MEMORIAL DAY MESSAGE

On this Memorial Day I would like to remind others about the losses that we must acknowledge.

Although the primary focus of Memorial Day is upon those who have given the ultimate sacrifice to their country while serving in the military, we must also recognize those who have given their all in defense of their working brothers and sisters.

The names of those who have sacrificed their lives is too long to put down here and those who have suffered from their support of unionism is even longer than that. And what have these sacrifices wrought??????????????

Everyone of these Labor Heros would be turning in their graves if they truly comprehended the current state of affairs within the labor movement in the U.S.

Did I say Labor Movemment???????? I should have said Labor Stagnation. The facts speak for themselves. There has been a steady decline in the percentage of Union membership in this country. We are on the verge of a collapse of "organized" labor.

What I have noticed is that the powers that be in the labor unions are constantly changing their approach to everything except what the problem is. I see the problem as being that the leadership has lost sight of the fact that the rank & file is the backbone of the movement and it is being ignored. The rank & file are being denied access and accountability to the leadership and are percieved as being there only for the enrichment of the leadership.

Union leaders across the board are effectively picking the pockets of their members by taking salaries that dwarf the earnings of the rank & file whose blood, sweat and tears provide the capital for such exborbitant salaries and the realted expenses. John Bowers of the Longshoreman took home over $400,000 last year and our own President Doug McCarron was rewarded with over $350,000.

Meanwhile the rank & file continue to try and eek out another dollar or two from the contractors during negotiaitions of contracts that some don't even get to vote on. Where is the accountability?????? Where is the incentive to join??????????? Be assured that there are advantages such as the medical coverage and the retirement. But as management and our bargainging teams continue to dilute both we are left with less and less persuasive reasons to come and join "the brotherhood"

The time has come for a "retro-revolution", not only in this land but primarily within our building trades communities. We are the ones who actually are still producing tangible goods. We are the ones who erect office buildings, parking garages, retail outlets, multi-family and residential housing. These are jobs that cannot be outsourced to India or China These are tradeable commodities that our labor is producing and we are not reaping the benefits.

When are we going to wake up and say "ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!!". Bigger is not necessarily better but consolidation is also not the evil that it is portrayed to be. There is a common ground that we must find and occupy for our benefit and the benefit of the generations of workers to come. Just as those who came before, who gave of themselves to whatever degree, must be remembered for their sacrifices, we must make sacrifices for the next generation of workers who will follow.

Those who continue in our footsteps must have a legacy and a tradition to uphold or all will be lost to the corporados and their counterparts upon the national political stage. So please join me in remembering those who gave it all in order to make it better for their children and their children's children. We are responsible for what happens next. Be prepared for that burden and accept it gratefully and willingly.

When our holiday, Labor Day. comes around in 3 months, we may very well be looking at a whole new face of labor. This is a pivotal point in labor history and you can be a part of it or you can sit it out. Please join me in writing this next chapter. Solidify your part in the next step that labor and the carpenters take, get involved and make a difference.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend and let's celebrate our victory at the end of summer as we remember our labor leaders and activists who did what they felt they had to in order to gain a foothold for the working men and women of this country.

Thank You.................In Brotherhood & Solidarity......................Scott

The Anti-Bush Channel

The Anti-Bush Channel
Richard Bradley
May 27, 2005



Richard Bradley is the former executive editor of George magazine. He is author of American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr., and Harvard Rules: The Struggle for the Soul of the World's Most Powerful University."


Sometime soon, the cable channel Showtime will air a short film about birth control that contradicts everything the Bush administration believes about sex ed. “Toothpaste,” which is apparently teen slang for condoms, focuses on two teenage girls considering sex with their boyfriends. The film was made by four high-school girls from Mission, Texas, a town where some 37 girls out of every ,1000 become pregnant by the age of 17—an unusually high rate. So, while the Bush administration’s official policy towards sex ed is abstinence—and some faith-based groups that receive federal funds for sex education actually discourage condom use—“Toothpaste” doesn’t hesitate to endorse condoms.

In an age when pop culture is obsessively scrutinized by right-wing crusaders looking for a political fight to pick, Showtime’s decision to air "Toothpaste" takes guts. That’s especially true because Showtime’s corporate parent, Viacom, also owns CBS, which famously tangled with the White House (and lost) over the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident.

Not content with overseeing broadcast television, the FCC is now considering regulating cable. Conservative groups such as the American Family Association and the Parents Television Council have been pressuring members of Congress to extend the agency’s authority to monitor cable content, and Republicans such as Alaska senator Ted Stevens and Texas congressman Joe Barton, along with new FCC head Kevin Martin, like the idea. Meanwhile, over at the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, new head Kenneth Tomlinson is pushing public broadcasting to the right. There’s a chill in the airwaves.

But in recent years, Showtime has built a reputation for programming that rejects the White House’s vision of a blander America and occasionally challenges it directly. A couple of years ago, Showtime aired “The Reagans” miniseries after CBS caved to conservative pressure and dropped it. More recently, in this season's finale of “The L Word,” feminist icon Gloria Steinem explicitly blasted the Bushies. In a myriad of ways, Showtime has become the anti-Bush channel.

Probably the foremost example is Showtime’s explicit sex, and more particularly, its non-judgmental portrayal of homosexuality. Twenty years ago, Showtime aired “Brothers,” one of the first sitcoms with a gay lead; a few years back, it aired Armistead Maupin’s “More Tales of the City” and a drama about the assassination of San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk. Now Showtime features “Queer as Folk” and “The L Word,” both of which have been described as “the gay ‘Sex in the City’—meaning unabashedly sexually explicit.

When you look at Showtime’s lineup in its entirety, however, it becomes clear that it’s not just homosexuality or sex that that dominates the channel, but rather a portrait of an America more diverse, more complicated and more realistic that what you’ll read in, say, Lynne Cheney’s kids’ books. “Huff” deals with a psychiatrist whose life is devastated when a young patient commits suicide in his office. “Family Business” is about “an average guy trying to make a living in the adult film industry,” as Showtime’s website puts it. “Weeds” deals with a dysfunctional suburban California family; "Out of Order" was another portrayal of a heterosexual marriage that isn't all it's cracked up to be. Meanwhile, “Penn & Teller: Bullshit” watches as the two performers debunk “nonsense peddlers and how they operate.” In Showtime’s words, the show stands in opposition to “our increasingly anti-intellectual, anti-science culture.” Given its attitude towards Darwin, stem cells and global warming, the Bush White House may be the greatest manifestation and promoter of that culture.

I doubt that Showtime has become the anti-Bush channel on purpose. Every cable channel works diligently to build a brand, and Showtime has done so by pushing the cultural envelope—it just happens to have done so in a time of cultural repression. Let us hope not only that Showtime keeps up the good work—but that it is allowed to.

ACLU ONLINE

An historic, pivotal battle over the Patriot Act is now underway. This summer, America will need your help as never before, as we work to restore liberties lost to the Patriot Act, and to stem the tide of further expansions.

Take Action!Act now and urge your members of Congress to oppose expansion of the Patriot Act. We have already begun to fight. With your help, the ACLU won a small victory this week when the Senate Intelligence Committee reversed its decision to vote on legislation to expand the Patriot Act in secret session without any public hearing. And while they did hold a public hearing on Tuesday, the Committee will still be voting on the legislation in a closed door session today. If we are going to beat back this climate of secrecy and slow the rush to eliminate checks and balances, we will need to work tirelessly and together as Patriot Act legislation makes its way through Congress this summer. Proposed expansions to the Patriot Act include new FBI powers to order disclosure of a broad array of personal records without judicial approval in advance. Another provision would broaden the government’s ability to monitor your mail. Not surprisingly, the sponsors of these attacks on liberty are deploying the same tactics used in the 45 days after September 11, 2001, when the Patriot Act was rushed through Congress with little to no debate. You have helped the ACLU educate and rally millions of Americans who now realize that the Patriot Act went too far, too fast. We’ve been successful in generating a growing clamor of bipartisan concern over the Patriot Act. The time to make our voices heard is now.In the coming weeks, we will keep you informed of developments in Congress and our essential efforts to make sure the Patriot Act receives real reform, not a rubber stamp. There will be much work for us all. You can begin to get involved today.Take action now and urge your members of Congress to oppose expansion of the Patriot Act. Learn more about the Patriot Act.

Documents released last week by the Department of Defense reveal more cases of abuse of detainees, including mock executions and use of a religious symbol to taunt detainees. "While the White House blames Newsweek magazine for damaging America's reputation in the Muslim world, the Army's own investigations show systemic abuse and humiliation of Muslim men by U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "If we are to truly repair America's standing, the Bush Administration must first hold accountable high-ranking officials who allow the continuing abuse and torture of detainees." One investigation into abuses at Rifles Base in Ramadi, Iraq details an incident in July 2003 in which an Army captain took an Iraqi welder into the desert, told him to dig his own grave, verbally threatened to kill him and had other soldiers stage a shooting of the man. Another document dated July 15, 2004 related an incident involving two Iraqi men detained in Samarra. The men were driven to a bridge, where a platoon leader instructed three soldiers to push the detainees into the river. One of the Iraqi men could not swim and drowned. The body was recovered by the family 12 days later and buried. One soldier indicated to investigators that the chain of command had instructed the soldiers not to cooperate with the investigation and to deny that they pushed the men into the river. To date, more than 35,000 pages of government documents have been released in response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The ACLU has been posting these documents online at www.aclu.org/torturefoia.

The FBI and local police are engaging in intimidation based on political association and are improperly investigating law-abiding human rights and advocacy groups, according to documents obtained by the ACLU through a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed last week. The ACLU charged that the FBI is wrongfully withholding thousands of pages of documents, and filed a lawsuit on May 18 in federal court to compel the FBI to comply with the FOIA requests. The few documents received to date through the December FOIA requests shed light on the FBI’s misuse of Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) to engage in political surveillance. The FOIAs seek two kinds of information: the actual FBI files of groups and individuals targeted for speaking out; and information about how the practices and funding structure of the JTTFs may be encouraging rampant and unwarranted spying. "The FBI is taking tax dollars and resources established to fight terrorism and instead spying on innocent Americans who have done nothing more than speak out or practice their faith," Beeson said. "By recruiting the local police into these activities, they are also sowing dissent and suspicion in communities around the country." The JTTF partnerships between the FBI and local police, in which local officers are "deputized" as federal agents, are intended to identify and monitor individuals and groups implicated in terrorism. But the ACLU charges that these task forces are allowing local police officers to target peaceful political and religious groups with no connection to terrorism. Learn more and take action. Quiz: Could they have a file on you?

Over the past three years, the federal government has awarded more than one million dollars to the "Silver Ring Thing," an abstinence-only organization that describes its mission as "offering a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as the best way to live a sexually pure life." Last week, in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and Jenner & Block LLP against the federal government for funding religious activities in an abstinence-only program, the Silver Ring Thing substantially altered and removed religious content from its website. During the "Silver Ring Thing's" flagship three-hour program members testify about how accepting Jesus Christ improved their lives, quote Bible passages, and urge audience members to ask the Lord Jesus Christ to come into their lives. In addition, the official silver ring of the program is inscribed with a reference to the biblical verse "1 Thess. 4:3-4," which reads "God wants you to be holy, so you should keep clear of all sexual sin. Then each of you will control your body and live in holiness and honor." The "Silver Ring Thing" is an extensive, nationwide effort that uses government funds for aggressive religious recruitment. Since April 2003, it has held three events in the Boston area and is scheduled to hold a fourth in October of this year. But, it has also held events in Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin and is scheduled to visit Georgia, Ohio, and North Carolina, among other states, in the coming year. "A sanitized version of the website does not change the fact that the "Silver Ring Thing" in its core programming is nothing more than a vehicle for converting young people to Christianity," said Sarah Wunsch, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts. "Taxpayer dollars should play no part in such a program." Get more information on the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom program.

Holocaust Survivor

Holocaust SurvivorLeaving US - SeesWhat´s Coming
By Joey Picador
Justice For None.com
5-27-5

One of our neighbors is moving. I´ve been in this neighborhood for about six years now, but didn't really know them very well at all - just waves and nods, mostly.

So I heard the moving van pull up this morning. When I got home this evening I happened to spy my neighbor(he´s like 85 years old - I don´t know exactly, but he´s old, talks and moves very slowly) standing on thesidewalk next to the van. I walked over and shook his hand, and we started talking. I asked him where he was moving, and he said, "Back to Germany."

I had been stationed in Germany for two years while inthe military, so I lit up, and commented about how beautiful the country was, and inquired if he was going back because he missed it."No," he answered me. "I´m going back because I'veseen this before."

He then commenced to explain that when he was a kid, he watched with his family in fear as Hitler's government committed atrocity after atrocity, and no one was willing to say anything. He said the news refused to question the government, and the ones who did were not in the newspaper business much longer. He said good neighbors, people he had known all his life, turned against his family and other Jews, grabbing on to the hate and superiority"as if they were starved for it" (his words).

He said he was too old to see it happen right in front of his eyes again, and too old to do anything aboutit, so he was taking his family back to Europe onThursday where they would be safe from George W. Bush and his neocons. He seemed resolute, but troubled, nonetheless, as if being too young on one end and too old on the other to fight what he saw happening was wearing on him.

I gotta tell you - it was chilling. I let him talk,and the whole time, my gut was churning, like I had mutated butterflies in my stomach. When he was finished, he shook my hand, gripping it really hard,until his knuckles turned white and he was shaking. He looked me in the eyes, hard, and said, "I will pray for your family and your country." He let go of my hand and hobbled away.

I have related this event to you in the hopes it will serve as a cautionary anecdote about the state of our Union, and to illustrate the path we Americans are being led down by a group of fanatics bent on global economic and military dominion.

When a man who survived the fruits of fascism decides its time to leave THIS country because he´s seeing the same patterns that led to the Holocaust and other Nazi horrors beginning to form here, it is time for us to recognize the underlying evil inherent in the actions of those who claim they work for all Americans, and for all mankind. And it is incumbent upon all Americans, Red and Blue, Republican and Democrat, to stop them.

GREAT QUOTES / 6

I hope you've been enjoying my collection of quotes. Usually they reflect some point or aspect of wisdom. However occasionally a quote becomes available that also makes the point on the opposite side of the wisdom coin. Such is the case of the first quote of this group...........Scott


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GEORGE BUSH - See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.
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Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler - Albert Einstein


"A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way." - John Tudor


Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects. - Will Rogers


If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. - Kurt Vonnegut


Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. -- Edmund Burke


"That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world." - John Adams


"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid." President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954


An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. - Psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl, who lived through four concentration camps in World War II


I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws andupon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. No constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it - Judge Learned Hand, 1944


"Why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth." - Will Rogers


The absurd is born of the confrontation between the human call and the unreasonable silence of the world - Albert Camus


"I know up on the top you are seeing great sights, but down at the bottom we too should have rights." - Dr. Seuss


Everybody's an authority in a free land. - Husker Du


Journalism: a profession whose business is to explain to others what it really does not understand. - Lord Northcliffe


It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. - Albert Einstein


"There is not one wise man in twenty that will praise himself" - William Shakespere


"The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard."-- Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day

THE BIGGEST MEDIA SIN

It feels good to be back on line. I've been down for the past week doing some computer upgrades and getting new programs and firewalls installed. I'm up and running again and am looking forward to the challenges ahead of me.

I am still looking for campaign contributions for my run for Western District V.P. of the UBC (carpenter's union). Anything that you can do to help would be greatly appreciated. Only through strong progressive union leadership can we hope to be able to support progressive candidates for public office. The labor movement is in a state of flux and we need to take this opportunity to gain control of the national offices and exert our influence. Howard Dean said that sucess takes showing up. I've SHOWN UP and here is how you can join me.

Thanks...................In Brotherhood & Solidarity.....................PEACE.....................Scott


Elect Brineman V.P.
Box 752
Yelm, WA, 98597

electbrinemanvp@hotmail.com

electbrinemanvp.blogspot.com

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Here's something that got lost in my cyber backlog. This came from the Progressive Review.


WHICH AMERICAN political party best reflects the views of a majority of citizens on the Iraq war, environmental issues, health care, campaign financing, population growth, genetically modified foods, and marijuana use?

The answer, based on various polls, is the Green Party.

That you may not be aware of this points to a problem with American journalism far more important than plagiarism, blogs, or Fox News, namely that our media - for all its professed objectivity - is stunningly biased towards the views of the American elite and particularly those who buy space in their papers or time on their channels.

On the environmental issue alone, the Green Party has been proven by the latest scientific data far more prescient and sane than either of the older parties. Yet the media prefers to dismiss, discredit or disregard the Greens as well as leaders who share their views such as David Cobb or Ralph Nader.

But let's assume for a moment that one is not entitled to coverage simply for being right and let's adopt the childish media view that the only ideas that count are those that demonstrate sufficient strength at the polls. We're still left with all those Americans who agree with the Greens and don't know it:

- The 52% of Americans who think Iraq war was not worth fighting.

- The resolutions critical of the Patriot Act that have been passed in 378 communities in 43 states including six state-wide resolutions.

- The 68% who find the "problems of the global environment: global warming, destruction of rainforests, destruction of species, loss of ozone layer" to be very or extremely important to their life.

- The 62% of Americans who support universal health coverage as opposed to the current system.

- The 68% of the public who support a version of public campaign financing used in several states.

- The 78% who think population is growing too fast.

- The 80% or more of Americans who believe "protecting the environment will require most of us to make major changes in the way we live," that an underlying cause of environmental problems is that "the way we live produces too much waste," that "we focus too much on getting what we want now and not enough on future generations," that "we need to treat the earth as a living system," and that "Americans should have more respect and reverence for Nature."

- The 61% of the American public who oppose arresting and jailing nonviolent marijuana smokers.

- The 76% who believe that large companies have too much concentrated power.

- The 73% who agree with the statement: "I regard myself as a citizen of the world as well as a citizen of the United States."

Why do we hardly ever see any of these folks on cable television, on the op ed pages of the Washington Post or the New York Times, or mentioned in political analyses? It would be interesting, for example, for a columnist to attempt to square the red vs. blue, Christian vs. secular dichotomies currently in fashion with some of the data above. Or to ask the question: do our elites want us to hate each other so we don't find out what's really on our minds? And what we have in common?

The Harris polling people report that over the past ten years 31 million Americans have had someone close to them die after the removal of life support systems, but the media would have us believe it only happened once in Florida. 30,999,999 true stories left untold so one more divisive myth could be created.

Here then is the real sin of America's media: It has created an America it chooses to see, not the one that exists. It has denied access to its pages and its channels to voices representing the majority or even greater percentages of Americans on key issues. And it has made us dislike each other even when on many of the critical issues that it ignores or distorts we have much in common.

100,000 Signatures Needed on Downing Street Letter

By Congressman John Conyers
dailyKos.com
Friday 27 May 2005


I have written to you in this space on a number of occasions about my profound concern about the implications of the "Downing Street Memo," which actually consists of the minutes of a July 2002 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers. During this meeting, Blair and his advisers reveal details about conversations with their American counterparts. These details cast substantial doubt on the honesty of contemporaneous claims made by the Administration to Congress and to the American people about the Iraq war.

First, the memo appears to directly contradict the Administration's assertions to Congress and the American people that it would exhaust all options before going to war. According to the minutes, in July 2002, the Administration had already decided to go to war against Iraq.
Second, a debate has raged in the United States over the last year and one half about whether the obviously flawed intelligence that falsely stated that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was a mere "failure" or the result of intentional manipulation to reach foreordained conclusions supporting the case for war. The memo appears to close the case on that issue stating that in the United States the intelligence and facts were being "fixed" around the decision to go to war.

These are not routine questions within a partisan give and take. Under the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 8), the Congress has the sole power to declare war. If the Executive Branch deceives the Congress in this duty, it represents an attack of our democracy of the most serious nature. These Constitutional questions are not going away and must be answered forthrightly and completely by this Administration.

I and 88 of my colleagues (that number is growing - more on that soon) asked the Administration to come clean about these troubling allegations. Our inquiries have been met with silence.

The press has also been negligent in giving this matter the attention it deserves.

I am committed to seeing this through until we get the answers we deserve. But I need your help.

The conventional wisdom, which unfortunately governs Washington's political discourse, hold that the American people have long ago made peace with the mistakes or deceptions which led us into war. Help me prove them all wrong. I want to show the White House, the Press and my congressional colleagues that nothing could be further from the truth.

That is why today I am giving you the opportunity to sign on to a letter asking the same questions of the President that now nearly 100 Members of Congress have asked. If I get at least 100,000 signatures on this, I will personally deliver the letter to the White House.

If you want to sign on to this letter, go to my website.

I also want you to know that I am exploring many, many avenues to get to the truth about this matter.

Thank you in advance for your help and assistance.

Stand and Be Heard

By William Rivers Pitt
Progressive Democrats of America


Next week, Progressive Democrats of America, in partnership with United for Peace and Justice and Code Pink, will initiate a nationwide campaign to demand that Congress and George W. Bush immediately and without delay implement and execute a plan to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq. This campaign will involve calls, letters, faxes and direct lobbying of members of Congress. This National Call-In Week will begin on May 31st and continue through June 3rd.

Take action on this now.

At the center of this campaign is House Continuing Resolution 35, authored by Representative Lynn Woolsey. H. Con. Resolution 35 calls for Bush and Congress to: (1) Develop and implement a plan to begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Iraq; (2) Develop and implement a plan for reconstructing Iraq's civil and economic infrastructure; (3) Convene an emergency meeting of Iraq's leadership, Iraq's neighbors, the United Nations, and the Arab League to create an international peacekeeping force in Iraq and to replace U.S. armed forces, and (4) Provide the Iraqi people the opportunity to completely control their internal affairs.

Read the text of Rep. Woolsey's H. Con. Res. 35.

The occupation of Iraq has lasted some 800 days. In that time, 1,653 American soldiers have been killed, along with 180 soldiers from other nations of the ‘Coalition of the Willing,' putting the butcher's bill at 1,833 in total. Ten times that number have been wounded, many of them permanently. The most common injuries are to the brain; when a roadside bomb goes off in Iraq next to an American armored personnel carrier, the soldiers inside get their brains jarred within their Kevlar helmets. They come away without a scratch, but are never, ever the same again.

More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed during this invasion and occupation. There is no accurate numbering of the dead, because we don't do body counts. At least as many have been wounded. They are shot by snipers, strafed by helicopters, buried under the rubble of their houses by bombs, incinerated by fire, and left to rot in the streets of cities like Falluja to be gnawed on by dogs. The only crime these people committed against America, in the words of MP George Galloway, was to be born Iraqi.

Hospitals in Iraq are without trained medical personnel and without doctors. Ambulances are targeted for attack by American forces because they are suspected of transporting ‘insurgents.' Hospital bathrooms are filled to the walls with urine and feces because the plumbing does not work. Buildings that were blasted two years ago remain piles of shattered cement. Electrical power in the best neighborhoods is sporadic at best, and almost nonexistent everywhere else. Citizens of this oil-rich nation sit in endless lines for two days to receive their rationed 7.5 liters of gasoline, because the American corporations that have taken control of the petroleum infrastructure are not pumping any oil. They are sitting on it, hoarding it, keeping it for themselves like some kind of noxious nest egg. Unemployment stands at 70%.

And the rage there builds. Every day it builds, festering in the streets like the corpses left unburied after the echoes from bombs and bullets fade. The keepers of the cleansed consensus in the media tell us those who attack our troops are Ba'athist holdouts and foreign fighters who have come to Iraq for the pleasure of killing American soldiers, but this is only a small part of the story. Everyday Iraqi citizens who would never have dreamed of doing violence to anyone have taken up arms and now fight to rid their nation of its occupiers. Iraqi citizens who have seen their wives, husbands, children, parents, brothers, sisters and friends turned into red smears across what used to be the family dinner table now drink deep the bitter dregs of vengeance, because that is all they have left to them.

There is in the Bible a verse to describe what has been done to Iraq by the Bush administration, what has been done to our soldiers and their citizens, what has been done to us all. "For they have sown the wind," reads Hosea 8:7, "and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal." There is no freedom to be found in Iraq. There is no democracy. For sure and certain, there are no weapons of mass destruction, nor was there ever a threat posed by that nation against ours. There is only the whirlwind, and if we do not put an end to the crime that was this invasion and is this occupation, that whirlwind will consume us in fire and blood and tears.

It is enough. By all that we hold true and dear, it is more than enough. This must be ended.
Rep. Woolsey's efforts to bring national attention to the need for an end to this occupation of Iraq made it to the floor of the House of Representatives on May 25th. Rep. Woolsey offered an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill which asked Bush to develop a plan for the withdrawal of American troops. Though the amendment was defeated, it garnered the support of a large majority of House Democrats. Perhaps more encouraging was the fact that five Republicans – Harold Coble (NC), Walter Jones (NC), John Duncan (TN), Jim Leach (IA) and Ron Paul (TX) – likewise voted in favor of the amendment. This happened with little advance warning and little time to get the grassroots mobilized, yet PDA joined with several groups and was able to successfully organize activists to urge Representatives to support the amendment.

There is daylight here. Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son Casey to this invasion and occupation, who lost her son after Bush proclaimed "Mission Accomplished," believes in her heart that there is daylight here. "Members of Congress know that Iraq is a mistake," says Sheehan. "I know, because I have spoken to many members of the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans alike, who all acknowledge that Iraq is a catastrophe. It has been encouraging to me to see that conscientious Republicans have begun to split with their party line on such things as the Bolton nomination and the so-called 'nuclear option.' It is time that Republican members of Congress break with their party and their President on the issue of Iraq, and work with like-minded Democratic members of Congress to get our troops out of the quagmire as soon as safely possible."

