White House Plumbing Clogged

Olympics a Fascist Feeding Frenzy

Corporations around the world have been gleefully rubbing their hands as they display their police state wares at a Chinese trade show that precedes the Olympics. Such wares include technology for secretly copying hard drives, crowd control, and surveillance on public streets, all in the name of “security.” And China, recently criticized around the world for its brutal crackdown on protests in Tibet, is rabidly in the market for “security” and “crime control” equipment. It’s a perfect match between Western multinationals and Chinese police agencies.

From the New York Times, April 26:

At the recent China International Exhibition on Police Equipment here, sponsored by the Ministry of Public Security, DuPont had a large exhibit promoting Kevlar bulletproof fabric for riot police use. Motorola was selling police radio systems as well as wireless systems for transmitting vast quantities of video surveillance data.

And with the slogan “dress to kill” on their black T-shirts, top executives from Magnum of Britain showed off their latest police boots. “Chinese police deserve the best — Magnum protects the protectors,” said Paul Brooks, the company’s president, in a speech to police officials.

The most intriguing device offered at the show to senior Chinese security agency officials was the Image Masster RoadMasster, a powerful computer system that swiftly copies computer hard drives without leaving any trace and comes concealed in its own color-coordinated briefcase.

Gonen Ravid, the chief executive of the device’s manufacturer, Intelligent Computer Solutions in Chatsworth, Calif., said that the company sells exactly the same equipment in the same briefcases to the Pentagon for use in Iraq, and to the Central Intelligence Agency and other Western intelligence agencies for use around the world.

No company in China makes similar equipment, he said. “The U.S.,” he said, “is still leading with this.”

The trade show coincided with increasing controversy in the United States over American exports of crime-control equipment to China. After the Tiananmen Square killings in 1989, Congress passed a law that remains in effect today: it bans “the export to the People’s Republic of China of any crime control or detection instruments or equipment.”

The Commerce Department drafted regulations in the early 1990s to put that ban into effect. But those initial regulations — which officials have said clearly apply to products aimed exclusively at law enforcement agencies, like fingerprint kits — paid little attention to the rising computer industry and have not been updated.

The department did an internal review last winter of the rules. It is now seeking public comment on how and whether it should update its regulations on exports of crime control and detection equipment to any country subject to restrictions.

Asked about the abundant American gear shown at the police equipment trade show, Mario Mancuso, the under secretary of commerce for industry and security, replied with a one-sentence written statement: “Enforcing U.S. regulations on crime control equipment, including the Tiananmen Square Sanctions, is a top priority, and we continually review our regulations to ensure that they effectively support our national security and foreign policy.”

Another Commerce Department official said that questions from The New York Times about American equipment exhibited at the trade show had prompted the department to begin a review of whether American laws might have been broken. The official insisted on anonymity, in keeping with a department policy of not commenting on work that might lead to law enforcement actions.

The department has officials in Beijing and Hong Kong who look for violations of export control laws, but did not try to send anyone into the police equipment trade show. A reporter for The New York Times was able to enter the show by filling out a routine questionnaire at the entrance about his interest in the security industry, identifying himself in English on the form as a correspondent for the newspaper and providing a copy of his business card.

The trade show was held from April 16 to 19 at a small compound near the center of Beijing; the compound is reserved for commercial events with top-level government backing.

At least two Hong Kong companies at the show set up booths to market fingerprint identification kits that were prominently marked as having been made in the United States by American companies.

Many other products at the trade show were also from the United States, but their manufacturers said that they were complying with American laws. Read the rest>>

Hillary’s Coverup: She’s Guilty of Felony Violations

Hillary Will Testify In Fraud Case Against Bill Clinton
…AFTER the November election.

