wanttoknow.info - Spread The Word ...

Good Morning All

A good friend sent me the link to the following site and I have just begun to study it.

I admit I was not previously familiar with the name Fred Burks, and I am more cautious of anyone who has been close to any administration, but I think the quality and content of WantToKnow speaks for itself.

Enjoy ... and let me know what you think !
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For those who want to know what goes on behind the scenes in national and global politics, this is essential reading. These articles come from a comprehensive database of nearly 1,000 highly revealing news articles arranged by category. To access the entire, empowering database, click here.
- http://www.wanttoknow.info/indexnewsarticles

The database also includes a number of inspiring articles to balance all of the secrecy and darkness. By educating ourselves and spreading the news
- http://www.wanttoknow.info/spreadtheword

...to friends, colleagues, and to our media and political representatives, we can and will build a brighter future:
- http://www.wanttoknow.info/brighterfuture

With very best wishes to all,
Fred Burks for PEERS:
- http://www.peerservice.org/

and the WantToKnow.info Team:
- http://www.wanttoknow.info/aboutus

Fred Burks is former language interpreter for Presidents Bush and Clinton
- http://www.wanttoknow.info/fredburksresigns

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WDU is catching on ...

" Experts who have studied the properties of Depleted Uranium and its deleterious effects upon human health have a great deal to tell us. Recently in a letter to Tracy Press, Marion Fulk, local resident and nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, tells us a bit about the uranium that is being exploded at Livermore and its effects upon human health: “Uranium-238, sometimes called ‘depleted uranium’, poses a serious health threat, especially if inhaled in finely divided particles like those created by open-air explosives testing. Because of its properties, uranium-238 is a triple threat to human health. Its properties as a heavy metal create health damage once inside the body. Its properties as a hazardous chemical catalyst cause additional health risks. And its properties as a radioactive material offer a third route to cellular and DNA damage, illness and premature death in humans and animals.”

Despite the fact that Uranium-238 is commonly called “Depleted”, this was a label invented to get the public to think that it is a weakly radioactive material. Nothing could be further from the truth. This poison dust packs a powerful punch to the human body, as Dr. Rosalie Bertell, biometrician and environmental epidemiologist, international radiation expert, and Founder of The International Institute of Concern for Public Health explains, “Depleted uranium concentrate is almost 100 percent uranium. More than 99 percent of both natural and depleted uranium consists of the isotope U-238.” In addition, the U.S. Department of Energy and the 1995 U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute admits that a small amount of additional toxic heavy metals and radioactive isotopes are also present in Depleted Uranium, such as plutonium, neptunium, americium, Uranium-236 as well as Uranium-234 and Uranium-235.

The Uranium-238 which is used in our weapons and is “tested” at test sites throughout the United States is some mighty powerful stuff. We should not, therefore, allow the name of this type of radioactive munition, “Depleted Uranium”, fool us. As a matter of fact, in order to bring greater clarity to the issue, scientists from the UK at the Low Level Radiation Campaign are no longer calling uranium weapons “Depleted Uranium” or “DU” but have switched to the term “WDU”, which stands for Weapons-Derived Uranium when referring to exposures from use of weapons containing any class of Uranium. Hopefully the term WDU will eventually catch on, because just like the words that the US Military uses to describe DU such as claiming it is “mildly” or “weakly” radioactive, the fact of the matter is, no radiation is harmless radiation. "

Excerpted from:
- http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_23826.shtml

See also: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/livermore_300.htm
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media monopoly conserving power ...

"Brent Bozell believes that media bias has reached its worst level in the past 24 years, distorting the truth about the war, the economy and more. A new study released by the non-partisan Center for Media and Public Affairs confirms Brent’s claims, noting that 77 percent of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage was favorable to Democrats this fall, while 88 percent of the coverage given GOP candidates was negative.

"ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin, appearing on The O’Reilly Factor, admitted that the media elite are biased. He particularly noted the adulatory coverage of liberal Democrat Nancy Pelosi compared to the mean-spirited coverage the networks dumped on Newt Gingrich back in 1994. “If I were a conservative,” confessed Halperin, “I would feel suspicious that I was not going to get a fair break at the end of an election.”

"Anticipating an even greater flood of bias from the liberal media, the Media Research Center has launched the ‘Demand the Media "Tell the Truth!" about Liberal Leadership’ petition to give outraged citizens a platform to hold the media accountable."
- Media Research Center (asking for donations)
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What a bizarre place Americans live in now.

The U.S. Department of Defense website right now lists at least 16 accomplishments U.S. troops have made for the Iraqi people and their infrastructure.

DOD website is not under control of so-called mainstream (corporate) U.S. "media" so Defense can list those accomplishments ...

... but look for them in your local newspaper, or try to find them on TV ?

You will NOT !

Why ?

Because should corporate media list accomplishments in Iraq would indicate that things are going WELL in Iraq.

That would mean there is little need for U.S. troops to remain in Iraq, and that would mean having to fill airspace and print with something other than the "Iraq story" ...

... and that might put increased pressure on media to actually INVESTIGATE something.


I continue to hear these ragtag arguments from the far Left that media is right biased, and from the far Right that media is left biased, and it makes no sense at all.


Whatever BIAS there is in today's American media has to do with one thing only:

Monopolistic power *conserving* monopolistic power.

Enormity ...

" The Fedex woman stopped by my office on Friday. She wanted to know if we were going to be open on Monday.

I explained that our hours really never make sense, but that my team and I would be thinking of Dr. King and his work all day, regardless of what we were doing.

She sighed deeply and said, "Every year, we're supposed to ask if offices are going to be open, and last year it made me so sad, I had to stop asking. I even got written up for not doing it." It turns out that most people either said, "what holiday?" or "oh, we don't celebrate that..."

I've written a lot about worldview, about the instincts and biases and outlooks that shape our lives. It's very difficult to change a worldview as a marketer... but one thing that changes a worldview, not just forever but often for generations, is a truly horrific event.

Why is it so easy and fun for a politician to make fun of French people (the French are arrogant and don't bathe was the joke on the radio on Saturday), but a non-starter to take on rape victims? There are no skits on Saturday Night Live about Darfur. Why does it make us squirm when someone misuses the idea of a lynching for their own selfish motives? If you've been misjudged and mistreated your entire life, of course it has an effect on the way you see the world.

Slavery was the greatest crime of the millenium. Why does it surprise marketers (politicians and otherwise) when so many people have a worldview that has been permanently altered by the legacy of abuse? It's a worldview that doesn't ask for charity for the individual, but one that demands respect.

The lesson of diversity is a simple one, a compelling one, one that's been demonstrated over and over again. Diverse populations solve problems better and faster than homogenous ones. But the selfish value of treating people of all backgrounds in the same way is just part of the Reverend's message. The other part, the part that's easy to forget, is that when confronted with enormity, worldviews change. And if you want to engage with someone, you have no choice but to understand that. You don't have to experience the emotion in order to be able to respect someone who has. "

- http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/01/enormity.html

a dead man walking ...

Commenting, in part, on a New York Times article, and to others commenting on it:
- http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/opinion/08herbert.html?8ty&emc=ty
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Unions can and do provide good benefit to workers - something I always agreed and pointed out, even while chafing under having "two bosses" (never liked that part).

One thing I find most troubling is tendency of union "bosses" to "inflate" some workers into thinking they are "skilled" - people with no more than a high-school education may be skilled in having multi-year experience at "tending" a machine, which actually does the work, so there is some *skill* involved in making that machine work to the best of expectations, or preventing it doing otherwise, but beyond that environment, what *skill* does that worker actually possess ?

Maybe none ... and not much in the way of "social skills" either for having been so long with the machine.

I think it is an inescapable fact that those who do not acquire some real skill (at least one) are simply going to be "left behinds" in the current technological era ...

... and if society meets with some catastrophe for which our dependence on technology suddenly ends, because our infrastructure is destroyed, there is another even more critical importance for our survival depending on acquired skills.

A "class" of people that does not possess skills to survive will not survive without a "nanny" state to support them, and even then, if such a state decides to withhold that support ... or is not longer able to provide ?
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" ... the top five Wall Street firms (Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley) are the essence of "robber barons" and not so easily stopped as some other corporate entities which could more easily be "starved" - which is not to say nothing can be done about them.

They are, however, the real targets of anyone who would ultimately change the way things are: not the obscene bonuses, but the way they do business, and the very business they do.

I think a more serious question needs to be asked:
*Where does "American wealth" reside ?*

American "wealth" is largely in the form of worthless paper.

Aside from gold or other metals, real estate is probably the closest thing to *wealth* Americans can hold - actual ownership, that is: no mortgage.

Even so, RE handicaps owners who are required to pay a continual "tribute" to maintain an illusion of ownership, without which their "wealth" evaporates into government coffers - except even that is illusion, when in fact government under our present system is in debt to the banking system ( the Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, et al) whose control of our money is beyond anything "federal" (Federal Reserve is not federal) and who collect profits not only from government debt, but from everything you and I do.

I have no doubt it is provable that other CEOs who collect "obscene bonuses" by and large do not sit in their chairs without some nod from the above mentioned "Bear Sterns et al"

In a real sense it seems to me these CEOs are not as much "removing the wealth" of the nation as they are maintaining, and being rewarded for keeping, control.
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"Fairness plays no role in this system. The corporate elite control it, and they have turned it to their ends."

I do not even see so-called "productivity gains" of past decades as having been "beneficial" to American workers, who now are caught in a no-win position of sustaining a "consumer society" in order to have income even though they can hardly afford necessities.

The "work" of the Federal Reserve is just about finished.

"The pervasive unfairness in the way the great wealth of the United States is distributed should be seen for what it is, an insidious disease eating away at the structure of the society and undermining its future. The middle class is hurting, propped up by the wobbly crutches of personal debt. The safety net, not just for the poor, but for the middle class as well, is disappearing. The savings rate has dropped to below zero, and more Americans are filing for bankruptcy than for divorce."

... misses the reality that "the structure of the society" is already demolished, the "middle class" is essentially extinct, so that the only "present truth" is that our society is "propped up by the wobbly crutches of personal debt" without which there would be no economy, because there would be no money.

What "safety net" is there ?

Only the smoke and mirrors of our *debt-based* (unsustainable) economy keeps our government from bankruptcy - it IS bankrupt, impossibly in debt to Bear Stearns et al who, in just almost a hundred years, have reduced the value of the American dollar to nothing.

Making reference to a view of "enlightened" America:
- http://www.ebaumsworld.com/2006/02/invade.html

Someone who cannot distinguish between Iran and Australia on a map who still thinks the dollar in his pocket, which he does not own and can be taken away at any time, cannot buy a sustainable meal anywhere, likely has no place to grow one, and even if he did would be hard pressed to make one grow.

He is for all practical purposes a dead man walking.
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Climate Change Denial - excellent presentation

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"Wacky Weather" is Deadly Global Heating

" As of 2007 the Earth System has already undergone profound global change of which global heating is the most immediately evident profound impact. It is getting hot, and it is happening fast. Many leading scientists tell us we have 10 years at most given current trends before climate change becomes irreversible and dangerous, beyond the generally accepted rise of 2 degrees Celsius considered adaptable (we are about 1/3 the way there).

Yet the chortling television weather people tell us the unprecedented wave of global mild weather - really a lack of winter in many parts - is not climate change. We are encouraged to take advantage of our good fortune and get out there and play golf. At what point will abrupt climate change and deterioration of the Earth System's life giving biosphere be recognized as a global ecological emergency, and responded to as such? And will it then be too late to limit damages, or even to survive?

Global warming is not a slow, gentle, pleasant rise in temperatures to be savored. It is an abrupt fundamental break down in the Earth System's climate sub-system that threatens the Earth's, humanity's and your family's ability to live. It is not enough to blame the weather on El Nino, which itself can be and is exacerbated by climate change. As climate change continues unabated by systematic policy responses, and "wacky weather" more prevalent, we can expect immediately budding trees to die from later frosts, agriculture to struggle to define growing seasons, pest insects to multiply, and ecosystems to deteriorate and die.

The ability of individuals, communities and nations to deny the obvious is amazing. People do not like hearing that their consumptive, wasteful lifestyle is destroying God's creation. For most our addiction to lethargic comfort is so great, our ignorance of ecology and our total dependence upon a healthy biosphere so complete, and our psychological inability to grasp that humanity has overrun the biosphere becoming the dominant force in nature so absolute that we do nothing as the greatest avertable disaster to ever face civilizations looms - increasingly recognized but not nearly sufficiently addressed.

Humanity is deeply within the Anthropocene era whereby our presence is the greatest force shaping the biosphere. We are witnessing the jarring collapse of the Earth's most recent climate equilibrium, and depending upon how much climate forcing occurs from continued emissions, there are no guarantees what the next climate will look like or even be regularized within a decent time period. And the longer term results will be calamitous - extreme weather including super storms, floods and droughts, massive crop failures, vegetation die-back over whole regions, a proliferation of tropical diseases, rising seas destroying cities, a massive refugee crisis and a general breakdown of anything resembling dependable climatic patterns.

Don't believe me? Walk outside right now - see or feel anything different? Are the trees blooming in the middle of winter like in Washington D.C. and New York? Is there a lack of snow as in Minnesota and Europe, while other areas like Colorado get dumped upon? Are the rains failing as with Australia's "Big Dry"? So much of the global ecological system's processes and patterns which provide the life-giving context for human civilization have been lost and changed, and it continues to intensify. Essentially no natural processes are assured as a very different Planet emerges - climate patterns, water supplies, ocean fisheries, soil fertility, terrestrial ecosystem energy and nutrient cycling are all in doubt.

Many rightly do what they can individually, but are discouraged by the fact that many necessary changes like widespread public transportation, caps on emissions, and universal adoption of a low carbon energy economy requires societal changes beyond an individual's immediate grasp. Goddamn it, snap out of it! I want to shake every climate denier and ambivalent Earth slayer, slapping them in the face to awake them from their slumberous death march. We are witnessing a human caused disintegration of ancient climatic cycles, with anthropogenic emissions forcing the global climate beyond what has always been a high level of variability.

We must get past the ingrained illusion that humanity has not become a planetary ecological force. And that the changes we are witnessing in a single lifetime are good. As the ecologically ignorant chortle, pleased to be outside in winter in short sleeves, perhaps they should consider how global heating will impact their water, food and shelter requirements for life - to say nothing of the economy and their prospects for employment.

How deeply and sadly we are in denial regarding the consequences of the abrupt climate changes we are witnessing. The life giving biosphere is in tatters and near collapse because of you and me and everyone. We are witnessing the logical conclusion of deforesting 80% of the world's natural ecosystems while working on the rest, breeding and increasing in numbers recklessly, using fossil fuel energy wastefully, and believing our lifestyles and consumption are independent of the Earth.

Massively reducing emissions must become this next greatest generation's central call to duty. Dramatically and rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions must become the central organizing principle of governments, business and individuals. Contracting rich nations' carbon emissions, while allowing materially poor nations to converge with the rich's level of emissions, is the only way forward that is both equitable and likely to be successful. We need contests, and publicity for best practices, and technology sharing, and a rejection of coal, and emission caps, and global carbon trading, population control, huge renewable energy subsidies and so much more.

Only massive public and political pressure - now - can save the Earth and all her species. The recent vote in the U.S. was a repudiation of oil industry governance. Now it is up to Democrats to stop pandering on gas prices and propose a progressive, workable carbon tax; ratify Kyoto and meaningfully rejoin international climate talks; launch an "Apollo project" supporting renewable energy, and generally for the U.S. to get on the ball and rejoin the league of civilized nations that are working on climate solutions.

I exhort all that read this to break the denial that the current "wacky weather" is natural; it is more, much more; the start of systematic collapse of being as we know it. And I ask that you help other non-ecologically attuned people grasp what their way of life is doing to creation - risking ridicule as an acolyte of ecological truth. Take responsibility personally, and become involved in the great climate change/ecological sustainability movements that are set to rock this world - bringing forth the necessary societal changes. Time is short, but solutions exist. Save the climate, save the Earth, save yourself and your posterity. Get active, organize, agitate, protest and above all else reduce your carbon emissions! "

- http://earthmeanders.blogspot.com/2007/01/climate-change-denial.html

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there is no more time to waste ...

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Photo from Arenac County Michigan January 7, 2007.

It is written in Hopi Prophecy, that when wild flowers bloom or grow in the middle of winter it is a sign that the written prophecy time is here.

These ferns are in a growth stage normal for the end of May or the June.

We must all do what we can, there is no more time to waste!
- http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=9552&pst=617442&archival=

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beaten to death for "fun" ...

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One of the illnesses of our current society ...



