Sunday, February 26

Zimbabwe today

Reading these just-in news reports about Zimbabwe, while packing my bag, brought up the fear, not just for my life, but fear that if confronted by the realities, I would either feel too much, or shut down and not feel at all.

I'll try to post something now and then on this blog.

The caption that went with this picture:
As Zimbabwe's drought has worsened, the goal of providing 'supplementary' food for children has lost its meaning. This school lunch is the the first, and only, meal these children will have all day.

Killer Drought Threatens East Africa
In cracked riverbeds once flowing with water, dozens of hippos lie decomposing in the stifling heat. The thin, delicate frames of rare Grevy's zebras lie on parched grass, felled by anthrax. The wildlife in East Africa is dying of thirst and starvation, the people are suffering - and now the lack of rain threatens even the Serengeti migrations.


Zimbabwe's shortages, inflation blamed for rise in illegal abortions
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- The corpses of at least 20 newborn babies and fetuses are found each week in the sewers of Zimbabwe's capital, some having been flushed down toilets, Harare city authorities said, according to state media Friday.

Zimbabwean Women Protesters Held

About 200 women are in police custody in the Zimbabwe capital, Harare, after a protest on Tuesday over food prices and human rights violations.

responsible travel?

When Kim and I first discussed the idea of traveling to Africa prior to the baby getting too much bigger in her belly, the first question I wanted answered was how does one offset the impact that this amount of air travel represents?

After a while I let this issue slide for a while, until my dear friend Laurence forced it firmly back into my consciousness again, with some challenging questions.


Here is the answer as best as I can find out, though I would welcome any more information or discussion - please add your comments to this post.


Using travelnotes.org I calculated that the round trip distance is 43,000 Km. According to information I found it would require 24 trees to be planted in order to offset the carbon dioxide produced for one person to travel this distance.

So
in order to account for this trip, over the next twelve months I will plant 50 trees - and then keep a watchful eye to give them the best chance of surviving and growing to healthy oxygen-producing, carbon dioxide-locking trees, over the coming years.

"In 1999 the world's leading climate scientists estimated that 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year was pumped into the earth's atmosphere through flying," says Graham Simmonds, chief executive for Trees for Cities. "

To put it another way, flying accounts for 3.5 percent of mankind's contribution to global warming, so it is serious business."
Flying business class also leaves a larger carbon footprint, since executive seats take up a lot more space in an airplane -- Simmonds believes the footprint is up to 50 percent larger than sitting in economy.

One option is to offset emissions by planting trees that absorb carbon dioxide. For a round trip from London to New York, which covers 11,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) and produces 1.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide, you need to plant six trees.
For a short haul return flight from Auckland to Wellington, a distance of 1,300 kilometers, you need two trees to absorb the 250 kilos (550 lbs) of carbon dioxide.


fever, sore throat, cough

This is probably the last post before we head off - so I wanted to give you something meaty to chew on.

I have been watching the news reports about Bird Flu carefully, since the first reports began coming through in August last year. Call me suspicious, but I choose not to accept the dominant media's versions of the issues.


I have read many of their stories but I wont automatically accept them as truth. I looked carefully at the information they offered, rather than allow myself to be drawn into the fearful projections that have appeared every day for months now.

In my humble opinion, the media has lost its credibility on this subject. There is simply too much hype and too many questionable reports coming through for me to take them seriously. But the fact that the story persists makes me question more deeply, why?


So I chose to read widely on this subject from other sources. And there have been many writers offering explanations for what might be behind the hype.

Today I came across an extensive and wide reaching article that is worthy of a read. It is too long to include here so here is the link to it.

In case you need some assurances about the source of this report there is some background on the author, Dr. Lorraine Day, at the end of the article. I can imagine it took some courage for her to write this.

Saturday, February 25

what are our leaders saying?

I'm curious.

Are Helen Clark and others who speak on our behalf in the international community, speaking out on this - and being reported?

Clearly, Guantanamo's Camp X-Ray is an abomination - how many more years need to pass before we acknowledge this and do what is necessary to let the perpetrators know that it is not acceptable behavior?

Or are we afraid of backlash from the bully in the playground?

Archbishop of York on Guantanamo Bay - 24 Feb
By "declaring war on terror" President Bush is perversely applying the rules of engagement which apply in a war situation. But the prisoners are not being regularly visited by the Red Cross or Red Crescent, which is required by the Geneva Convention. They were not even allowed to be interviewed by the United Nations Human Rights Group.

In Uganda President Amin did something similar: he did not imprison suspects because he knew that in prison the law would apply to them, so he created special places to keep them. If the Guantanamo Bay detainees were on American soil, the law would apply. This is a breach of international law and a blight on the conscience of America." Full story

inspiration downtown


Its not often I feel inspired when visiting the city. The fowl smell of petroleum exhaust and the noise tends to make me want to do my business and head home.

But I was met by this image on arrival at the downtown intersection. I was not dissappointed when I wandered through to see the array of giant images.


Coexistence: Political Art in Auckland's Britomart
The manifestation of his dream for a better world where races and cultures learn to live side by side in coexistence has affected and inspired millions of people world-wide. Israel’s Raphie Etgar arrives in New Zealand on February 5 to curate Coexistence, the 44-piece exhibition of giant, thought-provoking posters featuring compelling images by international artists.


Etgar, the founder of the unique Museum on the Seam in Jerusalem, initiated the exhibition in 2000 “motivated by the growing need to make it possible for more and more people to acknowledge the right of others to exist and to think differently”.

“Coexistence is more than a concept and more than a popular idea for our new global culture,” Etgar says. “It involves changing our lives and changing the way we think. Coexistence is not necessarily learning to live together but perhaps learning to live side by side.”

A former leading poster artist in Israel and in-house artist for one of Germany’s most prestigious publishing houses, Etgar is deeply committed to promoting greater peace and justice in the world.

“What is happening today all over the world is a cycle that cannot be broken without brave and inspired leaders who must solve the problems with generosity, mutual understanding and non-violent thinking.”

Tuesday, February 21

off to Africa

Today we booked flights, and we leave on Monday (27th) to fly to Zimbabwe and the Kufunda Learning Village where we will stay for two weeks.

Visiting Africa, and helping in the area of child development is something that Kim has wanted to do for a very long time.

Last year she helped establish a children's orphanage in Sri Lanka after the Tsunami. According to the UN,
there are more than 34 million orphans in Africa and some 11 million of them are orphaned by AIDS
, so I imagine there will be plenty to do.

Kim is 18 weeks pregnant now, so we thought it would be wise to go before the pregnancy got too far on and the baby consumed our attention for a while.

As well as helping out where I can, with a particular interest in permaculture, I am hoping to experience the culture of a small village population and see how they manage their own affairs. Considering what is happening in the country, I expect there will be plenty of examples of self-reliance I can learn from.

