Mr. Brown, the FEMA director, said in Baton Rouge that the formal house-to-house search for bodies had begun at midmorning. He said the temporary mortuary set up in St. Gabriel, La., was prepared to receive 500 to 1,000 bodies a day, with refrigeration trucks on site to hold the corpses.

As it worked to remove the water inundating the city, the Corps of Engineers said that one additional pumping station, No. 6, at the head of the 17th Street Canal, had started up, and that about 10 percent of the city's total pumping capacity was in operation. But the corps added that it was dealing with a new problem: how to prevent corpses from being sucked to the grates at the pump inlets.

"We're expending every effort to try to ensure that we protect the integrity of remains as we get this water out of the city," said John S. Rickey, chief of public affairs for the corps. "We're taking this very personally. This is a very deep emotional aspect of our work down there."

Officials emphasized that as testing of the flood waters continued, substances in addition to E. coli bacteria and lead were likely to be found at harmful levels, especially from water taken near industrial sites.

"Human contact with the floodwater should be avoided as much as possible," the environmental agency's administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, said.

A spokesman for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said state and local officials had reported three deaths in Mississippi and one in Texas from exposure to Vibrio vulnificus, a choleralike bacterium found in salt water, which poses special risks for people with chronic liver problems.

At a news conference this morning, officials in New Orleans cautioned people to decontaminate themselves as best as possible when entering homes after wading through the floodwater.

Among the authorities, though, some confusion lingered about how a widespread evacuation by force would work, and how much support it would get at the federal and state level. Mayor C. Ray Nagin told the police and the military on Tuesday to remove all residents for their own safety, and on Wednesday, the police superintendent, Mr. Compass, said state laws give the mayor the authority to declare martial law and order the evacuations.

"There's a martial law declaration in place that gives us legal authority for mandatory evacuations," Mr. Compass said. "We'll use the minimum amount of force necessary."

But because the New Orleans Police Department has only about 1,000 working officers, the city is largely in the hands of National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers.

State officials said Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco could tell the Guard to carry out the forced removals, but they stopped short of a commitment to do so. In Washington, Lt. Gen. Joseph R. Inge, deputy commander of the United States Northern Command, said regular troops "would not be used" in any forced evacuation.

The state disaster law does not supersede either the state or federal Constitutions, said Kenneth M. Murchison, a law professor at Louisiana State University. But even so, Mr. Nagin's decision could be a smart strategy that does not violate fundamental rights, Professor Murchison said.

When police officers came to Billie Moore's 3,000 square foot Victorian to warn her of the health risks of remaining in the city, she pushed her identification tag from the hospital where she works as a nurse through slats in the door.

Ms. Moore and her husband, Richard Robinson, who do not drive and use bicycles for the 5-mile ride to their jobs at the still-functioning Ochsner Hospital in suburban Jefferson Parish, have no plans to leave. Their circa-1895 home, on the city's southwest flank, suffered virtually no damage in the hurricane or its aftermath. They have been lighting an old gas stove with a match to cook pasta and rice, dumping cans of peas on top for flavor.

"We try to be normal and sit down and eat," Ms. Moore, 52, explained as she showed off the expansive, well-kept home where they have lived for 10 years. "I think that's how we'll stay healthy is if I keep the house clean."

Ms. Moore said she had not worked since the hurricane because there are few babies left at the hospital, but that she remains on standby; her husband has been on duty the past five days.

"I don't want to go, I don't want to lose my job," she said. "Who's going to take care of the patients if all the nurses go away?"

From Ryan Parry in New Orleans

BUNGLING Barbara Bush yesterday claimed poverty-stricken refugees who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina are actually better off thanks to the devastating floods.

The 80-year-old former first lady piled more pressure on her under fire son George's administration by declaring that the victims are so happy in their makeshift camps they would rather stay than go back to their impoverished communities.

Her gaffe came after a visit with husband George Snr to the Astrodome stadium in Houston, Texas, where thousands of evacuees from New Orleans and other affected areas are being housed.

Barbara chuckled as she said: "So many of the people here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. Almost everyone I've talked to says: 'We're going to move to Houston'."

Many of the refugees are anxiously waiting for news of missing loved ones. Their homes have been destroyed and families shattered by the hurricane that hit southern America last week.

BUTTON IT: Barbara Bush

Barbara's comments come as celebrities lined up to criticise George Bush over delays in responding to the crisis.

As the hunt for the thousands of people still missing intensified yesterday, James Bond star Pierce Brosnan, 52, said: "This man called President Bush has a lot to answer for. I don't know if he is really taking care of America. This government has been shameful."

Actor Colin Farrell added: "If this had been a bunch of white people on the roofs of their houses I don't have any f***ing doubt there would have been every single helicopter, plane and means that the government has trying to help."

The 29-year-old Irishman spoke out after being auctioned off on a £6,000 charity date.

Other stars rolled up their sleeves and got on with the job of helping stricken communities themselves rather than waiting for politicians to sort out the mess.

Actor Sean Penn spent nine hours pulling bodies out of the putrid waters in New Orleans.

"Though we have come to be suspicious of the will of our administration, I don't think anybody ever anticipated the criminal negligence of the Bush administration in this situation."

Penn had to abandon his mission when his boat sprung a leak. He bailed out using a plastic cup.

Grease star John Travolta delivered five tonnes of food and 400 tetanus shots to Louisiana on his private jet. He visited shelters across the region and spoke to victims before touring New Orleans with actress wife Kelly Preston.

Singer Paul Simon donated two mobile medical units and Barry Manilow announced his fund had raised £81,000 in aid.

Macy Gray and Oprah Winfrey visited the devastated region. Chat queen Oprah also handed out food at the Astrodome.

Author John Grisham has given £2.7million to the relief effort in his home state of Mississippi. Rappers P Diddy and Jay-Z pledged £550,000 to help the thousands of homeless.

Several concerts are being staged including an MTV benefit gig called ReAct Now: Music & Relief on Saturday. The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Kanye West, Sheryl Crow and Paul McCartney are due to play.

Up to 10,000 are believed killed by Katrina. By last night the floodwaters had dropped substantially and rescuers braced themselves for what horrors the receding deluge would reveal.

Draining the remaining water is likely to take weeks and with so many people decomposing the risk of disease worsens by the day.

In Violet on the Mississippi, 22 bodies were found lashed together around a pole - evidence of a bid to escape the rising waters.

New Orleans police estimated there were fewer than 10,000 people left in the city. Many refuse to leave their homes. The authorities have now refused to hand out water to those who insist on staying.

But officials said the lawlessness that plagued New Orleans has been brought under control.

Mr Bush yesterday pledged to lead a probe into the government's dismally slow relief effort. He said: "We've got to solve problems."

I N S I G H T

FEMA's Blocking Of Relief Efforts - An Amazing List
http://www.rense.com/general67/femwont.htm
contributing editor to

- Jeanne

That last one is really real -- not satire but straight from FEMA's website.

R e s p o n s e

re: An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
contributing editor to

- Jeanne

[This is a reply to the article of September 7, 2005 (earlier this edition) entitled "An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State". -- Tribble]

Refugees who have and were receiving food stamps and welfare checks have been brought up to Ft. Smith, AR (Fort Chaffee) and are now being assimilated into the schools/etc. One woman said- “There is so much LOVE HERE- Why they even gave us our own P. O. BOX in order to continue getting our food stamps and our welfare checks!”

Think about this for a moment. There have been pleas by the local news media to the public to please give your time to come and HELP these people. What do they need for us to do? They have FREE FOOD, FREE WATER, FREE HOUSING, FREE MEDICAL CARE, FREE P. O. BOX to get their FREE food stamps and money…..do they really need some of us who work 60 hours a week to put a roof over our heads and food on the table for us and our family to go there and hand-feed them, or make their bed for them? What is it that they need, I’m wondering? They even have FREE medical treatment without having to pay any health care premiums or ever pay back any health care fees. What a DEAL! Here’s the other kicker- the news media reported that they will get FREE bus rides up to NW Arkansas for job hunting and the businesses might even have a JOB FAIR to help them find jobs. That’s what we need. We already have a huge Mexican population that are working in the chicken-plucking plants for Tyson/George’s/etc. At least they work, but they have also brought all kinds of CRIME to the area as well. Stealing, rape, murder, shootings, etc. not to mention the diseases like TB which are being spread from those coming up from Mexico daily. Why not just add more CRIME to our area with those on welfare who keep multiplying and getting more food stamps, while the “sperm” donors are out robbing/raping and pillaging the neighborhood, or selling drugs on the street corners. Let’s make NW Arkansas just like New York, ya want to?

I don’t mean to sound hard-hearted, but if EACH ONE took care of themselves, WELL, just what would that be like, I wonder? Or maybe all of the women you see without husbands with 5+ children from 5 different men, who are 300 lbs. overweight, might just help each other look after their brood while continuing the “status quo” of someone else providing their every need for them.

GET UP OFF YOUR BUTT AND TAKE CARE OF YOUR BUTT FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE! Walk over to the kitchen where someone is preparing your meals for you and go ahead and EAT and DRINK. How’s that for a Scriptural thought? I’m not talking about those who are ill….let those who aren’t, help take care of the others….you know, like how real Americans do it when there is a disaster that affects their neighbors!

Ruptured New Orleans Levee had help failing
By: Hal Turner September 9, 2005 3:36 PM EDT

NOTE (Turner): This story has been UPDATED as of Saturday, September 10, 2005 @ 11:40 PM EDT The updated info is incorporated into the story and appears in bold type

New Orleans, LA -- Divers inspecting the ruptured levee walls surrounding New Orleans found something that piqued their interest: Burn marks on underwater debris chunks from the broken levee wall!

One diver, a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, saw the burn marks and knew immediately what caused them. When he surfaced and showed the evidence to his superior, the on-site Coordinator for FEMA stepped-in and said "You are not here to conduct an investigation as to why this rupture occurred, but only to determine how best to close it." The FEMA coordinator then threw the evidence back into the water and said "You will tell no one about this."

At that point, the diver went back down to do more inspection of the levee. On the second dive, he secreted a small chunk of the debris inside his wet suit and later arranged for it to be sent to trusted military friends at a The U.S. Army Forensic Laboratory at Fort Gillem, Georgia for testing.

According to well placed sources, a military forensic specialist determined the burn marks on the cement chunks did, in fact, come from high explosives. The source, speaking on condition of anonymity said "We found traces of boron-enhanced fluoronitramino explosives as well as PBXN-111 embedded in the debris. This would indicate at least two separate types of explosive devices."

The levee ruptures in New Orleans did not take place during Hurricane Katrina, but rather a day after the hurricane struck. Several residents of New Orleans and many Emergency Workers reported hearing what sounded like large, muffled explosions from the area of the levee, but those were initially discounted as gas explosions from homes with leaking gas lines.

If these allegations prove true, the ruptured levee which flooded New Orleans was a deliberate act of mass destruction perpetrated by someone with access to military-grade UNDERWATER high explosives.

More details as they become available . . . . .

I N S I G H T

Volunteer Helping Hurricane Survivors Reports how "Evacuees" Abused Those Who came to Help
http://www.halturnershow.com/ReportFromAVolunteer.html
contributing editor to

- Jeanne

[This shows there is enough bad charactor for the would be rescuers and also for the alleged victims. -- Tribble]

Free food rejected as "not good enough";
Free water rejected with demands for beer and liquor;
Refusal to help each other carrying mattresses and supplies; saying "we just lost our homes, you want us to work?"

I thought I might inform the few friends I have on my recent traumatic experience. I am going to tell it straight, blunt, raw, and I don’t give a damn. Long read, I know but please do read!!!

I went to volunteer on Saturday at the George R. Brown convention for two reasons.

I’ve been watching the news lately and have seen scenes that have made me want to vomit. And no it wasn’t dead bodies, the city under water, or the sludge everywhere. It was PEOPLE”S BEHAVIOR. The people on T.V. (99% being Black) where DEMANDING help. They were not asking nicely but demanding as if society owed these people something. Well the honest truth is WE DON’T. Help should be asked for in a kind manner and then appreciated. This is not what the press (FOX in particular) was showing, what I was seeing was a group of people who are yelling, demanding, looting, killing, raping, and SHOOTING back at the demanded help!!!!! So I’m thinking this can’t possibly be true can it???? So I decide to submit to the DEMAND for help out of SHOCK. I couldn’t believe this to be true of the majority of the people who are the weakest of society. So I went to volunteer and help folks out and see the truth. So I will tell the following story and you decide:

I arrived at the astrodome only to find out that there are too many volunteers and that volunteers where needed at the George R. Brown Convention Center. As I was walking up to the Convention Center I noticed a line of cars that wrapped around blocks filled with donations. These where ordinary Houstonians coming with truckloads and trunks full of water, diapers, clothes, blankets, food, all types of good stuff. And lots of it was NEW. I felt that warm fuzzy while helping unload these vehicles of these wonderful human beings. I then went inside the building and noticed approximately 100,000 sq. ft. of clothes, shoes, jackets, toys and all types of goodies all organized and ready for the people in need. I signed up, received a name badge and was on my merry way excited to be useful.

I toured the place to get familiar with my surrounding; the entire place is probably around 2 million sq. ft. I noticed rows as far as the eye can see of mattresses, not cots, BLOW UP MATTRESSES!!! All of which had nice pillows and plenty of blankets. 2 to 3 bottles of water lay on every bed. These full size to queen size beds by the way where comfortable, I laid in one to see for myself. I went to look at the medical area. I couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing!!! A makeshift hospital created in 24 hours!!! It was unbelievable, they even had a pharmacy. I also noticed that they created showers, which would also have hot water. I went upstairs to the third floor to find a HUGE cafeteria created in under 24 hours! Rows of tables, chairs and food everywhere – enough to feed an army! I’m not talking about crap food either. They had jason’s deli food, apples, oranges, coke, diet coke, lemonade, orange juice, cookies, all types of chips and sandwiches. All the beverages by the way was put on ice and chilled!!!! In a matter of about 24 hours or less an entire mini-city was erected by volunteers for the poor evacuees. This was not your rundown crap shelter, it was BUM HEAVEN.

So that was the layout: great food, comfy beds, clean showers, free medical help, by the way there was a library, and a theatre room I forgot to mention. Great stuff right????

I started by handing out COLD water bottles to evacuees as they got off the bus. Many would take them and only 20% or less said thank you. Lots of them would shake their heads and ask for sodas! So this went on for about 20-30 minutes until I was sick of being an unappreciated servant. I figured certainly these folks would appreciate some food!!! So I went upstairs to serve these beloved evacuees some GOOD food that I wish I could have at the moment!

***The following statements are graphic, truthful, and discuss UNRATIONAL behavior***

Evacuees come slowly to receive this mountain of food that is worth serving to a king! I tell them that we have 2 types of great deli sandwiches to choose from – ham and turkey. Many look at the food in disgust and DEMAND burgers, pizza, and even McDonalds!!!! Jason’s deli is better than McDonalds!!!! Only 1 out of ten people who took something would say “thank you” the rest took items as if it was their God give right to be served without a shred of appreciation!!! They would ask for Beer and liquor. They complained that we didn’t have good enough food. They refused food and laughed at us. They treated us volunteers as if we where SLAVES. No not all of them of course…but 70% did!!!!!! 20% where appreciative, 10% took the food without any comment and the other 70% had some disgusting comment to say. Some had the nerve to laugh at us. And when I snapped back at them for being mean, they would curse at me!!! Needless to say I was in utter shock. They would eat their food and leave their mess on the table… some would pick up their stuff many would leave it for the volunteers to pick up. I left that real quick to go down and help set up some more beds. I saw many young ladies carrying mattresses and I helped for a while. Then I realized something…their where hundreds of able bodied young men who could help!! I asked a group of young evacuees in their teens and early twenties to help. I got cursed at for asking them to help!!! One said “We just lost our fucking homes and you want us to work!!” The next said “Ya Cracker, you got a home we don’t” I looked at them in disbelief. Here are women walking by carrying THEIR FUCKING BEDS and they can’t lift a finger and help themselves!!

I waved them off and turned away and was laughed at and more “white boy jokes” where made at me. I felt no need to waste my breath on a bunch of pitiful losers. I went to a nearby restroom where I noticed a man shaving. I used the restroom, washed my hands and saw this man throw his razor towards the trash can...he missed… he walked out leaving his disgusting razor on the floor for some other “cracker” to pick up. Even the little kids where demanding. I saw only ONE white family and only TWO Hispanic families. The rest where blacks…sorry 20% to 30% decent blacks… and 70% LOSERS!!!!!

I would call them NIGGERS, but the actual definition of a nigger is one who is ignorant, these people were not ignorant……they where ARROGANT ASSHOLES. The majority of which are thugs and lifetime lazy ass welfare recipients. We are inviting the lowest of the low to Houston. And like idiots we are serving the people who will soon steal our cars, rape, murder, and destroy our city while stealing from our pockets on a daily basis through the welfare checks they take. We will fund our own destruction.

By “US” I don’t mean a specific race, I mean the people who work hard, work smart, have values and morals. Only people who want to help themselves should be helped, the others should be allowed to destroy themselves. I do not want to work hard, give the government close to half the money I earn so they can in turn give it to a bunch of losers.

I don’t believe in being poor for life. My family immigrated here, we came here poor, and now thank God, and due to HARD WORK we are doing fine. If immigrants, who come here, don’t know the language can work and become successful... WHY THE FUCK CAN’T THE MAJORITY OF THE HOMEGROWN DO IT!!! If we continue to reward these losers then we will soon destroy our great country. I just witnessed selfish, arrogant, unappreciative behavior by the very people who need help the most. Now these same people who cursed me, refused my cities generosity, who refuse to help themselves are DEMANDING handouts on their own terms!!!!!!! They prance around as if they are owed something, and when they do receive a handout, they say it’s not good enough! Well you know what……these types of people can go to hell for all I care!

© 2001 Hal Turner - All rights reserved. No material posted in any area of this site may be reproduced or distributed in any form without written permission.
Web design:

He's just posted a letter to Secretary Chertoff from Ranking Member Waxman and Chairman Davis which describes documents from the Department of Homeland Security that show that FEMA was aware in 2004 that a "catastrophic hurricane" could hit New Orleans and "trap hundreds of thousands of people in flooded areas and leave up to one million people homeless." FEMA officials wrote: "the gravity of the situation calls for an extraordinary level of advance planning."

Before he knew what happened, the 77-year-old long-time resident, law-abiding citizen and Korean War veteran had eight law enforcement officials swarm on his property, checking the place out for marijuana.

Never before having a run-in with the law, Stout said the heavy-handed looking group of law enforcement thugs “came and went without saying a word” after suspiciously looking at a large bush on his property not in the slightest bit resembling a pot plant.

“I’ve been here since 1994 and everybody’s knows me including the sheriff. I never smoked marijuana and they know it, but I think they just like terrorizing people,” said Stout in a telephone conversation from his rural home, adding he still hasn’t received an answer from anyone why law enforcement officials invaded his privacy and entered his land without a proper search warrant.

“It scared the hell out of me as eight or ten men swarmed my place. I was weeding my garden and the next thing you know, they were on my property, looked at this bush and left without saying a word. It was ridiculous, but the sheriff, the deputy sheriff and the game warden all raided my place for no reason and I am still looking for an explanation.”

Although Stout can’t pinpoint why authorities entered his property without a warrant, earlier that day he aired his strong opinions against President Bush, calling him an outright liar, on a free speech and truth-telling talk radio show on the popular WAIF AM770 local radio station.

Stout said he has been calling in regularly voicing his anti-Bush opinions, saying people in rural Ohio are finally starting to wake up to lies, deceit and treachery imposed on the American people by what he calls a “lying dog of a President.’

“I think he and the rest of his buddies are corrupt, down right crazy and Bush should be impeached plain and simple for lying to the people about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” said the former Korean War veteran, who lashed out at Bush for going to war illegally and in the process killing thousands of innocent civilians, including more than 1,700 GI’s.

“I think George Bush is a liar and is personally responsible for the deaths of many good young men in order that his rich buddies could profit from this illegal war.”

Considering himself a “true American” who honorably fought for his country and drove a Greyhound bus for many years, the plain speaking Bush critic thinks America is in a crisis and at the brink of martial law at the hands of government tyrants bent on destroying the country from within.

“I think we have lost this country and many people feel it’s too late and feel helpless about doing anything about it,” said Stout. “I am pretty outspoken about a lot of things and it wouldn’t surprise me if another terrorist hits us harder than 9/11, putting the country under a state of emergency and martial law while at the same time taking the heat off Bush.

“This reminds me of Nazi Germany. The people are being fed propaganda and in turn the dollar is going to hell as are the rest of our freedoms. I don’t think we should give up our freedoms in order to be safer, when all the government is trying to do is take us over from within.

“The Founding Fathers would have never stood for what is going on and would have thrown Bush and his buddies out on their ears. I think the people of Ohio are starting to wake up and I do not intend to stop talking about how I feel on that talk radio show.”

Besides the strange raid on Stout’s property, the radio station giving the thumbs up to air the controversial truth-telling radio program in the traditionally conservative heartland also has reported mysteriously having its transmitter knocked out on two occasions from “two mysterious bolts of lightening.”

Housewife Lauren Dowling, another avid WAIF listener and unofficial promoter of the truth-telling show that schedules many of the guests for broadcaster Sharon Elliot and station owner Joe Edwards, isn’t pointing fingers but said this week from her rural home that the two “bolts of lightening” in the last six weeks was very unusual.

Although Elliot and Edwards have been airing a controversial show from their station headquarters in Nelsonville, Ohio, radio for quite some time, it hasn’t been until recently that they decided to bring on even more controversial figures like anti-establishment broadcaster Alex Jones and others to talk the traditionally mainstream audience at WAIF.

“And Maureen Jones just came on the other day educating people about fluoride in the water, which was very interesting,” said Dowling, adding calls have been coming in from all over the South East quadrant of Ohio, including parts of West Virginia about the station that has small town roots but a large broadcast reach.

“I thought it was time the people of our community heard the truth from people like Alex Jones, who by the way, probably shocked a few listeners, but had a very important message which has been basically censored by the mainstream press.

“I’m just an average Mom, giving out a common sense dose of the truth to these arrogant leaders.

.Besides Jones, WAIF is scheduling for future morning shows other alternative broadcasters and activists basically silenced in rural America by the Bush propaganda machine and a cooperative press.

Plans also include interviewing many people who have had their voices silenced about 9/11, especially eye-witness, victims and journalists who have struggled hard to wake up a sleeping country.

“It’s never too late and people around here are starting to open their hearts and minds, tuning in to listen and participate,” added Dalling.

And Stout, who many people in the community believe had his civil rights violated by law enforcement officials for voicing his regularly on WAIF, had one last message to President Bush before getting to the bottom of why officials illegally swarmed down on his private property:

“I don’t intend to trade of security for my rights as an American. I believe we need to take our country back from these thugs and brown shirts before or jobs, our financial security and our lives are taken away from us right before our very eyes.

“I want the American people to know that a lot of other people here in Ohio feel like I do and also know the election was stolen by Bush. He is losing popularity because a lot of people over here are finally starting to see through his lies, lies that are costing young American lives every day this illegal war continues.”

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT

Citizen Flotilla Turned Back by Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries
http://www.rense.com/general67/cit.htm
contributing editor to

- Rodger

My name is Jason Robideaux, I am an attorney from Lafayette Louisiana and have dealt with all of the various law enforcement agencies in Louisiana during the past 18 years. Although I have had a positive relationship with law enforcement personnel throughout the State for many years, I regretfully have a story to share that will shake your head in disbelief about the La. Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries.

A group of approximately 1,000 citizens pulling 500 boats left the Acadiana Mall in Lafayette this morning (Weds.) and headed to New Orleans with a police escort from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff´s Department. The "flotillia" of trucks pulling boats stretched over five miles. This citizen rescue group was organized by La. State Senator, Gautreaux from Vermilion Parish. The group was comprised of experienced boaters, licensed fishermen and hunters, people who have spent their entire adult life and teenage years on the waterways of Louisiana.

The State Police waved the flotillia of trucks/boats through the barricades in LaPlace and we sped into New Orleans via I-10 until past the airport and near the Clearview exit. At that time we were stopped by agents of the La. Dept. of Wildlife & Fisheries. A young DWF agent strolled through the boats and told approximately half of the citizens that their boats were "too large" because the water had "dropped during the night" and that they should turn around and go home.

