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Monday, November 01, 2004
Ralph Nader Debates Puppets! Brilliant!
Posted at 11:46 am by Psychomike
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Iran: Death To America- Pledges Enriched Uranium
Iranian lawmakers OK uranium enrichment
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's parliament unanimously approved the outline of a bill Sunday that would require the government to resume uranium enrichment, legislation likely to deepen an international dispute over Iran's nuclear activities.
Separately, Iran's top nuclear negotiator said there was a 50% chance of a nuclear compromise with European nations, though he ruled out an indefinite suspension of key enrichment activities.
Shouts of "Death to America!" rang out in the conservative-dominated parliament after lawmakers voted to advance the nation's nuclear program, an issue of national pride that provides a rare point of agreement between conservatives and reformers.
Washington has pushed hard for Iran to drop its nuclear program, which Tehran maintains is for peaceful energy purposes. The U.N. nuclear watchdog is also pushing for Iran to halt its activities.
The United States, which has secured some support from European nations, accuses Iran of trying to build nuclear weapons.
Parliament speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel called Sunday's vote a message to the world.
"The message of the absolute vote for the Iranian nation is that the parliament supports national interests," he said. "And the message for the outside world is that the parliament won't give in to coercion."
A date for discussing details of the legislation was not immediately set.
Lawmaker Hossein Afarideh said that under the bill, the government would be required to resume enrichment of uranium — injecting gas into centrifuges, a measure Iran is not doing now.
The legislation, a copy of which was made available to The Associated Press, said "the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran is required to make use of scientists and the country's facilities ... in order to enable the country to master peaceful nuclear technology, including the cycle of nuclear fuel."
Uranium enriched to a low level can be used to produce nuclear fuel. If enriched further it can be used to make nuclear weapons.
Another vote is expected on the bill when details are worked out, but that is usually a formality.
Iran is not prohibited from enriching uranium under its obligations to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty but faces growing international pressure to suspend such activities as a good-faith gesture.
Iran last year suspended actual uranium enrichment, but it repeatedly has rejected a long-term suspension of all uranium enrichment-related activities, which the international community is seeking. Iranian nuclear negotiators have been meeting with officials from Britain, France and Germany, but a second round of talks ended last week without agreement.
At the talks in Austria, the three European powers offered Iran a trade deal and peaceful nuclear technology in return for assurances the country will stop enrichment indefinitely.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator, in an AP interview Sunday, said the chance of a nuclear compromise is about 50%.
"I see the chance of a compromise before November as 50-50," Hossein Mousavian said. "We have rejected two possibilities: cessation and unlimited suspension. We told the Europeans if your target is cessation, it will be impossible. But we are flexible if your proposal is balanced."
Washington has called for the U.N. Security Council to study Iran's situation for possible economic sanctions if Tehran doesn't give up all enrichment activities before a Nov. 25 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-10-31-iran-uranium_x.htm Posted at 11:57 pm by Psychomike
Saturday, October 30, 2004
THE AIDS CRISIS: WHAT WE NOW KNOW
Over the last few years many have worn the ribbons but few have any idea what is going on in AIDS research, that HIV and AIDS are now seen as two distinct problems or that we now know the disease probably first appeared in the 1930's but science dealt with the symptoms, not the cause.
And it began when people started eating infected monkeys.
I don't know how to break it to those that think pork and shellfish are wrong to eat- I would say judging by the results- eating monkeys is far more dangerous.
Anyway, check out the site as a whole. You'll learn how the AIDS stats are come up with, and facts. Not internet rumor mongering- although to be fair- they do mention some of the more popular whacko theories- like AIDS being man made and such rubbish.
This one is a must read: QUOTE:
THE ORIGINS OF AIDS
It is now generally accepted that HIV is a descendant of simian (monkey) immunodeficiency virus (SIV). Certain simian immunodeficiency viruses bear a very close resemblance to HIV-1 and HIV-2, the two types of HIV.
For example, HIV-2 corresponds to a simian immunodeficiency virus found in the sooty mangabey monkey (SIVsm), sometimes known as the green monkey, which is indigenous to western Africa.
The more virulent strain of HIV, namely HIV-1, was until very recently more difficult to place. Until 1999 the closest counterpart that had been identified was the simian (monkey) immunodeficiency virus that was known to infect chimpanzees (SIVcpz), but this virus had significant differences between it and HIV
So what happened in 1999?
Are chimpanzees now known to be the source of HIV?
