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Iraq High Cost * Physics911 * IMF * Kucinich


11 January 2004


1) Ignore US atrocities in Iraq at what cost?
- - U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Approach 500
2) Physics911.org - a science-based inquiry
3) I.M.F. Says U.S. Debts Threaten World Economy
4) NASA-Prometheus in the heavens
5) Kucinich for and of the People

Editor's Notes:

Presence slips past an emotional past
while sublime reality steps in and
moments too soon forgotten regret not a thing..
while last time the unsurmountable tongue
lingered too long to satisfy
the intrinsic logic set in..;
perpetuated by angular expression and denial of chance..
Pieces all too quickly assembled
as an atmosphere on Mars
pushes away the envelope from Earth
and reason and measure, misbegotten to some,
springs back as an image from Cydonia staring back, fear or love,
truth or denial, destruction or creation.


I wrote the first draft of this poem at the John Wayne Airport lobby, January 6. I was three weeks in California. Someone involved in the Kucinich campaign gave me an article by John Kaminski. I didn't plan it this way, but during the descent to Hartford/Springfield with acting-up frigid windy conditions, I started reading "911 Was A HOAX!." What timing! Last time landing at this airport I finished Mari Sandoz's "Crazy Horse: Strange Man of the Oglalas." Now, rereading this Kaminski commentary, the bumpy plane landing was put into a perspective. Flyby News returns to see another day.

RUMI

"This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some monetary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond."


Item 1 is on the high price for a reckless and dangerous foreign invasion policy.

Item 2 gives links for an in-depth look into 9/11 investigations. Physics911.org is a wonderful consortium of scientists, engineers, measurers, taking on a role most needed, to investigate unexplained questions regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks in NYC and Washington, D.C.

Item 3 is on the growing amounts of US Debt and its danger to the world economy.

Item 4 briefly touches on the Bush space mission.
Nukes Ahoy - the Bush Space Plan was announced.

Item 5 is articles on Dennis Kucinich. When people hear him speak, and learn of his ideas that would benefit most all Americans, they get excited, but then they wonder about poll numbers and possibly wasting a vote. But a primary is within the Party of your choice, and it is the best time to support those most closely associated with your interests. The leader of the Party will arise, but each delegate elected will have a say in this selection. You can not waste a vote in the Primaries, not by voting your conscience.



1) Ignore US atrocities in Iraq at what cost?


Much farther down the road to hell

Americans ignore U.S. atrocities in Iraq

By John Kaminski < skylax@comcast.net >

Maybe I'm only deluding myself, but I seem to remember stories during the Vietnam war when American reporters at least pretended to be outraged when U.S. troops were accused of sickening war crimes. I mean, the My Lai massacre was a big deal when it was revealed — accidentally, as I recall. At least a couple of officers were prosecuted and sentenced to long prison terms in country club jails, and TV and newspapers reporters at least wagged their fingers while proclaiming this was not the way Americans were supposed to behave.

But on the other hand, we noticed that recent exposé in the Toledo Blade newspaper in which it was revealed that many U.S. units in Vietnam were given carte blanche by their superiors to butcher women and children in a pathetic attempt to frighten the Vietnamese natives into supporting the froth-mouthed white-skinned invaders who were eviscerating their jungle paradise.

Wild as they were, the 1960s were a more innocent time in America Doing the right thing and treating foreigners with respect had not yet been eliminated from the social repertoire of American behavior.

But that was then and this is now.

Savage terrorists who hold nothing sacred, least of all the precious lives of innocent civilians, are now running roughshod over the obliterated dump once known as the prosperous nation of Iraq — and they are wearing American uniforms.

But most Americans don't notice. They don't mention that stuff on TV anymore. The reporters are embedded with the troops, and those who try to report accurately from the battlefield — and there are numerous instances of this nowadays — wind up with an accidental bullet in their heads if they do. Another example of the new American way.

