THE FIRE DREAM CIRCLE
This year, halfway between the Man and the Temple of Dreams, an enormous
head will rise from the playa. It is Pepe Ozan's Dreamer, a huge partially submerged head containing an interactive interior brain space and a playa mud chimney. Each evening, the fireplace will be ceremonially lit by the lamplighters. Participants are invited to experience/practice/ live a "dream state" inside the head for a number of hours. Anyone can join. Musicians will be playing "dream" music almost every night.The Head will stare out to the deep playa, and will be surrounded by a grouping of fire installations. Each night during the event this Fire Dream Circle will flame on for several hours and will be visible from far across the playa.
Heading along the walkway from the man to the Temple, one will pass through Joe Bard and Danya Parkinson's Pyrokinetics, two large-scale fire pendulums that will face each other across the central walkway, forming a kind of gateway. "You see flames swaying to and fro, back and forth, popping, roaring, calling to you. There are two of them, one swinging down low, and one high overhead; so beautiful, so bright. Your eyelids feel heavy as you become mesmerized by their movement. You relax more with every rotation; with every breath you go deeper, deeper..."
Within the Circle, several fire projects will surround the Dreamer,
including:
The Angel of the Apocalypse by the Flaming Lotus Girls
The Angel will come alive with fire at dusk each night. We will start the wood fire inside the Angel's head at sunset, and as the sky darkens a lighting ceremony will start the outer wings burning, creating an edge of flame around the installation. As people come into the space, we will introduce the fire and interactive controls in the inner wings, inviting participants to play, dance, and explore the Angel of the Apocalypse. Towards early morning each night we will close down the wing fires and stoke the wood fire in the Angel's head, leaving the space open, warm, and resting for the remainder of the night and morning.
The Fire Pod by Buphalo
Fire-Pod will be operating Tuesday through Saturday, working with fire performance groups or individuals to use the pod as a stage. The pod will make lots of big fire from the time it gets dark, till we run out of gas (estimating 1 hour to an hour and a half). There will be some interface that allows people passing by to control the bursts.
The Synapses by Charlie Smith and Jaime Laudet
The six synaptic fire cauldrons will burn four times during the week of Burning Man: Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights. These burns will provide a very warm and visually stimulating atmosphere hosting a collective of participants and performers of fire, dance, music, antics, who knows what ? This will be an open, safe area for all to share and commune in the basking warmth of red hot metal. All of the visual designs glowing from the caldrons were created by the 72+ workshop participants that have come together to build this new series of fire cauldrons. The space will be filled with tons of great energy representing communities from New York City, Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco. All of these communities have done a fantastic job working together to create and build these six magnificent steel fire sculptures. Everyone is invited to come on out and toss a log into the mouth of a fire belching cauldron of synaptic energy!
Ajna by Kasia Wojnarski
Kasia's creative vision is to create, with the use of fire and metal, a third eye playground. Employing the three main shapes that create the symbol for AJNA - the pineal gland, third eye, or sixth chakra - the installation will provide a place where citizens of Black Rock City can mingle, dance, and meditate within a large scale model of the Seat of the Soul, safely surrounded by fire and sacred geometry.
In addition, David Best's Tower of Memory will move through the Fire Circle each night. This mobile 25' hollow steel obelisk contains three fire pits; the flames will be visible through the filigreed metal.
Only a fraction of the art installations on the playa are funded. See other 2005 projects here:
http://www.burningman.com/installations/
EXPLORE YOUR PSYCHE
Several of the funded artists have based their projects on our 2005
theme, the Psyche:
http://www.burningman.com/art_of_burningman/
Laser maestro Gary Stadler of San Diego is bringing us an enormous version of the human brain in which we'll experience the synapses firing, and more. Inner Mind is a completely air supported structure housing an inner air-inflated dome, with thousands of color LED's representing nerves and ganglia- the inside of a giant brain. Over 2,500 microprocessors hooked into a 3 dimensional neural network display the thoughts, sounds, and sights that the brain encounters... and you're right in the middle of it! The source for the brain's activity will be the same as yours and mine... visuals, audio, and thought itself via an interactive human interface.
After exploring the Inner Mind, you can experience the outer surface of the brain at Michael Matteo's Headspace. Michael works as a production designer for events, televison, and music videos in LA, and will give us an opportunity to project our faces and voices onto a 15' head which will broadcast our spoken thoughts in real time.
Michael writes: "The installation is intended to act as a human 'thought amplifier'. The masses don't enjoy the freedom of having their thoughts heard by thousands through the television or print media as do celebrities or others in the news. Headspace gives the user the unique and uncensored opportunity to share their most personal thoughts and feelings on any subject they choose, with a large captive audience. I believe this emotional experience will challenge each individual to focus on what they truly want to share with their fellow humans and thus encourage, stimulate and provoke positive conversation and thought with others based on their statements. HeadSpace literally connects you to others with whom you share the planet and does so in a powerful and visually appealing way."
Moving your focus from the head to the entire body, you can place yourself inside of Kate Raudenbush's Stadium of the Self. Kate is a photographer/artist from New York who built White Noise, the white house surrounded by a white picket fence, in the deep playa in 2004.
"In creating Stadium of the Self, I wanted to create a paradox. Historically, a coliseum was a place where you found yourself captive in a violent arena surrounded by an audience of strangers and where oneis fate rested on the whims of a powerful and capricious Caesar. Here I seek to replace this arena of powerlessness with a place of enveloping empowerment: the audience reflected in the 70 arching stadium steps is the multiplicity of oneself. The stadium, glowing and gold, forms a protective cocoon around its sole participant. It is here that you challenge yourself as your only judge and arbiter of your fate. It is a place of confrontation and accountability for your own ego: is it intimidating or empowering to look oneself in the eye seventy times simultaneously? And, if it is uncomfortable or intimidating, what can you learn about yourself from that reaction? How do you identify with yourself? Are your actions in the arena of life done to please or impress others, or are they true to your nature? How far can you see past your own ego? Confronting oneis ego as one looks in the mirror is normal, yet when faced with an inescapable multiplicity of oneself, my hope is that the ego falls away and one is left with a curious, centering space of meditation and energizing self-reflection. Stadium of the Self is designed to be a place of empowerment: a place to bear witness to the potential in ourselves and channel it up and out into the world."
When you've explored your inner and outer mind and seen yourself reflected in multiples, take a break and experience another person's psyche, after being isolated in a small enclosure for all the world to observe. Meet Dicky, the brave soul who will live in a small plexiglass box on the playa for the week of our event. Logan Mirto, DPW worker and builder, says, "The Dicky Box explores the idea of isolation within community. We've all felt, at one time or another, that feeling of being present, but still removed... of standing in a crowded room, but still being alone. At his first Burn in 2002, our volunteer Dicky Davies had an amazing experience, but still had a deep feeling of isolation out on the playa, and none of the connection which he had hoped for. With the Dicky Box, our goal is to create a literal expression of those barriers we set up around ourselves. A physical manifestation of our internal boundaries. Dicky has volunteered to be our man in the box, and will be enclosed in a 10 x 10 clear plexiglass room for the duration of this year's Burning Man event, present but removed; isolated in his own bubble; missing out while being there. His experience will be unique. Come say hello."
And finally, when your psyche is full to the breaking point, get some rest! Lie down in a large comfortable bed and view videos of people just awakened from dreams at The Bed in your Head, by Karen Lewis and Max Allstadt, a mouth art-bed surrounded by free standing neuron monsters.
"The Bed is an exploration of the unconscious mind and the conscious mind is attempt at recalling and understanding information from the unconscious state. Each night after sundown we invite you to enter a large dream inspired cartoon mouth bed. Look into the seven neurons to watch various individuals' recollections of their own dreams. Much in the way that the mind jumps from one subject to another in the dream state, so will the viewer experience the subjectsi retelling of dreams as each neuron simultaneously shows a different dreamer. All of the dreams are unique and utilize symbols to comment on individual's lives, as well as the larger cultural and worldwide issues that may be constellated within the psyche of our entire community."
Only a fraction of the art installations on the playa are funded. See other 2005 projects here:
http://www.burningman.com/installations/
LAMPLIGHTER GIANT PUPPET PARADE
Citizens of Black Rock City! Make way for the Lamplighters!! Over the years the Lamplighters have transformed a small solemn processional to a magnificent parade. This year we will also be inviting Any and All Giant Puppets from the Black Rock Community at large to participate.
Join us as we illuminate our city's thoroughfares at dusk. This year's inspiration for the Lamplighter Giant Puppet Parade comes from the characters in the Major Arcana of the Tarot. Giant Puppets, Stilt Walkers, and Pole Puppets of all types and styles are welcome to accompany us in illuminating the Main Processional to the Man. Drummers welcome too! We meet nightly in Center Camp at the Lamplighter Chapel, 6 PM. Come one night or every night! For further information contact
DAYZee@burningman.com
NO SPECTATORS DAY and Community Art Carnival (in conjunction with the Black Rock Art Foundation -
http://www.blackrockarts.org ) July 31st here in San Francisco. You're invited....and if you can't make it here, you're invited to celebrate it in your own town in your own way.
But what about the news for preparing to PLAYA? (Yes, that word's been officially verbed. Trust me.) Registration deadline for the Department of Mutant Vehicles is fast approaching (July 15th) and if you're planning a piece of driveable art, OR you're going to need to register with your disabled placard to move a vehicle around BRC, get on over to that form. (See "BRC NEWS".) AND we've got the first of six JRS installments which will focus on the grant projects for Burning Man 2005 - read up below and start wrapping your brain around these amazing works!
So let's go, but before we do: for those that may have skipped or missed the Resource Issue, we repeat one big piece of news around here - the extended DVD of "Beyond Black Rock" is now available at Burningman.com!
This long-awaited version double-sided DVD of the documentary includes the 106 minute main feature and another 2 hours of additional material, including extended interviews, outtakes and deleted scenes, all of which provide a large body of detail and information. Producer Mike Wilson helpfully pointed out to us this week that the film is not only a great way to help your puzzled family understand why you keep dragging yourself to that danged desert thing every year, but that it might be a good motivator for getting your camp excited about high-season planning, or for that on-the-fence friend you've been trying to drag along with you for years. We'll let you be the judge of that. You've got your chance if you're going to be in Portland or Seattle in early August, where Mutaytor and other great acts will add to the fun at special screenings of the film. (More under "Events and Happenings".)
You can get a copy of the DVD at:
http://marketplace.burningman.com/catalog.php
PANTIES FOR MAN
We want your panties!
Panty Camp needs your panties!!! Panty Camp is on it's third year of providing the citizens of Black Rock City with clean underthings and we're running out of panties. We rely on donations to run our camp, and we are running low this year.. so send us your panties!
But wait, there is something in it for you... Send us 6 or more panties and we'll send you one back with "The Man", wearing a pair of panties, of course, printed on the butt!
visit www.pantycamp.org/donate.html for more details.
see ya on the playa!
lovelove,
josie
WHY DO YOU DO WHAT YOU DO?
Check out http://www.wdydwyd.com to see cool black & white portraits of hundreds of burners last year, who answered the question: "Why do you do what you do?" and posed for the photo with a written sign.
The responses fit in a theme that may be more appropriate for this year than last year since the project "explores psychology: self-expression, self-reflection."
Some sample responses:
- "Because if I don't, I'll be punished."
- "Because I am a survivor."
- "Eventually Love will ruin everything."
Santana to headline Emissaries tour
Indo-Asian News Service
New York, July 26, 2005
Guitarist Carlos Santana will join renowned American jazz musicians Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter for the Emissaries for Peace concert tour of Japan.
The concert tour, which will run from July 27 to Aug 2, will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the World War II atomic bombing of Japan, the International Committee of Artists for Peace (ICAP) announced.
"At this particular time, I'm especially excited about making a presentation for peace along with two dear friends of mine - Carlos Santana and Wayne Shorter - who have the same passion for spreading the human spirit of peace and happiness," said Hancock.
"I look forward to the opportunity to bring the magic of creativity through the contact of one human heart to another."
Concerts will be performed at Yokohama Arena, Nagasaki Brick Hall, Osaka Festival Hall and Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
"In 2002, an ICAP group performed in Hiroshima and the city's mayor gave them seed from a tree that had survived the atomic blast of WWII to plant the symbolic 'seeds of peace' when they all returned to their homes," said Patrick Duffy, vice president of ICAP.
"Since then, we have been pleased to welcome Carlos Santana and his life-long dream for peace into the expanding ICAP family of artists. This year's Emissaries for Peace concert tour will mark the start of Carlos' dream of wrapping the globe with a music tour that will hopefully awaken in everyone a passion and commitment to work for mankind's betterment."
Founded by Soka Gakkai International-USA Buddhist artists, ICAP's mission is to promote world peace through arts and it is a coalition of co-sponsors of the UN International Decade for Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World (2000-10). 
Hiroshima at 60 - A Critical Moment in History
Douglas Mattern Association of World Citizens
August 6 marks the 60th anniversary of the nuclear nightmare that began when the City of Hiroshima and its inhabitants were instantly incinerated by an atomic bomb the makers named “Little Boy.” Three days later the City of Nagasaki was laid to waste with the second atomic bomb the makers named “Fat Man.” Strangle little names for two bombs that killed some 200,000 civilians.
The 60th anniversary is particularly ominous due to the failure of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference held at the United Nations during the month of May. The failure of governments to make progress toward reducing the nuclear danger at the NPT conference was inexcusable, if not criminal negligence. This failure, combined with the proliferation of nuclear weapons states, and the intention of the Bush Administration to develop and produce new nuclear weapons, has cast a dark nuclear shadow over the world community.
Most people understand the prospects of a terrorist organization acquiring a small nuclear device would be an apocalypse of its own, but the greater danger to the world community, virtually unknown among the general public, consists of 4,000 U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear warheads that are maintained on a hair-trigger alert. A recent study by the RAND think tank reports these weapons could be launched in a few minutes notice destroying both countries in an hour. Such a doomsday scenario could result from an accidental missile launch, computer error, miscalculation, or intent.
It’s a sad and tragic commentary on our society, even our civilization, that the vast majority passively accepts the daily threat of nuclear incineration.
This passivity continues even when the BBC reports that some scientists are worried that an asteroid passing close to our planet could be misinterpreted as a missile strike and initiate a nuclear exchange. This bizarre possibility is due to the hair-trigger alert policy, and it’s utter madness.
Why, for example, that more than a decade after the Cold War thousands of strategic nuclear warheads are maintained on hair-trigger alert? What kind of unthinking irresponsible people have we elected to high office? And where is the public outrage to end this lunacy? If not a kind of unthinking madness, then perhaps Noam Chomsky has it right: “People don’t know what is happening, and they don’t even know they don’t know”
It’s time they learn the dreary facts, for unless change is achieved in the near future it is only matter of time before a nuclear exchange takes place somewhere on the globe that could rapidly get out of control and lead to a tsunami of nuclear hell that engulfs us all.
This is why the 60th commemoration in Hiroshima of the first atomic bombing will be particularly somber. The ceremony will be held, as always, in the Peace Park, which is located at ground zero that forever changed human history. During the ceremony the bells of Hiroshima will toll for the victims in deep and haunting tones, and all present will feel that in some way they toll for all of us, that we are all the children of Hiroshima.
After the official ceremony in the park, long lines will form to visit the Memorial Museum that is located in the park. This museum, which contains photographs taken soon after the bomb exploded, is like no other. The museum also has models of the city before and after the bomb, plus other artifacts of that fateful day in history. The devastation is a searing reminder that nuclear weapons have a destructive capacity beyond our comprehension. It's even worse when we remember that the Hiroshima atomic bomb was small compared to today’s hydrogen bombs.
