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21 Jan 2006 @ 22:06, by soultruth. Violence, War
Is it not true that:
-- if we do nothing,
--vote for ANY candidate (because really they are all for power, greed, lies and corruption),
--pay taxes to fund war and corruption and
--don't look at our actions and lifestyles as being a part of the bigger picture...
then we are really part of the cause of the wars, hunger, poverty, sickness, disease, and suffering in the world? To say no is to lie for these scenarios go on and on with NO end in sight. Here is another example...Ignore it with the same peril as ignoring the Iraq situation before it started.
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WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East : Iran
The political issues behind the Iranian nuclear confrontation
By the Editorial Board
21 January 2006
The escalating confrontation between Iran and the major powers over Tehran’s nuclear programs raises crucial political issues.
Once again the Bush administration is recklessly setting the course for military conflict. Again, the European powers, Russia and China, caught between Washington’s demands and their own economic interests in Iran and the Middle East, have chosen to appease the US. While economic sanctions are currently under discussion, the White House has repeatedly made clear that “all options”, including a military attack, are “on the table”.
The EU-3—Britain, France and Germany—have called for an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to refer Iran to the UN Security Council for punitive sanctions. Russia and China are yet to finally agree. However, at a meeting on Monday in London, all five concurred with the US that Iran had to “return to full suspension” of its uranium enrichment activities, thus providing the pretext for increasingly aggressive measures against Tehran.
The entire rationale for UN action against Iran, recycled endlessly in the international media, reeks of cynicism and hypocrisy. All five permanent members of the UN Security Council—the US, Britain, France, Russia and China—have nuclear weapons and have failed to meet their obligations as signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to dismantle their huge nuclear arsenals.
There is nothing benign about these stockpiles. Rather their purpose is to bully, threaten and ultimately be deployed against smaller, weaker powers, as the incendiary comments of French President Jacques Chirac last Thursday make clear. Speaking at a nuclear submarine base in Brittany, Chirac warned that France would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against any state that sponsored a terrorist attack against vital French interests. “The flexibility and reactiveness of our strategic [nuclear] forces allow us to respond directly on the centres of power,” he declared.
A glaring double standard is applied to Iran, which is being menaced with economic sanctions and military strikes over its nuclear programs, while US allies—Israel, India and Pakistan—already have nuclear weapons. Other countries, such as Brazil, either have built or are currently constructing uranium enrichment plants, which are not outlawed under the NPT.
Just as it used Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration is exploiting the Iranian “nuclear threat” to advance its ambitions for untrammelled domination of the resource-rich region. Iran, which has the world’s third largest reserves of oil and the second largest reserves of natural gas, sits in a key strategic position astride the Middle East, Central Asia and the increasingly important Indian subcontinent. Even if the Iranian regime were to abandon all nuclear programs and completely demolish its nuclear facilities, Washington would invent another pretext for its provocative actions, which are aimed at establishing US ascendancy in the region over America’s European and Asian rivals.
In opposing the predatory activities of US imperialism in the Middle East, however, the World Socialist Web Site does not give any political support to the reactionary theocratic regime in Tehran nor to any attempt on its part to acquire nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic established following the overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979 represented the interests of dissident sections of the bourgeoisie, not those of the working people who brought down the hated dictatorship. The clerical powerbrokers have maintained their rule for three decades through ruthless repression, directed above all against any independent movement of the working class.
In response to the latest threats, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared that his government will defy the UN Security Council and proceed with plans to develop uranium enrichment. In a press conference last weekend, he condemned what he called the “medieval attitude” of “bullies” and issued vague threats that “a time might come that you would become regretful, and then there would be no benefits in regretting.” In a veiled reference to the danger of skyrocketting oil prices, he declared: “They confront us and deal with us in very harsh and illegal language, but ultimately they need us more than we need them.”