Achieving real democracy


Here is Richard's blog - the author of "Escaping the Matrix." It may be that we have a chance to host him here on Waiheke and engage in a harmonisation process - a way of finding common ground amongst a group of people with disparate points of view.

Sound like fun?

Let me know if you are interested.

Sunday, February 19

consuming our future

Our consumerist culture is unsustainable and the world must find alternative ways, says Robert Newman.

There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change. A cap on this and a quota on the other won't do it. Tinker at the edges as we may, we cannot sustain earth's life-support systems within the present economic system.

Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is predicated on infinitely expanding markets, faster consumption and bigger production in a finite planet. And yet this ideological model remains the central organising principle of our lives, and as long as it continues to be so it will automatically undo (with its invisible hand) every single green initiative anybody cares to come up with.

Much discussion of energy, with never a word about power, leads to the fallacy of a low-impact, green capitalism somehow put at the service of environmentalism. In reality, power concentrates around wealth. Full story
We have lived in an era of cheap, abundant energy. There never has and never will again be consumption like we have known.


denial

A long article, but it could be helpful . . .

Gaia and Psychology

John Mead


There seem to be a vast number of questions and possibilities about the relationship of Gaia to psychology. On which should we concentrate?


For example:- Is there such a thing as Gaian morality? Whence are our values? Is the human psyche wholly the product of earthly forces? What should we make of the words of Sir Thomas Browne: "There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun"; or of the words of the Church of England collect for Tuesday in Easter week, which speaks of God's grace "putting into our minds good desires", which certainly sounds like a psychological process. Is that process in fact performed by Gaia? Or if we are the consciousness of Gaia, as Lovelock suggests, are we also the conscience?


Then there are questions about our power to avert climate catastrophe. According to Lovelock, we can save ourselves, but only with the help of nuclear energy. But, he says, it is ludicrous to think that we can save the world – by the end of the century the earth's temperature will have risen by 8C. But in that case, in what sense can we save ourselves, since the Exeter conference of climate scientists last February concluded that a 2C increase is the utmost compatible with climate stability?


In order to make the discussion rather more manageable, I suggest that we leave to one side for the moment the recent predictions of Lovelock, and go by those of the IPCC and of the Exeter conference last February. They are the conclusions of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists. The latter are not at present predicting inevitable disaster, though they certainly say we have very little time in which to avert it – at the utmost ten years.


If we ask, what is the importance for Gaia of the topic of psychology?, is it simply of academic importance?, we must surely reply:- for the moment the future of the planet rests in the hands of the collective human psyche. To what extent should we also assume that our interests, rightly understood, are identical with those of Gaia?


We may then ask: What, in terms of psychology, is the current global situation?


When we consider the scale of the threat to the global climate, and therefore to human life, the imminence of the threat, and the almost total failure to take action that might avert it, it is surely obvious that our entire culture, indeed our entire civilization, and with it our collective psyche and state of motivation, is in a most extraordinary mess. As Jung put it, the whole psyche is in a state of uproar. At times it seems to me that this mess to some extent invades our own discussions here in the Gaia network. The future of human civilization, and even of the species, now hangs upon the individual and collective psyche.


That invites us to take seriously another set of questions. Are neurosis and psychosis partially, perhaps largely, the product of disturbances in our relationship with the planet, or perhaps in the planet itself? If so, would that not justify and indeed require in psychotherapy from time to time the kind of interpretation reported by Terrance O'Connor, who interrupted a client's obsessive, self-absorbed soliloquy by asking "Are you aware that the planet is dying?" If the Gaia thesis is correct, would it not be surprising if the current global situation, however repressed in the unconscious, had no effect on the human psyche?


This might be the moment at which, if we had time, we might discuss the whole concept of anima mundi. Lack of time, the urgency of the crisis we have neglected for so long, pervades the whole situation. As Jonathon Porritt says in his recent book on the destructive effects of capitalism on the environment, we just don't have time to work out a more satisfactory political and economic system. We have somehow to make now, at once, the necessary reductions in CO2 emissions.


For it appears that global catastrophe can be averted only if we in the rich countries very rapidly take action to reduce CO2 emissions, reductions so radical that they will require the end of affluence and its replacement by a way of life far more modest.


We have therefore to ask: What motivation is needed to avert this catastrophe, and why is it not available? That question takes us to the heart of the collective mess. Even to describe the mess is quite difficult. But let me try.


What I am attempting is a survey of the main psychological features of the UK scene.


If the climate scientists are right, we are as a civilization confronted by a very terrifying prospect. In this company I need hardly spell out the details. Sir David King has said that if we carry on as we are, by the end of the century Antarctica is likely to be the only habitable continent. Lovelock thinks it is already too late to avert disaster. The IPCC predicts that by 2050 there will 150M environmental refugees. The Exeter conference last February gave us at most ten years in which to make the very radical reductions in CO2 emissions needed if catastrophe is to be averted. As George Monbiot has said: "We are not facing the end of holidays in Seville because Seville has become too hot. We are facing the end of human existence."


We have to take account of spiritual as well as political and psychological outcomes. The World Council of Churches warns that the number of victims of climate change and the scale of the disasters affecting them may exceed the human capacity for solidarity, and that "love may grow cold". Dr. Rowan Williams speaks of "the horror of a world of spiraling inequality" and warns that "When we speak about environmental crisis, we are not to think only of spiraling poverty and mortality, but about brutal and uncontainable conflict", a remark echoed by Lovelock, who speaks of a future of "a broken rabble led by brutal war lords". Dr.Rowan Williams fears that "We may as a species cease to be capable of some vision of universal justice".



Lovelock himself seems even to be inviting us to abandon such a vision – and to be advocating in its place a policy of sauve qui peut. He speaks of seeking to preserve civilisation – but is not civilisation at its best based on such a vision?



That is the prospect. It invites us to ask two questions:-


(a) How does one live with all this? – this is a very real psychological problem.

How are people responding to this prospect?: and


(b) Why is that response so inadequate, so unequal to the task before it?


So first, how does one live with all this? It is indeed a terrifying prospect. Yet the vast majority of people are not in a state of terror, or even of anxiety.


First, there are those who somehow manage to find the strength to recognize pretty fully the main dimensions of our global situation. They are a tiny minority. That recognition can be psychologically and emotionally pretty demanding and costly. I know personally some of the leading members of this group. They experience daily feelings of horror, grief, rage, depression, despair. In general, the fuller and more expert their knowledge, the deeper their pessimism.


I am myself frequently possessed by such feelings. Often I have said to myself: "John, you must find something more cheerful to think about". And I have sought peace of mind both in the insights of depth psychology, more of which later, and in the teachings of Christianity. Thus I have turned to a passage such as the following from St. John of the Cross:


Keep your heart in peace; let nothing in this world disturb it: all things have an end.

