By Melissa Johnson and Sander Hicks

Federal Appeals Court Judge Michael Chertoff’s ties to the financiers of the Sept. 11 attacks may prevent his confirmation as Homeland Security Chief.

According to a June 20, 2000 article in the The Record of Bergen County, New Jersey, Chertoff defended accused terrorist financier Dr. Magdy Elamir.

Elamir’s HMO was sued by the State of New Jersey to recoup $16.7 million in losses. At least $5.7 million went “to unknown parties… by means of wire transfers to bank accounts where the beneficial owner of the account is unknown,” according to the article.

Foreign intelligence reports given to then chairman of the House International Relations Committee Ben Gilman (R-New York) in 1998 accused Magdy Elamir of having “had financial ties with Osama bin Laden for years,” according to an Aug. 2, 2002 Dateline NBC broadcast.

In 1999, Magdy Elamir and brother Mohamed were named suspects in Operation Diamondback, an FBI/ATF undercover infiltration of Pakistani arms merchants who sought to arm Osama bin Laden with conventional and nuclear weapons, according to independent researcher and former New Jersey police officer Allan Duncan and taped transcripts with FBI informant Randy Glass.

Mohamed Elamir tried to purchase “small arms and ammunition” in a recorded telephone conversation with Glass, according to Dateline.

Dateline confirmed that Elamir and his corporations had paid at least $5,000 to Egyptian arms dealer Diaa Mohsen, who Elamir referred to on camera as a family friend. Moshen was sentenced to 30 months for his involvement in Operation Diamondback. However, Elamir was never convicted.

Duncan, who was hired by family members of the Sept. 11 victims to research government ties to the attacks, said the reason Magdy Elamir was never convicted was because he was never charged with a crime.

“By the time Operation Diamondback culminated in arrests in the summer of 2001, Michael Chertoff was the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the criminal division and Operation Diamondback would have fallen under his prevue since it was a criminal case and not a counterterrorism case,” Duncan said.

From 1990 to 1994, Chertoff was U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, during the period when the first attack on the World Trade Center took place.

Omar Abdel-Rahman preached at the Al Salam mosque and was later arrested for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, according to Dateline. Magdy Elamir was one of the Al Salam mosque’s financial supporters.

“The Jersey City area and particularly the Al Salam mosque were allowed to continue to be one of the major hubs of terrorist activity in the United States,” Duncan said.

In October 2001, Chertoff was appointed head of Operation Green Quest, a multi-agency initiative to target sources of funding for terrorist organizations, according to a U.S. Customs Service press release. Chertoff told the Associated Press on Oct. 25, 2001 that, “The lifeblood of terrorism is money, and if we cut the money we cut the blood supply.”

Chertoff served in the capacity of Assistant Attorney General of the criminal division at the Department of Justice from 2001 to 2003.

While acting in this position, Chertoff played a central role in formulating U.S. anti-terrorism policy — from increasing the FBI’s authority to conduct domestic surveillance at religious gatherings to the effort to secretly detain hundreds of Middle Easterners in the United States.

Chertoff was one of the chief architects of the Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act, also known as the International Money Laundering Abatement and Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001.

Chertoff was then nominated to the Third Circuit U.S Court of Appeals in June 2003. Though there is no formal career path for federal judges, it is common for appellate judges to have served as district judges prior to appointments, according to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

Despite having never served in the judiciary, Chertoff was made a federal judge whose jurisdiction includes Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the Virgin Islands.

After 19 months, President Bush nominated Chertoff to the position of Secretary of Homeland Security.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a government advocacy watchdog agency, has noticed Chertoff’s advancement from Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice to Secretary of Homeland Security nominee over the past four years.

“It’s an exceptional rise to power,” said Fitton.

Whether or not Chertoff had prior knowledge of Elamir’s alleged connections to Diaa Mohsen and bin Laden is unknown. Calls to Chertoff’s office were not returned.

Senate confirmations hearings for Chertoff have yet to be scheduled, according to the office of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

a new chapter in the long automotive heritage of American Motors Corporation began this week
when Juan Manuel Alvarez decided to commit suicide by parking his Jeep Cherokeee on the tracks of the Los Angeles Metrolink commuter train..

he then “changed his mind” and fled..
leaving the Jeep to derail the train…
killing 11 and wounding more than 200..

this “new feeling” came home to roost..
at a Jeep plant in Toledo today
click to learn more about the Jeep revolution!

Kevin Benderman is a Sergeant in the 3rd Infantry, who has declared himself a conscientious objector. He faces federal charges for abstention from a second deployment to Iraq.

I have come to the conclusion that the Creator does not want us to fight wars or to leave our brothers to die in hunger or disease for we have been given the things we need to provide all men on the planet what he needs to get by in the world. I have been lead to question some things about myself that I could change to better myself as a man.

Why should I not help another human being that needs what I can help them with? I have ignored that for far too long. I have turned my head when the homeless person asks for a little help. I have taken advantage of others when I should have been offering a hand up. I have done things in my life that I am not proud of. I have not lived a perfect life so I do not claim to have the authority to tell anyone else how to live his or hers.

Some people are asking me why is it now that I have come to this conclusion that I can no longer take part in an organization whose primary purpose is to kill. People are
asking how I can spend ten years in the military and now want to get out or how I can abandon the people that I have served with. I have to tell them that I have seen
the wrong way that I had been living and that I need to make some changes. Changes that will hopefully let me live a better life and that will allow me to be a better part of the human society.

I have learned that I have done things that are not to the benefit to mankind and that to continue in that vein would be detrimental to my growth as a human being. And now that I have seen the errors of my ways, wouldn’t it be prudent to change the way I conduct myself? Why should I continue with what I see as self-destructive behavior? And why should I continue a way of life that does nothing to alleviate some problems that have plagued humanity far too long? If a drug addict learns that the drugs are killing him then he is expected to stop using drugs. That leads me to ask the question, “If what I am doing is killing me spiritually, why should I continue?