In the name of all that you hold dear and true, in the name of the soldiers who have fallen and the soldiers who still stand waiting to come home, in the name of the men, women and children of Iraq, both the living and the dead, in the name of a justice that has been all too absent of late, I urge you to join us in our campaign next week. Call, write, stomp and shout to demand this catastrophe be brought to an end. It can be done, and it must be done. In your hands lies a better future for us, for them, for the world entire.

Ask your Representatives to support Rep. Lynn Woolsey's resolution to end the occupation. In the name of all that you hold dear and true, stand and be heard.

Read PDA's offered plan for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and sign our petition.


To join the PDA grassroots network, go to:

News and Views you don't have to lose:

On Memorial Day.. What does it mean to support the troops?

Well over 1 million soldiers have served in Afghanistan and Iraq since September 11, 2001, according to the Pentagon. A full third of those million have served more than once. In addition to the 1,600-plus soldiers who have been killed in Iraq, more than 12,000 troops have been wounded and needed to seek medical treatment. Soldiers who have suffered psychologically are more difficult to count - and often more difficult to treat. A 2004 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine pointed out that 17 percent of Iraq veterans were exhibiting signs of major depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But according to that study, less than 40 percent of those soldiers sought treatment for PTSD, due to the stigma associated with its diagnosis. According to Steve Robinson at the National Gulf War Resource Center, the military needs to be doing much more to educate about and treat PTSD.
Once soldiers arrive home, they face new difficulties. According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, although veterans compose only 9 percent of the U.S. population, they represent 23 percent of our nation's homeless. More than 500,000 veterans experience homelessness each year.
The White House isn't getting kinder to vets, either. In January of 2003, just prior to the March invasion of Iraq, President Bush suspended the health-care benefits of 200,000 veterans. The Bush administration's proposed 2006 budget would charge a new $250 enrollment fee to 2.2 million veterans, and would double vets' prescription drug co-pay, which could limit access to those drugs for veterans living in poverty. The budget also proposes to cut $351 million from veterans' nursing homes, and $4 million from medical and prosthetic research.
Source: The Evangelical Fundamental bigot's website: Sojourners



In Herold's view, each of the world's seven largest publicly traded oil companies will begin seeing production declines within the next 48 months or so.

May 13, 2005 --The analysts at John S. Herold Inc.-- a research-only firm that issues valuations on several hundred publicly traded energy companies -- are making predictions even bolder than their call on Enron. [This article appeared on the Herold web site as “Peer Group New Source Production Portfolios: 2005 New Source Production Portfolios,” but is available only to Herold’s paid subscribers. --J.R.] They have begun estimating when each of the world's biggest energy companies will peak in its ability to produce oil and gas. Herold's work shows that the best minds in the energy industry are accepting the reality that the globe is reaching (or has already reached) the limit of its own ability to produce ever increasing amounts of oil.
Many analysts have estimated when the earth will reach its peak oil production. Others have done estimates on when individual countries will hit their peaks. Herold is the first Wall Street firm to predict when specific energy companies will hit their peaks.
* Oil prices -- which are already at record levels -- will continue rising as demand outstrips supply. In a few years, gasoline prices of $2 per gallon could seem like a bargain.
* State-owned oil companies like Mexico's Pemex, Venezuela's PDVSA (Petroléos de Venezuela) and Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco may be unable to increase their production enough to meet burgeoning global demand.
Another energy industry veteran, John Olson, co-manager of Houston Energy Partners, an energy hedge fund, agrees. Olson believes that Herold's predictions about peak production are "very significant. It is perhaps the first cannon ball over the bow of a big tanker."
Last month, the president of China's Sinopec Economics and Development Research Institute, said that between January and September of 2004, motor fuel use in his country soared by 20 percent. Yu also predicted that China's oil consumption will double over the next 15 years to more than 10 million barrels of oil per day. Meanwhile, the Energy Information Administration expects India's oil consumption to increase by nearly 30 percent over the next five years.
..virtually everyone else in the oil industry -- agrees that the era of cheap energy is over and that America must begin adapting to the new geopolitical realities that come with that fact.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/03/15/herold/index_np.html (subscribers only)or http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/031505G.shtml
Source via: http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2818/2/



The lies that led to war


Comment: and WHY NO OUTRAGE?


A leaked British memo, and other documents, make it clear that Bush intended all along to invade Iraq -- and lied about it to the American people. The full gravity of his offense has not yet sunk in.By Juan ColeWhy has there not been more outrage in the United States at these revelations? Many Americans may have chosen to overlook the lies and deceptions the Bush administration used to justify the war because they still believe the Iraq war might have made them at least somewhat safer. When they realize that this hope, too, is unfounded, and that in fact the war has greatly increased the threat of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, their wrath may be visited on the president and the political party that has brought America the biggest foreign-policy disaster since Vietnam.

...Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill described to Ron Susskind in "The Price of Loyalty" the first Bush national security meeting of principals on Jan. 30, 2001. He writes that after Bush announced he would simply disengage from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and "unleash Sharon," he made it clear that Iraq would be a priority.
...We know about this episode from the public account of Sir Christopher Meyer, then the U.K. ambassador in Washington. Meyer reported that in the two weeks after Sept. 11, the Bush national security team argued back and forth over whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan. It appears from his account that Bush was leaning toward the Iraq option.
...When British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in Washington on Sept. 20, 2001, he was alarmed. If Blair had consulted MI6 about the relative merits of the Afghanistan and Iraq options, we can only imagine what well-informed British intelligence officers in Pakistan were cabling London about the dangers of leaving bin Laden and al-Qaida in place while plunging into a potential quagmire in Iraq. Fears that London was a major al-Qaida target would have underlined the risks to the United Kingdom of an "Iraq first" policy in Washington.

The memo reported a July 2002 meeting of key British Cabinet and other officials, held when Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the British intelligence service, MI6, returned from a trip to Washington. It revealed that the decision to go to war had already been made by that point: "Military action was now seen as inevitable,"

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8891.htmhttp://snipurl.com/f1fr



Following FAIR's call for more mainstream coverage of the "smoking gun memo"--the secret British document containing new evidence that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify its plan to invade Iraq--a steady trickle of news reports have appeared. But that coverage has been downplayed in general and is still completely absent from the nightly news.http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2520



The Right to demonstrate and freedom of speech

On the waters of Elliott Bay last year something very analogous to this horror story happened to Glen Milner. Glen is faced with a $10,100 fine from the Coast Guard, which apparently cannot be appealed to any court. His only recourse is appealing to a biased Coast Guard official.

The motive of the Coast Guard is clear. They want to deny Glen and others their right to demonstrate against the fleet during Seafair. Though Glen has been doing this with others for a number of years, last year the Coast Guard decided to get tough.

Glen has written to Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, Jay Inslee, the ACLU and others. The ACLU doesn't think there is much they can do about this, though they are, of course, sympathetic. Staff people from the politicians' offices are trying to do what they can.

Source: Tom Krebsbach of Lake Forest Park SNOW

US interrogators beat to death man they believed innocent

An investigatory report by the New York Times on the deaths of two prisoners held by the U.S. military at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in December 2002.

A copy of a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, which was obtained by the New York Times. The Times obtained the copy of the file from a person involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military's response to the deaths.

see this website to read the report: http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2816/2/



Overseas Basing Commission removes report from web siteMay 19, 2005 --
[Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News reported Thursday that the Overseas Basing Commission had removed a report to Congress after the Department of Defense complained that it disclosed classified information without authorization.

Comment: an empire of bases

-- The commission chair, however, told the *Washington Post* that "The commission is confident that everything in our report was obtained from unclassified sources or settings." -- Aftergood provides a link to a copy of the report on the Federation of American Scientists web site. -- Bases have a cardinal importance in the American way of hegemony.

-- Chalmers Johnson has argued that the base is the essential institution in the practice of empire as developed by the United States: "With the end of the Cold War the huge Eurasian territory between the Balkans and Pakistan, formerly off-limits as the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union, opened up for expansion. America quickly deployed military forces into this critical region and prepared to fight wars with regimes that stood in the way.

During this period of little more than a decade, a vast complex of interests, commitments, and projects was woven together until a new political culture paralleling civil society came into existence. This complex, which I am calling an empire, . . consists of permanent naval bases, military airfields, army garrisons, espionage listening posts, and strategic enclaves on every continent of the globe . . . creating not an empire of colonies but an empire of bases"

(*The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic* [Metropolitan Books, 2004], pp. 22-23). --Mark]

Source: via Mark Jensen, a Professor at PLU
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2815/http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html



Buy Your Gas at Citgo: Join the BUY-cott!

Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation's oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela.

Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela

By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela's democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0516-25.htm



US Defends Disarmament Stance
20 May 2005 -- United Nations - The United States defended itself Friday against charges that it is moving too slowly toward nuclear disarmament, saying it must balance such steps against "our obligations to maintain our own security."
At a month long conference reviewing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, states without nuclear weapons dismissed the Americans' recitation of a long history of warhead and missile reductions, and asked instead what Washington has done lately.
...citing the steps endorsed by the 2000 conference, which also included negotiating a verifiable treaty ending production of nuclear bomb material worldwide, and reducing arms in an "irreversible" way. The Bush administration opposes verification of a bomb-material cutoff, and critics note that the Moscow Treaty is reversible, since warheads need not be destroyed, just stored away.
"Unfortunately, today we see that no progress has been made in the area of those practical steps," said Algeria's Hamza Khelif.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/052105A.shtml


Your local police department may be working with the FBI's JointTerrorist Task Force program. Under this program, local policeare taken away from their regular criminal law enforcement activitiesand used to undertake a wide range of other activities, includingmonitoring of religious activities and infiltration of peace groups,such as American Friends Service Committee and Amnesty International.
Documents obtained by the ACLU prove that the FBI and Joint TerrorismTask Forces (JTTFs) are gathering information about peace groups, andare intimidating anti-war activists through aggressive questioning. Inone example, the Colorado Spring Police Department suppliedinformation on 80 participants of a peaceful demonstration, along withlicense plate numbers of 30 of them, to the Denver IntelligenceBureau. This kind of surveillance is chilling to free speech-protectedactivities. For example, in the days leading up to the 2004 DemocraticNational Convention, officials identifying themselves as JTTF agentsmade "visits" to the homes of several activists as well as theirfriends and family members.
http://aclu.convio.net/site/MessageViewer?em_id=1861.0&dlv_id=6581



2005 Renewable Energy Fair, June 4th

FREE To Attend! 10 AM - 4 PM. Expanded greatly from last year, Shoreline Solar Project's 2nd Annual Renewable Energy Fair is Saturday, June 4th at Meridian Park School, 17077 Meridian Avenue North, Shoreline, WA 98133. This year's fair includes dozens of exhibitors, Responsible fuel vehicles including biodiesel, electric, and hybrids, Solar Electric Power, Solar Hot Water, Green building design & materials, energy efficiency and Energy Star Appliances, workshops and presentations and a newly created KIDS ZONE with lots of fun hands-on learning activities. Special Presentation by the Pacific Science Center!
http://www.shorelinesolar.org/gpage2.html

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewsViewsnolose

Having Fun With Intelligent Design

By David Morris, AlterNet. Posted May 23, 2005.


I have just three words for biology teachers who are wringing their hands as school boards from Kansas to Pennsylvania force them to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution: Get over it.

Here's what I think. Science teachers can comply with the requirement and still offer their students a first-rate education. If done with imagination, the new curriculum could end up stimulating more learning and excitement than their traditional explication of Darwinian theory.

I wouldn't have made this argument 20 years ago. At that time, school boards' interventions were far more restrictive. Science teachers were obliged to inform their students that the story of Genesis was literally true. But in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court put a stop to that by declaring the teaching of creationism in the classroom a violation of the Constitutional insistence on the separation of church and state.

The Court decision spawned a more nuanced and sophisticated approach by anti-evolutionists: intelligent design. Intelligent design is not creationism per se. It holds that higher forms of life are so complex they must have been created by an unspecified higher power. The key word here is "unspecified." Many school board members who support an intelligent design mandate believe that higher power is Jesus. But they aren't forcing anyone to teach that in schools.

What they do require is that teachers offer a critique of evolution and suggest alternative theories about the origins of life. How might a good science teacher comply with these new directives without compromising their principles or their dignity? Or to put it slightly more aggressively, how might a biology teacher educate his or her students while at the same time teach meddling school board members a lesson?

All teachers know that their first and hardest job is to gain the student's attention and interest. What subject best attracts a teenager's undivided attention? Sex. Happily, when it comes to evolution, sex is central.

I recommend that biology teachers begin by discussing Elisabeth A. Lloyd's decidedly scientific book, The Case of the Female Orgasm. No school board member should complain. The book's subtitle, "Bias in the Science of Evolution," clearly fits with the new requirement that teachers critique evolutionary theory.

Darwinians can explain the male orgasm. After all, the male ejaculation is necessary for the survival and perpetuation of the species, and if giving the male great pleasure while doing so promotes that, then natural selection would eventually endow the male orgasm with that characteristic.

When it comes to the human female orgasm, however, evolutionists are stumped. No other female of the animal kingdom experiences an orgasm. Professor Lloyd examines 21 evolution-based explanations for the female orgasm, and demolishes every one of them.

Here the biology teacher might offer the class the alternative explanation of intelligent design. Is the intelligent power simply leveling the playing field between the sexes? Or is Professor Lloyd right that the female orgasm is "just for fun," and the intelligent power is female?

Then there's the question of male homosexuality. From a Darwinian perspective, it's a puzzle. The theory of natural selection should guarantee the disappearance of males that don't reproduce. But they keep hanging around, in considerable numbers, in every culture and every era.

Evolutionists have their theories. Psychologist Louis A. Berman argues that it has to do with embryonic development. Medical doctor Lorne Warneke suggests that homosexuality actually offers a natural advantage. Homosexuals instill a more cooperative impulse that helps perpetuate the kinship group and tribe.

A good science teacher will follow the school board's guidance and propose intelligent design as an alternative explanation for male homosexuality. Could there be an intelligent power that has created and nurtured male homosexuality? Does that mean God is gay?

School boards require science teachers to offer alternative explanations about how life began. That presents still another opportunity for creative educators.

Evolutionists argue that life evolved over tens of millions of years via natural selection. Intelligent design advocates believe the creation of life was overseen and guided by an intelligent power.

The biology teacher should offer students creationism as a possible explanatory theory of the origins of life. And, of course, subject it to the same rigorous scientific analysis the teacher uses to evaluate the accurateness of evolution. The students will learn that the scientific evidence for the-heavens-and-the-earth-and-all-life-was-formed-in-six days theory of the origins of life is virtually nonexistent.

Moreover, substantial empirical evidence exists to demonstrate that the Bible has the order of the origination of life wrong. On day three, for example, the Bible tells us (Genesis 1:6-10) that God created "vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit trees...." On the fifth day He made "birds fly above the earth" and "the waters teem with swarms of living creatures." On the sixth day He created the "beasts of the earth."

But geology teaches us that fish were in the seas hundreds of millions of years before a tree was on the ground. Birds did not appear until well after beasts of the field. And if a dinosaur is a beast of the field, then flowering and fruit-bearing plants did not appear until after beasts of the field.

If a Christian God as described in the Bible was not the agent of the origin of life, who, or what, was the intelligent designer? Here the diligent science teacher should offer a series of alternatives. One of the most compelling should command the attention of teenagers almost as much as sex: space aliens.

In his 1983 book The Intelligent Universe, respected physicist Fred Hoyle asks whether life could have evolved at random. "Impossible," he answers. That conclusion should hearten the intelligent design folks. But Hoyle does not dismiss the theory of evolution. His criticism of Darwinism is that it is an earthbound theory. Life derived from outer space. "Genes from outside the earth are needed to drive the evolutionary process," Hoyle concludes.

An even more intriguing and far better documented theory about the origins of life than Hoyle's is that of Swiss writer Erich von Daniken. Daniken's book, Chariots of the Gods, was translated into 28 languages, and has sold over 60 million copies worldwide. It was the basis of the much-watched 1970s television show "In Search of Ancient Astronauts."

Von Daniken amassed an enormous amount of evidence to substantiate his thesis, which he summed up this way: "Dim, as yet indefinable ages ago, an unknown spaceship discovered our planet. The crew of the spaceship soon found that the Earth had all the prerequisites for intelligent life to develop.... The spacemen artificially fertilized some female members of this species...." Over millennia they returned several times to repeat this procedure, each time breeding a more advanced human.

In some respects, Von Daniken bridges the theory of evolution and intelligent design. He agrees with the theory of evolution, but proposes that the evolutionary seed or seeds, were planted by space travelers. He notes that ancient civilization greatly respected such visitors and called them "gods." He records legend upon legend from one civilization to another whose records tell of the gods interbreeding with humans.