It isn't bad enough that no one in a position of authority in either the American government or practically all of American public life bothers to mention that the U.S. has absolutely no business being in Iraq, and that all these needless murders and corrupt business practices have created a 21st century America that makes Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union look humane by comparison. Just ask all those innocent people of Arab descent who remain in jail without access to their lawyers.

The stark fact is America has gone to war, demolished an entire nation, and squandered the lives of thousands of its own soldiers for reasons that are lies — proven, documented, and deliberate perversions of the truth — and nearly no one on the homefront in positions of authority has had the moxie to stand up and say America is now the most dangerous rogue nation in the world as it threatens to spread its economic coercion and radioactive rape to every country on the planet.

While the dapper Democratic candidates wax poetic in front of the TV cameras while gently chiding our demonstrably insane president for his bad manners and utter repression of government accountability, every day American soldiers are murdering innocent Iraqi families — and for what? For corporate thievery and dictatorial hegemony over the entire planet.

Those who aren't paying attention to the continuing atrocities being committed in our names might say I'm exaggerating.

Well, as a good example, I bid you consider a mere one day's news from Iraq, as reported by our premier American daily e-newspaper, Information Clearing House. And today (Friday, 1/9/04) was as good a day as any, very typical of the past ten months' daily news from Iraq.

Just consider what the American "liberators" did to its hapless victims in Iraq — just today, one single day.

• A 55-year-old Iraqi man had been removed from his house in August after a search by American soldiers found no weapons there. His family had been desperately searching for him for months, and they finally found him, brain dead in a Tikrit hospital.

After performing diagnostic tests, doctors told his family he had suffered massive head trauma, electrocution, and other beatings on his arms. The family was told he would be in a coma for the rest of his life from the obvious trauma suffered from torture.

It turns out that American soldiers had dropped him off at the hospital, saying he had had a heart attack.

• In a similar story, the Arab newspaper Al-Bawaba reported the presidential secretary of former leader Saddam Hussein died two days ago while in U.S. custody. He had been taken into custody in June. Reports in the Arabic press noted he was tortured by U.S. investigators to pressure him to provide information on weapons development programs.

• The New York Times reported the Bush administration has quietly withdrawn from Iraq a 400-member military team whose job was to scour the country for military equipment. So much for the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. The Times said "some military officials" said the administration might have lowered its sights and no longer expected to uncover the caches of chemical and biological weapons that the White House cited as a principal reason for going to war last March.

• The London Financial Times reported Bush administration officials "systematically misrepresented" the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to war, according to a new report to be published by a respected Washington think-tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. These distortions, combined with intelligence failures, exaggerated the risks posed by a country that presented no immediate threat to the US, Middle East or global security, the report says.

• The London Financial Times also reported U.S. intelligence bowed to political pressures in assessing the threat posed by Iraq, undermining a critical element of the Bush administration's national security doctrine. That same think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, concluded that U.S. intelligence was clearly unable to provide accurate information necessary for reliably acting in the absence of an obvious imminent threat.

Thursday's Information Clearing House report also included stories on a new investigation into a secret Pentagon intelligence unit that led the nation to war by pushing disinformation and faulty intelligence to produce wildly exaggerated threats posed by Iraq, quotes from Richard Perle's new book about how the U.S. should make a preemptive strike on North Korea, how nearly as many U.S. soldiers were wounded in Iraq last month as during the entire six-week period of major combat operations, an evocative piece on how an American father visited Iraq to mourn his dead son killed in combat, and a story on how a Spanish journalist was deliberately killed by coalition troops.

But the capper was this:

• An Iraqi mother has written to President Bush and other top politicos around the world to ask them to explain why her son was deliberately murdered by U.S. troops. In her heart-wrenching letter, she explained that her 19-year-old son, who was soon to be married, was returning home with friends when their truck broke down. After being confronted by an American patrol, they were searched and handcuffed, and led three kilometers to a nearby dam, then ordered to jump into the raging waters.

One of the three boys survived to tell the tale, but her son, who could not swim, was never found, only his jacket. Then as a final signature, U.S. soldiers flattened the boys' vehicle by running over it with heavy equipment.