Some people claim that war brings peace; if that is the case then why do we not have peace in the world? There have been wars as long as I have been alive and yet we
still have no true peace in the world. We are taught in school that we have had the American Revolution and the two world wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Grenada, Beirut, Persian Gulf War, and now the Operation Iraqi Freedom, and my point is, “When will it be enough?”

Do we want our grandkids to learn the “art” of war? Should we teach them to throw hand grenades and learn how to shoot center mass of a human being in order to kill
them? Or should we be teaching them to hit home runs and to catch fly balls? We should teach them to throw the winning pass at the super bowl, anything but how to kill other humans. There are many things that should be shown to our young besides the “honor” of killing.

War should be left behind us in the memories of history. The people of the world should practice it no more. Better results in peace could be realized if we were to reach out to our fellow man with an understanding instead of aligning them in our rifle sights. I know that this is a concept that will take time for people to understand, but isn’t it time to start trying?

We have recently observed the day that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and shouldn’t we remember his words and try to live them? “I have a dream that one day that all the children of the world can live together” That may not be the exact quote but I believe that is the essence of what he wanted to see in our world. When will we try to attain that goal?

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created
equal.’ I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”

Why can’t we take that view for peace in our country and expand it to the nations of the world? It made sense then and it makes sense now. ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.

And if is the case that all men are equal, why I am facing the possibility of seven years in Federal Prison because I do not want to kill another human being?

January 25, 2005

the scene is as “traditional” as a Norman Rockwell painting
a homeless wretch in the NYC subway..trying to stay warm.
trying to stay ALIVE
during a killer snowstorm by whatever means available
one person..needing shelter..needing support…
finding none..
(in fact probably dodging the ADDITIONAL threat of law enforcement)
starts a small fire for warmth
next thing you know..
two subway lines out of service
marooning hundreds of thousands of daily commuters
FOR YEARS to come..

no surprises

just CAUSE and EFFECT.

just like Sept.11th, 2001

excavated from A12 in the Washington Post (where the TRUTH goes to die)

Only One Outsider From International Mission May Assess Iraq Elections on Site

When 1 million Palestinians voted for a successor to Yasser Arafat, 800 international observers poured into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to monitor the polling. Former president Jimmy Carter and former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt led one team. A former French prime minister led another, and there were two U.S. congressional delegations.

When 8 million Afghans voted in October, at least 122 international observers from across Europe and Asia monitored the presidential election—and declared it an “orderly and transparent process.”

But in Iraq, where 14 million people are eligible to vote, the elections next week may have only one outsider from the hastily organized International Mission for Iraqi Elections to evaluate the balloting. If reluctant governments change their minds at the last minute about letting their officials go to Iraq, a handful of others may show up. But, even then, none is likely to tour polling stations or to be publicly identified, mission and U.S. officials said.

The violence in Iraq means that its elections will be the first among dozens of transitional elections over the past two decades—since democracy began to sweep through eastern Europe, the old Soviet Union, Latin America and Africa—(sorry..citizen x here..that last bit SLAYED me..democracy sweeping thru Akron would be NEWS!) -that will not have an international observer force touring polling stations to assess the vote’s credibility, election experts say.

There will be no neutral outside group deployed across Iraq to determine whether voters are impeded, ballot boxes are stuffed, any party tries to interfere with the process or votes are counted fairly. No congressional delegation will monitor the polls, and the European Union announced last week that it had declined an invitation from Iraq to send observers. The Carter Center, which has monitored more than 50 elections overseas, also decided not to send observers.

“That means you don’t have an independent voice that can really report credibly on the quality of the election—in a context where there are already extremely difficult circumstances and doubts about the process,” said David Carroll of the Carter Center, who was an observer in the Palestinian elections. Among those doubts are whether the insurgents will succeed in keeping people away from polling places with threats of violence and whether the minority Sunnis will participate in sufficient numbers for the balloting to be called successful.

Iraq’s escalating violence has forced the International Mission for Iraqi Elections to headquarter its operation outside Iraq—in neighboring Jordan—a fact the group is not keen to publicize because of fears it could be targeted there, too. And even then, fewer than two dozen election experts from Albania, Australia, Bangladesh, Britain, Canada, Ghana, Hungary, Indonesia, Mexico, Panama and Yemen will participate. Their limited mission will be to sift through data provided by Iraq to evaluate the elections, according to mission and U.S. officials.

“I applaud the [mission’s] effort, but if they’re not on site, they will not be credible in judging either the participation in or the results of Iraq’s election,” said Frederick D. Barton, a monitor or election trainer in Haiti, Poland and Ethiopia in the 1990s and now co-director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Iraq does have about 6,000 of its own first-time monitors culled from 150 organizations, but that figure is low—one for every 2,300 registered voters. The Palestinians had 21,000 observers—about one for every 50 voters. And Afghanistan had 5,300 observers, 22,000 party agents and 52,000 candidate agents.

The International Mission for Iraqi Elections was pulled together just last month to provide a stamp of international legitimacy. “The idea was that the elections would go ahead but there would be so much cynicism and doubt in the outside world that unless there was a credible and objective organization involved to evaluate it and provide expert opinion, even a relatively good election could be put in doubt,” said Les Campbell, an expert on the Middle East who is working on Iraq’s elections for the National Democratic Institute.

Now, with the international mission largely on the outskirts of the elections, the balloting is already facing criticism. “Any attempt to present the elections as valid is an attempt to fool the world,” Giulietto Chiesa, an Italian member of the European Parliament, told reporters after the EU decision not to send representatives to Iraq.

The international mission, chaired by Elections Canada chief Jean-Pierre Kingsley, says it can still provide an overview from outside by reviewing data on 10 issues provided by Iraq’s election commission. “There’s no doubt that an international presence does something,” Kingsley said in an interview.

“But our experts can look at the laws and tell us what is good or needs to be improved. We’ll weigh the voter registration and how it was done—and the system to handle complaints. We’ll look at the process of listing parties and access to the media and voter education,” he said. “We’ll have a good idea of how the elections went.”

But mission and U.S. officials describe the mission’s work with words such as “audit” and “assess” rather than “monitor” or “observe.”