The creative biology teacher could build another bridge between Von Daniken and creationism. One Christian website for example, citing the sixth chapter of Genesis as its source, declares, "Von Daniken is correct... beings did, in fact arrive on at least two different occasions; and their visitation truly did significantly influence the course of human history, and they did interbreed with humans." But the writer continues, "These beings, however, were angels, not 'aliens from outer space.'" These are fallen angels, of course.

There's no question that if science teachers had their druthers, they wouldn't be teaching intelligent design or gratuitously criticizing evolution in their classrooms. But they do. They can whine or refuse or resign. How much better for them to take this opportunity to teach their students while exasperating their school boards with the power of thoughtful investigation. And have a whole lot of fun doing so.

David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, Minnnesota and director of its New Rules project.

News and Views you don't have to lose:

News and Views you don't have to lose:

The Kean Commission inexplicably introduced, a completely new timeline of events surrounding the responses of the FAA, NORAD and the Pentagon on 9/11 in direct contradiction to previously sworn testimony and exhibits from these commands. In most cases this evidence was presented by the same men who actually made key decisions that day.

The Kean Commission unilaterally changed the times of certain key events, negating and overruling testimony and evidence presented under oath, without having received a single new piece of evidence – either formally or informally – that contradicted or changed the evidence already received.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that, Mark Dayton of Minnesota, found some egregious inconsistencies in the final report of the Kean Commission. "Dayton said NORAD officials ‘lied to the American people, they lied to congress and they lied to your 9/11 commission .." He said, a squadron of NORAD fighter planes that was scrambled was sent east over the Atlantic ocean and was 150 miles from Washington, D.C., when the third plane struck the Pentagon – ‘farther than they were before they took off.’

The mysterious and inexplicable failure of the nation’s air defenses on Sept. 11th remains the most glaring and gaping hole in the Kean Commission’s account and in the government’s version of events. Scrambling fighter aircraft was a routine occurrence for years before 9/11. Kean Commission not only failed to look at this but actually altered evidence in the preparation of its final report.

On the morning of September 11th. Vice President Dick Cheney or his immediate staff were being conducting, coordinating and/or controlling war games. He was running a completely separate command, control and communications system which was superceding any orders being issued by the NMCC, or the White House Situation Room. To accomplish that end he relied on a redundant and superior communications system maintained by the US secret service in or near the Presidential Emergency Operations Center – the bunker to which he and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice were reportedly "rushed" after Flight 175 struck the WTC’s south tower. The Secret Service possessed radar screens which gave them, and the Vice President with real-time information as good as or better than that available to the Pentagon.

The names of those war games are known to include: Vigilant Guardian, Vigilant Warrior, Northern Guardian, Northern Vigilance, and Tripod II. All, except for Northern Vigilance and Tripod II had to do with hijacked airliners inside the continental United States, specifically within the northeast air defense sector where all four 9/11 hijackings occurred.

According to a clear record some of these exercises involved commercial airline hijackings. In some cases false blips were deliberately inserted onto FAA and military radar screens and they were present during (at least) the first attacks. This effectively paralyzed fighter response because, with only eight fighters available in the region, there were as many as 22 possible hijackings taking place. Other exercises, specifically Northern Vigilance had pulled significant fighter resources away from the northeast U.S. – just before 9/11 – into northern Canada and Alaska. In addition, a close reading of key news stories published in the Spring of 2004 revealed for the first time that some of these drills were "live-fly" exercises where actual aircraft, likely flown by remote control – were simulating the behavior of hijacked airliners in real life. All of this as the real attacks began. the fact that these exercises had never been systematically and thoroughly explored in the mainstream press..

Only one war-game exercise, Vigilant Guardian, was mentioned in a footnote to the Kean Commission report and then it was deliberately mislabeled as an exercise intended to intercept Russian bombers instead of a hijack exercise in the northeast sector.

The publicly available mass media articles about these exercises state that they were similar enough to the actual events that top NORAD personnel were confused, not sure if 9/11 was "part of the drill" or a real world event. (Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology, June 3, 2002, Newhouse News) http://911review.com/means/wargames.html

A non-military biowarfare exercise called Tripod II, was being "set up" in Manhattan on September 11th was under the direct coordination of FEMA and – by White House directive – the immediate control of the Vice President. The set up for that exercise conveniently placed a fully staffed FEMA, New York City and Department of Justice command post on Manhattan’s Pier 29 in time for it to be conveniently used as the command post after the twin towers had collapsed.

1. In what are called national special security events the US Secret Service is the supreme US agency for operational control with complete authority over the military and all civilian agencies.

2. In May of 2001, by Presidential order, Richard Cheney was put in direct command and control of all war-game and field exercise training and scheduling through several agencies, especially FEMA. This also extended to all of the conflicting and overlapping NORAD drills on that day.

3. That the tripod II exercise being set up on Sept. 10th in Manhattan was directly connected to Cheney's role in these war games/exercises.

4. A number of public officials, at the national and New York City levels, including then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, were aware that Flight 175 was en route to lower Manhattan for 20 minutes and did nothing – absolutely nothing – to order the evacuation of or warn the occupants of the World Trade Center.

Conclusion: The 9/11 attacks were the result of deliberate planning and orchestrated efforts by identifiable leaders within the U.S. government, and the energy and financial sectors, which would provide the American empire with a pretext for war, invasion and the sequential confiscation of oil and natural gas reserves, or the key transportation routes through which they pass.

Source: A Speech by Michael C. Ruppert to the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, August 31, 2004 and his book, Crossing the Rubicon. http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/transcripts/159

Explosives In The Twin Towers: The Evidence
http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/explosives_in_towers_evidence.htm

Some Survivors Say 'Bombs Exploded Inside WTC'
http://www.americanfreepressnet/10_22_01/Some_Survivors_Say__Bombs_Expl/some_survivors_say__bombs_expl.html


The FEMA photograph is the fake
The plane that hit the WTC1 was indeed a small plane, much smaller than a 767. Just before it hit WTC1 it fired three (or four) missiles at the building and the impact holes from these missiles formed the resultant scar. The intention was clearly to use a small military plane to leave the impression of a Boeing 767. It was a pretty successful conjuring trick but the execution wasn't perfect and the resultant scar was rather too big. This may all sound fanciful, but I believe the video and photographic evidence and FEMA's fraudulent report prove it beyond any reasonable doubt.
http://serendipityptpi.net/wot/spencer03.htm

WTC2: the real scar measured about 37 pillars across. According to FEMA however the scar measured a mere 23 pillars in width, less than two-thirds of the true figure. It is clear also that FEMA's rendition of the shape of the scar is way off the mark.
So what did hit the South Tower? To answer this question we must look closely at all the photographic and video evidence that is available. Examination of these images shows there is good reason to believe that the plane was something other than United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767 that had departed Boston's Logan Airport at 08.14 earlier that morning. http://serendipityptpi.net/wot/spencer06.htm

Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, whose seismic data and analyses
The seismic reports have told us to within a fraction of a second the exact times at which the first two planes hit their targets and 'Flight 93' crashed in Pennsylvania. They have informed us that the strike on the Pentagon caused no measurable seismic readings whatsoever. They show us that immediately before the collapse of each tower Manhattan was subjected to a massive seismic spike that had the magnitude and properties of a medium-sized underground nuclear explosion.

It is reasonable to predict that the second plane struck its target with considerably greater force than did the first plane — about 50% greater force according to one calculation I have seen.