The cover-up of the original felony violations of the federal election law committed by Hillary and Bill Clinton (they solicited and coordinated Peter Paul’s $1 million plus contribution as a quid pro quo for Clinton’s post White House employment) have resulted in a corruption of every branch of the government by the Clintons- all in plain view of the public and with the collusion of the media and the government. Watergate seems insignificant in the breadth of its public corruption in comparison with what has become the mother of all coverups orchestrated by Hillary Clinton. Read it all>>

10 Worst Corporations

Every year the Multinational Monitor applies guidelines to compile the 10 worst corporations. It never lists the same corporations two years in a row, since the idea is to expand the pool for exposure. Apparently they haven’t compiled a list for 2007 yet. But here are the ones for 2006.

1. BP: In March 2006, a leak in the Alaska pipeline that BP maintains led to the second biggest oil spill in Alaskan history. Then, in August 2006, BP was forced to shut down the pipeline because of massive corrosion problems the company had permitted to fester.
2. Delphi: Delphi continued in bankruptcy through 2006, plowing ahead with its shameful scheme to manipulate the bankruptcy system to escape wage and pension payments owed to past and present workers. Final arrangements are still pending for Delphi to emerge from bankruptcy, but it’s fair to say the company will have achieved much of what it desired — trashing its unionized wage and benefit structure, if perhaps not as fully as it fantasized doing.
3. Dupont: Dupont appeared on our list in 2005 for a decades-long cover-up on the effects of a chemical used to make Teflon and grease-resistant coatings. At the end of 2005, the company agreed to phase out its use, over the course of a decade. But the company continues to deny it has any harmful effect on humans. Meanwhile, a federal criminal investigation is ongoing.
4. ExxonMobil: In 2005, ExxonMobil appeared on our list for its global warming denialism, and price-gouging that resulted in record profits of $36 billion. In 2006, the company began massaging its position on global warming — ExxonMobil now agrees that “climate change is a serious and long-term challenge,” but doesn’t want governments to do anything serious about it — and its continued mass rip-off of consumers enabled it to rake in $39.5 billion in profits, a new record.
5. Ford: Ford lost more than $12 billion in 2006, the legacy of the company’s complete failure to recognize that the future rests with fuel efficient vehicles (and soon, petroleum-free transportation) rather than gas-guzzling giant SUVs. Investors took a big hit, but workers felt the worst impact; at the start of 2006, Ford announced it would eliminate a quarter of its U.S. jobs.
6. Halliburton: Halliburton continued with its scandalous looting of taxpayers. In a small but totally typical example, the Associated Press in September reported that a company whistleblower revealed in a lawsuit filed in 2005 that Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary in Iraq billed millions to U.S. taxpayers for nonexistent recreational activities. In July 2006, the Army fired Halliburton from its contract (which Halliburton called a routine decision to suspend the contract). The contract to rebid will be broken up into several pieces — Halliburton may yet end up as the overseer of the companies that take over its old contractual duties.
7. KPMG: KPMG, the accounting firm mired in controversy over the sweetheart deal it negotiated in 2005 to escape prosecution for peddling illegal tax shelter schemes, started off 2006 with a bang. On January 3, the esteemed accountants at KPMG agreed to pay $2.77 million for failing to disclose rebates the firm received for travel expenses billed to the U.S. government.
8. Roche: In July, the newspaper The Australian reported that Roche had spent a remarkable $49,000 on a dinner for 300 doctors. Held at a restaurant in the Sydney Opera House, the purpose of the dinner was to promote the drug makers’ pill rituximab, used to treat non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The dinner violated the Australian drug industry’s code that donated meals to doctors be “simple and modest.”
9. Suez: Suez struggled to hold on to its privatized water business, which seems increasingly non-viable in developing countries. In March, Argentina threw Suez out of the country, terminating its 30-year contract on the grounds that Suez had failed to make promised investments. Suez also left Bolivia in October, extracting a $5 million payment, but backing down on threats to sue the country’s government in international arbitration.
10. W.R. Grace: In 2005, W.R. Grace appeared on our 10 worst list after being indicted for its operations in Libby, Montana, a mining town where the company let hundreds be exposed to deadly doses of asbestos and then concealed the problem. In April 2006, the New York Times reported that “doctors at the clinic that has treated hundreds of asbestos victims accuse the company of trying to discredit them and force the clinic to close.”