The Memorial Museum provides proof that anyone who accepts or contemplates the use of nuclear weapons for any reason is history’s biggest fool and most dangerous criminal. When I visited this museum several years ago my thought was that every general, every admiral, every politician who holds or aspires to high national office should be required to visit the museum and make their reaction public.
As evening descends on the city, thousands of people will proceed to the river adjoining the park. They will come to place lanterns in the river consisting of a lighted candle mounted on a wood platform covered with colored paper. Many will write the names of the victims on the paper as the symbolism is that their souls will be freed when the
lanterns reach the open sea.
APOCALYPSE SOON?
In a recent article published in Foreign Affairs entitled “Apocalypse Soon,” Robert McNamara recounts how during the Cuban missile crisis we came within a hairbreadth of nuclear war without knowing it, and that luck performed a role in averting catastrophe. We also know that over the years there have been many documented close calls to nuclear war by accident or confrontation, and that we had luck on our side.
Luck, however, does not endure; therefore, we cannot allow the madness to continue. We are, as McNamara states, at “a critical moment in history.” How will this moment be recorded? Will the present apathy lead to a radioactive valley of darkness, or will we finally muster the courage and wisdom to band together and force a dramatic change in policy, leading to the elimination of nuclear weapons and the liberation of humanity from the nuclear monster created in the fireball from hell at Hiroshima 60 years ago?
Douglas Mattern (worldcit@best.com)
Association of World Citizens
http://www.worldcitizens.org
Phone : 650-326-1409
A Tale of Two Cities: “Original Child Bomb”
An extraordinary documentary looks at the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
By RAYMOND A. SCHROTH
National Catholic Reporter, July 29, 2005
“It is a thing of beauty to behold,” wrote The New York Times’ William L. Laurence of the atomic bomb nestled in the belly of the B-29, Aug. 9, 1945, on the way to Nagasaki. Did he feel any pity or compassion for the “poor devils about to die”? Not when he thought “of Pearl Harbor or the Death March on Bataan.”
Awestruck, he watched the black object fall and the ball of fire rise. His imagination struggled to match metaphors to what he saw: It was a “new species” being born, a flower, a mushroom 45,000 feet high topped by creamy foam, a thousand Old Faithfuls, a decapitated monster growing a new head.
When the first bomb hit Hiroshima three days before, my family was on vacation on a farm in Pennsylvania. When we heard the news on the radio, I remember looking up “atomic” in the dictionary. That night on a horseback ride I saw a comet course across the sky. Was this an omen of world peace? I was 12 years old.
It was not until I read John Hersey’s Hiroshima, with its description of the 20 men whose faces had been turned upward when the bomb exploded, that I knew what happened to those “poor devils” below: Their eyeballs had melted and run down their cheeks. Around 1949, Fr. Schiffer, a Jesuit who had survived Hiroshima, addressed our high school, St. Joe’s Prep. I remember the scars from the shattered glass on his bony face.
“Original Child Bomb,” first released in 2004, is an extraordinary documentary on the moral impact of dropping the first atom bombs. Directed by Carey Schonegevel and produced by Mary Becker, it is, in a sense, made to educate “children” like me. The American and Japanese generation with any memory of August 1945 is dying out. We turn to the visual arts, to its graphic depiction of human suffering, to render today’s viewers more compassionate.
Ms. Becker’s father was a U.S. sailor in the Pacific when the bomb dropped. Inspired by Thomas Merton’s poem “Original Child Bomb,” haunted by her visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the 9/11 images of the planes hitting the Twin Towers and bodies tumbling through the air, she has moved toward this documentary for more than 20 years. She has woven together long-suppressed film footage and photos, drawings and animation, interviews with survivors and contemporary teenagers, statistics on the carnage, and Merton’s text.
The film opens with old color footage of pre-bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki street life in 1945. Children exercise, play baseball and dance. Men and women circulate in the outdoor market, cut wheat, eat lunch. A plane appears in the sky. The screen erupts in an animated blast. A woman’s body flies through the air. America celebrates. WAR IS OVER. President Truman proclaims the “biggest achievement of organized science in history.”
Then -- red, withered faces; chests, backs, breasts, legs blistered, torn, gone. A witness told Ms. Becker her friend had looked like “a fish on a charcoal grill.” In a few days came the effects of radiation -- vomiting blood, diarrhea, paralysis.
By the 1960s, a cloistered Trappist monk, writing daily in his cell, had become the religious voice of the antiwar movement. Merton’s prose-poem, a 41-stanza narrative, moves from President Truman’s first learning about the project in April to the 70,000 killed by the first bomb, which the Japanese called “original child” because it was the first of its kind. The poet’s brutal ironies illuminate the moral madness behind the decision: Many advisers opposed its use, yet some insisted that using it just once or twice “would produce eternal peace.” The president’s committee picked Hiroshima because “it had not been bombed at all. Lucky Hiroshima! What others had experienced over a period of four years would happen to Hiroshima in a single day! Much time would be saved, and ‘time is money.’ ”
In a classroom discussion among American students who have viewed the Hiroshima pictures, one asks, when will the blind cycle of Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima -- they BOOM us, we BOOM them -- stop? Another concludes: “Americans have a hard time feeling compassion for people other than themselves.”
In a creative riff, the producers send a present-day Hiroshima teenager in a backward baseball cap and earphones on a walk through the modern city, leading into the wreckage of 1945. He hears the voices of victims pleading with a woman with milk in her breasts to share it with another’s starving baby.
The film ends too quickly with its warning that the Bush administration has not learned the futility of atomic war: While the United States threatens Iran and Korea lest they develop nuclear capabilities, we order a whole new family of tactical nuclear weapons we are all too ready to use.
“Original Child Bomb” will be shown on the Sundance TV Channel Aug. 6 and 7.
Jesuit Fr. Raymond A. Schroth teaches journalism ethics at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City.
Mushroom clouds on the horizon?
By Pervez Hoodbhoy
Special to the Los Angeles Times
One wonders what Osama bin Laden and his ilk learned from Hiroshima.
The decision to incinerate the Japanese city and another, Nagasaki, was not taken in anger. White men in gray business suits and military uniforms, after much deliberation, decided that the United States could not give the Japanese any warning -- that although it could not concentrate on a civilian area, it should seek to make a profound psychological impression on as many inhabitants as possible. They argued that it would be cheaper in American lives to release the nuclear genie.
Crowds gathered in Times Square to celebrate: There were fewer of the enemy left. Rarely are victors encumbered by remorse. Declared President Truman: "When you have to deal with a beast, you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true."
Not surprisingly, six decades later, even U.S. liberals remain ambivalent on the morality of nuking the two Japanese cities. But terrorists are not ambivalent.
The New York Times reported that before the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States had intercepted an al Qaeda message that bin Laden was planning a "Hiroshima" against America. In a later taped message, released before the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, bin Laden said: "When people at the ends of the Earth, Japan, were killed by their hundreds of thousands, young and old, it was not considered a war crime; it is something that has justification."
In a recent televised debate between myself and Hameed Gul -- an influential Islamist leader, retired general and former head of Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency -- my opponent snarled at me: "Your masters [the Americans] will nuke us Muslims just as they nuked Hiroshima. People like you want to denuclearize and disarm us in the face of a savage beast set to devour the world."
Gul then vented his anger at those -- like myself -- who opposed Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. He sees us as agents of America, apostates and enemies of Islam and the Pakistani state.
This extremist general was making a point that resonates around the globe. The United States has bombed more than a dozen countries since 1948, and it recently killed tens of thousands on the pretext of chasing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It claims to be a force for democracy and the rule of law despite a long history of supporting the bloodiest of dictators, rejecting the International Criminal Court and continuing to develop nuclear weapons.
But the nuclear monopoly is breaking down. The making of atomic weapons -- especially crude ones -- has become vastly simpler than at the time of the Manhattan Project. Basic information is freely available in technical libraries throughout the world, and surfing the Internet can bring anyone a staggering amount of detail.
Advanced textbooks and monographs contain details that can enable reasonably competent scientists and engineers to come up with "quick-and-dirty" designs for nuclear explosives. The physics of nuclear explosions can be readily taught to graduate students.
If one steals fissile materials from the thousands of former Soviet bombs marked for disassembly, or even a fraction of the vast amounts of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium in research reactors and storage sites the world over, it is unnecessary to go through complex processes for uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing.
Anger in Muslim countries at the United States has never been higher. The desire for an atomic weapon to seek vengeance -- utterly immoral, foolish and suicidal though it be -- is becoming ever more popular.
The notion of an "Islamic bomb" existed long before Sept. 11. Addressing posterity from his death cell in a Rawalpindi jail, where he would be hanged two years later, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear program, wrote in 1977: "We know that Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability. The Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations have this capability. The communist powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilization was without it, but that position was about to change."
Addressing an Islamic conference in Tehran in 1992, the Iranian vice president, Sayed Ayatollah Mohajerani, said: "Since Israel continues to possess nuclear weapons, we, the Muslims, must cooperate to produce an atomic bomb, regardless of U.N. efforts to prevent proliferation."
In the celebrations after Pakistan's 1998 nuclear tests, the decades-old religious party Jamaat-e-Islami paraded bomb and missile replicas through the streets of Pakistani cities. It saw in the bomb a sure sign of a reversal of fortunes and a panacea for the ills that have plagued Muslims since the end of the Golden Age of Islam.
In 2000, I captured on video the statements of leaders of jihadist, right-wing political parties in Pakistan who also demanded a bomb for Islam.
It is impossible, however, to conceive of any Muslim state risking retaliation by declaring that it has an Islamic bomb that would be used for defense of the ummah -- the Islamic community of believers -- against the United States or Israel. The danger of a nuclear conflict comes from radicalized individuals within the states.
Although Pakistan's military government insisted that there was no danger that any of its nuclear weapons would be taken for a ride by some radical Islamic group, it wasn't taking any chances. Shortly after the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began in October 2001, several weapons were reportedly airlifted to safer, isolated locations within the country, including the northern mountainous area of Gilgit.
This nervousness was not unjustified -- two strongly Islamist generals of the Pakistan army, close associates of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, had just been removed. Dissatisfaction within the army concerning Pakistan's betrayal of the Taliban was (and is) deep. Almost overnight, under intense U.S. pressure, the Pakistan government had disowned its progeny and agreed to wage a war of annihilation against it.
Fears about Pakistan's nuclear weapons were compounded by revelations that a high-ranking nuclear engineer, Bashiruddin Mahmood, and a materials specialist, Chaudhry Abdul Majid, had journeyed several times into Afghanistan in 2000. Both scientists espouse radical Islamic views. Mahmood had even been photographed with bin Laden.
Today, the United States lives in fear of the bomb it created, because the decision to use it already has been made. Pious men with beards will decide when and where on U.S. soil atomic weapons are to be used. Shadowy groups, propelled by fanatical hatreds, scour the globe for materials.
They are not in a hurry. Time is on their side. They are doubtless confident that they will one day breach Fortress America.
The possibilities for nuclear attack are not limited to the so-called suitcase bomb stolen from the arsenal of a nuclear state. In fact, getting and exploding such a bomb is far more difficult than the use of improvised nuclear devices fabricated from highly enriched uranium, constructed in the very place where they eventually will be detonated. Still more likely is an attack on a vulnerable nuclear reactor or spent fuel repository.
Some nuclear weapons experts say privately that it is not a question of if but when the attack will happen.
This may be too pessimistic, but tighter policing and monitoring of nuclear materials (and rapid reduction of stockpiles) and nuclear weapons knowledge must be the first step. There should not be the slightest delay in moving on this. But this is far from sufficient.
If nuclear weapons continue to be accepted by nuclear weapon states as legitimate instruments of deterrence or war, their global proliferation -- whether by other states or non-state actors -- can only be slowed at best.
Coercive nonproliferation will only serve to drive up demand. Nonproliferation by cooperation and consent cannot succeed as long as the United States insists on retaining and improving its nuclear arsenal. By what reasonable argument can others be persuaded to give up, or not acquire, nuclear weapons?
So what will happen when religious fanatics succeed in a nuclear attack? The world shall plunge headlong into a bottomless abyss of reaction and counter-reaction in a horror that the human mind cannot comprehend.
Whom will the United States retaliate against? Will the United States nuke Mecca? The capitals of Muslim states? What will the United States and its allies do as their people fear more attacks? Will they expel Muslims from the United States and Europe, or herd them into internment camps as was done to Japanese Americans in World War II?
Hiroshima signaled a failure of humankind, not just of the United States. The growth of technology has far outstripped our ability to use it wisely. Like a quarreling group of monkeys on a leaky boat, armed with sticks of dynamite, we are embarked on an uncertain journey.
Humanity's best chance of survival lies in creating taboos against the manufacture of nuclear weapons -- such as those that already exist for chemical and biological weapons -- and to work rapidly toward their global elimination.
Pervez Hoodbhoy is a member of the Pugwash Council and is a professor of nuclear and high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan.
America needs to debate about future role of nukes
Albuquerque Tribune July 23, 2005
It is past time for Americans - with New Mexicans taking the lead - to look deeply into the nuclear-weapons mirror and see if we like the reflection.
This month and next, Americans and others - most notably the Japanese - are observing the 60th anniversary of the creation, testing and military use of the first atomic bombs. Their reflections, frequently moralistic, are sobering.
America has known for decades that nobody wins a nuclear war. But America insists on maintaining a devastating and costly nuclear arsenal, and is preparing to expand or at least revitalize it and wants most other nations to renounce development of their own arsenals. America recognizes that with the Cold War over, its most serious threat is a nuclear weapon in the hands of its terrorist enemies. Based on this fear, America has even gone to war against a third-rate military power, Iraq, on the deceptive grounds that Iraq posed a nuclear threat.
Among the facts worth considering, particularly in nuclear New Mexico:
The United States was the first to let the nuclear genie out of the bottle, developing the atomic bomb principally at Los Alamos.
The United States was the first to test an atomic weapon, at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, on July 16, 1945.
Albuquerque has always been at the nuclear crossroads and continues to be home to thousands of warheads on Kirtland Air Force Base and to serve as a way station for nuclear arms going into or out of the active arsenal.
The United States is the only nation to use nuclear weapons militarily, first obliterating Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and then Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.
While the end of the Cold War has permitted the United States, Russia and the other states of the former Soviet Union to substantially reduce the nuclear threat by downsizing their nuclear arsenals, each nation still has thousands of warheads.
Even as America's three nuclear weapons laboratories - including Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico - maintain the awesome U.S. arsenal, the United States insists that virtually every other nation - especially North Korea and Iran - must not develop or maintain nuclear weapons.
Recent, secret nuclear-weapons policy meetings and proposals in Congress suggest that U.S. officials intend to develop new warheads, ranging from miniature versions of existing bombs and "bunker busters" to the "reliable replacement warhead."
While the United States adheres to a moratorium on nuclear testing, the Senate has never committed the nation to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Experts say it is unlikely that the United States could field a new or substantially revised warhead without first testing it.
Asked more than a decade ago, as the Cold War wound down, what size of nuclear arsenal the United States needs for its security, Cornell University nuclear physicist and Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe - who headed the theoretical division of Los Alamos during the development of the first atomic bombs and who died on March 6 - said that 50 to 100 should do, certainly no more than 300.
Earlier this month, 10 Americans who developed the first atomic bomb - including Louis Rosen, currently a senior fellow at Los Alamos lab - took advantage of the 60th anniversary of the Trinity test to urge all nations, including the United States, to renounce the development and production of nuclear weapons.
Some experts fear it may already be too late to prevent another mushroom cloud somewhere. But America bears the greatest responsibility to try.
America needs to begin a comprehensive public debate - involving all the people, who have paid for the nuclear arsenal and in whose name it exists - about the future role of nuclear weapons and what nuclear example the nation should be setting.
