News and Views you don't have to lose:

7 Mar 2005 -- "Waiting until world conventional oil production peaks before implementing crash program mitigation leaves the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for two decades or longer," according to a report prepared for the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) by Science Applications International Coporation (SAIC).
http://www.energybulletin.net/4638.html

Supreme Court - What nobody seems to be noticing, Neo-fascism
by Thom Hartmann

A summary of his commentary:

The corporatist "conservatives" are salivating at the opportunity to pack the Court with judges who will further erode the rights of communities and increase the power of multinational corporations and the super-rich in America. On June 28, 2005 The Wall Street Journal ran a major story ("For a High Court Nomination, Business Has Its Own Agenda") on how corporate Republicans may be at odds with "social" Republicans, because the latter generally endorse states' rights. Corporatists prefer a strong federal government where all politicians can be bought centrally in Washington, DC, and federal rules and agencies can be used to back down states that may want clean air or water.

Because Alberto Gonzales has a very limited record in ruling or writing on corporate rights and powers, the corporatists are not as enthusiastic about him as they are about others.
What nobody seems to be noticing, though, is what may well be the real agenda of George W. Bush and those around him - neo-fascism.

For this agenda, Alberto Gonzales is the perfect man.

Although he testified that "I don't recall today whether I was in agreement with the analysis" on the meeting that led to the infamous 2002 torture memo that said "injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions - [are necessary] in order to constitute torture," he actually chaired the committee that drafted it. As The Washington Post noted on January 5, 2003 ("Gonzales Helped Set Course On Detainees"), "White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales chaired the meetings on this issue, which included detailed descriptions of interrogation techniques such as 'waterboarding,' a tactic intended to make detainees feel as if they are drowning."

He helped draft Executive Order 13233, which began the shut down of the transparency and accountability that have been hallmarks of American government since its inception. In 2002 he argued that the Geneva Conventions were "quaint" and that their language was sufficiently vague that the Bush administration could essentially ignore them.

Gonzales also wrote a Presidential Order saying that terror suspects could be tried by secret military tribunals and sentenced to death, and enthusiastically pushed for passage of the USA PATRIOT.
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No absolute proof that Gulf vets' babies are especially prone to congenital problems, patterns of defects have begun to emerge--patterns unlikely to result from chance alone.

The Association of Birth Defect Children says it has found the first cluster of defects in the offspring of U.S. Gulf veterans: 10 babies with severe Goldenhar's syndrome, a condition that usually strikes one in 26,000, according to ABDC executive director Betty Mekdeci. (Another case has surfaced in Britain, where 600 vets complain of Gulf-related illness.) The ABDC, which has gathered data on 163 ailing Gulf War babies so far, is tracking four more possible clusters--of victims of hypoplastic left heart syndrome, of atrial-septal heart defect, of microcephaly and of immune-system deficiencies. Significantly, not one of the parents in the ABDC survey has a family history of these types of birth defects. Or as Mekdeci puts it, "There have been no relatives with funny ears."

The difficulty in proving conclusively whether clusters are occurring is that no one--not Mekdeci, not the Pentagon--knows how many babies have been born to Gulf vets. The Defense Department's own survey of 40,000 birth outcomes, initial results of which are due in late October, is the largest study yet.
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The Tiny Victims Of Iraq War One (aka "Desert Storm" - for those who think war is an act of nature)

Along with The Association of Birth Defect Children (ABDC) and Defense Department surveys, more than 30 other studies of Gulf vets and their children are under way. One that is no longer ongoing, by the Senate Banking Committee, folded last year when committee chair Don Riegle retired. Of the 400 sick vets who had already answered committee inquiries, a startling 65 percent reported birth defects or immune-system problems in children conceived after the war.

An internal report by the National Guard, leaked to the press last year, which revealed that hundreds of Gulf vets had been wrongly discharged as a money-saving measure--let go with a supposedly clean bill of health, although ongoing medical problems entitled them to remain in the service for treatment.

See photos of congenital birth defect kids at source:

source via http://www.skagitprogressive.org/

Source: http://www.life.com/Life/essay/gulfwar/gulf01.html
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WAR MADE EASYHow Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death

In his new book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, media critic, author and FAIR associate Norman Solomon examines 50 years of press corps complicity in promoting military endeavors. From Vietnam to Panama to Iraq, he reveals a consistent strategy of distorting facts, demonizing the enemy and labeling dissent as "unpatriotic." Just back from a trip to Iran, possibly the next U.S. military target, Solomon will give us the critical tools we need to separate real news from propaganda--and help prevent the next repeat performance. Joining him will be Dahr Jamail, one of the few independent US journalists reporting from Iraq. Weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Jamail went to Iraq to report on the war himself. Recently returned from the Middle East, Jamail will give us the crucial stories we aren't receiving from the news media.http://www.fair.org
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It is not withdrawal that threatens Iraq with civil war, but occupation

A summary of the Commentary by Sami Ramadani


Those who are genuinely concerned about withdrawal should examine the facts on the ground before giving support to continued occupation. Some pro-war commentators warned early on that the country would be blighted by sectarian violence: oppressed Shias would take revenge on Sunnis; Kurds would avenge Saddam's rule by killing Arabs; and the Christian community would be liquidated.What actually happened confounded such expectations. Within two weeks of the fall of Baghdad, millions converged on Karbala chanting "La Amreeka, la Saddam" (No to America, no to Saddam). For months, Baghdad, Basra and Najaf were awash with united anti-occupation marches whose main slogan was "La Sunna, la Shia; hatha al-watan menbi'a" (no Sunni, no Shia, this homeland we shall not sell). Such responses were predictable given Iraq's history of anti-sectarianism. But the war leaders reacted by destroying the foundations of the state and following the old colonial policy of divide and rule, imposing a sectarian model on every institution they set up, including arrangements for the January election.When it became clear that the poorest areas of Baghdad and the south were even more hostile to the occupation than the so-called Sunni towns - answering the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's call to arms - Bush and Blair tried to defeat the resistance piecemeal, under the guise of fighting foreign terrorists. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was promoted to replace Saddam as the bogeyman in chief, to encourage sectarian tension and isolate the resistance.This propaganda has been more successful abroad than in Iraq. Indeed, Iraqis habitually blame the occupation for all acts of terrorism, not what is fondly referred to as al-muqawama al-sharifa (the honourable resistance). But in Britain and the US many people feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards the mainstream popular resistance.The occupation's sectarian discourse has acquired a hold as powerful as the WMD fiction that prepared the public for war. Iraqis are portrayed as a people who can't wait to kill each other once left to their own devices. In fact, the occupation is the main architect of institutionalised sectarian and ethnic divisions; its removal would act as a catalyst for Iraqis to resolve some of their differences politically. Only a few days ago the national assembly members who had signed the anti-occupation statement met representatives of the Foundation Congress (a group of 60 religious and secular organisations) and the al-Sadr movement and issued a joint call for the rapid withdrawal of the occupation forces according to an internationally guaranteed timetable.07/05/05 "The Guardian" -- There is now broad agreement in Iraq to build a non-sectarian, democratic Iraq that guarantees Kurdish national rights. The occupation is making the achievement of these goals more difficult. Every day the occupation increases tension and makes people's lives worse, fuelling the violence. Creating a client regime in Baghdad, backed by permanent bases, is the route that US strategists followed in Vietnam. As in Vietnam, popular resistance in Iraq and the wider Middle East will not go away but will grow stronger, until it eventually unites to force a US-British withdrawal.How many more Iraqis, Americans and Britons have to die before Bush and Blair admit the occupation is the problem and not part of any democratic solution in Iraq?

Sami Ramadani, <> a political refugee from Saddam Hussein's regime, is a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9378.htm


Iraq Body Count: 7/05/05
Americans Killed: 1746
Americans Wounded: 13,190
Iraqi Dead: Est. 100,000
DU deaths and birth defects in the future: unknown
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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