The seismic evidence however tells a different story. As already noted, the first plane generated an impact of magnitude ML=0.9 compared with a value ML=0.7 for the second plane. Despite the fact that it was travelling much more slowly than the second plane, the first plane nonetheless managed to cause an impact 30% greater in magnitude. This is easily demonstrated by comparing the relative amplitudes of the two collisions in the graphs above.
http://serendipityptpi.net/wot/spencer03.htm

Seismic Evidence Points to Underground Explosions Causing WTC Collapse
Two unexplained "spikes" in the seismic record from September 11 indicate huge bursts of energy shook the ground beneath the World Trade Center's twin towers — just as the buildings began to collapse.
http://www.serendipityli/wot/bollyn2.htm

The reservation situation of certain planes was kept artificially low, when coast to coast flights were booked for 20% instead of the usual 75% to minimize deaths that could cause problems.
http://members.surfeu.fi/11syyskuu/soldier1.htm


WTC BUILDING 7
On September 11th, Towers One and Two collapsed after suffering direct hits by airliners. Building 7 was neither hit by an airliner nor damaged severely by flying debris, but at 5:20 p.m. it collapsed in the exact same accordion style of the other two towers. The official explanation by FEMA investigators claimed that WTC 7 fell as a result of burning for 7 hour.
Several weeks after the events of 9/11, Larry Silverstein, the new owner of the WTC was interviewed on TV. At this time he openly acknowledged the decision to pull Building 7. This was a public statement in which the owner of the WTC agreed to the destruction of the building.
This decision was never explained and was never questioned by the Kean Commission. The conflicting report of the FEMA investigators was also never explained. Pulling a building requires weeks, if not months of preparation. Explosives have to be carefully and strategically placed and wired. How was it possible to pull a building without first preparing for its demolition?
Larry Silverstein invested $386 million in WTC 7. On 9/11, by his own admission, Larry Silverstein ordered the demolition of his building. In February of 2002, his company won a settlement of $861 million from Industrial Risk Insurers. Do the math. No one investigated.
http://tvnewslies.org/html/9_11_-_all_the_proof_you_need.html


Close-up of WTC-7 Collapse Footage Shows
Unmistakable Demolition Charges

Looking at the upper right-hand corner of the (WTC 7) building we see a rapid series of small explosions travelling upward just as the building itself begins to fall. The size, placement and timing of these "puffs" is very consistent with squibs from cutting charges of the type used in professional controlled demolitions, and in fact nothing but small explosive charges could create such an appearance. The decreasing volume of the building from the collapse itself could not create enough pressure to cause such localized high-velocity effects, and this early in the collapse would have only created a modest overpressure.
http://st12.startlogic.com/~xenonpup/Flashes/squibs_along_southwest_corner.htm

Why was building WTC 7 pulled (demolitioned) ?
A Citigroup lawyer, for instance, recently told a congressional committee looking into the bank's role in the WorldCom mess that she couldn't provide them with all the information they sought because some of it was destroyed in the attack on the World Trade Center.
"Some further email records the committee has requested cannot be retrieved," wrote Citigroup Deputy General Counsel Jane Sherburne in an Aug. 7 letter to House Committee on Financial Services. "The backup tapes for external emails from September 1998 through December 2000, and for a short time period in September 2001, were lost when the building in which they were stored (7 World Trade Center) was destroyed in the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001."

Maybe no financial institution lost more critical documents than the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had its New York regional office at 7 World Trade Center. While the regulatory agency was fortunate in that it lost no employees in the terror attacks, it suffered setbacks in a number of long-running securities investigations.
In August, defense lawyers for several former executives of Rite Aid, who've been charged by the SEC with fraud and obstruction of justice, filed a motion seeking a delay in the trial, claiming some of the documents gathered by the SEC had been lost in the attack. SEC attorneys contend many of the original copies of those documents still exist at other locations but acknowledge it will take time to reconstruct all the evidence in the case.

The SEC says the main problem it encountered was that an index for the documents in the Rite Aid case was destroyed in the attack -- not necessarily the documents themselves.

A similar reconstruction of evidence had to take place in a decade-old insider trading case against several former executives of Motel 6, a chain of low-cost motels. The SEC settled the case against the remaining defendants in June. But before that could occur, it had to obtain a court order directing the lawyers for some of the defendants to assist the SEC in reconstructing files "that were destroyed due to the events of Sept. 11, 2001."

In the Motel 6 case, the four remaining defendants, without admitting or denying the insider-trading charges, entered into a settlement with the SEC in which they agreed to pay fines and penalties totaling $798,000. In all, the 10-year case netted $6.36 million in fines, penalties and disgorged profits for the SEC.

SEC officials won't discuss how many cases may have been impacted by the terror attacks, but they claim the lost information was limited to two weeks' worth of data stored on the agency's computers that hadn't yet been backed up.

But it's clear from talking to securities lawyers who practice before the SEC that things haven't gone as smoothly as the agency would like the public to believe.

"Regardless of what the regulators say, they lost a ton of files," says Bill Singer, a New York securities lawyer, who says one case he had pending before the SEC quickly settled because so many of the original documents were destroyed. "In my opinion it was a wholesale loss of documents." -TheStreet.com (9/09/02)
http://thewebfairy.com/killtown/wtc7.html

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewsViewsnolose

MOYERS ADDRESSES PBS COUP

Here is a link to the lengthy speech made by Bill Moyers. This is well worth the read. Then read the following post about media activism. Thanks..............Scott




MOYERS ADDRESSES PBS COUP
Bill Moyers, AlterNet
In this highly anticipated speech the veteran publicbroadcaster takes on the PBS coup and its right-wingengineers who are 'squealing like a stuck pig.'

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/22021/

Winning The Media Wars

Winning The Media Wars
Russ Baker
May 20, 2005



Russ Baker —an investigative reporter and essayist—is a longtime TomPaine.com contributor. He is involved in the development of a new not-for-profit organization dedicated to revitalizing investigative journalism in America.

How much of a pipe dream is it to be an effective “media reform activist?” Most of us are skeptical about real opportunities for mere mortals to do anything to stanch the flow of life from an increasingly sold-out, wimpy, self-censoring, corporate-owned fourth estate.

Now, I don’t want to come off as excessively starry-eyed. But I’ll tell you this: I wasn’t the only one attending the National Conference on Media Reform last weekend in St. Louis who was impressed, energized, made to see what is now possible in terms of reclaiming our right to read and hear the truth. So were the 2,500 other attendees. So were the hundreds or perhaps thousands more who wanted to come, were there ample space to accommodate everyone. So were participants Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein— the two holdouts on the Federal Communications Commission who still believe in a vigorous, diverse press. And so was Bill Moyers, the poster boy for a conservative campaign to neuter public broadcasting, who capped the proceedings with a rousing call to arms .

Pretty much everyone was begoshed to find that so many other people care about such dry-sounding and technical matters as media monopolies, censorship at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, affordable and unfettered Internet access and strategies for funding independent journalism.

I usually can’t stand such conferences, and I’ve attended plenty. Lots of blather but little concrete to show for it. However, this one—organized by the group FreePress (co-founded by Robert McChesney and John Nichols)— was singular. Attendance was dramatically up over previous conclaves, and everyone, it seemed, had success stories from the media wars. Which suggests this rather elementary formulation: If you can get enough people doing lots of different things on an issue that has traditionally eluded popular appeal or public scrutiny, everything can change.

Here are just a few of the things you can affect as an individual:

What’s on television.
Cable companies set the menu for what you can watch in your city, but every few years, cable franchise licenses come up for renewal. And at that time, you can help persuade your local government to require those companies to reconsider what kinds of programs they carry, and to expand the diversity and value of their offerings. One way is to increase the number of public access channels. For more on this, contact Alliance for Community Media .


What’s on the radio.
A huge chunk of the programming going over the airwaves is now determined by a handful of executives at companies like Clear Channel, owner and operator of more than 1,200 stations. So you can help support and promote the growing number of alternatives, which include locally owned and run stations, Pacifica, Air America, Internet radio, podcasts, and, notably, community-run “low-power FM” stations—which, facing severe obstacles, now appear poised to emerge in a bigger way, thanks to the Local Community Radio Act of 2005, from Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. As noted recently by the Utne Reader , “the bill would expand LPFM service nationwide, easing the burden on would-be LPFM stations to prove noninterference with commercial broadcasters.” For more on LPFM, including information on obtaining a license, contact Prometheus Radio Project .


What’s on public broadcasting.
Common Cause, recognizing that the campaign financing system can’t be changed unless the media are reformed—and the best parts protected— is involved with a “Hands Off NPR and PBS” campaign. You can find out about it here .


The creep of commercialism in your community.
To learn more about what’s wrong with Channel One, the providers of advertising-soaked “news” programming to a captive audience of 8 million students in 12,000 schools across America, read my articles from The New Republic and The American Prospect. Then contact Commercial Alert to find out what you can do about it.


FCC Decision-making.
The FCC must ask for and acknowledge public comment, but hardly ever hears from anyone but corporations. Recently, large numbers of citizens have begun exercising their right to be heard, and the rising chorus seems to be making a demonstrable difference in FCC deliberations. To get started, go here .


Local coverage.
Monitor your area media and, when you see something wrong, speak out. Many attendees had stories of getting results from their own newspaper, radio and TV stations when they complained about bias, poor journalism and tepidness. One woman from an extremely conservative part of Florida happily recounted how she had single-handedly muscled key advertisers into withdrawing support from one hate-mongering program.


Support the good media that are out there, or create your own.
Independent newspapers, blogs, podcasts— there’s a thriving marketplace of ideas out there, if you look just a bit. And a cornucopia of groups are bringing democracy to media. Go to http://www.freepress.net/content/orgs for a list of 149 organizations working in various aspects of media reform. Choose your favorite area. And dive in.