Lawrence Johnson, retired from the University of Idaho and the only man to witness all three of the first atomic detonations, has a good starting point. He prays for nonproliferation, "asking that God will give us good ideas."
Good ideas can be found here in New Mexico, too - in the many brilliant minds at Los Alamos and Sandia labs.
America may never force the nuclear genie back into the bottle, but America must find a way to live - not die - with it.
TreasonGate - What Did Bush Know, And When Did He Know It?
by Thom Hartmann
Political smears by right-wingers are nothing new. In the election of 1800, John Adams had a surrogate newspaper publisher write an article about "Dusky Sally," the half-sister of Thomas Jefferson's deceased wife, who was also one of the Jefferson family slaves. Jefferson succeeded in avoiding the issue, and his friends pointed out that it was merely about his personal life, not national security.
George W. Bush may not be so fortunate.
Today comes the revelation in The Wall Street Journal that "A key department memo discussing Joseph Wilson's Niger trip was classified 'Top Secret,' and the passage about his wife's CIA role was specially marked 'S/NF' -- not to be shared with any foreign intelligence agencies."
Perhaps even more damning are reports that the Top Secret-S/NF document was apparently first delivered to Air Force One when George W. Bush and Colin Powell (who had apparently requested it from analysts within the State Department) were flying to Africa in 2003.
Somehow - nobody knows at the moment - the information in this Top Secret-S/NF document (the identity of Joe Wilson's wife) then migrated from Air Force One to George W. Bush's assistant, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney's assistant, Scooter Libby. Rove and Libby then immediately began "dialing for dollars" - calling reporters with this juicy bit of Top Secret-N/SF information - in an attempt to politically assassinate Joe Wilson.
Which raises the question: "What did the President know, and when did he know it?"
It's unlikely that Colin Powell would have called Rove and Cheney (to give instructions to Libby) with the information in the memo - that was above his pay grade. Ditto for Ari Fleischer. And it's extremely doubtful that the pilots on the plane even knew about the explosive information they were carrying as they flew across the Atlantic.
Which leaves George W. Bush, as the only other person on that plane with the means, opportunity, and motive.
Thus, perhaps, the reports that Patrick Fitzgerald has now subpoenaed the phone logs of Air Force One.
Those of a certain age among us remember well the shocking moment when Nixon's lawyer, John Dean, confirmed to Congress that Nixon himself was involved in the Watergate scandal.
The urgency Bush brought to deciding on and releasing the name of John Roberts coincided relatively closely with a growing press awareness that the Sop Secret-S/NF memo with Plame's identity started it's long path to Bob Novak on Air Force One. Time - and an awakened press corps (and hopefully an awakened Congress) - will tell if Bush's own fingerprints are all over this treasonous act of political revenge.
Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show, and a morning progressive talk show on KPOJ in Portland, Oregon. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection," "We The People," "The Edison Gene", and "What Would Jefferson Do?"
The unspoken subtext of Karl Rove's treason:
Support your local CIA?
by Helen & Harry Highwater
Unknown News
If you're following the ongoing scandals swirling around Karl Rove, hoping he'll be indicted, prosecuted, or fired for blowing a CIA agent's cover, you're being snookered.
It's amusing to watch the Bush White House squirm, caught in their own
lies and deceit, and it's enjoyable to see Rove simmer in his own sour juices. It's hilarious to see the Republicans' bizarre lies, spin, and fiction in a wheel-spinning attempt to come to Rove's defense. That's entertainment, but that's all it is. The Rove scandal means nothing.
There's no chance that Karl Rove is going to be arrested, indicted, tried, or imprisoned -- not while the Bush administration controls the Justice Department. Jim Jeffords is more likely than Rove to be charged with treason. Rove is an extremely well-connected Republican strategist who wins elections by any means necessary, and that's
what matters, and that's all that matters.
And despite all the emailed petitions and AirAmerica hosts demanding that he be
fired, it makes no difference whether Rove quits, gets fired, or gets a promotion and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. However this scandal unfolds, Rove will still be pulling strings behind the scenes, and he can pull strings from a downtown office just as effectively as from the White House.
Whatever happens, Rove will still be Bush's brain, and he'll still be very well-paid to orchestrate the next round of smears and fixed elections for the Republicans. And when he grows weary of such battles, Rove will be very well-paid to sit on numerous corporate boards, or to deliver motivational speeches to adoring crowds.
This scandal is no threat to Rove or Rove's power, and Rove knows it. He's probably urging his underlings (Cheney and Bush) to use this scandal as a diversion, to pursue other despicable objectives while the press and progressive activists are all agog about Rove, Rove, and more Rove.
There's only one aspect of the Rove scandal that concerns me, and that's the disturbing technique being used by liberals and progressives in their attacks on Rove.
'We're at war,' seems to be the standard beginning of the anti-Rove argument, a war against terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Rove revealed the identity of a CIA agent who was working on WMD counterespionage, and in doing so he betrayed the trust of the nation -- the dictionary definition of 'treason' -- or so say the people who want Rove gone.
This argument makes it sounds as if leaking secrets detrimental to the Central Intelligence Agency, is the equivalent of leaking secrets detrimental to American national security. As if betraying the CIA
= betraying the USA. And that's a lie.
The CIA is not America. Jennifer Garner is not your typical spook. It's not patriotic to support and admire the CIA -- only ignorant patriots could do so. Let's remember, please, that the Central Intelligence Agency is generally a loathsome, repugnant gang of murderous, unprincipled scum.
The CIA has toppled democratically-elected governments and/or installed or supported cruel tyrants in places like Afghanistan and Iran and Iraq. And you may have noticed, this hasn't helped America's national security in any sane sense of the term -- au contraire, it has led directly to war.
The CIA has backed bloodthirsty bastards in Angola, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Panama, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, and more nations we know about or suspect -- and undoubtedly, in still more nations where the CIA's work remains top secret. The number of people who have died as a result number in the millions -- killed by the killers the CIA has installed and protected, in the highest levels of these and other nations' governments.
None of this has enhanced America's "national security." It undermines American national security. The CIA's actions may remain under the media radar in America, but the victims -- the people who live in all these countries -- know damned well who brought them misery, whose bullets killed their brothers, whose bombs blew their parents to pieces, and who destroyed their democracies. And they're furious about it, as you would be if it happened to you.
But these furious people can't just dash off a letter to the editor or send a check to Amnesty International. With the governments America's CIA has given them, doing so would get them arrested, beaten senseless, or killed. So some of these people turn to terrorism.
And of course, terrorism can't be endorsed. But it certainly can't be hard to understand why these people turn to violence and vengeance, and why their targets are Americans.
So if your idea of American national security is a three-hour wait at the airport, having your luggage searched, your background checked, and your underwear x-rayed, having skyscrapers topple to dust and the Pentagon in flames, then the CIA's tactics have been a complete success. They're so successful that your airport wait will undoubtedly grow longer, the searches more intrusive. Eventually, the same scrutiny will be standard practice at train stations and bus stops, and at postal counters, ball parks, and office buildings everywhere.
And some folks, not knowing any better, will call this "freedom." And some politicians who clearly do know better, have made it illegal to expose the CIA's outrageous conduct.
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the law under which Karl Rove could conceivably be prosecuted, is itself unAmerican crap. It was written and passed expressly to overrule the last shred of conscience that might survive in any high-level official's mind. The purpose of this law is to compel silence from people who know about CIA atrocities.
But silence about the CIA, like the CIA itself, usually hurts America's true national security. So long as the CIA is given its ongoing carte blanche, more and more people will want to kill Americans, and Americans will become more and more un-free.
Karl Rove disclosed a covert CIA agent's identity. What he did was possibly illegal, under that awful law. What Rove did undoubtedly shows political recklessness, and of course, Rove is a boob, probably a psychopath, and it's clear that he's hostile to democracy and other traditional American values -- but that was obvious, long before you ever heard of Valerie Plame.
And we don't particularly have a grudge against Valerie Plame. She is or was a CIA agent, but her primary mission (from all the information we've read in the media) was preventing tyrants and terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction. Of course, the best way to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction would be for America itself to stop developing and exporting weapons of mass destruction. But until that glorious fictional day, we're not naïve enough to believe that every state secret and every covert CIA agent should be unmasked willy-nilly.
So Rove is no hero, for dropping Plame's name to reporters. He's still the same sorry sack of shit he's always been.
But if we want national security, then the CIA must be effectively dismantled. And then, to the extent that its mission can be honestly justified, "The Agency" must be reassembled with some actual, honest oversight from Americans who give a damn about notions like liberty and justice for all -- unlike past and present CIA leadership.
America won't have any true national security until the CIA has been publicly exposed on a grand scale, its files opened for public review, and many of its current and former agents prosecuted for their crimes against humanity. A sincere and complete apology is overdue, and it ought to be delivered live on worldwide TV, straight from an American president's lips. To show sincerity, the apology should be accompanied by reparations, and by a restructuring of the CIA that prevents future U.S.-taxpayer funded atrocities, coups, and mass murders.
http://www.serendipity.li/cia/cia_time.htm
Global Eye: American Coup d'Etat
By Chris Floyd
July 22, 2005
The United States long ago ceased to be anything like a living, thriving republic. But it retained the legal form of a republic, and that counted for something: As long as the legal form still existed, even as a gutted shell, there was hope it might be filled again one day with substance.
But now the very legal structures of the Republic are being dismantled. The principle of arbitrary rule by an autocratic leader is being openly established, through a series of unchallenged executive orders, perverse Justice Department rulings and court decisions by sycophantic judges who defer to power -- not law -- in their determinations. What we are witnessing is the creation of a "commander-in-chief state," where the form and pressure of law no longer apply to the president and his designated agents. The rights of individuals are no longer inalienable, nor are their persons inviolable; all depends on the good will of the Commander, the military autocrat.
President George W. Bush has granted himself the power to declare anyone on earth -- including any U.S. citizen -- an "enemy combatant," for any reason he sees fit. He can render them up for torture, he can imprison them for life, he can even have them killed, all without charges, with no burden of proof, no standards of evidence, no legislative oversight, no appeal, no judicial process whatsoever except those that he himself deigns to construct, with whatever limitations he cares to impose. Nor can he ever be prosecuted for any order he issues, however criminal; in the new American system laid out by Bush's legal minions, the Commander is sacrosanct, beyond the reach of any law or constitution.
This is not hyperbole. It is simply the reality of the United States today. The principle of unrestricted presidential power is now being codified into law and incorporated into the institutional structures of the state, as the web log Deep Blade Journal reports in a compendium of recent outrages against liberty.
For example, last Friday, a panel of federal judges -- including John Roberts, nominated for the Supreme Court this week -- upheld Bush's claim to dispose of "enemy combatants" any way he pleases, The Washington Post reports. In a chilling decision, the judges ruled that the Commander's arbitrarily designated "enemies" are nonpersons: Neither the Geneva Conventions nor American military and domestic law apply to such garbage. Bush is now free to subject anyone he likes to his self-concocted "military tribunal" system, a brutal sham that retired top U.S. military officials have denounced as a "kangaroo court" that tyrants around the world will cite in order to hide their oppression under U.S. precedent.
The kowtowing court ruling ignores the fact that the Geneva Conventions -- which lay down strict guidelines for the handling of any person detained by military forces, regardless of the captive's status -- have been incorporated into the U.S. legal code, Deep Blade points out. They cannot be abrogated by presidential fiat. And anyone who commits a "grave breach" of the Conventions by facilitating the killing, torture or inhuman treatment of detainees (e.g., stripping them of all legal status and subjecting them to rigged tribunals) is subject to the death penalty under U.S. law.
This is why the Bush Faction labored so mightily to advance the absurd fiction that the Geneva Conventions are somehow voluntary -- while simultaneously promulgating the sinister Fuhrerprinzip of unlimited presidential authority. The fiction was a temporary sop to the crumbling legal form of the Republic, a cynical perversion of existing law to keep justice at bay until the Fuhrerprinzip could be firmly established as the new foundation of the state.
It doesn't matter anymore if the president's orders to suspend the Conventions, construct a worldwide gulag, torture captives, spy on Americans, fabricate intelligence and wage aggressive war are illegal under the "quaint" strictures of the old dispensation; the courts, packed with Bushist cadres, are now affirming the new order, the "critical authority" of the Commander, beyond law and morality, on the higher plane of what Bush calls "the path of action."
This phrase -- with its remarkable Mussolinian echoes -- was incorporated into the official "National Security Strategy of the United States," promulgated by Bush in September 2002. That document in turn was drawn largely from a manifesto issued in September 2000 by a Bush Faction group whose members included Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Jeb Bush. Their detailed plan envisioned the transformation of America into a militarized state: planting "military footprints" throughout Central Asia and the Middle East, invading Iraq, expanding the nuclear arsenal, massively increasing the defense budget -- and predicating all these "revolutionary" changes on the hopes for "a new Pearl Harbor" that would "catalyze" the lazy American public into supporting their militarist agenda.
This agenda is designed, the group said, to establish "full spectrum dominance" over geopolitical affairs, assuring control of world energy resources and precluding the rise of "any potential global rival" that might threaten the unchecked wealth and privilege of the U.S. elite. The rule of law could only be a hindrance to such a scheme, hence its replacement by the Fuhrerprinzip and the "path of action."
There has been virtually no institutional resistance to this open coup d'etat. It's now clear that the American Establishment -- and a significant portion of the American people -- have given up on the democratic experiment. They no longer wish to govern themselves; they want to be ruled by "strong leaders" who will "do whatever it takes" to protect them from harm and keep them in clover. They have sold their golden birthright of American liberty for a mess of coward's pottage.
WAR ON TERROR SHIELDS GLOBAL POWER GRAB
I have felt for some time that the ' War on Terror ' is a term that has been used indiscriminately by George Bush and other World leaders ~ to cover a multitude of deceptions and lies as well as a barely disguised neo- conservative global power grab and an undeclared war on people who dare to dissent from their views.
America is the classic example as we continue to hide the multitude of our now well documented deceptions and lies, regarding our illegal war, occupation and exploitation of Iraq, under the smokescreen of The War on Terror.
Naomi Klein of The Guardian appropriately compares it to a deadly franchise and " a smokescreen used by governments to wipe out opponents. "
Indeed, in an article she wrote on August 23, 2003 she called the War on Terror A Deadly Franchise .
In light of the recent bombings in London and Egypt ~ her words are worth repeating because they still ring true today;
" The Marriott hotel in Jakarta was still burning when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia's security minister, explained the implications of the day's attack: "Those who criticise about human rights being breached must understand that all the bombing victims are more important than any human rights issue."
In a sentence, we got the best summary yet of the philosophy underlying Bush's so-called War on Terror. Terrorism doesn't just blow up buildings; it blasts every other issue off the political map. The spectre of terrorism - real and exaggerated - has become a shield of impunity, protecting governments around the world from scrutiny for their human rights abuses.
Many have argued that the War on Terror is the US government's thinly veiled excuse for constructing a classic empire, in the model of Rome or Britain. Two years into the crusade, it's clear this is a mistake: the Bush gang doesn't have the stick-to-it-ness to successfully occupy one country, let alone a dozen. Bush and the gang do, however, have the hustle of good marketers, and they know how to contract out. What Bush has created in the WoT is less a "doctrine" for world domination than an easy-to-assemble toolkit for any mini-empire looking to get rid of the opposition and expand its power.
The War on Terror was never a war in the traditional sense. It is, instead, a kind of brand, an idea that can be easily franchised by any government in the market for an all-purpose opposition cleanser. We already know that the WoT works on domestic groups that use terrorist tactics such as Hamas or the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (Farc). But that's only its most basic application. WoT can be used on any liberation or opposition movement. It can also be applied liberally on unwanted immigrants, pesky human rights activists and even on hard-to-get-out investigative journalists.
The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was the first to adopt Bush's franchise, parroting the White House's pledges to "pull up these wild plants by the root, smash their infrastructure" as he sent bulldozers into the occupied territories to uproot olive trees and tanks to raze civilian homes. It soon included human rights observers who were bearing witness to the attacks, as well as aid workers and journalists. "
People like Rachel Corrie , organizations like Greenpeace, and too many journalists to list .
Next time you hear the words WAR ON TERROR uttered by unindicted war criminals like Bush and Blair ~ look beneath their words to the offenses being shielded and the civil liberties that are being erased.
Allen L Roland
Check out Fiore's FlashToon "Double Super-Secret Background"
at MetaMagic StrangeNews http://metamagic.org/strange
Communicate your views regarding
Mr. Rove to the White House, as follows:
Mailing Address
The President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500
Phone Numbers
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
E-Mail President George W. Bush: president@whitehouse.gov
Emerging Alternatives for Escaping the USA
From Canada To Europe, Africa To Asia, It’s Time For A Fresh Look by Phillip Townsend July 2005
The advent of fast Internet communication and inexpensive air travel makes it easier to turn any far-flung paradise into a permanent home. Which places in the world have the most to offer? The perfect place to live or retire, of course depends on your idea of perfection.
I’m taking a different approach for this article. Instead of giving an overview of the better-known and increasingly-popular expatriate destinations around the world (Mexico, Costa Rica, Belize, Panama, Nicaragua, Ecuador, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, etc.), I’ve decided to introduce you to the below 7 locales you probably don’t know much about. All offer affordability and abundant recreational and cultural opportunities.
Nova Scotia
Just east of Maine, in the North Atlantic, Nova Scotia’s pristine coast is slowly becoming a sought-after affordable getaway. Only two hours from New York or Boston, it feels a world away. A pleasingly crowd-free province on Canada’s Atlantic Coast, little-known Nova Scotia could just be the perfect full-or part-time retreat. Halifax, the capital, has been luring tourists for years. Waterfront cafes, European architecture, and spectacular seafood keep them coming back. Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island boasts some of the best scenery in the world, from the picturesque highlands to the picturesque Bras d'Or Lake (pronounced "bra door"), with the Atlantic Ocean as a backdrop. In the winter months, the Gulf Stream keeps the climate milder than most northern U.S. states, with the area receiving more rain showers than snow storms. Picture the American East Coast a century ago, and you get a feel of what Nova Scotia is like. Almost an island, it is best known for its stunning coastline, sleepy seaside towns and friendly people.
The province’s natural beauty, cheap real estate and low cost of living make it well worth a look: oceanfront lots start at $10,000, three-bedroom homes on acreage from $50,000. A lobster dinner with a bottle of good local wine sets you back no more than a twenty spot. Scenes of the Hollywood blockbuster Titanic were shot in Nova Scotia, and celebrities including Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore and Billy Joel maintain summer homes here.
Caribbean
Almost everyone has had dreams of living a laid-back, stress-free life on a tropical island. One by one, the Caribbean islands were discovered and eventually became sadly over-developed, terribly over-crowded, and ridiculously over-priced. Unfortunately, due to mass tourism, most places in the Caribbean have become little more than artificial, tropical Disneylands with luxury hotels and all-inclusive resorts. But there is one place that still maintains its original charm and natural beauty. This place is quite inexpensive (by Caribbean standards) and is virtually unspoiled. Relatively undiscovered, here, you can still find ocean view lots for as little as $22,000 and have a small cottage built for prices starting at $25,000. To protect it from the fate of its Caribbean cousins, I won't reveal the name of this special place just yet. You can find a link to more information at the end of this article.
Cuba
Think Cuba, and vivid images come to mind: men in Guayabera shirts and Panama hats, tropical breezes and cool drinks, steamy Latin rhythms and sultry women. It has always been an intriguing place, steeped in truth and in fiction by the novels of Ernest Hemingway. Because travel to Cuba is restricted by the U.S. government, relatively few Americans visit the island each year. While their counterparts from Europe, Canada and Latin America bask in the warm Cuban sun, most U.S. citizens can only hope to experience this "pearl" of the Caribbean after Castro is gone. Of those who do manage to get to Cuba via Mexico or Canada, few are disappointed. The largest Caribbean island (pop. 11 million), Cuba is also one of the most beautiful and unspoiled. There are miles of pristine, underdeveloped beaches, tropical forests teeming with wildlife and some of the best deep-sea fishing, scuba diving and snorkeling the world has to offer. And there is Havana, not only the capital of Cuba, but also the most important city in the Caribbean. With tourism once again thriving, Havana has regained much of its past allure. Famous old bars, restaurants and hotels are enjoying a proud comeback, and stunning new places are being built. As one taxi driver put it, "We have the best cigars, best rum, best music, and most beautiful women in the world. What more could anyone want?"
Romania
Best known for Transylvania, the legendary home of Count Dracula, Romania is steeped in history, myth and folklore. Unlike other Eastern European countries with Slavic origins, Romania, whose name means 'land of the Romans,' absorbed much of the culture, religion, and language of the Roman Empire. Bordered by the Black Sea (which is being called “The Next Riviera”) and the Danube River, with the Transylvanian Alps and Carpathian Mountains nestled in the center of the country, Romania has long stretches of seacoast, mountains, forests, medieval villages and gothic castles galore, giving it all the makings of a fairy-tale setting. The capital Bucharest, a former communist citadel, has a growing number of discos, while restaurants at most major hotels double as nightclubs, there are several Parisian-style cafés, and cheap wines and plum brandy flow freely everywhere. Due to its wide boulevards, sidewalk cafés, and Triumphal Arch, Bucharest, was known as the "Paris of the Balkans" prior to World War II. Today the city’s 19th century neoclassical architecture and numerous tree-lined streets still maintain its charm. A sizable enclave of foreigners (Germans, Jews, Turks, Russians, Ukrainians, Serbs, Croats, and Gypsies) live in Romania. French is the most widely-spoken second language and English is spoken by many of the younger generation. The real estate prices are some of the lowest in all Europe (the country’s economic woes spells opportunity for you).
Malaysia
Asia's best-kept secret for expatriates, Malaysia has a vibrant mix of foreign and indigenous tribal cultures, creating a veritable melting pot of peoples, traditions and religions. A sizable enclave of foreigners (Brits, Americans, Australians, and Canadians) live full time or maintain holiday homes in Malaysia, and you'll find that just about everybody speaks English, since its compulsory in local schools. Not only are three world-class playgrounds (Thailand, Bali, and the Philippines) all within a few hour's travel from Malaysia, but miles of beaches and numerous coastal islands add to its tropical appeal. Despite being the capital of a developing nation, Kuala Lumpur is a modern cosmopolitan city with clean streets and every modern convenience found in New York or London. Compared with other major Asian cities (Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong, for example), Kuala Lumpur is downright cheap. The cost of 2-bedroom rental apartments begins at around $225 per month and 3-bedroom houses start at $35,000. Naturally, comparable housing in expatriate communities or the luxurious homes that date from British colonial period can set you back considerably more.
New Zealand
Imagine an interesting land of breathtaking and contrasting scenery: craggy coastlines, golden beaches, lush forests, snow-capped mountains, bubbling volcanic pools, fish-filled rivers and glacier-fed lakes, all beneath a brilliant blue sky. New Zealand is accessible, spread over three relatively small islands with modern and efficient transport, quiet roads, plenty of flights and two stunningly scenic rail journeys. Other pluses are friendly, English-speaking people, virtually no crime, and a trio of rich cultural influences: adventurous Polynesian navigators (Maori), pioneering European settlers who followed a thousand years later, and modern Pacific Rim immigrants. The plant and animal life are unmatched, giving opportunities for close-up experiences with birdlife (including kiwis), seals, dolphins and whales. Enjoy the chance to explore two of the richest wine regions on the planet, taste wonderful cuisine, stroll on sandy beaches. Prefer urban living? Immerse yourself in the culture of the capital Wellington or the large cities of Auckland or Christchurch.
Tanzania
Many people tend to associate African countries with wars, famine and political unrest rather than the good life, but Zanzibar, Tanzania is an exception. Located only a short distance off the east coast of Africa, exotic Zanzibar has lured explorers, traders and colonists for centuries. The islands’ powdery white sand beaches, swaying palm trees and turquoise waters continue to attract European and Asian tourists. Outside of an unusual mix of black African and Arab cultures, you’ll find the islands teeming with tropical forests, remote villages and idyllic coastline. Despite flare-ups between residents of Zanzibar Island and the smaller island of Pemba (due to differing views on unification with the mainland), Zanzibar is usually quite stable. Cheap real estate (oceanfront or raw land with fruit trees), mouth-watering seafood, some of the world’s best scuba diving, and pure tropical bliss make it an attractive expatriate haven. A few wealthy Europeans and African aristocrats have already made Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania home. Why not join them?
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Respectfully Aware:
More On Living In The Dominican Republic
by Elizabeth Roebling July 2005
“The dollar goes higher and higher and the peso goes lower and lower. That is why we don’t speak English and we don’t buy Chevrolet.” So sings Juan Luis Guerra, the premier musician of the Dominican Republic. He attended music school in Boston and so, presumably, could sing in English if he wished. I, for one, wish he would for it would do us good to hear what others are saying about us.
I am now living in his country, and am grateful for the opportunity to do so. As more Americans move abroad, more and more people are growing to dislike us. Not only do the residents of the countries dislike us, but other immigrants from other countries as well. French (well, we knew that already), British, Germans (who are the most likely to have English as a second language), even Canadians now are confessing a dislike for Americans, individual Americans that they have met, not just the government. Costa Rica, which had in place a program to entice foreign retirees with tax incentives and benefits, has evidently stopped this. The crime rate there has soared.
So in answer to “why do they hate us?” the question that seemed to baffle even our current president, I would like to offer a few examples of American behavior that so endears us to locals in the developing world.
First one needs an elementary understanding of geopolitics. Most of the developing world is in debt to the world banking system, primarily American financial institutions. They have all run up large “credit card” bills with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These come not as grants in “foreign aid” but as interest bearing loans. Many countries have no hope of ever being able to pay off the principal but only borrow more money to pay the interest on their debt. Most Americans are well acquainted with both this system and the feelings involved. Few that I know are truly grateful to the issuers of their credit cards.
The Dominican Republic must now pay half of all its tax revenues to service the loans that were given for “development.” Most of the money is long gone, perhaps into some development projects such as dams and roads, accompanied by large and steady run-off into fleets of expensive cars and private bank accounts. The last president of the Dominican Republic increased the foreign debt by 400% in four years. This nation is not ostensibly better off then it was. Prices for everything are much higher. Additionally, the country needs dollars (or Euros) both to service the debt and pay for imports such as oil. Dominican pesos are not a convertible currency.
The Duvaliers (pere et fils), former dictators of neighboring Haiti, had masses of foreign “aid” for decades. The son is currently living in exile on his nation’s wealth. The people of his country are the poorest in the hemisphere. Perhaps even in our lifetime some Haitian may cut down the last living tree to make charcoal to heat his family’s supper. Border “incidents” using live ammunition between that nation and this one will escalate. And more and more people will risk their lives in open boats in dangerous waters for a chance to work in America, where they can live, hidden and illegal, but still sending a portion of their wages (or drug trafficking money) home to their families.
The stated purpose of the World Bank is to eliminate poverty. Thus the people of this and other developing nations are offered a chance to participate in the bounty of the wealthy countries. Jean Bertrand Aristide, former President of Haiti, wrote the best analogy that I ever read for discussing the issue of global wealth and poverty. Imagine that the nations of the world, represented by fingers of a hand, have $100 a day between them. The industrialized nations, representing 20% of the nations, or the thumb, have $85 of this amount between them. The rest of the fingers must divide the remaining $15. The poorest nations, the pinky, one fifth of the nations of the world, have less than $1 a day.
The Dominican Republic is not among the very poorest nations of the world. Most have enough to eat: most eat meat (primarily chicken) at least once a day. Many Dominicans now have cell phones. Many have motor scooters, needing gas at over $3 a gallon. Now they have cable TV transmissions, complete with daily murders and provocative videos, in their houses with dirt floors. Some send their children out to sell shoeshines or their bodies to pay for the electric bill.
The International Monetary Fund, once it is the major creditor, has the power to dictate how the debtor nation will spend its money. Privatize all national companies, including power and water, streamline government payrolls, and cutback on social services such as education and health care, eliminate trade tariffs, and open markets to multinational corporations.
Capitalism is the major export of the United States. I have met many Americans who think this word is synonymous with democracy. One, however, is an economic system and the other political system. Certainly the United States is in the business of making the world safe for capitalism so it is easy to understand how Americans can make this error. The fall of the Soviet Union has produced the thought that capitalism is triumphant and holds the answer to all the world’s troubles. It is only necessary to allow the “invisible hand” of the market to work by itself and all boats will rise with the tide of global wealth. Such is the mindset of the New World Order. Perhaps it just needs more time to work before the results are seen. Or perhaps the theory is flawed at its inception.
There are 46 “free-trade” zones here, fourth largest installation in the world. I haven’t actually been into one, as they are enclosed in high wire fences, guarded by men with guns. Inside, more than 200,000 people of the Dominican Republic, mostly women, work for one of the 520 foreign companies, 6 days a week, ten hours a day. There are no unions here. When the workers at American Airlines started to discuss the possibility of forming a union, all those workers lost their jobs. Wages are steadily decreasing through Latin America as there is an ever-present threat of a less developed nation whose citizens will work for even less money. Seventy percent of the trade-zone jobs are in the textile industry. The Dominican Republic then exports the products, primarily to the United States, with no tax put on them. The workers are, however, taxed on their earnings. There are always applicants for jobs. The products from these zones accounts for 85% of the exports from this country, supplemented by the traditional products of coffee, sugar, tobacco, fruit, leather, silver and gold. The United States is the largest trading partner receiving 51% of the exports and sending 43% of the imports.
Another big industry here is sex tourism. The Europeans are by far the largest tourist population here, accounting for more than 85% of the visitors. Many of the all-inclusive resorts have a reputation for easy encounters with locals, male and female. Prostitution is not illegal here, but neither does the government regulate it. Costa Rica, by contrast, which has legalized prostitution, requires frequent health checks and the payment of taxes. Those who have a particular lust for sexual encounters with minors of both sexes are particularly noticeable here. There were local headlines that a child pornography ring was recently busted and four Europeans actually sent to prison but enforcement of the laws against the exploitation of minors, which do exist, are scarcely enforced. Casinos abound in the resort areas and the Dominicans themselves have a passion for gambling, buying lottery tickets every week in the hopes of hitting the big one. And the local rum is as cheap as the Coca-Cola mixers.
The first Europeans here, in this village on the north coast of the Samana Peninsula, bought and built up the available land. Some even paid for it in coconuts (well, that is the story anyway.) Now the Dominicans have learned from them and large land parcels near the beach are selling for $90 a square meter ($9 a square foot or $36,000 an acre). Even the undeveloped steep mountaintops, where access is extremely difficult, is priced at $12,000 an acre. Construction costs here may run to $100 a square foot.
It is difficult to find a meal in a sit-down restaurant for under $12. Even at the Dominican restaurants, dishes, which feature a very large serving of rice with a very small portion of chicken, meat, or fish, sell for over $4. A good housecleaner, one who is independent and has several clients, can earn that in one hour. A schoolteacher, with a college degree, starts with a salary of about $250 a month. Ten thousand pesos a month, or an annual salary of about $4,000 is considered a good wage in this country.
So know that if you come here, or go to another developing country, to live on a simple retirement income of $3,000 a month, you will be among the wealthy. You will be the target of scams and scoundrels, both foreign and domestic. You will need a large and impressively frightening dog, or an armed guard, as well as bars on your windows and a wall around your property. Sometimes the police themselves are the thieves.
However, you can leave your belongs with impunity along the tourist beaches when you swim. I alone walk at night in this town with no sense of fear whatever. But I am a native New Yorker, well trained by travel. Despite the publicity from some of the all-inclusive resorts who aim to keep the tourists within their own compounds, this is reasonably gentle and safe nation, whose residents welcome strangers.
Should you be robbed, I suggest you consider the old question: “What are the crimes of the bank robber compared to the man who owns the bank?”
If you come here with the attitude that these are somehow “inferior” people, who are fortunate to have the opportunity to meet and serve you, you will be targeted even further.
Even those people who are illiterate are not stupid. Locals will not have to speak English in order to sense an air of “superiority.” One Dominican friend of mine said to me recently; “Everyone is a racist.” I countered with my opinion. I would be a fool, I said, if I did not acknowledge that there are differences in skin color. However, to be a racist, in my mind, means that one assumes that one’s own race is superior. This I do not do. My greatest heroes have been men of color: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela.
If you come here for sexual gratification, you will be given that but not the respect of the community. You will be regarded as the predator that you are. Know, however, that many happy marriages have ensued between Dominicans and foreigners. But the love and respect that are needed for a relationship are rarely founded with a cash transaction.
.
If you come with the attitude that your way is better, that you are here to “save” them, they will gladly take your money, listen to your advice, and go on about their own way of doing things. This is an independent nation. It is a democratic nation in which you do not have a vote.
If you are looking for an easy way to make a fortune in real estate speculation, you are already too late for this country. You may be able to clear a bit of jungle in El Salvador.
If you are hoping to establish an “American” colony, with all the conveniences and amenities of “home”, you will be sold a very expensive property in a guarded and gated community and consigned to the company of your own people.
If you do not learn Spanish, you will exist in a pale shadow world, never understanding what is being said around or about you. You will not even be able to talk with ex-pats from other countries. You will lead a lonely and isolated life.
If you understand that as a person of wealth among them, a foreigner whose wallet and passport allow them to travel wherever they wish, you are expected to share a bit with the local population, even perhaps pay a bit of a higher price than the locals. Your foreign income is not taxed here. It will be up to you to decide how to contribute your fair share.
If, however, you come in peace, with a willingness to participate in the lives of the people, to be of assistance as your talents allow, you will be welcomed and respected.
You will be greeted with smiles, waves, hugs and kisses. Local doors will open to you. Residents will travel 5 hours by bus to visit you in the hospital in the Capital if you are taken ill. You will enjoy completely unspoiled and often deserted beaches lined with coconut palms.
You will be able to bask in the beautiful sunshine of this country and the loving hearts of its people. 
It’s Confirmed: Karl Rove Exposed a CIA Operative
From Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan (USN, ret)
Dear Bravo Zulu Unit,
I saw combat in three wars and know that national security depends on people who are trusted with confidential information never using it for their personal agendas.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove recently acknowledged that he revealed the identity of a CIA operative [1], proving that he can’t be trusted with classified information. For the sake of national security and to protect America’s defenders in the line of fire, President Bush needs to revoke his security clearance and get him out of the White House before he leaks another secret.
Congressmembers are calling on the President to strip Rove of his security clearance and fire him. To send a message to your legislators asking them to join in asking for this prudent step, just click “Reply” and “Send” in your email. If this message was forwarded to you or you’d like to edit the message click here:
http://action.truemajority.org/campaign/rove_must_go
Then please forward this email to anyone else you think might be concerned about our national security.
Thanks for helping,
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan (USN, ret.)
Military Advisor to TrueMajority.org
Here’s what we know:
An ongoing investigation into this scandal eventually will conclude whether Rove should go to prison or was just inept. In the meantime, the Commander-in-Chief has an obligation to protect our nation and our troops by making sure Rove doesn’t get another chance to leak something that, next time, may cost someone more than their career.
In his State of the Union message in 2003, George Bush said that Saddam Hussein was trying to get uranium from Niger. In the following weeks, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson disclosed that he was sent to Niger by the CIA to look into this and had reported to top administration officials months before the speech that there was no Niger-Iraq uranium connection. In a discussion with a reporter at Time magazine about Wilson’s disclosure, Rove said that Wilson’s wife was the CIA operative who sent him to Niger. Three days later columnist Robert Novak published the fact that Plame was a CIA operative thus ending her career, possibly endangering her life and ending an important operation.
Rove may have been punishing Wilson for embarrassing the President. If Rove exposed Wilson’s wife, a covert member of the CIA’s weapons of mass destruction team, it would be an act of treason. Rove’s lawyer counters that he didn’t know she was a covert operative and didn’t mean any harm. Either way his disclosure was dangerous and President Bush needs to pull his security clearance and get him out of the White House right now.
http://action.truemajority.org/campaign/rove_must_go
Send Karl Rove His Pink Slip! It is time to hold the President accountable. He made a promise to the American people that he'd fire whoever leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent. Now that we know the leaker was, at least in part, Karl Rove; it is time for the President to keep his word.
We are sending along our own pink slips to Karl Rove because the President refuses to do it himself. If the White House ends up knee deep in pink paper, perhaps the President will finally give Mr. Rove the legitimate pink slip he so greatly deserves.
Putting the life of an undercover CIA agent in jeopardy cannot be tolerated. Mr. Rove clearly deserves his pink slip, and we’re going to give it to him.
http://votelouise.com/page/petition/rove
America's Most Famous Spy:"I'm just a regular working mom"
By Philip Sherwell in Washington
Telegraph.co.uk
America's most famous spy was doing her best to stay out of the unwelcome limelight last week. "I'm just a mom getting dinner ready for my kids," Valerie Wilson said with a smile at her hilltop home in one of Washington's best neighbourhoods. "You better talk to my husband."
Mrs Wilson, 42, a slim and glamorous blonde in black T-shirt and trousers, was indeed grilling steaks on the barbecue and cooking sweetcorn on the stove as she chatted to her five-year-old twins in their spacious open-plan kitchen.
Samantha grated cheese while Trevor was disappointed that he had slept through a thunderstorm. Outside, Mrs Wilson's husband, Joe, lit a cigar and poured drinks for friends on their wooden deck, which has a commanding view to the Washington Monument. An American flag flew at the house.
The scene was deceptively calm, for the Wilsons are at the centre of one of America's biggest political controversies which, last week, witnessed dramatic new developments.
As well as being a mother, Mrs Wilson operated undercover for the Central Intelligence Agency for nearly two decades, including a stint in London. Most recently, she worked on weapons proliferation issues while posing as an analyst for a CIA front company.
Mrs Wilson is now known to Americans as the CIA agent Valerie Plame after her maiden name and real job were leaked to the media, apparently by a senior government official, in July 2003.
The revelation emerged just a few days after Mr Wilson, a former United States ambassador, went public with his charge of a major cover-up by the Bush administration over Iraq. For the past two years, the Wilson family has been living with the fallout from his claims. Mr Wilson, 55, had concluded that Iraq did not buy yellowcake uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons programme after he visited the African state to investigate the reports for the CIA. Even so, President George W Bush later used the claim as a key justification for the invasion of Iraq.
The leak became the subject of a criminal investigation, which has now escalated into a cause célèbre about press freedom in America.
Last Wednesday, Judith Miller, a New York Times journalist, was jailed for refusing to reveal the name of the government source to a judge. A lawyer for Karl Rove, meanwhile, denied that Mr Bush's chief political adviser was responsible for blowing Plame's cover after his name appeared in the notes of another reporter who had been briefed about her identity.
While Miller languishes in jail, Mrs Wilson has quietly returned to work at the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, after a year's unpaid leave. Her work remains classified, although she is no longer a covert operative.
She spent much of her enforced leave of absence helping to counsel women suffering from postnatal depression, a condition that strikes an estimated one in 10 new mothers and which Mrs Wilson herself experienced.
Only once has Mrs Wilson shrugged aside years of low-profile living. She was photographed in front of the White House for Vanity Fair, in dark glasses and a headscarf, sitting next to her husband in their convertible green Jaguar XJS.
She leaves the public talking to Mr Wilson, her second husband (she is his third wife), who has run a business consultancy since retiring from the foreign service. Relaxing in shorts and a polo shirt bearing the logo of the US Marine security detachment in Niger, Mr Wilson sat on his deck and described his wife and Miller as "collateral damage" in the "smear campaign" against him. Mr Rove, he said, should be sacked.
"Any senior government official who participates in such a campaign is engaged in an outrageous abuse of power," he said as he drew on his cigar. "It is very clear that Karl Rove has been part of this, as evidenced by his phone call to Chris Matthews [a TV political show host] in which he asserted that my wife was fair game.
"I am not a lawyer and I don't know whether anyone should be prosecuted for leaking my wife's name. But I do think that people should be sacked. And those people include Rove.
"They persisted in going after me, and hence my wife, because I was too effective in my criticism. They wanted to discourage anyone else from following my example."
Mr Wilson's 23-year diplomatic career included two ambassadorial postings in west Africa.
He said that since the scandal broke he had been vilified, his reputation tarred and clients discouraged from doing business with him. However, he said, "the real victims of the cover-up are the Congress, the constitution and, most tragically, the Americans and Iraqis who have paid the ultimate price for Bush's folly".
Such comments have drawn scorn from the Bush administration. Senior officials have privately made clear that they view Mr Wilson as a self-publicist with a vendetta against the government and memoirs to promote.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has tried to find out whether senior administration officials broke the law by disclosing the name of a covert operative. So far, however, the only person to go to jail is Miller.
The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir (Order your copy!)
Rove's Leak Points to Bush Conspiracy
By Robert Parry
July 11, 2005
A key national security principle for dealing with top-secret information, such as the identity of undercover CIA officers, is strict compartmentalization, often called “the need to know” – which raises the question why George W. Bush’s chief political adviser Karl Rove would know anything about the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
The answer to that mystery – why was Rove involved – may be more crucial to unraveling who was behind the illegal leaking of Plame’s name and the subsequent cover-up than even the identity of which Bush officials passed the information to right-wing pundit Robert Novak for his infamous column on July 14, 2003.
But rather than focusing on how and why Rove knew about Plame, the latest controversy around the case has centered on whether Rove explicitly used her name in an interview with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper three days before Novak’s column.
Rove’s lawyer Robert Luskin told the Washington Post that his client didn’t identify Plame by name, only mentioning her in giving Cooper guidance about who was responsible for authorizing a fact-finding trip by Plame’s husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger in February 2002. [Washington Post, July 11, 2005]
According to an internal Time e-mail (obtained by Newsweek), Cooper informed his editor that Rove offered a “big warning” not to “get too far out on Wilson” and that “KR said” the Niger trip was authorized by “wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency (CIA) on wmd issues.” [Newsweek, July 18, 2005, issue]
During Wilson’s 2002 trip to Niger, the ex-ambassador discovered that claims about Iraq trying to buy yellowcake uranium were almost certainly bogus. But Wilson’s findings – which were later corroborated by United Nations officials – would remain politically sensitive because they undercut Bush’s assertions about Iraqi nuclear ambitions, a central rationale for invading Iraq in March 2003.
On July 6, 2003, three months after the U.S.-led invasion, Wilson disclosed his Niger findings in a New York Times op-ed article that represented an early crack in the president’s credibility on the Iraq War.
Bush Spin Machine
The Bush spin machine quickly whirled into action, even though it was clear by July 2003 that Bush was wrong about the existence of large caches of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as well as about an active nuclear weapons program. Still, the goal in summer 2003 was to discredit Joe Wilson.
It was in that context that the secret about Plame’s covert role as a CIA officer working on WMD issues was somehow delivered to the White House. From there, the sensitive fact, which also could have jeopardized the lives of other operatives who were cooperating with Plame, was fashioned into a public-relations attack on her husband.
Rather than keep the secret under tight control, Bush’s White House bandied it about as a way to question Wilson’s manhood, as a guy who needed his wife’s intervention to get him a job – although Plame appears only to have mentioned her husband as one Africa expert suitable for the Niger assignment.
To professional U.S. intelligence officers, the notion of sharing such a precise secret – the identity of an undercover CIA officer – with a spinmeister like Rove is anathema.
From a national security viewpoint, it also doesn’t matter much whether Rove used Plame’s name. He certainly gave Time magazine enough information – that Joe Wilson’s wife was a CIA officer – to unmask her identity with a little bit of research.
But again, the national news media seems to have missed the forest for the trees. By concentrating on whether Rove specifically spoke Plame’s name to Cooper, the media is missing the significance of the fact that a political operative like Rove would have a hand in this operation at all.
The larger point is that senior White House officials, possibly including Bush, revealed the identity of a covert CIA officer as part of what appears to be a conspiracy to discredit Wilson in retaliation for telling the truth in his op-ed column.
The key incriminating fact in this mystery is that Rove had no reason to know who Plame was, except as part of a public relations attack against her husband. It was a classic case of dirtying up – or punishing – the messenger for delivering unwanted news.
It also fits with the long-running neoconservative strategy of using “perception management” techniques to “controversialize” critics and keep the American people in a constant state of confusion. [For more on the evolution of those strategies, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]
Identifiable Harm
In the Plame case, there also was identifiable harm to national security – the outing of a covert CIA officer working on WMD issues – and a possible violation of a federal law that bars willful disclosure of secret agents. That is why federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was assigned to investigate the matter two years ago.
At minimum, the White House behavior indicates gross negligence in handling a sensitive secret. But if the case were simply negligence, heads probably would have rolled long ago. Any administration serious about protecting national security would have carried out stern disciplinary actions even as Fitzgerald’s investigation continued.
In the Iran-Contra Affair, for instance, Ronald Reagan fired aides Oliver North and John Poindexter on Nov. 25, 1986, the day the scandal was revealed, rather than wait for the conclusion of a criminal probe.
On April 30, 1973, as the Watergate scandal was unfolding, Richard Nixon ousted chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman and White House counsel John Dean. Nixon famously promised “no whitewash at the White House.”
By contrast, George W. Bush has taken no known disciplinary action against anyone for letting the identity of a covert CIA officer leak out. Rove played a prominent role in Bush's reelection campaign and has since been promoted to deputy White House chief of staff.
Nor has Bush done anything to discourage his right-wing supporters from denigrating Wilson, who gets routinely mocked as a flaky self-promoter or a partisan Democrat.
These orchestrated attacks on Wilson have continued despite the fact that U.S. government investigations – including several ordered by Bush himself – have corroborated the absence of a pre-invasion Iraqi nuclear weapons program.
So, this long-term pattern of White House behavior suggests that negligence isn’t the whole story. Rather it looks as if the dissemination of Plame’s identity may have crossed the line into a criminal conspiracy at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
Unanswered Questions
For two years now, what has been lacking from the White House is a coherent explanation of how the information about Plame’s identity got from the cloistered world of the CIA to White House meetings and then into the hands of political adviser Rove.
Long ago, there should have been answers to the following questions:
--What national security purpose was served by giving Karl Rove a sensitive secret that, if leaked, could endanger the lives of covert intelligence operatives?
--Who attended White House meetings at which Wilson’s disclosures and Plame’s identity were discussed? How was Plame’s identity brought into these talks? By whom?
--Was George W. Bush present at any of these meetings? As the president, who is ultimately responsible for decisions about national security secrets, did Bush say anything about Wilson and Plame? If so, what did he say and to whom?
--Did Bush or anyone else in the White House order Rove to disparage Wilson?
