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DelegatePeace * BushLies * IceAge * PakiNukes
07 February 2004
"My campaign is about the end of fear
and the beginning of hope.
When the lives of men and women who bravely serve this nation
are at risk in Iraq, our civil liberties are in peril
and the entire U.S. domestic agenda is being sacrificed,
we must have the courage
to see through the lies that sent us into Iraq.
We must reclaim our nation."
– Dennis J. Kucinich1) Caucuses a referendum on the war by Dennis Kucinich
2) Bush Panel to investigate WMD intelligence of far right- - Demand Congress to Appoint a Truly Independent Commission
- - 8 Questions for Russert -- for George W. Bush
- - Scott Ritter: Not Everyone Got it Wrong on Iraq's Weapons
3) How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age
4) Doubts over 'Confession' by Pakistani Nuclear Expert Deep in the mid winter blues, a strange sight envelopes the mind
where one cannot see, silence strips the avenue,
and twilight settles in while kucinich stirs an imagination
and people prepare to not see, or shout from the mountaintops,
heralding spring where possibilities are inevitable
and ceaseless flinches of uncompromising behavior
has eroded the ineptitude to trust only the savage beast
where fears depart and challenges are welcome.Editor's Notes:Item 1 is crucial to understand to learn about strategic voting and uniting with a plan to get the US out of Iraq. Dennis Kucinich is gaining some momentum. In New Mexico he received about 6% of the vote. Former United States Marine and United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter, a leading critic of the Iraq war, (see article in item 2), announced his endorsement of Kucinich at a news conference on January 30 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The second item is on the Bush appointed panel to study the manipulation of lies and so-called intelligence about Iraq's nonexisting stockpiles of WMDs. This item includes numerous resources, and please note the reference on this Sunday's Meet the Press program with George W. Item 3 could explain the unusually cold winter in many parts of our world, and its relationship with Global Warming. And item 4 is on the foolishness of a potentially darker winter where humans are self-destructing from a contortion of lies, dominance, fear and ignorance.
On a positive note, keep checking
the schedule for Dennis Kucinich.He is appearing all over our nation, raising awareness of proposed policies for peace, integrity, prosperity, health, and truth. It is time for a change, and your vote can make a difference.
Vortex Network News
Jonathan Mark, editor of Flyby News, will be the guest on Aurora Ellegion's new radio program, which is aired out of Phoenix, AZ from 10:00pm-1:00am, this Monday, February 9th. 10pm is midnight on the east coast and 9pm PST. The show can be listened to anywhere over the Internet at
1100KFNX.com You are invited to call in to the show toll-free 866-536-1100.
1) Caucuses a referendum on the war by Dennis KucinichSEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Caucuses a referendum on the war
Thursday, February 5, 2004
By DENNIS KUCINICH
DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
My campaign is about the end of fear and the beginning of hope. When the lives of men and women who bravely serve this nation are at risk in Iraq, our civil liberties are in peril and the entire U.S. domestic agenda is being sacrificed, we must have the courage to see through the lies that sent us into Iraq. We must reclaim our nation.
The Washington caucuses are a referendum on the Iraq war. Every other Democratic presidential candidate, except the Rev. Al Sharpton, would keep our troops in Iraq for years. I will bring our troops home quickly. I have a plan to work with the United Nations to replace U.S. troops with U.N. peacekeepers.
The United States must ask the United Nations to manage the oil assets of Iraq until the Iraqi people are self-governing. The United Nations must handle all contracts (no more Halliburton sweetheart deals). The United States must renounce any plans to privatize Iraq. The United States must ask the United Nations to handle the transition to Iraqi self-governance. The United States must agree to pay for what we blew up. The United States must pay reparations to the families of innocent Iraqi civilians killed and injured. The United States must contribute to the U.N. peacekeeping mission. The United Nations, through its member nations, will commit 130,000 peacekeepers to Iraq on a temporary basis until the Iraqi people can maintain their own security. U.N. troops will rotate into Iraq and all U.S. troops will come home. The United States will abandon policies of "pre-emption" and unilateralism and commit to strengthening the United Nations.
Five hundred American service men and women have already lost their lives in Iraq; $155 billion has already been spent. If we stay there for years, our troop casualties will go into the thousands. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis will die. More than a trillion dollars could be spent in Iraq, taking away money needed at home for health care, education and housing. Inevitably there will be a draft. The administration is already keeping our troops past their terms of service.
I am the only Democratic candidate with a plan to bring our troops home quickly. All the other candidates, except Sharpton, have unwittingly conceded this singularly important issue, saying "we're stuck there." Washington can make the end of the war in Iraq the defining issue. Your participation in the caucuses can say it's time to get the United Nations in and the United States out of Iraq.