Like most of the nations whose elections chiefs or officials are part of the new international mission, Canada has barred Canadians from going into Iraq—at least for now. Countries with representatives on the mission team—which is also supposed to “assess” the constitutional referendum in the fall and the elections in December for a permanent government—are reviewing the dangers daily to see whether other experts can be dispatched before the Jan. 30 vote, mission and U.S. officials say.

In the absence of outside observers, election experts are concerned that voter turnout may be used as a barometer of the elections’ credibility. “I hope we don’t resort to saying that in the U.S. we only get 15 percent in local elections, 35 percent in gubernatorial elections and 55 percent in presidential elections, and therefore even a low vote is credible,” Barton said. “This is not an honest standard in a country that finally gets a chance to vote on its future.”

citizen x here..did he say 55% turnout for national elections in the U.S.?..STOP..you’re gonna KILL me..these journalists are HILARIOUS!!!

An interview with Maude Barlow (reposted from MotherJones.com)

In 1995, a vice president of the World Bank famously declared that, as the wars of the 20th century were fought over oil, so the wars of the 21st would be fought over water. In the decade since, potable water, scarce even then, has become even more so thanks to pollution, industrial development in nations like China—and especially the process whereby giant firms like Vivendi, Suez and Bechtel increasingly buy up impoverished nations’ water supplies, taking sorely needed water and selling it at a profit, all with the blessing of transnational organizations like the World Bank and World Trade Organization.

As Maude Barlow explains, this process isn’t sustainable. Barlow is national chairperson of The Council of Canadians, a nonpartisan public watchdog group working to fight against global trends in privatization and deregulation, and co-founder of the organization’s Blue Planet Project. She’s also the co-author, with Tony Clarke, of Blue Gold, a 2002 international best-seller about the world’s growing water crisis. While in San Francisco recently, Barlow spoke with MotherJones.com about how governments are ceding control of their water supplies to the private sector and what can be done before the public’s water supply dries up for good.

MotherJones.com: How have international trade agreements encouraged the privatization and commercialization of the world’s water?

Maude Barlow: Water was included, as a good and later as an investment, in the very first trade agreement in the world, when Canada and the U.S. signed a free-trade agreement that later morphed into NAFTA. The GATT definition of a good includes water. There’s now negotiations to put water, as a service, into the General Agreement on Trade and Services, which is a proposed international agreement on services. So the World Trade Organization and NAFTA—and bilateral agreements, because water is also included in a lot of bilateral agreements—are ways to enforce a corporate discipline, if you will, over governments that want to maintain public control of their water. Basically, once you privatize it, it’s very, very hard to turn back. And once you’ve started the sale of commercial water, both the receiving country—if it’s in a trade agreement with you—and the corporations involved have inherent rights in these agreements that don’t exist if you don’t sign them.

MJ.com: Besides trade agreements, what other factors caused commercialization to grow so rapidly?

MB: Well, I think the reality of the scarcity and the pollution of the world’s surface water has just suddenly become real to people. And whereas 20 years ago you couldn’t imagine getting most of your water from bottles, it’s just become an accepted part of people’s lives now. On planes, in restaurants, everybody drinks bottled water; you carry it around in your pocket. So it came first from scarcity, people needing access to clean water in their lives. And then the view that it was an okay thing to start commodifying water and using it in this way. Of course, behind all this are the big corporations. They’ve been aggressively promoting and marketing their water as better, as cleaner, as purer, as safer—which it is not. And it is to their advantage to let the public systems of the world’s water deteriorate while they get to make huge amounts of money off people’s need for clean water.

MJ.com: Historically, how were corporations able to change the perception of water from a basic right to a commodity?

MB: This started with the privatization of municipal water services. It was encouraged when water was declared a commodity or a good in the trade agreements. It started to be considered and talked about as a good and a need—not a human right—by the World Water Council when it was founded in 1997. The World Water Council is basically the World Bank, the other regional development banks and the development agencies of the northern governments. It set itself up as a global high command of water existing for its own benefit, to commercialize and commodify water. They have a big forum every three years, where they invite governments to come and observe, and the governments pick up this language of water as a commodity, such thatgovernments really didn’t think about this language 10 or 20 years ago, now they’re getting together and saying, “There’s this U.N. millennium plan and we have to be helping the developing countries bring on water, and how do we do that?” They’re all buying into this commodification notion, which is all very new and has happened very quickly—and, I believe, has been driven by corporate interests. It’s important to remember that it’s a very small, incestuous circle—these water companies, the World Water Council, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the IMF. There’s a lot of money to be made from the commodification of water, and these people know that whoever controls water is going to be both very rich and very powerful.

MJ.com: So why do governments cede control to this privatization system instead of, say, selling their water to the public themselves?

MB: Really, the same reasons that governments have bought into the whole concept of neoliberalism. Governments that used to protect their citizens and provide them with health care and water services and education no longer are allowed to do that if they’re poor and owe a debt to the developed world. Through structural adjustment programs, the IMF and the World Bank basically forced developing countries to abandon those relationships with their people, whether it’s health care or energy or state enterprises, because the funding was going to be cut if they didn’t. It’s been to the advantage of the powerful in northern countries, who are more and more controlled by their own big-business communities, to adopt this language. So it didn’t start with water, but water just kind of fell in there when they started talking about everything as a commodity. When you start commodifying things like social services, energy, forests, fish and even air—because you’re now trading air-pollution credits and so on—it’s not a big step to say “why is water different?” One of the first questions I often get asked in hostile interviews is why water is different than forests or fish. And one of my answers is well, actually, we should be protecting our forests and fish, too. However, we can restock fish, we can find alternatives to energy, and we can even replant trees. But there’s only so much water, and the more we destroy, the less access we have to potable water and the more desperate the situation becomes.

MJ.com: How does third-world debt play into this conflict?