No one should mistake Ahmadinejad’s bravado for a genuine struggle against imperialism. The aim of this limited challenge is to pressure the major powers for a more advantageous relationship for the Iranian bourgeoisie and to bolster Iran’s position as a regional power. For the past two years, Tehran has been seeking to use the nuclear issue to manoeuvre between the US and the European powers for a formal agreement with the EU for closer economic and political relations, in return for concessions on its nuclear programs.
Ahmadinejad obliquely referred to “war criminals” who back Israel and those who “fight wars in other countries in order to get security for themselves”. But, for all its posturing against the Bush administration, the Iranian regime is an accomplice to the US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite its formal opposition, Tehran cooperated with the US-led invasion of Iraq, calculating that the defeat of its regional rival would only strengthen its own position. In Iraq itself, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is closely aligned to the Iranian regime, openly backed the invasion and now forms a central component of the US puppet regime.
Ahmadinejad blandly declared last weekend that “our goal is the peaceful use of nuclear technology” and again asserted Iran’s rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to develop all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. Whatever his public statements, however, the president is connected to the most right-wing elements of the theocracy, who insist that Iran has to have not only nuclear power plants, but nuclear weapons as well. The construction of nuclear weapons is viewed as the means to establish Iran as a regional power in the Middle East, just as the Indian government is attempting to do in South Asia.
There are no doubt those in the Iranian regime who calculate, or rather miscalculate, that if Iran had nuclear weapons the US would be compelled to come to terms with Tehran in the same way that it did New Delhi after its 1998 nuclear tests. However, a few crude Iranian nuclear weapons would not seriously deter US aggression. In fact, the construction and testing of an Iranian nuclear weapon would only heighten the danger of a military strike or all-out war by the US and its allies, with devastating consequences.
The danger of imperialist war will not be ended through the acquisition of nuclear weapons by countries like Iran and North Korea and bloodcurdling threats to incinerate millions of innocent working people, in Israel or South Korea or elsewhere. Such threats play directly into the hands of US imperialism. Washington has exploited the outrage produced by Ahmadinejad’s openly anti-Semitic statements, denying the Nazi Holocaust and calling for the state of Israel to be “wiped off the map”, to justify the current international action against Iran.
Ahmadinejad’s reactionary appeals to nationalism and xenophobia cut directly across the only practical and progressive strategy for combatting the eruption of US militarism: the development of a broad global offensive against war and imperialist oppression by the international working class, based on the struggle for a socialist program. The natural allies of working people in Iran are workers throughout the Middle East, including Israel, as well as in the United States, Europe and internationally, not nationalist demagogues like Ahmadinejad or any other faction of the Iranian bourgeoisie.
The surprise victory of Ahmadinejad in last year’s presidential poll was itself the product of a deepening economic and social crisis in Iran for which no faction of the capitalist class has any solution other than to place the burden onto the backs of working people. His populist appeals to “put Iran’s oil wealth on people’s tables” struck a chord with workers and young people who are increasingly disenchanted with the corrupt theocratic regime that has brought enormous wealth to a few at the expense of the vast majority.
Ahmadinejad’s win reflected above all the political bankruptcy of the so-called reformists led by former president Mohammed Khatami, who came to power in 1997. Khatami promised to improve living standards and establish basic democratic rights, but did neither. He responded to every significant movement of workers and students by immediately closing ranks with the conservative hand-liners to crack down on dissent. At the same time he sought to open up the Iranian economy to foreign investors and, to that end, improve relations with Europe and the US, even as Washington invaded neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq and threatened military intervention against Iran itself.
While Ahmadinejad capitalised on popular disgust towards the “reformers,” he has no solution to the social and economic catastrophe confronting millions of Iranians. Despite its large reserves of oil and gas and the current high price of oil, the Iranian economy is suffering from high inflation, a lack of investment and decrepit infrastructure. According to an estimate by the National Iranian Oil Company, the oil industry desperately needs $70 billion over the next 10 years to modernise the country’s dilapidated infrastructure.
