[Biofuel] 25 censored stories of 2008
http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2008/index.htm - Don't let your dream ride pass you by.Make it a reality with Yahoo! Autos. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20070914/209372b0/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] Corn Prices Not Cause of Rising Grocery Prices
... Food and meat processors are using the ethanol smokescreen to justify grocery price increases that are unlikely to decline when corn's historically volatile price falls. Retail Realities: Corn Prices Do Not Drive Grocery Inflation, September 2007 Full report: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/us-farmbill/retail-realities/ pdf: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/pubs/reports/retail-realities-corn-prices/download?id=pdf http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/press/releases/corn-rising-grocery-pr ices-article09132007 - Food Water Watch Corn Prices Not Cause of Rising Grocery Prices September 13, 2007 CONTACT: Patrick Woodall, 202-797-6544 Jen Mueller, 202-797-6553 Corn Prices Unlikely Culprit for Rising Grocery Prices Analysis of Three Decades of Prices Reveals No Connection Between Corn Prices and Grocery Realities Washington, DC - Retail prices for meat and milk are disconnected from increases in the price that farmers receive for corn, according to an analysis of food and corn prices over the past three decades released today. Retail consumer food prices have generally risen steadily with inflation or even faster irregardless of the price farmers receive for corn used to feed livestock. Food Water Watch's examination of historical farmgate and retail price trends disproves the allegation that there is a direct causal relationship between corn prices and retail grocery prices. Although corn prices have risen over the past year in part as a result of increased ethanol demand, the correlation between crop prices and retail grocery prices remains elusive, said Food Water Watch Policy Analyst Patrick Woodall. Federal farm policy over the past two decades has promoted overproduction and low crop prices that consolidated the profits of the farm and food system in a tiny number of special interest hands. During most of the past decade, these agribusinesses were able to purchase corn at very low prices, but consumer retail prices at the grocery store did not decline commensurately. Consumers are legitimately nervous when the cost of eating is rapidly outpacing the means of paying for food, said Food Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. As long as federal farm policy promotes overproduction and ignores agribusiness consolidation, farmers and consumers will be at the mercy of pricing decisions made by a few powerful agribusiness interests. During the first half of 2007, food prices rose by 6.2 percent and contributed to almost one-fifth (17 percent) of the total increase in consumer prices. Consumer anxiety over higher grocery prices is heightened by more modest wage and economic growth. The food industry has been capitalizing on consumer fears about grocery prices by focusing on higher costs for one of their key ingredients: corn. Food Water Watch examined and compared the monthly farmgate price of corn and retail price of ground beef, chicken, pork chops, and milk since 1980 and found: * Contrary to widespread media reports, the long-term farmgate price of corn has fluctuated significantly and has exceeded oft-cited $2 per bushel during three quarters of the months between 1980 and 2006. * The real, inflation-adjusted price of corn has trended downwards since 1980 from an average of $6 per bushel in the early 1980s to $2.37 two decades later. * During periods of farmgate corn price increases similar to the recent rise, there has been little interplay with retail food costs - in many cases retail food prices fell as corn prices rose. In 1980, the farmgate price for corn was $2.70 and a new Ford Mustang cost about $6,000. Today, the base model Mustang runs about $19,000 and corn is selling for as much as $3.70 - meaning the price of Mustangs more than tripled and the price of corn increased by a little more than a third, said Woodall. America needs agriculture and food policies designed for farmers and consumers and not just agribusiness interests. The full analysis is posted at http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/pubs/reports/retail-realities-co rn-prices ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] Wanted: Unruly Activists
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/13/3813/ - CommonDreams.org Published on Thursday, September 13, 2007 by The Nation Wanted: Unruly Activists by Nicholas Von Hoffman The first thing the members of Congress did before they heard the testimony of General David Petraeus, the Administration's new political point man on the war, was to throw the members of Code Pink out of the room. The Code Pinkers are those obnoxious females wearing their eponymously colored T-shirts with end-the-killing slogans on them. The women of Code Pink are liable to pop up at any solemn public gathering demanding peace at the top of their voices. They are unable to understand that elected officials are better informed and wiser than they are and thus they mistakenly dis people important enough to warrant bodyguards. During Code Pink's brief moment in the sun, several Republican members of Congress groused to House Arms Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D. Mo) about the scandalous trouble-makers. American politicians, who these days are equipped with security details, have come to regard political heckling as a misdemeanor of greater gravity even than making a pass at an undercover cop in a men's room. Heckling used to be an inseparable part of public debate and, once upon a time, a politician was judged in part by his ability to come through with the kind of humorous riposte that sets audiences to laughing and the hecklers to the sidelines. Lincoln, Churchill and Disraeli were masters at it. The Code Pinkers are playing what ESPN would call Extreme or X-politics. X-politicians make noise, bust up meetings, chain themselves to furniture, do the big floppola in front of the security personnel and wail like hell when they are dragged off. Most of us are incapable of playing X-politics, but thank God the women of Code Pink are not. You don't play X-politics because you want a new school superintendent or a stop sign on your block. You play it when it's about war, about dying, maiming and mass misery on a scale too large for any mind to encompass. You play it because the war party always has all the drums and all the bugles and all the flags. You play it because somebody has to smash through, be the truth-teller. And it's not going to be people with normal temperatures and Anglo-Saxon inhibitions. X-politics is only for the lion-hearted. Samuel Adams played it at the Boston Massacre and the wildest, craziest and yet most essential X-politician in our history was John Brown, Old Potawatamie, who ended dangling from a noose, the North's most electric abolitionist martyr. An X-politician does not have to lead an armed insurrection, but he or she must do something that enflames indignation and ignites anger. On a small scale that is what Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr did. He's the man who was gang-tackled by the Capitol cops to keep him out of the hearing room. Put your hands together and give it up for the Reverend as you watch the seven-minute video of his encounter with Capitol Hill's finest. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiradcejA6o MoveOn.org plays its own, somewhat more sedate brand of X-politics. The day before the hearings it kicked war partisans in the shins with a full-page New York Times ad, with a headline that screamed, General Petraeus or General Betray Us?. It drove the likes of Orrin Hatch (R. UT) to offering resolutions of condemnation and denunciations of MoveOn.org's wickedness for suggesting the General cannot be counted to tell the whole truth. (In the interest of full disclosure, the writer confesses to having sent MoveOn.org a small contribution immediately after having read that ad.) A newspaper ad alone could not have so convincingly disseminated the thought that Petraeus had moved from being a four-star general to being a four-star Republican politician. For that the ad had to provoke a furious reaction from the war lovers. The essence of X-politics, whether it's Cindy Sheehan or Eli Pariser, one of MoveOn.org's better known people, is to use the other sides' rage, money and status against itself. May Code Pink strike again. And again. Nicholas von Hoffman is the author of A Devil's Dictionary of Business, now in paperback. He is a Pulitzer Prize losing author of thirteen books, including Citizen Cohn, and a columnist for the New York Observer. © 2007 The Nation ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] President Bush to veto ban on mercury in flu vaccines
http://www.ahf-au.org/bushvetovaccinebill.html Alliance for Health Freedom Australia President Bush to veto ban on mercury in flu vaccines President Bush is to veto a bill that would ban mercury in flu vaccines for children despite its known links to autism and other neurological disorders and despite the fact that he pledged in 2004 to support such a move when campaigning for re-election. The White House stated on Tuesday that President Bush would veto the FY 2008 HHS-Labor-Education Appropriations Bill because of the cost and objectionable provisions such as a measure to ban the use of childhood flu vaccines that contain thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, a press release from Autism advocacy group Safe Minds on the PRNewswire-USNewswire states. Bush is calling for an amendment that would remove the children's safety provision from the bill. Safe Minds warns: Under the current administration, mercury has been and will continue to be knowingly injected into the youngest of American citizens. The controversial mercury-containing preservative thimerosal has been linked by thousands of parents as being the cause of their children's mercury poisoning and autism. The flu vaccine, which continues to be manufactured with mercury, is recommended for all pregnant women, infants and children despite the fact that the Institute of Medicine in 2001 recommended against the policy of exposing these same sensitive groups to thimerosal containing vaccines. Mercury is the second most toxic metal known to man behind Uranium. Thimerosal is used in vaccines not because it is good for you, but purely because it prevents vaccine contamination. Yet some have questioned why thimerosal is even considered for vaccines because there are obviously safer alternatives to preventing contamination. Questions also remain about how pharmaceutical companies conduct vaccine research and how the government regulates those companies. Despite these facts, sickening reports such as the one below continue to make out that injecting the second most poisonous substance in the world into babies is actually GOOD for their health: During Bush's re-election campaign in 2004 he stated: I support the removal of Thimerosal from vaccines on the childhood national vaccine schedule. During a second term as President, I will continue to support increased funding to support a wide variety of research initiatives aimed at seeking definitive causes and/or triggers of autism. It is important to note that while there are many possible theories about causes or triggers of autism, no one material has been definitely included or excluded. Despite this he now plans to veto a bill that would remove Thimerosal because of costs. What costs would these be? Do the costs of big pharmaceutical companies and fat government kickbacks outweigh the costs of the healthy brains of every child in America? Seemingly so. Furthermore, though Bush stated that the evidence for links between mercury laden vaccines and autism are not concrete, there are scores of studies and testimony from credible figures asserting the exact opposite. Starting in the early nineties, government regulators dramatically increased the amount of Thimerosal exposure to babies by adding two new vaccines to the roster of mandatory immunizations children must have before enrolling in school. The combination of the Hepatitis B vaccine and the HiB vaccine more than doubled the amount of mercury children. Mercury expert Dr. Boyd Haley of the University of Kentucky has testified before Congress and the Pentagon as well as the FDA as one of the nation's leading experts on Thimerosal and mercury poisoning, revealing that his research leads him to believe that some children are genetically predisposed to storing mercury in their brains, leading to neurological disorders, including autism. The combination of the Hepatitis B vaccine and the HiB vaccine more than doubled the amount of mercury children in the 90s. If you take a ten-pound baby in, and it gets four shots on that one day, which is a common practice - that's equivalent to giving a 100-pound person forty shots in one day, said Haley. Haley has also proposed that Thimerosal in infant vaccines was also the most likely toxic agent involved in Gulf War syndrome and autistic spectrum disorders. Think about this, they are injecting into babies something that is breaking down the bodies of full grown combat veterans. While the FDA questioned thimerosal's safety in the 80s, noting that it was not safe for 'over-the-counter' topical use because of its potential for cell damage, and while it was removed from animal vaccines for the same reason, the government regulatory committees did nothing to question its use in childhood vaccines. It's too dangerous for cats and dogs but the government is happy for our babies to be pumped full of the stuff on a
Re: [Biofuel] 25 censored stories of 2008
http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2008/index.htm Thanks! It should be 2006 though, not 2008 - by 2008 it'll have been censored, LOL! I saw many of them at the time, and posted a few of them, but it's a little chilling to see them all together in a bunch, more so than previous years, seems to me. Sinister stuff. Hm... #1 No Habeas Corpus for Any Person #2 Bush Moves Toward Martial Law #3 AFRICOM: US Military Control of Africa's Resources #4 Frenzy of Increasingly Destructive Trade Agreements #5 Human Traffic Builds US Embassy in Iraq #6 Operation FALCON Raids #7 Behind Blackwater Inc. #9 Privatization of America's Infrastructure #13 Immigrant Roundups to Gain Cheap Labor for US Corporate Giants #14 Impunity for US War Criminals #16 No Hard Evidence Connecting Bin Laden to 9/11 #20 Terror Act Against Animal Activists Anybody betting the farm there's going to be a US election next year, or even another coup in drag like the last two? Quite a lot of people seem to be doubting it. Best Keith ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] Fwd: Re: Back Door Install - Probably Not but...
