So many factors threaten human existence. .... One would think that such warnings from top people, who know from the inside, would result in remedial behaviour from rational human beings who wish to live and want their children and other human beings to continue to live on our planet. But it is not so.

According to a new report from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, some 100,000 asteroids and comets routinely pass between the Sun and the Earth's orbit. About 20,000 of these orbit close enough to us that they could one day hit the Earth and destroy a major city.
But the really worrying news from NASA is that over a thousand of these things are large enough (almost a mile wide in diameter) and their orbits close enough to us as to pose a real potential hazard of crashing into the Earth with enough force to end most life on this planet. Scientists think this is what killed off the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.

Heather Wokusch, M.A. in Clinical Psychology, is an educator, journalist and writes extensively on US political developments, wars and nuclear issues.
Her following article has similar conclusions to mine and other writers on the preliminary strategies the US is likely to use to justify its War On Iran.
All the indications are that the US will soon massively strike Iran, including the probable use of nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration continues moving closer to a nuclear attack on Iran, and we ignore the obvious buildup at our peril.
Russian media is sounding alarms. In February, ultra-nationalist leader Vladimir Shirinovsky warned that the US would launch a strike against Tehran at the end of this month. Then last week, the Russian News and Information Agency Novosti (RIA-Novosti) quoted military experts predicting the US will attack Iran on April 6th, Good Friday.

Professor Griffin's new book "Debunking 9/11 Debunking" meticulously dissects the flaws in Bush's official story about the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Paul Craig Roberts gives a splendid review of it below and agrees with its findings. But the implications that the Official Story of the 9/11 attacks was basically a collection of lies and myths is not examined in detail in this article. However the appalling conclusions and implications must be made.

The 9/11 attack has been used to start wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to plan an attack on Iran, to curtail constitutional protections and civil liberties in the US, to radically expand US military budgets and the power of the executive, and to enrich entrenched vested interests.
Professor David Ray Griffin is the nemesis of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.  In his latest book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking, Griffin destroys the credibility of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Popular Mechanics reports, annihilates his critics, and proves himself to be a better scientist and engineer than the defenders of the official story.

As one who foresaw, and lectured against the Vietnam War before it started in the early 60's, and more or less continuously ever since about the nuclear arms race, wars and lately the Iraq War and the US planned War against Iran, I have been concerned about the peace movement. Where are the thousands that demonstrated in 2003 before Bush launched his illegal war on Iraq ? Now the Iraq body count is 655,000, the same people don't bother to demonstrate or make any noticeable gesture against this war now. Why? Tom Englehart gives some of the answers below.

Excuse me if, at 62, and well into my second era of protest against yet another distant, disastrous, and disabling American war, I express a little confusion.

If the mass media informed the public about Bush's lies to fool the people and Congress into supporting his war on Iraq, and how it violates the US Constitution and international law, and his preparations to use nuclear weapons on Iran, based on the same type of lies, the Polls would be much higher against Bush and his illegal wars. However telling the truth about the Bush Administration and its phony war on terrorism, is not something the media would do. Their role has been to act as cheerleaders for Bush and his wars, repeating his every lie, and preventing the truth from being known.

More Than Half Favor a Deadline for Withdrawal, Bush Suffers Longest Streak Without Majority Support Since Truman
A record number of Americans disapprove of the war in Iraq , and a clear majority now favors the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces, even if civil order has not been restored there — potentially a tipping point in public attitudes on the war.

This article presents the realities of Bush's intentions and plans to attack Iran. As in the Iraq War. Bush's UK  poodle has staged a provocation in violation of Iranian waters. This will appear to be more authentic, than if the US did it. It also provides the UK with an excuse to satisfy Parliament and the Public, for its participation with the US in a war on Iran.

The timing of the recent incident in which 15 British sailors were arrested by Iran at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway for purportedly entering Iranian waters couldn't have been more provocative if it had been planned that way. And perhaps it was. The question is, however, who did the planning?

The new Democratically-controlled Congress has totally capitulated to Bush's power, even signalling that he can proceed with his plans for a war on Iran.
The power of the Bush criminal conspiracy is virtually unlimited and is backed by at least 25% of the richest, most powerful people and institutions in America, including many who are afraid not to appear to support the many manifestations of Bushism.

The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

737 US Bases in 103 countries and a defence budget larger than that of all other nations in the world. That's the US Empire.
The mission is building the US Empire through imperial conquest, using "9/11 and the war on terror" as their mantra, war cry and justification.
US Military Historian Chalmers Johnson dissects this imperial military industrial complex and predicts calamites for what may be next.
" If there weren't terrorists, Bush and Cheney would have had to invent them? " asks Karlin.

I believe that we're close to a tipping point right now. What happened to the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 could easily be happening to us for essentially the same reasons. Imperial overreach, inability to reform, rigid economic ideology. ... The world's balance of power didn't change one iota on September 11, 2001. The only way we could lose the power and influence we had at that time was through our own actions, and that's what we did. -- Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
Has our "leadership" traded democracy for empire? Have their over-bloated egos convinced them that they are the world's newly crowned colonial kings? Author Chalmers Johnson is certainly not given to wearing rose-colored glasses. As he concludes in his newest book, Nemesis: "... my country is launched on a dangerous path that it must abandon or else face the consequences."