UN economic sanctions on Iran will intensify the country’s deep social crisis. The population is very young—nearly 50 percent is under the age of 20 and 70 percent is under 30. The official unemployment rate is 16 percent, but other estimates put the figure twice as high. Only half of the one million new job-seekers entering the market each year find work. According to a government study in 2004, joblessness among 15- to 29-year-olds was set to skyrocket to 52 percent in less than two years.
The fact that the Iranian ruling class is compelled to rely on Ahmadinejad is a sign of the political impasse that it has reached. Unable to address the needs and aspirations of the Iranian masses, it is forced to turn to a populist demagogue to whip up anti-Semitism and chauvinism to divert attention from the government’s failure to solve the social crisis at home and its manoeuvring with imperialism abroad. The climate of national emergency will undoubtedly be exploited to further wind back what limited democratic rights exist in Iran and crack down on dissidents, including various minorities.
As the confrontation with US imperialism and its allies deepens, the regime in Tehran may well decide that it has no alternative but to embark on the course of developing, testing and stockpiling nuclear weapons. There is no doubting the very real dangers posed by the Bush administration, which has enunciated and aggressively acted upon its doctrine of preventive war with reckless indifference to the consequences and contempt for international law. While insisting Tehran restrict its nuclear activities, the US is openly flouting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by developing a new generation of “bunker-buster” nuclear weapons that are aimed precisely at the type of protected underground facilities that exist in Iran.
The working class, however, cannot give any support to the building of an Iranian nuclear weapon, which would inevitably be justified through a frenzied nationalist campaign to defend the Iranian state and the so-called Islamic revolution. The threat of nuclear war is not an answer to imperialist aggression, but a recipe for a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East and beyond. The only realistic alternative to the predatory policies of imperialism and the danger of nuclear war is the program of revolutionary class struggle.
What is required is the construction of a broad, politically independent movement of the international working class that tackles the root cause of war and social inequality: capitalism and the outmoded nation state system. In opposition to all forms of nationalism, racism and chauvinism, workers must unite their struggles to reconstruct the economic system on socialist lines to meet the social needs of humanity as a whole, rather than the profits of a tiny handful. That is the program advocated by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International and fought by its sections around the world.
See Also:
US, EU set to refer Iran to the UN Security Council
[13 January 2006]
European media report US plans to strike Iran
[5 January 2006]
US and EU-3 make another provocative move against Iran
[29 September 2005]
US-EU deal on Iran: a step towards confrontation, not a negotiated settlement
[25 March 2005] More >
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 21 Jan 2006 @ 07:42, by judih. Ideas, Creativity
one month past solstice
the hour's getting cold
as waves of winter prepare to cover our land More >
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21 Jan 2006 @ 04:24, by shreepal. Philosophy
Nature has three fundamental properties, viz., the conservation of energy, opposite and dual nature of matter or energy and the singularity of universal force and they originate from a single universal reality. This universal reality may be visualised as a partial projection of itself into dimensions of space and time that look like mirror images and produce the effect of undestruction of energy, counterbalancing symmetry in nature and singularity of prime force.
Dimension is a "projection". It is the projection of "reality" (and, not necessarily of matter). This projection of reality is not necessarily into space (and time). This projection may be conceived of as a process whereby a portion of reality is raised (by consuming energy) above its neutral state of existence and as result thereof an amount of additional energy is stored as potential energy in the new elevated (or projected) state. This process may be given a suitable name. It may be called a projection. It may also be called "acquiring of a colour" since colour is dependent on frequency (of electromagnetic radiation) and the amount of energy stored therein is directly proportional to the number of frequency. In its essence dimension is an instrument of storing reality. Properties (of reality) are associated with dimension as its integral part.
Reality can exist without being projected into dimensions and then it has no property. The moment reality is projected into dimensions, it acquires specific properties depending upon the dimensions it is projected into. One well-known example of this process is the projection of reality into spatiai dimensions whereupon reality gets the properties of mass, charge, spin and parity. Another example of the same is the projection of reality into time's dimension whereupon it gets the property of flow from past to future. Reality, without its projection into spatial dimensions, has no property of mass etc. And likewise, reality without its projection into time's dimension has no property of past, present and future (and this state may be conceived as eternal reality existing without mass and time).