$384 to Fill Your 12-gallon Tank?

Jack-boots in PDX

Just now I was taking a return trip on the streetcar from Powell’s back down to PSU in SW PDX and coming up from behind I got a real wake-up when I saw eight pigs in black riot gear riding shotgun on a SUV cruiser. They were decked out in plexi face shields and they reminded me of Hitler’s SS so much I got a sick feeling in my gut. What the fuck are these Nazis doing in PDX? In the deep South, maybe, but PDX? There aren’t even any demos going on as far as I know. Oh yeah, I forgot. It’s May 1, Labor Day. Gotta keep those wage slaves obedient and shopping, gotta beat ‘em down if they even think about a strike or protest.

Everyone who lives here seems so calm, so un-bothered by this display of raw fascistic extremism. Why is everyone so docile, so accepting? Maybe it’s the familiarity. After awhile no one notices. People get used to it. I have to think this is exactly the way it was in pre-war Nazi Germany. Everyone is so caught up in financial and personal shit, living in their own heads it seems.

There was an Iraq symposium down in a PSU cafe earlier today, but the college rag refused to publicize it in advance, so not that many people showed up.

I wrote elsewhere about Cheney’s plans to nuke Iran. There is all sorts of buzz about this everywhere–talk radio and the Net, mostly. With the price of oil topping $120 a barrel, the attack seems imminent. And it won’t be small scale, because Iran, unlike Iraq, is armed to the teeth and can defend itself against invaders and occupiers. So this could be the ramping up of losing what’s left of our rights as bush implements his directives and locks us all into a true dictatorship.

Yup, after 911, the cons have had their way with Americans, have stripped us of our rights, finances, services, privacy, and just about everything else. Where are the citizen’s means to fight back and defend ourselves? And if this is to be a global nuclear holocaust over oil, then the human race has been a supreme failure and we get what we deserve, right? Wrong. The human spirit must rise in these dire times, must evolve into something we’ve never known before, and it must do it soon, or else we will all surely perish in shame, grief, and ignorance.

The Year of Global Food Crisis Hits Home

Last weekend I discovered that Costco members have begun hoarding bags of rice. The entire rice section of the warehouse was stripped bare. There’s no reason why Americans need to act like this except out of fear and greed. Costco has placed a limit on the amount of rice people can buy, but their family and friends can double, triple, quadruple the amount purchased. This is just the beginning, folks.

While we drink our lattes and eat our muffins on the run, people are literally starving to death all over the planet. While the media bombards us with the phrase “financial crisis” and faced by the growing blight of abandoned homes from mortgage default, the poor everywhere face a life and death struggle in the dire and growing crisis of mass starvation and disease. We get trickles of this news in gaps between the wearisome campaign bloodfight and the incessant roar of the bank and airline consolidation, and whatever else concerns Wall Street. Even U.S.-backed genocide in Iraq, Palestine, Rowanda, Darfur and other places have been relegated somewhere on A16 in the Sunday paper.

What we aren’t getting is that this looming global food crisis has already begun to hit home. We’ve already begun to see critical shortages at food banks in Amarillo, Texas, southern Minnesota, New York City, Los Angeles, California, eastern Texas, and Manchester, New Hampshire, among a growing number of other cities.

What all of this amounts to is a world-wide depression on steroids. Forget the docile bread line imagery recalled in the last depression at the close of the second decade of the last century. Already there are food riots in more than a dozen countries. I don’t care how educated you are or where you live. When you are starving, nothing else matters except food. Most Americans are clueless about starvation. We’re too busy going to concerts, sunbathing, watching movies, and partaking in a million other distractions after a hard week’s work.

America is still the world’s largest food donor in the world. But American food aid is expected to drop from 2.6 million tons last year to about 2.2 million this year. That means that people are going to starve to death.