Have you ever wondered why people were so worried about nuclear dangers in past decades, yet so unconcerned now?
One reason is that in spite of many nuclear crisis - (remember how people evacuated US cities during the Cuban missile crisis)   - nothing ever happened. So people are used to the dire predictions never eventuating. Also, with the end of the cold war, they have been taught to believe that the nuclear risks have decreased, and some undoubtedly have. But some, and new risks, have got much worse. The media deliberately avoids informing the public about the increasing nuclear risks; that the US Defence budget is the highest in history; and that the Bush Administration is making new nuclear weapons to go with the new nuclear doctrines.

.... This reaction either shows total and profound ignorance of the situation, or corrupt duplicity in enabling Bush to make war without hindrance or seeking permission from a Democratic Congress recently elected to stop Bush's wars. ...
It could become millions of deaths, and horrific long-term consequences for everyone, including the US public.
That is the spineless Pelosi and Democratic Party gift to the American public for their support in the last election.

The AIPAC Girl

If George W. Bush launches a pre-emptive war on Iran, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will bear full moral responsibility for that war.
For it was Pelosi who quietly agreed to strip out of the $100 billion funding bill for Iraq a provision that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval before launching any new war on Iran. Pelosi's capitulation came in the Appropriations Committee.
What went down, and why?

The slow genocide of US and UK involvement in Iraq even before they backed Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran, ending in one million killed, was followed by the lst Gulf war, then the starvation sanctions against Iraq which killed millions, and the lie-based US-UK invasion and bombing and occupation of Iraq since 2003. It is a shocking record of Western duplicity, barbarism and deception. Most people in the US-UK had no idea of the murderous extremes their leaders had implemented on the Iraqis. Barry Lando's article is an eye-opener - an astonishing record of mass murder by a series of US-UK leaders mouthing platitudes about 'freedom, liberty and democracy' as they implemented policies which would kill and starve millions of Iraqis and their children. It will ruin the future of millions of the next generation. Their use of DU munitions alone will poison the land, kill and infect the people for endless generations to come.

4 years later: Let's leave the Iraqis alone, shall we?

It's time for the Iraqis to cease their bloody sectarian rivalries, disband their ruthless militias and death squads and take responsibility for their country's fate. Why should American boys continue dying to save Iraqis from their own perverse selves?
It's a view expressed by all sides in the U.S. four years after the 2003 invasion. The problem is it shows no understanding of Iraq's nightmarish past and calamitous psychological present. l

This paper has some valuable insights into the character and relatively unknown mental illness affecting our society. It is particularly incarnate in George Bush. Paul Levy has called it "malignant egophrenic" illness or malignant egophrenia. In fact the illness could be named other known psychiatric names but "ME disorder" is the term used here.
As he says "George Bush does not exist in isolation. We can view his entire Administration (Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, et all) as well as the corporate, military industrial complex that they are co-dependently enmeshed with, the media they control, and the voters that support them, as interconnected parts of the whole system, or a "field".

The following essay offers a penetrating look at the psychopathology of George W. Bush and the collective psychosis that is gripping America, from a Jungian perspective. (This should be read as part of a series, beginning with my previous post, Parading Jesus , in which I'm exploring the idea of approaching the problem in terms of the interconnection of a "many headed hydra," or what this author terms as an "interrelated field." I think if you read this piece in its entirety you'll appreciate why it is important to look at the problem as a symbiosis rather than isolated parts.

This paper is an excellent guide to how propaganda permeates and influences our opinions and guides our reactions. It is one of the best I have seen. Given the power of the Bush Administration over the media, it is unlikely that the mass media will report the facts about Bush's deceits to initiate wars of aggression. 

United State of Minds

America's methods of mind control or better put, manufacturing consent through efficient and careful use of media, must be the envy of every tyrannical dictator ruling the most oppressive regimes in the world. . . .
. . . Shaping of one's attitude, beliefs, and personality without that person's knowledge or consent works by gradually exerting increasing control through a variety of techniques which includes repetition and herding.

Preparing For A US Dictatorship   The Late, Great American Nation

We live in a fundamentally different country since 9/11. Not only do many Americans view their government with suspicion, but how their government views them has drastically changed.
A perfect example of this took place last fall. Prior to the elections that transformed the makeup of Congress, the Bush Administration pushed for the inclusion of two stealth provisions into a mammoth defense budget bill. The additions made it easier for the government to declare martial law and establish a dictatorship.
Since the days of our Founding Fathers, when King George III used his armies to terrorize and tyrannize the colonies, the American people have understandably distrusted the use of a national military force to intervene in civilian affairs, except in instances of extreme emergency and limited duration.

This article shows how the nuclear power industry is spending millions on public relations to revise the image of nuclear power from something dangerous, not to be touched,  to something clean, green and desirable. The way the PR companies, and the media, use the industry's ex-Greenpeace spokesman - and will not reveal what they pay him - is most instructive. The comments following the original version are excellent and contain many provoking pros and cons of the debate. Serious nuclear power researchers should read these, and develop counter arguments, if they wish to be able to answer the pro-nuclear lobbyists.