MB: Of course, if the third-world countries didn’t have a debt to the north—and as you know, they send more as debt payment to the north than we send them in trade and aid together—they would be in a position to start delivering not-for-profit services, including water, health care and other services. But as long as they remain in that desperate situation, having to pay even just the interest on the debt payment, they are totally at the mercy of the IMF, the World Bank, the United States, Canada and Europe. A few years ago, the World Bank was [mereley] encouraging water privatization, but now they’re saying it’s a condition of any aid that you privatize water, and we’re going to negotiate the agreement and tell you the company you’re going to use. So countries are forced to take the conditions under which they can get the money to deliver water to their people.

MJ.com: Would eliminating third-world debt necessarily solve this problem?

MB: It would be a huge step toward it, either canceling or at least seriously renegotiating the debt. If the first world was really interested in delivering water to the poor of the world, we would also have a tax on financial speculation. If the World Bank can afford to pay these great big water companies to come in and run a water service—because it’s their money; the companies aren’t investing—if they can afford to bring a private company in to do this, they can afford to train public-sector workers to deliver water on a not-for-profit basis.

I look at Japan and the Philippines. Japan has a highly skilled public workforce delivering clean water, on an island, to millions of people. Tokyo itself is nearly the population of Canada, so it’s amazing what they do. But the World Bank goes to the Philippines, so close to Japan, and says, “You’re going to have to take these private companies” instead of saying, “Let’s bring a bloc of these wonderful public-sector experts from Japan over and transfer this technology on a not-for-profit basis.” It would be cheaper. It would have a longer-lasting effect. It would mean water would get delivered to everyone on a not-for-profit basis, which means you could deliver it to way more people. And we could start to really move toward solving the world’s crisis. Then that extra money could go into rebuilding infrastructure, because 90 percent of all the wastewater in the developing world goes untreated into rivers and lakes and streams and wetlands. So the infrastructure to stop that pollution is desperately needed.

MJ.com: What are some examples of governments in the developing world that have tried to break free from this system?

MB: Well, Uruguay’s a good example. A country that just had an election, brought in a center-left government, and just had a vote Oct. 31 about their water. They voted two-thirds to say that water is a fundamental human right, which requires a constitutional amendment. Their government’s position now is that it’s required to deliver water on a not-for-profit basis, but they’ve got these corporations there. So this is going to be a really interesting test of what they can do. Will they kick the company out, as Bolivia did when they kicked Bechtel out? You get governments like that of South Africa, where when they amended the constitution after apartheid ended, they brought water in as a basic human right. But then they brought Suez [a private firm] in to deliver it, so it was only a human right if you could pay for it. I think the government there is under tremendous pressure now to reconcile their constitutional amendment that says it’s a basic right and the fact they were forced to bring in a for-profit company.

There are other governments, Suharto’s in Indonesia was one of them, that worked very closely with some private water companies to skim off money from the people the way the water companies did. There’s no question there’s collusion. But let’s face it, it’s often collusion that’s watched and condoned by the World Bank, by the American government, by our government in Canada. Certainly by the government of France, which promotes its water companies in the most outrageous venues and situations. So there’s no question that there’s sometimes a symbiotic relationship between corrupt governments, these companies and the World Bank.

MJ.com: We’ve talked about the developing world, but how much control do the governments of industrialized countries—the U.S., Canada, Europe—have over their own water supplies?

MB: Much less than they think they do. For one thing, the pollution is taking place at such an accelerated rate that we’re all mining our groundwater, and the actual water systems are being mined far faster than they can be replenished. Our prairies are going to be experiencing really deep drought, as are yours, within the next 10-20 years; a permanent kind of drought, so our scientists tell us. So it’s not just a so-called third-world problem. Confronted with this reality, our governments are starting to ask questions about who should have access to water and who should pay for it and all that. They’ve bought into the ideology of neoliberalism or economic globalization or market capitalism.

When you take a new problem—you always had all the air and water you needed; it was never a problem—and suddenly you’re confronted with a water-scarcity problem, and the thinking and ideology you already have starts to fit itself around this. So I don’t think it’s a big jump for governments in industrialized countries to start to see reasons to commodify and privatize water. And as soon as you take water out of its natural state—bidding on it, trading it for commercial purposes or selling it—it is then a commodity clearly defined under these trade agreements and that’s it—you’ve lost control over it. So governments in the developing world have been forced into privatization by the World Bank, regional development banks and the IMF. Countries in the northern, industrialized world are coming at it through another door. I’ve always said free trade is to the north what structural adjustment is to the south, and water is getting caught in that web.

MJ.com: Are there positive steps the industrialized nations could take at this stage that could then spread to the rest of the world?

MB: Absolutely. We’re calling in Canada for a national water act, which would outline the protections needed environmentally, really put limits on the use and abuse of our water from industry, remove water from the trade agreements and exempt water from all future trade agreements. We also believe that if we can get water defined as a human right—which it is, but if we can get it recognized—in some kind of binding treaty at the United Nations, it would be a strong challenge to the existing situation in these trade agreements.

It would be a very powerful tool for people to be able to say to their governments, “You’ve signed an agreement saying that water is our human right, so therefore you can’t charge us.” It’s not a semantic question, this human need or human right. If it’s a human need, it can be delivered by the private sector on a for-profit basis. If it’s a human right, that’s different. You can’t really charge for a human right; you can’t trade it or deny it to someone because they don’t have money. And we need laws at every level of government, from the most local to international, on the current abuse of water. All of us are going to have to change our relationship with water.

citizenx say:
have a Coke and a smile!

no more acting surprised people..eh?

FINALLY..someone relates the concepts of quantum perspective and causality to politics and culture
THE thesis of citizen x itself!!…BRAVO Paul!..a true wise guy!

Quantum physics points out that the way we observe the universe in this present moment literally evokes the universe that is observed. Our perception of the universe is a part of the universe that is happening through us that has an effect on the universe that we are observing. Quantum physics points out that it makes no sense whatsoever to talk of an objective universe separate or independent from the observer. To quote noted physicist John Wheeler “Useful as it is under everyday circumstances to say that the world exists ‘out there,’ independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld. There is a strange sense in which this is a participatory universe.”

