A suggestion ...

Just a quick tuppenceworth to all this recessioning that abounds at present...  

We're still trying to find ways to cloy back a few pence here and there so's our respective economies will stabilise and we'll be able to continue to buy DVD box sets and all those oh so valuable things ...  

But look at this ... if the Governments are really so concerned for our welfare and they genuinely want to get a bit of money back into the economy .. surely they should stop (and reverse) this ticking counter ...  

http://zfacts.com/p/447.html

 

to Quote: "The US budget for Iraq in FY 2007 came to $4,988/Iraqi" - so with the population of Iraq at 27,499,638 (as of 2007) that'd be a saving of ... $137,168,194,344 ... (and counting) (hope me commas are in the right place)

QED ... no?

Books and Articles to be read

This will be updated as and when ....

http://www.swans.com/library/art13/ga230.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5574 -   The (Farcical) Trial of Slobodan Milosevic

Humanitarian Imperialism - http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18827

The Black Hole of Greed - Space Wars?

From GeurillaNews: RE: Space Wars
"While 'there are executive orders that say we don't want to do that... [and] there's been a long-standing U.S. policy to try to keep space a peaceful place... we have in space assets absolutely essential to the conduct of our military operations, absolutely essential to our national security,' Haver added. " (Haver being Rich Haver, a former Defence Official).

Just came accross this this morning, and one cannot but think about the consequences of such a prospect. Space, 'final frontier' and all that it is, has seemingly already been claimed by the US (if they could grasp a galaxian concept, no doubt the stars within the galaxy would be Branded with the Bush Stars and Stripes....sickening thought, but it seems homeland security virus is airborne and this lame excuse for defence expenditure has reached a land where ordinary human being has even experienced yet .... so, by any logical conclusion, by the time we get up there, it'll be a barren wasteland like Michigan or Palestine or somesuch ...

Look, as soon as people realise that there IS NO SECURITY THREAT, IT'S MANUFACTURED, there is no need for 'Homeland Security', it's manufactured; as manufactured as Pop Idol, and that we don't need a hug from the Murderers in suits we have placed our trust in, the sooner we can begin to right this ever expanding wrong ... the concept of Terrorism is a psychologically manufactured stage desinged to frighten us as would (supposedly!) another dose of Hallowe'en in the movie theater, except that nowadays the Movie Theater is the globe, the world, and the actors are the Bushes and Blairs, but the victims are REAL and the special effects are not special but still effective, in the worst way concievable....
The blase, not-a-second-thought-about-it attitude we have had for monumental explosions and mass killing sprees on the Big Screen is the precisely same attitude exacted by these governmental Oscar contenders playing out a greedy role on the gobal stage on a daily basis ... and all the while, we sit in the theatre seats of our offices and homes and traffic jams worrying about our hair, stomachs, television schedule for the night or new GAP range ... what carrotts we entertain, what nonsensical distractions we allow ourselves to be sold for ...

US, UK, DU and us

Depleted Uranium (DU) - The unconscionable acts of the US continue to abhor and regrettably fascinate me ... the amount spent on this war (and the continuing war on terrorism) should be seen as an exponential ratio to the lack of humanity and emotional intelligence the blair-ites and bush-ites posess ... the greater the amounts spent, the greater is the childish ignorance of these 'upstanding' pieces of moral fibre ...

Quote:
"For the past three months Dr. Zenad has been monitoring the birth defects in their delivery room (Basra, Iraq) where 20 to 30 babies are born daily. She keeps her findings in a hard-backed grey notebook. ... She begins: 'August - we had three babies born with no head. Four had abnormally large heads. In September we had six with no heads, none with large heads and two with short limbs. In October, one with no head, four with big heads and four with deformed limbs or other types of deformities..” Guardian Weekly, 1/10/99


The cost of the cleanup after Iraq war is at present assigned as $150BN+, but with 350tonnes of Depleted Uranium scattered over the middle east...

Quote:
"It is next to impossible to clean up DU dust.. "The cost of cleaning DU residue in the Gulf would be prohibitive. The price tag for removing 152,000 pounds of DU in the now-closed 500 acre Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana has been estimated to have been $4 billion to $5 billion." Christian Science Monitor 4/30/99


.. so with 152K Pounds of DU costing $4-5BN, just how much is a 350+ TONNES clear up going to cost? I doubt such a things hasn't even entered into the corridors of consideration where the US and UK are concerned

More US dollars well spent:
American Revolution: $3.2 billion
War of 1812: $1 billion
Mexican War: $1.8 billion
Civil War: $50 billion for the Union, $21.8 billion for the Confederacy
Spanish-American War: $6.5 billion
World War I: $588 billion
World War II: $4.8 trillion
Korean War: $408 billion
Vietnam War: $584 billion
Persian Gulf War: $82 billion (more than 90% of which was paid by U.S. allies)

The arrested development of those in power has prevented them from being morally and emotionally mature enough to face reality with an admission of wrongness ... such an affliction only leads to more of the same because the child-like mentality that has gotten them this far is hardly going to fail them now, hardly wrong. War is all they know that works

... the wrathful force of a spoilt child in a greedy capitalists body ...

It's afforded them the money they posess and the slaps on the backs they acquire from other immature figures who haven't the backbone to stand up and be heard so they hide behind the veil of underdeveloped, unconscionably misunderstood religosity and righteousness which provides them with a herd mentality and sameness that they wish to impose upon the rest of us

... the rest of us that are growing more than they in ways that they never want to understand and never will ... they cower at the prospect of betternment of the human race out of fear of realisation that they're just a little underdeveloped ... kids with a brain welded into 'Pseudo-Learned-isms' . . .

"so more war as a diversion from our own psychological, moral incompetancies, NOW!!", cry bush and blair (once they get their thumbs out of their mouths).

"The truth is heavy, therefore few care to carry it" - The Talmud.

Climate Change - The Longest Emergency

Just finished a few books, namely 'High Tides' by Mark Lynas - http://www.marklynas.org,

and another called "The Long Emergency" by Howard Kuntsler - http://www.alternet.org/story/25175/.

Rather nice wake up call to how this planet is run and a just reason to re-prioritise. It provides a nice perspective on the happenings and, for me, brought to the fore what our concerns should be about in this day and age.

It sorta takes the wind out of the New MP3 and DVD Players sails when one begins to consider what there might need to be done to stay aware and alive in the coming half century. No it's not all doom and gloom, and neither is it supposed to be ... but a shirking away from such a concept at this moment in time is only analogous to the reaction that you may have when the time comes .... which is just cause for one and all to stop, consider and listen to reality and try and take the headphones outta your ears and stop looking in HMV's bargain basement for a sec and have a ponder about what might happen when all the oil goes ... when climate change has had such an effect on agriculture that we don't have half the culinary luxuries there are today when we sit at our table ...

IT appears that localities and communities may be on the return during and after the Long Emergency - which is no bad thing ... it's getting a tad monotonous with all these big buildings and 8 choices of everything ... I could get into what I mean but I've got to head off now ... Personal interaction on a grand scale is always better than grand (corporate) action on the personal scale ...

___________________
Dream is Destiny

Considerations ...

Here's a video with Richard Heinberg, author of two books worthy of a gander .... 'The Party's Over' and 'PowerDown' ... check them out

http://www.freespeech.org/fscm2/genx.php?name=featured_videos

Also ... the Free Speech Network Website isn't a bad site either ... check it out after looking at the video ...

I intend to get back to this topic and to discern the benefits that will come when Oil starts to become a precious commodity and users are prioritised according to commulal benefit ... the re-prioritising of our values, localising and its benefits - local markets and produce ... shared concern for local communities moreso than what passes for same now ... not taking air travel for granted ... re-acquiring skills that we thought have been scrapped due to our 'Modernisation' .... the understanding of Modernisation as a mere Project that spanned a few decades rather than a state of impermeable change ...

Also ... and this is very important ... China and how it's gigantic economic and environmental footsteps are affecting our everyday everything and it's own consequence of guzzling nearly 20% plus of the remainder of Oil ... It's poor enviromnemtal record ergo contribution to Global Warming (and then some ..)

Little things now ... but significant in 30+ years time ...


Another few links that might interest you

http://www.videoactivism.org/watchenviro.html

http://www.workingtv.com/finkelstein.html - Norman Finkelstein ... new book 'Beyond Chutzpath' is causing a furore in the States

http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video.htm

Laters

N

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