In February 1999 it was announced1 that a group of researchers from the University of Alabama had studied frozen tissue from a chimpanzee and found that the simian virus it carried (SIVcpz) was almost identical to HIV-1. The chimpanzee came from a sub-group of chimpanzees known as Pan troglodytes troglodytes, which were once common in west-central Africa.
It is claimed by the researchers that this shows that these chimpanzees were the source of HIV-1, and that the virus at some point crossed species from chimpanzees to human. However, it was not necessarily clear that chimpanzees were the original reservoir for HIV-1 because chimpanzees are only rarely infected with SIVcpz.
The findings of this 10-year long research into the origin and evolution of HIV by Paul Sharp of Nottingham University and Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama were published in 20032. They concluded that wild chimps became infected simultaneously with two simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs) which had "viral sex" to form a third virus capable of infecting humans and causing AIDS.
Professor Sharp and his colleagues discovered that the chimp virus was an amalgam of the SIV infecting red-capped mangabeys and the virus found in greater spot-nosed monkeys. They believe that the hybridisation took place inside chimps that had become infected with both strains of SIV after hunting and killing the two smaller species of monkey.
How could HIV have crossed species?
It has been known for a long time that certain viruses can pass from animals to humans, and this process is referred to as zoonosis.
The researchers concluded that HIV could have crossed over from chimpanzees as a result of a human killing a chimp and eating it for food.
Some other rather controversial theories have contended that HIV was transferred iatrogenically i.e. via medical experiments. One particularly well publicised theory is that polio vaccines played a role in the transfer.
The journalist Edward Hooper has suggested that HIV could be traced to the testing of an oral polio vaccine called Chat as batches of the Chat vaccine may have been grown in chimp kidney cells in the Congo, the Wistar Institute and Belgium. That could have resulted in the contamination of the vaccine with chimp SIV, the simian version of HIV-1. This vaccine was then given to about a million people in the Belgian Congo, Ruanda and Urundi in the late 1950s.
However, in February 2000 the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia announced that it had discovered in its stores a phial of polio vaccine that had been used as part of this polio vaccination program. The vaccine was subsequently analysed and in April 2001 it was announced3 that no trace had been found of either HIV or chimpanzee. A second analysis4 confirmed that only macaque monkey kidney cells, which cannot be infected with SIV or HIV, were used to make Chat.
What is crucial in regard to the credibility of any theory is the question of when the transfer took place.
Is there any evidence of when the transfer took place?
During the last few years it has become possible not only to determine whether HIV is present in a blood or plasma sample, but also to determine the particular subtype of the virus. Studying the subtype of virus of some of the earliest known instances of HIV infection can help to provide clues about the time of origin and the subsequent evolution of HIV in humans.
Three of the earliest known instances of HIV infection are as follows:
A plasma sample taken in 1959 from an adult male living in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo
HIV found in tissue samples from an American teenager who died in St. Louis in 1969.
HIV found in tissue samples from a Norwegian sailor who died around 1976. |
Analysis in 1998 of the plasma sample from 1959 was interpreted5 as suggesting that HIV-1 was introduced into humans around the 1940s or the early 1950s, which was earlier than had previously been suggested. Other scientists have suggested that it could have been even longer, perhaps around 100 years or more ago.
In January 2000, the results of a new study presented at the 7th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, suggested that the first case of HIV infection occurred around 1930 in West Africa. The study was carried out by Dr Bette Korber of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The estimate of 1930 (which does have a 20 year margin of error), is based on a complicated computer model of HIV's evolution.
Is it known where the emergence of HIV in humans took place?
Many people now assume that because HIV has apparently developed from a form of SIV found in a type of chimpanzee in West Africa, that is was actually in West Africa that HIV first emerged in humans. It is then presumed that HIV spread from there around the world.
However, as discussed above, chimpanzees are not necessarily the original source of HIV and it is likely that the virus crossed over to humans on more than one occasion.2 So it is quite possible that HIV emerged at the same time in say both South America and Africa, or that it even emerged in the Americas before it emerged in Africa.
We will probably never know exactly when and where the virus first emerged, but what is clear is that sometime in the middle of the 20th century, HIV infection in humans developed into the epidemic of disease around the world that we now refer to as AIDS.
What caused the epidemic to spread so suddenly?
There are a number of factors that may have contributed to the sudden spread including international travel, the blood industry, and widespread drug use.
International Travel
The role of international travel in the spread of HIV was highlighted by the case of 'Patient Zero'. Patient Zero was a Canadian flight attendant called Gaetan Dugas who travelled extensively worldwide. Analysis of several of the early cases of AIDS showed that the infected individuals were either direct or indirect sexual contacts of the flight attendant. These cases could be traced to several different American cities demonstrating the role of international travel in spreading the virus. It also suggested that the disease was probably the consequence of a single transmissible agent.
The Blood Industry
As blood transfusions became a routine part of medical practice, this led to a growth of an industry around meeting this increased demand for blood. In some countries such as the USA paid donors were used, including intravenous drug users. This blood was then sent worldwide. Also, in the late 1960's haemophiliacs began to benefit from the blood clotting properties of a product called Factor VIII. However, to produce the coagulant, blood from thousands of individual donors had to be pooled. Factor VIII was then distributed worldwide making it likely that haemophiliacs could become exposed to new infections.
Drug Use
The 1970s saw an increase in the availability of heroin following the Vietnam War and other conflicts in the Middle East, which helped stimulate a growth in intravenous drug use. This increased availability together with the development of disposable plastic syringes and the establishment of 'shooting galleries' where people could buy drugs and rent equipment provided another route through which the virus could be passed on.
![[drugs]](http://www.avert.org/graphics/origdrug.gif)
Posted at 10:55 am by Psychomike
Friday, October 29, 2004
JFK Assassination-John Kerry? Odd Kerry Stories
Vietnam just found a document linking Kerry- to them, in the Nam War days. Like the fact that the 101st moved the "missing weapons" the Democrats are going on about, don't expect the press to bring this up anytime soon. Thank heavens for the internet.
Maybe the original THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE isn't that far off.....
CONSPIRACY theorists are buzzing about John Kerry's connection to Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination. While no one in the lunatic fringe has gone so far as to suggest Kerry helped kill Kennedy — yet — they make much of the fact that a cousin of Kerry's, Michael Paine, was a close friend of Oswald who frequently had the assassin as a house guest. Paine even stored the rifle Oswald used to shoot Kennedy at his house.
Posted at 11:50 am by Psychomike
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Shocker! Russians Moved Arms To Syria!
Vietnam just found a document linking Kerry- to them, in the Nam War days. Like the fact that the 101st moved the "missing weapons" the Democrats are going on about, don't expect the press to bring this up anytime soon. Thank heavens for the internet.
Maybe the original THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE isn't that far off.....
CONSPIRACY theorists are buzzing about John Kerry's connection to Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination. While no one in the lunatic fringe has gone so far as to suggest Kerry helped kill Kennedy — yet — they make much of the fact that a cousin of Kerry's, Michael Paine, was a close friend of Oswald who frequently had the assassin as a house guest. Paine even stored the rifle Oswald used to shoot Kennedy at his house.
IRAQ ARMS SHOCKER! SOVIETS MOVED WEAPONS TO SYRIA!
Yes I know, I've been saying my guess was that weapons were moved and hidden in Syria from Iraq for a couple of years now. But no, I thought that was something we wouldn't know for decades to come. Oh well.......
Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.
John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.
"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."
Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.
Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.
The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX, is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said.
The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said.
Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment.
The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material.
Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said.
"That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."
The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.
A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA.
The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6.
"The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said.
The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime.
According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken.
It is not known whether the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003.
A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria.
The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not persuade Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.
A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said.
However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. "The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said.
The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country.
Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.
The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said.
Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq.
The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said.
Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said.
"Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said.
Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said.
The director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said.
Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003.
The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said.
Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing.
The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive.
Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20041028-122637-6257r
Copyright © 2004 News World Communications, Inc. Posted at 03:50 am by Psychomike
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Presidential Results Out: SUNDAY!
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION TO BE DECIDED SUNDAY!
One of the great fallacies of this political season is that the election will be decided on November 2. Wrong. The whole thing will be determined this Sunday afternoon at Fed-Ex field in Washington, D.C. That's where the Washington Redskins host the Green Bay Packers. You can forget Zogby, Gallup, Rasmussen, RealClearPolitics, etc. None of them can match the track record of the Redskins Rule.
For the past 72 years, the fate of the Redskins in their last game before the election has predicted whether or not the incumbent party holds the White House. If the Redskins win, the incumbent party stays. If the Redskins lose or tie, the incumbent loses the White House. The rule has held for the last 18 elections (see below).
David Dolan, an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, calculated the odds of this happening for PackerNews.com: 1 in 263.5 million. (By the way, that’s 2,600 times higher than the chance of getting killed by lightning!)