In a variation of the classic “two-slit experiment,” which is the cornerstone of quantum physics, Wheeler has demonstrated in the “delayed choice experiment” that not only does our act of observation in this present moment effect the way the universe manifests in this present moment, but that the act of observation in this present moment actually has an effect on the past. This bit of quantum weirdness seems particularly relevant for our current times after the controversial presidential election of 2004.

Consensus reality, as embodied in the views of classical physics, describes the present as having a particular past. Quantum physics, on the other hand, because of its probabilistic nature enlarges the arena of history such that the past is an amalgam of all possible pasts that are compatible with the version of the present moment that we are currently experiencing. The quantum universe is one in which the past involves a wide range of possible pasts all co-existing in a state of unmanifest potential. Speaking in physics terms, by imagining the past to be a certain way, we literally collapse the infinite potentiality of the past’s wave function, and concretize the past as being something very particular. This is analogous to the quantum physicist’s question: is it a wave or a particle? And the answer, of course, is that it depends on how we are observing    

The quantum universe is one which pulsates in and out of the void multiple times every nano-second, endlessly recreating itself anew. Each moment brings with it a potentially new past, which we are the ‘builders’ of in the present moment. In this present moment right now there are endless possibilities, it is an infinitely textured moment in time seething with unmanifested potential. In the future, when we consider this multi-dimensional moment we are in now, we will probably focus our attention and only remember a certain slice or aspect of this very moment, solidifying it in time, and this will be our ‘memory’ of that seemingly past event. And yet, by the way we remember this present moment in the future will have an actual effect on the way that moment in the future manifests. So on the one hand, the way we contemplate the past has a creative effect on how the present moment manifests.

What Wheeler is pointing out through the delayed choice experiment, though, is that the past doesn’t actually exist in a solid and objective way that causes or determines our present moment experience like is imagined by classical physics. Rather, he is saying our situation is just the opposite. He is saying that by the way we observe in this present moment we actually reach back into time and create the past. It is not just the future that’s undetermined, but the past as well; just as there are ‘probable’ futures there are ‘probable’ pasts. Our present observations select one out of many possible quantum histories for the universe.

We have entranced ourselves and fallen under a self-created spell if we imagine that the past exists in a solid, objective way. To quote Wheeler “It is wrong to think of that past as ‘already existing’…..the past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present.” When we become convinced that the past exists in a solid way, we solidify it in our imagination as being that particular way, which will thereby create compelling evidence that proves the rightness of our point of view (that the past really is that way). When we imagine that the past is a particular way, for example, this conviction effects our present moment experience AS IF the past really was that way, which just confirms to us our conviction that the past REALLY IS that way, which just makes the past seem even more AS IF it really was that way, ad infinitum.

This is to fall into a self-created and infinitely self-confirming feedback loop that is synchronistic and atemporal in its operation and thereby has the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have unwittingly literally hypnotized ourselves by our own power of effecting reality by the way we observe it. Because of the limited and limiting way we view the past it seems convincingly solid and objectively existing in a way that it simply is not. The past is much more malleable than we have been imagining. For what really did happen in the past? For that matter, what is actually happening right now?

In a circular, non-linear and acausal feedback loop, the past effects us in this present moment, while at the same time, in this present moment we effect the past. The way we observe the past in this present moment actually effects the past which simultaneously effects us in this present moment in what I call a ‘synchronistic, cybernetic feedback loop.’ The doorway is the present moment, which is the point where our power to shape reality is to be found. In quantum physics the universe wasn’t created billions of years ago in the big bang but rather is being created right now by what Wheeler refers to as “genesis by observership.” The mystery of this universe doesn’t lie at some point way back in the past, but rather, right now, in this very living present moment.

This quantum perspective on the past arising or being conjured up out of and into the present moment collapses the sense of sequential time and linear causality. This points to the non-local nature of space and time, in that the past, present, and future completely interpenetrate and are inseparable from each other. In a bit of quantum weirdness, if we ask whether the universe really existed before we started looking at it, the answer we get from the universe is that it looks as if it existed before we started looking at it.

Quantum physics is describing what I call the physics of the dreamlike nature of reality. Like a mass shared dream, we are all literally moment by moment calling forth and collaboratively ‘dreaming up’ this very universe into materialization. And dreams, by their very nature don’t exist in a ‘flat-land’ where they are fixed in meaning, but are extremely multi-dimensional. When we contemplate the past in this very moment, it has the same ontological status of and no more reality than a dream we had last night. Just like this present moment, when we contemplate it tomorrow, will in that present moment have no more reality than a figment of our imagination. 

What actually did happen on November 2? Did George Bush win the election?  Or did he steal it? And if he stole it, is this criminal act something we can do nothing about? If this universe is like quantum physics describes, then we are only not able to do anything about it because of our own self-imposed limitations and a failure of our imagination in this very moment. If even some of the overwhelming evidence that Bush stole the election is true, can we step into a universe in this very moment in which we have the power to do something about it? Or is the past written in stone? Quantum physics points out that this is a participatory universe in which the power to change reality is literally in our hands at every moment and that the choice is truly ours. Let us not get fooled into giving away our power by the source of our real power, namely, the reality-creating function of our own sacred imagination.

Paul Levy is a spiritually-informed political activist. Please visit his website at www.awakeninthedream.com, where his article “The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis” is available.

© 2004 Paul Levy

DONT MESS WITH MOTHER NATURE!

SAVANNAH, Georgia (AP) — A mechanic with nine years in the Army, including a role in the assault on Baghdad, has refused to return to Iraq, claiming “you just don’t know how bad it is.”

Sgt. Kevin Benderman, 40, said he became morally opposed to war after seeing it firsthand during his first Iraq tour. Now he faces a possible court-martial after failing to deploy Friday with his unit.

read Sgt.Bendermans letter to george w bush

“I told them that I refused deployment because I just couldn’t go back over there,” Benderman said Wednesday. “If I’m going to sit up there and tell everyone that I do not believe in war, why would I go back to a war zone?”

Lt. Col. Cliff Kent, a Fort Stewart spokesman, said Benderman was being considered absent without leave because he had orders to deploy to Iraq while the Army processed his conscientious objector claim.

“He was AWOL from the unit’s movement,” Kent said. “Beginning the application process for conscientious objection does not preclude you from deploying.”

Benderman has been reassigned to a rear detachment unit at Fort Stewart while his case is processed, Kent said. Kent said the Army has not decided whether to bring charges against him.

Gaining objector status is a time-consuming process for soldiers, requiring meetings with counselors and a chaplain with lengthy paperwork reviewed far up the chain of command. Under military law, a person must be opposed to war in all forms to be considered a conscientious objector.

Listen to an interview with Kevin and his wife Monica about Kevin’s experience in Iraq and his decision not to return.

“If a person said, `I’m not opposed to war, but I’m opposed to the Iraq war,’ they would not qualify,” said Louis Hiken, an attorney with the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild.

Filing an objector claim does not prevent the Army from prosecuting soldiers for disobeying orders.

In May, a Fort Stewart court-martial sentenced Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia of the Florida National Guard to a year in prison for desertion despite his pending objector application. Mejia filed his claim after refusing to return to his unit in Iraq while home on leave.

In December, a soldier who re-enlisted with the Marines after becoming a Seventh-Day Adventist was jailed for refusing to pick up a gun. Cpl. Joel D. Klimkewicz, 24, of Birch Run, Michigan, told his superiors he was a conscientious objector and cited his new religious status. It was rejected in March 2004.

Benderman served in Iraq from March to September 2003 with the 4th Infantry Division based at Fort Hood, Texas. When he later transferred to the 3rd Infantry at Fort Stewart, Benderman said, he was already questioning the morality of the destruction he had witnessed.

“You can sit around your house and discuss this thing in abstract terms, but until you see and experience it for yourself, you just don’t know how bad it is,” he said. “How is it an honorable thing to teach a kid how to look through the sights of a rifle and kill another human being? War is the ultimate in violence and it is indiscriminate.”

Asked why he waited until a week before his unit deployed to file notice of his objector claim, Benderman said, “It takes time for you to make sure that you 100 percent want to do things. This is not something you make a snap judgment on.”

citizen x apropos quote of the day:

“For what purpose, then, did God endow all men with reason and free will if, in spite of this, we are obliged to render blind obedience?”
 
-Franz Jagerstatter
Conscientious Objector under the Third Reich
(1907-1943) 

the brits just go apeshit for bad taste costumes and characatures don’t they?
BUT..
was this just a naiive young man acting out?

citizen x feels that Prince Harrys choice of >afrika corps< costume
for a fancy dress party, the theme of which was “colonials and natives”
(perhaps THAT was the faux pas?) was in fact PERFECT and no mistake..
and furthermore..
represents this new generations unflinching recognition of historical fact.

the touchy subject of royal links with Nazi Germany

Linked by blood but twice divided by war, the royal family’s relationship with Germany, its people and its troubled history has long been a sensitive one. The photograph of Prince Harry wearing a swastika has echoes of one particularly disturbing incident involving the family, one which seared itself into the British collective memory – that of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor meeting Adolf Hitler in 1937.

The ex-King Edward VIII and his wife were known sympathisers of the Nazis and their policies, a feeling shared by a large number of British aristocrats who admired the way Hitler was dealing with the Communists.

The Nazis regarded the duke, who had abdicated over his affair with divorced American Wallis Simpson, as a potential ally and a possible head of state for a subjugated Britain.

But his flirting with Hitler’s regime threatened to undermine years of work by the royal family to distance themselves from their German roots.

The modern royal family was founded in 1840 when Queen Victoria married Albert of Saxe-Coburg, a Germany duchy, creating The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Such was the ill-feeling towards all things German during the First World War that in 1917 Victoria’s grandson King George V – an honorary Field Marshal in the German army – thought it prudent to renounce the German name and titles and adopt that of Windsor.

It was a masterful PR exercise, replacing the Teutonic surname with that of a quintessentially home counties town.

His son Edward VIII once declared: “There is not one drop of blood in my veins that is not German.” Both he and George VI were bilingual in German and English.

Throughout the Twenties and Thirties, the royals were steadfastly opposed to conflict with their ancestral fatherland. Indeed George V’s wife Queen Mary always maintained that Britain had “backed the wrong horse” in 1914.

His son’s meeting with Hitler threatened irrevocably to undermine the royal family’s support among their subjects.

It took the Queen Mother’s steadfastness in the face of German bombs and her visit to the East End during the Blitz to restore public faith in the family.

The Windsors’ links with Germany remained a touchy subject however. There was embarrassment in the Eighties when Princess Michael of Kent’s father, Baron Gunther von Reibnitz, was exposed as a former Nazi party member and SS officer.

Less well known is the fact that one of Prince Philip’s sisters, Sophie, was married to Christopher of Hesse-Cassel, an SS colonel who named his eldest son Karl Adolf in Hitler’s honour. Indeed, all four of Philip’s sisters married high-ranking Germans.

The prospect of the former Nazis and Nazi sympathisers attending George’s wedding to the Queen meant he was allowed to invite only two guests.

citizen x say:
ROYALIST = RACIALIST
a’ight?

CERES — It started as a seemingly simple and somewhat routine call Sunday night: a man was acting strangely at a liquor store.

Moments later, a burst of gunfire echoed through the normally quiet neighborhood. One Ceres police officer lay dying, another was critically wounded, and law enforcement was storming the scene by land and air.

Helicopters hovered above as police ordered people to go inside, lock their doors and turn off the lights.

Three hours later, another gun battle erupted, this one ending in the death of a 19-year-old Marine from Modesto,suspected of shooting the two officers.

Altogether, police and neighbors said Monday, dozens of bullets flew, shattering windows and piercing vehicles as residents hunkered down in terror.
“Brap-brap-brap-brap-brap,” said Anthony John Phillips, a 15-year-old boy who lives a block away, trying to describe the rapid gunfire. “I was scared. It was crazy.”

