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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

1 November - Blogs I'm Following

Denis Rancourt, Professor of Physics, Universi...Image via Wikipedia
Welcome to the Reading List. Here are all the updates from any blogs you follow and sites you've joined using Google FriendConnect.
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1 November - Games - Poltics

A Master Class in Occupation

 

Center for Media and Democracy
After two tours of duty in Iraq, 24-year-old Wisconsin native Scott Olsen managed to escape unscathed and with seven medals for valor. But Olsen was critically injured in an Occupy Oakland march last week by a police projectile. Whether this was a case of an inexperienced Mayor (check) or a historically aggressive police department (check), the incident underscored the potential for catastrophe as cops increasingly confront peaceful protesters with riot control weapons.

Positive Policing From Wisconsin's ‘Original Occupation’ | Center for Media and Democracy
www.prwatch.org

After two tours of duty in Iraq, 24-year-old Wisconsin native Scott Olsen managed to escape unscathed and with seven metals for valor. But Olsen was critically injured in an Occupy Oakland march last week by a police projectile. According to eyewitnesses, Olsen was acting as a human barrier between ...

The CIA And The Nazis: The Secrets ‘They’ Don’t Want You To Know

The CIA and the Nazis reveals a CIA program known as Operation Paperclip, about how over 4,000 former Nazis went to work for the U.S. government, without the public’s knowledge, to help fight the Soviet Union. Reinhard Gehlen, an intelligence officer for Hitler’s General Staff, was tapped to head the U.S. intelligence program in West Germany to spy on the Russians. At the same time, former Nazi scientists and engineers were welcomed onto American soil. But the extent of these operations is only now becoming clear: In 1998, a law was passed mandating declassification of documents concerning recruitment of former Nazis. THE CIA AND THE NAZIS examines these files to see how far the U.S. went in recruiting its former enemy to fight its new one.

Bush and Blair to be Tried for War Crimes

The Iraq invasion in 2003 and its occupation had resulted in the death of 1.4 million Iraqis. Countless others had endured torture and untold hardship. The cries of these victims have thus far gone unheeded by the international community. The fundamental human right to be heard has been denied to them.
As a result, the KLWCC had been established in 2008 to fill this void and act as a peoples’ initiative to provide an avenue for such victims to file their complaints and let them have their day in a court of law.

The Great Game Continues

The widely expected victory for Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Asif Ali Zardari in the presidential election brought to a high point the tortuous process of regime change in Pakistan. Anyone who has followed the “colour revolutions” that installed pro-American rulers in Georgia (Rose Revolution, 2003), Ukraine (Orange Revolution, 2004) and Kyrgystan (Tulip Revolution, 2005) could surely not have missed the tell tale signs.
The earliest foreboding surfaced in the backroom manoeuvres by United States (US) and British intelligence services to engineer panic about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear assets. It was a repeat of the duplicitous hysteria they generated over non-existent weapons of mass destruction that Iraq allegedly possessed. A carefully worded article, co-authored by former State Department officials Richard L. Armitage and Kara L. Bue, signalled the shift in US policy. After formally acknowledging then President Pervez Musharraf’s many achievements, the authors continued: “much remains to be accomplished, particularly in terms of democratization. Pakistan must…eliminate the home-grown jihadists…And…it must prove itself a reliable partner on technology transfer and nuclear non-proliferation.”
The “war on terror” and “promoting democracy” are the 21st century equivalents of the 19th century British gobbledygook. American Late Neo-colonialism purveys them as moral justification and uses as political cover for intervening and, where necessary, invading resource-rich and strategic countries to overthrow nationalist leaders, install puppet regimes and savage the countries’ wealth. And of course the US is by far the most powerful terrorist force.
The Bush Administration deftly replaced the “Communist threat” with the “Islamic threat”, no doubt following Machiavelli’s famous advice in The Prince, that a wise ruler invents enemies and then slays them in order to control his own subjects.
When Musharraf skilfully combined military operations against Islamists with a political front promoting secularism to ideologically disarm them, the US administration saw red. By secularising Pakistani society over time Musharraf would de-fang the “Islamic threat” within Pakistan and extricate the country out of the contrived orbit of “war on terror”. That would greatly diminish Washington’s leverage to intervene in the country to distance Islamabad from Beijing and exploit energy resources abundantly found in Balochistan and, in the long run, perhaps derail US administration’s well laid plans to bring Afghanistan to heel and to dominate Central Asia and its oil-rich Caspian Sea basin.
The import of “coordination” between American, NATO, Afghan and Pakistan militaries will become clearer over the next weeks and months. For now the suspicion is unavoidable that the US Administration has at long last begun frog-marching Pakistan into the US-created Afghan quagmire to further destabilise the country and justify intervention.
Musharraf had resolutely opposed precisely this eventuality. He rejected US demands that the Pakistani army assist NATO forces in Afghanistan. He underlined the country will not repeat the catastrophic mistakes of the 1980s when it got embroiled in America’s war in Afghanistan against the then Soviet Union, for which the Pakistani people continues to pay a heavy price. Rather, he insisted his army will fight only Pakistan’s war within Pakistan’s borders.
The consequences of the PPP leadership following the US into the Afghan quagmire will soon be evident.

The Occupy Wall Street movement arose in response to the economic crisis of capitalism, and the way in which the costs of this were imposed on the 99 percent rather than the 1 percent.  But "the highest expression of the capitalist threat," as Naomi Klein has said, is its destruction of the planetary environment.  So it is imperative that we critique that as well.
Climate change is only part of the overall environmental problem.  Scientists, led by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, have recently indicated that we have crossed, or are near to crossing, nine "planetary boundaries" (defined in terms of sustaining the environmental conditions of the Holocene epoch in which civilization developed over the last 12,000 years): climate change, species extinction, the disruption of the nitrogen-phosphorus cycles, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, freshwater usage, land cover change, (less certainly) aerosol loading, and chemical use.  Each of these rifts in planetary boundaries constitutes an actual or potential global ecological catastrophe.  Indeed, in three cases -- climate change, species extinction, and the disruption of the nitrogen cycle -- we have already crossed planetary boundaries and are currently experiencing catastrophic effects.  We are now in the period of what scientists call the "sixth extinction," the greatest mass extinction in 65 million years, since the time of the dinosaurs; only this time the mass extinction arises from the actions of one particular species -- human beings.  Our disruption of the nitrogen cycle is a major factor in the growth of dead zones in coastal waters.  Ocean acidification is often called the "evil twin" of climate change, since it too arises from carbon dioxide emissions, and by negatively impacting the oceans it threatens planetary disruption on an equal (perhaps even greater) scale.  The decreased availability of freshwater globally is emerging as an environmental crisis of horrendous proportions.3
It is important to grasp that all of these rifts in the planetary system derive from processes associated with our global production system, namely capitalism.  If we are prepared to carry out a radical transformation of our system of production -- to move away from "business as usual" -- then there is still time to turn things around; though the remaining time in which to act is rapidly running out.

"With a fish tank, some toothpaste, a tube of glue and a live mussel, scraped from its cosy home on the banks of a canal, Venice – preposterous, beautiful, sad, slow-sinking Venice – might be saved"....


Red Bulletin- The woman regrowing the planet
www.redbull.com

A freethinking scientist wants to change the way we save the world. First up- using living architecture to stop Venice sinking forever.

Libya´s War For The Abaya

Democracy poses a real threat to NATO’s vision of the “New Libya.”The abaya carries so much weight in the battle for Islamic modernity that Gadhaffi pretty much banned Islamic dress from the first days of his government. Getting rid of the abaya was part of Gadhaffi’s larger reform package supporting women’s rights—one of the best and most advanced in the entire Arab world. The transformation of women’s status has been so great that the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran imposed a fatwa against Gadhaffi years ago, declaring his government blasphemous to Islamic traditions.

Real Coastal Warriors
‎"As the Occupy Wall Streeters are beginning to discover, and homeless people have known all along, many ordinary and biologically necessary activities are illegal when performed in American streets -- not just urinating but sitting, lying down and sleeping. In Sarasota, Fla., for example, it is illegal for someone to sleep in public if, when awakened, he says he has 'no other place to live.'