"We just find it maddening that Hill & Knowlton , which has an $8 million account with the nuclear industry, should have such an easy time working the press," concluded the Columbia Journalism Review in an editorial in its July / August 2006 issue.
The magazine was rightly bemoaning the tendency of news outlets to present former Greenpeace activist Patrick Moore and former EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman as environmentalists who support nuclear power, without noting that both are paid spokespeople for a group bankrolled by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). NEI represents nuclear power plant operators, plant designers, fuel suppliers and other sectors of the nuclear power industry. Hill & Knowlton is NEI's public relations firm, though it's not the only firm working to build support for nuclear power.

Bush has established a record as spinning a litany of lies to fool the American people and Congress into supporting an illegal assault, bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq . He is also spinning similar lies about Iran as an excuse to make war on Iran . He has destroyed Iraq and killed some 655,000 Iraqis. Thus he is a war criminal who has violated the US Constitution and should be impeached. There is suspicion that his crimes may be far greater, regarding the 9/11 issue. So is it any wonder that he wants to be able to suppress if not destroy any evidence of these crimes? The fact that he has taken steps to prevent some of his papers from being seen indicates this.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush was inside Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla., to promote his education reform when he learned that America was under attack.
This was a day that changed the Bush presidency and the nation's history.
Scholars and archivists will one day travel to the Bush presidential library on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas to learn more about the nation's leaders and the decisions they made on that day.
The history textbooks and papers that they will write after visiting the Bush library might very well be incomplete.
"On November 1, 2001, less than two months after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Bush issued an executive order that allows former presidents to keep some of their papers secret indefinitely. This executive order violates the Presidential Records Act of 1978, legislation that guarantees public access to papers 12 years after a president has left office.... This order should be overturned so that historians and scholars will get an honest portrait of the Bush administration and future administrations," writes the Republican.

This paper by Tom Engelhardt shows that dramatic and questionable developments under the Bush Administration have not been reported, commented upon, or questioned by the US mass media. For example Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker that:
 "a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Join Chiefs of Staff charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders of the President within 24 hours and that it's new assignment was to identify not just nuclear facilities and possible regime change targets, but targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq." 
What this means is that just about anything and anyone in Iran may be considered a target.

... and no one notices....
In my childhood, one of the Philadelphia papers regularly ran cartoon ads for itself in which some poor soul in a perilous situation - say, clinging to the ledge of a tall building - would be screaming for help, while passersby were so engrossed in the paper that they didn't even look up. Now, we have the opposite situation. A journalist essentially writing bloody murder in a giant media and governmental crowd. In this case, no one in the mainstream evidently cares -– not yet anyway - to pay the slightest attention. It seems that there's a crime going on and no one gives a damn. Think Kitty Genovese on a giant scale.

Paul Craig Roberts has that rare ability to sum up in one page what's happened to our world. The U.S. has been taken over by a criminal conspiracy, using the wars they started and phoney threats to establish a dictatorship in America . They use the familiar words of 'freedom, democracy and liberty' as a cover and justification. Most people are either not aware, deny, or justify this process. They don't know, or feel, the effects of what's happened to their culture. They seldom used their freedoms and rights before. Indeed, they were hardly aware of them or their origin, or their establishment in law. So they don't really miss them - at least, not yet.

Alas, Franz Kafka's novel, The Trial, published in 1925 and George Orwell's novel, 1984, published in 1949, also have been turned into period pieces by the practices of the Bush Regime.
In Kafka's novel, Josef K. is arrested for reasons never given, tried for an unspecified crime, and executed.
The Trial is the model for the Bush Regime's Military Tribunals, which permit execution on the basis of hearsay, secret evidence unknown to the defendant, or confession extracted by torture.

Though U.S. legislators voted against appropriating funds for permanent bases in Iraq, the White House and Pentagon have ignored that prohibition by portraying the huge construction projects to be for temporary facilities tied to the on-going conflict.
F rom the very start, the debate over Iraq has been obscured by a miasma of bogus statistics and facts: issues no one really wanted to deal publicly with—not the White House; certainly not the Republican-led Congress.

A domestic war casualty, Stacy Bannerman, shows below some of the high social costs to America of casualties that are fooled into giving their services, futures and even lives to kill for the Bush regime in their illegal war on Iraq. Her figures are startling and don't cover some of the long-term costs of broken marriages, psychologically damaged children and adults, and veterans who may have become unemployable. Also, what about the social effect of damaged human beings feeling embittered and cheated 'by the system'. When some of the vets realise that the Bush regime is essentially a criminal group who are waging a series of wars based on lies and deceptions, that they have been conned and sucked into and used by this group as trained killers, and may now suffer long term physical and psychological effects, there's no doubt that there will be costs to society. Some may become very high in the long term. Stacy reveals the obvious, immediate costs.

"They volunteered, didn't they?"
As the war in Iraq has gone from wrong to worse, that question, often delivered as a statement, has become the fallback stance of folks who are attempting to silence the voices of those of us who actually have loved ones in uniform, or who died while wearing it. I love my country dearly, but sometimes it's difficult to retain a feeling of love for my countrymen who have said, "They volunteered, didn't they?" in an effort to shut up the growing numbers of military and Gold Star families who are speaking out against this war.