In all circumstances, however hard they may be, we should rejoice rather than be cast down, that we may not lose the greatest good, the peace and tranquility of our soul.


If the whole world and all that is within it were thrown into confusion, disquietude on that account would be vanity, because that disquietude would do more harm than good. To endure all things with an equable and peaceful mind, not only brings with it many blessings to the soul, but also enables us, in the midst of our difficulties, to have a clear judgment about them, and to minister the fitting remedy for them.


I discussed this passage, not long before his death, with the late Hugh Montefiore. I said I simply did not know how to implement its advice. He replied that he doubted that one should even try to do so – that the most one could say was: "Underneath are the everlasting arms".


As for depth psychology, that might traditionally seek to interpret one's anxiety by tracing it to some intra-psychic conflict or trauma. As a psychotherapist myself, I certainly cannot rule that out. But it seems not to do justice to the objective realities.


That is the first group. Several of its members describe what they call a "road to Damascus" experience, which led them to recognize the frightening realities of the global predicament.


The second group is far larger, and less clearly defined, but it needs neither religion nor psychotherapy to protect it from rage, depression and despair, for it already has something more effective than either – denial. This denial can be individual or collective. As long as we are in denial about climate change we are free from the very painful feelings listed above. But we are also free from any motivation to take action to avert it.


Hence the answer to my second question: Why is the response so inadequate, so unequal to the task before it? must be: the prevalence of denial make an adequate response impossible.


It follows that denial, individual and collective, is by far the biggest obstacle to be overcome if there is to be any hope of averting climate catastrophe.


Denial about climate change remains widespread in the UK public. But this is but one manifestation of a much wider and more fundamental denial, one that has been described by a variety of writers, notably the distinguished Christian economist Herman Daly in Beyond Growth. Writing of the concept of sustainable development, he refers to the shift it requires in our vision of how the economic activities of human beings are related to the natural world, one which involves replacing the economic norm of quantitative expansion (growth) with that of qualitative improvement. In his own words:


"This shift is resisted by most economic and political institutions. Enormous forces of denial are aligned against it, and to overcome them requires a deep philosophical clarification, even religious renewal". (My emphasis).


The most superficial reading of the finance pages of the media confirms Daly's words. They all take utterly for granted the vital need of growth for a healthy economy. The necessity of growth is the first article of faith in our economic credo. And the trouble about climate change is that it constitutes, if taken seriously, a most formidable challenge to that credo. As the World Council of Churches have recently said: "Measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions run against the dynamic of the present project of society based in ever-expanding production and consumption. A vision of society is at stake".


Hence the need for denial to protect that vision. But what is meant by denial in this context? Obviously it is not just conscious deliberate dishonesty. The academic economists do not begin each day with the conscious resolve to tell lies to their students. Nor is it just ignorance, though ignorance certainly abounds. It refers rather to the honest rejection at a conscious level of some truth or fact which at a deeper level is known about however incompletely, but which is avoided because of the fear and anxiety which it arouses. Denial is much more intractable than ignorance. The latter can be corrected by more information. But for denial, information is water off a duck's back. All the water is immediately shed, apart from a few drops. These indeed sparkle for a moment in the sun. Then the duck gives its feathers a brisk little shake, and the status quo is restored. Denial is a "defense mechanism". It defends the individual from some truth which he cannot afford to acknowledge because to do so would expose him to overwhelming feelings of horror or shame or confusion. It therefore defends that basic clarity and peace of mind which we all need if we are to carry on with our lives, and to which we all therefore tend to cling. To remove it plunges us at once into a desperate struggle to redefine our identity and somehow to bring a new order into what has become for the time being frightening chaos in our understanding of ourselves and of the world. In some shape or form, denial tends to some degree to be a permanent feature of human life. Thus it is axiomatic in psychotherapy that "we all need our defenses". As T .S. Eliot says "Humankind cannot bear very much reality". Hence the enormous resistance to attempts to remove denial.


Collective denial is to a much higher degree the product of social forces, and to understand it takes us into the realm of social psychology – particularly conformity and cognitive dissonance. Society needs to guard and preserve as does the individual certain fundamental assumptions if the peace of mind of its members is to be maintained. In our current culture these include those basic economic assumptions referred to by Daly in the passage quoted above. We are socialised almost from birth to take those assumptions utterly for granted. The forces of conformity to group norms are central to this process. They act to maintain the massive states of denial to which Daly refers. We are thus defended against any threat to what may be called our cognitive vested interests.


We need to look at our own emotional involvement in this vast and frightening process, and in the conscious and unconscious forces at work. For the alternative to denial is to be conscious, conscious of what is at stake - nothing less than the future of the planet as a place able to support human life in sufficiency and peace, and conscious also of our feelings about the situation – for it is quite possible, and quite common, for people to be in denial about their own feelings. One common way of doing this is to say: "Well, disaster is inevitable, there's nothing anyone can do about it, so we might as well have a good time – for our holiday let's fly to Turkey or India." Despair thus becomes a sedative rather than a spur.



But to contemplate fully, without denial, the extent of all that is now at risk, the magnitude of the vested interests to be overcome, and the brevity of the time still available to put things right, is almost certainly to encounter anxiety, and even at times depression and despair. There must be for all of us the unconscious temptation to avoid that emotional pain by re-entering to some extent the refuge of denial, perhaps by apathy, perhaps by excited "manic" activity in some other direction, perhaps by the fatalism, which releases us from action by declaring that disaster is inevitable, so there's no point in doing anything.


As the WCC says:


"The threat of climate change is of such magnitude that it surpasses the human capacity to react. People tend therefore to protect themselves by pursuing their present way of life"


And a leading eco-psychologist, Joanna Macy, has written: "The perils facing life on earth are so massive and unprecedented that they are hard to believe. The very danger signals that should rivet our attention summon up the blood and bond us in collective action, tend to have the opposite effect. They make us want to pull down the blinds and busy ourselves with other things".



Discussion ensued to which these notes are added:

If that is the prospect we face, and that is the response to it, one of denial and apathy, effectively blocking the actions needed to avert catastrophe, two points need to be stressed.


First, that it is only in response to massive public pressure that the politicians will take the necessary measures in time to avert climate catastrophe;

Secondly, that the chief obstacle to be overcome in the generation of that pressure is the psychological state of denial with regard to climate change which currently informs UK public opinion.


So what are the remedies? Are there any?


I believe there are. But they all stem from one major remedy, without which most of the others cannot be implemented. The key to it lies in those words of Joanna Macey. "The very danger signals that should rivet our attention summon up the blood and bond us in collective action, tend to have the opposite effect. They make us want to pull down the blinds and busy ourselves with other things".