Germany’s Der Speigel reports the insufferably grim conditions in Haiti and elsewhere and outlines some of the root causes of the crisis. The graphic above illustrates which countries so far have banned exports (the red dots) and which countries have begun rioting for food (the clenched fists).

Around the world, rising food prices have made basic staples like rice and corn unaffordable for many people, pushing the poor to the barricades because they can no longer get enough to eat. But the worst is yet to come.

Fort Dimanche, a former prison in the hills above the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, is a hell on earth. In the past, it was home to the torture chambers of former dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s death squads, the Tontons Macoutes. Today thousands of impoverished Haitians live in the prison’s grounds, digging through piles of garbage for food. But even dogs find little to eat there.

On the roof of the former prison, enterprising women prepare something that looks like biscuits and is even called by that name. The key ingredient, yellow clay, is trucked in from the nearby mountains. The clay is combined with salt and vegetable fat to make dough, which is then dried in the sun.

For many Haitians, the mud biscuits are their only food. They taste of fat, suck the moisture out of the mouth and leave behind an aftertaste of dirt. They often cause diarrhea, but they help to numb the pangs of hunger. “I’m hoping one day I’ll have enough food to eat, so I can stop eating these,” Marie Noël, who survives with her seven children on the dirt cakes, told the Associated Press.

The clay to make 100 of the biscuits costs $5 (€3.15) and has risen by $1.50 (€0.95), or about 40 percent, within one year. The same is true of staple foods. Nevertheless, the same amount of money buys more of the mud cakes than bread or corn tortillas. A daily bowl of rice is almost unaffordable.

The shortages triggered revolts in Haiti last week. A crowd of hungry citizens marched through Port-au-Prince, throwing stones and bottles and chanting, “We are hungry!” in front of the presidential palace. Tires were burned, and people died. It was yet another of the rebellions that are beginning to occur with increasing frequency worldwide, but which are still only a harbinger of what is yet to come.

Food is become increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is already unaffordable for many people. The world’s 200 wealthiest people have as much money as about 40 percent of the global population, and yet 850 million people have to go to bed hungry every night. This calamity is “one of the worst violations of human dignity,” says former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Read the rest>>>

And this, “2008: The Year of Global Food Crisis” from Scotland’s Sunday Herald:

It is the new face of hunger. A perfect storm of food scarcity, global warming, rocketing oil prices and the world population explosion is plunging humanity into the biggest crisis of the 21st century by pushing up food prices and spreading hunger and poverty from rural areas into cities.

Millions more of the world’s most vulnerable people are facing starvation as food shortages loom and crop prices spiral ever upwards.

And for the first time in history, say experts, the impact is spreading from the developing to the developed world.

More than 73 million people in 78 countries that depend on food handouts from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) are facing reduced rations this year. The increasing scarcity of food is the biggest crisis looming for the world”, according to WFP officials.

At the same time, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that rising prices have triggered a food crisis in 36 countries, all of which will need extra help. The threat of malnutrition is the world’s forgotten problem”, says the World Bank as it demands urgent action.

The bank points out that global food prices have risen by 75% since 2000, while wheat prices have increased by 200%. The cost of other staples such as rice and soya bean have also hit record highs, while corn is at its most expensive in 12 years.

The increasing cost of grains is also pushing up the price of meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products. And there is every likelihood prices will continue their relentless rise, according to expert predictions by the UN and developed countries. Read the rest>>

I wanted to know the causes behind this crisis, and this is the toxic cocktail that I found:

• The increase in the price of oil due to the accelerated depletion of natural energy sources
• The diversion of agricultural resources from food to energy production
• Global trade regulations that favor Western nations by relegating developing countries to the periphery of the global market (the globalised free trade model).
• The double-edged sword of the Green Revolution
• The world population is growing constantly, while the amount of arable land is declining.
• Climate change is causing a loss of agricultural land, irreversible in some cases, as a result of droughts, floods, storms and erosion.
• Because of changing eating habits, more and more arable land and virgin forests are being turned into pasture for livestock. The yield per acre in calories of land given over to pasture is substantially lower than that of arable land.
• The World Bank wants developing countries to introduce market reforms, including the abolition of protective tariffs, a move that often causes massive damage to local agriculture.
• Speculators are driving up the prices of raw materials. The resulting high oil price leads to “energy crops” being cultivated instead of grain for food or animal feed.
• Millions of people displaced by civil wars need food, and yet they themselves are no longer capable of producing food.