I have always admired George Monbiot's articles about the Iraq war and the Bush Administration. That makes it very hard to understand why Monbiot rubbished those very eminent well-known writers and scholars who questioned the official 9/11 story. Below, David Ray Griffin, one of the best authorities on 9/11, answers Monbiot. His forthcoming book in April will give a far more thorough answer to Monbiot and others like him.

In “ Bayoneting a Scarecrow The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a coward's cult.” (Guardian, February 20), George Monbiot accuses members of the 9/11 truth movement of being “morons” and “idiots” who believe in “magic.” Having in his previous attack---“ A 9/11 conspiracy virus is sweeping the world, ” Guardian, February 6---called me this movement's “high priest,” he now describes my 9/11 writing as a “concatenation of ill-attested nonsense.”

In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington's basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important. As was the norm during the cold war, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq - a country otherwise free from any foreign interference - on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.

Although this article was published in 2003, it illustrates how pervasive pro-war propaganda has become. Also, how slavishly the editors of 175 Murdoch papers have followed Murdoch's pro-Bush-war line. The other corporate-owned media are similar. For instance Fairfax-owned papers in New Zealand follow a similar policy. The editors' views, reflecting those of their employer, seem to be totally arrogant.

Rupert Murdoch argued strongly for a war with Iraq in an interview this week. Which might explain why his 175 editors around the world are backing it too.

Whistle-blower Mark Klein found that the Bush regime wanted to keep secret from the American people, that their communications were been monitored by US intelligence. Also that top media executives willingly became a part of this conspiracy by killing this story. And one got a bigger job at the New York Times where he could do the same censorship. As the NYT says "All the news that (the Bush regime says) is fit to print" Some of the comments are excellent. Others are important because they show how many American have been duped, and believe censorship and spying on Americans is justified so long as Bush claims "it is a necessary part of the war on terrorism etc"

Whistle-blower AT&T technician Mark Klein says his effort to reveal alleged government surveillance of domestic Internet traffic was blocked not only by U.S. intelligence officials but also by the top editors of the Los Angeles Times.

A new US hydrogen bomb will add momentum to the new nuclear arms race. The US disregard of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty - making more bombs rather than nuclear disarmament as promised, and Bush's threat to bomb a non-nuclear nation - Iran - will convince other nations that their security lies with adding to and modernising their own nuclear arsenals.

A U.S. plan to develop a new hydrogen bomb could spark production of new nuclear weapons by other countries, including several foes of the Bush administration, warn some of the nation's leading arms control and disarmament advocacy groups.

An interview with John Mueller conducted March 6, 2007. Listen to the interview .
Is Iraq a distraction from the real War on Terrorism? Is there a real War on Terrorism? What exactly is the threat to the Heimatland ? (That's "Homeland" in the original German.)
To help discuss these questions is John Mueller, author of the new book Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them . He is a professor of political science at Ohio State University. Welcome to the show, sir.

Professor Griffin's paper on "Neocon Imperialism, 9/11 and the Attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq " is the most comprehensive, informative, and scholarly essay I have seen on this subject. ...
Bush and the hand-picked collection of neo-conservatives in his administration control the most powerful forces in human history - enough to kill the world's population many times over. Add to that the other 8 nuclear weapon states that might be triggered into action by Bush's pre-emptive wars as described in Griffin 's paper. The world and humanity face extreme threats from a criminal regime operating on lies, delusions and grandiose ambitions.  

My purpose in publishing this essay is to introduce a perspective, relevant to the debates about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, that thus far has not been part of the public discussion.

Professor Griffin covers topics he says have been inadequately answered by the commission. These include questions surrounding the attack on the Pentagon, the way in which the World Trade Center towers collapsed, and the behavior of President Bush and his Secret Service detail following notification that a second plane had hit the WTC. The talk was hosted by the Muslim- Jewish- Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth (www.mujca.com) and took place at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Includes Q&A.

Seymour Hersh again warns about the new Middle East strategy of the Bush Administration which has brought it "closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims".
He doesn't mention past colonial efforts of the UK and US to dominate Iran and its oil by using the CIA to depose the democratically elected leader of Iran Mossedagh, and replace him with a US puppet the Shah with his dreaded Savak secret police and its torture and assassinations. Finally the 1979 Iranian revolution kicked the Shah and the US out and the new religious government came to power. The Iranians gained control of their own oil resources and their own government.

Is the Administration's new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?
A Strategic Shift
In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The "redirection," as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

Paul Craig Roberts Sums Up World Crisis

Paul Craig Roberts has had a brilliant career as Assistant Secretary to the US Treasury under Reagan and many other prestigious positions and achievements. The following article is Roberts at his best and brilliantly sums up our predicament and the extraordinary circumstances behind it. I give it my highest recommendation.

The Bush-Cheney regime is America's first neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has destroyed the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the remains of America's moral reputation along with the infrastructures of two Muslim countries and countless thousands of Islamic civilians. Plans have been prepared, and forces moved into place, for an attack on a third Islamic country, Iran, and perhaps Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well.