The Challenges of Urban Camping - Kansas City, Missouri News
www.infozine.com




  POWER; DOWNED          


Center for Media and Democracy
‎"The natural gas industry's favorite public relations ploy about the necessity of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the process through which "clean natural gas" is now procured, is that the patriotic gas industry is championing the shale gas boom for domestic consumption and for "national security purposes." We now know definitively that this is pure propaganda."

Michigan Company Develops Fuel Saving ‘Corona’ Ignition System

 


The top one per cent of US society is enjoying a two-tiered system of justice and politics.

Stephen Harper's Government For the Few Paid For By the Many 

They ignore our international commitments, they undermine respect for our courts here at home, and they refuse to enforce or even accept their own legal obligations to Canadians. Then they call this "strong leadership." This is how we lost our bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council. This is why Canadians are disaffected, distanced from their own government and from their own role in civil society.

These actions are the manifestation of an ideology that is at fundamental odds with what we know to be our best interest as a country. These are the actions of a government that ignores the social, environmental and economic bottom lines. Simply put, these are the actions of a government of and for the few, paid for by the honest, hard work of the many.

http://cfjctv.com/story.php?id=5240


Commonwealth in peril?
www.cfjctv.com

No human rights reforms have been reached by the Commonwealth leaders meeting in Australia. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the other leaders have been looking at a report stating the Commonwealth's future is in jeopardy if it cannot credibly address democratic and rule-of-law abuses and human ri...
( Of foxes watching henhouses )

Just a Theory re: Hidden Agenda


 


Brendan DeMelle | Massive Natural Gas Export Deal Inked by BG Group, So Much for Industry's "Domesti
www.desmogblog.com


PakAlertPress


Break up the Family by Replacing Love with Lust
www.youtube.com

Divide and conquer - render us useless! "[ I brought up the point that the gay identity is a nonsense - and a bigger issue than the homosexuality ] He answer...
Israeli ex-soldier faces prison over leaks 
An Israeli court has sentenced a former soldier to four and a half years in prison for leaking classified military documents to a newspaper, which later reported allegations of a policy to assassinate Palestinian fighters.
Biopiracy in India: The case of the aubergine 
...raises serious questions about the political will and the institutional capacity of the Federal Government of India to protect its treasure trove of biodiversity and its agricultural sector - arguably the backbone of a country in which around 70 per cent of 1.2 billion people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. 
The BT brinjal fiasco is far from unusual. Given the massive profits involved, multinationals seem more than willing to ride roughshod over laws in foreign nations - often in the developing world - that they would rarely ignore in their own countries. 
The lost bases of the US empire 

Colombia politicians fear for their lives 

84,000 WITHOUT POWER

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1 November - Morning is Broken ( Who's Going to Fix It ? )

The Divine Matrix with Greg Braden

HongPong: for more on CONPLAN3501 military contingencies for disaster PDF

Sibel Edmonds: 9/11 & The Turkish Spy Scandal

Teacher! Leave those kids alone - Psychiatric coercive schools for youth & teens; Elan, Teen Challenge, therapeutic boarding school trade associations, very dark rooms & mass drugging for minors


Intelligence Spending Declined in 2011

Invention Secrecy on the Rise
The use of secrecy orders has sometimes been questioned, particularly when they extend to inventions that are not clearly limited to military or other national security applications. Forty years ago, government agencies directed that advanced renewable energy technologies should be reviewed for possible restriction under the Invention Secrecy Act. These included photovoltaics that were more than 20% efficient and energy conversion systems with efficiencies “in excess of 70-80%.” (“Invention Secrecy Still Going Strong,” Secrecy News, October 21, 2010)

Secrecy and Candy, Expensive Habits

Tactical Level Commander and Staff Toolkit


The Great Renewable Energy Scam Continues
Wind and solar projects are hugely expensive, require massive taxpayer subsidies, while producing few real jobs. They are astonishingly stupid and unreliable way to generate electricity when one considers that wind power, for example, requires a constant backup supply of electricity from traditional generating facilities.