- one given very little thought as I can see -



...is that we can sit in comfort in our living areas and watch on television a "news" report related to a homeless man who was beaten to death "for fun" by teenage boys ...



... and in an instant allow our attention to shift,
as the "talking head" says:



" ... and now, shifting gears, let's look at what is hot in trucks these days."



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"signing statement" declared his right to open people's mail ...

W pushes envelope on U.S. spying

New postal law lets Bush peek through your mail

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

Bush's move came during the winter congressional recess and a year after his secret domestic electronic eavesdropping program was first revealed. It caught Capitol Hill by surprise.

"Despite the President's statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people's mail without a warrant," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.

Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.

"The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.

"The danger is they're reading Americans' mail," she said.

"You have to be concerned," agreed a career senior U.S. official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush's claim. "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we've ever known."

A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised, "It's something we're going to look into."

Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval.

Yet in his statement Bush said he will "construe" an exception, "which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent ... with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances."

Bush cited as examples the need to "protect human life and safety against hazardous materials and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection."

White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore denied Bush was claiming any new authority.

"In certain circumstances - such as with the proverbial 'ticking bomb' - the Constitution does not require warrants for reasonable searches," she said.

Bush, however, cited "exigent circumstances" which could refer to an imminent danger or a longstanding state of emergency.

Critics point out the administration could quickly get a warrant from a criminal court or a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge to search targeted mail, and the Postal Service could block delivery in the meantime.

But the Bush White House appears to be taking no chances on a judge saying no while a terror attack is looming, national security experts agreed.

Martin said that Bush is "using the same legal reasoning to justify warrantless opening of domestic mail" as he did with warrantless eavesdropping.

- http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/485561p-408789c.html

only cartoon nominated for Nobel Peace Prize ...

In the spirit of the season, this 1939 MGM Cartoon Peace On Earth is the only cartoon ever nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize!

It was broadcast in the US just after Germany pre-emptively invaded Poland, a protest against Bush-Iraq-style pre-emptive wars, and before US was attacked at Pearl Harbor and thus entered WWII.

You will be amazed.

http://www.thomhartmann.com/

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key to worldchanging in 2007 ...

What's Next: Edward Wolf

WorldChanging Team
December 28, 2006 8:36 AM

" The key to worldchanging in 2007 will not be what we think, but how we think.

During the past year the worldchanging community has celebrated a multitude of new ideas, each intriguing and many truly transformative. But the world’s gravest challenges – war, genocide, spreading anarchy, the climate emergency – remain unresolved not for want of ideas. Instead, those with the power to make big decisions seem unable to think.

It’s easy to direct this criticism at Washington, where for a time “reality-based community” was a term of derision (until reality caught up). But in London, Harare, Khartoum, Moscow, Beijing, and many corporate boardrooms, the same pattern prevails: unwillingness to admit error, to engage with honest critics, to test alternatives, to follow logic and scientific evidence where they lead has poisoned the atmosphere for constructive decision-making and reduced the chances that promising ideas will get to strut their stuff.

Politics resembles a battle of “brands” more than an exchange of ideas. The blogosphere has blown the doors of civic conversation wide open but hardly elevated the dialogue, as almost any comment string confirms. But that may be changing as social networking and open-source tools reshape the “spaces” in which people interact. Can new leaders emerge in such spaces?

In 2007, watch for worldchanging leaders who embody humility, not those who merely espouse it. Emulate them. Admit errors freely – too many things are now changing too fast to avoid mistakes. Embrace the anomalies and reject the certainties. As scholar Mark C. Taylor advised recently in The New York Times, “cultivate a faith in doubt that calls into question every certainty.” (“The Devoted Student,” 12/21/06)

Thoreau declared “the elevation of ends and the simplification of means is the goal.” Worldchanging showcases the means our times require. It’s up to each of us to elevate the ends – by keeping rigor in our thinking, courtesy in our conversations, and humility in our hearts. By restoring our faith in doubt.

A paradox: as we make space for doubt, we may invigorate public life. Watch the world change then! Arrogant certitude is SO twentieth century. "

Edward C. Wolf is a writer and editor with a special interest in the natural history of global change. A former senior researcher at Worldwatch Institute and director of communications at Ecotrust, his books include Salmon Nation and Klamath Heartlands.

- http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005679.html