George Galloway is one of the few British MPs who consistently and bravely, has criticised the policies and wars of the Bush regime.
In the article below he is championing the leadership and independent policies of Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela. The US hates what Chavez is doing in leading other Latin American countries toward independence and improvement in the social conditions of their peoples.
Will Chavez be able to defend himself and his government from US subversion? Fidel Castro of Cuba has managed to defeat repeated US attempts at assassination, but is now in decline due to illness and old age. Will the improvements in Cuba under Castro remain when he is gone? I hope so.

A social revolution is taking place in Venezuela. No wonder the neocons and their friends are determined to discredit it.
The chilling Oliver Stone film Salvador got a rare airing on television this week. It was a reminder of a time when, for those on the left, little victories were increasingly dwarfed by big defeats - not least in a Latin America which became synonymous with death squads and juntas. How different things seem now. Yesterday US Vice-President Dick Cheney came uncomfortably close to the reality of Afghan resistance to foreign occupation. On the same day Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez delivered a mightier blow to the neocon dream of US domination, announcing an extension of public ownership of his country's oil fields - the richest outside the Middle East.

This article presents a complete picture of how Bush is converting democratic America to Fascist America.
All the steps and legislative acts empowering Bush are shown. All he needs is an event that produces shock, horror, and fear in Americans such as that produced by the 9/11 attack. After that Bush was the hero saving America from terrorism. His popularity soared and he could do anything he wanted and he was given unprecedented power to wage war, even nuclear war, arrest, imprison and torture anyone, and without trial or even accusation.

. . . The Bush administration has carried out three massive sweeps in the last two years, rolling up more than 30,000 minor crooks and criminals, without as much as a whimper of protest from the public.

Many Americans who look into 9/11 questions may be terrified at the thought that a criminal conspiracy has taken over control of America, that the US military has been part of the conspiracy and cover up, and that it controls the worlds biggest nuclear arsenal - enough weapons to kill all life on earth many times over. It is not surprising that many will choose to disbelieve the story, regardless of proofs, or place it in the 'too hard' basket.

. . . Side by side, the two documents are almost identical. But there is one difference. The new order includes an extra passage in the policy section that mentions two new kinds of airborne vehicles, “unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)” and “remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).” The order states that these are to be regarded as “a potential threat to public safety.” But why did two new categories of aerial vehicles require the drafting of a new order, especially since the basic policy did not change? I puzzled over this for some time, until I stumbled upon a news story about the Global Hawk, prompting further investigations. These have convinced me that the June 1, 2001 pentagon order could be one of the keys to what happened on 9/11.

It's good to see these photos of Australians protesting the Iraq war and the Cheney visit. Many people.are waking up to the facts that Australia is helping the Bush regime fight a totally illegal war based on lies. The war has no purpose or meaning, except to dominate middle east oil and to be a base to launch a lie-based war on Iran.

Sydney anti-war marchers defy police ban and reclaim the streets
This evening 1500 anti-war demonstrators overcame a strong police presence and, after a half-hour confrontation with the NSW riot squad and mounted police marched to the US Consulate to protest against US Vice-President Dick Cheney's visit to Australia and the five-year imprisonment of David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay.
An unexpected last-minute ban by NSW Police (no doubt at the instigation of the NSW Labor Government) turned what would have been a routine demonstration into a major test of the right to march.

Here is the best article so far, that spells out the probability that the US will stage a 'False Flag' operation, in which Iran is blamed for an attack on US territory or military forces, in order to supply the Bush regime with a pretext for attacking Iran. The larger the Bush-staged attack and the more casualties, the more people will be outraged and believe Bush and his war propaganda that Iran is guilty of this crime, and that Bush could never do such a murderous act on his own people. If the mass media in the US and in US-owned or influenced media in other countries, repeats without question this gigantic lie, as they have similar lies about the so-called Iraq threat since 2001, then it is likely that most of the population will believe the lie.

. . . When asked why the Bush Administration was seeking to do this, she responded that it is a part of Bush's broader agenda for the Middle East to bring about a "democratization... peace and stability", to the region.      
Of course, one only has to look back to history to see the Bush Administration's real agenda behind confronting Iran. Iran is only one piece of the puzzle in a broader, century long struggle by the US, Britain, and its Western allies to secure the Middle East's oil reserves.

The war plans against Iran are based on a series of lies, false accusations and false and/or doctored intelligence. It is similar to the US basis for making illegal war on Iraq in 2003. The same techniques of war propaganda and tricks to deceive the public and mass media manipulation are being used.
The consequences of the war are likely to be far more disastrous than with the calamitous Iraq war and the public are now far more suspicious of the Bush Administration. It has now rejected his Iraq war and wants the troops brought home. So to get a measure of public support for a new major war, Bush is likely to stage a major act of provocation, such as a phoney terrorist attack on the US , then blame Iran and use it as a justification for war.

George Bush is going to war again. We see it in the Bush administration's rhetoric about Iran's nuclear program. We see it in the Bush administration's commentary on Iran's reported role in training and equipping Iraqis who are fighting US forces that have invaded and occupied that country. We see it in the Bush administration's criticism of Iran's role in funding and equipping Hezbollah in Lebanon. We see it in the Bush administration's direction to the US military to detain Iranian diplomats in Iraq, breach diplomatic facilities, and capture or kill Iranian operatives in Iraq. We see it in the deployment of the third US Naval carrier group (twenty more ships) to the Gulf.