That is the tendency that at present undermines all our efforts. It is that that we must combat. We must, that is to say, deliberately set out to join forces, to meet together, in small groups, and discuss both our understanding of the situation, and our feelings about it, and how we are to achieve collective action. That means sharing those feelings – of despair, impotence, anger, depression, etc. In this matter it is fatal, spiritually and psychologically, to be isolated. Dr. Rowan Williams described this well when he spoke, in his Environment Lecture, of the need to overcome denial by promoting "new and secure relationships enabling us to confront unwelcome truths without the fear of being destroyed by them".


Like many of my contemporaries, I recall the Munich Agreement of September 1938, and the years leading up to the second world war, a time of denial in some ways similar to our own. T.S. Eliot wrote of his horrified reaction to that event, that what he felt was "not a criticism of government but a doubt of the validity of a civilisation".


No such doubt assails Lovelock about the validity our current civilisation. On the contrary, he believes we should seek above all to preserve it, here in the UK, and without concern for the rest of the world. Furthermore, he says, "You can't have civilization now without electricity."


And of course, if he is right, you can't have electricity without nuclear energy. Just where that leaves Africa, South America, much of SE Asia, etc., in terms of "civilization", let alone Iran and much of the Middle East, Lovelock does not explore. For him, the one thing really worth preserving in today's terrible global predicament is the civilization that has led us into it. This idea, surely, is another example of the dreadful mess affecting our collective psyche and moral consciousness.


On 8th January, 2000, the Tablet published an extraordinarily prescient article, "Beware Apocalypse", about climate change, by the late Adrian Hastings. He, like Lovelock, predicted disaster. He called on his readers "to recognize that global catastrophe is in the judgment of hard realism very likely to come upon us". But his advice was very different from Lovelock's. We should, he said, "prepare ourselves and small communities of sanity and faith to live undespairingly within it. Even inside a concentration camp or on the deck of the Titanic there is a Gospel to preach and a pattern of behaviour reflective of that Gospel. There is little time to lose in preparing ourselves mentally for Christian life in the very hardest of times".


Obviously, whether one is a Christian or not, the demands on our collective psyche in terms of sanity and faith are now formidable. I set out – last September – to describe in this paper the current psychological landscape of the UK. Now, four months later, it is evident how rapidly, and at times dramatically, that landscape is changing, in ways that at times encourage one to hope that denial of the threat of climate catastrophe is at last beginning to evaporate. Such hopes have of course surfaced from time to time in the recent past, only for denial to be reestablished as before. But one such hopeful sign is the remarkable readiness of an increasing number of people publicly to reject air travel for holidays.


As I write, Clare Short is presenting to the UN Commission for Social Development the argument for a civilization based upon equity and upon respect for the earth's ecological limits. If adopted, that would mean a commitment to the policy of Contraction and Convergence (of the Global Commons Institute), and to a radical reduction in the affluence of the rich countries. And in the USA, Al Gore is apparently having extraordinary success in his efforts to persuade Americans to take seriously the threat of climate catastrophe, an issue which even the evangelical right is beginning to discuss.


All these issues need somehow to be integrated and made coherent within the collective psyche of the UK, and of the rich world in general.


We are certainly perilously near a "tipping point" in terms of climate change. It seems possible that we are also near a "tipping point" in terms of public awareness and readiness to act. What is now needed – and with great urgency – is the establishment of that capacity for collective action of which Joanna Macey speaks, and which at present is rendered impotent by the psychologically divisive effects of denial. We need to use that collective action to put massive pressure on politicians to take those measures which can yet save our civilization and the future of human life.


John Mead.

February 9, 2006

Friday, February 17

a quiet moment

How few such moments we gift ourselves with in this rush rush rush world. I stopped for a while yesterday and took a kayak to a small beach where I was alone for several hours.

After a period of mental machinations, of thinking I should be doing something, I created this little beach art - while thinking about how much I value my partner and the two, soon to be three children that make up my family.

We are so busy doing doing doing, I sometimes think we would all be better off if we each did a little less.

The less I do, the better I do it.

.

escaping the matrix - review

I have a small basket of the most valuable tools and books that I refer back to and share with others who are looking to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. Escaping The Matrix is my newest addition, for which I am most grateful to the author Richard Moore.

Once I read the first page and sensed the pace wasn't slowing, I drank it down in big gulps. I was delighted by the clarity and rapid fire presentation of information, and his linking of the pieces to make the point - that we live in a world quite different from the one suggested to us by the corporate dominated media machine.


I can't praise highly enough, the synthesis of knowledge about the development of our human history and what we can now reasonably assume (based on present wisdom, research, and widely accepted facts) is the real world. That our society is being manipulated and managed by a few elite rulers is a hard pill to swallow when we are deeply embedded in the Matrix view,
but we are stepped through the facts until it's obviousness is undeniable. The bibliography and list of resources at the back of the book, offers a plethora of excellent material to help you if you doubt this proposition. And understanding it is a helpful pre-requisite to the second half of the book which deals with some possible responses and discusses how we might become part of the solution - now that the problem is overwhelmingly clear.

If not as thrilling and liberating as peeling away the layers of illusion about the situation we are presently in, the second part has prompted me to go and search out more information, and some of what I have found excites me. In these latter chapters, Richard describes processes and tools, and proceeds to offer ideas about how these might be engaged to transform our society, from the grass roots on up. He paints a picture of a time when large numbers of people might come to that most valued, harmonious and hopeful disposition of "we the people."

While offering a few examples to whet our appetite, perhaps the examples we so desperately need are the ones that will be demonstrated by us.

fourth world war

How many more countries will follow?

We have been psychologically prepared by the media over the last 12 months, to the possibility of the US going into Iran. So we are almost passive now in our response to the looming reality of it.

I know it is easy to ignore, after all it's "over there", but when the US leaders choose to lead their people into Syria and then North Korea, or to our country, will we have the same response?


Will that be the time when we say "Enough!"


--

Dear leaders of the USA,

Thank you for expressing your concerns and your offers to help out.

However at this time we politely decline your offers of assistance and wish you well in your endeavors, as you take care of business within your own borders.

We no longer wish to receive goods and services from you and trust that if you reduce - even a little - the level of consumption at home, you will discover you have plenty of resources to share fairly amongst your population, and will not need any more from us.


Sincerely,


The Global Community

Tuesday, February 14

water wars

This seemed like such a glaring example of the global Inequality of Wealth and Income Distribution:



"While over 1 billion people worldwide lack reliable access to safe drinking water, people in rich countries spend astronomical amounts of money on bottled water, which they could not distinguish from tap water if they tried. Ironically, only $11 billion would pay for clean water and sanitation for everybody on the planet, a figure which represents less than a quarter of global annual spending on bottled water." (New York Times) - full article

I wonder if the reality behind facts like this - that there are a lot of people held down at the point of an IMF "gun" - may one day come around to bite us privileged people's of the Western world.