I know that once the United States acts on my plan to get out of Iraq, we can focus the energy and resources of this country on taking care of things here. We will have the resources to provide quality education from pre-kindergarten through college. We can create universal single-payer health care. We can create a full-employment economy. But we must have a dramatic change in direction.
All the oil in Iraq is not worth another drop of blood. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Yet the administration is calling up more reserves. Existing troops are being retained against their will. Can a draft be far behind?
The men and women serving this country have a right to expect we will spare no effort in bringing them home quickly. We should not wait for more U.S. helicopters to be shot out of the sky. We should not wait for increasing mortar attacks to exact their toll on our brave troops.
Washington can save the day on Saturday by voting for my plan to bring our troops home by bringing U.N. peacekeepers into Iraq.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, a Democratic presidential candidate - kucinich.us© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Caucuses a referendum on the war
2) Bush Panel to investigate WMD intelligence of far right- - Demand Congress to Appoint a Truly Independent Commission
- - 8 Questions for Russert -- for George W. Bush
- - Scott Ritter: Not Everyone Got it Wrong on Iraq's Weapons
Co-Chair of Bush Panel Part of Far Right Network
by Jim Lobe
Published on Friday, February 6, 2004 by Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush's choice to co-chair his commission to investigate intelligence failures prior to the Iraq War is a long-time, right wing political activist closely tied to the neo-conservative network that led the pro-war propaganda campaign.
Federal appeals court Judge Laurence Silberman, who will share the chairmanship with former Virginia Democratic Senator Charles Robb, also has some history in covert operations.
In 1980, when he served as part of former Republican president Ronald Reagan's senior campaign staff, he played a key role in setting up secret contacts between the Reagan-Bush campaign and the Islamic government in Tehran, in what became known as the ''October Surprise'' controversy..
For the complete article, see:
www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0206-10.htm= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - Let Congress Appoint a Truly Independent CommissionIf the White House appoints the members of the panel to investigate intelligence failures we will never get answers to the right questions. Did members of the administration purposely exaggerate the case for war? Was intelligence cherry picked to make a case for war? We the people deserve to know what really went wrong. We don't need panel that will only point the figure at the CIA. The Administrations use of intelligence must also be probed. Demand a truly independent commission by writing letters to the editor or to your representative in government to tell the White House to allow a bipartisan congressional committee to appoint the panel.
Sample Letter
Dear Editor (or government representative),
I commend President Bush for recognizing the need for an independent commission to examine intelligence about Iraq, but believe it would be making a serious mistake if he were to establish this commission by executive order and personally appoint the members to head the commission.
The US chief weapons inspector David Kay stated last week that the Administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq was "all wrong." Other nonpartisan experts have reached similar conclusions about our intelligence and have also raised concerns about the accuracy of the Administration statements on this issue. Given these findings, a broad, thorough, nonpartisan review of both the intelligence community's assessments of the threats posed by Iraq and the Administration's use of this information is essential to restoring the trust of the American public and international community in the Administration and our intelligence system.
While I support the need for an independent commission, this commission should not be one whose members are appointed by and report to the White House. One of the major questions that needs to be addressed is whether senior Administration officials, including members of the Cabinet and senior White House officials, misled the Congress and the public about the nature of the threat from Iraq. President Bush's statements and those of Vice President Cheney need independent scrutiny. A commission appointed and controlled by the White House will not have the independence or credibility necessary to investigate these issues.
For these reasons, I urge you to call upon Congress to enact a truly independent commission to examine the collection, analysis, dissemination and use by policymakers of intelligence on Iraq. This commission should be given unrestricted access to all relevant information and its members should be appointed on a bipartisan basis by the congressional leadership.
Sincerely,
This letter was adapted from an alert by
Voice4Change.org= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Additional resources for an independent truthful investigation:
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - 8 Questions for Russert -- for George W. Bush
by David Corn
Tim Russert, the Grand Inquisitor of Sunday morning, is scheduled to have George W. Bush in the witness chair for a full hour on the next Meet the Press. He's a lucky man--Russert, that is. This will be high drama, as the nation's politerati--and millions of others--watch to see if Russert gives Bush the hot-seat treatment.
There is, of course, much to ask Bush about. Did he decide to use military force against Iraq before 9/11? Where are the WMDs he insisted were there? Why is he using phony budget numbers? Did he engage in less-than-proper business dealings before he entered politics? Why he has misled the public while promoting his policies on stem cells research, global warming, and missile defense? Why has he opposed certain homeland security measures and not adequately funded others? It's a long list, and I'm sure Russert is busy preparing his own queries. But in an unsolicited act of kindness, I have crafted eight questions for Russert--several on matters in the news, a few on issues that have received less attention. And, Tim, since you always like to display your source material when you ask the tough questions, feel free to call me, and I'll send you the citations or the clips. Unlike many of Bush's WMD assertions, these questions are based on real evidence.
For the complete article, see:
8 Questions for Russert -- for George W. Bush= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
For information on a new book by David Corn
THE LIES OF GEORGE W. BUSH:
MASTERING THE POLITICS OF DECEPTION
See:
BushLies.com= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Bush Watch for Bush Lies= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- -
Scott Ritter: Not Everyone Got it Wrong on Iraq's Weapons
3) How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice AgePublished on Friday, January 30, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age...
by Thom Hartmann
While global warming is being officially ignored by the political arm of the Bush administration, and Al Gore's recent conference on the topic during one of the coldest days of recent years provided joke fodder for conservative talk show hosts, the citizens of Europe and the Pentagon are taking a new look at the greatest danger such climate change could produce for the northern hemisphere - a sudden shift into a new ice age. What they're finding is not at all comforting.
In quick summary, if enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting polar ice caps and the melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe and northeastern North America warm. The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age - in a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset - and the mid-case scenario would be a period like the "little ice age" of a few centuries ago that disrupted worldwide weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters, droughts, worldwide desertification, crop failures, and wars around the world.
Here's how it works.
If you look at a globe, you'll see that the latitude of much of Europe and Scandinavia is the same as that of Alaska and permafrost-locked parts of northern Canada and central Siberia. Yet Europe has a climate more similar to that of the United States than northern Canada or Siberia. Why?
It turns out that our warmth is the result of ocean currents that bring warm surface water up from the equator into northern regions that would otherwise be so cold that even in summer they'd be covered with ice. The current of greatest concern is often referred to as "The Great Conveyor Belt," which includes what we call the Gulf Stream.
The Great Conveyor Belt, while shaped by the Coriolis effect of the Earth's rotation, is mostly driven by the greater force created by differences in water temperatures and salinity. The North Atlantic Ocean is saltier and colder than the Pacific, the result of it being so much smaller and locked into place by the Northern and Southern American Hemispheres on the west and Europe and Africa on the east.
As a result, the warm water of the Great Conveyor Belt evaporates out of the North Atlantic leaving behind saltier waters, and the cold continental winds off the northern parts of North America cool the waters. Salty, cool waters settle to the bottom of the sea, most at a point a few hundred kilometers south of the southern tip of Greenland, producing a whirlpool of falling water that's 5 to 10 miles across. While the whirlpool rarely breaks the surface, during certain times of year it does produce an indentation and current in the ocean that can tilt ships and be seen from space (and may be what we see on the maps of ancient mariners). This falling column of cold, salt-laden water pours itself to the bottom of the Atlantic, where it forms an undersea river forty times larger than all the rivers on land combined, flowing south down to and around the southern tip of Africa, where it finally reaches the Pacific. Amazingly, the water is so deep and so dense (because of its cold and salinity) that it often doesn't surface in the Pacific for as much as a thousand years after it first sank in the North Atlantic off the coast of Greenland.
The out-flowing undersea river of cold, salty water makes the level of the Atlantic slightly lower than that of the Pacific, drawing in a strong surface current of warm, fresher water from the Pacific to replace the outflow of the undersea river. This warmer, fresher water slides up through the South Atlantic, loops around North America where it's known as the Gulf Stream, and ends up off the coast of Europe. By the time it arrives near Greenland, it's cooled off and evaporated enough water to become cold and salty and sink to the ocean floor, providing a continuous feed for that deep-sea river flowing to the Pacific.
These two flows - warm, fresher water in from the Pacific, which then grows salty and cools and sinks to form an exiting deep sea river - are known as the Great Conveyor Belt.
Amazingly, the Great Conveyor Belt is only thing between comfortable summers and a permanent ice age for Europe and the eastern coast of North America.
Much of this science was unknown as recently as twenty years ago. Then an international group of scientists went to Greenland and used newly developed drilling and sensing equipment to drill into some of the world's most ancient accessible glaciers. Their instruments were so sensitive that when they analyzed the ice core samples they brought up, they were able to look at individual years of snow. The results were shocking.
Prior to the last decades, it was thought that the periods between glaciation and warmer times in North America, Europe, and North Asia were gradual. We knew from the fossil record that the Great Ice Age period began a few million years ago, and during those years there were times where for hundreds or thousands of years North America, Europe, and Siberia were covered with thick sheets of ice year-round. In between these icy times, there were periods when the glaciers thawed, bare land was exposed, forests grew, and land animals (including early humans) moved into these northern regions.
Most scientists figured the transition time from icy to warm was gradual, lasting dozens to hundreds of years, and nobody was sure exactly what had caused it. (Variations in solar radiation were suspected, as were volcanic activity, along with early theories about the Great Conveyor Belt, which, until recently, was a poorly understood phenomenon.)
Looking at the ice cores, however, scientists were shocked to discover that the transitions from ice age-like weather to contemporary-type weather usually took only two or three years. Something was flipping the weather of the planet back and forth with a rapidity that was startling.
It turns out that the ice age versus temperate weather patterns weren't part of a smooth and linear process, like a dimmer slider for an overhead light bulb. They are part of a delicately balanced teeter-totter, which can exist in one state or the other, but transits through the middle stage almost overnight. They more resemble a light switch, which is off as you gradually and slowly lift it, until it hits a mid-point threshold or "breakover point" where suddenly the state is flipped from off to on and the light comes on..
..If the Great Conveyor Belt, which includes the Gulf Stream, were to stop flowing today, the result would be sudden and dramatic. Winter would set in for the eastern half of North America and all of Europe and Siberia, and never go away. Within three years, those regions would become uninhabitable and nearly two billion humans would starve, freeze to death, or have to relocate. Civilization as we know it probably couldn't withstand the impact of such a crushing blow.
And, incredibly, the Great Conveyor Belt has hesitated a few times in the past decade. As William H. Calvin points out in one of the best books available on this topic ("A Brain For All Seasons: human evolution & abrupt climate change"): ".the abrupt cooling in the last warm period shows that a flip can occur in situations much like the present one. What could possibly halt the salt-conveyor belt that brings tropical heat so much farther north and limits the formation of ice sheets? Oceanographers are busy studying present-day failures of annual flushing, which give some perspective on the catastrophic failures of the past. "In the Labrador Sea, flushing failed during the 1970s, was strong again by 1990, and is now declining. In the Greenland Sea over the 1980s salt sinking declined by 80 percent. Obviously, local failures can occur without catastrophe - it's a question of how often and how widespread the failures are - but the present state of decline is not very reassuring."
Most scientists involved in research on this topic agree that the culprit is global warming, melting the icebergs on Greenland and the Arctic icepack and thus flushing cold, fresh water down into the Greenland Sea from the north. When a critical threshold is reached, the climate will suddenly switch to an ice age that could last minimally 700 or so years, and maximally over 100,000 years.
And when might that threshold be reached? Nobody knows - the action of the Great Conveyor Belt in defining ice ages was discovered only in the last decade. Preliminary computer models and scientists willing to speculate suggest the switch could flip as early as next year, or it may be generations from now. It may be wobbling right now, producing the extremes of weather we've seen in the past few years.
What's almost certain is that if nothing is done about global warming, it will happen sooner rather than later.
This article was adapted from the new, updated edition of
"The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" by Thom Hartmann
due out from Random House/Three Rivers Press in March.
Copyright 2004 by
Thom Hartmann The complete article is posted at following url link:
commondreams.org/views04/0130-11.htm
4) Doubts over 'Confession' by Pakistani Nuclear ExpertPublished on Friday, February 6, 2004 by the Christian Science Monitor
[Excerpts]
Doubts over 'Confession' by Pakistani Nuclear Expert
by Owais Tohid
KARACHI, PAKISTAN – For millions of Pakistanis it was shocking to see the country's top nuclear scientist on national television Wednesday apologizing for selling nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran, and North Korea, and exonerating their country's political and military leadership. Thursday, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf granted Abdul Qadeer Khan clemency for his "unauthorized proliferation."
The prevailing view is that the US is willing to accept Khan's explanation, plus the dismantling of his global nuclear merchandising network, because it's preparing to launch an offensive against Al Qaeda and Taliban elements along the Afghan border, say US and Pakistan officials, in hopes of capturing Osama bin Laden. If Musharraf's government were to be connected to Khan's nuclear deals, the US might be forced under existing nonproliferation law to impose sanctions on Pakistan at a moment when it most needs the South Asian nation's help..
Musharraf said that Pakistan will not allow the UN to inspect its nuclear program. "We will cooperate with UN atomic agency, the IAEA, but will not hand over any documents," he said, "If the IAEA wanted to come to Pakistan and discuss the results of Pakistan's investigation, by all means, we are open." But he added, "This is a sovereign country.... This country will never roll back its nuclear assets and its missile program. This can never be done. This is my promise..
The complete article is posted at the following URL link:
Doubts over 'Confession' by Pakistani Nuclear Expert
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