In the end:
Ceres police Sgt. Howard Stevenson, 39, was dead.
Andres Raya, who police say seemed determined to die rather than return to Iraq, was dead.
Ceres police officer Sam Ryno, 50, was hospitalized with multiple gunshot wounds. He was in critical condition Monday, and is expected to recover.

Monday, detectives from several law enforcement agencies — from the Ceres police to the FBI — sifted through events leading to Sunday’s carnage.

Officers were still struggling to figure out what drove Raya to fire on officers.

“It was premeditated, planned, an ambush,” Ceres Police Chief Art de Werk said. “It was a suicide by cop.”

De Werk said investigators are not ruling out other motives or accomplices, but believe that Raya, a Marine who had served seven months in Iraq, was concerned about the possibility of going back into combat.

Raya returned to the United States in September and recently visited his family in Modesto.

Julia Cortez Raya said Monday that her son served in Fallujah: “He came back different.”

Raya told family members he did not want to return to Iraq. But his father said the family believed by the end of his holiday visit, Raya had decided to make the best of the 2½ years he had left in the Marines.

He rejoined his unit at Camp Pendleton on Jan. 2. Sheriff’s Lt. Bill Heyne said Raya was last seen at Camp Pendleton Saturday.

He reportedly told fellow soldiers he was going to get a quick bite to eat. Instead, he showed up in Ceres 24 hours later, armed with an SKS assault rifle. The rifle is a Chinese version of the weapon that Raya was trained to use in the Marines, Heyne said.

Video cameras catch carnage

The first moments of the three-hour drama were caught by video cameras at George’s Liquors, 2125 Caswell Ave., near Central Avenue.

The tape shows Raya firing one round into the pavement of the store’s parking lot. He then walks into the store.

According to police, Raya told the clerk that he had just been shot at and asked the clerk to call 911, Heyne said.

Steven Marchant, working at the store Sunday night, said he was standing in front of the store when he saw Raya walking toward him from across the street about 8 p.m. Raya was wearing a poncho and yelling “how much he hated the world,” Marchant said.

Marchant recognized Raya as a friend of the owner’s brother and a regular customer.

Marchant went into the store when Raya stopped at the front door and asked him to call police.

Another employee tried to calm Raya down. Then the employee realized Raya had a gun under the poncho. After Raya walked out, the employees locked the door and called police.

Raya waited outside, a surveillance videotape shows.

About 8:07 p.m., about two minutes after the call, Ryno and a police trainee pulled up into the parking lot of Jiro Tires Plus, a neighboring business that faces Central Avenue. The trainee’s name was not released.

As the two officers peered around the corner of a building to locate Raya, a third officer pulled into the same parking lot. Raya opened fire on all three, hitting Ryno — who had stepped out from behind the building — several times in the leg and once in the lower back.

Raya then rushed the trainee, firing several times but missing. The trainee and the third officer, whose name was not released, shot back.

Raya ducked around the corner of George’s. After a few seconds, he saw Stevenson pull up in front of the liquor store. Raya opened fire again, shooting through the window of a white car in the parking lot and hitting Stevenson.

He then ran out of view of the camera.

Stevenson, lying injured on the ground, was shot twice in the back of the head, Heyne said.

Witnesses: Raya appeared calm

“I was walking in my back yard to use my spa when I heard a horrible grinding noise,” said Norm Travis, whose home is on Glenwood Drive, around the corner from George’s.

“Then an alarm went off and there was a bunch of yelling and screaming and then another round of shots,” he said.

“We knew that it was an automatic weapon,” said his wife, Karen Travis.

Witnesses told police that after shooting the officers, Raya calmly walked east on Caswell and disappeared, either into a house or a back yard.

Within minutes, officers from the Ceres, Modesto, Turlock and Newman police departments, as well as the Stanislaus and Merced sheriff’s offices and the California Highway Patrol, responded.

Nearly one square mile of the city’s streets were closed as a CHP helicopter hovered and police officers and SWAT teams took positions around the neighborhood.

Police officers began shooting out street lights to diminish Raya’s vision, officers said.

Residents were told to lock their doors and turn off their lights, said Kim Rose, 25, who lives about one block from the liquor store. She had been in the store about 20 minutes before the shooting.

“We heard a lot of gunfire, and I mean a lot of gunfire,” Rose said. “Then a few minutes later, police were walking up and down the street with guns drawn, yelling for everyone to go back in their houses.”

George Newton, who lives two blocks from the store on Beachwood Drive, said his 42-year-old daughter was visiting him when the neighborhood was locked down. She wasn’t allowed to leave the home.

“She slept on my couch last night,” Newton said. “She was stuck here until 4:30 a.m.”

Some neighbors evacuated

Across the street, the Garcia family was evacuated. Their home was believed to be directly behind the home in which Raya was hiding. Members of a SWAT team took over the Garcia’s house, Kandy Garcia said, positioning themselves in her back yard and on her neighbor’s bal-cony.

“They were nice and professional but very firm and matter-of-fact,” Garcia said. “They said we had to leave now.”

She grabbed her four children and stayed the night at her mother’s house.

The CHP helicopter beamed its light into the yards of homes on the south side of Beachwood and north side of Caswell.

After about two hours, officers began a slow house-to-house search, according to a press release issued Monday.

“Our poor neighbors across the street were evacuated, so they locked their doors,” Norm Travis said. “Then about an hour later, the SWAT team broke down their front door to search for the suspect.”

About 11:08 p.m., Raya jumped over a backyard fence from a home on Caswell and ended up in an alley between Glenwood and Myrtlewood drives.

Police say he fired at four officers who were positioned at the Glenwood end of the alley, about 100 yards away. The officers fired back and struck him multiple times.

He dropped his rifle but started running toward them. He motioned as if he was going for a second weapon, officers said, so they continued to fire.

He fell to the ground and died at the scene.

His body was still in the alley Monday afternoon as investigators worked the scene.

Police said that an exact number of rounds fired by Raya and police had not been determined Monday evening, but it was probably more than 60.

Police also released the liquor store video tape. De Werk said he wanted the public to see the tape so they could understand not only what happened but “what’s really going on in the world.”