In a healthy democracy, the news media would have demanded answers before Election 2004, rather than focusing primarily on the plight of several journalists caught up in demands for testimony from prosecutor Fitzgerald.
Ironically, it was the caving in by Time magazine last week that has opened the door slightly into the long-running White House cover-up of the Plame case. But still the major news media misses the bigger picture.
The answer to the Plame mystery is not the Watergate advice of “follow the money” or even the obvious question of who spilled the beans to Novak. Instead, the route to the heart of this mystery is to follow the trail from who knew Plame’s identity at the CIA through the White House meetings to Karl Rove.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at http://secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
Bush Bully Rove "Antics in Office": Criminal at Large
In March 2001, Rove met with executives from Intel, successfully advocating a merger between a Dutch company and an Intel company supplier. Rove owned $100,000 in Intel stock at the time. In June 2001, Rove met with two pharmaceutical industry lobbyists. At the time, Rove held almost $250,000 in drug industry stocks. On 30 June 2001, Rove divested his stocks in 23 companies, which included more than $100,000 in each Enron, Boeing, General Electric, and Pfizer. On 30 June 2001, the White House admitted that Rove was involved in administration energy policy meetings, while at the same time holding stock in energy companies including Enron.
Read More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turd_Blossom
MR. ROVE AND THE ACCESS OF EVIL
Not in The New York Times
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
By Greg Palast
The only thing more evil, small-minded and treacherous than the Bush Administration's jailing Judith Miller for a crime the Bush Administration committed, is Judith Miller covering up her Bush Administration "source."
New York Times reporter Miller and her paper would rather she go to prison for four months than identify their "source." Why?
Part of her oddball defense is that The Times never ran the story about Wilson's wife. They get no points for that. The Times SHOULD have run the story with the headline: BUSH OPERATIVE COMMITS FELONY TO PUNISH WHISTLEBLOWER. The lead paragraph should have been, "Today, Mr. K--- R--- [or other slime ball as appropriate] attempted to plant sensitive intelligence information on The New York Times, a felony offense, in an attempt to harm former Ambassador Joseph Wilson who challenged the President's claim regarding Iraq's nuclear program."
A Karl Rove or Rove-like creature peddling a back-door smear doesn't make him a source. Miller's real crime is not concealing a source, but burying the story. A reporter should never, ever give notes to a grand jury, but this information is something The Times owes the PUBLIC, not the prosecutors.
Why didn't The Times run this story? Why not now? Who are they covering for and why?
Maybe the problem for The Times is that this is the same "source" that used Miller to promote, as fact, her ersatz report before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam truly had nukes and bugs and chemicals he could launch at Los Angeles. That "source" too needs publication, Judy.
Every rule has an exception. My mama always told me to "compliment the chef" at dinner. But that doesn't apply when the chef pees in your soup. Likewise, there's an exception to the rule of source protection. When officialdom uses "you-can't-use-my- name" to cover a lie, the official is not a source, but a disinformation propagandist -- and Miller and The Times have been all too willing to play Izvestia to the Bush's Kremlinesque prevarications.
And that is what Miller is protecting: the evil called "access."
The great poison in the corpus of American journalism is the lust for tidbits of supposedly "inside" information which is more often than not inside misinformation parading as hot news.
And thus we have Miller sucking on the steaming sewage pipe of White House lies about Iraq and spitting it out in the pages of The Times as "investigative reporting," for which The Times has apologized. Likewise, we had the embarrassment of Bob Woodward's special access to the Oval Office after the September 11 attacks when Woodward reported the exclusive news that the President was a flawless commander in chief in the war on terror -- for which Woodward has yet to apologize.
While reporting from the Potemkin village of decision-making set up for him at the White House, Woodward missed the real story that, in the words of the Downing Street memo, our leaders were losing track of Osama while they spent their time "fixing the intelligence" on Iraq. Even if Woodward learned of it, would he have reported it at the risk of losing his access to evil?
As Karl Rove chuckles and Judy does time, we are left to ask, What are Miller and The New York Times doing: protecting the name of a source or covering up their conduit to the Bush gang's machinery of deception?
One can only be sympathetic to Miller for choosing jail over bending to the power of the State. But as T.S. Eliot said,
"The last temptation is the greatest treason,
To do the right deed for the wrong reason."
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Subscribe to his commentaries or view his investigative reports for BBC Television at www.GregPalast.com "We must realize that today's Establishment is the new George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution."
-- Justice William O. Douglas "Points of Rebellion"
REDFORD URGES JOURNALISTS TO INVESTIGATE BUSH
July 4th 2005
ROBERT REDFORD has urged journalists to investigate US President GEORGE W BUSH's administration - because he sees strong similarities between Bush's government and the events leading to the Watergate scandal which forced President RICHARD NIXON to resign.
Redford starred in 1976 movie ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN alongside DUSTIN HOFFMAN, as The Washington Post journalists BOB WOODWARD and CARL BERNSTEIN, who brought about the events that led to Nixon's resignation in 1974.
And Redford wasn't surprised when the identity of the mysterious 'Deep Throat' character who sparked the Watergate scandal was recently revealed to be former deputy FBI chief MARK FELT.
But the shock revelation has reminded the actor of the power of the media and the similarities between Bush's secret cover-ups and the Watergate affair.
He says, "There are deep similarities going on but where is the press? where is the press?"
"There is stone-walling, not telling the truth, getting people under wiretaps. The US public continues to be told things that are not true and what worries me is that we have these brave young American guys risking their lives everyday.
"When Deep Throat was revealed, the press came to me and wanted to know what I thought. I said, 'Well, it's interesting that his name came out but is that the point?'
"My contribution was to come at a time when journalism was at its high point and the role I played was to save a testimony to the freedom of speech. The media have changed, we see the ethics have changed. The press is more, I am sorry to say, celebrity oriented."
http://www.peoplejudgebush.org/
Rove Blew CIA Agent's Cover
Lawrence O'Donnell
I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's emails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.
McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don't expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.
Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow.
Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, had his holiday weekend ruined on Friday when I broke the story that the e-mails that Time delivered to the special prosecutor that afternoon reveal that Karl Rove is the source Matt Cooper has been protecting for two years. The next day, Luskin was forced to open the first hole in the Rove two-year wall of silence about the case. In a huge admission to Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, Luskin confessed that, well, yes, Rove did talk to Cooper. It is a huge admission in a case where Rove and Luskin have never, before Friday, felt compelled to say a word about Rove's contact with Cooper or anyone else involved in the case.
Luskin then launched what sounds like an I-did-not-inhale defense. He told Newsweek that his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information." Knowingly. That is the most important word Luskin said in what has now become his public version of the Rove defense.
Not coincidentally, the word 'knowing' is the most important word in the controlling statute ( U.S. Code: Title 50: Section 421). To violate the law, Rove had to tell Cooper about a covert agent "knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States."
In Luskin's next damage control session with the press, let's see if any reporter can get him to drop the word 'knowingly' from the never-disclosed-classified-information bit.
Karl Rove CIA Leaker: Forced to Retire in Luxury?
Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire
It appears Evil Karl, the demented genius of the Bush machine, is the leaker who outed Valerie Plame to Matt Cooper of Time Magazine, according to Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher. Karl, of course, wanted to burn Joe Wilson who came back from Niger saying Saddam wasn’t there picking up discounts of yellowcake uranium.
So Karl outed Joe’s wife for payback. It is illegal under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act to reveal the identity of a CIA agent and a conviction can bring a maximum sentence of 10 years in the clink. Do you think Karl Rove will see the inside of a jail cell? Do you think he will actually be prosecuted? Judith Miller (the Mistress of Propaganda) may waste away in the jail because her employer refuses to spill the beans about her source to a grand jury, but chances are slim to none Evil Karl will ever have to watch the soap or wear an orange jumper.
People like Karl Rove don’t go to jail, not unless they are caught red-handed killing six year olds and cannibalizing the remains. Rove may be forced to resign from the Bush administration and even if he is prosecuted the next president will pardon him just like Dubya’s daddy pardoned all those Iran-Contra criminals. Meanwhile, if you’re a black male in the Queens neighborhoods of Cambria Heights and Laurelton, you get racially profiled, dragneted, arrested, and interrogated because a cop was shot (or stabbed) in the leg while attempting to arrest somebody for smoking marijuana.
I say it is high time we start profiling Bushcons, although long trials and convictions for crimes against humanity (a fantasy, I realize) and then inevitable pardons are too good for this lot. I believe a special (and remote) penal colony is in order, although I can imagine, left to their own devices, these guys would resort to something along the lines of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in short order.
Other Rove "Antics in Office":
In March 2001, Rove met with executives from Intel, successfully advocating a merger between a Dutch company and an Intel company supplier. Rove owned $100,000 in Intel stock at the time. In June 2001, Rove met with two pharmaceutical industry lobbyists. At the time, Rove held almost $250,000 in drug industry stocks. On 30 June 2001, Rove divested his stocks in 23 companies, which included more than $100,000 in each Enron, Boeing, General Electric, and Pfizer. On 30 June 2001, the White House admitted that Rove was involved in administration energy policy meetings, while at the same time holding stock in energy companies including Enron.
Read More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turd_Blossom 
Why the Betrayal of Our National Security by the Bush White House Matters
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
July 4, 2005
"In essence, whatever the legal outcome (which has been driven by political considerations -- that is why it has taken two years to move the "investigation" forward, if it is moving forward), this fact remains clear: In order to send a message to anyone who would expose that the White House lied America into war, the White House -- in an action that could have only been authorized by Karl Rove, perhaps with a nod and a wink from Bush -- deliberately endangered the national security of the United States."
It is two years since PlameGate broke open as a national story, but its implications have long been underplayed by the White House and the Press.
In essence, whatever the legal outcome (which has been driven by political considerations -- that is why it has taken two years to move the "investigation" forward, if it is moving forward), this fact remains clear: In order to send a message to anyone who would expose that the White House lied America into war, the White House -- in an action that could have only been authorized by Karl Rove, perhaps with a nod and a wink from Bush -- deliberately endangered the national security of the United States.
As a warning to those who would expose Bush lies about WMDs -- or any of the daily Bush deceptions -- in July of 2003 the White House revealed to their newspaper water boy, Bob Novak, that Valerie Plame, the wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson, was a CIA operative, and she specialized in the illicit trafficking of Weapons of Mass Destruction. It is befitting the morally corrupt Bush Administration that they would neutralize an American asset in the war against the proliferation of WMDs, while fighting a war allegedly launched against WMDs, in order to make an example of a man, Joe Wilson, who had written a commentary in the New York Times arguing that the Bush Administration evidence claiming WMD evidence regarding a transaction between Niger and Saddam Hussein was false.
In short, the Bush Administration doesn't care if it endangers our national security by undercutting our efforts to curtail the very weapons that they claim they were saving us from. That is how dangerous the Bush Administration is to our national security -- and it is has been before us in plain sight for two years. But the mainstream media has focused on periodic reports that emerge about the "investigation" of the Chicago U.S. Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, who was appointed by John Ashcroft, then Attorney General, to see if any laws were broken.
Fitzgerald, who works now for AG and highly possible Supreme Court nominee Gonzales, must be under enormous pressure to find a way to avoid legally charging any senior Bush Administration officials, particularly Karl Rove. Most speculation is that he doesn't have enough "evidence" to charge Rove or others with violating the law in regards to exposing a CIA operative. The conventional wisdom is that Fitzgerald is now focussing on the possibility of perjury. But that is only speculation. And it's not over until the bald Benedict Arnold (Rove) sings.
Rove is our acting president on domestic policy, and if he can get Gonzales to sit on Fitzgerald (who -- for other reasons unrelated to PlameGate -- both political parties in Illinois want "promoted" to Washington), the endgame of PlameGate will be politically motivated, not legally accountable. If there are no indictments against Rove or other senior White House officials, Bush will declare that his staff got a clean bill of health and the mainstream media will consider the case closed.
Or Rove may have Gonzales, through Fitzgerald, indict a "little fish" to take the heat off, and Godfather style, the victim will be promised to have his family taken care of and a job waiting for him when he gets out of a federal "country club" prison.
Of course, there is another possibility, that Fitzgerald is the rare bird in the Bush Administration, a man who actually upholds the rule of law. In that case he would indeed be unique as he forges ahead despite withering pressure to find legal reasons NOT to indict Rove or any senior Bush/Cheney officials. But, although Fitzgerald has a reputation for relative integrity, we aren't holding our breath.
But here is what we know even without legal indictments and what is getting lost in the latest round of speculation about a two-year old act of betrayal against the citizens of the United States by the Bush Administration: the Bush White House committed brazen treason by deliberately undercutting our national efforts to keep WMDs out of the hands of "bad guys." Why did they do this? Because Karl Rove wanted to prevent future whistleblowers from coming forward to expose Bush lies, in this case the courageous proof by Joe Wilson that another lie had been used to bolster the false claim that Iraq had WMDs.
The PlameGate affair is symbolic of how the Bush Administration puts its own interests of preserving power before the interests of the American people -- and in unbelievable irony, on the one issue that they have trumpeted their "expertise" at: national security.
How the Democrats have apologetically bolstered Bush's "national security credentials" when he has put -- and PlameGate is just the tip of the iceberg -- our nation at greater risk than before 9/11, and used his bumbling efforts to further consolidate power into a shadow, secret government run by Cheney and Rove, is what is in plain sight.
But the mainstream media -- and most of the Democrats in Congress -- can't even see it staring them in the face.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
KARL ROVE CAN'T LIE HIS WAY OUT
By Bill Gallagher DETROIT -- Cynicism is the soul of George W. Bush's presidency and Karl Rove, the man he calls his "brain," speaks out loud the thoughts lurking in the president's ruthless but muddled mind. Rove is the most vile, despicable, duplicitous, power-addicted, war-mongering, lying neo-fascist in the administration, save Dick Cheney and the man who lets them run the government for him.
Rove's cynicism is a perfect reflection of Bush's jaded mind and willingness to say and do anything to grab and preserve power. If that means sending young men and women to die in an illegal, unnecessary war against the wrong enemy, Rove figures, so what?
His only political dimension dwells on hate, distrust and division, and using those raw emotions to manipulate and control the masses. In Rove's world, the war in Iraq was a brilliant political move that salvaged Bush's faltering presidency, secured a second term and assured a rubber-stamp Republican Congress.
Rove's supreme cynicism reached a new summit last week when he told an audience at a New York Conservative Party dinner that the Democratic Party and liberals just didn't understand the consequences of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of he 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Rove said. He is a barbaric partisan trying to cloak himself in patriotism, slurring people in the process. What he said is absurd.
Rove's cynicism has a putrid odor. Some smells just stick in your nose, and, as much as you'd like to forget them, the stench endures. The sight of Rove makes me cringe and hold my nose. He believes in nothing but power, and will deceive and lie to keep it.
In his body, devotion to straw-man arguments and impeccable credentials as a "chickenhawk," Rove is essentially Rush Limbaugh with a White House office.
Rush must have shared some of his pills with Rove when Bush's deputy chief of staff went on his incredible rant accusing liberals of coddling terrorists. Karl Rove has no shame and his performance was right out of Joe McCarthy's playbook.
Can Rove or any of the Busheviks point to a single Democrat or liberal who wanted to "offer therapy" to the people behind he 9/11 attacks? That's a damnable lie that Bush is letting his "brain" utter to slam the opposition, and divert attention from the quagmire in Iraq.
Most Americans and our allies around the world supported going into Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda murderers had set up camp under the protection of the Taliban government. They brought us the 9/11 attacks and pose an ongoing threat to our national security. The pursuit of bin Laden and his terrorists enjoyed nearly universal approval, especially from Democrats and liberals.
But when Bush morphed that legitimate cause into invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with the attacks, many liberals and even a few clear-thinking conservatives opposed the madness.
Now Rove and Bush are caught up in their lie, and public support for the savagery in Iraq has eroded significantly. The consequences of the invasion and occupation of Iraq are disastrous. We not fighting terrorists; we're creating them.
Bush, who loves to call himself a "war president," is waging a war that is threatening our national security and assures another, more virulent generation of terrorists who hate America and will bring us more harm.
The New York Times reports a classified assessment prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency found "Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda's early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat." The chilling report offers an ominous conclusion about the consequences of Bush's unnecessary war fought for fabricated reasons. Intelligence and congressional officials who spoke to the Times made it clear that "the war was likely to produce a dangerous legacy by dispersing to other countries Iraqi and foreign combatants more adept and better organized than they were before the conflict."
Rove used the war to sell Bush as a determined and courageous leader protecting our freedom at home and planting it in Iraq. What we have instead is unending violence and turmoil and a schoolyard for terrorists who flock to Iraq "to learn how to carry out assassinations, kidnapping, car bombings and other kinds of attacks," as the Times reports.
We ran bin Laden out of Afghanistan and essentially gave him Iraq to train new terrorist recruits. It's difficult to imagine anything crazier, but for Karl Rove, it worked for his purpose of keeping his boy in the Oval Office.
CIA Director Porter Goss says he has an "excellent idea" where bin Laden is holed up, but we're not going after him because we must respect diplomatic niceties. In an interview with "Time" magazine, Goss said, "When you go to the question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you're dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation and fair play."
Goss is surely talking about Pakistan. Bin Laden is widely believed be hiding in the mountains near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. So the Bush administration is refusing to go after the man responsible for masterminding and financing the 9/11 attacks because we don't want to offend Pakistan and because of our sense of "fair play." This absurdity from the same people who trampled on international law, invaded the sovereign state of Iraq, and removed Saddam Hussein, who didn't have a damn thing to do with 9/11.
Dick Cheney left his bunker and chimed in, telling CNN he too had bin Laden in sight. "We've got a pretty good idea of the general area that he's in, but I, you know, I don't have the street address," Cheney said. Why don't you ask Saddam Hussein, Dick? Cheney told the lie of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection so often, he continues to spout it long after the fraud has been thoroughly discredited.
Cheney's been acting especially daffy and delusional these days. He must have gone to a pill-popping party with Rush and Rove. While everyone with eyes to see knows Iraq is in turmoil and the violence shows no sign of ebbing, Cheney insists the insurgency in Iraq is in its "last throes." Cheney, as usual, didn't offer a scintilla of evidence to support his wildly unfounded assertion.
Cheney wouldn't back down from his delusion, even after our commander in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, offered a dose of reality and told a congressional committee the insurgency was as strong as ever and the military has "a lot of work" remaining to defeat it.
"Editor and Publisher's" Greg Mitchell has a trenchant read on the vice president's behavior. "Is it just me, or is Vice President Cheney, who repeated Thursday that the Iraq insurgency is in its final throes, starting to sound liked former Saddam spokesman, 'Baghdad Bob'? Is it time to start calling him 'D.C. Dick'?" Mitchell's referring to Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, who optimistically assured everyone things were going quite well and the Iraqi army was winning as U.S. forces rolled into Baghdad. It is just as ludicrous to suggest the insurgents are in their final days of battle, as "D.C. Dick" does.
Even with Cheney's laughable assurances and Rove's lies, the American people have finally caught on. Most now know the war was a horrible mistake and that the Busheviks and their comrades in the media lied relentlessly to gain public support for it.
Polls show 60 percent of the American people now favor a troop withdrawal. Bush's approval rating has plunged to a hair above 40 percent. That's the lowest for a second-term president since Richard Nixon when he was caught in his crimes. Bush's are much worse and have done considerably more harm to the nation and the world.
Our fearless commander in chief will try to drum up support for staying the course in Iraq in a speech slated for Tuesday night.
The setting? Why, of course, a military base: Fort Bragg, N.C., where everyone in the audience will cheer and scream on cue and Bush will repeat the lie of the ages, that the war in Iraq is a response to the 9/11 attacks and will make the nation safer from terrorists.
He'll praise the troops and tell some folksy anecdotes, and vow that, as your "war president," he won't waver. The plan is working, he'll insist.
But the Downing Street Memo taught us that, not only was U.S. intelligence "fixed" to buttress the phony case against Iraq, but even knowing Saddam was going to be easy to oust, the administration had given little thought to what would happen in the "aftermath after military action."
But the carnage in Iraq doesn't really matter in the most cynical White House in American history. The senseless war got Bush another term and that's all he and Karl Rove cared about. They like war. Their children are alive.
Who is Karl Christian Rove? Bush's "Turd Blossom" Revealed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turd_Blossom
Bush's Impeachable Offenses
Compiled by 'Son of a Bush'
1) The now famous Downing Street Memo, along with the testimony of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil constitute direct evidence of a decision by Bush to invade a sovereign foreign nation on entirely specious grounds.
2) The decision to deploy chemical weapons in Fallujah came from Rumsfeld who no doubt covered his ass by receiving assent from Bush to use these banned weapons
3) The decision by Bush to dig up dirt on UN diplomats when the General Assembly was considering his ill-fated war resolution
4) Authorizing torture of POW's - a direct violation of the protocols of the Geneva Convention
5) Holding so called "non-combatant civilians" for an indefinite period of time ,depriving them of their day in court ,acess to counsel, and acess to family members who could plead their cause to the public.
6) Kidnapping so called "terror suspects" , placing them on Rendition Airways, and sending them to countries like Uzbekistan who boil these,untried, unconvicted people alive.
7) foreknowledge of 9/11 by Bush, Rice, and the top Neocons at the Pentagon . The only ones warned were Fmr. SF. Mayor Willie Brown, Salman Rushdie (Via Scotland Yard) and Ariel Sharon, who cancelled his trip to NYC scheduled for the weekend prior to 9/11.
8) Engaging in a massive voter suppression campaign in the state of Ohio to secure a second term by fraudulent means. Such activities carry criminal sanctions as outlined in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
9) Covering up the involvement of Mossad in 9/11. The fellow that secreted these spies and explosives experts out of country and back into Israel , Michael Chertoff, was promoted from Criminal Division of the Justice Dept to lead the Dept. of Homeland Security.!
10) The attempt to quash the testimony of Sibel Edmonds using the bogus shield of the States Secret Act.
11) Engaging in a sytematic campaign of depriving political dissidents of their 1st ammendment rights to condem Bush administration policy. Protesters are removed out of crowds and summarily placed in jail. The Secret Service, under orders of the President, conduct "Harassment and intimidation Interviews" of anti -Bush political activists.
12) Conspiring with Ken Lay to rip-off the the people of California by creating false energy shortages,thus creating the causus belli for charging energy consumers illegal, confiscatory rates. 13) Conspiring to rig the vote count in the state of Fl. by hacking optical scan machines and E-voting machines and covering up the latter by passing legislation in the state of Fl to prevent post-election examination of E-voting machines.
14) Illegally transferring $700 million from the budget for the war in Afghanistan for war preparations in Iraq in July 2002, without Congressional Approval. This is a Constitutional violation.
15) The "outing" of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
This info is what I can recover off the top of my head. Clearly an impeachment inquiry by the US House Judiciary Committeee is an action clearly overdue. Some of the allegations are violations of international law. They fall under the impeachment clause as well . An additional action of filing criminal referral to the UN War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague is also an absolute must if the United States wants to gain the esteem of the citizens of the entire world.
The Declaration Of Independence Of The United States
Outside CONGRESS, on Independence Day, July 4, 2005
By Ted Lang et al
The unanimous Declaration of the PEOPLE of the fifty United States of America...
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for the people to dissolve the political bands of oppression which have connected them with their chosen government, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and Property...and that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Further, that whenever *any* Form of Government (The Bush Regime and The Supreme Soviet Court) becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety (getting out of Iraq and untangling from Israel) to ensure both their Security and their Pursuit of Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
However, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism (Bush), it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these United States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of America (George II) is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States, and for that matter, much of the entire world according to the plan of Lucifer and Ariel Sharon. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
HE has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good, and permitted flagrant violations of other Laws, particularly with regard to illegal immigration.
HE has forbidden his Secretaries to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, such as the arming of airline pilots, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them as is his duty, particularly in supporting, defending and protecting the Constitution.
HE has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, such as an open debate as regards the USA PATRIOT Act abolishing our Bill of Rights, rights inestimable to the People and formidable to tyrants only.
HE has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures, such as Congressman Conyers' banishment to a Congressional basement for his panel for the review of the Downing Street Memos proving he lied US into an unnecessary, costly war.
HE has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people, by allowing Congressman James Sensenbrenner to summarily disband a review of the horrors of the USA PATRIOT Act which virtually abolishes our Bill of Rights.
HE has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
HE has endeavored to prevent the population of these States by legitimate immigrants; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers, and tried to force politically oriented judges upon US, instead of those with adequate legal training and the resultant capability of assessing laws in accordance with both justice and common sense.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries, and intimidated them to rescind both the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights and the People's right to Private property ownership.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, such as the bloated and unnecessary Department of Fatherland Security, and the Transportation Security Agency, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures, and formed "Free Speech Zones," thereby violating the First Amendment's guarantee of the People's right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, as well as their right to assemble freely.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power, and under central government auspices, turned the Police of our States, Cities, Towns and Counties against US, combining them with Military operations, thus violating Congress' 1878 Posse Comitatus Act.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction [New World Order and Israel] foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us, and creating "Free Speech Zones" encapsulated by dangerous razor wire and augmented by federalized Police armed with dangerous fully automatic weapons of Mass Annihilation and Destruction [MAD]:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States, and threatening and imprisoning members of our free and independent press:
For cutting off beneficial free market Trade with all parts of the world via GATT, NAFTA and the soon to be enacted CAFTA, thereby causing our People to lose their means of employment:
For imposing Taxes and intolerable gasoline prices on us without our Consent:
For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury [USA PATRIOT Act], and condoning and initiating illegal imprisonment and torture:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried and tortured [rendition] for pretended offences [International kidnapping and exported torture]:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws [such as habeas corpus], establishing an Arbitrary government [the Zionist PNAC Cabal and AIPAC], and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these United States of America:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own State Legislatures and their initiatives, and subordinating those to the Federal government via tax authority and economic blackmail, and threatening armed intervention, and declaring these legislatures divested of power to legislate for US in all cases whatsoever.
HE has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against US
in the abstract by his "War on Terror," and by standing down our defenses on September 11, 2005.
HE has plundered and hideously abused innocent nations, burnt our towns and buildings, and destroyed the lives of our people, and plundered the natural resources of other Nations thereby inviting retaliation against our People.
HE is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty, Torture and Mass Murder and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally conducted himself as totally unworthy as the Head of a civilized nation.
HE has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive in civilian-staffed Reserve and National Guard units in his control to bear Arms against other non-threatening peaceful Nations, unjustly extending their duty assignments, and has been neglectful in his duty to our wounded and maimed warfighters, has suspended and reduced veterans' benefits, has failed to appear at even one military funeral, has forbidden members of Congress from honoring our military dead by their presence at funerals, has disallowed honest coverage of our war casualties by a formerly free and independent press, and forced our military to become the executioners of innocent, unarmed citizens and their friends and Brethren in peaceful Nations posing no threat to US.
HE has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, merciless and criminal Foreign Illegal Immigrants and Terrorists, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions in retaliation for the very same practices He has directed towards the Populations of other Nations.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Congressional brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.
They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the People of the united States of America, in General and in rapidly increasing numbers, and as yet Unassembled, and appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these United States of America, solemnly publish and declare, That these United States are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Washington Crown, and that all political connection between them and the Central Government of the United States, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.
http://www.peoplejudgebush.org/
Each One a Vibrant Energy Center for Change
Each one of us is a roving intelligent energy vortex on a blue planet, each one of us connected by magical magnetic threads to every other, and all of us feeling it. We are feeling the pain of the world. We are feeling shadows of those on the other side of the planet. We are feeling light rising in their eyes.
We in the the privileged nations, those designated the "Group of 8"-- overly developed, industrialized, and generally ruthless-- must confront the grotesque daily reality of the rest of the world, which is mostly poverty, hunger, and desperation. When Pink Floyd reunites for Live 8 and their wall reads "Poverty"... we must admit what is on the other side of that wall.
In confronting our leaders in their economic alliance, keep in mind this one simple but brutal commonality. Nearly every projectile-launching weapon, from machine guns to tanks, from cruise missiles to fighter jets, are manufactured and distributed by the "G-8" nations. It really has reached monstrously Orwellian dimensions, most cancerously (and radioactively) pumping out of the USA.
A fraction of what the US has spent in Iraq could have saved millions upon millions of people with constructive, healing, and nutritious programs. Bluntly speaking, we are at a crossroads where we must force our leaders to choose either war as an addiction or global recovery as the only viable remedy. War is a contagious disease-- symptoms include insanity, poverty and toxic ooze.
We are all called to use our awareness to expose these war profiteers, who are raking in billions upon billions for corrupted contracts and deadly technologies, while over 200 million people are starving to death, at this moment. The reason George Bush is in office is to allow these people free reign, to use up as many weapons as possible in order for them to build new ones. We must treat this as a pandemic disease, requiring possible amputation and definite alternative therapy.
Put an end to the disease of war, and the resources to heal our planet are there immediately. Remember, most of these war technologies are billed to us and our children, and we have the consitutional right to refuse to pay (or revolt!), especially when war and despotism is choking the world. No more bloody excuses!
If you can't get to Edinburgh this weekend, take a few simple steps to help yourself and the world: Stop eating processed food and meat for a month. Wean yourself from petrol products. Spend some time every day writing letters. Plant some beans, grain, and squash in a "Global Victory Garden." You will feel much less the shadow and much more the light.
Bravo Zulu Bywydd, MetaMagic MotherShip
Burning Bush http://burnbush.blogspot.com
MADONNA LEADS A REVOLUTION
MADONNA wowed crowds at LIVE 8 this evening with a spectacular performance.
The star kicked off her set with ’Like A Prayer’, backed by the a full choir, who - like the star and her band - were dressed completely in white. Madonna was also joined onstage by an Ethiopian woman who had been, in Bob Geldof's words "10 minutes from death," until the money raised at the first Live Aid concert helped save her.
“Are you ready to start a revolution," Madonna asked the crowd. "Are you ready to change the world?" 
From July 6-8th, violent extremists will be coming to Scotland...
They'll be trying to meet at the Gleneagles hotel, and we'll be trying to stop them.
http://www.dissent.org.uk/
For those who don't know, what exactly is the G8 Summit?
The G8 are the 8 richest countries in the world. The summit of these eight countries - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United States - will meet in July 2005 in Gleneagles. The G8 (as was the G6) met for the first time in 1975. Given the failed history of the G8 it is no surprise that people have protested when they meet. The leaders of the eight richest countries in the world may take their photo-opportunities but there are millions of us ready to point out their hypocrisy and reveal the G8 for what they really are: a rich cabal trying to disguise themselves as pious philanthropists.
Why should we protest?
There are so many reasons why we should protest. The G8 has had over 30 years to alleviate the misery and poverty endured by people in some of the poorest parts of the world. Yet, at the beginning of the 21st century 30,000 children die EVERY DAY from the brutal and callous effects of poverty. The trajectory of the global capitalist economy at the beginning of the twenty-first century is on a collision course with nature. Our ecological system is in peril. Scientists estimate that a reduction of 70 per cent of greenhouse emissions over this century is necessary to prevent the worst effects of climate change including flooding, hurricanes and droughts. Yet, the Kyoto pact, which is part of the United Nations framework on climate change, only requires developed countries to reduce greenhouse emissions by 5.2 per cent by 2012. And the United States, which is the world's biggest polluter - spurting out 5,795.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide - has refused to sign the pact.
G8 ALTERNATIVES Summit-- Free Camping Edinburgh
http://www.g8alternatives.org.uk/
Schedule of Demos & Rallies
War Profiteering as Crimes Against Humanity$5.2 billion a year: The FAO’s estimate for direct assistance to the most nutritionally deprived people on earth (Those starving to death- 214 million people identified).
$147 billion: Amount spent on the Iraq War and occupation as of January 2005.
$165 billion: Annual amount going to U.S. military contractors.
World Game Institute annual estimates
• Eliminate Starvation and Malnutrition ($19 billion)
• Provide Shelter ($21 billion)
• Remove Landmines ($4 billion)
• Eliminate Nuclear Weapons ($7 billion)
• Refugee Relief ($5 billion)
• Eliminate Illiteracy ($5 billion)
• Provide Clean, Safe Water ($10 billion)
• Stabilize Population ($10.5 billion)
• Prevent Soil Erosion ($24 billion)
840 million people go hungry everyday.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
--President/General Dwight Eisenhower
Open letter to G8 leaders
The Live 8 concerts this weekend will be a wonderful musical occasion.
But despite the fact that the world’s greatest popular musicians are playing – they are not the stars of the show. The 8 of Live 8 are not 8 musicians or bands – they are you, the 8 leaders of the G8.
Let this be absolutely clear before the first note is played. Everyone taking part in these concerts is there because the many millions watching will not tolerate the further pain of the poor while we have the financial and moral means to prevent it.
We are gathering for you the largest mandate for action in history. Just as people demanded an end to slavery, demanded women’s suffrage, demanded the end of apartheid – we now call for an end to the unjust absurdity of extreme poverty that is killing 50,000 people every day.
Live 8 is taking place so that you – our elected leaders – right now in 2005 make the breakthrough demanded by, among others, the Commission For Africa in the battle towards making poverty history.
You know what needs to be done, specifically:
ON AID: Deliver an extra 25billion dollars aid for Africa and make plans to ensure this aid really will be effective at eradicating poverty. This must stand beside a further 25billion dollars for other poor countries. This is the absolute minimum required to begin to win the battle against poverty.
ON DEBT: Confirm the 100 per cent debt cancellation from the G8 finance ministers meeting and commit to 100 per cent debt cancellation for ALL the countries that need it and remove damaging economic policies imposed as a condition.
ON TRADE: Make decisive steps to end unjust rules of trade and allow poor countries to build their own economies, at their own pace. It is only through trade that Africa will eventually beat poverty on its own.
Let it be equally clear – at the same time, African governments must be free from corruption and thuggery and put in place recognised practices of good governance, accountability and transparency towards their own people and to the world.
Twenty years ago at Live Aid we asked for charity. Today at Live 8 we want justice for the poor.
The G8 meeting next week can take the first real step towards eradicating the extremes of poverty once and for all.
We will not applaud half-measures, or politics as usual. This must be a historic breakthrough. Today there will be noise and music and joy, the joy of exuberant possibility.
On Friday, when the summit ends, there will be a great silence as the world awaits your verdict.
Do not disappoint us. Do not create a generation of cynics. Do not betray the desires of billions and the hopes of the poorest of our world.
Are those 50,000 people each day to be allowed to live, or not?
Sincerely,
Bob Geldof
http://www.live8live.com/
Bono -
"This is our moment, this is our time, this is our chance to stand up for what is right.We are not looking for charity, we are looking for justice. We cannot fix everything but the ones we can we must.
"Three thousand Africans, mostly children, die every day of a mosquito bite. We can fix that. Nine thousand people dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease like Aids. We have got the drugs. We can help them. Dirty water, death by dirty water. Well we can dig wells. You want to join us. Get out on the streets of Edinburgh and everywhere else.
"Eight of the most powerful men on earth are meeting in Gleneagles in Scotland. We have a message for them.
"This is your moment too. Make history by making poverty history."
http://one.org/
Mandela appeals to G8 leaders at Live 8 concert
CTV.ca News
Former South African president Nelson Mandela urged the leaders of the world's richest nations to commit to the fight against world poverty, as performers took to the stages at Live 8 concerts around the world.
"I say to all those leaders: Do not look the other way, do not hesitate, it is easy to make promises, but never go to action," Mandela said to global TV audience.
When he walked onstage in South Africa's Johannesburg, thunderous applause rose from the crowd, silencing the iconic leader for several moments.
"Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. It is a protection of a fundamental human right -- the right to dignity and a decent life," Mandela said, addressing the crowd.
"While poverty persists, there is no true freedom."
Delighted concertgoers packed the Johannesburg venue, the only African addition to the Live 8 series, dancing and waving signs demanding "trade justice" and "give us food."
"Africans are involved in helping Africa, which doesn't happen too often," Cameroonian singer Coco Mbassi told The Associated Press before the concert.
"We're presenting a different image of Africa - showing that Africa has good things to give."
Unlike the concerts in the G8 countries, most of the South African concertgoers were impoverished.
The event took place in a working-class part of the city and concert-goers did not need tickets to attend.
"The spirit is terrific, it's more a celebration than anything else," said CTV's Murray Oliver, reporting from Johannesburg.
Live 8 concerts are being held around the world -- in London, Tokyo Philadelphia, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Moscow, Johannesburg, and Barrie, Ont. -- in an effort to focus attention on global poverty and put pressure on political leaders to drop the debt burden of the poorest countries.
U2 frontman Bono and Paul McCartney kicked off the main Live 8 extravaganza in London with a rousing performance of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
The crowd roared when the two performers sang the first line: "It was 20 years ago today ..." - a reference to the Live Aid concerts that raised millions for African famine relief two decades ago.
"This is our moment, this is our time, this is our chance. Stand up for what's right. We are not looking for charity, we are looking for justice," Bono told the crowd of up to 200,000 that packed Hyde Park.
"We can't fix every problem, but the ones we can, we must."
Later in the show, Brad Pitt tugged on the heartstrings of the London audience, when he recounted the story of a young woman with AIDS whom he met in Africa.
She grabbed him by the arm and pleaded: "Please bring us the drugs, please hurry."
"Let us be fighters for the lives of her life and the lives of her children -- whatever it takes, whatever the cost," Pitt appealed to the audience.
Musicians such as U2, Madonna, Pink Floyd, Dido, Mariah Carey, Annie Lennox, Sting and Coldplay were on London's star-studded lineup.
A child dies every three seconds
In Philadelphia, where actor and musician Will Smith is hosting the city's Live 8 concert, he led a global session of finger-snapping, beginning at 12:05 p.m. ET.
The finger-snapping, or "click moment," represents how often a child dies from the effects of extreme poverty.
"Every three seconds in the poorest countries of the world, a child dies as a result of extreme poverty...Dead -- just like that," he said, snapping his fingers.
"We are calling on the eight most powerful leaders to do what they can to end this daily tragedy. With the stroke of a pen, eight men can make a world of difference in the lives of billions of people."
Earlier in Japan, Iceland's Bjork and U.S. rockers Good Charlotte joined a handful of Japanese bands, drawing a crowd of about 10,000.
"People are willing to go out of their way, because we believe passionately in what this is about," said Bjork, who was making her first live performance in two years.
"Just the acknowledgment of the problem is an important step."
In Berlin, German crowd-pleasers Die Toten Hosen opened the city's concert, entertaining the crowd packed into a wide boulevard through a downtown park.
In Moscow, tens of thousands of fans jammed into a venue off of Red Square, to watch performances from the Pet Shop Boys and Russian rock bands.
More than 150 acts are slated to perform in total worldwide, what Live 8 worldwide producer Harvey Goldsmith calls a mixture of "the biggest acts in the world, the best acts in the world and the newest acts in the world."
Satellite trucks will beam Saturday's broadcast of the Live 8 concerts (starting at 7 a.m. ET on CTV, Canada's host broadcaster) to a potential global audience of 5½ billion people in more than 140 countries. For those who won't be attending the show in Barrie, Ont., Canada's show starts at 11 a.m. ET.
Performers for Canada's Live 8 gig include: Neil Young, Barenaked Ladies, Bryan Adams, Gordon Lightfoot, Great Big Sea, Simple Plan, Jet, and Sam Roberts.
'Mandate for action'
It's 20 years to the month that Live Aid concerts, raising millions for African famine relief, were held.
Today, performers are taking to the stage in 10 venues around the world for an even more ambitious follow-up.
The Live 8 concerts are the brainchild of Irish rocker Bob Geldof, who hopes to raise awareness of poverty in Africa and to increase pressure on world leaders to tackle the crisis.
In an open letter to political leaders published Saturday in several British newspapers, Geldof said the summit will disappoint the world if it fails to deliver an extra $25 billion US in aid to Africa.
"We will not applaud half-measures, or politics as usual. This must be a historic breakthrough," the letter says.
"Today there will be noise and music and joy, the joy of exuberant possibility. On Friday (the end of the summit) there will be great silence as the world awaits your verdict. Do not disappoint us. Do not create a generation of cynics."
While Live Aid was to raise money for victims of famine in Africa, Live 8 is about raising awareness.
The concerts come four days before leaders of the world's richest nations meet in Gleneagles, Scotland, for a Group of Eight summit.
The finance ministers from the world's wealthiest nations agreed to a historic accord earlier this month, which cancels at least $40 billion US worth of debt owed by poor, developing countries.
World Food Program's Interactive Map of World Hunger
Global Call to Action against Poverty
The GCE has joined the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), a growing and historic movement to end world poverty. This unprecedented campaign, offers an extraordinary chance to make a lasting difference in the fight against poverty during 2005. Please join us to make poverty history!
Why 2005?
2005 offers a unique and never to be repeated set of opportunities for making progress in the fight against poverty. Three major summits will focus on global poverty:
The G8 summit in July - during which the UK hosts have promised to focus on development and poverty issues.
The UN Heads of State summit in September - which will review progress on the Millennium Development Goals
The World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in December.
What actions are being planned for GCAP?
The Global Call to Action against Poverty is made up of national campaigns around the world. It is a way for different networks, across all sectors, to rally around a powerful common message at one or two critical moments in 2005. The international focus for the campaign will be on two key dates - 1st July, ahead of the G8 meeting, and September 5th ahead of the UN Millennium Summit - where campaigners will wear white bands as a sign of solidarity.
Countries will be building on existing networks - such as those on debt, trade or education - and strategies and activities that are already being planned: such as the Global Action Week for education. At the national level, coalitions are planning their own actions and forming their own unique identities, while still falling under the GCAP banner. From the Make Poverty History UK coalition, to Keep the Promises India coalition, to No mas Pobreza coalition in El Salvador, these national coalitions are beginning to mobilise in 50+ countries, and continue to grow by the day.
How does the 2005 Call to Action link to the GCE Global Action Week?
For GCE supporters, getting involved in the 2005 Call to Action does not replace the Global Action Week. On the contrary, it's a way to sustain the momentum and expand the impact of the Action Week by linking with other networks at key moments in the year. The Global Action Week for education will be just one of the many mass mobilisations planned during 2005. And because the GCE already has a well-established and strong network of coalitions, geared up to mobilise, we are in a truly unique position to add our campaigning weight to, and be a driving force in, GCAP. The 2003 and 2004 Action Weeks mobilised millions, by joining in the Global Call to Action against Poverty we can help to mobilise hundreds of millions!
The armband action would be a simple add-on to Global Action Week events and not a replacement for it: you can also join in on one or two of the agreed worldwide "armband days". To find out more visit the GCAP website
Who else is involved?
The list of organisations taking part grows week by week. The International Facilitation Group includes: Action Aid, Agir Ici, ANCEFA, AWEPON, CCIC, Christian Aid, CIDSE, CIVICUS, Comic Relief, DATA, Global Campaign for Education, ICFTU, Islamic Relief, Legambiente, MICAH Challenge, MWENGO, MWENGO, NOVIB, One campaign, Oxfam, Platforma 2015 y más, Public Services International, Socialwatch, UNDP, UN Millennium Campaign, UNDP, World Vision International.
http://www.actionaid.org/313/global_call_to_action.html
This is the future calling
Many Africans hope this weekend's concerts will draw attention to what the continent is doing to help itself
Telegraph.co.uk by John Chiahemen
As a sub-editor on the Reuters Africa desk in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1984, I watched, horrified, as Reuters pictures and video of emaciated and dying Ethiopian famine victims came into the newsroom, day after day shaking the conscience of the world. Now as Reuters chief correspondent in Southern Africa, I am a witness to a different story - the slow but steady rebirth of Africa, many of whose leaders appear committed to breaking its cycle of tragedy, conflict and poverty, despite the many setbacks and daunting obstacles.
Vibrant continent: many Africans hope the world will see how Africa is trying to help itself
Ethiopia set a radical new benchmark for public donations to an African cause, and much of that was thanks to the Live Aid concerts. Now, 20 years on, Live8 gigs are taking place across the world to draw the world's attention to Africa's woes.
South Africans have been busy in the past week getting the Mary Fitzgerald Square in central Johannesburg ready for the only African gig. While most Africans, without electricity or television, will miss the live acts, those who have heard about it are grateful for the global attention it will focus on their plight as it did for Ethiopians.
Africa's crippling debt and demand for free trade are now both firmly on the agenda of the G8 summit taking place barely a week after the concert.
But many in Africa also hope that the gigs will draw attention to Africa's untold story of what it is doing to help itself, reversing deep-rooted Western-held stereotypes of conflict and chaos, and propagate a message about how the developed world can truly help Africa.
A lot has changed in Africa over the past 20 years, although you could be forgiven for missing that since media coverage of this vibrant continent tends to focus most on disease and poverty.
There is no doubt these are important issues, but there is another side to this story. Africa is developing. For example, a revolution in telecommunications is already changing the face of the continent. Phone ownership in the continent leapt to 65 million connected lines in 2004 from a mere 15 million in 2000. Nigeria alone is on track to have 20 million phone lines by the end of this year and double that in five years. It had fewer than half a million in 2000.
Other sectors such as banking, retail and mining are poised to replicate the success of telecoms. All of these industries are creating investment, jobs, and a chance to reverse the poverty trend.
Many Africans say aid alone is not enough. They want a long-term commitment that will enable them to fix their own problems. This is how Moustapha Diop, a 25-year-old student at Senegal's Dakar University, sums it up: "Aid is good, but we want the Europeans to come here to help us, so young Senegalese can get work, so they can stay here. We have a proverb: instead of giving me a fish, teach me to fish myself."
The Ultimate Cost of War
$147 billion: Amount spent on the Iraq War and occupation as of January 2005.
World Game Institute annual estimates
• Eliminate Starvation and Malnutrition ($19 billion)
• Provide Shelter ($21 billion)
• Remove Landmines ($4 billion)
• Eliminate Nuclear Weapons ($7 billion)
• Refugee Relief ($5 billion)
• Eliminate Illiteracy ($5 billion)
• Provide Clean, Safe Water ($10 billion)
• Stabilize Population ($10.5 billion)
• Prevent Soil Erosion ($24 billion)
$5.2 billion a year: The FAO’s estimate for direct assistance to the most nutritionally deprived people on earth (Those starving to death- 214 million people identified). $4.4 billion: The cost of two B-2 Bombers.
$3.2 billion: The annual budget for the World Food Program to assist 104 million starving and malnourished people in 81 countries.The World's Largest Military Spenders
(billions)
United States $419
Russia $65
China $56
United Kingdom $49
Japan $45
France $40
Germany $30
Saudi Arabia $19
India $19
Italy $18
"I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolishment, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes."
--General Douglas MacArthur