What will turn this unprecedented situation around? Not the stupid, stupid politicians and their lackluster or do-nothing policies. Not big business which is only interested in turning profits. Not Joe Blow who’s too wrapped up in Nascar and ball games. Who, then?

Like everything else in this era of globalization and ruthless labor cuts while the top 1/10 of 1 percent pops champagne corks, I want to know what it is that will tip the balance, what will drive pampered and lulled consumers in industrialized nations over the edge of tolerance and complacency and into the necessary zone of anger rather than cling to business as usual. My guess is that first meal missed because food costs too damn much.

The old model of “me me me, forever me” is dying; it just doesn’t work any more.

Ronin of the Spirit offers an excellent analysis.

Can organic farming solve this crisis? Some, like Per Pinstrup-Andersen, a Cornell professor of food, say no. Others, like the UK’s Institute of Science in Society say yes.

Rush Limbaugh Calling For Riots In Denver

Talk Show Host Wants America To See Actions Of ‘Far Left’
From: Denverchannel.com
POSTED: 11:37 am MDT April 24, 2008
UPDATED: 5:40 am MDT April 25, 2008

DENVER — Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is sparking controversy again after he made comments calling for riots in Denver during the Democratic National Convention this summer.

He said the riots would ensure a Democrat is not elected as president, and his listeners have a responsibility to make sure it happens.”Riots in Denver, the Democrat Convention would see to it that we don’t elect Democrats,” Limbaugh said during Wednesday’s radio broadcast. He then went on to say that’s the best thing that could happen to the country.

Limbaugh cited Al Sharpton, saying the Barack Obama supporter threatened to superdelegates that “there’s going to be trouble” if the presidency is taken from Obama.Several callers called in to the radio show to denounce Limbaugh’s comments, when he later stated, “I am not inspiring or inciting riots, I am dreaming of riots in Denver.”Limbaugh said with massive riots in Denver, which he called “Operation Chaos,” the people on the far left would look bad.”There won’t be riots at our convention,” Limbaugh said of the Republican National Convention. “We don’t riot. We don’t burn our cars. We don’t burn down our houses. We don’t kill our children. We don’t do half the things the American left does.”He believes electing Democrats will hurt America’s security and economy and appeared to call on his listeners to make sure that doesn’t happen.”We do, hopefully, the right thing for the sake of this country. We’re the only one in charge of our affairs. We don’t farm out our defense if we elect Democrats … and riots in Denver, at the Democratic Convention will see to it we don’t elect Democrats. And that’s the best damn thing that can happen to this country, as far as I can think,” Limbaugh said.Later, Limbaugh downplayed his “dreaming of riots in Denver” statement, and said that he wasn’t calling for riots and was referring to warnings of trouble if superdelegates decide the nomination at the Democratic National Convention.Limbaugh’s comments prompted Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper to say: “Anyone who would call for riots in an American city has clearly lost their bearings.”Denver will host the DNC on Aug. 25 to Aug. 28.

So, Limbaugh gets a pass to commit a federal crime, inciting riots, no different than a domestic terrorist. But that’s not the worst of it. This stinks of Bush nazi intervention to propel Martial Law so that he can implement his hellacious executive orders. Be aware. Be very aware. Make certain this information gets all over the Internet!

Here’s what this piece of trash Limbaugh posted April 23 on his website between himself and a caller to his show:

Screw the World! Riot in Denver!