To add insult to injury, virtually all of the components of wind and solar energy production are manufactured in China where U.S. companies have exported the jobs involved, focusing on assembling the parts instead.

The Institute for Energy Research found that electricity prices are almost 40% higher in states with mandates for their use.
( Think about the impact of making any invention that works secret. )

China Opens Oil Field in Iraq
By Phyllis Schlafly The United States waged an incredibly expensive war in Iraq, got rid of their cruel dictator, set up a peaceful democratic government, and rebuilt much of the country's infrastructure. Iraq has the second largest supply of oil in the world, and the spoils of war should belong to us. We should take enough Iraqi oil to [...]
( 'Rebuilt much of the country's infrastructure...' One would think so given  the amount {that was stolen by allocating it without competitive bidding or oversight....} spent. I think I'd like quite a catalogue of success stories unlike the disaster at the Fallujah water works
 Fallujah Sewerage System, Iraq
Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for reconstruction released his report on the sewerage system in October 2008. Bowen went into the details of what went wrong with the Fallujah Sewerage System. The sewerage project was already delayed by three years and costs increased to three times the expected figure.
The work contractors rejected the use of workers from outside Fallujah. Quality was compromised as the local contractors had no experience in building a wastewater treatment plant. Above all, payment for the construction became an unanswered question, with US Embassy officials frozen in "indecision" over budget allocation to the project.

Bowen's report has redrawn timelines for completion of the Fallujah Sewerage system. According to the report it will take another 56 months to serve only 9,300 homes of the planned 24,400, or about 38% of Fallujah's residents.
Discharged wastewater into the Euphrates has caused problems of contamination.
Only around 6% of Iraq's 27.5 million population are served by WTPs.
( At the time of the 2003 invasion Iraq's population was 29 million )


Fallujah’s Wastewater Treatment Plant Update
"There's no doubt that Fallujah and cities across Iraq need billions of dollars of development. Services in the country are a wreck after years of wars and sanctions and nowhere near meeting demand.

My criticism is that the U.S.'s reconstruction plan was a disaster. I'm reading a 2008 audit of the Fallujah project right now and it's a comedy of errors. The original designs for the plant were inadequate, the concrete for the plant was poured improperly, the Iraqi Ministry of Public Words wanted the individual Iraq families in the city to connect their homes to the system on their own! There was no money to build the pipelines from the plant out to the houses to begin with. They didn't talk to Baghdad about getting fuel to run the plant. There was a later report by the Inspector General that said the project should've never been started in the first place because Fallujah was a war zone at the time and all this money got diverted to security and costs sky rocketed as a result. The idea for the plant was fine, the timing and execution were horrible."

Climate Prostitutes, Charlatans, and Comedians
Nearly 2,000 animal species “are fleeing global warming by heading north much faster than they were less than a decade ago,” asserts new “research” just published in the once-credible journal Science. The opportunistic species are moving at the breakneck speed of “about a mile a year,” intrepid climate-chaos promoter Seth Borenstein anxiously noted in his AP wire story.

The situation could quickly reverse if reduced solar activity and the past two years’ frigid Northern Hemisphere winters become the new norm. But neither Science nor the AP mentioned that or explained how the current migrations differ from what’s been happening since the last Pleistocene glaciers retreated and the Little Ice Age ended.

Instead, we’ve been repeatedly treated to amusingly convoluted back-peddling from earlier pronouncements that ski resorts will be a thing of the past and “children just aren’t going to remember what snow is.” Now we’re told that global warming can worsen winters and increase snowfalls. In fact, as one Greenpeace activist explained, “Global warming can mean colder. It can mean wetter. It can mean drier. That’s what we’re talking about.”

Actually, what we’re talking about is Earth’s constantly changing weather and climate caused – not by hydrocarbon use – but by complex, chaotic, unpredictable atmospheric, oceanic, solar, planetary and other forces whose interactions and effects scientists are only beginning to understand. To respond adequately to them, we need building, heating, air conditioning and other technology to adapt to, cope with, and protect our lives and property against those forces – and the prosperity to afford that technology.
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