Another good reason to switch to Linux Indeed. Did microsoft really think they could get away with this? I'm told by some friends that after cracking the cryptoAPIs, initial dissasembly and poking around a bit... M$ made some network and authentication related changes in .381... that could really screw someone if the government or microsoft or whatever decided to install a backdoor, rootkit, logger, whatever. XP users are in a really sorry position. F*** you, M$. - Catch up on fall's hot new shows on Yahoo! TV. Watch previews, get listings, and more! -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20070915/c72285c7/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] President Bush to veto ban on mercury in flu vaccines
to be pumped full of the stuff on a regular basis. Dr Haley has also pointed out that it is also well known by any good biochemist that thimerosal and aluminum react dangerously when combined together. Given that Aluminum is a compound added to many vaccines as a catalyst you would think the government would have heeded this warning, yet it has still done nothing. Despite the continued reports doubting the link between Thimerosal and autism, more studies have continued to verify the link. As reported in the Capitol Times recently: A study done at the University of Washington in 2006 showed that baby primates exposed to injected thimerosal (50 percent mercury), at a rate equal to the 1990s childhood vaccine schedule, retained twice as much inorganic mercury in their brains as primates exposed to equal amounts of ingested methylmercury. We know from autometallographic determination that inorganic mercury present in the brain, following the dealkylation of organic mercury, is the toxic agent responsible for changes in the microglial population and leads to neuroinflammation. In other words thimerosal, inorganic mercury, leads to neuroinflammatory disease which is proven to be the underlying medical condition of autism. Furthermore In a study done at the University of Arkansas last year, autistic children were found to have significantly lower levels of the antioxidant glutathione. Glutathione is the major antioxidant needed for the elimination of mercury at the cellular level. Moreover, Professor Philippe Grandjean, from Harvard University and the University of Southern Denmark, considered the foremost scientific authority on the development of children's brains, has recently claimed that the average human IQ is plummeting primarily due to IQ points in the population being chemically destroyed via low level mercury exposure in children. The links between the ingestion of mercury and neurological breakdown are clear and proven. Professors all over the world are telling us outright that it is literally destroying people's brains. Even if you choose to believe, in the face of all the evidence, that the links are still somewhat questionable, the solution is still obvious. GET IT OUT OF THE VACCINES NOW. Safe Minds also point out that according to the EPA, one in every six women of childbearing age already has blood levels of mercury high enough to cause neurological damage to their unborn children due to environmental exposures alone. Injecting even more mercury into the bodies of pregnant women, infants and children when it is not a necessary component of vaccines is just bad medicine, said Lyn Redwood, president of Safe Minds and parent of a mercury-injured child. It defies logic that a flu vaccine must be disposed of as a hazardous waste if it is not used, but somehow injecting the same mercury-containing vaccine into a baby is safe. Yes it defies logic to someone who believes in the unabated progression of the entirety of the human race, however, to an elite devoid of all morality and interested only in the endgame pursuit of their own biological, spiritual and financial monopoly over the whole planet, it makes perfect sense. Related Video: Mercury, Autism and the Global Vaccine Agenda Vaccine Data Page: Vaccines The Deadly Cure http://users.tpg.com.au/petander/vaccines.deadlycure.htm ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ - Don't let your dream ride pass you by.Make it a reality with Yahoo! Autos. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20070915/2dd28e8a/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] Testimony of The Tortured
See: http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein -- http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/13/3816/ Published on Thursday, September 13, 2007 by CommonDreams.org Testimony of The Tortured by Jeremy Scahill When President Bush dispatched the neoconservative terror expert Paul Bremer to Baghdad in the summer of 2003, it took the former staffer to Henry Kissinger just two weeks to boldly declare that Iraq was open for business. Naomi Klein, who traveled to Iraq during Bremer's one year stint in the country, writes in The Shock Doctrine: Overnight, Iraq went from being one of the most isolated countries in the world, sealed off from the most basic trade by strict UN sanctions, to becoming the widest-open market anywhere. Bremer swiftly set about wiping Iraq clean and applying Milton Friedman's radical economic formula in the Arab world, a region Klein calls the last holdout for this neoliberal crusade. This, Klein writes, would come in the form of mass privatization, complete free trade, a 15% flat tax and a dramatically downsized government. As Klein says, it was an anti-Marshall Plan. And while it appeared early on in Bremer's tenure that the neoconservatives were winning, it didn't take long for the temporary euphoria of life without Saddam to be overcome by a collective Iraqi rage at the US agenda. Even US allies like the interim trade minister, Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi, declared Iraqis were sick and tired of being the subjects of experiments. There have been enough shocks to the system, so we don't need this shock therapy in the economy. This radical economic agenda, combined with the disastrous de-Baathification policy, which not only resulted in tens of thousands of state workers losing their jobs overnight, but also some 250,000 Iraqi soldiers, meant that the Bremer agenda would just as radically give rise to a widespread Iraqi resistance to the occupation, the likes of which the cake walk theory promoters could never have envisioned. As the situation on the ground rapidly deteriorated, the job of keeping alive Bremer, the most hated man in Iraq, was not given to the US military, but rather was awarded - through a no-bid $27m contract - to the politically-connected mercenary firm, Blackwater USA, whose owner, Erik Prince, is a major donor to the political campaigns of President Bush and his allies, as well as to the core groups that make up the radical religious right in America. As Bremer opened Iraq up for business, his own life would be placed in the all-powerful hands of the free market. If Blackwater loses a principal [like Bremer], they're out of business, aren't they? asked Colonel Thomas Hammes, the US military official in charge of building a new Iraqi military after Bremer disbanded the old one. Can you imagine being Blackwater, trying to sell your next contract, saying, 'Well, we did pretty well in Iraq for about four months, and then he got killed.' Hammes, who said he himself was run off the road by Blackwater mercenaries, said Blackwater made enemies everywhere, but added, they were doing their job, exactly what they were paid to do in the way they were paid to do it. It was this period, as Bremer ran around Iraq with his Blackwater mercenaries destroying the economy, that began the epic conflict that would unfold with a stunning degree of bloodshed and loss of life - overwhelmingly Iraqi. But you wouldn't get that from watching CNN or Fox News. Iraq has become one long series of car bombs and sectarian violence. There is no context and almost no mention of the on-the-ground policies of Bremer in that first year when the pundits discuss Iraq. Iraqis are simply people who want to blow each other up and murder their liberators. More importantly, the destruction of Iraq's economy and civil society - which began a full decade before the 2003 invasion with the 1991 Gulf War and a decade of devastating economic sanctions - and the ensuing carnage are almost never viewed through the lens of more than 40 years of US global policy that preceded the Iraq occupation and indeed laid the groundwork for the present reality. This is where the brilliance of Klein's analysis shines through. She thoroughly exposes the historical roots of the first year of the occupation and provides the most comprehensive analysis to date on how we got to where we are today. The Shock Doctrine is equal parts meticulously documented scholarship and old-fashioned reporting. Klein is indeed an embedded journalist, but never with the occupying armies - she has embedded with the poor and suffering, the victims of economic and literal shock. John Loyd charges Klein with promoting the conspiratorial version of history. No. What Klein has done is to take the testimony of the tortured and destroyed, mix it with a scathing confrontation of their oppressors (often using their own words)
[Biofuel] From the Bin Laden tape
Full transcript: http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/070907_bin_laden_transcript.pdf This version edited and condensed by Michael Dickinson http://www.counterpunch.org/dickinson09112007.html ... After examining the transcribed text of Osama's address, I found much of what he said made sense to me. After condensing and editing, this following version of the speech might make sense to you too - And your [America's] information media during the first years of the war lost its credibility and manifested itself as a tool of the colonialist empires, and its condition has often been worse than the condition of the media of the dictatorial regimes which march in the caravan of the single leader... Why are the leaders of the White House keen to start wars and wage them around the world, and make use of every possible opportunity through which they can reach this purpose, occasionally even creating justifications based on deception and blatant lies, as you saw in Iraq? In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the White House claimed at the time that it was a necessary and crucial war, and during it, Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. When Kennedy took over the presidency and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up for the White House and wanted to stop this unjust war, that angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefiting from its continuation. And so Kennedy was killed, and those corporations were the primary beneficiary from his killing. The war continued after that for approximately one decade. But after it became clear to you that it was an unjust and unnecessary war, you made one of your greatest mistakes, in that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its murderers, Rumsfeld. Even more incredible is that Bush picked him as Secretary of Defense in his first term after picking Cheney as his vice president, Powell as secretary of state and Armitage as Powell's deputy, despite their horrific and blood history of murdering humans. It was a clear signal that his administration - the administration of the generals- didn't have as its main concern the serving of humanity, but rather, was interested in bringing about new massacres. Yet in spite of that, you permitted Bush to complete his first term, and stranger still, chose him for a second term, which gave him a clear mandate from you - with your full knowledge and consent - to continue to murder our people in Iraq and Afghanistan. History shows the genocide and holocausts which took place at your hands: only a few specimens of Red Indians were spared, and just a few days ago, the Japanese observed the 62nd anniversary of the annihilation of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by your nuclear weapons. Then you claim to be innocent! It is impossible to humor any of you in the arrogance and indifference you show for the lives of humans outside America, or to humor your leaders in their lying, as the entire world knows they have the lion's share of that. Not taking past war criminals to account led to them repeating that crime of killing humanity without right and waging this unjust war in Mesopotamia. This war was entirely unnecessary, as testified to by your own reports. Among the most capable of those from your own side who speak to you on this topic is Noam Chomsky, who spoke sober words of advice prior to the war, but the leader of Texas doesn't like those who give advice. The entire world came out in unprecedented demonstrations to warn against waging the war and describe its true nature in eloquent terms like no to spilling red blood for black oil, yet he paid them no heed. It is time for humankind to know that talk of 'the rights of man' and 'freedom' are lies produced by the White House and its allies in Europe to deceive humans, take control of their destinies and subjugate them. Among the things which catch the eye of the repercussions of your unjust war against Iraq is the failure of your democratic system, despite it raising of the slogans of 'justice, liberty, equality and humanitarianism'. It has not only failed to achieve these things, it has actually destroyed these and other concepts with its weapons - especially in Iraq and Afghanistan- in a brazen fashion, to replace them with fear, destruction, killing, hunger, illness, displacement and more than a million orphans in Baghdad alone, not to mention hundreds of thousands of widows. Americans statistics speak of the killing of more than 650,000 of the people of Iraq as a result of the war and its repercussions. People of America: the people of the world have recently come to know that, after several years of the tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they
[Biofuel] Why failure is the new face of success
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/s tory/0,,2167226,00.html Why failure is the new face of success It may have been the military that invaded but, with Iraq completely dismantled, the reconstruction was to be the preserve of US corporations ... Thus was born 'disaster capitalism', where oil companies profit from a broken country and private security firms grow rich on political chaos, says Naomi Klein in this final extract from her new book Wednesday September 12, 2007 The Guardian On my flight leaving Baghdad, every seat was filled by a foreign contractor fleeing the violence. It was April 2004, and both Falluja and Najaf were under siege; 1,500 contractors pulled out of Iraq that week alone. Many more would follow. At the time, I was convinced that we were seeing the first full-blown defeat of the corporatist crusade. Iraq had been blasted with every shock weapon short of a nuclear bomb, and yet nothing could subdue this country. The experiment, clearly, had failed. Now I am not sure. On one level, there is no question that parts of the project were a disaster. US chief envoy Paul Bremer was sent to Iraq to build a corporate utopia; instead, Iraq became a ghoulish dystopia where going to a simple business meeting could get you lynched, burned alive or beheaded. By May 2007, more than 900 contractors had been reported killed and more than 12,000 wounded in battle or injured on the job, according to a New York Times analysis. The investors Bremer had done so much to attract had never showed up - neither HSBC, nor Procter Gamble, which put its joint venture on hold, as did General Motors. New Bridge Strategies, the company that had gushed about how a Wal-Mart could take over the country, conceded that McDonald's is not opening any time soon. Bechtel's reconstruction contracts did not roll easily into long-term contracts to run the water and electricity systems. And by late 2006, the privatised reconstruction efforts that were at the centre of the anti-Marshall Plan [by which western corporations would remake Iraq in their own image rather than help Iraqis rebuild their own economy, as the US did in Germany after the second world war], had almost all been abandoned. And some rather dramatic policy reversals were in evidence. Stuart Bowen, US special inspector general for the reconstruction of Iraq, reported that in the few cases where contracts were awarded directly to Iraqi firms, it was more efficient and cheaper. And it has energised the economy because it puts the Iraqis to work. It turns out that funding Iraqis to rebuild their own country is more efficient than hiring lumbering multinationals who don't know the country or the language, surround themselves with $900- a-day mercenaries and spend as much as 55% of their contract budgets on overhead. Jon C Bowersox, who worked as the health adviser at the US embassy in Baghdad, offered this radical observation: the problem with Iraq's reconstruction, he said, was its desire to build everything from scratch. We could have gone in and done low-cost rehabs, and not tried to transform their health-care system in two years. An even more dramatic about-turn came from the Pentagon. In December 2006, it announced a new project to get Iraq's state-owned factories up and running - the same ones that Bremer had refused to supply with emergency generators because they were Stalinist throwbacks. Now the Pentagon realised that instead of buying cement and machine parts from Jordan and Kuwait, it could be purchasing them from languishing Iraqi factories, putting tens of thousands to work and sending revenue to surrounding communities. Paul Brinkley, US deputy under-secretary of defense for business transformation in Iraq, said, We've looked at some of these factories more closely and found they aren't quite the rundown Soviet-era enterprises we thought they were, though he did admit that some of his colleagues had begun calling him a Stalinist. Lieutenant General Peter W Chiarelli, the top US field commander in Iraq, explained that we need to put the angry young men to work A relatively small decrease in unemployment would have a very serious effect on the level of sectarian killing going on. He couldn't help adding, I find it unbelievable after four years that we haven't come to that realisation ...To me, it's huge. It's as important as just about any other part of the campaign plan. Do these about-turns signal the death of disaster capitalism? Hardly. By the time US officials came to the realisation that they didn't need to rebuild a shiny new country from scratch, that it was more important to provide Iraqis with jobs and for their industry to share in the billions raised for reconstruction, the money that would have financed such an undertaking had already been spent. Meanwhile, in the midst of the wave of neo-Keynesian epiphanies, Iraq was hit
[Biofuel] America's Deadly Shock Doctrine in Iraq
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/62525/ America's Deadly Shock Doctrine in Iraq By Naomi Klein, Henry Holt Posted on September 14, 2007, Printed on September 14, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/62525/ The following is an excerpt from Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Henry Holt, 2007) and first appeared in the UK Guardian (read other excerpts here and here). The video to the right is a short documentary explaining the thesis of Klein's book. Read more about the documentary here. When the Canadian citizen Maher Arar was grabbed by US agents at JFK airport in 2002 and taken to Syria, a victim of extraordinary rendition, his interrogators engaged in a tried-and-tested torture technique. They put me on a chair, and one of the men started asking me questions ... If I did not answer quickly enough, he would point to a metal chair in the corner and ask, 'Do you want me to use this?' I was terrified, and I did not want to be tortured. I would say anything to avoid torture. The technique Arar was being subjected to is known as the showing of the instruments, or, in US military lingo, fear up. Torturers know that one of their most potent weapons is the prisoner's own imagination -- often just showing fearsome instruments is more effective than using them. As the day of the invasion of Iraq drew closer, US news media outlets were conscripted by the Pentagon to fear up Iraq. They're calling it 'A-Day', began a report on CBS News that aired two months before the war began. A as in airstrikes so devastating they would leave Saddam's soldiers unable or unwilling to fight. Viewers were introduced to Harlan Ullman, an author of the Shock and Awe doctrine, who explained that you have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes. The anchor, Dan Rather, ended the telecast with a disclaimer: We assure you this report contains no information that the Defense Department thinks could help the Iraqi military. He could have gone further: the report, like so many others in this period, was an integral part of the Department of Defense's strategy -- fear up. Iraqis, who picked up the terrifying reports on contraband satellites or in phone calls from relatives abroad, spent months imagining the horrors of Shock and Awe. The phrase itself became a potent psychological weapon. Would it be worse than 1991? If the Americans really thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, would they launch a nuclear attack? One answer was provided a week before the invasion. The Pentagon invited Washington's military press corps on a special field trip to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida to witness the testing of the Moab, which officially stands for Massive Ordnance Air Blast, but which everyone in the military calls the Mother of All Bombs. At 21,000lb, it is the largest non-nuclear explosive ever built, able to create, in the words of CNN's Jamie McIntyre, a 10,000ft-high mushroom-like cloud that looks and feels like a nuclear weapon. In his report, McIntyre said that even if it was never used, the bomb's very existence could still pack a psychological wallop -- a tacit acknowledgement of the role he himself was playing in delivering that wallop. Like prisoners in interrogation cells, Iraqis were being shown the instruments. The goal is to have the capabilities of the coalition so clear and so obvious that there's an enormous disincentive for the Iraqi military to fight, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained on the same programme. When the war began, the residents of Baghdad were subjected to sensory deprivation on a mass scale. One by one, the city's sensory inputs were cut off; the ears were the first to go. On the night of March 28 2003, as US troops drew closer to Baghdad, the ministry of communication was bombed and set ablaze, as were four Baghdad telephone exchanges, with massive bunker-busters, cutting off millions of phones across the city. The targeting of the phone exchanges continued -- 12 in total -- until, by April 2, there was barely a phone working in all of Baghdad. During the same assault, television and radio transmitters were also hit, making it impossible for families in Baghdad, huddling in their homes, to pick up even a weak signal carrying news of what was going on outside their doors. Many Iraqis say that the shredding of their phone system was the most psychologically wrenching part of the air attack. The combination of hearing and feeling bombs going off everywhere while being unable to call a few blocks away to find out if loved ones were alive, or to reassure terrified relatives living abroad, was pure torment. Journalists based in Baghdad were swarmed by desperate local residents begging for a few moments with their satellite phones or pressing numbers into the reporters' hands along with pleas to call a brother or an
[Biofuel] Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse
http://www.counterpunch.org/boal09112007.html Iain Boal: September 11, 2007 Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Iain Boal in conversation with David Martinez Iain Boal is an Irish social historian of science and technics, associated with Retort, a group of antinomian writers, artisans and artists based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is one of the authors of Retort's Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (2nd edn, Verso, 2006). This chapter is based on a conversation prompted by David Martinez, a San Francisco-based filmmaker and journalist, in late 2005. It also draws on material from a forthcoming book by Iain Boal, entitled The Long Theft: Episodes in the History of Enclosure. David Martinez: I'd like to talk with you about scarcity and catastrophe. On the talk shows there is even discussion of an impending collapse of society due to dwindling oil supply. The concepts of scarcity and collapse are hardly new, and obviously the invasion of Iraq brought the issue of oil into sharp focus. Can we start with the sacred cow of scarcity? Iain Boal: Sure. With respect to oil, we should begin with the observation that the general problem for the petro-barons has always been glut, or to put it another way, how to keep oil scarce. They've done a pretty good job, although all monopolies have to be measured against De Beers, who have the corner on diamonds. They are the world's masters at constructing scarcity, in this case, of crystalline carbon, which is actually rather common in the earth's crust. So one thing to make clear is that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is not about absolute scarcity. For sure, the history of oil is complex, and the fluctuations in the supply of oil have an extraordinarily complicated relation to price, demand, and reserves. But in order to understand scarcity - whether of oil in particular or of commodities under capitalism in general - you have to look at the discourses of scarcity and of poverty. And that means you have to look at the historical moment of the institutionalizing of economics - defined in the textbooks as the study of choice under scarcity - as the dominant way of talking about the world, and the relation of these to capitalist modernity. And that story is indeed interesting. In order to understand scarcity as a sacred cow, we have to go back to the Reverend Thomas Malthus. Because, no question, we are living in a Malthusian world. By that I mean that Malthus' way of framing the issue of human welfare has triumphed. And I think it's especially important for the Left to understand this. Particularly those who got drawn into politics through concern about the environment, who count themselves as green. Scratch an environmentalist and probably you'll find a Malthusian. What do I mean by that? What is it to be Malthusian? Well, it's to subscribe to the view that the fundamental problems humanity faces have their roots in the scarcity of the resources that sustain life, because the world is finite and we are exhausting those resources and also perhaps because we are polluting them. Notice how this mirrors the basic assumption of modern economics - choice under scarcity. In his notorious essay published in 1798, Malthus argued, or rather asserted, that population growth, especially of poor bastards, would inevitably outrun food supply, unless the propertyless were restrained from breeding. He advocated that poor people be crowded together in unhealthy housing, as a way of checking the growth of population. Remember, this is the world's very first economist we're talking about here. And don't forget that Malthus was in his own time consciously devising a counter-revolutionary science of economics and demography: his essay was a response to a famous best-seller by the utopian anarchist William Godwin, husband of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and father of Mary Shelley who later wrote Frankenstein as a warning against the hubris of (male) science. Godwin had written An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice during the euphoric period after the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and the overthrow of the French monarchy. Godwin's optimistic, atheist, rationalism was born of the revolutionary events happening across the Channel - Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, in the indelible line of Wordsworth. But as the counter-revolution set in, Thomas Malthus felt emboldened to compose his Essay on the Principle of Population as an explicit response to Godwin's vision of an ample life for all. Malthus invented an iron law of nature intended, rhetorically, to put a damper on Godwin and the perfectibilians, and in practical political terms to discourage idling and illegitimacy and to cut away the existing welfare system which was a safety net for the poor. DM: So help us understand Thomas Malthus. IB: Malthus was born into a well-off family in late 18th
[Biofuel] The Age of Disaster Capitalism
http://books.guardian.co.uk/shockdoctrine/story/0,,2165953,00.html Monday, September 10, 2007 by The Guardian/UK The Age of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein In the days after 9/11, America's firefighters, nurses and teachers were hailed as the country's heroes. But President Bush's embracing of the public sector didn't last long. As the dust settled on the twin towers, the White House launched an entirely new economy, based on security - with the belief that only private firms could meet the challenge. In this exclusive extract from her new book, Naomi Klein reports on those who see a profitable prospect in a grim future The following is excerpted from Naomi Klein's recently published book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism: As George Bush and his cabinet took up their posts in January 2001, the need for new sources of growth for US corporations was an urgent matter. With the tech bubble now officially popped and the DowJones tumbling 824 points in their first two and half months in office, they found themselves staring in the face of a serious economic downturn. John Maynard Keynes had argued that governments should spend their way out of recessions, providing economic stimulus with public works. Bush's solution was for the government to deconstruct itself - hacking off great chunks of the public wealth and feeding them to corporate America, in the form of tax cuts on the one hand and lucrative contracts on the other. Bush's budget director, the think-tank ideologue Mitch Daniels, pronounced: The general idea - that the business of government is not to provide services, but to make sure that they are provided - seems self-evident to me. That assessment included disaster response. Joseph Allbaugh, the Republican party operative whom Bush put in charge of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) - the body responsible for responding to disasters, including terrorist attacks - described his new place of work as an oversized entitlement programme.Then came 9/11, and all of a sudden having a government whose central mission was self-immolation did not seem like a very good idea. With a frightened population wanting protection from a strong, solid government, the attacks could well have put an end to Bush's project of hollowing out government just as it was beginning. For a while, that even seemed to be the case.September 11 has changed everything, said Ed Feulner, old friend of Milton Friedman, the guru of unfettered capitalism and president of the Heritage Foundation, 10 days after the attack, making him one of the first to utter the fateful phrase. Many naturally assumed that part of that change would be a re-evaluation of the radical anti-state agenda that Feulner and his ideological allies had been pushing for three decades, at home and around the world. After all, the nature of the September 11 security failures exposed the results of more than 20 years of chipping away at the public sector and outsourcing government functions to profit-driven corporations. Much as the flooding of New Orleans exposed the rotting condition of public infrastructure, the attacks pulled back the curtain on a state that had been allowed to grow dangerously weak: radio communications for the New York City police and firefighters broke down in the middle of the rescue operation, air-traffic controllers didn't notice the off-course planes in time, and the attackers had passed through airport security checkpoints staffed by contract workers, some of whom earned less than their counterparts at the food court. The first major victory of the Friedmanite counter-revolution in the United States had been Ronald Reagan's attack on the air-traffic controllers' union and his deregulation of the airlines. Twenty years later, the entire air transit system had been privatised, deregulated and downsized, with the vast majority of airport security work performed by underpaid, poorly trained, non-union contractors. After the attacks, the inspector general of the department of transportation testified that the airlines, which were responsible for security on their flights, had skimped significantly to keep costs down. On September 10, as long as flights were cheap and plentiful, none of that seemed to matter. But on September 12, putting $6-an-hour contract workers in charge of airport security seemed reckless. Then, in October, envelopes with white powder were sent to lawmakers and journalists, spreading panic about the possibility of a major anthrax outbreak. Once again, 90s privatisation looked very different in this new light: why did a private lab have the exclusive right to produce the vaccine against anthrax? Had the federal government signed away its responsibility to protect the public from a major public health emergency? Furthermore, if it was true, as media reports kept claiming, that anthrax, smallpox and other deadly agents could be
[Biofuel] Fwd: Back Door Install - Probably Not but...
in the past few months, the nine executables in Windows\System32 will either show an earlier version number, 7.0.6000.374, or the stealth patch: 7.0.6000.381. (The version numbers can be seen by right-clicking a file and choosing Properties. In XP, click the Version tab and then select File Version. In Vista, click the Details tab.) In addition, PCs that received the update will have new executables in subfolders named 7.0.6000.381 under the following folders: c:\Windows\System32\SoftwareDistribution\Setup\ServiceStartup\wups.dll c:\Windows\System32\SoftwareDistribution\Setup\ServiceStartup\wups2.dll Users can also verify whether patching occurred by checking Windows' Event Log: Step 1. In XP, click Start, Run. Step 2. Type eventvwr.msc and press Enter. Step 3. In the tree pane on the left, select System. Step 4. The right pane displays events and several details about them. Event types such as Installation are labeled in the Category column. Windows Update Agent is the event typically listed in the Source column for system patches. On systems that were checked recently by Windows Secrets readers, the Event Log shows two installation events on Aug. 24. The files were stealth-updated in the early morning hours. (The time stamp will vary, of course, on machines that received the patch on other dates.) To investigate further, you can open the Event Log's properties for each event. Normally, when a Windows update event occurs, the properties dialog box shows an associated KB number, enabling you to find more information at Microsoft's Web site. Mysteriously, no KB number is given for the WU updates that began in August. The description merely reads, Installation Successful: Windows successfully installed the following update: Automatic Updates. No need to roll back the updated files Again, it's important to note that there's nothing harmful about the updated files themselves. There are no reports of software conflicts and no reason to remove the files (which WU apparently needs in order to access the latest patches). The only concern is the mechanism Microsoft is using to perform its patching, and how this mechanism might be used by the software giant in the future. I'd like to thank reader Angus Scott-Fleming for his help in researching this topic. He recommends that advanced Windows users monitor changes to their systems' Registry settings via a free program by Olivier Lombart called Tiny Watcher. Scott-Fleming will receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of his choice for sending in a comment we printed. I'll report further on this story when I'm able to find more information on the policies and techniques behind Windows Update's silent patches. Send me your tips on this subject via the Windows Secrets contact page. Scott Dunn is associate editor of the Windows Secrets Newsletter. He is also a contributing editor of PC World Magazine, where he has written a monthly column since 1992, and co-author of 101 Windows Tips Tricks (Peachpit) with Jesse Berst and Charles Bermant. - Shape Yahoo! in your own image. Join our Network Research Panel today! -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20070915/4d5c3deb/attachment.html -- next part -- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 4287 bytes Desc: not available Url : /pipermail/attachments/20070915/4d5c3deb/attachment.jpe ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] Fwd: Back Door Install - Probably Not but...
another good reason to use Linux. I suggest PCLinuxOS if anyone wants to dabble. (Bootable off CD/DVD, install if you like it.) regards Doug On Sunday 16 September 2007 06:32:13 am Kirk McLoren wrote: Back Door Install - Probably Not but... Microsoft updates Windows without users' consent http://windowssecrets.com/comp/070913 By Scott Dunn ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] UN Skeptical of Biofuel Price Hikes
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/09/13/ap4115047.html - Forbes.com Associated Press UN Skeptical of Biofuel Price Hikes By ARIEL DAVID 09.13.07, 1:05 PM ET ROME - A senior U.N. environmental official cautioned Thursday against claims that increasing demand for biofuels was resulting in higher grain prices, saying the linkage was only speculation. While further study is needed to understand the impact of biofuels on crop markets, it is unlikely that environmentally friendly biofuel crops are responsible for price increases of tortilla flour in Mexico or of pasta in Italy, said Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program. Global price fluctuations in the grain markets have always existed, although we are for some, like wheat, at historic highs at the moment, Steiner said at a news conference in Rome. It would be somewhat premature to say that pasta costs more because there is biofuel grown in other parts of the world. On the other hand, the increasingly violent weather caused by global warming does pose a real danger to crops and to food supplies, particularly for the world's poorest, Steiner said on the sidelines of a two-day national conference on climate change in Italy held at the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. We should ask ourselves: are we getting single-minded about the biofuels issue instead of looking at the full spectrum of issues? Also Thursday, Italian consumer groups called a strike against pasta and bread products to protest recent grain price increases. Additionally, in Brussels, the EU's top agricultural official called for increased production of wheat, oats and barley to counter world shortages. Fuels made of corn, palm oil and other plants have been hailed as a cleaner and cheaper energy source than the greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuels. But officials have been saying the rush for biofuels could have a downside. Over the summer, the United Nations issued a multi-agency report involving the U.N. Environment Program and others warning that the benefits of biofuels could be offset by environmental problems and increased prices for the hungry. Politicians have also blamed the shortages and high prices on biofuels, as well as on poor harvests in major producing regions and rising demand from industrializing nations such as India and China. There are speculative assumptions at the moment, Steiner told reporters. We are working together with our colleagues in different institutions to assess whether that linkage can really be made. Steiner also noted that farmers, particularly in the United States, are capable of increasing production to respond to a rise in demand. A different threat to supply and price stability comes from climate change and the expected increase in floods, droughts and other crop-damaging weather. It is clear that we will face a greater risk of variations in supply, which in turn will create much more price volatility, and that is a difficult consequence particularly for the poorest economies in the world, Steiner said. While voicing his caution on the link to prices, Steiner echoed widespread concerns that, if left unregulated, the push to plant new biofuel crops could hurt the environment. Regions like Europe, where the EU has pledged to replace 10 percent of transport fuel with biofuels by 2020, must ensure that imported biofuels are not grown by cutting down tropical rain forests or damaging other sensitive areas, Steiner said. Like with other products, there are sustainability criteria and the world is struggling at the moment to agree on those, he said. Copyright 2007 Associated Press ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