Reality and its dimensions
Do dimensions exist without primary reality projected into them? Are dimensions co-existing with primary reaiity and therefore equivalent primary reality themselves? No. Dimensions are specific states or measures of the projection of primary reality and in that sense they exist independent of any projection into them of primary reality. However, these states are beyond detection by any means without primary reality being projected into them. Does time exist? Can we measure it? We choose a succession of events as the reference standard and then taking a part out of this succession label it as time. But the rate (of succession of events) can neither be measured in absolute terms with reference to a stationary frame (due to the wave-particle's dual nature of matter of which events are made) nor is it always the same with reference to a moving frame (due to the relativistic principle). In measuring time by this process the extent of our ability to do the same is not limited by this problem only. By this method we only count events and do not deal with the time at all. By counting events we tag them as time and by going backward or forward in the succession we refer it as past or future.
There is no way to directly deal with time. And, yet the time does exist as a certain measure of projection of primary reality to a certain height that stores specific amount of potential energy (of primary reality) creating the dimension known as time.
What is space? Can we measure it? We measure matter, and treating this measure as a reference, compare with it the spreadth of space. Again, the amount of matter (that is, its spatial properties) can neither be measured with reference to a stationary frame (on account of its wave-particle dual nature in accordance with quantum mechanics' principle) nor it is a singular amount with reference to a moving frame (in accordance with relativistic principle). Here, again, we are dealing with matter and not space. By any means, we can not directly deal with the space.
However, the space does exist as a measure of projection of prime reality to a certain potential height that takes the shape of spatial dimensions.
Cubes of space, time and consciousness
Spatial dimension has a cubic form; that is, it has three sides' projection of reality into length, width and height. Time's dimension also has the cubic form. The single dimensional time would simply exist but would not move forward or backward, that is, into the future or the past. With two dimensions, it would move in either of the directions but still it would not cover events (of matter that has not two but three projections). With two projections, a man would be able (if it were technologically possible) to go in the past or future but still would not see events associated with that past or future. To make it possible, one more, the third one, is needed. It is like depth of time. If one moves along this dimension, he would not move into past or future but would see all the events of universe at a single given moment.
Our inability to directly deal with time and space is not associated with the inherent properties of these dimensions. This inability demarcates the limits of human mind in understanding, rather knowing, the truth lying behind the appearance.
Reality existing without its projection into any dimensions whatsoever is "primary" reality. The "primary" reality is the "only" reality that exists and it may be conceptualised as a great ocean of unified field of energy and this ocean must include all that we know as existing as well as all that we do not know yet but (must) exist.
The primary reality observes the law of conservation of energy, that is, it can neither be created (and so, is eternal) nor destroyed (that is, unperishable). To meet the requirements of a unified field's mathematical equation, it is assumed that this ocean of primary reality, that is, unified field energy in modern scientific terminology, possesses the capacity of "self-excitation". The projection of unified field energy into dimensions is the work of manifestation and it requires "self-excitation", that is, an amount of force or "work". A certain quantified volume of (given) dimensions contain in them a certain quantified amount of unified field energy.
There are many planes of projected reality in the universe and an individual plane's specific dimensions determine its structure. All these planes are independently existing but interconnected with each other by a bridge-like formation that connects two sharply different planes with gradually receding-shades. In a plane, the very existence of projected, that is, dimensional, reality makes the plane a deformed structure and in this structure all movements of projected reality follow a path along the edges of the plane's dimensions. This strangely moving presence of projected reality makes the universe a string-like structure at every plane. Original dimensionless position occupied by the primary reality and dimensional position occupied by the projected reality may be viewed as a 'distance' and this distance, or ‘creation' needs a force that would make this creation not only possible but would also sustain this creation. And, this force would have to act and be present constantly.
Since we endow the Primary Realty with the attribute of consciousness, we may conceive the force that creates and sustains the creation as its 'will' and the creation as 'purposeful design of this will' of Primary Reality, or of 'Supreme Being.' Also we may conceive the creation as displacement of a part of this Primary Realty from its original groove, or as a distance of a part of this Realty from its original station. This distance (or potential force stored in stretched distance) not only needs a constant will to sustain it but also forms an elastic band between the primary reality and created things that is 'tauter when it is pulled'.
This potential force stored in stretched distance, or energy stored in the work of creation, has the tendency to compel created things to return back to their original position.
The quantum relativity concept is an efficient mental tool that enables mind (that is, human being) to understand (to the extent it is possible for mind to understand) the interrelations of different frames of reference moving in various planes of projected reality.
Projection of reality into space-time dimensions forms the material world. Projection of reality into dimensions of consciousness forms the worlds of mind, of desire-impulse and of physical (body) senses. There are many more dimensions into which reality is projected (bringing into existence their associated properties) that are not known to human being (being possessing mind). Moreover, human being with the aid of his best instrument – mind - cannot know reality existing in its neutral state without its projection into dimensions.
With this article we end the series of articles on Enlightenment.
Further reading links:
Beyond mind's conception 1 Beyond mind's conception 2 More >
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20 Jan 2006 @ 16:18, by Unknown. Communication
Found on the Web
OPEN LETTER TO THE EARTH
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
JANUARY 01,2006
Well hello everyone, hope your day is going well.
Strange world aye?
Well it seems that it may be that Humanity is at war
with itself because maybe there's nothing better to do
and war, drugs and sex, is good for business.
Well that may be the case and war may be fun and interesting
but to myself it is a sorry state of affairs. i.e.: (Let them eat cake)
It would seem then that some people may just have to much money, power and time on their hands then, oh my...!
I can accept perhaps that fighting, poverty, disease, hunger, homelessness, pollution, global warming, loneliness, the elements, prejudice, racism, ignorance, addictions, hatred, greed and such may not be as much fun or as interesting as war but really if you have to and want to war then please do it on the moon and not on the planet because it is interfering with those trying to really accomplish something constructive and meaningful
on the planet.
Thank you for your time
and consideration to this matter...
A global citizen More >
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20 Jan 2006 @ 01:43, by oasiian. Science
I had been thinking, for some time, 'What if we followed Aristotle in Science instead of Democratus?' It seems there is indeed an answer, and it's not a 'what if,' but a 'what IS.' More >
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 19 Jan 2006 @ 19:17, by jstarrs. Ideas, Creativity
Welcome to The NCN Poet Tree Anthology...we hope you'll enjoy this evolving, involving and revolving selection of prose from NCN poets, worldwide - submissions are welcomed. More >
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18 Jan 2006 @ 22:40, by gsosbee. Activism
Until the United States' terrorists and assassins are stopped in their tracks, the world cannot rest. Human beings are presently tortured, imprisoned and murdered by the fbi and the cia worldwide for no cause; this will not stop until the global population demands the surrender of the homicidal sociopaths who dominate U.S. political and economic policies. The concept that if the U.S. is let alone (or with its *puppet allies) to be armed with nuclear weaponry in order to allow the rest of the world to live in peace is total lunacy. The United States used the nuclear bomb, threatens to use it again, and will in fact use it again to attack any nation which remotely threatens the U.S. stranglehold on the world.
Indeed according to Karl W B Schwarz (and others),"evidence is still piling up that they have done wrong for the past three presidential administrations in using depleted uranium weapons on Iraq twice, Bosnia and Afghanistan." *
See also for info on evidence consistent with this suspicion (scroll down page to 'depleted uranium'):
[link]
Consult with the individuals around the globe who have survived the torture camps now being run (in secret) by the fbi and the cia. Review the testimony of current Targets of fbi/cia torture campaigns for more insights on the barbaric and homicidal methodologies employed by the U.S. government at home and abroad.
Under the best of scenarios (as viewed from the perspective of non conforming-belligerent nations), however, the world cannot defeat the U.S. war machine. Any attempt to prepare to do so will be met with total destruction of the aggressor. Even today the U.S. has another weapon (other than conventional) which can theoretically wipe out, instantaneously, any cache or bank of unfriendly technologies which may pose a threat to the U.S. or its allies: the laser beam fixed in positon in outer space can accomplish this little task just fine (see world in a box at www.sosbeevfbi.com).
The real issue , I think, is how to stop all weaponry on earth and space from being used and at the same time to afford all human beings alive some hope for peace and stability everywhere and for all time. The formation of a one world , one people Humane global government must be studied and proposed. The tyrants of any given country cannot be entrusted with Human Rights and Individual Freedom issues ever again. This means that the people of the world, not their respective governments, must embark on mankind's most ambitious odyssey: the journey toward permanent peace and harmony on earth and the uncompromising realization of Human Rights for all. This can be done; such a goal is not simply a dream. What appears as an unattainable dream is that the United States or any other government on earth will someday stop killing and torturing people and allow them to live in peace , mutual respect and love.
_*Note the following statement by Benjamin Netanyahu (in a paper on "Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic And International Terrorism", 1995)wherein he unwittingly confesses to the character and nature of American and Israeli intelligence groups and their associates globally:
"By its very nature, the inhuman method chosen by the terrorists to achieve their aim disqualifies the aim from the start as one worthy of moral support....the methods reveal totalitarian strain that runs through all terrorist groups....terrorists are the forerunners of tyranny."
The intel groups torture, imprison, terrorize and murder at will (and then subsequently brag about it) and anyone who challenges these fools may be targeted for death.
______________________________________________________
SOSBEE'S PROCLAMATION
Whereas the present government of the United States (feigning leadership) openly and without the slightest pretense of respect for human life and in complete disregard for universally accepted standards for basic human rights, engages under color of its national flag in murder, torture, imprisonment and terrorist practices against the peoples of the world, NOW THEREFORE SHOULD BE DECLARED AND HEREBY IS DECLARED A CRIMINAL AND ILLEGITIMATE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY (THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA) and as such deserves not a respectable place among the family of nations and more significantly merits nil when the final account of Humanitarian efforts be tabulated by all that is holy and graceful in the universe.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We the people of the world hereby prevent the fbi, the cia, the militia, or any other government agency (or person) of the United States (or any other country) from dictating the terms of our surrender unto their authority, custom, culture, power now and for all times; in furtherance of this recognition, the world's population forthwith seeks to expose such dictatorial intent (and the techniques employed in support of same) by public investigation which serves on a continuing basis to protect and to defend the people of the world (now and in the future) from any form of inhumane governance. EVERY MAN/WOMAN.
_______________________________________________________________________
As people discover the immoral, cowardly and macabre character of the agents, operatives, handlers and associates of the fbi/cia (as manifest globally in the killing/torture techniques used by these sociopathic assassins to insure compliance to new world order dictates) we may not reasonably expect a merciful redress from foreign and domestic freedom fighters forced from desperation to employ against US equally aggressive and abhorrent stratagems. Geral Sosbee .
All of the torture tactics used by the fbi and the cia require analysis and discussion. Among other websites see.... www.sosbeevfbi.com [link] http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/statement.html [link] http://miami.indymedia.org/news/2005/05/1347.php [link] http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/remote_behavioral_techology.htm The failure of the global academic community to engage the topics included in the above listed sites reflects the decadent mentality of those who pompously and pretentiously presume to carry the banner of enlightenment for our civilization. Any questions ? geral sosbee
See Also:
http://cc.msnscache.com/cache.aspx?q=3723282831579〈=en-US&mkt=en-US&FORM=CVRE9
____________________________________________________________
See the above article in a different format at:
[link]
See Also:
[link]
*For evidence to support this statement by Schwarz see the following link from which this is excerpted:
[link]
GOING NUCLEAR
And as evidence surfaces that Bin Laden had been making plans to go nuclear, some experts believe that in fact the US Air Force is deploying nuclear materials. Here is areport out of Australia on the use of weapons hardened with depleted uranium, a concern that surfaced in the Gulf War and later in Kosovo. I haven't read much about thisin the US presss:
Depleted Uranium Toxicity in Afghanistan
by Richard S. Ehrlich
"ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - American warplanes are attacking Afghanistan with depleted uranium weapons which could poison combatants and civilians, especially children, according to U.S. officials.