We were pulling a large (24ft) shallow draft aluminum boat that can safely carry 12 passengers and had ramp access which would allow the elderly and infirm to have easier access to the boat. We politely informed the DWF agent that the local and national media had consistently reported that the water level had "risen" during the night which contradicted his statement to us that the water "was dropping" and no boat over 16ft. in length would be allowed to participate in rescue operations.

We then specifically asked the DWF agent that we (and other citizens in the flotillia) be allowed to go to the hospitals and help evacuate the sick and the doctors and nurses stranded there. We offered to bring these people back to Lafayette, in our own vehicles, in order to ensure that they received proper and prompt medical care.

The DWF agent did not want to hear this and ordered us home. We complied with the DWF agent´s orders, turned around and headed back to Lafayette along with half of the flotillia. However, two of my friends were pulling my other boat, a smaller 15ft alumaweld with a 25 hp. The DWF agents let them through to proceed to the rescue operation launch site.

My two friends were allowed to drive to the launch site where the La. Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries were launching their rescue operations (via boat). They reported to me that there were over 200 DWF agents just standing around and doing nothing. My friends were kept there for approximately 3 hours. During that time they observed a large number of DWF agents doing nothing. After three hours had passed they were told that they were not needed and should go home. They complied with the DWF´s orders and turned around and went home to Lafayette.

Watching CNN tonight, there was a telephone interview with a Nurse trapped in Charity Hospital in New Orleans. She said that there were over 1,000 people trapped inside of the hospital and that the doctors and nurses had zero medical supplies, no diesel to run the generators and that only three people had been rescued from the hospital since the Hurricane hit!

I can´t come up with one logical reason why the DWF sent this large group of 500 boats/1000 men home when we surely could have rescued most, if not all, of the people trapped in Charity Hospital. Further, we had the means to immediately transport these people to hospitals in Southwest Louisiana.

On Tuesday afternoon, August 30, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee asked for all citizens with boats to come to the aid of Jefferson Parish. A short time later Dwight Landreneau, the head of the La. Depart. of Wildlife and Fisheries, got on television and remarked that his agency had things under control and citizen help was not needed. Apparently, Sheriff Lee did not agree with that assessment and had one of his deputies provide the Lafayette flotillia with an escort into Jefferson Parish.

Sheriff Lee and Senator Gautreaux - 1000 of Louisiana´s citizens responded to your pleas for help. We were prevented from helping by Dwight Landreneau´s agency, the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. When I learned that Charity Hospital has not been evacuated and that no one has been there to attempt a rescue, I became angry.

The "turf-marking" by some minor state agency should never take priority over the lives of citizens!

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: I don't really understand. How is it the new [Social Security] plan is going to fix that problem?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled

Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words,how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.

The Flat Earth Report

What you ought to know about Wal-Mart (and other corporations)
http://www.acoustic-coffeehouse.com/Wal-Mart.htm
contributing editor to

- Jeanne

[I do support free enterprise, and the opportunity for anyone to advance. I have a lawyer acquaintance who tells me there are 4 branches of government. If you remember your high school civic studies (even if you attended public warehousing) you were taught there are only 3 branches of government. But, in today's world, there seems my acquaintance is correct is saying there is the Executive, Judicial, Legislative and Wal-Mart. Now consider why some people/businesses continue to do things considered wrong, especially when a financial penalty is likely to be imposed. Take the following article for example - if Wal-Mart occasionally pays a fine of $50million, yet profits over $7Billion, then even on a yearly basis, that is a profit of over $6Billion. Hence, the occasional fines, settlements and judgments are merely a "cost of doing business" and those values are factored into the prices they charge.

Now this article does try to attack Wal-Mart for some things that may not be controllable, such a claimed disparage in wages between men and women, or percentage of women in clerk vs management positions. Regardless of whether Wal-Mart has a deliberate agenda to encourage this statistic will not alter the basic facts of humanity. Some of these factors are well explained by Marilyn Van Savant and her explanation is made the next article reported here in -- Tribble]

The next time you go shopping, think about this before you pull into Wal-Mart's parking lot:

The owners of one of the U.S.'s premiere retail corporations is comprised of five of the ten richest people in the world, all from the same family. Their personal wealth eclipses $100 billion dollars. Last year the companies CEO was paid a cool $11.5 million, more than the annual salaries of 765 of his employees combined! The company's profits are over $7 billion annually. In these difficult economic times how do they do it? Here's how.

This company runs ads featuring the United States flag and proclaims "We Buy American". In 2001 they moved their world-wide purchasing headquarters to China and are the largest importer of Chinese goods in the US, purchasing over $10 billion of Chinese made products annually. Products made mostly by women and children working in the labor hell-holes, China is famous for.

Wal-Mart's average employee working in the US makes $15,000 a year, $7.22 per hour! The company brags that 70% of their employees are full time, but, fails to disclose that they count anyone working 28 hours a week or more, as full time. There are no health care benefits unless you have worked for the company for two years. With a turnover rate averaging above 50% per year, only 38% of their 1.3 million employees have health care coverage. In California alone it's estimated that the taxpayers pay over $20 million annually to subsidize public health care benefits for these employees who get none from this behemoth corporation.

According to a report by PBS's "Now" with Bill Moyer, their managers are trained in what government social programs are available for these "employees" to take advantage of, so that the company can pass on those costs to you and me. It allows them to, not only keep their $7 billion in annual profits, but to do so by substituting benefits they refuse to provide with benefits paid for with taxpayer dollars.

This company holds the record for the most suits filed against it by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A lawyer from "Business Week" (not exactly the bastion for supporting Labor) said, "I have never seen this kind of blatant disregard for the law." They had to pay $750,000.00 in Arizona for blatant discrimination against the disabled! The judge was so incensed that he also ordered them to run commercials admitting their guilt. The National Labor Relations Board has issued over 40 formal complaints against the corporation in 25 different states in just the past five years. The NLRB's top lawyer believed that their labor violations, such as illegal spying on employees, fraudulent record keeping, falsifying time cards to avoid paying overtime, threats, illegal firings for union organizing etc., were so widespread that he was looking into filing a very rare national complaint against the company.

Nearly 1 million women are involved in the largest class-action suit ever filed against a corporation. Although women make up over 65% of this corporations work force only 10% of them are managers. The women who have become store managers make $16,400 a year less then the men. The corporation took out nearly 350,000 life insurance policies on their employees. They did not tell the employees and then named the corporation as the beneficiary. They are now being sued by numerous employees, and although the corporation has stopped this practice of purchasing what is known as "Dead Peasant Policies", a company spokesperson stated, "The company feels it acted properly and legally in doing this." They force employees to work after ordering them to punch out. In Texas alone this practice of "wage theft" is estimated to have cost employees $30 million per year. Wage theft or "off-the-clock" lawsuits are pending in 25 states. In New Mexico they paid $400,000.00 in one suit and in Colorado they had to pay $50 million to settle one class-action case brought against them. In Oregon a jury found them guilty of locking employees in the building and of forcing unpaid overtime.

With 4,400 stores they practice "predatory pricing." They come into a community and sell their goods at below cost until they drive local businesses under. Once they have captured the market the prices go up. Locally owned and operated businesses put virtually all of their money back into the community which helps keep the local economies vibrant. This corporation sucks the money out of the local community, decreases wages and benefits and ships the profits out of state. This company doesn't buy locally or bank locally. They replace three decent paying jobs in a community with two poorly paid "part-timers". In Kirksville, Missouri when this company came to town, four clothing stores, four grocery stores, a stationery store, a fabric store and a lawn-and-garden store all went under. Eleven businesses are now gone. (The above information can be found in "Thieves in High Places", James Hightower, The Penguin Group, New York, NY, 2003 p. 166 193.)

Now you know how they can claim, "Always low prices." Wal-Mart is the largest corporation in the world, larger than General Motors and Exxon-Mobil. Wal-Mart will reap over 250 billion in sales in 2003, which is larger than the entire gross national product of Ireland and Israelcombined. It has over 1.3 million employees. It sells more groceries, jewelry, photo processing, dog food, and vitamins than any other chain in the world. Wal-Mart is owned by the Walton family.

duh

Women, on Average, Earn 77 cents on the Dollar Compared to Men, IS A FALLACY
http://www.parade.com/marilyn/index.html

Some time ago, you polled your readers for their opinions about men and women in the workplace, and I put in my 2 cents. I’m still waiting to read the results. Can it be that they are too controversial to publish?
—Herb Millspaugh, San Francisco, Calif.

No, but they’re surprising, all right! Before the survey, I replied to a question about the claim that women are paid less than men for equal work by writing: “But if their work is equal, why aren’t employers slashing their payroll costs by hiring women instead of men? In a free market, businesses are highly competitive, and if they’re paying men more than they pay women, there must be a reason.”

One reason, I wrote, might be that women often have less experience because of years spent at home raising children. During that time, men and women with unbroken careers have built customer bases, cultivated professional
relationships and stayed in touch with developments in their industries. Those employees are going to be worth more, and that’s only fair.

The National Committee on Pay Equity wrote to complain about that assessment. It blamed sex discrimination instead: “Women, on average, earn 77 cents on the dollar compared to men. Some of the gap is attributable to experience, education and time taken out of the workforce to raise children. But there is plenty of evidence that shows wage discrimination exists. We routinely hear from women who discover that they are paid less than equally qualified men.”

This is a common misunderstanding, based on an inflammatory misinterpretation of Census Bureau survey statistics: The “77 cents on the dollar” figure is simply the weekly median (meaning middle: an equal number of women above and below) earnings figure ($473) of all working women divided by the weekly median earnings figure ($618) of all working men. These figures include everyone from dishwashers to physicists and have nothing whatsoever to do with equal pay for equal work. Yet the misleading phrase “77 cents on the dollar” has been the impetus for lawsuits and legislation, not to mention the source of unnecessary fury on the part of both sexes.

In short, much of the “wage gap” is due to experience, education and delayed or broken careers, plus the fact that women are concentrated in lower-paying occupations. It is possible that very little equal-pay-for-equal-work gap exists at all. Note: Equal qualifications don’t produce equal performance in the workplace. Just because employees complain that they’re not being paid as much as others doesn’t mean their complaints are justified: Both male and female employees routinely fail to recognize their own personal shortcomings, and both complain about not being paid as much as fellow workers who they believe are equal or inferior to themselves.

To be convinced of any real equal-pay-for-equal-work gap, first we must see unbiased studies that show men and women working in the same jobs and producing the same results but with unequal pay. And even that isn’t enough. Then we must consider relevant additional factors, and there are many. For example, employees with management potential may be paid more. If women are perceived to have less ability to handle positions of more responsibility, they could lose some ground here.

To see if women are considered equally capable and valuable in other ways (that is, excluding management potential) by the public itself—not by employers—readers were asked to fill out a questionnaire. The results were amazing. There wasn’t a single job for which the vast majority (say, 90%) of the readers answered that “it made no difference.” And the only job for which even a simple majority (over 50%) of the readers actually preferred a woman was a babysitter, and that turned out to be the vast majority (about 90%). The runner-up (and still under 50%) was soothing angry customers—handling complaints! So that’s how we see it. Are we right or are we wrong? Are men and women equal or unequal?

If any unfair gap exists, litigation can help with situational inequities, but lawsuits make the stereotype worse, because they imply that women, as a group, need special help and are incapable of competing with men on their own. (For example, forced hiring and promoting has cast a cloud of doubt over all women.) On the other hand, if employers are not seriously biased—and the pay differences are for good reasons—I believe that forcing equality in pay is unfair to men.

In my judgment, women are capable of far more than they currently demonstrate, but to realize their full professional potential—whatever that may be—they would need to give up the home values they cherish, and I doubt that will happen. As I once wrote, “Money, power and fame are not most mothers’ goals.” Nor should they be.

Survey Results Here's how 7,758 readers felt about men and women in the workplace:

         Of the men, 4% chose a man, 91% chose a woman,
         and 5% said it made no difference.
         Of the women, 2% chose a man, 90% chose a
         woman, and 8% said it made no difference.

         Of the men, 57% chose a man,
         4% chose a woman, and 39% said it made no difference.
         Of the women, 44% chose a man, 7% chose a
         woman, and 49% said it made no difference.

         Of the men, 18% chose a man, 43% chose a woman,
         and 39% said it made no difference.
         Of the women, 14% chose a man, 27% chose a
         woman, and 59% said it made no difference.

         Of the men, 69% chose a man, 2% chose a woman,
         and 29% said it made no difference.
         Of the women, 51% chose a man, 3% chose a
         woman, and 46% said it made no difference.

When buying a home, with which owner would you prefer to negotiate on the price?

         Of the men, 40% chose a man, 23% chose a woman,
         and 37% said it made no difference.
         Of the women, 28% chose a man, 22% chose a
         woman, and 50% said it made no difference.

         Of the men, 59% chose a man, 2% chose a woman,
         and 39% said it made no difference.
         Of the women, 38% chose a man, 6% chose a
         woman, and 56% said it made no difference.

         Of the men,
         64% chose a man,
         9% chose a woman,
         and 27% said it made no difference.
         Of the women,
         51% chose a man,
         14% chose a woman,
         and 35% said it made no difference.

         Of the men,
         3% chose the men,
         77% chose the women,
         and 20% said it made no difference.
         Of the women,
         9% chose the men,
         37% chose the women,
         and 54% said it made no difference.

Should we teach our daughters that they have a choice between having a career and staying at home?

Of the men, 83% said “yes” and 17% said “no.”
Of the women, 77% said “yes” and 23% said “no.”

Should we teach our sons that they have a choice between having a career and staying at home?

Of the men, 28% said “yes” and 72% said “no.”
Of the women, 40% said “yes” and 60% said “no.”

Say that you’re an employer hiring a new college graduate for a career position. Over the first few years, you will spend $250,000 on this person as he or she gains experience. Which—a man or a woman—do you think is more likely to quit for personal reasons? (Say, to become a full-time parent, follow a spouse to a new location or stop work after marriage.)

         Of the men,
         11% chose a man,
         83% chose a woman,
         and 6% said it made no difference.
         Of the women,
         7% chose a man,
         82% chose a woman,
         and 11% said it made no difference.

I N S I G H T

Report from Iron Mountain
http://www.amerikanexpose.com/ironmountain.html
contributing editor to

- Rodger

[If you care at all about this country and the country you will be leaving to your children and grand children, go to this web site and download the Report from Iron Mountain. Listen to it and pass the web site info on to those you want to inform. If you want more info on Iron Mountain and what it is, let me know. We are all busy but this is important. If you're too busy to take a little time to listen to this and get educated about what is going on, may your children and grandchildren piss on your grave. If we even have that much time. -- Rodger]

[Be certain to also visit the web site of "Amerikan Expose" at
http://www.amerikanexpose.com/
http://www.amerikanexpose.com/index2.html
-- Tribble]

Did the U.S. shadow government plan and orchestrate an environmental crisis for the purpose of restricting the freedoms of the American people? Is the next great crisis yet to come — the orchestration of a U.F.O. attack upon the earth?

It is now scientifically possible to project a 3-D hologram into the sky, according to a technology brag on the website of the United States Air Force.

If explosives were planted ahead of time in buildings on the ground, and a hologram of a U.F.O. with beams of light flashing toward the ground were projected, then a very realistic and convincing "attack" could be orchestrated. The explosives would be detonated at the same time that the beams of light flashed, to create the appearance that the U.F.O. was firing upon a city, causing the buildings on the ground to explode.

As we've seen with the orchestrated acts of terrorism which were executed on September 11th, 2001, the momentum that the globalists could gain toward the implementation of the unification of the world would be phenomenal!

The population would be paralyzed by fear and would be susceptible to manipulation and control, in their desire to be saved from this perceived "threat".

This and more was addressed in the Report from Iron Mountain, of which Sid Tolbert speaks in this audio documentary, produced exclusively by Chris Gerner and Amerikan Exposé. The environmental "crisis" of today, the U.F.O. crisis of tomorrow: Are they real crisis, or are we being manipulated as a part of a Hegelian process? Listen here (below), and then you decide!

More Archived Audio

I N S I G H T

U.S. Muslims Desecrate American Flag Video shows Group on Street Corner Declaring Islamic Dominance
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44664
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44709
contributing editor to

- Bob

[Even though I have NEVER seen an "American" flag, and I doubt any of you have EVER seen such a flag, you may still take issue with this story. All that aside, it seems that every klan of people has its share of degenerates, and not single klan has a monopoly. -- Tribble]

A group of American Muslims produced a video that shows its members on a New York City street corner declaring Islam's dominance over America as they tread on a U.S. flag and then rip it apart.

In the video, released by the New York-based Islamic Thinkers Society, one of the Muslims is shown placing a sign on the flag that says, "Oh Muslims! Do you know your enemy? Isn't it obvious?"

The group, tied to the British jihadist organization Al-Muhajiroun, said the demonstration was "in response to the desecration of the holy Quran by the Crusaders & Zionists at Guantanamo Bay," an allegation based on a retracted Newsweek story.

The five-minute piece begins with a man speaking in clear English: "Just to show where our loyalty belongs to – you see this flag here? It's going to go on the floor [sic]. And to us, our loyalty does not belong to this flag, our loyalty belongs to Allah ... ."

The speaker then shifts to Arabic and members can be heard shouting the familiar "Allahu Akbar," or "Allah is greatest."

Later, after noting he has a legal permit for the demonstration, the speaker shouts, "You Muslims who are hiding in your houses, don't be afraid. Come and join us. Join us in the revival of all Islam. ... Join us to revive the Muslims from darkness into light."

Image from video of Muslim group desecrating U.S. flag in street demonstration

Another speaker refers to the mandate for "Islam to dominate over all other religions, to dominate the world, even though the non-Muslims may hate it."

On its website, the Islamic Thinker's Society explains:

"This video is of our first demonstration out of a series of city-wide demonstration that was planned in response to the desecration of the holy Quran by the Crusaders & Zionists at Guantanamo Bay. In this video, we were exposing the truth to the public about the real story behind the desecration of the Qur'an. Also, this was done to rise the Muslim Communities up and unite under one cause. That is to expose the agenda of the Crusaders & Zionists and their war on Islam which many still do not see today.

Author and researcher Robert Spencer, who posted a link to the video on his weblog Jihad Watch, commented that Muslim lobby groups such as the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations have helped foster an environment that discourages criticism of such actions.

"... [I]f we even ask how many Muslims in America think this way, CAIR will bellow about discrimination and Islamophobia," Spencer writes. "So attention is diverted from activities such as what is shown in this video, and they can continue unheeded."

Image from video shows Muslim protester ripping U.S. flag

The Islamic Thinkers Society is an off-shoot of Al-Muhajiroun, a British jihadist group that publicly raised funds for Hamas and has been suspected of facilitating transportation of British Muslims to fight U.S. troops overseas.

Al-Muhajiroun spiritual leader Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad has called on the British Muslim community to join Hamas.

Under pressure from UK authorities, Al-Muhajiroun claimed it disbanded in October, but security sources say leaders still are active in London and the U.S.

As WorldNetDaily reported, Al-Muhajiroun openly maintains a branch in Queens that claims to be involved in "only peaceful activities." The group holds closed-door meetings and study sessions at a mosque in Jackson Heights, Queens, led by an older cleric identified as Sheikh Choudray.

The Queens branch youth leader, Abu Yousuf, a U.S. citizen who says he attended a "camp" in Sudan and takes computer courses at the City University of New York, speaks at university events throughout New York City usually sponsored by the Muslim Student Association.

Al-Muhajiroun leader Omar Bakri

At one Al-Muhajiroun event at Queensborough Community College sponsored by the MSA and attended by WND, a Muhajiroun speaker working with Yousuf said, "We reject the U.N., reject America, reject all law and order. Don't lobby Congress or protest because we don't recognize Congress! The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it!"

The speaker continued, "The so-called terrorists are the only people who truly fear Allah. ... They are the only worthy causes, and the mighty superpower only fears them."

In a private interview with WND, a Queens based Al-Muhajiroun leader said he would be "absolutely honored" to give up his life in a "martyr operation" against American civilians. The leader warned that "a jihad is coming to America because of the moves of the Bush administration."

Last year, Al-Muhajiroun planned a convention in London titled, "The Choice is in Your Hands: Either You're with the Muslims or with the Infidels," to mark the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In 2003, the group had planned a similar anniversary event called "The Magnificent 19 [Suicide Attackers]," but canceled it at the last minute.

Sign displayed at Muslim protest

The Flat Earth Report

Here Come The Lesbian Rangers!
http://www.rense.com/general67/ezlf.htm
contributing editor to

- Rodger

[does the poster image look enticing? -- Tribble]

Auto Genocide
By Henry Makow, PhD, 9-11-5

University students continue to face a bizarre government campaign to make them homosexuals.

Last week co-eds at the University of Winnipeg were invited to participate in a lesbian "Reorientation Week."

They were asked to become "rangers" with the "Lesbian National Parks and Services," the brainchild of local "performing artists" Shauna Dempsey and Lorri Millan. (See Poster)

This is the lesbian equivalent of the university and government hiring two middle-aged males to recruit co-eds to go camping and have sex.

The two womyn had a "field office" in the university art gallery, staffed by a university employee in ranger uniform. They took part in pancake breakfasts, barbecues and interviews on campus radio.

"Here you will encounter new, even life-changing lifestyles and ideas," their brochure said. "These may challenge you in uncomfortable ways."

The university art gallery, the Manitoba Arts Council and the Canada Council, sponsored this spectacle to the tune of (I estimate) $10,000. This doesn't include thousands of taxpayer dollars already expended on their promotional video and "Field Guide" which includes examples of lesbian "flora and fauna."

Their message: "Homosexuality is natural. Question the heterosexual model. Heterosexuality is a social construct."

Does the LNPS actually exist? This is social engineering masquerading as art, propaganda disguised as self-parody. It is a shock tactic. Eventually the outrageous becomes accepted. Often, what happens in the imagination later occurs in reality.

The Lesbian Rangers don't actually work in any parks. But the artists claim to have hundreds of junior members called "Eager Beavers."

Their video (online) is full of such double entendres and sexual innuendo. The two "bush women" leave "no stone or lesbian unturned." It's a "lesbian-eat-lesbian-world." Knots are practiced in various bondage positions. Their website is called "finger in the dyke.ca"
http://www.fingerinthedyke.ca/performance_art.html

Yet, in the video, they fine a heterosexual male $100 for wearing a lewd T-shirt ("Blow me")and intimidate him when he protests. He is reprimanded for "threatening the lesbian environment." Rangers are urged to make "citizens' arrests."

Lesbians are just a few grants shy of having a paramilitary organization, a cross between the Girl Scouts and Hitler's Brown Shirts. Its function: Persecute heterosexuals. (see my, "The Dawn of the Feminist Police State"

In the "video", they "rescue" a straight female from drowning. She is enchanted by her hairy-legged saviors and "sees the world through brand new eyes."

If the University of Winnipeg is an indication, universities are playgrounds for lesbianism. It makes sense. Enrollment is already 2-1 female.

In June 2001, the University of Winnipeg made headlines when high school students attending a summer art history course complained they were shown lesbian porn and instructed to use zucchinis instead of seeking male companionship. The instructors were not removed.
http://www.savethemales.ca/uw/main.html

The following year, the "Women's Center" sponsored an event where co-eds had casts made of their breasts! Imagine if heterosexual males sponsored an event like that on campus.

The "Sexual Harassment Officer" stated that the university takes a grim view if only one student is made "uncomfortable." Apparently this rule only applies to the discomfort of feminists, gays and lesbians. Victimhood is just a guise for an aggressive destructive ideology.

In Women's Studies courses, co-eds learn to be feminist "change agents" and harass professors who step out of line. Women's Studies originated in the training schools of the US Communist Party in the 1940's. The Rockefeller Foundation sponsors Women's Studies. If you Google "Rockefeller" and "Women's Studies," you will get 73.000 entries.

The Rockefellers have supported Left and Right Wing, Communist and Fascist causes for almost 100 years. The principle is divide-and-conquer. They are the American agents for the London-based banking cartel that is establishing a world dictatorship to translate their monopoly of credit (they create our money from nothing as a debt to them) into world institutions of political and social control.