If you are interested in this subject you may like to see the "water wars" documentary.

The World Bank claims that prepaid water meters can "facilitate cost-recovery and accelerate private sector participation in provision of water services."

Monday, February 13

consider this...

In 2002, people spent 5 times more money in breast implants and viagra than for research into cures for Alzeimer desease. One might conclude that in 30 years, there will be a large number of people with big boobs and magnificent erections, but they will be unable to remember how to use them.

Sunday, February 12

real solutions

Richard Moore expresses his primary mission in writing Escaping the Matrix, as being to provide answers to the important, difficult questions like: "... how on earth do we go about creating a new culture and gaining a new vision? And how can that lead to the transformation of our societies?"

This afternoon I found some references that to the work of people found at the Co-Intelligence Institute. The first example I read was about Manitonquat, a Native American elder who has been working in US prisons for 12 years, with phenomenal success. The description is clear and direct and shows how much can be done with the right approach. It is a worthy read from the point of view of developing effective communications processes.

Some facts:
  • The prison population in the U.S. doubled from 1981-1991,
  • It has doubled again in the past five years.
  • There is a general recidivism rate of 65-85% in the overall prison population.
  • Manitonquat's program has run for more than 12 years.
  • Only 5-10% of the convicts who complete his program revert to criminal activities which land them in Prison again.
  • As a volunteer, he serves 120-150 inmates in seven state prisons with only about $100/month in travel expenses.
Manitonquat notes that the convicts he works with are eager to use the same practices to heal the young men on the streets, in the gangs and in the juvenile correctional system. They want to build job programs and start ex-con businesses, especially environmental ones. He infects these men with his desire "to replace the pyramid of domination with the circle of equality and respect."

Could such a program be useful to us?

tribes


On Saturday night two different circles of friends came together. People Kim and I have each known and loved and been loved by. Sharing food and wine with good people - what a pleasure.

It was a beautiful afternoon/evening/night. Made special by a walk to the beach for a swim - at the end of a scorching hot sunny day, and then the almost full moon - creating a backdrop which couldn't go unrecorded.

Saturday, February 11

life in the usa


The political system has not been corrupted. It is working effectively, like always. The backbone is the patronage system. Politicians have wonderful memories. They know who they owe. Prostitution is a profession, allegorically the oldest one. Politics is a business. At one time it was popular to think that if someone rich enough were to get elected, he (at that time it would surely be a he) would be immune, but who can owe as much as the rich?
One of this mornings gems from the Information Clearing House. It goes on to explain that there were no intelligence failings concerning Iraq, the invasion was not a mistake...

Thank you Richard Moore for your book and the clarity it has brought - even though I am only at Chapter Three. The above quote reminds me of the one-liner that had me chuckling all the way home on the ferry last night. Referring to the events of the period around 6,400 years ago and the barbarian invasion of the peaceful partnership society of the fertile crescent, who had been farming and gardening for over 3,000 years:
We can imagine the thoughts in the mind of our victorious warrior chief: "A pretty good swindle, this domestication thing, let's see if it works on people!"

Friday, February 10

world social forum - venezuela

The world social forum was held in Venezuela this year, which seems appropriate given that it may well be the best example of a democracy anywhere in the world today. A series of four short videos were made of the event and posted to the video section of truthout.

I have made them available here in case you would like to see them. If you can't download them all I would recommend you look at the fourth and if possible the third in this series.

Enjoy.

1) Introduction - Day One - Pro Chavez
2) The Anti Chavez demonstrators views
3) Into the Barrio - where it all happens
4) Summing Up - where are we going


escaping the matrix

Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
by Richard Moore

Richard Moore seems like an interesting fellow, and very well read! I may be biased just because I recognise a number of titles in the book's bibliography, but from the first few pages in this gem of a book I can see the research has been worth it. And I suggest the many years of dialogue via his cyberjournal have paid off in the clarity of the writing.

He wastes no time throwing the reader into numberless descriptions of the dichotomy between the benign versions of historic and present events that we are used to hearing (the Matrix), and the descriptions of those events and how they have impacted on the various populations, primarily in the third world (the real world).

The details come thick and fast but the message comes through loud and clear, things are changing and since the direction they are going is presently in the hands of a few ruling elite, we probably will not like the direction they are taking.

When I read the following news in today's email, in the context of having completed Chapter one, I felt sobered to realise that the strategys for responding to a Bird Flu epidemic (accidental or allowed), may include considerable military involvement.

09 Feb 2006 Lt Col Kimberly Robinson, Department of Defense; Taha A. Kass-Hout, MD, MS, Northrop Grumman CDC Programs; and Lauren C. Thompson, The MTIRE Corporation are joining the Bird Flu Summit taking place on 27th-28th February in Washington D.C. However The Bird Flu Summit agenda has not yet listed the above participants on their website. Citizens For Legitimate Government has obtained this information.

Why is the Department of Defense, Northrop Gumman ('Battle Management' specialists), and The MITRE Corporation ('Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I)s' for the Department of Defense) attending a *Bird Flu Summit?*

Thursday, February 9

depleted uranium

Back to referring article

Many shocking reports now indicate that we have been fools
thinking that what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan is happening only
to the local populations over there. Few of us are even aware that the
United States military has been using depleted uranium (DU) in its
armaments and that tons of the stuff have been spilled all over the
landscape in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Meaning the all powerful
anti-human forces that be in the United States and England have found a way to
go nuclear right under our very noses and the effects of that have
already been spread around the globe, especially in the northern hemisphere.



The term "depleted" seems to give the impression that DU is
uranium that does not contain radioactivity any more, which is
not the case. DU ammunition can cause serious radioactive
contamination and is no less atrocious than nuclear weapons.

Dr. Katsuma Yagasaki



"Since 1991, the United States has staged four wars using
depleted uranium weaponry, illegal under all international treaties,
conventions and agreements, as well as under the US military law. The
continued use of this illegal radioactive weaponry, which has already
contaminated vast regions with low level radiation and will contaminate other
parts of the world over time, is indeed a world affair and an
international issue" wrote Leuren Moret who has worked at two US nuclear weapons
laboratories as a geoscientist.[1] What we are seeing in reality is an
end to the reason of law and order. When presidents of constitutional
democracies and the ruling elite behind him take it upon themselves to
so blatantly, abandon the law we have both the seeds of anarchy and the
deep roots of fascism combining to shape the world's future in the most
nasty of ways possible.



Depleted uranium weaponry meets the definition
of a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD).



It should come as no surprise that the federal government is
breaking international laws against the use of such weapons. The
culture of the United States government is deeply imbedded with the death and
poisoning of its own citizens through vaccines, fluoridated drinking
water, dangerous drugs and medical treatments backed with the full
authority of the FDA and CDC. As well as poisoning of the food supply with
the likes of aspartame and MSG, massive use of pesticides, herbicides,
fungicides, genetically altered foods, and massive use of food
preservatives, now the list includes the use of depleted uranium in armaments
whose radioactive pollution will go on for a few billion years.



What you are about to read is a nightmare unmatched in the
annals of human history outdistancing perhaps even the rising tide of
mercury and the thousands of other toxic chemicals flooding the
environment. We now stand threatened from both chemical and nuclear poisons with
devastating consequences to public health. Through it all public health
officials can only find the time to masturbate with viruses, closing
down their consciousness to anything but their pet obsessions with things
that often cannot even be proven to exist.



Depleted Uranium armaments are "the
perfect weapon for killing lots of people!"

Dr. Marion Fulk


Nuclear physical chemist, retired, Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons
Lab and Manhattan Project



Uranium weapons have been increasingly employed in battle
action since their first use by the US and UK forces in the Persian Gulf
War in 1991. Since then they have been used in the Balkans in the late
1990s, then Kosovo in 2000, in Afghanistan starting in 2002 and
continuing into the present, and then in the 2nd Gulf War (GW2) in March and
April 2003. The Army began arming tank, artillery and machine gun shells
with depleted uranium in the 1980s. The term "depleted" is a misnomer
since DU contains about 60% of the radioactivity found in natural
uranium.



Pentagon has estimated that 320 tons of depleted uranium was
fired by US and UK units in the first Gulf War. Some experts put the
numbers as high as 800 tons. U.S. and British warplanes dropped about
31,000 DU shells of various calibers on Kosovo and Serbia during the 1999
bombing campaign. Approximately 2000 tons or more were detonated in the
second gulf war.



350 tons of uranium is equal to about a kilogram of plutonium.

Dr. Chris Busby

In principle, using the Atomic Energy Control Board's (AECB)
regulatory limits, we can calculate that 0.1 micrograms of plutonium
can overdose one person with maximum safe exposure limits being placed at
.56 micrograms maximum full body exposure and .25 micrograms for lung
exposure. "Experiments with beagle dogs suggest that about 27 millionths
of a gram of insoluble plutonium would be sufficient to cause lung
cancer in an adult human being with virtual certainty, with significant
risks probably associated with far lower doses," report International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.[2] According to the Canadian
Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) 0.1 grams would overdose
one million people, a gram ten million, 100 grams one billion people and
600 grams six billion, the entire worlds' population[3] if those 600
grams were implanted directly into people.

"A rapid release of one kilogram of plutonium at ground level
in dispersible, inhalable form would cause a public health emergency of
the first magnitude. Plutonium air concentrations could be on the order
of hundreds of micrograms per cubic meter of air at one kilometer from
the release site. Individuals breathing this air would inhale enough
plutonium to cause cancer with certainty within minutes," said Dr. Edwin
S. Lyman of the Nuclear Control Institute.

The Pentagon has misled the world with claims that its DU is
safe. They have lied about depleted uranium no matter how many of their
own soldiers get sick and die from it and from the toxic vaccines they
administer in mega doses before troops are deployed into war theaters.
The Pentagon has maintained that DU shells are safe because they
contain only mildly radioactive uranium when in reality; depleted uranium
also contains small amounts of plutonium and other highly radioactive
elements.[4] Despite the authorities' attempt at concealment, the truth is
out. The media has forgotten its responsibilities, and the public
remains docile thus the military is contemplating getting away with more
murder through nuclear weapons when it contemplates actions against Iran.



Thus we can begin to understand why Professor Katsuma
Yagasaki stated that "The used amount of radioactive atoms of DU weapons
dispersed into environment in the real wars was far beyond that of the
atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is estimated that in the
First Gulf War, 320 to 800 tons of DU were used, scattering indeed
14,000 to 36,000 times more radiation than in Hiroshima."



The Department of Energy has millions of tons of DU and
using it in weapons saves the government a fortune on the cost of its
disposal. What difference does it make if the use threatens millions with
premature and terrible deaths with cancer? Such a terrible question fits
like a glove to those who have planned for decades the use of such
weaponry. Actually the official party line from the medical and military
industrial establishments are simple, there is nothing to worry about
from nuclear or chemical poisons, they are safe and you can go back to
sleep trusting your children's future to us.



The long-term effects from over a decade of DU exposure are
emerging in southern Iraq and they are devastating. However, the
increased amount of radioactive material used in Afghanistan (3 times greater
than in Iraq in 1991) and Iraq in 2003 (6-10 times greater than 1991)
will travel throughout a larger area and affect many more people than
anyone has imagined. As we will see below the first evidence is in that
contrary to the military's belief that the radiation danger only extends
for a few meters around impact points, scientists measured strong
increases in radiation 2500 miles away in England within days of the
American bombing in Iraq. The Americans are still using these munitions in
Afghanistan and are itching to unleash a nuclear firestorm against Iran.
Any war the United States fights today will be nuclear because all
scenarios include DU armaments some of which contain more than a ton of
uranium.[5]



Nuclear power plants are really dangerous facilities put
in practical use on stipulation that they can "completely seal
in radiation," while radioactive weapons commit an impermissible
crime scattering radioactive materials in the environment.

Professor Katsuma Yagasaki



Since World War II accumulated radiation has incrementally
increased the radiation burden to the global community. Nuclear weapons
testing, nuclear power plants, and radiation accidents like Three Mile
Island and Chernobyl are steadily increasing the radiation contamination
of the global environment. We cannot escape exposure because we breathe
the air, drink the water and eat food from contaminated soils. Now the
American and British governments have taken it upon themselves to
increase this nuclear contamination thinking that these supremely powerful
armaments will win wars quickly thus saving soldiers' lives. But these
soldiers are the first ones who come down with deadly diseases upon
returning home giving us a chilling preview of what is in store for
millions who are being exposed, only more slowly.



On impact, uranium penetrators burn fiercely to give an aerosol
of sub micron diameter oxide particles which are largely
insoluble and remain in the environment for many years.


Dr Chris Busby



As much as 70 percent of the projectile can burn up on
impact, creating a firestorm of ceramic DU oxide particles. The residue of
this firestorm is an extremely fine ceramic uranium dust that can be
spread by the wind, inhaled and absorbed into the human body and absorbed
by plants and animals, becoming part of the food chain. Once lodged in
the soil, the munitions can pollute the environment and create up to a
hundredfold increase in uranium levels in ground water, according to
the U.N. Environmental Program.



When uranium burns into particles, it will enter human bodies
ingested with drinking water and food, or inhaled with air. In
this case,
the whole radiation and chemical toxicity will be released in
the body.

Professor Katsuma Yagasaki



According to Dr. Katsuma Yagasaki "DU dust-like particles can
enter human bodies, and once taken into the body, they will become tens
of millions times more hazardous. Newly released data indicate that
low-level radiation is more likely to cause biochemical abnormalities than
intensive high-level radiation.[6] It is wrong to make light of the
hazard of low-level radiation."[7] DU is a little different then other
forms of radioactive material. It only emits alpha and beta radiation. A
piece of paper will stop it. So the military feels comfortable lying
about its danger. However, when it is in the lungs or elsewhere in the
body, it is in contact with living tissue, bombarding that tissue with
low level radiation for the rest of your life. That radiation will lead
to cancers, genetic damage, a list of chronic diseases and eventual
death.



Yagasaki continues saying, "One alpha particle passes
hundred thousand atoms before it stops, blowing out hundred thousand
electrons constituting a molecule. The destruction (ionization) of molecules
will damage DNA, or will induce mutation in the cellular structure
itself. There will be a great possibility of only one depleted uranium
particle causing cancers and organ disorder. With the half-life of DU being
4.5 billion years, there will be almost no change in the rate of alpha
emission 10,000 or 100,000 years later. This means once DU is inside the
body, one will remain exposed to radiation as long as he/she lives
unless it is discharged, while the environment continues to be polluted
forever."



In Afghanistan, where 800 to 1000 tons of depleted uranium was
estimated
to have been used in 2001, even uneducated Afghanis understand
the
impact these weapons have had on their children and on future
generations.[8]



Nuclear war means clouds of fallout raining down on you and
your children. Yes, that fallout, which your friendly government said
would only travel a few meters in the battlefield, or only far enough to
afflict the enemy and unfortunately, our own brave troops. "Out of the
580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), 11,000 are now
dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical
Disability. This astounding number of 'Disabled Vets' means that a decade
later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical
problems!" The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5
percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam.[9]



Physicians in Bosnia are seeing patients present
for care with three simultaneous malignancies
something never previously reported in medicine.



"The military know perfectly well that DU has all these
effects, but they want to use it because it wins them the battles. It has
actually destroyed tank warfare. Tanks are of no use any more, because
they can come down with an A10 with a Gatling gun, fire these cheap bits
of nuclear waste, and just wipe them out," said Dr Chris Busby,
Secretary at the European Committee on Radiation Risk and an international
expert on low-level radiation.



The United States has fought four nuclear wars, and just this
year has science started to show the fallout from these wars showing up
far from the battlefields. The Sunday Times Online, on February 19,
2006, reported on a shocking scientific study authored by British
scientists Dr. Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan. Below is a graph from that study
showing measurements of uranium taken over England, information that
had to be pried with legal crowbars to be released. Notice the strong
spike in radiation thousands of miles away at exactly the time of the
second gulf war.









After the "Shock and Awe" campaign in Iraq in 2003, very
fine particles of depleted uranium were captured with larger sand and dust
particles in filters in Britain. These particles traveled in 7-9 days
from Iraqi battlefields as far as 2400 miles away. The radiation
measured in the atmosphere quadrupled within a few weeks after the beginning
of the 2003 campaign, and at one of the 5 monitoring locations, the
levels twice required an official alert to the British Environment Agency.



Within nine days of the start of the Iraq war on March 19, 2003,
higher levels of uranium were picked up on five sites in
Berkshire.[10]

London Times



This is such earth shattering information that many
officials in England were immediately forced to move into denial mode. The
Ministry of Defense refused to acknowledge the possibility of any
connection between the use of atomic weaponry in Iraq and these readings in
England saying the uranium was of a "natural origin" and there was no
evidence that depleted uranium had reached Britain from Iraq. Perhaps there
was a volcano eruption that went unnoticed or a flyby UFO with a
radioactive tail; when it comes to the military any excuse but the truth will
do.



According to Dr. Chris Busby and Dr. Saoirse Morgan, who
forced the British government to release the above information[11]
published in January of this year. "On the basis of the mean increase in
uranium in air of about 500nBq/m3 we use respiration data on standard man to
calculate that each person in the area inhaled some 23 million uranium
particles of diameter 0.25 microns. As far as we know, this is the
first evidence that uranium aerosols from battle use have been shown to
travel so far." In their earth shaking report they make it clear that the
"evidence from the present analysis is implicit in the results; i.e.
the increases found clearly demonstrate that the uranium particles are
capable of long distance travel."[12]



Busby and Morgan continue saying, "Despite many pieces of
evidence that the uranium aerosols are long lived in the environment and
are able to travel considerable distances, this is the first evidence
as far as we know, that they are able to travel thousands of miles. The
distance traveled from Baghdad to Reading following the wind patterns
implicit in the pressure systems at the time is about 2500 miles.
Although this transport may be hard to believe at first, the regular desert
sand events which occur in the UK should teach us that the planet is not
such a large place, and that with regard to certain long lived
atmospheric pollutants, no man is an island."



The U.S. government has not released any information about the
levels of radioactivity being observed in the U.S. and the
controlled media in
Europe and the U.S. has said nothing about the 4 genocidal
nuclear wars the
United States and it's British ally have foisted off on the
populace of the world.



Depleted Uranium munitions is one of the greatest
depopulation weapons ever deployed and by design is leading to the permanent
contamination of the Middle East and Central Asia with radioactive uranium,
which destroys the genetic future of the populations living in those
regions. It is unrealistic to think that the designers of these munitions
have not tested for the reality of the radioactive contamination
meaning they must have known that radiation would have been put up high into
the atmosphere to be swept around the globe. Radioactive substances
have been studied intensively for over five decades and we all grew up
with the fear of atomic warfare. Little did we know that the nuclear
industry would find a way to use their waste materials profitably creating
nuclear weaponry that would haunt the planet virtually forever.



After traveling 2,500 miles if the exposure to the English was
23 million uranium particles it is anyone guess the amount of
fallout that reached the United States. Odds are that everyone in
the northern hemisphere was contaminated to one degree or
another.



The American and British governments say depleted uranium is
relatively harmless. They also stand behind the use of mercury in
medicine and dentistry saying mercury is relatively harmless as well. The
list goes on. Be prepared for the CDC to ignore this or when all hell
breaks loose and lung cancer cases spike upward you will see them pretend
it is another genetic epidemic like they thought autism was for a
while. Now they just simply scratch their heads at anything they cannot
blame on a virus. It is absolutely pathetic that medical and health
officials at the CDC and other international agencies are spending all their
resources scaring the heck out of the public about the bird flu and
influenza virus, as millions are threatened with nuclear and chemical
poisons.



DU is the stuff of nightmares.
This whole thing is a crime against God and humanity.

Dr. Doug Rokke

Army health physicist



In 1991, Dr. Doug Rokke was assigned to the command staff of
the 12th Preventive Medicine Command to clean up some of the mess left
after uranium armaments were used. Today, in poor health, he has
reactive airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts and kidney problems
and blames his health problems on exposure to DU. Dr. Rokke and his
primary team of about 100 performed their cleanup task without any
specialized training or protective gear. Today, Rokke said, at least 30 members
of the team are dead, and most of the others have serious health
problems. Rokke said: "Verified adverse health effects from personal
experience, physicians and from personal reports from individuals with known DU
exposures include reactive airway disease, neurological abnormalities,
kidney stones and chronic kidney pain, rashes, vision degradation and
night vision losses, lymphoma, various forms of skin and organ cancer,
neuropsychological disorders, uranium in semen, sexual dysfunction and
birth defects in offspring.



"Since 1991, numerous U.S. Department of Defense reports
have said that the consequences of DU were unknown. That is a lie. We
warned them in 1991 after the Gulf War, but because of liability issues,
they continue to ignore the problem." Rokke worked until 1996 for the
military, developing DU training and management procedures. The procedures
were ignored, he said. "Their arrogance is beyond comprehension. We
have spread radioactive waste all over the place and refused medical
treatment to people . . . it's all arrogance."[13]



The U.S. Army quietly placed an order for $38 million in
depleted uranium rounds last week, bringing the total order from
a
West-Virginia based company to $77 million for fiscal year
2006.[14]







This would be fine if this all were a fantasy, but the
Pentagon uses depleted uranium in its rounds because they say it is
extremely effective in penetrating heavy armor. It's the same kind of
consciousness that put poisonous chemicals in our water supplies and toothpaste
(fluoride) that we give to our kids, that has the military using
armaments that are releasing vast amounts of nuclear material with a half
life of only 4.5 billion years. Now if anyone can be accused of playing
God it is these people. No language on earth has developed words to
express the ultimate in death worship of that kind, which would release
poisonous radiation on the earth that will keep moving through the
environment and into all living systems for millions of generations to come.



Brent North Sea crude oil was traded at 70.20 dollars a barrel for the
first time on Thursday evening due to simmering tensions
of Iran nuke issue.[15]


April 14, 2006



Evil does not quite cover this disgusting travesty of human
consciousness. Modern psychology has tragically missed the boat when it
comes to warning us about the effects on the mind of the super wealth
and power achieved by a few in the past 100 years. Those who doubt that
these very same people could have, and would have destroyed the World
Trade Centers, should understand how small such a thing was in
comparison to blanketing the earth with lethal radiation. If the world allows
President Bush to go to war against Iran, humanity will learn a lesson
cruel in dimension and scope. We are on the brink, closer than any of us
think, and people who are beyond all madness and terrorism are at the
helm of the world.



If there ever was a time for humanity to pour out into the
streets in protest its now. No more war, no more use of uranium
armaments, and no more big government. The governments that we have allowed to
grow to monstrous proportions by their very nature are lessons in
uncontrolled destruction. Its not enough to stop Bush now, we have to stop
the people and corporations behind him and only the most massive display
of our humanity is going to stand a thread of a chance of effecting
necessary changes. Darkness greater than anything the earth has known is
right around the corner. The peace movement should combine with
environmentalists and health activists to raise a human storm never seen
before, one strong enough to topple governments who choose the path of
insanity over humanity.



Defense officials said they have no plans to phasing out
the use of DU munitions or a ban on its use.[16]



According to the Associated Press,[17] a Pentagon-sponsored
team of experts determined in May 2003 that two small trailers were not
used to make biological weapons. Yet two days after the team sent its
findings to Washington in a classified report, Bush declared just the
opposite. "We have found the weapons of mass destruction," Bush said in
an interview with a Polish TV station. "We found biological
laboratories." Is this the man we trust with the fate of the world, or with
anything else for that matter? If we do not stop him and his 'whole team,' and
make it perfectly clear to the Israeli government as well that nuclear
war is not an option against Iran, we will collectively face a possible
consequence that will have us being sorry we ever brought our children
to this planet. If peace does not rain on earth now it will be war,
nuclear war, for that is the only kind of war that will be fought by
America and its allies. Depleted uranium nuclear armaments have been
classified as conventional weapons so there is no way for American forces to
avoid their use.



With little progress in resolving the dispute with Iran through
diplomacy - the option of turning to air strikes is unlikely to
go away.[18]


New York Times April 16, 2006



Physicians for Social Responsibility examined the risks of a
more advanced buster-bunker weapon, and it eerily tabulated the toll
from an attack on the underground nuclear facility in Esfahan, Iran.
"Three million people would be killed by radiation within two weeks of the
explosion, and 35 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India,
would be exposed to increased levels of cancer-causing radiation,"
according to a summary of that study in the backgrounder by the Union of
Concerned Scientists.



Although many of the world's cities have recently
experienced the horrors of terrorism, the damage they have suffered is minuscule
compared to what may lie ahead. What if a terrorist organization
obtained nuclear weapons asks International Physicians for the Prevention of
Nuclear War? Some point to the fact that Iran supports terrorism, which
is true, and thus should not be allowed to go nuclear. But there is no
larger or greater terrorist organization than the American military and
government and the corporations that dominate from behind the scenes.



Throughout the 1950s the military detonated A-bombs
above-ground at the Nevada Test Site, showering
downwind civilian populations with radioactivity.

They are the last people anyone should trust
when it comes to anything nuclear related.



This war on terrorism is simply the projection of the
greatest terrorists the world has ever seen. Many conspiracy theorists feel
that these huge government organizations are actually behind many of the
terrorist acts -used by them to provoke widespread fear and fuel their
march toward global fascism and the destruction of everything we hold
dear. So great is their power and their evil there is little chance they
can be stopped. They are so used to doing harm to people that it has
become second nature to them. They hardly give it a thought; certainly
they are incapable of seeing the wrong in what they do.



The New York Times printed on April 18, 2006, "When it comes
to the fundamental human principles of freedom, liberty and justice,
China is in the Dark Ages."[19] This is an example of the kind of
projection, or in this case semi-projection[20] that the American media belts
out. America herself has done so many ugly things to its own people and
to the world these past five decades and is heading down the slippery
slope of fascism. We already know that America hosts the largest prison
populations in the world. Freedom, liberty and justice is going down
like the Titanic in America and all bets are on for America starting a
nuclear war in Iran that will include more than 'just' depleted uranium
weapons. Fascists and fanatics have to have their wars and some of the
greatest ones who have ever lived are at the heads of the governments
most involved in the present crisis.