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Zebra 3 Report by Joe Anybody
Thursday, 31 January 2008
poopey water at your tap .... well its purified ....
Mood:
bright
Now Playing: Toilet toTap - California Water Systems
Topic: ENVIRONMENTAL
It's Time To Drink Toilet WaterRecycling sewage is safe and efficient, .....so why aren't we doing it?By Eilene Zimmerman Posted Friday, Jan. 25, 2008, at 7:33 AM ET How do you feel about ....Drinking "clean recycled TOILET water? I found the Original Article here: http://www.slate.com/id/2182758/ Officials in Orange County, Calif., will attend opening ceremonies today for the world's largest water-purification project, among the first "toilet-to-tap" systems in America. The Groundwater Replenishment System is designed to take sewage water straight from bathrooms in places like Costa Mesa, Fullerton, and Newport Beach and—after an initial cleansing treatment—send it through $490 million worth of pipes, filters, and tanks for purification. The water then flows into lakes in nearby Anaheim, where it seeps through clay, sand, and rock into aquifers in the groundwater basin. Months later, it will travel back into the homes of half a million Orange County residents, through their kitchen taps and showerheads. It's a smart idea, one of the most reliable and affordable hedges against water shortages, and it's not new. For decades, cities throughout the United States have used recycled wastewater for nonpotable needs, like agriculture and landscaping; because the technology already exists, the move to potable uses seems a no-brainer. But the Orange County project is the exception. Studies show that the public hasn't yet warmed to the notion of indirect potable reuse (IPR)—or "toilet-to-tap," as its opponents would have it. Surveys like one taken last year in San Diego show that a majority of us don't want to drink water that once had poop in it, even if it's been cleaned and purified. A public outcry against toilet-to-tap in 2000 forced the city of Los Angeles to shut down a $55 million project that would have provided enough water for 120,000 homes. Similar reluctance among San Diego residents led Mayor Jerry Sanders to veto the city council's approval in November of a pilot program to use recycled water to supplement that city's drinking water. (A similar plan failed once before in 1999.) But San Diego is in the midst of a severe water crisis. The city imports 90 percent of its water, much of that from the Colorado River, which is drying up. The recent legal decision to protect the ecosystem of the San Joaquin Delta in Northern California—San Diego's second-leading water source—will reduce the amount coming from there as well. Add to that rising population and an ongoing drought, and the situation looks pretty bleak: 3 million people in a region that has enough water, right now, for 10 percent of them. We don't have enough water where we need it; if we don't learn to deal with drinking toilet water, we're going to be mighty thirsty. Only 2.5 percent of the water on Earth is freshwater, and less than 1 percent of that is usable and renewable. The Ogallala Aquifer—North America's largest, stretching from Texas to South Dakota—is steadily being depleted. And Americans are insatiable water consumers—our water footprint has been estimated to be twice the global average (PDF). The ocean provides another source of potable water. Large-scale treatment of seawater already occurs in the Middle East, Africa, and in Tampa Bay, Fla. Construction of the largest desalination plant in the western hemisphere is supposed to begin this year in Carlsbad, Calif., which would convert 300 million gallons of seawater into 50 million gallons of drinking water each day. Taking the salt out of ocean water sounds like a good idea, but it's economically and environmentally far more expensive than sewage-water recycling. Orange County water officials estimate desalinated water costs between $800 and $2,000 per acre-foot to produce, while its recycled water runs about $525 per acre-foot. Desalination also uses more energy (and thus produces more greenhouse gas emissions), kills tiny marine organisms that get sucked up into the processing plant, and produces a brine byproduct laced with chemicals that goes back into the ocean. What desalination doesn't have, though, is the "yuck" factor of recycled sewage water. But seawater, like other sources of nonrecycled water, is at least as yucky as whatever comes through a toilet-to-tap program. When you know how dirty all this water is before treatment, recycling raw sewage doesn't seem like a bad option. Hundreds of millions of tons of sewage are dumped into rivers and oceans, and in that waste are bacteria, hormones, and pharmaceuticals. Runoff from rainwater, watering lawns, or emptying pools is the worst, sending metals, pesticides, and pathogens into lakes, rivers, and the ocean. The water you find near the end of a river system like the Colorado or the Mississippi (which feeds big cities like San Diego and New Orleans) has been in and out of municipal sewers several times. Whatever winds up in lakes and rivers used for drinking is cleaned and disinfected along with the rest of our water supply. Still, a recent analysis of San Diego's drinking water found several contaminants, including ibuprofen, the bug repellent DEET, and the anti-anxiety drug meprobamate. No treatment system will ever be 100-percent reliable, and skeptics who worry that pathogens in sewage water will make it past treatment and into our drinking water should worry about all drinking water, not just the water in a toilet-to-tap program. The fact is, supertreated wastewater is clean enough to drink right after treatment. It's been used safely this way (in a process known as direct potable reuse) for years in the African nation of Namibia. The EPA has conducted research in Denver and San Diego on the safety of direct potable reuse and found recycled water is often of better quality than existing drinking water. And although putting water into the ground, rivers, or lakes provides some additional filtering and more opportunities for monitoring quality, the benefits of doing it that way are largely psychological. In its 2004 report (PDF) on the topic, the EPA concluded that Americans perceive this water to be "laundered" as it moves through the ground or other bodies of water, even though in some instances, according to the report, "quality may actually be degraded as it passes through the environment." Despite the public's concerns, a few U.S. cities have already started to use recycled wastewater to augment drinking water. In El Paso, Texas, indirect potable reuse supplies 40 percent of the city's drinking water; in Fairfax, Va., it supplies 5 percent. Unless we discover a new source of clean, potable water, we're going to have to consider projects like these to make wastewater a reusable resource. The upfront costs for getting a system in place and educating the public may be steep, but it would save us the expense—both economic and environmental—of finding another river or lake from which we can divert water. Eilene Zimmerman is a San Diego-based journalist who writes about business and political and environmental issues. Her work appears in the New York Times , the San Francisco Chronicle , Fortune Small Business , Salon.com, Wired , the Christian Science Monitor, and other publications.
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 7:03 PM PST
Updated: Monday, 4 February 2008 4:06 PM PST
Monday, 21 January 2008
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr "A Time To Break Silence"
Mood:
celebratory
Now Playing: Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
Topic: PROTEST!
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorage, leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight. I come to this platform to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents. Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor - both black and white - through the Poverty Program. Then came the build-up in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political play thing of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the young black men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. My third reason grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years - especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But, they asked, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government. For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a Civil Rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed from the shackles they still wear. Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read “Vietnam.” It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the “brotherhood of man.” This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant or all men, for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that He died for hem? What then can I say to the Viet Cong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with hem my life? And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and their broken cries. They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its re-conquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not “ready” for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision, we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants, this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives. For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to re-colonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting 80 per cent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will to do so. After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem’s methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace. The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while, the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy, and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers destroy their precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least 20 casualties from American firepower for each Viet Cong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call “fortified hamlets.” The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts’? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers. Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the NLF, that strangely anonymous group we call VC or communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the North” as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem, and charge them with violence while we pour new weapons of death into their land? How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than 25 per cent communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know of his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition. So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded at Geneva to give up, as a temporary measure, the land they controlled between the 13th and 17th parallels. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands. Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the President claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. Perhaps only his sense of humor and irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8000 miles from its shores. At this point, I should make it clear that while I have tried here to give a voice to the voiceless of Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for our troops must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor. Somehow this madness must cease. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam and the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop must be ours. This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently, one of them wrote these words: “Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.” If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It’ will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony, and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of her people. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing the war to a halt. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmare: 1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam. 2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation. 3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military build-up in Thailand and our interference in Laos. 4. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government. 5. Set a date on which we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement. Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the NLF. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, in this country if necessary. Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible. As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation’s role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than 70 students at my own Alma Mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy, and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military “advisors” in Venezuela. The need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. With such activity in mind, the words of John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: ” This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are the days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take: offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops. These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 9:36 PM PST
Updated: Monday, 21 January 2008 9:39 PM PST
Monday, 14 January 2008
Terrorism Report From The FBI
Mood:
smelly
Now Playing: Justification Attempts & the FBI war on Terror
Topic: POLITICS
The following article I found on Portland Indy MediaJan 14 2008 http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/01/371032.shtml Amazing. Bush's FBI Attempts Justification author: Fredric L. Rice e-mail: frice@skeptictank.org Rarely do we get to see a fascist, terrorist regime attempt to justify its outrageous behavior and its equally outrageous budgets. |
http://www.fbi.gov/publications/terror/terrorism2002_2005.htm
This is amazing. Absolutely amazing!
The Bush regime came out with a "report" about what it thinks "terrorism" was over the years of 2002 through 2005 and it's a profoundly informative and telling document. What's ironic is that it's an _official_ document by the fascist regime, one they _intended_ to have released in to the every-more-aware public, not something that was leaked by whistleblowing insiders who actually take their jobs to protect Americans seriously.
The intent of the document is to justify the Bush regime's crimes against American citizens under the guies of "fighting errorism" however if you step through this thing you'll find that a tally of the claims that the regime makes shows that roughly ONE THIRD of the unevidenced claims could conceivably be considered to be "acts of terrorism" or "planned terrorism."
Justification of the regime's crimes against us is closely related to the justification and excuses of this regime's BUDGETS. This regime's FBI's budgets skyrocketed under the fiction that money was needed to protect American citizens from vague, illdefined, non-existant "terrorists" -- and of course even before the Bush regime law enforcement experts outside of the FBI have long noted that the FBI's personnel, budgets,a nd equipment could be cut to roughly one third of what it actually is and still effect the agency's charter without ANY ADVERSE IMPACT in the agency's ability to fight crime.
This document is something one would expect to see come from the typewriters of the Third Reigh of from Stalin's Soviet Union. The document and its claims have all of the credibility -- and often the laghable and obvious falsehoods -- that the old Pravda used to carry, and for the same exact reasons.
If you haven't fully encountered this fascist regime's official justifications for some of its crimes against humanity and its treason against America, this document is a good place to start. It's some 80 sheets long if printed to paper but it's probably worth at least a skimming.
Foremost in this fascist regime's civil, Constitutional, and Human Rights abuses are "thought crimes" for which the regime assigned the label "terrorism." Among some of these gross violations of American's basic rights are spewers of right-wing extremist hatred -- which lends another layer of ironic flavor to the document -- which this regime frequently has gone after just like the old COINTEL PRO activities that the Church Committee supposedly put a stop to.
Some of the right-wing extremist groups that employ hate speech are groups that nearly all Americans find disgusting however their activities of speech are putatively protected rights in the OLD AMERICA whereas under this regime -- probably to show that they arrest their own types and are "being fair" -- thought crimes and speech are some how "terrorism."
Another major aspect of core fascism in this document is the re-labeling of simple, mundane crimes as "terrorism" or "terrorist threats" -- such as simple tresspass, minor vandalism, graffitti, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, all the way up to relatively minor and ACTUAL offenses like arson, petty theft, and using a public address system after noise cerfews.
What we see in this document is a fascist State claiming that it has the right to violate every law, every freedom, every liberty, and every right of all citizens at any time. What we see here is a fascist State trying to label virtually EVERYTHING "terrorism" so that it can excuse its treason against us. |
homepage: http://www.fbi.gov/publications/terror/terrorism2002_2005.htm
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 10:54 PM PST
Updated: Monday, 14 January 2008 10:56 PM PST
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
Why Ralph Nader Should Run in 2008
Mood:
bright
Now Playing: Z3 Readers sign the draft - we want Ralph Nader
Topic: NADER
The following was copied from a link I found on URL above 2008 Why Ralph Nader Should Run for President in 2008 *** Sign the DraftNader.org online petition! *** Statement from the Twin Cities Branches of Socialist Alternative Within the next few months, the Democratic and Republican nominees for president will be decided. Regardless of who wins, the two major presidential candidates will both support continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan indefinitely, the expansion of the military by 90,000 more troops, the disastrous for-profit healthcare system, and a host of other policies that benefit Corporate America at the expense of the majority of the population.
A year ago the Democrats were voted into power in Congress on a wave of mass anger in U.S. society at the war in Iraq, economic polarization, and the policies of the Bush administration. However, the Democrats have quickly betrayed their electoral base on every major issue. The Democratic Congress has handed over hundreds of billions more dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now has an approval rating of 20 percent – lower than Bush! None of the major Democratic presidential candidates – Clinton, Obama, and Edwards – promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of their first term – in 2013. In an election awash in corporate cash – 2008 will be the first $1 billion election in U.S. history – the top Democrats have received millions of dollars more in big business donations than their Republican counterparts. While 48 million Americans lack healthcare, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, is the leading recipient of money from the for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical companies. In July, Fortune magazine, one of the leading mouthpieces of the rich elite, even ran a cover story titled, “Business Loves Hillary!” Neither party’s candidate will give voice to the millions of Americans fed up with the war in Iraq, the lack of affordable housing, health care and good-paying jobs, the mass poverty, under-funded education system, the racist criminal injustice system, and environmental devastation at the hands of corporate polluters. A USA Today/Gallup poll from July 20 showed that 58% think that a third party is needed and that both the Democrats and the Republicans do an inadequate job representing the American people. A record number of voters (25%) are registered as independents. These facts show that millions of Americans are disillusioned by the two major parties, and that many would be responsive to an anti-war, anti-corporate voice in the 2008 elections, independent of the big business-dominated two party system. Socialist Alternative in the Twin Cities calls on Ralph Nader to run for president again in 2008 to provide a voice to the millions outraged at the brutal war in Iraq and corporate domination of our society. For tens of millions of Americans, Nader’s name remains synonymous with an independent, left-wing challenge to the Democrats and Republicans. He is a reference point who immediately brings to mind the key question facing workers and youth in the U.S. – is it justified, strategic and possible to break from the two-party system and run independent candidates against big business and their two parties? Or should we continue to support the politics of “lesser-evilism,” which means limiting ourselves to what is acceptable to Corporate America? In 2000 and 2004, Nader’s campaigns for president reached millions with radical demands, including: • A universal single-payer healthcare system • Full withdrawal of U.S. troops and personnel from Iraq • A $10/hour minimum wage • An expansion of workers’ rights and repealing the Taft-Hartley Act • Public works programs to create millions of jobs and end unemployment • A progressive tax system that makes big business and the rich pay • Rigorous environmental protection and a sustainable energy policy • Repealing the Patriot Act • Same-sex marriage rights • Abolition of the death penalty • An end to the failed war on drugs Nader is not a socialist, instead wrongly believing that the major social problems we face can be solved through greater regulations on business. Nevertheless, his presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004 were extremely important developments because they popularized the idea of building a left-wing alternative to the two-party corporate stranglehold over U.S. politics. We campaigned for a Nader vote, but on an independent, socialist basis (see links below for our previous material on Nader). Socialist Alternative believes the antiwar movement, the labor movement, and other social struggles can effectively challenge the two corporate parties if they unite and use their powerful resources to build a new mass party of working people that fights for our interests in the streets, the workplaces, and the electoral arena. We have criticized Nader for not using the authority he built up to clearly call for the formation of such a new political party. In 2004 we also made clear our opposition to Nader taking the ballot line of the right-wing, anti-immigrant Reform Party in several states. If Nader does run, it should be on a clear, principled, and left-wing basis. However, if Nader does not run, it will likely be a setback to challenging the Democrats and Republicans and preparing the basis for a mass left-wing, working class political alternative in this country. Owing to his prominence in 2000 and 2004 and his many years of consumer activism, Nader has become a household name and a symbol of resistance to the corporate domination of politics. More than any other foreseeable left independent candidate in 2008, a Nader campaign has the potential to reach the largest number of workers and youth and get the largest vote. This is important, because the larger the campaign and vote for a left independent in 2008, the greater the confidence ordinary working people will have in our ability to build a powerful, lasting political challenge to corporate rule. It is precisely the fear of this development that explains the uniquely vitriolic, well-funded attack campaigns directed at Nader by apologists for the Democratic Party. In reality, it is a mistake that Nader has not declared he is running already. This would have allowed activists to be out campaigning against the Democrats and Republicans and channeling support into an independent left-wing alternative, rather than allowing a lot of anti-war, anti-establishment sentiment to get sucked into the campaign of right-wing libertarian Ron Paul or left-wing Democrats like Dennis Kucinich. Despite Kucinich putting forward a platform essentially similar to Nader’s, he ultimately acts as a vehicle to channel progressives back into the corporate-dominated Democratic Party. We also welcome the declaration by former Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney that she has broken from the Democrats and is seeking the Green Party’s nomination for president. McKinney has been outspoken against the occupation of Iraq, calling for “troops home now,” and is a leading critic of Bush and Congress’s attacks on civil liberties. With her base in the working class African American neighborhoods of Atlanta, McKinney has fought against racist and anti-worker policies and championed the fight to rebuild New Orleans in working peoples’ interests. Her program of far-reaching reforms within capitalism is fundamentally similar to Naders.’ While McKinney is much less well-known, if Nader fails to run in 2008 the McKinney campaign will likely be the strongest independent antiwar, anti-corporate electoral challenge for the White House. We feel that a united Nader-McKinney ticket in 2008 would be the strongest challenge to the two-party system and be a pole of attraction for millions fed up with the two parties of war and big business. Nader has said that he will decide soon whether or not to run for president, depending on the number of activists he feels will get involved in actively building his campaign. We urge everyone who agrees that Nader should run to show your support by signing the Draft Nader petition at www.draftnader.org. – Previous Socialist Alternative Material on Nader: 2004 Statement: Support Nader’s Campaign for President: It’s Time to Break From the Two-Party System http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article10.php?id=279 Review of An Unreasonable Man: New Documentary About Ralph Nader http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article21.php?id=517 Assessing the Nader Challenge in 2004 – Was It Worth Voting for Kerry After All? http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/printerfriendly/148.html Learning from Nader’s Mistakes – We Need a Workers’ Party http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article10.php?id=147 The Nader Factor in the 2000 Elections: http://socialistalternative.org/oldjustice/justice22/3.html Growing Cracks in the Two-Party System http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article10.php?id=151
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 5:52 PM PST
Monday, 7 January 2008
Mother Jones Interviews Iran Activist About Being In Prison
Mood:
sad
Now Playing: This is a sad article about a girl who went to prison in Iran for 30 days
Topic: HUMANITY
Thirty Days in Iran's Worst Prison http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2008/01/fashion-victim-full.html?src=email&link=hed_20080107_ts4_Thirty%20Days%20in%20Iran%27s%20Worst%20Prison Zarah Ghahramani, an Iranian student, was sent to Evin prison for exposing her head in public in 2001. Seven years later, she talks about what happened next. Kiera Butler January 04 , 2008 In autumn of 2001, 20-year-old college student Zarah Ghahramani broke the law by pulling her headscarf back a few inches on the streets of Tehran. Her crime didn't go unnoticed—she was picked up by the police and hauled off to spend 30 grueling days in Iran's infamous Evin prison. There she endured interrogations, beatings, and solitary confinement. At the end of her sentence, the authorities dropped her off in a distant suburb and left her to find her way back to her home—and to figure out how to readjust to life outside prison walls. After Evin, Ghahramani stopped giving political speeches on campus—the risk of getting arrested again was too great. She now lives in Australia, working and attending university. She tries to keep up with her activist friends back home, but in Iran, staying in touch is a dangerous business, since the simple act of contacting an old friend can be enough to get him arrested. "[My friend] Arash chose to stay in Iran, even though he knows they're watching him," she says. "He has to be really careful about everything, even the friends he chooses. So many times, I've done a Google search and found out who's been arrested lately. I'm always thinking, 'Am I going to see his name?'" In her new memoir, My Life as a Traitor, Ghahramani chronicles her time in prison and describes her liberal upbringing under an increasingly conservative regime. At home, Ghahramani recalls, she was encouraged to express herself, but in public, she was forced to obey the oppressive rules of the mullahs. "In school, I was taught that my greatest loyalty must be to God, then to the father of the Islamic Republic, the Ayatollah Khomeini, then to the nation itself," writes Ghahramani. At home, though, "Iran, my country, was the captive of sinister, inflexible people who saw the world in black and white, no color permitted, no shading, no nuances, no tolerance of beauty outside of Islamic spirituality." Mother Jones talked with Ghahramani about her time inside Evin—and how her life changed when she was released. Mother Jones: How did you pass the time in prison? Zarah Ghahramani: This might sound a bit weird, but it's unbelievable—human nature actually adapts itself to anything that we face. You just wake up at whatever time of the day or night, you sit there, and you keep thinking, because there's absolutely nothing else to do. If I was strong enough and I wasn't in pain, I would try to do some exercise. I would think, or talk with the guy who was above my cell, or cry, or be angry, or. . .I don't know. You just sit there and do nothing. You try to keep yourself alive and happy all day with whatever you have. Anything that you're left with is a blessing. The fact that you're not dead yet, or the fact that you can move your feet and breathe—it's good. You don't really think you're going to be free again, so you just deal with the situation at the time. MJ: What was the hardest part of being in Evin? ZG: When they shaved my head. I never thought it would mean so much, but for me it was such a big thing. It was my womanhood. It was my dad who loved my hair. It was me. These guards know exactly what makes you really depressed. They are really good at what they do. MJ: When the book ends, you've been dropped off in a distant suburb of Tehran and you've called your father to come pick you up. What happened next? ZG: He came, and we hugged and cried and all that, and then we went home. My sisters came over, and my father made breakfast for us, like when we were kids. It was all really normal. I was expecting them to ask me what had happened, where I had been, but we just had normal, everyday breakfast. Then I went to have a shower and I saw my face for the first time after a month. It was really scary. I hardly stopped myself from screaming, wondering what my family was going through seeing me like that, and not even saying anything. It was really frustrating for me—I really wanted to talk. But when I think about it now, it was the best thing they did. It was hard enough for them, what happened to me. I'm sure they didn't want to know any more. MJ: What was it like readjusting to life outside? ZG: I sort of hated myself for being depressed. I said to myself, "How dare you be depressed? You've put your family through so much, and now you're going to be depressed?" So I would actually try to cheer them up—I would act like, "I'm over it; it's fine; you guys should get over it, too." But there was always an unspoken fear between us that they would take me again. Sometimes I would come back a little bit late, and I would find my mom shivering and screaming, "Where have you been? Why didn't you call me or pick up your phone?" She would basically freak out. So it was really hard to go back to a normal life. There was always that paranoia for them and for me, and it stopped us from living life like we used to. MJ: Was that a real possibility, being arrested again? ZG: I wasn't giving any speeches or writing anything, but I would see my other friends arrested again and again, and I thought eventually that would happen to me, too. Even if you've just contacted an old friend, that could be a reason to get arrested if you have a previous record. MJ: What made you choose to go to Australia? ZG: I met [my coauthor] Robert [Hillman] and his wife [Ann] in Tehran, and we became friends. After they learned about my story, Robert kept telling me, "They're going to take you again." I wasn't planning to leave Iran, but it just became clear that it's not possible to live a normal life, so I decided to do it. Robert and Ann were the only people I knew overseas, so I decided to go to Australia. MJ: In the book, you criticize Iranian American TV channels, saying the Iranian American community is urging people in Iran to become martyrs. ZG: In Iran, we get those channels through satellite. When there were protests in the street, [Iranian Americans] would be like, "Oh, get out there into that street." For them it's really easy to say, because they don't know what it's like when you're taken to prison. For me, it would be a very difficult thing to do—sitting here in the sunshine in Australia telling people to go kill themselves. I would never give anyone advice to do that, and in fact, in my interviews I've been telling people not to do it. MJ: After being in Evin, do people generally give up activism? ZG: Not everyone. Some of them, even after their release, they still do things, and they keep taking them back again and again. Some of them actually die in prison. I decided that I wanted to have a normal life, and I don't want to put my family through any more than I already have. To be honest, I feel like I've paid my share. I've done whatever I could as a woman in Iran in the political scene. MJ: Are you worried about the book's effect on your family? ZG: Of course. I want everyone to know that what has happened to me has absolutely nothing to do with my family. If there's anyone to be blamed, it's me. I wrote the book to inspire other people, because I know a lot of people go through really tough times and they end up being depressed for the rest of their lives. I believe that you can get over something and get on with your life, no matter how much of a bad experience you've been through. Kiera Butler is an associate editor at Mother Jones.
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 1:35 PM PST
Updated: Monday, 7 January 2008 1:41 PM PST
Thursday, 3 January 2008
Saudi Blogger Arrested 1/2/07
Mood:
don't ask
Now Playing: Blogger who dared to expose Saudi corruption is arrested
Topic: MEDIA
January 2nd, 2008 9:09 pm Blogger who dared to expose Saudi corruption is arrested By Claire Soares / The Independent http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=10636 Fouad al-Farhan knew they were coming for him. A few days before Saudi security forces swooped on his offices, he sent a letter to friends telling them he was a wanted man. "They will pick me up any time in the next two weeks," he predicted. His crime? Writing one of the most widely read blogs in Saudi Arabia. Mr Farhan, 32, who describes his online mission as "searching for freedom, dignity, justice, equality, public participation and other lost Islamic values", had already broken ground by refusing to hide behind a pen-name as he vented his spleen about the rampant corruption blighting political life. Now he has clocked up another first – the first blogger to be arrested in the kingdom. The blogger was picked up on 10 December from the offices of his computer company in Jeddah, but it was not until this week that the interior ministry finally confirmed his arrest. Blogging has seen something of a boom in Saudi Arabia, allowing dissident voices a space in a society were the media is kept on a tight leash and where political parties and public gatherings are banned. There are an estimated 600 bloggers in Saudi Arabia, male and female, conservative and liberal, writing in English and Arabic. The arrest of Mr Farhan has sent shock waves around internet users in Saudi Arabia. "Although we have seen bloggers in Bahrain, Kuwait and Egypt arrested and jailed, I thought this wouldn't happen here," said Ahmed Al-Omran, 23, a student in Riyadh who blogs under the name Saudi Jeans. He added: "Saudi Arabia doesn't usually jail journalists (they ban them, but they don't throw them in jail), and I thought those arresting citizens who exercise their right of free speech would be wise enough to choose their battles." The Saudi interior ministry said Mr Farhan was being held for "interrogation for violating non-security regulations" and declined all further comment. But in the letter he wrote before he was detained, Mr Farhan offers some more specifics: "The issue that caused all of this is because I wrote about the political prisoners here in Saudi Arabia and they think I'm running a online campaign promoting their issue." A group of 10 academics were arrested by the authorities last February. They were accused of supporting terrorism but have yet to be charged. Their campaigners say that the terrorism story is a charade and the men are being punished for their political activism. Mr Farhan said he had been asked to issue an apology. "I'm not sure if I'm ready to do that," he said. "An apology for what? Apologising because I said the government is [a] liar when it accused those guys of supporting terrorism?" His decision to stick to his guns may have cost him his liberty. The Committee to Protect Journalists described his arrest as deplorable. "Detaining writers and holding them for weeks without charge is appalling," said its director, Joel Simon. "We call on Saudi authorities to release him at once." Until that happens, Mr Farhan will be hoping that people pay attention to the closing words of his pre-arrest letter: "I don't want to be forgotten in jail."
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 5:54 PM PST
Missing Torture Tapes - Bush pretends he cares(sic)
Mood:
quizzical
Now Playing: Imagine, watching hundreds of hours of USA-Done-Torture
Topic: TORTURE
Bush "strongly" (sic) supports CIA tapes probe By Tabassum Zakaria http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSWAT00862120080103?sp=true WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Thursday he strongly supports a Justice Department investigation into the destruction of CIA videotapes depicting the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects. The White House would cooperate, he said. "I strongly support it. And we will participate," Bush said in a Reuters interview. It was his first public comment since the Justice Department said on Wednesday it had launched a criminal investigation into the CIA's destruction of the tapes. Asked whether he had any concerns the probe might raise questions about his counterterrorism policy, Bush replied: "See what it says. See what the investigation leads to." The Central Intelligence Agency last month disclosed that in 2005 it destroyed hundreds of hours of tapes from the interrogations of two al Qaeda suspects, prompting an outcry from Democrats, human rights activists and some legal experts. The CIA interrogations, which took place in 2002, were believed to have included a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding, condemned internationally as torture. Bush has said the United States does not torture but has declined to be specific about interrogation methods. He has previously said he had no recollection of being briefed on the tapes or their destruction before last month. Reports have said that White House lawyers were involved in discussions on whether the tapes should be destroyed. Bush also called on Congress to pass a new version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which sets rules for electronic surveillance in terrorism cases. The effort to renew the legislation is stalled by battles over enhanced privacy protections some Democrats want and Bush's push to shield telephone companies from lawsuits if they participated in a program of domestic spying without warrants after the September 11, 2001, attacks. "The Congress needs to pass FISA, and they need to do it quickly," Bush said. "FISA expires, but the threat to America doesn't." The Justice Department investigation is expected to focus on the destruction of the tapes and not whether the interrogation practices were legal. The probe could last well beyond Bush's term in office, which ends next January, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law school expert on the federal legal system. U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat, released a copy of a letter she wrote to the CIA in 2003, after receiving a briefing on the interrogations, urging the agency not to destroy the tapes. "Even if the videotape does not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law ... the fact of destruction would reflect badly on the agency," she said. The CIA says it acted lawfully in destroying the tapes, but critics including some top congressional Democrats say the agency flouted court orders and investigators' requests that it hand over evidence in various terrorism cases. Congressional intelligence committees have said they would continue their investigations into the destroyed tapes despite the federal probe and warnings from the Justice Department that Congress could undermine that investigation by compromising witnesses. (Additional reporting by Randall Mikkelsen, Editing by Joanne Kenen and Frances Kerry)
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 2:53 PM PST
Updated: Thursday, 3 January 2008 2:54 PM PST
Monday, 31 December 2007
The Airport Security Follies
Mood:
d'oh
Now Playing: TSA trummed up fear ....flying safe? I doubt it!
Topic: FAILURE by the GOVERNMENT
Six years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, airport security remains a theater of the absurd. The changes put in place following the September 11th catastrophe have been drastic, and largely of two kinds: those practical and effective, and those irrational, wasteful and pointless. The first variety have taken place almost entirely behind the scenes. Explosives scanning for checked luggage, for instance, was long overdue and is perhaps the most welcome addition. Unfortunately, at concourse checkpoints all across America, the madness of passenger screening continues in plain view. It began with pat-downs and the senseless confiscation of pointy objects. Then came the mandatory shoe removal, followed in the summer of 2006 by the prohibition of liquids and gels. We can only imagine what is next. To understand what makes these measures so absurd, we first need to revisit the morning of September 11th, and grasp exactly what it was the 19 hijackers so easily took advantage of. Conventional wisdom says the terrorists exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling aboard box-cutters. What they actually exploited was a weakness in our mindset — a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings. In years past, a takeover meant hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were trained in the concept of “passive resistance.” All of that changed forever the instant American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the north tower. What weapons the 19 men possessed mattered little; the success of their plan relied fundamentally on the element of surprise. And in this respect, their scheme was all but guaranteed not to fail. For several reasons — particularly the awareness of passengers and crew — just the opposite is true today. Any hijacker would face a planeload of angry and frightened people ready to fight back. Say what you want of terrorists, they cannot afford to waste time and resources on schemes with a high probability of failure. And thus the September 11th template is all but useless to potential hijackers. No matter that a deadly sharp can be fashioned from virtually anything found on a plane, be it a broken wine bottle or a snapped-off length of plastic, we are content wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and untold hours of labor in a delusional attempt to thwart an attack that has already happened, asked to queue for absurd lengths of time, subject to embarrassing pat-downs and loss of our belongings. The folly is much the same with respect to the liquids and gels restrictions, introduced two summers ago following the breakup of a London-based cabal that was planning to blow up jetliners using liquid explosives. Allegations surrounding the conspiracy were revealed to substantially embellished. In an August, 2006 article in the New York Times, British officials admitted that public statements made following the arrests were overcooked, inaccurate and “unfortunate.” The plot’s leaders were still in the process of recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers. They lacked passports, airline tickets and, most critical of all, they had been unsuccessful in actually producing liquid explosives. Investigators later described the widely parroted report that up to ten U.S airliners had been targeted as “speculative” and “exaggerated.” Among first to express serious skepticism about the bombers’ readiness was Thomas C. Greene, whose essay in The Register explored the extreme difficulty of mixing and deploying the types of binary explosives purportedly to be used. Green conferred with Professor Jimmie C. Oxley, an explosives specialist who has closely studied the type of deadly cocktail coveted by the London plotters. “The notion that deadly explosives can be cooked up in an airplane lavatory is pure fiction,” Greene told me during an interview. “A handy gimmick for action movies and shows like ‘24.’ The reality proves disappointing: it’s rather awkward to do chemistry in an airplane toilet. Nevertheless, our official protectors and deciders respond to such notions instinctively, because they’re familiar to us: we’ve all seen scenarios on television and in the cinema. This, incredibly, is why you can no longer carry a bottle of water onto a plane.” The threat of liquid explosives does exist, but it cannot be readily brewed from the kinds of liquids we have devoted most of our resources to keeping away from planes. Certain benign liquids, when combined under highly specific conditions, are indeed dangerous. However, creating those conditions poses enormous challenges for a saboteur. “I would not hesitate to allow that liquid explosives can pose a danger,” Greene added, recalling Ramzi Yousef’s 1994 detonation of a small nitroglycerine bomb aboard Philippine Airlines Flight 434. The explosion was a test run for the so-called “Project Bojinka,” an Al Qaeda scheme to simultaneously destroy a dozen widebody airliners over the Pacific Ocean. “But the idea that confiscating someone’s toothpaste is going to keep us safe is too ridiculous to entertain.” Yet that’s exactly what we’ve been doing. The three-ounce container rule is silly enough — after all, what’s to stop somebody from carrying several small bottles each full of the same substance — but consider for a moment the hypocrisy of T.S.A.’s confiscation policy. At every concourse checkpoint you’ll see a bin or barrel brimming with contraband containers taken from passengers for having exceeded the volume limit. Now, the assumption has to be that the materials in those containers are potentially hazardous. If not, why were they seized in the first place? But if so, why are they dumped unceremoniously into the trash? They are not quarantined or handed over to the bomb squad; they are simply thrown away. The agency seems to be saying that it knows these things are harmless. But it’s going to steal them anyway, and either you accept it or you don’t fly. But of all the contradictions and self-defeating measures T.S.A. has come up with, possibly none is more blatantly ludicrous than the policy decreeing that pilots and flight attendants undergo the same x-ray and metal detector screening as passengers. What makes it ludicrous is that tens of thousands of other airport workers, from baggage loaders and fuelers to cabin cleaners and maintenance personnel, are subject only to occasional random screenings when they come to work. These are individuals with full access to aircraft, inside and out. Some are airline employees, though a high percentage are contract staff belonging to outside companies. The fact that crew members, many of whom are former military fliers, and all of whom endured rigorous background checks prior to being hired, are required to take out their laptops and surrender their hobby knives, while a caterer or cabin cleaner sidesteps the entire process and walks onto a plane unimpeded, nullifies almost everything our T.S.A. minders have said and done since September 11th, 2001. If there is a more ringing let-me-get-this-straight scenario anywhere in the realm of airport security, I’d like to hear it. I’m not suggesting that the rules be tightened for non-crew members so much as relaxed for all accredited workers. Which perhaps urges us to reconsider the entire purpose of airport security: The truth is, regardless of how many pointy tools and shampoo bottles we confiscate, there shall remain an unlimited number of ways to smuggle dangerous items onto a plane. The precise shape, form and substance of those items is irrelevant. We are not fighting materials, we are fighting the imagination and cleverness of the would-be saboteur. Thus, what most people fail to grasp is that the nuts and bolts of keeping terrorists away from planes is not really the job of airport security at all. Rather, it’s the job of government agencies and law enforcement. It’s not very glamorous, but the grunt work of hunting down terrorists takes place far off stage, relying on the diligent work of cops, spies and intelligence officers. Air crimes need to be stopped at the planning stages. By the time a terrorist gets to the airport, chances are it’s too late. In the end, I’m not sure which is more troubling, the inanity of the existing regulations, or the average American’s acceptance of them and willingness to be humiliated. These wasteful and tedious protocols have solidified into what appears to be indefinite policy, with little or no opposition. There ought to be a tide of protest rising up against this mania. Where is it? At its loudest, the voice of the traveling public is one of grumbled resignation. The op-ed pages are silent, the pundits have nothing meaningful to say. The airlines, for their part, are in something of a bind. The willingness of our carriers to allow flying to become an increasingly unpleasant experience suggests a business sense of masochistic capitulation. On the other hand, imagine the outrage among security zealots should airlines be caught lobbying for what is perceived to be a dangerous abrogation of security and responsibility — even if it’s not. Carriers caught plenty of flack, almost all of it unfair, in the aftermath of September 11th. Understandably, they no longer want that liability. As for Americans themselves, I suppose that it’s less than realistic to expect street protests or airport sit-ins from citizen fliers, and maybe we shouldn’t expect too much from a press and media that have had no trouble letting countless other injustices slip to the wayside. And rather than rethink our policies, the best we’ve come up with is a way to skirt them — for a fee, naturally — via schemes like Registered Traveler. Americans can now pay to have their personal information put on file just to avoid the hassle of airport security. As cynical as George Orwell ever was, I doubt he imagined the idea of citizens offering up money for their own subjugation. How we got to this point is an interesting study in reactionary politics, fear-mongering and a disconcerting willingness of the American public to accept almost anything in the name of “security.” Conned and frightened, our nation demands not actual security, but security spectacle. And although a reasonable percentage of passengers, along with most security experts, would concur such theater serves no useful purpose, there has been surprisingly little outrage. In that regard, maybe we’ve gotten exactly the system we deserve.
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 11:24 AM PST
Wednesday, 26 December 2007
Bush wont have a chance (HAHA) to appoint while Congress is on recess
Mood:
celebratory
Now Playing: "pro forma" sessions (Congress Keeps Running)
Topic: SMILE SMILE SMILE
Copied from - WASHINGTON (CNN) http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/26/senate.pro.forma/index.html?iref=topnews The U.S. Senate was called to order for 11 seconds on Wednesday as the last political scuffle of the year between the White House and the Democratic-led Congress played out. Democratic senators will hold short "pro forma" sessions over the holiday break to prevent recess appointments. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, opened and then immediately gaveled the Senate session to a close. He spent 57 seconds in the chamber. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, announced December 19 that he would keep the Senate open with a series of "pro forma" sessions through mid-January. Talks had just broken down with the White House on a deal that would have allowed the president to make dozens of those appointments if he agreed not to appoint one controversial official, Steven Bradbury, as the permanent head of the influential Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. Bush declined to accept the Democrats' offer, and Reid refused to approve Bradbury because of concerns about his involvement in crafting legal opinions for the administration on interrogation techniques of terrorism suspects. Similar sessions were conducted over the Thanksgiving recess. Webb also did the duty Friday, but he won't be the only senator tasked with presiding over the shortened sessions. Other Democrats -- including Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Chuck Schumer of New York -- will share the duty.
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 5:17 PM PST
Updated: Wednesday, 26 December 2007 5:18 PM PST
Sunday, 23 December 2007
FBI (J.Edgar Hoover) Sought Authority To Detain Thousands
Mood:
irritated
Now Playing: to "protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage,"
Topic: CIVIL RIGHTS
FBI Sought Authority To Detain Thousands Declassified Papers Detail
Hoover Plan During Korean War
The following post was copied from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/22/AR2007122201487.html?sub=AR Associated Press Sunday, December 23, 2007; A16
Former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had a plan to suspend the rules against illegal detention shortly after the Korean War began and arrest as many as 12,000 Americans he suspected of being disloyal, according to a newly declassified document. Hoover sent his plan to detain suspect Americans in military and federal prisons to the White House on July 7, 1950, but there is no evidence to suggest that President Harry S. Truman or any subsequent president approved any part of the proposal. Hoover had wanted Truman to declare the mass arrests necessary to "protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage," the New York Times reported yesterday in a story posted on its Web site. The plan called for the FBI to apprehend all potentially dangerous individuals whose names were on a list that Hoover had been compiling for years. "The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven percent are citizens of the United States," Hoover wrote in the now-declassified document. "In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus." Habeas corpus, the right to seek relief from illegal detention, is a bedrock legal principle. All apprehended individuals eventually would have had the right to a hearing under Hoover's plan, but hearing boards composed of one judge and two citizens "will not be bound by the rules of evidence," he wrote. The details of Hoover's plan was among a collection of Cold War-era documents related to intelligence issues from 1950 to 1955. The State Department declassified the documents Friday.
Posted by Joe Anybody
at 12:38 PM PST
Updated: Sunday, 23 December 2007 12:42 PM PST
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