They now direct government and education through their sponsor-ownership and control of most politicians, parties, cartels, business councils, professional associations, think tanks, foundations, university endowments, mass media, intelligence agencies, secret societies and organized crime. Yes Virginia, the planet (at least the West) is a pathetic one-horse company town.

I have no problem with lesbians, many of whom are my neighbors. They seem to be nice people who just want to lead their lives in peace. But their activists are funded to depopulate and destabilize society in advance of "world government." Their message is that lesbianism is not a developmental disorder but a natural alternative for women.

Unfortunately many ex-lesbians disagree. In her book, "Restoring Sexual Identity" Anne Paulk surveyed 265 ex-lesbians like herself and conducted numerous personal interviews. She found that, to cite a review, "same-sex attraction is seldom really driven by sexual needs; it is driven by an unconscious desire to be loved and to trust another person. It is also frequently driven by a desire to reconnect with the feminine but in the wrong way."
http://www.narth.com/docs/newbook2.html

"Childhood trauma, poor self-image, anger at men, poor relationships with either or both parents, and pro-homosexual media propaganda are several key elements in women developing an attraction to other women."

In the "classic development of lesbian attraction," these women had a home with a domineering, critical, detached, or weak mother; and/or a home with a father who was detached, critical or abusive."

"In many cases, the mother was viewed as weak or was cruelly dominated by her husband. Seventy-five percent of the women viewed the male as a more favorable role model for their lives--with a rejection of their own gender and pursuit of male characteristics."

"An astounding 90 percent experienced some form of abuse themselves. This abuse was not just sexual but included emotional abuse (70 percent), sexual (more than 60 percent), and verbal abuse (more than half of those surveyed.) "

As far as I could tell, University of Winnipeg students mostly avoided the Lesbian Rangers. But there are many feminist or lesbian professors who are harder to avoid. They make their dogma of male oppression of women (i.e. divide men and women and conquer) a prerequisite for a passing grade.

Let's not mince words. Orwell's "1984" has arrived. The government and universities are foisting a developmental disorder caused by dysfunctional families on our children.

Dempsey and Millin try to be campy and nice but they are really obnoxious hypocrites. Like fellow lesbian Irshad Manji, they are New World Order "change agents," cultural agitators highly paid to subvert the young. Destruction of the family is a main tenet of the Illuminati's Communist Manifesto.
(For Manji: http://www.savethemales.ca/000642.html)

The LNPS motto is "Treat a Lesbian as you would like a Lesbian to Treat You." I ask them, do they want to be treated like they are treating straights? What if straight society launched a comparable campaign teaching them that their deepest life desires are not natural but a "social construct"? Do they want to be converted?

It's ironic that they refer to lesbians as an endangered species. Heterosexuals are the real endangered species. They are the ones who conceive and nurture the young in nuclear families. And when they disappear, so will the human race as we know it.
_____

[This article almost would not be included here except for the last sentence. -- Tribble]

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept 10 - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney on Saturday said he supported the decision to remove Michael Brown as head of the federal relief effort in the stricken Gulf Coast but refused to say if Brown would eventually be dismissed.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Friday put Vice Admiral Thad Allen, chief of staff of the U.S. Coast Guard, in charge of the relief effort on the ground, sending Brown back to continue administering the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington.

The Bush administration has been under fire for being slow to aid hundreds of thousands of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama residents who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina and the floodwaters that followed when the levees in New Orleans broke.

"Mike Chertoff made those decisions and I certainly support him," Cheney told reporters at the Austin convention center, which is housing about 1,500 evacuees. Some have called for Brown to be fired, but Cheney deferred to Chertoff.

Brown, who has been FEMA's director since 2003, has been singled out for especially harsh criticism, even from some Republicans such as Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott who said he had been "acting like a private, instead of a general."

The New York Times said Cheney heard complaints about Brown in private meetings with state and local officials and emergency personnel during a trip on Thursday to Mississippi and Louisiana.

In Austin, protesters gathered outside the convention center shouting, "Cheney, you are scumbag" and carrying signs that said "Fire Cheney too" and "Relief not Repression."

Cheney said the evacuees he spoke to in Texas did not raise concerns about the FEMA shake-up but detailed their stories of escaping the devastation.

"Not one of them mentioned any of it," Cheney said in response to a question. "They're all very thankful where they find themselves right now."

He said the federal government will help state and local governments pay for costs of educating children evacuated from their homes, "so that the burden doesn't fall totally on the local school system."

Cheney spent about 20 minutes touring the Austin convention center, walking past the rows of cots with neatly arranged blankets, pillows and sleeping bags.

Among those he spoke to was Telisha Diaz, 23, who said she had spent "four long days" in the New Orleans convention center, but said the Austin experience had been much better.

Michael Craig, 43, who came from New Orleans with his fiancee and three children, said he told Cheney about the evacuation and talked of how he thought it could have been made better.

Cheney held up Texas, which took in tens of thousands of evacuees from Louisiana in places like the Houston Astrodome, as a model of effective crisis management.

"There are a lot of lessons we want to learn out of this process in terms of what works," Cheney said.

"I think we are in fact on our way to getting on top of the whole Katrina exercise," he said, but added, "we've got a lot of work ahead of us obviously."

"The company rose to international prominence after 4 of its men were killed in Fallujah and two of their charred bodies were hung from a bridge in March 2004. Those killings sparked the massive US retaliation against the civilian population of Fallujah that resulted in scores of deaths and tens of thousands of refugees."

After 4 of these privately owned for hire mercenaries learned the other side of war for hire, the US went on a killing spree against a civilian population? Makes you proud to be an an American and proud of ol Dubya doesn't it.

Now we learn these guys are in New Orleans complaining of only making $350 per day. Their allegiance is only to the money. And one of them tells us we are going to see more of them in this country handling these kind of situations. What's he trying to tell us? That more of these type situations are going to happen? Surprise, surprise, surprise.

And you thought all those movies with paid solders and solders who worked for the "corporation", that you've watched over past several years, were only movies. Welcome to the brave new world. Well, new world anyway. -- Rodger]

[I've lived in new orleans, and it had a very high %age of blacks - like 75% - that was in the 80"s. new orleans has ALWAYS been considered the "murder capitol of the world". since katrina, many of the city police have abandoned the force and have even looted themselves. that's another thing - new orleans has also FOREVER been a very crooked city with most of the police force dirty and international criminals all over the city - not only the usual bloods n cryps, & mexican gangs, but a HUGE asian underworld. i should think that it may take the blackwater guys to deal with this place. it's not just sweet poor old people. maybe it has something to do with things like the 48 entergy workers sent there to work that are missing? (this i got straight from an entergy employee) i think we're not hearing much detail about all the gory stuff going on. -- Cindy]

New Orleans - Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force. Several mercenaries we spoke with said they had served in Iraq on the personal security details of the former head of the US occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former US ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte.

"This is a totally new thing to have guys like us working CONUS (Continental United States)," a heavily armed Blackwater mercenary told us as we stood on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. "We're much better equipped to deal with the situation in Iraq."

Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in the world and they are accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences. Their presence on the streets of New Orleans should be a cause for serious concern for the remaining residents of the city and raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here. Some of the men now patrolling the streets of New Orleans returned from Iraq as recently as 2 weeks ago.

What is most disturbing is the claim of several Blackwater mercenaries we spoke with that they are here under contract from the federal and Louisiana state governments.

Blackwater is one of the leading private "security" firms servicing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It has several US government contracts and has provided security for many senior US diplomats, foreign dignitaries and corporations. The company rose to international prominence after 4 of its men were killed in Fallujah and two of their charred bodies were hung from a bridge in March 2004. Those killings sparked the massive US retaliation against the civilian population of Fallujah that resulted in scores of deaths and tens of thousands of refugees.

As the threat of forced evictions now looms in New Orleans and the city confiscates even legally registered weapons from civilians, the private mercenaries of Blackwater patrol the streets openly wielding M-16s and other assault weapons. This despite Police Commissioner Eddie Compass' claim that "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons."

Officially, Blackwater says its forces are in New Orleans to "join the Hurricane Relief Effort." A statement on the company's website, dated September 1, advertises airlift services, security services and crowd control. The company, according to news reports, has since begun taking private contracts to guard hotels, businesses and other properties. But what has not been publicly acknowledged is the claim, made to us by 2 Blackwater mercenaries, that they are actually engaged in general law enforcement activities including "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting criminals."

That raises a key question: under what authority are Blackwater's men operating? A spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department, Russ Knocke, told the Washington Post he knows of no federal plans to hire Blackwater or other private security. "We believe we've got the right mix of personnel in law enforcement for the federal government to meet the demands of public safety." he said.

But in an hour-long conversation with several Blackwater mercenaries, we heard a different story. The men we spoke with said they are indeed on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and the Louisiana governor's office and that some of them are sleeping in camps organized by Homeland Security in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. One of them wore a gold Louisiana state law enforcement badge and said he had been "deputized" by the governor. They told us they not only had authority to make arrests but also to use lethal force. We encountered the Blackwater forces as we walked through the streets of the largely deserted French Quarter. We were talking with 2 New York Police officers when an unmarked car without license plates sped up next to us and stopped. Inside were 3 men, dressed in khaki uniforms, flak jackets and wielding automatic weapons. "Y'all know where the Blackwater guys are?" they asked. One of the police officers responded, "There are a bunch of them around here," and pointed down the road.

A short while later, as we continued down Bourbon Street, we ran into the men from the car. They wore Blackwater ID badges on their arms.

"When they told me New Orleans, I said, 'What country is that in?,'" said one of the Blackwater men. He was wearing his company ID around his neck in a carrying case with the phrase "Operation Iraqi Freedom" printed on it. After bragging about how he drives around Iraq in a "State Department issued level 5, explosion proof BMW," he said he was "just trying to get back to Kirkuk (in the north of Iraq) where the real action is." Later we overheard him on his cell phone complaining that Blackwater was only paying $350 a day plus per diem. That is much less than the men make serving in more dangerous conditions in Iraq. Two men we spoke with said they plan on returning to Iraq in October. But, as one mercenary said, they've been told they could be in New Orleans for up to 6 months. "This is a trend," he told us. "You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."

    If Blackwater's reputation and record in Iraq are any indication of the kind of "services" the company offers, the people of New Orleans have much to fear.
    -----
    Jeremy Scahill, a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, and Daniela Crespo are in New Orleans. Visit www.democracynow.org for in-depth, independent, investigative reporting on Hurricane Katrina. Email: jeremy@democracynow.org.

a r t i c l e / c o m m e n t a r y

Triple Exthnics: Nathan Abrams on Jews in the American Porn Industry
http://www.the7thfire.com/new_world_order/zionism/jewish_dominance_in_porn.htm
contributing editor to

- Rodger

[Sometimes, you have to wonder how stories are found. -- Tribble]

["If the Torah [Pentateutch] command Jews 'to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,' and Judaism strongly opposes porn, why do Jews dominate porn? ... Pornographer Seymore Butts attributes the large number of Jews in porn to the desire for profits. Jews gravitate towards money ..."

"Al Goldstein, the publisher of Screw magazine, said (on lukeford.com), 'The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks. Catholicism sucks. We don't believe in authoritarianism." Pornography thus becomes a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the American mainstream (and is no doubt consumed by those very same WASPs), its subversive character becomes more charged ..."

Not only do the Israelis dominate the porn industry. They also dominate the movie industry, the network media industry, all forms of entertainment and news outlets including most radio stations, so they control what the mass of people see and hear. Thereby controlling the peoples thoughts and actions. They control the banking and finance industry. Thereby controlling the purse strings. Thereby controlling how the people live. No, the United States does not own the Federal Reserve. They also have the largest spy organization spying on the United States.

The Father must be proud of His, so called, "chosen people"! How anyone can still proclaim the Israelis of today as God's chosen people is beyond comprehension. It's obvious they do not understand the Father nor the Bible. -- Rodger]

"A story little told is that of Jews in Hollywood's seedier cousin, the adult film industry. Perhaps we'd prefer that the 'triple exthnics' didn't exist, but there's no getting away from the fact that secular Jews played (and still continue to play) a disproportionate role throughout the adult film industry in America. Jewish involvement in pornography has a long history in the United States, as Jews have helped transform a fringe subculture into what has become a primary constituent of Americana. These are the 'true blue' Jews. Smut peddlers

Jewish activity in the porn industry divides into two (sometimes overlapping) genres: pornographers and performers. Though Jews make up only two percent of the American population, they have been prominent in pornography. Many erotica dealers in the book trade between 1890 and 1940 were immigrant Jews of German origin ...

In the postwar era, America's most notorious pornographer was Reuben Sturman, the 'Walt Disney of porn.' According to the US Department of Justice, throughout the 1970s Sturman controlled most of the pornography circulating in the country ... By the mid-80s he owned over 200 adult bookstores ... It was said that Sturman did not simply control the adult-entertainment industry, he was the industry.

Eventually he was convicted of tax evasion and other crimes and died, disgraced, in prison in 1997. His son, David, continued running the family business. The contemporary incarnation of Sturman is Steven Hirsch, a 43-year-old Jewish Clevelander who has been described as the 'Donald Trump of porno.' The link between the two is Steve's father, Fred, who was a stockholder-cum-lieutenant to Sturman. Today Hirsch runs the Vivid Entertainment Group, which has been called the Microsoft of the porn world, the top producer of 'adult' films in the US. His specialty was to import mainstream marketing techniques into the porn business. Indeed, Vivid parallels the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s and 1940s, particularly in its exclusive contracts to porn stars who are hired and moulded by Hirsch ...

Jews accounted for most of the leading male performers as well as a sizeable number of female stars in porn movies of the 1970s and '80s. The doyen of the Hebrew studs is Ron Jeremy ... [H]e's the nebischy, fat, hairy, ugly guy (an image from his web site opens this article) who gets to bed dozens of beautiful women. He presents an image of a modern-day King David, a Jewish superstud who supersedes the traditional heroes of Jewish lore ...

As probably the most famous Jewish male porn star, Jeremy has done wonders for the psyche of Jewish men in America ... Seymore Butts, aka Adam Glasser, is everything that Jeremy is not: young, handsome, and toned ... Within a few years, 'Seymore Butts' -- his nom de porn which is simultaneously his sales pitch -- became one of the largest franchises in the adult-film business ... [H]e is today probably the most famous Jewish porn mogul ...

Glasser employs 12 people, including his mother and cousin ... Gertzman (Jay Gertzman, author of Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940) explains that 'Jews, when they found themselves excluded from a field of endeavor, turned to a profession in which they sensed they could eventually thrive by cooperating with colleagues in a community of effort' ... The adult entertainment business required something that Jews possessed in abundance: chutzpah .. Of course, the large number of Jews in porn were mainly motivated by the desire to make profits ... As Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the ADL, commented, 'Those Jews who enter the pornography industry have done so as individuals pursuing the American dream" ...

Sturman ... identified as a Jew -- was a generous donator to Jewish charities -- and the performer Richard Pacheco was once interviewed to be a rabbinical student ... Is there a deeper reason, beyond the mere financial, as to why Jews in particular have become involved in porn? There is surely an element of rebellion in Jewish X-rated participation. It's very taboo and [its] forbidden nature serves to make it attractive.

As I have written in these pages before, treyf signifies 'the whole world of forbidden sexuality, the sexuality of the goyim, and there all the delights are imagined to lie ..." (Reel Kashrut, Jewish food in film, JQ 189, Spring 2003) According to one anonymous industry insider quoted by E. Michael Jones in the magazine Culture Wars (May 2003), 'the leading male performers through the 1980s came from secular Jewish upbringings and the females from Roman Catholic day schools.' The standard porn scenario became, as a result, a Jewish fantasy of schtupping the Catholic shiksa ...

Extending the subversive thesis, Jewish involvement in the X-rated industry can be seen as a proverbial two fingers to the entire WASP establishment. Some porn stars viewed themselves as frontline fighters in the spiritual battle between Christian America and secular humanism.

According to [Luke] Ford, Jewish X-rated actors often brag about their 'joy in being anarchic, sexual gadflies to the puritanical beast'. Jewish involvement in porn, by this argument, is the result of an atavistic hatred of Christian authority: they are trying to weaken the dominant culture in America by moral subversion ...

Al Goldstein, the publisher of Screw magazine, said (on lukeford.com), 'The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks. Catholicism sucks. We don't believe in authoritarianism." Pornography thus becomes a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the American mainstream (and is no doubt consumed by those very same WASPs), its subversive character becomes more charged ...

It is a case of the traditional revolutionary/radical drive of immigrant Jews in America being channeled into sexual rather than leftist politics. Just as Jews have been disproportionately represented in radical movements over the years, so they are disproportionately represented in the porn industry. Jews in America have been sexual revolutionaries. A large amount of the material on sexual liberation was written by Jews. Those at the forefront of the movement that forced America to adopt a more liberal view of sex were Jewish ..

Overall, then, porn performers are a group of people who praise rebellion, self-fulfilment, and promiscuity. What are we ashamed of? This brief overview and analysis of the role and motivations behind pornographers and performers is intended to shed light on a neglected topic in American Jewish popular culture. Little has been written about it."

[Nathan Abrams is a Lecturer in Modern American History at the University of Aberdeen. He has just completed a book on neo-conservatism in the United States.]

"Towering Men and Stout-Hearted Sisters": Book review of Jewish scholar Jay Gertzman's Bookleggers an Smuthounds

"A great many of the publishers and peddlers of what was variously called flagitious, pornographic, or erotic literature were Jews, and most of those were German Jews who had learned the printing trades in the old country.

This fact of course fed right into the animosity of anti-smut crusaders who constantly decried the 'foreign, radical, corrupting' character of the smut peddlers. The main protagonists in this battle for the soul, if not the groin, of America were the patrician John Saxton Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and Samuel Roth, a writer, poet and genuine man of letters and an equally authentic purveyor of sleaze. Roth, for example, not only published (and often pirated) works by Lawrence, Joyce, Miller and legitimate classics, but also printed and peddled flip books, pornographic playing cards, albums of 'French postcards' and the vulgarities known as 'Tijuana Bibles.'

Just to compound matters, during his various stints in prison Roth wrote works like Jews Must Live, a book of rabid anti-Jewish sentiment that Gertzman says still circulates in anti-Semitic circles today ... Gertzman himself acknowledges towards the end of his book that his uncle once ran the most notorious 'dirty bookshop' in Philadelphia. For that matter, Sam Roth's grandson is none other than Prof. James Kugel, the eminent Bible scholar at Harvard University. If there's a more complicated and surprising tribe on earth, I've yet to hear about it."

"The story of the Web's most influential pornophile is nearly unbelievable: the son of an Australian Christian evangelist, Ford converted to Orthodox Judaism in 1993 – a 'porn-again Jew' in Fordspeak – under the theological influence of right-wing Jewish talk-radio demagogue Dennis Prager (whose Web site Ford also runs).

As a result, Ford's site is not really a porn site at all. It's a daily chronicle of how devout Judaism and devout pornology play themselves out in one man's endless public arguments with himself. The basic premise: how can someone devote his professional life to an industry he believes is, in Ford's own words, 'profoundly destructive and hence immoral ... another form of rebellion against God.'

Ford is a religious Jew, not a cultural one, yet it is cultural Jews – 'non-Jewish Jews,' he calls them – with whom Ford's site is most invested, specifically all those non-Jewish Jews who get it on and buy and sell the getting-it-on in the porn industry. Like all of his polemics, Ford's essay on these Jews is a rambling collage of theories, interviews, and uncited historical references that never really coalesce into an identifiable argument.

Ford is less of an opinion maker and more of an archivist-chronicler, his agenda always buried beneath layers of deferral and ambiguity. In the piece, Ford turns the Jews-run-Hollywood riff into a Jews-run-porn riff, listing off the secret Hebraic roots of all the key players – Randy 'Andy Abrams' West, Barbara 'Stacy Mitnick' Dare. He also feeds the age-old anti-Semitic connection that Hitler turned into grounds for genocide in Mein Kampf – Jews as dirty, parasitic merchants of smut, disease, and moral pollution – by emphasizing the high number of Jewish porn publishers throughout smut's history."

"Secular Jews play a disproportionate role throughout the sex industry ... Jews accounted for most of the leading male [pornography] performers of the 1970s and '80s ...

If the Torah [Pentateutch] command Jews 'to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,' and Judaism strongly opposes porn, why do Jews dominate porn? ... Pornographer Seymore Butts attributes the large number of Jews in porn to the desire for profits. Jews gravitate towards money ...

I have not yet met a Jewish guy who wasn't horny as a rabbit,' says [Jewish porn star] Nina Hartley, 'Culturally it's OK for Jews to act and for WASPs its different ... Plus, they get to have sex with all these beautiful blonde women ... Where else are you going to get a succession of shiksas [non-Jewish women] to bed you down?'"

[To read the remainder of the article, go to http://www.the7thfire.com/new_world_order/zionism/jewish_dominance_in_porn.htm ]

D O N O T drink the Kool-Aid*

Agenda 21
http://home.earthlink.net/%7edmalick/CWARUM/cwarum1.html
contributing editor to

- Rodger

[Several years ago, prior to the WWW going strong, there was grassroots activity by many groups to enlighten the masses to the takeover of our land by special interest agencies of the UN. Several such groups were called "Take Back" with the name of the State, such as "Take Back Arkansas" whose email is tbark@nwark.com . These groups had distributed maps (like the ones in this article) and photographs of parks and other areas changing their names to include "UN Biosphere". It seemed that the effort had an effect, but here you can see that the move is still active and kicking. -- Tribble]

[This is a map of the United Nations Agenda 21 goal for future land use. It shows what the UN plan is as far as human use of the land is concerned. The red zones will be off limits to humans. Notice the small zones scattered around for normal human activity. How much population decrease do you think needs to happen to achieve this goal? All aspects of UN agenda 21 are in the process of being implemented. In this country and around the world.

There are many more aspects to agenda 21 that is bad news for your freedom. I know you're busy. I'm busy! But, you owe it to your family, children, grand children and friends to learn about UN Agenda 21 and why we must put a stop to it. Get the word out to all who have ears to hear. -- Rodger]

"AGENDA 21 proposes an array of actions which are intended to be implemented by
every person on earth... Effective execution of AGENDA 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society,unlike anything the world has ever experienced - a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources."
— Environmental activist and attorney Daniel Sitarz

According to the United Nations, "Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment."

Agenda 21 is actually a world-wide blueprint for international totalitarian control of all the earth, and its resources — including "human resources". The goal of Agenda 21 is "sustainable development" — a term used to expound upon the U.N. position that human beings are destroying the earth's atmosphere, its wildlife, and natural resources.

It is hence the purpose of Agenda 21 to curtail this supposed "threat", by pushing for governments to implement policies, restricting populations of people from engaging in risky behavior that these globalists deem as lacking "sustainability".

What behavior is considered risky or lacking "sustainability"? Virtually every behavior in which one engages in a free society. And that is the problem.

Under Agenda 21, land, water, minerals, the air, the population itself all must be tightly managed. Relocation of populations of people to "sustainable communities" is a necessary part of the "sustainable" equation.

If "sustainable development" is achieved, freedom will be nothing more than a fading memory on the global U.N. plantation.

Instrumental in the implementation of world-wide "sustainable development" — which is nothing less than world-wide Marxism — are numerous Non-Governmental Organizations. You will see links to many of these organizations below, for your further research. We will continue to add more links as we, and our excellent research partners discover them.

Also, see our section below, "Why should you care?" for hard-hitting information about how this program will ultimately change your life, if it is not stopped.

http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/#
    *      Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources
    *      Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water
    *      Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020

The Soviet Communist empire lurches closer to collapse every day. As this column is written in early January, there is no way to predict exactly what the crisis of Communism will bring in the next several months. What is clear already, however, is that Communists and other dictators are entirely correct in their fear of an armed populace.

With the exception of Rumania, the countries of the Warsaw Pact have so far made the transition from dictatorship to democracy without violence. Does this prove that in the modern world, the right to bear arms no longer has any relation to political liberty? Not at all.

The collapse of the Soviet empire did not begin in Grenada in 1983, or in Poland in 1980, but rather in Afghanistan in 1979. In December of that year, General Secretary Brezhnev ordered a surprise attack on the U.S.S.R.'s southern neighbor, to prop up a local Communist regime that was on the verge of being overthrown by Muslim guerrillas.

The Red Army quickly seized the cities and took control of the government. Most of the world expected that the Soviet conquest would be completed in a matter of weeks, and the Afghanistan itself would be absorbed into the U.S.S.R. as a Soviet "Republic."

But the Afghans, like the Swiss, are a proud and independent mountain people who have maintained their freedom for centuries through force of arms. The gun culture of Afghanistan is as strong as any on the planet. The Afghans had a long tradition of expert gunsmithing. Using tools inferior to those in the Sears catalogue, Afghan gunsmiths began turning out home-made versions of the Soviet army's Kalashnikov rifles. Pakistani gunsmiths across the border found a lucrative business in selling home-made guns to the rebels.

And the Afghan people knew how to use the guns. Explained one rebel commander to a New York Times reporter, "All tribesmen are trained in the use of guns from childhood, in their home villages."

The imperial Soviet army tried every trick in the book: carpet bombing, chemical warfare, anti-personnel explosives disguised as toys for children to pick up, crop destruction to starve the people into submission. Yet the "primitive" mountain people of Afghanistan fought the mightiest army in the history of the world to a draw for seven years. When the U.S. finally began providing Stinger missiles to the rebels in 1986, the Soviets lost control of the air. The Kremlin acknowledged that its imperial appetite was larger than its imperial capacity, and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan began.

But it was too late for the Kremlin; the Afghan warriors had already set the dominos of the Soviet empire tumbling. In Poland in the early 1980s, the Solidarnosc movement began a social revolution. Union leader Lech Walesa credited the Afghan rebels with creating the essential breathing space for Solidarnosc. Bogged down in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, the Soviet army was reluctant to undertake an invasion of Poland to crush Solidarnosc.

Within the Soviet Union, the failure of the invasion of Afghanistan fanned popular resentment against a regime that had sent its young men to die for nothing. Even Communist Party apparatchiks began to see that the Soviet military was not an infallible solution to Soviet problems.

In the closing months of 1989, the Soviet imperial decay reached an advanced stage, and Communist governments were peacefully ousted in Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. Private gun ownership had little to do with the change of power in these countries. In each country the economy was falling apart, and when the Gorbachev regime told the Eastern European Communists that they were on their own, the Communist governments yielded to the rising tide of popular demands.

Freedom was allowed to come to eastern Europe in 1989 thanks to the self-restraint of the Soviet army. Freedom could have come a generation ago, but was repeatedly crushed by the Red army: in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968. One reason that the Soviet army succeeded in those bloody episodes of subjugation was that the people of East Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia lacked the arms with which to fight a guerilla war. Had the Poles and Czechs and Hungarians been as well armed as the Afghans, Eastern Europe might not have had to wait till 1989 for permission from the Kremlin to be free.

Indeed, the best testimony to the power of an armed populace is the vigor with which the Warsaw Pact dictatorships enforced gun control. When the Communists took over Bulgaria on September 9, 1944, they immediately confiscated every weapon in private possession.

In East Germany, private gun ownership was outlawed, although citizens were allowed to rent hunting guns for one-day periods.

Immediately after World War II, Hungary was governed by a coalition of democrats and Communists. Preparing the way for a total Communist takeover Laszlo Rajk, the Communist Minister of the Interior, ordered the dissolution of all pistol and hunting clubs, as well as of other organizations which might prove a threat to government power. Rajk claimed he acted "in order to more efficiently protect the democratic system of the state."

Poland, on the other hand, did allow limited ownership of registered target guns with a license from the so-called "Citizen's Militia." In December 1981, Poland's dictator, General Jaruzelski, decided that Solidarnosc had gone too far. He declared martial law, arrested all the pro-democracy leaders he could find, and ordered all firearms and ammunition be turned over to the government.

Nowhere was gun control fiercer than in Rumania. The dictatorship of Nicolai Ceausescu used registration lists to confiscate all firearms in private hands. The government also registered (but did not confiscate) typewriters.

Ceausescu, the "Comrade Supreme Commander", enjoyed bear hunting with his Holland & Holland custom British rifle. The Securitate (the secret police) manufactured all of Ceausescu's clothes for him, including German-style hunting outfits. Each item of clothing would be worn only once, and then burned.

Sportsmanship was not Ceausescu's style. Squads of Rumanian forest rangers would spend all their time preparing an area for a bear hunt. The rangers would tie down half of a dead horse near a watering hole. When a large bear began feeding there, the rangers would notify Ceausescu. He would arrive by helicopter at three a.m., and leave with a bear skin by five.

Frustrated by missing a few shots in the dark, Ceausescu had his security forces steal Western military infrared scopes, for his night-time hunting forays. High Communist party officials in other countries, such as East Germany and Czechoslovakia also enjoyed hunting, and maintained expensive hunting lodges at government expense, while the people went short of meat and fruit.

The Ceaucescu regime fell when the Rumanian army turned against the government, and refused to shoot protestors in the streets. Had the Rumanians been well-armed, the population might not have had to endure 45 years of brutal dictatorship, waiting until the regime alienated even the Communist army officers.

In the days following the revolution, Ceaucescu's secret police, the Securitate, waged a vicious counter-revolutionary campaign against the population, much like the one carried out by Manuel Noriega's "Dignity" battalions after the American invasion.

In December 1989, both Panamanian and Rumanian citizens took up arms to defend themselves after theirs dictatorships were toppled. A fair number of Panamanian citizens already owned guns, and were able to speedily form Vigilance Committees to protect their neighborhoods.

Most Rumanians, though, had never touched a gun until they picked up a Kalashnikov assault rifle from the dead hands of a Securitate soldier. One can only speculate about how many Rumanian citizens were mowed down by Securitate because the citizens lacked the first idea about how to fire an automatic effectively, how to clear a firing chamber jam, or how to use a rifle sight.

The final story of Eastern Europe is yet to be written. What we do know so far is that the flames of revolution, which now threaten to engulf the Soviet Union itself, were first kindled in the Soviet empire by the brave people of Afghanistan, who took up arms and laid down their lives so that their nation would not perish from the earth.

Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily representing the views of the Independence Institute or as an attempt to influence any election or legislative action. Please send comments to Independence Institute, 13952 Denver West Pkwy., suite 400, Golden, CO 80401 Phone 303-279-6536. (email) webmngr@i2i.org

The Flat Earth Report

You have Watched all this and Thought it Looked Familiar

[You have sat in your car (truck or whatever) and watched those people and muttered under your breath or even screamed or some other thing. You have watched those other cars (especially, but not exclusively the sporty little ones) dart left almost taking your headlights with them. They have gone from the far left lane to the exit in one SUDDEN move. They have come on the highway and promptly move to the far left lane. They have even tried to take your space in your lane, while you are still there. Sometimes they are holding a growth (telephone) to their ear and talking with their hands 9as if the person on the other end could see them???) and/or putting on makeup while looking in the rearview mirror. All of this happens seemingly without ANY regard for anyone else on the road. You have watched all this and thought it looked familiar, but you could not place it.

Well , you are correct. First, they are doing it without regard for anyone else on the road. Second, you have seen this previously. These are largely youngin's who got their training on video race games. MANY of those games reward for crashes and mayhem. One the most popular is "Grand Theft Auto". If it isn't easy enough to rape and pillage on this video game as it is they offer car jacking and drive-by's.

Remember your time with any of these games. You can wreck and get back on the road as if NOTHING happened, except for maybe a minor delay Of course if you have raped enough, then maybe you get an immunity from wrecks or a get-out-of-jail-free card. But, in these games, you can move suddenly without regard for what is around, and it is even encouraged.

This is NOT proper training for getting behind the wheel, and it seems only to be getting worse. My advice, keep your wives and daughters in the house behind bolted doors, and and least stay off the sidewalks, and travel when these new breed is least likely to be on the road. -- Tribble]

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT

New Orleans: Dress Rehearsal for American Lockdown
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050913&articleId=938
contributing editor to

- Rodger

[While you still have time to learn these things, here is yet another report. -- Tribble]

The war has come home to America, right here, right now and so have myriad questions so disturbing that most Americans, even if they know what the questions are, are terrified to ask:

Why is Blackwater USA, the principal mercenary force outsourced by the Pentagon to fight in Iraq, now patrolling the streets of New Orleans?

Why the disgraceful, ghastly slowness of response by the federal government to the Katrina disaster? Why FEMA’s destruction of communication lines and implacable refusal to allow food, water, and medicine into the city? (http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/, September 6)

Why have reconstruction and clean-up contracts conveniently fallen, with perfect timing, to Halliburton and Bechtel, the two U.S. corporations most infamous for their expertise in rebuilding Iraq and worldwide whatever the U.S. military has blown up?

Mainstream media and the Internet are abuzz with stories of FEMA’s “gutting” by the federal government as the agency became part of the Department of Homeland Security, as if FEMA were some sort of altruistic savior who could have rescued New Orleans if only it had been granted sufficient funding. In reality, FEMA’s obstruction of assistance, not only from the likes of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and several European nations, but from humanitarian organizations inside the United States is mindboggling. For a complete list of efforts blocked by FEMA see: http://www.rense.com/general67/femwont.htm

In order to begin answering the endless disturbing questions, we must understand what FEMA actually is. In Sheila Samples’ excellent September 10 article (http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/samples7.html), she emphasizes the origins of FEMA in the 1980s under its architect, Oliver North. North’s Operation Rex 84, or Readiness Exercise 1984, was a plan by which the the federal government would accommodate the detention of large numbers of American citizens during times of emergency. Through Rex-84 an undisclosed number of concentration camps were set in operation throughout the United States, for internment of dissidents and others potentially harmful to the state. Existence of the Rex 84 plan was first revealed during the Iran-Contra Hearings in 1987, and subsequently reported by the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84)

For decades since North’s operation was disclosed, many dissidents have assumed that as in Nazi Germany, concentration camps were being secretly constructed for the incarceration of Americans. While this may be more than merely an assumption, there has been little speculation about what specific purpose such camps might serve—until the Katrina disaster. In the aftermath of the South Coast hurricane, we saw massive numbers of evacuees relocated throughout the nation.

Particularly since 9-11, FEMA has been very little about disaster relief and very much about “population management.” Katrina has underscored what the federal government and virtually all Americans already knew—the chaos that results from natural disasters. What the federal government knows, but most Americans don’t know is the pandemonium that will result as the consequences of Peak Oil exacerbate.

In the United States, all non-organic food growers use commercial pesticides and fertilizers on agricultural products. These have either a petroleum or natural gas base, thus insuring that as petroleum and natural gas prices increase, so will food prices. Moreover, what happens when trucking companies go belly up from gas prices, when truckers can no longer afford fuel, and when their axles break because interstates are in dis-repair as a result of the prices or shortages of the petroleum needed to build roads? What happens when the housing bubble bursts, when massive unemployment engulfs the nation, and when hundreds of thousands or millions of people must walk away from their mortgaged homes? Add to this, the likely crashing of the U.S. dollar and the certainty of more natural disasters. Anarchy may not even approach the description of such a scenario. Enter FEMA’s mandate and machinery, thanks to Blackwater, to maintain order.

One of the harshest realities of Peak Oil, but as old as the infanticide practiced by ancient civilizations is “demand destruction”, also known as population control. In a recent article, Mike Ruppert explained its integral role in a global energy crisis:

“Demand destruction” has become a priority not only to mitigate Peak Oil but also to mitigate global warming. The United States, with 5% of the world’s people, consumes (wastes) 25% of the world’s energy. How do you destroy demand? You collapse the economy. Homeless, unemployed “refugees” (what a cold, depersonalizing term) don’t buy gas, take trips, fly on airplanes or buy consumer goods (made with energy and requiring energy to operate). They don’t use air conditioning because they can’t afford it. They are the embodiment of Henry Kissinger’s infamous term “useless eaters,” a phrase from the Nazi vocabulary. If energy demand destruction, as acknowledged by the Bilderbergers and the CFR [Council On Foreign Relations], is a priority, then the only – I repeat only – beast that must be tamed is the United States.

As we witnessed the American Apartheid of relocating masses of African-Americans to cities throughout the nation, how chilling was FEMA’s promise of a $2,000 debit card for each person, then its decision to give these “useless eaters” a check for $2,000 when most have neither a checking account nor personal identification! In addition, the very fact that so many of these individuals are living from paycheck to paycheck, on the brink of homelessness, underscores the likelihood that many of them will be forced into bankruptcy which may accelerate freefall into homelessness as the Bush Administration’s Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act becomes law on October 17. Remember the Patriot Act—that 300-page piece of legislation passed in the middle of the night on October 26, 2001 which almost no members of Congress had a chance to read? You know, the one that shredded the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? How appropriate that the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act will become law almost four years to the day after the Patriot Act was passed.

It appears that FEMA did not think this one through, but alas, things are not necessarily as they seem. Certainly, the ruling elite would not intentionally arrange for millions of indigent evacuees to suddenly “litter” the streets of America. A more likely scenario could be debt servitude. I can already hear the FEMA offer that no penniless refugee could refuse: “We’d like to give you a job helping to clean up New Orleans or the South Coast. We can’t pay you minumum wage, however, since the President cancelled minimum wage by Executive Order. We also notice that you have quite a bit of debt, but never fear, we will give you the opportunity to ‘work off your debt’ by coming to work for us until you debt is satisified.” Will this be Readiness Exercise 2005, 2006, 2007, ad infinitum?

With every national emergency, the fascist agenda of this government will come more clearly into focus. On September 10, Tom Curry listed in his article, “Hurricane Spawns Flurry Of Deregulation,” (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9259887) the Bush Administration’s most recent rulings in the name of hurricane and oil supply relief:

    *      Starting last Wednesday and until next Wednesday, the federal Department of Transportation has eased rules on how many hours truckers can drive when transporting fuel.
    *      The Environmental Protection Agency has suspended until next Thursday certain federal fuel standards in response to possible diesel and gasoline shortages. The suspended rules are designed to combat high ozone and sulfur emissions.
    *      Bush has ordered suspension of provisions of the Jones Act, which requires transport of petroleum, gasoline and other petroleum products on U.S.-flagged ships while operating in U.S. coastal waters.
    *      Senate Environment and Public Works chairman Sen. James Inhere, R-Okla., said Congress would need to waive a law that limits federal emergency road building funds to $100 million per state per emergency and that limits full federal funding to 180 days.
    *      The House unanimously passed a bill allowing the Department of Education to waive the repayment requirement for low-income college students who received Pell grants. Normally if a college student drops out of school, he must pay back the unused portion of his Pell grant.
    *      On Thursday, Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon law on all federally financed construction in areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. That law requires the federal government to pay the “prevailing wage” on construction projects, which is often higher than the local minimum wage. Suspending Davis-Bacon will allow the government to pay lower than prevailing wages, and Bush said, “will result in greater assistance to these devastated communities and will permit the employment of thousands of additional individuals."
    *      House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, saw a need for a new energy bill as a result of the hurricane. “When one hurricane, as massive as it was, can knock out about 20 percent of our (oil and natural gas) facilities, it shows how vulnerable we are,” he said. In order to expand the long-term U.S. oil and gas supply, DeLay wants to open parts of the country that are currently off-limits to oil and gas drilling. Large swaths of the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts are under a federal moratorium on oil and gas exploration until the year 2012.

Congress does not need to approve these decisions. They have been pronounced by fiat, frighteningly reminiscent of Hitler’s unilateral directives in Germany in the 1930s. As Sheila Samples notes, FEMA has not been gutted; it is the Patriot Act on crack!

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT

Major Air Route Closed--No Reason Given
http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=4846
contributing editor to

- Craig

[HHHMMMMM -- Tribble]

BBC newsreader Michael Buerk has complained that the "shift in the balance of power between the sexes" has gone too far, saying "life is now lived in accordance with women's rules".

He has cited females in the top jobs in BBC broadcasting as an example, saying "these are the people who decide what we see and hear".

Buerk, who complains that men have been reduced to "sperm donors", told the Radio Times magazine that society needs to admit there is a problem.

"The traits that have traditionally been associated with men - reticence, stoicism, single-mindedness - have been marginalised.

"The result is that men are becoming more like women. Look at the men who are being held up as sporting icons - David Beckham and, God forbid, Tim Henman."

Buerk said: "Look at the changes in the workplace. There is no manufacturing industry any more; there are no mines; few vital jobs require physical strength.

"What we have now are lots of jobs that require people skills and multi-tasking - which women are a lot better at."

The former Nine O'Clock News newsreader, who now reads the news on BBC World, said some changes have been for the good, but asked: "What are the men left with?

"Men gauge themselves in terms of their career, but many of those have disappeared.

"All they are is sperm donors, and most women aren't going to want an unemployable sperm donor loafing around and making the house look untidy. They are choosing not to have a male in the household."

Buerk, whose views will also be screened in a channel Five series on personal hobbyhorses, Don't Get Me Started!, on channel Five, this week, said that when he started making the programme he "came across what I considered a very personal example of the changes that have taken place.

"Almost all the big jobs in broadcasting were held by women - the controllers of BBC1 television and Radio 4 for example. These are the people who decide what we see and hear".

BBC1 Controller Lorraine Heggessey has since left the BBC and been replaced by a man, Peter Fincham, while Radio 4 is still run by Janice Hadlow.

Recently one of the BBC's most influential former director-generals, Alasdair Milne, sparked a furious response when he accused the corporation of producing "terrible" programmes and laid the blame on the domination of women executives.

Buerk added that "the majority of middle management positions were held by women and that has changed the nature of almost every aspect of the marketplace.

"Products are made for women, cars are made for women - because they control what is being bought," he said.

"Some people might argue that this is a case of the pendulum swinging over the woman's side for a change, and eventually it will find a happy medium.

"I'm not so sure about that," he said. "What can you do about falling sperm counts for example? ... admitting there is a problem is the first step."

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain**

President Approves Emergency Declaration For Arizona
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18821
contributing editor to

- Rodger

[See what little it takes for FEMA to declare a state of emergency? 28 States? Why? -- Rodger]

[Me thinks Rodger knows the answer to his question. If maybe 3/4 of the states are declared a disaster, then is is a small step to a NATIONAL emergency/disaster and yet a small step to martial law/rule. Then King George can stay in office and/or the people will be under total control. This is not to say this will be the event when such a thing happens, but as a watchman on the wall, it is needed to pay attention to things which fit the proscribed pattern. -- Tribble]

» More Information on Arizona Hurricane Katrina Evacuation

Washington, D.C. -- The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Arizona and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts to assist evacuees from the area struck by Hurricane Katrina and to provide emergency assistance to those areas beginning on August 29, 2005, and continuing.

The President's action makes Federal funding available to the State and all 15 counties of the State of Arizona.

Specifically, assistance is available to State and eligible local governments for emergency protective measures that are undertaken to save lives and protect public health and safety. Emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 100 percent Federal funding.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) named Karen E. Armes as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Federal recovery operations in the affected area.

A total of 28 states and Washington, D.C. are now included in emergency declarations.

FEMA prepares the nation for all hazards and manages federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates mitigation activities, trains first responders, works with state and local emergency managers, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration. FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2003.

FROM: Bob, September 13, 2005
Actually, the citizens of New Orleans could fight back if they had enough firepower. The Blackwater guys only have assault rifles. a well-armed civilain populace can fight back and take 'em out. The key is to not register your guns so "they" don't know who has what.

FROM: Bob, September 15, 2005
You're preaching/quoting to the choir here and the "sermon" has been heard and agreed with, so many times before.
It's too bad that so many "sheeple" have the "it can't happen here" attitude. Also, the dependence upon government to "take care of me" desensitizes folks into trusting the government and beleiving that it would only help them, not subjugate them.

Health / nutrition

Intravenous Vitamin C Kills Cancer Cells
http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi43.html
contributing editor to

- Dan

by Bill Sardi, September 14, 2005

Save a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.comSave a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.com Email a link to this articleEmail a link to this article Printer-friendly version of this articlePrinter-friendly version of this article View a list of the most popular articles on our siteView a list of the most popular articles on our site

Recall how hydrogen peroxide is poured on wounds to kill germs. Well now researchers clearly show high-dose vitamin C, when administered intravenously, can increase hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) levels within cancer cells and kills them. I.V. vitamin C was also demonstrated to kill germs and may be an effective therapy for infectious disease.

With a growing body of evidence mounting, National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers conceded today that intravenous vitamin C may be an effective treatment for cancer. Last year the same researchers reported a similar study but the news media failed to publish it.

The latest study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirms the work of Nobel-Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling who conducted cancer research in the 1970s with vitamin C. Dr. Pauling's studies were discredited at the time by poorly conducted research studies at the Mayo Clinic.

Unlike cancer drugs, I.V. vitamin C selectively killed cancer cells, but not healthy cells, and showed no toxicity. The ability of intravenous vitamin C to kill lymphoma cells was remarkable – almost 100% at easily achievable blood serum concentrations.

For inexplicable reasons, NIH researchers continue to maintain high-dose oral vitamin C can produce a limited increase in serum vitamin C concentrations. However, their earlier study published in 2004 clearly showed oral-dose vitamin C can achieve three times greater blood concentration than previously thought possible, a fact which negates the current Recommended Dietary Allowance for vitamin C. [Annals Internal Medicine 140:533–7, 2004] NIH researchers refuse to issue a retraction of their earlier flawed research which mistakenly claimed humans cannot benefit from high-dose oral vitamin C supplements.

The NIH also offered no explanation why it has taken 35 years to confirm the work of Dr. Linus Pauling.

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a consumer advocate and health journalist, writing from San Dimas, California. He offers a free downloadable book, The Collapse of Conventional Medicine, at his website.

So who decides what names are used each year? The World Meteorological Organization uses six lists in rotation. The same lists are reused every six years. The only time a new name is added is if a hurricane is very deadly or costly. Then the name is retired and a new name is chosen.

September 15, 2005—An entire American city has become an uninhabitable mire of fetid water, sodden ruins, and toxic sludge. Moreover, the destruction will not end there: the financial, political, and psychological spill-off, incurred by the deluge, will cause our nation to sink further into a morass of debt, denial, and despair.

How did it come to this? How did we come to buy this worthless plot of swampland known as George Bush's America?

Perhaps, at this point, a brief history lesson, for a nation whose populace possesses the collective capacity for long-term memory of a Louisiana gnat on a hot afternoon in high summer, might prove helpful. Let's begin with the watershed year of 1968.

After it became increasingly obvious that the Vietnam War was neither a moral nor a winnable cause and, concurrently, on the racially riven domestic front, when a sense of hopeless rage among inner city African Americans, engendered by centuries of racism and its attendant disparities of wealth and equality, lit the spark of urban riots—Richard Nixon, by promising he had a "secret plan" to end the war in Southeast Asia and vowing he would restore "law and order" to the nation's streets, was able to slither into the White House. Yet, within a few years time, it was revealed that Nixon's plan (to be more accurate, scheme) would prolong the war for years, causing hundreds of thousand of unnecessary causalities, and, in general, would screw over all concerned. As for his law and order policy, it consisted of a covert plan to take crime off of the streets and place it back within the corridors of official power where it belongs.

But an unwashed, unruly mob of sticklers for constitutional process got lucky, that round, and they brought Nixon down. And, for our anti-American sins of self-doubt, we received Jimmy Carter, who delivered cardigan-draped bromides of thrift and Sunday school sermons of self-restraint and personal sacrifice . . . and that sort of thing drove people to cocaine and disco.

Moreover, the high cost and banality of (not to mention brain-damage incurred by) those activities left the nation susceptible to the platitudinous, confidence man assurances of power and prosperity, without sacrifice, promised by Ronald Reagan. All the while, through the 1980s, George W. Bush hid himself among mountains of the afore-mentioned disco marching powder and Arnold Schwarzenegger brandished fists full of anabolic steroids, creating for himself a body that is a precise metaphor for his adopted land—a nation that worships the appearance of strength, but whose interior life is as stunted as that of a narcissistic bodybuilder, a preening twit for whom the larger world serves no greater purpose than for the adoration of his over-sized, oil-lacquered muscles.

More and more, the American mind began to suffer from steroid-induced psychosis. Worse, our self-absorption was only surpassed by our paranoia: The proxy armies of the Evil Empire awaited the command from their Kremlin masters to attack and enslave us; homosexuals plotted to destroy the American family, thereby leaving aimless children adrift and easy prey for conversion by skulking sodomites; civil liberty advocates employed legalistic weasel words to hamstring the police and thwart the legal system, giving criminals carte blanche to roam the streets and commit crimes with impunity, while their Welfare Queen mothers cushioned their posh asses on the leather seats of Cadillacs and cruised city streets trading Food Stamps for crack cocaine. Then matters grew far, far worse.