“RUSH: Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania. This is Brian. Great to have you here, sir.

CALLER: Yes, thank you. I was calling to comment on — on — on first of all the gentleman that had called in earlier about your ego. I am a Republican, and I’m a very conservative Republican. However, I have to agree a little bit, Rush, that — from a comment that you made a little while ago, that — I do believe your ego is run away with you slightly.

RUSH: Well, first off, it was an e-mail. The guy didn’t call actually, I read an e-mail from him that my ego was out of control.

CALLER: Understood. Well, I believe in ego. I believe it’s a necessary for your occupation. I believe it’s the engine that, you know, that needs to be fed to make you good at what you do. I’m in sales, and I believe that for myself. But your comment about wanting your Operation Chaos to go all the way, like back to 1968 with riots in the streets, turned over burning cars, and I believe you even said “literally.”

RUSH: I did say literal riots. Al Sharpton has promised them!

CALLER: But you said, “That’s what we want.” That’s not good for anybody, and hopefully you really don’t want that, and most of us don’t. I believe in your Operation Chaos. It showed great ingenuity, and it was and is a fantastic idea. However, riots and burning cars would make all Americans look bad. I believe our whole premise –

RUSH: To who? To who would it make all Americans look bad?

CALLER: To the world.

RUSH: Oh, screw it! Screw the world! You know, I can’t –

CALLER: I think there’s that ego again. (laughing)

RUSH: It will make…? Do you really think we ought to govern ourselves on the basis of what the world thinks of us?

CALLER: I believe that we need — that our whole premise on working hard for our side is to bring all Americans together, Democrats, Republicans, and independents even, under one common goal that our forefathers designed for us.

RUSH: That’s what we’re trying to do. You don’t bring them together. We don’t bring people together. That’s not how this country works. We defeat our political adversaries so that they’re in the minority.

CALLER: I believe that, with — with passion. But then also, I mean our — our whole premise was our Constitution for our safety, you know, for our children’s safety. And what would that show by riots and burning cars no matter what side did that? I just think, Rush, that that comment was a little out of line and maybe just not properly thought through. Because I don’t believe that way, and I don’t believe that most of us want that. Because people get hurt in those situations — and we believe that our side as Republicans, we can do it better than the rest.

RUSH: As we would be demonstrating because there won’t be riots at our convention.

CALLER: Actually they would be demonstrating as Americans –

RUSH: We don’t riot.

CALLER: — that they’re more out of control.

RUSH: We don’t burn our cars. We don’t burn down our houses. We don’t kill our children. We don’t do half the things the American left does. We need the American left — and this is another great thing about Operation Chaos; nothing to do with my ego. We need as many ignorant Americans to wake up and find out exactly who the modern-day Democrat Party is as dominated by the far left in this country. We need that to be seen. Now, I am not inspiring or inciting riots. I’m dreaming. (singing to the tune of White Christmas) “I’m dreaming of riots in Denver.” Remember 1968? And which party did that? It was the radicals in that party, the anti-war radicals, the same bunch of clowns that are running around defining the Democrat Party today. What the world thinks of us? There was an analogy just this week about somebody in the world. I’m drawing a mental blank about this. But the fact is that the Democrat Party has members in it that have already said, “There will be riots,” or something to that effect. Al Sharpton.

He was throwing down the gauntlet to the superdelegates: “You take this election away from Barack Obama, and there’s gonna be trouble. There’s going to be trouble in Denver.” As for the rest of the world and what they think of us, you know, there’s nothing that frustrates me more than to hear that. What part of the world do we care about? What part of the world do we want approval from? Do we want approval from the Europeans who have gone so damn wussy that they cannot — they could not if they had to — mount a military defense of themselves if they were attacked? Not even with NATO, because it has been allowed to lapse. Is it those people that we want the approval from? Do we want approval from people like Robert Mugabe? Do we want approval from some of the warlords and terrorists of Al-Qaeda? Who in the world do we want approval from? Do we want approval from Hamas, like Jimmy Carter does? We have the approval of our allies. We have the approval of the UK. We have the approval of the Australians. Do we want the approval of the Chinese? Do we want the approval of Kim Jong Il.