The distraught mother, wrote: "To document the incident, my son's name is Zaydun Ma'mun Fadhil Hassun Al-Samarrai, born in the 1st of June 1984...Yes, they killed him and they broke my heart, try to imagine that dear sirs and ask your wives how hard it is for a mother to see her fruit ripen only to be thrown by sinful hands and to be swept away without any mercy or humanity. Those soldiers have turned everything America has ever stood for into one big lie. I was a victim, and there are and will be many more."

( You need to read this whole story, and see the boy's photo, if you want to really cry:
http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/archives/2004_01_01_healingiraq_archive.html )

Two thoughts:

1. Americans are wretched people. We should be long out of Iraq because the reasons we are there have been proved to be lies. That we are still there says a lot about the American people, that we are much farther down the road to hell than we thought.

2. Information Clearing House, the prodigious and informative compendium compiled daily by a single high-integrity gentleman named Tom, is the single most valuable daily newspaper in America, in my humble opinion. It is the one e-mail that I never fail to read every day, and you can get it, too, just by signing up at
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

[Excerpted]

John Kaminski is the author of "America's Autopsy Report," a collection of his Internet essays posted on hundreds of websites around the world.

Web Site: http://www.johnkaminski.com/
Email: skylax@comcast.net

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- - U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Approach 500

Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens for Legitimate Government
January 9, 2004
http://www.legitgov.org/

U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Approach 500 --The number of American troops who have died in Iraq since the W-ar began last March is nearing 500, more than U.S. losses in many regional conflicts of the past several decades: the Gulf War, Lebanon, Somalia, Panama, Grenada, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

For articles of breaking news, see:
http://legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news

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Senator: 'We Received False Security Briefing Prior to Iraq Vote'
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/121803A.shtml


Pope: 'U.S. War on Iraq is Illegal'
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/121803B.shtml

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CBSNews.com & Sixty Minutes

Saddam's Ouster Planned In '01?
Jan. 10, 2004


The Bush Administration began laying plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 -- not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks as has been previously reported.

That's what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider. O'Neill talks to Correspondent Lesley Stahl in the interview, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

For more on this story, see:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml
© MMIII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved.



2) Physics911.org - a science-based inquiry

Physics911.org [on the Internet] has been set up to stimulate rational, science-based inquiry into the 9/11 mass murder

The scale of the mass murder on September 11th 2001 was unprecedented in American History. In view of the extent of public interest, it should have prompted the most vigorous, open and thorough murder inquiry ever.

Instead, the Bush Administration has been obstructing even the limited, secretive official inquiries set up so far. while overseeing willful destruction of forensic evidence

This website is one of many independent citizens' initiatives seeking the truth about 9/11


Physics911.org features the work of (S.P.I.N.E.),
the Scientific Panel for Investigating Nine Eleven


Physics911.org
Applying Science to Uncover the Truth
http://www.physics911.org/

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Following is another resource on 9/11 investigations.
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9/11 Archive
http://www.questionsquestions.net/topics/archive/911archive.html


also check out Flyby News updated
"The Bush Conspiracy and 9/11 Investigative Reports,
looking into the unanswered questions."
http://www.flybynews.com/cgi-local/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid1014738186,11057,
http://www.FlybyNews.com



3) I.M.F. Says U.S. Debts Threaten World Economy

I.M.F. Says U.S. Debts Threaten World Economy
By ELIZABETH BECKER
and EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published New York Times:
January 8, 2004

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 - With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the United States is running up a foreign debt of such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy, according to a report released Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund..

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For the complete article, see following links:

http://www.nytimes.com
http://snipurl.com/3qew
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/business/08FUND.html

US Foreign Debt Threatens Global Financial Stability Says I.M.F.

********************************************************************

4) NASA-Prometheus in the heavens.

"NASA, flush with the spirit of success,
ignores the chance of failure -- full nukes ahead!"

– Russell D. Hoffman

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The following is from:
Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
http://www.space4peace.org

Bush Plays with Fire: Launching a Dangerous Space Policy

George W. Bush is playing with fire. He is expected to soon make a major space policy announcement that could include a return mission to the moon, the establishment of permanent bases on the moon, and an aggressive program to take humans to Mars. Estimates for these space projects range from $50 - $150 billion. That is of course before cost overruns set in.

In order to make the trip to Mars feasible (the normal year-long trip would take a toll on any human being because of space radiation) Bush is expected to commit to using a nuclear rocket – what is now known as "Project Prometheus," named after the God of Fire. The nuclear rocket would cut in half the amount of time it would take to get to Mars, and would have military applications as well. The Bush administration a year ago announced the Nuclear Systems Initiative, a $3 billion research and development effort to expand the number of launches of deadly nuclear powered systems into space.

NUCLEAR DANGERS

One scientist who has publicly expressed grave concern about the Nuclear Systems Initiative is Dr. Michio Kaku, Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center. According to Dr. Kaku, "The exploration of outer space is indeed one of humanity's great adventures. Perhaps one of the greatest risks facing this ambitious program is the use of dangerous, unproven technologies which could backfire, eroding public confidence in the space program."

"One such dangerous technology is the nuclear rocket, which is now seriously being reconsidered after being rightly rejected for the past several decades. The recent disaster involving the Columbia shuttle crew was bad enough. If it had contained a nuclear rocket, it would have been the death blow to the space program. Having radioactive uranium reactor parts sprayed over Texas and much of the southwest would have doomed the entire space program. The nuclear booster rocket has gone through many stages of development in the past, and all of them have been canceled with good cause.."



5) Kucinich for and of the People

Kucinich: fervently unconventional

By Harry Bruinius | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

HOPKINTON, N.H. - Dressed in a long black overcoat, looking a little like a wizened wizard from the snowy New Hampshire woods, Dennis Kucinich strides confidently into a chilly toolshed at Derek Owen's 200-acre organic farm. As he stops to survey the 30 or so locals who have come to hear him speak, he grins: These are his people.

There's Mr. Owen - his gray mutton-chop beard still flecked with snow - holding dirty yellow work gloves as he extends his greeting. His green cap, stuck with a feather, reads, "Farm Here to Eternity." Over there, in the corner, is Mark Lathrop, the burly proprietor of the Monadnock Hemporium, wearing a broad-brimmed leather cowboy hat. He's a fierce advocate for the decriminalization of marijuana. Opposite him, near the door, stands Elizabeth Obelenus, smiling. She's the tall office manager for the Northeast Organic Farming Association, the informal sponsor of the talk tonight, and she's most worried about the unknown dangers of genetically modified organisms.

They're all applauding. "Good job last night!" says one of an older couple near the pegboard on the wall. "You were our hero!" the other adds. As the diminutive Cleveland congressman shakes their hands and nods, he tells them he's been hearing the same all day. He'd created a bit of a buzz the night before after lashing out at Ted Koppel, the moderator of the debate in nearby Concord, and scolding him for focusing on polls and endorsements rather than important issues.

Like his nonconformist audience this evening, Mr. Kucinich is a candidate with quirks. A strict vegan, he would hardly be the type to throw a Crawford, Texas, barbecue. A skilled ventriloquist, he keeps a dummy in his office to entertain school kids who visit him on field trips. Twice divorced, he recently went on an early-morning blind date with a woman who had beaten out 79 others in a "Who Wants to Be a First Lady" contest, put on by the website PoliticsNH.com.

And though he comes from the Rust Belt shores of Lake Erie, he often speaks more as a New England transcendentalist, straight from Walden Pond. "We need to be certain that we have agricultural policies that are rooted in a philosophy which connects us to the power of nature itself," Kucinich tells the bundled-up country folk gathered in the shed. "We need to recognize the important role agriculture plays - like Derek's cap says, 'Farm Here to Eternity.' "

One of his top priorities as president, he explains, would be to break up the big corporations that control the food supply and threaten the small farmers who have long been the foundation of American democracy. In the same 19th-century vein, Kucinich often urges his audiences to read Emerson's "Self-Reliance," an essay he says he's read at least once a year since he was a boy. "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string," he often quotes. "To believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius."