Remind the “old media” folks that they’re becoming dinosaurs not just for economic and technological reasons. They've forgotten how to do real journalism anymore, so busy are they establishing their 'fairness' by giving equal time to credible information served up in the public interest and to blatant lies, and by lowering the barrier to fluff. Bill Moyers’ trademark maxim nails it: “News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.”
And there's a nice counter-maxim. Publicity—in the form of concerted public action—is in fact an antidote, the best way to coax that "real news" out of hiding.

CAMPAIGN UPDATE

On the eve of my campaign kickoff I thought I would update where we are. I have a new address for my campaign along with a new blog. I also have space on the CDUI website. I will have a PayPal link by next week.


Please make contibutions to the following:

Elect Brineman V.P.
P.O. Box 752
Yelm, Wa, 98597



My new blog is:

http://electbrinemanvp.blogspot.com


My wesite address is:

www.ranknfile.net/electbrinemanvp


My e-mail address is:

electcbrinemanvp@hotmail.com



Thank you for your support. Through strong and progressive unions we can support progressives candidates for public office. We are just a part of the whole. Let's work together to make the Union and this country a better place to work and live.


In Brotherhood & Solidarity.......................PEACE........................Scott

CANDIDACY ANNOUNCEMENT

You may have noticed that there has not been the usual amount of activity on the blog. I appologize to those of you who depend on this blog for certain information. However I must take a hiatus from my usual activities in order to concentrate on my campaign for Western District VP of the UBC (United Brotherhood of Carpenters).

I will be posting campaign events and position papers over the coming months. The election for this position and the other General Officer positions will take place at the General Convention to be held in Las Vegas starting on the 22nd of August 2005.

I will try and keep abreast of other current events and post the most urgent items. However,
this campaign will occupy the majority of my time.

With the organized labor in a state of flux, this could be a very influential and vital election in regards to the future of the labor movement. Please pass this information on to everyone you know who is concerned about the current situation of the working class in this country and across the world. We are not independent of the global economy and what we do here can effect the world.

Thank you for your support of this blog and of your support of my Candidacy.


___________________________________________________________________

Brothers and Sisters,

I am writing to inform all of you that I will be kicking off my campaign for Western District Vice President at the May 21st Delegates meeting.

From my campaign for EST you know that I stand for open communication, accountability and the basic democratic principles upon which this Union was founded. I am a firm believer in the original vision of P.J. McGuire and feel that we have strayed far to the right of his intent and purpose. McGuire believed that everyone should belong to a Union and that the members would be able to share in the wealth that they were producing. He also believed that Union membership brought autonomy over oneself and pride in what one did .These factors would lead to more time available for participation with family and community. The rank and file members have been disenfranchised and have lost all hope of having any control over their lives. In order to re-involve the membership we must return the vote to the individual, we must return some autonomy to the locals, and we must get involved with our local communities and remind them that the carpenters are here to stay.
The current leadership of the UBC is not representing the true concerns of the membership but instead is doing whatever it can to mold us into a corporate commodity to be sold to the lowest bidder. They have done their best to fashion the “re-organized” UBC along the lines of corporate America. We are a multi-billion dollar industry which can and should wield incredible industry and political clout for the benefit of the rank and file member. We are not a Union for the benefit of the contractors.
The leadership is very short sighted and needs to broaden its scope and vision. The world we live in is getting smaller all the time and the resources we have are becoming more limited. The UBC needs to look at the ways that we as an organization can promote sustainability not only for ourselves and our industry but society as a whole. We are but a small piece of the overall scheme of things, and need to work in unison for the betterment of our craft. New environmental regulations and alternative energy sources are creating growth industries that could yield millions of hours of carpenter work. We need to look ahead with that kind of vision.

I am in the process of developing my campaign and am in need of financial support in order to run it effectively. If you agree with me that we need a change of vision at the leadership level of our Union then please support my candidacy. Thank you.
In Brotherhood & Solidarity



T. Scott Brineman

8311 Aspen Pl S.E.
Yelm, WA, 98597

360-556-6224-...........….Days

electbrinemanvp@hotmail.com

www.ranknfile.net/electbrinemanvp

ENERGY

Oil Firms Guzzel Profits, Consumers Get Fumes

'Tis the season (again) of sky-high gas prices, and according to the Department of Energy, they're here to say, with costs likely to average $2.28 through the summer. This means a major added burden on America's middle class. Except for housing costs, low- and middle-income households in the United States spend more of their earnings on transportation than anything else. And high gas prices hit Americans is other unexpected ways – pressuring local businesses to increase costs, curtailing vacation and travel plans, even jacking up prices for the flowers you gave to Mom this past weekend (hey, she's worth it). But as Americans realize, it doesn't have to be this way. A new Gallup poll shows that while President Bush claims "he can do little to address gas prices in the short run, two in three Americans say there are reasonable steps that he should take right now that would significantly lower U.S. gas prices." As we show below, they're right: President Bush and conservatives in Washington are standing in the way of real solutions to rising gas prices.

THE CONSERVATIVE PLAN – HIGHER PRICES, MORE PORK: President Bush has admitted his energy bill "wouldn't change the price at the pump today." But that's just half the story. A 2004 analysis by the administration's Energy Information Administration found that the Bush-backed energy bill will actually raise gas prices and increase oil demand nearly 14 percent by 2010. And that's even after profit-flushed oil and gas companies are flooded with subsidies. The energy bill lavishes fossil-fuel firms with $515 million in authorized spending from the U.S. government, including "$125 million to reimburse oil and gas producers for 115% of the costs of remediating, reclaiming, and closing orphaned wells." The bill also creates a $2 billion ultra-deep water fund (taken from conservation funding) to pay for research that companies are already doing without government help. And on top of that, the bill also provides $3.275 billion in new tax breaks to the oil and gas industry.

CONSUMERS STRUGGLE, OIL INDUSTRY CELEBRATES: As Americans struggle at the pump, oil companies are raking in record profits and giving their executives fat raises. According to the Wall Street Journal, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch/Shell Group "both reported huge increases in first-quarter income, benefiting from the industry wide bonanza also swelling the coffers of their peers: high prices for the oil they pump and high margins for refining it." Of course, those profits do have their drawbacks: Exxon's "soon-to-retire CEO suddenly has a new anxiety: how to spend the windfall wrought by $55-a-barrel oil," Fortune Magazine reports. "If oil simply stays where it is now, Exxon's cash could approach $40 billion in 12 months. By then [Exxon's CEO] is expected to have handed off the top job – and the headache of what to do with all that cash." And the recent Wall Street Journal compensation survey found that oil and gas executives' total direct compensation (2004) averaged about $16.5 million (median). The median percent change from 2003 to 2004 was 109.1 percent, by far the highest of the industries profiled. (For more on CEO pay soaring while the middle class struggles, read this from the Center for American Progress.)

BUSH'S CLEAN ENERGY PLAN IS "BULLS--T": Hey, we didn't say it. House Resources Chair Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) did. A few weeks ago, while Pombo's conservative colleagues were talking up new subsidies for hydrogen technology at a Capitol Hill news conference, Rep. Pombo turned to House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) and whispered, "This is bulls--t." (A CNN journalist happened to be within earshot.) Pombo later explained his comment: President Bush's plan to spend $2 billion developing hydrogen-fueled cars is "not a short-term solution because we just don't have the technology to produce it," he said, adding that the promised vehicles are "multimillion-dollar prototypes that nobody's going to buy." And Pombo's actually right. Sure, hydrogen could be an important energy option down the road. But making fuel-cell technology the prime focus of our sustainable energy policy, as conservatives in Washington have done, "means having to wait 15 to 20 years to produce cleaner cars and wean the country off of oil." Our environmental problems are serious and growing now. And while President Bush trumpets the long-term gains of hydrogen, he's hindering investment in clean technologies that already exist and actively opposing efforts to make today's cars and trucks cleaner and more fuel-efficient.

REAL SOLUTIONS ARE READY AND WAITING: Gas prices can be lowered sooner rather than later, and American Progress has laid out a series of steps to do just that. For example, scrap-and-replace programs offer low-income drivers (who typically own the least safe and the most polluting cars on the road) the opportunity to trade in their inefficient vehicles for cleaner, more efficient cars. A system of feebates – fees and rebates assigned to each vehicle type based on its fuel efficiency – would provide a direct signal of the value of efficiency to consumers where they pay the most attention, at the sticker price. Buyers of more efficient vehicles would receive a rebate; buyers of less efficient vehicles would pay a fee. And merely improving standards for tire replacements, so that substitute tires are required to be as efficient as new car tires, would save over 7 billion barrels of oil over the next 50 years.