Football fans will recall that four years ago the Tennessee Titans played the Washington Redskins in the pre-election game. The game, as you may recall, was a cliffhanger. (And Al Gore was actually at the game to cheer on his team.) But the Redskins Rule held: the Titans won, 27-21. And Bush won the presidential nail-biter.
Prediction: the Redskins will win decisively.
For the history buffs, here are the details:
2000
Tennessee 27, Redskins 21
George W. Bush defeats Al Gore—Democrats lose the White House
1996
Redskins 31, Indianapolis 16
Bill Clinton defeats Bob Dole—Democrats keep the White House
1992
New York Giants 24, Redskins 7
Clinton defeats George H.W. Bush—Republicans lose the White House
1988
Redskins 27, New Orleans 24
George H.W. Bush defeats Michael Dukakis—Republicans keep the White House
1984
Redskins 27, Atlanta 14
Ronald Reagan defeats Walter Mondale—Republicans keep the White House
1980
Minnesota 39, Redskins 14
Ronald Reagan defeats Jimmy Carter—Democrats lose the White House
1976
Dallas 20, Redskins 7
Jimmy Carter defeats Gerald Ford—Republicans lose the White House
1972
Redskins 35, New York Jets 17
Richard Nixon defeats George McGovern—Republicans keep the White House
1968
Minnesota 27, Redskins 13
Richard Nixon defeats Hubert Humphrey—Democrats lose the White House
1964
Redskins 21, Philadelphia 10
Lyndon Johnson defeats Barry Goldwater—Democrats keep the White House
1960
Cleveland 31, Redskins 10
John Kennedy defeats Richard Nixon—the Republicans lose the White House
1956
Redskins 17, Chicago Cardinals 14
Dwight Eisenhower defeats Adlai Stevenson—Republicans keep the White House
1952
Pittsburgh 24, Redskins 23
Dwight Eisenhower defeats Adlai Stevenson—Democrats lose the White House
1948
Redskins 51, Boston Yanks 21
Harry Truman defeats Thomas Dewey—Democrats keep the White House
1944
Redskins 42, Chi-Pitt 20
Franklin Roosevelt defeats Thomas Dewey—Democrats keep the White House
1940
Washington Redskins 37, Pittsburgh 10
Franklin Roosevelt defeats Wendell Willkie—Democrats keep the White House
1936
Boston Redskins 13, Chicago Cardinals 10
Franklin Roosevelt defeats Alfred Landon—Democrats keep the White House
1932
Boston Braves 7, Chicago Bears 7
Franklin Roosevelt defeats Herbert Hoover—Republicans lose the White House
UPDATE: Welcome OpinionJournal.com readers! James Taranto writes:
This number seems vastly out of line. If we assume that the Skins have a 50% chance of winning each game and the incumbent party has a 50% chance of winning each election, the odds of the two indicators matching up for 18 elections in a row are 1 in 262,144 (2 to the 18th power). The odds that they will match up for 19 elections in a row are 1 in 524,288. Does this mean you should bet against the pattern repeating? Of course not. The odds that it will are 50-50 (with Bush and the Skins both slightly favored).
Hey. I report--you decide! If there's anyone out there who knows how to calcuate statistics, feel free to leave your answer in the comments section below, and/or email opinionjournal@wsj.com!
BTW, I've emailed Professor Dolan for his response.
Update 2. Professor Dolan emailed to say that PackerNews.com misquoted him. He said "thousand," not "million." I blame Al Gore for inventing the Internet--or as George Bush calls it, the Internets. Sorry for the confusion. But I'm still predicting a Redskins--and Bush--decisive victory!
Posted at 10:30 pm by Psychomike
Monday, October 25, 2004
Nuclear genie blasts out of the bottle
By Marc Erikson
US presidential candidates George W Bush and Senator John Kerry don't see eye to eye on much of anything, but in their first debate they found one point of agreement: that the single greatest danger to national (and global, we presume) security was the  prospect of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists and detonated in a major population center.
Well, guys, just in case it's news to you (though it shouldn't be), the chances of that happening sooner rather than later are pretty close to a hundred percent and you'd better get ready for it - and I don't mean get ready for a "dirty bomb" filled with radioactive waste. That sort of bomb might kill someone if it dropped right on his head, some more people might be killed in the ensuing panic, and the cleanup would be a pain and take a while. But it would fall into Senator Kerry's "nuisance" category. The real threat is the real thing - a nuclear-fission device in the kiloton range capable of killing tens if not hundreds of thousands.
Bush's and Kerry's one and only time-worn prescription for how to keep nukes away from terrorists was enforcement of a strict non-proliferation regime. But that hasn't worked particularly well in the past and will prove even less efficient in the future. A recent reminder of that was the August 23 admission by South Korea that in 2000 it had enriched uranium in the course of atomic vapor laser isotope separation (AVLIS) experiments that had not been declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was opened for signature on July 1, 1968, and came into force on March 5, 1970. After that, at least five nations - Israel, India, Pakistan, South Africa, North Korea - engaged in clandestine nuclear-weapons programs and actually succeeded in developing nukes. Many others tried - Taiwan, South Korea, Argentina, Brazil, Iraq, Iran, Libya, to name just the best-known cases. Still others - Japan, Germany, Canada, Sweden, and so on - have the certain capability and have proliferated nuclear or dual-use technology. Beyond that, there are thousands of eminently capable nuclear scientists of the nations of the former Soviet Union and other countries who are for hire at the right price, not to speak of the tons of nuclear materials that vanished when the Soviet Union collapsed.
All this makes for a noxious mix. The long and the short of it is that 60 years after the detonation of the first nuclear device by the US Manhattan project in World War II, nuclear-weapons know-how, technology and materials are widespread, relatively inexpensive, and largely uncontrollable. Vast technological advances and the spread of civilian nuclear technology (some 450 reactors in 31 countries) make control and detection of diversion of dual-use technologies to weapons development virtually impossible.
The recent revelation of South Korean AVLIS experiments is a case in point. Laser isotope separation for uranium enrichment (first tried in 1973 at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California, the United States' premier weapons lab) is a higher-tech, lower-cost, more difficult to detect way of enriching uranium from 3-5% enriched reactor fuel to 90%-plus weapons-grade uranium. The Koreans say it was an experiment by a "rogue" scientist unknown to higher-ups and the government. Nonsense! You don't set up and carry out million-dollar experiments on the sly in the government's main nuclear energy research facility, Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI).
Taiwan, similarly, has been in pursuit of nuclear weapons since the late 1960s. And as late as 1995, president Lee Teng-hui told the National Assembly: "We should re-study the question of nuclear weapons from a long-term point of view," adding, "Everyone knows we had had the plan before." Indeed, they had. A few years after mainland China exploded its first nuclear device in 1964, a Taiwanese program was set up. Siemens of West Germany was to supply reactors and reprocessing facilities. Eventually, a Canadian Candu "research reactor" was purchased - the same type of reactor delivered to India and used there to extract weapons-grade plutonium.
Japan, for what it's worth, has had a laser isotope enrichment program since 1980 and, of course, has all the facilities for producing weapons-grade materials for more than 20 years. "Eighteen months" was the answer of a top Japanese nuclear scientist when asked a few years back about how long it would take for Japan to build a nuke.
Iraq? After the Israelis destroyed a French-supplied plutonium-capable nuclear reactor (Osirak) in 1981 on the orders of prime minister Menachem Begin, Saddam Hussein started an electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS) program to get highly enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear-weapons production. Technically, it's easy and copies the first US enrichment program developed by Lawrence Livermore Labs. It's unknown how far it advanced. Recent news is that all traces of the technology developed in the 1980s and '90s has vanished.
Iran? Russian officials said in September 2000 that they would freeze shipment of a laser isotope separator to Iran, after repeated requests by the US administration of president Bill Clinton. Was the program actually suspended? No one knows for sure. But it would take up a whole lot less of space to conduct AVLIS enrichment than the widely publicized centrifuge enrichment now in contention.
What is clear is this: there now exist technological capabilities and know-how to make nukes anywhere, with little chance of detection. The US found out about the Taiwanese program in 1988 when a top Taiwanese weapons scientist defected after having supplied information to the Central Intelligence Agency for nearly 20 years. The CIA hasn't been that lucky with its human intelligence efforts elsewhere. The Vienna-based NPT watchdog agency, the IAEA, has nowhere near the already suspect and insufficient capabilities of the CIA.
Could a weapon made in Iran be passed on to terrorists? Did weapons information get passed from Pakistan to terrorists? We don't know. All we have is the testimony of Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's premier bomb maker, that information and technology were passed to North Korea in return for missile technology.
It would probably take at least the blind eye of a state favoring terrorists' aims for a period of a few years in order for nuke makers to get a bomb ready for delivery to the US or elsewhere in the West. But there are several such states that would turn a blind eye and there are several states that don't have sufficient control over their own territory for them to take notice.
As for delivery itself, it's not a big deal. I'm not talking about the Tom Clancy scenario of delivery via container ship to Baltimore. I'm calling attention to the delivery of tons of marijuana on fishing vessels from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America to the US west coast. A bunch of guys in Bangkok (onetime bar owners there) did that on several occasions. On one final run, they got caught. They served a few years in a federal penitentiary and have since retired on their loot and proceeds.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. Posted at 12:15 pm by Psychomike
Sunday, October 24, 2004
Pagans, Subgenius And The War On Terror
As a fallible Pope in the Church of the Subgenius I have never issued an edict before. Here we go.
I think most folks support Kerry because their friends do, because they hate Bush and because they are just exhausted. They look lovingly back to an era when embassies were blown up and we weren't told why, the economy built on dot coms and Enron (Clinton authorized CIA agents to tap the competitions phones so that they always won bids), an era of Don't worry, be happy. A world in which the Aryan Nation was on the verge of overthrowing the United States government in the eyes of the left (hey what happened to the Aryan Nation?), and religious kooks alone in the desert or mountains were public enemy number one.
An era in which we didn't know and just enjoyed the bubble. Now with color codes and Bush reminding of us of war every day it is simply exhausting. Americans love a beginning, middle and end to a story. (That's why they mistakenly think that getting Laden will end this).
One thing is clear. Between Republicans not wanting to offend Moslems and stop the flow of cheap labor from Mexico and Latin America, with Democrats actually believing that the world will change its mind and join us in Iraq and then Iran, there is only one group in America that understands fully what we face.
Pagans. This is a difficult choice because frankly Christians and Moslems both have not been the most tolerant to us, ever.
So we must first ask ourselves, why defend a Christian based society? Did they help or burn the "witches"? What did they do for us?
Once the Catholic Church had mighty armies. They took land when they wanted it. They sold saint's bones as souvenirs. One day the head of Italy and a couple of his military officers went to speak to the Pope. When they left the Pope only ruled a few blocks, and his military was dismantled. This needs to happen in the Moslem world. It hasn't.
So while Christians have a long history of oppressing us, this new age has allowed us to openly appreciate Big Al Crowley (Led Zep), openly discuss herbal remedies, go out to the desert to get in touch with ritual (Burning Man), run occult bookstores and not burn them down, do you see what I'm getting at?
The 20th century brought a level of tolerance for us with Christians that has never existed before. It's that simple.
No matter who wins the next election one thing is very clear. We are not leaving the Mideast. Back in World War 2 the military went to eccentrics, madmen and artists to try and discover new ways of fighting. Ian Fleming (author of the James Bond novels), Al Crowley, Paul Linebarger, Julia Child,L. Ron Hubbard and others. We ended up with terrific ideas like fake military bases to throw off the Germans. While Patton strutted around he was surrounded by inflatable tanks you could lift with one hand. Julia invented a shark repellent that saved the lives of downed pilots. Paul who would become famous sci fi author Cordwainer Smith came up with so many creative ideas that his book PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE still remains a hot collectible with Intel agents in the know. You should read it, too.
We are not politically correct. A society that teaches it's young not to discuss sex. politics and money doesn't like the fact that we revel in those subjects. But the Christians need us.
We have known how to survive every attempt at oppression society could come up with to destroy us. We survived,and in this society we excel. We know the alternative. Islamic terrorist's may despise Jews and Christians, they hate us even more.
No matter who wins the election, we have far more to lose than most. Maybe from the OTO to the Masons, Subgenii to Hollywood, all of us need to start asking ourselves what needs to be done. What can we do? This war isn't going anywhere anytime soon. What creative idea can you come up with?
The enemy will just accuse us of being behind the scenes anyway. Let's start putting our heads together. What can we do to save a fragile nation that is in denial of what it faces? Plenty. Start thinking.
Pope Michael Flores
Church Of The Subgenius, Chicago
Posted at 11:55 am by Psychomike
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Tommy Franks Faces Kerry Charges
War of WordsBy TOMMY FRANKS
 resident Bush and Senator John Kerry have very different views of the war on terrorism, and those differences ought to be debated in this presidential campaign. But the debate should focus on facts, not distortions of history.
On more than one occasion, Senator Kerry has referred to the fight at Tora Bora in Afghanistan during late 2001 as a missed opportunity for America. He claims that our forces had Osama bin Laden cornered and allowed him to escape. How did it happen? According to Mr. Kerry, we "outsourced" the job to Afghan warlords. As commander of the allied forces in the Middle East, I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality.
First, take Mr. Kerry's contention that we "had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden" and that "we had him surrounded." We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir. Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured, but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp.
Second, we did not "outsource" military action. We did rely heavily on Afghans because they knew Tora Bora, a mountainous, geographically difficult region on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is where Afghan mujahedeen holed up for years, keeping alive their resistance to the Soviet Union. Killing and capturing Taliban and Qaeda fighters was best done by the Afghan fighters who already knew the caves and tunnels.
Third, the Afghans weren't left to do the job alone. Special forces from the United States and several other countries were there, providing tactical leadership and calling in air strikes. Pakistani troops also provided significant help - as many as 100,000 sealed the border and rounded up hundreds of Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Contrary to Senator Kerry, President Bush never "took his eye off the ball" when it came to Osama bin Laden. The war on terrorism has a global focus. It cannot be divided into separate and unrelated wars, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. Both are part of the same effort to capture and kill terrorists before they are able to strike America again, potentially with weapons of mass destruction. Terrorist cells are operating in some 60 countries, and the United States, in coordination with dozens of allies, is waging this war on many fronts.
As we planned for potential military action in Iraq and conducted counterterrorist operations in several other countries in the region, Afghanistan remained a center of focus. Neither attention nor manpower was diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq. When we started Operation Iraqi Freedom we had about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, and by the time we finished major combat operations in Iraq last May we had more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan.
We are committed to winning this war on all fronts, and we are making impressive gains. Afghanistan has held the first free elections in its history. Iraq is led by a free government made up of its own citizens. By the end of this year, NATO and American forces will have trained 125,000 Iraqis to enforce the law, fight insurgents and secure the borders. This is in addition to the great humanitarian progress already achieved in Iraq.
Many hurdles remain, of course. But the gravest danger would result from the withdrawal of American troops before we finish our work. Today we are asking our servicemen and women to do more, in more places, than we have in decades. They deserve honest, consistent, no-spin leadership that respects them, their families and their sacrifices. The war against terrorism is the right war at the right time for the right reasons. And Iraq is one of the places that war must be fought and won. George W. Bush has his eye on that ball and Senator John Kerry does not.
Tommy Franks, a retired general and former commander in chief of the Central Command, is the author of "American Soldier." He is a member of Veterans for Bush. Posted at 08:47 am by Psychomike
Monday, October 18, 2004
In Praise Of Premature War
In praise of premature war
By Spengler
The West should be thankful that it has in US President George W Bush a warrior who shoots first and tells the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to ask questions later. Rarely in its long history has the West suffered by going to war too soon. On the contrary: among the wars of Western history, the bloodiest were those that started too late. Why should that be the case? The answer, I believe, is that keeping the peace requires prospective combatants to maintain the balance of power, for example between Athens and Sparta in the 5th century BC, between Catholic and Protestant states in the 17th century AD, and between the Central Powers and the Allies at the turn of the 20th century. Once powers truly are balanced, however, neither side can win, except by a devastating war of attrition. Postponing war therefore creates equally matched opposing blocs who eventually will annihilate each other.
More than ever does this principle apply to the present race for nuclear weapons. It brings to mind the old joke about the housewife in Hertfordshire who telephones her husband and says, "Dear, be careful driving home. The news report says that there is a maniac driving in the wrong direction on the motorway." He replies, "What do you mean, one maniac? Everyone is driving in the wrong direction!"
Whether or not Saddam Hussein actually intended or had the capacity to build nuclear weapons is of trifling weight in the strategic balance. Everyone is planning to build nuclear weapons. They involve 60-year-old technology no longer difficult to replicate. It hardly matters where one begins. "Kill the chicken, and let the monkey watch," as the Chinese say. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, the theocrats of Iran, the North Koreans and soon many other incalculable reprobates have or will have such plans. It hardly matters which one you attack first, so long as you attack one of them.
But isn't it cruel to cast the die for war before it is proven beyond doubt that war cannot be avoided? Given the frightful cost of war, should peace not be given every chance? Some wars of course should not be fought, such as the threatened hot war between the United States and the Soviet Union. In many cases, however, risk and reward are highly asymmetric; the cost of a short and nasty small war vanishes toward insignificance compared with the price of a grand war of attrition, particularly when nuclear weapons are concerned.