It is a great idea from a great US historian, that the people should hold Bush impeachment hearings all across America. Will it happen? The Democrats are too deeply involved in echoing Bush's lies, and with the Israeli and arms trade lobbies to offer much more than platitudes of token opposition. I think people should try but I doubt if there would be sufficient support in time to stop Bush's war on Iran. There could be as little as two months left.
It would take a massive campaign and I know various organisations are working for this now. So any help people can offer, now is the time to exert effort to prevent a doomsday war. If Bush begins his war, I think it may be too late to impeach him. So now is the time for any effective action.

Sweet vindication. Who wouldn't want it? To be right. To be free of criticism and upheld by evidence, by actual proof, that one's predictions about a controversial war were correct.
It is the culture of this town -- trafficking in rightness. People clamor day in and day out, in that polished and politic way of the Washingtonian, to be proved right.
But on Iraq, the vindicated are pained. There is no gloating -- not with thousands of people dead, Americans and Iraqis; not with the Iraq war precipitating an ongoing foreign policy crisis that has left the United States' global image in tatters.

It is a great idea from a great US historian, that the people should hold Bush impeachment hearings all across America. Will it happen? The Democrats are too deeply involved in echoing Bush's lies, and with the Israeli and arms trade lobbies to offer much more than platitudes of token opposition. I think people should try but I doubt if there would be sufficient support in time to stop Bush's war on Iran. There could be as little as two months left.
 It would take a massive campaign and I know various organisations are working for this now. So any help people can offer, now is the time to exert effort to prevent a doomsday war. If Bush begins his war, I think it may be too late to impeach him. So now is the time for any effective action.

Courage is in short supply in Washington, D.C. The realities of the Iraq War cry out for the overthrow of a government that is criminally responsible for death, mutilation, torture, humiliation, chaos.
But all we hear in the nation's capital, which is the source of those catastrophes, is a whimper from the Democratic Party, muttering and nattering about "unity" and "bipartisanship," in a situation that calls for bold action to immediately reverse the present course.

Robert Parry, a long-time Washington insider and commentator, presents a very informed, powerful and convincing article that the Bush Administration is on course to start a war with Iran , beginning with a massive bombing campaign.
. . . . Parry illuminates many previously little known facts - such as that various leading Democrats such as Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator John Edwards and others have expressed strong support for a US attack on Iran, and no opinions or questions as to the advisability or potential disastrous consequences of such action or the false accusations of the Bush regime. Many democrats are helping build a false case against Iran.

Much as he did before the Iraq invasion, George W. Bush is limiting the debate about war with Iran, offering assurances that he considers war "a last resort" even as he moves his military forces into place.

Paul Craig Roberts is one of the best political commentators today and most qualified to give us the truth of what is going on in Washington and what is likely to happen.
What impressed me was the large amount of advice Bush was given by highly qualified Americans that invading Iraq was a mistake. An even greater amount of advice said making war on Iran would be a bigger mistake, very much against US interests, and threatening to the world. However, no amount of wise advice has any effect on Bush, who is following an insane, Israeli-inspired, neoconservative agenda.

Bush's State of the Union Address did not describe the deplorable state of the union. The speech's importance consists of Bush's plea to Congress to please let him fool them one more time in order that he can attack Iran and start a bigger war that Congress will have to support in order to support Israel.   That is all the president had to say. . . .
. . . "The president took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable, and predicted, disarray that has followed."   - Sen. Jim Webb

Will a similar incident like the Gulf of Tonkin attack during the Vietnam War in 1964 be used by Bush as a pretext for war with Iran?
Will it fool congress and the people as it did in 1964?  That a big war may soon erupt is no secret as there are over 21 million articles on "Nuclear War With Iran" from a Google search.
That does not mean people know about it. They don't.
Congressman Ron Paul is warning about it, but Bush's obedient mass media either do not report it, or slant it to disparage Paul.

Developments converge to signify inevitable conflict despite ongoing chaos in Iraq
Republican Congressman and 2008 Presidential candidate Ron Paul fears a staged Gulf of Tonkin style incident may be used to provoke air strikes on Iran as numerous factors collide to heighten expectations that America may soon be embroiled in its third war in six years.
Writing in his syndicated weekly column, the representative of Texas' 14th district warns of “a contrived Gulf of Tonkin-type incident (that) may occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran.”

Will Protest Help?

It's good to see this protest and typical of the New York Times to downgrade it by underestimating the numbers.
Will it move Bush.? Very unlikely.
. . . Nevertheless this popular protest is good because it may encourage others and embolden the very weak and vacillating Congress.
Bush is defiant and says he'll continue to make war based on lies, while he is making up new lies to justify his next war. The formula seems to work well for the Bush Administration who are determined to carry on their plan even if it means world war III.
Until Congress faces up to Bush's many lies, instead of going along with them, and acts to impeach Bush, his neocon regime will carry on their war-making agenda.

Washington - Tens of thousands of protesters converged on the National Mall on Saturday to oppose President Bush's plan for a troop increase in Iraq in what organizers hoped would be one of the largest shows of antiwar sentiment in the nation's capital since the war began.
The event drew demonstrators from across the country, and many said that in addition to taking their discontent to the streets they planned to press members of Congress to oppose the war.

Russian Ex-Chief of Defence, General Ivashov's analysis is very similar to many articles on our website and in my comments. I think it is one of the most informed professional analysis so far of US intentions to nuclear bomb Iran. He even refers to a pretext or what many have referred to as a "False Flag" incident to get the Senate and Congress to give their approval for a nuclear attack on Iran. The article should convince people that now is the time to take action if they wish to prevent a US nuclear attack on Iran and all the disastrous consequences that can follow. I can't see any effective action or purpose in protest after such an attack when casualties are already in the millions with perhaps many more to come.

In the overall flow of information coming from the Middle East, there are increasingly frequent reports indicating that within several months from now the US will deliver nuclear strikes on Iran. For example, citing well-informed but undisclosed sources, the Kuwaiti Arab Times wrote that the US plans to launch a missile and bomb attack on the territory of Iran before the end of April, 2007. The campaign will start from the sea and will be supported by the Patriot missile defense systems in order to let the US forces avoid a ground operation and to reduce the efficiency of the return strike by “any Persian Gulf country”. Strategic Cultural Foundation (Russia)

This Los Angeles Times article shows how US is setting the stage for attacking Iran by making accusations against Iran for aiding the Iraqi opposition.
The US is acting as if it had a divine right to illegally bomb and invade Iraq, justifying it with lies and false accusations. Then the US  blames Iraq's neighbours Iran and Syria, for interfering with their illegal conquest and slaughter of over 650,000 Iraqis and supplying arms to the Iraqi opposition. This is in spite of good relations between Iran and the US-appointed Iraqi government. It is outrageous and delusional for the US, who has created a large war quagmire in Iraq, to portray itself as having the right to dictate Iraq's affairs, it's relations with other states and actually threaten these states for opposing its conquest and killing. The Bush regime has been creating many false reasons for attacking Iran, and preparing the military for an attack for some months. As they get closer the anti-Iran propaganda increases.

US warnings of advanced weaponry crossing the border are overstated, critics say.

The finding by The National Centre for Social Research that "An overwhelming majority of people in Britain are willing to surrender civil liberties to help tackle the threat of terrorism" shows a dangerous shift in social attitudes.
The survey does not take into account that much of the so-called terrorist threat has been greatly magnified, some believe created, by politicians such as Tony Blair, to prepare his public and legislators to support his illegal wars based on a series of lies. People have believed his lies, as the Germans believed Hitler's lies. They have uncritically accepted Blair's definitions of a terrorist threat based on his and Bush's lies.

. . . the survey found a declining sense of Britishness, particularly among English people who are becoming more inclined to assert their "Englishness";

Bill Moyers is well-placed to tell us about the power of ever-growing media empires in the US. With his direct experience in both politics and the media, Moyers tells us of the techniques the media use to fool and befuddle the public, and why. He explains why it is a battle for fundamental freedoms.

Address to the National Conference for Media, Memphis, Tennessee - as prepared for delivery.

Bush's purpose in sending 21,000 or more US troops to Iraq is to create even more chaos and violence. He also wants to create incidents he can blame on Iran, so as to justify a US attack on Iran. The more violence and killing the US can create, the more their puppet Iraqi government will believe they need US troops. Bush names any opponents of the US illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, such as Muqtada al-Sadr, as linked to 'terrorism'.

He is a strange figure to be targeted as the number one enemy of the US in Iraq. Four years ago, few had heard of the Shia nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr inside or outside Iraq. Even somebody as suspicious as Saddam Hussain did not think he would play any role in the coming crisis.
Now he holds the future of Iraq in his hands. He has far more popularity and legitimacy than many of the pro-American Iraqi leaders cowering in the Green Zone. He is seen by millions of Shia in Baghdad and across southern Iraq as their spiritual and national leader.
Rightly or wrongly, he is feared by most Sunnis as their nemesis, a physical symbol that they are battling for their existence in Iraq.

Paul Craig Roberts is one of our best commentators on what Bush and his neocons are really doing. The following is another top article, and well-documented as usual. Once again war with Iran is predicted with the US using nuclear weapons. I urge you to read this article and consider the consequences, which can have a devastating effect on the world.

Most Americans believe that Bush's Iraqi misadventure is over. The occupation has lost the support of the electorate, the Congress, the generals and the troops. The Democrats are sitting back waiting for Bush to come to terms with reality. They don't want to be accused of losing the war by forcing Bush out of Iraq. There are no more troops to commit, and when the "surge" fails, Bush will have no recourse but to withdraw. A little longer, everyone figures, and the senseless killing will be over.

Does anybody believe there is a crime the Bush regime would not commit? After all those lies to get the US public to support the illegal war against Iraq, and murdering 655,000 people, setting up false imprisonment and torture prisons in many different countries, spying on Americans, and others,  I don't believe there is any crime the Bush regime would not commit. They have sneered at the soul of America, stole it, and jumped on it, as the following article illustrates.

Sometimes you look around and wonder how things could have gone so wrong so quickly. America has become the antithesis of everything she purports to be. We are the greatest purveyors of violence the world has ever known; the largest weapons dealers on earth; and death and misery are our principal exports. Everything is for sale here, even men's tormented souls—at least, those who still possess them.

