The president’s virtuous plan to spread democracy like bird flu goes apace. Ain’t nobody heah ceptin’ us missionaries. The rascal is imposing democracy right and left, though mostly left as it turns out... ...In Bolivia it produced Evo Morales, who hates the United States. In Iran it empowered Ahmawhatsispelling, who hates the United States. So does the elected government in Iraq. In Palestine Mr. Bush’s righteousness elected Hamas, which hates the United States, perhaps as much as does the Muslim Brotherhood, which keeps getting more elected in Egypt.

NOTHING happens with "Islamic" on it in Beirut, never mind Damascus, unless the Syrian colonels in sunglasses OK it. Assad...wants to remind Bush that taking down Syria may be a cakewalk in stage one, just like Iraq was, but stage two, the occupation, will be way worse than Iraq is now, because Assad's spies are smarter and tougher than Saddam's goons ever were. So in a way I'm kind of glad those Danish embassies burned, because maybe Bush will take the hint and not land us in another tar swamp. One's plenty. But let's be realistic. Bush's last contact with reality was his senior-year report card at Yale. He didn't enjoy it and hasn't been back since. He'll jump into Syria unless one of the Joint Chiefs draws a pistol and changes the C-in-C's mind.

Bourse Director Sven Arild Andersen is fed up with Norwegian oil having to be traded in London and wants to have a commodities and energy bourse [market] in Norway. The Bourse Director believes that Norway already has the prerequisites for building up a Norwegian or Scandinavian energy bourse. "This would in such case compete with the bourse in London. Why not have the ambition to outcompete the British petroleum bourse," says Sven Arild Andersen...Andersen is of the opinion that Norwegian oil must be traded in Euros, which can be advantageous for international customers.

This cartoon of DICK Cheney is brilliant. Enjoy this kind of stuff while it's still legal. There'll be prison terms for sedition like this before long. Isn't it sad that an old man has to get shot in the face for us to get some relief from bad news?

   

Having eliminated internal opposition, the Bush administration is now using blackmail obtained through illegal spying on American citizens to silence the media and the opposition party. Before flinching at my assertion of blackmail, ask yourself why President Bush refuses to obey the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act...The only reason for the Bush administration to evade the court is that the Bush administration had no legitimate reasons for its spying. This should be obvious even to a naif. The United States is undergoing a coup against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, civil liberties, and democracy itself. The "liberal press" has been co-opted. As everyone must know by now, the New York Times has totally failed its First Amendment obligations, allowing Judith Miller to make war propaganda for the Bush administration, suppressing for an entire year the news that the Bush administration was illegally spying on American citizens, and denying coverage to Al Gore’s speech that challenged the criminal deeds of the Bush administration. The TV networks mimic Fox News’ faux patriotism. Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda. The years of illegal spying have given the Bush administration power over the media and the opposition. Journalists and Democratic politicians don’t want to have their adulterous affairs broadcast over television or to see their favorite online porn sites revealed in headlines in the local press with their names attached. Only people willing to risk such disclosures can stand up for the country.

The US public sees the issue of Iran as backburner, and has little eagerness for an attack on the country at this time. A USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll from early February 2006 found that a full 86% of respondents favored either taking no action or using economic/diplomatic efforts towards Iran for now. Significantly, 69% said they were concerned "that the U.S. will be too quick to use military force in an attempt to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons." And that begs the question: how can the US public be convinced to enter a potentially ugly and protracted war in Iran? A domestic terrorist attack would do the trick. Just consider how long Congress went back and forth over reauthorizing Bush's Patriot Act, but how quickly opposing senators capitulated following last week's nerve-agent scare in a Senate building. The scare turned out to be a false alarm, but the Patriot Act got the support it needed. Now consider the fact that former CIA Officer Philip Giraldi has said the Pentagon's plans to attack Iran were drawn up "to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States." Writing in The American Conservative in August 2005, Giraldi added, "As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States." Chew on that one a minute. The Pentagon's plan should be used in response to a terrorist attack on the US, yet is not contingent upon Iran actually having been responsible. How outlandish is this scenario: another 9/11 hits the US, the administration says it has secret information implicating Iran, the US population demands retribution and bombs start dropping on Tehran. That's the worst-case scenario, but even the best case doesn't look good. Let's say the Bush administration chooses the UN Security Council over military power in dealing with Iran. That still leaves the proposed oil bourse, along with the economic fallout that will occur if OPEC countries snub the greenback in favor of petro-euros. At the very least, the dollar will drop and inflation could soar, so you'd think the administration would be busy tightening the nation's collective belt. But no. The US trade deficit reached a record high of $725.8 billion in 2005, and Bush & Co.'s FY 2007 budget proposes increasing deficits by $192 billion over the next five years. The nation is hemorhaging roughly $7 billion a month on military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is expected to hit its debt ceiling of $8.184 trillion next month. So the white-knuckle ride to war continues, with the administration's goals in Iran very clear. Recklessly naïve and impetuous perhaps, but clear: stop the petro-euro oil bourse, take over Khuzestan Province (which borders Iraq and has 90% of Iran's oil) and secure the Straits of Hormuz in the process.

potatoes, rice, corn, wheat and grains (no breads or cakes), rye, yams, meat, chicken, fish, sugar, coffee, chocolate, beans, peas, peanuts, parsnips, canola oil, mayonaisse, legumes (no tofu or soy based products) and salt.

Approximately 25 per cent of bottle-fed children in the US receive soy-based formula - a much higher percentage than in other parts of the Western world. Fitzpatrick estimated that an infant exclusively fed soy formula receives the estrogenic equivalent (based on body weight) of at least five birth control pills per day. By contrast, almost no phytoestrogens have been detected in dairy-based infant formula or in human milk, even when the mother consumes soy products. Scientists have known for years that soy-based formula can cause thyroid problems in babies. But what are the effects of soy products on the hormonal development of the infant, both male and female?... ...It goes without saying that future patterns of sexual orientation may also be influenced by the early hormonal environment. Male children exposed during gestation to diethylstilbestrol (DES), a synthetic estrogen that has effects on animals similar to those of phytoestrogens from soy, had testes smaller than normal on manturation. (sic) Learning disabilities, especially in male children, have reached epidemic proportions. [my hate mail and popular "culture" confirm this]. Soy infant feeding - which began in earnest in the early 1970s - cannot be ignored as a probable cause for these tragic developments. As for girls, an alarming number are entering puberty much earlier than normal, according to a recent study reported in the journal Pediatrics. Investigators found that one per cent of all girls now show signs of puberty, such as breast development or pubic hair, before the age of three; by age eight, 14.7 per cent of white girls and almost 50 per cent of African-American girls have one or both of these characteristics. New data indicate that environmental estrogens such as PCBs and DDE (a breakdown product of DDT) may cause early sexual development in girls. In the 1986 Puerto Rico Premature Thelarche study, the most significant dietary association with premature sexual development was not chicken - as reported in the press - but soy infant formula.

This was the first conclusion I came to; this was another scheme to build up our dislike of those damn towelheads sitting on our oil. It’s not as if this hasn’t already taken place on a large scale because it evidently has - where were the media when the people of Fallujah were being burnt to death by anything-but-napalm? Middle east/Muslim smear campaigns have been underway for quite some time to allow such numb responses to the Anglo-American enterprise literally invading the Middle East. But this latest smear campaign had an added venom to it. As well as portraying most Muslims as a bunch of crazies who freak out and break things because of cartoons, this campaign placed the Muslim community at opposites, and hence as sworn enemies, of our beloved free speech.

   

...there were over 100 children in US custody and that soldiers had abused children. An eye-witness, Sergeant Provance, even described how interrogators molested a 15-year old girl and physically abused a 16-year old boy... ...Seymour Hersh claimed that he had heard tapes of children screaming as they were being sodomized in front of their parents...Buried in a Denver Post article a few months earlier was a brief but chilling reference to the rape of a young Iraqi boy by an American soldier. Just recently, nine-year-old Aya Astal was shot in the neck and had her stomach blown open when she wandered too close to Israel’s “security fence.”... But a whole troupe of little ghosts go before her: Fifth grader, Ghadir Mukheimer, a ten-year-old schoolgirl whom Israeli occupation troops shot in the chest and killed in October, 2004 while she was sitting at her desk inside a United Nations school in a Gaza refugee camp... And thirteen-year-old Iman al-Hams skipping to school, left to die in a pool of blood when ambulances were denied access. Her body was riddled with 20 bullets - 5 to her head - most pumped into her body after death by Israeli soldiers... And four-month-old Iman Hajjour, killed at Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza Strip by Israeli shelling that also left her mother and sister seriously injured...

Next month, Iran is scheduled to shift its petrodollars into a euro-based bourse. The effect on the value of the dollar will be significant, if not, in the long term, disastrous. At present the dollar is, on paper, a worthless currency bearing the burden of a national debt exceeding $8trn and a trade deficit of more than $600bn. The cost of the Iraq adventure alone, according to the Nobel Prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz, could be $2trn. America's military empire, with its wars and 700-plus bases and limitless intrigues, is funded by creditors in Asia, principally China. That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency. What the Bush regime fears is not Iran's nuclear ambitions but the effect of the world's fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking the dollar monopoly. Will the world's central banks then begin to shift their reserve holdings and, in effect, dump the dollar? Saddam Hussein was threatening to do the same when he was attacked.

Managers cite a series of shortcomings in potential recruits. These include: Too much time spent working on degrees and not enough joining clubs and societies, where students might work in teams. Not enough experience of giving presentations in tutorials, leaving new graduates unable to communicate ideas in the work place. Poor spelling, grammar and mathematical ability mean that graduates are making basic mistakes, writing illiterate memos and are in need of constant supervision.