"The possibility of radioactive dust storms sweeping across Afghanistan and polluting rivers has meanwhile sparked fears in Pakistan.
"The radioactive dust released by the impact of these weapons can easily get into the food chain and the water supply through the Kabul River in Afghanistan and thus into Pakistan's Indus [River]," reported Dawn newspaper.
"There are simply no contingency measures to brace people against such a disastrous humanitarian fallout," Dawn added.
------- --------- -----------
See:
Torture Warrants and Law: Justifying Torture and
Making it Legal?
Rosemary Horton, P.L. Duffy Resource Centre,
Trinity College, Western Australia
[link]
____________________________________________
See:
[link]
and:
[link]
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 18 Jan 2006 @ 13:18, by silviamar. Ideas, Creativity
I wrote this poem in Spanish a few years ago, but I've included also an English translation, so you can understand it :-) More >
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17 Jan 2006 @ 20:27, by vaxen. Globalization
Mark Your Calendars
By Cliff Jones
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." ~ Upton Sinclair
The first paragraph says enough:
[link]
January 7, 2006 - I must comment here: mark your calendars for March 20, 2006. This is the day Iran has promised to kick about 35%, perhaps more, of the backing of your "money supply" right out from under you.
The magnitude of such an event takes some explanation, but I'll begin by stating that this was the very reason for invading Iraq. Saddam Hussein had the inside goods on decades of insider global banking dirt, (which fact was published in Germany) including the involvement, and we're talking smoking guns, of every president of the US since Truman and likewise all the Federal Reserve Board ("fed") chairmen across the same timespan. With what he thought was four aces in hand, Saddam too had boldly promised to denominate Iraq's oil sales in Euros. No small matter, that. More >
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16 Jan 2006 @ 22:46, by ming. Environment, Ecology
In The Independent, an article by James Lovelock, whom you'll know best as the father of the Gaia Theory. A serious wake-up call there. More than that, really. He says essentially it is too late to back out of what we're doing, and that we're going down, and we've better prepare for being partially wiped out, and Mad Max survival scenarios for those who're left.The climate centres around the world, which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger.
Our planet has kept itself healthy and fit for life, just like an animal does, for most of the more than three billion years of its existence. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.
Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This "global dimming" is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
By failing to see that the Earth regulates its climate and composition, we have blundered into trying to do it ourselves, acting as if we were in charge. By doing this, we condemn ourselves to the worst form of slavery. If we chose to be the stewards of the Earth, then we are responsible for keeping the atmosphere, the ocean and the land surface right for life. A task we would soon find impossible - and something before we treated Gaia so badly, she had freely done for us.
To understand how impossible it is, think about how you would regulate your own temperature or the composition of your blood. Those with failing kidneys know the never-ending daily difficulty of adjusting water, salt and protein intake. The technological fix of dialysis helps, but is no replacement for living healthy kidneys. Well, I'm an optimist, and I'm hoping for a miracle. But I can't logically think of which corner it would come from. Humanity hasn't really changed its ways, and we're still using nature as something to steal from, and something to dump the waste back into, with little understanding of how things actually work. What arrogance. Hopefully Gaia is more resilient than we fear, and hopefully he's wrong. But what does it take for us to actually change how we interact with the global eco-system? One really big catastrophe, and then we get it? But then it might already be way too late. More >
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