This paper provides new insights into why the US will not withdraw troops from Iraq. It is the new imperialism and colonialism and exploiting Iraqi oil that provides enormous profits to the 100,000 private military contractors in Baghdad , and provides billions in profits for the military-industrial complex in the US . Money is the great motivator, with no-bid contracts for chosen Pentagon suppliers. Greater war risks, the slaughter or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, morality and ethics don't matter to people participating in a gigantic profits feeding frenzy in Baghdad and Washington.

Neither the Iraq Study Group nor other establishment critics of the Iraq war are calling for the withdrawal of US troops from that country. To the extent that the Study Group or the new Congress purport to inject some "realism" into the Iraq policy, such projected modifications do not seem to amount to more than changing the drivers of the US war machine without changing its destination, or objectives: control of Iraq's political and economic policies.
In light of the fact that by now almost all of the factions of the ruling circles, including the White House and the neoconservative war-mongerers, acknowledge the failure of the Iraq war, why, then, do they balk at the idea of pulling the troops out of that country?

Al Gore believes people can make a difference as the following article shows. He has demonstrated that this can be true with his film "An Inconvenient Truth" and his global efforts to publicize this issue. The people also made a difference in New Zealand by their multi-faceted campaign to declare New Zealand a nuclear free zone. David Lange judged this to be a vote winner, so he jumped on the band wagon in 1984 when he said "elect Labour and we'll make the whole country nuclear free". And so it happened, Labour was elected and made New Zealand  nuclear free.
That was in New Zealand in 1984.  But does this technique of effecting social change work in the USA under Bushism?

Hundreds of volunteers from across the country have flocked to Nashville this fall and winter and more are here today as part of a grass-roots training effort to spread the word on global warming.
They are taking part in Al Gore's The Climate Project, which mushroomed from his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.
The goal had been to train 1,000 "presenters" to show slides of melting glaciers and charts of climbing temperatures, but many more have wanted in.

The New York Times article below gives a good account of how alleged US strategy in Iraq during 2006 has zigzagged and failed.
The NYT and US Govt want to give the impression that it is a series of blunders and mistakes in Iraq that has resulted in the situation going from bad to worse, to full-blown civil war.
What they do not discuss is (1) They had no right or real reason to invade and occupy in the first place (2) That the whole effort is based on a collection of lies by the Bush regime. (3) With the lies they used to justify their attacks now thoroughly exposed, the Bush regime carries on anyway, intensifying their war, killing 655,000 Iraqis and stoking the civil war.

President Bush began 2006 assuring the country that he had a “strategy for victory in Iraq.” He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch trying to devise a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed.
The original plan, championed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Baghdad, and backed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, called for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of American troops. But the plan collided with Iraq's ferocious unraveling, which took most of Mr. Bush's war council by surprise.

Professor Lustick's article below, illustrates the amazing growth in the 'War on Terror' industry throughout various sectors of American society. From Congressional estimates of 160 potential terrorist targets in 2003 to 300,000 potential fund-generating targets in 2006. From zero dollars to 650 billion dollars for anti-terrorist expenditures. It's now a huge 'pork barrel' with "thousands of interest groups crowding toward the anti-terrorism trough" according to Lustick. It's like the Tulip craze in the Netherlands in the 1600s. Anti-terrorism has now become a huge industry of vested interests depending on the continuing phoney wars on terror created by the Bush regime and its neoconservatives to justify real invasions, wars and generally enlarging real wars. As with the intended US-planned nuclear war on Iran, proof of any accusations is not required. The accusation is enough backed up by an eager mass media repeating and embellishing every lie.

The official mantra is that we fight in Iraq because it is the "central front in the War on Terror." The exact opposite is the case.
We are trapped in fighting an unwinnable - even nonsensical - "war on terror" because its invention was required in order to fight in Iraq. After years of slaughter in Iraq, the neoconservative fantasy of a series of cheap, fast, neo-imperial victories is dead. But the war on terror lives on, stronger than ever.

.... Parry's article below reports that the Bush regime is planning to go ahead with its expansion of the Iraq  war, and by nuclear bombing Iran. This parallels many other articles on this site which say the same thing. All predict very, very serious consequences in many areas.
Parry also predicts there will be "some provocation that can be blamed on Syria and Iran , thus justifying the expanded war."
My own prediction is that the "provocation" referred to by Parry, will be a vitally important False Flag operation. It would be very carefully planned by the Bush Administration to stage some kind of an attack, perhaps a terrorist attack on the US, like 9/11, for which the Bush Regime has planned to blame Iran. ...

Intelligence sources say President Bush -- along with Israel's Ehud Olmert and the UK's Tony Blair -- are weighing the possibility of Israeli-led attacks on Syria and Iran in early 2007, with the United States providing logistical back-up.

Every tactic the US has taken in Iraq since their 2003 invasion seems to have been designed to provoke more hatred of the US and more, not less, terrorism. The US public are conditioned to believe that there is no such thing as legitimate armed resistance to their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq . The US government and mass media promote the fantasy that any opposition to US rule must be called "terrorist". The US mass media is more than happy to oblige the Bush regime, by using US psy-war designed words and definitions of the Iraq situation as part of their campaign to justify and white-wash every new US atrocity against a sovereign state and its people.

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies?