R7

"Ain't Gonna Study War No More"

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Right-To-Life Party, Christian, Anti-War, Pro-Life, Bible Fundamentalist, Egalitarian, Libertarian Left

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Jussi Bjöerling - " Leise flehen meine Lieder " Schubert ( Serenade)

Atomic Deserts

A Survey of the World's Radioactive No-Go Zones

By Michail Hengstenberg, Gesche Sager and Philine Gebhardt

The Soviet nuclear testing site in present-day Kazakhstan is just one of many places in the world that remain dangerously radioactive to this day.
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The Soviet nuclear testing site in present-day Kazakhstan is just one of many places in the world that remain dangerously radioactive to this day.

Part 14: The Desert Rats

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AFP
France was also determined not to get left behind in the nuclear arms race. The first French atomic bomb was called "Gerboise Bleue," named after a desert rodent, and was detonated on the morning of Feb. 13, 1960 in the Reggane district of Algeria, then a French colony. At 70 kilotons, it was bigger than the first nuclear tests of the UK, USSR and USA combined. Three more bombs were exploded soon thereafter. France moved its testing grounds to remote areas of the South Pacific after Algeria gained its independence in 1962.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,756369-14,00.html

Don't Cut Entitlements-Cut the Military

It seems that this President has turned his back on everything he touted during his campaign. Yet, as mature individuals we should have expected it…after all he’s a politician and most politicians lie through their teeth, right? You must remember, closing Guantanamo, having a more “transparent” government, working for peace in the Mid-East, talking to Iran, etc., etc., etc.

I hate to shatter anyone’s bubble, but he hasn’t done anything except reward the perpetrators of the Wall Street crash, expand the War in Afghanistan and move it over to Pakistan to boot. We still have troops in Iraq and we are considering putting troops in Libya where we have no national interests at all. Funny what that “Commander-in-Chief” title can lead you to do.

Yes, since the Congress declared “The Global War on Terror”, the executive branch has almost unlimited resources and power. “Hail Caesar!” I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little bit tired of him moving our military around the World like he’s playing some kind of chess game. You can bet that the military personnel are getting a little sick of it too.

I found out that the reason we are so down on Iran is because they are the sworn enemy of Saudi Arabia. Gee, I didn’t know that. I should have figured it out. When the Saudi’s sent troops into Bahrain to put down a popular movement against the princes of the oilfields, it became quite clear that America is certainly for freedom in the Mid-East, but only in certain parts. We supply Saudi Arabia with 3.5 Billion dollars of military equipment every year. Do they pay for it? Let me guess…no. Between Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia we give them more that 10.5 Billions of dollars in military hardware.

We have a situation where we spend more on our military than all the other nations on Earth combined. We are doing it today, and what are our fearless leaders talking about in Congress? How to reduce the average Americans entitlements! They have absolutely no qualms about spending more than half the tax dollars they get, but want to cut programs that American taxpayers put money into! If what I heard tonight is true, 40 cents of every tax dollar received goes to finance the debt. If that’s true, between financing the debt and paying for our military, that only leaves 10 cents of every dollar to actually spend. Is it any wonder why we are going bankrupt?

How about Libya? Who the F**K authorized us into that war? Just what are the people of the U.S. going to gain from it? The U.S. has a new toy called AFRICOM and they want to use it. Some say that Somalia, Yemen and Sudan will be next. Just what is going on and why aren’t Americans screaming their fool heads off?

Look, I didn’t use any big words and everything I’ve said here can be easily verified. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this nation is in a fatal spiral of debt that will eventually have us go the way of the Soviet Union. Where are all the lefties? Where are the people that don’t want Medicare and Social Security cut? Why isn’t there uproar over our out of control military spending? Do you realize the two largest air forces are the U.S.Airforce and secondly the U.S. Navy? Did you know that it takes approximately 50 Billion dollars to operate one nuclear powered aircraft carrier and we have eleven of them? There are two nations; Italy and Spain the closest to us in numbers have 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_country

So why do we have so many carriers? Just what real good are they doing? Off the coast of Somalia American and other nations ships are routinely captured by pirates in fast boats. How do you hide a two football field long tanker from an aircraft carrier? Doesn’t this make you sit up and say WTF?

We’re fighting a war in Afghanistan to root out what the U.S. admits are only 50-100 al Qaida. The average cost of having one set of boots on the ground there for a year is One Million Dollars http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114294746, just what are we doing? Opium production there has risen 400% since the U.S. landed troops there. Some sources say it is now over 6000 metric tons yearly. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6239734.stm There are entire families addicted to the stuff. War is hell and opium makes it less so. If we gave them a democracy (which isn’t the real mission there) they wouldn’t know what to do with it. Between depleted uranium and opium, the Afghani’s will never forget us.

Forget about the class war here in America where the top 1% of the population owns almost 40% of the wealth and the other 19% together with the1% hold 83% of the nation’s wealth, leaving the bottom 80% of us with a whopping 7% of the total wealth. Never mind that the middle class has seen wages fall steadily over the last two decades while the upper 10% have had a 13% increase. Don’t tax the rich! According to the GOP that will mean that they can’t hire anyone. (What …like an extra maid or butler?)

So when are we going to do something about it? Obama, with his minions from Goldman Sacks aren’t going to break the status quo. Anyway, he’s Commander-in-Chief! I say do something. If things progress the way they are, we will have the largest armed forces in the world, but they will all be mothballed. (And maybe that’s a good thing). The government wants to cut everything under the sun, but the military is sacrosanct. It’s about time we brought the subject up loud enough for these cowards in Washington to hear us. Don’t you think?

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By Timothy V. Gatto

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2011/04/16/don-t-cut-entitlements-cut-the-military#more17343

DEADLINE LIVE EXCLUSIVE: Sinaloa Drug Cartel Controlled and Protected by Both Mexican and U.S. Governments

Recent testimony by captured drug cartel leader Vicente Zambada in Federal Court points to DEA and FBI protection and collaboration with one of the most dangerous and powerful criminal organizations in the world: the Sinaloa Drug Cartel. South of the border, a brave Mexican journalist exposes how the Mexican government not only protects the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, but also works as an ally to eliminate their rivals and competitors.

Almost four years ago, on September of 2007, the Mexican military caught and confiscated an airplane with almost 4 tons of cocaine in the state of Yucatan. A month later, there was a plane crash in the same region, involving a similar aircraft –a Gulfstream II with registration N987SA, belonging to a U.S. company known as Donna Blue Aircraft Inc. When authorities arrived at the crash site, they discovered around 4 tons of cocaine onboard the aircraft. The narcotics reportedly belonged to the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, under the command of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, whom according to Forbes Magazine, is among one of the wealthiest men in the world. However, the airplane did not belong to Guzman; it was later discovered by both Mexican authorities and independent news sources that the aircraft was used for CIA rendition flights. Mexico’s leading newspaper, El Universal, obtained the flight records and other documents related to the ownership and recent flight information and confirmed that it was a CIA aircraft.

Captured drug lord Vicente Zambada said in court that he worked with the DEA and FBI.

A year later, one of the members of Guzman’s inner circle, Vicente Zambada, was captured and later extradited to the United States. Last week, at a federal court in Chicago, Zambada presented evidence stating that U.S. Government agencies, such as the D.E.A. and the F.B.I. protected him and worked with him. Furthermore, he’s not just making baseless accusations; Zambada is actually naming names, such as “the DEA Regional Assistant for South America, the Director General of the Office of the DEA in Mexico, the DEA agents commissioned in Monterrey, Hermosillo and Mexico City , including but not limited to those who are named Eduardo Martinez “Manny” LNU, “David” LNU, and Stephen Monk, as well as other people, including FBI agents whose names are unknown but the defendant agencies are known for, ” according to court documents. In the document, Zambada states that the U.S. Government agencies were in contact with him and were fully aware of his operations between January of 2004 and March of 2008, just months before his arrest.

Who are the real drug lords?

In a recent interview with the newspaper Diario de Juarez, Mexican journalist Anabel Hernandez, who’s living in exile in Italy, stated that in the Mexican Drug War, the federal government and the United States D.E.A. only go after the Sinaloa Drug Cartel’s competitors. She indicated that the protection that Sinaloa receives from the government is ‘systematic’ and embedded in the drug war policy. She also accused Felipe Calderon of protecting the Federal Public Safety Director, Genaro Garcia Luna, who many accuse of having ties to the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, and plays the most significant role as the government liaison with organized crime.

Anabel Hernandez, author of the book "Los Señores del Narco"

In her new book “Los Señores del Narco” (or the Narco-Lords), she provides detailed information about how Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the alleged leader of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel is an Orwellian creation of the Mexican government, almost a mythical and elusive character, who’s story about how he broke out of prison in 2001 using a laundry truck is completely bogus. She finds it hard to believe that Forbes Magazine listed Guzman among the richest people in the world, given the fact that he’s illiterate and cannot do basic math. “When he was captured, his testimony made absolutely no sense; he couldn’t come up with the exact figures he was supposedly paying his people; he could not do basic additions or multiplications,” she said.

Further in the interview, Hernandez said that the real drug trafficking is done by people other than the typical drug dealers, who are only figure heads in this so-called “drug war.” The real drug lords are not wanted by police or federal authorities; they are people well established in the political and economic systems, as well as many other areas of government, from where they have established a wide network of complicity to money laundering and protection of the drug cartels. “These are people in positions of power, who use their power for trafficking, or who at one point of another it has been proven conclusively that their careers -whether they are businessmen, politicians, governors, presidents, secretaries of state or police chiefs- have been financed by drug money or are deeply linked with drug trafficking,” she said.

By Mario Andrade
DeadlineLive.info
April 15, 2011

http://deadlinelive.info/2011/04/15/deadline-live-exclusive-sinaloa-drug-cartel-controlled-and-protected-by-both-mexican-and-u-s-governments/