Many writers, to be sure, have offered apologies for war. Under the title "Give war a chance", Edward Luttwak wrote in the Summer 1999 edition of Foreign Affairs, "Since the establishment of the United Nations, great powers have rarely let small wars burn themselves out. Bosnia and Kosovo are the latest examples of this meddling. Conflicts are interrupted by a steady stream of ceasefires and armistices that only postpone war-induced exhaustion and let belligerents rearm and regroup. Even worse are UN refugee-relief operations and NGOs [non-governmental organizations], which keep resentful populations festering in camps and sometimes supply both sides in armed conflicts. This well-intentioned interference only intensifies and prolongs struggles in the long run. The unpleasant truth is that war does have one useful function: it brings peace. Let it."
I have no quibble with Luttwak, but propose to go further. He proposed to let small wars burn out; I propose to let major wars break out, the sooner the better.
Historians allow that the Allies should have attacked Germany in 1936 rather than 1939, but dismiss World War I as "a tragic and unnecessary conflict", in the words of Sir John Keegan. Tragedy stems from necessity. From the Congress of Berlin in 1878, when Germany and Austria set limits to Russian expansion in the Balkans, Pan-Slavism set Europe on a course toward inevitable war. France allied with Russia, seeking help against Germany after its humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. Already in demographic decline, France knew that it could not wait to attack Germany one more generation. Germany knew that if Russia completed its railroad network its bulk might make it undefeatable a generation hence.
If Kaiser Wilhelm II had had the nerve to declare war on France during the 1905 Morocco Crisis, Count Alfred von Schlieffen's invasion plan would have crushed the French within weeks. Russia's Romanov dynasty, humiliated by its defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and beset by popular revolt, likely would have fallen under more benign circumstances than prevailed in 1917. England had not decided upon an alliance with the Franco-Russian coalition in 1905. The naval arms race between Germany and England, a major source of tension, was yet to emerge. War in 1905 would have left Wilhelmine Germany the sole hegemon in Europe, with no prospective challenger for some time to come. Germany's indecision left the initiative in the hands of Russia, elements of whose secret service backed the Serbian terrorists who murdered the Austrian crown prince in 1914, forcing Germany into war under far less favorable circumstances.
Both World Wars of the 20th century, in my view, started too late, with catastrophic consequences for Western Europe. America's Civil War, by contrast, was a war that began just in time, and I attribute the future flowering of the United States to Abraham Lincoln's ruthlessness in pushing the country into war.
General Ulysses S Grant, the Northern commander-in-chief and later president, wrote in his memoirs that the Civil War began with America's 1846 invasion of Mexico, which seized territory to permit the expansion of slavery. Because cotton destroyed land within a decade, the slave-owning caste required perpetual expansion of the slave system into new territories. The Southern Confederacy planned to march southward and create a slave empire in Mexico and the Caribbean (Happy birthday, Abe - pass the blood, February 10).
Was it coincidence that France, England and Spain determined to invade Mexico after Benito Juarez suspended debt-service payment to Mexico's European creditors in 1861, just as the American Civil War began? French, English and Spanish forces landed in Mexico in December 1861, after the South's early victories in the Civil War convinced European governments that the slaveholders would prevail. By 1862, after Stonewall Jackson's success in the Shenandoah Valley, England came close to recognizing the Confederacy. In October of that year, William Gladstone, then chancellor of the exchequer, stated, "We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern States so far as regards their separation from the North." The Union half-victory at the Battle of Antietam in September came just in time to abort British recognition of the South.
Had the war broken out two years later, the European powers already would have been entrenched in Mexico, providing the South with a natural ally against the Lincoln government, and a base with which to expand the slave system southward. America would have split in two (at least), and the history of the world would have been radically different, and radically worse.
Before America's invasion of Iraq, I wrote, "Iraq's nuclear program is the 21st-century equivalent of Russia's railroads in 1914. The United States must prevent Saddam Hussein from building nuclear weapons now, or the cost of stopping him (and others in the future) will be incalculable. The trouble is that today's Arabs (and to a great extent other Islamic populations) are in the position of the Slavs of 1914. They are an endangered culture, and like many endangered cultures, the extremists among them will take desperate measures" (Do not click on this link, October 29, 2002).
That is why George W Bush has my moral support in the upcoming US presidential election. He may not fathom what he is doing, and he may have made a dog's breakfast of Iraq, but at least he is willing to go straight to war, no questions asked. That is precisely what the world needs.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd.
Posted at 12:56 pm by Psychomike
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