Who do we want to love us? What is this? I guarantee you: You live your life this way as an individual, and you are forever going to be confused and unhappy because you will be embarking on something that’s impossible, and that is, A, to make everybody like you; and, B, respect you. This is something that has to be earned, particularly on the side of respect — and respect is earned with strength. Nobody is going to respect you if they figure out you’re doing whatever you have to do to get their approval. They’re going to laugh at you! They’re going to think you’re a weak-kneed wuss. So the hell with that! We do, hopefully, the right thing for the sake of this country. We’re the only ones in charge of our affairs. We don’t farm out our defense, unless we elect Democrats. We don’t farm out our protection against attack and national security, unless we elect Democrats. We don’t farm out our economy and tear it up in the name of a hoax called global warming, unless we elect Democrats. Riots in Denver at the Democrat convention would see to it we don’t elect Democrats — and that’s the best damn thing could happen for this country as far as anything I can think: Don’t elect Democrats!

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me tell you something, folks. If there are riots in Denver, the world is gonna just think that we’re just like them, and we have something in common with them, and isn’t that what we want to say: “We’re all the same”?”

*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.

The Chernobyl Legacy: Nuclear is No Solution

Connected to my post yesterday, the “solution” of nuclear power is no solution. Those who tout it as “alternative” low emissions energy source are ignoring the deadly threat of radioactive waste. There’s a lot of sound and fury about building new reactors, but most of it is bluster, not building. Make no mistake. Nuclear power is about money going into pockets, not about climate change. Nuclear Information and Resource Service has an extensive fact sheet that addresses the issues.

But Paul Fusco has photographed the actual human toll of Chernobyl. On April 26, 1986, “Chernobyl reactor number 4 unleashed a plague that emptied cities, condemned entire regions and seeped invisibly into the bodies of those exposed to its destructive presence.” Here you can really see why nuclear power is NOT the answer for life on earth.

Alternately, you can watch the slide show of Fusco’s Chernobyl Legacy. These are really tough images to see, yet they are also hauntingly beautiful. More profound than the greatest poetry. You will come away changed, I guarantee. Immerse yourself in something that could affect every human being on the planet.

PNAC’s Trainwreck

“We’re not in a recession,” Bush said in response to a reporter’s question at a press conference Tuesday in New Orleans with the prime minister of Canada and president of Mexico. “We’re in a slowdown. We grew in the fourth quarter of last year. We haven’t had first quarter growth statistics yet. But there’s no question we’re in a slowdown. And people are concerned about it, obviously. I’m — of all the three of us standing up here, I’m probably the most concerned about the slowdown.”

Slowdown? That’s like saying two trains traveling at 100 miles per hour that crash is keeping them from moving forward.

Yet I think that this idiocy has penetrated the mindset of all three presidential candidates. One is a weathervane neocon; one is manipulative neocon light; and the third is an eloquent windbag. None of them has convinced me he or she is fit to lead the nation in these unprecedented times of challenge. In fact, no pundit has yet convinced me that whomever gets “elected” in the fall will steer America in a new direction or move to rectify the mounting atrocities in Southwest Asia. I see the entire election fiasco, the hundreds of hours of radio, television, print, and digital media devoted to elections as a huge distraction, Like watching cats hump while the house burns down. My sense is that all three candidates are all elitist, regardless of rhetoric, and that they are all clueless about the planet’s critical, I daresay dire, situation. Nothing will change because money, corruption, and outdated practices (i.e. electoral college) have taken over the entire process.

How did these trains collide? Back on April 14 William Rivers Pitt wrote a piece that sheds more light on the conspiracy of idiots with their plan to bring America (and the rest of the planet) to its knees. It hints at a collusion between everyone who gets a paycheck from taxpayers in Washington against the populace he or she was “elected” to serve. Instead, they are all three beholden to the invisible puppeteers. The truth is that money drives all politicos (regardless of eloquence) forward while the threat of getting snuffed pushes them from behind. And big oil’s fingerprints are all over this. Big Oil (and Big Fascists like G.H.W. Bush and Cheney) has kept the truth of the end of cheap, abundant oil out of the light.

Think about it. Every time you pump fuel into your vehicle, you’re actually financing terrorism because the Saudis (who furnish most of the U.S. oil supply) are financing known terrorist operations all over the planet. The same Saudis who the Bush administration flew out of the U.S. when all other planes were grounded after 9/11. There is an abundance of evidence that Bush and and Saudis were complicit in the attack.

Exerpt from Mr. Pitt’s article:

Before delivering his State of the Union address in January of 1998, President Clinton received a letter containing one explicit demand: invade Iraq immediately and overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein.

“The only acceptable strategy,” read this letter, “is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy. We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration’s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power.”

The letter was written by a group called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a right-wing organization originally formed by William Kristol, Republican pundit and son of neoconservative movement founder Irving Kristol, and by long-time GOP think-tanker Gary Schmitt. PNAC’s original sources of funding in 1998 included notorious far-right groups such as the Scaife Foundations, the Olin Foundation and the Bradley Foundation.

Nobody had ever heard of PNAC in 1998, and thanks to the assertions and demands written in their January letter to Clinton, nobody really took them seriously after hearing of them. Invade Iraq? Were they serious? The very same year this PNAC letter was delivered to Clinton, a book co-authored by former President George H. W. Bush and his NSA Director Brent Scowcroft, articulated the consensus foreign policy opinion on the matter, specifically by explaining their decision not to occupy Iraq and topple its government during the first Gulf War.

“Trying to eliminate Saddam,” Bush Sr. and Scowcroft wrote in 1998, “extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in ‘mission creep,’ and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs … We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well.”

“Under those circumstances, furthermore,” they continued, “we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.’s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different - and perhaps barren - outcome.”

Sane people in all areas of government agreed with this analysis, leaving PNAC to wriggle in ridiculed obscurity for another two years. A trio of events transpired upon the advent of this new millennium, however, that served to catapult PNAC into power and prominence. First, the group delivered its flagship policy argument in September of 2000, in a report titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” Three months later, the Supreme Court delivered the White House into the hands of both GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney. Third, the attacks of 9/11 delivered the United States and the world into the hands of madmen, all of whom turned out to be PNAC alumni.

Among these were:

• Bush’s current vice president, Dick Cheney;
• Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby;
• Bush’s former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld;
• Bush’s former deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz;
• Bush’s former special assistant and senior national security adviser, Elliot Abrams;
• Bush’s former ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad;
• Bush’s former deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage;
• Bush’s former UN ambassador, John Bolton;
• Bush’s former assistant defense secretary and member of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle;
• Bush’s former deputy secretary of state, Robert Zoellick; and,
• Bush’s former defense policy adviser, Eliot Cohen.

The Republican Party’s 2000 presidential platform was eerily similar in both tone and content to PNAC’s September report of that year, and the Bush administration’s national security policy doctrine, published just after the 9/11 attacks, almost copied the precepts of that PNAC report wholesale.

What specifically did this September 2000 PNAC report argue in favor of? As stated on p. 26 of “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” the Hussein regime in Iraq provided a ready excuse for, but not reason for, invasion and occupation. “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification,” argued the report, “the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

The removal of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of an American protectorate in Iraq, by way of American military attack, actually served three larger PNAC purposes: 1) restructure America’s budgetary priorities by stripping funds from myriad domestic policies and redistributing those funds into a massive increase in military spending; 2) establish a massive and permanent American presence in Iraq by building several US military bases within that occupied nation; and, 3) use these bases as the staging area for the invasion and overthrow of other Middle Eastern regimes, including allies of the United States. Read the rest>>