Nonconformists, however, are by definition few and far between, and Kucinich is near the bottom of the polls. Beyond this band of pastoral farmers, few have even heard of Dennis Kucinich - "Is he the one with the ears?"

Yet it's become a refrain as he travels the well-worn New Hampshire campaign trail: When people do hear him speak, many admire his passion and "spin free" fervor. As co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Kucinich has been one of the most outspoken liberal voices in the Democratic Party. Since he stakes out positions that a more cautious candidate might consider, well, politically eccentric, some voters find him both curious and refreshing - though they think he cannot win. "The others, they're all so boring - except for Kucinich," says Ms. Obelenus. "Sure, he's a long shot, but at first you've got to vote on principle, don't you?" But then, hesitating, she asks with a worried tone, "Do you think I'm throwing away my vote?"

As an unabashed liberal, Kucinich stands apart from the other candidates. Earnest as a prophet, he proclaims the need for a single-payer national healthcare system - as do Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun. But he is the only to have offered a congressional bill, outlining a concrete plan. And while Howard Dean has been an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq, Kucinich is the only candidate to have actually cast a vote against the resolution approving the US invasion. He also continues to call for the immediate withdrawal of US troops.

He also proclaims he would extend free public education all the way through college (which he implies would be paid for by reducing the Pentagon budget and repealing the Bush tax cuts), decriminalize marijuana, and ban genetically modified organisms. He also envisions a cabinet-level Department of Peace, which would, according to his platform, redirect 1 percent of the Pentagon budget to "establish non-violence as an organizing principle in both domestic and international affairs."

Though most find such ideas audacious, they rarely find Kucinich politically calculating or insincere, and this has won him a number of admirers.

Momentary boost

The next day, as Kucinich bounds up the steps of the Simon Center at New England College, Eleanor Kjellman stands beaming on the porch above him, waiting to shake his hand.

The blue campaign button on her coat is blazoned with CLARK04, but while watching the nine candidates debate, she, too, had been most impressed by the strength and poise of the Ohio congressman. Kjellman and her husband, John, both longtime residents in Henniker, were so thrilled they came to offer a show of support.

"We just wanted to thank you for speaking out the other night," she says as Kucinich hops up and clasps her outstretched hand. "You really took charge there and said what needed to be said." Still, while the Kjellmans smile and explain how the others lack his earnest, no-nonsense style, they later concede Kucinich "probably doesn't have a chance" - and that they don't intend to stop supporting Wesley Clark.

Call it voter sophistication or just a sympathetic respect for a futile, quixotic campaign, but so far, many of his new admirers haven't become actual supporters. Although he has raised about $5 million this year - a respectable amount for his type of campaign - this is far less than top-tier candidates like Dr. Dean, and Kucinich's poll numbers languish at 1 to 3 percent.

Still, he has overcome enormous obstacles throughout his life.

For the complete HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links, see:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0102/p01s03-uspo.html

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Congressman Dennis Kucinich,
Candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW January 8, 2004

So why is BuzzFlash interviewing Dennis Kucinich?


The answer is simple: we sent out invitations for interviews to several of the candidates and Kucinich was the only one who responded -- and his staff was tenacious in ensuring that this interview took place. Hey, we like that kind of treatment!

Read Article Here:

www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/01/int04002.html

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Presidential Candidates on the Web
http://pages.alexa.com/features/candidates.html

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MUSICIANS FOR DENNIS KUCINICH
John Nichols, The Nation
While other Democratic candidates may be raising more money, the Ohio Congressman's candidacy is inspiring some of the finest campaign concerts in this election.
* In MediaCulture: http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/

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For more information on the Kucinich campaign, visit:
http://www.kucinich.us



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