By Noelle Straub
reposted from Boston Herald

WASHINGTON - With no fanfare, the U.S. House has passed a controversial doomsday provision that would allow a handful of lawmakers to run Congress if a terrorist attack or major disaster killed or incapacitated large numbers of congressmen.

     “I think (the new rule) is terrible in a whole host of ways - first, I think it’s unconstitutional,” said Norm Ornstein, a counselor to the independent Continuity of Government Commission, a bipartisan panel created to study the issue. “It’s a very foolish thing to do, I believe, and the way in which it was done was more foolish.”

     But supporters say the rule provides a stopgap measure to allow the government to continue functioning at a time of national crisis.

     GOP House leaders pushed the provision as part of a larger rules package that drew attention instead for its proposed ethics changes, most of which were dropped.

     Usually, 218 lawmakers - a majority of the 435 members of Congress - are required to conduct House business, such as passing laws or declaring war.

     But under the new rule, a majority of living congressmen no longer will be needed to do business under “catastrophic circumstances.”

     Instead, a majority of the congressmen able to show up at the House would be enough to conduct business, conceivably a dozen lawmakers or less.

     The House speaker would announce the number after a report by the House Sergeant at Arms. Any lawmaker unable to make it to the chamber would effectively not be counted as a congressman.

     The circumstances include “natural disaster, attack, contagion or similar calamity rendering Representatives incapable of attending the proceedings of the House.”

     The House could be run by a small number of lawmakers for months, because House vacancies must be filled by special elections. Governors can make temporary appointments to the Senate.

     Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), one of few lawmakers active on the issue, argued the rule change contradicts the U.S. Constitution, which states that “a majority of each (House) shall constitute a quorum to do business.

     “Changing what constitutes a quorum in this way would allow less than a dozen lawmakers to declare war on another nation,” Baird said.

citizen x- can you say Democratic Flu epidemic?

here’s an image from
Phillip K Dick’s “A Scanner Darkly”
directed by Richard Linklater
using “A Waking Life” style animation

WASHINGTON – A small group of Democrats agreed Thursday to force House and Senate debates on Election Day problems in Ohio before letting Congress certify President Bush’s win over Sen. John Kerry in November.

While Bush’s victory is not in jeopardy, the Democratic challenge will force Congress to interrupt tallying the Electoral College vote, which had been scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. EST Thursday. It would be only the second time since 1877 that the House and Senate were forced into separate meetings to consider electoral votes.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., signed a challenge mounted by House Democrats to Ohio’s 20 electoral votes, which put Bush over the top. By law, a protest signed by members of the House and Senate requires both chambers to meet separately for up to two hours to consider it. Lawmakers are allowed to speak for no more than five minutes each.

“I have concluded that objecting to the electoral votes from Ohio is the only immediate way to bring these issues to light by allowing you to have a two-hour debate to let the American people know the facts surrounding Ohio’s election,” Boxer wrote in a letter to Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, a leader of the Democratic effort.

The action seems certain to leave Bush’s victory intact because both Republican-controlled chambers would have to uphold the objection for Ohio’s votes to be invalidated. But supporters of the drive hope their move will shine a national spotlight on the Ohio voting problems.

Underscoring that the outcome was not in doubt, Kerry, who conceded to Bush the day after the Nov. 2 election, said he would not join the challenge. The four-term Massachusetts senator was in the Middle East, thanking U.S. troops for their service.

In a statement, Kerry said there are “very troubling questions” about the Ohio voting and he would present a plan later to improve voting procedures.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed the move as politically driven.

“I think the American people expect members of Congress to work together and move forward on the real priorities facing this country, instead of engaging in conspiracy theories and rehashing issues that were settled long ago,” McClellan said.

Many Democrats oppose challenging the Ohio vote, concerned that it would do little but antagonize voters who consider the election over. The numbers are also politically daunting: Bush won an Ohio recount by more than 118,000 votes, and won nationally by more than 3 million.

Bush defeated Kerry by 286 to 252 electoral votes, with 270 needed for victory.

On Wednesday, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee , issued a report claiming “numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio presidential election.”

The report, mirroring complaints from Ohio voters, cites machine shortages and extremely long lines in minority and Democratic precincts. It alleges intimidation of voters, a purging of registration lists and other irregularities.

Many problems stemmed from “intentional misconduct and illegal behavior” by Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in the state, the report argues.

Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo called the report “ludicrous” and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

In January 2001, a group of House Democrats protested the 2000 election because of Florida’s ballot problems. But with the country weary of that contest’s six weeks of recounts and turmoil, no senator joined in and the challenge failed. In political theater at its most ironic, Vice President Al Gore — the defeated Democratic presidential contender — presided over the session, rejecting a challenge aimed at making him president.

The last time the two chambers were forced to interrupt their joint session and meet separately was in January 1969, when a “faithless” North Carolina elector designated for Richard Nixon voted instead for independent George Wallace. Both chambers agreed to allow the vote for Wallace.

The previous challenge requiring separate House and Senate meetings was in 1877 during the disputed contest that Rutherford Hayes eventually won over Samuel Tilden.

Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are a group of diseases that cause immature blood cells (called blasts) to accumulate in the bone marrow leading to a shortage of mature blood cells, including red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. Furthermore, the mature blood cells that are made can also be defective.

MDS are not cancer themselves, but about 30% of the time the syndromes are a precursor to leukemias such as acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and chrome myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML).

Although MDS can affect people of all ages, the median age of onset is 65. MDS affects less than 15,000 people each year in the United States, and includes the following syndromes:

5q syndrome (named after the chromosomal defect that causes the symptoms)
Hypoplastic MDS
MDS with myelofibrosis
MDS with prominent eosinophilia or monocytosis

Causes of MDS

People who have received radiation therapy, chemotherapy with alkylating agents (such as chlorambucil, cyclophosphamide, and melphalan), or who have been exposed to industrial solvents (such as benzene) have a higher risk of developing MDS than people who have not had these exposures. Rarely, genetic disorders are responsible for the disease. Nevertheless, in 60% to 70% of MDS patients, no specific cause can be identified.