For most Americans marinated in materialism, heads anchored firmly in the sand, never having heard the words “Peak Oil,” still driving their gas-gulping SUVs, reveling in suburban sprawl, and gullibly counting on their pensions and 401Ks to be there when they need them, the notion of civilization’s collapse is ludicrous and merely the latest obsession of the lunatic fringe. For other Americans of the rapidly-vanishing middle class who are only one paycheck or one catastrophic illness away from financial oblivion—who between mortgage, car payments, monthly bills, medical expenses, gas prices, and doubling monthly credit card bills, realize that not only will they not be able to pay for their kids’ college education but that every day they are now walking over an economic tightrope across a gaping precipice with a thousand-foot drop. Those folks know in their bones the reality of collapse—they feel it, smell it, taste it, but may not yet be able to allow the words to pass from their lips... ...For the first and second group of Americans, collapse is very bad news. It will mean the end of lifestyles they cannot imagine living without. They have become their lifestyle, and in its absence, they believe they will have no identity—that literally, they will cease to exist. For these folks, collapse will be extremely painful, and worse. Since they have isolated themselves in their hermetically-sealed suburban “dormitories,” they are not likely to survive unless they are willing to radically alter their behavior, and by the time they are, if they are, it may be far too late to do so.

How do you plan to flee the country when the shit hits the fan?

   

As one high school junior in Boulder told "the Rocky": "The whole getting-shot-at thing - I have better things I want to do." This survey comes on the heels of a recent Pentagon study stating that the US Army "has become a ‘thin green line’ that could snap unless relief comes soon.” I know exactly where the Army can find such "relief." Millions of Americans who support America’s policy of perpetual war have never served one day in the military. Most of the pundits, politicians and policymakers who promote and vote for America’s troop presence in 130 countries, as well as the Iraq war and - this is a safe bet - a war with Iran, fall into this category... ...If you desire perpetual war, go fight it yourself. Enlist in the infantry. If the military won’t have you for whatever reason, form your own volunteer unit.

If Dr. Rice has done her homework, she is aware that in 1975 President Gerald Ford's chief of staff, Dick Cheney, and his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, bought Iran's argument that it needed a nuclear program to meet future energy requirements. This is what Iranian officials are saying today, and they are supported by energy experts who point out that oil extraction in Iran is already at or near peak and that the country will need alternatives to oil in coming decades. Ironically, Cheney and Rumsfeld were among those persuading the reluctant Ford in 1976 to approve offering Iran a deal for nuclear reprocessing facilities that would have brought at least $6.4 billion for U.S. corporations like Westinghouse and General Electric. The project fell through when the Shah was ousted three years later.

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

There are numerous signs that the nation’s free ride will soon be over. Gold is skyrocketing as perceptive investors see the cracks and fissures appearing in the economic foundation that binds the debtor-kingdom together. Twitchy investors are watching for news about Iran, rebel attacks in Nigeria, or a potential sell-off of greenbacks in China... ...the country is dead broke. Last year alone Americans not only spent more than they earned for the first time since the great Depression; they also borrowed an additional $600 billion from their home equity to pay off credit card debt and consumer loans! This tells us that ... all signs of growth in the economy are the result of credit spending. Home equity has become the new ATM card, demonstrating once again that the country is running on fumes. This quarter’s slow growth of 1.1%, shows that the well has run dry and consumer spending (which accounts for 70% of GDP) is down for the count. Interest rates are going up, the dollar will soon be sinking, energy costs are soaring, and the unemployment line is getting longer. Time to find a nice comfy spot beneath the freeway on-ramp…and bring your own cardboard.

"I try to be truthful," he continues, "My God, after the Holocaust isn’t it time we gave up as a species? After the first world war wasn’t it time we gave up? We’re perfectly awful animals and we’re intelligent enough to know about it."... ...In the land of his internal exile, corporate profiteers rule unchecked, extended families have been split into desperately vulnerable nuclear groups, "lethal injection and warfare are forms of entertainment" and Americans are "as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis once were". When challenged about this last statement, Vonnegut repeats that US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and vice-president Dick Cheney are "jut-jawed, like Nazis" and argues that the main difference is that the Germans were justly feared for their military prowess. "We have no army," he says, "What makes us the most powerful nation on Earth is our willingness to kill people in their thousands with remote-controlled missiles, the fact that we’re prepared to set off nuclear explosions in the middle of unarmed people - men, women and children.

Taking an unusual approach, Professor Lowe then set out to describe how one might go about destroying a planet, by destroying its future. "How could we do it? "We could start with exponential population growth. "Then we could increase the rate of consumption per person. We could base our economy on consumption, stimulating consumption that is not necessary. In fact, we could stimulate consumption by appealing to the seven deadly sins. (Or, as Clive Hamilton puts it, we could use money we don't have to buy things we don't want to impress people we don't like.) "Then we could deplete significant mineral resources, starting with oil. We could over-use potentially renewable resources like fisheries and forests and groundwater.

A Halliburton subsidiary has just received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to provide "temporary detention and processing capabilities." "Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters," says Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst who in 1971 released the Pentagon Papers, the U.S. military's account of its activities in Vietnam. "They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo."