Musings, perspectives, rants

A selected few from the above book.  They all speak for themselves:

The US and Britain have the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world.  No surprise there.

China has 44 million missing women.

81% of the world's executions in 2002 took place in just three countries: China, Iran and the USA.

One in five of the world's people lives on less than one dollar a day. 

In 2003, 15 million Americans had some form of plastic surgery.

Landmines kill or maim at least one person every hour.

There are 44 million child labourers in India.

People in industrialised countries eat between 6 and 7 kg of food additives every year.

7 million American women and 1 million American men suffer from an eating disorder.

Since 1977, there have been more than 90,000 acts of violence and disruption at abortion clinics in North America.

A third of Americans believe aliens have landed on Earth.

More than 150 countries use torture. (and the USA and the UK are two of them.)

Every day 1 in 5 of the world's population - some 800 million people, go hungry.

A third of the world's population is at war.

10 languages die out every year.

There are at least 300,000 prisoners of conscience in the world.

2 million girls and women are subjected to female genital mutilation each year.

America spends 10 billion dollars on pornography each year - the same amount it spends on foreign aid.

In 2003, the US spent 396 billion dollars on its military.  This is 33 times the combined military spending of the seven 'rogue states'.

There are 27 million slaves in the world today.

Americans discard 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.  That's enough bottles to reach all the way to the moon every three weeks.

The average urban Briton is caught on camera up to 300 times a day.

The US owes the United Nations more than 1 billion dollars in unpaid dues.

From "50 facts that should change the world", Jessica Williams

It's ironic that in supposedly defending 'democracy' we become less democratic.  But I know it's not about defending democracy at all.  But this reason for a war on terror is leading to tyranny.  We're becoming submerged beneath the petty rules and the idiocy which leads to law-abiding people innocent of any crime, but seemingly one of being human, being put behind bars or remonstrated with.  Here are two links which illustrate the madness:

It's a crime to read a book

Emotion gets you thrown in jail

I read with interest his article (or 'Epiphany' as he calls it) which can be found on several sites, the following being one of them:

Who will save America?

It's of interest because here is a former Reaganite who, because of his natural objection to injustice, can recognise the injustices and the inherent dangers currently rife in the Bush administration.  I'd like to quote a few paragraphs.

.."Bush refuses to obey the Foreign Intelligence 
Surveillance Act. The purpose of the FISA court is to 
ensure that administrations do not spy for partisan 
political reasons. The warrant requirement is to ensure 
that a panel of independent federal judges hears a 
legitimate reason for the spying, thus protecting a 
president from the temptation to abuse the powers of 
government. The only reason for the Bush administration 
to evade the court is that the Bush administration had 
no legitimate reasons for its spying. This should be 
obvious even to a naif.

The United States is undergoing a coup against the 
Constitution, the Bill of Rights, civil liberties, and 
democracy itself. The "liberal press" has been co-opted.
As everyone must know by now, the New York Times has
totally failed its First Amendment obligations, allowing
Judith Miller to make war propaganda for the Bush 
administration, suppressing for an entire year the news 
that the Bush administration was illegally spying on 
American citizens, and denying coverage to Al Gore's 
speech that challenged the criminal deeds of the Bush 
administration.

The TV networks mimic Fox News' faux patriotism. Anyone 
who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media
is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has 
achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda.

The years of illegal spying have given the Bush 
administration power over the media and the opposition. 
Journalists and Democratic politicians don't want to 
have their adulterous affairs broadcast over television 
or to see their favorite online porn sites revealed in 
headlines in the local press with their names attached. 
Only people willing to risk such disclosures can stand 
up for the country.

Homeland Security and the Patriot Act are not our 
protectors. They undermine our protection by trashing 
the Constitution and the civil liberties it guarantees. 
Those with a tyrannical turn of mind have always used 
fear and hysteria to overcome obstacles to their 
to gain new means of silencing opposition.

Consider the no-fly list. This list has no purpose 
whatsoever but to harass and disrupt the livelihoods of 
Bush's critics. If a known terrorist were to show up at 
check-in, he would be arrested and taken into custody, 
not told that he could not fly. What sense does it make 
to tell someone who is not subject to arrest and who has 
cleared screening that he or she cannot fly? How is this 
person any more dangerous than any other passenger?..."

"Debate is dead in America for two reasons: One is that 
the media concentration permitted in the 1990s has put 
news and opinion in the hands of a few corporate 
executives who do not dare risk their broadcasting 
licenses by getting on the wrong side of government, or
their advertising revenues by becoming "controversial." 
The media follows a safe line and purveys only politically
correct information. The other reason is that Americans 
today are no longer enthralled by debate. They just want
to hear what they want to hear. The right-wing, left-wing, 
and libertarians alike preach to the faithful. Democracy 
cannot succeed when there is no debate."
 
More Americans should read articles like this and some of my 
American friends are seeking out information for themselves, 
which is brilliant.  But a lot more need to be sat down and 
shown what is really going on.

ON INCOMES:
--Inflation-adjusted median household income in 2000: 
USD46,058
--Median household income in 2004: USD44,389
[Historical Income Tables -Households, H-6 Table 
US Census]

--Decrease in median income from 2000-2004 in White 
households: USD1,066
--Decrease in median income from 2000-2004 in Hispanic 
households: USD2,141
--Decrease in median income from 2000-2004 in Black 
households: USD2,407
[Historical Income Tables -Households, H-6 White, 
not Hispanic, Black, and Hispanic Tables, US Census]

--Inflation-adjusted average CEO pay at depth of 
recession in 2002: USD7,773,000
--Average CEO pay as of 2004: USD9,600,000
[Executive Pay, Business Week 4/21/2003; A Payday For 
Performance, Business Week 4/18/2005]

--Increase in productivity for 2005: +13.5 percent
--Percentage increase in average American CEO's
compensation since 2002: +24 percent
[Business Week, April 21, 2003; BLS, Labor Productivity 
and Costs]

ON JOBS:
--American manufacturing jobs in 2001: 17,101,000
--American manufacturing jobs in 2005: 14,283,000
[The Economic State Of The Union, Manufacturing & 
Technology News Jan. 19, 2006]

--Number of private sector jobs created since 2001 
excluding those produced by increased military spending:
 -1,160,000
--Number of American manufacturing jobs lost since 2001:
 2,818,000
[Economic Policy Institute, Sept. 3, 2005; 
Manufacturing & Technology News, Jan. 19, 2006]

--Average number of fewer hours per week parents have 
to spend with their kids today than 35 years ago: 22

THREE HOURS LESS PER DAY - HOW MANY DOES THAT LEAVE?

--Percentage decrease in average American household 
income since 2000: -3 percent
[National Statistics, PBS- Hedrick Smith; US Census]

ON ENERGY:
--Average price of a gallon of gasoline in 2000: 
USD1.51
--Average price of a gallon of gasoline in 2005: 
USD2.28
[December 2005 Monthly Energy Review, Energy 
Information Administration, Dec. 22, 2005]

--Percentage increase in the price of a gallon of 
gasoline since 2000: +51 percent
--Percentage increase in the price of a gallon of 
home heating oil since 2000: +94 percent
[Energy Information Administration, Dec. 22, 2005; 
Energy Information Administration, Jan. 2006]

--Average price of a gallon of home heating oil, 
Winter of 1999-2000: USD1.24
--Projected price of a gallon of home heating oil, 
Winter of 2005-2006: USD2.41
[Selected U.S. Average Consumer: Table WF01, 
Energy Information Administration, Jan. 2006]

--Average increase in profits for oil companies in 
third quarter of 2005: +69 percent
--Amount of subsidies provided to oil industry in 
2005 energy bill: USD6 billion
[Star-Telegram, Oct. 26, 2005; Public Citizen Aug. 2005]

ON HEALTH CARE:
--Percentage of companies that provided health care to 
their employees in 2000: 69 percent
--Percentage of companies that provided health care to 
their employees in 2005: 60 percent
[The Kaiser Family Foundation, June 14, 2005]

--Number of Americans without health insurance in 2000: 
39,800,000
--Number of Americans without health insurance as of 
2004: 45,800,000
[U.S. Census Bureau, Sept. 30, 2002; U.S. Census 
Bureau Aug. 30, 2005.]

--Percentage of companies that provided healthcare 
insurance to their employees as of 2005: 60 percent
--Number of additional Americans without health 
insurance since 2000: 6,000,000
[The Kaiser Family Foundation, June 14, 2005; U.S. 
Census Bureau, Aug. 30, 2005]

ON COLLEGE COSTS:
--Average cost of yearly tuition at a 4-year public 
university in 2000:  USD7,020
--Average cost of yearly tuition at a 4-year public 
university in 2005:  USD10,982
[Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 27, 2000; 
The College Board, Oct.18, 2005]

--Average increase in yearly tuition costs for public 
university students since 2000: +USD3,962
--Average loan burden carried by a student upon 
graduation as of 2003: USD18,900
--Average increase families will pay in student loan 
interests due to Republican cuts in the 2006 education 
budget: USD2,000 for students, USD3,000 for parents
[Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 27, 2000; The 
College Board, Oct. 18, 2005; Nellie Mae Feb. 6, 2003; 
Wall Street Journal, Dec. 22, 2005]

ON RETIREMENT SECURITY:
--Americans working in private sector who can rely on 
a defined pension as of 2004: 6 percent
--Baby Boomers who believe they're very prepared to 
meet living expenses of retirement as of 2005: 
24 percent
[New York Times, Jan. 16, 2006; AllState, Oct. 4, 2005]

I just received this this morning and thought I would copy and paste it here in its entirety.

"Rumsfeld:Internet must be shut down

  . . and he has an authorized plan to do it.

Reporter for the BBC at the Pentagon: "The US military seeks the 
capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, 
every radar system on the planet."

"... approved/signed by the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- 
these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon."

The document/plan "sees the internet as being equivalent to an enemy 
weapons system."

(Once again, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush Sr, et al -- who have held high 
offices for decades -- are revealing themselves to be the greatest 
enemy the American people have ever faced.  Are we going to allow 
them to complete their plans?)
Connie Cook Smith, Canton Illinois

US plans to 'fight the net' revealed

By Adam Brookes
BBC Pentagon correspondent

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US 
military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological 
operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.

Bloggers beware.

As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the 
military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies 
and the modern media offer.

 From influencing public opinion through new media to designing 
"computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to 
fight an electronic war.

The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap". 
It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington 
University using the Freedom of Information Act.

Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, 
Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.

The "roadmap" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's 
ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare. 
And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed 
forces should think about this new, virtual warfare.

The document says that information is "critical to military success". 
Computer and telecommunications networks are of vital operational 
importance.

Propaganda

The operations described in the document include a surprising range 
of military activities: public affairs officers who brief 
journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate 
the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack 
specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.

All these are engaged in information operations.

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its 
acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's 
psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the 
computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public 
diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic 
audience," it reads.

"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much 
larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.

The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should 
not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries 
should be established," they write. But they don't seem to explain how.

"In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed 
abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing 
back into the United States - even though they were directed abroad," 
says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive.

Credibility problem

Public awareness of the US military's information operations is low, 
but it's growing - thanks to some operational clumsiness.

Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private 
company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi 
newspapers. The stories - all supportive of US policy - were written 
by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications.

And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of 
Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon.

But the true extent of the Pentagon's information operations, how 
they work, who they're aimed at, and at what point they turn from 
informing the public to influencing populations, is far from clear.

The roadmap, however, gives a flavour of what the US military is up 
to - and the grand scale on which it's thinking.

It reveals that Psyops personnel "support" the American government's 
international broadcasting. It singles out TV Marti - a station which 
broadcasts to Cuba - as receiving such support.

It recommends that a global website be established that supports 
America's strategic objectives. But no American diplomats here, thank 
you. The website would use content from "third parties with greater 
credibility to foreign audiences than US officials".

It also recommends that Psyops personnel should consider a range of 
technologies to disseminate propaganda in enemy territory: unmanned 
aerial vehicles, "miniaturized, scatterable public address systems", 
wireless devices, cellular phones and the internet.

'Fight the net'

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document 
takes on an extraordinary tone.

It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons 
system.

"Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of 
Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it 
reads.

The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the 
roadmap.

The authors warn that US networks are very vulnerable to attack by 
hackers, enemies seeking to disable them, or spies looking for 
intelligence.

"Networks are growing faster than we can defend them... Attack 
sophistication is increasing... Number of events is increasing."

US digital ambition

And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United 
States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the 
entire electromagnetic spectrum".

US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of 
globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons 
systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".

Consider that for a moment.

The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, 
every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.

Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or 
are they real?

The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the 
Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very 
seriously indeed in the Pentagon.

And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched 
only by the US military's ambitions for it.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4655196.stm>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4655196.stm 


 From Fred Burks --
Note: You can view the entire 78-page U.S. military document titled 
"Information Operations Roadmap" (parts are redacted) on BBC's 
website at the link below. A free PDF reader is required (download 
the reader here).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/27_01_06_psyops.pdf

It's not about nuclear weapons.  Like Iraq, Iran is being demonised for daring to, supposedly, develop nuclear weapons.  

Hey the lie worked before, why not use the same one....

"Washington (PRWEB) January 26, 2006 -- Author and historian Webster 
Griffin Tarpley warned today that the Bush administration is in the 
advanced stages of planning for a catastrophic nuclear sneak attack 
on Iran. The goal, said Tarpley, would be incidentally to disable 
Iran's nuclear capacity, but mainly to prevent the opening -- timed 
to coincide with the Iranian New Year on March 20 -- of the first 
non-dollar international oil market since 1944.

"A few nuclear bombs in Iranian hands hardly add up to a strategic 
threat to the United States," said Tarpley. "But the new Iranian 
euro-based oil market or oil bourse as it is called has the potential 
to oust the dollar as the world's reserve currency, causing central 
banks to shift a trillion dollars or more in reserves into the euro 
and other destinations. That would spell immediate doom for the US 
stock price bubble and real estate bubble as hot money streamed out 
of this country. It would cut Wall Street and London out of a myriad 
of lucrative transactions, and deprive the US-UK combine of their 
ability to interfere in access to other people's oil," he added.

The Iranian oil bourse would be the first euro-based oil market in 
the recent history of the world where sellers and buyers of oil could 
come together for spot and futures transactions independent of the 
dollar, thus outside US control and without Wall Street skimming off 
a hefty part of the profits. Today's privileged position for the 
dollar is "obsolete and removed from reality," Tarpley asserted.

"The 213-point drop in the Dow last Friday on reports that Iran was 
shifting funds out of Europe is the merest hint of what may be 
coming," Tarpley noted. "If the Iranian oil bourse opens, the 
colossal instability to the dollar, the stock market, and the US 
banking system will very likely be revealed rather quickly."

The current system allows the US to export unlimited supplies of 
dollar bills to buy goods abroad, resulting in a yearly trade deficit 
of $700 billion and counting. Americans should not feel threatened by 
the inevitable crisis of this system, Tarpley pointed out, since the 
unique US privilege of importing without producing, as world dumping 
ground and buyer of last resort, has cut the US standard of living in 
half since 1970, creating a low-wage economy. It is time for the US 
once again to earn foreign exchange by producing exports which will 
mean jobs and prosperity here.

"A rational way out would be to rebuild the world monetary system 
around fixed parities among the dollar, the euro, and the yen as 
equal participants, with gold settlement and a credit mechanism to 
expand exports of capital goods. This would avoid a new general war."

"As for 'Helicopter Ben' Bernanke, the incoming Federal Reserve boss, 
he is clearly getting ready to gin up the printing presses to print 
an avalanche of paper dollars if the Chinese and Japanese demand cash 
for their plummeting US Treasury bonds in the near future -- what 
economists call monetization of the debt. The Fed will soon stop 
publishing the M3 data series on the money supply, which is the one 
that would reveal a monetization of debt. Bernanke seems to have 
Weimar-style hyperinflation written all over him," Tarpley commented.

"The lunatic neocon war plan for Iran is doomed to failure, just as 
their Iraq adventure was," Tarpley concluded. "If attacked, there is 
every indication Iran would cut the world oil aorta at the Straits of 
Hormuz, fire off missiles at Israel and other targets, and unleash 
Iraqi Shiites and Iranian volunteers around Basra. The position of 
the US and especially the UK forces there would soon become 
extraordinarily critical. If Russians and Chinese were killed in the 
raids, the stage would be set for larger confrontation. All of this 
would guarantee endless war and economic ruin for the US and the 
dollar. Why not avoid this incalculable folly by calling right now 
for a new Bretton Woods international monetary conference, which 
would be welcomed by the world community as a whole?"

Webster G. Tarpley is an experienced political expert based near 
Washington DC. He is the author of "George Bush: The Unauthorized 
Biography" (1992), "Surviving the Cataclysm" (1999) a study of the 
world financial crisis, and "9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA" 
(second edition 2006), the first work to tie 9/11 to the neocon 
"flight forward" into military expansionism in an attempt to shore up 
the dollar. The revised edition also covers the war drive against Iran.

Tarpley's 1992 Bush biography was the first to document the Bush 
family's support of Hitler. Investors who followed his 1999 advice to 
buy gold in "Surviving the Cataclysm" have doubled their money now. 
His "Who Killed Aldo Moro" (1978) was the first to expose the Red 
Brigades as "synthetic terror" assets of the neofascist P2 lodge."

From Behind the mad rush to bomb Iran