In the early 1990s, came a threat to everything we hold sacred in Christendom: Bill Clinton. Although, godly souls need not have worried—he turned out to be simply a Sybaritic salesman of global neo-liberal economic colonialism. Furthermore, Bill Clinton did Ronald Reagan one better: he bitch-slapped those Welfare Queens so hard their taxpayer-subsidized gold teeth rattled. Across the land, good Christians paused to listen to the satisfying thwap.

George W. Bush has shown us an even more blessed path to salvation: He has revealed to us how we can ascend to heaven—by climbing the stacked corpses of the poor. In the meantime, he will carry out Christ's admonition to give succor to the truly deserving—to the members of the true welfare state—all those needy Haliburton contractors in Iraq.

While domestically, with the intention of protecting us from rising rivers of reality, Bushco., a division of Cheney Inc., a subsidiary of JesusCorps and NeoConico have tirelessly labored to keep us safe from the possibility of ever being so much as touched by a droplet of truth. Therefore, they have constructed for us a shoddy levee system of lies . . . Beneath which, we, inhabiting ad hoc, flimsy structures, live below sea level of self-awareness, all the while, choosing to call this misnomer made manifest—life.

Meanwhile, like the waters of the Mississippi River flooding into Lake Pontchartrain, the waters around us have begun to rise towards the tipping point.

And thus far, we Americans have risen to meet the challenge of these perilous times—by dozing off before our televisions. With crumbs of Doritos stippled in the folds of our double chins and upon our sagging chest, the garish glow of our sets flickers over our sleep-slackened faces, while the programming fare proclaims that "reality" is now comprised of the stuff of contrived competitions between corporately-neutered, would-be pop stars and of Weather Channel remotes, in which, legions of blow-dried, sub-cretinous blathering heads are dispatched to hurricane-battered coastal regions to be blown about on camera for the amusement of viewers afflicted with a voyeuristic fetish for "live" disaster footage. And it was big fun, until the appearance of floating corpses put a damper on everyone's festive mood.

Inasmuch as the reality of our waking life now includes crushing debt, runaway inflation, due to diminishing oil supplies, global environmental upheaval brought on by global warming (including increasingly destructive cataclysms, such as Hurricane Katrina), and the enmity of the people of the world beyond our shores, in response to our bullying militarism and economic imperialism—we would have to be a nation of narcoleptics, in the first place, to have ever believed in the existence of this chimera called the "American Dream." For it's not a dream: it amounts to complicity in multiple acts of criminal negligence.

Why do we Americans accept this pernicious and ultimately self-defeating arrangement? Because we're convinced that it bestows upon us everything we could possibly need and desire. All we need to know and experience is at our twitching, TV remote-happy fingertips. Ergo, we can flip from enactments of explicit porn on one channel, to explicit re-enactments of pornographic Christian prophecy on another; we can transmigrate from fake sin to phony salvation, in an instant . . . What else, in the whole of boundless creation, could we possibly want?

And, for our being provided with these comforts and accommodations, the only debt we owe is this: It is mandated that we make unceasing payments, using the scarce currency of the time we have been allotted in this finite world, to our munificent masters of the corporate class—and only for the duration of our mortal existence . . . It's a very simple arrangement: we give them the precious hours of our lives and they keep us sheltered from the unsettling storms that we seed, suppressing the knowledge of all the things we have forsaken by said transaction. In short, folks, it's the deal of a lifetime.

We have become a society of Willie Lomans (as he might have been written by Joseph Goebbels). In this Potemkin world, the public relations mountebanks of Bushco were convinced they could indefinitely hold back raging rivers of reality by means of media sound-bites, spin control, cooked intelligence, and strategic leaks to stenographic reporters . . . And because they had gotten away with it for so long, I suspect, they actually believed they could respond to the lethal winds and drowning tides of Hurricane Katrina by engaging in a Rovian whispering campaign against her fury. Somehow, it would seem, in their ineluctable arrogance, they went and mistook a level four hurricane for those walking wet farts known as the present day Democratic Party.

I'm as serious as a tsunami: I think such madness is in them—in direct proportion to the fecklessness of the leadership of our so-called opposition party.

We are: We the people of the United State. Our hubris, instilled by having lived our lives within the unreality of corporate dystopia, has deluded us into believing that we can indefinitely hold back the approaching shit storms spawned by our delusional sense of infinite entitlement—all of which have been financed by a pyramid scheme of (personal and national) debt. By the means of our emptiness, selfishness, and corruption, our "American way of life" is an unnatural disaster that has been waiting to happen.

But goddamn it to hell (or, at least, its earthly exurb Houston) why did it have to be New Orleans that was destroyed—N'awlins—one of the last outposts within this corporate simulacrum of a country where a human pulse and heart beat could be found—where the primordial songs of bone and heart and flesh and clouds and rivers had not been forced into the Clear Channel/Disney/Time-Warner Uberculture blandification machine?

Just let Haliburton try to build Branson, Missouri on the bayou. You see, in New Orleans, dead bodies will not remain buried underground. By the same token, we must not deep-six our grief and anger. In the name of the dead, we can't allow the truth to bulldozed, buried, and have shlock erected over their memories.

Although, to be of any use to them, first, we Americans must gaze down into the drowning pool that once was the Crescent City, where, superimposed upon the raw sewage, submerged debris, and bloated corpses—we will see our own face reflected. It is the face of empty entitlement, of exceptionalism, of state sanctified selfishness, of ceaseless ambition, and mindless appetite. What destroyed New Orleans is the toxic spill-off from our national psyche.

Frank O'Hara wrote: "In times of crisis we must all decide again and again whom we love."

Perhaps, to properly grieve the loss of New Orleans, we must allow ourselves to again be seduced by life—not by the soul-usurping machinations of the corporate UberCulture. Personally, like so many others who knew the city—beautiful, disloyal, capricious bitch she could be—I retain a lover's ardor for her. For the enveloping redolence of honey suckle and jasmine on the humid, evening air, as I, swigging a Turbo Dog, would hobbled up Esplanade. For the exquisite indifference of starlight above the Bywater and the manner in which those distance celestial bodies stood in stark contrast to the redemptive immediacy of the sweat-soaked bodies near me, as we would lie on our backs, on the sidewalk, watching stream rise from the roof of an old Camelback house, listening, as inside, Kermit Ruffin's band played an ode to Louis Armstrong's affection for reefer . . .

Living with the keening pain of loss evoked by such memories is the easier part of the grieving process . . . Now, through our rage and sadness, we must attempt to love, with the same ardor, the intricate manner that our lives and fates are interconnected, by way of mutual inter-dependance, with intimate strangers—which is the essential thing that we Americans seemed to have forgotten—and it is the reason our beloved city of New Orleans has been lost to us.

In a similar vein, we are dependent on air, water, and soil. Tragically, far too many of us have been tricked into believing we are dependent on the corporate power structure—and its proxy state, presently known as the three branches of the U.S. government. For far too long, we have deferred the hour when we faced the fact that this corrupt cabal cares nothing for us—and, accordingly, we owe them nothing.

In contrast, we owe the air, water, and soil—big time. For these things sustain us; they are the face of our beloved.

We should carry snapshots of New Orleans, before and after, in our wallets. And, in times of doubt, despair, and alienation, we should gaze at the photographs, in order that we never again forget: It was not divine wrath that brought on the flood; instead, the tragedy was caused by billions of interconnected acts (personal and collective; private and official) of carelessness, obliviousness, and indifference.

This is the choice our times have given us: continued complicity in sowing the toxic winds of corporatism or the passion-agitated air created by the ceaseless need to struggle against exploitation.

Our choice will not only determine our individual fates, but the fate of us all.

Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com. Rockstroh is a contributing editor to Cyrano's Journal Online.

There has been widespread criticism of the response of US officials to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. The tone of these complaints is that the authorities failed to do their job quickly enough. Some commentators have said this is a racial issue, claiming that the government would have acted more promptly if the majority of victims had been white instead of black. Others have said it was an issue of the rich against the poor, the oil companies against the consumers, the land developers and contractors seeking to force people out of the city so they can rebuild without interference at taxpayers' expense. Democrats have said the problem is that Republicans were in control, and Republicans are indifferent to the plight of the common man.

In news coverage of this tragedy, the most significant events often were buried beneath a blanket of heart-wrenching stories of personal survival, scenes of awesome destruction, reports of looting, and interviews with experts. However, the key to understanding can be found in the following list of news headlines, most of which did not make it into mainstream coverage. These reports make it clear that the government did not fail to respond in a timely fashion. The problem was that it did respond - but in such a way as to actually hinder rescue operations. There were too many instances for this to be merely a mistake or a bureaucratic snafu. There is a clear pattern here that cannot be denied. Why this should be so will be discussed in a moment, but first, here is the amazing record.

The primary job of the military, FEMA, and Homeland Security is not to protect the American people in times of emergency but to protect the government in times of emergency and keep it functioning. Their primary assignment is, not to rescue people, but to control them. Their directive is to relocate families and businesses, confiscate property, commandeer goods, direct labor and services, and establish martial law. The reason FEMA and Homeland security failed to carry out an effective rescue operation is that this was not their primary mission, and the reason they blocked others from doing so is that any operations not controlled by the central authority are contrary to their directives. Their objective was to bring the entire area under the control of the federal government - and this they succeeded in doing very well. They did not fail in New Orleans. They were a huge success. Once this simple fact is understood, everything that happened in the wake of Katrina becomes understandable and logical.

How's that? The current federal debt is rapidly approaching eight trillion dollars. The current deficit forecast for this year was $333 billion before Katrina hit. Now the deficit estimates will have to be revised by $200-300 billion. The national debt will likely increase $600 billion within a year. That's over half a trillion dollars! But the Republicans have repeatedly told Americans that "deficits don't matter."

Where is this money coming from? Most of it has come from foreign investors, such as the central banks of China and Japan. They buy U.S. bonds because they have an excess of dollars from the current account deficit, also known as the "trade deficit," which is, quite ironically, about $600 billion.

The Federal Reserve also is a significant source for this "debt money." They can simply "pop" money into existence and loan it to the government. "Pop the magic money" should be engraved above the marble entrance to their Washington D.C. fortress. If you're beginning to feel like all of this financial "hocus-pocus" is a bit tenuous then that means you're waking up from the spell. It's a hopeful sign.

Right now the U.S. is borrowing $320 billion a year just to pay the interest on the national debt. ( 8 trillion times 4 percent ). When you find yourself borrowing just to pay the interest on your debt then you are bankrupt. If interest rates ( and bond rates ) rise one percent the government will need an additional $80 billion.

Most Americans doubt that we will ever pay off that huge debt, which comes to more than $26,000 per man, woman and child or more than $60,000 per full-time worker. 1.7 trillion of this debt is held by the Social Security Trust fund. The fund is already gone. Current recipients are getting their checks from foreign nations' purchase of U.S. bonds. At least that's one potential way to "spin" the facts. Who's paying for the war in Iraq? Japan and China. Who's paying for your Katrina relief? Japan and China. Who's paying for the highway bill? China and Japan. Take your pick of which "spin" you prefer.

One or all of these statements are true, at least in some respect, depending on how you wish to "slice and dice" the national debt. It would be one thing if the Social Security Trust Fund had been invested in private sector companies, but instead it's been spent on war in Iraq, tax cuts, and the Katrina disaster. It's all the same "pot of money."

Remember the famous words of Ross Perot in 1992, when the national debt was only four trillion dollars: "The national debt is immoral. It's stealing from our children." A decade ago the Republicans were shouting about the need for a "balanced budget amendment" but today's corrupt gang refuses to be bothered by such things as virtues, morals or scruples. When Bush recently asked them for another 50 billion they opened the checkbook and dutifully complied.

Why do foreigners buy U.S. bonds? Because the U.S. is sitting on 10 trillion dollars of Iraqi oil. That's a conservative estimate using the figure of 200 billion barrels times $50 a barrel. Oil is now over $60 a barrel and the estimates of Iraqi reserves go as high as 300 billion barrels, which could mean that the U.S. is sitting on 18 trillion dollars of oil. That's more than the capitalization of all the companies on the New York Stock Exchange!

Regardless of how much "window dressing" America puts on the Iraq situation, other nations know that the United States is the real government of Iraq. Without the presence of the U.S. military the current regime would fall within a week.

There's another reason the U.S. must stay in Iraq which is related but more difficult to understand. When other nations purchase oil they use dollars. In the past decade there have been discussions among OPEC nations to switch to the Euro as the required currency. If that happened, the United States would no longer reap the benefit of all these "oil dollars" circulating in the global economy. America would have to compete for Euros and the dollar would plummet in value. America's economy would collapse within a month.

Two OPEC nations have actively supported the movement to the Euro: Iraq and Venezuela. We already know what happened with Iraq. They have changed their mind. A few years ago there was an attempted coup against Venezuela's democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez. The coup failed, but there is now mounting evidence that the CIA was behind it.

Recently, Republican TV Christian evangelist Pat Robertson publicly called for the assassination of President Hugo Chavez. After a great deal of criticism from the public he apologized for his remarks. A few days ago Hugo Chavez called the United States a "terrorist state" in a speech before the United Nations. Chavez noted that Robertson's act was technically a "terrorist act" which has gone unpunished by this Republican-controlled government. Apparently our government has chosen to ignore the rule of law and has forgotten the virtue of justice.

When other nations look at the United States and its behavior it is easy to understand how they might conclude that they will be the next target of U.S. aggression if they dare to challenge the American global hegemony. When they are asked to "pony up" a few more hundred billion dollars to cover deficit spending by the Americans they look towards the Middle East and realize that they might be "cut off" at some future date from oil they desperately need. So they appease the tyranny of the United States government with another payment.

And that's the main reason that the U.S. must stay in Iraq. We are terrorizing the world into giving us more money to cover our increasing debts. The United States government is the biggest financial terrorist on the planet.

The basis for this "you need oil and we have it" extortion scheme is a widely-held perception that there is a finite amount of oil and that demand is increasing faster than supply. But that's only a perception. This perception has been premised on the widely-popularized notion of "Peak Oil."

The "Peak Oil" theory asserts that production curves have already peaked, or will peak soon, and the world will experience declining supplies while global demand is rapidly increasing.

This is a truly difficult prospect in the mind of anyone who accepts the notion that there are no alternatives to oil. This notion asserts that the world has "no choice" but to compete for dwindling supplies of oil. War is a natural consequence of such a competition.

The "Peak Oil" theory is a myth because it is based on false assumptions. It's the "big lie" being presented to the world as justification for U.S. military aggression and economic hegemony. It isn't about oil at all, really, but rather about the unwillingness of the U.S. to "live within its means," "pay its debts" and "play well with others."

America is essentially telling the world "give us more money because we are sitting on 10 trillion dollars of oil which you will need" along with "we'll overthrow any government which changes it's trade currency from the dollar to the Euro."

That's what America has become: the biggest bully on the block, a global financial terrorist, a Pax Americana extortionist. The U.S. is willing to be peaceful as long as you give it more money.

All of this is unnecessary. What's needed is a massive international initiative to develop alternative energy sources, such as synthetic fuels ( made from coal ), ethanol, biodiesel fuels produced by algae or renewable crops, wind power, hydroelectric, solar and a host of other alternative energy sources which have already been proven as viable alternatives to oil. As much as Americans hate even thinking about "consuming less" we could conceivably reduce our oil consumption by 10-20 percent with energy conservation measures. Truthfully, even if the world decided to continue its dependence on oil we could produce enough oil without depending on the Middle East.

There is an estimated 1.3 trillion barrels of oil, more than 5 times the amount of Iraq's estimated reserves, waiting for us on the ocean floor. Granted, it's more difficult to get to than the oil in Iraq, which is "easy oil" to mine by comparison, but it's doable. Therefore the myth of Peak Oil is a perceptual hoax cleverly used to justify the war in Iraq. It's an argument which accepts some facts and ignores others. Call it "the tyranny of the facts" if you wish. The technique employs only those facts which support the desired conclusion. It's a technique we've seen used repeatedly by the current gang of evildoers.

As with so many things in the current Republican regime, things are different than they seem. Perception is reality but only until the fleecing of America is accomplished. Then the truth sets in. Perceptions change but the truth persists.

Do I think we need to stay in Iraq? No, I think we need to leave Iraq and to do it soon. The international backlash from our foreign policy of military aggression and economic hegemony is brewing and it's going to be a hell of a disastrous storm when it reaches the coast. It has the potential to cause the greatest depression America has ever seen, perhaps even total economic collapse.

But, what the heck, let's be positive. It's the American way in the face of adversity.

One conceivable way out is to turn to the world and give our most sincere "mea culpa" for our past sins and begin working to free the world from dependence on oil. A few days ago the price of gasoline in London approached $10 a gallon! There are shortages popping up all over the world. The United States has five percent of the world's population and consumes 25 percent of the world's oil. It's time for us to work towards providing for our own energy needs and help the world free itself from dependence on oil.

There is an alternative policy to war, aggression and economic domination. There is a way for us to get out of Iraq and save America from financial disaster. This way requires us to throw the Republican party onto the trash heap of history's failed parties. It requires us to make a complete paradigm shift in American foreign policy. It's result will be friendlier relations with the world and a much smaller military.

Helpfulness is a virtue. We need to stop being the "world's bully" and start serving the needs of humanity. We need to help rather than hurt, make peace rather than war, create new solutions rather than perpetuate old problems.

Jesus taught us that "The love of money is the root of all evil." I believe it is clear that George Bush and the Republicans who support him have chosen the "love of money" over the "love of virtue."

We will soon wake up from this evil spell cast upon us by the Republicans and smell the fresh flowers of a peaceful spring. We will release our love of money and embrace virtue in both our words and deeds. We will rehabilitate our reputation in the world and service the true needs of humanity by focusing on developing alternative energy solutions which will free humanity from dependence on oil, tyranny and war.

All of this can happen as soon as we reject the Republican agenda of war, domination and financial terrorism.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill said that the American people…he said, the American people, he said, and this is a direct quote, “We didn’t come this far because we are made of sugar candy.”

That was his response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. That we didn’t come this far because we are made of sugar candy.

And that reminder was taken seriously. And we proceeded to develop and deliver the bomb, even though roughly 150,000 men, women and children perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With a single blow, World War II was over.

Following New York, Sept. 11, Winston Churchill was not here to remind us that we didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar candy.

We gave old pals a pass, even though men and money from Saudi Arabia were largely responsible for the devastation of New York and Pennsylvania and our Pentagon.

We called Saudi Arabians our partners against terrorism and we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we kept our best weapons in our silos.

Even now we’re standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive, because we’ve declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies -- more moral, more civilized.

Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and into this continent by giving small pox infected blankets to native Americans.

And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever. And we grew prosperous.

And so it goes with most nation states, which, feeling guilty about their savage pasts, eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded, and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry and up and coming who are not made of sugar candy.

The disgusting bigotry and Nazi-like nature of these comments are the furthest yet that any Neo-Con has gone in attempting to justify harsher prosecution of the war on terror.

The scale of this sickness dwarfs even previous comments by Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh suggested that the Abu Ghraib prison guards were "just having fun" and "blowing off some steam."

The official official US Army report into Abu Ghraib lists the activities that Limbaugh defines as harmless fun. They include;

- Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture.

And to conservatives reading this article, we are by no means saying that those on the extreme left are any different. During Clinton's tenure, many liberals tried to justify the brutal siege on the Waco Church in 1993. This represents the same mindset, the specific targeting and elimination of minority groups to further a jackboot agenda. The Muslims are just the latest victims of this crusade and they certainly won't be the last.

The liberals couldn't ram through the entirety of their police state agenda, so they just put on sheep's clothing and returned as self-proclaimed conservatives and are now attempting to destroy America.

One of Paul Harvey's peers, Michael Savage has continually advocated the arrest of anyone who criticizes the government. Last year he called for the arrest of a New York Times journalist for publishing an anti-US photograph under the reasoning that the editor was committing sedition by promoting enemy propaganda.

On several occasions, Savage has even gone as far as to call for anti-government dissenters to be put in forced labor camps. The danger of this is all the more immediate when one considers the fact that three years ago FEMA began work on constructing entire mini-cities for purposes of internment.

It is common knowledge that this 'bastion of conservatism' was once a liberal hippy. He still advocates the books and philosophy of literary beatniks Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, whose books included glorification of drug use.

Mr. Wiener, like a plethora of other so-called right-wing talk show hosts, is a dangerous anti-American who hates freedom and what the founding fathers created. While he has a first amendment right to voice his comments, we feel the need to challenge them and will continue to monitor his subversive and extremist activities.

Paul Harvey is an even greater threat to liberty and he will likewise be scrutinized.

The argument that America has to be less moral than its enemies is paving the way for the American government to be less moral to its own people.

Harvey's sentiments go against everything America is supposed to stand for. Does the biblical philosophy of treat others as you wish to be treated mean anything to Harvey?

Harvey's argument lacks further credibility in light of the fact that the so-called 'terrorists' who would be at the brunt of Harvey's ire are in the vast majority of cases no terrorists at all.

Consistent figures have indicated that as high as 90% of Iraqis arrested at checkpoints and hauled away to prison camps have no connection to car bombings. In most cases they don't have their papers in order or are accused of stealing wood. Do these crimes justify the use of biological warfare and nuking entire countries?

The LA Times reported that no leaders of Al-Qaeda were identified as being at Guantanamo. That's because the US government ordered all the poor cavemen who were shoved onto the front lines by the Taliban to be arrested, while they safely evacuated 8,000 Al-Qaeda and Taliban cream (by accident of course) from Kunduz in Afghanistan.

The justification of dropping nuclear bombs on countries is also a mindless argument. Many Neo-Cons called for 'levelling Fallujah' after American contractors were killed in the city. So next time there are a handful of murders in your city the government should solve the problem by letting loose a few A-Bombs?

We demand a public apology and a retraction of Mr. Harvey's comments. Failing this, we extend an invitation for Mr. Harvey to appear on The Alex Jones Show and defend his comments.

Contact ABC and Paul Harvey and voice your disgust at the promotion of black slavery and genocide.

And - Now They are Pathetically Trying to Fight Back.
From Ted Twietmeyertedtw@frontiernet.net

[Do not let the title confuse you prior to reading the article. -- Tribble]

by Lolly MacKenzie lolneil@saol.com Sept 18th 2005

Dear All

I would like to bring to your attention a situation that is developing in the world which is going to impact on all our lives. If/when America falls, we all fall. By that I mean the Judeo/Christian values, traditions, morality and civilization we hold dear. Britain is virtually lost already and, without a spectacular revival it will be precipitated into the EEC and a comprehensive defeat that two world wars could not accomplish. For them, as well as the Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, the survival of Christian America is of paramount importance. Right now the battle for America is being contested in the Judicial area where left wing judges have turned the Declaration of Independence and the Constituion, which were both drawn up by God fearing Christians, on their heads. Aidiing them in this task of deliberate national suicide is a group called the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). People consider it to be a benign civil group assisting society. It is not. It is a group of unmitigated evil, infiltrated a long time ago by radical activists whose sole mandate has been to remove God from the nation, and most importantly the courts. They have targeted anything Christian, from school children to judges. I dont really know as yet where George Bush stands as he appears to stand for God but it is never what people SAY that matters, but what they do. One can only say that if a President speaks publicly of God then hang in with him because the Democrats are a group too horrible to contemplate. The Republicans do have bad eggs but the record of Clinton the liar and adulterer, Kennedy the adulterer and Chapaquaddick dodger and the other slippery characters with questionable war records etc cannot inspire any thoughtful person with confidence.

When $750,000 dollars of tax payers money is used to prevent the Boy Scouts from congregating in a public park and $6 million dollars is used to attack any anti abortion group and to promote abortion and $170,000 is used to mount a legal attack to remove the cross from the graves of veterans in the Mohave Desert which will impact on every veterans grave in the country if the courts uphold that suit, and a similar amount was spent to remove Judge Ray Moore from office because of his openly Christian stand, then you know the ACLU is extremely dangerous. It has mounted thousands of attacks, always seeking the most vulnerable target and it has cost the tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is also well funded independently. While it systematically targets Christian activities it also publicly supports Moslem radicals and Moslem education and indoctrination of children into the Koran and all that it stands for including Jihad. How can this be you may well ask? Indeed! ALL THAT IS NEEDED FOR EVIL TO TRIUMPH IS FOR GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING Edmund Burke said. The Christian church all over the world has been beguiled and brow beaten into inactivity and guilt, which is groundless, by wolves in sheeps clothing who posture as men of God, but are not, and by left wing politicians and judges who have their own agenda for the nation which is not in the nation's interests or survival. It is VITAL that Christians stand up and be counted for God. Either we are for God or against God. There is no middle ground and no longer any place to hide. Those who do not feel inclined towards God, or feel that they can escape the tidal wave that is threatening to engulph them, will wake up too late to the truth. I repeat. WHEN AMERICA FALLS, WE FALL.

The Supreme Court is made up of 9 Judges of which 5 were died in the wool left wing, anti Christ aethiests. Sandra Day O'Connor has retired. Her activities on the bench left a lot to be desired. Although she was appointed by Reagan she was an appalling choice but he was probably forced into it by the filibustering tactics of the Democrats. The Supreme Justice Rienquist has died - he was a God fearing, law abiding man who interpreted the law according to the Constituion, unlike the 5 left wing judges who do not. They interpret the law according to their own opinions and biases which has caused havoc in the courts and the entire nation.

The left wing Supreme court Justices are trying to move America into the European sphere of influence and law, taking direction on legal matters from the EEC and moving into the International Court in the Hague which will strip Americans of their own law and power of independence and render them subject to Europe. Nothing would be worse for them, and us.

Please, please email all your friends and relatives in America. Warn them and tell them to contact Dr James Kennedy at Coral Reef Ministry, PO Box 555, Fort Lauderdale 33302 to ask for an ACLU PACK AND PETITION. Tel: 1-888-334-9680. Find out WHAT YOU CAN DO TO STEM THIS TIDE OF EVIL. Send them a donation to help them fight the battles. Set up prayer chains to ask God for mercy and help in sustaining His people in power in America.

I have been following these developments with increasing anxiety. Bear in mind that the dogs of war are snapping at the heels of America in every direction, because Christian America HAS TO BE DEFEATED/NEUTRALIZED before the full fury of the end times can come upon us - the attack in New York, the hurricane Katrina - the replacement of judges - congressional elections. It is happening so fast, that people cannot focus on everything, or keep up with everything and while they are intent on personal survival, and assisting those in distress, all manner of evil is slipping past them. God has His watchmen on the walls all over the world. Be a watchman. If the warning comes out of South Africa, praise God. If it is spread further from New Zealand, England, or wherever, praise God for the watchmen on those walls. May you be richly blessed.

My beloved friends, dont sit around - just DO IT.

a r t i c l e / c o m m e n t a r y

The Coming Depression
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20050916054129788
contributing editor to

- Rodger

Contributed by: PatM By Patrick Meloy Sept 11, 2005

The United States is pushing towards a war with Iran with the stated reason that Iran is attempting to build nuclear weapons. We now know that Iraq’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction” that were said to be poised to annihilate the free world at a moment’s notice, did not exist. The United States and Britain used weak and false intelligence to spread this fallacy in an effort to legitimize a war of aggression and they are trying to do the same thing again. Iraq did indeed pose a real and serious threat to the United States, but not by way any military weapons. Iraq had the power to destroy the value of the American Dollar and along with it, the American Economy.

To understand this true weapon of mass destruction, you must understand the position the American Dollar holds in the world economy.

After WWII, Europe lay in ruins. The United States instituted the Marshall Plan where the US loaned massive amounts of money to European nations with the condition that goods and services be purchased from the United States. It was a great success; Europe was quickly able to rebuild its infrastructure and industry while US companies made fortunes supplying Europe’s needs. Because so many countries had so many US dollars, they ended up using them to purchase goods and services from other countries as well - including oil from the Middle East. In fact, two energy exchanges, the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) in London, and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) emerged as the only places to trade energy products and everything was priced in US dollars. In the 1970s, after the US made deal with Saudi Arabia, virtually the only currency you could use to purchase oil was the US dollar. This made the Greenback the dominant currency in the world, used for most (Western) trade and all energy purchases. This was a great deal for the United States - the value of the US dollar gained strength rapidly and they could afford to print huge sums of money without risk of devaluing their currency. Most of the newly printed money ended up offshore, in the vaults of central banks around the world that needed it for trade and energy.

Due to Free Trade, Globalization, and Reaganomics, American manufacturing fled to low-wage countries in search of higher profits. American output fell; unemployment rose, and the Federal government started borrowing madly to maintain spending levels; at the same time, their ability to pay shrank. America is now in a worse economic position than that of either Brazil or Korea when those countries’ economies melted down. The United States has an advantage that neither of those countries had though, massive amounts of their own currency sitting in other countries’ central banks collecting dust. America was able to borrow back its own currency from a multitude of countries that were happy to have their reserves earning interest instead of just laying around. This process of printing money for use outside the country and then having it come back as investments is known as “Recycling the Petro Dollar”.

Most of the world now realizes that the main reason for the USA to invade Iraq was to take its oil. What most governments, but few citizens, know, is that the rush to war was due to Saddam Hussain’s committing the high crime of accepting Euro dollars for oil under the “Oil for Food” program. While oil sales from Iraq were minimal due to UN sanctions, the act of defiance did not go unnoticed. Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea all started to dump portions of their US dollar reserves, and OPEC itself received European Union representatives who gave a presentation on the advantages of using the Euro currency for oil sales. The EU today is actually a larger market than the USA. It has more people and more money, and uses more oil than the United States. As OPECs largest single customer, it makes sense to use their currency. With Europe posing a major threat to the hegemony of the US Greenback, the USA decided it had to do something drastic to show OPEC that it would not allow a switch to the Euro. This is why; shortly after Iraq’s conversion to the Euro in late 2000, the USA used the excuse of 9/11 to invade Iraq - not to fight terrorism, but to perpetrate terror itself in order to keep OPEC in line. One can understand the reticence of Germany, France, and Russia when it came to invading Iraq, as switching to the Euro would have been a strategic economic victory.

In 2003, Iran began selling oil for Euros to a large number of Euro-dominated countries. The Euro was already making inroads as a replacement trade currency and this switch to the Euro for oil has played a large part in the US dollar’s declining value. As if this crime against the USA wasn’t enough, Iran also announced its intention to open its own Oil Bourse (exchange) in late 2005 (now delayed until spring 2006), competing with the two American owned exchanges, NYMEX and IPE. The last technical hurdle to the Euro taking over as both world trade and energy currency would be eliminated; the US dollar would likely go into freefall as central banks dumped their Greenbacks and bought Euros. The US has been working hard overtly, with its weapons of mass destruction smear campaign, as well as covertly, using its own cadre of terrorists, the M.E.K, to destabilize the Iranian government. The USA lacks the troops to invade and Dick Cheney has asked the Pentagon to draft a plan to use nuclear weapons against Iran. Assuming that Russia and China do not retaliate with a missile attack against the USA and its assets, using nuclear weapons against Iran could push the rest of the world to use its only real defense against the USA, dumping the Greenback and destroying the US economy. If the US does not attack, the oil bourse will open and the ultimate result will likely be the same: the end of the USA as a world power and the start of a new “Great Depression”.

20050921

a r t i c l e / c o m m e n t a r y

Conservative New Urbanism
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/9/192005gst.asp
contributing editor to

- Dale

[I would argue that it is not a conservative/liberal thing, but a government thing. THEN gubment should only be involved to AID during catastrophe and not with everyday things. -- Tribble]

By Paul M. Weyrich
September 19, 2005

(AgapePress) - In my last column, I argued that the next conservatism needs to revive the family farm. Here, I want to make the case that it also needs to revive our cities.

Many conservatives dislike cities, for reasons I understand and sympathize with. Sin and the city is an old, old story; you can find it in the Confessions of Blessed Augustine. But cities are also the birthplace and necessary home for high culture. Without living cities, we will not have symphony orchestras and great music, classic theater, art museums, serious public libraries or any of the other venues high culture requires. Nor will we have the good used bookstores, artistic and literary cafes, salons or other informal but important places where ideas can be exchanged and culture can grow. No, the Internet is not a substitute; there can be no full replacement for people talking face-to-face.

Just as the next conservatism needs to make the culture its centerpiece, it needs to include high culture. Conservatism ought not be indifferent to whether future generations get to see Shakespeare's plays, hear Mozart's music or see Dürer's engravings. And if conservatives want that to happen, we need cities. God knows we dare not entrust culture to the universities.

That brings us to the problem we face: America's cities are in bad shape, most of them anyway. First the upper class, then the middle class, then anyone who could afford to moved out (busing, which wrecked the public schools, played a central role in the exodus). Cities cannot live if no one but the underclass lives in them. Nor can they survive if we continue to export our industries, to the point where cities offer no manufacturing or business jobs.

Over the past several decades, a movement has arisen to restore our cities and even to build new urban communities, towns, as an alternative to suburbs. It is called "new urbanism." As a conservative, I think new urbanism needs to be part of the next conservatism. But I also think we need a conservative new urbanism, which differs from much of what now goes under the new urbanist label.

The difference is this. Much of present-day new urbanism is statist. It envisions using the power of government to force people to adopt new urbanist ideas. An example is Portland, Oregon's "urban growth boundary," a line drawn on a map by government bureaucrats that tries to stop sprawl by decree. Guest what? It doesn't work. Not only does it violate property rights, if you actually go to Portland and look what has been built inside the boundary, most of it is still sprawl.

Let me say that I am not necessarily against sprawl. Suburbs are great places for families to raise kids. What we need is suburbs and living, thriving cities, not one or the other.

Here is where conservative new urbanism comes in. Conservative new urbanism should be built on property rights. Its basis would be dual codes. At present, virtually every building code in the country mandates sprawl. One developer told me that in order to build a traditional town (something most conservatives like), he had to get 150 variances at immense expense and delay.

The next conservatism should call for dual codes, nationwide. Under one code, a developer would be perfectly free to build a sprawling suburb. But he could also choose to build under a new urbanist code, which would be consistent with the way towns and cities were traditionally designed and built. Obviously, developers would make their choice based on demand in a free market. They would build suburbs where the market wanted suburbs, and towns or even small cities (or redevelopment in existing cities) where the market wanted that.

Good new urbanism should welcome a dual-code approach. Why? Because good new urbanism sells. Sometime when you are in Washington, go look at the architect Andres Duany's Kentlands development in Montgomery County, Maryland. It is a beautiful traditional town. And houses there are selling for tens of thousands of dollars more than houses with the same floor space in surrounding suburbs.

Here as so often elsewhere, the problem is government interference in the marketplace. The next conservatism should end the monopoly government building codes give to suburban sprawl and allow the free market to restore our cities. That is conservative new urbanism, and I think it needs to be part of the next conservative agenda.

I N S I G H T

American Life Under A National ID Card
http://www.newswithviews.com/DeWeese/tom36.htm
contributing editor to

- Rodger

By Tom DeWeese, September 20, 2005

“If you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to fear from these surveillance policies in the Patriot Act.” There it was - the one line that is continually uttered by those who are determined to turn America into the society of Big Brother. It’s the one line that will instantly bring out my own urge to kill anyone who has said it. My patience has run paper thin for such short-sighted, quivering, knee-jerk reactionaries who are willing to sacrifice our precious liberties for some false sense of momentary security.

Now, during a radio interview on the subject, sitting in my office on the opposite end of the telephone, I heard it said by my host. I had been feeling the frustration growing throughout the interview as he dismissed my fears of an allseeing, controlling government that can invade my own home without a search warrant or even a court order issued by a real judge. To him it was perfectly fine to pat down little old ladies and children in airports, while those fitting the profile of a terrorist could walk by, protected by political correctness. It’s OK that all of our personal lives, our bank accounts, records of books we’ve read and videos we’ve rented could be searched. And above all, to him, the greatest idea yet devised for protecting freedom in this nation was the creation of a national ID card. “Now,” he said, “we can control who comes in to this nation, where they go and who they are dealing with.” “And if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear!”

I lost it.“Have you any idea what living under a national ID card will be like? Have you given it the slightest thought beyond your own selfish, primal fear of some unstated threat,” I shouted into the telephone and over the airways. “Well, I spend a majority of my time looking into this issue and let me tell you what I’ve found to be true. And then, you tell me if this will be a nation you want to live in.” It was surprising to me that my host let me talk at this point. Perhaps the murderous tone in my voice warned him to stay quiet. Nevertheless, he let me continue.

“The Real ID bill that has just passed Congress and will establish a national ID card within the next 18 months will transform all state motor vehicle departments into agents of the federal government. They have now been told to install a high tech computer chip into every single drivers license in every single state. That chip will be used to carry either a finger print or voice print. It will be used to track almost every single transaction made by every single American, including buying guns, using credit cards, buying gas, getting on an airplane or a train.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, “I know what you’re going to say next. Your ilk always says it. “So what. If that keeps me safe, it’s OK.” “Well,” I continued, “consider how those ID cards will be used. Without one, you won’t be able to get on a plane or a train. You will be denied all government services. You will not be able to open a bank account. You will be literally shut out or American society.”

“And all the time the federal government has been passing this law mandating a national ID card it vigorously denies it is doing it. It’s not mandatory, they tell us. It’s all voluntary. It’s just that without the approved card you can’t use government services. Why have they lied?” Perhaps it’s because Congress knows full well that the American people are overwhelmingly opposed to being boxed in like this.”

“But still you say, if you haven’t done anything wrong, so what.” “Well,” I shouted, “I’ll tell you so what.” “Once this system is set up, you as an American no longer have control of your life. That will now fall under the whim of any government official or bureaucrat that controls the data in your file.” “Do you know how much information currently in government data files is incorrect,” I asked. Then I answered my own question; “Over 25 percent. Underpaid, undereducated government employees are paid to input information into massive data banks. They make mistakes.” “Have you ever tried to get credit, only to find a mistake on your credit report,” I asked. “Have you ever tried to fix it? Now take that experience and consider what happens when such mistakes block you from accessing your checking account so you can’t buy groceries. Consider what might happen if a mistake puts a false arrest warrant under your name. How do you prove you’re the wrong guy? How do you get it fixed? Now you have no money, no driver’s license. No ability to travel. You are completely cut out of society. What do you do now?”

“And to make it even worse”, I said, really warming up to the subject, “what would happen if you actually made someone in the government mad at you and that person had the power to mess with your records? What if things that are legal now are illegal in the future? It happens. Governments change. New laws are made. Drugs were once legal in this country and they aren’t now. Guns are now but may not be in the future. It used to be perfectly legal to protect your private property from trespassers. It isn’t now. Do you ever pay cash for something so that the transaction isn’t recorded? They are out to stop that. Laws change. Now tell me, if the laws change and you are tied to a national ID and total government surveillance, how long until you suddenly have something to hide from an all seeing government?” “Will you be so smug then?”

“And,” I finally concluded, “the sorriest part of your eagerness to abandon liberty for a chance to be safe from the big bad terrorists… none of these intrusions into American life will do a bloody thing to protect you. Within five minutes of the issuing of a government national ID card there will be counterfeits on the streets and a black market emerging to see them to any pirate, illegal immigrant or terrorist in need. So we will lose our freedoms for nothing.”

Finally, I took a breath. There was silence on the other end of the phone. Dead air time. I felt this interview had come to an end, so I just finished by saying, “if that’s the kind of nation you want to live in, there are plenty of totalitarian societies which can provide you with all the sadomasochistic torment you desire to satisfy your need for pain and control. Please leave America for the rest of us who want to be free.” “As for you, this interview is over.”

I N S I G H T

Jewish Chapel Built With Federal Funds: No Outcry From ADL, ACLU Or AU
http://www.catholicleague.org/05press_releases/quarter%203/050915_chapelbuilt.htm
contributing editor to

- Dan

[For that matter, where is the "Americans United for the Separation of Church and State" (AUSCS)?! -- Dan]

[It is possible to debate this without taking religious sides. There is clear and obvious evidence that the groups and agendas against religion is almost exclusively against "christian" expressions. While is it possible to show the promises are NOT to "christians", but to Israelites (not to be confused with jews), if a rule is established to ban gubment participation in religious things, then it should be a ban on ALL religious things. But, the evidence is also clear and obvious that most alleged anti religious agendas are in reality pro jewish and/or pro muslim, to the exclusion of anything "christian". -- Tribble]

Catholic League president William Donohue commented today about the absence of outcry from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) over the building of a Jewish chapel at the U.S. Naval Academy. From September 16-18, several events will take place at the Naval Academy celebrating the opening of the Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel; formal dedication will take place Sunday. Here is what Donohue had to say:

“The Catholic League understands the central role that religion plays in the lives of most Americans, and it is particularly sensitive to the need for religious expression among our men in women in uniform. That is why we congratulate the Naval Academy for opening the Jewish Center and heartily approve of federal funds being used to build the Jewish chapel. Our problem is with the hypocrites at the ADL, ACLU and AU.

“To the applause of the ADL, ACLU and AU, Catholic schools are denied government money for the purchase of maps in the classroom, but the federal government can spend nearly 2 million dollars to build a Jewish chapel at the Naval Academy without a word of protest from any of them. Catholic kids in New York City public schools cannot have a crèche in their classroom but Jewish kids can have a menorah (all to the approval of the ADL), and now a U.S. military building on the grounds of the Naval Academy can display a huge Star of David on its exterior without a peep from any of the church-and-state watchdog groups. Moreover, since 1845 the Naval Academy has had a non-sectarian prayer said before lunch, but the ADL and the ACLU now want it censored; the ADL has even written to the Armed Services Committees of the House and Senate calling the practice ‘deeply troubling.’

“In other words, prayer rugs can be purchased with federal funds to accommodate suspected Muslim terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, and Jewish chapels can be built with federal monies, but Christian kids can’t sing ‘Silent Night’ in the classroom. Got it everyone?”

R e s p o n s e

re: More Evidence US Citizens Are Worrying The Police State

[Here are some responses to the article "More Evidence US Citizens Are Worrying The Police State" -- Tribble]

FROM: Bob, September 21, 2005

Gosh, I MUST BE a "die-hard Republican" and Bill is, apparently, a believer in this Liberal hogwash. It sickens me that people like this "Ted" actually BELIEVE this slop that they are putting together "out of context."

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe

U.S. State Department Says New Testament Is 'Anti-Semitic'?
http://www.rense.com/general67/state.htm
contributing editor to

- Rodger & Dan

[Do I have to say it yet again? Israel is not our friend. Israel is not God's chosen people. Israel is much of the problem. Why do you think they are having laws passed to make it a crime to talk bad about them? Hopefully because people are waking up to what the Israeli's are doing behind the scenes. Although probably much too late.

A person once told me that as a Christian we cannot be silent. We must speak up if we see something going against the word of God. In this case, the person was discussing homosexuality. I told the person I was with them and even had their back but, what if the powers that be pass a law making it illegal to speak up? What are they going to do?

Quoting from this article, "Last October 10th, ADL/B'nai B'rith lashed out in unprecedented fury against eleven Christians in Philadelphia for the "hate crime" of witnessing to homosexuals. Through ADL national board member, Philadelphia D.A. Lynne Abraham, ADL/B'nai B'rith attempted to incarcerate those Christians for 47 years in prison with fines of $80,000.00 each." The hatefull thing these evil Christians did was read scripture and pray.

Okay Christians, I'll ask all of you the same question I asked that person. What are you going to do? Like Peter, Paul and the rest are you going to speak out and run the risk of going to prison, like they did? Or are you going to be silent because the government has passed a law saying you must? I think He said something like this, "If you love your life more than you love Me, you are unworthy of Me." -- Rodger]

[For that matter, where is the "Americans United for the Separation of Church and State" (AUSCS)?! -- Dan]

[I recall during the early 1990's, when the gubment controlled news media was chasing citizen militias and painting them as everythin bad and evil, that ABC was reporting these militias as anti-government, WHITE SUPREMECISTS and several other villionized things. Then the reporter interviewed a BLACK MAN as a member of a militia asking him questions about what it is like to be a member of the militia. This shows how many in the media and special interest groups use words and phrases contrary to the self-evidence. The use of the phrase "anti semitic" is being thrown around to label many people who are semites. ANYONE who is descendent from Abraham is a semite. In fact, the heritage of being a semite begins prior to Abraham. Most people in many parts of the Earth are able to claim ancestry to Abraham, and some of them are labeling their fellow semites as anti-semites. Why would the black man in the white supremecist militia be anti-self, why would a descendent of Abraham be anti-self? -- Tribble]

By Rev. Ted Pike, 9-13-5

Evangelical lovers of Israel would never believe that our government could consider them anti-Semitic. Yet the U.S. State Department's new "Department of Global Anti-Semitism" now defines anti-Semitism in a way that makes Bible-believing Christians into anti-Semites. Here's how:

The State Department's 40-page Report on Global Anti-Semitism cites a recent example of "anti-Semitism" in Poland. "...the pastor of St. Brigid Church in Gdansk told parishioners during services that Jews killed Jesus and the prophets." (p.22) What's wrong with that? According to Jewish leadership: plenty. Jewish leaders say it was this millennia-old accusation that ultimately led to the Holocaust: to millions of Jewish "Christ killers" being herded into the prison camps and gas chambers of Auschwitz, Dachau, etc. "You can't get any more anti-Semitic than that!" they protest.

IS THE NEW TESTAMENT "HATE LITERATURE?" Yet, think about it. Isn't that accusation exactly what Mel Gibson portrayed in "The Passion of the Christ?" Isn't that exactly what the New Testament teaches in passages too numerous to list here? Scripture says evil Jewish leaders, helped by Jews gathered at the Feast of the Passover, collectively pressured the Romans to crucify Christ.

From the Book of Acts alone come powerful indictments of the Jews. "...let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified." Acts 2:36. "Men of Israel...this man...you nailed to the cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death." Acts 2:22,3. "Men of Israel...Jesus, the one whom you delivered up...you disowned...put to death the Prince of Peace" Acts 3:12-15. "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye had put to death by hanging him on a cross." Acts 8:30.

These words - that the Jews killed Jesus - were spoken by the pastor of St. Brigid Church in Gdansk, Poland. If he is anti-Semitic according to the US State Department, then so is the New Testament! So are you as a Bible-believing Christian!

NO CHRISTIANS ARE SAFE Most Christians "spiritualize" the above Scriptures, saying we are "all" guilty for the crucifixion. Yet it is clear that as long as any Christians believes the "anti-Semitic" New Testament to be the inspired word of God, he, also, is not safe from being labeled "anti-Semitic" by our government. Christians can also expect such derision from Jewish "civil liberties" organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, which is always eager to marginalize Christians into those our "tolerant" society should disapprove of.

Even Mel Gibson, who believes personally that we are all guilty of the crucifixion, was not immune from attack by ADL as anti-Semitic.

This is ominous for Christians because in countries dominated by hate laws, such as Canada, public criticism of matters Jewish, or "anti-Semitism," is a hate crime punishable by harsh fines and imprisonment.

IS PERSECUTION COMING FROM ADL/B'nai B'rith? The State Department's Report on Global Anti-Semitism was not written by the State Department. It was "ghosted" by the international Jewish religious, educational, fraternal and charitable organization, B'nai B'rith and its Anti-defamation League. Only they could marshal such an extensively detailed report from 50 countries, utilizing their worldwide "hate crimes" statistics-gathering capacities.

Far from being a "far left" kooky Jewish minority, not representing mainstream Jewish attitudes, B'nai B'rith International describes itself as the "body and soul" of organized Jewry. Its half million Jewish members constitute a powerful lobbying base, setting up anti-hate bureaucracies (and ending free speech) in many of the more than 50 countries in which B'nai B'rith is established. This anti-Christian, international Jewish religious organization, uniting synagogue and state, is creating a federal hate-crimes Gestapo. Its "Department of Global Anti-Semitism" is laying down outrageous definitions of the "hate crime" of anti-Semitism that make Bible-believing Christians into anti-Semitic "haters."

MAKING LOVERS OF ISRAEL INTO ANTI-SEMITES Why is ADL/B'nai Brith putting the noose of anti-Semitism around tens of millions of Christians? Present actions by B'nai B'rith worldwide indicate that persecution of Christians tops their agenda. In fact, the history of modern, international, evil Jewish leadership is one of just such persecution. In my 345-page book, "Israel: Our DutyOur Dilemma," I document how in 1917 international Jewish financiers, including Jacob Shiff (head of what later became Chase Manhattan Bank), the English Rothschilds, and the German Warburgs, along with a host of Jewish Bolshevik leaders, toppled the Csar and established communism in Russia. Eventual death toll from Soviet communism: 66,000,000, millions of whom were Christians.

Last October 10th, ADL/B'nai B'rith lashed out in unprecedented fury against eleven Christians in Philadelphia for the "hate crime" of witnessing to homosexuals. Through ADL national board member, Philadelphia D.A. Lynne Abraham, ADL/B'nai B'rith attempted to incarcerate those Christians for 47 years in prison with fines of $80,000.00 each.

Throughout the western world and Europe, ADL/B'nai Brith hate laws are now indicting evangelical Christians. Cases against Christians in Canada, Sweden, England, Italy, Germany, Australia and New Zealand have taken place or are in progress. In dozens of other countries under ADL/B'nai B'rith hate laws, Christian testimony is now intimidated.

OMINOUS SIGNS In Canada, B'nai B'rith's federal anti-hate law was passed by Parliament in 1971 after at least five years of B'nai B'rith lobbying the law was designed to end Christian truth-telling and evangelism, as well as criticism of matters Jewish. The same is true of provincial hate laws, also orchestrated by B'nai B'rith Canada and the Canadian Jewish Congress.

A pastor in northern Canada recently told me that as he handed out gospel tracts in his town, a policeman informed him that such "proselytizing" is now a hate crime under provincial law. If he continued, he would be arrested. I asked a Christian friend in Toronto what would happen if he said publicly that the Jews had Christ crucified. He replied, "Up here, everybody understands that to do so would be playing with fire. If someone complained, the police would come and you might be charged."

As Rabbi Daniel Lapin recently warned, evangelical Christians are "under relentless attack" by "secular Judaism" (i.e. ADL/B'nai B'rith). This cannot but increase as B'nai B'rith continues rapidly to establish anti-hate bureaucracies with the help of its 2,100 lodges and chapters worldwide.

THE WAY OF ESCAPE How can Christians escape persecution as anti-Semitic hate criminals in the years ahead? One way is to deny Christ: remove yourself as far as possible from any association with Christianity.

The other way is to affirm Christ to the limit. We can trust His guidance and protection so completely that we no longer fear man. When we do that, we become a force for truth-telling and righteousness such as the world has seldom seen - just like the apostles in the Book of Acts. They shook the Roman Empire.

We can shake the New World Order.

As Congress reconvenes, members of the House and Senate will give full consideration to ADL/B'nai B'rith's federal anti-hate bill, "The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2005," HR 2662, S 1145. It is now before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.

Lovers of freedom must protest this Orwellian legislation to their members of Congress. It will create a vast federal anti-hate bureaucracy in America identical to Canada's, ending free speech.

Also protest the "Department of Global Anti-Semitism." Although it has not yet been given an official title, the "Department of Global Anti-Semitism," approved by Congress and President Bush on Oct. 17th, is now being set up in the US State Department.

Demand from Congress that all funding and authority for the "Department of Anti-Semitism" be ended.

If there is to be such a department, demand that Congressional hearings be held to formulate a balanced definition of "anti-Semitism" that protects Christians and critics of Israel.

Protest to Members of Congress, toll free 1-877-762-8762 The US State Department comment line 1-202-647-4000

Have you seen Rev. Ted Pike's gripping, 80-minute video, "Hate Laws: Making Criminals of Christians"? It rips the cover off ADL/Bnai B'rith as the originator of hate laws. Order at $24.90 postpaid at <http://www.truthtellers.org/>www.truthtellers.org, or call 503-631-3808, or mail check or money order to National Prayer Network, P. O. Box 828, Clackamas, OR 97015.

This video is free to talk show hosts who request it.
For many more articles on hate laws and the threat of evil Jewish leadership, visit www.truthtellers.org.
Rev. Ted Pike is available for interview at 503-631-3808.
NATIONAL PRAYER NETWORK, P. O. Box 828, Clackamas, OR 97015

I am from the gubment, & am here to help you - NOT

House Approves 'Anti-Hate' Bill
http://www.rense.com/general67/speech.htm
contributing editor to

- Rodger

Freedom Of Speech Now In Jeopardy Passage Of Thought Crimes Bill Spells Doom To Free Talk Radio
By Rev. Ted Pike 9-20-5

In a surprising move, the House of Representatives on September 14, 2005 approved "The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2005," HR2662, as an amendment to the Children'S Safety Act, HR3132. It was approved 223-199.

The Senate is expected to also approve a similar amendment within a month.

This federal legislation, orchestrated by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith will lead to creation of a vast anti-hate bureaucracy in America, similar to what now exists in Canada. In Canada it is a "hate crime" to publicly criticize such federally protected groups as homosexuals and Jews. In Canada free speech talk radio no longer exists. It is even illegal now in some areas to evangelize or "proselytize" in public.

HR2662, S1145, while ostensibly punishing only violent hate crimes, nevertheless creates an anti-hate bureaucracy through several means:

1. It breaks down all barriers between federal and states, rights in law enforcement. It allows federal "thought police" to meddle, upon the flimsiest of pretexts, in states, enforcement of civil rights laws.

2. It requires all states to pass and enforce ADL-style anti-hate laws.

3. It enforces nationwide the working ADL definition of "hate" as being "bias" against federally protected groups, such as homosexuals. Such automatically makes the Bible into "hate literature" and preaching from it into "hate speech." Result: Bible-believing Christians become potential hate criminals.

The nation was aghast last October 10th when the ADL'S national executive board member, Lynne Abraham, D.A. of Philadelphia, arrested 11 Christians as hate criminals. Her charge: Their preaching was "biased" against homosexuals. They were "hate criminals" because they used an "instrument of crime" (a megaphone) to express "hate speech," (Bible verses) against homosexuals.

If this "big brother legislation" becomes law, the ADL and federal government will, through enabling legislation and judicial precedents, be exponentially empowered to indict Christians. Pastors, talk show hosts, publishers, critics of Israel, etc. will be liable to arrest just like the Philadelphia Eleven.

THERE'S STILL TIME TO PROTEST

Approval by the House last week does not mean that the members of the House or Senate, by granting approval, will have cast their final vote on this Orwellian legislation. Approving an amendment to a bill is not the same as passing a bill on its own terms. Final approval will come only after conference between the House and Senate decides whether this hate bill, in amendment form, should be included in passage of a children'S protection bill. Until then, members of the House and Senate are free to change their votes. It is vital that all lovers of freedom and free speech protest now!

Last spring, on June 15, this same legislation was approved by the Senate in amendment form. However, largely as a result of non-stop, wide publicity against it by the National Prayer Network, and many talk-show hosts, it was defeated in conference between the House and Senate on Oct 8, 2004. The same can happen again if Americans will raise a holy howl of protest against the theft of our First Amendment freedoms.
_____

To protest to your members of Congress, call toll free 1-877-762-8762. It is time to get educated fast on the dangers of hate crime legislation. Ted Pike'S gripping video documentary, "Hate Laws: Making Criminals of Christians," (now available on DVD) will give you, your pastor, and your church or civic club a complete education on the origins and ambitions of hate laws worldwide. Come to http://www.truthtellers.org to order this video online at $24.90 postage paid or to read many more articles on 'anti-hate' laws.

Ted Pike 503-631-3808 NATIONAL PRAYER NETWORK PO Box 828, Clackamas, OR 97015

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe

U.S. House Briefed on International Cooperation on Internet Hate
http://adl.org/PresRele/Internet_75/4790_75.htm
contributing editor to

- Rodger

[What are you going to do? -- Rodger]

[As of the time of this printing, the above link had the following error message

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But the article can be found on several other sites such as this one.

http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_news&Number=293967905&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=21&part=all
-- Tribble]

Washington, DC, September 9, 2005 .... Continuing to further efforts on international cooperation regarding online hate stemming from the OSCE Conference on Hate on the Internet in Paris in June 2004, ADL experts addressed a packed room on Capitol Hill to discuss how governments, industry and advocates could partner to curb online hate. The session was sponsored by the Congressional Task Force Against Anti-Semitism and co-hosted by ADL and the French Embassy.

The meeting began with remarks from Task Force Co-Chairs Reps. Tom Lantos (D-CA) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). Ambassador Jean David Levitte of France and Ambassador Samuel Zbogar of Slovenia discussed the ongoing efforts by France and OSCE nations to combat Internet hate and foster international cooperation. Slovenia currently chairs the OSCE.

Panelists included Christopher Wolf, Chair of ADL's Internet Task Force and Partner, Proskauer Rose, who spoke about the complex legal issues surrounding bigotry online; Markham Erickson, General Counsel for NetCoalition, who discussed the Internet industry's responses and continued commitment to enforcing their already-existing usage policies for users regarding online hatred; and Brian Marcus, ADL Director of Internet Monitoring gave a multi-media presentation that highlighted many examples of hate materials from around the world.

"We all know and appreciate that the Internet has transformed the ways in which we communicate, educate, inform and entertain. But there is a dark side to the Internet," Mr. Wolf testified. "Terrorists, anti-Semites, racists, homophobes and other haters have logged on and are online. ... Unfortunately, the Internet has become the new frontier in spreading hate."

Mr. Wolf offered recommendations for coordinating an international response to online hate, including:

Better international cooperation and coordination of monitoring the use of the Internet for hateful and terroristic purposes.

Studies on the ways in which vulnerable people, especially children, become exposed to hate sites and content, and the ways in which such content affects that audience.

An examination of the link between hate speech and hate crimes.

Annual reports should be prepared on the "State of Hate on the Internet" setting forth trends and describing where there has been progress in fighting such hate.
Panelists discussed the ongoing efforts to coordinate the fight against online hate, and agreed that government, industry and nongovernmental organizations need to work together – even in vastly different frameworks. International differences can be bridged, and all players can agree on a common set of principals regarding hate online that respect the differences, but still seek to expose hate, get industry to act on sites that violate their terms of service and to educate parents, educators and kids about what to do when they encounter hate online.

-------
The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

a r t i c l e / c o m m e n t a r y

SLAP - Throwing Down the Glove to Britain
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisiana/index.ssf?/base/news-19/1127229840199010.xml&storylist=louisiana
http://www.katc.com/Global/story.asp?S=3877643&nav=EyB0

[Depending on your point of view, the U.S. made no friends with France and Germany by attacking Iraq, and keep making no friends with many other nations, including Russia and China. Now, what do you think the Brits are thinking? -- Tribble]

JACKSONVILLE, Ark. (AP) — British meals ready-to-eat donated for Hurricane Katrina victims as part of an international relief effort have sat on shelves at an air base in Arkansas because of U.S. regulations put in place after a mad cow disease scare.

The MREs were shipped to Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville, which has been the hub for all international Katrina aid. The base has received 1,842 tons of goods from dozens of countries since the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.

U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations prohibit the importation of British beef and poultry. The prohibition was put in place after a degenerative disease that affects the central nervous system was found in British cattle.

"We have an obligation to hold the food we're distributing to evacuees to the same standards we maintain for all Americans on a daily basis," Agriculture Department spokeswoman Terri Teuber said. "We are not saying these MREs are unfit or unsafe. We're saying they don't meet the importation standards, and they are being set aside."

Teuber said the numbers of meals involved was not available and that some of the MREs were distributed. She also said discussions were under way about possible ways to use additional meals and that other food and goods have made their way to the Gulf Coast.

"We are grateful for the donations, and they are being put to very good use," Teuber said.

In all, some 400,000 MREs were donated by foreign countries, said Army Major Paul Swiergosz, a spokesman for the Defense Department.

Darla Jordan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, said American officials work with the countries that make the donations to determine what to do with the donated items as they are received. When the food is needed it is easy to separate from other products because the meals are in divided pouches, Swiergosz said.

Arbitrary gun seizures, without warrant or probable cause, have been reported during the past three weeks since the Crescent City was devastated by the hurricane. In cases reported to SAF, police refused to give citizens receipts for their seized firearms. Earlier, SAF insisted that police account for all seized firearms, disclose their whereabouts, and explain how they will be returned to their rightful owners. Authorities have not responded.

Gun confiscations have been highly publicized since the New York Times quoted New Orleans Police Superintendent P. Edwin Compass III, who said, “Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons,” and ABC News quoted Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley stating, “No one will be able to be armed. We are going to take all the weapons.”

For example, a San Francisco, CA camera crew from KTVU filmed one incident in which visiting California Highway Patrol officers tackled an elderly woman identified as Patricia Konie, to seize her pistol and forcibly remove her from her home. An ABC news crew accompanying an Oklahoma National Guard unit filmed another incident in which homeowners were handcuffed and disarmed, then released but without their firearms.

“We are delighted to work jointly with the NRA in an effort to bring these outrageous gun seizures to a halt,” said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb. “Our inquiries about these confiscations were cavalierly ignored, as were our demands for a public explanation from the police and city officials about why citizens were being unlawfully disarmed, leaving them defenseless against lingering bands of looters and thugs.

“New Orleans officials left us with no recourse,” Gottlieb observed. “It was bad enough that Big Easy residents were victims of the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history. That they would be subsequently victimized by their own local government, taking their personal property without warrant, is unconscionable. These illegal gun seizures must be stopped, now.”

Use of environmental modification techniques for hostile purposes does not play a major role in military planning at the present time. Such techniques might be developed in the future, however, and would pose a threat of serious damage unless action was taken to prohibit their use. In July 1972 the U.S. Government renounced the use of climate modification techniques for hostile purposes, even if their development were proved to be feasible in the future.

Both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives held hearings, beginning in 1972, and the Senate adopted a resolution in 1973 calling for an international agreement "prohibiting the use of any environmental or geophysical modification activity as a weapon of war...." In response to this resolution, the President ordered the Department of Defense to undertake an in-depth review of the military aspects of weather and other environmental modification techniques. The results of this study and a subsequent interagency study led to the U.S. Governments decision to seek agreement with the Soviet Union to explore the possibilities of an international agreement.

During the summit meeting in Moscow in July 1974, President Nixon and General Secretary Brezhnev formally agreed to hold bilateral discussions on how to bring about "the most effective measures possible to overcome the dangers of the use of environmental modification techniques for military purposes." Three sets of discussions were held in 1974 and 1975, resulting in agreement on a common approach and common language.

In August 1975, the chief representatives of the U.S. and the Soviet delegations to the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament (CCD) tabled, in parallel, identical draft texts of a "Convention on the Prohibition of Military or any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques."

The Convention defines environmental modification techniques as changing -- through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes -- the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydro-sphere, and atmosphere, or of outer space. Changes in weather or climate patterns, in ocean currents, or in the state of the ozone layer or ionosphere, or an upset in the ecological balance of a region are some of the effects which might result from the use of environmental modification techniques.

Intensive negotiations held in the CCD during the spring and summer of 1976 resulted in a modified text and, in addition, to understandings regarding four of the Treaty articles. These were transmitted to the U.N. General Assembly for consideration during the fall session.

Article I sets forth the basic commitment: "Each State Party to this Convention undertakes not to engage in military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party." An understanding defines the terms "widespread, long-lasting or severe." "Widespread" is defined as "encompassing an area on the scale of several hundred square kilometers"; "long-lasting" is defined as "lasting for a period of months, or approximately a season"; and "severe" is defined as "involving serious or significant disruption or harm to human life, natural and economic resources or other assets."

With regard to peaceful uses of environmental modification techniques, the convention provides that the parties shall have the right to participate in the fullest possible exchange of scientific and technological information.

In addition to the provision for mutual consultation regarding complaints and for resource to the Security Council, the revised draft establishes the framework for a Consultative Committee of Experts, which would meet on an ad hoc basis when so requested by a party, in order to clarify the nature of activities suspected to be in violation of the convention. Responding to the suggestion of many delegations, the revised text incorporates a provision for periodic conferences to review the Conventions operation.

During the 1976 fall session, the U.N. General Assembly held extensive debate on the draft Convention, including several resolutions relating thereto. On December 10, the General Assembly adopted a resolution by a vote of 96 to 8, with 30 abstentions, which referred the Convention to all member nations for their consideration, signature, and ratification, and requested the U.N. Secretary-General to open the Convention for signature.

The U.N. Secretary-General officiated at the signing ceremony in Geneva on May 18. The United States joined 33 other nations in signing the Convention. The Convention entered into force on October 5, 1978, when the 20th state to sign the Convention deposited its instrument of ratification. President Carter transmitted the Convention to the Senate on September 22, 1978.

The Senate gave its advice and consent to ratification on November 28, 1979, by a vote of 98-0. The President ratified the Convention December 13, 1979. The Convention entered into force for the United States on January 17, 1980, when the U.S. instrument of ratification was deposited in New York.

Signed in Geneva May 18, 1977
Entered into force October 5, 1978
Ratification by U.S. President December 13, 1979
U.S. ratification deposited at New York January 17, 1980

Guided by the interest of consolidating peace, and wishing to contribute to the cause of halting the arms race, and of bringing about general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control, and of saving mankind from the danger of using new means of warfare,

Determined to continue negotiations with a view to achieving effective progress towards further measures in the field of disarmament,

Recognizing that scientific and technical advances may open new possibilities with respect to modification of the environment,

Recalling the Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment adopted at Stockholm on 16 June 1972,

Realizing that the use of environmental modification techniques for peaceful purposes could improve the interrelationship of man and nature and contribute to the preservation and improvement of the environment for the benefit of present and future generations,

Recognizing, however, that military or any other hostile use of such techniques could have effects extremely harmful to human welfare,

Desiring to prohibit effectively military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques in order to eliminate the dangers to mankind from such use, and affirming their willingness to work towards the achievement of this objective,

Desiring also to contribute to the strengthening of trust among nations and to the further improvement of the international situation in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,

1. Each State Party to this Convention undertakes not to engage in military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party.

Jeffrey Smith, author of Seeds of Deception, the best-selling book on genetic engineering, spills the beans to noseweek about the hidden dangers in the foods we eat and the way massive seed and agrichemical corporations such as Monsanto are manipulating governments and science to foist their questionable products on us. South Africa (along with Brazil and India) is one of Monsanto’s key targets.

noseweek: What motivated you to write ‘Seeds of Deception’?
Jeffrey Smith: In addition to having the inside scoop on many of the dangers of GM foods, I was also aware of several scandalous stories about the biotech industry that would make good reading. Scientists were offered bribes or threatened. Evidence was stolen. Data was omitted or distorted. Government employees who complained were harassed, stripped of responsibilities, or fired. Laboratory rats fed a GM crop developed stomach lesions and seven of the 40 died within two weeks. The crop was approved. When a top scientist tried to alert the public about other alarming discoveries, he lost his job and was silenced with threats of a lawsuit. The warnings of US government scientists were ignored and denied by the Food and Drug Administration, whose policy chief was a former attorney, and later vice president, for Monsanto. A University of California professor claimed he was threatened by a senior Mexican government official who allegedly implied, “We know where your children go to school,” trying to get him to withdraw an incriminating paper from publication. And news reports about GMOs were cancelled due to threats from Monsanto’s attorneys.

I figured that these stories alone would be fascinating to readers. So I weaved the science and facts about the technology into the stories, and the book became the international bestseller on the topic.

What is your interest in Africa?
Many senior African officials I have met at various international conferences have confided that they have been pressurised by the US government and biotech companies, and have little access to the type of information that I have documented. I hope to pierce the biotech myths that advocates propagate, so that the public and Africa’s leaders can make decisions based on facts, not spin.

Scientists representing the biotech industry claim that GM foods have been extensively tested and are safe. They say that anti-GM campaigners like you are unscientific and base their arguments on emotion. Can you comment?A recently published linguistic analysis of biotech advocates concludes what many of us have observed for years. Using unscientific, emotional, and even irrational arguments, GM proponents attack critics as unscientific, emotional and irrational. In reality, critics demand more science, not less. We demand facts, not PR hype.

There are many ways in which a GM food could create toxins, allergens, carcinogens, or nutritional problems. The process of inserting a gene into a DNA can dramatically disrupt the normal genes. One study showed that as many as 5% of the natural genes changed their levels of expression when a single gene was inserted. Genes can get turned off or deleted, switched on permanently, scrambled, duplicated, or relocated. Gene insertion coupled with growing cells from tissue culture, creates hundreds or thousands of mutations throughout the genome. On top of all this, the inserted gene can get mutated, truncated, or blended with the crop’s natural gene code. And it appears that the inserted genes get rearranged over time as well. Any of these changes can create serous problems in themselves, or set in motion a chain of reactions that can lead to problems.

Tragically, the studies conducted on GM crops are not designed to identify the vast majority of possible problems. When scientists understand the dangers involved with GM technology and then discover what studies are actually conducted, they’re shocked. They realize the extent to which consumers are being used as guinea pigs, just so the biotech industry doesn’t have to spend the money doing the proper research. There are fewer than 20 peer-reviewed animal-feeding safety studies. And many of these are industry-funded and clearly rigged to avoid finding problems. No, GM crops are not adequately tested for safety. Part of my work is to bring that to the public’s attention.

In ‘Seeds of Deception’ you cite a study by a leading expert on genetic modification, Dr Arpad Pusztai, which showed that a strain of GM potatoes retarded the growth of rats and damaged their immune systems. But is there any evidence of GM foods harming humans?
First of all, let’s summarize the evidence collected from animals. Pusztai’s government-funded study demonstrated that rats fed a GM potato developed potentially pre-cancerous cell growth, damaged immune systems, partial atrophy of the liver, and inhibited development of their brains, livers and testicles. Rats fed a GM tomato developed stomach lesions, and seven of 40 died within two weeks. Mice fed GM maize had problems with blood cell formation as well as kidney and liver lesions. Those fed GM soy had problems with liver cell formation, and the livers of rats fed GM canola were heavier. Pigs fed GM maize on several Midwest farms developed false pregnancies, sterility, or gave birth to bags of water. Twelve cows fed GM maize in Germany died mysteriously. And twice the number of chickens died when fed GM maize compared to those fed natural maize.

Remarkably, there have been no human clinical feeding trials, and no post market surveillance of possible health effects in humans. The UK’s Food Standards Agency had asked supermarket executives for the purchasing data from the 20 million consumers using loyalty cards, so they could see if those eating GM had higher rates of cancer, birth defects, or childhood allergies. When the study was made public, the embarrassed government cancelled their plans.

Soon after GM soy was introduced to the UK, soy allergies skyrocketed by 50%. Without follow-up tests, we can’t be sure if genetic engineering was the cause, but there are plenty of ways in which genetic manipulation can boost allergies. For example, the most common allergen in soy is called trypsin inhibitor. GM soy contains significantly more of this compared with natural soy.

I have also documented how one epidemic in the 1980s was caused by a brand of the food supplement L-tryptophan, which had been created through genetic modification. The disease killed about 100 Americans and caused sickness or disability in about 5,000–10,000 others. The Food and Drug Administration withheld information from Congress and the public, in an apparent attempt to protect the biotech industry.

If GM foods do affect the human immune system, what are their potential risks in South Africa where we have a high incidence of HIV/AIDS?
If the foods were creating health problems in the population, it might take years or decades before we identified the cause. The L-tryptophan epidemic provides a chilling example. The only reason that doctors were able to identify that an epidemic was occurring, was because the new disease had three simultaneous characteristics: it was rare, acute, and fast acting. Even then it took years to discover and was nearly missed entirely.

If GM foods affect the immune system, which has been shown in animal models, there are numerous ways that could manifest in humans, from mild symptoms to serious diseases. Certainly it could worsen existing diseases or create complications. Since no human studies are conducted, however, we don’t know. It’s best just to avoid eating GM products.

Critics of Monsanto demonise the company, but it has publicly pledged itself to the principles of ‘dialogue, transparency, sharing, sharing in benefits, and respect’. Doesn’t this indicate that their heart is in the right place?
Actions speak louder than words. Consider just a few of the facts about this company:

In 2005, Monsanto paid a $1.5 million fine to the US justice department for giving bribes and questionable payments to at least 140 Indonesian officials, trying to get their cotton approved without an environmental impact study.

Six government scientists testified before the Canadian Senate that a Monsanto official offered them a bribe of $1-2 million, if they approved the company’s GM bovine growth hormone (rbGH) without further study.

Legal threats from Monsanto resulted in the cancellation of a TV news series about rbGH, the cancellation of a book critical of Monsanto, and the shredding of 14,000 issues of a magazine dedicated to exposing Monsanto.

Monsanto’s PR firm created the so-called “Dairy Coalition” in order to pressure major US newspapers to withdraw stories critical of rbGH.

Documents that were stolen from the FDA showed that when Monsanto researchers wanted to show that rbGH didn’t interfere with fertility, they allegedly added cows to the study that were pregnant, prior to injection.

Other researchers supporting rbGH had pasteurized milk 120 times longer than normal and even spiked the milk with huge amounts of powdered hormone, to try to claim that pasteurization destroyed the hormone.

Monsanto omitted incriminating data altogether from their 1996 published study on GM soybeans. When it was later recovered by an investigator, it showed that GM soy contained significantly lower levels of protein and other nutrients, and toasted GM soy meal contained nearly twice the amount of a lectin that may block the body’s ability to assimilate other nutrients. Furthermore, the toasted GM soy contained as much as seven times the amount of trypsin inhibitor, a major soy allergen. Monsanto named their study, “The composition of glyphosate-tolerant soybean seeds is equivalent to that of conventional soybeans.”

In the feeding portion of the same study, they fed mature animals instead of the more sensitive young ones, diluted their GM soy with non-GM protein 10- or 12–fold, used too much protein, and never weighed the organs or examined them under a microscope. These and other flaws have made it the subject of peer-reviewed critiques, which exposed how GM food studies are designed in such a way as to overlook detection of even significant problems.

In July 1999, independent researchers published a study showing that GM soy contains 12-14% less cancer-fighting phytoestrogens. Monsanto responded with its own study, concluding that soy’s phytoestrogen levels vary too much to even carry out a statistical analysis. Researchers failed to disclose, however, that they had instructed the laboratory to use an obsolete method of detection – one that had been prone to highly variable results.

Documents made public from a lawsuit revealed that FDA policy on GM foods was deceitful. The policy claimed that the agency was not aware of any meaningful or uniform differences between GM and non-GM foods, and therefore did not require any safety studies. The disclosed memos showed, however, that the overwhelming consensus among the FDA’s own scientists was that GM crops were significantly different, and that they urged their superiors to require long term safety testing due to the possible presence of unpredictable toxins, allergens and new diseases. The person in charge of policy at the FDA who apparently ignored the scientists was Monsanto’s former attorney. He later became Monsanto’s vice president.

One FDA scientist arbitrarily increased the allowable levels of antibiotics in milk 100-fold, in order to facilitate the approval of Monsanto’s rbGH. She had just arrived at the FDA from Monsanto.

Monsanto consistently reported increased yields on GM soy, canola and cotton, whereas independent studies show decreases. For example, scientists published a study demonstrating a nearly 80% increase in Indian cotton yields based only on test plot data supplied to them by Monsanto. In May, 2005, however, a study by the government of Andrah Pradesh found a decrease of about 18%. When they told Monsanto to pay about US$10 million compensation to the farmers, the corporation refused and was kicked out of the state altogether.

Monsanto has a long history of wrongdoings. They had claimed PCBs were safe, DDT was safe, Agent Orange was safe. They were wrong. In fact, court documents revealed that the company withheld evidence about the safety of their PCBs to the residents of the town that was being poisoned by their factory. On February 22, 2002, a court found Monsanto guilty of negligence, wantonness, suppression of the truth, nuisance, trespass, and outrage. Outrage, according to Alabama law, usually requires conduct “so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society.”

Monsanto’s detractors criticize the fact that the company has patented seeds and other genetic material. Surely they are entitled to protect their intellectual property, just like any other inventor?
There is enormous controversy about patents on life. Further, many believe that patenting genes is more about discovery than invention, and is therefore privatizing what should remain in the public commons. It’s also interesting how Monsanto chooses to enforce its patents. They have sued 150 farmers in North America and received more than $15 million in judgments. In one case, they sued a farmer who had the company’s seeds blow onto his land from a nearby farm and by passing trucks.

Have Monsanto ever tried to silence you?
Because my book is now influencing policy in many regions, I occasionally hear criticism from biotech advocates who try to dismiss the book as a whole. They don’t challenge specific details, however, since the book is carefully documented and has been through a thorough review by many senior scientists.

The website www.health24.com says that ‘there are exhaustive tests to ensure that any genetic change in a foodstuff does not increase the allergenicity of the food.’ If GM food is as questionable as you say, why have US regulatory authorities allowed products that contain GM material onto supermarket shelves?
The FDA’s own scientist Carl Johnson wrote in a memo, “Are we asking the crop developer to prove that food from his crop is non-allergenic? This seems like an impossible task.” It is impossible to guarantee that a GM crop isn’t an allergen. People tend to develop allergies after being exposed to a substance over time. But the proteins newly introduced into GM crops typically come from bacteria and have never before existed in the human diet.

The World Health Organization developed a list of criteria designed to minimize the likelihood that a foreign protein from a GM crop will be allergenic. Unfortunately, the GM soy, maize, and papaya already on the market fail those criteria.

In addition, the process of gene insertion can disrupt the DNA and increase a known allergen or create a new unknown allergen.

Not only is there no comprehensive allergy testing before GM foods are released, remarkably there is no post market surveillance. When it was revealed that soy allergies skyrocketed by 50% after GM soy was introduced into the UK, it’s simply amazing that no follow up studies were conducted to see if GM soy was more allergenic.

You are clearly concerned about the way GM foods are being developed and marketed, but do you think the technology has any potential benefits?
The current technology used in GM crops on the market is based on science that is 40 years old. Many of the key assumptions used as the basis for safety claims have been overturned. We know very little about how the DNA functions, and our paradigms are being shifted every few months with new discoveries. I am not against DNA research. And perhaps in the future we can safely manipulate genes for crops or food. But at this stage, it is irresponsible to feed the products of this infant science to millions of people or release them into the environment where they can never be recalled.

My focus, by the way, is not on medical uses of biotechnology, which has an entirely different equation of risk versus benefit.

South Africa has authorized the growing of GM maize for human consumption. Do you know the nature of this modification? What is its intended outcome? The primary trait added to GM corn is the insertion of a gene that creates the Bt-toxin, which is a pesticide. The industry claims that Bt is safe, since it has been used in an organic pesticide for years. This is utter nonsense.

We are the only country in the world where a GM staple food has been authorized. How will this affect people where 80-90% of their diet consists of maize meal and fresh maize on the cob?
The GM Bt-toxin in maize is hundreds or even a thousand times more concentrated than the spray

The spray degrades in the sunlight in a few days, but the GM variety is produced by every cell of the maize, around the clock, and eaten by the consumer.

Mice exposed to Bt-toxin developed an immune response equal to that of cholera toxin, developed a greater susceptibility to allergies, and developed abnormal and excessive cell growth in their small intestines. Farm workers exposed to even the low dose Bt spray showed evidence of allergic sensitivity, and blood tests showed an immune response. Preliminary evidence found that thirty-nine Philippinos living next to a Bt maize field developed skin, intestinal, and respiratory reactions while the maize was pollinating. Tests of their blood also showed an immune response to the Bt. The only human feeding study ever conducted showed that genes inserted into GM soy actually transferred into gut bacteria. Imagine if the gene that produces the Bt-toxin were to transfer from the maize we eat into our gut bacteria. It could theoretically transform our intestinal flora into living pesticide factories.

In the US, we eat only 3-5% of our caloric intake as maize. I dread to think what might happen to those eating GM maize as the majority of their diet. Some farmers who fed 100% GM corn to their livestock had catastrophes. Twelve cows died on a German farm. And about 25 farmers in North America say their pigs became sterile or had false pregnancies, or gave birth to bags of water.

In the US, GM potatoes were withdrawn from the market due to consumer pressure, but in South Africathe Agricultural Research Council with additional funding from USAID are fast-tracking GM potatoes, ostensibly to benefit resource-poor small farmers. Will GM crops benefit Africa’s poor and starving?
The US decided to fast track GM food in 1992, because the Council on Competitiveness identified it as a promising area for increasing US exports and gaining control over the lucrative food supply. USAID has been trying to implement the US agenda in Africa, and many believe that they consciously use contamination as a means to promote acceptance of GM. In fact, University of Washington professor Phil Bereano reported in the Seattle Times in 2002 that Emmy Simmons, assistant administrator of USAID, “said to me after the cameras stopped rolling on a vigorous debate we had on South African TV, ‘In four years, enough GE [genetically engineered] crops will have been planted in South Africa that the pollen will have contaminated the entire continent.’”

There are many safe, sustainable, and life-supporting technologies that can benefit Africa’s poor and starving. Perhaps genetic engineering technology will progress to the point someday that it can also be a worthy candidate. But in its current version, I say, “Run away.”

There is an interesting feature about GM potatoes that makes them potentially more dangerous than most other GM crops. We know that the process of gene insertion combined with tissue culture typically results in hundreds or thousands of mutations throughout the genome. Many of these mutations can be corrected through the process of outcrossing – mating the GM crop with non-GM crops. Potatoes are not propagated through outcrossing, and the massive number of mutations created from the transformation process may theoretically remain intact in the GM potatoes on the market. Scientists typically don’t identify the genome-wide mutations before putting GM crops onto the market. It’s a form of gambling with every bite.

South Africa, along with the US, is one of the very few countries in the world that allow the use of genetically engineered recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) on its dairy cows. Is drinking milk from cows injected with rBGH safe?
There are a few known differences between milk from cows injected with rbGH and natural milk. Typically, rbGH milk has more pus, due to increased infections, more antibiotics, used to treat the infections, and more bovine growth hormone.

The hormone level that most critics are concerned about, however, is insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). Natural milk contains IGF-1. Milk drinkers increase their levels of IGF-1. Studies suggest that pre-menopausal women under 50 with high levels of IGF-1 are seven times more likely to develop breast cancer. Men are four times more likely to develop prostate cancer. IGF-1 is also implicated in lung and colon cancer. Milk from cows treated with rbGH has significantly higher levels of IGF-1. (No comprehensive study has yet evaluated a direct link between rbGH and human cancer.)

Up to 30% of the soya grown in SA is GM. Soya is used as a protein source by many poor people and in infant formulas. It is also routinely fed to prisoners and mineworkers. What are the implications?
In addition to all that was said above, we know that:

GM soy has sections of its DNA that were scrambled during the gene insertion process. These might result in the creation of toxins, allergens, anti-nutrients, etc.

We know that the inserted gene appears to be unstable and can rearrange over time. This means that it will create a protein that was never intended or tested, and may be a toxin, etc.

The protein it was designed to create has two sections that are identical to known allergens, and therefore might cause dangerous allergic reactions.

Since the inserted gene transfers to gut bacteria, even if you stop eating GM soy for the rest of your life, you still might have this foreign protein being created inside of your intestines.

The promoter, which is inserted into soy to activate the foreign gene, also transfers to gut bacteria, and may switch on one of the bacterium’s genes at random. And this could create a problem.

Science is supposedly objective, yet many university academics defend the use of GM crops while others condemn their introduction vigorously. Why?
What may come as a shock to people is the extent to which science is no longer independent and objective. Studies show that the source of funds has a lot to do with the research outcome. Industry-funded studies favour industry’s products. Many scientists admit to making changes in their findings to suit funders. In the field of plant biotech, practically all jobs are funded directly or indirectly by industry. We know of many examples of scientist who lost their jobs, or were threatened or penalized, after expressing concerns about GM products. Attacks on scientists can get quite vicious. As a result, those scientists who still dare to challenge biotechnology are often of retirement age and feel less vulnerable.

So-called independent panels and committees are often stacked with industry representatives. This is part of the industry’s plan, as revealed in leaked documents. They have been remarkably successful at this.

As the technology flounders, revealing how unsafe and unpredictable it is, the industry promotes their biotech myths more vigorously. It appears that they are trying to prop up the image of the technology so they can recoup their investment before the public and the regulators figure out what’s really going on.

Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods by Jeffrey Smith is published by Yes! Books. His website is at www.seedsofdeception.com

Jeffrey Smith has studied the issues around genetic modification for nearly 10 years. He has lectured on the subject, consulted with a nonprofit group trying to get GM foods labelled, run for US Congress to raise the public awareness about the issues, worked as the vice president for marketing communications at a genetically modified organism (GMO) detection laboratory, and has extensively interviewed scientists and experts worldwide. Over the past two years, he has toured more than 150 cities on five continents, debated with scientists, testified before various government committees, and interviewed activists, scientists, politicians, and farmers. He collaborates with numerous scientists on a monthly syndicated column and is preparing material for two more books on GMOs.

On May 23, 2003, President Bush proposed an Initiative to End Hunger in Africa using genetically modified (GM) foods. He also blamed Europe’s “unfounded, unscientific fears” of these foods for hindering efforts to end hunger. Bush was convinced that GM foods held the key to greater yields, expanded US exports, and a better world. His rhetoric was not new. It had been passed on from president to president, and delivered to the American people through regular news reports and industry advertisement.

The message was part of a master plan that had been crafted by corporations determined to control the world’s food supply. This was made clear at a biotech industry conference in January 1999, where a representative from Arthur Andersen Consulting Group explained how his company had helped Monsanto create that plan. First, they asked Monsanto what their ideal future looked like in 15 to 20 years. Monsanto executives described a world with 100% of all commercial seeds genetically modified and patented. Andersen Consulting then worked backward from that goal, and developed the strategy and tactics to achieve it. They presented Monsanto with the steps and procedures needed to obtain a place of industry dominance in a world in which natural seeds were virtually extinct.

Integral to the plan was Monsanto’s influence in government, whose role was to promote the technology worldwide and to help get the foods into the marketplace quickly, before resistance could get in the way. A biotech consultant later said, ‘The hope of the industry is that over time, the market is so flooded that there’s nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender’.

The next conservatism needs to help Americans see the value of what is local and traditional. Much of that is not political, but real conservatism has never just been about politics. Conservatism is not an ideology, it is a way of life. That way of life needs to be grounded in local traditions and in preserving and, where necessary, restoring those traditions.

At the same time, politics plays an important role here. The next conservatism needs to revive an important conservative truth that has to some extent been lost, even among conservatives: subsidiarity. Subsidiarity says that decisions should be made at the lowest possible level. As much as possible should be decided at the local level. Only when the local level clearly cannot cope should state governments get involved. And federal involvement should be rare, because it is dangerous. Decisions made in Washington often run roughshod over local needs, traditions and realities. The public schools offer a sad example. Have America's schools gotten better since state governments and the federal government have given them more and more directives? No, they have gotten worse.

The next conservatism could take one powerful action that would do much to restore subsidiarity. It should put an end to all unfunded mandates, on both the state and federal levels. Today, state governments and the federal government lay more and more requirements on local schools, local governments, local transit systems and so on, but they do not provide any funds to meet those requirements. The things local people know are more important go without funding because the local level has no choice but to give these mandates money. They are required by law to do so.

Of course, it is easy for state and federal lawmakers to please this or that interest group by creating a new mandate in law. It would not be so easy if they had to pay for those mandates themselves. A rule of "No unfunded mandates" would move many decisions away from state and federal governments and back to the local level, where they belong. It would also reduce the power of government generally, which conservatives have always seen as a good thing.

THE UNITED STATES PROGRAM
FOR GENERAL AND COMPLETE DISARMAMENT
IN A PEACEFUL WORLD

DEPARTMENT OF STATE PUBLICATION 7277
Disarmament Series 5
Released September 1961

For sale by the Superintendent ot Documents, U.S. Government
Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C. - Price 15 cents

The revolutionary development of modern weapons within a world divided by serious ideological differences has produced a crisis in human history. In order to overcome the danger of nuclear war now confronting mankind, the United States has introduced, at the Sixteenth General Assembly of the United Nations, a Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World.

This new program provides for the progressive reduction of the war-making capabilities of nations and the simultaneous strengthening of international institutions to settle disputes and maintain the peace. It sets forth a series of comprehensive measures which can and should be taken in order to bring about a world in which there will be freedom from war and security for all states. It is based on three principles deemed essential to the achievement of practical progress in the disarmament field:

FREEDOM FROM WAR

THE UNITED STATES PROGRAM
FOR GENERAL AND COMPLETE DISARMAMENT
IN A PEACEFUL WORLD

SUMMARY

The overall goal of the United States is a free, secure, and peaceful world of independent states adhering to common standards of justice and international conduct and subjecting the use of force to the rule of law; a world which has achieved general and complete disarmament under effective international control; and a world in which adjustment to change takes place in accordance with the principles of the United Nations.

In order to make possible the achievement of that goal, the program sets forth the following specific objectives toward which nations should direct their efforts:

The negotiating states are called upon to develop the program into a detailed plan for general and complete disarmament and to continue their efforts without interruption until the whole program has been achieved. To this end, they are to seek the widest possible area of agreement at the earliest possible date. At the same time, and without prejudice to progress on the disarmament program, they are to seek agreement on those immediate measures that would contribute to the common security of nations and that could facilitate and form part of the total program.

The program sets forth a series of general principles to guide the negotiating states in their work. These make clear that:

DISARMAMENT STAGES

The program provides for progressive disarmament steps to take place in three stages and for the simultaneous strengthening of international institutions.

FIRST STAGE

The first stage contains measures which would significantly reduce the capabilities of nations to wage aggressive war. Implementation of this stage would mean that:

SECOND STAGE

The second stage contains a series of measures which would bring within sight a world in which there would be freedom from war. Implementation of all measures in the second stage would mean:

THIRD STAGE

During the third stage of the program, the states of the world, building on the experience and confidence gained in successfully implementing the measures of the first two stages, would take final steps toward the goal of a world in which:

APPENDIX

THE UNITED STATES PROGRAM
FOR GENERAL AND COMPLETE DISARMAMENT
IN A PEACEFUL WORLD

Conscious of the crisis in human history produced by the revolutionary development of modern weapons within a world divided by serious ideological differences;

Determined to save present and succeeding generations from the scourge of war and the dangers and burdens of the arms race and to create conditions in which all peoples can strive freely and peacefully to fulfill their basic aspirations;

Declare their goal to be: A free, secure, and peaceful world of independent states adhering to common standards of justice and international conduct and subjecting the use of force to the rule of law; a world where adjustment to change takes place in accordance with the principles of the United Nations; a world where there shall be a permanent state of general and complete disarmament under effective international control and where the resources of nations shall be devoted to man's material, cultural, and spiritual advance;

Affirm that disarmament negotiations should be guided by the following principles:

Agree upon the following outline program for achieving general and complete disarmament:

STAGE I

STAGE II

During Stage II, states shall develop further the peace-keeping processes of the United Nations, to the end that the United Nations can effectively in Stage III deter or suppress any threat or use of force in violation of the purposes and principles of the United Nations:

STAGE III

By the time Stage II has been completed, the confidence produced through a verified disarmament program, the acceptance of rules of peaceful international behavior, and the development of strengthened international peace-keeping processes within the framework of the U.N. should have reached a point where the states of the world can move forward to Stage III. In Stage III progressive controlled disarmament and continuously developing principles and procedures of international law would proceed to a point where no state would have the military power to challenge the progressively strengthened U.N. Peace Force and all international disputes would be settled according to the agreed principles of international conduct.

The progressive steps to be taken during the final phase of the disarmament program would be directed toward the attainment of a world in which:

** As the ‘Great And Powerful Oz’ once said to Dorothy, “Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain!” because appearances can be deceiving. You HAVE TO look behind to curtain to learn the truth.

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01	=False Prophet Hal Lindsay Wants War on Iran =Walmart Kills Houston Man for Shoplifting =Failure =Your Vote Has not Counted for Many Years =How to lose 75 pounds =Diesel for Destruction	02	=
03	=Bush Gives New Reason for Iraq War =The State and the Flood =$4 a gallon =The Lies To Hike The Price Of Oil =Did the Government Cause Hurricane Katrina?	04	=
05	=New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize =Picking up the Pieces: Practical Guide for Surviving Economic Crashes, Internal Unrest and Military Suppression =Is God Removing His Hand of Protection from America? =America's Mayors: You've Been Warned =Hurricane Center Director Tells Paper He Briefed Brown and Chertoff on Danger of Severe Flooding	06	=Ending the Impunity of the Bush White House =Impeach Bush Now, Before More Die =American Herods & The Fallacy of A Free Press =re: Did the Government Cause Hurricane Katrina? =Can Hurricanes Be Used As Weapons of Mass Destruction?
07	=New Orleans' Holdouts Coaxed From Homes =Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury on New Orleans: "Americans Are Being Brainwashed" =An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State	08	=
09	=	10	=
11	=Senate OKs Restrictions on Cold Medicines =New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms as Water Recedes =They were Underprivileged, so this is Working very well for Them =FEMA's Blocking Of Relief Efforts - An Amazing List =re: An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State =Explosive Residue Found on Failed Levee Debris! =Volunteer Helping Hurricane Survivors Reports how "Evacuees" Abused Those Who came to Help	12	="Smoking gun" documents nail FEMA, Chertoff, and Bush =War Vet Has Property Raided After Calling Bush a Liar On Radio Call-in =Citizen Flotilla Turned Back by Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries =The President Explains the Virtues of his Social Security Plan =What you ought to know about Wal-Mart (and other corporations) =Women, on Average, Earn 77 cents on the Dollar Compared to Men, IS A FALLACY =Report from Iron Mountain =U.S. Muslims Desecrate American Flag Video shows Group on Street Corner Declaring Islamic Dominance =Here Come The Lesbian Rangers! =Cheney Backed Removing FEMA Boss from Katrina Duty - but What did He Really Say
13	=Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans =Triple Exthnics: Nathan Abrams on Jews in the American Porn Industry =Agenda 21	14	="None are so Enslaved as Those Who Falsely Believe Themselves to be Free" =You have Watched all this and Thought it Looked Familiar =New Orleans: Dress Rehearsal for American Lockdown =Major Air Route Closed--No Reason Given =Feminisation, and why he's no Buerk =President Approves Emergency Declaration For Arizona
15	=	16	=
17	=Levees in New Orleans would have survived if not for ... =Chavez urges leaders to consider moving UN out of US	18	=Who Knew about the Effects of Katrina Ahead of Time? =Levees made of lies: Rage, grief, and the chimera of the American Dream =You Could Be a Terrorist IF...
19	=The US Government did not Fail its Mission in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina =Backlash as Harvard Supresses Flouride Study =Why the U.S. Must Stay in Iraq =Paul Harvey Triumphs Smallpox, Black Slavery, Genocide, ...	20	=More Evidence US Citizens Are Worrying The Police State =Christian America HAS TO BE DEFEATED/NEUTRALIZED =The Coming Depression
21	=Conservative New Urbanism =American Life Under A National ID Card =Jewish Chapel Built With Federal Funds: No Outcry From ADL, ACLU Or AU =re: More Evidence US Citizens Are Worrying The Police State =U.S. State Department Says New Testament Is 'Anti-Semitic'? =House Approves 'Anti-Hate' Bill =U.S. House Briefed on International Cooperation on Internet Hate =SLAP - Throwing Down the Glove to Britain =Economic Crunch Survival =Mental Health Bill 'To Cause Thousands To Be Detained'	22	=SAF, NRA Ask Federal Court To Halt New Orleans Gun Seizures =Are You Watching http://www.bushclintonRITAfund.org & DYN-O-GEL
23	=Things I have learned from watching the news on TV lately =Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques =The Inevitable War with Iran	24	="If You Want City Rules, Move to the City"
25	="We have not disarmed this storm" -- Bill White	26	=Louisiana Governor Had Asked Bush To Declare Disaster On Aug, 28th =Rammed Down Our Throats =Courts Move America Toward a Police State =Think Locally, Act Locally
27	=Department of State Publication 7277 =A National Emergency	28	=re: A National Emergency =Watch your ... =New Government Seal
29	=	30	=
31	=	.	.

FREEDOM FROM WAR

THE UNITED STATES PROGRAM FOR GENERAL AND COMPLETE DISARMAMENT IN A PEACEFUL WORLD

SUMMARY

DISARMAMENT STAGES

FIRST STAGE

SECOND STAGE

THIRD STAGE

APPENDIX

STAGE I

STAGE II

STAGE III

THE UNITED STATES PROGRAM
FOR GENERAL AND COMPLETE DISARMAMENT
IN A PEACEFUL WORLD